"Pommel" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... 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
... 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 ...
— A March on London • G. A. Henty
... 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
... took his pipe from his lips, knocked the ashes out upon the pommel of his saddle, and pursued his tale in a ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... 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
... 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 ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... 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
... "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 ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay
... 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
... 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 ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... 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
... 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 saddle with ...
— The Etiquette of To-day • Edith B. Ordway
... 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 ...
— Crossing the Plains, Days of '57 - A Narrative of Early Emigrant Tavel to California by the Ox-team Method • William Audley Maxwell
... on his excellency and his regimentals; being, as all counsellors should be, not easily flustered, nor taken by surprise. The governor, looking around for a moment with a lofty and soldier-like air, and resting one hand on the pommel of his sword, and flinging the other forth in a free and spirited manner, addressed them in ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... 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.
... the pommel of his saddle and glanced off. A boy in an orchard had fired it. A load of bird-shot, a handful it seemed to Harry, flew about his ears. A bent old man who ought to have been sitting on a porch in a rocking chair had discharged it from the edge of a wood. A ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... "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
... 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 out to see the archbishop, thought he was about to deliver ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... 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
... frontiersman again. He was riding heavily, sagged forward, with one hand on the high pommel ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... 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.
... 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
... sword's point till his breast, The pommel till a stone; Thorough that falseness of that lither lad These three lives were ...
— Ballads of Romance and Chivalry - Popular Ballads of the Olden Times - First Series • Frank Sidgwick
... 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
... 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 ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... 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
... "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 it to pieces ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... 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 |
