"Spiked" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boulders, spiked with driftwood, was firmly based against the wall of the cut. But it sloped up to within a few feet of the top of that gap, more than one landslide having contributed to its fashioning. The landing stage paralleled the river for perhaps some fifty feet. Beyond it ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Book of Proverbs, hey? I know. She's an able old frigate. I did think I had her guns spiked, but she turned 'em on me unexpected. I thought I had her and her boy in a clove hitch. I knew somethin' that I was sartin sure they wouldn't want Caroline to know, and she and Malcolm knew I knew it. Her tellin' Caroline of it, her story of it, when ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... goodness knows where. But when I saw them—these Prussians—it was too much for me. They made my blood boil with rage, and I cried the whole day for shame. Oh, if I had only been a man!—well, there! I watched them from my window—fat pigs that they were with their spiked helmets—and my servant had to hold my hands to prevent me throwing the furniture down on the top of them. Then some of them came to be quartered on me, and I flew at the throat of the first one—they are not harder to strangle ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 1 (of 8) - Boule de Suif and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... runs a drive open to foot passengers, but not to bicycles or dogs. Nearly at the end of the drive going towards Waverley Abbey is a curious cave, lined and roofed at the entrance with stone, and barred and gated and spiked with iron, evidently a fit habitation, once upon a time, for a very witch-like old woman. The gates, or rather railings which do not open, must have been placed there many years ago, for no initials have been carved, or at least none are visible, on the stone within. The cave ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... apples coming in. For I have had too much Of apple-picking: I am overtired Of the great harvest I myself desired. There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch, Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall. For all That struck the earth, No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble, Went surely to the cider-apple heap As of no worth. One can see what will trouble This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is. Were he not gone, The woodchuck could say whether it's like his Long sleep, as I describe its coming on, Or ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... is at its broadest, and he revels in almost pantomimic fun, he never loses sight of truth and nature—never strikes a false or uncertain note. Robinson goes to an evening party with a spiked knuckle-duster in his pocket and sits down. Jones digs an elderly party called Smith in the back with the point of his umbrella, under the impression that it is his friend Brown. A charming little street Arab prints the soles of his muddy ...
— Social Pictorial Satire • George du Maurier
... the Captain with the mighty heart: And when the step of Earthquake shook the house Wrenching the rafters from their ancient hold, He held the ridge-pole up, and spiked again The rafters of the Home. He held his place— Held the long purpose like a growing tree— Held on through blame and faltered not at praise. And when he fell in whirlwind, he went down As when a kingly cedar green with boughs ...
— Elson Grammer School Literature, Book Four. • William H. Elson and Christine Keck
... affairs the earliest railroads were. Instead of the long smooth steel rails which now carry the great trains, with their luxurious cars, in their never-ceasing flight, day in and day out the whole year round, flat bands of iron, spiked to wooden rails, formed the path of the small carriages drawn by a locomotive of the size and shape of a threshing-machine engine. These amazed by a speed of ten or twelve miles an hour the gaping spectator ...
— Stories Of Ohio - 1897 • William Dean Howells
... more appropriate word, Verboten, substituted. Nor would it astound any save the most romantic if, at the same time, the goddess of liberty were taken off the silver dollars to make room for a bas relief of a policeman in a spiked helmet. ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan
... fox from Springfield drove them to taking refuge under the wreck of a barbed-wire hog-pen by the spring. But once there they could look calmly at him while he spiked his legs in ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... Each girl spiked one on a sharpened stick and held it out to broil. When the mushrooms were cooked they each ate until they felt better. Then ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... jail lies about a mile out of the town, an ugly, gray stone barracks with a high, spiked wall about it. I was thankful that it was still fairly early in the morning, and I drove through the streets without seeing any one I knew. Finally I reached the gate in the prison wall. Here some kind of a keeper barred my ...
— Parnassus on Wheels • Christopher Morley
... helter-skelter into the thick wood behind it. A few of the white men—who, to do them credit, were the last to run—were shot or cut down, but the greater number made their escape,—our lieutenant wisely not allowing us to follow. Five guns found in the battery were spiked, upon which we immediately re-embarked and ...
— Twice Lost • W.H.G. Kingston
... awning, when a young apprentice came aft and said a gentleman wished to speak to me. I saw a man standing in the gangway; he was a tall, soldierly person, about forty years of age, with iron-grey hair and spiked moustache, and an aquiline nose. His eyes were singularly bright and penetrating. ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... one another thus, those tigers among monarchs endued with arms like unto spiked iron maces, took up their weapons and rushed at Drupada to slay him then and there. And Drupada beholding those monarchs all at once rushing towards him in anger with bows and arrows, sought, from fear, the protection of the Brahmanas. But those ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... would save him and Brave the toil and danger of climbing the Ice-Father. But could he? They had two rifles, one an autoloader, and they had in all likelihood three negatron pistols. After the single shot of the big rifle was fired, he had only a knife and a hatchet and the spiked and pickaxed ice-staff, and Brave. One of the thieves would kill him before he and Brave killed all of them, and then the Crown would be lost. He dropped into sleep, still thinking of ...
— The Keeper • Henry Beam Piper
... on the floor lie iron chains, spiked collars, saw-toothed snaffles, muzzles bristling with nails, and long iron rods set in wooden handles. In one corner stands a portable furnace, such as tinkers use to melt their spelter; charcoal and dry chips fill it, so ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... clouds of mosquitoes looking out for a landing-place in this world of marshes. I took the chief of the Nuehrs' portrait, as he sat in my cabin on the divan; of course he was delighted. He exhibited his wife's arms and back covered with jagged scars, in reply to my question as to the use of the spiked iron bracelet. Charming people are these poor blacks! as they are termed by English sympathisers; he was quite proud of having clawed his wife like a wild beast. In sober earnest, my monkey "Wallady" looks like a civilized being compared to the Nuehr savages. The chiefs forehead ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... feet back from the footlights, ran a snaky-looking fence with high-spiked posts. It had taken him all morning to build it, even with Alec's and Walker's help. Above this peered a thicket of small trees and underbrush bearing a marvellous crop of gold and silver apples and plums. Real gold and silver fruit it looked to be in the dim light, and ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... pouring across the bridge into the city; Campion's name was on every tongue; and Anthony, as he passed under the high gate, noticed a man point up at the grim spiked heads above it, and laugh to his companion. There seemed little doubt, from the unanimity of those whom he questioned, that the rumour was true; and some even said that the Jesuit was actually passing down Cheapside on his way to the Tower. When at last Anthony came ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... the place, informing him that it was no longer necessary to make a general attack. On the day before he had made a sally from the four gates of the city, had fallen upon the besiegers in great force, had wounded Biron and killed six hundred of his soldiers, had spiked several pieces of artillery and captured others which he had successfully brought into the town, and had in short so damaged the enemy's works and disconcerted him in all his plans, that he was confident of holding the place longer than the king could afford to stay in front of him. All he ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... accordance with instructions from Major Anderson, set fire to the gun-carriages bearing on Fort Sumter, and destroyed all the ammunition and military material that could not be brought away. The guns had been spiked the night before, and the flag-staff was cut down, either at that time ...
— Reminiscences of Forts Sumter and Moultrie in 1860-'61 • Abner Doubleday
... approaching; half a mile above me his noise preceded him. Down he came over brush and stones. I stepped quietly beside a bush and waited as I would for an oncoming elephant. With gun at right shoulder arms, knapsack and canteen rattling, spiked shoes crunching, he marched past me, eyes straight ahead; walking within ten yards and never saw me. Twenty deer must have seen him where he saw one. That night this same man came straggling wearily into our midst and asked the way to his camp. He explained ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... room with three locks, against the door of which strong chamber the light porter laid his head every night, on a truckle bed, that disappeared at cockcrow. Further, she was lady paramount over certain vaults in the basement, sharply spiked off from communication with the predatory world; and over the relics of the current day's work, consisting of blots of ink, worn-out pens, fragments of wafers, and scraps of paper torn so small, that nothing interesting could ever be deciphered on them when Mrs. ...
— Hard Times • Charles Dickens*
... The river of light fell over a sheer precipice, but we found a metal ladder spiked to the rock, with rungs as inconveniently far apart as those in the shaft. It was five hundred feet, I suppose, to the bottom; it took us many ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... sizes, and the walls were of enormous thickness, so that no cannon belonging to the besiegers could hope to make a breach in them. But the hearts of the garrison were less stout than their defenses; and when four hundred cheering volunteers approached a battery on shore, the Frenchmen spiked their guns ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... 23. FESTUCA pinnata. SPIKED FESCUE-GRASS.—I have observed this near the Thames side to be the principal grass in some of the most abundant meadows; and as the seeds are very plentiful, I am of opinion it might be very easily propagated: it is, however, not in ...
— The Botanist's Companion, Vol. II • William Salisbury
... broke the record getting out here as soon as I was invited. Well, she believes, from something I said—one of those odd moments, you know—that I'm a great athlete, and she told those cowboys that I'd gladly put on my spiked shoes and carry their colors to victory. You've heard ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... failed, however; and his raw recruits having been routed at San Lorenzo* by General Bazaine (May 8), further resistance became hopeless. Puebla was lost. General Ortega faced the situation with a dignity worthy of his courageous defense of the town. He spiked his guns, blew up his magazines, disbanded the garrison, and, with his officers, surrendered ...
— Maximilian in Mexico - A Woman's Reminiscences of the French Intervention 1862-1867 • Sara Yorke Stevenson
... shepherd dog is a very powerful animal, and even those of Mexico, when armed with spiked collars, are a sufficient match for the largest wolves. Mr. Kendall mentions having met on the grand prairie with a flock of sheep numbering seventeen thousand, which immense herd was guarded by a very few men, assisted by a large number of noble dogs, which appeared gifted with the ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... camp stove in a recess, noted it all without turning her head—noted, too, that there the usual routine of his return was interrupted. The great two-inch spurs, his individual twist to cowboy attire—great spiked wheels which he never used, but whose glitter and rattle seemed to satisfy him—were forgotten. Instead, he sank to the rocky floor and meditatively drew from his ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... having recovered herself, went from her state-room into the saloon a little later, it was to find that Don Carlos had, so to speak, "spiked her guns," had she intended to denounce him as being responsible for the "accident" ...
— Bandit Love • Juanita Savage
... Boxed Cheese; and Hohenheim, where it is made. A rather unimportant variety. Made in a copper kettle, with partially skim milk, colored with saffron and spiked with caraway, a handful to every two hundred pounds. Salted and ripened for three months and ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... take long to get the cars on the rails, as they were lighter. The damaged engine was switched off to one side, some rails, which had been displaced when the train bumped off, were spiked down, and the wreck was a ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... and bosoms half uncovered, were running fearlessly from one end of the chariot to the other, encouraging the combatants by voice and gesture, and casting at the Romans with no feeble or untrained hands short pikes, knives, and spiked clubs. At last the critical moment came. All the men were killed, the chariot, surrounded by bodies piled half way up its sides, was defended only by the women. There they were, with my mother Margarid, five young women and six maidens, almost all of superb beauty, heightened ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... the scenic landscape that intruded upon the reality of our lives by its motionless fantasy of outline and colour. His followers thronged round him; above his head the broad blades of their spears made a spiked halo of iron points, and they hedged him from humanity by the shimmer of silks, the gleam of weapons, the excited and respectful hum of eager voices. Before sunset he would take leave with ceremony, and go off sitting under a red ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... enough to knock him sprawling. Before he could get up Ch'aka had clutched Mikah Samon by the arm and dragged him across the invisible line to the other group of slaves. Fasimba stalked over to examine him, prodding him with a spiked toe. ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... and the rest of us slipped down the slope to the river-bottom, taking care not to rattle arms and equipments, and began a slow advance along a narrow pathway, the borders of which were lined with the spiked vegetation of the country. ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... House School, as it was called, was in a quaint and very old building, with high walls about the grounds, and great spiked, iron-studded gates. Here the boys lived and studied, seldom returning home, and seldom going outside the grounds, except when ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... afraid, when Paul lifting his chains, fronted him with words of righteousness and judgment. Carlyle says that in 1848, during the riot in Paris, the mob swept down a street blazing with cannon, killed the soldiers, spiked the guns, only to be stopped a few blocks beyond by an old, white-haired man who uncovered and signaled for silence. Then the leader of the mob said: "Citizens, it is De la Eure. Sixty years of pure life ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis
... on all the uniforms on the lower shelves; and as a result, when the assistant returned, instead of finding a young American in English clothes and a high hat, he was confronted by a German officer in a spiked helmet fighting a duel with himself in the mirror. The assistant retreated precipitately, and Ford, conscious that he appeared ridiculous, tried to turn the tables by saying, "Does a German uniform always affect a Territorial ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... the devil!" shouted back Van Hee. "And stop pointing that gun at me, or I'll come over and knock that spiked helmet of yours off. I'm American, and I've more right here than ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... the fishbone by the middle. Out from one side of his head, and mingling with his whiskers, projected the long, spiked spine of the big fish; down from the other side of that ferocious head dangled the fish's tail, and from above the remarkable effect thus produced shot the intolerable glare of two yellow eyes. To the gaze of Duke, still blurred by slumber, this monstrosity was all of one piece ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... feenish you vas det." He shows where the Water-torture was practised. "Nottice 'ow de vater vas vork a 'ole in de tile," he chuckles. "I tink de tile vas vary hardt det, eh?" Then he points out a pole with a spiked prong. "Tief-catcher—put'em in de tief's nack—and ged 'im!" Before a grim-looking cauldron he halts appreciatively. "You know vat dat vas for?" he says. "Dat vas for de blode-foots; put 'em in dere, yass, and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 102, June 18, 1892 • Various
... when the outnumbered garrison were paralysed by the blowing up of their powder magazine. The townsmen began to escape, and a council of war decided to abandon the place. This was done. Lovell, a gunner, would not leave his piece until he had spiked it, and was killed, but not before doing so. Bishop Selwyn, landing from his mission ship in the Bay, had been doing the work of ten in carrying off women and children and succouring the wounded, aided ...
— The Long White Cloud • William Pember Reeves
... old school building, standing foursquare to the world, with its shuttered windows, its lofty, tiled roof, and the spiked lightning-conductors pointing like black and taloned fingers from the corners. For a long time he stood and stared. Then, presently, he came to himself again, and realised to his joy that a light still shone in the windows ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to whom the conduct of the siege had been entrusted by the Marquis de Vaudreuil, Governor and Lieutenant-General of New France. The garrison having fired away all their shells and ammunition from Fort Ontario, spiked up the cannon, and, deserting the fort, retired next day across the river into Fort Oswego, which was even more exposed than the other, especially when the enemy had taken possession of Fort Ontario, from whence they immediately began to fire without intermission. Colonel Mercer being on the ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... presence. On the east side of the river was Fort Ontario, a barricade of logs built in the shape of a star, housing an outguard of three hundred and seventy men. On discovering the French, the sentry spiked their cannon, threw their powder in the river, and retired at midnight inside Oswego's walls. Working like beavers, Montcalm's men dragged twenty cannon to a hill commanding the fort, known as "Fort Rascal" because the outfort there was useless to the English. Before ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... got into uniform—all except his spiked shoes. He would put those on on the porch where there was no carpet to rip and tear. He went over to the window and looked down at the yard. Nothing was there but grass, and hedge, and a small bed of flowers. And yet he saw a steep side of Danger Mountain, and khaki-clad ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... groups. Fortune-tellers are in great request, especially among the once brilliant Laises and Thaises, now looking more shabby, to whom they predict the speedy restoration of Nabobs and Russians, and golden joys. Yonder Punch is achieving a victory over the Evil One, who wears the Prussian spiked helmet, and whose face has been recently beautified into a resemblance to Bismarck. Punch draws to his show a laughing audience of Moblots and recruits to the new companies of the National Guard. Members of the once formidable police, now threadbare ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a fairly large island, but the built-over part of it is small, so it was not surprising that we should emerge from the office face to face with Lady Saffren Waldon. She was the one surprised, not we. She probably thought she had spiked our guns in that part of the world forever, and the sight of us coming laughing from the very office where we should have been made ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... condition of the character he was personating. He was even said to resemble a dancer achieving the terpsichorean feat known as the egg hornpipe. Presently, too, the musicians became alarmed for the safety of themselves and their instruments, and deemed it advisable to scale the spiked partition which divided them from the pit; for the cannon-balls were upon them, smashing the lamps, and falling heavily into the orchestra. Meantime, exposed to the full gaze of the house, lay prone, beside his empty barrow, the carpenter, the innocent invoker of the ...
— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook
... Abruptly, even while weeping with distress, he precipitates himself into new debauches and, raving with delirium, hurls himself upon the child brought to him, gouges out the eyes, runs his finger around the bloody, milky socket, then he seizes a spiked club and crushes the skull. And while the gurgling blood runs over him, he stands, smeared with spattered brains, and grinds his teeth and laughs. Like a hunted beast he flees into the wood, while his henchmen remove the crimson ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... suddenly and unmistakably made their presence felt. Just as at Belah the mosquitoes battened shamelessly upon us and the frogs burst into mighty paeans of welcome, so at El Chauth the scorpions extended the glad hand—if I may venture thus euphemistically to describe the spiked atrocity they wear lengthwise on their backs. Apparently on strike for better conditions of living they decided upon an army blanket as a desirable residence and were quite indifferent as to whether ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... that he received of what was going on, was by the discharge of artillery, on the part of the inhabitants. He immediately ordered several pieces of cannon, which were posted in front of the government house, to be spiked and filled with sand, and went, or rather was rolled in a wheelbarrow, to the scene of action. In a very peremptory tone, he commanded the inhabitants to cease firing and return to their houses. Those posted ...
— Great Indian Chief of the West - Or, Life and Adventures of Black Hawk • Benjamin Drake
... of the probable consequences. He had his mill prepared for an assault. He took up his lodgings in it; and the doors were strongly barricaded at night. On every step of the stairs there was placed a roller, spiked with barbed points all round, so as to impede the ascent of the rioters, if they succeeded ...
— The Life of Charlotte Bronte - Volume 1 • Elizabeth Gaskell
... were constructing an ideal kingdom by drawing up a list of all the people we should have banished? Every one had his or her turn at saying who should be expelled—people who come late to dinner, people who fence with spiked wire, people who talk in theatres, people who say 'like he does,' and so forth; and when somebody suggested 'all young women who wear red veils,' Lord Rockminster immediately added, 'and all young women who don't wear red veils.' Now you ...
— Prince Fortunatus • William Black
... license. . . . Some of the octogenarians were weeping as they told how the soldiers of a civilized nation were cutting off the breasts from the women in order to nail them to the doors, how they had passed around as a trophy a new-born babe spiked on a bayonet, how they had shot aged men in the very armchair in which they were huddled in their sorrowful weakness, torturing them first with ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... who was a dashing sort of a fellow, contrived to brush up the enemy's quarters, on the coast of France. On one of our boat expeditions, I contrived to slip away with the rest; we landed, and surprised a battery, which we blew up, and spiked the guns. The French soldiers ran for their lives, and we plundered the huts of some poor fishermen. I went in with the rest, in hopes of finding plunder, and for my deserts caught a Tartar. A large skait lay with its mouth open, into which I thrust my fore-finger, to drag him ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... steppe has tumult and gold ornaments; also many a scene that looks desert and rock-bound from the distance, will unfold itself, when visited, into rare valleys. Nay, in any case, would Criticism erect not only finger-posts and turnpikes, but spiked gates and impassable barriers, for the mind of man? It is written, "Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased." Surely the plain rule is, Let each considerate person have his way, and see what it will lead to. For not this man ...
— Sartor Resartus - The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh • Thomas Carlyle
... time can almost discern spiked German helmets in the gloom, stands tingling. On either side of him are ranged the men of his platoon—some eager, some sleepy, but all silent. For the first time he notices that in the distant woods ahead of him there is a small break—a mere gap—through ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... flowers with their perfume and the coarse, robust character of the plant really give it a kind of English feminine comeliness and bounce. It looks like a Yorkshire housemaid. Still another plant in my section, which I notice has been widely distributed by the agency of water, is the spiked loosestrife. It first appeared many years ago along the Wallkill; now it may be seen upon many of its tributaries and all along its banks; and in many of the marshy bays and coves along the Hudson, its great masses of purple-red bloom in middle ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her. If Grandet cut the bread with rather too much parsimony, she made no complaint; she gaily shared the hygienic benefits derived from the severe regime of the household, in which no one was ...
— Eugenie Grandet • Honore de Balzac
... on the morning of the second of July, our small cavalcade, with the two exasperating donkeys at the head laden with mats, bags of provisions, extra clothing, alpenstocks, spiked shoes, and coils of stout rope, filed down the streets of Bayazid, followed by a curious rabble. As Bayazid lies hidden behind a projecting spur of the mountains we could obtain no view of the peak itself until we had tramped some distance out on the plain. Its ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... stakes. The upper end of the post is wound with a few rounds of wire or an iron strap to prevent splitting. The crosspiece is 2 in. square, 12 ft. long, strengthened by a piece 4 in. square and 5 ft. long. These two pieces must be securely bolted or spiked together. A malleable iron bolt, 3/4 in. in diameter and 15 in. long is the pivot. On this depends the safety of the contrivance, so it must be strong enough, and long enough to keep firmly in the post. Drive this bolt in a 3/8-in. hole bored in the post, which will make it a sufficiently ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... through the "deep cut" led to an event of great importance to future railway construction. The authorities at Sing Sing having failed to deliver the stone blocks rapidly enough, Mr. Stevens ordered hewn wooden cross ties to be laid temporarily, and the rail to be directly spiked thereto. A number of these ties were laid on the sharpest curves in the cut. They showed such satisfactory properties when the road began to be operated that they were permitted to remain, and the stone blocks already in the track were replaced by wooden ties as rapidly ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 832, December 12, 1891 • Various
... though this frigate laid her broken bones upon the Antarctic shores of Palmer's Land; though not two planks adhered; though all her guns were spiked by sword-fish blades, and at her yawning hatchways mouth-yawning sharks swam in and out; yet, should you escape the wreck and scramble to the beach, this Martial Law would meet you still, and snatch you by ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... were spiked, for the moment. He felt the blood rush to face, and his fists, as he brandished them ...
— The Woman-Haters • Joseph C. Lincoln
... said Saunders. "We are in the twentieth century, and even the parsons have dropped the idea of your old sins finding you out. Before you caught the hand in the library it was filled with pure malevolence—to you and all mankind. After you spiked it through with that nail it naturally forgot about other people, and concentrated its attention on you. It was shut up in that safe, you know, for nearly six months. That gives plenty of time for thinking ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... that phrase is concentrated the whole biology of Home Rule. Every organism must suffer and perish unless its external circumstances echo its inner law of development. The sin of the Union was that it imposed on Ireland from without a sort of spiked strait-jacket which could have no effect but to squeeze the blood and breath out of every interest in the country. What was meat to England was poison to Ireland, and even honest Englishmen, hypnotised by the economists of the day, were unable to perceive this plain truth. Let me ...
— The Open Secret of Ireland • T. M. Kettle
... we slowed down again. We were running through wooded country. From the darkness ahead a lantern waved at us and the train stopped with a jerk at a little wayside station, a tiny box of an affair. A tall, solid figure, wearing a spiked helmet and grey military great-coat, stood in solitary grandeur in the centre of the little platform, the wavering rays of a flickering gas lamp reflected in his brilliantly ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... the cathedral of Paris was spiked again. The last hope of repairing the wrong that had been done his house was gone. What next? Human nature suggested revenge. He compassed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... But the movie had begun again, unfolding scenes of soldiers in spiked helmets marching into Belgian cities full of little milk carts drawn by dogs and old women in peasant costume. There were hisses and catcalls when a German flag was seen, and as the troops were pictured advancing, bayonetting the civilians in wide Dutch pants, the old women with ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... Conglomerate; and that on this platform, as if suddenly overtaken by some wide-spread catastrophe, the ichthyolites lie by thousands and tens of thousands, in every attitude of distortion and terror. We see the spiked wings of the Pterichthys elevated to the full, as they had been erected in the fatal moment of anger and alarm, and the bodies of the Cheirolepis and Cheiracanthus bent head to tail, in the stiff posture ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Ahab's larger, darker, deeper part remains unhinted. But vain to popularize profundities, and all truth is profound. Winding far down from within the very heart of this spiked Hotel de Cluny where we here stand—however grand and wonderful, now quit it;—and take your way, ye nobler, sadder souls, to those vast Roman halls of Thermes; where far beneath the fantastic towers of man's upper earth, his root of grandeur, ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... the Confederacy who stayed at home and fed the children and slaves while the men fought. As you advised them, they have decided to put it in the park just to the left of the Temple of Arts, on the very spot where General Darrah had his last gun fired and spiked just before he fell and just as the surrender came. It's strange, isn't it, that nobody knows who's giving it? Perhaps it was because you and David and I were talking last night about what he should say ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... whistle, the men and horses arrayed in white and scarlet swung into double-file cavalry formation and stood awaiting orders. The moon was now shining brightly, and its light shimmering on the silent horses and men with their tall spiked caps made a picture such as the world had not seen since the Knights of the Middle Ages rode ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... answered! Firing at such an hour, he thought, the rebels must have got wind of their intended evacuation. It was too late for that, but why did not the garrison reply? Between the shots he seemed to hear the universal silence. Heavens! were their guns already spiked? If so, all was lost!—But it was daylight! He had overslept himself! He ought to have been with his men—how long ago he could not tell, for the first shot had taken his watch. A third came and broke his sword, carrying the hilt of it through the wall on which it hung. Not a sound, ...
— Heather and Snow • George MacDonald
... itself,—always the slippery backs of roots crossing at all angles, like loop-traps, over sharp fragments of volcanic rock or pumice-stone. There are abrupt descents, sudden acclivities, mud-holes, and fissures;—one grasps at the ferns on both sides to keep from falling; and some ferns are spiked sometimes on the under surface, and tear the hands. But the barefooted guides stride on rapidly, erect as ever under their loads,—chopping off with their cutlasses any branches that hang too low. There are beautiful flowers here,—various unfamiliar species of lobelia;—pretty ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... to open the spiked fruit better than you do," said Fil. "They throw them from the high branches. The fruit breaks open on the ground. Then the wild monkeys race down the tree, and eat up the custard durian. Who said that a ...
— Fil and Filippa - Story of Child Life in the Philippines • John Stuart Thomson
... post had referred the request to Keogh, and washed its hands of intermeddling in a country not tributary to its territory. The last hope of interference was gone, and the rigors of quarantine closed in like a siege with every gun of the enemy spiked. Let it be a week or a month before the quarantine was lifted, the citizens of Montana had so willed it, and their wish was law. Evening fell, and the men drew round the fires. The guards buttoned ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... thumb screws, spiked collars, and other dretful implements of torture like black shadders throwed from the past. A piece of the boat that the Doge went to his weddin' in when he married the water wuz interestin'; weddin's always ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... air, and with the water three white balls which leaped and danced in the jet of shining spray and never flew away from it. How did they stay there? The school-master laughed—Chad had asked him a question at last that he couldn't answer. And the tall spiked iron fence that ran all the way around the yard, which was full of trees—how wonderful that was, too! As they stood looking, law-makers and visitors poured out through the doors—a brave array—some of them in tight trousers, ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... is a fine thing, Mr. Editor, but it should be handled as one handles the spiked guns which the rebels leave behind, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Brackets. Arms for carrying insulators, which arms are attached to telegraph poles or other support. They vary in style; sometimes they are straight bars of wood gained into and bolted or spiked in place; sometimes they are ...
— The Standard Electrical Dictionary - A Popular Dictionary of Words and Terms Used in the Practice - of Electrical Engineering • T. O'Conor Slone
... language into proportion. At first I opened on it with my heavies in sermon after sermon. Then I saw proportion, and decided on a tariff, allowing an officer a 'damn' and a man a 'bloody.' Winter and Neuve Chapelle taught me the rock-bottom level on which we are fighting this war, and I spiked my guns. No one has a right to condemn them, who hasn't floundered in mud ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... "she's dead. When she got over the hedge she grew too proud of herself, and personal vanity was the ruin of her. She took a tremendous spiked gate, and caught it with her hind legs; the spikes kept her fast, the gate swung open, and the poor mare was so disgusted that she broke her heart. She was worth two hundred guineas; so that the Derby this year has cost me a fortune. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... with an air of apology. "You see, I suspected you when we first met. It's that little bulge up the sleeve where you people have the spiked bracelet." ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... 2, captain Willoughby of the Nereide made a descent upon the south side of the island, at Port Jacotet; where he cut out L'Estafette packet boat, spiked the guns of the fort, carried off the officer with two field pieces, and M. Etienne Bolger, commandant of the quarter of La Savanne, the same who had acted so ungraciously on my arrival at the Baye du Cap. This sullying of the French territory produced a fulminating proclamation ...
— A Voyage to Terra Australis Volume 2 • Matthew Flinders
... the snow-wall, so that, by means of the great rope attached, they could haul themselves up the massive snow-front, out on to the jagged summit of the pass, naked to heaven, where the Marienhutte hid among the naked rocks. Round about, spiked, slashed snow-peaks pricked ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... The guns were then spiked and dragged to a part of the fort directly over the stream, into which they were tumbled, and from whence it would give the Arabs no small amount of trouble to fish them out again. The place was next set on fire in every direction, when the party, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... road, indeed, was hastily made, with a single track, the rails simply spiked down, and the work done at the rate of from a mile to a mile and a half a day. Before the Bokharans fairly realized what was afoot, the iron horse was careering over their level plains, and the shrill scream of the locomotive whistle was startling ...
— Historic Tales, Vol. 8 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... his father was accustomed to descend the ice shoot; planting his heels firmly in the snow and placing his pole under his right arm and leaning the entire weight of his body upon it he came down with the swiftness of an arrow, his body almost in a sitting posture, his heels and the spiked end of his pole alone touching the ice ...
— Scenes in Switzerland • American Tract Society
... the frigate's shot committed little or no damage, while numbers of her crew were falling, some severely wounded. Lieutenant Yeo had in the meantime landed, and storming the 2-gun battery, put its defenders to flight. Having spiked the guns, Lieutenant Yeo discovered the large fort close to the town of Muros, which was severely annoying the frigate. Without hesitation, he resolved to attack it, and his men were eager to follow him. The garrison were so occupied in firing at the frigate, that not only was the approach ...
— How Britannia Came to Rule the Waves - Updated to 1900 • W.H.G. Kingston
... the Rebel gunboats and steamers had taken the troops on board, and ferried them to the Tennessee shore near Island No. 10. They spiked their heavy guns, but Colonel Bissell's engineers were quickly at work, and in a few hours had the guns ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... between rusty rules, who could never see a literary bough project beyond the trim level of its day but they must lop it with a crooked criticism, who kept indomitably planting in the defile of fame the "established canons" that had been spiked by poet after poet. But we decline to believe that a singer of Shelley's calibre could be seriously grieved by want of vogue. Not that we suppose him to have found consolation in that senseless superstition, "the applause of posterity." Posterity! posterity which goes to Rome, weeps large-sized ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... Singleton Spyke's mission would come up. Every one agreed that there ought to be no delay in getting Brother Spyke off to Antioch; but a small deficiency always stood in the way. And Brother Spyke seemed spiked to this deficiency; for notwithstanding Mrs. Slocum, who was reckoned the strongest-minded woman, and best business-man of the society, always made speeches in favor of Brother Spyke and his mission (a special one), he never ...
— Justice in the By-Ways - A Tale of Life • F. Colburn Adams
... guests of our finest Southern society—they afterwards were drawn around with immense solidity towards Louisville, Frankfort, Maysville, Paris, and Lexington, being everywhere received with such honors and provisions that these great guns were in danger of becoming spiked forever in both barrel ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... stereographs were sent us by a lady now residing in Charleston. The Battery, the famous promenade of the Charlestonians, since armed with twenty-four-pounders facing Fort Sumter; the interior of Fort Moultrie, with the guns spiked by Major Anderson; and a more extensive view of the same interior, with the flag of the seven stars, (corresponding to the seven deadly sins,)—the free end of it tied to a gun-carriage, as if to prevent the winds of the angry heaven from rending it to tatters. In the distance, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 45, July, 1861 • Various
... her as silently as mice, and shoved off, leaving the fort to take care of itself. We were much amused by seeing the Dutchmen outside firing away into it as hard as ever. When they discovered their mistake, I don't know; but whenever they did, they must have found all the guns spiked, and the British ensign flying triumphantly over their heads, to show them who ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... swords in solid ivory scabbards, swords of the old Samurai so keen that a touch of the edge would divide a suspended hair. Malay krisses, double-handed Chinese execution swords; old pepper-pot revolvers, such as may still be found on the African coast; knob-kerries, assegais, steel-spiked balls swinging from whips of raw hide; weapons wild and savage and primitive as those with which Attila drove before him the hordes of the Huns, and modern weapons of to-day and yesterday; the ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... then for quite a long distance, in time coming to four rows of tall, thorny reeds with spiked branches. The reeds grew far enough apart to permit travellers to pass into them, but closed whenever the unwary allowed himself to be caught, and he never escaped. The boys marched boldly up to the reeds and started ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... hyphenate populations, and Americans will stand even outrages from France without getting excited. Page knew that if the British seized the Dacia, the cry would go up in certain quarters for immediate war, but that, if France committed the same crime, the guns of the adversary would be spiked. It was purely a case of sentiment and "psychology." And so the event proved. His suggestion was at once acted on; a French cruiser went out into the Channel, seized the offending ship, took it into port, where a ...
— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume I • Burton J. Hendrick
... spectacle. Yes; he was worse; he was a spyglass; he was the great telescope in the Lick Observatory. He had on a coat and shiny shoes and a white vest and a high silk hat; and a geranium as big as an order of spinach was spiked onto his front. And he was smirking and warping his face like an infernal storekeeper ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... later some one came surging through the crowd, and called Aldous by name. It was Blackton. His thin, genial face with its little spiked moustache rose above the sea of heads about him, and as he came ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... summer and the garden of Java Head could afford: a slow moon disentangled itself from the indigo foliage at the back of the stable and soared with an increasing brilliancy, bathing the sod and summerhouse and poplars, the metallic box borders and spiked flower beds, in a crystal clearness. The Ammidons sat about the willow, Rhoda with a hand affectionately on her husband's arm, the children—Laurel and Janet staying without remark long past their accustomed hours for bed—still and white under the blanching moon. Gerrit intently ...
— Java Head • Joseph Hergesheimer
... return to Smuts and find out just how he achieved the miracle by which he not only retained the Premiership but spiked the guns ...
— An African Adventure • Isaac F. Marcosson
... battery on Lighthouse Point. It is ours without striking a blow. They have spiked their guns and gone! We have only to take possession, mount our guns, and the command of ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... of pointing it out. It made a pile more than three hundred feet long. It was nothing but rough hemlock, two inches thick, and from two to ten inches wide, intended to be spiked together flatwise for the walls of the bins, but its bulk was impressive. Bannon measured it with his eye and whistled. "I wish that had been down on our job ten days ago," he said, presently. "I'd be taking a vacation ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... proceeded with the Sea Horse and several other vessels up the river on the 17th of August, but was unable to reach the fort till the 27th. The place being rendered untenable by the explosion of a powder magazine, the garrison spiked their guns and evacuated it next day. The populous and commercial town of Alexandria, situated higher on the river, thus lost its sole protection; and Captain Gordon, having no obstacle to oppose his progress, buoyed the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt
... lying about on the ground; revolvers and automatic pistols stuck half out of their slings on the men's belts as they walked about the camp; large knives and daggers had been thrown about, and so had the huge, heavy, nickel-plated spurs of the men, with their gigantic spiked wheels. These wheels were as much as two inches in diameter and even more. It was the habit of Brazilians to wear the spurs upside down, so that when they got off their mounts they had to remove them or it would ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... most faithful creatures that ever was born,' said Mr. Geddes, as the superintendent shut the door of the cottage. 'Nature made him with a heart that would not have suffered him to harm a fly; but thou seest, friend Latimer, that as men arm their bull-dogs with spiked collars, and their game-cocks with steel spurs, to aid them in fight, so they corrupt, by education, the best and mildest natures, until fortitude and spirit become stubbornness and ferocity. Believe me, friend Latimer, I would as soon expose my faithful household dog to ...
— Redgauntlet • Sir Walter Scott
... and red. Their mouths were black and twisted, and in each of these mouths there was a hedge of curved yellow fangs. They had long scraggy necks that could turn all the way round like the neck of a hen. Their arms were long and skinny and muscular, and at the end of each finger they had a spiked nail that was as hard as horn and as sharp as a briar. Their bodies were covered with a bristle of hair and fur and fluff, so that they looked like dogs in some parts and like cats in others, and in ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... him how shamefully her husband had treated her a short time before, how her fair skin had been cut, told him her hatred and thirst for revenge; and the brigadier acquiesced, and that same evening he came to the cottage accompanied by his four hounds, with their spiked collars on. ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... covers the site of the original Sundanese capital, Jakatra (meaning "the work of victory"), there is a desolate-looking house which the visitor will do well to include in his archaeological investigations. Over the walled-up entrance of this house the remains of a skull spiked on a pike are still to be seen. Underneath is a tablet ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... was right. At one sweep he had spiked my guns, demolished my defenses. The triumph was sponged from my face. I fumed ...
— A Daughter of Raasay - A Tale of the '45 • William MacLeod Raine
... Drake sent sixteen to attack the King's Treasure just at the moment he himself, with his hundred men, should succeed in drawing the entire Spanish garrison to a sham battle on the market-place. The cannon on the platform were spiked and overturned. Drums beating, trumpets blowing, torches aflare, the English freebooter marched straight to the market. Up at the Treasure House, John Drake and Oxenham had burst open the doors ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the others, as well as the men, having been forwarded to Donabue, the Burmahs not imagining, as we had so long left that part of their territory unmolested, that we should have attempted it. Our passage was therefore easy; after a few broadsides, we landed and spiked the guns, and then, with a fair wind, ran about seventy miles up one of the most picturesque and finest rivers I was ever in. Occasionally the right lines of stockades presented themselves, but we found nobody in them, and passed by ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... fust, the old man would only buy one of these little eight-horse rubby-dubbys that go strugglin' up 'ills with a death-rattle in its throat, and all the people in buggies passin' it. O' course that didn't suit Henery. He used to get that spiked when a car passed him, he'd nearly go mad. And one day he nearly got the sack for dodgin' about up a steep 'ill in front of one o' them big twenty-four Darracqs, full of 'owlin' toffs, and not lettin' 'em get a ...
— Three Elephant Power • Andrew Barton 'Banjo' Paterson
... they used for church suppers—and we heard the whole business. Of course nobody knew that Nat was goin' to marry Keziah then, but they did know that he wa'n't goin' to marry Grace Van Horne, and had given her up to the minister of his own accord. So Daniels's guns was spiked and he didn't stand no chance at all. However, you'd never have guessed it to look at him. He marched into that meetin' and up to the platform as stiff and dignified as if he'd swallered a peck of starch. He called the ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... spikes to every rail, three hundred and fifty-two rails to every mile, and eighteen hundred miles from Omaha to San Francisco—those sledges will swing sixty-eight million times before the rails are full-spiked—they have to go fast." ...
— The Mountain Divide • Frank H. Spearman
... trains. Tump Pack piloted Peter Siner to a negro cafe where they could eat, and later they searched out a negro lodging-house on Gate Street where they could sleep. It was a grimy, smelly place, with its own odor spiked by a phosphate-reducing plant two blocks distant. The paper on the wall of the room Peter slept in looked scrofulous. There was no window, and Peter's four-years regime of open windows and fresh- air sleep was broken. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... not; Here bloweth thyme and bergamot; Softly on the evening hour, Secret herbs their spices shower. Dark-spiked rosemary and myrrh, Lean-stalked, purple lavender; Hides within her bosom, too, All ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... could see nothing but the bluish ruins of the morning bank, which lay far along the horizon, like melting icebergs. Then the sun rose, pierced a gap in these debris of vapours, and displayed an inconsiderable islet, flat as a plate upon the sea, and spiked ...
— In the South Seas • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to place, the same general arrangement being adopted as at the plants already described. No. 3 and No. 4 Ransome mixers were used, and were generally set up at about the level of the top of the arch. The sand and stone storage bins were made of scantlings spiked together, and were necessarily rather shallow on account of the proximity of the ...
— Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Vol. LXVIII, Sept. 1910 • James H. Brace and Francis Mason
... tallow dip aloft, and by its uncertain and flickering light surveyed her prison. The briefest glance sufficed. The room contained two shakedown beds and a stool, there was a window in the gable, but a piece of heavy plank was spiked before it. ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... Maybe he only spiked himself on a snag. But this is sure; there's no Coons here to-night. There won't be after this. We come too early, and it's too hot ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... of shower-washed laylock! There's a somethin' in me jumps As I ketch it round some corner, where the heart-shaped leaflets small Cluster up against the stucco, as they did about that wall, Grey, and gritty, and glass-spiked, of our tumble-down old cot Out Epping way, in boy-time long ago, and quite a lot Of remembrances came crowding, like good ghostes, in that scent; There's the mother's call to dinner, there's the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, May 6, 1893 • Various
... arrangement was different, and of such a nature as to make life much easier for those who worked in it. The greatest improvement was the introduction of a set of machines called "jigs." The coal from the mine, after being drawn to the very top of the breaker, first passed between great spiked rollers, or "crushers;" then through a series of "screens," provided with holes of different sizes, that separated it into several grades of egg, stove, nut, pea, buckwheat, etc. From the screens it was led into the jigs. These are perforated iron cylinders set in tubs of water, and fitted ...
— Derrick Sterling - A Story of the Mines • Kirk Munroe
... need not be ashamed. Her land is spiked with glistening monuments to greatness gone. And on these monuments one often gets the epitomized life of the man whose ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... redoubts in turn opened an enfilading fire on the British, and in desperation, just before dawn on the 15th a sortie was made, and the French were driven out of one of the batteries, and the guns spiked but the advantage could not be held against the reserves that came up at the first alarm, and they were in turn forced out at the ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... pink clover mingled with the odor of grasses and the delicate perfume of sweetbrier. Wood sorrel nestled in the grassy corners near the crude rail fences, daisies and spiked toad-flax grew lavishly among the weeds of the roadside. In the meadows tall milkweed swayed its clusters of pink and lavender, marsh-marigolds dotted the grass with discs of pure gold, and Queen Anne's lace lifted its parasols of exquisite loveliness. Phoebe reveled in it all; ...
— Patchwork - A Story of 'The Plain People' • Anna Balmer Myers
... to a bend in the village street. Where the road took a turn stood an aged church; nestling beside it in a little garden was a grey, semi-fortified mediaeval dwelling. The garden was surrounded by high spiked railings, planted on a low stone wall. Sitting on the wall beside the entrance was an American soldier. He had a small French child on either knee—one arm about each of them; thus embarrassed he was doing his patient best ...
— Out To Win - The Story of America in France • Coningsby Dawson
... built in the form of an open square, like all the other presidios, and was in a most ruinous state, with the exception of one side, in which the commandant lived, with his family. There were only two guns, one of which was spiked, and the other had no carriage. Twelve half-clothed and half-starved looking fellows composed the garrison; and they, it was said, had not a musket apiece. The small settlement lay directly below the fort, composed of about forty dark brown looking huts, or houses, and three or four larger ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... two more cups of coffee, spiked them from a small flask of brandy, and handed one to Mike. They drank ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett |
