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More "Whirr" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hunting and questioning, Von Barwig found the family he was looking for on the fourth floor of a crowded tenement house in Rivington Street. He heard the whirr of sewing machines and as he opened the door he saw the father of his pupil, and several others, all sewing rapidly as if for dear life. The six machines made such a noise he could barely hear the sound of his own voice. As soon as Branski saw Von Barwig, he jumped up from his machine ...
— The Music Master - Novelized from the Play • Charles Klein
... lights. I have them arranged so for just that purpose of scaring off intruders. Then, as I looked out of my window on the second floor, I fancied I could see a dark figure slink into the shadow of the shrubbery at the side of the house. Then there was a whirr. It might have been an automobile, although it sounded differently from that—more like a motor boat. At any rate, there was no trace of a car that we could discover in the morning. The road had been oiled, too, and a car would have left marks. And yet some one ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... yellow leaves are hanging-pegs to dewy, brilliant gossamer-webs; when the hedges are full of trailing brambles, loaded with ripe blackberries; when the air is full of the farewell whistles and pipes of birds, clear and short—not the long full- throated warbles of spring; when the whirr of the partridge's wings is heard in the stubble-fields, as the sharp hoof-blows fall on the paved lanes; when here and there a leaf floats and flutters down to the ground, although there is not a single breath of wind. The country surgeon felt the beauty of the seasons perhaps more than ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... And poised in space... A great bird resting in its flight Between the alleys of the stars. It is the wind's hour off.... The wind has nestled down among the corn.... The two speak privately together, Awaiting the whirr of wings. ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... of the Southward seemed nearing A whirr, as of wings Waved by mighty-vanned flies, Or by night-moths of measureless size, And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond ...
— Poems of the Past and the Present • Thomas Hardy
... rested, toss their heads impatiently. We take our seats in the carriage, open wide beneath a sparkling sky, whirl past the palace and its ghost-like recollections, and are halfway on the road to Fossombrone in a cloud of dust and whirr of wheels before we think of looking back to greet Urbino. There is just time. The last decisive turning lies in front. We stand bareheaded to salute the grey mass of buildings ridged along the sky. Then the open road invites us with its varied scenery and movement. ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Second Series • John Addington Symonds
... and hung among its branches, and all along its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces, and chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly in its depths, I heard a chirrup and the whirr of ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... their cards at midnight, after a small refection which the bailiff's wife had provided for them, when the rapid whirling of wheels was heard approaching their house, and caused the lady to lay her trumps down, and her heart to beat with more than ordinary emotion. Whirr came the wheels—the carriage stopped at the very door: there was a parley at the gate: then appeared Mrs. Betty, with a face radiant with joy, though her eyes were full of tears; and next, who is that tall young gentleman ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... others the man and boy were soon balanced on top of the wooden fence. Whirr! George was conscious of a whistling sound, and a bullet flew by him as it just grazed ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... along the road. Then came the sound of horse's hoofs, and at the same time he heard a motor-car approaching from the opposite direction. The rider made appearance first, riding a grey horse with an Arab's high set head and tail. She was holding him with difficulty, for the whirr of the approaching car grew every moment louder. Shelton rose; the car flashed by. He saw the horse stagger in the gate-way, crushing its rider ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... master of the hunt to blow his horn—" Her cupped hands at her lips made a beautiful horn and her whistle rang valiantly in the great ceilinged room but the hunting song usually lost itself in a whirr of laughter and frills as the huntress dropped breathless on the footstool at the Major's side and put her sleek head ...
— Little Miss By-The-Day • Lucille Van Slyke
... settlement along the river. Often, four or five full-fledged cities are at once in view from our boat, the air is thick with sooty smoke belched from hundreds of stacks, the ear is almost deafened with the whirr and roar ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... long before I heard a gentle whirr in the leaves overhead, and, looking up, saw two birds circling around the twig, but at some distance above it. Then one of them, the mother, of course, drew nearer and nearer in smaller and smaller circles, at the same time calling to her baby in ...
— The Nursery, February 1878, Vol. XXIII, No. 2 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... a big easy-chair, Randall McLean heard the crash of the horses' hoofs and the whirr-r-r of the wheels on the gravelly road in front, and demanded of the attendant an ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... go when we heard a whirr overhead, followed by a volley of mitrailleuse. High up in the blue, over the centre of the dead city, flew a German aeroplane; and all about it hundreds of white shrapnel tufts burst out in the summer sky like the miraculous snow-fall of Italian legend. Up and up they flew, on the trail ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... tell you the color of every flower in the garden, just by touching them," explained Pearl. "He knows all the different kinds of birds just by the whirr of their wings. He can tell the color of every dress I ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... small "Early Closing," I wish they could know what it is to chop, chop, When your feet are one ache and your eyes drawn to dozing And you're sick of the sight and the smell of the shop! When a whiff from the meadows appears to come stealing Above all our washes, and powders, and soaps; And the whirr of the brush which revolves near the ceiling Seems pain to our ears and seems death to ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 29, 1891 • Various
... There was a whirr. The clock shuddered and all at once the door opened. The cuckoo came out, sliding swiftly. He paused and looked around solemnly, scrutinizing her, ...
— Beyond the Door • Philip K. Dick
... crags of the Caucasian mountains rose up, where, with his limbs bound upon the hard rocks by galling fetters of bronze, Prometheus fed with his liver an eagle that ever rushed back to its prey. High above the ship at even they saw it flying with a loud whirr, near the clouds; and yet it shook all the sails with the fanning of those huge wings. For it had not the form of a bird of the air but kept poising its long wing-feathers like polished oars. And not long after they heard ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... of that newly-created office, allowing for the tapping of the typewriter and the scratching of the pens, was very quiet; but outside there was the strange sound produced by the mingling of voices with trampling feet and the distant whirr and rattle of machinery, till a clock began striking, followed by the clangour of a bell, and ...
— A Dash from Diamond City • George Manville Fenn
... her silver wand, bade her close her eyes—another moment, and she bade her open them; and, most wonderful of all the wonderful things that had happened to her, the trees, the country, the distant city, all were gone! There was a charming log-fire on the hearth, sparkling and crackling; whirr, whirr, whirr, went the old woman's wheel, and there she sate in her chair just as usual; and the wind was blowing, and the rain was pelting against the shutters, exactly as it did the very night puss had left the cottage in such a mysterious way. In fact, ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... fourteenth century. To find its analogue, we must betake ourselves to the frescoes of Spinello Aretino, a master more decidedly Giottesque than his contemporary Taddeo di Bartolo.[156] A Gabriel, rushing down from heaven to salute Madonna, with all the whirr of arch-angelic pinions and the glory of Paradise around him, is a fine specimen of Spinello's vehemence. The same quality, more tempered, is noticeable in his frescoes of the legend of S. Ephesus at Pisa.[157] Few faces in ...
— Renaissance in Italy Vol. 3 - The Fine Arts • John Addington Symonds
... across any of these books I am filled with a curious melancholy. The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire means more to me than to some: I hear the whirr of the buzz-saw as I open it; even in its driest page I smell the resin of fir and spruce; Locke's Human Understanding recalls things no man can understand if he has not worked alongside Indians and next to Chinamen. As for Carlyle, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Lights. Blurr. Gone. On, on. Lead. Lead. Hail. Spatter. Whirr! Whirr! 'Toward that patch of brown; Direction left'. Bullets a stream. Devouring thought crying in a dream. Men, crumpled, going down.... Go on. Go. Deafness. Numbness. The loudening tornado. Bullets. Mud. Stumbling and skating. My voice's strangled ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... reached the plant, where they were to meet Donald's father and Thornton; they mounted the steps of the low building and went in. Immediately they were greeted by the whirr of wheels, the chatter of many herders, and ...
— The Story of Wool • Sara Ware Bassett
... there, rigid and silent, a sudden disturbance took place in the sky above them. Shells began exploding up there. At the same time the men in the ranks could distinctly hear the whirr and the hum of ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... charm. But men with that great gift are not to be met with in every railway-carriage, or at every dinner. The man we actually meet is one whose joke, though we have signalled it a mile off, we are powerless to stop, whose opinions come out with a whirr as of clockwork. Besides, it always happens in life that the man—or woman—with whom we would like to talk is at the next table. Those who really have something to say to each other so seldom have a chance of ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... phosphorescent spine of some monstrous stranded fish. This was a strange night, crude as if some coarse but powerful human intelligence were co-operating with nature. She had a fancy that if she strained her ears she might hear the whirr of the great dynamo that served this huge electric moon. But however the night might be, this strange, dangerous son of hers was a match for it. She looked gloatingly after him as he passed out of her sight, and then turned and went into the kitchen. It ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... merely state that, as I descended the Estabrook steps and struck off into the park, the detective instinct which lies in every one of us had wakened in me. It may have been the reason for my turning around, after I had crossed the street, between the whirr and lights of two automobiles, and stood at the opening of one of ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... house came on a sudden the click of metal and the swift whirr of wheels. Somewhere a clock was in labour—an old, old timepiece, to whom the telling of the hours was a grave matter. A moment later a thin old voice piped out the ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... speak them, he sobbed them out,—"'Brothers, have mercy on me! Brothers, have mercy on me!' But the brothers had, no mercy, and when the procession came close to me, I saw how a soldier who stood opposite me took a firm step forward and lifting his stick with a whirr, brought it down upon the man's back. The man plunged forward, but the subalterns pulled him back, and another blow came down from the other side, then from this side and then from the other. The colonel marched beside him, and looking now at his feet and now at the man, inhaled the ...
— The Forged Coupon and Other Stories • Leo Tolstoy
... hoofs and a whirr of wheels, the fire engine dashed around the corner. The driver was crouched low in the seat. He ...
— "Say Fellows—" - Fifty Practical Talks with Boys on Life's Big Issues • Wade C. Smith
... being furnished simply with cane-bottoms, a pillow, and one unclean sheet. Those who were decoyed into these staterooms endured them with disgust while the boat was at anchor; but when the paddle-wheels began to revolve, and dismal din of clang and bang and whirr came down about their ears, and threatened to unroof the fortress of the brain, why, then they fled madly, precipitately, leaving their clothes mostly behind them. But I am anticipating. The passengers arrived ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... The whirr of flapping leathern bands and hum of dynamos from the powerhouse urged Stephen to be on. Beingless beings. Stop! Throb always without you and the throb always within. Your heart you sing of. I between them. Where? Between two roaring worlds where they swirl, I. Shatter them, one ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... little whirr, but no answer. The person at the other end had rung off. By this time I was getting angry. In five minutes time I rang up again. ...
— The Lost Ambassador - The Search For The Missing Delora • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... that took place in the parish, and a great deal of what never did take place. She had just been telling it all unreservedly in her hard way; things that might be said, and things that might as well have been left unsaid. She went out leaving a whirr and a buzz behind her and an awful sickness of ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and flash of the Allies' guns and the Turks' answering could be picked out without great difficulty. Added to this the air was still; the dull thud of the field guns at work there was different from the resounding boom of the naval guns, and the whirr of the machine guns could be ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of green-plumed parrots and cuckoos, Pee-wits and sparrows join the piercing cries Of gorgeous herons, while now upward flies The eagle screaming, joyful spreads his wings Above the forest; and the woodchuck rings A wild tattoo upon the trees around; And humming-birds whirr o'er the flowering ground In flocks, and beat the luscious laden air With emerald and gold, and scarlet, where These perfect forms with godly grace divine, In loveliness upon the rock recline. Sweet joy is slender ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... after he had found No. 192 Layte Street to be a never-failing mint, when Braun became fascinated with the whirr of the roulette ball, the varying chances of the faro box, and, at last, the fine peculiarities of "unlimited poker" swept away his once ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... confined, without a single thing to break the stillness, they could not conceive. It seemed that hours had gone by, during which time there was nothing to disturb them, except the one steady whirr, broken occasionally by some remark by ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... friendly lizard too, in the hospital compound. One night, as I lay in my tent looking to the moon-lit camp, Fritz, our little ground squirrel that lived beneath the table of the mess tent, met an untimely fate from a big white owl. A whirr of soft owl wings to the ground outside my tent, a tiny squeak, and Fritz had vanished from our ...
— Sketches of the East Africa Campaign • Robert Valentine Dolbey
... so indifferent, and ask myself why I, a distinguished man, a privy councillor, am sitting in this little hotel room, on this bed with the unfamiliar grey quilt. Why am I looking at that cheap tin washing-stand and listening to the whirr of the wretched clock in the corridor? Is all this in keeping with my fame and my lofty position? And I answer these questions with a jeer. I am amused by the naivete with which I used in my youth to exaggerate the value of renown and of the exceptional ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in the hollows. The brown bushes by a hidden stone-wall broke the sheen entrancingly; here and there a dry leaf fluttered, but only enough to show how still such winter stillness can be, and a flock of little brown birds rose, with a soft whirr, and settled further on. Mrs. Wadleigh pressed her lips together in a voiceless content, and her eyes took on a new brightness. She had lived quite long enough in the town. Rounding a sweeping bend, and ploughing sturdily ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... certainly, we must admit, as we picture to ourselves some brushy ravine in which the trapper has his irons cunningly set out for the betrayal of the stone-marten and the glossy-backed "fisher-cat,"—but the breeze in it is quite as wholesome as a brandy-smash. The whirr of the sage-hen's wing, as she rises from the fragrant thicket, brings a flavor with it fresher far than that of the mint-julep. It is cheaper than the latter compound, too, and much more conducive to health. Continuing to indulge our fancy in cool images ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. VI.,October, 1860.—No. XXXVI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... behind, pulled up beside the other horse and threw himself off. Even as he touched the ground a sharp whirr met his ear and he saw the fat, still body and vibrating tail of the snake. He wrenched the pistol from the holster, took the quickest aim of his life and pulled the trigger. After the shot apparently nothing had changed. The whirr of the rattle ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... girl had to do was to go to the storehouse, and to sift the corn through a sieve. While she was busy rubbing the corn she heard a whirr of wings, and a flock of sparrows flew in at ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... ruthless force, Into the solemn church, and scatter the congregation, Into the school where the scholar is studying; Leave not the bridegroom quiet—no happiness must he have now with his bride, Nor the peaceful farmer any peace, ploughing his field or gathering his grain, So fierce you whirr and pound you drums—so shrill you ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... structure. Though its walls were intact, many of its staircases were rotten, while its flooring was, as I knew, heavily broken away in spots, making it a dangerous task to walk about its passage-ways, or even to enter the large and solitary rooms which once shook to the whirr and hum ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... life-prisoner emerging from the Bastille, he began to crawl stiffly forward: and it was just then that the first of the disturbing events occurred which were to make this night memorable to him. Something like a rattlesnake suddenly went off with a whirr, and his head, jerking up, collided with the piano. It was only the cuckoo-clock, which now, having cleared its throat as was its custom before striking, proceeded to cuck eleven times in rapid succession before subsiding with another ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... a state of diseased susceptibility that the most innocent words from Captain Wybrow would have been irritating to her, as the whirr of the most delicate wing will afflict a nervous patient. But this tone of benevolent remonstrance was intolerable. He had inflicted a great and unrepented injury on her, and now he assumed an air of benevolence ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... movements of the horses and the rattle of their harness were all the sounds he could hear. Naab returned to his seat; the team started, now no longer in a trot; they were climbing. After that Hare fell into a slumber in which he could hear the slow grating whirr of wheels, and when it ceased he awoke to raise himself and turn his ear to the back trail. By-and-by he discovered that the black night had changed to gray; dawn was not far distant; he dozed and awakened to clear light. A rose-red ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... grand piano (he receives a new one every year,) stands in one window. The other window is always open and looks out on the park. There is a dovecote just opposite the window, and doves promenade up and down upon the roof of it, and fly about, and sometimes whirr down on the sill itself. That pleases Liszt. His writing-table is beautifully fitted up with things that match. Everything is in bronze—inkstand, paper-weight, match-box, etc.—and there is always a lighted candle standing on it by which he and the gentlemen ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... into an inarticulate whirr of its own machinery. The recital was over. Tudor must have died immediately after securing the record in the safe in his bedroom, where Hugo had ...
— Hugo - A Fantasia on Modern Themes • Arnold Bennett
... senses that he might protect her. The din of noises seemed far away, the cries somewhere at a distance ever increasing. The moans that had seemed to him those of the girl who clutched his arm grew fainter, until they were lost in the buzz and whirr of a hundred other sounds. Then the clasp which held him relaxed as suddenly as if a rope had been cut away. It came into his mind with a wave of horror that the girl who had held him was dead. The thought that ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... passed softly round the room; there was a whirr and a flutter as when a flight of bees or birds goes down the sky, and a voice, a plaintive yet happy voice, like the plover who cry to each other on the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the office had been turned on. The whirr of the great engine and the clash of the planers in the big shop continued until six o'clock. Then the whistle blew, the engine slowed up, the men dropped their tools and ran for ...
— In His Steps • Charles M. Sheldon
... wild breezes birr, New budded boughs among, I saw the deeper tinting stir In the green tassels of the fir, I heard the pheasant rise and whirr, Above her ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... had, luckily, a stout pig-whip in his hand, and by an adroit turn of his muscular wrist he parried a blow that would have stopped the old Jew's eloquence perhaps forever. As it was, the corn-factor's stick cut like a razor through the air, and made a most musical whirr within a foot of the Jew's ear. The basilisk look of venom and vengeance he instantly shot back amounted to ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... yards, and passing alley after alley, till he came upon the end of one which looked fairly open, and which ran in the direction of the oast-house on the hill, Richard was about to plunge down this, when, all at once, there was a sharp, thin sound, followed by the loud whirr of wings, as an early covey of strongly-pinioned partridges, alarmed by the crack, sprang up, and flew over the tops of the poles, completely ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... the right wing of the Federal army were resting about six o'clock that evening. Their arms were stacked, some were cooking supper, others were smoking or playing cards, when suddenly from the woods there came the whirr of wings, and a rush of frightened squirrels and ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... Provins. At that early hour he could examine without being observed the various houses surrounding the open space, which was oblong in form. The mills along the river were already working; the whirr of their wheels, repeated by the echoes of the Upper Town in the keen air and sparkling clearness of the early morning, only intensified the general silence so that the wheels of a diligence could be heard a league away along the highroad. The two longest sides of the square, separated ...
— Pierrette • Honore de Balzac
... an hour later Jean Libert—whose feigned illness had now almost passed—was seated happily at her lover's side, slowly ascending the hill on the cliff-road leading towards Cromer, when, of a sudden, a loud whirr was heard in the air ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... railway journey to town, which at any other time would have been a rattle and whirr of delight and interest, seemed endlessly monotonous to me, full of sad thoughts at parting with all I loved; and I was glad enough when the train at length puffed and panted its way into ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... 'buses tinkled noisily, and there was an incessant roar of the traffic that rumbled heavily over the wooden pavements. There was a clatter of horses' hoofs, and the blowing of horns; the electric broughams whizzed past with an odd, metallic whirr. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... serving God You sweep a room or turn a sod, And suddenly to your surprise You hear the whirr of seraphim And ?uid you're under God's own eyes And building ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... moon sank below the crest of the hill. Puffs of smoke rose in its place. Then there was borne to the waiting trio a sound of chugging. And the next instant, with a purr of its engine, and a whirr of its wheels, here into full sight ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... whirr of wings outside and above, excited flutterings first, and then a general flight of the pigeons who roosted on the roof. Woslosky listened and ...
— A Poor Wise Man • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the whirr of a covey on wing before the fowler, our crested three of immemorial antiquity and a presumptive immortality, the Ladies Endor, Eldritch, and Cowry, shot up again, hooting across the dormant chief city Old England's fell word of the scarlet shimmer above the nether pit-flames, Rome. An ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the dinner they had eaten together in the little back dining-room. The son noticed that the heat had told on his father, and he blamed himself for keeping him in this dusty, deserted town, while he completed his laboratory work. The electric cars made a great whirr, just around the corner, every few moments, and the little strip of park behind the house was full of the poor people who had crawled out of their hot holes to get some breathable air in the green spots abandoned by the rich. Jarvis Thornton cast his eyes lazily over the ...
— The Man Who Wins • Robert Herrick
... maybe; and put the shoe on him. His poor feet are like ice half the time, but I can't keep 'em covered, all I can do—" And then, half wailing, half humming, Dame Brinker would sit down and fill the low cottage with the whirr of ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... down the street for a few blocks ere he heard the whirr of a Gridley-bound trolley car behind him. He quickened his pace until he reached the next corner. There he signaled to ...
— The High School Boys' Training Hike • H. Irving Hancock
... my Angora tabby: stroke them smoothly and they will purr and rub noses with you; but stroke them the wrong way and whirr! they scratch your hands and out of the window they fly! When I ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... who has spent the day in the field puts away his glasses at nightfall, looking forward to a walk after dark only as a chance to hear the call of nocturnal birds or to catch the whirr of a passing wing. But some bright moonlight night in early May, or again in mid September, unsheath your glasses and tie them, telescope-fashion, to a window-ledge or railing. Seat yourself in an easy ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... suddenly snapped, and the ladies recoiled in alarm. The Baroness, handling the brittle wires with her delicate little fingers, gave me the numbers as I wanted them, and carefully held the coil whilst I unrolled it. Suddenly one of them coiled itself up again with a whirr, making the Baroness utter an impatient "Oh!" Lady Adelheid enjoyed a hearty laugh, whilst I pursued the tangled coil to the corner of the room. After we had all united our efforts to extract a perfectly straight string from it, and had tried it again, to our mortification ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... innumerable company of ascending and descending angels, and I thought it must be the same ladder I used to see in my dream. The drowsy delight which follows on the loss of blood possessed me, and the little garret with the slanting roof, and its sloping sun-ray, and the whirr of the wheel, and the form of the patient woman that span, had begun to gather about them the hues of Paradise to my slowly fading senses, when I heard a voice that sounded miles away, and yet close to ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... in such a case! There's nothing feels so like disgrace, Or gives you such a scurvy look— A kick and pail of slush from Cook, Clefsticks, or Kettle, all in one, As standing to a missing gun! It's whirr! and bang! and off you bound, To catch your bird before the ground: But no—a pump and ginger pop As soon would get a bird to drop! So there you stand, quite struck a-heap, Till all your tail is gone to sleep; A sort of stiffness in your nape, Holding ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... burberrys. The cartographer at his table beneath a shaded acetylene light drew maps and sketched, the magnetician was busy on calculations close by. The cook and messman often made their presence felt and heard. In the outer Hut, the lathe spun round, its whirr and click drowned in the noisy rasp of the grinder and the blast of the big blow-lamp. The last-named, Bickerton, "bus-driver" and air-tractor expert, had converted, with the aid of a few pieces of covering tin, into a forge. A piece of red-hot metal was lifted out ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... he saw the strip of bright yellow sunlight and the blue bay in the opening below the eaves; then he caught the glitter and whirr of the two huge saws, moving silently but with the deadly menace of great speed on their axes. Against the light in irregular succession, alternately blotting and clearing the foreground at the end of the mill, appeared the ends ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... moment King Prigio, seeing, in the magic globe, all that passed, and despairing of Ricardo's life, was just about to wish the dwarf at Jericho, when through the open window, with a tremendous whirr, came a huge vulture, and knocked the king's wishing cap off! Wishing was now of ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... Captain Dell were hanging about waiting for Sir Henry Chicksands. The astonishing warmth and sunshine of the month had brought out a shimmer of spring everywhere, reddened the great heads of the oaks, and set the sycamore buds shining like jewels in the pale blue. There was an endless chatter and whirr of wood-pigeons in the high tree-tops, and underfoot the anemones and violets were busy pushing their gentle way through the dead leaves of autumn. The Squire's beechwoods were famous in the neighbourhood, and he ...
— Elizabeth's Campaign • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... death, and almost every yard of brown sod at its base covered a skeleton. In place of the horrid yell of the infuriated savage, as he wrenched off the reeking scalp of his victim, the whistle of the locomotive and the pleasant whirr of the reaping-machine is heard; where the death-cry of the painted warrior rang mournfully over the silent prairie, the waving grain is singing in beautiful rhythm as it bows to the ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Rasalu stood aghast; but he thought of the cricket's gift at last, and taking it out of his pocket thrust it into the fire, and a cloud as dust showed in the sky and the distant whirr of thousands of wings caused the air to stir, as, dark'ning the day like a fun'ral pall, a flight of crickets appeared at the call. 'What is our task?' asked his friend with a laugh; 'only that? I've brought too many by ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... good way without any luck. There didn't seem anything to shoot in all the bush, though you may be sure I kept my eyes about me. I was beginning to grow disheartened. At length I made my way down to the creek. Just as I got near it, I heard a whirr-r-r over my head, and looking up, I saw a flock of wild duck. They seemed to pause a moment, and then dropped downwards. I couldn't see where they alighted, but of course I knew it must be ...
— A Little Bush Maid • Mary Grant Bruce
... wonderful trunk. So soon as any one pressed the lock the trunk could fly. He pressed it, and whirr! away flew the trunk with him through the chimney and over the clouds farther and farther away. But as often as the bottom of the trunk cracked a little he was in great fear lest it might go to pieces, and then he would have flung a fine somersault! In that way he came ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... from the western chain of mountains carry millions of logs from the great dark forests. As soon as the ice breaks up in the spring, whole fleets of fishing boats and lumber vessels sail up and down the coast; sawmills whirr and buzz all day long; the hum of labor is heard all over ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... could be observed, Maidwa changed himself into a humming-bird, and flew toward the scalp. As he passed some of those who were standing by, he came close to their ears, and as they heard the rapid whirr or murmur which this bird makes when it flies, they jumped aside, and asked each other what it could be. Maidwa had nearly reached the scalp, but fearing that he should be perceived while untying it, he again changed himself into the down that floats lightly on the air, and ...
— The Indian Fairy Book - From the Original Legends • Cornelius Mathews
... of mountains based in hills of fir, Empty, lone, and cold. A land of streams Whose roaring voices drown the whirr Of aspen leaves, and fill the heart with dreams Of dearth and death. The peaks are stern and white The skies above are grim and gray, And the rivers cleave their sounding way Through endless forests dark as night, Toward the ocean's far-off ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... enough, it seemed; for he sat At the wheel in front of her, And turned it three times round and round, Whirr, and whirr-rr, and whirr-rr-rr— One of the bobbins was full; and then, Whirr, and whirr-rr, and whirr-rr-rr again, Until all the straw that had been spread Had been ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... the neighborhood; nobody was to be seen, and the only sound not made by the birds and insects was the far-away click and whirr of ...
— The Story of the Big Front Door • Mary Finley Leonard
... giving to your cerebral powers the characters of preappointed, automatic action, which are proper to the cerebellum. It cannot be denied that you have thus acquired a remarkable, machine-like simplicity, force, and constancy of mental action,—your brain-wheels spinning away with such a steam-engine whirr as one cannot but admire; but, on the other hand, as was inevitable, you have become astonishingly insensitive to all truths, save those with which you are established in organic connection; nor could the products of Manchester mills be bargained for beforehand with more ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 12, No. 72, October, 1863 • Various
... in rout Disastrous they, unmann'd by terror, fled. Great Ajax still, unwearied, long'd to hurl His spear at Hector of the brazen helm; But he, well skill'd in war, his shoulders broad Protected by his shield of tough bull's hide, Watch'd for the whizzing shafts, and jav'lins' whirr. Full well he knew the tide of battle turn'd, Yet held his ground, his trusty friends ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... was over, and the girls rose with a whirr, like a flock of pigeons, and fluttered out of the dining-room. Peggy looked longingly after Bertha Haughton; indeed, Bertha seemed to be lingering, looking for her; but at that moment two or three ...
— Peggy • Laura E. Richards
... to tell those girls not to talk over their work. The more work they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen, who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength even in listening, amidst the conflicting whirr of the feeds and wheels,—and the old, sobered-down, slow ones, like Miss Bree and Miss Proddle, button-holing and gather-sewing for dear life, with their spectacles over their noses, and great bald places showing on the tops of their bent heads,—kept time with ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... level of les Causses, the roof of that gnome-land where we had journeyed together yesterday. From snow-covered billows which should have been sprayed with mountain wild-flowers by now, a fierce blast pounced down on us like a swooping bird of prey. We felt the swift whirr of its wings, which almost took our breath away, and made the Aigle quiver; but like a bull that meets its enemy with lowered horns, the brave car's bonnet seemed to defy the wind and face it squarely. ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... volume of sound that when first told it was created by insects alone I found my credulity taxed to its utmost limit; and it was not until I was solemnly assured by Mr Austin that such was the case that I quite believed it. It was not unlike the "whirr" of machinery, save that it rose and fell in distinct cadences, and occasionally—as if by preconcerted arrangement on the part of every individual insect in the district—stopped altogether for a few moments. Then, indeed, ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... to cease it would have been pleasant to have rung it a few more times. It is an awful thing to contemplate that you have rung a bell for the last time. One can get very sentimental over a thing like that. Dear jolly old bells, what an influence they have upon life. How bravely they whirr at the arrival of a dear expected—how madly they riot to the tune Wedding—how sadly they toll when the last of us ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... grew more flaming and fiery, and the little black wings grew larger and larger; and now the left leg was dashed to and fro with a fearful agitation. Mackaw looked agonised. What a whirr! Francia is on the table! All shriek, the chairs tumble over the ottomans, the Sevre china is in a thousand pieces, the muzzle is torn off and thrown at Miss Graves; Mackaw's wig is dashed in the ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... and they sat on the rough shaley earth, trying to pierce the gloom, and listening with quite a start from time to time to the sharp whirr of the pigeons' wings as ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... sounds come not so much from the birds, or the soughing of the branches; they seem to come from the swamp life underneath the branches, at the roots of trees. There's a ceaseless stir as of a myriad of reptiles creeping in the slime. Listen long enough and you will fancy that you hear the whirr and rush of innumerable crabs, the flapping of innumerable fish. Now and again a more distinctive sound emerges from the rest—the croaking of a bull-frog, the whining cough of a crocodile. At such sounds Hatteras would start up in his chair and cock his head like a dog in ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and by the time I had got a good head of reserved steam on, here they came. All together, too; none of those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about —one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair play. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight—for a man up a tree. I laid my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron wave was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... seem to be able to," she said. "It isn't a bit like shooting at clay targets. The twittering whirr takes me by surprise—it's all so charmingly sudden—and my heart seems to stop in one beat, and I look and look and then—whisk! the woodcock is gone, leaving ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... drew up the weights with a grate and a whirr that made audible conversation quite out of the question, she formed a study, in clothes and visage, that might have stepped direct from a Franz ...
— The Return of Peter Grimm - Novelised From the Play • David Belasco
... mental sight singularly, even preternaturally, clear. The falling of silence gave an amazing acuteness to his inner sense of hearing. Certain people are so made that they can, under certain conditions, and at certain moments, hear the workings of their neighbours' minds, as you and I can hear the whirr of machinery, or the cry of a child in the street. An ordinary man or woman can only hear a mind when lips, teeth, and tongue utter it with living sounds that set the air in vibration. These abnormal people hear, in these abnormal moments, the silent ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... coming slowly, haltingly from the front, told that the incessant crash and rattle of musketry in that direction was no mere feu-de-joie, while every now and then the angry spat of the steel-clad Mauser on the stony road, the whiz and whirr about the ears of the few who for duty's sake or that of example held their ground in the highway, gave evidence that the Tagal marksmen had their eyes on every visible group ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... note Of cuckoos hid on either hand, The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat When eve's brown ...
— Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... The wailing cry sounded through the leafy solitude; but no answer came save the whirr of wings or the chatter of startled birds. But even more shocking than that terrible cry—more disturbing and eloquent with dreadful suggestion—was the way in which she peered, furtively, but with fearful expectation, among the roots of the bushes, or ...
— John Thorndyke's Cases • R. Austin Freeman
... noses and fingers much more than do we adults. Our stories rely mainly upon visual recalls. We forget to listen even to birds whose message is pure melody. And how many of us hear the city sounds which surround us, the characteristic whirr of revolving wheels, the vibrating rhythm of horses' feet, the crunch of footsteps in the snow? Noises we hear, the warning shriek of the fire engine or the honk! honk! of the automobile. But the subtler, finer reverberations ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... a yell, and the sharp whirr of arrows, and the cling, clang, from the armour of the terrace as Prince Harald staggered through unhurt, struck by the broad ...
— The World of Romance - being Contributions to The Oxford and Cambridge Magazine, 1856 • William Morris
... never did his heart fail to leap in response. In later years, when he too owned a shotgun, this sudden shock of the nerves seemed to be the required stimulant to key him instantly to his best work. A sneaker—that is to say, a bird that flushed without the customary whirr—he ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... of sound—the rhythmic thud of the looms, shaking floor and walls, the click and rattle of the shuttles passing back and forward, and the steady whirr of the winding-wheels, like ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... moleskin, and a little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in air ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... often erroneously called a locust. . . . It is remarkable for the loud song, or chirruping whirr, of the males in the heat of summer; numbers of them on the hottest days produce ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... other ladies of the party, but Patricia was nowhere to be seen. It occurred to him that she might have sought solitude in some other part of the great house, and he had turned away, striving to think where he might find her, when the whirr of an automobile engine came to him through an open window from the ...
— The Last Woman • Ross Beeckman
... beside the driver. The cab began to quiver, then it started forward with a whirr. The uncle, his hands and feet acting mechanically, kept his blue eyes fixed on the highroad into whose traffic the car was insinuating its way. Berry felt curiously as if he were sitting beside an older development of himself. His mind went ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... consciousness of home, like the musty smell of the stairs, or Becky's young men through whom she had to plough her way when she went for the morning milk, or the odors of Mr. Belcovitch's rum or the whirr of his machines, or the bent, snuffy personality of the Hebrew scholar in the adjoining garret, or the dread of Dutch Debby's dog that was ultimately transformed to friendly expectation. Esther led a double life, just as she spoke ...
— Children of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... over the rough hummocks and grass banks, followed the bottom of winding draws, or skirted the margin of wide lagoons, where the golden coreopsis grew up out of the clear water and the wild ducks rose with a whirr of wings. ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... lie under the same quilt with her mother, while a washerwoman who lodged with them used to wash clothes in the next room; while through the thin walls there came from the neighbouring flats sounds of laughter, swearing, children's crying, the accordion, and the whirr of carpenters' lathes and sewing-machines; while her father, Akim Ivanovitch, who was clever at almost every craft, would be soldering something near the stove, or drawing or planing, taking no notice whatever of the noise and stuffiness. And she longed to ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... giant masses of the mountains above us, the vast distances of mysterious blue air, through which the snow-peaks shone out with a strange look that was not natural. The swish of the quickly flowing stream at the edge of the plot we were walking over sounded hollow and unearthly; the velvety whirr of the great mountain bats as they circled near us, stirred from the branches as we passed out, was disagreeable and heavy to hear. The moon shone brighter ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... some member of the clerical force, who, at his master's bidding, had thrown himself upon the young officer, who then deftly tripped his heels from under him and dropped him on the floor, while Loomis confronted the others who would have made some show of obeying orders. And then there was the whirr of a whip-lash, a crack and snap and swish, and a red welt shot across Burleigh's livid face as he himself staggered back to his desk. With raging tongue and frantic oath he leaped out again, a leveled pistol in his hand, but even before ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... may have been owing to the same wish not to excite unduly and unnecessarily the envy of others, that no machinery was exhibited from Canada, and that while other nations were making the great building resound and vibrate to the whirr of wheels driven by steam; you did not, even by so much as a picture, remind the Parisians of your wealth in water power as well as in steam, and there was nothing to show the citizen of London or of Paris, ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... A sudden whirr cut through the silence. One of the large clocks near the door was beginning to strike the hour. Instantly the rest began to do the same, till the room was full of the noise. And above the din there sounded sharp and clear the note ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... charged and overflowing with life and energy. One thinks of him as a bundle of steel wires and needles and coiled springs, all electrically charged. One of his sounds or calls is like the buzz of a reel or the whirr of an alarm-clock. Something seems to touch a spring there in the old apple-tree, and out leaps this strident sound as of spinning ...
— The Wit of a Duck and Other Papers • John Burroughs
... bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... partridge seemed to gain strength as the fox put forth his, and after a quarter of a mile race, racing that was somehow all away from Taylor's Hill, the bird got unaccountably quite well, and, rising with a derisive whirr, flew off through the woods leaving the fox utterly dumfounded to realize that he had been made a fool of, and, worst of all, he now remembered that this was not the first time he had been served this very trick, though he never knew ...
— Wild Animals I Have Known • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in the fierce swishing whirr of a slender ray of fire that, shooting violently upward from the sombre hull of the brig, dissolved at once into a dull red shower of falling sparks. Only one, white and brilliant, remained alone poised high overhead, and after glowing vividly for a second, exploded with a feeble report. Almost ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... rod—he was not even thinking of it. He heard all the sounds of the house as he sat there. He could tell all the clocks, that one booming softly the half hours was in his mother's bedroom, there was a rattle and a whirr and there came the cuckoo-clock on the stairs, there was the fast, cheap careless chatter of the little clock on the schoolroom mantelpiece, there was the whisper of Miss Jones's watch which she had put out on the table to mark the time of Mary's sewing by. There were all the regular sounds of the ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... of others the man and boy were soon balanced on top of the wooden fence. Whirr! George was conscious of a whistling sound, and a bullet flew by him as it just grazed the tip ...
— Chasing an Iron Horse - Or, A Boy's Adventures in the Civil War • Edward Robins
... forest flaunting triumphant banners of crimson and gold. A strong south wind was blowing, and it brought to them a sound as of the whispering of many voices. The shining river, too, murmured to its reeds and pebbles, and in the air was the dull whirr of wings as the vast flocks of wild fowl rose like dark smoke from the water, or, skimming along its surface, broke it into myriad diamond sprays. Around the horizon towered heaped-up masses of cloud—Ossa piled on Pelion—fantastic ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... over their work. The more work they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen, who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength even in listening, amidst the conflicting whirr of the feeds and wheels,—and the old, sobered-down, slow ones, like Miss Bree and Miss Proddle, button-holing and gather-sewing for dear life, with their spectacles over their noses, and great bald places showing on the tops of their bent heads,—kept ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... When all was ready, he climbed up to his seat, and at a signal from the station-keeper, who watched with paternal pride all the movements of the little prodigy, we dashed off at a pace rarely attained by post-horses. He had the faculty of emitting a peculiar sound—something between a whirr and a whistle—that appeared to have a magical effect on the team and every few minutes he employed this incentive. The road was rough, and at every jolt he was shot upwards into the air, but he always fell back into his proper position, and ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... became boss of the gang, and could contract for men of his own. There was larger life in the land of resin and pine-logs. No tune in all broad Scotland was so merry as the whirr of the sawmill, when the little flashing ribbon of light runs before the swift-cutting edge of the saw. It made Sylvanus remember the pale sunshine his feet used to make on the tan-coloured sands of North Berwick, when he walked two summers before with May Chisholm, when it was low-water ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... show stretches of trellis, along which meander the cord-like tendrils of bignonias, aristolochias, and orchids, the flowers of which, drooping over windows and doorways, shut out the too garish sunlight, while filling the air with fragrance. Among these whirr tiny humming birds, buzz humble bees almost as big, while butterflies bigger than either lazily flout and flap ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... a very silent habitation,—situated as it was on so lofty and barren a crag, it was far beyond the singing- reach of the smaller sweet-throated birds—now and then an eagle clove the mist with a whirr of wings and a discordant scream on his way toward some distant mountain eyrie—but no other sound of awakening life broke the hush of the slowly widening dawn. An hour passed—and Alwyn still remained in the same position,—as pallidly quiescent as a corpse stretched ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... sparks of light came forward until they grew to circles of flame, and all at once lifted themselves up as if in angry surprise. Then for the first time thrilled in Mr. Bernard's ears the dreadful sound that nothing which breathes, be it man or brute, can hear unmoved,—the long, loud, stinging whirr, as the huge, thick-bodied reptile shook his many-jointed rattle and flung his jaw back for the fatal stroke. His eyes were drawn as with magnets toward the circles of flame. His ears rung as in the overture to ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 • Various
... they were thus confined, without a single thing to break the stillness, they could not conceive. It seemed that hours had gone by, during which time there was nothing to disturb them, except the one steady whirr, broken occasionally by some remark by one ...
— The Boy Volunteers with the Submarine Fleet • Kenneth Ward
... then he saw the strip of bright yellow sunlight and the blue bay in the opening below the eaves; then he caught the glitter and whirr of the two huge saws, moving silently but with the deadly menace of great speed on their axes. Against the light in irregular succession, alternately blotting and clearing the foreground at the end of the mill, appeared the ends ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... gratefully. After all, then, she was not to die. It seemed to her hardly possible. But before she could rise a subdued whirr of machinery penetrated into the room, and the motor-car came slowly to ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... made clear, for the line of Indians advanced obliquely towards the long grass till the leading man came almost in touch a couple of hundred yards in advance, when all at once there was the wild whirr of wings, and about a couple of dozen great birds sprang ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... them there would be little of the slaughter-yard suggestion about a modern battlefield, with its improved system of well-built and cleanly kept trenches and its clean puncturing bayonet thrust or rifle bullet. While the shells shriek and whirr through the air, heaps of humanity are distributed about the trenches, in the dug-outs, or in the reserve lines. The men sit or lie about for the most part, as unconcerned as if on holiday bent. The order to 'stand to' would ...
— Over the Top With the Third Australian Division • G. P. Cuttriss
... violent twitch at the end of the rod, the reel spun round with a sharp whirr-r, and every nerve in Mr Sudberry's system received an electric shock as he bent forward, straddled his legs, and made a desperate effort to fling ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... a wonderful trunk. So soon as any one pressed the lock the trunk could fly. He pressed it, and whirr! away flew the trunk with him through the chimney and over the clouds farther and farther away. But as often as the bottom of the trunk cracked a little he was in great fear lest it might go to pieces, and then he would have ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... and Neewa the report of the rifle and the moaning whirr of the bullet over their backs recalled memories of a host of things, and Neewa settled down to that hump-backed, flat-eared flight of his that kept Miki pegging along at a brisk pace for at least a mile. Then Neewa stopped, puffing audibly. Inasmuch as he had had nothing to eat for a ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... they made was like to make her head run round. "Splash! splash! Whirr! whirr! Clack! clack!" The water in the pot bubbled over. The spinning-wheel whirred. The shuttle in the ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... cows at eventime has been sung about, written about, talked about, painted, and always it has had in it the restfulness of evening,—the drowsy whirr of insects' wings, the benediction of the sunset, the welcoming gladness of a happy family. But these pictures have not been painted by those of us who have seen the hungry cattle come in from the range when the snow covers the grass, or the springs dry up, ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... tinkled noisily, and there was an incessant roar of the traffic that rumbled heavily over the wooden pavements. There was a clatter of horses' hoofs, and the blowing of horns; the electric broughams whizzed past with an odd, metallic whirr. ...
— The Explorer • W. Somerset Maugham
... off for the Red Dragon. This machine he selected because, with the exception of the Dart, it was the fastest and lightest of the aeroplanes they had with them. Farmer Hutchings had hardly closed his mouth from its gaping expression of surprise when a whirr of the motor announced that the Red Dragon was off. Its lithe body shot into the air ...
— The Girl Aviators' Motor Butterfly • Margaret Burnham
... later Jean Libert—whose feigned illness had now almost passed—was seated happily at her lover's side, slowly ascending the hill on the cliff-road leading towards Cromer, when, of a sudden, a loud whirr was heard ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... hundred pounds. Suddenly we shot out of the amber channel into a shallow lagoon lined on each side by the high tufted reeds, but the reeds were so thin we could see through them to lakes on each side. A whirr above our heads and a flock of teal almost touched us with their wings. Simultaneously all three dropped paddles—all three were speechless. The air was full of voices. You could not hear yourself think. We lapped the canoe close in hiding to the thin lining of ...
— The Canadian Commonwealth • Agnes C. Laut
... flight of a falcon pouncing down upon its prey. It seemed descending not in a straight line, but in an acute parabolic curve, like a thunderbolt or some aerolite projected toward the surface of the sea. But the bird, with a whirr like the sound of running spindles, was going in a definite direction, the point evidently aimed at being the head of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... Whirr! a kingfisher darts down with a quick splash, and back to his bough with a fish in his beak. The canoe moves on, slowly, noiselessly; here the water is only three inches deep, but the soft bottom yields as the strong young arms ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... Miller Loveday's pipe came down Mrs. Garland's chimney of an evening with the greatest regularity. Every time that he poked his fire they knew from the vehemence or deliberateness of the blows the precise state of his mind; and when he wound his clock on Sunday nights the whirr of that monitor reminded the widow to wind hers. This transit of noises was most perfect where Loveday's lobby adjoined Mrs. Garland's pantry; and Anne, who was occupied for some time in the latter apartment, enjoyed the privilege ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... took place in the parish, and a great deal of what never did take place. She had just been telling it all unreservedly in her hard way; things that might be said, and things that might as well have been left unsaid. She went out leaving a whirr and a buzz behind her and an awful sickness of ...
— Elster's Folly • Mrs. Henry Wood
... humming hot day at Waddy; the pulsing whirr of invisible locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent droning in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson
... men, grouped about the door of a furnace whose red light flashed dazzlingly upon walls and ceiling and gave its tenants the aspect of crimson devils. What the furnace meant or why it was built, I was soon to learn; for presently one of the men gave an order, and upon this an engine started, and a whirr of fans and the sucking of a distant pump answered to the signal. "Air," said I to myself; "they are pumping air ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... right, then climbed swiftly. Jimmy raised his machine at the same time, but, thinking to save the left turn and unconsciously slowing in a little on the plane in front, was reminded that he would be wise to change course a bit. The ominous whirr of pieces of projectile told him that the German "Archie" had fired a shot with good direction. He knew that shell might be closely followed by another at a better elevation, so turned right, climbing, until he had regained his eight hundred ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Flying Corps • James R. Driscoll
... pulled up beside the other horse and threw himself off. Even as he touched the ground a sharp whirr met his ear and he saw the fat, still body and vibrating tail of the snake. He wrenched the pistol from the holster, took the quickest aim of his life and pulled the trigger. After the shot apparently nothing had changed. The whirr of the rattle went on for a second ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... a tree, well toward the north; that a little gray bird almost as far to the south was singing with great vigor and sweetness; that a rabbit was hopping about in the undergrowth, curious and yet fearful; that an eagle with a faint whirr of wings had alighted on a bough, and was looking at the three; that the eagle thinking they might be dangerous had unfolded his wings again and was flying away; that a deer passing to the west had caught a whiff of them on the wind and was running with all speed in the other direction; that a lynx ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sent forth so remarkable a volume of sound that when first told it was created by insects alone I found my credulity taxed to its utmost limit; and it was not until I was solemnly assured by Mr Austin that such was the case that I quite believed it. It was not unlike the "whirr" of machinery, save that it rose and fell in distinct cadences, and occasionally—as if by preconcerted arrangement on the part of every individual insect in the district—stopped altogether for ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... streams, the squirrel in the wood and the bracken, the wildcat stealing through the undergrowth, the lizard glittering by the stone, the fish leaping in the stream, the plaint of the whippoorwill, the call of the bluebird, the golden flash of the oriole, the honk of the wild geese overhead, the whirr of the mallard from the sedge. And, more than all, a human voice declaring by its joy in song that not only God looks upon the world and finds it ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... commotion in the scrub beside him abruptly changed the trend of his thought. He was startled. The commotion went on. Then with a rush and whirr of wings, and a hoarse-throated squawk, a large bird flew up, clutching the ruffled body of a lesser one in its fierce claws, its great flapping wings brushing his sleeve as it swept ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... have ears on the stretch for the footfalls of sorrow that never come, but be deaf to the whirr of the wings of ...
— Leaves of Life - For Daily Inspiration • Margaret Bird Steinmetz
... my childish days I heard A woman's voice that slowly read, How 'twixt two shadowy mountains sped Four colored steeds, four chariots whirr'd. ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... the lights. I have them arranged so for just that purpose of scaring off intruders. Then, as I looked out of my window on the second floor, I fancied I could see a dark figure slink into the shadow of the shrubbery at the side of the house. Then there was a whirr. It might have been an automobile, although it sounded differently from that—more like a motor boat. At any rate, there was no trace of a car that we could discover in the morning. The road had been oiled, too, ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... the blackbirds clamored along the river. Some crows followed the workers at a distance, hunting for grains of corn, and over in the woods, a chewink scratched and rustled among the deep leaves as it searched for grubs. From time to time a flock of quail arose before them with a whirr and scattered down the fields, reassembling later at the call of their leader, from a rider of the snake fence, which ...
— At the Foot of the Rainbow • Gene Stratton-Porter
... went into his office; the big engine started up again, and the whirr and dust and clamour of the shops went on. But men bent over their work there, in the gathering dusk of the winter day, who felt a new heart-throb at the recollection of the pale face and sincere word of the man who had broken a selfish silence of a quarter of a century to call them brothers. ...
— Robert Hardy's Seven Days - A Dream and Its Consequences • Charles Monroe Sheldon
... towns we burst, like a whirlwind, crashing across the pebbled streets, and out upon the broad, smooth road again. Before we had well considered the fact that we were out of Lyons, we stopped to change horses. Done in a jiffy; and whoop, crick, crack, whack, rumble, bump, whirr, whisk, away we blazed, till, ere we knew it, another ...
— Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands V2 • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... the short half hour was over and the wheels began to whirr again. Though wearied, she would be inconspicuous. This illusion ended when another young man passed along the aisle and poked her indifferently in the ribs with his thumb. She turned about, indignation leaping to her eyes, but he had gone on ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... fence to watch the effect of the mortar-firing. It was interesting to sit there and hear the great shells sail through the air five hundred feet above us. It was like the sound of far-off, invisible machinery, turning with a constant motion, not the sharp, shrill whistle of a rifled-bolt, but a whirr and roll, like that which you may sometimes hear above the clouds in a thunder-storm. One shell fell like a millstone into the river. The water did not extinguish the fuse, and a great column was thrown up fifty feet high. Another buried itself deep in the ground before it burst, and excavated ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... mood did not last long. The Canadian air was getting into his blood again. A sudden whirr and flash, where a host of red-winged blackbirds arose in a cloud from the road, proved too much for him. He leaped from the buggy, yelling like a madman, and for the rest of the journey was quite beyond the limits of reason. He sat in the vehicle only on ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... the old days at Petrovskoe, every one had been used to wash and dress for the meal, and then to repair to the drawing-room as the appointed hour (two o'clock) drew near, and pass the time of waiting in lively conversation. Just as the clock in the servants' hall was beginning to whirr before striking the hour, Foka would enter with noiseless footsteps, and, throwing his napkin over his arm and assuming a dignified, rather severe expression, would say in loud, measured tones: "Luncheon is ready!" Thereupon, ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... ambition, and I remembered Mr. Wilde as I had last left him, his face all torn and bloody from the claws of that devil's creature, and what he said—ah, what he said. The alarm bell in the safe began to whirr harshly, and I knew my time was up; but I would not heed it, and replacing the flashing circlet upon my head I turned defiantly to the mirror. I stood for a long time absorbed in the changing expression of my own eyes. The mirror reflected a face which was ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... solemn silences with shouts and squeals of sheer ecstasy, which Uncle Andy had not the heart to suppress. Then, all at once, he remembered what the thrilling air, the gold and scarlet of the trees, the fairy ice films, the whirr of the partridge wings, and the sharp cries of the bluejays all meant. It meant that soon Uncle Andy would take him back to town, the cabin under the hemlock would be boarded up. Bill the Guide would go off to the lumber camps beyond the Ottanoonsis, and Silverwater would be left to ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... myself why I, a distinguished man, a privy councillor, am sitting in this little hotel room, on this bed with the unfamiliar grey quilt. Why am I looking at that cheap tin washing-stand and listening to the whirr of the wretched clock in the corridor? Is all this in keeping with my fame and my lofty position? And I answer these questions with a jeer. I am amused by the naivete with which I used in my youth to exaggerate the value of renown and of the exceptional position which celebrities are ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... little red motor-bonnet, surrounded by five men, one of them the somewhat notorious Maharajah of Indorwana. Vanno retreated hastily, and went on toward the steps which led up to the Rock of Monaco; but he had not gone far when a combination of sounds stopped him: the whirr of a propeller and the throb of an engine. Carleton was evidently on the point of trying his machine, the curious invention which could be used, it was said, on land as well as in ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... out of the physician's office to find Jean Forette calmly reading in his side of the car. The paper was put away at once, and with a whirr from the ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... Flashing like a fair star Where the humid, dew-becoated, Sun-illumined blossoms are— See the fleet humming-bird! Hark to his humming, heard Loud as the whirr of a fairy king's car! Sightliest, sprightliest, lightest, and brightest one, Child of the summer ...
— Voices for the Speechless • Abraham Firth
... breakfast, smothered with herbs and mystery, we hired a fancy phaeton and voluble driver to whirr us around the principal streets, parks and buildings of the rushing, brilliant city, everything moving as if the devil were out with a search warrant for some of the stray citizens ...
— Shakspere, Personal Recollections • John A. Joyce
... had to go and investigate. William escorted her at once to the spot. There was a large elm just at the edge of the wood, and certainly it was emitting very strange sounds. At intervals a curious clicking whirr came from among the branches. Mr. and Mrs. Treasure, who had also been informed of the mysterious noises, had hurried up from the farm with little Connie. They stood staring ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... me the savage whirr: And is it Nature scourged, or she, Her offspring's executioner, Reducing land to barren sea? But is there meaning in a day When this fierce angel of the air, Intent to throw, and haply slay, Can for what breath of life we bear, Exact the wrestle?—Call to mind The many ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... of their harness were all the sounds he could hear. Naab returned to his seat; the team started, now no longer in a trot; they were climbing. After that Hare fell into a slumber in which he could hear the slow grating whirr of wheels, and when it ceased he awoke to raise himself and turn his ear to the back trail. By-and-by he discovered that the black night had changed to gray; dawn was not far distant; he dozed and awakened to clear light. A rose-red horizon lay far below and to the eastward; ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... rather like your father," she said. "I don't understand;" and in the silence which followed upon her words Feversham heard something whirr and rattle upon the table. He looked and saw that she had slipped her engagement ring off her finger. It lay upon the table, the stones winking ...
— The Four Feathers • A. E. W. Mason
... semi-dark, faces turning like his own to the summits of the mountains and the billowy splendors there. It grew so dark he could see no more. There fell a deep silence, not a sound but the occasional chirp of a bird or the faint whirr of an insect. Even the glow on the peaks was gone. ...
— His Family • Ernest Poole
... powerful form as if to prove whether it were an equal match for such a foe. Then, raising his voice to such a pitch, that it sounded above the cries and groans of the fighting men, the words of command, the neighing of the horses, the crash of overthrown chariots, the dull whirr of lances and swords, their heavy blows on shields and helmets, and the whole bewildering tumult of the battle—with a loud shout he drew his bow, and his first arrow pierced a ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... not the worst time or place in the world to read the Bible. But how all the voices of nature seemed to flow in and mix with the reading, I cannot tell, no more than I can number them; the whirr of a bird's wing, the liquid note of a wood thrush, the stir and movement of a thousand leaves, the gurgle of rippling water, the crow's call, and the song-sparrow's ecstasy. Once or twice the notes of a bugle found their way ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... to come with her? It would not do, Madame von Marwitz saw that clearly, for an alienated Karen to be taken to the Lippheims'. Comparisons and disclosures would ensue that would send the loom, with a mighty whirr, weaving rapidly in an opposite direction to that of the plan. Franz, in Germany, must be pacified, and Karen be carried off to some lovely, lonely spot until the husband's suit was safely won. It was not fatal to the plan that Karen should be supposed, finally, ...
— Tante • Anne Douglas Sedgwick
... wander forth with fever'd blood, That makes me start at little things, The blackbird screaming from the wood, The sudden whirr of ...
— The Defence of Guenevere and Other Poems • William Morris
... again and comforted the people, saying, "The Lord hath given us a sign, and he will feed us, as he fed the people of Israel in the wilderness; for he has sent us a fine flight of fieldfares across the barren sea, so that they whirr out of every bush as ye come near it. Who will now run down into the village, and cut off the mane and tail of my dead cow which lies out behind on the common?" (for there was no horsehair in all the village, seeing that ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... will I destroy'; and with a crash one more hoary iniquity disappears from the earth which it has burdened so long. For sixty times sixty slow, throbbing seconds, the silent hand creeps unnoticed round the dial and then, with whirr and clang, the bell rings out, and another hour of the world's secular day is gone. The billows of the thunder-cloud slowly gather into vague form, and slowly deepen in lurid tints, and slowly roll across ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... curious bay. All around us was admirably green. The strong sea-breeze had suddenly fallen, and was succeeded by a perfect calm; the atmosphere, now very warm, was laden with the perfume of flowers. In the valley resounded the ceaseless whirr of the cicalas, answering each other from one shore to another; the mountains reechoed with innumerable sounds; the whole country seemed to vibrate like crystal. On our way we passed among myriads of Japanese junks, gliding softly, wafted by imperceptible breezes on ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... rivers which flow down to the sea from the western chain of mountains carry millions of logs from the great dark forests. As soon as the ice breaks up in the spring, whole fleets of fishing boats and lumber vessels sail up and down the coast; sawmills whirr and buzz all day long; the hum of labor is heard ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... to bask," I said to myself, as I gave it a little wider berth, when all at once, to my surprise, up rose with a whirr not the bird I sought, but a little flock of seven or eight, and as I raised my gun to fire at the ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... beam followed relentlessly, and as the two smart little craft cleared from the area of the black smoke cloud, there came the ringing report of a 6-inch gun followed by the familiar whirr of a heavy shell. ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... plot and the bronzed oaks beyond, as if loath to break the intimacy of the last half hour. In the solitude, the dead silence of the place, there seemed to lurk misfortune and pain. Suddenly from a distance sounded the whirr of an electric car, passing on the avenue behind them. The noise came softened across the open lot—a distant murmur from the big city that ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... quiet life surrounding him, to the few sounds of the country solitude. Something from behind the nettles chirps with a shrill, shrill little note; a gnat seems to answer it. Now it has ceased, but still the gnat keeps up its sharp whirr; across the pleasant, persistent, fretful buzz of the flies sounds the hum of a big bee, constantly knocking its head against the ceiling; a cock crows in the street, hoarsely prolonging the last note; there is the ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... off through the grass and ferns while the chicks hasten to hide themselves. Your natural inclination is to follow the mother, and then she will take very short flights, alternated with runs in the grass, until she has led you far from her family. Then a whirr of strong wings and she is gone back to the cover where she clucks them together. But if you first turn your attention to the chicks the mother will turn on her trail, stretch out her long, broad, banded tail into a beautiful fan, ruffle ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... Angora tabby: stroke them smoothly and they will purr and rub noses with you; but stroke them the wrong way and whirr! they scratch your hands and out of the window they fly! ...
— The Golden Dog - Le Chien d'Or • William Kirby
... repeated this phrase together, speaking so fast as to produce a sound like the whirr of a rapidly revolving machine. Meanwhile Coue quickly stroked the man's shoulder. At the end of that time the patient admitted that his ...
— The Practice of Autosuggestion • C. Harry Brooks
... as a cat's follows a pendulum, but without the cat's curiosity about a pendulum. He never interrupted when Potter was speaking; and Canby noticed that whenever Potter talked at any length Tinker looked thoughtful and distant, like a mechanic so accustomed to the whirr and thunder of the machine-shop that he may indulge in reveries there. After a moment or two the old fellow ceased to follow the pendulum stride, ...
— Harlequin and Columbine • Booth Tarkington
... in early windows, forth over wet, dim fields went cows from their houses: even in this hour touched the fields again the feet of the hippogriff. And the moment that the man dismounted and took off his magic halter the hippogriff flew slanting away with a whirr, going back to some airy ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... respectably in bed and for the most part sleeping. But so far as the fashionable "West End" was concerned, it might have been midday. Everybody assuming to be Anybody, was in town. The rumble of carriages passing to and fro was incessant,—the swift whirr and warning hoot of coming and going motor vehicles, the hoarse cries of the newsboys, and the general insect-like drone and murmur of feverish human activity were as loud as at any busy time of the morning or the afternoon. There had been a Court at Buckingham Palace,—and a "special" ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... the Turks' answering could be picked out without great difficulty. Added to this the air was still; the dull thud of the field guns at work there was different from the resounding boom of the naval guns, and the whirr of the machine guns could be ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... alarm. The Baroness, handling the brittle wires with her delicate little fingers, gave me the numbers as I wanted them, and carefully held the coil whilst I unrolled it. Suddenly one of them coiled itself up again with a whirr, making the Baroness utter an impatient "Oh!" Lady Adelheid enjoyed a hearty laugh, whilst I pursued the tangled coil to the corner of the room. After we had all united our efforts to extract a perfectly straight string from it, and had tried it again, to our mortification it again ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... mammals, but the birds along the road were fascinating. Brilliant green parrots screamed in the tree tops and tiny sun-birds dressed in garments of red and gold and purple, flashed across the trail like living jewels. Once we heard a strange whirr and saw a huge hornbill flapping heavily over the river, every beat of his stiff wing feathers sounding like the motor of an aeroplane. Bamboo partridges called from the bushes and dozens of unfamiliar ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... rushed downward the whirr of their descent seemed to arouse the being so painfully crawling over the hot waste beneath them. He looked up, and then, extending his hands upward in a gesture of bewilderment, he staggered forward and the next instant stretched his length on the ...
— The Girl Aviators on Golden Wings • Margaret Burnham
... it, placed himself in front of the wheel, and whirr, whirr, whirr, three times round, and the bobbin was full. Then he set up another, and whir, whir, whir, thrice round again, and a second bobbin was full; and so he went all night long, until all the straw was spun, and the bobbins were full of gold. At sunrise the King came, very ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... the berths being furnished simply with cane-bottoms, a pillow, and one unclean sheet. Those who were decoyed into these staterooms endured them with disgust while the boat was at anchor; but when the paddle-wheels began to revolve, and dismal din of clang and bang and whirr came down about their ears, and threatened to unroof the fortress of the brain, why, then they fled madly, precipitately, leaving their clothes mostly behind them. But I am anticipating. The passengers arrived and kept arriving; and we watched, leaning over the side, for Don Antonito, who ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... the loftiest trees. One allied to the gourd bears immense yellowish-white pendulous blossoms; another bears curious pitcher-shaped flowers. Vines, peppers, and pothos interlace with the palms and plantains in impenetrable jungle. Orchids clothe the trees. Everywhere and always we hear the whirr and hum of insect life, sometimes soft and soothing, sometimes harsh and strident. And floating about wherever we look are butterflies innumerable, many dull and unpretentious, but some of a brilliancy of colour that makes us gasp ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... mangrove-swamp follows the general rule for West Africa, and night in it is noisier than the day. After dark it is full of noises; grunts from I know not what, splashes from jumping fish, the peculiar whirr of rushing crabs, and quaint creaking and groaning sounds from the trees; and—above all in eeriness—the strange whine and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... enough, and have half a mind to throw up the contract with fate. But hold on a bit. There is something worse than too much work, and that is idleness. Imagine a sudden hush in all the myriad sounds of labor. The ceasing of the whirr of countless wheels whereat men stand day after day through toilful years, fashioning everything from a pin's head to a ship's mast; the suspended click of millions of sewing machines, above which bend delicate women ...
— A String of Amber Beads • Martha Everts Holden
... in fact their whole front, until ten o'clock at night. Our battery had moved back at least two miles and gone into park in a field, where, at short intervals, a large gunboat shell would burst over us, scattering pieces around, while the main part would whirr on, it seemed, indefinitely. ...
— The Story of a Cannoneer Under Stonewall Jackson • Edward A. Moore
... owing to the same wish not to excite unduly and unnecessarily the envy of others, that no machinery was exhibited from Canada, and that while other nations were making the great building resound and vibrate to the whirr of wheels driven by steam; you did not, even by so much as a picture, remind the Parisians of your wealth in water power as well as in steam, and there was nothing to show the citizen of London or of Paris, who supposes the Thames or the Seine to be the greatest streams on earth, why he should ...
— Memories of Canada and Scotland - Speeches and Verses • John Douglas Sutherland Campbell
... weeping at the knees of her father, heard the whirr of the car coming up the drive; and, springing to the window, witnessed the arrival of ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... lit up the streets, the city was in absolute darkness, and near the quay I lost my way in the byroads trying to get back to the Hotel Wagner. For the second time that day I narrowly escaped death by a shell. One burst with terrific force about twenty-five yards from me. I heard its warning whirr, and rushed into a neighboring porch. Whether it was from concussion of the shell or in my anxiety to escape, I cannoned against a door and tumbled down. As I lay on the ground the house on the opposite side crashed ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the hollows. The brown bushes by a hidden stone-wall broke the sheen entrancingly; here and there a dry leaf fluttered, but only enough to show how still such winter stillness can be, and a flock of little brown birds rose, with a soft whirr, and settled further on. Mrs. Wadleigh pressed her lips together in a voiceless content, and her eyes took on a new brightness. She had lived quite long enough in the town. Rounding a sweeping bend, and ploughing sturdily along, though it was difficult here ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... responded the artist, "I am often at a loss to know whether I love or despise you most. If a little of the whirr of our great grandam's spinning wheel would only get into your brain the world might hear from you. You are a man of unbounded stomach and unbounded heart, and so you have won all there is of me except my head, ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... these ancient ribs of granite rock, Else to yon depths profound it you will hurl. A murky vapour thickens night. Hark! Through the woods the tempests roar! The owlets flit in wild affright. Hark! Splinter'd are the columns that upbore The leafy palace, green for aye: The shivered branches whirr and sigh, Yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan. The roots upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the, wreck-strewn precipice, The raging storm-blasts ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... laboring trio from safe vantage points now rose with a soft whirr of wings and a quick chorus of twitters as Farvel opened the door from the Church and came out. A long black gown hung to his feet, but this only served to accentuate the paleness of his newly-shaven cheeks. "Ah, fine!" he greeted kindly; "the yard ...
— Apron-Strings • Eleanor Gates
... might have covered several, but with the rifle I could not hope for more than a single bird; so, wanting to make sure of that, I waited until an old cock mounted the rock, and got to 'drumming.' Then I sighted him, and sent my bullet through his crop. I heard the loud whirr of the pack as they rose up from the ring; and, marking them, I saw that they all alighted only a couple of hundred yards off, upon a ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... roof of that gnome-land where we had journeyed together yesterday. From snow-covered billows which should have been sprayed with mountain wild-flowers by now, a fierce blast pounced down on us like a swooping bird of prey. We felt the swift whirr of its wings, which almost took our breath away, and made the Aigle quiver; but like a bull that meets its enemy with lowered horns, the brave car's bonnet seemed to defy the wind and face it squarely. We swept on toward the snow-reaches whence the wind-torrent came. Soon we ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... dissenting voices, and presently Bob heard the whirr of the sending set, followed by the voice ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... such a state of diseased susceptibility that the most innocent words from Captain Wybrow would have been irritating to her, as the whirr of the most delicate wing will afflict a nervous patient. But this tone of benevolent remonstrance was intolerable. He had inflicted a great and unrepented injury on her, and now he assumed an air of benevolence towards her. This was a new outrage. ...
— Scenes of Clerical Life • George Eliot
... when the bird was singing its best, and the emperor was lying in bed listening to it, something gave way inside the bird with a 'whizz.' Then a spring burst, 'whirr' went all the wheels, and the music stopped. The emperor jumped out of bed and sent for his private physicians, but what good could they do? Then they sent for the watchmaker, and after a good deal of talk and examination he got the works ...
— Stories from Hans Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... voice, and chanted the chant of the fight on the bitter sea,—wonderfully making his biwa to sound like the straining of oars and the rushing of ships, the whirr and the hissing of arrows, the shouting and trampling of men, the crashing of steel upon helmets, the plunging of slain in the flood. And to left and right of him, in the pauses of his playing, he could hear ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... that interested him immensely, and that was the grist mill, composed of the two stones, and when the water wheel was set in motion and the upper stone began to whirr, he stood with mouth and eyes open, and watched the meal running from the spout like one entranced. Usually these people are too stolid to pay attention to such things, but his intense interest was so pronounced that it attracted all ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Tribesmen • Roger Finlay
... the fear of going astray. Through the vast forest a deathlike silence reigned; and this silence was not made up of an infinity of tiny sounds, like the silence of a summer day when the crickets whirr in the treetops and the bees drone in the clover-blossoms. No; this silence was dead, chilling, terrible. The huge pine-trees now and then dropped a load of snow on the heads of the bold intruders, and it fell with a thud, followed by a noiseless, glittering ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... branches, and all along its ditch border the starry stitchwort lifted its childish faces, and chorused in lines and masses. Never had I seen such a symphony of note-like flowers and tendrils and leaves. And suddenly in its depths, I heard a chirrup and the whirr of startled wings. ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... by terror, fled. Great Ajax still, unwearied, long'd to hurl His spear at Hector of the brazen helm; But he, well skill'd in war, his shoulders broad Protected by his shield of tough bull's hide, Watch'd for the whizzing shafts, and jav'lins' whirr. Full well he knew the tide of battle turn'd, Yet held his ground, ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... air, and went beating up above the Surrey wastes. He felt a breath of wind from the southwest, and lifted his westward wing as he had learnt to do, and so drove upward heeling into the rare swift upper air. Whirr, whirr, whirr. ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... warm embrace and many kisses. I climbed on to the front seat of the buggy beside my escort, he whipped the horses—a cloud of dust, a whirr of wheels, and we were ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... window and pushed aside one of the short, calico curtains. She looked out on the court. A tall woman had just pulled up a bucket of water from the well and had emptied it into a pitcher. She finished, let the bucket drop with a whirr and a clash, and raised her head. For a second she and Jasper Morena's wife looked at each other. Betty nodded, smiled, and drew the ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... task that she heard nothing of the clang and roar of the streets below, seething with holiday traffic. The elevator opposite her door buzzed up and down unheeded. She did not even notice when it stopped on her floor, and some one walked across the corridor with a heavy tread. But the whirr of her door bell brought her to herself with a start, and she looked up impatiently, half inclined to pay no attention to the interruption. Then thinking it might be some business message which she could ...
— The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware • Annie Fellows Johnston
... fatigue, and he had no courage left to approach the wall. There fell a mist over his eyes, and there came a soorawn in his head, and he was obliged to sit down upon a great stone to recover himself. He could see nothing but the light, and he could hear nothing but the whirr of it as it shot round the paddock faster than a flash ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... from the Spaniard—a whirr, a shriek, and a solid shot struck the water, having passed entirely over the ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... was it in the big circus tent after the band stopped playing, while Joe prepared to do his head slide, that the whirr of the steel wheels in his leather cap could plainly be heard as he slid down ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... fingers much more than do we adults. Our stories rely mainly upon visual recalls. We forget to listen even to birds whose message is pure melody. And how many of us hear the city sounds which surround us, the characteristic whirr of revolving wheels, the vibrating rhythm of horses' feet, the crunch of footsteps in the snow? Noises we hear, the warning shriek of the fire engine or the honk! honk! of the automobile. But the subtler, finer reverberations we are not sensitive to. Yet little children love ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... peak and dwindle The clank of chain and crane, The whirr of crank and spindle Bewilder heart and brain; The ends of our endeavor Are wealth and fame, Yet in the still Forever We're one ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... bade her close her eyes—another moment, and she bade her open them; and, most wonderful of all the wonderful things that had happened to her, the trees, the country, the distant city, all were gone! There was a charming log-fire on the hearth, sparkling and crackling; whirr, whirr, whirr, went the old woman's wheel, and there she sate in her chair just as usual; and the wind was blowing, and the rain was pelting against the shutters, exactly as it did the very night puss had left the cottage in such ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... mill, with ceaseless whirr and drone, With moss and lichens to the roof o'ergrown An undertone to every other sound, The blind old ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... vacant chair of "the Chief" on the opposite side of the broad flat desk, then out the wide-open window and across the shimmering roofs of Ancon to the far green ridges of the youthful Republic, ablaze with the unbroken tropical sunshine. The whirr of a telephone bell broke in upon his meditation. In sharp, clear-cut phrases he answered the questions that came to him over the wire, hung up the receiver, and pushed the apparatus away from him ...
— Zone Policeman 88 - A Close Range Study of the Panama Canal and its Workers • Harry A. Franck
... clothing the old commonplaces with charm. But men with that great gift are not to be met with in every railway-carriage, or at every dinner. The man we actually meet is one whose joke, though we have signalled it a mile off, we are powerless to stop, whose opinions come out with a whirr as of clockwork. Besides, it always happens in life that the man—or woman—with whom we would like to talk is at the next table. Those who really have something to say to each other so seldom have a ...
— Prose Fancies • Richard Le Gallienne
... on, here they came. All together, too; none of those chivalrous magnanimities which one reads so much about —one courtly rascal at a time, and the rest standing by to see fair play. No, they came in a body, they came with a whirr and a rush, they came like a volley from a battery; came with heads low down, plumes streaming out behind, lances advanced at a level. It was a handsome sight, a beautiful sight—for a man up a tree. I laid my lance in rest and waited, with my heart beating, till the iron wave was ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... the waves upon the pebbled beach, would make enough noise to effectually deaden the whirr of the propeller—the new and novel muffler or silencer, fashioned very much on the order of such a contraption as successfully applied to small firearms, was doing wonderfully, and Perk every little while made motions as though shaking hands with himself because of this addition ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... What was that whirring, singing sound? Was that a new signal that Barney was trying? Was it—Whirr, s-st! Down like a shot dropped Tam's head, and like an arrow he leaped forward, swerving sideways to escape the danger he had scented,—the danger of a lariat ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... animal was my friend and companion in the hunt and not my pursuer. How quickly the dog adjusts himself to the bow! At first he is afraid of the long stick. But he soon gets the idea and not waiting for the detonation of the gun, he accepts the hum of the bowstring and the whirr of the arrow as signals for action. Some dogs have even shown a tendency to retrieve our arrows for us, and nothing suits them better than that we go on foot, and by their sides can run with them and with our silent shafts can lay low what they bring to bay. In fact, ...
— Hunting with the Bow and Arrow • Saxton Pope
... along beside her on his big iron-gray horse. No more good times with the best and jolliest of little neighbours. A summer without Rob's cheery whistle and good-natured laugh would seem as empty and queer as the woods without the bird voices, or the meadows without the whirr of humming things. She ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... songs, laughter, rattle of dice, whirr of wheel and clink of glasses—assailed me discordant. The scores of tents and shacks stretching on irregularly had become pocked with dark spots, where lights had been extinguished, but the street remained ablaze and the desert without winked at the stars. There were moving gleams at the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... know not; the cistus is brown now, the rest all deep and brilliant green. Large herds of cattle browse on the baked deposit at the foot of these large crags. One or two half-savage herdsmen in sheepskin kilts, etc., ask for cigars; partridges whirr up on either side of us; pigeons coo and nightingales sing amongst the blooming oleander. We get six sheep, and many fowls too, from the priest of the small village, and then run back to Spartivento and make preparations ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... birds who has spent the day in the field puts away his glasses at nightfall, looking forward to a walk after dark only as a chance to hear the call of nocturnal birds or to catch the whirr of a passing wing. But some bright moonlight night in early May, or again in mid September, unsheath your glasses and tie them, telescope-fashion, to a window-ledge or railing. Seat yourself in an easy position and focus ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... curious glance of a mortal eye He is not seen. He's heard. His steps go a-creeping, creeping by, He speaks but a single word. You may hear his feet: you may hear them plain, For—it's odd in a ghost—they crunch. You may hear the whirr of his rattling chain, And the ting ...
— A Wodehouse Miscellany - Articles & Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... As he did so he made some casual remark and then sat down again. After the 10.40 had gone through, there followed a period of silence which seemed almost oppressive. All at once the stillness was broken by the whirr of the electric bell, which sounded so sharply in our ears that ...
— A Master of Mysteries • L. T. Meade
... the Burmese boy, I had to claw down some high pigeons from untold heights on their way home to roost. After this, as I was loading, a partridge got up from some stubbly grass in a clearing, with an astonishingly familiar whirr, and went clear away, and I'd barely loaded when a Button quail whipped over some bushes, and it dropped, but in impenetrable thorns! I'd not heard of Burmese partridges, but the flight and whirr were unmistakeable, though the ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... rapidly towards two o'clock (92 and 93 Fahr.), by which time every voice of bird or mammal was hushed; only in the trees was heard at intervals the harsh whirr of a cicada. The leaves, which were so moist and fresh in early morning, now become lax and drooping; the flowers shed their petals. Our neighbours, the Indian and Mulatto inhabitants of the open palm- thatched huts, as we returned home fatigued with our ramble, ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... beneath the tree there comes a flash and a report and a bullet flies and the night prowler leaps in the air with a snarling yelp and falls writhing in his death agony, as from the sand flats in the river arises the clamour of startled wild fowl and the rush and whirr of a thousand wings. Then silence again, save for the ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... of serving God You sweep a room or turn a sod, And suddenly to your surprise You hear the whirr of seraphim And ?uid you're under God's own eyes And ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... soughing of the branches; they seem to come from the swamp life underneath the branches, at the roots of trees. There's a ceaseless stir as of a myriad of reptiles creeping in the slime. Listen long enough and you will fancy that you hear the whirr and rush of innumerable crabs, the flapping of innumerable fish. Now and again a more distinctive sound emerges from the rest—the croaking of a bull-frog, the whining cough of a crocodile. At such sounds Hatteras would start up ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... folded his napkin in haste, seized his coat and hat, kissed his wife, patted her shoulder, nodded at me, and was gone. A minute later we heard the whirr and slide of his car, and Hepatica, at the window, ...
— A Court of Inquiry • Grace S. Richmond
... at intervals, for the night was partially clouded. There seemed to be nobody stirring, though his attention was unusually awake, and he could hear the whirr of the bats overhead, and the pulsating croak of the frogs in the distant pools and marshes. Presently he detected the sound of hoofs at some distance, and, looking forward, saw a horseman coming in his direction. The ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... man enters upon his first real sovereignty of nature. As we hear the whirr of the dynamo or listen at the telephone, as we turn the button of an incandescent lamp or travel in an electromobile, we are partakers in a revolution more swift and profound than has ever before been enacted upon earth. Until the nineteenth century fire was justly accounted the most useful ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... of every moment that detained him. This was a feeling he had never before experienced. He knew that winter was following him closely and the river would soon be freezing behind him; yet that could scarcely account for the unusual desire for haste. The moment he heard the whirr of the little alarm clock, he was up. Hurriedly swallowing breakfast, he slipped into the river ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... with a million veins, That like as with rosy and silvery essences flow In the rose-and-silver evening glow. Farewell, my lord Sun! The creeks overflow: a thousand rivulets run 'Twixt the roots of the sod; the blades of the marsh-grass stir; Passeth a hurrying sound of wings that westward whirr; Passeth, and all is still; and the currents cease to run; And the sea and the marsh are one. How still the plains of the waters be! The tide is in his ecstasy. The tide is at his highest height: And it is night. And ...
— Sidney Lanier • Edwin Mims
... called after them. Tom waved his hand to his father, and the next moment his craft shot into the air. Up and up it went, the great propeller blades beating the air, but, save for a soft whirr, such as would be made by the wings of a bird, ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... noticed things as she had never noticed them before. A sunbeam came through the shutterless window of the house and writhed and quivered on the wall as if it were a live thing. She read a warning in this, and in the color of the sun, that was red, like blood, and in the whirr of the grasshoppers, that was sinister and threatening. The creeks had dried, and their slimy beds crept along the willows like sluggish snakes. Gaunt range-cattle bellowed in their thirst, and the parched earth crackled beneath the sun that ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... paces away, and held a mass meeting to protest; whereupon the father of all the dragon-flies, a magnificent warrior in a steel- blue armour, saw that a conspiracy was afoot, and swept into the midst with a whirr and a snap, a turn here and a flash there, that scattered the host in a twinkling of ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... soft whirr, the click of a brake, two footfalls, and the Young Lady in Grey stood holding her machine. She had turned round and come back to him. The warm sunlight now was in her face. "Are you hurt?" she said. She had a pretty, clear, girlish voice. She was really very young—quite a girl, ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... up facing the Antelope priests in front of the Kisa, (See Figure 10), and the rattles of both lines of priests begin a low whirr not unlike the rattle of snakes. All is perfectly rhythmic and the Snake priests, with locked fingers, sway back and forth to the music, bodies as well as feet keeping time, while the Antelopes mark time with a rhythmic shuffle. At last they break into a low chant, which increases in volume, and ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... naturalist at heart, and found interest in hundreds of things I should have passed over. For instance, that morning, as we strolled a little way along the lane, we stopped to peer over the gate into a newly ploughed field at some round-looking birds which rose directly with a loud whirr, and then went skimming along, to glide over the hedge ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
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