"Battering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brass flashed in between the gate posts, grazing them, and barely escaping an upset, and then came plunging toward me. I screamed to the boys, who seemed to me directly in the path of the Thing, which in another moment I recognized as an automobile of the battering-ram variety, belonging to Harvey Somers, Gwendolen Burton's fiance, which for the past week had been the terror of father's steady old gray horses, ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... effect on France would have been frightful. We have reason to believe that it was only in the middle of February that he made up his mind to send an army to Bulgaria. They arrived by driblets, without any plan of operations, and it was not until August that their battering train left Toulon. It ought to have reached Sebastopol in May. In time, however, he must see the necessity of either becoming an active man of business himself, or of ministering, like other sovereigns, through his Ministers. Up to the present time many causes have concurred ...
— Correspondence & Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with Nassau William Senior from 1834 to 1859, Vol. 2 • Alexis de Tocqueville
... Amazon Clorinda, who is beloved by the Christian chief Tancred, goes forth in disguise at night to burn the battering tower of the Christian army. She effects her purpose; but, in retreating from its discoverers, is accidentally shut out of the gate through which she had left the city. She makes her way into the open country, trusting to get in at one of the other gates; but, having been watched by Tancred, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Vol. 2 • Leigh Hunt
... that they forced an entrance, the governor of the city was endeavouring to take his departure. He was, however, arrested by the rovers. Meantime De la Marck and his men, lighting a huge fire at the northern gate, rigged a battering-ram, formed out of a ship's mast; and as the fire burned the wood of the gates, they commenced battering away with might and main. The gates quickly gave way; and, dashing the embers of the fire aside, the bold sailors, sword in hand, rushed into the town, and speedily found themselves masters ...
— The Ferryman of Brill - and other stories • William H. G. Kingston
... Adam, "makes you as noisy as a magpie. If you're not whistling, you're singing some damned rake of an Irish song and if you're not singing, you're at the piano battering out a ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... a French window which opened upon the piazza on the side away from the crowd. She ran back through the darkened rooms, swung open this window and ran about the piazza to the front door. As she reached it, the human battering-ram drew back ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... fall by reason of imminent peril. Do not think this a meaningless or uncertain sign; fear, arising from the things they foresee, has changed their custom." Why say more? He inflamed the hearts of his soldiers to attack Aquileia again. Constructing battering rams and bringing to bear all manner of engines of war, they quickly forced their way into the city, laid it waste, divided the spoil and so cruelly devastated it as scarcely to leave a trace to be seen. Then growing bolder 222 and still thirsting for Roman blood, the Huns raged ...
— The Origin and Deeds of the Goths • Jordanes
... like water racing through an opened dam, they swept upon the bridge-head. On and on they pushed, like the bore of a mighty tide. The frog-men strove against them, clubbing, spearing, tearing them. But even those worst smitten seemed not to fall. On they pushed, driving forward, irresistible—a battering ram of flesh and bone. They clove the masses of the Akka, pressing them to the sides of the bridge and over. Through the open gates they forced them—for there was no room for the frog-men to ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... The sounds of battering had ceased, and as he passed the oak door he laid his ear to it: some one was in the place! the lid of the bureau shut with a loud bang, and he heard a lock turned. The wall could not be half down yet: the earl must have entered the moment he could ...
— Donal Grant • George MacDonald
... what happened, only that my arms were going like windmills, that I was battering Courtenay, and that he was battering me; that we were down, and then up, and then down again, over and over, and fighting fiercely ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... she awaited the answer to her question became profound and in it the ticking of the old clock sounded like the blows of a blacksmith's hammer, the purring of the cat like the roar of machinery, and the beating of his heart like the dull thud of a battering ram. ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... surf flew in all directions about him. "His course was marked by a white foam a rod in width which he made with the continual thrashing of this tail." His huge head, boneless but almost as solid and as hard as the inside of a horse's hoof, most admirably designed for a battering-ram, was almost half out of the water. The mate made one desperate attempt to get out of his way. Again the helm was put up and the men ran to the braces, but the water-laden ship, already well down by the head, and more sluggish than ever, ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... concierge pronounced a fine eulogy on people who never stayed out all night and then came battering at the lodge gate during hours which even a gendarme held sacred to sleep. He also discoursed eloquently upon the beauties of temperance, and took an ostentatious draught from ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... of the house, and rustled away through the narrow paths of the small bridges to the rapids. You could stand at any window in the House and watch the ugly, rushing current, gorged with logs, come battering at the wall, jostle between the piers, and race on to the rocks and the dam and the slide beyond. You stepped from the front door upon the wall, which was a road between the bridges, and from the back ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... all the blind, fighting spirit which, in gridiron days, had driven him with clinched teeth into the thick of the battering melee. He sprang into a crouching posture, face turned toward the taunting sound, every muscle taut, every nerve tingling, and with but one thought surging through his brain—the desire to charge ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... she was hidden from sight by the great walnut tree on the lawn. What a tiresome, interfering old lady she was, and how angry Aunt Sarah would be! Her head really ached now. It felt as though some one had been battering it on each side with large, strong hands, and she was quite confused and giddy; but through it all one triumphant thought came uppermost. She could go to the picnic! Presently she strolled out into the garden, fanning her hot face with her hat, as she turned ...
— Thistle and Rose - A Story for Girls • Amy Walton
... sprawling, And driving and riving and striving, And sprinkling and twinkling and wrinkling, And sounding and bounding and rounding, And bubbling and troubling and doubling, And grumbling and rumbling and tumbling, And clattering and battering and shattering; ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... made of ourselves, Florence!" resumed Ellen, after she had gazed in silence a few moments on the gloomy prospect presented to her eyes; "jamming into crowded, uncomfortable coaches, and bruising and battering our flesh and bones to jelly, all to reach this wonderful abode of grandeur and sublimity. What 'Alps on Alps' we expected would tower before our astonished visions! But here we are, sunk in a dismal abyss on the extreme northern verge of civilization, and never a mountain to be seen, ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... that La Corriveau emerged from the gloomy woods of Beauport, on her return to the city, the night of the murder of Caroline, two horsemen were battering at full speed on the highway that led to Charlebourg. Their dark figures were irrecognizable in the dim moonlight. They rode fast and silent, like men having important business before them, which demanded haste; ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... to the door, not merely to find it locked, but to discover that it was not the kind of lock that would yield to blows. There was no way out but by battering away one of the panels, and to this he addressed himself without hesitation, assisted by Balbi, who had armed himself with the bodkin, but who trembled fearfully at the noise of Casanova's blows. There was danger in this, but the danger ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... red ore from the faraway hills beyond Superior, limestone fragments from some near-by hill, and scrap of earlier burning. These, one by one, are seized by a great arm of iron, thrust out from a huge moving structure that looks like a battering-ram and is operated by a young man about whom the lightnings play as he moves; and, one by one, they are cast into the furnaces that are heated to a temperature of a thousand degrees or more. There the red earth is freed of its "devils," as the great ironmaster has named ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... the nearness of the Enemy, strung Bennett's nerves taut as harp-strings. His will hardened to the flinty hardness of the ice itself. His strength of mind and of body seemed suddenly to quadruple itself. His determination was that of the battering-ram, blind, deaf, resistless. The ugly set of his face became all the more ugly, the contorted eyes flashing, the great jaw all but simian. He appeared physically larger. It was no longer a man; it was a giant, an ogre, a colossal ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... translate the Koran, or build a new Saint Paul's, there would have been many chances of success; for, once moved, her will, like a battering-ram, would knock down the obstacles her wits could not surmount. John believed in her most heartily, and showed it, as he answered, ...
— A Modern Cinderella - or The Little Old Show and Other Stories • Louisa May Alcott
... we decided that at the next division we would throw our feet for grub and make a rush back to our ice-boxes. We arrived in the town of Green River late in the afternoon, but too early for supper. Before meal-time is the worst time for "battering" back-doors; but we put on our nerve, swung off the side-ladders as the freight pulled into the yards, and made a run for the houses. We were quickly separated; but we had agreed to meet in the ice-boxes. I had bad luck at first; but in the end, with a couple of "hand-outs" poked into my ...
— The Road • Jack London
... I'm determined to do it; so that every one may pursue his own path, let no one be bringing any of his business in this street; for my fist is a balista, my arm is my catapulta, my shoulder a battering-ram; then against whomsoever I dart my knee, I shall bring him to the ground. I'll make all persons to be picking up their teeth [1], whomsoever I shall ...
— The Captiva and The Mostellaria • Plautus
... laughing. The thing was too absurd. Under cover of our animated talk the landlord must have bolted us in. The bars made the window no use. A skilled burglar might have beaten those bolts, and a battering-ram would, no doubt, have smashed the door; we had neither ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... the besieged was unshaken; bread was failing, and yet they would not hear of surrender. At length, after a year and a half of sufferings heroically borne, in the eleventh year of Zedekiah, the eleventh month, and the fourth day of the month, a portion of the city wall fell before the attacks of the battering-rams, and the Chaldaean army entered by the breach. Zedekiah assembled his remaining soldiers, and took counsel as to the possibility of cutting his way through the enemy to beyond the Jordan; escaping by night ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 8 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... the attacks became less frequent. The schooners manoeuvring in the river poured broadsides into the Indian villages, battering down the flimsy wigwams. Pontiac moved his camp from the mouth of Parent's Creek to a position nearer Lake St Clair, out of range of their guns, and turned his thoughts to contrive some means of destroying the troublesome vessels. He had learned from the French of the attempt with fire-ships ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... dropped her anchor when they opened upon her with muskets. All hands were ordered under cover, and for two days were kept closely confined below. The bullets, which constantly whistled over the deck, did no damage beyond cutting down the flag—which, however was promptly hoisted again—and battering up the officers' rooms on the quarter-deck, which were not iron-clad. Several attempts were made to dislodge the rebels, but, as usual, without success. On the third day, however, a heavy firing up the river, in the direction of Alexandria, announced that the expedition was returning, and the ...
— Frank on the Lower Mississippi • Harry Castlemon
... of the armistice dumbfounded the General. Instead of battering Fort Niagara and attacking Sackett's Harbour, he had to order Procter to cancel the expedition for the relief of Fort Wayne, in the Wabash country, and himself hurry on to Fort George. At Chippewa he was received with wild welcome by the river residents and the populace from the countryside. ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... While the battering Balls, Did assault the strong Walls, Of Cork and the sweet Trumpets sounded; She did bravely advance, Where by unhappy Chance, This young Female, young ...
— Wit and Mirth: or Pills to Purge Melancholy, Vol. 5 of 6 • Various
... sister-charioteer. Desperate of flight, nor daring to advance, Aghast, and shuddering at the lifted lance, He falters. Then AEneas poised at last His spear, and hurled it, as he marked his chance. Less loud the stone from battering engine cast, Less loud through ether bursts ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... manoeuvred smartly enough to take advantage of leads that opened and closed. This state of affairs continued throughout the 16th. That night a heavy swell was rolling under the ice and the ship had a rough time. One pointed floe ten or twelve feet thick was steadily battering, with a three-feet send, against the starboard side, and fenders only partially deadened the shock. "It is no use butting against this pack with steam-power," wrote Stenhouse. "We would use all our meagre supply of coal in reaching the limit of the ice in sight, and then we would ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... anticipating the move, had shifted her berth as soon as the waning light enabled her to do so without being seen. She could not therefore be made out; which was the more unfortunate because, although only pierced twice in the morning, her plating on the exposed side had been much loosened by the battering she received. One XI-inch shot only found her as the fleet went by, and that killed and wounded several of her people. All Farragut's fleet, accompanied by the ram Sumter,[13] detached for this service by Flag-Officer Davis, passed down ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... a huge mass of iron, to form an anchor, was drawn out of the furnace; then down came the hammer with thundering strokes, beating and battering it until it was forced into the required shape, while the sparks flying out on all sides made us retreat to a ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... hand entrance, opening into a great bare vaulted room, the cellar of the East wing, from which issued a maze of corridors and stair-cases. A number of huge packing cases stood about, and upon these the Red Guards and soldiers fell furiously, battering them open with the butts of their rifles, and pulling out carpets, curtains, linen, porcelain plates, glassware.... One man went strutting around with a bronze clock perched on his shoulder; another found a plume of ostrich feathers, which he stuck in his hat. The looting ...
— Ten Days That Shook the World • John Reed
... threshold, Gerwazy stopped, once more eyed his foes, and deliberated for an instant, whether to retire under arms, or with new weapons to seek fortune in war. He chose the second; already he had swung back the bench for a blow, like a battering-ram; already, with head bent down, breast thrust forward, and foot uplifted, he was about to attack—when he caught sight of the Seneschal, and felt terror in ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... loud commotion, like the rushing of ocean, Grew momently more and more, And strokes as of a battering ram Did shake ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... between the shell-torn houses, and along the littered streets, where men and women and children, thin and haggard and listless with hunger, and the deadly inertia of long confinement, pass and repass as indifferently as though no guns were battering and growling from the low grey hills south and east, and the incessant rattle of rifle-fire were the innocent expenditure of blank cartridge incidental to a ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... My wife near crazy with ear-ache; the rain descending in white crystal rods and playing hell's tattoo, like a tutti of battering rams, on our sheet-iron roof; the wind passing high overhead with a strange dumb mutter, or striking us full, so that all the huge trees in the paddock cried aloud, and wrung their hands, and brandished their vast arms. The horses stood in the shed like things stupid. The sea ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 25 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... in their rear); ere long the uproar falls upon their ears; a fiendish bellower cries, "Silence, in the King's name!" to no purpose, it would be an easier task to hale apart old beavers than one of these. But when Lucifer's veterans dashed into their midst, the growls, and blows, and battering lessened. "Silence in Lucifer's name!" roared the devil a second time. "What is this," demanded the King, "and who are these?" "Nothing, sire, but that in the general confusion, the drovers came across the cuckolds, and set a-butting to prove whose horns were the harder; ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... still battering on the roof with a sound like the violent jingling together of tin cans, She listened to it with a dull wonder. The violence of it would have made a deeper impression upon her had she been suffering less. But she felt as one immersed in an evil dream which clogged all her senses save ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... retorted Wright, kicking the bar with his foot, "nine feet of it, by Master Percy's computation, and, I warrant, as many years will be required to see the further side. Try it, good Catesby, 'tis a nut a giant could scarce crack, though he wield a battering ram." ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... summons Messire de Crevecoeur answered knightly, that Clermont he would hold till death or rescue, so we set to battering his house about his ears. But, alas! after four days a sentinel of ours saw, too late, an English knight with nine men slip through the vines, under cover of darkness, and win a postern gate in the town wall. ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... an arm up, when he was smothered in a rain of stinging, vindictive battering. The blows came from all about him, a furious attack against which he was powerless to do anything but endeavor to protect his head. No visible person, he said solemnly, was near him. Jannie was at the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... could be no question for her of improvement, of strengthening. She was faced with the fact until the war should end she had to do with what she had, and that the things she had formerly counted on importing would be replaced by guns and shells, to be used, as it turned out, in battering Russian property that happened to be in enemy hands. She even learned that she had to develop gun-making and shell-making at home, at the expense of those other industries which to some small extent might have helped her to keep going. And, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome
... spot, passing hundreds of school children on the way, to study the situation. When I reached the front of the corral and stood still to look at the fence, the boar immediately rushed for me. He came straight on, angry and terrible, and charged the wire like a living battering-ram. He repeated these charges until I became fearful of an outbreak, and decided to try to make him afraid to repeat them. Procuring from the bear dens, a pike pole with a stout spike in the end, I received the next ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... Switzerland all closely packed together—houses at the most three stories high, with gabled roofs, ground-floors a step or two below the level of the roadway, and huge arched doors studded with great iron nails, and looking strong enough to resist a battering-ram. Above the doors, in the case of the better houses, were the painted escutcheons of the residents, and crests were also often blazoned on the window-panes. The shops, too, and more especially the inns, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... completed in the evening, with ranjows stuck round the outer defence. It was excellently situated for battering Balidah; but Balidah, I fear, is too loosely constructed to be battered to the best advantage. During the day the Sow and Singe Dyaks joined, to the amount of about 150 men, and other tribes have been gradually dropping in; so that altogether ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... for long voyages, a blue-water sailor and all it means; but battering back and forward round the Horn with my deck cluttered up by prospectors and shore crews the mates would have to slam into the rigging—!" His exclamation refused every face of such a possibility. She understood his necessity ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... will plague them both, 260 Whose air cries, Arm! whose very look's an oath: The captain's honest, sirs, and that's enough, Though his soul's bullet, and his body buff. He spits fore-right; his haughty chest before, Like battering rams, beats open every door: And with a face as red, and as awry, As Herod's hangdogs in old tapestry, Scarecrow to boys, the breeding woman's curse, Has yet a strange ambition to look worse; Confounds the civil, keeps the rude in awe, Jests like a licensed ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... liberal education. Now, there you are, you see. Take Prescott. He's never crocked a man seriously in his life. I don't count being winded. That's absolutely an accident. Well, there you are, then. Prescott weighs thirteen-ten, and he's all muscle, and he goes like a battering-ram. You'll own that. He goes as hard as he jolly well knows how, and yet the worst he has ever done is to lay a man out for a couple of minutes while he gets his wind back. Well, compare him with this Bargee man. ...
— Tales of St. Austin's • P. G. Wodehouse
... with fire the sanctuary; they have polluted on earth the tabernacle of thy name." And again, "O God, the gentiles have come into thine inheritance; thy holy temple have they defiled," &c. So that all the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... HEAVEN, to evacuate its streets, to disperse its population, to lay aside its employments, to burn its wealth, to renounce its vanities and pomp; and for what?—that he may enter in as the King of Glory; or after enforcing his threat with the battering-ram of logic, the grape-shot of rhetoric, and the crossfire of his double vision, reduce the British metropolis to a Scottish heath, with a few miserable hovels upon it, where they may worship God according to the root of the matter, and an old man with a blue ...
— The Spirit of the Age - Contemporary Portraits • William Hazlitt
... Why do you move with such a stateliness? Can you not hear them yonder like a storm, Battering the doors, and breaking thro' ...
— Becket and other plays • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... suddenly breaking off. "They heard you talking that last time, and you have locked the door against them? They are battering it down? Move something heavy, if you can, up against it—the bureau, anything to brace it. We'll be there directly. Come on, Walter. There isn't time to get around Broadway for that fixed post cop. We must ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... which they had secured in the stables. Passing again to the front of the house, Lecour saw the mob angrily tearing up garden benches and summerhouses for the same purpose. An active crowd besides, under the urging of Cliquet, was battering the main door with a beam. The fire, lit for his parchments was blazing merrily, and a man with a shock of matted hair, by a sudden impulse snatched a long brand and raised the cry of "Burn him up!" Others sprang forward to do the same, and fought for the blazing ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... had grasped the opportunity, that momentary respite the flare afforded, and was out of the brickmaker's sight below battering the door with the ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... and design I never knew it reach beyond the invention of some notable expedient, for the speedier ridding them of their Estate, (a devilish clog to Wit and Parts), than other grouling Mortals know, or battering half-a-dozen fair new Windows in a Morning after their debauch, whilst the dull unjantee Rascal they belong to is fast asleep. But I'll proceed no farther in their character, because that miracle of Wit ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... valiant Trojans, when they saw the sons Of Dares, one beside his chariot slain, And one by flight preserved, through all their host 35 Felt consternation. Then Minerva seized The hand of fiery Mars, and thus she spake. Gore-tainted homicide, town-battering Mars! Leave we the Trojans and the Greeks to wage Fierce fight alone, Jove prospering whom he will, 40 So shall we not provoke our father's ire. She said, and from the fight conducted forth The impetuous Deity, whom on the side She seated of Scamander deep-embank'd.[3] And now ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... large yellow pine, hoping that it might protect me from at least the smaller outbounding boulders. For a minute or two the shocks became more and more violent—flashing horizontal thrusts mixed with a few twists and battering, explosive, upheaving jolts,—as if Nature were wrecking her Yosemite temple, and getting ready to build a ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... were battering at the door of the passage in which they were imprisoned. Perhaps he would still have time to reach his motor before they succeeded in breaking down the door. Nevertheless, he preferred to take the same road as Florence and Sauverand, which gave him the ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... to keep out sand or water, the girls could not determine. It might even have been designed to hide the keyhole, but former use, or the battering which the box had received, had loosened and disclosed the metal slide, and Betty's quick eyes had discerned ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Ocean View - Or, The Box That Was Found in the Sand • Laura Lee Hope
... from the face of a husband strolling on forbidden grounds, nor from the spying eyes of a jealous wife. Life is mine again, and I will enjoy it; yes I enjoy it. I will enjoy it like fragrant wine pressed to our lips in a golden goblet, sparkling with diamonds. Ah, how they are hammering and battering in the anteroom! Every stroke of theirs is a note of the glorious song of my liberty. The furniture of my household is gone; the pictures and looking-glasses are all gone—gone. The past and every thing reminding ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... came tramping up the stairs and past Irving's closed door. Soon also a racketing began in the corridors; Irving suspected an intention to bait him still further; it was probably Westby once again. He waited until the noise became too great to be ignored—shouting and battering and scuffling; then he ...
— The Jester of St. Timothy's • Arthur Stanwood Pier
... bullets on several premises. Shrapnel has no battering force. Its object is to kill or disable men. It can do no harm to walls. Its employment in this instance was a wanton act intended to inspire terror and doubtless augmented the loss of life among ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... for the moment, whether Myka was in the way or not, spun the tankette halfway round, and pulled the throttle out as far as it would go. Its engine clamoring, its rigid tracks transmitting every shock and battering them, the tankette flogged forward through the brush. There was gunfire booming behind them, and there were ...
— The Barbarians • John Sentry
... the very foot of the defences. The new towers, which had replaced the burnt ones, were brought up close to the walls, and plied the new machines which Cyprian and Phoenician engineers had constructed for their new master.[14399] The battering of the wall began. Engines moreover of a large size were placed on horse-transports furnished by Sidon, and on the heavier and clumsier of the triremes, and with these attacks were made upon the ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson
... ovoids seemed at first consideration to be an impossible task. They were carefully guarded far in the rear of the attacking groups. Blake knew that he had scarcely a chance in a hundred of battering his way through the ...
— Zehru of Xollar • Hal K. Wells
... mystery, is lifted now, and it reveals . . . what? Hougoumont invested—Brave Baring there with a handful of men—English, German, Brunswickians—making a last stand with ten rounds of ammunition left to them per man, and the French engineers already battering in the gates of the enclosing wall that surrounds the chateau and chapel of Goumont: the farm of La Haye Sainte taken—Ney there with his regiment of cuirassiers and five battalions of the Old Guard: and the English lines on ...
— The Bronze Eagle - A Story of the Hundred Days • Emmuska Orczy, Baroness Orczy
... outlook for Washington's allies in the war darkened, when in April, 1782, Rodney won his crushing victory and carried De Grasse a prisoner to England. France's ally Spain had been besieging Gibraltar for three years, but in September, 1782, when the great battering-ships specially built for the purpose began a furious bombardment, which was expected to end the siege, the British defenders destroyed every ship, and after that Gibraltar was safe. These events naturally stiffened the backs of the British in negotiating peace. Spain ...
— Washington and his Comrades in Arms - A Chronicle of the War of Independence • George Wrong
... a beam, he ran to a neighbouring pile of timber, and, with the aid of some others, returned bearing a battering-ram, which would soon have dashed in the door, if it had not been opened by Bacri himself, who had returned just in time to attempt to save his house ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... consequently he bolted and barred the gate on the inside, and hastily erected a barricade under an arch leading to the apartments of the abbe. Just as these preparations were complete, Esprit Seguier caught sight of a heavy beam of wood lying in a ditch; this was raised by a dozen men and used as a battering-ram to force in the gate, which soon showed a breach. Thus encouraged, the workers, cheered by the chants of their comrades, soon got the gate off the hinges, and thus the outside court was taken. The crowd then loudly demanded the release of the ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the hooks were fixed into the jambs, and the doors were hung in triumph. Solid doors they were too; not slender things with wooden panels, but thick iron-plated affairs somewhat resembling the armour of a modern ship-of-war, and fitted to defy the ocean's most powerful battering-rams. ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... his suspicions were aroused, and he began at last to perceive the trick that had been played upon him; so he climbed over a low wall that divided the alley from the street, and hied him to the door of the house, which he knew very well. There for a long while he stood shouting and battering the door till it shook on its hinges; but all again to no purpose. No doubt of his misadventure now lurking in his mind, he fell to bewailing himself, saying:—"Alas! in how brief a time have I lost five ...
— The Decameron, Volume I • Giovanni Boccaccio
... matters worse, leaks were causing anxiety. Water was gushing in pretty freely near the water-line aft. The crew had frequently remarked in the course of the morning of January 3rd how much looser the boat had become during the last few days. Her planks had received no ordinary battering. It had been Bass's intention to strike for the northern coast of Van Diemen's Land, which he supposed to be at no very great distance. He may at this time have been under the impression that he was in a deep gulf. As a matter of fact, the nearest point southward ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... Even with this extended neck the giraffe's legs are so exceedingly long that he is obliged to spread his front feet when he wishes to reach the ground with his head. The elephant has pursued exactly the reverse plan. Using his tremendous head as a battering ram in fighting, and using his enormous tusks both in battle and in uprooting young trees, a lengthened neck is absolutely out of the question. Furthermore his front teeth have grown so prodigiously that they would interfere with his getting his ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker
... of the spot where the battle between the ape and the natives was raging, but I dared not risk a shot in that quarter, for the great brute, still roaring horribly, was completely hemmed in by a crowd of natives, all battering the huge, hairy body with big lumps of coral, and the movements of the combatants were so quick that I was more likely to hit a black than the beast; but the second ape was now in shallow water and on the point ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... about the head of certain tables, actually clinging to would-be going fellows, in unbecoming and unaccustomed "cits," while he was forcibly restrained by none. So, finally, waving his natty straw to table after table, he passed on to the broad-arched entrance, the clamor of voice and the battering of the old time iron stool beginning in kindly and cordial fashion—they would not send a dog away, those big-hearted fellows, without some show of friendliness—yet in all that array he numbered not one ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... great organ pealed out so loud and thundering, it fairly made me tremble; and all the more, when I remembered me that, even in the stillness of that dead-cold weather, I had heard no sound of little battering hands upon the windowglass, although the phantom child had seemed to put forth all its force; and, although I had seen it wail and cry, no faintest touch of sound had fallen upon my ears. Whether I remembered all this at the very moment, I do not know; the great organ sound had ...
— Curious, if True - Strange Tales • Elizabeth Gaskell
... sworn to observe Belgium's neutrality, and at that very moment her guns were battering the little nation to bits. Was that just a European affair, or did it ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... on his lips, for at that instant a rapid stride was heard without—a momentary scuffle—voices in altercation;—the door gave way as if a battering ram had forced it;—not so much thrown forward as actually hurled into the room, the body of Dykeman fell heavily, like a dead man's, at the very feet of Lord Lilburne—and Philip Vaudemont stood in ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 5 • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... grasp the hope I hold Of saintdom; and to clamour, mourn, and sob, Battering the gates of heaven with storms of prayer. Have mercy, Lord, and take away my sin. Let this avail, just, dreadful, mighty God, This not be all in vain, that thrice ten years Thrice multiplied by superhuman pangs, * * * * * * A sign between the meadow ...
— The Hermits • Charles Kingsley
... means it. But where's the harm, if he likes it? Any one who objects to Whiggery should be glad when the Whigs don't put up the strongest fellow. They won't overturn the Constitution with our friend Brooke's head for a battering ram." ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... shore to contest his landing, and shouting shrilly to him to be off, for it was long past Lock-out Time. This, with much brandishing of their holly-leaves; and also a company of them carried an arrow which some boy had left in the Gardens, and this they were prepared to use as a battering-ram. ...
— Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... his donjon-keep with as gallant a troop of Christian bandits as ever stepped in Italy. He had his sword, Excalibur, with him. His beautiful countess and her young daughter waved him a tearful adieu from the battering-rams and buttresses of the fortress, and he galloped away with ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the defence of Amida, and the works of Sapor were more than once destroyed by the fire of the Romans. But the resources of a besieged city may be exhausted. The Persians repaired their losses, and pushed their approaches; a large preach was made by the battering-ram, and the strength of the garrison, wasted by the sword and by disease, yielded to the fury of the assault. The soldiers, the citizens, their wives, their children, all who had not time to escape through the opposite ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... in all the neighboring region, are plainly visible the terrible effects of the great freshet of October 1st, 1856. We were told that, in the vicinity of this fall, neither the heavy rain nor the rushing waters could for a time be heard, only the rattling and battering of stones, as if the Titans had again taken to pelting the poor earth with whatever of rock and bowlder they could lay their hands upon. The State dam at the outlet of the lower Au Sable broke down, and the freed lake rushed out through the valley, over the meadows, carrying away bridges, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... trees and scrambling madly over stones and bushes he hammered up the slope of Lookout Point and disappeared in a cloud of dirt, but as Hardy drifted around the bend and floated toward the whirlpool there was a crash of brush from down the river and Creede came battering through the trees to the shore. Taking down his reata as he rode he leapt quickly off his horse and ran out on the big flat rock from which they had often fished together. At his feet the turbid current rolled ponderously against the solid wall of rock and, turning back upon ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... night the moon full they assaulted my fort with huge halloo and many shot, battering my door with a great log for ram. But I shooting one and wounding others they ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... become tiresome to watch had not both horse and rider soon showed effects of the work. Every leap of Rickety's was shorter. Sweat shone on his thick body. He was killing Arizona but he was also breaking his own heart. Arizona weakened fast under that continual battering at the base of his brain. His eyes rolled. He no longer pretended to ride straight up, but clung to pommel and cantle. A trickle of blood ran from his mouth. Marianne turned away only to find that mild old Corson was crying: "Watch his head! When it begins to roll then ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... done soon after, the militia-men proceeded in a body to the gaol, and demanded their comrade; and compliance with the demand being refused, they seized a long piece of timber that lay in the street, near the prison, and this they used as a battering-ram against the door of the gaol, which they soon forced off its hinges. I was sitting in the back dining-room at my house, No. 1, Lady Mead, and I witnessed the transaction myself. About the third effort with the battering-ram, each of which was cheered by the populace, I saw the ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 2 • Henry Hunt
... of the car—a half-mile north—and the horses in the stable. He must do something. He would bring the car into the garage. It was relieving to hurry across the dripping grass toward the barn. How wonderful it was to keep the body doing something when the breath in him was short, his heart battering like an engine with burned-out bearings, his brain in insane chaos. As he applied a match to the lantern he thought of his wife again, and his ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... like flails, making head-long, bull-like rushes, the Butterfly Man managed to send him sprawling again. Then he himself caught one well-aimed blow, and went staggering; but before slow-moving and raging Jan could follow up his advantage, with a lightning-like quickness the Butterfly Man made a battering ram of his head, caught Jan in the pit of the stomach, and even as he fell Jan went down, too, and went down underneath. Desperately, fighting like a fiend, John Flint kept him down. And presently using every wrestler's trick that he knew, and bringing to bear every ounce of ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... suddenly Stoddard discovered something that gave him a clue. It was a barred door, within a closet, covered over with clothes and uniforms so as to be fairly well concealed. On battering it in, they found that it led into ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... Fenian scares and labor strikes, when the practical joker [346] and mauvais sujets, bent on a lark, would occasionally take possession, after night-fall, of some of the chief city thoroughfares, and organize a masquerade, battering unmercifully with their heavy lanterns. Captain Pinguet's hommes de guet,—the night patrol—long before Lord Durham's blue-coated "peelers" were thought of, the historic statue would disappear sometimes ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine
... that Heppner was entitled to a little something as a memorial of the plot that failed. So, dodging the bull-like rush of McGurvin, he jumped at Heppner, and his doubled fist shot out like a battering-ram. ...
— Frank Merriwell, Junior's, Golden Trail - or, The Fugitive Professor • Burt L. Standish
... the hall. A more sorrowful, heart-rending sight mortal eyes have seldom seen. The father, the mother, the saint-like sister, the innocent and helpless children, had found but a momentary refuge from cannibals, who were roaring like wolves around the hall, and battering at the doors to break in and slake their vengeance with blood. It was seriously apprehended that the mob would make a rush, and sprinkle the blood of the royal family upon the very floor of the sanctuary where they ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... about its deeds with extraordinary unction. After a while Barnes asked a Roman to describe the battle of Cannae. Whereupon the Romans hurled their copies of Wayland's Moral Science at the enemy. Then the Carthaginians made a battering-ram out of a bench and jammed it among the Romans, who retaliated with a volley of books, slates and chewed paper-balls. Barnes concluded that the battle of Cannae had been sufficiently illustrated, and he tried to stop it; but the ...
— Elbow-Room - A Novel Without a Plot • Charles Heber Clark (AKA Max Adeler)
... thieves. The bullets began to fly; fortunately the gathering darkness protected us. The crowd grew blacker, and more dense and turbulent. Then a number of stalwart fellows appeared, bearing a long beam, which they proposed to use as a battering-ram, to burst open the door, which had ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... lords clash with each other like powerful battering rams, and for what? Perhaps for undisputed possession of a city or two, a matter they must be ashamed of did they but call to mind what they have received from God. They would be constrained to exclaim: "What are we doing that we injure one another—we who are all baptized in one name, ...
— Epistle Sermons, Vol. III - Trinity Sunday to Advent • Martin Luther
... Rome the road parted company with the shore, and we turned inland over the plain. The night came on with drifting showers, which descended in torrents, lashing the naked plain, and battering our vehicle with the force and noise of a waterspout. And though at length the moon rose, and looked out at times from the cloud, she had nothing to show us but houseless, treeless desolation; and, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... with the enemy, he selected this plain with the eye of a soldier, his right resting on the river, and a ravine being in front. At 11 at night I joined him with the reserve, under General Ripley, our field and battering train, and corps of artillery under Major Hindman. General Porter arrived the next morning with a part of the New York and Pennsylvania volunteers, and some of the warriors of the ...
— The Medallic History of the United States of America 1776-1876 • J. F. Loubat
... grazed. The chariot tript and flew, and all was mazed In turmoil. Up went wheel-box with a din, Where the rock jagged, and nave and axle-pin. And there—the long reins round him—there was he Dragging, entangled irretrievably. A dear head battering at the chariot side, Sharp rocks, and rippled flesh, and a voice that cried: "Stay, stay, O ye who fattened at my stalls, Dash me not into nothing!—O thou false Curse of my Father!—Help! Help, whoso can, An innocent, innocent and stainless man!" Many there were ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... the circles of two towns. Here come your groceries, country; your rations, countrymen! Nor is there any man so independent on his farm that he can say them nay. And here's your pay for them! screams the countryman's whistle; timber like long battering-rams going twenty miles an hour against the city's walls, and chairs enough to seat all the weary and heavy-laden that dwell within them. With such huge and lumbering civility the country hands a chair to the ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... cities into the air. [41] A circumstance that distinguishes the siege of Constantinople is the reunion of the ancient and modern artillery. The cannon were intermingled with the mechanical engines for casting stones and darts; the bullet and the battering-ram [411] were directed against the same walls: nor had the discovery of gunpowder superseded the use of the liquid and unextinguishable fire. A wooden turret of the largest size was advanced on rollers this portable magazine of ammunition and fascines was protected by a threefold covering ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... was about 20 miles per hour, with a pressure of from 40 to 50 lb. The rails were light; they were jointed in the chairs, which were generally carried on stone blocks, thus affording most excellent anvils for the battering to pieces of the ends of the rails—that is to say, for the destruction of the very parts where they were most vulnerable. The engines were not competent to draw heavy trains, and it was a common practice to ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 312, December 24, 1881 • Various
... melted away like a mist, and the prince saw an army besieging a city; he heard a general haranguing his soldiers to urge them on, and the soldiers shouting and battering the walls; but shortly, when the city was well-nigh taken, he saw some men secretly giving gold among the soldiers, so much of it that they threw down their arms to pick it up, and said that the walls were so strong that they could not throw them down. "O powerful gold!" thought the prince; ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... then unexpectedly from another quarter—there was a sudden battering sound. Something went past them through the branches with a crashing noise. It was terrific, the way it smashed and clattered overhead, making a clapping rattle that died away into the distance with strange swiftness. They jumped; their hearts ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... end of the winter, 1914-15, she was still in the possession of a large portion of Galicia. But the Germans were preparing a battering ram which their generals thought irresistible. Their plan now was to deliver so hard a blow at the Russian that he would be forced to yield a separate peace. Von Mackensen formed his unprecedented phalanx of soldiery and of artillery in Galicia and destroying ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume I (of 8) - Introductions; Special Articles; Causes of War; Diplomatic and State Papers • Various
... no time for fright. He began to pull himself up by the rope, hand over hand. At the same time he was acutely conscious of many things. The Indians were yelling like demoniacs and battering at the gate. In the garden on the other side, the old priest was shouting Ave Marias in a high quavering voice. A breeze had sprung up and Roldan felt the chill in it. And he felt the weight of the cassock. The heavy woollen garment fatigued his ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... outside. About a dozen of the horsemen were posted around the house; but the remainder, dismounted, had gone to the edge of the woods, and were felling a well-grown sapling, with the evident intention of using it as a battering-ram to break ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 96, October 1865 • Various
... the muzzle of the hose, and Big Ivan of the Bridge let go of the rope and sprang at him. The fist of the great Russian went out like a battering ram; it struck the steward between the eyes, and he dropped upon the deck. He lay like one dead, the muzzle of the hose ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... slow weary draggings of the three ponderous strangers along the encumbered deck. Their stupidity or their resolution was so great, that they never went aside for any impediment. One ceased his movements altogether just before the mid-watch. At sunrise I found him butted like a battering-ram against the immovable foot of the foremast, and still striving, tooth and nail, to force the impossible passage. That these tortoises are the victims of a penal, or malignant, or perhaps a downright diabolical enchanter, seems in nothing more likely than in that strange infatuation of hopeless ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... evident that the barricade was no longer tenable, for the heavy pieces of furniture they had heaped up to oppose entrance, were completely hammered to fragments by poles brought up by the assailants, and used as battering-rams. The retreat was sounded; they all hastened to the other story, where the ladies were already placed, and the galley-slaves were soon in possession of the first floor— exasperated by the defence, mad with wine and ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat
... you laughed and danced," Josef continued, "a Russian army, unchallenged, passed your gates, and could have taken you all. Knowing that it had you safe when needed, it pushed on to the bigger game, the capture of your capital. At daybreak it began battering down those walls you ...
— Trusia - A Princess of Krovitch • Davis Brinton |
