United States or Tunisia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He said he was all right just a touch of headache. I bade him good-night and left him. Half an hour later, the porter tells me that a rough-looking man with a beard called with a note for Godfrey. He had not gone to bed, and the note was taken to his room. Godfrey read it, and fell back in a chair as if he had been pole-axed.
He dropped instantly, collapsing in on himself as falls a pole-axed bullock, and lay, unconscious, in a crumpled heap on the ground. For a little Dunn waited, crouching above him and listening for the least sound to show that their brief scuffle had been heard. But it had all passed nearly as silently as quickly.
Then on he came again, until at last, catching sight of us, he gave a cry of joy, and ran for us full speed with a note held out at arm's length. "You're a nice cove, too, John Cummings," said Harrison, reproachfully. "Didn't I tell you not to let a drop pass your lips until you had given your message to Sir Charles?" "I ought to be pole-axed, I ought," he cried in bitter repentance.
Ignorant of a Ferenghi's mode of attack, the presumptuous individual, with his hand twisted in my neck-handkerchief, cocks his head in a semi-sidewise attitude, in splendid position to be dropped like a pole-axed steer by a neat tap on the temple.
But as he passed through the door some one dealt him a blow on the head, and as though pole-axed he dropped to the floor. After Locke had left her to go into the inner room Eva's fears revived and she wished to follow him. But she was ashamed to have him think her a coward. She forced herself to remain rooted to the spot.
Locke was slowly gaining the upper hand when the thug whom he had thrown over his head recovered. The brute took the situation in at a glance, saw his pal in trouble, and, sneaking treacherously behind Locke, dealt him a terrific blow with the butt of a revolver. Locke dropped to the floor as if pole-axed and lay still.
"Why, really I hardly know," I answered, yet stepping back to grip the ropes. "The fellow had hold of your dress, did n't he?" "Yes, oh! I was so frightened, and and then he jerked me horribly." "That was when I hit him. I must have got the big brute just right. He fell back as if he had been pole-axed, crashed into the rail, and went overboard."
It sent him reeling backward with a howl of pain, like a child at the slash of an admonishing cane. And Jake's hands went up to his wounds at once; but, even so, his movements were not swift enough to protect him from a second slash of the vengeful thong. And Tresler's aim was so swift and sure that the bully fell to the ground like a pole-axed steer.
The man went down with a grunt like a pole-axed ox, and lay where he fell. To a drunken sailor lad, who seemed anxious to be included in this matter, I dealt a stinging smack on the face with my open hand that satisfied him straightway. The others did not molest me. Turning from the crowd, I found Edith Metford looking at me with blazing eyes. "Superb! Marcel, I am proud of you!" she cried. "Oh!
And, besides, what a painful contrast: so many millions stored away in those rooms of the Vatican, and so many millions working and fructifying, constantly being diverted from one speculation to another in order that they might yield the more gain; and then down below, near at hand, so much want and misery in those abominable unfinished buildings of the new districts, so many poor folks dying of hunger amidst filth, mothers without milk for their babes, men reduced to idleness by lack of work, old ones at the last gasp like beasts of burden who are pole-axed when they are of no more use!
Word Of The Day