"Bowstring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... corporis." Voice, eyes, bearing, gesture, countenance, each in turn, all of them together, are to the spoken words, or, rather than that, it should be said, to the thoughts and emotions of which those articulate sounds are but the winged symbols, as to the barbed and feathered arrows are the bowstring. How essential every external of this kind is, as affording some medium of communication between a speaker and his auditors, may be illustrated upon the instant by the rough and ready argument of the reductio ad absurdum. Without insisting, for example, upon the impossibility ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... down upon the cavaliers, attracted by the shouting and laughter! Now and then some person would be a little late in attempting to cross before him; then with what grace Demedes would spur after him, his bow and bowstring for whip! And how the spectators shrieked with delight when he overtook the culprit, and wore the flowers out flogging him! And when a balcony was low, and illuminated with a face fairer than common, how the gallant young riders plucked roses ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... a very strong rapid, and arrived at a range of three steep cascades, situated in the bend of the river. Here we made a portage of one thousand three hundred yards over a rocky hill, which received the name of the Bowstring Portage, from its shape. We found that the Indians had greatly the advantage of us in this operation; the men carried their small canoes, the women and children the clothes and provisions, and at the end of the portage they were ready to embark; whilst it was necessary for ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... laid it on the string; but even as he drew it back, Hector of the glancing helm smote him with the jagged stone, as he aimed eagerly against him, even beside his shoulder, where the collar-bone fenceth off neck and breast, and where is the most deadly spot; and he brake the bowstring, and his hand from the wrist grew numb, and he stayed fallen upon his knee, and his bow dropped from his hand. But Aias disregarded not his brother's fall, but ran and strode across him and hid him with his shield. Then two trusty comrades bent down to him, even Mekisteus ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... longing tone, Imploringly ask why They can not be as happy now As in the days gone by. And two more hearts, tumultuous With overflowing joy, Are dancing to the music Which that dear, provoking boy Is twanging on his bowstring, As, fluttering his wings, He sends his love-charged arrows While merrily be sings: "Ho! ho! my dainty maiden, It surely can not be You are thinking you are master Of your heart, when it is me." And another gleaming arrow Does the little god's behest, And the dainty ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... kind of cord, which he carried around the neck and then under his left arm. The ends of the arrows were thus convenient to his right hand, and with one sweeping circular motion he could draw them from the quiver and fit them to the bowstring. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... himself was a swineherd in Normandy, while mine were Thanes in England, and their courteous manners have descended to you," retorted Martin; whereupon Drogo laid his bowstring about his ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... are few," he cried, "but their revenge is sure. Let but an Englishman set foot again on Punagwandah and, swifter than the arrow leaves the bowstring, he dies!" ...
— Their Mariposa Legend • Charlotte Herr
... to shoot first, and he pulled back his bowstring and braced himself to let go. Right here it may be said that at thirty yards an arrow propelled by an Indian-made bow is just as deadly as a bullet, if it hits its mark. But Injun shot a little high and caught the buck ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... and hardens. Any instrument of music Of this truth is an example. Lightly touched, it breathes but sweetness, Discord, when 't is roughly handled. 'T is not well to send an arrow To such heights, that in discharging The strong tension breaks the bowstring, Or the bow itself is fractured. These two simple illustrations Are sufficiently adapted To my purpose, of advising Means of cure both mild and ample. You must take a middle course, All extremes must be abandoned. Gentle but judicious treatment ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... a simpler way. Thy mind ever runs on the bowstring and the sword. These are great, but there is a greater. It is the mocking finger. At midnight, when Kaid goes to the Mosque Mahmoud, a finger will mock the plotters till they are buried in confusion. Thou knowest the governor of the prisons—has he ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the gracious sovereign of the Middle Kingdom had confiscated the property of Li's family, that his wife had died of sorrow, in misery, and that his son, Li, having taken the liberty to complain of the glorious emperor's severity, suffered death by the bowstring, as is proper and reasonable in ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... riding on in the ellipse, and another man fitted an arrow to his bowstring, and as he ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... fed the wolves has encountered His weird in the dale of the Bowstring— Thorarin the Strong, 'neath the slayer Lay slain by the might of my weapon. And loss of their lives men abided When Loft fell, and Alf fell, and Skofti. They were four, yonder kinsmen, and fated— They were ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... each man alone A single bowstring uses, and that his own; What matters it to any the worth that's buried? By its own waves the current o'er seas ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... array appear, And some the front assail, and some the rear; Their remedies to reinforce and vary, Came surgeon eke, and eke apothecary; Till the tired Monarch, though of words grown chary, Yet dropt, to recompense their fruitless labor, Some hint about a bowstring or a saber. There lack'd, I promise you, no longer speeches, To rid the palace ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis in such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. She begins with revenge and rage, until she reaches ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... Barbary Coast; Democratic gospel pure and undefiled; Janus-faced double; Good Lord, good devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... get out the stresses in girders of the bowstring form, the author was not satisfied with the common formulae for the diagonal braces, which, owing to the difficulty of apportioning the stresses amongst five members meeting in one point, were to a large extent based on an assumption as to the course ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... must differ from a man of such intense and overweening personality), it must yet be admitted that he habitually speaks out of that primitive silence and solitude in which only the heroic soul dwells. Certainly not in contemporary British literature is there another writer whose bowstring has ...
— Winter Sunshine • John Burroughs
... of their seals and their arms, converted their masters' substance into their own, and, as it were, sucked them dry under the shelter of those repealed laws. The Roman Empire, formerly sold by auction to the highest bidder, and the Turkish emperors, whose necks are exposed every day to the bowstring, show us in very bloody characters the blindness of those men that make authority to consist ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... dull half-musical sound of a bowstring, and to Brace's horror one of their flying men made a spasmodic jump into the air and came down upon hands and knees, his nearest messmates passing on some twenty yards before they could check their ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... double disappearance, there was picked up in the Tiber, a little below the Castle Sant' Angelo, the body of a beautiful young woman, her hands bound together behind her back, and also the corpse of a handsome youth with the bowstring he had been strangled with tied round his neck. The girl was Caracciuolo's bride, the young ...
— The Borgias - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... reputation of those who offend him. A black-vizarded ruffian (whom we will unmask), who signs the forged name of Trefoil, is at present one of the chief bravoes and bullies in our contemporary's establishment. He is the eunuch who brings the bowstring, and strangles at the order of the Day. We can convict this cowardly slave, and propose to do so. The charge which he has brought against Lord Bangbanagher, because he is a Liberal Irish peer, and against the Board of Poor Law Guardians of the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... original direction, but he had not gone more than a hundred yards when another arrow struck his cap, taking it off. He staggered, then, taking a new direction, ran a few strides, then stopped in hesitation, seeing an Indian rise to his knees, fixing an arrow to his bowstring. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... they discovered openings through the cord into the pool or lake, that was included between that and the bow; but whether there were or were not such openings is uncertain. We sailed abreast of the low beach or bowstring, within less than a league of the shore, till sun-set, and we then judged ourselves to be about half-way between the two horns. Here we brought-to, and sounded, but found no bottom with one hundred and thirty fathom; and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... but I had other measures. Apollo twangs not ever on the same bowstring. Did my sudorific work ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... them," the Ambassador interrupted. "I have taken no credit for it. The credit is yours. But in this land there are so many things which one may not do. The bowstring and the knife are unrecognized. Civilization has set an unwholesome value upon human life. It is the maudlin sentiment which creeps like corruption through the body of a ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to foot. What was that Chippy had worked in among his sobs and moans? B.P.—the motto of their order—'Be Prepared.' Dick held himself tense as a bowstring, ready ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... sound The hosts reecho, and the hills around Retain the rending tumult; all the air Clangs in the conflict of the clashing war; But firm undaunted as a shelvy strand That meets the surge, the bold Peruvians stand, With steady aim the sounding bowstring ply, And showers of arrows thicken thro the sky; When each grim host, in closer conflict join'd, Clench the dire ax and cast the bow behind; Thro broken ranks sweep wide their slaughtering course. Now struggle back, now sidelong swray the force. Here from grim chiefs is lopt the grisly head; All ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... The fatal bowstring was not in his thought, When, breaking truce, he so unjustly fought; Made the world tremble with a numerous host, And of undoubted ...
— Poetical Works of Edmund Waller and Sir John Denham • Edmund Waller; John Denham
... Isabella, too, whose bright eyes had not closed since the first gleam had visited her chamber, was early astir. An ugly dream, it is said, troubled her. Though of ripe years, yet, as we have noticed before, love had not yet aimed his malicious shafts at her bosom, nor even tightened his bowstring as she tripped by, defying his power; so that the dream, which in others would appear but as the overflowing of a youthful and ardent imagination, seemed to her altogether novel and unaccountable, raising up new faculties, and endowing her with a train of feelings heretofore ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... long as they don't interfere with us! The only really important factor to reckon on is this, that with an impoverished air to breathe, their rebellious spirit will die out—the dogs!—and we'll have no more talk of social revolution. We'll draw their teeth, all right enough; or rather, twist the bowstring round their damned necks so tight that all their energy, outside of work, will be consumed in just keeping alive. Revolution, then? Forget it, Waldron! We'll kill that viper ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... her to the stream's bank, and as he stood there his keen eyes saw something move across the short grass at the water's edge. Promptly he put an arrow to his bowstring and took deft aim. The shaft sped quickly to its mark, plunged into the body of a stoat, and pinned the ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... them an alphabet card. Most of the Indians just round the Post are Roman Catholics, but those scattered over the lake, about 500 in number, are nearly all pagans. The name of the chief with whom we talked this morning is David Winchaub (Bowstring). ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... penitent, Who now, ere Phoebus mounts the firmament, 330 Fondles the flower amid the sobbing rain. The archers too, upon a wider plain, Beside the feathery whizzing of the shaft, And the dull twanging bowstring, and the raft Branch down sweeping from a tall ash top, Call'd up a thousand thoughts to envelope Those who would watch. Perhaps, the trembling knee And frantic gape of lonely Niobe, Poor, lonely Niobe! when her lovely young Were dead and gone, and her caressing tongue 340 Lay a lost thing ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... his right eye!" said Otto; and stepping forward in the English manner (which his godfather having learnt in Palestine, had taught him), he brought his bowstring to his ear, took a good aim, allowing for the wind and calculating the parabola to a nicety. Whiz! ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scarce marvelling, I saw her, standing naked in the lamplight, Beneath the huge tent's cavernous canopy, Against the throng of elephants and camels That champed unwondering in the golden dusk, Moon-white Diana, mettled Artemis— Her body, quick and tense as her own bowstring, Her spirit, an arrow barbed and strung for flight— White snowflakes melting on her night-black hair, And on her glistening breasts and supple thighs: Her red lips parted, her keen eyes alive With fierce, far-ranging hungers of the chase Over the hills of morn—The lantern ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... "violence" is violently denounced; and beheading being deemed cruel, the most atrocious crimes, as well as those small political offenses which in the days of the Mamelukes would have led to a beyship or a bowstring, receive fourfold punishment by deportation to Faizoghli, the local Cayenne. If you order your peasant to be flogged, his friends gather in threatening hundreds at your gates; when you curse your boatman, ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... bow," says Ivy. "Loop the bowstring round the hand-piece and you'll get more friction ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... and ladders, landing-jetties, fishing apparatus, irrigation wheels and scoops, oars, masts, and yards [and in China, sails, cables, and caulking, asparagus, medicine, and works of fantastic art], spears and arrows, hats and helmets, bow, bowstring and quiver, oil-cans, water-stoups and cooking-pots, pipe-sticks [tinder and means of producing fire], conduits, clothes-boxes, pawn-boxes, dinner-trays, pickles, preserves, and melodious musical instruments, torches, footballs, ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... too much similarity of tone to the voice to give sufficient contrast. Granted then that the lyre was invented to accompany the voice, and without wasting time with surmises as to whether the first idea of stringed instruments was received from the twanging of a bowstring or the finding of a tortoise shell with the half-dessicated tendons of the animal still stretching across it, let us find when the instrument was ...
— Critical & Historical Essays - Lectures delivered at Columbia University • Edward MacDowell
... bows of Castac shall be broken. The bowstring shall break asunder. The bows of thy foes shall be broken and the vultures come to ...
— The Arrow-Maker - A Drama in Three Acts • Mary Austin
... answered with mad clamor. A door would open to show first a long seal gun, then a fisherman, then a fool dog that darted between the fisherman's legs and capered away, ki-yi-ing a challenge to the universe. A silence, tense as a bowstring; a sudden yelp—Hui-hui, as the fisherman whistled to the dog that was being whisked away over the snow with a grip on his throat that prevented any answer; then the fisherman would wait and call in vain, and shiver, and go back to ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... though her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and her mouth had grown stiff with its effort to command. The tension was torture. Her heart strings were drawn to the snapping point; her mind was a bowstring never relaxed, till every fiber of her resistant ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... rent in twain his bowstring, and they cut his pond'rous mace, Slew his steeds and chariot-driver, streaked with blood his ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... fortress of Belgrade. Their defeat might amuse with a triumph the vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring [39] ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... make myself a bow, Mr Jack, and get reeds out of the edge of the long lake, to tie nails in the ends and use for arrows. I used to bind the nails in with whitey-brown thread well beeswaxed, and then dress the notch at the other end to keep the bowstring from splitting it up. I've hit rabbits with an arrow before now, though they always run into their holes. You can shoot with a bow and arrow at a target ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... to me, not many months ago, as he sat in his palace, crowned and dreary and trying to cheat me out of my fair profit on some emeralds,—'Jurgen, I cannot sleep of nights, because of that fool Alexius, who comes into my room with staring eyes and the bowstring still about his neck. And my Varangians must be in league with that silly ghost, because I constantly order them to keep Alexius out of my bedchamber, and they do not obey me, Jurgen. To be King of ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... on the first demonstration I make in favor of Mehemet Ali, the Sultan send me the bowstring, and make my secretaries ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... it?" he cried angrily. "Find out, John, and he shall have a bowstring about his back. Point out the man who stripped you, my little lad," he continued, ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... commandant of Wu-ch'ang, he transformed the character of the people by 'proprieties' and music, and was praised by the master. After the death of Confucius, Chi K'ang asked Yen how that event had made no sensation like that which was made by the death of Tsze-ch'an, when the men laid aside their bowstring rings and girdle ornaments, and the women laid aside their pearls and ear-rings, and the voice of weeping was heard in the lanes for three months. Yen replied, 'The influences of Tsze- ch'an and my master might be compared to those of overflowing water and ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... be in the country, and indeed the population is so large they would have very unsettled times of it. At every turning we meet people, or see their villages; all armed with bows and arrows. The bows are unusually long: I measured one made of bamboo, and found that along the bowstring it measured six feet four inches. Many carry large knives of fine iron; and indeed the metal is abundant. Young men and women wear the hair long, a mass of small ringlets comes down and rests on ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... at the town-ward port of the castle (to which a steep ascent led up from a narrow vennel), where presently the outer guard soon crowded about him, listening to his story and already fingering bowstring and examining rope-matches preparatory to the expected ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... the greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what by the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commenced business, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the end of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an awkward ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... Persons who suppose that a Russian Czar cannot be drowned, because belonging to that select class who are born to be strangled, would have it that the question would be settled by an application of the bowstring, or the sash of some guardsman, to the Imperial throat; and so a successful palace revolution lead to the postponement of the plan of emancipation for another quarter of a century. But Russian morality is of a much higher character than it was, and the members of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... tombs of Mahmoud's grandsons, nephews of the present Light of the Universe, and children of his sister, the wife of Halil Pasha. Little children die in all ways: these of the much-maligned Mahometan Royal race perished by the bowstring. Sultan Mahmoud (may he rest in glory!) strangled the one; but, having some spark of human feeling, was so moved by the wretchedness and agony of the poor bereaved mother, his daughter, that his Royal heart relented towards her, ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that in this political game the great lottery of power is that into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. In Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself, are so insecure, that scarcely any have died in their beds for ages, so that the bowstring is the natural death of Bashaws, yet in no country is power and distinction (precarious enough, God knows, in all) sought for with such boundless avidity, as if the value of place was enhanced by the danger and insecurity of its tenure. Nothing will ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... the denizens of Heaven, that hero, who was conversant with celestial weapons of high efficacy, stood immovable like a hill. The delighter of the Kurus then drew his celestial bow. And as he repeatedly stretched the bowstring, the twang that followed resembled the loud sound of some mighty machine. Like Purandara pouring rain, the puissant Arjuna then, with that bow of his, poured incessant showers of shafts on his foes. Pierced by those shafts the Saindhava warriors with their ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Thorleik's son, sprang up on the roof, and cuts asunder Gunnar's bowstring. Gunnar clutches the bill with both hands, and turns on him quickly and drives it through him, and hurls him ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... implement he may be said to have, in this country and among its white inhabitants, reinvented. Seated in our easy-chair, we follow him gayly and untiringly into the depths of the woods, drink in the rich, cool, damp air, and revel in the primeval silence that is only broken by the twang of the bowstring or the call of its destined victim. We enjoy his marvellous shots with some little infusion of envy, and his exemplary patience under ill-success and repeated failure with perhaps more. We end, like his "Cracker" ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... this basin, was seen Mr. Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... 1: A nock is the groove at either end of a bow for holding the bowstring or the notch in the end of an arrow ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... not English revolutions; and will cast your eye upwards to see if my letter is not dated from Constantinople. Indeed, violent as the changes have been, there has been no bloodshed; no Grand Vizier has had a cravat made of a bowstring, no Janizaries have taken upon them to alter the succession, no Grand Signior is deposed—only his Sublime Highness's dignity has been a little impaired. Oh! I forgot; I ought not to frighten you; you will interpret all these fine allusions, and think on the rebellion—pho! we ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Stukely had seized his bow, fitted an arrow to the string, and risen cautiously to his feet. Then the antelope appeared to become aware of some unusual feature in the scene, and halted to investigate, whereupon Phil cautiously drew his bowstring, released it with a loud twang, and the arrow, flying straight and true, pierced the creature's heart, so that it fell dead in its tracks, and they had their first deer. And now again Stukely gave fresh evidence of his uncanny knowledge, for although he had never before killed a deer, and might ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... blow on the point of the chin when the head is thrown up. The other fleets and other arrangements threaten the enemy's solar plexus and stomach. Somewhere in relation to the Grand Fleet lies the "blockading" cordon which examines neutral traffic. It could be drawn as tight as a Turkish bowstring, but for reasons which we may arrive at after the war, it does not seem to have been so ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... my Lords, Soldiers will not flye indeede; I have seene the day, I could have crackt a tree of yew, made my bowstring whisper in mine eare in[249] the twang, tost my pike lustilye. Tis since the siedge of Parthia: bith-'mas a great while; I was lustie then at the service was done there, yet I love the discourse. Come my Lord, I chuse your companye, ...
— A Collection Of Old English Plays, Vol. IV. • Editor: A.H. Bullen
... then was dumb. The Mufti looked about the room, And straight made answer to his lord, Fearing the bowstring at ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... muscle in Jean's body became as taut as a bowstring. He hunched a little forward, as if about to leap upon the other, and strike him down. And then, all at once, he relaxed. His hands unclenched. And he ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... Having seized them, he drew together the notch [of the arrow] and the ox-hide string; the string, indeed, he brought near to his breast, and the barb to the bow. But after he had bent the great bow into a circle, the bow twanged, the bowstring rang loudly, and the sharp-pointed shaft bounded forth, impatient to wing ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... once of bitter pangs, My precious jewel now, my chiefest treasure; A mark I'll set thee, which the cry of grief Could never penetrate, but thou shalt pierce it. And thou, my trusty bowstring, that so oft Has served me faithfully in sportive scenes, Desert me not in this most serious hour— Only be true this once, my own good cord, That has so often winged the biting shaft:— For shouldst thou fly successless from my hand, I have no ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... a loose flowing cloak which swells around and behind him in the wind. His left arm, strong and bare, is firmly stretched out, and his left hand holds a thick bow in its iron grasp. His right arm is out of sight, and only the right hand is seen, drawing back the bowstring to his breast. At his left side there hangs a quiver, full of arrows with feathered shafts. On his head he wears a stately winged helmet, and above it a crown. His face wears a look of commanding strength, and in the eyes beneath the shadow of the helmet there ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick
... their wishes knew, And he whose lips are ever true Caused the two Gods to meet as foes. Then fierce the rage of battle rose: Bristled in dread each starting hair As Siva strove with Vishnu there. But Vishnu raised his voice amain. And Siva's bowstring twanged in vain; Its master of the Three bright Eyes Stood fixt in fury and surprise. Then all the dwellers in the sky, Minstrel, and saint, and God drew nigh, And prayed them that the strife might cease, And the great ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... hog on the Mosque of Omar, trying to make it into a kanisah (unclean idol-house). My people discovered the sacrilege, and"—he added with intent—"gave that Greek the bowstring, then quartered the body and threw it to ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... besotted sins. Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pages was spared him. It was not possible for an instant to turn away his eyes. His mental clarity was unrelieved by weariness. No shadow dimmed the keen crystal of his brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring that is stretched continually. He realised this, thinking: "Presently I will cut the bow-string, and the bow shall have rest! Even if my once-boasted will-power reasserted itself—even if I rose triumphant ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... one month; a fawn and a boar, for two; a snake, for a whole day; and then I will devour the bowstring.' When the first impulse of his hunger was allayed, he said, 'This flesh is not yet tender; let me taste the twisted string with which the horns of this bow are joined.' So saying, he began to gnaw it; but, in the ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... practise a curious trick upon me. It is an institution of their neighbours and masters, the Turks, and they call it the bowstring." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... king possesses comes from the people, and foolish is the ruler who is cruel and hears not their cry. The great and good king is merciful, and kindness can do more than cruelty. Boast not of the greatness of your ancestors. Each man uses but one bowstring, and that is his own. Who cares for the worth that is buried? The good man is true to his own heart, ...
— Northland Heroes • Florence Holbrook
... is free," said his father. "And poor Charity is getting nothing more than women have always got who've dared to ask for their own way. They used to throw 'em to the lions, or bowstring 'em in the harems. And in the days of real chivalry they burned 'em at the stake or locked 'em up in convents or castles. But don't you worry, Jim, Charity has you for a champion and she's mighty lucky. Go on and fight the muckers and ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the sea, disappeared in ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... crowded blazing upon the golden-haired youth. Radiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty strength, a flashing shape in the midst of flame. He fitted a glowing arrow to a gleaming bow. The arrow parted with a keen musical twang of the bowstring, and Photogen darting after it, vanished with a shout. Up shot Apollo himself, and from his quiver scattered astonishment and exultation. But the brain of poor Nycteris was pierced through and through. She fell down in utter darkness. All around her ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... displayed an aversion for violent physical contention of any sort, especially fighting; which caused him to be branded as a coward. But the time came when, unable longer to endure the insults heaped upon him, the restraint of the young Texan snapped like a bowstring, and the boys of Oakdale found that a sleeping lion had suddenly awakened. Then it came to be known that Grant had inherited a most unfortunate family failing, a terrible temper, which, when uncontrolled, was liable to lead ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... But I was filled with longing to be gathered to the company of the Divine ones, and I knew that I had no evil in me, and desired to do only the thing that is just. Therefore, having with so much labour drawn the bowstring to my ear, I was fain to let fly the shaft. "Lead on," I cried with a loud voice; "lead on, thou ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... copy he had L100. People probably attended, as they attend modern representations of legitimate drama, rather from a sense of duty, than in the hope of pleasure. The heroine originally had to speak two lines with a bowstring round her neck. The situation produced cries of murder, and she had to go off the stage alive. The objectionable passage was removed, but Irene was on the whole a failure, and has never, I imagine, made another appearance. When asked how ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... the rest, stood the captain, with the fatal bowstring hanging carelessly on his arm, and his eyes intent to catch the slightest gesture of the king. "Behold!" said Boabdil ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... which seemed as if it would never either scar over or be curable. The same man witnesses that the maiden Weghbiorg (Webiorg) fought against the enemy and felled Soth the champion. While she was threatening to slay more champions, she was pierced through by an arrow from the bowstring of Thorkill, a native of Tellemark. For the skilled archers of the Gotlanders strung their bows so hard that the shafts pierced through even the shields; nothing proved more murderous; for the arrow-points made ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the flock, 140 To fair Zeleia's walls once safe restored. Compressing next nerve and notch'd arrow-head He drew back both together, to his pap Drew home the nerve, the barb home to his bow, And when the horn was curved to a wide arch, 145 He twang'd it. Whizz'd the bowstring, and the reed Leap'd off, impatient for the distant throng. Thee, Menelaus, then the blessed Gods Forgat not; Pallas huntress of the spoil, Thy guardian then, baffled the cruel dart. 150 Far as a mother wafts the fly aside[7] That haunts her slumbering babe, ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... Bowstring never sped arrow from itself that ran so swift a course through the air, as a very little boat which I saw coming through the water toward us at that instant, under the direction of a single ferryman, who was crying out, "Art ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... as if terrified at the glittering figures that dashed upon them so fearlessly. As they swept through, Menna had enough to do to manage his steeds, which were wild with excitement; but Ramses' bow was bent again and again, and at every twang of the bowstring a Hittite champion fell from his chariot. Behind the King came his household troops, and all together they burst through the chariot brigade of the enemy, leaving a long trail marked by dead and wounded men, overturned ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... giving her strength, she clung to my wrist so fiercely that I had not the heart, knowing how slender was her hold on life and how near the brink she stood, to break from her. I constrained myself to stand still, though every muscle grew tense as a drawn bowstring, and I felt the strong rage rising in my throat and choking me as I waited for him ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... with THAT for your pillow, young man!' Thereupon, the little dressmaker again dabbed out his eyes separately, and making a loop in the air of her thread and deftly catching it into a knot with her needle, seemed to bowstring him into the bargain. ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... pointed end. When the thread is carried through the cloth, which may be done to the distance of about three-fourths of an inch the thread will be stretched above the curved needle, something like a bowstring, leaving a small open space between the two. A small shuttle, carrying a bobbin, filled with thread, is then made to pass entirely through this open space, between the needle and the thread which it carries; and when the shuttle is returned the thread which was carried in by the needle is surrounded ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the retaliating principle, I soon had some such sensations as one would be apt to feel if his gullet were in a vice. I shall not attempt to describe very minutely the miracle that followed. Hanging ought to be an effectual remedy for many delusions; for, in my case, the bowstring I was under certainly did wonders in a very short time. Gradually the whole scene changed. First came a mist, then a vertigo; and finally, as the captain relaxed his hold, objects appeared in new forms, and instead of being in our lodgings in Bivouac, I found myself in ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sight, but this time there were only two of them, as the youngest had stayed at home. The air was warm and damp, and the snow soft and slushy, and the elder brother's bowstring hung loose, while the bow of the younger caught in a tree and snapped in half. At that moment the dogs began to bark loudly, and the bear rushed out of the thicket and set off in the direction of the mountain. Without thinking ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... birds were fighting within thirty yards of the spot where the Bushman lay. The twang of a bowstring might have been heard by one of the koris, had he been listening. The other could not possibly have heard it; for before the sound could have reached him, a poisoned arrow was sticking through his ears. The barb had passed through, ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... silken thong; Loud twangs the steel, the golden arrow flies, 240 Trails a long line of lustre through the skies; "'Tis done!" he shouts, "the mighty Monarch feels!" And with loud laughter shakes the silver wheels; Bends o'er the car, and whirling, as it moves, His loosen'd bowstring, drives the rising doves. 245 —Pierced on his throne the slarting Thunderer turns, Melts with soft sighs, with kindling rapture burns; Clasps her fair hand, and eyes in fond amaze The bright Intruder with enamour'd gaze. "And leaves my Goddess, like a blooming bride, ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... wondrous well, Till his arrows were all ago', And the fire so fast upon him fell That his bowstring burnt ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... harp that had but one long string, But one low song, but one brief wingy flight, Is voiceless, for my bowstring is cut off. Sever two locks of hair for my sake now, Spoil those bright coils of power, give me your hair, And with my mother twist those locks together Into a bowstring for me. Fierce small head, Thy stinging tresses shall scourge men forth ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... you seen her With that high, laughing, turbulent head of hers Thrown backward, and the bowstring at her ear, Or sitting at the fire with those grave eyes Full of good counsel as it were with wine, Or when love ran through all the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... the bowstring? Whence a cord to match the weapon? Sinews from the elk of Hiisi, And the hempen cord of Lempo. Thus at length the bow was finished. And the stock was quite completed, 40 And the bow was fair to gaze on, And its value matched its beauty. At its back a horse was standing, ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... Springfield, Illinois. On the 29th of December, Sherman met with the bloody repulse of Chickasaw Bluffs. On the 2d of January he returned to the mouth of the Yazoo, and there found McClernand armed with the bowstring and the baton. ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... accept "considerations of state" as a reason for Mr. Motley's removal. Considerations of state have never yet failed the axe or the bowstring when a reason for the use of those convenient implements was wanted, and they are quite equal to every emergency which can arise in a republican autocracy. But for the very reason that a minister is absolutely in the power of his government, the manner in which that power is ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... remarkable woman I am obliged to express things rather brutally. I feel this to be the case, for instance, when I say that she had primarily detected such an aid to advancement in the person of Robert Acton, but that she had afterwards remembered that a prudent archer has always a second bowstring. Eugenia was a woman of finely-mingled motive, and her intentions were never sensibly gross. She had a sort of aesthetic ideal for Clifford which seemed to her a disinterested reason for taking him in hand. It was very well for a fresh-colored young gentleman to be ingenuous; but Clifford, ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... Pacha was not quite such an easy prey. The kapidgi-bachi who dared to present him with the bowstring was instantly laid dead at his feet by a pistol-shot. "Wretch!" cried Mouktar, roaring like a bull escaped from the butcher, "dost thou think an Arnaout dies like an eunuch? I also am a Tepelenian! To arms, comrades! they would slay us!" As he spoke, he rushed, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness, the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... fugitives, at once ordered the men-at-arms to fall upon them. The cavalry, the heavy troops, and the cross-bow men, soon formed a wild and reeling crowd, amid which the English poured a continued flight of unerring arrows, and not a single bowstring was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of Sinbad the sailor. This person went ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... upon Apiarian laws would be a strange Utopia! the bowstring would be used there as unmercifully as it is in the seraglio, to say nothing of the summary mode of bringing down the population to the means of subsistence. But this is straying from the subject. The consequences of defective order are indeed frightful, whether we regard the physical or the ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... a cross-bow breaks, when 'tis discharged Too tensely drawn the bowstring and the bow, And with less force ...
— Dante's Purgatory • Dante
... of lights, and that all his wondrous thoughts stood embodied hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging plank, shouting together in his honour, when something cracked inside his temples like an overstrained bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and he was alone in ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... were kept in prison, till they grew Of years to fill a bowstring or the throne, One or the other, but which of the two Could yet be known unto the fates alone; Meantime the education they went through Was princely, as the proofs have always shown; So that the heir apparent still was found No less deserving to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... in our natures, and yet I experienced a sensation of relief while listening to her bubbling and effervescent nonsense. My mind had been kept on so high a tone, there was a strain, a tension, of which I was hardly conscious till the bowstring was slackened. Besides, she was associated with the recollections of Grandison Place,—she was a young person of my own sex, and she could talk to me of Mrs. Linwood, and Edith, and the friends of my rural life. So I tried to become reconciled to the visitation, and to do ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... breathe. Oh, for an hour of the old liberty and power! It would amuse me to see the faces of ENVER and of my wretched brother MOHAMMED as I ordered them to execution—them and their gang of villainous parasites. By the bowstring of my fathers, but that would be a great and worthy killing! Pardon the fond day-dreams of a poor and lonely old man whose only crime has been that he loved his country too well and treated his enemies with a kindness not to be understood by those ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... Henry had scored high to Gilbert's nothing, and the boy dropped the ball at his feet to tighten the network he had made on his hand by winding a bowstring in and out between his fingers and across the palm, as men did before rackets were thought of. Suddenly he turned half round and faced Gilbert, planting himself with his sturdy legs apart and crossing ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... the folly of neglecting Raften's advice to have a big Dog in camp. He glanced around and would have run, but the tramp was too quick for him and grabbed him by the collar. "Oh, no you don't; hold on, sonny. I'll fix you so you'll do as you're told." He cut the bowstring from its place, and violently throwing Yan down, he tied his feet so that they ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... boys! My kind true wife! I will Protect them from thee, Landvogt! When I drew That bowstring, and my hand was quiv'ring, And with devilish joy thou mad'st me point it At the child, and I in fainting anguish Entreated thee in vain; then with a grim Irrevocable oath, deep in my soul, I vow'd to God in Heav'n, that the next aim I took should be thy heart. The vow I made In that despairing ...
— The Life of Friedrich Schiller - Comprehending an Examination of His Works • Thomas Carlyle
... "She won't get ahead of me," as he had said at the first; he set his teeth, threw off his hat, and, knitting his brows with a resolute expression, prepared to take steady aim, though his heart beat fast and his thumb trembled as he pressed it on the bowstring. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... enough of this. Go to, knave, go to thy place—and thou, Gurth, get thee another dog, and should the keeper dare to touch it, I will mar his archery; the curse of a coward on my head, if I strike not off the forefinger of his right hand!—he shall draw bowstring no more.—I crave your pardon, my worthy guests. I am beset here with neighbours that match your infidels, Sir Knight, in Holy Land. But your homely fare is before you; feed, and let welcome ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... modernity possess undoubted possibilities for humorous treatment, and no one has appreciated the fact more keenly than the authors of "Wisdom While you Wait." In this their latest work the prospectus of the Napolio Syndicate forms a bowstring whence fly shafts of satire that ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... for. At a distance out in the lake sat a most beautiful Red Swan, whose plumage glittered in the sun, and who would now and then make the same noise he had heard. He was within long bow-shot, and, pulling the arrow from the bowstring up to his ear, took deliberate aim and shot. The arrow took no effect; and he shot and shot again till his quiver was empty. Still the swan remained, moving round and round, stretching its long neck and dipping its bill into the water, as if ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... never used in the field, and bred only as a spoiled pet, yet not always spoiled, for anecdotes are related of his inviolable attachment to his owner. One of them belonged to a Turkish Pacha who was destroyed by the bowstring. He would not forsake the corpse, but laid himself down by the body of his murdered ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... from the earth, And their seed from among the children of men. For they intended evil against Thee, They imagined a mischievous device, Which they could not execute. For Thou wilt make them turn their back, Thou wilt make ready Thy bowstring against their faces. Be Thou exalted Jehovah in Thine own strength; We will sing and ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defence, without the forms of law and justice! History has been ransacked to find examples of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... episode. He saves his string, "good whipcord," when requested by Mr. Gresham to untie a parcel, and it thereafter serves to spin a fine new top, to help Hal out of a difficulty with his toy, and in the final incident of the story, an archery contest, our provident hero, finding his bowstring "cracked," calmly draws from his pocket the still excellent piece of cord, and affixing it to his bow, wins the match. Hal betrays his great lack of self-control by exclaiming, "The everlasting whipcord, I declare," and thereupon Patty, Mr. Gresham's only child, ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea-gully and the HISPANIOLA would go humming ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... I turned my haggard, burning eyes upon her murderers—four of them there were and all staring into those cruel, black waters below and not a word betwixt them. Suddenly the black-bearded man snapped his fingers and laughed even as my bowstring twanged; then I saw him leap backwards, screaming with pain, his shoulder transfixed by my arrow. Immediately (and ere I might shoot again) his fellows dragged him down, and lying prone on their bellies let fly wildly in my direction with petronel and musquetoon. And now, had ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... dangers of sedition and the sea to expire by less hostile, though not less effective, means. To be strangled was not much better than to be starved: and certainly, with half-a-dozen highly respectable females clinging round his neck, he was not reminded for the first time in his life what a domestic bowstring is an affectionate woman. In an agony of suffocation he thought very little of his arms, although the admiration of the men had already, in his imagination, separated these useful members from his miserable body and had it not been for some justifiable kicking and plunging, the veneration ...
— The Voyage of Captain Popanilla • Benjamin Disraeli
... services he performed with equal skill and celerity. Success attended him, and the pacha, his predecessor, having in his opinion, as well as in that of the sultan, remained an unusual time in office, by an accusation enforced by a thousand purses of gold, he was enabled to produce a bowstring for his benefactor; and the sultan's "firmaun" appointed him to the vacant pachalik. His qualifications for office were all superlative: he was very short, very corpulent, very illiterate, very ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the loan of a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring instead, with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a fluff, ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... millimeters broad. This is attached to the lower end of the stock by a simple series of loops. To the upper extremity it is attached by a loop that slips along the stock into the upper notch when the bow is strung for shooting. It is needless to remark that the bowstring is about 2 or 3 centimeters shorter than the stock, which in the moment of stringing must be bent to enable the upper extremity of the string to reach the upper notch and thereby acquire a sufficient tension ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... He dropped into Flint's big half-couch and puffed for a while in silence. "Well, since you're all here, I may confess that I'm the mute with the bowstring." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... in lat. 19 deg., conquering the tribes, Nubian and Cushite, as he proceeded, and from time to time distinguishing himself in personal combats with his enemies. On one occasion, we are told, "his majesty became more furious than a panther," and placing an arrow on his bowstring, directed it against the Nubian chief so surely that it struck him, and remained fixed in his knee, whereupon the chief "fell fainting down before the royal diadem." He was at once seized and made a prisoner; his followers were ...
— Ancient Egypt • George Rawlinson
... this important morrow rise, But fear or mutiny may taint the Greeks? Who knows, if Mahomet's awaking anger May spare the fatal bowstring ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... no foreshaft. The sting-ray spine, which makes an excellent natural projectile point, was let directly into the split end of the cane, and was secured by cord binding (see "Haftings"). Instead of the usual nock in the butt end of the shaft for a bowstring, there is a cuplike depression (fig. 1). This suggests, of course, that this may have been a dart for use with a thrower or atlatl. Although that weapon is unreported in the Spanish sources on central and northern Baja California, dart-throwers ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... the kind, the wayward one is "tossed." Tossing is not the sort of pastime any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the party to be tossed, though it is a beanfeast for the onlookers. They manage it this way. A hide, freshly stripped from a bullock, smoking, bloody, and limber as a bowstring, is requisitioned; the hairy side is turned downwards, two strong men get hold of each corner, cutting holes in the green hide for their hands to have a good grip; they allow the hide to sag until it forms a sort of cradle, into which the unlucky one is dumped neck and crop. Then ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... pain he bored in. He had but one chance—to get this shadow in his gorilla-like arms. He lacked mental flexibility. An idea, getting into his head, stuck; it was not adjustable. Like an arrow sped from the bowstring, it had to fulfill its destiny. It never occurred to him to take to his heels, to get space between himself and this enemy he had so woefully underestimated. Ten feet, and he might have been able to whirl, draw his pistol, and end ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the later English archers did, and so close just across the flame wall was the opposing group that the meanest archer in all the lot could scarcely fail to reach a living target, and stronger arms drew back those arrows than were the arms of those who drew bowstring in the battles of mediaeval history. With the first deadly flight came a scattering outside and men lay tossing upon the ground in their death agony. There was no cessation to the shot, though Boarface sought fiercely to rally his ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... wondrous well, Till his arrows were all gone, And the fire so fast upon him fell, That his bowstring burnt in two. The sparkles burnt, and fell upon, Good William of Cloudeslie! But then was he a woeful man, and said, "This is a coward's ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... that thou pullest not the long bow ere the bowstring be twisted, or ever the arrow be at hand—send not in thy bill ere the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... good charade words: Knighthood, penitent, looking-glass, hornpipe, necklace, indolent, lighthouse, Hamlet, pantry, phantom, windfall, sweepstake, sackcloth, antidote, antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, coltsfoot, bridegroom, housemaid, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... half-carbonised wood-meal which the drilling loosens from the light-stock and in which the red heat arises. When fire is to be lighted by means of this implement, the lower part of the drill pin is daubed over with a little train-oil, one foot holds the light-stock firm against the ground, the bowstring is put round the drill pin, the left hand presses the pin with the drill block against the light-stock, and the bow is carried backwards and forwards, not very rapidly, but evenly, steadily, and uninterruptedly, until fire appears. A couple of minutes are generally required ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... him by Sir Edward Grey was feathered with his own plumage. To meet our contentions Sir Edward cites our own seizures and our own court decisions. It remains to be seen whether out of strands plucked from the mane and tail of the British lion we can fashion a bowstring which will give effective momentum to a counterbolt launched in the general direction ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... soon after apparent, for another of Drake's companions, being desirous to show the third Indian a specimen of the English valour and dexterity, attempted, likewise, to shoot an arrow, but drawing it with his full force, burst the bowstring; upon which the Indians, who were unacquainted with their other weapons, imagined him disarmed, followed the company, as they were walking negligently down towards their boat, and let fly their arrows, aiming particularly at Winter, who had the bow in his hand. He, finding ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... exact conditions," added the confident Giraffe. "And just make up your minds I'm going to do that same stunt yet. Why, half a dozen times already I've been pretty close to getting fire; but something always seemed to happen just at the last minute. Once my bowstring sawed through. Another time the plaguey stick burst. Then Bumpus had to fall all over me just when I felt sure the spark was going to come in the tinder. And the last time, you may remember, when I sang out that ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the arrow went straight to the mark. But here the chief, the old White Bear, interposed and said that it was necessary that they should have long claws in order to be able to climb trees. "One of us has already died to furnish the bowstring, and if we now cut off our claws we shall all have to starve together. It is better to trust to the teeth and claws which nature has given us, for it is evident that man's weapons were not intended ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft, Through the camp was spread the rumor, And the soldiers, as they quaffed Flemish beer at dinner, laughed At the ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... the men who were in the small ships took him, but he received quarter from the Earl. And after this all leapt overboard who yet lived; but most of these were wounded, and those who received quarter were taken as they swam: these were Thorkell Netja, Karlshead, Thorstein, and Einar Bowstring-shaker. ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... nobles; but if thou losest it, thou shalt be stript of thy Lincoln green, and scourged out of the lists with bowstrings, for a wordy and insolent braggart, and if thou refusest my fair proffer, the Provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the presence as ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... be restrained in some manner from moving when the concrete strikes them. A very good way of accomplishing this is to string them on a longitudinal rod, nested in the bend at the upper end. Mr. Godfrey, in his advocacy of bowstring bars anchored with washers and nuts at the ends, fails to indicate how they shall be placed. The writer, from experience in placing steel, thinks that it would be very difficult, if not impractical, to place them in this manner; but let a saddle of U-bars ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey |
