"Pickaxe" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... remonstrate with the judges. Stephen seized a turnkey, and took the keys by force; but, finding his followers unruly, was wise enough to submit. He was sent with three others to the 'New Jail.' The prisoners in the King's Bench hereupon rose, and attacked the wall with a pickaxe. Soldiers were called in, and ...
— The Life of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, Bart., K.C.S.I. - A Judge of the High Court of Justice • Sir Leslie Stephen
... Elisha Braggs suddenly revealed in the moonlight as he crossed the path behind the chapel. He was closely followed by two peons, whom she recognized as his servants at the Mission, and they each carried a pickaxe. From their manner it was evident that they had no suspicion of her presence in the chapel. But they had stopped and were listening. Her heart beat quickly; with a sudden instinct she ran and bolted the door. ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... middle age between the Pachydermata and the Cetaceae. Each ramus of the under jaw, which in the larger specimens are fully four feet in length, bore at the symphysis a great bent tusk turned downwards, which appears to have been employed as a pickaxe in uprooting the aquatic plants and liliaceous roots on which the creature seems to have lived. The head, which measured about three feet across,—a breadth, sufficient, surely, to satisfy the demands of the most exacting phrenologist,—was provided with muscles of enormous strength, ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... in the direction of the gully, or cleft, upon their arrival at which preparations were at once made for a possible sojourn of a few days; and while those preparations were being made, Earle and Dick, carrying a pickaxe and shovel, as well as their rifles, started to climb the cleft, bent upon examining the spot where the emeralds had been found, and, if possible, settling the question as to whether or not a mine had ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... brown in the dusky light that came through a small lancet window, opening, not to the outside, but into the tower, itself dusky with an enduring twilight. And there were some broken old headstones, and the kindly spade and pickaxe—but I have really nothing to do with these now, for I am, as it were, in the pulpit, whence one ought to look beyond such ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... bright steel pickaxe working all alone. It was so hard and sharp that when it struck a rock it went into it a foot ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... or not, as you please, but along this new road score upon score of young women and mere girls toiled and slaved with pickaxe and shovel. And some fell and were lifted up again, with threats and imprecations, and toiled on. There were some who came from Belgium, whose hands had been cut off, and these were harnessed and drew ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... scamperings and scramblings were loud enough in all conscience. The sacristan came out from the body of the church and suggested another exorcism to the reverend father, who answered that he preferred the pickaxe, and, turning to beckon to his workmen, found they had fled. Nowise daunted, the reverend gentleman took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves and went to work with a will, making the vault re-echo with his blows. This operation, while it had the effect of thinning the audience ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... "Bring the pickaxe, Hayle, and we'll soon see what is underneath this precious stone. We may be at the heart of the ...
— My Strangest Case • Guy Boothby
... close to him. It seemed to be the only place where he could be at ease, for there he remained quietly, resting his shaky old hands on the crook of his cane. And as soon as old Lisa and Cowhouse Martha saw where Pickaxe Bengt had taken refuge, they, too, came tottering up, and sat down at Ingmar's feet. They did not speak to him, but somehow they must have had a vague idea that he would be able to protect them—he who ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... 1 Clown. [Sings.] A pickaxe and a spade, a spade, For and a shrouding sheet; O, a pit of clay for to be made For such a ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... reached a village one evening. She had been in violent convulsions successively; it was all but over. I laid her down on her litter within a hat, covered her with a Scotch plaid, and fell upon my mat insensible, worn out with sorrow and fatigue. My men put a new handle to the pickaxe that evening, and sought for a dry ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... longing in their faces. When the crowd had pressed forward too far it hesitatingly allowed itself to be pushed back again. Suddenly there was a break in the ranks; a man leaped over the rail and seized a pickaxe. A couple of policemen wrested the tool from his ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... sitting down yonder like hoodie-craws in a mist; but d'yo think ye'll help them wi' skirling that gate like an auld skart before a flaw o' weather?Steenie, lad, bring up the mastOd, I'se hae them up as we used to bouse up the kegs o' gin and brandy lang syneGet up the pickaxe, make a step for the mastmake the chair fast with the ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... whose griesly top 670 Belch'd fire and rowling smoak; the rest entire Shon with a glossie scurff, undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic Ore, The work of Sulphur. Thither wing'd with speed A numerous Brigad hasten'd. As when bands Of Pioners with Spade and Pickaxe arm'd Forerun the Royal Camp, to trench a Field, Or cast a Rampart. Mammon led them on, Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From heav'n, for ev'n in heav'n his looks and thoughts 680 Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of Heav'ns pavement, trod'n Gold, Then aught divine ...
— The Poetical Works of John Milton • John Milton
... not long been with them before a day was appointed for the celebration of one of their religious, or rather superstitious, rites. This was the consecration of the holy pickaxe, the implement always used by these men for burying those whom they have slain. A fakir, versed in all the learning of the Thugs, was seated, when the auspicious day arrived, with his face turned to the ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... home that evening frightfully drunk, came near setting fire to the house, killed a horse by hitting it with a pickaxe, and ended up by lying down to sleep in the mud in the midst of the pouring rain, thanks ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... forward on a lightning run up the little mound of earth, then fly gracefully out across the soft sands. There is much shouting and good-natured rivalry. As each lad leaps, an eager attendant marks his distance with a line drawn by the pickaxe. The lines gradually extend ever farther from the mound. The rivalry is keen. Finally, there is one leap that far exceeds the rest.[*] A merry crowd swarms around the blushing victor. A grave middle-aged man takes ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by seizing the patients roughly and exercising them violently until they were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming people extricating themselves. They would, he ...
— Heartbreak House • George Bernard Shaw
... Molly and Milly together. Anyhow I got the best of that. Damned glad I didn't do it in the bath this morning over her silly I will punish you letter. Made up for that tramdriver this morning. That gouger M'Coy stopping me to say nothing. And his wife engagement in the country valise, voice like a pickaxe. Thankful for small mercies. Cheap too. Yours for the asking. Because they want it themselves. Their natural craving. Shoals of them every evening poured out of offices. Reserve better. Don't want it they throw it at you. Catch em alive, ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... were indeed at work upon some necessary repairs and draining, when it was found that a part of the wall of the Braccioforte chapel would have to be removed. In setting to work upon this—little more than the removal of a few stones—the pickaxe of one of the workmen struck against wood, and presently a wooden box appeared which partly fell to pieces, revealing a human skeleton. Within the box was ...
— Ravenna, A Study • Edward Hutton
... citizen. Government departments are still less malleable by public opinion than the legislature. For an individual to attack the policy of a Government department is almost as hopeless a proceeding as if a laborer were to take pickaxe and shovel and determine to level a mountain which obstructed his view. Yet Government departments are supposed to be under popular control. The Castle in Ireland, theoretically, was under popular control, but it was adamantine in policy. If the cant about popular ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell
... Portland stone into Roman cement was first seized, the whole rock has been subjected to an alteration which has completely changed its original appearance. Calcareous lias, slate, and trap are still to be found there, rising from layers of conglomerate, like teeth from a gum; but the pickaxe has broken up and levelled those bristling, rugged peaks which were once the fearful perches of the ossifrage. The summits exist no longer where the labbes and the skua gulls used to flock together, soaring, like the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... upholsterer's wagon also stopped the way; nothing was to be seen but workmen, swarming from the kitchens to the garret. Inside and outside alike; bricklayers, painters, carpenters, masons; hammer, hod, brush, pickaxe, saw, trowel: all at work together, in ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... atom. At long intervals, the method changes. With its crown of awls driven into the pith, the animal frets and fidgets, sways on the pivot of its anal armor. The work of the auger follows that of the pickaxe. Then the blows recommence, interspersed with periods of rest to recover from the fatigue. At last, the hole is made. The pupa slips into it, but does not pass through entirely: the head and thorax appear outside; the abdomen remains held in ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... compared to Mr Superintendent Norton when he begins. I say, though, you should have given me notice of all this, and then I'd have had a carpenter here to skin the walls and ceiling so as to have made everything nice and easy for you. I say, Mr Norton, you'll want a pickaxe and shovel directly, ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... before they reached the other edge, the dwarf pushed the chair, which was on rollers, up against the wall behind him, which opened; and instantly the Princess, Ting-a-ling, and the dwarf disappeared, and the wall closed up. Without saying a word, the magicians each drew from beneath his cloak a pickaxe, and they cut a hole in the wall in a few minutes. There was a large room on the other side, but it was entirely empty. So they sat down, and got out their magical calculators, and soon discovered that the Princess was in the lowest part of the castle; but ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... The Germans are almost on top of us. The front line's falling back. They'll stand here." He seized one or two of them and pushed them towards the door. "You," he said, "and you and you, get outside and round the back there. See if you can get a pickaxe, a trenching tool, anything, and break down that grating and knock a bigger hole in the window. We may have to crawl out there presently. The rest o' ye come with me an' ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... remonstrance; he took off his jacket, and struck his pickaxe into the hard, dry soil near the point where ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... two and a half in depth, dug in a sand which pressure, and probably the presence of certain salts, have cemented so as to form true sandstone, soft indeed, but which does not yield except to the pickaxe. These sandstones exhibit an inclination which seems to be the effect of wind; for they conform to the direction of the sands which roll down a scarp occasioned by the ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... from the embers, stuck it in the ground a few feet from the debris of outcrop, and finally affixed his "Notice." Then, with a conscientiousness born possibly of his new religious convictions, he dislodged with his pickaxe enough of the brittle outcrop to constitute that presumption of "actual work" upon the claim which was legally required for its maintenance, and returned to his horse. In replacing his things in his saddle-bags he came upon the slipper, and for an instant so complete was his ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... windows, scarcely if at all perceptible to you, above our heads, and that opening shielded now by a simple curtain, but which in an instant, without my moving from this place, I can so hermetically seal that no man, save he be armed with crowbar and pickaxe, could enter here, even if man could know of our imprisonment, in a house soon to be closed from top to bottom by ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... after to tell me all this, and I, knowing that he had never handled a weapon more warlike than a pickaxe, could not help ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... it; the projection of the features has been calculated so as to produce the desired effect at the right height when seen from below. The district lying between Tanis and Bubastis is thickly studded with monuments built or embellished by the Amenemhaits and Usirtasens: wherever the pickaxe is applied, whether at Fakus or Tell-Nebesheh, remains of them are brought to light—statues, stelae, tables of offerings, and fragments of dedicatory or historical inscriptions. While carrying ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... way of conducting himself on the ground, and his table manners. To eat a kernel of dry corn, he flew with it to a small branch, placed it between his feet (the latter of course being close together), and, holding it thus, drew back his head and delivered a blow with that pickaxe beak of his that would have broken a toe if he had missed by the shadow of an inch the grain for which it was intended. I was always nervous when I saw him do it, for I expected an accident, but none ever happened that I know of. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... sacrifice a multitude of victims for the sake of their religion and pecuniary gain. The Thug bands would assemble at fixed places of rendezvous, and before commencing their expeditions much strange ceremony had to be gone through. A sacred pickaxe was the emblem of their faith: its fashioning was wrought with quaint rites and its custody was a matter of great moment. Its point was supposed to indicate the line of route propitious to the disciples of the goddess, and it was credited with ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... the Prince digs a vat or cistern-shaped hole a yard deep. Under the ringed slab he also finds a door whose lock he breaks with his pickaxe and seeing a staircase of white marble lights a candle and reaches a room whose walls are of porcelain and its floor and ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 3 • Richard F. Burton
... the St. Jean and St. Louis gates were closed, the latter being placed under the protection of an outwork. Men and officers alike toiled ceaselessly, harnessing themselves to the guns, and working on the batteries with pickaxe and spade. Even the wounded demanded employment, the convalescent filling sand-bags for the fortifications, while those in the hospitals made wadding for the cannon which night and day belched shot and shell ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... him vaguely; and in the sweltering heat and closeness, and dim twilight of the jungle, he began to wield the pickaxe, swinging it overhead with the vigour of a healthy man. At first, there broke forth upon him a strong sweat, that made his face to shine, and in which ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... a rock, and find a toad inside it, with a cavity which he exactly fills, it is extremely difficult to say whether there was or was not a fissure before you broke the thing to pieces with your hatchet or pickaxe. A very small fissure indeed would be quite sufficient to account for the whole delusion; for if the toad could get a little air to breathe slowly during his torpid period, and could find a few dead flies or worms among ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... on a shelf, held his neck erect, gave no sign of suffering from any wound, and though he was motionless, his small black eyes seemed to be ever keenly watchful. His formidable bill, very sharp, three or three and a half inches long, and shaped like a pickaxe, was held perfectly level. But the wonder was that he did not struggle or make the slightest movement. We had a tortoise-shell cat, an old Tom of great experience, who was so fond of lying under the stove in frosty weather that it was difficult even to poke him out with a broom; ...
— The Story of My Boyhood and Youth • John Muir
... then fulfil its injunction; till on St Thomas's eve, as he was walking in his garden just after sunset, it threatened him so effectually that in the morning he went to a magistrate and revealed the whole thing. The place was examined; the body and the pickaxe found; and a warrant was granted against Walker and Sharp. They were, however, admitted to bail; but in August, 1681, their trial came on before Judge Davenport at Durham. Meanwhile the whole circumstances were known over all the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... its arms as in the act of benediction, and vanished. The husband found her extended on the snow; he raised her in his arms; she recovered, and they walked home. He returned in the morning with a pickaxe and spade, cleared away the snow, broke into the ground, and found a pot of gold, which was unquestionably their own. And then, with the usual end of a nurse's tale, 'they lived happily all the rest ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... water in his hand. Every now and again he would listen attentively, with his ear in the dust, and, rising, place the pan on the spot. At last he has it. Like the beating of a pulse, the still water in the pan vibrates in harmony with the stroke of the pickaxe far underneath, and the old miner rises exultant.' A counter-mine was hurriedly made, and through a tiny opening it was seen that barrels of gunpowder and pitch and piles of faggots were heaped beneath ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... the contract was by no means easy to construct. We had to cut through the solid rock, working in the air, suspended by ropes. This perilous labour so disheartened our workmen that some of them left us; to encourage the rest, I was slung up like them, and like them handled the pickaxe. One day, in the explosion of a charge a piece of stone struck the rope of one of my men with such violence that it cut it as clean in two as the edge of a razor would have done. The man fell—I believed him to be lost; by a miracle, his clothes caught in some brushwood, to which ...
— Samuel Brohl & Company • Victor Cherbuliez
... founded toward the end of the fifteenth century at the time of the decadence of Gothic architecture. It was then a Catholic church consecrated to St. Lawrence; now it is the first Protestant church in the city. Protestantism, with religious vandalism, entered the ancient church with a pickaxe and a whitewash brush, and with bigoted fanaticism broke, scraped, rasped, plastered, and destroyed all that was beautiful and splendid, and reduced it to a bare, white, cold edifice, such as ought to have been devoted to the Goddess of Ennui in the time of the False ...
— Holland, v. 1 (of 2) • Edmondo de Amicis
... and could not shoot their game, whatever it was; but each of them had a biliong. This was the implement Achang had bought in Sarawak. It looked something like a pickaxe with only one arm, the end of which was fashioned like a mortising chisel, and ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... destructible by weather, nor so flat as to be the victims of floods and deposits. With the exception of an aged highway, and a still more aged barrow presently to be referred to—themselves almost crystallized to natural products by long continuance—even the trifling irregularities were not caused by pickaxe, plough, or spade, but remained as the very finger-touches of the ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... There stood a hill not far, whose grisly top Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest entire Shone with a glossy scurf—undoubted sign That in his womb was hid metallic ore, The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with speed, A numerous brigade hastened: as when bands Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe armed, Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field, Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on— Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... Bonaparte treats the people of France like a conquered country. He effaces the republican inscriptions; he cut down the trees of liberty, and makes firewood of them. There was on Place Bourgogne a statue of the Republic; he puts the pickaxe to it; there was on our coinage a figure of the Republic, crowned with ears of corn; M. Bonaparte replaces it by the profile of M. Bonaparte. He has his bust crowned and harangued in the market-places, just as the tyrant Gessler made ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... of their intended fortification were some spots appropriated to superstitious practices; which the negroes no sooner perceived in danger of violation by the spade and pickaxe, than they ran to arms, and began to interrupt the work. The Portuguese persisted in their purpose, and there had soon been tumult and bloodshed, had not the admiral, who was at a distance to superintend the unlading the materials for the edifice, been informed of the danger. He was told, ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson in Nine Volumes - Volume V: Miscellaneous Pieces • Samuel Johnson
... a sweep with his pick, and delivered a horizontal blow at the clay on that side of the shaft Bartley had told him to attack. His pickaxe stuck in it, and ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade
... famous picture in Peterborough Cathedral, on the wall of the western transept, usually attracts the chief attention of the tourist, and has preserved his name and fame. He is represented with a spade, pickaxe, keys, and a whip in his leathern girdle, and at his feet lies a skull. In the upper left-hand corner appear the arms of the see of Peterborough, save that the cross-keys are converted into cross-swords. The whip at his girdle ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... was reason to apprehend serious mischief would occur; one of them hit the Porter with his spade, and several others were prepared to follow his example; while a second, who seem'd a little more blood-thirsty than the rest, raised his pickaxe in a menacing attitude; upon perceiving which, Dashall ...
— Real Life In London, Volumes I. and II. • Pierce Egan
... and scrutiny showed that we were both 537, and although Laxey held a distinct advantage in position I decided on a strenuous effort to halve the game. I took a firm stance and the hockey stick and let drive for the hole with a tremendous pickaxe stroke. Instantly there was a blinding flash and an explosion, and, when we had finished picking sand out of our ears and eyes and allayed the excitement of the Chinks, we discovered my ball comfortably nestling ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 4, 1920 • Various
... Goldsmith and Dick Swiveller and Colonel Newcome to clink ghostly glasses amid the punch fumes and tobacco smoke. In short I knew London when it was still Old London—the knowledge of Temple Bar and Cheapside—before the vandal horde of progress and the pickaxe of the builder had ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... fever! I'm not going to die. There's too much for me to do in the world! I'll be a great engineer. I'll make her proud. I vowed it when we looked out over the waves and I wanted to take her in my arms. See here!" and suddenly seizing a pickaxe from the ground beside him, he swung it around his head and sent it whizzing past Pilchard's ear, out through the opening of the shanty. "I've got my muscle and I've got my brain and I'll keep my life. I deserve to live. I deserve it as payment for putting the ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... extradition had failed, gave an example of the same kind of courage. Another detective, in a case where the body of a murdered man had been hidden, did not hesitate to arrest the murderer on the flimsy charge of "being in unlawful possession of a pickaxe" to prevent flight while he continued his search. In each case these men deliberately adopted risks to attain their ends which nothing but success ...
— Scotland Yard - The methods and organisation of the Metropolitan Police • George Dilnot
... mine! Countermine! down, down! and creep through the hole, Keep the revolver in hand! You can hear him—the murderous mole. Quiet! ah! quiet—wait till the point of the pickaxe be through! Click with the pick, coming nearer and nearer again than before— Now let it speak, and you fire, and the dark pioneer is no more; And ever upon the topmost roof our ...
— The Evolution of Expression Vol. I • Charles Wesley Emerson
... men to get their breakfast from Nancy: none but himself should do the last offices for Ruadh! With skilful hand he separated and laid aside the head—in sacrifice to the living God. Then the hard earth rang with mighty blows of the pickaxe. The labour was severe, and long ere the grave was deep enough, Hector and Rob had returned; but the chief would not get out of it to give them any share in the work. When he laid hold of the body, they did not offer to help him; they understood ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... modification of the divine certainty, the entire truth, is possible. The removal of the smallest stone from the edifice could only prove a cause of instability. Is this not evident? You cannot save old houses by attacking them with the pickaxe under pretence of decorating them. You only enlarge the fissures. Even if it were true that Rome were on the eve of falling into dust, the only result of all the repairing and patching would be to hasten the catastrophe. And instead of a noble death, met unflinchingly, ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Norman, "I like your idea. I will dig the grave. I will go and ask the gardener to lend me a spade or a pickaxe, or a hoe or some tool to dig with, and we will set out ...
— Norman Vallery - How to Overcome Evil with Good • W.H.G. Kingston
... something if he could be made to work. I long to give him a pickaxe, and set him on upon the roads. Then he would see the beauty of them! I hate to hear him maunder on about imagination, while he leaves his tenantry to take their chance. HE knows what eyes Percy and John see ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... pickaxes out of the cart, the handles of the pickaxes and their iron heads, and each man slipped the head of his pickaxe over the handle and gave it a tap on the ground to drive the ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... were yet destined to form so large a portion of senatorial eloquence, and give birth to so prolific an offspring of European ridicule—figured in diplomacy for the first time; while our pioneers stood, pickaxe in hand, waiting the order to break ground. We thus lost day after day. Couriers were busy, while soldiers were yawning themselves to death; and the only war carried on was in the discontents of the military councils. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... variable depth; steps, or rather holes, are cut in two of the faces of the square by which the workmen ascend and descend. The instruments used are wooden-lipped with iron crowbars, by which the soil is displaced; this answers but very imperfectly for a pickaxe: small wooden shovels, baskets for carrying up the soil, etc., buckets of bark to draw up the water, bamboos, the base of the rhizoma forming a hook for drawing up the baskets, and the Madras lever ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... advantage; for you've been good fellows to me, one and all! I want you now to help me, friend Heinrich, in a sad commission; so, I rely upon your assistance from our old brotherly feelings when together—not because I ask you as your superior. Get a pickaxe and spade from one of the pioneers and come with me. I'm going to bury a poor fellow who has fallen over there, whose fate has attracted my sympathy." Fritz pointed, as he spoke, to the wood where the ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... of an apple wrinkles when the apple dries. This brought some of the strata of coal to the surface, and after a while people discovered that it would burn. If a vein of coal cropped out on a man's farm, he broke some of it up with his pickaxe, shoveled it into his wheelbarrow, and wheeled it home. After a while hundreds of thousands of people wanted coal; and now it had to be mined. In some places the coal stratum was horizontal and cropped out on the side of a hill, ...
— Diggers in the Earth • Eva March Tappan
... however, and sprang into the pigeon-house. The King's son waited until her father came, and then he told him that the stranger maiden had leapt into the pigeon-house. The old man thought, "Can it be Cinderella?" and they had to bring him an axe and a pickaxe that he might hew the pigeon-house to pieces, but no one was inside it. And when they got home Cinderella lay in her dirty clothes among the ashes, and a dim little oil-lamp was burning on the mantle-piece, for Cinderella ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... vanished from sight. Somewhere in a grave close at hand a digger, whom they could not see, was wielding his pickaxe with regular strokes. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... seeking, toiling, by hot sun and cold moon, with pickaxe and with spade; and as he toiled there came a bright Spirit, and looked him in the face, ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... man, woman, or child remained an idle spectator. On this occasion, the aged seemed to have recovered the vigour of youth, and women and children to have acquired the strength of manhood. In a word, men of all trades and professions were confounded, and cheerfully handled the pickaxe and shovel: delicate females, sprucely dressed, were seen here and there wheeling along barrows filled with earth; while long strings of stout fellows dragged heavy loads in carts and waggons. As the electric matter runs along the several links of an extensive ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... bright as to be almost dazzling, and, peering into the darkness, I first dimly, but afterwards gradually, almost with full distinctness, beheld the form of a man engaged in digging what appeared to be a rude hole close under the wall. Some implements, probably a shovel and pickaxe, lay beside him, and to these he every now and then applied himself as the nature of the ground required. He pursued his task rapidly, and with as little noise as possible. "So," thought I, as shovelful after shovelful, the dislodged rubbish mounted into a heap, "they are digging the grave in ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... been a murder, but couldn't do anything till we found the body. Dutful, the murderer, would have slid off to some place where there's no extradition, but for the fact that I had him arrested on a charge of being in the unlawful possession of a pickaxe handle. This affair is the converse of that. We can't afford to have Ivan ...
— The Grell Mystery • Frank Froest
... "Yes; pickaxe, mattocks, and a crowbar; a lantern, and so forth," said the doctor. "You see I am at home in this; the fact is, I have had more than one affair of this kind on my hands before now, and whilst a student I have had more than one adventure of a ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... fish." Somehow or other they raked out miscellaneous tackle. But they were a little too eager. I excused myself and hunted up a map. Sure enough the lake was there, but it had been dry since a previous geological period. The fish were undoubtedly there too, but they were fossil fish. I borrowed a pickaxe and shovel and announced ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... approached near to Gortnaclough, he came upon one of those gangs of road-destroyers who were now at work everywhere, earning their pittance of "yellow meal" with a pickaxe and a wheelbarrow. In some sort or other the labourers had been got to their work. Gangsmen there were with lists, who did see, more or less accurately, that the men, before they received their sixpence or eightpence for their day's work, did at any rate pass their day with ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... kill this monster; and taking with him a horn, a shovel, and a pickaxe, he went over to the Mount in the beginning of a dark winter's evening, when he fell to work, and before morning had dug a pit twenty-two feet deep, and nearly as broad, and had covered it over with long sticks and straw. Then strewing a ...
— The Story of Jack and the Giants • Anonymous
... said the smith, examining a pickaxe, which he was getting up to that delicate point of heat which is requisite to ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... besiegers slowly worked their way towards the Tongres gate, while at the same time the more ostensible operations were in the opposite direction. The besieged had their miners also, for the peasants in the city had been used to work with mattock and pickaxe. The women, too, enrolled themselves into companies, chose their officers—or "mine-mistresses," as they were called—and did good service daily in the caverns of the earth. Thus a whole army of gnomes were noiselessly at work to destroy and defend the beleaguered ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... word then, and only give me a handful; but I was too smart for him, and swore I would tell his wife about the girl unless he gave me half. When we were leaving the cellar, of course, he wanted me to go first, so that he could follow with the pickaxe, but here again I was too sharp for him—and I got safely out of the place with my pockets bulging. I went right away to Prescott's in Clay Street, and let the lot go for three thousand dollars. I wonder ...
— The Sorcery Club • Elliott O'Donnell
... old house took on new life and activity, the latter sometimes pernicious, as when Willy Cameron fell down the cellar stairs with a pail of paint in his hand, or Dan, digging up some bricks in the back yard for a border the seeds of which were already sprouting in a flat box in the kitchen, ran a pickaxe into his foot. ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... to do—but then I thought. I scratched around amongst the old tools, and got a pickaxe and give it to him, and he took it and went to work, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... long years brought me since first, with this pen for pickaxe, I bowed my loins to quarry from the living rock of my world about me, bread and a home where Love should smile beside the hearthplace, and chiefly for Love's dear sake, that men should honour you who, above all on earth, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the city, and mechanics were passing to and fro. Clyde Farm began to wear the appearance of a business place. A manufacturing company was incorporated under the title of the Clyde Mills. The stillness of the spot was exchanged for the strokes of the pickaxe, the human voice urging on oxen and horses, the blasting of rocks; the grass was trampled down, the trees were often wantonly injured, and, where they obstructed the tracks of wheels, laid prostrate. Frances no longer delighted ...
— Rich Enough - a tale of the times • Hannah Farnham Sawyer Lee
... our thoughts determine a man's value to society. No investments bring so high a rate of interest as investments of brain. Hand work earns little, but head work much. In a Western camp one miner put his lower brain into the pickaxe and earned $2.00 a day; another miner put his higher brain into the stamp-mill and soon was receiving a score of dollars daily for his work; a third youth, toiling in the same mine, put his genius into ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... in the garb of the laboring class of my time. They were bareheaded, and their coarse-textured shirts, rolled above the elbow and open at the breast, showed the sinewy arms and chest. Before them, on the ground, lay a pair of shovels and a pickaxe. The central figure, with the right hand extended, palm outward, was pointing to the discarded tools. The arms of the other two were folded on their breasts. The faces were coarse and hard in outline and bristled with unkempt beards. Their expression ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... world, that had flourished and died long ages ere, in at least our northern part of the island, the course of history had begun. There were oaks of enormous girth, into whose coal-black substance one could dig as easily with a pickaxe as one digs into a bank of clay; and at least one noble elm, which ran across the little stream that trickled, rather than flowed, along the bottom of the hollow, and which was in such a state of keeping, that I have scooped out of its trunk, ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... sod hereabouts for some minutes, one of the men rose, ran to a disused porch of the church where tools were kept, and returned with the sexton's pickaxe and shovel, with ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... place in front of the jamadars, sitting with his back to them, and placed upon the ground, first a white cloth of cotton, and then the velvet bag, upon which rested a silver pickaxe. ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... the enemy's infantry. Sergt. Pengelly of the 112th Battery, who was in command of a 15-pounder in an anti-tank position, having had his gun destroyed in the preliminary bombardment, fought for two days with the infantry, in command of a platoon, and did great execution himself with a pickaxe. A forward gun of the 110th Battery was fought until all its ammunition was expended, and the breech-block was then removed with the enemy almost on the top of the gun. For over seven hours the main battery fired on the enemy at ranges from ...
— A Short History of the 6th Division - Aug. 1914-March 1919 • Thomas Owen Marden
... Jews should come to work them, that (quoth he) could he not say. And at times, in these mines, deep down in the old workings, do they hear the ghosts of them that worked them a thousand years ago, a-knocking with the pickaxe; and when they do break into the ancient workings, they come on the olden pickaxes of stags' horn, used of these old Jews and Romans, that did labour in ...
— Joyce Morrell's Harvest - The Annals of Selwick Hall • Emily Sarah Holt
... they might have disposed of some of the unburnable articles under the floor, and he lifted a rough board or two. But to pursue the search systematically he would have needed a pickaxe, and reluctantly he gave it up and turned his attention to the ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with a pickaxe," said Beale later, "so help me three men and a boy you might. It's a rum go. My lord 'e says there's some woman been writing letters to 'im this long time saying she'd got 'old of 'is long-lost nephew or cousin or something, and a-wanting to get money out ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... while digging a very deep canal, some workman struck his pickaxe against timbers that were black with age, and nearly as hard as stone. These, on being brought up, showed that they were the ribs of an ancient boat. Learned men say that there was once a river here, which long since dried up. All ...
— Dutch Fairy Tales for Young Folks • William Elliot Griffis
... answered the youth.—"Martin and Dan, take pickaxe and mattock, and follow me if ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott
... twenty-one, he left college to descend into the heart of the Saarbruck Mountains as an engineer of mines, where, according to custom, he had to commence with the lowest grade of labour, and for months drag a heavy wheel-barrow, and wield the pickaxe. Yet here, in reality, dawned his mission as the apostle of popular music: he relieved the tedium of those interminable nights of toil—for days there were none—by composing and teaching choruses, thus leading the miners ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 424, New Series, February 14, 1852 • Various
... last, and in the sick light of it I went down to the cottage for spade and pickaxe. In the tumult of my senses I hardly noted that our prisoner, the dragoon, had contrived to slip his bonds and steal ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... shovel, a pickaxe, his armor, and a dark lantern, and one winter's evening he went to the mount. There he dug a pit twenty-two feet deep and twenty broad. He covered the top over so as to make it look like solid ground. ...
— The Blue Fairy Book • Various
... out all my store of tools, and gave every man a digging-spade, a shovel, and a rake, for we had no barrows or ploughs; and to every separate place a pickaxe, a crow, a broad axe, and a saw; always appointing, that as often as any were broken or worn out, they should be supplied without grudging out of the general stores that I left behind. Nails, staples, hinges, hammers, chisels, knives, ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... Parks until the old miner drew rein in front of a great mass of shattered, ragged, dirty looking quartz rock. In front of this a deep hole had been dug by somebody, and near it were traces of old camp-fires, bones of deer and buffalo, some rusty tin cans, and a worn-out pickaxe. ...
— Two Arrows - A Story of Red and White • William O. Stoddard
... We slipped at once and easily into the groove of last term's routine, filling our old quarters and several additional houses. Some building operations needed for the winter's sojourn have been mentioned by anticipation. Our medical officer, also, and the ready pickaxe of "Sanitary Tom" (as the boys called the navvy who was his stout ally), had been at work laying bare the subterranean geography of our premises and making all right. At his instance, the proprietor ran out an extended culvert into the sea beyond low-water mark, a grand engineering work, ...
— Uppingham by the Sea - a Narrative of the Year at Borth • John Henry Skrine
... jack-knives and a pair of scissors, also a small flat piece of tin, now lost; saw no graves at this place, but found what, from his description of the way the handle was put on, was either an adze or a pickaxe. A little north of this place found a tent place and three tin cups. About Victory Point found a grave, with a skeleton, clothes, and a jack-knife with one blade broken. Saw no books. In a little bay on the north side of Collinson Inlet saw a quantity of clothes. There was plenty of snow on the ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... weeks before the coal strike of 1920 was declared, a pickaxe was seen on several occasions in the cups of two persons, both of whom read their tea-leaves regularly. This symbol, as will be seen in the dictionary which follows, stands for "labour trouble and strikes." A spade was also in evidence at intervals, ...
— Telling Fortunes By Tea Leaves • Cicely Kent
... away. Mr. Lamb exhibited no desire to leave, and Miss Carmichael was compelled to devote herself to him, a somewhat monotonous task, in spite of his garrulous egotism. Timotheus, by the Squire's orders, harnessed the horses to the waggonette, and deposited therein a pickaxe and a spade. Mr. Bigglethorpe brought out his fishing tackle, joyous over the prospect of a day's fishing, and Mr. Terry lugged along a huge basket, prepared by his daughter in the kitchen, with all manner of eatables and drinkables for the picnic. The lawyer made the fourth of the party, ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... fetch home wood for night, and eke for fire sought, That we our roots and things seeth might if any home were brought. The rest the wood doth seeke, eke euery bush and tree For berries and such baggage like, which should seeme meate to bee. Our fingers serue in steed, both of pickaxe and spade, To dig and pull vp euery weed, that grew within the shade. Eke diged for rootes the ground, and searcht on euery brier For berries, which if we had found, then streight way to the fire: Where we rost some of those, the rest seeth ...
— The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques, - and Discoveries of The English Nation, v5 - Central and Southern Europe • Richard Hakluyt
... of this pickaxe, and see how you like it. Jump into the hole without a word, or I'll help you with my heavy hand!" ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... in breaking up just the surface of the earth with a sort of wooden instrument, like a little pickaxe, which they make by splitting the end of a thick piece of wood, that serves for a handle, and putting another piece of wood, sharp pointed at one end into the slit. This instrument serves them instead of a hoe or spade, for they have ...
— Agriculture in Virginia, 1607-1699 • Lyman Carrier
... were hanged, and many transported to our penal settlements in the Straits of Malacca. Dacoity was in some parts of India akin to Thuggee, for the leaders carried with them in the same way a sacred implement, which was devoted to Bhawani. In the case of the Thugs this was a pickaxe, but with the Dacoits it was an axe with ...
— Prisoners Their Own Warders - A Record of the Convict Prison at Singapore in the Straits - Settlements Established 1825 • J. F. A. McNair
... night after the full moon, when everybody else was asleep, Hans crept quietly out of the house with a pickaxe, wrenched out the stone with much difficulty, and actually found the hole with the money, just as the dwarf had described it to him. Next Sunday he divided the third part among the poor of the parish, and gave notice to the parson that ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... give to the English reader: "You provide the noblest materials for building, when a pickaxe and a spade are only necessary: and build houses of five hundred by a hundred feet, forgetting that ...
— The History of Tom Jones, a foundling • Henry Fielding
... enough to keep us alive. The party who had tried to sink a well had invariably been stopped by hard limestone rock in every place they had tried, and all their attempts to penetrate it by means of a cold chisel and pickaxe had proved abortive. The party which had been out with me searching for water had not seen the slightest sign which indicated its presence on the island: we had taken a spade with us, but wherever we dug had come down upon the solid rock. Under these ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey
... depth enough and room enough for all. Over a meadow and down a bluff a path led from camp to a big paper mill which stood above a gorge of the Saranac River. The huge pile of pulp, at which men were picking and prying with pickaxe and canthook, ought to be a gold mine in these days of high prices of paper. Beyond was the dam, higher than a house on its clear side and (so we were told) of equal depth on the other. Along the sides of the big basin there was room for the whole regiment; and the dive from ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... reforms, and the army was now a professional service, with regular pay. Trained corps of engineers were attached to each legion. The campaigns of the Romans were thenceforward to be conducted with spade and pickaxe as much as with sword and javelin, and the soldiers learnt the use of tools ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... opportunity for his escape occurred. For a month he had been hewing stone in Portland, black despair at his heart. Then, like lightning, he saw his chance and took it. The warders were off guard for a moment. Hastily lifting his pickaxe— ...
— The Sunny Side • A. A. Milne
... roughly piled up, stood a cross of coral that extended its long arms that one might have thought were made of petrified blood. Upon a sign from Captain Nemo one of the men advanced; and at some feet from the cross he began to dig a hole with a pickaxe that he took from his belt. I understood all! This glade was a cemetery, this hole a tomb, this oblong object the body of the man who had died in the night! The Captain and his men had come to bury their companion ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... numbers, at a designated time and place, with their oxen and implements. Working in unison, they would work merrily and with energy; and, as the tough roots and deeply bedded rocks gave way to the pickaxe, crowbar, and chain, and rough places became smooth, the wilderness would echo back their voices of gratulation, and a spirit of animating rivalry stimulate their toils. Many other operations were carried on, such as getting up hay from the salt-marshes and building stone-walls, by neighbors ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... the shaft, and the child slipped twenty—-five feet deeper. At seven o'clock we were down to where he was again, though we could no longer bear him. We dug a little below, bored a bole, and the father slipped through a pickaxe handle, and fainted away as he felt the little one slide down again but rest on the handle. We tore off the boards, took the baby out, and drew him and his father to the surface. There were two doctors waiting for them, and the next day neither was ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... sight of the burial-ground. In the moonlight, at the edge of the wood close to the spot where our gallant fellows had fallen, we could distinguish newly-dug earth, and four silent men standing beside it, their tunics thrown off, leaning on spade and pickaxe. It was there. ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... boat-painting, Gregory Wilkinson had gathered a sufficient interest in our money-digging to volunteer to go along with us to the bay. We had a two-seated wagon, and I took with me several things which I thought might be useful in an expedition of this nature—two spades, a pickaxe, a crow-bar, a measuring tape that belonged to Susan, an axe, and a lantern (for, as Susan very truly said, we might have to do some of our digging after dark). I took also a pulley and a coil of rope, in case the box ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... man, nor the minister; and all the learning he had was obtained from assiduous study of a grocer's window. But for one brief day he had things his own way in the town, or, speaking strictly, on the top of it. With a spade, a broom, and a pickaxe, which sat lightly on his broad shoulders (he was not even back-bent, and that showed him no respectable weaver), Henders delved his way to the nearest house, which formed one of a row, and addressed the inmates down the chimney. They had already been clearing it at the other end, or his ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... about the end of the second year our little paradise went wrong. Friday was then about fourteen feet high to the bill of him, with a big, broad head like the end of a pickaxe, and two huge brown eyes with yellow rims, set together like a man's—not out of sight of each other like a hen's. His plumage was fine—none of the half-mourning style of your ostrich—more like a cassowary ...
— The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... blowing up with gunpowder; the force of which detaches pieces from the rock, which are hewn roughly into forms on the spot by a small pickaxe. Granite is also quarried by cutting a deep line some yards long, and placing strong iron wedges at equal distances along this line; these wedges are struck in succession with heavy hammers, till ...
— A Catechism of Familiar Things; Their History, and the Events Which Led to Their Discovery • Benziger Brothers
... force-generation, in the case of the will-power, we know nothing; but the moment the power is started on its way towards the point of force-expenditure, whether it traverses the nerves and tissues of the brain, or the right arm or the left, or a crowbar or pickaxe, it is in no sense distinguishable from the force that traverses a rope and pulley. Nor is there any evidence that it undergoes molecular changes, or becomes modified or conditioned by any nearly or remotely related force, as it darts along the nerves, runs through ...
— Life: Its True Genesis • R. W. Wright
... that if it was you, papa, I shouldn't mind how long I lay there, for I shouldn't feel a bit lonely, even though we could not speak a word to each other all the time. But the sounds came on, nearer and nearer, and at last a pickaxe struck, with a blow that jarred me all through, upon the lid of the coffin, right over ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... host, it is God's will that you should build this convent; therefore prepare yourself for the work." "Oh, how shall I be able to do that," answered Cotolai, "I who am so poor, and who live by my daily labor?" "Take courage," said Francis, "take a pickaxe, and go to the spring which is close by; make a hole a little in front of it, and you will find a treasure which will enable you to execute the order of Heaven." Cotolai, relying on the Saint's word, searched as he was ...
— The Life and Legends of Saint Francis of Assisi • Father Candide Chalippe
... ship landing two companies is to be prepared to land with the small-arm men six Pioneers—2 with a saw and axe each, 2 with a pickaxe and spade each, 2 with a small crowbar and sledge-hammer, or such intrenching or other tools as the nature of the expedition may require; the tools to be slung on the men's backs; smaller ...
— Ordnance Instructions for the United States Navy. - 1866. Fourth edition. • Bureau of Ordnance, USN
... A refuge from harm when by foes they were pressed. Day in, and day out they skurried about, Putting fish worms, and beetles, and such like to rout. At length one, the most energetic of all, Found something quite large and round like a ball, So calling the family, with pickaxe and spades They soon in the wonder an opening made. And what do you think they found it to be? A turnip so large it might have been three. So they hollowed it out as fast as they could, Not pausing a moment for rest or for ...
— Nestlings - A Collection of Poems • Ella Fraser Weller
... thing,—I said.—It grows out of life,—out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple, in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined. Because time softens its outlines and rounds the sharp angles of its cornices, shall a fellow take a pickaxe to help time? Let me tell you what comes of meddling with things that can take care of themselves.—A friend of mine had a watch given him, when he was a boy,—a "bull's eye," with a loose silver case that came off like an oyster-shell ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... Mr. Sawyer to examine the tools and implements in the mill workshop and he found a pickaxe, one point of which had been subjected to rather rough treatment. I naturally connected that pickaxe with the ledge of rock that had been found in ...
— The Further Adventures of Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks • Charles Felton Pidgin
... him, to be ready for carrying out in the morning. He heard a good deal of goblin-tapping, but it all sounded far away in the hill, and he paid it little heed. Towards midnight he began to feel rather hungry; so he dropped his pickaxe, got out a lump of bread which in the morning he had laid in a damp hole in the rock, sat down on a heap of ore, and ate his supper. Then he leaned back for five minutes' rest before beginning his work again, and laid his head against the rock. He had not ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... Captain Kidd, the boy sat watching them, looking from one to the other as long as they were in sight. The heart of him was pounding deliciously to the music of such phrases as, "Fathoms deep, lonely beach, spade and pickaxe, skull and crossbones, bags of golden doubloons and chests of ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... horrible! The storm drove the snow and rain into the face of the solitary man and whipped the black hair around his temples; but he paid no attention to this—he dug into the hard, rocky soil with pickaxe ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere |
