United States or Micronesia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Colonel Battledown fought under Wellington against Soult at Orthez; and in a charge of the French cavalry the gallant officer and genial gentleman was cut in the head by a sabre-stroke and ridden down; and when picked up after the battle he was dead.
The boy grew up in the rude backwoods settlement, rough, boisterous, unlettered; at the age of fourteen, riding with Sumter in the guerrilla warfare waged throughout the state against the British, and then, captured and wounded on head and hand by a sabre-stroke whose mark he bore till his dying day, a prisoner in the filthy Camden prison-pen, sick of the small-pox, and coming out of it, at last, more dead than alive.
Moreover, the Governor used to go down with him to the tilting-ground and assemble horsemen and teach the lad the fashion of fight and fray, and the place to plant lance-thrust and sabre-stroke; so that by the time he was fourteen years old, he became a valiant wight and accomplished knight and gained the rank of Emir.
He woke, to die 'mid flame and smoke, And shout, and groan, and sabre-stroke, And death-shots falling thick and fast As lightnings from the mountain-cloud, And heard, with voice as trumpet loud, Bozzaris cheer his band: "Strike! till the last armed foe expires; Strike! for your altars and your fires; Strike! for the green graves of your sires, God, and your native land!"
It looked as though in some desperate fray a mad sweep had been made with vengeful blade straight for the jugular, and, just missing that, had laid open the jaw for full four inches. "But," said Feeny, "what could he have been doing, and in what position could he have been, sitting or standing, to get a sabre-stroke like that? Where was his guard?
The first, cursing like a fiend, aimed a sabre-stroke at my poor comrade's head, but as he rose in his stirrups to give force to the blow I buried my bayonet in his side, while the other brought down his blade upon my shoulder with such force, that, were it not for my epaulette, I believe that I had been wellnigh cloven in two.
Flashed all their sabres bare, Flashed as they turned in air, Sabring the gunners there, Charging an army, while All the world wondered: Plunged in the battery-smoke Right through the line they broke; Cossack and Russian Reeled from the sabre-stroke Shattered and sundered. Then they rode back, but not Not the six hundred.
Out from the crevice stole the wildcat. Its ears were flattened close to its evil head. Its yellow eyes were mere slits of fire. Its claws unsheathed themselves from the furry pads, long, hooked claws, capable of disemboweling a grown deer at one sabre-stroke of the muscular hindlegs. Into the rubble and litter of the ledge the claws sank, and receded, in rhythmic motion.
Those which escaped, he ordered the fiery Custer to pursue with brand and vengeance; and they were pressed far into the desolate forest, spent and hungry, many falling by the way of wounds or exhaustion, many pressed down by hoof or sabre-stroke, and many picked up in mercy and sent back to rejoin their brethren in bonds. We captured in all fully six thousand prisoners.
Bayonet-thrust, sabre-stroke, blows from the butt-end of our pieces, crashed on all sides. They tried to crush us by mere weight of numbers, and came on like furious bulls. A battalion rushed upon us, thrusting with their bayonets; we returned their blows without leaving the ranks, and they were swept away almost to a man by two cannon which were in position fifty paces in our rear.
Word Of The Day