"Spiked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pink clover mingled with the odor of grasses and the delicate perfume of sweetbrier. Wood sorrel nestled in the grassy corners near the crude rail fences, daisies and spiked toad-flax grew lavishly among the weeds of the roadside. In the meadows tall milkweed swayed its clusters of pink and lavender, marsh-marigolds dotted the grass with discs of pure gold, and Queen Anne's lace lifted its parasols of exquisite loveliness. ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... Thaises, now looking more shabby, to whom they predict the speedy restoration of Nabobs and Russians, and golden joys. Yonder Punch is achieving a victory over the Evil One, who wears the Prussian spiked helmet, and whose face has been recently beautified into a resemblance to Bismarck. Punch draws to his show a laughing audience of Moblots and recruits to the new companies of the National Guard. Members of the once formidable police, now threadbare and hunger-pinched, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... were sent us by a lady now residing in Charleston. The Battery, the famous promenade of the Charlestonians, since armed with twenty-four-pounders facing Fort Sumter; the interior of Fort Moultrie, with the guns spiked by Major Anderson; and a more extensive view of the same interior, with the flag of the seven stars, (corresponding to the seven deadly sins,)—the free end of it tied to a gun-carriage, as if to prevent the winds of the angry heaven from rending ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... to see that the time he had fixed with Charteris for his withdrawal was approaching. His men were recalled from the front two or three at a time, the remainder keeping up a brisk fire to delude the enemy and divert their minds, and when all were withdrawn, the two cannon were spiked, and a start made across the rocky ground towards the right. Before they had gone far, the scout left at the bivouac came riding in hot haste to say that he had seen a great cloud of dust advancing from the direction of Adamkot, ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... there were to be a conflict of purpose he could have wished that it be conducted in friendly fashion. But when did Hell-Fire Packard ever clasp hands with the man he opposed in anything, when did he ever see a business rival without cloven hoof, horns, and spiked tail? ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... trunks of trees ranging from a foot to two feet in diameter. These are "rossed," that is, stripped of their bark and laid across the road, where they are held in place by pegs driven into the ground, and by strips spiked upon the tops of the logs. If possible they are laid in swampy places to keep the surface damp and slippery. At turns in the road, pulleys are hung, thru which the hauling cables pass. The skidway runs to the railway siding or water's edge. Over these skidways the logs are hauled ...
— Handwork in Wood • William Noyes
... one end with a long iron spike, and is used to check the speed of the sledge in descending hills, and to stop the dogs when they leave the road, as they frequently do in pursuit of reindeer and foxes. The spiked end is then thrust down in front of one of the knees or uprights of the runners, and drags in that position through the snow, the upper end being firmly held by the driver. It is a powerful lever, and when skilfully used brakes up a sledge very ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... consumed with fever, outwardly as cheery as human being might be, stood watching the laying of the rails over that last stretch. The men who could be prevented from dropping in their tracks must work until the last rail had been spiked into place. Away up in Lineville Harry Hazelton was personally superintending the laying of ...
— The Young Engineers in Colorado • H. Irving Hancock
... British vessels. But the men-of-war fired back with better aim, and Howe's light infantry, coming up at a run from behind, dashed in among the astonished gunners with the bayonet, cleared them all out, and spiked every gun. Howe left three companies there to hold the battery against Bougainville later in the day, and returned with the other seven to Wolfe. It was now six o'clock. The third brigade had landed, the whole of the ground at the top was clear; and Wolfe set off with ...
— The Winning of Canada: A Chronicle of Wolf • William Wood
... our surprise some one appeared to be looking down from the tower, and a few minutes later the Indian was seen above the mangroves climbing up to him. There must have been strips spiked crosswise to one of the uprights, ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... Lowenhausen scoured all the shores of the Baltic, and compelled Colonel Graham, a Scotch soldier in the Imperial service, to surrender the Hanse town of Wismar. Graham marched out with his garrison, 3000 strong, with the honours of war en route for Silesia, but having, contrary to terms, spiked the cannon, plundered the shipping, and slain a Swedish lieutenant, Lowenhausen pursued him, and in the battle which ensued 500 of Graham's men were slain and the colonel himself with 2000 ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... For both the onlooking hosts on either hand Stood in broad daylight, and the sky was pure, And the sun sparkled on the Oxus stream. But in the gloom they fought, with bloodshot eyes And laboring breath; first Rustum struck the shield Which Sohrab held stiff out; the steel-spiked spear Rent the tough plates, but failed to reach the skin, And Rustum plucked it back with angry groan. Then Sohrab with his sword smote Rustum's helm, Nor clove its steel quite through; but all the crest He shore away, and that proud horsehair plume, Never till now denied, sank ...
— Composition-Rhetoric • Stratton D. Brooks
... on the crown, which was raggedly bald, he had stiff, black hair, standing jaggedly all over it, and growing down hill almost to his broad, blunt nose. It was so like Smith's work, so much more like the top of a strongly spiked wall than a head of hair, that the best of players at leap-frog might have declined him, as the most dangerous man in the world ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... becomes the celebrated bucking mule, and a prize is offered to anyone who will keep on his back for one minute. Audiences go into fits of laughter at his antics. But the audiences do not know that Barney was trained with a spiked saddle, and that for months life was one ...
— A Dominie in Doubt • A. S. Neill
... process of composition. At night he contrived to wake for his strange courtship; and he had a peculiar ceremony when he got up in the dark and lit his candle. From a steep and wild hillside, not far form the house, he had cut from time to time five large boughs of spiked and prickly gorse. He had brought them into the house, one by one, and had hidden them in the big box that stood beside his bed. Often he woke up weeping and murmuring to himself the words of one of his songs, and then when he had lit the candle, he would draw out the gorse-boughs, and place ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... curving home, in the general form of the letter "U." The rails were very light. Charles T. Hughes, who went with Edison in 1879, and was in charge of much of the work, states that they were "second" street-car rails, insulated with tar canvas paper and things of that sort—"asphalt." They were spiked down on ordinary sleepers laid upon the natural grade, and the gauge was about three feet six inches. At one point the grade dropped some sixty feet in a distance of three hundred, and the curves were of recklessly short radius. The dynamos supplying current ...
— Edison, His Life and Inventions • Frank Lewis Dyer and Thomas Commerford Martin
... carpenters hammering professionally upon a hasty grandstand of timber. Most of the carpenters would have been handier with rivet guns or welding torches, but it would have been indiscreet to comment. As fast as a final timber was spiked in place, somebody hastily wound it with very tawdry bunting. Men were stringing wires to the grandstand, and other men were setting up television and movie cameras. Two Security men grimly stood by each camera amid a ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... for material and fuel which there are neither engines nor wagons to bring. Meanwhile, all over Russia, spades are worn out, men are plowing with burnt staves instead of with plowshares, scratching the surface of the ground, and instead of harrowing with a steel-spiked harrow of some weight, are brushing the ground with light constructions of wooden spikes bound ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... We come to a table-land stretching lengthily forward, covered with the greenish yellow of pastures, and alive with cattle browsing on a sparse turf. The way winds on among the herds; we form in close marching order, with the guide in front and spiked staffs ready for use; for these neighbors are a trifle wild and not used to strangers. They feed on unconcernedly, jangling their bells, but one or two of the bulls cast inquiring glances upon us, and we prudently retire ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... wide-mouthed bottle, and we shall soon see whether we have captured any specimens. These exquisite little creatures attach themselves to the leaves and stems of water-plants; they are most readily seen on the finely cut leaves of the water-buttercup or spiked milfoil. The way to proceed is to place a tuft of this plant in the bottle and to hold it up to the light, and we shall soon see whether any Melicertae ...
— Country Walks of a Naturalist with His Children • W. Houghton
... out by the stern, lonely old man, Major Hardwicke departed, his conversational guns spiked with the deft compliments, as the mighty clatter of the returning General filled the courtyard of ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... old thoroughfare, crowded with so many memories of hideous tragedy; by the side of the gloomy prison; past the debtors' door with its forbidding spiked wicket; past the gallows gate with its festoons of fetters; we walked in silence until we reached the ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... the very entrance, the light which streamed in striking him in such a way that all was in shadow excepting his hat, shoulders, and face. The slouched head-gear was thrown back, showing a low forehead, while the hair that lay in matted and spiked masses on and around his crown was of a grizzled brown color—that which dangled from beneath his hat when he met the young scouts being of as fiery a red as were ...
— The Wilderness Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... retiring from hospitable Castle Skrae, having also slit largely the tyres of the bicycles. Mr. Macrae's new wireless machine has been rendered useless by my unfortunate associate, and, as I have rather spiked all the wheeled conveyances (I could not manage to scuttle the yacht), you will be put to some inconvenience to re-establish communications. By that time my trail will be lost. I enclose a banknote for 10l., which pray, if you would oblige me, distribute among ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... towards the highest point, and before long saw the house, surrounded by a high spiked railing, standing just beyond the brow of the hill. His heart beat fast; he knew there could be no mistake, as the road and the house answered exactly to the description just given him by his driver. No, there he was, for good or evil. And, before he had clearly realised ...
— Captain Mansana and Mother's Hands • Bjoernstjerne Bjoernson
... Dave and Jim came to work, still feeling shaky. Jim went below, crawled along the drive, lit his candle, and stuck it in the spiked iron socket and the spike in the wall of the drive, quite close to the hole, without noticing either the hole or the increased freshness in the air. He started picking away at the 'face' and scraping the clay back from under his feet, and didn't hear Kullers come to work. Kullers came ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... the ground where an imprint of a miner's boot was plainly seen. Only the miners at Oak Creek wore such spiked heels, the ranchers and other citizens being satisfied with heavy leather soles. The foot-print pointed towards the ...
— Polly and Eleanor • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... where, as the sequel proved, they began a secret and effective war upon the pending constitutional amendment. We all knew we had a formidable foe to fight at the ballot-box. Our own hands were tied and our own guns spiked, while our foe was armed to the teeth with ballots, backed by money and controlled by vice, bigotry and tyranny. But the leading men of the State had long been known to favor the amendment; the respectable press had ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various
... diamond-backed species." At this juncture the monster again moved. "As it is heading in our direction," resumed Bearwarden, "I vote we strike for a free pass," and, taking a run, he sprang with his spiked boots upon the turtle's shell and clambered upon the flat top, which was about six feet from the ground. He was quickly followed by Ayrault, who was not much ahead of Cortlandt, for, notwithstanding his fifty ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... kicking our toes agin Carrick Gaol, till the police comed and spiked us? The boys is now in gaol, and there they're like to be, for anything we'll do ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... spears and pitchforks, with heavy cudgelling or gnawing of their flesh. In the anguish of death, and the crush by the way, mothers trod down their infants and fathers their daughters; and when the damned reached the spiked threshold of hell itself, a hideous and poisoned vapor rose up to meet them, choking them, and yet giving them renewed strength to feel fresh torments with increased keenness of every sense. Then the devil's shrieks of anguish, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... as that?" But the movie had begun again, unfolding scenes of soldiers in spiked helmets marching into Belgian cities full of little milk carts drawn by dogs and old women in peasant costume. There were hisses and catcalls when a German flag was seen, and as the troops were pictured advancing, bayonetting the civilians in wide ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... the weather was much warmer, and the soil in the two gardens began to dry out. The man came with the spiked, or tooth, harrow, and his horses dragged this over the ground several times. Soon the soil was quite smooth, the big lumps or clods of earth being broken up ...
— Daddy Takes Us to the Garden - The Daddy Series for Little Folks • Howard R. Garis
... bonita, the manini striped black and white, and many others. There was an abundance of opilu or limpets, also the pipi, a small oyster found among the coral; the ula, as large as a clawless lobster, but more beautiful and variegated; and turtles which were cheap and plentiful. Then there were purple-spiked sea urchins, black-spiked sea eggs or wana, and ina or eggs without spikes, and many other curiosities of the bright Pacific. It was odd to see the pearly teeth of a native meeting in some bright-coloured fish, while the tail hung out of his mouth, for they eat fish raw, and some of them were ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... Belminster, when Cyril betrays unconscious ambition at Everard's jesting prophecy that he would preach as bishop in the cathedral. Asceticism is defended by Cyril and condemned by Everard. Cyril speaks of the discipline of sorrow, and presses a spiked cross under his clothes into his side. Everard exalts the discipline of joy. The friends have been privately educated together, and were together at Cambridge. Henry admires Cyril's character and mental brilliance; Cyril ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume V. • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... tall mesquite thickets, over rolling hills where clumps of bear-grass grew among spiked yuccas and needle-pointed tufts of Spanish bayonet, and climbed the pass beyond. From its summit he looked down upon the wide reaches of the Sulphur Springs valley, level as a floor, as tawny as ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... spiked and dragged to a part of the fort directly over the stream, into which they were tumbled, and from whence it would give the Arabs no small amount of trouble to fish them out again. The place was next set on fire in every direction, when the party, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... referred the request to Keogh, and washed its hands of intermeddling in a country not tributary to its territory. The last hope of interference was gone, and the rigors of quarantine closed in like a siege with every gun of the enemy spiked. Let it be a week or a month before the quarantine was lifted, the citizens of Montana had so willed it, and their wish was law. Evening fell, and the men drew round the fires. The guards buttoned their coats as they rode away, and the tired ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... headlong into the grisly. Through the matted undergrowth of years, over the high-spiked barriers of the deer-park, the Highflyer had seen not only the familiar Grey Lady in robes of rustling silk (through which you could discern the gravel and weeds on the path), but little green demons with chalk-white heads and ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... the islands. But the buccaneers or pirates who had made their retreat here offered heavy opposition; in 1680 there was an attack by the Spaniards, and in July 1703 the French and Spaniards made a descent on New Providence, blew up the fort, spiked the guns, burnt the church and carried off the governor, with the principal inhabitants, to Havana. In October the Spaniards made a second descent and completed the work of destruction. It is said that when the last of the governors appointed by the lords proprietors, ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 2 - "Baconthorpe" to "Bankruptcy" • Various
... success on their numbers, the Persians did not wholly despise the use of contrivance and stratagem. At Arbela, Darius Codomannus had spiked balls strewn over the ground where he expected the Greek cavalry to make its attacks. [PLATE XXX., Fig. 5]; and, at Sardis, Cyrus obtained his victory over the Lydian horse by frightening them with the grotesque and unfamiliar camel. Other instances will readily occur to ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 5. (of 7): Persia • George Rawlinson
... the best and most faithful creatures that ever was born,' said Mr. Geddes, as the superintendent shut the door of the cottage. 'Nature made him with a heart that would not have suffered him to harm a fly; but thou seest, friend Latimer, that as men arm their bull-dogs with spiked collars, and their game-cocks with steel spurs, to aid them in fight, so they corrupt, by education, the best and mildest natures, until fortitude and spirit become stubbornness and ferocity. Believe me, friend Latimer, I would as soon expose my faithful household ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... advancing columns. Las Torres, unsuspicious of stratagem, was now convinced that his position was one of extreme danger, while confusion reigned in the camp. The tents were hastily struck, the guns spiked, and in a few minutes the Spanish army started along the Valencia road in a retreat which might almost ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... ceremony of removing the burs from our clothing, for every plant in this country seems to have a bur or a tick-seed, and we found a new one in every camp. Sometimes they were arrows or needles an inch long, sometimes triangles with sharp corners, sometimes little spiked balls, sometimes long bags with prongs. There was no end to their number and variety, and they grew to be one of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 90, June, 1875 • Various
... landing-place in this world of marshes. I took the chief of the Nuehrs' portrait, as he sat in my cabin on the divan; of course he was delighted. He exhibited his wife's arms and back covered with jagged scars, in reply to my question as to the use of the spiked iron bracelet. Charming people are these poor blacks! as they are termed by English sympathisers; he was quite proud of having clawed his wife like a wild beast. In sober earnest, my monkey "Wallady" looks like a civilized being compared ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... together; I heard that they were adulterers, procurers, publicans, sycophants, informers, and all the filth that pollutes the stream of life. Separate from them came the rich and usurers, pale, pot-bellied, and gouty, each with a hundredweight of spiked collar upon him. There we stood looking at the proceedings and listening to the pleas they put in; their accusers were orators of a ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to prose. Volume I (of X) - Greece • Various
... unheard-of tortures which human depravity could invent, for the amusement of the captors. Some were tied to a windlass and pelted into insensibility, or perhaps more charitable death. Others were lashed with ropes and cast, almost dead, into the sea; or, spiked hand and foot to the deck, were exposed mercilessly to the hot rays of the sun until the features were distorted into unrecognizability; some were placed before a gun and thus decapitated, while others were tied back to back and thrown into the waters. In fact, so low were these villainous ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann
... of rails used by the Americans consisted of a flat bar half-an-inch thick spiked down to longitudinal timbers. In the process of running the train, the iron was curved, the spikes loosened, and the ends of the bars turned up, and were known by the name of snakes' heads. Occasionally they pierced the bottoms of the ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... the base of the declivity. Instead of following the road to the village, the horses turned abruptly into a bridle-path branching off to the left, and in the course of a few minutes passed through an iron-spiked gateway in a high brick wall surrounding the large red structure which had puzzled Lynde on first discovering the town. The double gates stood wide open and were untended; they went to, however, with a clang, and the massive bolts were shot as soon as the party had entered. In ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... adroit remonstrance spiked the wrath, as it were, of the stout and angry woman he had jammed in the gate, he permitted the resumption of the trickle of ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... the next time I called, a fat boy with his spiked mustache on glazed cheeks, and a pocketful of rattling gold junk, a racing car on the curb. He had had Ena out for a little spin, and they were discussing how fast they had gone. Not better than sixty-eight, ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... their innings that day, too. It was a great sight to see Andy Lowes leap nimbly up the ladder and poke in window after window with his spiked ax, stepping backward now and then into nozzleman Jones's face in order to view the effect. The axmen got glory enough to last for years, and it was an axman who put out the last scrap of fire. Frank ...
— Homeburg Memories • George Helgesen Fitch
... the party, in accordance with instructions from Major Anderson, set fire to the gun-carriages bearing on Fort Sumter, and destroyed all the ammunition and military material that could not be brought away. The guns had been spiked the night before, and the flag-staff was cut down, either at that time or in ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... building the Michigan Central Railroad which had just then begun to be built. They laid down the ties first (sometimes a mudsill under them) and then put down four by eight wooden rails with a strips of band iron half an inch thick spiked on top. I scored the timber and Henry used the broad axe after me. It was pretty hard work and the hours as long as we could see, our wages being $13 per month, ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... race, the city at that time was well-fortified on all sides, according to the science (of fortification), with pennons, and arches, and combatants, and walls and turrets, and engines, and miners, and streets barricaded with spiked wood-works and towers and edifices with gate-ways well-filled with provisions, and engines for hurling burning brands and fires, and vessels, of deer-skins (for carrying water), and trumpets, tabors, and drums, ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... ought to take the stage in turn—he himself was quite content to retire on his early laurels. So all hands took pains to contradict Cranze and to cower with a fine show of dramatic fright before his spiked revolver. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... as mice, and shoved off, leaving the fort to take care of itself. We were much amused by seeing the Dutchmen outside firing away into it as hard as ever. When they discovered their mistake, I don't know; but whenever they did, they must have found all the guns spiked, and the British ensign flying triumphantly over their heads, to show them who had ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... moneylender, and cheated most poor people in the same patient and pacific style. Let it be granted—let us admit, for the sake of argument, that he did all this. If that is so, I will tell you what he didn't do. He didn't storm a spiked wall against a man with a loaded gun. He didn't write on the wall with his own hand, to say he had done it. He didn't stop to state that his justification was self-defence. He didn't explain that he had no quarrel with the poor warder. He didn't name the house of the rich man to which ...
— The Wisdom of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... dark opening in the wall strode Lobkyn Lollo the Dwarf, his great, spiked club on brawny shoulder. Jocelyn viewed the monstrous little man in awed wonder; but beholding his mighty girth and determined aspect, wonder ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... already disbanded, and the two returned to Plattsburg, only to receive their honourable discharge, to be presented each with the medal of war, with an extra clasp on Rolf's for that dauntless dash that spiked the British guns. ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... the British charge on an angle of the German breastworks under cover of artillery and machine-gun fire. This illustrates the early trench warfare before the development of the elaborate concrete-protected structures the Germans later devised. They can be seen wearing the famous spiked helmets which were later ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... umpire and had to be laid off. Mullaney got spiked while sliding and was out of the game. Ashwell sprained his ankle and Hirsch broke a finger. Radbourne, my great pitcher, hurt his arm on a cold day and he could not get up his old speed. Stringer, who had batted three hundred and seventy-one and ...
— The Redheaded Outfield and Other Baseball Stories • Zane Grey
... of white marble—spotless and relentless—that barred her into the grave, seemed to my still half-unstable brain symbolical of that last year of virgin purity of life that had broken her strength to bear. That spiked iron linked round the helpless dust seemed like the chains of repression that had tortured and crushed the soft ardent nature. That arrogant cross, stretching its arms threateningly above the lonely tomb, seemed the cross upon which we had crucified—she ...
— To-morrow? • Victoria Cross
... used to fish and hunt, crossing the Rapids on foot and supporting their steps with tall wooden poles spiked with iron. The necessity, on one occasion, of saving two marooned comrades on the island, taught them this means of crossing, which they had ...
— The Greatest Highway in the World • Anonymous
... saddle. The unmistakable air of the gamin was apparent beneath the superficies of the gentleman. Conspicuous on his costume, and wound like an order of merit upon his breast, glittered a chain, the chain,—each tiny brick-like gem spiked with a hundred sparks, and building a fabric of sturdy probabilities with the celerity of the genii in constructing Aladdin's palace. There, a cable to haul up the treasure, was the chain;—where was the diamond? I need not tell you how I followed this young friend, with what assiduity I kept him ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... rested their horses on the divide. To the west lay Malapi and the plains. Eastward were the heaven-pricking peaks. A long, bright line zig-zagged across the desert and reflected the sun rays. It was the bed of the new road already spiked ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... unladen; and one of them was immediately armed and sent back to join the main squadron as the flagship. Their marine thus augmented, they sailed first into the Bay of Venerada, the fort guarding the entrance to which was taken, the guns spiked, and the garrison, numbering two hundred and fifty men, put to the sword. The pirates next sailed into the Lake of Maracaibo, landed their forces, and proceeded at once to attack the castle that guarded the entrance to the harbor. The governor had made ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 2, August, 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... being uttered by way of prologue, he then delivered himself of the message with which he had been charged, and that was a challenge from the Kandyan general to come out and fight without aid from his artillery. The dismal report was just in time; darkness was then coming on. The English officer spiked his guns; and, with his garrison, fled by night from a fort in which else he would have perished by starvation or by storm, had Kandyan forces been equal to such an effort. This corporal was, strictly speaking, the only man who escaped, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 337, November, 1843 • Various
... hand; and with his advice, particularly in regard to the cheeks for the trunnions, we succeeded during the afternoon in getting up a rough imitation of the old-fashioned gun-carriage in use on our wooden war-vessels. The captain made the wheels and axles. The body was then spiked to them, and the howitzer lifted up and set on the carriage. By way of testing it, we then charged the piece with half a pint of powder, and fired it. The sharp, brassy report was reverberated from the dark mountains on the starboard side in a wonderfully ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the jagged frowning Balkan Mountains, the proceeded southwards and formed colonies among the Thraco-Illyrians, the Roumanians, and the Greeks, to the days of Michael the Brave who drove the Turks to the spiked gates of Adrianople and freed half the peninsula for a span of years; from the days when gallant King Mirtsched went down to glorious defeat amongst the Osmanli yataghans to the final day when the Russian Slav ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... reins to a man. King copied him, and part-way sliding, part stumbling down they found their way along the dry bed of a water-course between two spurs of a hillside, until they stood at last in the midst of a cluster of a dozen sentries, close to a tamarisk to which a man's body hung spiked. That the man had been spiked to it alive was suggested ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... time the Rose of Spring blushed out But Winter angrily withdrew it back Into his rough new-bursten husk, and shut The stern husk-leaves, and hid it many years. — Once Famine tricked himself with ears of corn, And Hate strung flowers on his spiked belt, And glum Revenge in silver lilies pranked him, And Lust put violets on his shameless front, And all minced forth o' the street like holiday folk That sally off afield on Summer morns. — Once ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... October, 1768, every Frenchman in Louisiana Province was marching toward New Orleans. That same night the guns at the Tehoupitoulas Gate—the upper river corner—were spiked; while yet farther away, along a narrow road bordering the great stream, armed with fowling pieces, muskets, even axes, the Arcadians, and the aroused inhabitants of the German coast, came sweeping down to unite with the impatient Creoles of the town. In the dull gray of early morning they pushed ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... I got from her the story of the German approach: the distracted fugitives pouring in from the villages north of Rechamp, the sound of distant cannonading, and suddenly, the next afternoon, after a reassuring lull, the sight of a single spiked helmet at the end of the drive. In a few minutes a dozen followed: mostly officers; then all at once the place hummed with them. There were supply waggons and motors in the court, bundles of hay, stacks of rifles, artillery-men unharnessing and rubbing down their horses. ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... the ferry-boat was rolled down on logs into the river again. The tent was set up and its folds were spiked fast to the edges of the flooring. My bed and my boxes were arranged in the tent, a carpet was spread on the floor, and at the front opening was placed my writing-table, consisting of two boxes, whereon paper, pens, compass, ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... exhibited his wife's arms and back, covered with jagged scars, to show the use of the spiked iron bracelet. ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... "richly carved ceilings, wainscoted, panelled rooms, chimneypieces with paintings framed in the over- mantel, dentilled cornices, and pedimented doors," and I could well believe it, as I passed them with an envious heart. There were gardens behind these mansions which hung their trees over the spiked coping of their high-shouldered walls and gates, and sequestered I know not what damp social events in their flowery and ...
— Seven English Cities • W. D. Howells
... paper the outside of my high board fence with the leaves of "The Arabian Nights," it would afford me a good deal of protection,—more, in fact, than spikes in the top, which tear trousers and encourage profanity, but do not save much fruit. A spiked fence is a challenge to any boy of spirit. But if the fence were papered with fairy-tales, would he not stop to read them until it was too late for him to climb into the garden? I don't know. Human ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... short stakes. The upper end of the post is wound with a few rounds of wire or an iron strap to prevent splitting. The crosspiece is 2 in. square, 12 ft. long, strengthened by a piece 4 in. square and 5 ft. long. These two pieces must be securely bolted or spiked together. A malleable iron bolt, 3/4 in. in diameter and 15 in. long is the pivot. On this depends the safety of the contrivance, so it must be strong enough, and long enough to keep firmly in the post. Drive ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... of the great rope attached, they could haul themselves up the massive snow-front, out on to the jagged summit of the pass, naked to heaven, where the Marienhutte hid among the naked rocks. Round about, spiked, slashed ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... course of construction. The first bed of timbers should be laid on hard-pan or solid rock in the bed of the stream parallel to its flow. The second course, across the stream, is then begun, being spiked home by means of rods cut to length and sharpened by the local blacksmith, from 3/4-inch Norway iron. Hemlock logs are suitable for building the crib; and as the timbers are finally laid, it should be ...
— Electricity for the farm - Light, heat and power by inexpensive methods from the water - wheel or farm engine • Frederick Irving Anderson
... men—"fuera gente," knowing that this sign of serene courage would thrill thirteen thousand hearts, already warm for him, and adjusted his red muleta to the small, spiked stick which secured it. Then, graceful as a wave which rears its crest to breaking-point, he moved towards ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... and our ponies at the same odds; then, when everything was geared up, I called Mike from his tent. Say, when he opened the fly and stepped out there was a commotion, for all he had on was his runnin'-trunks and his spiked shoes. The Injuns was in breech-cloths and moccasins, and, of course, they created no comment; but the sight of a half-nekked white man was something new to these people, and the first flash they got at Mike's fancy togs told 'em they'd once more ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... and several other vessels up the river on the 17th of August, but was unable to reach the fort till the 27th. The place being rendered untenable by the explosion of a powder magazine, the garrison spiked their guns and evacuated it next day. The populous and commercial town of Alexandria, situated higher on the river, thus lost its sole protection; and Captain Gordon, having no obstacle to oppose his progress, buoyed the channel, and placed his ships in such a position as to enforce compliance ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... upon their arms till next morning. When day broke on the 12th, the enemy had disappeared from the mountain-top, and Rosecrans, feeling his way down to the rear of Pegram's position, found it also abandoned, the two remaining cannon being spiked, and a few sick and wounded being left in charge of a surgeon. Still nothing was seen of McClellan, and Rosecrans sent word to him, in his camp beyond Roaring Creek, that he was in possession of the enemy's position. Rosecrans's ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... lightning speed, the men's faces level with the flying manes, their lance-heads skimming the ground. Followed the stirring moment of impact, the long-drawn shout, steadily rising to a yell of triumph, as four lances whirled aloft, each bearing the coveted morsel of wood spiked through the centre. ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... plenty long enough," he decided. "The guard will be asleep by now. The crew were that way when I left them, in the dormitory. I saw that they had plenty of spiked molkai at dinner. Pretended it was my birthday celebration. And the ship's all ready and waiting for the take-off. All we have to do is lock the port ...
— The Indulgence of Negu Mah • Robert Andrew Arthur
... threats of armed rebellion. On the day after Christmas, as the Federalists of Carlisle were about to light a bonfire on the common and fire a salute, they were driven off the field by a mob armed with bludgeons, their rickety old cannon was spiked, and an almanac for the new year, containing a copy of the Constitution, was duly cursed, and then burned. Next day the Federalists, armed with muskets, came back, and went through their ceremonies. Their opponents did not venture to molest them; but after they had dispersed, an ...
— The Critical Period of American History • John Fiske
... treated leniently, as Germany wishes to enlist the German sympathizers. Still, most of the Poles in the pension are horrorstricken. They see the Germans marching through the streets, and they see the flames and shuddering civilians. I can see the Germans' spiked helmets in ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... Miss Blake. That's why I broke the record getting out here as soon as I was invited. Well, she believes, from something I said—one of those odd moments, you know—that I'm a great athlete, and she told those cowboys that I'd gladly put on my spiked shoes and carry their colors to victory. You've ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... by a shot through the head, and the gun was abandoned. The other three guns were retired 400 or 500 yards farther; but here they became hopelessly bogged in a channel, deeper than any that had hitherto been met with. They were spiked, and left in the water; and the drivers and gunners moved off with the cavalry, just as the ...
— For Name and Fame - Or Through Afghan Passes • G. A. Henty
... day it was required that upon all high trestles and in tunnels the track should be full-spiked before being left or a train let over. This took extra time and labor, and possibly was not necessary; but it was a precaution on ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 623, December 10, 1887 • Various
... thus the old palace walls of Padua, if they could yield up their tinged secrets through the coats of lime, would show her rosy limbs and crowned head. Mantegna has her armoured, with greaves to the knee and spiked cups on her breastplate. Gian Bellini carried her to Venice, to lead Scythians in trousers against Theseus in plate-armour and a blazoned shield. Giorgione set her burning in the shade, trying to cool her golden flank in ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... spiked. He marched out of the kitchen, slamming the door viciously. The library was tenanted by Cousin Percy, who was taking a nap on the lounge. Upstairs, Gertrude was helping her mother with a "report" of some kind. ...
— Cap'n Dan's Daughter • Joseph C. Lincoln
... appearance, and the hooded windows on the sides throw an air of protection over them, quite agreeable to the eye. The framing of this roof is no way different, in the rafters, from those made on straight lines, but the curve and projection is given by planks cut into proper shape, and spiked into the rafters, and apparently supported by the brackets below, which should be cut from two to three-inch plank, to give them a heavy and substantial appearance. The windows are in casement form, as shown in the design, but may be changed into the ordinary sash form, if preferred, ...
— Rural Architecture - Being a Complete Description of Farm Houses, Cottages, and Out Buildings • Lewis Falley Allen
... The wall was broken down in many places, and the path all overgrown and weedy, and as he came to the courtyard before the house, he saw the fishponds choked with weeds and the horseblock green with moss, and in the great doorway grew charnel and hellebore, and the spiked hemlock waved and spilt its seed in the wind. The windows hung by their hinges, and the green moss crept down the wide wet cracks in ...
— King Arthur's Knights - The Tales Re-told for Boys & Girls • Henry Gilbert
... spirit, day by day it grew. To Gervase he forbade the house, and led The Lady Eunice such a life she flew At his approaching footsteps. Winter came Snowing and blustering through the Manor trees. All the roof-edges spiked with icicles In fluted companies. The Lady Eunice with her tambour-frame Kept herself sighing company. The flame Of the birch fire glittered ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... upon the glimmering levels of Loch Grannoch; nor yet the kind of love which in alternate currents pulsed to and fro between the two young people who sat so demurely on either side of the great, many-spiked fir-branch. ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... open square, like all the other presidios, and was in a most ruinous state, with the exception of one side, in which the commandant lived, with his family. There were only two guns, one of which was spiked, and the other had no carriage. Twelve half-clothed and half-starved looking fellows composed the garrison; and they, it was said, had not a musket apiece. The small settlement lay directly below the fort, composed of about forty dark brown looking huts, or houses, and three ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... was nothing to be learned from Flintwinch, and so one night he followed Little Dorrit when she left the house. To his great surprise he saw her finally enter a great bare building surrounded with spiked ...
— Tales from Dickens • Charles Dickens and Hallie Erminie Rives
... of an aesthete I took my slim, spiked running shoes. I patted them with affection as I pushed my feet into them. I removed the corks ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... turn out sharp! They are going in first." So shouted Steel, the captain of our eleven, putting his head in at the door of the tent in which we were arraying ourselves in flannels and spiked shoes, and otherwise arming for the great match against Westfield School, which ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... telling, of his treatment of a cattle-drover. To the village it had an eerie look, that windmill-like rage let loose upon a man who, after all, had only been twisting a bullock's tail and running a spiked stick into its softer parts, as any drover might. People said—the postman and a wagoner had seen the business, raconteurs born, so that the tale had perhaps lost nothing—that he had positively ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... were led forth. Father Eastgate was taken to a strong room in the lower part of the chapter-house, where all acts of discipline had been performed by the monks, and where the knotted lash, the spiked girdle, and the hair shirt had once hung; while the abbot was conveyed to his old chamber, which had been prepared for his reception, and ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... July had never before been kept in the like manner in Chicago. There was a row or two at Grand Crossing between the strikers and the railroad officials, several derailed cars and spiked switches, a row at Blue Island, and a bonfire in the stock yards. People were not travelling on this holiday, and the main streets were ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... poking their noses into private business. In 1868, L200 was expended in the purchase of guns, pistols, and swords for the police and officers at the Gaol. The Watch Committee, in May, 1877, improved the uniform by supplying the men with "spiked" helmets, doubtless to please the Major, who liked to see his men look smart, though the military appearance of the force has been greatly improved since by the said spikes being silvered ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... France without getting excited. Page knew that if the British seized the Dacia, the cry would go up in certain quarters for immediate war, but that, if France committed the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be spiked. It was purely a case of sentiment and "psychology." And so the event proved. His suggestion was at once acted on; a French cruiser went out into the Channel, seized the offending ship, took it into port, where a French prize court promptly condemned it. The proceeding did not cause even a ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... one. Here at last was an idea! The wagons were quickly filled with armed workmen. The catch was released, but the wagons did not move. The "Great Power" with his devilish cunning, had been before them; he had spiked the endless chain so that it could not move. And now he struck away the under-pinning of a few of the supports, so that the wagons could not be launched upon ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... walked up to the iron gates and found them chained. It was in vain that he shook them, and in vain that he looked at them. The gates were fully twelve feet high, and spiked at the top. At each side of the gates ran a wall surmounted by iron railings,—extending to the gardener's cottage on the one side, and to the coach-house on the other. The drive up to the house, which swept round a plot of thick shrubs, lay between the various ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... language of the "infinite,"—that the vastest and most transcendent realities have for him their points d'appui in some bit of intense life, some darting bird or insect, some glowing flower or leaf. Existence ebbs away from the large, featureless, monotonous things, to concentrate itself in a spiked cypress or a jagged mountain cleft. A placid soul without "incidents" arrests him less surely than the fireflies on a mossy bank. Hence, while "the finite" always appears, when explicitly contrasted with "the infinite," ...
— Robert Browning • C. H. Herford
... two more cups of coffee, spiked them from a small flask of brandy, and handed one to Mike. ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... on load of apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... a fence of palings, spiked at the top, and climbing it was a problem. Studying the question for a moment or two he decided that it was too dangerous to be risked, and moving cautiously along he began to feel of the palings. At last he came to one that was loose, and he pulled it entirely free at the bottom. Then he slipped ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was of every style and metal from the ancient banded mail of the Saxon to the richly ornamented plate armor of Milan. Gold and silver and precious stones set in plumed crest and breastplate and shield, and even in the steel spiked chamfrons of the horses' head armor showed the rich loot which had fallen to the portion of Norman of ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... animals and even other little birds, and keeps them in a larder for use. For this purpose he chooses a bush with thorns, perhaps a hawthorn, and then when he catches any small creature he sticks it on the thorns and leaves it there spiked until it is wanted. Look at this one's larder. He has a wretched little dead sparrow hanging by its neck from a big thorn, and two or three bumble-bees spiked too. We can imagine the mamma saying to the little ones: 'No, dears, you mustn't have any sparrow ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... as his disengaged hand was clinging to a pinnacle of rock, his hat blew off, exactly as she had predicted, and his dark curls mixed with hers in wild confusion. Thus, foot by foot, they won their way, and reached at last the iron-spiked door, the only work of modern hands on that gray rock. This screened them from the gale; and, as they stood a while to rest beneath its shelter, she showed him what a handsome key her father had made for it, with cunning wards, more suitable for a banker's safe than ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... Henry VIII. had placed it. Some years ago, when the Earl of Derwentwater's coffin was found in the family vault, the head was lying safe with the body. In 1716 there was, however, a traitor's head spiked on the Bar—that of Colonel John Oxburgh, the victim of mistaken fidelity to a bad cause. He was a brave Lancashire gentleman, who had surrendered with his forces at Preston. He displayed signal courage and resignation in prison, forgetting ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... from a sulky ruffian, some five feet high, with the head of a bull-dog, the eyes of a vulture, sunken in a mass of bones, neglected beard, sun-burnt, grog-worn, as dirty as a brute,—the known cast, as called here in this colony, of a 'Vandemonian,' made up of low, vulgar manners and hard talk, spiked at each word, with their characteristic B, and infamous B again; whilst a vile oath begins and ends any of their foul conceits. Their glory to stand oceans of grog, joined to their benevolence of 'shouting' for all hands, and their ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... she went, drowning seven of my shipmates; but the captain, with the rest of us, managed to get on shore. In spite of the hot fire with which we were met from the mole head, we succeeded in effecting a landing, and drove the enemy before us. Having spiked the guns which had done us so much mischief, we advanced along the mole, led by Captain Bowen, and our first lieutenant, Mr Thorpe. Here we encountered a tremendous fire of musketry from the Citadel and houses, so that the greater ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... sinister smile) Ladies and gentlemen, my educated greyhound. It was I broke in the bucking broncho Ajax with my patent spiked saddle for carnivores. Lash under the belly with a knotted thong. Block tackle and a strangling pulley will bring your lion to heel, no matter how fractious, even Leo ferox there, the Libyan maneater. A redhot crowbar and some liniment rubbing on the burning part produced Fritz of Amsterdam, the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... minister of the old school and the unyielding New England type. I don't remember my mother, but sometimes I think the inflammatory goodness at home killed her. In our house you mustn't question a hell where Satan reigns as a personal god of Damnation. To doubt his spiked tail and cloven hoofs, would almost be heresy. That's ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... dismiss the subject and keep him longer. She would have been glad to branch off on to other ethical topics and discuss them. She was satisfied with the result of the interview, for she had vindicated her position and spiked ...
— Unleavened Bread • Robert Grant
... behold himself as a military man, by trying on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant returned, instead of finding a young American in English clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, "Does a German uniform always affect a Territorial ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... the sky is clear and the north ablaze with the colours of sunrise—or is it sunset? The air is delicious, and a cool waft comes down the glacier. A deep ultramarine, shading up into a soft purple hue, blends in a colour-scheme with the lilac plateau. Two men crunch along in spiked boots over snow mounds and polished sastrugi to the harbour-ice. The sea to the north is glazed with freezing spicules, and over it sweep the petrels—our only living companions of the winter. It is all an inspiration; while hewing out chunks of ice and shovelling them away is the ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson |
