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His lithe, tense body was like a coiled spring; and that, too, though he seemed to be very much at ease. With every sentence that the other spoke, O'Connor was judging Flatray, appraising him for a fine specimen of a hard-bitten breed a vigilant frontiersman, competent to the finger tips. Yet he was conscious that, in spite of the man's graceful ease and friendly smile, he did not like Flatray.
Not every young woman would brave, without trepidation, a virago who had cracked a hard-bitten warrior's head with a poker. "Marigold and I will come with you," I said. She protested. It was nonsense. Suppose Mrs. Tufton went for Marigold and spoiled his beauty? No. It was too dangerous. No place for men. We argued. At last I blew the police-whistle which I wear on the end of my watch-chain.
"We'll get to Venus faster than the Venus Lark, and save money besides." "O.K.," said Roger. "I guess I can take him for a little while." Strong suppressed a smile. Roger's reluctance to go with Connel was well founded. Any cadet within hailing distance of the hard-bitten spaceman was likely to wind up with a bookful of demerits. "Are you on an assignment, sir?" asked Tom.
He was not mad to plunge into the great game, reckless of the future and shouting for the fray. He was not one of the "hard-bitten raw-boned men with keen eyes and ready for anything" beloved of the journalists, who loom so large in the public eye when "big things are afoot."
She liked and she wanted all types of men; the hard-bitten, keen-eyed, lean-flanked men who could give her a lead or take a lead from her over difficult country, and the softer breed of men, whose more rounded bodies were informed by sharp spirits, who, many of them, could not have sat a horse over the easiest fence, or perhaps even have brought down a stag at twenty paces, but who would dominate thousands from their desks, or from the stages of opera houses, or from adjustable seats in front of pianos, or from studios hung with embroideries and strewn with carpets of the East.
A blackguard may be slow to think for himself, but he is genuinely anxious to kill, and a little punishment teaches him how to guard his own skin and perforate another's. A powerfully prayerful Highland Regiment, officered by rank Presbyterians, is, perhaps, one degree more terrible in action than a hard-bitten thousand of irresponsible Irish ruffians led by most improper young unbelievers.
This crew was forty in number, and had been picked from the best a hard-bitten, tough band of veterans, weather beaten, scarred in numerous fights or by the backwoods scourge of small-pox, compact, muscular, fearless, loyal, cynically aloof from those not of their cult, out-spoken and free to criticise in short, men to do great things under the strong leader, and to mutiny at the end of three days under the weak.
In his Janissaries, in his hard-bitten fighting men from the galleys, he could expect much; but there were but some few thousands of these, while the disciplined host against which he was called upon to combat was at the least twenty-five thousand the flower of the imperial forces.
The others fell in behind, a silent, hard-bitten outfit as ever took the trail for that most dangerous of all big game the hidden outlaw. The little bunch of riders had not gone far before Purdy, who was riding in the rear, called to Yeager. "Somebody coming hell-to-split after us, Jim." It turned out to be Buck Weaver, who had been notified by telephone of what was taking place.
Down here they call such escapes, 'pier-head jumps. There is suddenly a roar from the beach, and a nigger runs down to the water pursued by clouds of spears and arrows. Of course, Johnny Be-blowed's whale-boat is lying ready to pick him up. In his last days Johnny got nothing but pier-head jumps. "And the first owners of Berande bought his recruits a hard-bitten gang of murderers.
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