"Sheath" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shaving-table, and the foolish toilet crockery which no one uses (but I should have to replace) strewn upon the carpet. But one thing I found that had not been there before: under the window lay a formidable sheath-knife without its sheath. I picked it up with something of a thrill, which did not lessen when I felt its edge. The thing was diabolically sharp. I took it with me to show my neighbor, whom I found giving his order to the boots; ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... its sheath, And the soul wears out the breast, And the heart must pause to breathe, And love itself ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... by the mouths of his servants amongst our selves; or from our owne former visitations, and namely, The Sword, threatned and drawn against us, both at home and from abroad, but at that time through the forbearance of GOD, put up in the Sheath again, wee might have prevented the miseries under which now we groane. But the Cup of trembling, before taken out of our hands, is again come about to us, that wee may drink deeper of it: And although when these bloody Monsters, the Irish Rebels, together with ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... weight they had forced the tree top over and down until they could secure it by setting the snare. The tossing-pole, when the snare went off, sprung up with such force that it not only dislocated the hunter's right leg at the knee, but it threw his knife out of its sheath, and, consequently, he had no means by which he could cut the line, nor could he unfasten it or even climb up—for he was hanging clear of the tree. Presently, however, he began to bleed from the nose ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... said, and flung away his scabbard and sheath. I saw the flash of my own weapons a moment later, and ere I had time for a second thought on the seriousness of this event—my first fight in earnest—he was keeping me busy to parry his point and watch his dagger ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... little man until consciousness left him. Before he recovered he had been ironed to a stanchion in the 'tween-deck, and entered in the captain's official log for threatening life. And by this time the dunnage had been searched, a few sheath-knives tossed overboard, and the remaining ten men were ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... evidently alarmed him. He inspected the contrivance that had been applied by the field attendant to check the flow of blood, which was simply a cord passed around the leg outside the trousers and twisted tight with the assistance of a bayonet sheath, with a growling request to be informed what infernal ignoramus had done that. Then suddenly he saw how matters were and was silent; while they were bringing him in from the field in the overcrowded landau the improvised tourniquet had become loosened and slipped ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... dog's death,' said Mowgli, feeling for the knife he always carried in a sheath round his neck now that he lived with men. 'But he would never have shown fight. Wallah! his hide will look well on the Council Rock. We ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... sheath of tresses now laid bare And now again concealed in black, luxuriant hair;[FN256] As if the maid the day resplendent and her locks The night that o'er it spreads ...
— Tales from the Arabic Volumes 1-3 • John Payne
... huge white cathedral of the near dependency of Taipa. Then in the foreground at their very feet was Macao, a feast of colour, red roofs, many-hued walls, green trees and brilliant gardens, beautiful as the jewel-set sheath of a Venetian dagger, with its poison and death-dealing ...
— In Macao • Charles A. Gunnison
... said the former, loosening his own hunting-knife in its sheath. "We will draw near, and make certainty of ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... With a blow of his fist he had broken the jaw of a man helplessly ironed in the 'tween-deck, and on the same voyage, armed with a simple belaying-pin, had sprung alone into a circle of brandishing sheath-knives and quelled a mutiny. He was short, broad, beetle-browed, and gray-eyed, of undoubted courage, but with the quality of sympathy left ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... attention until this time had been centered upon the seals which he had attacked, which were among those farthest from the open water. Now as he dried his eyes and, still trembling from effort and excitement, drew his sheath knife to dress the animals, he looked about him, and what he saw brought ...
— Bobby of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... board, and they began to carry on to the boat all the valuables which the exile had been able to save from the shipwreck of his kingdom. First a bag of gold weighing nearly a hundred pounds, a sword-sheath on which were the portraits of the king, the queen, and their children, the deed of the civil estates of his family bound in velvet and adorned with his arms. Murat carried on his person a belt where some precious papers were concealed, with about a score of unmounted diamonds, ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... nor swords and bucklers wield, Nor drive the chariot through the dusty field; But whirl from leathern slings huge balls of lead; And spoils of yellow wolves adorn their head; The left foot naked, when they march to fight; But in a bull's raw hide they sheath the right. ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... may be up on the mountain-top, so I brought the sheath-knife, ax, rifle, and other things in case we get the ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... three paces and fixed upon La Briere a look which entered the eyes of the young man as a dagger enters its sheath; he stood silent a moment, recognizing the absolute candor, the pure truthfulness of that open nature in the light of the young man's inspired eyes. "Is fate at last weary of pursuing me?" he asked himself. "Am I to find in this young man the pearl of sons-in-law?" He walked ...
— Modeste Mignon • Honore de Balzac
... limb is at rest; and as the pain attends the course of the nerve, and not the course of the muscles, or of the fascia, which contains them. The theory of Cotunnius, who believed it to be a dropsy of the sheath of the nerve, which was compressed by the accumulated fluid, has not been confirmed by dissection. The disease seems to consist of a torpor of this sheath of the nerve, and the pain seems to be in consequence of this torpor. See Class ...
— Zoonomia, Vol. II - Or, the Laws of Organic Life • Erasmus Darwin
... the stem. I have also in my herbarium a leaf of Arum maculatum, with a stalk single at the base, but dividing into two separate stalks, each bearing a hastate lamina, the form of which is so perfect that were it not from the venation of the sheath it would be considered that there was here a union of two leaves rather than a bifurcation of one. A garden Pelargonium presented ...
— Vegetable Teratology - An Account of the Principal Deviations from the Usual Construction of Plants • Maxwell T. Masters
... but one. I did one act—and I never undid it—it is there still—as long ago as when we were at Ryelands. There it was—something my fingers longed for among the beautiful toys in the cabinet in my boudoir—small and sharp like a long willow leaf in a silver sheath. I locked it in the drawer of my dressing-case. I was continually haunted with it and how I should use it. I fancied myself putting it under my pillow. But I never did. I never looked at it again. I dared not unlock the drawer: it had a key all to itself; and ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... ruin'd tower, We mus'd for many a solemn hour; And, half-dejected, half in spleen, Computed idly, o'er the scene, How many murders there had dy'd Chiefs and their minions, slaves of pride; When perjury, in every breath, Pluck'd the huge falchion from its sheath, And prompted deeds of ghastly fame, That hist'ry's self might blush to name[1]. [Footnote 1: In Jones's History of Brecknockshire, the castle of Abergavenny is noticed as having been the scene ...
— The Banks of Wye • Robert Bloomfield
... to give the plant a light touch of the plough. This eases the soil about the roots, lets in air and light, tends to clean the undergrowth of weeds, and gives it a great impetus. The operation is called Bedaheunee. By the beginning of June the tiny red flower is peeping from its leafy sheath, the lower leaves are turning yellowish and crisp, and it is almost time to begin the grandest and most important operation of the season, the manufacture of the dye ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... yet his eye Is like an Engyn bent, or a sharpe weapon In a soft sheath; mercy and manly courage Are bedfellowes in his visage. Palamon Has a most menacing aspect: his brow Is grav'd, and seemes to bury what it frownes on; Yet sometime tis not so, but alters to The quallity of his thoughts; long time his eye Will dwell upon his ...
— The Two Noble Kinsmen • William Shakespeare and John Fletcher [Apocrypha]
... turbans like the Turks, and a cloth round their waist hanging to their knees; having seldom any other apparel, except sometimes sandals on their feet fastened with thongs. They either carry their sword naked on their shoulder, or hanging at their side in a sheath. They are fond of tobacco, yet are unwilling to give any thing for it. Some of them wear a cloth of painted calico, or some other kind, over their shoulders, after the fashion of an Irish mantle or plaid; while others have shirts and surplices, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... be paid in Rice. The Mindanaians are no good Accomptants; therefore the Chinese that live here, do cast up their Accompts for them. After this Captain Swan bought Timber-trees of the General, and set some of our Men to Saw them into Planks, to Sheath the Ship's bottom. He had two Whip-Saws on Board, which he brought out of England, and four or five Men that knew the use of them, for they had ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... of all swords Hath made me now sword-wealthy; For the swinger of swords Will there now be swords in plenty. No lack of swords will there be, —Worthy of three swords am I— Lord of the land were but The sheath of that sword to ...
— The Sagas of Olaf Tryggvason and of Harald The Tyrant (Harald Haardraade) • Snorri Sturluson
... Conqueror) to a sober-looking personage opposite, who, horn-spectacles on nose, is peering at the endorsement of the "Marriage Settlem^t of the R^t Hon^ble. Lord Vincent [Squanderfield]."[24] This second figure, which is that of a London merchant, with its turned-in toes, the point of the sword-sheath between the legs, and the awkward constraint of its attitude, forms an admirable contrast to the other. A massive gold chain denotes the wearer to be an alderman. Between the two is a third person, perhaps the merchant's confidential clerk or cashier, who ...
— Great Pictures, As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Esther Singleton
... oppression. Dear princes and lords, know ye what to do, for God will no longer endure it? The world is no more as of old time, when ye hunted and drove the people as your quarry. But think ye to carry on with much drawing of sword, look to it that one do not come who shall bid ye sheath it, and that ...
— German Culture Past and Present • Ernest Belfort Bax
... the two together, the Moor and Sir Lancelot; each had a great spear and brake it in two, as a reed, yet neither felled the other, but each abode upon his steed. Then each drew his sword from its sheath, and set to work therewith, and of a sooth, had not God Himself so willed it both had died there; so mighty were their strokes that by right no man should escape alive. Had it been midnight, and dark as night is wont to be, yet had ye seen the grass and the flowers by the light ...
— The Romance of Morien • Jessie L. Weston
... the gyroscope," began Norton, pointing out a thing encased in an aluminum sheath, which weighed, all told, perhaps fourteen or fifteen pounds. "You see, the gyroscope is really a flywheel mounted on gimbals and can turn on any of its angles so that it can assume any angle in space. When it's at rest like this you can turn it easily. ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... gross structure of the bones is best learned by studying both dry and fresh specimens. (See Practical Work.) The ends of the bones are capped by a layer of smooth, elastic cartilage, while all the remaining surface is covered by a rather dense sheath of connective tissue, called the periosteum. Usually the central part of the long bones is hollow, being filled with a fatty substance known as the yellow marrow. Around the marrow cavity the bone is very dense and compact, but most of the material forming ...
— Physiology and Hygiene for Secondary Schools • Francis M. Walters, A.M.
... whipping his nag with all his might, and seemingly very desirous of overtaking us. Presently he called out to us to stop, which we did; and when he came up he turned out to be a country student, dressed in brown, with spatterdashes and round-toed shoes. He had a sword in a huge sheath, and a band tied with tape. He had indeed but two tapes, so that his band got out of its place, which he took great pains ...
— Great Men and Famous Women, Vol. 7 of 8 • Charles F. (Charles Francis) Horne
... who has acquired a fairly impartial way of looking at things will find something in the possibility and actual fact of man's education, which has the power of logical proof that a spiritual being is struggling for existence within the sheath of the body. He will compare animals with man and say to himself that at the birth of the former there appears certain definite qualities and capacities as something, decisive in itself, which plainly shows how it has been designed ...
— An Outline of Occult Science • Rudolf Steiner
... breaking glass was an annoying defect until he remembered that some Indians decorate their weapons with a notch for each enemy it has killed, and this, therefore, might do duty as a kill-tally. He made a sheath for the knife out of scraps of leather left off the moccasins. Some water-colours, acquired by a school swap, and a bit of broken mirror held in a split stick, were necessary parts of his Indian toilet. His face during the process of make-up was always a battle-ground ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... for refreshment. We frequently find these punctured flowers. But hive and other bees visiting the blossom for pollen, some rubs off against their breast when they depress the two middle petals, a sort of sheath that contains ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... was also struck at the extravagantly florid phraseology in the fifteenth book with respect to Scaevina's dagger being sharpened to a point the day before the intended execution of a plot: "Finding fault with the poniard which he drew from its sheath that it was blunted by time, he gave orders it should be whetted on a stone, and be made to FLAME UP into a point." "Promptam vagina pugionem 'vetustatem obtusum,' increpans, asperari saxo, et in mucronem ...
— Tacitus and Bracciolini - The Annals Forged in the XVth Century • John Wilson Ross
... supply your gunbearer with a cartridge belt, a leather or canvas carrying bag, water bottle for him and for yourself, a sheath knife and a whetstone. In the bag are your camera, tape line, the whetstone, field cleaners and lunch. You personally carry your field glasses, sun glasses, a knife, compass, matches, police whistle ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... is not a corpse, but a numbed body. If I remove the Locust immediately after he has been bitten and release him from the silken sheath, the patient recovers his strength to such an extent that he seems, at first, to have suffered no injury. The Spider, therefore, does not kill her capture before sucking its juices; she is content to deprive it of the power of motion by producing a state ...
— The Life of the Spider • J. Henri Fabre
... had sought to bestow her token in a manner which should prove his devotion and gratitude. But his tight-fitting foreign uniform had threatened to baffle his desire, till, in the exigency of the moment, he took out a pocket-knife (or was it his sword from its sheath?) and cut a slit in the breast of his coat on the left side, over the heart, where he put the flowers. Was this at the end of that second day after the brothers' arrival, on which, as the Prince mentions, in detailing to a friend the turn of the ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... always carry on the road," he answered carelessly, half drawing it from its sheath with his left hand, and putting it back again. "Do you carry no ...
— No Thoroughfare • Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins
... a well-known American biologist, lately gave a good illustration of this. In a paper on education he showed photographs of two varieties of maize. The ripe fruits of both are colourless if their sheaths be unbroken. The one, if exposed to the light before ripening, by rupture of its sheath, turns red. The second, otherwise indistinguishable, acquires no red colour though uncovered to the full sun. If these maizes were two boys, not improbably the one would be caned for failing to respond to treatment so efficacious ...
— Cambridge Essays on Education • Various
... fifty men lay on the ground dying or dead. Adrian raised his sword in act to speak: "By whose command," he cried, addressing his own troops, "do you advance? Who ordered your attack? Fall back; these misguided men shall not be slaughtered, while I am your general. Sheath your weapons; these are your brothers, commit not fratricide; soon the plague will not leave one for you to glut your revenge upon: will you be more pitiless than pestilence? As you honour me—as you worship God, in whose image those also are created—as your children ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... issuing from its stifling sheath, joyously, stretched its limbs in its new shape, and had no time as yet to mark the ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... others wore, on his head; and the belt round his body, as we could see from looking down on to the deck of the dhow, which was much below the level of our vessel, was filled choke-full with long-barrelled pistols and dirks, and a round-shaped scimitar-like sword without a sheath that seemed as if it could give a fellow ...
— The Penang Pirate - and, The Lost Pinnace • John Conroy Hutcheson
... fish (suolo-kala) is the peasant's fare, yesterday, to-day, and to-morrow, almost always the same! These people never taste meat, unless it be for a treat salted, while fresh vegetables are unknown, cabbage even being a luxury. Each labourer pulled his puukko (knife) from its sheath at his waist—alas, too frequently pulled in anger—and cutting hunks of brown bread, dragged a fish like a sardine (only it was dry and salt) from another wooden tub, and cutting off bits ate them together, ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... man whom Joan did not know, and had never seen, was sent from Tours, and found the sword in the place which she described. The sword was cleaned of rust, and the king gave her two sheaths, one of velvet, one of cloth of gold, but Joan had a leather sheath made for use in war. She also commanded a banner to be made, with the Lilies of France on ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... clay in which he mixed grass for a binder. This mortar he rolled into layers called "cats," each eight inches long and three inches thick. Then he laid them against the logs and held them in place with a woven network of sticks. The first fire—a slow one—baked the clay into a rigid stone-like sheath inside the logs and presently the sticks were burned away. The women had cooked the meats by an open fire and spread the dinner on a table of rough boards resting on poles set in crotches. At noon one of them sounded a conch shell. Then with ...
— A Man for the Ages - A Story of the Builders of Democracy • Irving Bacheller
... I forget the dreadful hour, I sheath'd my weapon in thy noble breast; Thy dying hand clasp'd mine, with feeble pow'r, And to thy ...
— Elegies and Other Small Poems • Matilda Betham
... in his sermon to the people he merely insists on its uselessness, and urges the propriety of looking simply to God, and not at all to such expedients, for deliverance. It must be recollected, however, that he and his people in no sense drew the sword from its sheath; he confined himself to passive resistance. He had violated no law; the Church's property was sought by a tyrant: without using any violence, he took possession of that which he was bound to defend with his life. He placed himself upon the sacred ...
— Historical Sketches, Volume I (of 3) • John Henry Newman
... custom decreed should not be washed, was the usual wear. It tucked into a dirty pair of linen drawers or knickerbockers, which garments were always dyed a dull red in the blood of the beasts killed. A sailor's belt went round the waist, with a long machete or sheath-knife secured to it at the back. Such was the attire of a master hunter, buccaneer, or Brother of the Coast. Many of them had valets or servants sent out to them from France for a term of three years. These valets were treated with abominable cruelty, and put to all manner of bitter labour. ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... this wise, left his presence. But as soon as she had left, a voice from the skies, emanating from no visible shape, thus spoke unto Dushmanta as he was sitting surrounded by his occasional and household priests, his preceptors, and ministers. And the voice said, 'The mother is but the sheath of flesh; the son sprung from the father is the father himself. Therefore, O Dushmanta, cherish thy son, and insult not Sakuntala. O best of men, the son, who is but a form of one's own seed, rescueth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa - Translated into English Prose - Adi Parva (First Parva, or First Book) • Kisari Mohan Ganguli (Translator)
... himself in the darkness to watch the stars slowly seeming to pass from east to west, and as he said half-aloud those words about being alone he slowly fingered the revolver-holster on one side of his belt and the hunting-knife in its sheath, which done, he pulled at the strap which slung his rifle, and getting it round to the front he rested it upon his knees, and began mechanically to examine the breech as if to make sure that he had ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... peoples ate from wooden trenchers and platters; sat upon three-legged stools or wooden blocks; used bear's grease in lieu of lard and butter, and cut their foods with the same sheath-knives used in disembowelling and skinning the deer killed by their rifles. They had no money and their scant furniture was essentially crude, sometimes including a few pewter dishes and plates and spoons, but usually nothing beyond wooden bowls, trenchers, ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... earth was clothed with green and yellow grass easy to the feet, and during the day he found many sweet roots to refresh him. He also found quantities of cam-berries, a round fruit a little less than a cherry in size, bright yellow in colour, and each berry inside a green case or sheath shaped like a heart. They were very sweet. At night he slept once more in the long grass, and when daylight returned he travelled on, feeling very happy there alone—happy to think that he would ...
— A Little Boy Lost • Hudson, W. H.
... his wife's bidding he stepped down out of his bed, and made for his richly dight sword that he kept always hanging on its pin above his bed of cedar. Verily he was reaching out for his new-woven belt, lifting with the other hand the mighty sheath, a work of lotus wood, when lo, the wide chamber was filled again with night. Then he cried aloud on his thralls, who were drawing the deep ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... and the knife polish (invented by the great and immortal Duke of Wellington in his spare time when he was not conquering Napoleon. Three cheers for our Iron Duke!), and with emery paper and wash leather and whitening. Oswald wore a cavalry sabre in its sheath. Alice and the Mouse had pistols in their belts, large old flint-locks, with bits of red flannel behind the flints. Denny had a naval cutlass, a very beautiful blade, and old enough to have been at Trafalgar. ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... certain privileges. Within the precincts of the palace at Phnom Penh is a modest building where they still guard the sword of Indra. About two inches of the blade are shown to visitors, but except at certain festivals it is never taken out of its sheath. ...
— Hinduism and Buddhism, An Historical Sketch, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Charles Eliot
... tightened and he looked up into his companion's face. Smoke noted the yellow pallor of sun-tan forsaken by the blood, and wondered what his own complexion was like. But when he saw Carson, with shaking fingers, fumble for his sheath-knife, he decided the end had come. The man was in a funk and was going ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... at him, speechless, shuddering miserably in the boisterous rush of wind that wrapped his wet garments about him like a sheath of ice. ...
— From the Car Behind • Eleanor M. Ingram
... Henri Quatre had crossed the frontier on a white charger and hoisted the old gonfalon with its 'fleur-de-lis.' Then, indeed, his own career would be opened, and the sword of the Kerouecs drawn from its sheath. Day after day he expected to hear of revolts, of which his noble father was doubtless the soul. But the Marquis, though a sincere Legitimist, was by no means an enthusiastic fanatic. He was simply a very proud, ...
— The Parisians, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... into our hands. I hope that if my efforts at the last hour do not succeed in bringing our opponents to see eye to eye with us and in maintaining the peace, we shall, with God's help, so wield the sword that we shall restore it to its sheath again with honor. ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... to his feet, slid his knife into its sheath, and announced in good enough English that he was ready. He had youth, the slender, hardy, perfectly moulded figure of the Indian, a coloring and a countenance that were not of the white and not of the brown. When he went a-trading up the river, past the thickly settled country, past the falls, ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... a soft gleam flashed from his sword, above his head, as with the hand that held it he fingered his slender mustache, and how another gleam followed it as he reversed the blade and let it into its sheath. Then my eyes lost him; for Gholson had taken his place under the window and was beckoning ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... feeling the handle of his revolver in the belt and loosening his knife in its sheath. He picked up a blue poncho lined with red from the table, and put it over his head. "Adios, look after the things in my sleeping-room, and if you hear from me no more, give up the box to Paquita. There is not much of value there, except my new serape from ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... sacred to the moon, were chattering in the trees. There was a statue in this place, carved out of black stone, in the likeness of a woman, having enamelled eyes and three rows of breasts, with the lower part of her body confined in a sheath; and upon the glistening pedestal of this statue chameleons sunned themselves with distended throats. Round about Melicent were nodding armaments of roses and gillyflowers and narcissi and amaranths, and many violets and white lilies, and other flowers of all ...
— Domnei • James Branch Cabell et al
... plague, and instead of words there comes through his set teeth a hoarse, hissing sound as of the great rock serpent in its wrath. His glance falls upon Joseph's garment, the gleaming sword leaps from its sheath and he turns to seek the slave. She lays her hand lightly upon his arm, great Egypt's shield, a pillar of living brass; she nestles in the grizzly beard like some bright flower in a weird forest; she kisses the bronzed cheek as Judas did that of our dear Lord and soothes ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... When great passions and great aspirations stirred a country, shapes like these formed along its shores to be the sheath of its valour. Nothing Claude had ever seen or heard or read or thought had made it all so clear as these untried wooden bottoms. They were the very impulse, they were the potential act, they were the "going over," the drawn arrow, the great unuttered ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... a line. They did not speak. She took off her thimble and laid it in its velvet sheath. She gathered up the scattered skeins of linen and silk, straightening each with a little pull, and laid them in the case. She stabbed a needle into the tiny cushion and dropped the scissors into their pocket. Then she rose deliberately, her chair scraping the polished boards as she ...
— Unfinished Portraits - Stories of Musicians and Artists • Jennette Lee
... your breath. If Sally hadn't stuck up so gamely for you I'd have shot you. But at that I wasn't looking for you. Now clear out of here." I picked up my gun from the bureau and dropped it in its sheath. For the life of me I could not leave without another look at Miss Sampson. The scorn in her eyes did not wholly hide the sadness. She who needed friends was experiencing the bitterness of misplaced trust. That came out in ...
— The Rustlers of Pecos County • Zane Grey
... in Cluichre. The pair remained behind, and the warriors went on. Cuillius came to them, and they heard not the spy. Fergus' sword happened to be beside him. Cuillius drew it out of its sheath, and left the sheath empty. Cuillius ...
— The Cattle-Raid of Cualnge (Tain Bo Cualnge) • Unknown
... arms were all his own, our Europe's growth, Which two worlds bless for civilising both; The musket swung behind his shoulders broad, And somewhat stooped by his marine abode, But brawny as the boar's; and hung beneath, 490 His cutlass drooped, unconscious of a sheath, Or lost or worn away; his pistols were Linked to his belt, a matrimonial pair— (Let not this metaphor appear a scoff, Though one missed fire, the other would go off); These, with a bayonet, not so free from rust As when the arm-chest held its brighter ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... deep mourning, and having an expression of profound sorrow on her charming features. Her companion was a portly handsome man, also dressed in a full suit of the deepest mourning, with the finest of lace at his bosom and wrists, and a sword in a black sheath by his side. These persons were Mr. Kneebone ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... The health of the Queen in a golden cup!— The quarry is hunting the hound! Like steel the stars gleam through the night On armored waves beneath,— As England's honor cold and bright We bear her sword in sheath! ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... a coal-vessel—a leathern belt round his waist, sustaining a knife in a leathern sheath. Probably he uses it to eat his dinner with; ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... appeared more open. Judge of my excitement when I saw Mr. Benson unbutton his trousers and pull out an immense cock. Oh, dear, how large it looked; it almost frightened me. With his fingers he placed the head between the lips of Mrs. Benson's sheath, and then letting go his hold, and placing both arms so as to support her legs, he pushed it all right into her to the hilt at once. I was thunderstruck that Mrs. Benson did not shriek with agony, it did seem such a large thing to thrust right into her belly. However, ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... coat pocket, he drew forth not his trusty revolver, but a small diary with a red cover and a dainty ivory knobbed pencil in the small sheath. Dost thou remember, honored reader, when thou hadst one of them given thee to keep the record of thy important life? I bet thou dustest. Perhaps, for ten successive days were daily jottings put down; if very persistent ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... of the crossing of the Thames at Cookham is supported by a certain amount of pre-historic evidence, worth about as much as such evidence ever is, and about as little. Two Neolithic flint knives have been found there, a bronze dagger sheath and spear-head, a bronze sword, and a whole collection or store of other bronze spear-heads. Such as it is, it is a considerable collection for ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... seaman's alehouse has a cellar of spirits!" And now the stick danced. But as the Dutchman turned away with a gesture of disapproval, the Czar's fury broke loose. From time to time his disposition necessitated such outbreaks. His sabre flew out of its sheath; like a madman, he broke all the bottles on the dresser and cut all the legs off the chairs and tables. Then he made a pile out of the fragments, and prepared to burn the ...
— Historical Miniatures • August Strindberg
... searched and prodded about the deserted deck to whip upward at the audible hiss of wet carbide. Another appeared; the rifle came slowly to the man's shoulder as a pair of jaws gaped glowingly beyond the windows and an eye stared unblinkingly from its hornlike sheath. It crashed madly against the walls of the wireless room to shatter the glass and make kindling of the woodwork of the sash. Thorpe fired once and again before the specter vanished, and he knew with sickening certainty that the wounds were only messages to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... discovered a sharp knife lying near him, which had accidentally fallen from its sheath. He drew it to him with his feet, and succeeded noiselessly in cutting the cords. Still he hardly dared to stir, for there was danger that the slightest movement might rouse his vigilant foes. The savages had stacked their five guns near the fire. Cautiously he crept towards them, and ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... ounce]vj of bloody fluid in a localised cavity between colon, kidney, stomach, and liver. Lower quarter of right kidney in half its width separated from main part of organ, yellow in colour, and enveloped in disintegrating clot. Blood-staining of psoas sheath; no injury to vertebral ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins
... from the agricultural state, to occupy her skill and industry. Even the art of the seamstress is only practised by the Indian woman on a few things. She devotes much of her time to making moccasons and quill-work. Her husband's leggins are carefully ornamented with beads; his shot-pouch and knife-sheath are worked with quills; the hunting-cap is garnished with ribbons; his garters of cloth are adorned with a profusion of small white beads, and coloured worsted tassels are prepared for his leggins. In the spring, the corn-field is planted by her and the youngsters, in a vein ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 459 - Volume 18, New Series, October 16, 1852 • Various
... the voluminous folds of the big coat, which had been originally designed to fit Garth's own proportions, and against the high fur collar her delicate cameo face, with its white skin and scarlet lips and its sombre, night-black eyes, emerged like some vivid flower from its sheath. ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... expressionless. Then he gathered his legs under him, sprang noiselessly to his feet, laid his right hand on the hilt of my knife, and his left one on his own, drew both bright blades with a simultaneous and graceful movement, and drove his knife into my sheath, mine ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... condition, as far as putrefaction was concerned, as perfect as when alive. A big gash had been cut in the ham clear to the bone and the sun had dried the flesh in this. I was so awful hungry that I took my sheath knife and cut a big steak which I devoured as I walked along, without cooking or salt. Some may say they would starve before eating such meat, but if they have ever experienced hunger till it begins to draw down the life itself, they will find the impulse of self preservation ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... as ripened corn Which Autumn's kiss frees,—grain from sheath,— Such was her hair, while her eyes beneath Showed Spring's faint violets ...
— Frederic Lord Leighton - An Illustrated Record of His Life and Work • Ernest Rhys
... Merciful be praised!" cried Hadassah. Abishai, with a muttered curse, thrust back his thirsty blade into its sheath. ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... a radish shkin, Ne'er finds the time to molder; Shee how it shleeps its sheath within! I put it on my shoulder. While curs and bitches yelp at me, I roam, Like ...
— The Little Clay Cart - Mrcchakatika • (Attributed To) King Shudraka
... The wind is roaming by Across the heath— The Wind's a tell-tale and will bear your sigh To dim the smiling gladness of the sky Or kill the spring's first violets that lie In purple sheath— ...
— Fires of Driftwood • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... every side. Little Johnny Sheehan broke out into wild screaming, but the men took no notice of him. O'Brien was bent backward to the deck, the tureen cover under his neck. Gorman was shoved forward. Some one had thrust a large sheath-knife into ...
— When God Laughs and Other Stories • Jack London
... descended the bridge to the upper deck. Here, on a platform, were the two batteries of three ray-guns apiece, mounted on swivels, and firing in any direction on the port and starboard sides respectively. The guns were enclosed in a thin sheath of osmium, through which the lethal rays penetrated unchanged; about them, thick shields of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... of the boy was very full as he passed out of the hotel, so full that he scarcely noticed the whip of cold air that stung his face or the white mantle that lay upon the streets, wrapping in a silver sheath all that was sordid, all that was dirty and unpicturesque in that corner of Paris. The human note had been touched in that moment in the salle-a-manger, and his ears still tingled to its sound. Alarm, disgust, and ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... world had coated her heart with a tolerably hard husk; but there was a heart beneath the stony sheath, and by some occult sympathy Katherine had pierced to the hidden fount of feeling, and her chaperon found there was more flavor and warmth in ...
— A Crooked Path - A Novel • Mrs. Alexander
... for I may not be delivered of this sword but by a knight, but he must be a passing good man of his hands and of his deeds, and without villainy or treachery, and without treason. And if I may find such a knight that hath all these virtues, he may draw out this sword out of the sheath, for I have been at King Rience's it was told me there were passing good knights, and he and all his knights have assayed it and none can speed. This is a great marvel, said Arthur, if this be sooth; I will myself assay ...
— Le Morte D'Arthur, Volume I (of II) - King Arthur and of his Noble Knights of the Round Table • Thomas Malory
... the waist, and the other was a white man in his shirt-sleeves, wearing petticoat breeches, a Monterey cap upon his head, a red bandanna handkerchief around his neck, and gold ear-rings in his ears. He had a long, plaited queue hanging down his back, and a great sheath-knife dangling from his side. Another man, evidently the captain of the party, stood at a little distance as they lifted the chest out of the boat. He had a cane in one hand and a lighted lantern in the other, although the moon was shining as bright as day. He wore jack-boots and a handsome ...
— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle
... daybreak next morning outside the Vane Arms with all the air of one setting out on his travels in distant lands. He had a field glass slung over his shoulder, and a very large sheath knife buckled by a belt round his waist, and carried with the cool bravado of the bowie knife of a cowboy. But in spite of this backwoodsman's simplicity, or perhaps rather because of it, he eyed with rising ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... touched it with his foot, saying, Open, and it opened like a shell. And he said: See! it has in it a very strange kernel, preserved safe and sound only because all its adventures added to its case, sheath after sheath. And all the leaves are still there, a very little mouldy, and the silk that tied them, and the seal. And the goddess said: But what is it after all? And Maheshwara said: It is a case of urgency, that all came to nothing in the end, being a letter that never even reached its ...
— The Substance of a Dream • F. W. Bain
... for hours waiting in that spectral place, my eyes riveted on the tower and its golden cap of moonshine. I remember that my head felt void and light, as if my spirit were becoming disembodied and leaving its dew-drenched sheath far below. But the most curious sensation was of something drawing me to the tower, something mild and kindly and rather feeble, for there was some other and stronger force keeping me back. I yearned to move nearer, but I could not drag ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... Misfortune followed misfortune. The Chin-kang, deprived of their magical weapons, began to lose heart. To complete their discomfiture, Huang T'ien Hua brought to the attack a matchless magical weapon. This was a spike 7 1/2 inches long, enclosed in a silk sheath, and called 'Heart-piercer.' It projected so strong a ray of light that ...
— Myths and Legends of China • E. T. C. Werner
... expansion of Fisette's chest worked palpitating beneath the great arms, and, just ere endurance reached its limit and the trees began to swim before Manson's eyes, his little finger touched the haft of the sheath knife that hung at Fisette's back. The touch ran through Fisette's laboring frame like fire, for he had reached the point where the world seemed dipped in blood. Slowly Manson pushed down his hand, never relaxing his titanic embrace. But the instant his ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... rapidity; two of those were on the boulevard close to the place where I was. I saw a horseman suddenly bound over the first; he wore a tuft of red-and-white feathers in his hat. I saw that it was a staff officer, doubtless carrying some despatch to headquarters. He continued his way, sabre in its sheath, head erect, proud and calm in the midst of insulting shouts from the crowd; stones were thrown at him and sticks at his horse's legs; he looked as if he were parading upon the Place ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... fades To brown above the yellow blades, Whose rustling sheath enswathes the corn That bursts its chrysalis in scorn Longer to lie in ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... funnel-topped, and drooping low to expose the pretty stockings; deep gauntlets of finest white heretic skin, from the factory of the Holy Inquisition, formerly part of the person of a lady of rank; rapier with sheath crusted with jewels and hanging from a broad baldric upholstered with ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... man, what's up now? How goes the war?" said Hawbury. "But what the mischief's the matter? You look cut up. Your brow is sad; your eyes beneath flash like a falchion from its sheath. What's happened? You look half ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... spotlight, Forrester thought at first. Then he saw that the light was coming from the woman herself—or from her clothing. The dress she wore was a satinlike sheath that glowed with an aura even brighter than the room. Her blonde hair picked up the radiance and glowed, too, illuminating a face that was at once regal, inviting and passionate. It was, Forrester thought, a hell of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Said now the figure motionless, with sword In hand. This sovereign soul seemed to commune With self beneath his metal sheath; yet soon And suddenly, with tranquil voice said he, "Princes, your craven spirit wearies me. No phantom—only man am I. Arise! I like not to be dreaded otherwise Than with the fear to which I'm used; know me, For it is ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... name given to a pair of metal rods attached to a sword-sheath, and used like chop-sticks. They were ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... drawing his sword. "I never shall be able to get over this," thought Yussuf. "In a few seconds it will prove to be but a piece of palm wood, and I shall lose my head among the jeers of the people. However, my trust is in God; and to Shitan with all Moussul merchants." He took, however, his sheath and sham sword from his belt, and raised it in the scabbard over ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... place, never sheath your swords,' says he, 'until you have obtained full and ample justice.' This dreadful alternative of either deserting our country in the extremest hour of her distress, or turning our arms against it, which is the apparent object, unless Congress can be compelled into instant compliance, ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 4 (of 5) • John Marshall
... knife in its sheath in his girdle, loosened for dinner. As the first man, with a knowingly kindled eye, watches the filling of the poisoned chalice (truly but a very small tin mug, to be prosaic), and, tossing back his head, tosses the contents into himself, ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... of several possible ways of escaping, I considered each at length, found it faulty, and dismissed it. Meanwhile, not a sound had been made. I had not moved, but something had to be done. Slowly I worked the small folding axe from its sheath, and with the slowest of movements placed it in my right coat-pocket with the handle up, ready for instant use. I did this with studied deliberation, lest a sudden movement should release the springs that held ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... far more sweet than is the standing brook: If long unworn you leave a cloak or gown, Moths will it mar, unless you thereto look: Again, if that upon a shelf you place or set a book, And suffer it there still to stand, the worms will soon it eat: A knife likewise, in sheath laid up, the rust will ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VI • Robert Dodsley
... upper fin, and both fins being developed on the same side of it. Lopsidedness as such, therefore, was not to be regarded as an embryological character in ancient fishes; what might be regarded as such was the absence of a bony sheath to the end of the "chorda" found in the more developed fishes. Further traces of this bony structure were shown to exist, among other piscine resemblances, in the Amphibia. Finally the embryological facts now observed in the ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... meeting the eyes of Cummins as he made his way among the men. There was a new burst of song as Mukee and his Crees pulled down a second caribou, but the boy paid no attention to the fresh excitement. He thrust his knife into its sheath and ran—ran swiftly through the packs of dogs fighting and snarling over the scraps that had beep thrown to them; past Maballa who was watching the savage banquet around the big fire, and into the little ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... to shrink into himself and to begin to sparkle all over—I can't describe it: that is the effect he produced—he seemed to settle down like a cat going to spring. Extry's hand travelled round for his sheath-knife, and yet it moved indecisively, as though half afraid. And then, just as I felt that Extry would die from being looked at in that way, he hung his head, turned to the door, and walked out sheepishly according to order. He ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... common kitchen table. He turned it upside down, took his Scout axe from its sheath, knocked the legs off, fastened a piece of clothesline to the butts of ...
— A Little Book for Christmas • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... saying, he seized the staff he had driven into the ground, and leaving one half of it fixed there, showed it to be a sheath that concealed a tolerably long rapier; and, what may be called its hilt being planted in the ground, he swiftly, coolly, and deliberately threw himself upon it, and in an instant the bloody point and half the steel blade ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... raised her arms to her head, her hair slid darkly across her face, and she turned and disappeared. He moved away, but the memory rankled delicately in his imagination, returned the following morning. The thought lingered of that body, as fine as ivory, unguessed, hidden, in a coarse sheath. ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... their tinsel livery, And indistinguishable at a sweeping glance, They muster, maybe, As lives wide in irrelevance; A world of her own has each one underneath, Detached as a sword from its sheath. ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... several bill-hooks, a good hatchet with hammer head and nail-puller should be in the tool kit. In addition, each man should be provided with a belt knife and a machete with sheath. Collins makes the best machetes. His axes, too, are excellent. The bill-hook, called foice in Brazil, is a most valuable tool for clearing away small trees, vines, and under-growths. It is marvellous how quickly an experienced hand can clear the ground in a forest with ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... opposite direction up the street's animated vista. He followed their eyes and saw a sight that made him halt—Lorry, her satin-slippered feet stepping delicately along the grimy pavements, her pale skirts emerging from the rich sheath of her cloak. Beside her, responding to a beckoning hand, a carriage rattled down upon Chrystie and Aunt Ellen. They had a carriage and she had had to go ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... shalt lie close hid with nature, and canst not be afforded to the Capitol or the Exchange. The world is full of renunciations and apprenticeships, and this is thine: thou must pass for a fool and a churl for a long season. This is the screen and sheath in which Pan has protected his well-beloved flower, and thou shalt be known only to thine own, and they shall console thee with tenderest love. And thou shalt not be able to rehearse the names of thy ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... image out the unknown thing That hides the past world, like to a set sun Which still elsewhere may rouse a brighter spring— Death laughs at all you weep for:—look upon This hourly dread of all! whose threaten'd sting Turns life to terror, even though in its sheath: Mark how its lipless mouth grins ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... all sides: onely out of their wisdome they know how to spare Agag and the great ones, and bee sure they anger not their great Masters, and meddle with their matches: whereas it is the property of fire that comes from above, to spare the yeelding sheath, and melt the resisting mettall, to passe by the lower roofes, and strike the towred pinacle, as Nathan, David; Elias, Ahab; John, Herod; Jonas, Ninivie; &c. Note also in all their proceeding with ...
— A Coal From The Altar, To Kindle The Holy Fire of Zeale - In a Sermon Preached at a Generall Visitation at Ipswich • Samuel Ward
... Toby skinned the lynx, beginning at the hind feet, and drawing the skin whole and inside out over the carcass. It was then pulled snugly over a board shaped for the purpose, with the fur next the board and the fleshy side out, drawn taut and secured. Now, with a sheath knife, Skipper Zeb scraped it carefully, removing every particle of fat or flesh that adhered, and when this was completed to his satisfaction he hung the board with the pelt upon it from a peg ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... then, drawing his long-bladed hunting knife from its sheath, he began to search the forest. Henry Ware had been long a captive among the Northwestern Indians, and he had learned their lore. He had gained from the medicine men and old squaws a knowledge of herbs, and now he was to put it to use. He sought first for the bitter root ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... nodded. He had drawn the fangs of the wolf, and now that he no longer feared, a sudden, unexplainable feeling of sympathy took possession of him. Yet he drew farther away before slipping his own gun into its sheath. For a time neither spoke, their eyes peering across the ridge. Murphy sputtered and swore, but his victorious companion neither spoke nor moved. There were several distant smokes out to the northward now, evidently the answering signals of different ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... was in a sheath and Pedro could just reach the point. His only hope was to work it loose, then with a quick motion jump it out, and catch it as it fell. It was a desperate chance, but all that ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... society, and what was to him the cream of existence, while it lasted. He fitted himself out with new shirts and buckskins, sashes, caps, neips, and moccasins, and when he was not on duty showed himself like a hero, knife in sheath, a weather-browned and sinewy figure. To dance, sing, drink, and play the violin, and have the scant dozen white women, the half-breeds, and squaws of Mackinac admire him, was a voyageur's heaven—its brief duration being its charm. For he was a ...
— The Black Feather - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... we must be prepared to meet him," said Will, loosening a large hunting-knife in its sheath and examining ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains - Wandering Will in the Land of the Redskin • R.M. Ballantyne
... whimsical and picturesque. She darted about in magnificent furs and pumps and close-clinging gowns, though that was the day of full skirts. Her hats were large and floppy. When she wriggled out of her moleskin coat at luncheon, she looked like a slim black weasel. Her satin dress was a mere sheath, so conspicuous by its severity and scantness that every one in the dining-room stared. She ate nothing but alligator-pear salad and hothouse grapes, drank a little champagne, and took cognac in her coffee. She ridiculed, in the raciest ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... in heaven; and no matter what may befall the body in which it was buried it will abide to that hour we call the resurrection and transfiguration and at the shout, the voice and action of the trump of God will come forth in the glow of unfolded and eternal beauty as the sheath, the house, the home, the perfect dwelling place, the royal robe of the souls the Lord shall bring with Him; while the living shall flash forth in the same ...
— Why I Preach the Second Coming • Isaac Massey Haldeman
... I use a meerschaum myself, for I DO NOT, though I have owned a calumet since my childhood, which from a naked Pict (of the Mohawk species) my grandsire won, together with a tomahawk and beaded knife-sheath; paying for the lot with a bullet-mark on his right check. On the maternal side I inherit the loveliest silver-mounted tobacco-stopper you ever saw. It is a little box- wood Triton, carved with charming ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... rank was sitting cross-legged at the farther end of the tent. He wore a handsome dark-red tunic trimmed with gold and leopard skin, and was shod in tall black-and-red leather boots of Chinese shape. A beautiful sword with a solid silver sheath inlaid with large pieces of coral and malachite was ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... he must not look upon the sea. He appeared habited in the usual guy style: a gaudy fancy helmet, a white shirt with limp Byronic collar, a broad-cloth frock coat, a purple velvet gold-fringed loin-wrap: a theatrical dagger whose handle and sheath bore cut- glass emeralds and rubies, stuck in the waist-belt; brass anklets depended over naked feet, and the usual beadle's cloak covered the whole. Truly a change for the worse since Tuckey's day, when a "savage magnificence" ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... trophies here of East Indian warfare. I saw Rob Roy's gun, rifled and of very large bore; and a beautiful pistol, formerly Claverhouse's; and the sword of Montrose, given him by King Charles, the silver hilt of which I grasped. There was also a superb claymore, in an elaborately wrought silver sheath, made for Sir Walter Scott, and presented to him by the Highland Society, for his services in marshalling the clans when George IV. came to Scotland. There were a thousand other things, which I knew must be most curious, yet did not ask nor care about them, because so many curiosities ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... took out his knife from its sheath, and gave it to one of his servants, named Milichus, to be ground. He directed Milichus to be particularly attentive to the sharpening of the point. Before Milichus brought back the knife, Scevinus directed him to prepare bandages such as would be suitable for binding up wounds ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... by manhood sudden crowned, Went walking by his horses to the plough, For the first time that morn. No soldier gay Feels at his side the throb of the gold hilt (Knowing the blue blade hides within its sheath, As lightning in the cloud) with more delight, When first he belts it on, than he that day Heard still the clank of the plough-chains against The horses' harnessed sides, as to the field They went to make it fruitful. O'er the hill The sun looked ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... frequently at aiming at a mark, as to have acquired very considerable skill in the use of them. I had now several arrows of hard wood tipped with sharp fish-bones, and some with iron nails, in a kind of pouch behind me; in its sheath before me was my American knife, which I used for taking the plants from the ground. I had a basket made of the long grass of the island, slung around me, which served to contain our treasures; and I carried ...
— The Little Savage • Captain Frederick Marryat
... well-girt horse, and the foaming rivals hardly allowed themselves to be pulled up at the edge of a steep grassy slope, where already here and there a yellow cowslip bud was beginning to break its pale silken sheath. At length their impatient dancing was over, and they stood quiet, resigned to the will of the incomprehensible beings who controlled them. But Mildred's blood was dancing still and she abandoned ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... simple as to be contained within the hollow of an acorn sheath. Let it suffice that she has the left ear of Shan Tien, even as Ming-shu has the right, but on which side his hearing is better it might ...
— Kai Lung's Golden Hours • Ernest Bramah
... needle in front of a rifle. Some bullets whistled above us, but they did not know we were there, they were not looking for us. When we got within sight of the mound of our line, we took a breather for a moment; one of us let a sigh go, another spoke. Another turned round bodily, and the sheath of his bayonet rang out against a stone. Instantly a rocket shot redly up from the International Trench. We threw ourselves flat on the ground, closely, desperately, and waited there motionless, with the terrible star hanging over ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... went so far as to draw the knife. I was paralyzed with fear, then suddenly I remembered that when she was our servant, and used to get out of temper and sulk, I could always calm her by singing to her. So I began to sing hymns. Instantly she forgot her jealousy and put the knife back into its sheath. She knew the sound of the singing, and sat listening to it with a rapt face; the baboons, too, crowded in at the entrance of the cave to listen. I must have sung for an hour or more, all the hymns that I could remember. It was ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... the murder was to be, I drew my long, keen dagger from its sheath, And stole on down the marble stair-way, past The throne-room, to the curtained arch wherein My brothers lay asleep. No dream beset The guilty Dead-Sea of their rest. They lay Engulfed in pillows, like ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... hardly power sufficient to ripen maize; but, with well-prepared ground, and in a favourable position, it might be sufficiently advanced by the beginning of autumn to serve as a vegetable. The outside sheath being taken off and the waving fibres removed, let the ears be placed in boiling water, where they should remain for about 25 minutes (a longer time may be necessary for larger ears than ordinary); and, when sufficiently boiled and well drained, they may be sent to table whole, and ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... constructed, and have their leaves set thus, opposite, on the sides of their tubular stems, alternately, as they ascend. But in most of them there is also a peculiar construction, by which, at the base of the sheath, or enclosing tube, each leaf articulates itself with the rest of the stem at a ringed ...
— Proserpina, Volume 1 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... length, her Cunt closely nipping Cupid's battering ram, her arms tightly holding me almost like a vice, her lips played with mine in long kisses, our tongues darting into each other's mouths in the most luscious manner, all the while the inner folds of her tight fitting sheath kept me prisoner, and treated my Cock to the most delicious contractions and pressures, till I was so inflamed, Cupid's charger plunged on his mad career once more, making my dark beauty writhe and squirm in the excess of her ...
— Forbidden Fruit • Anonymous
... stood before the sculptors were caused to present to them the piles of gold, and the soldiers that stood behind the sculptors were caused to sheath their ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... its sheath and looked at it carefully in the dim light. He saw at once by the bright gleam that it was in excellent order, and well polished. He tried the edge with his thumb; it was as keen as a razor. He stepped back two ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... was on the table, and the men, each with his pint-stoup before him, had seated themselves round, there came a knocking at the door—loud, insistent, imperious. Each man ran his hand down his side to the loaded whip or jockteleg (the smuggler's sheath-knife) which he ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the elbow, red breeches of cloth or silk, and shields higher by half a foot than their heads, with two holes of the ordinary size, so that the antagonist can be seen through them. Each shall have a lance and two swords, one of the latter girded about him, the sheath drawn up to his hips, the other fastened to the shield, so that he can have ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various
... in the fog, close to the canoe, and then his heart fell from his throat to its usual place. Tayoga climbed lightly into the canoe, no easy feat in such a situation, put on his belt and replaced the knife in the sheath. Robert asked him nothing, he had no need to do so. The sigh that was almost a groan ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Under such conditions her fate would have been unspeakable degradation, and probably death; but, sir, I fought and bled for her, not once but many times, and eventually I killed one of them with my sheath-knife, and I remember, to this hour, how his blood gushed over my hands and arms, and sickened me. After that they waited hourly to avenge his death, and get me out of their way once and for all, but I had my long knife, and they but ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Cuillius went where Medb and Fergus wantoned. The pair dallied behind while the warriors continued their march. Cuillius stole near them and they perceived not the spy. It happened that Fergus' sword lay close by him. Cuillius drew it from its sheath and left the sheath empty. Then Cuillius betook himself to Ailill. "Well?" said Ailill. "Well, then," replied [3]Cuillius;[3] "thou knowest the signification of this token. As thou hast thought," continued Cuillius, ...
— The Ancient Irish Epic Tale Tain Bo Cualnge • Unknown
... year—it is very much like the insect you are holding, only, all that can be seen of its wings are small swellings, which grow longer each time the animal changes its skin. This swelling is a sort of sheath to the beautiful gauzy wings which distinguish all the Neuroptera, and the dragon-fly ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... ropes were tied in the loops, Bann's rifle was stood beside his bayonet, the muzzle beneath the front loop; we aligned our sloping ridgepole at right angles to the street, drove in our front and rear pins and tied the ropes, and then I, creeping into the tent with my bayonet in its sheath, set it upright under the end of the ridge. Then quickly we pegged down the sides and back, stretching them well out, laid back the front flaps of our kennel, set our equipment in the double doorway, ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... at the mantelpiece. His eyes were filled with horror. Very slowly, and with the air of one engaged upon some interesting task, Oliver Hilditch had removed the blood-stained sheath of cotton wool from around the thin blade of a marvellous-looking stiletto, on which was also a long ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he commanded, and one of the men drew Roland's sword from its sheath, flinging it along the deck to Kurzbold's feet. The others now came up, bringing the two lieutenants, both gagged, with their arms tied behind them. Roland ceased his struggles, which ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... forget to bring with them three or four strong sheath knives, for skinning the seals and any other use for which they were applicable; and, to add to their stock of cutlery implements, the skipper had presented Fritz with a serviceable bowie knife, whose broad double-dagger-like ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... every speck of dust from the Doctor's coat and seeing him seated in an armchair by the open window, took out a long stocking of blue-mixed yarn which she was knitting for his winter wear, and, pinning her knitting-sheath on her side, was soon trotting her needles contentedly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 3, No. 18, April, 1859 - [Date last updated: August 7, 2005] • Various
... drawn the sword, and shrined the sheath Upon our father's tomb; And when the foe shall sleep in death, We'll sheath it o'er ...
— The Yankee Tea-party - Or, Boston in 1773 • Henry C. Watson
... shell? While the garnered greed of ages lay in leash beneath my breast, Did you deem an oath of honor more than is a royal jest? While you slept my masters labored! In the metal of my frame Molded they the mighty promise of a continent in flame! In the casting of my carriage, in the boring of my sheath, They have riveted my armor ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... following thee." 535 He crossed the threshold—and a clang Of angry steel that instant rang. To his bold brow his spirit rushed, But soon for vain alarm he blushed, When on the floor he saw displayed, 540 Cause of the din, a naked blade Dropped from the sheath, that careless flung Upon a stag's huge antlers swung; For all around, the walls to grace, Hung trophies of the fight or chase: 545 A target there, a bugle here, A battle-ax, a hunting spear, And broadswords, bows, and arrows store, With the tusked trophies of the boar. Here grins ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... and self-possession—all combined to make him a formidable stormer of a girl's heart. And as he looked on her—on her clear almost luminous face and great eyes, shrined in the drooping lace shawl, through which a jewel or two in her black hair glimmered, her upright slender figure in its dark sheath, and the hand, white and cool, that held her shawl together over her breast—he had a pang of hope and despair at once, at the sudden sense of need of this splendid creature of God to be one with him, and reign with him over ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... superior knowledge of your friends, M. le Colonel," responded Deroulede, as he silently drew his sword from its sheath. ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... you can use it the whole day without resharpening, or at most with simply a stropping on a piece of wood or leather. But improper use of the knife, or the least knick, will spoil the edge and sometimes it will be quite difficult to get it back. Therefore the blade should always be protected by a sheath, never laid down or used for cutting raffia, or anything but the actual cutting of the graft. For this purpose a leather sheath worn on the front of the belt, as first used by Dr. Morris, is almost a necessity. This ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... Islands is doubtful. Finally, Crozet saw on the island on which he landed a white bird, which he mistook for a white pigeon, and argues that a country producing seeds for the nurture of pigeons must exist in the vicinity. This bird was probably the Sheath-bill (Chionarchus crozettensis) of the ...
— Essays on early ornithology and kindred subjects • James R. McClymont
... cold on the shore-head, and all the gameness out of it, for a ganger's bullet found his heart, for all that Kate Dol Beag thought she had it. But because John McCook was come of good folk, I took the dagger from Dol Beag's hand in the darkness, and wiped it clean, and put it back into the sheath, while folk were seeing to the wound on Bryde's shoulder, for a bullet had passed through it, even as Helen robbed Dol ...
— The McBrides - A Romance of Arran • John Sillars
... that they thought the drawn swords of the Danes cast their beams from afar off, and sparkled as if aflame. Moreover, their vision was so blunted that they could not so much as look upon the sword when it was drawn from the sheath: the dazzle was too much for their eyesight, which could not endure the glittering mirage. So Hrafn and many of his men were slain, and only six vessels slipped back to Norway to teach the king that it was not so easy to crush the ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... that for a second the lad could not move. But instantly, he realized that he must act. The man was attempting to draw his long knife. Thrusting out a hand, Dave gripped the point of the blade in its soft leather sheath so tightly that it could ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell |
