"Overhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... river; or sparkling in snow which dresses up a hundred thousand masts, peaks, and towers; or wrapped round with thunder-cloud canopies, before, which the white gables shine whiter; day and night the kind little carillon plays its fantastic melodies overhead. The bells go on ringing. Quot vivos vocant, mortuos plangunt, fulgara frangunt; so on to the past and future tenses, and for how many nights, days, and years! Whilst the French were pitching their fulgara into Chasse's citadel, ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Wales, the Duke and his wife were the great social, semi-political figures of my youth. One day they came to pay us a visit in Cavendish Square, having heard that our top storey had been destroyed by fire. They walked round the scorched walls of the drawing-room, with the blue sky overhead, and stopped in front of a picture of a race-horse, given to me on my wedding day by my habit-maker, Alexander Scott (a Scotchman who at my suggestion had made the first patent ...
— Margot Asquith, An Autobiography: Volumes I & II • Margot Asquith
... in calculating the amount in order to settle with the men, do you take it overhead at all your stations?-We take our chance ...
— Second Shetland Truck System Report • William Guthrie
... sweetness making grief complete; Faint wind of wings from hours that distant beat, When I, I too, Was once, O wild companions, as are you, Ran with such wilful feet. Wraith of a recent day and dead, Risen wanly overhead, Frail, strengthless as a noon-belated moon, Or as the glazing eyes of watery heaven, When the sick night sinks ...
— New Poems • Francis Thompson
... Its immense disk, hanging overhead, would cover a circle of the firmament twenty degrees in diameter, or, in round numbers, forty times the diameter of the full moon as seen from the earth! It would shed a great amount of light and heat, and thus would more or less effectively ...
— Other Worlds - Their Nature, Possibilities and Habitability in the Light of the Latest Discoveries • Garrett P. Serviss
... commotion below of Spanish shouting and roaring with much jingling of bells; and looking out of window I perceived lanterns hanging here and there in the courtyard, and the muleteers packing their goods to depart, with a fine clear sky full of stars overhead. And scarce had I turned into my warm bed again, thanking God I was no muleteer, when in comes the Don with a candle, to say the guide will have us moving at once if we would reach Ravellos (our Spanish town) before night. ...
— A Set of Rogues • Frank Barrett
... out the lamp and departed, closing the door behind him. The rain poured upon the roof overhead and splashed against the panes of the two little windows beneath the eaves. Galusha Bangs, warm and dry for the first time in ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... at the rolling stretches of grey-green land all round him. Besides himself, and that one tiny dwelling, there was not a sign of human life to be seen. Overhead the storm still threatened and grumbled; below, the man and the house stood powerless, but undaunted. Far away to the south the sun shone out brightly through a rift in the clouds. "Always God's promise somewhere. God's sign to us that ...
— Anxious Audrey • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... whole spectrum, were milling about. There seemed to be at least two square-dances going on, to the music of competing bands. At the distant end of the plaza, over the heads of the crowd, I could see the piles and tracks of an overhead crane, towering above what looked like an open-hearth furnace. Between us and the bulk of the crowd, in a cleared space, two medium tanks, heavily padded with mats, were ramming and trying to overturn each other, the mob of spectators ...
— Lone Star Planet • Henry Beam Piper and John Joseph McGuire
... exercises and sorted them. She was too weary for this task: she could not go on just yet. She drew her chair over to the window and sat there long quarter hours, watching the electric cars. They announced themselves from a great distance by a low singing on the overhead wire; then with a rush and a rumble the big, lighted things dashed across the void, and rumbled on with a clatter of smashing iron as they took the switches recklessly. The noise soothed her; in the quiet intervals she was listening for sounds from upstairs. ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... of proportion, a power of reflection, speculation, and intuition which enables him to evolve those notable theories for which German scholarship is so famous. It is under the intellectual stimulus of the kommers, when the foam lies thick in the steins and blue clouds of tobacco smoke roll overhead, that the great classical scholars of Germany perceive that the classical epics, the Iliad, the Odyssey, the Aeneid, are but the typifying of the rolling of the clouds in the empyrean, the warfare of the foam-crested waves dashing upon the land, that the metamorphoses ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... festoons of coloured lamps, attached to the neighbouring trees, so as to resemble the pendent grape-clusters, that the traveller meets with just previous to the Bolognese vintage. Occasionally, a path would be encountered where no light met the eye save that of the prying stars overhead. In the distant vista, might be seen a part of the crowded promenade, where music held its court; whilst at intervals, a voice's swell or guitar's tinkle would be borne on the ear. There was the hum of men, too—the laugh of the idlers without the sanctum, ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... the storm should abate. He scrambled up, and thankfully flung himself, just as he was, on to his bunk. In the wild confusion of squeaking, straining planks, the thump of waves against the porthole, the demon-shrieks of infuriated wind, and the shouts and running to and fro of sailors overhead, it seemed impossible that any human being could sleep. Yet the creature overhead was mercifully quiet; and suddenly slumber fell upon Max, shutting out thought and sound. For a while he slept heavily; but by and by dreams came and ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson
... in which a fire ladder is placed against the wall of a burning building, only the lower part of the ladder showing in the picture. A fireman starts to mount, and finally disappears overhead. The scene changes, and we see the upper windows of the building and the upper portion of the ladder. Suddenly the fireman's head appears as he climbs up (into the picture), then his whole body comes into view, and presently he climbs in at ...
— Writing the Photoplay • J. Berg Esenwein and Arthur Leeds
... smoking a cigarette, watching the light fade, and the lagoon before him turn into molten gold to match the sunset sky. It would be very quiet save for such sounds as the faraway barking of dogs or the lowing of cattle. When the sky overhead had faded to an obscure purple, and the flare of the sunset had narrowed to a belt along the horizon, he would hear the distant eerie whistle of wild wings. Nothing could be seen yet, but the sound multiplied. He could distinguish now the roar ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... high birth is that it usually shuts a man out from the large sympathetic knowledge of human experience which comes from contact with various classes on their own level, and in my father's time that entail of social ignorance had not been disturbed as we see it now. To look always from overhead at the crowd of one's fellow-men must be in many ways incapacitating, even with the best will and intelligence. The serious blunders it must lead to in the effort to manage them for their good, one may see clearly by the mistaken ways ...
— Impressions of Theophrastus Such • George Eliot
... to be coming toward the little blue farm-house. No cannon was in sight; there was no smoke visible, and many, with an upward look, wondered what the queer sound could be. Suddenly there was a screeching, crackling answer in the air; the atmosphere was rent apart as by a lightning stroke directly overhead. The man and the horse by the blue wall dropped noiselessly to the earth. A Rough Rider paled and limped down the hill and Blackford shook his hand—a piece of shrapnel had fallen harmlessly on his wrist. On the hill—Crittenden laughed as ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... pointed out the edges of the curbstones, he was on the lookout whenever they stepped on or off the pavement, ready with a warning if there was a gutter to cross. Schmucke could have wished that the streets were paved with cotton-down; he would have had a blue sky overhead, and Pons should hear the music which all the angels in heaven were making for him. He had won the lost province ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... for the purpose of expelling all steam bubbles as they form in contact with hot steel. We are aware of the fact that a great many toolmakers in jewelry shops still cling to the overhead bath, as in Fig. 82, but more broken pieces and more dies with soft spots are due to this method than to all the others combined, as the water strikes one spot in force, contracting the surface so much faster than the rest of the die that the ...
— The Working of Steel - Annealing, Heat Treating and Hardening of Carbon and Alloy Steel • Fred H. Colvin
... gigantic "No. 10" whitewashed outside) stands close to the breakers, just above high-water mark in winter. It is divided into two large rooms, upper and lower, with a tiny kitchen in the rear and an equally comfortless bedroom overhead. The doors of the lower room (which, like those of a barn, fill the whole end of the house) being closed, we sought for Old Probabilities up stairs, and found very little at first sight to gratify curiosity or any craving for mystery. There was a large wooden room, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... with the wind and had scarcely noticed its violence in his headlong course. Now he felt it whipping sharply at his back and increasing with each step. Overhead the sky was clear. It seemed to give vision for the wind and cold to seek him out, and the moon made his following shadow long and ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... up, and went to one of the great windows that looked down across the city. The rain was over, dark masses of cloud were breaking and stirring overhead; through their rifts she caught the silver glimmer of the troubled moon. Across the shadowy band that was the bay a ferryboat, pricked with hundreds of tiny lights, was moving toward the glittering chain of Oakland. There was a light ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... departed forest, the miry ground strewn with eggs of all sizes, shapes and colors, and dead birds of many kinds, in amongst which writhed and twisted dirty-looking, repulsive water moccasins and brilliant yellow and black swamp snakes, while overhead on the whitened limbs, roosted hundreds of birds partly roused from their sleep by ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... through the woods. Perfectly level and smooth, with the woods closing in on both sides and making long vistas through their boles and under their boughs. By and by we took another path that led off from this one, wide enough for two horses to go abreast. The pine trees were sweet overhead and on each hand, making the light soft and the air fragrant. Preston and I wandered on in delightful roaming; leaving the house and all that it contained at an unremembered distance. Suddenly we came out upon a cleared field. It was many acres large; ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... Woolsen, being an ambitious person, was not to be so easily put down. Besides the consent and petitions, which Cowperwood could not easily get away from him, he had a new form of traction then being tried out in several minor cities—a form of electric propulsion by means of an overhead wire and a traveling pole, which was said to be very economical, and to give a service better than cables and cheaper ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... white marble, which is cut and carved as though it were of the softest substance in the world. A light burns in the tombs, and garlands of flowers are laid over the rich imitations of themselves. Hark as you whisper gently, there rolls through the obscure vault overhead a murmur like that of the sea on a pebbly beach in summer. A white bearded priest, who never raises his eyes from his book as we pass, suddenly reads out a verse from the Koran. Hark! How an invisible choir takes it up, till the reverberated ...
— The Friendships of Women • William Rounseville Alger
... we strolled out along the common, through heather which as yet was a mere brown expanse of flowerless undergrowth, and copses which overhead were a canopy of golden oak-leaf, and carpeted underneath with primroses and the young up-curling bracken. Presently through a little wood we came upon a pond lying wide and blue before us under the breezy May sky, its shores fringed with scented fir-wood and the whole air alive with ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... at night the long streets are a sight, With garlands of soft-colored lanterns alight— Blue, yellow, and red twinkling high overhead, Like thousands of ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... now directly overhead, and as they came out from the shade of the forest to the open space along the river's bank Rebby sank down on the grass with ...
— A Little Maid of Old Maine • Alice Turner Curtis
... a gladness in her eye, And in the wind her dancing tread Appears in swiftness to outvie The scurrying cloudlets overhead; In brief, her moods and graces are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But if the place were grand, the times, the burthen of the times, was far more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers were hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had re-opened the wounds of France. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... the boy was set on a full penance. And every now and again he forgot his headache and the gnawing at his stomach in the fervor of passionate prayer and in the fascination of the ghostly figures weeping and wailing in the gloomy synagogue, and once in imagination he saw the heavens open overhead and God sitting on the judgment throne, invisible by excess of dazzling light, and round him the four-winged cherubim and the fiery wheels and the sacred creatures singing "Holy, holy, holy is ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... most imposing, and, notwithstanding the paint on his face, I began to feel some respect for him. While he was speaking we heard the music overhead, the singing provided for the entertainment of the guests, and out on the square the horses of the municipal guards shaking their curb-chains. Our party must have been a very brilliant affair from outside, with the myriads ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... not distinguish the various articles of furniture, even papa's armchair in the chimney-corner; while, outside, in the gloaming, the snow-flakes were falling slowly and steadily from a leaden-hued sky overhead. ...
— Teddy - The Story of a Little Pickle • J. C. Hutcheson
... she was gone and I alone in the soft luxury of this chamber, desolation filled me and I yearned bitterly for the discomforts of the little camp within the copse; the rustle of leaves, the soft, murmurous gurgle of the brook, the winking stars overhead; for Jeremy, and Jessamy Todd and my loved Diana. And coming to the open lattice, I leaned there to look upon the moon, this other Diana so placid and serene. And thinking that perhaps my Diana looked upon her even now, a Diana not at all placid and serene but with sweet, grey eyes ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the Tyrol that oft, 'tis said, When the storm is out and the town in bed, The howling of wolves sweeps overhead. ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... wrote last, nothing at all happened here. I spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the sun-sparks raining on the sea. It's grand up there with the gorse all round, the gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in the corn, and now and then a young hawk overhead. The afternoons I spent out in the orchard. The usual routine goes on at the farm all the time—cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out, Pasiance in her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands; and the smell of clover, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... through the division of guns allotted to his care. But instead of greeting us with his usual heartiness, and cracking his pleasant jokes, to our amazement, he did little else but scowl; and at last, when we rallied him upon his ill-temper, he seized a long black rammer from overhead, and drove us on deck; threatening to report us, if we ever dared to ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... Overhead someone gave a loud shout, several sailors ran by, they seemed to be dragging something bulky over the deck, something fell with a crash. Again they ran by.... Had something gone wrong? Gusev raised his head, listened, and saw that the two soldiers and the sailor ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the southern part of the heavens,— two bright, like the milky-way, and one dark. They are first seen, just above the horizon, soon after crossing the southern tropic. The Southern Cross begins to be seen at 18 N., and, when off Cape Horn, is nearly overhead. It is composed of four stars in that form, and is one of the brightest constellations ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... tower built high overhead, with gangways up in air, Set well for fight, 'gainst which the foe their utmost war-might bear, 530 And all Italians strive their most to work its overthrow: Gainst whom the Trojans ward it well, casting the stones below, And through the hollow windows speed the shot-storm thick and fast. ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... Somebody was overhead, speaking,—exchanging courtesies. What was my astonishment to see on the slippery column of the tree two human forms appear and quietly slip down to the ground. Rouletabille had mounted alone, and ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... of squires and nephews of baronets," said Mrs. Lovell. "Adieu! I think I see a carrier-pigeon flying overhead, and, as you may ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... them at first, each little hole with its watchful, well-equipped couple of assassins, turning up their eyes in expectation. The wind is with our enemy, and his captive balloons have been disagreeably overhead all through the hot morning. His big guns have suddenly become nervously active. Then, a little murmur along the pits and trenches, and from somewhere over behind us, this air-shark drives up the sky. The enemy's ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... that we must face this agitation; and beyond the dull clouds overhead hangs in the horizon Venus, as morning-star, no less fair, though of more melting beauty, than the glorious Jupiter, who ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... themselves in the mirror of the lake. He convinced himself that his eyes and his mind were having sport with him, and turning away, he made a little circle in the woods about their camp. All was well. He heard a swish overhead, but he knew that it was a night bird, a rustling came, and an ungainly form lumbered through a thicket, but it was a small black bear, and coming back to the hollow, he looked down at ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Overhead the trees wrenched and creaked, and above the lashings of their branches the rain could be heard beating with fury upon the tossing foliage. Once in the blackness Lucy stumbled and, following the instinct for self-preservation, ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... was a sudden rushing overhead, and an instant later the barrage began falling beyond the crest of the ridge. He looked at his watch, blinked, and looked again. That barrage was due at 0550; according to the watch, it was 0726. He was sure that, ten minutes ago, when he had looked at it, up there at the head of the ravine, ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... eyes was a pretty bamboo grove; their leaves, wet with dew, shone brilliantly, even as bright as in the gardens of the palace. The cricket sang cheerfully in the old walls as if it was at their very ears, and the flight of wild geese in the air rustled overhead. Everything spoke of rural scenes and business, different from what Genji was in the habit of ...
— Japanese Literature - Including Selections from Genji Monogatari and Classical - Poetry and Drama of Japan • Various
... gaily painted wings hovered tenderly overhead, and tiny silver thistledown balls sailed across the blue sky spaces, like little wayward balloons without anybody in ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... sun to give her the joy of her own presence. The tide of the light was creeping up the shore of the sky, but until the sun stood overhead, not a ray ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... length, after consultation, we determined to steer west and by north by compass, the make of the land indicating the existence of a river. We continued to march all day through a country untrodden before by an European foot. Save that a melancholy crow now and then flew croaking overhead, or a kangaroo was seen to bound at a distance, the picture of solitude was complete and undisturbed. At four o'clock in the afternoon we halted near a small pond of water, where we took up our residence for the night, ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... not an overhead traffic in commodities similar to our own commodities carried over this earth's oceans—I'm not the deep-sea ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... out the candle, my dear. We can talk just as well by firelight, you know. There! Well, you see, Deborah had gone from home for a fortnight or so; it was a very still, quiet day, I remember, overhead; and the lilacs were all in flower, so I suppose it was spring. My father had gone out to see some sick people in the parish; I recollect seeing him leave the house with his wig and shovel-hat and cane. ...
— Cranford • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... gathered together doing feats and casting stones. And after a while the Druid of Teamhair that was with them said: "I am in dread, Finn of the Fianna, that there is some trouble near at hand; and look now at those dark clouds of blood," he said, "that are threatening us side by side overhead. And there is fear on me," he said, "that there is some destruction coming ...
— Gods and Fighting Men • Lady I. A. Gregory
... bloom'd, And hung above the pathway of the sun, As if to harbinger his course begun; When, lo! his disk burst forth—his beams of gold Seem'd earth as with a garment to enfold, And from his piercing eye the loose mists flew, And heaven with arch of deep autumnal blue Glow'd overhead; while ocean, like a lake, Seeming delight to take In its own halcyon-calm, resplendent lay, From Western Kames to far Kilchattan bay. Old Largs look'd out amid the orient light, With its grey dwellings, and, in ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843 • Various
... one of those solitary camps when out on a prolonged hunt, for the visitor was certain of a cordial welcome, and everything the generous men had was freely at your service. The crowning pleasure came at night, when stories were told under the silvery pines, with troops of stars overhead, around a glowing camp-fire, until the lateness of the hour warned all that it was time to roll up in their robes, if they ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... light faded, and only left her the poor amusement of looking over the side for the phosphorescence of the water, and watching the smoke of the funnel lose itself overhead. The silent stars and sparkling waves would have set Phoebe's dutiful science on the alert, or transported Honor's inward ear by the chant of creation, but to her they were of moderate interest, and her imagination ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... breaking camp. By the time the canoes were loaded the mists had lifted and the river lay open and empty before them. In the bush around and beyond, gloom still lay thick and the forest life yelped, howled, clattered, and wailed. But out on the water it was broad day, and far overhead sounded the harsh cries of unseen parrots flying two by two in the sunlight above the matted branches. The world of the pathless tropic wilderness, ever dying, ever living, was about its daily business. The ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... roof and was wandering in the vast nave from pillar to pillar, when I found myself beneath the lantern. I raised my eyes, but the flood of golden light compelled me to close them. The sunlight passing through the yellow glass of the windows overhead encircled the mighty vault of the lantern with a fiery crown, and played around the walls of its cage in rays which, growing fainter as they fell, flooded the floor with their expiring flames, a mysterious dayspring, a diffused glory, through which litany and sacred chant ...
— The Ink-Stain, Complete • Rene Bazin
... of the rock, and then pass into the air, and the thought flashed through my brain that I was lost. But no! In another instant my feet struck against a rocky floor, and I felt that I was standing upon something solid, and out of reach of the wind, which I could hear singing away overhead. As I stood there thanking Heaven for these small mercies, there was a slip and a scuffle, and down came ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... a day of God. The earth lay like one great emerald, ringed and roofed with sapphire: blue sea, blue mountain, blue sky overhead. There she lay, not sleeping, but basking in her quiet Sabbath joy, as though her two great sisters of the sea and air had washed her weary limbs with holy tears, and purged away the stains of last week's sin ...
— Daily Thoughts - selected from the writings of Charles Kingsley by his wife • Charles Kingsley
... tight-rope, which was fastened at one end to a big hook in the side of the barn, and at the other end to the loft, against which was placed a ladder, which she proceeded to ascend. There was a beam overhead, which Polly was to hold on to in order to keep herself from falling, and assisted by it, she started out quite bravely; but she had taken but four steps when Tommy shouted, "Hold on fast, Polly! the hook's comin' out." Alas! the warning came too ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... rush of the Erlking, his long, spectral arms outstretched to grasp the child, the frantic gallop of the horse, the alarmed father clasping his darling to his bosom in convulsive embrace, the siren-like elves hovering overhead, to lure the little soul with their weird harps. There can be no better illustration than is furnished by this terrible scene of the magic power of mythology to invest the simplest physical phenomena with the most ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... vast, vague swell flowing from far away down south under the night, lifted the Northumberland on its undulations to the rattling sound of the reef points and the occasional creak of the rudder; whilst overhead, near the fiery arch of the Milky Way, hung the Southern Cross like a ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... us, make the place warm in the tropics. Forward, the stokeholds, dimly enough lit save when a furnace door opens and a fiery glow illuminates the bent back and soot-blurred face of some cosmopolitan fireman. Overhead, each lit by a single lamp, are the water-gauges—green glass tubes in which the water ebbs and flows with ...
— An Ocean Tramp • William McFee
... he is doing, this pulling of the door-bell at the old home. The balcony is overhead. Never mind little Davy! We can live without him, but we cannot live without Esther. Ah that Tarpion! that base Tarpion! Probably he intends to marry her! It is none too soon to pull this bell. Now David Lockwin will enter, never to be driven forth. He will enter among ...
— David Lockwin—The People's Idol • John McGovern
... close under the quay wall, and make fast to the ring down there,' came down from above, followed by the slack of the sodden painter, which knocked my cap off as it fell. 'All fast? Any knot'll do,' I heard, as I grappled with this loathsome task, and then a big, dark object loomed overhead and was lowered into the dinghy. It was my portmanteau, and, placed athwart, exactly filled all the space amidships. 'Does it fit?' was the anxious inquiry ...
— Riddle of the Sands • Erskine Childers
... state-room. But at last I had to go below, and the night that followed was a terror. Such a storm raged as I had never dreamed of, the ship rocked and groaned, and the water dashed against the port-holes; my bag played tag with my shoes, and my trunk ran around the room like a rat hunting for its hole. Overhead the shouts of the captain could be heard above the answering shouts of the sailors, and men and women hurried panic-stricken ...
— Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... at the poor ship's side like sledge hammers; and the lightnings fell around us scorchingly, with forked bolts, as arrows from the hand of a giant; the thunders overhead, close overhead, crashing from a concave cloud that hung about us heavily—a dense, black, suffocating curtain—roared and raved as nothing earthly can, but thunder in the tropics; the rain was as a cataract, literally ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... in the upper story, when, looking up, to my dismay I saw a bright light overhead; the roof had been set on fire. Under other circumstances we might have attempted to extinguish it; as it was, I ran to tell Uncle Jeff what ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... the voyagers with an aspect as benign as the summer sky overhead; Prue ran to and fro pouring forth a stream of counsels, warnings, and predictions; men and maids gathered on the lawn or hung out of upper windows; and even old Hecate, the cat, was seen chasing imaginary rats and mice in the grass till ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... little chemin de fer de ceinture I love this tramway better. It speeds along the quays between the Seine and the garden of the Champs Elysees, through miles of chestnut bloom, the roadway chequered with shadows of chestnut leaves; the branches meet overhead, and in a faint delirium of the senses I catch at a bloom, cherish it for a moment, and cast it away. The plucky little steamboats are making for the landing-places, stemming the current. I love this sprightly little river better than the melancholy Thames, ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... that third clatter of distress from his cooking utensils. To David Carrigan, even in his hour of deadly peril, there was something about it that for an instant brought back the glow of humor in his eyes. It was hot, swelteringly hot, in that packet of sand with the unclouded sun almost straight overhead. He could have tossed a pebble to where a bright-eyed sandpiper was cocking itself backward and forward, its jerky movements accompanied by friendly little tittering noises. Everything about him seemed friendly. The river rippled and murmured in cooling song just beyond the ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... which is a generating chamber having a water-sealed lid with pressure test-cock I. Into the generating chamber fit a number of pans J, which are charged with carbide. Water is supplied to the generating chamber from an overhead tank B through the starting tap D and the funnel E. It flows out of the supply-pipe near the top of the generating chamber through a slot in the side of the pipe facing the corner of the chamber, so that it runs down the latter without splashing the carbide in ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the gate I rode through on the roan that's long dead,— I remember the dawn was but pale, and the stars overhead; Of the babe that is grown to a maid, and of Martha, my wife, And the spring on the wolds far away, and ...
— Ride to the Lady • Helen Gray Cone
... Coventry, of the use of this melting and dewy blue, accompanied by two distances of rain-cloud, one towering over the horizon, seen blue with excessive distance through crystal atmosphere; the other breaking overhead in the warm, sulphurous fragments of spray, whose loose and shattering transparency, being the most essential characteristic of the near rain-cloud, is precisely that which the old masters are sure to contradict. Look, for instance, at the wreaths of cloud? ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... illustrating the style in its earliest and greatest phase. Surrounded by a ring of fire and with cowherd boys and cattle stupefied by smoke, Krishna is putting out the blaze by sucking the flames into his cheeks. Deer and pig are bounding to safety while birds and wild bees hover distractedly overhead. ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... Overhead, skies were grey with ragged, shapeless cloud; below, the waters were the colour of slag and slapping angrily against the plates of the starboard bow under the drive of a wind from the north-east. The ashen cliffs of Dover came to ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... ravine, and the burghers ceased firing. Shells continued to tear through the air, but none exploded in the vicinity of the men, and they took advantage of the lull in the battle to light their pipes. A swarm of yellow locusts passed overhead, and exploding shrapnel tore them into myriads of pieces, their wings and limbs falling near the burghers. "I am glad I am not a locust," remarked a burgher farther to the left of the others, as he dropped a handful of torn fragments of the insects. Shells and bullets suddenly ...
— With the Boer Forces • Howard C. Hillegas
... bursting in large numbers overhead, I got the men well extended, as best I could, but some of course were hit. Just as we left the road a man in charge of an ambulance-waggon full of wounded ran up and asked what he was to do, as some infernal civilian had unhitched and gone off with the horses whilst he was attending ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... uses for water: It will not be long before every truck and every commercial flower garden will have overhead irrigation. This is merely gas pipes ("seconds" rejected for blow holes or porosity are usually used) supported on posts say six feet above the ground. They are usually placed parallel about fifty feet apart, which will make four to the acre square, and have a single row of holes and ...
— Three Acres and Liberty • Bolton Hall
... being very light, she made but little progress. The day following, the weather, which had long been fine, gave signs of changing; and instead of the clear blue sky and glass-like sea, which for many weeks had surrounded the ship, dark clouds gathered overhead, sudden gusts of winds began to blow, and the water began to undulate, and every now and then to hiss and foam as the blast passed over it. Then down came the rain in right earnest, and continued for some hours, the watery veil obscuring every object beyond a mile or so. Suddenly, as ...
— True Blue • W.H.G. Kingston
... are they so when one awakens to them, for the first time, in a novel and romantic situation, with the soft sweet air of a tropical climate mingling with the fresh smell of the sea, and stirring the strange leaves that flutter overhead and around one, or ruffling the plumage of the stranger birds that fly inquiringly around, as if to demand what business we have to intrude uninvited on their domains. When I awoke on the morning after the shipwreck, ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... younger brother in the weather-worn gray and red of Kincaid's Battery. They waved a pocket-soiled letter and asked how to get in and up to her; but before she could do more than toss them a key there came, not from the ships but from close overhead under a blackening sky, one last, hideous roar and ear-splitting howl. The beautiful treasure-laden home heaved, quivered, lurched and settled again, the women shrieked and crouched or fell prone with covered heads, and a huge shell, sent by some pain-crazed fugitive from a gun across the ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... Busentinus for the interment of Alaric, and then, after his burial there, be let back into it again, that he might ever hear the sonorous voice of its waters above him, and, perhaps, now and then the call of the leadsman overhead, crying the depth beneath, as he himself in the pilot-house used once to hear the call "Mark Twain" from the darkness below. So it was a disappointment to me that when the world followed him to his grave it was to a little patch of earth outside the valley, beyond the reach of even the ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... Contessa, with her young daughter, the Contessina, led their guests out in the grounds to a pergola where coffee was served, and which commanded a vista of a magnificent avenue of copper beeches, whose great branches met and interlaced overhead. The Contessa was the favorite lady of honor at the court of Queen Margherita, and she interested Mr. Browning very much by speaking of her beloved royal mistress, and showing him some of the handwriting of the Queen, which he ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting
... probably went to church in the secret chapels which the Christians had dug deep in the ground under the city. In these dark, gloomy catacombs, as they were called, the Christians held services directly under the feet of the cruel Romans, who were passing overhead without suspecting what was going on so near ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... attack by hostile Indians. But during this time they saw no human beings; the only living things that caught their eyes as they sped past forest and plain were the deer browsing along the banks, the birds circling overhead, and immense herds of buffalo moving like huge armies over the grassy slopes. At length they reached a village of friendly Illinois, and here they were feasted on fish, dog, and buffalo meat, and spent the balmy midsummer night in the open, sleeping on buffalo robes. While at this ...
— The Jesuit Missions: - A Chronicle of the Cross in the Wilderness • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... ferns Sir John paused. A great deal of care had been devoted to this conservatory. Half hidden among languorous scented flowers were a thousand tiny lights, while overhead in the gloom towered graceful palms and bananas. A fountain murmured pleasantly amidst a cluster of maidenhairs. The music from the ballroom fell ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... entered the room, dressed in white, carrying something in her hand, which she threw at the tailor's wife, striking her with some violence, and then vanished. While this was taking place on the first floor, a most frightful noise was going on overhead in the room where the children and their nurse were sleeping. The father immediately rushed upstairs, and found to his horror the floor all torn up, the furniture broken, and, worst of all, the children lying senseless ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... again, Berlin! I shall see you again, dear town of my fathers! I shall come back, and, please God, not humbly and enslaved as I go away to-day, but as a Prince, who is lord within his own domains, with God in his heart, a clear sky overhead, and no Schwarzenbergs ...
— The Youth of the Great Elector • L. Muhlbach
... high. Everyone who has not looked into the matter closely is prepared to maintain that the luminous disc in the sky—whether of moon or of sun—not merely seems to, but actually does, occupy a bigger space when it is low down near the horizon than when it is high up, more nearly overhead. Of course, no one nowadays imagines that the moon or the sun swells as it sinks or diminishes in volume as it rises. Those who think about it at all, say that the greater length of atmosphere through ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... satins. But come out now, and look at this portentous lower jaw, which seems like the long narrow lid of an immense snuff-box, with a hinge at one end, instead of one side. If you pry it up, so as to get it overhead, and expose its rows of teeth, it seems a terrific portcullis; and such, alas! it proves to many a poor wight in the fishery, upon whom these spikes fall with impaling force. But far more terrible is it to behold, when fathoms down in the sea, you see ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... anxiously at the knots of men who remained in the open, and gradually increased, and we asked whether they would not soon go. But there they stayed, and again we heard the dull growl of the discharge, then the whistling overhead, and the explosions of some dozen shells falling upon the men. Crowding to the window, we watched the massacre, and waited to receive the victims. My colleague M——drew my attention to a soldier who was running up the grassy slope on the ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... out there seemed excited," he commented drily. "Kindly suggest to them that it's unnecessary for them to advertise their lack of confidence in their chief by scurrying about during my interviews like chickens when a hawk hovers overhead." Then he recounted what had occurred—for this was one of the matters in which the secretary might be admitted to his confidence. At the end of the recital Carl shook his head. "I think you were magnanimous, sir. Though ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... for the ship's tapered stem, and merged into a witches' way of blackness beyond. The red signal of a distant gare, or station, or the white gleam of an approaching vessel's masthead light, shone from the void like low-pitched stars. Overhead the sky was of deepest blue, its stupendous arch studded with stars of extraordinary radiance, while low on the west could be seen the paler sheen of departing day. At times his wondering eyes fell on some Arab encampment on the neighboring ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... a gleam broke through from the hidden sunset and spotlighted it and the low scudding clouds in a sudden glowing red. He stopped and leaned against the balustrade to watch the red gleams reflecting from the bay. Red and purple clouds fled by low overhead, their colors changing as they moved. This was something a man couldn't see in ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... moosewood bride is glowing, all her curls awave, The colt's-foot in millions makes the ground like a bed, So sweet-breathed and green now, in winter scarlet brave, And blossom lips of tulip trees are meeting overhead, But never shall a tear fall for their love spent and dead. Doves are building yonder in that clump of maples deep, Do maple leaves come soonest for they love to hide The earliest nest and hear the first faint cheep Telling them of joy too ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... moon was awful clear, And the icy mountains hemmed you in with a silence you most could HEAR; With only the howl of a timber wolf, and you camped there in the cold, A half-dead thing in a stark, dead world, clean mad for the muck called gold; While high overhead, green, yellow and red, the North Lights swept in bars? — Then you've a haunch what the music meant... hunger and night and ...
— The Spell of the Yukon • Robert Service
... westward, the pale-green vineyards, the yellow cornfields; she looked at the rushing river, with the diamonds sparkling on its surface, at the far-away gleaming snows of Monte Sfiorito, at the scintillant blue shy overhead. ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... a long time, or what seemed a long time, while they stood motionless in the summer night, with the great branches of the trees moving a little overhead, and garden scents creeping out on the damp air, Margaret said, with a sort of breathless catch ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... my back and worked with a pick-axe at the coal overhead. Sometimes I pushed long distances a thing called "a hutch," ...
— From the Bottom Up - The Life Story of Alexander Irvine • Alexander Irvine
... arisen until it was a gale, and it began to rain. Gently at first the drops came down, until at length there was a torrent of water descending from the overhead clouds. But those in the Falcon ...
— Tom Swift and his Great Searchlight • Victor Appleton
... tent, across the starry heavens, Woven of interlacing beams of light Flung lightly o'er the arches which supported, High overhead, the ...
— The Last West and Paolo's Virginia • G. B. Warren
... hear the midnight flight of birds passing through the air and darkness overhead, in countless armies, changing their early or late summer habitat? It is something not to be forgotten. A friend called me up just after 12 last night to mark the peculiar noise of unusually immense flocks migrating north (rather late this year.) In the silence, shadow and delicious odor of the hour, ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... the high road. When she got there she stood still and looked about her. Which way should she go? It had turned out a beautiful afternoon, though the morning had been so stormy. The road was nearly dry already, the sky overhead was blue, save here and there where little feathery clouds were flying about in some agitation; it might rain again before night, for though not exactly cold, there was no summer glow as yet, and the sunshine, though bright, had a very April ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... in his place, Prone and sprawling on his face, More like brute than any man Alive or dead, By his great pump out of gear, Lay the peon engineer, Waking only just to hear, Overhead, Angry tones that called his name, Oaths and cries of bitter blame,— Woke to hear all this, and, waking, ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... telling stories to the two little blonde children who were making the falling pink blossoms into necklaces at her feet; the pigeons, Dionea's white pigeons, which never leave her, strutting and pecking among the basil pots, and the white gulls flying round the rocks overhead. This is what I heard... "And the three fairies said to the youngest son of the King, to the one who had been brought up as a shepherd, 'Take this apple, and give it to her among us who is most beautiful.' And the first fairy said, 'If thou give it to me ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... outspread before him, calm, uninvaded by any alien being, man or animal. The great ilex trees were immobile, fixed as the eternal stars overhead. And he shrank in swift protest, almost in terror, being called on thus to face things apparently super-normal, forces unexplored and uncharted, defying reason, giving the lie to ordinary experience and ordinary belief. ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... toned to the appropriate dimness, as it stole through the stained windows, the same hour her husband stood in the log church of the wilderness, its arches and pillars outside—the tall old trees locking arms overhead. Nature softened the fierce rays in this temple as well, for they filtered through thick green boughs, and flecks of light fell here and there, a stray one resting halo-like upon the minister's head, transfiguring him in the eyes ...
— Divers Women • Pansy and Mrs. C.M. Livingston
... lands, and the great heat begins to pass, countless larks resume their song, while from every orchard one hears the subdued murmur of doves or the mellow notes of the nightingale. Storks sweep in wide circles overhead or teach their awkward young the arts of flight, or wade solemnly in search of supper to some marsh where the bull-frogs betray their presence by croaking as loudly as they can. The decline of the sun is quite rapid—very often the afterglow ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... the little boy, who was trying in vain to scramble up one of the posts of the piazza, in order to reach a humming-bird's nest, which hung in the tendrils of a creeper overhead, and which a light puff of wind now set swinging, so as to attract the child's eye. What child ever saw a humming-bird thus rocking—its bill sticking out like a long needle on one side, and its tail at the other, without longing to clutch it? So Denis cried out ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... of large birds flew up from his path, as he advanced; among others, the beautiful argus-pheasant, that almost rivals the peacock in the splendour of its plumage. These rare creatures would whirr upward, and alight among the branches of the trees overhead; and, strange to say, although nearly as large as peacocks, and of a most striking and singular form, Caspar could never get his eyes upon them after they had ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... Overhead the green, shining leaves of stephanotis spread a canopy, pale clusters of its white, heavy-scented bloom gleaming star-like in the faint light of Chinese lanterns swung from the leaf-clad roof. From somewhere near at hand came the silvery, ...
— The Lamp of Fate • Margaret Pedler
... up at dawn to tell me there was a queer chugging overhead, that sort of scared him. I jumped up, because of course I knew what that must mean. And sure enough I was just in time to see a biplane pass over at a good height, and head up the lake. I lost it back of the barn, because a flock of crows came flying along, stretching out for a mile ...
— The Aeroplane Boys Flight - A Hydroplane Roundup • John Luther Langworthy
... look up through the canyon and see that only a little of the blue heaven appears overhead—a crescent of blue sky, with two or three constellations peering down upon us. I do not sleep for some time, as the excitement of the day has not worn off. Soon I see a bright star that appears to rest on the very verge ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell
... till she died; then the Empress put me in a convent and I was forgotten. The convent was on the side of a bare yellow hill, where bees made a hot buzzing in the thyme. Below was the sea, blazing with a million shafts of light; and overhead a blinding sky, which reflected the sun's glitter like a huge baldric of steel. Now the convent was built on the site of an old pleasure-house which a holy Princess had given to our Order; and a part of the house was left standing with its court and garden. The nuns ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... border comes Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champaign head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides, With thicket overgrown, grotesque, and wild, Access denied; and overhead up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... solar body than when they are above us; and having more light from the sun they give more light, and the bodies which are most luminous appear the largest. As may be seen by the sun through a mist, and overhead; it appears larger where there is no mist and diminished through mist. No portion of the luminous body is ever visible from any spot within the pyramid of pure ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci
... to befall the luckless owner. The people had days of good luck and of bad omen. They cut their hair, and sacrificed it to rivers. They marked the flight of birds, particularly that of the owl. On seeing this night bird flying overhead at the battle of Salamis, the soldiers considered it a good sign, took courage, and won the fight. When one was going round an altar, he took care to keep his right hand towards it. People anointed sacred stones in token ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... laden, we set sail from Keeling bay for Bantam, having never a top-sail overhead, as the top-sails had been blown from the yards while Mr Davis was removing the ship from her original station to another bay, seven leagues more to the westward. As the junk went better than we, I wrote a letter by her ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... country is bright and beautiful with its broad meadows waving before the western wind like seas of green, and the yellow corn, gleaming in the field where the sun-burnt reapers are singing; though the flowers shed their fragrance, and the breeze sighs softly through the branches overhead in monotones, but slightly varied, yet sweet and soothing; though the wood is made vocal with the song of birds, and all nature is jocund and bright—notwithstanding, all this, the winter, strange as it may seem, was ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... to the little harbour, and embarked on board Ellis's boat. The sea heaved and rocked even there; the torn clouds went hurrying overhead in a ...
— The Doom of the Griffiths • Elizabeth Gaskell
... at the breast. Ludlow Street—the tenement—are forgotten; eleven o'clock is not yet. Down along the silver gleam of the river a mighty city slumbers. The great bridge has hung out its string of shining pearls from shore to shore. "Sweet land of liberty!" Overhead the dark sky, the stars that twinkled their message to the shepherds on Judaean hills, that lighted their sons through ages of slavery, and the flag of freedom borne upon the breeze,—down there the tenement, the—Ah, well! let us forget as ...
— The Battle with the Slum • Jacob A. Riis
... a devil of a row awakened me; I listened, and heard a rush overhead like a burst of cavalry, the trampling of horses, the yelling of dogs, together with the loud voices of many men in high contention. What the mischief can have ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... Ah me! The Noble Flea! While he was thus weeping, And his sad watch keeping, A glossy raven overhead, Flew swiftly down and gently said, Oh my friend, oh brilliant bug, Why are you weeping on the rug? The bug replied, O glossy raven, With your head all shorn and shaven, I am now weeping, And sad watch keeping, Over, Ah me! The Noble Flea. The ...
— The Women of the Arabs • Henry Harris Jessup
... occurred to him that he was cold, and getting up abruptly, he went to the fireplace, and kicked the charred sticks of driftwood together over a graying bed of ashes. Then he heard a chair pushed back overhead and a soft, tired step, and he wondered vaguely if his mother's room was comfortable. Reaching for the bellows, he knelt down and blew the reluctant embers into a faint glow; when a hesitant flicker of flame caught the half-burned ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... the air could play through the cabin and those within could look out at the river; but at present it closed the openings and kept out both the night air and the glances of passers-by. At the other end was a door opening into the smaller cabin allotted to the girls. A lamp swung from the beams overhead. Mysa gave a cry of pleasure as they entered and was about to spring to her feet, ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... crying overhead—and giving a kind of gasp the wretched father stops in some indifferent speech he was trying to make. "I can't help myself," he groans out; "my wife is so ill, she can't attend to the child. Mrs. Mackenzie ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray |
