"Fastness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... duke, and that ye ken the by-roads to the castle. Settle it that he and I can meet this very nicht, and if need be I'll be ready to leave the morrow's morning. Aye, Balcarres, if the duke holds the fastness, I'll look after the open country." And before daybreak there was a meeting between the Gordon and the Graham. They exchanged pledges, each to do his part, but both of them knew an almost hopeless part, for the king. Many a ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... open field we must fight them, or thy master must rank but as a mansworn knight. Know, that when I feasted yonder wily savage in my halls at Christmas, and when the wine was flowing fastest around, Gwenwyn threw out some praises of the fastness and strength of my castle, in a manner which intimated it was these advantages alone that had secured me in former wars from defeat and captivity. I spoke in answer, when I had far better been silent; for what availed my idle boast, but as a fetter to bind me to a deed ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... Kells and his kind, she had to meet him with all that was catlike and subtle and devilish at the command of a woman. She had to win him, foil him, kill him—or go to her death. She was no girl to be dragged into the mountain fastness by a desperado and made a plaything. Her horror and terror had worked its way deep into the depths of her and uncovered powers never suspected, never before required in her scheme of life. She had no longer any fear. She matched herself against this man. She anticipated him. ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... course, live under the same conditions if one is to feel the authentic thrill; the mere sojourner cannot know it. One wonders, in these feudal towns, what it would be like to leave democratic London or the independence of one's country fastness, and pass for a while beneath the spell of a Duke of Norfolk, or a Baron Leconfield—a spell possibly not consciously cast by them at all, but existing none the less, largely through the fostering care of the townspeople on the rent-roll, ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... his pillow. As for the girl, timid, sensitive, aged fifteen, she fled on his approach, and shook with fear if he looked at her. He made his love plain by logical formulas and proved his passion by geometrical permutations—by charts and diagrams. A seasoned widow might have broken up the icy fastness of his soul and melted his forbidding nature in the crucible of feeling, but this poor girl just wanted some one to hold her little hand and say peace to her fluttering heart. How could she go plump herself in his lap, pull his ears ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... days—fastened on the site of the Lodge and planted three miles of wood, birch and oak, and beech and ash, with the rowan tree, along the river that goes out and in seven times in that distance, so that his descendants might have a fastness for their habitation and their children might grow up in kindly woods on which the south sun beats from early spring till late autumn, and within the sight and sound of clean, running water. No wonder they loved their lonely home with tenacious hearts, and left it only because ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... to fumble in his pockets, and drawing out a brownish rag, possibly a handkerchief, knotted in several places, proceeded to untie one of the knots. The doctor watched him without speaking. Ultimately, from some fastness in the rag a half-sovereign was extracted, and was laid upon the table by Sweeny. The clerk, a well-dressed young gentleman, whose attitude had throughout been one of the extremest aloofness, made an entry in his book with ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... of Belgium, to look with tragic eyes at all that remained to him of his country. Here had come visiting Russian princes from the eastern field, the King of England, the Prince of Wales. No obscurities—except myself—had ever penetrated so far into the fastness of ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Egypt looked forth from the shadows of the mountain fastness, and nothing stirred in the earth or upon ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... nations of the East obtained communication with the Grecian continent and isles? What more probable than that the maritime and roving Phoenicians entered the seas of Greece, and were tempted by the plains, which promised abundance, and the mountains, which afforded a fastness? Possessed of a superior civilization to the hordes they found, they would meet rather with veneration than resistance, and thus a settlement would be obtained by an inconsiderable number, more in right of ...
— Athens: Its Rise and Fall, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... thus: "Nay, thou shalt not only be in safety, but thou shalt be a king; and that more firmly than thou wast before; for thou art worthy to reign over a great many subjects, by reason of the fastness of thy friendship; and do thou endeavor to be equally constant in thy friendship to me, upon my good success, which is what I depend upon from the generosity of thy disposition. However, Antony hath done well in preferring Cleopatra to thee; ...
— The Wars of the Jews or History of the Destruction of Jerusalem • Flavius Josephus
... the demi-monde in dress leads to something in manner and feeling, not quite so pronounced, perhaps, but far too like to be honorable to herself or satisfactory to her friends. It leads to slang, bold talk, and fastness; to the love of pleasure and indifference to duty; to the desire of money before either love or happiness; to uselessness at home, dissatisfaction with the monotony of ordinary life, and horror of all useful work; in a word, to the worst ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous
... names were forgotten in the frosts of earlier years, had dived into the icy waters of Surprise Lake and fetched lump-gold to the surface in both hands. At different times, parties of old-timers had penetrated the forbidding fastness and sampled the lake's golden bottom. But the water was too cold. Some died in the water, being pulled up dead. Others died later of consumption. And one who had gone down never did come up. All survivors had planned to return and drain the lake, yet none had ever gone back. Disaster always smote ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... open... He had thought always of these snow-pent places as quite devoid of any life at the winter season, and he was amazed to find how many human beings burrowed in and hibernated during the storm-bound months. Elsewhere, the skulking traveler received a chary welcome, but in the silent fastness of the hills latchstring and hearthstone and tobacco store were for genial sharing. In almost any one of these log shelters that he chanced upon he might have settled himself in content and found an indefinite welcome, but the urge to be up and on sent him ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... sat within the icy domes Of yon far Schreckhorn—ay, or higher, where Veiled since eternity, the Jungfrau soars, Still to the tyrant would I make my way; With twenty comrades minded like myself, I'd lay his fastness level with the earth! And if none follow me, and if you all, In terror for your homesteads and your herds, Bow in submission to the tyrant's yoke, I'll call the herdsmen on the hills around me, And there beneath heaven's free and boundless roof, Where ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... those whose business it was to keep watch on the frontier, and at the appearance of an enemy to alarm the country by signals—probably by a fire. Resolute men might have defended themselves in this little fastness against many assailants, who must have been completely exposed to their arrows or ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... in a manner altogether new. It was Brown's idea to gather a band of determined and resourceful men, to plant them somewhere in the Appalachian mountains near slave territory and from their mountain fastness to run off the slaves, ever extending the area of operations and eventually settling the Negroes in the territory that they had long tilled for others. He believed that operations of this kind would soon demoralize slavery in the South and he counted upon ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 6, 1921 • Various
... America. At Fort Edward, where General Webb lay with five thousand men, the startling news had just been received that the French general, Montcalm, was moving up the Champlain Lake with an army "numerous as the leaves on the trees," with the forest fastness of Fort William Henry ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... two not included by him. Karl the Great lies in the Unterberg, near Salzburg, and also in the Odenberg, where Woden himself, according to other legends, is said to be. Siegfried, the hero of the Nibelungen Lied, dwells in the mountain fastness of Geroldseck. Diedrich rests in the mountains of Alsace, his hand upon his sword, waiting till the Turk shall water his horses on the banks of the Rhine. On the Gruetli, where once they met to swear the oath which freed their country, lie the three founders of the Swiss Federation ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... Burne; be reasonable," said the professor. "Yussuf has only obeyed orders. If anyone is to blame it is I, for I wished to see this ruined fastness of ...
— Yussuf the Guide - The Mountain Bandits; Strange Adventure in Asia Minor • George Manville Fenn
... army officers did not like his name to be mentioned in their presence. His followers, mounted on stolen horses, laughed at the pursuit of the regular cavalry sent to hunt them down, and whom they took pleasure to ambush most scientifically in the broken ground of their own fastness. Expeditions had been fitted out; a price had been put upon his head; even attempts had been made, treacherously of course, to open negotiations with him, without in the slightest way affecting the even tenor ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... at will, Till all its time be rounded; headlong she Falls to this cistern. And perchance above Doth yet appear the body of a ghost, Who here behind me winters. Him thou know'st, If thou but newly art arriv'd below. The years are many that have pass'd away, Since to this fastness Branca Doria came." "Now," answer'd I, "methinks thou mockest me, For Branca Doria never yet hath died, But doth all natural functions of a man, Eats, drinks, and sleeps, and putteth raiment on." He thus: "Not yet unto that upper foss ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... follow the enemy into the defiles of Allatoona from Cartersville. His position at Kingston offered a far more easy way to turn that fastness by the south, if he could replenish his stores, rebuild the bridges behind him, and make Kingston the base for a march upon Dallas and thence on Marietta. On the 20th of May his orders were issued ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V2 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... respect for our arms among the neighbouring nations, who, seeing that tribes so warlike and honoured among them have been broken to pieces without daring to fight a battle, even when posted in the celebrated fastness of Truckee, will form a just idea of the British power. Indeed, I have already received, within the last few days, letters from neighbouring tribes, asking me to attach their territory to Scinde, to be under the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... style, introduces London into authentic history during the apostolic era and the reign of Nero.[1] Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain, came in hot haste from Mona, suspending the slaughter of the Druid leaders in this their last fastness, to restore the Roman arms. For Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, outraged at the treatment of herself and her two daughters, had, like a second Deborah, raised a popular uprising against the foreign invaders. Colchester fallen, ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... nothing. I tell you plainly that I feel myself to be—not in a nobleman's castle, but in a brigand's fastness; and that I suspect my poor old servant has been ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772. Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much upon his numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in a marshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundred Dutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the "black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he again drew back ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... uninterruptedly, like Cuzco and Ollantaytambo, Machu Picchu would have retained its ancient name, but during the centuries when it was abandoned, its name was lost. Examination showed that it was essentially a fortified place, a remote fastness protected by natural bulwarks, of which man took advantage to create the most impregnable stronghold in the Andes. Our subsequent excavations and the clearing made in 1912, to be described in a subsequent volume, has shown that this was the ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... greatly increased the variety of colors available. Although some of the first aniline dyes to be made were not fast to washing or to light and they thus received a bad reputation, they are now to be obtained which compare favorably in fastness with the natural dye stuffs such as cochineal, madder, etc., provided sufficient time and care are given to dyeing. The chief trouble is that in the endeavor to furnish cheap goods, processes are hurried and ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... he reached Italy, his soul caught the bright rays that emanate from a southern sky, and he preferred to combat hypocrisy with the lighter weapons of pleasantry. But whichsoever arm he wielded, he always pursued the enemy remorselessly, following into every fastness, of which none knew better than himself each winding and each resource. For hypocrisy had been the bane of his life; it had rendered useless for happiness that combination he possessed of Heaven's choicest gifts; the plenitude of affections, numberless ...
— My Recollections of Lord Byron • Teresa Guiccioli
... the foothills to the east, first with the effect of fire upon their crests, and then as a great, slowly-whitening ball soaring high into the fathomless heaven. The girl stood framed in the open window, and the moonlight painted her face to the purest ivory, and toyed with the rich brown fastness of her hair, and gleamed from a single ornament at her throat. And she thought of the young horseman galloping to town; wondered if he had yet set out on his homeward journey, and the eerie depths ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... it, the hermit was galvanized into life. He dropped what he had been eating, and slowly rose from his crouching attitude. Then he turned slowly, so as to face the group of intruders on his island fastness. He seemed to fear they would vanish, if he moved too suddenly—vanish as the figment of ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... young man returns into the country of the lotus-eaters, and takes up his dwelling there in the face of all men; and if any help be sent by his friends to the oligarchical part of him, the aforesaid vain conceits shut the gate of the king's fastness; and they will neither allow the embassy itself to enter, nor if private advisers offer the fatherly counsel of the aged will they listen to them or receive them. There is a battle and they gain the day, and then modesty, which they call silliness, ...
— The Republic • Plato
... Sufficient time must be allowed for the mordant to penetrate the fibre thoroughly. If the mordant is only superficial, the dye will be uneven: it will fade and will not be as brilliant as it should be. The brilliancy and fastness of Eastern dyes are probably due to a great extent to the length of time taken over the various processes of dyeing. The longer time that can be given to each process, the more satisfactory ...
— Vegetable Dyes - Being a Book of Recipes and Other Information Useful to the Dyer • Ethel M. Mairet
... as large as the largest warship Fenor boasted; completely provisioned, armed, and powered for a cruise of one hundred years at high acceleration. It is hidden in a remote fastness of the jungle. I am placing in that vessel a group of the finest, brainiest, most highly advanced and intelligent of our men and women, with their children. We shall journey at our highest speed to a certain distant Galaxy, where we shall seek out a planet similar in ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... back to Hunston, after an interminable nightmare of running over rough ground with unaccustomed limbs, and stumbling heavily to earth, and rising up to struggle again, he had learned to what uses his enemies had put that absence. Smith had related the story in the fastness of his office, and in wholly different guise from that which it wore next morning in the columns of his newspaper. And Ryan, listening, had slowly calmed, calmed to the still fury of ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... fascination you indubitably find In the "High Cash Cloe's!" man's holler, in the hurdy—gurdy grind. Are your Spanish castles blue prints? Are you waiting for a knight To descend upon your fastness and to ...
— Tobogganing On Parnassus • Franklin P. Adams
... least computation—what a story it might have told! What a tale of remotest antiquity, of wild adventures and romance, of love, hate, death! What a revelation of harem, palace, treasury, of cavern, temple, throne! Of Hindu ghat, Egyptian pyramid, Persian garden, Afghan fastness, Chinese pagoda, Burmese minaret! Of enchanted moonlight, blazing sun, dim starlight! ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... black hordes Swarming as lice With their obscenities and greed Across your fastness, Even your peaks that swing white swords, Rent, splintered ice Into the vastness Of skies where ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... was soon told. He had gone on farther than had any of his companions, and, being a bold and brave man, had penetrated into the very fastness of the jungle where few would dare ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... enchanting is it, when he praises golden curls, Or when, from anointed heads, the royal crowns away he hurls. Yes, methinks 'tis heavenly rapture, which delights the happy man Whom his words to Elba's fastness or ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... and protection, for he meant to camp on that spot during his stay as he used to do when a boy. Then he went on foot down the mountainside to his old home in the hollow, little dreaming, as he passed along its rocky fastness, that a ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... of wild emotion Strike the ocean Of the poet's soul, erelong From each cave and rocky fastness, In its vastness, Floats some fragment of ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... Ireland. On the other hand, those who had hitherto opposed them in vain redoubled their efforts, and became exceedingly clamorous. Then it was that Lord North found it necessary to come out of his fastness, and to interpose between the contending parties. In this character of mediator, he declared, that, if anything beyond the first six resolutions should be attempted, he would oppose the whole, but that, if we rested there, the original motions should have his support. On this ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... at it, my dear," he told his spouse, in his fastness under a gnarled tree root. "However, there's no objection to the children having a look if it amuses them." He cast a discriminating eye round the larder, and frowned heavily. "Hell! you don't mean to say that we've got that damned ham bone ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... instinct for "shanties"—which all boys universally manifest—we are told that these forms of play are but the echo of remote ages when our ancestors sojourned in caves, lived in tents, or dwelt in the mountain fastness. In this same way the advocates of this theory seek to explain the strange and early drawings which the young lad has for wading, swimming, fishing, boating, and other forms ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... of pretty honest gratitude seemed to touch the heart of the ticket-man. He opened the door of his fastness, and came out—actually came out!—and with a long shrill whistle summoned a porter whom he addressed as, "Here, you Pat," and bade, "Take this lady's things, and put them into the 'bus for the Sherman; look sharp now, and see that she's ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... Jupiter, its repudiated, and, as it now believed, its offended god. 200,000l., together with many costly goods, were paid as a ransom. The barbarian general retired. He was insulted by the emperor from his fastness at Ravenna. Altercations and new marches ensued; and at last, for the third time, Alaric appeared before Rome. At midnight on the 24th of April, A.D. 410, eleven hundred and sixty-three years from the foundation of the city, the Salarian gate was opened to him by the treachery of slaves; ...
— History of the Intellectual Development of Europe, Volume I (of 2) - Revised Edition • John William Draper
... on the other side, belonged to the rich republic of Amain, who built this tower as an exploratory gazeeboo from which they could watch the motions of the Saracens who were wont to annoy them with plundering excursions; but after this fastness [was built] the people of Amalfi usually defeated and chastised them. The ride over the opposite side of the mountain was described as so uncommonly pleasant as made me long to ride it with assistance of a pony. That, however, was impossible. ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... Captain Lewis. "... We now found that as the snow bore our horses very well, traveling was infinitely easier than it was last fall, when the rocks and fallen timber had so much obstructed our march." But with the best of fortune, at least five days must be spent in getting through this dreadful fastness. Unfamiliar as they were with the route, the chances against getting through at all were tenfold. "During these five days, too, we have no chance of finding either grass or underwood for our horses, the snow being so deep. To proceed, therefore, under such circumstances, ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... Moon—that the scenery there was marvellously suited to their tastes, and would give them a chance to try experiments in landscape gardening according to Fairy ideas. It seemed likely that they might remain undiscovered in the new fastness for many centuries, and that when the time came for their presence to be suspected, the world would have assumed a new policy toward the Fay race. No cruel calumnies would be written or spoken about them, such as saying that they cast ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... asylum, to which she would silently retreat when the torture became too intense for the repression of society, and there alone, with closed doors, she wrestled with her agony. The stubborn independence of her nature took refuge in this final fastness; and she prayed only that she might go down to death with the full ability to steady herself all the way, needing the help ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... tight places together. I remember our experience, shortly after I took over the Ertak, on the monstrous planet Callor, whose tiny, gentle people were attacked by strange, vapid Things that come down upon them from the fastness of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... securely planted on its ruins. High above the babel Moossy could be heard crying encouragement, and demanding whether the "mices" had been caught, but nothing would induce him to come down from his fastness. When things were at their highest, and gay spirits like Speug were beginning to conclude that even a big snow fight was nothing to a mouse hunt, and Howieson had been so lifted that he had mounted a desk, ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... and, what was more, the full deep bite and fast hold they would take of Life's entrails. A young girl's canines are self-revelatory in this respect. Let them be big and prominent, as Leonetta's were, and the fastness of her hold on Life, once she has bitten, promises to break all records. The sensitive philosopher has little patience with your fair delicate misses with small mouse-like canines. There are too many of them to begin with, and they are so ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... overcome. The minister was not an athletic man, yet he had considerable strength. He squared his elbows, set his mouth hard, and strove to push his way through into the room. The opposition which he met was as sternly and mutely terrible as the rocky fastness of ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... hast foolishly mistaken the road to thy convent. Depart! This is not a place in which vagabond kalandars are harboured. This is the palace of the superintendent of the police. and if the symurgh looks with incivility from the fastness of the west of Mount Kaf at this place, the wings of its impertinence will at once become singed." The superintendent said, "What nonsense art thou speaking? Go out of my way, for I do not relish thy imbecile prattle." But when he wanted to enter, Hyacinth struck him with a bludgeon on the shoulder, ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... he chased him over the wheat-bearing plain, edging him toward the deep-eddying river Skamandros, as he ran but a little in front of him (for by wile Apollo beguiled him that he kept ever hoping to overtake him in the race), meantime the other Trojans in common rout came gladly unto their fastness, and the city was filled with the throng of them. Neither had they heart to await one another outside the city and wall, and to know who might have escaped and who had perished in the fight, but impetuously they poured into the city, whomsoever ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... said, 'Having crossed that impassable fastness (the world) which has purposes for its gadflies and mosquitoes, grief and joy for its cold and heat, heedlessness for its blinding darkness, cupidity and diseases for its reptiles, wealth for its one danger on the road, and lust and wrath its robbers, I have entered ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Philippines has accomplished its task rapidly and completely. In more than two thousand combats, great and small, within three years, it has exhibited unvarying courage and resolution. Utilizing the lessons of the Indian wars it has relentlessly followed the guerrilla bands to their fastness in mountain and jungle, and crushed them. It has put an end to the vast system of intimidation and secret assassination, by which the peaceful natives were prevented from taking a genuine part in government under American ...
— Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Supplemental Volume: Theodore Roosevelt, Supplement • Theodore Roosevelt
... discharge of "grape and canister," have been struck down on the instant: not one being left to look to the bodies of the slain—neither to bury nor remove them. Like the battle-field, too, it becomes the haunt of wolves and other wild beasts; who find among the fallen trunks, if not food, a fastness securing them from the pursuit both of hound and hunter. Here in hollow log the black she-bear gives birth to her loutish cubs, training them to climb over the decaying trunks; here the lynx and red couguar choose their cunning ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... writers as the Mercato Vecchio, or the Old Market. This piazza, though it had been the scene of a provision-market from time immemorial, and may, perhaps, says fond imagination, be the very spot to which the Fesulean ancestors of the Florentines descended from their high fastness to traffic with the rustic population of the valley, had not been shunned as a place of residence by Florentine wealth. In the early decades of the fifteenth century, which was now near its end, the Medici and other powerful families of the popolani grassi, or commercial ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... There, on a cushion of an island, only big enough to hold it, rose the great ruin of Thrieve Castle, the home of the proud and magnificent Douglases. Once boats must have carried the knights and ladies back and forth between the mainland and the fourteenth-century fastness of old Archibald the Grim. But now I saw a line of half-submerged stepping-stones, the only way of crossing in these days when there is no fighting or feasting at Thrieve, and no "tassel" dangling from the knoblike "hanging stone" ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... his companions had left their mountain fastness, as before described, they had appeared in different parts of the country and committed various depredations; some of their robberies having been accompanied with bloodshed and violence of a nature which so exasperated the people that an organised band had at length been ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... these dim shapes passed to the left there came again the sight of the expanse across which the disarmed men in red had been marching. And then the black ruins, and then again the beleaguered white fastness of the Council. It appeared no longer a ghostly pile, but glowing amber in the sunlight, for a cloud shadow had passed. About it the pigmy struggle still hung in suspense, but now the red ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... advisable to deny her identity or that of the child; the only explanation that he could put upon the matter was that, after all, the white woman who had accompanied his son and the Swede into the jungle fastness of the interior had ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... one of them but will cross himself and say his prayers when he hears in his mountain fastness the matin or the ave maria bells sounding from the valleys. They will often confess themselves to the village priests, to obtain absolution; and occasionally visit the village churches to pray at some favorite shrine. I recollect an instance in point: I was one evening ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the practical lady felt that he was really a very good young man. His father liked him for his own sake; but as Adam Johnstone had been gay in his youth, in spite of his sober Scotch blood, even beyond the bounds of ordinary "fastness," the fact of his being fond of Brook was not of itself a guarantee that the latter was such a very good young man as his mother said that he was. Somehow or other Brook had hitherto managed to keep clear of any ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... its own sake, and none were ever able quite to penetrate into the inner fastness of his personality. Those who came nearest to it were probably Hasfeldt and Ford, whose persistent good-humour was an armour against a reserve that chilled most men. Of all Borrow's friends it is probable that none understood him so well as Hasfeldt. He ...
— The Life of George Borrow • Herbert Jenkins
... planting it there was the inaccessibility of the place and its consequent freedom from distraction. More than twenty young men from other villages cheerfully submitted to the long confinement in this ice-bound fastness, and the people of Dourmillouse were glad to make room in their huts for the new-comers, and to add to the supplies brought by ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... unprecedented. Experts in many outlandish vernaculars had to be found from the start, and he always managed to produce the article required at the shortest notice. As a matter of fact, he had laid hands upon a tame professor, whom he kept immured in a fastness somewhere in the attics, and who was always prepared to vouch for the proficiency of anybody in any language when required to ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... prepare for the great life struggle which is before them. Such boys are apt to do well in the world. Many, however, after being released from the stores, imitate the ways of the clerks and salesmen. They affect a fastness which is painful to see in boys so young. They sport an abundance of flashy jewelry, patronize the cheap places of amusement, and are seen in the low concert saloons, and other vile dens of the city. It is not difficult to predict the future of ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... as the ships had swung to their anchors I saw a boat put off, bearing a flag of truce, to summon the pirates to yield up their fastness. But this proposal evidently miscarried, for the boat returned shortly, without any motions being made towards a surrender. At the same time I saw the gate on the landward side of the fortress opened and a chieftain wearing a rich dress come forth, accompanied by a train of attendants, ...
— Athelstane Ford • Allen Upward
... ally. But, as the bride, with her bridesmaids, was journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an island called Sarrope, in the midst of a great lake, who put the warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness, espoused them all, and, as we are assured, "loved ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, August, 1863, No. 70 - A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics • Various
... smiling, fruitful plain with frowning menace. Johanna Elizabetha's eyes sought the distant mound where she knew lay the prison fort; perchance Serenissimus would answer her pleadings by imprisonment in that dark fastness. ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... good-humoredly agree "to break conditions," and find our way back to the centres of activity and trade in the Old and New Worlds, leaving the great scientific problem of the ages to solve itself as best it may. We accordingly descend from our mountain fastness, hasten to the coast, and take passage by steamer to Manhattan, the great commercial metropolis of the world. Here we find that the barometer of exchange was long ago taken down in London and hung up in New York. The Old ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... settled down to business. He purchased stores of pasteboard, of paper, of printers ink, and a little machine to fold cartons. Thus equipped he retired to his fastness, and set dark-eyed Caterlina to work in a little box factory of his own; while clever Guiseppe ran the printing press, and Mafalda pasted. Cartons, piled flat, do not take up much room, even ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... fact; she was The Nice Girl. She was sweet-tempered, sweet-mannered, and sweet-spoken—a perfect dear. She never did a "bad" thing in her life. And she never ceased from her career of moral forcing. She wrote to her husband from her mountain fastness, warning him against high-balls in hot weather. She went twice a month during the winter to act as librarian for an evening at a settlement in a district which was inhabited by perfectly respectable working people but which, while she passed out the books, she sympathetically alluded ...
— Stories from Everybody's Magazine • 1910 issues of Everybody's Magazine
... both on sea and land during the last two years, and the more important I think the "mission" of every quiet, refined, self-respecting woman—the more mistaken I think those who would forfeit it by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the first continually exerts its restraining power. The last morning came. I cleaned up ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... Later marauding Navajo used this trail, crossing the canyon to the north side, raiding the scattered Mormon settlements, bringing their stolen horses, and even sheep, down this canyon trail. Then they drove them across on a frozen river, and escaped with them to their mountain fastness. The Mormons finally tired of these predatory visits, and shut off all further loss from that source by blasting off a great ledge at the north end of the trail. This ruined the trail beyond all hope of repair, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... besiegers provided with food, means of shelter, or other conveniences, which might have enabled them to convert the siege into a blockade; and there would, at any rate, have been a risk of relief from some of the marauder's comrades. Hobbie grinded and gnashed his teeth, as, walking round the fastness, he could devise no means of making a forcible entry. At length he suddenly exclaimed, "And what for no do as our fathers did lang syne?—Put hand to the wark, lads. Let us cut up bushes and briers, pile them before the door and set fire to them, ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... but stood pale and trembling, as if an icy wind had struck him, before her, she pulled the pricking vines loose from her dress, and came out. "How do you do, Lot?" she said, again. Still Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient dignity as if to enter her fastness again; but then ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... in hell cannot shake. Between you and me the battle has only begun, and nothing but your death or my victory will end it. You have your revenge; I intend to enjoy mine. Though he burrow as a mole, or skulk in some fastness of Alaska, I will track and seize that cowardly miscreant, and when the law receives its guilty victim, you shall be freed from suspicion, freed from prison, and most precious of all boons, you shall ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... crouched somewhat sheltered by a rock, and clasping her within my arm lay there nor dared to stir until the mad fury of the wind abated somewhat. Then, side by side, on hands and knees, we gained our rocky fastness, and closing the door, which was screened from the direct force of the tempest, I barred it with the beam I had made for the purpose, and stood staring at my companion and she on me, while all the world about us roared and clamoured loud and louder until it seemed here was to be ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... of brigands in their mountain fastness, on the watch for plunder and rapine. The scenery in the background should resemble ragged rocks, made by fastening brown paper in a rumpled manner to a frame of wood, and shaded with light and dark-brown ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... "marvellous bigness" at St Michael's Mount, near Pontorson. This monster, who had come from Spain, had made his lair on the summit of the rocky island, whither he had carried off the Lady Helena, niece of Duke Hoel of Brittany. Many were the knights who surrounded the giant's fastness, but none might come at him, for when they attacked him he would sink their ships by hurling mighty boulders upon them, while those who succeeded in swimming to the island were slain by him ere they could ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... Chinese pirates worked side by side with border ruffians and broken men from Europe, talking together in a mixed dialect, mostly oaths, gambling, drinking, quarrelling, and murdering like wolves; how the plumed hereditary lord of all America heard, in this last fastness, the scream of the "bad medicine waggon" charioting his foes; and then when I go on to remember that all this epical turmoil was conducted by gentlemen in frock-coats, and with a view to nothing more extraordinary ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hunger-silent now, Seeks cedar-berries blue, his autumn cheer; The squirrel, on the shingly shagbark's bough, Now saws, now lists with downward eye and ear, Then drops his nut, and, with a chipping bound, 40 Whisks to his winding fastness underground; The clouds like swans drift down the ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... subsisted, and were to be discerned in the river[6] down almost to the present times. The Britons had made the best of the situation; but the Romans plunged into the water, tore away the stakes and palisadoes, and obtained a complete victory. The capital, or rather chief fastness, of Cassibelan was then taken, with a number of cattle, the wealth of this barbarous city. After these misfortunes the Britons were no longer in a condition to act with effect. Their ill-success in the field soon dissolved the ill-cemented ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... Nicholas bridge and were driving out among the parks and estates that cover the small islands, set like jewels among the white fastness of the river Neva. Here and there the river was solid ice, in other places the thin ice was decorated with a light ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... dozen or more, still the wolves continued round the tree. It was in a dense part of the forest, through which the beams of the sun did not penetrate, or the creatures, disliking the bright light of day, would probably have retreated to their fastness. Hour after hour passed by, the air became unusually sultry and hot, even in the forest. Donald was growing, at the same time, very hungry, and though, as yet, he had rather enjoyed the adventure, ...
— Janet McLaren - The Faithful Nurse • W.H.G. Kingston
... of them in the employ of the American Fur Company. These were the fearless and intrepid pioneers who so far from fleeing danger seemed rather to court it. Accounts of their adventures—now a struggle with a wounded bear, again the threatened perils of starvation when lost in some mountain-fastness—have long simultaneously terrified and fascinated both young and old. We all have pictured their dress—the coat or cloak, often an odd combination of several varieties of skins pieced together, with fur side in; breeches sometimes of the same material, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... through the outer brain of the shorthand writer to the secret fastness where Hilda sat in judgment on the world ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... upon his feet now, gazing, white and trembling, at the fate which had overtaken him even in the fastness of the labyrinthine jungle. Instinctively he turned to flee; but Tarzan of the Apes reached out a strong hand and grasped him by ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Guard Thee, my Land!" There is the brassy blare of challenging trumpets in the former; they defy all creation, and make a vast deal of impotent and unprofitable noise about "The roaring northern main," "The ancient Norway's rocky fastness," "Liberty's temple in Norroway's valleys," and "Norway's lion, whose axe doth threaten him who ...
— Essays on Scandinavian Literature • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... trail of the party. The alarm was given; they all came to a halt, and held a council of war. Some conjectured that the band of Indians, whose trail they had discovered in the neighborhood of the stray horse, had been lying in wait for them in some secret fastness of the mountains; and were about to attack them on the open plain, where they would have no shelter. Preparations were immediately made for defence; and a scouting party sent off to reconnoitre. They soon came galloping back, making signals ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... compared with what it must have cost if executed after the ordinary manner. The aqueduct was formally opened for traffic in 1805. "And thus," said Telford, "has been added a striking feature to the beautiful vale of Llangollen, where formerly was the fastness of Owen Glendower, but which, now cleared of its entangled woods, contains a useful line of intercourse between England and Ireland; and the water drawn from the once sacred Devon furnishes the means of distributing ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... of March, 1306, Bruce was crowned king. His enemies immediately attacked and defeated him, and he was obliged to take refuge in the mountains of the Highlands. Here he was hunted like a wild animal, and was obliged to flee from one fastness to another. One of the most malignant of his enemies was Lord Lorn, a kinsman of the Red Comyn. At one time Bruce and his few followers were retreating through a narrow pass, when he was set upon by Lorn and a much superior force. Sending his followers ahead, he stopped ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... his foes pursued him actively from fastness to fastness, determined to run him down, and at length, on September 6, 1859, surprised him on the plateau of Gounib. Here the devoted band made a desperate resistance, not yielding until of the original four hundred only forty-seven remained ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... of coming evil diffused itself through the atmosphere. The air seemed lurid with the impending storm, for the situation was one of peculiar horror. The wealthiest city in Christendom lay at the mercy of the strongest fastness in the world; a castle which had been built to curb, not to protect, the town. It was now inhabited by a band of brigands, outlawed by government, strong in discipline, furious from penury, reckless by habit, desperate in circumstance—a crew which feared not God, nor man, nor ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... From her fastness at Estwich she defied him in letters, but every letter of hers seemed to leave some loophole open for further argument, and Ogilvy replied valiantly from a perfectly safe distance, vowing that he meant to marry her some day in spite of herself and threatening to go up and tell her so to her ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers
... nothing. It is unnecessary to say that the winter passed too quickly with them, and the time came for "making a new crop" all too soon. They left the school reluctantly and returned to the mountain home, taking with them a spirit of progress, which will make even a rugged fastness into a ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 48, No. 7, July, 1894 • Various
... that in a great measure it checked his fiery ardour, and induced most of his more timorous following to climb with most perturbed activity over the rocks. The ancient more slowly followed, and then from behind the fastness of his rocky shield, he spoke spears and boomerangs to us, though he used none. He, however, poured out the vials of his wrath upon us, as he probably thought to some purpose. I was not linguist enough to be able to translate all ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... bunches of Spanish moss festooned other monarchs of the forest, which seemed gloomy indeed as the girls gazed off into it. Now and then some creature of the woods, disturbed by the passage of the party, would take flight and scurry off, fly away or slink deeper into the fastness, according to ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Florida - Or, Wintering in the Sunny South • Laura Lee Hope
... Filion, from Black Brian's castle in the hills, was told with primitive force and passion. But the most wonderful part of the story described how a strange dwarfed Little Man came out of the hills in the East, across the land, to the Western fastness of Black Brian, and there slew that evil man, because of an ancient feud—slew him in a situation of great indignity, and left him lying on the sands for the tide to wash him out to the deep and hungry sea. Even here Patsy had his inspiration from real life; and yet he disguised ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... much adventure; escapes, far distant wanderings, strange company. Many months I spent in a mountain fastness with a wise Hebrew Rabbi, who taught me his sacred Scriptures; going back to the beginning of all things, before the world was; yet shrewd in judgment of the present, and throwing a weird light forward upon the future. A strange ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... a race that once lorded it over western Italy," he declared. "Midway inland, between Ventimiglia and Bordighera, is our old fastness beneath the mountains and beside the river. An ancient bridge like a rainbow still spans Nervia, and the houses climb up the hills among the vines and olives, while frowning down upon all things is the mighty ruin of the Doria's castle—a great ghost from the past. In the midst of all the human ...
— The Red Redmaynes • Eden Phillpotts |
