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Clamber   Listen
verb
Clamber  v. i.  (past & past part. clambered; pres. part. clambering)  To climb with difficulty, or with hands and feet; also used figuratively. "The narrow street that clambered toward the mill."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Clamber" Quotes from Famous Books



... aside the summerhouse of Vreugde bij Vrede, as a scythe sweeps away grass. I saw the bombs fall, and then watched a great crimson flare leap responsive to each impact, and mountainous masses of red-lit steam and flying fragments clamber up towards the zenith. Against the glare I saw the country-side for miles standing black and clear, churches, trees, chimneys. And suddenly I understood. The Central Europeans had burst the dykes. Those flares meant the bursting of the dykes, and in a little while the sea-water ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells

... obliged to scramble down the kind of street, or rather goat's-path, which leads to the Japanese Nagasaki—with the prospect, alas! of having to climb up again at night; clamber up all the steps, all the slippery slopes, stumble over all the stones, before we shall be able to get home, go to bed, and sleep. We make our descent in the darkness, under the branches, under the foliage, among dark ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti

... it. Now stinted in the shortening day, We go to prayers and then to play, Till supper comes; and after that We sit an hour to drink and chat. 'Tis late—the old and younger pairs, By Adam[3] lighted, walk up stairs. The weary Dean goes to his chamber; And Nim and Dan to garret clamber, So when the circle we have run, The curtain falls and all is done. I might have mention'd several facts, Like episodes between the acts; And tell who loses and who wins, Who gets a cold, who breaks his shins; How Dan caught ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... a strong lad, when, as he thought it was very dark in the hole, he climbed out of it and looked all about. Then he came back to his mothers (for he called all the seven Ranis "Mother" now), who told him he was not to clamber up out of the hole any more, for if he did, some one might kill him. "Still, if you will go," they added, "do not go to your father's kingdom, but stay near this place." The boy said, "Very well," and every day he climbed out of the hole and only went where his seven mothers told him he might go, ...
— Indian Fairy Tales • Anonymous

... covered with hoar frost. They descended into the deepest graves, broke open the coffins, and ejected their tenants, to procure fire-wood to warm their frozen limbs. I myself saw a French soldier who had fallen among a heap of coffins piled up to the height of more than twelve feet; and, unable to clamber up again, had probably lain there several days, and been added by Death to the number of his former victims. The appearance of the skulls, before so carefully concealed from the view of the living, now thrown out of the coffins into the graves, was ...
— Frederic Shoberl Narrative of the Most Remarkable Events Which Occurred In and Near Leipzig • Frederic Shoberl (1775-1853)

... mount him, fearing witchcraft, or fairies' pranks, but Joan was too tired to have many scruples. So up she got and untied his feet, for he was hobbled, put the rope round his head, and then managed somehow to clamber up on his back, basket and all. It was hard work, but she got settled after a bit, then picking up the rope, called ...
— Cornwall's Wonderland • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... was just showing above the distant sea-line, and the bay was lying motionless as a mirror, with a rosy hue thrown across its placid surface, when I awoke on the following morning, stiff from the clamber of the preceding day. The short half-hour before the rays of the sun have attained an unpleasant fierceness is most enjoyable in Australia, particularly in a wild region such as Cardwell, where birds, beasts, and fishes pursue their daily avocations, heedless of the presence ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden

... the scene of so many sorrows and little jealousies, so many midnight Indian attacks and bilious attacks by day, became a solemn ruin, and a few shattered tombstones, over which the jimson-weed and the wild vines clamber, show to the curious traveller the place where civilization first sought to establish itself ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye

... not to be long in the rain, set off running as fast as we could along the field-side of the hedge, to the bank we were looking for. We saw amazement in the face of our postilion at what possible motive could have made three guests of his master clamber pell-mell over a gate into a field that led nowhere, in the midst of a heavy shower of rain, and then run away as if pursued; and it was the expression in his countenance which caused our mirth, which was increased to peals of merriment when we saw that, instead of waiting ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 451 - Volume 18, New Series, August 21, 1852 • Various

... recite our business; but he was civil enough when he heard we were those whom he expected. He called a crew and slacked out his anchor-rope till his ship ground against the shingle, and then thrust out his two steering oars to help us clamber aboard. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne

... after Sandy. He was told not to climb on to the stones in the current of the stream, but as he was bent on catching the vain, provoking wagtails who strutted about on them, the prohibition was unendurable. As soon as Lizzie's head was bent over her work, he would clamber in and out till he reached some quite forbidden rock; and then, looking back with dancing eyes and the tip of his little tongue showing between his white teeth, he would say, "Go on with your work, Nana, DARLING!"—And his mother's ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... picturesque but most tortuous river. In one place, called appropriately "The Kink," I was able to clamber over a ridge of rocks and reach another bend of the river in six or seven minutes, and then had to wait twenty-five minutes for the dog team, going at a good clip, to come around to me. At length ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... the eastern end of the sand-bank. They found that the shore was everywhere sand until they had gone some half a mile and nearly reached the end of the island, when they came upon a ledge of rocks over which they had to clamber, and which stretched out for quite a long distance into the sea. The two ventured out some few hundred yards along the ridge to seaward, and found that it had deep water on each side of it, the rock seeming ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood

... say that beyond the hills it is all sand and rocks; that there is neither grass or water, or wood; and that it is awfully hot. This last feature appears to terrify them. They say that they are obliged to take wood to the hills for fire, and that they clamber up the rocks on the hills; that when there is water there, it is in deep holes from which they are obliged to sponge it up and squeeze it out to drink. I do not in truth think that any of the natives have been beyond the hills, and that the ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... washes and dips In the pride of the morn. Robes of azure, Fringed with amber, Fold upon fold Of purple and gold, Vine-leaf bloom, And the grape's ripe gloom, When season deep In noontide leisure, With clustering heap The tendrils clamber Full in the face Of his hot embrace, Fill'd with the gleams Of his firmest beams. Autumn flushes, Roseate blushes, Vermeil tinges, Violet fringes, Every hue Of his flower cupholders, O'er the clear ether Mingled together, Shining anew From ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... to convert the shapeless lagoon into a perfectly symmetrical pond just out of the reach of the stubby tongue. Hence the scolding. Three witnesses—each ardently on the side of the bird—watched intently. Decently mannered, it refused to clamber on to the edge of the plate, for it was ever averse from defilement of food. The tit-bit was just beyond avaricious exertions—just at that tantalising distance and just so irresistibly desirable as might be directly stimulative of ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield

... woodpeckers amble up the boles and branches of trees, and when they wish to descend, as they do occasionally for a short distance, they hitch down backward. The brown creepers ascend their vertical or oblique walls in the same way, but seldom, if ever, do anything else than clamber upward, never descending head downward after ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser

... in the mood to listen to a recital of her own blessings. "Deborah couldn't sit on a chair, or the floor, but must actually clamber on to my bed, with her boots on too! Just look at the mess she has made my white quilt in! It—it looks as though it had been slept ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch

... Hear you me, Jessica: Lock up my doors, and when you hear the drum, And the vile squealing of the wry-neck'd fife, Clamber not you up to the casements then, Nor thrust your head into the public street To gaze on Christian fools with varnish'd faces; But stop my house's ears- I mean my casements; Let not the sound of shallow fopp'ry ...
— The Merchant of Venice • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]

... to her to come back, but the child paid no heed to her; at that moment she was trying to clamber up into the fireplace. After tumbling down a couple of times, she finally managed to get upon the hearth, where the ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof

... soldiers recoiled and fell into confusion; and they were for the second time saved from disaster by the gallantry of Colonel Hammond, who with voice and action rallied them, endeavoring to keep them firm while a detachment was sent to clamber up the rocks and outflank the Indians. At the same time Lieutenant Hampton got twenty men together, out of the rout, and ran forward, calling out: "Loaded guns advance, empty guns fall down and load." Being joined by some thirty men more he pushed desperately upwards. The Indians ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt

... his face. Prevost received him as he landed, and ordered two sergeants to take him by the arms and lead him to the governor. His progress was neither rapid nor direct. They drew him hither and thither, delighting to make him clamber in the dark over every possible obstruction; while a noisy crowd hustled him, and laughing women called him Colin Maillard, the name of the chief player in blindman's buff. [Footnote: Juchereau, 323.] Amid a prodigious hubbub, intended to bewilder him and impress him with ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman

... She looked about her with a brave show of interest in the bare November woods, unroofed and open to the sunlight, and was rewarded by a throb of real interest to observe that she was where she had not been for forty years, when she used to clamber over the spur of Hemlock Mountain to hunt for lady's-slippers in the marshy ground at the head of the gorge. A few steps more and she would be on her own property, a steep, rocky tract of brushland left her by her great-uncle. She ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield

... said Polly. "Oh, Phronsie dear, I never shall forgive myself for forgetting you," as Phronsie pattered across the kitchen, to clamber into Mother ...
— The Adventures of Joel Pepper • Margaret Sidney

... years ago (23rd January, 1834), and Lord Durham levelled the site and made it a public promenade. A stately arcade of solid masonry supports it on the brink of the rock, and an iron parapet incloses it; there are a few seats to lounge upon, and some idle old guns for the children to clamber over and play with. A soft twilight had followed the day, and there was just enough obscurity to hide from a willing eye the Northern and New World facts of the scene, and to leave in more romantic relief the citadel dark against the mellow evening, and the people gossiping ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... many a day—now scaling rugged mountain passes where it seemed doubtful whether the horses would be able to clamber, anon traversing rich meadows, and frequently meeting with and shooting deer, bears, Rocky Mountain goats, and the other wild inhabitants of the region. But, in course of time, they reached a particularly barren part of the mountains, to travel through which was a matter of extreme ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne

... over it does not sink. Some experts can right a capsized canoe and clamber in over the side even while swimming in deep water. The seaworthiness of a canoe depends largely upon its lines. Some canoes are very cranky and others can stand a lot of careless usage without capsizing. One thing is true of all, that accidents occur far more often in getting ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller

... thou linger On barren plains and bare, Or clamber the bald mountain-side Into the ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant

... we were fishing we were obliged to clamber along the bank where a tree crowded us so far over the water that Virginia, in stooping to pass under the body of the tree, was about to fall; and I jumped down into the stream and caught her in my arms as she was losing her hold. ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick

... four cowpunchers started for the corral with a whoop and a few minutes later the men who had been standing about in groups began to clamber into wagons or seek refuge behind the wheels as the lean roan steer shot out onto the flat bounding this way and that, the very embodiment of wild-eyed fury. But before he had gone twenty yards there was a thunder of hoofs in his wake and ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... side of the churchyard, so the girls seized their golden opportunity. They went up and up and up, along a winding staircase for an interminable way. It was dark, and the steps were worn with the tread of seven centuries, and here and there was a broken bit over which they had to clamber with care. At last, after what seemed like mounting the Tower of Babel, they stumbled up through a narrow doorway into the most extraordinary place in the world. They were in the garret of the roof over the south ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... pompously proclaims itself to be—a training ground for culture. Take away the Greeks, together with philosophy and art, and what ladder have you still remaining by which to ascend to culture? For, if you attempt to clamber up the ladder without these helps, you must permit me to inform you that all your learning will lie like a heavy burden on your shoulders rather than furnishing you with wings and ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche

... squirrel, now among the branches of an elm, is twitching from one rigid attitude to another, electrified by the crisp atmosphere and the inspiration of the snow. Again he is leaping over the white surface to clamber up the repellent bark of a tall hickory. Among the larger limbs he disappears. As he never attempts to hide, he must have retired into his own dwelling to partake of the store laid by in the season of plenty. Hickory nuts are his favourite food, and the hard shells seem but an appetizing ...
— The Ontario Readers - Third Book • Ontario Ministry of Education

... can see from what I told you that it was easy to follow a straight course right through that old park. Sometimes we had to clamber over piles of old boards and we had to work our way kind of in and out through the old rotten trestle of the scenic railway. That thing crossed our path like a big, long, wriggling snake. Some of the old booths were boarded up and some of them were all falling to pieces. ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... another little boy who was accustomed to clamber up by the side of my father at the morning chapel exercises, and was so kindly treated that, whenever he saw his distinguished friend, he straightway assumed a position beside him. At the college commencement, which was ...
— Recollections and Letters of General Robert E. Lee • Captain Robert E. Lee, His Son

... grown and mild, I knew you once a romping child, Obstreperous much and very wild. Then you would clamber up my knees, And strive with every art to tease, When every art of yours could please. Those things would scarce be proper now, But they are gone, I know not how, And woman's written on your brow. Time draws his finger o'er the scene; But I cannot forget between The Thing to me you once have been; ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb

... on the one side; cultivated fields, rich with vineyards, on the other, and tufted with elegant shrubs that invite one to pluck and carry them away to where they would be treated with much more respect. Little towns flicking in the clefts, where one would imagine it was impossible to clamber; light clouds often sailing under the feet of the high-perched inhabitants, while the sound of a deep and rapid though narrow river, dashing with violence among the insolently impeding rocks at the bottom, and bells in thickly-scattered ...
— Observations and Reflections Made in the Course of a Journey through France, Italy, and Germany, Vol. I • Hester Lynch Piozzi

... wonta, eh? Alla right," said Tony softly through his teeth, and in a grim silence more terrifying than the threat of his words, he blew the lantern out, tossed it to the ground, and proceeding to clamber down, grasped Alex by the leg ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs

... The French station officials all in a paroxysm of excitement because one Tommy throws down a gas helmet for the train to run over. Up we clamber. Hale heaves up valise and coat and so forth, and retires to a "third," while I feel a beast lounging in this luxurious "first." Off we go, and I look out at all ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson

... spoken so as to reach only his ear. Now it was no easy scramble for a man in Drummond's condition to make, but it took him only a little time to clamber to Patterson's side. ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King

... them hated Lamothe. Oncle Jazon squirmed like a snake while they filed past all unaware that an enemy lurked so near. When they reached the fort, ladders were put down for them and they began to clamber over the wall, crowding and pushing one another in wild haste. Oncle Jazon could hold in ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson

... suffering from some unpleasant malady such as attacks the wealthy gluttons who eat too many truffles. And on a dish by the side of these, the hard grey goats' milk cheeses, about the size of a child's fist, resembled the pebbles which the billy-goats send rolling down the stony paths as they clamber along ahead of their flocks. Next came the strong smelling cheeses: the Mont d'Ors, of a bright yellow hue, and exhaling a comparatively mild odour; the Troyes, very thick, and bruised at the edges, and of a far ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola

... every-day occurrence for visitors from the slums to burst into the school to fetch the master to some coster who was "a-killin' his woman." The brawny young giant would dive into the courts where the police go in couples, clamber ricketty stairs, and "interview" the fighting pair. "His plan was to appeal to the manliness of the offender, and make him ashamed of himself; often such a visit ended in a loan, whereby the 'barrer' was replenished and ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman

... Then with an oath the remaining man sprung at the rock and clambered over it in safety. Aghast at the awfulness of what had happened, I stood still, till I saw the great blade of a Matuku spear pass up between my feet. That brought me to my senses, and I began to clamber up the rock like a cat. I was half way round it. Already I had clasped the hand of that brave girl Maiwa, who came down to help me, the men having scrambled forward with the ivory, when I felt some one ...
— Maiwa's Revenge - The War of the Little Hand • H. Rider Haggard

... later we reach the parapet—that immovable rampart over which we have peeped so often and so cautiously with our periscopes—and clamber up a sandbag staircase on to the summit. We note that our barbed wire has all been cut away, and that another battalion, already extended into line, is advancing fifty yards ahead of us. Bullets are pinging through the ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay

... preparing to repeat some performance. For a second or so he stood irresolute; then, clutching wildly at an imaginary something that appeared to encumber his feet, with a swift, darting run and a scrambling clamber, he was into the midst of a sapling; then, our silence attracting attention, the black world collapsed ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn

... fitting to, say, Lullington church near Alfriston, or St. Olave's at Chichester, in no fewer than three of his letters. This is the best passage, revelling in a kind of inverted exaggeration, as written to John Bates Dibdin, at Hastings, in 1826:—"Let me hear that you have clamber'd up to Lover's Seat; it is as fine in that neighbourhood as Juan Fernandez, as lonely too, when the Fishing boats are not out; I have sat for hours, staring upon the shipless sea. The salt sea is never so grand as when it is left to itself. One ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas

... however, that there was no need of this. The two boys in the motorboat knew how to manage, and brought the little vessel in close enough so that even clumsy Bumpus was able to clamber aboard, after handing up his possessions. And Thad smiled when he saw that the other included among these the rusty crank belonging to the destroyed boat which the poachers had used in their illegal business, evidently romantic Bumpus meant to keep that as ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... round and managed to clamber upon the roof, which was only four feet from the ground. But a brief trial served to convince our young adventurer that it is a good deal easier sliding down a roof than it is climbing up. The shingles being old were slippery, and though the ascent was not steep, Ben found the progress he made ...
— Paul Prescott's Charge • Horatio Alger

... he should be kept from dashing his foot against a stone. To be there, therefore, was one of Christ's temptations; consequently one of Satan's stratagems: nor went he thither of his own accord, for he knew that there was danger; he loved not to clamber pinnacles. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... the river lay motionless in the moonlight. The Rhine was tight in ice. The batteries at the angle of the Neckar were invisible. In wonder I came down to three hundred feet and circled, watching our men creep tentatively up to the sharp-cut bank, hesitate, clamber down, and start across the ice recklessly. They were not spiked, never dreaming of getting ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various

... a long, steep climb up to the Bath House at Fideris, after leaving the road leading up through the long valley of Prattigau. The horses pant so hard on their way up the mountain that you prefer to dismount and clamber up on foot to ...
— Moni the Goat-Boy • Johanna Spyri et al

... next, you stupid, and I shall have to answer for you," wheezes Gerassim. "Clamber out, the devil take you! I'll get him ...
— The Cook's Wedding and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... hardly a dignified one, as he had to clamber up the pole and into the building on all fours, drawing his body through the small aperture hardly three feet square, which formed the entry of the house. Once in the "ruai," however, great preparations were made by the inmates for his welcome. Some beautifully-worked ...
— On the Equator • Harry de Windt

... slowly climbed the hollow crags that seemed to close together and forbid her further progress. But she would not turn back, for she could not believe that Andrew had perished. She would have heard the fall of his body or its splash in the water beneath and so she continued to climb and clamber though every step appeared to make further ...
— A Knight of the Nets • Amelia E. Barr

... it. Just below is a rapid, filled with rocks. On the shoot, no channel explored, no signal to guide them! Just at this juncture I chance to see them, but have not yet discovered the fire, and the strange movements of the men fill me with astonishment. Down the rocks I clamber, and run to the bank. When I arrive they have landed. Then we all go back to the late camp to see if anything left behind can be saved. Some of the clothing and bedding taken out of the boats is found, also a few tin cups, ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... something triumphal about the way in which he learnt to brandish his leg with every step he took, and the majestic swing with which he brought it round to its place in advance of the other. In fact, he soon found himself stumping along the highroads with wonderful speed and safety; though to clamber over stiles, and work a bicycle one-footed, of course took much ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour

... the tossing and bobbing motor boat heard, and at once began, one after the other, to clamber up the rope. There were five of them, as could be seen in the glare of the light, and Tom, as he watched, wondered what they were doing out in the terrific storm at that early hour of the morning, and with a ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton

... her crowded decks. The effect was terrible. The mass of men gathered in her bow in readiness to board as soon as she touched the Tarifa were literally swept away. Another half minute she was alongside the Spaniard, and the Moors with wild shouts of vengeance tried to clamber ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... the crowd of natives and another at the shore, and a wild idea came into Lannigan's head. He whispered to Tariro, who went up for'ard and said something to the natives. In another ten seconds some of them began to clamber out on the ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke

... beautiful congress-hall of flowers. It occupies a bluff that overlooks the Schuylkill a hundred feet below to the eastward, and is bounded by the deep channels of a pair of brooks equidistant on the north and south sides. Up the banks of these clamber the sturdy arboreal natives as though to shelter in warm embrace their delicate kindred from abroad. Broad walks and terraces prevent their too close approach and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... turned in my door, and the bolts drawn. I push the door open and clamber up the iron ladder to the deck, just as the men are battening down ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne

... marched funereally by, and then he heard in the trench behind the sound of voices, and an order passed along the line to clamber back into the trench. Surely there was some mistake, thought Mac, but no, it was repeated, and they wormed themselves back over the parapet, gathered hazily that the attack had been deemed inadvisable, and sauntered tiredly back ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie

... was probable, and shifting to the coast itself when that ceased to threaten. Such sea-trading handicraft towns as Bruges, Venice, Corinth, or London were the largest towns of the vanishing order of things. Very rarely, except in China, did they clamber above a quarter of a million inhabitants, even though to some of them there was presently added court and camp. In China, however, a gigantic river and canal system, laced across plains of extraordinary fertility, has permitted the ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells

... glasses, &c., from a gardeners house, and a large hall in the same, good for dancing—was the singular colossal figure, representing "The Apennine," said to have been designed by Michael Angelo. One used to clamber up inside this figure, which sits in a half crouching attitude, and reach on the top of the head a platform, on which four or five persons could stand and admire the ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope

... their legs were tangled knee-deep in a plant covered with minute white feathery blossoms, looking like white swan's-down shot through with green light, that carpeted miles of the ground; sometimes the trees had fallen so thickly that they had to clamber from log to log rather than walk; sometimes their way was a bog, and they were in danger of sinking deeper ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall

... companion rode into a wash-out, and then, dismounting, led their ponies along a clay ledge from which they turned off and went straight up an almost perpendicular sandy bluff. As Merrifield, who was in the lead, turned off the ledge, his horse, plunging in his attempt to clamber up the steep bluff, overbalanced himself, and for a second stood erect on his hind legs trying to recover his equilibrium. As Roosevelt, who was directly beneath him, made a frantic leap with his ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... were now a good distance off upon the prairie. There was but little consolation in this thought, and less in that which occurred to them next; which was that the fierce brutes might not be satisfied at what they had eaten, but might take it into their heads to clamber up to the summit in search of more! This apprehension was the most fearful of all—as the boys knew that there was no place upon the table where they could long conceal themselves; and to get down, if once discovered and pursued, ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid

... the light, he perceived that the wounded man had risen to the surface, and was trying to clamber up the ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... devoured it. The rope and the grappling-hooks still lay where they had fallen, but they afforded me no chance of return; it was impossible to re-attach them to the rock above, and the sides of the rock were too sheer and smooth for human steps to clamber. I was alone in this strange world, amidst ...
— The Coming Race • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... this at the price of making myself believe a thing to be true, which all that is nearest the divine in me cries out against, then you are selling your opiates too high. I'm a volunteer for "God's own forlorn hope," and I'll clamber up the breech as long as I think I can see the flag of truth waving in front ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... the name of this place to be Gatun. Talbot found us a native hut in which were hammocks we could rent for the night. The hut was a two-storied affair, with a notched pole by which to clamber aloft. I took one look and decided to stay below. My weight seemed sufficient to bring the whole thing down ...
— Gold • Stewart White

... beloved, The mother of another son whose name Was Dhruva. Seated on his throne the king Uttanapado, on his knee one day Had placed Uttama; Dhruva, who beheld His brother in that place of honour, longed To clamber up and by his playmate sit; Led on by Love he came, but found, alas! Scant welcome and encouragement; the king Saw fair Suruchee sweep into the hall With stately step,—aye, every inch a queen, And dared not smile upon her co-wife's son. Observing him,—her rival's boy,—intent ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt

... irrepressible, almost as troublesome to their friends as to their foes; but there is good stock in them,—brain and brawn, and brain and brawn will yet carry the day over court and crown, in the name of the right, which shall overpower all things. We clamber down into arched passages, choked with debris, over floors tangled with briers, and join in the wild wassail of the bold outlaw, fired by his victorious career. We clamber up the rugged sides and wind around to ...
— Gala-days • Gail Hamilton

... The sole light admitted into the gloomy chamber proceeded from a square opening, about a foot in diameter, at a height of about seven feet from the floor. Yet what will the energy of true genius not effect? I resolved to clamber up to this hole. A vast quantity of wheels, pinions, and other cabalistic—looking machinery stood opposite the hole, close to it; and through the hole there passed an iron rod from the machinery. Between the wheels ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... one side and Benito on the other would rush at the trees and clamber up to the branches encircled by the cipo so as to ...
— Eight Hundred Leagues on the Amazon • Jules Verne

... any other,—that is, for the first story; the second story is to be of wood, the walls shingled or slated instead of being covered with clapboards, in the orthodox fashion. She is delighted with the notion that her "Baltimore belles" and the like can clamber against the house without being torn away every two or three years for paint. On the strength of this notion, she has already ordered a big lot of all sorts of herbs and creeping things, from grape-vines and English ivy to sweet-peas and passion-flowers. That's only one thing. Every time we go ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner

... girl at Haytersbank, liked to spend half her time in the open air, running out perpetually without anything on to scatter crumbs to the poultry, or to take a piece of bread to the old cart-horse, to go up to the garden for a handful of herbs, or to clamber to the highest point around to blow the horn which summoned her father and Kester home to dinner. Living in a town where it was necessary to put on hat and cloak before going out into the street, and then to walk in a steady and decorous fashion, she had only cared to escape down ...
— Sylvia's Lovers — Complete • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell

... of this Manitou is still shown. It is a rock or cliff on the loneliest port of the mountains, and, from the flowering vines which clamber about it, and the wild flowers which abound in its neighborhood, is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... expressing determined resolve and kindly irony, which gave great range of expression to the face. There are plenty of materials for judging what sort of a boy Scott was. In spite of his lameness, he early taught himself to clamber about with an agility that few children could have surpassed, and to sit his first pony—a little Shetland, not bigger than a large Newfoundland dog, which used to come into the house to be fed by him—even ...
— Sir Walter Scott - (English Men of Letters Series) • Richard H. Hutton

... at an almost giddy height up the endless mountain-side, and curved hither and thither in such multiplied windings that enormous arcs of it can always be seen from the flying window of the car. The woods, green with June or crimson with November, clamber over each other's shoulders up the ascent; but as we attain the elevation of two hundred feet above the Savage, their tufted tops form a soft and mossy embroidery beneath us, diminishing in perspective ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... you. A ball from one of the English field pieces struck him full in the chest, and of course slew him instantly. He was not thirty yards from the tree when I saw him knocked over. He is quite dead, I can assure you, for when the others moved off I took the trouble to clamber down to assure myself. So now the greatest obstacle to the release of your father and mother is out of ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty

... the bottom of a deep ravine, along which swiftly hurries a tiny stream. He is diligently shovelling dirt into a rude sluice-box which he has constructed in the bed of the stream at a point where the water rushes swiftly down a declivity. Setting my bicycle up against a rock, I clamber down the steep bank to investigate. In tones that savor of anything but satisfaction with the result of his labor, he informs me that he has to work "most infernal hard" to pan out two dollars' worth of "dust" a day. "I have had to work ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens

... in pale bars of gold above Helicon. Glaucon rose again; the cold sweat sprang out upon his forehead. Before his eyes rose darkness, but he did not faint. Some kind destiny set a stout pole upright in the field,—perhaps for vines to clamber,—he clutched it, and stood until his sight cleared and the pain a little abated. He tore the pole from the ground, and reached the roadway. He must take his chance of meeting more raiders. He had one vast comfort,—if there had been no battle fought ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... to her own resources and rushed to the stern. She helped Wyn clamber into the boat. Then she hoisted the sail again, and got way upon the boat. She raised the canvas only a little, for she had risked all the weight she dared upon the ...
— Wyn's Camping Days - or, The Outing of the Go-Ahead Club • Amy Bell Marlowe

... mountain, rocks their zeal cannot resist, Up the rugged heights they clamber till ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels

... decided to make the attempt. It was a long and tedious journey, especially as I had to clamber from rock to rock, and then lift Ruth. We managed it, however, and after a time stood safely on the ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking

... in chasms. To drive "down-town" in a carriage is to suffer a sensation akin to sea-sickness; and having once suffered, you can understand that it is something else than the democratic love of travelling in common that persuades the people of New York to clamber on the overhead railway, or to take its chance in ...
— American Sketches - 1908 • Charles Whibley

... chin, and pinches Chloe's nose till it is red and blue; and then they cry, this is a bad summer! as if we ever had any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees and make our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too freezing a commodity for us, and, depend upon it, will ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... forward to take his life; behind him are the rickety steps of the bathing-machine, which, but now a chamber of torture, has become his sole haven of refuge. Buffeted by the billows, he makes shift at last frantically to clamber back into it; he snatches the small, damp towels, and attempts to dry his shivering limbs; his clothes have fallen on the wet floor; he cannot force his blue toes into his oozy socks. At the moment he is ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... those Homeric struggles of one man against twenty, which are none the less heroic because the Ajax is a convict, and the Trojans merely ordinary sailors. Shaking his assailants to the deck as easily as a wild boar shakes off the dogs which clamber upon his bristly sides, the convict sprang to his feet, and, whirling the snatched-up cutlass round his head, kept the circle at bay. Four times did the soldiers round the hatchway raise their muskets, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... rolling considerably, and it is never a pleasant or easy task for a landsman, much less a landswoman, to clamber by a rope-ladder some twenty feet up the side of a rolling ship. However, all the ladies acquitted themselves nobly, some even going up without a rope round their waists. The little Japanese stewardess, ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes

... We clamber up into the long jungle grass region and go on our way across a series of steep-sided, rounded grass hillocks, each of which is separated from the others by dry, rocky watercourses. The effects produced by the seed-ears of the long ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... how the wounded clutched at the tails and bridles of the horses of their companions, sinking them without saving themselves—how the exhausted struggled against the scarped bank, endeavouring to clamber up, fell back, and were borne away and engulfed by the furious current. The corpses of the slain were whirled away, mingled with the dying and streaks of blood curled and writhed like serpents on the foam. The smoke floated far along the Terek, far in the distance, and the snowy peaks of Caucasus, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... canvassed hams and shoulders; and proceeded to the Bandit's Hall, up a steep ascent of twenty or thirty feet, rendered very difficult, by the huge rocks which obstructed the way and over which we were forced to clamber. The name is indicative of the spot. It is a vast and lofty chamber, the floor covered with a mountainous heap of rocks rising amphitheatrically almost to the ceiling, and so disposed as to furnish at different elevations, galleries or platforms, ...
— Rambles in the Mammoth Cave, during the Year 1844 - By a Visiter • Alexander Clark Bullitt

... enormous building. Deep they built it, deep into the ground; high they built it, high into the air. And now they use this building built by them. The sky scraper houses an army of ten thousand men. All day they clamber up and down its core like insects in a giant tree. They buzz and buzz, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell

... I watched Ludar clamber, losing him now and again in the shooting foam, and now and again, as the spray cleared off, seeing him safe, and ever a foot higher than before. How I followed him 'twould be hard to say. Yet the rock seemed riven into cracks which gave us a tolerable foothold, the better as we got higher ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed

... down a chimney again," said the cuckoo. "Open your eyes and clamber down off my back, but don't speak loud, or you'll waken him, and that wouldn't do. There you are—the moonlight's coming in nicely at the ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth

... but a few strokes behind his friend, and the two were seen to clamber over the side of the craft at the moment it came opposite where the delighted ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... all ye say!" shouted Captain Riggs from the fore-deck, and I heard him clamber up the ladder and knew it must have been he who grabbed me as I was about to ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore

... the cold in our thin, wet burnous, we alight from our camels, that suffer and complain, disquieted by the white obscurity, the lashing wind, the strange, wild altitude. For twenty minutes we clamber by lantern light among blocks and falls of granite, with bare feet that slip at every step on the snow. Then we reach a gigantic wall, the summit of which is lost in darkness, and a little low door, covered with iron, opens. We pass in. Two more ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Volume 19 - Travel and Adventure • Various

... their way, and after struggling along some distance they came out suddenly on a portion of the mountain side, where to continue their course meant that they must clamber up, descend a sheer precipice of at least a hundred feet by hanging on to the vine-like growths and ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn

... of the live oaks, beautiful-braided and woven With intricate shades of the vines that myriad-cloven Clamber the ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple



Words linked to "Clamber" :   shinny, climb, skin, struggle, shin



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