"Spike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and during drier weather, cultivation is carried on for a different purpose, namely, to conserve moisture by making a thin dust mulch of soil over the surface. This is best accomplished by shallow-going implements of which the spike-tooth harrow, the acme harrow, or a light wheel cultivator are best. As the season and the amount of rainfall vary, so must tillage operations be varied. In an early dry season begin with the lighter implements earlier. In a late wet season keep the digging ...
— Apple Growing • M. C. Burritt
... their narrative to inquire in their turn what had passed? What was the cause of the general discouragement? why had the cannon been abandoned to the enemy untouched? Had they not had time to spike them, or at least ...
— History of the Expedition to Russia - Undertaken by the Emperor Napoleon in the Year 1812 • Count Philip de Segur
... to throw me down. Feeling the Frenchman which hung about my middle hang very heavy, I said to the boy, 'Go round the binnacle, and knock down that man that hangeth on my back.' So the boy did strike him one blow on the head which made him fall.... Then I looked about for a marlin spike or anything else to strike them withal. But seeing nothing, I said, 'LORD! what shall I do?' Then casting up my eye upon my left side, and seeing a marlin spike hanging, I jerked my right arm and took hold, and struck the point four times about a quarter of an inch deep into ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... being ill at ease: He hated that He cannot change His cold, Nor cure its ache. 'Hath spied an icy fish That longed to 'scape the rock-stream where she lived, And thaw herself within the lukewarm brine 35 O' the lazy sea her stream thrusts far amid, A crystal spike 'twixt two warm walls of wave; Only, she ever sickened, found repulse At the other kind of water, not her life, (Green-dense and dim-delicious, bred o' the sun) 40 Flounced back from bliss she was not born to breathe, And in her old bounds buried ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... gone well. It was this which had inspired Bill Lightfoot to restrain his tongue when he was sore over his defeat; and even though Hardy confessed to being a rider, somehow no one ever thought of sawing off Spike Kennedy's "side winder" on him. The quiet, brooding reserve which came from his soldier life protected him from such familiar jests, and without knowing why, the men of the Four Peaks ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... you're going to be tried for conspiracy among the other things. You see that pattern? It fits the foot of a man who went out one night with a spy Shackleby sent over to see how and when you would play the devil with our work in the canyon. It even shows the stump of the filed-off creeper-spike on your right boot. There's no use protesting—a friend of yours here will help us to trace your career back to the finding of the Blue Bird mine. Take him along and lock him into the galvanized ...
— Thurston of Orchard Valley • Harold Bindloss
... 1581 the king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty foreknowledge of Darnley's death. He was executed deservedly, and his head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth. The death of this avaricious, licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to the preachers and their party, and a crook in ...
— A Short History of Scotland • Andrew Lang
... the next morning, Swan Day rode out of Walton in the same stage-coach and with the same "spike-team" of gray horses which had brought him thither thirty-six hours before. When the coach reached Troy, and the bright sun broke over the picturesque scenery of the erratic Ashuelot, he drew his breath deeply, as if relieved of a burden. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... "Strip your old tub down to a flying balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she'd outfoot you on every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr. Give me the Ark and a breeze, and your House-boat wouldn't be within ...
— The Pursuit of the House-Boat • John Kendrick Bangs
... land-lubbers would be able to understand the marine technicalities Mr. RUSSELL introduces into his stories without explanations such as this, it would be difficult to say. But with such assistance, a studding-sail-boom becomes as easy of identification as a marling-spike lashed to a forecastle spinaker-boom, close hauled aport under trysails, blowing out like flags from the grips of clew-lines and leech-lines towards the close of a second dog-watch! Shiver LINDLEY MURRAY'S timbers! but what can be finer than a bulkhead battened down with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 98, March 1, 1890 • Various
... the Old Folks never made such a fuss about flies as we make nowadays. You cannot pick up a magazine without running plump into an article on the deadly housefly—with pictures of him magnified until he looks like the old million-toed, barrel-eyed, spike-tailed dragon of your boyhood mince-pie dreams. The first two pages convince you that the human race is doomed to extermination within eighteen months ...
— The Long Ago • Jacob William Wright
... wi' eye-balls wet, To zee the flow'rs that she'd a-zet; The lilies, white's her maiden frocks, The spike, to put 'ithin her box, Wi' columbines an' hollyhocks; The jilliflow'r an' nodden pink, An' rwose that touch'd her soul to think Ov woone ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... but Barbara smiled. By and by—"Miss Barb, kin I ax you a favo'?—Yass'm. Make yo' paw put me som'ers in de crowd to-day whah I ken see you when you draps de hammeh on de golden spike—Law'! dass de dress o' dresses! You looks highly fitt'n' ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... Charley rapidly mounted a tall tree that stood close beside the truck. As luck would have it, the tree stood all by itself, its nearest neighbors having been cut in making the road. Two-thirds of the way up the tree, Charley drove a spike deep into the wood. He sank a second spike not far from the first. Then he drove home a third. The lead-in wire dangled behind him at his belt. He unfastened it and twisted it tight to the spikes, wrapping ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... rise to the hight of five feet; the pedestals on which these immages are fixed are sometimes cut out of the solid stick with the canoe, and the imagary is formed of seperate small peices of timber firmly united with tenants and motices without the assistance of a single spike of any kind. when the natives are engaged in navigating their canoes one sets in the stern and steers with a paddle the others set by pears and paddle over the gunwall next them, they all kneel in the bottom of the canoe and set on their feet. their paddles are of a uniform ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... and most agreeable men I ever conversed with. Indeed for six months of the year they keep company with the most distinguished travellers of Europe. With these guides, each of us armed with a long pole with an iron spike, such as my uncle described to me ages ago, and which I never expected to wield, we came down La Flegere, which we mounted on mules. In talking to an old woman who brought us strawberries, I was surprised to hear her pronounce the ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... its aspect; the upper part of the flame has, indeed, broken away, and is now shown in that part of the drawing between the two figures on the line above. The same plate also shows various instances of the remarkable spike-like objects, taken, however, at different times and at various parts of the sun. These spikes attain altitudes not generally greater than 20,000 miles, though sometimes they soar aloft to ...
