Scramble

“ Scrag′-whale, a finner whale, having the back scragged. [Scand., Sw. prov. shraka, a tall tree or man, shrokk, anything shrivelled—Norw. skrekka, to shrink.]
Scraich, Scraigh, skrāh, v.i. (Scot.) to scream hoarsely: to screech, to shriek.—n. Scraich. [Gael. sgreach.]
Scramb, skramb, v.t. (prov.) to scrape together with the hands. [A variant of scramp.]
Scramble, skram′bl, v.i. to struggle to seize something before others: to catch at or strive for rudely: to wriggle along on all-fours.—v.t. to throw down to be scrambled for: to advance or push.—n. ”

“ Consequently half their pleasures and more than half their duties slip through their fingers for want of the knack of compact holding; and their lives are passed in trying to pick up what they have let drop and in frantic endeavours to remedy their mistakes. For scramblers are always making mistakes and going through an endless round of forgetting. ”

“ Never before had we been so swayed, so thrilled; never before had we been so reckless of the peril. Over us a magic snare had fallen, and we had evaded it—an unseen and delicate web, enmeshing us, drawing us together limb to limb, body to body, soul to soul, there on the kindling edges of destruction.
She sank back into the deep seat by the window, her white hands tightening on the gilded foliation of the chair's carved arms. And I saw how pale her face was and how her dark eyes were fixed steadily upon the floor as though destruction was a pit whose edge lay at her feet. ”

“ Asking to be forgiven after slamming a door is like touching off a Rodman gun, and then calling out to the fort in front to 'look out' 'take care!' 'do get out of the way.' A first class slam is cumulative long after the noise has ceased—the nerves go on slamming—the valves of the heart flap to and from—the tympanum roils a revelrie to all the shattered senses, the offender slammed at, at once subsides from rage to fear ”

“ You hear the dull thud, thud of the ball, and the shouts of “Off your side,” “Down with him,” “Put him over,” “Bravo.” This is what we call “a scrummage,” gentlemen, and the first scrummage in a School-house match was no joke in the consulship of Plancus. ”

“ As for existing cramped half an hour, that you never thought possible. Imagine now the severest cramp you ever felt artificially prolonged for hours and hours. Imagine yourself cramped in a vise, no part of you movable a hair's breadth, except your hair and your eyelids. Imagine the fierce cramp growing and growing, and rising like a tide of agony higher and higher above nature's endurance, and you will cease to wonder that a man always sunk under Hawes's man-press. ”

“ The scrubbers, unseen of men, would stay in their fastnesses all day chewing the cud they had laid up the night before, and when the sun went down and the strident laugh of the giant kingfisher had given place to the insidious air-piercing note of the large-mouthed podargus, the scrub would give up its inhabitants. ”

“ She heard the crunching of heavy feet all around her, whispering made hoarse by breath exhausted, movement across rock and scrub, retreating steps.
For an interminable time she sat there alone in the hot sun, drenched to the skin in sweat, listening, thinking, striving to find a reason for this lawless outrage. ”

“ The bedcover pressing on the arm is embraced as a mistress or felt as a heavy weight; a dream of being impaled, that is to say, of standing on a stake, the point of which was thrust through the foot, has been known to arise from the pressure of a straw lodged between the toes; a covering which has slipped to the ground is sometimes a source of great embarrassment, when it causes us to dream of appearing half clad in the street or at a social gathering ”

“ Sink until only your lips are out. I’ll support your head. There must be a limit to cramp. No man ever died of cramp on land. Then in the water no strong swimmer should die of cramp. It’s bound to reach its worst and pass. ”

“ I know a heavy soft mass struck me senseless, but my ears at moments ring yet with that horrid scream, which seemed to split and tear the night asunder, wavering, quavering, long after I was hurled on my back and my eves seemed stark open in oceans of blood. ”

“ I believe in my heart, he has gone for fineries for your ball; though he called it ‘business.’”
“I am glad Antony is coming, although I fully respect Miss Van Hoosen’s scruples with regard to dancing.”
“Yes, yes! On a road full of danger it is good to have scruples. They are like a pebble in the shoe, you cannot walk on it without a constant painful reminder; and if you lift the foot, then, you do not walk on it at all. ”

“ He could feel her form pressed against him, her milky palm against his face; then just as he swung her into destruction, he awoke with a violent start, gasping for breath, with a hammering heart and a sweating body. ”

“ Sure, to a brave man, the stab of a poniard or knife, the stroke of a sabre, or the blow from a ball, are, as respects himself, little heeded, and are faced without a moment's hesitation on very slight grounds. ”

“ Something was taking place outside which, to us, shut in there, sounded uncommonly like a scrimmage, or the beginning of one, at any rate. Someone else, apparently, had climbed over the wall, a weighty someone, for we heard him descend with a ponderous flop. Without a doubt, the first comers had heard him too, with misgivings. Something fell, with a clatter—perhaps the tool with which they had been assailing the door. There was a scurrying of feet, as of persons eager to seek safety in flight. ”

“ From a state of collapse the laws of his being bring the bird into normal behavior as quickly and completely as the collapsed rubber ball is rounded by the laws of its being. The memory of the fright seems to be an impression exactly like the dent in the rubber ball—as if it had never been. ”

“ One fact had repeatedly struck me as significant, and that was the circumstance that every morning between six and half-past, as already narrated, the same cripple went down the street; and in connexion with this, within the last few days of the time, a curious coincidence had revealed itself to me. From the tapping of his crutches on the stones I discovered that while one was shod with iron, the other was not. Now where and when had I noticed that peculiarity in a cripple before? ”

“ By that mysterious law of amalgamation which throughout nature causes appearances to exaggerate realities, the place, the hour, the mist, the mournful sea, the cloudy turmoils on the distant horizon, added to the effect of this figure, and made it seem enormous.
The mass linked to the chain presented the appearance of a scabbard. It was swaddled like a child and long like a man. There was a round thing at its summit, about which the end of the chain was rolled. The scabbard was riven asunder at the lower end, and shreds of flesh hung out between the rents. ”

“ The clash of blades in battle is less dismal, after all, than the clank of the scabbard on the pavement. And then, throwing out your chest like a bully and lacing yourself like a girl, with stays under your cuirass, is doubly ridiculous. ”

“ This I do know, that in my own soul, far more real than the demonstrable propositions of life, such as that two and two make four, is the certain assurance that my soul and Scraggles’ will meet when my body and soul are severed. ”

“ Every week saw fresh scrub-falling accident cases brought in. One in particular ought to be recorded, as showing that peace hath her heroes as well as war. An old chap, aged about sixty, scrub-falling by himself, had a tree jump back at him, jambing his foot and grinding it to pulp. He tied a bit of string round below the shin, cut off the bits of foot still dangling, and then crawled two miles through the scrub to a road. ”

“ There came to him the sound of running feet. In his fear and agony he could have shrieked, but from his parched throat there issued no sound. Friend or foe, for him it meant the same fate—one touch on that knob and a torturing death by fire.
With bursting muscles he redoubled his efforts. In a long sweep his body swayed out and up. Would he be in time? Those pattering feet, they were coming nearer and nearer. There were now but a few yards between them and that knob.
A mighty swing, a monstrous heave, his fingers crooked talon-like, and he touched the rafter, clutched—and missed. ”

“ Considering the perpetual crushing of unprotected toes by hobnailed heels, and the bending of ribs under the crushing pressure of uncompromising elbows there is heard on all sides an astonishingly small amount of cursing and swearing; but the most marvellous part of the business is the various things the people contrive to do in the very heart and thick of the crush. ”

“ If I stumble as I run, the sensation of falling provokes a movement of the hands towards the direction of the fall, the effect of which is to shield the body from too sudden a shock. If a cinder enter my eye, its lids close forcibly and a copious flow of tears tends to wash it out. ”

“ Open them she did for a moment, but the lashes seemed too heavy for the weary lids and again they rested on the pale cheeks. A sigh escaped from the cold lips. It was hard to have to come back to consciousness and not be dead, after all. ”

“ When it had said these words, the spectre took its wrapper from the table, and bound it round its head, as before. Scrooge knew this, by the smart sound its teeth made, when the jaws were brought together by the bandage. He ventured to raise his eyes again, and found his supernatural visitor confronting him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm. ”

“ The scrub is prickly and dense. Their clothes are torn, their hands and feet bleeding. Already they feel out-wearied. No one pursuing, they light a fire, and sleep. The second day they come to a sandy spit that runs out into the sea, and find that they have got too far to the eastward, and must follow the shore line to East Bay Neck. Back through the scrub they drag their heavy feet. ”

“ The Flopper halted and turned himself about, while his left hand swept his livid face, brushing from it the spurting drops, sweeping back the damp, tangled hair from his eyes—faced them till they saw an agony on human countenance that struck, stabbing, to their souls—faced them while his eyes traversed the long, long line of ghastly white faces before him, out of which eyes everywhere, row on row of them, straining, fixed, fascinated, seemed to burn like living fires as they held him in their focus. ”

“ He stared in horror at the dry lips, the swollen black tongue. In the space of seconds the hard young man was a limp scarecrow whose lips cracked and moved in a dry-as-dust whisper. The major bent his ear close to the withered mouth, listening. ”

“ It will be impossible for you to escape the influences brought to bear on you, if you remain here; the Cribbages, great and small, will lie in wait till you are napping and then fall on you and bind you, and apply the laces to your feet, and the boards to your head. ”

“ But they have gone on, fascinated, and at last have brought their unhappy countenances to a state of helpless and complete ruin. Their lips are cracked, their cheeks are swollen, their eyes are bloodshot, their noses are peeled and indescribable. ”

“ You boys have been having your own way right along, and you have done nothing but run into scrape after scrape. It is amazing the troubles you have been into and the dangers you have passed through. Several times you have placed me in deadly peril, and but for my coolness, my remarkable nerve, my extremely level head, I must have been killed or gone insane long ago. ”

“ It is impossible!” with a twist of her pretty shoulders.
“How did it come—to you?” he asked between his teeth.
Then her face grew scarlet and her eyes grew dark, and her hands contracted in his—tightened, twisted fingers entangled, until, with a little sob, she swayed toward him and he caught her. An instant, a minute—more, perhaps, she did not know—she half lay in his arms, her untaught lips cold against his. Lassitude, faint consciousness, then tiny shock on shock came the burning revulsion; and her voice came back, too, sounding strangely to her, a colourless, monotonous voice. ”

“ Her shoulders sloped, too, and looked as if they had been bent forward on purpose to squeeze her lungs together. Her skin was a bit too yellow and her teeth too large and 199her lips too shapeless. But the steel of people has nothing to do with the scabbard, I’m thinking. Bodies are many a time disguises, and there was only one place where that woman’s self peeped through like a flower through the dead coals on an ashheap. ”

“ Hill, who annotated the English edition of Swammerdam, says, ‘There is not perhaps in all the animal creation so outrageous or fierce a creature against those weaker than itself as the Water Scorpion. ”

“ After the crash of a bursting shell every one who can picks himself up, brushes the dirt off his uniform, and tries to make a joke of it. Then some one whips a handkerchief round his hand—a splinter has torn it—and another finds warm streaks running down his forehead. ”

“ I have known men cut off very suddenly in a land like this. A slip would do it sometimes—a single slip, and down you go through a crack, and only a bubble on the green water to show where it was that you sank. ”

“ Falling, at the same time, appeared scarce one of her properties, and it was positive for Lady Champer at moments that if one held out one's arms one might be, after all, much more likely to be pulled up. ”

“ I hate a cramp, he thought. It is a treachery of one's own body. ”

“ LOSS OF A SMACK’S CREW. I fell once into conversation with a smack-boy—a Yorkshire lad—who told me a story which I privately declined to believe until I saw the printed report of the inquest, and had confirmation of his narrative from other hands. Men who go to sea meet with strange accidents, and perish through causes which landsmen would ridicule as impossibilities in marine novels; but seldom do a vessel’s crew encounter such a disaster as that which befell the people of the smack Apostle, of Hull. I wish I could tell the story as the fishing apprentice gave it me. ”