"Fastness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flew to her fastness in Frank's attic, while Julius repaired to Raymond's room, and found him as usual lying tranquil, with his mother's chair so near that she could hand him the cool fruit or drink, or ring to summon other help. ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... paved with raw gold. Old-timers, it was said, whose very names were forgotten in the frosts of earlier years, had dived into the icy waters of Surprise Lake and fetched lump-gold to the surface in both hands. At different times, parties of old-timers had penetrated the forbidding fastness and sampled the lake's golden bottom. But the water was too cold. Some died in the water, being pulled up dead. Others died later of consumption. And one who had gone down never did come up. All survivors had planned to return and drain the lake, yet none had ever ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... place to land upon the banks to make fire, espied four canoas coming down the river; and with no small joy caused his men to try the uttermost of their strengths, and after a while two of the four gave over and ran themselves ashore, every man betaking himself to the fastness of the woods. The two other lesser got away, while he landed to lay hold on these; and so turned into some by-creek, we knew not whither. Those canoas that were taken were loaded with bread, and ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... still and already very hot. As they descended towards the basin in which lies Olympia, heat ascended to meet them and to give them a welcome—a soft and almost enticing heat like a breath from some green fastness where ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... untold harm in a district precisely as a couple of man-eating jaguars may depopulate a forest village in tropical America; and many men and much time had to be spent before they could be beaten into submission, exactly as it needs a great hunting party to drive from their fastness and slay the big man-eating cats, though, if they came to bay in the open, they could readily be killed by a single ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Three - The Founding of the Trans-Alleghany Commonwealths, 1784-1790 • Theodore Roosevelt
... within the icy domes Of yon far Schreckhorn—ay, or higher, where, Veil'd since eternity, the Jungfrau soars, Still to the tyrant would I make my way; With twenty comrades minded like myself, I'd lay his fastness level with the earth! And if none follow me, and if you all, In terror for your homesteads and your herds, Bow in submission to the tyrant's yoke, Round me I'll call the herdsmen on the hills, And there ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... The mountain fastness of the Apache in Arizona permitted easiest approach from the south and the west for all who wished to seek peace or revenge. The Apache-Mohave, living as Apache in close affiliation, were on the western border of this stronghold, whence they made raids upon several other Yuman groups, north, ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... grim was this third battle, for the ships fought together upon the water. The Saxons withdrew before the Britons, so that from beyond the Humber even to Kent they were deceived in their hope. The heathen fled in their galleys to an islet called Thanet. The Britons assailed them in this fastness, and so long as it was day, harassed them with arrows and quarrels, with ships and with barges. They rejoiced loudly, for the pagans were caught in a corner, and those not slain by the sword were fain to die of hunger. For this reason, ...
— Arthurian Chronicles: Roman de Brut • Wace
... battle in the Mountain— Might assaulteth Might; 'Tis the fastness of the Anarch, Torrent-torn, an ancient height; The crags resound the clangor Of the war of Wrong and Right; And the armies in the valley Watch and pray ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... implicit faith, not only nobly triumphing over every inducement to compromise the interests of truth by refusing to surrender himself to its acknowledged claims, but venturing forth, and assailing error in its most splendid fastness, and pursuing it to its final retreat; and that to, by the employment of arguments whose overwhelming force is partly derived from the peculiar suavity with which they are urged, we are unable to resist such an occasion for exclaiming, "This ...
— The Baptist Magazine, Vol. 27, January, 1835 • Various
... to be found from the start, and he always managed to produce the article required at the shortest notice. As a matter of fact, he had laid hands upon a tame professor, whom he kept immured in a fastness somewhere in the attics, and who was always prepared to vouch for the proficiency of anybody in any language when required ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... ye've had your own communings wi' the duke, and that ye ken the by-roads to the castle. Settle it that he and I can meet this very nicht, and if need be I'll be ready to leave the morrow's morning. Aye, Balcarres, if the duke holds the fastness, I'll look after the open country." And before daybreak there was a meeting between the Gordon and the Graham. They exchanged pledges, each to do his part, but both of them knew an almost hopeless part, for the king. Many a forlorn hope had their houses led, and this would ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... that the billowy archduke would have no little difficulty in recovering her from this fastness; and since she was assured that this green wood life was the very thing the princess needed, she was resolved to give him no help herself. She was pleased to learn that she was in no way responsible for ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... I tell you plainly that I feel myself to be—not in a nobleman's castle, but in a brigand's fastness; and that I suspect my poor old servant has ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... General Webb lay with five thousand men, the startling news had just been received that the French general, Montcalm, was moving up the Champlain Lake with an army "numerous as the leaves on the trees," with the forest fastness of Fort William Henry as ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... a second illustration of the way in which changing conditions are altering political questions, let the reader take his atlas and consider the case of that impregnable fastness, that great naval station, that Key to the Mediterranean, Gibraltar. British boys are brought up on Gibraltar and the Gibraltar idea. To the British imagination Gibraltar is almost as sacred a national ...
— In The Fourth Year - Anticipations of a World Peace (1918) • H.G. Wells
... founded temples, gilded fanes and altars fair; Looking up, they saw already Manitou enthroned there In the fastness of the mountain, with his sphynx-like, stony face Watching like a guardian spirit, o'er the dusky lawless race Who regarded not each other, and their deadly hatred slaked In the blood of friends and foemen, when their ...
— Indian Legends of Minnesota • Various
... now, gazing, white and trembling, at the fate which had overtaken him even in the fastness of the labyrinthine jungle. Instinctively he turned to flee; but Tarzan of the Apes reached out a strong hand and grasped him by ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Arab robbers had possessed themselves of the fastness of a mountain, and waylaid the track of the caravan. The yeomanry of the villages were frightened at their stratagems, and the king's troops alarmed, inasmuch as they had secured an impregnable fortress on the summit of the mountain, and made this ...
— Persian Literature, Volume 2, Comprising The Shah Nameh, The - Rubaiyat, The Divan, and The Gulistan • Anonymous
... directly on the trail of the party. The alarm was given; they all came to a halt, and held a council of war. Some conjectured that the band of Indians, whose trail they had discovered in the neighborhood of the stray horse, had been lying in wait for them in some secret fastness of the mountains; and were about to attack them on the open plain, where they would have no shelter. Preparations were immediately made for defence; and a scouting party sent off to reconnoitre. ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... its dust-white line, with the rocky ridge through the middle, dipping and rising and getting nowhere. The horse grew nervous and shied repeatedly from sheer loneliness. The road entered a wood. Deep in its leafy fastness wild steers heard the beat of the horse's hoofs, laid back their ears and galloped into safer depths, bellowing with alarm. Steering gave up, as helplessly homesick as a baby, his head dropped forward on his chest in a settled melancholy, from which he did not rouse until he had cleared the ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the chance centre of many varying interests. In its immediate vicinity exists the life of the prairie ranch on the one hand and that of the mining-camp on the other; while dominating all as it were—town, prairie, and mountain fastness—rises the great Peak which has now for so many years been the goal of pilgrimage to men and women from the Eastern States in pursuit of health, of fortune, or of the free, open-air life of the prairie. If, ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... these we crawled and lay, listening for snakes. But there seemed to be none there, though our rocky fastness was a very likely place. And after we had eaten and emptied our canteens, the two Oneidas went out on guard to the eastern limit of the rocks; and the Sagamore and I lay on our sides, facing each other in the dark. And for a while we lay there, neither of us ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... these western Englishmen, whose older name was soon lost in that of Mercians, or Men of the March. Their settlement was in fact a new march or borderland between conqueror and conquered; for here the impenetrable fastness of the Peak, the mass of Cannock Chase, and the broken country of Staffordshire enabled the Briton to make a fresh ...
— History of the English People, Volume I (of 8) - Early England, 449-1071; Foreign Kings, 1071-1204; The Charter, 1204-1216 • John Richard Green
... through the vale the rain-clouds Darker and heavier flow, Above them the dominant summit Stands clad in calmness and snow; So thou, great Chief, awaiting the turn Of the purple tide:—And the moment has come! And the signal-word flies out with a smile, And they charge the foe in his fastness, home:— As one long wave when the wind Urges an ocean behind, One line, they sweep on the foe, And France from our battle recoils, and ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... a place of safety. She invokes the aid of Roqueblanc, an independent chieftain, who, spurred on by love for her, throws all his forces on to her side, offering at the same time his well-guarded fastness as a sanctuary for her boy. ("Castles.") Then the queen musters all her own troops and leads them into battle by the ...
— If I May • A. A. Milne
... wearing their old, old coat of grained varnish; nay the varnish had its ancient smell, and the very vanes outside creaked their message to my ears. I remembered whole days that I had spent, whole books that I had read, here in this favorite fastness of my boyhood. The dirty little place, with the dormer window in each of its four sloping sides, became a gallery hung with poignant pictures of the past. And here was I leaving it with my life in my hands ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... void and the darkness that is peopled by Mimir's brood, from the ultimate silent fastness of the desolate deep-sea gloom, and the peace of that ageless gloom, blind Oriander came, from Mimir, to be at war with the sea and to jeer at the sea's desire. When tempests are seething and roaring from the Aesir's inverted bowl all seamen ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... a tree with the swift surety of an executioner, and in revenge for his many arborai murders the woodland had taken captive his mind, captured and chained it as Prospero did Ariel. The resounding footsteps of Progress driven on so mercilessly in this mad age could not reach his fastness. It did not concern him that men were thinking, investigating, inventing. His senses responded only to the sonorous music of the woods; a steadfast wind ringing metallic melody from the pine-tops contented him as the sound of the sea does the sailor; ...
— A Michigan Man - 1891 • Elia W. Peattie
... reason for going. The Federal troops held Romney then, a neighboring village, and he knew many of the officers would be at this meeting. There was a party of Confederates in Blue's Gap, a mountain-fastness near by, and Scofield had heard a rumor that the Unionists would attack them to-morrow morning: he meant to try and find out the truth of it, so as to give the boys warning to be ready, and, maybe, lend them a helping ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... St. Helena, that he believed himself to be bolder than any general that ever lived, but he would never have dared to hold the position that Dumouriez took up. He was outnumbered, three to one. He had been outmanoeuvred, and driven from his fastness by the most enterprising of the allied generals; and his recruits refused to face the enemy. He never for a moment lost confidence in himself, for the time wasted at Verdun had given him the measure of his opponents. He summoned Kellermann, with the army of Metz, and Beurnonville, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... Ghostie provided a perpetual jest by wearing a smart Paris hat with a high cerise crown. She said it had once belonged to the fastest woman in South Africa, who had given it to her as a joke, but she did not mention the lady's name, nor say in what her "fastness" consisted. This was characteristic of visitors at Ho-la-le-la: they sometimes stated facts, but never talked scandal. When April asked them to call her by her own name, instead of "Diana," they did so without comment, accepting her as one of themselves, and asking no questions ...
— Blue Aloes - Stories of South Africa • Cynthia Stockley
... opposite sides of the little stream, the branches of which crept through the alder and gum thickets between them, and contributed to make the district almost as impenetrable to the uninitiated as a mountain fastness. The long log-cabin of the Cove-Millses, where room had been added to room in a straight line, until it looked like the side of a log fort, peeped from its pines across at the clearing where the hardly more pretentious home of Darby Stanley was set back amid a little orchard of ragged ...
— The Burial of the Guns • Thomas Nelson Page
... now, Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The chipmunk, on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, cheeping, with a bound 40 Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... minutest phase in this field—the "parlor rifle," with a target against the chimney-piece or meandering, in feline form, along our neighbor's roof-tree—we go forth, with Snider and sunrise, to the forest fastness. Our companions throng, tall, bronzed, close-knit and sinewy, true children of the four-grooved, from frosty Caucasus, the Hartz, the Alps, the Dovrafjeld, the Grampians, the Himmalaya, the Adirondack, the Alleghany, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... up water in an iron cup, to gratify the curiosity of visitors as much as to quench their thirst; for it was strange, indeed, to meet with fresh water there, the presence of which, no doubt, had caused the place to be chosen for a fastness in old time. With this she hurried back; and fixing one end firmly round the door-post, she looped the other in a slip-knot, and lowered it carefully to Richard. "Put this beneath your arms," she said; "the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... must not be supposed that this prosperity was uninterrupted throughout Mr. Crittenden's business life. There were dark storms which threatened disastrous wreck, and nothing but stead-fastness of purpose and force of character brought him through. In 1836 the financial tornado swept over the land and stripped nearly every business man bare. When the storm was at its height Mr. Crittenden found himself with fifty ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... capture of Fiona by Filion, from Black Brian's castle in the hills, was told with primitive force and passion. But the most wonderful part of the story described how a strange dwarfed Little Man came out of the hills in the East, across the land, to the Western fastness of Black Brian, and there slew that evil man, because of an ancient feud—slew him in a situation of great indignity, and left him lying on the sands for the tide to wash him out to the deep and hungry sea. Even here Patsy had his inspiration ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... hills. These were not the clouds of summer rains. They were the first banners of an enemy—a grim and dreadful foe who had his ramparts in the wilds, and his ambush laid for such feeble creatures as would dare to brave his fastness. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... this man. One thing was clear enough: the Lion of Petra was well informed. It was nothing less than fact that on no account could an expedition be undertaken against him for a long time. And it was fair, therefore, to presume that in his Petra fastness the robber chief would be feeling confident, and would be that much more ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... intrenchments, for protection from their pagan visitants. But when these invaders themselves were converted to christianity, and settled into regular and potent governments, this retreat of the antient Britons grew every day narrower; they were overrun by little and little, gradually driven from one fastness to another, and by repeated losses abridged of their wild independence. Very early in our history we find their princes doing homage to the crown of England; till at length in the reign of Edward the first, who may justly be stiled ...
— Commentaries on the Laws of England - Book the First • William Blackstone
... their fellow pueblo dwellers. The forested mesas, so different from the arid cliffs farther south and west, possessed constant moisture and fertile soil. The grasses lured the deer within capture. The Mancos River provided fish. Above all, the remoteness of these fastness canyons from the trails of raiders and traders and their ease of defense made for long generations of peace. The enterprise innate in the spirit of ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard
... in remote parts of the country, and the legate Bassus was sent to take their three fortresses. He died before the capture of Masada, the last stronghold, a natural fastness overlooking the Dead Sea, which had been fortified by Herod. In this region David and centuries later the Maccabean heroes had found a refuge at their time of distress, and here the Jewish people were to show ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... later, she would bring out some cynical scrap of wisdom, evidently the fruit of bitter experience, which sounded strange coming from her lips. Yet, despite the utter unconventionality, there was no hint of fastness about her, and even when she touched by implication on her way of life, she did so with a kind of frank simplicity, hiding nothing and ...
— People of Position • Stanley Portal Hyatt
... error is seldom expelled from philosophy by a single victory. It retreats slowly, defends every inch of ground, and often, after it has been driven from the open country, retains a footing in some remote fastness. The essences of individuals were an unmeaning figment arising from a misapprehension of the essences of classes, yet even Locke, when he extirpated the parent error, could not shake himself free from that which was its fruit. He distinguished two sorts of essences, Real and Nominal. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... much adventure; escapes, far distant wanderings, strange company. Many months I spent in a mountain fastness with a wise Hebrew Rabbi, who taught me his sacred Scriptures; going back to the beginning of all things, before the world was; yet shrewd in judgment of the present, and throwing a weird light forward upon the future. A strange man; wise, as are all of that Chosen ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... afterwards his foes pursued him actively from fastness to fastness, determined to run him down, and at length, on September 6, 1859, surprised him on the plateau of Gounib. Here the devoted band made a desperate resistance, not yielding until of the original four hundred only forty-seven remained alive. Schamyl, the lion ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... pulled the pricking vines loose from her dress, and came out. "How do you do, Lot?" she said, again. Still Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient dignity as if to enter her fastness again; but ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... recollection of those days when Tarzan of the Apes had ruled supreme, Lord of the Jungle, over all the myriad life that trod the matted vegetation between the boles of the great trees, or flew or swung or climbed in the leafy fastness upward to the very apex of the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... that emanate from a southern sky, and he preferred to combat hypocrisy with the lighter weapons of pleasantry. But whichsoever arm he wielded, he always pursued the enemy remorselessly, following into every fastness, of which none knew better than himself each winding and each resource. For hypocrisy had been the bane of his life; it had rendered useless for happiness that combination he possessed of Heaven's choicest gifts; the plenitude of affections, ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the situation, and contented himself with wishing that the British would attack him. There were continual rumors that the British plan was laid, and deserters frequently came from Boston prophesying a sally; but still the regulars lay in their fastness, and did not move. ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... when winter storms confined them to the castle. Rude as was their work, the constant observation and choice of subjects were an unsuspected training and softening. It was not in vain that they lived in the glorious mountain fastness, and saw the sun descend in his majesty, dyeing the masses of rock with purple and crimson; not in vain that they beheld peak and ravine clothed in purest snow, flushed with rosy light at morn and eve, or contrasted with the purple blue of the sky; or that they stood marvelling at ice caverns ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... night schools after business hours, and thus prepare for the great life struggle which is before them. Such boys are apt to do well in the world. Many, however, after being released from the stores, imitate the ways of the clerks and salesmen. They affect a fastness which is painful to see in boys so young. They sport an abundance of flashy jewelry, patronize the cheap places of amusement, and are seen in the low concert saloons, and other vile dens of the city. It is not difficult to predict the future ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... Guard Thee, my Land!" There is the brassy blare of challenging trumpets in the former; they defy all creation, and make a vast deal of impotent and unprofitable noise about "The roaring northern main," "The ancient Norway's rocky fastness," "Liberty's temple in Norroway's valleys," and "Norway's lion, whose axe doth threaten him who dares ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... his eyes become injected with hot blood; the man of peace vanishes, transfigured into a choleric and formidable man of war. Still, she does not come out of her absorption to look at him: her eyes are steadfast with a mechanical reflection of Richard's stead-fastness.) ...
— The Devil's Disciple • George Bernard Shaw
... was that a letter penned by this unknown M. de Puisaye from some hidden fastness in the Bocage of Brittany came to divert the course of Adrian Landale's existence into a channel where neither he, nor any of those who knew him, would ever have dreamed to see ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... during the last two years, and the more important I think the "mission" of every quiet, refined, self-respecting woman—the more mistaken I think those who would forfeit it by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the first continually exerts its restraining power. ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... fifteen, she fled on his approach, and shook with fear if he looked at her. He made his love plain by logical formulas and proved his passion by geometrical permutations—by charts and diagrams. A seasoned widow might have broken up the icy fastness of his soul and melted his forbidding nature in the crucible of feeling, but this poor girl just wanted some one to hold her little hand and say peace to her fluttering heart. How could she go plump herself in his lap, pull his ears and tell him he was a fool? Finally, the girl's brother, ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... thing to have killed the wrong man," said the conscience-stricken illicit distiller in his mountain fastness. "I never seen good come o' goodness yet; him as strikes first is my fancy," said the dying pirate in "Treasure Island." Augustine, passing over much worse offences, exhausts himself in agonies of remorse over ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... type of space-flyer," said Nern Bela. "It is capable of making two trips a year between Venus and the earth. We have visited this planet often, always landing in some mountain or jungle fastness as heretofore we did not desire earth-dwellers to know of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... zigzagging between them. A frail little toy of man, it seemed, to venture here alone; small, black, impertinent atom forcing its way so hardily into this magnificence of colour, this silent splendour, this radiant stillness of the North. Into this very fastness of the most gigantic forces of Nature it had penetrated, and the sapphire sea supported it, the transparent light illumined it, the lance-like mountains looked down upon it, and the glistening bergs forbore to crush it, as if disdaining to ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... with all their dash, and brusquerie, and fastness, they really are most kind-hearted ...
— Working in the Shade - Lowly Sowing brings Glorious Reaping • Theodore P Wilson
... swiftly to black night that rushed past the two clinging figures and enveloped them in a wall of silence. Then out of the mysterious fastness came the dull glow of what looked like a distant planet. It grew and enlarged till it reached the size of a silver dollar. Little pin-points of light soon began to appear on all sides of it, very ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... time the Americans tried to break through, but were driven back with terrific loss. But the Germans could not approach close enough to wipe them out. Always when the Huns stormed there was such a withering fire from the American guns that the Kaiser's troops fled back to the fastness ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... in a dim romantic laboratory may light upon a placid formula and, like Aladdin, roll back the portals of the enchanted fastness with a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... gloom of snow-storms there is a chance for a shot; sometimes in a remoter fastness a big boar may deem himself secure enough to venture out where there are no witnesses to his solitary gastronomic revels save an Arctic owl or two huddled high in ...
— The Danger Mark • Robert W. Chambers
... Florentine writers as the Mercato Vecchio, or the Old Market. This piazza, though it had been the scene of a provision-market from time immemorial, and may, perhaps, says fond imagination, be the very spot to which the Fesulean ancestors of the Florentines descended from their high fastness to traffic with the rustic population of the valley, had not been shunned as a place of residence by Florentine wealth. In the early decades of the fifteenth century, which was now near its end, the Medici and other powerful ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the ships had swung to their anchors I saw a boat put off, bearing a flag of truce, to summon the pirates to yield up their fastness. But this proposal evidently miscarried, for the boat returned shortly, without any motions being made towards a surrender. At the same time I saw the gate on the landward side of the fortress opened and ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... must be allowed for the mordant to penetrate the fibre thoroughly. If the mordant is only superficial, the dye will be uneven: it will fade and will not be as brilliant as it should be. The brilliancy and fastness of Eastern dyes are probably due to a great extent to the length of time taken over the various processes of dyeing. The longer time that can be given to each process, the more satisfactory will ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... his voice seemed fairly to boom out. At the sound of it, the hermit was galvanized into life. He dropped what he had been eating, and slowly rose from his crouching attitude. Then he turned slowly, so as to face the group of intruders on his island fastness. He seemed to fear they would vanish, if he moved too suddenly—vanish as the ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... of one end was filled with an abundant stock of firewood and peat which his brothers had cut, cast and prepared, and the troop had brought in one night of full moon. The peat-cutting had increased the difficulty of reaching the central fastness of the Wild, for the ink-black tarns had been cunningly united, and the wide morass in front, where from black pools great bubbles for ever rose and lazily burst, had been dammed till it overflowed the meadows and lapped the sand-dunes ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... of Schonwaldt by the insurgents, was answered by all the bells in that city, whose distant and clamorous voices seemed to cry, Hail to the victors! It would have been natural that Meinheer Pavillon should now have sallied from his fastness, but either in reverent care of those whom he had taken under his protection, or perhaps for the better assurance of his own safety, he contented himself with dispatching messenger on messenger, ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... that had placed him at enmity with her kinsfolk, yet he realized there was no help for this. The Morgans were a law unto themselves. Hardened men with a hardened code, they lived in their fastness like Ishmaelites. Counselled by their leader, old Duke Morgan, brains of the clan and influential enough to keep outside the penalties of the law themselves, their understanding with the outlaws of the Sinks was apparently complete, and the hospitality ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... Dragon; there retired To his last fastness; overthrown by few. Him a laborious thrust of roadway slew. Then man to play devorant ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the wronged and fettered soul! the freed and royal soul! It alone is king. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in! Tremble, O Tyrant, in your mountain-fastness! Tremble, Deceiver, in your cavern under the sea! Your victim is your accuser. Your sin has found you out. Your crime cries to Heaven. You have condemned and killed the just. You have murdered the innocent in secret places, and in the noonday ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton
... my life. How well I remember the scene! We were resting beneath the chestnut-trees that shadow a stretch of level sward immediately below the last short stage of ascent that leads into the heart of the squalid village now nestling in the crevices of the old Moslem fastness. The midday hush was on sea and sky. Far out on the horizon a level line of smoke showed where an unseen steamer was crawling along under the edge of the sapphire sphere. As I reached the climax of my tale an old woman, bent almost ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... who means to amuse himself with angling. Then, mounted upon a Manx pony, he rode briskly over the country, and halted at one of the mountain streams, and followed along the bank until he reached a house where once a fastness had ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VII • Various
... force of the Indians was routed and dispersed, each family, or band of neighbors, fled in its own direction, and concealed itself in the fastness of the mountains. The Spaniards pursued them, but found the chase difficult amidst the close forests, and the broken and stony heights. They took several prisoners as guides, and inflicted incredible torments on them, to compel them to betray their countrymen. They drove them before ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... may put on her brother's boots, and they will not affect her spirit strongly; but as soon as she puts on her brother's hat, she gives him a manly nod. The same philosopher who fathers his dulness on me, asserts that the modern vice or fastness ('Trotting on the Epicene Border,' he has it) is bred by apparently harmless practices of this description. He offers to turn the current of a Republican's brain, by resting a coronet on his ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... failed in every attempt to scale it. He did not, for this, despair of accomplishing the object; but, having obtained Agramant's consent, caused the assembled courtiers and knights to celebrate a tournament upon the plain below. This was done with the view of seducing Rogero from his fastness, and the stratagem ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... great treasure and power from this time forth; still thou art not happy without love and one to share thy fortune. I will tell thee then of a lovely bride who lies guarded round by fire in a rocky forest fastness. She sleeps and waits for one who shall dare the flames for love. The ...
— Operas Every Child Should Know - Descriptions of the Text and Music of Some of the Most Famous Masterpieces • Mary Schell Hoke Bacon
... knowledge of his freedom and he knows that rebirth has been destroyed, the higher life has been led, what had to be done has been done. He has no more to do with this life. Just as if in a mountain fastness there were a pool of water, clear, translucent and serene and a man standing on the bank and with eyes to see should perceive the mussels and the shells, the gravel and pebbles and the shoals of fish as they move ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, Vol I. (of 3) - An Historical Sketch • Charles Eliot
... slipped the leash. She was a robber baroness; she dwelt in a rocky "fastness"—whatever that was—surrounded by a crew of outlaws as desperate as any that ever drew cutlass and dagger, and she ruled them not only by native strength of character, but also by the aid of other forces, for she was on friendly terms with the more prominent wood ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... it, my dear," he told his spouse, in his fastness under a gnarled tree root. "However, there's no objection to the children having a look if it amuses them." He cast a discriminating eye round the larder, and frowned heavily. "Hell! you don't mean to say that we've got that damned ham ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... called—who, weary of the long struggle, were willing to return to the bosom of the Church if only the cup (calix), and thus communion under both kinds (sub utraque), were guaranteed to them, with two or three secondary matters. Not so the Taborites, who drew their name from a mountain fastness which they fortified and called Mount Tabor. These, the Ultras, the democratic radical party, separating themselves off as early as 1419, had left Huss and his teaching very far behind. Ignoring the whole historical development of Christianity, they demanded that a clean sweep should be made ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... punish Bijai Singh, the Rathor leader of Jodhpur, for abetting the resistance of Ismail Beg. On the 21st of August the General arrived at Ajmir, and took the town on the following day. He then sat down to form the regular siege of the citadel, called Taragarh (a fastness strong by nature, and strengthened still more by art, and situated on an eminence some 3,000 feet above sea-level). Bijai Singh, in Rajput fashion, was ready to try negotiation, and thought that he might succeed in practicing upon ...
— The Fall of the Moghul Empire of Hindustan • H. G. Keene
... Buschetti, Bertone, and Broglie, which took their origin from it, six of which became notable in their own country and one in France. The Bensos acquired possession of the fief of Santena and of the old fastness of Cavour in the province of Pignerolo. This castle has remained a ruin since it was destroyed by Catinat, but in the last century Charles Emmanuel III. conferred the title of Marquis of Cavour on a Benso who had rendered ...
— Cavour • Countess Evelyn Martinengo-Cesaresco
... exultation. It was as though he were under some horrid spell which twisted his love and anguish into the expressions of a spiteful prig. Why couldn't he tell her of those deadly, shapeless fears, of his loneliness, his sorrowful jealousies? He was shut up in the iron fastness of his own ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... Bohemia, or at least some part of it, for frontiers in those very early days were even more elastic than those drawn by International Commissions. Anyway, there was Krok lording it over as much of Bohemia as he could control, from his fastness of Vy[vs]ehrad. Of Libu[vs]a's sisters, Kazi and Teta, nothing but their names is known even in legend; they passed into oblivion on Krok's demise, for he ordained that Libu[vs]a, his youngest daughter, should succeed him. Libu[vs]a, according to ...
— From a Terrace in Prague • Lieut.-Col. B. Granville Baker
... follow the enemy into the defiles of Allatoona from Cartersville. His position at Kingston offered a far more easy way to turn that fastness by the south, if he could replenish his stores, rebuild the bridges behind him, and make Kingston the base for a march upon Dallas and thence on Marietta. On the 20th of May his orders were issued ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... The solemn stillness around seemed to me like the shadow of death—especially so, from the peril we were in through the deadly feud existing at the time between the Indians and white men. I penetrated for full a quarter of a mile into this fastness in a lateral direction, and, in doing so, suddenly startled two immense white birds of the adjutant species, which were standing in a swamp surrounded by majestic cedar trees. I could easily have brought one down ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... been so long undisturbed in their mountain fastness that they had ceased to take even the most ordinary precautions against surprise. So far as could be discovered they had posted no guards over the aeroplanes and their deadly cargo, nor at either of the two doors to the ...
— The Apartment Next Door • William Andrew Johnston
... as 'Tonio's little party reached the scene and swelled the clamor with their Springfields. Another moment and, springing from rock to rock, spreading out to the right and left as they came in view of a little fastness along the face of a cliff, the troopers went scrambling down the adjacent slope and, every man for himself, opened on what could be seen of the foe. Some men, possibly, never knew what they were firing at, but the big-barrelled Sharp's carbine made a glorious chorus to the sputtering ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... the grandson of the old Stephen, and (by the death of his sire and brother) the youthful head of that powerful House, had already raised his standard against the Senator. Fortifying himself in the almost impregnable fastness of Palestrina, he had assembled around him all the retainers of his family, and his lawless soldiery now ravaged the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... from Surinam, in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772. Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much upon his numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in a marshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundred Dutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the "black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he again drew back into the forests, resuming ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... Abundance, they were both restless and fierce, for the days of sorrow hung heavy on their hands. So on a time a great company of them had ado with the Burgers somewhat recklessly and came to the worse; wherefore some drew back into their fastness of the Scaur and the others still rode on, and further west than their wont had been; but warily when they had the Wood Perilous behind them, for they had learned wisdom again. Thus riding they had tidings of an host of the Burg ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... legends, which I hope soon to lay before the public in another place. Of Ahupu, except in snatches of song, little memory appears to linger. She dwelt at least about Tepari,—"the sea-cliffs,"—the eastern fastness of the isle; walked by paths known only to herself upon the mountains; was courted by dangerous suitors who came swimming from adjacent islands, and defended and rescued (as I gather) by the loyalty of native fish. My anxiety to learn more of "Ahupu Vehine" became (during my stay in Taiarapu) ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... places pig-tailed Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, talking together in a mixed dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, quarrelling and murdering like wolves; how the plumed hereditary lord of all America heard, in this last fastness, the scream of the "bad medicine waggon" charioting his foes; and then when I go on to remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in frock coats, and with a view to nothing more extraordinary than a fortune and a subsequent visit to Paris, it seems to me, I own, as if ...
— Across The Plains • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fearless and intrepid pioneers who so far from fleeing danger seemed rather to court it. Accounts of their adventures—now a struggle with a wounded bear, again the threatened perils of starvation when lost in some mountain-fastness—have long simultaneously terrified and fascinated both young and old. We all have pictured their dress—the coat or cloak, often an odd combination of several varieties of skins pieced together, with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... And when anew the earth assembled round me I swung out on the heath and woke a hare And speared it at a cast and shouldered it, Startled another drinking at a tarn And speared it ere it leapt; so steady and clear Had the god in his fastness made my mind. Then, as I took those dead things in my hands, I felt shame light my face from deep within, And loathing and contempt shake in my bowels, That such unclean coarse blows from me had issued To crush delicate things to bloody mash And blemish ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... woman who was not strikingly beautiful and with whom he had talked, in all, but ten minutes. But, as we recognise, he went so far as to wish that the human belongings of a person whose high spirit appeared to have no taint either of fastness, as they said in England, or of subversive opinion, and whose mouth had charming lines, should not be a little more distinguished. There was an effect of drollery in her behaviour to these subjects of her zeal, whom she seemed to regard as a care, ...
— Pandora • Henry James
... strange indeed in the illuminating light of her later insight into Kells and his kind, she had to meet him with all that was catlike and subtle and devilish at the command of a woman. She had to win him, foil him, kill him—or go to her death. She was no girl to be dragged into the mountain fastness by a desperado and made a plaything. Her horror and terror had worked its way deep into the depths of her and uncovered powers never suspected, never before required in her scheme of life. She had no longer any fear. She matched herself ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... sauntered down to the water-front. The Chinamen were already busy in their shops. The sky had still the pallor of dawn, and there was a ghostly silence on the lagoon. Ten miles away the island of Murea, like some high fastness of the Holy ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... days, the Mount of St. Michael in Cornwall was the fastness of a hugeous giant whose name ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... orchards, whilst in harmony with the little town, and adding a still greater look of old- worldness, are the arched walls of the old chateau-fort. As evening closes in, the fascination of the scene deepens; spire and roofs, shadowy hill and stern mountain fastness, are all outlined in pale, silvery tones against a pure pink and opaline sky, the greenery of near vine and peach-tree all standing out in bold relief, blotches of greenish gold upon a dark ground. I must describe our inn, ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... hateful work"; it is also a poor work, badly constructed, and for the most part carelessly written. In essence it is a mere tract against Puritanism, and in form a sort of Arabian Nights' Entertainment in which the hero plays the part of Haroun-al-Raschid.] whose anger has no stead-fastness; but the gentle forgivingness of disposition that is so marked in Vincentio is a trait we found emphasized in Romeo, and again in Hamlet and again in Macbeth. It is, indeed, one of the most permanent characteristics of Shakespeare. ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... man of great power and discernment. It is said that if he has the will, he can do more than any man in London to help on young writers. It is useless sending manuscripts, for he refuses to consider unsolicited poetical contributions. He shuts himself up in a fastness in Fleet Street, and the door thereof is guarded with dragons with lying tongues. I know! I have made it my business to inquire, but I feel convinced that if he once gave Ron a fair reading, he would acknowledge his gifts. There is no hope of approaching ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... demi-monde in dress leads to something in manner and feeling, not quite so pronounced, perhaps, but far too like to be honorable to herself or satisfactory to her friends. It leads to slang, bold talk, and fastness; to the love of pleasure and indifference to duty; to the desire of money before either love or happiness; to uselessness at home, dissatisfaction with the monotony of ordinary life, and horror of all useful work; in a word, to the worst forms of luxury and selfishness, ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... many of them. I select for mention a few only, adding one or two not included by him. Karl the Great lies in the Unterberg, near Salzburg, and also in the Odenberg, where Woden himself, according to other legends, is said to be. Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen Lied, dwells in the mountain fastness of Geroldseck. Diedrich rests in the mountains of Alsace, his hand upon his sword, waiting till the Turk shall water his horses on the banks of the Rhine. On the Gruetli, where once they met to swear the oath which freed their country, lie the three founders of the Swiss Federation in a cleft ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... was symmetrical, straight and pliant as a young fir tree when the sweet spring sap fills its veins. So he came to that assembly, in the glory of youth, beauty, strength, valour, and beautiful shame- fastness, yet proud in his humility and glittering like the morning star. Choice youths, his comrades, attended him. The kings held their breaths when he drew nigh, moving white knee after white knee over the green and sparkling grass. When the other ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... check, to draw him into separate detachments, in successive skirmishes to profit of their superior aim and activity, and of their better knowledge of the country, and to keep up its confidence by a system of short and gradual retreats from fastness to fastness,—from river beyond river." p. l29.—These sentences, taken at hap-hazard from two consecutive leaves, are not unfair specimens of the literary merits of this intrepid attempt to convert the history of the nation, at its most critical period, into a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... to him thus: "Nay, thou shalt not only be in safety, but thou shalt be a king; and that more firmly than thou wast before; for thou art worthy to reign over a great many subjects, by reason of the fastness of thy friendship; and do thou endeavor to be equally constant in thy friendship to me, upon my good success, which is what I depend upon from the generosity of thy disposition. However, Antony hath done well in preferring Cleopatra to thee; for by this means we have gained thee by her madness, ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus |
