"Tattoo" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had filled her pail and was returning in the track selected by the buffalo. Too terrified to move, she watched, with white face and parted lips, the maddened animal sweep toward her, head down and tail up, its hoofs beating a thunderous tattoo ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... Injuns to go on the warpath," Gene announced disgustedly, coming out upon the porch where the rest of the boys were foregathered, waiting for the ringing tattoo upon the iron triangle just outside the back door which would be the supper summons. "They're too lazy to take the trouble—and, besides, they're scared of dad. I was talking to Sleeping Turtle just now—met him down there past the Point ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... outrigger canoe to the dancing pole. Kohokumu caught the line that was fast to the butt of the pole and under-handed it in until a two-foot ukikiki, battling fiercely to the end, flashed its wet silver in the sun and began beating a tattoo on the inside bottom of the canoe. Kohokumu picked up a squirming, slimy squid, with his teeth bit a chunk of live bait out of it, attached the bait to the hook, and dropped line and sinker overside. The stick floated flat on the surface of the water, and the canoe ...
— On the Makaloa Mat/Island Tales • Jack London
... try again." But it seemed no use knocking, and Wildney at last, in a fit of impatience, thumped a regular tattoo on ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... o'clock that night we were sitting about the fire, when from the near woods was heard a tremendous "tap-tap-taptrrr," so loud and so near that we all jumped and stared into the darkness. Again it came, "tap-tap-tap trrrrr," a regular drum tattoo. ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... mirthful on the ginger-wine; keeping up a continual buzz, like a colony of bees, sadly itching to be at something—a wish that is not to be realized at once, for little Miss Newsoince is going to do that eternal tattoo, the "Rataplan:"—yes, there she is, in Tom's felt-hat and polonaise, as "La Vivandiere," thumping upon an empty band-box with two knitting-pins, singing, as some of the mammas say, very prettily; but as the boys, who have ...
— Christmas Comes but Once A Year - Showing What Mr. Brown Did, Thought, and Intended to Do, - during that Festive Season. • Luke Limner
... daughters until the evening on which we first introduced them to our readers. Then taking her seat by the brightly burning lamp, she drew the letter from her pocket and read it aloud, while Alice drummed an occasional note upon the piano and Eugenia beat a tattoo upon the carpet with her ...
— Dora Deane • Mary J. Holmes
... speak in the presence of my lord chief justice that is to be, and should not talk lightly of the laws. But still you say reason: give me your arm, sergeant, and lead the way to the east wing; my eyesight is good for nothing in such a dark night. A soldier should always visit his guard before the tattoo beats." ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... swayed forward. The rather pretty girl who had mustered the nerve to come as a bearded lady trembled with excitement, thinking to be rewarded for an evening's hideousness. The man who had spent the afternoon having tattoo marks painted on him skulked on the edge of the crowd, blushing furiously when any one told him he was ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... out of the darkness and at that instant I made a discovery. Leith was not alone. Keeping time with the clatter of the shoes was a softer tattoo that told me that a barefooted runner was racing beside the ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... prime, and the system of circles and circlets which composed her personnel had assumed a tremulous and gravitating tendency. She was habited in the height of Fan fashion. Her body was modestly invested in a thin pattern of tattoo, and a gauze-work of oil and camwood; the rest of the toilette was a dwarf pigeon-tail of fan- palm, like that of the men, and a manner of apron, white beads, and tree bark, greasy and reddened: the latter was tucked under and over ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... ornamental, they assorted feathers piece by piece, and enlaced the feathers in the meshes of their hats and caps, or fastened them into scepters with pitch. They could make houses, etc., with their axes only by long-continued industry.[231] South American Indians made tools for printing tattoo patterns on the body. They were blocks, on each face of which a pattern was raised, perhaps a different one on each side.[232] It should be noticed what prodigious power a large body of men can put forth when they all work at ...
— Folkways - A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals • William Graham Sumner
... of the body, with a mark indicating their ownership. Until within recent years this system of tattooing appears to have been maintained in the province of Satsuma,—where the marks were put especially upon the hands; and in many other provinces the lower classes were generally marked by a tattoo on the face. Slaves were bought and sold like cattle in early times, or presented as tribute by their owners,—a practice constantly referred to in the ancient records. Their unions were not recognized: ...
— Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation • Lafcadio Hearn
... wells, for which they lack patience. Their women, whom they do not confine, will, it is said, do more field-work than the men; indeed, one often finds women at work in the crops when the men are lying down. Like the women of low Hindu castes they tattoo their bodies, a practice disapproved by Musalmans in general. Abul Fazl writes that the Meos were in his time famous runners, and one thousand of them were employed by Akbar ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume IV of IV - Kumhar-Yemkala • R.V. Russell
... much to me as though it were one of those crimes of passion which are so frequent in this country," he said. "Mordon was a Frenchman and I have been able to identify him by tattoo marks on his arm, as a man who has been in the hands of the ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... Indians of Quito, dyeing it a dull brown by means of achote juice. The men wear a strip of this around the loins, and the women a short skirt. On feast-days, or when musquitoes are thick, the men add a little poncho and pantaloons. They do not properly tattoo, but color the skin with achote or anatto. This substance, which serves so many purposes in this part of the world, is the red powder which covers the seeds contained in the prickly bur of the Bixa orellana. The pigment is an article of commerce on the Amazon, and is exported to ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... wife and all the lassies came flying in upon me, crying all in the name of heaven, what could it be? by which I was obligated to put on my big-coat, and, with my hat and staff, go out to enquire. The whole town was aloof, the aged at the doors in clusters, and the bairns following the tattoo, as it was called, and at every doubling beat of the drum, shouting as if they had been in ...
— The Annals of the Parish • John Galt
... the man also scratch his though he takes much more pains over his hair, combing and smoothing it in order to divide it well in front and display the tattoo which distinguishes ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... he be permitted to mark each error in the composition by striking his lap-stone. The humorous consequences can be imagined. Beckmesser becomes enraged at Sachs, sings more and more falsely, until Sachs is occupied in beating a veritable tattoo on his lap-stone. To add to Beckmesser's discomfiture, David, Sachs's apprentice and Magdalena's sweetheart, thinking the serenade intended for his love, begins to belabor the singer with a chub; neighbors join in the brawl, which proceeds right merrily until interrupted by the horn ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... smallest boy but one divining her intent, immediately began swarming upstairs after her—if that word of doubtful etymology be admissible—on his arms and legs; while the eldest (known in the family by the name of Biler, in remembrance of the steam engine) beat a demoniacal tattoo with his boots, expressive of grief; in which he was joined by the ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... sound of gun-fire and tattoo announced that the day's work was over he felt fully prepared for the morrow's recitations. But he was in no mood for play. The quiet that had reigned through the building for the last two hours was suddenly broken in upon by sounds of mirth and jollity—merry ...
— Elsie's Vacation and After Events • Martha Finley
... on his pillows, the hectic passed from either gaunt and sallow cheek, leaving the red and blue tattoo marks visible in most ghastly distinctness, while the sweat poured in drops down ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... dinner, and in fine weather and good condition of the ground in afternoon often, field drill of which battery, with guns, caissons, teams, cannoneers, drivers and all stable call, supper, camp amusements of all kinds, tattoo and finally taps. There were two buglers in the company, Charles M. Donoho was at the company headquarters. He acted as messenger also. The other, Rufus Menander Rosser was in the same mess as the writer. One of his duties was to blow the Reveille call at ...
— A History of Lumsden's Battery, C.S.A. • George Little
... friendships you ever heard tell of. Nothing delighted the pair more than to borrow a boat off my father and pull out to the rocks where the Primrose and the Despatch had struck and sunk; and on still days 'twas pretty to hear them out there off the Manacles, the drummer playing his tattoo—for they always took their music with them—and the trumpeter practising calls, and making his trumpet speak like an angel. But if the weather turned roughish, they'd be walking together and talking; ...
— Wandering Heath • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... tattooed immediately above your right wrist could only have been done in China. I have made a small study of tattoo marks, and have even contributed to the literature of the subject. That trick of staining the fishes' scales of a delicate pink is quite peculiar to China. When, in addition, I see a Chinese coin hanging from your watch-chain, the ...
— Short Stories of Various Types • Various
... tattoo the long roll began to beat. Officers and men hurriedly dressed, snatched their arms and accoutrements and formed in the company streets. As soon as a company was ready it started for the color line, and, as soon as the regiment was formed, it started on a brisk walk towards the front, or in ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... a fuss and a bother, forsooth, was made By that man-tormentor, Gustavus, the Swede, Whose camp was a church, where prayers were said At morning reveille and evening tattoo; And, whenever it chanced that we frisky grew, A sermon himself from ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Timor Tom! thou famed leviathan, scarred like an iceberg, who so long did'st lurk in the Oriental straits of that name, whose spout was oft seen from the palmy beach of Ombay? Was it not so, O New Zealand Jack! thou terror of all cruisers that crossed their wakes in the vicinity of the Tattoo Land? Was it not so, O Morquan! King of Japan, whose lofty jet they say at times assumed the semblance of a snow-white cross against the sky? Was it not so, O Don Miguel! thou Chilian whale, marked like an old tortoise with mystic hieroglyphics upon the back! ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... in ecstasies. So much so, that she could not wait to beat the tattoo and effect any alterations. But having succeeded, while conversing with her cousins, in devising a stanza in her mind, she promptly inscribed it on the first piece of paper that came to hand. "I have," she remarked, with a precursory smile, ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... little from their finery! The eyebrows and eyelids are dyed black while the children are very young, and they frequently paint themselves with dark-blue streaks of a finger's breadth over the eyebrows, and with spots on the forehead. The adult women tattoo their breasts, foreheads, noses, or temples with red, white, or yellow colours, according as they are particularly attached to one or the other deity. Many wear amulets or miniatures hung round their necks, so that I at first thought they were Catholics, and felt ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... to tattoo and circumcise. They determine the days of rest and of ceremony for the pueblo, and all pueblo ceremonies are in their hands; so also are the ceremonies of the ato — only men are "priests," except ...
— The Bontoc Igorot • Albert Ernest Jenks
... expression of vigor, just as a colt frisks to show how well he feels, he whirred yet more loudly, until, unwittingly, he found himself drumming, and tickled with the discovery of his new power, thumped the air again and again till he filled the near woods with the loud tattoo of the fully grown cock-partridge. His brother and sister heard and looked on with admiration and surprise; so did his mother, but from that time she began to be ...
— Lobo, Rag and Vixen - Being The Personal Histories Of Lobo, Redruff, Raggylug & Vixen • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... and Pintados, who inhabit the provinces of Camarines in this island of Luzon, and those of Leyte, Samar, Panay, and other neighborhoods, came, I have heard, from the districts of Macasar, where it is said that Indians live who make designs on and tattoo the body, in the manner of our Pintados. Pedro Fernandez de Quiros, in the relation which he wrote of the discovery of the Salomon Islands in 1595, says that an island called Madalena was found in ten degrees north latitude, at a distance from Piru of one thousand eight hundred leguas ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... resorted to to ease conscience and evade the law. In this case, strange to say, it had its effect. After some parleying, it was agreed to share the booty equally between the guard and ourselves. They helped us cut brush and cover it nicely, and after tattoo all were to return and divide up. We did not know the guards personally, but knew their command. And so we returned to the camp to await the return of our pickets and night. It was soon noised in camp that there was a fine fat porker to be distributed after tattoo, and no little eagerness ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... not a large legacy, even from the modest standpoint of Henri Deplis, but it impelled him towards some seemingly harmless extravagances. In particular it led him to patronize local art as represented by the tattoo-needles of Signor Andreas Pincini. Signor Pincini was, perhaps, the most brilliant master of tattoo craft that Italy had ever known, but his circumstances were decidedly impoverished, and for the sum of six hundred francs he gladly undertook to cover his client's back, from ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... felt for the lady, and felt for my hat too, Improvised on the crown of the latter a tattoo, In lieu of expressing the feelings which lay Quite too deep for words, as Wordsworth would say: Then, without going through the form of a bow, Found myself in the entry,—I hardly knew how,— On doorstep and sidewalk, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... gave him still greater confidence. He had expected an answer, but none came. He had traveled in the face of the wind, and as he howled, a bull moose crashed through the scrub timber ahead of him, his horns rattling against the trees like the tattoo of a clear birch club as he put distance between himself and ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... were on a strip-sloping bottom, came away easily, without damage to windlass or hawse-pipes. Slowly as we disappeared into Sound, the light in the hut died away. At 11.30 p.m. the ice around us started to break up, the floes playing tattoo on the ship's sides. We were out in the Sound and catching the full force of the wind. The moon broke through the clouds after midnight and showed us the pack, stretching continuously to northward, and about one mile to the south. As the pack from the southward ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... protracted sounds.] Roll. — N. roll &c. v.; drumming &c. v.; berloque[obs3], bombination[obs3], rumbling; tattoo, drumroll; dingdong; tantara[obs3]; rataplan[obs3]; whirr; ratatat, ratatat- tat; rubadub; pitapat; quaver, clutter, charivari[obs3], racket; cuckoo; repetition &c. 104; peal of bells, devil's tattoo; reverberation &c. 408. [sound of railroad train rolling on rails] clickety-clack. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... restrictions and have considerable influence. The women's heads are shaved entirely and the men's into fantastic patterns. Yellow and red ochre mixed with grease are coarsely smeared over the bodies, grey in coarse patterns and white in fine patterns resembling tattoo marks. Tattooing is of two distinct varieties. In the south the body is slightly cut by women with small flakes of glass or quartz in zigzag or lineal patterns downwards. In the north it is deeply cut by men with pig-arrows ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia
... swelling here is different—sonorous, tense, elastic; On it you might a tattoo beat, with fingers or with a stick. There's costiveness and atrophy, with features Hippocratic; When these appear, there's much to fear, all safety is erratic. Although a cordial laxative, mix'd up with some carminative, Might be prescribed, with morphia, or hops, to keep the man alive; Take ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Clown, making mirth for all the town, With his lips curved ever upward and his eyebrows ever down, And his chief attention paid to the little mule that played A tattoo on the dashboard with his heels, in ...
— Riley Child-Rhymes • James Whitcomb Riley
... "The Adelantado drops down the river at eleven. But in passing I'll venture a little prophecy. You're down on your luck now, and a bit hot-hearted in consequence; but some day you will strike it right and come out on top. When you do, you'll be a hard master; tattoo that on your arm somewhere so ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde
... determination that he should not contribute personally to the further upbuilding of anybody's reputation. His eyes with this resolve shining in them rested intently on de Spain, and at his side the long fingers of his right hand beat a soft tattoo against his pistol holster. De Spain's question seemed to arouse him. "What's your name?" he demanded bluntly. His voice was heavy and his deafness was reflected ...
— Nan of Music Mountain • Frank H. Spearman
... this staircase: in renewed excitement he hurried down the hall and, regardless of the consequence, beat a quick tattoo with his knuckles ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... Sunfish scrambled with his feet for secure footing, found it and waded up to the front door. The water was a foot deep on the porch. Thurston beat an imperative tattoo upon the door with the butt of his quirt, and shouted. And Mona's voice, shorn of its customary assurance, ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... war. For me the beginning of the war was a torchlight tattoo on Salisbury Plain. It was held on one of those breathless evenings in July when the peace of Europe was trembling in the balance, and when most of us had a heartache in case—in case England, at this time of internal crisis, did not ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... the corridors. He took a step forward. Jim pushed him encouragingly from behind with a "Quick, man, before somebody else asks her up!" and he was in the stream and away with the current. He started across, his heart drumming a tattoo on his ribs. Half-way over the floor—and he would have turned back but for the thought of Jim. He kept on, still somewhat indeterminately. When he got near to Miss Pederstone, she looked up almost in surprise, but the smile ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... was himself in mellower mood; and they were having tea, for all the world like any ordinary trio, the girl still making talk about sundry songs, the man quizzing them and her, and the boy standing up for one that his sister sang at home, when a metallic tattoo put a dramatic stop ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... same. It was a good joke, he thought, to get the boy he was abusing to contribute some needful assistance towards the work; it added a flavor to treachery. But Frank did not so much enjoy the pleasantry. He was wild to be beating the tattoo, not on the said drum, but on the head of the rogue who was writing on the drum, and with his fist ...
— The Drummer Boy • John Trowbridge
... through pitch darkness. Stella lay back and tried to sleep; but sleep would not come to her. She was tired, but repose eluded her. The beating of the unceasing rain upon the tin roof, and the perpetual rattle of the train made an endless tattoo in her brain from which there was no escape. She was haunted by the memory of the last journey that she had made along that line when leaving Kurrumpore in the spring, of Ralph and the ever-growing passion in ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... lips, and handsome countenances, though frequently marked by an expression of cunning. The Balows and Sibnowans are amiable tribes, decidedly warlike, but not predatory; and the latter combines the virtues of the Dyak character with much of the civilization of the Malays. The Dyak Laut do not tattoo, nor do they use the sumpitan; their language assimilates closely to the Malay, and was doubtless originally identical with that of the inland tribes. The name of God among them is Battara (the Avatara of the Hindoos). They bury their dead, and in the ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... just it, Bohannan. A duel." And the Master fixed strange eyes on his companion. His muscular fingers fell to tapping the prayer-rug on the table, drumming out an impatient little tattoo. ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... expecting a boat so late, lay down to sleep. I soon found my mistake, for a large party came drumming on the side of the tent, and crying out that a 'little ship' was coming, and, in fact, I found the boat nearly on shore. Ooyarra's senior wife now anxiously begged to tattoo a little figure on my arm, which she had no sooner done than the youngest insisted on making the same mark; and while all around were running about and screaming in the greatest confusion, these two poor creatures sat quietly down to embellish me. When the boat ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... of the Irawadi. This agrees with Martini's indication of the seat of the Kin-Chi as north of Yung-ch'ang. One of Hannay's notices of Singpho customs should also be compared with the interpolation from Ramusio about tattooing: "The men tattoo their limbs slightly, and all married females are tattooed on both legs from the ankle to the knee, in broad horizontal circular bands. Both sexes also wear rings below the knee of fine shreds of rattan varnished black" (p. 18). These rings appear on the ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo, Volume 2 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... been eating, to enjoy the sport of the search. On the first page there were only some scraps of writing, such as a man with a pen in his hand might make for idleness or practice. One was the same as the tattoo mark, "Billy Bones his fancy"; then there was "Mr. W. Bones, mate," "No more rum," "Off Palm Key he got itt," and some other snatches, mostly single words and unintelligible. I could not help wondering who it was that had "got itt," and what "itt" was that he got. A knife in his ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... At length recovering from the shock of being thus addressed by a woman, he leaned forward and asked with satirical politeness, "What will the lady have?" "I wish to speak to the question under discussion," said Miss Anthony calmly, although her heart was beating a tattoo. Turning to the few rows of men in front of him, for the women occupied the back seats, he inquired, "What is the pleasure of the convention?" "I move she shall be heard," said one man; this was seconded by another, and thus was precipitated ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... Colonel Jacques sat and smiled; but he is a modest man, and his fingers were beating a nervous tattoo on the table. The young officer stood and read, glancing up now and then to smile at his chief's embarrassment. The wind howled outside, setting the sacks at ...
— Kings, Queens And Pawns - An American Woman at the Front • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... we entered our bunk house than we threw off all the restraint of etiquette which we had to observe at the "big" house, and quickly had a roaring fire in our stove, and while out of doors another blizzard was playing a tattoo upon the telegraph wires and was piling tons of snow upon the right of way, we had brewing in a pot upon the stove something that is not altogether in accordance with the tenets of temperance, but which meant additional cheer to us, whose thoughts were ever and anon ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... cornstalks and caused the dry twigs to rap a tattoo upon the windows of the farm houses. It attacked the shivering form of a lonely little cur who took his tail between his legs and scurried away down the road in search of some sheltering barn or shed; it nipped little Hi Babson's ears and snatching his ...
— Randy and Her Friends • Amy Brooks
... the only thing that our lads—and the pirates too, apparently—had been waiting for, for the next moment the guns of our port battery crashed forth, one after the other, while our port Maxim— the only one of the two that could be brought to bear—started its savage thud-thudding tattoo, and in less than half a minute the ship was enveloped in a cloud of acrid smoke which, hanging motionless in the stagnant air, effectually cloaked the approach of the attacking force, and as effectually prevented ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... decoration, and furnishing; of the assignment of rooms, the supply of food, the heating, lights, silver, and livery. He commanded the detachments of the Imperial Guard on duty in the Imperial palaces. He gave orders to beat the reveill and the tattoo, to open and shut the palace gates. When the Emperor was with the army, or travelling, he had to find him quarters. In 1805 the Grand Marshal's budget amounted to 2,338,167 francs. In 1806 it reached the sum of 2,770,841 francs. ...
— The Court of the Empress Josephine • Imbert de Saint-Amand
... wheel in motion. The sawmill at work. Making spears. Gathering and threshing barley. The roast ox and the feast. Making bread. The surprising novelties for the warriors. Determining to make guns before dismantling. Building a new wagon. Uraso directing the work of the men. The universal tattoo. Its significance. Designating name and rank. Clothing. Blakely drilling the army at the Brabo village. News of the approach of the old chief Suros. The Professor and party receiving him with honor. The conversation with Suros. His hearty accord. Jim and Will. ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Conquest of the Savages • Roger Thompson Finlay
... and he beat a tattoo on the sides of the horse with his feet. But as Dick had on soft slippers, he did not hurt the White Rocking Horse in the least, nor did he chip off any paint. "Here I go! Here I go!" shouted Dick. "Oh, ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... ever passed the mill without a visit, and of course Charles Stuart always explored it all with a fine air of proprietorship. So they scrambled over the silent place with its sweet smell of running water and fresh sawdust. They beat a clamorous tattoo upon the big circular saw, they went down to the lower regions and explored the dark hole where the big water-wheel hung motionless, with only the drip, drip of water from the flume above. They rode on the ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... the girls and women having heavy shocks of unkempt hair shading their great black eyes, high cheek-bones, and disfigured mouths and chins, which last are tattooed in blue dye of some sort. The males tattoo the whole face elaborately, but the women disfigure themselves thus only about the mouth and chin. It is most amusing to see them meet one another and rub noses, which is the Maori mode of salutation. This race has some very peculiar habits: they never eat salt; they ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... Nicholas's fingers were beating a light tattoo on the arm of his chair. "Well, those are my orders. That will do. You needn't come again ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... of his face was a curious discoloration in the skin and a long, crooked, cruel scar that ran diagonally across forehead and temple and cheek in a white, jagged seam. This discoloration was of a livid blue, about the tint of a tattoo mark. It made a patch the size of a man's hand, lying across the cheek and the side of the neck. Hiram could not keep his eyes from this mark and the white scar cutting ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... all blacked our faces with burnt cork, and played at the West Coast in one of the back passages, and at James being the captain of a slave ship; because he tried to catch us when we beat the tom-toms too near him when he was cleaning the plate, to make him give us rouge and whitening to tattoo with. ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... search, and all six men began a hunt that was necessarily brutal in its haste, for some indication of identity. They examined the men's pockets, their bloodstained clothes, the machine, the framework. They turned the bodies over and flung them aside. There was not a tattoo mark. . . . Everything was elaborately free of any ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... vehicle would be wanted. Not a sign of impatience escaped him until the time drew near for the departure of the early coach. Then the captain's curly lips began to twitch with anxiety, and the captain's restless fingers beat the devil's tattoo unremittingly on ...
— No Name • Wilkie Collins
... he play rat-tat-tat and beat the tattoo before the lasses again, lest he should find himself westwards in the Blue Mountains before he was well aware ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... more than half expecting to see Rozsi there; but she was not, and he noticed with faint surprise that the window was not open; the plants, too, outside, looked singularly arid. He knocked. No one came. He beat a fierce tattoo. At last the door was opened by a man with a reddish beard, and one of those sardonic faces only to be seen ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... Roll — N. roll &c v.; drumming &c v.; berloque^, bombination^, rumbling; tattoo, drumroll; dingdong; tantara^; rataplan^; whirr; ratatat, ratatat-tat; rubadub; pitapat; quaver, clutter, charivari^, racket; cuckoo; repetition &c 104; peal of bells, devil's tattoo; reverberation &c 408. [sound of railroad train rolling on rails] clickety-clack. hum, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... positively ached, until tears of weakness dribbled down his face and splashed on to the pavement. As for his head, it throbbed as if a giant hammer were within it, and some demon were rattling the interior of his skull and were dancing a tattoo upon ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... in tents, and are regarded with contempt even by the peasantry. Their women tell fortunes, tattoo, {189} and sell small-wares; the men work in iron (quincaillerie). They are all adroit thieves, and noted as such. The men may sometimes be seen going around the country with monkeys; in fact, they appear to be in all respects the same people ...
— The English Gipsies and Their Language • Charles G. Leland
... was infectious; the aged Delmia's eyes also began to gleam with religious enthusiasm, while her trembling hand caused the crutch to keep up a soft tattoo on the floor. ...
— A Lover in Homespun - And Other Stories • F. Clifford Smith
... had called and been unable to rouse him, while he lay there like a yokel and dreamed of her! He conjured up visions of all sorts of disaster. The boy might have returned and—he shuddered and drew back from the suggestion. He refused to imagine. He beat a tattoo with the ...
— The Seventh Noon • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... the engine plunged forward. Jawn fingered the lever with a lover's caress. He knew old "eleven," every foot of her, every tube, bolt, and strap. As they cleared the yards, he threw her wider and wider open until she was lunging and lurching madly. The cinders beat a tattoo upon the cab, and Jim Weeks crowded up into the corner. The fireman, a strapping young fellow, threw in great shovels of coal with the regularity of a machine, pausing only to wipe his forehead with the back of his hand as the heat grew intense. When he opened the furnace door, Jim could ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... the tattoo of her necklace, Miss Thompkins moved away in the direction of Madame Piriac, who was ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... upon the quarter-deck beneath the awning, he pulled a large tub from under a boat turned upside down over the deck cabin; and then, while the young monkey had scrambled round to his back, and was beating a tattoo with his tiny fists on his shoulders, Banou caught up a bucket and proceeded to draw water from over the side, which he dashed into the tub. When he had nearly filled the tub he felt around with his black paws as delicately as if he was about to seize a musquito, and, clutching the kicking legs with ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... for a moment, and not a suspicion of dew fell during the hours of darkness. Only the lightning came, as soon as the sun was down, blazing, flaring, and flashing round the horizon and high overhead; disturbing the darkness as the patter of a tattoo disturbs silence; punctuating the night into periods of sombre, awful blackness by moments of dazzling, blinding white fury, that made the eyes tingle through the succeeding moments of dark, and the ears shrink ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... should see you again," said the girl as though she had not heard Armitage's banality. "I know now why I spoke to you on the General and why I wrote you that note in church." Her slipper beat an impatient tattoo on the door. "But why," she began, "why are you willing to enter service as a physical instructor, or motor car ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... followed passed away, the anxious watchers still keeping vigil by turns upon the deck of the Isabel. The next day, while Lily was keeping watch, both Dan and Cyd being asleep in the cabin, she heard the dip of oars in the bayou. Her heart beat a furious tattoo against her ribs, and she almost sank with horror, as she listened to the sounds which indicated the approach of the dreaded enemy. It was her duty to call Dan; but she seemed to be riveted to her seat. The sounds came nearer and nearer, and soon ...
— Watch and Wait - or The Young Fugitives • Oliver Optic
... by came "tattoo," and finally far away a trumpet sounded "taps"; then another and another and another still. At last, when all were through, "taps" rose once more out of the darkness to the left. This last trumpeter had waited—he knew his theme and knew his power. The rest ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... were all "raw"; and my duty, with others, consisted in "licking them into shape". It was drill, drill, from morning till night; and, by early tattoo, I was always glad to crawl into my tent and go to sleep—such sleep as a man can get among scorpions, lizards, and soldier-crabs; for the little islet seemed to have within its boundaries a specimen of every reptile that came safely out of ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... this letter he did not do so. He put it in a drawer of his writing-table, so that he might find it again when necessary, but he did not put it in his breast pocket. And then he sat for some time doing nothing, looking before him, with his legs stretched out and his hand beating a little tattoo upon the table. "Well: well? well!" That was about what he said to himself, but it meant a great deal: it meant a vague but great disappointment, a sort of blank and vacuum expressed by the first of these words—and then it meant a question of great importance and many divisions. ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... heard that he wished to see her, she thought her heart could beat no faster, but his words made that small organ tattoo against her sides like the flutter of a bird's wing in fright. She could do something for him! Oh, what joy! ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... Abmarsch) has for its scene the garden of a war hospital in a quiet little Austrian town thirty miles from the front. It is an evening late in autumn. The tattoo has just sounded. All is quiet. From afar comes the sound of heavy guns, as if huge dogs were baying underground. Some young wounded officers are enjoying the peace of the evening. Three of them are talking gaily with two ladies. The fourth, ...
— The Forerunners • Romain Rolland
... of Okooloo was covered with small tattoo marks, each of which I was assured represented a ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... straightened up to look. Something struck me on the back of the head, partially stunning me and knocking me to the deck. My first thought was that something had carried away aloft; but even as I went down, and before I struck the deck, I heard the devil's own tattoo of rifles from the boats, and twisting sidewise, I caught a glimpse of the sailor who was standing guard. Two big niggers were holding his arms, and a third nigger from behind was ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Fischer beat his little tattoo upon the trapdoor, crawled through it and underneath the flap in the counter, out into the saloon. He paused for a moment to look around, on his way to the door. The fight was apparently over, for every one was standing at the counter, drinking with a swarthy-faced man whose ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the foot of the terrace, the beggar stopped, and wagged his head and said: "Pretty! The little woman is very pretty!" But he did not obey Sonia's order, who repeated it, almost angrily this time, beating a violent tattoo on the stone-work. "The ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... German base. Some landed, and their aeronauts took cover and became energetic infantry soldiers. Others hovered above the fight, their men ever and again firing shots down at some chance exposure below. The firing came in paroxysms; now there would be a watchful lull and now a rapid tattoo of shots, rising to a roar. Once or twice flying machines, as they circled warily, came right overhead, and for a time Bert gave himself ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... crick, crick, crack, crack. In three seconds ten heads were broken, with a sound just like glass bottles, under the short, deadly truncheon, and there lay half a dozen ruffians writhing on the ground and beating the Devil's tattoo with ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... looking at her. He was now feeling quite certain that his suspicions had fallen on the guilty party. Here was a jealous woman who evidently knew a good deal. Putting two and two together is the very essence of scientific thought and Dr. Starr was no beginner. Sophy's foot was beating a rapid tattoo on the floor. On her face the color ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... booms, during which he had drafted agreements at all hours of the day and night, improvising as his office the back room of a liquor saloon or the cigar counter of a barber shop; and, in default of any other writing material, he was quite prepared to tattoo a brief though binding agreement with gunpowder on the skin ...
— Elkan Lubliner, American • Montague Glass
... is but a flimsy barricade against a mob, especially if that mob be led by five-and-twenty stout-bodied seaman. We had shut it merely to gain time, and when the cudgels outside began to play tattoo upon its upper panels I looked for no more than a ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... "Dick Tattoo" was shouted quick enough along the deck, for everyone now saw that not a moment was to be lost, as the ship had just then heeled over still more. The moment the drummer was called, all hands began tumbling down the hatchways to their quarters, that ...
— The Loss of the Royal George • W.H.G. Kingston
... 'Tattoo lao! Get my pony! Here, come in out of the rain till I'm ready. What blasted nuisances you are! That's brandy. Drink some; you want it. Hang on to my stirrup and tell me if I go ...
— Under the Deodars • Rudyard Kipling
... cloudy and a wind came sighing from the north, tossing the girl's hair and tugging at the careless folds of her dress, but she heard nothing save the devil's tattoo that rang in her head, and felt nothing beyond the pain at throat and breast, which in time became so bitter that the tears were wrung from her dry eyes, and she began to weep in a pitiful woman fashion, as if her heart would burst. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... teeth with which the skin is punctured. Into these punctures a preparation made from the kernel of the candle-nut, mixed with cocoa-nut oil, is rubbed, and the mark thus made is indelible. The operation is performed by a class of men whose profession it is, and they tattoo as much at a time as the person on whom they are operating can bear; which is not much, the pain and inflammation caused by tattooing being very great, sometimes causing death. Some of the chiefs were tattooed with an ornamental stripe down the legs, which gave them the appearance of being ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... to be identified with the sleek, glib fellow who had interviewed Kirkwood in the afternoon. His flabby cheeks were ashen and trembling, and upon the back of his chair the fat white fingers were drumming incessantly an inaudible tattoo of ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance |
