"Catapult" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the reproof at me like a stone from a catapult. But then she repeated, "I wouldn't ...
— Simon Dale • Anthony Hope
... around a sturdy figure in the center, whose strong, lean head rose confidently above the press. There was the momentary whirl of a scuffle, out of the tangle of which shot a brakeman as if propelled from a catapult. The circle parted, brushed aside by a pair of lean shoulders, muscular and broad. Yet a few moments and the owner of the shoulders led down the aisle to the vacant section opposite her a procession whose tail was ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... of black clothing huddled in the bows. The darkness swallowed it all. I swung Seraphina in front of me, and made her sit low on the stern sheets beneath my feet. A lot of foam boiled up around the boat, and we had the sensation of having been sent flying from a catapult. ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... he is doing a man may be ignorant, as men in speaking say a thing escaped them unawares; or as Aeschylus did with respect to the Mysteries, that he was not aware that it was unlawful to speak of them; or as in the case of that catapult accident the other day the man said he discharged it merely to display its operation. Or a person might suppose a son to be an enemy, as Merope did; or that the spear really pointed was rounded off; or that the stone was a pumice; or in striking with a view to save might kill; or might ...
— Ethics • Aristotle
... chuckled old Parrish. "The concentrated essence of the destructive principle. It's a lever I fitted into a concealed groove in the Atom Smasher unknown to Tode. This lever has a universal joint and connects with a hidden chamber, and when pulled will catapult the annihilated components of a small quantity of uranium in any direction we desire. The release of the slumbering energy of this uranium will produce an explosion of proportions beyond the wildest dreams of engineers—perhaps, one great enough to throw ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... backward like a catapult, directly at Stacy. The gun exploded in the air, and as the slug buzzed into the roof, both Mullhall and the exforeman went down like bags of meal—a tangled maze of legs ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... in the way, he skinned his teeth, and growled to himself, 'By the prophet, but I can almost love her again; she distinguished herself by that kick, which was aimed with infinite tact; it went right to the spot, and struck me like a discharge from a catapult, drove all the wind out of me, and left an absolute vacuum, as if a stomach-pump had sucked me out. Yap—yow—eaow—yeaow—yap—snif—xquiz;' and, after a good deal of panting and distress, he at last yawned ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... few minutes they were in the thick of the timber, searching the small trees and saplings for Y-forks to serve as catapult handles. In half an hour they returned with a dozen of varying degree of symmetry ...
— Campfire Girls at Twin Lakes - The Quest of a Summer Vacation • Stella M. Francis
... a new prayer book illustrated by pictures from the Gospel. I coloured the pictures in mine with crayons, and got my hands rulered for it; Angel traded his with one of the choir boys for a catapult which he successfully kept in concealment, with occasional forays on back alley cats. The Seraph was immensely pleased with his. He carried it about in his blouse, producing it, now and again, for reference, with pretended ...
— Explorers of the Dawn • Mazo de la Roche
... in the air it draws in its breath so strongly that it draws the birds into its mouth too. Marcus Regulus, the consul of the Roman army was attacked, with his army, by such an animal and almost defeated. And this animal, being killed by a catapult, measured 123 feet, that is 64 1/2 braccia and its head was high above all the trees in ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... away. Tony, who had been down at the side of the gorse, at once jumped into it, knowing the passage through. Lord Rufford, who for the last five or six minutes had sat perfectly still on his horse, started down the hill as though he had been thrown from a catapult. There was a little hand-gate through which it was expedient to pass, and in a minute a score of men were jostling for the way, among whom were the two Botseys, our friend Runciman, and Larry Twentyman, with Kate Masters on the pony close behind him. Young Hampton jumped ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... went down before the big rancher as though struck by a catapult; and the force of his fall against the stony earth stunned him so that he lay beneath his enemy as helpless as ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... had cleared away from the great wooden catapult, leaving two of their number to discharge it. One in a scarlet cap bent over it, steadying the jagged rock which was balanced on the spoon-shaped end of the long wooden lever. The other held the loop of the rope which would release the catch and send the unwieldy missile hurtling ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... impulse of one at bay who finds himself released, he brought it up. There was murder, murder from behind, in the catlike quickness of his movement; but Jim Galway was equally quick. He threw his whole weight toward Leddy in a catapult leap, as he grasped Leddy's wrist and bore it down. Jack faced about in alert readiness. Seeing that Galway had the situation pat, he put up his hand in a kind of questioning, puzzled remonstrance; but ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... this same siege, there were brought to him two iron cuirasses from Cyprus, weighing each of them no more than forty pounds, and Zoilus, who had forged them, to show the excellence of their temper, desired that one of them might be tried with a catapult missile, shot out of one of the engines at no greater distance than six and twenty paces; and, upon the experiment, it was found, that though the dart exactly hit the cuirass, yet it made no greater impression ...
— Plutarch's Lives • A.H. Clough
... had devised a catapult which literally flung objects to the surface of that incredible world. Insects, birds, and at last a cat had made the journey unharmed, and he had built a steel globe in which to attempt the journey in ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... another side. As the victims were pressed closer and closer together in their flight, half of them seemed to go insane. They raced to and fro, laughing and screaming, flinging their arms aloft in extravagant gestures. One young fellow, rushing across the ground, hurled himself like a bolt from a catapult into the heart of the grisly mass, which opened ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... arm?" inquired Denys, with twinkling eyes. "I have lived among arms, and by Samson's hairy pow never saw I one more like a catapult. The bolster wrapped round his nose and the two ends kissed behind his head, and his forehead resounded, and had he been Goliath, or Julius Caesar, instead of an old quacksalver, down he had gone. St. Denys guard me from such feeble opposites as thou! and above all from ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... had they but died out with their need! Here and there a monk, fresh from his Desert-Laura, hurtles through the eclipse-light of history like the stone from a catapult,—rules a church with iron rods, organizes, denounces, intrigues, executes, keeps an unarmed soldiery to do his behests, and hurls ecclesiastic thunders at kings and emperors with the grand audacity of a commission presumedly divine, while Greeks cringe, and Jews ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... shoulder, felt herself carried along with such velocity that the breath left her body, her knees gave way and she fell down in a limp little bundle. Julia Crosby instantly let go her hand and the impetus of the rush shot her like a catapult far over the ice into the midst ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... dozing again, shot over his head as if from a catapult, and Dick went sprawling forward over the saddle onto ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... his own castle, the boy knight led the assault upon the outworks, and proved in this, his first deed of arms, the truth of his biographer that he was one who "knew when to strike and how to strike." Catapult and balista, battering-ram and arbalast, cloth-yard shaft and javelin did their work, a breach was made in the walls, and only the darkness put ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... lumbago; he may have a rheumatic pain. None of these things matters to him on the way "in." He can bend his back quickly enough as he passes along. There are always a few bullets dropping near by. One will hit the mud somewhere around his feet. The boy nearest springs as from a catapult until he is close to the comrade ahead of him. No; he never springs back. If he did ... he would be the man ahead. He would be in front. Nuffin' doin'—the whole idea is to keep behind; there is no doubt ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... approaches the wall it will overtop it, and a drawbridge with grappling irons may be dropped upon the parapet. Elsewhere there is mining and countermining. From a safer distance the artillery of the time is hurling its formidable missiles. There is the "catapult," which shoots a giant arrow, sometimes tipped with material on fire, from a groove or half-tube to a distance of a quarter of a mile. The propelling force, in default of gunpowder or other explosive, is the recoil of strings of gut or ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... but just then Sami came and I forgot all about them. I don't believe I have ever seen any child so frightened as that little Indian! He simply fell through the bushes behind the chicken house and shot, like a small, brown catapult, into Desire's arms. His round face was actually grey with fear. And he huddled in her big apron shivering, for all the world ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... a boy, Dad? Aunt Rosamund says that you used to get into white rages when nobody could go near you. She says you were always climbing trees, or shooting with a catapult, or stalking things, and that you never told anybody what you didn't want to tell them. And weren't you desperately in love ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... "Filampatan," according to the author of the BURHAN-I-MAASIR. He seized it, slaughtered the inhabitants without mercy, and captured the unfortunate prince Vinayaka Deva.[41] The Sultan "commanded a pile of wood to be lighted before the citadel, and putting Nagdeo in an engine (catapult), had him shot from the walls into the flames, in which he was consumed." After a few days' rest the Sultan retired, but was followed and harassed by large bodies of Hindus and completely routed. Only 1500 men returned to Kulbarga, ...
— A Forgotten Empire: Vijayanagar; A Contribution to the History of India • Robert Sewell
... had done talking. He was upon his feet, the big, swaying body oddly like a clumsy black bear's, his big hands lifted in front of him. And then he threw himself forward, close to two hundred and fifty pounds of brawn and bone hurled like a boulder from a catapult. Some one had turned up the lantern wick. The black head and the red head from which the hat had dropped came together, there was the thud of two strong bodies meeting with an impact that brought a little coughing grunt ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... of a thousand conflicts—and the exultation. For the glory of such moments it is well worth dying. One minute flying through the air—the old catapult tackle—and the next a crashing of bone and sinew. We rolled over, head on, and across the floor. Curses and execrations; the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... geese. He listened with joy and warmth like a pot of butter, and with his two hands on his outstretched knees, or on those of his neighbors, he never stopped talking, hurling consonants into the air like a catapult and making them roll along. Occasionally he would have a fit of laughing which made him shake all over; he would throw back his head, open his mouth, snorting, gurgling, choking. His laughter would infect Schulz and Kunz and when it was over they would look at Christophe as they ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... as the infuriated beggar rushed in upon him in catapult fashion, with his body doubled and his head bent low, Mick at the same time, with all the force of his good right arm, struck downwards at the darkey's exposed ear, which was about the size of a small plate, catching him thus between his knee and fist like ...
— Young Tom Bowling - The Boys of the British Navy • J.C. Hutcheson
... condition it is placed in the museum, and a photograph of it is published in 'The Graphic.' Those who come to look at it in its glass case think it is a bunch of grapes, or possibly a monkey: those who see its photograph say that it is more probably an irregular catapult-stone ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... assisted, loved, and laughed at, and at whose death he was deeply grieved. In 1775, the publication of his "Tour to the Hebrides" brought him in collision with the perfervidum ingenium Scotorum, and especially with James Macpherson, to whom Johnson sent a letter which crushed him like a catapult. Macpherson, as well as Rob Roy, was only strong on his native heath, and off it was no match for old Sam, whose prejudices, passions, and gigantic powers, combined to make him altogether irresistible in a literary duel. The same year, the University ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett
... the price! It was the tool—a weird hybrid tool, part gun, part rake, part catapult, part curry-comb, fit apparently for almost any purpose, from the business of blunderbuss to the office of an apple-picker. Its handle, which any child could hold, was somewhat shorter and thicker than a hoe-handle, and had a slotted tin barrel, a sort of intestine, ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... To-day and To-morrow building turned her again into a worm. It did not so much scrape the sky as soar into it, and when she timidly murmured the words "editorial offices" she was shot up to the top in an elevator as in a perpendicularly directed catapult. ...
— Winnie Childs - The Shop Girl • C. N. Williamson
... Apartments, had been seized, that day, when half or quarter dressed; with unusual orthodoxy or unusual jealousy. Watching her opportunity, she had whisked into the corridor, in extreme deshabille; and gone, like the wild roe, towards Majesty's Suite of Rooms; through Majesty's glass door, like a catapult; and emerged as we saw,—in petticoat and shift, with hair streaming, eyes glittering, arms cut, and the other sad trimmings. O Heaven, who could laugh? There are tears due to Kings and to all men. It was deep misery; deep enough "SIN and misery," as Calvin well says, on the ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. III. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Hohenzollerns In Brandenburg—1412-1718 • Thomas Carlyle
... the guns and walked toward the jet-boat catapult deck. Tom returned to the radar bridge and stood ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... concern, and the motion is by no means disagreeable. Sometimes the bands slip from the shafts, and in such case the machine comes to the ground with a disagreeable thump; if the traveler happens to be asleep at the time he can easily imagine he is being shot from a catapult. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... something shot from a catapult, he sprang to the door, whisked through it, banged it behind him, turned the key, and went racing down the corridor like ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... Thorguy, with Thorwig, Tatar (Teit), and Hialte. These men voyaged to Leire with bodies armed for war; but they were also mighty in excellence of wit, and their trained courage matched their great stature; for they had skill in discharging arrows both from bow and catapult, and at fighting their foe as they commonly did, man to man; and also at readily stringing together verse in the speech of their country: so zealously had they trained mind and body alike. Now out of Leire came Hortar (Hjort) and Borrhy (Borgar or Borgny), and also Belgi and Beigad, to whom ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... week prepare enough to keep all the ordnance on the castle walls busy for two. But indeed he had not such a high opinion of gunpowder but that he believed engines for projection, more powerful as well as less expensive, could be constructed, after the fashion of ballista or catapult, by the use of a mode he had discovered of immeasurably increasing the strength of springs, so that stones of a hundredweight might be thrown into a city from a quarter of a mile's distance without any noise audible to those within. It ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... earth's revolving hours Under the changing centuries of heaven, It stood upon the solemn altar block, By every Gentile who had heard abhorred— The holy light of Israel of the Lord; Until that Titus and the legions came And battered the walls with catapult and fire, And bore the priests and candlestick away, And, as memorial of fulfilled desire, Bade carve upon the arch that bears his name The stone procession ye may see today Beyond the Forum on the Sacred Way, Lifting ...
— The Menorah Journal, Volume 1, 1915 • Various
... expedition. Joan seems throughout that day's fighting to have watched over the Duke's safety with much anxious care; at one hour of the day she bade him leave a position from which he was watching the attack, as she told him that if he remained longer in that place he would get slain from some catapult or engine, to which she pointed on the walls. Hardly had the Duke left the spot when a Seigneur de Lude was struck and killed by a shot from the very engine about which Joan ...
— Joan of Arc • Ronald Sutherland Gower
... which were now wandering up the valley; then suddenly, as if she felt his presence rather than saw it, her dark eyes flashed round upon him and she pulled up the big horse on its haunches with a suddenness which ought to have sent her from the saddle like a stone from a catapult; but she sat back as firm as a rock and gazed at him steadily, with a calmness which fascinated Stafford and kept him staring back at her as if he were the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... against the walls; Now shake the ramparts, now a buttress falls, But, still no breach—"Once more one mighty swing "Of all your beams, together thundering!" There—the wall shakes—the shouting troops exult, "Quick, quick discharge your weightiest catapult "Right on that spot and NEKSHEB is our own!" 'Tis done—the battlements come crashing down, And the huge wall by that stroke riven in two Yawning like some old crater rent anew, Shows the dim, desolate city smoking thro'. But strange! no sign of life—naught living seen Above, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... into society; if he were in a fair way to be a Royalist poet with a pension and the Cross of the Legion of Honor, he would be an optimist, and journalism offers starting-points by the hundred. Journalism is the giant catapult set in motion by pigmy hatreds. Have you any wish to marry after this? Vernou has none of the milk of human kindness in him, it is all turned to gall; and he is emphatically the Journalist, a tiger with two hands that tears everything to pieces, as if his ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... snap like a dry twig. Suddenly his spine bent limp. Muscles relaxed. The whole body capitulated. Then the man behind stooped a little, and Rodrigo began to rise. Slowly at first, and next, as from a catapult, the brigand shot backward over the man's shoulder and struck his length ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... like a live thing, and turned over, end for end, twice. Then, it seemed to shoot high into the air, and fell again, in a confused heap of wreckage, among the broken stones of the quarry. Morton was thrown from it, like the projectile from a catapult, and he came down in a crumpled heap, somewhere among that mass of rocks; and ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... against the mast with immense violence, and a noise more deafening than thunder, while the great seas dashed against the bows, now in full front toward them, with the force and shock of huge rocks projected from a catapult, and the wind shrieked and howled through the rigging as if the spirits of the deep were rejoicing ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... garbage-scow, unflatteringly but somewhat aptly rechristened Hildegarde Hernandez, which had been altered as a bomb-carrier, and the gun-cutter Elmoran. With the glasses, he could see a bulky cylinder being handled off the scow and loaded onto the improvised bomb-catapult on the Elmoran's stern. Shortly thereafter, the gun-cutter broke loose from the tender and began ...
— Ullr Uprising • Henry Beam Piper
... forgotten him. But Big Jan's evil eyes caught sight of him. He knew the Butterfly Man's dog very well. He snickered. A huge foot shot out, there was a howl of anguish and astonishment, and Kerry went flying through the air as if shot from a catapult. ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... jocund and gay of mood, He hath Cordres city at last subdued; Its shattered walls and turrets fell By catapult and mangonel; Not a heathen did there remain But confessed himself Christian or else was slain. The Emperor sits in an orchard wide, Roland and Olivier by his side: Samson the duke, and Anseis proud; Geoffrey of Anjou, whose arm was vowed The ...
— Song and Legend From the Middle Ages • William D. McClintock and Porter Lander McClintock
... seat and the back as if ejected from a catapult shot two figures, and flew together up the front walk, a tall boy and a little girl, just as the sun dropped low and swung a deep red light into the sky, flooding the front yard with glory, and staining the heavens ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... doorway, shouting after her). Dearest HEDDA, not those dangerous things, eh? Why, they have never once been known to shoot straight yet! Don't! Have a catapult. For my sake, have a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 25, 1891 • Various
... his piebald beard would hardly please this centre of bliss, that rose in which lies our wealth, our substance, our loves, and our fortune. Do you know that it is a living flower, which should be fondled thus, and not used like a trombone, or as if it were a catapult of war? Now this was the gentle way ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 3 • Honore de Balzac
... Socotra is entitled to a salute of fourteen popguns and one catapult. Before approaching the throne of the Duke of the Djibouti one is required to take lessons ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 29, 1919 • Various
... how shall we class the historians who indulge in poetical phraseology? 'The catapult rocked responsive,' they say; 'Loud thundered the breach'; or, somewhere else in this delectable history, 'Thus Edessa was girdled with clash of arms, and all was din and turmoil,' or, 'The general pondered in his heart how to attack the ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata
... sky, came a bolt of common-sense to Tim, and he realized he had been a fond and foolish jay. And that was why, when he had finished prep that evening, he exchanged a copy, bound in calf, of Victor the Valiant for two oranges and a catapult. ...
— War and the Weird • Forbes Phillips
... be his last; but just then the current turned the log, so that the opposite end pointed to the fall. On it went, with even greater rapidity than at first; then balancing for an instant on the brink, the end to which he held was lifted up high in the air, and he was sent from it as from a catapult, far out into the calm water below the caldron! I never expected again to see him, but he rose uninjured to the surface; and being a good swimmer, struck out boldly till he was picked up by one of several canoes which put off instantly to his ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Moorish Scaevola, with a fate very different from that of his Roman prototype, was pierced with a hundred wounds by the attendants, who rushed to the spot, alarmed by the cries of the marchioness, and his mangled remains were soon after discharged from a catapult into the city; a foolish bravado, which the besieged requited by slaying a Galician gentleman, and sending his corpse astride upon a mule through the gates of the town into the ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V2 • William H. Prescott
... type—a gamester, a fiend, a catapult. With a yell of "Hellsfire!" like a bursting shell, he would rowel his saddle-mule and lead the Train through flood or flame. His was a curse and a blow. He seemed a devil, condemned ever to pound miles behind him—bloody miles. Sometimes, there was a sullen ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... repulsion-ray full—the attraction-ray full. And when they were set, he picked up the bar he had dropped and smashed the controls so that they were helplessly jammed. He could almost feel the planet catapult through the heavens. ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... over but he caught the edge of the box. His loose purple "jumper" of cotton and silk ballooned at the back as he swung by one hand in the on-rushing water, thick and yellow with sand, filled with the grinding boulders that came down as, though shot from a catapult, drowning completely his, agonized ...
— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart
... transitory nature of his popularity, was not too overcome by his recent operation to accept promptly the presents his brothers offered, and did so with a sweetly wan and patient smile which kindled a noble rivalry in the matter of gifts. Patsey, now very repentant, brought his catapult, Bugsey his alleys, his loveliest "pure," and the recumbent lamb set in a ball of clear glass; Tommy surrendered his pair of knobbies. Their mother, watching the procession leaving the gate, was moved almost to tears by these ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... citizens; and yet it fell in little more than four months before an army of eighty thousand under Titus. How great must have been the military science that could reduce a place of such strength, in so short a time, without the aid of other artillery than the ancient catapult and battering-ram! Whether the military science of the Romans was superior or inferior to our own, no one can question that it was as perfect as it could be, lacking any knowledge of gunpowder; we surpass them only in the application of this ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... in his arms, he whirled him around until he could get sufficient impetus, and then threw him against the wall as if he had been fired from a catapult. If you have never witnessed the fury of genuine fright it is to be hoped you never will, for there is something hideous about it. The ruffian had hardly hit the wall before the negro was upon him again, making a noise in his throat like some ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... usually very strong, and with blue eyes; especially when, swelling her neck, gnashing her teeth, and brandishing her sallow arms of enormous size, she begins to strike blows mingled with kicks, as if they were so many missiles sent from the string of a catapult. ...
— The Roman History of Ammianus Marcellinus • Ammianus Marcellinus
... down!" O'Neil ordered. He set his back against the opposite wall, then launched himself like a catapult. The patrolman followed suit, but although the panels strained and split ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... propelled from the mass as if by a catapult. His body straightened as it came down with a heavy thud. Zane pounced upon it with catlike quickness. Once more he swung aloft the bloody hatchet; then once more he lowered it, for there was no need to strike. The renegade's side was torn open from shoulder to hip. A deluge of blood poured out ...
— The Spirit of the Border - A Romance of the Early Settlers in the Ohio Valley • Zane Grey
... accident—I shouldn't value it. I am prouder to have climbed up to where I am just by sheer natural merit than I would be to ride the very sun in the zenith and have to reflect that I was nothing but a poor little accident, and got shot up there out of somebody else's catapult. To me, merit is everything—in fact, the only thing. All else ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... beneath the open window. Then as if in one movement the great fellow ducked down, avoiding a blow struck at him with a knife, seized the uppermost of the two enemies by the waistbelt, flung him up to the full extent of his reach, and then turning himself as it were into a human catapult, he hurled the fellow at another of his companions and caught him just as he was climbing ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... hour or more, exchanging a passing word now and then with the sentinel, when two men entered the battery, chatting busily together. One was in complete armor; the other wrapped in the plain short cloak of a man of pens and peace: but the talk of both was neither of sieges nor of sallies, catapult, bombard, nor culverin, but simply ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... roaring like a tempest. Before essaying the worst runs of the cascades Fraser ordered a canoe lightened at the prow and manned by the five best voyageurs. It shot down the current like a stone from a catapult. "She flew from one danger to another," relates Fraser, who was watching the canoe from the bank, "till the current drove her on a rock. The men disembarked, and we had to plunge our daggers into the bank to keep from sliding into the river as we ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... queen, brought out of their tents by the noise, were filled with horror when they learned the imminent peril from which they had escaped. The mangled body of the Moor was taken by the people to the camp and thrown into the city from a catapult. The Gomeres gathered up the body with deep reverence as the remains of a saint; they washed and perfumed it and buried it with great honor and loud lamentations. In revenge of his death they slew one of their principal Christian captives, and, ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... approaches the reverend period of nine or say ten years, he should still be the unabashed and proclaimed possessor of a hoop and a Noah's Ark. The child will quite see the reasonableness of this, and, the goal of his ambition being now a catapult, a pistol, or even a sword-stick, will be satisfied that the titular ownership should lapse to his juniors, so far below him in their kilted or petticoated incompetence. After all, the things are still there, and if relapses of spirit occur, on wet afternoons, one can still (nominally) ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... sensation. One of his dearest bits of fun was to drive the birds into a panic. This he did by flying furiously around the room, feathers rustling, and squawking as loud as he could. He usually managed to fly just over the head of each bird, and as he came like a catapult, every one flew before him, so that in a minute the room was full of birds flying madly about, trying to get out of his way. This ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... the double-header shot her nose into the clear over the Blackwood gorge. As engine after engine flew past the divided walls each cab took up the cry; it was the wildest crowd that ever danced to victory. Through they went and half-way across the bridge before they could check their monster catapult. Then, at a half full, they shot it back again at the cut, for it worked as well one way ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... slaughtering-room, And by the child Despair born red therefrom As, thank the secret sire picked out to cram With spurious spawn thy misconceiving dam, Thou, like a worm from a town's common tomb, Didst creep from forth the kennel of her womb, Born to break down with catapult and ram Man's builded towers of promise, and with breath And tongue to track and hunt his hopes to death: O, by that sweet dead body abused and slain, And by that child mismothered,—dog, by all Thy curses thou ...
— Two Nations • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... been indiscreet. Tom went for the gate, as did Pollock, who knew that he could have no chance at the double rails. But Calder Jones came to infinite grief, striking the top bar of the second rail, and going head-foremost out of his saddle, as though thrown by a catapult. There we must leave him. Grindley, rejoicing greatly at this discomfiture, made for the gate; but the country gentleman with the fresh horse accomplished the rails, and was soon ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... after all but a fillip of the finger—could this be possible? could it be that Barkilphedro should miss his aim? To be a lever powerful enough to heave great masses of rock, and when sprung to the utmost power to succeed only in giving an affected woman a bump in the forehead—to be a catapult dealing ruin on a pole-kitten! To accomplish the task of Sisyphus, to crush an ant; to sweat all over with hate, and for nothing at all. Would not this be humiliating, when he felt himself a mechanism of hostility capable of reducing ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... felt that he could no longer endure the strain, the dragging sensation ceased. Like a stone from a catapult Jack was projected up again to the surface of the sea. The sky, the ocean, everything burned red as flame as he regained the blessed air and sucked it in in ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... yore were pleasant. Sweet to climb for alien pears Till the irritated peasant Came and took us unawares; Sweet to devastate his chickens, As the ambush'd catapult Scattered, and the very dickens ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dissemination that allow large families to disperse quickly over the country, so that each member may have his place in the sun without injuring his neighbour; and these apparatus, these methods vie in ingenuity with the elm's samara, the dandelion-plume and the catapult of the ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... filled the air,— "St. George!" "St. Denis!"—as here and there The shock of the battle shifted; There were catapult-shots and shots by hand, Ladders with desperate climbers manned, Rams and rocks, hot lead, and sand On the heads of ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... chauffeur who had brought round the motor surrendered his place to Molly, whom Jack had taught to drive the new car, and I was given the seat of honour beside her. By this time the streets were comparatively clear of traffic, and we shot away as if we had been propelled from a catapult, Molly contriving to combine a rippling flow of words with intricate tricks of steering, in an extraordinary fashion which I would defy any male expert to imitate without committing suicide ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... could locate the Hun machine from which that bomb had been shot downward like a projectile from a catapult, passing through a tube with a forward slant in the bottom of the big ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... that I ever kicked a man with more success. He shot out as if he had been heaved by a catapult. There was a dreadful uproar behind me, and I expected every moment to be stormed by the waiter-and-pot-boy regiment. However I could hear some ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... slide lower with each circle, whirling round and round the lake in a great spiral, yelling all the time, and all the loons answering. When low enough, he would set his wings and plunge like a catapult at the very midst of the assembly, which scattered wildly, yelling like schoolboys—"Look out! he'll break his neck; he'll hit you; he'll break your back if he hits you."—So they splashed away in a desperate fright, each one looking back over ...
— Wilderness Ways • William J Long
... the dancer standing tense as a caryatid before the footlights, her face in shadow, her shawl flaming yellow; the strong modulations of her torso seemed burned in his flesh. He drew a deep breath. His body tightened like a catapult. ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... partridges which Middleton is going to send over in the next ten minutes," he said, "you could shoot anything of the sort that comes along in East Africa, with a catapult. If you will stand just a few paces there to the left, Henry, Terniloff by the gate, Stillwell up by the left-hand corner, Mangan next, Eddy next, and I shall be just beyond towards the oak clump. Will you walk ...
— The Great Impersonation • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... instant of the discovery, Fred concentrated all his energies in one effort, and bounded forward like a catapult. The distance was precisely what it should have been, and, as he threw out his hands, he struck the Indian squarely in the back with the whole momentum of the body. In fact, the daring boy nearly overdid the matter. He not only came near driving the Apache to the other side of the opening, but he ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... second too late. The little boat's stern shot up; for a moment it was almost on end, and then it rose to the top of the wave and a moment later as the crash came and the sweep in toward shore began the frail craft was flung forward as if from a catapult. ...
— A Prisoner of Morro - In the Hands of the Enemy • Upton Sinclair
... way first!" and, drawing his head down and folding his arms about it, he dashed forward for the center of my company, like a great stone hurled from a catapult. ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... overcast, and the sea had a leaden gloomy look—there was a swell also, and the ship rolled so much from side to side, that, as I looked up and saw the mastheads forming arches in the sky, I could not help fancying that I should be sent off when I got up there like a stone from a sling, or an ancient catapult, right into the water. The idea made me hold on very tight, let me tell you; yet, as it would never do to give it up, on I went with my teeth pretty closely clenched, and my eyes fixed on the top, which seemed to grow farther and farther away from me, like Jack's bean-stalk. At last ...
— My First Cruise - and Other stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... challenge; in a blast of breath I gave; You can be all things other; you cannot be a slave. You shall be tired and tolerant of fancies as they fade, But if men doubt the Charter, ye shall call on the Crusade— Trumpet and torch and catapult, cannon and bow and blade, Because it was My challenge to all ...
— Poems • G.K. Chesterton
... Corps, the flower of the Prussian Army, were sent like a catapult at the gap in the French line, immediately in front of Rheims. Five times they charged, and with such heroic daring and such penetrative energy that General Foch did not dare break from his position. As they came up for the fifth assault, a wild cheer of admiration broke out ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... catapult sailed through the air and struck two of the enemy as it fell, carrying them to the ground, knocking the breath from ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... high-backed chairs scattered about, of all shapes and sizes. Portraits of various degrees of indifferent oil painting adorned the walls of the hall and staircase. Somebody appeared to have been shooting with a catapult at some of the pictures. One old gentleman had a shot through his nose; and an old fellow with a hat on, over the window, had received a pellet in ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... warned him was right. He must jump overboard and take his chance in the river, for it was too late now to slow down and put his motor in reverse. In the impending crash that was only a matter of seconds, The Laird would undoubtedly catapult from the stern sheets into the water—and if he should drift in under the logs, knew the river would eventually give up his body somewhere out in the Bight of Tyee. On the other hand, should he be thrown out on the boom he would stand an equal chance of being seriously injured by the impact ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... house where Mr. Clair had secured apartments, and in the bustle of getting in the packets, exploring the rooms, exclaiming at the beautiful view from the balcony, and Bertie's sudden discovery that it was a glorious place to test the powers of a pea-shooter or catapult, he forgot all about Uncle Clair's words and Aunt Amy's sorrowful smile; and even Eddie thawed a little, and agreed that a beautiful full-rigged ship, with the bright sun shining on her snow-white sails, was a pretty-enough picture to ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... cordiality and rugged, blond good looks. There were other bridge-builders in the world, certainly, but it was always Alexander's picture that the Sunday Supplement men wanted, because he looked as a tamer of rivers ought to look. Under his tumbled sandy hair his head seemed as hard and powerful as a catapult, and his shoulders looked strong enough in themselves to support a span of any one of his ten great bridges that cut the air above as ...
— Alexander's Bridge and The Barrel Organ • Willa Cather and Alfred Noyes
... would fall in, and kick grotesquely till he rose to end its troubles. Or a misguided frog, pursued perhaps by some enemy on land, would dive in and swim by with long, webbed toes. At this sight the master of the pool would dart from his lair like a bolt from a catapult. Frogs were much to his taste. And once in a long time even a wood-mouse, hard pressed and panic-stricken, would leap in to swim across to the meadow shore. The first time this occurred the trout had risen slowly, and followed ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was jerked back into his throat by the jump of the Green Imp. She shot out of the driveway like a stone out of a catapult, and was off down the mile road to the station, All conveyances going to that train had passed quarter-hour before, and the course ...
— Red Pepper Burns • Grace S. Richmond
... quarter, and at the end he wiped his brows with the blackboard duster under the impression that it was his handkerchief. Meanwhile Tommy had eaten three apples, caught four flies, written "Kiser" in chalk on the back of the boy in front of him, exchanged a catapult with Jones minor for a knife, cut his finger, and made faces at each of the four new boys. Mr. Smith caught him in one of these contortions, but he was speaking of Louvain at the moment and took ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, October 21, 1914 • Various
... coming this way, Ned," said Jack excitedly, and gathering a half-dozen or so smaller stones in his right hand, he hurled them catapult fashion right at the advancing heads, with the result that the two reptiles turned sharply, and went off at full speed in beneath the abundant growth of plants, while at the end of a few minutes the missiles thrown in ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... went past me through the door like a bolt from a catapult. Fred followed me, and when he saw us both out on the landing Monty started ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... the voice rumbled heavily an octave below his own bass. Either the look of the stocky catapult, as he launched himself on the fleeing servant, or the invidious servility of the innkeeper, sobered the landlord, ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... chapter" and to "compose herself for the night," the housekeeper sat late rocking alone in her rooms, while the hollow tick of the hall clock sounded doubly lonely in the cheerless night. The modern castle's walls were proof against the wildest rain and even the blows of a catapult, and so the dashing storm never even stirred the heavy leaded diamonded panes. "Thanks be to God, auld Andrew never ventured to cross on this raging sea! He'll no be here the morrow, neither. I must send down for telegrams in the morning," ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... also exhibited a ball made partly of thin iron; the globe represented the earth, for the purposes of the experiment, and the ball a meteorite of somewhat large relative size. The ball was then discharged at the globe from a little catapult; sometimes the globe attracted the ball to its surface, and held it there, sometimes it missed it, but altered its curve of motion through the air. So was it, said the lecturer, with meteorites when they neared the earth. Photographs ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XXI., No. 531, March 6, 1886 • Various
... unless I miss my guess, ought to be able to put old Chester on the gridiron map where she belongs. Now let's go back to the tackle job again, and the dummy. Some of you, I'm sorry to say, try to hurl yourselves through the air like a catapult, when the rules of the game say plainly that a tackle is only fair and square so long as one foot remains in ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton |
