United States or Isle of Man ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This here is the breakwater supposing the water isn't there and this is the basin cut through the middle, you understand? But I can't get it to look right yet the dimensions are quite correct. Here above the water-line there will be big coping-stones, and underneath it's broken stone." Pelle set to work, but he was too finicking. "Not so exact!" said Jorgensen. "Only roughly!"
It was not at any time very easy to stand upright, for long together, upon this wall, as the stones which capped it were rounded. Now, when the coping-stones were slippery after the frost, and Hugh nearly blinded with the shower of snow-balls, he could not keep his footing, and was obliged to sit astride upon the wall.
A yell of defiance answered this polite speech, and the soldiery, who knew perfectly well that the unarmed ecclesiastics within were not to be trifled with, and had no ambition to die by coping-stones and hot water, went quietly on their way.
I said to God, "They are very mighty." God said, "Ay, exceeding great." And I listened. God asked me what I was listening to. And I said, "A sound of weeping, and I hear the sound of strokes, but I cannot tell whence it comes." God said, "It is the echo of the wine-press lingering still among the coping-stones upon the mounds. A banquet-house stood here." And he called me to come further.
To the broad coping-stones of the wall under the lime boughs speckled thrushes came almost hourly, sometimes to peer out and reconnoitre if it was safe to visit the garden, sometimes to see if a snail had climbed up the ivy. Then they dropped quietly down into the long strawberry patch immediately under.
A sharp-eyed youth who was lying next to Constans touched him on the arm, directing his attention to a squad of the defenders who were working to dislodge one of the massive coping-stones of the gateway arch. Already it was oscillating under the heave of the levers; if it fell, a score of men might be crushed beneath its weight, and the destruction of the testudo would be a certainty.
In five minutes we had fastened them cunningly together. "I am the lightest," said Croisette. "But Marie has the steadiest head," I objected. We had learned that long ago that Marie could walk the coping-stones of the battlements with as little concern as we paced a plank set on the ground. "True," Croisette had to admit.
The reader will have the kindness to imagine a couple of roads crossing an open common, with an armless sign-post on one side, and a rubble-stone bridge, with several of the coping-stones lying in the shallow stream below, on the other. The country round about, if any country could have been seen, would have shown wild, open, and cheerless.
Then up to his feet sprang Robin Getley, upon the saddle-backed coping-stones, his hand upon Nick Attwood's head to steady himself, and looked away where the rippling Stour ran like a thread of silver beside the dust-buff London road, and the little church of Atherstone stood blue against the rolling Cotswold Hills.
Through the agency of the yew-tree, he arrived at the highest portion of the wall, and looking over, perceived that a roof descended from the large coping-stones on which he stood, in a slanting manner, and that the building communicated by an arched covering to the palace: the Thames was not distant from the base of the building more than sixty yards, so that once down, his escape was certain.
Word Of The Day