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More "Grappling" Quotes from Famous Books



... for a little space, Stood the great preacher; then he spake as one Who, suddenly grappling with a haunting thought Which long has followed, whispering through the dark Strange terrors, drags it, shrieking, into light "What if God's will consign thee ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier

... had been waiting for us and his boat was in place. He flung up a rope ladder with grappling hooks on the end. Gallagher fixed them to the ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine

... Grappling with them, criticism is no passion of the head, it is the head of passion. It is no anatomical knife, it is a weapon. Its object is its enemy, which it will not refute but destroy. For the spirit of the conditions has been refuted. In and for themselves they are no memorable ...
— Selected Essays • Karl Marx

... champion of the games strode through the ring calling for nobler antagonists, and taunting the reader with the fear that he would be thrown, that Washington closed his book. Without taking off his coat he calmly observed that fear did not enter his make-up; then grappling with the champion he hurled him to the ground. "In Washington's lion-like grasp," said the vanquished wrestler, "I became powerless, and went down with a force that seemed to jar the very marrow in my bones." The victor, regardless of shouts at ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie

... the question arose in Gaunt's mind. In what manner could he best set about the task of preparing his child to meet death unflinchingly? Whilst he was painfully grappling with the problem Percy himself afforded his father an opening of which the latter at once gladly availed himself. Stirring uneasily, and with a sobbing sigh seeming to recover his recollection of where he was and what had happened to him, the little fellow ...
— The Missing Merchantman • Harry Collingwood

... old Manysnifters,' thought I, trying to smile. 'That's real funny, ain't it? Oh, if he were only here now, wouldn't he get me out of this?' And in my fancy I could see my husky friend grappling with the gang outside, pitching them down the stairs, and carrying me off in triumph—the way they do it in the best sellers. My captors then went below, their voices trailing away into silence. They left me with some ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald

... I believe Lord Palmerston made a mistake in not grappling with it from the first, and using all the power the Crown had entrusted to him, even ostentatiously, for the purpose. Now it might be most difficult—but it ought not to pass without a solemn protest on the part of the men who were not connected ...
— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Volume III (of 3), 1854-1861 • Queen of Great Britain Victoria

... unknown' had gone down beneath his associations, his acquirements and his adventures, and had to a large extent revealed himself—a primitive man, with his breast by no means wholly rid of the instincts of the wild beast, grappling with the problem of a complex humanity: an epitome of the eternal struggle which alone gives savour to the wearisome process of "civilisation." For the conventional man of the lapidary phrase and the pious memoir (corrected by the maiden sister and the family divine), ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow

... aureole, as though the ardour of their joy could scarcely be repressed; while the everlasting light of God sheds radiance from above, and far below, lies earth with diminished sun and moon. The boldness of conception in this singular fresco reveals a genius capable of grappling with such problems as Tintoretto solved. Fra Filippo died at Spoleto, and left his work unfinished, to the care of his assistant, the Fra Diamante. Over his tomb Lorenzo de' Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... and had the Character of a mild and peaceable Man in his Profession. If the former was too furious, this was too sheepish, for his Part; insomuch that after a short modest Walk upon the Stage, he would fall at the first Touch of 'Hydaspes', without grappling with him, and giving him an Opportunity of showing his Variety of 'Italian' Tripps: It is said, indeed, that he once gave him a Ripp in his flesh-colour Doublet, but this was only to make work for ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... counted as factors. British rule is there, and is there to stay. Education has come—good, bad, and indifferent. English University training is bringing forward a host of acute thinkers of native blood. But the forces of Western infidelity are also there, grappling with Western Christianity on Indian soil, and before the eyes of the conquered and still sullen people. The vilest of English books and the worst of French novels in English translations are in the markets. All the worst phases of European commerce are exhibited. The opium ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... particular commodity—the lecturing Englishman—the people has been fairly sated; but because Americans are no longer eager to lionise any English author or artist with some measure of a London reputation, it does not by any means imply that they are not still seeking for, and grappling, the best in art and letters wherever they can find it. They only doubt whether the Englishman who comes to lecture ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson

... the mountains was one of the most portentous of events in American history. It was not only the grappling of two European peoples and two systems of government out upon the edges of the civilized world— the stone-age men assisting on both sides—a fray in which Legardeur de St. Pierre, Coulon de Jumonville, and de Villiers, his avenging brother, were France, ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley

... with shouting, and there rained a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various

... to be a man-eater. If the crocodile will live at peace with him the native has no wish to start a quarrel. But the day usually comes when a native who has gone down to the river fails to return. In America, under such circumstances, the relatives of the missing man would send for grappling irons and an undertaker. But in Borneo they summon a professional crocodile hunter. The idea of this is not so much to obtain revenge as to recover the brass ornaments which the dear departed was wearing at the moment of his taking off, for, though human life is the cheapest thing ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell

... of the early sixties was the feats of the acrobat Blondin. This daring rope-walker crossed the waters by Niagara Falls on a slack wire. On one occasion he carried a man on his back, to whom he imparted the caution, "grappling as with hooks ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams

... corrugated fastener; clamp, U-clamp, C-clamp; cramp, cramp iron; ratchet, detent, larigo[obs3], pawl; terret[obs3], treenail, screw, button, buckle; clasp, hasp, hinge, hank, catch, latch, bolt, latchet[obs3], tag; tooth; hook, hook and eye; lock, holdfast[obs3], padlock, rivet; anchor, grappling iron, trennel[obs3], stake, post. cement, glue, gum, paste, size, wafer, solder, lute, putty, birdlime, mortar, stucco, plaster, grout; viscum[obs3]. shackle, rein &c. (means of restraint) 752; prop &c. (support) 215. V. bridge over, span; connect ...
— Roget's Thesaurus

... attention; and, with the instinct of genius, which catches comfort and assistance from means apparently the most trivial, and unpromising in their aspect, the paving-stone seemed to impart an idea to Montezuma Moggs, in this "his last and fearfulest extremity." Grappling this new weapon in both his hands, he raised it ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol. XXXII No. 2. February 1848 • Various

... in fury, and let go the bridle. The pony backed in alarm. The new-comer was grappling with the thief, and trying to drag him aside. 'On, on; go on, Har'ld!' he shouted, but his strength was far from equal to Dick's, who threw him aside on the hand-rail. Old rotten rail that it was, it crashed under ...
— Friarswood Post-Office • Charlotte M. Yonge

... there was none; but the Council had to be governed under the glare of inevitable publicity, with a free press in Europe, and hostile views prevalent in Catholic theology. The causes which made religious science utterly powerless in the strife, and kept it from grappling with the forces arrayed against it, are of deeper import than the issue ...
— The History of Freedom • John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton

... not scruple to fight his own way. Polperro, wildly thrashing about him with both fists, excited wrath in every direction. There was a general scrimmage; shouts of rage mingled with wild laughter; the throng crushed this way and that. Grappling in his own defence with a big brute who had clutched his throat, Gammon saw Polperro go down. It was his last glimpse of the unfortunate man. Fighting savagely he found himself borne far away by an irresistible rush, and when he had lost ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing

... learned the fact that the ships of the Carthaginians were inferior to his own in stoutness and size, but excelled in the quickness of their rowing and variety of movement. Therefore he fitted out his triremes with mechanical devices,—anchors and grappling irons with long spikes and other such things,—in order that by laying hold of the hostile ships with these they might pin them fast to their own vessels; then by crossing over into them they might have a hand to hand conflict with the Carthaginians and engage them ...
— Dio's Rome, Volume 1 (of 6) • Cassius Dio

... tell us all about him," said Mrs. Bradley, dismissing the subject, as she turned her sleeves back over her white arms, preparatory to grappling certain ...
— A Phyllis of the Sierras • Bret Harte

... the little bridge, And turned against him all their grappling-irons; But he cried out: "Be none ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... but the grip on his ear lobe was emphatic, and in his one short struggle for freedom he felt as if he were grappling with the great poppet-legs at the Silver Stream. Summers paused for ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... the men waded through mud to the canal, fighting as they went, and again plunged into the water, swimming the canal, at the far side of which they were compelled to use grappling hooks and scaling irons to mount the perpendicular banks of the canal, along which were the resisting Germans. And finally, when the German Empire fell, famed Sedan was in the hands of the Americans. With the last forward movement they took possession ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller

... racer, by being trained to run against the hill, at length courses with facility. The road to success may be steep to climb, and it puts to the proof the energies of him who would reach the summit. But by experience a man soon learns that obstacles are to be overcome by grappling with them,—that the nettle feels as soft as silk when it is boldly grasped,—and that the most effective help towards realizing the object proposed is the moral conviction that we can and will accomplish it. Thus difficulties often fall ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles

... of negation died on Undine's lips. She found herself grappling with a new social riddle, and such surprises were always stimulating. The name of the untidy-looking young woman she had been about to repel was one of the most eminent in the impregnable quarter beyond the Seine. No one figured more ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton

... so much more furiously flew up the dust and sand from the spot, that I could see nothing; but the mingling growls and yells of the desperately-grappling brutes were so terrific as to make the hair stand up on my head. Presently, however, I could perceive that the cries of the assailant, which had been becoming less and less fierce, were now turning into howls ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... no sooner had the stranger shown his face, and pronounced the words "Mrs. Dods!" than a panic seized the whole array. The advanced guard recoiled in consternation, the ostler upsetting Mrs. Dods in the confusion of his retreat; while she, grappling with him in her terror, secured him by the ears and hair, and they joined their cries together in hideous chorus. The two maidens resumed their former flight, and took refuge in the darksome den, entitled their bedroom, while ...
— St. Ronan's Well • Sir Walter Scott

... way of protest against external domination, or a readjustment of itself to external power. We can no more deduce the political character of the Irish from the history of the past seven hundred years than we can estimate the quality of genius in an artist whom we have only seen when grappling with a burglar. The political character of a people emerges only when they are shaping in freedom their own civilization. To get a clue in Ireland we must slip by those seven centuries of struggle and study national origins, as ...
— National Being - Some Thoughts on an Irish Polity • (A.E.)George William Russell

... Dublin city and urban district of scenes truly rural of happiness of the better land with Dockrell's wallpaper at one and ninepence a dozen, innocent Britishborn bairns lisping prayers to the Sacred Infant, youthful scholars grappling with their pensums or model young ladies playing on the pianoforte or anon all with fervour reciting the family rosary round the crackling Yulelog while in the boreens and green lanes the colleens with their swains strolled what times the ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce

... on them. Ho, ho! bend to your oars, my hearties! grappling-chains ready there! ho! on to ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... a sheer to port, and with a loud crash ran alongside the "Concorde." Grappling-irons were hove aboard her and the next instant the Frenchmen, in overpowering numbers, rushed like a torrent ...
— Ronald Morton, or the Fire Ships - A Story of the Last Naval War • W.H.G. Kingston

... frontier had deified—the man of whom a little time before Edwardes had said to Lord Canning, 'You may rely upon this, that if ever there is a desperate deed to be done in India, John Nicholson is the man to do it'—was one who had proved himself beyond all doubt capable of grappling with the crisis through which we were passing—one to follow to the death. Faith in the Commander who had claimed and been given the post of honour was unbounded, and every man was prepared 'to do or die' ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts

... the waters began to give up their dead. Stony Creek first showed their white faces and lifeless bodies floating on the surface, and men in skiffs went after them with their grappling rods. Several of them were taken ashore during the afternoon and carried to the Presbyterian Church morgue, which was the nearest. Then, too, the dead among the wreckage on shore came to light just the same as on other days. ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker

... industry. Wehle thinks that in America, even before the war, industrial concentration was leading to political concentration and that the states were losing their relative political importance. The grappling of states individually with large industrial problems is now, he says, at an end. Dillon has expressed the view that England ought to adopt industrial compulsion. Clementel, the French minister of commerce, thinks France ought to substitute ...
— The Psychology of Nations - A Contribution to the Philosophy of History • G.E. Partridge

... and perishable, while the species is eternal in the existing economy of nature. Imperceptible forests of timber scarcely tinge their inert masses of gneiss and granite, into which they anchor their roots; grappling with substances which, when struck with steel, tear up the tempered grain, and dash out the spark." This may be an enthusiastic, but is doubtless the faithful, impression of our tourist; and in descriptions of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various

... out of his chair, stepped around behind the spool case that stood on the end of the counter, leered at his father and moved toward him. Beach came within three feet of his father. The next thing they were grappling. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... father of either of Winthrop's two wives; and there was nothing in any family records or memorials to justify the notion. On the contrary, they absolutely precluded it. By the labors and acumen of the Hon. James Savage and Mr. Charles Deane, of Cambridge, who have no superiors in grappling with such a difficulty, its solution seems, at last, to be reached. "After long fruitless search," Mr. Savage has expressed a conviction that Mr. Deane has "acquired the probable explication." The clue was thus obtained: ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... the chair between himself and Dimsdell. Finally, Dimsdell wrenches the chair from Roger, flings it aside, and, grappling ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith

... here in the greenwood, All day in a childish dream, Toying with leaves and flowers, Watching the wavelets gleam, While a world grown old and hoary With the spirit of change is rife, And the outworn past and the present Are grappling ...
— Donahoe's Magazine, Volume 15, No. 1, January 1886 • Various

... Romans, in times effeminate, as compared with these, afforded not in its wielding a greater test of personal courage than the handling of the flint-headed spear or the stone knife or chipped ax. There, all along the barrier, was the real grappling of man and man, with further existence ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... Evangeline was as silent as ever. Miss Atherley and I surveyed it after breakfast. It was still grappling with a monkey-nut, but no doubt a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 146., January 14, 1914 • Various

... again, not knowing how far it might oblige me to go out to sea, and above all, doubting how I should get back again; so I came to an anchor, for I had made me a kind of an anchor with a piece of broken grappling which I got out of ...
— The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe (1808) • Daniel Defoe

... motion to be perceptible during the period, in no case exceeding one hundred and fifty years, through which accurate observations extend. The efforts of all the observatories which engage in such work are, up to the present time, unequal to the task of grappling with the motions of all the stars that can be seen with the instruments, and reaching a decision as to the proper motion in each particular case. As the question now stands, the aim of the astronomer is to determine what stars have proper motions ...
— Side-lights on Astronomy and Kindred Fields of Popular Science • Simon Newcomb

... the trap was sprung, with the pit yawning beneath it. Struggling, striking, grappling with his assailants, Locke managed to hurl three of them to their deaths in ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey

... not real ills of life enough already? Is there not a "lo here!" from this school with its gushing "earnestness," it distinctions without differences, its gnat strainings and camel swallowings, its pretence of grappling with a question while resolutely bent upon shirking it, its dust throwing and mystification, its concealment of its own ineffable insincerity under an air of ineffable candour? Is there not a "lo there!" from that other school with its bituminous ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler

... little sparks of life which might have been rekindled), only to add their own bodies to the horrid pile, and to be trampled in their turn by comrades who sought to avenge them; of soldiers on both sides, grappling hand to hand, tearing open each other's wound, drenched with each other's blood, dying locked in a fierce embrace. It turns me sick even now when I remember the terrible things I then heard, the awful wounds I then saw. During ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers

... making more or less than there really was of her. You were speaking the other night at Wetmore's, of the uncertain quality of her beauty, and the danger of getting something else in," said Ludlow, suddenly grappling with the fact, "and I was always doing that, or else leaving everything out. Her beauty has no fixed impression. It ranges from something exquisite to something grotesque; just as she ranges in character from the noblest generosity to the most inconceivable absurdity. ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells

... rushed to kill him. I shot them both with a right and left, for fortunately my rifle was just reloaded. He rose once more and killed a third man. Stephen came to his support and grappling with an Arab, dashed his head against the gate-post so that he fell. Old Bausi, panting like a grampus, plunged in with his remaining Mazitu and the combatants became so confused in the dark gloom of the overhanging smoke that I could scarcely tell one from the other. Yet the maddened Arabs ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard

... work by courses in Northwestern University and Garrett Biblical Institute, by travel in the South and West of our own country, and by a visitation of the Old World, he has served on the rugged frontier of his Conference, and among foreign populations grappling successfully with some of the most difficult problems ...
— Questionable Amusements and Worthy Substitutes • J. M. Judy

... one word that does not point out, or clinch home the action. Here action speaks louder than words. Furthermore, in the speed of bodily movement there is actually no time for words. If two men are grappling in a life and death struggle ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... outward, but not quite far enough, for one paw was caught and ground to a pulp. But at the next instant, thrust back from the rock by his own effort, the bear toppled outward over the brink of the shelf. Grappling madly to save himself, he caught only the bowed loins of the puma, who now sank her teeth once more into his throat, while her rending claws seemed to tear him everywhere at once. He crushed her in his grip; and in a dreadful ball of screeching, roaring, biting, mangling ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts

... volumes, in mass altogether beyond her ability to cope with; nowadays, her secretary read and digested and summarised with tireless energy. Lady Ogram had never cared much for reading; she admired Constance's quick intelligence and power of grappling with printed matter. But that she had little faith in the future of her own sex, she would have been tempted to say: "There is the coming woman." Miss Bride's companionship was soon indispensable to her; she had begun to dread the thought of being left alone ...
— Our Friend the Charlatan • George Gissing

... history these same tendencies have continually been illustrated. The Greeks, our pioneers in all insight and knowledge, grappled (as Professor Myres has lately set forth[3]), and realised that they were grappling, with this same problem. Even in the Minoan Age their population would appear to have been full to overflowing; "there were too many people in the world," and to the old Greeks the Trojan War was the earliest ...
— Essays in War-Time - Further Studies In The Task Of Social Hygiene • Havelock Ellis

... are always weaving the meshes of an argument, selecting the most difficult point, and fastening upon details instead of grappling with the matter in hand as a whole. Come now, and I will demonstrate to you, if you will allow me, by many satisfactory proofs, that Homer has made Achilles a better man than Odysseus, and a truthful man too; and that ...
— Lesser Hippias • Plato

... the course of a balloon His mind conceived the wondrous screw. Some day he hopes unto the moon To guide the course of a balloon. Of 'airy navies' admiral soon, We'll see him 'grappling in the blue'— To guide the course of a balloon His mind conceived ...
— My Days of Adventure - The Fall of France, 1870-71 • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... and struggling, and the noise of hoarse, quick shouts and the rebound of bodies falling and rolling upon the hard, smooth beach. The thing had not been a farce, after all. This was fighting at last, and there within arm's length were men grappling and gripping and hitting one another, each honestly striving to kill his fellow—Chinamen all, fighting in barbarous Oriental fashion with nails and teeth when the knife or hatchet failed. What did he, clubman and college man, in that hideous ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris

... light in the streets, but all seemed quiet without. The doors reeled and shook beneath the pressure of the pursuers. Gawtrey flung the rope across the street to the opposite parapet; after two or three efforts, the grappling-hook caught firm hold—the perilous path ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... a general expression of confidence, she was sure of that; only to be kind and comforting. But to her, grappling with new hard problems, that strange gaze came like a torch lit in a cave at night. Much she had wondered how Vivian could possibly hold her responsible for what her father did, or left undone. And now in a flash it was all quite clear, and she saw that he had not been holding her responsible ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... of the men of religion over Shakspere and his creations,—here is the greater world than Shakspere saw,—men grappling with their fate and in the struggle working ...
— The Chief End of Man • George S. Merriam

... and pestilence. All our plans, my son—(it is a comfort to make a counsellor of my own son!)—all the plans of my generals and myself are directed to provide for our defence till August, certain that then the French will be occupied in grappling with a deadlier foe than even men fighting ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau

... saw his horizon aglow with the smile of fortune. Everything was coming propitiously for him, even this unexpected visit of Miriam Kirkstone. He did not trouble himself to speculate as to the object of her visit, for he was grappling now with his own opportunity, his chance to get away, to win out for himself in one last master-stroke, and his mind was concentrated in that direction. The time was ripe to tell these things to Mary Josephine. She must ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood

... hitherto unknown law of development which is supposed to regulate and determine the progress of humanity from primeval Fetishism to ultimate Atheism; and it takes away Theology, with all its ennobling beliefs and blessed hopes, not by grappling with and solving, but by merely discarding the problem both of the origin and end of ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... are the chances of war! But half an hour before he and I were engaged in mortal combat, and our prisoner was all but my conqueror. Grappling with Cambaceres, whom I knocked from his horse, and was about to despatch, I felt a lunge behind, which luckily was parried by my sabretache; a herculean grasp was at the next instant at my throat—I was on the ground—my ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray

... 6. Item: Upon grappling the enemy, efforts shall be made to make him fast to our ship and to lower his sails, so that he may not become separated from us. Before boarding with troops, the nettings and deck of the enemy shall be rendered safe by clearing and raking them, in order that there may be as ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume XI, 1599-1602 • Various

... know as how he'd like it. He's been that upset these last few days. I——" He hesitated. Visibly an idea had visited him with which he was grappling. "You're not from Miss Austen, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... Once then, grappling manfully with the task he had undertaken, and constraining himself to look on what Riccabocca would have called "the southern side of things," whatever there was really great in principle or honourable to human nature, deep below the sordid ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... off, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, was grappling with his efforts to produce laundry effect from a wooden bucket and a few quarts of dingy water. Beyond splashing his putties and giving himself a pain in the hinges of his back, he accomplished little. The garments were very wet; but their ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller

... threw a transient gleam over the dark canopy of battle. The contest exhibited few of those enlarged combinations and skilful manoeuvres to be expected in a great naval encounter. It was rather an assemblage of petty actions, resembling those on land. The galleys, grappling together, presented a level arena, on which soldier and galley-slave fought hand to hand, and the fate of the engagement was generally decided by boarding. As in most hand-to-hand contests, there was an enormous waste of life. The decks were ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 2, December, 1857 • Various

... few days later, while he was grappling at the treasury with a file of papers on the mysteries of superannuation, Mr. Gladstone was again summoned by the prime minister, and again (Jan. 26) he writes ...
— The Life of William Ewart Gladstone, Vol. 1 (of 3) - 1809-1859 • John Morley

... the fight raged unceasingly; the Aztecs in the boats alongside leaping ashore, and grappling with their foes, and rolling with them down the causeway into the water; while those in the distance kept up their rain of missiles. The opening in the causeway was at last filled—choked up with ammunition wagons and ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty

... advanced upon the squire and gave him such a blow on the helmet as made him stagger and almost fall down. Guillonet, smarting from the blow, was very wroth, and made for the servant to strike him with his axe on the head; but the varlet avoided it, and grappling with the squire, who was much fatigued, turned him round and flung him to the ground under him, when he said: 'I will put you to death if you do not surrender yourself ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... face smiling over the swaying fiddle bow! And to think that Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his misfortune upon the ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... this dusky monarch was seen flying about above them. Presently he began to hover over them, after the manner of a hawk watching for mice. He then with extended legs let himself slowly down upon them, actually grappling the backs of the young cattle, and frightening the creatures so that they rushed about the field in great consternation; and finally, as he grew bolder and more frequent in his descents, the whole herd broke over the fence and came tearing down to the house "like mad." ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs

... the signal for the onslaught, and the sudden scuffling noise of several pair of feet, he wheeled, found himself already closely pressed by a number of men, and struck out at random. His stick landed on somebody's head with a resounding thump followed by a yell of pain. Then three men were grappling with him, two more seeking to aid them, and another lay in the roadway clutching a fractured skull and spitting oaths ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance

... it sees, with its sharp eye, a fish ripple the water; then it pounces down like a flash, and grabs the fish with, its long claws, that are made like grappling-irons. If the fish is small the Osprey carries it home easily; but if it is a big one there may be a fight. Sometimes, if the Osprey's claws get caught in a fish too large to fly away with, the Fisherman Bird is ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues

... black. The trap chains were rattling. Then a big black head was raised, to growl; and as if in reply came a sharp snarl from some animal out of sight. The black creature darted forward; and a great uproar arose, growling, grappling, and spitting, at which there flew up a whole flock of crows, cawing and hawing; and the noise increasing, there sprang into the air, at a single flap, a great yellow ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... Colonel Boyce; and he was in fact dragging the Prince across the room when the door bursts open and in comes a stranger, a little man. He flung himself across the room upon Colonel Boyce, making some play with a pistol. There was some grappling and wrestling. I recall that they gasped and breathed hard. But it's odd, I believe, that there was no word spoken. Then Colonel Boyce freed himself and bolted through that inner door. The stranger fired a shot after him, and while we were all deaf and sneezing ...
— The Highwayman • H.C. Bailey

... back to our ship, all but Thord and half a dozen warriors, whom he kept as guard for me, I suppose; and the grappling lines were cast off. Then we made sail again, and headed to rejoin the rest of the Saxon vessels. Odda's crippled ship had repaired her damage at this time, and went with us. But first it was plain that she thought we had taken her consort, for she prepared to fight us, and Odda ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler

... board us," cried Baragat. "They are getting out their grappling-irons, and they will fasten the ...
— The Bee-Man of Orn and Other Fanciful Tales • Frank R. Stockton

... "This is my club. Here we are like a family." He ordered tea of a waiter who seemed more like a bosom friend. And leaning eagerly forward, he began to speak in glowing terms of the men and girls from sweatshops who spent their nights in these feasts of the soul, talking, listening, grappling, "for the power to think with minds as clear as the sun when it rises," he ardently cried. "There is not a night in this city, not one, when hundreds do not talk like this until the breaking of the day! And then they sleep! A little joke! For at six o'clock they must rise to their work! ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole

... and south by open windows, from whose parapets I saw the village and the valley spread beneath. The fierce wind hurried through it, charged with snow, and its narrow space was thronged with men. Men on the platform, men on the window-sills, men grappling the bells with iron arms, men brushing by to reach the stairs, crossing, recrossing, shouldering their mates, drinking red wine from gigantic beakers, exploding crackers, firing squibs, shouting and yelling in corybantic chorus. They yelled and shouted, ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds

... masques, and high heroic games. And now the old sit round; and now the young Climb the green boughs, the murmuring doves among. Who claims the prize, when winged feet contend; When twanging bows the flaming arrows [Footnote 9] send? Who stands self-centred in the field of fame, And, grappling, flings to earth a giant's frame? Whilst all, with anxious hearts and eager eyes, Bend as he bends, and, as he rises, rise! And CORA'S self, in pride of beauty here, Trembles with grief and joy, and hope and fear! (She who, the fairest, ever flew the first, With cup of balm to quench his ...
— Poems • Samuel Rogers

... submitting stupidly, without offering much resistance. The mandibles gape, the legs kick and protest, the body wriggles and twists; and that is all. They have no weapons capable of contending with the assassin's dagger. I should like to see the huntress grappling with an imposing adversary, one as crafty as herself, an expert layer of ambushes and, like her, bearing a poisoned dirk. I should like to see the bandit armed with her stiletto confronted by another bandit equally ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre

... streets in a sort of stupor. He was conscious only of a heavy, aching heart and a wearied, confused brain. All the time, however, he knew an event had occurred that must for good or evil affect his entire existence; but he shrank with nervous dread from grappling with the problem. As the cold air refreshed and revived him, his strong, practical mind took up the question almost without volition, and by reason of his morbid, wearied state, only the dark and discouraging side was presented. The awakening to his love was a very ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... rent-down undergrowth, and had no great difficulty in reconstructing the scene. Smashed fern and scattered leaves as well as the red smears on the snow bore plain testimony to the fierceness of that struggle, and he pictured his comrade grappling with his adversary while his strength flowed from him with that horrible red trickle. The light that came down between towering trunks showed that his face was grey and stern, and Okanagan, who looked at him, nodded as ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss

... and, not able to get asunder, fought desperately; those who were near the prows showed the greatest alacrity, boarding each other's ships, and making terrible havoc; none, however, were taken prisoners. For grappling-irons they made use of large sharks chained together, who laid hold of the wood and kept the island from moving: they threw oysters at one another, one of which would have filled a waggon, and sponges of an acre long. AEolocentaurus ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian

... by pills, boluses, and draughts: we can lay our hand, with a clear conscience, on our stomach, and avouch that fact. We have ever held our doctor in too much reverence to disobey him; and we revere him more and more every day, since we find him grappling closer and closer with the Homoeopathists, and meeting them manfully on their own ground. 'We will not,' says he, 'give in to the absurdity of attempting to counteract a disease by a medicine that produces the same disease; but something good ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 428 - Volume 17, New Series, March 13, 1852 • Various

... motion, they intercepted the darts and javelins wherewith they were attacked, and broke them or diverted them from their intended courses.[14408] When boarding-bridges were thrown from the towers to the top of the walls, and an attempt was made to pass troops into the town across them, they flung grappling hooks among the soldiers on the bridges, which caught in their bodies and lacerated them, or dragged their shields from their hands, or sometimes hauled them bodily into the air, and then dashed them against the wall or against the ground.[14409] Further, they made ready masses of ...
— History of Phoenicia • George Rawlinson

... aspect to my young friend. She has set me down in the thick of events—and not events such as the smiling philosopher is in the habit of dealing with, but lunatic, fantastic occurrences with which no system of philosophy invented by man is capable of grappling. I can just keep my head, that is all, and note down what happens more or less day by day, so that when the doings of dwarfs and captains, and horse-tamers and youthful Members of Parliament concern me no more, Dale Kynnersley can have a bald but veracious statement ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... unsurpassed type of one way of grappling with the horror of life. Fear nothing, desire nothing, possess nothing: and then Life with all its ingenuity of malice cannot disappoint you. If man cannot enter into life nor yet depart from it save through agony and filth, let him learn to endure the one and be indifferent to the ...
— Five Stages of Greek Religion • Gilbert Murray

... he shouted, in a rapture. "In every way—and always—as long as you live? Do you mean it?" He had caught her hand to his breast and was grappling it tight there and drawing her ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... in spite of the latter's enormous jaws,—avoiding which, by its agility, it will tear open the reptile's side, and devour it before life is extinct. It lies watching from a projecting trunk for the huge manatee swimming by, and grappling it with its claws, holds it fast in the struggle for life and death, by degrees dragging the vast body out of the water, and never letting go its grasp till it has succeeded in capturing its prey. Turtles become its easy victims. ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston

... grappling, the two figures waltzed grotesquely about in the falling snow. Then the mayor's feet slid from under him on the treacherous white carpet, and the two went down together. As Mr. Magee swooped down upon them he saw ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... a true one with regard to any continuation of any general work in the direction of Evolution, but his estimate of powers which could afterwards prove capable of grappling with the 'Power of Movement in Plants,' and with the work on 'Earthworms,' was ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume II • Francis Darwin

... what may be accomplished by irrigation, the report of the last census says: "The construction of large irrigation works on the Platte, Yellowstone and Arkansas Rivers would render fertile an area equal to that of some eastern states. Engineers are grappling with the great problems of conserving the flood waters of these streams, which now are wasted and help to increase the destructive floods of the Mississippi. The solving of these problems will change a vast area of country, now ...
— Checking the Waste - A Study in Conservation • Mary Huston Gregory

... hiccup than a "How do you do?" I saw Peter use his eyes like grappling irons on the camera-eyes of Mr. Moyle. Then his magnetism, like a band of pirates, swarmed aboard of the other's mentality. He put out his hand and shook the hand of the man, whether Camera eyed Dick ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... or thought I saw, that by crossing the face of the cliff for a few yards I should regain the ordinary route. The first step or two was easy; then came a long stride, in which I had to throw out one hand by way of grappling-iron to a jutting rock above. The rock was reeking with moisture, and as I threw my weight upon it my hand slipped, and before I had time to look round I was slithering downwards without a single point ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker

... so they Drew back under the wave. I saw, and yet My heart doth stagger, one, that waited thus, As it befalls that oft one frog remains, While the next springs away: and Graffiacan, Who of the fiends was nearest, grappling seiz'd His clotted locks, and dragg'd him sprawling up, That he appear'd to me an otter. Each Already by their names I knew, so well When they were chosen, I observ'd, and mark'd How one the other call'd. "O Rubicant! See that his hide thou with thy talons flay," Shouted ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante

... evidence seems wonderfully strong. The Rev. Mr. Cumming, though emphatically powerful in declamation, has never practised argument,—a mean and undignified art, which he leaves to men such as Mr. Cunningham, just as the genteel leave the art of boxing to the commonalty; and in grappling lately with a strong-boned Irish Presbyterian, skilful of fence, he caught, as gentlemen sometimes do, a severe fall, and began straightway to characterize Irish Presbyterians as a set of men very inferior indeed. Now the writer in Fraser has ...
— Leading Articles on Various Subjects • Hugh Miller

... by—Perkins dead; Margaret still unconscious; Dorothy lying in her seat, her thoughts a formless prayer, buoyed up only by her faith in God and in her lover; DuQuesne self-possessed, smoking innumerable cigarettes, his keen mind grappling with its most desperate problem, grimly fighting until the very last instant of life—while the powerless space-car fell with an appalling velocity, faster and faster; falling toward that cold and desolate monster of ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... me an interesting item of news from the East; it was, that the Merrimac had steamed out, and after engaging the Monitor for some time with no decisive results, had ran alongside, and throwing grappling-hooks on her, towed her ashore, where, of course, she fell an easy prey. He said that now they had the two best gunboats in the world, and they would be able to raise the blockade without difficulty, and even to burn the Northern cities. But I have not space to tell of all the wild ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger

... way to do it," he said, pausing in perplexity; "I suppose a certain amount of dirt is inevitable when you are grappling with reality. But my pyjamas will be in a ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson

... treasonable oaths, which was a practice in the society of United Irishmen, was a capital offence; and that in case a witness was murdered, which frequently happened, before a trial, his written testimony should be considered sufficient evidence. While government was thus grappling with the disaffection which prevailed, a body of men united under the name of Orangemen, for the purposes of security. This was natural; but, unfortunately, it only increased the religious animosities which already existed between the two parties. Government, moreover, began to embody ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... whosomever you plaze, boy," said Davy. "What's it saying in the ould Book: 'Go out into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.' Only it's the back-courts and the public-houses this time, and you'll be wanting no grappling hooks to fetch them. Just whip a whisky bottle under your arm, and they'll be asking for no other invitation. Reminds me, sir," he added, looking up as Lovibond entered, "reminds me of little Jimmy Quayle's aisy way of fetching poor Hughie Collister from the bottom of Ramsey harbor. Himself ...
— Capt'n Davy's Honeymoon - 1893 • Hall Caine

... tumults had given place to an almost scientific calm. Very soon he was grappling manfully with the question. There was no disputing it, they had quarrelled. Not once but several times lately they had quarrelled. It was real quarrelling;—they had stood up against one another, striking, ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells

... death-gripe on the plain, The grappling monsters on the main, The tens of thousands that are slain, And all the speechless suffering and agony ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various

... and climb to meet the bristling fire. Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over the top, While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, Flounders in mud. ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon

... pardon upon their souls; they that before were joined to their idols, drunkenness, uncleanness, covetousness, pride, ways of false worship, old superstitious customs, and ceremonies, and the like; so that there was no parting of them; or those who had long been grappling and conflicting with their strong corruptions and old temptations, and in those conflicts had received many a foil, and got many a fall to the wounding of their consciences, and cutting deep gashes upon their souls; ...
— The Covenants And The Covenanters - Covenants, Sermons, and Documents of the Covenanted Reformation • Various

... the vigorous preparations which were being made to receive them. Bearing down on the crippled vessel at full speed, in spite of the bellowing discharge from the great gun, and a well-delivered volley of small shot, which stretched many of them on the deck, they ran straight against her, threw grappling-irons into the rigging, and sprang on board ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne

... a year may have passed between this and the continuation. Whatever the period, a clarity arrived. Mallare's mind grappling with the nightmare shadows engulfing it, distorted his reason to give them outline and was saved. The writing, however, becomes more labored in appearance as if the letters of words were now decorations ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht

... a man drawing his breath low and short, after he hath spent many hours and days in prayer to the Lord, grappling with his corruptions, and striving to pull down his base lusts, after he hath waited upon the Lord in a constant course of obedience. Take but such a man, and ask him, now his conscience is opened, whether the ways of holiness and sincerity be not irksome to him, whether ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser

... Wind" went on blowing. At six o'clock he had left the children of Israel to their fate, and was grappling with the Norman invasion of England. The House adjourned for dinner then, and it is on record that as they walked the corridor to the dining-room, a member of the cabinet asked the premier, "Where in the name of all we stand for is this fellow going to land?" that the premier, without even ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... well matched," he said, "and I suppose were equally surprised when we found each other grappling in the dark. Of course neither of us knew how many supporters the other had close at hand, but the first thought that struck me was that I must silence him if possible before his comrades came to ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... not endure the thought of failure. His pride of character led him ever to resolve to accomplish whatever he should undertake. He seems not at all to have thought of the peril he would encounter in grappling with the savage alone. The Indian was of herculean size and strength, and of wonderful agility. He was well armed, and thoroughly understood the use of his rifle. His bravery had already given him renown, and it was certain that under the circumstances ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott

... declaration of Hungarian independence, it became necessary for Francis Joseph to accept his protector's help without qualification or disguise. An army of eighty thousand Russians marched across Galicia to assist the Austrians in grappling with an enemy before whom, when single-handed, they had succumbed. Other Russian divisions, while Austria massed its troops on the Upper Danube, entered Transylvania from the south and east, and the Magyars in the summer of ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe

... may be added, deserves to be remembered for her courage in trying inoculation on her own children, and then introducing it into this country. This was in 1721, seventy-eight years before Jenner discovered a more excellent way of grappling ...
— The Age of Pope - (1700-1744) • John Dennis

... insistence. Mrs. Verrier said to herself—not altogether shrewdly—that he had no nerves, or no heart; and Daphne had not yet come across the genus. Her lovers had either possessed too much heart—like Captain Boyson—or a lack of coolness, when it really came to the point of grappling with Daphne and her millions, as in the case of a dozen she could name. Whereby it had come about that Daphne's attention had been first provoked, then peremptorily seized by the Englishman; and Mrs. Verrier began now to suspect that ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... perhaps still more in its recovery after it had been broken. A small cable is lost at the bottom of the ocean, far from the land, and in water about two miles in depth—a ship goes out, discovers the spot, and then grappling irons are lowered. Science with its long arm, as it were, reaches down the almost unfathomable abyss, and with its powerful hand secures and brings to the surface of the ocean the fractured cable, which is again made to connect the Old and New Worlds—thus ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... bill. This we knew before: but now comes a fresh assault on liberty. Not only must we look on and see nets and lines set all round our once hospitable shores to catch the unhappy fugitives from continental tyranny; but at length, it seems, ministers are to be allowed to throw out their grappling hooks after English fugitives from the tyranny of Lord Londonderry. If a man runs to the North Pole, I suppose Lord Londonderry and Ally[1] Croaker will soon be after them: and that, by the way, is the meaning of all these polar voyages.—I see that even the ministerial gentlemen present cast down ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey

... Again My Lady screamed shortly; the children screamed. He proved very strong. Swelling and tugging and cursing he broke one grip, but I was fast to him, now with guard against his holstered gun. We swayed and staggered, grappling hither and thither. I had his arms pinioned once more, to bend him. He spat into my face; and shifting, set his teeth into my shoulder so that they champed like the teeth of a horse, through shirt and hide to the flesh. I raised him; his boots hammered ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin

... and the increasing dread of the hallucination. The self-confidence that first supported me in my nightly encounter diminished on each occasion, and the curiosity which stimulated me to the study of the phenomenon rapidly gave way to the sentiment akin to terror when I proved myself incapable of grappling with ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... through some wild caprice of its own, or some touch of its dying rider, circled back, galloping down the long slope toward the man who had come to help Hall adjust his differences with these contemptible sheepmen. Hall's hat fell off as his head sank forward; he bent, grappling his horse's mane. So for a little way he rode, then slipped from the saddle, one foot entangled in ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden

... to a boat, after having first passed through the body of one of her crew. Barney had no rockets; and, as the combat at long range was telling upon his men, he at once dashed forward into the midst of the enemy. Soon the barges were engaged in desperate hand-to-hand conflicts. The sailors, grappling with their adversary's craft, fought with pistol and cutlass across the gunwales. Barney, in a small barge with twenty men, dashed about, now striking a blow in aid of some overmatched American boat, then cheering on some laggard, or ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... approach. He sat down and picked up a magazine from the table upon which Marie-Anne's work-basket lay. He was cool as ice now. His blood flowed evenly and his pulse beat unhurriedly. Never had he felt himself more his own master, more like grappling with a situation. St. Pierre was coming to fight. He had no doubt of that. Perhaps not physically, at first. But, one way or another, something dynamic was bound to happen in the bateau cabin within the next half-hour. Now that the impending ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood

... and the trickling rivers, the fishermen—from this height, Liliputians grappling with Liliputian meshes—were setting their nets for the night. Across the river-beds, peasant women and fishwives, with bared legs and baskets clasped to their bending backs, appeared and disappeared—shapes that emerged ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd

... susceptibility of pain is the sole fulcrum on which slavery works the lever that moves him. In this it plants all its stings; here it sinks its hot irons; cuts its deep gashes; flings its burning embers, and dashes its boiling brine and liquid fire: into this it strikes its cold flesh hooks, grappling irons, and instruments of nameless torture; and by it drags him shrieking to the end of his pilgrimage. The fact that the master inflicts pain upon the slave not merely as an end to gratify passion, but constantly as a means of extorting ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society

... own corpse, he had climbed up on the dock and told the officer that he had touched the body sticking in the mud. And, as a result of this fiction, the river-police dragged the river-bed around Wakeman's Slip with grappling irons for four hours, while Rags sat on the wharf and directed ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis

... our own fashion, how in the name of natural law the place could have caught fire or smoked at all. And each was silent—myself from sheer incapacity and befuddlement, the Colonel from the quiet pluck that faces all things yet speaks little, and John Silence from the intense mental grappling with this latest manifestation of a profound problem that called for concentration of thought rather ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood

... fellows or more, of every hue, from jet-black to white, and in every style of costume, sprung up on her decks from below, and directly afterwards she ranged up alongside of us. The captain, on this, ordered her to sheer off; but instead of so doing, grappling-irons were thrown aboard us, and her fierce-looking crew made a rush to leap on our deck. They were met, however, by our captain, Mr Gale, Peter, and the rest of our people, who, with pistol and cutlass in hand, were prepared to dispute ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston

... enfeebling to the artists themselves. Few of the novelists have ever gone about a whole winter with a knot in their foreheads, such as Hawthorne carried there while he was thinking out the 'Scarlet Letter.' And only by strenuous grappling with his obstacles was he able to attain the masterly simplicity of that Puritan tragedy. A resolute wrestling with difficulty is good not only for the muscles but also for the soul; and it may be because ...
— Inquiries and Opinions • Brander Matthews

... that the people of Samboanga seized the said artillery, which they had taken from the galley and took it ashore at the river of Mindanao. He said that the people of Samboanga burst one piece; and the Spaniards took it, along with two grappling hooks, and brought it to this city. All the above is the truth. This witness said also that the said galley that was lost carried nine pieces of artillery—amidships a large round swivel-gun; at the bow and along the sides, two large chambered falcons; ...
— The Philippine Islands 1493-1898, Vol. 4 of 55 - 1576-1582 • Edited by E. H. Blair and J. A. Robertson

... corner of the house, to light on an odd volume of Livy, left there by some student boarder. What could Livy do for a child of eight years, with no previous knowledge of Latin, and no lexicon to interpret between them? For most children, nothing. Not one in a thousand would have dreamed of seriously grappling with such a mystery. But the brave Patavinian took pity on our little one and yielded something to childish importunity. The quaint old copy was garnished, according to a fashion of the time, with rude wood-cuts, having explanatory legends underneath. The young philologer tugged at these until he ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various

... discussing this committee and its work, declared that 'a very free interchange of opinion took place. In the course of the discussions it appeared probable that a union of parties might be effected for the purpose of grappling with the constitutional difficulties.' Macdonald voted against the committee's report. Brown was thoroughly in earnest, and the desperate nature of the political situation gave him an opportunity to prove ...
— The Fathers of Confederation - A Chronicle of the Birth of the Dominion • A. H. U. Colquhoun

... dropped from the sky at the psychological moment. For two straight hours that afternoon he had been sitting at his desk grappling with the problem, which they, in their broken English, were so ably handling. Should he swallow a great deal of pride, and make another plea for justice? St. Ursula's vacation was at hand; in a few days more she would ...
— Just Patty • Jean Webster

... above rough fingers—so you make A weed a flower, and others, passing, think: "Next ditch I cross, I'll lift a root from it, And dress my window" . . . and the blessing spreads. Well, so I grew, with every root and tendril Grappling the secret anchorage of his love, And so we loved each other till he ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... again towards evening, I found that the expression of her sick face—the weary, exhausted look of one grappling with a stronger power—had passed away, and, in exchange, there was peace, and even happiness. She began herself to say, "When you told me this forenoon that I could not live, it surprised me; but I have come to it now, and it is all right. Every thing is ...
— Catharine • Nehemiah Adams

... down on the deck, that nothing might be seen which could intimate any purpose of resistance. In a quarter of an hour De Longueville's vessel ran on board that of the Champion, and the Red Rover, casting out grappling irons to make sure of his prize, jumped on the deck in complete armour, followed by his men, who gave a terrible shout, as if victory had been already secured. But the armed Scots started up at once, and the rover found himself unexpectedly engaged with men ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... put the Astorian Library on a par with the Imperial? Well, perhaps some quick and cheap way will be found of righting it all when the Aerial Navigation Company issues its time-bills, and news come of battles "from the nation's airy navies grappling in the central blue." ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton

... as soon as he was within earshot, "the pirates are bested, and we can make a safe escape if you will give an order to set loose the grappling irons and lines and bid our men raise sail!" He looked eagerly at Captain Blizzard. "The pirates look pretty tired now, but the Vulture might pursue us if I didn't know ...
— Mr. Wicker's Window • Carley Dawson

... mind remains inactive, in a sort of indolent revery, wandering here and there, without focusing anywhere. Such reading takes the spring and snap out of the mental faculties, weakens the intellect, and makes the brain torpid and incapable of grappling with great ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden

... who have failed upon the stage owe their want of success in part to their over-estimation of the power of the acting play to convey ideas, and consequently to their putting so much more into their work than the average audience can get out that the public shirks the task of grappling with them at all. Shakespeare, under peculiar circumstances, was grappled with before our time, and has been predigested for us; but the others have had no such fortune. Moreover, much of the national dramatist's finest work is cut when his works are produced and some ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"

... that never in their close intercourse had he been able to fathom John Harman. A shadow rested over the wealthy and prosperous merchant. Never until now had Hinton even approached the cause; but now, now it seemed to him that he was grappling with the impenetrable mystery, that face to face he was looking at the long and successfully hidden sin. Strong man as he was, he trembled as this fear came over him. Whatever the cause, whatever the sudden and swift temptation, he felt an ever-growing conviction that long ago John and Jasper ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... womanly too, that he puzzled my father's purely masculine brain. The mixture, and the vehemence of the mixture, were not in his line. He would have turned "Crayshaw's" matters over in his own mind as often as hay in a wet season before grappling with the whole bad business as the Colonel had done. And on the other hand, it made him feel uncomfortable and almost ashamed to see tears standing in the old soldier's eyes as he passionately blamed himself for what had been suffered by "my ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing

... tufted breasts to the sunshine; even a long worm that she noticed crawling lazily in the heat spoke to her of enjoyment of some sort. Her own heart leaped, and she thought it was in answer to the spring. She forgot the dire fates with which she had been grappling, forgot to hate and ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... as how he'd like it. He's been that upset these last few days. I——" He hesitated. Visibly an idea had visited him with which he was grappling. "You're not from Miss Austen, now, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus

... do. " wheelbarrows. do. " pitchforks. do. " posts. do. " beams. do. " bolts. do. " bars. do. " hinges. do. " pokers. do. " saucepans. do. " mallets. do. " hammers. do. " saws. do. " chisels. do. " ropes. do. " chains. do. " grappling irons. together with a miscellaneous collection of articles snatched up at a moment's warning by an excited multitude, men, women, and children, headed by Frank, who wielded triumphantly an old fowling-piece, ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille

... sufferings of the heroic inhabitants claim our sympathy, we might read with entertainment the singular devices they resorted to in grappling with a terrible foe whose insidious advances were more difficult to oppose than the open assaults of the enemy. For the famine of Sancerre boasts of a historian more copious and minute than Josephus or Livy. In reading the narrative of the famous Jean ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird

... slipping, grappling, the two figures waltzed grotesquely about in the falling snow. Then the mayor's feet slid from under him on the treacherous white carpet, and the two went down together. As Mr. Magee swooped down upon them he saw ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers

... bolder and firmer champions. Under cover of the panic of 1857, which drew men's minds away from politics, a group of them were already planning a most daring last attempt to bring Kansas into the Union as a slave State. In the grappling there, freedom had shown itself stronger than slavery. Robert J. Walker, a slaveholder, whom Buchanan and Douglas had persuaded to accept the governorship, reported that the Free-Soilers outnumbered their adversaries three to one. The legislature ...
— Stephen Arnold Douglas • William Garrott Brown

... was done quietly, and without any explosive smack. These omissions oppressed and depressed her considerably; still, on the whole, we got on very well. Accustomed to instruct foreign girls, who hardly ever will think and study for themselves— who have no idea of grappling with a difficulty, and overcoming it by dint of reflection or application—our progress, which in truth was very leisurely, seemed to astound her. In her eyes, we were a pair of glacial ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte

... you shovin', you big slob you" yelled Buzz (I regret to say). And he thrust at him, and through him. The man released his grappling hold of Hatton's throat, and grunted, and sat down. And Buzz laughed. And the two went on, Buzz behind his lieutenant, and then something smote his thigh, and he too sat down. The dying German had thrown his last bomb, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... is—namely movement. He can accomplish his task in only one way, and that is by so rendering the one particular movement that we shall be able to realise all other movements that the same figure may make. "He is grappling with his enemy now," I say of my wrestler. "What a pleasure to be able to realise in my own muscles, on my own chest, with my own arms and legs, the life that is in him as he is making his supreme effort! What ...
— The Florentine Painters of the Renaissance - With An Index To Their Works • Bernhard Berenson

... out his evil premiss to the bitter end, till he is forced to go back upon himself, and recognize the right principle which he has violated? The very law of his being, of every being who is being raised from death unto life, is, that he can only know life through death, only grasp good by grappling with evil, only gain knowledge by knowing ignorance; his highest must be sown in weakness before it can be raised in power, must be sown in dishonor before it can be raised ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins

... his obtaining payment of the various sums due by the Insurance Offices. This point was either more knotty and difficult to unravel than the previous one, or the grog began to render his intellect less capable of grappling with it. At all events it cost him an hour to determine his course of action, and required another glass of grog to enable him to put the whole matter fairly before his mental vision in one comprehensive view. This, however, accomplished, he ...
— The Floating Light of the Goodwin Sands • R.M. Ballantyne

... means used for its propagation, the methods it employed in grappling with and overcoming the evils that it found existing in the world, in the relations it established between the sexes, in its teaching with regard to the respective duties of the civil and spiritual powers, and, above all, in its redeeming character, and then the conclusion ...
— Two Old Faiths - Essays on the Religions of the Hindus and the Mohammedans • J. Murray Mitchell and William Muir

... I hardly heard her. My heart was pounding, and a curious dizziness had come over me. I was grappling with the incredible. 'I think he went ...
— The Little Nugget • P.G. Wodehouse

... Turgot. Grimm calls them "the pietists of philosophy," and Hume, bantering Morellet, wonders how a man like Turgot could herd with such cattle, "the most chimerical and the most arrogant that now exist since the annihilation of the Sorbonne." But they were grappling with living problems, and seeing into the real situation so much further than their contemporaries, that an historian like de Tocqueville thinks the best key to the Revolution is to be found in their writings. The malady of the age, they held, was the ever-increasing distress of the agricultural ...
— Life of Adam Smith • John Rae

... on the tide, The grappling-irons are plied, The boarders climb up the side, The shouts are ...
— Tales of a Wayside Inn • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... jealousy—and nobody could have guessed that his quiet deferential bearing to all these grey-heads was the supreme effort of stoicism, that the man was engaged in keeping a sinister watch on his tortures lest his strength should fail him. As before, when grappling with other forces of nature, he could find in himself all sorts of courage except ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad

... were five odd-looking marks on his throat, and Boston thought of that cry in the night and wondered if the whispering firs could tell of another mystery hidden in the forest; of a menacing shadow dogging the footsteps of a man and grappling with him in ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly

... Lincoln was one of the few white men he ever passed an hour with who failed to remind him in some way, before the interview terminated, that he was a negro. "He always impressed me as a strong, earnest man, having no time or disposition to trifle; grappling with all his might the work he had in hand. The expression of his face was a blending of suffering with patience and fortitude. Men called him homely, and homely he was; but it was manifestly a human homeliness. His eyes had in them the tenderness of motherhood, and his mouth and other ...
— The Every-day Life of Abraham Lincoln • Francis Fisher Browne

... some Austrian howitzer, struggling madly at a bridge, gave us a bit of a tussle. Everything flitted past me like smoke, or like the mad finale of a dream just before waking. I knew the living movement under me, and the companionship of men, but all dimly, for at heart I was alone, grappling with the realization of a new world. I felt the shadows of the Palantuken glen fading, and the great burst of light as we emerged on the wider valley. Somewhere before us was a pall of smoke seamed with red flames, and beyond ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan

... development which is supposed to regulate and determine the progress of humanity from primeval Fetishism to ultimate Atheism; and it takes away Theology, with all its ennobling beliefs and blessed hopes, not by grappling with and solving, but by merely discarding the problem both of the origin and ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... is a mass of written enlightenment concerning human beings, human hearts, and human thought. Name, if you will, any other study which could better fit a man for grappling with the problems of humanity in that portion of his ...
— Platform Monologues • T. G. Tucker

... qualification of beard to offer himself as a candidate, indulges in it also; and I, too, in this transition stage, cherished it with all the strength of a passion. It seems to spring out of a latent timidity in the yet undeveloped mind, that shrinks from grappling with the stern realities of life, amid the crowd and press of the busy world, and o'ershaded by the formidable competition of men already practised in the struggle. I have still before me the picture of the "lodge ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... brought a battering-ram, which two warriors were seeking to hold in its place by hooks, this part of the bas-relief illustrating the account in the Book of Chronicles and in Josephus of the machine for battering walls, instruments to cast stones, and grappling-irons made by Uzziah. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... sound, and saw the magnetic mooring cables jerk. The ship was preparing for blastoff. Automatic motors were drawing the cables and grappling plates into the hull. Moving quickly, Tom reached the rear cable. Here was his anchor, something to hold him tight to the hull! With one hand he loosened the web belt of his suit, looped it over a corner of the grappling plate as it ...
— Gold in the Sky • Alan Edward Nourse

... Grappling-irons: Some grappling-irons, for the frigates have lost those brought by Captain Juan de la Ysla in the year seventy. Let some be of five arrobas' weight, and the others from ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 - Volume III, 1569-1576 • E.H. Blair

... possible, but also he knew that never in their close intercourse had he been able to fathom John Harman. A shadow rested over the wealthy and prosperous merchant. Never until now had Hinton even approached the cause; but now, now it seemed to him that he was grappling with the impenetrable mystery, that face to face he was looking at the long and successfully hidden sin. Strong man as he was, he trembled as this fear came over him. Whatever the cause, whatever the sudden and swift temptation, ...
— How It All Came Round • L. T. Meade

... that leap there was none of the gentle mercy with which he had dealt with him first, so long ago in Harold's cabin. But a quick movement by Harold saved him from the full force of the leap; in a moment they were grappling in ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... their joy could scarcely be repressed; while the everlasting light of God sheds radiance from above, and far below, lies earth with diminished sun and moon. The boldness of conception in this singular fresco reveals a genius capable of grappling with such problems as Tintoretto solved. Fra Filippo died at Spoleto, and left his work unfinished, to the care of his assistant, the Fra Diamante. Over his tomb Lorenzo de' Medici caused a monument to be erected, and Poliziano wrote Latin couplets to commemorate the fame of a painter highly ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds

... shrill and sudden cry, And, looking up, I saw the antic Puck Grappling with Time, who clutch'd him like a fly, Victim of his own sport,—the jester's luck! He, whilst his fellows grieved, poor wight, had stuck His freakish gauds upon the Ancient's brow, And now his ear, and now his beard, would pluck; Whereas ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood

... meet him, reversing his pistol and aiming at P. Sybarite's head a murderous blow. This, however, the little man was alert to dodge. November came bodily into his arms. Grappling, the two reeled and went down, P. Sybarite's fingers closing on the throat of the assassin just as the latter's head struck the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance

... with lines hanging over the sides in festoons, so that any one in the water, using them as stirrups, might get into the boat with ease. She was further provided with an anchor and cable; with strong but light lines attached to grappling irons at the bow and stern, which, when thrown into the rigging or upon a wreck, might fasten themselves to the ship and retain the boat without any other aid; also with a life-buoy, and a lantern for night work, besides numerous ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne

... Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales; Heard the heavens fill with shouting, and there rain'd a ghastly dew From the nations' airy navies grappling in the central blue; Far along the world-wide whisper of the south-wind rushing warm, With the standards of the peoples plunging thro' the thunder-storm; Till the war-drum throbb'd no longer, and the battle-flags were furl'd In the Parliament of man, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh

... them with your rifle, before they charged. Even while I was fighting I always heard your voice, like a trumpet; and after the sergeant had fallen you seemed to take command, as if it was your right. You saved my life when you bayoneted two of the three who were grappling with me, and you seemed to ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty

... forward. Keith's grip closed like iron on his groping arm, while he shot one fist out toward where the man's head should be. The blow glanced, yet drove the fellow backward, stumbling against the table, and Keith closed in, grappling for the throat. The other, startled by the unexpected attack, and scarcely realizing even yet the nature of his antagonist, struggled blindly to escape the fingers clawing at him, and flung one hand down to the knife in his belt. Warned ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... Mr Canning set about the process of grappling for the lost cable with persistent energy. But fishing in water two and a half miles deep is no easy matter. Nevertheless, it was done. Again and again, and over again, were two monster hooks in the shape of grapnels let down to the bottom of the sea, with an iron rope for a line, and the ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne

... that for this purpose ingenious arrangements are contrived by God—by the One Spirit whom he regards as incomparably the wisest and most powerful in the Universe. Dr. McTaggart recognizes no intelligence capable of grappling with such a problem or succession of problems. But this particular matter of the assignment of souls to bodies is only a particular application of a wider difficulty. Dr. McTaggart contends that the Universe constitutes not merely a physical but a moral order. ...
— Philosophy and Religion - Six Lectures Delivered at Cambridge • Hastings Rashdall

... beaming old face smiling over the swaying fiddle bow! And to think that Mrs. Clarke's own father had hidden away here all these years, utterly friendless except for the children, poor to the point of starvation, sick to the point of death, grappling with his great weakness in heroic silence, and going down to utter oblivion rather than obtrude his misfortune upon ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice

... and gave him such a blow on the helmet as made him stagger and almost fall down. Guillonet, smarting from the blow, was very wroth, and made for the servant to strike him with his axe on the head; but the varlet avoided it, and grappling with the squire, who was much fatigued, turned him round and flung him to the ground under him, when he said: 'I will put you to death if you do not surrender yourself ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix

... shall tell him simply that you are going to be married, and that you wish it kept secret. Unluckily, you need neither mother nor sister for your bridal evening. We are in October now; like a brave woman, you are grappling with winter first. If it were not a question of marriage, I should say you were taking the bull by the horns. In any case, you will have in me the most discreet and intelligent of friends. That mysterious region, known as the centre of Africa, has swallowed up many travelers, and ...
— Letters of Two Brides • Honore de Balzac

... to lip that motor-boats were on the way down from the city, with police officers and grappling-hooks and men experienced in the gruesome business of "dragging." The boss of the railway construction gang at Hawkins, where the new bridge was being built, had started for Windomville with a quantity of dynamite to be exploded on the bottom of the river in the hope and expectation of ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon

... the unfortunate man had worn round his neck, did not present the usual appearance, but was much loosened, and the knot displaced and dragged extremely tight; the folds were also compressed, as if it had been used as a means of grappling the deceased, and dragging ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott

... found means to gain over, by cash and promises, a sergeant and two privates, who agreed that, when on duty as sentinels on the walls over the precipice to the north, they would draw up rope-ladders, and fasten them by grappling-irons at their top to the battlements of the castle. This done, it would be easy for an armed party to scale the walls and make themselves masters of the stronghold. Arthur's plan did not end with the mere capture of the fortress. ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris

... long period. The followers of Sextus alarmed their opponents by the way they dashed up the waves: and they knocked holes in some ships by assailing them with a rush and bursting open the parts outside the oars, but as they were struck from the towers in the combat and brought alongside by grappling irons, they suffered no less harm than they inflicted. The Caesarians, also, when they came into close conflict and had crossed over to the hostile ships, proved superior; but as the enemy leaped out into the sea whenever the boats ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio

... Trade, who belonged to the Play-House, and had the Character of a mild and peaceable Man in his Profession. If the former was too furious, this was too sheepish, for his Part; insomuch that after a short modest Walk upon the Stage, he would fall at the first Touch of 'Hydaspes', without grappling with him, and giving him an Opportunity of showing his Variety of 'Italian' Tripps: It is said, indeed, that he once gave him a Ripp in his flesh-colour Doublet, but this was only to make work for himself, in ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele

... Britling had never faced before the war. They came to him now, and they came only to be rejected by the inherent quality of his mind. For weeks, consciously and subconsciously, his mind had been grappling with this riddle. He had thought of it during his lonely prowlings as a special constable; it had flung itself in monstrous symbols across the dark canvas of his dreams. "Is there indeed a devil of pure ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells

... loud report followed, and Tom saw some one leap from his car, and try to run away. But the figure stumbled, and, a moment later the young inventor was upon him, grappling with him. ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Runabout - or, The Speediest Car on the Road • Victor Appleton

... intrusion of modern art and its appliances strike one more curiously by force of contrast than in the wilder parts of Hungary. Just outside the railway station life and manners are what they were two centuries ago, and yet here are the grappling-irons of civilisation. No doubt a change will come to all this substratum of humanity, but it takes time. Even the railways in these wilder parts have not exactly settled themselves down to the inexorable limits of "time tables." It occurred on this very journey that ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse

... His was the soul of the Roman Petronius, or of one of the Corinthian eccentrics, who strutted in St. James's Park or past Carlton House in the early days of the Regency, and gave colour to that otherwise grim England that was grappling for life with the Corsican; or of "King" Nash of Bath. It was the "King," perhaps, that he suggested most of all. But in the Carlton House circle he might have out-Brummelled Brummel, and supplanted that famous Beau as the object of the fat ...
— Fifth Avenue • Arthur Bartlett Maurice

... [Sidenote: 1801-14] historian proves, that in no single instance did a lack of any quality of administrative ability in him create a difficulty, and that every problem of the many that during his term of office required solution was solved by his sound common-sense method of grappling with it. ...
— The Naval Pioneers of Australia • Louis Becke and Walter Jeffery

... left no doubt of their hostile intentions. The anchor was got up, when some of the blacks seized the painter, and others in trying to capsize the boat brought the gunwale down to the water's edge, at the same time grappling with the men to pull them out, and dragging the galley inshore towards the shoal water. The bowman, with the anchor in his hand, was struck on the head with a stone-headed axe, the blow was repeated, but fortunately took effect only on the wash-streak; another of the ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray

... Republicans asked aid and comfort of Abolitionists, because they were opposed to the extension of slavery, but the Abolitionists, who demanded "immediate emancipation," scouted the proposition; non-extension, said they, is by no means grappling with the principle; shutting up slavery where it is, is a step in the right direction, and will eventually strangle the whole system, but to educate the people into an idea we need the enthusiasm of a principle. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume II • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage

... motionless. So did the rest of us, waiting for the plunge. The boat dipped by the bow, darted forward, and in a trice we were in the midst of a deafening turmoil of boiling waters and crashing breakers. The breakers laid violent hands upon us, grappling at the frail gunwale and coming in part aboard, and then, as we slipped from their grasp, impotently flung their spray in our faces, and with a growl dropped astern. The boat trembled like a leaf, and was trembling yet, when, with nightmare speed, the ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell

... well-worn theme," said the Dean, with a half-smile. "But not, sir," I said, "as you handled it. You told us, at the end of the sermon, that you remembered a summer afternoon when you were an undergraduate at Christ Church, and were sitting over your Thucydides close to your window, grappling with a long and complicated passage which was to be the subject of next morning's lecture; and that, glancing for a moment from your book, you saw the two most brilliant young Christ Church men of the day ...
— Fifteen Chapters of Autobiography • George William Erskine Russell

... sphere of foreign politics. The estimates had exceeded all former limits, and reached for those days the enormous sum of twelve and a half millions. The struggle with France was vigorously waged, too, upon the ocean, warships, privateers, and merchantmen grappling to the death with one another in many a distant sea, while the main fleets of the enemy were for the most part blockaded in their ports by vigilant British armaments. Everywhere were exhilaration and a superb feeling of confidence, engendered by incipient successes and by the consciousness ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various

... of the horsemen the pioneers of this strange army passed. At one that rolled along the ground, breaking shapelessly and trailing out reluctantly into long grappling ribbons and bands, all three horses began to shy and dance. The master was seized with a sudden, unreasonable impatience. He cursed the drifting globes roundly. "Get on!" he cried; "get on! What do these things matter? How can they matter? ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... I looked in the direction the brenn was pointing, and saw our ships with their heavy leathern sails, bent on iron chains, grappling with the galleys. The brenn spoke true. The battle was joined on land and sea simultaneously. On that double combat depended the freedom or slavery of Gaul. But as I turned my attention from the two fleets ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue

... seem to feel it. He knelt on, inflexible, determined, all his iron will, all his fiery vitality, concentrated upon holding a man in life. It was not all magnetism, it was not all strength of purpose, it was his whole being grappling, striving, compelling, till inch by inch he gained a ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... course which he could consistently pursue amid all difficulties, because it was in harmony with the actual facts and the permanent conditions of the problem he had to solve." Here we have the secret of his success in grappling with the serious and complicated questions which constantly engaged his attention in the administration of ...
— Lord Elgin • John George Bourinot

... "Dramatis Personae" contains "James Lea's Wife," "Rabbi Ben Ezra," and "Prospice." Then, four years later, as we have said, appeared four volumes of that marvellous performance, "The Ring and the Book," a poetic and psychological grappling with the question suggested to the poet by the account of a Roman trial that took place a couple of centuries ago. Whether anyone else in any country has ever before ventured to publish a poem in four simultaneous volumes, we cannot ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne

... to resentment. It was even believed by a few that he doubted the wisdom of his brother's career.[576] But It was soon found that the leisure which he cultivated was not that of easy enjoyment and did not promise prolonged repose. He was grappling with the mysteries of language, and learning by patient study the art of finding the words that would give to thought both form and wings. The thought, too, must have been taking a clearer shape: for Tiberius ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge

... care to interfere with' Mustafa in a town full of his Moslem countrymen. He waited until the crazy trading-galley was well out to sea and rammed her with the beak of his own ship. Crossbowmen lined the rail, grappling irons were thrown out, and the captain, with Nicholas and some soldiers, went and unearthed Mustafa among bales of striped cotton. When he understood that they merely wanted all of his Feringhi slaves, he ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey

... ictibus) the engines. 10-12. in eas (sc. proras) iniecta on their bows was dropped ... 11. tollenone from a swing beam, supported at the centre of gravity by a strong fixed fulcrum. 12-13. cum (ferrea manus) gravique ... ad solum lit. when (the grappling-iron) swung back (recelleret) to the ground by a heavyweight of lead. 'This is incorrect; it was not the grappling-iron, but the other (inland) end of the lever which was brought down to the ground.' —Rawlins. 15. remissa (sc. ferrea manus) the grappling-hook was (then) suddenly ...
— Helps to Latin Translation at Sight • Edmund Luce

... on the enemy. The Abigail crept up to within pistol-shot of Roquemont's ship, swept round her stern, and poured in a raking broadside. While the French sailors were still in a state of confusion from the iron storm that had beaten on their deck, the English vessel rounded to and threw out grappling-irons. Over the side of the French ship leaped Kirke's pikemen and musketeers. There was a short fight on the crowded deck; but after Roquemont had been struck down with a wound in his foot and some of his sailors had ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis

... thick of events—and not events such as the smiling philosopher is in the habit of dealing with, but lunatic, fantastic occurrences with which no system of philosophy invented by man is capable of grappling. I can just keep my head, that is all, and note down what happens more or less day by day, so that when the doings of dwarfs and captains, and horse-tamers and youthful Members of Parliament concern me no more, Dale Kynnersley can have a bald but veracious statement of fact. And as I have before ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke

... Hare, quickly. He grasped the fellow's arm and received a violent push that almost knocked him over. Grappling with the rustler, he pulled up the bound hands, in spite of fierce resistance, and there were the long fingers, the sharp wart, the laced wristband. "Here's ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey

... then lay down on the deck, that nothing might be seen which could intimate any purpose of resistance. In a quarter of an hour De Longueville's vessel ran on board that of the Champion, and the Red Rover, casting out grappling irons to make sure of his prize, jumped on the deck in complete armour, followed by his men, who gave a terrible shout, as if victory had been already secured. But the armed Scots started up at once, and the rover found himself unexpectedly engaged with ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott

... and learned that his dog was mending. For fear of exciting the patient, he would not go in, but promised to come the next day. Then he passed on, hardly noticing whither he went, but turning mechanically, when he had covered five miles, wrestling with arguments, grappling with circumstances, and finally setting himself by the ears for a lovesick fool and a varlet ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates

... The footsteps gained upon him. He felt himself grasped by his cloak, when suddenly his pursuer was attacked in turn: a fierce fight and struggle ensued—a pistol was discharged that lit up rock and bush for a period, and showed two figures grappling together—all was then darker than ever. The contest continued—the combatants clenched each other, and panted and groaned, and rolled among the rocks. There was snarling and growling as of a cur, mingled with curses in which ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving

... resolutely crossed over to the other side of the corpse, covering it from attack, while his two assistants who were left proceeded quickly to lay hold of it. They had raised it, laid it on the bier, and were setting off by an unusual track across the waste, while Agellius, Aspar, and the third were grappling with some ruffians who had rushed upon them. Few, however, were there as yet to take part against them, but their cries of alarm were bringing others up, and the Christians were in growing danger of being worsted and carried ...
— Callista • John Henry Cardinal Newman

... the tank. Fortunately, the native was more frightened than hurt, and not many moments later joined in a game of monte with his friends not on duty at the time. The cable laying machinery was then transformed into a grappling machine, and by half past seven that evening the strain on the dynamometer showed we had in all probability hooked something. An hour later the end was on board, and by midnight a satisfactory splice had been made by a sergeant of the Signal ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel

... himself was strange and even startling. While 'Larby was speaking, he was beating his forehead and mumbling: "Where? When? Naomi!" as if grappling for lost treasures in an ebbing sea. And when 'Larby finished, he fell on him with reproaches. "And you are weeping for that?" he cried. "You think it much that the sweet child is dead—God rest him! So it is to the like of you, ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine

... few gaze, as if fascinated, into the gulf of fire towards which the whole mass of misery are being urged by the ministers of doom—the flames bite them, the devils fish for and catch them with long grappling-hooks:—in sad contrast to the group on the opposite side, a queen, condemned herself but self-forgetful, vainly struggles to rescue her daughter from a demon who has caught her by the gown and is dragging her backwards ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... his antagonist, swept away by the current, were engaged in a frightful struggle for life and death, now rising gasping to the surface, then sinking to unknown depths, but always grappling, and clutching at ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore

... deference to their professions or prejudices. Her respect for Lydia remained so great that she never complained to her of Cashel save on one occasion, when he had shown a bishop, whose house had been recently broken into and robbed, how to break a burglar's back in the act of grappling with him. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... set those brown and naked arms of theirs, Half-mad with strain, quick swinging chime on chime To the helmsman's shout. But vainly; all the time Nearer and nearer rockward they were pressed. One of our men was wading to his breast, Some others roping a great grappling-hook, While I sped hot-foot to the town, to look For thee, my Prince, and tell ...
— The Iphigenia in Tauris • Euripides

... even after the messages were sent, that Boylan spoke very little of himself. He was grappling with a certain final disposal. His talk was colored with desire. In fact, within an hour he had reached the critical part of his narrative, and was becoming more glib momentarily as the way ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort

... invariably lost the battle to the French and Spaniards, who were, as a rule, all tied up in ethical red tape. Our profession is broad, intelligent, and fearless; we do not profess any exclusive dogma, and should not, therefore, exclude persons; as a large ship throws its grappling-irons on to its adversary, we should always seek an opportunity to meet these gentry when practicable. As it is, we have placed them on the vantage-ground of appearing as being persecuted; our ethics need circumcising ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino

... been floating with the tide, drifting athwart the long shadows under the western bank, shooting across the whirls and eddies of the rapid strait, grappling to one and another of the good-natured sloops and schooners that swept along the highway to the great city, near ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various

... doubt amongst mischief-makers, they seek to strengthen by savage renewal as often as they find a British subject unprotected by armed guardians within their streets. In those streets murder walks undisguised. And the only measure for grappling with it is summarily to introduce the British resident, to prostrate all resistance, and to punish it by the gallows[4] where it proceeds to acts of murder. It is sad consideration for those, either in England ...
— The Uncollected Writings of Thomas de Quincey, Vol. 2 - With a Preface and Annotations by James Hogg • Thomas de Quincey

... given, and we have only to continue the process. Where the vehicle for the transmission of things past is poetry, then we have them presented in that succession, and with that modification of force, a resilient plasticity, now advancing, now recoiling, insinuating and grappling, that ere this material and mental warfare is over, we find the facts thus transmitted are incorporated with our psychical existence. And in tradition is it otherwise?—Every man tells the tale in his own way; and the merits of the story itself, or the person who tells it, or his ...
— The Germ - Thoughts towards Nature in Poetry, Literature and Art • Various

... one can get a good intellectual outfit without much personal effort. There are many schemes of education which encourage this idea. If one could only hit upon the right "electives," he could become a scholar with very little study, and without grappling with any of the real difficulties in the way of an education. It is no more a short-cut we desire, but a road of easy grades, with a locomotive that will pull our train along while we sit in a palace-car at ease. The discipline to ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... Wen, Take measures against hostile States, Along with your brethren, Get ready your grappling-irons, And your engines of assault, To ...
— Religions of Ancient China • Herbert A. Giles

... to cross the white line of coral-sand, when his Shadow, catching him suddenly and stoutly round the waist, pulled him back from the enclosure with every sign of horror, alarm, and astonishment. "No, you can't go," he cried, grappling with him with all his force, yet using him very tenderly for all that, as becomes a ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen

... paralyzed. Patsy came first and again took a fall. This time, from necessity or inclination,—probably the latter,—he did not rise, but left the drunken Douglas to face Dic single-handed and alone. Though tall and strong, Dic was by no means the equal of Doug in the matter of bulk, and in a grappling match Doug could soon have killed him. Dic fully understood this, and, being more active than his huge foe, endeavored to keep him at arm's length. In this he was successful for a time; but at last the grapple came, and both men fell to the ground—Doug Hill on top. Poor Rita was in a ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major

... Jack was rushing forward to drive back some fellows who had just hooked on their canoe at the lee fore-chains. The marines were thrusting away with their bayonets. A huge mulatto had grasped Mr Evans by the throat, and several of the seamen were grappling with their opponents. Over heeled the vessel. Just as she was in midstream another gust, more furious than the first, struck her. In an instant Jack felt that she had gone over not to rise again. He scrambled up over the ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... two eagles circled around and around; but at last they dashed against one another, and, grappling with their talons, tumbled over and over until they struck the ground close to the ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle

... been voted to all those who were to be affected by legislation that was sprung upon them, and passed into law for the public good. It may be said that any scheme of compensation must face heavy difficulties, but that is not a sufficient reason for not grappling with ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... the illustrations of the 'Painter's Camp' with George Leslie. He has promised to do twenty etchings of figure-subjects to illustrate it, and I shall do twenty landscapes. I have learned a great deal from Haden here, and I feel sure now of grappling successfully with the difficulties which plagued me before. Besides, I am anxious to have a book with etchings in it out in time to appear with the work on Etching. I am sure this new edition of the 'Painter's Camp' will be something jolly. ...
— Philip Gilbert Hamerton • Philip Gilbert Hamerton et al

... several of his sons a college education. The son who is chiefly interesting at the present time, Allison Francis Page, the father of the future Ambassador, did not enjoy this opportunity. This fact in itself gives an insight into his character. While his brothers were grappling with Latin and Greek and theology—one of them became a Methodist preacher of the hortatory type for which the South is famous—we catch glimpses of the older man battling with the logs in the Cape Fear River, or penetrating ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick

... intercourse between the two had been tentative and incoherent,—a doubtful, aimless grappling with strange conditions which seemed delightful, but might mask unknown dangers. No solid basis of mutual acquaintanceship had been even approached. Balder, accustomed though he was to woman's society, knew ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne

... little else to do. Again and again he plunged under, coming up each time nearly spent but desperately determined to try again. Two boats put out from the mill side of the river, capable Mr. Aikens in one of them. A grappling hook trailing from the stern of the boat told that such accidents as this were not unusual in treacherous ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Air on Lost Island • Gordon Stuart

... thus with pious heart he prays, Far in the distance sounds a boom: He pauses; and again there rings That sullen thunder through the room. A ship upon the shoals to-night! She cannot hold for one half hour; But clear the ropes and grappling hooks, And trust in ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... island. It is plain that this is the foundation on which the coral built. But, in the case of the Atoll, the coral ring was present and so was the internal lagoon, but there was no rocky island. The key to the solution came with an interesting discovery. Darwin began to put down a grappling iron on the outer side of the reef and to drag up coral. The farther away from the reef he went the deeper was the water from whose bottom he pulled the coral. What at first puzzled him was the fact that so long as he dragged up his coral ...
— The Meaning of Evolution • Samuel Christian Schmucker

... went on blowing. At six o'clock he had left the children of Israel to their fate, and was grappling with the Norman invasion of England. The House adjourned for dinner then, and it is on record that as they walked the corridor to the dining-room, a member of the cabinet asked the premier, "Where in the name of all we stand for is this fellow going to land?" that the premier, ...
— William Adolphus Turnpike • William Banks

... both ranks. The boasted short sword of the Romans, in times effeminate, as compared with these, afforded not in its wielding a greater test of personal courage than the handling of the flint-headed spear or the stone knife or chipped ax. There, all along the barrier, was the real grappling of man and man, with further existence ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... car that is unattached to the cable will make no progress and stand still forever, even though the engines in the power house glow with heat, and the cable, gliding along in the center of the track not two feet away, is laden down with power. The cable car must close its grappling iron and grip the cable before progress can be made. It must come in contact with the power. An electric lamp will swing dark and unlighted while all the other lamps about it send forth enlightening rays, and all the dynamos in ...
— The Jericho Road • W. Bion Adkins

... brightness for the street, Though raised above rough fingers—so you make A weed a flower, and others, passing, think: "Next ditch I cross, I'll lift a root from it, And dress my window" . . . and the blessing spreads. Well, so I grew, with every root and tendril Grappling the secret anchorage of his love, And so we loved each other till he ...
— Artemis to Actaeon and Other Worlds • Edith Wharton

... the next morning, I sent two boats, one from each ship, to search more accurately for a landing-place; and, at the same time, two others to fish at a grappling near the shore. These last returned about eight o'clock, with upward of two hundred weight of fish. Encouraged by this success, they were dispatched again after breakfast; and I then went in another boat, to take a view of the coast and attempt landing, but this I found to be wholly impracticable. ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 16 • Robert Kerr

... about three miles, and reached the edge of the ice, which extended far out from the promontory. Here we landed, and secured the boat by means of a small grappling-iron, which we thrust into the ice. We then walked toward the promontory for about a mile, and here we found a multitude of seals. These animals were so fearless that they made not the slightest movement as we came ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... both fields under his guidance. He saw the point of the road where the regiment marched into action on the 16th, and the slope down which they drove the French cavalry who were pressing on the retreating Belgians. There was the spot where the noble Captain cut down the French officer who was grappling with the young Ensign for the colours, the Colour-Sergeants having been shot down. Along this road they retreated on the next day, and here was the bank at which the regiment bivouacked under the rain of the night of the seventeenth. Further on was the position which they took and held ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... eloquent essays, "My First Acquaintance with Poets." But his active energies were concentrated on the solution of a metaphysical problem which was destined to possess his brain for many years: in his youthful enthusiasm he was grappling with a theory concerning the natural disinterestedness of the human mind, apparently adhering to the bias which he had received from his ...
— Hazlitt on English Literature - An Introduction to the Appreciation of Literature • Jacob Zeitlin

... is no time in vaudeville climaxes for one word that does not point out, or clinch home the action. Here action speaks louder than words. Furthermore, in the speed of bodily movement there is actually no time for words. If two men are grappling in a life and death struggle they can't ...
— Writing for Vaudeville • Brett Page

... father and son. But as Jim Hargis walked in his direction, Beach pulled himself up out of his chair, stepped around behind the spool case that stood on the end of the counter, leered at his father and moved toward him. Beach came within three feet of his father. The next thing they were grappling. ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas

... certain arrears of weakness, I had occasion to notice a disreputable attorney in London, who showed me some attentions, partly on my own account as a boy of some expectations, but much more with the purpose of fastening his professional grappling-hooks upon the young Earl of A——t, my former companion, and my present correspondent. This man's house was slightly described, and, with more minuteness, I had exposed some interesting traits in his household economy. A question, therefore, naturally ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol 58, No. 357, July 1845 • Various

... word if you love your life. You haven't thrown your grappling-iron on a worthless building. Do you know that the Marquis de Montauran is worth more than one hundred thousand francs a year from lands which have not yet been confiscated? And I read in the Primidi de l'Ille-et-Vilaine ...
— The Chouans • Honore de Balzac

... in, and the wicked revolver spoke out, and then Kettle nipped into the deck-house and slammed the door to on his heels. The black ape-like faces jabbered and mowed at the window ports, and brawny arms were thrust in, grappling viciously, but the Mate drew out camp-stools from a locker, and with these the three white men stabbed and hit at every face or arm which showed itself. There was no more shooting, and there was no need for it. By sheer weight of blows the whites kept ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne

... at all, however, as to the strain and stress of the general struggle to live in the valley, the sheer wear and tear of temper and spirits involved in the daily grappling with that problem. Everywhere one comes across symptoms of it—partial evidences—but the most complete exposition that I have had was given, some years ago now, by a woman who had no intention of complaining. She came to me with a message from a neighbour who was ill, but, in explanation ...
— Change in the Village • (AKA George Bourne) George Sturt

... that world had obtruded itself and shattered their dream. In the person of Simon Harley it had shut the door which was to separate him and her. Hitherto he had taken from life what he had wanted, but already he was grappling with the blind fear of a fate for once too strong ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... body of one of her crew. Barney had no rockets; and, as the combat at long range was telling upon his men, he at once dashed forward into the midst of the enemy. Soon the barges were engaged in desperate hand-to-hand conflicts. The sailors, grappling with their adversary's craft, fought with pistol and cutlass across the gunwales. Barney, in a small barge with twenty men, dashed about, now striking a blow in aid of some overmatched American boat, then cheering on some laggard, or applauding ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot

... upon the man who had struck the blow. Some other man, he did not see which, wrested the club from the fellow's hand. In the moments Alec was grappling with him he became conscious that the old man lying near his feet on the grass was more to him than revenge, and, with the caprice of a boy who turns from what interests him less to what interests him ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall

... of learning, founded school libraries, and turned the houses of tenants into homes of college students. But the Radicals' real reason for making him their candidate was his "recognition of the truth that slavery is the implacable enemy of our National life, and that the Union can only be saved by grappling directly and boldly with its ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander

... now at an end. My uncle had been all the morning making purchases of a part of the tools and apparatus required for this desperate undertaking. The passage was encumbered with rope ladders, knotted cords, torches, flasks, grappling irons, alpenstocks, pickaxes, iron shod sticks, ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... a bumblebee. When you come to think of it, he must lead a pleasant kind of life. Sails through the air without the trouble of flying. Free pass everywhere that the bee goes. No fear of being dislodged; look at those six grappling-hooks. Helps himself to such juices of the bee as he likes best; the bee feeds on the choicest vegetable nectars, and he feeds on the bee. Lives either in the air or in the perfumed pavilion of the fairest and sweetest flowers. Think what tents ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

... brick from the floor, he raised himself to his full height, and dashed it down on the head of the sleeping man. Just at that moment Corney's nodding head chanced to fall forward, and the brick only hit the comb of his helmet, knocking it over his eyes. Next moment he was grappling with Gorman. ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... had nothing more to fear, whereas, should we wear ship now, we should be heading for the Penmarks as soon as we got round upon the other tack, and should reach them, and be faced with the task of weathering them during the hours of darkness. The skipper, it was evident, was all for grappling with the nearest danger, for the reason that we should at least have light enough to see what we were doing; and Mr Howard ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood

... follows:—After forming a pair of large wings, each of them forty yards long, and fourteen wide, and annexing them to myself, I mounted at break of day, when every creature, even the watch upon deck, was fast asleep. As I hovered over the ship I fastened three grappling irons to the tops of the three masts with my sling, and fairly lifted her several yards out of the water, and then proceeded across to Dover, where I arrived in half an hour! Having no further occasion for these wings, I made them a present to the governor ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe

... At first the Carthaginians seemed to have the best of it, because they had a strong war fleet while the Romans had only a few small vessels. But the Romans hurriedly built ships and placed upon each a kind of drawbridge, fitted with great hooks called grappling-irons. These they let down upon the enemy's decks as soon as the ships came close enough, and over these drawbridges the Roman soldiers rushed and captured ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton

... know, I was disappointed,' he said judicially. 'Stonor's too content just to criticize, just to make his delicate pungent fun of the men who are grappling—very inadequately of course—still grappling with the big questions. There's a carrying power'—he jumped to his feet again and faced an imaginary audience—'some of Stonor's friends ought to point it out—there's a driving power in the poorest constructive ...
— The Convert • Elizabeth Robins

... rudimentary condition. In other words, if we followed the course usual in such inquiries, we should penetrate as far up as we could in the history of primitive societies. The phenomena which early societies present us with are not easy at first to understand, but the difficulty of grappling with them bears no proportion to the perplexities which beset us in considering the baffling entanglement of modern social organisation. It is a difficulty arising from their strangeness and uncouthness, not from their number and complexity. One does not readily get over the surprise ...
— Ancient Law - Its Connection to the History of Early Society • Sir Henry James Sumner Maine

... Mike leading the way, with Kay riding beside him. From time to time she stole a sidelong glance at him, riding with his chin on his breast, apparently oblivious of her presence. She knew that he was not in a mood to be entertaining to-day, to be a carefree squire of dames; his mind was busy grappling with problems that threatened not only him but everything in life that he held to ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne

... were my excuse for remaining in Europe, which somehow I had not the strength of mind to leave for the West Indies, or elsewhere. On the other hand, my adventurous pursuit kept me in contact with the sea where I found occupation, protection, consolation, the mental relief of grappling with concrete problems, the sanity one acquires from close contact with simple mankind, a little self-confidence born from the dealings with the elemental powers of nature. I couldn't give all that up. And ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... billiard-ball; and; if the reader will believe me, not one of us ever dreamt of stirring abroad. But at last the awful siege came to an end-because there was absolutely no more electricity left in the clouds above us within grappling distance of my insatiable rods. Then I sallied forth, and gathered daring workmen together, and not a bite or a nap did we take till the premises were utterly stripped of all their terrific armament except just three rods on the house, one on the kitchen, and one on the barn—and, ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... creating enmities, and making wars that drained the blood and treasure of our land. We do not find a single instance of Pitt or Castlereagh expressing an idea worthy of statesmanship. What did either of these men ever do to uplift the higher phases of humanity by grappling with the problem that had been brought into being by ...
— Drake, Nelson and Napoleon • Walter Runciman

... a long period of years, the lady found her powers of tongue fail in the proposed effect upon the understanding of her loving and legal lord; and knowing but of one other way to assail it, her hand at length grappling with the stool, from which she tumbled the breechless babe without scruple, seized upon an argument to which her adversary could oppose neither text nor technical; when, fortunately for him, the loud rapping of their ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms

... giving the reasons why the big boy does not like this duty. It is enough to say that it is a small boy's business, and the big boy knows it. The excitement of hunting up and driving home a lot of slow, meandering cattle is not sufficient for a mind capable of grappling with the highest grade of agricultural ideas, and the youth who has reached the mature age of fifteen or sixteen is very apt to think that his mind ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton

... South Carolina to make a bold exertion, and nobly bear the burthens of their present debt, I believe in the end it would be found to conduce greatly to their advantage." Burke made a crushing rejoinder. "Was Maryland like South Carolina constantly grappling with the enemy during the whole war? There is not a road in the State but has witnessed the ravages of war; plantations were destroyed, and the skeletons of houses, to this day, point out to the traveler the route of the British army; her citizens were exposed to every violence, ...
— Washington and His Colleagues • Henry Jones Ford

... "The grappling-hooks were brought at length, The brown bill and the sword-a; John Dory at length, for all his strength, ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... drew up a list of supplies and underwater search gear needed for the missile hunt. Tom phoned orders to a dozen different departments. Food, space-plant pills, extra clothing, tools, including a midget atomic earth blaster, grappling hooks—nothing was overlooked. ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton

... influences which must be counted as factors. British rule is there, and is there to stay. Education has come—good, bad, and indifferent. English University training is bringing forward a host of acute thinkers of native blood. But the forces of Western infidelity are also there, grappling with Western Christianity on Indian soil, and before the eyes of the conquered and still sullen people. The vilest of English books and the worst of French novels in English translations are in the markets. All the worst phases of ...
— Oriental Religions and Christianity • Frank F. Ellinwood

... Lord Humphrey Degge, "the swift and heart-grappling recollection of the woman you gave up in the cause of common-sense,—roused by some melody she liked, or some shade of color she was wont to wear, or by hearing from other lips some turn of speech to which she was addicted. My Lord Duke, that memory wakes on a sudden ...
— Gallantry - Dizain des Fetes Galantes • James Branch Cabell

... family records or memorials to justify the notion. On the contrary, they absolutely precluded it. By the labors and acumen of the Hon. James Savage and Mr. Charles Deane, of Cambridge, who have no superiors in grappling with such a difficulty, its solution seems, at last, to be reached. "After long fruitless search," Mr. Savage has expressed a conviction that Mr. Deane has "acquired the probable explication." The clue was thus obtained: Mr. Savage says, "This approach to explanation is ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... skill and address of most able, artful, and experienced men; it is beaten out to the very thinnest leaf, and is disposed in such a way as to seem ten times larger than it is. The dexterity with which the confederates avoid grappling with those parts of the subject with which they know themselves to be incompetent to deal is quite wonderful. Now and then, indeed, they commit disgraceful blunders, for which old Busby, under whom they had studied, would have whipped them all round. But this circumstance ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... as this, when the clutch of the wickedest rebellion the world ever saw is grappling the throat of the national existence, you are openly in opposition to the action of the Government, and apparently in sympathy with the rebels. Yet you claim to be loyal, and you vindicate your claim in a very remarkable way. Loyalty with you is fidelity ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... he grappled one of his assailants. For a few seconds they swayed and struggled, and then rolled down the rest of the stairs, over and over each other, grappling and clawing, each trying to tear the other's shirt off. When they rolled into the street, Carew discovered that he ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... plank-bed, the guard being instructed to visit him periodically, lest he should smother. He was scarcely half an hour there—this was in the early evening—when the most unmerciful screaming brought all hands to the lock-up, to find the erstwhile helpless man standing on the plank-bed, and grappling with a, to us, invisible foe. We took him out, and he maintained that a man had tried to choke him, and was still there when we came to his relief. The strange thing was, that he was shivering with fright, and perfectly sober, ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour

... change of some sort," she admitted. "I cannot describe it. I only know it is there. He seems much more thoughtful and less hard. The change would be an improvement," she went on, "except that somehow or other it makes me feel uneasy. It is as though he were grappling with some crisis." ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... armed themselves with grappling-poles that had nails for claws. Then we lowered Rob in the canoe into the rapid and held on while ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton

... inferred; for in less than three hours they completed a fortification of ten miles in circumference; and during the rest of the days they began to prepare and construct towers of the height of the ramparts, and grappling irons, and mantlets, which the same prisoners ...
— "De Bello Gallico" and Other Commentaries • Caius Julius Caesar

... are gaining on them. Ho, ho! bend to your oars, my hearties! grappling-chains ready there! ho! on ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards

... was Juan de Esquibel, claiming respect as having exchanged names with the Spanish commander. Lopez seized him with one hand by the hair, and with the other aimed a thrust at his body; but the cacique struck down the sword with his hand, and, grappling with his antagonist, threw him with his back upon the rocks. As they were both men of great power, the struggle was long and violent. The sword was beneath them, but Cotabanama, seizing the Spaniard by the throat with his mighty ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving

... inducement to remain in the Egyptian service, a position of still higher consequence— the Governor- Generalship of the whole Sudan; and Gordon once more took up his task. Another three years were passed in grappling with vast revolting provinces, with the ineradicable iniquities of the slave-trade, and with all the complications of weakness and corruption incident to an oriental administration extending over almost boundless tracts of savage territory which ...
— Eminent Victorians • Lytton Strachey

... Wanyoro were stealing on us, as we could hear, though nothing could be seen. Presently the shade-seeking boat was attacked, spears were thrown, fortunately into the river instead of into our men, and grappling-hooks were used to link the boats together. My men cried, "Help, Bana! they are killing us;" whilst I roared to my crew, "Go in, go in, and the victory will be ours;" but not a soul would—they were spell-bound to the place; we might have been cut up in detail, it was all the same to ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke

... class. "But," argued Sir William, "this captain is different; on talking to him and noting his sober, silent, earnest way, I concluded that the world would yet ring with the name of Nelson. He fights his enemy for laying his ship alongside and grappling him to the death." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard

... good, dear, gentleness and forbearance, I endured too long. I have pushed my hands in the dark soil, under the flower of my soul And the gentle leaves, and have felt where the roots are strong Fixed in the darkness, grappling for the ...
— Amores - Poems • D. H. Lawrence

... what man is made for; we are full of mortal parts; we are all as good as dead already, we hang so close upon the brink: touch a button, and the strongest falls in dissolution. Now, see how easy: I take you - (GRAPPLING HIM.) ...
— The Plays of W. E. Henley and R. L. Stevenson

... narratives, whose true object and meaning were gradually forgotten. And when these were abandoned, and philosophy resorted to definitions and formulas, its language was but a more refined symbolism, grappling with and attempting to picture ideas impossible to be expressed. For the most abstract expression for Deity which language can supply, is but a sign or symbol for an object unknown, and no more truthful and adequate than the terms Osiris and Vishnu, except ...
— Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry • Albert Pike

... left Genoa he had thought that it was possible that he might make this sort of an attack upon the Dunkery Beacon, and he had therefore provided for it. He had shipped a number of grappling-irons with long chains attached which were run through ring-bolts on his deck. With these and other appliances for making fast to a vessel alongside, Banker was sure he could stick to an enemy or a prize as long as he wanted to ...
— Mrs. Cliff's Yacht • Frank R. Stockton

... posterior to full view, stretching himself face downward on the earth, and burying his head, with the grappling ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene

... recovered him. And after that the second theft, and another and more dreadful ride when he raced through the night after the cavalry—the torture of it, the agony of his arm, the shooting, and the grappling hand to hand, and Pat sinking with exhaustion, and the thrill again, his own, at having the horse once more in his possession. It was worth it—all of it—and he was glad—glad to have had an object for once in his life. And he still had that object, for ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton

... dread the dragon's war-craft. For with his valor and his skill Beowulf had succeeded many a time. He had been victorious in many a tumult of battle since that day when a young man and a warrior prosperous in victory, he had cleansed Hart Hall by grappling ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... thick as one's little finger, has a curvature about as large as that of a man's hand when half closed, and is from six to eight inches in length, with a formidable barb. This fierce-looking grappling-iron is furnished with three or four feet of chain, a precaution which is absolutely necessary; for a voracious shark will sometimes gobble the bait so deep into his stomach, that he would snap through the rope as easily as if he were nipping ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... poor generals. They may be born leaders of men, and yet absolutely unfitted for independent command. Their courage, coolness, and common sense may accomplish the enemy's overthrow on the field, but with strategical considerations their intellects may be absolutely incapable of grappling. In the great wars of the early part of the century Ney and Blucher were probably the best fighting generals of France and Prussia. But neither could be trusted to conduct a campaign. Blucher, pre-eminent on the battle-field, knew nothing of the grand combinations ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson

... viking-ship come, there is grappling and strife, and the fight 'neath the shields will rejoice; If you yield but a pace you are parted from us; 'tis the law, you ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner

... there was no time to reload them. Some of the rebels had bayonets, and some had not; and, with the fury of their brave leader, they attempted to break their way through the line. A sharp but very irregular conflict ensued, the rebels clubbing their muskets or grappling with the Union soldiers, each according to his individual taste. As they were two to one of the Federals, they would certainly have won the field if Captain de Banyan had not promptly come ...
— The Young Lieutenant - or, The Adventures of an Army Officer • Oliver Optic

... battle-gear, Men jostle and climb to meet the bristling fire. Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear, They leave their trenches, going over the top, While time ticks blank and busy on their wrists, And hope, with furtive eyes and grappling fists, Flounders in mud. O Jesu, make ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon









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