"Hairbreadth" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... graze his arm, and heard a heavy thud at his side. It was a ripe Durian which had fallen from an immense height and missed him by a hairbreadth. ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... dark. Pairs and trios might be seen chasing each other, and from time to time they showed off in various feats of flight. A favorite sport was to dart down suddenly from a great height toward some perching crow, and just before touching it to turn at a hairbreadth and rebound in the air so fast that the wings of the swooper whirred with a sound like distant thunder. Sometimes one crow would lower his head, raise every feather, and coming close to another would gurgle out a long note like. ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... recollection of the incidents that led me hither, and of the stunning blow which I had received, occurred to me. I saw into what error appearances had misled these men, and shuddered to reflect by what hairbreadth means I had ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... with a silent exclamation of relief that the red angry mark was quite outside the eye-socket, harmless on the bone at one side. Much ado about nothing as usual with the children. Why did she get so frightened each time? Another one of Mark's hairbreadth escapes. ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... each generation has given to the rising generation the version thought proper for the ears of children. In Boyle's edition this method resulted in realism pushed to the extreme; but it is not to be denied that the yellowed pages contain the wondrous adventures and hairbreadth escapes so dear to the small boy of all time. The thrilling incidents were further enlivened, moreover, by cuts called by the printer "curious" in the sense of very fine: and curious they are to-day because of the crudeness ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... his last real hairbreadth escape—for that night, at any rate, though other thrills were in store. The chauffeur was greatly surprised when bidden to go on from St. Albans to London, and take the High Barnet road to the City; but Fenley produced a five-pound note at the right moment, and the man reflected that his ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... from me," said Mr. Wyndham, "exciting tales of adventure, and hairbreadth escapes by sea and land. I have never read a dime novel in my life, and therefore couldn't undertake to rival them in highway robbery, scalping Indians, and bowie-knives and revolvers. My heroes were never left on a desert ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... chasing a hen certainly exhibited an activity surprising in one of her years. By a hairbreadth she missed perfection. Uncle Jap had been known to hint, nothing more, that he would have liked a dozen or so of babies. The hint took concrete form in: "I think a heap o' young things, colts, kittens, puppies—an' the ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... it?—to escape without having learned anything of the "Terror's" secrets would not have contented me at all. Although I could not thus far flatter myself upon the success of my campaign, and though I had come within a hairbreadth of losing my life and though the future promised far more of evil than of good, yet after all, a step forward had been attained. To be sure, if I was never to be able to re-enter into communication with the world, if, like this Master of the World who had voluntarily ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... addressing so grave a set of men as their Honors the Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States." In attending the circuit courts of Mississippi he had experiences of the roughest sort and many a hairbreadth escape. He wrote: ...
— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss
... them—one of those innumerable hairbreadth escapes that make the streets of New York as exciting as a battle—and as dangerous. For a few minutes Ursula's mind was deflected. But a fatality seemed to pursue the subject of the pale obscurity whose very name he was uncertain ...
— The Grain Of Dust - A Novel • David Graham Phillips
... something of the plot originated during the Revolution by Gov. Tryon to capture or murder Washington. They communicate their knowledge to Gen. Putnam and are commissioned by him to play the role of detectives in the matter. They do so, and meet with many adventures and hairbreadth escapes. The boys are, of course, mythical, but they serve to enable the author to put into very attractive shape much valuable knowledge concerning one phase of ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... beatific vision Lorraine floated into others more entrancing. All the hairbreadth escapes of the heroine of the movie serial were hers, adapted by her native logic to fit within the bounds of possibility,—though I must admit they bulged here and there and threatened to overlap and to ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... stories of the safe return of 'missing' men which he had collected for her that morning, including the narrative of an escaped prisoner, who, although badly wounded, had managed to find his way back, at night, from the neighbourhood of Brussels, through various hairbreadth adventures and disguises, and after many weeks to the British lines. He brought the tale to her, as an omen of hope, together with his other gleanings; and under the influence of his cheerful voice and manner, Nelly's aspect changed; ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... busy for a few days; but whatever of thankfulness we were capable of feeling was aroused by this hairbreadth escape from death through the wicked neglect of the most elementary duty of any ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... the Mongul in the eye. The agony which the wounded man felt was so great that the two others stopped to assist him, and in the mean time Timur got out of the way. In due time, and after meeting with some other hairbreadth escapes, he reached the camp of the sultan, who received him very joyfully, loaded him with praises for the indomitable spirit which he had evinced, and immediately made him governor of ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... was hounded by revengeful Indians, who had an uncanny way of ferreting out his whereabouts no matter where he went. Often he sighted them while working in the fields and would be forced to flee to some other place. This continued with many hairbreadth escapes, until he was forced to ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... is perhaps the severest test to which any buoyant spirit can be put. And from the very beginning of his career as a novelist Scott had this burden upon his shoulders. He bore the chains very lightly at first with a hundred hairbreadth 'scapes which made the struggle—as even that struggle can be made while the sufferer is strong and young—almost exhilarating, with a glee in the relief and the power to surmount every difficulty, and a faith strengthened by numberless examples of the certainty—however dark things might seem ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... headquarters — as "the most delicious period of his life in many respects." Writing of it later he said: "Our life was as full of romance as heart could desire. We had a flute and a guitar, good horses, a beautiful country, splendid residences inhabited by friends who loved us, and plenty of hairbreadth 'scapes from the roving bands of Federals who were continually visiting that Debatable Land. . . . Cliff and I never cease to talk of the beautiful women, the serenades, the moonlight dashes on the ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... or horse flesh; the rifles standing in the corners; the lamp of bear's grease; in fine, all the similitude of camp life. Then the wild stories of bear fightings, beaver intelligence, Indian deviltry, and hairbreadth escapes, become intensely real. The auditor hangs upon each word which falls from the lips of the supposed sage orator with eager earnestness, ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... two hunters returned empty. Sweeny, in spite of his hunger and fatigue, boiled over with stories of the hairbreadth escapes of the "antyloops" that he had fired at. Thurstane also had seen game, but not near ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... were a number of brave men who had survived the siege of Rome, and the slaughter by General Oudinot's troops. In three days after determining on action, everything was prepared for one of the most daring and hairbreadth expeditions of modern times. Supplies of arms and stores were procured and held ready at different points of the coast near Genoa; several steamers were "arranged for" (it was stated, at the time they were seized); and on the night of Saturday, May 5th, some two ...
— Fair Italy, the Riviera and Monte Carlo • W. Cope Devereux
... courage, probity, and skill, but in each case the justification is manifest, for he constantly refers to the tortuous and treacherous machinations of his virulent enemies. The "Autobiography" is from beginning to end a thrilling and wonderful romance of real life, for the hairbreadth escapes of this extraordinary man are among the most singular recitals in the whole world of adventure. The whole story is unique, as was the noble individuality of ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol X • Various
... adventurous side of their calling, and then the criticism becomes a mere "notice," as it were, the relation of a journey where nothing but the distances and the geology of a new country should be set down; the glimpses of strange beasts, the dangers of flood and field, the hairbreadth escapes, and the sufferings (oh, the sufferings, too! I have no doubt of the sufferings) of the traveller being carefully kept out; no shady spot, no fruitful plant being ever mentioned either; so that the whole performance ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... these pages more than once—he is a lover of romance with an unfaltering respect for reality. We all meet with strange experiences once in our lives, with "things you could put in a story," as the phrase is; but we none of us have hairbreadth escapes every morning before breakfast. The romantic is as natural as anything else; it is the excess of the romantic which is in bad taste. It is the piling up of the agony which is disgusting. It is the accumulation upon one impossible hero of many exceptional ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... campaigning I persisted in repeating that "they would never get my number," until it almost became second nature with me, and the hairbreadth escapes I have had almost convinced me "there is something in it." Be that as it may, hundreds of men all around have "gone West" while I have been permitted to go through three years of ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... story is told of his feats of arms and hairbreadth escapes while he wandered about without a country. Sir Walter Scott, in his poem, "The Lord of the Isles," records one of these legends. It is reported that, on one occasion, with his brother Edward and sister Isabel in a boat, he was driven by stress ...
— Ten Great Events in History • James Johonnot
... to assist him. His implements, both animate and inanimate, had to be formed by himself. Peasants taken from the plough were educated by him into efficient mechanics and engineers. The delicate and complex machinery needed in operations of such hairbreadth nicety as his enterprise involved, the steam-engine which was to set it in motion, at times the very crucibles in which his specula were cast, ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke
... history!" Why, or I greatly err, one chapter of his life, had it been written, would have unfolded more of the wild and wonderful than fifty volumes of what are in general called adventures and hairbreadth escapes by land and sea. A soldier! what a tale could that man have told of marches and retreats, of battles lost and won, towns sacked, convents plundered; perhaps he had seen the flames of Moscow ascending to the clouds, and had "tried ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... &c 149; defenselessness &c adj., exposure &c (liability) 177; vulnerability; vulnerable point, heel of Achilles^; forlorn hope &c (hopelessness) 859. [Dangerous course] leap in the dark &c (rashness) 863; road to ruin, faciles descensus Averni [Lat.] [Vergil], hairbreadth escape. cause for alarm; source of danger &c 667. rock ahead [Approach of danger], breakers ahead; storm brewing; clouds in the horizon, clouds gathering; warning &c 668; alarm &c 669. [Sense of danger] apprehension &c 860. V. be in danger &c adj.; be ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... area of Five-Mile Point, after his recapture, Deerslayer was bound to a tree, and became a target for the hairbreadth marksmanship of Huron tomahawks, preliminary ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... brought it nearer to the condition of Red Indian fighting, which was our favourite reading and our example of heroism. Again and again we studied the adventures of Bill Biddon, the Indian spy, not only on account of his hairbreadth escapes when he eluded the Indians after a miraculous fashion and detected the presence of the red varmint by the turning of a leaf on the ground, but also in order to find out new methods of deceit by which ...
— Young Barbarians • Ian Maclaren
... had so much more time than usual on his hands, before he was considered quite well enough to go into the school-room and employ himself with the others. He was allowed, however, to sit up and to read as many story-books as he liked. They were full of stirring adventure and hairbreadth escape. It was quite a common everyday thing in them for a boy to save a person's life and risk his own. Why could not something of the ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... presently a new serial story began, and the hairbreadth escapes of that immortal Monkey which it recorded were breathlessly followed by Wee Willie Winkie's army of bairns all over the world; and when it was concluded, so numerous were the entreaties for a sequel, that compulsion had to be resorted to in order to secure the revelation ...
— The Monkey That Would Not Kill • Henry Drummond
... narrow escape. 'Tis the luck of the Le Moynes. Perhaps you know the motto of our house?—'By hairbreadth escapes we ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... bailed up on the Cow Flat road by a gang of bushrangers, who demanded his money or his life and fired upon him. He described his hairbreadth escape with primitive eloquence, and was certain the gang meant to murder him. He was too agitated at the time to notice whether the bushrangers were men or boys. It was he who overtook the three young men, but they could not be induced to turn back till ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... ring quite true, and in any case it is too much on the lines of 'Sunday reading' to please the small boy, who must, however, have found a thousand things in that volume that were to his taste—some of the wildest adventures, hairbreadth escapes, extraordinary meetings again and again with unique people—with Benedict Mol, for example, who was always seeking for treasure. Gypsies, bull-fighters, quaint and queer characters of every kind, come before us in ...
— George Borrow and His Circle - Wherein May Be Found Many Hitherto Unpublished Letters Of - Borrow And His Friends • Clement King Shorter
... safety, and found his Loo Loo well and cheerful. Words are inadequate to describe the emotions excited by reunion, after such dreadful perils and hairbreadth escapes. Their marriage was solemnized as soon as possible; but the wife being an article of property, according to American law, they did not venture to return to the States. Alfred obtained some writing ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... the other side, with all brakes set and forty hairbreadth margins recorded for the outer wheels; and, an hour from the col, we are safely at the hamlet of Grip, where the horses and we are doomed to a two hours' halt and a lunch. The first inn, irrationally placed ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... it appeared as though the boat must be overrun by the sea and swamped; but the coxswain in charge of her was an old man-o'-war's-man, and each time he avoided disaster by a hairbreadth, until, at the expiration of a breathless five minutes, Frobisher saw her living cargo leap safely out on the beach, and heaved a sigh of relief. By this time, too, the second and third boats had been got into the water without mishap, and were also on their way shoreward, leaving about a ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... with much greater effect and insistence, by this charming woman of the world. Her mother, still living, had passed her time in the disturbed and exciting atmosphere of plots and counterplots; and she herself could tell him story after story of heartrending tragedies and of hairbreadth escapes, which had happened to her own relations and friends. From her he acquired those aristocratic longings which always characterised him, and through her influence he made acquaintance with several people of high position and importance, and thus was ...
— Honore de Balzac, His Life and Writings • Mary F. Sandars
... a realist, however, as regards place and character, his conception of life was none the less romantic. Life to him was a story of hairbreadth escapes—of a quest beset with a thousand perils. Not only was there that great dragon the Devil lying in wait for the traveller, but there was Doubting Castle to pass, and Giant Despair, and the lions. We have in The ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... still skipping defiantly over the high seas between Iloilo and Capiz, though after all her hairbreadth escapes she came near ending herself in a typical way. She started out one night from Capiz for Iloilo, a heavenly calm night, bright moonlight, and a sea smooth as a floor. Two or three miles from the ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... dashed—and occasionally became prosaic enough to walk on for half a mile or so in a country lane, but generally we preferred trespassing through a corn-field, and losing our way in searching for a short cut across a plantation; and at last, after many hairbreadth 'scapes—after being terrified by the bellowing of a bull, which turned out to be a sentimental cow giving vent to her agitated feelings in what somebody calls a "gentle voice and low"—after nearly losing ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... guide. He was a thin, wiry man, named Givens. In age, Calhoun put him down at about forty. The few days during which Calhoun was with Givens gave him a very high opinion of the guide's bravery and sagacity. Givens related many of his hairbreadth escapes during their journey, and seemed to treat them as great jokes. During the entire journey through Tennessee and Kentucky, Givens kept to unfrequented roads, and in the darkest night rode as one ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... many times is known to have followed a man in the woods merely to study the queer creature, but without intent to do him harm. Nevertheless the timid traveller who discovers he is "pursued by a Cougar" may manage to persuade himself that he has had a hairbreadth escape. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... not scratched Bandmaster. He would not believe Alan Chesney had been shot, and this firm conviction cheered Eve Berkeley wonderfully. Then came the news that Captain Chesney had returned to headquarters after many hairbreadth escapes and that he was ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... Russell's hairbreadth escapes would have terrified his mother had she been there to see, but the boys were wise in their generation and had quietly worked their way round to the opposite bank before beginning their experiments. It took a considerable time to call them back and rally forces in time to catch ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... personages. The researches of modern historians have shown, however, that he was a living, breathing man—and a valiant champion. The hero of the tale fought under both Wallace and Bruce, and while the strictest historical accuracy has been maintained with respect to public events, the work is full of "hairbreadth 'scapes" ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... the centre of indifference and life had little interest for him. Yet there never was a man more ready for action, or more quick to seize upon and solve the nodus of any new emergency. The Prussian anecdote-books are full of his exploits and hairbreadth escapes, a number of which are represented around the base of the statue. He combined the intelligence of the skilful general with the physical dexterity ...
— Cambridge Sketches • Frank Preston Stearns
... After his hairbreadth escape from Varden, Rudge hid himself in a narrow street. When the next dawn came, as he searched for some dark den in which he might lie sheltered till another night, he saw Simon Tappertit issuing with his noisy apprentice crew from the cellar in which they held their meetings. He entered ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... his seat beside Alphonse, while I and the luggage found place behind them. We dashed out of the gate at a speed and risk which gave obvious satisfaction to our driver, and our progress up the narrow High Street was a series of hairbreadth escapes. ...
— Dross • Henry Seton Merriman
... course of a year, promoted to a lieutenancy in the Prince of Wales' Regiment. His first commission was given him as the immediate reward of the courage and skill he displayed as the bearer of special despatches from Charleston, 196 miles into the interior, in the course of which he experienced several hairbreadth escapes. He was promoted to his lieutenancy for the manner in which he acquitted himself as the bearer of special despatches by sea to the north, having eluded the enemy in successive attacks and pursuits. He was in six battles, besides ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 2 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Edgerton Ryerson
... six years, one would have supposed. But, not content with this, you have experienced for eighteen months the manifold miseries of a Russian prison; and have topped off with two years of wandering in Mexico—with more thrilling adventures and hairbreadth escapes than you can count, I'll warrant—and still you ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... were in the country roads the unsteadiness of our Jehu did not so much matter, for he was sober enough to keep the horse upon the road, though hardly fit to steer him past other vehicles. However, it was marvellous how we did get on. What hairbreadth escapes we had! It was useless attempting to remonstrate with the fellow. He was in that quarrelsome and mischievous humour which would brook no protest. Once, very soon after starting, in passing a country ...
— My Friend Smith - A Story of School and City Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... As the appetites of those who had passed the day in the exciting toil were keen and the viands tempting, the first half-hour passed quickly, as all such half-hours are wont to pass, in garrulous recitals of personal exploits, and of the hairbreadth escapes of deer, which, had fortune not been fickle, should have now been present as trophies of the skill of the hand by which they fell. It was only after personal vanity was sufficiently appeased, and when the hunger even of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... many hairbreadth escapes, a sheltered harbour was reached on the west side of the channel in Hall's Basin, north of Lady Franklin's Sound, in latitude 81 degrees 44 minutes north. Here the Discovery was secured for the winter, while the Alert, as it had been arranged, pushed onwards, for the purpose ...
— Our Sailors - Gallant Deeds of the British Navy during Victoria's Reign • W.H.G. Kingston
... inspiring, purifying uplift of the flowers, drawing us up the hillside to the top. We find the voice—the Man—gently but with unflinching unbending determination that never yields a hairbreadth, insisting on our coming clear up to the topmost level. That's a wondrous order of words, and coupling of ...
— Quiet Talks on John's Gospel • S. D. Gordon
... I toss my head about much, and when I am riding I can't give my mind to them. It would be doing me knight service if you keep your eyes fixed upon them, and remember them every minute of the day, and tell me directly I drop one. They have had such hairbreadth escapes, haven't they, Unity?' she continued to the parlour-maid who ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... recuperate themselves; for they were nearly exhausted by their efforts to escape from the bloody scalping-knives of the Scarred-Arms. They kindled a fire, around which the six warriors huddled, telling each other, as is the savage wont, of their numerous hairbreadth escapes and single combats with the common enemy; also trying to devise some means of eluding the Scarred-Arms, who they knew to be still ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... knowledge of French and no training, had rivaled in technique the foremost craftsmen of the Latin races. In the six years since I met him, a stranded reporter, he stood in the firing line during two wars, knew hairbreadth 'scapes on land and sea, and established himself as the first writer of his time in the picturing of episodic, fragmentary life. His friends have charged him with fickleness, but he was a man who was in the preoccupation of haste. He went from country to country, from man to man, absorbing ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... pseudo-Messiah Shabbatai Zebi, "that the sinfulness of the world can be overcome only by a super-abundance of sin." This paved the way for the last of the long list of Messiahs, Jacob (Yankev Leibovich) Frank of Podolia. His experiences, adventures, and hairbreadth escapes, his entire career, beginning with his return from his travels in Turkey, through his conversion to Catholicism (1759), to the day of his death as "Baron von Offenbach," would furnish material for a stirring drama. As if to counteract ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... narrative of mere adventures as contrasted to the observation and dissection of character and manners we find in the true "novel." Rather be it said that it is one in which the hidden soul is made patent under the touchstone of blood-stirring incidents, of hairbreadth risks, of recklessness or fierceness. There are soaring passions, secrets of the innermost heart, that can only be set free in desperate situations—and those situations are not found in the tenor in every-day, well-ordered life: they belong ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... the labour of construction, as though from an enforced and unwelcome task, but rejoicing over its work and unwilling to quit it until it has expressed this rejoicing in every fittest touch of form and colour and exquisite proportion that the material will admit of, and this without departing by a hairbreadth from the original ...
— The Hidden Power - And Other Papers upon Mental Science • Thomas Troward
... youthful blunder. It was not really a tale. I introduced, in order to provide interest, all sorts of accessories— aunts, parsons, gamekeepers, nurses, a fire and some hairbreadth escapes, but they were none of them essential and they were all manufactured. The only parts not worthless were ...
— More Pages from a Journal • Mark Rutherford
... of the newly- discovered fire-arms. And in all these things his versatile head and ready hand were personally employed, not by deputy; while coupled with so much artistic taste was a violent passion for hunting, which carried him through many hairbreadth 'scapes. "It was plain," he used to say, "that God Almighty ruled the world, or how could things go on with a rogue like Alexander VI. at the head of the Church, and a mere huntsman like himself at the head of the Empire." ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Maitland, "I was not to be caught napping. My previous adventures and hairbreadth escapes had rendered me unusually wary, and perceiving a number of people, among whom were two or three sheriff's officers, approaching my house, I at once interpreted their mission, and climbing through a trap-door leading on to the roof of the building, nimbly made ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... available was proof against it. Its effect was very destructive and its toll of life heavy. A sentry usually watched for and gave warning of the approach of one of these missiles, and the scene which followed his stentorian "Look out!" was somewhat animated. Hairbreadth escapes from destruction were numerous. Two of these ...
— The 28th: A Record of War Service in the Australian Imperial Force, 1915-19, Vol. I • Herbert Brayley Collett
... full of heroic interest and adventure. Her defence of Bromeham Castle against the intrusion of her uncle of Cumberland,—her riding cross-legged to meet the judges of assize, when she acted in person at Appleby as High Sheriff by inheritance of the county of Westmoreland,—her hairbreadth escapes and dangers during the great rebellion, are characteristics of the woman, so striking in themselves, that they would require little adventitious ornament from the writer, who should take them as incidents for poem or romance. Her ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 354, Saturday, January 31, 1829. • Various
... word on the subject, having whispered it to this friend and that, leaving no part uncolored, the town of Dornbirn grew scandalized at a mad peasant's audacity. The authorities took it in hand, and a solemn gendarme visited Hans Jakob with strict orders from government to desist from such perilous, hairbreadth inventions for the future. Poor Hans! he now regarded himself not only as the laughing-stock of the whole country, but as a ruined man. He had spent all his savings on his first venture; but neither official ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 30. September, 1873 • Various
... the long still nights, and some drinking. In lieu of the excitement of the gaming table, he took his fun in breaking and riding wild horses, and hairbreadth escapes were the order of his daily exercise. It was gambling, perhaps, but it developed the muscles of ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... which it was applied, and landed in the midst of the ruins caused by the dreadful explosion of gun-powder that had taken place the previous year: it had occasioned a fearful destruction of property and loss of life, and many hairbreadth escapes were recounted to us. We were told, indeed, that two children, after being buried for five days, were dug out alive; two officers were blown out of the window of an hotel, one of whom was uninjured, the other was only wounded by a splinter, whilst the Kitmutgar, who was drawing a cork close ...
— A Journey to Katmandu • Laurence Oliphant
... with a forced smile, "my story is not very interesting! No hairbreadth escapes, no thrilling adventures, no love intrigues—nothing but mental misery, for which few people have any sympathy. A child with a cut finger gets more universal commiseration than a man with a ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... it makes her feel so and so, she says. But do you think that brings you a hairbreadth nearer? Hardly. Look at her, use your eyes as much as you please—but as soon as she marks what you are doing, she will say to herself—'Ho, here's this man looking at me with his eyes, and thinks to win me that way.' And with a single ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... to have remained quietly on shore, after so many hairbreadth escapes and singular adventures; but I found France so changed, that I was disgusted with my own country. Every thing was upside down—the nobles, the wealthy, the talented, either were murdered, or living in abject poverty ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... figuring out just what the relation was. The impression her manner gave to one who was merely a casual observer was that she deliberated and thought before speaking in order that her statements might not deviate by a hairbreadth ...
— Elizabeth Hobart at Exeter Hall • Jean K. Baird
... the Indian tribes friendly to the peltrie trade. As these hardy, bronzed men sat around the hearth, while the juicy haunch of venison roasted on the spit by the blazing logs, relating blood-curdling tales and hairbreadth escapes, they were a necessary phase of times long passed away, but which will always have a picturesqueness ...
— Famous Firesides of French Canada • Mary Wilson Alloway
... on horseback, he made his way toward the distant plains where the Texans were waging their life and death struggle against the Mexicans. More than one hairbreadth escape did the old hunter have from Indians, desperadoes and wild beasts, but he finally got to the neighborhood of San Antonio, and fell in with another adventurer, a bee-hunter, also on his way to join the Texans. They soon learned that ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... to give, in a page or two, any adequate idea of the hairbreadth escapes and perilous risks of Carbajal, not only from the enemy, but from his own men, whose strength he overtasked in the chase. They rival those of the renowned Scanderbeg, or our own Kentucky hero, Colonel Boone. They were, indeed, ...
— The History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William H. Prescott
... ribbed and mossy surface, under the friendly stars. The outcast and his strange brethren had played fair: this was the long roof, and close ahead rose the wall of some higher building, an upright blackness from which escaped two bits of light,—a right angle of hairbreadth lines, and below this a brighter patch, small and ragged. Here, louder, but confused with a gentle scuffing of feet, sounded the voices of ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... upon one's fate. I take it for granted one fancies oneself the hero. Then all one's fancy is paid in ready money, or at least one can draw upon it at the end of the third volume. One leaps to remote wealth and honour by hairbreadth chances; and one's uncle in India always dies opportunely. To be sure the thought occurs, that if this novel life could be turned into real life, one might be the uncle in India and not the hero of the tale. But that is a ...
— Friends in Council (First Series) • Sir Arthur Helps
... had felt the war. One son had just been wounded, they knew not how severely, in France. If some unknown English, soldier on the Yser had raised his rifle just a hairbreadth higher the other son would be sleeping in the blood-soaked soil of Flanders instead of doing garrison duty in Hanover while recovering from a bullet which had passed through his head just ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin
... were coming in of hairbreadth escapes, of stray shots, apparently from the sky, picking off unfortunate wayfarers, and of whole parties of officers on their way back from the races in their cars being captured and held up by the Volunteers—and every story went one further than the one before ...
— Six days of the Irish Republic - A Narrative and Critical Account of the Latest Phase of Irish Politics • Louis Redmond-Howard
... cold night in the Christmas vacation fourteen years later.[51] Alec Mackay, now a young engineering student, was lost to all sense of time as he read of the hairbreadth escapes and adventures told by the African explorer, Stanley, in his book, ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... when they heard Cyrus Garst tell of his camping excursions, of his jolly times, long tramps, and hairbreadth escapes, their hearts swelled with a tremendous longing to accompany him on the trip into northern Maine which he was then projecting for ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... not one of those romantic heroes who can go through three volumes of hairbreadth escapes without the faintest hint of that blessed institution, dinner; therefore, like "Lady Leatherbridge," he "partook copiously of everything," while the two women beamed over each mouthful with an interest that enhanced ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the last out of it, the terror of the head forester and his men, the object of old Greifenstein's inveterate hatred, the admiration of the village maidens for twenty miles around, the central figure in a hundred adventures and hairbreadth escapes of all kinds, and yet, as though he were miraculously preserved from harm, he had always managed to keep out of trouble, and though many a time suspected of making free with the game, yet never convicted, nor even brought to a trial. It had been impossible to ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... risk was run in eluding the guards, and that in the morning we should be compelled to cheat the blood-hounds. The first we managed to do very well, not without many hairbreadth escapes, however; but we did succeed in getting through both lines of guards, and found ourselves in the densest pine forest I ever saw. We traveled, as nearly as we could judge, due north all night until daylight. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... a dilemma. I didn't want to lose that club, for it had done good service in past autumns, and had gone through a great many hairbreadth escapes. ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... down desperadoes, they called him chief ungrudgingly. He was a daredevil, who had taken his life in his hands a hundred times. Yet always he came through smiling, and brought back with him the man he went after. The whisper ran that he bore a charmed life, so many had been his hairbreadth escapes. ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... left our ruined quarters that evening, and I reposed more peacefully in my bomb-proof than I had done for many nights past. The air at the convent had accomplished its healing work. We were both practically recovered, and we had had a hairbreadth escape; but I was firmly convinced that an underground chamber is preferable to a two-storied mansion when a 6-inch 100-pound shell gun, at a distance of two miles, is bombarding the town you happen to ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... alone, but he had never known fear. He was the most determined adventurer who had ever passed the Rocky Mountains, and, if but half of what is said of him is true, his dangerous travels and his hairbreadth escapes would fill many volumes more interesting and romantic than the best pages of the American novelist. Poor man after having during so many years escaped from the arrows and bullets of the Indians, he was fated to fall under the tomahawk, and his ...
— Travels and Adventures of Monsieur Violet • Captain Marryat
... said Ken, but though he spoke quietly enough, he, too, felt a thrill. For five long hours they had been pushing east, or rather south-eastwards. They had crossed the main road leading to Great Maidos, they had had hairbreadth escapes sufficient to last most folk for a lifetime, and now at a little after one in the morning, they had crossed the whole peninsula, and were facing the famous Narrows, with their double cordon of forts on both sides of the Straits, ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... accounts of the marvellous preservation of books after they have become rare—the snatching of them as brands from the burning; their hairbreadth 'scapes i' the imminent deadly breach. It would be interesting, also, to have some account of the progress of destruction among books. A work dedicated apparently to this object, which I have been unable ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... five minutes for the little geologist he had, in his preoccupation, overlooked. This poor little creature having dodged two boulders by a hairbreadth, got out by the westward corner and fled athwart the hill, with flapping rucksack and twinkling knicker-bockered legs, leaving a trail of Cretaceous echinoderms behind him; while young Caddies, satisfied with the destruction he had achieved, came striding out to fulfil ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... dangers even than he had met with on his former visit were awaiting him. Many more perils and hairbreadth escapes had yet to be surmounted before he could say that his feet—his tired feet—had stood 'within thy gates, O Jerusalem.' Throughout these later hardships his faith must have been strengthened by the memory of his encounter with the robbers, and the ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... engagement as hunter for the company, which covered a period of eighteen months, I killed 4,280 buffaloes and had many exciting adventures with the Indians, including a number of hairbreadth escapes, some of which are well ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... worst of fates in the Idylls themselves, and much more does he escape it in the originals. In the first place, though he invariably (or always till the Graal Quest) "wins through," he constantly does not do so without intermediate hairbreadth escapes, and even not a few adventures which are at first not escapes at all. And just as his perpetual bafflement in the Quest salts and seasons his triumphs in the saddle, so does the ruling passion of his sin save, from anything ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 1 - From the Beginning to 1800 • George Saintsbury
... of thrilling adventure, hairbreadth escapes, and deeds securing worldly applause, but quiet, unobtrusive and useful. Her constitution was naturally weak—her brain too active for her body, and as a consequence much mental and physical suffering was her portion. To her studies—French, ...
— Canadian Wild Flowers • Helen M. Johnson
... simply availed herself of its presence to gain a few miles by turning to windward in the smooth water under its lee. The discovery of the presence of the English ship did not appear to have caused any uneasiness to her commander, for he did not deviate a hairbreadth from his course, but stood on, maintaining his luff, the only indication that he had observed the Adventure at all being the display of the yellow flag of Spain, which he had hoisted to the head of his ensign staff within five minutes of the time when ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... animals to be devoured, as well those introduced by man as those furnished by the hand of nature, renders the life of many of the inhabitants of these regions little else than a constant struggle with wild animals. Many hairbreadth escapes and heroic adventures are recounted by the natives, which would pass for fabulous if not stated on such unquestionable authority as that of M. Humboldt, and supported by the concurring testimony of other travellers. The number of alligators, in particular, on the Orinoco, the Rio ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... its strength, who had desired to be in it some night when the wind blew with unusual fury. There was the story also of the man and two boys, in a ship laden with tin, blown out of Helford Haven, and of their hairbreadth escape by counsel of one of the boys who ran the ship through rocks into a narrow creek that he knew in the Isle of Wight. The form of the coast has been changed so much since 1703 by the beat of many storms, that it may be now impossible ...
— From London to Land's End - and Two Letters from the "Journey through England by a Gentleman" • Daniel Defoe
... of the heir-apparent to the throne, and the applause of the whole nation. I need not speak of his musical melodies, which drove the fatal demon of melancholy from the royal palace; of his jealous expulsion by the King, his hairbreadth escapes, his trials and difficulties as a wanderer and exile, as a fugitive retreating to solitudes and caves of the earth, parched with heat and thirst, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, surrounded with increasing ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume II • John Lord
... of bees is like an active and hazardous campaign of an army; the ranks are being continually depleted, and continually recruited. What adventures they have by flood and field, and what hairbreadth escapes! A strong swarm during the honey season loses, on an average, about four or five thousand a month, or one hundred and fifty a day. They are overwhelmed by wind and rain, caught by spiders, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... and morose, can live for years in a cell or a desert or a convent-close without perishing of ennui or being devoured by restlessness, and can mingle with life, where all its currents meet, without losing their heads or swerving a hairbreadth from the straight line of a most uncommon and most impressive kind ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... the lake. A canoe can be paddled only in almost smooth water, and we were frequently stormbound on some desolate island or point of land for two or three days at a time. When, after many adventures, some of which looked like hairbreadth escapes, we reached the Saskatchewan River, the eclipse was only three or four days ahead, and it became doubtful whether we should reach our station in time for the observation. It was to come off on the morning of July 18, and, by dint of paddling for twenty-four hours ...
— The Reminiscences of an Astronomer • Simon Newcomb
... sixshooter. They began with tin cans at ten yards, thirty, fifty—and hit them. They shot at rolling cans, and hit them; at high-thrown cans, and hit them; at cards nailed to hitching-posts; then at the pips of cards. Neither man could boast of any advantage. The few and hairbreadth misses of the card pips, the few blanks at the longer ranges, fairly offset each other. The California man took a slightly crouching attitude, his knees a little bent; held his gun at his knee; raising an extended and rigid arm to fire. The Texan ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes
... much as he who never came within a prospect of the game. So in a lottery, the proprietors of the next numbers to that which wins the great prize are apt to account themselves much more unfortunate than their fellow-sufferers. In short, these kind of hairbreadth missings of happiness look like the insults of Fortune, who may be considered as thus playing tricks with us, and wantonly diverting herself ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... pictured in men's minds at their moment of glory; and this was the case particularly with the Young Pretender, who had disappeared into well-nigh complete mystery after his wonderful exploits and hairbreadth escapes of the '45; so that in the eyes of Louise of Stolberg the man she was about to marry appeared most probably but little changed from the brilliant youth who had marched on foot at the head of his army towards London, who ...
— The Countess of Albany • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... the luggers, so close that he tossed his hat on the deck of the one and his wig on that of the other, hoisted a cask to his maintop, to show his occupation, and bore away under an extraordinary pressure of canvass, without receiving injury. To account for these and other hairbreadth escapes, popular superstition alleged that Yawkins insured his celebrated buckkar by compounding with the devil for one-tenth of his crew every voyage. How they arranged the separation of the stock and tithes is left to our conjecture. The buckkar was perhaps called the ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of its sports, and the tales of hairbreadth escapes from elephants, which I had read in various publications, were sources of attraction against which I strove in vain; and I at length determined upon the very wild idea of spending twelve months in ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... recurrent. A murderer, who is such by passion and by a wolfish craving for bloodshed as a mode of unnatural luxury, cannot relapse into inertia. Such a man, even more than the Alpine chamois hunter, comes to crave the dangers and the hairbreadth escapes of his trade, as a condiment for seasoning the insipid monotonies of daily life. But, apart from the hellish instincts that might too surely be relied on for renewed atrocities, it was clear that the murderer of the Marrs, wheresoever ...
— The Notebook of an English Opium-Eater • Thomas de Quincey
... most remarkable and most singular scene of all that rose-water revolution was the Duke's departure from his capital and his duchy. Other sovereigns in similar plight have hidden themselves, travestied themselves, had hairbreadth escapes, or have not escaped at all. In Tuscany the fallen ruler went forth in his own carriage with one other following it, both rather heavily laden with luggage. The San Gallo gate is that by which the hearse ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... comes over what is practically the long known and historic overland stage-road, over which so many thousands of gold-seekers and emigrants came in the days of California's gold excitement. Every mile has some story of pioneer bravery or heroism, of hairbreadth escape from hostile Indians or fortuitous deliverance from storm or disaster. It was over this route the pilgrims came who sought in Utah a land of freedom where they might follow their own peculiar conceptions of religion and duty, untrammeled and uninterfered ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... had treacherously affected to place in him. But he had an honest man's regard for his own pledged word—the regard which looks straightforward at the fact, and which never glances sidelong at the circumstances—and the utmost persistency of Pedgift Senior failed to move him a hairbreadth from the position which he had taken up. "No" is the strongest word in the English language, in the mouth of any man who has the courage to repeat it often enough, and Allan had the courage to repeat it often enough on ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... them, bounded up the rock, and shook her slight finger at them in scorn! Surely she will save that estimable Bandit still! Now, hitherto, though the Bandit was the nominal hero of the piece, though you were always hearing of him,—his wrongs, virtues, hairbreadth escapes,—he had never been seen. Not Mrs. Harris, in the immortal narrative, was more quoted and more mythical. But in the last scene there was the Bandit, there in his cavern, helpless with bruises and wounds, lying on a rock. In rushed the enemies, ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... least bit irritated at the implication of that hairbreadth raise. "Steele will be over there and ...
— Vicky Van • Carolyn Wells
... the cavalry, Stuart, Hampton, Ashby, Fitz Lee and others, were heroes and household names to the whole army. Their brilliant courage and dare-deviltry, their hairbreadth escapes, and thrilling adventures, their feats of skill, and grace were themes of pride and delight to us all. These cavaliers were the "darlings of the army." Still, the army would guy the cavalry every ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... secured, regardless of cost. Several weeks were consumed in preparations, and at last the cavalcade started away, with Rubens in the carriage and eleven velvet suits in his chest, as he himself has told us. It was a long, hard journey to Madrid. There were encounters with rapacious landlords, and hairbreadth escapes in the imminent deadly custom-house. But in a month the chromatic diplomat arrived and entered Madrid at the head of his company, wearing one of the velvet suits, and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 4 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Painters • Elbert Hubbard
... any appeal to me. To my sympathy, my admiration, my devotion, she offered only that bright surface of her schooled manner and disciplined emotions. While her house crumbled about her ears, while her world failed her, she deviated not a hairbreadth from the line ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... man can call after him. He bilks Revolutionary Committees; rides in carriers' carts, covered carts and open; lies hidden in one, under knapsacks and cloaks of soldiers' wives on the Street of Orleans, while men search for him: has hairbreadth escapes that would fill three romances: finally he gets to Paris to his fair Helpmate; gets to ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... a case for a certain steamboat captain, and in gratitude the counsel had been invited by his client to go on an excursion to Peoria, the head of navigation on the Illinois River. The lawyer took the trip, and duly reached Peoria after many hairbreadth 'scapes on the imminently deadly sandbar. But a week must be spent at Peoria while the boat was reloading for her ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 7 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Orators • Elbert Hubbard
... dreadful spectacles, which were originally accompanied on the part of the onlooker by trembling, perspiration and palpitation of the heart, when lived over again in memory, are again accompanied by all these bodily activities. Your memory of a hairbreadth escape will bring to your cheek the pallor that marked it when the ...
— The Trained Memory • Warren Hilton
... peaceful inhabitants by rendering them houseless during the rigour of winter. The attempt to restore the Chevalier St. George soon collapsed, but it does not seem to have been followed by the thrilling scenes, the hairbreadth escapes, and the rigorous treatment which marked the close ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... from place to place. As soon as the evening began to close in the Crooked Mary would be observed rapidly approaching the land, and occasionally giving out signals indicating the creek into which she meant to run. Both on sea and land hairbreadth escapes were the rule rather than the exception, and it is related of one of the Crooked Mary's confederates on shore, poor Philip Kennedy, that one night, while clearing the way for the cargo just landed from the contraband trader's hold, he was simply murdered by the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... made an extensive journey encumbered with a large pack. He visited Paris, had some hairbreadth escapes, was stuck in the mud, but finally returned and became ...
— Who Was Who: 5000 B. C. to Date - Biographical Dictionary of the Famous and Those Who Wanted to Be • Anonymous
... impossible, and they gazed at a device that seemed to be doing nothing whatever. The gyros appeared quite motionless. They spun with such incredible precision that it was not possible to detect that they moved a hairbreadth. And the whole complex device ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... about half a mile, measured by his twisting and turning, was one series of hairbreadth escapes. A dozen times over he had to turn and come back over almost precisely the same ground to avoid a party of Malays, who seemed ready to spring out of the earth on all sides of him, but still, thanks to the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... awaiting him at Beaumanoir. Raoul played a bold game, and calling jealousy to his help, he went and confided the deed to Madame Pean, Bigot's fair charmer, entreating her immediate interference, and after some hairbreadth escapes, arrived at the Chateau with her just in time to save Mdlle ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... that with such men words are of little avail. The disease was entrenched too strongly in the very centre of the man's being. It seemed at moments as if all his strange adventures and hairbreadth escapes had been sent to do him harm, and not good; to pamper and harden his self-confidence, not to crush it. Therefore Campbell seldom argued with him: but he prayed for him often; for he had begun, as all did who saw much ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... their last dust before vanishing, but she had supposed that they had left compensations in their wake. On the principle that adventures are to the adventurous, her life should have been a whirl of hairbreadth escapes. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... "he'll go and tell—tell the Fort girls of his hairbreadth escape from the claws ...
— The Heritage of Dedlow Marsh and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... Lord Tony wanted to hear all about the adventure of this afternoon. A thorough sportsman, he loved a good story of hairbreadth escapes, of dangers cleverly avoided, risks taken ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... sat watching the tremendous gallop. Nearer and nearer we drew to the waggon, and precisely at the right time Jack pulled the mare's bridle, and I cut her over the ear. Within a hairbreadth of the post on one side, and the van on the other, we ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... only in some kinds, to be used but in carrying materials. With their breasts and whole bodies, indeed, most of them round off the soft insides of their procreant cradles, till they fit each brooding bunch of feathers to a hairbreadth, as it sits close and low on eggs or eyeless young, a leetle higher raised up above their gaping babies, as they wax from downy infancy into plumier childhood, which they do how swiftly! and how soon ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... times connected with the settlement of that state. Spending much time in the saddle, while a mere boy he crossed the plains many times in company with bull-trains; on some of these trips he met with thrilling adventures and had several hairbreadth escapes from death at the hands of Indians. Then, for a while, he was dashing over the plains as a pony-express rider. Soon afterwards, mounted on the high seat of an overland stagecoach, he was driving a six-in-hand team. We next hear of him cracking the bull-whacker's whip, and commanding ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... mentioned, and Archie always spoke with enthusiasm of his hero; and he could see that, although Mistress Bradfute said but little, she fully shared his views. It was but natural that Wallace's name should come so often forward, for his deeds, his hairbreadth escapes, his marvellous personal strength and courage, were the theme of talk in every Scotch home; but at Lanark at present it was specially prominent, for with his band he had taken up his abode in a wild and broken country known as Cart Lane Craigs, ...
— In Freedom's Cause • G. A. Henty
... in a state of perpetual confusion and indistinctness, while her forms, as told by light and shade, are invariably clear, distinct, and speaking. The stones and gravel of the bank catch green reflections from the boughs above; the bushes receive grays and yellows from the ground; every hairbreadth of polished surface gives a little bit of the blue of the sky or the gold of the sun, like a star upon the local color; this local color, changeful and uncertain in itself, is again disguised and modified by the hue of the light, or quenched in the gray of the shadow; ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... building bridges. He counted the minutes he lost in awaiting the diminution of floods. Anon, he would catalogue the various fish with which a famous river teemed; and, when he got fairly into the woods, there was no end of adventures and hairbreadth escapes from alligators, elephants, anacondas, vipers, and the fatal tape snake, whose bite is certain death. In the mountains he encountered wolves, wild asses, ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... short cut. Her virtuous scruples reminds me of the subterfuge by which English law evaded the veto on torture. Torture was forbidden, but the custom of placing an obstinate witness under a press and slowly crushing him within a hairbreadth of death was legalised and practised. So it is to-day. When the criminal comes out of gaol the whole world is often but a press whose punishment is sharp and cruel indeed. Nor can the victim escape even if he opens his mouth ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... me," said Warden, with confidence. "He was a friend. Do you know that was one of the most hairbreadth escapes of my life? If Fletcher Hill had caught me, he wouldn't have shown much mercy—any more than he would now," he added, with a half-laugh. "He's a terrific ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... a cry of pain and terror, slipped to the ground, his nerve completely shaken. The sorrel lashed out with his hind feet, and missed his head by a hairbreadth. Pedro turned to ...
— A Daughter of the Dons - A Story of New Mexico Today • William MacLeod Raine
... propitiation; now scouring the bush in pursuit of the gorilla or shooting hippopotami by the half-dozen, and other adventures and exploits wherein duty, excitement, and gratified curiosity were intermingled with danger and hairbreadth escape that ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... tale to undue proportions were we to give in detail all the adventures they experienced, dangers they encountered, and hairbreadth escapes they made, between that point on the wide southern ocean and the Malay Archipelago. The reader must be content to skip over the voyage, and to know that they ultimately arrived at the port of Sarawak, where ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... confessed that Marbot's details are occasionally a little hard to believe. Never in the pages of Lever has there been such a series of hairbreadth escapes and dare-devil exploits. Surely he stretched it a little sometimes. You may remember his adventure at Eylau—I think it was Eylau—how a cannon-ball, striking the top of his helmet, paralyzed him by the concussion of his spine; and how, on a Russian officer running ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle
... recklessness of character than ever belonged to any number of persons so congregated together; they had so often jested at, and with death, in all its shapes, that it was little more than pastime; and they had in their own persons experienced so many hairbreadth 'scapes that they looked upon Springall's great and very natural anxiety for the fate of the ship he loved, as a species of madness which a little experience would soon cure him of. The elder ones certainly knew that there was little use in their forming plans or projects, as their commander would ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... of the hairbreadth escapes of the French fugitives. Guizot and Madame de Lieven, his dear friend and evil genius, arrived both in London on the same day, having travelled from Paris in the same railroad train as far as Amiens; she with the painter Roberts, passing ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... several parts of the town. Edgar joined a group of several civilians, who, having either been hidden during the massacre or having escaped to the French lines, now came up, deeming that they would be safer near the troops than elsewhere. All had stories of hairbreadth escapes to relate, but, feigning not to be able to follow their narratives, Edgar, after a few words in Italian, joined the troops, who were engaged in eating the food that they ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... and John Williams's The Redeemed Captive, both famous in their day, and still of lively interest. In the third group are the fighting stories, such as John Mason's History of the Pequot War. The adventures and hairbreadth escapes recorded as sober facts in these narratives were an excellent substitute for fiction during the Colonial period. Moreover, they furnished a motive and method for the Indian tales and Wild ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long
... years could not remove it; the proved character of every man and officer on board; the implicit trust and the adoration we felt for our commander; the ludicrous situations which would occur even in the extremest danger and create mirth when death was staring you in the face; the hairbreadth escapes, and the indifference to life shown by all—when memory sweeps along those years of excitement even now, my pulse beats ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... on moonlight rays as elemental dust, as again Jonathan saw those sisters in the castle of Dracula. He become so small, we ourselves saw Miss Lucy, ere she was at peace, slip through a hairbreadth space at the tomb door. He can, when once he find his way, come out from anything or into anything, no matter how close it be bound or even fused up with fire, solder you call it. He can see in the dark, no small power this, in a world which is one half shut from the light. Ah, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... proud to do for himself! Think of the excitement, the interest, the food for his cynicism, the food for his conceit such a game would be to Semyonov. Is this going to do it? Or this? Or this? Now I've got him far enough? Another five minutes!... Think of the hairbreadth escapes, the check and counter check, the sense, above all, that to a man like Semyonov is almost everything, that he is master of human emotions, that he can direct wretched, weak human beings ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... They spent an exceedingly pleasant evening together, chatting mostly over the work that still lay before them, Harry producing his plans and explaining what had already been done, while Bannister sat listening gravely to the recital of sundry hairbreadth escapes from death in the execution of duty, and of the manner in which a few of the more than ordinarily difficult bits of work had been accomplished; and when the pair again sat chatting together, twenty-four ...
— Harry Escombe - A Tale of Adventure in Peru • Harry Collingwood
... last page is, as a rule, the most interesting, and when one begins with the catastrophe or the denoument one feels on pleasant terms of equality with the author. It is like going behind the scenes of a theatre. One is no longer taken in, and the hairbreadth escapes of the hero and the wild agonies of the heroine leave one absolutely unmoved. One knows the jealously-guarded secret, and one can afford to smile at the quite unnecessary anxiety that the puppets of fiction always ...
— Reviews • Oscar Wilde
... Mississippi and the Missouri. In that fascinating history we read of the romantic and thrilling experiences of Parkman and his companions in their summer journey across the plains of Nebraska and through the mountain ranges of Wyoming, Montana, and Oregon. We read of their hairbreadth escapes from the Indians; their chase of the buffalo and other wild animals of the far Western country; of the wearisome weeks that they spent in crossing the deserts where absolute loneliness reigned; and finally of their arrival, after months of hardship, in the vast Oregon country, ...
— The Railroad Builders - A Chronicle of the Welding of the States, Volume 38 in The - Chronicles of America Series • John Moody
... taking the Lone Moose cabins for his model. And he was a fearful and wonderful axeman. His log ends looked as if chewed by a beaver, except that they lacked the beaver's neatness of finish. His feet suffered manifold hairbreadth escapes from the sharp blade. He could never guess which way a tree would fall. For a week's work he had got two courses of ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Bidwell's Bar, the road, hitherto so smooth and level, became stony and hilly. For more than a mile we drove along the edge of a precipice, and so near, that it seemed to me, should the horses deviate a hairbreadth from their usual track, we must be dashed into eternity. Wonderful to relate, I did not "Oh!" nor "Ah!" nor shriek once, but remained crouched in the back of the wagon, as silent as death. When we were again in safety, the driver exclaimed, in the classic patois of New England, "Wall, I guess ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... minority, indeed, who could not logically look for aught but ruin and disaster as a sequence to the shock of Saturday. "Look at the narrow escapes so many had," the minority argued. There were plenty of stories. Legends of hairbreadth escapes were legion. They were well told by fluent liars, by such raconteurs as talk of prodigious things in fishing, and catch nothing but colds. The narrow escapes were yet to come. Our wounded in the hospital were doing well; some of them had already been discharged. Their escapes ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... census are neither extraordinarily silly, nor extraordinarily wicked, nor extraordinarily wise; their eyes are neither deep and liquid with sentiment, nor sparkling with suppressed witticisms; they have probably had no hairbreadth escapes or thrilling adventures; their brains are certainly not pregnant with genius, and their passions have not manifested themselves at all after the fashion of a volcano. They are simply men of complexions more or less muddy, whose conversation is more ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... and uprightness he seems to be in the prime of life; and his eyes and mouth shew no signs of age; but his face, though fully and firmly fleshed, bears a network of lines, varying from furrows to hairbreadth reticulations, as if Time had worked over every inch of it incessantly through whole geologic periods. His head is finely domed and utterly bald. Except for his eyelashes he is quite hairless. He is unconscious of his surroundings, and walks right into one of the dancing couples, separating ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw
... to be no more than a faithful narrative of five years spent on the goldfields and in the far interior of Western Australia. Any one looking for stirring adventures, hairbreadth escapes from wild animals and men, will be disappointed. In the Australian Bush the traveller has only Nature to war against—over him hangs always the chance of death from thirst, and sometimes from the attacks of hostile aboriginals; he has no spice of adventure, no record heads of rare ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... favourable to the developement of those mild virtues which are the most beautiful ornaments of youth; and, in the following pages, the quiet scenes and simple characters of rural life solicit attention, in preference to the hairbreadth 'scapes and marvellous adventures which are often brought under the notice of the young. If the author has succeeded in the moral purpose of her little book, she will be ...
— Frank and Fanny • Mrs. Clara Moreton
... gardener, who had also come back to the house shortly after the others, with the report that he "couldn't see nothing of Master Teddy nowheres," sat in the chimney-corner, gazing at the porter with envious admiration as he told of his hairbreadth scapes at sea and ashore when serving in the navy. Joe wished that he had been a sailor too, as then perhaps, he thought, the nurse, for whom he had a sneaking sort of regard, might learn to smile and look upon him in ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... a vivid and picturesque narrative of one of the most romantic, if also in some ways one of the darkest, episodes in history. It is impossible in a small compass to convey a tithe of the astonishing series of hairbreadth escapes, of conquest over tremendous odds, and of rapid eventualities which ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... firearms and the injuries inflicted upon several of their party, the savages did not come too near, but stood drawing their bows from time to time, and sending their arrows up in the air, so that they might fall nearly perpendicularly upon the deck. Many times over the men had hairbreadth escapes from arrows which fell with a sharp whistling sound, and stuck quivering in the boards, while the mate made the crew ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn
... bashful. Tell me about your adventures in the mountains, with all the hairbreadth escapes, fantastic coloring, and romantic medley of incidents that must be crowded into the life of anyone engaged in such work ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss |
