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Clamber   Listen
noun
Clamber  n.  The act of clambering.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Clamber" Quotes from Famous Books



... mechanical contrivance peculiar to the Pequod, and a thing not to be rigged and shipped in any other vessel at a moment's warning. Now, it is no very easy matter for anybody —except those who are almost hourly used to it, like whalemen —to clamber up a ship's side from a boat on the open sea; for the great swells now lift the boat high up towards .. the bulwarks, and then instantaneously drop it half way down to the kelson. so, deprived of one ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville

... Jean. Meanwhile the little loitering party came along the road, and seeing their mother engaged in conversation beside the pretty cottage door, they were eager to know who of all the old friends she was talking to. Willie was the first to clamber up the mossy bank and reach the cottage. The others were following, when he joined them with an expression of mingled interest and disappointment ...
— Geordie's Tryst - A Tale of Scottish Life • Mrs. Milne Rae

... which our party was hastening, just at that moment. As the cakes of ice were broken from the field, they were driven upward by the vast pressure from without, and the whole line of the shore seemed as if alive with creatures that were issuing from the ocean to clamber on the rocks. Roswell had often seen that very coast peopled with seals, as it now appeared to be in activity with fragments of ice, that were writhing, and turning, and rising, one upon another, as if ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper

... useless. As if by the anger of fate, not a single thick tree was near him—only one dry branch arose from the oak against which he had leaned; and Verkhoffsky threw himself on it as the only means of avoiding destruction. Hardly had he time to clamber an arschine and a half[6] from the ground, when the boar, enraged to fury, struck the branch with his tusks—it cracked from the force of the blow and the weight which was supported by it.... It was in vain that Verkhoffsky tried to climb higher—the bark ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various

... They are all thieves nowadays, seeking to eat, as you say in your dialect, with a strict simplicity which leaves nothing to the imagination. At all events this bridge was a fraud, and the peasants clamber down a steep footpath they have made through its ruins, ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford

... that have echoed Antony's speech. There they troop up the Sacred Way, the shock-headed, wool-draped, beak-nosed Romans; there they stand together in groups at the corner of Saturn's temple; there the half-naked plebeian children clamber upon the pedestals of the columns to see the sights, and double the men's deep tones with a treble of childish chatter; there the noble boy with his bordered toga, his keen young face, and longing ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 2 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford

... they were more than double that, Giuseppi; but we shall see better when we get down to the bottom. I daresay we shall find a place where we can clamber down somewhere." ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty

... their stomachs, the pair moved in closer. As they arrived, unseen, they were in time to see the late fighting men clamber into their automobiles. Hawkins could be heard giving directions for the further ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock

... begin to clamber over the crags, making my difficult way among the ruins of a rampart, shattered and broken by the assaults of a fierce enemy. The rocks rise in every variety of attitude; some of them have their feet in the foam, and are shagged half-way upward with sea-weed; ...
— Footprints on The Sea-Shore (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... one," said Jaska softly. "'Apparently,' indeed! You will note now that, though men of the Gens of Dalis swarm all about the aircars, and even clamber atop them, no more are dying in the grasp of those tentacles? Is Dalis arranging a treacherous truce with ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various

... havoc with my tailormade clothes, neither time nor the elements seemed to affect the personal appearance of my big companion; his buckskin suit was apparently as clean and fresh as it was on the day I first met him. There was no magic in this. Big Pete knew how to clamber all day through a windfall without leaving the greater part of his clothes on the branches, a feat few hunters and no tenderfoot have yet been ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard

... dinner, I found to my regret that we were to change drivers as well as horses, and that a very popular and well known individual was to be the new coachman. As our former driver very politely assisted me to clamber up on the box-seat, he recommended F—— to sit on the outside part of the seat, and to put me next the driver, "where," he added, "the lady won't be so likely to tumble out." As I had shown no disposition to fall ...
— Station Life in New Zealand • Lady Barker

... obtained from the tribe from which the Indian wife of the interpreter had been stolen. The passage through the mountains or over the Divide caused the greatest suffering of the expedition. The men had to cut their way in many places through the brush, clamber over jagged stones and climb such precipitous walls that several of their horses were crippled. Then snow began falling and the nights became very cold. Game seemed to have deserted the country, and the sufferers had to eat all their supply of flour and parched corn. ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis

... finished, he would sometimes take them for a ride in his shabby gondola on the Grand Canal, and on the way they would beg to stop for just a moment at the famous well with two porphyry lions. Andrea was tall enough to clamber by himself after the manner of young Venetians, and nothing would do but Paolo must lift Maria, so she, too, would proudly straddle one of the fierce figures. There they would sit while the old caretaker would count the pigeons bathing ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard

... is to feel the soft, springy earth under my feet once more, to follow grassy roads that lead to ferny brooks where I can bathe my fingers in a cataract of rippling notes, or to clamber over a stone wall into green fields that tumble and roll and climb ...
— Story of My Life • Helen Keller

... with the first of the daylight, but the timber grew denser and more choked with underbrush as they proceeded and for a day or two they wearily struggled through it and the clogging masses of tangled, withered fern. Besides this, they were forced to clamber over mazes of fallen trunks, when the ragged ends of the snapped-off branches caught their loads. Their shoulders ached, their boots were ripped, their feet were badly galled; but they held on stubbornly, plunging deeper into the mountains all the while. It would probably overcome the average ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss

... citi. Citizen urbano. Citron citrono. City urbo. Civic urba. Civil civila. Civil (polite) gxentila. Civilian nemilita. Civility gxentileco. Civilization civilizacio. Civilize civilizi. Claim pretendo. Claimant pretendanto. Clamber suprenrampi. Clammy glua. Clamour bruego. Clan gento. Clandestine sekreta. Clank resoni. Clap manfrapi. Clarify klarigi. Clarion milita trumpeto. Clarionet klarneto. Clasp (buckle) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... would you be permitted to take on the journey more than 150 pounds. When the baggage had all been weighed and strapped on the coach, when the horses had been attached, and the waybill, containing the names of the passengers, made out, the passengers would clamber to their seats through the front of the stage and sit down with their ...
— A School History of the United States • John Bach McMaster

... and Branch. With them, as gallant if not as strong as his great brother, stood braced the eager Bark. They were ready, these young men, but, as it chanced, there could be, at the beginning of the strong clamber of the foe, only one man to first meet them. All were behind this man at the front, for the flat rock came to something like a point. He stood there, hairy and bare except for the skin about his hips, and with only ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo

... upon the enemy where he was posted very strong, with guns all along his front, and served till we got right up to them, the runners being cut down and bayoneted when we got right up amongst them, and no quarter given; and there was great banks of earth, too, to clamber over, and more guns behind; so, with the marching up in front and losing so many officers and men, our regiment was that wild when we got amongst them, that 'twas awful to see, and, if there was any prisoners taken, it was more by mistake ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes

... her down from the top of that there portico," cried Clodd; "but I'm too heavy. Here; who'll jump atop of my back, and so try to clamber up?" ...
— Miss Grantley's Girls - And the Stories She Told Them • Thomas Archer

... of the children's wagons; and when the very smallest pairs of feet grew tired of trudging bravely after us, or of racing on rapturous side trips after flowers and other treasures, the owners would clamber into the wagon. One of these wagons, by the way, a gorgeous red one, had "Express" painted on it in gilt letters, and was known to the younger children as the "'spress" wagon. They evidently associated the color with the term. Once while ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt

... eye-balled— No wonder if the Duke was nettled! And when she persisted nevertheless— Well, I suppose here's the time to confess That there ran half round our lady's chamber 300 A balcony none of the hardest to clamber; And that Jacynth, the tire-woman, ready in waiting, Stayed in call outside, what need of relating? And since Jacynth was like a June rose, why, a fervent Adorer of Jacynth of course was your servant; 305 And if she had the ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning

... blaze aloft, and choking wood-smoke eddied out of the Richard's hold and mingled with the powder fumes. Then the enemy's fire abreast us seemed to lull, and Mr. Stacey mounted the bulwarks, and cried out: "You have cleared their decks, my hearties!" Aloft, a man was seen to clamber from our mainyard into the very top of the Englishman, where he threw a hand-grenade, as I thought, down her main hatch. An instant after an explosion came like a, clap of thunder in our faces, and a great quadrant ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... the moment her nerve deserted her. With a strangling sob she ran towards the beach-head, and began to clamber up the low cliff leading to ...
— True Tilda • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... drinking in, with eager, flashing eyes, the beauty and brilliant colour of the picture presented by the emerald island in its setting of sapphire sea; but as I sprang into the rigging I noticed that her gaze followed me; and when I swung myself out to clamber over the rim of the top—a performance which, to the eye of the landsman, appears distinctly hazardous—she suddenly clasped her hands upon her breast, as though in terror for my safety. The action was trifling enough, perhaps, yet I was disposed to regard it as not quite insignificant, since I had ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood

... should find a lodging for the night, and was, besides, excessively tired. But I pursued my journey, and still kept in the road to Derby, along a footpath which I knew to be right. It led across a very pleasant mead, the hedges of which were separated by stiles, over which I was often obliged to clamber. When I had walked some distance without meeting with an inn on the road, and it had already begun to be dark, I at last sat me down near a small toll-house, or a turnpike-gate, in order to rest myself, and also to see whether the man at the ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz

... for her brother was at the other side of the garden. "Bring me those light wreaths of snow that have rested on the lower branches of the pear tree. You can clamber on the snowdrift, Peony, and reach them easily. I must have them to make some ringlets for ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various

... Tresco saw them clamber down from the rock, and drink beer by the wayside. Only too quickly did he recognise these men, who looked like diggers but behaved so strangely; but the sight of the liquor was almost more than he could bear, yet not daring to stir a finger ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace

... but, like all other blessings, it has its alternates of shadow. I used to sit here by my window last April and gloat over the prospects for the vegetable garden a tramp laid out and seeded for me in the early spring. What luscious peas were going to clamber over the trellis along about the middle of July! What golden squashes were going to nestle in the little hollows! What lusty corn was going to stride the hillocks! What colonies of beans and beds of lettuce should fill the spaces, like stars ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden

... on, past the mouth of the Paris moat, and then made for the left bank. Exhaustion seized me as I laid hold of the earth, but I had strength to clamber up. I fell into a sitting posture and rested my tired arms and legs. What pains of cold and heat I felt I cannot describe. Presently, with returning breath, came the strength to walk,—a strength of which I would have to avail myself, ...
— An Enemy To The King • Robert Neilson Stephens

... to the surface. There I floated for possibly ten or fifteen minutes, when I saw and made a grab at a collapsible lifeboat at which other passengers were also grabbing. We managed to get it shipshape and clamber in. There were eight or nine in the boat, all stokers except one or ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... sky-born, As it washes and dips In the pride of the morn. Robes of azure, Fringed with amber, Fold upon fold Of purple and gold, Vine-leaf bloom, And the grape's ripe gloom, When season deep In noontide leisure, With clustering heap The tendrils clamber Full in the face Of his hot embrace, Fill'd with the gleams Of his firmest beams. Autumn flushes, Roseate blushes, Vermeil tinges, Violet fringes, Every hue Of his flower cupholders, O'er the clear ether Mingled together, Shining anew From ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith

... spending a few minutes in adding its age to its size, and its size to its solitude, it becomes appallingly mournful in its growing closeness. A squally wind blows in the face with an impact which proclaims that the vapours of the air sail low to-night. The slope that I so laboriously clamber up the wind skips sportively down. Its track can be discerned even in this light by the undulations of the withered grass-bents—the only produce of this upland summit except moss. Four minutes of ascent, and a vantage-ground of some sort is gained. It is only the crest of the ...
— A Changed Man and Other Tales • Thomas Hardy

... flood when he goes in it. Now stinted in the shortening day, We go to prayers and then to play, Till supper comes; and after that We sit an hour to drink and chat. 'Tis late—the old and younger pairs, By Adam[3] lighted, walk up stairs. The weary Dean goes to his chamber; And Nim and Dan to garret clamber, So when the circle we have run, The curtain falls and all is done. I might have mention'd several facts, Like episodes between the acts; And tell who loses and who wins, Who gets a cold, who breaks his shins; ...
— The Poems of Jonathan Swift, D.D., Volume I (of 2) • Jonathan Swift

... first began to think of this, it was a great trouble to me; for I thought with myself, that in the condition I now was in, I was not fit to die, neither indeed did I think I could, if I should be called to it; besides, I thought with myself, if I should make a scrambling shift to clamber up the ladder, yet I should either with quaking, or other symptoms of fainting, give occasion to the enemy to reproach the way of God and His people for their timorousness. This, therefore, lay with great trouble upon me, for methought I was ashamed ...
— Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners • John Bunyan

... right," the old lady said. "But nobody cares to play it a dozen times a day. And nobody enjoys having to clamber over the ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey

... then they cry, this is a bad summer! as if we ever had any other. The best sun we have is made of Newcastle coal, and I am determined never to reckon upon any other. We ruin ourselves with inviting over foreign trees and make our houses clamber up hills to look at prospects. How our ancestors would laugh at us, who knew there was no being comfortable, unless you had a high hill before your nose, and a thick warm wood at your back! Taste is too ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole

... Yes. Then said the Shepherds, Those that you see lie dashed in pieces at the bottom of this Mountain are they; and they have continued to this day unburied (as you see) for an example to others to take heed how they clamber too high, or how they come too near the ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan

... by the thoughts that "for aught he could tell," his "imprisonment might end at the gallows," not so much that he dreaded death as that he was apprehensive that when it came to the point, even if he made "a scrabbling shift to clamber up the ladder," he might play the coward and so do discredit to the cause of religion. "I was ashamed to die with a pale face and tottering knees for such a cause as this." The belief that his imprisonment might be terminated by death on the scaffold, however ...
— The Life of John Bunyan • Edmund Venables

... rafts through the jungle; They swim through a network of leaves; They clamber with never a bungle ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, February 11, 1920 • Various

... in pale bars of gold above Helicon. Glaucon rose again; the cold sweat sprang out upon his forehead. Before his eyes rose darkness, but he did not faint. Some kind destiny set a stout pole upright in the field,—perhaps for vines to clamber,—he clutched it, and stood until his sight cleared and the pain a little abated. He tore the pole from the ground, and reached the roadway. He must take his chance of meeting more raiders. He had one vast comfort,—if there had been no battle fought that day, there would be none before dawn. But ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis

... her bow in readiness to board as soon as she touched the Tarifa were literally swept away. Another half minute she was alongside the Spaniard, and the Moors with wild shouts of vengeance tried to clamber on board. ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty

... a tangle of holly and hawthorn, he came out into the open space and his feet struck against stone. In front of him the rocks rose darkly against the waning light, and he began to clamber about among them, over smooth round surfaces, along narrow gullies, and by cruel jagged ridges, seeking to find the exact spot where he had left the dead body. "It was about here," he said, after a time. "It was ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell

... blue sky and the hedgerows and the birds and the cows and the crows are all just as Jane Austen knew them—no change. These stone walls stood here then, and so did the low slate-roofed barns and the whitewashed cottages where the roses clamber over the doors. ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 2 of 14 - Little Journeys To the Homes of Famous Women • Elbert Hubbard

... that they could, by the help of a telescope, be read on the ramparts of the castle. Agents laden with letters and fresh provisions managed, in various disguises and by various shifts, to cross the sheet of water which then lay on the north of the fortress and to clamber up the precipitous ascent. The peal of a musket from a particular half moon was the signal which announced to the friends of the House of Stuart that another of their emissaries had got safe up the rock. But ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 3 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... so there was nothing to hinder a prompt boarding of the captured boat when Jack gave the word. With the glorious flush of victory thrilling his whole frame Perk stood by to fend off as they drew close to the squatty stern. It would be his duty to clamber out on one wing and get aboard, carrying a rope by means of which the floating airship could be secured ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb

... of the churchyard, so the girls seized their golden opportunity. They went up and up and up, along a winding staircase for an interminable way. It was dark, and the steps were worn with the tread of seven centuries, and here and there was a broken bit over which they had to clamber with care. At last, after what seemed like mounting the Tower of Babel, they stumbled up through a narrow doorway into the most extraordinary place in the world. They were in the garret of the roof over the south aisle. ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... went with his new-found friends to the mine, where, in the "Dry," he saw the underground laborers change into their red-stained working-suits. Then he watched them clamber, a dozen at a time, into the great ore-cages and disappear with startling suddenness down the black shaft into unknown depths of darkness. After all were gone he spent some time in the "compressor-room" of the engine-house with Tom, who was there on duty. The remainder of the ...
— The Copper Princess - A Story of Lake Superior Mines • Kirk Munroe

... little window of the loft. With one end of the riem tied round the gable, the other end round his waist, how easy to slide down to it, and to open it, through one of the broken panes, and to go in, and to fill his arms with books, and to clamber up again! They had burnt one book—he would have twenty. Every man's hand was against his—his should be against every man's. No one would help him—he ...
— The Story of an African Farm • (AKA Ralph Iron) Olive Schreiner

... making my way through the forest, and had already got to some distance from where I had first seen the creatures, when a large herd, which had apparently collected from all quarters, came scampering after me. I at once began to clamber up into a tree, where you found me. On they came at a great rate; and, as I told you, I narrowly escaped being caught by one of the savage little brutes. I must have spent a couple of hours or more besieged by them before ...
— On the Banks of the Amazon • W.H.G. Kingston

... sedans are lifted Other ladies by their lovers.... Rays of light sift through the leafage, Shed on golden curls their luster, Break in flames on gaudy cushions, Gleam alike on grass and gravel, Sparkle on the simple structure We have raised to serve the moment. Vines and creepers clamber upward, Covering the slender woodwork, While between them are suspended Gorgeous tapestries and curtains: Scenes Arcadian boldly woven, Charmingly designed by Watteau.... In the place of stage, an arbor; Summer sun in place of footlights; ...
— The Lonely Way—Intermezzo—Countess Mizzie - Three Plays • Arthur Schnitzler

... take me long to clamber over its side and drag Nobs in to comparative safety, and then I glanced around upon the scene of death and desolation which surrounded us. The sea was littered with wreckage among which floated the pitiful forms of women and children, buoyed up by their useless lifebelts. ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... drain a health to thee;— May merry Joy and jolly Mirth Like children clamber on thy knee, And ride thee round the happy earth! And when, at last, the hand of Fate Shall lift the latch of Canaan's gate, And usher me in thy domain, Smile on me just as ...
— Green Fields and Running Brooks, and Other Poems • James Whitcomb Riley

... be seen to turn over with their feet in the air, drowning their riders. It was sad to see how the wounded clutched at the tails and bridles of the horses of their companions, sinking them without saving themselves—how the exhausted struggled against the scarped bank, endeavouring to clamber up, fell back, and were borne away and engulfed by the furious current. The corpses of the slain were whirled away, mingled with the dying and streaks of blood curled and writhed like serpents on the foam. The smoke floated far along the Terek, far in the distance, and the snowy peaks ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - April 1843 • Various

... Soldiers were beginning to clamber up the garden wall from the outside; torches were raised to investigate. As we shrank back into the shadow of the shrubbery I stumbled over something soft—Jacqueline's clothes, lying in a circle as she had stepped ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers

... served as a knocker four separate times to the door, he was still so lost in thought that he started violently on the appearance of the Scotch retainer at the portal, and behaved for a moment as if he were considering which of two courses he should pursue: i.e., whether he should clamber frantically into the seclusion of the area, or take boldly to the open street. Before he could do either M'Allister, the retainer, had magnetised him into the hall, relieved him of his hat—almost with the seductive adroitness of a Drury Lane thief—and drawn him down ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens

... the clouds, as to make your way to some of these perilous chambers, which are cut in the blank face of the rock, and can be reached only by a sinuous track which requires the fibres of a goat to clamber. There are often long lines of these sculptured houses piled in successive tiers above each other; sometimes with a view to architectural regularity, but in almost all cases they are equally hazardous to the ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould

... determined to leave their habitations underground, the Minnatarees began, men, women, and children, to clamber up the vine, and one-half of them had already reached the surface of the earth, when a dire mishap involved the remainder in a still more ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous

... would sit or stand quiet by the hour on the cliff-top watching the men as they drilled and fixed the dynamite, and waiting for the bang of it. Best of all, however, were the days when his grandfather allowed him inside the light-house, to clamber about the staircase and ladders, to watch the oiling and trimming of the great lantern, and the ships moving slowly on the horizon. He asked a ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... We clamber up into the long jungle grass region and go on our way across a series of steep-sided, rounded grass hillocks, each of which is separated from the others by dry, rocky watercourses. The effects ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley

... view from the top of the mountain; but as a peculiar and altogether exceptional state of the atmosphere is essential to their being seen, I need not tell you that they are rarely visible,' said Maulevrier. 'You are talking to old mountaineers, Molly. Hammond has done Cotapaxi and had his little clamber on the equatorial Andes, and I—well, child, I have done my Righi, and I have always found the boasted panorama ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... of an Apache Indian, smeared with paint and contorted with eager passion, slowly rose in the moonlight. The exhausted warrior, feeling that the critical moment was at hand, when all depended upon prompt and decisive work, made furious efforts to clamber out of the cavern before the lad who held the key of ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne

... lying cuddled up in a lump in the bows, and the stern was all out of water. The thing kept turning round slowly as it drifted—-kind of waltzing, don't you know. I went to the stern and pulled it down, expecting him to wake up. Then I began to clamber in with my knife in my hand, and ready for a rush. But he never stirred. So there I sat in the stern of the little canoe, drifting away over the calm phosphorescent sea, and with all the host of the stars above me, waiting ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells

... balcony outside her room, drinking in the smells of the night—the pungent, earthy smell after rain, the aromatic smell of pine trees near the house. It was the intoxicating smells of the night that had first driven her, as a very small child, to clamber down from her balcony, clinging to the thick ivy roots, to wander with the delightful sense of wrong-doing through the moonlit park and even into the adjoining gloomy woods. She had always ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull

... towering far into the snowy regions of the atmosphere. He soon found that he had undertaken a tremendous task; but the pride of man is never more obstinate than when climbing mountains. The ascent was so steep and rugged that he and his companion were frequently obliged to clamber on hands and knees, with their guns slung upon their backs. Frequently, exhausted with fatigue and dripping with perspiration, they threw themselves upon the snow, and took handfuls of it to allay their parching thirst. At one place they even ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford

... bodies I have ever seen. One evening, after bathing, as we were driving back to Amiens in the car, he stretched out his arms and said, "Orpen, I feel like a young Greek god!" And, after a pause, added: "But only a fragment, you know, only a fragment." He was a great man, and could clamber over trenches with his wooden stump in ...
— An Onlooker in France 1917-1919 • William Orpen

... to clamber up to Thiepval from our lines. The road runs through the site of the village in a deep cutting, which may have once been lovely. The road is reddish with the smashed bricks of the village. Here and there in the mud are perhaps three courses of brick where a house once stood, ...
— The Old Front Line • John Masefield

... a shattered corridor am able to look up into the room in which Sir Henry Lawrence received his death-wound. Access to it is impossible by reason of the tottering condition of the structure; and turning away I clamber up the worn staircase in the shot-riven tower on the summit of which still stands the flagstaff on which were hoisted the signals with which the garrison were wont to communicate with the Alumbagh. The walls of the staircase and the flat roof of the tower are scratched ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes

... hole and cupboard they explore, Each creek and cranny of his chamber, Run hurry-scurry round the floor, And o'er the bed and tester clamber; ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... It applies only to that class which serves a function somewhat similar to that served by the populace of old time in Rome. This is the unstable, mob-minded mass, which sits on the fence, ever ready to fall this side or that and indecorously clamber back again; which puts a Democratic administration into office one election, and a Republican the next; which discovers and lifts up a prophet to-day that it may stone him to-morrow; which clamours for the book everybody else is reading, ...
— Revolution and Other Essays • Jack London

... kept from dashing his foot against a stone. To be there, therefore, was one of Christ's temptations; consequently one of Satan's stratagems: nor went he thither of his own accord, for he knew that there was danger; he loved not to clamber pinnacles. ...
— The Riches of Bunyan • Jeremiah Rev. Chaplin

... the Hillock he had plainly perceiv'd such a shining Substance as the Indians Tradition mention'd, and being stimulated by Curiosity, had slighted those Superstitious Fears of the Inhabitants, and with much ado by reason of the Difficulty of the way, had made a shift to clamber up to that part of the Hill, where, by a very heedful Observation, he suppos'd himself to have seen the Light: but whether 'twere that he had mistaken the place, or for some other Reason, he could ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle

... Orestes has broken free; he slays Thoas and many a Scythian; and the last scene shows them sailing away, with Iphigenia and the Goddess; the Scythians clutch vainly at the receding vessel; they cling to the rudder, they strive to clamber on board; at last, utterly baffled, they swim back to the shore, wounded or terrified. It is at this point in their conflict with the Scythians that the devotion of the friends is best illustrated: the painter ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata

... given to fix bayonets: the brigade then pushed forward for fifty yards further, when it was met by a storm of Mauser bullets, which had killed and wounded no less than 120 out of the 250 before the survivors reached the foot of the kopjes. It is extremely difficult to clamber up the rough sides of an African kopje. To do it properly one needs india-rubber soles or bare feet, for boots cause one to slip wildly about on the smooth, rough stones. By the time our men had got to the summit of the low ridge the Boers ...
— With Methuen's Column on an Ambulance Train • Ernest N. Bennett

... grasped the floor of our hamper and eased the jar of its contact with the earth. Those same hands had redraped the rim with sandbags, and had helped us to clamber out from between the stay ropes, when up came the young captain who spelled the lieutenant as an aerial spy. He came at a run. Between the two of them ensued a sharp interchange of short German sentences. I gathered the sense ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... anything done in the campaign. I had the advantage of witnessing the centre column carry out the whole of its task and of seeing the right column complete as gallant an effort as any troops could make, and as one saw them scale frowning heights and clamber up and down the roughest of torrent beds, one realised that more than three months' fighting had not removed the 'bloom' from these Cockney warriors, and that their physique and courage were proof against long and heavy trials of campaigning. The chief objective of the centre ...
— How Jerusalem Was Won - Being the Record of Allenby's Campaign in Palestine • W.T. Massey

... George suggested, with false lightness, "I expect I could get in through my window." His room was on the ground floor, and not much agility was needed to clamber up to its ledge from the level of the area. He might have searched his pockets again and discovered his latchkey, but he would not. Sooner than admit a deception he would have remained at the ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett

... I no longer "search for" my father; but it has sometimes seemed to me—and it seems so to me to this day—that in my sleep I hear distant shrieks, unintermittent, melancholy plaints; they resound somewhere behind a lofty wall, across which it is impossible to clamber; they rend my heart—and I am utterly unable to comprehend what it is: whether it is a living man groaning, or whether I hear the wild, prolonged roar of the troubled sea. And now it passes once more into that beast-like growl—and I awake with sadness ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev

... rocks; that there is neither grass or water, or wood; and that it is awfully hot. This last feature appears to terrify them. They say that they are obliged to take wood to the hills for fire, and that they clamber up the rocks on the hills; that when there is water there, it is in deep holes from which they are obliged to sponge it up and squeeze it out to drink. I do not in truth think that any of the natives have been beyond the hills, and that the country ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre

... leave we Hob to clamber out, Queen Mab and all her Fairy rout, And come again to have a bout With Oberon yet madding: And with Pigwiggen now distraught, Who much was troubled in his thought, That he so long the Queen had sought, And through ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick

... else in America. There are ways of getting on without business, if you would only take them!" He seldom answered her notes, and he disliked extremely the way in which, in spite of her love of form and order, she attempted to clamber in at the window of one's house when one had locked the door; so that he began to interspace his visits considerably, and at last made them very rare. When I reflect on his habits of almost superstitious politeness to women, it comes ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James

... than willing to clamber into the cart, and for the remainder of the route, be a part of the procession. Gwen, first flatly refused to ride, but after much coaxing she finally consented, and took her place beside Max, and so odd was the expression of ...
— Princess Polly At Play • Amy Brooks

... since she, as a girl at Haytersbank, liked to spend half her time in the open air, running out perpetually without anything on to scatter crumbs to the poultry, or to take a piece of bread to the old cart-horse, to go up to the garden for a handful of herbs, or to clamber to the highest point around to blow the horn which summoned her father and Kester home to dinner. Living in a town where it was necessary to put on hat and cloak before going out into the street, and then to walk in a steady and decorous fashion, she had only cared to escape down ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell

... he began to clamber round the edge of the pool, but so high up that it did not seem possible for the fish to touch him. There was good foothold on the jagged hunks of rock, and a man might have gone across safely enough but for the thought of that which was below him. For my part, I say that my eyes followed ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... have fed on platitudes and vanity, they have had the energy and humility to develop a splendid system of national education, to toil at science and art and literature, to develop social organisation, to master and better our methods of business and industry, and to clamber above us in the scale of civilisation. This has humiliated and irritated rather ...
— The Better Germany in War Time - Being some Facts towards Fellowship • Harold Picton

... row upon row, with here and there a sail, carrying on the color of the plowed fields above the village, and elsewhere, scraps of flaming bunting flashing like flowers in a reed bed. Behind the masts, along the barbican, the cottages stand close and thick, then clamber and straggle up the acclivities behind, decreasing in their numbers as they ascend. Smoke trails inland on the wind—black as a thin crepe veil, from the funnel of a coal "tramp" about to leave the harbor, blue from the dry wood burning on a ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts

... touched at one island, on which we also landed. It was completely surrounded by precipitous cliffs, arid, stony, rugged, treeless, unwatered. We contrived to clamber up the rocks, and advanced along a track beset with thorns and snags—a hideous scene. When we reached the prison and the place of punishment, what first drew our wonder was the character of the whole. The very ground stood thick with a crop of knife- blades and pointed stakes; and it was ...
— Works, V2 • Lucian of Samosata

... on. The batch of fifteen eggs had all come out. It was really wonderful to see these fifteen baby ducks, yellow as canaries, beaks and webbed feet pink, swarming around the big patient sitting mother, ducking under her wings, to come out presently and clamber helter-skelter onto her broad back. As often happens with nurses, Yollande loved the ducklings as her own children, and without worrying about their shape or plumage, so different from her own, she showered ...
— The Curly-Haired Hen • Auguste Vimar

... our daily bread. We may not be able to explain it, but we must hope and trust or perish. To go back to your nautical illustration, suppose some who had been wrecked were clinging to a rocky shore, and trying to clamber up out of the cold spray and surf to warmth and safety; would it not be a cruel thing to go along the shore and unloosen the poor numb hands however gently and scientifically it might be done? Loosing that hold means sinking to unknown depths. With complacent ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe

... ponies along a clay ledge from which they turned off and went straight up an almost perpendicular sandy bluff. As Merrifield, who was in the lead, turned off the ledge, his horse, plunging in his attempt to clamber up the steep bluff, overbalanced himself, and for a second stood erect on his hind legs trying to recover his equilibrium. As Roosevelt, who was directly beneath him, made a frantic leap with his horse to one ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... very picturesque but most tortuous river. In one place, called appropriately "The Kink," I was able to clamber over a ridge of rocks and reach another bend of the river in six or seven minutes, and then had to wait twenty-five minutes for the dog team, going at a good clip, to come around to me. At length we reached the spot where a vista ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck

... uprooted, the trunk being at a sharp angle with the ground, while the boughs resting against those of its neighbours had prevented it from falling prostrate. We crept towards it, and finding that I could easily clamber up I did so, followed by Mr Tidey. We could thus see much further ahead than from the ground below. We had been there about a minute, the rustling ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston

... heard what drove me from the house at once. It was my sister's voice—Adelaide's. She was in the building, and I stood almost on a level with her, with a bottle in my pocket. It did not take me a minute to clamber through the window. I did not stop to wonder, or ask why she was there, or to whom she was speaking. I just fled and made my way as well as I could across the golf-links to a little hotel on Cuthbert Road, where I had been once before. ...
— The House of the Whispering Pines • Anna Katharine Green

... villains have set a watch over every road," murmured Mr. Haydon. "Do you know of any way to get out without following a path, Me Dain, any way by which we can clamber over ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore

... only up to my middle, but before I could clamber back he had shipped his oars, and was well into the centre ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan

... Glen Lui Beg, perhaps about three or four miles from the opening of the glen, that we begin to mount Ben Muich Dhui. At first we clamber over the roots and fallen trunks of trees; but by degrees we leave the forest girdle behind, and precipices and snow, with a scant growth of heather, become our sole companions. Keeping the track where the slope ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, No. 382, October 1847 • Various

... from what I told you that it was easy to follow a straight course right through that old park. Sometimes we had to clamber over piles of old boards and we had to work our way kind of in and out through the old rotten trestle of the scenic railway. That thing crossed our path like a big, long, wriggling snake. Some of the old booths were boarded up and some of them were all ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... of so many sorrows and little jealousies, so many midnight Indian attacks and bilious attacks by day, became a solemn ruin, and a few shattered tombstones, over which the jimson-weed and the wild vines clamber, show to the curious traveller the place where civilization first sought to establish itself on ...
— Comic History of the United States • Bill Nye



Words linked to "Clamber" :   mount, sputter, skin, shin, struggle



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