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More "Pommel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had followed Frank from the house, and Jan had been thoughtful enough to bring with him the Manila rope that had hung at the pommel of Frank's saddle. ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... into the spurs with which she punished the side of the bay, and the tall horse responded with a high-tossed head and a burst of whirlwind speed. The result was finally a stumble over a loose rock that almost flung Mary over the pommel of the saddle and forced ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... chaparral brought them to open woods, where three horses were tied to low-hanging branches. One was waiting for John Big Dog, who would never ride by night or day again. This animal the robbers divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the other two with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with discretion through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg. They shot him through the head at once and sat down to hold a council of flight. Made secure ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... the pommel of his sword, keeping up a loud continuous knocking. A minute or two passed, and then a face appeared at the ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... with three days' rations, intended to last five days, and with two days' grain for the horses. The rations and forty rounds of ammunition per man were to be carried on the persons of the troopers, the grain on the pommel of the saddle, and the reserve ammunition in wagons. One medical wagon and eight ambulances were also furnished, and one wagon was authorized for each division and brigade headquarters; enough canvas-covered boats for a small pontoon-bridge ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 3 • P. H. Sheridan
... seven had provided them of such weapons as they could get in that house, and John Fox took him to an old rusty sword-blade without either hilt or pommel, which he made to serve his turn in bending the hand end of the sword instead of a pommel, and the other had got such spits and glaves as they ...
— Voyager's Tales • Richard Hakluyt
... from the lady's necklace was suspended a heart-shaped portrait—that of the man who broke his heart by her persistent refusal to encourage his suit. De Stancy then led them a little further, where hung a portrait of the lover, one of his own family, who appeared in full panoply of plate mail, the pommel of his sword standing up under his elbow. The gallant captain then related how this personage of his line wooed the lady fruitlessly; how, after her marriage with another, she and her husband visited the parents of the disappointed lover, the then occupiers of the ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... forgotten her existence. She watched him pointing up at the openings in the mountains and down at the ore-road, or stooping to pick up a piece of ore from the ground in cowboy fashion, without leaving his saddle, and pounding it on the pommel before he passed it to the others. And, again, he would stand for minutes at a time up to his boot-tops in the sliding waste, with his bridle rein over his arm and his thumbs in his belt, listening to what his lieutenants were saying, and ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... Greene as part of Chaucer’s dress. {107} In connection with Woodhall were the following:—A sword, probably Saxon, brought up from the Witham bed near “Kirkstead Wath,” entangled in the prongs of an eel-stang. The pommel and guard are tinned, as we now tin the inside of kitchen utensils; an art which we should not have known that our forefathers at that period possessed but for such discoveries as this. The polish still remained on parts of the blade “admirably brilliant.” ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... in the Boston "Ministers' Meeting," on the question, "How to conduct a prayer meeting," might be very appropriately applied to missionary concerts and addresses. This was the suggestion: "Keep the temperature warm, the atmosphere clear, and don't pommel the Christians!" Applied to missionary concerts and addresses, this sound advice would read: Keep the missionary temperature warm by telling incidents of missionary experience; keep the missionary atmosphere clear by presenting the grand hopefulness of ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... discovered the philosopher's stone, and the secret of Hermes Trismegistus; that he must make gold, because, though he squandered all his money, he had always money in hand; and that he kept a "devil's-bird," a familiar spirit, in the pommel of that famous long sword of his, which he was only too ready to lug out on provocation—the said spirit, Agoth by name, being probably only the laudanum bottle with which he worked so many wondrous cures, and of which, to judge from ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... dismounted and handed his bridle to the Indian; then Shiela cast her own bridle loose across the pommel, and touching her horse with both heels, rode forward, hands in her jacket pockets. And Hamil walked beside her, one arm on ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... rose the wolf in wisdom: "I am sure that Bruin's right, And this Mister Man with Big Teeth slaughters every thing in sight! Why, they say he wears a slicker and sleeps close beside his nag On the pommel of his saddle in a mammoth sleeping-bag! We must watch him mighty careful or a common fate we share;— Mister Teddy's on a huntin' trip and loaded ...
— Oklahoma Sunshine • Freeman E. (Freeman Edwin) Miller
... was fated to have an ignominious end; for the horse, impatient of restraint, increased its pace to a gallop, which swiftly left the groom behind and sent its rider's composure to the winds. Her foot slipped from the stirrup, she dropped her whip, clung wildly to the pommel, and, regardless of dignity, screamed for help at the pitch of her voice. It seemed an eternity of time, but in reality it was only a couple of minutes, before Victor overtook her, and leaning forward, seized the reins and brought both ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... turning herself upon the pommel of the saddle, she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him on the lips, whispering, "At least we have met again, and if we die ...
— Swallow • H. Rider Haggard
... were still applauding when Greatauk, his hand on the pommel of his sword, made this ...
— Penguin Island • Anatole France
... boy, who belonged to Captain Wilson of the Ayacucho, and was well acquainted in the place; and he, knowing where to go, soon procured us two horses, ready saddled and bridled, each with a lasso coiled over the pommel. These we were to have all day, with the privilege of riding them down to the beach at night, for a dollar, which we had to pay in advance. Horses are the cheapest thing in California; the very best not being worth more than ten dollars apiece, and very good ones being often sold ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... all sides, and ran cunningly along with the steel rings, in such a way as it is hard even to imagine: moreover, on the crest of each helm was wrought the phoenix, the never-dying bird, the only creature that knows the sun; and by each suit lay a gleaming sword terrible to look at, steel from pommel to point, but wrought along the blade in burnished gold that outflashed the gleam of the steel, was written in fantastic letters the ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... not hold the horses," she commanded, in her fresh voice. "Throw my bridle over your saddle pommel and yours over mine.—There!" she said, watching the horses as they shuffled about interlinked. "That is like half the marriages in this world. They don't separate and they don't go astray, ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... down," returned the Mormon. The deep voice, unwelcoming, vibrant with an odd ring, would have struck a less suspicious man than Dene. The outlaw wrung his leg back over the pommel, sagged in the saddle, and appeared to be pondering the question. Plainly he was uncertain of his ground. But his ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... the astute Tostig. "Seven feet of English ground," answered the king, roguishly, "or possibly more, as Hardrada is rather taller than the average," or words to that effect. "Then let the fight go on," answered Tostig, taking a couple of hard-boiled eggs from his pocket and cracking them on the pommel of his saddle, for he had not eaten anything but ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... the western hill was shaped somewhat like a saddle, and standing high above the eucalypti on the point corresponding with the pommel were three tall pines. These lonely trees, seen for many miles around, had caught the yellow rays of many a setting sun long before the white man wandered over ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... fair countrywomen first began to ride with the knee over the pommel, we are not enabled to state: it is, however, clear, according to the original of the above sketch, which occurs in one of the historical illustrations of equestrianism, given by Audry, that the courtly dames of England did so, about the middle of the seventeenth century. Our author ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... slain him!" Then all signed with significant eyes to Nur al-Din as much as to say, "Take thy wreak of him; not one of us will come between thee and him." Thereupon Nur al-Din, who was stout of heart as he was stalwart of limb, went up to the Wazir and, dragging him over the pommel of his saddle, threw him to the ground. Now there was in that place a puddling- pit for brick- clay,[FN34] into the midst of which he fell, and Nur al-Din kept pummelling and fisti-cuffing him, ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... horn, which hung by a green silk scarf to the pommel of his saddle. The blast aroused the boar, who made at him furiously. His spear shivered against its bristly hide into a hundred fragments, when, leaping from his steed, which he directed Pedrillo to hold, he drew his falchion of Toledo steel, and valiantly on foot assailed ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... combined with natural energy of character. He was attired wholly in black, with a short cloak in the fashion of the day, and carried under his left arm a roll of documents, which, when speaking, he would take in the right hand and grasp convulsively, as a warrior in his anger grasps the pommel of his sword. At one moment it seemed as if he were about to unfurl the scroll, and from it hurl lightning upon those whom he pursued with looks of fiery indignation—three Capuchins and a Franciscan, who ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... cold or wet. Their lances were 11 feet long, and they were dressed in blue jacket and trousers confined round the waist with a leather belt, in which was a rest for the lance. I envied their saddles, which have a sort of pommel behind and before, between which is placed a cushion, on which they must sit most comfortably. We must see them on horseback to have seen them, but we shall probably have an opportunity of ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... valley below. They rested closely on the willows by the ford, the cottonwood grove to the left, and the big rocks beyond the creek. From its case beneath his leg he took the sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot. It rested on the pommel of the saddle while his long and careful scrutiny swept the panorama. The spot was an ideal ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... was taking on a coppery flush from the sun that did not quite break through. I put on my cap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to the pond I could see that he was bringing in a little cedar tree across his pommel. He used to help my father cut Christmas trees for me in Virginia, and he had not forgotten ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... hundred pounds each. The donkeys were also overloaded, but there was no help for it. Mrs. Baker was well mounted on my good old Abyssinian hunter "Tetel," ("Hartebeest") and was carrying several leather bags slung to the pommel, while I was equally loaded on my horse "Filfil;" ("Pepper") in fact, we were all carrying as ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... relief with guns, horns and other implements of the chase. Shell guard. Boar-head pommel. Quillions shaped like deer feet. ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle;" "No whit anticipating the oblivion which awaited their names and feats, the champions advanced through the lists;" "Charity covereth a multitude of sins, in another sense than that in which it is said to ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... bedstead as that which we had found outside the house, dressed in his full mail, and helmed, and with his sword at his side, such a priceless weapon, with gold-mounted scabbard and jewelled hilt, as men have risked the terrors of grave mounds to win. His white hand rested on the pommel, and he was facing forward as if looking toward the far shore which he was to reach through the flames. But there was naught terrible in his look, and even my fears passed as I saw the ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... mounting, was performed the ceremony of taking from its resting place the famous sword given to the Kh[a]n's grandfather by Nadir Shah himself. The blade was of Damascus steel, and valued alone at one hundred tomauns;[*] the ivory handle was ornamented with precious stones, and the pommel was one large emerald of great beauty and value. The scabbard was of shagreen finely embroidered in gold. This precious weapon the Suyud had the enviable office of presenting to his chief unsheathed, whilst the aged Moollah who stood by read aloud the inlaid ...
— A Peep into Toorkisthhan • Rollo Burslem
... all on horseback,—John riding beside Puss Leek, protecting her; Luke riding beside Elsie, and protecting her; Jacob Isaac riding beside his shadow, and protecting the lunch-basket, carried on the pommel ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... said Sergeant Whitley, resting his rifle across the pommel of his saddle. "They've got to follow straight behind. The ground is too rough for them to ride around an' ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his daughter from the saddle; and while I recounted the particulars of her adventure, unclasped her habit and chafed her forehead; but all was of no avail. He looked distractedly, first at his daughter and then at me; and after a pause of contending emotions, rose, laid her across the pommel, placed his foot in the stirrup, and turning to me said, "I am embarrassed by many circumstances—take my blessings for this ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... of his father, Sancho, at the age of a year and a half. Though proclaimed king, he was regarded as a mere name by the unruly nobles to whom a minority was convenient. The devotion of a squire of his household, who carried him on the pommel of his saddle to the stronghold of San Esteban de Gormaz, saved him from falling into the hands of the contending factions of Castro and Lara, or of his uncle Ferdinand of Leon, who claimed the regency. ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... recoil of his horse from the burning embers, on which he had stepped, and which had been concealed from view by the ashes which covered them. William, unwieldy and comparatively helpless as he was, was thrown with great force upon the pommel of the saddle. He saved himself from falling from the horse, but he immediately found that he had sustained some serious internal injury. He was obliged to dismount, and to be conveyed away, by a very sudden transition, from the dreadful scene of conflagration ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... that cavalry saddle of my father's, with the high cantle and pommel, and the rolls for the knees. It's like an armchair, and if one can't stick on on that, one ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... he held up the child to him. Faber took her, and sitting as far back in the saddle as he could, set her upon the pommel. She screwed up her eyes, and grinned with delight, spreading her mouth wide, and showing an incredible number of daintiest little teeth. When Ruber began to move ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... reins and held with one hand to the saddle pommel, and with the other to Dollie's mane. This saved her. Her skirt tore loose from the gate. ...
— A Little Florida Lady • Dorothy C. Paine
... should be fixed to the saddle, not simply into the leather-work, but firmly riveted or secured into the tree itself. This must be especially insisted on, or frequent disasters will occur. The three rings are to be fixed to the pommel—one on the top, and one on each side of it; the nine "D's" are placed as follows:—three along the back of the saddle, two more on each side of the seat, and two in ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... buckskin horse, which smelled of Pa and snorted, and didn't seem to want Pa to get on, but they held the horse by the bridle, and Pa finally got himself on both sides of the horse, and took the lariat rope off the pommel of the saddle and began to handle it, kind of awkward, like a boy with a clothesline. I didn't like the way the cowboys winked around among themselves and guyed pa, and I told Pa about it, and tried to get him to give it up, but he said, "When I get my steer tied, and stand with my foot on his neck, ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... his rifle, and strapped the old Confederate haversack to his saddle pommel, staring again, half unbelieving, at the faded inscription underneath the flap. Yet the sight of those letters awoke him, bringing to his bronzed face a new look of determination. He swung into the saddle, and, rifle across his knees, his eyes studying the desolate distance, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... cause alarm. There the emigrant road showed plainly before us. The wagons were in open single file, the loose stock drawn out in line at the rear. Men on horseback, hats over their eyes, some of them with one leg curled over the pommel of the saddle; lazily droning away the slow hours and the humdrum miles. The women and children were stowed away on bundles of baggage and camp stuff in the wagons, some of them asleep perhaps, rocked in their "schooner" ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... selected, and put a ball through its heart at the first shot. Not so Marston. Misfortune awaited him. Having come close up with the animal he meant to shoot, he cocked his rifle and held it in readiness across the pommel of his saddle, at the same time urging his horse nearer, in order to make a sure shot. When the horse had run up so close that its head was in line with the buffalo's flank, he pointed his rifle at its ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... but kindled at sight of a foe. A broad-brimmed, battered slouch hat was pulled well down over his brows; his flannel shirt and canvas trousers showed hard usage; his pistol belt hung loose and low upon his hips and on each side a revolver swung. His rifle—Arizona fashion—was balanced athwart the pommel of his saddle, and an old Navajo blanket was rolled at the cantle. He wore Tonto leggins and moccasins, and a good-sized pair of Mexican spurs jingled at his heels. He looked—and so did his horse—as though a long, hard ride was behind ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... exceedingly well-looking, slim and tall, and with a fine air of good breeding. He looked straight into my eyes without moving. His hands remained closed upon the pommel of his saddle. ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... ahead. He turned in his saddle. The Arab was gaining on him, and gradually leaving behind the heavy horse and weighty rider who were giving chase. The woman, with a set white face, was jerking at the bridle with her left hand in an odd, mechanical, feeble way, while with her right, she held to the pommel of her saddle. But she was swaying forward in an unmistakable manner. She was only half conscious, and in a ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... remember?" said Peter. "We each put in exactly ten guilders. The purse had sixty guilders in it. I am the stupidest fellow in the world; little Schimmelpenninck would have made you a better captain. I could pommel myself for bringing such ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... the victory was with the Prussians. Seventy-two pieces of cannon fell into the hands of the victors, and at every point the Russians were retreating. Frederic, in his exultation, scribbled a note to the empress, upon the field of battle, with the pommel of his saddle for a tablet, and dispatched it to her by a courier. It ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... her mare being fidgety, and refusing to stand still, she managed to dismount; but in doing so her wrist caught against the pommel of her saddle, and was so severely wrenched backwards, as she sprang to the ground, that she turned ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... I tink perhaps hims could if he wos try," said Henri, plunging on to his horse with a laugh, and arranging the carcass of the antelope across the pommel of ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... his habits. He had rendered some signal service to the Mexican Government while British Minister there, by settling a dispute between them and the French authorities. The Mexican Government had out of gratitude presented him with a splendid Mexican saddle, with pommel, stirrups and bit of solid silver, and with the leather of the saddle most elaborately embroidered in silver. Sir Charles kept this trophy on a saddle-tree in his study at Lisbon, and it was his custom ...
— The Days Before Yesterday • Lord Frederick Hamilton
... in Sweden, a dean was riding through the dense forest on a New Year's Eve. He was on horseback, dressed in a fur coat and cap. On the pommel of his saddle hung a satchel in which he carried his book of prayers. He had been with a sick person who lived in a far away forest settlement until late in the evening. Now he was on his way home but he feared that he should not get back to ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... promptings of the impulse that snatched, unerring, at opportunity—the men, Delaney and Christian from one side, the sheriff and the deputy from the other, rushed in. They did not fire. It was Dyke alive they wanted. One of them had a riata snatched from a saddle-pommel, and with this they ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... they did not doubt that a vein had been broken in the stomach. It was reported that this accident had happened by an effort M. de Berry made when out hunting on the previous Thursday, the day the Elector of Bavaria arrived. His horse slipped; in drawing the animal up, his body struck against the pommel of the saddle, so it was said, and ever since he had spit blood every day. The vomiting ceased at nine o'clock in the morning, but the patient was no better. The King, who was going stag- hunting, put it off. At six o'clock at night M. ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... was, at first, that few noticed the troop of horsemen which swung in at one end of the town, to ride slowly and silently down the main street. Each of the hundred men in the troop carried a rifle balanced across his saddle pommel; each was dressed in the garb of the range-rider; and the face of each, glimpsed by the light from some window or doorway, was grimly stern. The sight was one calculated to make Fear clutch like an ice-cold hand at the hearts of those with guilty consciences; a spectacle which ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... o'clock when one of the bateau men appeared at the door and asked if he was ready. Quickly David joined him. He forgot his taunts to Concombre Bateese, forgot the softly padded gloves in his pack with which he had promised to pommel the half-breed into oblivion. He was ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... making jeering remarks and faces at the other, and at intervals his busy companion put down his shears and went for him with tremendous spirit. Then a chase among and over the graves would begin; finally, they would close, struggle, tumble over a mound and pommel one another with all their might. The struggle over, they would get up, shake off the dust and straws, and go back to their work. After a few minutes the youngest boy recovered from his punishment, and, getting tired of the monotony, would begin teasing again, and a ...
— A Traveller in Little Things • W. H. Hudson
... the open pine forest on a wood-road behind the cabin. He threw one leg over the pommel and sat still with the ease of a horseman in any of the postures the saddle affords. "Read me both of those letters again, ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... chastise, overcome, spank, thrash, batter, conquer, pommel, strike, vanquish, belabor, cudgel, pound, surpass, whip, bruise, defeat, scourge, ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... before. He could not have been more than sixteen years of age, and was as fair as any maiden. His long yellow hair flowed behind him as he rode along, all clad in silk and velvet, with jewels flashing and dagger jingling against the pommel of the saddle. Thus came the Queen's Page, young Richard Partington, from famous London Town down into Nottinghamshire, upon Her Majesty's bidding, to seek Robin ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... met by precisely the same appearances, and the search was made, and ended by sounding with the sword pommel. ...
— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn
... further, but that he would return home and leave Pierre and his band to take care of his three enemies; but his keeper did not give him time to finish the sentence. Seeing that Arthur had no intention of following the rest of the party, the robber took his lasso from the pommel of his saddle, and with it struck his prisoner's horse a blow that caused the fiery animal to give one tremendous spring, which brought him to the very brink of the precipice. In his efforts to stop himself, ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... swift and trenchantly Morvan thrust his blade far into the arm-pit and the heart and the giant tumbled to the earth like a falling tree. Morvan placed his foot on the dead man's breast, withdrew his sword, and cut off the Moor's head. Then, attaching the bleeding trophy to the pommel of his saddle, he rode home with it and affixed it to the gate of his castle. All men praised him for his doughty deed, but he gave the grace of his victory entirely to St Anne, and declared that he would build a house of prayer in her ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... cur! Ah, mongrel! Ah, white-galled Norman eft! God's feet, if I pommel you for this!' Pommel him he did; and, having drawn blood at his ears, he turned him over his knee as if he had been a schoolboy, and lathered his rump with a chair-leg. This humiliating punishment had humiliating effects. Gilles believed himself a ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... TO POMMEL. To beat: originally confined to beating with the hilt of a sword, the knob being, from its similarity to a small apple, called pomelle; in Spanish it is still called the apple of the sword. As the clenched fist likewise somewhat resembles an apple, perhaps ...
— 1811 Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue • Captain Grose et al.
... to the handcuffs the end of the lariat which was attached to the saddle. The other end he fastened to the pommel. ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... head I was not stunned, only so dazed that my recapture was an easy matter. This time no risks were taken, and with my hands tied behind me by means of a long scarf, the other end of which was looped round the high pommel of a trooper's saddle, I was perforce compelled to accompany my captors as best I could, bleeding ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... Count Bernard dexterously raised himself in his stirrups, and, reaching upward, caught Felix in his arms and swung him down plump on the saddle-bow in front of him; then, showing him how to steady himself by holding the pommel, he turned to Brian, his squire, who while all this was going on had stood by in silent astonishment, and giving the order to move, the little cavalcade hastened on at a rapid pace in order to get clear of the forest as quickly ...
— Christmas in Legend and Story - A Book for Boys and Girls • Elva S. Smith
... swordsman may be wounded by the unexpectedness of the onslaught of some ignorant youngster who hardly knows a sword's pommel from its point, so this murderously inclined vixen was bowled over by the astounding attack of Master Black-and-Gray. The slope was very steep and the pup's spring a bolt from the blue. The vixen slipped, lost her footing, and went slithering down the ...
— Jan - A Dog and a Romance • A. J. Dawson
... a warrior of long ago. The strangely living lips, the dusky hollows where thoughtful eyes gleamed darkling. The glint of armor half covered by velvet and fur. A gloved hand that seemed to caress a sword hilt, that caught one crashing ruby light upon its pommel—the matchless Heim Vandyke—the silent, attentive watcher who had seen his sacking of the dead; who seemed, with those deep eyes of understanding, to realize and know it all—the futile clash of human wills, the little day of ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... Mr. Dunborough, it would be hard to imagine a man more completely taken by surprise. He swore one great oath, for he saw, at least, that the meeting boded him 110 good; then he sat motionless in his saddle, his left hand on the pommel, his right held stiffly by his side. The moon, which of the two hung a little at Sir George's back, shone only on the lower part of Dunborough's face, and by leaving his eyes in the shadow of his hat, gave the others to conjecture what he would do next. It is probable that Sir George, ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... he, therefore, checked his horse and made, in a slanting line, for a point towards which he judged Adonis would go. Maude was swaying in her saddle, in which she could only keep herself by clutching at the pommel; it seemed every moment as if she must fall, as if the horse itself must fall and throw her like a stone down the ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... licentious example. ... The favourite duchess stamps about Whitehall, cursing and swearing. The ministers employ their time at the council board in making mouths at each other, and taking off each other's gestures for the amusement of the king. The peers at a conference begin to pommel each other, and to tear collars and periwigs. A speaker in the House of Commons gives offence to the court. He is way-laid by a gang of bullies, and his nose is cut to the bone. ... The second generation ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... on the snuff to put it out." Upon this, the same person was so bold as to draw his sword; but he asserted positively that he had hardly withdrawn it from the scabbard before an invisible hand seized hold of it and tugged with him for it, and prevailing, struck him so violent a blow with the pommel that he was quite stunned. Then the noises began again; upon which, with one accord, they all retired into the presence-chamber, where they passed the ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... costume harmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement and caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had no points of high light. A carbine strikingly foreshortened lay across the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In silhouette against the sky the profile of the horse was cut with the sharpness of a ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... wit so tickled Pinto Pete that he nearly stampeded the bunch by bursting again into his ear-splitting laugh. Sarah grabbed the handy pommel with a nervous clutch that was eloquent of her state of mind. And that action was all that saved her. For Comanche, taking Pete's guffaw for a command, leaped forward like a cat, and a moment later the whole crowd was galloping madly across ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... bright pommel of his master's saddle and the shining stirrups and spurs, dug a heel into the tender skin of his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... for such a steed. He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle; his sharp elbows stuck out like grasshoppers'; he carried his whip perpendicularly in his hand, like a sceptre, and as his horse jogged on, the motion of his arms was not unlike the flapping ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, while talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of its sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asunder, that it may perceive the ministers of good and evil who throng continually around it. No man of mere talent ever flung his inkstand ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... going any farther; good morning," and raised his hat to salute him. As he did so the shot came whizzing along in front of him, cutting the reins, the pommel of the saddle, and driving a steel purse against the crest of the hip-bone, making a large flesh wound, and seriously bruising the bone. The rider thought ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a number of bronze vessels and weapons, including swords, some of which were nearly a metre in length. In one tomb, which had evidently belonged to a chieftain, there was found a short sword of elaborate workmanship, with a pommel of translucent agate, and a gold-plated hilt, on which was engraved a scene of a lion chasing and capturing one of the Cretan wild-goats. The occurrence in some of the tombs of a long rapier and ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... began to walk before him. He struck the pavement with his tall cane, the pommel of which was adorned with bells, and before every apartment cried aloud the name of Hamilcar amid eulogies ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... enjoy the warm bath of the Arizona sun, and to converse with our next neighbours. Once in a while some enterprising cow, observing the opening between the men, would start to walk out. Others would fall in behind her until the movement would become general. Then one of us would swing his leg off the pommel and jog his pony over to head them off. ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... "No, it was the pommel," Tavannes answered dryly. "It would not have served me to kill you. I could have done ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... hill, and almost the first ball which he sent in that direction struck the "Record" correspondent in the forehead between and just above the eyes. As he reeled in the saddle Gomez's chief of staff sprang to catch him and break his fall. The next Mauser bullet from the hidden marksman pierced the pommel of the saddle that the staff-officer had just vacated; and the third shot killed Gomez's horse. The general and his aide then hastily escaped from the dangerous position, carrying the "Record" correspondent with them; but he was dead. In the first two ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... swaying of her fan. Only once did her face express aught but fixed attention—and that was when a sudden fanfare of the trumpets caused the Governor's horse to plunge, and the old man lurched forward on the pommel of his saddle, his plumed hat slipping down over ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... symphysis may result from violence inflicted on the fork, as in coming down forcibly on the pommel of a saddle; from forcible abduction of the thighs; or it may happen during child-birth. In some cases the two pubic bones at once come into apposition again, and there is no permanent displacement, the only evidence of the injury being localised pain in the region of the symphysis ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... tapaderas—a saddle to thrill every drop of the Castilian blood that flowed in the veins of its owner. The bridle was of finely plaited rawhide, with fancy sliding knots, a silver Spanish bit, and single reins of silver-link chain and plaited rawhide. At the pommel hung coiled ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... a bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of the pommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, "Oh, make up your ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... bought his buckler, of gilt leather and wood, at the haberdasher's; "hung it over his back, by a strap fastened to the pommel of his sword in front." Elegant men showed what taste, or sense of poetic beauty, was in them by the fashion of their buckler. With Spanish beaver, with starched ruff, and elegant Spanish cloak, with elegant buckler hanging at his back, a man, if his moustachios and boots were in good order, stepped ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... He has a gentle way with him which makes the process of getting on him extremely difficult. Just as my foot is in the groom's hand, and I say one—two—three, and am in midair, the horse moves gently to one side, and I either land on the hard pommel or, more often, I fill an empty space between the horse and the groom, which is awkward. However, when, after repeated efforts, I do manage to hit the saddle on the right place ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... behind or overcoming the difficulties of riding lady fashion on a man's saddle. My determination was quickly taken, and much to the amusement of our party, up I mounted, the whole village stolidly watching the proceeding, whilst the absence of pommel contributed considerably to the difficulty I had ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! But his horror was still more increased on observing that the head which should have 20 rested on his shoulders was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose to desperation. He rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip. But the specter started full jump with him. Away 25 then they dashed, through thick and thin, stones ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... globe, orb, pellet; pome, pommel; base-ball, football, lacrosse, basket-ball, tether-ball; bullet, projectile, dejectile, missile; glomeration, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... might have done with him what I list. I had spoiled him, had I[82] took his apparel prisoner; for, it being made of straw, and the nature of jet to draw straw unto it, I would have nailed him to the pommel of my chair, till the play were done, and then have carried him to my chamber-door, and laid him at the threshold, as a wisp or a piece of mat, to wipe my shoes on every time ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... on hers as it rested on the pommel of the saddle and gave it a slight pressure. "You're a ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... wounded, was sinking at the feet of a man whose back was towards me. The man turned at the instant when I came in, and I saw John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a dagger dripping with blood in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in the end of the dagger's handle, flashed in the torchlight, as he turned on me, like a gleam of fire. The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to the dagger in Herncastle's hand, and said, in his native language—"The Moonstone ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... a calm anxiety, as if he were sending a freight of his own merchandise to Europe. A scarlet British uniform, made of the best of broadcloth, because imported by himself, adorns his person; and in the left pocket of a large buff waistcoat, near the pommel of his sword, we see the square protuberance of a small Bible, which certainly may benefit his pious soul, and, perchance, may keep a bullet from his body. The middle-aged gentleman at his right hand, to whom ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... shrug of his shoulders, the horseman threw one leg across the saddle-pommel and sat there, very much at his ease, while he proceeded to roll himself a cigarette from coarse, black tobacco and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... a government representative. In some lonely portion of the road, or in the suggestive stillness of an evening twilight, our Turkish Don Quixote would sometimes cast mysterious glances around him, take his Winchester from his shoulder, and throwing it across the pommel of his saddle, charge ahead to meet the imaginary enemy. But we were more harmful than harmed, for, despite our most vigilant care, the bicycles were sometimes the occasion of a stampede or runaway among the caravans and teams along the highway, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... Wise also spoke, sitting on his horse and bending forward over the pommel of his saddle. Referring to the surrender, he said, "I would rather have embraced the ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... "Go on, pommel her," urged lady Feng, "and ask her what made her run! and, if she doesn't tell you, just you take her mouth and tear ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... more minutely the buckle of brilliants that captured the plume in her hat, the lace about her throat, the curious work upon her leather gauntlets, the firm foot in the small, square shoe, the riding-whip with its pommel of gold which she carried so commandingly. Lovely shadows trooped into his mind, names that had been naught but names to him till now—Rosalind, Camiola, Bianca. They had passed before him as so many smooth-faced youths, carrying awkwardly and awry their woman's wear, and lamentably ...
— The Lady of Loyalty House - A Novel • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... the latter in it. Its wooden skeleton is as scientifically fitted to the rider's form as an old "incroyable's" pair of pantaloons. There is no such thing as getting tired in or of it. Rising to the lower lumbar vertebrae behind, and in front terminating gracefully in a broad-topped pommel, it enables one to lean back in descending, forward in climbing, the great ridges on the path of California travel,—thus affording capital relief both to one's self and one's horse, and bringing in both from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... administers it, but from God. However, for my part, I would rather die unshriven than have anything to say to such a confessor. You are of my opinion, are you not, viscount? and I see you playing with the pommel of your sword, as if you had a great inclination to break the ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... sword's point till his breast, The pommel till a stone; Thorough that falseness of that lither lad These three lives ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... box. A bullet struck Arthur in the elbow, and the shock of it for a time paralyzed his arm. The rifle clattered against the singletree in its fall. But the shortest of the outlaws was sagging in his saddle and clutching at the pommel ...
— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine
... courtiers on certain mysteries of the Christian faith"? So Washington Irving says, and so I once believed, with glowing heart and throbbing brow as I read how "this most Christian knight and discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of lofty gravity, leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with ineffable scorn upon the weak casuists around him. The quick and subtle Arabian witlings redoubled their light attacks on the stately Spaniard, but when one of them, of the race of the Abencerrages dared to question, with a ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... second one came to his aid, and with a blow from the pommel of his sword numbed my hand, and forced me to quit my hold. Then the other made three stabs at me, a third wounded me slightly, and together they would have finished me had you not come up. My horses were found on the road this morning, with the valises cut open. It must have been ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... into the lists by two grooms richly dressed, the animal itself being fully accoutred with the richest war-furniture; which, however, scarcely added to the value of the noble creature in the eyes of those who were judges. Laying one hand upon the pommel of the saddle, the Disinherited Knight vaulted at once upon the back of the steed without making use of the stirrup, and, brandishing aloft his lance, rode twice around the lists, exhibiting the points and paces of the horse with the skill ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... Seizing the pommel with both his hands, and raising himself in his shoe stirrups, he looked as if he intended to vault over the head of the mule; and as they were at this moment going through a village, the inhabitants, who had come ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... rocking chair; couch, fauteuil [Fr.], woolsack^, ottoman, settle, squab, bench; aparejo^, faldstool^, horn; long chair, long sleeve chair, morris chair; lamba chauki^, lamba kursi^; saddle, pannel^, pillion; side saddle, pack saddle; pommel. bed, berth, pallet, tester, crib, cot, hammock, shakedown, trucklebed^, cradle, litter, stretcher, bedstead; four poster, French bed, bunk, kip, palang^; bedding, bichhona, mattress, paillasse^; pillow, bolster; mat, rug, cushion. footstool, hassock; tabouret^; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... vase. There was also a number of bronze vessels and weapons, including swords, some of which were nearly a metre in length. In one tomb, which had evidently belonged to a chieftain, there was found a short sword of elaborate workmanship, with a pommel of translucent agate, and a gold-plated hilt, on which was engraved a scene of a lion chasing and capturing one of the Cretan wild-goats. The occurrence in some of the tombs of a long rapier and a shorter sword or dagger is unexpected, as there are no representations of the ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... approve of fighting, and did not think it a proof of either manliness or courage for two lads to pommel one another for the amusement of the rest. All sorts of hardy games and exercises were encouraged, and the boys were expected to take hard knocks and tumbles without whining; but black eyes and bloody noses given for the ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... entered the precincts of the sanctuary. He was dressed in a dark suit, the sombre colours of which were adapted to the solemn looks of his face, and he held in his hand a long enamelled stick, curiously inlaid at the pommel. He had put by all ornament, wearing none of his customary jewellery, not even his dagger, which on other occasions he is never without. The only article of great value was his rosary, composed of large pearls (the produce of his fishery at Bahrein), of the most beautiful water and symmetry, ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier
... may result from violence inflicted on the fork, as in coming down forcibly on the pommel of a saddle; from forcible abduction of the thighs; or it may happen during child-birth. In some cases the two pubic bones at once come into apposition again, and there is no permanent displacement, the only evidence of the injury being localised pain in the region of the symphysis ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... a ball through its heart at the first shot. Not so Marston. Misfortune awaited him. Having come close up with the animal he meant to shoot, he cocked his rifle and held it in readiness across the pommel of his saddle, at the same time urging his horse nearer, in order to make a sure shot. When the horse had run up so close that its head was in line with the buffalo's flank, he pointed his rifle at its shoulder. At that precise moment ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... shivered in his hand. "What are you doing, comrade?" cried Roland, when he was aware of the mishap. "A man wants no staff in such a battle as this. 'Tis the steel and nothing else that he must have. Where is your sword Hautclere, with its hilt of gold and its pommel of crystal?" ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various
... settlement five times, and by this ingenious contrivance they catch five times as many salmon as they would if it only passed once!" The Major was surprised into silence, and seemed to be considering some abstruse problem. Finally he raised his eyes from the pommel of his saddle, transfixed the guilty Dodd with a glance of severe rebuke, and demanded solemnly, "How many times must a given fish swim past a given settlement, in order to supply the population with food, provided the fish is caught ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... Lord there's no one looking, and it's a decent old saddle with a pommel on the offside," he said to himself piously, while he grasped the curving snout of the pommel in question, "I'd be a dead man this ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... whistled softly several bars of the same air, which were at once repeated from within. Tuttle rode beside the wall and threw over it the end of his lariat. He waited until the whistling ceased, and then, winding the rope around the pommel, he struck home the spurs and the horse leaped forward, straining to the work. It was a trained cow-pony, Mead's own favorite "cutting-out" horse, and it answered with perfect will and knowledge the urging of Tuttle's spurs. With a soft "f-s-s-t" ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... had a belt round his waist crammed with dust and bank-notes," cried another, "and the farmer a nugget as big as a pumpkin on the pommel of his saddle." ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... saddle. The Arab was gaining on him, and gradually leaving behind the heavy horse and weighty rider who were giving chase. The woman, with a set white face, was jerking at the bridle with her left hand in an odd, mechanical, feeble way, while with her right, she held to the pommel of her saddle. But she was swaying forward in an unmistakable manner. She was only half conscious, and ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... A broad-brimmed, battered slouch hat was pulled well down over his brows; his flannel shirt and canvas trousers showed hard usage; his pistol belt hung loose and low upon his hips and on each side a revolver swung. His rifle—Arizona fashion—was balanced athwart the pommel of his saddle, and an old Navajo blanket was rolled at the cantle. He wore Tonto leggins and moccasins, and a good-sized pair of Mexican spurs jingled at his heels. He looked—and so did his horse—as though a long, hard ride was behind them, but that they were ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... be nice to be married," Marie Louise reflected, "if one could stay single at the same time." Frontispiece Facing p. He tried to swing her to the pommel, but she fought herself free and came to the ground and was almost trampled. 3 "This is the life for me. I've been a heroine and a war-worker about as long as I can." 75 "'It's beautiful overhead if you're ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... eyes filled when the tattered old flag of the stars and bars trembled toward him. Under its folds rode the spirit of gallant fraternity—a little, old man with a grizzled beard and with stars on his shoulders, his hands folded on the pommel of his saddle, his eyes lifted dreamily upward—they called him the "bee-hunter," from that habit of his in the old war—his father's old comrade, little Jerry Carter. That was the man Crittenden had come South to ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... throw my sword in that water, and come again, and tell me what thou there seest. My lord, said Bedivere, your commandment shall be done, and lightly bring you word again. So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss. And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under a tree. And as soon as he might he came again unto the ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... relieved him of the useless weapon, and, in a trice, produced a rope, with which he bound the sheepman's arms tightly behind him. With the other end of the rope turned about the pommel of his saddle, he dropped back into the darkness, while his companion rode to ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... mowing down the weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the word, and her bay sprang into a lope from a standing start. The red mare did likewise, nearly flinging the doctor over the back of the saddle, but by the grace of God he clutched the pommel in time and was saved. The air caught at his face, they swept out of the town and onto a limitless ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... foot into a heavy stirrup, eased his weight into the high peaked saddle and gripped the pommel, for though an excellent horseman, he had no clue as to what motion would ensue. It was wise he did so, for the podoko reared suddenly, almost flinging his rider from ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... bank nearest to me. Havoc pricked his ears, passed him like a flash and jumped the brook again; but the bank on landing was boggy and while we were floundering I got a pull at him by putting the curb-rein under my pommel and, exhausted and distressed, I jumped off. Peter burst ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... and the heart and the giant tumbled to the earth like a falling tree. Morvan placed his foot on the dead man's breast, withdrew his sword, and cut off the Moor's head. Then, attaching the bleeding trophy to the pommel of his saddle, he rode home with it and affixed it to the gate of his castle. All men praised him for his doughty deed, but he gave the grace of his victory entirely to St Anne, and declared that he would build a house of prayer in her honour ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... olive skin and the coppery spots on her face and arms. Riding astride, she had pulled her skirts up to her knees; her stockings showed, filthy and full of runs. She wore a gun at her side, a cartridge belt hung over the pommel of her saddle. ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... left foot out of the stirrup, threw her right leg over the pommel, turned, and slipped straight out of the saddle. She stood there a somewhat severely tall, dark figure, strong and positive in effect, against the immense and reposeful landscape—far-ranging, purple distance, golden ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... staircase, sweeping aside all those who barred his path. He seemed possessed with strength and courage Homeric; odds were nothing. With a back hand-swing of his arm he broke one head; he smashed a face with the pommel; caught another by the throat and flung him headlong. In a moment he was out of the door. Down the steps he dashed, through the gate, thence into the street, a mob yelling at his heels. The light ...
— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath
... They were fine animals, of a small breed, but very spirited, and apparently only half-trained. Their accoutrements were in some respects novel; for the saddle was an unwieldy article, with a high pommel in front, and an elevation behind, so that we were fairly wedged in the seat, and had many thumps before we learned to sit correctly in these stocks. We therefore had no wish, as we had little opportunity, of trying the speed of our beasts, the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... light. But could we go back and touch the reality, we should find many a swamp of disease, and rough and grimy paths of rock and mire. Those were good old times, it may be thought, when baron and peasant feasted together. But the one could not read, and made his mark with a sword-pommel; and the other was not held so dear as a favorite dog. Pure and simple times were those of our grandfathers,—it may be. Possibly not so pure as we may think, however, and with a simplicity ingrained with some bigotry and a good deal of conceit. The fact ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... in a friendly voice, as she rode up behind and drew rein. "I've been in that soap-hole myself. Here, ketch to my pommel, and I'll snake ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... to Lieutenant Picart and to Second Lieutenant Pommel, and tell them that I am expecting them here immediately. Also send me Torchebeuf with ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... and Simon cowered against the wall not far from them; and in a chair, into which he had apparently just thrown himself, sat the king, huddled up and collapsed, the point of his sword trailing on the ground beside him, and his nerveless hand scarce retaining force to grip the pommel. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... the question, "How to conduct a prayer meeting," might be very appropriately applied to missionary concerts and addresses. This was the suggestion: "Keep the temperature warm, the atmosphere clear, and don't pommel the Christians!" Applied to missionary concerts and addresses, this sound advice would read: Keep the missionary temperature warm by telling incidents of missionary experience; keep the missionary atmosphere clear by presenting the grand hopefulness of the ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 4, April, 1889 • Various
... sweep which caused the eagle's plume in it to touch the dust. The twenty-five behind him uncovered also. They made a gallant show, every man with his carbine slung over his shoulder by the broad bandolier strap which crossed his chest, his cloak and provender rolled on the pommel of his saddle, and his bridle and spurs jingling as the ponies fidgeted restlessly ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... take a peep at the squirrel; but Wallace advised him to do no such thing. In due time the whole party got out of the woods. Wallace gave the boy his six cents, and the boy handed the trap up to Phonny. Phonny held it upon the pommel of the saddle, directly before him. He found that the squirrel had gnawed through the board so as to get his nose out, but he could not gnaw any more, now that the box was all the time in motion. So he gave it up in despair, and remained crouched ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... I wholly like it," said Miss Ruth, holding on to the pommel of her saddle and looking down into the valley, checkered with fields and criss-crossed with shining rivulets. "Why do the mules persist in ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Cheyenne and forty pounds in weight, was black, richly embossed, and decorated with bits of beaten silver which flashed back the sunlight. At the pommel hung a thirty-foot coil of braided horsehair rope, and at the rear was a Sharp's .50-caliber, breech-loading rifle, its owner having small use for any other make. The color of the bridle was the same as the saddle and it supported ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... was much the same as the boys'. Sombrero, leather chaps well worn, blue shirt, and red neck handkerchief. Jack's keen eyes noted, too, that the pommel of his saddle bore some recent bullet scars, and that in two bearskin holsters reposed the formidable-looking butts of two heavy-caliber revolvers. The war-like note was further enhanced by the fact that across his saddle horn the new arrival ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... also resolution, confidence, possession, mastery. There was that that would neither be denied nor turned aside, nor accept any subterfuge. If King had ridden up on a fiery steed, felled Meigs with his "mailed hand," and borne away the fainting girl on his saddle pommel, there could have been no more doubt of his resolute intention. In that look all the mists of doubt that her judgment had raised in Irene's mind to obscure love vanished. Her heart within her gave ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... >From the pommel of the side-saddle there dangled a heavy roll of home-spun linen, which she was taking to town to her aunt's merchant as barter for queen's-ware pitchers; and behind this roll of linen, fastened to a ring under the seat of the saddle, was swung a bundle tied up in a large blue-and-white ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... Curly paid no heed, but remained as he had fallen. Glen's eyes flashed with a dangerous light as she tapped impatiently with her riding-whip upon the pommel of ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... the old nag stopped, lifted her head, and threw her ears forward as though to gaze, like any traveller to a strange land, upon the rolling expanse beneath, and the lad on her back voiced her surprise and his own with a long, low whistle of amazement. He folded his hands on the pommel of his saddle and the two searched the plains below long and hard, for neither knew so much level land was spread out anywhere on the face of the earth. The lad had a huge pistol buckled around him; he looked half dead with sleeplessness ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... dismounted and left his horse standing with the bridle reins dragging upon the ground, while he removed the lariat from the pommel of the saddle, and, stuffing it inside his shirt, walked back to the street on which the building stood, and so made his way past the sentry and ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... head, snorted, and came obediently up. He was neither shy nor wild. He poked a friendly nose at Stillwell, and then looked at Al and the women. Unhooking the stirrups from the pommel, Stillwell let them fall and began to search the saddle for something which he evidently expected to find. Presently from somewhere among the trappings he produced a folded bit of paper, and after scrutinizing it handed ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... richly dressed for a soldier, and for weapons had heavy pistols and a large knife in his belt. He also had a powder-flask, field-glass, gold-plated spurs, and some small gold coin on his person. His sword, tied to the pommel of his saddle, was ...
— Slavery and Four Years of War, Vol. 1-2 • Joseph Warren Keifer
... tink perhaps hims could if he wos try," said Henri, plunging on to his horse with a laugh, and arranging the carcase of the antelope across the pommel of his saddle. ...
— The Dog Crusoe and his Master • R.M. Ballantyne
... Scotchman leaped from his horse, clasped his wife in his arms, asked a few hurried questions concerning her welfare during his absence, untied a small buckskin bag which depended from the pommel of his saddle, and, remarking, "I thought you might need some spending-money, Violante," held up the bag containing gold, containing a hundred times more gold than her simple tastes and restricted opportunities would permit her to employ. But was not her Robert ...
— The Ape, the Idiot & Other People • W. C. Morrow
... before a door of the Harim, at the head of a sleeping eunuch, as he were one of the Ifrits of Solomon or a tribesman of the Jinn, longer than lumber and broader than a bench. He lay before the door, with the pommel of his sword gleaming in the flame of the candle, and at his head was a bag of leather[FN11] hanging from a column of granite. When the Prince saw this, he was affrighted and said, "I crave help from Allah the Supreme! O mine Holy One, even as Thou hast already delivered me from ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... days' rations, intended to last five days, and with two days' grain for the horses. The rations and forty rounds of ammunition per man were to be carried on the persons of the troopers, the grain on the pommel of the saddle, and the reserve ammunition in wagons. One medical wagon and eight ambulances were also furnished, and one wagon was authorized for each division and brigade headquarters; enough canvas-covered boats for a ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... hips of the dead horse, projected beyond the tail. In this position he made it fast, by tying the butt with a piece of string to a projecting part of the saddle. He next took the cap from his head—a coonskin it was—and set it so that its upper edge could be seen alongside the pommel, and rising about three inches above the croup. The ruse was an old one, with some new additions ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... gold. In a glass-case, which is kept locked, are the entire accoutrements of a horse; and the saddle, even to the stirrup-straps and girths, was studded with pearls, emeralds, rubies, and torquoises. On the pommel, inlaid, were four emeralds, having a ruby for their centre, each stone being little less than an inch square. Every day Christian must have dismounted his horse some hundred pounds poorer than when he mounted; and yet the eye could ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... end was come, and perhaps the world's. He shied slap into the hedge and stuck there—alone; for, his rider swaying violently the reverse way, the girths burst, the saddle peeled off the pony's back, and David sat griping the pommel of the saddle in the middle of the road at Eve's feet, looking up in her face with an uneasy grin, while dust rose around him in a little column. Eve screeched, and screeched, and screeched; then fell to, with a face as red as a turkey-cock's, and beat David furiously, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... ignominious end; for the horse, impatient of restraint, increased its pace to a gallop, which swiftly left the groom behind and sent its rider's composure to the winds. Her foot slipped from the stirrup, she dropped her whip, clung wildly to the pommel, and, regardless of dignity, screamed for help at the pitch of her voice. It seemed an eternity of time, but in reality it was only a couple of minutes, before Victor overtook her, and leaning forward, seized the reins and brought both ...
— The Fortunes of the Farrells • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... event in its very inception. He maintained a discipline to many commanders impossible. His troops had a unity of spirit that might well animate an individual. They endured long fasts, made wonderful forced marches on occasion—all day in the saddle and nodding to the pommel all night; it was even said they fought to such exhaustion that when dismounted the front rank, lying in line of battle prone upon the ground, would fall asleep between volleys, and that the second rank, kneeling to fire above them, had orders to stir them with their carbines to insure regularity ...
— The Raid Of The Guerilla - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... whipped wet and stinging about me in the driving rain; of endless tears of weeping contributed to the general deluge, of passionate outbursts and resentments against a world all twisted and wrong, of beatings of my hands upon my saddle pommel, of asperities to my Kilohana cowboy, of spurs into the ribs of poor magnificent Hilo, with a prayer on my lips, bursting out from my heart, that the spurs would so madden him as to make him rear and fall on me and crush my body for ever out ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... broken Lance that lies there by his right Foot; He shivered that Lance of his Adversary all to Pieces; and bearing himself, look you, Sir, in this manner, at the same time he came within the Target of the Gentleman who rode against him, and taking him with incredible Force before him on the Pommel of his Saddle, he in that manner rid the Turnament over, with an Air that shewed he did it rather to perform the Rule of the Lists, than expose his Enemy; however, it appeared he knew how to make use of a Victory, and with a gentle ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... your hunt," said Felix, gasping as he spoke. He had in fact broken his right arm which had been twisted under him as the horse rolled, and two of his ribs had been staved in by the pommel of his saddle. Many men have been worse hurt and have hunted again before the end of the season, but the fracture of three bones does make a man uncomfortable for the time. "Now the cart—is—sent for, couldn't you—go ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... and smote on the door with the pommel, and the door opened to him and in he went: and he found that fair hall full of folk and bright with candles; and he stood amidst the floor; all men looked on him, and many knew him at once to be a man of the Ravagers, and silence fell upon the hall, but no man stirred hand against him. ...
— The Story of the Glittering Plain - or the Land of Living Men • William Morris
... it to handle," said Skeggi. "There is a pouch to it, and that thou shalt let be. Sun must not shine on the pommel of the hilt. Thou shalt not wear it until fighting is forward, and when ye come to the field, sit all alone and then draw it. Hold the edge toward thee, and blow on it. Then will a little worm creep from under the hilt. Then slope thou the sword over, ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... other till the referee had to pry them apart. There was a little revival of interest just before the gong sounded to end the third and last round; for Bobbles, having regained some of his wind, began to pommel Jaynes with surprising rapidity and accuracy. The end of the bout found them in a happy-go-lucky ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... that laughed at the law for many a year, though never breaking it beyond repair,—took your advice, Father Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the saddle's pommel. Corporal ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... touching the cords of the zithers with their long pointed nails, and their heads began to nod as though they were falling asleep. Suddenly, with a cry so shrill that all the children were startled and Don Pedro's hand clutched at the agate pommel of his dagger, they leapt to their feet and whirled madly round the enclosure beating their tambourines, and chaunting some wild love-song in their strange guttural language. Then at another signal they all ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... meditated against the perfidious host one of those hearty vengeances which offer consolation while they are hoped for. He entered the hostelry with his hat pulled over his eyes, his left hand on the pommel of the sword, and cracking his ...
— The Three Musketeers • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the party was a young man of haughty mien and sat somewhat apart from the rest, wearing his plumed hat loftily among his elders, while the fire glittered on the rich embroidery of his dress and gleamed intensely on the jewelled pommel of his sword. This was the lord De Vere, who when at home was said to spend much of his time in the burial-vault of his dead progenitors rummaging their mouldy coffins in search of all the earthly pride and vainglory that was hidden among bones and dust; so that, besides his own share, ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the length of this black alley in search of the little doorway of the building he sought. At length he came upon it, and, after repeated pounding with the pommel of his sword, it was opened by ...
— The Outlaw of Torn • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the ground with impatience, and veiling their chests with long streams of smoky vapour exhaled from their nostrils. He held the stirrup and aided me to mount upon one; then, merely laying his hand upon the pommel of the saddle, he vaulted on the other, pressed the animal's sides with his knees, and loosened rein. The horse bounded forward with the velocity of an arrow. Mine, of which the stranger held the bridle, also started off at a swift gallop, keeping up with his companion. ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... three of them; and in a moment they would be fighting together, and would keep at it until one of their stern officers was upon them with blows right and left with his fists or with the butt of his pistol or with the pommel of his sword—and so would scatter the rough brutes, scowling, and as it seemed uttering growls such as beasts lashed by their keepers would ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... shields of light wood, with their armholes fastened on the inside. These cover them from top to toe, and are called carasas [kalasag]. At the waist they carry a dagger four fingers in breadth, the blade pointed, and a third of a vara in length; the hilt is of gold or ivory. The pommel is open and has two cross bars or projections, without any other guard. They are called bararaos. They have two cutting edges, and are kept in wooden scabbards, or those of buffalo-horn, admirably wrought. [66] With these they strike with ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XVI, 1609 • H.E. Blair
... no offence meant: and it's before her that Bob only yesterday rode up—one of the gentlemen being Mr. Algernon, free of hand and a good seat in the saddle, t' other's Mr. Edward; but Mr. Algernon, he's Robert Eccles's man—up rides Bob, just as we was tying Mr. Reenard's brush to the pommel of the lady's saddle, down in Ditley Marsh; and he bows to the lady. Says he—but he's ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... horse,—but, egad, I fancy all my troop had widows and orphan maidens to comfort as well as I, for only five of us got together. We cut our way through successfully; and Gad, gentlemen, I carried my little Breakfast on the pommel before me; and there was such a hollowing and screeching, as if the whole town thought I was to kill, roast, and eat the poor child, so soon as I got to quarters. But devil a cockney charged up to my bonny bay, poor lass, to rescue little cake-bread; ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... canvas-covered book, raising his brown eyes from time to time, or writing on a pad laid flat on his saddle-pommel. ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... special saddle made for buckjumpers, provided with heavy pads to prop the knee against, and so prevent the rider from being chucked forward, and this is sometimes assisted by securely fastening an iron bar with a roll of blanket around it across the pommel of the saddle. This presses across the thighs just above the knees, and affords great additional security, and a surcingle is strapped over the seat of the saddle as a ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... as he threw his knee over the pommel of his saddle, "lemme see. The trail goes by that there belt of timber, then jines the stage-road to Allewe, an' follows that a piece, then it shunts off to the west straight for the bluff thar, purty nearly a ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... at that time, very bright and still, and by the light thereof Sir Launcelot beheld that there was a knight in full armor seated upon horseback without the gate, and that the knight beat upon the gate with the pommel of his sword, and shouted that ...
— The Story of the Champions of the Round Table • Howard Pyle
... knew, I was in the saddle before him. I grasped his hand, instinctively caught with my foot at his, and was astride the pommel. I will not say I sat very comfortably, but the memory of that day's delight will never leave me—not "through all the secular to be." There must be a God to the world that could give any such delight as fell then to the share of one little girl! I think my uncle must soon after have got another ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... hand. They pass along the dooryard fence. At the little garden gate they halt. Only 'Thanase dismounts. The commander exchanges a smiling word or two with him, and the youth passes through the gate, and, while his companions throw each a tired leg over the pommel and sit watching him, comes up the short, flowery walk and in ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... a woman gathers up her habit in her left hand, and stands close to the horse with her right hand on the pommel of the saddle. The man who assists her stoops and places his right hand with the palm up at a convenient distance from the ground. The lady then puts her left foot into his hand, and springs up into the saddle with ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... with me. Though felled by the blow on my head I was not stunned, only so dazed that my recapture was an easy matter. This time no risks were taken, and with my hands tied behind me by means of a long scarf, the other end of which was looped round the high pommel of a trooper's saddle, I was perforce compelled to accompany my captors as best I could, bleeding ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... mud, Marius was running after the carriage as fast as his legs could carry him. As soon as he came up Julien leant down, caught hold of him by the coat collar, and lifted him up on the box seat; then, dropping the reins, he began to pommel the boy's hat, which at once slipped down to his shoulders. Inside the hat, which sounded as if it had been a drum, Marius yelled at the top of his voice, but it was in vain that he struggled and tried to jump down, for his master held him ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... ere long to the Enchanted Garden of the necromancer Ormadine, where, embedded in the living rock, he saw a magic sword, the like of which for beauty he had never seen, the belt being beset with jaspers and sapphire stones, while the pommel was a globe of the purest silver chased in gold ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... From the pommel of his saddle he snatched his quirt. It whirled, hummed in the air, and then cracked on the shoulders of Andrew. In the dimness of the saloon door a gun flashed in the hand of Jasper Lanning. It was a swift draw, but he was not in time to shoot, for Andy, with ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... a long shot," said Sergeant Whitley, resting his rifle across the pommel of his saddle. "They've got to follow straight behind. The ground is too rough for them to ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fetch him the sword, and in the first place showeth him the scabbard that was loaded of precious stones and the mountings were of silk with buttons of gold, and the hilt in likewise, and the pommel of a most holy sacred stone that Enax, a high emperor of Rome, made be set thereon. Then the King draweth it forth of the scabbard, and the sword came forth thereof all bloody, for it was the hour of noon. And he made hold it before Messire Gawain ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... thing the frost had debarred him of for weeks. So he kicked up his heels and shook his head, and capered about in a manner very grateful to his own feelings, but most discomposing to his rider, who was first on the pommel, then on the crupper, then heeling over on the near side, then on the off—though both sides threatened to be off sides if these vagaries took a ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... covering of which served in some measure to protect him from the wind and rain. His servant, Joe Beck, was perched upon one of the horses, his shoulders screwed under the scanty folds of an oil-cloth cape, and his knees drawn nearly up to the pommel of the saddle, to avoid the thumping bushes and briers that occasionally assailed him, as the team plunged along in a stumbling pace. Their pathway, or rather their direction, for there was no beaten road, lay along the northern bank of the "Mad Missouri," some two hundred miles ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... any farther; good morning," and raised his hat to salute him. As he did so the shot came whizzing along in front of him, cutting the reins, the pommel of the saddle, and driving a steel purse against the crest of the hip-bone, making a large flesh wound, and seriously bruising the bone. The rider thought ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... us a run, and let it end with blood, so that he may have something to tell the natives when he gets back to his own parts. That's him, see, sitting under the yew-tree, in a bottle-green coat with basket buttons, just striking a light on the pommel of his saddle to indulge in a fumigation.—Keep your eye on him all day, and if you can lead him over an awkward place, and get him a purl, so much the better.—If he'll risk his neck I'll risk ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... first at the pale, anemic little man with big eyes, who shifted his feet and looked uncomfortable; then her gaze went to Sanderson who, resting his left elbow on the pommel of the saddle, was watching her with ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... was ready to lay in March. A squad of Yankees make us chillun ketch every one and you know how they went 'way wid them pullets? They tie two on behind, in de rings of de saddle. Then they tie two pullets together and hang them on de saddle pommel, one on each side of de hosses neck. Dat throw them flankin' de hosses withers. I 'members now them gallopin' off, wid them chickens flutterin' and hollerin' whare, ...
— Slave Narratives Vol. XIV. South Carolina, Part 1 • Various
... themselves.' 'I wish you would let me speak a word to you,' said he. 'Just come aside. It's a nice horse,' said he, in a half whisper, after I had ridden a few paces aside with him. 'It's a nice horse,' said he, placing his hand upon the pommel of the saddle and looking up in my face, 'and I think I can find you a customer. If you would take a hundred, I think my lord would purchase it, for he has sent me about the fair to look him up a horse, by which he could hope to make an honest penny.' 'Well,' said I, 'and ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... sword I was upon him; but he still spurred his horse, and the two galloped together over the plain, I with my leg against the Russian's and my left hand upon his right shoulder. I saw his hand fly up to his mouth. Instantly I dragged him across my pommel and seized him by the throat, so that he could not swallow. His horse shot from under him, but I held him fast and Violette came to a stand. Sergeant Oudin of the Hussars was the first to join us. He was an old soldier, and he saw at a ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Not a second did he waste in thought. To have done so would have been fatal. Instinctively he knew that whilst he shortened his blade, others would rush in; so, turning his wrist, he caught the man a crushing blow full in the face with the pommel of his ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... took his pipe from his lips, knocked the ashes out upon the pommel of his saddle, and pursued his ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... Roby! Miss Talbot, you are leaning over in your saddle! Miss Lettice, your elbows again! Miss Wright, you must learn not to grasp the pommel. Don't drag the rein! Miss Latimer, keep a light hand! What, tired already? Well, I won't work you too hard just ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... the morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair toddling baby was sitting on its mother's pommel-knee, smiling out on the world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had ridden a couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and before it reached home again another five hundred would ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... race, swinging big paunches in front of them; but in that army the only fat men we saw were officers, and not so many of them. On occasion, some colonel, beefy as a brisket and with rolls of fat on the back of his close-shaved neck, would be seen bouncing by, balancing his tired stomach on his saddle pommel; but, without exception, the men in the ranks were trained down and fine drawn. They bent forward under the weight of their knapsacks and blanket rolls; and their middles were bulky with cartridge belts, and ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... personal belongings, the most valuable of which appeared to be a heavy wooden box, about the size and shape of a brick, and which he would not allow out of his own hands, but carried with him, fastened to the pommel of his saddle. What was in this box no one ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... overcoming the difficulties of riding lady fashion on a man's saddle. My determination was quickly taken, and much to the amusement of our party, up I mounted, the whole village stolidly watching the proceeding, whilst the absence of pommel contributed considerably to the difficulty I had in keeping ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... to and fro, like a well-trained sentry,—its "round" being the curved crest of the sand-ridge, from which it did not deviate to the licence of an inch. Backward and forward did it traverse the saddle in a longitudinal direction,—now poised upon the pommel,—now sinking downward into the seat, and then rising to the level of the coup,—now turning in the opposite direction, and retracing in long, uncouth strides, the path over which it appeared to have been passing since the earliest ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... blew his silver horn, which hung by a green silk scarf to the pommel of his saddle. The blast aroused the boar, who made at him furiously. His spear shivered against its bristly hide into a hundred fragments, when, leaping from his steed, which he directed Pedrillo to ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... the willows by the ford, the cottonwood grove to the left, and the big rocks beyond the creek. From its case beneath his leg he took the sawed-off shotgun loaded with buckshot. It rested on the pommel of the saddle while his long and careful scrutiny swept the panorama. The spot was an ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... says, and so I once believed, with glowing heart and throbbing brow as I read how "this most Christian knight and discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of lofty gravity, leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with ineffable scorn upon the weak casuists around him. The quick and subtle Arabian witlings redoubled their light attacks on the stately Spaniard, but when one of them, ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... a shapeless, cumbersome fabric, made of rough leather, with a high pommel and cantle, and huge knee-pads, weighing on an average twenty pounds. The greatest care is necessary to prevent such a diabolical machine from giving ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... to worry none about me, lady," he said, running a hand through his white hair and incidentally touching the pommel of one of the two knives strapped high on the back of his jacket so he could reach one over either shoulder. "I quit murdering some years back. It got to be too much of a strain on ...
— The Night of the Long Knives • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... countrywomen first began to ride with the knee over the pommel, we are not enabled to state: it is, however, clear, according to the original of the above sketch, which occurs in one of the historical illustrations of equestrianism, given by Audry, that the courtly dames of England did so, about the middle ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... Their strong, gaunt horses were equipped with rusty Spanish bits and rude Mexican saddles, to which wooden stirrups were attached, while a buffalo robe was rolled up behind them, and a bundle of beaver traps slung at the pommel. These, together with their rifles, their knives, their powder-horns and bullet-pouches, flint and steel and a tincup, composed their whole traveling equipment. They shook hands with us and rode away; Saraphin with his grim countenance, like a surly bulldog's, was in advance; ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... been hypercritical over the tints of Nature. They could not forget his own tint as he lay with his cheek upon the black stone. Sadie had chattered about tailor-made dresses and Parisian chiffons. Now she was clinging, half-crazy, to the pommel of a wooden saddle, with suicide rising as a red star of hope in her mind. Humanity, reason, argument—all were gone, and there remained the brutal humiliation of force. And all the time, down there by the second ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... him I could only exclaim, "Well done, Mahomet! thrash him; pommel him well; punch his head; you know him best; he deserves it; don't spare him!" This advice, acting upon the natural perversity of his disposition, generally soothed him, and he ceased punching his head. This man was entirely out of his ...
— In the Heart of Africa • Samuel White Baker
... too,' added Dr. Winship. 'The vaquero winds the reata very tightly round the pommel of his saddle to hold the steer, and he is likely to have his finger caught in the hair- ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Polly,' laughed Jack. 'Why, I went to ride with him one day in the Cathedral Oaks, and he made me get off my horse every five minutes to dig up roots and tie them to the pommel of his old saddle, so that we came into town looking like moving herbariums. The stable-man lifted him on to his horse when he started, I suppose, and he would have been there yet if he hadn't been helped off. Bah!' For Jack had a supreme contempt for any man who was less ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to see him executed, but to meet him, he urged his horse past the executioner, who had just learned of the disappearance of one of his patients, knocking over two or three bumpkins with the breast of his Bayard. He bounded toward her, swung her over the pommel of his saddle, and, with a cry of joy and a wave of his hat, he disappeared like M. de Conde at the battle of Lens. The people all applauded, and the women thought the action heroic, and all promptly fell in love with ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... sailing down the wind a few seconds later; and, while two of the warriors go whirling off in a wide, sweeping circle, the other two are victims to their own unusual recklessness. One of them, clinging desperately to the high pommel, but reeling in his saddle, urges his willing pony down the slope; the other has plunged forward and lies stone-dead upon the sward. Even at the echo of the carbines, however, popping up from across the ridge a mile away, there come whirling into view a score ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... biscuit, gave the boys leave to club over as many of the 'two-legged things in feathers' as they could conveniently come at. The result was that a good number were despatched, and being tied together by the legs, were slung over the pommel of the saddle of 'Benny,' an old sabreur, who had frontiered it for years, been in more Indian fights than you could shake a stick at, and could tell, if he wanted to, of some high-old-hard times with these ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... expression than a calm anxiety, as if he were sending a freight of his own merchandise to Europe. A scarlet British uniform, made of the best of broadcloth, because imported by himself, adorns his person; and in the left pocket of a large buff waistcoat, near the pommel of his sword, we see the square protuberance of a small Bible, which certainly may benefit his pious soul, and, perchance, may keep a bullet from his body. The middle-aged gentleman at his right hand, to whom he pays such grave attention, in silk, gold, ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... nodded. He drew from its case beneath his leg a rifle and held it across the pommel. It was not necessary for Sanders to ask, nor for him to promise, protection while the younger man was making his trip of inspection. Both were men who knew the frontier code and each other. At a time of action speech, beyond the curtest ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... cornfield, where the sky was taking on a coppery flush from the sun that did not quite break through. I put on my cap and ran out to meet Jake. When I got to the pond I could see that he was bringing in a little cedar tree across his pommel. He used to help my father cut Christmas trees for me in Virginia, and he had not forgotten how ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... to secure, if possible, twelve pommel pack-saddles, now arrived, it is believed, on the Darling. These were forwarded via Adelaide, and will no doubt be of great use to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... which they are very expert, for I have often seen them, at a distance of ten feet, bury one more than two feet deep in the flanks of a buffalo. To complete their offensive weapons, they have the lasso, a leather rope fifty feet long, and as thick as a woman's little finger, hanging from the pommel of their saddles; this is a terrible arm, against which there is but little possibility of contending, even if the adversary possess a rifle, for the casting of the lasso is done with the rapidity of thought, and an attempt to turn round and ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... saddle, not simply into the leather-work, but firmly riveted or secured into the tree itself. This must be especially insisted on, or frequent disasters will occur. The three rings are to be fixed to the pommel—one on the top, and one on each side of it; the nine "D's" are placed as follows:—three along the back of the saddle, two more on each side of the seat, and two in front, for ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... downstairs! I have never forgotten my first ride on that rocking-horse. The fearful joy when he went backward; the awful plunge when he went forward; and the proud moment when it was possible to cease clinging to the leather pommel. I nearly killed the cousin who pulled out his tail. I thrashed him, then and there, WITH the tail; which was such a silly thing to do; because, though it damaged the cousin, it also spoiled the tail. The next time—ah, but ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... with heavy pads to prop the knee against, and so prevent the rider from being chucked forward, and this is sometimes assisted by securely fastening an iron bar with a roll of blanket around it across the pommel of the saddle. This presses across the thighs just above the knees, and affords great additional security, and a surcingle is strapped over the seat of the saddle as a further ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... clung to the pommel and shouted. The trees flew by; great clods of mud were flung up by the horse's feet. From far up the road could be heard the creaking of a lumber team and the crack of ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... of thy skill, sage Hakim," said Sir Kenneth, "to debate thine hest;" and swallowed the narcotic, mingled as it was with some water from the spring, then wrapped him in the haik, or Arab cloak, which had been fastened to his saddle-pommel, and, according to the directions of the physician, stretched himself at ease in the shade to await the promised repose. Sleep came not at first, but in her stead a train of pleasing yet not rousing or awakening sensations. A state ...
— The Talisman • Sir Walter Scott
... interesting things to do everyday. A Mexican saddle with its high pommel and cantle, was fascinating after an English one. Foothills and arroyos were a charming part of one's walk after the boulevards and parks of Chicago. She hugely enjoyed chatting in sign language with the Mexicans and Indians on the place, ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... if he galloped in pursuit behind her; he, therefore, checked his horse and made, in a slanting line, for a point towards which he judged Adonis would go. Maude was swaying in her saddle, in which she could only keep herself by clutching at the pommel; it seemed every moment as if she must fall, as if the horse itself must fall and throw her like a stone ...
— At Love's Cost • Charles Garvice
... the pubic symphysis may result from violence inflicted on the fork, as in coming down forcibly on the pommel of a saddle; from forcible abduction of the thighs; or it may happen during child-birth. In some cases the two pubic bones at once come into apposition again, and there is no permanent displacement, the only evidence of the injury being localised pain in the region of the symphysis elicited ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... smoke puff out upon the rising breeze; five sputtering reports come sailing down the wind a few seconds later; and, while two of the warriors go whirling off in a wide, sweeping circle, the other two are victims to their own unusual recklessness. One of them, clinging desperately to the high pommel, but reeling in his saddle, urges his willing pony down the slope; the other has plunged forward and lies stone-dead upon the sward. Even at the echo of the carbines, however, popping up from across the ridge a mile away, there come whirling into view a score of red and glittering horsemen, ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... a heavy stirrup, eased his weight into the high peaked saddle and gripped the pommel, for though an excellent horseman, he had no clue as to what motion would ensue. It was wise he did so, for the podoko reared suddenly, almost flinging ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... realize how long this pursuit after an unseen prey lasted; I can only remember that I was getting rather faint with fatigue, and ignominiously held on to my pommel, when all of a sudden the black outline of a sleigh merged into sight in front ...
— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various
... lightning, the power of which was designated by suspended arrows. Through holes in the upper part of the board was threaded a leather thong, or burden-strap, which Tecumapease passed about her forehead when carrying the papoose on her back, or which the mother fastened to the pommel of her saddle when making long journeys. It served also to hang the cradle to the branch of a tree, when the child swayed backwards and forwards with the motion of the bough while the wind crooned him to sleep. The cradle would sometimes be ...
— Tecumseh - A Chronicle of the Last Great Leader of His People; Vol. - 17 of Chronicles of Canada • Ethel T. Raymond
... what itself is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, while talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of its sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asunder, that it may perceive the ministers of good and evil who throng continually around it. No man of mere talent ever flung his inkstand ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... secure, if possible, twelve pommel pack-saddles, now arrived, it is believed, on the Darling. These were forwarded via Adelaide, and will no doubt be of great use to ...
— Successful Exploration Through the Interior of Australia • William John Wills
... you would let me speak a word to you,' said he. 'Just come aside. It's a nice horse,' said he, in a half whisper, after I had ridden a few paces aside with him. 'It's a nice horse,' said he, placing his hand upon the pommel of the saddle and looking up in my face, 'and I think I can find you a customer. If you would take a hundred, I think my lord would purchase it, for he has sent me about the fair to look him up a ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... of Ireland," I said. "It was no easy job to read Matins, with one hand clutching the reins and the pommel of the saddle, and the other holding that book in a mountain hurricane. But you are not a ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... bent, flushed face, was tying up the loose piece of the pommel with string. With the string in his teeth, he said, "Oh, make up your damned mind ...
— The Ball and The Cross • G.K. Chesterton
... up the child to him. Faber took her, and sitting as far back in the saddle as he could, set her upon the pommel. She screwed up her eyes, and grinned with delight, spreading her mouth wide, and showing an incredible number of daintiest little teeth. When Ruber began to move she ...
— Paul Faber, Surgeon • George MacDonald
... had been drinking deeply, now lifted her head, the water running from the corners of her mouth. She gave a deep breath of satisfaction, and began cropping the dense green grass which grew between the water and the road. Her master tossed the reins over the pommel and let her go. He began speaking again on a different note. "But, Sylvia, what in the world—here, can't we go up under those trees a few minutes and have a talk? I can keep my eye on the mare." As they took the few steps he asked again, "How ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... low-hanging branches. One was waiting for John Big Dog, who would never ride by night or day again. This animal the robbers divested of saddle and bridle and set free. They mounted the other two with the bag across one pommel, and rode fast and with discretion through the forest and up a primeval, lonely gorge. Here the animal that bore Bob Tidball slipped on a mossy boulder and broke a foreleg. They shot him through the ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... and suspended from the neck by a strap called guige or gige, a Norman custom of great antiquity. A huge broadsword was carried by his armour-bearer, the person of the chief being without any further means of impediment or defence than a French stabbing sword, fastened on one side of his pommel, and a stout battle-axe on the other. The horse was decorated with great and costly profusion. At a short distance rode William de Bellomonte, the baron's inseparable companion. A small train of archers and cross-bowmen brought up the ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... hammering like an anvil. It passed for a moment out of sight in a hollow of the road below. In the next instant it would be on us. The giant Jud made one last mighty effort. The Cardinal went straight into the air. I clung to the bit, dragged up out of the saddle. I felt my foot against the pommel, my knee against the steel shoulder of the great horse, my face under the ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... and 56-58 supra. Compare the description of Excalibur, and of Bedivere's hesitancy, in Malory's book. "So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.' And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... drawing my pistol I wheeled suddenly in my saddle, and fired straight at him. The Frenchman fell, while a regular volley from his party rung around me, one ball striking my horse, and another lodging in the pommel of my saddle. The noble animal reeled nearly to the earth, but as if rallying for a last effort, sprang forward with renewed energy, and plunged boldly into the river. For a moment, so sudden was my leap, my pursuers lost sight of me; but the bank being ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... that Annie feared being torn from her saddle by the branches, or having her brains dashed out by violent contact with the trunks. She raised herself upon the saddle, and crouching on her knees clung to the pommel. The frightened animal as he emerged from the woods plunged into the midst of the Eleventh Corps, when his course was soon checked. Many of the men, recognizing Annie, received her with cheers. ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... were all ready. The camels were too heavily loaded, carrying about seven hundred pounds each. The donkeys were also overloaded, but there was no help for it. Mrs. Baker was well mounted on my good old Abyssinian hunter "Tetel," ("Hartebeest") and was carrying several leather bags slung to the pommel, while I was equally loaded on my horse "Filfil;" ("Pepper") in fact, we were all carrying as much as we ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... three steps toward the farmer, who said to her, leaning forward on the pommel of his saddle, and lowering ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... nuzzled his right pauldron. Mallory mounted—not gracefully, it is true, but at least without the aid of the winch he would have needed if his armor had been manufactured in the sixth century—and inserted the red pommel of his spear in the stirrup socket. Then, activating the Yore's lock, he rode across the imaginary drawbridge that spanned the mirage-moat, and set forth into the forest. As the "portcullis" closed behind him, symbolically ...
— A Knyght Ther Was • Robert F. Young
... out in front of our tent and throwed my hand to my forehead, shading my eyes—that's the Injun sign of friendship. An old chief and a couple of warriors rode forrad, Winchester to pommel, but, seein' we was alone, they sheathed their guns, and we invited 'em ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle;" "No whit anticipating the oblivion which awaited their names and feats, the champions advanced through the lists;" "Charity covereth a multitude of sins, in another sense than that in which it is said to ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... thrown upon her back at the corral by a playful soldier, just before she had been led up. Kelly did not like to tell this of a comrade. It was most fortunate that I had decided not to ride at that time, for a pitch over a horse's head with a skirt to catch on the pommel is a performance I am not seeking. And Bettie had been such a dear horse all the time, her single foot and run both so swift and easy. Kelly says, "Yer cawn't feel yerse'f on her, mum." Faye is quartermaster, adjutant, commissary, ...
— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe
... sledge-hammer, knocked down at a blow eight sailors upon whose heads they had brought their monstrous catapult in play. The floor was already strewn with wounded, and the room filled with cries and dust, when D'Artagnan, satisfied with the test, advanced, sword in hand, and striking with the pommel every head that came in his way, he uttered a vigorous hola! which put an instantaneous end to the conflict. A great backflood directly took place from the center to the sides of the room, so that D'Artagnan found ...
— Ten Years Later - Chapters 1-104 • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... glorious, palpitating semblance of a warrior of long ago. The strangely living lips, the dusky hollows where thoughtful eyes gleamed darkling. The glint of armor half covered by velvet and fur. A gloved hand that seemed to caress a sword hilt, that caught one crashing ruby light upon its pommel—the matchless Heim Vandyke—the silent, attentive watcher who had seen his sacking of the dead; who seemed, with those deep eyes of understanding, to realize and know it all—the futile clash of human wills, the little ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... coming to the hall door to take their carriages, it was found that Mr. Carleton's meaning was no less than to take Fleda before him on horseback. He was busy even then in arranging a cushion on the pommel of the saddle for her to sit upon. Mrs. Carleton burst into ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... battlefield, and Crittenden felt a clutch at his heart and his eyes filled when the tattered old flag of the stars and bars trembled toward him. Under its folds rode the spirit of gallant fraternity—a little, old man with a grizzled beard and with stars on his shoulders, his hands folded on the pommel of his saddle, his eyes lifted dreamily upward—they called him the "bee-hunter," from that habit of his in the old war—his father's old comrade, little Jerry Carter. That was the man Crittenden had come South to see. Behind came a carriage, in which ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... was talking gently, leaning over his pommel. But John G. was listening more from politeness than because he needed a lift. His stride was as steady ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... in the door of the inn; in another moment they had plunged forth and towards us. With a low cry the young girl leaped towards a tree where to my unbounded astonishment I beheld my horse standing ready saddled. Dragging the mare from her fastenings, she hung the lantern, burning as it was, on the pommel of the saddle, struck the panting creature a smart blow upon the flank, and drew back with a leap to ...
— A Strange Disappearance • Anna Katharine Green
... leg over the pommel and sat sideways for a while, buckling and unbuckling his reins. When he spoke, it was very gently, and again he did not look at her. "Hadn't you better wrap up a ...
— The Plow-Woman • Eleanor Gates
... Across the pommel of the saddle, in front, was fastened a bag of oats; and behind, my Mass kit. Tightly I strapped on my steel helmet, with gas mask tied ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... hearing this intelligence, and wanted to get off his horse at once, and take a peep at the squirrel; but Wallace advised him to do no such thing. In due time the whole party got out of the woods. Wallace gave the boy his six cents, and the boy handed the trap up to Phonny. Phonny held it upon the pommel of the saddle, directly before him. He found that the squirrel had gnawed through the board so as to get his nose out, but he could not gnaw any more, now that the box was all the time in motion. So he gave it up in despair, and remained ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... aid the fugitives' escape, the moon, which had been shining brightly the greater part of the evening, had become overclouded almost from the minute they set off, and headed by the King, who bent low over the pommel of his saddle, and at the start had seemed to drive his spurs into his horse's flanks, the little party tore over the darkened road at a furious pace, ...
— The King's Esquires - The Jewel of France • George Manville Fenn
... a horse a woman gathers up her habit in her left hand, and stands close to the horse with her right hand on the pommel of the saddle. The man who assists her stoops and places his right hand with the palm up at a convenient distance from the ground. The lady then puts her left foot into his hand, and springs up into ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... wet. Their lances were 11 feet long, and they were dressed in blue jacket and trousers confined round the waist with a leather belt, in which was a rest for the lance. I envied their saddles, which have a sort of pommel behind and before, between which is placed a cushion, on which they must sit most comfortably. We must see them on horseback to have seen them, but we shall probably have an opportunity of seeing ...
— Before and after Waterloo - Letters from Edward Stanley, sometime Bishop of Norwich (1802;1814;1814) • Edward Stanley
... which Samba had sent for us, as the town lay at a considerable distance. They were fine animals, of a small breed, but very spirited, and apparently only half-trained. Their accoutrements were in some respects novel; for the saddle was an unwieldy article, with a high pommel in front, and an elevation behind, so that we were fairly wedged in the seat, and had many thumps before we learned to sit correctly in these stocks. We therefore had no wish, as we had little opportunity, of trying ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... of the hollowed trail, just where the trees began, the horse came to a halt so suddenly that Mahon jerked against the pommel and lifted his ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... provided for," replied Harry Herndon, curtly. "All you have to do is to hold on to the pommel of your saddle. There is a non-combatant here who ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... sterling-silver trimmings and long tapaderas—a saddle to thrill every drop of the Castilian blood that flowed in the veins of its owner. The bridle was of finely plaited rawhide, with fancy sliding knots, a silver Spanish bit, and single reins of silver-link chain and plaited rawhide. At the pommel hung coiled a ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... A week later saw him leaving the mission with his personal belongings, the most valuable of which appeared to be a heavy wooden box, about the size and shape of a brick, and which he would not allow out of his own hands, but carried with him, fastened to the pommel of his saddle. What was in this box no one ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... five in the gang, Billinger," he said shortly—"All of them were galloping—but one." He looked up to catch Billinger leaning over the pommel of his saddle staring at something almost ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... horses, and made him wash his dusty face and hands in the cool water and dampen his hair, though he complied as if in a daze. And indeed Nick rode on through the long afternoon, clinging helplessly to the pommel of his saddle, sobbing bitterly until for very weariness he ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... and her bay sprang into a lope from a standing start. The red mare did likewise, nearly flinging the doctor over the back of the saddle, but by the grace of God he clutched the pommel in time and was saved. The air caught at his face, they swept out of the town and onto a limitless ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... walking down a side street off the Strand, when four men sprang out and held my hands to my side, another snatched my watch and purse, and as I gave a cry for the watch, he smote me with the pommel of his rapier in my mouth, then throwing me on the ground the villains ...
— The Cornet of Horse - A Tale of Marlborough's Wars • G. A. Henty
... inheritance, but he swore that the other man should never live to possess the woman. "It is a pity," Payton meditated, "for, with his aid, I could take the girl, willing or unwilling. She'd not be the first Irish girl who has gone to her marriage across the pommel!" While Asgill reflected that if he could find Payton alone on a dark night it would not be his small-sword would help him or his four troopers would find him! But it must not be ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... meaning, for he smiled and nodded, and placed the rein in Bart's hand, when he leaped into the saddle, or rather into the apology for a saddle, for it was only a piece of bison hide held on by a bandage, while a sort of knob or peg was in the place of the pommel, a contrivance invented by the Indians to hold on by when attacking a dangerous enemy, so as to lie as it were alongside of their horse, and fire or shoot arrows beneath its neck, their bodies being in this way thoroughly ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... recollections of "six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Zuelow—he who one day brought in a prisoner from the foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren, or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... back past the exhausted cowboys and Harley, the latter so beaten with fatigue that he could scarce cling to the pommel of his saddle. ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... need help, possibly a lancet, possibly a pocket-pistol, possibly hot blankets, possibly somebody to knead these lifeless lungs and pommel this flaccid body, until circulation ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... thou for all the threats in the wide world I will be silent and not speak the message which the mighty Charlemagne sendeth to his mortal enemy? Nay, I would speak, if ye were all against me." And keeping his right hand still upon the golden pommel of his sword, with his left he unclasped his cloak of fur and silk and cast it upon the steps of the throne. There, in his strength and splendor, ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... left his horse standing with the bridle reins dragging upon the ground, while he removed the lariat from the pommel of the saddle, and, stuffing it inside his shirt, walked back to the street on which the building stood, and so made his way past the sentry and to ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... there's no one looking, and it's a decent old saddle with a pommel on the offside," he said to himself piously, while he grasped the curving snout of the pommel in question, "I'd be a dead man this ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... Petit Andre were in an instant on foot, and Quentin observed that they had each, at the crupper and pommel of his saddle, a coil or two of ropes, which they hastily undid, and showed that, in fact, each coil formed a halter, with the fatal noose adjusted, ready for execution. The blood ran cold in Quentin's veins, when he saw three cords ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... Morvan thrust his blade far into the arm-pit and the heart and the giant tumbled to the earth like a falling tree. Morvan placed his foot on the dead man's breast, withdrew his sword, and cut off the Moor's head. Then, attaching the bleeding trophy to the pommel of his saddle, he rode home with it and affixed it to the gate of his castle. All men praised him for his doughty deed, but he gave the grace of his victory entirely to St Anne, and declared that he would build a house of prayer ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... being in the pistol-belt in front. Here, in a leather case, is a mass of arms which occupy the same relative position to the wearer as the youthful kangaroo to its parent; here are a brace of pistols with a pointed pommel, and a yataghan, which is used in these countries to the entire exclusion of the sword, and which, from its position in the belt, does not get in the way when walking—the ramrod for the pistols also, which in the East is a separate ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 57, No. 351, January 1845 • Various
... useless, he began in desperation to kick and pommel the door with all his might. The window then opened and a beautiful Child appeared at it. She had blue hair and a face as white as a waxen image; her eyes were closed and her hands were crossed on her breast. Without moving her lips in the least, she ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... hysterical and baffled war on the Douglass squirrels. Billy took a long draw from his cigarette, exhaled the smoke, and continued to look down at the meadow. Saxon divined trouble in his manner. His rein-hand was on the pommel, and her free hand went out and softly rested on his. Billy turned his slow gaze upon her mare's lather, seeming not to note it, and continued on ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... farther; good morning," and raised his hat to salute him. As he did so the shot came whizzing along in front of him, cutting the reins, the pommel of the saddle, and driving a steel purse against the crest of the hip-bone, making a large flesh wound, and seriously bruising the bone. The rider thought he was cut ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 29, May 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... a shrug of his shoulders, the horseman threw one leg across the saddle-pommel and sat there, very much at his ease, while he proceeded to roll himself a cigarette from coarse, black tobacco and a ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... eyes frankly. He had made up his mind that she would believe only the truth, and he had decided to tell her at least a part of that. He would lay his whole misadventure to the gold. Leaning over the pommel of his saddle he recounted the occurrences of the night before, beginning with his search for Quade and the half-breed, and his experience with the woman who rode the bear. He left out nothing—except all mention of herself. He described the events lightly, not ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... only exclaim, "Well done, Mahomet! thrash him; pommel him well; punch his head; you know him best; he deserves it; don't spare him!" This advice, acting upon the natural perversity of his disposition, generally soothed him, and he ceased punching his head. This man ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... 'stirrup-' or 'false-necked' vase. There was also a number of bronze vessels and weapons, including swords, some of which were nearly a metre in length. In one tomb, which had evidently belonged to a chieftain, there was found a short sword of elaborate workmanship, with a pommel of translucent agate, and a gold-plated hilt, on which was engraved a scene of a lion chasing and capturing one of the Cretan wild-goats. The occurrence in some of the tombs of a long rapier and a shorter sword or dagger is unexpected, ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... his hand. Then said Rolland: "What mean you, Compagnon? In such a fight as this 'tis not a staff We need, but steel and iron, as I deem. Where now that sword called Halteclere, with hilt Of gold and crystal pommel?" "I lack time To draw it," valiant Olivier replies, "So busy is my hand ...
— La Chanson de Roland • Lon Gautier
... night itself stood without the gate, pawing the ground with impatience, and veiling their chests with long streams of smoky vapour exhaled from their nostrils. He held the stirrup and aided me to mount upon one; then, merely laying his hand upon the pommel of the saddle, he vaulted on the other, pressed the animal's sides with his knees, and loosened rein. The horse bounded forward with the velocity of an arrow. Mine, of which the stranger held the bridle, also started off at a swift gallop, ...
— Clarimonde • Theophile Gautier
... sword; but he asserted positively that he had hardly withdrawn it from the scabbard before an invisible hand seized hold of it and tugged with him for it, and prevailing, struck him so violent a blow with the pommel that he was quite stunned. Then the noises began again; upon which, with one accord, they all retired into the presence-chamber, where they passed the night, ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds • Charles Mackay
... imaginatively and psychologically fascinating. Whether they were as part of the action or as allusions, as in Webster's two great plays, in which there occurs poisoning by means of the leaves of a book, poisoning by the poisoned lips of a picture, poisoning by a helmet, poisoning by the pommel of a saddle; crimes were multiplied by means of subordinate plots and unnecessary incidents, like the double vengeance of Richardetto and of Hippolita in Ford's "Giovanni and Annabella," where both characters are absolutely unnecessary ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... "Would you shut me up within four walls; cram me with rice pudding and every form of food I most detest; send a dreadful woman to pound, roll, and pommel me, and tell me gruesome stories; keep out all my friends, all letters, all books, all news; and, after six weeks send me out into the world again, with my figure gone, and not a sane thought upon any subject under the sun? Dear doctor, think of it! Stout, and an idiot! ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... a hot, close morning, and the padded Ranger's coat heavy and tight-fitting. I took it off, flinging it across the saddle pommel. As I did so a folded paper came into view, and I drew it forth, curiously. My eye caught the signature at the bottom of a brief note, and I stared at it in surprise. Fagin! How came Fagin to be writing to Captain Grant? He pretended ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... obtain without further trouble. To his agreeable surprise, however, his tenants paid him the whole arrears,—an event so unexpected that he could not conceal his exultation as he clinked the heavy bag of money on the pommel of his saddle, when cordially taking leave of his farmers. Merle—that was the little dog's name—was equally delighted; for his moods were always regulated by those of his master,—such is the mysterious sympathy between Dog and us; and ever as his master ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... back, the frost melted away, and the country was open again, and once more she rode to hounds. Her colour was high, her lips feverishly scarlet, her eyes large and brilliant. She rode with the best, and came home with the brush at her pommel. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... one came to his aid, and with a blow from the pommel of his sword numbed my hand, and forced me to quit my hold. Then the other made three stabs at me, a third wounded me slightly, and together they would have finished me had you not come up. My horses were ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... hung from the pommel, and with this the fugitive struck the animal sharply as he forced him directly into the underbrush ...
— Neal, the Miller - A Son of Liberty • James Otis
... discomposure, even turning angrily, with a bitten lip, and reaching for his saddle pommel, as if to remount his pony; but "Miss Sally" touched his arm and said, laughingly, "Come now. Marquis; that was quite a compliment from Saunders. It's that distinguished air of yours and aristocratic nose that made ...
— Rolling Stones • O. Henry
... of Uncle Sam's power was an easy prey for "Poor Lo," who, when he caught the unfortunate soldier away from his command and started after him, must have laughed at the ridiculous appearance of his enemy, with both hands glued to the pommel of his saddle, his hair on end, his sabre flying and striking his horse at every jump as the animal tore down the trail toward camp, while the Indian, rapidly gaining, in a few minutes had the scalp of the hapless rider dangling at his belt, and another of the "boys ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... fear," called Richard in his cheery voice, as he forced his horse alongside of hers. Then suddenly he caught sight of her face and saw that it was white and drawn as though with pain; also that she leaned forward on her saddle, clasping its pommel as though she were ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... horse-catchers—or "vaqueros," as they are called—are famous riders, and to see them capture a wild mustang is better than to go to a circus. The vaquero puts a Spanish saddle on a tame horse, and starts out to see what he can find. In front, on the high pommel of the saddle, he hangs in large coils a leather rope, about a hundred feet long, and called a lasso. It is made of strips of raw hide, braided by hand into a smooth, hard and very pretty rope. One end is secured ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... reference to horsemanship; and to "vault" is "to carry one's body cleverly over anything of a considerable height, resting one hand upon the thing itself,"—exactly the manner in which some persons mount a horse, resting one hand on the pommel ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 182, April 23, 1853 • Various
... answer to his words, there appeared upon the edge of the excavation into which he had fallen, but upon the opposite side from that on which he had taken his slide, ten horsemen, three of whom carried across the pommel of their saddles the bodies of three men. They halted and surveyed the basin critically. Then, single file, they slowly descended into ...
— The Broncho Rider Boys with Funston at Vera Cruz - Or, Upholding the Honor of the Stars and Stripes • Frank Fowler
... give way an inch, but parrying in carte, slipped his blade round that of the duke, feinted in tierce, and then rapidly disengaging, lunged in carte as before. The blade passed through the body of his adversary, and the lunge was given with such force that the pommel of his sword struck against the ribs. The duke fell an inert mass upon the ground ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... mutineers were riding slowly towards the coach. Every man had his pistol on the high pommel of the saddle. Their faces wore an ugly look. As they passed the officer, one of them, pointing ahead of him with his sword, shouted ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... connection with this battle. The day before the principal attack, the Mexicans fired heavily on our line. A Mexican officer, coming with a message from Santa Anna, found Taylor sitting on his white horse with one leg over the pommel of his saddle. The officer asked him "what he was waiting for?" He answered, "For Santa Anna to surrender." After the officer's return a battery opened on Taylor's position, but he remained coolly surveying the enemy with his spy-glass. Some one suggesting that "Whitey" was too conspicuous ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... we stood and waited, we examined with interest the mounts of the English cavalry regiment lined up in the street awaiting their riders. George and Leon were eagerly fingering a long coil of rope thrown on the pommel of one saddle, when a deep voice from behind ...
— My Home In The Field of Honor • Frances Wilson Huard
... he hummed it with great content, beating time with one hand; and as for the King's Favorite, for all that Preferment rideth on the pommel of his saddle, I doubt not he never sang such a song to himself, or took ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... ebon brows. Against the statue's folded shins, its pommel negligently gripped by one immovable, ivory hand, leaned a short Turkish scimitar of watered steel. Beneath the carved hassock upon which the statue sat, a dais of three steps fell ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... hastening, jumping, covered with mud, Marius was running after the carriage as fast as his legs could carry him. As soon as he came up Julien leant down, caught hold of him by the coat collar, and lifted him up on the box seat; then, dropping the reins, he began to pommel the boy's hat, which at once slipped down to his shoulders. Inside the hat, which sounded as if it had been a drum, Marius yelled at the top of his voice, but it was in vain that he struggled and tried to jump down, for his master held him ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... in height and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! But his horror was still more increased on observing that the head which should have 20 rested on his shoulders was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle! His terror rose to desperation. He rained a shower of kicks and blows upon Gunpowder, hoping by a sudden movement to give his companion the slip. But the specter started full jump with him. Away 25 then they dashed, through thick and thin, stones flying and sparks ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... chair; couch, fauteuil [Fr.], woolsack^, ottoman, settle, squab, bench; aparejo^, faldstool^, horn; long chair, long sleeve chair, morris chair; lamba chauki^, lamba kursi^; saddle, pannel^, pillion; side saddle, pack saddle; pommel. bed, berth, pallet, tester, crib, cot, hammock, shakedown, trucklebed^, cradle, litter, stretcher, bedstead; four poster, French bed, bunk, kip, palang^; bedding, bichhona, mattress, paillasse^; pillow, bolster; mat, rug, cushion. footstool, hassock; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... side of the window, as a result of a violent thrust from Archie, who swung out his sword and struck up the shaft of a spear with one cut, sending the spear to stick into the upper framework of the window, his next stroke being delivered with the pommel of his sword crash into the temple of a Malay who had crept up in the darkness and made two thrusts at the gallant old soldier, who said dryly, as one of his men made a thrust with his bayonet and rendered the treacherous ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... replied Sancho, "I did not mean to say that;" and coming close to him he laid one hand on the pommel of the saddle and the other on the cantle so that he held his master's left thigh in his embrace, not daring to separate a finger's width from him; so much afraid was he of the strokes which still resounded with a regular beat. Don Quixote bade him ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... horse is a very useful appendage; I have passed a river in a boat with four people in it, which was ferried across in the same way as the Gaucho. If a man and horse have to cross a broad river, the best plan is for the man to catch hold of the pommel or mane, and help ...
— A Naturalist's Voyage Round the World - The Voyage Of The Beagle • Charles Darwin
... gradually leaving behind the heavy horse and weighty rider who were giving chase. The woman, with a set white face, was jerking at the bridle with her left hand in an odd, mechanical, feeble way, while with her right, she held to the pommel of her saddle. But she was swaying forward in an unmistakable manner. She was only half conscious, and ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... swallowing nails. In the Philosophical Transactions is an account of the contents of the stomach of an idiot who died at thirty-three. In this organ were found nine cart-wheel nails, six screws, two pairs of compasses, a key, an iron pin, a ring, a brass pommel weighing nine ounces, and many other articles. The celebrated Dr. Lettsom, in 1802, spoke of an idiot who swallowed four pounds of old nails and a pair of compasses. A lunatic in England e swallowed ten ounces of screws ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... so I once believed, with glowing heart and throbbing brow as I read how "this most Christian knight and discreet ambassador restrained himself within the limits of lofty gravity, leaning on the pommel of his sword and looking down with ineffable scorn upon the weak casuists around him. The quick and subtle Arabian witlings redoubled their light attacks on the stately Spaniard, but when one of them, of the race of ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... along the sand-cushioned and half-obliterated road which skirted his dilapidated fence line, and he straightened up at length to see a horseman who had drawn rein there and who now sat sidewise gazing at him with one leg thrown across his pommel. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... is found difficult to plait the cord on the handle as in the illustration, wind it around in a continuous line closely together, and finish by fastening with a little glue and a small tack driven through the cord into the handle. The pommel is a circular piece of wood, 1/8 in. thick and 5 in. in diameter. The length of the handle, allowing for a good hold with both hands, should be about 9 in., the length of the blade 28 in., the width near the pommel 1-1/2 in. and 3 in. in the widest part at the lower ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... horses; the horses that I ride can always warrant themselves." "I wish you would let me speak a word to you," said he. "Just come aside. It's a nice horse," said he, in a half whisper, after I had ridden a few paces aside with him. "It's a nice horse," said he, placing his hand upon the pommel of the saddle, and looking up in my face, "and I think I can find you a customer. If you would take a hundred, I think my lord would purchase it, for he has sent me about the fair to look him up a horse, by which ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... in relief with guns, horns and other implements of the chase. Shell guard. Boar-head pommel. Quillions shaped like deer feet. Double-edged blade, ...
— A Catalogue of Early Pennsylvania and Other Firearms and Edged Weapons at "Restless Oaks" • Henry W. Shoemaker
... cumb'rous it may speedily sink the bark, The Ravignani sat, of whom is sprung The County Guido, and whoso hath since His title from the fam'd Bellincione ta'en. Fair governance was yet an art well priz'd By him of Pressa: Galigaio show'd The gilded hilt and pommel, in his house. The column, cloth'd with verrey, still was seen Unshaken: the Sacchetti still were great, Giouchi, Sifanti, Galli and Barucci, With them who blush to hear the bushel nam'd. Of the Calfucci still the branchy trunk Was in its strength: and to the curule chairs Sizii and Arigucci yet ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... extent, with his legs and spurs; a woman must depend on her reins, whip, and left leg. As only one rein and the whip can be well held in one hand, double reins, except for hunting, are to a lady merely a perplexing puzzle. The best way for a lady is to knot up the snaffle, and hang it over the pommel, and ride with a light hand on ...
— A New Illustrated Edition of J. S. Rarey's Art of Taming Horses • J. S. Rarey
... old man. You know I'd let you pommel my head off any time if it could help you anyhow. Besides it was my fault as I told you. I didn't mean to be mean. I'll do any penance ...
— Wild Wings - A Romance of Youth • Margaret Rebecca Piper
... that torture went into the spurs with which she punished the side of the bay, and the tall horse responded with a high-tossed head and a burst of whirlwind speed. The result was finally a stumble over a loose rock that almost flung Mary over the pommel of the saddle and forced ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... spread-legged gait, his knife hand against his right hip and his left hand extended in front. Verkan Vall nodded with pleased satisfaction; a wrist-grabber. Then he blinked. Why, the fellow was actually holding his knife reversed, his little finger to the guard and his thumb on the pommel! ...
— Last Enemy • Henry Beam Piper
... watched him pointing up at the openings in the mountains and down at the ore-road, or stooping to pick up a piece of ore from the ground in cowboy fashion, without leaving his saddle, and pounding it on the pommel before he passed it to the others. And, again, he would stand for minutes at a time up to his boot-tops in the sliding waste, with his bridle rein over his arm and his thumbs in his belt, listening to what his lieutenants ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... hat and a swallow-tail coat, which made up a very comical rig for a buffalo hunter. As we galloped over the prairie, he jammed his hat down over his ears to keep it from being shaken off his head, and in order to stick to his horse, he clung to the pommel of his saddle. He was not much of a rider, and he went bouncing up and down, with his swallow-tails flopping in the air. The sight I shall never forget, for it was enough to make a "horse laugh," and I actually believe old Buckskin Joe ...
— The Life of Hon. William F. Cody - Known as Buffalo Bill The Famous Hunter, Scout and Guide • William F. Cody
... When an Indian chases a buffalo, if he does not use his rifle or bow and arrow, he rides on fast till he comes up with his game, and makes his horse gallop just the same pace as the buffalo. Every bound his horse gives, the Indian keeps moving his spear backwards and forwards across the pommel of his saddle, with the point sideways towards the buffalo. He gallops on in this way, saying "Whish! whish!" every time he makes a feint, until he finds himself in just the situation to inflict a deadly wound; then, in a moment, with all ...
— History, Manners, and Customs of the North American Indians • George Mogridge
... out Robak's instructions and sat down on the bed beside him; but Gerwazy remained standing, resting his elbow on the pommel of his sword, and leaning his bent brow on ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... efforts, we at length fell in with a little Sandwich Island boy, who belonged to Captain Wilson, of the Ayacucho, and was well acquainted in the place; and he, knowing where to go, soon procured us two horses, ready saddled and bridled, each with a lasso coiled over the pommel. These we were to have all day, with the privilege of riding them down to the beach at night, for a dollar, which we had to pay in advance. Horses are the cheapest thing in California; very fair ones not being worth more than ten dollars apiece, and the poorer being often sold for three ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... with its trimming of gold lace, completed a costume half-military, half-civilian. To strengthen its military character a rapier in a leathern sheath hung from his waist-belt, and a carbine, suspended in front, rested against the pommel of his saddle. ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... his saddle with a single leap. Sinclair paused to take the jump, with his hand on the pommel, and as he lifted himself up with a jump, a gun blazed in point-blank range from the ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... It was presented by Lord Viscount Gage to the late Sir Samuel Meyrick, and exhibited by Dr. Meyrick to the Society of Antiquaries, Nov. 23. 1826. The Doctor's letter is to be found in the Appendix to the Archaeologia of that date, with an engraving of the sword. He states that the arms on the pommel are those of Battle Abbey, that its date is about A.D. 1430, and that it was the symbol of the criminal jurisdiction of the abbot. At the dissolution of the abbey it fell into the hands of Sir John Gage, who was ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 65, January 25, 1851 • Various
... fearless horseback rider, sitting her horse with easy grace, and was the first to ride with the leg around the pommel, which was more graceful and becoming than the former mode of sitting with feet upon a board. She loved to ride horseback even up to the time she was sixty years old and over, and when her growing feebleness prevented her riding ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various
... pardner?" she inquired in a friendly voice, as she rode up behind and drew rein. "I've been in that soap-hole myself. Here, ketch to my pommel, ...
— 'Me-Smith' • Caroline Lockhart
... at their most secret entrance, even though that stranger was a woman, sent Hugh Dalton's hand to the pommel of his sword, but it was as quickly stayed by Robin's cry ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... appealingly; first at the pale, anemic little man with big eyes, who shifted his feet and looked uncomfortable; then her gaze went to Sanderson who, resting his left elbow on the pommel of the saddle, was watching ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... dean was riding through the dense forest on a New Year's Eve. He was on horseback, dressed in a fur coat and cap. On the pommel of his saddle hung a satchel in which he carried his book of prayers. He had been with a sick person who lived in a far away forest settlement until late in the evening. Now he was on his way home but he feared that he should not get back to ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... old frontiersman again. He was riding heavily, sagged forward, with one hand on the high pommel of the Mexican saddle. ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... were lady Glamorgan and the ladies Elizabeth, Anne, and Mary. In the carriages behind came their gentlewomen and their lady visitors, with their immediate attendants. Dorothy, mounted on Dick, with Marquis's chain fastened to the pommel of her saddle, followed the last carriage. Beside her rode young Delaware, and his father, ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... to me now again, as I put my hand on the pommel, and pinned upon my lapel some of the pale ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... if to himself, and laid hand to pommel. The heap shuddered and turned on itself. It swarmed. Finally, like a drop from a sponge, Master Porges exuded and stood ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... did not know, how strong was the arm and how terrible the sword of the hunchback whose studies Pinto had so rudely and so foolishly interrupted. As for the hunchback himself, he stood quietly by his chair, with his hands resting on the pommel of his rapier, and a disagreeable smile twisting new hints of malignity into features that were malign enough in repose. Now it may be that the sight of that frightful smile had its effect in cooling the hot blood of the Biscayan, for, indeed, the hunchback, as he stood there, so quietly alert, so ...
— The Duke's Motto - A Melodrama • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... not their names, but in the morning Merlin came that way, and in letters of gold wrote on the tomb, "Here lieth Balin le Savage, the knight with two swords, and Balan his brother." Then Merlin took the famous sword, unfastened the pommel, and offered the sword to a knight to try; but the knight could not handle it, and Merlin ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 5 • Charles Sylvester
... saddle, n. Associated Words: pommel, cantle, girth, pillion, stirrup, saddle-tree, croup, crutch, chapelet, tilpah, tapadero, housing, latigo, pique, panel, sinch, saddle-bow, selliform, ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... is again divided into three Parts, viz. the Pommel or Ball at the far end, sometimes Round and sometimes Oval in Shape. This keeps the Hilt fast, by being well riveted, and by its poise makes the Sword well mounted, or light before the Hand. The next is that part on which you grasp ...
— The School of Recreation (1696 edition) • Robert Howlett
... Nottingham before. He could not have been more than sixteen years of age, and was as fair as any maiden. His long yellow hair flowed behind him as he rode along, all clad in silk and velvet, with jewels flashing and dagger jingling against the pommel of the saddle. Thus came the Queen's Page, young Richard Partington, from famous London Town down into Nottinghamshire, upon Her Majesty's bidding, to seek Robin Hood ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... past the executioner, who had just learned of the disappearance of one of his patients, knocking over two or three bumpkins with the breast of his Bayard. He bounded toward her, swung her over the pommel of his saddle, and, with a cry of joy and a wave of his hat, he disappeared like M. de Conde at the battle of Lens. The people all applauded, and the women thought the action heroic, and all promptly fell in love with the hero on ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... an old racing mare that I used as a riding hack, following the team. In a minute I had her saddled and bridled; I tied the end of a half-full chaff-bag, shook the chaff into each end and dumped it on to the pommel as a cushion or buffer for Jim; I wrapped him in a blanket, and scrambled into the saddle ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... Wiltshire have been so productive of bronze daggers as those about Stonehenge. In some cases it has been possible to recover portions of the ornamental sheaths in which they lay. Their handles were of wood, strengthened occasionally with an oval pommel of bone. In some cases, gold pins have been hammered into the wood to form ...
— Stonehenge - Today and Yesterday • Frank Stevens
... was in the saddle before him. I grasped his hand, instinctively caught with my foot at his, and was astride the pommel. I will not say I sat very comfortably, but the memory of that day's delight will never leave me—not "through all the secular to be." There must be a God to the world that could give any such delight as fell then to the share of one little ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... murdered yonder on the Vineyard Hill. A Spanish man has done the deed, Juan de Garcia by name.' When my father heard these words his face became livid as though with pain of the heart, his jaw fell and a low moan issued from his open mouth. Presently he rested his hand upon the pommel of the saddle, and lifting his ...
— Montezuma's Daughter • H. Rider Haggard
... compartment set, Cruan, and crystal, carbuncles of fire, And brilliant rubies of the Eastern world. In his right hand a mighty spear he seized, Destructive, sharply-pointed, straight and strong:— On his left side his sword of battle swung, Curved, with its hilt and pommel of red gold. Upon the slope of his broad back he placed His dazzling shield, around whose margin rose Fifty huge bosses, each of such a size That on it might a full-grown hog recline, Exclusive of the larger central boss ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... unparalleled slaughter the victory was with the Prussians. Seventy-two pieces of cannon fell into the hands of the victors, and at every point the Russians were retreating. Frederic, in his exultation, scribbled a note to the empress, upon the field of battle, with the pommel of his saddle for a tablet, and dispatched it to her by a ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... one looking, and it's a decent old saddle with a pommel on the offside," he said to himself piously, while he grasped the curving snout of the pommel in question, "I'd be a dead man this minute ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... one so gaily clad been seen in Nottingham before. He could not have been more than sixteen years of age, and was as fair as any maiden. His long yellow hair flowed behind him as he rode along, all clad in silk and velvet, with jewels flashing and dagger jingling against the pommel of the saddle. Thus came the Queen's Page, young Richard Partington, from famous London Town down into Nottinghamshire, upon Her Majesty's bidding, to seek Robin Hood ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... just touching the cords of the zithers with their long pointed nails, and their heads began to nod as though they were falling asleep. Suddenly, with a cry so shrill that all the children were startled and Don Pedro's hand clutched at the agate pommel of his dagger, they leapt to their feet and whirled madly round the enclosure beating their tambourines, and chaunting some wild love-song in their strange guttural language. Then at another signal they all flung themselves again to the ground and lay there ...
— A House of Pomegranates • Oscar Wilde
... nights, and as the flood was still rising, they resolved to try to cross the creek at all risks, preferring to face the danger of death by drowning rather than to die slowly of starvation. Each man took off his clothes, all but his flannel shirt and drawers, strapped them to the pommel of his saddle, threw the stirrup irons over the saddle, and stopped them with a string under the horse's belly to keep them from getting foul in the trees and scrub. In some places the horses had to climb over logs under water, sometimes they had to swim, but in the end they all ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... thicknesses of raw bulls-hide, borne on the left arm, and so managed by the trooper as to defend himself and his horse against the arrows and spears of the Indians; in addition, they used a species of apron of leather, fastened to the pommel of the saddle, with a fall to each side of the horse down to the stirrup, wide enough to cover the thigh and a leg of the horseman, and protect him when riding through the brush. This apron was called the armas. Their offensive ...
— The March of Portola - and, The Log of the San Carlos and Original Documents - Translated and Annotated • Zoeth S. Eldredge and E. J. Molera
... moment there was a rustle of leaves, and a yearling doe dashed by. I am not a dead shot, and have nothing to say about that first barrel, but the second sent her down and over with a roll that almost broke her neck. The dogs were stopped and the deer thrown over the pommel of one of the boys, and we rode on to try the Brunswick swamp. The boy had assured us that "One pow'ful big buck bin in day (there) las' night. I see all he track gwine in, an' I nebber see ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... when I ran downstairs! I have never forgotten my first ride on that rocking-horse. The fearful joy when he went backward; the awful plunge when he went forward; and the proud moment when it was possible to cease clinging to the leather pommel. I nearly killed the cousin who pulled out his tail. I thrashed him, then and there, WITH the tail; which was such a silly thing to do; because, though it damaged the cousin, it also spoiled the tail. The next time—ah, ...
— The Rosary • Florence L. Barclay
... to learn. Then is the book to write. Is much to do that is very pleasant. But of those wild lions on the hills, they are not for a man to fight alone." He restrained the horse, and walked slowly at her side, his hand on the pommel of the saddle, but did not speak. "You promise not? All night you stay in the cold, where is danger, and how may I know you will not again do such a thing? All is beautiful here, and great happiness may be if—if that you do no ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... Arab was gaining on him, and gradually leaving behind the heavy horse and weighty rider who were giving chase. The woman, with a set white face, was jerking at the bridle with her left hand in an odd, mechanical, feeble way, while with her right, she held to the pommel of her saddle. But she was swaying forward in an unmistakable manner. She was only half conscious, and in a ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and the haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come to good but harm and loss'. And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... comes not from him who administers it, but from God. However, for my part, I would rather die unshriven than have anything to say to such a confessor. You are of my opinion, are you not, viscount? and I see you playing with the pommel of your sword, as if you had a great inclination to ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... result of a violent thrust from Archie, who swung out his sword and struck up the shaft of a spear with one cut, sending the spear to stick into the upper framework of the window, his next stroke being delivered with the pommel of his sword crash into the temple of a Malay who had crept up in the darkness and made two thrusts at the gallant old soldier, who said dryly, as one of his men made a thrust with his bayonet and rendered the ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... himself an armed escort, and rode proudly alongside on his pony, his gun slung across the pommel of his saddle, and the dog Turk bringing ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Bounce was successful in coming up with the one he had selected, and put a ball through its heart at the first shot. Not so Marston. Misfortune awaited him. Having come close up with the animal he meant to shoot, he cocked his rifle and held it in readiness across the pommel of his saddle, at the same time urging his horse nearer, in order to make a sure shot. When the horse had run up so close that its head was in line with the buffalo's flank, he pointed his rifle at its shoulder. At that precise ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... extremely unlike the horses of France. Although he managed his palfrey with great dexterity, he sat with his feet in broad stirrups, something resembling shovels, so short in the leathers that his knees were well nigh as high as the pommel of his saddle. His dress was a red turban of small size, in which he wore a sullied plume, secured by a clasp of silver, his tunic, which was shaped like those of the Estradiots (a sort of troops whom the Venetians at that time levied in the provinces ...
— Quentin Durward • Sir Walter Scott
... and a shriek at this. They would come after her and take her away, when she only wanted to be hid and kept safe; it was a cruel shame, and Charles was ready to fly at his brother and pommel him; indeed, Armyn had to hold him by one shoulder, and say in the voice that meant that he would be minded, "Steady, boy I—I'm very sorry, my little Katie; it's a melancholy matter, but you must have left those poor old ladies ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stinging pain in his right shoulder, and but for a convulsive grasp of the pommel with his bridle hand he would have pitched headlong to ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... playing single-stick with bone poles instead of wooden ones. Two men stand apart, and pommel each other with their fists (a hard bunch of knuckles permanently attached to the arms, and made globular, or extended into a palm, at the pleasure of the proprietor), till one of them, finding himself ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... frankly. He had made up his mind that she would believe only the truth, and he had decided to tell her at least a part of that. He would lay his whole misadventure to the gold. Leaning over the pommel of his saddle he recounted the occurrences of the night before, beginning with his search for Quade and the half-breed, and his experience with the woman who rode the bear. He left out nothing—except all mention of herself. He described ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... quieted him, and the latter offered the reins to Sam, who was never a skillful horseman, and felt a mortal terror of the high-mettled steed beneath him. With a most frightened expression upon his face, he grasped the saddle pommel with both hands, and ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... of fighting, and did not think it a proof of either manliness or courage for two lads to pommel one another for the amusement of the rest. All sorts of hardy games and exercises were encouraged, and the boys were expected to take hard knocks and tumbles without whining; but black eyes and bloody ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... gallop—a thing the frost had debarred him of for weeks. So he kicked up his heels and shook his head, and capered about in a manner very grateful to his own feelings, but most discomposing to his rider, who was first on the pommel, then on the crupper, then heeling over on the near side, then on the off—though both sides threatened to be off sides if these vagaries took ...
— Dr. Jolliffe's Boys • Lewis Hough
... realised their meaning, for he smiled and nodded, and placed the rein in Bart's hand, when he leaped into the saddle, or rather into the apology for a saddle, for it was only a piece of bison hide held on by a bandage, while a sort of knob or peg was in the place of the pommel, a contrivance invented by the Indians to hold on by when attacking a dangerous enemy, so as to lie as it were alongside of their horse, and fire or shoot arrows beneath its neck, their bodies being in this way thoroughly ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... thought I had observed a movement of the enemy, as if to pass through the gap where I had posted Colonel Cooke's two regiments. I found Jackson in rear of Barksdale's brigade, under an apple tree, sitting on his horse, with one leg thrown carelessly over the pommel of his saddle, plucking and eating the fruit. Without making any reply to my report, he asked me abruptly: "Can you spare me a regiment and a battery?"...Adding that he wished to make up, from the different commands on our left, a force of four or five thousand men, and give them to Stuart, with ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... then peeped down the woods through the leaves. Pretty soon a splendid young man come galloping down the road, setting his horse easy and looking like a soldier. He had his gun across his pommel. I had seen him before. It was young Harney Shepherdson. I heard Buck's gun go off at my ear, and Harney's hat tumbled off from his head. He grabbed his gun and rode straight to the place where we was hid. But we didn't wait. We started through the ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... doubt that a vein had been broken in the stomach. It was reported that this accident had happened by an effort M. de Berry made when out hunting on the previous Thursday, the day the Elector of Bavaria arrived. His horse slipped; in drawing the animal up, his body struck against the pommel of the saddle, so it was said, and ever since he had spit blood every day. The vomiting ceased at nine o'clock in the morning, but the patient was no better. The King, who was going stag- hunting, put it off. At six o'clock at night M. de Berry ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... in which thousands of cutters went and came. Some of the drivers were already speeding their horses, and these shot to and fro on inner lines, between the slowly moving vehicles on either side of the road. Here and there a burly mounted policeman, bulging over the pommel of his M'Clellan saddle, jolted by, silently gesturing and directing the course, and keeping it all under the eye of the law. It was what Bartley Hubbard called "a carnival of fashion and gaiety on the Brighton road," in his account of it. But most of the people in those elegant ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Oriental gaucho, dark and with good features, his hair and moustache intensely black. He wore costly clothes, while his whip-handle, the sheath of his long knife, and other things about him were of massive silver. Of silver also were his heavy spurs, the pommel of his saddle, his stirrups, and the headstall of his bridle. He was a great talker; never, in fact, in the whole course of my varied experience have I encountered anyone who could pour out such an incessant stream of talk about small matters as this man. We all sat together in ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... is unenthusiastic, nor will he ever have disciples who has not himself impulsive zeal enough to be a disciple. Great wits are allied to madness only inasmuch as they are possessed and carried away by their demon, while talent keeps him, as Paracelsus did, securely prisoned in the pommel of its sword. To the eye of genius, the veil of the spiritual world is ever rent asunder, that it may perceive the ministers of good and evil who throng continually around it. No man of mere talent ever flung his inkstand ...
— The Function Of The Poet And Other Essays • James Russell Lowell
... without coming to any decision, that the members, whose stomachs were quite empty, began to feel alarmed again. Rougon dismissed them to dine, saying that they would meet afresh at nine o'clock in the evening. He was just about to leave the room himself, when Macquart awoke and began to pommel the door of his prison. He declared he was hungry, then asked what time it was, and when his brother had told him it was five o'clock, he feigned great astonishment, and muttered, with diabolical malice, that the insurgents had promised to return much ...
— The Fortune of the Rougons • Emile Zola
... many a swamp of disease, and rough and grimy paths of rock and mire. Those were good old times, it may be thought, when baron and peasant feasted together. But the one could not read, and made his mark with a sword-pommel; and the other was not held so dear as a favorite dog. Pure and simple times were those of our grandfathers,—it may be. Possibly not so pure as we may think, however, and with a simplicity ingrained with some ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... crupper of this saddle is perched a ruined castle, with a church below it, and a cross and a graveyard on the cliff's edge; high on the pommel you climb to another cross, beside a dilapidated house of religion, the Priory of Notre Dame ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of activity. The gray costume harmonized with its aerial background; the metal of accoutrement and caparison was softened and subdued by the shadow; the animal's skin had no points of high light. A carbine strikingly foreshortened lay across the pommel of the saddle, kept in place by the right hand grasping it at the "grip"; the left hand, holding the bridle rein, was invisible. In silhouette against the sky the profile of the horse was cut with the sharpness of a cameo; it looked across the heights of air to the confronting ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... in her saddle with the lithe grace of a boy, dropped her elbow on the high pommel, and gave advice. "You got a pretty bad taproot under yonder. Better chop out a bigger hole, boys. But, say, what you clearing this here land for? Ain't no good for nothing, is it?" She looked around her. Here and there the clearing around the shanty ate raggedly into the forest, but still the ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... grateful lady, he went on his way, coming ere long to the Enchanted Garden of the necromancer Ormadine, where, embedded in the living rock, he saw a magic sword, the like of which for beauty he had never seen, the belt being beset with jaspers and sapphire stones, while the pommel was a globe of the purest silver chased in gold ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... saddle; and while I recounted the particulars of her adventure, unclasped her habit and chafed her forehead; but all was of no avail. He looked distractedly, first at his daughter and then at me; and after a pause of contending emotions, rose, laid her across the pommel, placed his foot in the stirrup, and turning to me said, "I am embarrassed by many circumstances—take my blessings for ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... government representative. In some lonely portion of the road, or in the suggestive stillness of an evening twilight, our Turkish Don Quixote would sometimes cast mysterious glances around him, take his Winchester from his shoulder, and throwing it across the pommel of his saddle, charge ahead to meet the imaginary enemy. But we were more harmful than harmed, for, despite our most vigilant care, the bicycles were sometimes the occasion of a stampede or runaway among the caravans and teams along the highway, ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... seen them, at a distance of ten feet, bury one more than two feet deep in the flanks of a buffalo. To complete their offensive weapons, they have the lasso, a leather rope fifty feet long, and as thick as a woman's little finger, hanging from the pommel of their saddles; this is a terrible arm, against which there is but little possibility of contending, even if the adversary possess a rifle, for the casting of the lasso is done with the rapidity of thought, and an attempt to turn round and fire would indubitably seal his fate: the only means ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... filled when the tattered old flag of the stars and bars trembled toward him. Under its folds rode the spirit of gallant fraternity—a little, old man with a grizzled beard and with stars on his shoulders, his hands folded on the pommel of his saddle, his eyes lifted dreamily upward—they called him the "bee-hunter," from that habit of his in the old war—his father's old comrade, little Jerry Carter. That was the man Crittenden had ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... under ebon brows. Against the statue's folded shins, its pommel negligently gripped by one immovable, ivory hand, leaned a short Turkish scimitar of watered steel. Beneath the carved hassock upon which the statue sat, a dais of three steps ...
— Zero Data • Charles Saphro
... of blood was telling rapidly now. He clutched the pommel, set his teeth, and felt oblivion settle slowly and surely upon him. As his senses left him he noted the black outlines of the next high range of hills, a full ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... sinking at the feet of a man whose back was towards me. The man turned at the instant when I came in, and I saw John Herncastle, with a torch in one hand, and a dagger dripping with blood in the other. A stone, set like a pommel, in the end of the dagger's handle, flashed in the torchlight, as he turned on me, like a gleam of fire. The dying Indian sank to his knees, pointed to the dagger in Herncastle's hand, and said, in his ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... appeared quite unconscious of my presence. She sat motionless save for the swaying of her fan. Only once did her face express aught but fixed attention—and that was when a sudden fanfare of the trumpets caused the Governor's horse to plunge, and the old man lurched forward on the pommel of his saddle, his plumed hat slipping ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... heavy pads to prop the knee against, and so prevent the rider from being chucked forward, and this is sometimes assisted by securely fastening an iron bar with a roll of blanket around it across the pommel of the saddle. This presses across the thighs just above the knees, and affords great additional security, and a surcingle is strapped over the seat of the saddle as a further assistance to ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... I was in the saddle before him. I grasped his hand, instinctively caught with my foot at his, and was astride the pommel. I will not say I sat very comfortably, but the memory of that day's delight will never leave me—not "through all the secular to be." There must be a God to the world that could give any such delight as fell then to the share of one little girl! I think my uncle must soon after have got another ...
— The Flight of the Shadow • George MacDonald
... the whip from Shelby's grasp, and struck with all his might. The warded blow spent itself on the pommel ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... Sir Nigel was very moody and downcast, with bent brows and eyes upon the pommel of his saddle. Edricson and Terlake rode behind him in little better case, while Ford, a careless and light-hearted youth, grinned at the melancholy of his companions, and flourished his lord's heavy spear, making a point to right and a point to left, as though he were a paladin contending ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... but in that army the only fat men we saw were officers, and not so many of them. On occasion, some colonel, beefy as a brisket and with rolls of fat on the back of his close-shaved neck, would be seen bouncing by, balancing his tired stomach on his saddle pommel; but, without exception, the men in the ranks were trained down and fine drawn. They bent forward under the weight of their knapsacks and blanket rolls; and their middles were bulky with cartridge belts, and ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... reports, and congratulated himself on the realistic qualities of his little drama. Then suddenly his hat went spinning from his head. At the same instant a bullet ploughed through the leather on his pommel. Zip! zip! went other bullets past his ears. The boys of Triangle X outfit were ...
— Blazed Trail Stories - and Stories of the Wild Life • Stewart Edward White
... laughed Jack. 'Why, I went to ride with him one day in the Cathedral Oaks, and he made me get off my horse every five minutes to dig up roots and tie them to the pommel of his old saddle, so that we came into town looking like moving herbariums. The stable-man lifted him on to his horse when he started, I suppose, and he would have been there yet if he hadn't been ...
— A Summer in a Canyon: A California Story • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... this coy nymph of the forest had proved too much for the susceptible heart of Ferdinand, who, regarding her as his lawful prize, had borne her, irate and struggling, to the boat, from whence she was in due course transported to the police camp (mounted on the pommel of the saddle in front of the adventurous swain), where, in a very short time she became perfectly at home, and under the name of Lizzie, made ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... baby," he muttered, as he carefully lifted her up to Wells, who circled her in his strong right arm, and seated her on the overcoat that was rolled at his pommel. ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... carved bedstead as that which we had found outside the house, dressed in his full mail, and helmed, and with his sword at his side, such a priceless weapon, with gold-mounted scabbard and jewelled hilt, as men have risked the terrors of grave mounds to win. His white hand rested on the pommel, and he was facing forward as if looking toward the far shore which he was to reach through the flames. But there was naught terrible in his look, and even my fears passed as I saw the peacefulness ...
— A Sea Queen's Sailing • Charles Whistler
... and visited him daily since my arrival, and I had made sure that I could have him at a moment's notice by putting on the cumbrous saddle. Moreover, I had secretly made a bundle of my effects, and had succeeded in taking it unobserved to the stall, and I tied it to the pommel. I also told my landlady that I was going away in the morning with the young gentleman who had visited me, and who, I said, was the engineer who was going to make a new road to the Serra. This was not quite true; but lies that hurt no one are not lies at all, as you all know, and the ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... Though felled by the blow on my head I was not stunned, only so dazed that my recapture was an easy matter. This time no risks were taken, and with my hands tied behind me by means of a long scarf, the other end of which was looped round the high pommel of a trooper's saddle, I was perforce compelled to accompany my captors as best I could, bleeding and ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... roadside at the beginning of the clearing, and in a position where he could not readily be seen until the guerillas were nearly abreast, and waited, with his heavy revolver in hand and his drawn sword lying across the pommel of ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... actually mowing down the weeds, and tearing up the earth, and boosting up the sand like a whirlwind! By George, it was a hot race! I and the saddle were back on the rump, and I had the bridle in my teeth and holding on to the pommel with both hands. First we left the dogs behind; then we passed a jackass rabbit; then we overtook a cayote, and were gaining on an antelope when the rotten girth let go and threw me about thirty yards off to the left, and as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... suddenly between two or three of them; and in a moment they would be fighting together, and would keep at it until one of their stern officers was upon them with blows right and left with his fists or with the butt of his pistol or with the pommel of his sword—and so would scatter the rough brutes, scowling, and as it seemed uttering growls such as beasts lashed by their keepers would ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... leader of the expedition, the others could do no more than advise against his engaging in work, and he led the way, seated on the saddle, with his wounded leg fastened to the pommel in such a manner that it would not be injured by the trees while they ...
— Messenger No. 48 • James Otis
... waiting. He rubbed his eyes to make sure he was not a victim of the night's magic. It was Annette on her pony; she had kept the promise of her eyes. But her appearance gave Roger a shock. Her hair was disheveled. Her hands hung limply upon the saddle pommel and her head was bowed. She rode through the gate, past him to the brink of the tiny lakelet and halted. Then she looked round as if seeking some one. She looked to where the tent lights gleamed mistily through the canvas of Payne's camp. Then, after a long while, she dismounted and started ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... "He rode with short stirrups, which brought his knees nearly up to the pommel of the saddle;" "No whit anticipating the oblivion which awaited their names and feats, the champions advanced through the lists;" "Charity covereth a multitude of sins, in another sense than that in which it is said to do so ...
— An English Grammar • W. M. Baskervill and J. W. Sewell
... was wondering if anything would be doing here while I was here." Craig threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and adjusted the knickerbockers comfortably. "By the way, how do you—your people—celebrate an event of this kind? I admit I'm a bit ignorant on ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... seemed to have forgotten her existence. She watched him pointing up at the openings in the mountains and down at the ore-road, or stooping to pick up a piece of ore from the ground in cowboy fashion, without leaving his saddle, and pounding it on the pommel before he passed it to the others. And, again, he would stand for minutes at a time up to his boot-tops in the sliding waste, with his bridle rein over his arm and his thumbs in his belt, listening to what his lieutenants were saying, and glancing quickly from them ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... winding in and out among the trees so rapidly that Annie feared being torn from her saddle by the branches, or having her brains dashed out by violent contact with the trunks. She raised herself upon the saddle, and crouching on her knees clung to the pommel. The frightened animal as he emerged from the woods plunged into the midst of the Eleventh Corps, when his course was soon checked. Many of the men, recognizing Annie, received her with cheers. As she was now at a distance from her regiment, she felt a strong ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... the dead horse, unloosed the saddle from its back, detached from it a rain-coat strapped to the pommel, and brought ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... easy prey for "Poor Lo," who, when he caught the unfortunate soldier away from his command and started after him, must have laughed at the ridiculous appearance of his enemy, with both hands glued to the pommel of his saddle, his hair on end, his sabre flying and striking his horse at every jump as the animal tore down the trail toward camp, while the Indian, rapidly gaining, in a few minutes had the scalp of the hapless rider dangling ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... foot," was laid down over "the New Work," eastward, and the spire, which, being of lead over timber, was in a dangerous condition, was taken down and a very fine one set in its place, surmounted by a cross and a gilt pommel[3] large enough to contain ten bushels of corn. Bishop Gilbert Segrave (who had previously been precentor of the cathedral, and was bishop from 1313 to 1317) came to the dedication. "There was a great and solemn procession ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... most disconcerting question. Not knowing what he proposed to do, Roddy, to gain time, slipped to the ground and, hat in hand, moved close to the pommel of her saddle. As he did not answer, the girl spoke again, this time in a tone more kindly. "And to ask why you wish to ...
— The White Mice • Richard Harding Davis
... saying that he had discovered the philosopher's stone, and the secret of Hermes Trismegistus; that he must make gold, because, though he squandered all his money, he had always money in hand; and that he kept a "devil's-bird," a familiar spirit, in the pommel of that famous long sword of his, which he was only too ready to lug out on provocation—the said spirit, Agoth by name, being probably only the laudanum bottle with which he worked so many wondrous cures, and of which, ...
— Historical Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... however, the quick trot stopped, and in a moment a lady on a bay mare came pacing slowly into sight,—a young and pretty lady, all in dark blue, with a bunch of dandelions like yellow stars in her button-hole, and a silver-handled whip hanging from the pommel of her saddle, evidently more for ornament than use. The handsome mare limped a little, and shook her head as if something plagued her; while her mistress leaned down to see what was the matter, saying, as if she expected ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... less, was crinkled, and he watched dubiously as Murguia helped the two girls into great armchair-like saddles. There was not a woman's saddle in Tampico, but Jeanne d'Aumerle did not mind that. She, the marchioness, enjoyed the oddity of a pommel in lieu of horn. And the lady's maid might have been on a dromedary, for all the consciousness the poor child ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... foreign hands, a haft cunningly shaped and wrought, a blade curiously slender and long and three-edged, a very deadly thing I judged by the feel. Now since it had no sheath (and it so sharp) I twisted my neckerchief about it from pommel to needle-point, and thrusting it into the leathern wallet at my belt, went on some way further 'mid the trees, seeking some place where I might be sheltered from the cold wind. Then, all at once, I heard that which ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... chair, easy chair, elbow chair, rocking chair; couch, fauteuil [Fr.], woolsack^, ottoman, settle, squab, bench; aparejo^, faldstool^, horn; long chair, long sleeve chair, morris chair; lamba chauki^, lamba kursi^; saddle, pannel^, pillion; side saddle, pack saddle; pommel. bed, berth, pallet, tester, crib, cot, hammock, shakedown, trucklebed^, cradle, litter, stretcher, bedstead; four poster, French bed, bunk, kip, palang^; bedding, bichhona, mattress, paillasse^; pillow, bolster; mat, rug, cushion. footstool, hassock; tabouret^; tripod, monopod. Atlas, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... to help in the man hunt, but he returned with Curly and Maloney to Saguache. On the pommel of his saddle was a sack. It contained the loot from the express car of the Flyer. Two lives already had been sacrificed to get it, and the sum total taken amounted only to one hundred ninety-four ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... his foot into a heavy stirrup, eased his weight into the high peaked saddle and gripped the pommel, for though an excellent horseman, he had no clue as to what motion would ensue. It was wise he did so, for the podoko reared suddenly, almost flinging ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... pack-train was starting back light for Crater Lake, and Churchill was invited to a mule. Burns wanted to put the gripsack on another animal, but Churchill held on to it, carrying it on his saddle- pommel. But he dozed, and the grip persisted in dropping off the pommel, one side or the other, each time wakening him with a sickening start. Then, in the early darkness, Churchill's mule brushed him against a projecting branch that laid his cheek open. To cap it, the mule blundered off the trail ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... useful appendage; I have passed a river in a boat with four people in it, which was ferried across in the same way as the Gaucho. If a man and horse have to cross a broad river, the best plan is for the man to catch hold of the pommel or mane, and help himself with ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... dozen interesting things to do everyday. A Mexican saddle with its high pommel and cantle, was fascinating after an English one. Foothills and arroyos were a charming part of one's walk after the boulevards and parks of Chicago. She hugely enjoyed chatting in sign language with the Mexicans and Indians on the place, and before a week had passed she had picked up ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... I lift on my panting steed; On the pommel she holds my mace; Hand on bridle I gently lead The horse at a gentle pace; The thickets with martel-axe I heed, For the ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... to himself, and laid hand to pommel. The heap shuddered and turned on itself. It swarmed. Finally, like a drop from a sponge, Master Porges exuded and stood out, a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... forced trip that day, and the last five miles were agonizing. In vain we sat sideways on our horses, threw a leg over the pommel, got off, and walked and led them. Bowman Lake, our objective point, ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... hands, like a young knight receiving the pommel of his sword from him who has just given the accolade, and stared down at it until the creaking of the opened French windows startled him to ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... return home and leave Pierre and his band to take care of his three enemies; but his keeper did not give him time to finish the sentence. Seeing that Arthur had no intention of following the rest of the party, the robber took his lasso from the pommel of his saddle, and with it struck his prisoner's horse a blow that caused the fiery animal to give one tremendous spring, which brought him to the very brink of the precipice. In his efforts to stop himself, a portion of the earth was detached by his ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... In the Philosophical Transactions is an account of the contents of the stomach of an idiot who died at thirty-three. In this organ were found nine cart-wheel nails, six screws, two pairs of compasses, a key, an iron pin, a ring, a brass pommel weighing nine ounces, and many other articles. The celebrated Dr. Lettsom, in 1802, spoke of an idiot who swallowed four pounds of old nails and a pair of compasses. A lunatic in England e swallowed ten ounces of screws and bits of crockery, all of which were ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... land when he gets his steer," and I took pa's valuables and the boys brought up the buckskin horse, which smelled of Pa and snorted, and didn't seem to want Pa to get on, but they held the horse by the bridle, and Pa finally got himself on both sides of the horse, and took the lariat rope off the pommel of the saddle and began to handle it, kind of awkward, like a boy with a clothesline. I didn't like the way the cowboys winked around among themselves and guyed pa, and I told Pa about it, and tried to get him to ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... horse past the executioner, who had just learned of the disappearance of one of his patients, knocking over two or three bumpkins with the breast of his Bayard. He bounded toward her, swung her over the pommel of his saddle, and, with a cry of joy and a wave of his hat, he disappeared like M. de Conde at the battle of Lens. The people all applauded, and the women thought the action heroic, and all promptly fell in love with the hero on ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... corridors. The walls were so thick that each room was cut off from its neighbour. Huge fireplaces yawned in each, while the windows were 6ft. deep in the wall. Captain Baumgarten stamped with his feet, tore down curtains, and struck with the pommel of his sword. If there were secret hiding-places, he was not fortunate ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... threw one leg over the pommel of his saddle and faced his companion squarely, "I've heard your mother talk, and of course I understand why she wants to go back among her folks, but you were raised here. Why ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... day before the principal attack, the Mexicans fired heavily on our line. A Mexican officer, coming with a message from Santa Anna, found Taylor sitting on his white horse with one leg over the pommel of his saddle. The officer asked him "what he was waiting for?" He answered, "For Santa Anna to surrender." After the officer's return a battery opened on Taylor's position, but he remained coolly surveying the enemy with his spy-glass. ...
— A Brief History of the United States • Barnes & Co.
... "round" being the curved crest of the sand-ridge, from which it did not deviate to the licence of an inch. Backward and forward did it traverse the saddle in a longitudinal direction,—now poised upon the pommel,—now sinking downward into the seat, and then rising to the level of the coup,—now turning in the opposite direction, and retracing in long, uncouth strides, the path over which it appeared to have been passing since the earliest hour ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... the cross, saying aloud as he did so, "Have pity on me, O God, according to Thy great mercy" (Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam); thereupon he became incontinently quite pale, and all but fell; but he still had heart enough to grasp the pommel of the saddle, and remained in that condition until a young gentleman, his own house-steward, helped him to dismount and set him down under a tree, with his face to the enemy. The poor gentleman burst into tears, seeing his good master so ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume IV. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... rider, but with arms upon the saddle, to swell the train of the mourning cavalcade. The favourite charger of the departed warrior, carrying his arms and clothes, accompanies the procession; the sheepskin cap he wore is placed on the pommel of his saddle; his scarf sash, or kumarbund, is bound round the horse's neck, and his boots are laid across the saddle. In all this may be seen the origin of similar customs now followed by the most civilized ...
— Persia Revisited • Thomas Edward Gordon
... pommel of the saddle, in front, was fastened a bag of oats; and behind, my Mass kit. Tightly I strapped on my steel helmet, with ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... Both of them were sadly discomfited when on coming to the hall door to take their carriages, it was found that Mr. Carleton's meaning was no less than to take Fleda before him on horseback. He was busy even then in arranging a cushion on the pommel of the saddle for her to sit upon. Mrs. Carleton burst into indignant remonstrances; ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... his captain, he was nearly so, and, being a bold, self-reliant fellow, he felt persuaded in his own mind that he could thrash him, if need were. In fact, Jo was convinced that there was no living creature under the sun, human or otherwise, that walked upon two legs, that he could not pommel to death, with more or less ease, by means of his fists alone. And in this conviction he was not far wrong. Yet it must not be supposed that Jo Bumpus was a boastful man or a bully. Far from it. He was so thoroughly persuaded of his invincibility that he felt there was no occasion ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... of his own merchandise to Europe. A scarlet British uniform, made of the best of broadcloth, because imported by himself, adorns his person; and in the left pocket of a large buff waistcoat, near the pommel of his sword, we see the square protuberance of a small Bible, which certainly may benefit his pious soul, and, perchance, may keep a bullet from his body. The middle-aged gentleman at his right hand, to whom he pays such grave attention, in silk, gold, ...
— Biographical Sketches - (From: "Fanshawe and Other Pieces") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on board. I must explain our relative positions as we rode along. The captain was on my left, I next to him, and the man was on my right, riding very near to me. All of a sudden he exclaimed in Spanish, 'Now is the time or never,' threw his right leg over the pommel of his saddle, slipped on to the ground, drew his knife, dashed at me, and after snatching my gun from my hand, stuck his knife (as he thought) into me. Then he rushed towards the captain, pulling the trigger of my gun, and pointing straight at the latter's head; ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... rang out sharply. The stricken officer threw up his sword arm, his bridle arm clutched his saddle-pommel, as if resisting the attempt of Death to unhorse him. Then the muscles all relaxed, and he fell into he arms of those who had ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... the gun, and, without wadding or ramming, dropped after the powder a bullet from his mouth, in which magazine he carried several bullets so as to be ready. Then driving the butt of the gun violently against the pommel of the saddle, so as to send the whole charge home and cause the weapon to prime itself, he aimed at ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... shrill as a bugle, for Jim Last, white and dull as a moon in fog, let go his desperate hold on the pommel and slid, deadweight, into the reaching arms ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... of wit so tickled Pinto Pete that he nearly stampeded the bunch by bursting again into his ear-splitting laugh. Sarah grabbed the handy pommel with a nervous clutch that was eloquent of her state of mind. And that action was all that saved her. For Comanche, taking Pete's guffaw for a command, leaped forward like a cat, and a moment later the whole crowd was galloping madly across ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... they yelled. Had he made the motion of an arm, they might have ridden or shot him down, but the simple quietness of him as he sat with hands crossed on the pommel of his saddle, face calm and set, eyes unwavering and fearless, had the effect that nothing else he could have done would have brought about—and they swerved on either side of him, while the rest swerved, too, like sheep, one stirrup brushing his, as they ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... Samba had sent for us, as the town lay at a considerable distance. They were fine animals, of a small breed, but very spirited, and apparently only half-trained. Their accoutrements were in some respects novel; for the saddle was an unwieldy article, with a high pommel in front, and an elevation behind, so that we were fairly wedged in the seat, and had many thumps before we learned to sit correctly in these stocks. We therefore had no wish, as we had little opportunity, of trying the speed of our beasts, the road lying through ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal Vol. XVII. No. 418. New Series. - January 3, 1852. • William and Robert Chambers
... and no other.—I that laughed at the law for many a year, though never breaking it beyond repair,—took your advice, Father Corraine, and here I am, holding that law now as my bosom friend at the saddle's pommel. Corporal Shon McGann, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... of bronze vessels and weapons, including swords, some of which were nearly a metre in length. In one tomb, which had evidently belonged to a chieftain, there was found a short sword of elaborate workmanship, with a pommel of translucent agate, and a gold-plated hilt, on which was engraved a scene of a lion chasing and capturing one of the Cretan wild-goats. The occurrence in some of the tombs of a long rapier and a shorter sword or dagger is unexpected, as there are no representations ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... doing at just this time! He's listening for us!" Ellhorn whistled softly several bars of the same air, which were at once repeated from within. Tuttle rode beside the wall and threw over it the end of his lariat. He waited until the whistling ceased, and then, winding the rope around the pommel, he struck home the spurs and the horse leaped forward, straining to the work. It was a trained cow-pony, Mead's own favorite "cutting-out" horse, and it answered with perfect will and knowledge the urging of Tuttle's spurs. ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... services. De patrollers wouldn't allow de slaves to hold night services, and one night dey caught me mother out praying. Dey stripped her naked and tied her hands together and wid a rope tied to de hand cuffs and threw one end of de rope over a limb and tied de other end to de pommel of a saddle on a horse. As me mother weighed 'bout 200, dey pulled her up so dat her toes could barely touch de ground and whipped her. Dat same night she ran away and stayed over a ...
— Slave Narratives, Oklahoma - A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From - Interviews with Former Slaves • Various
... not be, it may not be!" Maqueda answered, striking the pommel of her saddle with her small hand. "Shall Jehovah whom Solomon, my father, worshipped, Jehovah of all the generations, do homage to an idol shaped by the hands He made? My people are worn out; they have forgot their faith and gone astray, as did Israel in the desert. I ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... is this?' I asked, as I put a hand to the pommel of the saddle and felt something hard and ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... "thinkest thou for all the threats in the wide world I will be silent and not speak the message which the mighty Charlemagne sendeth to his mortal enemy? Nay, I would speak, if ye were all against me." And keeping his right hand still upon the golden pommel of his sword, with his left he unclasped his cloak of fur and silk and cast it upon the steps of the throne. There, in his strength and splendor, he ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... his silver horn, which hung by a green silk scarf to the pommel of his saddle. The blast aroused the boar, who made at him furiously. His spear shivered against its bristly hide into a hundred fragments, when, leaping from his steed, which he directed Pedrillo to hold, he drew his falchion of Toledo steel, and valiantly on foot assailed ...
— The Seven Champions of Christendom • W. H. G. Kingston
... morning they left us, and as they rode away the fair toddling baby was sitting on its mother's pommel-knee, smiling out on the world from the deep recesses of a sunbonnet. Already it had ridden a couple of hundred miles, with its baby hands playing with the reins, and before it reached home again another five hundred would be added to the two hundred. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... skein of silver threads the book-hunter could discern the Itchen with its attendant rivulets. So he gazed across to the stream and pondered over this marvellous stone which 'hoved' always above the water, a sword set in it so that the pommel alone could be seen, 'and in the pomel therof were precyous stones wrought with subtyle letters of gold.' It was the symbol which was to prove the youthful Galahad the haut prince who should ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... in the driving rain; of endless tears of weeping contributed to the general deluge, of passionate outbursts and resentments against a world all twisted and wrong, of beatings of my hands upon my saddle pommel, of asperities to my Kilohana cowboy, of spurs into the ribs of poor magnificent Hilo, with a prayer on my lips, bursting out from my heart, that the spurs would so madden him as to make him rear and fall on me and crush my body for ever out of ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... a heavy iron-gray beard smoked a pipe, puffing out great mouthfuls of smoke with a sort of deliberate energy; another whittled a stick, cutting a bull with horns, and shaping his work with the nicest care; and still another traced letters on the pommel of his saddle with ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... before him. He struck the pavement with his tall cane, the pommel of which was adorned with bells, and before every apartment cried aloud the name of ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... was surrounded and disarmed. Without a word they dragged her from the bungalow. A giant Negro lifted her to the pommel of his saddle, and while the raiders searched the bungalow and outhouses for plunder he rode with her beyond the gates and waited the coming of ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... open its assailant's jaws. The crocodile, taken apparently by surprise, went into dire convulsions, and making for deep water, plunged his foe therein over head and ears. Nothing daunted, the mias regained his footing, hauled his victim on to a mudbank, and, jumping on his back began to tear and pommel him. There was nothing of the prize-fighter in the mias. He never clenched his fist—never hit straight from the shoulder, but the buffeting and slapping which he gave resounded all over the place. At last he caught hold of a fold of his ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... danced twenty feet from him and over the chasm. He jerked his gun and fired, but only once, for his mount had its own ideas about some things and this particular one easily headed the list. The startled rider grabbed reins and pommel, his blood congealed with fear of the precipice less than a foot from his side, and he gave all his attention to the horse. But scared as he was he heard, or thought that he heard, a peculiar sound when he fired, and he would have sworn that he hit the mark—the striking of the bullet was not drowned ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... described by Greene as part of Chaucer’s dress. {107} In connection with Woodhall were the following:—A sword, probably Saxon, brought up from the Witham bed near “Kirkstead Wath,” entangled in the prongs of an eel-stang. The pommel and guard are tinned, as we now tin the inside of kitchen utensils; an art which we should not have known that our forefathers at that period possessed but for such discoveries as this. The polish still remained on parts of the blade ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... friend in the expedition was not Colonel Perez, who had insultingly dubbed him the Second Fiddle (or Charango). He attached himself therefore with the fidelity of a spaniel to Mr. Marcoy, walking alongside and resting his arm on the pommel of his saddle. After an hour's traverse of a comparatively desert plateau called the Pedregal, covered with rocks and smelling of the patchouli-scented flowers of the mimosa, Aragon pointed out the straw sheds and grassy plaza of Chile-Chile. This ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... to carry my rifle over my shoulder, or rested across the pommel of my saddle: in either case, always in hand. It was but the work of a moment to get the piece ready. The pressure of the muzzle against my horse's ear, was a signal well understood; and at once rendered him as immobile as if made of bronze. Many years of practice— during ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Madame de Bruhl and Simon cowered against the wall not far from them; and in a chair, into which he had apparently just thrown himself, sat the king, huddled up and collapsed, the point of his sword trailing on the ground beside him, and his nerveless hand scarce retaining force to grip the pommel. ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... stamps about Whitehall, cursing and swearing. The ministers employ their time at the council board in making mouths at each other, and taking off each other's gestures for the amusement of the king. The peers at a conference begin to pommel each other, and to tear collars and periwigs. A speaker in the House of Commons gives offence to the court. He is way-laid by a gang of bullies, and his nose is cut to the bone. ... The second generation of the statesmen of this reign, were worthy of the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 342, November 22, 1828 • Various
... supra. Compare the description of Excalibur, and of Bedivere's hesitancy, in Malory's book. "So Sir Bedivere departed, and by the way he beheld that noble sword, that the pommel and haft were all of precious stones, and then he said to himself, 'If I throw this rich sword in the water, thereof shall never come good, but harm and loss.' And then Sir Bedivere hid Excalibur under ...
— Selections from Wordsworth and Tennyson • William Wordsworth and Alfred Lord Tennyson
... was captured, there started up before him the identical "Headless Horseman" to whom he had been introduced by the story of Brom Bones. Nay, not entirely headless; for the head which "should have rested upon his shoulders was carried before him on the pommel of the saddle. His terror rose to desperation. He rode for death and life. The strange horseman sped beside him at an equal pace. He fell into a walk. The strange horseman did the same. He endeavored ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... "quarter-deck of a mule." A square, legitimate seat in the saddle was usually impossible, so steep was the incline; and hence, when going down, I braced my feet and lay back on the haunches of the beast, and, in coming up, had to lean forward and clutch the pommel, to keep from sliding off, as a human avalanche, on the head of the next in line. In many places, however, riding was impossible, and we were compelled to scramble over the rocks on foot. The effect of hours of this exercise on muscles unaccustomed to such surprises may ...
— John L. Stoddard's Lectures, Vol. 10 (of 10) - Southern California; Grand Canon of the Colorado River; Yellowstone National Park • John L. Stoddard
... "six-and-sixty" and as ready to amputate your leg as to crack a joke or clink a glass; gay young Adjutant von Zuelow—he who one day brought in a prisoner from the foreposts a red-legged Frenchman across the pommel of his saddle; and many other good fellows, over most of whom the turf of the Spicheren, or the brown earth of the Gravelotte plain, now ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... loaded his rifle, and strapped the old Confederate haversack to his saddle pommel, staring again, half unbelieving, at the faded inscription underneath the flap. Yet the sight of those letters awoke him, bringing to his bronzed face a new look of determination. He swung into the saddle, and, rifle across his knees, his eyes studying ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... sticking a sword. The king said: I will see that marvel. So all the knights went with him, and when they came to the river they found there a stone fleeting, as it were of red marble, and therein stuck a fair rich sword, and in the pommel thereof were precious stones wrought with subtil letters of gold. Then the barons read the letters which said in this wise: Never shall man take me hence, but only he by whose side I ought to hang, and he shall ...
— Chronicle and Romance (The Harvard Classics Series) • Jean Froissart, Thomas Malory, Raphael Holinshed
... of Parliament from paying tolls. The exemption of mail coaches from paying tolls, a relief provided by the Act of 25th George III., was really a continuation of the old policy, by which the postboys of an earlier age, riding on horseback, and carrying the mails on the pommel of the saddle, had always been exempt from toll, and the light mail carts of a later ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs
... king, roguishly, "or possibly more, as Hardrada is rather taller than the average," or words to that effect. "Then let the fight go on," answered Tostig, taking a couple of hard-boiled eggs from his pocket and cracking them on the pommel of his saddle, for he had not eaten anything but a broiled ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... Eppeghem we met a troop of cavalry convoying a high cart filled with peasants, who had evidently been taken prisoners. The officer in charge was a nervous chap, who came riding at us, brandishing his revolver, which he had tied to the pommel of his saddle with a long cord. He was most indignant that we had been allowed to come this far and reluctantly admitted that our pass was good. All the time he talked with us, and told us of the skirmishing ahead, he kept waving that large blunderbuss in our faces. I tried a little humour ...
— A Journal From Our Legation in Belgium • Hugh Gibson
... manner as he went, when he was suddenly stopped by a violent recoil of his horse from the burning embers, on which he had stepped, and which had been concealed from view by the ashes which covered them. William, unwieldy and comparatively helpless as he was, was thrown with great force upon the pommel of the saddle. He saved himself from falling from the horse, but he immediately found that he had sustained some serious internal injury. He was obliged to dismount, and to be conveyed away, by a very sudden transition, from the dreadful scene of conflagration and vengeance ...
— William the Conqueror - Makers of History • Jacob Abbott
... period our fair countrywomen first began to ride with the knee over the pommel, we are not enabled to state: it is, however, clear, according to the original of the above sketch, which occurs in one of the historical illustrations of equestrianism, given by Audry, that the courtly dames of England did so, about the middle of ...
— The Young Lady's Equestrian Manual • Anonymous
... to join them. At eight next morning we set out through an uninteresting thorn-bush towards one of those Tetes or isolated hills which form admirable bench-marks in the Somali country. "Koralay," a terra corresponding with our Saddle-back, exactly describes its shape: pommel and crupper, in the shape of two huge granite boulders, were all complete, and between them was a depression for a seat. As day advanced the temperature changed from 50o to a maximum of 121o. After marching ...
— First footsteps in East Africa • Richard F. Burton
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