"Precipice" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Rosa. When nearly at the top, they entered a dense fog. Presently, the guides faced right about, and grounded their axes on the frozen snow-slope. The brother—seeing the slope still beyond, and not knowing it was merely the cornice, overhanging a precipice of several thousand feet—rushed onward. The writer will never forget their cry of agonized warning. His brother stood a moment on the very summit, and then, the snow yielding, began to fall through. One ...
— The Wonders of Prayer - A Record of Well Authenticated and Wonderful Answers to Prayer • Various
... "is that the reason why some people, when at an elevation, like a tall building, or on a high precipice, say they ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... contributions of Sir William had been always greatly the most valuable. Again, I shall not readily forget with what emotion he once told me an incident of their associated travels. On one of the mountain ledges of Madeira, Fleeming's pony bolted between Sir William. and the precipice above; by strange good fortune and thanks to the steadiness of Sir William's horse, no harm was done; but for the moment, Fleeming saw his friend hurled into the sea, and almost by his own act: it was a memory that ...
— Memoir of Fleeming Jenkin • Robert Louis Stevenson
... us; and the current hurried us with such velocity directly towards the point, that we expected momentarily to be dashed in pieces; but on coming within twice the length of the ship of the perpendicular precipice, which was some hundred feet high, the eddy swept her round three several times with great rapidity. The Captain would have dropped the anchor, but an old Chinese fisherman, whom we had taken on board to pilot us, made signs that it was too deep, and, at the same ...
— Travels in China, Containing Descriptions, Observations, and Comparisons, Made and Collected in the Course of a Short Residence at the Imperial Palace of Yuen-Min-Yuen, and on a Subsequent Journey thr • John Barrow
... sustained the violence of the raging waves, by managing their little boat very dexterously, they suffer themselves to be carried away with the impetuous torrent as swift as an arrow. The affrighted spectator imagines they are going to be swallowed up in the precipice down which they fall; when the Nile, restored to its natural course, discovers them again, at a considerable distance, on its smooth and calm waters. This is Seneca's account, which is confirmed by our ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... same tactics upon a herd of elk that contained one yearling. The eagle doubtless had his eye upon the yearling, though he would probably have been quite satisfied to have driven one of the older ones down a precipice. His chances of a dinner would have ...
— Ways of Nature • John Burroughs
... disturb its dreams, and was infinitely content. At its front flowed the tranquil river, its surface painted with cloud-forms and the reflections of drifting arks and stone-boats; behind it rose the woody steeps to the base of the lofty precipice; from the top of the precipice frowned a vast castle, its long stretch of towers and bastions mailed in vines; beyond the river, a league to the left, was a tumbled expanse of forest-clothed hills cloven by winding gorges where the sun never penetrated; and to the right a precipice overlooked ...
— The Mysterious Stranger and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... what that meant. I knew that I was tottering on the very edge of a precipice, and to save myself I tried to think of Father Dan, of Martin's mother, of my own mother, and since I could not speak ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... chrystal l'hyver conduit leurs pas, Le precipice est sous la glace; Telle est de nos plaisirs la legere surface, ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... this spot are a few trees of the ash, the first we have seen for a great distance, and from which we named the place Ash Rapids. On these hills there is but little timber, but the salts, coal, and other mineral appearances continue. On the north we passed a precipice about one hundred and twenty feet high, under which lay scattered the fragments of at least one hundred carcases of buffaloes, although the water which had washed away the lower part of the hill must have ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... one of the foolish virgins whose light hath been extinguished for lack of the saving oil,—to see you wandering as a lost sheep in the paths of darkness and error, without a hand to rescue your steps from the near and dreadful precipice! Ay, truly! . . . my spirit yearneth for you as a mother for an own babe—fain would I save you from the devices of the evil one,—fain would I—" here the minister drew out his handkerchief and pressed it lightly to his eyes,—then, as if with an effort overcoming his emotion, he added, ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... says Eric. "I have seen the spot—they call it Mitchell's Falls now—where he died. A stream of considerable size plunges over a precipice of about forty feet into a basin fourteen feet deep by as many wide. Into this he fell, probably ...
— Southern Literature From 1579-1895 • Louise Manly
... sheer out into mid-current, came the dull, heavy roar of the cataract and above the north shore rose great, billowy clouds of foam. With a sweep of our paddles, we were opposite a cleft in the vertical rock and saw the shimmering, fleecy waters of Montmorency leap over the dizzy precipice churning up from their own whirling depths and bound out to the river like ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... their stalls as a prebendary; and by many a stranger, ignorant of their true character, should have been patted and caressed. Let us hope that a fate, to which more than once they were nearly forcing us, namely, regress over a precipice, may ultimately have been their own. Once I saw such another case dramatically carried through to its natural crisis in the Liverpool Mail. It was on the stage leading into Lichfield; there was no conspiracy, as in our Irish case; one horse only out ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... waters!—from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture. Childe ...
— The World's Best Poetry — Volume 10 • Various
... terms, for it is altogether composed of sights and sounds of terror. The falls of the Potomac are awfully sublime: the dark deep gulf which yawns before you, the foaming, roaring cataract, the eddying whirlpool, and the giddy precipice, all seem to threaten life, and to appal the senses. Yet it was a great delight to sit upon a high and jutting crag, and ...
— Domestic Manners of the Americans • Fanny Trollope
... he would smite them with it; but he said nothing. So they were in great fear, and turned from him and went back in great sorrow of heart, wandering they knew not whither, until they found themselves standing on the top of a rock, and before their feet was a precipice. And Adam was so miserable that he desired to live no longer; and he cast himself down from the top of the rock, and lay on the ground below without moving; and Eve thought that he was dead, and said, "I will not live after him; it is through my fault that all these evils have come ...
— Old Testament Legends - being stories out of some of the less-known apochryphal - books of the old testament • M. R. James
... traitor, but disqualified his family for place and power; and the process of eliminating feudalism from the region of government, started by Edward I., was finished by Henry VII. Feudal society has been described as a pyramid; the upper slopes were now washed away leaving an impassable precipice, with the Tudor monarch alone in his glory at its summit. Royalty had become a caste apart. Marriages between royal children and English peers had hitherto been no uncommon thing; since Henry VII.'s accession there have ...
— Henry VIII. • A. F. Pollard
... a small schooner lying in the bay. This wise move had not long been accomplished, when a huge section of the ground occupied by the cottages slid down the great cliff and the next morning there was little to be seen but a sloping mound of lias shale at the foot of the precipice. The villagers recovered some of their property by digging, and some pieces of broken crockery from one of the cottages are still to be seen on the shore near the ferryman's hut, where the path ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... which the boat touched, is a peninsula with a narrow neck, about midway the lake on the east side. The celebrated precipice is on the east or land side of this, and is so high and perpendicular that you can jump from the top many hundred feet into the water which makes up behind the point. A man on board told us that an anchor had been sunk ninety fathoms at its base before reaching bottom! Probably ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... many years to be hardly more than a military post. At the time of Champlain's death, in 1635, there was, says Winsor, a fortress with a few small guns on the cliffs of Cape Diamond. Along the foot of the precipice was a row of unsightly and unsubstantial buildings, where the scant population lived, carried on their few handicrafts, and stored their winter provisions. It was a motley crowd which, in the dreary days, sheltered itself here from the cold blasts that blew along ...
— The Land We Live In - The Story of Our Country • Henry Mann
... daily sun-thaw congealing in thin sheets upon the rocks. He tells us that there is one peak immediately behind the hotel which yet remains unclimbed. It is the Piz Langrev, and it rises like a tower. No man could climb that mural precipice ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... precipice and got killed, like Moses Warner, when he was lost," suggested a tall fellow, ...
— The Louisa Alcott Reader - A Supplementary Reader for the Fourth Year of School • Louisa M. Alcott
... fever"—they were walking together in the garden, Arthur in silence, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe in his mouth, and Mildred humming a little tune by way of amusing herself, when they came to the wall that edged the precipice. Arthur leant over it and gazed ...
— Dawn • H. Rider Haggard
... with a quick fling of his tool he sent the reptile whirling high in the air toward the precipice. But from the clump of cactus growth along the parapet arose a sahuaro, with branching arms, and against this the snake was flung. Wrapped around the thorny top by the momentum of the cast, it hung, hissing and ...
— The Round-up - A Romance of Arizona novelized from Edmund Day's melodrama • John Murray and Marion Mills Miller
... of his first wine is delicious as the opening scenes of life or the entering upon some newly-discovered paradise look upon my desolation, and be made to understand what a dreary thing it is when a man shall feel himself going down a precipice with open eyes and a passive will—to see his destruction and have no power to stop it, and yet to feel it all the way emanating from himself—to perceive all goodness emptied out of him, and yet not be able to forget a time when it was otherwise—to hear about the piteous spectacle ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... come here almost every day while summer visitors are on the island, and we can't always judge what kind they are; but we know it is not an uncommon thing for people standing on the brink of a precipice or any height to feel an uncontrollable inclination to throw themselves down it, and therefore we are on ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... everlasting things! They cannot see the vile nature of the evil, and the foul character of the fiends that tempt and rule them. They do not see the black ruin that lies before them. So on they go, the blind leading the blind, till over the precipice they fall together. God wants their eyes to be opened. The Spirit can do the work, and through you He wants to ...
— The Authoritative Life of General William Booth • George Scott Railton
... misfortunes and disgraces cast a general shade?(458) The age, it is true, soon emerges out of every gloom, and wantons as before. But does not that levity imprint a still deeper melancholy on those who do think? Have any of our calamities corrected us? Are we not revelling on the brink of the precipice? Does administration grow more sage, or desire that we should grow more sober? Are these themes for letters, my dear lord! Can one repeat common news with indifference, while our shame is writing for future ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... before Roger again obtained news. Bathalda had injured his leg in a fall down a precipice, while stalking a deer; and was obliged to lie up in the hut for more than a fortnight. As soon as he was well enough to get about again, he joined Roger in a turkey hunt, and started the next day for ...
— By Right of Conquest - Or, With Cortez in Mexico • G. A. Henty
... families, the Patrizzi and Piccolomini, joined him in leaving the world to become hermits in the desert. The chalky cliffs overhanging the Maremma on Bernardo's estates were selected as a fitting retreat: here they dug grottoes in the sides of a precipice and lived on roots and water. They were soon followed by so many penitents as to form a community requiring a government, and, the necessity of this being made plain to them through a vision, in which Bernardo saw a silver ladder suspended between heaven ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... darkness, his torch having been extinguished. The smell of the burning resin recalled him to himself, and it required but a moment for him to remember the accident which had befallen him. For a time he scarcely dared to stir, fearing that he might pitch headlong over some precipice. He felt of his face and hands, but could detect nothing like blood. The boy had received quite a number of severe bruises, however, and when he ventured to stir there were sharp, stinging pains in his ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... disconcerted me, that I did not know what to reply, and my brain reeled, as if I had been at the edge of a precipice. Did she already know what her mother had not told her? Had she already learned what she ought to have been ignorant of? And had that heart, which I used to compare to the Vessel of Election, of which the litanies of Our Lady speak, ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... on a coast destitute of rocks, it is not surprising that its building shall have successively yielded to the impetuosity of the billows, breaking against, and easily undermining the foot of the precipice." Certainly not, say we; and it is equally un-surprising that seven out of its eight parishes having been long ago destroyed, their political consequence should not exist beyond their extermination. Mr. Oldfield, whom we remember to have often met, was ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 492 - Vol. 17, No. 492. Saturday, June 4, 1831 • Various
... notice has been advanced to account for those barrier-reefs, which encircle islands of moderate dimensions. The great reef which fronts the coast of Australia has been supposed, but without any special facts, to rest on the edge of a submarine precipice, extending parallel to the shore. The origin of the third class or of fringing-reefs presents, I believe, scarcely any difficulty, and is simply consequent on the polypifers not growing up from great depths, and their not flourishing close to gently shelving beaches where the ...
— Coral Reefs • Charles Darwin
... not sure how far she did believe my assurances, or thought me deceived, when I strenuously denied all evil intent from Harold towards his poor wife, and explained that he had merely driven over a precipice in the dark, and had a brain fever afterwards; all I could see was that, though not perfectly satisfied or convinced, she found that her brother would not allow the separation to be kept up, and therefore she resumed her favourite office of adviser. ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... indeed, some things which appear so impossible that the mind does not dwell on them for an instant. To undermine the ground for fifty feet—to devote three years to a labor which, if successful, would conduct you to a precipice overhanging the sea—to plunge into the waves from the height of fifty, sixty, perhaps a hundred feet, at the risk of being dashed to pieces against the rocks, should you have been fortunate enough to have escaped the fire of the sentinels; and even, supposing all these ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the river, after we had clambered up its sides like squirrels, he led the way across its spiky surfaced summit, and soon we were leaning forward over our horses' necks in danger of taking somersaults into space, as we peered over the sides of a precipice at the river away down beneath us. "Nothing like variety," Dan chuckled; and a few minutes later again we were leaning well back in our saddles as the horses picked their way down the far side of the ridge, old Roper letting himself ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... are careful not to appear in the bright light, or after a strain of dance music. No, fear is an abyss into which you descend step by step, until you are overcome by vertigo; your feet slip, and you plunge with closed eyes to the bottom of the precipice. Now, if you read the accounts of all these apparitions, you'll find they all proceed like this: First the sky darkens, the thunder growls, the wind howls, doors and windows rattle, the lamp—if there is a lamp in the room of the person the ghosts are trying to frighten—the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... Italy. In his youth, it was said, he had eloped with a married woman of high rank; the escapade was scarcely startling in his social world, but it had clung to men's minds because of an additional tragedy: the alleged suicide of the insulted husband, who appeared to have flung himself over a precipice in Sicily. The prince then lived in Vienna for a time, but his more recent years seemed to have been passed in perpetual and restless travel. But when Flambeau, like the prince himself, had left European celebrity and settled in England, it ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... covered at the top with green bushes, and now and then a sheep, or a cow, separated from the grazing flock, came to the edge of the precipice, ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... partially explaining how it was originally lodged in its former resting place. A short distance below the Flume are the Georgiana Falls, where the water descends for more than a hundred feet over a sheer precipice. ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 2 • Various
... splendidly booted and cuirassed, made up a sufficient cavalcade to fetch home one snivelling goatherd. It was four by the time they were off, seven before they were at Abano, eight when they reached the foot of Monte Ortone and faced the deep chestnut woods in which that precipice dips his flanks. But though it was getting dusk there were eyes sharp enough on the top of the mountain to watch for what sharp ears had heard—a most unaccustomed sound in those leafy solitudes—trotting horses and jingling steel. Castracane ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... Dea were grateful. Deformity is expulsion. Blindness is a precipice. The expelled one had been adopted; the ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... might with much greater truth be ascribed to the author of Antony and la Tour de Nesle. Scribe invents and eludes where Dumas invents and dares. The theory of Scribe is one of mere dexterity: his drama is a perpetual chasse-croise at the edge of a precipice, a dance of puppets among swords that might but will not cut and eggs that might but will not break; to him a situation is a kind of tight-rope to be crossed with ever so much agility and an endless affectation of peril by all his characters ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... been so, he never would have made a promise he intended to violate. She retired from him. After a time he arose, less wounded than benumbed by the sharp uncovered stones in the garden-walk; and, as a man who fears to fall from a precipice goes farther from it than is necessary, so did Amadeo shun the quarter where the gate is, and, oppressed by his agony and despair, throw his arms across the sundial and rest his brow upon it, hot as it must have been on a cloudless ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... joy I discover, my dearest son," replied the Abbot, "that I have arrived in time to arrest thee on the verge of the precipice to which thou wert approaching. These doubts of which you complain, are the weeds which naturally grow up in a strong soil, and require the careful hand of the husbandman to eradicate them. Thou must study a little volume, ...
— The Abbot • Sir Walter Scott
... boiling torrent, and the horrible fate that awaited us should one of them fall or falter!... The Seora ——- and I shut our eyes and held each other's hands, and certainly no one breathed till we were safe on the other side. We were then told that we had crossed within a few feet of a precipice over which a coach had been dashed into fifty pieces during one of these swells, and of course every one killed; and that if instead of horses we had travelled with mules, we must have been lost. You may imagine that we were not sorry to reach Sopayuca; where the people ran out to the door at ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon de la Barca
... Grande Chartreuse as 'one of the most solemn, the most romantic, and the most astonishing scenes.... I do not remember to have gone ten paces without an exclamation that there was no restraining. Not a precipice, not a torrent, nor a cliff, but is pregnant with religion and poetry.' 4. The same passionate appreciation extends with the Romanticists to all full and rich beauty and everything grand and heroic. 5. ...
— A History of English Literature • Robert Huntington Fletcher
... only added (if an addition could be made) to my distress; for the moment I turned about I found a large crocodile, with his mouth extended almost ready to receive me. On my right hand was the piece of water before mentioned, and on my left a deep precipice, said to have, as I have since learned, a receptacle at the bottom for venomous creatures; in short, I gave myself up as lost, for the lion was now upon his hind legs, just in the act of seizing me; I fell involuntarily to the ground with fear, and, as it afterwards appeared, he sprang over ...
— The Children's Hour, v 5. Stories From Seven Old Favorites • Eva March Tappan
... getting fat and that's about it—and I had to half pull a much fatter man than myself who pretended to help me. I finally told them I'd go alone unless the fat man went away, so the other two drove him off. Going down is worse. It's like looking over a precipice all the time. I was so glad when I got down that I sang with glee. I hate work like that, and to make it worse I took everybody's picture on top of the Pyramid, and forgot to have one of them take me, so there is no way to prove I ever went up. Little ...
— Adventures and Letters • Richard Harding Davis
... structure of these mountains. Vast clefts traverse them, yawning far into the earth. In South America these are called quebradas. You may stand on the edge of one of them and look sheer down a precipice two thousand feet! You may fancy a whole mountain scooped out and carried away, and yet you may have to reach the bottom of this yawning gulf by a road which seems cut out of the face of the cliff, or rather has been formed by a freak of Nature—for in these ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... dropped sharply for a long way, fifty or sixty feet perhaps, not a precipice, but with a decided drop that could only be descended with care. If Marie would only lie down and roll, she might be able to hide among the bushes at the bottom. But Marie did not think of that. Her one idea was to run ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... white splash between high wooded mountains and a dark precipice rising from a sea intense as the blue of the gentian. The population was about 140,000, mostly Italian speaking. Nominally they were Catholics, and of genuine Catholics there might have been 20,000, chiefly women. "Trieste," said Burton, "is a town of threes—three ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... steep acclivity; so that it somewhat resembled the Etruscan cities which I have seen among the Apennines, rushing, as it were, down an apparently break-neck height. About midway of the ascent stood a shabby brick church, towards which a difficult path went scrambling up the precipice, indicating, one would say, a very fervent aspiration on the part of the worshippers, unless there was some easier mode of access in another direction. Immediately on the shore of the Potomac, and extending back towards the town, lay the dismal ruins of the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... heard the pounding of many horses in pursuit. The whole dream had the underlying terror of a nightmare, and just as the distance diminished, and they were nearly caught, the ground gave way and they pitched over a precipice. As they were falling and about to be dashed on the rocks at the bottom of the ravine, she heard a woman's laugh, and recognized it as that of ...
— The Title Market • Emily Post
... the very moment he thus attacked Madame's character, mentally asked her forgiveness from the bottom of his heart. The chevalier, while admiring De Guiche's penetration, was leading him, blindfolded, to the brink of the precipice. De Guiche then questioned him more directly upon the effect produced by the scene of the morning, and upon the still more serious effect produced by the scene ...
— Ten Years Later • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... player. Like other frigid egotists, his head and heart were always at leisure; and his successes had been the means, on more than one occasion, of extending his means of disgraceful enjoyment. At least, however, his career lay on the verge of a precipice; for playing at a stake beyond the limit of his fortune, a single faltering step might at any hour precipitate him into an abyss of shame and ruin. Amelia was often tempted to doubt whether she had more cause to dread that intoxication of triumph, which ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 548 - 26 May 1832 • Various
... thorns. The wonderful water lily we covet is smiling on its green cushion of leaves just beyond the danger line, where death lurks; the rhododendron flame that burned brightest amid surrounding floral fires, and lured us, springs from the crevice of some beetling precipice, waving a challenge over fatal chasms that bar possession; and with fretful dissatisfaction we repine, because the colors of the feathered captives in our gilt cages are so dull, so faded in comparison with their brothers, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... comprehend or desired to comprehend, even though it should take them into thousands of unprintable pages. It is infinitely preferable that those who have so far given evidence of nothing better than a fatal fluency in insipid imitation of true lyric poets should fall down a precipice in the attempt to scale the very pinnacles of Parnassus. There is something heroic about the most unmitigated disaster at such ...
— Aspects of Literature • J. Middleton Murry
... She fled blindfold from it, not knowing whither, only away from that pain, over any precipice, into ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... cave of One-Ear was a hunter living some miles to the north, upon a ledge of a broad forest-covered plateau terminating on the west in a slope which ended in a precipice with more than a hundred feet of sheer descent to the valley below. On rare occasions a herd of mammoths invaded the forest and worked itself toward the apex of the plateau, and then word went all over the region, ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... of her world; for her the wind murmured, the birds sang, insects hummed or shrilled, the green saplings nodded their heads. Flowers, and the bedded moss, and the little stream that leaped from a precipice of three feet into the calm of a hand-deep pool spoke to her. She was happy. Gone was the house and its inmates; gone Paris the schoolmaster, who had taught her to write, and whose hand touching hers in guidance ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... time we write, Florence had passed through her ages of primitive religions and republican simplicity, and was fast hastening to her downfall. The genius, energy, and prophetic enthusiasm of Savonarola had made, it is true, a desperate rally on the verge of the precipice; but no one man has ever power to turn back the downward slide of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... conduct, has learned where the ridge of the hill has breadth sufficient to allow a horse and his rider a passage, and where the moss or bog is hard enough to bear them. The bogs are avoided as toilsome at least, if not unsafe, and therefore the journey is made generally from precipice to precipice; from which if the eye ventures to look down, it sees below a gloomy cavity, whence the rush of water is ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... lower down in the trunk—some large and others small—but still to be found on every tree. I was almost in despair when we came to a part of the wood where we found one of these trees down in a hollow, under the road, and another upon the precipice above. I was ready to stake my credit upon the probability that no traveller would take the trouble to go up to the tree above, or down to the tree below, merely to write the name of the god upon them; and at once pledged myself to Nathu that he should find neither the god's name nor that ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... and we come to this: The climbing road that lures the climbing feet Is lost: there lies no mist above the wheat, Where-thro' to glimpse the silver precipice, Far off, about whose base the white seas hiss In spray; the world grows narrow and complete; We have lost our perils in the certain sweet; We have sold our great horizon ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... of upland, separated from the main only by a brook, which in some seasons is dry. This island, as we may call it, is nearly covered with an enormous rock, which to this day is called Annawan's Rock. Its southeast side presents an almost perpendicular precipice, and rises to the height of twenty-five or thirty feet. The northwest side is very sloping and easy of ascent, being at an angle of not more than thirty-five or forty degrees. A more gloomy and hidden recess, even ...
— King Philip - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... will apply up in those regions!" said the doctor, after again a second's delay to speak. "And you are doing my will too much honour now—I tell you it is in a state of stagnation, and I don't at present see any precipice to tumble down. When I do, I'll promise to think of you—if that thought isn't carried away too.—Come, Linden!" he said with more expression of kindliness than Mr. Linden had seen certainly during all the voyage before,—"I believe in you, and I will!—though I suppose ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... the world, "This is our Yankee-Englishman; such links we make in Yankeeland!" As a logic fencer, advocate or Parliamentary Hercules, one would incline to back him at first sight against all the extant world. The tanned complexion; the amorphous, craglike face; the dull black eyes under the precipice of brows, like dull anthracite furnaces needing only to be blown; the mastiff mouth accurately closed; I have not traced so much of silent Berserker rage that I remember of in any other man. "I guess I should not like to be your nigger!" ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... to give, amid the most impressive surroundings, three stirring events in the lives of three great Emperors. State briefly the first story. The Emperor Maximilian was hunting a chamois, when he slipped on the edge of the precipice, rolled helplessly over, and caught a jutting ledge of rock, which interrupted his descent. An outlaw hastened to his assistance ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Literature • Ontario Ministry of Education
... as great a hurry as a boy let out of school; the third is so remarkable as to have received a name. It is a little rivulet issuing from a cavern six or seven feet high, and about twenty from the entrance to the further end, at the foot of a perpendicular precipice covered with ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... the mountain tops all crimson and purple with the sunset; and there were bright tongues of fiery cloud burning and quivering about them; and the river, brighter than all, fell, in a wavering column of pure gold, from precipice to precipice, with the double arch of a broad purple rainbow stretched across it, flushing and fading alternately in the wreaths of ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 10 - The Guide • Charles Herbert Sylvester
... bare possibility o' such a thing makes it my dooty to go an' see if it was the old man. I think the Blackfeet have drawed off to have a palaver, an' won't be back for a bit, so I'll jist slip down the precipice by our secret path; an' if they do come back when I'm away, pepper them well wi' slugs. I'll hear the shots, an' be back to you afore they can git up the hill. But if they should make a determined rush, don't you make too bold ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... the Scaricatojo the seamen constructed a rude bier, and thus they bore the dead up that wild and yet lovely precipice, persevering in their good work until they reached the cottage of Carlo Giuntotardi's sister. A little procession accompanied the body from the first, and, Ghita being universally known and respected among the simple inhabitants of those heights, ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... foot of the slide—that is to say, at the edge of the valley—there was a tall cliff, or rock wall, and over this precipice all the mass of snow now was pouring, driven with such mighty force against this wall of rock at its foot that it broke into fine particles more like mist than snow. In a vast cascade it poured down and out over the valley, making one of the most wonderful spectacles a man could see anywhere ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... affair before the King and council; Charles Townshend first, and then your brother, (you know why I am sorry they should appear together in that cause,) have tried to deprecate Sir Richard's wrath: but it was then too late. The silly fellow has brought himself' to a precipice. ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole Volume 3 • Horace Walpole
... those who sit at home in apparent calmness of safety seek perils with a maniacal persistence, perils to the intricate scheme of bodily health, perils to the mind. More human mules than the men of the banner and the sword delight in journeying at the extreme edge of the precipice. And Valentine now had to the full this secret hankering after danger. As he knew it, he despised himself for it, for this attitude of the schoolboy in which he held himself. Until now he had believed that he was free from such a preposterous and morbid bondage, free on account ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... Atawa, vainly trying to restrain him, "one step more, and you are lost!" But she spoke too late: ere the echoes of her cry had ceased, Meynell's soul had gone to its last account. He had approached too near the edge of the precipice: the snow gave way beneath his feet; a moment more, and he lay a bleeding corpse upon the ice-bound rocks below. Atawa's despairing shrieks brought out the inmates of the huts. They were obliged to use force, to separate her from the lifeless ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 385. November, 1847. • Various
... years that were kindlier and fairer, and kindled with pleasures as keen, Have eclipsed not with lights or with shadows the light on the face of it seen. For softly and surely, as nearer the boat that we gazed from drew, The face of the precipice opened and bade us as birds pass through, And the bark shot sheer to the sea through the strait of the sharp steep cleft, The portal that opens with imminent rampires to right and to left, Sublime as the sky they ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... but, borne irresistibly along in the strong current of a mighty, still emotion, pressed on with a certainty that left no room for excitement, because none for doubt. And so I came upon it. Swinging round one more rock, hanging over a breathless precipice, and landing upon the summit of the mountain, I beheld it stretched at my feet: a lake about five miles in circumference, bedded like an eye in the naked, bony rock surrounding it, with quiet rippling waters placidly smiling in the level ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 30, April, 1860 • Various
... radiance beamy Spirit, fair with womanhood! Tower thy precipice, white-gleamy, Climb unto the hour of good. Dumb space will be rent asunder, Now the shining column stands Ready to be crowned with wonder By ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... in meeting a friend, or at some political blow-out. On extreme occasions he will indulge until he becomes a helpless victim, and usually as he grows older occasions will increase, and step by step he will be lead nearer to the precipice of ruin. ...
— Searchlights on Health: Light on Dark Corners • B.G. Jefferis
... The coursers at their master's threat With quicker steps the sounding champaign beat. And now Antilochus with nice survey Observes the compass of the hollow way. 'Twas where, by force of wintry torrents torn, Fast by the road a precipice was worn: Here, where but one could pass, to shun the throng The Spartan hero's chariot smoked along. Close up the venturous youth resolves to keep, Still edging near, and bears him toward the steep. Atrides, trembling, casts his eye below, And wonders at the rashness of his foe. ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... Yosemite chasm that equals it, and, emptied of its water, this chasm would far surpass that famous canon, as the river here is a mile and a quarter deep. The bald eagle nests in the niches in the precipice secure from any intrusion. Immense blocks of the rock had fallen out, leaving areas of shadow and clinging overhanging masses that were a terror and fascination to the eye. There was a great fall a few years ago, just as the steamer had ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... man! With his little bit of stock wisdom, "You can do nothing abruptly"! Nothing abruptly! I must not check myself abruptly on the edge of the precipice, but go quietly down half-way to the gulf, and then come up again! If I were ever to do anything, it must be done abruptly—now, to-day; while the strength was on me, while there was still a force, fresh and vigorous, to match the other great ...
— The King's Mirror • Anthony Hope
... impulses of her own heart,' I said, 'knows not in her purity how near she goes to a fall. Here, in her sister's house, passionately loved by her sister's husband! She calls him 'brother,' whose eyes cannot look at her without telling their story of wicked love. She walks on the edge of a precipice—self-deceived. Were I to abandon her she might fall. My affection is her only safeguard; and by winning her to myself I shall snatch her from ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... not to goe before in the river, nor stay behind some 2 or 3 leagues. Some 3 or 4 boats now & then to land to kill a wild beast, & so putt themselves into a danger of their lives, & if there weare any precipice the rest should be impotent to helpe. We warned them to looke to themselves. They laughed att us, saying we weare women; that the Iroquoits durst not sett on them. That pride had such power that they thought themselves masters of the earth; but they will see themselves soone mistaken. ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... opening; which reduces the different platforms, or territories that surround it, to a size comparatively small. These territories are more or less varied with land and water, lakes, precipices, &c. A precipice, fourteen miles high, divides the first of them from the second. The passages from the upper world to the entrance are various; and the descents from one circle to another are effected by the poet and his guide in different manners-sometimes on foot through by-ways, ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... argument of poverty; also, that the recent application to perfect her modest learning was in parallel with an unexpressed hope of independence in the cities. Frequently—and invariably after nights when old Tom was on his sprees—Jane had found her pathetically near the precipice of desperation, and it required some pointed talks ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... the man appropriately. "Now his kraal is yonder, two hours' ride away. It is called Mafooti," and he pointed over the top of the precipice, adding: "he is a hunter and trades with ...
— The Ghost Kings • H. Rider Haggard
... was stretched like whip-cord against the dull grey of the broken precipice. You could fancy you heard the very cracking of his sinews as he rose foot by foot. The reins lay on his neck, and I saw the Black Colonel slip oft the bridle, with its heavy iron bit, to give him the uttermost chance. The rivulet of stones which his hoofs had set going grew ...
— The Black Colonel • James Milne
... follow him whithersoever he should lead him, though he should be obliged to die in the attempt, Jonathan made use of the young man's assistance, and descended from the hill, and went to their enemies. Now the enemy's camp was upon a precipice which had three tops, that ended in a small but sharp and long extremity, while there was a rock that surrounded them, like lines made to prevent the attacks of an enemy. There it so happened, that the out-guards of the camp were neglected, ...
— The Antiquities of the Jews • Flavius Josephus
... thousand feet right above their heads. It was a stern and sombre coast, unbroken by any bays or inland glimpses, and gloomy and terrible in the fading light. The great oily swell broke into spouts of foam at the cliff-foot, and all along the face of the precipice they could see innumerable sea- fowl ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... the unwilling Nymph That culls her flowers beside the precipice Or dips her shining ankles in the lymph: But, just when she must perish or be his, Heaven puts an arm out. She is safe. The shore Gains some new fountain; or the lilied lawn A rarer sort of rose: but ah, poor Faun! To thee she ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... and days amidst vast forests and hills without the slightest sensation of pleasure or sense of admiration for the scene, till suddenly your path leads you out on to the dizzy brink of an awful precipice—a sheer fall, so exaggerated in horror that your most stirring memories of Mont Blanc, the Jungfrau, and the hideous arete of the Pitz Bernina, sink into vague insignificance. The gulf that divides you from the distant mountain seems like a huge bite ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... masterly strategy and its bloodless victories. Now, in dead, by powder and disease, in crippled, etc., McClellan destroyed about 100,000 men, and the country's honor is bleeding, the country's cause is on the verge of a precipice. ...
— Diary from March 4, 1861, to November 12, 1862 • Adam Gurowski
... turned a corner to the right, a corner to the left, and ran down the long dingy street that skirts the foot of the precipice on which the Citadel is enthroned. The ramshackle houses, grey and grimy, huddled against the cliff that frowned above them with black scorn and menace. High against the stars loomed the impregnable walls of the fortress. Low in the shadow crouched the frail habitations of the poor, the miserable ...
— The Unknown Quantity - A Book of Romance and Some Half-Told Tales • Henry van Dyke
... "you're forgetting that time you tripped in the dark, and fell over a precipice a thousand feet deep, and hung there from the top, yelling for help. We came galloping to the spot, and rescued you, about as limp as a dish-rag; and you told us how you'd suffered such agonies that you lived ten years, and wanted to know if your hair had turned ...
— The, Boy Scouts on Sturgeon Island - or Marooned Among the Game-fish Poachers • Herbert Carter
... meet him. Unlike the Sorrento side of the promontory, the mountains here rise suddenly and boldly out of the sea, towering to craggy eminences, moulded and cleft into infinite variety of slope and precipice, bastion and gorge. Cut upon the declivity, often at vast sheer height above the beach, the road follows the curving of the hills. Now and then it makes a deep loop inland, on the sides of an impassable chasm; and set in each of these recesses is a little town, white-gleaming ...
— The Emancipated • George Gissing
... wrong, but an attempt to govern par bascule—by trimming betwixt the opposite parties—is equally unsafe for the crown and detrimental to the country, and cannot do for a long time. The fact seems to be that Lord Goderich, a well-meaning and timid man, finds himself on a precipice—that his head is grown dizzy and he endeavours to cling to the person next him. This person is Lord Lansdowne, who he hopes may support him in the House of Lords against Lord Grey, so he proposes to bring Lord Lansdowne into ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... count, with great indignation. "As if it were not the most dreadful calamity for Austria if she should be deprived of your services. You know that we are standing on the verge of a precipice; in the interior, the liberal and seditious desires which the senseless reforms of the Emperor Joseph have stirred up, are still prevalent, and the people only submit with reluctance and with spiteful feelings to the reforms which your excellency has inaugurated with a ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... maintained their position, killed five hundred men, and made prisoners of seventy of the principal citizens of Waterford. Large sums of money were offered for their ransom, but in vain. They were brutally murdered by the English soldiers, who first broke their limbs, and then hurled them from a precipice into the sea. It was the first instalment of the utterly futile theory, so often put in practice since that day, of "striking terror into the Irish;" and the experiment was quite as unsuccessful as all such experiments ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack
... combine, and, forming a semicircle, creep slowly towards a herd of deer, if there be a precipice near, and hemming them in gradually, so as not to alarm them suddenly, drive them to the edge of the precipice; then they all at once set up the most terrific yells, and taking flight, the poor deer leap over the precipice, where the wolves ...
— Anecdotes of the Habits and Instinct of Animals • R. Lee
... Ridgwell incredulously. "What on earth do you mean, Chris? Oh, good gracious, Chris, I've got an extraordinary feeling I'm falling over a sort of precipice." ...
— The Tale of Lal - A Fantasy • Raymond Paton
... grave council of war was summoned, to deliberate upon the mode of transit, for the honour could not be declined, "coute qui coute." The chariot was out of the question; Nicholas declared it would never reach the "Moraan Beg," as the first precipice was called; the inside car was long since pronounced unfit for hazardous enterprise; and the only resource left, was what is called in Hibernian parlance, a "low-backed car," that is, a car without any back whatever; it being neither more nor less than the common agricultural conveyance of the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Vol. 1 • Charles James Lever
... bones of a man gnawed by foxes and eagles; a man who never had been missed or inquired after. Remains of pencils and leather shoe strings among the bones proved that the man had been a pedlar, like James Stewart's messenger, who had fallen over the precipice in trying to cross from Coalisnacoan to the road through Glencoe. But he never was missed, nor is the date of his death known ...
— Historical Mysteries • Andrew Lang
... Following the sound, they came upon traces of wheels in the hill-side, where no carriage could have gone had it not been for the deep snow which concealed and smoothed away the inequalities of the ground. These marks were traced here and there till they led to the verge of the precipice, where a struggle had evidently taken place, and masses of snow had been dislodged and fallen into ...
— A Stable for Nightmares - or Weird Tales • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... all conscience sufficiently ticklish; but woe betide the poor masullah boat which shall be a little too far in advance of her proper place, so that, when the wave curls over and breaks, she may be pitched head foremost over the brink of the watery precipice, and strikes her nose on the sandbank. Even then, if there happen, by good luck, to be depth of water over the bar sufficient to float her, she may still escape; but, should the sand be left bare, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall
... point on which these watchmen stood was so high, that between them and the horizon the sea lay like half a world—an immeasurable expanse, spreading as if from a vast depth below up into the very sky. Dim and soundless lay the mass of waters— breaking, no doubt, as for ages past, against the rocky precipice below; but not so as to be heard upon the steep. If might have appeared dead, but that a ray from some quarter of the heaven, capriciously touching its surface, showed that it was heaving as was its wont. Eastwards, at the point of junction of sea and sky, a dusky yellow light shone ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... climbs the dizzy precipice, or passes over the rocking bridge, in his journey across the rugged mountains, or leads his troop of llamas to the seashore, or labours in the dark mines, bringing up vast weights from the bowels of the earth, ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... anything of that sketch; the mountain is humpbacked, and the face of that precipice is exactly like Colonel Bury;' and he caught up a pencil to help out the resemblance with nostril ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... could she expect? It was her own fault." To expect that any man with an ounce of true manhood in him would at once say, "That young girl does not in the least realize the danger she is in, and I must get between her and the edge of the precipice, and see that she comes to no harm."—this would be to expect the wildly impossible. Have we not made up our mind that the beast and not the Christ is our master here; and does not every beast spring at once on a fallen prey? It is human nature, and you will never get men to think and act any differently. ...
— The Power of Womanhood, or Mothers and Sons - A Book For Parents, And Those In Loco Parentis • Ellice Hopkins
... on the man's feet made him appear clumsy-footed, but he swung down from the giddy height as lightly and airily as a mountain goat. A rock, turning under his foot on the edge of the precipice, did not disconcert him. He seemed to know the precise time required for the turn to culminate in disaster, and in the meantime he utilized the false footing itself for the momentary earth-contact necessary to carry him on into safety. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... to the end of their journey and to the edge of a cliff two hundred feet high. It was as though a giant had taken a gouge and cut a bay right through the sea cliffs. Far across the water of the bay before them the land rose again in a precipice steep as the one on whose ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... precipice, the footsteps fell into instant silence. There was a pause, and then the ring of steel upon the stone floor. There was another pause, and Monica heard the voice of her brother. Broken, as though with running, it still retained its level accent, its ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... urges us to set forth the truth in all its nakedness and beauty. This must be done, even though it may sometimes give pain and cause irritation. If a man be walking in a trance towards the crumbling edge of some ghastly precipice, who—let me ask—acts with the greater charity, he who is afraid to interfere, and will calmly allow the somnambulist to walk on, till he fall over into the abyss; or he who will shout, and, if need be, roughly shake him from his fatal sleep, and ...
— The Purpose of the Papacy • John S. Vaughan
... cork, and bags of hay and corn, hung dangling from mighty hooks—the latter to feed the cattle, should they be compelled to camp out on some sterile spot on the Veldt, and methinks to act as buffers, should the whole concern roll down a nullah or little precipice, no very uncommon incident in the blessed region they must pass to reach ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... me from doing anything to the detriment of my creditors," said Cesar, stunned by the sudden sight of the precipice ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... beside Webster and Blake, on one of the very highest peaks of Parnassus. And, if not the highest of all, Browne's peak is—or so at least it seems from the plains below—more difficult of access than some which are no less exalted. The road skirts the precipice the whole way. If one fails in the style of Pascal, one is merely flat; if one fails in the style of Browne, one is ridiculous. He who plays with the void, who dallies with eternity, who leaps from star to star, is in danger at every moment of being swept into utter limbo, ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... his side in the utter abandonment of despair. Babalatchi, looking at him curiously, was astonished to see him smile. A strange fancy had taken possession of Almayer's brain, distracted by this new misfortune. It seemed to him that for many years he had been falling into a deep precipice. Day after day, month after month, year after year, he had been falling, falling, falling; it was a smooth, round, black thing, and the black walls had been rushing upwards with wearisome rapidity. A great rush, the noise of which he fancied he could hear yet; ...
— Almayer's Folly - A Story of an Eastern River • Joseph Conrad
... was on his feet, the place in alarum. Behind and beside them loomed the precipice and the waterfall;—there was surrender, there was conquest; there was no retreat. The fires were extinguished, the breastworks strengthened, weapons adjusted, and all the ireful preparations for hasty battle made. Then they expected their foe. Slowly over the crown of the mountain above them an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... was occupied by me in endeavoring to determine what should be my next step. To stand still in my present position was absolutely impossible: I must go forward or backward. To go backward was a simple thing enough; it was like turning round and jumping down a precipice; it made me shudder. To go forward was like climbing a precipice with beetling crags and perpendicular walls ...
— The House of Martha • Frank R. Stockton
... had just reached this station, when I felt myself grasped all at once by four Korannas, who simultaneously seized hold of me by the arms and legs. My first impression was, that they were going to hurl me over the precipice; but it was a momentary thought, and it wronged the friendly savages. They are themselves a timid race, and they were alarmed, lest my temerity should lead me into danger. They hurried me back from the brink, and then explained their motive, and asked my forgiveness. I ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 268, August 11, 1827 • Various
... Reade with reassuring positiveness. "You're out of sorts, to-night. Your head, or your nerves, or some thing, has gone back on you, and you walk through this blackness with half a notion that you're going to walk over a precipice, or drop head-first into some danger. With such a feeling it would be cruelty to let you go forward, chum, and I'm not going to do it. I'll ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... cour exhaussent quelques marches, Domine l'horizon, et toute la foret Autour de son perron comme un gouffre apparait. L'epaisseur du vieux roc de Corbus est propice A cacher plus d'un sourd et sanglant precipice; Tout le burg, et la salle elle-meme, dit-on, Sont batis sur des puits faits par le duc Platon; Le plancher sonne; on ...
— La Legende des Siecles • Victor Hugo
... we now situated? For more than two and a half years we have fought for our just rights, and what do we see if we take a retrospective view? Are we making progress, or are we gradually going down the precipice? I have been in correspondence with my officers in all parts of the country, and have received information from them as to the condition of affairs, but I must tell you that from all that information there is nothing to show me that our cause is progressing, not even ...
— The Peace Negotiations - Between the Governments of the South African Republic and - the Orange Free State, etc.... • J. D. Kestell
... saying "if you loved me, why did you betray me?" She had not gone as far as that yet. Her fall had been so tremendous that if she had any feeling about him, it was nothing more than the consciousness that he too, had gone over the precipice. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... of the vessel was driven inland, Tell perceived a solitary table rock and called aloud the rowers to redouble their efforts, till they should have passed the precipice ahead. At the instant they came abreast this point he snatched his bow from the plank, where it was lying forgotten during the storm, and, turning the helm suddenly toward the rock, he sprang lightly on shore, scaled the mountain, and was out of sight and beyond reach of pursuit, before ...
— Heroes Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... closer together, and the tower-like masses on the brink of each precipice lift their inaccessible ramparts higher and higher in the blue air. Gray-white or ochre-stained layers and monoliths shine like incandescent coals in the unmitigated radiance of the sun. I pass a little group of houses ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the car in the wide ruts made by ox-carts, but even with his good driving we swayed to right and left, leaving the rough track and ploughing into drifts dangerously near the precipice edge, or skidding as if we skated on polished ice, failing to grip ...
— The Car of Destiny • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... a warning from Heaven, that Chevalier Menars had been led across his path to save him just as he was approaching the brink of the precipice; he vowed that he would withstand all the seductions ...
— Weird Tales, Vol. II. • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... way through the somewhat thinly scattered underwood as he replied, "You see, Mister Harry, the place where he's gone to sun hisself is just at the foot o' a sheer precipice, which runs round ahead of him and juts out into the water, so that he's got three ways to choose between. He must clamber up the precipice, which will take him some time, I guess, if he can do it at all; or he must take ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... to supper, Annie smiled so sweetly and looked so gentle and kind, that he thought, "She does not seem one to push a wretch over a precipice. That warm little hand that charmed away my headache so gently cannot write Dante's inscription over my 'Inferno,' and bid me enter it as 'my own place'; and yet I ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... his very character was shaken to the foundation by his crime and its terrible consequences. He was now like a man who had glided down a soft sunny slope, and was suddenly arrested at the brink of a fathomless precipice. Bartley was cunning, selfish, avaricious, unscrupulous in reality, so long as he could appear respectable, but he was not violent, nor physically reckless, still less cruel. A deed of blood shocked him as much as it would shock an honest man. Yet now ...
— A Perilous Secret • Charles Reade |
