DICTIONARY ONE.COM • More 'Knuckles' Quotes from Famous Books

... Peterkin could by no means brook the idea of the poor girl being converted into a long pig! As for Jack, he clinched his teeth, and shook his fist towards the sea, saying at the same time that he was sorry he had not broken Tararo's head, and he only hoped that one day he should be able to plant his knuckles on the bridge of that chiefs nose! After they had "pumped me dry," as Peterkin said, I begged to be informed of what had happened to them during my long absence, and particularly as to how they got out of the ...

— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... similar nature was played with the so-called astragaloi, dice of a lengthy shape made of the knuckles of animals. Two of the surfaces were flat, the third being raised, and the fourth indented slightly. The last-mentioned side was marked 1, and had, amongst many other names, that of "dog;" the opposite surface, marked 6. The Latin names of the two other sides marked 3 and 4 were suppus and ...

— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy

... of blue fire touched Dio's men. Bolts of it fastened on gun-butts, and knuckles. Men screamed and fell. Jill cried out as he tore silver ornaments from ...

— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett

... hat in the closet, opened the incubator on his culture tubes, trying to look busy. He slammed the door after one whiff and gripped the edge of the work table with whitening knuckles. "Why?" ...

— The Coffin Cure • Alan Edward Nourse

... I suppose," said he, fretfully. And he stepped back and looked up at the house. Then he approached the door, and searched for a bell or knocker; but of neither of these appendages could the dwelling boast. First, he rapped with his knuckles, then with his cane. But no one responded to the summons. He looked up and saw lights in the window. So he knocked again, and louder. After waiting several minutes, and not being admitted, Mr. Grim tried the door and found it unfastened; but the passage into which he stepped ...

— The Lights and Shadows of Real Life • T.S. Arthur

... cried Elizabeth, rapping her knuckles with her stick, "and behave thyself, or theaw shanna go out to ...

— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth

... an alpacar one here, made a-purpose for some clipper built (individual) like you. I would n't 'a' speculated in her, on'y she was the last the hawker had left. She's never bin bent." He produced a slate-coloured alpaca coat, which, when I tried it on, extended down to my knuckles and knees, trailing clouds of glory where there was none before. "You'll do a bit o' killin' at the station, in that rig-out," continued my host, with a lewd reference to some person ...

— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy

... Yes. I daresay there are. It's the right place for them. But what I mean—" He looked at his bony knuckles. "Is that sort of thing always dreaming? Is it dreaming? Or is it something else? ...

— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... changed. His hard knuckles were pressed upon the table, he leaned forward towards her. Even his tone was altered. His blandness had all vanished, his grey eyes were as ...

— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... into a vessel, with water enough to contain the head; boil the head in this, and take it off when boiled, leaving it to cool. Then make your sauce in the following manner: put into a stewpan a pound of ham cut into slices; put over the ham two knuckles of veal, two large onions, and two carrots; moisten with some of the broth in which you have boiled the head to half the depth of the meat only; cover the stewpan, and set it on a slow fire to sweat through; let the broth reduce to a good rich colour; turn up the meat for fear ...

— The Lady's Own Cookery Book, and New Dinner-Table Directory; • Charlotte Campbell Bury

... hall, and a voice in which langour strove in vain against asperity—Melchard's voice, which he had heard for the first time while he clung with his fingers to the window-sill of the bedroom and with his shoe-tips to the string-course below it, sinking his head even below his defenceless knuckles. ...

— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming

... warrant?" exclaimed Duncan Cameron. "Hut-tut! We'll teach him to respect warrants issued under authority of 43d King George III.," and the dictator of Fort Gibraltar fussed angrily among the papers of his desk and beat a threatening tattoo with knuckles and heels. ...

— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut

... on Mr. Chamberlin's ample board. On the contrary, they partook of the good things of the table with a well-bred slowness, that would have been beyond his endurance to bear, had Mars been thundering with his iron fist at the gates of his fortress. But as it was Cupid, only tapping with his rosy knuckles at the casement of his heart, that dinner seemed no longer to him than, no, not half so long indeed as, the shortest snack he had ever eaten on horseback in the hurry of a forced march. The dinner over, Washington seemed in no haste ...

— The Farmer Boy, and How He Became Commander-In-Chief • Morrison Heady

... his chin on the knuckles of his hand. "Monsieur, you have heard of the Chevalier ...

— The Grey Cloak • Harold MacGrath

... assignation placed covertly by subsidised waiters into the serviettes of the Callot-adorned Thaises in the spectacularized haunts of the Bois. The piano in Le Caveau may be diabetic, senescent, and its operator half blind and all knuckles (as he is), but the music it gives forth is full of the romance of Sheppard and Turpin, of stage coach days and dark and nervous highways, of life when life was in the world and all the ...

— Europe After 8:15 • H. L. Mencken, George Jean Nathan and Willard Huntington Wright

... at that moment on a stool. I rapped his knuckles gently with the butt of the revolver to let ...

— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... sounded on the companion ladder and a bunch of horny knuckles rapped at my state-room door. "Come in," I cried, and as the door opened Jones poked ...

— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood

... it!" she cried, "read it! Ah!" and she clenched her little hand, and in her passion struck the oak table beside her, so that a stain of blood sprang out on her knuckles. "Why did you not kill him? Why did you not do it when you had the chance? You were three to one," she hissed. "You had him in your power! You could have killed him, and you did not! Now ...

— The House of the Wolf - A Romance • Stanley Weyman

... three hours with one-half of her registering 85 degrees and the other half frostbitten, and never sneeze once. But just let a bunch of ineligibles come around where I am, and she'll begin to swell at the knuckles and shriek with pain. And I have to take her to her room and rub her arms. To see mamma dressed you'd be surprised to know the number of square inches of surface there are to her arms. I think it must be delightful to be a hermit. That—cassock—or gabardine, isn't it?—that you wear is so ...

— Options • O. Henry

... Alonso, blinking. "I only had a little stick in my hands, and I defended myself against the lobster by hitting him in the knuckles; but he, roaring with rage, and eyes shining, continued climbing. I couldn't get any farther, and I was thinking of coming down; but as I made a movement, biff!... The son of a sea-cook grabs me with one of his ...

— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... as near the threshold as they could be and still be felt as two. At each successive putting down of the instrument I would bring the points a little nearer together and a little lower down on the hand. By the time a dozen or more stimulations had been given I would be working down near the knuckles, and the points would be right together. From that on I would use only one point. It might be necessary to repeat this a few times before the illusion would persist. A great deal seems to depend on the skill of the operator. It would be noticed that ...

— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... too staggered to laugh. But the girl filled the staid place with gay peals. Then she leaned over and patted the wrinkled and bony worn black knuckles. "Bless your dear heart," she said; "no, he isn't, Aunt Basha. He's awfully important and good to us all, and he knows everything. ...

— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

... of poor Northcliffe. He thinks he's saved the nation from its miserable government, and the government now openly abuses him in the House of Commons. Northcliffe puts on his brass knuckles and turns the Times building upside down and sets all the Daily Mail machine guns going, and has to go to bed to rest his nerves, while the row spreads and deepens. The Government keeps hell in the prayer-book because without it they wouldn't know what to do with ...

— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... he answered, scarcely even glancing down at her. "They'll make it this time, though," he added, and she could see his knuckles whiten with the strain as he gripped a rough limb of the tree ...

— In Old Kentucky • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey

... I hope he will leave his ferrule behind. Whew! My knuckles ache now with the mention! Still he seemed to get some pleasure ...

— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson

... agreed Fanny with that joyous, bubbling, luxurious note that Grandma knew so well. "I saw Mary Hagley polishing her very knuckles off on that second-hand stove Mert bought from that watery-eyed man from Spring Road who drives through here with the lame buckskin horse and pieced-out harness. Lutie Barlow's got her fall tinting and painting all done. She's painted the inside of her chicken coops a bright yellow, ...

— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... with a straight right. The Nipe moved his head aside, and Stanton's knuckles merely grazed the side of the alien's head, just below ...

— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett

... vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been.... 'Twas a great night... With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind... And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with... A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell... A world that rattles well ...

— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... any man could do, without making them so small as to be invisible, save under a microscope: and the result was, that he had caricatured every wrinkle, as his friend has in those horrible knuckles of Shem's wife. Besides, I deny utterly your assertion that one is bound to paint what is there. On that very fallacy are they all ...

— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley

... singled out for show seemed neither resentful nor distressed, ready enough most times to exhibit his merits, anxious only for the chance of a good master and the momentary avoidance of the lictor's flail. At the praefect's bidding he cracked his knuckles or showed his teeth, strained the muscles of his arm to make them stand up like cords, turned a somersault, jumped, danced or stood on his head if ...

— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... downward to her breast. Always a strong man he seemed now transformed into some ruthless, degraded, maddened animal. Apparently she was entirely at his mercy, but she was strong and young, and angry disgust gave her unusual strength. She caught the man's throat in both her hands, working her knuckles inwards on his windpipe with such force that he was almost choked, and instinctively put up his hands to hers endeavouring to remove her grip. But she held him, and, half-throttled, he sank down sideways on the arm of the chair. In an ...

— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay

... and some little things to eat along. I say it do help out. I got rheumatism and big stiff j'ints (enlarged wrist and knuckles)." ...

— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration

... who wears a high collar is not the one that knuckles down to hard work. Perspiration and high collars do not go well together. The dude employe does not like perspiration, so he sees to it that he does not exert ...

— Dollars and Sense • Col. Wm. C. Hunter

... shoregoing institutions are based on conformable strata of absolutely impervious inaccuracy. I reflected and became aware of a drumming on the back of the front seat that Pyecroft, bowed forward and relaxed, was tapping with his knuckles. The hardly-checked fury on Hinchcliffe's brow had given place to a greasy imbecility, and he nodded over the steering-bar. In longs and shorts, as laid down by the pious and immortal Mr. Morse, Pyecroft tapped out, "Sham drunk. ...

— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling

... cried McNally with comical disgust. "The matter's with us." He rapped his knuckles on his head. "Solid, all the way through!" said he. "Why, save from nat'ral born human imbelicity, should horses be living like gentlemen while gentlemen ...

— Gold • Stewart White

... invitation. He knew that the first two rules of battle are to strike first and to strike hard. His brown fist moved forward as though it had been shot from a gun. The other man crashed back against the wall and hung there dazed for a moment. The knuckles of that lean fist had caught him ...

— Oh, You Tex! • William Macleod Raine

... you hit it with your knuckles, didn't it?" prompted Zerkow, eagerly, his lips trembling, his ...

— McTeague • Frank Norris

... time was called. The Jam-wagon was bleeding about the knuckles. Several of Locasto's teeth had been loosened, and he spat blood frequently. Otherwise he looked as fit as ever. He pursued his man with savage determination, and seemed resolved to get in a deadly body-blow that would ...

— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... and degrees. Some have been sent for repair, but have nothing apparently wrong about them. The little note sent with them is simply to the effect that "they do not go well" and the owners would like them put in order. A tap is given here and there with his knuckles, and this kind of test is sufficient in one instance to get an acknowledgment from the violin itself that its ribs do not adhere to the back as they should. Another betrays no looseness anywhere, and there is no fracture perceptible ...

— The Repairing & Restoration of Violins - 'The Strad' Library, No. XII. • Horace Petherick

... arms, and his strong fingers grasped his tensed biceps until the knuckles stood out, as he ...

— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck

... yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow, crowned with sparse, ...

— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... timidly and gave it a little shake, not daring to meet her eyes. Alice put out her hand stiffly. Cashel immediately stepped forward with his right foot and enveloped her fingers with the hardest clump of knuckles she had ever felt. Glancing down at this remarkable fist, she saw that it was discolored almost to blackness. Then she went in through the gate, followed by Lydia, who turned to close it behind her. ...

— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw

... on," said the iron-grey giant, rubbing his knuckles together sheepishly. "You don't know Sis ef you go on that away. Many's the time that chile 'ud foller me up an' say, 'Pap, ef you see my shawl a-haugin' out on the fence, Puss'll be asleep, an' don't you come a-lumberin' in an' wake her up, nuther.' An' many's the time she'd come out an' ...

— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris

... so I just lost patience with his foolishness and took a crack at him standing where I'm standing now, but he ducked and you can still see, ma'am"—turning to the embarrassed Mrs. Ferris—"where my knuckles made a dint in the door-jamb. I got him ...

— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester

... breath, he leaned forward, and dug his sculls into the water, pulling them through with all his strength. The consequence of this feat was that the handles of the sculls came into violent collision in the middle of the boat, the knuckles of his right hand were barked, his left scull unshipped, and the head of his skiff almost blown round by the wind before he could restore order ...

— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... down, and much too tight for him; and yet, when he had taken up the ring (as it turned out to be), and was carrying it to his mistress, she thought he looked like a little cupid. He gave the ring to her; it was a trumpery little thing enough, but too small for any of her old knuckles, so she put ...

— The Rose and the Ring • William Makepeace Thackeray

... out of his box. His suit looked like blue skin. He walked with grandeur down the alley between the rows of coops. Stopping in front of his friend's door, he rapped on it with passionate knuckles. ...

— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane

... me to ask the way to the house of the commandant. Between them on a Boer pony sat a man, erect, slim-waisted, with well-set shoulders and chin in air, one hand holding the reins high, the other with knuckles down resting on his hip. The Boer pony he rode, nor the moonlight, nor the veldt behind him, could disguise his seat and pose. It was as though I had been suddenly thrown back into London and was passing the ...

— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis

... history of the Kovner house had the electric bell been in working order. Hence Glaubmann knocked with his naked fist and left the imprint of his four knuckles on the wet varnish just as Mrs. Kovner flung wide the door. It was at this instant that Glaubmann's well-laid ...

— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass

... suggested it and had a rap over the knuckles for my pains. The fellow is getting us a very ...

— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace

... from; another with a round ring, whose line formed the base; and another with holes, three or five, hollowed in the earth at equal distances from each other, which was called knucks. You could play for keeps in all these games; and in knucks, if you won, you had a shot or shots at the knuckles of the fellow who lost, and who was obliged to hold them down for you to shoot at. Fellows who were mean would twitch their knuckles away when they saw your toy coming, and run; but most of them took ...

— Boy Life - Stories and Readings Selected From The Works of William Dean Howells • William Dean Howells

... me feel that these gaudy colours I have burst into are not so famous as I supposed; and on the eighth day I find myself insulted in twenty-seven places by an angry mosquito, whom in the small hours of the morning I had occasion to rap over the knuckles and turn out of my billet. And I've got a nasty cold, and nobody loves me or cleans my buttons, and if I want to go anywhere there are no more motor cars and they make me pay a penny for the tram, and my wife doesn't think I'm a hero any longer, ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, July 25, 1917 • Various

... on the physical plan. On the lecture platform he stood erect and unadorned, his hands hanging folded in front, save when he changed the leaf of his manuscript, or emphasized his words with a gesture: his customary one, simple but effective, was to clinch his right fist, knuckles upward, the arm bent at the elbow, then a downward blow of the forearm, full of power bridled. It was accompanied by such a glance of the eyes as no one ever saw except from Emerson: a glance like the reveille of a trumpet. Yet his eyes were not ...

— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne

... and spent the whole night singing and dancing to the music of a long drum (gamba) and the caracasha. The drum was a hollow log, having one end covered with skin, and was played by the performer sitting astride upon it, and drumming with his knuckles. The caracasha is a notched bamboo tube, which produces a harsh rattling noise by passing a hard stick over the notches. Nothing could exceed in dreary monotony this music and the singing and dancing, which were kept up with unflagging vigour all night long. The Indians ...

— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates

... Pete was not drinking and insisted that he drink and refill his glass. Pete downed the raw red wine and presently complained of feeling sleepy. Flores grinned. "I do not sleep," he asserted—"not until this is gone"—and he struck the jug with his knuckles. Pete felt that he was in for a long session, and inwardly cursed his luck. Flores's eyes brightened and he grew talkative. He spoke of his youth in Old Mexico; of the cattle and the women of that land. Pete feigned a heaviness that he did not feel. Presently ...

— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs

... the loveliest string of knuckles Which dear Father gave to me, And a pair of shin-bone buckles Which I so wish ...

— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume III. (of X.) • Various

... traveller said that all that the woman had related was perfectly true. Taking her to one side of the room, he told her to tap gently with her knuckles all over a wooden pillar. At one part the pillar gave forth a hollow sound. The traveller said that the money spoken about by the poor woman lay hidden in this part of the pillar. Then advising her to spend it only gradually, he went ...

— Child-Life in Japan and Japanese Child Stories • Mrs. M. Chaplin Ayrton

... compunction in lifting the second, and this being replaced, he began to sound others with his knuckles, to find that they all gave forth the ...

— The Young Castellan - A Tale of the English Civil War • George Manville Fenn

... back to Harvey. "He looks ill," he said, which is true. His honestly-painted knuckles make diagnosis easy. My friend thought that this great man would probably have dosed him well, and, as he added, would not have bothered him about too much sugar, nor forbidden champagne. I had to reply that whatever ills were in the England of that day,—and ...

— Doctor and Patient • S. Weir Mitchell

... Mauchberg that evening and proceeded on the following day to Devil's Knuckles, down the steep Mauchberg road (known as Hell's Gate), where the two Boer big guns again narrowly escaped capture, and so on to Spitzkop, just north of Nelspruit on ...

— The Record of a Regiment of the Line • M. Jacson

... hand, like a human hand." The disc changed into a human hand, the fingers slightly bent, the soft, white fingers of a woman with the pink of the flesh and the wrinkles at the knuckles visible. The wrist seemed to fade gradually into nothingness, the end of the hand was as indeterminate as are things in a dream, but ...

— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell

... on tiptoe. We paused at a door near the head of the great staircase, and L'Amour knocked timidly with her rheumatic knuckles. ...

— Uncle Silas - A Tale of Bartram-Haugh • J.S. Le Fanu

... cheek, and a cruel grin about the muscles of the mouth; to say nothing about rusty hair protruding through the holes of a brown hat, not made for the wearer—long, sinewy arms, all of one thickness, terminating in huge, hairy, horny hands, chiefly knuckles and nails—a shambling gait, notwithstanding that his legs are finely proportioned, as if the night prowler were cautious not to be heard by the sleeping house, nor to awaken—so noiseless his stealthy advances—the ...

— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... of the chimney-piece delivered himself of his persuasive allocution, he took up his little groups successively from the table, held them aloft, turned them about, rapped them with his knuckles, and gazed at them lovingly, with his head on one side. They consisted each of a cat and a monkey, fantastically draped, in some preposterously sentimental conjunction. They exhibited a certain sameness ...

— The Madonna of the Future • Henry James

... Head-knuckles?" McTurk echoed. At the twentieth repetition—no boy can stand the torture of one unvarying query, which is ...

— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling

... side door and the thumping overhead blended in a travesty on the anvil chorus, the staccato tapping of somebody's knuckles rising flute-like above the hammering of Joel's cane. TO some temperaments the double summons would have proved confusing, but Persis Dale dropped her sewing and moved briskly to the door, addressing the ceiling as she went. "'Twon't ...

— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith

... jaw, the ear, and the temple, are the three weakest points which you present. However, I took particular care that my man did not get home; but, on the other hand, I fear that I did not do him much harm either. He bored in with his head down; and I, like a fool, broke my knuckles over the top of his impenetrable skull. Of course, theoretically I should either have stepped back and tried an undercut, or else taken him into chancery; but I must confess to feeling flurried and rattled from the blow I had ...

— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro

... bake-shop on the Main Street of the town of Coal Creek Pennsylvania and then went quickly inside. Something pleased him and as he stood before the counter in the shop he laughed and whistled softly. With a wink at the Reverend Minot Weeks who stood by the door leading to the street, he tapped with his knuckles on the showcase. ...

— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson

... the game is up; we are two old fogies. [They groan in unison; then she raps him sharply on the knuckles.] Tell me, sir, what are you ...

— What Every Woman Knows • James M. Barrie

... and the moon was shining brightly in the sky overhead when Bumpus, being awakened by some sort of dream, suddenly sat upright, digging his knuckles into his eyes, as if hardly able to believe that he was not safe and sound in his own ...

— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter

... to the public to-morrow—to the public, mind you. My English customers and friends, if they come to the little door in the Arcade, and give two knocks, and then three little ones with their knuckles on the door, will find it open, and can be served as long as there is any liquor left; but for the last three days I have been clearing out nearly all my stock. The demand has been tremendous, and I was ...

— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty

... a ram's blow is dealt: And foul fall the knuckles that strike below the belt. Nor brave the inventions that serve to replace The openness of valor while ...

— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville

... looked behind us, and then at each other. Margaret was now like the rest of us. She had lost her statuesque calm. All the introspective rigidity had gone from her; and she clasped her hands together till the knuckles were white. ...

— The Jewel of Seven Stars • Bram Stoker

... Tommy bored his knuckles into his red eyes, and began to whimper. Again it was hard for Tommy! He had followed Clare, thinking to supply what was lacking to him; to do for him what he was not clever enough to do for himself; in short, to make an advantageous partnership with him, to which he should furnish ...

— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald

... decided that his sheep should go through, since the free range was his as well as another's. On that long night march, when the men were behind the sheep, driving them, contrary to the usual custom, he told Sims of his interview with Beef Bissell, and the herder cracked his knuckles with rage at the position taken by ...

— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... Rubber Collar got one from me that made him remember home and mother, I'll bet. Anyhow, my knuckles ached for two days afterwards. And Jonadab was just as busy. But I cal'late we'd have been ready for the oven in another five minutes if the door hadn't bu'st open with a bang, and a loud dressed chap, with the sweat pourin' down his face, come ...

— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... loudest, tears streamed down its scarlet face, and it dug its clenched knuckles furiously into ...

— Five Nights • Victoria Cross

... the history of mathematics are the calculations published by the weather-prophet of the Express. Arithmetic turns pale when she glances at them, and, striking her multiplication table with her algebraic knuckles, demands to know why the Express does not add a Cube-it to ...

— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 18, July 30, 1870 • Various

... into his middle, there to mix uncomfortably with the viands he had eaten. Weeks' thin face looked very white, and Dane noticed with malicious enjoyment, that Ali had an unobtrusive grip on the table which made his knuckles stand out in polished knobs—proving that there were things which could upset the ...

— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... lad, with the desperation of a cornered rat. "But I got a right to live. And I've lived worse'n a dorg on this bloody schooner. I'm fair striped an' bruised wi' boots an' knuckles an' ends o' rope. I'd 'ave chucked myself over long ...

— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn

... study Alexey Alexandrovitch walked up and down twice, and stopped at an immense writing-table, on which six candles had already been lighted by the valet who had preceded him. He cracked his knuckles and sat down, sorting out his writing appurtenances. Putting his elbows on the table, he bent his head on one side, thought a minute, and began to write, without pausing for a second. He wrote ...

— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... They were hazy—a little—to the eye, but here and there he caught a face clearly and did not forget it again—a baby in a blue-and-white blanket coat, that had bright red cheeks and that smiled and showed two brand-new teeth; a boy with bare hands and red knuckles (the Poor Boy sent him a pair of warm mittens from the village store), and ears (one bigger than the other) ...

— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris

... might take to caves and the vampires to outhouses and dark crevices in the rocks, but most of the monkeys and apes would soon become extinct, while a chimpanzee or orang-utan would become a cripple, swinging ever painfully along between the knuckles of crutch-like forearms, searching, searching forever for the trees which gave him his form and structure, and without which his life and that of his race must ...

— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... among the scholars, familiarly slapping first one and then another on the shoulder, saying "Nice ('ic) nice old boy!" and smiling a smile of elaborate content. Arrived at a good position for speaking, he put his left arm akimbo with his knuckles planted in his hip just under the edge of his cut-away coat, bent his right leg, placing his toe on the ground and resting his heel with easy grace against his left shin, puffed out his aldermanic stomach, opened his lips, leaned ...

— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... day before. His hair was rather long and a toss of dark curls. His face was as tenderly pretty as his sister's, whom he strongly resembled, although he was somewhat fairer of complexion. But it was full of the utmost bravado of rage and defiance, and his two small hands were clinched, until the knuckles whitened, in the faces of the little crowd who confronted him. The color had not left his face, for his cheeks burned like roses, but his pretty mouth was hard set and his black eyes blazed. The boys danced ...

— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... state when we had well beheld, With tender ruth on him, and on his feres, In thoughtful cares forth then our pace we held; And, by and by, another shape appears Of greedy Care, still brushing up the briers; His knuckles knob'd, his flesh deep dinted in With tawed hands, and ...

— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan

... ashtray wasn't a sharp pain any longer. It had developed into a nice, dependable ache that had spread all over the side of his head. And his right eye was beginning to swell, probably from the same cause. He'd skinned the knuckles of his right hand, too, probably on Sam's face, and they set ...

— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett

... equal to all the diplomacy of thrust and parry to be gained by living in society. Her stepmother, who was apparently as good-natured as she seemed brainless, was prepared to be gushing, but that was nipped in the bud by the way Dawn extended her pretty, firm hand with the dimpling wrist and knuckles and exquisitely ...

— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin

... a cutlass from the pile, and someone, at the same time snatching another, gave me a cut across the knuckles which I hardly felt. I dashed out of the door into the clear sunlight. Someone was close behind, I knew not whom. Right in front, the doctor was pursuing his assailant down the hill, and just as my eyes fell upon him, beat down his guard and sent him sprawling on ...

— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... more than I can devoutly live, pricked through the very reins and kidneys with that skewer. Alas! he is my goad, my thorn in the flesh, the messenger of satan sent to buffet me. He is the mosquitto that stings my knuckles; the little, black, abominable fly that will insist to assail my nose; he is my bruise, my blain, my blister, my settled, ceaseless source of irritation: the cause, the cause—of what is he the cause? Alas! that I should ever have been the cause of such a foul effect! But let it ...

— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege

... it was none other than the subject of my late reverie with whom I had come in collision. "I don't know whether I have scratched your varnish, as you call it, but I have knocked the skin off my own knuckles against the tree in ...

— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley

... tight hold of the gunwale, and as reward for his chivalry had his knuckles rapped sharply by the oar-blade. Then he forgot himself, and Miss Welse also, and swore, ...

— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London

... Lucille, reappearing from behind the flagon. "I hate them myself, even on the funny-bone or knuckles—but on the ...

— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren

... wrote to Bob. He had been reading his contract over. There had come to him a strong temptation to quit. Several fellows had gotten bruised in practice. Jimmy Blackwell had the skin taken off his knuckles when someone stepped on his hand; Harry Knowlton got a clip over one eye; Tom Barley had his wind knocked out. It would be but a matter of time before something happened to him. In the letter to Bob, he wrote: "I don't know why I'm so timid. ...

— Over the Line • Harold M. Sherman

... that was the law: a hard fight—the best man to win. In war, favors might be shown; but in life, with a man's own at stake, it was every one for himself. Peter himself would agree to that. He was not one to ask favors. A fair fight was all he demanded. Then let it be a clean, fair fight with bare knuckles to a finish. Let him show himself to Marjory as the grandson of the man who gave him his name; let him press ...

— The Triflers • Frederick Orin Bartlett

... heard steps behind, and turned in time to guard his head with his right arm. It felt numb and he was half dazed by a shock of pain, but he struck savagely with his left hand and his knuckles jarred on bone. The other's stick dropped, and when they grappled Festing was relieved to feel his arm was not broken. His muscles were hard and well trained, his blood was hot, and a struggle of the kind was not altogether a novelty. ...

— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss

... got scruples," I says, and not a bit did I know what I was talking about. Captain Clyde rapped the table with his knuckles. ...

— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton

... to his mother's memory with his knuckles. "And that's for your friendship," he said, ...

— Garrison's Finish - A Romance of the Race-Course • W. B. M. Ferguson

... the 'cup-and-ring' markings on which are thought by the surrounding peasantry to have been made by the knees and elbows of St Roch, who fell upon this stone when he landed from Ireland. When the natives desire a wind they knock upon the depressions with their knuckles, murmuring spells the while, just as in Scotland in the seventeenth century a tempest was raised by dipping a rag in water and beating it on a stone thrice in the ...

— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence

... of the clearing below her, clearly visible in the bright moonlight, she saw fully twenty huge, manlike apes—great, shaggy fellows who went upon their hind feet with only slight assistance from the knuckles of their hands. The moonlight glanced from their glossy coats, the numerous gray-tipped hairs imparting a sheen that made the hideous creatures almost magnificent ...

— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... Marion, though he did not want to be mayor, and was chairman of the State Water Storage Commission because he particularly wanted to be the chairman; he was, by reason of that office, in a position where he could rap the knuckles of those who should attempt to grab and selfishly exploit "The People's White Coal," as he called water-power. These latter appertaining qualifications were interesting enough, but his undeviating observance of the mill rule of the Morrisons of St. Ronan's served more ...

— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day

... looked a little gruffer than of old; and left him to find his own way to Maurice's room. In accordance with the new state of things, Dove knocked ceremoniously at the door. While his knuckles still touched the wood, it was flung open, and he stood face to face with Maurice. For a moment the latter did not seem to recognise his visitor; he had evidently ...

— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson

... Mr. Vandam into my imitation hall of the Vandam mansion. I want each of you in turn to tiptoe up that hall to a spot indicated on the wall, back of the cabinet, and strike that spot several sharp blows with your knuckles." ...

— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve

... in fancy? You answer, So be it! Imagine yourself then, good Sir, in a wig, Either grizzle or bob—never mind, you look big. You've a sword at your side, in your shoes there are buckles, And the folds of fine linen flap over your knuckles. You have come with light heart, and with eyes that are brighter, From a pint of red Port, and a steak at the Mitre; You have strolled from the Bar and the purlieus of Fleet, And you turn from the Strand into Catherine Street; Thence climb to the law-loving summits of Bow, Till you stand at ...

— Collected Poems - In Two Volumes, Vol. II • Austin Dobson

... child!' cried the nurse, and hit him over the knuckles. Now, no one had ever hit Philip before. He grew paler than ever, but he did not cry, though his hands hurt rather badly. For she had snatched up the yard-stick to hit him with, and ...

— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit

... at the sound of a footstep behind him, and saw, standing in a doorway leading to another room, a man who was digging his knuckles into his eyes and stifling a yawn. He was a refined-looking stripling of not more than twenty-four, not tall, but well-made, and with an air of breeding, intensified rather than hidden ...

— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... not with such. ease. Here and there they were rapped over the knuckles. But nowadays they could cart ...

— Moral • Ludwig Thoma

... and remembered how he had kept his eyes fixed on it the evening that he had sat with her in the little Twenty-third Street drawing-room. All the beauty that had forsaken her face seemed to have taken refuge in the long pale fingers and faintly dimpled knuckles on his sleeve, and he said to himself: "If it were only to see her hand again I should ...

— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton

... stood over the blaze, rubbing his bony old knuckles, he was a depressing figure indeed. His gloomy eyes had no reflected glow in them; his long, stooped frame suggested nothing so much as a weather- worn scare-crow about which a thousand storms had thrashed. There was no joy in ...

— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon

... dry tree knuckles, buttressed roots rising three feet from the soil, and discussed the situation gravely. After a short time Peter got up with a start and began prancing about the little free space ...

— Boy Scouts in the Canal Zone - The Plot Against Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson

... He was dressed in a long black topcoat, high collar and string tie. The clicking noise was explained when he rubbed his long white hands together, making the knuckles pop like ...

— The End of Time • Wallace West

... know the man whose demeanour is "always calm," but whose passions are strong. How do you know that his passions are strong? Because he "gives them away" by some small, but important, part of his demeanour, such as the twitching of a lip or the whitening of the knuckles caused by clenching the hand. In other words, his demeanour, fundamentally, is not calm. You know the man who is always "smoothly polite and agreeable," but who affects you unpleasantly. Why does he affect you unpleasantly? ...

— LITERARY TASTE • ARNOLD BENNETT

... accounts, there is an end of confidence; but I must say his last letter appears to me a sort of exuberance of anger, which spends itself on many subjects rather than the one which first caused it, and therefore I suspect he has received some rap on the knuckles at home, which he resents here, or on the first person who is not of the same opinion as himself; but it is a curious anomaly that he should quarrel with Normanby in support of arbitrary and absolute Government. All is quiet here now, and will, I hope, continue so till ...

— The Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol 2 (of 3), 1844-1853 • Queen Victoria

... replaced the volume on its shelf. He gave the glass cylinder of his electrical machine a turn or two, and was for the moment gratified to elicit a faint spark, a feeble snap of blue fire, which clicked from the "receiver" to his knuckles. His eye dwelt fondly for a few seconds on the air-pump, but wandered from that to the telescope, and finally took cognizance of an apparatus for weighing heavy articles. This was provided with a small platform, upon which the recluse philosopher stepped, ...

— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... you know it. Shorthand typists are not wanted these days, the schools are turning out thousands of 'em, all more or less bad; but I—I ain't talking about that, dear—" He took a step towards her, and then recoiled, seeing her knuckles shine whitely as she gripped the ruler. ...

— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper

... said Grant doggedly. His knuckles were bleeding and his forearms were sore from the treatment he had received from Sam's boots. The pain made him angry and more determined than ever to ...

— The Go Ahead Boys and the Treasure Cave • Ross Kay

... brings it up to him, puts it irritatingly in front of him; he seizes it, they struggle for it, trying to take it out of each other's hands; she screams, he tries to get it; there is a scuffle round the room; he tries to rub her knuckles; she makes a little feint to bite him; in the struggle the box drops on the floor a little below the ...

— Dolly Reforming Herself - A Comedy in Four Acts • Henry Arthur Jones

... I've a notion, some folks will never have to boast of—so trot, and fetch the bowl for me, do you hear, and set up the nine-pins. You've sense enough to do that, have not you? and as for your lesson, I'll drive that into your head by and by, if I can," added he, rapping with his knuckles upon the ...

— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... 'bus that meets the 4.52. He'd a handbag and a sort of hamper: it looked to me like a linen-basket. He wouldn't let the Boots touch the hamper, but carried it up into his bedroom himself. He carried it in front of him by the handles, and grazed his knuckles at every second step. He slipped going round the bend of the stairs, and knocked his head a rattling good thump against the balustrade; but he never let go that hamper—only swore and plunged on. I could see he was nervous and excited, but one gets used to nervous and ...

— The Observations of Henry • Jerome K. Jerome

... dipped sixteen adult converts in a day—which he did a fortnight since; no wonder Barraclough, scamp and hypocrite as he is, should attract all the weaver-girls in their flowers and ribbons, to witness how much harder are his knuckles than the wooden brim of his tub; as little wonder that you, when you are left to yourselves, without your rectors—myself, and Hall, and Boultby—to back you, should too often perform the holy service of our church ...

— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... look a great deal better out of their integuments than in them. Not from this class, however, do your all-the-year-round bathers come. The Arab is an exotic—a child of the Sun, loving not to disport himself in water the temperature of which shocks his tentative knuckles, as he dips them in the unaccustomed element. His wardrobe, again, is too much after the fashion of that pertaining to Canning's needy knife-grinder to make an al fresco toilette other than embarrassing. From the all-the-year-round bathers, as a nucleus, there has grown up, ...

— Mystic London: - or, Phases of occult life in the metropolis • Charles Maurice Davies

... into the Custody of a professional Laddie with large staring Knuckles and a Dialect that dimmed all ...

— Ade's Fables • George Ade

... flash old Wat's arrow had sped, and the Butcher sprang back with a howl of pain, his hand skewered by a cloth-yard shaft. As he shook it furiously at his enemies a second grazed his knuckles. With a brutal kick of his metal-shod feet he hurled young Alspaye over the edge, looked down for a few moments at his death agonies, and then walked slowly from the parapet, nursing his dripping hand, the arrows still ringing loudly upon his ...

— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle

... secrets of their souls confidentially to her, and offered gracious mediations on their behalf with any of the flitting Newport fair ones. When they, as in duty bound, said that they saw nobody whom they cared about now she was married, that she was the only woman on earth for them,—she rapped their knuckles briskly with her fan, and bid them mind their manners. All this mode of proceeding gave her ...

— Pink and White Tyranny - A Society Novel • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... handsome woman she was when I saw her first! Well, lads, let's join the ladies: I'm none of your steady-going old topers. Enough's as good's a feast—that's my motto. And I can't write my name on a slate with my knuckles, either." ...

— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science Volume 15, No. 89, May, 1875 • Various

... him down, and churn his head against the ground; to gouge out his eyes; to bite off his ears; to kick him, carve him, mutilate him in various and unsportsman-like and unspeakable ways. But it was the high crime of the code to slug him with brass or steel knuckles, commonly called knucks. The man who carried this reenforcement for the natural fist in his pocket and used it in a fight was held the lowest of all contemptible and namelessly vile things. So, these Texas cowboys ...

— Trail's End • George W. Ogden

... his hands were moist, and there was a strange, tight feeling about his chest, as if his lungs were full and could not be emptied. After a moment's hesitation, he rapped firmly on the door with his bare knuckles. ...

— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon

... of laughter greeted the play and stirred the sleigh-bells on the startled horses beyond the door. The programme over, somebody called for Squire Town, a local pettifogger, who flung his soul and body into every cause. He often sored his knuckles on the court table and racked his frame with the violence of his rhetoric. He had a stock of impassioned remarks ...

— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... much resemblance to actual warfare. Still they demanded of the performers skill of a peculiar kind, great physical endurance and ceaseless activity. The combat-sword was an unlikely-looking weapon, very short in the blade, with a protuberant hilt of curved bars to protect the knuckles of the combatant. The orchestra supplied a strongly-accentuated tune, and the swords clashed together in strict time with the music. The fight raged hither and thither about the stage, each blow and parry, thrust and guard, being a matter of strict pre-arrangement. ...

— A Book of the Play - Studies and Illustrations of Histrionic Story, Life, and Character • Dutton Cook

... over his knuckles, and immediately opened it again over her half-embarrassed face. "I comprehend not anything to 'ekalkilate.' WILL you go, Don Fantastico; or is it for me to ...

— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte

... melted. It seemed impossible that rubber and gutta-percha could withstand such heat as had come sizzling from the Santa Fe. From what the lady had said it required no great inductive powers to reason that the rate clerk had told all. Coming victorious to Miss Lackawanna's door to have his knuckles collodionized he had made known in coarse, triumphant language the ...

— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach

... open, and reached the front door of the Vicarage. But her troubles were not over yet, for she found that, even by standing on the very tips of her toes, she could reach neither bell nor knocker. She rapped as hard as she could with her soft little knuckles, but they made no more noise on the great door than a bird's beak would have done; and then she tried some little kicks, but ...

— Our Frank - and other stories • Amy Walton

... the desk beside him with the back of his hand, using all his strength, skinning his knuckles so that the blood dripped from them, unnoticed. He waved both arms continually, bending his body almost double and straightening up again, in crucial efforts for emphasis. All the old jingo platitudes that he had learned from campaign speakers ...

— In the Arena - Stories of Political Life • Booth Tarkington

... faces lighted up as they saw him. The old sailing-master, who seldom indulged in more than a scowl since he lost his right ear by the stroke of a cutlass in capturing the tender to the "Plantagenet" seventy-four off the Hills of Navesink; the rigid old major of marines, who pipe-clayed his very knuckles, and wore a stiff sheet-iron padding to his stock to encourage discipline in the guard; the dear, kind old surgeon, who swallowed calomel pills by the pint, out of pure principle, and who lopped off limbs and felt yellow fever pulses all through the still watches of the hot nights with ...

— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise

... have. But the cloth on the table yesterday was a sight to behold, with big spots of dirt all along one side and dirt on top. Findlay came in the room just as I reached the table, and I said, "Findlay, what has happened here?" He gave one look at the cloth where I pointed, and then striking his knuckles together, almost sobbed out, "Dot tamn dog, mum!" Faye and Lieutenant Golden quickly left the room to avoid hearing any more remarks of that kind, for it was really very dreadful in Findlay to use such language. This left me alone, of course, to pacify ...

— Army Letters from an Officer's Wife, 1871-1888 • Frances M.A. Roe

... dreamed he was dead, and on his way to heaven. When he got there, he knocked loudly at the door. "I wonder," said he to himself, "that they have no knocker on the door,—-one knocks one's knuckles sore." The apostle Peter opened the door, and wanted to see who demanded admission so noisily. "Ah, it's you, Master Pfriem;" said he, "well, I'll let you in, but I warn you that you must give up that ...

— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers

... busy thumping the green balls with his knuckles, and feeling of the stems, and when he had tested each in turn, he answered, "Yis, I'll sell thim for you, but ye'd better wait a week or two. They aren't ...

— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... the Bad Hand nudged me gently with his knuckles, and I nudged Jed Smith, and Jed passed it on, and it went around from one to the other, so we all knew. Somebody was coming! We could hear a stick snap, and a little laugh, off in the timber; it sounded as though somebody had run into a branch. We waited. The enemy was stealing ...

— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin

... turned to Dade amiably, his knuckles pressing lightly upon his hips that his palms might be saved immaculate for the next little corn cake which he would presently slap into ...

— The Gringos • B. M. Bower

... too late. It fell to the ground and bounded away, with its proprietor in passionate chase. Arthur snorted and gently chafed his knuckles. ...

— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse

... lowly, but none the less viciously. It was quite by accident that when his patience was strained almost to the breaking point, he struck his hand against a board that formed part of the partition between his building and the courthouse next door, and tore a huge chunk of skin from the knuckles. He paid little attention to the injury, however, for the agitating of the board disclosed the glittering recreant, and he pounced upon it with the precision of a hawk upon ...

— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer

... said the husband with a look of almost fierce determination, pressing his fist as he spoke rigidly on his desk, as though he had Mr. Slope's head below his knuckles and meant ...

— Barchester Towers • Anthony Trollope

... stood, puzzled and scared, something brushed very lightly,-even coquettishly,—against his knuckles. He started in nervous fright. An instant later, the same thing brushed his knuckles again, this time more insistently. The man, in a spurt of fear-driven rage, grabbed at the invisible object. His fingers slipped along the smooth sides of the bewitched bag that Lad ...

— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... watched the result with great anxiety; after an interval of painful suspense, he saw the filaments of the string exhibit by their motion signs of electrical action; he drew in the kite, and, presenting his knuckles to the key, received a strong spark, which of course decided the success of the experiment. Repeated sparks were drawn from the key, a phial was charged, a shock given, and the identity of lightning with the electric fluid demonstrated beyond ...

— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various

... trickling rush of a little mountain stream that flowed through the grounds. Some what surprised, though not abashed, at the evident "not-at-home" look of the farm-house, Mr. Dyceworthy rapped loudly at the rough oaken door with his knuckles, there being no such modern convenience as a bell or a knocker. He waited sometime before he was answered, repeating his summons violently at frequent intervals, and swearing irreligiously under his breath as he did so. But at last the door was flung ...

— Thelma • Marie Corelli

... vengeance. I saw the blood bathing the torn ear of my antagonist. It looked beautiful. I was no longer afraid of anything. Yelling my uncle's name I came on ... I beat the knife out of the other's hand and bloodied his knuckles with the next blow. I beat him down with rapid blows, threshing at him, shouting ...

— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp

... up his huge paws, and as I stared at the battered, malformed knuckles I understood the ...

— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London

... in hopes that by his jesting, among his merry Companions, he may from them understand what is best, upon such occasions, to be done or avoided; and they seriously jesting say to him: O friend, wean yourself from your wife and Tobacco, and drink Chocolate, and eat knuckles of Veal, or else you'l become like one of Pharaohs lean Kine. Oh ho, thinks he, if that be true, I have spent my ...

— The Ten Pleasures of Marriage and The Confession of the New-married Couple (1682) • A. Marsh

... Sir, you have tore every bit of skin quite off the back of both my hands with your forceps, cried my uncle Toby—and you have crush'd all my knuckles into the bargain with them to a jelly. 'Tis your own fault, said Dr. Slop—you should have clinch'd your two fists together into the form of a child's head as I told you, and sat firm.—I did so, answered my uncle Toby.—Then the points of my forceps have ...

— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne

... visited Wuthering Heights, my nearest neighbours to Thrushcross Grange. On that bleak hill-top the earth was hard with a black frost, and the air made me shiver through every limb. As I knocked for admittance, till my knuckles tingled and the dogs howled, vinegar- faced Joseph projected his head from a round window of the barn, ...

— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.

... from outside. But the hand became instantly tense. It fell upon the sill and clutched it so hard that the knuckles stood out, white, strained and garish. Banneker's own strong hand descended upon the wrist. A voice ...

— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams

... beg pardon. But this is no time for explanations. Come, come"—he rapped his desk with his knuckles—"don't you know what getting out an extra is? Every second is worth half your lifetime. Out with ...

— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott

... up as he struck. He had been hit squarely on the jaw with a force that made even Tom Reade's hardened knuckles ache. ...

— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... letters from the left side of his desk to the right, staring at them thoughtfully; rearranged his pencils in a pile before his ink-well; glanced at the point of an indelible pencil with a manner of startled examination; tapped his desk-blotter with his knuckles; then raised his eyes. He studied Mr. Wrenn, smiled, put on the look he used when inviting him out for a drink. Mr. Guilfogle was essentially an honest fellow, harshened by The Job; a well-satisfied victim, with the imagination clean ...

— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis

... stock indeed. Five black pieces of muslin, each with two peep-holes, several sets of false whiskers, two pairs of brass knuckles, three metal rings from each of which dangled more than a dozen keys of varying sizes, a box of revolver cartridges, a formidable knife, some twine and a number of ...

— The Launch Boys' Adventures in Northern Waters • Edward S. Ellis

... month of the year. Herewith is illustrated a very simple method to determine the number of days in any month. Place the first finger of your right hand on the first knuckle of your left hand, calling that knuckle January; then drop your finger into the depression between the first and second knuckles, calling this February; then the second knuckle will be March, and so on, until you reach July on the knuckle of the little finger, then begin over again with August on the first knuckle and continue until December is reached. Each month as it falls upon a knuckle will have ...

— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics

... great blow with his thin fist, and shook the damaged knuckles in the air. "I just want to tell you, whatever I did feel, I don't feel MEAN any more; not to-day, I don't. There's a meaner man in this world than I ...

— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington

... the deaf, my ears; to the shyster lawyers, my tongue; to the cow-herds, my intestines; to the sausage makers, my thighs; to the ladies, my tenderloins; to the boys, my bladder; to the girls, my little pig's tail; to the dancers, my muscles; to the runners and hunters, my knuckles; to the hired man, my hoofs; and to the cook—though not to be named—I give and bequeath and transmit my belly and appendage which I have dragged with me from the rotten oak bottoms to the pig's sty, for him to tie around his neck and to hang ...

— Cooking and Dining in Imperial Rome • Apicius

... own knife, and showed it pointing towards Conroy in a damp, swarthy hand, whose knuckles bulged above the haft. His rough, spatulate thumb rasped along it, drawing from it the crepitation that proves an ...

— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon

... the skin-flap of her father's lodge. Two men sat with him, and the three looked at her with swift interest. But her face betokened nothing as she entered and took seat quietly, without speech. Tantlatch drummed with his knuckles on a spear-heft across his knees, and gazed idly along the path of a sun-ray which pierced a lacing-hole and flung a glittering track across the murky atmosphere of the lodge. To his right, at his shoulder, ...

— Children of the Frost • Jack London

... Will Jones's knuckles had won a degree of peace for him. He had lived a sort of armed truce, so to speak. Now he was subjected to petty persecutions by mean boys who took advantage of his new stand. He did not put on ...

— Stories Worth Rereading • Various

... shot into the air, with the vow, and his fist clenched until the knuckles stood out ridged against the bloodless ...

— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball

... interesting matters were, as far as we were concerned, swallowed up in one stupendous fact. One of the four survivors of the brutal and perhaps fatal scuffle was the immaculate Lieutenant Keith, his clothes torn to ribbons, his eyes blazing, blood on his knuckles. One other thing, however, pointed at him in a worse manner. A short sword, or very long knife, had been drawn out of his elegant walking-stick, and lay in front of him upon the stones. It did not, however, ...

— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton

... transaction within the verge of the Court. Walking, chaises, levees, and audiences fill the morning. At night the king plays at commerce and backgammon, and the queen at quadrille, where poor Lady Charlotte runs her usual nightly gauntlet, the queen pulling her hood, and the Princess Royal rapping her knuckles. The Duke of Grafton takes his nightly opiate of lottery, and sleeps as usual between the Princesses Amelia and Caroline. Lord Grantham strolls from one room to another (as Dryden says), like some discontented ghost that oft appears, and ...

— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray

... old Daniels appeared at the door, a heavy Colt in his hand. For a moment he stood dumbfounded, but then, with a cry, jerked up his gun—a quick movement, but a fraction of a second too slow, for the hand of Dan darted out and his knuckles struck the wrist of the old cattleman. The Colt rattled on the floor. He lunged after his weapon, but the voice of ...

— The Untamed • Max Brand

... room but came down again with considerable celerity, rubbing his knuckles, and breaking the highly charged silence of the office with a caustic comment upon the inconvenience of ...

— The Man from the Bitter Roots • Caroline Lockhart

... mistaken and much practised desire of striking when the iron was hot, Mrs. Agar, like many a wiser person, began, therefore, to bang about in all directions, hitting not only the iron but the anvil, her own knuckles and the susceptibilities of any one standing in the neighbourhood. She could not leave things to Mr. Glynde, but must needs see Dora herself. She had in her mind the nucleus of a simple if scurrilous scheme which will show ...

— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman

... with a lace cap on her head and a white silk shawl over her shoulders, was sitting upright in her low chair, knitting. She wore no glasses, and her old hands, meagre, almost transparent, with large knuckles, and skin that looked as if it had been polished, fumbled a little with her needles and the thick wool. Her eyesight was failing, though in the pride of her great age she would not acknowledge it; but her hearing was almost perfect. Aunt Laura, who was ...

— The Squire's Daughter - Being the First Book in the Chronicles of the Clintons • Archibald Marshall

... lost his patience. Seizing a rod he told Robert to hold out his hand, and gave him a caning. "There!" he exclaimed, "I hope that will make you do something." But the boy folded his arms and answered very quietly, "I came to school to have something beaten into my brains and not into my knuckles." It was very hard for the teacher to do much with such a lad, particularly as the boy was so often really very ...

— Historic Boyhoods • Rupert Sargent Holland

... the principal specialities being—(1.) early and free movement of the fingers; (2.) secure fixing of the wrist to procure consolidation. (1.) By passive motion of the joints of the knuckles and fingers, commenced on the second day, and continued daily after the operation; (2.) By a splint supporting the fore-arm and hand, the fingers being held in a semiflexed position by a large pad of cork fastened firmly on ...

— A Manual of the Operations of Surgery - For the Use of Senior Students, House Surgeons, and Junior Practitioners • Joseph Bell

... and then replaced the volume on its shelf. He gave the glass cylinder of his electrical machine a turn or two, and was for the moment gratified to elicit a faint spark, a feeble snap of blue fire, which clicked from the "receiver" to his knuckles. His eye dwelt fondly for a few seconds on the air-pump, but wandered from that to the telescope, and finally took cognizance of an apparatus for weighing heavy articles. This was provided with a small platform, upon which the recluse philosopher stepped, to determine ...

— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable

... cud gyard he had his gloved fist home on my cheek an' down I went full-sprawl. 'Will that content you?' sez he, blowin' on his knuckles for all the world like a Scots Greys orf'cer. 'Content!' sez I. 'For your own sake, man, take off your spurs, peel your jackut, an' onglove. 'Tis the beginnin' av the ...

— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... her mouth and bit down hard on her knuckles for a moment. She frowned intensely at nothing. Then she closed and locked the cabin door, went back up the passage and into the control room. She sat down before the communicator, glanced up once more at the plasmoid station ...

— Legacy • James H Schmitz

... Susan's voice was shaking now. Her hands were clenched so tightly on the fence pickets that the knuckles showed white with the strain. "Mis' McGuire, there's a chance, maybe, that that boy can see. There's somethin' they can do to his eyes, if he gets strong enough to have ...

— Dawn • Eleanor H. Porter

... beard, in form resembling a peg. The hands and feet, like the rest of the figure, have general forms only, without particular detail; the fingers and toes are flat, of equal thickness, little separated, and without distinction of the knuckles; yet, altogether, their simplicity of idea, breadths of parts, and occasional beauty of form, strike the skilful beholder, and have been highly praised by the best judges, ancient and modern. In their basso-relievos and paintings, ...

— How to See the British Museum in Four Visits • W. Blanchard Jerrold

... them, were sitting about when Billy, sniffing and rubbing his knuckles in his eyes to such an extent that of necessity notice must be taken, drew ...

— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock

... almost doubling up as he struck. He had been hit squarely on the jaw with a force that made even Tom Reade's hardened knuckles ache. ...

— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... from the pile, and someone, at the same time snatching another, gave me a cut across the knuckles which I hardly felt. I dashed out of the door into the clear sunlight. Someone was close behind, I knew not whom. Right in front, the doctor was pursuing his assailant down the hill, and just as my eyes fell upon him, beat down his guard and sent him sprawling on his back ...

— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... this species blessed with the loud quack of the female bird, sufficiently established the identity of the duck. Then muskrats, and the oyster-eating coon, came round, no doubt scenting my provisions. Brisk raps from my knuckles on the inside shell of the canoe astonished these animals and aroused their curiosity, for they ...

— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... master-lever, protected by its bell of glass. (At least it looked like glass, for it was crystal clear and reflected gleamingly the blue light from the nearby coils). He tapped it experimentally with his knuckles.... ...

— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst

... troubled thickness apparent in the voices of those who emerge from a deep grief. As he speaks, his large hands, roughened by trench toil and by riding, wander aimlessly until some emotion grips him when the knuckles harden and he clutches at his knees or at the edge of the table. And all the while he will be breathing hard like a man who has swum a distance. When he reads his poems he chants and one would think that he communed with himself save that, at the pauses, he shoots a powerful ...

— Counter-Attack and Other Poems • Siegfried Sassoon

... back and was staring out of the window. He might have been staring at a blank wall, for all he saw through the glass. He was as pale as though he had just received some great physical shock, and he had his hands doubled up into fists, so that his knuckles were white. His eyes were almost gray instead of hazel, and they ...

— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower

... regretfully, "and you used to be as hard as nails. When I got a good hit at you it made my knuckles tingle. But now you're getting all boggy everywhere. ...

— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand

... give him a thrashing for it. What was it? I want to know." He did not realize how pugnacious was his pose, but he was leaning toward her with his face quite close, and his eyes were blue points of intensity. His hands, doubled and pressing hard on the table, showed white at the knuckles. ...

— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... it from the hand, which was very tiny, and pink, with dimples where grown up folk have knuckles. She then pushed past the child, and went on to a door at the end of the passage, which she threw open, ...

— Rosemary in Search of a Father • C. N. Williamson

... the sign for bad is made, that for strong is used by the Comanches as follows: Place the clinched left fist horizontally in front of the breast, back forward, then pass the palmar side of the right fist downward in front of the knuckles of the left. ...

— Sign Language Among North American Indians Compared With That Among Other Peoples And Deaf-Mutes • Garrick Mallery

... immunity! That fine sand was on the next wolftrap and in an instant I was a prisoner. Although not wounded, for the traps have no teeth, and my thick trapping gloves deadened the snap, I was firmly caught across the hand above the knuckles. Not greatly alarmed at this, I tried to reach the trap-wrench with my right foot. Stretching out at full length, face downward, I worked myself toward it, making my imprisoned arm as long and straight as possible. I could not see and reach at the same time, but counted on my toe ...

— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton

... rapping of his knuckles on the table recalled her. She turned, slightly startled, and met his imperious eyes. ...

— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell

... observed that as he spoke his companion flushed. A wave of warm colour surged over her face and bare neck and receded again, leaving her very pale. Her hands closed over the book lying in her lap, as if glad to hold on to something, and their knuckles were white against ...

— Jan and Her Job • L. Allen Harker

... overturned by the energy of men attempting to get to the scene of action. The two combatants were quickly separated; sides were taken by the friends of each, excited explanations attempted and defied. Callum was examining the knuckles of his left hand, which were cut from the blow he had delivered. He maintained a gentlemanly calm. Hibbs, very much flustered and excited, insisted that he had been most unreasonably used. The idea of attacking him here. ...

— The Financier • Theodore Dreiser

... with the beating of its wings, So my soul... emptied of the known you... utterly... Is yet vibrant with the cadence of the song You might have been.... 'Twas a great night... With never a waste look over a shoulder Curved to the crook of the wind... And a great word we threw For memory to play knuckles with... A word the waters of the world have washed, Leaving it stark and without smell... A world that rattles well ...

— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... continually flew into my face and clung to my hair, and I have a great dislike of bats. At last, after some minutes of jerking and dangling, I found myself standing in a narrow passage by the side of the worthy Ali, covered with bats and perspiration, and with the skin rubbed off my knees and knuckles. Then another man came down, hand over hand like a sailor, and as the rest were told to stop above we were ready to go on. Ali went first with his candle—of course we each had a candle—leading the way down a long passage about five feet high. At length the passage widened out, ...

— Cleopatra • H. Rider Haggard

... metal sheathe of the monster out there, the shapeless crouching and malevolent winking lights, and he felt himself going to pieces inside with a sudden shaking crumble; he hated himself for it but he couldn't stop it; his hands clenched until the knuckles showed white. ...

— We're Friends, Now • Henry Hasse

... two bruisers, tense and glaring, the cool self-possession he had acquired in his training as a boxer overcame his mental confusion. With one quick glance he saw the cold hate gleaming in "Slim's" eyes as he stood with his back flat against the door and noticed that one of the "bashers" wore brass knuckles on his right fist, while the other had pulled a black-jack from ...

— Spring Street - A Story of Los Angeles • James H. Richardson

... pay the money they lost, lest otherwise, forsooth, they be thought no men of their words. Again what is it, I pray, to see old fellows and half blind to play with spectacles? Nay, and when a justly deserved gout has knotted their knuckles, to hire a caster, or one that may put the dice in the box for them? A pleasant thing, I must confess, did it not for the most part end in quarrels, and therefore belongs rather to ...

— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus

... knuckles of the Jew struck under the ear of the man from 'Rapahoe. It was a beautiful blow, and Buckhorn was knocked over in a twinkling, striking heavily on his shoulder in the dust of ...

— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish

... "bum," well up to trap, creeps like a rascal from the sheriff's-office, and with his capias armed, ere you are half-dressed, gives you the chase, and, as you "leg" away for the bare life, his knuckles dig into the seat of your unmentionables, gripping you like a tiger—that indeed is une autre chose, ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various

... brought the Queen thither 'to break his gall in sunder with Tantalus' torment.' Another time he protested that he must disguise himself as a boatman, and just catch a sight of the Queen, or else his heart would break. He drew his dagger on his keeper, Sir George Carew, and broke the knuckles of Sir Arthur Gorges, because he said they were restraining him from the sight of his Mistress. He proposed to Lord Howard of Effingham at the close of a business letter, that he should be thrown to feed the lions, 'to ...

— Raleigh • Edmund Gosse

... pudding-headed Teapots, sir. Didn't hurt my knuckles, because his head was soft. Just like punching a bladder o' lard, but the weight on him wrenched ...

— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn

... her young beauty and contrasted it with her appearance when he saw her in the "loanie" with her child. In a few years, he thought, she would be like any village woman, worn out, misshapen, tired, with gnarled knuckles and thickened hands. Already she had begun to ...

— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine

... was examining the box. It was at least well made. It weighed certainly under two ounces. I struck it with my knuckles; it sounded hollow. There was no hinge; nothing of any kind to show that it ever had been opened, or, for the matter of that, that it ever could be opened. The more I examined the thing, the more it whetted my curiosity. That it could be opened, and in some ingenious manner, ...

— The Lock And Key Library - Classic Mystery And Detective Stories, Modern English • Various

... thus far—flew around the tent and settled on the snow near by. In the calm, the heat was excessive and great thirst attacked us all the afternoon, which I attempted to assuage at every halt by holding snow in my hands and licking the drops of water off my knuckles——a cold and unsatisfactory expedient. We travelled without burberrys—at that time quite a novel sensation—wearing only fleece suits and light woollen undergarments. Correll pulled for the greater part of the afternoon in ...

— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson

... curls. His face was as tenderly pretty as his sister's, whom he strongly resembled, although he was somewhat fairer of complexion. But it was full of the utmost bravado of rage and defiance, and his two small hands were clinched, until the knuckles whitened, in the faces of the little crowd who confronted him. The color had not left his face, for his cheeks burned like roses, but his pretty mouth was hard set and his black eyes blazed. The boys danced ...

— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... elegance, appeared so frequently that the razor-like tips began to look somewhat scarred and battered, as if they might perhaps retire from active service in ten years' time, or so. But the tan shoes were not Jerry's only concession to the social amenities. An unwonted attention was given to grimy knuckles and finger-nails. More than once he made his appearance with his usually frowsy hair as sleek as the coat of a water rat, and dripping, in further likeness to the animal mentioned. Peggy, whose original ...

— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith

... was flat and wide and snubby. Tuff's cheeks were big and bony. Tuff's cigar was long and black. Tuff's lips were thick and extensive. Tuff's neck was huge and short. Tuff's coat was a heavy blue one that did for an overcoat, too. Tuff wore diamonds as big as his knuckles. Tuff's scarf was red. Tuff's waistcoat was yellow, and every color known to the spectroscope was employed to make up Tuff's ...

— Tin-Types Taken in the Streets of New York • Lemuel Ely Quigg

... His attack did not seem quite spontaneous. In spite of the wildness of his manner and the violence of his speech, he appeared to be acting a part which he had rehearsed beforehand. I was only angry, and stepping forward, I dealt him a very sharp rap with my knuckles on his chest. "Moderate your language, old man," I said; "remember that ...

— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson

... plain yellow robe, of a hue almost identical with that of his smooth, hairless countenance. His hands were large, long and bony, and he held them knuckles upward, and rested his pointed chin upon their thinness. He had a great, high brow, crowned with ...

— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... in the passage; he had just come out of the kitchen, and the fact that he had been washing his hands in the sink was made evident by his rolled-back shirt-sleeves, and by the shiny redness of the knuckles he was running through his stiff ...

— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton

... line of poetry that ever was written. A good recipe for a pudding is worth all that your Shenstones and the whole set of them ever wrote; and there's more good sense and useful information in this book"—rapping his knuckles against a volume he held in his hand—"than in all your poets, ancient ...

— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier

... in such a fury in my dream, fancying the Dutchmen had boarded us, and I was knocking one of their seamen down, that I struck my doubled fist against the side of the cabin I lay in with such a force as wounded my hand grievously, broke my knuckles, and cut and bruised the flesh, so that it awaked me out of my sleep. Another apprehension I had was, the cruel usage we might meet with from them if we fell into their hands; then the story of Amboyna came into my head, and how the Dutch might perhaps torture us, as they did our countrymen ...

— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe

... muscle and bone and fire and flax went to the making of that stunted wight," mused Zelie, setting her knuckles in her hips. "What a pity that she escapes powder and ball, when poor Pierre Doucett is shot down!—a man with wife and child, and ...

— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood

... guess everybody is," agreed Fanny with that joyous, bubbling, luxurious note that Grandma knew so well. "I saw Mary Hagley polishing her very knuckles off on that second-hand stove Mert bought from that watery-eyed man from Spring Road who drives through here with the lame buckskin horse and pieced-out harness. Lutie Barlow's got her fall tinting and painting all done. She's ...

— Green Valley • Katharine Reynolds

... sword of the Lord and of Gideon," Gib made a great lunge at me with his fist. But the sword of Gideon missed its aim, and skinned its knuckles on the stone wall. I saw now to my great comfort that the man was beside himself with fury, and was swinging his arms wildly like a flail. Three or four times I avoided his rushes, noting with satisfaction that one of the countrymen had got hold of the shrieking ...

— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... battle raged, and bruised knuckles, splinters in fingers, torn clothes, and rubbed shoes, were the only wounds received, while a great deal of fun was had out of the maltreated logs, and a lasting peace secured between ...

— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott

... Captain closely. Anderson turned abruptly away from them all and stood, feet apart, head down, hands behind his back, and stared out of the forward viewports. In the tense silence they could hear his knuckles crack. At length he said quietly, "That isn't what we came here ...

— Breaking Point • James E. Gunn

... nothing more. The artist must be a great student of human nature. I went, every day, to study these domestic groups; at first they did not attract the crowd; but later it was next to impossible to get at them. Every one was taken from life, and you see the grime on their knuckles. Almost every face expressed strong and agreeable character. There were very few good and a great many had pictures. Of statuary "The Forced Prayer" was very popular; the child has his hands folded, but is in anything but a saintly ...

— The Life and Letters of Elizabeth Prentiss • George L. Prentiss

... greeted the play and stirred the sleigh-bells on the startled horses beyond the door. The programme over, somebody called for Squire Town, a local pettifogger, who flung his soul and body into every cause. He often sored his knuckles on the court table and racked his frame with the violence of his rhetoric. He had a stock of impassioned remarks ready for ...

— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller

... for a glimpse of the beloved branches. The bats might take to caves and the vampires to outhouses and dark crevices in the rocks, but most of the monkeys and apes would soon become extinct, while a chimpanzee or orang-utan would become a cripple, swinging ever painfully along between the knuckles of crutch-like forearms, searching, searching forever for the trees which gave him his form and structure, and without which his life and that of his race must ...

— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe

... freestone of a half-buried tomb with a nail till told to stop. Sir Toady Lion, having a "pinch-bug" coralled in his palms, sat regarding it cautiously between his thumbs. Only Maid Margaret, her dimpled chin on her knuckles, sat looking upward in rapt attention. For her there was no joy like that of a story. Only, she was too young to mind letting the tale-teller know it. That ...

— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett

... His knuckles smote the bear fairly on the point of its nose, and the impact sounded loud and clear in the tense stillness of ...

— The Pony Rider Boys in the Rockies • Frank Gee Patchin

... when Vanderkemp closed his eyes on this world, a lad was working as an apprentice to a Scotch gardener, rising in the dense darkness of the cold winter's mornings at four o'clock, and warming his knuckles by knocking them against the handle of his spade. He was passing through a hard training, but this lad was being prepared to take up the work which Vanderkemp had so well begun, though in a somewhat different sphere, and to repair the loss which had been sustained ...

— Robert Moffat - The Missionary Hero of Kuruman • David J. Deane

... perhaps I'd better climb down. I did so, very slowly and stiffly, making the sad mistake of jumping down from the height of the step. How that did injure my feelings! The only catastrophe I can remember comparable to it was when a teacher rapped my knuckles with a ruler after I had been making snowballs bare handed. My benumbed faculties next swung around to the proposition of proceeding up an interminable gravel walk—(it is twenty-five feet long!) to a forbidding flight ...

— The Killer • Stewart Edward White

... warehouse, O' Man. All among the table-cloths and blankets. Carlyle. He's reading aloud. Doing the High Froth. Spuming! Windmilling! Waw, waw! It's a sight worth seeing. He'll bark his blessed knuckles one of these days ...

— The History of Mr. Polly • H. G. Wells

... alive to the very serious position in which he was placed;" i.e., He occasionally wiped his mouth on his knuckles. ...

— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, April 5, 1890 • Various

... violently that, for a few seconds, he was unable to move. Becoming calmer, he tried the door, and finding it locked, rapped with his knuckles against it. The grocer's wife demanded who was there. But Wyvil, instead of returning an answer, repeated his application. The same demand followed, and in a louder key. Still no answer. A third summons, however, ...

— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Those who have not grasped a live salmon in their arms have no conception of the strength of a fish; and perhaps it may be said with equal truth that those who have never wielded a forehammer have but a faint conception of the strength of a blacksmith's knuckles. Bryan had thrown his whole weight on the fish, and grasped it, as with a vice, in both hands; but at every struggle of its powerful frame he felt how uncertain was the hold he had of its slippery body. Once it almost escaped, and dashed the spray over its adversary's ...

— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... to ask you," he began, and then stopped at a punch in the side from Roy's knuckles, and began again: "Me and Roy would like—if it wouldn't be too much trouble, and you'd just as soon as not—to have you tell us a horse story next time." Then in a loud whisper aside to Roy: "You did ask me! ...

— Miss Elliot's Girls • Mrs Mary Spring Corning

... night is no easy task at best; but if your start is from a boat that is being tossed up and down on a rolling sea, if your precipice has a way of varying from a strict perpendicular to an overhanging cliff, and then in an instant thrusting out its base so that the climber's knees and knuckles come with a sharp bang against it, while the next moment he is dropped to his shoulders in icy sea-water, the difficulties of the task are naturally increased. The instant the pilot puts his feet on the ladder he must run up it for dear life if he ...

— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot

... rest, too, the Prince suffered a little from his eyes, an irritation caused by grains of steel that had blown into them while viewing the works at "Soo." His right hand was also painful from the heartiness of Toronto, and the knuckles swollen. To set these matters right, the doctor went up from the train, and by the Indian canoe that carried the mail and the daily news ...

— Westward with the Prince of Wales • W. Douglas Newton

... instant she stopped, appalled. The door did not open, the steps did not cross her threshold. Instead, knuckles rapped feebly on ...

— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall

... for a long time on the panels of the front door—she could not reach the knocker—she walked round to the back of the house, and knocked there. But still there was no answer. Then she tried the side door. By this time her knuckles were sore, and, as she found she could turn the handle, she opened the door, and walked in. A long passage led to the hall, where she stopped, and looked round. There were doors on every side, but they were all shut. The first door she opened showed another passage, ...

— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick

... dozen men fell over the ropes and pulled as many more down with them, and those that were down fought on the ground, while the others walked on them and fought over their heads. Carew, who was quite in his element, hit every head he saw, and knocked his knuckles to pieces on Black Andy Kelly's teeth. The fight he put up, and the terrific force of his hitting, are traditions among the mountain men to this day. Charlie Gordon was simply mad with the lust of fighting, and was locked in a death-grip with Red Mick; they swayed and struggled on the ground, while ...

— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson

... Jake's relief, there came a sudden distraction. Drama knocked at the door with imperious knuckles, and forced Comedy to the wings, and Drama peeped with a smiling but set ...

— Options • O. Henry

... installed his secretary and overwhelmed him with work. The young man spent his nights in writing, and, like all great workers, he contracted a bad habit, a trick—he took to chewing paper. The late M. de Malesherbes use to rap people over the knuckles; and he did this once, by the by, to somebody or other whose suit depended upon him. The handsome young secretary began by chewing blank paper, found it insipid for a while, and acquired a taste for manuscript as having more flavor. People did ...

— Eve and David • Honore de Balzac

... Think of poor Northcliffe. He thinks he's saved the nation from its miserable government, and the government now openly abuses him in the House of Commons. Northcliffe puts on his brass knuckles and turns the Times building upside down and sets all the Daily Mail machine guns going, and has to go to bed to rest his nerves, while the row spreads and deepens. The Government keeps hell in the prayer-book because without ...

— The Life and Letters of Walter H. Page, Volume II • Burton J. Hendrick

... not remember that he must avoid the effort to use the right hand which he had always used. Now he reached down and picked up the envelope—still with the lettered surface turned up to sight—and rapping still swollen knuckles on the desk top, he let the envelope fall just as he ...

— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck

... walks from side to side without a moment's rest. Every now and then he stretches his arm out of the window, apparently throwing something away. He is certainly ill. His body and legs are badly swollen, and there are great lumps in the places where his joints and knuckles ought to be. Well then, if he is ill, why does he not lie still in bed and rest and get well? For even in this wretched cave-room there is something that looks like a bed in one corner. It has no white sheets or soft blankets, but still it has four legs and a sort of coverlet, and ...

— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin

... he clenched his teeth, and shook his fist towards the sea, saying at the same time that he was sorry he had not broken Tararo's head, and he only hoped that one day he should be able to plant his knuckles on the bridge of that chief's nose! After they had 'pumped me dry,' as Peterkin said, I begged to be informed of what had happened to them during my long absence, and particularly as to how they got out ...

— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne

... country, too," he interposed, "and no one ever said that I am sentimental." He tapped his head. "I'm as hard as nails up here." Quill cracked his knuckles in a disagreeable habit he has, and continued: "I have a shack on the West Shore, and I go there week-ends. My work is so confining that if I didn't get to the country once in a while, I would play out in a jiffy. I'm a nervous frazzle—a nervous frazzle—by Saturday noon. But I lie on the ...

— Chimney-Pot Papers • Charles S. Brooks

... stalwart frame, now bowed and broken, he walked habitually with the knuckles of one hand in the small of his back, as if he feared that his frail framework might give way at that point; silvery hair straggling about his temples, faded blue eyes, kindly and clouded under white shocks of eyebrow—such was the Reverend Fergus Symington, now for some years minister-emeritus. ...

— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett

... distinguished family. The scent of old lavender and spiced rose leaves, and a stick or two of white orris root, haunt this relic: my lady's laces must be kept fresh, and so must my lady's long white mitts—they reach from her dainty knuckles quite to her elbow. And so must her cobwebbed silk stockings and the filmy kerchief she folds across ...

— The Little Gray Lady - 1909 • F. Hopkinson Smith

... promise to Bill, that he would not fight a customer. Casey spat disgustedly. "Hell! He wasn't no customer! Didn't he ship his rubber in by express, ruther'n to buy off me?" He grinned retrospectively and looked at his knuckles, one of which showed a patch of new ...

— Casey Ryan • B. M. Bower

... half an hour he climbed out of the slip again, dripping sweat, minus the skin of all his knuckles, and blistered as to palms and knees, but with a cheerful grin that spoke of a satisfied soul. He confidently depended upon the darkness, now absolute, and native unthoroughness, for his work to remain undetected until the sea came up ...

— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... knock at the door, and it appeared to him that his knuckles had hardly fallen upon the panel before the valve was flung suddenly open. An indescribable and heavy odor fell upon him and for the moment overpowered his senses, and he found himself standing face to face with a figure prodigiously and ...

— Stolen Treasure • Howard Pyle

... Stixon replied; "we all works our way up regular, the same as my lad is beginning for to do. New-fangled ways is not accepted here. We puts the reforming spirits scrubbing of the steps till their knuckles is cracked and their knees like a bean. The old lord was the man for discipline—your grandfather, if you please, miss. He catched me when I were about ...

— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore

... much too tight for him; and yet, when he had taken up the ring (as it turned out to be), and was carrying it to his mistress, she thought he looked like a little cupid. He gave the ring to her; it was a trumpery little thing enough, but too small for any of her old knuckles, so she put it into ...

— The Christmas Books • William Makepeace Thackeray

... that gallant chieftain was somewhat incoherent, and amid protestations of admiration and eternal friendship, much to our astonishment, wept profusely. Still later, he got very maudlin indeed, and was heard to murmur, looking at his scarred knuckles, that "he was afraid he must have hurt some one that night," with an accent of heartfelt sorrow and contrition which ...

— Guy Livingstone; - or, 'Thorough' • George A. Lawrence

... It was really too much of a good thing. In this state of intense antagonism he was startled to observe tips of fingers fumbling with the dark stuff. Then they grasped the edge of the further curtain and hung on there, just fingers and knuckles and nothing else. It made an abominable sight. He was looking at it with unaccountable repulsion when a hand came into view; a short, puffy, old, freckled hand projecting into the lamplight, followed by a white ...

— Chance • Joseph Conrad

... to be some street quarrel, I endeavoured to separate the parties by remonstrance. I rushed between them, holding out my cane; but a sharp cut across the knuckles, which I had received from one of the small men, together with his evident intention to follow it up, robbed me of all zest for pacific meditation; and, keeping my eye upon the one who had cut me, I drew a pistol (I could not otherwise defend myself), and fired. The man fell dead in his tracks, ...

— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid

... gentleman had read them down town, for he shoved them aside. Then he dropped an elbow on the table, rested his chin against his knuckles, and gazed fiercely at the ...

— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers

... beside one of these windows sat Mrs. Meyerburg with her hands idle and laid out along the chair sides. They were ringless hands and full of years, with a great network of veins across their backs and the aging fingers large at the knuckles. But where the hands betrayed the eyes belied. Deep in Mrs. Meyerburg's soft and scarcely flabby face her gaze was straight ...

— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst

... recover she had run into the house, through the hall, up the stairs into her bedroom. Down she sat on the side of the bed. "How vile, odious, abominable, vulgar," muttered Isabel. She pressed her eyes with her knuckles and rocked to and fro. And again she saw them, but not four, more like forty, laughing, sneering, jeering, stretching out their hands while she read them William's letter. Oh, what a loathsome thing to ...

— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield

... that already swollen lip, but the lower knuckles landed against the tip of Dodge's jaw with a force which, while not complete, nevertheless sent Bert to the floor, where he ...

— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock

... board the Triad with the hospitable Vice-Admiral. We were all very cheery at the happy turn of our fortunes; outwardly, that is to say, for there was a skeleton at the feast who kept tap, tap, tapping on the mahogany with his bony knuckles; tap, tap, tap; the gunfire at Helles was insistent, warning us that the Turks had not yet "taken their licking." But when I get back, although there is nothing in from Hunter-Weston there is an officer from Anzac who has just ...

— Gallipoli Diary, Volume I • Ian Hamilton

... the free range was his as well as another's. On that long night march, when the men were behind the sheep, driving them, contrary to the usual custom, he told Sims of his interview with Beef Bissell, and the herder cracked his knuckles with rage at the position ...

— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan

... back, horror in his eyes. His hands slid slowly along the carved arms of his chair, and clenched the ends so tightly that his knuckles looked like ...

— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini

... herself on the bed, face downwards and buried in a pillow. She was weeping and uttering incoherent cries. When her mother came in, alarmed, the old lady was indignantly ordered out again while the girl's feet beat against the mattress hurriedly, and she bit the knuckles of her hands. ...

— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... and he put one foot on the keg. He made no other move; but if ever a man's back was eloquent of determination, his was. From where I lay I could see the fingers of his left hand shut tight over his thumb, pressing till the knuckles were white and the cords in the back of his hand stood out in little ridges. I'd seen that before, and I recalled with a start when and where I'd heard that soft, drawly voice. I knew I wasn't ...

— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair

... "it was the Dominican put him out of joint. It certainly did give him a rap over the knuckles." ...

— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed

... of all evil. One should never trust them. They have no honour. No honour!" he repeated, striking his breast with his closed fist on which the knuckles stood out very white. "I left my village many years ago and of course I am perfectly satisfied with my position and I don't know why I should trouble my head about this loyal lady. I suppose that's the way women get on ...

— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad

... to stand well with my neighbours and do my duty towards them. What disheartens me is, they won't see it." He pushed the wine aside, and for a while, leaning his elbows on the table and resting his chin on his knuckles, stared gloomily before him. Then, with sudden boyish indignation, he burst out: "It's an infernal shame; that's it—an infernal shame! I haven't been home here a twelvemonth, and the people avoid me like a plague. What have I done? My father wasn't popular—in fact, they hated ...

— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch

... beginning to wonder whether he is really in love with Helene. If he isn't he ought to have his knuckles rapped. Of course, Helene will be sensible about it. But, Louis, when a really nice man behaves as though he were in love with a woman, no matter how gaily she laughs over it, it is bound to mean something to her. And men ...

— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... before her, eager to show the generous lady how useful he could be. In less than half an hour, Iris and her maid were at the door of the farm-house. No such civilised inventions appeared as a knocker or a bell. The boy used his knuckles instead—and ran away when he heard the lock of the door turned on the inner side. He was afraid to be seen speaking to any living creature who inhabited the ...

— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins

... each other steadily for perhaps a minute. Then Oxenford rapped his antagonist smartly across the knuckles and sprang back out of reach. The colossus, with a growl, swung his mace to right and left, striking at random, for Oxenford had cunningly contrived to turn Dom Gillian so that the light was at his back. Quinton Edge ...

— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen

... round Sapt's waist and supported him out of the cellar, drawing the battered door close after me. For ten minutes or more we sat silent in the dining-room. Then old Sapt rubbed his knuckles into his eyes, gave one great gasp, and was himself again. As the clock on the mantelpiece struck one he stamped his ...

— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope

... with little olive trees and sometimes have white hollows, rayed and criss-crossed, in their flanks), as they drove up hill and down he scowled in the corner of the carriage, with his paw so tightly closed that the skin was stretched between the knuckles and the little hairs stood upright. Sandra rode opposite, dominant, like a Victory prepared to fling ...

— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf

... gentlemen the doctor sat frozen with terror in his high-backed seat, clutching the arms of it so that his knuckles showed white as marble. In like case were the two attendant servants, who hung motionless by the buffet. But Sforza-Fogliani, a man of some spirit for all his effeminate appearance, leapt to his feet and set a hand ...

— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini

... the present, and forecast the future. Truly, if hell ever does begin to men on earth, it began that day to the pirate, as he sat in the twilight on the gnarled root, with one of his feet dangling in the slimy water, his hands clasped so tight that the knuckles stood out white, and his eyes gazing upwards with an expression that seemed the ...

— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne

... when we were first initiated in the mysteries of the alphabet. We almost fancy we see the pin's point following the letter, to impress its form more strongly on our bewildered imagination; and wince involuntarily, as we remember the hard knuckles with which the reverend old lady who instilled into our mind the first principles of education for ninepence per week, or ten and sixpence per quarter, was wont to poke our juvenile head occasionally, by way of adjusting the confusion of ideas in which we were ...

— Sketches by Boz - illustrative of everyday life and every-day people • Charles Dickens

... without any little wandering hairs, protruded a little over the dress. To her sloping shoulders were attached long arms, large or slender where they so should be. What shall I say of her white hands, with their long fingers, and knuckles without knots, delicately ending in rosy nails attached to the flesh by a clear and single line? I come to her bosom with its firm breasts, but short and high pointed, revealing the valley of love between them, to ...

— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... substance had been in him at his birth trustworthy rose up now to meet the voice of God that called to him aloud. His lank jaws grew red, his eyes a deeper blue, a look in them which his mother may have seen the like of years and years ago; he beat with his knuckles ...

— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various

... she went to the Mahlmanns', where she gave the twins their music lesson. Very often the finger exercises, to which she had to listen there, were positively painful to her, and she would rap the children on the knuckles when they struck a false note. On the present occasion, however, she was not in the least strict. When Frau Mahlmann, fat and friendly as ever, came into the room and inquired whether Bertha was satisfied, ...

— Bertha Garlan • Arthur Schnitzler

... quiet civil appearance of the chiefs reassured me, all the more when their spokesman began and made a long speech in a low tone of voice, sometimes waving his hand towards Case, sometimes toward me, and sometimes knocking with his knuckles on the mat. One thing was clear: there was no sign of anger ...

— Island Nights' Entertainments • Robert Louis Stevenson

... not a trace of embarrassment or of suspicion. The little dynamo with the prodigious head and the baby mouth and the intense, deepset, restless eyes stood by his chair, and with knuckles on the table much of the time, talked down into the flowers directly in front of him. He spoke sometimes in a husky, low voice, now and again in a smothered shriek, again in a tragic whisper. He was in a small gathering and he seemed to know that though the dingy, mysterious room was somewhat ...

— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... that moment somebody took a swing at Joe and grazed his cheek. It was a good thing that was all he did; he was wearing brass knuckles. Joe went down a couple of feet, bending at the knees, and caught this fellow around the hips with both hands, straightening and lifting him over his head. Then he threw him over the heads of the people in front of him. There were yells where the ...

— Four-Day Planet • Henry Beam Piper

... pronounced, Swinton's expression underwent various changes, and his face became visibly paler under the steady gaze of Grummidge. At the last word he grasped his knife and drew it, but his foe was prepared. Like a flash of light he planted his hard knuckles between Swinton's eyes, and followed up the blow with another on the chest, which felled him ...

— The Crew of the Water Wagtail • R.M. Ballantyne

... of harm's way. Yet here was the girl, hiding something beneath her long blue coat, and acting as if she had great ado to keep it there. It must have been a heavy, slippery something, because all the while she talked she kept hitching it up and clenching it till her knuckles ...

— The Brass Bound Box • Evelyn Raymond

... his superior, sternly. "Don't you see I'm quiet?" and he twisted his knuckles viciously into Leander's throat. "If you call out you're ...

— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey

... his lips, for the brown thing behind the chair had slipped upward with the silent undulation of a panther, and a deadly roomal (towel) had flashed over the Chief's head and was now a strangling knot about his tawny throat; the hard knuckles of Hunsa were kneading his spine at the back of the skull with a half twist of the cloth. He was pinioned to the back of the chair; he was in a vise, the jaws of which closed his throat. Just a stifled ...

— Caste • W. A. Fraser

... his side, Damar Greefe, clenching his teeth and clutching at the chair-arms so that his knuckles gleamed in the lamp-light like white marbles, turned his glance upon ...

— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer

... dexterity, though they are not easy to manage. The handles overlap by about six inches—in order to gain leverage, as the curagh is narrow—and at first it was almost impossible to avoid striking the upper oar against one's knuckles. The oars are rough and square, except at the ends, so one cannot do so with impunity. Again, a curagh with two light people in it floats on the water like a nut-shell, and the slightest inequality in the stroke throws the prow round at least a right angle from its course. ...

— The Aran Islands • John M. Synge

... heerd th' like in his born days. He says she fetched th' pianny two or three wallops that made Cassidy jump out iv his chair, an' Cassidy has charge iv th' steam whistle at th' quarry at that. She wint at it as though she had a gredge at it. First 'twas wan hand an' thin th' other, thin both hands, knuckles down; an' it looked, says Slavin, as if she was goin' to leap into th' middle iv it with both feet, whin Donahue jumps up. 'Hol' on!' he says. 'That's not a rented pianny, ye daft girl,' he says. 'Why, pap-pah,' says Molly, 'what d'ye mean?' she says. 'That's Wagner,' ...

— Mr. Dooley: In the Hearts of His Countrymen • Finley Peter Dunne

... would not have sufficed to serve the customers who struggled with one another for provisions. At the baker's they formed a string as in times of dearth. The wine shop keepers got rid of the produce of three vintages, and a clever statistician would have found it difficult to reckon up the number of knuckles of ham and of sausages which were sold at the famous shop of Borel, in the Rue Dauphine. In this one evening Daddy Cretaine, nicknamed Petit-Pain, exhausted eighteen editions of his cakes. All night long sounds of rejoicing broke out from the lodging houses, the windows of which ...

— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger

... time I had zigzagged it into the back chamber, Halicarnassus loomed up the back stairs. I stood hot and panting, with the inside of my fingers tortured into burning leather, the skin rasped off three knuckles, and a bruise on the back of my right hand, where the trunk had crushed it against a sharp edge ...

— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various

... the table and sat down behind the smoky lamp. There was a red spot on his forehead from a chance blow, and the knuckles of both big hands were raw. He breathed heavily for a full minute, and ...

— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts

... sounded like the tiny knuckles of a fairy's hand, knocking lightly and playfully on ...

— Myths That Every Child Should Know - A Selection Of The Classic Myths Of All Times For Young People • Various

... be felt as two. At each successive putting down of the instrument I would bring the points a little nearer together and a little lower down on the hand. By the time a dozen or more stimulations had been given I would be working down near the knuckles, and the points would be right together. From that on I would use only one point. It might be necessary to repeat this a few times before the illusion would persist. A great deal seems to depend on the skill of the operator. It would be noticed that the first impression was ...

— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various

... at Madame Beavor, said, "And yet, madame, your charming gaiety consoles me amidst all my suffering;" upon which Madame Beavor called him "flatterer," and rapped his knuckles with her fan; the latter proceeding the brave Pole did not seem to like, for he immediately buried his ...

— Night and Morning, Volume 3 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... the Secretary, holding the hand of Dona Isabel in her own, as if to assure her that she was guiltless of any design against her former admirer. This was quite unnecessary, as the gentle Isabel, after bidding Brace, with a rap on the knuckles, to "go and play," contented herself with curling up like a kitten beside Miss Keene, and left that gentleman to wander ...

— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte

... pretty!' said Sam, when the red-nosed man having finished, pulled his worn gloves on, thereby thrusting his fingers through the broken tops till the knuckles were disclosed ...

— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... countless ages ago. I stood mute before this apparition of remote antiquity. My uncle, usually so garrulous, was struck dumb likewise. We raised the body. We stood it up against a rock. It seemed to stare at us out of its empty orbits. We sounded with our knuckles his ...

— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... suddenly a footman in livery came running out of the wood—(she considered him to be a footman because he was in livery: otherwise, judging by his face only, she would have called him a fish)—and rapped loudly at the door with his knuckles. It was opened by another footman in livery, with a round face, and large eyes like a frog; and both footmen, Alice noticed, had powdered hair that curled all over their heads. She felt very curious to know what it was all about, and crept a little way ...

— Junior Classics, V6 • Various

... clenched his right fist and examined his knuckles, his unconscious action causing ...

— The Albert Gate Mystery - Being Further Adventures of Reginald Brett, Barrister Detective • Louis Tracy

... with an intention the straighter that her glove had by this time somehow come off. Bending over it without hinderance, he returned as firmly and fully as the application of all his recovered wholeness of feeling, under his moustache, might express, the consecration the bareness of his own knuckles had received; only after which it was that, still thus drawing out his grasp of her, and having let down their front glass by his free hand, he signified to the footman his view ...

— The Finer Grain • Henry James

... green balls with his knuckles, and feeling of the stems, and when he had tested each in turn, he answered, "Yis, I'll sell thim for you, but ye'd better wait a week or two. They ...

— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown

... weight. The blade sank into the man's body—through his body into the earth; Captain Madwell came near falling forward upon his work. The dying man drew up his knees and at the same time threw his right arm across his breast and grasped the steel so tightly that the knuckles of the hand visibly whitened. By a violent but vain effort to withdraw the blade the wound was enlarged; a rill of blood escaped, running sinuously down into the deranged clothing. At that moment three men stepped silently forward ...

— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce

... Littleton translates "Talus," a hucklebone, a bone to play with like a dye, a play called cockal. (So also in Rider.) Hucklebones and knucklebones are syn.: but the latter is modern and liable to give a false idea, besides being tautological. It has nothing to do with the knuckles and derives from the German "Knochel" (dialectically Knochelein) ...

— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 9 • Richard F. Burton

... later I learned that the late foreman had left town nursing a black eye and a cut on one cheek such as might have been made by a set of red knuckles backed by an arm the size of a ...

— One Way Out - A Middle-class New-Englander Emigrates to America • William Carleton

... refuge wherein they might take their last stand against the encroaching multitudes of men that had steadily spread themselves over the surface of the earth, wresting the hunting grounds from the lower orders, from the moment that the first ape shed his hair and ceased to walk upon his knuckles. Even the species with which Tarzan was familiar showed here either the results of a divergent line of evolution or an unaltered form that had been transmitted without variation ...

— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... called out. On more than one occasion, the sailors on one side to the number of two or three hundred, and the Kentucky and Tennessee boatmen of equal or superior numbers on the other, were drawn up in battle array, and commenced a desperate contest with hard knuckles, bludgeons, and missiles of every description, revolvers and bowie-knives had not at that time been introduced into such MELEES, when the military made their appearance, and the ...

— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... concealment of pain are two of the old noblesse oblige characteristics which are now little more than a tradition. Public opinion should be firmer on the matter. The man who must hop because his shin is hacked, or wring his hand because his knuckles are bruised should be made to feel that he is an object not of pity, ...

— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... that moment on a stool. I rapped his knuckles gently with the butt of the revolver to ...

— Oriental Encounters - Palestine and Syria, 1894-6 • Marmaduke Pickthall

... de Bechamel confided to me in her mad triumph and wild hoyden spirits—she was but a child, poor thing, poor thing, scarce fifteen;—but I love them young—a folly not unusual with the old!" (Here Mr. Pinto thrust his knuckles into his hollow eyes; and, I am sorry to say, so little regardful was he of personal cleanliness, that his tears made streaks of white over his guarled dark hands.) "Ah, at fifteen, poor child, thy fate was terrible! Go to! It is not good to love me, ...

— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.

... had done—though quite the puppy's fault, and not hers at all—came over her. She began to breathe quickly and then to make faces, and in a moment she was sobbing and sniffing, and rubbing her wet eyes with her knuckles, still dirty from her politeness in letting the puppy choose what game she and it ...

— Oswald Bastable and Others • Edith Nesbit

... said Crane, thoughtfully, "and neither can I, worse luck. We are not in his class there. And you must not fight with him, either"—noting that Seaton's powerful hands had doubled into fists, the knuckles showing white through the tanned skin—"though that would be a fight worth watching and I would like to see you give him the beating of his life. A little thing like a beating is not a fraction of what he deserves ...

— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby

... the door, as fast as knuckles could go. And then, as if the comer could not wait, the door was opened, and Mary Hodgson stood there ...

— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell