DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Drumhead' Quotes from Famous Books

... show phalanxes of these men smiling as if they were glad to be captives. On the other hand there are no smiles in the pictures of the spies and francs-tireurs. They know that they are fated for a hasty trial, a drumhead decision, and to be shot at dawn. The prospect of that walk through the early morning dews to the execution-ground made their shoulders droop along ...

— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams

... "Thur-r-r!" went the automatic in soulless, mechanical repetition, its tape spinning through the cylinder, while the rifles spoke with the human irregularity of steel-tipped fingers pounding at random on a drumhead. All along the line facing La Tir the volume of fire spread until it was like the ...

— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer

... little while, a group of soldiers lead some poor frightened Belgian to a little cafe across the street; several officers were sitting at one of the tables on the sidewalk, holding a sort of drumhead court martial. While they were examining the case, a squad would be marched around behind the railroad station. A few minutes later the prisoner would be marched around by another way, and in a few minutes there would be a volley and the troops would be marched back to their ...

— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson

... with which he had been out scouting and had blundered into the Spanish lines. He had been promptly made a prisoner, and, despite his papers proving his American citizenship, and the nature of his job, and the red cross on his sleeve, he had been tried by drumhead court martial and sentenced to be shot at dawn. All this he had written out, and then, that his account might be complete, he had gone on and imagined his own execution. This was written in a sort of pigeon, or perhaps you would call it black Spanish, English, ...

— Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son • George Horace Lorimer

... with an ax; and the stiffened leg had a curiously unfinished look about it, suggesting a natural malformation. Dead only a few hours, their carcasses already had begun to swell. The skin on their bellies was as tight as a drumhead. ...

— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... turned against yourself. Into the militia you would go, willy-nilly. Habeas corpus, I heard some one mutter just now. Instead of habeas corpus you would get post mortems. If you refused to go into the militia, or to obey after you were in, you would be tried by drumhead court martial and shot down like dogs. ...

— The Iron Heel • Jack London

... second protest, M. Leon Theodor was arrested, deported to Germany and if now living, is suffering imprisonment for the offense of defending the oppressed civilian population from a system of espionage, drumhead courts-martial and secret executions, which in their malignity should excite the professional jealousy of Danton, Marat and Robespierre. It was in this manner that the lofty promise of the German Chancellor that his country would ...

— The Case of Edith Cavell - A Study of the Rights of Non-Combatants • James M. Beck

... table full of old parchment-bound books, ranging from a tiny twenty-fourmo, which will stay neither open nor shut, to thin, limp folios that are instantly correspondent to either command. Those that are bound with boards have taken on a drumhead quality of smoothness and tension, especially the fat quartos and small octavos, while the larger volumes that received a flexible binding resemble nothing in surface so much as the wrinkled diploma on yonder wall, with its cabalistic signature now to be written no more, Carolus-Guil. ...

— The Booklover and His Books • Harry Lyman Koopman

... of himself, but it is not easy to subdue thought, and he could feel those strong, smooth, velvet arms encircling him. Disorder without and chaos within this house! The heavens rumbled like a mighty drumhead, the lightning made useless the feeble ray in his hand. It was the place, the hour of impulse. Gray swore savagely at himself, then he stumbled into his room ...

— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach

... external auditory canal, and remained imbedded there, the separated end of this prong only coming away in her grasp. Every attempt on her part to remove the hair-pin by traction on its projecting prong—she durst not force it INWARD for fear of wounding the drumhead—had served but to bury the point of the broken prong more deeply into the flesh of the canal, thereby increasing her suffering. Advised by her family physician not to delay, she forthwith sought advice and aid. On examination, ...

— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould

... of the jaw as he swung around, and was astonished that he did not appear to notice it. The next instant he fell senseless under a blow that crushed through his upraised fists as a hammer might go through a drumhead. One Peter hit a glancing blow upon the shoulder, and as long as he lived he could never raise that arm above ...

— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... his dress-coat hangs on a skeleton frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. You just see two big black holes, as in a dead man's skull. His skin, which is stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white, but a nasty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can't see it side-face; and THE ABSENCE of that nose is a horrible thing TO LOOK AT. All the hair he has ...

— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux

... for his cue, and when Mrs. Purdy-Pell gives the nod I sees Snick push him through the door, and in another minute the thing is on. The waiter's uniform was a tight fit, all right; for it stretches across his shoulders like a drumhead. And the shirt studs wa'n't mates, and the collar was one of them saw edged laundry veterans. But the general effect was good, and Hermy don't seem to mind them trifles at all. He stands up there lookin' big and ...

— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford

... into the city of Baltimore and its streets and heights planted with cannon. The chief of police was arrested and imprisoned, the police board was suspended and the city brought under the rule of drumhead court-martial. The writ of habeas corpus was suspended by Federal authorities in a free and sovereign State whose Legislature had proclaimed its neutrality in the sectional conflict. Blank warrants were issued by military officers and the house of every ...

— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon

... lynch law, club law, Lydford law, martial law, drumhead law; coup d'etat[Fr]; le droit du plus fort[Fr]; argumentum baculinum[obs3][Lat]. illegality, informality, unlawfulness, illegitimacy, bar sinister. trover and conversion[Law]; smuggling, poaching; simony. [person who violates the law] outlaw, ...

— Roget's Thesaurus

... editorial parent was replete with volumes upon subjects which would have filled a Bolshevik with disgust. Briefly, if ever Trotzky had become Commissar of the Soviet of Manhattan, Miss Althea and those like her would have been the first candidates for a drumhead court-martial. ...

— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train

... large varieties of drumhead,—by which I mean to make them grow to the greatest size possible,—I want a strong compost of barn-yard manure, with night-soil and muck or fish-waste, and, if possible, rotten kelp. A compost into which night-soil enters as a component is best made by first covering a plot of ...

— Cabbages and Cauliflowers: How to Grow Them • James John Howard Gregory

... it would have sounded poetic; in a charging regiment, none could have wished for more inspiriting battle strains; even in a great hall, inspiring and guiding the merry reel, it might have been in place and welcome; but in a room of ten feet by twelve, with a wooden ceiling, acting like a drumhead, at the height of seven feet and a half!—It was little below torture to the marquis and Lady Florimel. Simultaneously they rose to ...

— Malcolm • George MacDonald

... has grown vague and mysterious. Not a voice is heard—only the throb of the engine down below and the articulated pulsation of the paddles, every stroke of which brings forth a hollow sound from the sea, as clear and as well defined as a blow upon a drumhead; but these are softened by the swish of waters foaming under the wheel. Echoes multiply; myriads of them, faint and far, play peek-a-boo with the solemn pilot, who silently paces the deck when all the ship is wrapped ...

— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard

... above the ring, rather slender, sometimes mealy, skin peeling readily, whitish. The spores are rusty-brown and elliptical. The caps are from one to two inches broad, and the stem is from two to three inches long. The veil is stretched like a drumhead from the stem to the margin of the cap. It varies in manner of breaking; sometimes it separates from the margin of the cap and forms a ring around the stem; again, but little remains on the stem and much on ...

— The Mushroom, Edible and Otherwise - Its Habitat and its Time of Growth • M. E. Hard

... Lord, I am sincerely devoted to your Lordship, command me, I care not what it is, I'll screw, twist and strain the law as tight as a drumhead, to ...

— The Fall of British Tyranny - American Liberty Triumphant • John Leacock