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More "Creak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... as it neared her, until within some twenty fathoms of the launch it dwindled away to a mere occasional fluttering gleam. A great and solemn silence prevailed, upon which such slight sounds as the flap of the sails, the pattering of the reef-points, the creak of the rudder, or the stir of some uneasy sleeper broke ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... their curse my blessing, as no doubt it was theirs when their hearts were purged by service. Morning and night I send down the moss-grown bucket with its urgent message from a dry and dusty world; the chain tightens through my hand as the liquid treasure responds to the messenger, and then with creak and jangle—the welcome of labouring earth—the bucket slowly nears the top and disperses the treasure in the waiting vessels. The Gibeonites were servants in the house of God, ministers of the sacrament of service even as the High Priest himself; and I, ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... offered up a prayer. But although a Presbyterian in practice, Sir Walter in several parts of his works expressed his dissent from several of the rigid canons of that Church, and an example occurs in that graphic scene in the Antiquary, the funeral group of Steenie Mucklebacket, where "the creak of the screw nails announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates us for ever from the mortal relicks of the person we assemble ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... went to look at her, holding their breath and walking with the utmost caution, so that the boards might not creak. Clotilde had indeed just fallen asleep: and her stupor seemed so profound that the two old women grew bold. They feared, however, that they might touch and waken her, for her chair stood close beside the bed. And then, to put one's hand under a dead man's pillow to rob him ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... shock. The cabin is as dark as midnight. The clouds of flying snow put out the day. The labored breathing of the locomotives behind you, the clouds of smoke and steam that wrap you up as in a mantle, the noonday eclipse of the sun, the surging of the ship, the rattling of chains, the creak of timbers as if the craft were aground and the sea getting out of its bed to whelm you altogether, the doubt as to what will come,—all combine to make a scene of ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... began to creak under his weight; he stooped down and felt till he found the nail holes; then he knew that he was on a timber, and he walked the whole length of the shanty, returning on the opposite side, counting the ...
— On The Blockade - SERIES: The Blue and the Gray Afloat • Oliver Optic
... again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said) there were no other boots about, and partly because they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. He had seen men run in order to slide. But why on ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... elapsed before he seemed to come silently out of the gloom again, and was half-way to the door, when there was a faint creak from below, as if from a ...
— The Dark House - A Knot Unravelled • George Manville Fenn
... looked scared. The sound of a child's voice had been so distinct—and the words "Open, open; let me in!" The wind might creak the wood, or rattle the latch, but could not speak with a child's voice, nor knock with the soft plain blows that a plump fist gives. And the strange unusual howl of the wolf-hound was an omen to be feared, be the rest what it might. Strange things were said by one and another, ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... look at these walls!—papered with two or three kinds of paper, the bare spots hung with tapestry moth-eaten and filled with spiders! And what have we for table?—a board laid on cross-bars! And the oaken chairs are rush-bottomed, and so straight the backs are a persecution! The door hinges creak in these inns, the ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... seconds past seven by the clock on the tower—the astronomical time for the sun to go down on the 30th of April. Crack went all the combination locks on all the faery raths, spilling the Little People over all the world; and creak went the gates of Tir-na-n'Og, swinging wide open for wandering mortals ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... last and with a fine elation which ever follows a dismal night in war; an elation which bounds in the bosom as soon as day has knocked the shackles from a trembling mind. Although Coleman had slept but a short time he was now as fresh as a total abstainer coming from the bath. He heard the creak of battery wheels; he saw crawling bodies of infantry moving in the dim light like ghostly processions. He felt a tremendous virility come with this new hope in the daylight. He again took satis. faction in his sentimental journey. It was a shining affair. He was on active ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... steamers passed on each side of us, and so close that we were nearly swamped in the surges produced by their wheels. I breathed easier when the boats had passed, for I knew how reckless they were under the excitement of a race. I could hear them creak and groan under the pressure, as they ...
— Down The River - Buck Bradford and His Tyrants • Oliver Optic
... eyes alert for any movement of the mastiff; but he never stirred. I was glad enough, however, on reaching the stairs, to find them newly built and the carpet thick. Up I went with a glance at every step for the table which now hid the brute's form from me, and never a creak did I wake out of that staircase till I was almost at the first landing, when my toe caught a loose stair-rod, and rattled it in a way that stopped my heart for a moment, and then set it ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. 6, No. 5, April, 1896 • Various
... you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... thrusting his arm through, he reached the lock, turned the key, and the door swung open with a dismal creak. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... abruptly as the Racer struck a lower air current a strong blast of wind made it shake and reel. Then there was a creak, a sway ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... borne in litters high on the necks of slaves, And troops of sun-burn'd husbandmen with reaping-hooks and staves, And droves of mules and asses laden with skins of wine, And endless flocks of goats and sheep, and endless herds of kine, And endless trains of wagons that creak'd beneath the weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... for? My comforting supposition of a mistake in the number of his room, made by an innocent guest, could not be stretched wide enough to account for the long pause. Perhaps it was some robber lurking about the passages! He had tried my door gently, and found it open. I had heard the door creak on its hinges in spite of all his care. Now he was doubtless waiting to make sure that this noise had not awakened me before ...
— Seen and Unseen • E. Katharine Bates
... the left where the lights of the lighthouse are supposed to be, borrow the captain's glasses, but see nothing.... Half an hour passes, then an hour. The mast sways regularly, the devils creak, the wind makes dashes at my cap.... It is not pitch dark, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... had got out on Shooters' Hill Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity; While everything around was calm and still Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he Heard—and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum Of cities, that ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... us that it means the sound of the shaking of a house during an earthquake. But the word used to mean the noise of the shaking of a house moved by a goblin; and the invisible shaker was also called Yanari. When, without apparent cause, some house would shudder and creak and groan in the night, folk used to suppose that it was being shaken from ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelope his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park; and lets the King's ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... grew wilder. The great gulf storm had not yet reached its climax, and none could tell what pitch of fury that might mean. The dull jar of the boat as she time and again was flung down by the waves, the shiver and creak and groan of the sturdy craft, told us that the end might come at any instant, though now the anchor held firm and our crawl on to the shoal had ceased. All around us was water only four or five feet deep, but water whose waves were twice as high. Once the final crash came, and it ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... by the fiery fingers of this habit. At last, pinched, shrivelled, and consumed, they will get down on their beds to die, and at the step of the doctor in the hall, or the shutting of the front door, they will start up, thinking they hear the sepulchral gates creak open. ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... last, that somebody was on the road, but she would not look. She heard the latch of the gate and the creak of its hinges. Somebody was behind her. How softly Tunis stepped! She thought that he was approaching her quietly, believing he could surprise her. In a moment she would feel his arms about her and would surprise him by laying her head back against his breast and ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... this sudden yielding. But Pitt, although he shared it, was prompt to obey. His voice rang out, giving the necessary orders, and after an instant's pause, a score of hands sprang to execute them. Came the creak of blocks and the rattle of slatting sails as they swung aweather, and Captain Blood turned and beckoned Lord Julian forward. His lordship, after a moment's hesitation, advanced in surprise and mistrust—a mistrust shared by Miss Bishop, who, like his lordship and all else aboard, though ...
— Captain Blood • Rafael Sabatini
... Lords both put together all over Asia imitating him as hes always imitating everybody I suppose he used to sleep at the foot of the bed too with his big square feet up in his wifes mouth damn this stinking thing anyway wheres this those napkins are ah yes I know I hope the old press doesnt creak ah I knew it would hes sleeping hard had a good time somewhere still she must have given him great value for his money of course he has to pay for it from her O this nuisance of a thing I hope theyll have something better for us in the other world ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... waves creep in, barely overlapping one another, the vanes at the mastheads wake, and become agitated. As the tide rises, the fishing-boats get into good spirits and dance, the flagstaff hoists a bright red flag, the steamboat smokes, cranes creak, horses and carriages dangle in the air, stray passengers and luggage appear. Now, the shipping is afloat, and comes up buoyantly, to look at the wharf. Now, the carts that have come down for coals, load away as hard as they can load. Now, the steamer smokes immensely, and occasionally ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... happily. After having conceived a hundred different tragic sequels to the accident, she was lifted by the mere creak of the gate into a condition of pure optimism, and she realized what a capacity she had for secretly being a ninny in an unexpected crisis. But she thought with satisfaction: "Anyhow, I don't show it. That's one good thing!" She was now ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... tented valley stretching away to right and left of you, with the constant roar of sluice boxes and cradles, the creak of windlasses, and the perpetual noise of human voices. There's the excitement of pegging out your claim and sinking your first shaft, wondering all the time whether it will turn up trumps or nothing. There's the honest, manly labour from dawn to dusk. And then, when daylight fails, and the lamps ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... very lonely," Bella sighed. We could hear the creak of Jim's shirt bosom that showed that he had sighed also. Aunt Selina had gripped me by the arm, and I could hear her breathing ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... afterward the faint sound of disturbed waters. When I look back at that time I figure myself as forever sitting with uplifted pen, waiting for a word that would not come, and that I did not much care about getting. The panels of the room would creak sympathetically to the opening of the entrance-door of the house, the faintest of creaks; people would cross the immense hall to the room in which they plotted; would cross leisurely, with laughter and rustling of garments that after a long time reached my ears in whispers. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... shouted Lieutenant Bishop. The brave tars seize the ropes, the trucks creak, and the great eleven-inch gun, already loaded, is out in a twinkling. Men are bringing up shot and shell. The deck is clearing of ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... of the snows of December in the roses of June. It would be a blessing, if we could quite discard the tendency. And while your trap runs smoothly and noiselessly, while the leather is fresh and the paint unscratched, do not worry yourself with visions of the day when it will rattle and creak, and when you will make it wait for you at the corner of back-streets when you drive into town. Do not vex yourself by fancying that you will never have heart to send off the old carriage, nor by wondering where you shall find the money to ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... gruesome whisper which made the cold run down our backs, 'that yon paper was your finger, one finger only of your hand, and it burned like that for ever and ever, and think of your hand and your arm and your whole body all on fire, never to go out.' We shuddered that you might have heard the form creak. 'That is hell, and that is where ony laddie will go who does not repent ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... sound was very low, but I recognised that some one was opening the door from the outside. Another creak, and then silence. Very quietly I reached for my sword and prepared to spring from the bed. Presently, as if satisfied that the sound had not disturbed me, my uninvited guest pushed the door ajar and slipped into the room. I could not perceive ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... there was a sour smell where a flock of geese had been feeding all day; flaring acridly across was a transitory reek of burnt lubricating oil, and the hint of a cigar so faint that it was gone before he could be sure of it. . . . The lumbering creak of the mill-wheel rose assertively above the drone and plash of the stream; a shiver of rain and a gentle sigh of wind in the top branches of the trees behind him were suddenly swallowed by the hoot of ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... Alaire and Dave rode back toward Las Palmas. The dry, gray grass was beginning to jewel with dew; the paths were ribbons of silver between dark blots of ink where the bushes grew. Behind rose the jingle of spurs and bridles, the creak of leather, the voices of men. It was an hour in which to talk freely, an environment suited to confidences, and Dave Law was happier than he had been for years. He closed his eyes to the future, he stopped his ears to misgivings; ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... overhauled for the corn, which is shucked as gathered, while the pumpkins are still accumulating sunshine for the golden Thanksgiving pie. From the barn yards come the pounding of the steam thresher or the creak of a windlass, suggesting that the hay crop is being baled. Everything is busy but the cows, who evidently do not like frosting on their cake and, having the day before them, can afford to wait till the good ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... there is none she drives full tilt at the ice, with her heavy plunge, runs her sloping bows up on it, treads it under her, and bursts the floes asunder. And how strong she is too! Even when she goes full speed at a floe, not a creak, not a sound, is to be heard in her; if she gives a little shake it is ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... companionable noise, to whistle or to hum, or to listen to the friendly sound of his own movements he would have felt less frightened. But the need of absolute silence in that dark prison agitated him, and in the ghostly stillness every creak ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... Pepito.' 'Tidings of Pepito,' repeated the Inglez, 'tidings of Pepito—wait—' So I did wait, congratulating myself on the success of my scheme, and handling my knife with a confident expectation of making sure work of my man, when I heard the floor creak, and looking through the key-hole, I saw the confounded Inglez cocking a pistol and putting a fresh cap on it. And do you know, General, it somehow happened that when he opened the door, I was at the bottom of ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... he drew a key from his pocket and fitted it into the lid of a secretary. As he turned it in the lock the snap of the bolt made him start. He was haggard, even ghastly, as he stood, letting the lid back slowly, lest it should creak or jar. With another key he opened a little drawer, and involuntarily looking behind him as he did so, he took out a small piece of paper, which ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... once attracted by a noise in the garden. She certainly fancied that she heard the door of the summer-house creak on its rusty hinges. At the same moment she heard Morten's heavy tread on the stone steps leading up to the front door: he must be returning from the stable. It was time to go to bed, but still she remained at the window, looking towards the summer-house. ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... that is provided the water-carrier did not die of his wound, and provided also there was no lack of stuff to grease the palms of all the officers of justice, for unless they are well greased they creak worse than the wheels ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... place had communication with my room, I succeeded, by the help of my deer-knife, in forcing back the rusty bolt; and though, from the stiffness of the hinges, I dreaded a crack, they yielded at last with only a creak. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... little hatch-gate slammed with the wind, contrasting its rude sound with the rusty creak of the "invisible" iron fence just set ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 13, No. 363, Saturday, March 28, 1829 • Various
... half-an-hour the bombax began to creak and lean a little. Then Don Pablo threw over a lasso, which had been brought along. Guapo noosed one end over a high limb, and tying a stone to the other, pitched it back to Don Pablo, who hauled it taut. ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... beyond you, Lake Michigan. And when the melodious winds of March Wrinkle you and drive on the shore The serpent rifts of sand and snow, And sway the giant limbs of oaks, Longing to bud, The boats put forth for the ports that began to stir, With the creak of reels unwinding the nets, And the ring of the caulking wedge. But in the June days— The Alabama ploughs through liquid tons Of sapphire waves. She sinks from hills to valleys of water, And rises again, Like a swimming gull! I wish a hundred years to ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... on the seat in front of her, moved away to the smoking car; and the woman in gray listened to the creak and whirr of the wheel of torturing dread, upon which some malignant fate once more bound her. Bertie had been safe in his mountain fastness, until her ill-starred advertisement coaxed him within reach of the police Briareus. Could she discern ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... in taking up the thread of our narrative, was disconsolately bathed in tears, when her ear was suddenly attracted by the creak of the court gate, and her eyes by the appearance of Pao-ch'ai beyond the threshold. Pao-y, Hsi Jen and a whole posse of inmates then walked out. She felt inclined to go up to Pao-y and ask him a question; but dreading that if she made any inquiries in the presence of such ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... genial, miraculous, we have known to proceed from a book. We go musing into the vaults of day and night; no constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored leaves; and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and wagons creak along the road. We return to the house and take up Plutarch or Augustine, and read a few sentences or pages, and lo, the air swims with life, secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand, life is made of them. Such is our debt to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... little, as she could gether up her failin' strength." Fanny could not promise the napkins, since, luckily for her, she was past speech from exhaustion, as I was with indignation; and Miss Truman, hearing the Doctor's boots creak below, showed the better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 109, November, 1866 • Various
... along the glistening lanes; His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins; Hearing the saddle creak, He'll wonder if the frost will come next week. I shall forget him in the morning light; And while we gallop on he will not speak: But at ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... and laugh off her confusion. "I don't think so, and poor Dermot did not find it so when the wrong one was left to lift him, and just ran his great stupid arm into the tenderest place in his side, and always stepped on all the boards that creak, and upset the table of physic bottles, and then said it was Harold's way of propping them up! And that's the creature they expect ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... heard the bed creak he still waited awhile, walking slowly round the house in silence and darkness. Then, as he passed the side where the bedroom was, there came the sound of a slight sleeping snore, repeated as regularly as the breath might come and go ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... house. There is a storm outside, worse than the wind that is troubling our fire. It howls above the house, and tears at the branches of the tree, till even the great trunk shivers and trembles and makes the roof creak and groan. Suddenly the door is burst open, and in, out of the storm, rushes a man, and falls before the fire as if he were so weary that he could move no more. Then from another room of the house comes the woman who has promised to ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... of the seeing. The night was dark—no moon and many clouds. Not a sound came from the close. The cattle, the horses, the pigs, the cocks and hens, the very cats and rats seemed asleep. There was not a rustle in the thatch, a creak in the couples. It was well, for the slightest noise would have brought his heart into his mouth, and he would have been in great danger of scaring the household, and for ever disgracing himself, with a shriek. Yet he longed to hear something stir. Oh! for the stamp ...
— Sir Gibbie • George MacDonald
... had faith, if it lay not resting, A bright-eyed pearl, in the heart enclosed, In heav'nward gazes its sparkle vesting, When crumbling shell leaves the core exposed? Sweet slumber follows When pain expires.... And creak the gallows, And flame the fires, Lo, martyr! heaven shall open thence, And your Redeemer ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... "These orange cloaks Are made of lead so heavy, that the weights Cause in this way their balances to creak. ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri
... been a boatswain's cat; And as for the clock the moments nicking, The Dame only gave it credit for ticking. The bark of her dog she did not catch; Nor yet the click of the lifted latch; Nor yet the creak of the opening door; Nor yet the fall of a foot on the floor— But she saw the shadow that crept on her gown And turn'd its skirt ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... you rottenly wretched," admits Beauvayse, with a confirmatory creak of the bamboo chair. "But, on the other hand, they ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... said Garry; "when you climb the stairs, step on the end either near the wall or the balustrade, then the steps won't be so apt to creak." ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... to try my whip on you," said he, thinking if it should be a human being it would doubtless make a movement. He started back with a momentary conviction that he heard a rush creak under its feet. But as it still maintained its position, he soon concluded the noise to have been only imaginary, and venturing quite close gave it a smart blow with his whip. Instantaneously poor ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... is it?" I heard Don Luis exclaim, and then came the creak of the bedstead in the adjoining room as the good man leapt from it; and I heard him busy with the flint and steel, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... Not so thick a veil In winter e'er hath Austrian Danube spread O'er his still course, nor Tanais far remote Under the chilling sky. Roll'd o'er that mass Had Tabernich or Pietrapana fall'n, Not e'en its rim had creak'd. As peeps the frog Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, So, to where modest shame appears, thus low Blue pinch'd and shrin'd in ice the spirits stood, Moving their teeth in shrill note like the stork. His face each downward ...
— The Divine Comedy • Dante
... Without a creak the chamber-door Crept open!—with a cat-like tread, Shading his lamp with hand that bore A dagger, came beside their bed The Count. His hair was tinged with gray: Gold locks brown-mixed before ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... fighting to the death. All the other forest people had fled away in terror, but the empty-headed blue jay, held by the terrible fascination, remained on his bough, watching with dilated eyes. He saw the great beads of sweat stand out on the face of each, he could hear the muscles strain and creak, he saw the two fall to the ground, locked fast in each other's arms, and then turn over and over, first the white face and then the red uppermost, and ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The occasional creak of an oar, a whispered oath of dismay, the heavy breathing of toilers, the soft blowing of the mist-that was all; no other sound on the broad, still river. It was, indeed, a night fit ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Signora down the quiet rio by which they had entered the vignoli. So elderly was the aspect of the gondola with its three gray heads to one black one, that the very dogs refrained from barking, and in the grateful hush, broken only by the dip of the oar, and the not all unmelodious creak of Pietro's heavy boots, the liquid note of the blackbird ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... each suffered horribly, and each was well aware of the other's real feelings. Sometimes there was a lull, and they could almost believe that the whole thing was over. And then the old machine gave a creak, and the rusty cog-wheels took one more turn, and they both felt the horrid ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... it. I, for instance, I am loved by women. I don't call them, I don't lure them, they come to me of themselves." He seated himself on a bag of flour and told us how the women loved him and how he handled them boldly. Then he went away, and when the door closed behind him with a creak, we were silent for a long time, thinking of him and of his stories. And then suddenly we all began to speak, and it became clear at once that he pleased every one of us. Such a kind and plain fellow. He came, sat awhile and talked. Nobody came to us before, nobody ever spoke ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... Severac Bablon's voice from the next mummy-case; and a creak told of the cabinet ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... than time to shorten our courses and turn her head, when the tempest struck us from the south-west, lashing up the sea at our stern, and making our cranky masts stoop forward and creak ...
— Kilgorman - A Story of Ireland in 1798 • Talbot Baines Reed
... about to go on when she coughed and turned on her creaking bed, and his heart fell, and he stood immovable for about five minutes. When all was quiet and she began to snore peacefully again, he went on, trying to step on the boards that did not creak, and came to Katusha's door. There was no sound to be heard. She was probably awake, or else he would have heard her breathing. But as soon as he had whispered "Katusha" she jumped up and began to persuade him, as if angrily, to ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... horrible fright," he thought; and, creeping up, he softly inserted the key, unlocked this door, and withdrew the key without a sound. Then slowly and silently he pressed down the thumb-latch, the door yielded with a faint creak, and he passed in, to stand listening and ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... hand-cart as decrepit as himself, but not nearly so cheerful; for though he spoke up briskly with a spirit uttered from far within the wrinkles and the stubble, the cart had preceded him with a very lugubrious creak. It groaned, in fact, under a load of tin cans, and I was to learn from the old man that there was, and had been, in his person, for thirteen years, such a thing in the world as a peddler of buttermilk, ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... visions of walking to death with a "firm tread," as the papers say, and "dying game" before the admiring eyes of soldiers and natives. With him it was steel-ribbed facts. He could hear the bang of the trap, the snap of the rope, and the quivering creak of the scaffold. And afterward, the lonely, hopeless years. Besides, the dishonor of it. What irony to parade with thirty years of service chevrons on his sleeves, and be pointed out as the father of a man hanged for deserting ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... and found the padlock, and her fingers pressed on the link in the chain that Gypsy Nan had described. It gave readily. She slipped it free, and opened the door. There was faint, almost inaudible, protesting creak from the hinges. She caught her breath quickly. Had anybody heard it? It—it had seemed like a cannon shot. And then her lips curled in sudden self-contempt. Who ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... in thoughtfulness he became aware of the monotony of a tuneless chant, as if, it struck him, an insane young chorister or canon were galloping straight on end hippomaniacally through the Psalms. There was a creak at intervals, leading him to think it a machine that might have run ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... raging within a few miles of us? Hark, how the thunder rumbles! and for summer rain, I never saw such broad downright flat drops fall out of the clouds; the oaks, too, notwithstanding the calm weather, sob and creak with their great boughs as if announcing a tempest. Thou canst play the rational if thou wilt; credit me for once, and let us home ere the storm begins to rage, for ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... making any noise, and leave the lady in undisturbed possession of the consulting-room. When she gets tired of waiting, you know what to tell her. If she asks when I am expected to return, say that I dine at my club, and spend the evening at the theatre. Now then, softly, Thomas! If your shoes creak, I am a ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... give a system, and therefore forces its opponents to present an alternative system, instead of simply cutting a hole in the shoe when it pinches, or striking out the driving wheel because it happens to creak unpleasantly. And I think so the more because I cannot but observe that whenever a real economic question presents itself, it has to be argued on pretty much the old principles, unless we take the heroic method of discarding argument altogether. I should be the last to deny that the ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the lava or the burnt red earth, were gaunt, tattered, and thirsty-looking, weary of crying for moisture to the pitiless skies. At last the ceaseless ripple of talk ceased, crew and passengers slept on the hot deck, and no sounds were heard but the drowsy flap of the awning, and the drowsier creak of the rudder, as the Kilauea swayed sleepily on the lazy undulations. The flag drooped and fainted with heat. The white sun blazed like a magnesium light on blue water, black lava, and fiery soil, roasting, blinding, scintillating, and ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... enterprises. Occasionally, also, he went out to sea with the sailors of Yport. On several occasions he went fishing for mackerel and, again, by moonlight, he would haul in the nets laid the night before. He loved to hear the masts creak, to breathe in the fresh and whistling gusts of wind that arose during the night; and after having tacked a long time to find the buoys, guiding himself by a peak of rocks, the roof of a belfry or the Fecamp lighthouse, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... even more marked than that of the street, a silence as heavy and profound as the grave's, so that sheer instinct prompted Lanyard to tread lightly as he made his way down the passage and across the courtyard toward the stairway; and in that hush the creak of a greaseless hinge, when the concierge opened the door of his quarters to identify this belated guest, seemed little less ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... I can see the sunlight through the open door, with a black splash across the gold, of the great yews beyond; I hear the crowing of cocks and the voice of children, the creak of a passing cart and the song of birds, all the simple, jolly sounds of that everyday life which is the plain fabric on which all history, of nations and empires and monarchs, is ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... stay indoors. Just to tramp through wet or dry heather, or under dripping or shining trees, is enough. How can one believe one has ever lain sweating with one's tongue lolling out, and listened to the whining creak of the punkah through nights too deadly hot to sleep in! It's like remembering hell while one ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... enters this vaulted passage, her firm, quick step falters. As she approaches the door, she is visibly agitated. Her hand trembles as she places it on the heavy outside lock. The lock yields; the door opens with a creak. She draws aside a heavy curtain, ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... into the dining-room. Mrs. Thorne knocked, in a whisper as it were. There was no answer. She softly unlatched the door, and a draft of air crept through, widening it with a prolonged and wistful creak. The sleeper did not stir. She had changed her pillows to the foot of the bed, and was lying in the full light, with her window-curtains drawn. In all the room there was an air of abandonment, an exhausted ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... she spoke the complaining creak of the elevator could he heard, and presently two orderlies appeared at the end of the ...
— Miss Mink's Soldier and Other Stories • Alice Hegan Rice
... scratches, and never coming near enough to be caught except when the sail was down. Fold upon fold of low hills in the distance, with hamlets showing here and there at their bases by the sea. And then, almost like a part of the picture, so subtly did the sensations blend, the slow cadenced creak of the sweeps on the gunwale, a rhythmic undercurrent ...
— Noto, An Unexplored Corner of Japan • Percival Lowell
... thought, which struck him as he mounted the servants' staircase, that he was divided but by thin walls from the object of all these strivings and diplomacies—that for the second time in his life he was under her home roof with Annette. It was a firm, old house. Their footsteps made not the slightest creak on the thick-carpeted stairs. At the door of her room, Rosalie stopped and put her mouth to ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... him to say something more until I began to wonder, then to get impatient, that he let the horse jog along, the soft creak of the gig keeping time with the leisurely motions of the pampered beast, the master's eyes fixed upon the wheel he was tapping with his whip, as if he had ...
— When Grandmamma Was New - The Story of a Virginia Childhood • Marion Harland
... making it creak, an uneasy feeling coming over him. Close as Isom was, and hard-handed and mean, Joe felt that there was a certain indelicacy in his wife's discussion of his traits ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... it caused the boat to lie over and creak so loudly as we cleft the foaming waves, that I expected to be upset every instant; and I blamed Jack in my heart for his rashness. But I did him injustice, for although, during two seconds the water rushed inboard in a torrent, he succeeded in steering us sharply round to the ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... altogether succeed, the attempt was not so futile as to betray her; and the dinner passed over, and the hot water came in, without anything arising especially to excite her alarm. At last she heard the front door open, and she listened with apprehension to every creak the rusty hinges made as Biddy vainly endeavoured to close it without a noise; but the sounds, which, in her fear, seemed so loud and remarkable to her, attracted no notice from her father or brother. Then she mixed their punch. Had Thady been looking at her he might have seen a tear ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... lone attic of a dark night. What horrid, strange, suggestive, unaccountable noises you will hear! The stillness of night is a vulgar error. All the dead things seem to be alive. Crack! That is the old chest of drawers; you never hear it crack in the daytime. Creak! There's a door ajar; you know you shut them all. Where can that latch be that rattles so? Is anybody trying it softly? or, worse than any body, is——? (Cold shiver.) Then a sudden gust that jars all the windows;—very strange!—there does not seem to be any wind about that it belongs to. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 21, July, 1859 • Various
... was dumbfounded. Scared and attentive, she listened in a maze for the sound of the front door. She heard it open. But was it possible that she heard also the creak of the gate? She sprang to the bow window with surprising activity, and pulled aside a blind, one inch.... There was Rachel tripping hatless and in her best frock down the street! Inconceivable vision, affecting Mrs. Maldon with palpitation! A girl so excellent, so lovable, so trustworthy, to be ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... fancied it was becoming more difficult to keep my footing at the window; and just when Alister had been pointing out a queer red ship with one stumpy mast crowned by a sort of cage, and telling me that it was a light-ship, our own vessel began to creak and groan worse than ever, and the floor under our feet seemed to run away from them, and by the time you had got used to going down, it caught you and jerked you up again, till my head refused to think anything about anything, and I half dropped and was half helped by Alister ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... obliged to go on deck from the fetid kennel, and he left a man to watch the sufferer. The shrill wind seemed sweet to the taste and scent, the savage howl of tearing squalls was better than the creak of dirty timbers and the noise of clashing fish-boxes; but the young man always returned to his post and tried his best ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... not realize you were coming, old man; otherwise they would have had some weather especially prepared for your benefit," Bob replied, springing into the sleigh beside his chum. "My, but this is a jolly old pung! Hear it creak. I say," he leaned forward to address the driver, "where did my ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... beautiful Harmer,—off to the country,—to the mountains and canyons,—to climb one of the sunny slopes that had beckoned to them so enticingly. Almost they held their breath at first, afraid the first creak of the car would waken them from ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... but it smelled so vilely in those scorching days that he had consulted his feelings and probably his health, by retiring to the top of the bank, a rod or more distant. We watched night after night, and at last were gratified to find that none went nearer the Creak than the top ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... humming tunes very loud, in fits and starts. Then it came to her turn to take her candle and go up stairs; she was a good half-hour later than Moggy—all was quiet within the house—only the sound of the storm—the creak and rattle of its strain, and the hurly-burly of the gusts over ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... come away! — for the scenes we leave behind us Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that's young forever; And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind, That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains. The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us, And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... to make a big attempt at it," answered the miner. They heard the rope creak and knew that he had thrown his ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... this as an example how in your letters you might write to father more the small events of your life; they amuse him immensely; tell him who has been to see you, whom you have been calling on, what you had for dinner, how the horses are, how the servants behave, if the doors creak and the windows are firm—in short, facts and events. Besides this, he does not like to be called papa, he dislikes the ...
— Bismarck and the Foundation of the German Empire • James Wycliffe Headlam
... woman slept in her lair. He peeped over to assure himself of her complete somnolence. Satisfied that Mex would not likely be roused by any slight disturbance, he stole to the front door and undid the fastenings so softly that not a creak of the bolt sliding from its staple was heard even by his own quick ear. But when he swung the door open, providing for his ready escape, the hinges gave out a complaining sigh. The sound was faint, but it startled Mex. She raised her drowsy head, ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... height, flung himself down with a little groan of relief, and shut his sun-seared eyes. The voices of the others came to him. There was little conversation. He heard Jessie's accursed halloo. Then the soft thud of the pack-horses' hoofs, the creak of the saddles. He must get up and follow now. In a minute. In a ...
— Gigolo • Edna Ferber
... and promised faithfully that we would do so; the tongue indeed swore, but the mind was unsworn. It was agreed that we should keep pinching one another to prevent our going to sleep. We did so at frequent intervals; at last our patience was rewarded with the heavy creak, as of a stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, and ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... sye I sent thee thither"; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the cheek, with "Go up, thou bald-head, it is": all in two seconds' space; and he was now about to turn anew to hack at Frankl, when his keen ear heard a creak; and he sprang up a spinning motionlessness—the Reality ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... held still; the wise ones always do, when a dog says "Stop!" They waited. After a few minutes it came again—merely the long-drawn creak of a tree bough, wind-rubbed on ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... With a creak and a bump the train started, and the Colonel ran it slowly up until the locomotive stood on the tracks exactly where Buck Ogilvy had been cutting in his crossing; whereupon the Colonel locked the brakes, opened his exhaust, and blew the boiler down. And when the last ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... cool water, while the rough meal had hardly come to an end, and I had placed myself close to Walters, to see if I could be of any use in tending him, when a faint breeze sprang up, making the sails of the ship flap to and fro, and the yards swing and creak, though she hardly stirred. With us though it was different, for giving orders to Bob Hampton to trim the sails, Mr Brymer told me to take hold of the sheet of the mizzen, and he seized the rudder, so that the next minute we ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn
... the corral, peered through the rails at the great white horse that ran here and there, whinnying occasionally for the band, and heard the creak of leather and the rattle of the bit. Pink was right; the horse was saddled, ready ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... It was a creak somewhere in the old house that disturbed him and snapped the thin, rigid little thread that seemed to paralyze his soul; and still in a sort of terror, though no longer in the same stiff agony, he made his way down the three or four further steps ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... also that I heard the door creak after us, and saw a shadow slip past as we turned this corner. He is always on the watch; it might easily be that our going out aroused his suspicions so that he is hiding somewhere to track us. More than anything else in the world, ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... back in a few moments. He had heard the window creak down, and had wondered whether the action would add ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... chairs and tables to the wall opposite. Old Giorgio had chosen that bare, whitewashed room for a retreat. It had only one window, and its only door swung out upon the track of thick dust fenced by aloe hedges between the harbour and the town, where clumsy carts used to creak along behind slow yokes of oxen guided by boys ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... The sloop began to feel the sea and swing to it. She was a dark and secret ship: not a light save for the glare of the binnacle-lamp; the only sound the creak of a block, the mutter of canvas, and the ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Adjutant said he should mark me down for the job of Physical Training Officer; but I hope he was only joking. I am not built for the work. My frame is puny and my countenance irresolute. I hate bending and stretching my arms; they creak and frighten me. I never could squat on ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... Augustus; and he held out Elias's jacket and trousers. Elias took the hint, also the clothes. Down the stairs crept the two. Out the front door, which would creak, into the moon-lit yard stole they. Elias's eyes were snapping with excitement; for, as I said, Elias was poetical, and, like all poets, he was always expecting something to turn up. At this present he was on the look-out for what he ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... bridge and shot off into space on the other side like a hurdler clearing an obstacle. With a creak and a thud the big car landed, reeled drunkenly, and straightened out in earnest, Maclaren craned his head to see the speedometer, but had not the heart to look; he began to ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... pounded on the door of the gypsy's store a few minutes before four. Her face was white and her lips set in a thin line; she breathed with difficulty and with every move she made she could feel her old bones creak. ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... Molly? you ought to have too much sense for that. A pretty mess he'll find when he comes home; but he must get out of it the best way he can, for I can't help him, at least. I don't mean to have him asked here any more—you understand, Lucy," he said, turning round at the door, with an emphatic creak of his boots. But Lucy had no mind to be seduced into any such ...
— The Perpetual Curate • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... no louder than a whisper from without—the creak of a board. Andrew Lanning slipped to the door and turned the key in the lock. When he rejoined her in the middle of the room ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... to their work and over the creak of the leather in the rowlocks the rumble and fume of the seven mile beach came mixed with the yelping and mewing of the gulls. The boat made slow progress, then a few yards from the surf line it hung ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... Oh, I don't mean accidents. But, you know, when you turn, it does creak so awfully. I shouldn't mind myself; ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... like a frozen sea. Day after day we drive southwards, the horses ready to run away; there is nothing to drive over, no ditches to fall into, no stones to carry away a wheel. The hoofs hammer on the hard ground, the wheels creak, I and my things are shaken and thrown about in the carriage, the coachman plants his feet firmly against the foot-board lest he should tumble off, and on we go over the flat dreary steppe. As we drive on day and night the tarantass seems always to be in the centre ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... he, with a motion that made you expect to hear his back creak (it was intended for a bow)—"please, sir, can I do ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... One Hundredth Street is a house decrepit with a disease of the aged. Its windowed eyes are rheumy. It sags backward on gnarled joints. All its poor old bones creak when the winds shake it. To Average Jones' inquiring gaze on this summer day it opposed the secrecy of a senile indifference. He hesitated to pull at its bell-knob, lest by that act he should exert a disruptive force which might bring all the frail structure ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... horse showed signs of starting. You almost heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward, like an old propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way; but at the sound of Mary's voice he settled back on his foundations again. It must have been a very poor selection that couldn't afford a better ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... fumbling at his window. His sleepy eyes seemed to make out a face just disappearing from sight outside. He dismissed his suspicions as the manufactures of sleep, and was about to fall back again on the comfortable divan when he heard footsteps outside, and the creak of his door-knob. He rose quickly to ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... standing out in bold relief upon a blacker, more dismal background. She was beautiful at that moment—her sides and sails unnaturally whitened against the gloom, suggesting a cameo set on a piece of slate. Our blocks began to creak, sails bulged into huge scoops, masts tilted majestically, and the Whim, freed from her enforced ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... like a bubble into the air. Some fresh horror was afoot. What was this man plotting now? She held her breath and listened painfully. She heard the doors of the oak armoire creak on their hinges as they swung open, then came the click of a glass jar. Holliday spoke, a tinge of fascinated curiosity in ...
— Juggernaut • Alice Campbell
... softly on, trying the floor of the verandah with his bare feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a little under his weight. He reached the window door of his own room, and slipped ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... He heard it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to him. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin started. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the door-way of the other room. She crept to him across ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... calves, probably because his black silk stockings never exhibited a wrinkle; they might just as well have said that he waddled, because his shoes creaked; for these last, which were always without a speck, and polished as his crown, though of a different hue, did creak, as he walked rather slowly. I cannot say that I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... folding doors and passed into the inner room, accompanied by Jessie. Julian waited for her. He found himself listening to her movements in the other room, to the creak of wood, as she pulled out drawers, to the rustle of a dress lifted from a hook, the ripple of water poured from a jug into a basin. He heard the whole tragedy of preparation, as this girl armed herself for the piteous ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... In his absence, I will ask you to listen while I walk about in his room. One can't be too particular, when rest is of such importance to your young lady—and it has struck me as just possible, that the floor of his room may be in fault. My dear, the boards may creak! I'm a sad fidget, I know; but, if the carpenter can set things right—without any horrid hammering, of course!—the sooner he is sent for, the more relieved I ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... all the stately stir, And bending to your silken flowing, One day, my banner-poles, ye creak Naked beneath the high winds blowing! One day ye fall across the wall And moulder in the moat's green bosom, While in the cleft the wild tree left Bursts into spikes ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 32, June, 1860 • Various
... he cautiously rose from the bed, and pulled off his boots, which a proper respect for his host or the bed had not prompted him to do before. The house was old, and the floors had a tendency to creak beneath his tread. With the utmost care, he crawled on his hands and knees to one of the doors of the lumber hole, which he succeeded in opening ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... called musically; a cow lowed, a dog barked; the rich, sweet breath of the vernal land mingled its odors with the sultry air of the neighboring lagoon. The wayfarers spoke little; the time hung heavy on all, no doubt; to Ferris it was a burden almost intolerable to hear the creak of the oars and the breathing of the gondoliers keeping time together. At last the boat stopped in front of the police-station in Fusina; a soldier with a sword at his side and a lantern in his hand came out and briefly parleyed with the gondoliers; they stepped ashore, ...
— A Foregone Conclusion • W. D. Howells
... moved away toward the castle, which lay about a quarter of a mile from the village. Approaching to within fifty yards of the gate, he sat down to watch. About eleven o'clock he heard the creak of the gate, and presently was startled by seeing two horsemen ride past him. "They must have muffled their horses' feet," he said to himself. "They are up to no good. I wish there had only been one ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... l'Intendant. La Potherie, who visited Quebec in 1698, and Charlevoix, who writes in 1720, describe this district as the most beautiful in the city. Instead of the crowded quays of to-day there was a terraced lawn bordered with flower gardens; and where now the winches creak and rattle, and the railway engines hiss and scream, birds sang among willow-trees, and the Angelus echoed through a quiet woodland. Across the St. Charles lay the well-ordered grounds of the Jesuit monastery, and farther to the west the lonely spire of the General Hospital peeped ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... envying these fellows, as he saw with what glee and self- satisfaction they entered into their own at Wakefield's. They were all so glad to be back, to see again the picture of Cain and Abel on the wall, to scramble for the corner seat in the ingle-bench, to hear the well-known creak on the middle landing, to catch the imperturbable tick of the dormitory clock, to see the top of Hawk's Pike looming out, down the valley, clear and sharp ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... dankly fall With a dim forethought of rain, And the robins richly call To their mates mercurial, And the tree-boughs creak and strain In the wind; When the river's rough with foam, And the new-made clearings smoke, And the clouds that go and come Shine and darken frolicsome, And the frogs at evening croak Undefined Mysteries of monotone, And by melting beds of snow ...
— Rose and Roof-Tree - Poems • George Parsons Lathrop
... crickets creak, and through the noonday glow, That crazy fiddler of the hot mid-year, The dry cicada plies his wiry bow In long-spun cadence, thin and dusty sere: From the green grass the small grasshoppers' din Spreads soft and silvery thin: And ever and anon a murmur ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... — for the scenes we leave behind us Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that's young forever; And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind, That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains. The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us, And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years; But this will end our wander-time, for ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... they would creak less," snapped Miss Panney. "How are things going on at Cobhurst? What ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... that rock there hangs a tree, And chains do creak thereon; And in those chains his memory hangs, Though all ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... not the whir of windmills but the creak of a gate in the storm that brought Mr. Magee at last to a stop. He walked gladly up the path ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... addition was, it caused the boat to lie over and creak so loudly, as we cleft the foaming waves, that I expected to be upset every instant; and I blamed Jack in my heart for his rashness. But I did him injustice; for although during two seconds the water rushed inboard in a torrent, he succeeded in steering us sharply round ...
— The Coral Island • R.M. Ballantyne
... a pin for their chattering, and stumped away as evening drew on, up the hill-side to the outlying field. There he went inside the barn and lay down; but in about an hour's time the barn began to groan and creak, so that it was ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... in teeth of the wind and pendulous labor of rolling, the three cutters joyfully took the word to go. With a creak, and a cant, and a swish of canvas, upon their light heels they flew round, and trembled with the eagerness of leaping on their way. The taper boom dipped toward the running hills of sea, and the jib-foreleech ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... to return to Neeland, but that young man motioned him violently away from his door and closed it. Then, listening, his ear against the panel, he presently heard a door in the passage creak open a little way, then close ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... Who is there? cried my father, waking, the moment the door began to creak.—I wish the smith would give a peep at that confounded hinge.—'Tis nothing, an please your honour, said Trim, but two mortars I am bringing in.—They shan't make a clatter with them here, cried my father hastily.—If Dr. Slop has any drugs to pound, ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... coldness. One gets no intimation that in fashioning them the composer has liberated himself. On the contrary, they seem icy and brain-spun. They are like men formed not out of flesh and bone and blood, but out of glass and wire and concrete. They creak and groan and grate in their motion. They have all ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... them depart through the passageway that led to the street entrance. I heard the creak of the hinges, and the clang of the bars as they fell back into place. Then a strong, sweet odour of crushed blossoms turned me faint. I loosed my hold of the screening vines and stepped backward with a sudden struggle ...
— Margaret Tudor - A Romance of Old St. Augustine • Annie T. Colcock
... she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a current of cool air rushed in and over her before ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... young cockrobin That's got no use for parents, once he's mated: But I'm, somehow, out of place within four walls, Tied to one spot—that never wander the world. I long for the rumble of wheels beneath me; to hear The clatter and creak of the lurching caravan; And the daylong patter of raindrops on the roof: Ay, and the gossip of nights about the campfire— The give-and-take of tongues: mine's getting stiff For want of use, and spoiling ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... method upon us, if we had but the wit to see it, and the humility to adopt it? What can be more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you too may look at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can—"Hear this new sound." Watch the elder children coming into the room exclaiming—"Mamma, see what ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... It used to creak and crack under the engine when it was new. McNally was nearing it now. It lay, however, just below a deep rock cut that had been made in a mountain crag ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... pot of unglazed clay that stands beside the door, poises it lightly on her hip, and runs singing to the village well, where each house has its representative waiting for the morning supply. There is the plash of dripping water, the creak of wheel and straining rope, and the chatter of ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... wont to lie at the end of the bridge, and I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long.—One other source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was a great wooden HAND,—a glove-maker's sign, which used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to catch up a little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed,—whose porringer would be laid away empty thenceforth, and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... Mayberry was making them creak," said Lodloe. "But she is not, and you may as well postpone the lesson I suppose you want to give her. She is at present taking lessons in botany from another professor"; and he hereupon stated in brief the facts of the desertion ...
— The Squirrel Inn • Frank R. Stockton
... took away the lamp to his own room, shaking his fist at himself for allowing his mother's door to creak. He pulled up his blind. The town lay as still as salt. But a steady light showed in the south, and on pressing his face against the window he saw another in the west. Mr. Carfrae's words about the night-watch came back ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... was no longer in drumming torrents, but in a soft and almost imperceptible veil; but if the rain had lost the wind had gained. And as he passed from the edge of the wood, all the trees seemed to twang and creak, or cracked loudly, parting perhaps at some dear nerve where sap and beauty would no longer course. In every bush along the edge of the wood there seemed a separate chorus of voices, melodious and terrific, whistle and whoop, shriek and moan. Even the grass nodding in the wind lent a thin voice ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... the mighty trees knock their naked arms together, and creak and cry wildly in the wind. In Forty-nine's cabin, by a flickering log-fire, Carrie sits alone. The wind howls horribly, the door creaks, and the fire snaps wickedly; the wind roars—now the roar of a far-off sea, and now it smites the ...
— Shadows of Shasta • Joaquin Miller
... if I die for it," said Deborah, and whirled up the wooden steps in a silent manner surprising in so noisy a woman. Paul heard the trap-door drop with a stealthy creak. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... waiting for the cousin of Red Feather, the wise man who might help us. I heard the rattle of the bar as the helper lifted it, then the creak of the gate. Then a furious outcry, a confusion of howls and screams, a war-whoop and a rush of feet. The Indians were within the stockade. A moment later they burst into the shop and advanced upon us, uttering blood-curdling ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... cold and clear. The December sun shines upon the glassy turf, and upon trees all clad in armor of glittering ice. And the trees creak and rattle in the north wind; and the icy splinters fall tinkling to ...
— Atlantic Monthly,Volume 14, No. 82, August, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... asleep, the beds began to creak, and amid this creaking the empress fancied she heard words that no ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... floated down the long valley and found me in my field, and finally I heard, as though the sounds were then made for the first time, all the vague murmurs of the country side—a cow-bell somewhere in the distance, the creak of a wagon, the blurred evening hum of birds, insects, frogs. So much it means for a man to stop and look up from his task. So I stood, and I looked up and down with a glow and a thrill which I cannot now look back upon without some envy and a little amusement at the very grandness ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... looked to me like Red-Head Sammy Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor." How could I till my forty acres Not to speak of getting more, With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos Stirred in my brain by crows and robins And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle— ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... gulls as they flutter Like snowflakes and fall down the sky, To swoop in the deeps of the hollows, Where the crow's-foot tosses awry; And gnats in the lee of the thickets Are swirling like waltzers in glee To the harsh, shrill creak of the crickets And the song of the lark and ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula, for instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her hand, and had to go out of the window, and pass over the plank of the mill, it was all she could do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend and creak again under her weight—but how she poured out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms—almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung—but a truce to this gossip—the fact is that these two women were the two flags of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... course, though I only stepped through the French window to lay my flowers down, in that instant Jimmie had sprung upon that slanting edge of my poor, frail little box, and in that instant the mischief was done. The box tilted and flung Jimmie forward against the curving trellis, which began to creak and groan alarmingly. All my precious nasturtiums were pitched headlong into the flower-beds below, and for once Jimmie shrieked my name in accents ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... her lowly brethren on the borders of Kashmir.... And just as he was about to enter into the great peace, his consciousness beginning to wing with cosmic sweep, the rock upon which he sat started to creak and stir, and presently he was rolled about like a haversack in a ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... untidily served one—Andrey Yefimitch would walk up and down his rooms with his arms folded, thinking. The clock would strike four, then five, and still he would be walking up and down thinking. Occasionally the kitchen door would creak, and the red and sleepy face of Daryushka ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... semblance of rotation was maintained. The bobs' crews settled themselves with the deftness of long practice. Then bending to his task the pusher at the rear dug his toes in, while the others hunched. With a creak the runners gave way their hold on the frozen snow; the bobs began slowly to move. As momentum and the downward curve of the hill exerted their influence, the pusher found his task easier and easier. His then the nice decision as to just ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... doing, her movements were far from easy. She did not roll as before, as she was kept pressed down on one side; still every now and then she gave a pitch as she glided down into the trough of the sea, which made every timber and mast creak and quiver, and few on board would have been inclined ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... each stile along the glistening lanes; His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins; Hearing the saddle creak, He'll wonder if the frost will come next week. I shall forget him in the morning light; And while we gallop on he will not speak: But at the stable-door ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... motionless for a few minutes, thinking and listening. At first all was still. Footsteps above her head,—Elizabeth was going to bed; then the familiar creak of the good woman's bed; then silence again. Rita's room was across the hall, and she could hear no sound from there. Through the open window came the soft night noises: the dew dripping from the chestnut leaves, a little ...
— Three Margarets • Laura E. Richards
... and suit-cases were carefully arranged, and they were off,—off in the beautiful Harmer,—off to the country,—to the mountains and canyons,—to climb one of the sunny slopes that had beckoned to them so enticingly. Almost they held their breath at first, afraid the first creak of the car would waken ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... days that he had consulted his feelings and probably his health, by retiring to the top of the bank, a rod or more distant. We watched night after night, and at last were gratified to find that none went nearer the Creak than the top of ...
— Andersonville, complete • John McElroy
... me,' whispered Quilp, nipping and pinching her arm; 'worm yourself into her secrets; I know you can. I'm listening, recollect. If you're not sharp enough, I'll creak the door, and woe betide you if I have to creak it ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... and where there is none she drives full tilt at the ice, with her heavy plunge, runs her sloping bows up on it, treads it under her, and bursts the floes asunder. And how strong she is too! Even when she goes full speed at a floe, not a creak, not a sound, is to be heard in her; if she gives a little shake it ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... the cold blasts swirled dreamily through the leafless branches of the Langaffer beeches, causing them to creak and moan; when the snow lay thick upon the ground, and the nights closed in apace, and the villagers relished the comforts of the "ingle-nook," then—alas!—there was no fireside enjoyment for poor Dame ...
— Fifty-Two Stories For Girls • Various
... hour they drove in silence. Only the whistle of the iron-bound runners on the powdery snow, the creak of the warming leather on the horses, the regular breathing of the team, broke the stillness of the forest. Paul hoped against hope that Catrina was asleep. She sat by his side, her arm touching his sleeve, her weight thrown against him at such times ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... Innspruck, that he died to his bewilderment without any pain whatever, but that pain came to him after he was quite dead,—not bodily pain at all, but an anguish of mind because the chains by which he was hanged would groan and creak, and the populace, mistaking that groaning for his cries, scoffed at him and ridiculed his King for sending to rescue the Princess Clementina a marrowless thing that could not die like a man. Wogan stirred ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... look, the slim stiff-collared boys! Energy that is eager and enjoys They may anon make show of In some less honest haunt; here as in pain They creak and crawl, devoid of that sans gene That virtue seems ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... grass, were rude in appearance; but they were substantial, and well calculated for the work they had to perform. The seats, of which there were four—two chairs, a bench, and a stool—were of the plainest wood, and the simplest form; but they were solid as rocks, and no complaining creak, when heavy men sat down on them, betokened bad or broken constitutions. The little table—two feet by sixteen inches—was in all respects worthy of the chairs. At one end of the hut there was a bed-place, ...
— The Golden Dream - Adventures in the Far West • R.M. Ballantyne
... Cap'n Abe as he heard the bedcords creak and the patter of the girl's feet on the matting. "Cap'n Am'zon knows of a craft that'll sail to-day from Boston and I ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... useful in this sense, even where it is wrong; because at least it does give a system, and therefore forces its opponents to present an alternative system, instead of simply cutting a hole in the shoe when it pinches, or striking out the driving wheel because it happens to creak unpleasantly. And I think so the more because I cannot but observe that whenever a real economic question presents itself, it has to be argued on pretty much the old principles, unless we take the heroic method ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... for some moments. She saw it swing around a long, narrow point of land a short distance to the south of the camp and boldly enter a bay. She was unable to make out with any distinctness what was being done there, but she heard the creak of the boom as it swung over and the rattle of the tackle as the sails came down, though unable to interpret these sounds. Soon there came a sharp whistle from human lips, answered by a similar whistle from the shore, ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... drew a key from his pocket and fitted it into the lid of a secretary. As he turned it in the lock the snap of the bolt made him start. He was haggard, even ghastly, as he stood, letting the lid back slowly, lest it should creak or jar. With another key he opened a little drawer, and involuntarily looking behind him as he did so, he took out a small piece of paper, which he concealed in ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... sensitive childhood. It was a solemn house for him. Through the basement window on a dark night he had first glimpsed Marguerite. Unforgettable event! Unlike anything else that had ever happened to anybody!... He heard a creak, and caught sight through the letter-aperture of a pair of red slippers, and then the lower half of a pair of trousers, descending the stairs. And he dropped the flap hurriedly. Mr. Haim was coming to open the door. Mr. Haim did open the door, started at the apparition of George, and stood defensively ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... of the ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery—a world of matter for solemn remark, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... first creak of the door-handle the White Linen Nurse was on her feet, breathless, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the corridor and gained her room in safety. It was an instant's work to throw off her cloak and compose herself rigidly under the single white sheet. But though she lay still her heart was beating to suffocation as she heard the creak and thud of a heavy step coming up the stairs. Then the door was opened in a stealthy way and Henson came in. He could see the outline of the white figure, and a sigh of satisfaction escaped him. A less ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... they strike, both Franks and Arrabies, Breaking the shafts of all their burnished spears. Whoso had seen that shattering of shields, Whoso had heard those shining hauberks creak, And heard those shields on iron helmets beat, Whoso had seen fall down those chevaliers, And heard men groan, dying upon that field, Some memory of bitter pains might keep. That battle is most hard ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... Petrie repented, a day out, that he had been so hardy. For the nearer we struggled to the open ocean, the greater grew the seas, which presently broke across our bows with a force that made every timber creak, and laid us over almost on our beam-ends. It was soon more than we could do to carry any but a reefed foresail; and all day long some of us were hard at work ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... its rim had creak'd. As peeps the frog Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, So, to where modest shame appears, thus low Blue pinch'd and shrin'd in ice the spirits stood, Moving ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... which the squalid street conducts us? A kind of square of leprous houses, some of which are attainable only by crazy wooden stairs without. What lies beyond this tottering flight of steps, that creak beneath our tread? - a miserable room, lighted by one dim candle, and destitute of all comfort, save that which may be hidden in a wretched bed. Beside it, sits a man: his elbows on his knees: his ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... slunk piteously out of his shop, and went into a back parlour. Dyson heard his trembling fingers fumbling with a bunch of keys, and the creak of an opening box. He came back presently with a small package neatly tied up in brown paper in his hands, and, still full of terror, handed ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... sing, and rock him, And the creak of the swaying chair, And the old dear cadence of the words ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... claret and blue which shine Under the moon like lees of wine. A coronet done in a golden scroll, And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track. They ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... away and left me in darkness, filled with a horrid suspicion. I waited on in hope of the moonlight returning, but rain set in, and I returned to my own chamber much perplexed as to what to do. Leaving the door ajar I determined to sit up and listen for any further sound, or the creak of a footstep on the stair, but though I listened till grey dawn came I ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... deep sleep that night when she heard her master's door creak. Suddenly everything came back to her. Holy Mother, the mushrooms. Did he feel very bad? The poor master! She jumped out of bed as quick as lightning and rushed to the door. But when she tore it open, she saw that it was only her mistress who had just carefully closed the ...
— Absolution • Clara Viebig
... wished I were anywhere else but in that hideous hole. I felt myself leave the ground and rise steadily. The walls of the shaft glided past me. Up, up I went. The bit of blue sky grew bigger, bigger. There was a star shining there. I watched it. I heard the creak, creak of the windlass crank. Somehow it seemed to have a sinister sound. It seemed to say: "Have a care, have a care, have a care." I was now ten feet from the top. The bucket was rocking a little, so I put out my hand and grasped ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... the summer nights the market carts creak along the London road; to London go the wild young man and the steady young man who 'betters' himself. To London goes the girl seeking a 'place.' The 'beano' comes very near to this land—so near that across its ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... Mrs. Batty, bending forward stiffly because of her constricting clothes, and with a creak and rustle, ventured to ask in low tones, 'Have you any news of Mr. Mallett lately?' The three elder ladies murmured together; Rose, indifferent, concerned with her own thoughts, ate a creamy cake. This was one of the conversations she ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... evidently a serious business, its floor of operations the smooth ground worn bare about the camp fire. One of them lay flat with a careful hand patting the dust into mounds, the other squatted near by watching, a slant of white hair falling across a rounded cheek. They did not heed the creak of the wagon wheels, but as a woman's voice called from the tent, raised their heads listening, but not answering, evidently deeming silence the ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... The creak of a saddle; the shuffling and rustle of horses moving at a walk through the long prairie grass; the sudden jolt of a wheel as it dropped from a tufty wad to the barren sand intersecting the clumps ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... as everywhere, we were given freely of such things as we required. We left in the early morning of June 26, after Pennell had done some hours' magnetic work with the Lloyd Creak and ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... and creak of bough And rustle of the frost, And winter's inner voice—avow The holy hour is crossed, And far, mysterious music sounds, Sweet like ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... you, Artamo; open this door a tiny bit; easy, don't make it creak. (Artamo obeys) That will do. (to Nicobulus) Step up here, you. See that jovial ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... if it lay not resting, A bright-eyed pearl, in the heart enclosed, In heav'nward gazes its sparkle vesting, When crumbling shell leaves the core exposed? Sweet slumber follows When pain expires.... And creak the gallows, And flame the fires, Lo, martyr! heaven shall open thence, And ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... glimmer of day came relief, but she did not sleep. The night's terror had left her nerves too shaken for repose. Yet as the sun rose and the farmyard sounds began, as she heard the mill-wheel creak and turn and the rush and roar of the water below, common sense came to her aid, and she was able to tell herself that her night alarm might have been due to nothing more than her own ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... wanting to hear a door slam already! Any one wouldn't think I'd had a special set of door nerves for years!" She started in to rock briskly. There used to be a board that creaked by the west window. Why didn't it creak now? The Mother tried ...
— The Very Small Person • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... could follow it. Then came a breeze from the river, to sing drearily through the trees. In the intervals, when the breeze was still, its absence seemed in some way, to stimulate the watchers' power of hearing, so that they could detect vague sounds which proceeded from the river. The creak of oars told of a late rower on the stream—a voice was wafted up to them, to be drowned in the sighing of the leaves set swaying by the ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... other kinds too. The fowls, the ducks, and all the cattle in the neighbouring yard are creatures too. I now look up to the Yard Cock on the partition. He certainly is of much greater consequence than the Weathercock, who is so highly placed, and who can't even creak, much less crow; and he has neither hens nor chickens, and thinks only of himself, and perspires verdigris. But the Yard Cock—he's something like a cock! His gait is like a dance, his crowing is music; and ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... turn any fellow into a brick. If there were more girls like you in the world I shouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of good men too; and the world could be oiled on all its hinges, so to speak, so that it wouldn't creak and jump and fret one at every turn as it seems to have an unpleasant habit of doing at ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... planning great agricultural enterprises. Occasionally, also, he went out to sea with the sailors of Yport. On several occasions he went fishing for mackerel and, again, by moonlight, he would haul in the nets laid the night before. He loved to hear the masts creak, to breathe in the fresh and whistling gusts of wind that arose during the night; and after having tacked a long time to find the buoys, guiding himself by a peak of rocks, the roof of a belfry or the Fecamp ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... like spiritalism. You ask any of the servants. As soon as he gets drowsy at the table, the table begins to tremble, and creak like that: tuke, ... tuke! All the servants have ...
— Redemption and Two Other Plays • Leo Tolstoy et al
... bolt in the lock, and it was followed by a slight pressure upon the door itself, as if to ascertain the security of the lock. The person, whoever it might be, was probably satisfied, for I heard the old boards of the lobby creak and strain, as if under the weight of somebody moving cautiously over them. My sense of hearing became unnaturally, almost painfully acute. I suppose the imagination added distinctness to sounds vague in themselves. I thought ...
— Two Ghostly Mysteries - A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family; and The Murdered Cousin • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... broken up as it neared her, until within some twenty fathoms of the launch it dwindled away to a mere occasional fluttering gleam. A great and solemn silence prevailed, upon which such slight sounds as the flap of the sails, the pattering of the reef-points, the creak of the rudder, or the stir of some uneasy sleeper broke with almost ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... creak he still waited awhile, walking slowly round the house in silence and darkness. Then, as he passed the side where the bedroom was, there came the sound of a slight sleeping snore, repeated as regularly as the breath might come and go in a ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... gates at the end of the avenue. Through these they beheld the waiting yellow chaise which had brought Andre-Louis. From near at hand came the creak of other wheels, the beat of other hooves, and now another vehicle came in sight, and drew to a stand-still beside the yellow chaise—a handsome equipage with polished mahogany panels on which the gold and azure of armorial bearings flashed brilliantly in the sunlight. A footman swung ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... made myself look as fine as I could, and though my heart beat loudly as I mounted the bridle-path, I put on a bold look and rang the bell. It was a clanging thing, that seemed to creak on a hinge, as I pulled the stout string from outside. A man appeared, and on my inquiry said I might wait in the porch behind the great wooden gate, while he delivered my message to his excellency the baron. It seemed to take a long time, and I sat on a stone bench, eying ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... billow, Our op'ning timbers creak; Each fears a wat'ry pillow, None stop the dreadful leak! To cling to slipp'ry shrouds, Each breathless seaman crowds, As she lay, till the day, In the ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... Lope's business, and then, beyond a doubt, they might expect to come off with flying colours; that is provided the water-carrier did not die of his wound, and provided also there was no lack of stuff to grease the palms of all the officers of justice, for unless they are well greased they creak worse than the ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... stirs in his cradle. Although the old man left his sabots at the door when he entered, his footsteps make the floor creak. The child begins to whine. The mother leans out of her bed to comfort it; and the grandfather gropes to light the lamp, so that the child shall not be frightened by the night when he awakes. The flame of the lamp lights up old Jean ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... line of flesh. Now Eric knew for the first time the awful reality of intense pain; he had determined to utter no sound, to give no sign; but when the horrible rope fell on him, griding across his back, and making his body literally creak under the blow, he quivered like an aspen-leaf in every limb, and could not suppress the harrowing murmur, "Oh ...
— Eric • Frederic William Farrar
... him to a closed door, in front of which he paused; and, as he did so, the broad leaves began to open of themselves, without creak or sound of lock or latch, or touch of foot or finger. The singularity was lost in the ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... he muttered, and thrusting his arm through, he reached the lock, turned the key, and the door swung open with a dismal creak. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... he said, "you'd turn any fellow into a brick. If there were more girls like you in the world I shouldn't be surprised if there were a lot of good men too; and the world could be oiled on all its hinges, so to speak, so that it wouldn't creak and jump and fret one at every turn as it seems to have an unpleasant habit of doing ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... possible future, and what a lovely explosion one well-directed bomb would make, I heard some one coming towards me. At once hopping off the road I crouched against one of the shell heaps where the darkness was more dense, my weight causing the wicker to creak. But the seemingly deaf individual passed by and I breathed again. Entering the main village street at a good pace, whistling a German tune, I was accosted by two Huns carrying a heavy basket on a stick. One inquired of me the ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... would be a blessing, if we could quite discard the tendency. And while your trap runs smoothly and noiselessly, while the leather is fresh and the paint unscratched, do not worry yourself with visions of the day when it will rattle and creak, and when you will make it wait for you at the corner of back-streets when you drive into town. Do not vex yourself by fancying that you will never have heart to send off the old carriage, nor by wondering where you shall find the money to buy a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... open eagerly. The ancient hinges creak and halt. A breath of dampness wafts to me The ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... work, and time was passing, so I turned to bribery, but by good fortune I'll keep my racket yet. At this very moment she will be feeling her way cautiously down that stair, and he'll be hearing the creak, and coming forward to see the cause. All bluey white they'll be, and each one so scared by the sight of the other that they'll hardly dare to breathe. Listen now while I open the door, and you may ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... ignorance, for I have noticed the same thing as in the others, in several clerics who have studied in the university for ten or twelve years. One day I was in a convent where the boards of the floor began to creak because of dryness, and the coadjutor became so frightened that he went away to sleep in another house; and the Christian reflections, jests, and anger of the Spanish cura could not restrain him.... ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... She waited, holding her breath. She heard the couch creak. Then came the sound of a ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... door of the front room; he placed his ear against the keyhole, and listened. Within all was silent. A fresh terror seized him. Why was no sound to be heard?... He opened the door cautiously lest it should creak. There sat his father asleep in the arm-chair, his head bent on his bosom, his arms hanging limp ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... Presently the creak of the door reopening roused her, and she turned, instantly on the defensive, anticipating that Olga had come back to renew the struggle. But it was only Baroni, who approached her with a look of infinite concern on his ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... only to find that every opening was securely covered with an iron shutter. We were lost! I heard John muttering to himself; then he slipped his fingers under the bottom of the shutter, braced his feet, and pulled with a superhuman strength—the strength of a last hope. With a creak the shutter gave at its fastenings, then bent in the middle, and slipped out. He then knocked out the double window with his elbow ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... Christian and Hopeful both came out. When they got to the yard door the key did just as well; but the lock of the last strong gate of Doubting Castle went hard, yet it did turn at last, though the hinge gave so loud a creak that it woke up Giant Despair, who rose to seek for the two men. But just then he felt his limbs fail, for a fit came on him, so that he could by no means reach their cell. Christian and Hopeful ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... for it but to ascend those creaking stairs again. His already heavily encumbered pockets could not be persuaded to receive more than a small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and prepared to redescend the perilous stairs. He walked as lightly as possible, dreading that every creak would bring Mrs. Wilson from her parlour. A few more steps, and he would be in the passage. A smell of dust, sounds of children crying, children talking in the kitchen! A few more steps, and, with his eyes on the parlour door, Hubert had reached the rug at the foot of the stairs. He hastened ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... for four hundred, in a year.'" Here he laid his finger on his nose—lengthwise, the Norman in him supplanting the priest in his remembrance of a good bargain. "And now it is twenty years since then. Everything creaks and cracks over there: all of us creak and crack. You should hear my chairs, elles se cassent les reins—they break their thighs continually. Ah! there goes another, I cry out, as I sit down in one in winter and hear them groan. Poor old ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... of that Than if it had been a boatswain's cat; And as for the clock the moments nicking, The dame only gave it credit for ticking. The bark of her dog she did not catch; Nor yet the click of the lifted latch; Nor yet the creak of the opening door; Nor yet the fall of a foot on the floor - But she saw the shadow that crept on her gown And turned its skirt of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... communication with my room, I succeeded, by the help of my deer-knife, in forcing back the rusty bolt; and though, from the stiffness of the hinges, I dreaded a crack, they yielded at last with only a creak. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... the wind tears along in a mad fury. The forest tops sway as with the roll of some mighty sea swept by the sudden blast of a tornado. In the rage of the storm the woodland giants creak out their impotent protests. The wind battles and tears at everything, there is no cessation in ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... roads had made him familiar with all wandering things, and the breeze on his forehead troubled him not at all: before it had wearied of wandering in the night Rodriguez had fallen asleep. Just by the edge of sleep, upon which side he knew not, he heard the window of the balcony creak, and looked up wide awake all in a moment. But nothing stirred in the darkness of the balcony and the window was fast shut. So whatever sound came from the window came not from its opening but shutting: for a while he wondered; and then his tired thoughts rested, and ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... In another moment the whole floor, with a great, sobbing creak, swayed, gave way, and fell into the burning gulf of fire below. The flames with a horrible roar rushed up, filling the upper space where the chamber floor had been; seizing on the window-shutters, mantel-piece, door-frames, and all the timbers attached to the ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... that moment the great iron gate was heard to creak on its hinges. Other wretches were being pitched ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... that stilly one-o'clock hour when all the sleeping noises of lath and wainscoting creak out, John Burkhardt lifted his head to the moving light of a lamp held like a torch over him, even the ridge of his body completely submerged beneath the great feather billow of ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... long in which to admire the elegance of such service, for all of a sudden the ceiling commenced to creak and then the whole dining-room shook. I leaped to my feet in consternation, for fear some rope-walker would fall down, and the rest of the company raised their faces, wondering as much as I what new prodigy ...
— The Satyricon, Complete • Petronius Arbiter
... at full tilt, as if a high price had been set upon the head of the pursued, and he was determined to win it, whilst Zudar, snug in his hiding-place, listened to the hundreds and hundreds of pattering feet that made the bridge creak over his head, and to the hundreds and hundreds of hoarse voices clamouring for his blood. Presently he heard them all come panting back again, cursing and swearing and consoling one another with the assurance that although they had not ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... the wail of an old ballad reached his ears. Singing, the girl did not hear him coming, and through the open door he saw that the room had been tidied up and that she was cooking supper. The baby was playing on the floor. She turned at the creak of his footstep on the threshold and for ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... away to right and left of you, with the constant roar of sluice boxes and cradles, the creak of windlasses, and the perpetual noise of human voices. There's the excitement of pegging out your claim and sinking your first shaft, wondering all the time whether it will turn up trumps or nothing. There's the honest, manly labour from dawn to dusk. And ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... and she to him, but each suffered horribly, and each was well aware of the other's real feelings. Sometimes there was a lull, and they could almost believe that the whole thing was over. And then the old machine gave a creak, and the rusty cog-wheels took one more turn, and they both felt the horrid thing which ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... door, lingering there, listening to the creak of the wheels long after he had disappeared. She was deadly tired—too tired to eat, too tired to think—yet there was more to be done before she closed her eyes. The blanket on the bed she spread upon the floor, laid in it her saddle and bridle, ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... hurrying feet, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said) there were no other boots about, and partly because they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of head that cannot help asking questions; and on this apparently trivial question his head almost split. He had seen men run in order to jump. He had seen men run in order to slide. But why on earth should a man run in order to walk? Or, again, why should ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... spear Flew wide; and Pedasus, the gallant horse, Through the right shoulder wounded; with a scream He fell, and in the dust breath'd forth his life, As, shrieking loud, his noble spirit fled. This way and that his two companions swerv'd; Creak'd the strong yoke, and tangled were the reins, As in the dust the prostrate courser lay. Automedon the means of safety saw; And drawing from beside his brawny thigh His keen-edg'd sword, with no uncertain blow Cut loose the fallen horse; again set straight, The two, extended, stretch'd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... fun for Mitty, who sat on an old stump, with her chin resting in her hands, watching to see the stout old trunk stand like a rock against their heavy blows; then lean a little; then creak, as if it were groaning with pain that its green branches must so soon wither; then totter; then fall, crashing to the earth, like the "giant" before little "David." Mitty liked it, though it was rather dangerous ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... other. But again I told myself that the hours flew, and laid hold of the jewel which is studded into the forehead of the image with one hand, and then stretching out, thrust at a corner of the eyebrow with the other. With a faint creak the massive eyeball below, a stone that I could barely have covered with my back, swung inwards. I stepped off the stair, and climbed into the gap. Inside was the chamber which is hollowed from the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... rim had creak'd. As peeps the frog Croaking above the wave, what time in dreams The village gleaner oft pursues her toil, So, to where modest shame appears, thus low Blue pinch'd and shrin'd in ice the spirits stood, Moving their ...
— The Divine Comedy, Complete - The Vision of Paradise, Purgatory and Hell • Dante Alighieri
... their voices could be heard from downstairs, but what they talked of is not known. And then came silence. Had I been at home I should have been in the room again several times, turning the handle of the door softly, releasing it so that it did not creak, and standing looking at them. It had been so a thousand times. But that night, would I have slipped out again, mind at rest, or should I have seen the change ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... other side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping and clinking. The man was trying to force the lock! This time his skill was greater or his tool was better, for there was a sudden snap and the creak of the hinges. Then a match was struck, and next instant the steady light from a candle filled the interior of the hut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted upon the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... to give an example of the entertainment which he is likely to find in this province of his; and if the reader can detect any smell of dust or hear any creak of dead bones in the story which follows, it will be a ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... counsellors are rogues, Perdie! While men of honest mind are banned. To creak upon the Gallows Tree, Or squeal in prisons over-mann'd; We want a chief to bear the brand, And bid the damned Burgundians dance; God! Where the Oriflamme should stand If Villon were the King ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... one creak, which, I must confess, sent a tingle through my nerves, I reached the upper landing, found myself in front of a closed door, and beside this door encountered ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the human body, in the highest style of poetry. Nothing can exceed the bold and brilliant treatment of a subject usually so dry and repulsive. He saw nature "wreathing through an everlasting spiral, with wheels that never dry, on axles that never creak," and sometimes sought "to uncover those secret recess is where nature is sitting at the fires in the depths of her laboratory;" whilst the picture comes recommended by the hard fidelity with which it is based on practical anatomy. It is remarkable that this sublime genius ...
— Representative Men • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... a word, half oath, half prayer, and then rattle of stirrups, the creak of saddles, and clink of spurs, followed by the driving rush of fiery horses. Cole and his men disappeared in a pall of ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... even repeated the creak of those old, rusty springs while you waited for her. And when she came—well, anyway, I got every word you said, engraved in wax, like one of those old poets of ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the Labour Members creak And a terrible ghastly pallor is On the Wee Free face as it tries to speak; But ah! what a change to each sunken cheek If you put a bit more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 1, 1920 • Various
... still in the midst of my surprise, when the door opened with a very slight creak, and in walked a slim figure so silently that I knew it ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... of majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs with a ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... fastened together quite a complicated piece of machinery, as I thought, by which I managed to pump the ice-cold water upon my devoted head. The effect was not as immediate as I had hoped. But I had faith if a little was good, more must be better. Creak—creak—creak—went the pump-handle, which did more work that afternoon than in ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... by coach is by no means the least of our sublunary pleasures. Man is a wheelable animal as well as walking one. Winter is the time for a nice inside jaunt. What divine evaporations from the coachman's muzzle! What a joyous creak in the down-flying steps!—and, oh! that comfortable alertness with which we deposit ourselves in the padded corner, and fold our coatflaps over our knees, glance at the frosty steam of the window; and then, quite la Tityre, repose ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... closed and they soon heard the slight creak of the weighted wheel as Droop set off with ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... mutual interest of labour and capital—an adjustment broken only now and again by an occasional disturbance, just to show that the centre of gravity is changing; when we observe the World Trust quietly, without a creak or a groan, annihilating the individual producer; or when, to take the sublime example which has already been quoted, we perceive a single individual, in the pursuit of his own Good, positively co-operating ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his—plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God—and, upon my soul, it is an absurd comedy of ills!" At that he had a fit of coughing, and I gave him a glass of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fastened a miniature barrel, upon which there stands erect the figure of some local saint, generally that of San Gennaro. The exact part that the barrel and the row of studs play in this mystic battle against the Evil Eye is unknown, but the two revolving flags of brass that swing and creak above the pommel itself are believed to represent "the flaming sword which turned every way," and finally expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Certainly this shimmering metal has the appearance of a flaming sword in ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... home, actually returned!" thought Lavretsky, as he entered the little vestibule, while the shutters opened, one after another, with creak and rattle, and the light of day penetrated ...
— Liza - "A nest of nobles" • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... faculties. Suddenly he was aware of other sounds outside. There was a rumble of wheels and the rattle of a hansom. The hansom came nearer and nearer. It stopped in the outside courtyard. There was the noise of a curb-chain as if the horse were shaking its head. The doors of the hansom opened with a creak and banged back on their spring. A voice, a woman's voice, said "Good-night!" and another voice, a man's voice, answered, "Good-night and thank you, miss!" Then the cab wheels turned and went off. All his senses ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... poppies grew, and at the door itself stood shadowy forms, their fingers on their lips, enjoining silence on all those who would enter in, amaranth-crowned, and softly waving sheaves of poppies that bring dreams from which there is no awakening. There was there no gate with hinges to creak or bars to clang, and into the stilly darkness Iris walked unhindered. From outer cave to inner cave she went, and each cave she left behind was less dark than the one that she entered. In the innermost room of all, on an ebony couch draped with sable curtains, the god of sleep lay drowsing. ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... Jack hitched himself along more rapidly. The branch began to creak. Our hero doubted if it would sustain their double weight. However, he trusted to the wary instinct of the ocelot, which kept coming right forward. Jack was about eight feet from the end of the branch when it gave a very ominous crack. ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... and the stone will do the rest," said Bert, with a grim attempt at humor. He pressed the diamond-shaped stone as he spoke, but there was no answering creak, nor did the ...
— A Voyage with Captain Dynamite • Charles Edward Rich
... their work and over the creak of the leather in the rowlocks the rumble and fume of the seven mile beach came mixed with the yelping and mewing of the gulls. The boat made slow progress, then a few yards from the surf line it hung for a moment till the rowers suddenly gave way and moving like a relieved ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... crumpled handkerchief. Yes, the folks are at home: they have just stepped into the next room—perhaps are eating dinner. And so you sit down in an old hickory chair, or in the high settle that stands against the wall by the fireplace, and wait, expecting every moment that the kitchen-door will creak on its wooden hinges, and Abigail, smiling and gentle, will enter to greet you. Mr. Spear understands, and, disappearing, leaves you to your ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... answered, with a rough haughtiness all her own. She heaved herself up from the gilt chair, which seemed to creak a sigh of relief; and the trio went out in the ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... lost in shadowy but closer at hand are the dark pervading greens of the trees and vegetation, palms and tree ferns and banana trees helping by their graceful form to provide the truely tropical features, while the equally graceful clumps of bamboo sway and creak in the light breeze, their pointed leaves supplying that perpetual flutter and movement which one associates with the birches and beeches of one's native land. The cultivated patches on hillside and valley are rich in colour. Here, the yellow ...
— Across the Equator - A Holiday Trip in Java • Thomas H. Reid
... up the wood-team at the gate with a great creak. "Stand here 'side of the horse a minute," he said to Elmira. He swung himself off the load and went up the path to the house. As he drew near the door he could hear his mother's chair. Ann Edwards, crippled as she was, managed, through some strange manipulation of muscles, to move herself ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... unnoticed. It was not until eleven o'clock that a halt was made. He could just discern in the darkness the dim outlines of what appeared to be a large farm-house, surrounded by barns and outhouses. Some transport had got jammed in the yard. He could hear the creak of wheels, the stamping of hoofs, and shouts. There was not a light anywhere, and they waited for half-an-hour that seemed interminable, for they were drenched through, and tired, and were longing for any cover out of the wet. Sounds of shuffling were heard in front, and at last they found ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... rubbed his hands, laughed as if he had outwitted the people of whom he was thinking, and whispered to his daughter: "The baker will wonder when he gets paid this time in glittering gold, and the butcher and Master Reinhard! My boots still creak softly when I step, and you know what that means. The soles of your little shoes probably only sing, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he was swinging on a gibbet before the whole populace of Innspruck, that he died to his bewilderment without any pain whatever, but that pain came to him after he was quite dead,—not bodily pain at all, but an anguish of mind because the chains by which he was hanged would groan and creak, and the populace, mistaking that groaning for his cries, scoffed at him and ridiculed his King for sending to rescue the Princess Clementina a marrowless thing that could not die like a man. Wogan stirred ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... rifle in a leather case. For the moment all three boys were so much engaged in examining this that they paid little attention to what was going on—hurry and confusion, shouting and laughing and excited talk, mingled with the creak of the hoists and the rattle of the donkey-engine as the ship's men now began the work of discharging the cargo of the Yucatan. It must be remembered that in Alaska few things are manufactured, and everything ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... Old Bell's chair creak and I saw him shoot a quick glance at Henry. Henry admitted, casually, that he might ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... to tickle her neck with her hind-feet. Then she'd give a big jump, casual-like, to one side of the path, and sit down again, with her ears twitching and turning as if she thought there was mischief in every flutter of a leaf or creak of a bough." ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... from his nose, his ear and his lip. Shaw's face was bleeding, too, and soon one of the Italians had joined the meek young secretary in his slumbers on the floor. Then Laurie felt his head agonizingly twisted backward, heard the creak of a rusty bolt, and, in the next instant, was hurled headlong through the suddenly opened ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... across the court-yard to the foot of the Beauchamp Tower, within which the children were confined. It was necessary to use the utmost caution, to avoid being heard by the sentinels. Bertram fitted the false key into the great iron lock of the outer door. The door opened, but with such a creak that Maude shuddered in terror lest the sentinels should hear it. She was reassured by a peal of laughter which came from beyond the wall. The sentinels were awake, but were making too much noise ...
— The White Rose of Langley - A Story of the Olden Time • Emily Sarah Holt
... loneliness of his punishment threw him on his own resources. At night he lay in his bed and heard Butsey steal out to a midnight spread behind closed doors, or to join a band that, risking the sudden creak of a treacherous step, went down the stairs and out to wend their way with other sweltering bands across the moonlit ways, through negro settlements, where frantic dogs bayed at the sticks they rattled over the picket fences, to the banks of the canal for a cooling frolic ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... The gale must have ceased some time before, to allow the sea to go down. By putting my ears to the planks I could catch the sound of a gentle ripple as she glided along, but no other noise was to be heard. The bulkheads had ceased to creak, the masts to complain, the cargo to crash, and all was perfectly ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... his own suggestion, for when he heard the front door creak on its hinges, he laid down his revolver and covered his ears with his hands. This made Rodney turn as white as a sheet and get upon his feet again, fully expecting to hear the roar of a shotgun, followed by the clatter of buckshot in the hall; but instead of that, there came the ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... in the hills above mining towns are magnificent. The long valleys, cut and slashed by the railroads and made ugly by the squalid little houses of the miners are half lost in the soft blackness. Out of the darkness sounds emerge. Coal cars creak and protest as they are pushed along rails. Voices cry out. With a long reverberating rattle one of the mine cars dumps its load down a metal chute into a car standing on the railroad tracks. In the winter little ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... The timbers creak'd, the rafters sway'd, And e'en some roofs, upheav'd and torn, Came crashing to the earth, and laid Before the view, upon ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... She did not seem to be going to bed; she kept moving about in her room. Poor Nora could scarcely restrain herself from calling out, "Oh, do be quick, Linda! What are you staying up for?" but she refrained from saying the fatal words. Presently she heard the creak of Linda's bed as she got into it. This was ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... were equal to the difficulty. When the door was to be shut, the unemployed one either fell to shovelling coals upon the fire, or was suddenly seized with a severe bronchial cough, so that the ominous creak should not be heard outside. The comfort, therefore, remained; and heartily glad were the imprisoned Jesuits to have found this means of communication by the kind ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... of him the konar trees of Bund-i-Kir showed their dark green. At the right, on top of the bluff of the eastern shore, a solitary peasant stood white against the sky. Near him a couple of oxen on an inclined plane worked the rude mechanism that drew up water to the fields. The creak of the pulleys and the splash of the dripping goatskins only made more intense the early morning silence. "Do you remember, Gaston?" asked Magin. "It was here we first had the good fortune to meet—not quite three ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... making a clean breast of the ownership of Hester. Now, as he sat still, the trouble grew upon him. He started a new sheet, and ruined that: Once he got as far as his feet, and sat down again. But at length he had quieted to the extent of deciphering ten lines of Mr. Whipple's handwriting when the creak of a door shattered ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... being in tolerable possession of his faculties at the moment, and that what he was relating to me actually occurred, he told me that he remembered at once that he had heard that peculiar creak, a few moments before Euphra and he discovered that they were left alone in this very chamber. He had never thought of ...
— David Elginbrod • George MacDonald
... mark—mark!" Mac tightened his grip, and then sagged backward as the main motors fired. The vibrations shook him slightly but deeply, and he fought to keep his hold. He felt his back creak and pop with the sudden surge of weight. Then the motors shut off, and Mac skidded several feet up the ladder. No matter how fast a man's reactions were, they couldn't be applied quickly enough to keep him from starting an involuntary leap after bracing against a suddenly removed ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... is raging within a few miles of us? Hark, how the thunder rumbles! and for summer rain, I never saw such broad downright flat drops fall out of the clouds; the oaks, too, notwithstanding the calm weather, sob and creak with their great boughs as if announcing a tempest. Thou canst play the rational if thou wilt; credit me for once, and let us home ere the storm begins to rage, for the night will ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... be of little use," replied the Major; "creak they will. I don't know whether the oxen here are like those in India; but this I know, that the creaking of the carts and hackeries there is fifty times worse than this. The natives never grease the wheels; they say the oxen ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... who writes in 1720, describe this district as the most beautiful in the city. Instead of the crowded quays of to-day there was a terraced lawn bordered with flower gardens; and where now the winches creak and rattle, and the railway engines hiss and scream, birds sang among willow-trees, and the Angelus echoed through a quiet woodland. Across the St. Charles lay the well-ordered grounds of the Jesuit monastery, and farther to the west the lonely spire of ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Juan had got out on Shooter's Hill; Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of Good and Ill Where London streets ferment in full activity, While everything around was calm and still, Except the creak of wheels, which on their pivot he Heard,—and that bee-like, bubbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... mean to say you are going to make a lady of her!" gasped Annabel, upsetting her treasures as she fell back with a gesture that made the little chair creak again, for Miss Bliss was as plump ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... not forget the genial, miraculous, we have known to proceed from a book. We go musing into the vaults of day and night; no constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored leaves; and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and wagons creak along the road. We return to the house and take up Plutarch or Augustine, and read a few sentences or pages, and lo, the air swims with life, secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand, life is made of them. Such is our debt to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... sentry palms stand motionless. Masts move against the sky. With measured creak of curving spars dhows gently to the jeweled stars Rock out ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... with which Zenobia had inspired her, our guest showed herself disquieted by the storm. When the strong puffs of wind spattered the snow against the windows and made the oaken frame of the farmhouse creak, she looked at us apprehensively, as if to inquire whether these tempestuous outbreaks did not betoken some unusual mischief in the shrieking blast. She had been bred up, no doubt, in some close nook, some inauspiciously sheltered court of the city, where the uttermost rage of a tempest, though ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... on the brightest days. To-night the heavens held no lamps aloft to guide us, and soon the darkness folded around us like a garment. I could see neither the driver nor his horses. I could hear only the sibilant whisper of the trees and the creak of our slow wheels ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... foolish enough to try to reach us; and we looked for none. So as the stout ship wallowed and plunged at her anchors—head to wind and sea, and everything, from groaning timbers to song of wind-curved rigging and creak of swinging yard, seeming to find a voice in answer to the plunge and wash of the waves, and swirl and patter of flying spray over the high bows—we found what shelter we might under bulwarks and break of fore deck, ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... contrast to the quiet and peaceful scene about us—with a low moon over San Rafael, and the lights of the shipping reflected in the placid water. A few fishing-boats were drifting out on the tide, with creak of oar and rowlock; and above all was the glare of the lighted streets and harbour lights of the ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... doorway; the fading apparition of a pair of high boots and blue overalls in another; the abrupt withdrawal of a curly blond head from a sashless window over the way. Even the saloon was deserted, although a back door in the dim recess seemed to creak mysteriously. The stage-coach, with the other passengers, ...
— Devil's Ford • Bret Harte
... keep them hot, after he had taken them from the pan. Willis tended the fire and kept the embers banked over the potatoes; and Addison got on water for coffee. About this time the door of the girls' cabin was heard to creak; and we saw Catherine ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... The great gulf storm had not yet reached its climax, and none could tell what pitch of fury that might mean. The dull jar of the boat as she time and again was flung down by the waves, the shiver and creak and groan of the sturdy craft, told us that the end might come at any instant, though now the anchor held firm and our crawl on to the shoal had ceased. All around us was water only four or five feet deep, but water whose ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... if you were familiar enough to go upstairs, you could not find the steps which had been wont to creak. And peeping into the parlor you could see that some pretty new furniture had taken the place of the shaky old lounge and chairs; one good marine picture hung between the windows and a new rug lay ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... and in a few minutes she tripped down stairs, and when her mamma followed soon after, she heard the creak of Fay's little rocking chair, and the words, "Sleep, baby, sleep," which told her as she peeped through a crack in the door, that Susy was getting her last lullaby from the fond little mother, who at the proper time presented Susy ...
— The American Missionary - Volume 42, No. 2, February 1888 • Various
... on the door of the gypsy's store a few minutes before four. Her face was white and her lips set in a thin line; she breathed with difficulty and with every move she made she could feel her old bones creak. ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... up their final hopes. Slowly they all went out in the storm and night, shutting the door on the Christmas celebration now abandoned to darkness, the creak of the hinges, the long line of snow inside ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... snow deepen before their door. First an inch, then two, then four, then six, and on and on. The roof began to strain and creak ominously beneath the great weight. All rushed forth at once into the storm, and with poles and their rude shovels they thrust the great mass of accumulated snow from the roof. This task they repeated at intervals throughout the three days, but they had little ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... avoid pursuit. He changed his course and rode toward the heart of the forest. He would take an old and untraveled bridle-trail to the Blue. He was riding in a rocky hollow when he thought he heard the creak of saddle-leather. He glanced back. No one was following him. Farther on he stopped. He was certain that he had again heard the sound. As he topped the rise he saw Corliss riding toward him. The rancher had evidently ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... stress-cries of the storm, there came the low, dirge-like monotony of the sifting snowfall. And as always in old houses there were the little voices and the minute nameless stirrings of the night. The ghost-moan of drafty chimneys and the creak of warped timbers became audible accentuators of ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... window, "I'll creak," so the window creaked. Now there was an old form outside the house, and when the window creaked, the form said: "Window, why do you creak?" "Oh!" said the window, "Titty's dead, and Tatty weeps, and the stool hops, and the broom sweeps, the door ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... and if the winds Have seen aught wondrous, they will tell it her In a mouthful of strange moans,—will bring from far, Her ears being keen, the lowing and the mad Masterful tramping of the bison herds, Tearing down headlong with their bloodshot eyes, In savage rifts of hair; the crack and creak Of ice-floes in the frozen sea, the cry Of the white bears, all in a dim blue world Mumbling their meals by twilight; or the rock And majesty of motion, when their heads Primeval trees toss in a sunny storm, And hail their nuts ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... told to go to sleep, and promised faithfully that we would do so; the tongue indeed swore, but the mind was unsworn. It was agreed that we should keep pinching one another to prevent our going to sleep. We did so at frequent intervals; at last our patience was rewarded with the heavy creak, as of a stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, and ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... face. "He's rented a lonely cabin in the Adirondacks for a year—a year! and there I'm to live! Imagine me, my dear! I shall grow so rusty that when I return to civilization I shall only be able to hang on the back door and creak while others are talking. Mercy upon us! there's DeLancy! He'll find me visiting! I'll never hear the last of this as long as I live! Where can I go? What can I get under? Oh, there's nothing big enough in all the world to cover me! ...
— The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... custom for a gentleman to envelope his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park; and lets ...
— Harvard Classics Volume 28 - Essays English and American • Various
... the old woman dared not move, for fear her boots might creak. She continually wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, and rather than snuffle, ...
— If You Touch Them They Vanish • Gouverneur Morris
... upstairs to look at her and his child; but the efforts he made at careful noiselessness made the door creak on its hinges as he opened it. The woman employed to nurse her had taken the baby into another room that no sound might rouse her from her slumber; and Philip would probably have been warned against entering the chamber where his wife lay sleeping had he been perceived by the ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... boat carried up to him an impression of mixed doubt and discomfort—ultimate disbelief in his possession of arms, an energetic oath or two, and another creak of the oar. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... cool tang of burning leaves and brush heaps, the lazy smoke of which floated down the long valley and found me in my field, and finally I heard, as though the sounds were then made for the first time, all the vague murmurs of the country side—a cow-bell somewhere in the distance, the creak of a wagon, the blurred evening hum of birds, insects, frogs. So much it means for a man to stop and look up from his task. So I stood, and I looked up and down with a glow and a thrill which I cannot now look back upon without ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... his window. His sleepy eyes seemed to make out a face just disappearing from sight outside. He dismissed his suspicions as the manufactures of sleep, and was about to fall back again on the comfortable divan when he heard footsteps outside, and the creak of his door-knob. He rose quickly to ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... through. Aren't you, Thomas Jefferson? It's been a pretty LONG quilt. You get sort of tired when you quilt a LONG quilt. It makes your back creak when you unbend it; and when you quilt in a barn, of course you can't see without squinching, and it hurts ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... tongues with tasting, their hands with snow-balling; Or rioted in a drift, plunging up to the knees; Or peering up from under the white-mossed wonder, "O look at the trees!" they cried, "O look at the trees!" With lessened load a few carts creak and blunder, Following along the white deserted way, A country company long dispersed asunder: When now already the sun, in pale display Standing by Paul's high dome, spread forth below His sparkling beams, ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... bored they look, the slim stiff-collared boys! Energy that is eager and enjoys They may anon make show of In some less honest haunt; here as in pain They creak and crawl, devoid of that sans gene That ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98 February 15, 1890 • Various
... twisting stairs! Now that Willy and I have "grown up and gone away," do they creak gaily beneath the happy feet of children still, I wonder, or only groan with the heavy tread of sober grown-ups? Often ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... moment's regret, now that they were parted, and if he could yet find a way of happiness for both, better than cold wisdom, was there no hope? It was of a way to reach her that he was thinking to-night; and abruptly the big chair ceased to swing and creak. "I'll go and see that chap they call the Dook!" Nick mumbled on a sudden resolution, and knocked out the ashes from ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... single square window in the end of the chambermaid's cabin looked out on the wheel, but at all times, except when the wind was blowing from just the right quarter, this window was deluged with a veritable Niagara of water. The continual shake of the cabin, the creak of the rudder-beam working to and fro, the watery thunder of the wheel, and the solemn rumble of the engines made conversation impossible until the travelers grew accustomed to the noises. Still, Cissie found it pleasant. ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... the key turn in the lock as they left the cabin. Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... although I take your meaning, 'tis with such a heavy mind! . . . 'Dust and ashes!' So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... crouched near the roots, shivering and whining. A ray of hope flashed across her mind. She drew a heavy blanket from the bed, and, wrapping it about the babe, waded in the deepening waters to the door. As the tree swung again, broadside on, making the little cabin creak and tremble, she leaped on to its trunk. By God's mercy she succeeded in obtaining a footing on its slippery surface, and, twining an arm about its roots, she held in the other her moaning child. Then something cracked near the front ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... hands dropped from the piano the unmistakable creak of red wheels sounded on the frozen ...
— Peace on Earth, Good-will to Dogs • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... low brow'd cavern, where the wave Plash'd sapping its worn ribs (the while without, And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine, And shook its earthly socket, for we heard, In rising and in falling with the tide, Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak), Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent; And mine, with love too high to be express'd Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from All contemplation of all forms, did pause To worship mine own image, laved in light, The centre of the splendours, all unworthy Of such a shrine—mine image in her ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... dislike, such as most girls have, to see her brother engrossed by any one, but no more did she like to see another man preferred to Reginald; she was jealous both ways. As she sat and watched, a slight little creak came to her sharp ears, and looking up she saw Mrs. Hurst's drawing-room window opened the very least little bit in the world. Ah! Janey said, with a long breath. There was nothing she would not have given to have ...
— Phoebe, Junior • Mrs [Margaret] Oliphant
... other yacht standing out in bold relief upon a blacker, more dismal background. She was beautiful at that moment—her sides and sails unnaturally whitened against the gloom, suggesting a cameo set on a piece of slate. Our blocks began to creak, sails bulged into huge scoops, masts tilted majestically, and the Whim, freed from her enforced ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... to October 13. — The wind is blowing hard from the northeast, and the Chancellor, under low-reefed top-sail and fore-sail, and laboring against a heavy sea, has been obliged to be brought ahull. The joists and girders all creak again until one's teeth are set on edge. I am the only passenger not remaining below; but I prefer being on deck notwithstanding the driving rain, fine as dust, which penetrates to the very skin. We have been driven along in this fashion for the best part of two days; the "stiffish ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... of ten minutes, however, the wind carried with it the creak of rowlocks. A moment later a light, flat duck-boat shot around the bend and drew ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... "It can creak and groan when it gets dry for a little oil. And it will be like a camel if you put too heavy a load on it," returned ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... later the breeze came. Frank was pacing up and down the deck, when there was a slight creak above. He ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... hurry-scurry and play, Or sleep in a round coil half the day; While, creakety-creak, the rockers go, And the mittens grow, and grow, and grow, So shapely and fast— They are ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... rambled a long time over the dewy grass. He came across a little narrow path; and went along it. It led him up to a long fence, and to a little gate; he tried, not knowing why, to push it open. With a faint creak the gate opened, as though it had been waiting the touch of his hand. Lavretsky went into the garden. After a few paces along a walk of lime-trees he stopped short in amazement; he recognised ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... hour is not so much in the wasted time as in the wasted power. Idleness rusts the nerves and makes the muscles creak. Work has system, laziness ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... a far-away look in his eyes, while the aged servant followed him weeping. The sun was setting, and over the eastern sky was flung a heavy curtain of clouds. A dry wind shook the tree-tops and made the bamboo clumps creak. Ibarra went bareheaded, but no tear wet his eyes nor did any sigh escape from his breast. He moved as if fleeing from something, perhaps the shade of his father, perhaps the approaching storm. He crossed through the town to the outskirts on the opposite side and turned toward the ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... and shot off into space on the other side like a hurdler clearing an obstacle. With a creak and a thud the big car landed, reeled drunkenly, and straightened out in earnest, Maclaren craned his head to see the speedometer, but had not the heart to look; he ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... far on in the night and the empty building of the bank was as still as death. Pupkin could hear the stairs creak under his feet, and as he went he thought he heard another sound like the opening or closing of a door. But it sounded not like the sharp ordinary noise of a closing door but with a dull muffled noise as if someone had shut the iron door ...
— Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town • Stephen Leacock
... piers were run out to sea the water in the Tyne has been much deepened; but this advantage has its drawback in the fact that the sea pours through the deepened channel like the swirl of a millrace. As soon as the tiers of shipping begin to creak and moan with the lurching swell the people know that there may be bad work. The brigadesmen sit chatting in their warm shed. They know that they must go to work in the morning; they know that they may be ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... bank. When the river is low there are three such basins, placed one above the other, as if they were stages by which the precious water mounts to the fields of corn and lucerne. And then three "shadufs," one above the other, creak together, lowering and raising their great scarabaeus' horns to the rhythm of the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... chair gave a creak, and began to move out of the cottage, and into the forest, the very way Dame Frostyface had taken, where it rolled along at the rate of a coach and six. Snowflower was amazed at this way of travelling, but the chair never stopped nor stayed the whole summer day, ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... by, an' thar's the poundin' of a pony's hoofs, an' the creak of saddle-leathers, out in front. It's the Red Dog chief, who's ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... than a whisper from without—the creak of a board. Andrew Lanning slipped to the door and turned the key in the lock. When he rejoined her in the middle of the room ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... then, beyond a doubt, they might expect to come off with flying colours; that is provided the water-carrier did not die of his wound, and provided also there was no lack of stuff to grease the palms of all the officers of justice, for unless they are well greased they creak worse than the wheels of a ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... After the lamp was blown out and everything was dark, her mother heard a soft stir and the pat of a naked foot in there, then she heard the door swing to with a cautious creak and the bolt slide. She knew with a great pang, that Lois had locked her door against ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the stairs, through the rooms, and rested before a fine window, where probably the lady was also. You can believe that the poor lover remained melancholy and dreaming, and not knowing what to do. The window gave a sudden creak and broke his reverie. Fancying that his lady was about to call him, he looked up again, and but for the friendly shelter of the balcony, which was a helmet to him, he would have received a stream of water and the utensil which contained ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... made no answer, but sat looking forward thoughtfully and tapping the dashboard with his whipstock, and we rode on in a silence broken only by the creak of the evener and the sound of the horses' ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... din of the elements a shout sounded in the night. The Deputy raised his head, and glanced towards the woman. A moment later they heard the gate creak, and steps upon the path that led to ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... on, while the little girl still held the parasol aloft and looked down with a great wonder at the frowsy, unkempt creature, trying to reconcile it with the little part of life that she knew. To her ears came the cries of men, the stamp of hoofs on the bridge, and the creak and groan of wagons heavy-laden. It was a breathless California Indian summer day. Light fleeces of cloud drifted in the azure sky, but to the west heavy cloud banks threatened with rain. A bee droned lazily by. From farther thickets came the ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... the bombax began to creak and lean a little. Then Don Pablo threw over a lasso, which had been brought along. Guapo noosed one end over a high limb, and tying a stone to the other, pitched it back to Don Pablo, who hauled it taut. Then a few cuts of the axe broke the skin of the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... themselves out in his black face, and then he would lie blinded and invisible in the midst of an intense darkness. He could hear on the quiet deck soft footfalls, the breathing of some man lounging on the doorstep; the low creak of swaying masts; or the calm voice of the watch-officer reverberating aloft, hard and loud, amongst the unstirring sails. He listened with avidity, taking a rest in the attentive perception of the slightest sound from the fatiguing wanderings of his sleeplessness. He was cheered ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... gold ring on the little finger, and wondered if he were married—if his death would leave wailing orphans in his home, and a broken-hearted widow at the desolate hearthstone. Absorbed in her melancholy task, she heard neither the sound of strange voices in the passage, nor the faint creak of the door as it swung back on its rusty hinges; but a shrill scream, a wild, despairing shriek terrified her, and her heart seemed to stand still as she bounded away from the side of the coffin. The light of the setting sun streamed through the window, and over the white, convulsed ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... bed it was almost dawn. She heard Herman come up, heard the heavy thump of his shoes on the floor, and the creak immediately following that showed he had lain down without undressing. By the absence of his resonant snoring she knew he was not sleeping, either. She pictured him lying there, his eyes on the door, in ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... prayer. But although a Presbyterian in practice, Sir Walter in several parts of his works expressed his dissent from several of the rigid canons of that Church, and an example occurs in that graphic scene in the Antiquary, the funeral group of Steenie Mucklebacket, where "the creak of the screw nails announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates us for ever from the mortal relicks of the person we assemble to mourn has usually its ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... tree; I have sat in its boughs and looked seaward for hours. I remember the creak of its branches, the scent of the flowers That climbed round the mouth of the cave. It is odd I recall Those little things best, that I scarcely ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the long line that stood nearest the spigot, now staggering and splashing as he lugged a full pail, now scampering back happily with an empty one. And he was beside a stairway, and on the point of taking in a drink to the horse stalled closest to the entrance, when he heard several voices, the creak of doors, and footsteps. So he paused, the bucket swinging from both hands, until half a dozen pairs of shaggy legs appeared just above him. Then as the big hats were bobbing into view, so that he knew his labors could be seen and appreciated, he ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... the old horse showed signs of starting. You almost heard the wooden joints CREAK as he lurched forward, like an old propped-up humpy when the rotting props give way; but at the sound of Mary's voice he settled back on his foundations again. It must have been a very poor selection that couldn't afford a better spare ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... old print and old bindings, and looked up into the high, light vaults that hung over quiet book-laden galleries, alcoves and tables, and glazed cases where rarer treasures gleamed more vaguely, over busts of benefactors and portraits of worthies, bowed heads of working students and the gentle creak of passing messengers—as he took possession, in a comprehensive glance, of the wealth and wisdom of the place, he felt more than ever the soreness of an opportunity missed; but he abstained from expressing it (it was too deep for that), and in a ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. II (of II) • Henry James
... ponderous wall frowned a more ponderous gate. It was riveted and studded with iron bolts, and surmounted with jagged iron spikes. What impressions of deep awe did it inspire! It was never opened save for the three periodical egressions and ingressions already mentioned; then, in every creak of its mighty hinges, we found a plenitude of mystery—a world of matter for solemn remark, or for more solemn meditation. The extensive inclosure was irregular in form, having many capacious recesses. Of these, ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... freshened,' said Long John. 'I heard the creak o' davits just after the first discharge. She was lowering her ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The cottage began to creak without delay, and turned round with the floor facing the travellers. Old Yaga was on the look-out, and came to meet them. As soon as she got the Water of Youth she sprinkled herself with it, and instantly everything about her that was old and ugly became young and charming. So pleased was she ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs with a ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... furtive glance behind her, she peered more closely, holding Clem fast by the sleeve. Yes, certainly the bolts were drawn, and the key had not been turned in the lock. Very cautiously she tried the heavy latch. The door opened easily—though with a creak that fetched her heart into ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mariet, why is your land so mournful? I walk along your paths and only the cobblestones creak under my feet. And on both sides are ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... west, which burst the clouds, let through the sun, and set the mill to the turning. There was something of spring in the sunshine, or else it was in my heart; and the appearing of the great sails one after another from behind the hill diverted me extremely. At times I could hear a creak of the machinery; and by half-past eight of the day Catriona began to sing in the house. At this I would have cast my hat in the air; and I thought this dreary, desert place was like ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... well they strike, both Franks and Arrabies, Breaking the shafts of all their burnished spears. Whoso had seen that shattering of shields, Whoso had heard those shining hauberks creak, And heard those shields on iron helmets beat, Whoso had seen fall down those chevaliers, And heard men groan, dying upon that field, Some memory of bitter pains might keep. That battle is most hard to endure, indeed. ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... on tiptoe, every creak of the boards as they went causing their hearts to beat quickly. They had to pass Dr. Hunter's bedroom, and Marjory fancied that she could hear some movement within. Full of apprehension, she hurried on, Blanche following ...
— Hunter's Marjory - A Story for Girls • Margaret Bruce Clarke
... bitter-sweet musings, came the creak of the door as some one pushed it quietly open, and ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... a place as we could have wished. We had not seen a house in ten miles, and when the last creak of the wagon had died away there was a silence that made our city-broke ears fairly ache. Tish waited until the wagon was out of sight; then she stood up and threw out ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... you. Think of your maids and your children! I have seen the fires rise from too many roofs, I have heard the wail of the homeless too often, I have seen too many frozen corpses stand for milestones by the road, I have wakened to the creak of too many gibbets—to face these things ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... death. All the other forest people had fled away in terror, but the empty-headed blue jay, held by the terrible fascination, remained on his bough, watching with dilated eyes. He saw the great beads of sweat stand out on the face of each, he could hear the muscles strain and creak, he saw the two fall to the ground, locked fast in each other's arms, and then turn over and over, first the white face and then the red uppermost, and ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... falling of a half charred twig, the grating of the poker with which the fire was stirred, the blow of the hammer, the flickering of the candle, the creak of the dog's collar, the round bulging spot of blackness which was the sleeping blackbird, the singing of the cover of the pot, all combined to form a sacred language easier for me to understand than the speech of ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... see that the advance guard of the southeast force had struck the little fleet. They dipped and scurried and rocked, and you could see the sails being reefed hurriedly, and almost hear the rigging creak and moan under the strain. Then the wind came up the lake, and struck the town with a tumultuous force. The waters rose and heaved in the long, sullen ground-swell, which betokened serious trouble. There ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... A creak, a yell, and the "Pollard" started. How the cheering redoubled and made the shed's rafters shake. Lieutenant Jackson, of the Navy, tried to look unconcerned, but he couldn't, wholly. A launching of any kind of important craft is a ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... again, and he drew near the door once more. He became certain that something was moving stealthily on the stairs. He heard the boards creak again, and once the rails of the balustrade rattled. The silence and suspense were frightful. Suppose that the something which had been Fletcher waited for him in the ...
— Lady of the Barge and Others, Entire Collection • W.W. Jacobs
... rumble of wheels and the rattle of a hansom. The hansom came nearer and nearer. It stopped in the outside courtyard. There was the noise of a curb-chain as if the horse were shaking its head. The doors of the hansom opened with a creak and banged back on their spring. A voice, a woman's voice, said "Good-night!" and another voice, a man's voice, answered, "Good-night and thank you, miss!" Then the cab wheels turned and went off. All ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... began, when all were seated on the visionary camp-stools—which, by the way, are far superior to those in use in a world of realities, because they do not creak in the midst of a fine point demanding absolute silence for appreciation—"I do not know why I have been chosen to preside over this gathering of phantoms; it is the province of the presiding officer on occasions ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... of the gigantic portals gave an ominous creak, and, amid the huzzas of men and the shrieks of ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... don't call them, I don't lure them, they come to me of themselves." He seated himself on a bag of flour and told us how the women loved him and how he handled them boldly. Then he went away, and when the door closed behind him with a creak, we were silent for a long time, thinking of him and of his stories. And then suddenly we all began to speak, and it became clear at once that he pleased every one of us. Such a kind and plain fellow. He came, sat awhile and talked. Nobody came to us before, nobody ever spoke to us like this; so ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... sapping its worn ribs (the while without, And close above us, sang the wind-tost pine, And shook its earthly socket, for we heard, In rising and in falling with the tide, Close by our ears, the huge roots strain and creak), Eye feeding upon eye with deep intent; And mine, with love too high to be express'd Arrested in its sphere, and ceasing from All contemplation of all forms, did pause To worship mine own image, laved in light, The centre of the splendours, ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... under the bed. The thud of his head against what appeared to be some sort of joist or support, unless it had been placed there by the maker as a practical joke, on the chance of this kind of thing happening some day, coincided with the creak of the opening door. Then the light was switched on again, and the bulldog in the corner gave ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... offered some sort of shelter from the storm, however, the place would hardly have appealed to Harvey and Henry Burns. The aged building seemed to creak and sway in the wind, as though it might fall apart from weakness and topple into the water. The stream plunged over the dam with a sullen roar, much as if it chafed at the barrier and longed to sweep it altogether from its course and carry its timbers with it. Once the lightning ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the cold creak of the sledge-runners now, and a moment later the patter of many feet outside the door. In a single leap Philip was at the door. Another and he was outside, and an amazed Eskimo was looking into the round black eye of his revolver. It required no common language to make him understand ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... and leave the lady in undisturbed possession of the consulting-room. When she gets tired of waiting, you know what to tell her. If she asks when I am expected to return, say that I dine at my club, and spend the evening at the theatre. Now then, softly, Thomas! If your shoes creak, ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... safer than this here 'Sary Ann' along the shore," said the boat's master, grimly. "I sot every timber in her myself. She ain't got a crack or a creak in her. I keeled her and calked her, and I'll lay her agin any of them painted and gilded play-toys to weather the toughest gale on this here coast. You're as safe in the 'Sary Ann,' Padre, as if you were in ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... insulated villa, perhaps, with its garden-wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creak, like a tavern-sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen and footpads, was dangerous in those days; and even now, for aught I know, the Western prairie may still compare ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 65, March, 1863 • Various
... dingy old warehouse, with narrow, dark, cobwebbed windows, and wide, rusty iron shutters, which, as the bleak October wind swept up old Long Wharf, swung slowly on their hinges with a sharp, grating creak. I heard them in my boyhood. Perched on a tall stool at that old desk, I used to listen, in the long winter nights, to those strange, wild cries, till I fancied they were voices of the uneasy dead, come back ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... Bump! creak—cre—ak! bump! Then came the clank of wheel and chain, and the crowded cabin, and pressing throngs which crushed her close to his shoulder; and, "Please take my arm," he said; "I ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... fatigue of body, and something like illness; and on that a great terror. If they drugged her in her food? The thought was like a knife in the girl's heart, and while she still writhed on it, her ear caught the creak of a board in the passage, and a furtive tread that came, and softly went again, and once more returned. She stood, her heart beating; and fancied she heard the sound of breathing on the other side of the ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... water came the monotonous chant of their labor song, and sometimes the creak and squeak of some inland well-sweep drawn round and round by some patient camel. She felt herself to be in another world, as she sat in that boat guarded by that old woman and an eunuch, a world strange and remote, yet desperately real as it enmeshed her in its secret motives, ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... more of that Than if it had been a boatswain's cat; And as for the clock the moments nicking, The dame only gave it credit for ticking. The bark of her dog she did not catch; Nor yet the click of the lifted latch; Nor yet the creak of the opening door; Nor yet the fall of a foot on the floor - But she saw the shadow that crept on her gown And turned its skirt of a ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... switch attached to a stanchion of white metal, surmounted by a huge opaque glass dome, and threw it over. Instantly the hum and whir of machinery became audible, the sound of footsteps, the voices of the workmen, and the creak of ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... horrid suspicion. I waited on in hope of the moonlight returning, but rain set in, and I returned to my own chamber much perplexed as to what to do. Leaving the door ajar I determined to sit up and listen for any further sound, or the creak of a footstep on the stair, but though I listened till grey dawn came I ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... simplicity of boyhood, I maintain that travelling by coach is by no means the least of our sublunary pleasures. Man is a wheelable animal as well as walking one. Winter is the time for a nice inside jaunt. What divine evaporations from the coachman's muzzle! What a joyous creak in the down-flying steps!—and, oh! that comfortable alertness with which we deposit ourselves in the padded corner, and fold our coatflaps over our knees, glance at the frosty steam of the window; and then, quite la Tityre, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... blocks as the schooner rose to the short seas. There wasn't anything to be seen, but it seemed to him that the sheet made a queer noise in the blocks. It was a new manilla sheet; and in dry weather it did make a little noise, something between a creak and a wheeze. I looked at it and looked at the man, and said nothing; and presently he went on. He asked me if I didn't notice anything peculiar about the noise. I listened awhile, and said I didn't notice anything. Then he looked rather sheepish, but said he didn't think ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... and they soon heard the slight creak of the weighted wheel as Droop set off with the trunks ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... these things by the grace of the wind, which sometimes blew them about him in a chorus, and again shut off all except that lonely calling of the grouse, and often whisked away every murmur and left Gregg, in the center of a wide hush with only the creak of the pack-saddle and the click of the burro's accurate ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... Skarbolov's little store. She felt out with her hands and found the padlock, and her fingers pressed on the link in the chain that Gypsy Nan had described. It gave readily. She slipped it free, and opened the door. There was faint, almost inaudible, protesting creak from the hinges. She caught her breath quickly. Had anybody heard it? It—it had seemed like a cannon shot. And then her lips curled in sudden self-contempt. Who was there to ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... was planning great agricultural enterprises. Occasionally, also, he went out to sea with the sailors of Yport. On several occasions he went fishing for mackerel and, again, by moonlight, he would haul in the nets laid the night before. He loved to hear the masts creak, to breathe in the fresh and whistling gusts of wind that arose during the night; and after having tacked a long time to find the buoys, guiding himself by a peak of rocks, the roof of a belfry or the ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creak'd; The blue fly sung in the pane; [8] the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, Or from the crevice peer'd about. Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... the pair as they faces each other,—young Hiscock all bristled up bantam like and glarin' through his student panes; while Nutt Hamilton, who'd make three of him, tilts back easy in the heavy office armchair until he makes it creak, and ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... ball down the street, she forgot every thing but the desire to show her new shoes; and away she went marching primly along as vain as a little peacock, as she watched the bright buttons twinkle, and heard the charming creak. Kitty saw her coming; and, being an ill-natured little girl, took no notice, but called out ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... it; but to all that was light and air, perfume and colour, every drop of blood in her responded. She loved the roughness of the dry mountain grass under her palms, the smell of the thyme into which she crushed her face, the fingering of the wind in her hair and through her cotton blouse, and the creak of the larches as ...
— Summer • Edith Wharton
... Neddy when he had detached it. Then he cut out a pane of glass—it was all A.B.C. to him—put his hand in and raised the sash a little; then it was simple to push it up from below. But the sash had not been raised for years; it stuck; when it yielded to his efforts, it gave a loud creak. He flung one leg over the window-sill and sat poised there, listening. The room was lighted up; but if there were anyone in it, he must be asleep, or very hard of hearing, or that creak ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony
... didn't believe in her—that was it! He didn't think she was equal to working with him! Her young figure stiffened in angered pride, and her mind was gathering hot phrases to fling at him when the door from the pawnshop began to creak open. Instantly Larry turned toward it, relaxed and yet alert for anything. Old ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... — N. creak &c v.; creaking &c v.; discord, &c 414; stridor; roughness, sharpness, &c adj.; cacophony; cacoepy^. acute note, high note; soprano, treble, tenor, alto, falsetto, penny trumpet, voce di testa [It]. V. creak, grate, jar, burr, pipe, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Craig nodded and replaced his pipe between his teeth. The noise became multisonous. With the clangor of the pounding wheels came the stertorous gasping of the engines, the creak and clatter of protesting metal. The uproar filled the ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the first of June—when a thunderstorm was blowing up from the south-west, and scattering the smoke of the Five Towns to the four corners of the world, and making the weathercock of the house of the Ebags creak, the ladies Ebag and Carl Ullman sat together as usual in the drawing-room. The French window was open, but banged to at intervals. Carl Ullman had played the piano and the ladies Ebag—Mrs Ebag, somewhat ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... the orders of Francois they shifted the cargo now to the floating side of the boat. All of the men except two or three pole-men took that side also. Then, under command, with vast heaving and prying on the part of the pole-men, to the surprise of Rob at least, the boat began to groan and creak, but likewise to slide and slip. Little by little it edged down into the current, until the bow was caught by the sudden sweep of the water beyond and the entire craft swung free and headed down once more! It seemed to these new-comers as an extraordinary piece of river work, and such ...
— Young Alaskans in the Far North • Emerson Hough
... now blowing a gale, causing the trees near the farmhouse to creak and groan, and banging more than one shutter. But the boys did not mind this, and went to bed ...
— The Rover Boys in Camp - or, The Rivals of Pine Island • Edward Stratemeyer
... satisfaction, was putting it in my pocket before loosening a second, when a board on which I knelt moved under my knee, lifted, as if the other end, beyond the door, had been stepped on. There was no sound, no creak. Merely that ominous lifting under my knee. There was some ...
— The After House • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... had been none too rapid. The silence above was broken by the creak of an opening door, the sound of excited voices, and a sudden gleam of light, finding entrance through the open cellar-way. West startled, crept back into a corner, every nerve alert at approaching peril. He recognized Hobart's ...
— The Case and The Girl • Randall Parrish
... across the way; the call of their mother summoning them to bed. The tinkle of a piano down the street; the whine of a Victrola in another home; the cry of a baby in pain; the murmur of talk on the porch next door; the slamming of a door; the creak of a gate; footsteps going down the brick pavement; the swinging to and fro of a hammock holding happy lovers under the rose pergola at Joneses. She could identify them all, and found her heart was listening for another sound, a smooth ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... boards creak as though something were pressed against them, but I could see nothing. Only a very faint light crept through the window which I had partially opened. Presently the boards began to give way. I knew this by a light which streamed into the room. Then I saw the floor move, and I ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... lowland train of carts, that seemed to suffer agony for ages—it went so slowly past and out of hearing; perhaps it was the squeaking of the wheels that set all the cocks a-crowing. The more the wheels creak the better, for the Burman believes this creaking and whistling keeps away the "Nats" or spirits of things. The night seemed long and unrefreshing, and in the grey of the morning we found our blankets were wet with fog. But that was down below, now we are ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... bowed and courtesied in an unconcerned, wooden way, as if they were moved by some ingenious piece of Swiss clock-work. The stiff old curee, too, had an air of having been wound up and set a-going. I could almost hear the creak of his mainspring. I was smiling at that, perhaps, and thinking how strongly the scenery of some portions of our own country resembles this part ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... to bed it was almost dawn. She heard Herman come up, heard the heavy thump of his shoes on the floor, and the creak immediately following that showed he had lain down without undressing. By the absence of his resonant snoring she knew he was not sleeping, either. She pictured him lying there, his eyes on the ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I have been looking into the robber's house. There is a storm outside, worse than the wind that is troubling our fire. It howls above the house, and tears at the branches of the tree, till even the great trunk shivers and trembles and makes the roof creak and groan. Suddenly the door is burst open, and in, out of the storm, rushes a man, and falls before the fire as if he were so weary that he could move no more. Then from another room of the house comes the woman who has promised to be the ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost
... intently. She could hear the stairs creak under Mrs. Preston's quick steps; then there was silence; then an angry voice, a man's voice. Excited by this mystery, she rose noiselessly and set the hall door ajar. She could hear Alves ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... a little way; it was forbearing enough not to creak, and the next moment he was outside, free to go ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... sort of place had communication with my room, I succeeded, by the help of my deer-knife, in forcing back the rusty bolt; and though, from the stiffness of the hinges, I dreaded a crack, they yielded at last with only a creak. ...
— The Portent & Other Stories • George MacDonald
... wagons there would be four or five men and women, and here and there one would be playing a musical instrument and they would all be singing, while the creaking of the wagon came in with an orchestral quality which seemed grotesquely suitable. The mules, too, looked as though they ought to creak, and an inspection of the harness suggested that it was held together, not so much by the string and wire with which it was mended, as by the fingers of that especial Providence which watches over all kinds of absurd ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... straining creak of gear and came rattle of yokes as the pins were loosed. Cattle guards appeared and drove the work animals apart to graze. Women clambered down from wagon seats. Sober-faced children gathered their little arms full of wood for the belated breakfast fires; ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... against the snow, wet russets of drifted beech-leaves, a distant network of mauve twigs melting into the woodland haze. And in the silence just such fine gradations of sound became audible: the soft drop of loosened snow-lumps, a stir of startled wings, the creak of a dead branch, somewhere far off ...
— The Fruit of the Tree • Edith Wharton
... little girl still held the parasol aloft and looked down with a great wonder at the frowsy, unkempt creature, trying to reconcile it with the little part of life that she knew. To her ears came the cries of men, the stamp of hoofs on the bridge, and the creak and groan of wagons heavy-laden. It was a breathless California Indian summer day. Light fleeces of cloud drifted in the azure sky, but to the west heavy cloud banks threatened with rain. A bee droned lazily by. From farther ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... two copying-clerks and the engrosser, whose pens forthwith began to creak over the stamped paper, making as much noise in the office as a hundred cockchafers imprisoned ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... at the dressing-room door; she started and swung round on her heels as there came a knock at the door of the bedroom, the creak of the ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... in an' fed his face while first his cheeks would dimple with the gladness o' the moment, an' then his eyes would sadden as he thought of all the good eatin' he had missed by not knowin' the proper kind o' diplomacy to use in handlin' a cook. An' me!—say, I mowed away until my skin begun to creak under the strain an' I couldn't roll my eyes more'n two degrees. Then I got up an' I shook ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... in his cradle. Although the old man left his sabots at the door when he entered, his footsteps make the floor creak. The child begins to whine. The mother leans out of her bed to comfort it; and the grandfather gropes to light the lamp, so that the child shall not be frightened by the night when he awakes. The flame of the lamp lights up old Jean Michel's red face, ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... that we would do so; the tongue indeed swore, but the mind was unsworn. It was agreed that we should keep pinching one another to prevent our going to sleep. We did so at frequent intervals; at last our patience was rewarded with the heavy creak, as of a stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, and presently our ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler
... the quarry bowing their heads, and the reeds waving in the swamp, and the water of the meadow-ponds dimpling and rippling, as the wind swept over the Levels. Oliver soon heard something that he liked better still—the creak of the truck that brought the gypsum from the quarry, and the crack ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... heard what he had heard first—they heard the tonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them along the hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There was no creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards—and the bell jangled faster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right to the door and Squire Gathers wallowed among the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... burnt red earth, were gaunt, tattered, and thirsty-looking, weary of crying for moisture to the pitiless skies. At last the ceaseless ripple of talk ceased, crew and passengers slept on the hot deck, and no sounds were heard but the drowsy flap of the awning, and the drowsier creak of the rudder, as the Kilauea swayed sleepily on the lazy undulations. The flag drooped and fainted with heat. The white sun blazed like a magnesium light on blue water, black lava, and fiery soil, roasting, blinding, scintillating, and flushed the red rocks of Maui into glory. It was a constant ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... upon the housetop, a creak upon the plain, It's a libel on the sunshine, its a slander on the rain; And through my brain, in consequence, there darts a horrid thought Of exasperating wheelbarrows, and signs, with torture fraught! So, all these ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... plucked up a heart, locked up all the doors and gates fast, and lay down in a room where there was a bed ready made. But fearful and woeful he was, and still more afraid he got when he had lain a while and something began to creak and groan and quake in wall and roof, as if the whole castle were being torn asunder. Then all at once down something plunged close by the side of his bed, as if it were a whole cartload of hay. Then all was still again; but after a while he heard a voice, which bade him not ...
— Popular Tales from the Norse • Sir George Webbe Dasent
... with pink calico. The wash-hand stand was low, fragile, and diminutive. The little deal table, which occupied an inconveniently large proportion of the space, was clothed in a garment similar to that of the bed. The one solitary chair was of that cheap construction which is meant to creak warningly when sat upon by light people, and to resolve itself into match-wood when the desecrator is heavy. Two pictures graced the walls—one the infant Samuel in a rosewood frame, the other an ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... understand that I knew his condition. Twice, with tears in his eyes, he remarked: "Oh! Pet, I would give my right arm to make you happy." He would be out until late every night. I never closed my eyes. His sign in front of the door on the street would creak in the wind, and I would sit by the window waiting to hear his footsteps. I never saw him stagger. He would lock himself up in the "Masonic Lodge" and allow no one to see him. People would call for him in case of sickness, but ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation
... done when I stood upon the beach; it was, however, so far mellowed and softened by the intervening distance that it was possible to hear other sounds distinctly through it, even when they were so faint as the slight, almost imperceptible creak of the yard-parrels aloft, and the light flap of a coiled-up rope striking against the bulwarks with the slight, easy roll of the ship. I was therefore particularly careful not to make the faintest splash, as I drew up alongside, lest the unaccustomed ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... I don't mean accidents. But, you know, when you turn, it does creak so awfully. I shouldn't mind ...
— The Sleeping Car - A Farce • William D. Howells
... low there are three such basins, placed one above the other, as if they were stages by which the precious water mounts to the fields of corn and lucerne. And then three "shadufs," one above the other, creak together, lowering and raising their great scarabaeus' horns to the ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... appear to modern eyes, their lines were finely moulded under water and with a favoring wind they could log a fair distance in a day's run. It goes without saying that this tall brig was shoved along for all she was worth before a humming breeze that made her creak, and during the night she was reckoned to be a few miles to seaward of the sandy islands which extended like a barrier outside of Cherokee Inlet. Jack Cockrell stood a watch of his own, dead weary but with ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... perplexity. How cold their gray eyes looked to me! There was no reading anything in them. It just seemed to break my mother down, this queer thing. Many times that summer, in the middle of the night, I have seen her get up and take a candle and creep softly down-stairs. I could hear the steps creak under her weight. Then she would go through the front room and peer into the darkness, holding her thin hand between the candle and her eyes. She seemed to think the little room might vanish. Then she would come ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... the closed door, and then, treading heavily, departed. Crouching together in the angle of the door, we kept our eyes fixed upon the mirror. Suddenly, as the landlady's footsteps died away, there was the creak of a turning key, the handle revolved, and two thin hands darted out and lifted the tray form the chair. An instant later it was hurriedly replaced, and I caught a glimpse of a dark, beautiful, horrified ...
— The Adventure of the Red Circle • Arthur Conan Doyle
... high on the necks of slaves, And troops of sun-burn'd husbandmen with reaping-hooks and staves, And droves of mules and asses laden with skins of wine, And endless flocks of goats and sheep, and endless herds of kine, And endless trains of wagons that creak'd beneath the weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, choked every ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... receive my first bar, but a full-fledged captain, with fifty men under him to care for and discipline and lead into battle. There was not a man in my troop who was not at least a few years older than myself, and as I rode in advance of them and heard the creak of the saddles and the jingle of the picket-pins and water-bottles, or turned and saw the long line stretching out behind me, I was as proud as Napoleon returning in triumph to Paris. I had brought with me from the Academy my ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... midnight, and the prison had long been quiet, a cautious creak came up the stairs, and a cautious tap of a key was given at his door. It was Young John. He glided in, in his stockings, and held the door closed, while he ...
— Little Dorrit • Charles Dickens
... heart tonic. Mr. Grimm straightened up suddenly on the couch, himself again. He touched the slip of paper which she had pinned to his coat to make sure it was not all a dream, after which he recalled the fact that while he had heard the door creak before she went out he had not heard it creak afterward. Therefore, the door was open. She had left it open. Purposely? That was beside the question ...
— Elusive Isabel • Jacques Futrelle
... came from the cold lips of Abram Van Riper's son; and his office was a piece of all but perfect machinery, which dared not creak when he commanded silence. And no one save Van Riper and Dolph, and their two lawyers, knew the whole truth. Dolph never even spoke about it to his wife, after that first night. It was these five people only who knew that Mr. Jacob Dolph had parted ...
— The Story of a New York House • Henry Cuyler Bunner
... long time over the dewy grass. He came across a little narrow path; and went along it. It led him up to a long fence, and to a little gate; he tried, not knowing why, to push it open. With a faint creak the gate opened, as though it had been waiting the touch of his hand. Lavretsky went into the garden. After a few paces along a walk of lime-trees he stopped short in amazement; he ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... overhead. Suddenly the hound sprang to his feet, with a fierce growl, at the same time glaring upward into the thick recesses of a towering pine-tree. For a moment the sharp eye of the hunter could discern no object of alarm; but he soon heard the branches creak, as with the movements of some wild creature. He presently heard a growl among the tree-tops, and discerned two flaming globes of fire, which he knew to be the eyeballs of some animal, illuminated ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various
... is very notable in the exquisite silence and precision of his movements, as opposed to birds who either creak in flying, or waddle in walking. "Always quiet," says Gould, "for the silkiness of his plumage renders his movements noiseless, and the rustling of his wings is never heard, any more than his tread ...
— Love's Meinie - Three Lectures on Greek and English Birds • John Ruskin
... wild, sunless day had come in, the drift-piled home had ceased to shiver and creak or admit any sounds from without. Hour by hour it had settled deeper and deeper into the snow that weighted its roof and shuttered its windows, until, shrouded and almost effaced, it lay, at last, secure from the ...
— The Biography of a Prairie Girl • Eleanor Gates
... prostration. So she thought of it. She forced the note, no doubt. Afterward she was unpleasantly conscious of that. But at any rate the talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of course it was very banal to talk about Italy. But, still, these moments must come sometimes to all those who go much into the world. And what is Italy, beautiful, siren-like Italy, for if not to be talked about? ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... a whole volume. Be prudent, Captain. She is there beyond that wall, the fair young bride, who is awaiting you; her ear on the alert, her neck outstretched, she is listening to each of your movements. At every creak of the boards she shivers, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... did Bull Hunter impart his great tidings. He had not yet climbed into that real saddle; Diablo had not yet heard the creak of the stirrup leathers under the weight of his rider. Indeed, there was still much to be done before the happy day when he saddled the black stallion and took down the bars of the corral gate and rode him out. And rode ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... house little more than half a mile from the scene of the crime. And who was with him in that house? Who was there to observe and testify to his going forth and his coming home? No one. He was alone in the house. On that night, of all nights, he was alone. Not a soul was there to rouse at the creak of a door or the tread of a shoe—to tell as whether he slept or whether he stole forth in ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... feel lonesome right at home entertainin' guests! but I was gettin' acquainted with the sensation. There's no musical doings, no happy groups and gay laughter about the house; nothing but now and then a whisper from dark corners, or the creak of the ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... heavy over the bar, so that it would have been death to any man foolish enough to try to reach us; and we looked for none. So as the stout ship wallowed and plunged at her anchors—head to wind and sea, and everything, from groaning timbers to song of wind-curved rigging and creak of swinging yard, seeming to find a voice in answer to the plunge and wash of the waves, and swirl and patter of flying spray over the high bows—we found what shelter we might under bulwarks and break of fore deck, ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... out a dark lantern and lighted the candle in it, and shut the cover down: then he put his monk's cowl over his knight's suit, and covered his fur-trimmed cap with its hood. Then he was Father Peter again. What he did then, I could not see, for he went to the window, but I heard the window creak, and I heard the vines rattle against the wall. I went to my window and looked out; it was dark; Father Peter hid his lantern under his cowl; but I could see this much, that he went toward the chapel of Saint Nepomeck, ...
— Peter the Priest • Mr Jkai
... He had caught the creak of a footstep upon the stairs. In a flash he was across the room and crouched by the door. Yes, the step was nearer now—at the head of the stairs—on the landing. His revolver lifted, holding a steady bead on the door panel. And then there came a ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... had heard the peculiar creak given by an oar rubbing against wood, and this was repeated ...
— Middy and Ensign • G. Manville Fenn
... obstacle. He could make out the loom of the island over the starboard quarter, a black spot focussed in the all-pervading blackness of the night. Everything seemed to give promise of secrecy for him. The rasp of the boom-jaws, the swishing of coiled ropes on the pin-rails, and the chirping creak of the shrouds as the schooner bobbed and rolled on the lulling swells, concealed the slight sounds of ...
— Isle o' Dreams • Frederick F. Moore
... watchful. She did not seem to be going to bed; she kept moving about in her room. Poor Nora could scarcely restrain herself from calling out, "Oh, do be quick, Linda! What are you staying up for?" but she refrained from saying the fatal words. Presently she heard the creak of Linda's bed as she got into it. This was ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... summer is succeeded by the bleak nakedness of winter. So the streams of enterprise and joy that flowed full and free along their banks in maturity, overhung by blossoming trees, are shrivelled and frozen in the channels of age, and above their sepulchral beds the leafless branches creak in answer to the shrieks of the funereal blast. The flush of childish gayety, the bloom of youthful promise, when a new comer is growing up sporting about the hearth of home, are like the approach of the maiden ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... stillness fell on the room that one could hear the sounds of the forest, the tinkle of the rain on the window-panes, the crackling of the pine boughs in the fireplace. And then a low door behind the railing opened with a creak, and there appeared the old grey head of a Jew, dressed in his praying gown, and singing in a low voice, while behind him shone a room lighted with small candles, from which issued Sabbath smells ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Would you value your Keats letter if the signature was traced over to make it last longer? It's just because I love the past that I want this house to look back on its glamourous moment of youth and beauty, and I want its stairs to creak as if to the footsteps of women with hoop skirts and men in boots and spurs. But they've made it into a blondined, rouged-up old woman of sixty. It hasn't any right to look so prosperous. It might care enough for Lee to drop a brick now and then. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... long time munching the cake, and before they had finished it began to be rather dark, because a thunder-storm was coming up. The wind rose and made the old tree rock, and creak, and tremble. The little Fairies were so frightened that they got out of the nest and crept into ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... I confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long.—One other source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was a great wooden HAND,—a glove-maker's sign, which used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to catch up a little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed,—whose porringer would be laid away empty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... full of undefined terrors, with an unlimited space of the like solitude before her. She would even have been glad to be sure of an evening of Mrs. Martha's good advice, and of darning stockings! She sat down by the round table to Mr. James's wristbands; but every creak or crack of the furniture made her start, and think of death-watches. She might have learnt to contemn superstition, but that did not prevent it ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... did not leave the parlor at once, even when Hen, hearing the door creak open, cried down that the infirmary ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... "Creak! Creak! Creak! Nearer 'It' came, and our floor was reached. Clutching his revolver, Doctor Matthai sprang out of bed and ran to the door. Then a horrible scream of terror and anguish rang through the house. An invisible hand seemed to drag the unfortunate man out of the room. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it—before he comes home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six, she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm. Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the glass: those gray hairs! ... ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... he, "I shall be told whether to dance or to pray in it." And he stood listening eagerly as the Gate hung an instant on its outward journey and then began to creak home. ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... with some piles of weather-beaten lumber, and old debris. The windows were covered with dust; the broad stone steps showed where the winter snows had fallen and melted, leaving streaks of dirt, and more had blown in the corners. No cheerful creak of the great engine; no vapory puffs of smoke circling skyward from the chimney; no whir of looms. It saddened ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... old door leading on to the side-porch creak stealthily, then pause, and creak again. Perhaps Annie was ill, and she ought to follow her. She softly tiptoed back to her room and peeped from her window. Her sister was stealing down through the orchard, her light summer dress ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... reproof very quietly, and Mrs Nickleby, making every board creak and every thread rustle as she moved stealthily about, ...
— The Life And Adventures Of Nicholas Nickleby • Charles Dickens
... those creaking stairs again. His already heavily encumbered pockets could not be persuaded to receive more than a small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and prepared to redescend the perilous stairs. He walked as lightly as possible, dreading that every creak would bring Mrs. Wilson from her parlour. A few more steps, and he would be in the passage. A smell of dust, sounds of children crying, children talking in the kitchen! A few more steps, and, with his eyes on the parlour door, Hubert had reached the ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... one hillside, and from a hut the smoke of breakfast was beginning to curl. Stumm's gunners were awake and apparently holding council. Far down on the main road a convoy was moving—I heard the creak of the wheels two miles away, for the air ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... the billow, Our op'ning timbers creak; Each fears a wat'ry pillow, None stop the dreadful leak! To cling to slipp'ry shrouds, Each breathless seaman crowds, As she lay, till the day, In the Bay of ...
— Old Ballads • Various
... a creak of saddle leathers and a groan as the colonel dismounted. "Now, my good Cueto," he threatened, "another of your mistakes and I'll give you something to remember me by. Damnation! What a night! As black ...
— Rainbow's End • Rex Beach
... Fight—but if I have dreamed aright, 'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through! Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out, And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir— There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings, Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar! But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen), That on the Infinite Shore ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... run out to sea the water in the Tyne has been much deepened; but this advantage has its drawback in the fact that the sea pours through the deepened channel like the swirl of a millrace. As soon as the tiers of shipping begin to creak and moan with the lurching swell the people know that there may be bad work. The brigadesmen sit chatting in their warm shed. They know that they must go to work in the morning; they know that they ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... wandering things, and the breeze on his forehead troubled him not at all: before it had wearied of wandering in the night Rodriguez had fallen asleep. Just by the edge of sleep, upon which side he knew not, he heard the window of the balcony creak, and looked up wide awake all in a moment. But nothing stirred in the darkness of the balcony and the window was fast shut. So whatever sound came from the window came not from its opening but shutting: ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... swung wide, with creak and din; A blast of cold night-air came in, And on the threshold shivering stood A one-eyed guest, with cloak and hood. Dead rides ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... his great height and waved a long green scarf. From one of the galleys behind the screen of rocks a trumpet rang out in immediate answer to that signal; it was followed by the shrill whistles of the bo'suns, and that again by the splash and creak of oars, as the two larger galleys swept out from their ambush. The long armoured poops were a-swarm with turbaned corsairs, their weapons gleaming in the sunshine; a dozen at least were astride of the crosstree of each mainmast, all armed with bows and arrows, and the ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... appeared through the drawn blinds; so she got up and dressed herself without making any noise, and she had already half opened the door, when she made the lock creak, and he woke up and rubbed his eyes. He was some moments before he quite came to himself, and then, when he remembered all that had happened, he said: "What! Are you going already?" She remained standing, in some confusion, and then she said, in a hesitating voice: ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... withdraw the chain from the door. Bernadine wiped the sweat from his forehead as he listened. He still gripped the revolver in his hand. Peter had changed his position a little and was standing now behind a high-backed chair. They heard the door creak open, a voice outside, and presently the tramp of heavy ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by the plodding hoofs of Diogenes, the creak of harness and rattle of wheels, while Diana grew lost in thought and I in contemplation of Diana; the stately grace of her slender, shapely form, the curve of her vivid lips, the droop of her long, down-swept lashes, her resolute chin and ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... long Peterby will be?" he said to himself. But here came the creak of the waiter's boots, and that observant person reappeared, bearing the various articles which he named in turn as he set them ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... geometric cruelty and coldness. One gets no intimation that in fashioning them the composer has liberated himself. On the contrary, they seem icy and brain-spun. They are like men formed not out of flesh and bone and blood, but out of glass and wire and concrete. They creak and groan and grate in their motion. They have all the deathly ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... head that I had heard steps below. Cautiously, with a thumping heart, I stole from stair to stair, pausing at the bottom of the flight. I heard plainly the sound of moving above me, and of voices; but below not a whisper, not a creak. It must have been my silly fears. Resolved to choke them, I planted my feet boldly on the next flight, and descended humming, to prove my ease, the rollicky tune of Peyrot's catch. Suddenly, from not three feet off, came the ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... on the floor, but no knob came to view. But a bent nail was handy, and this he inserted into the hole sideways, and pulled with all his force. There was a slight creak, and a small door came open, revealing a dark closet about a ...
— Young Captain Jack - The Son of a Soldier • Horatio Alger and Arthur M. Winfield
... politically conservative. But it must be remembered that the good poet lived into the time when the glut and gore of the French Revolution made people hold their breath, and when every man who lifted a humane plaint against the incessant creak and crash of the guillotine was reckoned by all mad reformers a conservative. I think, if I had lived in that day, I should have been a conservative, too,—however much the pretty and bloody Desmoulins might have made faces at me in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... said that he wore false calves, probably because his black silk stockings never exhibited a wrinkle; they might just as well have said that he waddled, because his shoes creaked; for these last, which were always without a speck, and polished as his crown, though of a different hue, did creak, as he walked rather slowly. I cannot say that I ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... screech upon the housetop, a creak upon the plain, It's a libel on the sunshine, its a slander on the rain; And through my brain, in consequence, there darts a horrid thought Of exasperating wheelbarrows, and signs, with torture fraught! So, all these breezy mornings through my teeth ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... the walls the apprentice setters stood before the black formes and with abstruse, deliberate or hesitating expressions, made swift snatches at the little leaden dice. The sifting sound of the leads going home and the creak of the presses with the heavy wheeze of one printer, huge and grizzled like a walrus, pulling the press-lever back and bending forward to run his eyes across the type—wheeze, creak and click—made ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... were run out to sea the water in the Tyne has been much deepened; but this advantage has its drawback in the fact that the sea pours through the deepened channel like the swirl of a millrace. As soon as the tiers of shipping begin to creak and moan with the lurching swell the people know that there may be bad work. The brigadesmen sit chatting in their warm shed. They know that they must go to work in the morning; they know that they may be drenched and aching in every ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... which proved to be a fine rifle in a leather case. For the moment all three boys were so much engaged in examining this that they paid little attention to what was going on—hurry and confusion, shouting and laughing and excited talk, mingled with the creak of the hoists and the rattle of the donkey-engine as the ship's men now began the work of discharging the cargo of the Yucatan. It must be remembered that in Alaska few things are manufactured, and everything must be shipped in, fifteen hundred miles ...
— The Young Alaskans • Emerson Hough
... cautious a tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep—or, it may be, broad awake—with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... heard a sharp cry directly the cupboard door was opened; then the frantic dragging of a box on to the stairs, the creak of hinges—a groan ...
— Bessie Costrell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... low and sloping, the window tiny, and the walls exhibited all sorts of odd nooks and crannies. A bed, antique and worm-eaten, stood in one recess, a black oak chest in another, and at right angles with the door, in another recess, stood a wardrobe that used to creak and groan alarmingly every time Letty walked a long the passage. Once she heard a chuckle, a low, diabolical chuckle, which she fancied came from the chest; and once, when the door of the room was open, she caught the glitter of a pair of eyes—the same pale, malevolent eyes that had so frightened ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... and passed into the inner room, accompanied by Jessie. Julian waited for her. He found himself listening to her movements in the other room, to the creak of wood, as she pulled out drawers, to the rustle of a dress lifted from a hook, the ripple of water poured from a jug into a basin. He heard the whole tragedy of preparation, as this girl armed herself for ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... a stillness fell on the room that one could hear the sounds of the forest, the tinkle of the rain on the window-panes, the crackling of the pine boughs in the fireplace. And then a low door behind the railing opened with a creak, and there appeared the old grey head of a Jew, dressed in his praying gown, and singing in a low voice, while behind him shone a room lighted with small candles, from which issued Sabbath smells and a quiet ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... full liberty to enter the library. But no result followed this experiment; my footsteps had never fallen more noiselessly. Where could the board be? In aimless uncertainty I stepped into the corridor and instantly a creak woke under my foot. I had located the direction in which one of the so-called phantoms had fled. It ...
— The Mayor's Wife • Anna Katharine Green
... not now to be seen under normal conditions. From the street below rises the sound of clatter and creak as the rude oxen wagons bump over the cobblestones. Morning, noon, and night they rumble along unceasingly, and whenever I look down I see martial figures clad in tattered, muddy, and blood-stained uniforms, ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... quite a complicated piece of machinery, as I thought, by which I managed to pump the ice-cold water upon my devoted head. The effect was not as immediate as I had hoped. But I had faith if a little was good, more must be better. Creak—creak—creak—went the pump-handle, which did more work that afternoon than in half a dozen ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 • Various
... an' a-sp'ilin' the fun, fer she knowed what a skeery fool Jeb was. An' when the ole folks goes to bed, Nance lays thar under a quilt a-watchin' an' a-listenin'. Well, Jeb knowed the premises, ef he couldn't talk, an' purty soon Nance heerd Jeb's cheer creak a leetle, an' she says, Jeb's a-comin', and Jeb was; an' Polly Ann 'lowed Jeb was jes a leetle TOO resolute an' quick-like, an' she got her hand ready to give him one lick anyways fer bein' so brigaty. I don't know as she'd 'a' hit him more'n ONCE. Jeb had a ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... laughed as if he had outwitted the people of whom he was thinking, and whispered to his daughter: "The baker will wonder when he gets paid this time in glittering gold, and the butcher and Master Reinhard! My boots still creak softly when I step, and you know what that means. The soles of your little shoes probably only sing, but they, too, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... They bowed and courtesied in an unconcerned, wooden way, as if they were moved by some ingenious piece of Swiss clock-work. The stiff old curee, too, had an air of having been wound up and set a-going. I could almost hear the creak of his mainspring. I was smiling at that, perhaps, and thinking how strongly the scenery of some portions of our own country resembles ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... both Franks and Arrabies, Breaking the shafts of all their burnished spears. Whoso had seen that shattering of shields, Whoso had heard those shining hauberks creak, And heard those shields on iron helmets beat, Whoso had seen fall down those chevaliers, And heard men groan, dying upon that field, Some memory of bitter pains might keep. That battle is most hard to endure, indeed. And the admiral calls upon Apollin And Tervagan and Mahum, prays and ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... not leave the parlor at once, even when Hen, hearing the door creak open, cried down that the infirmary ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... the first time to see her, Rose knew. Harriet was living here now, running the house for Rodney, while Rose was laid up. Doing it beautifully well, too, through all the confusion of nurses and all. Not the slightest jar or creak of their complex domestic machinery ever reached Rose in the big chamber where she lay. ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... Baron lay wide awake, every sense alert, listening for the creak of a footstep on the wooden stair that led up from the harness-room to his prison. What else could the strange words of Dugald have meant, save that some friend proposed to climb those stairs and gently open that stubborn door? And in this opinion he ...
— Count Bunker • J. Storer Clouston
... guard, as it must be rather a dreary thing to pass a night quite alone in that solitary tower. I was much flattered by Mr. Bartlett's politeness to a total stranger, but, summoning all my courage, replied that I was not in the least afraid. Thereupon they all took their leave; I heard the door creak, the bolt was drawn, and the ladder removed, and I was left to my meditations ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... for the first time the awful reality of intense pain; he had determined to utter no sound, to give no sign; but when the horrible rope fell on him, griding across his back, and making his body literally creak under the blow, he quivered like an aspen-leaf in every limb, and could not suppress the harrowing murmur, "O ...
— Eric, or Little by Little • Frederic W. Farrar
... and broke short on the reef, with the result that the immense bank of water seemed to plunge under the broad side of the steamer, lifting her, and once more they were borne on the summit of the wave with a rush onward. There was a fierce, wild, hissing roar, and the great vessel seemed to creak and groan as if it were a living creature in its final agony, and old Bostock gripped ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... consequence of which behaviour was, that it staggered among the minutes in a state of the greatest confusion, and knocked them about in all directions without appearing to get on with its regular work. Perhaps this alarmed the stairs; but be that as it might, they began to creak in a most unusual manner, and then the furniture began to crack, and then poor little Miss Kimmeens, not liking the furtive aspect of things in general, began to sing as she stitched. But, it was not her own voice that she ...
— Tom Tiddler's Ground • Charles Dickens
... back, and hugged. He heard her gasp, and felt her hugging back. His eyes, very dark blue just then, looked into hers, very dark brown, till her lips closed on his eyebrow, and, squeezing with all his might, he heard her creak ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... began to feel the sea and swing to it. She was a dark and secret ship: not a light save for the glare of the binnacle-lamp; the only sound the creak of a block, the mutter of canvas, and the chatter ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... of pounds. He treated it lightly to Maude, and she to him, but each suffered horribly, and each was well aware of the other's real feelings. Sometimes there was a lull, and they could almost believe that the whole thing was over. And then the old machine gave a creak, and the rusty cog-wheels took one more turn, and they both felt the horrid thing which ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... and left the room. The cat followed to the door, and after he had closed it behind him, she settled down, smelling at the cracks, and cocking one ear at every creak from the ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... upon him. He started a new sheet, and ruined that: Once he got as far as his feet, and sat down again. But at length he had quieted to the extent of deciphering ten lines of Mr. Whipple's handwriting when the creak of a door ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... they all heard what he had heard first—they heard the tonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them along the hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There was no creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards—and the bell jangled faster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right to the door and Squire Gathers wallowed among the ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... there were no visions of walking to death with a "firm tread," as the papers say, and "dying game" before the admiring eyes of soldiers and natives. With him it was steel-ribbed facts. He could hear the bang of the trap, the snap of the rope, and the quivering creak of the scaffold. And afterward, the lonely, hopeless years. Besides, the dishonor of it. What irony to parade with thirty years of service chevrons on his sleeves, and be pointed out as the father of a man hanged for ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... put on her tennis shoes, and now stole very softly out of the room and down the passage. Janie went to bed again, though certainly not to sleep. She heard the stairs creak, and wondered if anyone else were awake in the house, and would notice the ...
— The New Girl at St. Chad's - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... arms jerked out to their full spread with such suddenness that he felt his backbone creak. For a moment, he hung motionless inside his suit, wondering if he had ...
— Satellite System • Horace Brown Fyfe
... hand, sword-girt, on the tall destrier armed, well seemed he in the make of his body and in his bearing to be a knight of great pith and hardiment. He planteth himself so stiffly in the stirrups that he maketh the saddlebows creak again and the destrier stagger under him that was right stout and swift, and he smiteth him of his spurs, and the horse maketh answer with a great leap. The Queen was at the windows of the hall, and as many as five-and-twenty knights were all come to the mounting-stage. When the King ...
— High History of the Holy Graal • Unknown
... have no tires, and the section of the wheel part or crowd together, according to the moisture, a train of these carts bringing in the products of the hunt is a strange sight. Each cart has its own peculiar creak, hoarse and grating, and waggles its own individual waggle, graceless and shaky, on the uneven ground. To add to its oddity, the shafts are heavy, straight beams, between which is harnessed an ox, the harness of rawhide ...
— The Romantic Settlement of Lord Selkirk's Colonists - The Pioneers of Manitoba • George Bryce
... she started and shivered at every creak of the crazy vehicle that was bearing her to the haven of her emancipation. She was horribly, unreasonably afraid, now that she had taken this rash step. Would it upset her father very greatly, she wondered? But surely he would not think badly of her for making a way of ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... sung as much as he liked, he went on to say: "In autumn the birds go south by easy stages; to-day their songs are departed from these woods, where there is none left but the catbird, to creak upon the bough. Soon snow will cover the earth, in which nothing is growing. But you, happy song birds, will build your nests far away, in green and windy trees, and your quarrels will fill distant ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... to look at her, holding their breath and walking with the utmost caution, so that the boards might not creak. Clotilde had indeed just fallen asleep: and her stupor seemed so profound that the two old women grew bold. They feared, however, that they might touch and waken her, for her chair stood close beside the bed. And then, ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... now no further words came. Listening very hard, I could half make out the progress of a heavy breathing, and a restless turning I could clearly detect. This was the wretched drummer. He was waiting. But he did not wait long. Again there was a light creak, and after it a light step. He was not even going to put his boots on in the fatal neighborhood of the dreamer. By a happy thought Medicine Bow formed into two lines, making an avenue from the door. And then the commercial traveller forgot his Consumption Killer. He ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... me," whispered Romeo Augustus; and he held out Elias's jacket and trousers. Elias took the hint, also the clothes. Down the stairs crept the two. Out the front door, which would creak, into the moon-lit yard stole they. Elias's eyes were snapping with excitement; for, as I said, Elias was poetical, and, like all poets, he was always expecting something to turn up. At this present he was on the look-out for ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... beauty, and certainly too stout; when she came on in the last scene of the Sonnambula, for instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her hand, and had to go out of the window, and pass over the plank of the mill, it was all she could do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend and creak again under her weight—but how she poured out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms—almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung—but a truce to this gossip—the fact is that these two women were the two flags of ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... articles best known to the "profession"—a piece of stiff wire, a skeleton key and other paraphernalia calculated to reduce the obstinate mechanism to submission. For a minute, two, three, he worked at the ancient lock; then, without a creak, the door swung open. A touch of oil to the hinges had insured their silence. Jimmie O'Hara believed in being artistic in his work, especially when it came to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... who visited Quebec in 1698, and Charlevoix, who writes in 1720, describe this district as the most beautiful in the city. Instead of the crowded quays of to-day there was a terraced lawn bordered with flower gardens; and where now the winches creak and rattle, and the railway engines hiss and scream, birds sang among willow-trees, and the Angelus echoed through a quiet woodland. Across the St. Charles lay the well-ordered grounds of the Jesuit monastery, and farther to ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... purring about the mat, But her mistress heard no more of that Than if it had been a boatswain's cat; And as for the clock the moments nicking, The dame only gave it credit for ticking. The bark of her dog she did not catch; Nor yet the click of the lifted latch; Nor yet the creak of the opening door; Nor yet the fall of a foot on the floor - But she saw the shadow that crept on her gown And turned its skirt ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley
... in its lines. Duty! Here was duty, surely, with tenderest happiness. She was leaning toward him—her hand was seeking his, when she heard through the fragrant silence a sound from her mother's room—the faint creak of her light rocking chair. She could not sleep—she was sitting up with her trouble, bearing it quietly as she had ...
— The Forerunner, Volume 1 (1909-1910) • Charlotte Perkins Gilman
... maddened by that evil sight, Dark, horrible, confused, and strange, A chaos of wild, weltering change, All power of check and guidance gone, Dizzy and blind, his mind swept on. In vain he strove to breathe a prayer, In vain he turned the Holy Book, He only heard the gallows-stair Creak as the wind its timbers shook. No dream for him of sin forgiven, While still that baleful spectre stood, With its hoarse murmur, "Blood for Blood!" Between ...
— The Complete Works of Whittier - The Standard Library Edition with a linked Index • John Greenleaf Whittier
... away in terror, but the empty-headed blue jay, held by the terrible fascination, remained on his bough, watching with dilated eyes. He saw the great beads of sweat stand out on the face of each, he could hear the muscles strain and creak, he saw the two fall to the ground, locked fast in each other's arms, and then turn over and over, first the white face and then the red uppermost, and then the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... So you creak it, and I want the heart to scold. Dear dead women, with such hair, too—what's become of all the gold Used to hang and brush their bosoms? I feel chilly ...
— Browning's Shorter Poems • Robert Browning
... mounted the steps, between the lions, the child's feet stumbling a little as they went, but Achilles's hand held fast and his touch on the bell summoned hurrying feet... there was a fumbling at the chains—a swift, cautious creak, and the door swung back. "Who is it?" said a voice that peered out. The dawn touched ...
— Mr. Achilles • Jennette Lee
... Surgeon suggested sincerely that the house was much too big for the White Linen Nurse to run all alone, but conceded equally sincerely, under the White Linen Nurse's vehement protest, that servants, particularly new servants did creak considerably round a house, and that maybe "just for the present" at least, until he finished his very nervous paper on brain tumors perhaps it would be better to stay ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... the block creak and the out-rigger bend. Yard after yard of the wet line was pulled in; and by and by the head of a tremendous fellow parted the water, and came up, one, two, three feet, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... the gale is broken; but the waves are making deeper and more desperate surges. The wreck, which had remained fixed in the fury of the wind, lifts again under the great swell of the sea, and is dashed anew and anew upon the shoal. With every lift her timbers writhe and creak, and all the remaining upper works crack and burst open with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... evidences of a rival antiquity in the crypt; for it had begun as a temple of Neptune. The sacristan practically lived in those depths and the chill sanctuary above them, and-he was so full of rheumatism that you could almost hear it creak as he walked; yet he was a cheerful sage, and satisfied with the fee which my guide gave him and which he made small, as he explained, that the sacristan might not be discontented with future largesse. I need not say that each church we visited had its tutelary beggar, ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... the Serpent and his crew— Naught has reached us of the Fight—but if I have dreamed aright, 'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through! Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out, And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir— There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings, Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar! But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen), That on the Infinite Shore their place ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... at us, to frown, and to be at times upon the point of speech. The cart, with this shabby and tragic freight, and surrounded by its silent escort and bright torches, continued for some distance to creak along the high-road, and I to follow it in amazement, which was soon exchanged for horror. At the corner of a lane the procession stopped, and, as the torches ranged themselves along the hedgerow-side, I became aware of a grave dug in the midst of the thoroughfare, ...
— St Ives • Robert Louis Stevenson
... remained, therefore, but standing behind her door, with her ears pricked up to catch the first sound. When everybody had gone to bed, she went downstairs and hid herself, until break of day, in a recess in the entrance-hall. She was prepared to spring out at the least creak on the stair, for she felt convinced that Suzanne would slip out in the dark with the object of joining Philippe. This time, Marthe would have killed her. And her jealousy was so exasperated that she lay in wait, not with fear, but with the fierce hope that ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... rough with long years of speaking against the wash of the waves, and the thunder of wind in sail and rigging, and the roll and creak of oars; and as he said this, every one turned towards him, for a silence had fallen on the crowd of folk who watched Neot the king's cousin ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... confess that traces of this undefined terror lasted very long.—One other source of alarm had a still more fearful significance. There was a great wooden HAND,—a glove-maker's sign, which used to swing and creak in the blast, as it hung from a pillar before a certain shop a mile or two outside of the city. Oh, the dreadful hand! Always hanging there ready to catch up a little boy, who would come home to supper no more, nor yet to bed,- -whose ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... direction, the wind tears along in a mad fury. The forest tops sway as with the roll of some mighty sea swept by the sudden blast of a tornado. In the rage of the storm the woodland giants creak out their impotent protests. The wind battles and tears at everything, there is no cessation ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... something indescribably satisfactory in the intense solidity of those old stairs and floors—no spring in the planks, not a creak; you walk as over strata of stone. What clumsy grandeur! What Cyclopean carpenters! What a prodigality ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... lamps were dim, and dull as death the street, It might be that the watchman slept that night upon his beat, When lo! a heavy foot was heard to creak upon the stair, The door revolved upon ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... footsteps creak upon the gravel under the shadow of the wall. A low whistle passes through the air, and ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... Merry as of old To the creak of leather And the morning cold. Break into a canter; Shout to bank and tree; Rocking down the waking trail, Steady ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... ride too hard in the sun, dear." But Gray saw something ahead and shook out his bridle, and soon left them in the rear once more, riding through endless glades of green where there was no sound except the creak of leather and the continuous popping of those small pods on the seeds ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... with a motion that made you expect to hear his back creak (it was intended for a bow)—"please, sir, can I do hanythink ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... Protestant door desirous of giving warning of Popish practices. But the Jesuits were equal to the difficulty. When the door was to be shut, the unemployed one either fell to shovelling coals upon the fire, or was suddenly seized with a severe bronchial cough, so that the ominous creak should not be heard outside. The comfort, therefore, remained; and heartily glad were the imprisoned Jesuits to have found this means of communication by the kind help of ...
— It Might Have Been - The Story of the Gunpowder Plot • Emily Sarah Holt
... side-street in Brighton, romantic and miserable scene of his sensitive childhood. It was a solemn house for him. Through the basement window on a dark night he had first glimpsed Marguerite. Unforgettable event! Unlike anything else that had ever happened to anybody!... He heard a creak, and caught sight through the letter-aperture of a pair of red slippers, and then the lower half of a pair of trousers, descending the stairs. And he dropped the flap hurriedly. Mr. Haim was coming to open the door. Mr. Haim did open the door, started at ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... have met for a parle on some plan To better ail-stricken mankind; I catch their cheepings, though thinner than The overhead creak of a passager's pinion When ...
— Moments of Vision • Thomas Hardy
... last few days there has been no occasion for forgiveness of sins. Every vessel has hastened into harbor, or cast anchor in mid-stream, and the watchmen can sleep in peace as long as this wind makes the joints of their wooden huts creak. No ship can travel now, and yet the corporal of the Ogradina watch-house has a fancy that ever since day-break, amidst the blustering wind and roaring waters, he can detect the peculiar signal tones ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... in almost unbroken silence, studying his hostess so perpetually that Anne's nerves began to creak at last under ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... efforts, Noddy braced his feet and kept the door tightly closed on the bear's neck. But the creature's struggles made the portal groan and creak as if it would be ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... something in the creak of saddle-leather that has a way of putting heart in a man. To hear the hogskin rubbing its yellow elbows is a good sound. It means action. It means being on the way. It means that all the idle talking, planning, ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... you may have known,—an insulated villa, perhaps, with its garden-wall around it, or the rudimental street of a new settlement which is sprouting on this otherwise barren soil. Half a century ago, the most frequent token of man's beneficent contiguity might have been a gibbet, and the creak, like a tavern sign, of a murderer swinging to and fro in irons. Blackheath, with its highwaymen and footpads, was dangerous in those days; and even now, for aught I know, the Western prairie may still compare favorably with it as a safe region to go astray ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the prodigal mother? You've not the hard heart of the young cockrobin That's got no use for parents, once he's mated: But I'm, somehow, out of place within four walls, Tied to one spot—that never wander the world. I long for the rumble of wheels beneath me; to hear The clatter and creak of the lurching caravan; And the daylong patter of raindrops on the roof: Ay, and the gossip of nights about the campfire— The give-and-take of tongues: mine's getting stiff For want of use, ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... were only five in number altogether, being stowed somewhere under the bulwarks amidships, trying to get an odd wink if the seas that were shipping in as the ship's bows fell would let them. Not a sound was to be heard save the whistle and screech of the wind through the cordage, and the creak of a block occasionally aloft; and I was looking out at the weather, wondering how soon the next squall would tackle us, when my arms were seized by somebody behind me, who held them down close to my sides, and a gag of a reef-knot or some piece of rope shoved into my mouth, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... admiration of my technical knowledge of nautical affairs and phrases.) I looked aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and. I heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging, but very faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it came from the creak of cordage in the ships of Crusaders; or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish main, echoing through remote ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... sometimes blew them about him in a chorus, and again shut off all except that lonely calling of the grouse, and often whisked away every murmur and left Gregg, in the center of a wide hush with only the creak of the pack-saddle and the click of the burro's accurate feet among ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... proceed from a book. We go musing into the vaults of day and night; no constellation shines, no muse descends, the stars are white points, the roses brick-colored leaves; and frogs pipe, mice cheep, and wagons creak along the road. We return to the house and take up Plutarch or Augustine, and read a few sentences or pages, and lo, the air swims with life, secrets of magnanimity and grandeur invite us on every hand, life is made of them. Such is our debt to ...
— Fifty Years of Public Service • Shelby M. Cullom
... hand ready to lead the psalm. There were aunts, uncles, cousins, and brethren of the deceased; and in the midst stood two coffins, where the two united in death lay sleeping tenderly, as those to whom rest is good. All was still as death, except a chance whisper from some busy neighbor, or a creak of an old lady's great black fan, or the fizz of a fly down the window-pane, and then a stifled sound of deep-drawn breath and weeping from under a cloud of heavy black crape veils, that were together in the group which country-people ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... got out on Shooters' Hill Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity; While everything around was calm and still Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he Heard—and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil over with ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... when she was asleep she laughed. Olivier, lying awake in the next room, would suddenly start up in the middle of the stories he was telling himself, at the sound of the wild laughter and the muttered words which she would speak in the silence of the night. Outside, the trees would creak with the wind, an owl would hoot, in the distant villages and the farms in the heart of the woods dogs would bark. In the dim phosphorescence of the night Olivier would see the dark, heavy branches of the pines moving like ghosts outside his window: and Antoinette's laughter ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... worth had faith, if it lay not resting, A bright-eyed pearl, in the heart enclosed, In heav'nward gazes its sparkle vesting, When crumbling shell leaves the core exposed? Sweet slumber follows When pain expires.... And creak the gallows, And flame the fires, Lo, martyr! heaven shall open thence, And ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... adopt it? What can be more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you too may look at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can—"Hear this new sound." Watch the elder children coming into the room exclaiming—"Mamma, see what a curious thing," "Mamma, ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... devil, and the final fight and general massacre ensued, Helene in leaning back pressed against Henri's hand, which was resting on the back of her arm-chair; while the juvenile audience, shouting and clapping their hands, made the very chairs creak ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... to regard more confidently the problems hitherto accepted as the insoluble and intricate handiwork of Fate. Fate may have woven the patterns of our being. But as we commence to probe the machinery and to examine the looms more carefully, we begin to understand why the wheels creak, and why there are seconds and odd lots in the product as well as the rare and precious firsts. Moreover, we are learning how to handle the machinery ourselves. The abdication of Fate can therefore be confidently ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... when they stopped their horses to rest. Only the wind in the great trees above them, the chatter of a squirrel remonstrating against this intrusion into his solitude, a strange sad bird-note farther up the mountain, and the occasional fall of a leaf or creak of a limb as it rubbed shoulders with its neighbor, broke the silence. Once in a clearing a deer and her fawn gazed at them with wondering eyes before leaping through the ferns into the safe shelter of ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... make sure that no door or window in her patient's room shall rattle or creak; that no blind or curtain shall, by any change of wind through the open window, be made to flap—especially will she be careful of all this before she leaves her patients for the night. If you wait till your patients tell you, or remind you of these things, where is ...
— Notes on Nursing - What It Is, and What It Is Not • Florence Nightingale
... requires it. I, for instance, I am loved by women. I don't call them, I don't lure them, they come to me of themselves." He seated himself on a bag of flour and told us how the women loved him and how he handled them boldly. Then he went away, and when the door closed behind him with a creak, we were silent for a long time, thinking of him and of his stories. And then suddenly we all began to speak, and it became clear at once that he pleased every one of us. Such a kind and plain fellow. He came, sat awhile and talked. Nobody came to us before, nobody ever spoke ...
— Twenty-six and One and Other Stories • Maksim Gorky
... her lair. He peeped over to assure himself of her complete somnolence. Satisfied that Mex would not likely be roused by any slight disturbance, he stole to the front door and undid the fastenings so softly that not a creak of the bolt sliding from its staple was heard even by his own quick ear. But when he swung the door open, providing for his ready escape, the hinges gave out a complaining sigh. The sound was faint, but it startled Mex. She raised her drowsy head, and through the mass of sable hair tangling over ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... Dante. At the Seventh Circle—but no matter for that: all the Circles are alike to the three young Misses, fair and fat,—at the Seventh Circle, nevertheless, my pupils are sticking fast; and I, to set them going again, recite, explain, and blow myself up red-hot with useless enthusiasm, when—a creak of boots in the passage outside, and in comes the golden Papa, the mighty merchant with the naked head and the two chins.—Ha! my good dears, I am closer than you think for to the business, now. Have you been patient so far? or have you said to yourselves, ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... gaff-top-sails, the main boom and sheets eased off a little, those long masts, with the sticks above them running clear away up the sky, almost out of sight, bending like whalebone, and reeling over the long swell when the breeze freshened; and not a sound to be heard save now and then a light creak from the main boom as the broad white sail strained flat and taut over to leeward, or the rush of the water as it came hissing along from her sharp, clean bows, with a noise like a breeze through the leaves of a forest, away off over the counter into ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... more, they would creak less," snapped Miss Panney. "How are things going on at Cobhurst? What did ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... unaccustomed freedom it refused to stir, stubbornly resisting every attempt to wrench its hinges asunder. It was not until the man and woman inside had combined their efforts and struggled with it for quite an interval that it contrived to creak apart far enough to reveal through a four-inch crack the figure of a young man who was ...
— Flood Tide • Sara Ware Bassett
... creaking stairs again. His already heavily encumbered pockets could not be persuaded to receive more than a small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and prepared to redescend the perilous stairs. He walked as lightly as possible, dreading that every creak would bring Mrs. Wilson from her parlour. A few more steps, and he would be in the passage. A smell of dust, sounds of children crying, children talking in the kitchen! A few more steps, and, with his eyes on the parlour ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... bed creak he still waited awhile, walking slowly round the house in silence and darkness. Then, as he passed the side where the bedroom was, there came the sound of a slight sleeping snore, repeated as regularly as the breath might come and go in a ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... rear of the Box Street tenement looked out upon the river. It was lifted high: the activities of the broad stream and of the motley world of the other shore went silently; the petty noises of life—the creak and puff and rumble of its labouring machinery,—straying upward from the fussy places below, were lost in ...
— The Mother • Norman Duncan
... the klop-klop of a pair of sabots—then the creak of a heavy key as it turned over twice in the rusty lock, and his faithful Marie cautiously opened the garden door. I do not know how old Marie is, there is so little left of this good soul to guess by. Her small shrunken ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... the seat in front of her, moved away to the smoking car; and the woman in gray listened to the creak and whirr of the wheel of torturing dread, upon which some malignant fate once more bound her. Bertie had been safe in his mountain fastness, until her ill-starred advertisement coaxed him within reach of the police Briareus. Could she discern the hand of merciful warning in this fortuitous ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
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