"Parapet" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... valley to the east was a steep hill on which were a few houses—at the foot of the hill was a brook crossed by an antique bridge of a single arch. I directed my course to the bridge, and after looking over the parapet for a minute or two upon the water below, which was shallow and noisy, ascended a road which led up the hill: a few scattered houses were on each side. I soon reached the top of the hill, where were some more houses, those ...
— Wild Wales - Its People, Language and Scenery • George Borrow
... followed, until Vera at length halted before a house somewhere in the neighborhood of Grosvenor Square. It was a fine, large corner mansion, but so far as Gurdon could see there was not a light in the place from parapet to basement. He could see Vera going up the steps; he was close enough to hear the sound of an electric bell; then a light blazed in the hall, and the door was opened. So far as Gurdon could see, ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... too closely at these. They had addressed them and then put them in their pockets, hoping that if they were killed they might be discovered. Some had been finished just before the order to go over the parapet. But the curious thing was that these were sent home, with a few words in a covering note saying they were alive and well, as a sort of keepsake. In those written after arrival in hospital a sense of gratitude to God was very ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... scared. So up we went. My word, boys, but it was blowing! We worked for half an hour when the gale got under my coat and blew it open like a sail. In a fraction of a second I was being driven breathless to the parapet. ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... house. In the sixth house Dr. Weedon Butler, father of the Headmaster of Harrow, kept a school, which was very well known for about thirty years. In the next block we have the famous Queen's House, marked by the little statuette of Mercury on the parapet. It is supposed to have been named after Catherine of Braganza, but beyond some initials—C. R. (Catherine Regina)—in the ironwork of the gate, there seems no fact in support of this. The two Rossettis, Meredith, and Swinburne came here in 1862, but soon parted company, and ...
— Chelsea - The Fascination of London • G. E. (Geraldine Edith) Mitton
... be a bold man who faces the fire from our batteries, I think," said Montcalm, looking with a calm complacency upon the animated scene; and then he turned and pointed backwards behind him to Cape Diamond, fringed with its palisades and capped by parapet and redoubt. ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... few days afterwards, he found his house beset with devils. Some of them were sitting on the chimneypots, kicking up their legs in the air; while others were playing at leapfrog, on the very edge of the parapet. His study was so filled with them that he found it difficult to make his way to his desk. When, at last, he had elbowed his way through them, he found his book open, and the student lying dead upon the floor. He saw immediately how the mischief had been done; and, dismissing all the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... fatalist," he went on. "Ah, you laugh at me! My people must have been owners of the second sight, I have often told you. Humor me, Will, bear with me. Don't question me too deep. Your flag, Will, I know will be planted on the last parapet of life—you were born to succeed. For myself, I still must remember what my mother told me—something about the burden which would be too heavy, the trail which would be long. ...
— The Magnificent Adventure - Being the Story of the World's Greatest Exploration and - the Romance of a Very Gallant Gentleman • Emerson Hough
... forward at once, but a flail drove them right and left, and the unknown knight had mounted the parapet amid a shower of execrations. "If you are the real Shovel," the lady said to him, "you can tell me how this proceeds, 'I love my dear father and my dear mother—' ...
— Sentimental Tommy - The Story of His Boyhood • J. M. Barrie
... and above; the way up is by the campaniles, and in going up one has to use the platform, where the drums of the four domes are, and this platform has a parapet in front, and none of these domes communicate with the church, but they ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... front along a terrace, partly paved, partly gravelled, partly bordered with flowers and choice shrubs. This elevation descended by three several flights of steps, placed in its centre and at the extremities, into what might be called the garden proper, and was fenced along the top by a stone parapet with a heavy balustrade, ornamented from space to space with huge grotesque figures of animals seated upon their haunches, among which the favourite bear was repeatedly introduced. Placed in the middle of the terrace ...
— Waverley, Or 'Tis Sixty Years Hence, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... pause. MAIA rises and leans on the parapet, over the woods, now drowned in twilight, to the sea, which still faintly glitters. She turns and comes back to the other two, ...
— Hypolympia - Or, The Gods in the Island, an Ironic Fantasy • Edmund Gosse
... direction; that as soon as his roving eyes came back from their unhurried survey of the audience, he would deliver the fatal blow. She quickly knotted the corner of her robe to the arm of her chair, squirmed out of it, and threw it over the parapet. The robe of a Roman lady was sleeveless and seamless, rather like a very long pair of very thin blankets, all in one piece. Tied, as she had tied it, by one corner, it made a sort of rope as it hung. She had acted so quickly that no one noticed her, not even Manlia, who sat next her, staring ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... time they were talking, the couple they were speaking of were standing leaning on the parapet of the wall by the river. They met there every evening when there was no ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... shadow leaped far out into the night. Splash! "Society, which, in the sacred names of Law and Charity, forbade the father to throw his child over Vauxhall Bridge, at a time when he was alike unconscious of life and death, has at last driven him over the parapet ...
— Volume 10 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... corner. What a change! All is light and brilliancy. The hum of many voices issues from that splendid gin-shop which forms the commencement of the two streets opposite; and the gay building with the fantastically ornamented parapet, the illuminated clock, the plate-glass windows surrounded by stucco rosettes, and its profusion of gas-lights in richly-gilt burners, is perfectly dazzling when contrasted with the darkness and dirt we have just left. The interior is even gayer ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... breastwork and a guard. There were four ravines which issued from the very thick woods, crossing the road, and distant from each other two hundred yards or so. On their banks he made his men fell trees and build them into breastworks—"a kind of parapet extending into the woods some distance." To prevent the American cannon from bearing on these breastworks, he felled trees and bush, covering a large stretch of ground with obstructions in the front. The breastwork on the front-line formed an obtuse angle at the right of the road, and extended ...
— An Account Of The Battle Of Chateauguay - Being A Lecture Delivered At Ormstown, March 8th, 1889 • William D. Lighthall
... throwing up a breastwork round the camp, which might assist him in repelling any attack of the Frenchmen. "Though my countrymen will kill me if they discover I have warned you, I would rather die than that you should be taken by surprise," exclaimed Pierre, as he was helped over the parapet. ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston
... stretched first one strong foreleg and then the other to its furthest reach, shooting again his claws, conscious with a faint sense of well-being of those tightly-strung muscles rippling beneath his loose striped skin. They would be in action presently. And, as he did so, there looked over the parapet six feet above him, at the top of the trellis up which presently he would ascend, another resolute little head and blunt-spired cars, and a soft indescribable voice spoke a gentle insult. It was his friend ... and, he knew well ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... was an enclosed one, i.e., had parapet all around, and embrassures in all directions, as if built to stand a siege even if entirely surrounded by the enemy. Our four guns were its whole armament however, fronting the river and its destroyed bridge ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... and, planting his ladder in the ditch, he rushed up foremost. The ladder was full short; he called out in German to a soldier to reach his hand down, and the butt-end of a musket was dropped, which he grasped, and by this aid sprang to the parapet, and was seized. "Stop," he said, "there's a fellow below with my brandy-flask and portmanteau." The soldiers were Italians; they laughed, and hauled away at man after man of the mounting troop, calling alternately "brandy-flask!—portmanteau!" as each one raised a head above the parapet. "The ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... They were Life. The boy's heart beat at what he heard and saw. The couples were hilarious and unrefined. One wench, almost under his nose, gave her soldier a slap with such a remark as Pocket had never heard from a woman's lips before. He turned away, tingling, and leant upon the parapet of a bridge he had been in the act of crossing, and thought of school and ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... waters as they dashed over from fall to fall, and perceive the grey mist that rose from the abyss. As I sat absorbed in the scene, a venerable personage, evidently of the class of farmers in the neighbourhood, came to me, and, after the salutation of strangers, he seated himself upon the parapet by my side, and joined in conversation and anecdote of the scenes around. He agreed with me that Clyde was a lovely stream; but added, it was a bloody one. I felt shocked at such an epithet being applied to the object of my present admiration, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... the parapet, Black-robed against the marble tower; His singing gains or loses power ...
— Poems of West & East • Vita Sackville-West
... hard in the darkness of night to see that one so brown as he was white, but the bearers of the rifles were impressed by his forcible words and withdrew their weapons. Henry ran on, and, despite the burden of his two rifles, seized the top of the parapet with his hands and in a moment was over. As he disappeared on the inside, a rifle shot was fired from some point behind, and a bullet whistled where he had been. Henry alighted upon his feet and found facing him two men in buckskin, rifle in hand and ready for instant action. ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... be no use thrashing you," said Norman, laughing, as he leaned against the parapet of the bridge, and pinched the boy's ear. "There's nothing to be got ...
— The Daisy Chain, or Aspirations • Charlotte Yonge
... bong, from the violoncellos). The forked lightning quivers through the clouds in a zig-zag scream of violins—and look, look, look! as the frothing, roaring waves come rushing up the battlements, and over the reeling parapet, each hissing wave becomes a ghost, sends the gun-carriages rolling over the platform, and plunges howling ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... glanced back at his bound and gagged prisoners. They were immobile, helpless. He looked guiltily about. The great room was bare, silent. With almost furtive movements he opened the door leading to the terrace, stumbled out, and was leaning over the parapet, absorbed in the spectacle ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... and naked overhead, was here walled across by a dump of rolling stones, dangerously steep, and from twenty to thirty feet in height. A rusty iron chute on wooden legs came flying, like a monstrous gargoyle, across the parapet. It was down this that they poured the precious ore; and below here the carts stood to wait their lading, and carry it millward ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into Sienna marble. The plain cornice which characterizes the outer walls of the exhibit palaces here takes on a richer ornamentation to conform to the ornate treatment of the Court, while it retains the parapet of red Spanish tiles above. Between the cornice and the columns is a wide and richly decorated attic or frieze where much of the detail and color which help to make the charm of the ...
— The Architecture and Landscape Gardening of the Exposition • Louis Christian Mullgardt
... copied." Fergusson adds that the fashion set by Walpole soon found many followers both in church and house architecture, "and it is surprising what a number of castles were built which had nothing castellated about them except a nicked parapet and an occasional window in the form of a cross." That school of bastard Gothic illustrated by the buildings of Batty Langley, and other early restorers of the style, bears an analogy with the imitations of old English poetry ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... dark mass clearly silhouetted. Every few seconds, when a shell landed in the middle of the approaching columns, the sides of the column would bulge outward for an instant, then close in again. Meanwhile every man in our trenches stood on the firing-platform, head and shoulders above the parapet, with fixed bayonet and loaded rifle, waiting for the order to begin firing. Still the Turks came on, big, black, bewhiskered six-footers, reforming ranks and filling up their gaps with fresh men. Now they were only six hundred yards away, but still there was no order to open fire. It was uncanny. ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... old man," and as he spoke, Hubert Graham drew his arm away from the parapet over which he was leaning with book in hand, and turning round a frank, honest-looking face towards the boy who was questioning him, passed his hand over his eyes, and added, "What can have come to Uncle ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... There was, she felt, some remedy for it quite close at hand; but she did not know what it could be. If she leapt from a height she might lift this curious burden from her heart. She scrambled up on the stone parapet of the bridge and jumped back to earth; and he, because it was the kind of thing a boy might have done, took no notice. But she shivered because this tangible lump of misery was still within her. She must run about, or the beating of her heart would become an ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... the shorter ropes to his bed, and struggled through the shutter—an ungainly figure, for round his body was wound the immense rope necessary for the long descent. Once on the roof-platform he made his way along the parapet until he came to a new stove which he had been told marked the best spot for lowering the rope. He could hear the soldiers talking near at hand, but the fog made him invisible. Unrolling his rope, and fastening his rope ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol VIII • Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton, Eds.
... who answered to the name of Brook said nothing, but sat down on the parapet of the terrace, looking out over his shoulder to seaward. A few seconds later he threw away ...
— Adam Johnstone's Son • F. Marion Crawford
... voice, and all are so occupied by the sights that none pay any attention to her. The youngster who has been devoting all his time to the pranks of the Delight Makers jumps forward in his enthusiasm, and would have tumbled sheer over the low parapet encircling the roof had not one of the men standing near grasped his hair and pulled him back. It saved the boy's life, but the urchin is highly displeased at the informal manner in which he is restrained. He screams and struggles to free himself. Again the voice of the ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... methods. Gas officers and N.C.O.'s, after making a careful survey of the front line trench, organised the digging of deep narrow trenches at suitable places below the surface of the main trench, just underneath the parapet. The heavy gas cylinders, weighing as much as ninety pounds, were carried to the front line by the unfortunate infantry. The discharge valves were carefully protected by domes which screwed on to the cylinder. The latter were introduced into the holes, tops flush with the ...
— by Victor LeFebure • J. Walker McSpadden
... silk surely, drying her hair by the still hot sun of late afternoon. His whistle died upon the stiff air of the room; he walked cautiously another step nearer the window with a sudden impression that she was beautiful. Sitting on the stone parapet beside her was a cushion the same color as her garment and she was leaning both arms upon it as she looked down into the sunny areaway, where ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... walks; but what I thought about I know not. I often became quite absorbed, and once, whilst returning to school on the summit of the old fortifications round Shrewsbury, which had been converted into a public foot-path with no parapet on one side, I walked off and fell to the ground, but the height was only seven or eight feet. Nevertheless the number of thoughts which passed through my mind during this very short, but sudden and wholly unexpected fall, was astonishing, and ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... strained his eyes in vain to see where his good coin has gone. But the walls are there all right, though Phillip never saw them; crumbling a bit, yet still a sturdy barrier to the sea. A broad cement and grass promenade runs atop, wide as an American street. Thirty or forty feet below the low parapet sounds the deep, time-mellowed voice of the Pacific, as there rolls higher and higher up the rock ledges that great tide so different from the scarcely noticeable one at Colon. The summer breeze never dies down, never grows boisterous. On the landward side Panama lies mumbling ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... for the old—he had almost said the "real"—Cathedral, and with new directions, he started afresh. Leaving the well-built, agreeable, commonplace "Lower city" of the plain, he came to the bridge, and there, sitting on its parapet, near the ancient Cross, he feasted his longing eyes on that perfect vision of Mediaevalism. The high, arid, and almost isolated hill of the Cite stood before him, and at the top rose battlements and flanking towers in double range, bristling, war-like, and strong; ...
— Cathedrals and Cloisters of the South of France, Volume 1 • Elise Whitlock Rose
... feretory when the west front was restored in 1860 at a cost of L3000. The triangle of the gable is filled with tracery, the lower part of the central panels in which serve as a smaller square-headed six-light window above the parapet which crosses at the head of the great nine-light window. Buttresses assist in supporting the two towers, and lesser ones project to hide the sides of the porch, which, pierced by three doorways and crowned by ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Winchester - A Description of Its Fabric and a Brief History of the Episcopal See • Philip Walsingham Sergeant
... hundred yards, there was no rampart, or even intrenchment, but only small ditches, in the low and marshy grounds next the river, which, however, were dry at low water, yet the bottom remained muddy and slimy. Towards the river, no rampart, no batteries, no parapet, on either side appeared, and on the land-side he observed some high ground within the distance of one hundred and fifty or two hundred yards of the town; in which condition, the colonel was told by the engineer, the place had remained for above seventy years. To prevent ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... side proposed paying-off the French in their own coin by trying the effect of a few red-hot shot upon them. A make-shift furnace for heating the shot was accordingly hastily constructed, and the shot were heated before being discharged at the fort. This sun had the desired effect. The parapet of the tower was lined with mantlets constructed of bass junk for the purpose of protecting the gunners from splinters, and the red-hot shot striking these mantlets set them on fire, whereupon the French flag was hauled down, and the ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... ravine-like street of the Cowgate, the market was spanned by the lofty, crowded arches of George IV Bridge. This high-hung, viaduct thoroughfare, that carried a double line of buildings within its parapet, leaped the gorge, from the tall, old, Gothic rookeries on High Street ridge, just below the Castle esplanade. It cleared the roofs of the tallest, oldest houses that swarmed up the steep banks from the Cowgate, and ran on, by easy descent, to the main gateway of Greyfriars kirkyard ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... have no parapet, and are only just wide enough for the passage of the trains; which, in the event of the smallest accident, wound inevitably be plunged into the river. They are startling contrivances, and are most ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... touches another side of his theory. In itself, it is one of Browning's half-humorous poems; a pleasantly-composed piece, glancing here and glancing there, as a man's mind does when leaning over a hill-villa's parapet on a sunny morning in Florence. I have elsewhere quoted its beginning. It is a fine example of his nature-poetry: it creates the scenery and atmosphere of the poem; and the four lines with which the fourth verse closes ...
— The Poetry Of Robert Browning • Stopford A. Brooke
... stood but ten feet from a wall which was really but a stone face built against the cliff cut away by the architect. Above the cliff rose the kitchen garden, and from its lower path we looked over the wall's parapet upon the cisterns. There were two—a very large one, supplying the kitchen and the bathroom above the kitchen; and a small one, obviously fed by the other, and as obviously leading, by a pipe which I could trace, to the pantry. Now the big cistern stood almost full, and yet the small one, ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... not looking into the street. In a moment, however, we saw that there was a ladder leading up to the flat roof, and we swarmed up. These houses are all built with flat roofs made of clay like the walls. Some of them have a parapet about a foot high; some of them none at all. In better-class villages some of the parapets are a good deal higher; so that the women can sit there unobserved ...
— Through Russian Snows - A Story of Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow • G. A Henty
... what appears from below to be the summit, but is not, I found a large platform, improved by art, with remains of houses and cisterns, and surrounded at the edge by a parapet wall five feet thick,—except at the eastern end, opposite to the present town, where one-third of the hill has been left rising considerably higher, and therefore a wall ...
— Byeways in Palestine • James Finn
... called also Fort William after William Bent, was built of adobe or clay bricks. It was one hundred and fifty feet long and one hundred feet wide. Its walls were eighteen feet high, and six or seven feet thick at the base. The tops formed a parapet or walk. In two diagonally opposite corners were bastions of round towers, thirty feet high, swelling out so as to command the walls. The main gateway was thirty feet wide and closed by a pair of huge plank doors. Over the gateway there was a sentry box, floating the United States flag. The ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... out on the parapet of the terrace past Adelle. He stopped where the parapet touched the sheer wall of the building, looked up at the burning house which cast out great waves of heat, knocked off his shoes, threw down his coat, and dove as it seemed into ...
— Clark's Field • Robert Herrick
... about two o'clock, Mr. Bartholomew Malthus, of 16 Chepstow Place, Westbourne Grove, on his way home from a party at a friend's house, fell over the upper parapet in Trafalgar Square, fracturing his skull and breaking a leg and an arm. Death was instantaneous. Mr. Malthus, accompanied by a friend, was engaged in looking for a cab at the time of the unfortunate occurrence. As Mr. Malthus was paralytic, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 4 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... as we pass; they appear to bear their privations with indifference or philosophy. Yonder is a woman leaning over the parapet looking into the mud and water below; we speak to her, and she turns about and faces us. Then we realise that Hood's poem comes into our mind; we offer her a ticket for a "shelter," which she declines; we offer her food, but she will have none of it; she asks us to leave her, and ...
— London's Underworld • Thomas Holmes
... on and farther yet, I see the isles enchanted, bright With fretted spire and parapet, And gilded mosque and minaret, That glitter ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... possession of by the British authorities, she being obliged to take up her residence in a farm-house on her lands. The large mansion was converted into a fort, and surrounded by a deep ditch and a high parapet. A garrison of one hundred and fifty men, under Captain McPherson, was stationed here, the place ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 1 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... executioners hurling men with millstones round their necks into a raging river from the bridge which spans it. The first victim flounders half merged in the flood; a second plunges head foremost through the air; the third stands bent upon the parapet, his shoulders pressed down by the varlets on each side, at the very point of being flung to death by drowning. In another of these pictures a man seated upon the ground is being tortured by the breaking of his teeth, while a furious fellow holds a club suspended over him, in ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... side, leaning against the parapet, looking down at the water.... And from the water rose up Love, and Love fluttered down from the trees, and Love was borne along upon the night air. Ferdinand did not know what was happening to him; he felt Valentia by his side, and he drew closer ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... their instrument tables in the lower rooms of the official buildings—had seen Georg in their finders. The alarm was spreading. Lights were appearing everywhere.... The murmurs of gathering people ... excited crowds ... an absurd woman leaning down over a far-away parapet and screaming ... an ignorant, flustered street-guard on a nearby upper terrace swinging his pencil-ray down at Georg.... Fortunately ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... Quite as good was it, too, for their occasional heavy-gun practice with two or three huge, new-cast, big-breeched "hell-hounds," as Charlie and others called them, whose tapering black snouts lay out on the parapet's superior slope, fondled by the soft Gulf winds that came up the river, and snuffing them for ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... played, while lightly yet Her fingers fell, as roses bloom by bloom, I listened—dead within a mighty room Of some old palace where great casements let Gaunt moonlight in, that glimpsed a parapet Of statued marble: in the arrased gloom Majestic pictures towered, dim as doom, The dreams of Titian and of Tintoret. And then, it seemed, along a corridor, A mile of oak, a stricken footstep came. Hurrying, ...
— Weeds by the Wall - Verses • Madison J. Cawein
... all day in the quarry, laying and exploding dynamite. In the village below was a factory, its chimneys belching smoke; and creaking wagonettes sped backwards and forwards from the parapet. Above on the cliff stood huge sappy pines. All day the sky was grey and cloudy, and the smoke from the chimneys spread like a low pall over the earth. The dynamite exploded with a great detonation and expulsion ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... Eph had the guard in his battery, for vigilance was not relaxed, as the enemy, though beaten, had not yet retired entirely, and he was pacing up and down the parapet, and wishing he could go to sleep, after all the long excitement and labor, when he heard a challenge of a sentinel at the rear, and soon a written order was brought by an orderly, directing him to report at headquarters on the following ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume XIII, No. 51: November 12, 1892 • Various
... effective from below; they had looked studiously down upon the city and tried to distinguish its minarets and towers and ancient gates, they had viewed with proper quizzicalness the imprint in the stone parapet of the hoof of that blindfolded horse which the last of the Mamelukes, cornered and betrayed, had spurred from ...
— The Fortieth Door • Mary Hastings Bradley
... splendid view of the valley, over which the castle was built. The broad stone terrace connecting the towers, and fronting the main building was connected with a velvet lawn by a forest of hot-house plants, that clung around the stone parapet in a sumptuous garland of vines and flowers, that shed a soft and delicious fragrance over everything ...
— The Old Countess; or, The Two Proposals • Ann S. Stephens
... through low and small door-ways to other apartments. It is all haphazard, but exceedingly picturesque. You may find some of the family in every room, or they may be gathered, women and babies, on a roof which is protected by a parapet. At the time of our visit the men were all away at work in their fields. Notwithstanding the houses are only sun-dried bricks, and the village is without water or street commissioners, I was struck by the universal cleanliness. There ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... part of the earthworks, as if to go away. One of these was knocked over by a cannon-ball. His comrades dragged his body behind the earthen wall. By and by a tall, strong-looking man appeared on top of the parapet, and walked leisurely along, apparently giving directions. Harry heard from a citizen, who had a field-glass, the words, "Prescott, of Pepperell." Other men were now visible on the parapet, superintending the workers behind. And now the booming of the guns was answered by disrespectful ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... portable ladders. The thickness of the wall is about twenty feet at the base, and sixteen feet above. The top is destroyed, but the bas-reliefs and mural paintings (fig. 28) show that it must have been crowned with a continuous cornice, boldly projecting, furnished with a slight low parapet, and surmounted by battlements, which were generally rounded, but sometimes, though rarely, squared. The walk round the top of the ramparts, though diminished by the parapet, was still twelve or fifteen feet wide. It ran uninterruptedly along the ...
— Manual Of Egyptian Archaeology And Guide To The Study Of Antiquities In Egypt • Gaston Camille Charles Maspero
... what would you say if we went to war?" asked Morestal, calling to the old tramp, who was sitting on the parapet of the terrace, ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... of the forests deepened; a violet mist rose from the banks; the channel of the river became a perfect mirror, which softened the gorgeous colors which the heavens flung upon its surface. Madame wandered aimlessly around within the outer parapet of the citadel. Far out upon the river she saw the black hull of the Henri IV, the rigging weaving a delicate spider-web against the faded horizon of the south. A breeze touched madame's cheek, as soft a kiss ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... of that Voice of the river, the old, familiar arguments of desolation and despair. I leant over the parapet; in another moment I should have been gone, when I became aware that some one was standing near to me. I did not see the person because it was too dark. I did not hear him because of the raving of the wind. But I knew that ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... will they keep this up?" she asked, as they were ascending the parapet from which they could still see the moving mass and the flashing lights, weird amid the ...
— A Little Girl in Old Quebec • Amanda Millie Douglas
... furnished for bringing it hither! Along the whole of the path were openings at intervals for views of the river, but, as almost always happens in gentlemen's grounds, they were injudiciously managed; you were prepared for a dead stand—by a parapet, a painted seat, or ...
— Recollections of a Tour Made in Scotland A.D. 1803 • Dorothy Wordsworth
... work. These two stories have elaborately canopied arcades running round them, the windows being pierced through two of the arches on each facade and not emphasized by any special treatment. Above each story is a traceried parapet of lozenge decoration, the same design being repeated in the two bands that encircle the spire itself. At each of the four angles of the tower is an octagonal turret with crocketed spire. Amid a coronet of decorated finials the great octagonal spire grows naturally with no abrupt revelation of ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Salisbury - A Description of its Fabric and a Brief History of the See of Sarum • Gleeson White
... the west side of Tower Green, facing the White Tower, and is on the inner wall between the Bell Tower on the south and the Devereux Tower on the north, being connected with both by a walk along the parapet. Its present name probably refers to the residence in it as a prisoner of Thomas, third Earl of Warwick, of the Beauchamp family, who was attainted under Richard II in 1397, but restored to his honours and liberty two years later under Henry IV. It is curious that the most interesting ...
— Authorised Guide to the Tower of London • W. J. Loftie
... man took to shelter, and the place was desolate. The firing was rapid, regular, and apparently aimed to strike the Confederate lines, but ceased as suddenly as it had begun. General Custis Lee, whose tent was near by, observing the panic, stepped quietly up to the parapet of the works, folded his arms, and walked back and forth without uttering a word or looking to the right or to the left. His cool behavior, coupled with the silence of the guns, soon reassured the trembling clerks, and one by one they dropped into line again. General Butler had ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... bulwark, obstruction, rampart, barricade, hindrance, parapet, restraint, breastwork, obstacle, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... had a thick parapet of logs some three feet high, and, crouching behind this, they watched the canoe. "He's coming nearer in shore, and the girl has got the paddle," Pearson muttered. "What's he doing now?" A puff of smoke was seen to rise near the border of ...
— True to the Old Flag - A Tale of the American War of Independence • G. A. Henty
... but the personal incidents that call up single sharp pictures of some human being in its pang or struggle, reach us most nearly. I remember the platform at Berne, over the parapet of which Theobald Weinzaepfli's restive horse sprung with him and landed him more than a hundred feet beneath in the lower town, not dead, but sorely broken, and no longer a wild youth, but God's servant from that day forward. I have forgotten the famous bears, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 12, October, 1858 • Various
... disheartened in the fire-deluge: a porthole at the drawbridge is opened, as by one that would speak. See Huissier Maillard, the shifty man! On his plank, swinging over the abyss of that stone-Ditch; plank resting on parapet, balanced by weight of Patriots,—he hovers perilous: such a Dove towards such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty Usher: one man already fell; and lies smashed, far down there, against the masonry! Usher Maillard ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... Sais, he speaks of a Tomb in the Temple, in the rear of the Chapel and against the wall; and says, "It is the tomb of a man, whose name respect requires me to conceal. Within the Temple were great obelisks of stone [phalli], and a circular lake paved with stones and revetted with a parapet. It seemed to me as large as that at Delos" [where the Mysteries of Apollo were celebrated]. "In this lake the Egyptians celebrate, during the night, what they style the Mysteries, in which are represented the sufferings of the God of whom I have spoken ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike
... roof), we came out upon the Devil's Bridge. The spray from the Reuss, which here drops a full hundred feet into the abyss, lashed our faces as with whips; the storm leaped at us out of the blackness like a wolf; the car quivered, and for an instant it seemed that we should be hurled against the parapet of the bridge. But we passed unharmed, and a quarter of a mile further on Winston stopped in the welcome shelter of the Urner Loch, a tunnelled passage ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... attention to this, and was saying something about a French crowd—how much cheerfuller it was than your average English one—when all of a sudden Jinks wasn't there! No, nor the crowd! I was alone on Bergerac bridge, and I leaned with both elbows on the parapet and gazed at the Dordogne ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... in the morning a semicircular line was traced out at the top of their pathway. It was thirty feet across, for, as Tom said, the walls ought to be at least four feet thick; and six feet would be better, as they would want a parapet at least two feet thick to fire over. It was agreed that the whites should use the two shovels by turns. The Indians were unaccustomed to the work, and were to undertake that of scouting along the hillside, and of watching by turns at night. The frying-pan was brought into ...
— In The Heart Of The Rockies • G. A. Henty
... piled it up and smoothed it off, he, standing in the middle, aiding and directing. A circular tower of fully twenty feet in diameter was quickly raised, and fully fifteen feet high, and finished off at the summit in a castellated form, with a parapet; and then there was an outer wall with a deep ditch; between them and the tower was a gateway, and a bridge, constructed partly of snow and partly of planks, led to it. It really had, when finished, a very imposing appearance, and looked ...
— Ernest Bracebridge - School Days • William H. G. Kingston
... where I had taken cover among the ferns behind the parapet of coquina, and with a thrill of pardonable joy I watched him unlimber his photographic artillery and place it in battery where my every posture and action would be recorded for posterity if a cave-lady came down to the ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... story of a Cambridge undergraduate finding it necessary to expound the four allegorical figures that crown the parapet of Trinity Library. They are the Learned Muses, as a matter of fact. "What are those figures, Jack?" said an ardent sister, labouring under the false feminine impression that men like explaining things. "Those," said Jack, observing them for the ...
— At Large • Arthur Christopher Benson
... circular gallery made of osiers and festooned with draperies and other ornaments, was attached by a set of cords to the bottom of the structure. The gallery was three feet wide, and was protected by a parapet over three feet in height. It did not in any way interfere with the opening at the neck of the balloon, under which was suspended a grating of iron wire upon which the occupants of the gallery, who were to be provided with dried straw and wool, could in a few minutes kindle ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... little bridge that humps itself over the trout stream. Many a summer evening we had made this the terminus of our evening's walk; for I was feeble enough on my limbs, though my head is as clear as a boy's of seventeen. And here we used to lean over the parapet, and talk of all things, politics, literature (the little we knew of it), the old classics, college stories, tales of the mission, etc.; and ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... earth currents.... If this fault cannot be removed, I should propose to return to our original system of independent wires (formerly to Croydon and Dartford).—The new Azimuth-mark (for the Altazimuth), upon the parapet of the Naval College, is found to be perfectly satisfactory as regards both steadiness and visibility. The observations of a low star for zero of azimuth have been omitted since the beginning of 1881; the mark, in combination with a high star, ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy
... the parapet a beautiful emerald fish some four feet long came sailing beneath my feet in the yellowish water; a little boy shouted with glee, and a brown naked boatman tried to gaff it, then a brilliant butterfly, velvet black and blue, fluttered ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... as flags, must be raised, and in the centre, a larger flag should be placed, and it must be the object of the opposite party to demolish them with their balls. When a player wishes to throw a ball, he mounts upon one of the inner partings of snow, discharges his shot, and jumps down behind the parapet for more shot. The party on the opposite side may build their castle as they please; but each party should watch each other's movements, and build their different places of defence or annoyance in such a manner as to defend themselves and annoy the enemy in the most effective ...
— The Book of Sports: - Containing Out-door Sports, Amusements and Recreations, - Including Gymnastics, Gardening & Carpentering • William Martin
... crowds to those who had accepted, in advance, the positions of stamp-officers. One by one, under persuasion or intimidation, the officers resigned until none were left. In New York the governor fled to the military for protection, and from the parapet of the fort looked helplessly on while the people burnt before his eyes his own coach, containing images of himself and the devil. But before this happened, Boston, first of all the capitals to take a positive stand, began to draw upon itself the ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French
... third day it seemed as if it would be the same thing over again. And he had half a mind not to go back at all, his father would be so vexed. As he came to a bridge, like the Creek Road one yonder, he leaned on the parapet thinking of his trouble, and that perhaps it would be foolish to run away from home, but he could not tell which to do; when he saw a girl washing her clothes on the bank below. ...
— More English Fairy Tales • Various
... precipitously that the outposts were forced to retire, closely pressed by the coats of red. On, on, they came, and, clearing the ditch before the earthworks, gained the redoubt through the embrasures, leaped over the parapet and quickly bayonetted the small force of backwoodsmen who ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... built-up roof crunched in the darkness under my feet as I walked cautiously to the parapet and looked over its edge to the hunk of desert that stretched away toward Reno, out behind the motel. The third story, behind me, cut off the neon glare from the Strip and left the place in inky darkness. There was silence and invisibility out ...
— Vigorish • Gordon Randall Garrett
... battle of January 8th was also chiefly an artillery battle: the main British column never arrived within fair musket range; Pakenham was killed by a grape-shot, and the main column of his troops halted more than one hundred yards from the parapet. ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... trenches were about 150 yards off, and the level, open space between the two lines wasn't healthy. No man who valued his life would go there unnecessarily, or recklessly put his head above the parapet. One morning, to their horror the men, through the periscope, saw the child standing above the trench on the German side. Cries came from the enemy, but they were not hostile. The sight of the girl, little more than an infant, has touched their sentimental side, ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton
... groups of twenty or thirty massed together, as if for mutual protection, some lying on their faces, some killed in the act of firing; others hung up in the barbed wire. In one place a small group actually reached our parapet, and now lie dead on it, shot at point-blank range or bayoneted. Hundreds of others lie just outside their own trenches, where they were caught by rifle or shrapnel when trying to regain them. Hundreds of wounded must have perished ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... talking of Eugenics and the "family"—Benham was almost knocked down by an American trotter driven by Lord Breeze. "Whup there!" said Lord Breeze in a voice deliberately brutal, and Benham, roused from that abstraction which is partly fatigue, had to jump aside and stumbled against the parapet as the gaunt pacer ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... leaned upon the parapet of the bridge, arms folded before him and eyes afar. He began to sing, a demi-voix, a little phrase out of Louise—an invocation to Paris—and the Englishman stirred uneasily beside him. It seemed to Hartley that to stand on a bridge, in a top-hat and evening clothes, and sing operatic ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... bridge which he had already crossed. The Indians, and some soldiers who had joined them, pursue him closely; he springs upon the bridge. Unfortunately a patrol appears at the opposite extremity; Martin Paz can neither advance nor retrace his steps; without hesitation he clears the parapet and leaps into the rapid current which breaks against the ...
— The Pearl of Lima - A Story of True Love • Jules Verne
... said nought; for amidst all this flashing of fire and flame, and the crying out of folk, and the measured clash of the bells so near him, his thought was confused, and he had no words ready to hand. But the monk turned from the parapet and looked him full in the face ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... was awfully still. I use the adverb not as Dick Cheeser would have used it. The stillness awed him. There had not been a shell all night. He put his head up over the parapet and waited. Nobody fired at him. He felt that the night was waiting for him. He heard voices going along the trench: some one said it was a black night: the voices died away. A mere phrase; the night wasn't black at all, it was grey. Dick Cheeser was staring at it, and the ...
— Tales of War • Lord Dunsany
... in 1381, and drowned by order of King Wenceslaus, because he refused to betray the secrets confided to him by the queen in the holy rite of confession. The spot whence he was cast into the Moldau is still marked by a cross with five stars on the parapet, indicative of the miraculous flames seen flickering over the dead body for three days. Nepomuk was canonized in 1729, and became the patron saint of bridges. His statue in stone usually occupies such a position on bridges as it does ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... low clear call As mellow as the thrush's at the fall Of day from some near thicket. At whose sound Rose up caught Helen and blushing turned her round To face him; but in going, ere she met The prince, her hand along the parapet She trailed, palm out, for sign to who below Rent at himself, nor had the wit to know In that dumb signal eloquence, and hope Therein beyond his sick heart's utmost scope. Throbbing he stood as when a quick-blown peat, Now white, now red, burns inly—O wild heat, ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... the province of Champagne, although far beyond the limits to which the famed viticultural district extends. It was at Bar-sur-Aube where the Bastard de Bourbon, chief of the sanguinary gang of corcheurs (flayers), was sewn up in a sack and flung over the parapet of the old stone bridge into the river beneath by order of Charles VII.; and here, too, Madame de la Motte, of Diamond Necklace notoriety, was married, and in after years made a parade of the ill-gotten wealth she had acquired by successfully fooling that infatuated libertine the Cardinal Prince ...
— Facts About Champagne and Other Sparkling Wines • Henry Vizetelly
... slowly. In the roof garden on the Hebrew Institute across East Broadway lights are twinkling and the band is tuning up. Little groups are settling down to a quiet game of checkers or love-making. Paterfamilias leans back against the parapet where palms wave luxuriously in the summer breeze. The newspaper drops from his hand; he closes his eyes and is in dreamland, where strikes come not. Mother knits contentedly in her seat, with a smile on her face that was not born of the Ludlow Street tenement. Over yonder a ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... them. You come upon these places sometimes very unexpectedly. You are walking along on the pavement of a crowded street, when you come suddenly upon the break, or interruption in the line of building on each side. The space is occupied by a parapet, or by a high iron balustrade. You stop to look over, expecting to see a river or a canal; instead of which, you find yourself looking down into the chimneys of four-story houses bordering another street below you, which is so far down that the people walking ...
— Rollo in Scotland • Jacob Abbott
... half-way, and Fernandez, still leading, was just about within pistol range, when I rose to my feet, sprang up on the low earth parapet which we had constructed, raised my sword above my head, and, in as loud and authoritative a voice as I could command, shouted, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... below her companion's feet. Miss Alice's arm sunk helplessly to her side, at which signal of unqualified surrender, the younger guide threw himself half way down the slope, worked his way to the thorn-bush, hung for a moment perilously over the parapet, secured the lasso, and then began to pull away at his lovely burden. Miss Alice was no dead weight, however, but steadily half-scrambled on her hands and knees to within a foot or two of her rescuer. At this too familiar ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... where he had stood above the pigeon-shooting ground. . . . Olive and that young fellow! An assignation! At this time in the morning! The earth reeled. His brother's child—his favourite niece! The woman whom he most admired—the woman for whom his heart was softest. Leaning over the stone parapet, no longer seeing either the smooth green of the pigeon-shooting ground, or the smooth blue of the sea beyond, he was moved, distressed, bewildered beyond words. Before breakfast! That was the devil of it! Confession, as it were, of everything. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... in pulpits at either side, and here again the Apostles stood in solemn guardianship on its broad parapet—but emblems, rather; of the stony rigidity of doctrines which have been shaped by the minds of men from some little phase of truth, than of that glowing, spiritualized, human sympathy which, as the soul of man grows upward into comprehension, is the apostle of an ever widening truth. ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... the backs of these came high up between the shoulders, and the tails did not reach below the waistband. There is a kind of rooster of similar appearance. I saw some of these young men from the country, with their sweethearts, leaning over the stone parapet, and looking into the pit of the bear-garden, where the city bears walk round, or sit on their hind legs for bits of bread thrown to them, or douse themselves in the tanks, or climb the dead trees set up for their gambols. Years ago they ate up a British ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... From the high pediments dropped the occasional chatter of sparrows and the chirp of their young in the roofs. The second brood, they were late; they would not be in time for the harvest and the fields of stubble. A flight of blue pigeons rose from the central pavement to the level line of the parapet of the western houses. A starling shot across the square, swift, straight, resolute. I looked for the swifts, but they had gone, earliest of all to leave our sky for distant countries. Away in the ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... hundred yards, never stirred. M. De Corny, and five others, were then sent to ask arms of M. de Launay, Governor of the Bastile. They found a great collection of people already before the place, and they immediately planted a flag of truce, which was answered by a like flag hoisted on the parapet. The deputation prevailed on the people to fall back a little, advanced themselves to make their demand of the Governor, and in that instant a discharge from the Bastile killed four persons of those nearest to the deputies. The deputies retired. I happened ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. IX (of X) - America - I • Various
... and was told that the men were putting fresh gabions (baskets full of earth behind which they sheltered from the fire of the enemy's guns) in the battery. The corporal had ordered the sapper to stand up on a parapet where the fire from the guns would hail upon him, while he himself, in safety down below, handed the baskets up to him. In one moment Gordon had jumped up on to the parapet, and ordered the corporal to stand beside him while the sapper handed up baskets to them. The Russian bullets ...
— The Story of General Gordon • Jeanie Lang
... his guns: one of these he served himself. Among his other warlike accomplishments, he was a wonderful shot with a cannon. He showed them capital practice this morning: drove two embrasures into one, and knocked about a ton of masonry off the parapet. Then taking advantage of this, he served two of his guns with grape, and swept the enemy off the top of the bastion, and kept it clear. He made it so hot they could not work the upper guns. Then they turned ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... pace slowly to and fro beneath the trees, whose foliage swayed softly in the mild evening air. When the few remaining groups had passed beyond her vision, she threw back the long thick veil that had effectually concealed her features, and approaching the parapet that overhung the sea, sat down. Removing her hat and veil, she placed them beside her on the seat, and resting her hands on the iron railing, bowed her chin upon them, and looked out upon the sea murmuring at the foot of ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... moment of danger, and before the sun went down on the 14th of October, he had led his troops with fixed bayonets, under a heavy and constant fire, over abatis, ditch, and palisades; then, mounting the parapet, he leaped into the redoubt. Washington saw the impetuosity of the attack in the face of the murderous fire, the daring leap to the parapet with three of his soldiers, and the almost fatal spring into the redoubt. "Few cases," he says, "have exhibited ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... go back to their trenches unmolested, but the two bottles of beer quite naturally and without any difficulty continued their journey to our lines. When I got up to the front trench, I found our boys standing on the parapet and looking over at the enemy. I climbed up, and there, to my astonishment, I saw the Germans moving about in their trenches apparently quite indifferent to the fact that we were gazing at them. One man was sawing wood. Between us and ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... such it may be called, consists of a few scattered houses of stone, apparently loosely put together, with pigeon-holes for windows, and roofs which, being flat, and apparently surrounded by a low parapet, afford no idea of their being habitable. It is difficult to find a comparison for these dwellings, which appeared to be composed of nothing more than four walls, and yet, to judge from the apertures, ...
— Notes of an Overland Journey Through France and Egypt to Bombay • Miss Emma Roberts
... person there—an old man dressed in a shabby suit, kneeling before a great block of stone that had been dislodged upward from the parapet and formed a sort of table. Upon this table the old man had placed a large, square box, resembling an exaggerated kodak, and it was from the lens of this box that the black beam ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... that passed I shall not soil my pages. The window opened into a broad stone balcony, and seating themselves upon its parapet, the young men exchanged stories and jests. After many sallies of so-called wit, Wildrake rallied Philip on the quantity of wine which he had taken, and betted that he could not walk steadily from the one ...
— False Friends, and The Sailor's Resolve • Unknown
... raised, and his countenance radiant with smiles at the cheers he had received, she recognised in him her former guest, and participating in the general enthusiasm, prevailing for the young knight, she leaned over the parapet, and addressed to him a greeting so hearty that it procured for her a courteous salutation in return. Enchanted with this, she followed with her eyes the graceful figure of Sir Jocelyn till it was lost to view—to re-appear a ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... of the gallant sailor already referred to; the others were too much exhausted to utter a word. McIntosh, the pilot from Burghead, expired from sheer cold and exhaustion. None who saw him perish soon forgot the fearful agony of his daughter as she bade her father farewell from the parapet of the breakwater. After renewed efforts a boat was got over the breakwater, and at great risk succeeded in saving the other men, who were in a ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... to himself as he remembered that Lord Castlereagh had satisfied the humblest of our needs before he cut his throat, and that the academician Auger had sought for his snuff-box as he went to his death. He analyzed these extravagances, and even examined himself; for as he stood aside against the parapet to allow a porter to pass, his coat had been whitened somewhat by the contact, and he carefully brushed the dust from his sleeve, to his own surprise. He reached the middle of the arch, and looked ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... his information, his next business was to get away. He waited till the lights were put out in the camps at night, then, walking down to the river he found a small boat, jumped in and pushed out into the stream. He could see the sentinels on the parapet of the fort as he floated past, but they did not discover him. Paul congratulated himself that he was beyond the picket line when he heard a hail from both shores at the same time. "Boat ahoy!" He made no reply. "Boat ahoy! come ashore or I'll fire," said both sentinels. ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... backed by the old glory that electrified every loyal American with patriotism to respond to the call of duty for the love of their country and the "Star Spangled Banner," that at that time fluttered high above the parapet of every Government fort as an emblem of protection to all that were struggling on and on over that vast expanse of unbroken and treeless plain; can you wonder then that the unspeakable crimes and mistakes of the Government of those days still rankle ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... the massive engirdling walls demonstrate its Roman origin. Thick mists hang over the termid in the early mornings, when the air is chilly, but later on it becomes a lively place, full of laughter and splashings. Here, for a sou, you may get the boys to jump down from the parapet and wallow among the muddy ooze at the bottom; the liquid, though transparent, is not colourless, but rather of the blue-green tint of the aquamarine crystal; it flows rapidly, and all impurities are ...
— Fountains In The Sand - Rambles Among The Oases Of Tunisia • Norman Douglas
... rescued it. There was another instance communicated to me. A fine Newfoundland dog had been constantly annoyed by a small spaniel. The former, seizing the opportunity when they were on a terrace under which a river flowed, took up the spaniel in his mouth, and dropped it over the parapet ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... jumped up on to the parapet with a pail of bombs and ran along. He fairly got among them, and by the time he was hit in the right leg they were mostly casualties or prisoners. I saw him on the stretcher going back. He was in some pain, but he smiled, and said, 'One stocking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug. 22, 1917 • Various
... all, they are the most important events in our lives, and in the villages most of the cottagers are more or less related. All the inhabitants were much excited when a poor old widow, living very near my house, sitting on a low circular stone parapet round her well, lost her balance in some way, fell in, and was drowned. I was foreman of the jury at the inquest, and after hearing the evidence, which amounted to no more than the finding of the body soon after the event, the coroner expressed his opinion that it was a case of accidental ...
— Grain and Chaff from an English Manor • Arthur H. Savory
... Fort Sumter in line of battle, Col. Alfred Rhett, commandant of the post, mounting the parapet, where he remained, ordered the band to strike up the national air of "Dixie;" and at the same time, in addition to the Confederate flag, the State and regimental flags were flung out at different salients of the fort, and ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... played on and on. Little was he aware who was listening to them. Could he have looked through the thick walls of his dungeon, he would have beheld a female form, her handkerchief to her eyes, leaning on the parapet of a terrace which ran along one of its sides. The lady whose tender feelings he had excited was no other than Isabelle Van Arent, who, with her sister and father and mother, had come that afternoon to pay a visit to Mynheer Bunckum. At length ...
— Voyages and Travels of Count Funnibos and Baron Stilkin • William H. G. Kingston
... disciplined, nothing could have withstood the fierce onslaught of the British. Numbers of the defenders were seen to fall, their officers being killed or made prisoners. Most of the remainder, taking to flight, crept through the embrasures or leapt over the parapet. ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... observed a difference in architecture betwixt the English and Scottish towers. The latter usually have upon the top a projecting battlement, with interstices, anciently called machicoules, betwixt the parapet and the wall, through which stones or darts might be hurled upon the assailants. This kind of fortification is less ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... the first words he had ever heard his child utter. The echoes of them rang in his ears as he stood endeavouring to hide his disfigured face by looking over the parapet of the bridge down upon the stream running away towards the ocean, into which his hot tears slowly fell, unheeded by the weeper. Then he changed the intention with which he had set out upon his nightly walk, and turned back ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... so many things to be considered. There! I hear the children coming! Let us walk this way for a minute." And they turned behind a wall which placed them out of sight, and walked on a few paces till they reached a parapet, which stood on the uttermost edge of the high rock. Leaning upon this they continued ...
— The Chateau of Prince Polignac • Anthony Trollope
... close beside her, as she hurried on. She turned; and there, leaning on the parapet in a recess of the bridge, stood Cosmo, in a splendid dress, but with a ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... sunset, and watches a black swan pushing the pink and silver water in front of him as he swims, crinkling its smoothness into pleats of changing colour with his breast. Madame Bonaparte presses against the parapet of the bridge, and the crushed roses at her belt melt, petal by ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... of jungle; piles driven in a square, about fifteen yards to each face; and the earth from the center, scooped out and intermixed with layers of reeds, was heaped up about five feet high inside the piles. At the four corners were small watch-towers, and along the parapet of earth a narrow walk connecting them. In the center space was a house crowded by the Chinese garrison, a few of whose harmless gingalls were stuck up at the angles to intimidate rather than to wound. While they labored at the body of the defence, the Dyaks surrounded it by an outer work, ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... line. The loss to the corps, in killed and wounded, was about three hundred, among whom were many choice spirits. The commander of the Fifth Wisconsin, Captain Walker, was killed. Captain Ordway succeeded to the command. He leaped upon the parapet, and fell ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... the American group. Cleopatra's needle, used for ornamentation, suggested Egypt and the Nile. That crenellated parapet once belonged to military architecture: between those pieces that stood up, the merlons, in the embrasure, the Greek and Roman archers shot their arrows at the enemy and darted back behind the merlons for protection. In spite ...
— The City of Domes • John D. Barry
... gave a low call and a soft rush of wings was heard in every direction. Pigeons flew from tree-top, tower, parapet and gable, alighting on his head and arms until he looked like a ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... would have it, and the result is a three-cornered pile, having a high square tower at one angle, where also the building recedes some yards from the edge of the cliff, leaving on that side a broad terrace guarded by a stone parapet. On another side of the great isolated boulder a narrow roadway heads up a steep incline, impracticable for carriages but passable for four-footed beasts; and this path gives access to the castle through a heavy gate opening upon a small court within. But the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford |
