Weighing machines

Usage examples of scales.

Kit roared a warning, and Don and Elda dashed indoors to say the middle of the roof was dipping downward, spreading the tiles like scales on a fir cone.

Many of its dingy green scales were split, or peeling, and they hung in ridges over the sharp bones beneath.

There was a piece of gold chain and a bent coronet caught among the broken scales there.

It glistened now, green all over, and the scales that had looked so loose and ragged had healed flat and whole again.

Every so often there would be a billow of fire and some roaring in the distance, and Scales would come sweeping inward, driving a panting huddle of men toward the dome, where Kit struggled to let them in, while Blade tried to stop the ones inside from getting out.

Instead, he mounted Nancy Cobber and rode as near to Scales as Nancy would go.

He was not going to call Scales sir again even if Scales ate him for it.

The geese, who liked to see humans being bullied, kept up beside Scales, alternately flying and waddling.

Kit might grunt every time he moved his wings, but his eyes gleamed and his crest was up cockily as he strutted over to open the camp when Scales got the soldiers walking again.

Shona was saying charmingly as Blade headed for the huge green bulk of Scales at a sharp trot.

They marched over open grassland, where trees clustered beside small streams, at quite a brisk pace, with Scales steadily crawling behind, and by evening they were beginning to see mountains in the distance ahead.

By this time Blade was ashamed that he had not trusted Scales over the gold.

As soon as the soldiers were inside and Blade had taken the animals to drink at the nearby stream, Scales beckoned Kit and made Kit walk with him all around the camp, showing him how to seal the magics of the dome more securely into the ground.

It would have been even greater fun if Blade had not kept thinking of small pigtailed men being crunched the way Scales had pretended to crunch that soldier.

When Derk finally arrived, he caused the greatest sensation of the lot, because he was riding Scales again.