"Scaling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... chiefly upon the creditor class, the people with fixed incomes and fixed salaries, the landlords, who have let at long leases, the people with pensions, endowed institutions, the Church, insurance companies, and the like. They are all being scaled down. They are all more able to stand scaling down ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells
... Andes of North America, which in California is known as the Sierras, but which in Oregon changes its name to the Cascades. Nature has thus provided a pathway for the Northern Pacific Road through these mountains, the scaling of which, on the other line, at an elevation of over seven thousand feet (a most wonderful triumph of engineering), cost the Central Pacific millions of dollars, and compelled them for seventy miles to maintain a grade of over one hundred ...
— Minnesota; Its Character and Climate • Ledyard Bill
... top of a high and steep mountain, well furnished with troops and artillery, and both from its natural and artificial strength was deemed impregnable. Putapichion came unexpectedly against this place, and soon scaling the difficult ascent, got possession of the ditch, set fire to the palisades and houses of the place with fire arrows, and very nearly succeeded in its capture. But the garrison collected in the only bastion which had escaped the flames, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... difficulties was added their want of means for attacking the place. There was no hope of procuring ladders long enough to reach the battlements, and the windows, besides being very narrow, were secured with iron bars. Scaling was therefore out of the question; mining was still more so, for want of tools and gunpowder; neither were the besiegers provided with food, means of shelter, or other conveniences, which might have enabled them to convert the siege into a blockade; and there ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott
... are so arranged that hair side faces hair side and flesh side faces flesh side. The visible effect of this arrangement is that two pages of clear writing alternate with two pages of faded writing, the faded appearance being caused by the ink scaling off from the less porous surface of the flesh side of the vellum.[22] As a matter of fact, the flesh side of the vellum showed faded writing long before modern time. To judge by the retouched characters on fol. 53r it would ...
— A Sixth-Century Fragment of the Letters of Pliny the Younger • Elias Avery Lowe and Edward Kennard Rand
... ravine and completely embowered the channel of the stream: to a place more strange and replete with gloom and horror no benighted traveller ever found his way. After a short pause we commenced scaling the opposite bank, which we did not find so steep as the other, and a few minutes' exertion ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... attack was made upon one of the Boer forts on the north. There seems to be little doubt that the enemy had some inkling of our intention, as the fort was found to have been so strengthened as to be impregnable without scaling ladders. The attacking force consisted of two squadrons of the Protectorate Regiment and one of the Bechuanaland Rifles, backed up by three guns. So desperate was the onslaught that of the actual attacking party—a forlorn hope, if ever there was one—fifty-three ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was now thrown off, and encouraged by the halloos of the falconer to join her companion. Both kept mounting, or scaling the air, as it were, by a succession of small circles, endeavoring to gain that superior height which the heron on his part was bent to preserve; and to the exquisite delight of the spectators, the contest was continued until all three were well-nigh mingled with the fleecy clouds, from ...
— The Betrothed • Sir Walter Scott
... effective. The battery 'blazed with cannon, swivels, and small-arms,' which fired point-blank at the men ashore and with true aim at the boats crowded together round the narrow landing-place. Undaunted though undisciplined, the men ashore rushed at the walls with their scaling-ladders and began the assault. The attempt was vain. The first men up the rungs were shot, stabbed, or cut down. The ladders were smashed or thrown aside. Not one attacker really got home. Meanwhile the leading ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... seizing and burning their military stores at the latter town. He certainly believed that they were all in retreat northwards, and great was his surprise when he heard from Lannes early on October 13th that his scouts, after scaling the hills behind Jena in a dense mist, had come upon the Prussian army. The news was only partly correct. It was only Hohenlohe's corps: for the bulk of that army, under Brunswick, was retreating northwards, and nearly stumbled upon the corps of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... SUN AND FROST.—Sun and frost cause scaling and hair cracks. For work in freezing weather the water, sand and gravel should be heated or salt used to retard freezing until the walk can be finished; it may then be protected from further action of the frost by covering it first with ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... lived in a vision the day before, he was surely living in one yet. The Zia who had been starved and beaten and driven out naked into the world, who had clutched his thin breast and sobbed, writhing upon the earth, where was he? He looked down upon his hands and saw the cracked and scaling palms, and it was as though they were not. He thrust back the covering from his chest and saw the spots there. But there were no lepers, there were no hunchbacks; there were only Zia and the light. He ...
— The Little Hunchback Zia • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... Astonishment never shook the foundations, nor did envy of greater heights tempt him to relinquish the security of his stronghold, for he saw none. Jugglers he saw running up ladders that overtopped him, and air-balloons scaling the empyrean; but the former came precipitately down again, and the latter were at the mercy of the winds; while he remained tranquil on his solid unambitious ground, fitting his morality to the laws, his conscience to his morality, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... next day they counted the minutes, until they saw the shadows thronging from the glen and scaling the mountain side. And, at last, they saw the door springing open, and the nine ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... and hedges—fighting with a river on one flank and a fortress on the t'other—parade manoeuvres—where, at the first check, the enemy retreats, and leaves you free, for the whole afternoon, to write off your successes to the Directory. Had you seen our fellows scaling the Alps, with avalanches of snow descending at every fire of the great guns—forcing pass after pass against an enemy, posted on every cliff and crag above us—cutting our way to victory by roads the hardiest hunter had seldom ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... me. I had long since lost sight of the Rata. In vain I scanned the smoke-laden horizon for a sight of her. I never saw her more. I could fancy Ludar stalking the deck, or scaling the masts wildly, in search of me; and then, when he found me not, with the cloud deep on his noble brow, crawling to his berth in the dark to tell himself that ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... now aimed again and again at the heads and corslets of Guisards, with something of the same exulting excitement as, only higher, more engrossing, and fiercer than, that with which the lads had taken aim at a wolf, or ridden after a fox. Scaling-ladders were planted and hurled down again; stones were cast from the battlements, crushing the enemy; and throughout Berenger's quick eye, alert movements, and great height and strength, made him a most valuable champion, often applauded by a low murmur of ...
— The Chaplet of Pearls • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Lochaber axes endeavored to cut through the abattis and chevaux-de-frize. For three hours the Highlanders struggled without the least appearance of discouragement. After a long and deadly struggle they penetrated the exterior defences and reached the breastwork; having no scaling ladders, they attempted to gain the summit by mounting on each others shoulders and partly by fixing their feet in holes they made with their swords, axes and bayonets in the face of the work, but no sooner did a man appear on top than he was hurled down by the defending troops. ...
— An Historical Account of the Settlements of Scotch Highlanders in America • J. P. MacLean
... I was studying and exploring in the borderland between the old life and the new; leaping at conclusions, and sometimes slipping; finding inspiration in common things, and interpretations in dumb things; eagerly scaling the ladder of learning, my eyes on star-diademmed peaks of ambition; building up friendships that should support my youth and enrich my womanhood; learning to think much of myself, and much more of my world,—while ...
— The Promised Land • Mary Antin
... with a new flutter at his heart. This upright fence was not meant for scaling; it was like a lot of area palings, as obvious and intentional an obstacle. And the whole place closed at twelve, did it? The flutter became a serious agitation as Pocket saw himself breaking the laws of the land as well ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... gallop is mingled with the clank of the loose and broken shoe. For, like the sin, the punishment is awful: he shall carry about for ages the phantom-body of the girl, knowing that her soul is away, sitting with the soul of his brother, down in the deep ravine, or scaling with him the topmost crags of the towering mountain-peaks. There are some who, from time to time, see the doomed man careering along the face of the mountain, with the lady hanging across the steed; and they say it always betokens a storm, such ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... who didst grant me that day, And before it not seldom had granted Thy help to essay. Carry on and complete an adventure,—my shield and my sword In that act where my soul was Thy servant, Thy word was my word,— Still be with me, who then at the summit of human endeavour And scaling the highest, man's thought could, gazed hopeless as ever On the new stretch of heaven above me—till, mighty to save, Just one lift of Thy hand cleared that distance—God's throne from man's grave! Let me tell out my tale ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... fort itself. Muskets, rifles, and sabers had been accumulated. A portable barricade had been constructed in the event of possible street fighting—a sort of wheeled framework that could be transformed into litters or scaling-ladders at will. Mess offices and kitchens were there that could feed a small army. Flags and painted signs carrying the open eye that had been adopted as emblematic of vigilance decorated the main room. A huge alarm bell had ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... trenches, nor any sign of that great test of courage when each man depends upon the strength of his own heart, and has no cover behind which to hide any fear that may possess him. What were those cheers? Still the football players, or our soldiers scaling the ridge? Was it only a freak of imagination that made us see masses of dark figures moving over that field in the mist? The guns were firing again continuously, at longer range, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... Fascinated, almost stupefied, we watched their miracles of form and unfathomable glory. It was as though the stockades of earth had fallen away. Palisaded, cliff on radiant cliff, the spires of the Unseeable lay bare. Ever since childhood one has dreamed of scaling the bulwarks of the clouds, of riding the ether on those strange galleons. Unconscious of their own beauty, they pass in dissolving shapes—now scudding on that waveless azure sea; now drifting with scant steerage way. ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... Eudoxus, that hee wished himselfe burnt with Phaeton, so he might stand over the Sunne to contemplate its nature; had hee lived in these daies, he might have enjoyed his wish at an easie rate, and scaling the heavens by this glasse, might plainely have discerned what hee so much desired. Keplar considering those strange discoveries which this perspective had made, could not choose but cry out in a prosopopeia and rapture ...
— The Discovery of a World in the Moone • John Wilkins
... had stopped falling by the time he had done his chores and breakfasted. The only benefit the storm had brought him was that it did away with the necessity of carrying water for his washing. He had acquired the agility of a cliff-dweller from scaling the embankment by means of the "toe-holts"; yet, at that, it was no easy matter to transport a bucket of water without ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... were quickly carried out. This trick of wall scaling was really not difficult for football men in daily practice. Dan's head was quickly above the gutter of the next roof. He pulled himself ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... warm, plain, or alkaline baths, or hot-water-and-soap washings; in those cases in which the scaling is abundant and adherent, washing with sapo viridis and hot water may be required. Baths of sal ammoniac, two to six ounces to the bath are also valuable in removing the scaliness. The tincture of green soap (tinctura saponis viridis) is especially valuable for ...
— Essentials of Diseases of the Skin • Henry Weightman Stelwagon
... too the Fish, if there is room for them; if not they are turned into fertilizer to keep them from scaling down the ...
— This Giddy Globe • Oliver Herford
... and found the thick vine. A moment later he was silently scaling the wall of the house, feeling his way carefully, testing every precarious foothold, dragging himself painfully upwards by means of the most ...
— Green Fancy • George Barr McCutcheon
... redoubled his challenges and his insults, like a man who is thoroughly persuaded that between arresting him and scaling Heaven there is no difference. As may well be imagined, such astounding remarks were not uttered without interruption, and warm altercations from the Cardinal de Bissy, who, nevertheless, could not stop the torrent. At last, carried away by anger and vexation, Bissy seized the Marechal ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XIV., His Court and The Regency, Complete • Duc de Saint-Simon
... Foedor's regiment formed the vanguard, charged into the town, pursuing the garrison, which only consisted of twelve hundred men, and obliged them to take refuge in the citadel. Pressed with an impetuosity the French were not accustomed to find in their enemies, and seeing that the scaling ladders were already in position against the ramparts, the captain Boucret wished to come to terms; but his position was too precarious for him to obtain any conditions from his savage conquerors, and he and his soldiers were made prisoners ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... is used for scaling low precipices, either of rock or ice, which sometimes come in the way, and which could not be surmounted without such aid. In long and dangerous excursions, especially among the higher Alps, one of the guides always carries a ladder; and there are frequent ...
— Rollo in Switzerland • Jacob Abbott
... English Socialists with regard to property are identical with those of most Anarchists (see Eltzbacher, "Der Anarchismus"). For instance, Proudhon taught: "We rob (1) by murder on the highway; (2) alone, or in a band; (3) by breaking into buildings, or scaling walls; (4) by abstraction; (5) by fraudulent bankruptcy; (6) by forgery of the handwriting of public officials, or private individuals; (7) by manufacture of counterfeit money; (8) by cheating; (9) by swindling; (10) by abuse of trust; (11) by ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker
... some reception of Lady Feenix's or a dinner party at the Gorings—Vivie as the child of a "fallen" woman had a prescriptive right of entrance to Diana's circle—he had not the slightest intention of running away with her, of nipping his career in two, just as he might be scaling the last heights to the citadel of fame: either as a politician of the new type, the type of high education, or as one of the giants of inductive science. Besides in 1912, if I mistake not, Dr. Smith-Woodward and Mr. Charles Dawson made that discovery of the remains of ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... into the parlor and saw the Prowley party tumbling over chairs, and scaling settees, in their haste to meet the cooling breezes of the piazza. But when they finally accomplished their purpose, and I was advancing with inquiries and congratulations, I started at seeing the surprise depicted in the countenance of Miss Hurribattle, as she gazed in the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XI., April, 1863, No. LXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics. • Various
... the victuals in an honest manner. You know that warriors may take as their own all food they find. I should like to see my brother-in-law Kolbein attack us by scaling these ramparts of ice, and see his men tumble down from above, and the ...
— Poet Lore, Volume XXIV, Number IV, 1912 • Various
... battle opened on the morning of the 27th inst., under excellent conditions, and it is now known to everyone how the crossing of the canal was effected by means of scaling ladders, and, in some instances, by the ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... retreat was impossible. The access to the rocks was difficult; a strong artillery protected all the positions. When the French advanced to the assault of this natural fortress, they could not at first reach the English lines. General Kellermann alone succeeded in scaling the steep slopes which led to the enemy, and was received by a deadly fire, which forced him to retire. Our cavalry superior to that of the English, was useless in this difficult attack; its only duty was constantly to protect the corps of infantry, ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... able to give very close attention to his angelic reasons, being occupied in watching the frequent falls people were having on the slippery street. Some I could see with ladders scaling the tower, and having reached the highest rung, falling headlong to the bottom. "Where do those fools try to get to?" I asked. "To a place that is high enough- -they are endeavouring to break into the treasury of the ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... "As scaling ladders, your honor," I replied. "It is possible that we may have some sword play ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... muff from her, rolled up her gloves and took a shot at the piano, then, laughing, unpinned her hat and sent it scaling away ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... animated by hate and despair, but they were scattered like chaff by mere handfuls of knights and men-at-arms. The Swiss have defended their mountains against the armies of despots, because they had mountains to defend, and were accustomed to scaling the rocks, and all good shots, just as the people of a town might hold their streets. I believe that you will hold Paris. I doubt whether the Germans will ever be able to enter your walls, but famine will enter, and, defend yourselves as obstinately as you may, the time must ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... snap. The roar of cannon shook the thin palmettos, and wild British cheers came from the lusty throats of the British veterans of Spain, as they advanced to the assault in close order—sixty men in front—with fascines and ladders for scaling the defences. Now a veritable storm of rockets hissed and sizzed into the American lines, while a light battery of artillery pom-pomed and growled upon the left flank. All was silence ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... sweep of desolation, but ventured not to march from behind their ramparts to assail the foe. Oleg draw his barges upon the shore and dragged them on wheels towards the city, that he might from them construct instruments and engines for scaling the walls. The Greeks were so terrified at this spectacle of energy, that they sent an embassage to Oleg, imploring peace, and offering to pay tribute. To conciliate the invader they sent him large presents of food and ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott
... instant the grand vizier perceiving that the populace had crowded the great square before the palace, and were scaling the walls in several places, said to the sultan, before he gave the signal: "I beg of your majesty to consider what you are going to do, since you will hazard your palace being destroyed; and who knows what fatal consequence may follow?" "My palace forced!" replied the sultan; "who can ...
— The Arabian Nights - Their Best-known Tales • Unknown
... said he to himself; "when the scaling ladder is up, the soldier follows, I suppose. I can only humbly thank them for giving my embrasure the preference. There he comes! ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... scrutinize the coast closely. Each of us has formed a mental picture of the Capronian seacoast from Bowen's manuscript, and it is not likely that any two of these pictures resemble each other, or that any of them resemble the coast as we shall presently find it. I have in view three plans for scaling the cliffs, and the means for carrying out each is in the hold. There is an electric drill with plenty of waterproof cable to reach from the ship's dynamos to the cliff-top when the Toreador is anchored at a safe distance ...
— The People that Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... their blue-green waters hurrying seawards—from stony heights of air into the mass of 'the restless wavy plain'; with their sides of rock rising in gigantic terrace after terrace up to the heavens; with their scaling pines, erect and slight, cone-head aspiring above cone-head, ambitious to clothe the bare mass with green, till failing at length in their upward efforts, the savage rock shot away and beyond and above them, ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald
... left, we saw a frowning, snow-clad ridge towering like an angry giant in the air, and we cried simultaneously, "Gray's Peak!" The terrific aspect of that mountain sent a momentary shiver through our veins as we thought of scaling it without a guide. We were in error, as we afterwards found, for the mountain was Torrey's Peak, not Gray's, which is not visible from Graymont, being hidden by two intervening elevations, Mount Kelso and Torrey's Peak. There are several points about a mile ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... now settling upon the two freshmen, Shirley Duncan and Sarah Howland. Their presence at Dol Vin's shop, the sobbing heard behind doors, and that wild run of the girl who tried to get away from the place by actually scaling a back fence, and who was recognized as the demure little Sarah, all this furnished plenty of material for ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... at the hymeneal altar. I assure you I did not tell of you; you betrayed yourselves. If you will talk in that confidential way on sofas, and call one another stealthily by your Christian names, and actually kiss at the foot of the stairs, while a clever detective is scaling them, apparently with her back toward you, you must only take the consequences, and be known prematurely as the hero and heroine of the forthcoming ...
— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu
... will believe always the worst of an enemy, the best of a friend—a credulous loyal fellow. And in Italy at War (DENT) he sets out to tell us a good deal that is interesting about the fine feats of our Italian Allies, especially of those Titanic gymnasts, the heaven-scaling Alpini. It is fair to warn the reader that it is a rather desultory scrap-book of the type the War has made common; fair also to add that some of the chapters least connected with the War are exceedingly interesting, as that about the elaborate sport of pigeon-netting at Cava dei ...
— Punch, July 18, 1917 • Various
... the quiet persistence which formed a trait in her baby character, dragged stools and chairs to the back of the bed, which she at last succeeded in scaling, and sat opposite to where the child lay, grave and still, watching with intense earnestness the process that was going on. At the moment when the eyes had opened, she stretched forth her little arms, and said, eagerly, "Pitty boy, come,"—and then, as they ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... Before scaling up his drawings Somerset wished to spend a short time in London, and dismissing his assistants till further notice, he locked up the rooms which had been appropriated as office and studio ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... me. I will do my utmost," replied the Colonel, quickly scaling the outer side of the cliff, and dashing over and among the broken masses of rock that laid between him and the sea. Throwing off his hat and heavy uniform coat, he stood with extended arms at the water's edge, exactly ...
— Peak's Island - A Romance of Buccaneer Days • Ford Paul
... or rather scaling a small rock that my long-expected fall came. Alat, my horse, floundered badly at an angle of forty-five degrees and lost his balance completely. The doctor, who was behind, shouted to me to pull him up, but as I was sliding off his back with a broken girth ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... tail as Constans passed, and he patted his head, the one single creature in his uncle's household who might regret his absence on the morrow. Now the way was clear; he stole off into the darkness, finding no difficulty in scaling the wall, and ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... has described an eruption which he observed in the foundling asylum at Prague, where nearly 300 cases occurred in ten years. According to Crocker it begins in the second or third week of life, and occasionally as late as the fifth week, with diffuse and universal scaling, which may be branny or in laminae like pityriasis rubra, and either dry or with suffusion beneath the epidermis. Sometimes it presents flaccid bullae like pemphigus foliaceus, and then there are crusts as well as scales, with rhagades on the ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... outing. The great forest to the west. The trip of the whites to Blakely's forest home. Driftwood. Centrifugal and centripetal motion. The forest animals. Orang-outan. The monkeys. Reaching the hill. The scaling vine. Reaching the recessed rocks. The two skeletons in the rocks. A gun and trinkets. A sextant. A letter. No identity. The message. Effort to decipher it. A mound for the bones. Forwarding copy of message to John. John's examination ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... shallow watercourse with sandy bed, and we found out the cause of the constant growling we had heard. A tiger also was tracking the panther, who every now and then stood at bay and attacked it. After some time the tiger, no doubt hearing us, turned aside. Suddenly I saw the wounded animal scaling a tall and almost branchless tree, which appeared as though it must have been at some time struck by lightning. The panther, no doubt, hoped to escape all its enemies in that way. It went to the tip-top, about forty feet or fifty feet from ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... For the first four miles the road continued to ascend the Lashora ravine between hills on the right hand and rocky, overhanging spurs a thousand feet high on the left. On issuing thence it dwindled to a mere goat track which ran uphill and downhill, scaling cliffs and dropping into gorges, the shaly soil at every step slipping away from under the feet of men, mules and bullocks, retarding the advance of the two former and almost bringing the latter to a standstill. It was two o'clock in the afternoon when the column, having crossed ...
— A Soldier's Life - Being the Personal Reminiscences of Edwin G. Rundle • Edwin G. Rundle
... nerves him and his men for their desperate charge. The obscure words in verse 8, which he speaks to his soldiers, do not need the supplement given in the Authorised Version. The king's quick eye had seen a practical path for scaling the cliffs up some watercourse, where there might be projections or vegetation to pull oneself up by, or shelter which would hide the assailants from the defenders; and he bids any one who would smite the Jebusites take that ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... had been outwitted. The rear of the Carthaginian army was just entering the defile, and in a short time Fabius saw the Gauls and Spaniards scaling the heights to the assistance of their comrades, who were maintaining an unequal fight with the Romans. The latter were soon driven with slaughter into the plain, and the Carthaginian troops descended into the defile and followed their retreating ...
— The Young Carthaginian - A Story of The Times of Hannibal • G.A. Henty
... an easy tree to climb," said he. "A scaling ladder would not be simpler. Go up it, and you will find that the top branch will enable you to step upon the roof of that house. After that it is your guardian angel who must be your guide, for I can help ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... value of, Freshness of, Fried, in potato nest, Creamed, in the diet, in the diet, Canned, in the diet, Salt and smoked, in the home, Care of, Left-over, Mineral matter in, Planked, Protein in, Purchase of, Sauces for, Scaling a, Seasons for shell, Shell, Skinning, Steamed, Stewed, stock, Stuffing for, Table showing composition and food value of shell, Table showing the names, seasons, and uses of fresh, Table showing names, seasons, and uses of salt and smoked, Table showing seasons for shell, with meat, ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 3 - Volume 3: Soup; Meat; Poultry and Game; Fish and Shell Fish • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... as long as Jacob's, on citadels worth scaling; on moonlight evenings, bearded husbands, and all that sort of thing—I would love a bed composed of five hundred poniards; you understand ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... pilgrims. Some feeble and hasty efforts were made for the defence of Jerusalem: but in the space of fourteen days, a victorious army drove back the sallies of the besieged, planted their engines, opened the wall to the breadth of fifteen cubits, applied their scaling-ladders, and erected on the breach twelve banners of the prophet and the sultan. It was in vain that a barefoot procession of the queen, the women, and the monks, implored the Son of God to save his tomb and his inheritance from impious ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... is no choice, it means walking, it means a return, it means scaling the season in between wet ...
— Matisse Picasso and Gertrude Stein - With Two Shorter Stories • Gertrude Stein
... afternoon when Constans found himself standing again before the closed door that bore the name of the inhospitable Mr. Richard van Duyne. He had brought with him a rope ladder, provided with grappling-hooks, and the mere scaling of the barrier should not present any great difficulty. It would be well, however, to reconnoitre a little ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... kept the main body of his followers, from which they were continually coming and going; and for every one who died a thousand fresh men came to his camp. They now set out to engage the Dutch with six hundred scaling-ladders, fourteen of their men being allotted to each ladder; but the besieged hung out a white flag, and came out to propose terms of surrender. This was granted with the condition that only the property of private ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume XXXVI, 1649-1666 • Various
... only a question of minutes when the besiegers should succeed in breaking a door or scaling the walls to the windows and making their entrance. From the office windows they could see a score of those in the rear running forward across the grounds with a ladder which they had secured in the ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... that the murderer entered the house by scaling the bedroom window, and made his exit by the same means. He bases that view on Miss Heredith's belief that the window was closed when she was in the bedroom before dinner. After the murder was committed the window was found open. But Miss Heredith's statement about the closed ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... with the colonial mansions poised on little hillocks, from which they look down on you with benevolent condescension and invite you to climb the long flights of steps that lead to their very hearts, grand but hospitable, which you do in a glow of high-pitched ambition, as if you were scaling an arduous but fascinating intellectual height. Having reached the summit, you stop an instant on the landing, partly for breathing purposes, but more especially to exult a moment on ...
— Literary Hearthstones of Dixie • La Salle Corbell Pickett
... front of the precipice, never touched before by human hand or foot. No one had ever dreamt of scaling it, and the Golden Eagles knew that well in their instinct, as, before they built their eyrie, they had brushed it with their wings. But the downwards part of the mountain-side, though scarred, and seamed, and chasmed, was yet accessible—and more than one person in the parish ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... Smoke, sparks, and flames issued in torment out of all the openings of the house. And then the flames began to play and crackle with redoubled strength and redoubled clearness. It was the middle part of the ceiling of the first floor that fell. Mogens with both hands seized a large scaling-ladder which leaned against the part of the factory which was not yet in flames. For a moment he held it vertically, but then it slipped away from him and fell over toward the councilor's house where it broke in a window-frame on the second story. Mogens ran up the ladder, ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... Songs and Sonets, 1567, contains a single fourteen-lined poem. The French word 'quatorzain' was the term almost as frequently applied as 'sonnet' to the fourteen-line stanza in regular sonnet form, which alone falls within my survey. Watson is congratulated on 'scaling the skies in lofty quatorzains' in verses before his Passionate Centurie, 1582; cf. 'crazed quatorzains' in Thomas Nash's preface to his edition of Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, 1591; and Amours in Quatorzains on the title-page of the first ...
— A Life of William Shakespeare - with portraits and facsimiles • Sidney Lee
... sides of the Capitoline hill were so steep that for a long time the Gauls were baffled in their attempts to seize it. At last they discovered a path, and one dark night were on the point of scaling the height when some geese, sacred to the goddess Juno, cackled and flapped their wings until the garrison was aroused and the Gauls hurled headlong down the precipice. The garrison was saved, but the city was burned. ...
— Introductory American History • Henry Eldridge Bourne and Elbert Jay Benton
... away. She is really a better woman than this, but never capable of scaling that higher plane to which he has, as it were, offered ...
— Dear Brutus • J. M. Barrie
... their easy sport, the hungry boys next proceeded to the grateful task of scaling and dressing their fish. This they did very expeditiously, as soon as the more difficult part of kindling a fire on the beach had been accomplished with the help of the flint, knife, and dried rushes. ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... the birth-day which conferred on me the privilege of going alone up and down the Zig-zag was the greatest boon to myself or to my nurse; the exertion involved in scaling the hill-side being to the full as wearisome to her as it was enchanting to myself. The emancipation, however, came early in my career, since my friend, old George, by my father's consent, assumed a sort of out-of-door charge of me at ...
— The Story of the White-Rock Cove • Anonymous
... last charge, we could see nothing. The Naval Brigade, who had the hardest part of the position to take, lost terribly, but did the job in a way that every one says was perfectly splendid. It is said, however, that they made the mistake, in the scaling of the hill, of closing together, and so offering a more compact mass to the enemy's fire. We came on behind the infantry with our friends the Lancers, and passed through a gap in the range and on across ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... adhering to the leaves of the kelp. These species are the commonest now living on this coast. The shells all appeared very old; the blue of the mussels was much faded; and only traces of colour could be perceived in the Patellas, of which the outer surfaces were scaling off. They lay scattered on the smooth surface of the gravel, but abounded most in certain patches, especially at the heads of the smaller valleys: they generally contained sand in their insides; and I presume that they have been washed by ...
— South American Geology - also: - Title: Geological Observations On South America • Charles Darwin
... reached the Trebizond-Erzerum highway at Baiboot, the contrast was so great that the scaling of Kop Dagh, on its comparatively smooth surface, was a mere breakfast spell. From here we looked down for the first time into the valley of the historic Euphrates, and a few hours later we were skimming over its bottom lands toward the embattled ...
— Across Asia on a Bicycle • Thomas Gaskell Allen and William Lewis Sachtleben
... men have great difficulty in scaling the walls of inefficiency and of race prejudice in order to escape the discomforts and dangers of a low ...
— The Negro at Work in New York City - A Study in Economic Progress • George Edmund Haynes
... It was only about forty-five or fifty feet high, and somewhat roughened by fissures and projections; but these seemed so slight and insecure, as footholds, that I tried hard to avoid the precipice altogether, by scaling the wall of the channel on either side. But, though less steep, the walls were smoother than the obstructing rock, and repeated efforts only showed that I must either go right ahead or turn back. The tried dangers beneath seemed even greater than that of the ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... again; after we had beat over two or three houses in the castle, the shells fell on the rocks in the inside the castle, and their weight and force of falling would break them without so much as their blowing up.... As to storming the walls, they were so high that our scaling ladders would not near reach the top ...
— The Pirates of Malabar, and An Englishwoman in India Two Hundred Years Ago • John Biddulph
... Broad Street, was instituted for gratuitous assistance to the poor in all cases of diseases of the teeth, including extracting, stopping, scaling, as well as the regulation of children's teeth. Any poor sufferer can have immediate attention without a recommendatory note, but applicants requiring special operations must be provided with a note of introduction from a ...
— Showell's Dictionary of Birmingham - A History And Guide Arranged Alphabetically • Thomas T. Harman and Walter Showell
... they ought to do," la Rochejaquelein said to two or three of his officers, among whom was Jean Martin, "there is no hope of taking the town. We have neither cannon to blow down the walls, nor means of scaling them. Thirty-six hours is the utmost we can hope for our operations. Kleber and the rest of them will be up by that time. However—it is our sole hope—possibly a panic may seize them when we attack; but even cowards will fight behind walls and, after our failure at Granville, I have ...
— No Surrender! - A Tale of the Rising in La Vendee • G. A. Henty
... plain, and were launched from the declivity into the shallow waters of the harbour, far above the molestation of the deeper vessels of the Greeks. A bridge, or mole, hastily built, formed a base for one of his largest cannon. The galleys, with troops and scaling ladders, approached the most accessible side of the walls, and, after a siege of forty days, the diminutive garrison, exhausted by a double attack, could hope no longer to avert the fate ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... individual initiative in action appeared in the tendency of certain mice to climb out of the experiment boxes or labyrinths. It would have been extremely easy for any of the mice to escape from the labyrinths by scaling the walls of the alleys, for they were only 10 cm. in height, and when a dancer stood on its hind legs it could easily reach the top with its nose. But, strange though it will seem to any one who has not worked with the dancer, not more than one in ten ...
— The Dancing Mouse - A Study in Animal Behavior • Robert M. Yerkes
... dangerous journey. While we were not in the track of the tornado, the storm had been severe over a wide territory. Fallen trees lay across our rocky trail and at times we had to make wide detours, forcing our way through thick underbrush and scaling slippery rocks. ...
— John Henry Smith - A Humorous Romance of Outdoor Life • Frederick Upham Adams
... ached with such unusual exercise, and still we did not see our way. For the outer sentries were too thickly posted to offer any hopes of overcoming them, and even if we succeeded in getting past any certain one, the time occupied in scaling the outer palisades ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... ice of Lake Champlain, down to Ticonderoga, where they rested a week, and constructed three hundred scaling ladders. Three days' further march, up Lake George, brought ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... the scattered tribes of Ishmael's children, Staining the desert with blood; and above their terrible war-trails Circles and sails aloft, on pinions majestic, the vulture, Like the implacable soul of a chieftain slaughtered in battle, By invisible stairs ascending and scaling the heavens. Here and there rise smokes from the camps of these savage marauders; Here and there rise groves from the margins of swift-running rivers; And the grim, taciturn bear, the anchorite monk of the desert, Climbs down their dark ravines to dig for roots by the brook-side, And over ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... roots like some black coil of carven snakes, Clutched at the crag, and started through mid air Bearing an eagle's nest: and through the tree Rushed ever a rainy wind, and through the wind Pierced ever a child's cry: and crag and tree Scaling, Sir Lancelot from the perilous nest, This ruby necklace thrice around her neck, And all unscarred from beak or talon, brought A maiden babe; which Arthur pitying took, Then gave it to his Queen to rear: the Queen But coldly acquiescing, in her white arms Received, and after loved it ...
— Idylls of the King • Alfred, Lord Tennyson
... of Brandenburghers had attacked the wall of the battery known as the Black Battery, whose fire was doing great execution upon the assailants. They had brought scaling ladders with them, and with these they succeeded, fighting with great bravery and determination, in gaining the walls. The whole regiment poured in; but, just as they did so, the Irish fired the powder magazine that supplied the battery, and the ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... had no scaling-ladders, and had to cut their way up the wall of the entrenchment by bayonets, digging out step after step under a shower of hot water, stones, shot, axes, etc. Some of the men actually got to the top, and, reaching over, dragged the enemy ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... Xaintrailles and La Hire. Soon the side of the palisade towards us was all down, as if one had swept it flat with his hand, but there stood the earthen wall of the boulevard, beyond the fosse. Then, all orderly, marched forth a band of men in the colours of Florent d'Illiers, bearing scaling-ladders, and so began the escalade, their friends backing them by shooting of arbalests from behind the remnant of the palisade. A ladder would be set against the wall, and we could see men with shields, or doors, or squares of wood on their heads to fend off ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... the highest pay. Did Charnisay in the language of the day "grease the fist" of the Swiss sentry, or was it a case of a boorish fellow refusing to fight under a woman's command? Legend gives both explanations; but on Easter Sunday morning Charnisay's men gained entrance by scaling the walls where the Swiss sentry stood. Madame La Tour rushed her men to an inner fort loopholed with guns. Afraid of a final defeat that would disgrace him before all the world, Charnisay called up generous terms if she would surrender. To save ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... morning Mr. Scott shot a rock wallabie of rather a large species, and many more were seen about the high perpendicular cliff under which we had found the water. These singular animals appeared to have a wonderful facility for scaling precipices, for they leapt and clambered up among the steep sides of the cliffs in a manner quite incredible, and where it was perfectly impossible for any human being to ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... before going over. At ten minutes to four, word was passed down, "Ten minutes to go!" Ten minutes to live! We were shivering all over. My legs felt as if they were asleep. Then word was passed down: "First wave get on and near the scaling ladders." ...
— Over The Top • Arthur Guy Empey
... walls of its town,—the war is likely to be tedious and indecisive. It is notorious that Greeks dislike hard sieges. The soldiers are the fellow townsmen of the generals. If the latter order an assault with scaling ladders and it is repulsed with bloody loss, the generals risk a prosecution when they get home for "casting away the lives of their fellow citizens."[*] In short, fifty men behind a stout wall and "able to throw anything" are in a position to ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis
... third division, and, exposing their ranks, forced them to commence the attack before the hour appointed. Crossing the Rivillas by a narrow bridge, under a tremendous fire, the third division assaulted the castle, and, although their scaling-ladders were over and over again hurled down, the stormers at last obtained a footing, and the rest of the troops poured in and the castle was won. A similar and more rapid success attended the assault on San Roque, which was attacked so suddenly and violently, that it was taken with scarce ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... or rather foot- holes, cut out by the shepherd-boys in the more perpendicular descents, and fairly sliding or running down the shorter ones. They saw their friends waiting for them; and a lesser figure than the rest hastened towards them, scaling the steep slopes with a good will, precipitancy, and wild hurrahs of exultation, that would not let them doubt it was Walter, before they could see his form distinctly, or hear his words. Rose ran headlong ...
— The Pigeon Pie • Charlotte M. Yonge
... and found many pieces that gave warning of scaling off. Several large flakes, each weighing some hundredweight, lay beneath the table rock,-upon the under surface of which could be distinctly traced the ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... covering up of what he really wanted under the pretended need of guiding her, tried her patience. The pretense was for himself, too, as much as for her. He was holding her off at arm's length behind him as if they were scaling an Alp! ...
— Mary Wollaston • Henry Kitchell Webster
... crowning-point of his story now. Honor listened spellbound as he told her of the breathless rush up that rugged incline, and of the sight that greeted them after scaling the mighty staircase ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... nursery yard. The wall of wealth and aristocracy around Hilton has had somewhat the same effect upon the people that it confines. If a social barrier of any sort appears upon the horizon of my sister-in-law Edith, she is never happy until she has climbed over it. She was in the very midst of scaling that high and difficult barrier built up about Hilton by the Summer Colonists, when ...
— The Fifth Wheel - A Novel • Olive Higgins Prouty
... died so gloriously that the shadow of our loss, dark as it seemed to us at first, is already melting in the radiance of his gain. To die young, clean, ardent; to die swiftly, in perfect health; to die saving others from death, or worse—disgrace—to die scaling heights; to die and to carry with you into the fuller, ampler life beyond, untainted hopes and aspirations, unembittered memories, all the freshness and gladness of May—is not that cause for joy rather ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... twenty-five miles and, with the three above, the unbroken canyon is about thirty-five miles. Under the circumstances the canyon seemed interminable and the cliffs insurmountable. The latter grow more precipitous toward the lower end, and scaling would be a difficult feat for a man well fed and strong, though well-nigh hopeless for any weakened by lack of proper food. At last, however, an opening appeared. Here they discovered Provo encamped with an abundance of provisions, so their troubles were quickly over. The opening ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... project of scaling the highest summits of the Alps, the astonishment was general. Some imagined that it was a mere whim which would be fully satisfied by the noise it caused. Others exclaimed against a hardihood willing to encounter so many perils. None were inclined ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... they were scaling the wall—floundering, apparently; and no wonder, with such a weight to hoist after them! More thuds; and then the steps of men staggering slowly, painfully away. The steps echoed louder from under the archway, and then ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... route, and advanced to the strongest part of the fortification, where they were moreover exposed to the fire of the town. Colonel Grant, who commanded the grenadiers, was mortally wounded; the scaling-ladders were found too short; the officers were perplexed for want of orders and directions; yet the soldiers sustained a severe fire for several hours with surprising intrepidity, and at length retreated, leaving about ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... character, have a ruggedness tempered by a singular airiness of form and softness of environment, in a climate favorable in some parts to the densest vegetation, and in others wild and barren. One is always in sight of mountains rising to fourteen thousand feet or more, and constantly scaling difficult pathways seven or eight or nine thousand feet above the sea. And in the loneliness of a country where nothing has altered very much the handiwork of God, an awe-inspiring silence pervades everything. Bold, grey cliffs shoot up here through a mass ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... they were come to the place where their ways severed. The old grey moors were all about them; in the midst a few sheep wandered; and they could see on the one hand the straggling caravan scaling the braes in front of them for Cauldstaneslap, and on the other, the contingent from Hermiston bending off and beginning to disappear by detachments into the policy gate. It was in these circumstances that they turned to say farewell, ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... thoughts in my mind, I was speeding with the train toward Buffalo, when, near that city, the sight of a workman doing something on the dizzy edge of a sky-scaling iron construction brought me to my senses very suddenly. And now I perceived, by a flash of insight, that I had been steeping myself in pure ancestral blindness, and looking at life with the eyes of a remote spectator. Wishing for heroism and the spectacle of human nature ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... the futility of scaling, under such conditions, a steep so well defended and had thought of a better way to gain his end and crush Ab and his people. He had heard the story of Ab's first advent into the valley when, chased by the wolves, he leaped through the flame, and there came an inspiration to him! ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... passing almost the whole of the day in the grounds. The measures to be adopted were now obvious. The paling belonging to Lord Tinemouth's park was only a few yards distant; but fearful of being observed, Pembroke sought a more obscure part. Scaling a wall which was covered by the branches of high trees, he found his way to the house through an almost ...
— Thaddeus of Warsaw • Jane Porter
... valour, and nearly, in the costume of Homeric heroes. Fearing nothing, needing nothing, sparing nothing, they stalked about the fens of Zeeland upon their long stilts, or leaped across running rivers, scaling ramparts, robbing the highways, burning, butchering, and maltreating the villages and their inhabitants, with as little regard for the laws of Christian warfare as ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... to the east, the west, the north, and the south, from Rhode Island to the Missouri, from the Canada frontier to the Gulf of Mexico. At the various gardens the combinations were very beautiful, and exceeded anything that I had witnessed in London or Paris. What with sea-serpents, giant rockets scaling heaven, Bengal lights, Chinese fires, Italian suns, fairy bowers, crowns of Jupiter, exeranthemums, Tartar temples, Vesta's diadems, magic circles, morning glories, stars of Colombia, and temples of liberty, all America was in a blaze; and, in addition ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... on August 13, we heard firing at the gates of the city, and knew that our deliverers were near. The next day, scaling the walls or battering down the gates, they forced their way into the city and effected our rescue. The day following, the Roman Catholic Cathedral was relieved,—the defence of which forms the brightest page in the history of the siege, and in the afternoon we held a solemn ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume XIV • John Lord
... think of scaling heaven," Sir Rudolph said. "Evesham could resist a month's siege by a force well equipped for the purpose; and were it not that good men are wanted for the king's service, and that these villains shoot straight and hard, I would open the gates ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... what was called the Louisiana Territory. But war with France was not yet at an end, and in the third volume of the series, entitled "At the Fall of Montreal," I have related the particulars of the last campaign against the French, including General Wolfe's memorable scaling of the Heights of Quebec, the battle on the Plains of Abraham, and lastly the fall of Montreal itself, which brought this long-drawn war to a conclusion, and was the means of placing Canada where it remains to-day, in ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... purposes at Reinsberg, to himself privately the grandest there, which he follows with constant loyalty and ardor, is that of scaling the heights of the Muses' Hill withal; of attaining mastership, discipleship, in Art and Philosophy;—or in candor let us call it, what it truly was, that of enlightening and fortifying himself with clear knowledge, clear belief, on all sides; and acquiring some spiritual panoply ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. X. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—At Reinsberg—1736-1740 • Thomas Carlyle
... of which was the marvelous march of Arnold and Montgomery through the forests of Maine to the St. Lawrence, ending in the wonderful siege, of the year 1775, and the heroic failure to storm the defenses by scaling the rocks from the river bed. Eventually the boundary between the United States and the British possessions was settled by the Treaty of Paris, in 1783, just twenty years after an earlier Treaty of Paris had recorded ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... men falling back from the barricade to die around me, and the disappearance of the red flag, showed that the Cossacks were at last scaling the great pile of miscellaneous objects that blocked the street. A dozen of the Czar's soldiers appeared silhouetted against the sky as they scrambled across the top of the barricade, but next second a dozen corpses fell to earth, riddled by the ...
— The Count's Chauffeur • William Le Queux
... puzzle about in his mind, but finds come over him with a waft at odd moments like the scent of bog-myrtle and tansy in an old clothes-press. Our own air in Glen Shira had ever been very genial and encouraging to me. Even when a young lad, coming back from the low country or the scaling of school, the cool fresh breezes of the morning and the riper airs of the late afternoon went to my head like a mild white wine; very heartsome too, rousing the laggard spirit that perhaps made me, before, over-apt to sit and dream of the doing of grand things instead of putting out a hand to ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... warfare. They used the long bow and drew the arrow, like the English archers, to the ear. Their armor was imperfect, and more often of quilting than of mail. They had regular divisions, with standards, and regular camps. Their sieges were unscientific, and their means of assault scaling ladders, sapping hatchets, and long pikes brought up to the walls under a sort of shed. Of their battles no definite notion can be formed. All is lost in the King, whose gigantic figure, drawn by gigantic horses, crushes, massacres, or grasps by the hair ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 3, February, 1851 • Various
... were driven onward by the spear-points of the savages, to be slain in heaps like game in a pitfall. Still, some of them lived, and running under the shelter of the wall, began to breach it with the rude battering rams, and to raise the scaling ladders till death found them, or they were worn out with excitement, fear ...
— Elissa • H. Rider Haggard
... may retort, would Taylor, or Browne, or De Quincey himself, have done, had one of them been wanted to write down the project of Wood's halfpence in Ireland? He would have resembled a king in his coronation robes compelled to lead a forlorn hope up the scaling ladders. The fact is, that Swift required for his style not only the plain good sense and other rare qualities enumerated, but pungent humour, quick insight, deep passion, and general power of mind, such as ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen
... scaling ladders, with stout ropes and hooks. The first who got up with the ladders were to fix on the hooks, so that the others might swarm up, and we might all mount ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... hated. She is a forward little witch, Max. She laughed merrily at my questions concerning the princess, and asked me if we were going to Burgundy to storm Mary's heart. 'Who is to win her?' she asked. 'You, Sir Karl, or Sir Max? It must be you. Sir Max is too slow and dignified even to think of scaling the walls of a maiden fortress. It must be you, Sir Karl.' The saucy little elf rose from her chair, bowed low before me and said, 'I do liege homage to the future Duke of Burgundy.' Then she danced across the room, laughing at my discomfiture. She is charming, Max, but ...
— Yolanda: Maid of Burgundy • Charles Major
... honorable pretence of defending a distressed, or, as he might allege, an injured father. Apprehensive of the fatal consequences of delay, Constantine gave orders for an immediate assault; but the scaling-ladders were found too short for the height of the walls, and Marseilles might have sustained as long a siege as it formerly did against the arms of Caesar, if the garrison, conscious either of ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... was well down the trail, hidden in the trees, and was making no further effort to approach. The men sat down again, watching the trail and evidently figuring out their plan of escape. There was no means of scaling the mountain wall behind them. Horses could not possibly climb that steep slope, covered with such a tangle of trees and undergrowth, but it was possible to proceed farther along the upper edge of the valley until finally timber-line was reached, after which the party could drop over the ...
— Mystery Ranch • Arthur Chapman
... (Fig. 41). The uprights on the two sides have their ends bent over and lashed together, forming arches for the roof. Over the arches are lashed horizontal poles the same as those described in the construction of the Iroquois lodge. Fig. 67 shows one way to prevent "varmints" of any kind from scaling the supporting poles and ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... themselves upon the Portuguese outposts. After a desperate struggle they were repulsed and a sally from the town was beaten back at the same time; the Europeans seemed ready to meet any odds. With these victories, Henry was confident that Tangier must soon fall; he ordered another escalade, but all his scaling ladders were burnt or broken and many of his men crushed beneath the overhanging parts of the wall, that were pushed down bodily upon the storming parties. In this final assault of the 5th of October, two Moors were taken who told Henry of immense succours now coming up under the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... toil to know; For pleased remembrance builds delight on woe. At every danger pants thy consort's breast, And gaping infants squall to hear the rest. How did I tremble, when, by thousands bound, I saw thee stretch'd on Lilliputian ground! When scaling armies climb'd up every part, Each step they trod I felt upon my heart. 70 But when thy torrent quench'd the dreadful blaze, King, queen, and nation staring with amaze, Full in my view how all my husband came, And what extinguished theirs increased my flame. Those spectacles, ...
— Poetical Works of Pope, Vol. II • Alexander Pope |
