"Battering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... arrived in the frigate Essex, bringing in a number of stout London whalers as prizes, having made a sweeping cruise in the Pacific. From Commodore Porter he received the alarming intelligence that the British frigate Phoebe, with a store-ship mounted with battering pieces, calculated to attack forts, had arrived at Rio Janeiro, where she had been joined by the sloops of war Cherub and Raccoon, and that they had all sailed in company on the 6th of July for the Pacific, bound, as it was supposed, ...
— Astoria - Or, Anecdotes Of An Enterprise Beyond The Rocky Mountains • Washington Irving
... just south of the Mongolian frontier, is a range of mountains inhabited by bands of wild sheep. They are wonderful animals, these sheep, with horns like battering-rams. But the mountains are also populated by brigands and the two do not form an agreeable ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... the road parted company with the shore, and we turned inland over the plain. The night came on with drifting showers, which descended in torrents, lashing the naked plain, and battering our vehicle with the force and noise of a waterspout. And though at length the moon rose, and looked out at times from the cloud, she had nothing to show us but houseless, treeless desolation; and, as if scared at what she saw, she instantly hid her face in another mass of vapour. The stages were ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... ingenuity to build increasingly powerful aggressive weapons, it was possible that, unknown to the rest of the world, some nation could have been testing such a fearsome machine. The Chassepot rifle led to the torpedo, and the torpedo has led to this underwater battering ram, which in turn will lead to the world putting its foot down. At least ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... judgments of heaven, he heaps one upon another the black crimes of which she is guilty (22:6-12). The repetitions so remarkably characteristic of his style are those of energy, not of weakness. They are the repetitions of a battering-ram that gives blow upon blow till the wall crumbles before it. The same may be said of his amplifications, as in chaps. 1, 16, 23, 27, etc. He had a remarkable adaptation to his office; and his influence must have been very great in bringing about ...
— Companion to the Bible • E. P. Barrows
... to me as a great blow that it was only men who could take the world by its ears and conquer their fate, while women, metaphorically speaking, were forced to sit with tied hands and patiently suffer as the waves of fate tossed them hither and thither, battering and bruising without mercy. Familiarity made me used to this yoke; I recovered from the disappointment of being a girl, and was reconciled to that part of my fate. In fact, I found that being a girl was quite pleasant until a hideous truth dawned upon me—I was ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... hall. A more sorrowful, heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring like wolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon the very floor of the sanctuary where they ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... Swift, all remarkable men, with constitutions of iron, and made like perfect models of humanity. Their names are unknown in these days, although in those of the long past gentlemen of the first position were proud of their acquaintance; and these men, although their profession was battering one another, were as little inclined to brutality as any. And when it is remembered that they played their game in accordance with strict rules and on the most scientific principles, it will be seen that cruelty formed ...
— The Reminiscences Of Sir Henry Hawkins (Baron Brampton) • Henry Hawkins Brampton
... The iron door upstairs had closed, shutting off the second floor from the lower part of the house, and at the same time consigning P. Sybarite to the mercies of the police as soon as they succeeded in battering down ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... wonder, since wise authors show, That best foundations must be low: And now the duke has wisely ta'en him To be his architect at Blenheim. But raillery at once apart, If this rule holds in every art; Or if his grace were no more skill'd in The art of battering walls than building, We might expect to see next year ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift
... minutes the servants and gillies had gathered, hastily clad; they were met by Logan, who briefly bade some bring hammers, and the caber, or pine-tree trunk that is tossed in Highland sports. It would make a good battering-ram. Donald Macdonald he sent at once to Mr. Macrae. He met Bude and Lady Bude, and rapidly explained that there was no danger of fire. The Countess went back to her rooms, Bude returned with Logan into the observatory. Here they found Donald telegraphing to the conspirators, by ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... window, immovable, immutable. Her knees felt tired. She lay down on her bed, staring at the immovable, immutable white walls. She tried to think of Substance, of the Reality behind appearances. She could feel her mind battering at the walls of her body, the walls of her room, the walls of the world. She could hear it ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... to serve them. Crossbows and arrows will be used, but the weapons will be blunted. You will see that there are ladders, planks for making bridges, long hooks for hauling men down from the wall, beams for battering down the gate, axes for cutting down the palisades, and all other weapons. The ten who will serve under you as knights have already been nominated, and the city will furnish them with full armour. ...
— Saint George for England • G. A. Henty
... captain that will plague them both, Whose air cries Arm! whose very look's an oath: The captain's honest, Sirs, and that's enough, Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff. He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before, Like battering rams, beats open every door: And with a face as red, and as awry, As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry, Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse, Has yet a strange ambition to look worse; Confounds ...
— Essay on Man - Moral Essays and Satires • Alexander Pope
... Waverley—first of thy breeding; I like its modest "sixty years ago," As if it was not meant for ages' reading. I don't like Ivanhoe, Tho' Dymoke does—it makes him think of clattering In iron overalls before the king Secure from battering, to ladies flattering, Tuning, his challenge to the gauntlet's ring— Oh better far than all that anvil clang It was to hear thee touch the famous string Of Robin Hood's tough bow and make it twang, Rousing him up, all verdant, with his ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... dirty, dry and wet—than ever I shook all over the world before. Notwithstanding the amount of water in the country, I must have carried away from Trondhjem about a quarter of a pound of the native soil. Between the contortions of body and limb acquired by a brief residence in Paris, the battering out of several hats against my knee in the process of bowing throughout the cities of Germany, and the shaking of various boys' hands on my trip through Norway, I consider that my politeness now ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... and past Irving's closed door. Soon also a racketing began in the corridors; Irving suspected an intention to bait him still further; it was probably Westby once again. He waited until the noise became too great to be ignored—shouting and battering and scuffling; then he ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... leap to the shoulder of the lion, hurtling against the leaping beast like a huge, animate battering ram. She saw the carnivore brushed aside as he was almost upon her, and in the instant she realized that no substanceless wraith could thus turn the charge of a maddened lion with brute force greater than ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Butterfly Man managed to send him sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath. Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to bear ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... know that it would never grow light for me. Again I flung myself against the walls of my prison, battering at them till the blood dripped from my hands. Again and again I flung myself down hopelessly, and then I tried again, clutching at every fragment ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... as noisy as a magpie. If you're not whistling, you're singing some damned rake of an Irish song and if you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... this; he does not say that. He only urges that Jarndyce may have become cynical in the affair in the same sense that he himself may have become cynical in the affair. He is always a man; that is to say, he is always unanswerable, always wrong. The passionate certainty of the woman beats itself like battering waves against the thin smooth wall of his insane consistency. I repeat: let any one who thinks that Dickens was a gross and indelicate artist read that part of the book. If Dickens had been the clumsy journalist that such people ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... out the ryme it may mean grass. Heroner is a long-winged hawk for the heron. The Hyppe is the berye of the sweet bryer or eglantine. Nowell meaneth more than Christmas. Porpherye is a peculiar marble, not marble in common. Sendale, a sylke stuffe. The trepegett is not the battering-ram, but an engine to cast stones. Wiuer or Wyvern, a serpent like unto a dragon. Autenticke meaneth a thing of auctoritye, not of antiquitye. Abandone is not liberty though Hollyband sayeth so. Of the Vernacle. Master Thynne would read Campaneus for Capaneus, and giveth reasons. ...
— Animaduersions uppon the annotacions and corrections of some imperfections of impressiones of Chaucer's workes - 1865 edition • Francis Thynne
... but what do I care for the laws of nature and arithmetic, when, for some reason I dislike those laws and the fact that twice two makes four? Of course I cannot break through the wall by battering my head against it if I really have not the strength to knock it down, but I am not going to be reconciled to it simply because it is a stone wall and ...
— Notes from the Underground • Feodor Dostoevsky
... cannonade, the infantry charged the German line for a thousand yards near the Chateau, and took a part of the second line of trenches. Again the British bayonet and bomb had won, though in this attack the greater credit must be given to the bomb. The Germans made an attempt to retrieve the day by battering the British out of the trenches they had won. To do this the German artillery used a plentiful supply of high-explosive shells. They continued the attempt for twenty-four hours; but all they succeeded in doing was driving the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... "Pelican" alone or with a friend I go, I sigh for men of muscle who could fight a fight like BENDIGO. He didn't fight in feather-beds, or spend his days in chattering, But faced his man, and battered him, or took his foeman's battering. He didn't deal in gas, or waste his time in mere retort at all; But now the "pugs" are interviewed, and journalists report it all. A man may call it what he will, brutality or bravery, I'd rather have the prize-ring back than give a purse to knavery. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 100, 13 June 1891 • Various
... iron rail and used it as a battering ram against the lobby doors. Sheriff McLendon tried to stop them, and some one of the mob knocked him down with a chair. Still he counseled moderation and would not order his deputies and the police to disperse the crowd by force. The pacific policy of ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... tried the strength of Jackson's position, made up his mind to breach his works and silence his guns with a regular battering train. Heavy cannon were brought up from the ships, and a battery was established on the bank to keep in check the Louisiana. Then, on the night of the last day of the year, strong parties of workmen were sent forward, who, shielded by the darkness, speedily threw ...
— The Naval War of 1812 • Theodore Roosevelt
... heard sometimes through the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here's your pay for them! screams the countryman's whistle; timber like long battering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the city's walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the city. All ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... not take it. The Frenchman has strengthened it with one of his accursed keeps, and without battering-engines you may ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... suddenly a little stern. Stone walls had to be broken down. That was the use of being strong. One was not frightened; one just got a battering-ram, and forced a passage through. He would tell her soon, but not out ...
— Winding Paths • Gertrude Page
... upon his bench and buried his face in his hands. Bridge rolled another smoke. The sound of a shot came from the front room of the jail, immediately followed by a roar of rage from the mob and a deafening hammering upon the jail door. A moment later this turned to the heavy booming of a battering ram and the splintering of wood. The frail ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the extemporized police reappeared. The fugitives had been found tranquilly sitting on the banks of the river, distending their abdomens with the stolen preserves and chocolate. Aragon and his men fell upon the deserters without mercy. The former, battering away at them with the stock of his gun, and the latter, exercising upon their shoulders whatever they possessed in the way of lassoes, axe-handles and sabre-blades, maintained the argument effectually ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... of the general consent to his proposals, said, "If we really wish to carry out what we have set ourselves, we must prepare battering-rams and siege engines, and get together mechanics and builders for our own castles." [21] Thereupon Cyaxares at once undertook to provide an engine at his own expense, Gadatas and Gobryas made themselves responsible for a second, Tigranes for a third, and Cyrus himself promised ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... and beyond the beach of darkness they could see the fronds of the palms waving. The five survivors were starving, and the green cocoa-nuts hung above them, filled with food and drink. But their bodies, broken and tormented as they were by hunger and the battering breakers, refused even to rise and climb for the food that meant life. So they lay there, as ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... Burrows, which was turned towards me, had a certain bend of effort in it as if my friend still needed some holding down. Suddenly that broad back swayed hither and thither. It was swaying on one leg; Basil, somehow, had hold of the other. Burrows' huge fists and those of the footman were battering Basil's sunken head like an anvil, but nothing could get the giant's ankle out of his sudden and savage grip. While his own head was forced slowly down in darkness and great pain, the right leg of his captor was being forced in ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... better get ower him. I've helped ye across a dyke afore, Maister John, and there ye go." Claverhouse, jumping on Grimond, who made a back for him, went over the Dutchman's shoulders. Then he seized the Dutchman by his arm, while Grimond acted as a battering-ram behind: so they pulled what remained of him, like a cork out of the mouth of a bottle, and Grimond followed his master. Collier, who had been covering the retreat, left his horse to its fate, and ran by the ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... within sight of the spot they found conditions precisely as they had expected. A large male was battering frantically against the steel wires of the cage that held him captive. Upon the outside several hundred other baboons were tearing and tugging in his aid, and all were roaring and jabbering and barking at the top ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and a pounding heart that nearly bore me down, it acted so like a battering ram on the inside, I drew a delicately scented envelope from my mailbox ... ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... poked his head out of the door of the hut, his face did not display merriment. Day was breaking; yet he could see nothing but the flying scud and the dim outline of the shore; he could hear nothing but the roar of the breakers, battering the boulders ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... his whole body trembling, stood by as if he had been paralysed. But the brewer bent his round head like a furious bull, and charged, using his skull as a battering ram, right into the middle of the scrimmage. Now there were two against ten. The odds were still far too great; and the brewer also was soon on the floor. The fighters made a tremendous noise, but ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... battering-rams, even against infantry, men and horses ought to be watered and fresh (Ponsomby's cavalry at Waterloo). If there is ever contact between cavalry, the shock is so weakened by the hands of the men, the rearing of the ...
— Battle Studies • Colonel Charles-Jean-Jacques-Joseph Ardant du Picq
... it you managed to make them alive?' asked he, 'for alive they were, and battering themselves against the ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... them. They trusted Gandiva, the goodly bow, to send no arrows their way; their caste was inviolable, and sacred to the tilling of the soil. Megasthenes notes it with wonder. War implied no ravaging of the land, no destruction of crops, no battering down of buildings, no ...
— The Crest-Wave of Evolution • Kenneth Morris
... the accusative and with a small a—"poneres lunam in arietem,"—which not at all understanding, I have changed the phrase to what it is in the text. Bracciolini by the Ram is referring neither to the male sheep nor the battering instrument of war among the Romans, but the vernal sign: he had evidently read Roger Bacon, and believed with the "Somersetshire Magician," (as the Brother of the Minor Order was styled by his contemporaries), that a man's neck ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... keep. We use the biggest stones for that. The bottom storey of father's keep is partly cut right out of the rock, and the walls are twenty-five or thirty feet thick. Nobody can knock down that wall with a battering-ram! Here we'll make a great arched door, so that the knights can ride right in without dismounting when they're hard pressed by the enemy. Here's the drawbridge—" Roger hastily whittled off a piece of bark—"and this line ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... must be either round or polygonal. Square towers are sooner shattered by military engines, for the battering rams pound their angles to pieces; but in the case of round towers they can do no harm, being engaged, as it were, in driving wedges to their centre. The system of fortification by wall and towers may be made safest by the addition of earthen ramparts, for neither rams, nor mining, ...
— Ten Books on Architecture • Vitruvius
... windows had been carried off, the door broken down, the roof pierced all over. In it we sat to make experiments; and how it recalled Birkenhead! There was Thomson, there was my testing-board, the strings of gutta-percha; Harry P—— even battering with the batteries; but where was my darling Annie? Whilst I sat, feet in sand, with Harry alone inside the hut—mats, coats, and wood to darken the window—the others visited the murderous old friar, who is of the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson, Volume 9 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... British Minister's chief of the staff, has been mortally hit, and has just died. It was a sad affair. In the morning a party from headquarters was making a tour of inspection of the Su wang-fu posts, in order to see exactly how much battering they could stand, and how soon the Italian contention that already the hillock works were untenable would become an undeniable fact. The Italian defences had been inspected and the little party was crossing the ornamental gardens, which are always swept by a storm of fire, when suddenly S—— ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... roll of the waves filled the bitter silence that followed, but the battering of the rain upon the cottage roof was decreasing. The storm was ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... to the Residency—I come to the Shah Nujeef, with its strong exterior wall enclosing the domed temple in its centre. It is still easy to trace the marks of the breach made in the angle in the wall by Peel's battering guns, and the tree is still standing up which Salmon, Southwell, and Harrison climbed in response to his proffer of the Victoria Cross. Opposite the Shah Nujeef white girls are playing on the lawn of that castellated building, for the Koorsheyd Munzil, on the ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... belonging to Mr. Chew, which stood directly in the way of Wayne's division, and poured on the Americans an incessant and galling fire of musketry from its doors and windows. After making some unsuccessful, and bloody attempts to carry this house by storm, and then battering it for a few minutes with field artillery, which was found too light to make any impression on its walls, a regiment was left to observe the party within it, while the troops who had been checked by Colonel Musgrave again moved forward, passing to ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall
... rain!— Pattering, clattering, The cabbage leaves battering, Down it comes amain!— Home we hurry Hop and scurry, And in with a flurry! Hustling, jostling Out of the airy land Into the dry warm sand; Our family white tails, The last of our vitals, Following hard with a whisk to them, And with a great ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... a lunch-counter. And, moreover, I couldn't eat that pie alone. A college student doesn't know how to masticate without an assistant or two. When I think of the hours and hours I have spent traveling around at midnight and battering on the doors of perfectly respectable houses, trying to drag some student out and take him a mile or two away downtown after pie, I am struck with awe. When I came to this town I walked two days for a job and then sat around with my feet on a sofa cushion ...
— At Good Old Siwash • George Fitch
... was shaking the Partitions as window-panes rattle in a sudden gust. The nor'wester came howling over the dark tree-tops, fell upon the clearing about the little wooden buildings—house, stable, barn—in' squalls and-wicked whirlwinds that sought to lift the roof and smote the walls like a battering-ram, before sweeping onward to the forest in a baffled fury. The house trembled from base to chimneytop, and swayed on its foundation in such a fashion that the inmates, feeling the onslaught, hearing the roar and shriek of the foe, were almost as sensible of the terrors ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... have the matches?" said I, standing beneath the window, "or shall I send for the battering ram?" ...
— The Brother of Daphne • Dornford Yates
... men had no muskets, and almost all were without bayonets. Heavy cannon, for battering the British fortifications, were much wanted. There was but a small quantity of powder and ball, few tools to build entrenchments with, and a great deficiency of provisions and clothes for the soldiers. Yet, in spite of these perplexing difficulties, the eyes of the ...
— True Stories from History and Biography • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... SYRACUSE. Sconce, call you it? so you would leave battering, I had rather have it a head: an you use these blows long, I must get a sconce for my head, and ensconce it too; or else I shall seek my wit in my shoulders.—But I pray, ...
— The Comedy of Errors • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... better reason, do I return the wish," replied the Sub-Prior; "it is such an arm as thine that should defend the bulwarks of the Church, and it is now directing the battering-ram against them, and rendering practicable the breach through which all that is greedy, and all that is base, and all that is mutable and hot-headed in this innovating age, already hope to advance to destruction and to spoil. But since such is our fate, that we can no longer ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... the Athenian's, as bull charges bull. Twice and three times, and the blood leaped out over Glaucon's fair skin. Again—the rush of blood was almost blinding. Again—Pytheas screamed with agony—the Athenian's clutch seemed weakening. Again—flesh and blood could not stand such battering long. If Lycon could endure this, there was only one ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... been no time for the retreat of so large a force, or the strength and desolation of the site may have filled them with confidence of success. But, if things came to the worst, they had a surprise in store for their former comrades who were now battering against ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... of the bridge, brittle with age and weather, already straining hard against the furious water, needed only the battering of the first heavy logs from the boom, and down ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
... its place in the solar system; oceans and lands their limits; wholly inconsistent with a petty surgical operation, to find material for the mother of the race. It is on this allegory that all the enemies of women rest their battering rams, to prove her inferiority. Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... all night long, old Jones's lantern sometimes recalling Ulysses, or a horse's head; or sometimes a flash of gold, or a mummy's sunk yellow cheek. Plato and Shakespeare continue; and Jacob, who was reading the Phaedrus, heard people vociferating round the lamp-post, and the woman battering at the door and crying, "Let me in!" as if a coal had dropped from the fire, or a fly, falling from the ceiling, had lain on its back, too ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... the mulberry and the orange, with many other diverse forms of luxuriant foliage, had completely changed the aspect of the country. The men were glad to wear the suits of drill and the sun-helmet which had now been issued. Thus May merged into June; the fourth great German attack was battering at the gates of Compiegne, but the Italian front had as yet given no sign. On our next visit, however, to the line, it became known that a British offensive was to be launched in the middle of June. The usual conferences and ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... irregular horse, a troop of horse artillery, and the 10th regiment of her majesty's foot. The next day a column arrived from Ferozepore, consisting of three regiments of native infantry, two regiments of native cavalry, one regular and one irregular, a battering train, a troop of horse artillery, and her majesty's 32nd regiment of the line. The forces before Mooltan then amounted to six thousand Europeans, and more than twenty-two thousand native troops, including the levies of Edwardes, and the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... had grasped the opportunity, that momentary respite the flare afforded, and was out of the brickmaker's sight below battering the door with the ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... culverin, he rode through the greaves and bucklers of his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped away ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... waning light enabled her to do so without being seen. She could not therefore be made out; which was the more unfortunate because, although only pierced twice in the morning, her plating on the exposed side had been much loosened by the battering she received. One XI-inch shot only found her as the fleet went by, and that killed and wounded several of her people. All Farragut's fleet, accompanied by the ram Sumter,[13] detached for this service by Flag-Officer Davis, passed down in safety; the total loss in the action with the Arkansas and ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... in the lead and the others trailing on close behind, they came down the middle of the street on a half run, plainly revealed in the bright moonlight. They expected to find the Democrats battering down the jail door, if they were not already taking the prisoner out, and all their attention was turned toward that building. Presently they saw that the entrance and all the street round about were silent and apparently deserted, and they concluded that the rescuing ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... crowd. Some one suggested burning the building. Another advised battering in the doors. A third intimated that shooting them full of holes were better. This idea, once voiced, spread like an infection. The childish people were eager to try ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... madly over stones and bushes he hammered up the slope of Lookout Point and disappeared in a cloud of dirt, but as Hardy drifted around the bend and floated toward the whirlpool there was a crash of brush from down the river and Creede came battering through the trees to the shore. Taking down his reata as he rode he leapt quickly off his horse and ran out on the big flat rock from which they had often fished together. At his feet the turbid current rolled ponderously against the solid wall of rock and, turning back ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... Whereby his suspicions were aroused, and he began at last to perceive the trick that had been played upon him; so he climbed over a low wall that divided the alley from the street, and hied him to the door of the house, which he knew very well. There for a long while he stood shouting and battering the door till it shook on its hinges; but all again to no purpose. No doubt of his misadventure now lurking in his mind, he fell to bewailing himself, saying:—"Alas! in how brief a time have I lost five hundred florins and a sister!" with much more of the like ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... shouted Kenneth, and a roar of defiance was uttered by the garrison, as the bailiff led back his men, making them pick up the battering-ram, and organising them for a ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... taxicab came swinging up the street. Three men jumped out and added their strength to those who were battering down Albano's barricade. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... although the attacks became less frequent. The schooners manoeuvring in the river poured broadsides into the Indian villages, battering down the flimsy wigwams. Pontiac moved his camp from the mouth of Parent's Creek to a position nearer Lake St Clair, out of range of their guns, and turned his thoughts to contrive some means of destroying the troublesome vessels. He had learned from ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... London in the name of the KING of HEAVEN, to evacuate its streets, to disperse its population, to lay aside its employments, to burn its wealth, to renounce its vanities and pomp; and for what?—that he may enter in as the King of Glory; or after enforcing his threat with the battering-ram of logic, the grape-shot of rhetoric, and the crossfire of his double vision, reduce the British metropolis to a Scottish heath, with a few miserable hovels upon it, where they may worship God according to the root of the matter, and an old man with a blue bonnet, a fair-haired ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... their customers; and with the autumn comes the vintage, and all its classic revelries. A happy folk—under a happy clime; which yet has its drawbacks, like all climes on earth. Terrible thunderstorms sweep over it, hail-laden, killing, battering, drowning, destroying in an hour the labours of the year; and there are ugly mistral winds likewise, of which it may be fairly said, that he who can face an eight days' mistral, without finding his life a burden, must ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... companionship, with naught but this roaring desolation about and the air above filled with screeching terrors. Even through thick log walls I can hear the surf roaring among the rocks and beating the white driftwood like a thousand battering-rams, almost at my door. It is a night to make one shiver, and in the lulls of the storm the tall pines above me whistle and wail mournfully as they straighten their twisted heads ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... and hastily erected a barricade under an arch leading to the apartments of the abbe. Just as these preparations were complete, Esprit Seguier caught sight of a heavy beam of wood lying in a ditch; this was raised by a dozen men and used as a battering-ram to force in the gate, which soon showed a breach. Thus encouraged, the workers, cheered by the chants of their comrades, soon got the gate off the hinges, and thus the outside court was taken. The crowd then loudly demanded the release of the ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... with the force of a battering-ram, Percy shot over the brink. As he fell he described a partial somersault, landing on hands and knees half-way down the slope. His momentum carried him heels over head, and he rolled and tumbled the rest of the way, bringing up in ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... Wright, kicking the bar with his foot, "nine feet of it, by Master Percy's computation, and, I warrant, as many years will be required to see the further side. Try it, good Catesby, 'tis a nut a giant could scarce crack, though he wield a battering ram." ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... what we understand by effeminacy, because a thing is said to be "soft" if it readily yields to the touch. Now a thing is not declared to be soft through yielding to a heavy blow, for walls yield to the battering-ram. Wherefore a man is not said to be effeminate if he yields to heavy blows. Hence the Philosopher says (Ethic. vii, 7) that "it is no wonder, if a person is overcome by strong and overwhelming pleasures or sorrows; but he is to be pardoned if he struggles against them." ...
— Summa Theologica, Part II-II (Secunda Secundae) • Thomas Aquinas
... every county were vested with authority to destroy "all graven images" and everything which seemed to savour of "idolatry and superstition." Under colour of this order, these persons, and those who sympathized in their work, gave vent to their zeal in many excesses, battering down and breaking up everything of an ornamental or sculptured character, including tombs and even the stained windows. Moreover we are told by Weever[5] that the commission was made the excuse for digging up coffins ...
— In Search Of Gravestones Old And Curious • W.T. (William Thomas) Vincent
... how shall summer's honey breath hold out, Against the wreckful siege of battering days, When rocks impregnable are not so stout, Nor gates of steel so ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various
... constrained to attack the second gate under a shower of missiles, and did they succeed in carrying that also, it was at the cost of enormous sacrifice. The peoples of the Nile Valley knew nothing of the swing battering-ram, and no representation of the hand-worked battering-ram has ever been found in any of their wall-paintings or sculptures; they forced their way into a stronghold by breaking down its gates with their axes, or by setting fire to ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... sure that the word used in the Ratura language was the exact counterpart of the words "brush" and "scrimmage" in ours, but it meant the same thing, namely, the cutting of a number of throats, or the battering in of a ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... the door, crossed the patio to the opposite side of the house, and, entering again, went down a long corridor, trying to decide which of the many unused rooms would be best to hide in. And before she made up her mind she came to the last room. Just then a battering on door or window in the direction of the kitchen and shrill screams from the servant women ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... with this extended neck the giraffe's legs are so exceedingly long that he is obliged to spread his front feet when he wishes to reach the ground with his head. The elephant has pursued exactly the reverse plan. Using his tremendous head as a battering ram in fighting, and using his enormous tusks both in battle and in uprooting young trees, a lengthened neck is absolutely out of the question. Furthermore his front teeth have grown so prodigiously that they would interfere with his getting his mouth to water. Accordingly, his nose has ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... men!" he cried. "Observe. She lies still and secure. 'Tis a stout hulk and will take a tremendous battering before she breaks. ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... the head of their battering ram against the door. It gave way, and, climbing through, they raced back to ...
— Dave Darrin's Second Year at Annapolis - Or, Two Midshipmen as Naval Academy "Youngsters" • H. Irving Hancock
... the fact that not only all materialism took possession of Darwinism as the irresistible battering-ram which, as they said, forever demolishes the whole fortress of theism and buries under its ruins all those who take refuge in this decaying castle, but that even naturalists let themselves be carried away without opposition by this anti-theistic current, ...
— The Theories of Darwin and Their Relation to Philosophy, Religion, and Morality • Rudolf Schmid
... ran to a neighbouring pile of timber, and, with the aid of some others, returned bearing a battering-ram, which would soon have dashed in the door, if it had not been opened by Bacri himself, who had returned just in time to attempt to save his ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... foe, when, in the midst of his fury, a glimmer of the all-importance of every second of time stayed his hand. He threw himself upon the heavy ladder that rested against Sir Adrian's rows of books, and, clasping it by the middle, swung it above his head. The battering blow would, no doubt, have burst panel, lock, and hinges the next instant, but again Rupert forestalled him, and charged him before the door ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... and still the fighting continued. Apparently, thus far, the Germans had not conceived the idea of battering the house to pieces with their big field guns. Evidently they thought they could take it without ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... the room, barricaded behind the table, the landlord's wife and daughter crouched in terror of their lives. The gas, turned full on, blazed high enough to blacken the ceiling, and showed the heavy bolts shot at the top and bottom of the solid door. Nothing less than a battering-ram could have burst that door in from the outer side; an hour's work with the file would have failed to break a passage through the bars over the window. "How did she get there?" the sergeant asked. "Run downstairs, and bolted herself in, while the missus and ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... the part of both the Major and Mr Dombey to look after them, that they both turned at the same moment. The Page, nearly as much aslant as his own shadow, was toiling after the chair, uphill, like a slow battering-ram; the top of Cleopatra's bonnet was fluttering in exactly the same corner to the inch as before; and the Beauty, loitering by herself a little in advance, expressed in all her elegant form, from head to foot, the same supreme disregard ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... set up their engines against the Crusaders in the castle, and so battered it that castle and watch-tower were broken, beams and lead and stone. At Holy Easter the battering-ram was made ready, long, iron-headed, sharp, which so struck and cut that the wall was injured, and the stones began to fall out. But the besieged were not discouraged; they made a loop of cords attached to a wooden beam, and with that they ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... dull battering,—as if some gigantic creature was performing a Terpsichorean feat upon the sand-bank above them; but sharper sounds were heard at intervals,—screams commingled with short snortings, both proclaiming something of the ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... all the props, buttresses, flying-buttresses, that keep the monument up, one thing there is that makes it totter. There is no loud battering from without, but a certain softness in the very foundations, which attacks the crystal with an imperceptible thaw. What thing do I mean? The humble stream of warm tears shed by a whole world, until they have become a ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... in for a struggle, and got both hands on the reins; but two men would hardly have held him. The next moment, with a mad rattle of wheels and red sparks flashing under the battering hoofs, we went flying into the long dark hollow, while I think I prayed that the Devil might keep his footing on the loose stones of a very bad road. One lurch flung Grace against the guard-rail, the next against my shoulder, and I remember feeling when the little ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... With these they returned to the city. It needed no questions as to the result of the attack, which had just terminated with the same fortune that had befallen that on the day previous. Unser had been killed, and large numbers of his men had fallen in their vain attempts to hew down the gates. The battering rams had proved a complete failure. Many of the fifty men who carried the beam had fallen as they advanced. The others had rushed at the gate door, but the recoil had thrown them down, and many had had their limbs broken from the tree falling on them. Attempts had been ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty
... of the grand army and a battering-train of the first grade off to the South without the loss of a second. A palace and establishment were immediately directed to be prepared for the family of the murdered monarch, and the commander-in-chief was instructed to make every exertion to bring home the ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... delightful, and for all the world like plunging into a stiff sou'wester off the rocks at Contrary. But the first part of the journey was terrible. That tunnel nearly made me shriek. It was a misty day too at Liverpool, and all the way to Edge Hill they let off signals with a noise like battering-rams. My nerves were on the rack; so taking advantage of the darkness of the carriage, I began to sing. That calmed me, but it nearly drove the old ladies out of their wits. They screamed if I didn't; and just as I was summoning the Almighty to ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... him and in its wave tossed him against the door of his prison battering at the panels with bare fists and shrieking aloud in a voice he could not recognise ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... so fast," said John in a low voice, pinning with his elbow the hand that was battering his side. "Let be! Thou hast seen but half. There was an Indian on the track of that deer. Should we step in and take his quarry, he might be minded to empty his gun into us instead! I saw him standing nigh the spot where the trail enters the wood ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... his lips. "Ha," he gasped. "I cannot wait even to pick your eyes. There is some one at the door. I must drink your heart's blood now! Now! A-h-h-h!" His voice rose in a wild cry, weird and terrible. He raised his knife high, but as it fell the Dalmatian, who had been amusing himself battering the Polak about during these moments, suddenly heaved the little man at Kalmar, and knocked him into the corner. The knife fell, buried not in the heart of Rosenblatt, but ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... Field's dresses were laid under contribution, and Field, Russell, and Riley gave an impromptu play. And it was upon this scene that Mrs. Field, after a continuous ringing of the door-bell and nearly battering down the door, appeared at seven o'clock ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... with upraised swords, standards and trumpets flung to the breeze, formed in columns by divisions, descended, by a simultaneous movement and like one man, with the precision of a brazen battering-ram which is effecting a breach, the hill of La Belle Alliance, plunged into the terrible depths in which so many men had already fallen, disappeared there in the smoke, then emerging from that shadow, reappeared on the other side of the valley, still compact and in close ranks, mounting ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... He struggled once more to his feet, with Nicholas, and they exchanged battering blows, dealt necessarily at random. Sometimes his arm swept violently through mere space, at others his fist landed with a satisfying shock on the body of his antagonist. The dark was occasionally crossed ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the remaining wood gave way, the end of the log, used as a battering ram, projecting into the room. Over the shattered door, now held only by one bent hinge, a half dozen forms swarmed inward, the quick rush ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... summons Messire de Crevecoeur answered knightly, that Clermont he would hold till death or rescue, so we set to battering his house about his ears. But, alas! after four days a sentinel of ours saw, too late, an English knight with nine men slip through the vines, under cover of darkness, and win a postern gate in the town wall. Soon we heard a joy- fire of guns within Clermont town, and foreboded ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... and ripped out, bent, or twisted most of the steel window or door sashes, ripped doors from hinges, damaged all suspended wood, metal, and plaster ceilings. The blast concussion also caused great damage to equipment by tumbling and battering. Fires generally of secondary origin consumed practically all combustible material, caused plaster to crack off, burned all wooden trim, stair covering, wooden frames of wooden suspended ceilings, beds, mattresses, and mats, and fused glass, ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States
... about the head of certain tables, actually clinging to would-be going fellows, in unbecoming and unaccustomed "cits," while he was forcibly restrained by none. So, finally, waving his natty straw to table after table, he passed on to the broad-arched entrance, the clamor of voice and the battering of the old time iron stool beginning in kindly and cordial fashion—they would not send a dog away, those big-hearted fellows, without some show of friendliness—yet in all that array he numbered not one real friend, for self-seeking had ever been ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... were evidently disappointed, having expected to surprise the house. At any moment a fire might be opened on them. Finding, however, that they were allowed to remain with impunity in front of the house, a party of them rushed up to the door and began battering away with their clubs, hoping to break it open. In addition to the bars, the girls had placed the dining-room table and the heaviest articles of furniture they ...
— The Young Berringtons - The Boy Explorers • W.H.G. Kingston
... most men of dreamy nature, felt in the quiet dusk the power to do all things. He had the poetic temperament which sometimes leads on to great things, and the man so gifted who does not feel himself capable, at that hour of the day of rest, of battering down Gibraltar or of upbuilding the whole human race, must account himself ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... scheme must fail; but I did not think they would. They had made "Jacob's Ladder" secure against attack. Johann had himself helped to fix it closely to the masonry on the under side, so that it could not now be moved from below any more than from above. An assault with explosives or a long battering with picks alone could displace it, and the noise involved in either of these operations put them out of the question. What harm, then, could a man do in the moat? I trusted that Black Michael, putting this query to himself, would answer confidently, "None;" while, ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... I mark, Congeal to dazed surprise at my straight motion— Why, passes sane conjecture. It may be That, with a haughty and unwavering faith In their own battering-rams of argument, They deemed our buoyance whelmed, and sapped, and sunk To our hope's sheer bottom, whence a miracle Was all could friend and float us; or, maybe, They are amazed at our rude disrespect In making mockery of an English Law Sprung sacred from the King's own Premier's ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... miserable town. Our incumbered march, without breakfast, after a long, inactive sea-voyage, had wearied us sadly; and we threw our luggage upon, the ground, lay down upon it, and ruminated on a scene of little comfort to the faint-hearted, if there were any such in our little crowd of world-battered and battering ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... besiegers made use of a huge machine moving upon wheels, and including several platforms or stages, which held various parties of armed soldiers, who were defended by a strong roofing of boards and hides, beneath which they could work their battering-rams with impunity. To co-operate with this unwieldy and bulky instrument, which, from its shape and covering, they called a "sow," movable scaffolds had been constructed, of such a height as to overtop the walls, from which they proposed to storm the town; ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 569 - Volume XX., No. 569. Saturday, October 6, 1832 • Various
... friendly battering-ram here," cried he; "a close prisoner do they indeed keep my uncle when even the inner doors ...
— The Scottish Chiefs • Miss Jane Porter
... were thundering at the palace gates below. Great numbers were killed by the falling ruins, and the tortoise was broken down. The Greeks, however, soon formed another tortoise, by means of which some of the soldiers scaled the walls, while others broke down the gates with battering rams and engines; and thus the palace, the sacred and last remaining stronghold of the city, was thrown open to the ferocious and frantic horde ...
— Romulus, Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... his own hand, but sustained a heavy blow at the side of his head. The defense of his adversary angered him to blind rage. He forgot everything but contact, rushed, closed and caught his antagonist in the brawny grip of his arms. The battle at once resolved itself into the wrestling and battering match of the frontier. And it was free! Each might kill or maim if so ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... his age and his lifetime of battering about the world, Captain Cy had a sentimental streak in his makeup; his rejuvenation of the old home proved that. Betsy's letter interested him. He had made guarded inquiries concerning Mary Thayer, now Mary Thomas, ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... Fenian scares and labor strikes, when the practical joker [346] and mauvais sujets, bent on a lark, would occasionally take possession, after night-fall, of some of the chief city thoroughfares, and organize a masquerade, battering unmercifully with their heavy lanterns. Captain Pinguet's hommes de guet,—the night patrol—long before Lord Durham's blue-coated "peelers" were thought of, the historic statue would disappear sometimes for days together; and after having ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... circumstance, was unable to satisfy her with sixty blows of a large sledge hammer. He afterwards used the same weapon, with the same degree of strength, for the sake of experiment, and succeeded in battering a hole in a stone wall at the twenty-fifth stroke. Another woman, named Sonnet, laid herself down on a red-hot brazier without flinching, and acquired for herself the nickname of the salamander; while others, desirous of a more illustrious ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... where to find his wife,— No, not his wife, but fatal mother-croft, Cropped doubly with himself and his own seed. And in his rage some god directed him To find her:—'twas no man of us at hand. Then with a fearful shout, as following His leader, he assailed the folding-doors; And battering inward from the mortised bolts The bending boards, he burst into the room: Where high suspended we beheld the queen, In twisted cordage resolutely swung. He all at once on seeing her, wretched king! Undid the pendent noose, and on ...
— The Seven Plays in English Verse • Sophocles
... "The battering and disposed field artillery was then put in position in an extended semicircle, embracing within its fire the works of the Sikhs. It had been intended that the cannonade should have commenced at daybreak; but so heavy a mist hung over the plain ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... lantern to stop better, if more halting, talk. "Mr. Black was telling me to-day about Mr. White's being appointed to —— what do you call that office?" implored the dignified matron. "Just call it anything, Mrs. Gray, a bandersnatch, or a buttonhook, or a battering-ram," impertinently suggested the glib undergraduate who had been applying these words to everybody and everything, and who continued to do so until she had found a new catchword as the main substance of her conversation. The infirmities of age, as well as the mellowed wisdom of it, deserve ...
— Conversation - What to Say and How to Say it • Mary Greer Conklin |
