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The skeleton of an old house is akin to that of a modern steel structure. Hand-hewn timbers, morticed and pinned together, take the place of riveted steel beams. It is a simple matter to give them the jack-knife test at intervals of two or three feet. Stick the blade in as far as possible. Then try to turn it around. With a sound beam this cannot be done.
'I have heard that the way they morticed yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Perhaps the young woman would like to see the place? 'Tis a curious sight, Mis'ess Anne; you don't see such a wownd every day. 'No, thank you, said Anne hurriedly, dreading, as did all the young people of Overcombe, the spectacle of the corporal uncovered.
Whereupon Gargantua, fearing lest the child should hurt himself, caused four great chains of iron to be made to bind him, and so many strong wooden arches unto his cradle, most firmly stocked and morticed in huge frames. Of those chains you have one at Rochelle, which they draw up at night betwixt the two great towers of the haven.
The cabin had been built for many decades built of white oak, hewn, morticed and tenoned. The roof and floor was gone, but the walls needed only chinking. They were founded upon boulders.... I saw in days to come a pair of windows opening to the north, and a big open fireplace on the east wall, a new floor and a new roof.... It would be a temple.
The two points of rock which formed the access approached each other so nearly that only one boat could enter at a time. On each side were still remaining two immense iron rings, deeply morticed into the solid rock. Through these, according to tradition, there was nightly drawn a huge chain, secured by an immense padlock, for the protection of the haven and the armada which it contained.
Formerly there was a walled enclosure in front of this gate, called the Tripulia, or Three Gates, which was used as a market. This was cleared away by the military authorities in 1875. The statues and elephants were thrown down by order of Aurangzîb. There are four hollow places in each platform, where the legs of the elephants were morticed into it.
On the top end of each upright of the trilithons is an accurately cut tenon which dovetails into two mortices cut one at each end of the lower surface of the horizontal block. Each upright of the outer circle had a double tenon, and the lintels, besides being morticed to take these tenons, were also dovetailed each into its two neighbours.
Morticed together at the ends, so very loosely had the work been done, that a timid observer, and one not accustomed to the survey of such fabrics, might entertain many misgivings of its security during one of those severe hurricanes which, in some seasons of the year, so dreadfully desolate the southern and southwestern country.
Rising from enormous substructures morticed into the solid hill-side, it rears its vast rectangular bulk to a giddy height above the town; airy loggias imposed on great forbidding masses of brown stone, shooting aloft into a light aërial tower. The empty halls inside are of fair proportions and a noble size, and the views from the open colonnades in all directions fascinate.
Count Robert looked around, and shuddered that a human being should talk of any thing approaching to comfort, connected with his residence in what seemed a living tomb. Ursel's dungeon was not above twelve feet square, vaulted in the roof, and strongly built in the walls by stones which the chisel had morticed closely together.
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