"Fastness" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... upon his feet now, gazing, white and trembling, at the fate which had overtaken him even in the fastness of the labyrinthine jungle. Instinctively he turned to flee; but Tarzan of the Apes reached out a strong hand and ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... revealed, and, what was more, the full deep bite and fast hold they would take of Life's entrails. A young girl's canines are self-revelatory in this respect. Let them be big and prominent, as Leonetta's were, and the fastness of her hold on Life, once she has bitten, promises to break all records. The sensitive philosopher has little patience with your fair delicate misses with small mouse-like canines. There are too many of them to begin with, and they are ...
— Too Old for Dolls - A Novel • Anthony Mario Ludovici
... fell a tree with the swift surety of an executioner, and in revenge for his many arboral murders the woodland had taken captive his mind, captured and chained it as Prospero did Ariel. The resounding footsteps of Progress driven on so mercilessly in this mad age could not reach his fastness. It did not concern him that men were thinking, investigating, inventing. His senses responded only to the sonorous music of the woods; a steadfast wind ringing metallic melody from the pine-tops contented him as the sound of the sea does the ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... situation that had placed him at enmity with her kinsfolk, yet he realized there was no help for this. The Morgans were a law unto themselves. Hardened men with a hardened code, they lived in their fastness like Ishmaelites. Counselled by their leader, old Duke Morgan, brains of the clan and influential enough to keep outside the penalties of the law themselves, their understanding with the outlaws of the Sinks was apparently complete, and the hospitality of one or ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... to their dark fastness, and of those who came none had ever shone with such blinding ...
— Rosemary - A Christmas story • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... is," Sally said thoughtfully. "She has always been so down upon any fastness that I supposed she would cut his acquaintance entirely, after that ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... to Sonora—to the prison? Or would he wait until they were in some hidden fastness of the Agua Fria, and there kill them and leave them to the coyotes? The youth Ramon knew that the two little canvas sacks of gold were cleverly tied in the huge tapaderas of his uncle's saddle. Who would think ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... wonderful a discovery that the making of it had been entirely worth while. He had no tenor of disgrace; his father was his only court of appeal, and that old rocky sinner, sitting alone with his proud spirit and his grey hairs, in his northern fastness, hating and despising the world, would himself slay, had he the opportunity, as many men of the Carfax kind as he could find. He had no terror of pain—he did not know what that kind of fear was. The ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... four hundred of our stoutest negroes free to defend us," says an honest letter from Surinam, in the "Annual Register" for Sept. 5, 1772. Fortunately for the safety of the planters, Baron presumed too much upon his numbers, and injudiciously built a camp too near the seacoast, in a marshy fastness, from which he was finally ejected by twelve hundred Dutch troops, though the chief work was done, Stedman thinks, by the "black rangers" or liberated slaves. Checked by this defeat, he again drew back into the forests, resuming his ...
— Black Rebellion - Five Slave Revolts • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... journeying towards Calos, escorted by a chosen band, they were assailed by a wild and warlike race, inhabitants of an island called Sarrope, in the midst of a lake, who put the warriors to flight, bore the maidens captive to their watery fastness, espoused them all, and, we are assured, "loved them ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... in mid-sentence, and Ann Veronica opened the door for her aunt. The air was thick with feelings. Her aunt went out of the room with dignity and a rustle, and up-stairs to the fastness of her own room. She agreed entirely with her brother. It distressed and confused her that the girl should ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... infections and noise and any distractions, surgery had made for itself a house of research and a healing fastness. The building itself would have seemed very wonderful to eyes accustomed to the flimsy architecture of an age when power was precious. It was made of granite, already a little roughened on the ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... S——k, and Charles S——th, may recall to the memory of some people in Edinburgh still, three young men, who, with good education, fair talents, and graces from nature, might have played a respectable role in the drama of life, had it not been for a tendency to "fastness," a disease which seems to increase with civilisation. In their instance the old adage of Aristotle, simile gaudet simili, was exemplified to the letter; and the union confirmed in each a mind which, originally ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, XXII • various
... the royal march of Spring Carpets your mountain fastness over,— Till chattering birds are on the wing, And buzzing bees are in ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... before her, she pulled the pricking vines loose from her dress, and came out. "How do you do, Lot?" she said, again. Still Lot did not answer, and after a minute she turned with impatient dignity as if to enter her fastness again; but ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... piazza, though it had been the scene of a provision-market from time immemorial, and may, perhaps, says fond imagination, be the very spot to which the Fesulean ancestors of the Florentines descended from their high fastness to traffic with the rustic population of the valley, had not been shunned as a place of residence by Florentine wealth. In the early decades of the fifteenth century, which was now near its end, the Medici and other powerful families of the popolani grassi, or commercial ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... harmony with the little town, and adding a still greater look of old- worldness, are the arched walls of the old chateau-fort. As evening closes in, the fascination of the scene deepens; spire and roofs, shadowy hill and stern mountain fastness, are all outlined in pale, silvery tones against a pure pink and opaline sky, the greenery of near vine and peach-tree all standing out in bold relief, blotches of greenish gold upon a dark ground. I must describe our inn, the most rustic we had as yet met with, nevertheless to be warmly recommended ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... the boats, seeking out some place to land upon the banks to make fire, espied four canoas coming down the river; and with no small joy caused his men to try the uttermost of their strengths, and after a while two of the four gave over and ran themselves ashore, every man betaking himself to the fastness of the woods. The two other lesser got away, while he landed to lay hold on these; and so turned into some by-creek, we knew not whither. Those canoas that were taken were loaded with bread, and were bound for Margarita in the West Indies, which those Indians, ...
— The Discovery of Guiana • Sir Walter Raleigh
... immoderately, nor start a racing stable, nor propose to manage an opera troupe, the practical lady felt that he was really a very good young man. His father liked him for his own sake; but as Adam Johnstone had been gay in his youth, in spite of his sober Scotch blood, even beyond the bounds of ordinary "fastness," the fact of his being fond of Brook was not of itself a guarantee that the latter was such a very good young man as his mother said that he was. Somehow or other Brook had hitherto managed to keep ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... was unendurable; and the very day after the funeral she departed, with her husband, to a place where no woman's eye could mark her maternal anguish—where no semblance of a home kept alive the sense of desolation. She retired, with her husband and his troop, to a fastness higher up in the Morne-du-Chaos, whence they kept watch over the regular entrenchments below, cut off supplies of provisions from the French, harassed all their marches, and waged a special war against the bloodhounds—the ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... had not redeemed her from the imputation of being "high," and Elvira was quite ready to call hers a very dull house. In truth, there was only moderate gaiety, and no fastness. The ruling interests were religious and political questions, as befitted Fordham's maiden session, the society was quietly high-bred, and intelligent, and there was much attention to health; for, strong as Sydney was, her mother would have ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... brother's boots, and they will not affect her spirit strongly; but as soon as she puts on her brother's hat, she gives him a manly nod. The same philosopher who fathers his dulness on me, asserts that the modern vice or fastness ('Trotting on the Epicene Border,' he has it) is bred by apparently harmless practices of this description. He offers to turn the current of a Republican's brain, by resting a coronet on his forehead for ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... owns large ranchos up in Durango, where the elopers will be quite safe in a mountain fastness, and they will arrive there by craft, not buying through tickets, doubling now ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... August he prepared to attack O'Neill with a large army, and, as he informs Cecil, "by the grace of God, as near as he could, utterly to waste the country of Tyrone." O'Neill had now retired to a fastness at the extremity of Lough Erne, attended by his brother, Cormac Art O'Neill, and MacMahon. Mountjoy followed him, but could not approach nearer than twelve miles; he therefore returned to Newry. In describing this march to Cecil, ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... the foot of the reach, and soon it was plain that she was about to enter a "chute," whose vividly green, low, wooded shore on her larboard bow was a large island: an island of swamp and jungle, ancient fastness of an Indian prophet, hiddenly swarming with all the ravening and venomous brute, reptile, and insect life possible to the region. Prophet's Island, it was, yet no senator, bishop, general, judge, or ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... women and children, and that heavenly host that hovered above them. David's faith sees the same defence encircling his weakness, and though sense saw no protection for him and his men but their own strong arms and their mountain fastness, his opened eyes beheld the mountain full of the chariots of fire, and the flashing of armour and light in the darkness ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have a French cook, of course—a very priestess of Gluttony—skilful to lure the timid appetite from the fastness of satiety. Enfin.... ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... forest has been of use to Jacques, not only warming him with fallen wood, but giving him shelter in days of sore trouble, when my lord of the chateau, with all his troopers and trumpets, had been beaten from field after field into some ultimate fastness, or lay over-seas in an English prison. In these dark days, when the watch on the church steeple saw the smoke of burning villages on the sky-line, or a clump of spears and fluttering pensions drawing nigh across the plain, these good folk gat them up, with all their household gods, into the wood, ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... terrible weapons as these, it requires at the present day great courage, great coolness, and very extraordinary steadiness of nerve to face a lion or a tiger in his mountain fastness, with any hope of coming off victorious in the contest. But the danger was, of course, infinitely greater in the days of Genghis Khan, when pikes and spears, and bows and arrows, were the only weapons with which the body of huntsmen ...
— Genghis Khan, Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... handle. Mr. Marrapit pushed; hissed through the crack: "Away! Search every nook. Penetrate each fastness. Use stealth. Track, ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... the deep-eddying river Skamandros, as he ran but a little in front of him (for by wile Apollo beguiled him that he kept ever hoping to overtake him in the race), meantime the other Trojans in common rout came gladly unto their fastness, and the city was filled with the throng of them. Neither had they heart to await one another outside the city and wall, and to know who might have escaped and who had perished in the fight, but ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... of the misfortunes of this most extraordinary campaign that every blow Washington had struck left his army exhausted. After each success it was necessary to recuperate. It was now being reorganized in the shelter of its mountain fastness, strengthened by a simultaneous uprising of the people, who now took the redress of their wrongs into their own hands. No foraging party could show itself without being attacked; no supplies be had except at the point of the sword. A host ...
— The Campaign of Trenton 1776-77 • Samuel Adams Drake
... of a precipice, which the persecutors never ventured to scale, to the hamlet of Dormilhouse, seated on a few ledges of rock on a lofty mountain-side, five thousand feet above the level of the sea; and this place, which was for centuries a mountain fastness of the persecuted, remains a ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... down and slept, and in the darkness this man who had been freed returned stealthily in the darkness, and unloosed a girl, the same who had been forgotten on the sand. In the morning the other captives were dead, but those who escaped were months in the fastness of the heights, living on roots and on birds they snared. In the end they went to Motopu. They were well received, for the Tahuata warriors thought a god had aided them, and they and their children lived ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... imagination rebuild the eternal rings of granite and, erecting upon them tall domes of thatch and skins on wattle ribs, conceive the early village like a cluster of gigantic mushrooms, whose cowls are uplifted in that rugged fastness through the night of time. We see Palaeolithic man sink into mother earth before the superior genius of his Neolithic successor; and we note the Damnonian shepherds flourishing in lonely lodges and preserving their flocks from the wolf, while Egypt's pyramids were still of modern ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... come, black hordes Swarming as lice With their obscenities and greed Across your fastness, Even your peaks that swing white swords, Rent, splintered ice Into the vastness Of ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... fastness in Frank's attic, while Julius repaired to Raymond's room, and found him as usual lying tranquil, with his mother's chair so near that she could hand him the cool fruit or drink, or ring to summon other help. Their time together seemed ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... rebellion, gave for some time considerable disquiet, if not alarm, to the English government. But his resources of every kind gradually falling off, he was hunted about through bogs and forests, from one fastness or lurking-place to another, enduring every kind of privation and hardship, and often foiling his pursuers by hair-breadth scapes. It is even related that he and his countess on one occasion being roused from their bed in the middle of the night, ...
— Memoirs of the Court of Queen Elizabeth • Lucy Aikin
... the tips of his tapered fingers trembling on an empty table, straining forward and staring into the stranger's face; "no, Jack Ramsey has not been here; and if what you say be true—he sleeps alone in yonder fastness. Alas, poor Ramsey!—Ah knew 'im well"; and he sank on a seat, ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... is seldom expelled from philosophy by a single victory. It retreats slowly, defends every inch of ground, and often, after it has been driven from the open country, retains a footing in some remote fastness. The essences of individuals were an unmeaning figment arising from a misapprehension of the essences of classes, yet even Locke, when he extirpated the parent error, could not shake himself free from that which was its fruit. ...
— A System Of Logic, Ratiocinative And Inductive • John Stuart Mill
... tool in Mahanaim, sacred for its associations with Jacob, but, no doubt, recommended to him rather by its position on the east side of Jordan, safe from the attacks of the victorious Philistines. From that fastness he made raids to recover the territory which the victory at Gilboa had won for them. First Gilead, on the same side of the river as Mahanaim; then the territory of the 'Ashurites'— probably a scribe's error for 'Asherites,' the most northern tribe; and then, coming southward, the great plain, with ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... life. The hide and seek games, the desires to convert a blanket into a tent, the instinct for "shanties"—which all boys universally manifest—we are told that these forms of play are but the echo of remote ages when our ancestors sojourned in caves, lived in tents, or dwelt in the mountain fastness. In this same way the advocates of this theory seek to explain the strange and early drawings which the young lad has for wading, swimming, fishing, boating, and other ...
— The Mother and Her Child • William S. Sadler
... river Dee. There, on a cushion of an island, only big enough to hold it, rose the great ruin of Thrieve Castle, the home of the proud and magnificent Douglases. Once boats must have carried the knights and ladies back and forth between the mainland and the fourteenth-century fastness of old Archibald the Grim. But now I saw a line of half-submerged stepping-stones, the only way of crossing in these days when there is no fighting or feasting at Thrieve, and no "tassel" dangling from the knoblike "hanging ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... said, "I was too proud and too sensitive. I did not come to you and say, 'Let me beard the cook in her fastness. Let me order the sirloin of beef for the mid-day meal. Let me rebuke the housemaid, or raise her wages, or give her notice,' or whatever it is that one does in the case of a housemaid. I did not ask that I too might ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... attend the night schools after business hours, and thus prepare for the great life struggle which is before them. Such boys are apt to do well in the world. Many, however, after being released from the stores, imitate the ways of the clerks and salesmen. They affect a fastness which is painful to see in boys so young. They sport an abundance of flashy jewelry, patronize the cheap places of amusement, and are seen in the low concert saloons, and other vile dens of the city. It is not difficult to predict the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... She had a cageful of tame canary-birds which answered to their names and fed from her plate at meal-times. Of these I remember only Roger, a gorgeous fellow with a beautiful voice and strong will of his own, who would occasionally defy his mistress from the secure fastness of a high picture-frame, but always surrendered at last, and came to listen to his lecture ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... gayest and wittiest found in her one quite their equal; the thoughtful and pathetic were equally at home by her side; but her heart, to them, seemed encased in iron, so cold and immovable it continued to all the assaults that gallantry made against its fastness, and yet no one who knew her really doubted the tenderness of her feelings and ...
— The Sea-Witch - or, The African Quadroon A Story of the Slave Coast • Maturin Murray
... up water in an iron cup, to gratify the curiosity of visitors as much as to quench their thirst; for it was strange, indeed, to meet with fresh water there, the presence of which, no doubt, had caused the place to be chosen for a fastness in old time. With this she hurried back; and fixing one end firmly round the door-post, she looped the other in a slip-knot, and lowered it carefully to Richard. "Put this beneath your arms," she said; "the ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... and escape from the Dantesque horrors of this selva oscura is accompanied by a sudden relief and buoyancy of spirit which perceptibly heightens the interest of the old-world city, once isolated by the woodland fastness of Nature, and belonging to an ageless past, surrounding the authentic origin of Djokjacarta with thick clouds of fable and myth. The modern name is derived from Arjudja, a city recorded in Java's ancient annals as being established by Rama, the incarnate Sun-God. Na-yud-ja, the first king ...
— Through the Malay Archipelago • Emily Richings
... Filion, from Black Brian's castle in the hills, was told with primitive force and passion. But the most wonderful part of the story described how a strange dwarfed Little Man came out of the hills in the East, across the land, to the Western fastness of Black Brian, and there slew that evil man, because of an ancient feud—slew him in a situation of great indignity, and left him lying on the sands for the tide to wash him out to the deep and hungry sea. Even here Patsy had his inspiration from ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... at St. Helena, that he believed himself to be bolder than any general that ever lived, but he would never have dared to hold the position that Dumouriez took up. He was outnumbered, three to one. He had been outmanoeuvred, and driven from his fastness by the most enterprising of the allied generals; and his recruits refused to face the enemy. He never for a moment lost confidence in himself, for the time wasted at Verdun had given him the measure of his opponents. He summoned Kellermann, with the army of Metz, and Beurnonville, ...
— Lectures on the French Revolution • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton
... though he sat within the icy domes Of yon far Schreckhorn—ay, or higher, where Veiled since eternity, the Jungfrau soars, Still to the tyrant would I make my way; With twenty comrades minded like myself, I'd lay his fastness level with the earth! And if none follow me, and if you all, In terror for your homesteads and your herds, Bow in submission to the tyrant's yoke, I'll call the herdsmen on the hills around me, And there beneath heaven's free and boundless roof, Where men still feel ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... she Falls to this cistern. And perchance above Doth yet appear the body of a ghost, Who here behind me winters. Him thou know'st, If thou but newly art arriv'd below. The years are many that have pass'd away, Since to this fastness ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... shot had been fired. Silently they stole on toward the sleeping Austrian camp. Feeling perfectly secure in the mountain fastness and believing their position practically impregnable, the Austrians failed to ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... boasts of only fourteen hundred inhabitants, and is almost hidden in the Pyrenean fastness, one does very well within its walls. There is a railway to Bayonne, the post, telegraph, a pharmacy, and a Red Cross station, and the wants of the automobilist are attended to sufficiently well by the local locksmith. The Hotel Central, on the Place du Marche, is vouched for by the ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... relief," he said, waving a graceful hand in a neatly limited gesture, which everybody's eyes followed, his own included. "It is a relief and a retreat. The windows open, the blinds closed—that is as it should be. It is a retreat, a fastness, a bastion against the heat's assault. For me, a quiet room—a quiet room and a book, a volume in the hand, held lightly between the fingers. A volume of poems, lines metrical and cadenced; something by a sound Victorian. ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... I had not merited from man any severity, my demerits at the hand of the Most High were wholly put out of the calculation. Thus, of course, every stroke drove me further from the only Rock of refuge, and deeper into the fastness of my own vain conceits. Added to this, I was wholly shut out from all the ordinary means by which the Lord usually calls sinners to himself. There was no gospel ministry then within my reach; nor could I, if it were provided, have profited by it, owing to my infirmity, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... coup. How the diabolo I, such an innocent stranger youth, had ever learned Spanish Gypsy—the least knowledge of which in Spain implies unfathomable iniquity and fastness—was beyond all comprehension. So I departed full of honour amid thunders ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... "Hamadryad." The Dryads and Hamadryads lived, according to old legend, within the trunks of trees and perished with their homes. So it was an impious act to destroy a tree without cause. This nymph of the woods has emerged from the tree-trunk home or from some rocky fastness and taken the urn of a naiad, a sister nymph of brook and fountain, to give drink to the gentle, confident fawn that is her charge. The little animal is lapping the stream that flows from the overturned vase. This study in white marble follows tradition and is regarded chiefly for its ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... to Salcombe to Mr Cottier's lodgings; they had questioned him, perhaps with threats, till he had confessed that he had betrayed them to the preventives; then they had gagged him, hustled him downstairs to a waiting closed carriage, and then they had quietly driven him on, undisturbed, to their fastness in the cliff. It was sad to see a man fallen so low, a man who had been at the University, and master of a school. It was sad to see him, his flabby face all fallen in and white from excess of fear, and to see his eyes lolling about from one to another man, trying to find a little hope in the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... felt exactly as though Mr. Zanti (looking very like an ogre in the mysterious yellow light with his bowler on the back of his head and mopping his face with a huge crimson handkerchief) were decoying him away to some terrible fastness where it was always ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... brush-piles in the east and south of the Swamp and to clear up the wreck of the old barbed-wire hog-pen just below the spring. But it was none the less hard on Rag and his mother. The first were their various residences and outposts, and the second their grand fastness and safe retreat. ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the American Fur Company. These were the fearless and intrepid pioneers who so far from fleeing danger seemed rather to court it. Accounts of their adventures—now a struggle with a wounded bear, again the threatened perils of starvation when lost in some mountain-fastness—have long simultaneously terrified and fascinated both young and old. We all have pictured their dress—the coat or cloak, often an odd combination of several varieties of skins pieced together, with fur side in; breeches sometimes of the same material, but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XXVI., December, 1880. • Various
... sense of the old dog's nearness and protection, for he meant to camp on that spot during his stay as he used to do when a boy. Then he went on foot down the mountainside to his old home in the hollow, little dreaming, as he passed along its rocky fastness, that a "still" ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... how that, shortly after the above-mentioned events, the whole province of the New Netherlands 'was subjugated by the British; how that Wolfert Acker, one of the wrangling councillors of Peter Stuyvesant, retired in dudgeon to this fastness in the wilderness, determining to enjoy "lust in rust" for the remainder of his days, whence the place first received its name of Wolfert's Roost. As these and sundry other matters have been laid before the public in a preceding article, I shall pass them over, and ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... of one hope, which all the legions in hell cannot shake. Between you and me the battle has only begun, and nothing but your death or my victory will end it. You have your revenge; I intend to enjoy mine. Though he burrow as a mole, or skulk in some fastness of Alaska, I will track and seize that cowardly miscreant, and when the law receives its guilty victim, you shall be freed from suspicion, freed from prison, and most precious of all boons, you shall be freed forever from the vile contamination of his ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... his head. 'It was all kinds of fastness with me, I can assure you!' he said. He raised his hands in some excitement as he said this, and instantly rolled out of the saddle, and fell headlong ...
— Through the Looking-Glass • Charles Dodgson, AKA Lewis Carroll
... spilth of fire, its honey of wild flame! Yea, and myself put on swift quickening, And answer to the presence of a sudden Spring. From cloud-zoned pinnacles of the secret spirit Song falls precipitant in dizzying streams; And, like a mountain-hold when war-shouts stir it, The mind's recessed fastness casts to light Its gleaming multitudes, that from every height Unfurl the flaming of a thousand dreams. Now therefore, thou who bring'st the year to birth, Who guid'st the bare and dabbled feet of May; Sweet stem to that rose Christ, who ...
— Sister Songs • Francis Thompson
... he painted a raging, tossing sea, Storming, with fierce and sudden shock, Wild cries, and writhing tongues of foam, A towering, mighty fastness-rock. In its sides above those leaping crests, The thronging sea-birds built their nests. "What a disagreeable daub!" said she; "Why it isn't anything ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... head-quarters. It was at once the center from which they carried on their enterprises in all directions about the island, and the refuge to which they could always retreat when defeated and pursued. In the possession of such a fastness, they, of course, became more formidable than ever. King Ethelred determined to dislodge them. He raised, accordingly, as large a force as his kingdom would furnish, and, taking his brother Alfred as his second in command, he advanced ...
— King Alfred of England - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... and leaves, made life for all of mortal beings that breathe and move. So lived the clansmen in cheer and revel a winsome life, till one began to fashion evils, that field of hell. Grendel this monster grim was called, march-riever {1e} mighty, in moorland living, in fen and fastness; fief of the giants the hapless wight a while had kept since the Creator his exile doomed. On kin of Cain was the killing avenged by sovran God for slaughtered Abel. Ill fared his feud, {1f} and far ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... it!" cried Dwight. He laughed so loudly that those at the near tables turned. And, from the fastness of her wifehood and motherhood, Ina laughed. Really, it was ridiculous to think ...
— Miss Lulu Bett • Zona Gale
... and what have been merely woods and plantations in this heavy gloom become mysterious forests. The river, too, seems to change its character, and become a pale serpent, uncoiling itself from some mountain fastness where no living creatures besides great ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... you that had it been necessary to come on snow shoes to prevent your loyalty to me from being in vain, I should have made the attempt, and perhaps like the youth who cried 'Excelsior,' might last have been seen plodding through the shades of night into your Alpine fastness, ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... introduces London into authentic history during the apostolic era and the reign of Nero.[1] Suetonius Paulinus, governor of Britain, came in hot haste from Mona, suspending the slaughter of the Druid leaders in this their last fastness, to restore the Roman arms. For Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni, outraged at the treatment of herself and her two daughters, had, like a second Deborah, raised a popular uprising against the foreign invaders. ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of St. Paul - An Account of the Old and New Buildings with a Short Historical Sketch • Arthur Dimock
... Peaceless they fell. Forthwith they fled, The folk of the Huns, when that holy tree The king of the Romans bade raise on high, Fierce in the fight. The warriors became 130 Widely dispersed. Some war took away; Some with labor their lives preserved Upon that march; some half-alive Fled to the fastness and life protected Behind the stone-cliffs, held their abode 135 Around the Danube; some drowning took off In the stream of the river at the end of their life. Then was of the proud ones the force in joy; They followed the foreigners forth until even From break ...
— Elene; Judith; Athelstan, or the Fight at Brunanburh; Byrhtnoth, or the Fight at Maldon; and the Dream of the Rood • Anonymous
... and casting a crimson glow upon the wooded summits. The empty cabins, and the boarded-up cooking shack, shone clear and sharp in the gathering twilight. High above, a great bird soared through the dusk, hastening to its home in the mountains, where Silver Fox trail wound its way up through the fastness, and where Tom and Roy had often gone. And the memory of all these fond associations gripped Tom now, and he had to tighten his big ugly mouth to keep it from showing any ...
— Tom Slade at Black Lake • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... my dear," he told his spouse, in his fastness under a gnarled tree root. "However, there's no objection to the children having a look if it amuses them." He cast a discriminating eye round the larder, and frowned heavily. "Hell! you don't mean to say that we've got that damned ham bone again," he growled. "However, we ought to pick up something ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... N. slope of the Palatine, chosen as the safest meeting-place, and near Cicero's house. 17-18. castra ... collocata, the camp of Manlius (one of the veteran centurions of Sulla) was planted at Faesulae (Fiesole), arocky fastness three miles N.E. of Florence. 19. imperatorem: ironical, as though Catiline were the legally appointed ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce
... our country must indeed astound thee," he observed, "having come from the dreary fastness of the outer Ice World. But come; we are now to pass the great retortii guarding ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... was thickly sprinkled over with willows, whence its name, "Willow Marsh." Across this isthmus Proctor hastily threw his regiment of about nine hundred regulars, while Tecumseh, with his brigade of about two thousand warriors, ambushed himself in the fastness of the swamp. On this occasion, as had he, indeed, on every other occasion of the kind, the Indian leader displayed a degree of generalship which stands without parallel in the annals of savage warfare. Pivoting his brigade on the right of the English regiment, he ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... another quarter fought, When suddenly th' unhop'd-for news was brought, The foes had left the fastness of their place, Prevail'd in fight, and had his men in chase. He quits th' attack, and, to prevent their fate, Runs where the giant brothers guard the gate. The first he met, Antiphates the brave, But base-begotten on a Theban slave, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... pursued him actively from fastness to fastness, determined to run him down, and at length, on September 6, 1859, surprised him on the plateau of Gounib. Here the devoted band made a desperate resistance, not yielding until of the original four hundred only forty-seven remained alive. Schamyl, the lion of the Caucasus, ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... and Mrs. Rabbit in colloquy with a flat masculine voice. He heard his own name demanded and conceded. Then a silence, not the faintest suggestion of a feminine rustle, and then the sound of Mrs. Rabbit at the door-handle. Conviction stormed the last fastness of ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... conceded that they would. Youth, beauty, wealth and the shadow of an old family name could cover a multitude of such sins as rapid manners, desperate flirtations and a questionable origin; and notwithstanding her fastness, and, worse still, her ci-devant governess-ship, Mrs. Clement Rutherford was ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... our boat we saw the fair face of that great rock Capri— already scarred and gashed by the gun emplacements and hiding-places that were to make it a fastness—we reckoned nothing of the imminent slaughter, though the fury of preparation hung about in puffs and clouds of dust at a hundred points amidst the grey; but, indeed, I made a text of that and talked. There, you know, was the rock, still beautiful for all its scars, with its countless windows ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... who they are," said the professor, shortly. "The craft came right out of a fastness in the mountain-side—a place difficult to reach, and which would not seem to attract aviators of the ordinary class." "I know what he is thinking of," cried Mark, suddenly. "I read in the paper that the Department of Justice officers are after some big smugglers ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... troops (some say three thousand men) against about one hundred and fifty robbers, threatening to exterminate them. They were pursued so closely, that after dragging their unfortunate captive over the mountains from one fastness to another, till he was nearly dead from exhaustion and ill-treatment, they either abandoned or surrendered him without terms. The troops immediately marched back to Naples, and the matter rests here: I cannot ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... journey on foot. You manifest to me kindness and fair friendship, you grant me grace 2515 and good-will. I know a lofty town near here, a little fortress: leave me there, in honor and peace, so that we may seek safety above, in Sigor. If you will protect that 2520 lofty fastness from the fire, we can abide in that place unharmed, in safety, and so ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... had she seen Jerusalem before, yet now she gave an exclamation of joy as the ascending sunlight fell in floods of golden glory over the snowy towers and gold minarets of the City of David, secure on its summit of rugged fastness. "Who has not seen Zion knows not what beauty is!" she exclaimed. "Zion—fairest throughout the earth!" The veil which she had loosely bound about her head had fallen from her shoulders and the morning breeze touching her soft dark hair was moving it gently around ...
— The Coming of the King • Bernie Babcock
... fastness of Protestantism was a place of more importance. Eighty years before, during the troubles caused by the last struggle of the houses of O'Neil and O'Donnel against the authority of James the First, the ancient city of Derry had ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... our city! say the boys. Dian, bless our women and our children, say the girls, and guard the sanctity of our marriage laws. Bring forth Earth's genial fruits, say both; give purity to youth and peace to age. Bring back the lapsed virtues of the Golden Age; Faith, Honour, antique Shame-fastness and Worth, and Plenty with her teeming horn. Hear, God! hear, Goddess! Yes, we ...
— Horace • William Tuckwell
... subsisted, and were to be discerned in the river[6] down almost to the present times. The Britons had made the best of the situation; but the Romans plunged into the water, tore away the stakes and palisadoes, and obtained a complete victory. The capital, or rather chief fastness, of Cassibelan was then taken, with a number of cattle, the wealth of this barbarous city. After these misfortunes the Britons were no longer in a condition to act with effect. Their ill-success in the field soon dissolved the ill-cemented union of their councils. They split ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VII. (of 12) • Edmund Burke
... never beset him with crude flattery; the principal reason why the flirtation had stood the test of so many years was the fact that it only flared into active existence at convenient intervals. In an age when the telephone has undermined almost every fastness of human privacy, and the sanctity of one's seclusion depends often on the ability for tactful falsehood shown by a club pageboy, Youghal was duly appreciative of the circumstance that his lady fair spent a large part of the year pursuing foxes, in lieu of pursuing him. ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... had been known to flee thither on more than one occasion when she did not wish to be disturbed in the thrilling place in a novel. For you really couldn't hear any one calling from the house in this leafy fastness. Ernest had made her two or three rustic seats, and a little cupboard where she could keep her treasures sheltered from the ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... gallant grandfather, Colonel Smith. When Mrs. Neville arrived, she was found to be so subdued and tame that she could hardly open her mouth before the old Earl. Her loudness, if she ever had been loud, was certainly all gone,—and her fastness, if ever she had been fast, had been worn out of her. She was an old woman, with the relics of great beauty, idolizing her two sons for whom all her life had been a sacrifice, in weak health, and prepared, if necessary, to sit in silent awe ...
— An Eye for an Eye • Anthony Trollope
... the principal reason for recalling him, was the President's desire to establish a surer peace with the cacique Enrique; although the latter had made no attack on the Spaniards since the agreement of 1529, he had not disbanded his followers, but remained in an inaccessible mountain fastness, a permanent source of unrest to the Spaniards with whom he showed no intention of entering ...
— Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings • Francis Augustus MacNutt
... suddenly, as it were, by some idle and tricksy demon, she stayed on after she was called, and, called again, she still stayed; and when, at last, Miss Fitch herself came out and stood beneath the tree, and in her pleasant, mild voice told her to come down, still the naughty girl, secure in her fastness, stayed. And when, at last, Miss Fitch, growing angry, spoke severely and ordered her to descend, Isabella shook the boughs, and sent a shower of hard little apples down on her kind teacher's head. That was dreadful, indeed, and dreadfully did she repent it afterward, for she ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... sallied forth on their imaginary forays and thither they retired when in disgrace with Mr. Tufts. Around this retreat they dug a deep trench, which they covered artfully with boughs and dead leaves. Then they beguiled their reverend preceptor into chasing them to their "mountain fastness." Lightly they skipped across the concealed moat on the only firm ground they had purposely left, leaving him in the moment of exultant success to plunge neck deep into a tangled mass of brushwood and mud. In such playful ways as these Field endeared ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... the poet would often walk. But Farringford, lying low in the shelter of the hills, proved too hot in summer; Freshwater was discovered by tourists too often inquisitive about the great; and so, after ten or twelve years, he was searching for another home, some remoter fastness set on higher ground. This he discovered on the borders of Surrey and Sussex near Haslemere, where Black Down rises to a height of 900 feet above the sea and commands a wide prospect over the blue expanse of the weald. Here he found copses and commons haunted by the song of ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... I have seen a great deal of the roughest class of men both on sea and land during the last two years, and the more important I think the "mission" of every quiet, refined, self-respecting woman—the more mistaken I think those who would forfeit it by noisy self-assertion, masculinity, or fastness. In all this wild West the influence of woman is second only in its benefits to the influence of religion, and where the last unhappily does not exist the first continually exerts its restraining power. The last morning came. I cleaned up my room and sat at the window watching the red and ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... sire; such a swoop Will raise an obstacle to their retreat And refuge in the fastness of the isle; And show this victory-gorged adventurer That striking with a river in his rear Is not the safest tactic to be played Against an Austrian front ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... chief there—one named Hazim Rhan—had made a haul of six malcontents who I understood had conspired against his authority. It seems that these rebels had a leader who had succeeded in escaping to his desert fastness, and whom Hazim Rhan greatly desired to capture. To gain this object he commanded the six prisoners to betray their leader; this they refused to do, whereupon the dusky prince ordered their ears to be cut off and threatened them that unless ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... maintained resistance in remote parts of the country, and the legate Bassus was sent to take their three fortresses. He died before the capture of Masada, the last stronghold, a natural fastness overlooking the Dead Sea, which had been fortified by Herod. In this region David and centuries later the Maccabean heroes had found a refuge at their time of distress, and here the Jewish people were to ...
— Josephus • Norman Bentwich
... Molochath, which separated the Numidian territory from the Mauretanian—whither Jugurtha had conveyed his treasure-chest, and, just as he was about to desist from the siege in despair of success, fortunately gained possession of the impregnable fastness through the coup de main of some daring climbers. Had his object merely been to harden the army by bold razzias and to procure booty for the soldiers, or even to eclipse the march of Metellus into the ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... friends with hordes of marauding hostiles intervening, and so induced him to remain with them in hiding until the rebellious tribes were driven from the reservations and Red Dog himself fled to their fastness. Then again had McGrath to remain in hiding, secreted by his humble friends, and there he lay when Winthrop's bugles sounded the charge and his own old troop came dashing in. He was so worn, ragged, and changed that he had difficulty in making even "A" Troop know him, ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... Church of the Cristo de la Vega, and faced the long hill that leads to the gate Del Cambron. Above them towered the city of Toledo—silent and dreamlike. Concepcion had ceased singing now, and the hard breathing of the horses alone broke the silence. The Tagus, emerging here from rocky fastness, flowed noiselessly away to the west—a gleaming ribbon laid across the breast of the night. In the summer it is no uncommon thing for travellers to take the road by night in Spain, and although many doubtless ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... escape and nab it, He couldn't get out of this flairing habit; He felt at his back the fiery breath Of the Kill Gorge pack that had vowed his death; He turned once more for the shelter good Of the Wan Tun Waste and the dark yew wood, The deep yew fastness of Cowall Itchen And the scuts and heads of hens in his kitchen. The hounds grew weak and The Mail was blowing; Rother said, "Alf, this is bad going!" Past Pemberton Billing, past Kenworthy, He shook them off, he was damp and earthy; By Molton Lambert and Platting Clynes—— ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, December 22, 1920 • Various
... flower-beds upon which the creeper-covered house looked forth, into many a leafy nook and shrub-bound fastness the phantom little form ran happily. Where the trees grew tall and close above an undergrowth of shepherd's-parsley and blue-bell had been a favourite resort of the child's. When the eyes of the young man followed him there, and saw him stop beside the smooth trunk of ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... question whether they were not still to be divided! Stefanello Colonna, the grandson of the old Stephen, and (by the death of his sire and brother) the youthful head of that powerful House, had already raised his standard against the Senator. Fortifying himself in the almost impregnable fastness of Palestrina, he had assembled around him all the retainers of his family, and his lawless soldiery now ravaged the ...
— Rienzi • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... began to open a way for more essential benefits to Ireland. On the other hand, those who had hitherto opposed them in vain redoubled their efforts, and became exceedingly clamorous. Then it was that Lord North found it necessary to come out of his fastness, and to interpose between the contending parties. In this character of mediator, he declared, that, if anything beyond the first six resolutions should be attempted, he would oppose the whole, but that, if we rested there, the original motions should ...
— The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. VI. (of 12) • Edmund Burke |
