Usurper

“ They roar in, mop up practically all the usurpers in sight, then we catch a few of the aliens and tell 'em. 'This is a sample. We can see you, so there's no use your sticking. Scram!' How's that?"
"Dandy, dandy. Except for the little matter of getting out of here to phone Arold. What if we're surrounded?"
"Oh, hell's tinkling bells! Where's your red Injun blood? But if you like, one of us can leave now, before they arrive. He can contact Arold, have him hurry it up, and in a day or two catch the besiegers in the rear." Geoff was jubilant, and some of his fervor rubbed off on me. ”

“ On the other side, the fourth dimension or whatever it may be, are a lot of these horrid-lookin' beasts of usurpers.
"Now here and there in the screen are holes, and through them some of the aliens are holding fake human beings, just as in our well-worn simile of the puppet show. I can see those who are leaning through the holes, but you can't.
"When they're leaning through, they haven't any powers except those of normal people. They can't hear any better than a man. They can't walk through bricks or see through stones. They can't look behind them without turning the human puppet around. ”

“ He discovered that there are among us many aliens of another race, perhaps from another dimension, or from another planet, or—who knows? He thought they were out of a different dimension, because he could see silvery lines behind them which he believed to be that dimension's scenery, as it were. Each of these aliens, these usurpers, as he called them, had stolen a human body, and was using it as a focal point of entrance into our world. Do you follow me?"
"With some difficulty, sir."
"Drop the 'sir', Johnson. We're all plain human beings together in this." ”

“ We were outnumbered, at the start, nearly two to one. But our crooks were professional killers, used to the mechanics of murder, and the usurpers were not. The hall was jammed from wall to wall with a struggling, howling, thrashing jam of fighters, so that often when a man was killed his body could not fall; conditions were thus perfect for our knifers and gougers, throttling experts and razormen.
The aliens for the most part had turned from us to engage this new menace. We tore away our barricade and charged down to mix it with them. I caught a glimpse of Arold before I struck the level. ”

“ You can pay professional rogues to commit murders, and no questions asked. So I deputized Arold to go out and collect a hundred scoundrels for me: the most reliable riffraff available, men who would, as he says, do in their old mothers for a chew of tobacco. He's to pay them ten pounds apiece in advance, with a promise of ten more when the business is done. Then, on a certain night, and within a period of a few hours, they're to strike all over England—and slay these usurpers I'll have collected in my little black book. ”

“ By oppression’s woes and pains;
By your sons in servile chains;
We will drain our dearest veins,
But they shall he free.
Lay the proud usurpers low;
Tyrants fall in ev’ry foe;
Liberty’s in every blow! ”

“ Yet if we examine with candor the conduct of these usurpers, it will appear, that they were much oftener driven into rebellion by their fears, than urged to it by their ambition. They dreaded the cruel suspicions of Gallienus; they equally dreaded the capricious violence of their troops. If the dangerous favor of the army had imprudently declared them deserving of the purple, they were marked for sure destruction; and even prudence would counsel them to secure a short enjoyment of empire, and rather to try the fortune of war than to expect the hand of an executioner. ”

“ It is asserted by some hunters, that a single urson will consume the bark of a hundred trees in the course of a year. Our urson, though it became attached to Uncle Denis and would feed out of his hand, was always an object of awe to the rest of the animals, who seemed well aware of its power of inflicting punishment on any of them who might offend it. ”

“ The Espoir brig was then in company with the Undaunted, and her commander, the Hon. Robert Cavendish Spencer, having suggested the possibility of carrying the enemy’s works by a coup-de-main, Captain Ussher left him to blockade the vessels, whilst he proceeded off Cape Sicie, to communicate with Sir Edward Pellew, by whom the Redwing (Captain Sir John Gordon Sinclair) , 200 marines, and a detachment of boats, belonging to the Caledonia, Hibernia, Barfleur, and Prince of Wales, were immediately placed at his disposal ”

“ Urquhart. It is a terrible thing to find that one’s family is stained.”
“Who are you to talk of stains?” replied Urquhart, fiercely. “A spy who would crawl into the bosom of a household, and win the confidence of all in it, from the mother by the fire to the child playing on the carpet, and would sell the trust they placed in you—would sell the woman’s kindly talk, the child’s prattle, to the ruffians who hire you. A spy talk of stains! Begone, sir, I have done with you.”
“You are violent,” said Ernest Adair, with a sinister smile, “but we will not quarrel over words. ”

“ Any individual among them could bear young, or fertilize the ova of any other individual. Fifteen years ago, when he had come to Uller as a former Terran Federation captain newly commissioned colonel in the army of the Uller Company, it had taken some time before he had become accustomed to the detailing of a non-com and a couple of privates out of each platoon for baby-sitting duty. ”

“ Auchester, or rather make Miss Lawrence take care of you; she will like to have to do so." 251
"I must go home, if it is not to be just yet, and return on purpose for the day."
"But that will fatigue you very much,—-cannot you prevent it? One ought to be quiet before a great excitement."
"Oh! you have found that. I cannot be quiet until afterwards."
"I have never had a great excitement," said Clara, innocently; "and I hope I never may. It suits me to be still."
"May that calm remain in you and for you with which you never fail to heal the soul within your power, Miss Benette!" ”

“ We very much regret that it is not in our power to place upon record the name of so magnanimous a fellow; that of his vessel was le Moulin à Café: his crew consisted of 83 men.
Lieutenant Ussher was obliged to use crutches for several months after his return to the Pelican; and his wound had not healed when he volunteered to attack another privateer schooner, lying in Artibonite river, at the west end of St. Domingo [9] . This enterprise was undertaken in Jan. 1799. The force intended to be employed consisted of 50 men, placed on board a detained merchant schooner ”

“ Thinking it probable that the Pelican, on hearing the report of the schooner’s guns, would either run into the river or send him a reinforcement, Lieutenant Ussher still continued the unequal contest; the eagerness of the enemy to keep people aloft, from whence they could look over the land and watch her motions, confirmed him in that opinion, and kept alive his hopes of final success. ”

“ The common Uistiti is, no doubt, familiar to our readers, for it is often imported into Europe. It has even reproduced in captivity, and many naturalists, as Cuvier, Pallas, and Audouin, have made some very interesting observations on it. The young ones, which are born with the eyes open, have a very large head, a dark-gray skin of pretty uniform color, excepting the tail, which plainly shows the rings. Immediately after birth they cling to their dam, who, however, does not seem to have any great affection for them, and turns them over to the male as soon as she feels tired ”

“ He sat in Charing Cross Station and made notes on them, at one stage of his adventures, and he decided that they were entering this world by usurping the bodies of newly-born children, children of unions between two of them or between one of them and a regular human. See?"
"Vaguely, sir."
"He figured out that after a few of them got into our dimension, through some fluke or other, they found that they could spawn puppet-humans who would become vehicles for others of their breed. They come 'in' by route of birth. ”

“ In fact, this is the reason why it is called sea-urchin, for urchin is an old name for hedgehog. So, when a sea-urchin crawls about, it does so partly with its sucker-feet, and partly with its spines as well.
Sometimes, however, these creatures use their sucker-feet for quite a different purpose. They poke them out as far as they can from among their spines, and then take hold of little stones, small pieces of broken shell, and other bits of rubbish [478] which they find at the bottom of the sea, and cling to them very tightly. ”

“ For Urson is ever lost in a strange apathy, a mental stupor, and life must be to him an inscrutable mystery without head or tail. He is guileless and stupid and so slow that even a cub-bear can overtake him (although clumsy little Woof, because of certain removable decorations on Urson’s back, would not care to do it a second time) and one of his only two advantages is an utter indifference to the water supply. He can get along very well on the moisture in the tree limbs on which he browses. ”

“ About 2 A.M. the schooner was perceived lying under the muzzles of the guns in the largest battery; and her crew being all asleep on the quarter-deck, she was soon afterwards silently boarded on the bow, from whence Lieutenant Ussher and his men walked aft without their shoes, and kneeling down with the points of their swords against the breasts of the Spaniards, threatened them with instant death if they gave the least alarm. ”

“ I beg you will be pleased to inform the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, that when I rejoined the Pelican, Lieutenant Ussher did his duty on board, although his wound was open and very troublesome; and I afterwards sent him on a similar service (to that on which he received his wound) in the boats of the Pelican, in the bight of Leogone, when he shewed his usual gallantry, and destroyed the French privateer. – I therefore beg leave to recommend his case to their Lordships, as that of a brave and deserving officer. I have the honor to be. ”

“ I presented her with the myrtle sprig, which she twisted into her pearls, seeming pleased with it; but otherwise she was very unexcited, though very bright. I was not bright, but very much excited; I quite shook as we walked up the soft stair-carpet side by side. She looked at me in evident surprise.
"You need not be nervous, Master Auchester, I assure you!"
"It is going into the drawing-room, and being introduced, I hate; will there be many people, do you think?" ”

“ And these suckers can be extended quite a distance beyond the spines. For example, a sea-urchin can extend a sucker from near the top of the shell, and bend it over, and lay hold of the surface upon which the animal is resting.
The sizes and forms of sea-urchins are very numerous. The ordinary kinds are two or three inches in diameter; some of the elongated kinds in the tropics have a diameter of five inches or more. Some are nearly hemispherical; others rise in the centre so as to be almost a cone ”

“ Then Utset returned to the lower world and asked Sussistinnako what she could do to harden the earth so that her people might travel over it. He asked, "Have you no medicine to make the earth firm? Have you asked Cougar and Wolf, Bear and Badger and Wolf to use their medicines to harden the earth?"
Utset said, "I have tried all these."
Then Sussistinnako said, "Others will understand." He told her to have a woman of the Kapina (spider) clan try to harden the earth. ”

“ Urquhart, and my life or death were in your hands, you would hear no word from me.”
“That swagger means that you are not. Who is?”
“It suits me to tell you in my own way, and in no other. It may occur to you on reflection that a man who has no fear may choose his own course. In my turn I demand that Mrs. Urquhart withdraw.”
He seated himself on the bed, and was so clearly resolved to be silent unless his demand were complied with, that Urquhart—after giving one savage thought to the expediency of violence—was not sorry that Bertha spoke. ”

“ Ussher, then only in the fifth year of his probationary term, was appointed acting Lieutenant of the Minotaur 74; and during the siege of that island we find him commanding a party of seamen, attached to the army under Sir Ralph Abercromby ”

“ Ursule, according to Madame Massin’s anticipations, was the bête-noire of the heirs, their sword of Damocles, and this remark, “Bah! those that live will see!” Madame Crémière’s favorite conclusion, was enough to show that they wished her more harm than good.
The tax-gatherer and the clerk, both poor compared to the postmaster, had often, by way of conversation, estimated the doctor’s inheritance. Whilst walking along the canal or on the road, if they saw their uncle coming, they would look at each other piteously. ”

“ To this day nobody knows, except, perhaps, Sir George, and the exception is doubtful. The man gave way, not from cowardice, but from courage—to do the right thing. He stopped the duel, and when the bystanders began to jeer, offered to fight on the same terms with any of them, and so silenced their laughter. Lady Ursula professed to be annoyed, but was really delighted; for not only had her life suddenly grown insurable, but she guessed that he had divined her secret, and that his thoughts of friendship for the handsome boy had changed to feelings of love for the handsome woman. ”

“ Previous to the debarkation at Cassis, a general order was issued, directing that if any man was seen to enter a house, under whatever pretence, he was instantly to be shot. Whilst Sir John Sinclair was employed getting the vessels out of the mole, Captain Ussher landed in company with Captain Spencer, and had the satisfaction to find that his wishes were most implicitly complied with, not an article of private property being touched, not any of the houses entered, and not a single peaceable inhabitant molested. ”