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Martin kept her teeth off his face with great difficulty, and griped her throat fiercely, and she kept rending his shoulder. It was like blunt reaping-hooks grinding and tearing. The pain was fearful; but, instead of cowing the old soldier, it put his blood up, and he gnashed his teeth with rage almost as fierce as hers, and squeezed her neck with iron force.
"I also heard of a little child," continued nurse, "not more than two years old, who was with her mother in the harvest field; who had spread a shawl on the ground near a tall tree, and laid the child upon it to sleep or play, when a bear came out of the wood and carried her off, leaping the fence with her in its arms; but the mother ran screaming after the beast, and the reapers pursued so closely with their pitchforks and reaping-hooks, that Bruin, who was only a half-grown bear, being hard pressed, made for a tree; and as it was not easy to climb with a babe in his arms, he quietly laid the little one down at the foot of the tree, and soon was among the thick branches out of the reach of the enemy.
Green foliage overhung them and the men with whom they were drinking; the white pipes, the blue smoke, the flash of a match, the red sign which had so often swung to and fro in the gales now still in the summer eve, the rude seats and blocks, the reaping-hooks bound about the edge with hay, the white dogs creeping from knee to knee, some such touches gave an interest to the scene.
But the mother ran screaming after the beast, and the reapers pursued so closely with their pitch-forks and reaping-hooks, that Bruin, who was only a half-grown bear, being hard pressed, made for a tree; and as it was not easy to climb with a babe in his arms, he quietly laid the little one down at the foot of the tree, and soon was among the thick branches out of the reach of the enemy.
The warm and fertile Maritza Valley is reached soon after noon, and I am not sorry to find it traversed by a decent macadamized road; though, while it has been raining quite heavily up among the mountains, this valley has evidently been favored with a small deluge, and frequent stretches are covered with deep mud and sand, washed down from the adjacent hills; in the cultivated areas of the Bulgarian uplands the grain-fields are yet quite green, but harvesting has already begun in the warmer Maritza Vale, and gangs of Roumelian peasants are in the fields, industriously plying reaping-hooks to save their crops of wheat and rye, which the storm has badly lodged.
Whereupon seven monsters, like himself, came towards him with reaping-hooks in their hands, each hook about the largeness of six scythes. These people were not so well clad as the first, whose servants or labourers they seemed to be; for, upon some words he spoke, they went to reap the corn in the field where I lay.
So that the prophecy that the time will come when men will be taught of God, will learn war no more, will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into reaping-hooks, which means, translating it into our language, the fortresses, prisons, barracks, palaces, and churches will remain empty, and all the gibbets and guns and cannons will be left unused, is no longer a dream, but the definite new form of life to which mankind is approaching with ever-increasing rapidity.
Return of arms taken from the rebels: 26 muskets, 4 bayonets on poles, 8 reaping-hooks, 2 swords, a fowling-piece, and a pistol." The revolt seems to have been the result more than anything else of the number of political prisoners which at that time had been transported to the colony and the quantity of liquor available. Certainly King's government was not severe enough to provoke an outbreak.
Bring out those three reaping-hooks, and all the axes and knives, and all hands must cut away the grass round the hut. Here come Tom Wells and Sam and Ben and Bill." A large circle was cut, and the grass was cleared round all the palings. It was then set on fire, and the flames went hissing along the ground towards the already burning forest.
You scalped your enemy with it, or you cut up your dinner, or you dug your field, or you planted your seed-corn, according as taste or circumstances directed. But while the Bronze Age men had axes to hew down the wood, they had also sickles and reaping-hooks to cut their crops, and a sort of hoe or scraper to till the soil with. Specialisation reached a very high pitch.
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