"Knee-deep" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a bottle o' matches in my bunk," cried the skipper, returning to the flooded cabin. Fortunately the matches were dry; a light was struck, and a candle and lamp lighted. The scene revealed was not re-assuring. The water in the cabin was knee-deep. A flare, made of a woollen scarf soaked in paraffin, was lighted on deck, and showed that the mainsail had been split, the boat hopelessly damaged, and part of the lee bulwarks broken. The mast also ...
— Personal Reminiscences in Book Making - and Some Short Stories • R.M. Ballantyne
... was freezing cold, as the streams flowing into the river come from the mountains where snow and ice are found nearly the year around. As they stood knee-deep in the water and looked across to the other shore, they doubted whether they could swim the long distance. Here the Rhine is about seven hundred feet wide. Moreover, there are many whirlpools in the river and the current itself is very swift. The men besides were tired ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... winds down to the clear stream, To cross the sparkling shallows; there The cattle love to gather, on their way To the high mountain pastures and to stay, Till the rough cow-herds drive them past, Knee-deep in the cool ford; for 'tis the last Of all the woody, high, well-water'd dells On Etna, . . . . . . glade, And stream, and sward, and chestnut-trees, End here; Etna beyond, in the broad glare Of the hot noon, without a shade, Slope ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... broken line of the Claudian Aqueduct, carrying its broad arches far away into the plain. The meadows along which it lies are not the smoothest in the world for a gallop, but there is no pleasure greater than to wander near it. It stands knee-deep in the flower-strewn grass, and its rugged piers are hung with ivy as the columns of a church are draped for a festa. Every archway is a picture, massively framed, of the distance beyond—of the snow-tipped Sabines ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... Division Head-quarters at Q— with information the Colonel did not care to commit to paper. He set off at ten o'clock, with Sergeant Hicks for escort. There had been two days of rain, and the communication trenches were almost knee-deep in water. About half a mile back of the front line, the two men crawled out of the ditch and went on above ground. There was very little shelling along the front that night. When a flare went up, they dropped and lay on their faces, trying, at the same time, ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... She stood now knee-deep in water. Above her the half-drunken boy, standing on the rock which projected into the spring, emboldened with drink and maddened by the thought that she had so easily given him up, had reached out and seized her around the neck. He was rough, ...
— The Bishop of Cottontown - A Story of the Southern Cotton Mills • John Trotwood Moore
... the interest which men, even upright and honorable men, take in the aims they follow, that they believe it possible to wade knee-deep through mud, and then ascend to the temple of fame without dragging the mud with them, and befouling the white ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... desert island in mid-ocean, by swamps and thousands of shallow lakes which extend landwards on every side for hundreds of miles. A reindeer-sled skims easily over their frozen surface, but in the open season a traveller sinks knee-deep at every step into the wet ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... a little wood Stand up against the sky. Knee-deep in grass a great tree stood; Some lazy cows went by ... There were some rooks sailed overhead, And once a church-bell pealed. "God! but it's England," someone said, "And there's ...
— Modern British Poetry • Various
... furiously at the posts, even while he spoke—we four with our hands, the carpenters with their tools. It was the work of a moment to lay a dozen of these; another moment and the first score of us were knee-deep in the snow piled to one side of the guard-house door. There was a murmur from behind which caused us to glance around. The body of Campbell's troops, instead of pressing us closely, had lingered to take down more pickets. Somebody—it may have been I—said, "Cowards!" Some one else, doubtless ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... clear up. I had arranged to go for a spin on the bike with some fellows out by Malahide. But the roads must be knee-deep. ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... familiarity with the swamp-infested forest area. It was dark long before we reached the broad cutting. No one will forget the ordeal of that night march. Could not see the man ahead of you. Ears told you he was tripping over fallen timber or sloshing in knee-deep bog hole. Hard breathing told the story of exertion. Only above and forward was there a faint streak of starlight that uncertainly led us on and on south toward the vicinity of ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... winds not infrequently awake, and, seeing their opportunity, pipe the flakes a lively dance. I am speaking now of the typical, full-born midwinter storm that comes to us from the North or N. N. E., and that piles the landscape knee-deep with snow. Such a storm once came to us the last day of January,—the master-storm of the winter. Previous to that date, we had had but light snow. The spruces had been able to catch it all upon their arms, and keep ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... about 200 seamen and volunteers were attached to each gun. Three of these were sixty-eight-pounder shell guns and three thirty-two-pounder solid-shot guns. Each of these guns weighed about three tons. Now each of these had to be dragged through the loose sand, almost knee-deep, for something like three miles before it could be put in the position the engineers had assigned to it. This battery, by the way, was protected by bags of sand piled on each other, and this was the first time that this device had been used. When the battery ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... the sound of her fall," he muttered, dashing open the window and springing through it with his burden, landing knee-deep in ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Albert, the principal work being the laying of cables and the improving of roads. On the 24th, quarters were changed to Henencourt and from billets into huts in the wood—most unpleasant, firstly on account of snow and frost, and then, following a thaw, on account of knee-deep mud. But a further change on the 29th to Dernancourt brought back ...
— The Seventeenth Highland Light Infantry (Glasgow Chamber of Commerce Battalion) - Record of War Service, 1914-1918 • Various
... any fault of mine! Cursed be the cause whence Gotham's evils spring, Though that cursed cause be found in Gotham's king. Let War, with all his needy ruffian band, In pomp of horror stalk through Gotham's land Knee-deep in blood; let all her stately towers Sink in the dust; that court which now is ours 280 Become a den, where beasts may, if they can, A lodging find, nor fear rebuke from man; Where yellow harvests rise, be brambles found; ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... snow became knee-deep, and the men helped the little horse, which often coughed, tossing its thick head up and down, as if working a churn. Once, when the poor creature met with a very heavy fall, Marx pointed to the green woollen scarf on the animal's ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and sparkle like stars among the green leaves. How it waved and rippled and flashed in the sunshine, when the wind blew! Andy almost forgot his grief; and surely he had quite forgotten that nothing was now any longer what it appeared, when he waded knee-deep through the delicious clover, and laid himself down in it. No sooner had he done so than he saw that what he had mistaken for a field was a large pond, and he had plunged into it ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the beach and the irregular cluster of houses that constitutes Dymchurch. He could see the little crowd of people he had so abruptly left. Grubb, in the white wrapper of a Desert Dervish, was running along the edge of the sea. Mr. Butteridge was knee-deep in the water, bawling immensely. The lady was sitting up with her floriferous hat in her lap, shockingly neglected. The beach, east and west, was dotted with little people—they seemed all heads and feet—looking up. And the balloon, released ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... own was less, his neighbor's more; The squire was flattered, and the pauper knew Old times acknowledged 'neath the threadbare blue! Dropped at the corner of the embowered lane, Whistling I wade the knee-deep leaves again, While eager Argus, who has missed all day The sharer of his condescending play, Comes leaping onward with a bark elate And boisterous tail to greet me at the gate; That I was true in absence to our love Let the thick dog's-ears ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... reach, from pool to pool. Here we had a glimpse of the wide-watered valley rich in grass, here of silent woods, up-piled in the distance, over which quivered the hot summer air. Here a herd of cattle stood knee-deep in the shallow water, lazily twitching their tails and snuffing at the stream. The birds were silent now in the glowing noon; only the reeds shivered and bowed. There, beside a lock with its big, battered timbers, the water poured green and translucent through ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... recommendation the article has, they are obliged to give up the argument in despair—to intrench themselves in the old fortress of such reasoners, and to defend what is, merely because it is. They would stand on the old ways, were they knee-deep in slush; and they would wear the old hat, were it not only of the shape, but of the material and ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2, May, 1851 • Various
... itself with a gentle splash and then the other—"Oh dear" said Isabel, seized with a great disposition to laugh. Lawrence was not amused. His boots were full of mud and water and he had an aching sense of injured dignity. The bog was not even dangerous: and ankle-deep, calf-deep, knee-deep he waded through it and got out on the opposite bank, bringing up a cloud of little marsh-bubbles on his heels. Isabel would have given all the money she had in the world—about five shillings to go away and laugh, but she had been well brought up and she remained grave, ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... and retreated. The boldest walked in ankle-deep and danced in daredevilry, and soon young and old were gambolling uncouthly, tasting the sea's quality, shouting and splashing. None ventured more than knee-deep; some crawled and wallowed in the wet sand, too fearful to trust their lives to so big a thing which showed itself to be alive by breathing and moving. The morning was spent in moist frolics, and when the north-easter began to work up a little sea, which spoke in menacing tones, ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... seconds Richard was down, knee-deep in water, holding on with his left hand to the reedy growth of the bank and reaching out ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... The bridge was knee-deep in unbroken snow, for no vehicle had crossed since the late storm, and there had been no service at Poussette's church. Crabbe walked on, not without some difficulty, lifting his feet higher and higher as he neared the centre of the structure. Underneath roared and tumbled the savage fall, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... and vegetables. The scene was tropical beyond the wildest imagination of the geography man. The trees was all sky-scrapers; the underbrush was full of needles and pins; there was monkeys jumpin' around and crocodiles and pink-tailed mockin'-birds, and ye stood knee-deep in the rotten water and grabbled roots for the liberation of Guatemala. Of nights we would build smudges in camp to discourage the mosquitoes, and sit in the smoke, with the guards pacin' all around us. There was ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... this large area of canvas to the gale, she lay down to it, until at every lee-roll the muzzles of the quarter-deck guns were buried in the boiling yeast that foamed and swirled giddily past to leeward, and sometimes surged in through the ports, filling the lee-scuppers knee-deep with water. And whereas we had before ridden buoyantly over the head seas, with nothing worse than an occasional shower of spray flying in over the weather cathead, the frigate now plunged her bows savagely right into the very heart of them, quivering to her keel with the violence of the ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... foot of a hill. There is no habitation within this day's walk. The traveller, as usual, must sleep in the forest; the path is not so good the following day. The hills over which it lies are rocky, steep and rugged; and the spaces betwixt them swampy and mostly knee-deep in water. After eight hours' walk you find two or three Indian huts, surrounded by the forest; and in little more than half an hour from these you come to ten or twelve others, where you pass the night. They are prettily ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... It was a flat and swampy country, full of mist, and the nights were few in which it did not rain. And we were always very wet and very cold. The latter was worse than the lack of food. Sometimes we struggled for hours at a time, knee-deep in desolate stretches of mist-covered morasses which gave no promise of firm footing but which often dropped us in to the waist instead. In addition, the country was cut up by numerous small ditches, six to eight feet wide, which along toward morning presented so much of an effort in the ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... door was closed; but, as I knew every turn and corner about the house, I made no doubt of soon finding out its inmates, if any of them were in the neighbourhood. I worked my way through the garden, knee-deep and rank with weed, for the purpose of reconnoitring the back-offices. I steered pretty cautiously past what memory, that great dealer in hyperbole, had hitherto generally contrived to picture as a huge lake—now, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... wicked but beautiful craft that had inflicted such grievous injury and loss upon us had slid away over the ocean's rim, and was hull-down. By this time also the water had risen in the schooner to such a height that it was knee-deep in the cabin. We lost no time, therefore, in committing our dead comrades to their last resting-place in the deep, and then proceeded to get the boats into the water, and stock them with provisions ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Girdlestones had noticed that, whereas towards the commencement of the storm it had been a rare occurrence for a wave to break over the ship, the decks were now continually knee-deep in water, and there was a constant splashing and crashing as the seas curled over the weather bulwark. Miggs had already observed it, and conferred gravely with ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... been in the swamp before at night. The rain had driven most of the frogs and other croaking creatures to cover. But now and then a sudden rumble "Better-go-roun'!" or "Knee-deep! Knee-deep!" proclaimed the presence of the green-jacketed gentlemen ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... nocturnes, notes, symphonies in rose and silver, his colour-sonatas, boldly annexed well-worn musical phrases, that in their new estate took on fresher meanings even if remaining knee-deep in the kingdom of the nebulous. It must be confessed modern composers have retaliated. Musical impressionism is having its vogue, while poets are desperately pictorial. Soul landscapes and etched sonnets are not unpleasing to the ...
— Promenades of an Impressionist • James Huneker
... the home of the summers, the seats of the happy immortals, Shrouded in knee-deep blaze, unapproachable; there ever youthful Hebe, Harmonie, and the daughter of Jove, Aphrodite Whirled in the white-linked dance, with the gold-crowned Hours and ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... with you, you tiresome child?" Mrs. Caldwell exclaimed, shaking Beth by the arm. Beth only sobbed the more. "Look," said her mother, pointing to a small lake left by the sea on the shore when the tide went out, where the children used to wade knee-deep, or bathe when it was too rough for them to go into the sea; "look, there's the pond, that bright round thing over there. And look below, near the Castle—that great green mound is the giant's grave. When the giant died they buried ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... Desert-smothered caravan, Knee-deep dust that once was man, Battle-trenches ghastly piled, Ocean-floors with white bones tiled, Crowded tomb and mounded sod, Dumbly crave ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... manager continues to wade knee-deep in tragedy, in spite of the state of the weather. The fare is, however, too good for any change in the carte. "Werner" forms a substantial standing dish. The "Boarding School" makes a most palpable entree; while "Bob Short," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... appointed hour the visitor appeared at the end of the avenue, advancing with a firm step between two hedges bordered with poplars, behind which several brood-mares, standing knee-deep in the rich grass, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... was soon splashing through the muddy shallows of the ford. The water was fast deepening, and he thought to himself, "If Monsieur the abbe doesn't hurry, he will have to swim where I am walking but knee-deep!" ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... this," he exclaimed, at the same time motioning to Mr. Stevens to that effect. By dint of great effort they made him understand what was required, and they then continued to make him jump in and out of the hogshead for several minutes; then, joining hands, they danced around him, whilst he stood knee-deep in the water, shivering, and making the most imploring motions to be ...
— The Garies and Their Friends • Frank J. Webb
... was solitary; not a soul was in sight. Close at hand, to landward, great hills, bare and green, shut off the sky; and here and there the land came tumbling down into the sea in great, jagged, craggy rocks, knee-deep in swirling foam, and all black with wet. The air was full of the prolonged thunder of the surf, and at intervals sea-birds passed overhead with an occasional piping cry. Wreckage was tumbled about here and there; and innumerable cocoanut shards, ...
— Blix • Frank Norris
... look at some fresh curiosity: now a tree-fern, now a climbing fern; now some huge tree-trunk, whose name was only to be guessed at; now a fresh armadillo-burrow; now a parasol-ants' warren, which had to be avoided lest horse and man should sink in it knee-deep, and come out sorely bitten; now some glimpse of sea and forest far below; now we cut a water-vine, and had a long cool drink; now a great moth had to be hunted, if not caught; or a toucan or some other ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... the second day, Mahoney and O'Brien gave up their attempt, and thereafter the vessel drifted in the gale uncared for and without a lookout. There were thirteen alive, and for seventy-two hours they stood knee-deep in the sloshing water on the cabin floor, half-frozen, without food, and with but three bottles of wine shared among them. All food and fresh water were below, and there was no getting at such supplies in the water-logged condition of the wreck. As the days went by, no ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... reflected moons died out and a chill wind began to blow, a grey light grew and grew, the birds stirred and twittered, and the marble slipped away from the children like a skin that shrivels in fire, and they were statues no more, but flesh and blood children as they used to be, standing knee-deep in brambles and long coarse grass. There was no smooth lawn, no marble steps, no seven-mooned fish-pond. The dew lay thick on the grass and the brambles, and ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... have been busied this past week, save on Sunday, when we rested and performed the Sabbath duties of a Christian, in bringing hither stores from the ship—now bearing them over firm ice, and now wading knee-deep in half-frozen water. I will here describe the house which we have built to shelter us withal. It is among a tuft of thick trees, under a south bank, about a bow-shot from the seaside; it is square, and about twenty ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... of people are passing and repassing up and down, or sitting on every scrap of available building. They flow out over the steps and down into the water itself. They are standing there knee-deep, waist-deep, shoulder-deep, with hardly any clothes on their glistening brown and yellow bodies, diligently throwing the water over themselves, washing their long, straight, black hair in it, ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... steep but it was good. It was hard and not more than knee-deep in mud. He traveled carefully, freezing on occasion when huge shadows moved above him. He was in fifty feet of water and he liked that better because it was easier to go unnoticed. He avoided a patch of electric cactus, for the spines would have electrocuted ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... dart might give; and so aside He cast his princely peplus, purple-dyed, And softly crept from 'neath the viny roof. But lo! the stag with smite of startled hoof On yielding ground, and toss of antlers high, Flashing a look from out his frightened eye, With agile bound sprang knee-deep in the stream, A moment paused as in a trance or dream; Then, casting back a calmly questioning look, Regained the bank above the brawling brook, And ere the hero seized his barbed dart, Had disappeared within the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 6, June, 1886, Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 6, June, 1886 • Various
... window-shutters were slamming and banging; a forlorn dog, with bowed head and tail withdrawn from service, was pressing his quaking body against a windward wall for shelter and protection; a young girl was plowing knee-deep through the drifts, with her face turned from the blast, and the cape of her waterproof blowing straight rearward over her head. Alonzo shuddered, and said with a sigh, "Better the slop, and the sultry rain, and even the insolent ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a fire-swept zone be crossed in the shortest possible space of time by attacking troops. But if men are detained under the enemy's fire by the difficulty of emerging from a water-logged trench, and by the necessity of passing over ground knee-deep in holding mud and slush, such attacks become practically prohibitive owing to the losses ...
— New York Times Current History: The European War, Vol 2, No. 1, April, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... Dead Horse Lake, in the hope of getting a few duck. But the weather was too fine, though I managed to bring down a couple of mallard, after one of which Susie, having removed her shoes and stockings, waded knee-deep in the slough. She enjoys that sort of thing: it's something so entirely new to the child of the city. And Susie, I might add, is already looking much better. She is sleeping soundly, at last, and has promised me there shall be no more night-caps of veronal. What is more, I am getting ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... others flowers that were beginning to seed, dead flowers, and seed-pods. The garden was quivering in heat and light; rain in the morning had brought out all the snails and all the sweetness, and we were very happy, as we always are, I when I am knee-deep in flowers, and the babies when they can find new sorts of snails to add to their collections. These collections are carried about in cardboard boxes all day, and at night each baby has hers on the chair beside her bed. Sometimes the snails get out and crawl ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... darting through narrow openings in the rocks that were but just wide enough for the train to pass. Reaching the summit of the pass, 10,858 feet above the sea level, we jumped from the coaches as the train came to a standstill and found ourselves standing knee-deep in the snow. ...
— A Ball Player's Career - Being the Personal Experiences and Reminiscensces of Adrian C. Anson • Adrian C. Anson
... circumstances. My room is still a howling wilderness. I sleep on a platform in a window, and strike my mosquito bar and roll up my bedclothes every morning, so that the bed becomes by day a divan. A great part of the floor is knee-deep in books, yet nearly all the shelves are filled, alas! It is a place to make a pig recoil, yet here are my interminable labours begun daily by lamp-light, and sometimes not yet done when the lamp has once more to be lighted. ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... wonderful, but very bad walking. The boys sank knee-deep in the soft moss, and as they went farther, steering only by the sun, they found the moss sank till their feet reached the water below and they were speedily wet to the knees. Yan cut for each a long pole to carry in the hand; in case the ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... purified. The most interesting of the thoroughfares led from the Eurychorus, or public square, along the lagoon. This fair water, extending from Med to Melita, was greenly shored and dotted with strange little pleasure crafts with exquisite sweeping prows and silken canopies. Before a white temple, knee-deep in whose flowered ponds the ibises dozed and contemplated, was anchored the imperial trireme, with delicately-embroidered sails and prow and poop of forgotten metals. From within, temple music sounded softly and was never ...
— Romance Island • Zona Gale
... The bed of the Burdekin at this camp is about from 90 to 100 yards, and the strong-running stream is confined between bergues on the north side to a space of about twenty yards, and little better than knee-deep. Only a few small fish visible. Magnificent gums on its banks and plenty of excellent timber in every direction. This will be a most difficult part of the country for drays travelling on account of ...
— McKinlay's Journal of Exploration in the Interior of Australia • John McKinlay
... times it seemed more than rain—there were liquid shafts reaching from earth to sky. By noon of the second day, half the cellars in the village were flooded; coops floated in slatted wrecks over fields; the roads were knee-deep in certain places; the horses drew back—it was like fording a stream. People began to ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... but it takes them all that night and all next day. Such a march as might fill the heart with pity. Oh, ye Rutowskis, Bruhls, though never so decorated by twelve tailors, what a sight ye are at the head of men! Dark night, wild raging weather, labyrinthic roads worn knee-deep. It is broad daylight, Wednesday, 13th, and only the vanguard is yet got across, trailing a couple of cannons; and splashes about, endeavoring to take rank there, in spite of wet and hunger; rain still pouring, ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... meanings, his elaborations of theme for the purpose of increased force, intensity or suggestion are but useless lumber to a mind that has not throbbed in sympathy, scarce knowing why. It is just here that almost all teaching in both literature and its expression fails; there is not enough browsing—knee-deep, waist- deep,—for the ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... "the dirt." Up come the buckets from the shafts, down which the diggers are working, and the dirty yellow water is poured down-hill to find its way to the creek as it best may. Unmade roads, or rather tracks, run in and out amongst the claims, knee-deep in mud; the ground being kept in a state of constant sloppiness by the perpetual washing for the gold. Perhaps there is a fight going on over the boundary-pegs of a claim which have been squashed by a heavy dray passing along, laden with ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... mounted high,— Mounting still, from the crafty foe Creeping and crawling up below; And, when thou canst no farther go, See thee crouch for the fearful leap Off the top of the old well-sweep, Then, with a swift and dizzy sweep, Plunge in the crusty snow knee-deep. Nor, for a lameness gotten so, Shall I nurse ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... were racing under water Keineth found it very easy to slip away. She chose a spot where a bend of the shore concealed her. She stood knee-deep in the water, going through the movements of the arm stroke, with a careful one, two, three. She put her small teeth tightly together—she would have confidence, she would go out deeper, throw herself calmly into the water in Peggy-fashion ...
— Keineth • Jane D. Abbott
... three great scourges: the pest of horse-sickness and fly and the calamity of rain. For after twelve hours' rain in that black cotton soil never a wheel could move until a hot sun had dried the surface of the roads again. Roads, too, were mere bush tracks in the forest, knee-deep either in dust ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... hollows in the sides of the crag are deepest, so that each hollow is almost a cave by itself, I determined to wade through it. There was an accumulation of soft stuff on the bottom, so that the water did not look more than knee-deep; but, finding that my feet sunk in it, I took off my trousers, and waded through up to my middle. Thus I reached the most interesting part of the cave, where the whirlings of the stream had left the marks of its eddies in the solid marble, all up and down the two sides of the chasm. ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 1 • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... tethering-rope: thus I ordered the syce and another man to jump into the river and secure the crocodile by a rope fastened round the body behind the fore-legs. This was quickly accomplished, and the men remained knee-deep hauling upon the rope to prevent the stream from carrying away the body. In the mean time Monsoor had mounted my horse and galloped off for assistance to the camp of ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... And a low sob came faintly on the ear, Mock'd by the sobbing gust. Down, quick as thought, Into the stream leapt Ambrose, where he caught Fast hold of something—a dark huddled heap— Half in the water, where 'twas scarce knee-deep, For a tall man; and half above it, propp'd By some old ragged side-piles, that had stopt Endways the broken plank, when it gave way With the two little ones that luckless day! "My babes!—my lambkins!" was the father's cry. One little ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXXVIII. February, 1843. Vol. LIII. • Various
... to take to subterranean courses at a very early stage of the journey. For more than two hours we toiled along a trench just wide enough to permit a man to wear his equipment, sometimes bent double to avoid the bullets of snipers, sometimes knee-deep ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... brake, and forest, Ran the cunning Pau-Puk-Keewis; 40 Like an antelope he bounded, Till he came unto a streamlet In the middle of the forest, To a streamlet still and tranquil, That had overflowed its margin, 45 To a dam made by the beavers, To a pond of quiet water, Where knee-deep the trees were standing, Where the water-lilies floated, Where the rushes waved and whispered. 50 On the dam stood Pau-Puk-Keewis, On the dam of trunks and branches, Through whose chinks the water spouted, O'er ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... railway has penetrated these remote regions of the west, and now men work with a degree of feverish haste that was unknown then. While hundreds of little boats (tenders to the large ones) crowd in on the beach, auctioneers with long heavy boots wade knee-deep into the water, followed and surrounded by purchasers, and, ringing a bell as each boat comes in, shout,—"Now, then, five hundred, more or less, in this boat; who bids? Twenty shillings a hundred for five hundred—twenty shillings—say nineteen—I'm bid nineteen—nineteen-and-six—say ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... but, discovering my mistake, turned about, and crossing the whole park came out upon the common and our old familiar cricketing ground. I flew along the dear old paths to our little cottage, but "Desolate was the dwelling of Morna"—the house closed, the vine torn down, the grass knee-deep, the shrubs all trailing their branches and blossoms in disorderly luxuriance on the earth, the wire fence broken down between the garden and the wood, the gate gone; the lawn was sown with wheat, and the little pine wood one tangled maze, without ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... And with the bright, keen morning not a vestige of the ship, but here a spar and there a door, and on the side of a sand-hill a great dog watching over a little child that he'd kept warm all night. Dan, he'd got up at turn of tide, and walked down,—the sea running over the road knee-deep,—for there was too much swell for boats; and when day broke, he found the little girl, and carried her up to town. He didn't take her home, for he saw that what clothes she had were the very finest,—made as delicately,—with ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 55, May, 1862 • Various
... three-wheeled tractors for the big guns. We sped past hundreds of horses picketed in long lines; past countless tents smeared crazily in various coloured paints; past huts little and huts big; past swamps knee-deep in mud where muddy men were taking down or setting up other tents. On we sped through all the confused order of a mighty army, until, chancing to raise my eyes aloft, I beheld a huge balloon, which, as I watched, mounted up ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... in many places, were already knee-deep; and in some places immense fragments of rock, hurled upon the house-roofs, bore down along the streets masses of confused ruin, which yet more and more, with every hour, obstructed the way; and, as the day advanced, the motion of the earth was more sensibly felt; the footing ...
— The Universal Reciter - 81 Choice Pieces of Rare Poetical Gems • Various
... minute or two," pleaded the smith, who, with his assistant, was by this time standing nearly knee-deep in water. ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... circular pit, bent over to form a dome, thatched with reeds and grass. About the hut lie baskets and blankets, a stone metate, other household articles, all of the best quality; in front is a clear space overflowing with knee-deep many-colored bloom of the California spring. A little bank that runs from the wickiup to the toyon bushes is covered with white forget-me-nots. The hearth-fire between two stones is quite out, but the deerskin that screens the opening of the hut is caught up at one ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... another day would have to be spent in the town before the little steamer would leave for Dyea. While Tim and Jeff stayed at the hotel, talking over old times and laying plans for the future, the boys strolled through the streets, which were knee-deep with mud. ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... stood, on its green bank, among the trees; the Pocantico swept by it in a deep dark stream, where I had so often angled; there expanded the mill-pond, as of old, with the cows under the willows on its margin, knee-deep in water, chewing the cud, and lashing the flies from their sides with their tails. The hand of improvement, however, had been busy with the venerable pile. The pulpit, fabricated in Holland, had been superseded by one of modern construction, and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... is the beginning of January, and the country is covered with a sticky snow. The road itself is intermittently encumbered with heavy traffic, the surface being churned to a yellow mud that lies half knee-deep, and at the numerous holes in the ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... he would kill himself; but he kept on day after day, and had not even a cold until February. Then there came a south rain and a thaw, and Barney went to the swamp and worked two days knee-deep in melting snow. Then there was a morning when he awoke as if on a bed of sharp knives, and lay alone all day and all that night, and all the next day and that night, not being able to stir without making the knives cut ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... have gone by, and still think and talk of Universities as though they were the only sources and repositories of wisdom. They conjure up a vision in my mind of an absent-minded water-seller, bearing his precious jars and crying his wares knee-deep, and going deeper into a rising stream. Or if that does not seem just to the University in the past, an image of a gardener, who long ago developed a novel variety of some great flower which has now scattered its wind-borne seed everywhere, but who still proffers you for sale in ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... nineteenth, found their vanguard in a deep forest of pines, less than a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low hills which extended in its rear, and formed a continuation of St. John's Bluff. All around was one great morass. In pitchy darkness, knee-deep in weeds and water, half starved, worn with toil and lack of sleep, drenched to the skin, their provisions spoiled, their ammunition wet, and their spirit chilled out of them, they stood in shivering groups, ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... winters, mesdames, that are hard to bear. They are long—they are dull. No one passes along the high-road. It is then, when sometimes the snow is piled knee-deep in the court-yard, it is then I try to amuse myself a little. Last year I did the Jumieges sculptures; they fit in well, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... A bundle, which, during the excitement, lay on her lap, broke open; and my mother-in-law, like Cleopatra in her roses, stood knee-deep in baby-clothes. In a moment the truth burst upon me. I was unmanned, limp, and disjointed. The shock was too much! ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... Miss Gifford to take pity on my loneliness for part of August. She is not knee-deep in engagements, as you are, my dear, and that precious son of mine; so we are going to amuse each other, and see how much entertainment we can ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the ground to our left, beyond the Bidassoa; and, having mounted my horse to take a look at their post, I passed through a small village, and then got on a rugged path winding along the edge of the river, where I expected to find their outposts. The river, at that place, was not above knee-deep, and about ten or twelve yards across; and though I saw a number of soldiers gathering chestnuts from a row of trees which lined the opposite bank, I concluded that they were Spaniards, and kept moving onwards; but, observing, at last, that I was an object of greater curiosity ...
— Adventures in the Rifle Brigade, in the Peninsula, France, and the Netherlands - from 1809 to 1815 • Captain J. Kincaid
... them, darker than the rest, has descended in a mist of rain, blotting out the ships. The surface of the water is paved curiously in green and violet, and where the light lies on it scintillates like millions of stars. The grass is not yet cut, and the showers have brought it up knee-deep. Its gentle whisper is plainly heard, the most delicate of all the voices in the world, and the meadow bends into billows, grey, silvery, and green, when a breeze of sufficient strength sweeps across it. The larks are so multitudinous ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... forests, which were covered with a heavy layer of snowflakes. Some one struck a red light in the dark, and the pleasant aroma of a good cigarette was wafted toward him. Osip, the sleigh-tender, ran from sleigh to sleigh, knee-deep in snow, telling of the elks that were roaming in the deep snow, nibbling the bark of aspen trees, and of the bears emitting their warm breath through the airholes of ...
— The Awakening - The Resurrection • Leo Nikoleyevich Tolstoy
... coldest morning that I think I ever was abroad in; a chill that pierced into the marrow. The sky was bright and cloudless overhead, and the tops of the trees shone rosily in the sun. But where Silver stood with his lieutenant all was still in shadow, and they waded knee-deep in a low, white vapour, that had crawled during the night out of the morass. The chill and the vapour taken together told a poor tale of the island. It was plainly a ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... holding her as high as I could, and turning at once shoreward. I tried to hurry, but I could not go fast, for the water sucked me back, while Dalfin waded close behind me. Then I heard Bertric shout, and I knew what was coming. The knee-deep water gathered again as the next roller stayed its ebb, swirled and deepened round me, and then with a sudden rush and thunder the wave came in, broke, and for a moment I was buried in the head of it, and driven ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... four acres of land as of right. This fostered an independent spirit and made their affection a tribute worth the winning.[8] Later on that same year, when winter came, earlier than its wont, the fells were knee-deep in snow and all the beasts were brought for shelter round the farm to protect them from the snow-drifts and bitter ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... done. I found myself with the Irish Fusiliers at Range Post, where the road crosses to the foot of Waggon Hill. The stream of ambulance was incessant—covered mule-waggons, little ox-carts, green dhoolies carried by indomitable Hindoos, knee-deep in water, and indifferent to every kind of death. In the sixteen hours' fighting we have lost fourteen officers and 100 men killed, twenty-one officers and 220 men wounded. The victory is ours. Our men have done what they were set to do. But two ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... dawn pierced the gloom of the deep valley, they were wading, knee-deep, a ford of the river, whose banks they had skirted throughout their journey. On the further side the forest, dank, green, and dripping with dew, received them into its impenetrable shades, but still the goldsmith toiled on; his ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... ho! Shell-bracelets ho! Fair maids and matrons come and buy!" Along the road, in morning's glow, The pedler raised his wonted cry. The road ran straight, a red, red line, To Khirogram, for cream renowned, Through pasture-meadows where the kine, In knee-deep grass, stood magic bound And half awake, involved in mist, That floated in dun coils profound, Till by the sudden sunbeams kissed Rich rainbow hues ...
— Hindu Literature • Epiphanius Wilson
... of Apemama was our daily resort. The coast is broken by shallow bays. The reef is detached, elevated, and includes a lagoon about knee-deep, the unrestful spending-basin of the surf. The beach is now of fine sand, now of broken coral. The trend of the coast being convex, scarce a quarter of a mile of it is to be seen at once; the land being so low, the horizon appears within a stone-cast; and the narrow prospect enhances ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... fainter; but so did the roars of the Firedrake. Presently they sounded more like groans; and at last the Remora slipped up his legs above the knees, and fastened on his very heart of fire. Then the Firedrake stood groaning like a black bull, knee-deep in snow; and still the ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... those watching events from the shore when they saw the French flag lowered from the masthead of the visitor and in its place the German naval ensign run up. The cutters were just about reaching knee-deep water at the shore when this surprise came, and it was augmented when, with the protection of the guns of the vessel, the men in these cutters showed themselves to be a hostile ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... minds, this claim for the ballot suggests nothing more than a rough polling-booth where coarse, drunken men, elbowing each other, wade knee-deep in mud to drop a little piece of paper two inches long into a box—simply this and nothing more. The poet Wordsworth, showing the blank materialism of those who see only with their outward eyes, says ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... of the wildest luxuriance ever known in the valley of the Wabash; for it was in that beautiful valley that our friend Hobert had settled. The woods cast their leaves early, and the drifts lay rotting knee-deep in places. Then came the long, hot, soaking rains, with hotter sunshine between. Chills and fever prevailed, and half the people of the neighborhood were shivering and burning at once. It was a healthy region, everybody said, but the weather ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... was the hour, the sun soaked everything in warmth, and Syme was vaguely surprised to see so many spring flowers burning gold and silver in the tall grass in which the whole company stood almost knee-deep. ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... to use it up, which he did religiously over his own precious self, in my after-cabin, as far from the end of the ship where the danger was as he could get. Some one else disinfected el proa, not he! Abundant as the stuff was, I had to look sharp for enough to wash out forward while aft it was knee-deep almost, at three dollars a jar! The harpy that alighted on deck at Maldonado sent in his bill for ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... taken place since the last cart had passed over, and no doubt many miles intervened between this and the next dwelling-house. Nothing but the thought of necessities that might arise for help on Bart's account made her make the toilsome passage, knee-deep among the flowers, to see whether, beyond that, the road was passable; but she only found that it was not fit for walkers except at a time of greater drought than the present. The swamp crept round in a ring, so that she ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... rode into the timber and from the timber into a mountain meadow, knee-deep with lush grass. There was no visible trail across the meadow but the horses seemed to know which way to go. After crossing the meadow, Filaree, leading the cavalcade, turned and took a steep trail down the side of a hidden canon, a mighty chasm, ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... crossed by the aid of stepping-stones, but on the day in question the tops of the stones were barely visible. On crossing the burn the foot of the bride slipped, and the bridegroom, in his eagerness to assist her, slipped also—knee-deep in the water. The raven voice was again heard—it ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... bridge, Forrester at its head. He grabbed the girl again, handing the goblet back to his corps of three carriers, and bowed and grinned at his worshippers behind him, surging forward, and at some others standing under the bridge, ankle-deep, shin-deep, even knee-deep in the rushing water, craning their necks upward to get a really good view of their God as he passed over. There were over a hundred ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... meadows, part of our way lying along the banks of the Cherwell, which unites with the Isis to form the Thames, I believe. The Cherwell is a narrow and remarkably sluggish stream; but is deep in spots, and capriciously so,—so that a person may easily step from knee-deep to fifteen feet in depth. A gentleman present used a queer expression in reference to the drowning of two college men; he said "it was an awkward affair." I think this is equal to Longfellow's story of the Frenchman who avowed ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... earth, like a hoary king, trembles for fear on their ways, their birth is strong indeed: there is strength to come forth from their mother, nay, there is vigor twice enough for it. And these sons, the singers, stretched out the fences in their racings; the cows had to walk knee-deep. They cause this long and broad unceasing rain to fall on their ways. O Maruts, with such strength as yours, you have caused men to tremble, you have caused the mountains to tremble. As the Maruts pass along, they talk together on ...
— Sacred Books of the East • Various
... woods where a great number of felled trees cumbered the ground, more tobacco, and then, in worn fields where the tobacco had been, knee-deep wheat rippling in the evening breeze. The wheat ran down to a marsh, and to a wide, slow creek that, save in the shadow of its reedy banks, was blue as the sky above. Haward, riding slowly beside his green fields and still waters, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... one to follow hand-in-hand, winding as it does through the pleasant meadows of companionship. The view is rather limited, it is true, and homelike—full of familiar things. There stand the kine, knee-deep in grass; there runs the water; and there grows the corn. Also you can stop if you like. By-and-by it is different. By-and-by, when the travellers tread the heights of passion, precipices will yawn and torrents rush, lightnings will fall and storms will blind; and who ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... severely treated. On commencement of the war which has so many years desolated Europe, he raised a company in his native country, and served with it on the Continent during the campaign of 1794. Under a heavy fire of the enemy, he was one of the last men who retreated with it along a single plank, knee-deep in water, from the siege of Nimeguen. In a few months after the disastrous retreat on the Continent, in the winter 1794, he was ordered to the West Indies, and, in the outset of his voyage, ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous
... waterside among the weeds, little knots of men and serving-maids stood looking into the south and listening. Some had waited for an hour, some for two; yet still there was no sound but the piping of the birds in white-thorn hedges, the hollow lowing of kine knee-deep in grassy meadows, and the long rush of the river through the sedge beside the pebbly shore; and naught to see but quiet valleys, primrose lanes, and Warwick orchards white with bloom, stretching away ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... low but excited voices between a young man of about one and twenty, and a lad who was apparently five years his junior, while they waded knee-deep in water among the long, rank grasses and circular pads of water-lilies which border the banks of Squaw Pond, a small lake in the forest region of ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... a belt of forced woodland—fifteen-year-old maple sixty feet high—grounded on a private meadow-dock, none too big, where we moored to our own grapnels, and hurried out through the warm dark night towards a light in a verandah. As we neared the garden gate I could have sworn we had stepped knee-deep in quicksand, for we could scarcely drag our feet against the prickling currents that clogged them. After five paces we stopped, wiping our foreheads, as hopelessly stuck on dry smooth turf as so ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... we took a westward shoot from the river, and following the course of a small stream again climbed heavily up the slope. Our horses were now so weak we could only climb a few rods at a time without rest. But at last, just as night began to fall, we came upon a splendid patch of bluejoint, knee-deep and rich. It was high on the mountain side, on a slope so steep that the horses could not lie down, so steep that it was almost impossible to set our tent. We could not persuade ourselves to pass it, however, and so made the best of it. Everywhere we could see white ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... strode, tugging, wrenching, dragging it after him. Part of it floated because of the air imprisoned beneath it, but gradually sank as it became soaked. Standing knee-deep, he held fast to one corner of it and waited during one precious minute while it absorbed as much of the water as ...
— Tom Slade at Temple Camp • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... stick of timber. The only thing to greet the eye was the logs of which the huts were constructed. Nevertheless the scene was to a certain extent enlivened by the spectacle of two peasant women who, with clothes picturesquely tucked up, were wading knee-deep in the pond and dragging behind them, with wooden handles, a ragged fishing-net, in the meshes of which two crawfish and a roach with glistening scales were entangled. The women appeared to have cause of dispute between themselves—to be rating one another about something. In ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... no speech would pretend, But he ne'er turn'd his back on his foe, or his friend; Said, "Toss down the Whistle, the prize of the field," And, knee-deep in claret, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... miles on shingle Or flounder knee-deep in a bog Than listen to a speech from PRINGLE Or hearken to the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, May 9, 1917 • Various
... than I, By all that run or swim or crawl or fly? Sober shell-fish and frivolous gnats, Tawny-eyed water-rats; The poet with rippling rhymes so fluent, Boys with boats playing truant, Cattle wading knee-deep for water; And the flower-plucking parson's daughter. Down in my depths dwell creeping things Who rise from my bosom on rainbow wings, For—too swift for a school-boy's prize— Hither and thither above me dart the prismatic-hued dragon-flies. At my side the lover lingers, And with lack-a-daisical ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... found himself in a strange country. The little stream down which he had been traveling had become a river. There were houses here and there on the shores, cultivated fields and pasture-lands, and in some places cattle browsed on the banks, or stood knee-deep in the water. ...
— How Sammy Went to Coral-Land • Emily Paret Atwater
... straight into the heath; I held on to a hollow I saw deeply furrowing the brown moorside; I waded knee-deep in its dark growth; I turned with its turnings, and finding a moss-blackened granite crag in a hidden angle, I sat down under it. High banks of moor were about me; the crag protected my head: the ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... the least variation in the depth of the water so as to facilitate our exertions, but it was to no purpose. We were ultimately obliged to drag the boat over the flats; there were some of them a quarter of a mile in breadth, knee-deep in mud; but at length got her into deep water again. The turn of the channel was now before us, and we had a good run for about four or five miles. We had completed the bend, and the channel now stretched to the E.S.E. At about ...
— Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, Complete • Charles Sturt |
