"Parapet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stand upon the crumbling parapet of old Fort Louis, you feel yourself poised in middle air; the sea-birds soar and swoop around you, the white surf lashes the rocks far below, the white vessels come and go, the water is around you on all ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... not part with her room-mate, little Barbara, and was to have for herself a charming bedroom and dressing-room, with a balcony and parapet overlooking the garden and park, and a tiny room besides, for ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... she will not come. She laughs to scorn all that I say. She stands upon the parapet of the roof, tossing her arms, and crying aloud as she sees building after building catch fire, and the great billows of flame rolling along. Oh, it is terrible to see and to hear her! Methinks she has gone distraught. Prithee, go fetch her down by force, dear father, for ...
— The Sign Of The Red Cross • Evelyn Everett-Green
... red, "he wasn't killed in an advance, or anything grand. He told me to tell you, so I am telling you. He was killed by a sniper while he was setting a trap of his own invention to catch the rats as they came over the parapet. He was shot in the chest very early yesterday morning, and he lived about four hours. He was not in much pain, he even laughed a little once or twice to think he should have lived and died so consistently. He told me that he had never seen a moment's real romantic ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... on his right, at the crowds of spectators on the river's edge, at the brilliant throng of skaters, at the great stone bridge spanning the frozen river over which people were forever passing to and fro, some hurriedly, some with leisure to lean over the parapet for a moment to watch the unaccustomed revelry below. And as he looked, another scene, which he had so lately left, rose before him. In fancy he could see the broad and shining Potomac, on its banks the stately old colonial house with its colonnaded wings, something after ...
— Calvert of Strathore • Carter Goodloe
... man," and as he spoke, Hubert Graham drew his arm away from the parapet over which he was leaning with book in hand, and turning round a frank, honest-looking face towards the boy who was questioning him, passed his hand over his eyes, and added, "What can have come to Uncle Charlie to make ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... Paslew's arm he led him to a low parapet, overlooking the covered passage before described. Half an hour before it had been bright moonlight, but, as if to favour the fugitive, the heavens had become overcast, and a thick mist had arisen from ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... oldest house in Hammersmith, is in the lane. The grounds stretch out a long way eastward, and one or two old cedars are still growing here. The eastern portion of the house has a fine front with fluted pilasters, with Ionic capitals running up to a stone parapet surmounted by urns. The windows are circular-headed, and those over the central doorway belong to a great room, 30 feet by 20, and 20 in height. The house, though much altered, is in its origin part of a very old building named Butterwick House, built by Edmund, third Baron Sheffield ...
— Hammersmith, Fulham and Putney - The Fascination of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... watches. Also, the person relieving a particular station. Also, a fresh detachment of troops, ordered to replace those already on duty. In fortification, the total height of the crest of the parapet above the ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... been rapidly thrown up, and offered no insuperable impediment. Sword in hand he leaped over the parapet, followed closely by Jacob and the ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... recall Mr. Tipp of the Elia essays. "Tipp," says his pleasant biographer, "never mounted the box of a stage-coach in his life; or leaned against the rails of a balcony; or walked upon the ridge of a parapet; or looked down a precipice; or let off a gun." I cannot follow Tipp, it may be, to his extreme tremors—my hair will not rise to so close a likeness of the fretful porcupine—yet in a measure we are in agreement. We are, as it were, ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... it is cut from the solid rock of precipitous cliffs rising straight from the sea, which the highway overhangs at an average height of five hundred feet, the traveller being protected only by a low stone parapet from the vast gulf that yawns beneath. And on the other side of the road the cliffs continue to ascend a like distance toward the sky, their irregular surfaces dotted with wonderful houses that cling to the slopes, ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces Abroad • Edith Van Dyne
... Sienna marble. The plain cornice which characterizes the outer walls of the exhibit palaces here takes on a richer ornamentation to conform to the ornate treatment of the Court, while it retains the parapet of red Spanish tiles above. Between the cornice and the columns is a wide and richly decorated attic or frieze where much of the detail and color which help to make the charm of ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... as he had whipped the pencil from his pocket in the cafe that morning—Max stepped back, his head up, his hand resting lightly on the wooden parapet. ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... haunt of spirits; but the public high place, such as I was now treading, was a thing on a great scale. As far as my eyes could pierce through the dark undergrowth, the floor of the forest was all paved. Three tiers of terrace ran on the slope of the hill; in front, a crumbling parapet contained the main arena; and the pavement of that was pierced and parcelled out with several wells and small enclosures. No trace remained of any superstructure, and the scheme of the amphitheatre was difficult to seize. I visited another ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 18 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... attracting its attention. But his foot slipped on the crumbling debris with a snapping of dry twigs. There was a quick little cry from above. He had barely time to recover his position before the singer, impulsively leaning over the parapet, had lost hers, and fell outward. But Masterton was tall, alert, and self-possessed, and threw out his long arms. The next moment they were full of soft flounces, a struggling figure was against his breast, and a woman's frightened little hands around his neck. But ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... 1381, and drowned by order of King Wenceslaus, because he refused to betray the secrets confided to him by the queen in the holy rite of confession. The spot whence he was cast into the Moldau is still marked by a cross with five stars on the parapet, indicative of the miraculous flames seen flickering over the dead body for three days. Nepomuk was canonized in 1729, and became the patron saint of bridges. His statue in stone usually occupies such a position on bridges ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... London Bridge, when he observed a policeman taking shelter under the parapet, and apparently watching those who passed him. Gorman could not make up his mind to go on, so he turned aside ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne
... General Graham, were leading on the left, and therefore won in this race for glory; but on all sides the invaders poured almost simultaneously over the works. For several minutes there was sharp fighting on the parapet; but the British were not to be denied, and drove before them the defenders as a kind of living screen against the fire that came from the second entrenchments; these they carried also, and thrust the whole mass out into the desert[371]. There hundreds of ...
— The Development of the European Nations, 1870-1914 (5th ed.) • John Holland Rose
... Hurons, so called by the French, where there are numerous communities, and seventeen villages fortified by three palisades of wood, with a gallery all around in the form of a parapet, for defence against their enemies. This region is in latitude 44 deg. 30', with a fertile ...
— Voyages of Samuel de Champlain, Vol. 1 • Samuel de Champlain
... the towers there stood forth a heavy stone porch with a Gothic gateway, surmounted by a battlemented parapet, made gable fashion, the apex of which was garnished by a pair of dolphins, rampant and antagonistic, whose corkscrew tails seemed contorted—especially at night—by the last agonies of rage convulsed. The porch doors stood open, except in tremendous weather; the inner ones ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... windows of the old men's rooms, each pair of windows separated by a small buttress. A broad gravel walk runs between the building and the river, which is always trim and cared for; and at the end of the walk, under the parapet of the approach to the bridge, is a large and well-worn seat, on which, in mild weather, three or four of Hiram's bedesmen are sure to be seen seated. Beyond this row of buttresses, and further from the bridge, and also further from the water which here suddenly bends, are the pretty oriel windows ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... detached Elizabethan, but not when decoration has been permitted below. They should then be carried up in curved lines, alternating with two angles, or three at the most, without pinnacles or hipknobs. A hollow parapet is far better than a battlement, in the intermediate spaces; the latter indeed is never allowable, except when the building has some appearance of being intended for defense, and therefore is generally barbarous ...
— The Poetry of Architecture • John Ruskin
... "don't look!"—and we turned into the entrance of the fort, between two outstanding walls. Going through, we hurried up a little steep rise, till we got to a smooth spread of grass, sloping gently to a level with the top of the wall. Where this slope reached its highest, where the parapet (as Mr. Thorold called it) commanded a clear view from the eastern side, there he brought me, and then permitted me to stand still. I do not know how long I ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... who is rather deaf, and has not caught the name, grasps the paper and hides behind it. From long experience he has discovered the utility of the newspaper as a sort of parapet behind which he ...
— War-time Silhouettes • Stephen Hudson
... to an open green, on the one side of which was a house of worship built on a mount that had been raised by the hand of man, about sixteen or eighteen feet above the common level. It had an oblong figure, and was inclosed by a wall or parapet of stone, about three feet in height. From this wall the mount rose with a gentle slope, and was covered with a green turf. On the top of it stood the house, which had the same figure as the mount, about twenty feet in length, and ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... to offer her help to her grandmother, but was refused so roughly that she dared not offer again, and therefore went to her favorite station by the parapet in the garden, whence she could look up and down the gorge, and through the arches of the old mossy Roman bridge that spanned it far down by the city-wall. All these things had become dear to her by years of familiar silent converse. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... the roof come down to a level midway between that of the roof-beams and that of the floor, and the interval of some 4 to 5 feet between the eaves and the floor remains open along the whole length of the front of the house (I.E. the side facing the river), save for a low parapet which bounds the floor along its outer edge. This space serves to admit both light and air, and affords an easy view over the river to those sitting in the house. The length of the house is in some cases as much as 400 yards, but the average length is probably ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... to Lombardy, flooded with sunlight, filled with swirling vapour, but never wholly hidden from our sight. For the blast kept shifting the cloud-masses, and the sun streamed through in spears and bands of sheeny rays. Over the parapet our horses dropped, down through sable spruce and amber larch, down between tangles of rowan and autumnal underwood. Ever as we sank, the mountains rose—those sharp embattled precipices, toppling spires, impendent chasms blurred with mist, that make the entrance ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... parapet of the bridge, and swung my feet over the water that frothed and fretted at the central pier below. Above the bridge the stream broadened into a cress-bespangled pool, over which the sapphire dragon-flies hovered, and its earlier course was hidden by the big oak trees that bent ...
— Select Conversations with an Uncle • H. G. Wells
... the trenches, with features set, On that hot, still morning, in measured pace, Our column climbed; climbed higher yet, Past the fauss'bray, scarp, up the curtain-face, And along the parapet. ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... to run down," Beorn exclaimed, and leaning over the parapet shouted to the Saxons in the courtyard below to stand on ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... afternoon,—about six,—and according to his daily custom he should have gone round to the offices to see his men as they came from their work, but he stood still for a few moments on the spot where Lady Carbury had left him and went slowly across the lawn to the bridge and there seated himself on the parapet. Could it really be that she meant to leave his house in anger and to take her daughter with her? Was it thus that he was to part with the one human being in the world that he loved? He was a man who thought much of the duties of hospitality, ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... fixedly regarded Captain's Hill rising in its bold isolation to the north. Long he gazed, and then, slightly shaking his head, stepped down from the beam and paced about the little enclosure, half unconsciously examining the work of platform and parapet, and following with a gunner's eye the range of the pieces yet unmounted; pausing longest before the eastern front, he marked with satisfaction how well the minion there to be placed would guard the landing ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... through the flowery paths of the hanging-gardens. He stopped at the parapet end cautiously opened a hidden trap-door, admitting to a secret staircase which wound down through one of the huge pillars supporting the hanging-gardens, and which had probably been intended by their original designer as a means of reaching his wife's apartments ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... that MacCartney's hand was broken and bleeding, and suggested to him that someone else should go back with my message of recall. He insisted on his ability to go, and with a companion he climbed over the parapet. A few moments later he was shot through the heart. Smedley's messenger was Lance-Corporal G.W.F. Franklin, whose services on the field won him a commission, and who played a splendid part in the subsequent annals of the Battalion. He was given a like message of recall for Captain Smedley, ...
— With Manchesters in the East • Gerald B. Hurst
... judiciously divided by string courses, and in the upper part on either side of the great window is a row of three small windows. At the east end is a small door leading into a pretty little Venetian balcony with stone parapet. The whole makes a very beautiful building, and the details and ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... withal she was a rebel. It was written in her attitude, it was evident in her lowering, militant expression, the smouldering fire in her eyes proclaimed it. Her long, rather narrow face was gripped between her hands; her elbows rested upon the brick parapet. She gazed at that world of blood-red mists, of unshapely, grotesque buildings, of strange, tawdry colors; she listened to the medley of sounds—crude, shrill, insistent, something like the groaning of a world stripped ...
— The Tempting of Tavernake • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of the siege were clouded by the death of Lieutenant Egerton of the 'Powerful,' one of the most promising officers in the Navy. One leg and the other foot were carried off, as he lay upon the sandbag parapet watching the effect of our fire. 'There's an end of my cricket,' said the gallant sportsman, and he was carried to the rear with a ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The shadows of the old gabled and balconied houses are thrown sharply on the reddish-yellow water. Above the steep speckled roofs, the spires of St. Lorenz glitter against the blue sky. CULCHARD is leaning listlessly upon the parapet ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... For now the sun was up, the radiance suffusing the blue and misty mountains and the seas of fog in the valleys. Albeit its dazzling focus was hardly visible above the eastern heights, it sent a red glow all along the parapet of the covered way and the slope beyond to the river bank, where only two years before Captain Coytmore, then the commandant, had been murdered at a conference by the treacherous Cherokees. The senior officer, ...
— The Frontiersmen • Charles Egbert Craddock
... realm could surpass. The war still continued with Sweden. On the night of the 29th of November, of this year, 1718, the madman Charles XII. was instantly killed by a cannon ball which carried away his head as he was leaning upon a parapet, in the siege of Fredericshall in Norway. The death of this indomitable warrior quite changed the aspect of European affairs. New combinations of armies arose and new labyrinths of intrigue were woven, and for several years wars, with their ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... still on the brown desolation, the British and the enemy front lines. From that further line, at half-past seven on the summer morning for ever blazoned in the annals of our people, the British Army went over the parapet, to gather in the victory prepared for it by the deadly strength and accuracy of British guns; made possible in its turn by the labour in far-off England of millions of workers—men and women—on the lathes and in the ...
— Towards The Goal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... mass of water, if it could be done without the head swimming and the eyes growing blind with the light of the sky striking sharp against the restless heaving of the waves, and Mary was one of the few who could stand fearlessly on almost the very brink of the parapet of the "Giant's Castle," and watch the sweep of the gulls as they flew under and above her, uttering their brief plaintive cries of gladness or anger as the wild wind bore them to and fro. When Reay first saw her run eagerly to the very edge, and stand there, a light, bold, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... of his case to the boy, who said, 'What can I do, seeing that I may not leave my brother day or night? Thou seest how careful he is over me.' Quoth the governor, 'My lodging adjoins thine; so, when thy brother sleeps, do thou rise and entering the wardrobe, feign thyself asleep. Then come to the parapet of the roof and I will receive thee on the other side of the wall; so shalt thou sit with me awhile and return without thy brother's knowledge.' 'I hear and obey,' answered the boy. So, when awhile of the night was past, he entered the closet ...
— The Book Of The Thousand Nights And One Night, Volume IV • Anonymous
... in a dark, low archway. Upon entering the square the principal door of the huge Cathedral was to the left of the spectator, and facing him were the Hospital buildings. A little beyond, was an opening which gave to view a portion of the parapet of the Quay Notre-Dame. A placard had been recently stuck on the discolored and sunken wail of the archway; it contained these words, traced in ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... on the way. The wind took care of that. On the bridge we had to claw the parapet to pull ourselves along; and just as we won to the portico of the Baths there came a squall that knocked us all sideways. Foe and Jimmy cast their arms about one pillar, I clung to another; and the policeman, who ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... blue, to make the resemblance complete. Few houses exceed the height of one story, and none but the great shops have either windows or openings in the wall in front, but most of them have a sort of terrace, with a railed balcony or parapet wall in front, on which are placed pots of flowers, or shrubs, or ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... their stroll, and were leaning over the parapet above the railway line. After a few moments' silence he ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... She had sent a manservant and a maid out to look for him. Dressed in a white gown, deeply embroidered, she was sitting in a corner of the terrace behind some flowers, and did not hear him. Bending her curly black head, she pressed her forehead against a cool watering pot that stood on the parapet, and both her lovely hands, with the rings he knew so well, clasped the pot. The beauty of her whole figure, her head, her neck, her hands, struck Vronsky every time as something new and unexpected. He stood still, gazing at her in ecstasy. But, directly he would have ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... it in; smashing the upper flooring, it fell into the very room where they were. Terrified by the noise of this catastrophe, which made the whole palace tremble, the cardinal and Monsignore Poto turned round, and seeing the room full of dust and debris, sprang out upon the parapet and shouted to the guards at the gate, "The pope is dead, the pope is dead!" At this cry, the guards ran up and discovered three persons lying in the rubbish on the floor, one dead and the other two dying. The dead man was a gentleman of Siena ailed Lorenzo Chigi, and the dying were two ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... Incas lay through the level country between the Andes and the ocean. It was constructed in a different manner, as demanded by the nature of the ground, which was for the most part low, and much of it sandy. The causeway was raised on a high embankment of earth, and defended on either side by a parapet or wall of clay; and trees and odoriferous shrubs were placed along the margin, regaling the sense of the traveller with their perfume, and refreshing him by their shade, so grateful under the burning sky of the tropics. In the midst ...
— Old Roads and New Roads • William Bodham Donne
... its own tail; and sheep clambering among the mossy ruins, and cropping the little tufts of grass sprouting out of the sides of the embrasures for cannon. And once I saw a black goat with a long beard, and crumpled horns, standing with his forefeet lifted high up on the topmost parapet, and looking to sea, as if he were watching for a ship that was bringing over his cousin. I can see him even now, and though I have changed since then, the black goat looks just the same as ever; and so I suppose he would, if I live to be as old as Methusaleh, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... Lacordaire, there are so many things to be considered. There! I hear the children coming! Let us walk this way for a minute." And they turned behind a wall which placed them out of sight, and walked on a few paces till they reached a parapet, which stood on the uttermost edge of the high rock. Leaning upon this they continued ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... within twelve courses of being ready for building the cornice, measures were taken for getting the stones of it and the parapet-wall of the light-room brought from Edinburgh, where, as before noticed, they had been prepared and were in readiness for shipping. The honour of conveying the upper part of the lighthouse, and of landing the last stone of the building on the rock, was ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the mill. More ominous than the tumult seemed the comparative silence that followed this absorption of the angry spirits of the mob. Little by little, as the power was shut off, the antiphonal throbbing of the looms was stilled. Pinioned against the parapet above the canal—almost on that very spot where, the first evening, she had met Ditmar—Janet awaited her chance to cross. Every crashing window, every resounding blow on the panels gave her a fierce throb of joy. She ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... air freely," said the little old lady—the room was close, and would have been the better for it—"because the cat you saw downstairs, called Lady Jane, is greedy for their lives. She crouches on the parapet outside for hours and hours. I have discovered," whispering mysteriously, "that her natural cruelty is sharpened by a jealous fear of their regaining their liberty. In consequence of the judgment I expect being shortly given. She is sly ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... annoyed that we had not observed it sooner. Three sprigs of gall, a leaf of ivy from the bridge arch where it grew in dark green sprays of glossy sheen, and a bare twig of oak standing up at a slant, were held down on the parapet by a peeled willow withy, one end of which pointed in ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... poilu, levant la tete derriere son parapet, se mit, dans la nuit froide de decembre, a fixer une etoile qui brillait au ciel d'un feu etrange. Son cerveau commenca a remeur de lointaines pensees; son coeur se fit plus leger, comme s'il voulait monter vers ...
— Defenders of Democracy • The Militia of Mercy
... while she played, while lightly yet Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom, I listened—dead within a mighty room Of some old palace where great casements let Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom, The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret. And then, it seemed, along a corridor, A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came. Hurrying, yet slow ... I thought long centuries ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... to France To help a general advance. Now in a minute they must hop Like billy-o across the top. Amid the din the Colonel said, "It will be hellish overhead. Machine-guns will let loose a jet Of bullets on the parapet; We'll meet a burst of rifle fire, And, as for shells, I don't desire To see in so confined a space A thicker lot than we shall face. Now, gentlemen, attend, I pray— When we ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... works, and waves amain Far fell grim Ruin's furious rain, O'er parapet and mast, And riding on the thunder-swell Far flew the shot, far flew the shell Red Havoc on the blast! Then as the flashing cannon sowed Their iron crop brave Nelson rode, His bridle bit all foam, Up to the gunners, and ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... the sight-seer as man himself; for the ledge we landed on was a perfect breastwork, built from the receding precipices on either side of the canon to the very crown of the cataract. The weakest nerves need not have trembled, when once within the parapet, on the smooth, flat rampart, and looking down into the tremendous boiling chasm ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... the Embankment parapet the wonder did not fade, but rather increased. The trams, one after another, floated loftily over the bridge. They went like great burning bees in an endless file into a hive, past those which were drifting dreamily out, while below, on the black, ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... laborers to be brought, and had a tower built to enclose the chapel, within which the remains of Zerbino and Isabella were entombed. Across the stream which flowed near by he built a bridge, scarce two yards wide, and added neither parapet nor rail. On the top of the tower a sentry was placed, who, when any traveller approached the bridge, gave notice to his master. Rodomont thereupon sallied out, and defied the approaching knight to fight him upon the bridge, where any chance step a little aside would plunge the rider headlong ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... was able to bring prodigious armies into the field. The city of Mexico was represented as of uncommon strength, being built on the water, with no communication between the houses, houses, except by means of boats or bridges, each house being terraced, and only needing the addition of a parapet to become a fortress. The only access to the city was by means of three causeways or piers, each of which had four or five apertures for the passage of the waters, having wooden bridges which could be raised up, so as to preclude all access. We were likewise informed of the ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. IV. • Robert Kerr
... the bridge. One of them, with an oath, called him a fool, and told him to keep out of the way—the other, who fancied he might have jostled the foot-passenger, and possibly might have sent him over the parapet, pushed on more quickly when he reached the other side of the water, calling likewise to Tom to come on; and the pair of young gentlemen were up the hill on their way to the house before Harry had recovered himself from his surprise at their appearance, and wrath at their behaviour. ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... a remarkable impression in his work "Pictures from Italy." "In the foreground was a group of silent peasant girls, leaning over the parapet of the little bridge, looking now up at the sky, now down into the water; in the distance a deep dell; the shadow of an approaching night on everything. If I had been murdered there in some former life I could ...
— A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga • Yogi Ramacharaka
... the ramparts of the city. And then there was a long-continued ululation and the noise of battle. Ragged Men, hidden in the jungle, had swarmed upon the walls with ladders made of jungle reeds. They came over the parapet in a wave of howling madness. And they surged into the city, flinging ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... by the long-repressed burst of filial sorrow, she sunk down on the banquette which ran along the inside of the embattled parapet of the platform, and murmuring to herself, "He is gone for ever!" abandoned herself to the extremity of grief. One hand grasped unconsciously the weapon which she held, and served, at the same time, to prop her forehead, while the tears, ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... he suddenly stopped at a seat under the stone parapet of the pier, and signed to me to sit down by him. I obeyed. Instead of looking at me, he kept his head turned away; looking out over the sea. I could not make him out. He ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... arches. I remember distinctly among the beautiful nights of that time, the soft night of late winter which first showed me the scene you may behold from the Public Gardens at the end of the long concave line of the Riva degli Schiavoni. Lounging there upon the southern parapet of the Gardens, I turned from the dim bell-towers of the evanescent islands in the east (a solitary gondola gliding across the calm of the water, and striking its moonlight silver into multitudinous ripples), and glanced athwart the vague shipping in the basin of St. Mark, and saw all the lights ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... punishment. And yet the last place in which he will look for the cause of his misery is in that very money-mongering to which he now clings as frantically as ever. But so it is throughout the world. Only look down over that bridge-parapet, at that huge black-mouthed sewer, vomiting its pestilential riches across the mud. There it runs, and will run, hurrying to the sea vast stores of wealth, elaborated by Nature's chemistry into the ready materials of food; which proclaim, too, by their own foul smell, God's will that ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... the parapet. A great volume of smoke obscured her for a moment. Out of the windows the vivid tongues of flame darted, flashing upward. She summoned all her courage and waited for the call of the man she loved. Inside a floor ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... round the camp, which might assist him in repelling any attack of the Frenchmen. "Though my countrymen will kill me if they discover I have warned you, I would rather die than that you should be taken by surprise," exclaimed Pierre, as he was helped over the parapet. ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... every kind of fly and worm every day for three weeks without an atom of success, and then Fate intervened on his behalf. There was a low stone bridge just over this pool, and on the last day of his fishing holiday a motor van ran violently into the parapet and turned completely over; no one was hurt, but part of the parapet was knocked away, and the entire load that the van was carrying was pitched over and fell a little way into the pool. In a couple of minutes ...
— Beasts and Super-Beasts • Saki
... another sent crowds to those who had accepted, in advance, the positions of stamp-officers. One by one, under persuasion or intimidation, the officers resigned until none were left. In New York the governor fled to the military for protection, and from the parapet of the fort looked helplessly on while the people burnt before his eyes his own coach, containing images of himself and the devil. But before this happened, Boston, first of all the capitals to take a positive stand, began to draw upon itself the particular ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... needs before he cut his throat, and that the academician Auger had sought for his snuff-box as he went to his death. He analyzed these extravagances, and even examined himself; for as he stood aside against the parapet to allow a porter to pass, his coat had been whitened somewhat by the contact, and he carefully brushed the dust from his sleeve, to his own surprise. He reached the middle of the arch, and looked forebodingly ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... signalled to a taxi: he leaned over the parapet and called to Juve-Vagualame, who had got no farther than the ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... advanced. When they were within a hundred yards of the fort, the rebel fire opened with such effect that the first battalion hesitated and wavered. Colonel Shaw sprang to the front, and waving his sword, shouted: "Forward, 54th!" With another cheer, the men rushed through the ditch, and gained a parapet on the right. Colonel Shaw was one of the first to scale the walls. As he stood erect, a noble figure, ordering his men forward and shouting to them to press on, he was shot dead and fell into the fort. After his fall, ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... after dinner that night from the little mess-room, across the garden hedge and over the country beyond, there flashed ever and anon hither and thither a distant halo of light. It was the field guns firing, and the searchlights flashing over a German parapet. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... There were four nine-pounders, two large howitzers, and six six-pounders, mounted in the fort, and two swivels. The entire fortification was surrounded by a wide, deep ditch about twenty feet deep from the top of the parapet. The forces within consisted of about two hundred and fifty regulars and two hundred militia. All were under command of Major William Campbell, of the Twenty-fourth Regiment. The rout of the Indian allies had been humiliating enough, but ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... a few yards away rose the gray stone side of the embankment, with its low parapet, and behind that the Drive. There was no one in sight—not even a car—and the open windows of the apartment houses across the Drive seemed very ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... when all the outworks were taken—is considered so beautiful that it is selected, under the article "Castle" in the last edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, as an illustration of Norman architecture, showing "an embattled parapet often admitting of chambers and staircases being constructed," and showing also "embattled turrets carried one story higher than the parapet." There is also a fine woodcut of the Castle at p. 198 of vol. ...
— A Week's Tramp in Dickens-Land • William R. Hughes
... the rope. The dawn was breaking; it was light in the streets, but all seemed quiet without. The doors reeled and shook beneath the pressure of the pursuers. Gawtrey flung the rope across the street to the opposite parapet; after two or three efforts, the grappling-hook caught firm hold—the perilous path ...
— Night and Morning, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a hot night in June. We had climbed to the roof of the new building for a breath of air, forsaking Jerry's small bedroom in the temporary quarters of the club where we had both been perspiring profusely. We sat upon the parapet smoking and talking of Jerry's plans and, since Una and the plans seemed to be a part of each other, ...
— Paradise Garden - The Satirical Narrative of a Great Experiment • George Gibbs
... large man-of-war fleet; and on the right, opposite to it, were two circular batteries, which looked like huge white factories rising out of the water; only instead of windows, there were ports, while enormous guns in lieu of rainspouts crowned their summits, without even a parapet to hide their carriages. On the southern part of the chief island ...
— Fred Markham in Russia - The Boy Travellers in the Land of the Czar • W. H. G. Kingston
... furnished for bringing it hither! Along the whole of the path were openings at intervals for views of the river, but, as almost always happens in gentlemen's grounds, they were injudiciously managed; you were prepared for a dead stand—by a parapet, a painted seat, or ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... N the glacis, which, except the abatis near the ditch, is left free and open, so as to expose the assailants to the fire from the parapet. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... pleasant anticipation of rest. So have I seen a wayfarer quicken his footsteps as, at eventide, he came in sight of the village lights. So have I seen a soldier, weary with the stress of conflict and wounded unto death, bear the standard aloft as he climbed the parapet and with his last ...
— The Centurion's Story • David James Burrell
... it, but their chief village was about three miles distant. In the front of the landscape, and presenting its most prominent feature, is Rock Island, on the southern point of which, elevated upon a parapet of rock, is Fort Armstrong. The region around is healthy and amazingly fruitful. The grape, the plum, the gooseberry and various other native fruits abound,—the wild honeysuckle gives its perfume to the air, and a thousand indigenous flowers mingle their diversified hues with the verdure ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... quietly lolled up to the parapet on the right-hand side of the bridge, and Tournefort, who was watching him with intense keenness, still marvelled why citizen Chauvelin had suddenly become so strangely excited. Rateau was merely lolling against the parapet, like a man who has not a care in the world. ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... on to the parapet of the verandah. Then, with one hand held behind him to poise himself, palm open backward, he leapt with a bound to the road, and ...
— Recalled to Life • Grant Allen
... which they were supposed to have been copied." Fergusson adds that the fashion set by Walpole soon found many followers both in church and house architecture, "and it is surprising what a number of castles were built which had nothing castellated about them except a nicked parapet and an occasional window in the form of a cross." That school of bastard Gothic illustrated by the buildings of Batty Langley, and other early restorers of the style, bears an analogy with the imitations of old English poetry in the last century. ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... Scotland). She was obstinate, and would not illuminate, though with child, and, as they hope, of an heir to the family, and with the Duke, her son, and the rest of her children in the house. There is a small court and parapet wall before the house: they brought iron crows, tore down the gates, pulled up the pavement, and battered the house for three hours. They could not find the key of the back door, nor send for any ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... standing apart with eyes bent in dumb and rigid despair upon his master. A confused tumult of arms is heard. The shepherd climbs hurriedly over the parapet with the announcement: "A second ship!" Kurwenal starts from his trance of grief and rushes to look off. He breaks into curses, recognising Mark and Melot among the men just landed. His resolution is instantly taken. "Arms and stones! Help me! To the gate!" With the shepherd's ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... by the Confederate forces. There was sharp firing in front of several forts. Lincoln—and for that matter, Mrs. Lincoln also—made a tour of the defenses. While Fort Stevens was under fire, he stood on the parapet, "apparently unconscious of danger, watching with that grave and passive countenance the progress of the fight, amid the whizzing bullets of the sharp shooters, until an officer fell mortally wounded within three feet of him, and General Wright peremptorily represented to him the needless ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson
... walls are there all right, though Phillip never saw them; crumbling a bit, yet still a sturdy barrier to the sea. A broad cement and grass promenade runs atop, wide as an American street. Thirty or forty feet below the low parapet sounds the deep, time-mellowed voice of the Pacific, as there rolls higher and higher up the rock ledges that great tide so different from the scarcely noticeable one at Colon. The summer breeze never dies down, never grows boisterous. On the ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... to the summit of the tower. Since the spiral stone steps had vanished long ago, the only means of getting to the top was by climbing the gnarled stem of the ivy which grew profusely on the face of the building. The tower was roofless, a low, partly demolished parapet encircling it on three sides, while a couple of weather-worn oak-beams supporting a few planks formed a kind of platform where the ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... lay on the cushioned parapet before her. She raised her hand, and made a slight, quick movement toward the right. No one but her lover saw her. Every eye but his was fixed on ...
— A Chosen Few - Short Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... terrace ledge and the forest lies a square of velvet green, abounding in four-leaf clover. Buona fortuna! In the center there is a fountain. The water tinkles in drops. One hears its soft music at all times. Along the terrace parapet are tea-tables; a monster oak protects one from the sun. If one (or two) lingers over tea and cakes, one may witness the fiery lances of the setting sun burn across one arm of water while the silver spars of the rising moon shimmer across the other. Nature is whole-souled here; ...
— The Place of Honeymoons • Harold MacGrath
... the average distance come. Nor, singular to say, did any loss occur; except of ALMOST one poor Army-Chaplain, and altogether of one poor Soldier's Wife;—sank dangerously both of them, beyond redemption she, taking the wrong side of some bridge-parapet. Poor Soldier's Wife, she is not named to me at all; and has no history save this, and that "she was of the regiment Bredow." But I perceive she washed herself away in a World-Transaction; and there was one rough ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... Martes. They confessed the troops, and encouraged them. The balls rained down, and thus they penetrated throughout the fort, as if it had been paper. No place was safe, for the enemy commanded the entire fort from their topmasts; and no sooner did any one mount the parapet than he was shot. The commander was wounded, as was Don Pedro Zara. Within that redoubt all were heaped sweltering in their own blood, awaiting death. For, as often as the enemy invested that small fort or redoubt, the Spaniards resisted bravely and killed many of them. But finally, at ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXIV, 1630-34 • Various
... lashed by a hawser to the mainmast of an Algerine brig, which lay at the entrance of the harbour. Her starboard broadside flanked all the batteries from the Mole-head to the Light-house. The Mole was crowded with troops, many of whom got upon the parapet to look at the ship; and Lord Exmouth, observing them as he stood upon the poop, waved to them to move away. As soon as the ship was fairly placed, and her cables stoppered, the crew gave three hearty cheers, such as Englishmen only can give. ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... last handful,' said the other, as she threw them over the parapet, some falling on Gorman as he leaned out. 'It was a bad habit I learned from yourself, child. I remember when I came here, you used to do this each night, like a ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... of Mademoiselle, as her father went below that he might carry out his barbarous design. She was deaf to the dainty trifles which the most elegant Chevalier de Jacquelin was murmuring into her ear. She stood, a tall, queenly figure, at the balcony's parapet and watched the preparations that ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... but these soldiers of a few weeks seemed but impatient to take the odds, and to make light of impossibilities. A slightly rising ground, raked by a murderous fire, to within a little distance of the battery; a ditch holding three feet of water; a straight lift of parapet, thirty feet high; an impregnable position, held by a ...
— What Answer? • Anna E. Dickinson
... the place where the large avenue unfolds its four rows of trees. They were following the stone parapet surmounted by a hedge of boxwood, which entirely hides the ugliness of the buildings on the quay. One felt the presence of the river by the milky atmosphere which in misty days seems to rest on the water. The sky was clear. The lights of the city were mingled with the stars. At the south shone ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... going off to the Board School round the corner. And a little after four in the afternoon you heard the wild cries of the juvenile community let loose from lessons, the boys trundling iron hoops and the girls skipping to a measured tune over a rope stretched from parapet to parapet. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine |
