jacks-in-a-box

Updated: May 9, 2025

Bare had our keels bumped through that forest of sailing craft, which ever swung to the tide below Quebec fort, when a company of young cadets marches down from the Castle St. Louis to escort us up to M. de la Barre, the new governor. "Hm," says M. Radisson, looking in his half-savage buckskins a wild enough figure among all those young jacks-in-a-box with their gold lace and steel breastplates.

Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut - Heralds of Empire: Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade

"Hunters tell bigger stories than that about 'Brer Rabbit. Not one has bobbed up since we got our guns." Suddenly from the flat surface of the plain, not twenty yards from where the boys stood, where nothing but bunch-grass and low shrubbery grew, sixteen Indians sprang up to full height, like so many Jacks-in-a-box. The boys were frightened.

Charles A. (Charles Albert) Curtis - Captured by the Navajos