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More "Bowstring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of my Englishness, and drilled me, and taught me the exercise as it was performed in the Vieille Garden and told me a new fairy-tale, I verily believe, every afternoon for seven years. Scheherezade could do no more for a Sultan, and to save her own neck from the bowstring! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... Europe still in such a state of economic disorder? Because the confusion of moral ideas persists. In many countries nerves are still as tense as a bowstring, and the language of hatred still prevails. For some countries, as for some social groups, war has not yet ceased to be. One hears now in the countries of the victors the same arguments used as were current coin in Germany ...
— Peaceless Europe • Francesco Saverio Nitti
... arrows, and were shooting squirrels. We gave them an alphabet card. Most of the Indians just round the Post are Roman Catholics, but those scattered over the lake, about 500 in number, are nearly all pagans. The name of the chief with whom we talked this morning is David Winchaub (Bowstring). ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... the bowstring? Whence a cord to match the weapon? Sinews from the elk of Hiisi, And the hempen cord of Lempo. Thus at length the bow was finished. And the stock was quite completed, 40 And the bow was fair to ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... rudeness; there was no sympathy in our natures, and yet I experienced a sensation of relief while listening to her bubbling and effervescent nonsense. My mind had been kept on so high a tone, there was a strain, a tension, of which I was hardly conscious till the bowstring was slackened. Besides, she was associated with the recollections of Grandison Place,—she was a young person of my own sex, and she could talk to me of Mrs. Linwood, and Edith, and the friends of my rural ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... the rest, stood the captain, with the fatal bowstring hanging carelessly on his arm, and his eyes intent to catch the slightest gesture of the king. "Behold!" said Boabdil to ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... commandant of Wu-ch'ang, he transformed the character of the people by 'proprieties' and music, and was praised by the master. After the death of Confucius, Chi K'ang asked Yen how that event had made no sensation like that which was made by the death of Tsze-ch'an, when the men laid aside their bowstring rings and girdle ornaments, and the women laid aside their pearls and ear-rings, and the voice of weeping was heard in the lanes for three months. Yen replied, 'The influences of Tsze- ch'an and my master might be compared to those of overflowing ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) Unicode Version • James Legge
... lottery of power is that into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. In Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself, are so insecure, that scarcely any have died in their beds for ages, so that the bowstring is the natural death of Bashaws, yet in no country is power and distinction (precarious enough, God knows, in all) sought for with such boundless avidity, as if the value of place was enhanced by the danger and insecurity ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... in prison, till they grew Of years to fill a bowstring or the throne, One or the other, but which of the two Could yet be known unto the fates alone; Meantime the education they went through Was princely, as the proofs have always shown; So that the heir apparent still was found No less deserving to be ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... and one cast a spear at him, but that fell short. Then the bank hid him from us; but we saw a Dane fixing arrow to bowstring, and saw him shoot; but he missed, surely, for he took another arrow and ran ...
— A Thane of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... pair of peculiar goat-skin bellows, provided with wooden nozzles tipped with iron. A catgut bowstring drills for boring holes, and screw-drills for cutting threads, hammers, and an anvil. A rude but ingenious forge is constructed out of a few handfuls of stiff mud, and, building a charcoal fire, they spend the evening in sharpening and ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... accept "considerations of state" as a reason for Mr. Motley's removal. Considerations of state have never yet failed the axe or the bowstring when a reason for the use of those convenient implements was wanted, and they are quite equal to every emergency which can arise in a republican autocracy. But for the very reason that a minister is absolutely in the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... the Mohar had bent his bow, and came so near to the king's chariot that he could be heard exclaiming in a hoarse voice, as he let the bowstring snap, "Now I will reckon with you—thief! robber! My bride is your wife, but with this arrow I will ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... stood Mnestheus, eager for the prize, And straight the bowstring to his breast updrew, Aiming aloft. The lightning of his eyes Went with the arrow, as he twanged the yew. Ah pity! Fortune sped the shaft untrue. The bird he missed, but cut the flaxen ties That held the feet, and cleft the knots in two. And ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... and laid her hand tremulously on his shoulder, and looked down at him with piteous, pleading eyes. No Circassian slave, afraid of bowstring and sack, could have entreated her master's clemency with ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... glanced along the polished shaft, drawing the bowstring far back, that the arrow might pierce through the heart for which ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... 17s. and for the copy he had L100. People probably attended, as they attend modern representations of legitimate drama, rather from a sense of duty, than in the hope of pleasure. The heroine originally had to speak two lines with a bowstring round her neck. The situation produced cries of murder, and she had to go off the stage alive. The objectionable passage was removed, but Irene was on the whole a failure, and has never, I imagine, made ...
— Samuel Johnson • Leslie Stephen
... any of the natives in open rebellion, they are strangled with a bowstring, or hanged on an ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... carried to extremes, It but irritates and hardens. Any instrument of music Of this truth is an example. Lightly touched, it breathes but sweetness, Discord, when 't is roughly handled. 'T is not well to send an arrow To such heights, that in discharging The strong tension breaks the bowstring, Or the bow itself is fractured. These two simple illustrations Are sufficiently adapted To my purpose, of advising Means of cure both mild and ample. You must take a middle course, All extremes must be abandoned. Gentle but judicious treatment Is the method for Chrysanthus. ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... naked and low like the cord. Some of us thought they discovered openings through the cord into the pool or lake, that was included between that and the bow; but whether there were or were not such openings is uncertain. We sailed abreast of the low beach or bowstring, within less than a league of the shore, till sun-set, and we then judged ourselves to be about half-way between the two horns. Here we brought-to, and sounded, but found no bottom with one hundred and thirty fathom; and as it is ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... him right up in his place by whipping him on the opposite of his neck. Presently the plucky savage's arm began to move. Booth watched him intently, and saw that he had fixed an arrow in his bow under the pony's shoulder; just as he was on the point of letting go the bowstring, with the head of the arrow not three feet from Booth's breast as he leaned out of the hole, the latter struck frantically at the weapon, dodged back into the wagon, and up came the Indian. Whenever Booth looked out, down went the Indian on the other side of his pony, to rise again in ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... my dear Sir, must transport, man-handle, murder, wheedle, bowstring, drown, and permanently lose Josephine, Countess St. Auban,—herself late back from Missouri, formerly of God knows where. I promise you, this country is only a tinder box, waiting for that sort of spark. To-morrow—but ...
— The Purchase Price • Emerson Hough
... Salvation at Paris, or the present constitutional Monarchs of France or England. The proof of this is, that when the people are dissatisfied with their administration, or displeased with the sovereign, they have no difficulty in dispatching him. The twisting of a sash round the neck in Russia, the bowstring in Constantinople or Ispahan, are very effectual monitors—fully as much so as a hostile Parliamentary majority in the house of Commons or Chamber of Deputies. In a word, government in every country being conducted by the few over the many ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... wicked little middy, [4] caused the greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what by the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commenced business, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the end of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an awkward situation. Large arrears of work remained, and hardly any body to do it but ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... was darted; the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it! but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsmen, and smiting the ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... sitting heavily on the dune until he regained his breath after the stalk. Then after cocking the crossbow again he stalked over to the beast and with his knife cut out the quarrel, notching it against the bowstring ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... they had an option when he whom they termed their Dhunni (Lord) issued the mandates. [325] Firearms and swords were only used by the chiefs and headmen of the tribe, and their national weapon was the bamboo bow having the bowstring made from a thin strip of its elastic bark. The quiver was a piece of strong bamboo matting, and would contain sixty barbed arrows a yard long, and tipped with an iron spike either flattened and sharpened like a knife or rounded like a nail; other arrows, used for knocking over birds, ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... my haggard, burning eyes upon her murderers—four of them there were and all staring into those cruel, black waters below and not a word betwixt them. Suddenly the black-bearded man snapped his fingers and laughed even as my bowstring twanged; then I saw him leap backwards, screaming with pain, his shoulder transfixed by my arrow. Immediately (and ere I might shoot again) his fellows dragged him down, and lying prone on their bellies let fly wildly in my direction with petronel and musquetoon. And now, ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a fine buck went by. He had not spied us while we lay still, but the moment my comrade moved, he threw up his head and bounded off. Yet not before a quick twang from Sir Ludar's bowstring had sent an arrow into his quarter. "Are you mad?" cried I, in terror, "it ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... Into his hand; but when that he Gat hold of it, full fast it stack, So fuming, down he laid his sack, And with both hands pulled lustily, But as he strained, he cast his eye Back to the dais; there he saw The bowman image 'gin to draw The mighty bowstring to his ear, So, shrieking out aloud for fear, Of that rich stone he loosed his hold And catching up his bag of gold, Gat to his feet: but ere he stood The evil thing of brass and wood Up to his ear the notches drew; And clanging, forth the arrow ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... deep array appear, And some the front assail, and some the rear; Their remedies to reinforce and vary, Came surgeon eke, and eke apothecary; Till the tired Monarch, though of words grown chary, Yet dropt, to recompense their fruitless labor, Some hint about a bowstring or a saber. There lack'd, I promise you, no longer speeches, To rid the palace of those ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... "She won't get ahead of me," as he had said at the first; he set his teeth, threw off his hat, and, knitting his brows with a resolute expression, prepared to take steady aim, though his heart beat fast and his thumb trembled as he pressed it on the bowstring. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the sea; many frantic words he spoke. Thus, without art or rhetoric, roughly dragged forth by head and ears, came his momentous confession into the world. Gnulemah had more than once striven to check it, but in vain. When he had come to an end, and stood tense and quivering as a bowstring whose arrow has just ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... in Jean's body became as taut as a bowstring. He hunched a little forward, as if about to leap upon the other, and strike him down. And then, all at once, he relaxed. His hands unclenched. ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... constructed out of the leather of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... He dropped into Flint's big half-couch and puffed for a while in silence. "Well, since you're all here, I may confess that I'm the mute with the bowstring." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... Hiding behind a rock he prepared to fight, but as he was looking for some enemy to shoot at, holding his arrow on the string, a Snake had crept up on the bank above him; the Piegan heard the twang of the bowstring, and the long, fine arrow passed through his body. His bow and arrow dropped from his hands, and he fell forward, dead. Now, too late, the warriors came rushing out from the Piegan camp to help him, but the Snakes ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... with her to the stream's bank, and as he stood there his keen eyes saw something move across the short grass at the water's edge. Promptly he put an arrow to his bowstring and took deft aim. The shaft sped quickly to its mark, plunged into the body of a stoat, and pinned the animal to the ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... celerity. Success attended him, and the pacha, his predecessor, having in his opinion, as well as in that of the sultan, remained an unusual time in office, by an accusation enforced by a thousand purses of gold, he was enabled to produce a bowstring for his benefactor; and the sultan's "firmaun" appointed him to the vacant pachalik. His qualifications for office were all superlative: he was very short, very corpulent, very illiterate, very irascible, ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat
... calls in auxiliary cut-throats to murder the reputation of those who offend him. A black-vizarded ruffian (whom we will unmask), who signs the forged name of Trefoil, is at present one of the chief bravoes and bullies in our contemporary's establishment. He is the eunuch who brings the bowstring, and strangles at the order of the Day. We can convict this cowardly slave, and propose to do so. The charge which he has brought against Lord Bangbanagher, because he is a Liberal Irish peer, and against the Board of Poor Law Guardians of the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... immense, horizons fade And thought forgets old gages in the ecstasy of view. The standards go by which the steps were made. On which we trod from former levels to the new. No time for backward glance, no pause for breath, Since impulse like a bowstring loosed us in full flight And in delirium of speed none aim considereth Nor in the blaze of burning codes can think of night. The whirring of sped wheels and horn remind That speed, more speed is best and peace is waste! They rank unfortunate who tag behind And only they seem wise who urge, ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... and feverishly restless, watching the movements of the other people. Finally I went up to my room and sat down by the windows, staring out. There came a little tap at the unlocked door and in an instant, like the go of a taut bowstring, I was up and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... of the edge of the long lake, to tie nails in the ends and use for arrows. I used to bind the nails in with whitey-brown thread well beeswaxed, and then dress the notch at the other end to keep the bowstring from splitting it up. I've hit rabbits with an arrow before now, though they always run into their holes. You can shoot with a bow and arrow at a target ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... nothing that I can call my own except, for the moment, the air that I breathe. Oh, for an hour of the old liberty and power! It would amuse me to see the faces of ENVER and of my wretched brother MOHAMMED as I ordered them to execution—them and their gang of villainous parasites. By the bowstring of my fathers, but that would be a great and worthy killing! Pardon the fond day-dreams of a poor and lonely old man whose only crime has been that he loved his country too well and treated his enemies with a kindness not to be understood by those black ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... from head to foot. What was that Chippy had worked in among his sobs and moans? B.P.—the motto of their order—'Be Prepared.' Dick held himself tense as a bowstring, ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... without first presenting her and her passport to the Dey and the French Consul, his men might represent him as acting in the interests of the Christians, and as a traitor to the Algerine power, by taking a bribe from a person belonging to a hostile state, in which case the bowstring would be the utmost mercy he could expect; and the reigning Dey, Mehemed, having been only recently chosen, it was impossible to guess how he might deal with such cases. Once at Algiers, he assured Madame de Bourke that she would have nothing to fear, ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a bowstring was out of the question; and Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis in such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. She begins with revenge ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... many a disobedient Pasha has awaited the decree of banishment issued against him by his imperious master. There, too, he was shipped on board the vessel destined to carry him into exile; or, if condemned to expiate his offences with his life, it was there the bowstring was applied. Hence this entrance is known by the appellation of the Pasha's gate. A little further on, we observed a small low door in the wall, scarcely high enough to admit an ordinary sized man. Through this opening ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... first demonstration I make in favor of Mehemet Ali, the Sultan send me the bowstring, and make my ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... months ago, as he sat in his palace, crowned and dreary and trying to cheat me out of my fair profit on some emeralds,—'Jurgen, I cannot sleep of nights, because of that fool Alexius, who comes into my room with staring eyes and the bowstring still about his neck. And my Varangians must be in league with that silly ghost, because I constantly order them to keep Alexius out of my bedchamber, and they do not obey me, Jurgen. To be King of the East is not to the purpose, Jurgen, when ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... alarmed Johnson's friends. The Prologue, which was written by himself in a manly strain, soothed the audience, and the play went off tolerably, till it came to the conclusion, when Mrs. Pritchard, the heroine of the piece, was to be strangled upon the stage, and was to speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck. The audience cried out "Murder! Murder!" She several times attempted to speak; but in vain. At last she was obliged to go off the stage alive.' This passage was afterwards struck out, and she was carried ...
— Life of Johnson - Abridged and Edited, with an Introduction by Charles Grosvenor Osgood • James Boswell
... arrow from twanging bowstring, Pierre Radisson set sail over the roaring seas for the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... cried angrily. "Find out, John, and he shall have a bowstring about his back. Point out the man who stripped you, my little lad," he continued, turning ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... man alone A single bowstring uses, and that his own; What matters it to any the worth that's buried? By its own waves the current o'er ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... neither of the warriors is scathed, for there was a waste place betwixt them. Now then for the shaft and the bow!" The maiden looked eagerly with knitted brows, and soon saw Osberne take up the shaft and nock it on the bowstring. ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... his pocket picked, yet he has the insolence to think every foreigner a miserable slave, and his country the seat of everything wretched. They may talk of liberty as they please, but Spain or Turkey for my money: barring the bowstring and the inquisition, they are the most comfortable countries under heaven, and you need not be afraid of either, if you do not talk of religion and politics. I do not see much difference too in this respect in England, for when I was there, one of their most ...
— A Budget of Paradoxes, Volume I (of II) • Augustus De Morgan
... to the mark. But here the chief, the old White Bear, interposed and said that it was necessary that they should have long claws in order to be able to climb trees. "One of us has already died to furnish the bowstring, and if we now cut off our claws we shall all have to starve together. It is better to trust to the teeth and claws which nature has given us, for it is evident that man's weapons were not intended ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... Professor unslung his telescope, set his rifle upright on the moss, and, kneeling, balanced the long spyglass alongside of the blued-steel barrel, resting it on his hand as an archer fits the arrow he is drawing on the bowstring. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... boy's gaze was fixed on the tops of the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed into view, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the humans. He did not like them, and growled querulously. Slowly the boy fitted the arrow to the bow, and slowly he pulled the bowstring taut. But he never removed his eyes from ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... rest of bone let by a socket into the wood, and having a head of thin iron, or more commonly of slate, secured into a slit by two treenails. Towards the opposite end of the arrow are two feathers, generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on. The bowstring consists of from twelve to eighteen small lines of three-sinew sinnet, having a loose twist, and with a separate becket of the same size for going over the knobs at the ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... cloth of their garments was somewhat coarse, but stout and serviceable. I knew, somehow, that they had been shooting at the butts, and, indeed, I could still hear a noise of men thereabout, and even now and again when the wind set from that quarter the twang of the bowstring and the plump of the shaft ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... bowstring twanged to the fore and a young girl stumbled across Jack Battle's feet with a scream that rings, and rings, and rings in memory like the tocsin of a horrible dream. She was wounded in the shoulder. Getting to ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... wild animals seem to be in the country, and indeed the population is so large they would have very unsettled times of it. At every turning we meet people, or see their villages; all armed with bows and arrows. The bows are unusually long: I measured one made of bamboo, and found that along the bowstring it measured six feet four inches. Many carry large knives of fine iron; and indeed the metal is abundant. Young men and women wear the hair long, a mass of small ringlets comes down and rests on the shoulders, giving them the appearance of the ancient Egyptians. One side ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... light-stock and in which the red heat arises. When fire is to be lighted by means of this implement, the lower part of the drill pin is daubed over with a little train-oil, one foot holds the light-stock firm against the ground, the bowstring is put round the drill pin, the left hand presses the pin with the drill block against the light-stock, and the bow is carried backwards and forwards, not very rapidly, but evenly, steadily, and uninterruptedly, ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... the great clamor, The war-trumpet winding. One did the Geat-prince [50] Sunder from earth-joys, with arrow from bowstring, 50 From his sea-struggle tore him, that the ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... allow the towers to advance unmolested by the machines to within bow-shot. Then taking up a long bow, which might have graced the hand of Robin Hood, and choosing two shafts of a yard in length, he drew the bowstring to his ear, and shot his shaft at the tower. The Gothic captain, who was directing its movements from the summit, had trusted too much to the workmanship of his Milan armour. The fabric was not equal to that of Byzantium. The shaft ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... "There is a simpler way. Thy mind ever runs on the bowstring and the sword. These are great, but there is a greater. It is the mocking finger. At midnight, when Kaid goes to the Mosque Mahmoud, a finger will mock the plotters till they are buried in confusion. Thou knowest the governor of the prisons—has he not need of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the loan of a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring instead, with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a fluff, that fellow—a ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... door would open to show first a long seal gun, then a fisherman, then a fool dog that darted between the fisherman's legs and capered away, ki-yi-ing a challenge to the universe. A silence, tense as a bowstring; a sudden yelp—Hui-hui, as the fisherman whistled to the dog that was being whisked away over the snow with a grip on his throat that prevented any answer; then the fisherman would wait and call in vain, and shiver, and go back to the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... Hobie Noble, Wi' his ain bowstring they band him sae; And I wat heart was ne'er sae sair, As when his ain five band ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... The Khasi bow (ka ryntieh) is of bamboo, and is about 5 feet in height. The longest bow in use is said to be about the height of a man, the average height amongst the Khasis being about about 5 feet 2 inches to 5 feet 4 inches. The bowstring is of split bamboo, the bamboos that are used being u spit, u ...
— The Khasis • P. R. T. Gurdon
... Tenterden treated him with great forbearance; but Hone, not content with the indulgence, took to vilifying the judge. 'Even in a Turkish court I should not have met with the treatment I have experienced here,' he exclaimed. 'Certainly,' replied Lord Tenterden; 'the bowstring would have been round your ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... the men-at-arms to fall upon them. The cavalry, the heavy troops, and the cross-bow men, soon formed a wild and reeling crowd, amid which the English poured a continued flight of unerring arrows, and not a single bowstring was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... shall Thou destroy from the earth, And their seed from among the children of men. For they intended evil against Thee, They imagined a mischievous device, Which they could not execute. For Thou wilt make them turn their back, Thou wilt make ready Thy bowstring against their faces. Be Thou exalted Jehovah in Thine own strength; We will sing and ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... bereft. Too late, alas! her sorrowing lover mourns His cruel vengeance; and himself he hates, Too credulous listening, and too soon enflam'd: The bird he hates, who first betray'd the deed And caus'd him first to grieve: his bow he hates; His bowstring; arm; and with his arm the dart, Shot vengeful. Fond he clasps her fallen form; And strives by skill, by skill too late apply'd To conquer fate:—his healing arts he tries,— All unavailing. Fruitless ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... receive the thread, about an eighth of an inch from the pointed end. When the thread is carried through the cloth, which may be done to the distance of about three-fourths of an inch the thread will be stretched above the curved needle, something like a bowstring, leaving a small open space between the two. A small shuttle, carrying a bobbin, filled with thread, is then made to pass entirely through this open space, between the needle and the thread which it carries; and when the shuttle is returned the thread ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... moment it was conveyed to her, she summoned to her presence three black slaves, belonging to the corps of the bostanjis, or gardeners, who also served as executioners, when a person of rank was to be subjected to the process of bowstring, or when any dark deed was to be accomplished in silence and with caution. Terrible appendages to the household of Ottoman sultans were the black slaves belonging to that corps—like snakes, they insinuated themselves, noiselessly ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... dark, his hand, from habit, going to his mouth. His attention being thus called to the force of habit, the strong-armed son of Pandu set his heart upon practising with his bow in the night. And, O Bharata, Drona, hearing the twang of his bowstring in the night, came to him, and clasping him, said, 'Truly do I tell thee that I shall do that unto thee by which there shall not be an archer equal ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... shot so wondrous well, Till his arrows were all ago', And the fire so fast upon him fell That his bowstring ...
— The Book of Brave Old Ballads • Unknown
... seated with laborious and unswerving perpendicularity on a demi-pique saddle, ornamented with a huge pair of well-stuffed saddle-bags, and holsters revealing the stocks of a brace of immense pistols, the horse with its obstinate mouth thrust out, and the bridle drawn as tight as a bowstring! its ears laid sullenly down, as if, like the Corporal, it complained of going to Yorkshire, and its long thick tail, not set up in a comely and well-educated arch, but hanging sheepishly down, as if resolved that its buttocks should ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... "Everything twanged like a bowstring. I felt myself turned inside out, passed through a small sieve, and poured back into shape. The entire bow wall-screen was full of Earth. Something was wrong all right, and this time it was much, much ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... think, and she was really beautiful, even under her wet, dark hair. She seemed to be a Caucasian girl—maybe a Georgian. She wore a small gold cross which hung from a gold cord around her neck. There was another, and tighter, cord around her neck, too. I cut the silk bowstring and closed and bound her eyes with my handkerchief before I rowed out a little farther and lowered her into the deep channel which cuts eastward here like the scimitar of ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... the hills around Retain the rending tumult; all the air Clangs in the conflict of the clashing war; But firm undaunted as a shelvy strand That meets the surge, the bold Peruvians stand, With steady aim the sounding bowstring ply, And showers of arrows thicken thro the sky; When each grim host, in closer conflict join'd, Clench the dire ax and cast the bow behind; Thro broken ranks sweep wide their slaughtering course. Now struggle back, now sidelong swray ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... them," the Ambassador interrupted. "I have taken no credit for it. The credit is yours. But in this land there are so many things which one may not do. The bowstring and the knife are unrecognized. Civilization has set an unwholesome value upon human life. It is the maudlin sentiment which creeps like corruption through the body of a ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sovereign of the Middle Kingdom had confiscated the property of Li's family, that his wife had died of sorrow, in misery, and that his son, Li, having taken the liberty to complain of the glorious emperor's severity, suffered death by the bowstring, as is proper and reasonable ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... sculptured a hog on the Mosque of Omar, trying to make it into a kanisah (unclean idol-house). My people discovered the sacrilege, and"—he added with intent—"gave that Greek the bowstring, then quartered the body and threw it ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... occasion to get out the stresses in girders of the bowstring form, the author was not satisfied with the common formulae for the diagonal braces, which, owing to the difficulty of apportioning the stresses amongst five members meeting in one point, were to a large extent based on an assumption as to the course taken ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... laid it loosely in large loops upon the ground so that it might run easily without hitching, then he tied the end of the thread tightly around one of his arrows. He fitted the arrow to the bow and drew the feather to his ear. Twang! rang the bowstring, and the feathered messenger flew whistling upon its errand to the watch-tower. The very first shaft did ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... Many perished raving mad, fancying themselves swimming in boundless seas, yet unable to assuage their thirst. Many of the soldiers lay parched and panting along the battlements, no longer able to draw a bowstring or hurl a stone; while above five thousand Moors, stationed upon a rocky height which overlooked part of the town, kept up a galling fire into it with slings and crossbows, so that the marques of Cadiz ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... thou pullest not the long bow ere the bowstring be twisted, or ever the arrow be at hand—send not in thy bill ere the customer have bought ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... home to the city of sacred Zeleia. Having seized them, he drew together the notch [of the arrow] and the ox-hide string; the string, indeed, he brought near to his breast, and the barb to the bow. But after he had bent the great bow into a circle, the bow twanged, the bowstring rang loudly, and the sharp-pointed shaft bounded forth, impatient to wing ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... well, Till his arrows were all gone, And the fire so fast upon him fell, That his bowstring burnt in two. The sparkles burnt, and fell upon, Good William of Cloudeslie! But then was he a woeful man, and said, "This is a ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... thrones, Have awed their servile spirits into fear; Spurned by the foot, they tremble and revere. The day of labor, night's sad, sleepless hour, The inflictive scourge of arbitrary power, The bloody terror of the pointed steel, The murderous stake, the agonizing wheel, And (dreadful choice!) the bowstring or the bowl, Damps their faint vigor and unmans the soul. Disastrous fate! Still tears will fill the eye, Still recollection prompt the mournful sigh, When to the mind recurs thy former fame, And all the horrors ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... mother," was the only thing they could get out of her. Her little body was taut as a bowstring, her lips tight. They offered her excuses; the lady mother slept; now she was rising and must be clothed. And then at last they told her, because of the hunted look in ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... "Ping!" went the bowstring. The arrow seemed to sing through the frosty air, and, a second later, the silence was broken by cheer after cheer. The apple lay upon the ground pierced ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... pastime any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the party to be tossed, though it is a beanfeast for the onlookers. They manage it this way. A hide, freshly stripped from a bullock, smoking, bloody, and limber as a bowstring, is requisitioned; the hairy side is turned downwards, two strong men get hold of each corner, cutting holes in the green hide for their hands to have a good grip; they allow the hide to sag until it forms a sort ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... but you may go to bed in the Albany, Piccadilly, with THAT for your pillow, young man!' Thereupon, the little dressmaker again dabbed out his eyes separately, and making a loop in the air of her thread and deftly catching it into a knot with her needle, seemed to bowstring him into ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... directed against him by Sir Edward Grey was feathered with his own plumage. To meet our contentions Sir Edward cites our own seizures and our own court decisions. It remains to be seen whether out of strands plucked from the mane and tail of the British lion we can fashion a bowstring which will give effective momentum to a counterbolt launched in the general ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... brave Hobbie Noble, Wi's ain bowstring they band him sae; But his gentle heart was ne'er sae sair, As when his ain five ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... but he had not gone more than a hundred yards when another arrow struck his cap, taking it off. He staggered, then, taking a new direction, ran a few strides, then stopped in hesitation, seeing an Indian rise to his knees, fixing an arrow to his bowstring. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... take the city of Pergamos, and with help of Telamon slew the nations of the Meropes, and the herdsman whose stature was as a mountain, Alkyoneus whom he found at Phlegrai, and spared not of his hands the terrible twanging bowstring. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... that dashed upon them so fearlessly. As they swept through, Menna had enough to do to manage his steeds, which were wild with excitement; but Ramses' bow was bent again and again, and at every twang of the bowstring a Hittite champion fell from his chariot. Behind the King came his household troops, and all together they burst through the chariot brigade of the enemy, leaving a long trail marked by dead and wounded men, ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... came in sight, but this time there were only two of them, as the youngest had stayed at home. The air was warm and damp, and the snow soft and slushy, and the elder brother's bowstring hung loose, while the bow of the younger caught in a tree and snapped in half. At that moment the dogs began to bark loudly, and the bear rushed out of the thicket and set off in the direction of the mountain. Without thinking that they had nothing to defend themselves with, should ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... god of love, that unnumbered saints and sages have surrendered the merits of their life-long penance at the feet of a woman. I broke my bow in two and burnt my arrows in the fire. I hated my strong, lithe arm, scored by drawing the bowstring. O Love, god Love, thou hast laid low in the dust the vain pride of my manlike strength; and all my man's training lies crushed under thy feet. Now teach me thy lessons; give me the power of the weak and the ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... seals and their arms, converted their masters' substance into their own, and, as it were, sucked them dry under the shelter of those repealed laws. The Roman Empire, formerly sold by auction to the highest bidder, and the Turkish emperors, whose necks are exposed every day to the bowstring, show us in very bloody characters the blindness of those men that make authority to ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... jugulate[obs3]; stab, run through the body, bayonet, eviscerate; put to the sword, put to the edge of the sword. shoot dead; blow one's brains out; brain, knock on the head; stone, lapidate[obs3]; give a deathblow; deal a deathblow; give a quietus, give a coupe de grace. behead, bowstring, electrocute, gas &c. (execute) 972. hunt, shoot &c. n. cut off, nip in the bud, launch into eternity, send to one's last account, sign one's death warrant, strike the death knell of. give no quarter, pour out blood like water; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... and rubbing gently again and again with his own hands which bore the marks of the thunderbolt the handsome and huge arms of Arjuna which resembled a couple of golden columns and which were hard in consequence of drawing the bowstring and son enhanced the beauty of the assembly, like the sun and moon god of a thousand eyes—eyeing his son of curly locks smilingly and with eyes expanded with delight, seemed scarcely to be gratified. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... whose Neck is stained with Blue.(257) The mighty Sire their wishes knew, And he whose lips are ever true Caused the two Gods to meet as foes. Then fierce the rage of battle rose: Bristled in dread each starting hair As Siva strove with Vishnu there. But Vishnu raised his voice amain. And Siva's bowstring twanged in vain; Its master of the Three bright Eyes Stood fixt in fury and surprise. Then all the dwellers in the sky, Minstrel, and saint, and God drew nigh, And prayed them that the strife might cease, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... were fighting within thirty yards of the spot where the Bushman lay. The twang of a bowstring might have been heard by one of the koris, had he been listening. The other could not possibly have heard it; for before the sound could have reached him, a poisoned arrow was sticking through his ears. The barb had passed through, and the shaft remained ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... often also a quiver of poisoned arrows and a bamboo* [The bamboo, of which the quiver is made, is thin and light: it is brought from Assam, and called Tulda, or Dulwa, by the Bengalees.] bow across his back. On his right wrist is a curious wooden guard for the bowstring; and a little pouch, containing aconite poison and a few common implements, is suspended to his girdle. A hat he seldom wears, and when he does, it is often extravagantly broad and flat-brimmed, with a small hemispherical crown. It ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... on the pummel of his saddle to keep his Stomach steady. An end, however, was put to the discomfort he suffered through Corpulence, by the arrival, three weeks after the suppression of the Insurrection, of a Tartar Courier, who brought with him a Bowstring and a Firman from the Grand Seignor. By means of the Bowstring, the Fat Bashaw was then and there strangled,—for they do things in a very off-hand manner in Turkey,—and when the Firman was opened by his ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... in position near the forestock. He pulled it back the length of the crossbar and it brought the string with it, stretching it taut. There was a click as the trigger mechanism locked the bowstring in place and at the same time a concealed spring arrangement shoved an arrow into place against ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... mighty arrows like unto a flight of locusts, then wilt thou repent of thine own folly! Bethink thyself of what thou wilt feel when that warrior armed with the Gandiva, blowing his conch-shell and with gloves reverberating with the strokes of his bowstring will again and again pierce thy breast with his shafts. And when Bhima will advance towards thee, mace in hand and the two sons of Madri range in all directions, vomiting forth the venom of their wrath, thou wilt then experience pangs of keen regret that will last for ever. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... Dog in camp. He glanced around and would have run, but the tramp was too quick for him and grabbed him by the collar. "Oh, no you don't; hold on, sonny. I'll fix you so you'll do as you're told." He cut the bowstring from its place, and violently throwing Yan down, he tied his feet so that they had about eighteen ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... my fair proffer," said the prince, "the provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... fed the wolves has encountered His weird in the dale of the Bowstring— Thorarin the Strong, 'neath the slayer Lay slain by the might of my weapon. And loss of their lives men abided When Loft fell, and Alf fell, and Skofti. They were four, yonder kinsmen, and fated— They were ...
— The Life and Death of Cormac the Skald • Unknown
... visited her chamber, was early astir. An ugly dream, it is said, troubled her. Though of ripe years, yet, as we have noticed before, love had not yet aimed his malicious shafts at her bosom, nor even tightened his bowstring as she tripped by, defying his power; so that the dream, which in others would appear but as the overflowing of a youthful and ardent imagination, seemed to her altogether novel and unaccountable, raising up new faculties, and endowing her with a train of feelings heretofore ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... cries rang out exultant as the horses dashed by the tunnel. The light in the tent wavered, went out. There was a shout of surprise and dismay, a twang like the snapping of a mighty bowstring and then came the whoops of the trio from the Three Star as they realized what the attempt had been and how it ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... majesty. "Know ye not that this Smyrna is our capital city, and we could confiscate your gold to our royal exchequer? Josiah is King here." And he took his seat upon the throne vacated by Sabbatai. "Get ye gone, or the bastinado and the bowstring shall be ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... sufficiently long upon men, Providence, like the sultan to his viziers, sends them the bowstring by a mute, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... with a blue sash and red fingers. I have promised him that when he comes to Beech Park you shall sing him my favourite Scotch song, 'Should auld acquaintance be forgot?' I would sing it myself if I could; but I think every Englishwoman who pretends to sing Scotch songs ought to have the bowstring." Then, turning to the harpsichord, she began to play it with ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... short one. Leaving his sword in the body of the archer, Jethro drew his dagger and speedily dispatched his foe. Then he jumped down, and lifting Amuba, who was insensible from the sharp jerk of the bowstring upon his throat and the violence of his fall, carried him back to his chariot. This with the greatest difficulty he managed to draw out of the heat of the conflict, which was for the moment raging more ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... prognostications! never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defence, without the forms of law and justice! History has been ransacked to find examples of tyrants sufficiently odious to illustrate ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... arrow, made of some extremely hard wood, was about ten inches in length. Affixed to it was a pointed fish-bone, sharp, but not barbed, and not fastened in a manner suggestive of much strength. The arrow was neither feathered nor grooved for a bowstring. Altogether it seemed to be a childish weapon to be used by men equipped ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... tender and that Moabdar was jealous. The envious man brought false reports to the king. The monarch now thought of nothing but in what manner he might best execute his vengeance. He one night resolved to poison the queen and in the morning to put Zadig to death by the bowstring. The orders were given to a merciless eunuch, who commonly executed his acts of vengeance. There happened at that time to be in the king's chamber a little dwarf, who, though dumb, was not deaf. He was allowed, on account of his insignificance, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... blazing upon the golden-haired youth. Radiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty strength, a flashing shape in the midst of flame. He fitted a glowing arrow to a gleaming bow. The arrow parted with a keen musical twang of the bowstring, and Photogen darting after it, vanished with a shout. Up shot Apollo himself, and from his quiver scattered astonishment and exultation. But the brain of poor Nycteris was pierced through and through. She fell down in utter darkness. All ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... on is this, that with an impoverished air to breathe, their rebellious spirit will die out—the dogs!—and we'll have no more talk of social revolution. We'll draw their teeth, all right enough; or rather, twist the bowstring round their damned necks so tight that all their energy, outside of work, will be consumed in just keeping alive. Revolution, then? Forget it, Waldron! We'll kill that viper ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... mad, or no? Undoubtedly not more insane than the rest of us, but her self-control snapped like a bowstring which is overstrained. She saw—so she said—a grinning death's head behind every smiling face. Merely a bee in her bonnet! But she was foolish enough to talk about it; and when people laughed at her words ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... laws would be a strange Utopia! the bowstring would be used there as unmercifully as it is in the seraglio, to say nothing of the summary mode of bringing down the population to the means of subsistence. But this is straying from the subject. The consequences of defective order ...
— Colloquies on Society • Robert Southey
... were riding on in the ellipse, and another man fitted an arrow to his bowstring, and as he ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... ere this important morrow rise, But fear or mutiny may taint the Greeks? Who knows, if Mahomet's awaking anger May spare the fatal bowstring till to-morrow? ...
— Dr. Johnson's Works: Life, Poems, and Tales, Volume 1 - The Works Of Samuel Johnson, Ll.D., In Nine Volumes • Samuel Johnson
... was as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea-gully, and the Hispaniola would go humming ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... stray, Or elephant, the stream to drink,—intent my savage game to slay. Then of a water cruse, as slow it filled, the gurgling sound I heard, Nought saw I, but the sullen low of elephant that sound appeared. The swift well-feathered arrow I upon the bowstring fitting straight, Towards the sound the shaft let fly, ah, cruelly deceived by fate! The winged arrow scarce had flown, and scarce had reached its destined aim, 'Ah me, I'm slain,' a feeble moan in trembling human accents ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... incoming tide He talked with his heart as one talks with a friend Who is dying. "The summer has come to an end And I wake from my dreaming," he mused. "Wake to know That my place is not here—I must go—I must go. Who dares laugh at Love shall hear Love laughing last, As forth from his bowstring barbed arrows are cast. I scoffed at the god with a sneer on my lip, And he forces me now from his chalice to sip A bitter sweet potion. Ah, lightly the part Of a lover I've played many times, but my heart Has been proud in its record of friendship. ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... which swells around and behind him in the wind. His left arm, strong and bare, is firmly stretched out, and his left hand holds a thick bow in its iron grasp. His right arm is out of sight, and only the right hand is seen, drawing back the bowstring to his breast. At his left side there hangs a quiver, full of arrows with feathered shafts. On his head he wears a stately winged helmet, and above it a crown. His face wears a look of commanding strength, and in ...
— Evangelists of Art - Picture-Sermons for Children • James Patrick
... Peruvians, formerly dictators, now become insurance agents, or generals transformed into salesmen for some wine house; Cuban chiefs half shot to pieces by the Spaniards; Cretes exiled by the Turks; great personages from Constantinople, escaped from the Sultan's silken bowstring, and displaying proudly their red fez in Paris, where the opera permitted them to continue their habits of polygamy; Americans, whose gold-mines or petroleum-wells made them billionaires for a winter, only to go to pieces and ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of business, and smells of the harem and the divan rather than of the forum and the market place. In modern times the official has lost all the social honor and dignity of the common hangman. He is only the bearer of the bowstring. ...
— What's Wrong With The World • G.K. Chesterton
... disappearance, there was picked up in the Tiber, a little below the Castle Sant' Angelo, the body of a beautiful young woman, her hands bound together behind her back, and also the corpse of a handsome youth with the bowstring he had been strangled with tied round his neck. The girl was Caracciuolo's bride, the young man ...
— Celebrated Crimes, Complete • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... principle, I soon had some such sensations as one would be apt to feel if his gullet were in a vice. I shall not attempt to describe very minutely the miracle that followed. Hanging ought to be an effectual remedy for many delusions; for, in my case, the bowstring I was under certainly did wonders in a very short time. Gradually the whole scene changed. First came a mist, then a vertigo; and finally, as the captain relaxed his hold, objects appeared in new forms, and instead of being ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... purpose, stirrups should be made as shown in Plate III. They should be restrained in some manner from moving when the concrete strikes them. A very good way of accomplishing this is to string them on a longitudinal rod, nested in the bend at the upper end. Mr. Godfrey, in his advocacy of bowstring bars anchored with washers and nuts at the ends, fails to indicate how they shall be placed. The writer, from experience in placing steel, thinks that it would be very difficult, if not impractical, to place them in this ...
— Some Mooted Questions in Reinforced Concrete Design • Edward Godfrey
... in the same harsh grunting voice as before; "and you call that pastime, that which we have seen a thousand and one times? By the beard of the Prophet, vizier," he continued in a louder tone, "if I have no sleep to-day, nor appetite to-morrow, there is the bowstring for you, and the stake ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... to his curled ear the silken thong; Loud twangs the steel, the golden arrow flies, 240 Trails a long line of lustre through the skies; "'Tis done!" he shouts, "the mighty Monarch feels!" And with loud laughter shakes the silver wheels; Bends o'er the car, and whirling, as it moves, His loosen'd bowstring, drives the rising doves. 245 —Pierced on his throne the slarting Thunderer turns, Melts with soft sighs, with kindling rapture burns; Clasps her fair hand, and eyes in fond amaze The bright Intruder with enamour'd gaze. "And leaves my Goddess, like a blooming bride, 250 ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... in less than a century disposed of the throne of its former tyrant. The unseen hand of fate gave to the discharged arrow a higher flight, and quite a different direction from that which it first received from the bowstring. In the womb of happy Brabant that liberty had its birth which, torn from its mother in its earliest infancy, was to gladden the so despised Holland. But the enterprise must not be less thought of because its issue differed from the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... sister," said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... her terror, though her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and her mouth had grown stiff with its effort to command. The tension was torture. Her heart strings were drawn to the snapping point; her mind was a bowstring never relaxed, till every fiber of her resistant body ached ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... They were open to bribes, intriguing, and a source of danger rather than strength; and finally a reforming Sultan touched a mine of gunpowder which led under their barracks, and they were exterminated, the bowstring and sword finishing the few ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... constitutional Monarchs of France or England. The proof of this is, that when the people are dissatisfied with their administration, or displeased with the sovereign, they have no difficulty in dispatching him. The twisting of a sash round the neck in Russia, the bowstring in Constantinople or Ispahan, are very effectual monitors—fully as much so as a hostile Parliamentary majority in the house of Commons or Chamber of Deputies. In a word, government in every country being conducted by the few over the many by the hundreds over the hundred thousands, it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... kissing them wildly, and betraying in her childish grief all the deep, sensitive, despairing sorrow of a woman. The villain before her might have often beaten her, debased her immeasurably, but the mysterious cord that linked their beating hearts was unbroken, though it sang like a bowstring in the gusty horror that swept between, and stretched to attenuation as the elder spirit sank, groaning, into the abyss of its own wickedness. Hot tears gushed from her eyes, her little throat was swollen with the ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... And the fire shall devour them. Their fruit shall Thou destroy from the earth, And their seed from among the children of men. For they intended evil against Thee, They imagined a mischievous device, Which they could not execute. For Thou wilt make them turn their back, Thou wilt make ready Thy bowstring against their faces. Be Thou exalted Jehovah in Thine own strength; We will sing ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... they hae ta'en brave Hobbie Noble, Wi's ain bowstring they band him sae; But his gentle heart was ne'er sae sair, As when his ain five ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... beautiful, even under her wet, dark hair. She seemed to be a Caucasian girl—maybe a Georgian. She wore a small gold cross which hung from a gold cord around her neck. There was another, and tighter, cord around her neck, too. I cut the silk bowstring and closed and bound her eyes with my handkerchief before I rowed out a little farther and lowered her into the deep channel which cuts eastward here like the scimitar of that true believer, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... night the buffalo might stray, Or elephant, the stream to drink,—intent my savage game to slay. Then of a water cruse, as slow it filled, the gurgling sound I heard, Nought saw I, but the sullen low of elephant that sound appeared. The swift well-feathered arrow I upon the bowstring fitting straight, Towards the sound the shaft let fly, ah, cruelly deceived by fate! The winged arrow scarce had flown, and scarce had reached its destined aim, 'Ah me, I'm slain,' a feeble moan in trembling human accents came. 'Ah, whence hath come this ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... Pillows of his Divan on the pummel of his saddle to keep his Stomach steady. An end, however, was put to the discomfort he suffered through Corpulence, by the arrival, three weeks after the suppression of the Insurrection, of a Tartar Courier, who brought with him a Bowstring and a Firman from the Grand Seignor. By means of the Bowstring, the Fat Bashaw was then and there strangled,—for they do things in a very off-hand manner in Turkey,—and when the Firman was opened by his Vizier it was found to contain, ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 3 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... riding on in the ellipse, and another man fitted an arrow to his bowstring, and as he rode ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... good charade words: Knighthood, penitent, looking-glass, hornpipe, necklace, indolent, lighthouse, Hamlet, pantry, phantom, windfall, sweepstake, sackcloth, antidote, antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... tops of the agitated bushes. Then a large bear, a grizzly, crashed into view, and likewise stopped abruptly, at sight of the humans. He did not like them, and growled querulously. Slowly the boy fitted the arrow to the bow, and slowly he pulled the bowstring taut. But he never removed his eyes ...
— The Scarlet Plague • Jack London
... matter of the kind, the wayward one is "tossed." Tossing is not the sort of pastime any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the party to be tossed, though it is a beanfeast for the onlookers. They manage it this way. A hide, freshly stripped from a bullock, smoking, bloody, and limber as a bowstring, is requisitioned; the hairy side is turned downwards, two strong men get hold of each corner, cutting holes in the green hide for their hands to have a good grip; they allow the hide to sag until it forms a sort of cradle, into which the ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... conditions," added the confident Giraffe. "And just make up your minds I'm going to do that same stunt yet. Why, half a dozen times already I've been pretty close to getting fire; but something always seemed to happen just at the last minute. Once my bowstring sawed through. Another time the plaguey stick burst. Then Bumpus had to fall all over me just when I felt sure the spark was going to come in the tinder. And the last time, you may remember, when I sang out that ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Rochester, costumed in shawls, with a turban on his head. His dark eyes and swarthy skin and Paynim features suited the costume exactly: he looked the very model of an Eastern emir, an agent or a victim of the bowstring. Presently advanced into view Miss Ingram. She, too, was attired in oriental fashion: a crimson scarf tied sash-like round the waist: an embroidered handkerchief knotted about her temples; her beautifully-moulded arms bare, one of them upraised ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a figure, painted, clothed, and plumed in scarlet. Everything was scarlet about him, his moccasins, his naked skin, the fantastic cloak and blanket, girdle, knife-hilt, axe shaft, and the rattling quiver on his back—nay, the very arrows in it were set with scarlet feathers, and the looped bowstring was ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... grandsons, nephews of the present Light of the Universe, and children of his sister, the wife of Halil Pasha. Little children die in all ways: these of the much-maligned Mahometan Royal race perished by the bowstring. Sultan Mahmoud (may he rest in glory!) strangled the one; but, having some spark of human feeling, was so moved by the wretchedness and agony of the poor bereaved mother, his daughter, that his Royal heart relented towards her, and he promised that, should she ever have another child, it should ...
— Notes on a Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo • William Makepeace Thackeray
... is 8,765. The Companies vary greatly in numbers: there are 448 Haberdashers, for instance: 380 Fishmongers: and 356 Spectacle Makers: while there are only 16 Fletchers, i.e. makers of arrows. Many of the trades are now extinct, such as the Fletchers above named, the Bowyers, the Girdlers, the Bowstring Makers and ...
— The History of London • Walter Besant
... won't get ahead of me," as he had said at the first; he set his teeth, threw off his hat, and, knitting his brows with a resolute expression, prepared to take steady aim, though his heart beat fast and his thumb trembled as he pressed it on the bowstring. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... rent in twain his bowstring, and they cut his pond'rous mace, Slew his steeds and chariot-driver, streaked ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... my mother," was the only thing they could get out of her. Her little body was taut as a bowstring, her lips tight. They offered her excuses; the lady mother slept; now she was rising and must be clothed. And then at last they told her, because of the ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... thread, about an eighth of an inch from the pointed end. When the thread is carried through the cloth, which may be done to the distance of about three-fourths of an inch the thread will be stretched above the curved needle, something like a bowstring, leaving a small open space between the two. A small shuttle, carrying a bobbin, filled with thread, is then made to pass entirely through this open space, between the needle and the thread which it carries; and when the shuttle is returned the thread ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... my son, that thou pullest not the long bow ere the bowstring be twisted, or ever the arrow be at hand—send not in thy bill ere the ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... bow," says Ivy. "Loop the bowstring round the hand-piece and you'll get more friction ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea-gully and the HISPANIOLA would go ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... if thou losest it, thou shalt be stript of thy Lincoln green, and scourged out of the lists with bowstrings, for a wordy and insolent braggart, and if thou refusest my fair proffer, the Provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the presence as a ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... decisive struggle in the open, but they always seemed to be stealing something which belonged to the men who were engaged in the struggle. And apart from this they were so indifferent in their practice of archery that they drew the bowstring only to the breast[5], so that the missile sent forth was naturally impotent and harmless to those whom it hit[6]. Such, it is evident, was the archery of the past. But the bowmen of the present time go into battle wearing corselets and fitted out ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... that," Carroll smiled. "There were the Sabine women, among other instances. Didn't they cut off their hair to make bowstring for their abductors?" ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... never-enough-to-be-lamented lock of hair. Other danger awaits him, for "to be strangled was not much better than to be starved; and certainly with half a dozen highly respectable females clinging round his neck, he was not reminded, for the first time in his life, what a domestic bowstring is an affectionate woman." He is next joined by an "influential personage," who informs him that he is in Hubbabub (London)—the largest city, not only that exists, but that ever did exist, and the capital of the Island ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 12, - Issue 322, July 12, 1828 • Various
... sorrowing lover mourns His cruel vengeance; and himself he hates, Too credulous listening, and too soon enflam'd: The bird he hates, who first betray'd the deed And caus'd him first to grieve: his bow he hates; His bowstring; arm; and with his arm the dart, Shot vengeful. Fond he clasps her fallen form; And strives by skill, by skill too late apply'd To conquer fate:—his healing arts he tries,— All unavailing. Fruitless he beholds ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... my harp that had but one long string, But one low song, but one brief wingy flight, Is voiceless, for my bowstring is cut off. Sever two locks of hair for my sake now, Spoil those bright coils of power, give me your hair, And with my mother twist those locks together Into a bowstring for me. Fierce small head, Thy stinging tresses shall scourge men ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... Roofs. Common Trusses. The Vertical Upright Truss. The Warren Girder. The Bowstring ...
— Carpentry for Boys • J. S. Zerbe
... when the head is thrown up. The other fleets and other arrangements threaten the enemy's solar plexus and stomach. Somewhere in relation to the Grand Fleet lies the "blockading" cordon which examines neutral traffic. It could be drawn as tight as a Turkish bowstring, but for reasons which we may arrive at after the war, it does not seem to have been ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... exercise as it was performed in the Vieille Garden and told me a new fairy-tale, I verily believe, every afternoon for seven years. Scheherezade could do no more for a Sultan, and to save her own neck from the bowstring! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... much more readily accept "considerations of state" as a reason for Mr. Motley's removal. Considerations of state have never yet failed the axe or the bowstring when a reason for the use of those convenient implements was wanted, and they are quite equal to every emergency which can arise in a republican autocracy. But for the very reason that a minister ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... fir rounded, and the rest of bone let by a socket into the wood, and having a head of thin iron, or more commonly of slate, secured into a slit by two treenails. Towards the opposite end of the arrow are two feathers, generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on. The bowstring consists of from twelve to eighteen small lines of three-sinew sinnet, having a loose twist, and with a separate becket of the same size for going over the knobs at the end of ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... said she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... Democrat; the pirates of the Barbary Coast; Democratic gospel pure and undefiled; Janus-faced double; Good Lord, good devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the most ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... house or taken by his foes; but for her children she would have stayed with him. William continued his wonderful archery, never missing his aim, till all his arrows were spent, and the flames came so close that his bowstring was burnt in two. Great blazing brands came falling upon him from the burning roof, and the floor was hot beneath his feet. "An evil death is this!" thought he. "Better it were that I should take sword and buckler and leap down ...
— Hero-Myths & Legends of the British Race • Maud Isabel Ebbutt
... express things rather brutally. I feel this to be the case, for instance, when I say that she had primarily detected such an aid to advancement in the person of Robert Acton, but that she had afterwards remembered that a prudent archer has always a second bowstring. Eugenia was a woman of finely-mingled motive, and her intentions were never sensibly gross. She had a sort of aesthetic ideal for Clifford which seemed to her a disinterested reason for taking him ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... leaf could move on the ground now—not a bush might bend or a bird pass and escape being seen by the four sharp eyes that peered from the brush in the direction indicated by the sound of the breaking stick. Two hearts beat loudly as Fine Bow fitted his arrow to the bowstring. Tense and expectant they waited—yes, it was a deer—a buck, too, and he was coming down the trail, alert and watchful—down the trail that he had often travelled and knew so well. Yes, he had followed his mother along that trail when he was but ...
— Indian Why Stories • Frank Bird Linderman
... Gresham to untie a parcel, and it thereafter serves to spin a fine new top, to help Hal out of a difficulty with his toy, and in the final incident of the story, an archery contest, our provident hero, finding his bowstring "cracked," calmly draws from his pocket the still excellent piece of cord, and affixing it to his bow, wins the match. Hal betrays his great lack of self-control by exclaiming, "The everlasting whipcord, I declare," ...
— Forgotten Books of the American Nursery - A History of the Development of the American Story-Book • Rosalie V. Halsey
... Considerable execution was also done by the Turkish arrows, with which portions of the masts and spars bristled. Several of these missiles came from the bow of the Pacha himself, who was probably the last commander-in-chief who ever drew a bowstring in European battle. But on the whole the fire of the Christians was greatly superior to that of the Turks. Twice the deck of Ali was swept clear of defenders, and twice the Spaniards rushed on board ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 1-20 • Various
... the throat, on the retaliating principle, I soon had some such sensations as one would be apt to feel if his gullet were in a vice. I shall not attempt to describe very minutely the miracle that followed. Hanging ought to be an effectual remedy for many delusions; for, in my case, the bowstring I was under certainly did wonders in a very short time. Gradually the whole scene changed. First came a mist, then a vertigo; and finally, as the captain relaxed his hold, objects appeared in new forms, and instead of being in our lodgings in Bivouac, I found myself in my old apartment ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... bamboo* [The bamboo, of which the quiver is made, is thin and light: it is brought from Assam, and called Tulda, or Dulwa, by the Bengalees.] bow across his back. On his right wrist is a curious wooden guard for the bowstring; and a little pouch, containing aconite poison and a few common implements, is suspended to his girdle. A hat he seldom wears, and when he does, it is often extravagantly broad and flat-brimmed, with a small hemispherical crown. It is made of leaves of Scitamineae, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... and pain he bored in. He had but one chance—to get this shadow in his gorilla-like arms. He lacked mental flexibility. An idea, getting into his head, stuck; it was not adjustable. Like an arrow sped from the bowstring, it had to fulfill its destiny. It never occurred to him to take to his heels, to get space between himself and this enemy he had so woefully underestimated. Ten feet, and he might have been able to whirl, draw his pistol, and end ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... defeat might amuse with a triumph the vanity of Constantinople; but the more sagacious Michael, despairing of his arms, depended on the effects of a conspiracy; on the secret workings of a rat, who gnawed the bowstring ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 6 • Edward Gibbon
... and in less than a century disposed of the throne of its former tyrant. The unseen hand of fate gave to the discharged arrow a higher flight, and quite a different direction from that which it first received from the bowstring. In the womb of happy Brabant that liberty had its birth which, torn from its mother in its earliest infancy, was to gladden the so despised Holland. But the enterprise must not be less thought of because its issue differed from the first design. Man works up, smooths, ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... longer be trusted. They were open to bribes, intriguing, and a source of danger rather than strength; and finally a reforming Sultan touched a mine of gunpowder which led under their barracks, and they were exterminated, the bowstring and sword finishing the few which ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... extremities. Many perished raving mad, fancying themselves swimming in boundless seas, yet unable to assuage their thirst. Many of the soldiers lay parched and panting along the battlements, no longer able to draw a bowstring or hurl a stone; while above five thousand Moors, stationed upon a rocky height which overlooked part of the town, kept up a galling fire into it with slings and crossbows, so that the marques ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... into the copses to cut myself a good hazel and make myself a bow, Mr Jack, and get reeds out of the edge of the long lake, to tie nails in the ends and use for arrows. I used to bind the nails in with whitey-brown thread well beeswaxed, and then dress the notch at the other end to keep the bowstring from splitting it up. I've hit rabbits with an arrow before now, though they always run into their holes. You can shoot with a bow and arrow at ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... have no claim whatever against you; neither has this man. I settled all my accounts with him; and I have his receipt in full, signed by him, and witnessed by Captain Sharp and his wife. He is a swindler and a villain; and if I ever catch him in Morocco he shall have the bowstring!" ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... boys came in sight, but this time there were only two of them, as the youngest had stayed at home. The air was warm and damp, and the snow soft and slushy, and the elder brother's bowstring hung loose, while the bow of the younger caught in a tree and snapped in half. At that moment the dogs began to bark loudly, and the bear rushed out of the thicket and set off in the direction of the mountain. Without thinking that they had nothing to defend themselves with, ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... had occasion to get out the stresses in girders of the bowstring form, the author was not satisfied with the common formulae for the diagonal braces, which, owing to the difficulty of apportioning the stresses amongst five members meeting in one point, were to a large extent based on an assumption as to the course taken by the stresses. As far ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... of the Hittite chariots, which drew aside as if terrified at the glittering figures that dashed upon them so fearlessly. As they swept through, Menna had enough to do to manage his steeds, which were wild with excitement; but Ramses' bow was bent again and again, and at every twang of the bowstring a Hittite champion fell from his chariot. Behind the King came his household troops, and all together they burst through the chariot brigade of the enemy, leaving a long trail marked by dead and wounded men, overturned ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... specially reckoned. Provided there is no waste, it is a coefficient of all the forces, and no one can tell exactly to what extent it may be carried. But what is remarkable is, that just as only a strong arm enables the archer to stretch the bowstring to the utmost extent, so also in War it is only by means of a great directing spirit that we can expect the full power latent in the troops to be developed. For it is one thing if an Army, in consequence of great misfortunes, surrounded with danger, falls all to pieces like a wall that has been ...
— On War • Carl von Clausewitz
... of a pair of peculiar goat-skin bellows, provided with wooden nozzles tipped with iron. A catgut bowstring drills for boring holes, and screw-drills for cutting threads, hammers, and an anvil. A rude but ingenious forge is constructed out of a few handfuls of stiff mud, and, building a charcoal fire, they spend the evening in sharpening and tempering ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... horizons fade And thought forgets old gages in the ecstasy of view. The standards go by which the steps were made. On which we trod from former levels to the new. No time for backward glance, no pause for breath, Since impulse like a bowstring loosed us in full flight And in delirium of speed none aim considereth Nor in the blaze of burning codes can think of night. The whirring of sped wheels and horn remind That speed, more speed is best and peace is waste! They rank unfortunate who tag behind And ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... than that the gracious sovereign of the Middle Kingdom had confiscated the property of Li's family, that his wife had died of sorrow, in misery, and that his son, Li, having taken the liberty to complain of the glorious emperor's severity, suffered death by the bowstring, as is proper and ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... every muscle in Jean's body became as taut as a bowstring. He hunched a little forward, as if about to leap upon the other, and strike him down. And then, all at once, he relaxed. His hands unclenched. And he ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... I write; then all desireful turned herself again to that region where the world is most alive.[1] Her silence, and her transmuted countenance imposed silence on my eager mind, which already had new questions in advance. And even as an arrow, that hits the mark before the bowstring is quiet, so we ran into the second realm.[2] Here I saw my lady so joyous as she entered into the light of that heaven, that thereby the planet became more lucent. And if the star war, changed and smiled, what did I become, who even by my nature ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... minutes the birds were fighting within thirty yards of the spot where the Bushman lay. The twang of a bowstring might have been heard by one of the koris, had he been listening. The other could not possibly have heard it; for before the sound could have reached him, a poisoned arrow was sticking through his ears. The barb had passed through, and the shaft remained in his head, ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pages was spared him. It was not possible for an instant to turn away his eyes. His mental clarity was unrelieved by weariness. No shadow dimmed the keen crystal of his brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring that is stretched continually. He realised this, thinking: "Presently I will cut the bow-string, and the bow shall have rest! Even if my once-boasted will-power reasserted itself—even if I rose triumphant for the second ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... called a bowstring a bowstring was out of the question; and Racine, with triumphant art, has managed to introduce the periphrasis in such a way that it exactly expresses the state of mind of the Sultana. She begins ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... silken thong; Loud twangs the steel, the golden arrow flies, 240 Trails a long line of lustre through the skies; "'Tis done!" he shouts, "the mighty Monarch feels!" And with loud laughter shakes the silver wheels; Bends o'er the car, and whirling, as it moves, His loosen'd bowstring, drives the rising doves. 245 —Pierced on his throne the slarting Thunderer turns, Melts with soft sighs, with kindling rapture burns; Clasps her fair hand, and eyes in fond amaze The bright Intruder with enamour'd gaze. "And leaves my Goddess, like a blooming bride, 250 "The fanes ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... speak two lines with the bowstring round her neck; but the audience cried out ['Murder!'] 'Murder!' and she was obliged to go off ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... whipping him on the opposite of his neck. Presently the plucky savage's arm began to move. Booth watched him intently, and saw that he had fixed an arrow in his bow under the pony's shoulder; just as he was on the point of letting go the bowstring, with the head of the arrow not three feet from Booth's breast as he leaned out of the hole, the latter struck frantically at the weapon, dodged back into the wagon, and up came the Indian. Whenever Booth looked out, down went ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... left fist, palm upward, at arm's length before the body, the right as if grasping the bowstring and drawn back. (Shoshoni and Banak I.) "From their peculiar manner of holding the long bow horizontally in shooting." ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... telescope, set his rifle upright on the moss, and, kneeling, balanced the long spyglass alongside of the blued-steel barrel, resting it on his hand as an archer fits the arrow he is drawing on the bowstring. ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... square-jawed man of thirty-six. His forehead is high and broad and his hair is worn longer than that of other young men—parted on the side and brushed back. He has thin lips and a mouth of unusual width. His mouth-line is as straight as a bowstring, and when he speaks, which is often, or smiles, which is not so frequent, he shows an even line of ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... happened in New York. I says to myself: 'Friend Heherezade, you want to get busy and make Bagdad look pretty to the sad sultan of the sour countenance, or it'll be the bowstring for yours.' But I never had any doubt I could ...
— Heart of the West • O. Henry
... pass as "the schadewe that glyt away;" man will fade as a leaf, "so lef on bouh." Where are Paris, and Helen, and Tristan, and Iseult, and Caesar? They have fled out of this world as the shaft from the bowstring: ...
— A Literary History of the English People - From the Origins to the Renaissance • Jean Jules Jusserand
... spent the previous night out here in the hills—they awoke to find a fresh trail in the bear-grass within a hundred yards of where they had been sleeping, and in the middle of the track Dick Gird picked up one of the rawhide wristlets which Apaches wore to protect their arms from the bowstring. ...
— When the West Was Young • Frederick R. Bechdolt
... that evening radiant with a new pride and joy. The storm within me had shifted my whole being from one centre to another. Like the Greek maidens of old, I fain would cut off my long, resplendent tresses to make a bowstring for my hero. Had my outward ornaments been connected with my inner feelings, then my necklet, my armlets, my bracelets, would all have burst their bonds and flung themselves over that assembly like a shower of meteors. Only ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... mark. But here the chief, the old White Bear, interposed and said that it was necessary that they should have long claws in order to be able to climb trees. "One of us has already died to furnish the bowstring, and if we now cut off our claws we shall all have to starve together. It is better to trust to the teeth and claws which nature has given us, for it is evident that man's weapons ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... "The summer has come to an end And I wake from my dreaming," he mused. "Wake to know That my place is not here—I must go—I must go. Who dares laugh at Love shall hear Love laughing last, As forth from his bowstring barbed arrows are cast. I scoffed at the god with a sneer on my lip, And he forces me now from his chalice to sip A bitter sweet potion. Ah, lightly the part Of a lover I've played many times, but my heart Has been proud in ...
— Three Women • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... hour of the old liberty and power! It would amuse me to see the faces of ENVER and of my wretched brother MOHAMMED as I ordered them to execution—them and their gang of villainous parasites. By the bowstring of my fathers, but that would be a great and worthy killing! Pardon the fond day-dreams of a poor and lonely old man whose only crime has been that he loved his country too well and treated his enemies with a kindness not to be understood by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... and some the rear; Their remedies to reinforce and vary, Came surgeon eke, and eke apothecary; Till the tired Monarch, though of words grown chary, Yet dropt, to recompense their fruitless labor, Some hint about a bowstring or a saber. There lack'd, I promise you, no longer speeches, To rid the palace of ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... out for football, but displayed an aversion for violent physical contention of any sort, especially fighting; which caused him to be branded as a coward. But the time came when, unable longer to endure the insults heaped upon him, the restraint of the young Texan snapped like a bowstring, and the boys of Oakdale found that a sleeping lion had suddenly awakened. Then it came to be known that Grant had inherited a most unfortunate family failing, a terrible temper, which, when uncontrolled, was liable to lead him into ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... around the neck and then under his left arm. The ends of the arrows were thus convenient to his right hand, and with one sweeping circular motion he could draw them from the quiver and fit them to the bowstring. ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... ascended a very strong rapid, and arrived at a range of three steep cascades, situated in the bend of the river. Here we made a portage of one thousand three hundred yards over a rocky hill, which received the name of the Bowstring Portage, from its shape. We found that the Indians had greatly the advantage of us in this operation; the men carried their small canoes, the women and children the clothes and provisions, and at the end of the portage they ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the Years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 1 • John Franklin
... golden-haired youth. Radiant as Apollo, he stood in mighty strength, a flashing shape in the midst of flame. He fitted a glowing arrow to a gleaming bow. The arrow parted with a keen musical twang of the bowstring, and Photogen darting after it, vanished with a shout. Up shot Apollo himself, and from his quiver scattered astonishment and exultation. But the brain of poor Nycteris was pierced through and through. She fell down ...
— Harper's Young People, December 23, 1879 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... received the pass-key to Ibrahim Pasha's harem. But the moment it was conveyed to her, she summoned to her presence three black slaves, belonging to the corps of the bostanjis, or gardeners, who also served as executioners, when a person of rank was to be subjected to the process of bowstring, or when any dark deed was to be accomplished in silence and with caution. Terrible appendages to the household of Ottoman sultans were the black slaves belonging to that corps—like snakes, they ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... of ruin and woe! never has any one been so pursued with direful prognostications! never has any one been so beset and impeded by a powerful combination of political and moneyed confederates! never has any one in any country where the administration of justice has risen above the knife or the bowstring, been so lawlessly and shamelessly tried and condemned by rivals and enemies, without hearing, without defence, without the forms of law and justice! History has been ransacked to find examples of tyrants sufficiently ...
— American Eloquence, Volume I. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1896) • Various
... paused the beauteous Teacher, and awhile Gazed on her train with sympathetic smile. 'Beware of Love! she cried, ye Nymphs, and hear 'His twanging bowstring with alarmed ear; 'Fly the first whisper of the distant dart, 'Or shield with adamant the fluttering heart; 430 'To secret shades, ye Virgin trains, retire, 'And in your bosoms guard the vestal fire.' —The obedient Beauties hear her ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... indeed the population is so large they would have very unsettled times of it. At every turning we meet people, or see their villages; all armed with bows and arrows. The bows are unusually long: I measured one made of bamboo, and found that along the bowstring it measured six feet four inches. Many carry large knives of fine iron; and indeed the metal is abundant. Young men and women wear the hair long, a mass of small ringlets comes down and rests on the shoulders, giving them the ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... some one about," he answered. "I heard the twang of a bowstring and the swish of an arrow over my head. Some one aimed—Ah, there ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... tongue, the longing tone, Imploringly ask why They can not be as happy now As in the days gone by. And two more hearts, tumultuous With overflowing joy, Are dancing to the music Which that dear, provoking boy Is twanging on his bowstring, As, fluttering his wings, He sends his love-charged arrows While merrily be sings: "Ho! ho! my dainty maiden, It surely can not be You are thinking you are master Of your heart, when it is me." And another gleaming arrow Does the little god's behest, And the dainty little maiden Falls ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... but his fingers could not loose their grip upon the arrow, and the sheep passed by unharmed. Bilh Ahati{COMBINING BREVE}ni scrambled up over the rim of the canon and ran to get ahead of them again, but the bowstring would not leave his fingers as they passed. A third effort, and a fourth, to kill the game brought the same result. Bilh Ahati{COMBINING BREVE}ni cursed himself and the sheep, but ceased suddenly, for whom should he see but four gods, Yebichai, appear before him, who had transformed ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... feverishly restless, watching the movements of the other people. Finally I went up to my room and sat down by the windows, staring out. There came a little tap at the unlocked door and in an instant, like the go of a taut bowstring, I was up ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the groove;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it! but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsmen, and smiting the sea, disappeared in ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... Swift as bowstring speeds a shaft, Through the camp was spread the rumor, And the soldiers, as they quaffed Flemish beer at dinner, laughed At the Emperor's ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... [4] caused the greatest affliction to Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what by the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commenced business, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the end of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... with millions of lights, and that all his wondrous thoughts stood embodied hundreds of feet below his tiny swinging plank, shouting together in his honour, when something cracked inside his temples like an overstrained bowstring, the glittering dome broke inward, and he was alone in ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... his cavernous throat. Meanwhile I levelled yet another shaft, Ill pleased to think my first had fled in vain. In the mid-chest I smote him, where the lungs Are seated: still the arrow sank not in, But fell, its errand frustrate, at his feet. Once more was I preparing, sore chagrined, To draw the bowstring, when the ravenous beast Glaring around espied me, lashed his sides With his huge tail, and opened war at once. Swelled his vast neck, his dun locks stood on end With rage: his spine moved sinuous as a bow, Till all his weight hung poised on flank and loin. And e'en as, when a chariot-builder ...
— Theocritus • Theocritus
... sound of a bowstring, and to Brace's horror one of their flying men made a spasmodic jump into the air and came down upon hands and knees, his nearest messmates passing on some twenty yards before they could check their speed; and then, in the midst of the thrill of excitement ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... given no sign of her suffering and her terror, though her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and her mouth had grown stiff with its effort to command. The tension was torture. Her heart strings were drawn to the snapping point; her mind was a bowstring never relaxed, till every fiber of her ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... and low like the cord. Some of us thought they discovered openings through the cord into the pool or lake, that was included between that and the bow; but whether there were or were not such openings is uncertain. We sailed abreast of the low beach or bowstring, within less than a league of the shore, till sun-set, and we then judged ourselves to be about half-way between the two horns. Here we brought-to, and sounded, but found no bottom with one hundred and thirty ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... folly of neglecting Raften's advice to have a big Dog in camp. He glanced around and would have run, but the tramp was too quick for him and grabbed him by the collar. "Oh, no you don't; hold on, sonny. I'll fix you so you'll do as you're told." He cut the bowstring from its place, and violently throwing Yan down, he tied his feet so that they had about ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... fiercely that I had not the heart, knowing how slender was her hold on life and how near the brink she stood, to break from her. I constrained myself to stand still, though every muscle grew tense as a drawn bowstring, and I felt the strong rage rising in my throat and choking me as I waited ...
— A Gentleman of France • Stanley Weyman
... one hand down inside the other, and sat for a moment in silence as tense with stirring possibilities to the others as to himself. The Judge felt moved to a most unusual sensation, as if he were a loosened bowstring beside this twanging, taut intensity. He felt slightly dismayed to have his unspoken principles carried to this nth power. He had given the best of himself, all his thoughts, illusions, hopes, endeavors, ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... out a sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the loan of a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring instead, with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a fluff, ...
— The Motormaniacs • Lloyd Osbourne
... ramparts, ordered the garrison to allow the towers to advance unmolested by the machines to within bow-shot. Then taking up a long bow, which might have graced the hand of Robin Hood, and choosing two shafts of a yard in length, he drew the bowstring to his ear, and shot his shaft at the tower. The Gothic captain, who was directing its movements from the summit, had trusted too much to the workmanship of his Milan armour. The fabric was not equal to that of Byzantium. The shaft pierced ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 379, May, 1847 • Various
... once when on a one-arrow-to-kill buffalo hunt with his brother-in-law. His companion had selected his animal and drew so powerfully on his sinew bowstring that it broke. Roman Nose had killed his own cow and was whipping up close to the other when the misfortune occurred. Both horses were going at full speed and the arrow jerked up in the air. Roman Nose caught it and shot the cow ...
— Indian Heroes and Great Chieftains • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... a death shot, they withdraw again to the far ends of the ring. Advancing once more each one throws the drawn bow and arrow upward, then toward the ground, calling heaven and earth to witness his vow to kill the other. Presently one gets a favorable opportunity, his bowstring twangs, and his opponent falls to the ground. The victor utters a cry of triumph, dances up to the body of his fallen foe, and cuts off the head with his bolo. He beckons and cries out to the relatives of the dead man to come and avenge the deed. Nobody appearing, ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... should we stop here to die?" They ran on to the camp, but Fox Eye would not run. Hiding behind a rock he prepared to fight, but as he was looking for some enemy to shoot at, holding his arrow on the string, a Snake had crept up on the bank above him; the Piegan heard the twang of the bowstring, and the long, fine arrow passed through his body. His bow and arrow dropped from his hands, and he fell forward, dead. Now, too late, the warriors came rushing out from the Piegan camp to help him, but the Snakes scalped their enemy, scattered ...
— Blackfeet Indian Stories • George Bird Grinnell
... her, standing naked in the lamplight, Beneath the huge tent's cavernous canopy, Against the throng of elephants and camels That champed unwondering in the golden dusk, Moon-white Diana, mettled Artemis— Her body, quick and tense as her own bowstring, Her spirit, an arrow barbed and strung for flight— White snowflakes melting on her night-black hair, And on her glistening breasts and supple thighs: Her red lips parted, her keen eyes alive With fierce, far-ranging hungers of the chase Over the hills of morn—The lantern guttered ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... grip was in position near the forestock. He pulled it back the length of the crossbar and it brought the string with it, stretching it taut. There was a click as the trigger mechanism locked the bowstring in place and at the same time a concealed spring arrangement shoved an arrow ...
— Space Prison • Tom Godwin
... the cavalcade went galloping by! What thousands of bright eyes peered down upon the cavaliers, attracted by the shouting and laughter! Now and then some person would be a little late in attempting to cross before him; then with what grace Demedes would spur after him, his bow and bowstring for whip! And how the spectators shrieked with delight when he overtook the culprit, and wore the flowers out flogging him! And when a balcony was low, and illuminated with a face fairer than common, how the gallant young ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 2 • Lew. Wallace
... Winterhie, Oliver the master-gunner, John Brewer, Thomas Hood, and Thomas Drake. And entering on land, they presently met with two or three of the country people. And Robert Winterhie having in his hands a bow and arrows, went about to make a shoot of pleasure, and, in his draught, his bowstring brake; which the rude savages taking as a token of war, began to bend the force of their bows against our company, and drove them to their ...
— Sir Francis Drake's Famous Voyage Round the World • Francis Pretty
... auxiliary cut-throats to murder the reputation of those who offend him. A black-vizarded ruffian (whom we will unmask), who signs the forged name of Trefoil, is at present one of the chief bravoes and bullies in our contemporary's establishment. He is the eunuch who brings the bowstring, and strangles at the order of the Day. We can convict this cowardly slave, and propose to do so. The charge which he has brought against Lord Bangbanagher, because he is a Liberal Irish peer, and against the Board of Poor Law Guardians of the ...
— The History of Pendennis • William Makepeace Thackeray
... long upon men, Providence, like the sultan to his viziers, sends them the bowstring by a mute, and they ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo
... would come easily Into his hand; but when that he Gat hold of it, full fast it stack, So fuming, down he laid his sack, And with both hands pulled lustily, But as he strained, he cast his eye Back to the dais; there he saw The bowman image 'gin to draw The mighty bowstring to his ear, So, shrieking out aloud for fear, Of that rich stone he loosed his hold And catching up his bag of gold, Gat to his feet: but ere he stood The evil thing of brass and wood Up to his ...
— The Earthly Paradise - A Poem • William Morris
... savage game to slay, Then of a water cruise, as slow—it filled, the gurgling sound I heard, Nought saw I, but the sullen low—of elephant that sound appeared. The swift well-feathered arrow I—upon the bowstring fitting straight, Toward the sound the shaft let fly—ah, cruelly deceived by fate! The winged arrow scarce had flown—and scarce had reached its destined aim, 'Ah me, I'm slain,' a feeble moan—in trembling human accents came. 'Ah whence hath come this fatal shaft—against a poor recluse ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman
... call that pastime, that which we have seen a thousand and one times? By the beard of the Prophet, vizier," he continued in a louder tone, "if I have no sleep to-day, nor appetite to-morrow, there is the bowstring for you, and the stake for ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... cried a voice. By way of answer the bowstring twanged, and an arrow sped home to its feathers through the throat of the speaker, so that he went down, grabbing at it, and spoke no ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... meet our contentions Sir Edward cites our own seizures and our own court decisions. It remains to be seen whether out of strands plucked from the mane and tail of the British lion we can fashion a bowstring which will give effective momentum to a counterbolt launched in the general direction of ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... men riding like the wind towards them, they turned their horses to retreat towards the hills, but the white and the black were the swiftest of the tribe's horses, and quickly overtook the two fleeing men. When they came close to the enemy they strung their arrows onto the bowstring and drove them through the two fleeing hunters. As they were falling they tried to shoot, but being greatly exhausted, their bullets whistled harmlessly over the heads of the two friends. They scalped the two enemies and took their guns and ammunition, also secured the two horses ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... motion. Isabella, too, whose bright eyes had not closed since the first gleam had visited her chamber, was early astir. An ugly dream, it is said, troubled her. Though of ripe years, yet, as we have noticed before, love had not yet aimed his malicious shafts at her bosom, nor even tightened his bowstring as she tripped by, defying his power; so that the dream, which in others would appear but as the overflowing of a youthful and ardent imagination, seemed to her altogether novel and unaccountable, raising up new ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... wishes knew, And he whose lips are ever true Caused the two Gods to meet as foes. Then fierce the rage of battle rose: Bristled in dread each starting hair As Siva strove with Vishnu there. But Vishnu raised his voice amain. And Siva's bowstring twanged in vain; Its master of the Three bright Eyes Stood fixt in fury and surprise. Then all the dwellers in the sky, Minstrel, and saint, and God drew nigh, And prayed them that the strife might cease, And the great rivals met in peace. 'Twas seen how Siva's bow has failed Unnerved, when Vishnu's ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... discovered that the shaft directed against him by Sir Edward Grey was feathered with his own plumage. To meet our contentions Sir Edward cites our own seizures and our own court decisions. It remains to be seen whether out of strands plucked from the mane and tail of the British lion we can fashion a bowstring which will give effective momentum to a counterbolt launched in the ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... Paris, or the present constitutional Monarchs of France or England. The proof of this is, that when the people are dissatisfied with their administration, or displeased with the sovereign, they have no difficulty in dispatching him. The twisting of a sash round the neck in Russia, the bowstring in Constantinople or Ispahan, are very effectual monitors—fully as much so as a hostile Parliamentary majority in the house of Commons or Chamber of Deputies. In a word, government in every country being conducted by the few over the many by the hundreds over the hundred thousands, it is ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... and internal disorders. The Janizaries could no longer be trusted. They were open to bribes, intriguing, and a source of danger rather than strength; and finally a reforming Sultan touched a mine of gunpowder which led under their barracks, and they were exterminated, the bowstring and sword finishing ...
— The Great Round World And What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 22, April 8, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... the birds were fighting within thirty yards of the spot where the Bushman lay. The twang of a bowstring might have been heard by one of the koris, had he been listening. The other could not possibly have heard it; for before the sound could have reached him, a poisoned arrow was sticking through his ears. The barb had passed through, and ...
— The Bush Boys - History and Adventures of a Cape Farmer and his Family • Captain Mayne Reid
... an arrow from twanging bowstring, Pierre Radisson set sail over the roaring seas for the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... Herakles take the city of Pergamos, and with help of Telamon slew the nations of the Meropes, and the herdsman whose stature was as a mountain, Alkyoneus whom he found at Phlegrai, and spared not of his hands the terrible twanging bowstring. ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... they discovered openings through the cord into the pool or lake, that was included between that and the bow; but whether there were or were not such openings is uncertain. We sailed abreast of the low beach or bowstring, within less than a league of the shore, till sun-set, and we then judged ourselves to be about half-way between the two horns. Here we brought-to, and sounded, but found no bottom with one hundred and ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... many frantic words he spoke. Thus, without art or rhetoric, roughly dragged forth by head and ears, came his momentous confession into the world. Gnulemah had more than once striven to check it, but in vain. When he had come to an end, and stood tense and quivering as a bowstring whose arrow has just flown, these ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... questions, and how straight they struck home! Yet with that low voice for their bowstring they gave him comfort. Her forays into his confidence not only relieved the loneliness of his too secretive mind but often, as now, involved a sweet yielding of her confidence to him. Yet now a straight answer ...
— Gideon's Band - A Tale of the Mississippi • George W. Cable
... at once, in spite of my Englishness, and drilled me, and taught me the exercise as it was performed in the Vieille Garden and told me a new fairy-tale, I verily believe, every afternoon for seven years. Scheherezade could do no more for a Sultan, and to save her own neck from the bowstring! ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... long line of lustre through the skies; "'Tis done!" he shouts, "the mighty Monarch feels!" And with loud laughter shakes the silver wheels; Bends o'er the car, and whirling, as it moves, His loosen'd bowstring, drives the rising doves. 245 —Pierced on his throne the slarting Thunderer turns, Melts with soft sighs, with kindling rapture burns; Clasps her fair hand, and eyes in fond amaze The bright Intruder ...
— The Botanic Garden - A Poem in Two Parts. Part 1: The Economy of Vegetation • Erasmus Darwin
... some the rear; Their remedies to reinforce and vary, Came surgeon eke, and eke apothecary; Till the tired Monarch, though of words grown chary, Yet dropt, to recompense their fruitless labor, Some hint about a bowstring or a saber. There lack'd, I promise you, no longer speeches, To rid the ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... the stricken whale flew forward; with igniting velocity the line ran through the grooves;—ran foul. Ahab stooped to clear it; he did clear it; but the flying turn caught him round the neck, and voicelessly as Turkish mutes bowstring their victim, he was shot out of the boat, ere the crew knew he was gone. Next instant, the heavy eye-splice in the rope's final end flew out of the stark-empty tub, knocked down an oarsman, and smiting the ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... went with her to the stream's bank, and as he stood there his keen eyes saw something move across the short grass at the water's edge. Promptly he put an arrow to his bowstring and took deft aim. The shaft sped quickly to its mark, plunged into the body of a stoat, and pinned the animal to ...
— The Thirsty Sword • Robert Leighton
... by whipping him on the opposite of his neck. Presently the plucky savage's arm began to move. Booth watched him intently, and saw that he had fixed an arrow in his bow under the pony's shoulder; just as he was on the point of letting go the bowstring, with the head of the arrow not three feet from Booth's breast as he leaned out of the hole, the latter struck frantically at the weapon, dodged back into the wagon, and up came the Indian. Whenever Booth looked out, down went the Indian on the other side of his pony, to rise again in a moment, ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... each man alone A single bowstring uses, and that his own; What matters it to any the worth that's buried? By its own waves the current ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... frantic follies and its besotted sins. Memory omitted nothing. Not a blot upon those sordid pages was spared him. It was not possible for an instant to turn away his eyes. His mental clarity was unrelieved by weariness. No shadow dimmed the keen crystal of his brain. He was at tension, like a bowstring that is stretched continually. He realised this, thinking: "Presently I will cut the bow-string, and the bow shall have rest! Even if my once-boasted will-power reasserted itself—even if I rose triumphant for the second time, cured of my vile craving, I do not ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... in sight, but this time there were only two of them, as the youngest had stayed at home. The air was warm and damp, and the snow soft and slushy, and the elder brother's bowstring hung loose, while the bow of the younger caught in a tree and snapped in half. At that moment the dogs began to bark loudly, and the bear rushed out of the thicket and set off in the direction of the mountain. ...
— The Brown Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... any fellow would choose for fun, not if he were the party to be tossed, though it is a beanfeast for the onlookers. They manage it this way. A hide, freshly stripped from a bullock, smoking, bloody, and limber as a bowstring, is requisitioned; the hairy side is turned downwards, two strong men get hold of each corner, cutting holes in the green hide for their hands to have a good grip; they allow the hide to sag until it forms a sort of cradle, into which the unlucky ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... for the leader's heart, but his fingers could not loose their grip upon the arrow, and the sheep passed by unharmed. Bilh Ahati{COMBINING BREVE}ni scrambled up over the rim of the canon and ran to get ahead of them again, but the bowstring would not leave his fingers as they passed. A third effort, and a fourth, to kill the game brought the same result. Bilh Ahati{COMBINING BREVE}ni cursed himself and the sheep, but ceased suddenly, for whom should he see but four gods, Yebichai, appear before him, who had transformed themselves ...
— The North American Indian • Edward S. Curtis
... the air shudder. From within the houses the dogs answered with mad clamor. A door would open to show first a long seal gun, then a fisherman, then a fool dog that darted between the fisherman's legs and capered away, ki-yi-ing a challenge to the universe. A silence, tense as a bowstring; a sudden yelp—Hui-hui, as the fisherman whistled to the dog that was being whisked away over the snow with a grip on his throat that prevented any answer; then the fisherman would wait and call in vain, and shiver, and go back to the ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... mistress who died strangely, swiftly, conveniently, as soon so he had wearied of her, and a new favourite had begun to exercise her influence. Such things are done in the East—dynasties annihilated, kingdoms overthrown, poison or bowstring used at will, to gratify a profligate's passion, or pay for a spendthrift's extravagances. Such things were done when that man was Governor of Madras as were never done by an Englishman in India before his time. He went there fettered by no prejudices—he was more Mussulman ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... mosques were reduced to frightful extremities. Many perished raving mad, fancying themselves swimming in boundless seas, yet unable to assuage their thirst. Many of the soldiers lay parched and panting along the battlements, no longer able to draw a bowstring or hurl a stone; while above five thousand Moors, stationed upon a rocky height which overlooked part of the town, kept up a galling fire into it with slings and crossbows, so that the marques of Cadiz was obliged to heighten the battlements by using ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... was a swineherd in Normandy, while mine were Thanes in England, and their courteous manners have descended to you," retorted Martin; whereupon Drogo laid his bowstring ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... and arrows, and were shooting squirrels. We gave them an alphabet card. Most of the Indians just round the Post are Roman Catholics, but those scattered over the lake, about 500 in number, are nearly all pagans. The name of the chief with whom we talked this morning is David Winchaub (Bowstring). ...
— Missionary Work Among The Ojebway Indians • Edward Francis Wilson
... also a quiver of poisoned arrows and a bamboo* [The bamboo, of which the quiver is made, is thin and light: it is brought from Assam, and called Tulda, or Dulwa, by the Bengalees.] bow across his back. On his right wrist is a curious wooden guard for the bowstring; and a little pouch, containing aconite poison and a few common implements, is suspended to his girdle. A hat he seldom wears, and when he does, it is often extravagantly broad and flat-brimmed, with a small hemispherical crown. It is ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... have tane brave Hobie Noble, Wi' his ain bowstring they band him sae; And I wat heart was ne'er sae sair, As when his ain five band ...
— A Collection of Ballads • Andrew Lang
... seed from among the children of men. For they intended evil against Thee, They imagined a mischievous device, Which they could not execute. For Thou wilt make them turn their back, Thou wilt make ready Thy bowstring against their faces. Be Thou exalted Jehovah in Thine own strength; We will sing and celebrate ...
— The Lord of Glory - Meditations on the person, the work and glory of our Lord Jesus Christ • Arno Gaebelein
... of rattan about 3 millimeters broad. This is attached to the lower end of the stock by a simple series of loops. To the upper extremity it is attached by a loop that slips along the stock into the upper notch when the bow is strung for shooting. It is needless to remark that the bowstring is about 2 or 3 centimeters shorter than the stock, which in the moment of stringing must be bent to enable the upper extremity of the string to reach the upper notch and thereby acquire a sufficient tension to propel ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... gives this bow to thee, wherewith in the chase striking many a beast he had luck in his aim: since never did the arrow leap wandering from the curved horn or speed vainly from his hand; for as often as the inevitable bowstring rang, so often he brought down his prey in air or thicket; wherefore to thee, O Phoebus, he brings this Lyctian weapon as an offering, having wound it round with ...
— Select Epigrams from the Greek Anthology • J. W. Mackail
... Wu-ch'ang, he transformed the character of the people by 'proprieties' and music, and was praised by the master. After the death of Confucius, Chi K'ang asked Yen how that event had made no sensation like that which was made by the death of Tsze-ch'an, when the men laid aside their bowstring rings and girdle ornaments, and the women laid aside their pearls and ear-rings, and the voice of weeping was heard in the lanes for three months. Yen replied, 'The influences of Tsze-ch'an and ...
— THE CHINESE CLASSICS (PROLEGOMENA) • James Legge
... done, and on a second trial it was found that the arrow went straight to the mark. But here the chief, the old White Bear, interposed and said that it was necessary that they should have long claws in order to be able to climb trees. "One of us has already died to furnish the bowstring, and if we now cut off our claws we shall all have to starve together. It is better to trust to the teeth and claws which nature has given us, for it is evident that man's weapons were ...
— Seventh Annual Report • Various
... of trying to rally the fugitives, at once ordered the men-at-arms to fall upon them. The cavalry, the heavy troops, and the cross-bow men, soon formed a wild and reeling crowd, amid which the English poured a continued flight of unerring arrows, and not a single bowstring was ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 1 of 8 • Various
... camper, and saw too late the folly of neglecting Raften's advice to have a big Dog in camp. He glanced around and would have run, but the tramp was too quick for him and grabbed him by the collar. "Oh, no you don't; hold on, sonny. I'll fix you so you'll do as you're told." He cut the bowstring from its place, and violently throwing Yan down, he tied his feet so that they had ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... have nothing that I can call my own except, for the moment, the air that I breathe. Oh, for an hour of the old liberty and power! It would amuse me to see the faces of ENVER and of my wretched brother MOHAMMED as I ordered them to execution—them and their gang of villainous parasites. By the bowstring of my fathers, but that would be a great and worthy killing! Pardon the fond day-dreams of a poor and lonely old man whose only crime has been that he loved his country too well and treated his enemies with a kindness ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 30, 1914 • Various
... was the only thing they could get out of her. Her little body was taut as a bowstring, her lips tight. They offered her excuses; the lady mother slept; now she was rising and must be clothed. And then at last they told her, because of the hunted look in ...
— The Truce of God • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have very unsettled times of it. At every turning we meet people, or see their villages; all armed with bows and arrows. The bows are unusually long: I measured one made of bamboo, and found that along the bowstring it measured six feet four inches. Many carry large knives of fine iron; and indeed the metal is abundant. Young men and women wear the hair long, a mass of small ringlets comes down and rests on the shoulders, giving them ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume I (of 2), 1866-1868 • David Livingstone
... he drew together the notch [of the arrow] and the ox-hide string; the string, indeed, he brought near to his breast, and the barb to the bow. But after he had bent the great bow into a circle, the bow twanged, the bowstring rang loudly, and the sharp-pointed shaft bounded forth, impatient to wing its ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... hills around Retain the rending tumult; all the air Clangs in the conflict of the clashing war; But firm undaunted as a shelvy strand That meets the surge, the bold Peruvians stand, With steady aim the sounding bowstring ply, And showers of arrows thicken thro the sky; When each grim host, in closer conflict join'd, Clench the dire ax and cast the bow behind; Thro broken ranks sweep wide their slaughtering course. Now struggle back, now sidelong ...
— The Columbiad • Joel Barlow
... penitent, looking-glass, hornpipe, necklace, indolent, lighthouse, Hamlet, pantry, phantom, windfall, sweepstake, sackcloth, antidote, antimony, pearl powder, kingfisher, football, housekeeping, infancy, snowball, definite, bowstring, carpet, Sunday, Shylock, earwig, matrimony, cowhiding, welcome, friendship, horsemanship, coltsfoot, bridegroom, housemaid, ...
— Entertainments for Home, Church and School • Frederica Seeger
... radiant with a new pride and joy. The storm within me had shifted my whole being from one centre to another. Like the Greek maidens of old, I fain would cut off my long, resplendent tresses to make a bowstring for my hero. Had my outward ornaments been connected with my inner feelings, then my necklet, my armlets, my bracelets, would all have burst their bonds and flung themselves over that assembly like a shower of meteors. Only some ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... inch from the pointed end. When the thread is carried through the cloth, which may be done to the distance of about three-fourths of an inch the thread will be stretched above the curved needle, something like a bowstring, leaving a small open space between the two. A small shuttle, carrying a bobbin, filled with thread, is then made to pass entirely through this open space, between the needle and the thread which it carries; and when ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis
... the sand he grasped his fire stick in his left hand after placing the bowstring in position. With a shell over the upper end of the stick, he sawed away busily for a moment. A tiny wreath of smoke eddied away from the ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... muscle in Jean's body became as taut as a bowstring. He hunched a little forward, as if about to leap upon the other, and strike him down. And then, all at once, he relaxed. His hands unclenched. ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... advanced from the rest, stood the captain, with the fatal bowstring hanging carelessly on his arm, and his eyes intent to catch the slightest gesture of the king. "Behold!" said ...
— Leila, Complete - The Siege of Granada • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... direction, but he had not gone more than a hundred yards when another arrow struck his cap, taking it off. He staggered, then, taking a new direction, ran a few strides, then stopped in hesitation, seeing an Indian rise to his knees, fixing an arrow to his bowstring. ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... not many months ago, as he sat in his palace, crowned and dreary and trying to cheat me out of my fair profit on some emeralds,—'Jurgen, I cannot sleep of nights, because of that fool Alexius, who comes into my room with staring eyes and the bowstring still about his neck. And my Varangians must be in league with that silly ghost, because I constantly order them to keep Alexius out of my bedchamber, and they do not obey me, Jurgen. To be King of the East is not to the purpose, Jurgen, ...
— Jurgen - A Comedy of Justice • James Branch Cabell
... on in the ellipse, and another man fitted an arrow to his bowstring, and as he rode by ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... where many a disobedient Pasha has awaited the decree of banishment issued against him by his imperious master. There, too, he was shipped on board the vessel destined to carry him into exile; or, if condemned to expiate his offences with his life, it was there the bowstring was applied. Hence this entrance is known by the appellation of the Pasha's gate. A little further on, we observed a small low door in the wall, scarcely high enough to admit an ordinary sized man. Through this opening the ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo
... no foreshaft. The sting-ray spine, which makes an excellent natural projectile point, was let directly into the split end of the cane, and was secured by cord binding (see "Haftings"). Instead of the usual nock in the butt end of the shaft for a bowstring, there is a cuplike depression (fig. 1). This suggests, of course, that this may have been a dart for use with a thrower or atlatl. Although that weapon is unreported in the Spanish sources on central and northern Baja California, dart-throwers were reported ...
— A Burial Cave in Baja California - The Palmer Collection, 1887 • William C. Massey
... the open, but they always seemed to be stealing something which belonged to the men who were engaged in the struggle. And apart from this they were so indifferent in their practice of archery that they drew the bowstring only to the breast[5], so that the missile sent forth was naturally impotent and harmless to those whom it hit[6]. Such, it is evident, was the archery of the past. But the bowmen of the present time go into battle wearing corselets and fitted out with ...
— History of the Wars, Books I and II (of 8) - The Persian War • Procopius
... 'for divine inspiration.' Still if he had been as thoroughly skilled as he professed to have been, he should have shown himself a humane as well as an innovating sovereign. Those who assisted him in his reforms, he rewarded with the bowstring. His character was blackened by ingratitude, an instinctive vice in oriental rulers. Obstinate as he was suspicious, deceitful as he was cunning, he could not rule his own passions, much less could he control the corrupt morals of his people. He was to an extraordinary degree ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... himself from head to foot. What was that Chippy had worked in among his sobs and moans? B.P.—the motto of their order—'Be Prepared.' Dick held himself tense as a bowstring, ready for anything. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... one about," he answered. "I heard the twang of a bowstring and the swish of an arrow over my head. Some ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... of some ancient breechin. His mouth was open as far as it could; his lips curled up in rage—a sort of terrible grin; his teeth gleaming, ready, from out the darkness; the strap across his mouth tense as a bowstring; his whole frame stiff with indignation and surprise; his roar asking us all round, "Did you ever see the like of this?" He looked a statue of anger and astonishment, done ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... blazed as with a hundred suns, and, O son of Kunti, with one hundred moons, and thousands and ten thousands of stars! And then none could ascertain whether it was day or night, or distinguish the points of the horizon. And, becoming bewildered, I fixed on my bowstring the weapon called Pragnastra. And, O son of Kunti, the weapon went like unto flakes of pure cotton blown away by the winds! And a great fight took place, calculated to make the down on one's body stand on end. And O best of monarchs, having regained light, I again fought ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... him and laid her hand tremulously on his shoulder, and looked down at him with piteous, pleading eyes. No Circassian slave, afraid of bowstring and sack, could have entreated her master's clemency with ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... that the feathers were glued to the wood exactly as they are with ourselves. The notch was somewhat large, projecting beyond the line of the shaft—a construction rendered necessary by the thickness of the bowstring., which was seldom less than of the arrow it-self. [PLATE CV., ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 2. (of 7): Assyria • George Rawlinson
... fair proffer," said the prince, "the provost of the lists shall cut thy bowstring, break thy bow and arrows, and expel thee from the ...
— Eighth Reader • James Baldwin
... angrily. "Find out, John, and he shall have a bowstring about his back. Point out the man who stripped you, my little lad," he continued, ...
— Young Robin Hood • G. Manville Fenn
... terrified at the glittering figures that dashed upon them so fearlessly. As they swept through, Menna had enough to do to manage his steeds, which were wild with excitement; but Ramses' bow was bent again and again, and at every twang of the bowstring a Hittite champion fell from his chariot. Behind the King came his household troops, and all together they burst through the chariot brigade of the enemy, leaving a long trail marked by dead and wounded men, overturned ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Ancient Egypt • James Baikie
... the dull half-musical sound of a bowstring, and to Brace's horror one of their flying men made a spasmodic jump into the air and came down upon hands and knees, his nearest messmates passing on some twenty yards before they could check their speed; and then, in the midst of the thrill of excitement which ran through ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... into which men will purchase with millions of chances against them. In Turkey, where the place, where the fortune, where the head itself, are so insecure, that scarcely any have died in their beds for ages, so that the bowstring is the natural death of Bashaws, yet in no country is power and distinction (precarious enough, God knows, in all) sought for with such boundless avidity, as if the value of place was enhanced by the danger and insecurity of its tenure. Nothing will ever make a seat in ...
— Thoughts on the Present Discontents - and Speeches • Edmund Burke
... Sultan Amurath, forcing him to order the amputation of his head six several times (that is, once in every one of his six parts) during the first act. In reality, the sultan, though otherwise a decent man, was too bloody. What by the bowstring, and what by the cimeter, he had so thinned the population with which he commenced business, that scarcely any of the characters remained alive at the end of act the first. Sultan Amurath found himself in an awkward situation. Large arrears of work remained, and hardly ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... heavy twine, to which the bowstrings could be tied after the bow was all wound. The stock of our crossbow was cut out of a board of soft wood 1 inch thick to as near the shape of a gun as we could get it. A hole was drilled through the muzzle end to receive the bow, and then the bowstring was tied fast. Along the upper edge of the barrel a V-shaped channel was cut. The channel was not very deep, only enough to receive a tenpenny nail with the head projecting half-way above the sides. A notch was cut across the barrel, through this channel, ...
— The Scientific American Boy - The Camp at Willow Clump Island • A. Russell Bond
... under her wet, dark hair. She seemed to be a Caucasian girl—maybe a Georgian. She wore a small gold cross which hung from a gold cord around her neck. There was another, and tighter, cord around her neck, too. I cut the silk bowstring and closed and bound her eyes with my handkerchief before I rowed out a little farther and lowered her into the deep channel which cuts eastward here like the scimitar of that true believer, ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... no? Undoubtedly not more insane than the rest of us, but her self-control snapped like a bowstring which is overstrained. She saw—so she said—a grinning death's head behind every smiling face. Merely a bee in her bonnet! But she was foolish enough to talk about it; and when people laughed at her words ...
— The Dangerous Age • Karin Michaelis
... seen her With that high, laughing, turbulent head of hers Thrown backward, and the bowstring at her ear, Or sitting at the fire with those grave eyes Full of good counsel as it were with wine, Or when love ran through all the ...
— Irish Plays and Playwrights • Cornelius Weygandt
... were kept in prison, till they grew Of years to fill a bowstring or the throne, One or the other, but which of the two Could yet be known unto the fates alone; Meantime the education they went through Was princely, as the proofs have always shown; So that the heir apparent still was found No less deserving to ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... every male in the tribe over twelve years of age to provide himself with a rifle. The bow, as now made, is a single piece of mulberry or other elastic wood and is from four to six feet in length; the bowstring is made of twisted deer rawhide; the arrows are of cane and of hard wood and vary in length from two to four feet; they are, as a rule, tipped with a sharp conical roll of sheet iron. The skill of the young men in the use of the ...
— The Seminole Indians of Florida • Clay MacCauley
... down inside the other, and sat for a moment in silence as tense with stirring possibilities to the others as to himself. The Judge felt moved to a most unusual sensation, as if he were a loosened bowstring beside this twanging, taut intensity. He felt slightly dismayed to have his unspoken principles carried to this nth power. He had given the best of himself, all his thoughts, illusions, hopes, endeavors, to his ideal of success, but his ambition had never been concentrated ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... should lie under the odour of piracy too; it will give Richcourt opportunities of saying very severe things to you!—Barbarossa our Dey is not returned yet-we fear he is going to set his grandson(599) up in a seraglio; and as we have not, among other Mahometan customs, copied the use of the bowstring for repressing the luxuriancy of the royal branches, we shall be quite overrun with young ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 2 • Horace Walpole
... trembling tongue, the longing tone, Imploringly ask why They can not be as happy now As in the days gone by. And two more hearts, tumultuous With overflowing joy, Are dancing to the music Which that dear, provoking boy Is twanging on his bowstring, As, fluttering his wings, He sends his love-charged arrows While merrily be sings: "Ho! ho! my dainty maiden, It surely can not be You are thinking you are master Of your heart, when it is me." And another gleaming arrow Does the ...
— The Complete Works • James Whitcomb Riley
... this vile climate; particularly will it keep him from his worst intoxicant lhiamba (Cannabis sativa), a plant which grows wild on the South-West Coast and on the West for all I know, as well as the African or bowstring hemp (Sanseviera guiniensis). The plant that produces the lhiamba is a nettle-like plant growing six to ten feet high, and the natives collect the tops of the stems, with the seed on, in little bundles and dry them. It is evidently the seeds which are regarded by them as being the important ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... rage and pain he bored in. He had but one chance—to get this shadow in his gorilla-like arms. He lacked mental flexibility. An idea, getting into his head, stuck; it was not adjustable. Like an arrow sped from the bowstring, it had to fulfill its destiny. It never occurred to him to take to his heels, to get space between himself and this enemy he had so woefully underestimated. Ten feet, and he might have been able to whirl, draw his pistol, ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... no sign of her suffering and her terror, though her eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and her mouth had grown stiff with its effort to command. The tension was torture. Her heart strings were drawn to the snapping point; her mind was a bowstring never relaxed, till every fiber of her resistant ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... saints and sages have surrendered the merits of their life-long penance at the feet of a woman. I broke my bow in two and burnt my arrows in the fire. I hated my strong, lithe arm, scored by drawing the bowstring. O Love, god Love, thou hast laid low in the dust the vain pride of my manlike strength; and all my man's training lies crushed under thy feet. Now teach me thy lessons; give me the power of the weak and the weapon of the ...
— Chitra - A Play in One Act • Rabindranath Tagore
... King's enemies; the people fall under Thee.' That is all that that ancient singer could conceive of the triumphant King of the world, the Messiah; a conqueror, enthroned in His chariot, and the twanging bowstring, drawn by His strong hand, impelling the arrow that lodged in the heart of His foes. And here is the fulfilment. 'Go ye into the village over against you, and ye shall find a colt tied ... And they set Him thereon.' Christ's kingdom, like its King, has no power but gentleness ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Mark • Alexander Maclaren
... as taut as a bowstring, and the current so strong she pulled upon her anchor. All round the hull, in the blackness, the rippling current bubbled and chattered like a little mountain stream. One cut with my sea-gully and the HISPANIOLA would go humming down ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... less than a century disposed of the throne of its former tyrant. The unseen hand of fate gave to the discharged arrow a higher flight, and quite a different direction from that which it first received from the bowstring. In the womb of happy Brabant that liberty had its birth which, torn from its mother in its earliest infancy, was to gladden the so despised Holland. But the enterprise must not be less thought of because its issue differed from the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... progress of the Austrian armies then invading Naples was yet in suspense, the news of another revolution filled him with exultation. We had formed the acquaintance at Pisa of several Constantinopolitan Greeks, of the family of Prince Caradja, formerly Hospodar of Wallachia; who, hearing that the bowstring, the accustomed finale of his viceroyalty, was on the road to him, escaped with his treasures, and took up his abode in Tuscany. Among these was the gentleman to whom the drama of "Hellas" is dedicated. Prince Mavrocordato was warmed by those aspirations for the independence ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... are." He dropped into Flint's big half-couch and puffed for a while in silence. "Well, since you're all here, I may confess that I'm the mute with the bowstring." ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... river's brink at night the buffalo might stray, Or elephant, the stream to drink,—intent my savage game to slay. Then of a water cruse, as slow it filled, the gurgling sound I heard, Nought saw I, but the sullen low of elephant that sound appeared. The swift well-feathered arrow I upon the bowstring fitting straight, Towards the sound the shaft let fly, ah, cruelly deceived by fate! The winged arrow scarce had flown, and scarce had reached its destined aim, 'Ah me, I'm slain,' a feeble moan in trembling human accents came. 'Ah, whence hath come this fatal shaft against a ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... body, bayonet, eviscerate; put to the sword, put to the edge of the sword. shoot dead; blow one's brains out; brain, knock on the head; stone, lapidate[obs3]; give a deathblow; deal a deathblow; give a quietus, give a coupe de grace. behead, bowstring, electrocute, gas &c. (execute) 972. hunt, shoot &c. n. cut off, nip in the bud, launch into eternity, send to one's last account, sign one's death warrant, strike the death knell of. give no quarter, pour out blood like water; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... turned my haggard, burning eyes upon her murderers—four of them there were and all staring into those cruel, black waters below and not a word betwixt them. Suddenly the black-bearded man snapped his fingers and laughed even as my bowstring twanged; then I saw him leap backwards, screaming with pain, his shoulder transfixed by my arrow. Immediately (and ere I might shoot again) his fellows dragged him down, and lying prone on their bellies let ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... Bowstring never sped arrow from itself that ran so swift a course through the air, as a very little boat which I saw coming through the water toward us at that instant, under the direction of a single ferryman, who was crying out, "Art thou then ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... arrangements threaten the enemy's solar plexus and stomach. Somewhere in relation to the Grand Fleet lies the "blockading" cordon which examines neutral traffic. It could be drawn as tight as a Turkish bowstring, but for reasons which we may arrive at after the war, it does not seem to have been so ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... slender, square-jawed man of thirty-six. His forehead is high and broad and his hair is worn longer than that of other young men—parted on the side and brushed back. He has thin lips and a mouth of unusual width. His mouth-line is as straight as a bowstring, and when he speaks, which is often, or smiles, which is not so frequent, he shows an even line of large ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... heard the great clamor, The war-trumpet winding. One did the Geat-prince [50] Sunder from earth-joys, with arrow from bowstring, 50 From his sea-struggle tore him, that the ...
— Beowulf - An Anglo-Saxon Epic Poem • The Heyne-Socin
... panzers arrows rattle, Where our Norse king stands in battle; From the helmets blood-streams flow, Where our Norse king draws his bow: His bowstring twangs,—its biting hail Rattles against the ring-linked mail. Up in the land in deadly strife Our Norse king took ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... I wavered, as well as I might. But I was filled with longing to be gathered to the company of the Divine ones, and I knew that I had no evil in me, and desired to do only the thing that is just. Therefore, having with so much labour drawn the bowstring to my ear, I was fain to let fly the shaft. "Lead on," I cried with a loud voice; "lead on, thou ...
— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard
... wheeled his horse, buried his spurs deep into his flanks, and, pressing his thighs to the saddle, galloped off in an opposite direction. The bull dashed on as before. In a moment the lariat was stretched. The sudden jerk caused the thong to vibrate like a bowstring, and the bull lay motionless on the grass. The shock almost dragged the mustang upon ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... to get out the stresses in girders of the bowstring form, the author was not satisfied with the common formulae for the diagonal braces, which, owing to the difficulty of apportioning the stresses amongst five members meeting in one point, were to a large extent based on an assumption as to the course taken by the stresses. As far as he could ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 483, April 4, 1885 • Various
... wondrous well, Till his arrows were all gone, And the fire so fast upon him fell, That his bowstring burnt in two. The sparkles burnt, and fell upon, Good William of Cloudeslie! But then was he a woeful man, and said, "This is a coward's ...
— A Bundle of Ballads • Various
... "shaft" is a holder for the missile, and it (not the missile) is driven by the bowstring. When the holder stops, the ...
— Procopius - History of the Wars, Books V. and VI. • Procopius
... foolish enough not to take all precaution against young Aaron. At the yard fence he stopped, seeing Mavis under an apple-tree with one hand clutching a low bough and her tense face lifted to the west. He could see that the hand was clenched tightly, for even the naked forearm was taut as a bowstring. The sun was going down in the little gap, above it already one pale star was swung, and upon it her eyes seemed to be fixed. She heard his step and he knew it, for he saw her face flush, but without looking ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... bearing, gesture, countenance, each in turn, all of them together, are to the spoken words, or, rather than that, it should be said, to the thoughts and emotions of which those articulate sounds are but the winged symbols, as to the barbed and feathered arrows are the bowstring. How essential every external of this kind is, as affording some medium of communication between a speaker and his auditors, may be illustrated upon the instant by the rough and ready argument of the reductio ad absurdum. Without insisting, for example, upon the impossibility ...
— Charles Dickens as a Reader • Charles Kent
... for a death shot, they withdraw again to the far ends of the ring. Advancing once more each one throws the drawn bow and arrow upward, then toward the ground, calling heaven and earth to witness his vow to kill the other. Presently one gets a favorable opportunity, his bowstring twangs, and his opponent falls to the ground. The victor utters a cry of triumph, dances up to the body of his fallen foe, and cuts off the head with his bolo. He beckons and cries out to the relatives of the dead man to come and avenge the deed. Nobody appearing, he bears ...
— Negritos of Zambales • William Allan Reed
... walls once safe restored. Compressing next nerve and notch'd arrow-head He drew back both together, to his pap Drew home the nerve, the barb home to his bow, And when the horn was curved to a wide arch, 145 He twang'd it. Whizz'd the bowstring, and the reed Leap'd off, impatient for the distant throng. Thee, Menelaus, then the blessed Gods Forgat not; Pallas huntress of the spoil, Thy guardian then, baffled the cruel dart. 150 Far as a mother wafts the fly ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... to shoot first, and he pulled back his bowstring and braced himself to let go. Right here it may be said that at thirty yards an arrow propelled by an Indian-made bow is just as deadly as a bullet, if it hits its mark. But Injun shot a little high ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... beautiful custom." The right of acting as umpire in wrestling-matches was vested in his family, that the "Driving Wind" might for future generations preside over athletic sports. In ancient days, the prizes for the three champion wrestlers were a bow, a bowstring, and an arrow: these are still brought into the ring, and, at the end of the bout, the successful competitors go through a variety ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... in scarlet. Everything was scarlet about him, his moccasins, his naked skin, the fantastic cloak and blanket, girdle, knife-hilt, axe shaft, and the rattling quiver on his back—nay, the very arrows in it were set with scarlet feathers, and the looped bowstring was whipped with ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... twain his bowstring, and they cut his pond'rous mace, Slew his steeds and chariot-driver, streaked ...
— Maha-bharata - The Epic of Ancient India Condensed into English Verse • Anonymous
... Rainy River, about 20 miles from the head of Rainy River. It stands on a point of land where the Missachappa or Bowstring River and the Rainy River join. There is a dense forest covering the river bank where the mound is found. The owner of the land has made a small clearing, which now shows the mound to some extent to one standing on the deck of a steamer passing on the ...
— The Mound Builders • George Bryce
... gracious sovereign of the Middle Kingdom had confiscated the property of Li's family, that his wife had died of sorrow, in misery, and that his son, Li, having taken the liberty to complain of the glorious emperor's severity, suffered death by the bowstring, as is proper and reasonable in all ...
— The Aldine, Vol. 5, No. 1., January, 1872 - A Typographic Art Journal • Various
... stout and serviceable. I knew, somehow, that they had been shooting at the butts, and, indeed, I could still hear a noise of men thereabout, and even now and again when the wind set from that quarter the twang of the bowstring and the plump of ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... come out for football, but displayed an aversion for violent physical contention of any sort, especially fighting; which caused him to be branded as a coward. But the time came when, unable longer to endure the insults heaped upon him, the restraint of the young Texan snapped like a bowstring, and the boys of Oakdale found that a sleeping lion had suddenly awakened. Then it came to be known that Grant had inherited a most unfortunate family failing, a terrible temper, which, when uncontrolled, was liable to lead him into extreme acts of violence; and it was this temper ...
— Rival Pitchers of Oakdale • Morgan Scott
... O, what shall we do? Let's cut his bowstring," said Ting-a-ling, in great excitement, and drawing his little sword. The green fairy, although polite, could not help laughing at this idea; but Ting-a-ling slipped softly to where the bow was lying, ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... and get reeds out of the edge of the long lake, to tie nails in the ends and use for arrows. I used to bind the nails in with whitey-brown thread well beeswaxed, and then dress the notch at the other end to keep the bowstring from splitting it up. I've hit rabbits with an arrow before now, though they always run into their holes. You can shoot with a bow and arrow at a ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... son, sprang up on the roof, and cuts asunder Gunnar's bowstring. Gunnar clutches the bill with both hands, and turns on him quickly and drives it through him, and hurls ...
— Njal's Saga • Unknown Icelanders
... Giraffe. "And just make up your minds I'm going to do that same stunt yet. Why, half a dozen times already I've been pretty close to getting fire; but something always seemed to happen just at the last minute. Once my bowstring sawed through. Another time the plaguey stick burst. Then Bumpus had to fall all over me just when I felt sure the spark was going to come in the tinder. And the last time, you may remember, when I sang out that ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... on the first demonstration I make in favor of Mehemet Ali, the Sultan send me the bowstring, and make ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... dispose the officers according to their rank; whereas the British seem to take a delight in confounding and mixing together, the officers with their men. As to their punishments among themselves, they will cut off a man's head; and strangle him with a bowstring, in a summary manner; but a Turk, or Algerine, would sicken at the sight of a whipping in the navy; and in the army of the Christian king of England. There is no nation upon this globe of earth that treats its soldiers and sailors with that degree of barbarity common to their camps, ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the Barbary Coast; Democratic gospel pure and undefiled; Janus-faced double; Good Lord, good devil; all things to all men; God-fearing patriots; come what may; all things are fair in love or war; the silken bowstring; the unwary voter; bait to catch gudgeons; to live by or to die by; these obsequious courtiers; Guttenburg; rubber stamp; at all hazards; the ...
— Public Speaking • Clarence Stratton
... she, on the thousand-and-second night, (I quote the language of the "Isitsoornot" at this point, verbatim) "my dear sister," said she, "now that all this little difficulty about the bowstring has blown over, and that this odious tax is so happily repealed, I feel that I have been guilty of great indiscretion in withholding from you and the king (who I am sorry to say, snores—a thing no gentleman would do) the full conclusion of Sinbad the sailor. This person went through numerous ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... pretty miss; but I had other measures. Apollo twangs not ever on the same bowstring. Did my sudorific work well, ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... law until his sovereign could be assured of the inevitable consequences of enforcing it. The pacha of a Turkish despot, who had allowed himself this latitude for the interests of his master, might, indeed, have reckoned on the bowstring. But the example of Mendoza, the prudent viceroy of Mexico who adopted this course in a similar crisis, and precisely at the same period, showed its propriety under existing circumstances. The ordinances were suspended ...
— History Of The Conquest Of Peru • William Hickling Prescott
... Ibrahim Pasha's harem. But the moment it was conveyed to her, she summoned to her presence three black slaves, belonging to the corps of the bostanjis, or gardeners, who also served as executioners, when a person of rank was to be subjected to the process of bowstring, or when any dark deed was to be accomplished in silence and with caution. Terrible appendages to the household of Ottoman sultans were the black slaves belonging to that corps—like snakes, they insinuated themselves, noiselessly and ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... the man, from whom he stole the ear of soft maize, now snatches from his hungry lips the red-gilled mushroom, and he, into whose crystal stream he threw impure substances, in revenge, strikes from his lip the gourd of crystal water. The good hunter, whose bowstring he enviously cut, fillips him on the forehead; the warrior whose spear he broke when no human eye beheld him, now, informed of the unmanly deed by the Spirit who sees all, spits in his face, as a coward should be spat upon. The soul of the horse ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... Felice. On the opposite side of the Adige, upon the plain, with their backs against the city walls, are two other fortresses, about a mile distant from each other, one called the Old the other the New Citadel, and a wall extends between them that may be compared to a bowstring, of which the city wall is the arc. The space comprehended within this segment is very populous, and is called the Borgo of St. Zeno. Niccolo Piccinino designed to capture these fortresses and the Borgo, and he hoped to succeed without much difficulty, as well on account of the ordinary negligence ...
— History Of Florence And Of The Affairs Of Italy - From The Earliest Times To The Death Of Lorenzo The Magnificent • Niccolo Machiavelli
... that region where the world is most alive.[1] Her silence, and her transmuted countenance imposed silence on my eager mind, which already had new questions in advance. And even as an arrow, that hits the mark before the bowstring is quiet, so we ran into the second realm.[2] Here I saw my lady so joyous as she entered into the light of that heaven, that thereby the planet became more lucent. And if the star war, changed and smiled, what did I become, who even ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 3, Paradise [Paradiso] • Dante Alighieri
... Pacha was not quite such an easy prey. The kapidgi-bachi who dared to present him with the bowstring was instantly laid dead at his feet by a pistol-shot. "Wretch!" cried Mouktar, roaring like a bull escaped from the butcher, "dost thou think an Arnaout dies like an eunuch? I also am a Tepelenian! To arms, comrades! they would slay us!" As he spoke, he rushed, sword in hand, upon the Turks, and, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - ALI PACHA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... darkly. "There is a simpler way. Thy mind ever runs on the bowstring and the sword. These are great, but there is a greater. It is the mocking finger. At midnight, when Kaid goes to the Mosque Mahmoud, a finger will mock the plotters till they are buried in confusion. Thou knowest the governor of the prisons—has he not need of something? Hath he never ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... inflicting suffering upon some unoffending citizen, no one was let into it but wretches condemned to death. And, even then, when these had "had enough," they were always at liberty to put an end to themselves with a Punjab lasso or bowstring, left for their use at the ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... fist, palm upward, at arm's length before the body, the right as if grasping the bowstring and drawn back. (Shoshoni and Banak I.) "From their peculiar manner of holding the long bow horizontally ...
— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery
... ta'en brave Hobbie Noble, Wi's ain bowstring they band him sae; But his gentle heart was ne'er sae sair, As when his ain five ...
— Minstrelsy of the Scottish border (3rd ed) (1 of 3) • Walter Scott
... The white man had come out by the tower, was now kneeling in the open; at the same moment a man slipped down a rope from the tower-top. Before he had touched earth they saw the kneeling man pull a bowstring to his ear and let fly. Next the fellow on the rope, touching ground, ran fleetly forward and, springing on the white-robed man, drove him to the earth. They saw ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... by a socket into the wood, and having a head of thin iron, or more commonly of slate, secured into a slit by two treenails. Towards the opposite end of the arrow are two feathers, generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on. The bowstring consists of from twelve to eighteen small lines of three-sinew sinnet, having a loose twist, and with a separate becket of the same size for going over the knobs at the end ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... tole me that if I tole anybody whar he was gwine, he'd bowstring me and feed mah ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... then was dumb. The Mufti looked about the room, And straight made answer to his lord, Fearing the bowstring at each word: ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... cried once more that the house should be burned, but the rest called shame on him, and then Thorbrand crept up on one side and cut Gunnar's bowstring with his axe. But before he could reach the ground again Gunnar had seized his bill, and ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various
... life bereft. Too late, alas! her sorrowing lover mourns His cruel vengeance; and himself he hates, Too credulous listening, and too soon enflam'd: The bird he hates, who first betray'd the deed And caus'd him first to grieve: his bow he hates; His bowstring; arm; and with his arm the dart, Shot vengeful. Fond he clasps her fallen form; And strives by skill, by skill too late apply'd To conquer fate:—his healing arts he tries,— All unavailing. Fruitless he beholds His each attempt, ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... Asiatic despot is obliged to cut his way to the throne of his fathers. Yet, even in the East, the sphere of contention is usually limited to the princes of the reigning house, and as soon as the more fortunate competitor has removed his brethren by the sword and the bowstring, he no longer entertains any jealousy of his meaner subjects. But the Roman empire, after the authority of the senate had sunk into contempt, was a vast scene of confusion. The royal, and even noble, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 1 • Edward Gibbon
... but irritates and hardens. Any instrument of music Of this truth is an example. Lightly touched, it breathes but sweetness, Discord, when 't is roughly handled. 'T is not well to send an arrow To such heights, that in discharging The strong tension breaks the bowstring, Or the bow itself is fractured. These two simple illustrations Are sufficiently adapted To my purpose, of advising Means of cure both mild and ample. You must take a middle course, All extremes must be abandoned. Gentle but judicious ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... was soon after apparent, for another of Drake's companions, being desirous to show the third Indian a specimen of the English valour and dexterity, attempted, likewise, to shoot an arrow, but drawing it with his full force, burst the bowstring; upon which the Indians, who were unacquainted with their other weapons, imagined him disarmed, followed the company, as they were walking negligently down towards their boat, and let fly their arrows, aiming particularly at Winter, who had the bow in his ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, Vol. 6 - Reviews, Political Tracts, and Lives of Eminent Persons • Samuel Johnson
... 1: A nock is the groove at either end of a bow for holding the bowstring or the notch in the end of an arrow ...
— Camping For Boys • H.W. Gibson
... Sire their wishes knew, And he whose lips are ever true Caused the two Gods to meet as foes. Then fierce the rage of battle rose: Bristled in dread each starting hair As Siva strove with Vishnu there. But Vishnu raised his voice amain. And Siva's bowstring twanged in vain; Its master of the Three bright Eyes Stood fixt in fury and surprise. Then all the dwellers in the sky, Minstrel, and saint, and God drew nigh, And prayed them that the strife might cease, And the great rivals met in peace. 'Twas seen how Siva's bow has failed ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
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