— The Story of the Heavens • Robert Stawell Ball
... considerable abundance a stately fern, the Cyclopteris Hibernicus (see Fig. 2), of mayhap not smaller proportions than our monarch of the British ferns, Osmunda regalis, associated with a peculiar lepidodendron, and what seems to be a lepidostrobus,—possibly the fructiferous spike or cone of the latter, mingled with carbonaceous stems, which, in the simplicity of their texture, and their abundance, give evidence of a low but not scanty vegetation. Ere passing to the luxuriant carboniferous flora, I shall make but one other remark. The existing plants whence we derive our ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... inflorescence usually met with are the spike, raceme and panicle. When the spikelets are sessile or borne directly along an elongated axis as in Enteropogon melicoides the inflorescence is a spike. If the spikelets borne by the axis are all stalked, ...
— A Handbook of Some South Indian Grasses • Rai Bahadur K. Ranga Achariyar
... Ragged Orchid, a near relative of the foregoing, H. psycodes, but far less fortunate in its attributes of beauty, its long scattered spike of greenish-white flowers being so inconspicuous in its sedgy haunt as often to conceal the fact of its frequency. Its individual flower is shown enlarged at Fig. 12—the lip here cut with a lacerated fringe (H. lacera). The pollen-pouches ...
— My Studio Neighbors • William Hamilton Gibson
... conquered with flying colours. My aim was to pin her down to something definite ... like an impaled butterfly: hers was to flutter over a vast garden of irrelevances; but she did not long evade the spike. I tipped its point with the subtly poisonous suggestion that all arrangements must be made in the hour, otherwise complications might arise. There seemed to be so many people who had been attracted by that simple little advertisement of mine, and really, I must be able to say that I and my ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... single word, but his face had grown pale for a moment. Letting go of his hand-spike, he regained ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... night, from thousands of spots all over the surface of the globe, it received thousands of facts, of cold, accomplished facts. It knew that a tidal wave had swept through China, a cabinet had changed in Chili, in Texas an express train had been held up and robbed, "Spike" Kennedy had defeated the "Dutchman" in New Orleans, the Oregon had coaled outside of Rio Janeiro Harbor, the Cape Verde fleet had been seen at anchor off Cadiz; it had been located in the harbor of San Juan, Porto Rico; it had been sighted steaming slowly past Fortress ...
— Ranson's Folly • Richard Harding Davis
... us a few steps round, as if back towards the cave; where was an iron spike driven into the smooth rock a little above the edge ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... left. This was the only chance that he had of victory or safety, and he seems to have done everything that good generalship could do to secure it. He placed his elephants in advance of his centre and right wing. He had caused the driver of each of them to be provided with a sharp iron spike and a mallet; and had given orders that every beast that became unmanageable, and ran back upon his own ranks, should be instantly killed, by driving the spike into the vertebra at the junction of the head and the spine. Hasdrubal's elephants ...
— The Fifteen Decisive Battles of The World From Marathon to Waterloo • Sir Edward Creasy, M.A.
... recommenced active operations, to the great satisfaction of the besieged. The batteries were reopened, and daily contests took place. One night under cover of a fog, a party of the besieged marched up to the principal Spanish battery, and attempted to spike the guns. Every one of them was killed round the battery, not one turning to fly. "The citizens," wrote Don Frederick, "do as much as the best soldiers ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... occurred: the performance prospered peacefully to the close, without incident. All eyes were now turned on the executioner, who had grown as white as the snows on the summit of Fujiama. His legs trembled and his breath came in gasps of terror. "Several kinds of spike-tailed brass lions!" he cried; "I am a ruined and disgraced swordsman! I struck the villain feebly because in flourishing the scimetar I had accidentally passed it through my own neck! Father of the Moon, I resign my office." So saying, he gasped his top-knot, lifted off his head, and advancing ...
— The Devil's Dictionary • Ambrose Bierce
... with me." They shanghaied little Tim O'Shane, they cached him safe away, An' though he objurgated some, they "cured" him night an' day; An' pretty soon there came the change amazin' to explain: "I'll never take another drink," sez Timothy O'Shane. They tried it out on Spike Muldoon, that toper of renown; They put it over Grouch McGraw, the terror of the town. They roped in "tanks" from far and near, an' every test was sure, An' like a flame there ran the fame of Deep-hole's ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... boat's painter carefully round a spike of coral and landed on the reef, and with a shellful of rum and cocoa-nut lemonade mixed half and half, he took his perch on a high ledge of coral from whence a view of the sea and the coral strand could ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... went on, "and I know all about it. Just before the war ended an enormous gun was spiked, dismantled and thrown into a well way down on the Dinkler place. It was got out a good while afterward and the spike drilled out, and since then it has been used for a Christmas gun. Well, they've got that thing on an ox wagon, but they've got no ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... with reluctance—for I have always admired Ned Hanlon's pluck—that the national game never received so severe a set-back as it did during the last Baltimore series here. The effort to spike players, the constant flow of profanity and vulgarity, the incessant and idiotic abuse of an umpire, all combined to make the Baltimore club—that local people have been led to believe was made of a crowd of earnest, honest players—thoroughly despised and detested. In ten years' experience ...
— Spalding's Baseball Guide and Official League Book for 1895 • Edited by Henry Chadwick
... league with my brother," muttered Jaimihr to himself when the fat Hindoo had gone, "then the sooner the British quarrel with both of them the better. Howrah alone I can dispose of easily enough, and there is yet time before rebellion starts for the British to spike the guns of the other two. By the time that is done, I ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... brought in the narrow gauge, was the wooden railway built in 1870 from {102} Quebec to Gosford. The rails were simply strips of seasoned maple, 14'x7"x4", notched into the sleepers and wedged in without the use of a single iron spike. The engine and car wheels were made wide to fit the rail. In spite of its cheap construction the road did not pay, and the hope of extending it as far as Lake St John was deferred for a generation. A similar wooden railway was ...
— The Railway Builders - A Chronicle of Overland Highways • Oscar D. Skelton
... representatives, distinguished as the Long Nine. They were much hampered by an old member who tried to put a stopper upon any measure on the set ground that it was "un-con-sti-tu-tional." Lincoln was selected to "spike his gun." A measure was introduced benefiting the Sangamon district, so that its electee might befittingly push it, and defend it. He was warrantably its usher when the habitual ...
— The Lincoln Story Book • Henry L. Williams
... if possible; if dry, it should be soaked until quite soft. Cut some thin strips of hide for sewing or lacing. Now shape a bag or pocket of size sufficient to hold about a hundredweight of stone, and by puncturing the edges with a knife, marline-spike, or other pointed tool, sew together; make a handle of twisted or pleated hide, and having filled your bucket with dry sand or earth let it stand till the whole is quite dry, when it will be properly distended and will maintain its shape until ...
— Getting Gold • J. C. F. Johnson
... decapitated this Gharib and suppressed his breath of life and forced my cousin and his people back to their belief: and whoso baulketh me, him will I destroy." Then he mounted an elephant paper-white as he were a tower plastered with gypsum, and goaded him with a spike of steel which ran deep into his flesh, whereupon the elephant trumpeted and made for the battle-plain where cut and thrust obtain; and, when he drew near Gharib, he cried out to him, saying, "O dog of mankind, what ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... mallows, of a new and singular coloring, faded in their vase before she had finished copying them. And yet for a whole afternoon she worked enthusiastically at a fantastic design of dream flowers, an extraordinary efflorescence blooming in the light of a miraculous sun, a burst of golden spike-shaped rays in the center of large purple corollas, resembling open hearts, whence shot, for pistils, a shower of stars, myriads of worlds streaming into the ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... word belongs To the Foes of Freedom, the Friends of wrongs, And unto them alone. The first and worst of the Tyrant's terms, Barbed to spike at the writhing worms That crawl about his throne. Only the mob at a despot's heels Would juggle a man at Fortune's wheels, Or conjure one with the die that reels From the lip of the dice-cup thrown! The soldier ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... placed on one side a black-handled fork with two prongs, and a knife of the same pattern (this was for Frank) and on the other a small pewter tea-spoon and a knife, of which the only handle was a small iron spike from which the wood had fallen away. (This was for herself.) Then there was a tooth-glass for Frank, and a teacup—without a handle, but with a gold flower in the middle of it, to make up—for herself. In the center of the pocket-handkerchief stood a crockery jug, with ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... extended laterally on either side, like ribs, to support and bind together the huge frame. Undertaken about twelve years ago it has only recently been completed as far as Hankow, about six hundred miles. The last spike in the bridge across the Yellow River was driven in August, 1905, and since that time through trains have been running from the capital to the banks ...
— The Awakening of China • W.A.P. Martin
... Monkstown Castle on the hill to the right, and the grounds of Ballybricken, a beautiful intermixed scene of wood and lawn. The high shore of the harbour's mouth opens gradually. The whole scene is land-locked. The first view of Haulbowline Island and Spike Island, high rocky lands, with the channel opening to Cove, where are a fleet of ships at anchor, and Rostellan, Lord Inchiquin's house, backed with hills, a scenery that wants nothing but the accompaniment of wood. The view of Ballybricken changes; it ...
— A Tour in Ireland - 1776-1779 • Arthur Young
... he. "Pull the damn bed down and spike it to the floor!" This we did. Then we held a short but intense consultation. Whatever else might be the matter, obviously Tristan was suffering severely from shock and, for all we knew, maybe from partial electrocution. So we called up Dr. ...
— Disowned • Victor Endersby
... leafy heads which both Sam and I strenuously ignored, while every time I went to dig around their roots somebody had done it before me! There they were, perfectly huge with their great fluted leaves, and right at the end of the row an extra-large plant had sent up a tall, green spike on the end of which a great, pink doll-blossom was shaking out her rosy skirts in the afternoon sun. I stood for a minute looking at her in utter rapture. Then I reached out my arms and gathered her in and put a kiss right in the center of ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... stated. "And Ainnesley—why, Ainnesley wouldn't have a roof over his head if we failed in our obligations! You must know as well as I do why the banking interests took our paper to those amounts which made it possible for us to drive the first spike." ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... there's no doubt of it," replied Dent. "That skiff is built of stiff teak planks, with a nose as sharp and hard as an iron spike. If they once hit this light sampan they'll cut it ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... heroically but in vain; step by step they were driven back, the battery was recaptured, and the guns, which in the excitement of the advance the captors had omitted to spike, were retaken ...
— The Lion of the North • G.A. Henty
... victor, placing his foot on the body of the vanquished, and holding to his throat the point of the axe, which terminated in a spike or poniard. ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... hated me; he compared my lectures to fireworks, pounced upon every expression of mine that was not altogether clear, once even put me to confusion over some monument of the sixteenth century.... But the most important thing was, he suspected my intentions; my last soap-bubble struck on him as on a spike, and burst. The inspector, whom I had not got on with from the first, set the director against me. A scene followed. I was not ready to give in; I got hot; the matter came to the knowledge of the authorities; I was forced to resign. I did ...
— Rudin • Ivan Turgenev
... he had fastened a barbed spike, and had secured the arrow to the end of the string. Armed with this weapon, he advanced to the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... took the helmet by the spike and put it on the mantel. "Lord knows, I'm not presenting that as a token of valor to any one. It belonged to a poor chap who died on the field the night I was wounded. My orderly packed it ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... marrying Claudine he swore fiercely, and eight days after, he sent me to Porto on a schooner belonging to one of our neighbours, just to give me a change of air. I came back, at the end of six months, thinner than a marling spike, but more in love than ever. Recollections of Claudine scorched me like a fire. I could scarcely eat or drink; but I felt that she loved me a little in return, for I was a fine young fellow, and more than one ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... to licking the galvanised compound off the newly painted quarter-deck stanchions whenever an opportunity of doing so presented itself. He was a healthy goat of voracious appetite. His gastric juices would have dissolved a marline-spike, and he even made short work of the greater portion of a pair of ammunition boots belonging to the Sergeant-Major of Royal Marines, and devoured with every symptom of relish a sheaf of official and highly important documents ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... master, and then, cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[34] They stayed in their villages till the Greeks had passed by, when they pursued and perpetually harassed them. They had their dwellings in strong places, in which they had also laid up their provisions, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 2 • Various
... shot upwards here and there euphorbias, with boughs like the arms of a candle-stick. In the sky vultures soared, and lower there flew from acacia to acacia birds of the raven species with black and white plumage. The grass was yellow and, in spike, looked like ripe rye. But, nevertheless, that dry jungle obviously supplied food for a great number of animals, for several times each day the travelers met considerable herds of antelopes, hartbeests, and particularly zebras. The heat on the open and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... ten stars (say) to a field, we should find a certain small portion having 100 or more to a field, then, on HERSCHEL'S first hypothesis, rigorously interpreted, it would be necessary to suppose a spike-shaped protuberance directed from the earth, in order to explain the increased number of stars. If many such places could be found, then the probability is great that this explanation is wrong. We should more rationally suppose some ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... message from Teppahoo to acquaint me the heifer was brought to Matavai. I immediately went on shore and found that he had been as good as his word. The purchase money was paid, which consisted of a shirt, a hatchet, a spike nail, a knife, a pair of scissors, a gimlet, and file; to which was added a small quantity of loaf-sugar. Teppahoo appeared well pleased with his bargain; and I sent the heifer to Poeeno's residence near which ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... the Sambaquis of the opposite Brazilian shore. The house was guarded by three wooden figures, "clouterly carved," and powdered with ochre or red wood; two of them, representing warriors in studded coatings of spike nails, with a looking-glass fixed in the stomach, raised their hands as if to stab each other. These figures are sometimes found large as life: according to the agents, the spikes are driven in before the wars begin, and ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... the tall mast as it rocks by the shore; The sun is declining, I see it once more; To-day like the blade in a thick-waving field, To-morrow the spike on ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the cottage gardens have foxgloves in them, but I had not observed any wild, till one afternoon near some woods I found a tall and beautiful foxglove, richer in colour than the garden specimens, and with bells more thickly crowded, lifting its spike of purple above the low cropped hawthorn. In districts where the soil is favourable to the foxglove it would not have been noticed, but here, alone and unexpected, it was welcomed. The bees in spring come to the broad wayside sward by the great mound to the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... of the two last do not curve back, but point forward; and as both these carry their heads low down the long sharp spike is often borne horizontally. In the form and length of their neck, the set of their ears, and other respects, the black rhinoceroses differ materially from the white ones. In fact, their habits are quite unlike. The former feed chiefly on the leaves and ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... the heavy ordnance being all that caused me any anxiety. And even now they do not greatly trouble me; for if they keep no better watch there on other nights than they did on this, it would be easy for a couple of resolute men to enter the place, even as I did, bind and gag the sentinels, and spike all eight of the guns, and never a man of them any the wiser until they came to put fire ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... Summerhayes I suppose you will have a hard time wading through my scrawl but I know you will be generous and remember that I went to sea when a little over nine years of age and had my pen been half as often in my hand as a marlin spike, I would now be able to write a ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... prim, wheezing old gentleman, sitting opposite Dumps, 'I beg your pardon; but have you ever observed, when you have been in an omnibus on a wet day, that four people out of five always come in with large cotton umbrellas, without a handle at the top, or the brass spike at the bottom?' ...
— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens
... brought alongside the Ship for Sale, but those who brought it would not part with it for anything we could offer them but a Carpenter's broad axe, and this was what we could not part with; they carried it away. Thus we see those very People who but 2 years ago prefer'd a spike Nail to an Axe of any Sort, have so far learnt the use of them that they will not part with a Pig of 10 or 12 pounds weight for anything under a Hatchet, and even those of an inferior or small sort are of no great ...
— Captain Cook's Journal During the First Voyage Round the World • James Cook
... stopped her speaking at the close of a brief preface to her plea. She, however, soon rallied, though her voice was tremulous throughout, from the conviction that only an eminently successful presentation of her subject, could spike the enemy's batteries and win a verdict of "just and womanly." Mrs. Nichols hoped no further than that. She did not expect conservative Vermont to yield at once for what she asked, as she stood alone with her paper among the press; and there ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... one, intolerably dirty, but very entertaining from her powers of mimicry. She was fond of hearing me whistle airs, and procured me a Tibetan Jews'-harp,* [This instrument (which is common in Tibet) is identical with the European, except that the tongue is produced behind the bow, in a strong steel spike, by which the instrument is held firmer to the mouth.] with which, and coarse tobacco, which I smoked out of a Tibetan brass pipe, I wiled away the dark evenings, whilst my cheerful companion amused himself with an old harmonicon, to the enchantment ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... experience, that the best articles for traffic at these islands, are iron tools in general. Axes and hatchets, nails, from the largest spike down to tenpenny ones, rasps, files, and knives, are much sought after. Red cloth, and linen, both white and coloured, looking-glasses and beads are also in estimation; but of the latter those that are blue are preferred to all others, and white ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 15 (of 18) • Robert Kerr
... cold. He had known a period of mere scientific curiosity, in the course of which he examined all the tiles of his cell, with the gratifying conclusion that they were all the same shape and size; but was greatly puzzled about the angle in the wall at the end, and also about an iron peg or spike that stood out from the wall, the object of which he does not know to this day. Then he had a period of mere madness not to be written of by decent men, but only by those few dirty novelists hallooed on by the infernal huntsman ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... called to him, and Matt turned about and said, "Hello, Caryl!" and yielded him a sort of absent-minded hand, while he kept his face turned smilingly upon the men. Some were holding the rails in position, and another was driving in the spike that was to rivet the plate to the sleeper. He struck it with exquisite accuracy from a wide, free-handed ...
— The Quality of Mercy • W. D. Howells
... inquired Huish. "I'm agreeable. About time, eh? Bloomin' nearly lost another ship, I fancy." He took out a bottle and began calmly to burst the wire with the spike ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... leaves are more or less deeply divided, and the sporangia distinct (Fig. 71, B). In Ophioglossum the sterile division of the leaf is usually smooth and undivided, and the spore-bearing division forms a sort of spike, and the sporangia are much less distinct. The sporangia in both differ essentially from those of the true ferns in not being derived from a single epidermal cell, but are developed in part from the ground tissue ...
— Elements of Structural and Systematic Botany - For High Schools and Elementary College Courses • Douglas Houghton Campbell
... a hole like a rat in a trap when there's blows to the fore, is more than flesh could stand,' said Lanty, who had seized on a hand-spike and was waving it about his head, true shillelagh fashion, by hereditary instinct in one who had never behold a faction fight, in what ought to have been his ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from interruption. The door was barred and the small aperture which served as window was too highly placed in the wall to allow of eyes to peep; but it was superstition that really kept them safe and proved far more potent as a barrier against their neighbours' curiosity than any spike-crowned wall. ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... of the firemen of the ill-fated vessel. He lay on the rock for three hours in the greatest suffering, being beaten by the terrible waves as they washed over him, stripping him by the force of their blows. But all that time he held on to a strong spike-nail; and though his hands were bleeding, and almost raw, he would not let go, for he knew that if he did he would lose ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... every time he knocked one of the spikes in. Of course he went higher every time. They were just far enough apart for a man to get his foot on from one to another. As he went up he had one end of the coil of the rope round his wrist. When he got to the top he was to draw it up to fasten to the top spike, and lower himself down by it to the ground on the other side. At last I felt him pull hard on the rope. I held it, and put my foot on the first spike. I don't know that I should have found it so very easy in the dark to get ...
— Robbery Under Arms • Thomas Alexander Browne, AKA Rolf Boldrewood
... that spook," Patsy began, "I got the fearfulest thump on my crust that I've had since that marline-spike fell off the main yard on to me in the little affair of ...
— The Crime of the French Cafe and Other Stories • Nicholas Carter
... was mentally active and alert. Quickly he took hold of my phrase and said, with a show of the old fire that I had seen on so many occasions: "Tumulty, it is never the wrong time to spike disloyalty. When Lansing sought to oust me, I was upon my back. I am on my feet now and I will not have ...
— Woodrow Wilson as I Know Him • Joseph P. Tumulty
... zeal to discover and add to the collection grew upon all the party, the Captain included. Near the water, where the Valerian and the Touch-me-not grew, Marjorie Carruthers found the Snake-head, with its large white flowers on a spike. Another little Carruthers brought to the botanist the purple Monkey flower, but the Captain excelled his youthful nephew by adding to the collection the rarer and smaller yellow one. Then the lawyer himself discovered another yellow flower, the Gratiola or Hedge Hyssop, at the moment when ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... led into the swamp, and disappeared amid the trees. Upon a post near by was an old marlin spike with something white fluttering beneath. This ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... spike the port battery and throw the guns overboard, but it was not done, for the enemy's fire was becoming so rapid and severe that the Captain deemed it judicious to abandon the ship at once in order to save the lives ...
— Dewey and Other Naval Commanders • Edward S. Ellis
... the greater the yield to a flower, as if to guard against chances of loss. The stately foxglove springs from a dust grain, and fading holds aloft a seed spike of prolific invention; the lupin has stout, podded, countable seeds that must of necessity fall to the ground by force of weight. Also in fingering the seeds, you will know why some are slow in germinating: these are either hard and gritty, sandlike, like those of the English primrose, smooth ...
— The Garden, You, and I • Mabel Osgood Wright
... or unchaste; so that in neither sex does wine produce that moral and mental wreckage which abbreviates the length of human existence among those of other creeds. Radical fanaticism, that drives a tack with a maul and a twenty-penny spike with a tack-hammer, cannot be expected to study this or any other question in any rational manner; but to the sociologist, the question as to what produces this remarkable soberness, in the midst of the habitual and continued use of wine in the race from the time of its earliest history, is ...
— History of Circumcision from the Earliest Times to the Present - Moral and Physical Reasons for its Performance • Peter Charles Remondino
... although one party thinks differently. In a few minutes, however, another truffle is found, and this time the old man delivers a whack on the nose at the right moment, and, seizing the fungus, hands it to me. Now he takes from his pocket a spike of maize, and, picking off a few grains, gives them to the pig to soothe her injured feelings, and encourage her to hunt again. This she is quite ready to do, for a pig has no amour propre. We move about in the dry open wood, keeping always near ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... both names, and amply justifies either prefix. The hideous reptile is very thick and stumpy in proportion to its length, which rarely exceeds two feet, whilst its circumference may be put down at one-fifth of its total measurement. The tail is terminated by a small curved spike, which is commonly regarded as the sting; but though when touched it doubles up, and strikes with this horn, as well as bites, I do not think the tail does any material damage, but this opinion one would find it difficult to make a bushman credit. I once saw a man take a death-adder ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... A crowd of Turkish irregulars, with a few naval officers leading them, and a solid mass of Jack-tars in the centre, would break from a sally-port, or rush vehemently down through the gap in the wall, and scour the French trenches, overturn the gabions, spike the guns, and slay the guards. The French reserves hurried fiercely up, always scourged, however, by the flank fire of the ships, and drove back the sortie. But the process was renewed the same night or the next day with unlessened ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... baffled bull by hunters pressed, Turned sharp about, and faced the flooded west, And saw the star-like spears and moony spokes Gleam from the rocks and lighten through the oaks— A sea of splendour! How the chariots rolled On wheels of blinding brightness manifold! While stumbling over spike and spine and spur Of sultry lands, escaped the son of Ner With smitten men. At this the front of Saul Grew darker than a blasted tower wall; And seeing how there crouched upon his right, Aghast with fear, a black Amalekite, He called, and said: "I pray thee, man of pain, Red from the ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... only one kind of sea food, try several, mixed according to taste. Spike this succulent Sea Rabbit with horseradish or a dollop of sherry, ...
— The Complete Book of Cheese • Robert Carlton Brown
... and lay this plaster to the back; take opopanax, two ounces, storax liquid, half an ounce; mastich, frankincense, pitch, bole, each two drachms; then with wax make a plaster; or take laudanum, a drachm and a half; mastich, and frankincense, each half a drachm, wood aloes, cloves, spike, each a drachm; ash-coloured ambergris, four grains: musk, half a scruple; make two round plasters to be laid on each side of the navel; make a fume of snails' skins salted, or of garlic, and let it be taken in by the funnel. Use also astringent fomentations ...
— The Works of Aristotle the Famous Philosopher • Anonymous
... opposite direction during the next 6 h. The two lobes, therefore, seem to be constantly closing or opening, though to a very small distance; for we must remember that the little triangle of paper affixed to the marginal spike increased its length, and thus exaggerated somewhat the movement. Similar observations, with the important difference that the petiole was left free and the plant kept under a high temperature, were ...
— The Power of Movement in Plants • Charles Darwin
... and injudicious Richard [Sir J. Hooker's youngest son, who had managed to spike himself on a fence.] is none the worse. It is wonderful what boys go through (also what ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 3 • Leonard Huxley
... terms of imprisonment. Fortunately no one was killed, and the only casualty was a drummer slightly wounded. The next day both regiments returned their ammunition into the magazine. The Tower Hamlets were ordered to their headquarters, London, and disbanded. The 25th were sent to Spike Island, a convict settlement ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... brilliant English writer has well remarked, with a touch of sound philosophy, that when a nation has rushed upon its fate, the whole force of the national life will sometimes shoot up in one grand character, like the aloe which blooms at the end of a hundred years, shooting up in one single spike of glory, and then expires. And wherever philosophy, refinement, and culture, have gone upon the globe, it is possible to place the finger upon individual men who are the exemplars of a nation's character, those typical forms under which others less noble, less expanded, have manifested themselves. ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... commutator may be described as an insulated core on which are two short lengths of brass tubing. One of these has rubbing against it a spring connected with the terminal of the battery; the other has similar communication with the - terminal. Projecting from each tube is a spike, and rising from the baseboard are four upright brass strips not quite touching the commutator. Those on one side lead to the line circuit, those on the other to the earth-plate. When the handle is turned one way, the spikes ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams
... squeeze. I am highly delighted with Mr. Allan's etchings. "Woo'd an' married an' a'," is admirable! The grouping is beyond all praise. The expression of the figures, conformable to the story in the ballad, is absolutely faultless perfection. I next admire "Turnim-spike." What I like least is "Jenny said to Jockey." Besides the female being in her appearance * * * *, if you take her stooping into the account, she is at least two inches taller than her lover. Poor Cleghorn! I sincerely sympathize with him. Happy I am to think that he yet ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... was telling one group about some of the funny things fond mothers had sent to camp with their boys, while just behind another group were listening to an exciting tale of how the only night-shirt in camp, together with the Leader's razor-strop, were hung on the topmost branch of a great spike-topped pine that stood just in the middle of ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... they parted quite amiably at Shinglehurst, where Harold got out. He was then carrying his full sketching kit, including a large holland umbrella, the lower joint of which is an ash staff fitted with a powerful steel spike for driving ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... third upon our left, equidistant from the other two, so as to form a triangle. Their signals showed us their position through the darkness. We saw that it was impossible to retreat unperceived and that our only plan was to spike the guns, abandon the wounded and artillery, put our rifles in as good order as might be, and cut our way through that body of Mexicans which held the road to Victoria. Once in the wood, we were safe, and all Santa Anna's regiments would have been insufficient to dislodge ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 363, January, 1846 • Various
... excellent reason that it was jammed by a tiny wedge. Hence, it could be opened noiselessly if need be; and lest a hinge might squeak each hinge was forthwith drenched with vaseline. Further, a tiny circlet of India rubber, equipped with a small spike, was ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... points that, although not absolutely essential, tend much to the comfort of the traveller. A couple of large carriage umbrellas with double lining, with small rings fixed to the extremities of the ribs, and a spike similar to that of a fishing-rod to screw into the handle, will form an instantaneous shelter from sun or rain during a halt on the march, as a few strings from the rings will secure it from the wind, if pegged to the ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... the banderilleros took possession. These were the men with the wooden stakes of the length of a man's arm and the thickness of a thumb, and wrapped around in gay colored paper ribbon streamers, and at one end a thin iron spike about as long as a man's little finger. The banderilleros had to stand in front of the bull, with a stake in each hand, and, as he charged, to step in between his horns and reach over and plant a stake ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... (erica); The yellow, gorse—call'd sometimes "whin." Cruel boys on its pickles might spike a Green beetle as if on a pin, You may roll in it, if you would like a Few ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... they can help their imagination by a statue of him, and find out the colouring from Suetonius and Tacitus. Truth is, you might have spared one side of your Medal: the head would be seen to more advantage if it were placed on a spike of the Tower, a little nearer to the sun, which would then break ...
— The Poetical Works of John Dryden, Vol I - With Life, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes • John Dryden
... can and took a shoe lace for a bow string. I had hard work getting the first tiny blaze, but after that I've kept a bed of coals covered with sand as a reserve. I found a piece of wreckage and used part of it for a shelter. One part had a long spike in it and that I sharpened by scraping it on some of the shells. Then I got a piece of fat pine that had washed ashore and made me a torch. With this sharp spike and the torch I went fishing at night and got ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... hair. His fleecy mantle was over him in the house. Every quarrel therein about seat or bed comes to his decision. Should a needle drop in the house, its fall would be heard when he speaks. Above him is a huge black tree, like a millshaft, with its paddles and its cap and its spike. Liken thou him, ...
— The Harvard Classics, Volume 49, Epic and Saga - With Introductions And Notes • Various
... suggestive of wrestling practice—perhaps because these would-be boomers have muddled things, and are thinking of the wrestling lion. Personally, I am not anxious either to box or to wrestle with a kangaroo; for the beast has a plaguey unpleasant hind foot, armed with a claw like a marline-spike, and a most respectable ability to kick a hole in a stranger with it. It is a kind of weapon that ordinary boxing and wrestling systems don't allow for, and not at all an amusing sort of thing to have lashing about among one's ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... old man and a very wild-looking young one, covered with red ochre, total gules, came to their tree, and I went to them. I gave the old man a spike-nail sharpened, but he asked for a tomahawk, and I then ...
— Three Expeditions into the Interior of Eastern Australia, Vol 1 (of 2) • Thomas Mitchell
... had left the starboard side, I saw a bandsman—the 'cellist—come round the vestibule corner from the staircase entrance and run down the now deserted starboard deck, his 'cello trailing behind him, the spike dragging along the floor. This must have been about 12.40 A.M. I suppose the band must have begun to play soon after this and gone on until after 2 A.M. Many brave things were done that night, but none more brave than by those few men playing minute after minute ...
— The Loss of the SS. Titanic • Lawrence Beesley
... haouse an' as dry as a herrin'," said Dan enthusiastically, as he was slung across the deck in a batter of spray. "Fends 'em off an' fends 'em off, an' 'Don't ye come anigh me,' she sez. Look at her—jest look at her! Sakes! You should see one o' them toothpicks histin' up her anchor on her spike ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... plants in full blossom. Her self-respect was whole again; her spirits rose at a bound. 'I don't know why you admire them so much. They have no scent, and they are only pretty in the lump,' and she broke off a spike of blossom, studied it a little ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Herr Jensen referred to were in a pasture, tethered to an iron spike driven in the ground, with a rope giving them a range of a ...
— A Danish Parsonage • John Fulford Vicary
... changes brought no difference into the home, save that George Mansion's arm grew stronger daily in combat against the old foe. Then came the second attack of the enemy, when six white men beset him from behind, again knocking him insensible, with a heavy blue beech hand-spike. They broke his hand and three ribs, knocked out his teeth, injured his side and head; then seizing his pistol, shot at him, the ball fortunately not reaching a vital spot. As his senses swam he felt them drag his poor maimed body into the middle ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... cautiously always, she stopped for long seconds at a time to reconnoitre, shifting her huge ears about and changing their shape, twitching her nostrils, and glancing hither and thither with bright little eyes. Sometimes they passed immense spike-tipped flowers ten feet in diameter, with fleshy yellow leaves which gave out a nauseating stench. Vines with long, recurved thorns and blossoms of deep scarlet, laced the undergrowth together and made passing dangerous. Fire-flies ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... their hands, some men climb into trees and wait for the herd to pass, whilst others drive them under. The hippopotami, however, are not hunted, but snared with lunda, the common tripping-trap with spike-drop, which is placed in the runs of this animal, described by every South African traveller, and generally known as far as the Hametic language is spread. The Karuma Falls, if such they may be called, are a mere ...
— The Discovery of the Source of the Nile • John Hanning Speke
... Amid the sprouting grasses by the river-bank, the snowdrops opened to the breath of spring; soon afterwards, the early violets and primroses decked the hedgerows on the margin of the wood, and the wild hyacinths thrust their spike-shaped leaves above the mould. The hedgehogs, curled in their beds amid the wind-blown oak-leaves, were awakened by the gentle heat, and wandered through the ditches in search of slugs and snails. One evening, as the moon shone over the hill, the woodcock, that for months had dwelt ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... upon a paragraph and handed me the paper.... And I read where one "Spike" Frazer had been shot to death in a hand-to-hand fight with the police who were raiding a dive suspected of being the rendezvous of drug-fiends. Long wanted and at last cornered, Frazer had fought tigerishly and died ...
— Slippy McGee, Sometimes Known as the Butterfly Man • Marie Conway Oemler
... took from the tree a tiny flower-bud and proceeded to dissect it. After the external covering, which consisted of seventeen scales, he came upon the down which protects the flower. On removing this he could perceive four branchlets surrounding the spike of flowers, and the flowers themselves, though so minute, were as distinct as possible, and he could not only count their number, but discern the stamens, and ...
— Among the Trees at Elmridge • Ella Rodman Church
... The place seemed deserted. He would have gone up to the door and rapped, but suddenly a big black dog appeared at the side and regarded him. It was a huge heavy-jawed dog of some unfamiliar breed, and it, wore a spike-studded collar. It did not bark nor approach him, it just bristled quietly and emitted a single sound like a ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... moving thing. It rode out of the dark and brushed him. It touched him with soft fingers and he drew them to him. A water hyacinth, and its purple spike topped his head as he stood waist-deep. So cool its leaves, and the dripping bulbs that he pressed them to his bloody cheek. He sank his teeth into them for that coolness on his parched tongue. The spongy bulb was sweet; it exhaled odorous moisture. He seized it ravenously. ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the fact that his interest is included in that of a large number. I have watched several political molecules being educated in this way by the nature of things into a faint feeling of fraternity. But at this moment I am thinking of Spike, an elector who voted on the side of Progress though he was not inwardly attached to it under that name. For abstractions are deities having many specific names, local habitations, and forms of ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... the centre-spike of gold Which burns deep in the blue-bell's womb What time, with ardors manifold, The bee goes singing to ...
— Introduction to Robert Browning • Hiram Corson
... a spike which perfectly fits a hole still to be seen in the cornice supporting the terrace. Larsan, who thought and prepared for everything in case of any emergency, had fixed this spike into the cornice. All he had to do to make his ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... your classes to woman; it needs be that she should learn." The moment you give her the ballot, you take bonds of wealth and fashion and conservatism, that they will educate this power, which is holding their interest in its right hand. I want to spike the gun of selfishness; or rather, I want to double-shot the cannon of selfishness. Let Wall Street say, "Look you! whether the New York Central stock shall have a toll placed upon it, whether my million shares shall be worth sixty cents in the market or ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... the prince. "I know there are guards in every gallery, bolts to every door, cannon and soldiery at every barrier. How will you overcome the sentries—spike the guns? How will you break through the bolts ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... decorated it with artificial flowers of the same material, so that it was not distinguishable from porcelain; another had forged an axe-blade of steel, etched the surface and fixed it upon a polished ebony rod with a terminal spike, forming a miniature ice-axe, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... long stretches of Lake Maggiore, looking eastward to Bellinzona, and southward to Luino, there is a shelf of grass meadows which is very beautiful in springtime with a great multitude of wild flowers. More particularly is this so in early June, when the slender asphodel Saint Bruno's lily, with its spike of white blossom, is in flower. To the westward of this delightful shelf there is a deep and densely wooded trench, a great gulf of blue some mile or so in width out of which arise great precipices very high and wild. ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... in front, armed with a brick; there was one at each side, and one behind, and they closed up around me. I was struck on all sides; and, while I was attending to those in front, I received a blow on my head, from behind, dealt with a heavy hand-spike. I was completely stunned by the blow, and fell, heavily, on the ground, among the timbers. Taking advantage of my fall, they rushed upon me, and began to pound me with their fists. I let them lay on, for a while, after I came to myself, with a view of gaining strength. ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass
... when we mean spike-tailed coats), has an eye on the scourge of Rum, and will eventually stamp it out. "But why," asks the Impracticable, "does not Society stamp it out at once?" "Why does not the sun shine twenty-four hours ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... State legislatures, but the "scamps" are vastly better at promising than fulfilling. The politicians, of course, expect all this flutter and buncombe about doing something for women in New York—in California—in Iowa—is going to spike our guns and make us help the Republican party to carry all before it; but we must not be thus fooled ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... position she thus took made her so high that the Cat seemed tiny in the distance below. Old Grumpy had faced a Grizzly once, and was she now to be held up by a miserable little spike-tailed skunk no bigger than a mouthful? She was ashamed of herself, especially when a wail from Johnny smote on her ear and reminded her of her plain duty, as well as supplied his ...
— Johnny Bear - And Other Stories From Lives of the Hunted • E. T. Seton
... impression of a stranger when observing the conduct of a mahout or driver is sympathy for the animal, which is governed through the severe authority of the iron spike. This instrument is about twenty inches long, and resembles somewhat an old-fashioned boat-hook, being a sharp spike at the extremity beyond the keen-pointed hook; it can thus be used either to drive the elephant forward by digging the point into its ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... The truckman, his case-spike hanging from his neck, listened with generous interest to Tom's simple, unboastful account of all ...
— Tom Slade on a Transport • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... aloft another trophy of the search—a metal spike and some tarnished and corroded metal ornaments. They had lain close ...
— The Lost Continent • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... going aloft to fit a strap round the main-topmast head for ringtail halyards, and had the strap and block, a coil of halyards, and a marlin spike about his neck. He fell, and not knowing how to swim, and being heavily dressed, with all those things around his neck, he probably sank immediately. We pulled astern in the direction in which he fell, and though we knew ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... take up any time to direct you to do it. And yet, because I cut you short in that, I will commute for it by telling you that that was told me for a secret. It is this: Dissolve gum of ivy in oil of spike, and therewith anoint your dead bait for a pike, and then cast it into a likely place, and when it has lain a short time at the bottom, draw it towards the top of the water and so up the stream, and it is more than likely that you have a pike follow ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... and strong that the song of soldiers marching is nothing to it. "'T is only the joke I am playing. Am I the wife to bother you with learning when you know already so much," she says, "and have the care of the section on your mind, with ties to lay straight and rails to spike fast so that the great railroad may run?" And when he speaks once more of the study she should make of knowledge Molly closes the big book and sets it on the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... strode into the waiting room on spike heels. Her shoes, stockings, trench coat, bag and overseas cap were all purple, the purple the painter called "the color of grapes ...
— 2 B R 0 2 B • Kurt Vonnegut
... replied, no doubt with a malicious twinkle in his eyes: "It is very possible; he is so lazy." Paisiello was still alive, and so was at least the memory of his opera, so Rossini, as a precautionary measure, thought it wise to spike, if possible, the guns of an apprehended opposition. So he addressed a letter to the venerable composer, asking leave to make use of the subject. He got permission and then wrote a preface to his libretto ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... without further adventure, and found the four company- guns with their spike teams and single drivers waiting for us. Many people were gathered here, and we were halted, so far as I could see, that they might talk with the men in the ranks. The ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling |
