"Crackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... staircase—the hurried unbolting and opening of distant doors, as the lighter one with which he was struggling at last yielded to his blind rage, and threw him crashing into the sitting-room. The back door was wide open. He could hear the rustling and crackling of twigs and branches in different directions down the hillside, where the fugitives had separated as they escaped. And yet he stood there for an instant, ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... that men were hurrying about on deck, was only shown by the somber figures who now and then passed in front of a single lantern. From out the engine room, already under water, arose the pound of heavy pounding and the weird crackling of the engines, ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... heard under his feet a crackling sound, and a smell of sulphur filled the air. A thought crossed his mind, and he ran and opened a hatchway; the vessel was burning. A cry of, "To our ships!" sounded through all the line. Each climbed back again ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... . . . . . . . . . . The murmurs hush'd—the Herald straight proclaim'd S-l-n the witty next in order nam'd, But he was gone to hear the dismal yells Of tortur'd Ghosts and suffering Criminals, Tho' summoned thrice, he chose not to return, Charmed to behold the crackling Culprits burn With George all know Ambition must give place When there's an Execution in the case." ...
— George Selwyn: His Letters and His Life • E. S. Roscoe and Helen Clergue
... hardness, rigidity, and finality will disappear, and your story will be not yours alone, but that of every one who feels and thinks. Spirit gives universality and meaning; but alas! for this new gospel of the auctioneer's catalogue, and the crackling of thorns under a pot. He who deals with facts only, deprives his work of gradation and distinction. One fact, considered in itself, has no less importance than any other; a lump of charcoal is as valuable ...
— Confessions and Criticisms • Julian Hawthorne
... was no idle one. Soon the fire was crackling merrily and the chops and bacon were sizzling in the frying-pan. Bob unpacked the sandwiches and the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... innumerable echoes repeated the sound of the discharge; a cloud of bright-coloured birds flew out of the woods screaming; a handful of leaves were scattered in the place where the shot had struck; a crackling of branches was heard; and some lithe but heavy creature sprang into the air, and fell forward, head down, over ...
— The Perils of Certain English Prisoners • Charles Dickens
... swallowed up in the agony of the time. One monstrous swing the brig gave, like to some doomed creature's last delirious struggle; the bowsprit caught the ice and snapped with the noise of a great tree crackling in fire. I could hear the masts breaking overhead—the crash and blows of spars and yards torn down and striking the hull; above all the grating of the vessel, that was now head on to the sea and swept by the billows, broadside on, along the sharp and murderous projections. Two monster seas tumbled ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... was an almost continual thumping along the ship's side as the paddle struck heavily the ice fragments which we found littering the frozen sea. There was also a dull reverberation as of distant thunder that rolled over the sea to us; and when we learned that this was the crackling of the ice-pack in the gorges, we thought with increasing solemnity of the majesty of the spectacle ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... trifle more to the northwest. There, now we aim straight for Hazenhurst," Andy called out; for the motor was crackling, and besides, there was more or less noise arising from the stiffened planes, so that it became necessary to raise the voice in order to ...
— The Airplane Boys among the Clouds - or, Young Aviators in a Wreck • John Luther Langworthy
... over twenty years ago. As he told his story, he made the scenes so real that the children forgot where they were. They could almost smell the thick, stifling smoke of the burning forest, hear the terrible crackling of the flames, feel the scorching heat in their faces, and see the frightened cattle driven into the lakes and streams by the ...
— The Little Colonel's Hero • Annie Fellows Johnston
... (Nine o'clock in the morning).—The gray curtain of mist has spread itself again over the town; everything is dark and dull. The bells are ringing in the distance for some festival; with this exception everything is calm and silent. Except for the crackling of the fire, no noise disturbs my solitude in this modest home, the shelter of my thoughts and of my work, where the man of middle age carries on the life of his student-youth without the zest of youth, and the sedentary ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the door of a sitting-room on the premier; a wood- fire was crackling, breakfast was on the table, and before the coffee-pot stood ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter
... the lunch with much shaking of the head. Olva lay in his chair watching, with eyes that never closed nor stirred, the crackling golden fire. Beyond the window the world was of blue steel. He could fancy the still gleaming waters of the lake that stretched beyond the grass lawns; he could fancy the red brick of the buildings that clung like some frieze to the horizon. Along the stone courtyard ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... him. In the din he had not heard it. He turned as he crouched, and saw that it was a hen-pheasant, with blood on her breast and one wing trailing alongside. And in the same instant he was aware of a man—an under-keeper—crackling about in the hedge only ten yards away, looking for ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... P.M.—It is difficult to settle down to sleep to-night: the sky is lit up with flashes and star-shells, and every now and then a big bang shakes the house, above the almost continuous thud, thudding, and the barking of the machine-guns and the crackling of rifle firing; they are bringing in more to-day, both here and at the Hospice, and we are tired enough to go to sleep as if we were at home; I shouldn't wonder if the Night Sister ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... on the clear waters of some ancestral spring, of the simple hearth of the farmhouse, of the family table resplendent with the silver salinum, heirloom of generations, from which the grave paterfamilias makes the pious offering of crackling salt and meal to little gods crowned with rosemary and myrtle, of the altar beneath the pine to the Virgin goddess, of Faunus the shepherd-god, in the humor of wooing, roaming the sunny farmfields in quest of retreating wood-nymphs, of Priapus the garden-god, and Silvanus, guardian ...
— Horace and His Influence • Grant Showerman
... A mattress composed of palm-leaves was covered with native cloth made of the paper mulberry-tree, in the same manner as in Otaheite; the sheets were of the same material; and it appeared, from their crackling, that they were quite new from the loom, or rather the beater. The whole arrangement is stated to have been comfortable, and inviting to repose; one interruption only disturbed their first sleep; this was the melody of the evening hymn, which, after the ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... became denser; policemen pushed it back and stretched a rope across the street. There was a world of tumbling yellow smoke that made one's eyes smart, and a great crackling and snapping of flames. Terribly excited little boys were about everywhere whistling and calling for each other as the ...
— Vandover and the Brute • Frank Norris
... turnip head. Again, there is a pause while the extreme right of the line negotiates an unexpected barbed-wire fence. Still, we move on, with enormous caution. We are not certain where the trenches are, but they must be near. At any moment a crackling volley may leap out upon us. Pulses begin ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... at the horses laboring up the hill. Swiftwater had got down and was urging them forward, his long whip crackling about the ears of the leaders. He waddled as he walked. His fat legs were too short for the round barrel body. A big roll of fat bulged out over the collar of his shirt. Whenever he was excited—and he always was on the least excuse—he ...
— The Yukon Trail - A Tale of the North • William MacLeod Raine
... the trees into flat planes like the cardboard of a stage setting. Cheerful, squatted figures sat in silhouette or in the relief of chance high light. Long switches of meat roasted before the fires. A hum of talk, bursts of laughter, the crooning of minor chants mingled with the crackling of thorns. Before our tents stood the table set for supper. Beyond it lay the pile of firewood, later to be burned on the altar of our safety against beasts. The moonlight was casting milky shadows over the river ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... shore we could detect only a ripple in the water ruffling the disk of a star. At intervals we were serenaded by the song of a dreaming sparrow or the throttled cry of an owl, but after each sound which near at hand broke the stillness of the night, each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves, there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious silence, as if the intruder were aware that no life was rightfully abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... the Day of Rest its true significance, the smouldering fire ate its way through the side of the log chimney, and caught a couple of hundred two-foot shingles, stacked in the angle outside. It was about half-past ten when Rory was awakened by a crackling sound close beside him; and the first sight he saw was a broad tongue of flame leaping in under the eave, and licking the rafter above ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... where he wishes to be buried." This was done, and the body of the saint deposited on the vehicle. The oxen, guided by the invisible hand of Ronan, went in a straight line into the thick of the forest, the trees bent or broke beneath their steps with an awful crackling sound. The waggon stopped in the centre of the forest, just where the largest of the oaks reared their head. The hint was taken and the saint was buried there and a church erected to ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan
... the apartment in stately fashion, her black silk gown crackling pleasantly as she walked, and seated herself very primly, as befitted her ancestry and bringing-up, in one of the stiff, high-backed chairs. And presently the parson, his garden clothes off and his best coat on, came in hurriedly to know his ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... Time and oft have Charles Diodati and I discust fond Legends, such as this, over our Winter Hearth; with our Chestnuts blackening and crackling on the Hob, and our o'er-ripe Pears sputtering in the Fire, while the Wind raved without among the creaking Elms. . ...
— Mary Powell & Deborah's Diary • Anne Manning
... saw one thus roasted. He said it did touch him with tenderness to see the gallant way she met her fate—cursing and reviling the hooting mob gathered about her, whilst the angry flames, leaping upward, licked her face, caught her locks, crackling about her old gray head. I trow it was a sorry sight, and God be praised, I never saw ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... refreshing spring evening, rode away down the narrow winding road through glades of bush and lonely valleys to the railway line. There they stayed at a neighbouring homestead, gathering round a great, crackling log-fire to talk ...
— The Tale of a Trooper • Clutha N. Mackenzie
... The plains are fascinating in a cruelly romantic way, but somehow the mountains make one think of hidden springs rushing swiftly into noisy foolish little brooks, of bird songs, and the smell of cool damp earth, of the crackling of dry twigs under one's feet, and the pungent woodsy smell of camp fires—but there," she broke off confusedly, as she realized the girls were regarding her with fond amusement. "I didn't mean ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... of which were heaped up in disorder. Urged by that wayward curiosity, which is sometimes excited, even under circumstances of the greatest danger and otherwise absorbing interest, the young man kicked the hickory log that lay nearest to it with his mocassined foot, and produced a bright crackling flame, the reflection of which was thrown entirely upon the object of his gaze; it was a large metal button, on which the number of his regiment was distinctly visible. Unable to check his desire to know further, he ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the dog was lying, and being very young and not realizing their danger, they talked rather loudly and boisterously, saying that if they could see the men in the brush, they would shoot them with their fingers. The crackling in the brush indicated that ...
— Trials and Triumphs of Faith • Mary Cole
... construed as either relief, dismay or wrath. It was, as a matter of fact, inarticulate and therefore extremely difficult to classify. Anderson, however, deduced it as dismay. Mr. Fryback came out from behind the counter, stumped over to the stove, in which there was a crackling fire and, after opening the isinglass door, squirted a mouthful of tobacco juice upon the coals. Whereupon it became possible ...
— Anderson Crow, Detective • George Barr McCutcheon
... mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under the eaves last night—a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December sleet crackling against the window-panes—in order to varnish a certain fly-rod. Now rods ought to be put in order in September, when the fishing closes, or else in April, when it opens. To varnish a rod in December proves that one possesses either a dilatory or a childishly anticipatory mind. But before uncorking ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... got stronger, and, in about as long as it would take you to count one and a half, what should happen but that the whole duckhouse was suddenly lighted up. Then there came a crackling, roaring sound, and Papa and ...
— Lulu, Alice and Jimmie Wibblewobble • Howard R. Garis
... of it. All the skie was of a fiery aspect, like the top of a burning oven, and the light seene above forty miles round about for many nights. God grant mine eyes may never behold the like, who now saw above 10,000 houses all in one flame; the noise and crackling and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shreiking (sic) of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of Towers, Houses, and Churches, was like an hideous storme, and the aire all about so hot and inflam'd that, at ...
— Old St. Paul's Cathedral • William Benham
... hear.' The headman rolled his eye where Kim was chatting to a girl in blue as she laid crackling thorns ...
— Kim • Rudyard Kipling
... with anecdotes of the supernatural—stories of ghosts, wraiths, apparitions, and second sight; but he professed himself a disbeliever, and I thought I had failed to make any impression on him, till at last he started at the crackling of a twig, and the gleaming whiteness of a silver birch. He would have liked the stories better, he confessed at length, if the night had not ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... least admonishes me to avoid the left-hand path; faith any turn but that must prove the right for me. Ha! unless my eyes are cheated by a Will-o'-th'-Wisp, a friendly light now peeps out through yonder coppice. (looking out) Perhaps some woodman's hut, with a fresh faggot just crackling on the hearth. Oh, for a seat in such a chimney corner. (Whistle again at a distance) I hear you, gentlemen, a pleasant ramble to you. Adieu, Messieurs! space be between us! yours is a left-handed destiny; I'll seek mine ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Volume I, Number 1 • Stephen Cullen Carpenter
... or perhaps I might say of Man, when engaged in any kind of chase. Showing us some antlers, he said: "This one belonged to a majestic creature. But this other was the beauty. I had been lying a long time at watch, when at last I heard them come crackling along. I lifted my head cautiously, as they burst through the trees. The first was a magnificent fellow; but then I saw coming one, the prettiest, the most graceful I ever beheld,—there was something so soft and beseeching in its look. I chose him at once, took aim, and shot him dead. ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... pointed flames which seemed the only things alive and worthy the watching. The flames were blue at the base and yellow at the top, and jumped looking merry, and caught at bits of black coal, and set them crackling and throwing off splinters till they were ablaze and as much alive as the rest. A man could get comfort and entertainment therefrom. There was naught else so good to live with. Nothing happened in the street, and every dull face that passed was an old story, and told an ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... streaming swarm Whistling in their tempest flight; Snap the tall yews 'neath the storm, Like a pine flame crackling bright. Swift though heavy, lo! their crowd Through the heavens rushing loud Like a livid thunder-cloud With ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... excitement in this hide-and-seek game, as you play it, than in the pursuits of a musty pedant," admitted the other, crackling his large knuckles. "But when are we going to spring upon friend Livius and strip him ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... how his fingers quivered; he could scarcely hold the pen! The priest drew nearer, and the two cloaked figures. They all signed; and then he felt the paper crackling in the bosom of his coat, where he had thrust it. They were hurrying back through the ...
— The Black Cross • Olive M. Briggs
... away from the town into the great forest. At last she grew calmer, and asked me to set her down, and, striking a narrow track between the dark trees, we marched along silently and quickly, stopping now and then to listen if we were being followed. We heard nothing but the crackling tread of some nocturnal beast of prey, or the cry of some animal in the agony of death. On coming to an opening in the forest I made a shelter for the night. Atala then threw herself at my feet, and clasped my knees, ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... spring, and the case lay open before him. Inside were papers, soft, crackling papers; the case was crammed with them. They were white and clean, and twenty-five of them in all. Twenty-five Bank of England ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... of an Arab boat, Flapping by night upon a glassy sea, Whereon the moon and planets seem to float, More bright of hue than they were wont to be, While shooting-stars rain down with crackling sound, And, thick as ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... empty lagoon and broken bridges was more beautiful in the savage glow of the ravaging fire than ever on the gala nights of the exposition. The fantastic fury of the scene fascinated man and beast. The streaming lines of people raced on, and the horse snorted and plunged into the mass. Now the crackling as of paper burning in a brisk wind could be heard. There was a shout from the crowd. The flames had gained the Peristyle—that noble fantasy plucked from another, distant life and planted here above the barbaric glow of the lake in ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... door closed behind him, there was a moment of silence. The steps of the child and his companion were heard on the frozen gravel, and dying away, left no sound save the crackling of the fire, the chirps of the sparrows on the eaves, the distant pianos, and an indistinct murmur of voices—the hum of ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... began to fly. There was no one to help her; she was so frightened that she lost all her presence of mind. When she tried to spread out the sheet again, she had a regular battle, for she was quite lost in it, as it covered her with a great crackling sound. ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... who by a bold assault With manly valour mastered Sarnen's keep. The Rossberg I had storm'd the night before. But hear, what chanced. Scarce had we driven the foe Forth from the keep, and given it to the flames, That now rose crackling upwards to the skies, When from the blaze rush'd Diethelm, Gessler's page, Exclaiming, ...
— Wilhelm Tell - Title: William Tell • Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
... quarters he had discovered. There, indeed, they stripped off their wet clothing and hung it in front of the fire, which, by diligent prodding and by an addition of logs which lay beside it, was soon giving off a fine heat, and was crackling and blazing merrily. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... for answer, and he flung a great armful of wood upon the blaze. It rose with a rush, leaping and crackling, but all three kept at their work until the pile of wood was higher than their heads. Only when the supply of dry fuel was exhausted did they pause to look out to sea. In place of the one eye of white there were three lights, one of white, one of red, and one of green—the lights ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... fire, not a cooking-fire, for that would have been low and red, but a crackling blaze of mesquite. Three men were in sight, all close to the burning sticks. They were Mexicans and of the coarse type of raiders, rebels, bandits that Gale expected to see. One stood up, his back to the fire; another sat with shoulders enveloped in a blanket, and the third lounged in ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... over it, until it was buried in the heart of a huge pile, the sea-weeds that still clung to it crackling, and the salt water spurting and spitting, as the smoke, mingled with the bright blaze, ascended toward the overshadowing branches of ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid
... nothing reached me, excepting a low, dull murmur, as if voices chanted in muffled monotone, the sound commingling with a sharp crackling of flames, and an occasional doleful beating upon some surface resembling the taut parchment of a drum. Suddenly a deep voice close at hand roared out hoarsely, and my heart leaped in excitement, although I at ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... a stateroom with a hot and cold bath, and spent ten minutes each morning picking over a gilt-edged bill of fare. And that same boy—no, his very much older brother—was up at four of the dim dawn in streaming, crackling oilskins, hammering, literally for the dear life, on a bell smaller than the steward's breakfast-bell, while somewhere close at hand a thirty-foot steel stem was storming along at twenty miles an hour! The bitterest thought of all was that there were folks asleep in dry, upholstered cabins who would ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... our way, feeding like Sheep, grunting like only themselves. Each one found a grazing-spot, stood there till it was cleared off, then trotted on crackling hoofs to the front in search of another. So the band was ever changing in rank and form. But one there was that was always at or near the van—a large and well-favored Simle', or Hind. However much the band might change and spread, she was in the forefront, ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... high seat of the old spring wagon, we looked into a desolate land which reached to the horizon on every side. Prairie which had lain untouched since the Creation save for buffalo and roving bands of Indians, its brown grass scorched and crackling from the sun. No trees to break the endless monotony or to provide a moment's respite ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... with a steel. The sparks showed him his hands trembling, but at first he did not dare to look behind him for fears intangible. The dried heather stems caught the flame of the tinder; there was but a handful of them; they flared up in a moment's red glare on the interior, then died out crackling. It was enough to show him the place was empty. It showed him, too, his lantern, the poor companion of his adventure, lying on the floor as if it had been tumbled there in some hasty escape; he picked it up and lit it, the gleam lighting a ghastly face. And then ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... Of Twelfth-tide cakes, of peas and beans, Wherewith you make those merry scenes, Whenas ye choose your king and queen, And cry out: Hey, for our town green; Of ash-heaps, in the which ye use Husbands and wives by streaks to choose; Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds A plenteous harvest to your grounds: Of these and such-like things for shift, We send instead of New-Year's gift. Read then, and when your faces shine With buxom meat and cap'ring wine, Remember ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... Whence this unseemly mirth! Know ye not that the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under the pot, a sure sign of the fire they are hasting to? The devil goeth ...
— Standish of Standish - A story of the Pilgrims • Jane G. Austin
... caught the sound at the same moment. Someone was stealing through the wood near them. It was a person, beyond question, for a horse would have made more noise, and the sounds of his hoofs would have been more distinct than anything else. That which, fell upon their ears was the occasional crackling of a twig, and the brushing aside of the obtruding limbs. No matter with what care an Indian warrior threaded his way through the timber in this dense gloom, he could not avoid such slight evidences of his movements—so slight, indeed, that but for the oppressive stillness ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... along, they came to a dense forest of pines, that covered the crest of a mountain, on the top of which they heard the sound of a woodman's axe, and the crackling of branches as they fell ...
— Our Young Folks, Vol 1, No. 1 - An Illustrated Magazine • Various
... are at treble-quick, fairly running forward, and the line straight all the while. Admirable to Valori, in the hot whirlwind of battle here. For the great guns go, in horrid salvos, unabated, and the crackling thunder of the small guns; "terrible tussling about those Carp-ponds, that quaggy Carp-husbandry," says the Schoolmaster, "and the Heavens blotted out in sulphurous fire-streaked smoke. What had become of us pacific? Some had run in time, and they were the wisest; others had squatted, who ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... followed her into the little kitchen, where on the hearth a fire was crackling and flashing its red flicker over the walls. He sat down on a rough wooden bench by the door, wondering if his uncle could really have forgotten that he was coming, and feeling not all light-hearted, ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... leap of the dying flames; but usually his face was merely a glimmering hint in the darkness—his face and the long hands which were folded upon his breast. Often when the flames leapt there was a crackling of the embers and the last of the log, and then the two nearer the fire would start and flash a glance, of one accord, towards the prostrate figure ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... seemed cold. She brought in lamp from the dining-room, and proposed we should have a little fire. I went into the kitchen, procured an armful of wood, and while she drew the curtains and wheeled up the table, I kindled a lively, crackling blaze. A fortnight ago she would not have allowed me to do this without a protest. She would not have offered to do it herself,—not she!—but she would have said that I was not here to serve, but to be served, and would have pretended ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866 • Various
... erect in his chair or stood before the fireplace, now banked with ferns; black-clad, tall and thin and straight in the comely pleasance of his sixty years, his face smoothly shaven, his cheekbones jutting above depressed cheeks that fell to his narrow, pointed chin, his blue eyes crackling far under the brow, high and narrow and shaded with ruffling gray hair, still plenteous. His ordinary aspect was severe, almost saturnine; but he was wont to destroy this effect with his thin-lipped smile that broke winningly ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... of fire surges around the woman; hot flames lick the rock; the conflagration rages against him who would push through to the bride. Look up toward the heights! Do you see not the light?... It is waxing in brightness.... Scorching clouds, wavering flames, roaring and crackling, stream down toward us. A sea of light shines about your head, Soon the fire will catch and devour you.... Then, back! mad child!" "Back yourself, you braggart!" cries Siegfried, nothing deterred; "up there where ...
— The Wagnerian Romances • Gertrude Hall
... fingers, ate while dodging avalanches from the trees, and packed reluctantly. The ropes were frozen, the hobbles stiff, everything either crackling or wet. Finally the task was finished. We took a last warming of ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... across the square, over the crackling leaves, the dance was breaking up. Oscar was playing "Home, Sweet Home," for ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... as she would have spoken more. He had shaken off his emotion, as if he was ashamed of having ever given way to it; and had even o'erleaped himself so much that he assumed a sort of bitter mirth, like the crackling of thorns ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... they could do to make any progress forward, or even to keep themselves upon their feet. While struggling and plunging blindly through the storm, amid the rushing of the wind and the rattling of the hail, and the crackling and creaking of the dry trees in the forest, and the rush of waters, and all the din of the tempest, Marian's ear caught the sound of a child wailing and sobbing. A pang shot through her heart. She listened breathlessly—and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... their tastes, however many geese they may eat, and however much they may enjoy them; and I remember one lady, whose ancestors, probably all having loved goose, reached back up to a quite giddy antiquity, casting a gloom over a dinner table by removing as much of the skin or crackling of the goose as she could when it came to her, remarking, amidst a mournful silence, that it was her favourite part. No doubt it was. The misfortune was that it happened also to be the favourite part of the line of guests who came after her, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... repose of the wood, diffused through her, almost in opposition to her own will and heart, an irresistible feeling of satisfaction and pleasure, which however quickly left her as she heard a something crackling in the wood. The wind it could not be? perhaps it was an animal! Petrea held her panting breath. It crackled; it whispered;—there were people in the wood! However bold, or more properly speaking, rash, Petrea might be ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... had any sight left, as soon as I lay down on my bed, and turned on either side, a flood of light used to gush from my closed eyelids. Then, as my sight became daily more impaired, the colors became more faint, and were emitted with a certain crackling sound; but at present every species of illumination being, as it were, extinguished, there is diffused around me nothing but darkness, or darkness mingled and streaked with an ashy brown. Yet the darkness ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various
... some investments, while Virginia laid out the lengths of brocade on the bed in the spare room, and sat down to wait for the arrival of the dressmaker. Outside, the trees were still white from the storm, and the wind, blowing through them, made a dry crackling sound as if it were rattling thorns in a forest. Though it was intensely cold, the sunshine fell in golden bars over the pavement and filled the town with a dazzling brilliancy through which the little seamstress was seen presently making her way. Alert, bird-like, consumed with her ...
— Virginia • Ellen Glasgow
... to one o'clock, a curious crackling noise was heard, a column of sparks burst high above the steep roof of No. 412, and the upper windows of the opposite houses ...
— Number Seventeen • Louis Tracy
... seem, it has become a distinction to have cool rooms. Alas, they are rare! Those blessed households where one has the delicious sensation of being chilly and can turn with pleasure toward crackling wood! The open fire has become, within the last decade, a test of refinement, almost a question of good breeding, forming a broad distinction between dainty households and vulgar ones, and marking the line which separates the homes of cultivated people from ...
— The Ways of Men • Eliot Gregory
... without pausing to think, threw the packet on the fire; even turning aside, lest the flames, while destroying, should reveal anything of the secret. Only once, forgetting herself, the crackling fire made her start and turn, and she caught a momentary glimpse of some curious foreign ornament; while near it, twisted in the flame into almost life-like motion, was what seemed a long lock of black hair. But she could ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... in the door and groped his way to the liquors. While he hastily swigged and smacked he heard the firing begin with a crackling, desultory volley. He laughed jovially, there in the dark, between draughts and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... were ranged upon the hearth, as if waiting for some one. Grandpa Markham had gone out, but Uncle Joseph sat in his accustomed corner, rubbing his hands when he saw Maddy, and nodding mysteriously toward the front room, the door of which was open, so that Maddy could hear the fire crackling ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... of its movement was soon forgotten—became, in fact, an actual stimulus to thought. For the mere pleasure of novelty, he steered through a copse, and took joy in seeing the monster thrash its way through thickets and brambles, and then across a field of crackling stubble. Steering toward the lonelier regions of that farming country, presently he halted in a dingle of birches beside a small pond. He spent some time very happily, carefully studying the machinery. He found some waste and an oilcan in the tool-chest, and polished until the metal shone. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... occupies a very large block of ground, for in addition to the house itself and gardens, the wine-cellars, the cooperage, stables and other accessory buildings attached to them, were all grouped round it. To-day a holy order of nuns occupies it as a convent. No longer is heard the crackling of the fires and the hammering of the iron hoops in the cooperage. No longer the teams of upstanding mules, with the music of their brass bells, are seen leaving the cellars with their load of the succulent wine. No longer is the air filled with that ...
— The Chronicles of a Gay Gordon • Jose Maria Gordon
... pressed suddenly. There was brittle crackling, and a rare violin became kindling. A sob broke from the prisoner's lips. What to Karlov was a fiddle to him was a soul. He saw the madman fling the wreckage to the floor and grind his heels into ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... Then Bertram sighed and felt that imminent danger was over. Alas! that feeling of partial security cost him dear. The step that succeeded the sigh was a careless one. His foot caught in a projecting root, and next moment he went headforemost into the centre of a decayed bush with a crackling crash that was ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... derelict's head to the seas had failed. The hulk had slued around and was driving before the tempest, whither he did not know. Groaning, crashing, crackling, the hulk lumbered on. Once a wave leaped over the stern, stunning them with its thunderous impact, dragging at them powerfully, as though to draw them back into ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... deeds, all regular and ready." With this he produced the plans, and then it was all up with us. Who does not know the peculiar smell of tracing-paper, with its suggestions of ownership? When these fresh and crackling drawings were opened before us they resembled nothing so much as a veritable paradise. There shone the lake—a brilliant patch of cobalt blue, bordered by outlines of vivid green pasture and belts of timber. Here and there, on the outskirts, we read the words, "proposed township," "building ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... Dave to ride a buckskin "that melts into the atmosphere like a patch of bunch grass." He wished he had taken that advice. A man looking for revenge could crouch in the chaparral and with a crook of his finger send winged death at his enemy. A twig crackling under the hoof of his horse more than once sent an electric shock through his pulses. The crash of a bear through the brush seemed to stop the beating ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... sides, hams and lard were saved, all other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by brought recreation, but the hog-killing ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... anxiously. There was a sharp crackling at the stern, where, in a narrow space, the reaction motors provided the forward motive power. In moments of excitement he referred to himself in the third person. ...
— The Martian Cabal • Roman Frederick Starzl
... were afraid, but hopped silently from bough to bough, following the movements of the Kangaroo with eager little eyes. The Brush Turkey and the Mound-Builder left their heaped-up nests and joined the other thirsty creatures, and only by the crackling of the dry scrub, or the falling of a few leaves, could one tell that so many live creatures were ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... "I want fire and shelter; and there's your great fire there blazing, crackling, and dancing on the walls, with nobody to feel it. ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... yes, it was an experience, a splendid, dazzling experience; nevertheless, my cowardly thoughts would turn, sunflower-like, toward warmth; warm rooms, even stuffy rooms, without a single window open, fires crackling, and hot things to drink. Still, I wouldn't admit that I was cold, and stiffened my muscles to prevent a shudder when my brother asked me cheerfully if I would enjoy a visit to the Gouffre de ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... if by magic there leaped into Phobar's mind a clear-cut, vivid picture of violet oceans of energy crackling and streaking from the heavens to crash through the laboratory roof and barely miss striking his captor behind. Even as Phobar created the image of that terrific death, his captor whirled around in a lightning movement, a long arm of metal flicking outward at the same instant ...
— Raiders of the Universes • Donald Wandrei
... out of a small, elegant case of yellow leather a few long cardboard folding books, and with the dexterity of a tailor began to unfold them, holding one end, from which their folds fell downward with a light crackling. ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... been in an interior so splendid. He tried to be off-hand in his attitude towards it, but did not fully succeed. The taste shown in the decoration and furniture was almost unexceptionable. White walls—Heppel-white; chintz—black, crackling chintz strewn with tens of thousands of giant roses. On the walls were a few lithographs—John's contribution to the general effect. John having of late years begun to take himself seriously as ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... God Almighty!" cried the brutal captain. The fourth boatswain's mate, with a fresh cat-o-nine-tails swung it about his head and brought the terrible scourge hissing and crackling on the young and tender back. Fernando turned his face away ...
— Sustained honor - The Age of Liberty Established • John R. Musick,
... beside the sacrifice in the midst of the Temple, heard the crackling wood as it slowly burned up the pieces, watched the smoke until it ascended, freely passing out through the aperture in the roof; then she knew the sacrifice was accepted ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... inconceivably blue. The hard-frozen world was one immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its brightness. The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws, the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling to the woodsmen's onslaughts—Bijou Falls logging-camp was a vital ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... distinct, as to convey their vibrations to the hand applied to the chest, as well as to be audible to a bystander at some distance. As the disease progresses these sounds become to a large extent replaced by others of crackling or bubbling character, which are termed moist sounds or rales. Both these kinds of abnormal sounds are readily explained by a reference to the pathological condition of the parts. One of the first effects of inflammation upon the bronchial mucous membrane is to cause ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... sharpshooting stunt," Lieutenant Trent called in Darrin's ear, over the crackling of the rifles, "until we get a few of the Mexicans ahead. Then we'll rush their position and try to drive them from it. The ...
— Dave Darrin at Vera Cruz • H. Irving Hancock
... courier, alarmed at his long absence, commenced the ascent of the mountain, in hopes of meeting him, or obtaining some information respecting him. Thus at the moment he and his guides were descending, his family were toiling up the icy steep, crowned with the snows of ages. A sudden crackling noise was heard, and then a thundering roar echoing through the Alpine heights—and all was still. Courier, and guides, and dogs, and the courier's family, were at the same moment overwhelmed by one common destruction—not ...
— Anecdotes of Dogs • Edward Jesse
... hast not seen in the warm glow Of thy glad home. This blighted shore of mine No verdure hath, nor bloom, nor fruits that shine 'Mong drooping boughs. Far inland gloom lone peaks O'er blackened meads; or from their bare cones leaps Gaunt, crackling flame; or crawl like ashen veins The smouldering fires across the stricken plains. Deep in these yawning caves black shadows lie That shall be lifted never more. Come, I Enter! Know thou what treasure by the sea I gathered other time." Therewith showed he Hid 'mong the high heaped ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... through the cloud of smoke, the spectral arms of a wind-mill revolved imperturbably. Mr. Brady, followed by the boys, went on around to the further side of the burning building. It was a huge hip-roofed structure. One end, that nearest the house, was already falling, and the tons of crackling hay in the mows glowed like a furnace. The heat, even at the foot of the wind-mill, a hundred feet or more away, was almost intolerable. A row of one-story buildings ran along one side of the barn, so near that the flying sparks blew over rather than on to them. Several other ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... driving snow, and then inside at her cozy room and the crackling fire. "It is too late for me to go with you, good sirs," she said, "the weather is too cold." She went inside again and shut the door, and the old men journeyed on to Bethlehem without her. But as Babouscka sat by her fire, rocking, she began ...
— Christmas Stories And Legends • Various
... from shaking them. As a rule, it snowed all day, cleared up at night, and froze intensely, with the stars as bright as jewels, earth spread out in lustrous twilight, and the sounds in the air as sharp and crackling as artillery; then in the morning, snow again; before the sun could ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... tells me it is midnight. The fire glows brightly, crackling with a sharp and cheerful sound, as if it loved to burn. The merry cricket on the hearth (my constant visitor), this ruddy blaze, my clock, and I, seem to share the world among us, and to be the only things awake. The wind, high and boisterous but now, has died away and hoarsely ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... was soon decided, for a loud crackling sound came from the place he had so lately left, and, to his horror, he saw the wreck crumble away and begin to sink steadily beneath the surface, long rafters raising their ends in the air and then diving down out of sight, while several shot by him, one of which ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... in a second, and listening with all my ears. From the clump of bush to the right of the lightning-shattered stump to which the sick ox was tied came a faint crackling noise. Presently it was repeated. Something was moving there, faintly and quietly enough, but still moving perceptibly, for in the intense stillness of the night ...
— A Tale of Three Lions • H. Rider Haggard
... What was the noise they heard all at once? A gentle crackling, a roar, a burst of flame, and a puff of smoke up through the long stove pipe! The pipe went through a hole cut in the side of the wall. "A fire, a fire!" exclaimed Lillian joyously, wondering why ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... great captain arose too late. A line of flame was leaping above the reed bed, crackling and howling before the evening breeze. The column on the causeway had seen their danger but too soon, and ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... still blacker. The blaze gained headway; and a dense column of smoke and sparks rose straight upward to a great height. Owing to the snow and the darkening heavens, the fire wore a very ruddy aspect, and I vividly recall how its melancholy crackling was borne along the white shore, as we turned away and ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... impetus of his weapons, he is endued with the strength of the Wind-god. Himself like a flame of fire, the arrows (proceeding from him) constitute its tongues. The slaps of his left hand cased in leathern fence constitute the crackling of that flame. The dust of the battle-field is its smoke. Urged by the sons of Dhritarashtra even as the wind urgeth the fire, Karna like unto the all-consuming fire at the end of the Yuga that is sent by Death himself, will, without doubt, consume my troops like unto a heap of ...
— Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 1 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... with Neil. Willard was giving a chowder party at the Hiawatha Club. This imposing name belonged to a rough one-room camp with a kitchen in a lean-to and a row of bunks in the loft above, and a giant chimney, with a crackling blaze of fire to combat the bleakness of the view through the uncurtained windows—Mirror Lake. It was a failure as a mirror that day, veiled with snow, and the white birches fringing it showed bare and cold among the warm ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... crackling noise, as of paper being torn—and then, quick, in the doorway, came a yellow flame, and the Wolf's hand showed from around the edge of the jamb, and, making momentary daylight of the room, a flaming piece of paper, tossed in, fell ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... kept me warm all the evening. An occasional glance at Madam Le Baron's placid face enabled me to preserve my sense of proportion, and I remembered that two wise men, Solomon and my Uncle John, had compared the laughter of fools to the crackling of thorns under a pot. And—and there were some ...
— The Green Satin Gown • Laura E. Richards
... read the closely-written pages. There was silence in the room as they did so, broken only by the crackling of the paper, while Max Wyndham kept a motionless watch, his shaggy ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... and danced fantastically against the color of the crackling logs and in her hair shimmered a glow that ranged between the glint of darkened mahogany and jet. It was of this that Stuart thought, as, for a half hour, they listened to Tollman's talk, content with brief replies or none at all. Some magic had lulled him, too, into a quietened ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... dozed over the fire opposite the baroness who was quite asleep, and, when she was aroused for a moment by the voices of the two men, raised in argument over something, she wondered if she would ever become quite content with a pleasureless, listless life like her mother. The crackling fire burnt clear and bright, and threw sudden gleams on the faded tapestry chairs, on the fox and the stork, on the melancholy-looking heron, on the ant and the grasshopper. The baron came over to the fireplace, and held his hands to ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... and red, while the thunder continued to roll below them, and the crackling of the electric flashes was like minute guns. The Snowbird was winging its way along at about seventy-five miles per hour. Wash had gone into the covered galley to prepare breakfast. Jack was ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... player to lay down his cards in the second round is not merely Pig, but Little Pig; in the third, Big Pig; in the fourth, Mother (or Father) Pig; in the fifth, Grandmother (or Grandfather) Pig; in the sixth, Ancestral Pig; in the seventh, Venerable Pig; in the eighth, Primeval Pig; in the ninth, Crackling. ...
— What Shall We Do Now?: Five Hundred Games and Pastimes • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... bleeding for them; and with school-dames' scourges in their fists do they give counsel to those who protect them from the cart and halter. In the name of the Lord, I must spit outright (or worse) upon these crackling bouncing firebrands, before I can ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor |
