United States or Chile ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


Only here and there chickweed grew, spreading its green tracery over the white soil in such sequestered spots as the hoofs of beast and the feet of men did not stamp and chafe and wear; and in the angles of the courthouse walls, the Russian thistle, barbed with its thousand thorns.

"Why," he explained, "the fence is straight ahead of you; and it's barbed wire; and as for where you're headed, you'll find the pond where we saw all those ducks last night about a hundred yards or so west." Where we saw all those ducks! My blood increased its pace through my veins.

Vision exalted and numbed by the display, one's mind sought the meaning and the purpose of this unprecedented bombardment, with its precision of the devil's own particular brand of "kultur," which was to cut the Germans' barbed wire, smash in their trenches, penetrate their dugouts, close up their communication trenches, do unto their second line the same as to their first line, bury their machine guns in débris, crush each rallying strong point in that maze of warrens, burst in the roofs of village billets over their heads, lay a barrier of death across all roads and, in the midst of the process of killing and wounding, imprison the men of the front line beyond relief by fresh troops and shut them off from food and munitions.

The frost was sharp in the glitter of the unwarming sun; upon leafless boughs hung the barbed ice-gems; and the crown was on the brows of Harold! and at night, within the walls of the convent, Edith heard the hymns of the kneeling monks; and the blasts howled, and the storm arose, and the voices of destroying hurricanes were blent with the swell of the choral hymns.

At the same instant she saw a bolt of lightning strike a young tree by the roadside, heard the sharp click as it hit and then watched the flash dance about, now on the road, now along the barbed wire fencing. Then the world went black again. And a rumble quickly grew to an earth-shaking blast of thunder. It was as though that tree were Billy struck by a gush of flying fire.

But the stranger had disappeared on the other side of the wall, or partly disappeared, for her heavy skirt had caught on a barbed wire that ran along the fence and held her suspended, head down. With a spring Bet was on the wall. Letting herself drop to the other side, she caught the stranger's head in her arms and eased the fall, as the dress ripped and gave way.

"It's all right, lad," shouted Mr. Hume, as Venning straggled to rise; "keep down." There was a sharp hissing. Something struck the rock above the Hunter as he was stooping over Venning, and fell down into the fire. It was a barbed arrow. He fired again, scattered the fire with a kick, and crouched over the boy. Several arrows rang viciously against the rock.

They were standing in a trench dug across the gentle slope of a hill which at one time, in those days of peace preceding the war, had been thickly clad with fir-trees a slope now denuded altogether, and presenting only innumerable stumps, standing up like so many sentinels, while those nearer to the trenches had barbed wire stretched between them, making a metal mesh which would require most strenuous efforts to break.

At the battle of the Horseshoe, where the Creeks made a desperate stand, a barbed arrow struck Houston in the thigh and sank deep into the flesh. He tried to pull it out and failed. "Here," he called to a comrade, "pull out this arrow." The other took hold of the shaft of the arrow and pulled with all his might, but could not dislodge it. "I can't get it out," he said, at last.

O-o-h, boy, watch your step; there was a narrow escape! I stepped on a chunk of air." So he came down working his way with both feet and one hand, and holding the precious piece of branch with its dangling nest in the other. "Talk about your barbed wire entanglements," he called. Then, after a minute, "This little codger lives in a swing," he shouted; "I should think she'd get dizzy.