"Crashing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a small schooner, at anchor, with her broadside toward us. The crew were all asleep, and had neglected to hoist a light. We struck her just amidships. The force, the size, and weight of our vessel, bore her down below the waves; we passed over her and were hurried on our course. As the crashing wreck was sinking beneath us, I had a glimpse of two or three half-naked wretches, rushing from her cabin; they just started from their beds to be swallowed shrieking by the waves. I heard their drowning cry mingling with the wind. The ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... to picture in detail the thing for which she was waiting. She fancied that she could hear the first alert, followed by single cries, these by a roar of alarm, this by the wild rush of feet; then she heard the crashing volley, the rattle of hoofs on the pavement, the whirl of the flight through the streets, the shouts of "Germany! Germany!" as the troops swept in triumphant! And then—ah, then!—she heard the things that would follow, the crashing ...
— In Kings' Byways • Stanley J. Weyman
... doomed ship, relentless as fate, crashing through her barricade of heavy spars and torpedo fenders, striking her below her starboard fore-chains, and crushing far into her. For a moment the whole weight of her hung on our prow and threatened to carry us down with her, the return wave of the collision ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... soaked for an hour in the dew of the meadow and seemed to tell him little. So he backed off, and sat down upon his tail in the edge of the pine-tree shadow to watch me. He might have outwatched me, though I kept amazingly still, but the hounds were crashing through the underbrush below, and he must needs be off. Getting carefully up, he trotted first this side of me, then that, for a better view, then down the path up which he had just come, and into the very throat of the panting clamor, when, leaping ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... period between 1840-1870. Hence the cruel compulsory exodus of vast masses of the people of Ireland to the shores of America. Hence, finally, the bitter cleavage between landlords and tenantry which brought the whole land system of Ireland crashing into ruin. ...
— Home Rule - Second Edition • Harold Spender
... and gold. Back and forth along this road went Red Cross ambulances on their ceaseless journeys of mercy. The sky that should have been blue and fair was filled with gray smoke. The air that in times of peace throbbed with the notes of the lark now trembled with the report of heavy guns and crashing shells. Great sheets of camouflage stretched along the road to screen ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... not upon the order of their going, but went, Chichester bringing up the rear; and the latter was still in the very act of descending the ladder when six crashing explosions, occurring almost simultaneously on the parapet above, shattered the early morning stillness, the sounds being instantly followed by a great rush of wings and an outburst of startled screams that issued from the throats ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... afraid he had a tumble," answered Dick, and told about the strange swishing and crashing they ...
— The Rover Boys in Alaska - or Lost in the Fields of Ice • Arthur M. Winfield
... from Geneva, before the daylight was quite gone, they were both startled by hearing a rushing, crashing sound coming toward them in the woods. Were their pursuers upon them after all? Had they chosen this, the most lonely part of their ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... was firing as it advanced. Ambulances galloped along the base of the embankment to the rear, and the hussars passed and repassed like phantoms. They were in the front at last, for all about them was movement and turmoil, while from the fog, close at hand, came cries and groans and crashing volleys. Shells fell everywhere, bursting along the embankment, splashing them with frozen slush. Trent was frightened. He began to dread the unknown, which lay there crackling and flaming in obscurity. The shock of the cannon sickened him. ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... which had been ringing with a sort of languid joviality, fell now into the hurried crashing which marks the approach of a bride, and the people I had passed outside came thronging in. I perceived a young man—little more than a boy, who by his semi-detachment, the fumbling of his gloved hands, and the sheepishness ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... suffering years and viewed all the pain she had borne, and the terrible Gethsemane which her life had been; but as the chair swung round he clutched the swaying rope and with the other hand steadied it from crashing against the side of the shaft as they slowly dropped lower and lower into the darkness and the evil ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... generally rained in torrents, and the roar of landslips and avalanches was then all but uninterrupted for hour after hour: sometimes it was a rumble, at others a harsh grating sound, and often accompanied with the crashing of immense timber-trees, or the murmur of the distant snowy avalanches. The amount of denudation by atmospheric causes is here quite incalculable; and I feel satisfied that the violence of the river at this particular part of its course (where it traverses those parts of the ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... hits close at hand. And while those at the fire were schooled to repress their natural alarm, evidently the same could not be said of a looker-on not counted in the bill; for there was a hoarse cry of alarm from the bushes across the way, and the sound of crashing seemed to tell of a ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... the mountainous pair, darting in and out, evidently with some plan of drawing off the male. Both the whales struck out incessantly with their mammoth flukes; their great tails, crashing upon the sea-surface, lashed it to mountains of foam. Our boats tossed ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... repeller ray columns, which automatically drew the rockets upward where they exploded in the generators of the aircraft; how the Wyomings threw the first thrill of terror into the Airlords by bringing an entire squadron crashing to earth; how a handful of us in a rocketship successfully raided the Han city of Nu-Yok; and how by the application of military principles I remembered from the First World War, I was able to lead the Wyomings to victory over the Sinsings, a Hudson River tribe which had formed ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... clasped above his head as though to shed rain by the hairy arms. And beyond that fire, in the circling darkness, Buck could see many gleaming coals, two by two, always two by two, which he knew to be the eyes of great beasts of prey. And he could hear the crashing of their bodies through the undergrowth, and the noises they made in the night. And dreaming there by the Yukon bank, with lazy eyes blinking at the fire, these sounds and sights of another world would make the hair to rise along his back and stand on end across his shoulders ...
— The Call of the Wild • Jack London
... I upset? For several reasons, some of which have been clouding the horizon for many years, others crashing up ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... this crisis of the dinner were past all counting. But the applause was so furious, the music so stormy, and the crashing of glasses so incessant, from the general resolution never again to drink an inferior toast from the same glass, that my power is not equal to the task of reporting. Besides which, Toad-in-the-hole now became quite ungovernable. He kept firing pistols in every direction; sent ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... far when he heard a cowbell rattle, and the voice of a boy shouting. He paused to take breath and listen; and presently with a crashing of bushes three or four horned cattle came pushing their way through the undergrowth, into the open road, followed by a lad without a jacket, with one suspender and a ...
— The Young Surveyor; - or Jack on the Prairies • J. T. Trowbridge
... not be—thou darest not do this!" but his voice passed unheeded in the tumult. The earthenware vessels fell crashing to the ground, the money was scattered over the floor. Some of the dismayed merchants crying, "My money, oh! my money," scrambled for the glittering coins. Others stared in fury at the unceremonious intruder. Half a dozen doves, ...
— King of the Jews - A story of Christ's last days on Earth • William T. Stead
... gazed upon the dark outline of the terrible beast. There it stood, with its head raised, its neck stretched outward, and ears erect, as if to catch the echo that gave back those dismal sounds; another minute and he was gone to join his companions, and the crashing of branches and the rush of many feet on the high bank above was followed by the prolonged cry of a poor fugitive animal,—a doe, or fawn, perhaps,—in the very climax of mortal agony; and then the lonely recesses of the forest ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... as I grew stronger, I was driven down and allowed to walk on the wide beach that stretched in front of the gay houses facing the sea. Cormorants dived under the long rollers that came crashing in from the Pacific; gulls wheeled and screamed in the soft wind; alert little birds darted here and there with incredible swiftness, leaving tiny footprints across the ribs and furrows of the wet sand. Far to the southward a dark barrier of mountains rose out of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... attendants quickly to let down the portcullis. They must have been stationed ready with the intention, and no doubt the lords had no attendants with them who could have hindered any such step or forced an entrance. While the people looked on wondering, the iron bars came crashing down, and in a moment the Queen and her child were safe though visible within. Then Margaret addressed through that iron trellis the astonished deputation. She told them that she was the guardian of the castle, enfeoffed in it by her royal husband, and not minded to yield ...
— Royal Edinburgh - Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets • Margaret Oliphant
... the cane-fields of his destination, and the horse, as if in communication with that ardent brain so close to his own, suddenly accelerated his already mercurial pace, until it seemed to Alexander that he gathered up his legs and darted like an inflated swallow straight through crashing avenues and flying huts to the stable door. Fortunately this solid building opened to the west, and Alexander was but a few moments stalling and feeding the animal who had saved two necks by his clever feet that day. He was ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... and for water he drank dew from the enormous pitcher-plants. The jungle was thick, and it was difficult to decide in what direction to go, so Piang had to climb trees to get his bearings. One day just as he was starting up a tall tree, he was startled by a sound. Something was crashing through the bushes below him. Visions of terrible mountain animals flashed through his head, and he hastily scrambled up the tree. On came the creature, now pausing a moment, now plunging into the mesh of vines, tearing them asunder, always following the path Piang had made. Preparing ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... with the leg fast between his mighty paws. He began to tear it into pieces. Sperver looked at him out of the corner of his eye with great satisfaction. The bone was fast falling into small fragments in the powerful mill that was crashing it. Lieverle was partial ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... indeed, the elements were in perfect accordance with the mad strife going forward on that isolated spot of earth. Night too came on to add to the horrors of the scene. Then the clouds opened and flashes of the most vivid lightning darting from the sky played like fiery serpents round the rock, while crashing peals of thunder rattled and roared around them. At first the seamen took no notice of the storm; then came a loud, thundering explosion, and two of their number lay blackened corpses on the ground. In an instant, seeing what had occurred, they fled with shrieks of dismay down the ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... then start off, and make a circuit of many miles in extent, shouting and hallooing the whole time. They form a semicircle, and drive all the kangaroos before them down the valley, to the spot where the old hunters are placed. Then comes the tug of war, the crashing of bushes, the flying of spears, and the thump, thump of the kangaroos, as they come tearing along, sometimes in hundreds, from the old grey grandfather of six feet high, to the little picanniny of twelve inches, ...
— The Bushman - Life in a New Country • Edward Wilson Landor
... rushing water, crashing trees, and crackling timber, and the darkness which seemed to flow with the water and blot out the fair valley, but little could be done to collect the scattered camp. When the morning broke, the cabin of Stumpy, nearest the river-bank, was gone. Higher up the gulch they found the body of its unlucky ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... directions; as, a vase is shattered by a blow, a building by an earthquake. A shivered glass is broken into numerous minute, needle-like fragments. To smash is to break thoroughly to pieces with a crashing sound by some sudden act of violence; a watch once smashed will scarcely be worth repair. To split is to cause wood to crack or part in the way of the grain, and is applied to any other case where a natural tendency to separation is enforced ...
— English Synonyms and Antonyms - With Notes on the Correct Use of Prepositions • James Champlin Fernald
... it out of my eyes and hair. When he picked up beside my pillow a piece as large as a saucer, I realized my narrow escape. The window-frame began to smoke, and we saw the house was on fire. H. ran for a hatchet and I for water, and we put it out. Another (shell) came crashing near, and I snatched up my comb and brush and ran down here. It has taken all the afternoon to get the plaster out of my hair, for my ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... thought aflush, Driving their lords like chaff, In the guns' mouths they laugh; Or at the slippery brands Leaping with open hands, Down they tear man and horse, Down in their awful course; Trampling with bloody heel Over the crashing steel, All their eyes forward ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... and took his place there during the attack upon the Austrian position at Sagschuetz, matters became more lively. The balls from the Austrian batteries sung overhead, and sent branches flying and trees crashing down. Sagschuetz won, the king followed the advancing line, and the air was alive with bullets ...
— With Frederick the Great - A Story of the Seven Years' War • G. A. Henty
... cut a fishing-pole, and will be back in a minute." And Ned went crashing into the thickest part of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... together they carry no water at all; and one may plant and build and live and sleep in their deserted beds—but beware! Without warning, they resume active business. Maybe on a Sunday, or in the middle of the night, a storm-cloud visits the mountains. There is a roar, a tearing, a crashing, and down comes a terrible wall of water, sweeping away houses and barns and people. No fishing, no boating, no swimming, no skating on those treacherous rivers; only surprise and ...
— Southern Stories - Retold from St. Nicholas • Various
... command of the French, had chosen the battleground. He had set the trap with consummate skill. The word was given; the trap was sprung; and the first battle of the Marne came as a crashing surprise to Germany. ...
— History of the World War - An Authentic Narrative of the World's Greatest War • Francis A. March and Richard J. Beamish
... cocked, but Jeremy's fist landed in the nearest man's face before he could shoot, and he went crashing backwards into his friend behind, whose head disappeared for a moment through the window-pane, and the only blood shed on that occasion came from the first man's nose and the back of the second man's neck where the smashed glass ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... his fist, and the bully of Nautical Hall got a crashing blow in the chin that knocked him clean ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... both directions. The artillery under Walker, Carter, Pegram, and Jones, was admirably served, and much better posted than our own guns at Fairview. For this height absolutely commanded the angle made by the lines of Geary and Williams, and every shot went crashing through heavy masses of troops. Our severest losses during this day from artillery-fire emanated from this source, not to speak of the grievous effect upon the morale of our men from ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge
... the dream of the old Oak Tree; and while he dreamt thus a mighty storm came rushing over land and sea—at the holy Christmas tide. The sea rolled great billows towards the shore; there was a cracking and crashing in the tree—his root was torn out of the ground in the very moment while he was dreaming that his root freed itself from the earth. He fell. His three hundred and sixty-five years were now as the single day ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... more than once the arms of the wearer—a couchant leopard. The other was a Saracen, who was circling swiftly about the knight of the leopard. The crusader suddenly seized the mace which hung at his saddle-bow, and with a strong hand and unerring aim sent it crashing against the head of his foe, who raised his buckler of rhinoceros-hide in time to save his life, though the force of the blow bore him from the saddle. The knight spurred his steed forward, but the Saracen leaped into his seat again without touching the stirrup. While the Christian ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... from its place he attacked the lower panel of the door, and amid a loud splintering and crashing created a hole big enough to allow of the passage of a ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... all of the forgotten years the gods had waited and forborne until the people of Mlideen should have carven one hundred gods. Never came lightnings from Mowrah Nawut crashing upon Mlideen, nor blight on harvests nor pestilence in the city, only upon Mowrah Nawut the gods sat and smiled. The people of Mlideen had said: "Yoma is god." And the gods sat and smiled. And after the forgetting of Yoma and the passing of years the people had said: ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... with their lessons. Seated on a rustic bench, her hands folded in her lap, her eyes on the ground and a book lying unheeded in the grass at her feet, she was startled by a sound as of some heavy body falling from a height and crashing through the branches of a thick clump of trees on the other side ...
— Elsie's children • Martha Finley
... did not actually see the occurrence, but later it developed that an automobile, in attempting to turn the corner, skidded, grazing the front of a car which had stopped to discharge some passengers, then crashing into a telegraph pole on the opposite side of the street. What he did see was the frightened rush of the crowd to the sidewalk, and in the rush, a girl, just stepping from the car, caught and carried forward and jostled ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... she stumbled to her feet, and tore madly up the hill. She saw as she went that Nap was not struggling any longer. He was hanging like a wet rag from the merciless grip that upheld him, and though his limp body seemed to shudder at every crashing blow, he made no voluntary ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... the world. But in all this—the recollection of bitterness, and more especially of recent and more home desolation, which must accompany me through life, have preyed upon me here; and neither the music of the shepherd, the crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lightened the weight upon my heart, nor enabled me to lose my own wretched identity in the majesty, and the power, and the glory, around, ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore
... live longer; I will join him soon; the Lord's will be done.' When Dr. Bliss told him he had a bare chance of recovery, 'Then,' said he, 'we will take that chance, doctor.' When asked if he suffered pain, he answered: 'If you can imagine a trip-hammer crashing on your body, or cramps such as you have in the water a thousand times intensified, you can have some idea of what I suffer.' And yet, during those eighty-one days was heard neither groan nor complaint. Always brave ...
— From Canal Boy to President - Or The Boyhood and Manhood of James A. Garfield • Horatio Alger, Jr.
... Montebello, in relief against the chalky facades bristling with Austrian guns, pouring forth their ammunition on the enemy below. The soldiers burst into the houses, the courtyards, the enclosures; every instant you hear the breaking open of doors, the crashing of windows, and the scuffling of the terrified inmates. The white uniforms retire in disorder. The village belongs to the French! Not just yet, though. From the last houses on the street, to the entrance ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... close beside her, and Tommy, in a little cot at the farther end of the room, were all sound asleep. Suddenly the walls of the big tenement-house began to sway from side to side in the strangest manner, and there was at the same second a terrible crashing noise. The kitchen table in the corner tipped over, and the dishes in the corner cupboard slid to the floor and went to pieces. The big wardrobe, which was a bureau and a clothes-closet all in one, moved out into the middle of the room, and the stove fell down. All these things happened ...
— Stories Worth Rereading • Various
... consists of small birch, elders, maples, and other trees, with here and there white-pines of larger growth. The whole is tangled and wild and thick-set, so that it is necessary to part the nestling stems and branches, and go crashing through. There are creeping plants of various sorts which clamber up the trees; and some of them have changed color in the slight frosts which already have befallen these low grounds, so that one ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... slumber into which I had gradually fallen; and such discordance of instruments and voices, such confusion worse confounded, such inharmonious harmony, never before deafened mortal ears. The very spheres seemed out of tune, and rolling and crashing over each other. I could have cried Miserere! with the loudest; and in the midst of all the undrilled band was a music-master, with violin-stick uplifted, rushing desperately from one to the other, in vain endeavouring to keep time, and ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... I stood there. But I know that when I moved she was long since past help. Suddenly there was a sharp crashing noise on the road below. I looked round and saw no one. But it gave me a shock—and I ran. I ran like a madman. And I thought as I ran that, if I were discovered, I should be hanged for murder. For who would believe my story? Who ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... Joining a wild rush for the ball, which Harriet Delaney was valiantly trying to throw to basket, Mignon made good her word. Just what happened to her Harriet could not say. She knew only that a sly, tripping foot, unseen in the turmoil, sent her crashing to the floor, while the ball passed into the enemy's keeping, ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... slip from its notch up on the side of the cliff, and come crashing down, loosening others on the way, until finally the rush and roar almost partook of the nature ...
— The Saddle Boys in the Grand Canyon - or The Hermit of the Cave • James Carson
... hadn't room for all the spokes which he wanted to carry to his wheel, and off he comes to New York, gets into the Erie Railroad, and, goodness knows how he did it! but before people knew who he was, he went smashing and crashing up that road, prowled through Wall Street like a roaring lion, or bear, or some other such animals as gore and claw each ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... aghast under the tree, and stared and stared at this awful sight, when suddenly our cogitations were interrupted in a painful manner. The thick bush about fifteen paces off burst asunder with a crashing sound, and uttering a series of ferocious pig-like grunts, the bull buffalo himself came charging out straight at us. Even as he came I saw the blood mark on his side where poor Hans' bullet had struck him, and also, as is often the case with particularly savage buffaloes, that his flanks ...
— Hunter Quatermain's Story • H. Rider Haggard
... for one fateful moment. In his mind's eye he saw the sunlit domes and minarets of the White City. The blue Danube sparkled as of yore beneath its ancient walls. Through the peaceful air of that quiet Denver suburb he caught the sound of cheering crowds, the crashing of bells, the booming of cannon, that would welcome ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy
... as it grew dark, and night came on with black and dismal looks. A bitter storm of sleet, sharp, dense, and icy-cold, swept the wet streets, and rattled on the trembling windows. Signboards, shaken past endurance in their creaking frames, fell crashing on the pavement; old tottering chimneys reeled and staggered in the blast; and many a steeple rocked again that night, as ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... piano and its long history had awakened memories in her of the first dining-room they furnished together, the first of their children which had had music lessons, the boredom of the long evenings, only to be chased away by the crashing volumes of sound which overcame the dulness of everyday life, changed bad temper into cheerfulness, and lent new beauty even to the old furniture . . . . But that is a ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... Winslow, amazed at this unwonted conduct of an enemy who had hauled down his flag in token of surrender, exclaimed: "He is playing us a trick, give him another broadside." Again the shot and shell go crashing through the bulwarks, carrying death and destruction; the Kearsarge is laid across the bows for raking and in position to employ grape and canister with deadly effect. Over the stern of the Alabama is displayed a white flag, her ensign half-masted, union down; Captain Winslow for the ...
— The Story of the Kearsarge and Alabama • A. K. Browne
... for waiting his opportunity he had inserted a real pear among those stony specimens and again passing through with Lucia, he picked it out, and with lips drawn back had snapped at it with all the force of his jaws. For the moment she had felt quite faint at the thought of his teeth crashing into fragments.... These humorous touches were altered from time to time; the spider for instance might be taken down and replaced by a china canary in a Chippendale cage, and the selection of the entrance hall for those whimsicalities was intentional, for guests found something ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... truth. I knew why I took your strength away, and I had nerved myself to tell you why. But you began to speak—those wild words. I could not resist you. You took me in your arms; and all the power of your soul went from you, and your life went crashing down ...
— The Faith Healer - A Play in Three Acts • William Vaughn Moody
... momentum, it went bounding into the air. About half-way down the hill it struck a tree several inches through and cut it clean off. This turned its course a little, and the negro in the cart, who heard the noise, saw it come crashing in his direction and made a wild effort to whip up his horse. It was also headed toward a cooper-shop across the road. The boys watched it with growing interest. It made longer leaps with every bound, and whenever it struck the fragments the dust would fly. They ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... breakers had kept on steadily thundering at the side of the steamer, rising over her and crashing down on her decks with the greatest regularity; but now, as the old sailor spoke and turned towards the insensible boy, it seemed as if a billow greater than any which had come before rolled up and broke short on the reef, ...
— King o' the Beach - A Tropic Tale • George Manville Fenn
... the stake, roastings alive, and such like horrible things. Suddenly the pattering noise increased with tenfold violence. It was followed by a fearful crash among the bushes, which was rapidly repeated, as if some gigantic animal were bounding towards us. In another moment an enormous rock came crashing through the shrubbery, followed by a cloud of dust and small stones, and flew close past the spot where we stood, carrying bushes and young trees along ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... mark, on which the natives instantly jumped overboard into the shallow water, making for the mangroves, which they succeeded in reaching, dragging their canoes with them. Two rounds of grape-shot crashing through the branches dispersed the party, but afterwards they moved two of the canoes out of sight. The remaining one was brought out after breakfast by the galley under cover of the pinnace, and was towed off to some distance. The paddles having been taken ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... Fitzgibbon's animosity. Soon afterwards, he became Lord Chancellor, and a peer of Ireland, by the title of Lord Clare; and in the former capacity he found an opportunity, by means of his judicial authority, of ungenerously crashing the rising powers and fortunes of his late antagonist. Curran, who was at this time a leader, and one of the senior practitioners at the Chancery Bar, soon felt all the force of his rival's vengeance. The Chancellor is said to have yielded a reluctant attention to every motion ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... wife's letters for the last time, and then tore them up, so that the enemy should not see those records of the heart, if victorious. 'This is the most important day of my life,' he said to his officers, as the first shot from the British came crashing among the sails of the Lawrence; 'but we know how to beat those fellows,' he added, with a laugh. He had nine vessels, with fifty-four guns and four hundred and ninety officers and men. The British had six ships mounting ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... his footing, rushed forward like an enraged bull, Jim Darlington measured him with a crashing blow on the jaw that sent him dazed against a sharp edge of woodwork that cut his scalp and laid him out for the moment. Drawn by the racket, the first and second mate came tumbling down, and joined in the attack, but Jim knew a trick ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... and all day and night we were startled at the loud crashing which took place, as the icebergs separated from each other. But my disgust at feeding upon human flesh produced a sort of insanity. I had always been partial to good eating, and was by no means an ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Captain Frederick Marryat
... favourite, and repetition did not stale its forceful rendition, especial stress being laid upon the words, "Britons never, never, never shall be slaves!" to which was roared the eternal enquiry, "Are we down-hearted?" The welkin-smashing negative, crashing through the night, and not entirely free from embroidery, offered a ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... and fly it, my beauties, Spider, Nuneaton, and Flo; With a trip and a blunder there's one of them under, Hark to it crashing below! Is it the brown or the sorrel that's down? The brown! It is Flo who is in! And Spider with Chauncy, the pick of the fancy, Is going full ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... you about that. Come closer!" The packer's speech hoarsened and failed. They could only hear each other breathe. Then it seemed to the packer that his was the only breath in the darkness. He listened. A faint cheer arose in the forest and a crashing of the dead underlimbs ...
— The Desert and The Sown • Mary Hallock Foote
... ice began to move the ensuing year, his party sought to return, but the Polaris was caught in the deadly grip of an impassable ice pack. After two months of drifting, part of the crew, with some Eskimo men and women, alarmed by the groaning and crashing of the ice during a furious autumn storm, camped on an ice floe which shortly afterwards separated from the ship. For five months, December to April, they lived on this cold and desolate raft, which carried them safely 1300 miles to Labrador, ...
— The North Pole - Its Discovery in 1909 under the auspices of the Peary Arctic Club • Robert E. Peary
... And directly she was on the road, trembling just a little and feeling very helpless, and Claybrook's voice somewhere over in the darkness was giving directions, sharp, irritated. To her knowledge he had not uttered a word during it all. She could hear them somewhere over there crashing about in the underbrush, an occasional word, an occasional suppressed shout. Very unreal it was, with the stars shining faintly overhead, the black shadows all around, and those two shafts of light ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... left the spectators to their astonishment at witnessing the chirping of the passions in the recitatives rising at last in the air, to the fuller nightingale tones. At present we require in an opera more frequent duos and trios, and a crashing finale. In fact, the most difficult problem for the opera poet is to reduce the mingled voices of conflicting passions in one pervading harmony, without destroying any one of them: a problem, however, which is generally solved by both poet and musician ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel
... minutenesses and distinctions into which one may go without end in any subject whatsoever. So, at large, with very competent learning, no small philosophical acumen, much logical formality and numeration of propositions and paragraphs, but a frequent liveliness of style, and every now and then a crashing shot of practical good sense, Comenius reasons and argues for a new System of Education, inspired by what would now be called Realism or enlightened Utilitarianism. Objections, as they might occur, are duly met and answered; and one notes throughout the practical schoolmaster, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... approached, crashing the underbrush and shouting lustily, the three stood motionless, guns ready: the suspense grew tense and the beaters grew silent as they hurried, unseen, from the line of fire. A moment of dead silence, then Lindsey heard to his right a dry twig ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... just in time. The wheel went crashing to the floor and bounded and rebounded out of the room and along the little hall. Philippe jumped in terror from the place ...
— Jacqueline of Golden River • H. M. Egbert
... tip and is much more attenuated than in the female. In an allied bird, the Penelope nigra, Mr. Salvin observed a male, which, whilst it flew downwards "with outstretched wings, gave forth a kind of crashing rushing noise," like the falling of a tree. (54. Mr. Salvin, in 'Proceedings, Zoological Society,' 1867, p. 160. I am much indebted to this distinguished ornithologist for sketches of the feathers of the Chamaepetes, and for other information.) The male ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... a spring men may find suddenly a torrent that they cannot control. It suddenly bursts its bounds and banks, and rushes headlong down, carrying everything before it in a resistless whirl of devastation, tearing great trees up by the roots, crashing through villages and towns and factories, girding the world with a liquid tempest that sends the works of man spinning down upon its dreadful course, till it plunges into the abyss, a frantic chaos of indiscriminate destruction, storm, ...
— An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford
... the whole valley re-echoes with hound music, as the pack come crashing towards us through the thick underwood. We get a splendid view of the proceedings—for the covert is a long, narrow strip of about ten acres, running in the shape of a bow round the hill immediately above the place where we are stationed. There is another small wood of about the same size ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... leapt to the attack; but David overturned the table as he ran, the blunderbuss crashing to the floor; it fell, opposing a momentary barrier in the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... first and second stories there were wide piazzas running around the house, and for hours at a time with my marine glasses at hand to look at passing steamers, I sat and enjoyed, what has always been a fascination to me, watching the magnificent surf crashing and dashing on the beach below. The house was protected by a formidable bulkhead, but it was no uncommon occurrence to have great showers of spray come dashing ...
— The Romance and Tragedy • William Ingraham Russell
... to time and verifying his course by the sound of the axe. This came and went, and by-and-by it ceased altogether, and Jeff crept forward with a real or feigned uncertainty. Suddenly he stopped. A voice called, "Heigh, there!" and the boy turned and fled, crashing through the underbrush at a tangent, with his dog ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... it. Something held it quietly and firmly, for all its plunging. It reared once more now, a gross, lumbering hugeness, and came crashing down to its knees. Then it went ...
— Legacy • James H Schmitz
... pitifully reach our ears. We are unable to distinguish her words, but the sound is heart-rending. It comes from one of those dreadful Water Street houses, and we all feel that a tragedy is taking place. There is a sound of crashing blows ...
— "In Darkest England and The Way Out" • General William Booth
... a skiff glides swiftly o'er, With plashing, spooming sound; The king stands listening on the shore; 'Tis silent all around— Till soon across the bay is borne The sound of shield and sword, And battle-cry, and clash, and clang, And crashing ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... shelter in the cellars, or any other hole they could crawl into, until night. I searched out my mule, and was thankful to find it where I had left it, tied to a tree, gave it a feed of oats, waited until it munched, unperturbed by the crashing explosions breaking in the immediate neighborhood, and utterly oblivious of the fact that I was counting the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... reply, a jolting burst of power blasted through the tubes, jerking the ship convulsively and throwing Tom to the deck. A loud, crashing sound filled the ship, followed by a strange stillness. Dimly Tom realized that the rockets had been cut and they were safely on the surface of ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... his own. Once, as he passed the trio on the poop, and glanced at the smooth, olive-coloured features of the young king, who, with anticipative zest, was fondling a rifle which Ross had brought on board for him, he felt inclined to whip a belaying-pin out of the rail and bring it crashing down upon his skull. Had there been any other ship but the Lucy May near, he would have left the Iroquois that moment. But help was coming to his ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... sudden crashing thud at the back of the room. Honey Hoke had fallen out of his chair. Now he lay on the floor, his legs drawn up and the back of his frowsy head resting against a rung of the chair in which still sat the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... a few seconds later, when there came the sound of the terrible explosion, followed by the bursting and crashing of the rocks, while the ground quivered and trembled as though shaken by an earthquake, that, for an instant, her courage failed, and with a low cry, she sank to the ground, shivering with horror. But only for an instant, and then she rose to her feet, ...
— The Award of Justice - Told in the Rockies • A. Maynard Barbour
... two parts which neither unite to make a whole, nor are sufficiently independent to stand complete in themselves. I find it characteristic that his Random Itinerary—that fresh and agreeable narrative of suburban travel—should conclude with a crashing poem, magnificent in itself, but utterly out of key with the rest of the book. Turn to the Compleat Angler, and note the exquisite congruity of the songs quoted by Walton with the prose in which they are set, and the difference will be apparent at once. Fate seems to dog ...
— Adventures in Criticism • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he went up into the darkness of the laurels. They heard him crashing away into the night. When he was gone the ...
— The River Prophet • Raymond S. Spears
... travelled in doubt and suspense, and she was continually reminded of that hurried journey when her unchastened temper had been the torment of herself and of her brother, she felt it an undeserved privilege to be allowed to go to him at all. Instead of schemes of being important, there was a crashing sense of an impending blow; she hardly had the power to think or speculate in what form, or how heavily it might fall. She had only room for anxiety ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the forest, and although he had at times met many savage beasts and fought them with his sharp ax, he had never to this day encountered the terrible Choggenmugger. Indeed, he was not thinking of the Great Beast at all as he walked along, but suddenly he heard a crashing of broken trees and felt a trembling of the earth and saw the immense jaws of Choggenmugger opening before him. Then Nikobob gave himself up for lost and his heart ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... afternoon when the train was shunted upon a siding not far from the great ball grounds on which the tourney was to be held. There was no crowd here as yet, and no crashing of brass or flourish of trumpets. The battalion, at route step, moved into the grounds. Here ranks were broken and arms stacked. Then, by detachments, each under an officer, or non-commissioned officer, the men were hustled ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... examine it at his leisure. But his hands were stiff and clumsy, and he had miscalculated the weight of the picture. It slipped through his fingers, and fell to the ground with a heavy thump and slight crashing noise, upsetting some lumber that stood against the wall, and raising a cloud of dust, which caused the man of manacles to step back and rub his eyes. With a muttered curse on the meddlesome official, Tchartkoff sprang forward to raise the picture. As he did so, a small board, forming one of the ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 62, No. 384, October 1847 • Various
... narrow passage, but this was not all. What was that sound of crashing rocks? They soon discovered. Huge blocks of granite had rolled down from above, diverting the course of the water, which now tumbled down on the highway like a sheet of foam. And what was this behind them? Another great sheet of water coming on. The flood ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... her days, Kate Waddington remembered to be thankful for a certain cotton-tail rabbit. At that moment precisely, this fearling of the woods streaked down the trail, pursued by a dog whose heavy crashing sounded in the distance; came out upon them, whirled with a loud roaring of fern and leaves, screamed the heart-rending scream of a frightened rabbit, and dashed off into the wood. The sound, coming in this tender ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... and saw at last that our reward was at hand; I remembered how we sat down, then, and wiped the perspiration away, and waited to let a picnic party get out of the way in the road below—and then we started the boulder. It was splendid. It went crashing down the hillside, tearing up saplings, mowing bushes down like grass, ripping and crushing and smashing every thing in its path—eternally splintered and scattered a wood pile at the foot of the hill, and then sprang ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... step toward me, with her white hands clasped together, she said, in a hurried, beseeching voice—and low as was the sound, I heard it distinctly during the crashing thunder which shook the rocks of the crag to ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... their fight, and it only remained for their foes to wreak their vengeance upon them and wipe out old scores. One minute more would have done for them, but in that minute the door came crashing in. There was a mighty roar, "Glengarry! Glengarry!" and the great Macdonald himself, with the boy Ranald and some half-dozen of his men behind him, stood among them. On all hands the fight stopped. A moment he ...
— The Man From Glengarry - A Tale Of The Ottawa • Ralph Connor
... but I rather think I saw your old ship crashing along and blazing away, but I expect you have heard from some of your pals. But the night was far and away the worse time of all. It was pitch dark, and, of course, absolutely no lights, and the ...
— Sea Warfare • Rudyard Kipling
... he could hear a plunging and splashing of water, with other noises,—as the snorting and growling of the bear, and the crashing of frozen snow, all mixed up in confusion of sounds. Concluding that these noises were caused by the struggle still going on between the man and the bear, he hurried forward. Strange! there ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... with indignation, and then he was after her like the wind. As they tore through the little barnyard Kirsty called to them not to go near the well, but neither of them heard. Into the woods they dashed, over mossy logs and stones, tearing through the undergrowth and crashing among fallen boughs. In spite of her fleetness Scotty caught his tormentor as she dodged round a tree; he held her in a sturdy grip and shook her for her impudence until her sunbonnet fell off. He ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... church-steeple. The roof at first was low, but we shortly came to a branch that opened on the sea, where the arch was forty-six feet in height. The breakers dashed far into the cave, and flocks of sea-birds circled round its mouth. The sound of a gun was like a deafening peal of thunder, crashing from arch to arch till it rolled ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey
... They'd come down somewhere on the west coast of India, not too far from the sea. He remembered crashing into the edge of a thin jungle and finding the Chief, and the two of them searching out Haney and stumbling to open ground. After laying out a signal for air searchers, they went off into worn-out slumber while ...
— Space Tug • Murray Leinster
... remembered the crashing blow to his proud pronunciamiento that forenoon, and his natural caution regarding statements caused him to hesitate. "He is supposed to coom frae the mill at ten o'clock, antemeridian! Postmeridian, Master Morrison, of St. Ronan's—not the ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... humanitarian pang, of the suburb's esthetic pleasure, the White Linen Nurse found herself precipitated suddenly into a mere blur of sight, a mere chaos of sound. In whizzing speed and crashing breeze,—houses—fences—meadows—people—slapped across her eyeballs like pictures on a fan. On and on and on through kaleidoscopic yellows and rushing grays the great car sped, a purely mechanical factor in a purely ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... before her, squaring his shoulders belligerently to keep away intruders, and she smiled up at him in that bewildering fashion of hers. But it was only for an instant, and then came a terrifying din from the dining-room, followed by the clamor of crashing glass. The guests tried for a moment to be courteously oblivious, but the noise was so startling that such politeness became farcical. The host, with a little laugh, went down the hall. It was the beautiful screen near the ceiling that had fallen. A thousand pieces of shattered ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon |
