"Handspike" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the field gun, the crew used a special handspike quite different from the garrison handspike. It was a long, round staff, with an iron handle bolted to its head (fig. 33a). The trail transom of the carriage held two eyebolts, into which the foot of the spike ...
— Artillery Through the Ages - A Short Illustrated History of Cannon, Emphasizing Types Used in America • Albert Manucy
... have not seen before. At intervals of about eight feet they plant from two to six plants of vine in a cluster At each cluster they fix a forked staff, the plane of the prongs of the fork at a right angle with the row of vines. Athwart these prongs they lash another staff, like a handspike, about eight feet long, horizontally, seven or eight feet from the ground. Of course, it crosses the rows at right angles. The vines are brought from the foot of the fork up to this cross-piece, turned over it, and conducted along over the next, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... lying unburied, and by the mounds which mark where others have been slightly covered up. There are additional traces of an artillery fight. Here is a broken wheel of a gun-carriage, an exploded caisson, a handspike, and some of the accoutrements of the men. In the fork of a tree I found a Testament, with the words, 'Charles Durrale, Corporal of Company G,' written on the fly-leaf. The guns and the gunners, have disappeared. Some of the latter are now with the column moving in pursuit of the ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... the whole of this show now, by your making, and I intend to be respected as such, and hold a full captain's ticket. You'll call me 'sir' when you speak, and you'll take orders civilly and carry them out quick, or, by James! you'll find your teeth rammed down your throat in two twinkles of a handspike. ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... ship. But this ain't no men crew, this is a woman crew. You can't lam this crew over the head with no handspike. When one of those fo'mast hands gives you back talk you can't knock her into the scuppers. All you can do is just stand and take it and wait for your chance to say somethin'. And you won't git no chance. What chance'll you have along with Elviry Snowden and Desire Peasley and ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... suddenly a thunderous knocking at the rendezvous door, and stentorian cries of: "Turn out! turn out there!" coupled with epithets here unproducible, would bring every man of them into the street in the turn of a handspike, half-dressed but fully armed and awake to the fact that a party of belated seamen was coming down the road. The sailors were perhaps more road-weary than the gangsmen, and provided none of them succeeded ...
— The Press-Gang Afloat and Ashore • John R. Hutchinson
... deck, one who had run forward for a handspike swept it down on young Dick Morrel's brown head. Morrell dodged, but the blow cracked his shoulder and swept him to the deck. The man who had fought beside him spraddled the prostrate body, and jerked an iron from the boat ...
— All the Brothers Were Valiant • Ben Ames Williams
... bawled Beauty, hailing the main-truck through an enormous copper funnel. "Stand by for stays," roared Flash Jack, bawling off with the cook's axe, at the fastening of the main-stay. "Looky out for 'quails!" shrieked the Portuguese, Antone, darting a handspike through the cabin skylight. And "Heave round cheerly, men," sung out Navy Bob, dancing a hornpipe ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... the mate came thundering upon the fore scuttle with a handspike, following up the resounding ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... door, halted, looked back and then passed into the adjoining room. Starbuck sat on a corner of the table. Peters stood looking at him. Peters was much the larger man, and lifting at a handspike, in the clearing at a log-rolling, would have been stronger; but the bully, the half-coward, in combat, is rarely as strong as the brave man. The blood of courage case-hardens ...
— The Starbucks • Opie Percival Read
... transports, essayed to enter his apartment, with a view of administering consolation; and, finding the door locked on the inside, desired admittance, protesting, that otherwise he would down with the bulkhead in the turning of a handspike. Peregrine ordered him to retire, on pain of his displeasure, and swore, that if he should offer to break open the door, he would instantly shoot him through the head. Tom, without paying the least regard to this injunction, set himself at work immediately. ...
— The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle, Volume I • Tobias Smollett
... one in ten years!" said the boy. "He loved it so, that me trying to pry him loose from it was about like working to move the Iriquois Building with a handspike. All he'd promise that first trip was that if I'd come and tell him when I saw you'd got into trouble, he'd see ...
— Michael O'Halloran • Gene Stratton-Porter
... of the sequel of this little story, be it here narrated how it came to pass, that an object which partly from its being so small was quite lost to every other man on board, still caught the eye of my handspike companion. The rest of the crew, myself included, merely stood up to our spikes in heaving, whereas, unwontedly exhilarated, at every turn of the ponderous windlass, my belted comrade leaped atop of it, with might and main ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... sat astride the breech of the nine-pounder at which he had been so busily engaged earlier in the afternoon. He appeared to be an idler who merely looked on but he was watching every motion, and that hard, canny face of his had, for once, forgot to grin. Releasing a three-foot handspike from its lashing beside the gun-carriage, he awaited the next roll of the deck and deftly kicked this handy weapon. It slid toward the forecastle and Jack Cockrell stopped it ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... old tottering voice that seemed to have been tuned and broken at the capstan bars. Then he rapped on the door with a bit of stick like a handspike that he carried, and when my father appeared, called roughly for a glass of rum. This, when it was brought to him, he drank slowly, like a connoisseur, lingering on the taste and still looking about him at the cliffs and up at ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... superstitious and scrupulous, believed I should occasion some mischief to their voyage if they received me; 'therefore,' said one, 'I will knock him down with a handspike'; said another, 'I will shoot an arrow through him'; said a third, 'Let us throw him into the sea.' Some of them would not have failed to do so, if I had not got to that side where the captain was. I threw myself at his feet, and took him by the coat in a begging ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... not become a master in any handicraft, but I had learned with paste-pot and knife, saw, plane, and chisel—nay, even axe and handspike—what manual labour meant and how to use ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers |
