"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... anybody was creeping about outside the fence. The boards were close together, with scarcely a crack half an inch wide anywhere. A light ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... began a vigorous assault upon the woodwork. It was old, but very tough, and yielded tardily to the blows of the instrument. Then a big crack appeared as the result of ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... sacret pipe I've got fixed to the big veshel, and the pipe goes under the wall for me into the tan-pit, and a sucker I have in the big veshel, which I pull open by a string in a crack, and lets all off ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... he has repented marrying me," added Mrs. Yorke, who liked occasionally to crack a dry jest against matrimony, even though it should be at her own expense. "He has repented it in sackcloth and ashes, Robert Moore, as you may well believe when you see his punishment" (here she pointed to her children). "Who ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... trumpet down on the bank of the river, and we could hear the echo from the rocks and mountains on the other side. He also fired a gun two or three times. After the gun was fired, for a few minutes all was still; but then there came back a sharp crack from the other shore, and then a long, rumbling sound from up the river and down the river, like a peal of ...
— Rollo on the Rhine • Jacob Abbott
... held the jacket over the hole, and Thomas Jefferson Brown put a strength into his paddle that threatened to crack off the handle. After a minute or two, he saw a little trickle of water, beginning to ooze in about the edges of the jacket. He leaned back for an instant, and signaled Lord Meton ...
— Thomas Jefferson Brown • James Oliver Curwood
... [146] the battery, Where we will have gallions of six foot broad, To save our cannoneers from musket-shot; Betwixt which shall our ordnance thunder forth, And with the breach's fall, smoke, fire, and dust, The crack, the echo, and the soldiers' cry, Make deaf the air and ...
— Tamburlaine the Great, Part II. • Christopher Marlowe
... traps or "gums," which were traps made of hollow gum-tree logs. But we boys were the hare-hunters. They were our property from our childhood; just as much, we considered, as "Bruno" and "Don," the beautiful "crack" pointers, with their brown eyes and satiny ears and coats, were ...
— The Long Hillside - A Christmas Hare-Hunt In Old Virginia - 1908 • Thomas Nelson Page
... oppressive. Laurence, in spite of himself, felt it steal upon his nerves, and began to whistle a lively tune—as he walked slowly around, examining the cliffs, and every crack and cranny, with critical eye. The echoing notes reverberated weirdly among the brooding rocks. Suddenly his foot struck something—something hard. He looked down, and could not repress a start. There ...
— The Sign of the Spider • Bertram Mitford
... of the children huddled together for warmth in one bed, and the parents and balance of the family in the other. I slept on the floor near the door in my sleeping-bag, with my nose glued to the crack to get a breath of God's cold air, in spite of the need for warmth—for not a blanket did the house possess. When I asked, a little hurt, where were the blankets which we had sent last year, the mother somewhat indignantly pointed to various trousers ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... the man. If we meet the Dawn up north, and I have a hunch we shall meet her, we want to keep our eyes open. Meanwhile, we want to make a smart passage, and get there first, and away. We want to carry on—by the Lord, crack on to ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... the "Retreat of the Ten Thousand." "I don't like to hear of retreat," said one. "Nor I," said a second: "I'm for marching on." Mr. C. now told of the incessant conflicts of these brave warriors, and of the virtues of the "square." "They were a parcel of crack men," said one. "Yes," said another, "their bayonets fixed, and sleeping on their arms day and night." "I should like to know," said a fourth, "what rations were given with all that hard fighting;" on which an Irishman replied, "to be sure, every time the sun ...
— Reminiscences of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey • Joseph Cottle
... waiting grimly for an opportunity to crack a lumberjack's head. That opportunity came sooner than she expected. Two jacks, having crept around behind the lean-tos, suddenly lifted the rear supports and turned the structures over ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... Yankees were after us. Suddenly it ceased. Over yonder, shoreward in the thicket, came a sharp command and then a second, and then, right on the front of the jungle, at the water's edge, the shots began to puff and crack, and the yellow river out here around the boat to spit!—spit!—in wicked white splashes. Every second their number grew. Behind me Quinn and his men stole away. But orders are orders and I had no choice but to watch the boat. The man in the stern had his back to me, and no face among ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... just so brown and black from the hulling of black walnuts that my mother would almost want to turn me over her knee and spank me. But when wintertime came I always had a bunch of black walnuts that we could sit down and crack and put in those ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Incorporated 39th Annual Report - at Norris, Tenn. September 13-15 1948 • Various
... exaggeration whatever. Throughout the Mississippi valley there could be nothing more heartless than his treatment of the sable helots, whose luckless lot it was to have him for a master. Around his courts, and in his cotton-fields, the crack of the whip was heard habitually—its thong sharply felt by the victims of his caprice, or malice. The "cowhide" was constantly carried by himself, and his overseer. He had a son, too, who could wield it wickedly as either. None of the three ever went abroad without that pliant, painted, switch—a ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... stimulus of the potent liquid, Malkarski was able in a few minutes between his gasps to tell his story. Concealed by a lumber pile behind Rosenblatt's shack, with his ear close to a crack between the logs, he had heard the details of the plot. In the cross tunnel at the back of the cave bags of gunpowder and dynamite were to be hidden. To this mass a train was to be laid through the cross tunnel to a convenient distance. At a certain point during the conference Rosenblatt ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... mounted the short, ladder-like steps to the attic, and, feeling with her hand for the crack in the flooring under the partition, reached in for the key. As her fingers closed upon it, she choked back a cry. Some one had been here! A piece of paper was wrapped around the key. What did it mean? What did all these strange, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... Benneville returned it frankly, in his open boyish fashion. They were ever together, and their adventures and daring escapades more than once nearly threw them into serious trouble. But what cared they, crack-brained as they were? Why, on one pitch dark night, masked and mounted, my Lords Kenneth and Benneville held up the Royal Mail, frightened the passengers almost to death, and alarmed the whole countryside; sober ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... another cigarette and gave my mind to the matter. And first crack out of the box, as is so often the way with the Woosters, I got an idea. I remembered the counsel I had given Gussie in the matter of ...
— Right Ho, Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... Beasts!" cried Benham, and before Amanda could realize what he was up to, she heard the crack of his revolver and saw a puff of blue smoke drift away above his right shoulder. The foremost beast rolled over and the goatherd had sprung to his feet. He shouted with something between anger and dismay as Benham, regardless of the ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... TOP,—This is the best news I have heard for a long time. I always knew you would bring it off soon; but I wasn't prepared for anything quite so sudden. There is, of course, only one thing to do when a man fulfils his destiny in this way. The custom is immemorial, and, war or no war, we must crack a bottle. Tell me where you would like to dine, and when, and I'll fix it up, and some jolly show afterwards. Occasions like This ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... Rosa, and with nothing of Claude. I cannot tell why the ancients made such a fuss about it; perhaps because half of them never saw it, and took its character from hearsay; the other half, like mankind every where, stupidly admiring what is said to be admirable. It is like a crack in a great wall, at the bottom of which is a river, sometimes inundated, sometimes dry; the passage narrow, the sides craggy, bare, lofty and perpendicular; its whole length not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 486 - Vol. 17, No. 486., Saturday, April 23, 1831 • Various
... is this,' sais I, as I gave Old Clay a crack of the whip, to push on. 'There is some critters here, I guess, that have found a haw haw's nest, with a tee hee's egg in it. What's in the wind now?' Well, a sudden turn of the road brought me to where they was, ...
— The Attache - or, Sam Slick in England, Complete • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... inexplicable. If they were interiorly shattered, it would be easy to understand that, in their hardened condition, they had been broken violently asunder; but it is not easy to conceive a firm cliff of limestone broken through a thickness of 2000 feet without showing a crack in any other part of it. If they were divided in a soft state, like that of paste, it is still less easy to understand how any such soft material could maintain itself, till it dried, in the form of a cliff so enormous and so ponderous: it ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... "In a crack in the wall: there's a lot more," the child answered; and at the same moment Hardwicke said, "Shall I ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... "Look here," he continued; "it's a dangerous place this, even at its best—a treacherous, dangerous place. I have known men cut off very suddenly in a land like this. A slip would do it sometimes—a single slip, and down you go through a crack, and only a bubble on the green water to show where it was that you sank. It's a queer thing," he continued with a nervous laugh, "but all the years I've been in this country I never once thought of making a will—not that I have anything to leave in particular, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the foot in which suppuration is present may in like manner terminate in quittor. In complicated sand-crack, suppurating corn, or in ordinary pricked foot quittor may be a sequel. In these conditions the pus formation either goes unnoticed or is neglected, and after seriously invading the sensitive structures within the hoof, breaks out at the coronet. Again, too, as with the ...
— Diseases of the Horse's Foot • Harry Caulton Reeks
... tastes very good prepared in any number of different ways. Andramark agreed with himself that when he gave himself in marriage it would be to a woman who was a thoroughly good cook. But quite raw food is acceptable at times. It is pleasant to crack quail eggs between the teeth, or to rip the roe out of a fresh-caught shad with your forefinger and just let ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... good," said the teacher, "for he won't come open, if he can possibly help it. And there's another fellow (pointing). His name is Slivertwist. If you get a crack in him, you will find him full of twisted splinters that he holds himself together with. The only way is to cut them through with a sharp axe. But he holds on so tight with them that I don't believe you can get him open. He says he never gives up ...
— Gentle Measures in the Management and Training of the Young • Jacob Abbott
... the grave and reverend authorities at Randlebury School when they perceived, coming up the carriage drive, a cab with a boy of thirteen perched on the box, tugging at the reins, hallooing to the horse, and making his whip crack like so many fireworks; while inside, comfortably lounging amid a pile of luggage, reclined cabby at his ease, ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... turned on them their own weapons, and annihilated them into silence when they found themselves paid in their own base coin. He rebounded their popular ribaldry on themselves, with such replies as "Pap with a hatchet, or a fig for my godson; or, crack me this nut. To be sold, at the sign of the Crab-tree Cudgel, in Thwack-coat lane."[81] Not less biting was his "Almond for a Parrot, or an Alms for Martin." Nash first silenced Martin Mar-prelate, and the government afterwards hanged him; Nash might be vain of the greater honour. A ridiculer ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... place; a narrow crack cut deep into the earth; so deep, and so out of the way, that the bad bogies can hardly find it out. The name of the place ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... Potomac than Nashville from the Ohio. From Nashville to Chattanooga was fully as difficult a task. The vulnerable lines of communication multiplied in length as we went southward, and made the campaign of Atlanta more difficult still. Vicksburg was a harder nut to crack than Richmond. We must put away our esprit de corps, and squarely face the problem as one of military art with the Official Records and returns before us. Our Western army was of essentially the same material as the Eastern. Regiments ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... into his brother's by determining to get on the scene early enough to have first crack at the treasure. He meant to get away with that, leave his brother to deal with Alwa's men, circle round, and then attack his brother from ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... Presently she took up the passion-flower. "This grew beside the tobacco house, close to the wall. Margery saw it, and ran to pluck it. The door of the tobacco house was closed, but above the passion-flower was a great crack between the logs." She began to laugh. "Margery heard a strange thing, while she was plucking the passion-flower. Shall she tell it ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... some herbs which grew upon one spot alone, a marsh at a considerable distance: she left Orikama to take charge of the wigwam till her return, which would not be before nightfall. Soon after she had left, the crack of the rifle was heard, and the Indian village was startled from its repose by the shout of the white man, and armed backwoodsmen rushed in, expecting to meet their enemies: but the warriors were ...
— Holidays at the Grange or A Week's Delight - Games and Stories for Parlor and Fireside • Emily Mayer Higgins
... overwhelmingly voted down in various States; and you know, gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the ballot until the majority of white men, particularly the foreign born, had voted "yes," he would have gone without it until the crack of doom. It was because of this prejudice of the unthinking majority that Congress submitted the question of the negro's enfranchisement to the legislatures of the several States, to be adjudicated by the educated, broadened representatives of the people. We ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... the carpet. When the waves reach the end of the carpet they disappear. If the waves were the carpet, the carpet would disappear. The same waves in a whip, soft and undulating though they be, result in a loud crack, ...
— The Battery and the Boiler - Adventures in Laying of Submarine Electric Cables • R.M. Ballantyne
... peasants broke fast then, Drank vodka and wine. Before each great holiday, In my best staterooms The All-Night Thanksgiving Was held by the pope. My serfs were invited With every inducement: 460 'Pray hard now, my children, Make use of the chance, Though you crack all your foreheads!'[35] The nose suffered somewhat, But still at the finish We brought all the women-folk Out of a village To scrub down the floors. You see 'twas a cleansing Of souls, and a strengthening 470 Of spiritual union; Now, isn't ...
— Who Can Be Happy And Free In Russia? • Nicholas Nekrassov
... severance, disseverance; scission; rescission, abscission; laceration, dilaceration^; disruption, abruption^; avulsion^, divulsion^; section, resection, cleavage; fission; partibility^, separability. fissure, breach, rent, split, rift, crack, slit, incision. dissection anatomy; decomposition &c 49; cutting instrument &c (sharpness) 253; buzzsaw, circular saw, rip saw. separatist. V. be disjoined &c; come off, fall off, come to pieces, fall to pieces; peel ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... Ohio, etc.—and you know, gentlemen, that if the negro had never had the right to vote until the majority of the rank and file of white men, particularly foreign-born men, had voted "Yes," he would have gone without it till the crack of doom. It was because of the prejudice of the unthinking majority that Congress submitted the question of the negro's enfranchisement to the Legislatures of the several States, to be adjudicated by the educated, broadened representatives of the people. ...
— The History of Woman Suffrage, Volume IV • Various
... roared like the crack of Doom; and Amber's jaw dropped. For in the high roof of the temple a six-foot slab had been noiselessly withdrawn, and through it a cold shaft of moonlight fell, cutting the gloom like a gigantic rapier, and smote with its immaculate radiance ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... were godly people, and taught me to love the Lord by precept and example too. I worked in the pit till I were about twenty; when one day, as my butty and me was getting coal a long way off from the shaft, the prop nearest me began to crack, and I knowed as the roof were falling in. I sung out to him, but it were too late. I'd just time to save myself, when down came a big stone a-top of him, poor lad. I shouted for help, and we worked away with our picks like mad; ...
— Frank Oldfield - Lost and Found • T.P. Wilson
... flashed and was accompanied by a fearful crack of thunder. With a prayer for skill, I covered his head and fired by the glare of it just as the trumpet touched his lips. It fell from his hand. He seemed to shrink together, and ...
— Allan and the Holy Flower • H. Rider Haggard
... her ear close to the crack of the kitchen door when her daughter opened the outside one. She heard Thomas Payne's hearty greeting and Charlotte's decorous reply. The door of the front room shut, then she set the kitchen door ajar softly, but she could hear nothing but a ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... said, "that dum'd egg was about 's near raw as it was when i' was laid, an' the' was a crack in the shell, an' fust thing I knowed it kind o' c'lapsed, an' I give it a grab, an' it squirtid all over my pants, an' the floor, an' on my coat an' vest, an' up my sleeve, an' all over the tray. Scat my ——! I looked ...
— David Harum - A Story of American Life • Edward Noyes Westcott
... close enough to the sea to overcome the intensity of subterranean heat. Needless to say, it was an extremely hazardous undertaking, despite the very careful surveys that had been made, for the little parties of workmen could never tell when they would strike a crack or an unexpected crevice that would let down upon them with a terrible rush, the waters of the Atlantic. But hazard is adventure, and as the two little groups of laborers dug toward each other, the ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... wet, I'm not.' Happily, the children don't know what fear is. The maids, however, were very frightened, as some of the sea had got down into the nursery, and the skylights had to be screwed down. Our studding-sail boom, too, broke with a loud crack when the ship broached-to, and the jaws ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... become of her?—and the girl mused, as countless generations had mused before her. Then there was the pathos of it. She thought of the brave animal which she had so often seen, apparently for the mere love of difficulty, struggling as if its sinews would crack. She thought of its glad recognition when she came into the stable, and of its evident affection, half human, or perhaps wholly human, and imprisoned in a form which did not permit full expression. She looked at its body as it lay there ...
— Catharine Furze • Mark Rutherford
... considerable weight had already weakened the wood. When Tom attempted to draw himself up, crack! went the board, and a jagged piece broke off. This would not have been so serious if the ice had not given way. Then, into the water, with many strange, guttural cries, slipped the deaf and dumb man. Grace herself was wet through by the rush of water over the ice, ...
— Grace Harlowe's Sophomore Year at High School • Jessie Graham Flower
... stick, he went into a slow circle, as he stared down at the column of men. "Jack Alshuler," he whistled in surprise. "The marshal's crack heavy cavalry. And several batteries of artillery." He swung the glasses in a wider scope and the whistle turned into a hiss of comprehension. "They're doing a complete circle of the reservation. They're going to hit the Baron from the direction ...
— Mercenary • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... there under it, when I want to learn my lesson, and can't rest in the house; and that's how I know of the crack in the ha-ha." ...
— Mary Marston • George MacDonald
... turban," he cried, as with one hand he dragged it from his enemy's head, with dauntless vehemence, and bringing his flute down with a smart crack on ...
— Jack Harkaway's Boy Tinker Among The Turks - Book Number Fifteen in the Jack Harkaway Series • Bracebridge Hemyng
... the great life-insurance companies. "Freddie" Vandam, as the lady called him, was a man of might in the financial world; and Montague said to himself that in meeting him he would really be accomplishing something. Crack shots and polo-players and four-in-hand experts were all very well, but he had his living to earn, and he feared that the problem was ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair
... of his adventure in London has given the reader some short notice of his friend, Mr Macshane. Neither the wits nor the principles of that worthy Ensign were particularly firm: for drink, poverty, and a crack on the skull at the battle of Steenkirk had served to injure the former; and the Ensign was not in his best days possessed of any share of the latter. He had really, at one period, held such a rank in the ...
— Catherine: A Story • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Reichstag; how utterly unesthetic!" The identical gentlemen find it, however, quite in order that pregnant women work at the most unesthetic trades, at trades in which female dignity, health and decency are undermined. In the eyes of a Socialist, that man is a wretch who can crack jokes over a woman with child. The mere thought that his own mother once looked like that before she brought him into the world, should cause his cheeks to burn with shame; the thought that he, rude jester, expects from a similar condition on the part of his wife the ...
— Woman under socialism • August Bebel
... spoke, from somewhere came a series of tiny noises, that, though they were so faint and small, suggested rifles fired at a great distance. Crack, crack, crack! went the ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... gone so very far when he came to the edge of a forest, and there was an old crone with a green nose a yard long, and it was caught in a crack of a log. She was dancing and hopping about, but for all her dancing and hopping she got no farther than that one spot, for her nose ...
— Tales of Folk and Fairies • Katharine Pyle
... hostility was to be found in all this life. It was the same old monotonous drudgery of the veldt again. The same merciless sun, the same sapless and parched surroundings. As the day wore on men longed for the crack of a rifle to ease the burden of the monotony. The country, too, grew more hilly, and fearing that he might be attacked in detail, the brigadier reduced his front, till by four in the afternoon the brigade to all practical purposes had concentrated. ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... much-talked-of Dawson road. It was some two feet higher than our rough track, and separated from it by a large mud puddle, in which, after a lurch to one side and a violent jerk from the horses, the waggon-wheels sank on the other. A volley of oaths was discharged by our half-breed, followed by a crack of his long whip, and a sharp struggle, and then the near horse fell back on his haunches and we stuck fast. Down rolled the best valise, out sprang Jehu, carrying with him into the mud our biggest blanket. Mr. C——, in slippers, ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... the column came the escort, with the three regimental bands, mounted and bicycle police, city officials, visiting military, sons of veterans, and the militia, including the resplendent Light Infantry Blues of Richmond, a crack drill regiment with an honorable history dating from 1789, and the handsomest uniforms ever seen. Behind the escort rode the honored commander-in-chief of the veterans, and staff, the grand marshal and staff, ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... sea fight in the reign of Charles the Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and bid him live there at discretion, for as he had saved his ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... duel with Dickinson was the result of a quarrel which had its beginning in a remark reflecting upon Mrs. Jackson, and Dickinson, though a crack shot, paid for ...
— Threads of Grey and Gold • Myrtle Reed
... 'chiefest among men, and that which most dignifies the haver'; the virtue which he finds in his time rewarded with patents of nobility, with patrician trust, with priestly authority, with immortal fame, and thrones and dominions, with the disposal of the human welfare, and the entail of it to the crack of doom—no matter what 'goslings' the law of entail may devolve ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... me was a singular one. Her life was passed in a crack-brained sort of alternation between love and hatred for me. If I was in a good-humour with her (as occurred sometimes) there was nothing she would not do to propitiate me further; and she would be as ...
— Barry Lyndon • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sometime. Overwhelmed with affection for his son, he summoned all his kinsmen and said, 'That man who will cause the head of my son to fall on the earth while the latter, struggling in battle, will be bearing a great burthen, I say that the head of that man will certainly crack into a hundred pieces.' Having spoken these words and installed Jayadratha on the throne, Vriddhakshatra, repairing to the woods, devoted himself to ascetic austerities. Endued with great energy, he is still engaged in the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 2 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... into his worst crimes. His first one leads on by fell necessity to others. A man who has done no sin is conceivable, but a man who has done only one is impossible. Did you ever see a dam bursting or breaking down? Through a little crack comes one drop: will it stop there—the gap or the trickle? No! The drop has widened the crack, it has softened the earth around, it has cleared away some impediments. So another and another follow ever more rapidly, until the ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... taken away, and tried to comfort her. One by one the mothers were taken until only the Lambs remained. They were very hungry now, and bleated pitifully. Still the twin brother stood with his head in the corner. He had closed his eyes, but now he opened them, and through a crack in the wall of the shed, he saw some very slender and white-looking Sheep turned into the meadow. At first they acted dizzy, and staggered instead of walking straight; then they stopped staggering and began to frisk. "Can it be?" said he. ...
— Among the Farmyard People • Clara Dillingham Pierson
... at his heart he knew that it was the sharp crack of a firearm. "Liar again! Pierre, for God's sake, do something for him. Father! ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... there is no excuse whatever for being without it. Save the bones collected on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. Chicken and veal bones may be kept together; beef, mutton and ham in another lot; one makes a white stock, the other brown. If the quantity is small, put them all together. Crack the bones, put them in the bottom of a large soup kettle, cover with cold water, bring slowly to boiling point and skim. Push the kettle to the back part of the stove, where the stock may simmer for at least ...
— Made-Over Dishes • S. T. Rorer
... carefully examined, the layer of cotton between them, at the bottom, replenished, a small vessel of salt added to absorb the moisture and prevent it from freezing on the panes, and strips of paper pasted over every possible crack. The outer doors are covered with wadded leather, overlapping the frames on all sides. The habitations being thus almost hermetically sealed, they are easily warmed by the huge porcelain stoves, which retain warmth so tenaciously that one fire per day is sufficient for the most sensitive ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... it went all unanswered. Once when I had a dying Tory's head pillowed on my knee I saw a rifleman thrust his weapon between the wheel-spokes of the outer wagon and draw a bead on me. I heard the crack of the Deckard, the zip of the bullet singing at my ear, and the man's angry oath at his missing of me. Once again a rifle-ball passed through my hair at the braiding of the queue and I felt the hot touch of it on my scalp like a breath ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... land at the wharf," said the old gentleman, nodding his approval of the question, "and says I, 'That's my man,' as soon as ever I clapped eyes on ye. So I had a crack wi' the captain o' yon steamer; he told me you hadna a billet, but were just on the lookout for the best ye could get, an' that's all he'd been able to get out o' ye in a five days' voyage. That was enough for me. I want a man who can keep his tongue behind his teeth, ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... fearful strain on one's comic spirit to have it suddenly cooled," he said. "It makes it liable to crack, and then when you beat on it you get nothing but a dull stodgy sound. I feel that there are times when my ebullience, my wealth of genteel diablerie, my flow of jeux d'esprit astonish even myself, but those times are never the ones when my hostess says, in ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... she were dead, they had to set me in the jacket, buckled so tight ye could hear my bones crack. The warden ain't got no blame comin' from me, 'cause I smashed his face afore he'd done tellin' me. And I felled the keeper like that!" He raised a knotty fist and thrust it forth. "But it were all 'cause I wanted to be with her so, ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... to restrain Ben, when the target could be so easily pierced, and he begged, “Oh, Mr. Stuart, only let me have one crack at the infernal rascal, and you may keep all the pay that ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... padder, that fell to decay, [6] Who used for to plunder upon the highway; The fourth was a mill-ken to crack up a door, [7] He'd venture to rob both the rich and the poor, The fifth was a glazier who when he creeps in, [8] To pinch all the lurry he thinks it no sin. [9] ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... genuine incredulity enabled her to dismiss Miss Stepney with a disdain which boded ill for that lady's prospect of succeeding to the black brocade; but minds impenetrable to reason have generally some crack through which suspicion filters, and her visitor's insinuations did not glide off as easily as she had expected. Mrs. Peniston disliked scenes, and her determination to avoid them had always led her to hold herself aloof from the details of Lily's life. In her youth, girls ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... opposite sex. With difficulty I got her to undress to her chemise, then with but my shirt on, how I revelled in her nakedness, feeling from her neck to her ankles, lingering with my fingers in every crack and cranny of her body; from armpits to cunt, all was new to me. With what fierce eyes after modest struggles, and objections to prevent, and I had forced open her reluctant thighs, did I gloat on her cunt; wondering at its hairy outer covering and ...
— My Secret Life, Volumes I. to III. - 1888 Edition • Anonymous
... up the ball, took a careless stance, and flicked moodily. There was a sharp crack, the ball shot off the tee, flew a hundred yards in a dead straight line never ten feet above the ground, soared another seventy yards in a graceful arc, struck the turf, rolled, and came to rest within easy ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... heard of the Meekers before. So had I, for that matter. A crack-brained professor had written a laborious, fantastic book about their mediumship and power of communication with the other world. They sat together as a family: the elder Meekers; the wife's sister; a boy, Albert, of fourteen; Ena, close to twenty; and Jannie, a girl seventeen ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... higher ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaning fir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than most tore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack of breaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea swept the rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught in the tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulation of driftwood ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... the merchant's eldest son. He was bold, stout, active, middle-sized, and seventeen years of age; full of energy and life, a crack rower, a first-rate cricketer, and generally a clever ...
— Freaks on the Fells - Three Months' Rustication • R.M. Ballantyne
... the victim of her own idea, as long as lotteries existed," said Bixiou; "for in Paris there are no great gains without corresponding outlays. The strongest heads are liable to crack there, as if to give vent to their steam. Those who make much money have vices or fancies,—no doubt ...
— Unconscious Comedians • Honore de Balzac
... stole the light from us.' They do not yet perceive that light, unsystematic, indomitable, will break into any cabin, even into theirs. Let them chirp awhile and call it their own. If they are honest and do well, presently their neat new pinfold will be too strait and low, will crack, will lean, will rot and vanish, and the immortal light, all young and joyful, million-orbed, million-colored, will beam over the universe as on ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... seeping in at more than one crack. Mohammedanism has an active propaganda in Great Britain. Heathen wedges are slipping their thin edges in, in our land. More and more it will extend, in time influencing our whole moral fabric, and affecting our whole ...
— Quiet Talks with World Winners • S. D. Gordon
... I do? I'd go and axe her to come to chapel Sunday, her and hers. I'd axe her kindly, and I'd crack a joke with her. And I'd get round her for ...
— The Matador of the Five Towns and Other Stories • Arnold Bennett
... water. Enjoyed among hackers who make batches during playtime at parties for its amusing and extremely non-Newtonian behavior; it pours and splatters, but resists rapid motion like a solid and will even crack when hit by a hammer. ...
— The Jargon File, Version 4.0.0
... might some counsel find Of my wit or in my mind Thee to better.' 'Ay, e'en so, But the telling shall let thee know,' Quoth the king, 'is neither scope For sweet counsel nor fair hope, Nor is found for respite room, Till the uttermost crack of doom. ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Jean Ingelow
... with wonder which savored of horror, but she heard the door close and saw Lily flit back across the yard with a feeling of immeasurable relief. Then she heard her aunt's voice at her door, opened a narrow crack. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... mastery over his enemy, having succeeded in grasping the serpent's neck with both hands, and begun to swing and whirl it round and round, whizzing through the air level with his neck. Murray could almost believe that it was whirled round so fast that he could even hear it hum and then snap and crack as if it were some mighty whip-lash with which the great black was flogging the golden darkness of ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... lowering yourself from stone to stone. Through the Arch ran the creek, with rare minnows in its pools, while important paths led from the creek to a wilderness of hazelnut-bushes. He taught her to tear the drying husks from the nuts and crack the nuts with stones. At his request Gertie produced two pins from unexpected parts of her small frilly dress. He found a piece of string, and they fished for perch in the creek. As they had no bait whatever, ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... we were about ten yards past the shack, standing all in a group. The person inside couldn't see us through the opening in front of the shack but for all we knew he might be peeking at us through some little crack or hole. It made me feel funny to think that he was in there staring at us and we not able to ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... he stopped suddenly and cast a quick glance around. He had heard a sharp crack behind him, but it was not repeated and there was little to be seen. While he listened, the wind wailed among the branches and the sloo grass rustled eerily. The patch of sky above him was growing darker, and the wood looked, inexpressibly ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... had got it and the ball had gone to the shorter and sturdier of the younger Britlings, who had been standing behind Mr. Direck's captain. Crack, and it was away to Teddy; smack, and it was coming right ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... of work, so on the round-up, a man of ordinary power, who nevertheless does not shirk things merely because they are disagreeable or irksome, soon earns his place. There were crack riders and ropers who, just because they felt such overweening pride in their own prowess, were not really very valuable men. Continually on the circles a cow or a calf would get into some thick patch ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... supremely devilish as the dried-up mirth of this old fellow it would be difficult to imagine. His very laugh seemed as if it had to crack in his throat before it could pass his lips. What would his daughter be like, living in such a house, with such companions? While I was wondering, I heard footsteps in the corridor, and then an old woman entered and curtsied respectfully. My host rose and went over ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... Union has surrounded itself with captive and sullen nations. Like a crack in the crust of an uneasily sleeping volcano, the Hungarian uprising revealed the depth and intensity of the patriotic longing for liberty that still burns within ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... grizzled man dressed in dungaree pants, a sweater, and a woolen cap with ear-flaps. His manner is sullen and angry. He stops stacking up the plates and casts a quick glance upward at the skylight; then tiptoes over to the closed door in rear and listens with his ear pressed to the crack. What he hears makes his face darken and he mutters a furious curse. There is a noise from the doorway on the right, and he darts ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... miles of river over which to sweep with fury, and a forty-mile-an-hour gale can kick up a tremendous sea, besides penetrating every crack and cranny to be found in a flimsy cabin, chilling the ...
— The House Boat Boys • St. George Rathborne
... spirit blew up just at that point; he hit the iron a crack that knocked it as flat as a pancake, and then threw down the hammer and deliberately gazed in ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... winding stairs. Moss covers the worn stone steps. Sometimes a ray of light, passing through a crack in the walls, strikes a green blade and makes it gleam in ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... found it much colder than we had expected,—quite cold enough for as thick winter clothing as one would wear at the North. The houses, heated only by open fires, were never comfortably warm. In the floor of our sitting-room there was a large crack through which we could see the ground beneath; and through this and the crevices of the numerous doors and windows the wind came chillingly. The church in which we taught school was particularly damp and cold. There was no chimney, and we ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... to them continually. I told you they were full of rents, or veins. Large masses of mountain are sometimes as full of veins as your hand is; and of veins nearly as fine (only you know a rock vein does not mean a tube, but a crack or cleft). Now these clefts are mended, usually, with the strongest material the rock can find; and often literally with threads; for the gradually opening rent seems to draw the substance it is filled with into fibres, which cross from one side of it to the other, and are partly ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... abilities as a "crack" shot that led him to be generally appealed to for instruction and "tips" by "pupils in the art of shooting." It was one of these "unattached pupils" who was continually dogging at Mr Hopkinson to teach him how to shoot straight. His name was Bob Brigg. It was with great joy that ...
— Adventures and Recollections • Bill o'th' Hoylus End
... without a pretense of hesitancy she turned into a black mouth of an entrance and up two flights. On each landing she paused more for tears than for breath. At a rear door leading off the second landing she knocked softly, but with insistence. It opened to a slight crack, then immediately swung back ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... how much worse things could be if the monsters took over the world to rule. But the driver insisted that the United States was calm. Us Americans, he assured Lockley, weren't scared. We were educated and we knew that them scientists would crack this nut somehow. Like only yesterday a broadcast said this Belgian guy had come up with calculations that said this poison beam had to be something like a radar beam or a laser beam or something like that. And the American ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to have stopped on the stairs, Eustace could hear his gay bold tones, calling, "Up! up! my merry men, all! Let not the French dogs find the wolf asleep in his den. They will find our inner bartizan a hard stone for their teeth—and it will be our own fault, if they crack it before the coming of our brave comrades ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... funds—the Peking branch of the Tract Society is bankrupt just now—and get them out, you shall have specimens. Probably they won't look well, being first attempts, but you need not be ashamed of the Mongol of them, as they have been written under my direction by a "crack" native scholar, and carefully revised by Schereschewsky, who is a general linguist of good ability, and has paid so much attention to Mongolian that he revised the Gospel by Matthew in conjunction with Mr. Edkins, and is at present at work on a ...
— James Gilmour of Mongolia - His diaries, letters, and reports • James Gilmour
... she simply took Vinesauf's breath away. No one thought that any ship so big had ever been built before, "unless it might be Noah's Ark", Richard had a hundred galleys. The Turkish ship was quite alone; but she was a tough nut to crack, for all that. She was said to have had fifteen hundred men aboard, which might be true, as soldiers being rushed over for the defence of Acre were probably packed like herrings in a barrel. As this was the first English ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... for the pearl quite ignored its setting of the common and the ridiculous. He looked at her and smiled. Ellen smiled back tremulously, then she cast down her eyes. The fire was roaring, but the room was freezing. The sitting-room door was opened a crack, and remained so for a second, then it was widened, and Andrew peeped in. Then he entered, tiptoeing gingerly, as if he were afraid of disturbing a meeting. He brought a blue knitted shawl, which he put over ...
— The Portion of Labor • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... be thoroughly rubbed with a brush into every crack and crevice of the walls, and if applied regularly every year would probably prevent the trees from being badly attacked. As the red spider passes the winter under some shelter, frequently choosing stones, rubbish, etc., near ...
— Scientific American Supplement, Vol. XV., No. 388, June 9, 1883 • Various
... you a hearty welcome, young sir," Sandy said. "Many a time I have seen your brave father riding at the head of his regiment, and have spoken to him too, for he and his officers would drop in here and crack a cup together in a room I keep upstairs for the quality. Well, well, and to think that you are his son! But what Malcolm said is true, and it were best that none knew who ye are, for they have an unco quick way here of putting inconvenient people ...
— Bonnie Prince Charlie - A Tale of Fontenoy and Culloden • G. A. Henty
... plates granulated? Why are the positive plates buckled? What caused the positive plates to disintegrate? Why are the separators black? Why is the case rotten when less than a year old? Why did the sealing compound crack on top and cause the electrolyte to slop? Why did one of the terminal connectors get loose and make a slopper? Who is to blame for it, the car manufacturer, the manufacturer of the battery, or the owner of the car? Why did this battery have ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... could at least boast of long familiarity with horses; and his cleverness in this line promised to make him a crack horseman when he had picked up a few more of the tricks ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... busily to the work of making a farm. As for Daniel, they knew it was idle to expect his help in such employment, and therefore left him to roam about with his rifle. This was a glorious country for the youth; wild woods were all around him, and the game, having not yet learned to fear the crack of the rifle wandered fearlessly through them. This he thought was, of all places, the home for him. I hope you will not think that he was the idle and useless boy of the family, for it was not so. While the farm was improving, Daniel was supplying the family with ...
— The Adventures of Daniel Boone: the Kentucky rifleman • Uncle Philip
... his daughter Susannah; and, lastly, Susannah's own. Shakspeare's is the commonest-looking slab of all, being just such a flag-stone as Essex Street in Salem used to be paved with, when I was a boy. Moreover, unless my eyes or recollection deceive me, there is a crack across it, as if it had already undergone some such violence as the inscription deprecates. Unlike the other monuments of the family, it bears no name, nor am I acquainted with the grounds or authority on which it is absolutely determined to be Shakspeare's; although, being in a range with those ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... miles in circumference, and to take about a thousand paces of walking so as to reach the lowest point within its area. He remarked abundance of brushwood on its sides, and observed cattle grazing peacefully upon the open grassy patches in the midst of the over-grown space. A deep crack, however, ran from end to end of the whole crater, which allowed persons so minded to descend amidst rocks and boulders to a large plain below the surface, whereon Braccini found three pools of hot steamy water, of a saline ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... will all go into heaven bravely and in triumph, with your heads erect and golden trumpets sounding for you. But I am sure I shall only be allowed to squeeze myself in through a little crack in the gate after a great deal of begging. I am not good always: I have ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... faster and faster, opening his mouth wider and wider, until they could fairly hear it crack at the corners. ...
— The Pot of Gold - And Other Stories • Mary E. Wilkins
... been bleached and ironed; hideous crawling creatures, some of them coleopterous or horny-shelled,—turtle-bugs one wants to call them; some of them softer, but cunningly spread out and compressed like Lepine watches; (Nature never loses a crack or a crevice, mind you, or a joint in a tavern bedstead, but she always has one of her flat- pattern five timekeepers to slide into it;) black, glossy crickets, with their long filaments sticking ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... a writer in the London Times, "that the Americans have some superior mode of firing." But when Broke with his crack crew in the Shannon beat the Chesapeake fresh out of port, he demonstrated, as had the Americans in other actions, that the superiority was primarily a matter of training ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... attacked the author in so exquisite a piece of grave irony, that I am tempted to transcribe his inimitable parallels of a triumvirate composed of the writer of the Flying Post, Dunton the literary projector, and poor Steele: the one, the Iscariot of hackney scribes; the other a crack-brained scribbling bookseller, who boasted he had a thousand projects, fancied he had methodised six hundred, and was ruined by the fifty he executed. The following is a specimen of that powerful irony in which Swift excelled all other ...
— Calamities and Quarrels of Authors • Isaac D'Israeli
... ship, large, roomy, and comfortable, with lines which show that she is built for speed. As her record is twenty knots an hour, the latter promise is carried out. The "Yankee" was formerly the "El Norte," one of the Morgan Line's crack ships, and, when it was found necessary to increase the navy, she was purchased, together with other vessels of the same company, and ordered converted into an auxiliary cruiser. Gun mounts were placed in the ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... itself." Again, she said, "I the author of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin!' No, indeed. The Lord himself wrote it, and I was but the humblest instrument in his hand." It has been said that "'Uncle Tom's Cabin' made the crack of the slave-driver's whip and the cries of the tortured blacks ring in every household in the land, till human hearts could bear it no longer," and that it "made the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law ...
— Daughters of the Puritans - A Group of Brief Biographies • Seth Curtis Beach
... chiefs to detain them, they came in sight of what they supposed to be Petherick's outposts, in north latitude 3 degrees 10 minutes 33 seconds. The Seedees immediately began firing away their carbines. Directly afterwards bang, crack, bang! was heard from the distant camp, when, in an instant, every height was seen covered with men. The travellers and their attendants hastened on, when before them appeared three large red flags, heading a military procession ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... fights all the better when he knows there is no one in England praying for his return, and that if he falls, there is no widow or children to bewail his loss. There are as many stout men-at-arms going too; so the Castle of Villeroy will be a hard nut for anyone to crack, for I hear they can put a hundred and fifty of their vassals there in ...
— At Agincourt • G. A. Henty
... cleaning them after their arrival from the merchants' hands, and giving them out to the workmen as required. Thus he came to learn the various shades of coloring; how to tell when bone was healthy and might be expected to take the cutting well, or when it would be apt to crack and split under the saw. Having come to know the differences in degree, he was put to checking off the lots as they arrived, according to kind and grade. Mammoth tusks of elephants, sometimes ten feet in length, weighing close on a hundred pounds, solid to within six inches ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... you work on should not be too freshly primed. The painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well dried. You cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and keeping it on hand. Then, if you have had ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... wild with delight, and insisted upon carrying Tom on their shoulders around the pond. A great crowd followed, and nobody noticed how this made the ice bend and crack. ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... the mould, reversing the process and pressing the clay against its confining surface. The danger in thrown ware comes from an uneven pressure on the clay resulting in a lack of solidity; the pieces are not always equally firm at all points and in consequence sometimes crack." ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... co-operation had continued for fifteen years. Mysterious efforts! During fifteen years the ocean had never for an instant ceased from its labours. The waves transmitted from one to another the floating bottle. The shelving rocks had shunned the brittle glass; no crack had yawned in the flask; no friction had displaced the cork; the sea-weeds had not rotted the osier; the shells had not eaten out the word "Hardquanonne;" the water had not penetrated into the waif; the mould had not rotted the parchment; the wet had hot effaced ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... safety. The grand cathedral of St. Paul, London, was threatened by a "tube," and only saved by vigorous protest from having its foundations jarred and shaken by rumbling trains in the bowels of the earth. Moreover, by sewers and drains the earth is made devoid of moisture, and therefore is liable to crack and crumble, and to disturb the foundations of ponderous buildings. St. Paul's still causes anxiety on this account, and requires all the care and vigilance of the ...
— Vanishing England • P. H. Ditchfield
... rest come a-trooping back from the kitchen—leaving the door just a crack open, so Hart could peep through and see the fun—and Santa Fe jumped up on a bench and sung out "Order!" as loud as he could yell. Knowing what was expected of 'em, the boys quieted down sudden; and the Hen got a-hold of Kerosene and snuggled her up to her, and told her to weep on her fond ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... on the opposition side, sat down, up rose another noble Lord, on the ministerial side, Grenville. This man ought to be as strong in the back as a mule, or the sire of a mule, or it would crack with the weight of places and offices. He rose, however, without feeling any incumbrance, full master of his weight; and thus said this noble ...
— The Writings Of Thomas Paine, Complete - With Index to Volumes I - IV • Thomas Paine
... our places long before we heard a shot followed by another; then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot,—one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a whip,—while the other three came from the ...
— A Comedy of Marriage & Other Tales • Guy De Maupassant
... had time to wonder, the racket ceased, and from the street filtered voices in altercation. Listening, Kirkwood's pulses quickened, and he laughed uncertainly for pure relief, retreating to the door and putting an ear to a crack. ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... or a squall from up-river, was upon us. We took down our hammocks, and then all hands were required to save the vessel from being dashed to pieces. The moon set, and a black pall of clouds spread itself over the dark forests and river; a frightful crack of thunder now burst over our heads, and down fell the drenching rain. Joaquim leapt ashore through the drowning spray with a strong pole, and tried to pass the cuberta round a small projecting point, while we on deck aided in keeping her off ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... dark one Thursday evening, and Sarah Ann had just brought the lamp into her mistress's parlour. Miss Michin turned up the light slowly, remarking, as she did so, "I don't want this glass to crack. I might do nothing else but buy lamp-glasses if I left the turning-up of them to Sarah Ann. This one has been boiled, which, Mrs. Dodd says, is a good thing to make them stand heat." Then she broke off suddenly, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... was raised by unseen hands. Poised in mid-air for a moment, it floated joggily, unsteadily through the crack of the partly opened stone door. The guard, wide-mouthed and staring, muttered supplication to the ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... shadow from the doorway moved towards and THROUGH me, and with the coldness of its passage I revived! With desperate energy I cut a couple of chunks off the washstand, and paring them down, eventually succeeded in slipping them in the crack of the door, and rendering it impossible to open from the outside. That done, I staggered to the bed, and falling, dressed as I was, on the counterpane, sank into a deep sleep. How long I slept I cannot say. I suddenly ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell
... (Stekel, Spr. d. Tr., p. 398 f.): "I came through a crack between two boards out of the 'wheel room.' The walls dripped with water. Right before me is a brook in which stands a rickety, black piano. I use it to cross over the brook, as I am running away. Behind me is a crowd of men. In front of ...
— Hidden Symbolism of Alchemy and the Occult Arts • Herbert Silberer
... first of having an old stove top that Roger saw thrown away at Grandfather's," Ethel Brown explained. "We could build two brick sides to hold it up and have the stone for a back and leave the front open and run a piece of stove pipe up through that crack ...
— Ethel Morton's Enterprise • Mabell S.C. Smith
... his ships uninjured—the six missing vessels having found their way at last safely back to the squadron—but with a very great crack to his reputation. It was urged very justly, both by the States-General and the public, that if one ship under a determined commander could fight the whole Spanish fleet two days and nights, and sink unconquered at last, ten ships ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... a sharpshooter, armed with a Whitworth gun, "I'll stop that racket. Wait until I see her smoke again." Boom, boom! the keen crack of the Whitworth rings upon the frosty morning air; the cannoneers are seen to lie down; something is going on. "Yes, yonder is a fellow being carried off on a litter." Bang! bang! goes the Whitworth, and the battery is seen to limber ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins |
