"Tree trunk" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and unattractive, and unfortunately the unprepossessing but valuable outer coat is polished away. This is done in a mortar hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone. One may see a young man or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar with a heavy wooden beetle or mallet. Often the beetle is fastened to a beam and worked by foot. Or the polishing apparatus may be driven by water, oil or steam power. Constantly ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... we can snatch a brand from the fire at any stage of its decomposition, or analyze a decaying tree trunk during any month of its existence, and thus manufacture as many chemical formulae as we like, and give them specific names; but it is evident that this is child's play, not science. The truth is, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 362, December 9, 1882 • Various
... Klussman sent it to the hearth and strode after it. He had not far to look for Marguerite. As his eye traveled recklessly into the women's camp, he encountered her beside him, sitting on the floor behind a settle and matching the red of a burning tree trunk with the red of ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... up two or three pieces of fallen tree trunk before it," added Robert. "Warriors watching on the opposite slopes will take them for our figures and will not dream ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... please," mumbled Anderson, and the two men who supported him lowered him gently to the ground, with his back against a tree trunk. "Come here, Alf," he ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... the meadow. The gorgeous bloom seemed to rise out of a black, curiously gnarled elbow of branch or trunk which thrust itself out through the leafage. Grom's eyes dwelt for a time, unheeding, upon this piece of misshapen tree trunk. Suddenly he saw the blackness wink. His startled vision cleared itself instantly, and revealed to him the hideous, two-horned mask of a black rhinoceros, peering forth ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of the former, and so he was never at a loss which trees to search. No sooner had he begun, than he was surprised at the quantities that he found. To an ordinary observer the trunk of the spruce tree seems like any other tree trunk—no rougher, and perhaps somewhat smoother than many; but Tom now found that on every tree almost there were little round excrescences, which, on being picked at with the knife, came off readily, ...
— Lost in the Fog • James De Mille
... visible, and, terrified at the strange form which it had assumed, he ran hastily to the rest of the tribe, and, gathering them together, held a consultation as to what should be done to appease it. Some suggested that upon every tree trunk should be scratched appealing messages, which the Nat might read; others were in favour of placing a huge heap of spears and swords near the spot where the embodied Nat had been seen in order that it might be tempted to destroy all those who urged ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 27, March 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... complex colonnades, silent ruins are grown through with giant roots, and about the mysterious entrances of the crypts there lingers yet the odour of ancient sacrifices. The stem of a rare column rises amid the branches, the fragment of an arch hangs over and is supported by a dismantled tree trunk. Ages ago the leaves fell, and withered; ages ago; and now the skeleton arms, lifted in fantastic frenzy against the desert skies, are as weird and symbolic as the hieroglyphics ...
— A Mere Accident • George Moore
... face, angry, disturbed; and the youth's—who would have thought that red-faced yokel could look so distraught! And painfully affected by that sight, he jumped up. They saw him then. Megan dropped her hands, and shrank behind a tree trunk; the boy gave an angry grunt, rushed at the bank, scrambled over and vanished. Ashurst went slowly up to her. She was standing quite still, biting her lip-very pretty, with her fine, dark hair blown loose about her face, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... large bake-oven. A hole at the apex is intended for the chimney, but it is also the door: Since there is no other mode of entrance into the jourt, and the interior is reached by descending a notched tree trunk—similar to that used in climbing up to ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... crept slowly forward, beside the dancing shadows, taking concealment behind every irregularity. Thus approaching, I discovered the flaring beacon to be a huge pine knot stuck into the earth wall, blazing right merrily. Lying at full length, with head outstretched from behind the tree trunk that concealed my body, I gazed forward into a small room, possibly a dozen feet in width, the walls concealed by grotesquely pictured bark, its floor covered with a rude matting, dyed in fanciful colors. Somewhat to the left of where I ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... I had leaped across the brook and pushed my way into the thicket. It was empty. I stared about me; I scanned every tree trunk, every bush. Suddenly I saw him. He was seated on a fallen log, his head resting in his hands, his rusty black robe gathered around him. For a moment my hair stirred under my cap; sweat started on forehead and cheek bone; then I recovered ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... like a fine stretch, Tom," he now announced. "Notice that road looking as if it might be pitted with shell-holes? Just on its right, where that single tree trunk stands, there's a field as level as a barn floor. Circle around, and let's get ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... upon the drooping vegetation with a sound so monotonous that Suma grew accustomed to it and did not notice its existence. But the chamber in the giant tree trunk remained dry and comfortable, a little world apart from its mournful surroundings. And scarcely had she entered upon her voluntary retirement when a swarm of craneflies took up its station at the entrance. These latter were slender, almost wasplike insects with lacy wings and long, thread-like ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... the tree at Jane. He seemed to be racking his doggish brain as to the best method of reaching her. He kept making little futile leaps, whining impatiently. Finally, he stood up on his hind legs, planted his fore paws against the tree trunk, and barked dolefully. Jane bent down and mischievously dropped a cherry into his open mouth. Huz choked, sputtered, and after a first rapturous crunch, hastily deposited the acid fruit upon the ground. He looked reproachfully ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... needed, and a blow struck in the crotch of the limb caused the chip to fly. This apparatus was improved and refined by putting a horn tip on the end point of contact. Another device was to cut a notch in a tree trunk, which could be used as a fulcrum. A long lever was used to apply the pressure to the stone laid at the root of the tree, or on the horizontal space at the bottom of the notch.[207] These variations show persistent endeavor to get control of the necessary force and to apply ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... I said," continued the voice, sounding closer in his ear as his cheek brushed the ridged bark of the tree trunk. "And, if I do have to remind you, it would be nicer if you said 'Mr. Ashlew,' considering ...
— The Talkative Tree • Horace Brown Fyfe
... buffet, were Rob's most conspicuous furniture. A shaving-strap hung on the wall. The fire was out, but the trunk of a tree, charred at one end, showed how he heated his house. He made a fire of peat, and on it placed one end of a tree trunk that might be six feet long. As the tree burned away it was pushed further into the fireplace, and a roaring fire could always be got by kicking pieces of the smouldering wood and blowing them into flame with the bellows. When Rob saw the minister he groaned relief and ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... the river, in a sheltered little coulee, there was a group of great bull pines. Sometimes she had gone there and leaned against a tree trunk, and had shut her eyes and listened to the vast symphony which the wind and the water played together. She forgot that she had come to see a picture which she had helped to create. She held her eyes shut ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... and pyramids; Greece an artistic series of pictures of her famous statues and ruins. Fiji shows a pirogue, the native canoe, rudely shaped from a tree trunk and hollowed out by fire. Labuan has a piratical looking native dhow. The stamps of Rhodesia and the Congo Free State depict the advance of civilization on the dark continent. History is sumptuously illustrated in the series of stamps issued by our Government ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... directions. To primitive folk the great world, whose ways are puzzling enough in all conscience to us, must have been simply bewildering in its dangers and complications. It was an amazement of Fear and Ignorance. Thunderbolts might come at any moment out of the blue sky, or a demon out of an old tree trunk, or a devastating plague out of a bad smell—or apparently even out of nothing at all! Under those circumstances it was perhaps wise, wherever there was the smallest SUSPICION of danger or ill-luck, to create a hard and fast TABOO—just ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... Suyak of Lepanto Province. A man knew that his faithless wife went habitually at dusk with another man to a secluded spot under a fallen tree. One evening the husband preceded them, and lay down with his spear on the tree trunk. When the guilty people arrived he killed them both in their crime, thrusting his spear through them and ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... for more'n five years," he said, leaning back on to a fallen tree trunk, with a satisfied sigh (cabbage and tea being inflating), adding when I sympathised, "nor a woman neither, ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... descried waving in the air, while its owner apparently lay partly on his back, his shoulders against a tree trunk. As the trap came nearer, the man could be seen distinctly; he was reading, with one leg balancing across the knee ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... drops, that seemed to her frightened imagination like the servants of the savage creature that she had left in the tree-tops. She slipped out again, in spite of wind and rain, obedient to his command, and as she dropped her bundle at the foot of the tree trunk, she whispered, ...
— Jewel Weed • Alice Ames Winter
... ice-cakes and wallowing logs and slowly turning islets of uprooted trees and the debris of the winter forest. But fortune so favoured the wolf that he fell in a space of clear water, instead of being dashed to a pulp on ice-cake or tree trunk. He disappeared, came to the surface gasping, struck out hardily through the grim and daunting turmoil, and succeeded in gaining one of those islets of toughly interlaced debris which turned slowly in the flood. Upon this precarious refuge, crouched ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... for his escape, and so were Richard and Marguerite. They seated themselves on an overturned tree trunk, to recover a little strength. When they had rested a little, the Count quickly threw off his uniform and donned some old clothes belonging to Richard. With a staff in his hand and a bundle on his back, Richard now led the way, while ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... the tree trunk. He scarcely breathed. The approaching figures came directly toward ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... drops changed to a heavy downpour. The moonlight had long since been obliterated and the short intervals between the lightning flashes were spaces of intense blackness. A yellow-clad figure scrambled over the tree trunk and the cowboy took the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... can always tell the age of the amiable serpent you are examining—if it will let you count the number of joints of its rattle. Captain F—— gave me the rattle of one which had as many as twelve joints. He said it had belonged to a very large snake which had crawled from under a fallen tree trunk on which his children were playing. After exhibiting his interesting captive, Israel killed, stuffed, and presented it to me for preservation as a trophy, and made me extremely happy by informing me that there was a nest of them where this ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... flashed, and he hurled it at Eadmund, but so skilfully that it did but graze his head, sticking firmly into the tree trunk. And he cried in a voice that shook ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... passing objects drew his attention. On the third day, too, he uttered his first genuine woodpecker cry of "pe-auk!" He had not the least embarrassment before me. I think he regarded me as a part of the landscape,—the eccentric development of a tree trunk, perhaps; for while he never looked at me nor put the smallest restraint upon his infant passions, let another person come into the wood, and he was at once silent and on his guard. All this time he had become more and more fascinated with the view without his door; one could fairly ...
— Little Brothers of the Air • Olive Thorne Miller
... he sat down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect something which whizzed through the space where his head had ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... were partially known to the Spaniards in the West Indies early in the 17th century; but its first introduction to this country was about 1770, when it was employed by artists for erasing black-lead pencil marks, hence its familiar name; it is collected by making incisions in the tree trunk and gathering the slowly exuding juice, which is first solidified by drying, then purified by boiling and washing; it is flexible and elastic, insoluble in water, and impenetrable to gases and fluids, and these qualities give it great commercial importance; the use of ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... not gainsay this, and as not one of us wanted to kill the animal or let her go, Jones had his way. So he went up the tree, passed the first branch and then another. The lioness changed her position, growled, spat, clawed the twigs, tried to keep the tree trunk between her and Jones, and at length got out on a branch in a most favorable ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... said David, with sudden energy, and, taking up a stone again, he flung it at a tree trunk opposite, with a certain vindictiveness as though Brother Winterbotham were ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... "fly" to another. As he springs he spreads out the whitish membranes along each side, holds his flat tail rigid, quivering. Thus he goes down, parachute fashion, on an inclined plane. Just before he gets to the tree trunk which is his objective point, he makes momentum aid his muscles in the accomplishment of ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... my camera under cover of a fallen tree trunk and crossed to a covered shell-hole which answered to the name of dug-out. Anyway, apart from shrapnel or a direct hit from an H.E., we were comparatively safe, being below ground level. Along the centre was a rough plank ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... servants and gillies had gathered, hastily clad; they were met by Logan, who briefly bade some bring hammers, and the caber, or pine-tree trunk that is tossed in Highland sports. It would make a good battering-ram. Donald Macdonald he sent at once to Mr. Macrae. He met Bude and Lady Bude, and rapidly explained that there was no danger of fire. The Countess ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... our former one had been. The next morning we rode forward to visit the pound which I will briefly describe. It consisted of a large circle of stout stakes, driven into the ground perpendicularly, close together. There was one opening, at the entrance of which a strong tree trunk was placed about a foot from the ground, and at the inner side an excavation was made sufficiently deep to prevent the buffalo from leaping back when once in the pound. From this entrance, on either side, gradually widening, extended two rows of bushy posts, stuck into the ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... whew-ew-ew-ew which came too near I dived for cover. If there was no friendly wall or vehicle or tree trunk at hand the ditch beside the road was always there. And every time I dived my companion stood in the middle of the road and shook with laughter—not unkindly, but in the utmost friendliness and good humor—waiting till I rejoined him and we ...
— Current History, A Monthly Magazine - The European War, March 1915 • New York Times
... out, six of us, Mrs Atherley carrying the precious thing; and we gathered round an old tree trunk in ...
— The Holiday Round • A. A. Milne
... movements are checked by the thickness of the hazels. In a beech grove he has more liberty to run and leap. Sometimes you will see twenty at once all nibbling the beech nuts on the ground. On hearing you they make for a tree trunk, and, rushing up it for a yard or two, stop suddenly, absolutely still, with fearful eyes, and ears intently and intensely cocked. If you stand equally still the squirrel will stay there, motionless, like a piece of the tree, for a minute or so, and then, in a very bad temper, disappear ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... living in the place, saw an old man floating down the river on a tree trunk whose agonized face and streaming gray hair excited his compassion. He plunged into the torrent, clothes and all, and brought the old man safely ashore. Scarcely had he done this when the upper story of a house floated by on which Mrs. Adams, of Cambria, and her two children were borne. He plunged ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... escape their range by going up, but they followed it. By this time the compensators were already beginning to fail. Haywire instruments jerked the machine back down and then side to side, then into a tree trunk, blindly. It rebounded and dipped low, almost touching the ground before it curved back up. Some of Glynnis' shots were missing, but Nelson made every shot count, even while the ...
— The Happy Man • Gerald Wilburn Page
... little people of the woods came peeping through the greenery surveying her, weighing her, examining her, testing her spirit of good or ill. A little squirrel went scampering up one huge tree trunk and down another, just a pace ahead, scouting for the other pixies of the woods, till with a scurr-r-r and chitter—chipper—ee, he whisked back in his tracks. "She's all right, people," he said. Then a whisky jack flitted from ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... alternately its bright yellow breast and olive back towards the light; now jetting his beautiful tail, or quivering his wings tremulously, he darts off into some thicket in response to a call from his mate; or, flying to a neighboring tree trunk, clings for a moment against the mossy hole to pipe his little strain, or look up the exact whereabouts of ...
— Birds Illustrated by Color Photography [May, 1897] - A Monthly Serial designed to Promote Knowledge of Bird-Life • Various
... They were not arranged in a row on a level, but mounted one above another on the slope. Jimmies idea was to so place the fires one above the other, some thing like notches cut in a tree trunk. ...
— Boy Scouts in an Airship • G. Harvey Ralphson
... mistaken about the drums, but none of them could have been mistaken about the bolt which came out of nowhere to slice through a tree trunk as a knife might slash wet clay. Blaster—and ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... fell in a slow drizzle, but Henry still watched at the loophole, and soon he caught a glimpse of two parallel rows of men bearing something heavy, and approaching the cabin. They had secured a tree trunk, and would batter down the door; but they must come within range, and Henry smiled to himself. Then he beckoned to Paul to come ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... lay two skiffs, light affairs, each cut out of a piece of tree trunk: just such as would hold two men, and such as two men could carry on their ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... two forms of wooden stool from Zui. The small three-legged stool on the left has been cut from the trunk of a pion tree in such a manner as to utilize as legs the three branches into which the main stem separated. The other stool illustrated is also cut from a single piece of tree trunk, which has been reduced in weight by cutting out one side, leaving ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... hand. Beyond was a field sloping steeply upwards, and at the top a small pine plantation. She climbed slowly towards it, keeping close to the hedge side, fragrant with wild roses, and holding her skirts high above the dew-laden grass. Arrived in the plantation she sat down with her back against a tree trunk. ...
— Anna the Adventuress • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... slowly across the garden and the lane, and found her way to a little seat she had made on the side of the bluff overlooking the water. Here, her back to a tree trunk, she sat immobile, trying to still the turmoil of memories ...
— The Nest Builder • Beatrice Forbes-Robertson Hale
... said the skeptic, leaning comfortably against a tree trunk. "This old Mexican governor seems to have had an ...
— The Lure of San Francisco - A Romance Amid Old Landmarks • Elizabeth Gray Potter and Mabel Thayer Gray
... followed the blow. Quick as a flash D'ri had caught the painter by the tail and one hind leg. With a quick surge of his great, slouching shoulders, he flung him at arm's-length. The lithe body doubled on a tree trunk, quivered, and sank down, as the dog came free. In a jiffy I had run my sword through the cat's belly and made ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... fright of a mouse. There is a swoop of wings which you neither distinctly hear nor clearly see, yet you are aware, in a less marked degree than was the mouse, that an owl was near. You feel certain that the downy woodpecker is asleep in that neat little round hole on the southwest side of a tree trunk, just a little higher than you can reach. In the early afternoon you saw a red squirrel go gaily up a tall red oak and climb into his nest of leaves. You fancy he is snugly coiled there now. This recent hill of fresh dirt—strange sight in January—was surely made by a mole, and you know that they ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... daylight, however, that we fully realized how narrowly we had escaped death. A great tree trunk had fallen on each side of the camp, so near as to brush the eaves of the low roof. Dry stubs of branches were driven deep into the frozen earth. Either trunk would have crushed the old camp like an eggshell! ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... under her hand, was resting against the prop formed by a great tree trunk behind her shoulders, and looking down at the two men. ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... now for the stupid mirrors which could only reflect what was placed before them. Each day he found something new and beautiful in the view from the narrow windows. Now it was a squirrel frisking about and running up some tall tree trunk so rapidly that Prince Harweda could not follow it with his eyes; again it was a mother bird feeding her young. By this time, the windows were a foot wide ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... of the lean-to faced the fallen tree trunk, which lay before it in such a position that it would ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... the bottom of the picture, not quite in the middle of the picture, a little on the right, is also ultramarine, and here the colour is used nearly in its first intensity. And the colossal woman who wears the blue gown leans against some grey forest tree trunk, and a great white primeval animal is what her forms and attitude suggest. There are some women about her, and they lie and sit in disconnected groups like fragments fallen from a pediment. Nor is any ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... she heard footsteps coming down the path. "They're coming," she thought, and was just ready to fall on Hinpoha's neck, when out of the woods came two men, one of them carrying a little boy. A few paces from where Migwan stood, hidden by a large tree trunk, they came to a halt, and the one man, pulling out a purse, began to count money. The little boy was dressed in a white sailor suit and hat, and his hair under the hat brim was yellow and curly. A beam of sunlight ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Maine Woods - Or, The Winnebagos Go Camping • Hildegard G. Frey
... wide. And lastly, he could throw a knife backwards while running at full speed with such strength and precision of aim that this new kind of Parthian arrow would go whistling through the air to hide two inches of its iron head in a tree trunk no thicker than a man's thigh. When to these accomplishments are added an equal skill with the musket, the pistol, and the quarter-staff, a good deal of mother wit, a deep hatred for Republicans, against whom he had vowed vengeance at the foot of the scaffold on which his father and mother ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... are," he said, and, taking an electric torch out of his pocket, he cast a dim beam over two or three blackened sections of tree trunk, scooped out into the semblance of pipes, which were lying forlornly in a little ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... 7th Tuesday 1806 Set out at Day light, porceded up the Creek about 2 mile and crossed on a tree trunk the Salt makers have fallen across, then proceeded on to the Ocean 3/4 mile & proceded up 3 miles to the mouth of Colimex River about 80 or 100 yds wide verry rapid & Cuts its banks, here we found an old Village of 3 houses, one only inhabited by one familey, ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... got tired and sat down in the shade of some overhanging branches. Reinhard stood opposite to her, leaning against a tree trunk; and as he heard the cuckoo calling farther back in the woods, it suddenly struck him that all this had happened once before. He looked at her and with an ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... impudent Labrador Jay[3] scolding them in its harsh voice, came so close that Charley could almost have caught it with his bare hands. Chickadees[4] chirped in the trees. A three-toed arctic woodpecker hammered industriously upon a tree trunk. In the distance a red squirrel chattered happily ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... but not before they had trampled down a border of pinks and lilies in the cruellest way, and made great holes in a bed of China roses, and even begun to nibble at a Jackmanni clematis that I am trying to persuade to climb up a tree trunk. The gloomy gardener happened to be ill in bed, and the assistant was at vespers—as Lutheran Germany calls afternoon tea or its equivalent—so the nurse filled up the holes as well as she could with ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... strides of the good beast, a leap over a fallen tree trunk, and in a wide clearing I saw before me ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Theodore has seized Maurits, crushed his ruffle, and is shaking him till he twists like an eel. Then he slings him from him with such force that Maurits staggers backwards any! would have fallen if he had not found support in a tree trunk. And there Maurits stands and gasps "What?" Yes, what else should ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... stripped off his jacket, and, by means of a lift from Fred, got upon one of the great horizontal boughs, and soon contrived to reach the one to which the kite tail was fluttering. But Harry was at the thick end, by the tree trunk, and the tail was twenty feet further off, at the thin end; and, as those who have tested the wood in their lead pencils well know, cedar is very brittle. Now, Harry was no coward, but he knew that he would be laughed at if he did not succeed, so, in spite of the danger, ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... tree trunk in a long brown cambric robe that fitted him closely and gave him at the foot only the absolute space that he needed for walking. He carried real apple twigs almost entirely stripped of their leaves and laden with blossoms made of white and pink paper. ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... his long sharp claws in the pole. It was part of a tree trunk, for the regular tent pole had been broken when the tent was carried away ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus • Laura Lee Hope
... watched all the movements of his white-robed master, who, drawing a little fife from his red cummerbund sash, began to play a shrill, weird tune. A frightened household coterie watched from a safe distance the thirty-foot circle of herbage around the shade of the giant tree trunk. A shudder crept over the watchers as a huge brown head, with two white circles on the back of the neck, rose slowly out of the grass, and two red-hot gleaming eyes blazed out, as an immense cobra swelled out its fearfully disgusting hood, and, ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... narrow paths cut into the sides of these chasms, but I walked along with a firm tread and without the slightest feeling of dizziness. Sometimes I leaped over a crevasse whose depth would have made me recoil had I been in the midst of glaciers on shore; sometimes I ventured out on a wobbling tree trunk fallen across a gorge, without looking down, having eyes only for marveling at the wild scenery of this region. There, leaning on erratically cut foundations, monumental rocks seemed to defy the laws of balance. From between their stony knees, trees sprang up like jets under fearsome ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... back. The Martian seemed to acquiesce. His single eye closed to a mere slit. He moved to a position between Forepaugh and the tree trunk, braced his feet. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... and gentle slope where Melicent sat herself comfortably down, her back against the broad support of a tree trunk, and Gregoire lay prone upon the ground with—his head ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... the monastery; the twelfth, where the whip is being laid on; the fourteenth, with an especially good figure of Benedict; the sixteenth, where the meal is spread; the twentieth, with the devil on the tree trunk; the twenty-first, when the fire is being extinguished; the twenty-fifth, with soldiers in the distance; the twenty-seventh, with a fine cloaked figure; the twenty-eighth, where there is a struggle for a ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... free he would rush after me down the garden, where he would go bounding along, arching his back, and setting up the fur upon his tail. Every now and then he would hide in some clump, and from thence charge out at me, and if I ran after him, away he would rush up a tree trunk, and then crouch on a branch with glowing eyes, tearing the while with his claws at the bark as if in a tremendous state of excitement, ready to bound down again, and race about till he was tired, after which I had only to stoop down and say, "Come on," when he would ...
— Nat the Naturalist - A Boy's Adventures in the Eastern Seas • G. Manville Fenn
... Ith sat in the forest waiting for the day to pass, he suddenly thought he saw a tree trunk looking at him as with a face. And Ith was afraid, for trees should not look at men. But soon Ith saw that it was only a tree and not a man, though it was like a man. Ith used to speak to this tree, and tell it about Lod, for he dared not speak to ...
— A Dreamer's Tales • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... enemies there are some large sorts which may do great damage in short order—rabbits and field mice. They may be kept away by mechanical protection, such as wire, or by heaping the earth up to a height of twelve inches about the tree trunk. Or they may be caught with poisoned baits, such as boiled grain in which a little Rough on Rats or similar poison has been mixed. The former method for the small home garden is little trouble, safer to Fido and Tabby, and ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... forced. She was silent and the quietude seemed oppressive. The girl leaned back to a great tree trunk and looked up. The sky wore an ocher hue against which the branches quivered in zigzags of blackness. Mr. Heatherbloom moved apart to watch, but still he neither saw nor heard sign of any one drawing near. The sad ocher merged into a somber blue; the stars came out, one by one, then ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... tenderfoot, even if he did not know as much as some of the others about woodcraft. He walked along the log, made the jump successfully, though falling flat on his face when he gained the rock; managed to gain the second tree trunk, and conducted himself so cleverly on the whole that Ned gave him a wave of approval after he had joined the others some ...
— Boy Scouts on Hudson Bay - The Disappearing Fleet • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the log. Charley increased his speed. As he neared the log he gave a cry of terror and bounded forward like a shot. What Charley had mistaken for a tree trunk was his chum's prostrate form. The flames ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... raised its head; and darted up the tree trunk. It was gone. And the snake slid noiselessly off into the underbrush.... The naked girl turned dark, deep eyes upon the stranger. She seemed not to mind her nakedness. And to him it seemed not strange that she should not. ...
— A Fool There Was • Porter Emerson Browne
... objects for nature study. There are many useful as well as interesting lessons taught by mushrooms to those who stop to read their stories. The long growth period of the spawn in the ground, or in the tree trunk, where it may sometimes be imprisoned for years, sometimes a century, or more, before the mushroom appears, is calculated to dispel the popular notion that the mushroom "grows in a night." Then from the button stage to the ripe fruit, several days, a week, a month, or a year ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... crossing the tree trunk, which was submerged nearly a foot deep with water running at mill-race speed, and resumed the trail, following running water most of the way over a very good path. Once again we had a few hours' positive enjoyment, with no sense of being in a sub-arctic country. We could hardly ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... squirrel's bullying cough. How he had hated the squirrel—a midget incarnation of mischief, whose whole life was spent in practical joking. How often had he heard that hateful cough shot into his ear, as My Lady Shadowtail whisked past him, a sinuous brown flash curling round the tree trunk! How often had he promptly dropped his hard-earned nut in consequence, only to see it seized by a field-mouse! How often had he swung at the end of a tapering twig, while the squirrel feinted at him ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... that Dave stood with his back to the trunk of the tree. Around Darry's neck a noose was fast. Back of the prisoner the rope had been wrapped once around the trunk of the tree. Next, several folds of rope had been passed both around Darrin and the tree trunk in such fashion that the boy's arms were pinioned fast to his sides. In addition, a single turn of rope had been taken around each arm. Finally, the rope had been knotted several times at the opposite side of the tree from ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock |
