"Thumbscrew" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... be no occasion for that," Von Aert said contemptuously. "A couple of turns with the thumbscrew will suffice to get out of a boy of that age everything he knows. Well, my friends, we will meet here tomorrow evening. I shall go round to the Market Square with Genet to see the result of this ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... Henry's admonishing finger goes up, and we are hushed to see what is the really cruel thing he intends to show us next, that will hurt just like a thumbscrew. He smiles and flips down a long scroll of—direct and drastic ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... our army wrecked disobedient, disorganised; what, then, shall we do? Dumouriez is summoned to Paris, quick, shifty, insuppressible; while royalist seigneurs cajole, and, as you turn your legislative thumbscrew, king's veto steps in with magical paralysis. Yet let not patriotism despair. Have we not a virtuous Petion, Mayor of Paris, a wholly patriotic municipality? Patriotism, moreover, has her constitution that can march, the mother-society of the Jacobins; ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XII. - Modern History • Arthur Mee
... you—blasphemy, profanation and sacrilege! And barged into your bedroom, when—. My God! woman," cried poor Dick, as if a flame came from the marble lips of him, "I could have watched him through an hour of rack and thumbscrew, when I thought of you up in that room of his. It's the cruelty I haven't done that's my claim to the next vacancy in halos. Cruel? Just for pouring down him a few tumblerfuls of a mixture of arrack and spud-spirit that he'd bought for his damned Caliban! ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... only one was used on the Pioneer. The safety valve is located on top of the steam dome. Pressure is exerted on the lever by a spring balance, fixed at the forward end by a knife-blade bearing. The pressure can be adjusted by the thumbscrew on the balance. The graduated scale on the balance gave a general but uncertain indication of the boiler pressure. The valve itself is a poppet held against the face of the valve seat by a second knife blade attached ...
— The 'Pioneer': Light Passenger Locomotive of 1851 • John H. White |
