Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
He was going to rescue a helpless woman from the hands of a man of violence; she was also the daughter of his first ally in the great struggle for Scotland, and who had fallen in the cause. Glad was he then to see the sun sink behind the distant hills. At that moment he and his friend closed their visors, mounted their horses, and set off at full speed toward the chateau.
As side by side they had gained this spot, and the vulgar assailants drew back, leaving the bodies of the dead their last defence from death, they turned their visors to each other, as for one latest farewell on earth.
Quickly now the arrows of the English archers flew into the courtyard. The confusion which reigned there was indescribable. The citizens with shouts of alarm took to their heels. The men-at-arms were powerless against this rain of missiles, and the knights, hastily closing their visors, shouted contradictory orders, which no one obeyed. In the confusion no one noticed the prisoner.
Their faces were all half hidden beneath the visors of their helmets; their right legs were all covered with bronze knemids; broad cylindrical shields reached down to their knees; and the horrible quadrangular mass moved in a single body, and seemed to live like an animal and work like a machine.
When summoned forth by the trumpets, the two champions executed demi-voltes with curvets, and then stood stock-still at either end of the barriers. Each then selected a lance from the bundle offered them by the esquires, and their choice of a weapon made, they carefully fastened down their visors, which up to this moment had been raised.
Some of its members wear armour, with helmets and black-lacquered iron visors, and carry 'martoe, or 'fire-charms, and various necessary implements; others are clad in head-and-shoulder pieces and gauntlets of light chain-armour, to protect them while pulling down and unroofing houses, which is their especial duty.
Most of the dancers wore towering, pointed head-dresses, similar to the historic crowns of the Cambodian kings, though a few of them wore masks, one representing the head of a fox, another a fish, a third a lion, which could be raised or lowered, like the visors of medieval helmets.
Great numbers of negroes, of various tribes and marks, are to be seen there. So mixed, indeed, is the colored population, that there is little sympathy or sense of fellowship among them. The Mandingoes seem to be the most numerous, and are the most remarkable in personal appearance. Almost without exception, they are very tall figures, and wear white robes, and high caps without visors.
The surviving Bretons had but strength to fall upon them dagger in hands, and to wring from them their surrender with the sharp point stabbing through their visors. Then victors and vanquished lay groaning and panting in one helpless and blood-smeared heap. To Beaumanoir's simple mind it had seemed that at the supreme moment the Saints of Brittany had risen at their country's call.
And there, without thinking of anything in particular, without even phrasing inwardly about something, I dreamed of coats of mail as pliable as gloves, of shields of buffalo hide soaked with sweat, of closed visors through which shot bloodthirsty glances, of wild and desperate night attacks with torches that set fire to the walls, and hatchets that mutilated the bodies; and of Louis XI, of the lover's war, of D'Aubigné and of the charlocks, the birds, the polished ivy, the denuded brambles, tasting in my pensive and idle occupation what is greatest in men, their memory; and what is most beautiful in nature, her ironical encroachments and eternal youth.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking