"Hand-to-hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... his hand on Cuthbert's shoulder, whereupon the young man flung it aside. At the same moment Jennings closed with him, and a hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Maraquito, with straining eyes, watched the fight. With stiffened muscles the two reeled across the room. Cuthbert was almost too amazed to fight. That Jennings should accuse him and attack him in this way was incredible. But his blood was up and he wrestled ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... twenty who worked upon a neighbour's farm. I wanted a home of my own, and Tom had some money saved up. We journeyed to Manitoba, and took out a homestead, where I spent the next twenty years of my life in a hand-to-hand struggle with Nature which seemed simply incredible to Sylvia when I told ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... if not the most important means of grace and spiritual enlightenment. The power of sustained attention and consecutive thought is greatly lacking in all untrained minds; hence the superiority of the hand-to-hand question-and-answer method of the class-room over the sermon as a means of informing the mind and clearing away the rubbish of superstition and the misapprehensions of meaning, derived from the ignorant preachers who have been in many cases the only previous expounders of the word, and ...
— The American Missionary — Volume 38, No. 06, June, 1884 • Various
... surprised and blown up one of our guns—none other than the howitzer visited by me the previous evening. Presently the young cadets themselves came riding into camp, bringing with them pieces of guncotton, and showing by the state of their ragged uniforms the hand-to-hand nature of the ...
— With Steyn and De Wet • Philip Pienaar
... 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 hilt. Then Blackbeard would have finished him off handsomely, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... letter in the pocket;" picked up a dead man's musket, and ran to the aid of a tall, powerful rebel who was parrying with a sword the bayonets of three British privates. The tramp of the retreating rebels, invading British, and hand-to-hand fighters raised a blinding dust. Harry and the tall American, gaining a breathing moment, strode together with long steps, guarding their flank and rear, to the passageway and out of it; and then fought their course between two divisions of British, which had turned the outer corners ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... Contraband (JARROLDS) are laid in the Devonshire of some hundred years ago. It is, as its title suggests, a tale of smuggling, and it contains an account of a hand-to-hand fight between the hero and the villain which I advise all members of the National Sporting Club to read. They may be shocked by the tactics of the villain, but at the same time they will see what a bout of fisticuffs meant in those ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... some Venetian merchantmen on 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 some six miles distance. ...
— The Life of Columbus • Arthur Helps
... receive a few rude shocks from buffaloes, or are worsted in a hand-to-hand encounter with some tough old bull, or savage old grey boar, more especially if they get an ugly rip or two from the sharp tusks of an infuriated fighting tusker, they begin to be less aggressive, they learn that discretion may be the better ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... had withdrawn a hundred yards, Ethan and Mickey emerged from the cave, shouting and excited, firing at every red-skin they could see, the Irishman occasionally swinging his gun over his head, and daring the savages to a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... country. 'Tis well that you are now approaching an age when the Saxon youth are wont to take their place in the ranks of battle. I have spared no pains with your training in arms, and though assuredly you lack strength yet to cope in hand-to-hand conflict with these fierce Danes, you may yet take your part in battle, with me on one side of you and Egbert on the other. I have thought over many things of late, and it seems to me that we Saxons have done harm in holding the people ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... step by step. With the pistol he could bury two or three balls in the body of the redskin before he could suspect where they came from, and thus completely clear the path before him. But there were doubts in the way. The revolver might miss fire, in which case all hope would be gone. In a hand-to-hand tussle the Apache would be more than a match for a dozen such lads. True, the weapon had not failed when he pulled the trigger in the cave, but there was no certainty that it would not do so when he most ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... cousin spur directly toward the leader of the Federals, in whom she recognized the Union scout. His men came galloping after him, but seemed more inclined to envelop and surround the Confederates than to engage in hand-to-hand conflicts. The latter were experienced veterans and quickly recognized that they were being overpowered and that there was no use in throwing away their lives. Hasty shots were fired, a few sabres clashed, but the demand, "Surrender!" ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... fire were giving trouble. They had dashed out of the dangerous firelight and had opened up on Lefty and Red. Kid Wolf's heart gave a little jump. Red was down! Lefty and one of the bandits were engaged in a hand-to-hand scuffle, for Warren's horse had been shot under him. The other outlaw had lifted his gun to finish Red, who was crawling along the ground. The range was a good fifty yards, but Kid Wolf fired three times. The rustler standing over Red dropped. Lefty broke ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... man to drink and death. While I am proud to belong to a farmers' club and "change works" with a hearty, whole-souled ploughman like George William Curtis, I hope that at all County Fairs or other intellectual hand-to-hand contests between outdoor orators and other domestic animals, I may be excused, and that when judges of inflamed slumber robes and restless tidies, which roll up and fall over the floor or adhere ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... it this high bearing. It aspires only to disencumber the route before the march of truth, to prepare the mind, to reform public opinion, to blunt dangerous tools in improper hands. It is in social economy above all, that these hand-to-hand struggles, these constantly recurring combats with popular errors, have a ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... Private Wilson was one of the finest animals, physically, that ever wore the uniform; or that he had gained a wide reputation among his comrades and the Filipinos on account of his terrible abilities in a hand-to-hand engagement. It was this very notoriety that had attracted the insurgents' attention to him, and ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... sheer cliffs descend to the sea. So Niger had here made a camp on a strong hill, and he put in front heavy-armed soldiers, next the javelin slingers and stone throwers, and behind all the archers. His purpose was that the foremost might thrust back such as assailed them in hand-to-hand conflict, while the others from a distance might be able to bring their force into play over the heads of the others. The detachment on the left and that on the right were defended by the sea-crags and by the forest, which had no issue. This ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... Afghans were seen, in great numbers, in the broken ground ahead. The Ghoorkas and the little body of Rangers pushed on against them. Presently the enemy gathered, and made a rush down upon them; and a desperate hand-to-hand fight took place, for a few minutes. The men were scattered among the trees, and each fought ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... 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 stamping of ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... attack was made, and at one end of a Bosch trench there was some pretty hand-to-hand work. An old Rittmeister held it, his breast covered with decorations, and he just wouldn't give in. Of course, so long as he stuck it the other Bosches did too, and there was nothing doing in the Kamerad line. They fought like fury. So did our men, but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... bad—it is worse," said Cecilia. "Will hanging an insane man bring back the others that are slain? Will it make foul fair and clean still cleaner? Will it bring peace and friendliness, and right feeling, or will it bring a fiercer fire and a sharper sword than our country has yet seen—a hand-to-hand fight between rival races, a civil war ...
— Crowded Out! and Other Sketches • Susie F. Harrison
... the violence of battle, not the terrible destruction of the new weapons, not the falseness of the enemy. Nothing stopped them. They accepted the hard life, they crossed the ocean at great peril, they took their places at the front beside us; and now they have fallen in a desperate hand-to-hand fight. All honor ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... merits of nobility and Christian warfare—accompanying his father from the age of seven years, on all occasions of danger; thus he came to despise danger so thoroughly that at the age of thirty (his present age) the enemies of God and of our king whom he has killed in hand-to-hand combats, in various frays, surpass two hundred. Don Goncalo, then, the father of so illustrious a son, left him enough examples to emulate his valor, for in accordance with his surname (which means "he who hurls down thunderbolts"), his valor hurled them in a constant shower. He opposed ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... the battered Saint George, threw her grappling hooks into the rigging, and her men were in a hand-to-hand struggle with the motley crew who battled for the veteran Fortunatus. Slash! Slash! Crack! The cutlasses cut and parried, the pistols spat, and the boarding-pikes thrust and struck. Cheering wildly the Frenchmen attempted to climb upon the deck of the privateer, but the ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... the British then advanced in line. Up the hill they went, right at the enemy. The firing became general along the whole line. A village burst into flames below us. We, with other Highland regiments and the Guards, were formed in line,—a band, I may say, able to meet any enemy in the world in a hand-to-hand fight or charge of bayonets; but the enemy's round-shot and bullets came rattling among us, and picked off many a stout fellow. We were therefore ordered to lie down to avoid the shot, our men grumbling not a little, and asking why we were not led at once against the enemy. We ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... single means, it is the FIGHT. However diversified this may be in form, however widely it may differ from a rough vent of hatred and animosity in a hand-to-hand encounter, whatever number of things may introduce themselves which are not actual fighting, still it is always implied in the conception of War that all the effects manifested have their roots in ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... line was impossible. The front line, however, charged well up to the points of the lances, against which they hewed with their sharp scimiters, frequently severing the steel top from the ashpole, and then breaking through and engaging in hand-to-hand conflict with the knights. Behind the latter sat their squires, with extra spears and arms ready to hand to their masters; and in close combat, the heavy maces with their spike ends were weapons before which the light-clad horsemen went down like ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... a Slav tilting at each other, and then comes a scroll entwined round a thistle, and inscribed with this enigmatical motto: "Giane le sur ou rien." In the third bas-relief a couple of passionate Italians are winding up a gambling dispute with a hand-to-hand combat, in the course of which table, cards, and dice have got cantered over; the fourth presenting us with two French knights, armed cap—pie, engaged in a tourney; while in the fifth and last a couple of German lansquenets essay their gladiatorial ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... worst fight. Far worse than all these Hittites and Hivites, and the other tribes with their barbarous names, far worse than all external foes, are the foes that each man carries about in his own heart. In that slow hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot struggle I do not believe that there is any conquering power available for a man that can for a moment be compared with the power that comes through submission to Christ's command and acceptance of Christ's help. He has fought every ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... of the 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, spear, club, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... fire with one withering volley, were ordered to charge. Scarcely were the bayonets lowered, when the head of the advancing column broke and fled, while Mackenzie's brigade, overlapping the flank, pushed boldly forward, and a scene of frightful carnage followed; for a moment a hand-to-hand combat was sustained, but the unbroken files and impregnable bayonets of the English conquered, and the French fled, leaving ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... overwork or some other feverish ailment, were accounted to have caught the distemper, and many of these did amend, though all sickness at such a time seemed to get a firmer hold upon its victims. But Father Paul and both his young assistants had escaped unscathed, though they had been waging a hand-to-hand fight with the destroyer for three long weeks, that ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... methods. Both were statesmen of scrupulous honesty, who despised jobbery. Marcy was wily and loved intrigue. Wright was proverbially open and frank. Marcy never trained himself to be a public speaker, and did not shine in the hand-to-hand conflicts of a body that was lustrous with forensic talents. A man's status in the United States Senate is determined by the calibre and skill of the opponents who are selected to cross weapons with him in the forum. Wright was unostentatious, studious, thoughtful, grave. ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... desired to do some real righting, not understanding the difference 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
... of my friend the Tinker as to the writing of a good "nov-el," I am perturbed, and not a little discouraged, upon looking over these pages, to find that I have, as yet, described no desperate hand-to-hand encounters, no hairbreadth escapes (unless a bullet through one's hat may be justly so regarded), and, above ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... 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 ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... been almost battered down, other warriors from the Christian camp gathered to the assault; but the watchers on the city wall raised a cry of alarm, and all the Turkish warriors flew to arms. Then followed a fierce hand-to-hand conflict. In spite of most heroic efforts, the Crusaders were finally driven back. "Never," says the Christian chronicler, "has there been such a people for prowess in battle as ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... savage hand-to-hand struggle took place, in which furniture was broken, the policeman badly injured and two of the volunteers knocked out. Armstrong was finally subdued, however, by the jiu-jitsu method, in which Duffey is an expert, and was lodged in the Central ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... of St. Leger, General Herkimer of the New York militia gathered eight hundred men and hurried to the relief of Fort Stanwix. Near Oriskany, about six miles from the fort, he fell into an ambuscade of British and Indians, and a fierce hand-to-hand fight ensued, till the Indians fled and the British, forced to follow, left the Americans in possession of the field, too weak ...
— A Brief History of the United States • John Bach McMaster
... cool hand, Wyatt," Lister said. "If we ever get into a hand-to-hand affair with the French, I hope you will take ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... strong laws against crime—that we should not neglect, at the same time, to cultivate and preserve the personal valour that is in us, by the use of arms. It may be that the day is shortly coming (our engineers predict that we shall soon have hand-to-hand fighting again), when every individual amongst us will have to put his courage to the proof; and if this should ever happen, it will certainly not diminish our interest in the construction and arrangement of these mediaeval castles, or in the battles that have been fought ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... country in 1861, the published account of those travels attracted several parties of the best class of ubiquitous Englishmen, and I regret to hear that all those mighty hunters who accompanied me have since been killed in the desperate hand-to-hand encounters with wild elephants. Their life is a constant warfare with savage beasts, therefore it may be expected that the termination is a death upon their field of battle, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... one of the first of the realists, but antedating conscious realism so long as to have been born at Venice early in the eighteenth century, and to have come to his hand-to-hand fight with the romanticism of his day almost before that century had reached its noon. In the early sixties of our own century I was no more conscious of his realism than he was himself a hundred years before; but I had ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... began to slacken, as their ammunition was running low. These experienced and brave, though rascally Indians, soon surmised the cause of this sudden change of affairs. Rallying their forces, they turned upon their assailants in right good earnest and a desperate hand-to-hand engagement ensued. The white men now had an opportunity to use their small arms, which told with such terrible effect upon their foes that they were soon driven back again. They, however, rallied once more and charged so manfully that the trappers were forced to retreat. ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... Scottish leader. The Scots then knelt for a moment of prayer, as the Abbot of Inchafray bore the crucifix along the line; but they did not kneel to Edward. His van, under Gloucester, fell on Edward Bruce's division, where there was hand-to-hand fighting, broken lances, dying chargers, the rear ranks of Gloucester pressing vainly on the front ranks, unable to deploy for the straitness of ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... 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
... who had demonstrated his claim to be Cock of the Walk by a most impious hand-to-hand fight with his own aunt, Miss Janet Trumbull, in which he had been decisively victorious, and won his spurs, consisting of his late grandfather's immense, solemnly ticking watch, was to take a new path of action. Johnny suddenly developed ...
— The Copy-Cat and Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... Jesus saith unto her, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour is not yet come." Plainly, and in the most emphatic manner, Christ refuses to recognize Mary as intercessor or director. A third instance is still more marked. Jesus is talking to an immense multitude, and is making a hand-to-hand fight with Pharisees and Scribes. "While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him." Evidently Mary had no idea of the character or ...
— The True Woman • Justin D. Fulton
... by obeying his orders, while the rest hurriedly gathered round the doomed men, and, drawing their keen knives, prepared to defend them. Don Luego unsheathed his sword and rushed forward with a fierce cry, while the mutineers fought hand-to-hand with the other seamen. It was a desperate fray, for the men who had revolted knew their fate if once they became overpowered. On the mutineers pressed over the slippery decks, until at last their disheartened ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Newcastle and Durham, with James Earl of Douglas for one of their leaders. These were already pillaging and burning in Durham when the Earl of Northumberland first heard of them, and sent against them his sons Henry and Ralph Percy. In a hand-to-hand fight between Douglas and Henry Percy, Douglas took Percy's pennon. At Otterburn the Scots overcame the English but Douglas fell, struck by three spears at once, and Henry was captured in fight by Lord Montgomery. There was a Scots ballad on the ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... 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
... Corralat), feared that the other had designs that were not peaceable, and commanded that the mouth of the river should be closed; but the sultan of Jolo, offended thereat, dared the other to a personal combat. This challenge was accepted, and the two sultans engaged in a hand-to-hand contest, so fierce that each slew the other; and immediately war was kindled between the two peoples. The Joloans, breaking down the stakes which closed the river, retired to their own island with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 41 of 55, 1691-1700 • Various
... whisks and bumps; laying the table-cloth as if she were raising the wind, putting down the glasses and salt-cellars as if she were knocking at the door, and clashing the knives and forks in a skirmishing manner suggestive of hand-to-hand conflict. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... seem to struggle with Death as with an invisible assassin; in the agony at the last, as the final thrust is made, the act of dying seems to be a conflict, a hand-to-hand fight for life. Pons had reached the supreme moment. At the sound of his groans and cries, the three standing in the doorway hurried to the bedside. Then came the last blow, smiting asunder the bonds between ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... First City Troop, and therefore, presumably, inflamed with the martial spirit characteristic of that ancient and honorable organization—was not, perhaps, just the man that a person knowing in such matters would have selected to pit against a New Mexico desperado in a hand-to-hand conflict. But Grace felt her heart sink a little as she saw the round and rather pursy form of her natural protector walk away into the depths of a mirror at the forward end of the car, and so vanish. And in this same mirror she beheld, seated only two sections ...
— A Border Ruffian - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... 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
... 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! ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... the reputation of being very faithful friends, but very bitter enemies. It was said they never forgot a favor, and never forgave an insult. They were cunning rather than brave. It was seldom that an Indian could be induced to meet a foe in an open hand-to-hand fight. But he would track him for years, hoping to take him unawares and to brain him with the tomahawk, or pierce his heart with the ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... came, Lady Arthur, who had never had an illness in her life, was measuring her strength in a hand-to-hand struggle with fever. The water was blamed, the drainage was blamed, various things were blamed. Whether it came in the water or out of the drains, gastric fever had arrived at Garscube Hall: the gardener took it, his daughter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... why the Church anathematizes duelling. The duel she condemns is a hand-to-hand combat prearranged as to weapons, time and place, and it is immaterial whether it be to the death or only to the letting of first blood. She fulminates her major excommunication against duellists, even in the event ...
— Explanation of Catholic Morals - A Concise, Reasoned, and Popular Exposition of Catholic Morals • John H. Stapleton
... 63 killed and wounded, out of a crew of 320. She came out of action, therefore, with 67 effective men more than her conqueror. It is highly creditable to the Nymphe's crew, that they beat a ship like the Cleopatra by gunnery, notwithstanding their inexperience; and carried her by a hand-to-hand conflict, notwithstanding their ...
— The Life of Admiral Viscount Exmouth • Edward Osler
... would read: "The same progress continued on Tuesday night, and by Wednesday morning the whole of Pozieres was consolidated." That is to say—in the heart of the village itself there was little more actual hand-to-hand fighting. All that happened there was that, from the time when the first day broke and found the Pozieres position practically ours, the enemy turned his guns on to it. Hour after hour—day and night—with increasing intensity as the days went on, he ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... ground 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 ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Physical courage is not an outstanding quality of the New York gangsman. His personal preference is for retreat when it is a question of unpleasantness with a stranger. And, in any case, even when warring among themselves, the gangs exhibit a lively distaste for the hard knocks of hand-to-hand fighting. Their chosen method of battling is to lie down on ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... meet fifty of like caliber in a hand-to-hand conflict—when the three hundred mean to end the business, and the fifty know that they must die—fighting for choice, but die in any event—the resultant encounter will surely be both fierce and brief. And never was fratricidal ...
— The Stowaway Girl • Louis Tracy
... The half-breeds were deaf to commands, and in vain their leader argued with blows. The shooting had been of a blind sort, and few shots did more than wound; but the natives were venting the pent-up hate of three years and would give no quarter. From musketry volleys the fight had become hand-to-hand butchery. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... be lost and, at four o'clock in the afternoon, Lieutenant Harley and a hundred men issued from the fort, at the garden gate, and rushed at the summer house. It was held by forty of the enemy, who fired a volley, and fled after some sharp hand-to-hand fighting. The head of the mine was found to be in the summer house, and the tunnel was full ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... ceased as 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
... was Fedor Deerinhoff. He was about forty years of age, and had been a noted sea otter and bear hunter. In size he was rather larger than the average of his race, and absolutely fearless. Many stories are told of his hand-to-hand encounters with these big bears. I think the best one is of a time when he crawled into a den on his hands and knees, and in the dark, and at close quarters, shot three. He was unable to see, and the bears' heavy breathing was his ...
— American Big Game in Its Haunts • Various
... cowed Kennedy grew bolder, though I, for my part, felt so weakened that I feared the outcome of a hand-to-hand encounter with either Poissan or Francois, who appeared as fresh as if nothing had happened. They were hurriedly preparing ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... Laelius, on the market-place, gave the Romans a foothold within the city, and a great quantity of spoil. One thousand talents were taken from the temple of Apollo. Preparations were then made for the attack of the citadel, and for six days there was a hand-to-hand fight between the combatants amid the narrow streets which led to the Byrsa. The tall Oriental houses were only taken one by one and burned, and the streets were cumbered with the dead. The miserable people, crowded within ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... 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 ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... of every opportunity of protection, every natural advantage or artificial device, vast quantities of ammunition are wasted on the empty air, every ball that finds its quarry in human flesh being mayhap but one in hundreds that go astray. In the old-time wars actual hand-to-hand fighting took place. Almost every stroke told, every thrusting blade was directly parried or came back stained with blood. In modern wars fighting of this kind has ceased. A battle has become a matter of machinery. The strong arm and stalwart heart are replaced by the bullet-flinging ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... 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 and stones so fiercely, that the police ...
— The Great Riots of New York 1712 to 1873 • J.T. Headley
... voice that shook with feeling he told of the fight for the bridge; how Dick, and Mathews, who had saved him, reached the Americans; of the desperate hand-to-hand fighting; how the groom had guarded his young master; the impending disaster; and the ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... trench, they may meet the enemy's soldiers running out of their dugouts for hand-to-hand battle. The traverses are so narrow that the length of the rifle makes it a clumsy weapon, and the adversaries in modern war, whose guns carry twenty miles, engage hand to hand, using knives, bombs ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... had under him only twenty-two thousand of legionaries and one thousand cavalry. But every man in both armies was prepared to conquer or die. The forces were posted on the open plain, and the battle was really a hand-to-hand encounter, in which the soldiers, after hurling their lances, fought with their swords chiefly. And when the cavalry of Pompey rushed upon the legionaries of Caesar, no blows were wasted on the mailed panoply ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... precipitous. The slopes were swept by machine-gun and 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 ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock
... caused Mrs. Tutts real suffering to suppress was upon the tip of that lady's tongue, but it was gradually being borne in upon her that the first families were not given to actual hand-to-hand conflicts, so she checked it ...
— The Lady Doc • Caroline Lockhart
... AND THE AZTECS FOUGHT. The Mexican warriors, though they fought fiercely, were no match for the Spaniards. The Mexicans were experts with the bow and arrow, using arrows pointed with a hard kind of stone. They carried for hand-to-hand fighting a narrow club set with a double edge of razor-like stones, and wore a crude kind of armor made from quilted cotton. But such things were useless against Spanish ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... Royalists were found blocking the road, and crowding the heights on either side. Cavalier, to avoid recognition, threw off his uniform, and assumed the guise of a simple Camisard. Again he sought to force his way through the masses of the enemy. His advance was a series of hand-to-hand fights, extending over some six miles, and the struggle lasted for nearly the entire day. More than a thousand dead strewed the roads, of whom one half were Camisards. The Royalists took five drums, sixty-two ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... There is room in it, believe me, whether your post be on a judge's bench, or over a wash-tub, for heroism, for knightly honour, for purer triumph than his who falls foremost in the breach. Your enemy, Self, goes with you from the cradle to the coffin; it is a hand-to-hand struggle all the sad, slow way, fought in solitude,—a battle that began with the first heart-beat, and whose victory will come only when the drops ooze out, and sudden halt in the veins,—a victory, if you can ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... his position on a rock just over the path his pursuers were likely to follow, and watched his opportunity to hurl a stone, which knocked one of them senseless. The other was dismounted by his horse taking fright, and before he could regain his saddle, Selim was upon him. A short hand-to-hand ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... propose, I believe we shall not waste a man: every part of our army will work with every other. [24] I will post the javelin-men behind the cuirassiers, and the archers behind them: it would be absurd to place in the van troops who admit that they are not made for hand-to-hand fighting; but with the cuirassiers thrown in front of them they will stand firm enough, and harass the enemy over the heads of our own men with their arrows and their darts. And every stroke that falls on the enemy means so much relief to our friends. [25] In the very rear of all I will ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... the gates of the city flew open and a swarm of Turks, mounted upon fleet horses and camels, issued forth and fell upon their enemies. The Tatars, who did not expect the sally, were scarcely able to form an opposing rank when they found themselves engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict, fighting desperately for their lives. In such a battle, however, the Turks were at a disadvantage, for the active Tatars slipped beneath their horses and disabled them, bringing both the animals and their riders to ...
— The Master Key - An Electrical Fairy Tale • L. Frank Baum
... engaged in an action which stands as one of the glorious achievements at arms in the annals of sea-fighting. The Broke that night was attacked by six German destroyers and, after a battle characterized by bulwark rasping against bulwark, by boarding-parties, hand-to-hand fighting, and all the elements that make the pages of Mayne Reid thrilling, defeated the six destroyers and proceeded to port ...
— Our Navy in the War • Lawrence Perry
... rifle being offset by the superiority of their foes in the art of hiding and of shielding themselves from harm. The hostile lines, though about a mile and a quarter in length, were so close together, being never more than twenty yards apart, that many of the combatants grappled in hand-to-hand fighting, and tomahawked or stabbed each other[33] to death. The clatter of the rifles was incessant, while above the din could be heard the cries and groans of the wounded, and the shouts of the combatants, as each encouraged his own ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... blazing scimitar of Orchan first flashed upon Europe, or Byzantium shook before the thunder of the artillery of Mohammed II. They were still worthy of their father, Osman, the "Bone-breaker;" and, in hand-to-hand combat, an overmatch for the boors of Russia, both in courage and strength. It must be said, to their disadvantage, that they were not very precise concerning the declaration of war; for on the ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... parties this resolution was alike a disappointment and restraint. The English felt there was no glory in their prize, they had not obtained possession through their own prowess and skill; and now that the siege had become so much closer, and this point of communication was entirely stopped, the hand-to-hand combat, the glorious melee, the press of war, which to both parties had been an excitement, and little more than warlike recreation, had of course entirely ceased, but Hereford heeded not the disappointment of his men; his plans were progressing as he had desired, even though his workmen ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... my cigar and started for what I felt was to be the tomb or the forcing-house of all the air-castles I had cherished from boyhood. At last I was to meet the real champion; I was to tussle hand-to-hand with the head of the financial clan, the man of all men best fitted to test to the utmost the skill and quickness which I had picked up in the rough and tumble of a hundred fights on State and Wall streets—Rogers, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... 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. If I were you, De Conte, I would ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... 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 ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... 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. ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... 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
... full current from the dynamo must be passing through the metal framework of the great chair; he moved a little farther back and stood on guard. There was a glitter in the old man's eye that was disquieting, and Constans did not relish the idea of a hand-to-hand struggle in this contracted space with these wicked-looking wires running in every direction. One of them had been broken, and from the dangling end, which hung close to a metal wall-bracket, a continuous stream of ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... between the two young Parisians would drop into a hand-to-hand fight. I myself was witness to such a skirmish one day, in front of 'La Prunelle.' The rivals pulled each other's hair mightily while the manuscripts flew about over the pavement, and Virginie, in her short skirts, stood at the door of the cafe and laughed until ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... free. The dogs were bound by harness, 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
... In a hand-to-hand combat with a chimpanzee, a strong man would have but little chance of success, and Mok, under the influence of two glasses of beer, was a man-chimpanzee. When Banker swore, and when he turned so that the light ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... 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 to this, he knew many tricks ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... begun his crusade for reform soon after his arrival in America in a practical hand-to-hand manner. His housekeeper, Katie Leary, one night employed a cabman to drive her from the Grand Central Station to the house at 14 West Tenth Street. No contract had been made as to price, and when she arrived there the cabman's ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Potherie and Oldmixon; in Jeremie, Relation de la Baie de Hudson; and in N. Y. Col. Docs., IX. 796-802. Various embellishments have been added to the original narratives by recent writers, such as an imaginary hand-to-hand fight of Iberville and several Englishmen in the blockhouse ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... surrender, but no acceptances. The fighting became hand-to-hand with bayonet and gun butt. The defenders fought on in the hope that assistance soon would ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... men in front had no time to reload, those behind could not fire because their friends were before them. It was a fierce hand-to-hand struggle, such as might have taken place on the same ground in the middle ages, before gunpowder was in use. Bayonets and clubbed muskets, these were the weapons on both sides, while dismounted troopers—for horses were worse than useless here, mixed up with the infantry—fought with swords. ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... now that they were so close to their enemy—and, drawing his own knife, made a sort 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 |
