"Hand-to-hand" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was frightful to behold. Most of the men wielded clubs of enormous size and curious shapes, with which they dashed out each other's brains. As they were almost entirely naked, and had to bound, stoop, leap, and run, in their terrible hand-to-hand encounters, they looked more like demons than human beings. I felt my heart grow sick at the sight of this bloody battle, and would fain have turned away, but a species of fascination seemed to hold me down and glue my eyes upon the combatants. I observed that the attacking party was led by a ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... because this art cannot be taught at all—it has always been an accepted American conviction that poetry is a thing which may be thrown off at any time as a side issue by highly organized persons, most of whose time and strength and faculties are engaged in a vigorous and engrossing hand-to-hand bout with the wolf on the threshold—a most practical, philistine wolf, moreover, which never heard of rhyme or rhythm, and whose whole acquaintance with prosody is confined to a certain greedy familiarity with frayed masculine ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... the light of yonder crater-fire ever shone—perhaps upon whom the sun ever shone; he had scarcely sixty seconds of time in which to determine whether she should die, or he should take the chance of a terrible death, with a hand-to-hand conflict, a powerful madman for an adversary, certain to confront him should his leap by a miracle prove successful. To have leaped over an abyss of half the width of that one, and then to have met an ordinary adversary, would ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... truce were displayed, and by the loss of their comrades and of some favorite officers. I never saw them fight with such ferocity. Few lives were spared in the houses into which they forced their way. Several savage hand-to-hand fights occurred. As private James March, of Company A, was about to enter a house after battering down the door with the butt of his rifle, a Home-guard, armed with musket and bayonet, sprang out and lunged at him. March avoided his thrust, knocked ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... Chone and the Strangler had gone away, leaping down from the mouth of the outer cave to the ravine. But Jack was certain that the unwounded Kachins were still lurking in the cave out of his sight, and he had no intention whatever of creeping out and engaging in a hand-to-hand struggle with the iron-limbed little mountaineers. Fully half an hour passed in this profound silence. Jack kept the sharpest look-out, but could catch no sign to show that his lair was ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... either should miss with their firearms, that a hand-to-hand struggle with the ferocious tigers would be the result; a combat of knives and claws—a combat to the death. Yes; at the bottom of that little valley it would be necessary for them to conquer or die. They knew this without exhibiting the slightest ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... week of January, 1915, between these forces and the Eleventh Corps of the Turkish army a fierce battle, lasting several days, opened. The struggle was of the utmost intensity, at times developing into a hand-to-hand combat between whole regiments. On January 14 the Fifty-second Turkish Regiment was put to the bayonet by the Russians. At Genikoi a regiment of Cossacks charged, during an engagement with a portion of the Thirty-second Turkish Division, and killed ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... we should not neglect, at the same time, to cultivate and preserve the personal valour that is in us, by the use of arms. It may be that the day is shortly coming (our engineers predict that we shall soon have hand-to-hand fighting again), when every individual amongst us will have to put his courage to the proof; and if this should ever happen, it will certainly not diminish our interest in the construction and arrangement of these mediaeval castles, or in the ...
— Normandy Picturesque • Henry Blackburn
... now not more than a hundred yards away, and though their losses had been severe there were so many left that it was evident it would come to a hand-to-hand fight. The enemy cannon had torn big rents in the barbed wire entanglements that stretched before the American position so that it would be ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... her as a small, dark, shapeless blot on the surface of the water, with a tiny luminous ripple under her bow. They were just beginning to discuss their probabilities of success, should it come to a hand-to-hand fight with those three armed and unfatigued men, when a faint puff of warm air fanned ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... cried Chanrellon, wiping the Rhenish off his tawny mustaches, "he should have been a captain by this if I had. Morbleu! He is a splendid sabreur—kills as many men to his own sword as I could myself, when it comes to a hand-to-hand fight; breaks horses in like magic; rides them like the wind; has a hawk's eye over open country; obeys like clockwork; what ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... defense was now made for us. First rifles, then, at closer quarters, revolvers. If it came to a hand-to-hand conflict we had our knives as a ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... Meanwhile fierce hand-to-hand fighting was taking place between the vanguard of the Arabs and a dozen of our men led by Omar. Fiendish yells and shouts sounded on every side as they hacked at each other with their long curved knives, each ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... of those hand-to-hand encounters that a tall and supple young fellow dashed from the opposing ranks and grappled with Giulio for the possession of the crimson standard. To and fro the boys swayed and tugged. In sheer defence the less sturdy Giulio struck out at his opponent's face, and down dropped ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... As I fought him, I bettered some verses in my poem, the WOODMAN; the only thought I gave to letters. Though the kuikui was thick, there was but a small patch of it, and when I was done I attacked the wild lime, and had a hand-to-hand skirmish with its spines and elastic suckers. All this time, close by, in the cleared space of the garden, Lafaele and Mauga were digging. Suddenly quoth Lafaele, 'Somebody he sing out.' - 'Somebody he sing out? All right. I go.' And I went and found they had ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... is to conceive of it, never had the music sounded with noisier delights in the dancing-halls of Venice, nor had the money been more lightly tossed from hand-to-hand over the gaming-tables, nor, at any time, had there been hotter love-making. It must be that each one was minded to enjoy, in the short space of life that might yet be his, all the delights of long years.—And foremost of these was ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the conflict had come. It was no longer to be a duel at a distance—no more a contest between rifle-bullets and barbed arrows; but the close, desperate, hand-to-hand contest of pistol, knife, ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... the Malays, who looked upon it as unfair fighting, and the result was, that after five minutes' sharp, hand-to-hand engagement, the rajah and his men once more took to the woods, and the ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... fearless as himself, in search of Richmond. He penetrated the enemies' lines in the direction where he supposed Richmond was to be found, and was soon surrounded by foes, whom he engaged desperately in a hand-to-hand encounter of the most furious and reckless character. He slew one or two of the foremost of those who surrounded him, calling out all the time to Richmond to come out and meet him in single combat. This Richmond would not do. In the mean time, many of Richard's friends ...
— Richard III - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... heard the cries of their little ones and come to their rescue. They were chasing us, while we followed the birds. It was really a perilous encounter! Our strong bows finally gained the victory in a hand-to-hand struggle with the angry cranes; but after that we hardly ever hunted a crane's nest. Almost all birds make some resistance when their eggs or young are taken, but they will ...
— Indian Child Life • Charles A. Eastman
... it was excusable, I think. All of you have learned how to behave in hot hand-to-hand engagements, and you don't need to be ashamed of your record in that matter; but to walk along in front of death, with one's hands idle, and no noise, no music, and nothing going on, is a very trying situation. If I were you, De Conte, I would ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... Beta! If we could know the complete story of this expedition, its probable failure to reach New York, its entrapment here, the siege and the inevitable tragedy of its end—starvation, sorties, repulses, hand-to-hand fighting at the outer gates, in the nave, here at the crypt door, perhaps on the stairs and in the vaults below—then defeat and slaughter and extinction—what a tremendous ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the North as well as in the South as a female divinity, the fostering mother of all things; and it was owing to climatic difference only that the mythology of the North, where people were daily obliged to conquer the right to live by a hand-to-hand struggle with Nature, should represent her as hard and frozen like Rinda, while the Greeks embodied her in the genial goddess Ceres. The Greeks believed that the cold winter winds swept down from the North, and the Northern races, ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... further, still standing in his rigid attitude. If he had been white before at times he was ghastly now. It had not been an attack in force. A small number had got across and had penetrated beyond the railway line. There had been hand-to-hand fighting in the road beyond the poplars. But it looked more like an experiment, an endeavor to discover the possibility of a real advance through the inundation; or perhaps a feint ...
— The Amazing Interlude • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... air, and the youth smote the chief squarely in the mouth with the back of his fist. He could have used his knife, but he chose to play awhile with this boaster. He delivered his blow so quickly that the Blackfoot, accustomed as he was to fierce hand-to-hand fighting, had no time to dodge or parry, and the next instant the Shawanoe was ten feet away, weapon still grasped, and grinning at the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... absorb morbid matter, poisons or microorganisms by enveloping them with their own bodies. It is a hand-to-hand fight, and many of the brave little soldiers are destroyed by the poisons and bacteria which they attack and swallow. What we call pus is made up of the bodies of live and dead phagocytes, disease taints and germs, blood serum, broken-down tissues and cells, in short, ...
— Nature Cure • Henry Lindlahr
... exaltation of thought and threatening language. They were bound and gagged; heads hanging, jolted by the bumping of the cart; their throats parched with thirst, despair and terror; unfortunate beings who did not even have, as in the times of Nero and Commodus, the fight in the arena, the hand-to-hand struggle with death. Powerless, motionless, the lust of massacre surprised them in their fetters, and battered them not only in life but in death; their bodies, when their hearts had ceased to beat, still resounded beneath the bludgeons which mangled their flesh and crushed ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... great army was awakened by shouts and blows to find the foe was upon them. In the darkness and the excitement of the moment all was confusion. Different parties of the royal troops starting hurriedly to arms, wildly attacked each other. The strife being furious and hand-to-hand was terrific and deadly; and when daylight appeared the enemy, pressing boldly forward to the centre of the camp, overcame all the resistance of which the thinned and disorganized army was capable, and captured both the ...
— Tales of the Caliph • H. N. Crellin
... followed its leader. For some reason, probably on account of my early admiration for Richard and being only too willing to obey his command, I was invariably cast for the villain in these early dramas, and the end of the play always ended in a hand-to-hand conflict between the hero and myself. As Richard, naturally, was the hero and incidentally the stronger of the two, it can readily be imagined that the fight always ended in my complete undoing. Strangulation was the method usually employed to finish me, and, whatever else Richard was at that ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... point. But he observed that after this point, they were no longer protected by the taboo. The ascending ridge belonged not to Maunganamu, but to the mountain system of the eastern side of Lake Taupo, so that they had not only pistol shots, but hand-to-hand fighting to fear. For ten minutes, the little band ascended by insensible degrees toward the higher table-land. John could not discern the dark wood, but he knew it ought to be within two hundred feet. Suddenly he stopped; almost retreated. He fancied he heard something in the darkness; his ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... any kind of fighting I haven't seen," he declared; "hand-to-hand fighting with bayonets, grenades, gun butts. I've seen 'em on their knees in the mud choking each other, beating each other with their bare fists. I've seen every kind of airship, bomb, shell, poison gas, every kind of wound. Seen whole villages turned into a brickyard in twenty minutes; ...
— The Deserter • Richard Harding Davis
... detached regiments of Molineux, and there Neafie joined them with the 3d brigade, after a strong stand at their breastworks, wherein Macauley fell severely wounded, and the 156th and 176th had hard fighting hand-to-hand to keep their colors, at the cost of the staves. Birge retired along the line of works to the open ground beyond Meadow Brook, ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin
... distorted, fierce, with eyes that blazed threats, and in an instant I found myself in the center of a struggling, shouting, swearing mass of savage men, fighting with naught but the instinct of blind rage. Shots were fired, but for the most part it was a hand-to-hand struggle. The clearest picture that comes to me out of the confused tangle is that of Wainwright handling his pistol like a bowie knife, and trying to perform a surgical operation extensive enough to let a joke into ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... the commons or who had simply provoked their displeasure, were the weapons of the plebeians; and to these the patricians opposed violence, concert with the public foes, and occasionally also the dagger of the assassin. Hand-to-hand conflicts took place in the streets, and on both sides the sacredness of the magistrate's person was violated. Many families of burgesses are said to have migrated, and to have sought more peaceful abodes in neighbouring ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... does not let himself get angry in the first place unless the situation calls for fight. However, the fight need not be a hand-to-hand combat with one's fellow man. William James has pointed out that there is a "moral equivalent for war," and that the energy of this instinct may be used to reinforce other impulses and help overcome obstacles of all sorts. A good ...
— Outwitting Our Nerves - A Primer of Psychotherapy • Josephine A. Jackson and Helen M. Salisbury
... keep his hand on Cuthbert's shoulder, whereupon the young man flung it aside. At the same moment Jennings closed with him, and a hand-to-hand struggle ensued. Maraquito, with straining eyes, watched the fight. With stiffened muscles the two reeled across the room. Cuthbert was almost too amazed to fight. That Jennings should accuse him and attack him in this way was incredible. But his blood was up and ...
— The Secret Passage • Fergus Hume
... though I was very little content. What earthly chance stood I against a lithe young brave, accustomed from his childhood to war? I thought of a duel hand-to-hand with knives or tomahawks, for I could not believe that I would be allowed to keep my pistols. It was a very faint-hearted combatant who rose and staggered after Onotawah into the clear morning. The cloudy weather had gone, and the glen where we lay was filled with sun and bright colours. ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... or lolling in the old hay. I entertain a vendetta toward the ursine family. I had a duello, pistol against claw, with one of them in the mountains of Oregon, and have nothing to show to point the moral and adorn the tale. My antagonist of that hand-to-hand fight received two shots, and then dodged into cover and was lost in the twilight. Soon or late in my life, I hoped that I should avenge this evasion. Ripogenus would, perhaps, give what the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... moved. And then, even as she moved, they met! With yells and wild cries and a mare's savage scream, the two bands crashed together in a huddle of fallen or rearing horses, of flickering weapons, of thrusting men, of grapples hand-to-hand. What happened, what was happening to any one, who it was fell, stabbed through and through by four, or who were those who still fought single combats, twisting round one another's horses, those on her right and on her left, she could not tell. For Badelon ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... offset by the superiority of their foes in the art of hiding and of shielding themselves from harm. The hostile lines, though about a mile and a quarter in length, were so close together, being never more than twenty yards apart, that many of the combatants grappled in hand-to-hand fighting, and tomahawked or stabbed each other[33] to death. The clatter of the rifles was incessant, while above the din could be heard the cries and groans of the wounded, and the shouts of the combatants, as each encouraged his own side, or jeered savagely at his adversaries. The cheers ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume One - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1769-1776 • Theodore Roosevelt
... Many a hand-to-hand encounter ensued during the fight at Taos, one of which was by Colonel Ceran St. Vrain, whom I knew intimately; a grand old gentleman, now sleeping peacefully in the quaint little graveyard at Mora, New Mexico, where he resided for many years. The gallant colonel, while riding ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... came his hardy crew. I sprang from the pilot-house and followed, not to be left out in the cold when it came to strafing the boches. From the engine room companionway came the engineer and stockers, and together we leaped after the balance of the crew and into the hand-to-hand fight that was covering the wet deck with red blood. Beside me came Nobs, silent now, and grim. Germans were emerging from the open hatch to take part in the battle on deck. At first the pistols cracked amidst the cursing of the men and the loud commands ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... He had to get at close quarters, for he could not tell when Miller would change his mind and elect to fight with a gun. The man had chosen a hand-to-hand tussle, Dave knew, because he was sure he could beat so stringy an opponent as himself. Once he got the grip on him that he wanted the big gambler would crush him by sheer strength. So, though the youngster had to get close, ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... advice, but the widow and Mrs. Moulton gave it no heed. One was impelled by hate, the other by love; and as they crashed into the growth behind me each was worth a woodsman or two in hand-to-hand fighting. With unnerving abruptness a man laughed boisterously directly ahead of me. Yells and questions filled the arches of ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... they do in mine, but they almost invariably produce in my brain mental phenomena of a pugnacious character, which are nothing modified by palace cars and steel rails. This particular night there was a perfect revelry of dreams in my brain. I was on the frontier with our corps, engaged in a glorious hand-to-hand conflict with men our equals in number and valor. We were having the best of it, giving it to them hot and heavy, crash! through the beggars' skulls, and plunge! into their abominable abdominal regions. "No quarter!" It was a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... enemy, that he might try this weapon effectively; but any attempt on his part to come to closer quarters was construed by the Kearsarge as a design to bring the engagement between the ships to a hand-to-hand conflict between the men. Having the speed, she chose her distance, and made all thought ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes
... crowded to the outside, Browning gave the signal for them to break and make it a hand-to-hand affair. Then he grappled ...
— Frank Merriwell at Yale • Burt L. Standish
... every mother's son in the boat had reached the deck of the launch, and a regular hand-to-hand ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... peaceful as it should be on a perfect Sunday afternoon. The people there were surprised that anyone should have thought there was fighting there. It was still much farther to the south. We drove around in search of evidence of fighting, but could find none. And this after circumstantial accounts of hand-to-hand struggle through all this part ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... completely by surprise. Some turned at once to fly, others made an effort to oppose their enemy; but it was useless. Two or three of the Sepoy leaders, calling to their men to follow them, made a rush at the British, and Dick found himself engaged in a hand-to-hand contest with Aboo Raab, the rebel leader. He was a powerful and desperate man, and with a swinging blow he beat down Dick's guard and inflicted a severe wound on his head; but Dick leaped forward and ran him through the body, just as the bayonet of one of the British soldiers pierced ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... opportunity to make their bold advance, running from bush to bush and from rock to rock until they were well up to the mouth of the chimney, but now in terribly close quarters with their enemies, who held their fire, expecting that the advance would be continued right on to a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... about, gave the word of command, and bore down upon the Americans. Then followed a hand-to-hand conflict, the Californians lancing and using their pistols with great dexterity, the Americans doing the best they could with their rusty sabres and ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... improvement in military arms there has necessarily been a corresponding modification in the method of supplying ammunition and in the quantity required to be supplied. When hand-to-hand weapons were the principal implements of battle, there was, of course, no such need, but even in the middle ages the archers and crossbowmen had to replenish the shafts and bolts expended in action, ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... slaughter them like rats; but they know better than to be caught on the open field, except they are pretty sure of an advantage. They steal upon you like thieves, shod with moccasons which have no sound; they think it equally brave to shoot a man from behind a tree as to sabre him in a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 2, August, 1864 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... at least two dozen vehicles crashed inside the Reservation. As in the first instance, there was a simultaneous ground attack from the southern side, with a demonstration-attack at the north end. For a while, von Schlichten found himself fighting hand-to-hand, first with his pistol and then, when his ammunition was gone, with a picked-up rifle and bayonet. It was full daylight before the last of the attackers was either killed or ...
— Uller Uprising • Henry Beam Piper, John D. Clark and John F. Carr
... The infantry soldier is armed with a bayonet. He relies mainly on fire action to disable the enemy, but he should know that it is often necessary for him to cross bayonets with the enemy. Therefore he must be instructed in the use of the rifle and the bayonet in hand-to-hand encounters. The present European War is demonstrating the importance of this instruction. If you did not receive instruction in bayonet fighting at a federal training camp, it was not because it is unimportant, but because there ...
— The Plattsburg Manual - A Handbook for Military Training • O.O. Ellis and E.B. Garey
... And this force, by forming a circle around the enemy and always shooting at them from behind, killed a large number, and by pressing hard upon the rest compelled them to descend into the plain. There a hand-to-hand battle took place between forces not evenly matched in strength, and most of the Goths were destroyed, though some few with difficulty made their escape and returned to their own camp. And Vittigis ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... it. At the time he had been congratulated upon the able and fearless manner in which he had met the emergency, but a bout with an intoxicated laundress, though it had its dangers, seemed a piffling affair as compared to a hand-to-hand combat with ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... by in this way. We were in constant communication by water with the Great City, receiving supplies and reenforcements of men and armament. And then gradually the situation changed. Over a period of several days our hand-to-hand encounters with the enemy grew less frequent. Finally two or three days went by without one of them ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... and his teeth flashed whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts, and its preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it. The member of the association who would bind a paper-box maiden to his conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brummel airs. They were not ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... which had been bivouacked in a grove not far from Cedar Run Bridge, arrived at the Junction, whither they had been attracted by the firing, and immediately fell upon the foe like an avalanche. Major Hammond commanded in person. Mosby was heard to exclaim, "My God! it is the Fifth New York!" A hand-to-hand encounter now took place, in which bravery was fired with desperation, and Yankee sabres were used with fearful effect. The Rebels soon broke and fled in every direction, demoralized and panic-stricken, ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... the twenty-first day of August, 1776. A terrific battle of seven days followed, in which the slaughter and suffering were fearful. Alternate victory and defeat were experienced by both sides. Sometimes it was a hand-to-hand fight with bayonets. As Washington beheld a detachment of his heroic men pierced to death by Hessian bayonets, he wrung his hands in an agony ...
— From Farm House to the White House • William M. Thayer
... Helvetii fought gallantly, and in numbers were enormously superior; but the contest was between skill and courage, sturdy discipline and wild valor; and it concluded as such contests always must. In these hand-to-hand engagements there were no wounded. Half the fighting men of the Swiss were killed; their camp was stormed; the survivors, with the remnant of the women and children, or such of them as were capable of moving (for thousands had perished, and little more than a third remained of those who had left ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... her that if hand-to-hand fighting were necessary he would depend more upon a crowbar than a rifle to sweep the ledge clear. She ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... his comrades on the north, knew little of what was passing on the peninsula in the south, but he became conscious after a while that the appalling fury of the battle around him was diminishing. He had not seen such a desperate hand-to-hand battle at either Shiloh or the Second Manassas, and they were terrible enough. But he felt as the Confederates themselves had felt, that the Southern army was fighting ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... down into his flooded room to doctor his ankle and attend to his instruments, I raided the slop chest, and armed every man of us with a sheath knife and belt; for while we could not see the creature, we could feel it—and a knife is better than a gun in a hand-to-hand fight. ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... old Indian hunter, burnt by the sun to living bronze, and scarred by the many hand-to-hand conflicts he had had with the red savages, leaped from his horse, his keen eyes fastened to the ground, read the signs which the outlaws had left as ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... of superiority was, after all, in the men themselves. The English sailor was then, as now, a quite amphibious and all-cunning animal, capable of turning his hand to everything, from needlework and carpentry to gunnery or hand-to-hand blows; and he was, moreover, one of a nation, every citizen of which was not merely permitted to carry arms, but compelled by law to practise from childhood the use of the bow, and accustomed to consider ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... pause or halt, the men under Willard Holmes working in shifts met the Rio Colorado in a hand-to-hand fight for The King's Basin lands. By day under the white, semi- tropical sun, by night in the light of locomotive headlights that gleamed strangely over the dark swirling floods, the trestles were forced further and further out into ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... conflicting orders, pauses, spasmodic developments of organisation, a vast ascending clamour and confusion. Before the Council came out, toiling perspiring men, directed by a conflict of shouts, carried forth hundreds of those who had perished in the hand-to-hand conflict within those long passages ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... shall we not be doubly triumphant? It occurs to me, by the way, that when my teacher was training my unreclaimed spirit, her struggle against the powers of darkness, with the stout arm of discipline and the light of the manual alphabet, was in two senses a hand-to-hand conflict. ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... faithless himself, he regarded them as only a part of a trap in which he was to be caught, and his whole purpose was to get out of the dilemma as quickly as possible. However hopeful he might be in a single hand-to-hand encounter with one of the men, he was not vain enough to think that he could master both. In their struggling they had approached quite close to the cliff, and Lone Wolf made a determined attempt to throw Tom over. By a little feinting and dodging, he managed to get him between ...
— Through Apache Lands • R. H. Jayne
... deference, agree to any of these suggestions. They involve hand-to-hand fighting over this baby's body. No one of us is entitled to take charge of him. Else why did we all unite to rescue him from the nunnery? He will be torn to pieces among contending divines! I think a purely secular education is all that as a committee we should aim at. We ...
— Ginx's Baby • Edward Jenkins
... pt. i. p. 40. Wise to Lee, Id., vol. ii. p. 1012; vol. v. p. 769.] The contrast between promise and performance in his case had been ludicrous. When we entered the valley, we heard of his proclamations and orders, which breathed the spirit of desperate hand-to-hand conflict. His soldiers had been told to despise long-range fire-arms, and to trust to bowie-knives, which our invading hordes would never dare to face. We found some of these knives among the arms we captured at the Gauley,—ferocious-looking weapons, made of broad files ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... "At the thought of a hand-to-hand battle with a vortex my brain froze solid. Fear—the sheer, stark, natural human fear of death, that robs a man of the fine edge of control and brings on the very death that he is trying so hard to avoid. That's what had ...
— The Vortex Blaster • Edward Elmer Smith
... not care about what happened in the building. His one thought was to get away, for he fully realized that in a hand-to-hand encounter he would be no match for his ...
— Dave Porter and His Rivals - or, The Chums and Foes of Oak Hall • Edward Stratemeyer
... on guard at the cottage, which was no very great distance away. Random sent a bullet into the midst of the boatload, and immediately the mate fired also. The bullet whistled past his head, and, crazy with rage, he felt inclined to jump in amongst the ruffians and have a hand-to-hand fight. But De Gayangos stopped him in a voice shrill with anger. Already the shouts and noise of the approaching policemen could be heard. Cockatoo gripped the green mummy case desperately, while the sailors tried to ...
— The Green Mummy • Fergus Hume
... with thrilling hand-to-hand conflicts, the three greatest during the eighteen days' battle being between Karna and the eldest Pandav, between the eldest Kuru and Bhima, and between Karna and Arjuna. During the first sixteen days of battle, countless ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... The fact of the matter is that the carving-knife is spotted deeply with blood, but it is not human blood. It is the blood of a cat. A few years ago even a scientific detective would have concluded that a fierce hand-to-hand struggle had been waged and that the murderer was, perhaps, fatally wounded. Now, another conclusion stands, proved infallibly by this Reichert test. The murderer was wounded, but not badly. That person even ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... relatives. This roused one of her brothers to revenge. He strengthened himself in exercises of all kinds until his muscles were like steel, and encountered with Lotu on the edge of the precipice near the principal path. They fought hand-to-hand until both were covered with blood, then, finding that he was about to be forced over the brink, Lotu clasped his brother-in-law and enemy about the neck and both went to their death together. The wife and sister of the two combatants ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... Table, and those of American pioneer days, is the fact that they were ever ready to do a good turn to some one. The knights of the Round Table did theirs by clash of arms, by the jousts and the tourney, and by the fierce hand-to-hand fights that were their delight in open battle. The old scouts, our own pioneers, very often had to use the rifle and the hatchet and the implements of war. However, those days have passed, and we are living in a non-military and peace-loving age; and the glory ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America
... interest in those who have not had our opportunities by our gifts. Much of the service we render in our own land must be rendered in the same way. But when that is said, the fact still remains that there is nothing that will take the place of our hand-to-hand dealing with those who need us. We cannot perform all our charities by proxy. We must come in personal contact with ...
— Sermons on Biblical Characters • Clovis G. Chappell
... from Normandy who took the body of the vicomte on his shoulders and carried it back to the lines. The advantage was, however, pursued, the regiments took the reserve with them, and the enemy's palisades were utterly destroyed. At three o'clock the fire of the Arabs ceased; the hand-to-hand fight lasted two hours; it was a massacre. At five o'clock we were victorious at all points; the enemy had abandoned his positions, and M. le duc ordered the white flag to be planted on the summit of the little mountain. ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... of King Lochlainn, sent a challenge to Domhnall, son of Emhin, High Steward of Mar. The battle commenced at daybreak. Plait came forth and exclaimed three times, "Faras Domhnall?" (Where is Domhnall?) Domhnall replied: "Here, thou reptile." A terrible hand-to-hand combat ensued. They fell dead at the same moment, the sword of each through the heart of the other, and the hair of each in the clenched hand of the other. And the combat of those two was the ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... leader, and then the battle became general. The Indians attacked furiously, and for a few moments those five men bore the brunt of the assault. With his own hand Robert Edmiston slew six of the more forward of the enemy, Morrison nearly as many, and then Moore became engaged in a desperate hand-to-hand fight with an herculean chieftain of the Cherokees. They were a few paces in advance of the main body, and, as if by common consent, the firing was partly suspended on both sides to await the issue of the conflict. "Moore had shot the chief, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... the men on the ship of Ulysses armed themselves, and Neoptolemus, in the splendid armour of his father, was the first to leap ashore. The Greeks could not come from the wall to welcome him, for they were fighting hard and hand-to-hand with Eurypylus and his men. But they glanced back over their shoulders and it seemed to them that they saw Achilles himself, spear and sword in hand, rushing to help them. They raised a great battle-cry, and, when Neoptolemus reached the battlements, he and Ulysses, and Diomede ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... having nowhere to go, what he offered her was something, and something with that spice of adventure of which she had been dreaming only a few minutes earlier. She couldn't be worse off than she was now, and if it gave her the chance of a hand-to-hand tussle with the world-pride which had never done anything but look down on her, she would be fighting what she held as her worst enemy. She braced herself ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... into the coast town of Stralsund, in Swedish Pomerania. He marched through Mecklenburg, and suddenly appeared before Stralsund at moment when the French cannoneers in garrison were firing a salvo in honour of Napoleon's entry into Vienna. A hand-to-hand fight gave Schill possession of the town, with all its stores. For a moment it seemed as if Stralsund might become a second Saragossa; but the French were at hand before it was possible to create works of defence. Schill had but eighteen hundred men, half of whom ...
— History of Modern Europe 1792-1878 • C. A. Fyffe
... no time for diplomacy. Moving as fast as he could, with the high-G, foot-slapping shuffle, Jason headed for the sealed door. He was no match for any Pyrran in hand-to-hand combat, young and small or old and crippled. The door thunked open, as he went through, and barely closed ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... it?" sang out a deriding voice that set the crowd jeering anew. "You'll git promoted, you will! See it in all the evenin' papers—oh, yus! ''Orrible hand-to-hand struggle with a desperado. Brave constable has 'arf a quid's worth out of an infuriated ruffin!' My hat! won't your missis be proud when you take her ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... 'Charge!' And the whole seven hundred launched themselves on Santa Anna's breastworks like an avalanche. Then there was three minutes of smoke and fire and blood. Then a desperate hand-to-hand struggle. Our men had charged the breastwork, with their rifles in their hands and their bowie-knives between their teeth. When rifles and pistols had been discharged they flung them away, rushed on the foe, and cut their path through a wall of living Mexicans with their knives. ...
— The Hallam Succession • Amelia Edith Barr
... cleared for action, and above the gunwales we could spy many a bare head peeping over at us. I marvelled that she had not long since given us a shot; but, like the Spaniard, she seemed bent on close quarters, and was saving up for a hand-to-hand fight. ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... the nearest group, followed by all his men, who formed a compact mass; round which the three corps of royal troops closed. Then there was everywhere a hand-to-hand battle there was no time to load and fire; swords flashed and fell, bayonets stabbed, the royals and the Camisards took each other by the throat and hair. For an hour this demoniac fight lasted, during which Cavalier lost five hundred men and slew a thousand ...
— Massacres Of The South (1551-1815) - Celebrated Crimes • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... corridor, when she sprang after him. Her arms were about his neck; her body clung against his; she breathed hotly into his eyes as she panted forth words, Latin, Greek, all burning with shameless desire. But Basil was not thus to be subdued. The things that he had heard and seen, and now at last the hand-to-hand conflict, had put far from him all temptation of the flesh; his senses were cold as the marbles round about him. This woman, who had never been anything to him but a lure and a peril, whom he had ...
— Veranilda • George Gissing
... nobler game!" and, followed by his troop, he rode at the Constable; who, with a thousand horse, had taken his post behind the infantry. Before this body of cavalry could advance to meet the Huguenots, the latter were among them, and a desperate hand-to-hand melee took place. Gradually the Huguenots won their way into the mass; although the old Constable, fighting as stoutly as the youngest soldier, was setting a splendid example to ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... the conflict; several of the pirates had been killed, the deck was slippery with blood, and the rest were keeping their ground with difficulty. I had a long and severe hand-to-hand fight with one of them. We had each received desperate wounds, when his foot slipped on the bloody deck. I gave him a severe stroke on the head with a tomahawk, and, after a deadly struggle on the gangway, tumbled him backwards overboard. The moon shone bright out at the moment, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various
... It was very much the same as that which occurred the year before at Tamai, on the Red Sea side, to the Second Brigade, and which was described while we were following the fortunes of Tom Strachan. The hand-to-hand fighting was desperate, the slaughter terrible, and the enemy was finally beaten back. No matter; a step was taken, though deep in blood, towards the great object—the relief of Khartoum, and the rescue of Gordon, and hope beat high in ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... other prisoners had been taken; they had been captured in the hand-to-hand struggle that had taken place on some parts of the field, having got separated from their corps and mixed up with the enemy, and carried off the field with them as they retired. These, for the most part, accepted the offered parole; but some fifteen, ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... especially from a despised adversary, unhinges and half paralyzes the whole nervous system. But as fighting Tom gradually recovered to the consciousness of his own strength, and the recollection that it had been only foiled by the skilful trick of a wrestler, and not the hand-to-hand might of a pugilist, the panic vanished, and Tom Bowles was himself again. "Oh, that's your sort, is it? We don't fight with our heels hereabouts, like Cornishers and donkeys: we fight with our fists, youngster; and since ...
— Kenelm Chillingly, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... determined rush the Dorsetshire men fell upon the defenders, and George found himself engaged in a hand-to-hand encounter. It was all over in a few minutes; the handful of Spaniards could not stand against so powerful a force, and the New Mole was taken. Hot and exited, the men were carried against Jumper's Bastion, a strong work a little to the north of the New Mole, and that place, too, was rushed in ...
— With Marlborough to Malplaquet • Herbert Strang and Richard Stead
... day; it was fiercest on our left flank, where General French and his cavalry charged the positions of the Ermelo and Bethel burghers again and again, each time to be repulsed with heavy losses. Once the lancers attacked so valiantly that a hand-to-hand fight ensued. The commandant of the Bethel burghers afterwards told me that during the charge his kaffir servant got among the lancers and called upon them to "Hands up!" The unsophisticated native ...
— My Reminiscences of the Anglo-Boer War • Ben Viljoen
... Desperate and frequent were the struggles within gangways so narrow that nothing but daggers could be used, so obscure that the dim lanterns hardly lighted the death-stroke. They seemed the conflicts, not of men but of evil spirits. Nor were these hand-to-hand battles all. A shower of heads, limbs, mutilated trunks, the mangled remains of hundreds of human beings, often spouted from the earth as if from an invisible volcano. The mines were sprung with unexampled frequency and determination. Still the Spaniards ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... fight. Far worse than all these Hittites and Hivites, and the other tribes with their barbarous names, far worse than all external foes, are the foes that each man carries about in his own heart. In that slow hand-to-hand and foot-to-foot struggle I do not believe that there is any conquering power available for a man that can for a moment be compared with the power that comes through submission to Christ's command and acceptance of Christ's help. He has fought every foot of the ground ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... little traffic between the city Pyrrans and those living outside the walls, and what contact there had been usually led to the kind of violence he had just witnessed. The only minor note of hope in this concert of discord was the fact that no one had died—as yet—in any of these fearsome hand-to-hand conflicts. In spite of the apparent deadliness of the encounters all of the Pyrrans seemed to understand that, despite past hatreds, they were all really on the same side. A distant rumble from the clouded ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... him likewise; and lastly, how he met a man as brave as he, but with a clear conscience and a clear sense of duty, in the person of Mr. Robert Maynard, first lieutenant of the Pearl, who found him after endless difficulties, and fought him hand-to-hand in Oberecock River, in Virginia, 'the lieutenant and twelve men against Blackbeard and fourteen, till the sea was tinctured with blood around the vessel'; and how Maynard sailed into Bathtown with the gory head, black beard and all, hung at his jibboom end; all this is written—in the books ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... a while before daybreak when I saw the lights of Port Barrios about a mile away. I stopped the hand-car there and walked to the town. I stepped inside the corporations of that town with care and hesitations. I was not afraid of the army of Guatemala, but me soul quaked at the prospect of a hand-to-hand struggle with its employment bureau. 'Tis a country that hires its help easy and keeps 'em long. Sure I can fancy Missis America and Missis Guatemala passin' a bit of gossip some fine, still night across the mountains. 'Oh, dear,' says Missis America, 'and it's a ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... in the Wood at St. Julien will go down to history side by side with the fight at Albuera and the hand-to-hand struggle at Inkerman. It was a soldier's battle, and many brave men fell. When roll call was held in the morning only five officers and 188 men of the 10th responded, whilst the 16th Canadian Scottish could only muster five officers and 260 men unhurt. The command of ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... circle tables and benches had been placed where the different families enjoyed the supper they had brought with them, and through it all a jubilant, giggling, staring crowd was pressing, eager for either love or a good hand-to-hand fight. ...
— Dame Care • Hermann Sudermann
... the foot of the slope, where the drift crossed the spruit, Boers were dragging cannon into position, and in among the waggons which had become congested in the road, burghers and soldiers were engaging in fierce hand-to-hand encounters. A stocky Briton wrestled with a youthful Boer, and in the struggle both fell to the ground; near by a cavalryman was firing his revolver at a Boer armed with a rifle, and a hundred paces away a burgher was ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... this manner, not having, as some say, been taught to do so by the Arabians, nor yet from any wish to imitate the Mysians, but because they were a warlike race, and met their foes in close combat, and studied above all to come to a hand-to-hand fight with their enemy, as Archilochus bears ...
— Plutarch's Lives, Volume I (of 4) • Plutarch
... fire; and the rocks themselves were heightened wherever necessary with some of the loads, or with such piles of loose stones as could be collected in time. The part allotted to the Wangoni was that of a reserve force, in the event of the enemy carrying any given point, and thus necessitating hand-to-hand conflict. The slaves, firmly secured, were placed in the center of ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... davits. We found only, besides Captain Bingley and the mates, half a dozen of the men with firearms, the others had either pikes or boat-hooks, or such weapons as might serve for a hand-to-hand tussle, but could not have prevented the pirates from boarding. We had no time to ask questions, for two of the prahus were almost alongside; hurrying across the deck, we stood with our muskets pointed at them, telling Ned to shout in a loud voice and threaten them with a fearful retribution should ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... company, was killed while on the log. But death had no terrors to that army. The centre and rear divisions pressed up to support the front and fill the gaps; and all equally shared the glory of the hour. Enough survived the terrible passage to bring the Indians to a hand-to-hand fight within the fort. After a desperate struggle of nearly three hours, the savages were driven from their stronghold; and, with the setting of that sun, their power was broken. Philip's fortunes had received a decided overthrow, and the colonies were ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham
... fairly shook the mountain side told too plainly a desperate struggle was going on in the passes that protected our rear. General McLaws, taking Cobb's Georgia Brigade and some cavalry, hurried back over the rugged by-paths that had been just traversed, to find D.H. Hill and Longstreet in a hand-to-hand combat, defending the routes on South Mountain that led down on us by the mountain crests. The next day orders for storming the works by the troops beyond the river were given. McLaws and Walker had secured their position, and now were in readiness to ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... shook with feeling he told of the fight for the bridge; how Dick, and Mathews, who had saved him, reached the Americans; of the desperate hand-to-hand fighting; how the groom had guarded his young master; the impending disaster; and ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... the hand-to-hand fighting was nearing its end, and the Germans were withdrawing into the woods beyond where they had many machine gun nests which it would be the final work of the Americans to smoke out. But Tom saw a little of that kind of ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... barked loud and shrill, adding their clamour to his. He raved of battles and sieges. He was lying in the trenches, in cold and rain and wind—in the tempestuous darkness. He was mounting the breach at Dunkirk against the Spaniard; at Charenton in a hand-to-hand fight with Frondeurs. He raved of Chatillon and Chanleu, and the slaughter of that fatal day when Conde mourned a friend and each side lost a leader. Fever gave force to gesture and voice; but in the midst of his ravings he fell back, half fainting, upon the pillow, his heart beating in a tumult ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... upon the corps of Vandamme and Gerard. Three times were Gerard's men driven back by the volleys of the Prussians holding Ligny. But the French cannon open fire with terrific effect. Roofs crumble away, and buildings burst into flame. Once more the French rush to the onset, and a furious hand-to-hand scuffle ensues. Half stifled by heat, smoke, and dust, the rival nations fight on, until the defenders give way and fall back on the further part of the village behind the brook; but, when reinforced, they rally as fiercely as ever, and drive ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... show with his little band and clung tenaciously to the battery yet. The Russians came on and on, with stubborn insistence, and all along the line a hand-to-hand fight ensued. Numbers told at length, and the small garrison was slowly forced back, after ...
— The Thin Red Line; and Blue Blood • Arthur Griffiths
... desperation by the sight of his lists of arrears. And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on Sunday the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to speak to a people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand friend! I never tired on Sunday, and was in condition to leave the sermon at home, if I chose, and preach it extempore, as all men should do always. Indeed, I wonder, when I think that a sensible people like ours—really ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... means, it is the FIGHT. However diversified this may be in form, however widely it may differ from a rough vent of hatred and animosity in a hand-to-hand encounter, whatever number of things may introduce themselves which are not actual fighting, still it is always implied in the conception of War that all the effects manifested have ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... gettin' nowhere!" growled Leary at the end of a third inconclusive hand-to-hand struggle with only a few ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... glory of domesticity, and as she passed from one room to another she told Caroline bits of interesting history about this piece or that. In her naivet she let the girl see into the long hard years that had been a hand-to-hand struggle for her and the major on their worn farm lands out in the ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... a good fellow, Beorn, and I could wish for no better to hold a shield over me in the day of battle or to stand back to back with me in a hand-to-hand fight." ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... The effect was to make infantry an effective force, and to equalize combatants, since a peasant could handle a gun as well as a knight. Another consequence has been to mitigate the brutalizing influence of war on the soldiery, by making it less a hand-to-hand encounter, an encounter with swords and spears, attended with bloodshed, and kindling personal animosity; and by rendering it possible to hold in custody large numbers of captives, whose lives, therefore, can ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher
... a man: every part of our army will work with every other. [24] I will post the javelin-men behind the cuirassiers, and the archers behind them: it would be absurd to place in the van troops who admit that they are not made for hand-to-hand fighting; but with the cuirassiers thrown in front of them they will stand firm enough, and harass the enemy over the heads of our own men with their arrows and their darts. And every stroke that falls on the enemy means so much relief to our friends. [25] In the very rear of all ...
— Cyropaedia - The Education Of Cyrus • Xenophon
... was a hand-to-hand fight. The claws of the animal seemed to be everywhere. They struck with lightning swiftness, and the teeth snapped like steel gins. In fact, the boy's opponent was simply a mass of fur and claws—nothing that could be gripped, but everything that ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... whole war I hear every body, but above all the West Point wiseacres and strategians, assert that charges with the bayonet and hand-to-hand fighting are exceedingly rare occurrences in the course of any campaign. It is useless to speak to all those great judges of experience ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... by General Steedman in person, rushed upon the enemy in a furious charge, which was passing through a low gap to the rear and flank of Brannan's position. The shock was terrible; and for a time, as the opposing forces met in a hand-to-hand fight, success swayed from side to side; in a few minutes more the enemy was repulsed, and dared not make the attempt again. A thousand of these brave men fell, killed or wounded, in that brief half hour's struggle; but ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... necessarily and rapidly declined, because human strength could not long maintain such exhausting efforts, and consequently tactical movements could continue but for a limited time;[1] and again, during the galley period offensive weapons were not only of short range, but were almost wholly confined to hand-to-hand encounter. These two conditions led almost necessarily to a rush upon each other, not, however, without some dexterous attempts to turn or double on the enemy, followed by a hand-to-hand melee. In such a rush and such a melee ...
— The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1660-1783 • A. T. Mahan
... managed to live for ten years in Normandy and even in Paris, without falling into one of the thousand traps set for him by Fouche. Bruslart arrived at his mistress's house at night, his belt bristling with pistols and poniards, and "always ready for a desperate hand-to-hand fight." ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... it, than of prudent conduct. However, he persisted obstinately to gain the passage, and at last with much ado making his way up the banks, which were extremely muddy and slippery, he had instantly to join in a mere confused hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, before he could draw up his men, who were still passing over, into any order. For the enemy pressed upon him with loud and warlike outcries; and charging horse against horse, with their lances, after they had broken and spent these, they fell ...
— The Boys' and Girls' Plutarch - Being Parts of The "Lives" of Plutarch • Plutarch
... Knight. Which of the two moves is the better is difficult to say and is more or less a matter of temperament. A player who prefers a slow and sure advance will choose P-f5. A player who likes a faster pace will start the hand-to-hand fight without delay by Ktxd2. It is the latter move on which ...
— Chess and Checkers: The Way to Mastership • Edward Lasker
... six killed, and nine wounded; and the captain in command was in the fust lot, brought down by Leftenant Lyon in a hand-to-hand squabble at the side of the road. Deck fit like a mad rooster. His hoss stood up straight, and gin his rider a chance to git in the cut that ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... great oath that he would get Lucy on the following day to promise to marry him. This oath, it appears, he kept, and on his way to the signal-box on Tuesday evening met Wynne, and triumphantly told him that Lucy had promised to be his wife. The men had a hand-to-hand fight on the spot, several people from the village being witnesses of it. They were separated with difficulty, each vowing vengeance on the other. Pritchard went off to his duty at the signal-box and Wynne returned to the village to drown his ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... my task," said Toro, "to keep up his character, and give it a realistic look by a hand-to-hand fight." ...
— Jack Harkaway and his son's Escape From the Brigand's of Greece • Bracebridge Hemyng
... do not think the version from which this is an extract is at all an elaborate one. There ought to be a "Triumph," with an archway of swords, in the style of Sir Roger de Coverley. After the passing and repassing strokes, there is usually much more hand-to-hand fighting, then four shoulder cuts, and some are aimed high and some down among their ankles, in a way which would probably be quite clear to any one trained ...
— The Peace Egg and Other tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... had withdrawn a hundred yards, Ethan and Mickey emerged from the cave, shouting and excited, firing at every red-skin they could see, the Irishman occasionally swinging his gun over his head, and daring the savages to a hand-to-hand encounter. ...
— The Huge Hunter - Or, the Steam Man of the Prairies • Edward S. Ellis
... than their masters. While there were more than 200,000 Helots and 120,000 Perioeci, there were never more than 9,000 Spartiate heads of families. In a matter of life and death, then, it was necessary that a Spartiate be as good as ten Helots. As the form of battle was hand-to-hand, they needed agile and robust men. Sparta was like a camp without walls; its people was an army always ...
— History Of Ancient Civilization • Charles Seignobos
... these few seconds, whilst his hand lay across her eyes, the lazy, idle fop of fashionable London was fighting a hand-to-hand fight with the bold leader of a band of adventurers: and his own passionate love for his wife ranged itself with fervent intensity on the side of his weaker self. Forgotten were the horrors of the guillotine, the calls of the innocent, ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... no struggling now—no hand-to-hand wrestling with storm-demons. The sun laughed from a sky as blue and deep as her own sky of Maine, and the girl laughed with him as she walked along, the powdery snow flying in a cloud from her snow-shoes ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... fire, had not waited to reload, but ran forward with the intention of joining me in the hand-to-hand fight— though he carried no other weapon than his empty gun. But this would have been an efficient arm in such hands; for, despite his unsymmetrical build, Dutch Lige was stalwart and though, and would have been a full match for any two of my assailants, ...
— The War Trail - The Hunt of the Wild Horse • Mayne Reid
... the officer. "That town has been taken by the Germans five times and lost as many. A few nights ago they got over into the main street and there was terrific hand-to-hand fighting." ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sandbags, which are everywhere torn like paper. At one time the heavy adhesive reek sways and lifts, and one sees again the swarming mob of the attackers. Torn out of the dusty picture, the silhouette of a hand-to-hand struggle is drawn in fog on the wall, it droops and sinks to the bottom. I hear several shrill cries of "Kamarad!" proceeding from a pale-faced and gray-clad group in the huge corner made by a rending shell. Under the inky cloud the ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... could not carry with it this high bearing. It aspires only to disencumber the route before the march of truth, to prepare the mind, to reform public opinion, to blunt dangerous tools in improper hands. It is in social economy above all, that these hand-to-hand struggles, these constantly recurring combats with popular errors, have ...
— What Is Free Trade? - An Adaptation of Frederic Bastiat's "Sophismes Econimiques" - Designed for the American Reader • Frederic Bastiat
... other. Hancock's men in great force and with invincible courage sprang upon the breast-works, clubbed their guns, or went over bayonet foremost. They were met on the other side in like manner. The melee that ensued was perhaps the most dreadful hand-to-hand conflict of the war. The impetus of the Union attack was irresistible. Great numbers were killed on both sides, and the Confederates ...
— Notable Events of the Nineteenth Century - Great Deeds of Men and Nations and the Progress of the World • Various
... meant to be, instead of the hard work of a man goaded to desperation by the sight of his lists of arrears. And preaching! what a luxury preaching was when I had on Sunday the whole result of an individual, personal week, from which to speak to a people whom all that week I had been meeting as hand-to-hand friend;—I, never tired on Sunday, and in condition to leave the sermon at home, if I chose, and preach it extempore, as all men should do always. Indeed, I wonder, when I think that a sensible people, like ours,—really more attached to their clergy than they were in the lost days, when ...
— The Man Without a Country and Other Tales • Edward E. Hale
... dumb animals seems to admonish them, they are caged with a dangerous companion—they and it alike unable to part company. Their masters know this, and knowing it, are all the more alarmed. A fight is before them; and there appears no chance of shunning it—a hand-to-hand fight, their short-bladed knives against the sharp teeth and claws ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... the bully placed himself before me and spat in my face. In a moment my calmness and self-control were gone, and in a minute more we were engaged in a hand-to-hand fight. The devil that my hatred for my brother had aroused now showed itself, and I fought with all the fury of a demon. My opponent was as big as I, and as strong, or would have been had he not abused his strength by evil habits; and in addition to this, he knew many tricks ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... bakery sale for the missionary station at Trebizond, or a Japanese tea for the Friendship cemetery fund, and we all sew or bake or lend dishes or sell tickets with the same infinity of zeal. The enterprise in hand absorbs our sense of the ultimate object; as when, after three days of hand-to-hand battle to wrest money for the freedmen from the patrons of a Kirmess at the old roller-skating rink, dear Mis' Amanda, secretary and door-tender, handed over our $64.85 with the ...
— Friendship Village • Zona Gale
... ships had been active. The younger officers served with seniors who had sailed and fought with Biddle and Barney and Paul Jones in the Revolution. Many of them had won promotions for gallantry in hand-to-hand combats in boarding parties, for following the bold Stephen Decatur in 1804 when he cut out and set fire to the Philadelphia, which had fallen into the hands of pirates at Tripoli, and helping Thomas Truxtun in 1799-1800 when the Constellation whipped ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... In hand-to-hand work one lunged with the bayonet in a vicious, swinging up-thrust, following through with an up-thrust of the ax-blade as one rushed in on one's opponent, and then a down-thrust of the butt-spike, developing into a down-slice of the bayonet, and a final upward ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... for years after, and never heard of any such thing. What strikes me is a parallel in the predisposing causes of each attack. Your unexpected and gallant hand-to-hand encounter, at such desperate odds, with an experienced swordsman, like that insane colonel of dragoons, your fatigue, and, finally, your composing yourself, as my ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... protection, every natural advantage or artificial device, vast quantities of ammunition are wasted on the empty air, every ball that finds its quarry in human flesh being mayhap but one in hundreds that go astray. In the old-time wars actual hand-to-hand fighting took place. Almost every stroke told, every thrusting blade was directly parried or came back stained with blood. In modern wars fighting of this kind has ceased. A battle has become a matter of machinery. The strong ...
— A History of The Nations and Empires Involved and a Study - of the Events Culminating in The Great Conflict • Logan Marshall
... his lungs. For the moment the soreness of bruised muscles, the biting pain in his crippled hand, were trifles driven outward to the farthermost rim of his consciousness. His foot was upon the first step of the long stairway which he must climb. He had whipped Brayley in a fair, square, hand-to-hand, man-to-man fight. He had done it through sheer dogged determination that he would do it. He had set himself a task, the hardest task he had ever essayed. And success had come ...
— Under Handicap - A Novel • Jackson Gregory
... full of courage and determination as were those Germans now so close to them? They, the handful of poilus whom the French High Command had alone spared for the protection of their front lines, had they the nerve, the grit, for a hand-to-hand combat? Shouts came from many a man, loud cheers burst from the throat of many a bearded veteran, while one young officer sprang on the battered parapet of a trench, and stood there facing his friends, calling to them, exhorting them, as ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... before stated, the rebels drove our force toward the gun-boats, taking colored men prisoners and murdering them. This so enraged them that they rallied and charged the enemy more heroically and desperately than has been recorded during the war. It was a genuine bayonet charge, a hand-to-hand fight, that has never occurred to any extent during this prolonged conflict. Upon both sides men were killed with the butts of muskets. White and black men were lying side by side, pierced by bayonets, and in some instances transfixed to the earth. In one instance, ...
— History of the Negro Race in America from 1619 to 1880. Vol. 2 (of 2) - Negroes as Slaves, as Soldiers, and as Citizens • George Washington Williams
... no question here of risking a hand-to-hand encounter. The Krooboys on board mustered quite fifty head, and most of them were men of enormous physical strength. So the three invaders went into the chart-house, from the ports of which they could command the bridge deck and the main fore deck, and ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... woods. Then starting up at once, and pouring upon him on every side, they overthrew those who resisted, and pressed after those who gave way, who at length, forming themselves into a circle, were assailed by some hand-to-hand, by others were annoyed by missiles. Cariovalda, having long sustained the fury of the enemy, exhorted his men to break through the assailing bands in a solid body; he himself charged into the thickest, and fell under a ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... knew, were at the time eager for a struggle in which, when they had isolated him from his Italian supporters, physical violence would decide the day: and he remarked that he did not wish to give them the pretext for the hand-to-hand combat which they desired.[679] One motive, indeed, of the invidious edict issued by the consul seems to have been to leave Gracchus to face the new position which his latest proposal had created, without any external help; but as external help, if successfully ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... savages. The hunter took to a tree, and so escaped. Then, carefully marking the trail, he came away in the morning. When near home, a lion had attacked him, but he speared the beast to death, after a hand-to-hand struggle in ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Rifle • Victor Appleton
... again, with various religious and other monuments. It radiated on all sides into a mazy coil, an ambush, of narrow crooked lanes, up and down, in which attack and defence would necessarily be a matter of hand-to-hand fighting. In the outskirts lay the citizens' houses, roomier far than those of Athens, with spacious, walled courts, almost in the country. Here, in contrast [209] to the homes of Athens, the legitimate wife had a real dignity, the unmarried woman a singular freedom. There ...
— Plato and Platonism • Walter Horatio Pater
... had been almost battered down, other warriors from the Christian camp gathered to the assault; but the watchers on the city wall raised a cry of alarm, and all the Turkish warriors flew to arms. Then followed a fierce hand-to-hand conflict. In spite of most heroic efforts, the Crusaders were finally driven back. "Never," says the Christian chronicler, "has there been such a people for prowess in battle ...
— With Spurs of Gold - Heroes of Chivalry and their Deeds • Frances Nimmo Greene
... soldier relies mainly on fire action to disable the enemy, but he should know that personal combat is often necessary to obtain success. Therefore, he must be instructed in the use of the rifle and bayonet in hand-to-hand encounters. ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department |
