"Barbed" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... afraid of overpraising it, but probe and probe for words to hint its surprising virtues. We may well celebrate it with festivals and music. It has that indescribable quality of all first things,—that shy, uncloying, provoking barbed sweetness. It is eager and sanguine as youth. It is born of the copious dews, the fragrant nights, the tender skies, the plentiful rains of the early season. The singing of birds is in it, and the health and ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... fan-like shape, and presents a formidable row of points turned towards its opponent. When attacked, it defends itself with its thick, muscular tail; and wherever it strikes, it leaves a number of its easily-detached quills, with barbed points, sticking firmly in its opponent's body. These spines are of a dull white colour, the points being dark. Awkward as the porcupine looks, it can gallop along at considerable speed; and when surprised, generally escapes to its rocky den—or if it gains a tree, scrambles up the trunk ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... threw a barbed spear into the sky, and hooked one spear on to another until he made a ladder up which he climbed after them; and across the sky he is still ...
— The Euahlayi Tribe - A Study of Aboriginal Life in Australia • K. Langloh Parker
... sanitarium this for the hebephreniac. And like all sanitariums, you go into it with one disease and come out of it with ten. Had Shakib been forewarned of Khalid's mind, had he even seen him at the gate before he entered, he would have given him a few hints about the cross-signs and barbed-cordons therein. But should he not have divined that Khalid soon or late was coming? Did he not call enough to him, and aloud? "Get thee behind me on this dromedary," our Scribe, reading his Al-Mutanabbi, would ...
— The Book of Khalid • Ameen Rihani
... In this parish was the barton of Drascombe, and in the reign of Edward I, Walter de Bromehall held it 'by the sergeanty of finding our Lord the King, whensoever he should hunt in the forest of Dartmoor, one bow and three barbed arrows. And it was let at five shillings a year rent.' One would imagine that King Edward I can seldom have found time to amuse himself so far west, and the tenant would not find the ...
— Devon, Its Moorlands, Streams and Coasts • Rosalind Northcote
... here progression was slower still as the rope had to be abandoned, and the pole called into requisition, so that it was nearly dark when we reached Ganderbul. Passed a number of men wading in the water up to their necks, and spearing the ground with poles armed with a single barbed spike. Although this seems an insane way of attempting to catch fish, their boat was well laden with a small species of trout, and I saw several drawn from the water impaled and wriggling upon the sharp point. Sreenuggur seen in the distance at the extremity ...
— Three Months of My Life • J. F. Foster
... Madame Colleville, who regarded it as a barbed arrow. She cast a haughty glance at Felix and said to Celeste, "Sit there, my daughter," seating herself at the same time beside Madame Thuillier and pointing to a chair on the other ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... business of ranching began. Lew Cawley was sent out with Tresler to instruct him in mending barbed-wire fences. A distant pasture had been broken into by the roving cattle outside. Lew remained with him long enough to show him how to strain the wires up and splice them, then he rode off to ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... bitter pain That pierced her gentle heart; For barbed by malice was the dart, And sped by treachery's deadliest art, The shaft ne'er ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the first barbed-wire entanglement," said Archer, as they approached. "You keep your mouth shut, but if you have to answer any questions, tell 'em the truth. These ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... very gradual. It coincides with the domestication of the dog, an epoch in hunting-life. It embraces thousands of centuries. The appearance of arrow-heads indicates the invention of the bow, and the rise of man from a defensive to an offensive mode of life. The introduction of barbed arrows shows how inventive talent was displaying itself; bone and horn tips, that the huntsman was including smaller animals, and perhaps birds, in his chase; bone whistles, his companionship with other huntsmen or with his ...
— History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science • John William Draper
... But on April 28, the two methods were again employed, the first in the initial series and the second in a final series of trials. The animal's persistent attempts to raise the doors gave the experimenter so much trouble that on April 29 barbed wire was nailed over the windows of the entrance doors with the hope that it might prevent him from working at them. But he quickly learned to place his fingers between the barbs and raise the ...
— The Mental Life of Monkeys and Apes - A Study of Ideational Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... gallantry the advance of the Irish regiments was not surpassed by any other exploit in the War. Working up on difficult ground to the sound of the Regimental calls, and then almost brought to a standstill by the barbed wire fences of the railway, which became a trap of death, they rushed the slope, pushing the enemy's outposts before them, and won the crest: and then in the failing light which compelled the supporting artillery to discontinue the bombardment and relieve the enemy from the pressure of shrapnel, ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... lay toward the open country. At last, leaving behind all lines of houses, she crawled under a barbed-wire fence into a broad meadow where a few cows were grazing; then over a creek into another meadow, and up to a grassy knoll just ahead. From beyond it faint shouts were coming. At the foot of the knoll Margery rested ...
— The Hickory Limb • Parker Fillmore
... from his book and eyed his crouching venomous assailant full in the face, majestically, as one can fancy a lion rearing his ponderous head, and looking lazily and steadily at a snake that has just hissed in a corner. Each word of Skinner's was a barbed icicle to him, yet not a muscle of his close countenance betrayed his ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... and held up three fingers, signifying that they recollected my first visit and number, which they do not seem to have forgotten, and seem to dread the appearance of a gun. The first one that came up had a very long spear, with a flat, sharp, and barbed point. They were two elderly stout men, one very much diseased and lame. They remained a long time looking at us. None of the others came up. In a little more than three hours they went off and we saw no more of them ...
— Explorations in Australia, The Journals of John McDouall Stuart • John McDouall Stuart
... of every nave, Cardinal Mercier has become the good shepherd who has taken charge of the flock during the King's absence. The great Brotherhood, for which so many Christian souls are yearning, in which there are no more classes, parties, and sects, seems well nigh achieved beyond the electrified barbed wire of the Belgian frontier. Are not all Belgians threatened with the same danger, are they not close-knit by the same hope, the same love, ...
— Through the Iron Bars • Emile Cammaerts
... my friend and client to use every possible exertion, in discovering and bringing to punishment the person who robbed and murdered him—be it man, woman or child. Feminine youth and beauty are no aegis against the barbed javelins of justice and the District Solicitor (Mr. Churchill) and I, have no doubt of the guilt of the woman, who will soon be put on trial here for her ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... carrying down, in his vast wake, a whirlpool of foam and slime. But this respite was short; he rose again, rushing furiously upon his enemies; but a slight prick of a lance drove him back with mingled fury and terror. Whichever way he turned, the barbed irons goaded him to desperation. Now and again intensity of agony would cause him to lash the waters with his huge flukes, till the very ocean appeared to heave and tremble at his power. Tossing, struggling, dashing over and over in his agony, he spouted up the ...
— The World of Waters - A Peaceful Progress o'er the Unpathed Sea • Mrs. David Osborne
... of the shaft? The shaft was cut in England: A long shaft, a strong shaft, Barbed and trim and true; So we'll drink all together To the gray goose feather, And the land where the gray ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... riding ashore on the dolphin, they invite the dolphin aboard. While he is darting and playing around the vessel a sailor goes out to the spritsail yard-arm, and with a long staff, leaded at one end, and armed at the other with five barbed spikes, he heaves it at him. If successful in his aim there is a fresh mess for all hands. The dying dolphin affords a ...
— Wanderings In South America • Charles Waterton
... on horseback with wrathful yet inquiring eye. A moment only. Sniffing the air and lashing his tail, the noble bovine rushes forward and engages the picadores; the little pennants of the national colours, which, attached to a barbed point, have been jabbed into his back by an unseen hand as he passed the barrier, fluttering in the wind created by his rush. Furiously he charges the picadores. If they are clever they goad him to madness with their lances, keeping him at bay; if he is resolute down go horse and man—both results ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... resumed, "is woman's weapon, even as the fist is man's. And it is a far deadlier weapon. Words break no bones—they break hearts, instead. Yet were men one-tenth part so ready with their fists, as women are with their barbed and envenomed tongues, what savage brutes you would think us—would n't you?—and what a rushing trade the police-courts would drive, to be sure. That is one of the good old cliches that came back to me during my walk. All women are alike—there's no choice amongst animated ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... even knew the number of German batteries that will be opposed to us; he also knew just what regiments hold the line opposite. He said that along the whole length of our front line steps had been cut in the trenches so that we can climb out easily. The barbed-wire entanglements have had little lanes cut through them every few feet so we can ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... not by a sentinel—it was much too cold that night to expect an attack—but by a network of barbed wires, by which the hill and camp were fenced in. Quickly the wires were cut. That done, some of the burghers charged the tents, while the rest made for the enemy's trenches on top of ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... no virtues save one tied like millstones to some of earth's noblemen; great-hearted and great-souled women mated with clods. I see people insanely jealous of one another, suspicious, fault-finding, malicious; covertly sending barbed shafts to one another through the medium of general conversation. As if love were ever to be held captive, or be won by cords and chains! As if the freest thing on earth would for a moment enter into bondage, or minister ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... or ninety yards along the straight line of the path. Across the canal a row of unkempt cottage gardens sloped to the water, the most of them fenced from the brink of it with decayed palings, a few with elder bushes and barbed wire to fill up the gaps, while at least two ended in moraines of old meat tins and shards of crockery. And between these containing banks wound the canal, shallow and waveless, with noisome weeds trailing on its surface afloat amid soot and iridescent ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... further on a straw stack loomed large within a fenced enclosure. The youth wormed his way between the barbed wires determined at last to let nothing prevent him from making a cozy bed in the deep straw beside the stack. With courage radiating from every pore he strode toward the stack. His walk was almost a swagger, for thus does youth dissemble the bravery it yearns for but ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... of the Guards was one which the Brigade may well remember with pride, as one of the most famous in its annals. They actually marched over forty miles in twenty-two consecutive hours, over ground full of holes of all sorts and sizes, and with barbed wire cut and lying on the ground in all directions. They marched hour after hour in steady silence, broken only by the 'Glory! Hallelujah!' chorus of the Canadians, marched with soleless boots, or with no boots at all, but with putties wrapped round the bare feet. ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... coolly, with a smile, Felling a seam with utmost care, meanwhile. "The caustic tongue of Vivian Dangerfield Is barbed as ever, for my sex, this morn. Still unconvinced, no smallest point I yield. Woman I love, and trust, despite your scorn. There is some truth in what you say? Well, yes! Your statements usually hold more or less. Some women write weak letters—(some men ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... "The barbed formation of the point explains how, under the stroking with the finger, it was forced through the dense tarsal cartilage and against the cornea ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... taste and habit; the barracks for the single men; the barracks for the single women; the two hospitals, one general, the other for infectious diseases; and last of all, the house where the half-dozen disorderly women are confined, surrounded by a double fence of barbed wire and guarded by ...
— The Valley of Vision • Henry Van Dyke
... simple. He was in a country where, a few years before, his quest for "real boys"—as he affectionately termed the type nearest his heart—would have been easy enough. But before the marching ranks of fence posts and barbed wire, the real boys had scattered. A more or less beneficent government had not gathered them together, and held them apart from the changing conditions, as it had done with the Indians. The real boys had ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... intensity of their own suffering, they made the damned give response to the utmost. I observed the part nearest me more minutely: there, the devils with pitchforks hurled them head foremost upon poisonous hatchels formed of terrible, barbed darts, thereon to struggle by their brains; then shortly, they threw them together, layer on layer, upon the summit of one of the burning crags, there to blaze like a bonfire. Thence they were snatched away up the ravines amidst the eternal ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... the barbed dart from his arm and poured a powerful antiseptic into the open wound, unmindful of the pain. As best he could, he disinfected his other cuts and bandaged them. Ora had raised herself and now sat there, swaying weakly and regarding ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... embroiderer's art. It was made by nuns about the end of the thirteenth century, in a convent near Coventry. It is solid stitchery on a canvas ground, "wrought about with divers colours" on green. The design is laid out in a series of interlacing square forms, with rounded and barbed sides and corners. In each of these is a figure or a scriptural scene. The orphreys, or straight borders which go down both fronts of the cope, are decorated with heraldic charges. Much of the embroidery is raised, and wrought ...
— Arts and Crafts in the Middle Ages • Julia De Wolf Addison
... blood, through dust and dirt he ran, O'er heaps of bodies wallowing in their gore, The squadrons close his sword to ope began, He broke their ranks, behind, beside, before, And, where he goes, under his feet he treads The armed Saracens, and barbed steeds. ...
— Jerusalem Delivered • Torquato Tasso
... unfortunately out of bounds, so that, except on stated occasions, when they were escorted by a mistress, the girls were unable to do shopping "on their own". There are ways, however, of crawling through even the most barbed-wire fence ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... picket, band, guy, chain; cord &c. (fastening) 45; cavesson[obs3], hackamore [obs3][U.S.], headstall, jaquima [obs3][U.S.], lines, ribbons. bolt, deadbolt, bar, lock, police lock, combination lock, padlock, rail, wall, stone wall; paling, palisade; fence, picket fence, barbed wire fence, Cyclone fence, stockade fence, chain-link fence; barrier, barricade. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... bright and sleek, 'twas pleasure but to see, With open mouths, as proud to show the bit, They raise their heads, and arch their necks—(with eye As bright as if with meteor fire 'twere lit;) And dart their barbed tongues, 'twixt fangs of ivory. These, when the quick advancing sprites they saw Furl their swift wings, and tread with angel grace The smooth, fair pavement, checked their speed in awe, And glided far aside as if ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 2 August 1848 • Various
... foreman's gibes grew less frequent. Kermode was more than a match for him, and his barbed replies were repeated with laughter about the camp; but his oppressor now relied on galling commands which could not be disobeyed. Kermode's companions sympathized with him, and waited for the inevitable rupture, which they thought would take ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... demolition. The trees on the outer avenues were being felled in order to enlarge the horizon. Barricades of sacks of earth and tree trunks were heaped at the doors of the old walls. The curious were skirting the suburbs in order to gaze at the recently dug trenches and the barbed wire fences. The Bois de Boulogne was filled with herds of cattle. Near heaps of dry alfalfa steers and sheep were grouped in the green meadows. Protection against famine was uppermost in the minds of a people still remembering the ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... and imposing, and must have proved itself a formidable fortress. Crowning a slight eminence, it overlooks most of the town. On the three sides are ramparts, varying from about twenty to sixty feet in height, while on a fourth it is now bounded by barbed wire and high railings, with only a slight drop on the other side. At the main entrance the road crosses the old moat and passes under a massive archway which adjoins the guardroom. All the approaches to the outer walls are guarded by quantities of ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... of the rudiments of trench warfare. Trenches had been dug, with barbed-wire entanglements, bombing saps, dug-outs, observation posts, and machine-gun emplacements. We were given a smattering of trench cooking, sanitation, bomb throwing, reconnoitering, listening posts, constructing ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths; Our bruised arms hung up for monuments; Our stern alarums chang'd to merry meetings, Our dreadful marches to delightful measures. Grim-visag'd war hath smooth'd his wrinkled front; And now,—instead of mounting barbed steeds To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,— He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber To the lascivious pleasing of a lute. But I,—that am not shap'd for sportive tricks, Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass; I, that am rudely stamp'd, ...
— The Life and Death of King Richard III • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... Cassandra role of uttering true prophecies which find no credence among those who wield the power of putting them to good account. M. Bratiano's appropriate attitude may be described as statuesque. Occasionally his Press organs commented upon the manifestations of the interventionists in words barbed with bitter sarcasm and utilitarian maxims. "Roumania's blood and money," the Independence Roumaine explained, "must be spent only in the furtherance of Roumania's interest." Her cause must be dissociated from that of the belligerents. ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... proclaiming that a second front is impossible; but, at the same time, they are desperately rushing troops in all directions, and stringing barbed wire all the way from the coasts of Finland and Norway to the ...
— The Fireside Chats of Franklin Delano Roosevelt • Franklin Delano Roosevelt
... really older than Methuselah because she knew a lot of things that Methuselah never heard of. Then he mentioned a number of more or less modern inventions, and wound up by saying, "What did Methuselah know about a barbed-wire fence?" ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... descended into the heart of the rock. Even there the wind blew dank and howling through all the cavernous hollows. As he approached the last chamber, out of the Devil's Window flew, with clanging wing, an arrow barbed seagull, down to the grey veiled tumult below, and the joy of life for a moment seized his soul. But the next, the dismay of that which is forsaken was upon him. It was not that the once lordly structure ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... telephones; (8) balloons and flying machines and their distinctive component parts, together with accessories and articles recognizable as intended for use in connexion with balloons and flying machines; (9) fuel; lubricants; (10) powder and explosives not specially prepared for use in war; (11) barbed wire and implements for fixing and cutting the same; (12) horseshoes and shoeing materials; (13) harness and saddlery; (14) field glasses, telescopes, chronometers and all ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 7, Slice 2 - "Constantine Pavlovich" to "Convention" • Various
... house stretched a sloping patch of growing wheat, perhaps about thirty acres in extent. This was the real business of the homestead, and, in spite of the crazy fencing of barbed wire about it, it ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum
... General telephoned to his cousin, who said that the allegation was absurd and that Pivko was one of his best officers. The orderly was therefore thrown into prison, and Pivko, having turned off the electricity from the barbed wires and arranged matters with a Bosnian regiment, made his way to the Italians. The suggestion is that, owing to the lie of the land and the weak Austrian forces, it was possible for the Italians to reach Trent; ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein
... some distance, and no patch or garden appearing that was not enclosed by a high, barbed-wire fence, he commenced to get discouraged. Feeling hungry and thirsty he was about wishing he had behaved himself at Mr. Biggses so he could go back, when he came to a turn in the road and there before him ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... animals as they pass. A shower of these diminutive vermin will sometimes drop from a branch, if unluckily shaken, and disperse themselves over the body, each fastening on the neck, the ears, and eyelids, and inserting a barbed proboscis. They burrow, with their heads pressed as far as practicable under the skin, causing a sensation of smarting, as if particles of red hot sand had been scattered over the flesh. If torn from their hold, the suckers remain behind and form an ulcer. The only safe expedient ...
— Sketches of the Natural History of Ceylon • J. Emerson Tennent
... a decided feeling of depression that Patty Sinclair approached the Watts ranch. Long before she reached the buildings an air of shiftless dilapidation was manifest in the ill-lined barbed wire fences whose rotting posts sagged drunkenly upon loosely strung wire. A dry weed-choked irrigation ditch paralleled the trail, its wooden flumes, like the fence posts, rotting where they stood, and its walls all but obliterated by the wash of spring freshets. The depression increased ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... are the barbed wire entanglements, a nightmare of tumbled wires piled high in cruel confusion. Close behind this are the observation trenches. There was no firing from these small trenches; they were simply what the name implied: look-outs. Leaving these, and passing down the zig-zag ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... was Maastricht, now become a town of crucial interest. It was like a city besieged. Barricades of barbed wire and paving stones ripped from street ran everywhere. Iron rails and ties blocked the exits and the small cannon disconcertingly thrust their nozzles down upon one out ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... interrupted in their fishing by blood-curdling yells from the old scientist. Looking up in alarm they saw him dancing about on the deck holding his arm as if in great pain, while in front of him on the deck a queer-looking, flat fish with a long barbed tail flopped about, its great goggle eyes ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... much. All the lot of the magistrates went out, their departure being accompanied by the few barbed words from the young advocate. What happened when the magistrates got together outside the courtroom can only be guessed. They must have had a painful discussion among themselves, because presently four of them ...
— Lloyd George - The Man and His Story • Frank Dilnot
... Inflorescence is usually a spike-like panicle. Spikelets are 1- to 2-flowered, jointed on very short pedicels which bear persistent scabrid or barbed bristles (modified branchlets). There are four glumes. The first glume is the shortest, equal to about half the length of the third, membranous, 3- to 5-nerved. The second glume is equal to or shorter than the fourth, 5- to 7-nerved. ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... bloody stream along the valley ran, And chariots swept like eagles on the wind On deathly mission borne. The conflict fierce Waxed fiercer—fiercer still; the rain of gore Wetted the soddened plain, and arrows flew Thicker and faster through the darkening air. The barbed spear, flung forth with stalwart arm, Sped like a whirlwind on its flight of death. Along the ranks the warrior's clarion call Inspired to valorous life the struggling hosts, And shouts of victory from contending hordes Blended with sorrowing moans of dying ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... by a strange proceeding on the part of the boat's crew. Upright pipes, serving as stanchions, were being screwed into the top of the Arangi's rail so that they served to support three strands of barbed wire that ran completely around the vessel, being broken only at the gangway for a narrow space of fifteen inches. That this was a precaution against danger, Jerry sensed without a passing thought to it. All his life, from his first impressions ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... Shakespeare! When the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy was raging in America (it really did rage there!) Jefferson wrote the most delicious doggerel about it. He ridiculed, and his ridicule killed the Bacon enthusiasts all the more dead because it was barbed with erudition. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... himself with throwing a few bombs into it and covering it with machine-gun fire. In spite of which Begbie Lyte, having now risen to the dizzy height of senior subaltern in the company, took out a small party and filled it with barbed wire. ...
— From the St. Lawrence to the Yser with the 1st Canadian brigade • Frederic C. Curry
... home begging for more engineers, a lot of hand grenades, trench mortars, periscopes and tools. The barbed wire bothers me! Am specially keen about trench mortars; if it comes to close fighting on the Peninsula with its restricted area trench mortars may make up for our lack of artillery and especially of howitzers. Luckily, they ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton
... dangerous than riding across our prairie at dusk when you can't see the barbed wire. You are the last person in the world to find fault because a ...
— The King's Jackal • Richard Harding Davis
... not steel, wire. While the piece of wire is straight, it is laid along a little groove in a block of wood, and there barbed by the stroke of a chisel, slantwise across it. The other end is flattened by a tap of the hammer, or roughened, that it may be held by the whipping; then the point is sharpened by a file, and finished on a stone. ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... the 6th Infantry Brigade (1st Batt. The King's (Liverpool) Regt., 2nd Batt. S. Staffs Regt., 1st Batt. R. Berks Regt. and 1st Batt. K.R.R.) was attacked three times during the day, and on one occasion the enemy infantry reached the barbed wire, close ...
— 1914 • John French, Viscount of Ypres
... portion of the house represents the work of my own unaccustomed hands. I have found how laborious an occupation fencing is, and how very exasperating if barbed wire is used; that the keeping in order of even a small plantation in which ill-bred and riotous plants grow with the rapidity of the prophet's gourd, and which if unattended would lapse in a very brief space of time into the primitive condition of tangled jungle, involves incessant labour of the ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... that she fairly scorned him. Then, suddenly, something occurred to her. She turned, and ran back as fast as she could, her short fleece of golden hair flying. She wrapped her short skirts about her, and wormed through the barbed-wire fence which skirted the field—the boy had leaped it, but she was not equal to that—and she hastened, leaving a furrow through the white-and-gold herbage, to the boy lying on his face weeping. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... for your own interest or mine, join these two in one." The boy unbound his quiver, and selected his sharpest and truest arrow; then straining the bow against his knee, he attached the string, and, having made ready, shot the arrow with its barbed point right ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... BARBED WIRE, a protective variety of fencing, consisting usually of several strands of wire twisted together with sharp spikes or points clinched or ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 3 - "Banks" to "Bassoon" • Various
... chief weapons. The bows, which are large and powerful, are made of split bamboo, and the arrows of a cane procured from New Guinea, afterwards headed with hard wood variously pointed and sometimes barbed. The Kowraregas obtain bows and arrows from their northern neighbours, and occasionally use them in warfare, but prefer the spears which are made by the blacks of the mainland. We saw three kinds of spear at Cape York; one is merely a sharpened stick used for striking ...
— Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Vol. 2 (of 2) • John MacGillivray
... the sharpest arrow in her aunts' quiver—nay, bad she been Miss Gascoigne herself, she could not have shot more keenly home. For the dart was barbed with truth—literal truth; which, however, sore it be, people in many difficult circumstances of life are obliged to face, to recognize, and abide by—to soften and subdue if they can—but woe betide them if by any cowardly ...
— Christian's Mistake • Dinah Maria Mulock Craik
... I explained. "Cabinet Ministers, Secretaries of State, the whole machinery of government shall writhe under the barbed shafts of my mockery. Ridicule is the power of the age. Ridicule in my hands shall be as bayonets to NAPOLEON, as poison to a BORGIA." ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 11, 1914 • Various
... clove the air between them and stuck in the earth beyond. They went to it. It was a large arrow having a barbed point and flighted ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... it," said Jane. Mechanically she withdrew the bolt of the gate, which forthwith collapsed in a tangle of barbed wire. Tramping over this snare, Jane faced the doctor as he wiped his brows. "I aint much hand with children," she reminded him. "You better ...
— A Prairie Infanta • Eva Wilder Brodhead
... bereavement. As yet my flight, I was sure, was undiscovered. I could go back and be his comforter—his pride; his redeemer from misery, perhaps from ruin. Oh, that fear of his self-abandonment—far worse than my abandonment—how it goaded me! It was a barbed arrow-head in my breast; it tore me when I tried to extract it; it sickened me when remembrance thrust it farther in. Birds began singing in brake and copse: birds were faithful to their mates; birds ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... skin, Sssuri was covered with a fluffy pelt of rainbow-tipped gray fur. In place of the human's steel blade, he wore one of bone, barbed and ugly, as menacing as the spear now resting in the bottom of the outrigger. And his round eyes watched the sea with the familiarity of one whose natural home was ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... twenty-first of July, "I care not; for I have a consolation within, that no earthly efforts can deprive me of; and that is, that neither ambitious nor interested motives have influenced my conduct. The arrows of malevolence, therefore, however barbed and well pointed, never can reach the most vulnerable point of me; though, whilst I am up as a mark, they will be continually aimed. The publications in Freneau's and Bache's papers are outrages on common decency; and ...
— Washington and the American Republic, Vol. 3. • Benson J. Lossing
... been added to the Maltese Cross outfit, he found, since the preceding autumn. It was George Myers, whom he had met on the ride down the river from Lang's. Roosevelt had purchased five hundred dollars' worth of barbed wire and George was digging post-holes. He was a boyish and attractive individual whom the wanderlust had driven westward from his home in Wisconsin. His honesty fairly leaped at you out ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... for the purpose of posts to grow to a sufficient size. But in many cases aged Osage orange hedges, which have been suffered to grow up, have been thinned out so as to leave a tree every ten, twelve, or fifteen feet, and on these barbed-wires have been strung and made a fence, which so far has proved satisfactory. The same success was obtained where fruit and shade trees standing in a line have had barbed-wire attached to them. But the precaution ...
— Prairie Farmer, Vol. 56: No. 4, January 26, 1884 - A Weekly Journal for the Farm, Orchard and Fireside • Various
... my now enlightened eyes in all her disharmony. And I, who in wanton Paris had passed as an innocent child through a hotbed of sensuality and a hailstorm of seduction, on a single twilight eve in London had four or five encounters the particulars of which remained in my memory as barbed arrows remain imbedded in the flesh, smarting and itching and burning like the thorny fibres of cactus or sweetbriar seed with which one has come ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... looked out to see what lay in front of him. But the most that could be seen were the long and winding earth embankments that marked the lines of the German entrenchments, and between, on "no man's land," a maze of barbed wire entanglements. No living human being was in sight, but, at one place, crumpled up, partly sustained by meshes of wire, there was a ragged heap, the sight of which sent a chill to the boy's heart. It required no second glance to discover that this was ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... about, and asking one another if they knew. Once, as he passed out from the doors of the Greater Testimony, the rector heard some one say: "The Church would be all right if that old mugwump was out of the pulpit." It went to his heart like a barbed ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... a bold and rapid movement that showed no common degree of skill and bravery, while struggling in the grasp of his powerful adversary, drew forth in his right hand a long dagger with a fine barbed blade. Gabriel smiled scornfully, snatched the weapon from him, and even as he stooped to break it across his knee, gave the prince a furious blow with his head that made him stagger and sent him rolling on the floor, three paces away; then, leaning over his poor sister and gazing ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... wire could be seen. It had hooked its coils into a bale of barbed wire, and in trying to lift this had entangled the bale ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... its rapid flight, were easily to be seen: but it was not until the handle snot again into the air by its own reaction, and its master catching it in his hand, threw its tines uppermost, that Elizabeth was acquainted with the success of the blow. A fish of great size was transfixed by the barbed steel, and was very soon shaken from its impaled situation into ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper
... most aggressive form. At Spokane, in 1910, the jail was soon filled, and sixty prisoners went on a hunger strike which cost several lives. In the lumber mills of Aberdeen, South Dakota, explosions and riots occurred. In Hoquiam, Washington, a twelve-foot stockade surmounted by barbed wire entanglements failed to protect the mills from the assaults of strikers. At Gray's Harbor, Washington, a citizens' committee cut the electric light wires to darken the meeting place of the I.W.W. and then used axe handles and wagon spokes to drive the members out of ...
— The Armies of Labor - Volume 40 in The Chronicles Of America Series • Samuel P. Orth
... 'Down with Rostopchin!' and 'Shall we be discouraged because Tchigagoff, and Kutusoff, and Carrymeoffski, of the Upperjnavyk Cgold Sdream Gards, oppose us?' I want to lie down and die. What is the sense of these barbed-wire names, anyhow? Why, when I was told that Barclay de Tolly had abandoned Vitepsk, and was marching on Smolensko with a fair chance of uniting with Tormagoff and Wittgenstein, I was so mixed that I couldn't tell whether Vitepsk was a brigadier-general or a ...
— Mr. Bonaparte of Corsica • John Kendrick Bangs
... dyed with blood for several yards round, and where it had fallen the grass was withered up to the roots, as if scorched with fire. We also picked up a cluster of hairs—long, wiry, crooked hairs, barbed at the ends like fish-hooks; also three or four scales like fish-scales, only rougher, and as large as doubloons. The spot where the fight took place is now called La Canada del Diablo, and I have heard that since that day the devil ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... he. And no man on the bank gave the sword: they were kept by their fear of the queen and the king; But her clothes from her Finnabar stripped, and she leapt in the river his sword to bring. And the king from above hurled his five-barbed spear; the full length of a shot it sped: At his daughter it flew, and its edge shore through two tresses that crowned her head: And Fraech in his hand caught the spear as it fell, and backward its point he turned. And again to the ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... county road about five miles south of the ranch. The county road was now the only link the Circle T had to the cattle shipping pens at Carson City. The dirt road arrowed south across the range but fifteen miles from the ranch, a six-strand, new, barbed-wire fence cut the road. A white metal sign with raised letters proclaimed "Road Closed. U.S. Government Military Reservation. Restricted Area. Danger—Peligre. ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... object. He fairly represented that type of men who combine in their composition that which is most practical and imaginative alike; whose energy can subdue a continent, and whose boastfulness would awaken contempt if it were not palliated by the magnitude of their achievements. A humor that is often barbed, but which is most willingly directed against one's self; but, whether directed against the humorist or his neighbor, carries no poison upon its point and leaves ...
— The Busted Ex-Texan and Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... trousers, tucked the flute case under his arm, and started off across the fields. He gave the town, as he would have said, a wide berth, and cut through a great fenced pasture, emerging, when he rolled under the barbed wire at the farther corner, upon a white dusty road which ran straight up from the river valley to the high prairies, where the ripe wheat stood yellow and the tin roofs and weathercocks were twinkling in the fierce sunlight. By the time Nils had done three miles, the sun ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... dame Plays the light gas, or kindles into flame. If rests the traveller his weary head, Grim MANCINELLA haunts the mossy bed, Brews her black hebenon, and, stealing near, 190 Pours the curst venom in his tortured ear.— Wide o'er the mad'ning throng URTICA flings Her barbed shafts, ...
— The Botanic Garden. Part II. - Containing The Loves of the Plants. A Poem. - With Philosophical Notes. • Erasmus Darwin
... red-hot pokers down their throats; by hugging red-hot stoves; by stripping themselves naked and allowing themselves to freeze to death on winter snow-drifts out of doors, or on piles of ice in refrigerator-cars; by lacerating their throats on barbed-wire fences; by drowning themselves head downward in barrels; by suffocating themselves head downward in chimneys; by diving into white-hot coke-ovens; by throwing themselves into craters of volcanoes; ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... alacrity, pleased to have something to do. As she looked upon the speckled beauty she thought how like an arrow it appeared; its long, lithe body resembling the smooth shaft; the head and gills the barbed point; and the spreading tail the feathered end. She wondered if there was a meaning in all this, or was it merely ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody
... Barbed and leaf-shaped arrow-heads Plan of a tumulus Plan of tumulus called Wayland Smith's Cave, Berkshire Celtic cinerary urn Articles found in pit dwellings Iron spear-head found at Hedsor Menhir Rollright stones (from Camden's Britannia, 1607) Dolmen Plan and section of Chun Castle The White Horse ...
— English Villages • P. H. Ditchfield
... thought that too, I thought it would send me mad, I longed to kill myself to get out of it. But, in an attack, when you've seen your own jolly pals, who have lived in the trenches with you, bleeding and tattered, spatchcocked against barbed wire, and had to leave them sticking to it, their eyes haunt you, your blood gets up, you long for a hundred hands to shoot with, instead of only two. When you've seen the result of Prussian militarism on decent German ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... meeting, dear Mamma? It is funny! All these old gentlemen sit up on a platform and talk such a lot. The Duke put in "buts" and "ifs" and "thats" over and over again when he could not think of a word, and you weren't a bit the wiser when he had finished, except that it was awfully wrong to put up barbed wire; but I can't see what that has to do with politics, can you? One of the pepper-and-salts did speak nicely, and so did one of the new people—quite a youngish person; but they all had such a lot of words, ...
— The Visits of Elizabeth • Elinor Glyn
... War hath smooth'd his wrinkled front; And now, instead of mounting barbed steeds, To fright the souls of fearful adversaries, He capers nimbly in a lady's chamber, To the ...
— The Actress in High Life - An Episode in Winter Quarters • Sue Petigru Bowen
... Henry had wheeled his horse. Once again he couched lance, and again he drove down upon his bruised and wounded enemy. This time the lance struck full and fair, and those who watched saw the steel point pierce the iron breast-plate and then snap short, leaving the barbed point within ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... say," he remarked, "that I have already received five barbed-wire-cutters, three vacuum flasks, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, September 9, 1914 • Various
... Charley poked the barbed end down into the hole. Down, down it went, fifteen, twenty feet, then struck with a dull thud. He began twisting the sapling over and over, then drew it slowly and gently up, but the end came into view with nothing adhering ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... hollow of the hill. On the morning of November 13, 1916, the Royal Naval Division attacked the stretch from just below the "Y" ravine on the south of Beaumont-Hamel to the north side of the Ancre. After a preliminary bombardment, which played havoc with the German barbed-wire entanglements protecting their front line, the British naval troops swept over the line with a rush as if the barriers had been made of straw. The British right rested on the Ancre as they swept across the valley bottom. Northwest, where there was a rise of ground, the center ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... second, he saw the top of the gate beneath his body, and he felt a thrill as he beheld twisted strands of barbed wire, cruel and jagged, across it; then, with a great sensation of joy, he knew that he had cleared the top, and a second later, he landed on the ground, in the ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... animals do not use barbed fences. To see the lacerations that these fences have produced upon the innocent animals should be sufficient testimony against them. Many use pokes and blinders on cattle and goats, but as a rule such things fail. The better way is to separate ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various
... feet in front, the rider skims down precipitous slopes and round perilous corners with a rapidity that beats a horse's pace. Winding through sombre pine-forests, where the torrent roars fitfully among caverns of barbed ice, and the glistening mountains tower above in their glory of sun-smitten snow, darting round the frozen ledges at the turnings of the road, silently gliding at a speed that seems incredible, it is so smooth, he traverses two or three miles without ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... lack of more aid;' but they held together in good order, and Shane, with the Derry garrison in his rear, durst not follow far from home in pursuit. 'Before he could revenge himself on Sidney, before he could stir against the Scots, before he could strike a blow at O'Donel, he must pluck out the barbed dart which was ...
— The Land-War In Ireland (1870) - A History For The Times • James Godkin
... he went out again with them in the boats for a short time to see them spear salmon. A man holding a large torch made of strips of resinous wood stood in the bow of the boat, and on either side of him stood an Ostjak holding a long barbed spear. In a short time there were swirls on the surface of the river. These increased till the water round the boat seemed to boil. The Ostjaks were soon at work, and in half an hour twenty fine salmon were lying in the bottom of the boat, and ...
— Condemned as a Nihilist - A Story of Escape from Siberia • George Alfred Henty
... "save that thou hast hurt me sore. Dost thou not know, Allan, that it is cruel to prophesy ill to any, since such words feathered from Fate's own wing and barbed with venom, fester in the breast and mayhap bring about their own accomplishment. Most cruel of all is it when with them ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... and said to him: "Most noble son of Atreus, why urgest thou me that myself am eager? Verily with such strength as is in me forbear I not, but ever since we drave them towards Ilios I watch with my bow to slay the foemen. Eight long-barbed arrows have I now sped, and all are buried in the flesh of young men swift in battle; only this mad dog can ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... speeding automobile on its way home from a road house. It surely is a proof of discipline to hear the mocking, silver-toned laughter of women ring out in the night only ten feet away and not drop your gun and follow it right through the barbed wire. After the war, I am going to buy lots of barbed wire and cut it up into little bits ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... crashed on. Cassy, her nose in the air, assumed a barbed-wire attitude, her usual defensive against the conjecturing eyes of old men and the Hello, Kid! glances of New York's subtle youth. This attitude, which enabled her to ignore everything and everybody, enabled her also to think of what she liked, or of what she did not like, a circumstance ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... the bath. All her barbed civilities came forth wrong end first. Young Mr. Emerson scored a notable triumph to the delight of Mr. Beebe and to the secret delight ...
— A Room With A View • E. M. Forster
... trying any longer! The sooner it's over the better"; and he was about to give up in despair. Alice, with equal hopelessness of any earthly aid, was about to turn her eyes from the faint rays which, barbed with the thoughts suggested above, pierced her heart like arrows, when the throwing open of the hall-door by Hemstead let out such a broad streaming radiance as attracted her notice. By calling the attention of the others to it, she ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... looted my garden was afraid to use the gate for fear he'd be seen from the house. He came and went through the barbed-wire fence and left that as a souvenir. It's a piece of a flannel shirt, like the one Maxon usually wears. Get his shirt and match this to the hole you'll find in it—see? Then take his everyday shoes and fit 'em to the footprints he left ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... They have their touch of piety in childhood, but it soon wears off, and in its best days cannot stand the demands made upon it by duty; it fails of its hold upon the soul, like a religion without a sacrifice. In these minds some notions of ethics leave a barbed arrow of remorse which penetrates further than piety. They may soothe themselves with the thought that God will easily forgive, later on, but they cannot quite lose consciousness of the law which does not forgive, of the responsibility of human acts and the inevitable ...
— The Education of Catholic Girls • Janet Erskine Stuart
... hastened to find, and, as soon as they were provided, they discharged their guns into the crowd of the natives, who instantly fled, leaving Roper and Calvert pierced with several spears, and severely beaten by their waddies. Several of these spears were barbed, and could not be extracted without difficulty. I had to force one through the arm of Roper, to break off the barb; and to cut another out of the groin of Mr. Calvert. John Murphy had succeeded in getting ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... experience tells him that it is not serious, and not even very painful. It was irritating the first time, but no well-bred bull should condescend to be upset by such a trifle. Another pair of bandarilhas, and yet another, are fixed into his shoulders by their barbed points—or the attempt is made to fix them. Then the bull begins to play the game in a condescending sort of way. Then the great man, the espada himself, comes on the scene, and arranges and waves his ...
— Spanish Life in Town and Country • L. Higgin and Eugene E. Street
... village paid a subscription towards the employment of professional shikaris. These men soon reduced the numbers of the common enemy, by setting clever traps, with bows and arrows, the latter having a broad barbed head, precisely resembling the broad arrow that is well known as the Government mark throughout Great Britain. The destruction of tigers was so great in a few years that the Lieut.-Governor of Bengal found it necessary to reduce the ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... dusky bars: the bill is black, but the gape and within yellow; the sides of the mouth furnished with bristles, as in other goat-suckers; besides which, at the base of the bill are ten or twelve erect stiff bristles, thinly barbed on their sides, and standing perfectly upright as a crest, giving the bird a singular appearance: the legs are weak, longer than in most of the tribe, and of a pale ...
— The Voyage Of Governor Phillip To Botany Bay • Arthur Phillip
... towards him in the market-place, its world a waste of woe because the toy it cherished had been broken in its play. Aldebaran would have turned aside on yesterday to press the barbed thought still deeper in his heart that he had been denied the joy of fatherhood. But now he stooped as gently as if he were the child's own sire to wipe its tears and soothe its sobs. And when with skilful fingers he restored the toy, the child bestowed ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... doing here; I ran my sailboat close under the overhanging rocks and anchored. Then I saw a small boat in the moonlight, pulling from the yacht toward shore, where the crescent cove had already been thoroughly staked and the bottom closely covered with barbed wire as far as the edge of the deep channel which curves ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... next morning, a huge herd of blesbok suddenly appeared on the scene, wildly galloping about in every direction, being continually brought up by the barbed wire fences of the farms. A good many were shot, but it was cruel to kill them, or try to, with hard bullets, and many and many a beast must have got away badly wounded, whilst the indiscriminate manner in which ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... their bright presence; a little cottage hunched against a hill, a candle winking cheerily through the window at the stars; the cries of night birds, the drone of insects, the distant howling of a coyote; far away on the boundary of your possessions, a fence of barbed wire stretching through a hollow and up over a hill; distance and quiet and calm, be it day or night. And Helen May coming through the sunlight, riding a gentle-eyed pony; Helen May with her deep-gold hair tousled in the wind, and with health dancing in her eyes that were the color ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... consequence. It would be impossible to commence our explorations in the Base until the grass should be sufficiently dry to burn; there were two varieties: that upon the slopes and hollows of the stony soil of the Atbara valley had been a pest ever since it had ripened; as the head formed three barbed darts, these detached themselves from the plant with such facility, that the slightest touch was sufficient to dislodge them; they immediately pierced the clothes, from which they could not be withdrawn, as the barbed heads broke off and remained. ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... all of seven feet high and made of the heaviest of woven-wire construction. It was topped with barbed wire, and went all the way down both sides of a narrow right of way until it vanished in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... rider put a saddle on him to give him a demonstrating turn around the track. Then that mild, gentle, perfectly broken family horse of kind disposition gave about as pretty an exhibition of barbed-wire bucking as you would want to see. Even the auctioneer had to join in the wild shriek of delight that went up from the crowd. He could not get a bid, and I bought the ...
— The Mountains • Stewart Edward White
... mother-of-pearl and gold; those of Boondi are the best. The shield of the rhinoceros-hide offers the best resistance, and is often ornamented with animals beautifully painted and enamelled in gold and silver. The bow is of buffalo-horn, and the arrows of reed, which are barbed in a variety of fashions, as the crescent, the trident, the snake's tongue, and other fanciful forms." It is probable that the forms were in reality by no means fanciful, but were copied from sacred or divine objects; and similarly the animals painted on the ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... the same number, how Will J. Shannon girds at your poor friend; and how the rhythmic Clinton steps chivalrously forth in his defence. First the Rev. Purcell; then Will J. Shannon: thick fall the barbed arrows.[42] ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... a working party to a near by farm. They were locked in the room as usual at nine o'clock that night after the day's work and then waited until they had heard the sentry pass by a couple of times on his rounds. The window was covered with barbed wire which they had no difficulty in removing. By morning they were well on the way to Switzerland. They figured that they, too, could do it in six weeks' of walking by night, laying their course by the stars. They had no money and were ...
— The Escape of a Princess Pat • George Pearson
... inclined their bodies over the barbed-wire fence which marked the dividing-line between the Centipede Ranch and their own, staring mournfully into a summer night such as only the far southwestern country knows. Big yellow stars hung ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... sport of death the crew repair, Dart the long lance, or spread the baited snare. One in redoubling mazes wheels along, And glides unhappy near the triple prong: Rodmond, unerring, o'er his head suspends The barbed steel, and every turn attends; Unerring aim'd, the missile weapon flew, And, plunging, struck the fated victim through: The upturning points his ponderous bulk sustain, On deck he struggles with convulsive pain. 80 But while his heart the fatal javelin thrills, And flitting life escapes in ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... scarcely finished a hasty meal, ere his menial announced to him that five men, each leading a barbed steed, desired to speak with him. The Disinherited Knight had exchanged his armour for the long robe usually worn by those of his condition, which, being furnished with a hood, concealed the features, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... the stress of winter hunger will an animal sometimes throw caution to the winds and attack this living pincushion. And then his dinner is usually the price of his life, for there is no escaping the lightning-like swing of the barbed tail. ...
— Followers of the Trail • Zoe Meyer
... handkerchiefs in the bull's face, and endeavour to divert his fury from the picadores, in case they have been thrown or worsted in the encounter. At the same time, the banderilleros are at pains to implant in either side of the bull's neck a number of barbed darts ornamented with cut paper, and, sometimes, charged with detonating powder. It is de rigeur to plant the barbs exactly on either side. In the third and final act, the protagonist, the matador or espada, is the sole performer. His function is to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... the village blacksmith who laughed when he was shown a French horseshoe which had been found on the road, and said: "Not one of these horses will leave Russia if the army remains till frost sets in!" The French horseshoes had neither pins nor barbed hooks, and it would be impossible for horses thus shod to draw cannons and heavy wagons up and down hill over frozen ...
— Napoleon's Campaign in Russia Anno 1812 • Achilles Rose
... went on, Pretoria was being shut in more completely every day. Blockhouses rose on every side; on the hills which lie around the town searchlights played from commanding positions over many miles of country, making darkest night as clear as noonday; barbed-wire fences enclosed the entire capital, and outposts were on guard night ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... not all down there," growled Ned. But his barbed wit failed to penetrate the tough skin of ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... about to start, everybody was ordered to attend prayers, and as they were embarking about twenty naked savages came running and shouting toward them, each carrying a long barbed spear, but the English made all haste to put ...
— The Junior Classics • Various |
