United States or Tajikistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This hail of bullets, darts, and flames passed above the first ranks in the form of a curve which fell behind the walls. But long cranes, used for masting vessels, were reared on the summit of the ramparts; and from them there descended some of those enormous pincers which terminated in two semicircles toothed on the inside. They bit the rams. The soldiers clung to the beam and drew it back.
He stood a moment or two at the door after his wife had gone, drinking in reassurance from that glorious vision of solid sense that spread itself before his eyes: the endless house-roofs; the high glass vaults of the public baths and gymnasiums; the pinnacled schools where Citizenship was taught each morning; the spider-like cranes and scaffoldings that rose here and there; and even the few pricking spires did not disconcert him.
He can forge but cannot wield the hammer of Thor; nor has Science yet discovered the philosopher's stone. Without it, what exchequer can accept chronic warfare and escape bankruptcy? After what has been witnessed in these latest days, the sieges and battles of that distant epoch seem like the fights of pigmies and cranes.
Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere; thoroughfares that were wholly impassable; Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height; temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding, and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing.
There is another bird, not found on the continent, as large as cranes, which are white when young, but grow red at their full growth, which are called flamences or flamingos. These would have been much valued in New Spain, for the curious feather-works which are made by the natives. These flamingos are found in vast flocks of 500 to 1000 together. They seldom fly, but stand much in the water.
They were never tired of watching the hydraulic cranes, of inspecting the dry docks; the intertwining railways by which all the docks, large and small, are connected, and the two basins, Le Petit and Le Grand Bassin. "Dear me!" exclaimed Jasper, on one of these occasions, "I thought Amsterdam docks were huge affairs, but Antwerp!"
They were ugly and of ugly features, and wore awkward ornaments and marks. Their faces were like those of tigers and lions and bears and cats and makaras. Others were of faces like those of scorpions; others of faces like those of elephants and camels and owls. And some had faces like those of vultures and jackals. And some there were that had faces like those of cranes and pigeons and Kurus.
In his heart, he knew the fight was hopeless; Festing, for example, in his place, might perhaps make good, but he had not the stamina for the long struggle. All the same, he worked with savage energy until his mood changed and he went off to hunt sandhill cranes. He would sooner have gone to the poolroom, but there was a risk of his meeting Sadie at the settlement.
The number of children in the Prairie Home school that year was limited to five, the rest having departed for the indefinable land known as the "East." Three of these children came from the Farnshaw home and the other two from the new neighbours, the Cranes, on the Hansen place. Sadie Crane hated the new teacher with all the might that her pinched little twelve-year-old body could bring to bear.
No garden was so entrancing to them as one that had "a rupellary nidary" or an aviary with eagles, cranes, storks, bustards, ducks with four wings, or with rabbits of an almost perfect yellow colour. Holland, therefore, where ships brought precious curiosities from all over the world, was a heaven for the virtuoso.
Word Of The Day