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More "Spike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you're going to be tried for conspiracy among the other things. You see that pattern? It fits the foot of a man who went out one night with a spy Shackleby sent over to see how and when you would play the devil with our work in the canyon. It even shows the stump of the filed-off creeper-spike on your right boot. There's no use protesting—a friend of yours here will help us to trace your career back to the finding of the Blue Bird mine. Take him along and lock him into the galvanized ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... 1581 the king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty foreknowledge of Darnley's death. He was executed deservedly, and his head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth. The death of this avaricious, licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to the preachers and their party, and a crook in ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which had brought him thither thirty-six hours before. When the coach reached Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... "Strip your old tub down to a flying balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she'd outfoot you on every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr. Give me the Ark and a breeze, and your House-boat wouldn't be within ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... land-lubbers would be able to understand the marine technicalities Mr. RUSSELL introduces into his stories without explanations such as this, it would be difficult to say. But with such assistance, a studding-sail-boom becomes as easy of identification as a marling-spike lashed to a forecastle spinaker-boom, close hauled aport under trysails, blowing out like flags from the grips of clew-lines and leech-lines towards the close of a second dog-watch! Shiver LINDLEY MURRAY'S timbers! but what can be finer than a bulkhead battened down with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... the Old Folks never made such a fuss about flies as we make nowadays. You cannot pick up a magazine without running plump into an article on the deadly housefly—with pictures of him magnified until he looks like the old million-toed, barrel-eyed, spike-tailed dragon of your boyhood mince-pie dreams. The first two pages convince you that the human race is doomed to extermination within eighteen months ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... wi' eye-balls wet, To zee the flow'rs that she'd a-zet; The lilies, white's her maiden frocks, The spike, to put 'ithin her box, Wi' columbines an' hollyhocks; The jilliflow'r an' nodden pink, An' rwose that touch'd her soul to think Ov woone ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... but Barbara smiled. By and by—"Miss Barb, kin I ax you a favo'?—Yass'm. Make yo' paw put me som'ers in de crowd to-day whah I ken see you when you draps de hammeh on de golden spike—Law'! dass de dress o' dresses! You looks highly fitt'n' ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Charley rapidly mounted a tall tree that stood close beside the truck. As luck would have it, the tree stood all by itself, its nearest neighbors having been cut in making the road. Two-thirds of the way up the tree, Charley drove a spike deep into the wood. He sank a second spike not far from the first. Then he drove home a third. The lead-in wire dangled behind him at his belt. He unfastened it and twisted it tight to the spikes, wrapping ...
— 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
... rise to the hight of five feet; the pedestals on which these immages are fixed are sometimes cut out of the solid stick with the canoe, and the imagary is formed of seperate small peices of timber firmly united with tenants and motices without the assistance of a single spike of any kind. when the natives are engaged in navigating their canoes one sets in the stern and steers with a paddle the others set by pears and paddle over the gunwall next them, they all kneel in the bottom of the canoe and set on their feet. their paddles are of a uniform ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... and most agreeable men I ever conversed with. Indeed for six months of the year they keep company with the most distinguished travellers of Europe. With these guides, each of us armed with a long pole with an iron spike, such as my uncle described to me ages ago, and which I never expected to wield, we came down La Flegere, which we mounted on mules. In talking to an old woman who brought us strawberries, I was surprised to hear her pronounce the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... its aspect; the upper part of the flame has, indeed, broken away, and is now shown in that part of the drawing between the two figures on the line above. The same plate also shows various instances of the remarkable spike-like objects, taken, however, at different times and at various parts of the sun. These spikes attain altitudes not generally greater than 20,000 miles, though sometimes they soar aloft to ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... considerable abundance a stately fern, the Cyclopteris Hibernicus (see Fig. 2), of mayhap not smaller proportions than our monarch of the British ferns, Osmunda regalis, associated with a peculiar lepidodendron, and what seems to be a lepidostrobus,—possibly the fructiferous spike or cone of the latter, mingled with carbonaceous stems, which, in the simplicity of their texture, and their abundance, give evidence of a low but not scanty vegetation. Ere passing to the luxuriant carboniferous flora, I shall make but one other remark. The existing plants whence we derive our ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... inflorescence usually met with are the spike, raceme and panicle. When the spikelets are sessile or borne directly along an elongated axis as in Enteropogon melicoides the inflorescence is a spike. If the spikelets borne by the axis are all stalked, ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... Ragged Orchid, a near relative of the foregoing, H. psycodes, but far less fortunate in its attributes of beauty, its long scattered spike of greenish-white flowers being so inconspicuous in its sedgy haunt as often to conceal the fact of its frequency. Its individual flower is shown enlarged at Fig. 12—the lip here cut with a lacerated fringe (H. lacera). The pollen-pouches ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... conquered with flying colours. My aim was to pin her down to something definite ... like an impaled butterfly: hers was to flutter over a vast garden of irrelevances; but she did not long evade the spike. I tipped its point with the subtly poisonous suggestion that all arrangements must be made in the hour, otherwise complications might arise. There seemed to be so many people who had been attracted by that simple little advertisement of mine, and really, I must be able to say that I and my ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... single word, but his face had grown pale for a moment. Letting go of his hand-spike, he regained ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... night, from thousands of spots all over the surface of the globe, it received thousands of facts, of cold, accomplished facts. It knew that a tidal wave had swept through China, a cabinet had changed in Chili, in Texas an express train had been held up and robbed, "Spike" Kennedy had defeated the "Dutchman" in New Orleans, the Oregon had coaled outside of Rio Janeiro Harbor, the Cape Verde fleet had been seen at anchor off Cadiz; it had been located in the harbor of San Juan, Porto Rico; it had been sighted steaming slowly past Fortress ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... us a few steps round, as if back towards the cave; where was an iron spike driven into the smooth rock a little above the edge ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... left. This was the only chance that he had of victory or safety, and he seems to have done everything that good generalship could do to secure it. He placed his elephants in advance of his centre and right wing. He had caused the driver of each of them to be provided with a sharp iron spike and a mallet; and had given orders that every beast that became unmanageable, and ran back upon his own ranks, should be instantly killed, by driving the spike into the vertebra at the junction of the head and the spine. Hasdrubal's elephants ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... recommenced active operations, to the great satisfaction of the besieged. The batteries were reopened, and daily contests took place. One night under cover of a fog, a party of the besieged marched up to the principal Spanish battery, and attempted to spike the guns. Every one of them was killed round the battery, not one turning to fly. "The citizens," wrote Don Frederick, "do as much as the best soldiers ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... occurred: the performance prospered peacefully to the close, without incident. All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama. His legs trembled and his breath came in gasps of terror. "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a ruined and disgraced swordsman! I struck the villain feebly because in flourishing the scimetar I had accidentally passed it through my own neck! Father of the Moon, I resign my office." So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and advancing ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... with me." They shanghaied little Tim O'Shane, they cached him safe away, An' though he objurgated some, they "cured" him night an' day; An' pretty soon there came the change amazin' to explain: "I'll never take another drink," sez Timothy O'Shane. They tried it out on Spike Muldoon, that toper of renown; They put it over Grouch McGraw, the terror of the town. They roped in "tanks" from far and near, an' every test was sure, An' like a flame there ran the fame of Deep-hole's ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... boat's painter carefully round a spike of coral and landed on the reef, and with a shellful of rum and cocoa-nut lemonade mixed half and half, he took his perch on a high ledge of coral from whence a view of the sea and the coral strand could ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... went on, "and I know all about it. Just before the war ended an enormous gun was spiked, dismantled and thrown into a well way down on the Dinkler place. It was got out a good while afterward and the spike drilled out, and since then it has been used for a Christmas gun. Well, they've got that thing on an ox wagon, but they've got no ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... with reluctance—for I have always admired Ned Hanlon's pluck—that the national game never received so severe a set-back as it did during the last Baltimore series here. The effort to spike players, the constant flow of profanity and vulgarity, the incessant and idiotic abuse of an umpire, all combined to make the Baltimore club—that local people have been led to believe was made of a crowd of earnest, honest players—thoroughly despised and detested. In ten years' experience ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... league with my brother," muttered Jaimihr to himself when the fat Hindoo had gone, "then the sooner the British quarrel with both of them the better. Howrah alone I can dispose of easily enough, and there is yet time before rebellion starts for the British to spike the guns of the other two. By the time that is done, I ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... brought in the narrow gauge, was the wooden railway built in 1870 from {102} Quebec to Gosford. The rails were simply strips of seasoned maple, 14'x7"x4", notched into the sleepers and wedged in without the use of a single iron spike. The engine and car wheels were made wide to fit the rail. In spite of its cheap construction the road did not pay, and the hope of extending it as far as Lake St John was deferred for a generation. A similar wooden railway was ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... representatives, distinguished as the Long Nine. They were much hampered by an old member who tried to put a stopper upon any measure on the set ground that it was "un-con-sti-tu-tional." Lincoln was selected to "spike his gun." A measure was introduced benefiting the Sangamon district, so that its electee might befittingly push it, and defend it. He was warrantably its usher when the habitual ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... if possible; if dry, it should be soaked until quite soft. Cut some thin strips of hide for sewing or lacing. Now shape a bag or pocket of size sufficient to hold about a hundredweight of stone, and by puncturing the edges with a knife, marline-spike, or other pointed tool, sew together; make a handle of twisted or pleated hide, and having filled your bucket with dry sand or earth let it stand till the whole is quite dry, when it will be properly distended and will maintain its shape until ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... decapitated this Gharib and suppressed his breath of life and forced my cousin and his people back to their belief: and whoso baulketh me, him will I destroy." Then he mounted an elephant paper-white as he were a tower plastered with gypsum, and goaded him with a spike of steel which ran deep into his flesh, whereupon the elephant trumpeted and made for the battle-plain where cut and thrust obtain; and, when he drew near Gharib, he cried out to him, saying, "O dog of mankind, what ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... mallows, of a new and singular coloring, faded in their vase before she had finished copying them. And yet for a whole afternoon she worked enthusiastically at a fantastic design of dream flowers, an extraordinary efflorescence blooming in the light of a miraculous sun, a burst of golden spike-shaped rays in the center of large purple corollas, resembling open hearts, whence shot, for pistils, a shower of stars, myriads of worlds streaming into the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... word belongs To the Foes of Freedom, the Friends of wrongs, And unto them alone. The first and worst of the Tyrant's terms, Barbed to spike at the writhing worms That crawl about his throne. Only the mob at a despot's heels Would juggle a man at Fortune's wheels, Or conjure one with the die that reels From the lip of the dice-cup thrown! The soldier ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... placed on one side a black-handled fork with two prongs, and a knife of the same pattern (this was for Frank) and on the other a small pewter tea-spoon and a knife, of which the only handle was a small iron spike from which the wood had fallen away. (This was for herself.) Then there was a tooth-glass for Frank, and a teacup—without a handle, but with a gold flower in the middle of it, to make up—for herself. In the center of the pocket-handkerchief stood a crockery jug, with ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... extended laterally on either side, like ribs, to support and bind together the huge frame. Undertaken about twelve years ago it has only recently been completed as far as Hankow, about six hundred miles. The last spike in the bridge across the Yellow River was driven in August, 1905, and since that time through trains have been running from the capital to the banks ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Monkstown Castle on the hill to the right, and the grounds of Ballybricken, a beautiful intermixed scene of wood and lawn. The high shore of the harbour's mouth opens gradually. The whole scene is land-locked. The first view of Haulbowline Island and Spike Island, high rocky lands, with the channel opening to Cove, where are a fleet of ships at anchor, and Rostellan, Lord Inchiquin's house, backed with hills, a scenery that wants nothing but the accompaniment of wood. The view of Ballybricken changes; it ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... he. "Pull the damn bed down and spike it to the floor!" This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation. Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was suffering severely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partial electrocution. So we called up Dr. ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... leafy heads which both Sam and I strenuously ignored, while every time I went to dig around their roots somebody had done it before me! There they were, perfectly huge with their great fluted leaves, and right at the end of the row an extra-large plant had sent up a tall, green spike on the end of which a great, pink doll-blossom was shaking out her rosy skirts in the afternoon sun. I stood for a minute looking at her in utter rapture. Then I reached out my arms and gathered her in and put a kiss right in the center of ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stated. "And Ainnesley—why, Ainnesley wouldn't have a roof over his head if we failed in our obligations! You must know as well as I do why the banking interests took our paper to those amounts which made it possible for us to drive the first spike." ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... there's no doubt of it," replied Dent. "That skiff is built of stiff teak planks, with a nose as sharp and hard as an iron spike. If they once hit this light sampan they'll cut it ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... heroically but in vain; step by step they were driven back, the battery was recaptured, and the guns, which in the excitement of the advance the captors had omitted to spike, were retaken ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... victor, placing his foot on the body of the vanquished, and holding to his throat the point of the axe, which terminated in a spike or poniard. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... hated me; he compared my lectures to fireworks, pounced upon every expression of mine that was not altogether clear, once even put me to confusion over some monument of the sixteenth century.... But the most important thing was, he suspected my intentions; my last soap-bubble struck on him as on a spike, and burst. The inspector, whom I had not got on with from the first, set the director against me. A scene followed. I was not ready to give in; I got hot; the matter came to the knowledge of the authorities; I was forced to resign. I did ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... he had fastened a barbed spike, and had secured the arrow to the end of the string. Armed with this weapon, he advanced to the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... took the helmet by the spike and put it on the mantel. "Lord knows, I'm not presenting that as a token of valor to any one. It belonged to a poor chap who died on the field the night I was wounded. My orderly packed it ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... marrying Claudine he swore fiercely, and eight days after, he sent me to Porto on a schooner belonging to one of our neighbours, just to give me a change of air. I came back, at the end of six months, thinner than a marling spike, but more in love than ever. Recollections of Claudine scorched me like a fire. I could scarcely eat or drink; but I felt that she loved me a little in return, for I was a fine young fellow, and more than one ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... to licking the galvanised compound off the newly painted quarter-deck stanchions whenever an opportunity of doing so presented itself. He was a healthy goat of voracious appetite. His gastric juices would have dissolved a marline-spike, and he even made short work of the greater portion of a pair of ammunition boots belonging to the Sergeant-Major of Royal Marines, and devoured with every symptom of relish a sheaf of official and highly important documents ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... master, and then, cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[34] They stayed in their villages till the Greeks had passed by, when they pursued and perpetually harassed them. They had their dwellings in strong places, in which they had also laid up their provisions, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... shot upwards here and there euphorbias, with boughs like the arms of a candle-stick. In the sky vultures soared, and lower there flew from acacia to acacia birds of the raven species with black and white plumage. The grass was yellow and, in spike, looked like ripe rye. But, nevertheless, that dry jungle obviously supplied food for a great number of animals, for several times each day the travelers met considerable herds of antelopes, hartbeests, and particularly zebras. The heat on the open and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... ten stars (say) to a field, we should find a certain small portion having 100 or more to a field, then, on HERSCHEL'S first hypothesis, rigorously interpreted, it would be necessary to suppose a spike-shaped protuberance directed from the earth, in order to explain the increased number of stars. If many such places could be found, then the probability is great that this explanation is wrong. We should more rationally suppose some ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... message from Teppahoo to acquaint me the heifer was brought to Matavai. I immediately went on shore and found that he had been as good as his word. The purchase money was paid, which consisted of a shirt, a hatchet, a spike nail, a knife, a pair of scissors, a gimlet, and file; to which was added a small quantity of loaf-sugar. Teppahoo appeared well pleased with his bargain; and I sent the heifer to Poeeno's residence near which ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... the Sambaquis of the opposite Brazilian shore. The house was guarded by three wooden figures, "clouterly carved," and powdered with ochre or red wood; two of them, representing warriors in studded coatings of spike nails, with a looking-glass fixed in the stomach, raised their hands as if to stab each other. These figures are sometimes found large as life: according to the agents, the spikes are driven in before the wars begin, and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the tall mast as it rocks by the shore; The sun is declining, I see it once more; To-day like the blade in a thick-waving field, To-morrow the spike on ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the cottage gardens have foxgloves in them, but I had not observed any wild, till one afternoon near some woods I found a tall and beautiful foxglove, richer in colour than the garden specimens, and with bells more thickly crowded, lifting its spike of purple above the low cropped hawthorn. In districts where the soil is favourable to the foxglove it would not have been noticed, but here, alone and unexpected, it was welcomed. The bees in spring come to the broad wayside sward by the great mound to the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of the two last do not curve back, but point forward; and as both these carry their heads low down the long sharp spike is often borne horizontally. In the form and length of their neck, the set of their ears, and other respects, the black rhinoceroses differ materially from the white ones. In fact, their habits are quite unlike. The former feed chiefly on the leaves and ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... the heavy ordnance being all that caused me any anxiety. And even now they do not greatly trouble me; for if they keep no better watch there on other nights than they did on this, it would be easy for a couple of resolute men to enter the place, even as I did, bind and gag the sentinels, and spike all eight of the guns, and never a man of them any the wiser until they came to put fire ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Summerhayes I suppose you will have a hard time wading through my scrawl but I know you will be generous and remember that I went to sea when a little over nine years of age and had my pen been half as often in my hand as a marlin spike, I would now be able to write a ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... prim, wheezing old gentleman, sitting opposite Dumps, 'I beg your pardon; but have you ever observed, when you have been in an omnibus on a wet day, that four people out of five always come in with large cotton umbrellas, without a handle at the top, or the brass spike at the bottom?' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... brought alongside the Ship for Sale, but those who brought it would not part with it for anything we could offer them but a Carpenter's broad axe, and this was what we could not part with; they carried it away. Thus we see those very People who but 2 years ago prefer'd a spike Nail to an Axe of any Sort, have so far learnt the use of them that they will not part with a Pig of 10 or 12 pounds weight for anything under a Hatchet, and even those of an inferior or small sort are of no great ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... stopped her speaking at the close of a brief preface to her plea. She, however, soon rallied, though her voice was tremulous throughout, from the conviction that only an eminently successful presentation of her subject, could spike the enemy's batteries and win a verdict of "just and womanly." Mrs. Nichols hoped no further than that. She did not expect conservative Vermont to yield at once for what she asked, as she stood alone with her paper among the press; and there ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... one, intolerably dirty, but very entertaining from her powers of mimicry. She was fond of hearing me whistle airs, and procured me a Tibetan Jews'-harp,* [This instrument (which is common in Tibet) is identical with the European, except that the tongue is produced behind the bow, in a strong steel spike, by which the instrument is held firmer to the mouth.] with which, and coarse tobacco, which I smoked out of a Tibetan brass pipe, I wiled away the dark evenings, whilst my cheerful companion amused himself with an old harmonicon, to the enchantment ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... experience, that the best articles for traffic at these islands, are iron tools in general. Axes and hatchets, nails, from the largest spike down to tenpenny ones, rasps, files, and knives, are much sought after. Red cloth, and linen, both white and coloured, looking-glasses and beads are also in estimation; but of the latter those that are blue are preferred to all others, and white ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... cold. He had known a period of mere scientific curiosity, in the course of which he examined all the tiles of his cell, with the gratifying conclusion that they were all the same shape and size; but was greatly puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end, and also about an iron peg or spike that stood out from the wall, the object of which he does not know to this day. Then he had a period of mere madness not to be written of by decent men, but only by those few dirty novelists hallooed on by the infernal huntsman ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, free-handed ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... inquired Huish. "I'm agreeable. About time, eh? Bloomin' nearly lost another ship, I fancy." He took out a bottle and began calmly to burst the wire with the spike ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leaves are more or less deeply divided, and the sporangia distinct (Fig. 71, B). In Ophioglossum the sterile division of the leaf is usually smooth and undivided, and the spore-bearing division forms a sort of spike, and the sporangia are much less distinct. The sporangia in both differ essentially from those of the true ferns in not being derived from a single epidermal cell, but are developed in part from the ground tissue ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... a hole like a rat in a trap when there's blows to the fore, is more than flesh could stand,' said Lanty, who had seized on a hand-spike and was waving it about his head, true shillelagh fashion, by hereditary instinct in one who had never behold a faction fight, in what ought to have been his ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from interruption. The door was barred and the small aperture which served as window was too highly placed in the wall to allow of eyes to peep; but it was superstition that really kept them safe and proved far more potent as a barrier against their neighbours' curiosity than any spike-crowned wall. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... of the firemen of the ill-fated vessel. He lay on the rock for three hours in the greatest suffering, being beaten by the terrible waves as they washed over him, stripping him by the force of their blows. But all that time he held on to a strong spike-nail; and though his hands were bleeding, and almost raw, he would not let go, for he knew that if he did he would lose ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... every time he knocked one of the spikes in. Of course he went higher every time. They were just far enough apart for a man to get his foot on from one to another. As he went up he had one end of the coil of the rope round his wrist. When he got to the top he was to draw it up to fasten to the top spike, and lower himself down by it to the ground on the other side. At last I felt him pull hard on the rope. I held it, and put my foot on the first spike. I don't know that I should have found it so very easy in the dark to get ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... that spook," Patsy began, "I got the fearfulest thump on my crust that I've had since that marline-spike fell off the main yard on to me in the little affair of ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... was mentally active and alert. Quickly he took hold of my phrase and said, with a show of the old fire that I had seen on so many occasions: "Tumulty, it is never the wrong time to spike disloyalty. When Lansing sought to oust me, I was upon my back. I am on my feet now and I will not have ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... zeal to discover and add to the collection grew upon all the party, the Captain included. Near the water, where the Valerian and the Touch-me-not grew, Marjorie Carruthers found the Snake-head, with its large white flowers on a spike. Another little Carruthers brought to the botanist the purple Monkey flower, but the Captain excelled his youthful nephew by adding to the collection the rarer and smaller yellow one. Then the lawyer himself discovered another yellow flower, the Gratiola or Hedge Hyssop, at the moment when ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... led into the swamp, and disappeared amid the trees. Upon a post near by was an old marlin spike with something white fluttering beneath. This ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... spike the port battery and throw the guns overboard, but it was not done, for the enemy's fire was becoming so rapid and severe that the Captain deemed it judicious to abandon the ship at once in order to save the lives ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... the greater the yield to a flower, as if to guard against chances of loss. The stately foxglove springs from a dust grain, and fading holds aloft a seed spike of prolific invention; the lupin has stout, podded, countable seeds that must of necessity fall to the ground by force of weight. Also in fingering the seeds, you will know why some are slow in germinating: these are either hard and gritty, sandlike, like those of the English primrose, smooth ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... or unchaste; so that in neither sex does wine produce that moral and mental wreckage which abbreviates the length of human existence among those of other creeds. Radical fanaticism, that drives a tack with a maul and a twenty-penny spike with a tack-hammer, cannot be expected to study this or any other question in any rational manner; but to the sociologist, the question as to what produces this remarkable soberness, in the midst of the habitual and continued use of wine in the race from the time of its earliest history, is ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... although one party thinks differently. In a few minutes, however, another truffle is found, and this time the old man delivers a whack on the nose at the right moment, and, seizing the fungus, hands it to me. Now he takes from his pocket a spike of maize, and, picking off a few grains, gives them to the pig to soothe her injured feelings, and encourage her to hunt again. This she is quite ready to do, for a pig has no amour propre. We move about in the dry open wood, keeping always near ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... both names, and amply justifies either prefix. The hideous reptile is very thick and stumpy in proportion to its length, which rarely exceeds two feet, whilst its circumference may be put down at one-fifth of its total measurement. The tail is terminated by a small curved spike, which is commonly regarded as the sting; but though when touched it doubles up, and strikes with this horn, as well as bites, I do not think the tail does any material damage, but this opinion one would find it difficult to make a bushman credit. I once saw a man take a death-adder ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... A crowd of Turkish irregulars, with a few naval officers leading them, and a solid mass of Jack-tars in the centre, would break from a sally-port, or rush vehemently down through the gap in the wall, and scour the French trenches, overturn the gabions, spike the guns, and slay the guards. The French reserves hurried fiercely up, always scourged, however, by the flank fire of the ships, and drove back the sortie. But the process was renewed the same night or the next day with unlessened ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... baffled bull by hunters pressed, Turned sharp about, and faced the flooded west, And saw the star-like spears and moony spokes Gleam from the rocks and lighten through the oaks— A sea of splendour! How the chariots rolled On wheels of blinding brightness manifold! While stumbling over spike and spine and spur Of sultry lands, escaped the son of Ner With smitten men. At this the front of Saul Grew darker than a blasted tower wall; And seeing how there crouched upon his right, Aghast with fear, a black Amalekite, He called, and said: "I pray thee, man of pain, Red from the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... only one kind of sea food, try several, mixed according to taste. Spike this succulent Sea Rabbit with horseradish or a dollop of sherry, ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... and lay this plaster to the back; take opopanax, two ounces, storax liquid, half an ounce; mastich, frankincense, pitch, bole, each two drachms; then with wax make a plaster; or take laudanum, a drachm and a half; mastich, and frankincense, each half a drachm, wood aloes, cloves, spike, each a drachm; ash-coloured ambergris, four grains: musk, half a scruple; make two round plasters to be laid on each side of the navel; make a fume of snails' skins salted, or of garlic, and let it be taken in by the funnel. Use also astringent fomentations ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... opposite direction during the next 6 h. The two lobes, therefore, seem to be constantly closing or opening, though to a very small distance; for we must remember that the little triangle of paper affixed to the marginal spike increased its length, and thus exaggerated somewhat the movement. Similar observations, with the important difference that the petiole was left free and the plant kept under a high temperature, were ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... and injudicious Richard [Sir J. Hooker's youngest son, who had managed to spike himself on a fence.] is none the worse. It is wonderful what boys go through (also what ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... terms of imprisonment. Fortunately no one was killed, and the only casualty was a drummer slightly wounded. The next day both regiments returned their ammunition into the magazine. The Tower Hamlets were ordered to their headquarters, London, and disbanded. The 25th were sent to Spike Island, a convict settlement ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... brilliant English writer has well remarked, with a touch of sound philosophy, that when a nation has rushed upon its fate, the whole force of the national life will sometimes shoot up in one grand character, like the aloe which blooms at the end of a hundred years, shooting up in one single spike of glory, and then expires. And wherever philosophy, refinement, and culture, have gone upon the globe, it is possible to place the finger upon individual men who are the exemplars of a nation's character, those typical forms under which others less noble, less expanded, have manifested themselves. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... commutator may be described as an insulated core on which are two short lengths of brass tubing. One of these has rubbing against it a spring connected with the terminal of the battery; the other has similar communication with the - terminal. Projecting from each tube is a spike, and rising from the baseboard are four upright brass strips not quite touching the commutator. Those on one side lead to the line circuit, those on the other to the earth-plate. When the handle is turned one way, the spikes ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... squeeze. I am highly delighted with Mr. Allan's etchings. "Woo'd an' married an' a'," is admirable! The grouping is beyond all praise. The expression of the figures, conformable to the story in the ballad, is absolutely faultless perfection. I next admire "Turnim-spike." What I like least is "Jenny said to Jockey." Besides the female being in her appearance * * * *, if you take her stooping into the account, she is at least two inches taller than her lover. Poor Cleghorn! I sincerely sympathize with him. Happy I am to think that he yet ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was telling one group about some of the funny things fond mothers had sent to camp with their boys, while just behind another group were listening to an exciting tale of how the only night-shirt in camp, together with the Leader's razor-strop, were hung on the topmost branch of a great spike-topped pine that stood just in the middle of ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... they parted quite amiably at Shinglehurst, where Harold got out. He was then carrying his full sketching kit, including a large holland umbrella, the lower joint of which is an ash staff fitted with a powerful steel spike for driving ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... third upon our left, equidistant from the other two, so as to form a triangle. Their signals showed us their position through the darkness. We saw that it was impossible to retreat unperceived and that our only plan was to spike the guns, abandon the wounded and artillery, put our rifles in as good order as might be, and cut our way through that body of Mexicans which held the road to Victoria. Once in the wood, we were safe, and all Santa Anna's regiments would have been insufficient to dislodge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... excellent reason that it was jammed by a tiny wedge. Hence, it could be opened noiselessly if need be; and lest a hinge might squeak each hinge was forthwith drenched with vaseline. Further, a tiny circlet of India rubber, equipped with a small spike, was ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... points that, although not absolutely essential, tend much to the comfort of the traveller. A couple of large carriage umbrellas with double lining, with small rings fixed to the extremities of the ribs, and a spike similar to that of a fishing-rod to screw into the handle, will form an instantaneous shelter from sun or rain during a halt on the march, as a few strings from the rings will secure it from the wind, if pegged to the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the banderilleros took possession. These were the men with the wooden stakes of the length of a man's arm and the thickness of a thumb, and wrapped around in gay colored paper ribbon streamers, and at one end a thin iron spike about as long as a man's little finger. The banderilleros had to stand in front of the bull, with a stake in each hand, and, as he charged, to step in between his horns and reach over and plant a stake ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... (erica); The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin." Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a Green beetle as if on a pin, You may roll in it, if you would like a Few ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spared one side of your Medal: the head would be seen to more advantage if it were placed on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to the sun, which would then break ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... can and took a shoe lace for a bow string. I had hard work getting the first tiny blaze, but after that I've kept a bed of coals covered with sand as a reserve. I found a piece of wreckage and used part of it for a shelter. One part had a long spike in it and that I sharpened by scraping it on some of the shells. Then I got a piece of fat pine that had washed ashore and made me a torch. With this sharp spike and the torch I went fishing at night and got ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... hair. His fleecy mantle was over him in the house. Every quarrel therein about seat or bed comes to his decision. Should a needle drop in the house, its fall would be heard when he speaks. Above him is a huge black tree, like a millshaft, with its paddles and its cap and its spike. Liken thou him, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... suggestive of wrestling practice—perhaps because these would-be boomers have muddled things, and are thinking of the wrestling lion. Personally, I am not anxious either to box or to wrestle with a kangaroo; for the beast has a plaguey unpleasant hind foot, armed with a claw like a marline-spike, and a most respectable ability to kick a hole in a stranger with it. It is a kind of weapon that ordinary boxing and wrestling systems don't allow for, and not at all an amusing sort of thing to have lashing about among one's ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... old man and a very wild-looking young one, covered with red ochre, total gules, came to their tree, and I went to them. I gave the old man a spike-nail sharpened, but he asked for a tomahawk, and I then ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... had left the starboard side, I saw a bandsman—the 'cellist—come round the vestibule corner from the staircase entrance and run down the now deserted starboard deck, his 'cello trailing behind him, the spike dragging along the floor. This must have been about 12.40 A.M. I suppose the band must have begun to play soon after this and gone on until after 2 A.M. Many brave things were done that night, but none more brave than by those few men playing minute after minute ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... haouse an' as dry as a herrin'," said Dan enthusiastically, as he was slung across the deck in a batter of spray. "Fends 'em off an' fends 'em off, an' 'Don't ye come anigh me,' she sez. Look at her—jest look at her! Sakes! You should see one o' them toothpicks histin' up her anchor on her spike ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... plants in full blossom. Her self-respect was whole again; her spirits rose at a bound. 'I don't know why you admire them so much. They have no scent, and they are only pretty in the lump,' and she broke off a spike of blossom, studied it a little ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Herr Jensen referred to were in a pasture, tethered to an iron spike driven in the ground, with a rope giving them a range of a ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... changes brought no difference into the home, save that George Mansion's arm grew stronger daily in combat against the old foe. Then came the second attack of the enemy, when six white men beset him from behind, again knocking him insensible, with a heavy blue beech hand-spike. They broke his hand and three ribs, knocked out his teeth, injured his side and head; then seizing his pistol, shot at him, the ball fortunately not reaching a vital spot. As his senses swam he felt them drag his poor maimed body into the middle ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... cautiously always, she stopped for long seconds at a time to reconnoitre, shifting her huge ears about and changing their shape, twitching her nostrils, and glancing hither and thither with bright little eyes. Sometimes they passed immense spike-tipped flowers ten feet in diameter, with fleshy yellow leaves which gave out a nauseating stench. Vines with long, recurved thorns and blossoms of deep scarlet, laced the undergrowth together and made passing dangerous. Fire-flies ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... their hands, some men climb into trees and wait for the herd to pass, whilst others drive them under. The hippopotami, however, are not hunted, but snared with lunda, the common tripping-trap with spike-drop, which is placed in the runs of this animal, described by every South African traveller, and generally known as far as the Hametic language is spread. The Karuma Falls, if such they may be called, are a mere ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Amid the sprouting grasses by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... upon a paragraph and handed me the paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... took from the tree a tiny flower-bud and proceeded to dissect it. After the external covering, which consisted of seventeen scales, he came upon the down which protects the flower. On removing this he could perceive four branchlets surrounding the spike of flowers, and the flowers themselves, though so minute, were as distinct as possible, and he could not only count their number, but discern the stamens, and ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... The place seemed deserted. He would have gone up to the door and rapped, but suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side and regarded him. It was a huge heavy-jawed dog of some unfamiliar breed, and it, wore a spike-studded collar. It did not bark nor approach him, it just bristled quietly and emitted a single sound like a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... moving thing. It rode out of the dark and brushed him. It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him. A water hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep. So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his bloody cheek. He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his parched tongue. The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous moisture. He seized it ravenously. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the fact that his interest is included in that of a large number. I have watched several political molecules being educated in this way by the nature of things into a faint feeling of fraternity. But at this moment I am thinking of Spike, an elector who voted on the side of Progress though he was not inwardly attached to it under that name. For abstractions are deities having many specific names, local habitations, and forms of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the centre-spike of gold Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb What time, with ardors manifold, The bee goes singing to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... a spike which perfectly fits a hole still to be seen in the cornice supporting the terrace. Larsan, who thought and prepared for everything in case of any emergency, had fixed this spike into the cornice. All he had to do to make his ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... your classes to woman; it needs be that she should learn." The moment you give her the ballot, you take bonds of wealth and fashion and conservatism, that they will educate this power, which is holding their interest in its right hand. I want to spike the gun of selfishness; or rather, I want to double-shot the cannon of selfishness. Let Wall Street say, "Look you! whether the New York Central stock shall have a toll placed upon it, whether my million shares shall be worth sixty cents in the market or ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the prince. "I know there are guards in every gallery, bolts to every door, cannon and soldiery at every barrier. How will you overcome the sentries—spike the guns? How will you break through the bolts ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... decorated it with artificial flowers of the same material, so that it was not distinguishable from porcelain; another had forged an axe-blade of steel, etched the surface and fixed it upon a polished ebony rod with a terminal spike, forming a miniature ice-axe, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... long stretches of Lake Maggiore, looking eastward to Bellinzona, and southward to Luino, there is a shelf of grass meadows which is very beautiful in springtime with a great multitude of wild flowers. More particularly is this so in early June, when the slender asphodel Saint Bruno's lily, with its spike of white blossom, is in flower. To the westward of this delightful shelf there is a deep and densely wooded trench, a great gulf of blue some mile or so in width out of which arise great precipices very high and wild. ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... in front, armed with a brick; there was one at each side, and one behind, and they closed up around me. I was struck on all sides; and, while I was attending to those in front, I received a blow on my head, from behind, dealt with a heavy hand-spike. I was completely stunned by the blow, and fell, heavily, on the ground, among the timbers. Taking advantage of my fall, they rushed upon me, and began to pound me with their fists. I let them lay on, for a while, after I came to myself, with a view of gaining strength. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... when we mean spike-tailed coats), has an eye on the scourge of Rum, and will eventually stamp it out. "But why," asks the Impracticable, "does not Society stamp it out at once?" "Why does not the sun shine twenty-four hours ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... State legislatures, but the "scamps" are vastly better at promising than fulfilling. The politicians, of course, expect all this flutter and buncombe about doing something for women in New York—in California—in Iowa—is going to spike our guns and make us help the Republican party to carry all before it; but we must not be thus fooled ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... position she thus took made her so high that the Cat seemed tiny in the distance below. Old Grumpy had faced a Grizzly once, and was she now to be held up by a miserable little spike-tailed skunk no bigger than a mouthful? She was ashamed of herself, especially when a wail from Johnny smote on her ear and reminded her of her plain duty, as well as supplied his ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... impression of a stranger when observing the conduct of a mahout or driver is sympathy for the animal, which is governed through the severe authority of the iron spike. This instrument is about twenty inches long, and resembles somewhat an old-fashioned boat-hook, being a sharp spike at the extremity beyond the keen-pointed hook; it can thus be used either to drive the elephant forward by digging the point into its ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... The truckman, his case-spike hanging from his neck, listened with generous interest to Tom's simple, unboastful account of all ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... aloft another trophy of the search—a metal spike and some tarnished and corroded metal ornaments. They had lain close ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... going aloft to fit a strap round the main-topmast head for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards, and a marlin spike about his neck. He fell, and not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed, with all those things around his neck, he probably sank immediately. We pulled astern in the direction in which he fell, and though we knew ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than likely that you have a pike follow ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and strong that the song of soldiers marching is nothing to it. "'T is only the joke I am playing. Am I the wife to bother you with learning when you know already so much," she says, "and have the care of the section on your mind, with ties to lay straight and rails to spike fast so that the great railroad may run?" And when he speaks once more of the study she should make of knowledge Molly closes the big book and sets it on the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... strode into the waiting room on spike heels. Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag and overseas cap were all purple, the purple the painter called "the color of grapes ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... replied, no doubt with a malicious twinkle in his eyes: "It is very possible; he is so lazy." Paisiello was still alive, and so was at least the memory of his opera, so Rossini, as a precautionary measure, thought it wise to spike, if possible, the guns of an apprehended opposition. So he addressed a letter to the venerable composer, asking leave to make use of the subject. He got permission and then wrote a preface to his libretto ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... without further adventure, and found the four company- guns with their spike teams and single drivers waiting for us. Many people were gathered here, and we were halted, so far as I could see, that they might talk with the men in the ranks. The ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... club-rush, a plant growing in lakes, by edges of rivers and similar localities, with a creeping underground stem, narrow, nearly flat leaves, 3 to 6 ft. long, arranged in opposite rows, and a tall stem ending in a cylindrical spike, half to one foot long, of closely packed male (above) and female (below) flowers. The familiar brown spike is a dense mass of minute one-seeded fruits, each on a long hair-like stalk and covered with long downy hairs, which render the fruits very light and readily carried by the ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... divided and warned not to lean over the sides and fall out—a somewhat superfluous caution—as most of them, though unused to riding in any legitimate manner, were pretty well used to balancing themselves behind any vehicle which offered as much as a spike to sit on, out of sight of the driver. Then came the rush into the vans. Grey and Tom took up their places next the doors as conductors, and the procession lumbered off with great success, and much shouting from ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... in their hands, some men climb into trees and wait for the herd to pass, whilst others drive them under. The hippopotami, however, are not hunted, but snared with lunda, the common tripping-trap with spike-drop, which is placed in the runs of this animal, described by every South African traveller, and generally known as far as the Hametic language is spread. The Karuma Falls, if such they may be called, are a mere sluice or rush of water between high syenitic ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Rrisa came silently back, sliding into the soft dusk of that room almost like a wraith. He bore a silver tray with a hook-nosed coffee-pot of chased metal. The cover of this coffee-pot rose into a tall, minaret-like spike. On the tray stood also a small cup having no handle; a dish of dates; a few wafers made of the Arabian cereal called temmin; and a little bowl ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... ranks them together as a single species, and gives a single definition. As soon as three Orchidean forms (Monochanthus, Myanthus, and Catasetum), which had previously been ranked as three distinct genera, were known to be sometimes produced on the same spike, they were immediately included as ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... assembly of the records (messages, records of oral orders, and the like) from which the journal is compiled. Each item of the file bears a serial number corresponding to that of its entry in the journal. An ordinary spike-file is frequently adequate for safe-keeping of these records while in use. When the journal is closed, the corresponding journal-file is filed with the journal, in accordance with standing instructions or in compliance with any particular disposition directed ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... Nature speaks loudly in the paternal-breast," said Dr. Oleander. "'Nater will caper,' as Ethan Spike says. Mollie's mamma must have been a very pretty ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... two kinds of flowers, male and female. The male flowers are arranged in the form of a spike protected by a modified leaf called the bract. They are white in color, crowded together on the spike and consist of stamens which hold the pollen. The flowers do not have the showy colored bracts which forms so prominent a feature in those of many other plants. The ...
— Philippine Mats - Philippine Craftsman Reprint Series No. 1 • Hugo H. Miller
... gendarmes—the policemen of the army—gorgeous in uniforms of bottle-green and silver and mounted on sleek and shining horses. After them came the infantry: solid columns of grey-clad figures with the silhouettes of the mounted officers rising at intervals above the forest of spike- crowned helmets. After the infantry came the field artillery, the big guns rattling and rumbling over the cobblestones, the cannoneers sitting with folded arms and heels drawn in, and wooden faces, like servants on the box of a carriage. These were the same guns that had been in almost constant ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... well in his way; but he is a man who has risen too fast, as other men rise too slowly. Nothing in him; no substance, madam; I knew him as a youngster, and I could have tossed him on a marling-spike. And instead of feeding well, Sir, he quite wore himself away. To my firm knowledge, he would scarcely turn the scale upon a good Frenchman of half of the peas. Every man should work his own way up, unless his father did it for him. ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... first to go down, and he hung out till nature rebelled, and he was dragged up and put in the open air. There the aggrieved Belgian saw him, and, maddened by drink, took advantage of his exhaustion to kick him viciously in the ribs; but Jones promptly laid the Dutchman out with a hand-spike. ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... frequently severing the steel top from the ashpole, and then breaking through and engaging in hand-to-hand conflict with the knights. Behind the latter sat their squires, with extra spears and arms ready to hand to their masters; and in close combat, the heavy maces with their spike ends were weapons before which the light-clad horsemen went down like ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... the fort on the hill," Ralph said, as he watched the flags run up on the signal-staff on the summit of Spike Island; "and they are answering down below there at the station in ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... astonished," remarked the lad, indicating one of the sleepers. "Look at that—the rail's only held down by a spike or two; we fasten them in solid chairs. They're rough ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... eager blast, and angled in between the herd and a straggler on the edge of it, a yearling elk, a spike bull, his first antler growth consisting of two pointed spikes eighteen inches long. He was not alarmed,—but it was a new kind of coyote that faced him now, one that had learned pack hunting under the leadership of ...
— The Yellow Horde • Hal G. Evarts
... Tadeusz" was the name by which his soldiers called him. Invariably he spent some part of his day among his beloved peasants, and daily he recited with them public prayers. Often at night he and they together went up to the teeth of the Russian batteries on expeditions to spike the cannon. His inseparable companion, Niemcewicz, who slept with him in his tent till the-end came, describes how the silence of these nights was broken hideously by the wild, shrill cry of the reapers, by the sudden ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... and thorns, but the elephant's hide is as strong as a board. He does not mind prickles, and the only sensitive part of him is just behind the ear, so when he is tamed a man sits on his neck, and with a little sharp-pointed spike pricks him behind the ear on the side he wants him to go. It does not hurt, but the elephant feels it and soon understands, and follows the directions as a horse follows the pull of the reins in driving. Elephants live entirely ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... animal, no doubt. The bear had been taught a hundred tricks, all to be performed at the keeper's word of command. It was late in the evening when O'Leary saw him, and the bear seemed sulky; the keeper, however, with a short spike fixed at the end of a pole, made him move about briskly. He marked on sand what o'clock it was, with his paw; and distinguished the men and women in a very comical way: in fact, our priest was quite diverted. The beast at length grew tired—the keeper hit him with the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... and soil, the ruin wrought by Nature in one of her Cromwellian moods, and, scattered irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of cultivated smoothness—potato rows, green parallel lines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant cabbage-globes—each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pass and repass wholly occupied with their ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... wild apparition and refused to face him. Bit by bit they retired and O'Hagan took advantage of a moment to take a green silk Irish flag, with a crownless harp, from his pocket, and attach it to the spike of the cross. Then, roaring like a lion and brandishing his strange weapon, he fell on them once more—and as they broke he saw the hooded priest driving them before him with his flaming sword. A great joy seemed to burn up in his soul. Men who watched him said he ran amok. His great voice ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... boy asleep. On the chair beside his head he had placed his old-fashioned hunting-case watch, as big as an alarm-clock, the kind a railroad man would wind up with a spike-maul. Beside the watch he had laid his huge revolver in its worn leather scabbard. Breathing peacefully, he lay quite at his companion's mercy, and McCloud, looking down on this man who never made a mistake, ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... iron tools, of which they are now possessed, are worn out, they will have almost lost the knowledge of their own. A stone-hatchet is, at present, as rare a thing amongst them, as an iron one was eight years ago; and a chisel of bone or stone is not to be seen. Spike-nails have supplied the place of these last, and they are weak enough to fancy that they have got an inexhaustible store of them; for these were not now at all sought after. Sometimes, however, nails much smaller than a spike would still be taken in exchange for fruit. Knives happened, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr
... a nation And her people most loyal and true, And all others take care how they meddle Or insult her colors of blue. San Berdoo and the counties around Come in for their share of the fun And have rolled up the numbers most nobly And helped spike the ...
— Sixty Years of California Song • Margaret Blake-Alverson
... between the Carboniferous and Permian eras; but whether the womb of one colossal volcano or the product of a thousand lesser eruptions threw forth this granite monster, none may yet assert. Whether Dartmoor first appeared as a mighty shield, with one uprising spike in its midst, or as a target supporting many separate bosses cannot be declared; for the original aspect of the region has long vanished, though our worn and weathered land of tors still shadows, in its venerable desolation, those sublimer, more savage glories manifested ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... a step closer to the track boss and her voice hardened. "If these spikes were forced out by the impact of the engine, we ought to find torn spike holes inclining toward the end of the ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post
... iron. Many other States offered significant tributes of similar nature. And when at last the great day came when all the short lines were connected in one whole, what a celebration there was from sea to sea! Wires had been laid so that the hammer that drove the last spike sent the news to cities all over the land. Bells rang, whistles blew, fire alarms sounded. The cost of the Union Pacific was about thirty-nine million dollars and that of the Central Pacific about one hundred and forty million dollars. The construction ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... leonine face, and his heart filled with gentleness for those who needed help or protection, and with the possibility of much wrath against a bully or an oppressor. He was very fond of riding both on the road and across the country, and was also a great whip. He usually drove four-in-hand, or else a spike team, that is, a pair with a third horse in the lead. I do not suppose that such a team exists now. The trap that he drove we always called the high phaeton. The wheels turned under in front. I have it yet. He drove long-tailed horses, harnessed loose in light American harness, so that ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... this point the young fool, whose hands were clasped behind him and concealed a marlin-spike, up and killed the old sailor, and so rounded ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... said the victor, placing his foot on the body of the vanquished, and holding to his throat the point of the axe, which terminated in a spike or poniard. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... enclosed little globular brown Orchid is. I have only seen pollen of a Cattleya on a bee, but surely have you not unintentionally sent me what I wanted most (after Catasetum or Mormodes), viz. one of the Epidendreae?! I PARTICULARLY want (and will presently tell you why) another spike of this little Orchid, with older ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... with a species of halbert, with half-moon shaped steels at the head, and one small spike in the midst. With this they caught the horns of Nero, and he was forced to retreat before the men, for if he resisted the spike entered his head and hurt him. Thus finally, by sheer force, he was driven, snorting, pawing the ground, ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... be well to stake the rows immediately. Keep the plants under constant observation, especially while quite young, when they are liable to destruction by garden foes. The flowering should be limited to the fourth spike, and from the time the pods appear assistance must be given in the form of liquid manure or a mulching of well-rotted dung. Remove all lateral shoots and promote vigorous healthy growth at every stage. Some means should be adopted ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... left side of my backbone, all the way from my shoulder blade down to where my ribs attach to my backbone, and the only way I get any relief from the pain is to have some one kick me along the side." (She was a witch, and concealed in her robe a long sharp steel spike. It was placed so that the last kick they would give her, their foot would hit the spike and they would instantly drop off into a ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... Triality^, trinity; triunity^. three, triad, triplet, trey, trio, ternion^, leash; shamrock, tierce^, spike-team [U.S.], trefoil; triangle, trident, triennium^, trigon^, trinomial, trionym^, triplopia^, tripod, trireme, triseme^, triskele^, triskelion, trisula^. third power, cube; cube root. Adj. three; triform^, trinal^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... at Fort Clifton with orders to spike the guns, blow up the magazine, destroy everything which could be of value to the enemy, and rejoin the command. The order was obeyed, and every man of the detail resumed his place in ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... passed quietly away. Amid the sprouting grasses by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... was well to windward, and the sough and swish of the wind through the cotton-woods seemed powerful enough to drown such slight sounds as I might be likely to make; so I stole softly across the open area to the nearest gun, which I at once proceeded to carefully spike with the aid of some nails and a leather-covered hammer with which I had provided myself. Despite the deadening effect of the leather the hammer still made a distinct "clink," which to my ears sounded loud enough to ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... through a red mist of pain. He was pinned in the crumpled mass of metal which had once been the cabin. Through a rent in the wall close to his head thrust a long spike of green, shredded leaves still clinging to it. He lay and watched it, not daring to move lest the pain prove more ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... "And Ainnesley—why, Ainnesley wouldn't have a roof over his head if we failed in our obligations! You must know as well as I do why the banking interests took our paper to those amounts which made it possible for us to drive the first spike." ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... Columbian mountaineer will carry a flour bag over moraine and glacier trusting only to the creeper spikes on his heels, and in objecting to the extra weight our guide said derisively: "We've quite enough to pack already, and I guess you don't want to dress us up with a green veil, a crooked club with a spike in the end of it, and fathoms of spun hemp, like them tourist fellows bring out to sit ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Jael crossed the threshold when Sisera awakened and begged for water to quench his burning thirst. Jael gave him wine mixed with water, which caused him to drop into a sound sleep again. The woman then took a wooden spike in her left hand, approached the sleeping warrior, and said: "This shall be the sign that Thou wilt deliver him into my hand if I draw him from the bed down on the ground without awaking him." She ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... to extract the worm which has already begun his mining labors. Hence these birds are not found where the forester removes trees as fast as they become fit habitations for such insects. In clearing new lands in the United States, dead trees, especially of the spike-leaved kinds, too much decayed to serve for timber, and which, in that state, are worth little for fuel, are often allowed to stand until they fall of themselves. Such stubs, as they are popularly called, are ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... abruptly stepping towards him, with a look of dissolved surrender, said: "When mermaid songs move figure-heads, then may glory, gold, and women try their blandishments on me. But a good fellow, singing a good song, he woos forth my every spike, so that my whole hull, like a ship's, sailing by a magnetic rock, caves in with acquiescence. Enough: when one has a heart of a certain sort, it is in ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret: it is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a Pike; and then cast it into a likely place; and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water, and so up the stream; and it is more than likely that you ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... shrine and in it a golden eagle, which is found in all the legions that are on the register, and it never moves from the winter-quarters except the whole army goes forth on some errand. One man carries it on a long shaft, which ends in a sharp spike for the purpose of setting it firmly in the ground. Now of these so-called eagles one was unwilling to join him in his passage of the Euphrates at that time, but stuck fast in the earth as if planted until many took their places around it and pulled ...
— Dio's Rome • Cassius Dio
... They go into battle on chariots with small, swift horses. There are also infantry, very quick at running and very firm in standing their ground. Their weapons are shield and short spear, with a bronze apple attached to the end of the ground-spike, so that when the instrument is shaken it may clash and inspire the enemy with terror. They also have daggers. They can endure hunger and cold and any kind of wretchedness. They plunge into the swamps and exist there for many days with only their heads above water, ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume V., Books 61-76 (A.D. 54-211) • Cassius Dio
... the whole force of cavalry, which was to make a circuit from the rear of the fort, so that they might be concealed till they were ready to dash at the guns. A party of infantry were at the same time to be prepared to rush forward to spike some of the guns, and to drag the others within the lines. A dozen Europeans, with two of their officers, were to lead the party of infantry, composed of the most determined and best disciplined natives. These were to follow when the cavalry, having ...
— The Young Rajah • W.H.G. Kingston
... his entire time mowing the lawn with a large horse-drawn machine. This, when not in use, was often left outdoors. Upon it was a square wooden box, containing certain necessary tools, among them a sharp, spike-like instrument, used to clean the oil-holes when they became clogged. This bit of steel was five or six inches long, and was shaped like a pencil. For at least three months, I seldom went out of doors that I did not go with the intention of purloining ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... let her go, very well pleased to have got so well out of the hobble he was in. The instant the village lass who had done duty for Dulcinea found herself free, prodding her "cackney" with a spike she had at the end of a stick, she set off at full speed across the field. The she-ass, however, feeling the point more acutely than usual, began cutting such capers, that it flung the lady Dulcinea to the ground; seeing which, Don Quixote ran to raise her up, ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... that, one after the other, many rash Jacobite heads, in 1715 and 1745, arrived at the same bad eminence. In many a royal procession and many a City riot, this gate has figured as a halting-place and a point of defence. The last rebel's head blew down in 1772; and the last spike was not removed till the beginning of the present century. In the Popish Plot days of Charles II. vast processions used to come to Temple Bar to illuminate the supposed statue of Queen Elizabeth, in the south-east niche (though it probably really ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... (junior editor of the Boomtown Spike), threw himself down on the sod, pulled his hat rim down over his eyes, and looked away over the plain. It was the second year of Boom-town's existence, and Seagraves had not yet grown restless under its monotony. Around him the gophers played saucily. Teams were moving here and there across ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the stairs. He found Cicely kneeling before a pail in which Melchisedek stood upright, a picture of sooty dolefulness, with water trickling from every sodden spike of his coat. The corners of his mouth drooped dejectedly, whether from Cicely's chidings or from the taste of the soap it ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... managing his reins, snaffle and curb, with excellent ease in his left hand, his right held—not a whip or stick of any sort, but—a lance like a rod, some seven or eight feet long, and armed at the end with a short iron spike. This spike rested on the toe of his boot as he rode—an attitude which, resembling that of a cavalier entering the tournament lists, gave to the rod in question all the appearance of a knightly lance. Yet there is in the recollection or the imagination of most people ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... had made up his mind the only thing he could do with his secret now was to use it to spike the enemy's guns. Mabel was rash enough to insist on an ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... mistake. Made it twice as aggravating because you couldn't consistently find fault with him. If you'd given Sol the job of making over the earth he'd have built it out of the latest text-book on "How to Make the World Better," and have turned out something as correct as a spike-tail coat—and every one would have wanted to die to get ...
— Old Gorgon Graham - More Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... near to this spike, is the portion of a shaft of the carriage which passed through the body of a gentleman who happened to be standing near the vehicle when the horse plunged violently forward, with the result that the off shaft ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... hand over hand brought me to the edge of the shelf, when, throwing my arm around the granite spike. I swung my body upon the shelf and lay down to rest, shouting to Cotter that I was all right, and that the prospects upward were capital. After a few moments' breathing I looked over the brink and directed my comrade to tie the barometer to the lower end of the lasso, which he did, and ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... Tarpaulin without heeding the general excitation, "ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—ugh! ugh! ugh!—I was saying," said he, "I was saying when Mr. King Pest poked in his marlin-spike, that as for the matter of two or three gallons more or less of Black Strap, it was a trifle to a tight sea-boat like myself not overstowed—but when it comes to drinking the health of the Devil (whom God assoilzie) and going down upon my marrow bones to his ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 3 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... advertised that the rail and the ties still remained. In one place, a ten-inch tree, bursting through at a connection, had lifted the end of a rail clearly into view. The tie had evidently followed the rail, held to it by the spike long enough for its bed to be filled with gravel and rotten leaves, so that now the crumbling, rotten timber thrust itself up at a curious slant. Old as the road was, it was manifest that it had been ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... to move. I had no business to remain there; every prospect of security depended on my joining the crew, but it was not in my power to desert my position. I could hear the hurrying feet of the watch tramping across the deck in response to LeVere's orders; the heavy pounding of a marling-spike on the forecastle hatch, as Haines called for all hands. I was aware that men were already mounting the ratlines, and laying out on the upper yards to make sail, while the capstan bars began rattling. Yet only one thought gripped me—Sanchez ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... 'cap'; 'tip' and 'top'; 'slent' (now obsolete) and 'slant'; 'sweep' and 'swoop'; 'wrest' and 'wrist'; 'gad' (now surviving only in gadfly) and 'goad'; 'complement' and 'compliment'; 'fitch' and 'vetch'; 'spike' and 'spoke'; 'tamper' and 'temper'; 'ragged' and 'rugged'; 'gargle' and 'gurgle'; 'snake' and 'sneak' (both crawl); 'deal' and 'dole'; 'giggle' and 'gaggle' (this last is now commonly spelt 'cackle'); ...
— English Past and Present • Richard Chenevix Trench
... vent was left exposed in the yard at night. One of the prowling, thieving peons climbed the wall and attempted to abstract the cap,—not because he was in want of a brass cap to a dynamite bomb; he would have stolen a railroad spike or an iron tie all the same. He hadn't fooled with this instrument more than sixty seconds before it was discharged in his hands with a report like a cannon. The consequence was, that not enough of that would-be thief could ...
— Aztec Land • Maturin M. Ballou
... like a maddened tiger, while Jozsef, retiring cautiously behind the embrasure of the window, aimed his gun as they were placing his uncle's head upon a spike, and shot the first who raised it. Another seized it, and the next instant he, too, fell to the earth; another and another, as many as attempted to raise the head, till, finally, ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... bloom has reached its perfect hour. One can never fix the precise moment when the rosy tint the field has from the wild almond passes into the inspiring blue of lupines. One notices here and there a spike of bloom, and a day later the whole field royal and ruffling lightly to the wind. Part of the charm of the lupine is the continual stir of its plumes to airs not suspected otherwhere. Go and stand ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... one hundred Indians. De Salaberry does not court defeat by neglecting precautions because he is weak. Windfall is hurriedly thrown up as barricade along the trail. Where the path narrows between the river and the bleak forest, De Salaberry has tree trunks laid spike end towards the foe. At the last moment comes McDonnell of Brockville with six hundred men, but De Salaberry's three hundred occupy the front line facing the ford. McDonnell is farther along the river. By the night of October 25 the American army is close on the dauntless little ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... spook," Patsy began, "I got the fearfulest thump on my crust that I've had since that marline-spike fell off the main yard on to me in the little affair of the ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... It's the easiest. It'll build itself. It's just a case of two and two makes four. All you've got to do is spike down two-inch planks till it's done, and then clap on some sort of a roof. There's no machinery, no details, just straight work. It's just a question of having the lumber to do it with, and we've got it now. It's the little work that can raise Ned ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... the lake itself, bring down glacier-mud, sand-grains, and pebbles, giving rise to margin-rings and plats of soil. To these fresh soil-beds come many a waiting plant. First, a hardy carex with arching leaves and a spike of brown flowers; then, as the seasons grow warmer, and the soil-beds deeper and wider, other sedges take their appointed places, and these are joined by blue gentians, daisies, dodecatheons, violets, honey-worts, and many a lowly ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... tucked up under her body. Out of each egg there comes the queerest little creature! It is just large enough to be seen as it wriggles in the water. Then its skin splits, and there appears a quaint thing with long feathery legs, a big head, a spike on the back of its head, and another spike ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... went on and the hope was deferred. The rush of the Sea-horse did not trouble the sands of the shallow bar, or sweep, with fiercely ramping figure-head, past the long pier-spike, stretching like the hand of welcome from the hospitable shore. While they fancied her full-breasted sails, swelled as with sighs for home, bowing lordly over the submissive waters, the Sea-horse lay a frozen mass, changed by the might ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... for long at a time over the failure of his resources. One evening he got his father to put a spike into the toe of one of his wooden shoes, and after that his kick was respected. Partly by himself, and partly through Rud, he also learned where to find the places on the animals where it hurt most. The cow-calves and the two bull-calves all had ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... included in that of a large number. I have watched several political molecules being educated in this way by the nature of things into a faint feeling of fraternity. But at this moment I am thinking of Spike, an elector who voted on the side of Progress though he was not inwardly attached to it under that name. For abstractions are deities having many specific names, local habitations, and forms of activity, and so get a multitude of devout servants who care no more for ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... dropped anchor in the beautiful harbour of Cove; the sea shone under the purple light of the rising sun with a rich rosy hue, beautifully in contrast with the different tints of the foliage of the deep woods already tinged with the brown of autumn. Spike Island lay "sleeping upon its broad shadow," and the large ensign which crowns the battery was wrapped around the flag-staff, there not being even air enough to stir it. It was still so early, that but few persons were abroad; ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... two-coloured lupin, the scented lupin, and the last to appear, Lupin's lupin. They are all there, resplendent, in serried ranks like an army of soldiers, each striving to outstrip the others and to hold up the thickest and gaudiest spike to the sun. They are all there; and, at the entrance to the walk that leads to their motley beds, is a streamer with this device, taken from an exquisite sonnet ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... driven upon the van of the Romans. When the beasts, trampling upon many, soon caused disorder, Flavius, a tribune of soldiers, snatching an ensign, meets them, and wounding the first elephant with the spike at the bottom of the ensign staff, puts him to flight. The beast turned round upon the next, and drove back both him and the rest that followed. Marcellus, seeing this, pours in his horse with great force upon the elephants, and upon ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... terminal, erect, spike-like racemes of small, pale pink, flesh-colored, or greenish flowers are sent upward by the MILD WATER PEPPER (P. hydropiperoides). It is like a slender, pale variety of the common pink persicaria. One finds its inconspicuous, but very common, flowers from June to ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... drink the children gather from afar; every one in Haifa under the age of fourteen is there I should say. They glue themselves to the fence and force their little faces between the posts, or spike their chins on the top and then watch in solemn deadly earnest the ways of these strange beings whom fate has so kindly sent to amuse them. The rest-house attendant does not approve of these manners, so he slips out of a side-door ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... were on the peg and the holes in the wall. Sherry questioned him. "Why do you spike the wall with the little ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... anxiety. And even now they do not greatly trouble me; for if they keep no better watch there on other nights than they did on this, it would be easy for a couple of resolute men to enter the place, even as I did, bind and gag the sentinels, and spike all eight of the guns, and never a man of them any the wiser until they came to put fire ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... on the pile of rails a good deal. They afforded anything but a comfortable resting place. Finally he seemed to decide that he would change his seat. He edged along with the apparent intention of reaching a heap of spike kegs. He never, however, took his eye away from Ralph. Ike, too, held his weapon at a continual menace, and gave his captive no chance to act against him or run ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... imaginary hat toward the Grdznth. "Spike cracked it," he said. "Spike is a sort of Grdznth genius." He tossed the coffee cup over his shoulder and it ricochetted in graceful slow motion against the far wall. "Now why ...
— PRoblem • Alan Edward Nourse
... such a mountain? and half impatiently, half hopelessly, she threw it from her. Instantly it stretched itself out, growing wider and wider, the notches in the wood expanding, till it had taken the shape of a roughly-made ladder of irregular steps, hooked on to the ice by the sharp spike at its end, and the Princess, ashamed of her discouragement, mounted up the steps without difficulty, and as she reached the top one, of itself the ladder pushed up before her, so that she could mount straight up ...
— The Tapestry Room - A Child's Romance • Mrs. Molesworth
... slaves there are to be liberated at twelve o'clock tonight, are to seize the three water towers and to spike the guns, to burn all the shipping in the harbour, to make off with six ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... and to-day Challis, who stands working at a little table set in against an open window, hammering out a ring from a silver coin on a marline-spike and vyce, whistles softly and contentedly to himself as he raises his head and glances through the vista of coconuts that surround his dwelling on this lonely and almost ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... town of Mogador to complete the work of destruction begun the day before, spike the guns, smash up the gun- carriages, and destroy all the munitions of war in the shore batteries— all of which was performed without a shadow of opposition being offered. Then I put a garrison on the island, providing it with heavy guns, to awe the town, which we did not care ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... the exploration of wild countries; but a few hints may be acceptable upon points that, although not absolutely essential, tend much to the comfort of the traveller. A couple of large carriage umbrellas with double lining, with small rings fixed to the extremities of the ribs, and a spike similar to that of a fishing-rod to screw into the handle, will form an instantaneous shelter from sun or rain during a halt on the march, as a few strings from the rings will secure it from the wind, if pegged to the ground. Waterproof calico sheeting should be taken in large ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... favourable waft of wind came the fragrant memory of Saint Catherine. It is the peak of earth most charged with wayward emotions—pity and terror blent together into a poignant beauty, a sorcery. Imagine yourself one of those old Popes—Linus or Anaclete or Damasius—whose heads spike the clerestory of the Duomo, you would look down upon a sea of pictures (by the best pavement-artists in the world)—the Massacre of the Innocents like a patch of dry blood by the altar-steps, a winking Madonna in the Capella del Voto thronged with worshippers, Hermes Trismegistus, a freaksome ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... is set all round about with diamonds, and one of his comrades makes the remark that the spike of this helmet is somewhat muddy. He wore no weapon by his side, not even a dagger. Naturally,—one generally lays aside one's arms when one is about to swear solemnly before an altar. Onucz approached him obsequiously and kissed the hand of his mysterious ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... men'll pick up a golf-stick to go walking with, and I've done that myself, hundred of times. And I knew that I had an ice-ax of that very pattern at home—and so I just shoved it under the doctor's nose in court, and asked him if that hole in Crone's head couldn't have been made by the spike of it. Why? Because I knew that Carstairs would be present in court, and I wanted to see if he would catch what ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... that the enemy would have the outlying redoubt, very likely would have them both, and would turn the guns before help could come. But I knew, at least I hoped, that there was time for me to get to the more exposed redoubt ahead of them and give the word to spike the guns. It was all in an instant, I say, that I found this thought in my mind, and my musket and cartridge-box thrown I don't know where, and myself dashing off through the mist across the broken ground like ...
— For The Honor Of France - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... he brained a man with a pingle spike Or plastered a seaman flat, We should 'a' been blowed but we all of us knowed That he didn't mean ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... threw his heavy sheath-knife, missing Wolf Larsen's throat by an inch. Another time he dropped a steel marlinspike from the mizzen crosstree. It was a difficult cast to make on a rolling ship, but the sharp point of the spike, whistling seventy-five feet through the air, barely missed Wolf Larsen's head as he emerged from the cabin companion-way and drove its length two inches and over into the solid deck-planking. Still another time, he stole into the steerage, possessed himself of a loaded ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... swine &c (waste) 638; carry coals to Newcastle &c (redundancy) 641; wash a blackamoor white &c (impossible) 471. render useless &c adj.; dismantle, dismast, dismount, disqualify, disable; unrig; cripple, lame &c (injure) 659; spike guns, clip the wings; put out of gear. Adj. useless, inutile, inefficacious, futile, unavailing, bootless; inoperative &c 158; inadequate &c (insufficient) 640; inservient^, unsubservient; inept, inefficient &c (impotent) 158; of no avail &c (use) ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... hot but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products ("Spike to Loaf in One Operation!") began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... odds and ends of old canvas, while he was not averse to licking the galvanised compound off the newly painted quarter-deck stanchions whenever an opportunity of doing so presented itself. He was a healthy goat of voracious appetite. His gastric juices would have dissolved a marline-spike, and he even made short work of the greater portion of a pair of ammunition boots belonging to the Sergeant-Major of Royal Marines, and devoured with every symptom of relish a sheaf of official and highly important documents lying on the ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... they have not seen the man, they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spared one side of your Medal: the head would be seen to more advantage if it were placed on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to the sun, which would then break out to ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... interrupted their narrative to inquire in their turn what had passed? What was the cause of the general discouragement? why had the cannon been abandoned to the enemy untouched? Had they not had time to spike them, or at ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... uplands faint out in semitones: grey scabious, grey harebell, pale bed-straw, white meadowsweet, like the lace of an old lady's cap. But even so, if I must have a sunset glow of brown-pink, herb-willow gives it me. Pinch out the leader of each slim spike, and you make a different plant of it." Thus the poet embroidered the philosopher's text, and kept away from his memories, ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... "I want you, Spike, to follow them. See what they do—where they go. It's her birthday. Something's bound to occur that will give you a lead. All you've got to do is to use your head. ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... came in front, armed with a brick; there was one at each side, and one behind, and they closed up around me. I was struck on all sides; and, while I was attending to those in front, I received a blow on my head, from behind, dealt with a heavy hand-spike. I was completely stunned by the blow, and fell, heavily, on the ground, among the timbers. Taking advantage of my fall, they rushed upon me, and began to pound me with their fists. I let them lay on, for a while, after I came to myself, with a view of gaining strength. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... sword, weighted with a cross-bar, and two 18-lib. dumb bells. In order to vary this performance, the sword-swallower allows only a part of the weapon to pass into his body, the remainder being "kicked" down by the recoil of a rifle, which is fixed to a spike in the centre of the bar, and fired by ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... kind of wooden tent, that owes whatever grace it has to its pointed windows and the high, sharp roofs—traces, both, of that upward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which soared aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the sky as the spike of a flowering aloe from the cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below. This suggestion of medieval symbolism, aided by a minute turret in which a hand-bell might have hung and found just room enough to turn over, was all of outward show the small edifice could ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at that worn and rusty bar of iron with its single bent and rusty spike, I was whisked back across the years by some strange trick of memory and I saw, instead, a dimly lighted sick room, on a hot summer night—myself a little sufferer, and sitting beside me, fanning my fevered brow, my beloved father, who, notwithstanding the fatigue of a heavy and exacting ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... pulls me outen bed, make me put on my close, gimme dis here han' spike, an' tells me I kin kill my ole marster an' missis when I ...
— The Man in Gray • Thomas Dixon
... his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks, preferring death to capture. A sly ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... button-hole stitching. The three central leaves crossing stem are in red and green, and blue and green; the brown stalks are worked in stem stitch. Loops are worked round the outside of the leaf here as in all the bigger leaves on this work. The spike on the left of the sketch is in herring bone stitch edged ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... see," Pierce's voice came apologetically after a pause in which some background noise sounding like a crash came over the televiewer speaker. "It started swinging around when I came in sight, so I just rammed it with that pretty ornamental nose spike. I'm backing off now with ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... nailing a flag to the battery flagstaff, went in search of more ammunition. The British did not land; and the Americans, finding six kegs of powder, took the gun to a blacksmith, who drilled out the spike, and the action continued. So vigorous and well directed was the fire of the Americans, that the "Despatch" was forced to slip her cables and make off to a place of safety. That afternoon a truce was declared, which continued until eight the next ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... bodies, and ten reptilian legs apiece, terminating in fins which acted as wings. The bodies were of bright blue, the legs and fins were yellow. They were flying, without haste, but in a somewhat ominous fashion, straight toward them. He could make out a long, thin spike projecting from ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... towards the centre with the quills of the porcupine. Their lances are made use of only for thrusting: the shafts are made either from the wood of the lawn (Caryota urens) or that of another species of palm juice—they are tipped with an iron spike, and are of great use in the ascent of hills. The lance heads are of their own manufacture, and of very soft iron. They have latterly become acquainted with fire-arms, and the chiefs have mostly each a ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... no manure, grass or trash, even when these are but partly turned under by the plow. For this reason it is especially useful on sod or other rough ground. The most convenient harrow for putting on the finishing touches, for leveling off and fining the surface of the soil, is the lever spike-tooth. It is adjustable and can be used as a spike-tooth or as a ...
— Home Vegetable Gardening • F. F. Rockwell
... really wings, though when one of these fish breaks water and shoots through the air, it appears to be flying. The wings are merely fins, enormously enlarged, and these give the fish its great size, rather than does the body itself. It is the whipping spike-armed tail of the devil fish that is to be feared, aside from the fact that the rush of a monster ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... Sciadophyllum, one of the most singular trees of the eastern coastline of tropical Australia; a slender stem, about thirty feet in height, gives off a few branches with immense digitate dark and glossy leaves and long spike-like racemes of small scarlet flowers, a great resort ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... foundation in fact. It is asserted that the wretch was gibbeted alive, that he lived for several days, and that his sweetheart kept him alive with milk. Another tale is to the effect that a loaf of bread was placed just within his reach, but fixed on an iron spike that would enter his throat if he attempted to relieve the pangs ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... conveyed to Cork on board the Triton, on the 16th of June, whence they were sent to herd with common malefactors on board the Mount Stewart Elphinstone—at the time infested with the plague. This vessel remained off Spike Island while the cholera was doing its ravages among her passengers, and finally put to sea, with the patriots and pestilence, a few days before the departure ...
— The Felon's Track • Michael Doheny
... boathouse on his way and closing the door behind him. The terrified boy did as he was told immediately he found himself on land, and the giant, quick to observe his flight, dashed after him into the boathouse. Now Loki had cunningly placed a sharp spike in such a position that the great head of the giant ran full tilt against it, and he sank to the ground with a groan, whereupon Loki, seeing him helpless, cut off one of his legs. Imagine the god's dismay, however, when he saw the pieces join and immediately ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... opposite views which they took of the subject. Mr. Pitt, about to surrender the possession of power to his rival, had a very intelligible interest in reducing the value of the transfer, and (as a retreating army spike the guns they leave behind) rendering the engines of Prerogative as useless as possible to his successor. Mr. Fox, too, had as natural a motive to oppose such a design; and, aware that the chief aim of these restrictive measures was to entail upon the Whig ministry of the Regent a weak ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... these changes brought no difference into the home, save that George Mansion's arm grew stronger daily in combat against the old foe. Then came the second attack of the enemy, when six white men beset him from behind, again knocking him insensible, with a heavy blue beech hand-spike. They broke his hand and three ribs, knocked out his teeth, injured his side and head; then seizing his pistol, shot at him, the ball fortunately not reaching a vital spot. As his senses swam he felt them drag his poor ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... many others. One species of Barley-grass, which grows very commonly in our sea-marshes, the Hordeum maritimum, is apt to render cattle diseased in the mouth, from chewing the seeds, which are armed with a strong bristly awn not dissimilar to the spike ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... anything to rest upon. Their arms are bows and arrows very well made, save that (the arrows) are not (tipped) with iron nor any other kind of hard metal: and instead of iron they put animals' or fishes' teeth, or a spike of tough wood, with the point hardened by fire: they are sure marksmen, for they hit whatever they aim at: and in some places the women use these bows: they have other weapons, such as fire-hardened spears, and also clubs with knobs, ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... groups of Belgian soldiers, the remainder of a few hundred who had been left to cover the British and Belgian retreat, fire the last shots from the forts, and spike the guns as the Germans approached. Pitiable was the terror of these fellows when they saw the bridge gone. Many of them were out of their heads through exposure and exhaustion; not a few of them wept. One sergeant tore off his uniform and fatigue cap ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... and simultaneously. One came in front, armed with a brick; there was one at each side, and one behind, and they closed up around me. I was struck on all sides; and, while I was attending to those in front, I received a blow on my head, from behind, dealt with a heavy hand-spike. I was completely stunned by the blow, and fell, heavily, on the ground, among the timbers. Taking advantage of my fall, they rushed upon me, and began to pound me with their fists. I let them lay on, for a while, after I came to myself, with a view of gaining strength. They ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... er likely gal," went on Aunt Verbeny, "an' when she las' come home, she wuz a-warin' spike-heeled shoes en er veil uv skeeter nettin'. 'Tain' so long sence Rhody's Viney went to Philadelphy, too, but she ain' had no luck sence she wuz born er twin. Hit went clean ...
— The Voice of the People • Ellen Glasgow
... was the only chance that he had of victory or safety, and he seems to have done everything that good generalship could do to secure it. He placed his elephants in advance of his centre and right wing. He had caused the driver of each of them to be provided with a sharp iron spike and a mallet; and had given orders that every beast that became unmanageable, and ran back upon his own ranks, should be instantly killed, by driving the spike into the vertebra at the junction of the head and the spine. Hasdrubal's elephants were ten in number. We have ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... like a horse would cause the jubilant maiden to call out, 'A dragoon!' Now some dim resemblance to a helmet would suggest a handsome member of the mounted police; or a round object with a spike would seem a ship, and this of course meant a sailor; or a cow would suggest a cattle-dealer, or a ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... being smitten thus, forthwith smite back, and smite where the enemy will least expect. We'll march overland on Carthagena—I know it well—fall on 'em in the dead hush o' night, surprise their fort, spike their guns and down to the harbour for a ship. Here's our vessel a wreck—we'll have one of theirs in place. So, comrades all, who's for Carthagena along with me; who's for a Spanish ship ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... sword with as much apparent knowledge of how to use it as if it had been a marlin-spike. Ralph pushed it aside with a stout stick that he carried, and was passing on, when the singing soldier came up and said, "Never mind his name; but whether he be Presbyter Jack or Quaker George, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... their bows was Trumet, with the town clock strikin' ten. Over the flat place between the hills they could see the light on the ocean side. And they was anchored right in the deep hole inside the breakwater, as sure as I'm knee high to a marlin spike! ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... mean time the little garrison had found an old honeycombed iron six-pounder, and had drilled out the spike, cleaned and mounted it, and by melting the lead pipes of a distillery had provided—unknown to the insurgents—thirty rounds of ball and grape for it. Two other pieces having been added to this, on the following day, the little ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... and stood motionless in the path. He watched them bolt down the slope from the right and cross in front of him, wishing he had the rifle, and when the last white tail vanished in the gray-brown woods he drove the spike of the ice-staff into the stiffening ground and took both hands to shift the weight of the pack. If he'd had the rifle, he could have shot only one of them. As it was, they were unfrightened, and he knew where to find them in ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... no home to which we could return. We were even too poor to live ashore. But we made some penny excursions in the little boats that plied back and forth, and to us children at least the weeks of waiting were not without interest. Among other places we visited Spike Island, where the convicts were, and for hours we watched the dreary shuttle of labor swing back and forth as the convicts carried pails of water from one side of the island, only to empty them into the sea at the other side. It was merely "busy work," to keep them occupied ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... the supreme excess of Ecelino's cruelty. The guide entered the cell before us, and, as we gained the threshold, threw the light of his taper vividly upon a block that stood in the middle of the floor. Fixed to the block by an immense spike driven through from the back was the little slender hand of a woman, which lay there just as it had been struck from the living arm, and which, after the lapse of so many centuries, was still as perfectly preserved as if it had been embalmed. The sight had a most cruel fascination; ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... tourney, conquered with flying colours. My aim was to pin her down to something definite ... like an impaled butterfly: hers was to flutter over a vast garden of irrelevances; but she did not long evade the spike. I tipped its point with the subtly poisonous suggestion that all arrangements must be made in the hour, otherwise complications might arise. There seemed to be so many people who had been attracted by that simple little advertisement of mine, and really, I must be able to say that I and my car were ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... to her own room. Upon a piece of black stuff on the wall, were hung two swords, one a sabre, and one a rapier in a three-cornered case, and above them a leathern helmet with a gilded spike. Beneath these weapons was a heavy old carved chest. With Hilda's help she lifted the lid. Within were uniforms and military trappings of all sorts, and in one corner, folded together, a roll of faded bunting. This she took out and unwrapped, and ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... indulging himself with the sound of a human voice. "But how? can you tell me that," he inquired of a gooseberry bush that grew near. The words were hardly out of his mouth before, peering about in every direction, he discovered an iron spike with some cord wrapped round it and, not far off, a piece of chalk. He pounced on them, and fastening the spike at the edge of the path attempted to draw a line with the chalk, using the string as a ruler. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... portions, the spore bearing (x) and the green vegetative part. In Botrychium the leaves are more or less deeply divided, and the sporangia distinct (Fig. 71, B). In Ophioglossum the sterile division of the leaf is usually smooth and undivided, and the spore-bearing division forms a sort of spike, and the sporangia are much less distinct. The sporangia in both differ essentially from those of the true ferns in not being derived from a single epidermal cell, but are developed in part from the ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... I must go to Ojo Caliente, away down south, if I was to get well. John, if the Santa Fe road had 'a been for sale for a cent then, I couldn't 'a bought a spike. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... September, but coasting the shore towardes the South wee saw an incredible number of birds: hauing diuers fishermen aboord our barke they all concluded that there was a great skull of fish, we being vnprouided of fishing furniture with a long spike nayle made a hooke, and fastening the same to one of our sounding lines, before the bait was changed we tooke more than fortie great Cods, the fish swimming so abundantly thicke about our barke as is incredible to bee reported, of which ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, and Discoveries - Vol. II • Richard Hakluyt
... Mackay with deep meaning, swinging round on his heel, all alert in an instant; and taking hold of a short bar of iron pointed at the end, lying near, which Tim Rooney told me afterwards was what is called a "marling-spike," he proceeded to rap with it vigorously against the side of the companion hatchway, shouting out at the same time so that he could be heard all over the ship: "Tumble up, all you idlers and stowaways and everybody! Below there—all hands on deck ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... drum Hiram passed two lengths of Number 9 wire through large screweyes, making a double loop into which the hook of a light timber chain would easily catch. Into one end of the drum he drove a headless spike, upon which the hand-crank of the grindstone ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... the smartest post-masters in the country. I've seed him rip open many a man's letter an' read it off just like print. Here, Kintchin! Kintchin! That nigger's asleep somewhar. One of these days somebody will fill him so full of lead you couldn't turn him over with a hand spike." Kintchin appeared at the door, stretching himself and rubbing his eyes. "What have ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... die," said the victor, placing his foot on the body of the vanquished, and holding to his throat the point of the axe, which terminated in a spike or poniard. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... placed his head upon the block, and the executioner's axe fell. Although Bishop Fisher was condemned for denying the King's supremacy, he incurred the wrath of Henry by his book against the divorce, and that practically sealed his fate. His head was placed on a spike on London Bridge as a warning to others who might be rash enough to incur the displeasure of the ...
— Books Fatal to Their Authors • P. H. Ditchfield
... water is a sheath for electric forces sufficient to charge 800,000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from Liverpool to London. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how hydrogen gas will chew up a large iron spike as a child's molars will chew off the end of a stick of candy. Thus each new book opens up some new and hitherto unexplored realm of nature. Thus books fulfill for us the legend of the wondrous glass that showed its ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... returned. "There are folks enough here," said Lasse, panting, "but there doesn't seem to be a superfluity of work. I've been asking first this one and then that, but no one will have me. Well, that's all right! If they won't, I can just put a spike on my stick and set to work collecting the bits of paper in the streets, like the other old men; I can at least do ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... Neb," said his brother, in brief introduction. "He don't hev much to say, but you mustn't mind that. It ain't been altogether clear weather in his upper deck since he shipped with a durned pirate of a captain that laid his head open with a marline spike; but for a cook, he can't be beat by any steward afloat or ashore. Jest you wait till he doses out that ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... Tim to let her go huckleberrying. She said she knew a field where they were "as thick as blades of grass." Uncle Tim couldn't go with her, because Sam Spike, the blacksmith, was in a hurry for a pair of boots to be married in, and of course Sam couldn't wait for all the huckleberries in creation; so Tim staid at home, humming and singing, and singing and humming, while Kitty tied on her calico sun-bonnet, slung her basket on ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... dollar," he stated. "And Ainnesley—why, Ainnesley wouldn't have a roof over his head if we failed in our obligations! You must know as well as I do why the banking interests took our paper to those amounts which made it possible for us to drive the first spike." ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... no incense at her shrine. She'll cut the thread no sooner because you turn your back on her." Fling overboard your mythologies, dead and alive, and kneel to Nature. A budding spike of wild hyacinth is worth all the gods put together. Go hand in hand with Nature, I say. Ask nothing from her; walk humbly; be well content if she lets you but turn the corner of one page none else have read. That's how I live. My life is not a ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... cope lobe tore crave drive tube lane hive spore pride wipe bide save globe stove slate pore rave snipe snore mere flake cove stone spine store stole cave flame blade mute wide stale grove crime stake hone mete grape shave skate mine wake smite grime spike more wave white stride brake score slope drone spade spoke fume strife twine shape snake wade slime strive whale strike slave mode stripe blame stroke shine smile swore scrape smoke ...
— The Beacon Second Reader • James H. Fassett
... your searchlight on," was the reply. "There may come a time when you'll want both hands to operate that spike thing you've ...
— Boy Scouts in a Submarine • G. Harvey Ralphson
... were soldiers, both black and stern. But one was a Hebrew, no less than forty-five years of age. He wore a helmet of polished metal, equipped with a visor, which, when raised, finished the front with a flat plate. The top of the head-piece was ornamented with a spike. His armor was complete—shirt of mail, shenti extending half-way to the knees, greaves of brass ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... reached the head of the rapids, and on the night of May 4 a messenger from Harrison made his way through the British lines to Clay, instructing him to land eight hundred men on the left bank of the Maumee to carry the British batteries there, and spike the guns, afterwards crossing to the fort. The remainder of the troops were to land on the right side of the river and make their way through the Indians to the fort. According to orders, Colonel Dudley landed with the specified force, rushed the batteries, which were manned only by a few gunners, ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... again they were halved. Next he ordered away all who smoked—Ah, deep philosopher that he was!—and from the remnant he selected his fifty. Among them was Rolf. Then he divulged his plan. It was nothing less than a dash on the new-made fort to spike those awful guns—fifty men to dash into a camp ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the ride given him out of compliment to his work and that of the Police generally, on the train which was the first to go through to the coast after Donald A. Smith had driven at Craigellachie in November, 1885, the spike which united the two oceans across Canada. Steele was back on duty in the mountains again and, as he knew some of the party, was invited to go through from Kamloops on a private car with Mr. Dickey, the government engineer, and the manager ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... retinue of the Major, were several men with elephant spears or goads. These consist of a long, pliant, polished bamboo, with a sharp spike at the end, which they call a jhetha. These men now came hurrying round the ridge, among the opener grass, and as we emerged from the heavy cover, they began goading the elephants behind and urging them to their most furious pace. On ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the profit that England gains from hence, not the forty thousandth part. Although I must confess, that a mote in the eye, or a thorn in the side, is more dangerous and painful than a beam, or a spike at a distance. ...
— The Prose Works of Jonathan Swift, Vol. VI; The Drapier's Letters • Jonathan Swift
... before he perceived an extraordinarily strong smell of honey. It came from the little flowering plants that covered the ground. They grew on slender stalks, had light-green, shiny leaves, which were beautifully veined, and at the top a little spike, thickly set with white flowers. Their petals were of the tiniest, but from among them pushed up a little brush of stamens, whose pollen-filled heads trembled on white filaments. Reor thought, as he went ...
— Invisible Links • Selma Lagerlof
... to clear away the snow from the ice at one side of the house, using their snow-shoes as shovels. When this was done, a pole was cut, and to the end of the pole a long iron spike was fastened. With this improvised implement Sishetakushin began to pick away the ice where the snow had been cleared from it, while ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... of the opposite Brazilian shore. The house was guarded by three wooden figures, "clouterly carved," and powdered with ochre or red wood; two of them, representing warriors in studded coatings of spike nails, with a looking-glass fixed in the stomach, raised their hands as if to stab each other. These figures are sometimes found large as life: according to the agents, the spikes are driven in before the wars begin, and every one promises the hoped-for death of an enemy. Behind them the house was ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... and 2/500 in an opposite direction during the next 6 h. The two lobes, therefore, seem to be constantly closing or opening, though to a very small distance; for we must remember that the little triangle of paper affixed to the marginal spike increased its length, and thus exaggerated somewhat the movement. Similar observations, with the important difference that the petiole was left free and the plant kept under a high temperature, were made on a leaf, which ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... door-step of the hotel. Unpretending as it is, this little alpine adventurer makes the most of its beauty. The blossoms are not crowded into close heads, so as to lose their individual attractiveness, like the florets of the golden-rod, for example; nor are they set in a stiff spike, after the manner of the orchid just now mentioned. At the same time the plant does not trust to the single flower to bring it into notice. It grows in a pretty tuft, and throws out its blossoms in a graceful, loose cluster. The eye is caught by the cluster, and yet each flower ...
— The Foot-path Way • Bradford Torrey
... oil of spike, two ounces origanum, two ounces hemlock, two ounces wormwood, four ounces sweet oil, two ounces spirit of ammonia, two ounces gum camphor, two ounces spirits turpentine. Add one quart strong alcohol. Mix well together, and bottle tight. This is an unequaled horse liniment, and of the best ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... quite diagnose the case your way, Mr. Smith; that's a blamed sight better lard than I thought Muggins & Co. were making." And you'd have driven a spike right through that fellow's little joke and have nailed down his order hard and tight with ...
— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer
... step-mother urged him to abjure his faith. Margaret Roper intercepted her father on his return to the Tower after his trial, and penetrating the circle of the Guards, hung on his neck and bade him farewell. There is a tradition that she caused her father's head to be stolen from the spike of the bridge on which it was exposed, and, getting it preserved, kept it in a casket. She and her husband, William Roper, wrote together the biography of ...
— The Old Masters and Their Pictures - For the Use of Schools and Learners in Art • Sarah Tytler
... at base, half clasping the stem and rapidly narrowed to an acute tip; hardly at all spreading from the thread-like twigs; flowers pinkish, in spike-like clusters 6. Tamarix. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... want you to take one chance in a million on that back of yours yet. See? Or do I have to drive that order in and spike it down?" ...
— Red Pepper's Patients - With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular • Grace S. Richmond
... were completed by the 28th, but just as we were congratulating ourselves upon having performed them, a fresh defect was discovered, which threatened more alarming consequences than the others. Upon stripping off some sheets of copper, the spike nails which fastened the planks were found to be decaying, and many were so entirely decomposed by oxidation that a straw was easily thrust through the vacant holes. As we had not enough nails to replace the copper, for that was now our only security, we could not venture to remove more than a few ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... per cent. in a toilet soap. An excess of naphthalene should also be avoided, since, on account of its strong odour, soaps containing much of it are unpopular. The odour of coal tar is considerably modified by and blends well with a perfume containing oils of cassia, lavender, spike, and red thyme. ...
— The Handbook of Soap Manufacture • W. H. Simmons
... corolla, the stamen and the pistil. We find that the arrangements of leaves and flowers are quite constant, that the leaves of some plants are opposite, of others alternate; of still others from the root only, that flowers are solitary, in raceme, head, spike or ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... it for him. "That would spike The Searchlight's guns, you think? Perhaps. But if she were going to divorce Eyre, she'd have done it long ago, wouldn't she? I think she'll wait. He ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... heather (erica); The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin." Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a Green beetle as if on a pin, You may roll in it, if you would like a Few holes in ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... fiercely, and eight days after, he sent me to Porto on a schooner belonging to one of our neighbours, just to give me a change of air. I came back, at the end of six months, thinner than a marling spike, but more in love than ever. Recollections of Claudine scorched me like a fire. I could scarcely eat or drink; but I felt that she loved me a little in return, for I was a fine young fellow, and more than one girl had set her cap at me. Then my father, seeing that he could do nothing, that I was ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... only keeping off another tribe that wanted to trade with the white men. The worst trouble was from the inordinate thieving propensities of the natives. Iron, nails, belaying pins, rudders, anchors, bits of sail, a spike that could be pulled from the rotten wood of the outer keel by the teeth of a thief paddling below—anything, everything was snatched by the light-fingered gentry. Nor can we condemn them for it. Their moral standard was the Wolf ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... love cows next," laughed Pan. "Nope. We'll do our work well. Then the chances are we won't spike any of those thoroughbreds we want to break ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... of inflorescence usually met with are the spike, raceme and panicle. When the spikelets are sessile or borne directly along an elongated axis as in Enteropogon melicoides the inflorescence is a spike. If the spikelets borne by the axis are ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... naturalists, and which is still in a far from perfect state. To all proposed arrangements some exception can be taken, and the following system is not free from objection, but it is on the whole the most reliable; and this system is founded on the form of the antler, which runs from a single spike, as in the South American Coassus, to the many branches of the red deer (Cervus elaphas); and all the various changes on which we found genera are in successive stages produced in the red deer, ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... situation presented a rare opportunity to the Democratic party. By becoming the vehicle to bring real peace and good will to the country, it would not only efface its questionable war record, but it could "spike the guns" of the Radicals, control Congress, sustain the President, and carry the Empire State. This was the hope of Raymond and of Weed, back of whom, it was said, stood tens of ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... and class pride will astonish the world. They will stand erect in their vast class strength and defend—THEMSELVES. They will cease to coax and tease; they will make demands—unitedly. They will desert the armory; they will spike every cannon on earth; they will scorn the commander; they will never club nor bayonet another striker; and in the legislatures of the world they will shear the fatted parasites from the political and industrial ...
— Socialism As It Is - A Survey of The World-Wide Revolutionary Movement • William English Walling
... (Colicroot, star grass, blackroot, blazing star, and unicorn root ) Bitter American herb of the Bloodwort family, with small yellow or white flowers in a long spike ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... With the seventy-five foot main-boom sheeted in to her rail, with the thirty-seven-foot spike bowsprit poking a lane in the sea when she dove and a path among the clouds when she lifted, with her midship rail all but flush with the sea and the night breeze to sing to her—of course she liked it, and she showed her liking. She'd tear herself apart now before she'd let anything ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... said the prince. "I know there are guards in every gallery, bolts to every door, cannon and soldiery at every barrier. How will you overcome the sentries—spike the guns? How will you break through the ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... made up his quarrel, it seemed—began to ill-treat the crew as before. If any man did not do exactly what he wanted, the captain would tear off his cap, seize his hair, and then, kicking his legs, bring him down on the deck. One day he knocked a poor fellow down with a hand-spike, and thrashed him with a boat-stretcher; and soon afterwards threw a marlin-spike at the head of another, and wounded him severely in the ear. It surprised me that the men did not turn upon ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... roach, and moving it up and down the water, is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret: it is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a Pike; and then cast it into a likely place; and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water, and so up the stream; and it is more than likely that you have a Pike follow with more than common eagerness. ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton
... through Bourne as she rode through Coventry. The boy Godwin—he that was the great Earl's godson, our last hope, the last of our house—draws sword on them; and he, a boy of sixteen summers, kills them both out of hand. The rest set on him, cut his head off, and there it sticks on the gable spike of the hall to this hour. And do you ask, after that, why free Englishmen are ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... monkey's-tail, or gliding fish or wriggling eel, companions of his imprisonment. At last the cold touch of iron: the hand encloses and lifts it; its weight betrays its length; he feels it to the end—blunt, square, useless. He tries the other end—an edge or spike. That will do. Standing under the hatch, guided by the ladder to the position, and with a strong swinging, upward blow, the new tool is driven into the soft, fibrous and adhesive pine bottom of the box. On the principle on which your butler's practiced elbow draws the twisted screw sunk ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... however, for long at a time over the failure of his resources. One evening he got his father to put a spike into the toe of one of his wooden shoes, and after that his kick was respected. Partly by himself, and partly through Rud, he also learned where to find the places on the animals where it hurt most. The cow-calves and the two bull-calves all had their particular tender spot, ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... man (junior editor of the Boomtown Spike), threw himself down on the sod, pulled his hat rim down over his eyes, and looked away over the plain. It was the second year of Boom-town's existence, and Seagraves had not yet grown restless under its monotony. ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... their mammoth fearless strength tore up the solid rock with snorts of rage and the panting of industry, now and then flinging some troublesome, stubborn boulder angrily upon the cars. Yet they could be dainty as human fingers too, could pick up a railroad spike or push a rock gently an inch further across the car. Each was run by two white Americans, or at least what would prove such when they reached the shower-bath in their quarters—the craneman far out on the shovel arm, the engineer within the machine itself with a labyrinth of levers demanding his ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... so bracing that we all feel equal to anything. Mr. Struble has already killed a fine "spike" elk for camp eating. We camped in a bunch, and we have camp stoves so that in case of rain or snow we can stay indoors. Just now we have a huge camp fire around which we sit in the evening, telling stories, singing, and eating ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... the young fool, whose hands were clasped behind him and concealed a marlin-spike, up and killed the old sailor, and so rounded ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... away. Amid the sprouting grasses by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt by day in the ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... receive the toddy Briggs was stirring for him, the other in kindly protest, for both the youngsters were on their feet confusedly striving to make it understood that they had only been waiting for the cool of the evening to come to pay their respects. "And never mind about spike tail and shirt fronts either—come just as ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... iron which they used first proved to be very poor iron. In after years, if a spike came out or the bar cracked off at the spike hole, the bar would turn up like a serpent's head and if not seen in time it was liable to throw the train off the track and do damage. I was at Dearborn at one time when an accident, of this kind, happened to ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... Louvre, because we scamped it. The fact is, there was a little unpleasantness with one of the fellows, owing to Jim's cane happening to scratch one of the pictures by a chap named Rubens. It was quite an accident, as we were only trying to spike a wasp on the frame, and Jim missed his shot. The fellow there made a mule of himself, and lost his temper. So we didn't see the fun ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... wind of the charge shatters them. Horse and foot, carbines and petronels, swords and pole-axes, are mingled in one struggling mass. Rupert and his men seem refreshed, not exhausted, by the weary night,—they seem incapable of fatigue; they spike the guns as they cut down the gunners, and, if any escape, it is because many in both armies wear the same red scarfs. One Puritan, surrounded by the enemy, shows such desperate daring that Rupert bids release him at last, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, No. 20, June, 1859 • Various
... I made the natives another visit, accompanied by Mr Forster and Mr Hodges, carrying with me various articles which I presented them with, and which they received with a great deal of indifference, except hatchets and spike-nails; these they most esteemed. This interview was at the same place as last night; and now we saw the whole family, it consisted of the man, his two wives (as we supposed), the young woman before mentioned, a boy about fourteen years old, and three small children, ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... her: he had made up his mind the only thing he could do with his secret now was to use it to spike the enemy's guns. Mabel was rash enough to insist on an ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... that the scratch on that table is slight at one side, but deepens in the direction of the bedroom door. That in itself is enough to show us that the shoe had been drawn in that direction, and that the culprit had taken refuge there. The earth round the spike had been left on the table, and a second sample was loosened and fell in the bedroom. I may add that I walked out to the athletic grounds this morning, saw that tenacious black clay is used in the jumping-pit and carried away a specimen of it, together with ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dish piled with melons, pine-apples and miscellaneous garden produce, while, between the veranda posts, could be seen a guava-tree, an elderly fig and a loquat all in full bearing. The garden seemed a tangle of all manner of vegetation—an oleander in bloom, a poinsettia, a yucca, lifting its spike of waxen white blossoms, a narrow flower-border in which the gardenias had become tall shrubs and the scented verbena shrubs almost trees. As for the blend of perfume, it was dreamily intoxicating. Two bamboos, guarding the ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... had placed on one side a black-handled fork with two prongs, and a knife of the same pattern (this was for Frank) and on the other a small pewter tea-spoon and a knife, of which the only handle was a small iron spike from which the wood had fallen away. (This was for herself.) Then there was a tooth-glass for Frank, and a teacup—without a handle, but with a gold flower in the middle of it, to make up—for herself. In ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... She spike quite calmly, even cheerfully now, thinking out her plans, ready for the worst if need be; she would show no more weakness, she would prove herself worthy of him, who was about to give his life for ...
— The Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... Caroline that she is mistaken and that you are indifferent to Madame de Fischtaminel, would cost you dear. This is a blunder that no sensible man commits; he would lose his power and spike his own guns. ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... a hall of famous sculpture; or as a wilderness of tapestry foliage, in texture from cobweb to burlap; or as a heaven-roofed, sun-furnaced greenhouse of blossoms, from the tiniest of dull-green orchids to the fifty-foot spike of taliput bloom. With this foundation of vegetation recall that the Demerara coast is a paradise for herons, egrets, bitterns, gallinules, jacanas, and hawks, and think of these trees and foliage, islands and marsh, as a nesting and roosting focus ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... stood gazing at that worn and rusty bar of iron with its single bent and rusty spike, I was whisked back across the years by some strange trick of memory and I saw, instead, a dimly lighted sick room, on a hot summer night—myself a little sufferer, and sitting beside me, fanning my fevered brow, my beloved father, who, notwithstanding the fatigue of ...
— A Pioneer Railway of the West • Maude Ward Lafferty
... by which his soldiers called him. Invariably he spent some part of his day among his beloved peasants, and daily he recited with them public prayers. Often at night he and they together went up to the teeth of the Russian batteries on expeditions to spike the cannon. His inseparable companion, Niemcewicz, who slept with him in his tent till the-end came, describes how the silence of these nights was broken hideously by the wild, shrill cry of the reapers, by the sudden ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... that they came from curiosity. The stout councilman was recognizable by his scarlet cloak and golden chain; a black, expensive-looking, swelling waistcoat betrayed the honorable and proud citizen. An iron spike-helmet, a yellow leather jerkin, and rattling spurs, weighing a pound, indicated the heavy cavalry-man. Under little black velvet caps, which came together in a point over the brow, there was many a rosy girl-face, and the young fellows who ran along after ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... WILLING,—For Heaven's sake, as an old friend, spike or remove the chimney cowl that McWhannel at No. 3 has written you about. He has called on me twice and written three long letters, "to enlist my sympathy and support." He is the most poisonous kind of bore, and I'll gladly ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... a confession. Peg Tatem in the toils. Timber pirates get prison terms. The lumberjacks' big Christmas. "Sit down, you rough-necks!" roars Hippy. Spike bares his soul. What the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... was so much afraid for Minucianus, lest he should light upon the Germans now they were in their fury, that he went and spike to every one of the soldiers, and prayed them to take care of his preservation, and made himself great inquiry about him, lest he should have been slain. And for Clement, he let Minucianus go when he was brought to him, and, with many other of the senators, affirmed the action was right, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... pronounced a single word, but his face had grown pale for a moment. Letting go of his hand-spike, he regained ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... in your mainslacks, and splice your marline-spike. Where are you coming to?" cried Peeler, the coastguardsman—for such, we need hardly say, was the rank of the ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... understan', noo, Maister Delamere, precisely what ye hae to dae?" observed the first luff, when concluding his instructions to me. "Oor business is tae tak' yon wee bit battery, and to spike the guns. But we're to dae't wi'oot loss o' life on oor ain part, if possible; ye'll therefore approach the place cannily and get as close up to it as maybe wi'oot bein' discovert; and, that done, ye'll ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... and the hope was deferred. The rush of the Sea-horse did not trouble the sands of the shallow bar, or sweep, with fiercely ramping figure-head, past the long pier-spike, stretching like the hand of welcome from the hospitable shore. While they fancied her full-breasted sails, swelled as with sighs for home, bowing lordly over the submissive waters, the Sea-horse ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... be madness. To save the gun and escape capture must be the "double event." Seizing a ramrod, he ordered an artilleryman to spike the gun, gave the command to retreat, telling the men to "duck their heads," fearing another discharge, and, leading his horse, followed by Macdonell and Glegg and the firing squad of eight ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... grow quite so tall, being about thirty feet high when full grown, and perhaps twenty inches in diameter. What looks like the root of the sago-tree is really a creeping underground stem, from which a spike of flowers grows up when the tree is about ten or fifteen years old. For some years, while the plant is young, the upright growing stem is covered and completely hidden by very large spiny leaves. These are rather like enormous ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... thinking that he had killed the children; but the cook threw himself at the King's feet and said, "Truly, sir King, I would desire no other sinecure in return for the service I have done you than to be thrown into a furnace full of live coals; I would ask no other gratuity than the thrust of a spike; I would wish for no other amusement than to be roasted in the fire; I would desire no other privilege than to have the ashes of the cook mingled with those of a Queen. But I look for no such great reward for having saved the children, and brought them back to you in spite ...
— Stories from Pentamerone • Giambattista Basile
... but guaranteed weather-controlled future summer day dawned on the Mississippi Valley, the walking mills of Puffy Products ("Spike to Loaf in One Operation!") began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... into permanence by twisted oaks and magnolias. Upon their limbs in April the Spanish moss and air-plants were just blossoming, the former into little star-like, hardly-discernible flowers, the latter throwing up a green stem with a pink terminal bud, which in August had burst into a spike of crimson flowers. Curious lichens cover the rough trunks of these oaks—some gray, some ashy-white, some pink, some scarlet like blotches of blood. The Mitchella, the little partridge-berry, is here in bloom, and has been since ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... has reached the age of tail coats and spike-fence collars that he discovers two hands are frequently too many and often not enough. They are too many at your first church wedding when wearing your first pair of white kids and they are not enough ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... of the two was that when they entered the cavern and took away the gold, they left the Winchester and revolvers. This may have been due to their eagerness to carry off every ounce of gold, but the commonest prudence would have suggested that they "spike" the weapons, so as to prevent their being ...
— Klondike Nuggets - and How Two Boys Secured Them • E. S. Ellis
... unequalled; but "the wild herds that never knew a fold" are its only denizens. Here, on the mountain slopes, Mr. Wallace found Bletia Sherrattiana, the white form, very rare; another terrestrial orchid, unnamed and, as is thought, unknown, which sends up a branching spike two feet to three feet high, bearing ten to twelve flowers, of rich purple hue, in shape like a Sobralia, three and four inches across; and yet another of the same family, growing on the rocks, and "looking like masses of snow on the hill-side." Such descriptions ...
— About Orchids - A Chat • Frederick Boyle
... looked out from amidst the long grasses like snowflakes of summer. Near the water's edge, mingling with sedges, flags, marsh-mallows, bur-reed, and alisma, were the golden flowers of the shrubby lysimachia in dense multitudes, while from the canal itself rose many a spike of water-stachys, with here and there blossoming butomus, near the fringe of the banks. Then there were the pond-weeds, and other true water-plants, whose summer luxuriance nearly stopped the navigation of the canal, and whose pollen in July, collecting near the locks, lay there upon the ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... belongs To the Foes of Freedom, the Friends of wrongs, And unto them alone. The first and worst of the Tyrant's terms, Barbed to spike at the writhing worms That crawl about his throne. Only the mob at a despot's heels Would juggle a man at Fortune's wheels, Or conjure one with the die that reels From the lip of the dice-cup thrown! The soldier forced to the field of fight, With never a reck of the ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the castle, there was a ring of spikes all round the castle and men's heads on nearly every spike there. ...
— Stories to Read or Tell from Fairy Tales and Folklore • Laure Claire Foucher
... the horse. He merely walked in front holding the bridle slackly. The horse followed him as good as gold—and picked up his feet at nearly every spike. Once or twice a hind hoof grazed a spike-head with a rasping sound that sent Racey's heart bouncing up into his throat. Lord, so much depended on ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... quite different from the garrison handspike. It was a long, round staff, with an iron handle bolted to its head (fig. 33a). The trail transom of the carriage held two eyebolts, into which the foot of the spike was inserted. A lug fitted into an offset in the larger eyebolt so that the spike could not twist. With the handspike socketed in the eyebolts, lifting the trail and laying the gun ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... any—as he will clearly gather from this By-law. When a person joins Mrs. Eddy's Church he must leave his thinker at home. Leave it permanently. To make sure that it will not go off some time or other when he is not watching, it will be safest for him to spike it. If he should forget himself and think just once, the By-law provides that he shall be fired ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... and fight. Many of the graders were old soldiers, and a little fight only rested them. Indeed there was more military air about this work than had been or has since been about the building of a railroad in this country. It was one big battle, from the first stake west of Omaha to the last spike at Promontory—a battle that lasted five long years; and if the men had marked the graves of those who fell in that fierce fight their monuments, properly distributed, might have served as mile-posts on the great overland route to-day. But the mounds were unmarked, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... business to remain there; every prospect of security depended on my joining the crew, but it was not in my power to desert my position. I could hear the hurrying feet of the watch tramping across the deck in response to LeVere's orders; the heavy pounding of a marling-spike on the forecastle hatch, as Haines called for all hands. I was aware that men were already mounting the ratlines, and laying out on the upper yards to make sail, while the capstan bars began rattling. Yet only one ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... steel edges like those of the ancient Romans, and carried ashen lances ten feet long, with straight and sharp iron spikes: only one-fourth of their number bore halberts instead of lances, the spikes cut into the form of an axe and surmounted by a four-cornered spike, to be used both for cutting like an axe and piercing like a bayonet: the first row of each battalion wore helmets and cuirasses which protected the head and chest, and when the men were drawn up for battle they presented to the enemy a triple array of iron spikes, which they could ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... yer. If I was to tell yer, 'Ere, Bill, give me that 'andspike,' that wouldn't be a hanthem;' but was I to say, 'Bill, Bill, giv, giv, give me, give me that, Bill, give me, give me that hand, handspike, hand, handspike, spike, spike, spike, ah-men, ahmen. Bill, givemethat-handspike, spike, ahmen!' why, that would ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... virgin purity, judging merely from their impression on my instincts as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe, at the moment, to stake my life. The next moment, however, as the surrounding flood of moral uncleanness surged over their foot-steps, I would not have staked a spike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the miracle was within the scope of Providence, which is equally wise and equally beneficent, (even to those poor girls, though I acknowledge the fact without the remotest ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... the energy and skill of such men as Stanford, Crocker and Huntington. Imported Chinese coolies had met the labor demand and construction was speeded up. Actual building had begun in 1863 and six years later the two roads met at Promontory Point near Ogden in Utah, where the last spike was driven, the engines ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... with him, went out to the wood, and again told the men who had been sent with him to remain outside. He hadn't to search long, for the unicorn soon passed by, and, on perceiving the Tailor, dashed straight at him as though it were going to spike him on the spot. "Gently, gently," said he; "not so fast, my friend;" and standing still he waited till the beast was quite near, when he sprang lightly behind a tree; the unicorn ran with all its force against the tree, and rammed its horn so firmly ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... before, were relegated for the moment to the limbo of forgotten tribulations. Reliance on relieving expeditions was considered foolish; all our thoughts and energies were centred in a desire to stay the slaughter of the innocents, and thus in a manner to spike ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... best way of securing a uniform appearance and the easiest, after one good result, is to cut a metal template with a spike at the central point or middle of where the string is to rest. These points will be found unequal when pricked on to the surface of the nut. A very small, round file should now be used carefully with the run of the fingerboard, or the strings when wound ...
— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick
... caused me any anxiety. And even now they do not greatly trouble me; for if they keep no better watch there on other nights than they did on this, it would be easy for a couple of resolute men to enter the place, even as I did, bind and gag the sentinels, and spike all eight of the guns, and never a man of them any the wiser until they came to put fire ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... was now, of course, commanded by the steward, but the duties of his unpleasant office left him but little time for directing an invasion. Well, we got within reach of England when the wind began to blow, and before I could hitch myself up with a marling-spike, every man Jack of us was ready ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101. October 3rd, 1891 • Various
... And King Leodogran Groan'd for the Roman legions here again, And Caesar's eagle: then his brother king, Urien, assail'd him: last a heathen horde, Reddening the sun with smoke and earth with blood, And on the spike that split the mother's heart Spitting the child, brake on him, till, amazed, He knew not whither he ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... the New English Dictionary, from Lat. brocca, spit, spike, broccare, to "broach"—another Eng. form of the same word; hence O. Fr. vendre a broche, to retail, e.g. wine, from the tap, and thus the general sense of dealing; see also for a discussion of the etymology and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... at them a few blossoms such as, for beauty and fragrance, are worthy to be, as they really are, cousin to the rose. On one of my rambles I came upon some plants of a strangely slim and prim aspect; nothing but a straight, erect, military-looking, needle-like stalk, bearing a spike of pods at the top, and clasped at the middle by two small stemless leaves. By some occult means (perhaps their growing with Tiarella had something to do with the matter) I felt at once that these must be the mitrewort (Mitella diphylla). My prophetic soul was not always ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... the damn bed down and spike it to the floor!" This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation. Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was suffering severely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partial electrocution. So we called up Dr. ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... blue, including filaments, anthers, and style; crowded in a dense spike; quickly fading; unpleasantly odorous. Perianth tubular, 2-lipped, parted into 6 irregular lobes, free from ovary; middle lobe of upper lip with 2 yellow spots at base within. Stamens 6, placed at unequal distances on tube, ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... boyhood in the Inverness-shire hills, and it was easy to slip into the speech of the mother-tongue. Then, after a long pause, he went on: "He wasna wearing a beard, a red beard trimmed down to a spike—this writer-man, when ye ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... standing on the bench that served instead of dining-chairs, each with a plate and a pancake on the table in front of them. Jack held a hammer and spike, Scott Burton a hatchet, Geoffrey a saw, and Philip a rifle. Bell was nothing if not intuitive. No elaborate explanations ever were needed to show her a fact. Without a word she flung the plate of flapjacks she held as far into a thicket ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... other with questioning eyes, before Josh, whose white teeth were all on view, stooped down and made a slight suggestion, a kind of pantomime, that he should drag up a great buckler fern by the roots, and drop it plump on the umbrella spike. ...
— Will of the Mill • George Manville Fenn
... were arranged, some in the interior of the wire-gauze cover, the prison of the female, and some around it, in an unbroken circle. Some contained naphthaline; others the essential oil of spike-lavender; others petroleum, and others a solution of alkaline sulphur giving off a stench of rotten eggs. Short of asphyxiating the prisoner I could do no more. These arrangements were made in the morning, so that the room should be saturated when the congregation ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... to hire a donkey, and then sham she'd rather not ride, for fear of being too heavy; and to take Spike out for a run, and then carry him to save him the trouble of walking. But she's very good; she made all our cocked hats, and at the review she and Dolly and Spike were the loyal crowd. Dick and Tom ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... them; and on a buttress of the clock tower, a lonely hedge-sparrow poured his heart out in that peculiarly pathetic threnody which no other feathered throat contributes to the varied volume of bird lays. Poised on the point of an iron spike in the line that bristled along the wall, a mocking bird preened, then spread his wings, soared and finally swept downward, thrilling the air with the bravura of the "tumbling song"; and over the rampart ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... Turning it upward as he spoke, it was his delight to tell of cruises against the French and battles with his own shipmates, when he and an antagonist used to be seated astride of a sailor's chest, each fastened down by a spike-nail through his trousers, and there to fight it out. Sometimes he expatiated on the delicious flavor of the hagden, a greasy and goose-like fowl which the sailors catch with hook and line on the Grand Banks. He dwelt with rapture on ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... water every heart was yearin' back To the little 'ouse at Coogee or a hut at Bar- renjack. She was 'ookin' up to spike the stars, or rootin' in the wave, An' me liver turned a hand spring with each buck the beggar gave. Then we pulls a sick 'n' silly smile 'n' tips a saucy lid, Crackin' hardy. Willie didn't. Willie snivelled ...
— 'Hello, Soldier!' - Khaki Verse • Edward Dyson
... honeycombs it; and riddled as it may occasionally be, still, if spike or nail finds substance enough to hold, or sufficient solidity to resist crushing, then, for many purposes, even such lumber is practically as good as the soundest timber; because when the tree dies the fungus dies, and thenceforth will absorb no more ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 • Various
... too. I write it ... light, elegant, about light elegant women." He laughed and twirled the tiny waxed spike that stuck out from ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... just as the sun was sending shafts of light across river and swamp—making them glow like burnished silver, and covering every tall spike of rush and flag with diamonds—a few straggling cottages or huts ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... that is good, was duly honoured by his son, and in company with the Mothers, he stayed there by the side of Mahasena to tend him. And that lady amongst the Mothers who was born of Anger[74] with a spike in hand kept watch over Skanda even like a mother guarding her own offspring, and that irascible red-coloured daughter of the Sea, who lived herself on blood, hugged Mahasena in her breast and nursed him like a mother. And Agni transforming himself into ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... wonder, With voice like thunder, Declares such plunder he roust dislike, They next may rowl in And sack Haulbowline, Or on a sudden run off with Spike. His peace is vanished, His joys are banished, And gay or happy no more he'll be, Until those Cork men And wild New York men Are sunk ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... the journal is merely an assembly of the records (messages, records of oral orders, and the like) from which the journal is compiled. Each item of the file bears a serial number corresponding to that of its entry in the journal. An ordinary spike-file is frequently adequate for safe-keeping of these records while in use. When the journal is closed, the corresponding journal-file is filed with the journal, in accordance with standing instructions or in compliance with any particular disposition directed by the commander ...
— Sound Military Decision • U.s. Naval War College
... judging merely from their impression on my instincts as they passed by, I should have deemed it safe, at the moment, to stake my life. The next moment, however, as the surrounding flood of moral uncleanness surged over their foot-steps, I would not have staked a spike of thistle-down on the same wager. Yet the miracle was within the scope of Providence, which is equally wise and equally beneficent, (even to those poor girls, though I acknowledge the fact without the remotest comprehension of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. July, 1863, No. LXIX. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... of the Carthaginians was neutralized by converting the decks into a battle-field for soldiers. Each ship was provided with a long boarding-bridge, hinged up against the mast, to be let down on the prow, and fixed to the hostile deck by a long spike, which projected from its end. The bridge was wide enough for two soldiers to pass abreast, and its ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord
... the siege was pushed with great vigilance. All within the walls of the beleaguered city were reduced to extreme suffering. Horse flesh was considered a delicacy which was reserved for the sick. The French made sally after sally to spike the guns which were battering down the walls. As Mallebois, with his powerful reenforcement, drew near, their courage rose. The Duke of Lorraine became increasingly anxious to secure the capitulation before the arrival ...
— The Empire of Austria; Its Rise and Present Power • John S. C. Abbott
... small hospital for seamen at Key West. Into one of the rooms of the building thus appropriated our narrative must now conduct the reader. It contained but a single patient, and that was Spike. He was on his narrow bed, which was to be but the precursor of a still narrower tenement, the grave. In the room with the dying man were two females, in one of whom our readers will at once recognize the person of Rose Budd, dressed in deep mourning for her aunt. At first sight, ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various
... no doubt. The bear had been taught a hundred tricks, all to be performed at the keeper's word of command. It was late in the evening when O'Leary saw him, and the bear seemed sulky; the keeper, however, with a short spike fixed at the end of a pole, made him move about briskly. He marked on sand what o'clock it was, with his paw; and distinguished the men and women in a very comical way: in fact, our priest was quite diverted. The beast at length grew tired—the keeper hit him with the ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... was over him in the house. Every quarrel therein about seat or bed comes to his decision. Should a needle drop in the house, its fall would be heard when he speaks. Above him is a huge black tree, like a millshaft, with its paddles and its cap and its spike. Liken ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... brown mare with an open fetlock joint due to a spike-nail puncture. Lameness was excessive, and joint greatly swollen. Tincture of iodin was injected into the wound and towels dipped in hot antiseptic solutions were applied for several hours daily until the acute stage had passed. Later the mare was turned ...
— Lameness of the Horse - Veterinary Practitioners' Series, No. 1 • John Victor Lacroix
... all the plants of this wonderful forest. The ocatilla is a cactus-like form having a group of long slender stems bunched together at the root. In the spring each is tipped with a spike of red flowers, and as the snake-like stalks wave in the breeze they present an appearance scarcely less attractive than ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... when the tree withered. Some Faraday shows us that each drop of water is a sheath for electric forces sufficient to charge 800,000 Leyden jars, or drive an engine from Liverpool to London. Some Sir William Thomson tells us how hydrogen gas will chew up a large iron spike as a child's molars will chew off the end of a stick of candy. Thus each new book opens up some new and hitherto unexplored realm of nature. Thus books fulfill for us the legend of the wondrous glass that showed ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried her ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... watch both Congress and our State legislatures, but the "scamps" are vastly better at promising than fulfilling. The politicians, of course, expect all this flutter and buncombe about doing something for women in New York—in California—in Iowa—is going to spike our guns and make us help the Republican party to carry all before it; but we must not be thus ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... middle hang very heavy, I said to the boy, 'Go round the binnacle, and knock down that man that hangeth on my back.' So the boy did strike him one blow on the head which made him fall.... Then I looked about for a marlin spike or anything else to strike them withal. But seeing nothing, I said, 'LORD! what shall I do?' Then casting up my eye upon my left side, and seeing a marlin spike hanging, I jerked my right arm and took hold, and struck the point four times about ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... underestimated the catapult. The crew released it. And a shower of spikes tore the invading ranks apart. Odin saw a white-skinned warrior go to his knees and scream as he tried to pull a six-inch spike from his eye. ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... scattered irregularly about its surface, the plots or patches of cultivated smoothness—potato rows, green parallel lines ruled on a grey ground, and big, blue-green, equidistant cabbage-globes—each plot with its fringe of spike-like onion leaves, crinkled parsley, and other garden herbs. Here the villagers came by a narrow, steep, and difficult path they had made, to dig in their plots; while, overhead, the gulls, careless of their presence, pass ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... some in the interior of the wire-gauze cover, the prison of the female, and some around it, in an unbroken circle. Some contained naphthaline; others the essential oil of spike-lavender; others petroleum, and others a solution of alkaline sulphur giving off a stench of rotten eggs. Short of asphyxiating the prisoner I could do no more. These arrangements were made in the morning, so that the room ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre
... will absolutely prove on the face of my plans that I cannot in any way benefit beyond the satisfaction I shall derive from putting another spike in ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... Susan, pleased with the commission, "that I will;" and away she ran, while Miss Fosbrook examined the spike to her own great enjoyment. "I see," she said, "the flowers are not really white, they each have a patch of pink or yellow on them, which gives them their softness. Yes; and do you see, Bessie, they are in clusters of three, and each three has one flower with a pink spot, and two ...
— The Stokesley Secret • Charlotte M. Yonge
... grew rather fast till it was 7 ft. high, then rather slowly till it reached its full development. The scape is now 10 ft. 4 in. high above the plant, 61/2 in. in circumference at the base, or 51/4 in. at a foot above the base; from there it tapers very gradually till near the apex. The flower-spike is exceedingly dense, and 5 ft. 8 in. long; the lower or naked portion, 4 ft. 8 in. long, is prominently marked by abortive flower buds, with, near the base, some bristle-like scales 31/2 in. to 4 in. long. The flowers are regularly arranged in parcels of three, all the three being equal ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... whose deeply-furrowed countenance and grizzled hair showed that he had been for many a year a toiler on the ocean. By his side was a boy of about twelve years of age, dressed in flushing coat and sou'wester, busily employed with a marline-spike, in splicing an eye ...
— Michael Penguyne - Fisher Life on the Cornish Coast • William H. G. Kingston
... his sword with as much apparent knowledge of how to use it as if it had been a marlin-spike. Ralph pushed it aside with a stout stick that he carried, and was passing on, when the singing soldier came up and said, "Never mind his name; but whether he be Presbyter Jack or Quaker George, he must drink to the health of the King. Here," he cried, ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... for the eyes and lower down one for the mouth. On the front of the caps of two of the men appeared the red wings of a hawk as the ensign of rank. From the top of each cap rose eighteen inches high a single spike held erect by a twisted wire. The disguises for man and horse were made of cheap unbleached domestic and weighed less than three pounds. They were easily folded within a blanket and kept under the saddle in a crowd without ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... for the Plantain were Waybroad (corrupted to Weybread, Wayborn, and Wayforn) and Ribwort. It was also called Lamb's-tongue and Kemps, while the flower spike with the stalk was called Cocks and Cockfighters (still so called by children).[214:1] The old name of Ribwort was derived from the ribbed leaves, while Waybroad marked its universal appearance, scattered by all roadsides and pathways, and literally ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... by both names, and amply justifies either prefix. The hideous reptile is very thick and stumpy in proportion to its length, which rarely exceeds two feet, whilst its circumference may be put down at one-fifth of its total measurement. The tail is terminated by a small curved spike, which is commonly regarded as the sting; but though when touched it doubles up, and strikes with this horn, as well as bites, I do not think the tail does any material damage, but this opinion one would find it difficult to make a bushman credit. I once saw a man take a death-adder ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... "what is this curious plant that grows so abundantly on the grass here? I know it well by sight, but do not know its name." It is a spike of horse-tail; see how the stem is marked with lines, and how curiously jointed it is, and quite hollow except where the joints occur. The fruit is borne at the top of the plant (a); see, as I shake it, what a quantity of dust ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... the Indian haze of the Tropics, and dreamy to look upon. Still valleys, leagues away, reposed in the deep shadows of the mountains; and here and there, waterfalls lifted up their voices in the solitude. High above all, and central, the "Marling-spike" lifted its finger. Upon the hillsides, small groups of bullocks were seen; some quietly browsing; others slowly winding ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... above Fricourt. From our line, we see his line and a few tree-tops. From the eastern flank of the hill, our line gives a glimpse of the site of the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle, once one of the strong places of the enemy, and now a few heaps of bricks, and one spike of burnt ruin ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... helmet by the spike and put it on the mantel. "Lord knows, I'm not presenting that as a token of valor to any one. It belonged to a poor chap who died on the field the night I was wounded. My orderly packed it in ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... to come across the body of one of the policemen. To his immense relief, he reached the street without discovering any signs of the tragedy he feared. Adam Street was deserted, but in the gardens below the Terrace he could hear the sound of voices, and a torn piece of clothing hung from the spike of one of the railings. Isaac had evidently made for the gardens and the river. The sound of the chase grew fainter and fainter, and there were no more shots. Arnold, after a few minutes' hesitation, turned round and reclimbed the stairs. The place smelt of ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... like a good sayman, says he. That's my principles, says I. They're the right sort, says he. But, says he (no offence), I think you wor wrong, says he, to pass the short turn in the ladie-shoes,[B] says he. I know, says I, you mane beside the three-spike headlan'. That's the spot, says he, I see you know it. As well as I know my ...
— Stories of Comedy • Various
... in armor. A cap of blue steel, with a silver spike on the crown—neck and shoulders covered with a hood of mail—body in a shirt of mail, a bead of silver in each link—limbs to the knees in mail. From the knees down there were splints of steel inlaid with silver; his shoes were of steel, and on the heels long golden spurs. ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... stitching. The three central leaves crossing stem are in red and green, and blue and green; the brown stalks are worked in stem stitch. Loops are worked round the outside of the leaf here as in all the bigger leaves on this work. The spike on the left of the sketch is in herring bone stitch ...
— Jacobean Embroidery - Its Forms and Fillings Including Late Tudor • Ada Wentworth Fitzwilliam and A. F. Morris Hands
... them, I don't see what his plan can be—that is, if he has a plan. However, there is no harm in keeping watch. The guns are against the skyline and, lying down fifty yards away, we shall be able to see if he does anything with them. Of course he might spike them, but I don't suppose that he would risk that, for the spikes might be noticed the first thing in the morning. I don't think that it would do for him to try that. It seemed a stupid thing even to doubt him but, half drunk as he ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... bard shall sit In foremost row before the astonished pit, And grin dislike, and kiss the spike, And twist his mouth and roll his head awry, The arch-absurd ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... retreat, and this dreadful thing about to tear the insides out of their fort with four-hundred-pound shot at quarter-mile range, there was nothing for them to do but consult their own safety, which they did with such haste that they did not spike a gun, or destroy ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... pretty in the place,' said Bob tragically. 'But you don't know, father—how should you know, who have hardly been out of Overcombe in your life?—you don't know what delicate feelings are in a real refined woman's mind. Any little vulgar action unreaves their nerves like a marline-spike. Now I wonder if you did anything to ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... pocket, Charley rapidly mounted a tall tree that stood close beside the truck. As luck would have it, the tree stood all by itself, its nearest neighbors having been cut in making the road. Two-thirds of the way up the tree, Charley drove a spike deep into the wood. He sank a second spike not far from the first. Then he drove home a third. The lead-in wire dangled behind him at his belt. He unfastened it and twisted it tight to the spikes, wrapping it close about one after the other. Then he climbed down and made sure his wire did ...
— 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
... in undress uniform, sat at the piano with his back towards her. His white helmet lay, spike downward, on the carpet; and an Aberdeen terrier—ears rigidly erect, head tilted at a critical angle—sat close beside it, watching his master with intent eyes, in which all the wisdom and sorrow ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... little escapades may be pardonable enough in 'noble and unfortunate' earls: but readers will perhaps agree that if they chose to try a similar experiment, they could not complain if they found themselves shortly after in company with Mr. Mitchell at Spike Island or Mr. Oxford in Bedlam. However, those were days in which such Sabbath amusements on the part of one of the most important and powerful personages of the realm could not be passed over so lightly, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... soon afterwards and said the things answered very well, and ordered more to be made; that, in a little while after this, the said Bentley was sent for to the Bow-street Office, and, after a private examination, was desired to make a pike, or spike, of the same sort, and to carry it to the office, which he did. That your petitioner perceives that the information which it contains may possibly be of the utmost importance in giving a clue to the strict investigation, which he humbly presumes ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... Purple hills hemmed in a broad, green, undulating plateau, scored across and across by the stone walls of the north, and all dappled with the shadows of rolling leaden clouds with silver fringes. Miles away a church spire stuck like a spike out of the hollow, and the smoke of a village dimmed the trees behind. No nearer habitation could I see. I have mentioned a hamlet which we passed in the spring-cart. It lay hidden behind some hillocks ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... Triality. — N. Triality[obs3], trinity; triunity[obs3]. three, triad, triplet, trey, trio, ternion[obs3], leash; shamrock, tierce[obs3], spike-team [U.S.], trefoil; triangle, trident, triennium[obs3], trigon[obs3], trinomial, trionym[obs3], triplopia[obs3], tripod, trireme, triseme[obs3], triskele[obs3], triskelion, trisula[obs3]. third power, cube; cube root. Adj. three ; triform[obs3], trinal[obs3], ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... fighting an exceptionally fierce rearguard action. A terrible shell fire was directed against our artillery under General Findley, temporarily situated in a valley by the village of Prise. It seemed a matter of moments when we should have to spike our guns and General Findley ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... sometimes called spear-grass, and grows to about the size of a mole-hill, all over the back country everywhere, as thick as mole-hills in a very mole-hilly field at home. Its blossoms, which are green, insignificant, and ugly, are attached to a high spike bristling with spears pointed every way and very acutely; each leaf terminates in a strong spear, and so firm is it, that if you come within its reach, no amount of clothing about the legs will prevent you from feeling its effects. I have had my legs marked all over by it. Horses hate the ...
— A First Year in Canterbury Settlement • Samuel Butler
... the levity, cold, but none of the six could really believe it. However, after Hilton had coiled a twenty-penny spike into a perfect helix between his fingers, and especially after he and Temple had each chewed up and swallowed a piece of uranexite, there were ...
— Masters of Space • Edward Elmer Smith
... the Ragged Orchid, a near relative of the foregoing, H. psycodes, but far less fortunate in its attributes of beauty, its long scattered spike of greenish-white flowers being so inconspicuous in its sedgy haunt as often to conceal the fact of its frequency. Its individual flower is shown enlarged at Fig. 12—the lip here cut with a lacerated fringe (H. lacera). The pollen-pouches approach slightly at the base, directly opposite ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... man a proved and seasoned fighter; so will we, being smitten thus, forthwith smite back, and smite where the enemy will least expect. We'll march overland on Carthagena—I know it well—fall on 'em in the dead hush o' night, surprise their fort, spike their guns and down to the harbour for a ship. Here's our vessel a wreck—we'll have one of theirs in place. So, comrades all, who's for Carthagena along with me; who's for a Spanish ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... in a great passionate outburst of popular revolution. Spike Foster was a friend of Cortright, and one day, when the latter was indisposed, Spike came to him and borrowed the hat. He had been drinking heavily at the "Red Light," and was in a supremely reckless mood. With the terrible gear hanging jauntily over his eye and his two guns drawn, ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... Spartan crooked dagger, with which they cut the throats of all whom they could master, and then, cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[34] They stayed in their villages till the Greeks had passed by, when they pursued and perpetually harassed them. They had their dwellings in strong places, in which they had also laid up their provisions, so that the Greeks could get nothing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... undaunted courage and determination. Thus the small mill at Newburg grew from the capacity of turning out thirty tons of re-rolled rails to its present capacity of sixty tons, beside the addition of a puddling mill, a merchant bar mill, a wire rod mill, two blast furnaces, spike, nut and bolt works. In the meantime the small beginning had grown into such large proportions, and so many railroad corporations had centered here, that it was thought best to form the same into a stock company, embracing another rolling mill on the lake shore, within the city limits. ...
— Cleveland Past and Present - Its Representative Men, etc. • Maurice Joblin
... a tropical bird, so called from its sort of whistle. It is distinguished by two long feathers in the tail, called the marling-spike. ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... said Will. "We've either got to spike the launch's boilers, or give them the complete slip ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the head of the rapids, and on the night of May 4 a messenger from Harrison made his way through the British lines to Clay, instructing him to land eight hundred men on the left bank of the Maumee to carry the British batteries there, and spike the guns, afterwards crossing to the fort. The remainder of the troops were to land on the right side of the river and make their way through the Indians to the fort. According to orders, Colonel Dudley ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... purple is heather (erica); The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin." Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a Green beetle as if on a pin, You may roll in it, if you would like a Few holes in ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... wings, though when one of these fish breaks water and shoots through the air, it appears to be flying. The wings are merely fins, enormously enlarged, and these give the fish its great size, rather than does the body itself. It is the whipping spike-armed tail of the devil fish that is to be feared, aside from the fact that the rush of a monster ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... made the meeting-point, though at Promontory, fifty miles west of Ogden, the last spike was driven. A thousand people met at that place in May, '69, to see the short space of track closed and the road finished. A Central train and locomotive from the Pacific came steaming up, and an engine and cars from the Atlantic ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... like his companion, but a strong hackney for the road, to save his gallant war-horse, which a squire led behind, fully accoutred for battle, with a chamfron or plaited head-piece upon his head, having a short spike projecting from the front. On one side of the saddle hung a short battle-axe, richly inlaid with Damascene carving; on the other the rider's plumed head-piece and hood of mail, with a long two-handed sword, used by the chivalry of the period. A second squire held aloft his master's lance, from ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... through their ranks came—a girl! Behind her, enormous pouch at his throat swelling in and out menacingly, in one paw a treelike, spike-studded mace, a frog-man, huger than any of the others, guarding. But of him I caught but a fleeting, involuntary impression—all my gaze ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... and white ally continued upstream. Beyond the northern sentry-line, and beyond the sod huts of the scouts, they spied the first sign of the horse-herd they sought—a herd composed of the sutler's spike-team, a four-in-hand used on the wood-wagon, Lieutenant Fraser's "Buckskin," and a dozen or fifteen second-choice mounts belonging to absent officers. That sign was a spark on the ground a long way ahead. They knew it for the lantern of the ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... heaven's sake, Corydon, look here! Just now a bramble-spike Ran, there, into my instep—and oh how deep they strike, Those lancewood-shafts! A murrain light on that calf, I say! I got it gaping after her. Canst thou discern ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... fractured repair takes place with the formation of a large permanent callus, which, projecting internally, may be a serious obstacle to calving. Worse still, if the edge of the broken bone projects internally as a sharp spike or ridge, the vaginal walls are cut upon it during the passage of the calf, with serious or fatal result. In other cases, where the cow has suffered from fragility of bone (fragilitas ossium) the thickening of the bone causes narrowing ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... men I ever conversed with. Indeed for six months of the year they keep company with the most distinguished travellers of Europe. With these guides, each of us armed with a long pole with an iron spike, such as my uncle described to me ages ago, and which I never expected to wield, we came down La Flegere, which we mounted on mules. In talking to an old woman who brought us strawberries, I was surprised ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... four in the morning, Lord Cornwallis directed a sortie to be made in order to destroy or to spike the guns in one of the enemy's batteries which was causing us most annoyance. The party consisted of about a hundred and fifty men from the guards, the light infantry and the 80th regiment. Never have I seen a more ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... When it come to spiking them in place he seen me swinging that twelve-pound sledge and near breaking my back. 'I think it's easier this way,' he says. 'Besides you can hit a lot faster if you use just one hand.' And he takes the hammer, and sends that big spike in all the way to the head with one lick. And he wondered why I didn't work the same way! Ain't got any ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... performance prospered peacefully to the close, without incident. All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama. His legs trembled and his breath came in gasps of terror. "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a ruined and disgraced swordsman! I struck the villain feebly because in flourishing the scimetar I had accidentally passed it through my own neck! Father of the Moon, I resign my office." So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... green at Offham, an out-of-the-way Kentish village, stands the only quintain post in England. It consists of a tall white post, having a spike at the top, upon which revolves a cross-bar. This portion, which turns on the spike, has a fairly broad square end covered with small holes, while at the opposite end hangs a billet ...
— What to See in England • Gordon Home
... never say "Society" when we mean spike-tailed coats), has an eye on the scourge of Rum, and will eventually stamp it out. "But why," asks the Impracticable, "does not Society stamp it out at once?" "Why does not the sun shine twenty-four hours in America on the Fourth of July?" Simply ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... my station, I started from what is called the "Beds," and God help St. Patrick if he lay upon them: they are sharp stones placed circularly in the earth, with the spike ends of them up, one circle within another; and the manner in which the pilgrim gets as far as the innermost, resembles precisely that in which school-boys enter the "Walls of Troy" upon their slates. I moved away from these upon the sharp stones ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... painted and decorated it with artificial flowers of the same material, so that it was not distinguishable from porcelain; another had forged an axe-blade of steel, etched the surface and fixed it upon a polished ebony rod with a terminal spike, forming a miniature ice-axe, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... seaside palazzo in Southern Italy, "where the baked cicala dies of drouth"; and the blue lilies about the harp of golden-haired David; and Solomon gold-robed in the blue abyss of his cedar house, "like the centre spike of gold which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb";[66] and the "gaze of Apollo" through the gloom of Verona woods;[67] he sees the American pampas—"miles and miles of gold and green," "where the sunflowers blow in a solid glow," with a horse—"coal-black"—careering across it; and ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... and red-robins, and now and then crushed the fragrance out of a low-lying spike of gorse. I knew the flowers were there, though in this curious light I could only see them by peering closely. At the foot of the terrace I pulled up and leant over the oak fence that guarded the abrupt drop ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mass. deceased; C. C. WHITTEMORE, of Portsmouth, N. H.; CHARLES MUDGE, of Maiden; MATTHEW F. WHITTIER, of Medford, a brother of the poet Whittier, and a newspaper-writer of considerable prominence, writing under the pen-name of "Ethan Spike"; and TRISTRAM TALBOT, of Newburyport, with others whom the writer does not now recall. A few years later the writer spent several of his college vacations as deputy clerk in the same Naval Office, and made pleasant acquaintances with all of the above-named men. He found them very competent ...
— The Real Diary of a Real Boy • Henry A. Shute
... very large flower, but the spike is short and only two or three blooms are open at one time. It was originated by Dr. Van Fleet by crossing Mrs. Beecher and Cruentus. Burbank crossed Princeps and America, and quite a number of the seedlings show the markings of Mrs. Beecher, ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various
... her their names and stowed them away in his candle box. The zeal to discover and add to the collection grew upon all the party, the Captain included. Near the water, where the Valerian and the Touch-me-not grew, Marjorie Carruthers found the Snake-head, with its large white flowers on a spike. Another little Carruthers brought to the botanist the purple Monkey flower, but the Captain excelled his youthful nephew by adding to the collection the rarer and smaller yellow one. Then the lawyer himself discovered another yellow ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... but the sound had not ceased to echo when, out of the horrible tangle about us, rose, with a swift, sinuous motion, a monstrous anacondalike arm, flesh pink in the electric beam, but covered with spike-edged spiracles! It curled itself over the edge of the hovering air ship ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... roach and moving it up and down the water is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than likely that ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... arithmetical retrogression. Besides, that brings you up against the Fence once more, and I'm done with the beggars for good and all. You talk about your editors and publishers, you literary swine. Barabbas was neither a robber nor a publisher, but a six-barred, barbed-wired, spike-topped Fence. What we really want is an Incorporated Society of Thieves, with some public-spirited old forger to run it for us ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... into a shipping office on the East Side, and inquired for the Manager of the Line. He had kindly blue eyes, a stub nose, and a mouth that shut to like a rat-trap, and stayed shut. Under his chin hung a pair of half-moon whiskers which framed his weather-beaten face as a spike collar frames ...
— A List To Starboard - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith
... built that gleaming line of yellow sand that held the sleepers and the rails—almost with his own hands. From far over the horizon to the east he had crept along westward, urging on his big gang with relentless but just hand. And out there before his door they had driven the last spike at the very edge of the valley that cut ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... made the natives another visit, accompanied by Mr Forster and Mr Hodges, carrying with me various articles which I presented them with, and which they received with a great deal of indifference, except hatchets and spike-nails; these they most esteemed. This interview was at the same place as last night; and now we saw the whole family, it consisted of the man, his two wives (as we supposed), the young woman before mentioned, a boy about fourteen years old, and three small children, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr
... interferes with the view from her garage; and about little Mrs. Justin Wright's charming innocence in buying a whole steamship whenever she goes over to Europe. I'd go a long way to see your Four Hundred perform; and moreover, after I had accumulated a precarious balance on an iron spike fence in order to rest one eye on a genuine duke while he fought his way out of a church with one of your leading local beauties, who had just been affixed to him for life, I would not squint pityingly on the heaving mass ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... egg there comes the queerest little creature! It is just large enough to be seen as it wriggles in the water. Then its skin splits, and there appears a quaint thing with long feathery legs, a big head, a spike on the back of its head, and another spike ...
— On the Seashore • R. Cadwallader Smith
... feature of the society at the house was that although the major was as well known as the flag on Spike Island, yet somehow, no officer above the rank of an ensign was ever to be met with there. It was not that he had not a large acquaintance; in fact, the "How are you, Major?" "How goes it, Dalrymple?" that kept everlastingly going on as he walked the streets, proved the reverse; but strange ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 1 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... Thomas and Marlin, the coock, and our master's boy, had their hands stretched out, and with their backs to the rayles, and the master's boy with his back to the maine mast, all looking one upon the other, and in each of their mouths a mandler spike, viz., an iron pinn clapt closse into their mouths, and tyd behind their heads; and there they stood a whole houre, till their mouths were very bloody, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 236, May 6, 1854 • Various
... his chest, in the shape of a coil of new soft rope, from which he rarely parted, whatever the journey he was about to make, and leaning on what, at first sight, seemed to be a stout walking-stick with a crutch handle, but a second glance revealed as an ice-axe, with, a strong spike at one end, and a head of sharp-edged and finely pointed steel, which Saxe said made it look like a ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... subdued outlaw horses, buck soldiers, and Apaches, even his own son, when all had not gone well. It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike Kennedy's "side winder" on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and without knowing why, the men of the Four ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... with the possibility of much wrath against a bully or an oppressor. He was very fond of riding both on the road and across the country, and was also a great whip. He usually drove four-in-hand, or else a spike team, that is, a pair with a third horse in the lead. I do not suppose that such a team exists now. The trap that he drove we always called the high phaeton. The wheels turned under in front. I have it yet. He drove long-tailed horses, harnessed loose in light American harness, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... down with a marlin-spike from the main-royal. An' now as you 'ave your figger'ead in trim, wot I want to know is, wot's it to you? That's wot I want to know—wot's it to you? Gawd blime me! do it 'urt you? Ain't it smug enough for the likes o' you? That's wot ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... Shall be my last regale. Be that thy boon. He spake, and, downward sway'd, fell resupine, With his huge neck aslant. All-conqu'ring sleep Soon seized him. From his gullet gush'd the wine With human morsels mingled, many a blast Sonorous issuing from his glutted maw. Then, thrusting far the spike of olive-wood Into the embers glowing on the hearth, I heated it, and cheer'd my friends, the while, 440 Lest any should, through fear, shrink from his part. But when that stake of olive-wood, though ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... he sent a little package to the commanding officer as a present. It contained a strong rope, fabricated from strips of his blanket, that he had carefully separated, and with a large stout spike at the end of it. The message accompanying it was, "He wished Major Clark to see that if he chose to put an end to himself, he could find means to do it in spite ...
— Wau-bun - The Early Day in the Northwest • Juliette Augusta Magill Kinzie
... row strong. Oh! hold, take my hook, put it alongside of you—it is pointed like a lance—it may be of use—now, push ahead!" said the bandit, placing in the boat a long boathook, one end of which terminated with a sharp spike of iron. ...
— The Mysteries of Paris V2 • Eugene Sue
... out to the wood, and again told the men who had been sent with him to remain outside. He hadn't to search long, for the unicorn soon passed by, and, on perceiving the Tailor, dashed straight at him as though it were going to spike him on the spot. "Gently, gently," said he; "not so fast, my friend;" and standing still he waited till the beast was quite near, when he sprang lightly behind a tree; the unicorn ran with all its force against the tree, and rammed its horn so firmly into the trunk ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... believe in intervening chasms and precipices, and almost impossible to resist the idea that one might sally forth and climb up easily. I went into all sorts of places; armed with a great pole with a spike at the end of it, like a leaping-pole, and with pointed irons buckled on to my shoes; and am all but knocked up. I was very anxious to make the expedition to what is called 'The Garden:' a green spot covered with wild flowers, lying across the Mer de Glace, and among ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... images sometimes rise to the hight of five feet; the pedestals on which these immages are fixed are sometimes cut out of the solid stick with the canoe, and the imagary is formed of seperate small peices of timber firmly united with tenants and motices without the assistance of a single spike of any kind. when the natives are engaged in navigating their canoes one sets in the stern and steers with a paddle the others set by pears and paddle over the gunwall next them, they all kneel in ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... worthy of note till the 22d October, when Mr. Page, Second Mate, made an attack on his superior officer, the Doctor of Physic, with a Marline-spike; and, but for a very large Periwig he wore, which was accounted odd in one having a Maritime Command, would have finished him. Mr. Page was had to the Forecastle and clapped in the Bilboes, and Captain Blokes was for Hanging ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... Waste no incense at her shrine. She'll cut the thread no sooner because you turn your back on her." Fling overboard your mythologies, dead and alive, and kneel to Nature. A budding spike of wild hyacinth is worth all the gods put together. Go hand in hand with Nature, I say. Ask nothing from her; walk humbly; be well content if she lets you but turn the corner of one page none else have read. That's how I live. My life is not ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... seemed about to spring back and mercifully hurl afar from our cruel, sinful world the suffering flesh held to earth by the enormous spike piercing the feet. Dislocated, almost ripped out of their sockets, the arms of the Christ seemed trammelled by the knotty cords of the straining muscles. The laboured tendons of the armpits seemed ready to snap. The fingers, wide apart, were contorted in an arrested gesture in which were ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... striding abruptly out of the inner room and confronting the new-comer. A glance at him was quite sufficient to confirm the savage guesswork of a man in love. This very dapper but dwarfish figure, with the spike of black beard carried insolently forward, the clever unrestful eyes, the neat but very nervous fingers, could be none other than the man just described to him: Isidore Smythe, who made dolls out of banana skins and match-boxes; ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... Not a spike of grass could be seen and the soil, a loose red sand, was in most places covered with a scrub like a thick-set hedge of Eucalyptus dumosa. Many a tree was ascended by Burnett, but nothing was to be seen on any side different to what we found where we were. We travelled from an early hour ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 2 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... on the Dead Man's Chest, Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! The mate was fixed by the bo'sun's pike An the bo'sun brained with a marlin spike. And the cookie's throat was marked belike It had been clutched by fingers ten, And there they lay, all good dead men, Like break o' day in a boozin' ken— Yo-ho-ho and a ...
— The Dead Men's Song - Being the Story of a Poem and a Reminiscent Sketch of its - Author Young Ewing Allison • Champion Ingraham Hitchcock
... contains the minor tale of the cruel stepmother added to the main tale, while the Grimm Briar Rose is a model of structure easily separated into ten leading episodes. Sleeping Beauty appeared in Basile's Pentamerone where there is given the beautiful incident of the baby sucking the spike of flax out of its sleeping mother's fingers. The Perrault version agrees with that of Basile in naming the twins, who are Sun and Moon in the ...
— A Study of Fairy Tales • Laura F. Kready
... false plea every moment, in order to elicit the truth, a true plea in order to unmask falsehood; to charge the battery when least expected, and to spike your gun at the very moment of firing it; to scale the mountain with the enemy, in order to descend to the plain again five minutes later; to accompany the foe in windings as rapid, as obscure as those of a plover ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... little vessel that would know the life of the seas no more. The gloom of the forest fell on her, mournful like a winding sheet. The bushes of the bank tapped their twigs on the bluff of her bows, and a pendent spike of tiny brown blossoms swung to and fro over the ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... thicker and larger than the cocoa-nut tree, although rarely so tall, and having immense pinnate spiny leaves, which completely cover the trunk till it is many years old. It has a creeping root-stem like the Nipa palm, and when about ten or fifteen years of age sends up an immense terminal spike of flowers, after which the tree dies. It grows in swamps, or in swampy hollows on the rocky slopes of hills, where it seems to thrive equally well as when exposed to the influx of salt or brackish ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... should be soaked until quite soft. Cut some thin strips of hide for sewing or lacing. Now shape a bag or pocket of size sufficient to hold about a hundredweight of stone, and by puncturing the edges with a knife, marline-spike, or other pointed tool, sew together; make a handle of twisted or pleated hide, and having filled your bucket with dry sand or earth let it stand till the whole is quite dry, when it will be properly distended and will maintain its ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... Permian eras; but whether the womb of one colossal volcano or the product of a thousand lesser eruptions threw forth this granite monster, none may yet assert. Whether Dartmoor first appeared as a mighty shield, with one uprising spike in its midst, or as a target supporting many separate bosses cannot be declared; for the original aspect of the region has long vanished, though our worn and weathered land of tors still shadows, in its venerable desolation, those sublimer, more savage glories manifested ere ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... in a paper, and put them into his waistcoat pocket, in order to get them home safely. The children found several other curiosities besides shells. They collected pebbles, and specimens of sand, of different colors. Mary found an old iron spike, perhaps part of a vessel, with the sand and gravel concreted around it. It looked like stone growing upon iron. Rollo also found a small piece of wood, battered and worn by the long-continued action of the waves, and he thought it was very curious ...
— Rollo's Museum • Jacob Abbott
... And ye did not gaze Heart-startled on the stars (albeit the rays Of that lone orb shot, sparkling, from the east Unseen before), for these, largest and least, Were fold-lamps, lighted nightly: and ye knew Far differing glory in the night's dark blue Suddenly lit with rose, and pierced with spike Of golden spear-beam. Oh, a dream, belike! Some far-fetched vision, new to peasant's sleep, Of paradise stripped bare!—But, why thus keep Secrets for them? This bar, which doth enclose Better and nobler souls, why burst for those ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... and glacier trusting only to the creeper spikes on his heels, and in objecting to the extra weight our guide said derisively: "We've quite enough to pack already, and I guess you don't want to dress us up with a green veil, a crooked club with a spike in the end of it, and fathoms of spun hemp, like them tourist fellows bring out to ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... not give either musket or fusee; but they had each a halberd, or a long staff, like a quarter-staff, with a great spike of iron fastened into each end of it, and by his side a hatchet; also every one of our men had a hatchet. Two of the women could not be prevailed upon but they would come into the fight, and they had bows and arrows, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... who is especially trained for the purpose. The driver carries no whip, but has instead a stick about four feet in length and two inches in diameter, called an oerstel (oar'-stel). This is armed at one end with a long iron spike, and is used to check the speed of the sledge in descending hills, and to stop the dogs when they leave the road, as they frequently do in pursuit of reindeer and foxes. The spiked end is then thrust down in front of one ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... the scratch on that table is slight at one side, but deepens in the direction of the bedroom door. That in itself is enough to show us that the shoe had been drawn in that direction and that the culprit had taken refuge there. The earth round the spike had been left on the table, and a second sample was loosened and fell in the bedroom. I may add that I walked out to the athletic grounds this morning, saw that tenacious black clay is used in the jumping-pit, and carried away a specimen of it, together with some ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the drum Hiram passed two lengths of Number 9 wire through large screweyes, making a double loop into which the hook of a light timber chain would easily catch. Into one end of the drum he drove a headless spike, upon which the hand-crank of the grindstone fitted, ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... Jerome bare headed, and with a coarse brown blanket robe dragging the ground; St. Sebastian with scarcely any raiment at all—these we should see, and should enjoy seeing them; but would we not miss a spike-tailed coat and kids, and turn away regretfully, and say to parties from the Orient: "These are well enough, but you ought to see Talmage of Brooklyn." I fear me that in the better world we shall not even have Dr. Talmage's "good ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will let herself be stabbed without dreaming of employing her venomous fangs. Here craft triumphs over strength; and this craft is not inferior to mine, when, wishing to capture the Tarantula, I make her bite a spike of grass which I dip into the burrow, lead her gently to the surface and then with a sudden jerk throw her outside. For the entomologist as for the Pompilus, the essential thing is to make the Spider leave her stronghold. After this there is no difficulty in ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... departed to resume his lonely tramp along the road-bed with a sledge over his shoulder to replace any spike or frogs ...
— The Bradys Beyond Their Depth - The Great Swamp Mystery • Anonymous
... wooden tent, that owes whatever grace it has to its pointed windows and the high, sharp roofs—traces, both, of that upward movement of ecclesiastical architecture which soared aloft in cathedral-spires, shooting into the sky as the spike of a flowering aloe from the cluster of broad, sharp-wedged leaves below. This suggestion of medieval symbolism, aided by a minute turret in which a hand-bell might have hung and found just room enough to turn over, was all of outward show the ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)
... king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty foreknowledge of Darnley's death. He was executed deservedly, and his head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth. The death of this avaricious, licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to the preachers and their party, and a crook ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... all took hold of the end of the log and lifted it as high as they could reach; and one of the men reached out quickly for his spike pole, while the other two men held the log, and he jabbed the spike hard into the log and held it while another man got his spike pole and jabbed the ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... the worthiest man alive. When I spoke to the old fellow of marrying Claudine he swore fiercely, and eight days after, he sent me to Porto on a schooner belonging to one of our neighbours, just to give me a change of air. I came back, at the end of six months, thinner than a marling spike, but more in love than ever. Recollections of Claudine scorched me like a fire. I could scarcely eat or drink; but I felt that she loved me a little in return, for I was a fine young fellow, and more than one girl had set her cap at me. Then my father, seeing that he ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... doubt not without foundation in fact. It is asserted that the wretch was gibbeted alive, that he lived for several days, and that his sweetheart kept him alive with milk. Another tale is to the effect that a loaf of bread was placed just within his reach, but fixed on an iron spike that would enter his throat if he attempted to relieve the pangs of hunger ...
— Bygone Punishments • William Andrews
... for pride. A warrior rough-visaged, terrible, in front of this company, and he great-bellied, large-lipped; rough hair, a grey beard on him; and he great-nosed, red-limbed; a dark cloak about him, an iron spike on his cloak; a round shield with an engraved edge on him; a rough shirt, braided(?), about him; a great grey spear in his hand, and thirty rivets therein; a sword of seven charges of metal on his shoulders. All the host rose before him, and ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... sleep, passed quietly away. Amid the sprouting grasses by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... structure. Round-shafted pillars rise at each projecting angle. In the recesses between them are low stone benches, save in front where an open colonnade gives upon the view. The roof is leaded, and surmounted by a wooden ball and tall, three-sided spike. These last, as well as the plastered, windowless walls are painted white. Within, the hollow of the dome is decorated in fresco, with groups of gaily clad ladies and their attendant cavaliers, with errant cupids, garlands of flowers, trophies of rather impossible musical instruments, and cages ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... folds of her Cashmere robe were relieved at the throat by a knot of lilac ribbon, and amid its loops were secured clusters of violets, that matched in hue the long spike of hyacinth which was fastened in one side of the coiled hair, twined just behind the ear, and drooped low on the snowy neck. Before her on a gilded stand was the purple pyramid of flowers she had brought from the theatre, and beside them lay several perfumed ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... straightly cut with a crosscut saw. The window openings, one or more, may next be cut, commencing beneath the second log from the top, and taking in three beneath it. Replace the logs above, and on the ends of those thus cut, both in windows and doors, proceed to spike a heavy plank, driving two nails into each log, about five inches apart, one above the other. This will hold them firmly in place, and offer a close-fitting jam for the door, and neat receptacle for the window sashes, which latter may now be put ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... rebuked; but Barbara smiled. By and by—"Miss Barb, kin I ax you a favo'?—Yass'm. Make yo' paw put me som'ers in de crowd to-day whah I ken see you when you draps de hammeh on de golden spike—Law'! dass de dress o' dresses! You looks ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... with that of the lance and sword; the only difference being that the levy of black mail in old times was by force, and is now by cozening. The old rider and reiver frankly quartered himself on the publican for the night; the modern one merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and persuades his host to buy it. One comes as an open robber, the other as a cheating pedlar; but the result, to the injured person's pocket, is absolutely the same. Of course many useful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless ones; and in the habits of ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... this brief period it has completely changed its aspect; the upper part of the flame has, indeed, broken away, and is now shown in that part of the drawing between the two figures on the line above. The same plate also shows various instances of the remarkable spike-like objects, taken, however, at different times and at various parts of the sun. These spikes attain altitudes not generally greater than 20,000 miles, though sometimes they soar aloft ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... that is a hard, dangerous method of hunting which gives it some semblance of fairness. Most of my bear hunts proved to me that I ran more risks than the bears. To set traps, however, to hide big iron-springed, spike-toothed traps to catch and clutch wild animals alive, and hold them till they died or starved or gnawed off their feet, or until the trapper chose to come with his gun or club to end the miserable business—what indeed ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... only when he has reached the age of tail coats and spike-fence collars that he discovers two hands are frequently too many and often not enough. They are too many at your first church wedding when wearing your first pair of white kids and they are not enough at a five o'clock tea. There is a type ...
— Cobb's Anatomy • Irvin S. Cobb
... did not last an instant. With my first blow I cut off his sword-arm at the wrist; my second I levelled at his head. I said that he wore a steel cap, with a gilt iron spike of six inches, and a hood of chain mail. I rose in my stirrups and delivered "ST. GEORGE;" my sword caught the spike exactly on the point, split it sheer in two, cut crashing through the steel cap and hood, and was only stopped by a ruby which he ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... or a roach and moving it up and down the water is too easy a thing to take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than likely that ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the worst of us to Spike Island or Dartmoor prison,' said Charley; 'but Mr. Snape, no doubt, has ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... etchings. "Woo'd an' married an' a'," is admirable! The grouping is beyond all praise. The expression of the figures, conformable to the story in the ballad, is absolutely faultless perfection. I next admire "Turnim-spike." What I like least is "Jenny said to Jockey." Besides the female being in her appearance * * * *, if you take her stooping into the account, she is at least two inches taller than her lover. Poor Cleghorn! I sincerely sympathize with him. Happy I am to think ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... Chandour posed as the rival queen of Angouleme; her husband, M. de Chandour, known in the circle as Stanislas, was a ci-devant young man, slim still at five-and-forty, with a countenance like a sieve. His cravat was always tied so as to present two menacing points—one spike reached the height of his right ear, the other pointed downwards to the red ribbon of his cross. His coat-tails were violently at strife. A cut-away waistcoat displayed the ample, swelling curves of a stiffly-starched shirt fastened by massive gold studs. His dress, in fact, was exaggerated, till ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... brighter vegetation which its own waters have created. Myriads of flowers gleam in their own atmosphere of living light, like jewels among the rich herbage, so that the feet can hardly be set down without crushing scores of them: the Orchis rubra with its splendid spike of crimson blossoms, the bee and spider orchises in great variety, whose flowers mimic the insects after whom they are named, sweet-scented alyssum, golden buttercups and hawkweeds, Roman daisies, larger and taller ...
— Roman Mosaics - Or, Studies in Rome and Its Neighbourhood • Hugh Macmillan
... we shouted, but the sound had not ceased to echo when, out of the horrible tangle about us, rose, with a swift, sinuous motion, a monstrous anacondalike arm, flesh pink in the electric beam, but covered with spike-edged spiracles! It curled itself over the edge of the hovering air ship and ...
— A Columbus of Space • Garrett P. Serviss
... mischief, and that only: off with it, for the tree's sake, if for nothing more; let the Conservatism that would preserve cut it away. Did no wood-forester apprise you that a dead bough with its dead root left sticking there is extraneous, poisonous; is as a dead iron spike, some horrid rusty ploughshare driven into the living substance;—nay is far worse; for in every wind-storm ('commercial crisis' or the like), it frets and creaks, jolts itself to and fro, and cannot lie quiet as your dead ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... and larger than the cocoa-nut tree, although rarely so tall, and having immense pinnate spiny leaves, which completely cover the trunk till it is many years old. It has a creeping root-stem like the Nipa palm, and when about ten or fifteen years of age sends up an immense terminal spike of flowers, after which the tree dies. It grows in swamps, or in swampy hollows on the rocky slopes of hills, where it seems to thrive equally well as when exposed to the influx of salt or brackish water. ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume II. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... silver by a smith of Damascus, well balanced, slender, with deep blood-channels scored on each side to within four fingers of the thrice-hardened point, that could prick as delicately as a needle or pierce fine mail like a spike driven by a sledge-hammer. The tunic fell in folds to the knee, and the close- fitted cloth hose were of a rich dark brown. Sir Arnold wore short riding-boots of dark purple leather, having the tops worked round with a fine scarlet lacing; but the spur-leathers were of the same ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... to carry him away, but also was protected by it from the stabs of the Athenians who fell upon him, for not only his head and breast, but his limbs also were protected by brass and iron. Some one, however, drove the spike at the lower end of his spear through the eye-hole of the helmet, and then the rest of the Persians abandoned the body and fled. The Greeks discovered the importance of their exploit, not from the number of the dead, for but few had fallen, but from the lamentations of the enemy. They ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume II • Aubrey Stewart & George Long
... with the spikes and thorns, but the elephant's hide is as strong as a board. He does not mind prickles, and the only sensitive part of him is just behind the ear, so when he is tamed a man sits on his neck, and with a little sharp-pointed spike pricks him behind the ear on the side he wants him to go. It does not hurt, but the elephant feels it and soon understands, and follows the directions as a horse follows the pull of the reins in driving. Elephants live entirely on green food and vegetables, ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... was brought Mr. Sparling snatched it from the hands of the tentman. Raising the pole, assisted by the boss canvasman, he was able to reach the loop. The iron spike in the end of the pole was thrust through the loop, and by exerting considerable pressure they were able to force the loop slowly toward ...
— The Circus Boys Across The Continent • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... with the morning dew and the brim was broken and bent where Goddard's weapon had struck it. Hard by in a heap of driven oak leaves lay the weapon itself, which Mr. Juxon examined curiously. It was a heavy piece of hewn oak, evidently very old, and at one end a thick iron spike was driven through, the sharp point projecting upon one side and the wrought head upon the other. He turned it over in his hands and realised that he had narrowly escaped his death. Then he laid the hat ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... Temple, as it has come to be called, is an octagonal structure. Round-shafted pillars rise at each projecting angle. In the recesses between them are low stone benches, save in front where an open colonnade gives upon the view. The roof is leaded, and surmounted by a wooden ball and tall, three-sided spike. These last, as well as the plastered, windowless walls are painted white. Within, the hollow of the dome is decorated in fresco, with groups of gaily clad ladies and their attendant cavaliers, with errant ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... each plant plenty of space for development, and it will be well to stake the rows immediately. Keep the plants under constant observation, especially while quite young, when they are liable to destruction by garden foes. The flowering should be limited to the fourth spike, and from the time the pods appear assistance must be given in the form of liquid manure or a mulching of well-rotted dung. Remove all lateral shoots and promote vigorous healthy growth at every stage. ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... would now have turned his cannon in their embrasures, and fired on those of the enemy who had turned our line and come in range. But the Kentucky troops and the Louisianians masked the guns, and made it impossible to fire without killing our own men. Seeing this, he determined to spike his guns and retreat. ...
— The Battle of New Orleans • Zachary F. Smith
... Pierce's voice came apologetically after a pause in which some background noise sounding like a crash came over the televiewer speaker. "It started swinging around when I came in sight, so I just rammed it with that pretty ornamental nose spike. I'm backing off now with the ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... be found for them to stand. Then over the tortured, famished city down fell the welcome night. To none was it more welcome than to Miriam, for with it came a copious dew which seemed to condense upon the gilded spike of her marble pillar, whence it trickled so continually, that by licking a little channel in the marble, she was enabled, before it ceased, to allay the worst pangs of her thirst. This dew gathered upon her hair, bared neck and garments, so that through them also she seemed to ...
— Pearl-Maiden • H. Rider Haggard
... day and night that it was difficult to believe in intervening chasms and precipices, and almost impossible to resist the idea that one might sally forth and climb up easily. I went into all sorts of places; armed with a great pole with a spike at the end of it, like a leaping-pole, and with pointed irons buckled on to my shoes; and am all but knocked up. I was very anxious to make the expedition to what is called 'The Garden:' a green spot covered with wild flowers, lying across the Mer de Glace, and among ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... as an old friend, spike or remove the chimney cowl that McWhannel at No. 3 has written you about. He has called on me twice and written three long letters, "to enlist my sympathy and support." He is the most poisonous kind of bore, and I'll gladly pay for the removal of the cowl, if that's ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... brutes. Diseases like snakes crawling over the earth, leaving trails of slime. Wails from people burying their dead. Through the window, he can see the rocking steeple. A ball of fire falls on the lead of the roof, and the sky tears apart on a spike of flame. Up the spire, behind the lacings of stone, zigzagging in and out of the carved tracings, squirms the fire. It spouts like yellow wheat from the gargoyles, coils round the head of Saint John, and aureoles him in light. It leaps into the night and hisses against the ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... hands, one to receive the toddy Briggs was stirring for him, the other in kindly protest, for both the youngsters were on their feet confusedly striving to make it understood that they had only been waiting for the cool of the evening to come to pay their respects. "And never mind about spike tail and shirt fronts either—come just as ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... crosscut saw. The window openings, one or more, may next be cut, commencing beneath the second log from the top, and taking in three beneath it. Replace the logs above, and on the ends of those thus cut, both in windows and doors, proceed to spike a heavy plank, driving two nails into each log, about five inches apart, one above the other. This will hold them firmly in place, and offer a close-fitting jam for the door, and neat receptacle for the window sashes, which latter may now be put ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... Mr Mackay with deep meaning, swinging round on his heel, all alert in an instant; and taking hold of a short bar of iron pointed at the end, lying near, which Tim Rooney told me afterwards was what is called a "marling-spike," he proceeded to rap with it vigorously against the side of the companion hatchway, shouting out at the same time so that he could be heard all over the ship: "Tumble up, all you idlers and stowaways ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... voyage to worlds unknown, for profits guessed at, against dangers neither to be counted nor foreseen. Be not too much stricken of amazement, therefore, when now these cold ones, who would not have bought an American railroad without counting the cross-ties and weighing every spike and fish-plate, were ready to send millions adrift on a sightless invasion of Asia ten thousand miles away. Besides, as the five with Mr. Harley laid out their campaign, any question of Oriental danger was ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the doctor, "what would you do if some one stuck a pin into your leg? Well, war and peace have driven more than one spike into the hide of humanity; and of course she howls and dances with the pain. It's just a natural reflex action. Why, they had a fox-trot epidemic just like this after the Black Death in the fourteenth century; only then they called it St. ...
— General Bramble • Andre Maurois
... is a developed tropical lily, not at all remotely allied to the common iris, only that its flowers and fruit are clustered together on a hanging spike, instead of growing solitary and separate as in the true irises. The blossoms, which, though pretty, are comparatively inconspicuous for the size of the plant, show the extraordinary persistence of the lily type; for almost all the vast number of species, more ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... backs; and you swear, and you frown, Never thinking the sun is just "doing us brown," As the furnace will do when we're slain. We cannot pull more than we can, you must know, And we cannot pull fast if we can but pull slow, So why should you spike us, and ill-use us so, And make our hides tingle ...
— Twixt France and Spain • E. Ernest Bilbrough
... terminating in fins which acted as wings. The bodies were of bright blue, the legs and fins were yellow. They were flying, without haste, but in a somewhat ominous fashion, straight toward them. He could make out a long, thin spike projecting from ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... were lost. Such little escapades may be pardonable enough in 'noble and unfortunate' earls: but readers will perhaps agree that if they chose to try a similar experiment, they could not complain if they found themselves shortly after in company with Mr. Mitchell at Spike Island or Mr. Oxford in Bedlam. However, those were days in which such Sabbath amusements on the part of one of the most important and powerful personages of the realm could not be passed over so lightly, especially when accompanied by severe loss of life; and as there existed in England ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... carefully round a spike of coral and landed on the reef, and with a shellful of rum and cocoa-nut lemonade mixed half and half, he took his perch on a high ledge of coral from whence a view of the sea and the coral strand could ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... and but too natural, source of the decidedly opposite views which they took of the subject. Mr. Pitt, about to surrender the possession of power to his rival, had a very intelligible interest in reducing the value of the transfer, and (as a retreating army spike the guns they leave behind) rendering the engines of Prerogative as useless as possible to his successor. Mr. Fox, too, had as natural a motive to oppose such a design; and, aware that the chief aim of these restrictive ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan Vol 2 • Thomas Moore
... almost to reach the ground. These are generally six or eight feet long, bearing large and handsome flowers three inches across, and varying in colour from orange to red, with deep purple-red spots. I measured one spike, which reached the extraordinary length of nine feet eight inches, and bore thirty-six flowers, spirally arranged upon a slender thread-like stalk. Specimens grown in our English hot-houses have produced flower-spires of equal length, and with ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... go to Ojo Caliente, away down south, if I was to get well. John, if the Santa Fe road had 'a been for sale for a cent then, I couldn't 'a bought a spike. ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... victory. During the summer months an employe spent his entire time mowing the lawn with a large horse-drawn machine. This, when not in use, was often left outdoors. Upon it was a square wooden box, containing certain necessary tools, among them a sharp, spike-like instrument, used to clean the oil-holes when they became clogged. This bit of steel was five or six inches long, and was shaped like a pencil. For at least three months, I seldom went out of doors that I did not go with the intention of purloining that steel spike. I intended ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... Jaffna and Manaar, where it bears the Tamil name of Aani mulla, or "elephant thorn." In some of these thorny plants, as in the Phoberos Goertneri, Thun.,[1] the spines grow not singly, but in branching clusters, each point presenting a spike as sharp as a lancet; and where these formidable shrubs abound they render the forest absolutely impassable, even to the elephant and to animals ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... into a hole like a rat in a trap when there's blows to the fore, is more than flesh could stand,' said Lanty, who had seized on a hand-spike and was waving it about his head, true shillelagh fashion, by hereditary instinct in one who had never behold a faction fight, in what ought to have been his ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... yields two crops annually for about thirteen years. It is an East Indian plant, rather pretty, but of rambling and untidy growth, a climber, with smooth, soft stems, ten or twelve feet long, and tough, broadly ovate leaves. It is supported much as hops are. When the berries on a spike begin to turn red they are gathered, as they lose pungency if they are allowed to ripen. They are placed on mats, and are either trodden with the feet or rubbed by the hands to separate them from the spike, after ...
— The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs. Bishop)
... escape of a man named Donovan, one of the firemen of the ill-fated vessel. He lay on the rock for three hours in the greatest suffering, being beaten by the terrible waves as they washed over him, stripping him by the force of their blows. But all that time he held on to a strong spike-nail; and though his hands were bleeding, and almost raw, he would not let go, for he knew that if he did he would lose his only chance ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... ended in a great passionate outburst of popular revolution. Spike Foster was a friend of Cortright, and one day, when the latter was indisposed, Spike came to him and borrowed the hat. He had been drinking heavily at the "Red Light," and was in a supremely reckless mood. With the terrible gear hanging jauntily over his eye and his two guns ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... palm, each layer of the onion peels off, brown and netted, like the outside of a cocoa-nut. It is a clever plant that; from the leaves we get a vegetable horsehair; - and eat the bottom of the centre spike. All the leaves you pull have the same aromatic scent. But here a little patch of cleared ground shows old friends, who seem to cling by abused civilisation:-fine, hardy thistles, one of them bright yellow, though; - honest, Scotch- looking, large daisies or gowans; - potatoes here ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... book you promised to lend Heinz," she said, blowing off the spike of ash that had accumulated at the tip of the cigarette. "He could not rest ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... description of the mechanism by which cross-fertilisation is effected in this genus, in the 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History' volume 2 4th series 1868 page 260. In the allied genus Isotoma, the curious spike which projects rectangularly from the anthers, and which when shaken causes the pollen to fall on the back of an entering insect, seems to have been developed from a bristle, like one of those which spring from the anthers in some of or all the species of Lobelia, as described by Mr. Farrer.) The ...
— The Effects of Cross & Self-Fertilisation in the Vegetable Kingdom • Charles Darwin
... it is thunder for pride. A warrior rough-visaged, terrible, in front of this company, and he great-bellied, large-lipped; rough hair, a grey beard on him; and he great-nosed, red-limbed; a dark cloak about him, an iron spike on his cloak; a round shield with an engraved edge on him; a rough shirt, braided(?), about him; a great grey spear in his hand, and thirty rivets therein; a sword of seven charges of metal on his shoulders. All the host rose before him, and he overthrew multitudes of the battalion ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... hand brought me to the edge of the shelf, when, throwing my arm around the granite spike. I swung my body upon the shelf and lay down to rest, shouting to Cotter that I was all right, and that the prospects upward were capital. After a few moments' breathing I looked over the brink and directed my comrade to ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: Explorers • Various
... a night," said Weatherstaff. "Tha'll have to wait for 'em. They'll poke up a bit higher here, an' push out a spike more there, an' uncurl a leaf this day an' another that. You ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... pandora). Among the numerous representations of deer in the Maya writings, there is but one that appears to show the brocket. This occurs in Tro-Cortesianus 92a (Pl. 30, fig. 2), where a hoofed animal with a single spike-like horn is shown, seemingly impaled on a stake set in the bottom of a pit-fall. As stated by Stempell, this animal from the character of its horns is probably to be identified as a brocket, though there is nothing to preclude its ...
— Animal Figures in the Maya Codices • Alfred M. Tozzer and Glover M. Allen
... I started from what is called the "Beds," and God help St. Patrick if he lay upon them: they are sharp stones placed circularly in the earth, with the spike ends of them up, one circle within another; and the manner in which the pilgrim gets as far as the innermost, resembles precisely that in which school-boys enter the "Walls of Troy" upon their slates. I moved away from these upon the sharp stones with which the whole island is surfaced, ...
— The Station; The Party Fight And Funeral; The Lough Derg Pilgrim • William Carleton
... terribly afraid of her daughter, she controlled herself, and bade the boy go and find the field guarded by eighteen millions of demons, warning him on no account to look back after having plucked the tallest spike of rice, which ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... conspiracy among the other things. You see that pattern? It fits the foot of a man who went out one night with a spy Shackleby sent over to see how and when you would play the devil with our work in the canyon. It even shows the stump of the filed-off creeper-spike on your right boot. There's no use protesting—a friend of yours here will help us to trace your career back to the finding of the Blue Bird mine. Take him along and lock him into the galvanized ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... swallows a real bayonet sword, weighted with a cross-bar, and two 18-lib. dumb bells. In order to vary this performance, the sword-swallower allows only a part of the weapon to pass into his body, the remainder being "kicked" down by the recoil of a rifle, which is fixed to a spike in the centre of the bar, and fired ...
— The Miracle Mongers, an Expos • Harry Houdini
... Ontario brought in the narrow gauge, was the wooden railway built in 1870 from {102} Quebec to Gosford. The rails were simply strips of seasoned maple, 14'x7"x4", notched into the sleepers and wedged in without the use of a single iron spike. The engine and car wheels were made wide to fit the rail. In spite of its cheap construction the road did not pay, and the hope of extending it as far as Lake St John was deferred for a generation. A similar wooden railway was ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... all our transactions, private as well as public. For I was no sooner returned from the pond, the first time I landed, than this old lady presented to me a girl, giving me to understand she was at my service. Miss, who probably had received her instructions, wanted, as a preliminary article, a spike-nail or a shirt, neither of which I had to give her, and soon made them sensible of my poverty. I thought, by that means, to have come off with flying colours; but I was mistaken; for they gave me to understand I might retire with her on credit. ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World Volume 2 • James Cook
... Orchid, a near relative of the foregoing, H. psycodes, but far less fortunate in its attributes of beauty, its long scattered spike of greenish-white flowers being so inconspicuous in its sedgy haunt as often to conceal the fact of its frequency. Its individual flower is shown enlarged at Fig. 12—the lip here cut with a lacerated fringe (H. lacera). ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... one was a Hebrew, no less than forty-five years of age. He wore a helmet of polished metal, equipped with a visor, which, when raised, finished the front with a flat plate. The top of the head-piece was ornamented with a spike. His armor was complete—shirt of mail, shenti extending half-way to the knees, greaves of ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... globular brown Orchid is. I have only seen pollen of a Cattleya on a bee, but surely have you not unintentionally sent me what I wanted most (after Catasetum or Mormodes), viz. one of the Epidendreae?! I PARTICULARLY want (and will presently tell you why) another spike of this little Orchid, with older flowers, some even ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin
... material processes, and always at the significant moment some other bloom has reached its perfect hour. One can never fix the precise moment when the rosy tint the field has from the wild almond passes into the inspiring blue of lupines. One notices here and there a spike of bloom, and a day later the whole field royal and ruffling lightly to the wind. Part of the charm of the lupine is the continual stir of its plumes to airs not suspected otherwhere. Go and stand by any crown of bloom and ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... family to which the arums and the "lords and ladies" belong. Half a dozen nuthatches attacking one of the red spikes of this plant present a pretty sight. The berries ripen in July and August, and at Naini Tal one rarely comes across a complete spike because the nuthatches pounce upon every berry the ...
— Birds of the Indian Hills • Douglas Dewar
... with both his hands he gripped it as he spoke, And, where the butt and top were spliced, in pieces twain he broke; The limber top he cast away, with all its gear abroad, But, grasping the tough hickory butt, with spike of iron shod, He ground the sharp spear to a point; then pulled his bonnet down, And, meditating black revenge, set forth for ...
— Thomas Davis, Selections from his Prose and Poetry • Thomas Davis
... shop where he bought a huge lump of solid iron, so big that they could hardly lift it between them. However, they just managed to carry it to a blacksmith's where Rosald directed that it should be beaten into a thick club, with a sharp spike at one end. When this was done to his liking he took it ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... will climb this ten-foot fence, And, careless where his feet may strike, He tumbles, bang! And there will hang, His rope being caught by vine or spike. ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... here interrupted their narrative to inquire in their turn what had passed? What was the cause of the general discouragement? why had the cannon been abandoned to the enemy untouched? Had they not had time to spike them, or at least to ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... and saw that this unfortunate fellow was in a very tight place. A great spike of aloe had run through the back of his skin waist-belt, though without piercing his flesh, in such a fashion that it was impossible for him to move, while within six feet of him the injured buffalo bull, thinking, no doubt, that he was the aggressor, ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard
... mocking-bird echoing it; and to the fiddling of grasshoppers, the whispers of trees, the quiet, soft movement of the swamp water. The long thoughts that came to him in the open crossed his mind as clouds cross the sky, idly, moving slowly, breaking up and drifting with the wind. A bee buzzed about a spike of blue lobelia; ants moved up and down the trunk of the oak-tree; birds and butterflies came and went. With his hands under his head, Peter lay so motionless that a great brown water-snake glided upon a branch not ten feet distant, overhanging a brown pool whose depths ...
— The Purple Heights • Marie Conway Oemler
... how wholly the ancients kept the super-earthly in mind in their logical processes—an attitude wise and in consonance with the wisest of this world's thinking. Heaven must not be left out of our computations, just as the sun must not be omitted in writing the history of a rose or a spike of golden-rod. In harmony with this exalted origin of the poet went the notion that he was under an afflatus. A breath from behind the world blew in his face; nay, more, a breath from behind the world blew noble ideas into his soul, and he spake as one inspired of the ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle
... industry. This sober lesson may be taught to children without putting it into grave words or formal precepts. A gentleman once astonished a family of children by his dexterity in playing at bilboquet: he caught the ball nine or ten times successively with great rapidity upon the spike: this success appeared miraculous; and the father, who observed that it had made a great impression upon the little spectators, took that opportunity to show the use of spinning the ball, to make the ...
— Practical Education, Volume I • Maria Edgeworth
... from some quarter, a railroad spike whizzed past the Captain's head, banging against the boards behind him with such a thump that the dignified Englishman ducked quickly amid a shout of derision. He began to curse them roundly in his own ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... descended to a hole far beneath by a rope ladder, life depending on a spike driven in the rock above and a secure handhold, for the handful of "pay dirt" two peons were grubbing down out of a lower veta, a long narrow alleyway of soft earth and small stones that stretched away into the interior of the mountain ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... Murphy declared to the American consul and dropped his marline-spike, as Matt Peasley ripped left and right, right and left into Ole Peterson's dish face. "Watch the skipper—our skipper, I mean. Regular young human pile-driver." He raised his voice and called to Matt Peasley. ...
— Cappy Ricks • Peter B. Kyne
... left, equidistant from the other two, so as to form a triangle. Their signals showed us their position through the darkness. We saw that it was impossible to retreat unperceived and that our only plan was to spike the guns, abandon the wounded and artillery, put our rifles in as good order as might be, and cut our way through that body of Mexicans which held the road to Victoria. Once in the wood, we were safe, and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... arrangement completed, I ate a hearty breakfast, when I began to secure the hatches, as a sort of floor, on my primitive joists. This was not difficult, the hatches being long, and the rings enabling me to lash them, as well as to spike them. Long before the sun had reached the meridian, I had a stout little platform, that was quite eighteen inches above the water, and which was surrounded by a species of low ridge-ropes, so placed as to keep articles from readily tumbling off it. The next measure ...
— Miles Wallingford - Sequel to "Afloat and Ashore" • James Fenimore Cooper
... leaves. He took it up and looked at it with huge satisfaction. The stem was woody and each leaf was grey, narrow, and not more than half an inch long. The peculiarity about them was, however, that each little leaf ended in a spike. The black-fellow felt the spikes and grinned to feel the pricks of pain, for the leaves had only recently been pulled from the tree. Then he dropped his handful of parakelia and grabbed the quart-pot and started to run, tracking the other native to find the tree from which that ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... possible, indeed, that the recent phrenzy for the investigation of digestive and reproductive operations in plants may by this time have furnished the microscopic malice of botanists with providentially disgusting reasons, or demoniacally nasty necessities, for every possible spur, spike, jag, sting, rent, blotch, flaw, freckle, filth, or venom, which can be detected in the construction, or distilled from the dissolution, of vegetable organism. But with these obscene processes and prurient apparitions the gentle and happy scholar of flowers has nothing whatever to do. ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... Invariably he spent some part of his day among his beloved peasants, and daily he recited with them public prayers. Often at night he and they together went up to the teeth of the Russian batteries on expeditions to spike the cannon. His inseparable companion, Niemcewicz, who slept with him in his tent till the-end came, describes how the silence of these nights was broken hideously by the wild, shrill cry of the reapers, by the sudden roar of the cannon and ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... a stranger when observing the conduct of a mahout or driver is sympathy for the animal, which is governed through the severe authority of the iron spike. This instrument is about twenty inches long, and resembles somewhat an old-fashioned boat-hook, being a sharp spike at the extremity beyond the keen-pointed hook; it can thus be used either to drive the elephant forward by digging the point into its head, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the old Jack-daw again came carrying something that shone like an evening star—a little spike of gold with a burning emerald set in the end of it. "And what do you think of that?" said he to ...
— The Blue Moon • Laurence Housman
... 'afore that young jackanapes was born, to be teached how 'twere to be done?' he had observed more than once in rather a high tone, though in general he patronised the successive occupants of the pulpit with much kindness. 'And this 'un, as cannot spike English nayther,' he added superciliously concerning the north-country accent of his pastor ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... 7.5% of GDP in 2007 - and represent a significant drain on the economy. Foreign direct investment has increased significantly in the past two years, but the NAZIF government will need to continue its aggressive pursuit of reforms in order to sustain the spike in investment and growth and begin to improve economic conditions for the broader population. Egypt's export sectors - particularly natural gas ...
— The 2008 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... crew. He was prized by the officers as an active and willing seaman, and by the men as a lively, hearty fellow, and a good shipmate. He was going aloft to fit a strap round the main topmasthead, for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards, and a marline-spike about his neck. He fell from the starboard futtock shrouds, and, not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed, with all those things round his neck, he probably sank immediately. We pulled astern, in the direction in which he fell, and though we ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... work at the round table in the library for hours and hours—with nothing for refreshment except a cup of coffee and a box of snuff, which always stood at his side;" and that he was rarely without a heavy stick with a whistle at one end and a spike at the other—the spike being to keep away dogs when he was travelling in hot countries. This was one of the many little inventions of his own. Mr. Tedder describes him as a man of great and subtle ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... (3) Spread and spike switch points in the track so that they will not move, or place rocks or close-packed dirt between ...
— Simple Sabotage Field Manual • Strategic Services
... that interval of eighty-six years between 1783, when George Washington had his vision of "the vast inland navigation of these United States," and the year 1869, when the two divisions of the Union Pacific were joined by a golden spike at Promontory Point in Utah. In point of time, those eighty-six years are as nothing; in point of accomplishment, they stand unparalleled. When Washington's horse splashed across the Youghiogheny in October, 1784, the boundary ...
— The Paths of Inland Commerce - A Chronicle of Trail, Road, and Waterway, Volume 21 in The - Chronicles of America Series • Archer B. Hulbert
... of Satanic pride, secondly tears, and third laughter. Syme's egotism held hard to the first course for a few seconds, and then suddenly adopted the third. Taking his own blue police ticket from his own waist coat pocket, he tossed it on to the table; then he flung his head back until his spike of yellow beard almost pointed at the ceiling, and shouted ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... reasonably have expected to be, for as he crawled over the rusty links he felt a shackle. It appeared to be of the usual harp-pattern with a cottered pin, and he called out sharply to the Siwash, who presently flung him an iron bar and a big spike. Then he struck one of the two or three sulphur matches he had carefully treasured, and when the sputtering blue flame went out set to work to back the pin out in the dark. He smashed his knuckles and badly bruised his hands, ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... of the entrances to the royal residence, and secured with iron bars, is a large bowlder weighing three hundred and sixty-three pounds; in the wall above it are driven three spikes, the highest spike being twelve feet from the ground; and Bavarian historians have recorded that Earl Christoph, a famous giant, tossed this bowlder up to the mark indicated by the highest ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... upon the horribly sharp stake formed by fining down a good-sized tree and planting it in the bottom, a hideously wolfish-looking hyaena, which, less fortunate than himself, had fallen upon the sharp spike, which had gone completely through the wretched animal's body, leaving it writhing, snarling, and clawing the air with its paws in its vain efforts ...
— Off to the Wilds - Being the Adventures of Two Brothers • George Manville Fenn
... none of us noticed it then, sir; but I've had a look at it since, and there's one leg broken fair off at the top. The break was half in the socket, as it were, leaving a kind of spike, and if you stick that into the socket you can make the table look as good as new. It's all right, in fac', until you try to move it, and then of course the leg ...
— Simon • J. Storer Clouston
... danger; and also, when the boat comes to land, to step out first and hold it by the painter, that is, the rope which is fastened to the bow, while the others get out. Marco had a pole, with an iron spike and also an iron hook in the end of it, which he used to fend off with, as they called it, when the boat was in danger of running against any obstacle. This was ...
— Marco Paul's Voyages and Travels; Vermont • Jacob Abbott
... sat at the piano with his back towards her. His white helmet lay, spike downward, on the carpet; and an Aberdeen terrier—ears rigidly erect, head tilted at a critical angle—sat close beside it, watching his master with intent eyes, in which all the wisdom and sorrow of the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... imprisonment. Fortunately no one was killed, and the only casualty was a drummer slightly wounded. The next day both regiments returned their ammunition into the magazine. The Tower Hamlets were ordered to their headquarters, London, and disbanded. The 25th were sent to Spike Island, a convict settlement near ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... they met with no resistance: the enemy had abandoned the fort with precipitation. The British colours were immediately hoisted, and sentinels of marines posted upon the parapet. The next care was to spike and disable the cannon, break the carriages, and destroy the powder which they found in the magazine: nevertheless, the detachment was ordered to keep possession of the battery. This service being successfully performed, three ships were sent to reduce the other battery at ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a fine, autumnal afternoon, that a simple-looking traveller, attired in a homespun suit of gray, and wearing a broad-brimmed, Quaker-looking hat, drove up to the door of the Spread Eagle Tavern, in the town of B——, State of Maine, kept by Major E. Spike, and ordered refreshments for himself and horse. There was nothing particular about the traveller, except his air of simplicity; but his horse was a character. The animal was at least thirty years of age, and was as gaunt as Rosinante, and would have been a ...
— The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales • Francis A. Durivage
... ground handy to the hole in which the end of it will slip, and the cross-piece is nailed in place. Jesus is stripped and laid upon the cross with His arms, outstretched on the cross-piece. A sharp-pointed spike is driven through the palm of each hand and through the feet. The hands are also tied with ropes as additional security. There is a small piece half-way up the upright where some of the body's weight ...
— Quiet Talks about Jesus • S. D. Gordon
... With voice like thunder, Declares such plunder he roust dislike, They next may rowl in And sack Haulbowline, Or on a sudden run off with Spike. His peace is vanished, His joys are banished, And gay or happy no more he'll be, Until those Cork men And wild New York men Are sunk together beneath ...
— Speeches from the Dock, Part I • Various
... level, or you'll shake out the priming. Ship it here; turn out that one, and heave it into that boat, if they come alongside. Steady now—so! Rummage about, and find me a bolt or two, a marlin-spike, anything. Quick, or the ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... hide, "green," if possible; if dry, it should be soaked until quite soft. Cut some thin strips of hide for sewing or lacing. Now shape a bag or pocket of size sufficient to hold about a hundredweight of stone, and by puncturing the edges with a knife, marline-spike, or other pointed tool, sew together; make a handle of twisted or pleated hide, and having filled your bucket with dry sand or earth let it stand till the whole is quite dry, when it will be properly distended and will maintain ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... there are to be liberated at twelve o'clock tonight, are to seize the three water towers and to spike the guns, to burn all the shipping in the harbour, to make off with six galleys, and destroy ...
— A Knight of the White Cross • G.A. Henty
... Jinkey, you've vegetated a great while in these slow parts. I feel it in my bones, sore as they are, that some day I'll give you a new dress that will make you look like a spike of red hollyhocks. You'll see changes ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... the Tropics, and dreamy to look upon. Still valleys, leagues away, reposed in the deep shadows of the mountains; and here and there, waterfalls lifted up their voices in the solitude. High above all, and central, the "Marling-spike" lifted its finger. Upon the hillsides, small groups of bullocks were seen; some quietly browsing; others slowly winding ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... my joining the crew, but it was not in my power to desert my position. I could hear the hurrying feet of the watch tramping across the deck in response to LeVere's orders; the heavy pounding of a marling-spike on the forecastle hatch, as Haines called for all hands. I was aware that men were already mounting the ratlines, and laying out on the upper yards to make sail, while the capstan bars began rattling. Yet only one thought gripped me—Sanchez ...
— Wolves of the Sea • Randall Parrish
... signaling to the fort on the hill," Ralph said, as he watched the flags run up on the signal-staff on the summit of Spike Island; "and they are answering down below there at the station in front of ...
— One of the 28th • G. A. Henty
... on the peg and the holes in the wall. Sherry questioned him. "Why do you spike the wall with the ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... is confidential and gracious with the mayoress—we might have been schoolchildren in the same townland we are so cordial. Everything proceeds amid plaudits, and winds up in acclamation. Their Excellencies depart. Great is the no-politics era—you can so quietly spike the guns of many an old politician—and keep him safe. The social amenities do this. Their Excellencies have gone, but they do not forget. There is a warm word of thanks for recent hospitality. Perhaps the mayor has a daughter ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... during a pause in the trial of Parnell v. the "Times." Other drawings, that attracted general attention, followed in rapid succession. Who that has seen it can forget the "Fancy Portrait" (by induction) "of my Laundress"—a brawny-armed woman standing over his shirts, which she belabours with a spike-studded club? or the "Automatic Policeman" at a crowded crossing, which, when a penny is dropped into the slot, puts up its arm and stops the traffic? or the "Restored Skeleton of a Bicyclist," and other "happy thoughts" of that period? It was obvious that the draughtsman was not a practised artist, ...
— The History of "Punch" • M. H. Spielmann
... have been fractured repair takes place with the formation of a large permanent callus, which, projecting internally, may be a serious obstacle to calving. Worse still, if the edge of the broken bone projects internally as a sharp spike or ridge, the vaginal walls are cut upon it during the passage of the calf, with serious or fatal result. In other cases, where the cow has suffered from fragility of bone (fragilitas ossium) the thickening of the bone causes narrowing of the long passage of the ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... his thoughts and words were constantly occupied with lamentations for his deceased commander and friend. He fell while gallantly charging up the hill with 190 men, chiefly of the York volunteers, by which charge the enemy was compelled to spike the 18-pounder ...
— The Life and Correspondence of Sir Isaac Brock • Ferdinand Brock Tupper
... fire to the shipping on the north side of the town, while he himself with his men should advance upon the nearby fort and spike the guns. As the fort was an old one and had a small garrison, the intrepid commander had but little trouble in capturing it, particularly as none of the British dreamed of a raid and small wonder, for their shores had been safe from the ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... For heaven's sake, Corydon, look here! Just now a bramble-spike Ran, there, into my instep—and oh how deep they strike, Those lancewood-shafts! A murrain light on that calf, I say! I got it gaping after her. Canst thou ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... moment pulling off the saddle. By the time he had carried it from the stall, hung it upon its accustomed spike and hurried to the door, Miss Bridger was nowhere to be seen. He said "Hell!" under his breath, and took long steps to the house, but she did not appear to be there. It was "Mama Joy," yellow-haired, extremely blue-eyed, and ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower
... open space. The implements are wooden balls and long-handled cues at the ends of which are spoonlike ovals of iron. In the centre of the Troco ground is fixed a ring of iron, which moves freely on a pivot, the spike of the ring being driven into a piece of wood let into the ground. The wooden ball is lifted from the ground by means of the spoon-ended cue, and thrown towards the ring—the object of the player ...
— Enquire Within Upon Everything - The Great Victorian Domestic Standby • Anonymous
... acquired the ability to doze placidly through almost any sort of business conference in the outer office. It was his practice to sleep from nine-thirty until eleven, when "Bob" fetched him a glass of orange juice with a "spike" in it. This refreshing beverage filled him with new energy to tackle the issues of the day, and thereupon began a routine as fixed as some religious ritual. First, he smacked his lips, then he cleared his throat loudly several times, ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... a dog-trot were leading the way to their lodgings. By the faces of others one could see that they came from curiosity. The stout councilman was recognizable by his scarlet cloak and golden chain; a black, expensive-looking, swelling waistcoat betrayed the honorable and proud citizen. An iron spike-helmet, a yellow leather jerkin, and rattling spurs, weighing a pound, indicated the heavy cavalry-man. Under little black velvet caps, which came together in a point over the brow, there was many a rosy girl-face, and the young fellows ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... won't count for anything, if they get a signed confession out of her. Now we both know she is innocent. I'm willing to do what I can to help you. Turn about is fair play. If you want to send me out there, I'll try to spike their guns. Maybe I can get there in time to put fresh heart in the girl. She's safe if she doesn't go to pieces and say ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... much about the Louvre, because we scamped it. The fact is, there was a little unpleasantness with one of the fellows, owing to Jim's cane happening to scratch one of the pictures by a chap named Rubens. It was quite an accident, as we were only trying to spike a wasp on the frame, and Jim missed his shot. The fellow there made a mule of himself, and lost his temper. So we didn't see the fun of ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... primrose, or conversely, ranks them together as a single species, and gives a single definition. As soon as three Orchidean forms (Monochanthus, Myanthus, and Catasetum), which had previously been ranked as three distinct genera, were known to be sometimes produced on the same spike, they were immediately included as a single ...
— On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection • Charles Darwin
... be, as they really are, cousin to the rose. On one of my rambles I came upon some plants of a strangely slim and prim aspect; nothing but a straight, erect, military-looking, needle-like stalk, bearing a spike of pods at the top, and clasped at the middle by two small stemless leaves. By some occult means (perhaps their growing with Tiarella had something to do with the matter) I felt at once that these must be the mitrewort (Mitella diphylla). My prophetic soul was not always ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... well. It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike Kennedy's "side winder" on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and without knowing why, the men of the Four Peaks looked up ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... From the eastern flank of the hill, our line gives a glimpse of the site of the village of Ovillers-la-Boisselle, once one of the strong places of the enemy, and now a few heaps of bricks, and one spike of burnt ruin where the ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield
... galvanised compound off the newly painted quarter-deck stanchions whenever an opportunity of doing so presented itself. He was a healthy goat of voracious appetite. His gastric juices would have dissolved a marline-spike, and he even made short work of the greater portion of a pair of ammunition boots belonging to the Sergeant-Major of Royal Marines, and devoured with every symptom of relish a sheaf of official and highly important documents lying on the ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... useless question: but Grimalson, already rattled, swung round upon a man he knew to be weak. 'Damn me!' cried he in a gust of rage, 'if I can't teach it to doctors, I'll teach seamen who gives orders here!' and snatching out a marling-spike from a sheath in his belt, hurled it full ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Leaves very broad at base, half clasping the stem and rapidly narrowed to an acute tip; hardly at all spreading from the thread-like twigs; flowers pinkish, in spike-like clusters 6. Tamarix. ...
— Trees of the Northern United States - Their Study, Description and Determination • Austin C. Apgar
... as all Boy Scouts can and took a shoe lace for a bow string. I had hard work getting the first tiny blaze, but after that I've kept a bed of coals covered with sand as a reserve. I found a piece of wreckage and used part of it for a shelter. One part had a long spike in it and that I sharpened by scraping it on some of the shells. Then I got a piece of fat pine that had washed ashore and made me a torch. With this sharp spike and the torch I went fishing at night and got ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
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