"Bats" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... flax-brake, the swingling-knife and coarse hackle, the shives and swingling tow have been removed by the men; to-morrow the more deft manipulations of the women will prepare these bunches of fibre for the little wheel, and granny will card the tow into bats, to be spun into tow yarn on the big wheel. All quaff the sparkling cider or foaming beer, from the briskly-circulating pewter mug, which the last out of bed in the morning must replenish from the barrel in the cellar. But over all a ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... personal peculiarities of the seamen. I remember nothing corresponding at all to the extravagances instanced in my early reading of Colburn's; such as a frigate's watch—say one hundred and fifty men—on liberty in Portsmouth, England, buying up all the gold-laced cocked bats in the place, and appearing with them at the theatre. Many, however, who have seen a homeward-bound ship leaving port, the lower rigging of her three masts crowded with seamen from deck to top, returning roundly the cheers given by all the ships-of-war present, foreign as ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... on this voyage, the admiral, called the Castle of Comfort, George Fenner general[293] of the expedition, and William Bats master; the May-Flower, vice-admiral, William Courtise master; the George, John Heiwood captain, and John Smith of Hampton master; besides a small pinnace. Walter Wren, the writer of the narrative, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume VII • Robert Kerr
... spoiled, everything in it that could be laid hands upon was sent to the melting-pot, to pay the Assyrian tribute; and then the doors were shut, the lamps extinguished, the fire quenched on the cold altars, and the silent Temple left to the bats and—the Shekinah; for God still abode ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... croaking of many frogs. They were, I believe, of the broad-bill kind, which, are not so commonly seen at sea as the others. Here, however, they are in great numbers, and flying much about in the night, some of our gentlemen at first took them for bats. After restoring the sportsmen to their boat, we all proceeded for the ship, which we reached by seven o'clock in the morning, not a little fatigued with our expedition. I now learned that our friends the natives returned to their ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... "She don't know what she wants, or what is good for her. Women rarely do. They make their matrimonial selections like the blindest of bats, the most egregious of fools, and then, when the mischief is done, go in for unending sackcloth, or a divorce court. Pocahontas will get hold of a fellow some day who will wring her heart—with her rubbishing ...
— Princess • Mary Greenway McClelland
... mountains, down their darkening sides, to the dusk-enshrouded reaches of her valley. "He used to watch the sun go down, and he never wearied at the wonder of it," she breathed, softly. "And then, as the darkness deepened and the bull-bats came wheeling overhead, and the whip-poor-wills began calling from the thickets, he would light his pipe, and I would cuddle up close to him, and the firelight would grow redder and brighter and the soft warm dark would grow blacker. The pine trees would lose their shapes and blend into the ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... or markings on the walls there was not a trace, though I looked carefully, and except for bats the place was entirely bare. I lit a cigarette and smoked it through—Coppinger always thinks one is slurring over work if it is got through too quickly—and then I went to the entrance where the rope was, and leaned out, and ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... seen the bats flying low over a burnished pool at sunset, and the web of their wings had burned in scarlet flickers, as they stretched across the light. Winged momentarily on bits of tissued flame, threaded with blood, the bats had flickered a secret ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... edited by Franklin B. Hough, Vol. II, p. 195. A game of ball is also described in Historical Collections of Georgia, by the Rev. George White, 3d edition, New York, 1835, p. 670, which took place in Walker County, Georgia, between Chatooga and Chicamauga. The ball was thrown up at the centre. The bats were described as curiously carved spoons. If the ball touched the ground the play stopped and it was thrown up again. Rev. J. Owen Dorsey in a paper entitled "Omaha Sociology," printed in the Third Annual Report of the Bureau ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... election day itself. It will always be remembered as the purest, cleanest election ever held in the precincts of the city. The citizens' organization turned out in overwhelming force to guarantee that it should be so. Bands of Dr. Boomer's students, armed with baseball bats, surrounded the polls to guarantee fair play. Any man wishing to cast an unclean vote was driven from the booth: all those attempting to introduce any element of brute force or rowdyism into the election were cracked over the head. In the lower part of the town scores of ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... Arthur's Seat, St Anthon's well aye springin'; The lammies playing at her feet, The birdies round her singin'. The solemn haunts o' Holyrood, Wi' bats and hoolits eerie, The tow'ring crags o' Salisbury, The lowly wells o' Weary, O[62] The lowly wells ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel , Volume I. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... marriage with Richard as was Richard himself. Those confidences could not aid now when it was Storri, not Mrs. Hanway-Harley, who stood in the way. And they might even work a harm. Richard went on his road to Bess, while these thoughts came flying thick as twilight bats. ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... refused Christian burial—the cries of poverty and distress have been disregarded—from bitter sectarianism. The genial influence of Christianity is fast driving these demoniac feelings to the owls and bats.—Ed. ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... know how to use it. "My daughter found a bat in a field one day, but an old Indian said that if she didn't know how to treat it, it would eat up her children." Women especially were afraid of bat-talismans and of living bats. The Washo believe that a bat charm is also a powerful love medicine and that a woman once touched by such a charm is powerless in the hands of its owner. "You touch a woman with that thing and it hypnotizes her. She follow the guy ...
— Washo Religion • James F. Downs
... the revelers collected bats and balls, cricket stools, bars, poles, and iron weights, carrying them each man to his own house, and in the afternoon the chopping party was augmented by nearly every ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... to be for a brief space our home; a real, wild, weird, romantic home, seated on its rocky island away from the world, away from every sign of life save pigeons or bats; full of grim spirits—if tradition were to be believed—and nightly walked by strange women and blood-stained men—for stories there are in plenty concerning the great Castle of Olavin Linna as the Finns call it, at Savonlinna, the ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... chewed up four brunette cigars the size of young baseball bats, two of the Board have threatened to resign, and a hurry call has just been sent out for our chief counsel to report, when Mr. Robert glances annoyed towards the door. It's nobody but fair-haired Vincent, that has ...
— Wilt Thou Torchy • Sewell Ford
... their damned badge." And he pointed to the sea-green and silver shield high up in the transept window. "Sunlight and moonlight, it is always there. I used to like to come down and play here to the bats of a full moon, till I saw that would always look into the loft ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... wrapped in a light muslin veil; they wear also a kind of mantilla of black silk, which gives them a peculiar appearance. When they came riding along, and the wind caught this garment and spread it out, they looked exactly like bats with outstretched wings. ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... the old man gazed at them, troops of fairies continued to arrive, some on the backs of bats, from which they slipped as they whirred past; others descending, apparently, on moonbeams. The old man even fancied that he saw one attempting to descend by a starbeam, which, being apparently too weak to ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... for no legitimate purpose; a place which the hounded bear and deer had avoided even when hard driven, and inviting only to copperhead, skunk, and fox. About it lay "laurel-hells" thick-matted and gnarled, briars that were like entanglements of barbed wire, and woods so black of recess that bats flew through their corridors of pine at midday. But these men had cut, and used familiarly, tortuous and hidden zig-zags of entry and exit, and they ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... them all," replied Ken. "That's Gallagher on the end of the bench; Burr is third from him; Stern's fussing over the bats, and there's Hill, the light-headed ...
— The Young Pitcher • Zane Grey
... follow Cadamosto in his accounts of the great trees, the wild elephants, great bats and "horse-fish" of the country. A chief called Gnumi-Mansa, "King Gnumi," living near the mouth of the Gambra, took him on an elephant-hunt, in which he got the trophies, foot, trunk, and skin, that he took home and ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... exclaimed; "only to think of them knocking their heads about here and there, and never so much as getting warm. Detectives are all fools, so the public say. Blind as bats. They want a ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... parlor, the butcher shop. Now there was a place where the girls could wear their new dresses, and where one could laugh aloud without being reproved by the ensuing silence. That silence seemed to ooze out of the ground, to hang under the foliage of the black maple trees with the bats and shadows. Now it was broken by light-hearted sounds. First the deep purring of Mr. Vanni's harp came in silvery ripples through the blackness of the dusty-smelling night; then the violins fell in—one of them ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... forward toward a long, dark shadow that transformed itself into a temple wall as we drew closer, and in a moment we were once more groping our way downward amid prehistoric foundation stones, with bats flitting past us and a horrible feeling possessing me, at least, that the worst was ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... Green Ride, the red light from the Horse Vivian's neck made a sort of heralding ghost before them on the grass. Bats darted above them for a few yards at a time, and were twitched aside as though by a string or a reminding conscience. The telegraph wires, bound for the post office of Faery, run through the Enchanted Forest, and the poles in the faint light were ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson
... of wild beasts among the ruins. A traveller saw some bones of a sheep in one, the remains, he supposed, of a lion's dinner; but he did not like to go further into the den to see who dwelt there. Owls and bats fill all the dark places. But no men live there, though human bones are often found scattered about, and they turn into dust as ...
— Far Off • Favell Lee Mortimer
... American bachelor stranded in London it sounded fine. And in my gratitude I had already shipped to my hostess, for her children, of whose age, number, and sex I was ignorant, half of Gamage's dolls, skees, and cricket bats, and those crackers that, when you pull them, sometimes explode. But it was not to be. Most inconsiderately my wealthiest patient gained sufficient courage to consent to an operation, and in all New York would permit no one to lay violent hands upon him save myself. By cable I advised ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... that sudden accession of new knowledge may compel him to cast his former idols to the moles and to the bats. But it must be some very miraculous interposition indeed which can justify him in quitting the religion of his forefathers; and, assuredly, it must be an unwise interposition which ...
— Val d'Arno • John Ruskin
... miserabili!" they exclaimed, stretching forth their diseased limbs. The hostess received the travellers with bare feet, untidy hair, and a dirty blouse. The doors were fastened together with string; the floors of the rooms were of brick, broken in many places; bats flew about under the roof; and as to ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... the latter, which beetled far above; and the convent-bells were proclaiming the festival of the ensuing day. The ravine was overshadowed by fig-trees, vines, and myrtles, and the outer towers and walls of the fortress. It was dark and lonely, and the twilight-loving bats began to flit about. At length the soldier halted at a remote and ruined tower apparently intended to guard a Moorish aqueduct. He struck the foundation with the buttend of his spear. A rumbling sound was heard, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the poplars that lined the avenue, beautiful and tall in the evening, she thought of Owen. He had said they were the trees of the evening. She had not understood, and he had explained that we only see poplars in the sunset; they appear with the bats ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... with a prominent church. The team was recently challenged by a rival club. The pastor gave a special contribution of five dollars to the captain, with the direction that the money should be used to buy bats, balls, gloves, or anything else that might help to win the game. On the day of the game, the pastor was somewhat surprised to observe nothing new in the club's paraphernalia. He ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... the altar the procession divided into halves, fifteen upon the east side of the chancel, fifteen upon the west. The organ began to drone and murmur, the censers swung and smoked, the candle-flames flared and attracted the bats that lived among the rafters overhead. Buelna knelt before the Mother Superior. She was pale and a little thin from fasting and the seclusion of the cells. But, try as she would, she could not keep her thoughts upon the solemn office in which she ...
— A Deal in Wheat - And Other Stories of the New and Old West • Frank Norris
... whitish hides, their teeth arranged in several backward-curving rows, fish commonly known by the name carpet shark; batfish, a sort of reddish isosceles triangle half a meter long, whose pectoral fins are attached by fleshy extensions that make these fish look like bats, although an appendage made of horn, located near the nostrils, earns them the nickname of sea unicorns; lastly, a couple species of triggerfish, the cucuyo whose stippled flanks glitter with a sparkling gold color, ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... twinkling in the sky. The moon must have been rising on the further side of the monastery, for the sky was clear, soft, and transparent. Bats were flitting noiselessly along the ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... sleepin', but before he woke something worse than a bat come down on me, an' that was Mrs. Sweet's cousin, Jerusha Dodd. You know Jerusha Dodd, Mrs. Lathrop, an' so do I, an' so does everybody an' as far as my observation 's extended bats is wise men bringin' their gifts from afar to visit you compared to Jerusha Dodd when she arrives in the early mornin'. I would n't never have gone to the door only she stepped up on the drain-pipe first an' looked in an' saw me there in the rockin'-chair afore she knocked. I tell you ...
— Susan Clegg and a Man in the House • Anne Warner
... terraces I would go into the ruined interior, into the courts, up the stairways and through the empty galleries. I climbed to the old towers and put to flight flocks of pigeons, and disturbed the sleep of bats and owls. On the first floor there was a suite of spacious rooms, still roofed over, and very dark because of the shuttered windows. I penetrated into these chambers, and I felt an almost delicious terror when I heard my footsteps echoing through the sepulchral stillness ...
— The Story of a Child • Pierre Loti
... "That's a deputation frae the Callyfloor C.C. I gae them a tume orange box a week or twa syne to haud their bats an' wickets, an' ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... ground, aged 86; Barber, who kept the Bat and Ball on Broad Halfpenny Down, was 71; William Fennex, at the age of 75, walked ninety miles in three days, carrying an umbrella, clothes, and three cricket bats (but he died soon after); William Lambert, almost the greatest of Surrey hitters, and the first player who ever made two centuries in the same match, died at 72; Lumpy Stevens, who won L100 for Lord Tankerville by hitting a feather once in four ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... Reddy Clammer proceeded to draw attention to himself, and incidentally delay the game, by assorting the bats as if the audience and the game might gladly wait years to ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... of a warm September evening the bats were flitting to and fro, as if it were still summer, under the great elm that overshadowed Isaac Brown's house, on the Dipford road. Isaac Brown himself, and his old friend and neighbor John York, were leaning against ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... "Jackass," and its loud "ha! ha! ha!" is heard every morning at dawn echoing through the woods and serving the purpose of a "boots" by calling the sleepy traveller in good time to get his breakfast and pursue his journey. The bats here are very large. ...
— A Lady's Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852-53. • Mrs. Charles (Ellen) Clacey
... was alone with his wife, he said what he thought about Maurice: "He is standing on the burning deck of this pathetic marriage of his, magnificently. He never bats an eyelash! (Your ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... and his lukewarm love of the world to come, had unfortunately all descended to his daughter, till we find her actually reviling Christiana on that decisive morning, and returning to her dish of tea and tittle-tattle with Mrs. Bats-eyes, Mrs. Inconsiderate, ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... not a single cry be heard in your streets, for if you dare to come out of your holes, I swear by the shadow of Allah that I'll make a rubbish-heap of Stambul with my guns, and none shall live in it henceforth but serpents and bats and your accursed ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... dirt. Why do the Germans leave this place so dirty? The rooms of Shakspeare are kept clean and in repair; the Catholics enshrine in gold and silver the relics of their saints, but this Protestant Mecca is left literally to the moles and the bats. ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... do this, six cuttings were made in the rock for the reception of the ends of the six great beams of the beacon. Each beam was to be fixed to the solid rock by two strong and massive bats, or stanchions, of iron. These bats, for the fixing of the principal and diagonal beams and bracing chains, required fifty-four holes, each measuring a foot and a half deep, and two inches wide. The operation of boring such holes into the solid ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... organisation of a cricket club, into which he was putting a great deal of energy. As the bats and balls and other necessary articles were to be paid for out of his own pocket, he found no difficulty in getting recruits, and the list of members was fast filling up. Bert had heard a good deal about this club, and would have liked very much to belong to it, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... installing the Quakelizor began. First the cave was cleared of debris, bats, and other small living creatures. Then a site was marked out on the cave floor. Tom had brought along a midget model of his great atomic earth blaster, which he had invented to drill for iron ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... pairs, mice four or five pairs, dogs and squirrels four pairs, cats and bears three pairs, most of the ruminants and many of the rodents two pairs, each provided with a teat or nipple (mastos). In the various genera of the half-apes (lemurs) the number varies a good deal. On the other hand, the bats and apes, which only beget one young at a time as a rule, have only one pair of mammary glands, and these are found at the breast, ...
— The Evolution of Man, V.1. • Ernst Haeckel
... the sky like a moon, and its shadows were ghostly. Terrified rooks and bats flew around, and hovered about the cross in this horrible twilight. Rocks on the hills broke away, and skulls rolled down the slope. As for the people, they seemed to have lost the power of speech, they stood dumb and looked at ...
— I.N.R.I. - A prisoner's Story of the Cross • Peter Rosegger
... of the necessary knowledge of preservative chemicals, the art seems to have been in the hands of chemists and astrologers, chiefly, during the middle ages, and stuffed animals such as bats, crocodiles, frogs, snakes, lizards, owls, etc., figure in literary descriptions of their abodes. Then as now also, the dining halls of the nobles and wealthy were decorated with heads and horns procured in ...
— Home Taxidermy for Pleasure and Profit • Albert B. Farnham
... There! Sh, sh, sh," rather as if he were a baby. Beginning to be conscious of a curious sense of weakness, Selden lay and stared at her in a helplessness which might have been considered pathetic. Perhaps he had got "bats in his belfry," and there was no ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... no tree that contributes so largely to the conveniences of English life as the Willow. Putting aside its uses in the manufacture of gunpowder and cricket bats, we may safely say that the most scantily-furnished house can boast of some article of Willow manufacture in the shape of baskets. British basket-making is, as far as we know, the oldest national manufacture; it is the manufacture in connection with which we ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... had got in, it would have carried away that roof as well. This hurricane lasted for about an hour and a-half; as soon as it had abated somewhat we went out to see the result. Everywhere reigned havoc and confusion, the whole place looked an old ruin, brick-bats, tiles, broken branches, loose sheets of corrugated iron lying all around; three roofs had been blown away, several windmills knocked down and carried 100 yards away, and lovely old trees ...
— Argentina From A British Point Of View • Various
... legs are made Well mortised and finely laid; He was the master of his trade It curiously that builded; The windows of the eyes of cats, And for the roof, instead of slats, Is covered with the skins of bats, With ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Like the dragon that strangles the moon in the night; Fierce sphinxes, long serpents, and asps of the south; Wild birds of huge beak, and all horrors that drouth Engenders of slime in the land of the pest, Vile shapes without shape, and foul bats of the West, Bringing Night on their wings; and the bodies wherein Great Brahma imprisons the spirits of sin, Many-handed, that blent in one phantom of fight Like a Titan, and threatfully warr'd with the light; I ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... I lie, buried amid The long luxurious grass; The bats flit round me, born and hid In twilight's ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... top of our heads; but their roots also are very richly supplied with nerves so that they form almost a sort of feelers, or organs of sense. Many animals that move about much in the dark, like cats and bats, for instance, have their lips or faces studded with long, delicate, stiff hairs called whiskers, which act in this way and prevent their bumping into objects in the dark. And it is probable that the bristling of the hair on a dog's ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... obscure situations, many in the total darkness of caverns, underground tunnels and excavations, or the ocean's depths. To all these sight must be of secondary importance. Hearing also can be of no superior value, and the dominant sense must be that of smell. In the bats there would appear to be a remarkably acute power of touch, if we may judge from the facility with which they can avoid obstacles at full flight after their eyes ...
— Man And His Ancestor - A Study In Evolution • Charles Morris
... for about a week, an' at last effects his rescoo from that hostile jack rabbit an' them crimson rattlesnakes an' blue-winged bats that has j'ined dogs with it in its attempts ag'in Huggins. Later, when Peets sends his charges, this yere ingrate Huggins—lovin' money as I states—wants to squar' it with a quart or two of whiskey checks on the Bird Cage bar. Nacherally, Peets waves aside sech ignoble proffers ...
— Wolfville Days • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the study of our church bells has made great progress, and many volumes have been written upon the bells of various counties. Too long have our bells been left to the bats and birds, and the belfry is often the only portion of a church which is left uncared for. We are learning better now, and the bells which have sounded forth the joys and sorrows of our villagers for so many generations are receiving the attention ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... hair-breadth escapes. And Tug is like 'Iron-armed Ike,' who took four villyuns, two in each hand, and swung them around his head till they got so dizzy that they swounded away, and then he threw one of 'em through a winder, and used the other three like baseball bats to knock down a gang of desperate ruffians that was comin' to the rescue. Oh, but I tell you, it ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... introduced the wounded wumpus, which got very angry). Unfortunately for players, the movement necessary to map the maze was made hazardous not merely by the wumpus (which would eat you if you stepped on him) but also by bottomless pits and colonies of super bats that would pick you up and drop you at a random location (later versions added 'anaerobic termites' that ate arrows, bat migrations, and earthquakes that randomly ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... targets, say the bells of St. Marg'-ret's; Brick-bats and tiles, chime the bells of St. Giles'; Halfpence and farthings, ring the bells of St. Martin's; Oranges and lemons, toll the bells of St. Clement's; Pancakes and fritters, say the bells of St. Peter's; Two sticks and an ...
— A History of Nursery Rhymes • Percy B. Green
... Orchards and vineyards were cut down, cattle killed and stolen, and there was only ruin where a short time before there had been thousands of busy people leading comfortable lives. Soon the churches were neglected and began to crumble away, bats flew in and out of the broken arches, squirrels chattered fearlessly in the padre's dining room, and the only human visitor was some sad-hearted Indian worshiper, slipping timidly into the desolate building to kneel alone before the altar ...
— History of California • Helen Elliott Bandini
... brown hematite, decomposing to yellow (tertiary), and is very magnetic, the compass being useless. Bituminous pitch found oozing out of the rocks—probably the result of the decomposition of the excrement of bats. It contains fragments of the wing cases of insects, and gives reactions similar to the bituminous mineral or substance found in Victoria. Barometer 28.285; thermometer 63 degrees at 5 p.m. On summit of watershed, barometer 28.15; thermometer 69 degrees; latitude 26 degrees 17 minutes ...
— Explorations in Australia • John Forrest
... to obey the word of command in less than ten minutes at the Cartref Pellenig entrance. To our honour be it spoken, as an army composed of so many females, not a word was spoken, and we emerged from the entrance as noiselessly as bats out ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... men fled from Harza, and the Pestilence chased dogs and rats and sprang upward at the bats as they sailed above him, who died and lay in the streets. But soon he returned and pursued the men of Harza where they fled, and sat by rivers where they came to drink, away below the city. Then back to Harza went the people of Harza pursued by the Pestilence ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... last I thought I heard the jubilee of deliverance, and out of the red billows of blood emerged the heads of the fettered demons: monsters of legendary horror, crocodiles with bats' wings, snakes with stags' horns, monkeys with shells on their heads, seals with long patriarchal beards, women's faces with one eye, green camels' heads, all staring with cold, crafty eyes, and long, fin-like claws grasping at the fiddling monk. From the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... were coursing this way and that like giant bats. Now came a dazzling flash from far down below. The Huns had not as yet entirely exhausted their supply of bombs, and were endeavoring to make every shot count before ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... the extent of this immense cave, it requires, however, five or six hours to partially see its curiosities, and of course would take far more time to investigate it properly. The only living creatures met within it, appear to be bats, which are not very numerous. Should a sportsman visit the place for several days, his gun will generally procure him some venison and wild pig to feast upon, or to present to the village priest, or to forward to his Mariquina or Manilla acquaintances. At Boroboso, also, some distance ...
— Recollections of Manilla and the Philippines - During 1848, 1849 and 1850 • Robert Mac Micking
... a bat are hands still, and, though the fingers are hampered by their awkward gloves, the thumbs are free. The giant fruit bats of the tropics clamber about the trees quite acrobatically with their ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... wise old girl though,—carries on three diff'rent business propositions left by her late string of husbands, goes in deep for classical music, and is some kind of a high priestess in the theosophy game. A bit faddy, I judged, with maybe a few bats in her belfry. ...
— On With Torchy • Sewell Ford
... sing, and all the barnyard fowls Roosted; the cattle at the pasture bars Lowed, and looked homeward; bats on leathern wings Flitted abroad; the sounds of labor died; Men prayed, and women wept; all ears grew sharp To hear the doom blast of the trumpet ...
— Our Day - In the Light of Prophecy • W. A. Spicer
... beginning to partake of sundry strange things. Bats were certainly eaten before the siege ended, though by no means in such quantities as some have asserted. However, there were already places where dogs and cats, skinned and prepared for cooking, were openly ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly
... in the Temple's innermost Shrine is set, Where the bats and shadows dwell, The worn and ancient Symbol of Life, at rest In its oval shell, By which the men, who, of old, the land possessed, Represented their Great Destroying Power. I cannot forget That, just as ...
— India's Love Lyrics • Adela Florence Cory Nicolson (AKA Laurence Hope), et al.
... they took to be huge bats, which moved rapidly through the air with short flights. When they alighted they hung on the boughs, with their backs downwards. They also found, in vast numbers, large land crabs, which lived in ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... had been let loose that night, and would overwhelm them. The ground trembled, and the hut swayed as if it were going to topple over. It was as if wild horses were prancing on the roof; as if howling ghosts rushed past the door, and as if owls and bats were beating ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... Companies. On board one of Her Majesty's ships billian proved three times as durable as lignum vitae. Mangrove forests. Monotony of tropical scenery. Trade—a list of exports. Edible birds'-nests. Description of the great Gomanton birds'-nests caves. Mr Bampfylde. Bats' Guano. Mode of collecting nests. Lady and Miss Brassey visit the Madai caves, 1887. Beche-de-mer, shark fins, cuttle fish. Position of Sandakan on the route between Australia and China—importance as a possible naval station. Shipping. Postal arrangements. ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... life of a jungle which stretched up to our very camp. Troops of rollicking wa-was or gibbons frequented the forest; squirrels, tupaias, birds and insects in myriads were everywhere during the day. Great fruit-bats, flying lemurs, owls and other nocturnal creatures made the evenings and ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... dog,—that is fearful! Indeed it is strange that no animal can be induced to stay in that house; not even a cat. Bats and mice are never found ...
— Haunted and the Haunters • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... sinned and wandered. Should a girl tell? No, a thousand times no. That was their secret, only theirs, alone in the hiding twilight and there was none to know or tell save the little bat that flew so softly through the evening to and fro and little bats don't tell. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... take very unusual baits. Black bass have been caught on young bats. The famous old trout in the Beaverkill River in New York State, which had refused all the ordinary baits and flies that were offered him for years and that on bright days could be seen in a pool lying deep down in the water, finally fell ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... subterraneous labyrinths as places of retreat in extreme danger; the howling of winds through the crevices of old walls and other dreary vacuities; the grating of heavy doors on rusty hinges of iron; the shrieking of bats and the screaming of owls and other creatures that resort to desolate or half-inhabited buildings; these and the like circumstances in the domestic life of the people I speak of, would multiply their superstitions and increase ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... rustling of wings was heard above their heads. They looked up, and saw numbers of large black bats, startled by the torches, darting hither and thither under the dismal vault. Birds, too, flew out from their hiding-places as they advanced, and flapped and screamed ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... noticed, were ever straying As if impatient to be playing Upon this pipe, as low it dangled Over his vesture so old-fangled.) "Yet," said he, "poor piper as I am, In Tartary I freed the Cham, Last June, from his huge swarms of gnats; 90 I eased in Asia the Nizam Of a monstrous brood of vampyre-bats: And as for what your brain bewilders, If I can rid your town of rats Will you give me a thousand guilders?" "One? fifty thousand!"-was the exclamation Of the astonished ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... continue to burn, and to cast henceforth their cheerful glow on meadow, fields, and woods; and as they doubted whether the new order of things had strength enough to endure, the smoke drove the bats from their home in the chimney, and they came flapping down stupefied on the summit of the tower, while the owls in its crevices shook their round heads and hooted in ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... and the ribs being also worn in clusters, as ornaments, in the ears, they very probably form an article of food among the natives. Capt. S.P. Henry related to me, that when at Aiva (one of the Fidji group) he fired at some of these bats, which he had observed hanging from the trees, on which they all flew up, making a loud screaming noise, at the same time discharging their foeces on the assailants.—Mr. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... woman clothed in gauze. She smiles, though she is surrounded by pickaxes, litters, black hangings, and all the utensils of funerals. Her diamonds glitter from afar among cobwebs. The Larvae, like skeletons, display their bones amid the branches, and the Lemures, who are phantoms, spread out their bats' wings. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... statement that Vasco de Gama, in 1497, discovered, sixty leagues beyond the Cape of Good Hope, a bay called after San Blaz, near an island full of birds with wings like bats, which the sailors called solitaries (De Blainville, Nouv. Ann. Mus. Hist. Nat., and Penny Cyclopaedia, DODO, p. 47.), is wholly irrelevant. The birds are evidently penguins, and their wings were compared to those of bats, from being without ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... watching and reporting the progress of events at Collingwood. Fires were kindled on the marble hearths, and the flames went roaring up the broad-mouthed chimneys, frightening from their nests of many years the croaking swallows, and scaring away the bats, which had so long held holiday in the deserted rooms. Partitions were removed, folding doors were made, windows were cut down, and large panes of glass were substituted for those of more ancient date. The grounds and garden too were reclaimed from the waste of ...
— Darkness and Daylight • Mary J. Holmes
... would flit Swart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned, Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks: She laughed a hailing as she scanned Me in the gloom, the tuneful box ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... story is too long to relate here. It is so long that when Mr. Hawkins had finished it was too late to reach Tavistock Square before dark. Mr. Hawkins explained that as bats and owls and rats come out only when the sun has disappeared, so there are other things that can be seen best by night. And as he did not go on until the next day at one, he proposed that we should ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... them. With maces and spiked bludgeons, and swords and axes and stones, short clubs and mallets, and discs, short arrows and battle-axes with dust and wind, and fire and water, and ashes and brick-bats, and straw and trees, afflicting and smiting, and breaking, and slaying and routing the foe, and hurling them on the hostile ranks, and terrifying them therewith, came Ghatotkacha, desirous of getting at Drona. The Rakshasa Alambhusha, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Nevada extended northeastward into northwestern Utah, and Davis (1939:124) reported specimens from Bingham and Bannock counties, Idaho, that he referred to the above mentioned subspecies. This led Stanford to comment (in litt.) that bats of this species from northern Utah in Cache County might be C. r. intermedius. Insofar as we are aware, C. r. pallescens differs from C. r. intermedius only in being slightly paler. Our specimens from Goldhill and South Fork of the Ogden River are not beyond the ...
— Additional Records and Extensions of Known Ranges of Mammals from Utah • Stephen D. Durrant
... while, "for last night was the hottest night I ever felt in my life. When I went to bed I didn't think I was going to sleep a wink, and I wouldn't if I'd stayed awake and thought about it. The mosquitoes were perfectly awful. Biggest things I ever saw. I thought once there were bats in the room. Sakes alive! that reminds me I haven't ordered a thing for dinner! I didn't intend to stay here a minute; just stopped by on my way to Mr. Blick's, and here it is after one o'clock! I get so tired of those ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... groves, Places which pale passion loves! Moonlight walks, when all the fowls Are warmly housed save bats and owls! A midnight bell, a parting groan! These are the sounds we feed upon; Then stretch our bones in a still gloomy valley: Nothing's so ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... as they rushed in to complete the overthrow. In one mad whirl they mingled—wild horses and tame, and wilder riders behind; and before that irresistible onslaught Juan Alvarez and his herders could only leap up and cling to the rocky cliffs like bats. And the sheep! A minute after, there were no sheep. Those that were not down were gone—scattered to the ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... of dusk and mist and midges, Now the tired planes drone homeward through the haze, And distant wood-fires wink behind the ridges, And the first flare some timorous Hun betrays; Now no shell circulates, but all men brood Over their evening food; The bats flit warily and owl and rat With muffled cries their shadowy loves pursue, And pleasant, Corporal, it is to chat In this hushed moment ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov. 14, 1917 • Various
... Fortunas, for the bosom or the girdle. Household gods were there, and the objects of personal devotion: Minerva or Vesta, with handsome niches or shrines in which they might reside. There, too, were the brass crowns, or nimbi which were intended to protect the heads of the gods from bats and birds. There you might buy, were you a heathen, rings with heads on them of Jupiter, Mars, the Sun, Serapis, and above all Astarte. You would find there the rings and signets of the Basilidians; amulets too of wood or ivory: figures ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman
... was not to continue, nor the humiliation of Milan to remain permanent. Time brings its revenges, as the proud Frederick was to learn. For five years Milan lay in ruins, a home for owls and bats, a scene of desolation to make all observers weep; and then arrived its season of retribution. Frederick's downfall came from the hand of God, not of man. A frightful plague broke out in the ranks of the German army, then in Rome, ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... his Table Round Had lain in dust for many years, Sir, Came cricket bats and beaver hats, The stumps, the ball, the burst of cheers, Sir! Thus horse-play broke on Time's rough breakers And gentler games were hero-makers. Men ceased to crave for olden times, Whose daily deeds were modern crimes, But guarded ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... wakeful eye, That drives the ghosts to realms of night or day, Points out the long uncomfortable way. Trembling the spectres glide, and plaintive vent Thin, hollow screams, along the deep descent. As in the cavern of some rifted den, Where flock nocturnal bats, and birds obscene; Cluster'd they hang, till at some sudden shock They move, and murmurs run through all the rock! So cowering fled the sable heaps of ghosts, And such a scream fill'd all the dismal coasts. And now they reach'd ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... them up at almost every station now—men and women coming in for the Christmas Week, with racquets, with bundles of polo-sticks, with dear and bruised cricket-bats, with fox-terriers and saddles. The greater part of them wore jackets like William's, for the Northern cold is as little to be trifled with as the Northern heat. And William was among them and of them, her hands deep in her pockets, her collar turned up over her ears, stamping her feet on the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... Bats fly only at night. They soon become friendly with any one who is kind to them, and will come to be fed or stroked. One who has studied them says that the good they do is very great and that the value of one of the little ...
— Friends and Helpers • Sarah J. Eddy
... This is my homage to the mightier powers, To ask my boldest question, undismayed By muttered threats that some hysteric sense Of wrong or insult will convulse the throne Where wisdom reigns supreme; and if I err, They all must err who have to feel their way As bats that fly at noon; for what are we But creatures of the night, dragged forth by day, Who needs must stumble, and with stammering steps Spell out their paths ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... also, of insects and bats. They all have wings with stiff front edges, and flexible hind edges which bend and allow the air to pass out, so that flying is nothing but sliding down a hill made of air. A bird rises, then, by flapping its wings, and it flies by falling back toward ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... horses were dismayed by this strange phenomenon, and dashed the froth from their foaming muzzles as they galloped now without stress of spur at their best speed. Birds that could not sing found voice, and chattered and shrieked as they dashed from tree to tree in aimless flight. Enormous bats hurtled in the air, blinded by the unusual light. From the dense undergrowth strange denizens of the woods, disturbed in their nightly prowl, leaped forth and scurried squealing between the galloping hoofs, reckless of anything save their own fear. Everything that was alive upon the island ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... a wild whirr of startled wings the owls and bats scurried away, dim spectral hiding things that love the darkness and the silence of night, and shrink from light and cheerful sounds! "Well rid of you!" murmured Punch, as Toby barked at ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, Jan. 2, 1892 • Various
... the quarries whence the Romans drew them have also been found, by Guerin; they lie in the flanks of the Jebel Assalah, and are well worth a visit; legions of bats—tirlils, the Arabs call them—hang in noisome ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... 'be you the one that banged this 'ere door just now? 'Twas enough to scare the owls and bats and all the other beasties from ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... Datura arborea, brimming with nectareous dew—her own most favoured flower, delicate of scent and chaste in beauty. Yet the night of the tropics has many drawbacks: noxious, unsightly creatures then forsake their lair, lithe snakes uncoil their glossy rings, bats flutter in the moonbeams, and croaking frogs disturb the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 449 - Volume 18, New Series, August 7, 1852 • Various
... of a broom, carpet sweeper, or umbrella can be repaired with this first aid to the injured. In the same way the handles of golf sticks, baseball bats, flagstaffs and whips may be given a ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... rage he was suppressing. "I know your kind. You're dirt. D'ye get that? You're dirt. And on this ship you'll be treated as dirt. You'll do your work like men, or I'll know the reason why. The first time one of you bats an eye, or even looks like batting an eye, he gets his. D'ye get that? Now get out. Get along for'ard to ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... is very often seen Flying perchance around the village green; But unlike many other bats, its flight Is always made by day and not by night. There may be one exception though,—and that Is when it's aimed at ...
— A Phenomenal Fauna • Carolyn Wells
... on its cypress-hooded hill, are as impenetrable as death. The tall windows are like blind eyes, the great door is a shut mouth. Inside there may be sunshine, the scent of myrtles, and a pulse of life through all the arteries of the huge frame; or a mortal solitude, where bats lodge in the disjointed stones and the keys rust ...
— Crucial Instances • Edith Wharton
... along the upper galleries, though there were many of them,—prisoners, who being condemned for lighter offences than murder or forgery, were allowed to walk under the eye of a keeper. I was conscious of passing them, but they only seemed to deepen the gloom, like ravens and bats flapping their wings in a ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz |
