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More "Whirring" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... he could hear the whirring of the car coming back from Cheltenham; the lines of the beech trees opened fan-wise to let it through. He saw Colin sitting up ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... kitchen, Drear and lonely our retreat, Speak a word and break the silence, Dearest little Mother, sweet! Has the moaning of the tempest Closed thine eyelids wearily? Has the spinning wheel's soft whirring Hummed a ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... the whirring of a covey of sand-grouse or partridges could express little more than the swift passage of birds to a place of security. To the man who grew almost as a part of the forest, the movement was something well defined, clearly initiated, and the first step in a sequence that he could trace without ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... rabbit in his burrow, Heard the pheasant, Bena, drumming, Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Rattling in his hoard of acorns, Saw the pigeon, the Omeme, Building nests among the pine-trees, And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa, Flying to the fen-lands northward, Whirring, wailing far above him. "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the next day of his fasting By the river's brink he wandered, Through the Muskoday, the meadow, Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee, Saw the blueberry, Meenahga, And the strawberry, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... held tortured and struggling all the time in the first grip of that masterful hold wherewith the potter lifts his clay when he lays it on the eternal whirring of the wheel. ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... themselves opposite the flowers, the attention of all was attracted to the movements of a far different sort of bird. It was that one we have been speaking of. It was seated upon a tree, not far from the honeysuckles; but every now and then it would spring from its perch, dash forward, and after whirring about for some moments among the humming-birds fly back to the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... across the room to a door. The Speaker pushed it open. Technicians looked up. Conger saw machinery, whirring and turning; benches and retorts. In the center of the room was ...
— The Skull • Philip K. Dick
... great drums pounding, And the small drums steady whirring, And every blow of the great convulsive drums, Strikes me ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... movement of time in early life, and its swift flight as it approaches old age, to the drumming of a partridge or ruffed grouse in the woods—the strokes falling slow and distinct at first, and following each other more and more rapidly, till they end at last in a whirring sound. ...
— Poetical Works of William Cullen Bryant - Household Edition • William Cullen Bryant
... bats and lifted up their spears as it were for war. Nevertheless when they perceived that that war for which they watched was not now come upon them, they lowered their spears and suffered him to enter, and he passed whirring through the earthward gateway. Even so he came, as foretold, to the City of Never perched upon Toldenarba, and saw late twilight on those pinnacles that know no other light. All the domes were of copper, but the spires on their summits ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... and sorrow, Ever fair and ever new; Whirring round the dear old woodland, Feeding ...
— Andromeda and Other Poems • Charles Kingsley
... the few magnified shapes of a covey of snow grouse, the ryper of the Scandinavian land, which, after running for a while, rose and passed over him with whirring wings, seeking the lower part of the valley, where the snow was ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... were even more disturbing. All day long it would seem that the birds were coming thicker from all quarters. Doubtless many were going as well as coming, but the mass seemed never to get less. Each bird seemed to sound some note of fear or anger or seeking, and the whirring of wings never ceased nor lessened. The air was full of a muttered throb. No window or barrier could shut out the sound, till the ears of any listener became dulled by the ceaseless murmur. So monotonous it was, so cheerless, so disheartening, so melancholy, ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... seems a huge, stirring sort of place," he added, as he watched motors, bicycles, and gharries whirring past the entrance. ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... Buildings is emblazoned with many names, including that of the Rev. John Hatton. The oak was not sported, and our rap at the inner door was immediately answered by a shout of "Come in!" As we opened it we heard a peculiar whirring sound. "Road skates," said Hatton, gracefully circling the table and then coming to a standstill. I was introduced. "I'm very glad to see you both," he said. "The two other men I share these rooms with have gone away, so I'm killing time by training for my road-skate tour abroad. It's trying ...
— Not George Washington - An Autobiographical Novel • P. G. Wodehouse
... were congratulating themselves on the happy termination of the meal, when, just as the Duke was speaking, there was a heavy lurch, and a tremendous sea broke over their heads. Then came a fearful whirring sound that shook through every plate and timber and bulkhead, like the sudden running down of mammoth clock-work, lasting some twenty seconds; then everything was quiet again save the sea, and the yacht ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... their crew—for when I stepped out of the express elevator, there was no one in sight that I remember but the boy who was with me. I pressed the button of the local, which was just beside the express—there was a buzz and whirring hum as if the elevator had ascended, and the door opened. As I stepped over its threshold, I felt a violent blow and terrific pain on the back of my head, and seemed to fall into limitless space. That was all I knew until I woke up in the hospital where Mr. Blaine had taken me ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander
... jumped up in his excitement, for there was a whirring of wings, a burst of screaming, and a flock of birds flew over their heads, with the plumage looking in the morning light as white ...
— First in the Field - A Story of New South Wales • George Manville Fenn
... had stopped for a moment after sending our bearer flying, and then, seeing him down, snorted a little, lowered his head, and would doubtless have tossed and trampled him to death had there not suddenly come a whirring whizzing noise from some bushes in a hollow on our right, when something struck the buffalo a heavy blow upon the muzzle, making it turn up its head, utter a furious roar, ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... roar from all the Rebel boats. The air is full of indescribable noises. The water boils and bubbles around us. It is tossed up in columns and jets. There are sudden flashes overhead, explosions, and sulphurous clouds, and whirring of ragged pieces of iron. The uproar increases. The cannonade reverberates from the high bluff behind the city to the dark-green forest upon the Arkansas shore, and echoes ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... big, airy beds, adorned with many-colored counterpanes, and hung with natty curtains, showing the skill of the mistress of the house. The other end was my father's workshop, filled with five or six "stocking-frames," whirring with the constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet, and producing right genuine hosiery for the merchants at Hawick and Dumfries. The "closet" was a very small apartment betwixt the other two, having room only for a bed, a little table and a chair, with a diminutive window ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... For the Master's eye is on us, Never off us, still upon us, Night and day! Work away! Keep the busy fingers plying, Keep the ceaseless shuttles flying; See that never thread lie wrong; Let not clash or clatter round us, Sound of whirring wheels, confound us; Steady hand! let woof be strong And firm, that has to last ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... in his winter home below could hear them whirring along, cutting fancy figures in the ice, and ...
— Little Jack Rabbit and the Squirrel Brothers • David Cory
... an expletive, on its face value, so this natural outlet for his irritation was denied him. Instead, therefore, of replying in words, he merely glanced sourly at the half-open door, through which issued the whirring noise of the little dressmaker at her sewing. Now and then, in the intervals when her feet left the pedal, she could be heard humming softly to herself with her mouth full ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... the fallen Galpy's cricket bat, and the two other cricketers were fighting back to back on the other side. Carroll was clubbing his way toward Mr. Brewster, but his weapon was now in his left hand. Matters looked dark indeed, when there shrilled fiercely from above them the whirring ...
— The Unspeakable Perk • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... where we dined we plunged again into the thick forest, where every now and then some splendid grouse or the beautiful plume-crowned California quail went whirring away from before our horses. Here and there a broad grizzly "sign" intersected our trail. The tall purple deer-weed, a magnificent scarlet flower of name unknown to me, and another blossom like the laburnum, endlessly varied in its shades of roseate, blue, or the compromised tints, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... It was a long hour they passed there. Rankin sat silent, holding on his knee little Ariadne, who amused herself quietly with his watch and the leather strap that held it. He took the back off, and let her see the little wheel whirring back and forth. His eyes never left the child's serious, rosy face. Once or twice he laid his large, work-roughened hand gently on ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... When cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round. Alone and warming his fine wits, The white owl ...
— The Nursery, October 1877, Vol. XXII. No. 4 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... she held her hands with locked fingers behind her. It was hot, hot as the breaths of a thousand belching furnaces. A white, burning glare had spread itself from horizon to horizon, and the earth wrinkled and cracked beneath it. From every corner of this parched wilderness came an ominous whirring, like the last wheezing gasp of an alarm-clock before striking the hour. This menacing orchestration was nothing more or less than millions of grasshoppers rasping legs and wings together in hoarse appreciation of the heat and glare; but it had a sound that boded evil. Again and ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... are blue above my head, The prairie green below, And flickering o'er the tufted grass The shifting shadows go, Vague-sailing, where the feathery clouds Fleck white the tranquil skies, Black javelins darting where aloft The whirring pheasant flies. ...
— Pike County Ballads and Other Poems • John Hay
... wave upon wave of crimson flame, against the yellow earth. Violet-veiled mountains appeared in the west, marking the southern trend of the Colorado. The air was suffocating. The train-created wind was like a blast from a furnace; yet with the electric fans whirring, with blinds drawn and windows closed to keep the withering air out, it seemed a little less uncomfortable in the car, in spite of the unvitalized air, than under the ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... in it?" Sam asked coolly. "That small whirring sound you hear isn't the hydrogen-helium conversion; it's a fan blowing air through a cooling coil. Even in the Sahara Desert there's enough moisture in the air to ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... pack went on, when one of our Otomi Indians gave a howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nip on my forehead where an arrow just grazed it, and there was that queer, faint whirring sound in the air that only a flight of a good ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... ye, ghost or no ghost," he ejaculated, gazing all round into the gloomy depths of the woods with his cutlass uplifted. Instead of flying again in front of him, as he had expected, the bat flew with a whirring noise past his ear. Down came the cutlass with a sudden thwack, cutting deep into the trunk of a small tree, which trembled under the shock and sent a shower of nuts of a large size down upon the sailor's head. Startled as he ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne
... stillest evening, may the presence of the night-jar be detected, except by its coarse call, while the sprightly little sun-bird flits hither and thither, prodigal of its vivid colours and joying with machine-like whirring. The sun-bird exemplifies the brightness of the day. All its activities are bold and conspicuous. Aptly named, it has nothing to hide, no deeds which will not withstand the scrutiny ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... effort. She was suffering torments. The words her father had said to her on the terrace were pouring back into her mind. She seemed to hear his voice now, cool and confident, warning her against Jimmy, saying that he was crooked. There was a curious whirring in her head. Everything in the room was growing large and misty. She heard Lord Dreever begin to say something that sounded as if someone were speaking at the end of a telephone; and, then, she was aware that Jimmy was holding her in his ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... ever lived can hardly claim infallibility in matters of opinion. A distinguished philosopher and vivisector of three hundred years ago, Rene Descartes, put forth the theory that animals, being without souls, cannot suffer pain, and that their cries under vivisection were simply as the whirring of wheels in an intricate piece of machinery. We can easily imagine a modern follower of Descartes declaring, as the philosopher would have done, that "NO SUFFERING WAS FELT." A professor of physiology in Harvard Medical School, in course of an address before a State ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... rang while the train was still running around, and Miss Davis had to catch it and leave it turned upside down with the little wheels whirring around while she marched her class into Miss May's room for ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... the tired and sleepy citizens are startled from their dreams by whoops, hurrahs, snatches of songs, and outbursts of rude laughter ringing through the frosty air and mingling with the clattering of horses' feet and the whirring rumble of swift-revolving wheels, as some party of roystering blades, excited by deep potations, drive shouting homewards from ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... its whirring note and they fell silent. Upon the silver sheet there took shape and actuality the moving barge with its banners and streamers and costumed actors. Then a flash was given of the Indians gathering on the wild shore—wondering, ...
— Ruth Fielding on the St. Lawrence - The Queer Old Man of the Thousand Islands • Alice B. Emerson
... before him. A-1 house! S-ay, I should worry that he ain't a Sunday-school boy. Show me the one that is. Your old man in his young days wasn't such a low flier, neither, if anybody should ask you." He made a whirring noise in his throat at that, pinching her cold cheek. She was walking rapidly now toward the house. "Well, since our daughter goes out riding in a six-thousand-dollar car, to show that we're sports, lets ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... shaking a stiff piece of cloth." On the west coast of Africa the little black-weavers (Ploceus?) congregate in a small party on the bushes round a small open space, and sing and glide through the air with quivering wings, "which make a rapid whirring sound like a child's rattle." One bird after another thus performs for hours together, but only during the courting-season. At this season, and at no other time, the males of certain night-jars (Caprimulgus) make a strange booming noise with their wings. ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... cantles out of the buttresses, and pitted and starred the paved square outside. They were at work, too, that very afternoon, though I do not think the cathedral was their objective for the moment. We walked to and fro in the silence of the streets and beneath the whirring wings overhead. Presently, a young woman, keeping to the wall, crossed a corner. An old woman opened a shutter (how it jarred!), and spoke to her. The silence closed again, but it seemed to me that I heard a sound of singing—the sort of chant one hears in nightmare-cities ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... Stewart directed the chauffeur to drive them to an address in the outskirts of the city and away they sped. It was only a short run in that whirring machine over Washington's beautiful streets and when the school was reached both Peggy and Polly exclaimed over the beauty of its situation, for Columbia Heights School was in the midst of spacious grounds, the buildings were substantial ...
— Peggy Stewart at School • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... blue jay or woodpecker, the loon's ghostly cry—solitary notes, and unhappy, as though wrung by pain out of the choking silence; or away on the hillside a grouse began drumming, or a duck went whirring down the long waterway until the sound sank and was overtaken again by the ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a dark brown colour, marked with a white patch on the wings, were seen, and some specimens shot. They made a whirring sound in flight, like the partridge, and appeared to haunt the rocks; a habit ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... and there in the cavern, carrying Rinkitink upon his back, and neither of them paid the slightest heed to the whirring knives, although the glitter of the hundreds of polished blades was rather trying to their eyes. Perhaps for ten minutes the knives darted about them in bewildering fury; then they disappeared as ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... little hill. Two wheels were lifted from the ground. The machine was poised in the air for a second before it crashed into the ditch and turned over completely, throwing me clear, but burying Blackie and Peter under its weight of steel and wood and whirring wheels. ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... strangers likewise / smote many a whirring slash, Wherefrom the men of Bechelaren / felt deep and long the gash Through the shining ring-mail / e'en to their life's core. In storm of battle wrought they / glorious ...
— The Nibelungenlied - Translated into Rhymed English Verse in the Metre of the Original • trans. by George Henry Needler
... dry beneath her, in one place Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and stirring. But never the motion has a human face Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... came up to the wood Fred stopped short, for from out of its dark recesses came a peculiar whirring sound, as if somebody ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... cheat your outstretched hand, and affect to be wing-broken and wounded, and yet have just strength to tumble along, until she has drawn you, fatigued, a safe distance from her threatened children and the young hopes of her heart; and then will she mount, whirring with glad strength, and away through the maze of trees you have not seen before, like a close-shot bullet, ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... lacked the equipment to cope with Pleiad affairs. As it was, his attention positively would not concentrate upon the rapid undercurrents, where the real energy of the habitues seemed to operate. It was all like a game of evil children, or rather of queer unfinished beings, a whirring everywhere of the topsy-turvy and the perverse—sick and insane to his ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... quite so well this week—yesterday some friends came early and kept me at home—for which I seem to suffer a little; less, already, than in the morning—so I will go out and walk away the whirring ... which is all the mighty ailment. As for 'Luria' I have not looked at it since I saw you—which means, saw you in the body, because last night I saw you; as I wonder if ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett
... this farm are of the fiber of poetry. The silence of the snowy aisles of the forest, the whirring flight of partridges, the impudent bark of squirrels, the quavering voices of owls and coons, the music of the winds in the high trees,—all these impressions unite in my mind like parts of a woodland symphony. I soon learned to distinguish the raccoon's ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... all the birds flew in a great flock into the air. There was a loud rustling and whirring and beating of wings. The air was full of dust, and it seemed as if a black cloud were floating over ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... but as he was afraid of descending among them, he made a noose with a long piece of rattan, lowered it gently, and slipping it over one of them, drew her up into the tree. She cried out, and they all disappeared with a whirring noise. The girl he caught was very young, and she cried sadly because she had no clothes on; so he rolled her in a chawat (long sash), and immediately heard the gongs at his own house, which he had thought was a long way off. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... have moved on three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime hens peck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt hums with crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts—first, yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a pelting snowstorm of them high up over the houses, spangling the blue heaven. But Burghersdorp cared nothing. "There is nothing for them," said a farmer, with cosy satisfaction; "the frost killed everything ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... carpet; and through the open window comes the fragrance of the wild-brier and the mock-orange. The birds are carolling in the trees, and their shadows flit across the window as they dart to and fro in the sunshine; while the murmur of the bee, the cooing of doves from the eaves, and the whirring of a little humming-bird that has its nest in the honeysuckle, send up a sound of joy to meet the ...
— Home Life of Great Authors • Hattie Tyng Griswold
... end of winter, when the snow was melted on my south hillside and about my wood-pile, the partridges came out of the woods morning and evening to feed there. Whichever side you walk in the woods the partridge bursts away on whirring wings, jarring the snow from the dry leaves and twigs on high, which comes sifting down in the sunbeams like golden dust; for this brave bird is not to be scared by winter. It is frequently covered up by drifts, and, it ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... carefully out of her cradle; then their wings went "whir-r-r, whir-r-r"—you 've heard a green fly buzzing against a window-pane, have n't you? That was the kind of whirring noise the Dream-Fairies' wings made, with the pleasing difference that the Dream-Fairies' wings produced a soft, soothing music. The cricket under the honeysuckle by the window heard this music and saw the Dream-Fairies carrying Sweet-One-Darling ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... in good earnest, and the Spaniards on the hills were engaged in heavy volley firing. The Mauser bullets drove in sheets through the trees and the tall jungle grass, making a peculiar whirring or rustling sound; some of the bullets seemed to pop in the air, so that we thought they were explosive; and, indeed, many of those which were coated with brass did explode, in the sense that the brass coat was ripped off, making a thin plate of hard ...
— Rough Riders • Theodore Roosevelt
... sound of the whirring thing behind him the animal cast an affrighted glance in its direction, and with a little squeal of terror redoubled its frantic efforts to escape. The girl, too, looked back over her shoulder. Her face was very white, but her eyes were steady ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... voice and piano was very loud just then, so that the little, soft, whirring sound of the electric bell reached only one or two pairs of ears in the big room. It did not reach the host certainly, and neither he nor most of the others observed the servant make his way among the groups of seated or standing ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... fire a gun?" he said. "Oh! no. I was only dreaming that I was hunting with father, and he shot at the beautiful pheasants that were making such a whirring of wings for me. It was music. When can I hunt with father, ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... must keep going in order to turn out the produce of a great city factory. He was no more here than one of the many parts of that engine, and if some day he should be absorbed into the midst of those whirring wheels and ground up like corn, who ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... I discovered in a dense forest on the side of a mountain. The sitting bird was disturbed as I passed beneath her. The whirring of her wings arrested my attention, when, after a short pause, I had the good luck to see, through an opening in the leaves, the bird return to her nest, which appeared like a mere wart or excrescence on a small branch. The humming-bird, ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... are still upon his lips, he has had time to lean back in his chair with the languid air of one who has given to the world views not admitting of contradiction, when a sharp whirring noise is heard, followed by a crash of broken glass and the dull thud of a bullet that has found its home in the wall right opposite the squire. Right opposite Brian, too, for they had been side by side with Owen Kelly, fortunately not quite, ...
— Rossmoyne • Unknown
... to the days when she was "little Draxy" and Elder Kinney was only her pastor. Slowly she lived her life since then over again, its joy and its sorrow alike softened in her tender, brooding thoughts. The soft whirring sound of a bird's wings in the air roused her: as it flew past the window she saw that it was one of the yellow-hammers, which still built their nests in the maple-grove behind ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... natterjacks were whirring like the nightjar. Strange birds screamed and rushed out of the trees as she sped along. White moths, ghostlike, wavered about her, mosquitoes piped. Water-rats ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... giddy and strange, and the aching at the back of my head was almost unbearable; but I began to walk with Day holding my hand, and after a time—he guiding me, for I felt very stupid—I began to trot; and at last, with my head throbbing and whirring, I found myself standing by my clothes, and my ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... powerful binoculars. He gazed from this height down on the settlement, on the reeking chimneys of those distant houses, on the tiny black objects that were men moving against a field of white. He could hear a faint whirring which he took to be the machinery of a sawmill. He could see on the river bank and at another point in the nearby woods the feathery puff of steam. He often wondered about these people, buried, like himself, in this snow-blanketed and mountain-ringed remoteness. Who were ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... and his eyes lazily roamed his surroundings, evidently a bedroom and bath in a good hotel. His head was whirring and picture after picture was forming and blurring and melting before his eyes, but beyond the desire to laugh he had no entirely conscious reaction. He reached for ...
— This Side of Paradise • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... it would call, or soon or late, as it calls the whirring wings; It's the olden lure, it's the golden lure, it's the lure of the timeless things, And to-night, O, God of the trails untrod, how it whines ...
— Giant Hours With Poet Preachers • William L. Stidger
... whirring continued, but then three of the birds were seen to drop to the ground, one dead and ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... gun-metal glistened over with gold. The taxi-cabs, the wild cats of the town, swept over the gleaming floor swiftly, soon lessening in the distance, as if scornful of the other clumsy-footed traffic. He heard the merry click-clock of the swinging hansoms, then the excited whirring of the motor-buses as they charged full-tilt heavily down the road, their hearts, as it seemed, beating with trepidation; they drew up with a sigh of relief by the kerb, and stood there panting—great, nervous, clumsy things. Siegmund was always amused by the headlong, floundering ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... through them, came tilting along over the sea as if they were alive,—and so they were,—and drew up, as if in order of battle, just before the mouth of the cave; and then a silver trumpet sounded on the shore, and a swarm of hornets appeared, whizzing and whirring all about the cave; and then there was another trumpet, and another, about as loud as you may hear from a caged blue-bottle, and compliments were interchanged, and a salute fired, which frightened the little lady-fairies into all sorts of shapes, and made the little fairy-bride jump ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... the sway of summer lay over all things. But, though the heat was broiling, the walk was lovely. All about me was alive with voice or perfume. Clouds of linnets fluttered among the branches, golden beetles crawled upon the grass, thousands of tiny whirring wings beat the air—flies, gnats, gadflies, bees—all chorusing the life—giving warmth of the day and the sunshine that bathed and penetrated all nature. I halted from time to time in the parched ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... Whirring the peacocks from the brake With Argus wings arose, Wild swans abandoned pool and lake For climes ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... headquarters camp frequently received shots from the point of Lookout Mountain also, but fortunately no casualties resulted from this plunging fire, though, I am free to confess, at first our nerves were often upset by the whirring of twenty-pounder shells dropped inconsiderately into our camp at untimely ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... down the narrow alleys, proclaimed the merciful conditions of the conquerors and called on the people to lay down their arms. Great piles of surrendered weapons rose in the streets, guarded by Soudanese soldiers. Many Arabs sought clemency; but there were others who disdained it; and the whirring of the Maxims, the crashes of the volleys, and a continual dropping fire attested that there was fighting in all parts of the city into which the columns had penetrated. All Dervishes who did not immediately surrender ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... rest-time was nearly over; while the sudden rattle of a machine gun close by him, indulging in a little indirect fire at a well-known Hun gathering place a thousand yards or so behind their lines, disturbed a covey of partridges, which rose with an angry whirring of wings. Then came four of those unmistakable faint muffled bursts from high above his head, which betokened an aeroplane's morning gallop; and even as he automatically jerked his head skywards, with a swishing noise something buried itself in the earth not far away. It is well to remember ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... aspiration valves, ignited the divine spark plugs, and whiz! went their motor-meters in a whirring, buzzing melody. ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... phonograph, a rare possession since it was the only one in the Village. The Indian carefully wound it up and lowered it into the hole. There was a craning of masked heads, . . . a period of grunting approval, . . . and then faintly from below came a whirring, a sputtering and a high, cracked voice of announcement. The White Chief's face wore its sardonic smile as the gravel was being shoveled into the grave for the little tin phonograph was bravely playing: There'll be a Hot Time in the Old ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... was very hot, even hotter than the day had been. Only the whirring electric fan kept the air moving. It might have been midsummer instead of ...
— The Rocks of Valpre • Ethel May Dell
... whole system, had no time for rebellion. He was in the whirlpool which was mightier than himself and his revolt. After all, a man is a small and helpless factor before his own needs. For a time those whirring machines, which had been evolved in the first place from the brains of men, and partook in a manner of both the spirit and the grosser elements of existence, its higher qualities and its sordid mechanism, like man himself, had the ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... from the direction of the stables, came a roar of men's voices, a sound of bursting and crashing through the under-wood, a thundering of heavy feet, followed by a whirring of frightened birds into the air. Brooks leaned forward breathing hard, and tightening his newly moistened grip on ...
— The Danvers Jewels, and Sir Charles Danvers • Mary Cholmondeley
... I can't ... it's gone ... and even if it weren't...." He dropped back in his chair and took his head between his hands. He had forgotten what he wanted the money for. He made a great effort to regain hold of the idea, but all the whirring, shuttling, flying had abruptly ceased in his brain, and he sat with his eyes shut, staring straight into darkness.... The clock struck, and he remembered that he had said he would go down to the dining-room. "If I don't she'll come up—" He raised his head and sat listening for the sound of ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... room! What do they gaze on with wide-open eyes? A dense, dense forest, where no sunbeam pries, And in its centre a cleared spot.—There bloom Gigantic flowers on creepers that embrace Tall trees; there, in a quiet lucid lake The white swans glide; there, "whirring from the brake," The peacock springs; there, herds of wild deer race; There, patches gleam with yellow waving grain; There, blue smoke from strange altars rises light, There, dwells in peace, the poet-anchorite. ...
— Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan • Toru Dutt
... as "Creechy," although less noisy, was the enemy's 1-pound Maxim. A very loud hammering, quickly repeated, and almost simultaneously a whirring in the air, followed by four quick explosions, and then we knew this poisonous devil was at work. The shells were little gems in their way, and when they did not burst, which was often the case, were tremendously in request as souvenirs. Not ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... could speak for her own sorrow and fear. There was a deep stillness in the house. Outside the tempest raged wildly. It seemed to Joan as if hours passed in that interval of heart-trembling; she was almost shocked when the old clock gave its long whirring warning and then struck only one. Her first look was to the fire. It wanted replenishing. Her next was at Denas. The girl was fast asleep. Her hands were across the open Bible, her face was dropped upon them. Joan touched her and said ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... judgment, for they had not been in position more than half an hour—by which time the sun, magnified to twice his size by the evening vapours through which he glowed, palpitating like a ball of white-hot steel, hung upon the very edge of the horizon—when a whirring of wings warned them to be on the alert, and a moment later a flock of some fifty teal, which must have been feeding on some far-off marsh during the day, settled down upon the surface of the water, with much splashing and loud quacks of satisfaction at having once more reached what they doubtless ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... and Robert the Devil went well. The long streets rolled behind us, and were lost in the rain; then with a rhythmic drumming of hoofs and a constant splashing from under the whirring wheels, we swept out into the blackness of a treeless plain. I knew the road and did not take the shortest one; and it was rapture to draw the rugs and apron round Grace's waist, and feel the soft furs she wore brushing ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... elegant lawyers, members of committees, and marshals of nobility, who in their own homes will make a scene over the slightest fume from the stove, or stain on the floor, resign themselves here to whirring ventilation wheels, the disgusting smell of fumigating candles, and the filthy, ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thread I love to see, Thy whirring sound is dear to me: Oh, swiftly turn by night and day, And toil for him that's ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... cane-fields came to us at night-time as we watched the shimmer of the fireflies. We sat so silently that the only thing to tell us that the wild duck sought his mate amidst the grass, was the swaying of the reed stems, or the rising of the teal with whirring wings. ...
— My Lady of the Chinese Courtyard • Elizabeth Cooper
... the recovery we sought merely a purposeless whirring of machinery. It is important, of course, that every man and woman in the country be able to find work, that every factory run, that business and farming as a whole earn profits. But Government in a democratic Nation does not exist solely, or ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Franklin D. Roosevelt • Franklin D. Roosevelt
... a whirring in the air and a joyous shout were heard. It was Prince Ricardo flying home ...
— Prince Ricardo of Pantouflia - being the adventures of Prince Prigio's son • Andrew Lang
... business, has gone; but elsewhere in its stead there are big offices of numerous commercial firms; and, moreover, there are large 'factories' of the modern kind, such as are denoted by tall chimneys and the perpetual roar of whirring wheels. ...
— The Story of Madras • Glyn Barlow
... far sweeter to me than the fragrance of peaches were the humid whiffs I breathed from the noisy press rooms in the Park Row basements, the smell of the printers' ink as it was received by the warm, moist rolls of paper in the whirring, clattering presses. There was history in the making, destiny at her loom. Nothing ever expels it: if once a taste for it is acquired, it ties itself up with ineffaceable memories and longings, and even ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... ceased pulling, the slaves resting upon their oars and raising the dripping blades high above the water; and a few seconds later a puff of white smoke burst from her bows, the report of her culverin boomed across the water, and the shot flew whirring athwart the galleon's bows, striking the water some twenty yards to leeward. Then, as George brought his glass to bear upon her, her oars once more dipped, while the gun's crew could be seen upon the forecastle busily engaged in reloading ...
— The Cruise of the Nonsuch Buccaneer • Harry Collingwood
... a mighty whirring, a thunder and a roaring above the storm. She stood listening breathlessly to it rise and swell—and ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... and suffered almost the pain of death. The ride with these men, over twenty miles of hilly, woody country, was like one of Dante's excursions into the Shades. In the awful stillness of the dark pines, their screams frightened the hooting owls, and the whirring insects in the leaves and tree-tops quieted their songs. They heard the gurgle of the rills, and called aloud for water to quench their insatiate thirst. One of them sang a shrill, fierce, fiendish ballad, in an interval of relief, but plunged, at a sudden relapse, in prayers and curses. ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... midst of an interminable scolding that was being given by a nasal-voiced conductor to a passenger just before the dawn, exposed his head and remarked: "Has it occurred to you that this is a sleeping-car?" In the swift silence the whirring of my private ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... inevitably as time rolls by, comes that final week; period of mania, of abandon; and in the mere sorcerous passage of a pair of whirring wings, Dr. Jekyll, the exemplary, is no more. In his place, wearing his shoes, audaciously signing his name even to checks, is that other being, Hyde: one absolutely the reverse of the reputable Jekyll; repudiating with scorn that gentleman's engagements; ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... gloriously plumaged. Look to the colour of him, as rich a purple as that of your sunset cloud, with crest and throat like gold painted green. And then, the long curved beak of him, see how daintily he dips it into the cup of the flower and sips the honey therefrom. And his wings, why they are whirring so quickly that you cannot see but can only hear them! Can any of your fancies touch a thing ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... There was a sudden whirring about their heads. A lariat, thrown with unerring accuracy, had gathered them both in its coil. With a jerk they were drawn close together, their hands pinned to their side. Two cowboys quickly disarmed them. Long Jim came sauntering round from ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gather, and all the mornings were crowded full. Often in the afternoon she went up in the garret to see Miss Eunice spin—sometimes on the big wheel, at others with flax on the small wheel. She liked the whirring sound, and it was a mystery to her how the thread came out so ...
— A Little Girl in Old Salem • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... the sun was just appearing over the edge of the trees as Jacques pressed the button which set the self-starter whirring. The engine roared and the pilot listened intently for any sound of defect to come to his well-trained ear. An aviator must know by the sound just what is wrong with his motor; there is no chance to search for the cause of the trouble when ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... gave a screw a turn. Already the car was losing speed. The fellow behind was coming on like a red-headed whirlwind. For a moment the missing seemed to cease, and the speed surged back to the hum of the whirring gears. ...
— A Husband by Proxy • Jack Steele
... natural aptitude for mechanics now stood him in good stead. Reaching out he threw over a lever and the machine moved forward. There was a whirring sound as the plane skimmed over the ground. As the machine began to rise, Hal pressed another lever, and they ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... the pavement before him with his scabbard, using it as a blind man's staff. And so we advanced through the fetid gloom, the passage being only wide enough to let us walk shoulder to shoulder. There was a whirring of wings about us, and a squeaking; once something swooped square into my face, knocking a cry of terror from me, and ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... across the hills to New Hampshire. How lucky that Riverboro is only thirty miles from the state line!—It looks like snow, and how I wish it would be something more than a flurry; a regular whizzing, whirring storm that would pack the roads and let us slip over them with our ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a loud splash and cackling, up would spring a knot of ducks, their wings whirring as they rapidly beat the air in a flight wonderful for such a heavy bird. Again a little farther and first one and then another snipe would dart away in zigzag flight, uttering their strange scape, scape. ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... for many miles, until, as they approached a cottage by the roadside, Ned thought he heard a familiar air. Indeed, he was sure that something important was about to happen, for the bluebird was whirring around in circles and singing as if her life depended upon the way ...
— The Magic Soap Bubble • David Cory
... hunt those big mountain canvasback? If you have, you know the story. If you have not, I am afraid I can not give you a correct impression of it. Sitting in a frozen blind, all at once you hear the whirring of wings, far off in the sky. Before you can locate the source of it, "Swish!" an old Can goes by. You look at the streak of light he leaves in the atmosphere. Then you hear another far-off alarm. ...
— Out of Doors—California and Oregon • J. A. Graves
... Robert the Devil went well. The long streets rolled behind us, and were lost in the rain; then with a rhythmic drumming of hoofs and a constant splashing from under the whirring wheels, we swept out into the blackness of a treeless plain. I knew the road and did not take the shortest one; and it was rapture to draw the rugs and apron round Grace's waist, and feel the soft furs she wore brushing against ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... years ago, wherein are bright-eyed English girls, Irish colleens and Scots lassies by the ten thousand, whose dexterous fingers flash nimbly to and fro, slender fingers, yet fingers contriving death. I have wandered through a wilderness of whirring driving-belts and humming wheels where men and women, with the same feverish activity, bend above machines whose very hum sang to me of death, while I have watched a cartridge grow from a disc of metal to ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... he got to the place where the King's daughter was sitting, the Troll came rushing up with a great whistling and whirring, and he was so big and stout that he was terrible to see, and ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... a very little, just to peep inside. All at once there was a whirring, rustling sound, and before she could shut it down again, out flew ten thousand strange creatures with death-like faces and gaunt and dreadful forms, such as nobody in all the world had ever seen. They fluttered for a little while about the room, and then flew ...
— Old Greek Stories • James Baldwin
... all the inexplicable feminine whirring inside her—socially reconciled with Boyce. Where the deuce was this reconciliation going to lead? I have told you how my lunatic love for Betty had stood revealed to me. Had she chosen to love and marry ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... they were in the narrowest part, where a low stone wall runs along the edge of the precipice. He stooped down and stepped upon the narrow wall, calling all the time to his sheep, who followed close upon his heels, walking in single file. He said "tahl, tahl," "come, come," and then made a shrill whirring call, which could be heard above the roaring of the waves on the rocks below. It was wonderful to see how closely they followed the shepherd. They did not seem to notice the camels on the one side, or the abyss on the other ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... watched her miserably as the dismal dawn came up out of the sea. Yet it was not until seven o'clock that the crash came, which shook the passengers out of their berths and filled them with shivering terror. The whirring of the broken shaft seemed to consume the ship. In every cabin it spoke with terrible vividness of disaster. The clamor of voices and the rush of many feet, which followed, meant but one thing. Almost instantly the machinery was ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... birds were coming thicker from all quarters. Doubtless many were going as well as coming, but the mass seemed never to get less. Each bird seemed to sound some note of fear or anger or seeking, and the whirring of wings never ceased nor lessened. The air was full of a muttered throb. No window or barrier could shut out the sound, till the ears of any listener became dulled by the ceaseless murmur. So monotonous it was, so cheerless, so disheartening, so melancholy, that all longed, but in vain, for any ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... afflictions are described by the double chorus. The tenors and basses in powerful unison declare, "He spake the Word," and the reply comes at once from the sopranos and altos, "And there came all Manner of Flies," set to a shrill, buzzing, whirring accompaniment, which increases in volume and energy as the locusts appear, but bound together solidly with the phrase of the tenors and basses frequently repeated, and presenting a sonorous background to this fancy ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... squeeze a tear, no suffering wring a pang from their hearts. They were immune to every feeling known to God or man. They knew only dollars. Their relatives of a moment since, their friends of yesterday and long, long ago, they regarded only as lumps of matter with which to feed the whirring, grinding, gnashing mill which poured forth ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... this place, and sparrows, and the solitary sandpiper and the Canada woodpecker, and a large number of hummingbirds. Indeed, I saw more of the latter here than I ever before saw in any one locality. Their squeaking and whirring were almost incessant. ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... beds, adorned with many-colored counterpanes, and hung with natty curtains, showing the skill of the mistress of the house. The other end was my father's workshop, filled with five or six "stocking-frames," whirring with the constant action of five or six pairs of busy hands and feet, and producing right genuine hosiery for the merchants at Hawick and Dumfries. The "closet" was a very small apartment betwixt the other two, having room only for a bed, a little table and a chair, with ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton
... was looking round me and the elder Gorman was wriggling about on the floor, Tim worked the lantern behind our backs. The thing, or some part of it, hissed in an alarming way. Then it made a whirring noise and a bright beam of light shot across the room. A very curious thing happened to that light. Instead of splashing against the far wall of the barn, exhibiting the cracks and ridges of the masonry, it stopped at the stage and spread itself in a kind of irregular ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham
... the procession began to pass, now, and it was a wonderful sight. It swept along, thick and solid, five hundred thousand angels abreast, and every angel carrying a torch and singing—the whirring thunder of the wings made a body's head ache. You could follow the line of the procession back, and slanting upward into the sky, far away in a glittering snaky rope, till it was only a faint streak in the ...
— Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven • Mark Twain
... fills the kitchen, Drear and lonely our retreat, Speak a word and break the silence, Dearest little Mother, sweet! Has the moaning of the tempest Closed thine eyelids wearily? Has the spinning wheel's soft whirring Hummed a ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi
... scare was only a bad dream. That it was a very bad reality was shown just as the last pack went on, when one of our Otomi Indians gave a howl as an arrow went through his leg, and I felt a sharp little nip on my forehead where an arrow just grazed it, and there was that queer, faint whirring sound in the air that only a flight of a good many ...
— The Aztec Treasure-House • Thomas Allibone Janvier
... seems to run along very rapidly without any very clearly defined melody. Still, it is by the same composer as the "Spring Song," so it may be worth trying over again. It is more familiar now, and you begin to associate the rapid, whirring phrases with its title—with the idea of "spinning." How clear it suddenly becomes. You even conjure up in your mind the picture of some young woman in quaint garb seated at a spinning wheel in an old-fashioned room—and you find yourself experiencing all the pleasure that comes ...
— The Pianolist - A Guide for Pianola Players • Gustav Kobb
... Esther stop singing, it won't help matters, Betty, dear, the summer has gone," she exclaimed. "Little Brother and I have just seen quail whirring about in the underbrush. See I lay our autumn bouquet at your feet," and she tossed her flowers over to Betty. "Where is ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... afraid of descending among them, he made a noose with a long piece of rattan, lowered it gently, and slipping it over one of them, drew her up into the tree. She cried out, and they all disappeared with a whirring noise. The girl he caught was very young, and she cried sadly because she had no clothes on; so he rolled her in a chawat (long sash), and immediately heard the gongs at his own house, which he had thought was a long way off. He took the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... coincidence, the words were hardly out of his mouth when we heard the familiar warning, the whirring, never-to-be-forgotten sound of the beast known to the Indians as "death ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... of the island. Presently he burst through some brushwood into a swampy bottom surrounded by low trees, and instantly a dozen large birds of the osprey kind rose flapping into the air like windmills rising. He was quite startled by the whirring and flapping, and not a little amazed at the appearance of the place. Here was a very charnel-house; so thick lay the shells, skeletons and loose bones of fish. Here too he found three terrapin killed but not eaten, and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... torn, his wrists lashed behind him, walked between two armed guards. The fourth, a sergeant, followed at their heels. Miss Lawrence had just time to note that the downcast face was dark and oval and refined, when it was suddenly uplifted at sound of the whirring carriage wheels. A light of recognition, almost of terror, flashed across it, and with one bound the prisoner sprang from between his guards, dove almost under the noses of the startled team, and darted through the wide-open doorway of a corner saloon. He ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... against the yellow earth. Violet-veiled mountains appeared in the west, marking the southern trend of the Colorado. The air was suffocating. The train-created wind was like a blast from a furnace; yet with the electric fans whirring, with blinds drawn and windows closed to keep the withering air out, it seemed a little less uncomfortable in the car, in spite of the unvitalized air, ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... unlike the sound produced by shaking a stiff piece of cloth." On the west coast of Africa the little black-weavers (Ploceus?) congregate in a small party on the bushes round a small open space, and sing and glide through the air with quivering wings, "which make a rapid whirring sound like a child's rattle." One bird after another thus performs for hours together, but only during the courting-season. At this season, and at no other time, the males of certain night-jars (Caprimulgus) ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Underneath him the branch post-office was opening its doors, as was its custom between two and three o'clock on Sunday afternoons. An acrid odor of ink rose upward to him. Occasionally a cable car passed, trundling heavily, with a strident whirring of jostled glass windows. ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... three feet in height, shut in the Dingle. Barrett jumped this lightly, and entered forthwith into Paradise. The place was full of nests. As Barrett took a step forward there was a sudden whirring of wings, and a bird rose from a bush close beside him. He went to inspect, and found a nest with seven eggs in it. Only a thrush, of course. As no one ever wants thrushes' eggs the world is over-stocked with them. Still, it gave promise of good things to come. Barrett pushed on through the bushes ...
— The Pothunters • P. G. Wodehouse
... have his own son at his side, as though this visit to the dead man's body was a battle in which otherwise he must single-handed meet those two. And the thought of how to keep June's name out of the business kept whirring in his brain. James had his son to support him! Why should he not ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... out of her cradle; then their wings went "whir-r-r, whir-r-r"—you 've heard a green fly buzzing against a window-pane, have n't you? That was the kind of whirring noise the Dream-Fairies' wings made, with the pleasing difference that the Dream-Fairies' wings produced a soft, soothing music. The cricket under the honeysuckle by the window heard this music and saw the Dream-Fairies carrying Sweet-One-Darling away. "Be sure to bring her back again," said the ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... out into the rustling shade of the maples. "I'm sure I shall soon get well here. Mrs. Barry was so kind to me—I shall never forget her kindness—but the house is so close to the factory, and there was such a whirring of wheels all the time, it seemed to get into my head and make me wild with nervousness. I'm so weak that sounds like that worry me. But it is so still and green and peaceful here. It ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... eagerly, boyishly. "Yes. Whirring wheels, a current of traffic, a broad highway of steel—that's the sort of monument ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... thousand natterjacks were whirring like the nightjar. Strange birds screamed and rushed out of the trees as she sped along. White moths, ghostlike, wavered about her, mosquitoes piped. Water-rats plunged ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... her way home along the brown road, stepping lightly and swiftly, and full of busy thoughts. Flocks of birds went whirring by over the yellowed fields. Lucy Ann could have called out to them, in joyous understanding, they looked so free. She, too, seemed to be flying on the wings of ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... gales, Wild whirring gannets pierce the sails Of barks that sweep by Arran's shore,[90] Thus swept the train through Barnesmore. Through many a varied scene they ran, By Castle Fin, and fair Strabane, By many a hill, and many a clan, Across the Foyle ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... came to halt, and I waited for the whirring sound; but, thank God! I waited in vain. We set ourselves in motion once more, and soon were in an immense courtyard surrounded by walls, having on one side large sheds in which we were to pass the night. With what eagerness did we throw ourselves on our faces in the mud, and lap up ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... and the gusts of wind. Then, as they stood, listening curiously, there came a deep, rumbling sound out of the very vitals of the old mill; there was a gentle quivering throughout all its timbers; a groaning in all its aged structure; a whirring, droning sound—the wheels of the mill were turning, and there was needed only the pushing of one of the levers to set the great mill-stones, themselves, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... the barn, the cavernous dark doors, the hoofs of the horses thundering on the floor, the smell of cattle from below, the pigeons in the loft whirring startled from their perches. Then the hot, scented, dusty "pitching off" and "mowing in"—a fine process, an honest process: men sweating for what ...
— Great Possessions • David Grayson
... was whirring; I was too weak and unsteady. I dropped back and wondered absently at the roses. Roses meant perfume, and perfume meant a woman. What could—something touched my face—something soft; it plucked tenderly at my tangled ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... so steep, that he was obliged to relax his speed. He had observed the birds winging home to these woods; they had reached it before him, and the chirp of their welcome to their nests was sinking into silence; but the whirring beetles were abroad. The frogs were scarcely heard from the marshes below; but the lizards and crickets vied with the young monkeys in noise, while the wood was all alight with luminous insects. Wherever a twisted fantastic cotton-tree, or a drooping ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... cats run home and light is come, And dew is cold upon the ground, And the far-off stream is dumb, And the whirring sail goes round, And the whirring sail goes round; Alone and warming his five wits, The white owl ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... ominous whirring sound came from the apparatus in front of the house and a sudden ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... fell asleep and began snoring 176 As soon as they tugged at the rope, the Captain and the Lieutenant pulled up the Princesses, the one after the other 184 No sooner had he whistled than he heard a whizzing and a whirring from all quarters, and such a large flock of birds swept down that they blackened all the field in which they ...
— East of the Sun and West of the Moon - Old Tales from the North • Peter Christen Asbjornsen
... back. The man with the camera began turning a crank on one side, and a low whirring noise blended softly with the roar of the rushing water. Hiram saw dripping men and women dancing about like maniacs ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... required to do very hard work. Her mother was a field hand, but in the evenings she spun and wove down in their cabin. Aunt Arrie added "an' I did love to hear that old spinnin' wheel. It made a low kind of a whirring sound that made me sleepy." She said her mother, with all the other negro women on the place, had "a task of spinnin' a spool at night", and they spun and wove on rainy days too. "Ma made our clothes an' we had pretty dresses too. She dyed ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... great morass lay in white and sinister tangle under the wild spring moon, when the dark and dreadful swamps were rife with horrible croaks and snaps, the whirring of the wings of waterfowl or the noise of a disturbed puff adder, Philip stretched himself upon the seat of the music-machine and slept through the twilight and the early evening. When the camp ahead, glimmering brightly through the live oaks, was silent, Philip awoke and watched ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... shot. Some are too high, some too low. There is an answering roar from all the Rebel boats. The air is full of indescribable noises. The water boils and bubbles around us. It is tossed up in columns and jets. There are sudden flashes overhead, explosions, and sulphurous clouds, and whirring of ragged pieces of iron. The uproar increases. The cannonade reverberates from the high bluff behind the city to the dark-green forest upon the Arkansas shore, and echoes from bend ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... mill and his predecessors was not encouraging; so the first night when it was his duty to watch in the mill he took care to provide himself with an axe and a prayer-book, and while he kept one eye on the whirring, humming wheels he kept the other on the good book, which he read by the flickering light of a candle set on a table. So the hours at first passed quietly with nothing to disturb him but the monotonous drone and click of the ...
— Balder The Beautiful, Vol. I. • Sir James George Frazer
... brought out a sweat of apprehension upon the baby's father. Adoree, on the other hand, had invested heavily in animals; her gifts included a roaring lion, a peacock with a lease-breaking voice, an elephant that walked, accompanied by strange, whirring, abdominal sounds, besides many other products of the toy-makers' fancy. There was a huge doll which Miss Deniorest had purchased because of its resemblance to herself and which was promptly christened "Aunt Adoree"; there were an ermine ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... find a way. Despite the square dining-room with the stag-and-tree wall-paper design above the plate-rack and a gilded radiator that hissed loudest at mealtime, when Simon Binswanger and his family relaxed round their after-dinner table, the invisible cricket on the visible hearth fell to whirring. ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... their skill. Here is the carpenter bumble-bee hovering and darting about the verge-board of my porch-roof as I write this. It darts swiftly this way and that, and now and then pauses in midair, surrounded by a blur of whirring wings, as often does the hummingbird. How it does it, I do not know. I cannot count or distinguish the separate stroke of its wings. At the same time, the chimney swifts sweep by me like black arrows, on wings apparently as stiff as if made ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... and blues and browns smiling cheerfully at whoever entered. The walls were hung with prints, judiciously chosen and arranged. Through a window to the left, healthfully open at the bottom, the sun streamed in, bringing with it the pleasantly subdued whirring of automobiles out on the Drive. At a desk at right angles to this window, her vivid red-gold hair rippling in the breeze from the river, sat the girl who had been working at the typewriter. She turned as Mr. Pett entered, ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... the flint was followed by a whirring flash, as the powder vanished in a white puff, but there was no report. Deerfoot, while carrying the weapon, had quietly withdrawn the charge, leaving the priming, however, in the pan. He knew just how far it is safe to ...
— Footprints in the Forest • Edward Sylvester Ellis
... brownish red in some places, where the light air of the morning has shaken down withered needles from a tall pine-tree. Then there is a distant, sharp flutter; the noise increases; suddenly a beautiful thing—a meteor of bronze and crimson—comes whirring along at a tremendous pace; Captain Frank blazes away with one barrel and misses; before he knows where he is the pheasant seems a couple of miles off in the silver and blue of the sky, and he does ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... drove around the corner and up the Avenue, there was suddenly a terrific explosion, which threw him completely out of the machine! The car, without a driver, its engines whirring madly, dashed into a helpless corner fruit stand, scattering oranges, bananas, apples and desolation in its wake, as it vainly endeavored to climb to the second story with super-mechanical intelligence! Shirley, stunned and bruised, fell to the pavement where he lay until ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball
... again, to be ready for the next flight that may come. Should the birds fly too high, or be inclined to take any other direction, little pieces of bark are thrown above them, or across their path, by the natives stationed for that purpose. These circling through the air, make a whirring noise like the swoop of the eagle when darting on his prey, and the birds fancying their enemy upon them, recede from the pieces of bark, and lowering their flight, become entangled in the net. Early in the morning, late in the evening, and occasionally ...
— Journals Of Expeditions Of Discovery Into Central • Edward John Eyre
... sleep, and when his tears would come no more, he sat up and watched the night through till the dawn grayed the blue-black sky. The noises of the noiseless woods made themselves heard: the cry of a night hawk, the hooting of an owl, the whirring note of the whip-poor-will; the long, plunging down-rush of a dead branch breaking the boughs below it; even the snapping of twigs as if under the pressure of stealthy feet. These sounds, the most delicate of the sounds he heard, shook him most with fear and hope, and then with ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... eyes charged with the electrical activity of the mind, reading intensely all who passed him, without a thought upon any of these objects in their passage. The people were read, penetrated, and flung off as from a whirring of wheels; to cut their place in memory sharp as in steel when imagination shall by and by renew the throbbing of that hour, if the wheels be not stilled. The world created by the furnaces of vitality inside him absorbed his mind; ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... a motor's starting crank, the chug of an engine. As its strident whirring continued her captor came again to her side, and with rudeness aided her to the seat of what she took to be a small car. She felt the leap of the car under his rude driving as he turned the gas on full, felt it sway as it set to its pace. She now knew ...
— The Sagebrusher - A Story of the West • Emerson Hough
... Bear tossed some partridge feathers to the wind as the hunters drew near her tree. A flock of partridges went whirring into the woods with a great noise, and ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... There was not a cloud nor a breath of wind; the sway of summer lay over all things. But, though the heat was broiling, the walk was lovely. All about me was alive with voice or perfume. Clouds of linnets fluttered among the branches, golden beetles crawled upon the grass, thousands of tiny whirring wings beat the air—flies, gnats, gadflies, bees—all chorusing the life—giving warmth of the day and the sunshine that bathed and penetrated all nature. I halted from time to time in the parched glades to seek my way, and again ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... dead, numb, but this was a peaceful sort of grave, so remote, so silent. That endless torturing thought—the chain of weary reproach and useless speculation, which beset every waking moment—had ceased for the moment. It was like quiet after a perpetual whirring sound. ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... the big meadow. He passed again and again amid whirring blades and sweet odours of grass, encompassing with narrowing circles the sacred centre of the field. Tom was ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... behind him: "But He was to come the second time in clouds of glory, with the nations gathered around Him and angels—" at the word a shaft of glorious light fell full upon the child, while without came the tramping of unnumbered feet and the whirring ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... freshness, chafers whirring, A little piping of leaf-hid birds; A flutter of wings, a fitful stirring, A cloud to ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... column of light flash along the Caverns beneath. It was seen but for an instant. No sooner did it disappear, than all was once more quiet and obscure. Profound Darkness again surrounded him, and the silence of night was only broken by the whirring Bat, as She ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... glades, beneath vast, leafy domes, seemed enchanted ground. The hoofs of Icon thudded softly on the moss. The stillness seemed alive with whispering life. Rabbits sat still to peep, then whisked and ran. Great birds rose suddenly, on whirring wings. Tiny birds, fearless, stayed on their twigs ...
— The White Ladies of Worcester - A Romance of the Twelfth Century • Florence L. Barclay
... cast anchor, and, at the chain's rattle, the forest was stimulated to instant and resounding uproar. The mouth of the Rio Ruiz had only been taking a morning nap. Parrots and baboons screeched and barked in the trees; a whirring and a hissing and a booming marked the awakening of animal life; a dark blue bulk was visible for an instant, as a startled tapir fought ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... the Simud Putih entrance about 5 P. M., the visitor will suddenly hear a whirring sound from below, which is caused by the myriads of bats issuing, for their nocturnal banquet, from the Simud Itam caves, through the wide open space that has been described. They come out in a regularly ascending continuous spiral or corkscrew coil, revolving from left to ...
— British Borneo - Sketches of Brunai, Sarawak, Labuan, and North Borneo • W. H. Treacher
... was a sudden whirring sound of wings, and they had a furtive glimpse of something flashing through the ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... alleys, proclaimed the merciful conditions of the conquerors and called on the people to lay down their arms. Great piles of surrendered weapons rose in the streets, guarded by Soudanese soldiers. Many Arabs sought clemency; but there were others who disdained it; and the whirring of the Maxims, the crashes of the volleys, and a continual dropping fire attested that there was fighting in all parts of the city into which the columns had penetrated. All Dervishes who did not ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... all dry beneath her, in one place Stirring with earth-coloured life, ever turning and stirring. But never the motion has a human face Nor sound, save intermittent machinery whirring. ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... from the great building and crossed an alley to another of like size. Down toward its middle was the usual wall of canvas with half-a-dozen men about the opening at one corner. A curious whirring noise came from within. He became an inconspicuous unit of the group and gazed in. The lights were on, revealing a long table elaborately set as for a banquet, but the guests who stood about gave him instant uneasiness. They were in the grossest ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... minutes crawling over that wall of snow and ice; and it was more and more apparent that we were in for danger. Before we had quite reached the far side, the wind was blowing a very full gale and roared past our ears. The surface snow was whirring furiously like dust before it: past our faces and against them drove the snow-flakes, cutting the air: not falling, but making straight darts and streaks. They seemed like the form of the whistling wind; they ...
— The Path to Rome • Hilaire Belloc
... colour of him, as rich a purple as that of your sunset cloud, with crest and throat like gold painted green. And then, the long curved beak of him, see how daintily he dips it into the cup of the flower and sips the honey therefrom. And his wings, why they are whirring so quickly that you cannot see but can only hear them! Can any of your fancies touch a thing ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... nimble and neat, for he was a clever workman, and knew what he was about: now and then he would cast a swift glance round at Dennis out of his bright black eyes, but he never paused in his work to talk, and there was seldom any sound in the barn but that of the saw and hammer, or the whirring of the lathe. His skin was so very dark, and his hair so black and long, that people called him a gypsy, and Dennis knew that he was a little wild sometimes, because old Sally shook her ...
— Black, White and Gray - A Story of Three Homes • Amy Walton
... well. And the troop-ships were handled well—no collisions and no gun-shells going aboard anybody else. A few went across other people's bows and sterns, but not too near to worry. And in the middle of it all, our guns made so much noise that before we heard them we saw them—two airplanes, whirring and cavorting about and above us. Whenever they saw a destroyer turn and shoot, they would turn and shoot after the destroyer. They could move about three times as fast as a destroyer, and so quite often beat the ...
— The U-boat hunters • James B. Connolly
... bosom-beat of things is over. The birds sing no more, but only chatter about time-tables. The bee keeps to his hive, and the bewildered butterfly, in tattered ball-dress, wonders what has become of his flowery partners. The great cricket factory has shut down. Not a wheel is heard whirring. The squirrel has lost his playful air, and has an anxious manner, as though there were no time to waste before stocking his granary. Everywhere berries have taken the place of buds, and bearded grasses the place of flowers. ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... sharply, and the play proceeded, while the young moving picture operator clicked away at the handle of his camera, the long strip of film moving behind the lens with a whirring sound, and registering views of the pantomime of the actors and actresses at the rate of sixteen ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... suffered badly from swelled self, for it had subconsciously expanded with its surroundings. The wide rooms of the Hall were her spacious skirts, bedecked with the long glitter of the glass-houses; her head reached the roof and wore the weathercock as a feather in her bonnet. All those whirring engines in the misty valley below were her demon-slaves, and the chimneys puffed up incense at her. When she drove out, her life-blood coursed pleasurably through the ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... bring me out dear old Welsh nurse's spinning wheel [Exit John into cottage, L. 2 E.] by the side of which I have stood so often, a round eyed baby wondering at its whirring wheel. [Reenter John with wheel, places it near cottage, L. 2 E.] There, that will do famously. I can catch the ...
— Our American Cousin • Tom Taylor
... To strew thy green with flowers: the yellows, blues, The purple violets, and marigolds, Shall as a carpet hang upon thy grave, While summer-days do last. Ay me! poor maid, Born in a tempest, when my mother died, This world to me is like a lasting storm, Whirring me from ...
— Pericles Prince of Tyre • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... in a dense forest on the side of a mountain. The sitting bird was disturbed as I passed beneath her. The whirring of her wings arrested my attention, when, after a short pause, I had the good luck to see, through an opening in the leaves, the bird return to her nest, which appeared like a mere wart or excrescence on a small ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... his chair and began to dress, choosing his clothes carefully. Gordon stretched out his arms and clenched the edges of the bed, fighting back a desire to cry out. His head was splitting and whirring, his mouth was dry and bitter and he could feel the fever in his blood resolving itself into innumerable regular counts like a slow dripping ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... restlessly from side to side. He was so worn to skin and bone that his nerves seemed laid bare, and he could not rest in any position. Also there were three hundred wheels whirring in his head, and striking out sparks that flew ...
— The Great Hunger • Johan Bojer
... my flowers In the morning wet with dew, Ah, they courtesy to the morning Off'ring gifts of fragrance new. Then the sound of bird wings whirring Wake again the drowsy trees, And the tiny brooks are stirring, Running onward to the sea. Oh, how lovely are my flowers When the twilight shadows creep, Hosts of fairy folks come trooping, ...
— Dorothy Dainty at Glenmore • Amy Brooks
... of these words Winterton gave a loup, as if he had tramped on something no canny, syne a whirring sort of triumphant whistle, and then ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... of a few yards, a sudden stoppage, and a round, red missile was thrown with considerable force after a blackcock, which rose on whirring wings from among the heather, his violet-black plumage glistening in the autumn sun, as he skimmed over the moor, and disappeared down the side of ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... the light from his guide's torch steering them through the many obstacles this apparently ancient and decayed passage presented. It was a weird flight, the ruddy glow on the broken and uneven walls and roof made the place very ghostly, while the flapping, whirring little bats shooting past their heads, often flying blindly into their faces, gave George a creepy sensation that ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... in the way of information about the Confederate army. My headquarters camp frequently received shots from the point of Lookout Mountain also, but fortunately no casualties resulted from this plunging fire, though, I am free to confess, at first our nerves were often upset by the whirring of twenty-pounder shells dropped inconsiderately into our camp at untimely hours ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... results. The amusing presumption of domestic animals, and the comparative fearlessness of many wild creatures in the presence of man; the white clouds of gulls that hover about each incoming steamer in expectation of an alms of crumbs; the whirring of doves from temple- eaves to pick up the rice scattered for them by pilgrims; the familiar storks of ancient public gardens; the deer of holy shrines, awaiting cakes and caresses; the fish which raise their heads from sacred lotus- ponds when the stranger's shadow falls upon the water—these ...
— Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan - First Series • Lafcadio Hearn
... Janice, with glad tears in her eyes, turned and thanked Philemon by a glance that meant far more than any words. Then she went to her room, only to lie for hours staringly awake, listening to the wild whirring and whistling of the wind as she bemoaned her unintentional treachery to the aide, and sought for ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... birds, and insects, and by the absence of larger creatures; of which in the day-time, the only audible signs are the stampede of a herd of kangaroo, or the rustle of a wallabi, or a dingo stirring the grass as it creeps to its lair. But there are the whirring of locusts, the demoniac chuckle of the laughing jack-ass, the screeching of cockatoos and parrots, the hissing of the frilled lizard, and the buzzing of innumerable insects hidden under the dense undergrowth. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... reply, then looked at his watch. It was twenty minutes after ten. He laid his hand upon the throttle and pulled. There was a gasp of steam, a whirring and slipping of the drive wheels, and the engine plunged forward. Jawn fingered the lever with a lover's caress. He knew old "eleven," every foot of her, every tube, bolt, and strap. As they cleared the yards, ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... was a flash in the darkness, and something came whirring into the room. The girls could not see it, but they heard the thud it struck with and saw a chip start from the cedar panelling. Then, there was a rush of feet, and twice a red streak blazed from the window. A man jerked a cartridge, which fell with a rattle from his rifle, ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... huge task of organizing these thousands of St. Louis women would require not only vision but time and energy. Hannah's return meant being engulfed in the vast roar made by rows of throbbing, whirring machines, into one of which she sewed her vitality at dizzy speed ten hours a day. Vision she had, ...
— How To Write Special Feature Articles • Willard Grosvenor Bleyer
... radical, as complete, as though in the midst of moonlit noble gardens a giant machine had arisen swiftly from the ground and inundated the night with electrical glare and set its metal thews and organs and joints relentlessly whirring, relentlessly functioning. ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... Mrs. Sutherland's right hand, she was always ready to do her bidding. Mrs. Sutherland would call across the room full of shirts and towels and whirring machines, "Mrs. Boyd, my dear, could you find me the back of this shirt? I must have mislaid it." And Joanna would run and wait on her hand and foot, Joanna who used to throw the dishwater so it would splash over into Mrs. ...
— In Orchard Glen • Marian Keith
... eyes, looking up, caught the glistening, polished lens of a powerful magnifying glass which hung by a black ribbon from a hook on one of the heavy steel beams which supported the huge mass of silently whirring apparatus. ...
— The Pygmy Planet • John Stewart Williamson
... and slept awhile; then awoke to the worst solitude a vexed soul knows—those terrible "small hours" of the morning. Then, every mere insect of evil omen that daylight has kept in bounds grows to the size of an elephant, and what was the whirring of his wings becomes discordant thunder. Then palliatives lose their market-value, and every clever self-deception that stands between us and acknowledged ill bursts, bubblewise, and leaves the soul naked ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... his human splendor scintillated, small as he was, sat in the pose and apparel that the world knows through pictures, and which pigment can never well render any more than it can catch the power of a sunset or an American autumn. The marble-shops were very pleasant places. A whirring sound lulled the senses into dreamy receptiveness, as the stone wheel heavily turned with soft swiftness, giving the impression that here hard matter was controlled to a nicety by airy forces; and a fragrance floated from the wet ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... can't ... it's gone ... and even if it weren't...." He dropped back in his chair and took his head between his hands. He had forgotten what he wanted the money for. He made a great effort to regain hold of the idea, but all the whirring, shuttling, flying had abruptly ceased in his brain, and he sat with his eyes shut, staring straight into darkness.... The clock struck, and he remembered that he had said he would go down to the dining-room. "If I don't she'll come up—" He raised his head and sat listening ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... o'clock, however,—patroling his long rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door, the soft whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter's temperish protest, "I won't! I won't!" and the White Linen Nurse's fervid pleading, "Oh, you must,—you must!" and the Little Girl's mumbled ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... although less noisy, was the enemy's 1-pound Maxim. A very loud hammering, quickly repeated, and almost simultaneously a whirring in the air, followed by four quick explosions, and then we knew this poisonous devil was at work. The shells were little gems in their way, and when they did not burst, which was often the case, were tremendously in request as souvenirs. Not much larger than an ordinary pepper-caster, when ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... de airy space ob de zeneth am extremely discommodatiousness to a pusson what ain't used to it," remarked Washington with a broad grin as he oiled a whirring motor. ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... and seem to try to be caught, and cheat your outstretched hand, and affect to be wing-broken and wounded, and yet have just strength to tumble along, until she has drawn you, fatigued, a safe distance from her threatened children and the young hopes of her heart; and then will she mount, whirring with glad strength, and away through the maze of trees you have not seen before, like a close-shot bullet, fly ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... wheat-sowers; with unprecedented harvests yielding records to each succeeding year; with boundless fields tilled and planted and harvested by machines that were mechanical wonders; with enormous floor-mills, humming and whirring, each grinding daily ten thousand barrels of flour, pouring like a white stream from the steel rolls, pure, clean, and sweet, the whitest and finest ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... had no notion what was up. "What's the time of day, Sir HENRY?" I ventured to whisper. Sir HENRY never looked at me, but took out his massive gold Winchester repeater and consulted it in a low voice. "Four thirty," I heard him say, "they are about due." Suddenly there was a whirring noise in the distance. "Duck, duck!" shouted Sir HENRY, now thoroughly aroused. I immediately did so, ducked right down in fact, for I did not know what might be coming, and I am a very timid man. At that moment I heard a joint report from Sir HENRY and COODENT. It gave on the whole ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 17, 1891 • Various
... outside the door of her room to wait. It was a long hour they passed there. Rankin sat silent, holding on his knee little Ariadne, who amused herself quietly with his watch and the leather strap that held it. He took the back off, and let her see the little wheel whirring back and forth. His eyes never left the child's serious, rosy face. Once or twice he laid his large, work-roughened hand gently on her ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... was a whirring and a whizzing, and hundreds of locusts flew over his head; they were followed by thousands, the swiftest of the mighty host. They thickened and thickened, till the air looked solid, and even that glaring sun was blackened ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... garments twined and flew around the delicate moulding of her dark, young, half-naked limbs. A heavy mass of hair clung motionless to her wide forehead. Her arms twirled and flickered, and body and soul seemed quivering and whirring in the poetry ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... river, on whose waters rested an impenetrable fog. Closely intermingled with the voice-like sounds were now to be distinguished a variety of other noises, resembling the sharp, light clattering of cloven hoofs, the muffled pattering of hairy paws, or the wind-like whirring of fluttering wings. ...
— The Red Moccasins - A Story • Morrison Heady
... and laughter glowing in her countenance as she watched the landscape that fled by them, with its hillsides clad in their brightest green and with its fresh-plowed farm-lands and snowy orchards; the clattering of the horses' hoofs and the whirring of the wheels in the sandy road were music and inspiration such as Helen longed for, and she would have sung with all her heart had she ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... frequency, there would come interruptions, like iron bars striking dark, jagged holes in the tissue of life. From time to time I heard inexplicable noises—the whirring of motors, the skid-skid of tires on invisible streets, the rumble of carts around corners of a world where there were no carts. Again and again those moments of confusion would come over me, when I seemed to be looking ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... what was called a "carriage," to be sawed. This carriage moved slowly along on a little track, and the Bobbsey twins were allowed to ride on the end of the log farthest from the saw. When the end came too close to the big, whirring teeth that ripped through the hard knots with such a screeching sound, Bert and Nan and Flossie and Freddie were lifted off ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... denote not only the stone churinga nanja, a local peculiarity of the Arunta and Kaitish, but also the decorated and widely diffused elongated wooden slats called "Bull Roarers" by the English. These are swung at the end of a string, and produce a whirring roar, supposed to be the voice of a supernormal being, all over Australia ...
— The Clyde Mystery - a Study in Forgeries and Folklore • Andrew Lang
... mixed larch and cedar; in the centre was a dismal bog, through which slowly rolled a black, foul stream. As they passed along the shoulder of solid ground, troops of birds rose out of the wide sea of bog, and the noise of their wings made a low, mournful whirring as they passed in dark troops upwards into the ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... onions bobbing up and down: the bowl was soon emptied by ten wooden spoons, and then the three eldest boys slipped off to bed, being tired with their rough bodily labour in the snow all day, and Dorothea drew her spinning-wheel by the stove and set it whirring, and the little ones got August down upon the old worn wolfskin and clamoured to him for a picture or a story. For August was ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... only that the other was silently louping on his track two steps to his one; and with that frantic apprehension upon him, he gained the next street, flung himself around the corner with his back to the wall, and his arms convulsively drawn up for a grapple; and felt something rush whirring past his flank, striking him on the shoulder as it went by, with a buffet that made a shock break through his frame. That shock restored him to his senses. His delusion was suddenly shattered. The goblin was gone. He ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... curb his iron horse and hold him back against the "down-grade" impetus of the heavy Pullmans far in rear; sometimes he would open his throttle and give her full head, and the long train would seem to leap into space, whirling clouds of dust from under the whirring wheels, and then Van would almost tear his heart out to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... practised all sorts of monkey-like feats. At the other lived David's rabbits in numerous hutches, Ambrose's owl, a jackdaw, a squirrel, and a wonderfully large family of white mice. Besides those captives there were bats which lived free but retired lives high up in the rafters, flapping and whirring about when dusk came on. Pigeons also flew in and out, and pecked at the various morsels of food left about on the ground, so that the barn was a thickly-peopled place, with plenty of noise and flutter, and much coming and ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... reading, curiously enough, the Bible. I have begun, in these later days, to take a growing interest in that great and ancient book. Suddenly, a distinct tremor shook the house, and there came a faint and distant, whirring buzz, that grew rapidly into a far, muffled screaming. It reminded me, in a queer, gigantic way, of the noise that a clock makes, when the catch is released, and it is allowed to run down. The sound appeared to come from some remote height—somewhere up in ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... to the cavity in the cottonwood while the torrential rains fell with a monotonous roar, and the craneflies with their lacy, whirring wings formed a curtain in the entrance to lend ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... old red Roman brick, The good grey stone is over all In arch and floor of the tower tall. And maidens three are living there All in the upper chamber fair, Hung with silver, hung with pall, And stories painted on the wall. And softly goes the whirring loom In my ladies' upper room, For they shall spin both night and day Until the stars do pass away. But every night at evening. The window open wide they fling, And one of them says a word they know And out as three white swans they go, And the murmuring of ...
— Spirits in Bondage • (AKA Clive Hamilton) C. S. Lewis
... came forward with the ladders as the storming party moved up to the gateway. And just at that moment there the sentry let off his alarm shot. It set all within the San Vincente bastion moving and whirring like the works of a mechanical toy; feet came running along the covered way; muskets clinked on the stone parapet; tongues of fire spat forth from the embrasures; and then, as the musketry quickened, ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... pool, just mad with the joy of life; the midges dancing over the water in the still sunshine, and the trout jumping for them—oh, it's the bonny, bonny place. You would think so too. You would like it, tramping knee-deep in the heather, to see the moorcock rise whirring at your feet; you would like to set sail with the fisher folk after the silver herring. It would make you feel good to see the calm faces of the shepherds, the peace in the eyes of the women. Ay, that was the best of it all, the Rest of it, the calm of it. I ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... life!" But it naturally seems stimulating to simians. Boys envy the fellow. On the other hand whenever we are told about factory life, we instinctively shudder to think of enduring such evils. We see some old work-man, filling cans with a whirring machine; and we hear the humanitarians telling us, indignant and grieving, that he actually must stand in that nice, warm, dry room every day, safe from storms and wild beasts, and with nothing to do but fill cans; and at once we groan: "How deadly! What montonous toil! Shorten his hours!" His ...
— This Simian World • Clarence Day Jr.
... stately palaces, bustle and breeze, The whirring of wheels and the murmur of trees; By night or by day, whether noisy or stilly, Whatever my ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 13, 1917 • Various
... worthless, to the continuous now of childhood. The night was hot; my little brothers were sleeping loud, as wee Davie called snoring; and a great moth had got within my curtains somewhere, and kept on fluttering and whirring. I got up, and went to the window. It was such a night! The moon was full, but rather low, and looked just as if she were thinking—"Nobody is heeding me: I may as well go to bed." All the top of the sky was covered with mackerel-backed clouds, ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... breathing; their slender tips struck his waist at each oscillation. The movement quickened, became a beat, a rapid palpitation. A soft whirring sound filled the room; the newspaper on the bed, dislodged, eddied to the floor; the wings were a mere white blur. Suddenly Charles-Norton's feet left the floor, and he rose slowly into the air. "Look, look, Dolly," he ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... Puffing and whirring the big automobile started off up the road, the old lady sitting stern and erect, as if she thought her driver needed watching, and she was determined to keep ...
— Dorothy Dainty at the Mountains • Amy Brooks
... fools with their lies and their dollars, their mills and their bloody hands, Who make a god of a wheel, who worship their whirring bands, ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... agility for one so fat, he knocked the musical box from Hans' head, so that it fell to the ground and after a little whirring ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... almost the twilight hour when they heard the faint whirring of wings. Henry looked up through half-closed eyes. A cloud of wild ducks, hundreds of them, ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... saddles the humming-birds were whirring round the tree-tops; the Qu'est-ce qu'il dits inquiring the subject of our talk. The black vultures sat about looking on in silence, hoping that something to their advantage might be dropped or left behind— possibly that one of our ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... he spoke the Sky-Bird seemed to recover her balance. Making a pretty circle, away she sped on her course, neither rising nor falling. Like a real bird she sailed onward, the noise of her whirring propeller now lost to her fliers, but her little pale-yellow silk wings against the blue sky plainly tracing her course for them. Paul was running after her now as fast as his legs could carry him. What if she should keep right on and go over the ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... proof of the soundness of their judgment, for they had not been in position more than half an hour—by which time the sun, magnified to twice his size by the evening vapours through which he glowed, palpitating like a ball of white-hot steel, hung upon the very edge of the horizon—when a whirring of wings warned them to be on the alert, and a moment later a flock of some fifty teal, which must have been feeding on some far-off marsh during the day, settled down upon the surface of the water, with much splashing and loud quacks of satisfaction ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... Heard the squirrel, Adjidaumo, Rattling in his hoard of acorns, Saw the pigeon, the Omeme, Building nests among the pine-trees, And in flocks the wild-goose, Wawa, Flying to the fen-lands northward, Whirring, wailing far above him. "Master of Life!" he cried, desponding, "Must our lives depend on these things?" On the next day of his fasting By the river's brink he wandered, Through the Muskoday, the meadow, Saw the wild rice, Mahnomonee, Saw the blueberry, Meenahga, And the strawberry, Odahmin, And ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... more about five o'clock, from beneath the ridge of the mountain, where the shadows of night still lingered, a strange noise swept across the air, a sort of whirring, accompanied by the beating of mighty wings. And had it been a clear day, perhaps the farmers would have seen the passage of a mighty bird of prey, some monster of the skies, which having risen from the Great Eyrie sped ...
— The Master of the World • Jules Verne
... too, to watch for danger and he usually would send the flock whirring into the jungle while they were well beyond shotgun range. When flushed from the open the birds nearly always would alight in the first large tree and sit for a few moments before flying deeper ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... there was only one. He and Harry jumped about and snapped and barked, and Harry was thinking with joy that he was the last, when the clock in the hall gave that whirring sound which some clocks do before they strike, as if it ...
— Last Words - A Final Collection of Stories • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... on three hundred yards, and are resting again. In the daytime hens peck and cackle in every street; at nightfall the bordering veldt hums with crickets and bullfrogs. At morn come a flight of locusts—first, yellow-white scouts whirring down every street, then a pelting snowstorm of them high up over the houses, spangling the blue heaven. But Burghersdorp cared nothing. "There is nothing for them," said a farmer, with cosy satisfaction; "the frost killed everything ...
— From Capetown to Ladysmith - An Unfinished Record of the South African War • G. W. Steevens
... and scarce knowing what to do, I drew my weapons upon impulse and presented, not the handles, but the points. But ere I could think, the Captain's long rapier flashed out, it moved so swiftly I could not see it, and my own sword was torn from my grip and sent whirring across the hall. In the next instant, the guard of the Captain's sword was locked against the guard of my dagger, and his left hand gripped my wrist. It was such a trick as a fencing master might have played on a new pupil, or as I had heard attributed to my father but had ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... our descent, as only now I knew by its cessation—a hissing sound as of wire whirring from a draw-plate. In the profound enormous silence that, at last, enwrapped us, the bliss of freedom from that metallic accompaniment fell on me like a balm. My eyelids ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... of it lying upon me and pinning me down? Would there be another upheaval in a moment; more steely-blue stars and another flight, and then—the end? If so, I wished it would come quickly and not leave me in suspense, and, oh! if only the horrible whirring noise at my ear would only stop for a minute. My head ached as though it would burst. I opened my eyes, but could see nothing but the stalks of yellow grass in which my ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... o'clock! Again I sank under the weight of my prolonged nervous excitement. The hollow whirring in my head made itself felt anew. I stared straight ahead, kept my eyes fixed, and gazed at the chemist's under the sign of the elephant. Hunger was waging a fierce battle in me at this moment, and I was suffering greatly. Whilst I sit thus and ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... became suddenly overcast with clouds, and deep darkness invested the Indian village; while gusts of wind, sweeping with a moaning sound over the adjacent hills, and waking the forests from their repose, came rushing over the village, whirring and fluttering aloft like flights of the boding night-raven, or the more powerful bird of prey that had given its name to ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... tube was pointing steadily at Lucille's body as Tode hovered ten feet overhead, perfectly still save for the whirring wings. The three stopped dead, and Tode, with a shout of triumph, began calling the Drilgoes, who swarmed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
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