The assistants seized the condemned man, and pushed him on to the bascule.
"Fantômas"
Pierre Souvestre Marcel Allain
A great gate-way, with a heavy iron-pointed portcullis hanging suspended in the dim arch above, yawned blackly upon the bascule or falling drawbridge that spanned a chasm between the blank stone walls and the roadway that winding down the steep rocky slope to the little valley just beneath.
"Otto of the Silver Hand"
Howard Pyle
Nearing the East Gate, placed on the west side of a branch of the river Eure, he saw the bascule descending; he knew that four o'clock was the hour.
"In the Day of Adversity"
John Bloundelle-Burton