"Hand-to-hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... almost hidden in the shadow, was the figure of a man. He must have been asleep, for he did not become aware of my presence until I was within a foot of him. Then he sprang to his feet and was about to give the alarm. Before he could do so, however, I was upon him. A desperate hand-to-hand struggle followed, in which I fought solely for his throat. This once obtained I tightened my fingers upon it and squeezed until he fell back unconscious. It was like a horrible nightmare, that combat without noise in the dark ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... onward they rushed and then they were in the midst of the battle. And yet not exactly in the midst, for the actual conflict was rather of longer distance than that. Hand-to-hand fighting had not yet occurred. But they advanced, firing as they rushed on, not in close formation, for that offered too good a target, but separated. They would fire, rush on, drop to earth, rise again, fire and rush on. And ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... where all the French vagabonds and English outlaws in the town (half the population) attended to prevent their recovery from bewilderment. After being minutely inspected by all the English, and claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed as prizes by all the French in a hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a mile long, they were at last free to enter the streets, and to make off in their various directions, ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... attacked furiously, and for a few moments those five men bore the brunt of the assault. With his own hand Robert Edmiston slew six of the more forward of the enemy, Morrison nearly as many, and then Moore became engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand fight with an herculean chieftain of the Cherokees. They were a few paces in advance of the main body, and, as if by common consent, the firing was partly suspended on both sides to await the issue of the conflict. "Moore had shot the chief, wounding him in the knee, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... in Shakespeare's plays are very numerous. There is little need to remind the reader, for instance, of the hand-to-hand encounters of Macbeth and Macduff, Posthumus and Iachimo, Hotspur and the Prince of Wales, Richard and Richmond. Romeo has his fierce brawl with Tybalt, Hamlet his famous fencing scene, and there is serious crossing of swords both in "Lear" and "Othello." English ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... was to spring upon his enemy, to strike him in the face, and compel him to engage in a hand-to-hand struggle. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... us to forget for any length of time one or another of his contrasting activities, however absorbed he may seem to be in some one field of action. Now, when he is plunged in a hand-to-hand struggle with the criminal conditions of London, when he is admonishing the gayer end of the Town with his weekly censorial satire and ridicule, and while he is watching the enactment of new legislation ...
— Henry Fielding: A Memoir • G. M. Godden
... madly about. For the instinct of the dumb animals seems to admonish them, they are caged with a dangerous companion—they and it alike unable to part company. Their masters know this, and knowing it, are all the more alarmed. A fight is before them; and there appears no chance of shunning it—a hand-to-hand fight, their short-bladed knives against the sharp teeth ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... High Street, or Corso—Aphetais by name, lined, irregularly again, with various religious and other monuments. It radiated on all sides into a mazy coil, an ambush, of narrow crooked lanes, up and down, in which attack and defence would necessarily be a matter of hand-to-hand fighting. In the outskirts lay the citizens' houses, roomier far than those of Athens, with spacious, walled courts, almost in the country. Here, in contrast [209] to the homes of Athens, the legitimate wife had a real dignity, ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... conflict; several of the pirates had been killed, the deck was slippery with blood, and the rest were keeping their ground with difficulty. I had a long and severe hand-to-hand fight with one of them. We had each received desperate wounds, when his foot slipped on the bloody deck. I gave him a severe stroke on the head with a tomahawk, and, after a deadly struggle on the gangway, tumbled him backwards overboard. The moon shone bright ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... and thus fettered were no match for the big, wild creatures. Andy's rifle was lashed upon the komatik. It was out of the question to free it in the moment before the wolves were upon them, and it was to be a hand-to-hand fight. ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... dozen dark hands grasped my bridle or clutched at me, their swarthy faces fierce with blood-lust, the eyes that fronted me cruel with passion and inflamed by hate. I heard shots not far away; but we were all too closely jammed to do more than fight in a desperate hand-to-hand struggle with club ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... hand-to-hand encounter with the cripple; mine was much the same; I was a child in his grip. But with his weapon useless, and Larry rushing into the room, Tugh must have felt that for all his strength and fighting skill he would be worsted in this encounter. ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... conflict had come. It was no longer to be a duel at a distance—no more a contest between rifle-bullets and barbed arrows; but the close, desperate, hand-to-hand contest of pistol, knife, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... hard, as he turns over the leaves on which are recorded the debates of the Virginia convention, to understand just how such a person could have made the speeches which are there attributed to Patrick Henry, or how a mere rhapsodist could have thus held his ground, in close hand-to-hand combat, for twenty-three days, against such antagonists, on all the difficult subjects of law, political science, and history involved in the Constitution of the United States,—while showing at the same time every quality of good generalship ...
— Patrick Henry • Moses Coit Tyler
... standing, Beta! If we could know the complete story of this expedition, its probable failure to reach New York, its entrapment here, the siege and the inevitable tragedy of its end—starvation, sorties, repulses, hand-to-hand fighting at the outer gates, in the nave, here at the crypt door, perhaps on the stairs and in the vaults below—then defeat and slaughter and extinction—what a ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... himself into the coast town of Stralsund, in Swedish Pomerania. He marched through Mecklenburg, and suddenly appeared before Stralsund at moment when the French cannoneers in garrison were firing a salvo in honour of Napoleon's entry into Vienna. A hand-to-hand fight gave Schill possession of the town, with all its stores. For a moment it seemed as if Stralsund might become a second Saragossa; but the French were at hand before it was possible to create works of defence. Schill had but eighteen hundred men, half of whom were cavalry; he understood ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... gagged; heads hanging, jolted by the bumping of the cart; their throats parched with thirst, despair and terror; unfortunate beings who did not even have, as in the times of Nero and Commodus, the fight in the arena, the hand-to-hand struggle with death. Powerless, motionless, the lust of massacre surprised them in their fetters, and battered them not only in life but in death; their bodies, when their hearts had ceased to beat, still resounded beneath the bludgeons which mangled ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... I hear every body, but above all the West Point wiseacres and strategians, assert that charges with the bayonet and hand-to-hand fighting are exceedingly rare occurrences in the course of any campaign. It is useless to speak to all those great judges of experience and ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... of the slope, where the drift crossed the spruit, Boers were dragging cannon into position, and in among the waggons which had become congested in the road, burghers and soldiers were engaging in fierce hand-to-hand encounters. A stocky Briton wrestled with a youthful Boer, and in the struggle both fell to the ground; near by a cavalryman was firing his revolver at a Boer armed with a rifle, and a hundred paces away a burgher ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... occurs to me, by the way, that when my teacher was training my unreclaimed spirit, her struggle against the powers of darkness, with the stout arm of discipline and the light of the manual alphabet, was in two senses a hand-to-hand conflict. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the kind one seldom sees in this war. The Germans have been entrenched on the left side of the Butte, the French on the right. And day and night for four years there has been an incessant battle over its summit of grenades, bombs and shells; a terrible hand-to-hand fight in which neither one of the contestants yields an inch of ground. A brook of blood runs its interrupted course on each slope. On the south slope it is red with German blood; with French ...
— Fighting France • Stephane Lauzanne
... action. As before stated, the rebels drove our force toward the gun-boats, taking colored men prisoners and murdering them. This so enraged them that they rallied and charged the enemy more heroically and desperately than has been recorded during the war. It was a genuine bayonet charge, a hand-to-hand fight, that has never occurred to any extent during this prolonged conflict. Upon both sides men were killed with the butts of muskets. White and black men were lying side by side, pierced by bayonets, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... will come to serious harm, and after the reader has known the thrilling excitement of lack of food and water, of attacks by night and day, and of a hand-to-hand fight, he is rescued and brought safely home again,—to realize that it's only a story, but a stirring and ...
— The Little Colonel's Christmas Vacation • Annie Fellows Johnston
... was translated to Charlie, he saw at once the force of the argument. He could not have denied that the Jew had fallen in a hand-to-hand struggle with himself, and, were he to appear in Warsaw, he might be killed by the co-religionists of Ben Soloman; or, if he escaped this, might lie in a dungeon for months awaiting his trial, and perhaps be finally executed. There was nothing for him now but to rejoin the ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... suddenly as it had commenced. I judged that the enemy was storming the city, for the sounds we heard were the sounds of hand-to-hand combat. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a man of good natural abilities, though of not much education, and after half an hour's conversation with him one would say, unhesitatingly, that he deserved a better fate than his hand-to-hand struggle with poverty. But he was one of those men who, for some unaccountable reason, never get on in the world. They can do a great many things creditably, but do not have the knack of conquering fortune. So Hiram had always been a poor man, and ...
— Bound to Rise • Horatio Alger
... idea. I don't much fancy a hand-to-hand encounter with a band of such desperate ruffians as those gipsies have shown ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... with that, you young ruffians, for you are nothing else! These hand-to-hand fights between boys seldom finish well. Some ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... whole line is a battle front from north of Wirballen to well into Poland, and no day passes without contact with the Germans. This is an army in which every man has fought. Most of them have been in hand-to-hand conflict with the Germans. They have approached the front through a country which the enemy has devastated. There is no village which does not bear the mark of wanton destruction. I have seen these things for myself. Houses have been burned, others pillaged and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... determination as were those Germans now so close to them? They, the handful of poilus whom the French High Command had alone spared for the protection of their front lines, had they the nerve, the grit, for a hand-to-hand combat? Shouts came from many a man, loud cheers burst from the throat of many a bearded veteran, while one young officer sprang on the battered parapet of a trench, and stood there facing his friends, calling to them, exhorting them, as the rays of a search-light played on his figure; ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... had been gazing rather absently into the distance, was aroused to defend himself, and the battle resolved itself into a hand-to-hand combat ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... crisply. "At the thought of a hand-to-hand battle with a vortex my brain froze solid. Fear—the sheer, stark, natural human fear of death, that robs a man of the fine edge of control and brings on the very death that he is trying so hard to avoid. ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... his; she breathed hotly into his eyes as she panted forth words, Latin, Greek, all burning with shameless desire. But Basil was not thus to be subdued. The things that he had heard and seen, and now at last the hand-to-hand conflict, had put far from him all temptation of the flesh; his senses were cold as the marbles round about him. This woman, who had never been anything to him but a lure and a peril, whom he had regarded with ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... machine gun nests captured in fighting at close quarters. On October 18 there was very fierce fighting in the Caures Woods east of the Meuse and in the Ormont Woods. On the 14th the First Corps took St. Juvin, and the Fifth Corps, in hand-to-hand encounters, entered the formidable Kriemhilde Line, where the enemy had hoped to check us indefinitely. Later the Fifth Corps penetrated further the Kriemhilde Line, and the First Corps took Champigneulles and the important town of Grandpre. Our dogged offensive was wearing ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... No. I fight a duel in each of them, except Macbeth, in which there is no duel, only a hand-to-hand combat. I do commit a murder ...
— Punch, or, the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 8, 1890. • Various
... unawares, Jack North did not allow his enemy to get very much the advantage of him. As the other rushed forward, expecting to overpower him by sheer force, he met him squarely in a hand-to-hand ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... didn't. If you are going in for hand-to-hand mix-ups I'm afraid we shall have to leave off hunting. Old and experienced hunters have done what you did, but I must say it's the first time I ever heard of a boy even ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin
... laborer on one or another of the Ayrshire tenant farms which his father or brothers leased. At the age of fifteen, he was worked beyond his strength in doing a man's full labor. He called his life on the Ayrshire farms "the unceasing toil of a galley slave." All his life he fought a hand-to-hand fight with poverty. ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... captains on either side who went through the wars without anything that could be called a defeat. Without fear or pity, he was a warrior of the older Maori type, who with equal enjoyment could plan a campaign, join in a hand-to-hand tussle, doom a captive to death, or shoot a deserter with his own rifle. As he would not join the Hau-Haus, they and their converts made the mistake of attacking him. After beating them off he was joined by Major Biggs and a company of ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... of the men named therein having confessed upon interrogation. Philip's account of the affair made it appear to Washington that his discovery was due to his accidental meeting with Ned Faringfield, and that Faringfield's escape was but the unavoidable outcome of the hand-to-hand fight between the two men—for Philip had meanwhile ascertained, by a personal search, that Ned had not been too severely hurt to make good ...
— Philip Winwood • Robert Neilson Stephens
... to get on in the world? Twenty years before he had thought less of getting on than of the interests of science or of doing good; now those ideas were gradually leaving him—life had become a stern hand-to-hand fight with hard necessity. The poor seemed to be growing poorer—the difficulty of getting a fee became greater—the ladies seemed more and more determined to show their dislike ...
— Wife in Name Only • Charlotte M. Braeme (Bertha M. Clay)
... stockade he had distinguished himself greatly by the methodical ferocity of his fighting. The storming party had come on so quick—Jim said—that notwithstanding the panic of the garrison, there was a "hot five minutes hand-to-hand inside that stockade, till some bally ass set fire to the shelters of boughs and dry grass, and we all had to ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... regiments of Molineux, and there Neafie joined them with the 3d brigade, after a strong stand at their breastworks, wherein Macauley fell severely wounded, and the 156th and 176th had hard fighting hand-to-hand to keep their colors, at the cost of the staves. Birge retired along the line of works to the open ground beyond Meadow Brook, where ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... they are not murderers. In a hand-to-hand conflict they might do it, as I might do the same to them. This very morning my men shot at the captain of all smugglers, Robin Lyth, of Flamborough, with a hundred guineas upon his head. It was no wish of mine; but my breath ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... of a monster ferocious and shaggy, misshapen and higher in stature than man, who came from the wood to the palace of a weak old king. This king had a lovely daughter, and the monster boldly demanded her hand and the kingdom, offering to meet in hand-to-hand combat any who would say him nay. No one dared to meet him, for no one had a weapon that could pierce his ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... that a glorious fight poor old Herkimer's men made against the Tories and Brandt's Indians? That must have been terrible, a regular hand-to-hand struggle. Yes, Arnold is here and many think he should have ...
— Rodney, the Ranger - With Daniel Morgan on Trail and Battlefield • John V. Lane
... to admit that I had no considerable desire to meet the formidable and ferocious creature, of whose mighty prowess Dian had told me when I first met her. He it was who, armed with a puny knife, had met and killed a cave bear in a hand-to-hand struggle. It was Jubal who could cast his spear entirely through the armored carcass of the sadok at fifty paces. It was he who had crushed the skull of a charging dyryth with a single blow of his war club. No, I was not pining to meet the Ugly One-and ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... seized her rein and forced her forward, she would not have moved. And then, even as she moved, they met! With yells and wild cries and a mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of grapples hand-to-hand. What happened, what was happening to any one, who it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were those who still fought single combats, twisting round one another's horses, those on her right and on her left, she could not tell. For Badelon dragged her on with whip ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... boarding, but more especially in boarding small vessels, there is not much opportunity for what is termed hand-to-hand fighting. It is a rush for the deck; breast to breast, thigh to thigh, foot to foot, man wedged against man, so pressed on by those behind, that there is little possibility of using your cutlass, except by driving ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... was frightful to behold. Most of the men wielded clubs of enormous size and curious shapes, with which they dashed out each other's brains. As they were almost entirely naked, and had to bound, stoop, leap, and run in their terrible hand-to-hand encounters, they looked more like demons than human beings. I felt my heart grow sick at the sight of this bloody battle, and would fain have turned away, but a species of fascination seemed to hold me down and glue my eyes upon the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... first team we practise what are called "set-pieces." One day we will take the forwards, get the scrum properly formed, practise hooking, heeling and screwing. We have devoted a lot of attention to wheeling. We also practise hand-to-hand passing among the forwards. ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... heroism, some of which have been officially recognized. The Australians have the utmost contempt for the enemy as fighting men. They declare that if the artillery and air-craft were eliminated they would be prepared to give the enemy the benefit of odds in hand-to-hand fighting. ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... had made up his mind that he would propose the expedition, and if he could obtain his uncle's permission would proceed upon it forthwith. Having come to this resolution, he fell fast asleep and dreamed away, till eight o'clock in the morning, that he was hunting elephants and having hand-to-hand conflicts with every variety of beast with which he had peopled Africa in his fancy. When he was called up in the morning, he found his determination of the night before rather strengthened than ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... beneath those human eyes after being trapped into the padded chamber, and a shiver of repulsion ran over him. Was he a captive in the hands of, and at the mercy of, a gang of conjurers and mesmerists? The thought was horrible to him. He had courage enough to defend himself in a hand-to-hand encounter, but he felt powerless to contend against such diabolical influences as he had ...
— Mona • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... at Carwar; charged with indiscretion by Hamilton; cautioned by the Bombay Council. Teach, Edward, pirate, alias Blackbeard; his fearlessness and cruelty; reward offered for his capture; killed in hand-to-hand encounter. Tew (? Thomas Too), English pirate, allied with Misson; escapes from Libertatia; killed in action; commission to Kidd to apprehend. Thevenapatam, establishment of a factory at. Thomas, the, attacked by four Beyt ships. Thomas, the, brigantine, owned by Gyfford; ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... destruction. Our ranks were disordered by the pursuit, and we thus lost one of our chief advantages; for the Bedouins, unable to resist the charge in line of disciplined cavalry, are no despicable opponents in a hand-to-hand melee. And this the combat soon became. Greatly outnumbered, we fought for our lives, and of course fought our best. I found myself near the colonel, who was assailed by two Arabs at one time. He defended himself like a lion, but his opponents were strong and skilful, ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... swaying movement, like the commencement of a Rugby scrimmage. He turned, and saw in a moment what had happened: by sheer weight of numbers, the overpowering rush of Arabs had forced back the thin line of "Heavies," and a fierce hand-to-hand fight was in progress. What had been the interior of the square was now covered with a confused mass of struggling combatants, dimly seen through clouds of dust and smoke. Desperate fanatics hacked and stabbed ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... "You!" And this monosyllable followed the tug of conquest, the blows which were equivalent to a momentary title of possession, all the extremes of a crude, ancestral predilection, of a gallantry inherited from remote forbears of the dark epoch when the club, the stone, and the hand-to-hand struggle were ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... it was, it was excusable, I think. All of you have learned how to behave in hot hand-to-hand engagements, and you don't need to be ashamed of your record in that matter; but to walk along in front of death, with one's hands idle, and no noise, no music, and nothing going on, is a very trying situation. ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... saw that escape was impossible. Neither had they any thought, but for a passing moment, of fighting for their liberty. The Ouvertures were completely armed; and there never was an occasion when a man would lightly engage, hand-to-hand, ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... between the two. He thought of joining an infantry unit—the artillery were not good enough, he did not want to fire at an enemy he could not see, he wanted to use the bayonet and murder his fellow men in hand-to-hand encounters. ...
— Combed Out • Fritz August Voigt
... the kitchen and hurrying forward, the troopers soon lifted their comrade from his mount and carried him in. A lance had pierced his thigh and the horse's flank, which meant that it had been a hand-to-hand fight, and the blood still flowing freely, proved that the combat was ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... through, while Barrett and his comrades watched and waited anxiously. The stormers came with the dawn, and were over the stockade before the Whites could rouse the sleepers. Then, however, after a desperate tussle—one of those sturdy hand-to-hand combats in which the Maori fighter shone—the assailants were cut down or driven headlong out. With heavy loss the astonished Waikatos recoiled in disgust, and their retreat did not cease till they reached their ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... him. He wished to get within easy range of his enemy, that he might try this weapon effectively; but any attempt on his part to come to closer quarters was construed by the Kearsarge as a design to bring the engagement between the ships to a hand-to-hand conflict between the men. Having the speed, she chose her distance, and made all ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... boasted when he said that he could wring Maurice's neck as easily with his left hand as with his right, and Maurice within his heart was bound to own that the boast was no idle one. He knew that in a hand-to-hand fight he was no match for that heavy-framed, hard-fisted product ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... service boasted a history and a high morale. Its ships had been active. The younger officers served with seniors who had sailed and fought with Biddle and Barney and Paul Jones in the Revolution. Many of them had won promotions for gallantry in hand-to-hand combats in boarding parties, for following the bold Stephen Decatur in 1804 when he cut out and set fire to the Philadelphia, which had fallen into the hands of pirates at Tripoli, and helping Thomas Truxtun in 1799-1800 when the Constellation ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... occasionally positions were captured and retained, as at Buval near Souchez, Hbuterne, and Quennevires. The Germans, too, failed in their attacks on Les parges, while the French succeeded in capturing Metzeral in Alsace. But the great offensive in Artois had subsided into stubborn hand-to-hand fighting in the Labyrinth, which was as costly as a first-class ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard
... minutes, and over they came again. We opened up heavily with our battery of four guns, throwing a barrage in his front as best we could; mine was the only battery left working on this particular sector. Our fellows went out and met Fritz in a hand-to-hand argument, backing up their contention so thoroughly with the cold steel that they sent him flying back to the line he had ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... war, of its causes and its vicissitudes, yet she remained fiercely true to England and the Allies, and could never accept the Japanese detachment. Above all, the thought of her husband's danger haunted her. Waking and sleeping she could see him, sword in hand, leading his men to desperate hand-to-hand struggles, like those portrayed in the crude Japanese chromographs, which Sadako showed her to play upon her fears. Poor Asako! How she hated Japan now! How she loathed the cramped, draughty, uncomfortable life! How she feared the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... delivering his fire, had not waited to reload, but ran forward with the intention of joining me in the hand-to-hand fight— though he carried no other weapon than his empty gun. But this would have been an efficient arm in such hands; for, despite his unsymmetrical build, Dutch Lige was stalwart and though, and would have been a full match for any two of my assailants, had ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... abrupt right angle. The chin was heavy, the nostrils were low and wide, and the lower lip hung loosely except in his moments of spasmodic earnestness, when it shut like a steel trap. Yet about those coarse features there were deep, rugged furrows, the scars of many a hand-to-hand struggle with the weakness of the flesh, and about that drooping lip were sharp, strenuous lines that had conquered it and taught it to pray. Over those seamed cheeks there was a certain pallor, a greyness caught from many a vigil. It was as though, after Nature had done her worst with that ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... numbers are assembled in Afghanistan for fighting purposes, so the dispersing of an Afghan army together with its attendant masses of tribal levies in flight is almost beyond comprehension; men who have been actually engaged in hand-to-hand combat dispose of their arms in the villages they pass through, and meet their pursuers with melons or other fruit in their hands, While they adopt the ...
— Afghanistan and the Anglo-Russian Dispute • Theo. F. Rodenbough
... given. Saya Chone and the Strangler had gone away, leaping down from the mouth of the outer cave to the ravine. But Jack was certain that the unwounded Kachins were still lurking in the cave out of his sight, and he had no intention whatever of creeping out and engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with the iron-limbed little mountaineers. Fully half an hour passed in this profound silence. Jack kept the sharpest look-out, but could catch no sign to show that ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... was the more formidable ship and faster on the wind, forcing Captain Sterling of the Savage to accept the challenge. Disabled aloft very early in the fight, Captain Geddes was unable to choose his position, for which reason they literally battled hand-to-hand, hulls grinding against each other, the gunners scorched by the flashes of the cannon in the ports of the opposing ship, with scarcely room to ply the rammers, and the sailors throwing missiles from the decks, hand grenades, cold ...
— The Old Merchant Marine - A Chronicle of American Ships and Sailors, Volume 36 in - the Chronicles Of America Series • Ralph D. Paine
... the hour had come in which they were free to reward themselves for years of misery and suffering. In the midst of that surging throng of humanity, in the glitter of day and of fire, shone the helmets of pretorians, under whose protection the more peaceable population had taken refuge, and who in hand-to-hand battle had to meet the raging multitude in many places. Vinicius had seen captured cities, but never had his eyes beheld a spectacle in which despair, tears, pain, groans, wild delight, madness, rage, and license were mingled together in such immeasurable ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... echoed by his followers, and accompanied as it was by loud peals of thunder, produced something like a panic among the ranks of the Spanish garrison. So sudden was the attack, and so completely unexpected, that it could scarcely fail of success; and indeed, after a short hand-to-hand combat, one portion of the garrison fled, while the other surrendered without ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... truth, a golden age. Without the elbow-room that some kinds of fun require, without money to buy games, without leisure to play them or to teach them to their children, forever held down by drudgery, forever pressed upon by the serious hand-to-hand fight to keep the wolf from the door, is it strange that the poor know next to nothing of the commonest home games and diversions? To the Home Libraries, a name sweet and dear to us who have had to do with them, came ...
— Library Work with Children • Alice I. Hazeltine
... in the Indians' possession was recognizable as coming from the poop, the remaining marksmen having preferred to fire wildly from their canoes. But Christobal knew that a deadly struggle was in progress on the fore deck. Tollemache, Frascuelo, and three Chileans were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with nearly a score of savages; the doctor could distinguish the cries of the combatants, the irregular ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... chanced to touch left little, buttery fleurs-de-lis on the floor. She escaped the disastrous fire, not, like a dozen other fowls, by seeking refuge in the wind-break, but because she was in the coal-shed carrying on a hand-to-hand conflict with the tortoise-shell cat, ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... was but momentary. The troops instantly rallied, and before those cruel guns, or even all the rifles, could be reloaded, the Chinese were among the rebels, the cold steel got to work, and a scene of sanguinary, relentless, hand-to-hand fighting ensued, the memory of which was to remain with Frobisher for many a long day. Before the end was reached he could no longer bear to look on, but, climbing down from his perch, seated himself on the floor and covered his ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... warriors. And next day Cortez sent a party to storm it. They tried to get up the winding stairs, and were driven back three times with fearful loss. Cortez, though he had but one hand to fight with, sallied out and cleared the pyramid himself, after a fearful hand-to-hand fight of three hours, up the winding stairs, along the platforms, and at last upon the great square on the top, an acre in breadth. Every Mexican was either killed, or hurled down the sides. The idol, the ...
— True Words for Brave Men • Charles Kingsley
... still standing in his rigid attitude. If he had been white before at times he was ghastly now. It had not been an attack in force. A small number had got across and had penetrated beyond the railway line. There had been hand-to-hand fighting in the road beyond the poplars. But it looked more like an experiment, an endeavor to discover the possibility of a real advance through the inundation; or perhaps a ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... military arms there has necessarily been a corresponding modification in the method of supplying ammunition and in the quantity required to be supplied. When hand-to-hand weapons were the principal implements of battle, there was, of course, no such need, but even in the middle ages the archers and crossbowmen had to replenish the shafts and bolts expended in action, and during ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... may seem to outsiders, but there is as much wire-pulling, as much jealousy and scandal within the walls of one of those big institutions, as anywhere else on this planet. It is an epitome of the world battle, and the strugglers meet in hand-to-hand conflict. ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... excellent advice, but the widow and Mrs. Moulton gave it no heed. One was impelled by hate, the other by love; and as they crashed into the growth behind me each was worth a woodsman or two in hand-to-hand fighting. With unnerving abruptness a man laughed boisterously directly ahead of me. Yells and questions filled the arches of ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... power grew greater and greater. The courage shown by him in the hand-to-hand fight with the hippopotamus had made a ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... shrill, adding their clamour to his. He raved of battles and sieges. He was lying in the trenches, in cold and rain and wind—in the tempestuous darkness. He was mounting the breach at Dunkirk against the Spaniard; at Charenton in a hand-to-hand fight with Frondeurs. He raved of Chatillon and Chanleu, and the slaughter of that fatal day when Conde mourned a friend and each side lost a leader. Fever gave force to gesture and voice; but in the midst of his ravings he fell back, half fainting, upon the pillow, his heart beating ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... showy chivalry of his day. He loved the pomp of tournaments; he revived the Round Table of the fabled Arthur; he celebrated his victories by the creation of a new order of knighthood. He had varied the sterner operations of the siege of Calais by a hand-to-hand combat with one of the bravest of the French knights. A naval picture of Froissart sketches Edward for us as he sailed to meet a Spanish fleet which was sweeping the narrow seas. We see the king sitting on deck in his jacket of black velvet, his head covered by a black ...
— History of the English People, Volume II (of 8) - The Charter, 1216-1307; The Parliament, 1307-1400 • John Richard Green
... little woman to do? With one boy crawling about the floor and two others in a hand-to-hand fight, with the rest in a giggle, of what use to try to talk to them about Moses? You should have seen Gracie Dennis eyes by that time! Horror and disgust were about equally expressed, and rising above them both, a look of actual fear. ...
— Ester Ried Yet Speaking • Isabella Alden
... they are bent on winning here. They know now about how many men I have, and they know that my men are regulars. The Moros have plenty of rifles, and I judge that they're well off in ammunition, but they can't shoot as well as American regulars. On a charge, however—in close, hand-to-hand fighting—these Malays are not to be despised. They always fought hand-to-hand in the old days, and ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... their way home from Flanders. At break of day the battle began, off Cape St. Vincent, and lasted till nightfall. The privateer commanded by Columbus grappled a huge Venetian galley, which, after a hand-to-hand struggle, caught fire, and the flames spread to the privateer. Friends and enemies alike sought safety in the sea, and Columbus, supporting himself on an oar, succeeded, when nearly exhausted, in gaining the land, which was at ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... had an opportunity to see the man and water conflict, with a perspective much as it would have appeared to a spectator happening on the scene. I was out of the heat of the battle. The excitement and indifference to danger that comes with a hand-to-hand grapple was gone. I heard the roar of the rapid; a roar so often heard that we forgot it was there. I saw the gloom of the great gorge, and the towering, sinister shafts of rock, weakened with cracks, waiting for the moment that would send ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... son, and my mother was sister to King Mark, from whose court I now come. My name is Sir Tristram de Lyonesse." "Truly," said Sir Bleoberis, "I am right glad to hear it, for thou art he that slew Sir Marhaus hand-to-hand, fighting for the Cornish tribute; and overcame Sir Palomedes at the great Irish tournament, where also thou didst overthrow Sir Gawain ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... the other two. Even as his opponent crumpled, they were upon him, coming in from each side. And at least one of them, he could see now, had been in hand-to-hand combat before. In short, another pro, like ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... when the operator pushed a thumb lever, releasing the gas in a cartridge contained in the handle. The blades snapped forth with enough force to break a bubble or to cut through a space suit. They were designed for the sole purpose of space hand-to-hand combat. ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... social economy, that this hand-to-hand struggle, this ever-reviving combat with popular errors, has a true ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... that even McGurk would try to rush a hostile house, but they took no chances. The guns of Jim Boone were given a thorough overhauling, and he wore as usual at his belt the heavy-handled hunting knife, a deadly weapon in a hand-to-hand fight. Thus equipped, they left ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... his dynol pistol without a word to a weaponless man and stalked after his leader. His great hand clutched and unclutched unconsciously. This was what he wanted, hand-to-hand fighting. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... us move; and it would be murderous for my poor lads to carry on a hand-to-hand fight in ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... accordance with orders, pressed forward into the houses beyond, so as to keep the enemy from advancing to the assistance of their friends, thus caught in a trap. The Warreners belonged to the party who advanced, and were soon engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with the enemy. Scattering through the houses, they drove the Sepoys before them. The Warreners were fighting side by side with Mr. Johnson, and with him, after driving the enemy through the next house, they entered an ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... ordinary methods of war which he had used with success in the West went here for nothing. The devotion of Lee's men was a mania. Small as his army was the bulldog fighter saw with amazement that it was practically unconquerable in a square, hand-to-hand struggle. ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... than 200,000 Helots and 120,000 Perioeci, there were never more than 9,000 Spartiate heads of families. In a matter of life and death, then, it was necessary that a Spartiate be as good as ten Helots. As the form of battle was hand-to-hand, they needed agile and robust men. Sparta was like a camp without walls; its people was an army ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... difficulties. It was his home, the prosperity of his coming life that he had to fight for; and he told himself that he must put aside all weakness, as he had done once before, when he turned away from the easy-going studies and pleasures of young Oxford life to undertake a hand-to-hand fight with evil fortune. ...
— Fenton's Quest • M. E. Braddon
... demanded to decide the fate of one of the loveliest creatures upon whom the light of yonder crater-fire ever shone—perhaps upon whom the sun ever shone; he had scarcely sixty seconds of time in which to determine whether she should die, or he should take the chance of a terrible death, with a hand-to-hand conflict, a powerful madman for an adversary, certain to confront him should his leap by a miracle prove successful. To have leaped over an abyss of half the width of that one, and then to have met an ordinary adversary, would have been a wonderfully brave deed. He decided promptly—and, too, ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... despoiled; the stumps are ugly; the bushes are scorched; the pine-leaf-strewn earth is trodden into mire; the landing looks like a cattle-ford; the ground is littered with all the unsightly dibris of a hand-to-hand life; the dismantled shanty is a shabby object; the charred and blackened logs, where the fire blazed, suggest the extinction of family life. Man has wrought his usual wrong upon Nature, and he can save his self-respect only by ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... could tell how long the former might be able to sustain life in the vitiated atmosphere of the mine, when ventilation was no longer possible. I reached Hartley a few hours after the breaking of the beam, and in the hand-to-hand encounter with death at that forlorn and desolate spot I first became acquainted at close quarters with the tragic realities of life. For a full week in that bitter January weather I may be said to have lived on the pit platform. From ten in the morning till long after ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... relies mainly on fire action to disable the enemy, but he should know that personal combat is often necessary to obtain success. Therefore, he must be instructed in the use of the rifle and bayonet in hand-to-hand encounters. ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... is," said he, "my pluck is to give a redskin no chance. Shoot 'em down like hogs. It takes a good un to stalk me, Ma'am. Up on the Kanawha I've had hand-to-hand fights with 'em, and made 'em ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... curtain, all a-shiver. I wanted to see if its fiery eyeballs were really watching at the door. I wanted to see them if they were there, and yet was terrified to peep out for fear they were. Even now it seems more than a mere figure of speech. Often I dream of having a hand-to-hand struggle with it, but I always conquer it in the end—in my dreams," she added, with a gay little laugh. "And ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... galleys a streak deeper in the water, fancy them in a brisk sea with a nor'wester brewing to windward, watching off the port of Carthage for Admiral Hasdrubal and his fleet to come out. They were good hand-to-hand fighters,—none better; and so they won their victories, no doubt; but, having won them, they dropped sea-going, and made the conquered nations transport their corn and troops, while they went back to their congenial camps ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... the state of things. A squad of police was immediately dispatched to arrest the ringleaders. On reaching Centre Street they found a desperate fight going on, and immediately rushed in, to put a stop to it. The belligerents at once made common cause against them. A bloody hand-to-hand conflict followed, but the police at length forced the mob to retreat. The latter, however, did not give up the contest, but mounting to the upper stories and roofs of the tenement- houses, rained down clubs ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... whom he did not actually need for defense. Grovno could be protected by a comparatively small number of soldiers without the enemy appreciating any depreciation in their numbers. For all the firing was done behind a barricade of walls. So far the Germans were about a mile away. There would be no hand-to-hand combats until the fortress ...
— The Red Cross Girls with the Russian Army • Margaret Vandercook
... wasn't it?" sang out a deriding voice that set the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all the evenin' papers—oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated ruffin!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her to see ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Johnson, captain of the Roxbury company, was killed while on the log. But death had no terrors to that army. The center and rear divisions pressed up to support the front, and fill the gaps, and all equally shared the glory of the hour. Enough survived the terrible passage to bring the Indians to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate straggle of nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold, and with the setting of that sun their power was broken. Philip's fortunes had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were saved. ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... Kosciuszko to form up a front with a small band of his soldiers. His third horse was killed beneath him. He mounted another, when a wave of Russian cavalry swept in upon the broken remains of the Polish army, and all was over. Fighting in a hand-to-hand struggle in a marsh, Kosciuszko fell, covered with wounds, unconscious, and was taken prisoner by three young Russian ensigns. Only two thousand of the Poles who had fought at Maciejowice returned to Warsaw from that tragic ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... neither urban life, nor the factory system, nor yet corroding luxury has caused in them any physical or moral deterioration which interferes with their fighting capacity. The soldiers of these civilized peoples are just as ready for hand-to-hand encounters with cold steel as any barbarians or savages have ever been. The primitive combative instincts remain in full force and can be brought into play by all the belligerents with facility. The progress of the war should have removed any delusions on this subject ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... west of the village. The rear portion of Herkimer's troops escaped from the trap, but were pursued by the Indians, and many of them were overtaken and killed. Between the remainder and the British and Indians there was a desperate hand-to-hand conflict, interrupted by a violent thunderstorm, with no quarter shown by either side. About this time a sortie was made from Ft. Schuyler and the British withdrew, after about 200 Americans had been killed ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... crippled hand, were trifles driven outward to the farthermost rim of his consciousness. His foot was upon the first step of the long stairway which he must climb. He had whipped Brayley in a fair, square, hand-to-hand, man-to-man fight. He had done it through sheer dogged determination that he would do it. He had set himself a task, the hardest task he had ever essayed. And success had come to him ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... only to himself and incommunicable, the poor fellow sustained an all but continuous hand-to-hand struggle with insanity, more or less agonized according to the nature and force of its varying assault; in which struggle, if not always victorious, he had yet never been defeated. Often tempted to escape misery by death, he had ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... outgeneraled, were beaten off with the loss of several giant U-boats. The Monitor played a very important part in the engagement and had the satisfaction of sinking one of the enemy ships by gunfire, coming up at close range right beside the U-boat and engaging her in an old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict. ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... birds had heard the cries of their little ones and come to their rescue. They were chasing us, while we followed the birds. It was really a perilous encounter! Our strong bows finally gained the victory in a hand-to-hand struggle with the angry cranes; but after that we hardly ever hunted a crane's nest. Almost all birds make some resistance when their eggs or young are taken, but they will ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... there above them; but only occasional men fell. Naval artillery raked the hills in front of them, where no Turk could be seen. The lines went forward slowly, too slowly, for there seemed to be little opposition to the advance and no hand-to-hand fighting. They did not even appear to have reached the base of Chocolate Hill when deepening shadows made it no longer possible to ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... should begin. Riggside Tower, the old ruined keep that was the goal of their excursion, had a romantic history of its own, and had been the scene of many an exciting struggle in border warfare. The guidebook related the legends of illustrious prisoners, fierce hand-to-hand combats, doughty champions, secret passages, underground dungeons, thrilling escapes, and other episodes of the past that added greatly to the attraction of ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... there in case the mad English should make the attempt. Carleill gave the signal. Goring's musketeers sprang forward and fired into the Spaniards' faces. Then Sampson's pikemen charged through and a desperate hand-to-hand fight ensued. Finally the Spaniards broke after Carleill had killed their standard-bearer and Goring had wounded and taken their commander. The enemies ran pell-mell through the town together till the English reformed in the Plaza. Next day Drake moved in to attack the harbor fort; whereupon ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... twenty of the lieutenant's men out of existence, and totally crippled one of his little sloops for the balance of the fight. After that, and under cover of the smoke, the pirate and his men boarded the other sloop, and then followed a fine old-fashioned hand-to-hand conflict betwixt him and the lieutenant. First they fired their pistols, and then they took to it with cutlasses—right, left, up and down, cut and slash—until the lieutenant's cutlass broke short off at the ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... them like rats; but they know better than to be caught on the open field, except they are pretty sure of an advantage. They steal upon you like thieves, shod with moccasons which have no sound; they think it equally brave to shoot a man from behind a tree as to sabre him in a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... men driven back by the volleys of the Prussians holding Ligny. But the French cannon open fire with terrific effect. Roofs crumble away, and buildings burst into flame. Once more the French rush to the onset, and a furious hand-to-hand scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, smoke, and dust, the rival nations fight on, until the defenders give way and fall back on the further part of the village behind the brook; but, when reinforced, they rally as fiercely as ever, and drive the French ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... others scampered swiftly, Scampered off in each direction, Struggling, seeking to escape them, Fleeing from the Regimentals. Dunlap found himself confronted By a single Lincoln Cornstalk, (Dr. Huffman, a "Militia,") Who essayed at once to take him. Hand-to-hand in duel comic, They careered with flintlocks rusty, They embraced with bayonets blunted, Dunlap all the while retreating, Huffman all the while pursuing, Till a wide ravine arrested, Stopped their wild, ferocious progress. Not for long the pause, however; Dunlap, lithe of limb ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... let himself get angry in the first place unless the situation calls for fight. However, the fight need not be a hand-to-hand combat with one's fellow man. William James has pointed out that there is a "moral equivalent for war," and that the energy of this instinct may be used to reinforce other impulses and help overcome obstacles of all sorts. A good deal of the business man's zest, the engineer's determination, ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... surprising feats of personal prowess were displayed. Four or five of the foe fell beneath the iron hand of Fitzgerald, whose matchless strength renders credible the wildest tales of the days of chivalry. McMurdo was engaged in three successive hand-to-hand combats, his opponents having the advantage of shields to aid their swordsmanship. He killed two in succession, but the third, with an upward stroke, cut him from the belly to the shoulder, and would have killed him, had he ...
— Our Soldiers - Gallant Deeds of the British Army during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... from the window, the part of the Liberal crowd that was not engaged in hand-to-hand fights with their enemies—the Tories—made a rush to the front entrance of the Town Hall, where Sweater's carriage was waiting, and as soon as he had placed his plump rotundity inside, they took the horses out and amid frantic ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... seconds, whilst his hand lay across her eyes, the lazy, idle fop of fashionable London was fighting a hand-to-hand fight with the bold leader of a band of adventurers: and his own passionate love for his wife ranged itself with fervent intensity on the side of his weaker self. Forgotten were the horrors of the guillotine, the calls of the innocent, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... near the end of the corridor; I heard his feet strike some boards that I remembered lay on the floor there, and I was nerved for a shot and a hand-to-hand struggle, ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... of running bound, coming upon the Indian with a panther-like spring, that nearly drove him backward off his feet. There was a clashing of knives, the scintillation of steel against steel, the deadly embrace, and hand-to-hand struggle; and, as the Rifleman recoiled clear of his fallen adversary, he reached out ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... peaceful village. Not, however, as the court lady of the old French regime, but travelling in the wake of the Whirlpoolers under dubious aliases, being sometimes called Good Form and at other The Correct Thing. At present she is having a hand-to-hand encounter with New England Prejudice, a once stalwart old lady of firm will, but now considerably weakened by age and the ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... that plan maybe summed up as follows: We can easily defeat them in a hand-to-hand fight; but we do not want to slaughter them. If we can make them captives we shall have a strong lever to work with in treating with the main band. In the night time it is always a hazardous enterprise, and we cannot afford to risk the lives of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... that the enemies found in advancing, after having driven in our right, enabled our them to rally and to resist. But this resistance was of short duration. Every one had been engaged in hand-to-hand combats; every one was worn out with lassitude and despair of success, and a confusion so general and so unheard-of. The household troops owed their escape to the mistake of one of the enemy's officers, who carried an order to the red coats, thinking them his own men. ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... huskings, apple-bees, sleigh-rides, "drop-ins," gymnastics, and, among his finer snares, the putting on of skates, drawing of patterns, and holding skeins,—the last-named having superior advantages over the others, as all will testify who have enjoyed one of those hand-to-hand skirmishes. ...
— On Picket Duty and Other Tales • Louisa May Alcott
... the lowest phases, where the scenes are as dramatic as in the highest social world, but a story of human life; the nobility, the meanness, the pathos of it in hopelessly commonplace surroundings, where the fight is not a hand-to-hand struggle with bitter poverty or crime, but with dullness and monotony. The characters in 'All Sorts and Conditions of Men' are possibly more typical than real, but one hesitates to question either characters or situation. The "impossible story" has become true, ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... the parlor-car, and talked over old times and new for an hour. I told him of my marriage and my home, and I studied him. I saw that he still preserved his humorous, mock-serious style of conversation, and that his hand-to-hand battle with the world had made him good-humoredly cynical. He evinced a knowledge of more things than I should have expected; and had somehow acquired an imposing manner, in spite of his rather slangy, if expressive, vocabulary. He had the power of making statements of mere opinion, ...
— Aladdin & Co. - A Romance of Yankee Magic • Herbert Quick
... and foe being fairly intermingled, was fatal to his purpose; the venerable culverin remained silent, and the gunner met hand-to-hand a figure that sprang from the incoming host. Simultaneously the rapid firing of a new wave of besiegers from the other side of the castle threw once more a pall of smoke over the scene, and, beneath its mantle, the two men were like figures struggling ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... then?" The sharp bark of rifles, the rat-a-tat of machine guns, the boom of bursting grenades, and the yells, groans, screams and shouts of the hand-to-hand conflict came through the curtaining smoke in a mad jumble ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... lover!" he cried, grasping his visitor's hand, "I thought you were that rascally proctor, and was really preparing for a hand-to-hand ...
— The Youth of Jefferson - A Chronicle of College Scrapes at Williamsburg, in Virginia, A.D. 1764 • Anonymous
... she had fought a hand-to-hand battle with want; a lonely battle, with no one to care or to comfort, and now it was meat, and drink, and health, and sunshine, to find herself of a sudden the most precious object on earth to one faithful heart! Although the General had given ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... sinkin'," he said; "but the rest of the divvies are comin' for us like mad, wid their sweeps churnin' up the wather like the paddles of one av your London tugs. Shtop 'em from layin' us aboard, if ye can, bhoy. We want no hand-to-hand fightin' wid thim, for they'll outnumber us ten to one, I calculate." He added this last item in a ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... The raids and reprisals in the cases of Hesione and Helen suited the demands of the time; and, as has been hinted, the singular interlardings of truce and war, and the shutting up of the latter into so many days' hand-to-hand fighting,—with no strategy, no care for communications, no scientific nonsense of any kind,—were exactly ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... before the guns could be reloaded or the great ship be got around so as to deliver her other broadside, the pirate vessel was alongside of her. Bartholemy had fired none of his cannon. Such guns were useless against so huge a foe. What he was after was a hand-to-hand combat on the deck ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... rifle fire, and the beds of the wadis were enfiladed. The ascent on the far side was steeply terraced. Men had alternately to hoist and pull each other up under fire, and finally to expel the enemy from the summits in hand-to-hand fighting. Under these conditions no rapid advance could be ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... blazed threats, and in an instant I found myself in the center of a struggling, shouting, swearing mass of savage men, fighting with naught but the instinct of blind rage. Shots were fired, but for the most part it was a hand-to-hand struggle. The clearest picture that comes to me out of the confused tangle is that of Wainwright handling his pistol like a bowie knife, and trying to perform a surgical operation extensive enough to let a joke ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... Joseph to Seneca, Kansas, eighty miles, which he covered at an average of twelve and one half miles an hour, including all stops. When the war started, Frey enlisted in the Union army under General Blunt. His short but worthy career was cut short in 1863 when he fell in a hand-to-hand fight with rebel bushwhackers in Arkansas. In this, his last fight, Frey is said to have killed five of his assailants before being ...
— The Story of the Pony Express • Glenn D. Bradley
... necessary with some of the loads, or with such piles of loose stones as could be collected in time. The part allotted to the Wangoni was that of a reserve force, in the event of the enemy carrying any given point, and thus necessitating hand-to-hand conflict. The slaves, firmly secured, were placed in the ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... the bully placed himself before me and spat in my face. In a moment my calmness and self-control were gone, and in a minute more we were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight. The devil that my hatred for my brother had aroused now showed itself, and I fought with all the fury of a demon. My opponent was as big as I, and as strong, or would have been had he not abused his strength by evil habits; and in addition ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... swiftness of cavalry, attacked them before they could unite, and swooping down with tremendous velocity, seized the camp and separated the British troops from their reserves of ammunition. In face of this warrior multitude our troops were defenceless. A few moments of wild despairing energy, a hand-to-hand struggle for life between the white man and the bloodthirsty savage, groans of wounded and yells of victory, and all was over. Of the six companies of the 24th, consisting of more than half the infantry engaged, ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... that if hand-to-hand fighting were necessary he would depend more upon a crowbar than a rifle to sweep the ledge clear. She might ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... sides were killed and wounded, and as many more Frenchmen were captured; and the town, when taken, gave the winners the control of the river Sambre for many miles east and west. Here, also, was a German charge with bayonets up a steep and well-defended height; and after that a hand-to-hand melee with the French defenders on the poll ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... sinewy and strong. He had been engaged in many a desperate hand-to-hand encounter, though never in anything resembling this. Finding the grip on his hair and ankle could not be shaken off, he snatched out his keen-pointed knife with the intention of striking one of his vicious back-handed blows, which had proved fatal ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... himself, he regarded them as only a part of a trap in which he was to be caught, and his whole purpose was to get out of the dilemma as quickly as possible. However hopeful he might be in a single hand-to-hand encounter with one of the men, he was not vain enough to think that he could master both. In their struggling they had approached quite close to the cliff, and Lone Wolf made a determined attempt ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... and infirm, there lived a great king with a beautiful daughter. See, from the depths of the forest there cometh a giant misshapen, Higher in stature than man, a monster ferocious and shaggy, Boldly demanding a hand-to-hand combat, ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... bayonet. He relies mainly on fire action to disable the enemy, but he should know that it is often necessary for him to cross bayonets with the enemy. Therefore he must be instructed in the use of the rifle and the bayonet in hand-to-hand encounters. The present European War is demonstrating the importance of this instruction. If you did not receive instruction in bayonet fighting at a federal training camp, it was not because it is unimportant, but because there was no available ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... village lad in the charge of some Germans who were holding their bayonets to his breast. His face was colorless, with the whiteness of a wax candle. His shirt, blackened with soot, was so badly torn that it told of a hand-to-hand struggle. On one temple was a gash, bleeding badly. A short distance away was a woman with dishevelled hair, holding a baby, and surrounded by four children all covered with black grime as though coming from ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... side of the track, and tramped about so as to make a great many footmarks. Then, between that point and the thicket where her steed was concealed, she walked to and fro several times, cutting and breaking the branches as she went, so as to make a wide trail, and suggest the idea of a hand-to-hand conflict having taken place there. She was enabled to make these arrangements all the more easily that the moon was by that time shining brightly, and revealing objects almost as clearly as ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... could be smashed in an instant—matches would light their way. It would be all over in much less time than it takes to tell it, and it might well happen but for two things—the Apache's dread of the dark and his fear of a possible hand-to-hand fight. ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... saw that their only chance of safety was to cut their way through, and in one huge column they charged desperately upon the Macedonian regiments. There was here a close hand-to-hand fight, which lasted some time, and sixty of the royal horse-guards fell, and three generals, who fought close to Alexander's side, were wounded. At length the Macedonian discipline and valor again prevailed, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... lips. Just then a cannon-ball rushed before him, like a small whirlwind, and carried away his drum, in a thousand fragments. He saw the same ball pass harmlessly between the legs of the white horse of Murat, who was then engaged in a hand-to-hand combat with a tall Austrian dragoon. Relieved from duty, the boy stood watching the fiery general, forgetful of danger, scarcely hearing the horrible singing of the bullets through the air. He saw the tall dragoon go ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood |
