Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The mate shouted to us to fire, and pick out three or four of the most desperate; but perceiving the intoxicated state of the men we refused to shed blood, except in the last extremity of self-defence; and determined to maintain our post, if possible, by means of our pistol-butts, or our fists alone.
A couple of cow-boys real cow-boys jingled through the camp amid a shower of mild chaff. They were on their way to Cook City, I fancy, and I know that they never washed. But they were picturesque ruffians exceedingly, with long spurs, hooded stirrups, slouch hats, fur weather-cloth over their knees, and pistol-butts just easy to hand. "The cow-boy's goin' under before long," said my friend.
Eyes, lit from within by liquor and from without by the dancing flames, gleamed below black brows. Many of the men wore earrings and metal bands about the knots of their pig-tails, while silver pistol-butts flashed everywhere. As the Captain strode into the center of this group, the swinging chorus fell away to a single drunken voice which kept on uncertainly from behind the rum-barrel.
He looked from one face to another before him, with a wide reach in his field of vision for the three hands that were fast on three pistol-butts. "Hold on! I've met you somewhere," he said with easy confidence to the blue-eyed man with the weather-split lip. "Williams Cache, wasn't it? All right, we're placed. Now what have you got in for me?"
It was his custom to visit the prison-yard at Hyde Park Barracks twice a week. Visitors to convicts were, of course, armed, and the two pistol-butts that peeped from Frere's waistcoat attracted many a longing eye. How easy would it be for some fellow to pluck one forth and shatter the smiling, hateful face of the noted disciplinarian!
Instinctively the hands of both men sought their pistol-butts, but Blake made never a move.
I thought with a smile of Bâvile and his dragoons, and how you may ride rough-shod over a religion for a century, and leave it only the more lively for the friction. Ireland is still Catholic; the Cevennes still Protestant. It is not a basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts.
And I think I should not leave my old creed for another, changing only words for words; but by some brave reading, embrace it in spirit and truth, and find wrong as wrong for me as for the best of other communions. It is not a basketful of law-papers, nor the hoofs and pistol-butts of a regiment of horse, that can change one tittle of a ploughman's thoughts.
They broke them with their tomahawks and pistol-butts, and cleft them with their knives. They tore off the plates of mica and glassy selenite. They flung them at their feet, abashed and mortified; and, one after another, came back to the plain with looks of disappointment and chagrin. Not one of them said a word, as they climbed into their saddles, and rode sullenly after the chief.
In one minute we were hard at work at the tubs, in the next we were struggling and splashing, hacking at each other with swords, firing in each other's faces. Half-a-dozen horsemen tried to drag the lugger towards the shore, but the men beat them back, knocked them from their saddles, or flogged the horses over the nose with pistol-butts.
Word Of The Day