Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 5, 2025
There were moments when the attacks became frenzied, when the beams battered fiercely; and then we thought that the end was near, that the walls would open and deliver us to the river. Gaspard had risked himself upon the edge of the roof. He had seized a rafter and drawn it to him. "We must defend ourselves," he cried. Jacques, on his side, had stopped a long pole in its passage.
The wind had fallen, but still charioted a world of troubled clouds; the air bit like frost; and the party, as they stood about the ruins in the rainy twilight of the morning, beat upon their breasts and blew into their hands for warmth. The house had entirely fallen, the walls outward, the roof in; it was a mere heap of rubbish, with here and there a forlorn spear of broken rafter.
Not far from the house there stood an old sycamore tree: one of its spreading branches bent so near to the house that Lorand could certainly reach it by a cast of the rope. The lead-weighted rope, like a lasso, swung over and around the branch and fastened itself on it firmly. Lorand looped the other end of the rope round a rafter.
The lads lay quiet till the last footstep had melted on the wind. Then they arose, and with many an ache, for they were weary with constraint, clambered through the ruins, and recrossed the ditch upon the rafter. Matcham had picked up the windac and went first, Dick following stiffly, with his cross-bow on his arm. "And now," said Matcham, "forth to Holywood."
"Its passions will rock thee As the storms rock the raven on high; Bright reason will mock thee Like the sun from a wintry sky. "From thy nest every rafter Will rot, and thine eagle home Leave thee naked to laughter When leaves fall and cold winds come." No. "Now the last of many days, All beautiful and bright as thou, The loveliest, and the last is dead, Rise, memory, and write its praise."
They will eat their way through the beams of your house till there is only a slender core of solid wood left to support the entire burden. I have taken down a rafter in my own house in Jamaica, originally 18 inches thick each way, with a sound circular centre of no more than 6 inches in diameter, upon which all the weight necessarily fell.
Knots of character told of the suffering, struggles and privations of the sturdy trees in the forest, of seams twisted by the tempests; rifts from the mountain rocks; fibre, steel-chilled by the terrible, silent cold of winter stars. And now plank and beam and rafter and roof made into a home, humble and honest, and giving it all back again under the warm light of the hearth-stone.
But this time I found something at last; I found an old rusty wood-saw without any handle; it was laid in between a rafter and the clapboards of the roof. I greased it up and went to work. There was an old horse-blanket nailed against the logs at the far end of the cabin behind the table, to keep the wind from blowing through the chinks and putting the candle out.
I noticed some terrapin shells lying on a platform in one of the houses, the breast shell pierced with two holes. “Wear them at Green Corn Dance,” said “Billy.” I caught sight of some dressed buckskins lying on a rafter of a house, and an old fashioned rifle, with powder horn and shot flask. A bag of corn hung from a rafter, and near it a sack of clothing, which I did not examine.
Nothing was visible, not even the outline of one worm-eaten rafter, nor of the deal table, on which lay the Bible from which his father had read before they went to bed. No one could tell where the toolbox was, and where the fireplace. There was something very impressive to the child in the complete darkness. At the head of his father's bed hung a great silver hunting watch. It ticked loudly.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking