"Pitchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a sonnet to the princess, who regarded him wide-eyed. The troll came back from a tunnel after he finished, and said curtly: "This way." Cappen took the girl's hand and followed her into a pitchy, reeking dark. ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... state-bedstead, and with a little exertion trundled it forward. Behind its tapestry hangings a secret door, suspected only by a crack in the wainscotting, opened beneath his prying fingers, and revealed a spiral staircase leading downward into pitchy darkness. Comprehending Malespini's admonition, he hastily appropriated the candles, and, drawing the bedstead into its place behind him, descended the dizzily circling steps. Eighty-seven he counted, twisting round and round ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... bank for the night, and each with his pack proceeded to push his way through the thick willows and alders and over the rocks. It was so dark we could not see each other. Falling down constantly and struggling to our feet again, we stumbled on through the pitchy blackness and down-pouring rain, until suddenly we discerned the glowing light of our campfire and came upon Hubbard frying bacon. George and I were too tired to eat; we were glad to lie down in our wet clothes on the bed of spruce ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... The night was pitchy dark. In the first gust of wind their temporary torches were extinguished, and only the red brands dancing and flitting in the gloom like drunken will-o'-the-wisps indicated their whereabouts. Their way led up Pine-Tree Canyon, at the head of which a broad, low, bark-thatched cabin burrowed ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... is the matter; I gasp, when I think of you. I am convinced of heaven and hell almost in the same breath—experience each in rapid succession. One touch of your hand and one look, I think would cure me. I seem as if in a thunder-storm—pitchy blackness with flashes of light—and in the flashes I see ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... one or two small trees in order to effect a passage. After a great deal of danger and difficulty, we succeeded in returning on the true bridle-path, and arrived about ten at night in a small village, through which we had passed three hours before. The gloom and pitchy darkness of an American forest at night, cannot be conceived by the inhabitants of an open country, and the traversing a narrow path interspersed with stumps and logs is both fatiguing and dangerous. Our horse seemed so well aware of this danger, that whenever the night set in, he could not ...
— A Ramble of Six Thousand Miles through the United States of America • S. A. Ferrall
... down to within a hundred feet of the sea-level. We made a grand fire, and after an early breakfast pushed merrily on all day along beautiful forested shores embroidered with autumn-colored bushes. I noticed some pitchy trees that had been deeply hacked for kindling-wood and torches, precious conveniences to belated voyagers on stormy nights. Before sundown we camped in a beautiful nook of Deer Bay, shut in from every wind by gray-bearded ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... with clouds is in the sky; I seem to feel, upon my limbs, the weight Of its vast brooding shadow. All in vain Turns the tired eye in search of form; no star Pierces the pitchy veil; no ruddy blaze, From dwellings lighted by the cheerful hearth, Tinges the flowering summits of the grass. No sound of life is heard, no village hum, Nor measured tramp of footstep in the path, Nor rush of wing, while, ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... a really satisfactory fire, one that would endure the rain, she must cut fuel from some of the logs Ben had hewn down and dragged to the cave. She lighted a short piece of pitchy wood, intending to locate the heavy camp axe. Then, putting on her heavy coat—the same garment of lustrous fur which Ben had sent her back for the day of her abduction—she ventured into ...
— The Sky Line of Spruce • Edison Marshall
... before I was awakened again, this time not by the noise of the storm, but by a curious movement of my bedstead. I had once felt the slight shock of an earthquake, and it seemed to me that this must be something of the kind. Certainly my bed moved under me. I sat up. The room was pitchy dark. In a moment I felt another movement, but this time it did not seem to me to resemble an earthquake shock. Such motion, I think, is generally in horizontal directions, while that which I felt was more like the movement of a ship upon the water. The ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... his position there. At eleven o'clock, Dalbrque climbed a bank, scrambled over a wire fence, hid his bicycle under the branches and moved away. It seemed impossible to follow him in the pitchy darkness, on a mossy soil that muffled the sound of footsteps. Rnine did not make the attempt; but, at daybreak, he came with his chauffeur and hunted through the park all the morning. Though the park, which covered the side of a hill and ...
— The Eight Strokes of the Clock • Maurice Leblanc
... precise—for Lambert, who was born and had spent his earliest years there, knew every spot of the ground. They took their shoes off, and walking upon the hard sand which formed the ground, entered the pitchy darkness. Lambert going first, and knowing that a sound would be fatal—for they would have little chance in that narrow passage—he turned every angle as accurately as if it had been daylight, and the officers holding, ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... John Mangles, "they must have perished, for in the midst of these breakers in a heavy swell on that pitchy night, they ran to ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... lever. Instantly a cone of black mephitis shot forth, a loathsome, bituminous stream of putrefaction that reeked of the grave and the cesspool, of the utmost reaches of decay before the dust accepts the disintegrated atoms. The first touch of seething, pitchy destruction brought screams of sudden agony from the guinea pigs, but the screams were cut short as the little animals fell in shocking, instant decay. The very cage which imprisoned them shriveled and retreated from the hellish, devouring breath that struck its noisome rot ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... simple enough to find what they wanted. There was a broad skylight of dark green glass propped up a foot or more above the level of the rest of the flat roof. Beside it Terry dropped upon his knees and pushed his head under the glass. All below was pitchy-black, but he distinctly caught the odor of Durham ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... fireplace, to left, a fire of pine roots was crackling. The room was filled with their pitchy, wholesome perfume, with the dancing light of their blaze and with the warmth made grateful by that ...
— The Air Trust • George Allan England
... down the precipitous mountain into the black, rocky bed of the Cheat, hundreds of feet below; have dashed at speed round steep grades hewn in the solid rock, where the sharp, jagged peaks rose a thousand feet beneath us; and I have raced in pitchy nights on the western rivers in tinder-box boats, that seemed shaking to pieces away from their red-hot furnaces; but I do not recall any piece of travel that gave the same sense of the instability of railroad affairs ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... Once I caught the name of Charles Le Sorcier, and again I fancied that the words "years" and "curse" issued from the twisted mouth. Still I was at a loss to gather the purport of his disconnected speech. At my evident ignorance of his meaning, the pitchy eyes once more flashed malevolently at me, until, helpless as I saw my opponent to be, I ...
— Writings in the United Amateur, 1915-1922 • Howard Phillips Lovecraft
... candles stuck by lumps of clay to their felt hats, the travellers have painfully descended by perpendicular ladders and along dripping-wet rock passages, fathoms down into pitchy darkness; the miner who guides them ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... now fastening their long rattan ladders before descending them to collect the nests. We crept along the logs and listened to the everlasting twittering far below; but, although we could see nothing but pitchy darkness, the thought of what was below made me soon crawl back with a very ...
— Wanderings Among South Sea Savages And in Borneo and the Philippines • H. Wilfrid Walker
... short visit to the country, at the house of O'Driscol, the newly-made magistrate. It was pretty late that evening when he took leave of the Purcels, but as the distance was not far he felt no anxiety at all upon the subject of his journey. The night, however, was so pitchy dark, that even although well acquainted as he was with the road, he found some difficulty in avoiding the drains and ditches that enclosed it. At length he had arrived within a couple of hundred yards of O'Driscol's house, when as he was proceeding along ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... night's faint rim Gaze sick with longing on them as they speed With golden gates, that only shut on him; And shapes sometimes from hell's abysses freed Flap darkly by him, with enormous sweep Of wings that roughen wide the pitchy deep. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... but seems his boat. And now the naumachie begins; Close to the surface her self spins: Arachne, when her foe lets flye A broad-side of his breath too high, That's over-shot, the wisely-stout, Advised maid doth tack about; And now her pitchy barque doth sweat, Chaf'd in her own black fury wet; Lasie and cold before, she brings New fires to her contracted stings, And with discolour'd spumes doth blast The herbs that to their center hast. Now to the neighb'ring henbane top Arachne hath her self wound ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace
... single wings would scull them farthest. One might impute instinct or whatever it is to the pine tree too, she works so methodically for the preservation of her species. A year ago last spring the mother pine put forth the beginnings of those pine cones that now dangle brown and pitchy, or drop to the ground, useless except as kindlings for my campfire. Then they were wee golden-green buds of pistillate flowers, set high on the uppermost branch tips that the pollen from the tree's own staminate blooms might miss them in its flight down the wind and thus avoid ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... were infantry, could move around them, though a running skirmish was kept up for some miles. Hobson was close in rear, and Judah's men were approaching Buffington. Morgan reached the river near the ford about eight o'clock in the evening. The night was pitchy dark, and his information was that a small earthwork built to command the ford was occupied by a permanent garrison. He concluded to wait for daylight. The work had in fact been abandoned on the preceding day, but at daybreak in the morning he was attacked. Hobson's ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... proceeded (having first with her art made the night itself more dark, and involved her head in a pitchy cloud), to explore the field, and examine one by one the bodies of the unburied dead. As she approached, the wolves fled before her, and the birds of prey, unwillingly sheathing their talons, abandoned their repast, while the Thessalian witch, ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... myself beginning to melt, like a snow ball in the heat of the sun; whereupon my master gave me some soporific drink, so that I fell asleep, but by the time I awoke, he had conveyed me to a considerable distance, on the other side of the wall. I found myself in a valley of pitchy darkness, and as it seemed to me, limitless. At the end of a little time, I could see by a dim light, like that of a dying candle, innumerable human shades—some on foot, and some on horseback, running through one another like the wind, ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... themselves in their accounts of these apparitions; but that may have arisen from the uncertain situations in which they saw her. Sometimes it was by the flashes of the thunder-storm lighting up a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her careering across Tappan Zee or the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay. At one moment she would appear close upon them, as if likely to run them down, and would throw them into great bustle and alarm, but the next flash would show her far off, always sailing ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... phenomenon that has occurred in Canada since the country became inhabited by civilized man, was first seen in October, 1785, and again in July, 1814. At noonday a pitchy darkness, of a dismal and sinister character, completely obscured the light of the sun, continuing for about ten minutes at a time, and being frequently repeated during the afternoon. In the interval between each mysterious ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... and the moon is full: Imps with long tongues are licking at my brow, And snakes with eyes of flame crawl up my breast; Huge monsters glare upon me, some with horns, And some with hoofs that blaze like pitchy brands; Great trunks have some, and some are hung with beads. Here serpents dash their stings into my face, All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives His red-hot talons in my burning scalp. Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears Like crackling coals, and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... at length, anchored off the coast of Borneo! not under very pleasant circumstances, for the night is pitchy dark, with thunder, lightning, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... the period already described as the moment when Captain Truck disposed himself to sleep in the launch of the Dane. The weather had sensibly altered in the brief interval, and there were signs that, to the understanding of our young seaman, denoted a change. The darkness was intense. So, deep and pitchy black, indeed, had the night become, that even the land was no longer to be distinguished, and the only clues the two gentlemen had to its position were the mouldering watch-fires of the Arab camp, and the direction ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... First thick clouds rose from all the liquid plains; Then mists from marishes, and grounds whose veins Were conduit-pipes to many a crystal spring; From standing pools and fens were following Unhealthy fogs; each river, every rill Sent up their vapours to attend her will These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt earth and heaven And as Night's chariot through the air was driven, Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue Talk'd to the Echo; satyrs broke their dance, And all the upper world lay in a ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... transports as she comes sailing down the turbid stream of the great Father of Waters, laden to the water's edge with brown bales of cotton, and emitting from her lofty, red crowned smoke-stacks dense clouds of pitchy black smoke, is most wonderful. Unlike ocean-steamers, the river-steamer carries her load upon her deck. Built to penetrate far towards the head-waters of rivers and bayous that in summer become mere shallow ditches, these steamers have a very light draught. ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... night drew on our spirits sank again, for with the daylight all evidence of our security vanished away. We could no longer see the firm rock on which we lay, while we were stunned with the violence of the tempest that raged around us. The night grew pitchy dark as it advanced, so that we could not see our hands when we held them up before our eyes, and were obliged to feel each other occasionally to make sure that we were safe, for the storm at last ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... I cast my looks? to heaven? Black pitchy clouds from thence rain down revenge. The earth shall I behold, stain'd with the gore Of his heart-blood, that died most innocent? Which way soe'er I turn mine eyes, methinks His butcher'd corpse ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... sun lies in all its power and warmth, unaffected by the cloud; and the light will yet strike, the light of His love will yet pierce through, with its merciful shafts bringing healing in their beams, and dispersing all the pitchy darkness of man's transgression. And as the mists gather themselves up and roll away, dissipated by the heat of that sun in the upper sky, and reveal the fair earth below—so the love of Christ shines in, molting the mist and dissipating the fog, thinning it off in its thickest places, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fell a tremendous downpour of rain, with pitchy darkness, which seemed so timely for the Iroquois that Radisson remarks, "To my thinking, the Devill himselfe made that storme to give those men leave to escape from our {204} hands." All sought shelter. When the storm was over the Iroquois had escaped. The victors found "11 ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... too dark to strike," he growled. "Wait till the moon is from behind that cloud. Ugh! It is black here, pitchy black." A full, heavy minute elapsed, disturbed by the scuffle of the negro's feet as he ran and cowered in the furthest corner, and the soft creaking of the iron door, and a sudden suck and soughing of the ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... the portals seven Above our abodes he hover'd With lances that yawn'd for carnage; But vanish'd, afore his chaps With slaughter of Thebes were glutted; Afore the flicker of pitchy flame Might to the crown of turrets climb. So fierce the rattle of war around Was pour'd on his rear by the serpent-foe Hard match'd in deadly encounter. For Jove the over-vaunting tongue Supremely hates. Their full fed stream Of gold, of clatter, and ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... body where he had laid her cold hands and breast to take what heat there was in him, and the breath was of his own lungs, putting life into hers through their two mouths....She opened her eyes. It was dark. The darkness she had come out of was bright beside this pitchy night, and her struggle back to life less painful than the fierce labor of the wind and waves. Their frail precarious craft was in ceaseless peril. His left arm held her like a vice, but for greater safety he had bound a rope round ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... little inn about nine in the evening on a night that was pitchy dark, and in a wind which made it necessary for him to hold his hat on to his head. "What a beastly country to live in," he said to himself, resolving that he would certainly sell Vavasor Hall in spite of all family associations, if ever the power to do so should ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... suggestion, which, as the blackness round us was pitchy, seemed a good one. At any rate it answered, for off we went at a fair pace, the three camels marching in line, first over soft ground and afterwards on a road. Presently I thought that the rain had stopped, since for a few seconds none ...
— Queen Sheba's Ring • H. Rider Haggard
... the enemy driven out, and they were set on fire. The blaze lighted up the midnight sky, announcing to the fainting garrison that relief was approaching. Barrier after barrier was passed, and for many an hour in the midst of the howling storm and pitchy darkness a fierce battle raged. The victorious Hollanders pushed further on, but still two forts of great strength, those of Zoeterwoude and Lammen, lay between them and the city, garrisoned by the enemy's best troops and armed with heavy artillery. They must be captured ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... appreciation of the tremendous irresistibility of the freshet, which must have ended the lives of the hapless party almost on the instant. The bravest swimmer would be absolutely helpless in the grasp of such a terrific current, and in a night of pitchy darkness would be unable to make the first intelligent effort ...
— The Telegraph Messenger Boy - The Straight Road to Success • Edward S. Ellis
... a black-faced cloud the world doth threat, In his dim mist the aspiring mountains hiding, From earth's dark womb some gentle gust doth get, Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding, Hindering their present fall by this dividing; So his unhallow'd haste her words delays, And moody Pluto ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... seemed to burn wildly; it did not glow and sputter and pale and brighten and sing like an honest camp-fire. It blazed in red, fierce, hurried flames, wild to consume the logs. It cast a baleful and sinister color upon the hard faces there. Then the blackness of the enveloping night was pitchy, without any bold outline of canon wall or companionship of stars. The coyotes were out in force and from all around came their wild sharp barks. The wind rose and ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... had a quaver of earnestness in it that needed no daylight to enforce. The pitchy night made a bobbing blur of him as he rode his quick-stepping little ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... gathered round when the light went out suddenly as if it had been quenched in water. In a second we were in pitch darkness and our leader called out "Choke damp—back for your lives," and in the pitchy darkness back we struggled. I have forgotten to say that water was running down the air-way like a little mill-stream, though it was barely over shoe-tops. We scrambled on with the deadly gas following us, sucked and drawn along by the draught of air. I was last ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... conscience. On the shelf over the stove there stood a miserable little lamp whose light fell on two sheriff's officers and a lawyer's clerk, with stern countenances, leaning against the wall. The windows were hung with rags, the alcoves were pitchy dark, a mute silence reigned ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... night. Heavy clouds had obscured the setting sun and now, as the clock in the great stone tower boomed twelve, the darkness was pitchy." ...
— Kent Knowles: Quahaug • Joseph C. Lincoln
... cutter was found too ill to utter an order. But Mr Maitland, well knowing his Chief, and that this was service which must be done, at once assumed the command, and got the vessel under weigh. He stood over to Ceuta. The night was so pitchy dark and so calm that the cutter was unperceived by the enemy, and yet so close among them that the words of command in French and Spanish could be distinctly heard. At daybreak she was about gunshot distance from the whole Spanish fleet. When they saw her their ...
— The Surrender of Napoleon • Sir Frederick Lewis Maitland
... seen spinning in immense rolling masses, the outer parts of which were turned by the sunshine to a dingy brown color, while the main stem of the column, rising directly from the great crater, was of pitchy blackness. ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... The night was pitchy dark, and blazing flashes of lightning showed a white ascending road at intervals. Rain rushed in torrents, splashing against the carriage wheels, which moved uneasily, as though they could but scarcely stem the river that swept down upon them. Far away above us to ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... a white nightcap and nightshirt were discernible in almost pitchy darkness), they saw him strut back from the window to slip downstairs and surprise them. Mr Pinsent paused only to insert his feet into a pair of loose slippers, and again, as he unbolted the back door, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... confident now of the strength to protect him of the man-o'-war's men, and every now and then, as the party continued its way along what proved to be a carefully constructed tunnel, he stopped short and whispered to Murray to shade the light while he hurried on into the pitchy darkness. ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... disdained as unnecessary impediments on a fishing trip. Then with a final glance from the window at the fast-graying sky, he reached behind the bookcase for his carefully concealed pole and tackle, gathered his shoes in one hand, and tiptoed down the pitchy hall with the stealth of ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... as pitchy copper-ore (Ger. Kupferpecherz), and of some importance as an ore of copper, is usually classed as a variety of chrysocolla containing much admixed limonite. It is dark brown to black in colour, with a ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... bit of a philosophical turn, and I daresay I spent the best part of five minutes in such thoughts before I went below to find where the blessed dust was stored. It was slow work hunting, feeling it was for the most part, pitchy dark, with confusing blue gleams down the companion. And there were things moving about, a dab at my glass once, and once a pinch at my leg. Crabs, I expect. I kicked a lot of loose stuff that puzzled me, ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... came sooner than he expected. The vague, black shadow of a lightless house loomed up before them. In a twinkling he was hustled across the road and into a door. Then down a flight of stairs, through pitchy darkness, guided by two of the men, a whispered word of advice now and then from the Yankee saving him from perilous stumbles. He was jerked up sharply with a command to stand still. A light flashed suddenly in his face, ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Field slipped out by the way he had come. Once in the road, he glanced back at the house, but the whole place seemed to be in pitchy darkness. There was nothing for it now but to make his way to the nearest police station, and get all the assistance possible. There was no trouble at the station across the Common, the mere mention of Field's name being sufficient. A few minutes later ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... and held his hands out through the opening, directing them with his voice, reaching into the pitchy darkness until her hands found his, and then he brought her up to him and ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... as well as winding, and so pitchy dark that the youth could not have advanced at all without stumbling, unless his host had held him all the way. At last a glimmer of light was seen in the distance. It seemed to increase suddenly, and in a few moments the two emerged from total darkness ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... a liquid Paradise: its great pellucid braes and hillocks shone with the sparkle and the hues of all the jewels in an emperor's crown. Imagine—after three days of inky sea, and pitchy sky, and Death's deep jaws snapping and barely missing—ten thousand great slopes of emerald, aquamarine, amethyst and topaz, liquid, alive, and dancing jocundly beneath a gorgeous sun: and you will have a faint idea of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... artificers to choke. Thou, high exalted in thy sphere, May'st follow still thy calling there. To thee the Bull will lend his hide, By Phoebus newly tann'd and dry'd: For thee they Argo's hulk will tax, And scrape her pitchy sides for wax; Then Ariadne kindly lends Her braided hair to make thee ends; The point of Sagittarius' dart Turns to an awl by heav'nly art; And Vulcan, wheedled by his wife, Will forge for thee a paring-knife. For want of room by Virgo's side, She'll strain a point, and sit astride, ...
— English Satires • Various
... Monstrous this; no greater Wrath God sends 'mongst Men; it comes from depth of pitchy Hell: And Virgin's Face, but Womb like Gulf unsatiate hath, Her Hands are griping Claws, ...
— Bygone Beliefs • H. Stanley Redgrove
... foreseen the Storm's impending rage, When to the Clouds the Waves ambitious rise, 10 And seem with Heaven a doubtful war to wage, Whilst total darkness overspreads the skies; Save when the lightnings darting wingd Fate Quick bursting from the pitchy clouds between In forkd Terror, and destructive state[2:2] 15 Shall shew with double ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... land was pitchy black. There are night people on the plain who love the dark. Amid the black level land they meet to frolic under the stars. Then when their sharp ears hear any strange footfalls nigh they scamper away into the deep ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... old, rough water-wit for which the Thames used to be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of the sunken Tunnel, we landed in Wapping, which I should have presupposed to be the most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque, both as to its buildings and inhabitants: the latter ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... Captain Baker now abandoned all hope of saving the ship, and gave orders to prepare the boats for launching. And now the full measure of their disaster became for the first time known; for upon proceeding to investigate, as well as they could in the pitchy darkness, it was found that they absolutely had not a boat left capable of floating. This fact once ascertained, all hands beat a retreat to the cabin, there to consult together, in such shelter as it afforded, regarding the most desirable ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... and my fingers tingled at thought of him, and so I resolutely turned my meditations elsewhere, and again in a little while I seemed to think of nothing, but lay and bathed in the silence, and indulged my eyes with the good red light of the torch, inhaling its pitchy scent. I was conscious, yet for a time I had no thought: I was like something half animal, half vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor has sense, but only lives. I seemed hung in space, as one feels when going from sleep to waking—a long lane of half-numb life, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... It was a pitchy, sleety night, the river roaring with the loose ice of spring flood, the forests noisy with the boisterous March wind. Out on the maelstrom of ice and flood launched the fifty-three colonists, March 20, 1658. By April ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... darkness would appall me by its dense gloom. All at once, while gazing at a frightful creation of my distempered mind, I seemed struck with sudden blindness. I knew a candle was burning in the room but I could not see it, all was so pitchy dark. I lost the sense of feeling, too, for I endeavored to grasp my arm in one hand, but consciousness was gone. I put my hand to my side, my head, but felt nothing, and still I knew my limbs and frame were there. ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... north, immense quantities of stores—clothing, provisions, material of every description were on fire, darkening the sky with rolling, inky clouds; an entire army corps with heavy artillery and baggage crossed the river enveloped in the pitchy, cinder-laden smoke from two bridges on fire. The forests, which had been felled from the Golden Farm to Fair Oaks to form an army's vast abattis, were burning in sections, sending roaring tornadoes of flame into rifle pits, redoubts, and abandoned ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... likewise there was activity, of construction trains laden high with rails, ties, boxes and bales, puffing out, their locomotives belching pitchy black smoke that extended clear to the ridiculous little cabooses; of wagon trains ploughing on, bearing supplies for the grading camps; and a great herd of loose animals, raising a prodigious spume as they were driven at ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... might perhaps be a safer resting-place for the night than the headquarters of some desperate smuggler, for such I conjectured that this lonely dwelling must be. The scud, however, had covered the moon once more, and the darkness was so pitchy black that I felt that I might reconnoitre a little more closely without fear of discovery. Walking on tiptoe I approached the little window ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Then in the pitchy gloom hard by I heard that which brought me to my feet—an evil scuffling, a close and desperate struggling—a man's hoarse laugh and a woman's pitiful pleading and sobbing. I had lost my staff, but I yet ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... on the fife rail at the crojack braces could have told them a different story. Clearly he saw the danger. There ahead, a little to leeward, were the long line of breakers; even in this pitchy darkness he could see their white foam-topped crests against the inky water; he fancied that even above the roaring of the wind through the rigging he could distinguish the crash with which they flung themselves hungrily against the rocks, the long-drawn sob as of disappointment with which ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... I didn't tell you. But there was no danger, really. It was too dark for him to shoot me—pitchy dark there, under the trees. I couldn't see an inch before my nose; and as I went I felt with my hand out in front of me, both sides the path. Thistledown was nothing to the lightness ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... lighted on the cliff. We had some difficulty in crossing the stream as we had no lantern. Looking after the fire was Rebekah, and later there came Mrs. Green, Alfred, Bob Green and the two other wives. The wind was blowing cold, and we were glad to sit near the blaze. You can picture the scene; pitchy darkness all round except where now and again gleams of light fell on the sounding sea below and made dimly visible the white line of surf. After staying some time, as there was no sign of the boat, we and the women ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... in water; these technically are known as "gums," and usually are so designated in commerce. Others are insoluble in water, but dissolve readily in alcohol, in naphtha, in turpentine, or in other essential oils; these are designated as "gum-resins." Still others yield oils or pitchy substances on distillation; these are known as "oleo-resins." There are many other dried vegetable juices, however, that in commerce are not classified among the gums and resins, and of these the most important is the substance commonly ...
— Commercial Geography - A Book for High Schools, Commercial Courses, and Business Colleges • Jacques W. Redway
... the Amoritish camp the cloud Bursts in its fury! on the race abhorred The parting heavens, as from a pitchy shroud. Their desolating hail-storm's wrath out-poured, More vengeful in its ire than Israel's sword! Thus was deliverance unto Gibeon shown; And by the fearful battle of the Lord, The army of the Amorites o'erthrown, And the almighty power ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 360 - Vol. XIII. No. 360, Saturday, March 14, 1829 • Various
... cheerful. But as night drew on, our spirits sank again, for with the daylight all evidence of our security vanished away. We could no longer see the firm rock on which we lay, while we were stunned with the violence of the tempest that raged around us. The night grew pitchy dark, as it advanced, so that we could not see our hands when we held them up before our eyes, and were obliged to feel each other occasionally to make sure that we were safe, for the storm at last became so terrible that it was difficult to make our voices audible. A slight variation ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... pierced on their left the flitting scuds of restless mist, and on their right fell softly over Bardlyn hill, making a weird contrast between the tender brightness of the places where it fell, and the pitchy gloom that hid the depths of the rift, and brooded in those undefined hollows ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... have ever been committed, on this continent, at least. Up stairs, in Castle Thunder, there are two or three large rooms, barred and dimly lit, and two or three series of condemned cells, pent-up and pitchy, where, by a refinement of cruelty, the ceiling has been built low so that no man can stand upright. Here fifteen or twenty were crowded together, and, in the burning atmosphere, they stripped themselves stark naked, so that when in the morning the cell-doors were opened, they ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... relieved the pitchy darkness of the cave enough to show the high ledges that ran still further ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... went home; but she was quite covered with pitch, and the cock by the well-side, as soon as he saw her, cried: "Cock-a-doodle-doo! Your pitchy girl's come back to you." But the pitch stuck fast to her, and could not be got off as long ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... go up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. Oh, let's not wait for rain to make it safe. The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough Down dark converging paths between the pines. Let's not care what we do with it to-night. Divide it? No! But ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... them. These men, moreover, tell us a great many romantic things about these gods, whereof these are some: They say that Oromazes, springing from purest light, and Arimanius, on the other hand, from pitchy darkness, these two are therefore at war with one another. And that Oromazes made six gods[114], whereof the first was the author of benevolence, the second of truth, the third of justice, and the rest, one of wisdom, one of wealth, and a third of that pleasure which accrues from ...
— Ten Great Religions - An Essay in Comparative Theology • James Freeman Clarke
... Galician Village (for the two words are Spanish, and have that signification), it a place containing, I should think, about four thousand inhabitants. It was pitchy dark when we landed, but rockets soon began to fly about in all directions, illuming the air far and wide. As we passed along the dirty unpaved street which leads to the Largo, or square in which the inn is situated, a horrible uproar of drums and voices ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... in Meroe, "Albinik underwent because the sea wind came up against him. As well punish with death him who cannot see clear in the pitchy night—him who cannot darken the light of ...
— The Brass Bell - or, The Chariot of Death • Eugene Sue
... dissolved; the waterfall deluged the valley; the mountains were covered with waves; the skies grew pitchy dark; ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... and refused to take another step. He urged it forward, but it only threw itself back upon its haunches. Just then a vivid flash of lightning revealed a great precipice upon the brink of which he stood. It was but an instant, and then the pitchy blackness hid it again from view. But he turned his horse and anxiously rode ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... gangs and the basket-women left Number Nine gallery and went further up Number Sixteen. At one turn of the road they could see the pitchy black water lapping on the coal. It had touched the roof of a gallery that they knew well—a gallery where they used to smoke their huqas and manage their flirtations. Seeing this, they called aloud upon their Gods, and the Mehas, who are thrice bastard Muhammadans, ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... with the holy night and loving world, but for the fear founded on a knowledge of the man he was; it held her frozen to the semblance of a tombstone lady beside her lord, in the aisle where horror kindles pitchy blackness with its legions at one movement. Verily it was the ghost of Mrs. Burman come to the bed, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... streamed up high and clear, she approached her face to the window-pane and started back with half a scream, as a pale, anxious visage with sad dark eyes seemed to approach her. It took a moment or two for her to discover that she had seen only the reflection of her own anxious, excited face, the pitchy blackness without having converted the window into a sort ...
— The Pearl of Orr's Island - A Story of the Coast of Maine • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... back; Crump, stand aloof! Whitford, keep near the walls! Huggins, regard your own behoof, For lo! the blazing rocking roof Down, down, in thunder falls! An awful pause succeeds the stroke, And o'er the ruins volumed smoke, Rolling around its pitchy shroud, Concealed them from th' astonished crowd. At length the mist awhile was cleared, When, lo! amid the wreck upreared, Gradually a moving head appeared, And Eagle firemen knew 'T was Joseph Muggins, name revered, The foreman of their crew. ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton |
