"Trapdoor" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was again laid cross with small sticks instead of laths, and then thatched over a great thickness with the rice straw, which was strong like reeds; and at the hole or place which was left to go in or out by the ladder, I had placed a kind of trapdoor, which if it had been attempted on the outside, would not have opened at all, but would have fallen down, and made a great noise; and as to weapons, I took them all in to my side ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe
... not whither. The sound of ropes and pullies was also indistinctly heard, though every caution had been taken to make them run smooth; and the traveller, by feeling around him, became sensible that he and the bed on which he lay had been spread upon a large trapdoor, which was capable of being let down into the vaults, or ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 13, - Issue 373, Supplementary Number • Various
... everything, giving directions where each one of her subordinates was to stay, and what they were to do in case of an attack. Every door and window was barricaded, every possible precaution taken, and then, with an unflinching nerve, Alice stole up the stairs, and unfastening a trapdoor which led out upon the roof, stood there behind a huge chimney top, scanning wistfully the darkness of the woods, waiting, watching for a foe, whose very name was in itself sufficient to blanch a woman's ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... to look into her mousetrap, where she found six mice all alive, and ordered Cinderella to lift up a little the trapdoor, when, giving each mouse as it went out a little tap with her wand, the mouse was that moment turned into a fine horse, which altogether made a very fine set of six horses of a beautiful mouse-colored dapple-gray. Being at a loss for a coachman, ...
— Cinderella; or, The Little Glass Slipper and Other Stories • Anonymous
... thing that the guide showed us was a trapdoor, or opening, beneath a crazy old floor. Looking down into this aperture we saw three stone steps, which we should have taken to be the beginning of a flight of stairs that descended into a dungeon, ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... beating in great thumps. Cicely was not mistaken. There was a faint rustling, as if someone were moving softly about in the tower above. Too terrified even to run away, they stood with their eyes fixed on the open trapdoor that led up ...
— The Manor House School • Angela Brazil
... the house, and again searched the upstairs rooms, looking particularly for a trapdoor, for the bamboo ladder suggested some such exit. This time, however, he completely failed. Jasper Cole, he found, had made only one visit to the house since John ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... surroundings. At the end of the basement for a length of twenty-five yards back from the wall under the street, they found a space cleared of the boxes and kegs. On one side was a broad, steep stairway leading up to a trapdoor in the ...
— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson
... still working with great rapidity, she pulled aside a rug that was on the floor, and, having lifted a trapdoor, she again took him in her arms, and descended through the opening in the floor to the depths ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... dishes in the sink and went up on the roof to smoke. He was the only person in the house who ever went to the roof, and he had a secret understanding with the janitress about it. He was to have "the privilege of the roof," as she said, if he opened the heavy trapdoor on sunny days to air out the upper hall, and was watchful to close it when rain threatened. Mrs. Foley was fat and dirty and hated to climb stairs,—besides, the roof was reached by a perpendicular iron ladder, definitely inaccessible to a woman of her bulk, and the iron door at the top of it was ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... was a great favourite. Him she found no difficulty in persuading to grant the hunted man a refuge in the loft. In a few days he had put up a partition between the part which was floored and that which was open, and so made for him a little room, accessible from the shop by a ladder and a trapdoor. He had just taken down an old window frame to glaze for it, when the laird coming in and seeing what he was about, scrambled up the ladder, and, a moment after, all but tumbled down again in his eagerness to put a stop to it: the window was in the gable, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... Sky-Bird overtook the rival machine. When it seemed her nose was almost up to the tail of the Clarion, they saw a movement in the bottom of the fuselage of the craft above them, where her trapdoor of glass was situated in the floor of the cabin. Then something gray streaked down through the air. It went whizzing by just in front of the Sky-Bird, and a few moments later plunged into the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... he had replaced the trapdoor, but he wasted no time, and began looking for a means of descent. He still held a gun in his hand and whirled sharply as the trapdoor suddenly flew open. He saw Jack at the same moment Jack ...
— The Boy Allies Under the Sea • Robert L. Drake
... was rebuilt. Access was obtained to it through the floor in one of the private apartments. The floor was of tessellated marble, but some ten squares of it lifted up in a mass, forming together a trapdoor, from which steps led down into the vault. When the block was lowered again, the fit was so accurate that, after sweeping a little dust over the joint, the opening was quite imperceptible to any one not aware of the hiding ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... of all the persons and institutions participating in the microfilm project. The History Department at the Fort would be interested in that, but the only thing that interested Altamont was the statement that the floor had been laid over the trapdoor leading to the vault where the microfilms were stored. He went ...
— The Return • H. Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... could see nothing. Raffles reached across me and tapped the ventilator, a sort of trapdoor in the wall above his bed, some eighteen inches long and half that height. It opened outwards ...
— The Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... and open places. Each of these theaters consisted of a two-story platform, set on wheels. The lower story was a dressing room for the actors; the upper story was the stage proper, and was reached by a trapdoor from below. When the play was over the platform was dragged away, and the next play in the cycle took its place. So in a single square several plays would be presented in rapid sequence to the same audience. Meanwhile the first play moved on to another ...
— English Literature - Its History and Its Significance for the Life of the English Speaking World • William J. Long
... tropical spiders bite the human being. Trapdoor spiders are among the commonest of these pests. Their bodies grow to great size, two to two and a half inches long, and are covered with hair giving them a horrid appearance. They live in holes bored in the ground, and provided with a trapdoor contrivance ...
— The Home Medical Library, Volume I (of VI) • Various
... London." So with a basket of luncheon, a roll of blankets, and a bottle of cocktails, the volunteer astronomer reluctantly sought the dryest corner of the second floor of the old tower for a night's camp. A square trapdoor hole whence the moldering ladder had fallen away, was in the middle of the old barrack room floor over the four embrasured gun room below. "I'll just draw up my ladder, have a pipe, and take a nap. It may clear off. If so the observation goes, and then the highest tide of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... garden, which was covered with pinks, roses, and honeysuckles. The window opened into his neighbor's orchard. He says: "It formerly served an apothecary, now dead, as a smoking-room; and under my feet is a trapdoor, which once covered a hole in the ground where he kept his bottles. At present, however, it is dedicated to sublimer uses. Having lined it with garden mats, and furnished it with a table and two chairs, here I write all that I write in summer-time, whether to my friends or to the public.... ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... It was classed in 1802 as one of the worst gaols in the kingdom. The prison was in the backyard of the keeper's house, and it comprised two dark, damp dungeons, twelve feet by seven feet, to which access was gained through a trapdoor, level with the yard, and down ten steps. The only light or air that could reach these cells (which sometimes were an inch deep in water) was through a single iron-grated aperture about a foot square. For petty offenders, runaway apprentices, ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... after a few seconds, it was only when she had gazed at him awhile in speechless horror, that he rose another foot from the floor, and she saw that he had paused in the act of ascending through a trapdoor. What the scene meant, who these men were, or what their entrance portended, with these questions her brain refused at the moment to grapple. It was much that—still remembering who might hear her, and what she ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... Transport (to delight) ravi. Transport (by vehicle) veturigi. Transport transporti. Transportation transportado. Transpose transloki. Transverse lauxlargxa, diagonala. Trap (snare) kaptilo, enfalujo. Trap kapti. Trapdoor plankpordo. Trapezium trapezo. Trash (rubbish) forjxetajxo. Travail nasklaboro, naskdoloro. Travel (by car) veturi. Travel vojiri, vojagxi. Traveller vojagxanto. Traverse trapasi, trairi. Travesty maskajxo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... get used to do without sleep," said Forsyth, stepping down through the trapdoor, "so I'll bid ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... his hips, he roared without restraint while they stood before him lank and straight, as unexpected as though they had been shot up with a snap through a trapdoor in the ground. Only four-and-twenty months ago the masters of Europe, they had already the air of antique ghosts, they seemed less substantial in their faded coats than their own narrow shadows falling so black across the white road—the military and grotesque shadows ...
— The Point Of Honor - A Military Tale • Joseph Conrad
... But before doing so he approached the long, plaited wisp of pagan hair and gave it a powerful tug, to assure himself that it was fast and firm. The two beds—mere shelves covered with blankets not overclean—faced each other from opposite sides of the room, the little square trapdoor that had given access to the Chinaman's grave being midway between. This, by the way, was crossed by a double row of spike-heads. In his resistance to the supernatural, Mr. Beeson had not disdained the use ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... and they shuddered and sobbed and blessed Juggut Khan alternately. Below them the whispering echoes sighed mysteriously through a maze of tunnels. Around them, and around their sack of food, the rats scampered. Above them, where a ten-ton stone trapdoor lay closed over their heads, black powder stood in heaps and sacks and barrels. Closing the trapdoor had been easy. One pushed it and it fell. Not all the mutineers in Jailpore nor Juggut Khan nor any one could open it again without the secret. And no man living knew the secret. The three ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... Girondins' was in the garden of the school, now kept by Christian Brothers, thither I went. A little boy in a long black blouse, with a leather belt round his waist, having obtained the permission, pulled open a trapdoor in the garden, and, candle in hand, led the way down a flight of steps into a cavern, about the same size as St. milion's, but much dryer and more comfortable. On one side of it was an opening, which was made perceptible by a very faint glimmer ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... time Hal o' Nabs had joined the group, and proceeding towards a raised part of the chamber where the grinding-stones were set, he knelt down, and laying hold of a small ring, raised up a trapdoor. The fresh air which blew up through the aperture, combined with the rushing sound of water, showed that the Calder flowed immediately beneath; and, having made some slight preparation, Hal let himself down ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... sleepy eyes to be dazzled by a glory of early sunshine, and creeping from the hay wherein I lay half-buried, I came blinking to the open trapdoor and beheld Diana standing below, flourishing ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... movable partitions for the young rabbits; the two lower hutches are used for the stock bucks. C, a tier of grain boxes on the floor for feeding the rabbits—the covers sloping out toward the room. D, small trapdoor, leading into the manure cellar beneath. E, large trapdoor leading into root cellar. F, troughs for leading off urine from rear of hutches into the manure cellar at K, K. G, wooden trunk leading from chamber above No. 3, through this into ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... her, built a fire and prepared breakfast. A half-filled bottle of whisky discovered in the cupboard, helped to revive all of us slightly, and gave Asa sufficient courage to seek outside for a spring. Tim, comparatively unwearied himself, and restless, located a trapdoor in the floor, rather ingeniously concealed, which disclosed the existence of a small cellar below. Candle in hand he explored this, returning with two guns, together with a quantity of powder and ball, and information that there remained a half-keg ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish |
