"Hard surface" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... attacked. Upon this groundwork of buff leather I had plates of thick and hard buffalo hide, tanned, overlapping like slates upon a roof. This armour was proof against either teeth or claws, as neither could hold upon the slippery and yielding hard surface of the leather tiles; at the same time the elephant could move its trunk with ease. Two circular apertures were cut out for the eyes, about six ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... the company dropped upon their knees and did their best to see. One or two thought they discerned something like a track; the others shook their heads and confessed that the smooth hard surface had no marks upon it which their eyes were sharp enough to discover. One said, "Maybe a child's foot could make a mark on it, but ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... gates of the spaceport and sped across the hard surface of the field. A moment later it came to a shuddering stop at the base of the giant ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... his seat in an omnibus that plied between the city and the seaside suburb of St. Kilda, three miles off. A cool breeze went; the hoofs of the horses beat a rataplan on the hard surface; the great road, broad enough to make three of, was alive with ...
— Australia Felix • Henry Handel Richardson
... suffer? During those first weeks he must have suffered terribly and horribly. There was no respite nor rest from the hard surface of the rock, and aching muscles could find no change from the cramped and perilous position. If he fell, it was damnation for his soul—all were agreed as ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... statement of the Indians, who said it was a "mai d'ovos," or mother of eggs, as they had pillaged the nest, which they had found near the edge of the water. The eggs were rather larger than a hen's, and regularly oval in shape, presenting a rough hard surface of shell. Unfortunately, the alligator was cut up ready for cooking when we returned to the schooner, and I could not therefore make a note of its peculiarities. The pieces were skewered and roasted over the fire, each man being his own ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... afternoon we had a hard surface. Scott started off at a great speed, Teddy [Evans] and I following. There was something wrong with my team or my sledge, as we had a desperate job to keep up at first. We did keep up all right, but ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... on top. These two operations of placing reinforcement and setting forms for another ring of wall took three days, so that the top surface of the wall to which new concrete was to be added, had become hard. This hard surface was very thoroughly washed and then coated with neat cement immediately before depositing the fresh concrete. Water was admitted to the tank as the work progressed, being kept about 20 ft. below the work ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... descending perpendicularly into darkness. Down the ladder Paton went, and I followed him. Arrived at the bottom, I turned to the left, led by an instinct or a fascination; passed along a passage barely wide enough to admit me, until I came against a smooth, hard surface. I passed my hand over it until I touched a knob or catch, which I pressed, and the surface gave way before me like a door. I stumbled forward, and found myself in a room of what was doubtless Herr Kragendorf's ...
— David Poindexter's Disappearance and Other Tales • Julian Hawthorne
... is commonly supposed to be a place in which the deer have a daily "bee" at road work all winter long and deliberately keep the snow hammered down so they can run on a hard surface everywhere within its limits. The fact is, the deer gather in a place where there is plenty of food and good shelter. The snow does not drift here, so the deer, by continually moving about, soon make a network of tracks in all directions, extending them as they ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... around in the dark and thought he had a mutiny on his hands. Presently he heard Jerry, up in front, hooking on the chain and clucking to the horses. Then the little Asiatics, without further orders, bent to their task and the big cage rolled out to the hard surface. Canhead apologized for his error. He stopped at a hydrant and washed the mud off the elephants' legs and gave 'em an ...
— David Lannarck, Midget - An Adventure Story • George S. Harney
... of papyrus, Eumenes II, King of Pergamus, a city of Asia Minor, invented or caused to be invented, a writing material made of dressed skins. These skins were not tanned but were dressed by another method which left them flexible but gave them a smooth hard surface which could be easily written on. This material was called, from the name of the city, pergamena, from which we get our "parchment." This term is now practically reserved for sheepskins which are harder than other skins ...
— Books Before Typography - Typographic Technical Series for Apprentices #49 • Frederick W. Hamilton
... eats us! This is why we go to so much trouble to make our houses secure, so that when the frost has hardened the thick layer of mud which we place each fall over the thatch of stones and driftwood, neither teeth nor claws can penetrate the hard surface." ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... land. It looked marvelously appealing, dark greens, bright yellows, and all the shades in between. He hurried forward, eager to explore what lay ahead. But as he drew closer, becoming more excited over its possibilities, he struck a cold hard surface which repelled him. It was like glass and through it Bart could see a poorly defined figure some distance away. Bart was intrigued. This was a mental barrier thrown up by the fellow on the other side. Well, he'd give the guy some competition. Bart concentrated on cracking the ...
— The Alternate Plan • Gerry Maddren
... outside the fort, they soon reached the steep part of the hill. In another minute, a merry laughing party were gliding down the side, one after the other, with headlong speed, the impetus sending them several hundred yards over the smooth hard surface of the snow beyond. Laurence, who sat in front, guiding Jeanie's sleigh, was delighted to find that it went further than any of the others. Up the hill again they soon came, the boys carrying the sleighs, and the girls scrambling up by ...
— The Trapper's Son • W.H.G. Kingston
... hard surface is unfavorable to the hound suggests, in a measure, the explanation of the wonderful faculty that all dogs in a degree possess of tracking an animal by the scent of the foot alone. Did you ever think why a dog's nose is always wet? Examine the ...
— Squirrels and Other Fur-Bearers • John Burroughs
... with the woodwork of the door, and did not project at all. This mouthpiece tapered all around inside, and terminated in a keyhole which was rubber-lined. On the other side of this keyhole was a hard surface, padded with rubber, but having just opposite the mouth of the keyhole a small orifice extending through to a metal surface. That metal surface was a section of one of the most powerful horseshoe magnets ever invented ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... at a massive bolt that secured the door. "Here," said Dex, wrenching it open for her. And they stepped out into thin sunlight, onto a hard surface of reddish ground that was crisscrossed with innumerable rounded furrows like the tracks old-fashioned, fifty-passenger airplane wheels used to make ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... way since he had left it. The windows had always been of a grim hideous glass, the stone shape of the place always squat and ugly, and the short flight of steps that led up to the heavy beetling door had always hinted, with their old hard surface, at a surly welcome and a reluctant courtesy. It was all ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole |
