Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: April 30, 2025
They were stark naked, save for a kind of breech-clout round the loins, and squatted in pairs along the bottom of the canoe, plying short broad-bladed paddles with which they seemed to be urging their craft at a pretty good pace through the water.
Just then I felt something put into my hand from behind, and when I closed my fingers on it I found this thing to be the handle of my big, broad-bladed spear. Then I heard the wicker door of the hut being closed, and the cross-bar being slipt into its place.
Joseph River there stands a withered cedar, perhaps several hundred years old, which bears scars that are believed to be the blaze marks of the broad-bladed axes of the French explorers made to indicate the place where the portage out of the river began, the place which La Salle missed when lost in the forest but afterward found, where Father Gabriel made several crosses, as Hennepin records, on the trees perhaps these very marks-and where La Salle left letters for the guidance over the prairie of those "who were to come in the vessel" thinking of the captain of the Griffin who was ordered to follow him to the Illinois on his return.
The canoes were now so near that I could distinguish their character. Though small compared with those of Fiji and Tonga, the leading ones were double, with a platform in the centre, on which stood a number of men gesticulating violently, and flourishing spears and clubs, while others sat on either side working broad-bladed paddles almost upright at a rapid rate.
Odda turned idly at the same time, and he started up. "Ah!" he said, under his breath, "what is this?" A tall maiden, mail clad and bearing a broad-bladed spear, stood beside us; and I thought her one of the Valkyrias Odin's messengers come to us, to fight for us in some strife to which she would lead us. I rose too, saluting. "Skoal to the shield maiden!" I said.
Then he took down an ancient-looking broad-bladed dagger, with a complex aspect about it, as if it had some kind of mechanism connected with it. "Take care!" said the Doctor; "there is a trick to that dagger." He took it and touched a spring. The dagger split suddenly into three blades, as when one separates the forefinger and the ring-finger from the middle one.
The after pole was shorter than the others, and served as a prop to them. When the pirates intend to board an enemy, they allow this mast to fall over the bows, and it serves them as a ladder to climb on to her decks. They were steered in a curious way, by two broad-bladed oars running through the counter at either quarter.
But when they had arrived within about three miles of the ruins they observed, approaching them round the spur of a low hill, a troop of about fifty horsemen, which their field glasses enabled them to perceive were splendidly mounted, and garbed in the full panoply of war, consisting of shield, war axe, sheaf of broad-bladed spears, plumed head-dress, and in the case of the leader leopard-skin mantle, and necklace of leopards' claws.
In order to accomplish this two broad-bladed steering-oars were necessary one for each end of the craft and a long tripping-line, with its ends bent on to either end of the yard, hanging down in a bight on deck, so that by its means the end of the yard which was to form the tack might be hauled down on deck.
It was stayed with shrouds, and carried a makeshift sail. A large broad-bladed oar was fixed behind to act as a rudder in case the wind was sufficient to require it.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking