"Hand-to-hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Melanchthon, with his love of Greek studies, held that the purpose of the Saviour in making such a descent was to make himself known to the great and noble men of antiquity—Plato, Socrates, and the rest; but Luther insisted that his purpose was to conquer Satan in a hand-to-hand struggle. ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... youth smote the chief squarely in the mouth with the back of his fist. He could have used his knife, but he chose to play awhile with this boaster. He delivered his blow so quickly that the Blackfoot, accustomed as he was to fierce hand-to-hand fighting, had no time to dodge or parry, and the next instant the Shawanoe was ten feet away, weapon still grasped, and grinning at the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... the way, that when my teacher was training my unreclaimed spirit, her struggle against the powers of darkness, with the stout arm of discipline and the light of the manual alphabet, was in two senses a hand-to-hand conflict. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... big circle tables and benches had been placed where the different families enjoyed the supper they had brought with them, and through it all a jubilant, giggling, staring crowd was pressing, eager for either love or a good hand-to-hand fight. ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... attempt at aid. His enemies, he knew, were at the time eager for a struggle in which, when they had isolated him from his Italian supporters, physical violence would decide the day: and he remarked that he did not wish to give them the pretext for the hand-to-hand combat which they desired.[679] One motive, indeed, of the invidious edict issued by the consul seems to have been to leave Gracchus to face the new position which his latest proposal had created, without any external ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... prostrate form, yelling to his men "Shoot the American." Then he was lost to Barney's sight in the hand-to-hand scrimmage that was taking place. The American tried to regain his feet, but the shock of the wound in his breast had apparently paralyzed him for the moment. A Blentz soldier was running toward the prisoner standing open-mouthed against the wall. The fellow's rifle ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... and fled towards the Pasig River, which they tried to cross. Their passage was at first cut off by gunboats, which fired volleys into the retreating mob and drove them higher up the bank, where there was some hand-to-hand fighting. Over a hundred managed to get into canoes with the hope of reaching the Lake of Bay; but, as they passed up the river, the civil guard, lying in ambush on the opposite shore, fired upon them, and in the consequent confusion every ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the trench, they may meet the enemy's soldiers running out of their dugouts for hand-to-hand battle. The traverses are so narrow that the length of the rifle makes it a clumsy weapon, and the adversaries in modern war, whose guns carry twenty miles, engage hand to hand, using knives, bombs and even their fists. With discarded rifles and bombs lying about a trench, it is difficult ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... the troubadour, of an idealized warfare and an idealized love, the age which had expressed one side of itself in his brother Henry, expressed a more manly side in Richard. He was first of all a warrior; not a general but a fighter. The wild enthusiasm of the hand-to-hand conflict, the matching of skill against skill and of strength against strength, was an intense pleasure to him, and his superiority in the tactics of the battle-field, in the planning and management of a fight, or even of a series of attacks or defences, a march or a retreat, ...
— The History of England From the Norman Conquest - to the Death of John (1066-1216) • George Burton Adams
... rapidly as possible in its wake. Presently they came to a small hill. Climbing to the top, they found they could command a good view of the advancing German columns, which they could see in the distance, and which were even now almost close enough to grapple hand-to-hand with the ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... middle of January came, Lady Arthur, who had never had an illness in her life, was measuring her strength in a hand-to-hand struggle with fever. The water was blamed, the drainage was blamed, various things were blamed. Whether it came in the water or out of the drains, gastric fever had arrived at Garscube Hall: the gardener took it, his daughter ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... Afghans were seen, in great numbers, in the broken ground ahead. The Ghoorkas and the little body of Rangers pushed on against them. Presently the enemy gathered, and made a rush down upon them; and a desperate hand-to-hand fight took place, for a few minutes. The men were scattered among the trees, and each ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... now resist Boscawen if the British should choose to run in past the demolished Island Battery and attack the French fleet, first from a distance, with the help of the Lighthouse and Royal Batteries, and then hand-to-hand. So the French admiral, des Gouttes, agreed to sink four of his largest vessels in the fairway. This, however, still left a gap; so two more were sunk. The passage was then mistakenly reported to be ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... madly about. For the instinct of the dumb animals seems to admonish them, they are caged with a dangerous companion—they and it alike unable to part company. Their masters know this, and knowing it, are all the more alarmed. A fight is before them; and there appears no chance of shunning it—a hand-to-hand fight, their short-bladed knives against the sharp teeth and claws ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... well tell, as it was by this time quite dark, and they could only distinguish her as a small, dark, shapeless blot on the surface of the water, with a tiny luminous ripple under her bow. They were just beginning to discuss their probabilities of success, should it come to a hand-to-hand fight with those three armed and unfatigued men, when a faint puff of warm air ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... good mind to try it," I said; "but in that case, remember, it will probably mean a hand-to-hand fight on the other side, and, unarmed and weak as we are, we shall be pretty sure to get ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... forward, she would not have moved. And then, even as she moved, they met! With yells and wild cries and a mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of grapples hand-to-hand. What happened, what was happening to any one, who it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were those who still fought single combats, twisting round one another's horses, those ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... judge by looks, captain," replied the youth quickly,—"especially the looks of a man who has just had a hand-to-hand tussle with a savage. But, to tell the plain truth, Captain Gascoyne, I would indeed rather have had to thank your worthy man John Bumpus than yourself for coming to my aid; for although I owe you no grudge, and do not count you an enemy, I had rather see ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... peered through the curtain, all a-shiver. I wanted to see if its fiery eyeballs were really watching at the door. I wanted to see them if they were there, and yet was terrified to peep out for fear they were. Even now it seems more than a mere figure of speech. Often I dream of having a hand-to-hand struggle with it, but I always conquer it in the end—in my dreams," she added, with a gay little laugh. "And that is ...
— Mildred's Inheritance - Just Her Way; Ann's Own Way • Annie Fellows Johnston
... it is true, equally with Persia, was liable to sudden inroads and incursions. But the difference was this—Persia was strongly protected in all ages by the wilderness on her main western frontier; if this were passed, and a hand-to-hand conflict succeeded, where light cavalry or fugitive archers could be of little value, the essential weakness of the Persian empire then betrayed itself. Her sovereign was assassinated, and peace was obtained from the condescension of the invader. But ...
— Theological Essays and Other Papers v1 • Thomas de Quincey
... the widow and Mrs. Moulton gave it no heed. One was impelled by hate, the other by love; and as they crashed into the growth behind me each was worth a woodsman or two in hand-to-hand fighting. With unnerving abruptness a man laughed boisterously directly ahead of me. Yells and questions filled the arches ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... agree with me in this, among them being United States District Attorney Sims, who has written much on the subject of white slavery. One reason for reaching this conclusion comes from the personal hand-to-hand and heart-to-heart touch with these girls themselves. The country girl is more open to the enticements of city life, being more truthful, perfectly innocent and unsuspecting of those whose business it is to seek their prey from girls ...
— Fighting the Traffic in Young Girls - War on the White Slave Trade • Various
... there were more than 200,000 Helots and 120,000 Perioeci, there were never more than 9,000 Spartiate heads of families. In a matter of life and death, then, it was necessary that a Spartiate be as good as ten Helots. As the form of battle was hand-to-hand, they needed agile and robust men. Sparta was like a camp without walls; its people was ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... taught at all—it has always been an accepted American conviction that poetry is a thing which may be thrown off at any time as a side issue by highly organized persons, most of whose time and strength and faculties are engaged in a vigorous and engrossing hand-to-hand bout with the wolf on the threshold—a most practical, philistine wolf, moreover, which never heard of rhyme or rhythm, and whose whole acquaintance with prosody is confined to a certain greedy familiarity with frayed masculine ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... and he had been the one to hold her feet as she was carried to it. At the time he had been congratulated upon the able and fearless manner in which he had met the emergency, but a bout with an intoxicated laundress, though it had its dangers, seemed a piffling affair as compared to a hand-to-hand combat with a grizzly. ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... ranged alongside the battered Saint George, threw her grappling hooks into the rigging, and her men were in a hand-to-hand struggle with the motley crew who battled for the veteran Fortunatus. Slash! Slash! Crack! The cutlasses cut and parried, the pistols spat, and the boarding-pikes thrust and struck. Cheering wildly the Frenchmen ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... Alexander had made up his mind that he would propose the expedition, and if he could obtain his uncle's permission would proceed upon it forthwith. Having come to this resolution, he fell fast asleep and dreamed away, till eight o'clock in the morning, that he was hunting elephants and having hand-to-hand conflicts with every variety of beast with which he had peopled Africa in his fancy. When he was called up in the morning, he found his determination of the night before rather strengthened than otherwise, and accordingly, after breakfast ...
— The Mission • Frederick Marryat
... tactics, the Romans had provided each of their vessels with a drawbridge. As soon as a Carthaginian ship came near enough to a Roman vessel, this gangway was allowed to fall upon the approaching galley; and the Roman soldiers, rushing along the bridge, were soon engaged in a hand-to-hand conflict with their enemies, in which species of encounter the former were unequalled. The result was a complete ...
— A General History for Colleges and High Schools • P. V. N. Myers
... heard the cries of their little ones and come to their rescue. They were chasing us, while we followed the birds. It was really a perilous encounter! Our strong bows finally gained the victory in a hand-to-hand struggle with the angry cranes; but after that we hardly ever hunted a crane's nest. Almost all birds make some resistance when their eggs or young are taken, but they will ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... the order, 'Charge!' And the whole seven hundred launched themselves on Santa Anna's breastworks like an avalanche. Then there was three minutes of smoke and fire and blood. Then a desperate hand-to-hand struggle. Our men had charged the breastwork, with their rifles in their hands and their bowie-knives between their teeth. When rifles and pistols had been discharged they flung them away, rushed on the foe, and cut their path through a wall of living ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... a good fellow, Beorn, and I could wish for no better to hold a shield over me in the day of battle or to stand back to back with me in a hand-to-hand fight." ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... his hand on Cuthbert's shoulder, whereupon the young man flung it aside. At the same moment Jennings closed with him, and a hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Maraquito, with straining eyes, watched the fight. With stiffened muscles the two reeled across the room. Cuthbert was almost too amazed to fight. That Jennings should accuse him and attack him in this way was incredible. But his blood was ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... hand-to-hand wrestling with storm-demons. The sun laughed from a sky as blue and deep as her own sky of Maine, and the girl laughed with him as she walked along, the powdery snow flying in a cloud from her snow-shoes at ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... dogs were bound by harness, and thus fettered were no match for the big, wild creatures. Andy's rifle was lashed upon the komatik. It was out of the question to free it in the moment before the wolves were upon them, and it was to be a hand-to-hand fight. ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... occupied Orenburg. The Russian general approached the hiding-place of the mock Czar cautiously. The thick fog was of service to him, and the two opponents only perceived one another when they were standing at firing distance. A furious hand-to-hand fight ensued. The best of the rebel troops were there. Pugasceff was always in the front and where the danger was greatest, but finally the Russians climbed the ice-bulwarks, captured his guns, and drove him out of the forest. This victory cost the life ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... the officer. "That town has been taken by the Germans five times and lost as many. A few nights ago they got over into the main street and there was terrific hand-to-hand fighting." ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the town (half the population) attended to prevent their recovery from bewilderment. After being minutely inspected by all the English, and claimed and reclaimed and counter-claimed as prizes by all the French in a hand-to-hand scuffle three quarters of a mile long, they were at last free to enter the streets, and to make off in their various ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... Review's" theory, it could not be better done. There is no country in Europe, I suppose, where the hereditary aristocracy is physically equal to that of England, or where the intellectual class has so good a physique. But set either the House of Lords or the "Saturday Review" contributors upon a hand-to-hand fight against an equal number of "navvies" or "coster-mongers," and the patricians would have about as much chance as a crew of Vassar girls in a boat-race with Yale or Harvard. Take the men of England alone, and it is hardly too much to say that physical force, instead of being the basis ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... that country in 1861, the published account of those travels attracted several parties of the best class of ubiquitous Englishmen, and I regret to hear that all those mighty hunters who accompanied me have since been killed in the desperate hand-to-hand encounters with wild elephants. Their life is a constant warfare with savage beasts, therefore it may be expected that the termination is a death upon their field of battle, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... financial history of the Revolution, although it loses none of its importance, loses much of its narrative-interest. No longer a hand-to-hand conflict between coin and paper,—no longer the melancholy spectacle of wise men doing unwise things, and honorable men doing things which, in any other form, they would have been the first to brand with dishonor,—it still continues a long, a wearisome, and often ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... the wild confusion, and for a time it seemed as if the struggle would become hopeless, as the brave fellows' strength began to yield to exhaustion, for the power to combine seemed gone, and the melee grew more a hand-to-hand fight, in which the savage Ghazis had the advantage with their keen swords, their adversaries wanting room to use their bayonets after a few ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... I ran away with a boy of twenty who worked upon a neighbour's farm. I wanted a home of my own, and Tom had some money saved up. We journeyed to Manitoba, and took out a homestead, where I spent the next twenty years of my life in a hand-to-hand struggle with Nature which seemed simply incredible to Sylvia when I told her of ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... few workers (scarcely one of whom, by the way, was in his own house) formed a little coterie apart, and grabbed up whatever morsels of wisdom and learning their master could afford to let drop in the midst of his hand-to-hand combat with the forces of anarchy and lethargy. But he had little to say to them. His appeals were addressed to the body of gaping, half- amused, half-bored loungers in the middle of the room, who listened pleasantly and forgot ...
— The Master of the Shell • Talbot Baines Reed
... think that the Mobiles could stand for days or even for hours against the artillery and musketry force of their opponents. They are individually brave, but like all raw troops they become excited under fire, shoot wildly, then rush forward in order to engage in a hand-to-hand encounter, and break before they reach the Prussian lines. In this respect the troops of the line are not much better. The Prussian tactics, indeed, have revolutionized the whole system of warfare, and the French, ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... by those high in command, that more individual prowess was manifested upon this battle-field than any during the war. There were more hand-to-hand encounters, more desperate fighting—men selling their lives as dearly as possible. As to their General, there is but one acclamation: General Rosecrans has endeared himself to the whole army; they love him ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... some bringing in their game, some empty-handed. The French officers saw that escape was impossible. Neither had they any thought, but for a passing moment, of fighting for their liberty. The Ouvertures were completely armed; and there never was an occasion when a man would lightly engage, hand-to-hand, with ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... January, 1915, between these forces and the Eleventh Corps of the Turkish army a fierce battle, lasting several days, opened. The struggle was of the utmost intensity, at times developing into a hand-to-hand combat between whole regiments. On January 14 the Fifty-second Turkish Regiment was put to the bayonet by the Russians. At Genikoi a regiment of Cossacks charged, during an engagement with a portion of the Thirty-second Turkish Division, ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... up the sides of the brig, and threw themselves on board. Part of the French crew having had no time to arm themselves, fled before them to the fore-part of the vessel, where, however, having rallied, they again rushed aft, and a furious hand-to-hand encounter took place. Fitz Barry had followed Denham on board, and the young lord, pistol in hand, was advancing by the side of his messmate. Led by Mr Evans, the English crew dashed forward till they reached ...
— The Heir of Kilfinnan - A Tale of the Shore and Ocean • W.H.G. Kingston
... first began to cut their hair in this manner, not having, as some say, been taught to do so by the Arabians, nor yet from any wish to imitate the Mysians, but because they were a warlike race, and met their foes in close combat, and studied above all to come to a hand-to-hand fight with their enemy, as Archilochus ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... The hand-to-hand fight was hardly five seconds in duration, and Buffalo Bill had driven his knife into the broad red breast, and then tore from his head the scalp and feather war-bonnet, and waving it over his head, shouted in ...
— Beadle's Boy's Library of Sport, Story and Adventure, Vol. I, No. 1. - Adventures of Buffalo Bill from Boyhood to Manhood • Prentiss Ingraham
... were cleared for action, and above the gunwales we could spy many a bare head peeping over at us. I marvelled that she had not long since given us a shot; but, like the Spaniard, she seemed bent on close quarters, and was saving up for a hand-to-hand fight. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... of superior forces, a greater range of artillery, and sheltered position in the hills, and they pressed with increased courage to the attack. The Germans did not await them quietly but threw themselves on them, so that in many cases it came to a hand-to-hand fight, and serious work was done with bayonets and the butt-ends of rifles. At length the French began to retreat, and the Germans with loud "Hurrahs!" flung themselves after them. But the pursuit was soon ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... disappeared from the window, the part of the Liberal crowd that was not engaged in hand-to-hand fights with their enemies—the Tories—made a rush to the front entrance of the Town Hall, where Sweater's carriage was waiting, and as soon as he had placed his plump rotundity inside, they took the horses out and amid frantic cheers harnessed themselves to it instead and dragged it through ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... ceased as suddenly as it had commenced. I judged that the enemy was storming the city, for the sounds we heard were the sounds of hand-to-hand combat. ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sat and stared at each other, Oscar with his years of unutterable labor behind him, his traditions that dealt with a constant hand-to-hand struggle with nature for his own existence; Jim with his long years of dreaming behind him and his awakening vision of social responsibility before him. Engineer and desert farmer, they were of widely ...
— Still Jim • Honore Willsie Morrow
... Lure of Contraband (JARROLDS) are laid in the Devonshire of some hundred years ago. It is, as its title suggests, a tale of smuggling, and it contains an account of a hand-to-hand fight between the hero and the villain which I advise all members of the National Sporting Club to read. They may be shocked by the tactics of the villain, but at the same time they will see what a bout of fisticuffs meant in those days. Mr. J. WEARE GIFFARD is a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, August 25th, 1920 • Various
... to protect their States from hostile invaders, or to acquire new territory, or to exact tribute from weaker nations. We do not read of military discipline, or of skill in strategy and tactics. A battle was lost or won by individual prowess; it was generally a hand-to-hand encounter, in which the strongest and bravest ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume III • John Lord
... free to admit that I had no considerable desire to meet the formidable and ferocious creature, of whose mighty prowess Dian had told me when I first met her. He it was who, armed with a puny knife, had met and killed a cave bear in a hand-to-hand struggle. It was Jubal who could cast his spear entirely through the armored carcass of the sadok at fifty paces. It was he who had crushed the skull of a charging dyryth with a single blow of his war club. No, I was not pining to meet the Ugly One-and it was quite ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... growled Leary at the end of a third inconclusive hand-to-hand struggle with only a few ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... impulse was to spring upon his enemy, to strike him in the face, and compel him to engage in a hand-to-hand struggle. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... giving way a step. Rutolo followed up furiously with a rush of rapid thrusts, nearly all in the low line, without uttering the usual cries. Sperelli, nothing daunted by this onslaught, and wishing to avoid an actual hand-to-hand fight, parried vigorously, and returned with such directness that he might, had he so wished, have run his adversary through the body each time. Rutolo's leg ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... should push on so fast, an' much need to husband our strength, for no one can tell how soon we may be forced to take part in a hand-to-hand scrimmage. We'll have a bite to eat, for I didn't overload my stomach this mornin', an' be all the better for ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... a respectable reputation for prowess among his associates, and Hutter heard this pledge with a satisfaction that was not concealed. Even the great personal strength of such an aid became of moment, in moving the ark, as well as in the species of hand-to-hand conflicts, that were not unfrequent in the woods; and no commander who was hard pressed could feel more joy at hearing of the arrival of reinforcements, than the borderer experienced at being told this important auxiliary ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... penned in a hot corner with a handful of grinning little Goorkhas, as ready and exultant as himself. He had no earthly business in that particular spot. But he had won his way there in a hand-to-hand combat, which had rendered that bit of ground the most desirable abiding-place on the face of the earth. And being there he ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... earth. Desperate and frequent were the struggles within gangways so narrow that nothing but daggers could be used, so obscure that the dim lanterns hardly lighted the death-stroke. They seemed the conflicts, not of men but of evil spirits. Nor were these hand-to-hand battles all. A shower of heads, limbs, mutilated trunks, the mangled remains of hundreds of human beings, often spouted from the earth as if from an invisible volcano. The mines were sprung with unexampled frequency ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... ash- spear in battle: that is God himself, who mightily de- stroyed the forces of the hostile armies and let thee with 2110 thy weapons hew out bloody paths broadly [through the foe], regain the booty, and fell the warriors. They were encamped by the way: nor could the withdrawing army prevail in hand-to-hand conflict, but God put it to flight, 2115 who with His own hands preserved thee with thy warriors in the fight, against the terror of superior numbers, and [so likewise] the sacred pledge [preserved thee] which thou rightfully holdest ...
— Genesis A - Translated from the Old English • Anonymous
... at the northwestern angle. Ayres leaped down alone into a crowd of Mexicans—he had done the same at Monterey—and fell covered with wounds. Our men rushed in on both sides, stabbing, firing, and felling the Mexicans with their muskets. From room to room and house to house a hand-to-hand encounter was kept up. Here a stalwart Mexican hurled down man after man as they advanced; there Buchanan and the Fourth levelled all before them. But the Mexicans never withstood the cold steel. One by one the defenders escaped ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... men, an old Indian hunter, burnt by the sun to living bronze, and scarred by the many hand-to-hand conflicts he had had with the red savages, leaped from his horse, his keen eyes fastened to the ground, read the signs which the outlaws had left as if they were ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... seconds every mother's son in the boat had reached the deck of the launch, and a regular hand-to-hand battle raged. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... this compilation out of respect to her opinion and also because the boys to whom I have read it said it was "great," The lesson in it is certainly fine. Men who are true men want to settle their own disputes by a hand-to-hand fight, but they will always help each other when a third party or the elements interfere. Humanity is greater than ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... watched and waited anxiously. The stormers came with the dawn, and were over the stockade before the Whites could rouse the sleepers. Then, however, after a desperate tussle—one of those sturdy hand-to-hand combats in which the Maori fighter shone—the assailants were cut down or driven headlong out. With heavy loss the astonished Waikatos recoiled in disgust, and their retreat did not cease till they reached their ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... plan maybe summed up as follows: We can easily defeat them in a hand-to-hand fight; but we do not want to slaughter them. If we can make them captives we shall have a strong lever to work with in treating with the main band. In the night time it is always a hazardous enterprise, and we cannot afford to risk the lives of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... or who the de'il do you think would sairve in them! It's a pitiful affair, altogether, as it has turned out; the honor being little more than the profit, I opine; and yet 'twill never do to let old Scotia lag astairn, in a hand-to-hand battle, Ye'll remember; we have a name for coming to the claymore; and so do yer best, every ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Ethandune, a lofty eminence in the vicinity of his camp. The Danes, fiery with barbaric valor, boldly advanced, and the two armies met in fierce affray, shouting their war-cries, discharging arrows and hurling javelins, and rushing like wolves of war to the closer and more deadly hand-to-hand combat of sword and axe, of the shock of the contending forces, the hopes and fears of victory and defeat, the deeds of desperate valor, the mighty achievements of noted chiefs, on that hard-fought field ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... Santiago, which the Chinese were on the point of taking by storm, when their attention was drawn elsewhere by the arrival of fresh troops led by a Spanish sub-lieutenant. Under the mistaken impression that these were the vanguard of a formidable corps, Sioco sounded the retreat. A bloody hand-to-hand combat followed, and with great difficulty the Chinese collected their dead and ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... ordinary means, for she has great cunning, and is less vulnerable than were her husband and son. Although Ea may work spells against her, she is able to thwart him by working counter spells. Only a hand-to-hand combat can decide the fray. Being strongly protected by her scaly hide, she must be wounded either on the under part of her body or through her mouth by a weapon which will pierce her liver, the seat of life. It will be noted in this connection that Merodach achieved success by causing ...
— Myths of Babylonia and Assyria • Donald A. Mackenzie
... can they do against these rocks? And, as we shall not fire from the windows of Granite House, the pirates will not think of causing irreparable damage by throwing shell against it. What is to be feared is, the necessity of meeting hand-to-hand, since the convicts have numbers on their side. We must therefore try to prevent them from landing, but without discovering ourselves. Therefore, do not economize the ammunition. Fire often, but with a sure ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne
... into a night course at the university, and proceeded to attack his ignorance with something of the fierce determination he had attacked the Hun the year before in France. He plunged through bogs of history, got hopelessly entangled in the barbed wire of mathematics, had hand-to-hand struggles with belligerent parts of speech, and more than once suffered the shell-shock of despair. But his watchword now, as then, was, "Up and at 'em!" And before long he had the satisfaction of seeing his enemy ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... brigade before Belle Grove. Thither also came the detached regiments of Molineux, and there Neafie joined them with the 3d brigade, after a strong stand at their breastworks, wherein Macauley fell severely wounded, and the 156th and 176th had hard fighting hand-to-hand to keep their colors, at the cost of the staves. Birge retired along the line of works to the open ground beyond Meadow Brook, where Shunk ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... Indian now rushed in and a hand-to-hand struggle followed. Dick fought valiantly, but was no match for the tall redskin, and a well-directed blow laid him senseless upon the prairie grass. "You have killed him!" screamed Nellie. She was about to kneel at Dick's side, when Yellow Elk ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... half-breeds were deaf to commands, and in vain their leader argued with blows. The shooting had been of a blind sort, and few shots did more than wound; but the natives were venting the pent-up hate of three years and would give no quarter. From musketry volleys the fight had become hand-to-hand butchery. ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... poetical robber's cavern, but within sight of a set of shanties, looking like any ordinary station of a low character. There a sudden volley of shot from an ambush poured upon them, happily without any serious wounds, and a hand-to-hand battle began, for the robbers having thus taken the initiative, it was hardly needful to display the search warrant with which the party had come armed. And to the amazement of all, the gang was headed by a man who seemed ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... laid his finger upon a paragraph and handed me the paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died in his tracks, preferring death to capture. A sly and secretive creature, he had ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... That kind of news has wings on any world. I think we could take her for you, but we might do some damage. The size of a scout crew doesn't lend itself to hand-to-hand brawls." ...
— A Transmutation of Muddles • Horace Brown Fyfe
... of this great world. Janet keeps all evil from her. We cannot conceive of such innocence in any one. The child has eaten the simplest things all her life; milk and gruel and beef-whey; 'tis no great wonder she is so pink and strong; Janet says in hand-to-hand battle in their convent chamber, the child hath thrown her oft in fair wit of strength;—such rough sport was not indulged in openly and Janet taught her thrusts and flings to broaden her chest and strengthen hip and back; she is stout and strong, ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... Pike to himself. "Aye, you are indeed worthless, compared with some of the English villains I have hunted down and fought for life or death. I could die like a man if I only had to die in a fair hand-to-hand fight with such a man as Birmingham Bill, the very first murderer I ever coped with; but I'll show them how ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... ensued a fierce hand-to-hand struggle. The spectators could hardly contain their excitement as they saw their party, fighting doggedly, forced back step by step to the edge of the water. Some, slipping in the ooze of the retreating tide, fell and were carried down by the current. These soon swam ashore—discreetly ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the addition of two brigades of infantry—Alabama and Georgia troops. Snapping at them was Union cavalry in full force. Not snapping at their heels, for it was fang to fang; the Confederates only gave ground fighting. Day darkened on the field and they were in hand-to-hand assault. A man marked musket or carbine flash to sight ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton
... of the conflict had come. It was no longer to be a duel at a distance—no more a contest between rifle-bullets and barbed arrows; but the close, desperate, hand-to-hand contest of pistol, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... fourteenth century. The effect was to make infantry an effective force, and to equalize combatants, since a peasant could handle a gun as well as a knight. Another consequence has been to mitigate the brutalizing influence of war on the soldiery, by making it less a hand-to-hand encounter, an encounter with swords and spears, attended with bloodshed, and kindling personal animosity; and by rendering it possible to hold in custody large numbers of captives, whose lives, therefore, can ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... as their ammunition was running low. These experienced and brave, though rascally Indians, soon surmised the cause of this sudden change of affairs. Rallying their forces, they turned upon their assailants in right good earnest and a desperate hand-to-hand engagement ensued. The white men now had an opportunity to use their small arms, which told with such terrible effect upon their foes that they were soon driven back again. They, however, rallied once more and charged so manfully that the trappers were forced ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... enemy—and, drawing his own knife, made a sort of running bound, coming upon the Indian with a panther-like spring, that nearly drove him backward off his feet. There was a clashing of knives, the scintillation of steel against steel, the deadly embrace, and hand-to-hand struggle; and, as the Rifleman recoiled clear of his fallen adversary, he reached out to Edith ...
— The Riflemen of the Miami • Edward S. Ellis
... one single means, it is the FIGHT. However diversified this may be in form, however widely it may differ from a rough vent of hatred and animosity in a hand-to-hand encounter, whatever number of things may introduce themselves which are not actual fighting, still it is always implied in the conception of War that all the effects manifested have their ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... who, seeing Gillespic coming in his direction, advanced to meet him, killing, wounding, or scattering any of the Macdonalds that came in his way. He made a signal to Gillespic to advance and meet him hand-to-hand, but, finding him hesitating, Kenneth, who far exceeded him in strength while he equalled him in courage, would brook no tedious debate but pressed on with fearful eagerness, at one blow cut off Gillespic's ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie
... two men discharged their pieces! Some shots flashed out in front of them but in the darkness none were hit, and in a moment they were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight with ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... in this plight he was surprised by a grizzly bear. Cut off from any other retreat, he was forced to take to the water, in which he stood to the depth of his armpits, facing the brute upon the bank and preparing to defend himself in a hand-to-hand struggle; but, in a manner wholly out of keeping with his family traditions, the grizzly was content to walk away without attacking. Proceeding about nightfall, the young officer encountered a strange ...
— Lewis and Clark - Meriwether Lewis and William Clark • William R. Lighton
... to prevent the Americans turning the British right, which, owing to their local knowledge, they had partially succeeded in doing. Coming up the canal bank, the 2nd Brigade in their turn took the enemy in flank, and a hand-to-hand conflict took place along the whole line, the British fighting with the energy of despair in the darkness and depths of the wood, and trusting to the bayonet alone. At last, about 3 a.m. on the 24th, the enemy retired, ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... remarkable in the appearance of this young man. Nearly six feet high, he has an erect, military carriage, a frank, manly face, and looks every inch a soldier,—such a soldier as would stand up all day in a square hand-to-hand fight with an open enemy; but the keenest eye would detect in him no indication of the crafty genius which delights to follow the windings of wickedness when burrowing in the dark. But if not a Fouche or a Vidocq, he is certainly an able man; for, in a section where able men are ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... dashed on the nearest group, followed by all his men, who formed a compact mass; round which the three corps of royal troops closed. Then there was everywhere a hand-to-hand battle there was no time to load and fire; swords flashed and fell, bayonets stabbed, the royals and the Camisards took each other by the throat and hair. For an hour this demoniac fight lasted, during which Cavalier lost five hundred ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... front. Being largely composed of siege artillery as well as cavalry, a considerable portion of Selivanoff's army was unsuited for mountain warfare. Cavalry were converted into infantry, but could not be supplied with the necessary equipment; they had no bayonets, and most of the fighting was hand-to-hand. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 12) - Neuve Chapelle, Battle of Ypres, Przemysl, Mazurian Lakes • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... "At the thought of a hand-to-hand battle with a vortex my brain froze solid. Fear—the sheer, stark, natural human fear of death, that robs a man of the fine edge of control and brings on the very death that he is trying so hard to avoid. ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... forward to the walls, echoed by his followers, and accompanied as it was by loud peals of thunder, produced something like a panic among the ranks of the Spanish garrison. So sudden was the attack, and so completely unexpected, that it could scarcely fail of success; and indeed, after a short hand-to-hand combat, one portion of the garrison fled, while the other surrendered without conditions ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... a humbler collateral descent in the same verbal family. The ballista, or fifty-man-power bow, constituted the heavy, and the individual article the light, artillery of twenty centuries ago. Slings and javelins, being for hand-to-hand fighting (David was near enough to hold an easy conversation with Goliath before bringing him down), can hardly be brought within the designation. The twang of either heavy or light was but a thin contribution to the orchestra of battle compared to "the diapason of the cannonade." ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Vol. XV., No. 85. January, 1875. • Various
... rifles became silent. There seemed, indeed, no reason to keep them speaking, as the road to the Oasis was clear. When the trees back of us should be reached more shots would ring out, closer, always getting closer; eventually would come the hand-to-hand fight, and then—forgetfulness. Yet I swore with a burning rage in my heart that whoever of those fiends were left to gloat over their victory would remember until their dying day the price I ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... French attempted to check their advance. Showers of grape swept their ranks; volleys of musketry, at a distance of but a few yards, withered up their front lines and, for a time, a hand-to-hand fight with bayonets raged. In the terrible roar of artillery and musketry, words of command were unheard; but the men mechanically filled up the gaps in their ranks, and the one thought of all was to press forward until, at length, the French yielded and fell ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... pioneer the forest was no friendly resource for posterity, no object of careful economy. He must wage a hand-to-hand war upon it, cutting and burning a little space to let in the light upon a dozen acres of hard-won soil, and year after year expanding the clearing into new woodlands against the stubborn resistance of primeval trunks and matted roots. He made war against the rank fertility ...
— The Frontier in American History • Frederick Jackson Turner
... Marne, of the irresistible onslaught of men whose homes had been invaded, whose children had been murdered, whose women had been enslaved, of a ruthless fighting, swift and deadly, and lastly of a bayonet charge by his own division, running down upon superior numbers, engaging them in hand-to-hand conflict, malignant and fatal, routing them over a field of blood ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... desperation by the sight of his lists of arrears. And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on Sunday the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to speak to a people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand friend! I never tired on Sunday, and was in condition to leave the sermon at home, if I chose, and preach it extempore, as all men should do always. Indeed, I wonder, when I think that a sensible people, like ours,—really more attached to their clergy ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... have been a close encounter with some of the pursuers, and a hand-to-hand fight, in which Jonathan and his two brothers fell, and the rest of the bodyguard were slain or scattered. The prophecy of that mantle-swathed shape last night was in part fulfilled—'To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be with me.' They ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren |
