"Scud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... you will be knocked to pieces," she cried; for the pony, in the drift and scud, could scarcely be seen but for his helpless struggles. But the young man was half way toward him while she spoke, and she knelt upon the ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... impertinent assault was borne was complete. It was but a puff of silvery dust, powdering his mane with fresher brightness. Nothing would be left of bull but a little froth of all the foam displayed in the fierce onset. He too would turn and scud ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... sad ambition and the speedy dart! He, the fortune-reader, read poor Helen's heart; And a face created for the hearthstone's light— Fishers tell its ruin as they scud by night. ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... further examination satisfied him it was a mistake. So long had he been gazing at the same object, that it was easy for the illusion to pass before his mind's eye, of imagining a dim outline of the little lugger flying away, like the scud of the heavens, wing-and-wing, ever seeming to elude his observation. That night he dreamed of her, and there were haply five minutes during which his wandering thoughts actually portrayed the process of taking possession, and ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Stephanie sat up and gazed for a long, long time at the scud of water leaping past ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... circles, scarcely ascending at all. Again, suddenly one will shoot up almost perpendicularly, immediately followed by the other. Then they will resume the regular ascent. Up, like the woodpecker round a tree, till now the level of the rainy scud which hurries over in wet weather has long been past; up till to the eye it looks as if they must soon attain to the flecks of white cloud in the sunny sky to-day. They are in reality far from that elevation; but their true height is none the less wonderful. ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... upper works, and one of her fashion pieces being shot through, which is a principal support of the after-part of the ship, they were obliged to strap her, to keep her together. As it blew pretty fresh, they durst not carry sail, and for nearly a week together had to scud almost under bare poles, through variable winds, bad weather, and a rough sea. This was a melancholy situation for the people, in seas with which they were little acquainted, and sailing by charts on which they could not depend. Yet they found the accounts and charts of Dampier much ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume X • Robert Kerr
... shapes and fashions do the creatures great and small Over wide earth's teeming surface skim, or scud, or walk, or crawl! Some with elongated body sweep the ground, and, as they move, Trail perforce with writhing belly in the dust a sinuous groove; Some, on light wing upward soaring, swiftly do the winds divide, And through heaven's ample spaces ...
— The Consolation of Philosophy • Boethius
... said Anne, absently, as the wind blew a scud of snow against the window. "Oh, dear, will ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... was less violent, and after looking for a moment at the angry sea and the grey, cloud-wrapped sky streaked with its wisps of flying white scud, the skipper nodded slowly. "You're right," he said. "It has gone down a bit. We're beginning to feel the lee of the land. Work her up gradually to twelve knots and see how she ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... once went off to a group of sailors, but these at first shook their heads, and looked toward the sky. Its aspect was threatening. The wind was getting up fast, and masses of scud flew rapidly across it. Leslie went up to ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... golden sovereigns, not if some purchaser comes along: uncomplimentary remarks about us from you are good coin of the realm. Your heart is fastened to us here with one of Cupid's spikes through it. Out with oar and up with sail, speed your fastest and scud away: the more you put out to sea, the more the tide brings you ...
— Amphitryo, Asinaria, Aulularia, Bacchides, Captivi • Plautus Titus Maccius
... never seen before. Notwithstanding the embroidered silk and velvet hangings decorating the fronts of the rich people's houses, he caught glimpses of filthy side streets, squalid alleys, and tumble-down tenements. He saw forlorn little children scud away like rats into their holes as he drew near, and wretched, vicious-looking men and women fighting with each other for places in the crowd. Sharp, miserable faces peered round corners at him, and nobody smiled because every one hated or distrusted his neighbor, and they ...
— The Land of the Blue Flower • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... scud along the wave, And echoing thunders rend the sky; All hands aloft! to meet the storm, At midnight was the ...
— The Olden Time Series, Vol. 6: Literary Curiosities - Gleanings Chiefly from Old Newspapers of Boston and Salem, Massachusetts • Henry M. Brooks
... of a cranberry-pie; and if the simile be an homely one, it is the best that comes to mind to convey an idea of those regimental stoves, with their seams and channels of fire, over which potatoes bubble, and roast and boiled scud forth a savory odor. And here and there, wistfully regarding this active scene, amid the green shrubbery, stands a sentinel before his sentry-box, built of spruce boughs, wrought into a mimic military temple, and fanciful enough, too, for a garden of roses. ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... craft so signalling is on the scud before a stiff breeze, with all sail set, stays taut, not a rope ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the sullen clouds Scud black and swift across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit along the beach,— One little ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... vessel rides Where my obscure condition hides. Waves scud to shore against the wind That flings the sprinkling surf behind; In port the bickering pennons show Which way the ships would gladly go; Through Edgecumb Park the rooted trees Are tossing, reckless, in the breeze; On top of Edgecumb's firm-set tower, As foils, not foibles, of its power, The ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... when I reached the water-side, at a place where many pleasure-boats are moored and ready for hire; and as I went along a stony path, between wood and water, a strong wind blew in gusts from the far end of the lake. The sky was covered with flying scud; and, as this was ragged, there was quite a wild chase of shadow and moon-glimpse over the surface of the shuddering water. I had to hold my hat on, and was growing rather tired, and inclined to go back in disgust, when a little incident occurred to ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... mill-race, the men had literally to be held to the rudder at pistol point and beaten up the masts with the flat of the officers' swords. But while they skulked, a hurricane rolled up the fog; and the ship could but scud under bare poles before the wind. Rations were now down to mouldy sea-biscuits, and only fifteen casks of water remained ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... would have been inevitable; and then, no 18th Brumaire, no Consulate, no Empire, no conquest of Europe—but also, it may be added, no St. Helena. None of these, events would have ensued had not the English squadron, when it appeared off Corsica, obliged the Huiron to scud about at hazard, and to touch at the ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... second evening closed in, the sky was loaded with heavy clouds—the scud flew wildly past them—the sea increased to mountains high—and the gale roared through the rigging of the schooner, which was now impelled before it under bare poles. They were really in danger. The hatches were battened down fore and aft—the ports were knocked out to ...
— The King's Own • Captain Frederick Marryat
... Next, I'd scud beneath the sky-land, Sight the hills of Treasure Island, Prowl and peer and prod and prise, Till there burst upon my eyes Just the proper pirate's freight: Gold doubloons and pieces ...
— The Joyful Heart • Robert Haven Schauffler
... middle of winter, so I shall see Tierra del Fuego in her white drapery. We leave the straits to enter the Pacific by the Barbara Channel, one very little known, and which passes close to the foot of Mount Sarmiento (the highest mountain in the south, excepting Mt.!! Darwin!!). We then shall scud away for Concepcion in Chili. I believe the ship must once again steer southward, but if any one catches me there again, I will give him leave to hang me up as a scarecrow for all future naturalists. I long to be at work in the Cordilleras, ...
— The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Volume I • Francis Darwin
... stretched to the eastward to cross the Atlantic, we met with a most violent gale, which lasted several days, and I fully expected every hour that the vessel would go down, buried as she was by the heavy sea. At last we had no chance but to scud before the wind, which we did for two days before a raging and following sea, that appeared determined upon our destruction. On the second night, as I was on deck, watching the breaking and tossing of the billows, ...
— The Privateer's-Man - One hundred Years Ago • Frederick Marryat
... left. My father argued, and correctly, that the winds which filled our sails came from the warm climate "within." The time of the year was certainly most auspicious for us to make our dash for the "outside" world and attempt to scud our fishing sloop through open channels of the frozen zone ...
— The Smoky God • Willis George Emerson
... upon the floor. The garden, with its muddy walks, and the chill, dripping foliage of its summer-house, was an image to be shuddered at. Nothing flourished in the cold, moist, pitiless atmosphere, drifting with the brackish scud of sea-breezes, except the moss along the joints of the shingle-roof, and the great bunch of weeds, that had lately been suffering from drought, in the angle ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... anchor from the sand and pulled sharply across the water to the Gar. A reddish, misshapen moon hung in the east, and when he had mounted to his deck it was suddenly obscured by a high, racing scud of cloud; the air had a damper, thicker feel. He instinctively moved to the barometer, which he found depressed. The wind, that had continued steadily since the night before, increased, and there was a corresponding stir among the branches ...
— Wild Oranges • Joseph Hergesheimer
... downward, Hither, thither, How the weaver makes them go! As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What a scuffling! As the weaver makes his shuttle, Hither, thither, scud ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... strain; Wet to the skin We're sound within. Our sea-steed through the foam goes prancing, While shields and spears and helms are glancing. From fiord to sea, Our ships ride free, And down the wind with swelling sail We scud before ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... give her the best possible chance to weather the gale? Henderson and the boatswain were rather opposed to this plan, the gunner suggesting, as an alternative, that we should cut adrift from the wreckage that was holding us head to wind, and endeavour to get before the wind and scud; and to this view they still adhered, even after I had pointed out to them that the island of Hayti constituted a lee-shore only some twenty-five miles distant, upon which we must inevitably be dashed before morning if we adopted ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... the flood, How often have I cast for you— How often sadly seen you scud Where weeds and pussy willows grew! How often have you filched my bait! How often have you snapped my treacherous line!— Yet here I have you on this plate. You shall swim ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... colour and motion. An old eagle-topped convex mirror gathered the picture into its mysterious heart, distorting afresh the distorted shadows, and curving the gallery lines into the curves of a ship. The day was shutting down in half a gale as the fog turned to stringy scud. Through the uncurtained mullions of the broad window I could see valiant horsemen of the lawn rear and recover against the wind that taunted them with legions of dead leaves. "Yes, it must be beautiful," she said. "Would you like to go over it? There's ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... again, and Blackfriars Bridge jumps over us. On we go, now at the top of our speed, past the dingy brick warehouses that lie under the shadow of St Paul's, whose black dome looks down upon us as we scud along. Then Southwark Bridge, with its Cyclopean masses of gloomy metal, disdains to return the slightest response to the fussy splashing we make, as we shoot impudently through. Then come more wharfs and warehouses, as we glide past, while our pace slackens, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... thought, save that of compliance. She had that piquant imperiousness to which men are willing slaves when it is manifested graciously, and by a pretty woman. He was like a ship caught in a gale, and there was nothing to do but scud before it. At the same time, it seemed that she was driving him swiftly towards the haven and rest of a better ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe
... those of man. To start the engines and try to run the ship out of the grasp of the wind would only mean to strain the craft to a dangerous point. There was but one thing to do, to run before the tornado, as ships on the sea scud before the gale. In this way the airship might be saved, if it was not ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... and as I sit here writing, a scene opens before me, and I can see a plain with one solitary tree—an ash—standing by a pool of water, on the margin of which are three clusters of reeds. Dark clouds scud across the sky, and the moon only shows itself at intervals. It is an intensely wild and lonely spot, and the cold, dank air blowing across the barren wastes renders it all the more inhospitable. No one, no living thing, no object is visible save the ash. Suddenly ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... household-stuff? What did he want with comforts there? "Walls, ceiling, floor, stay blank and rough, So goods on sale show rich and rare! 'Sell and scud home' ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... all; indeed, it still fascinates me. What experience has been withheld from His Royal High-ness? Was ever so supernal a type, as he, of mere Pleasure? How often he has watched, at Newmarket, the scud-a-run of quivering homuncules over the vert on horses, or, from some night-boat, the holocaust of great wharves by the side of the Thames; raced through the blue Solent; threaded les coulisses! He has danced in every palace of every capital, played in every club. He has hunted eleplants through ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... sad piece of mis-chief, and, if I am right in my guess, Mad-am Puss, by the man-ner in which she is scud-ding out of the room is the au-thor of it. I sus-pect that, while the doll was ly-ing upon the stool, the cat be-gan to play with its long clothes, till she pull-ed it down on the floor, where it got ...
— Little Scenes for Little Folks - In Words Not Exceeding Two Syllables • Anonymous
... sky, and the wind soon blew in furious gusts, raising a sea so heavy that the Saxons were obliged to lay in their oars. By nightfall it was blowing a furious gale. In the gathering darkness and the flying scud the ships of the Danes were lost sight of; but this was of little consequence now, for the attention of the Saxons was directed to ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... irretrievable ruin, as it would at a period of greater commercial activity. Comrades Rossiter and Bristow have studied my methods. They know how I like things to be done. They are fully competent to conduct the business of the department in my absence. Let us, as you say, scud forth. We will go to a Mecca. Why so-called I do not know, nor, indeed, do I ever hope to know. There we may obtain, at a price, a passable cup of coffee, and you shall ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... million winds Gone mad immeasurably, A torrid and tortuous tempest stung By rape of the fair South Sea. And it swept like a scud escaped From craters of sun or moon, And struck as no power of Heaven could, ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... One of the boats was blown off the booms, and went clean out of sight before it touched the water. You may laugh at that, but that was nothing to the Swallow sloop of war. She was in company with us; she wanted to scud for it, but, by Jupiter, she was blown two miles up the country—guns, men, and all; and the next morning they found her flying jib-boom had gone through the church-window, and slap into the cheek of the picture of the Virgin Mary. The natives ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... gained a better idea of the British power. The German ship passed among them, shrinking, humiliated, quickening its speed. "One might suppose," mused the youth, "that she had an uneasy conscience and wished to scud to safety." A South American passenger near him was jesting with one of the Germans, "What if they have already declared war! . . . What if they should ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... crawled away from the wonderful, dying garden, oblivious to the pleadings floating, now weakly, in the torpid water. He scuffed up little motes of golden sand, leaving a low-lying scud along the bottom, back to the little black box in the garden. The plants, the box, all were forgotten by now. Cully crawled on, not knowing why. A rise appeared; surprise caught Cully unaware. A change ...
— Cully • Jack Egan
... as soon as she could speak; 'go home just as fast as you can scud; an' tell your folks,' she added with a gust of gratitude, 'that there's worse folks in the world than ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... effort, easily kept up with the moving ship. Occasionally we saw a sea snake navigating the ocean all by himself. I did not understand how these fellows went to sea and lived so far from land. The flying fish seemed to be more plentiful as we went along, and would leave the water and scud along before us. ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... storm-scud, raced the morning sky, As light along the road I fared; Stern was the way, yet glad was I, Though feet and breast and brow were bared; For fancy, like a happy child, Ran on before ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... the holidays were short. Everything seemed to urge her to break loose from her self-imposed martyrdom and go her way rejoicing; the crisp air that sang in her ears and filled her with a sense of glorious exhilaration; the shimmering sunlight on the ice that seemed to scud before her and invite her to join in the race; the knowledge that she was in reality doing Louie a doubtful service by staying beside her, and, last of all, the look of disappointment in John's eyes as he shot past them at intervals, and saw that Nan was ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... out of this walrus-hide, and watch our chance with a favorable breeze to scud us along from islet to islet on the south side here. We could run down into Ungava Bay, clean to the foot of it; and then, leaving the boat, go across to Nain. It couldn't be more than a hundred and fifty miles from the foot of the bay. We could start off, and, with a strong spurt, ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... eagerly would I rise when the desire came upon me, so hastily in the clear grey of the morning would I dress myself, lest the sun should be up before me, and I fail to catch his first lance-like rays dazzling through the forest of grass on the edge of my hollow world. Bare-footed I would scud like a hare through the dew, heedless of the sweet air of the morning, heedless of the few bird-songs about me, heedless even of the east, whose saffron might just be burning into gold, as I ran to gain the green hollow whence ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... their frames revisit, then they stand All facing westward on the rocky heights, And of the gentle breezes take their fill; And oft unmated, marvellous to tell, But of the wind impregnate, far and wide O'er craggy height and lowly vale they scud, Not toward thy rising, Eurus, or the sun's, But westward and north-west, or whence up-springs Black Auster, that glooms heaven with rainy cold. Hence from their groin slow drips a poisonous juice, By shepherds truly named hippomanes, Hippomanes, fell stepdames oft have culled, And ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... a fierce scud of hail, hitting rather than wetting, but Dolores had the satisfaction of declaring the edges of her dress to be damp and going off to change it, though Aunt Jane pinched the kilting and said the damp was imperceptible, and Wilfred muttered, ...
— The Two Sides of the Shield • Charlotte M. Yonge
... graves, Than live in slavery to slaves; Worse than the anarchy at sea, Where fishes on each other prey; Where every trout can make as high rants O'er his inferiors, as our tyrants; And swagger while the coast is clear: But should a lordly pike appear, Away you see the varlet scud, Or hide his coward snout in mud. Thus, if a gudgeon meet a roach, He dares not venture to approach; Yet still has impudence to rise, And, like Domitian,[2] ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... amid lonely islets, mazed amid outer keys, I waked the palms to laughter—I tossed the scud in the breeze— Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm-trees ...
— Departmental Ditties and Barrack Room Ballads • Rudyard Kipling
... prevailed, though in the intervals between the outbursts of lightning, the sky had a mottled copper and green coloration, the copper being the edges of low raincloud-masses, and the green, the flying scud above. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... on the frequency and variety of those masses (nebulous) increases; here the Milky Way is composed of separate or slight or strongly connected clouds of semi-nebulous light, and, as the telescope moves, the appearance is that of clouds passing in a scud, as sailors call it.' The Milky Way is like sand, not strewed evenly as with a sieve, but as if flung down by handfuls (and both hands at once), leaving dark intervals, and all consisting of stars of the fourteenth, sixteenth, twentieth magnitudes down to nebulosity, in a most astonishing ...
— The Astronomy of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' • Thomas Orchard
... the flying scud and back at the storm-bewitched girl with laughter rippling from her throat and the wild joy of a rare ...
— The Pirate of Panama - A Tale of the Fight for Buried Treasure • William MacLeod Raine
... at first the eddying current carried one end of the log away from its pier. Then the edge of the main current caught at it, viciously—and so suddenly that Miki almost lost his precarious footing, the log gave a twist, righted itself, and began, to scud down stream at a speed that would have made Challoner hug his breath had he been in their ...
— Nomads of the North - A Story of Romance and Adventure under the Open Stars • James Oliver Curwood
... and, as thou strok'st mine ears With thy enchantment, melt me into tears. Then let thy active hand scud o'er thy lyre, And make my spirits frantic with the fire. That done, sink down into a silvery strain, And make me smooth as balm and ...
— The Hesperides & Noble Numbers: Vol. 1 and 2 • Robert Herrick
... waves, across which the Dakota was racing half-buried in spray. Very few of the passengers were on deck to enjoy the wild scenery. Every wave seemed to be making enthusiastic, eager haste to the shore, with long, irised tresses streaming from its tops, some of its outer fringes borne away in scud to refresh the wind, all the rolling, pitching, flying water exulting in the beauty of rainbow light. Gulls and albatrosses, strong, glad life in the midst of the stormy beauty, skimmed the waves against ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... him. Away to the right, where the line of marshes was unbroken, the boom of the wind grew louder. A gust very nearly blew him down the bank. He was compelled to shelter for a moment on its lee side, whilst a scud of snow and sleet passed like an icy whirlwind. The roar of the sea was full in his ears now, and though he must still have been fully two hundred yards away from it, little ghostly specks of white spray ...
— The Devil's Paw • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... disrepair. For a moment I paused, thinking that even the salt-marsh 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
... where the weary horses huddled beneath the bank, grouped about the man so helplessly swaddled in blankets on the ground. They were dim, pitiable objects, barely discernible through the flying scud, yet Hamlin was quick to perceive the advantage of their position—the overhanging bluff was complete protection from any attack except along the open bank of the river. Two armed men could defend the spot against odds. And below, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... driving impetuously across the zenith, the bright moon gleaming through the interstices as they rapidly passed along. My attention was divided between the Quaker poet, the blazing fire, the mysterious environment into which I peered from time to time, and the flying scud playing hide-and-seek with the moon. At three I called Andy, who had breakfast ready before five, and all hands were up prepared to start on a search. By the time we had eaten there was light enough for operations to begin, and the Major, ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... thither, How the weaver makes them go: As the weaver wills they go. Up and down the web is plying, And across the woof is flying; What a rattling! What a battling! What a shuffling! What a scuffling! As the weaver makes his shuttle Hither, thither, scud and scuttle. Threads in single, threads in double; How they mingle, what a trouble! Every color, what profusion! Every motion, what confusion! While the web and woof are mingling, Signal bells above are jingling,— Telling how each figure ranges, Telling when the color changes, As the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... our heads the sullen clouds Scud, black and swift, across the sky; Like silent ghosts in misty shrouds Stand out the white lighthouses high. Almost as far as eye can reach I see the close-reefed vessels fly, As fast we flit across the beach, One little sandpiper ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the rudder. But the waves were running tremendously high, and the wind blowing with great force, the water rolling in great mountains of sickly greenish gray, topped with foam that blew in a level scud. ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... over the house, Scud the cloudlets, still as a mouse; Whiskum, whiskum, by-and-by They'll pour rain-drops from ...
— Mother Truth's Melodies - Common Sense For Children • Mrs. E. P. Miller
... a moaning overhead as we went through the woods along the ridge above the valley, and hot breaths of air began to play in our faces. The clouds raced above us more swiftly, and black masses of scud drifted yet faster below them from across the hard black backs of the downs to the westward. There was something strange in the feeling of the weather that seemed to betoken more than a storm of wind and rain, and we were silent and ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... wit was left triumphant, and Julius proposed to return by a cross-road leading into the plantations. Suddenly a scud of rain mixed with whirling yellow leaves sent them hurrying into a cart-shed, where, with a sudden start, they found themselves rushing in on some one. Who was it? A girl—a young lady. That was evident, as Rosamond panted out, "I beg your pardon!" and the next moment there was the exclamation, ...
— The Three Brides • Charlotte M. Yonge
... from the nearest mountain-top, the lightning leaped downward from the zenith into the valleys, and darted, while it hissed, from tree to tree. The sea began to rise, and the cutter, that had hitherto lain so placidly on the smooth water, heaved, and her larger spars creaked to the growing scud. ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... fall, and a great mass of murky cloud began to bank up in the south-western quarter. This rapidly overspread the sky, until the whole of the visible heavens became obscured by a thick curtain of flying scud. The sea, inky black, suddenly became agitated, and formed itself into a confusion of irregular waves without any "run," but which reared themselves tremblingly aloft, and then subsided again, only to be instantly succeeded by others. The wind ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... so little, never was sea so lone, But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag ...
— Queen Victoria • E. Gordon Browne
... sail was being crowded on the ship; relinquished his half-eaten breakfast; and came on deck again, to find the main and the jib topsails set, and both watches and the cook turned out to hand the staysail. The Farallone lay already far over; the sky was obscured with misty scud; and from the windward an ominous squall came flying up, broadening and blackening ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XIX (of 25) - The Ebb-Tide; Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... scrambled round on little scratchy hands To peek at her about the other side. She lost him, bolting branch to branch, at last— The impudent brat! But still high overhead Flight on exuberant flight of opal scud, Or of dissolving ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... small gray scud, floating lower, ran past the far-away cirrus, Abel would add with a quaint seriousness, "'Tis the sheep- dog. How he ...
— Jan of the Windmill • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... with the sea-scud and the snow-flakes flying about their ears, while the waxing rollers rose big ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... shipp'd, Was what our mousling pictured so. 'He beat his arms,' said he, 'and raised his voice, And made so terrible a noise, That I, who, thanks to Heaven, may justly boast Myself as bold as any mouse, Scud off, (his voice would even scare a ghost!) And cursed himself and all his house; For, but for him, I should have staid, And doubtless an acquaintance made With her who seem'd so mild and good. Like us, in velvet cloak and hood, She wears a tail that's ...
— The Fables of La Fontaine - A New Edition, With Notes • Jean de La Fontaine
... gleaming thro' the busy scud With arching Wings, the sea-mew o'er my head Posts on, as bent on speed, now passaging Edges the stiffer Breeze, now, yielding, drifts, Now floats upon the air, and sends from far ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... overgrown with grass. Beyond Newport the country grows wilder. There is less cultivation, and behind every little shanty rises the great brown shoulder of the neighbouring mountain covered with rough, bent grass—or sedge, as it is called here. Grey plover and curlew scud across the road, a sign of hard weather, and near the rarer homesteads towers the hawk, looking for his prey. Now and again come glimpses of the bay, of the great island of Innisturk, of Clare Island, and of Innisboffin. Wilder and wilder grows the scenery as we approach ...
— Disturbed Ireland - Being the Letters Written During the Winter of 1880-81. • Bernard H. Becker
... the track of an enemy, and she clapped her hands and cried, 'Luloo!' and lo, a fair slave-girl that came to her and stood by with bent head, like a white lily by a milk-white antelope; so Noorna clouded her brow a moment, as when the moon darkeneth behind a scud, and cried, 'Speak! art thou ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... next morning, hearing that she was alongside, I hurried on deck. The mails were speedily brought off from the inward-bound ship, together with seven more passengers. Our anchor was at once weighed, and in ten more minutes we are off. We are soon at the entrance to the Heads; and I see by the scud of the clouds, and the long line of foaming breakers driving across the entrance, that before long we shall have the spray flying over our hurricane deck. Another minute and we are outside, plunging into the waves and throwing the water ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles
... Miami within a mile or two of the bark than the vessel squared around her yards and began to scud before the wind. She had a good pair of heels and it was not surprising that the schooner had not started to pursue. There was no real reason why she should interfere. But with the Coast Guard cutter it was another matter. A signal of distress had been seen, an American vessel had called on the ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Life-Savers • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... upon the brig righting (she was thrown upon her beam ends, and her spanker boom carried away), he commanded to furl the fore-top sail, strike top-gallant yards, furl the main course, and take a reef in the maintopsail, leaving her to scud under single-reefed maintopsail and fore-sail. This caused the vessel to leak to that degree that I despaired of reaching land in her, and prayed to the Almighty to send us speedy assistance. For nine days and nights the storm continued, ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... bethought himself of some cigars in his stateroom and went back. For the moment I was alone with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to prick through the darkening sky. The Sylph was running smoothly, with the wind almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like a benediction ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... would suddenly tack up the aisle and clutch the unhappy Mr. Chubb by the collar, and scud down the aisle again to the accompaniment of "Home Sweet Home," and then incarcerate Henry in the upper portion of the steeple until after church. But the end came at last, and the miserable boy found peace. One day, while ...
— Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers • Various
... its back. Raw shuddering gusts whipped the sea till the ship lurched and men felt driven spindrift stinging their faces. Beyond the rail there was winter night, a moving blackness where the waves rushed and clamored; straining into the great dark, men sensed only the bitter salt of sea-scud, the nettle of sleet and the lash ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... scud, passing ships that think they are going pretty fast, but, O Neptune! our fins and tails take us along at a spanking rate, which makes ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... direction, in pursuit of beer and the forgotten bread. A little later, and a scudding white dust-cloud in the road informs us that one of the dining 'scapists flees breathlessly vinegar- or salt-ward. Still another five minutes, and the other diner hies him in chase of the white scud, calling vigorously to it that there is no butter for the rice, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December, 1885 • Various
... cat raced off to cat-land, and was never seen again, And the dog sneaked out beneath the bed to scud with might and main; While Polly sits upon her roost, and rolls her eyes in fear, And when she sees a bit of cake, she ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... across the pond singing antiphonally. Black as it was under the trees, there was a moon behind the night. No suggestion of it showed through the clouds, yet from the pond surface itself came a weird twilight, filtered no doubt through a mile of flying scud a mile above, reflected from the wind-swept surface and showing these distant pines lifting heads of murk against the murky sky. But their antiphonal shout was no pine-voiced song of the sea, it was the sea itself. Again and again I ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... Whose chargers chew the cud, Whose wheels have braved a dozen years The gravel and the mud; Your glorious hawbucks yoke again To take another jag, And scud through the mud Where the heavy wheels do drag, Where the wagon creak is long and low And the ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine
... some one said, for the fair wind that had taken them hither and yon so long, and had waited on their fancies, was apparently on the point of deserting them at last, and the yacht was merely drifting before a fitful breeze that lightly moved a scud of low clouds which the sunset had kindled into a blaze of glory hanging just above them, and whose ragged shreds only now ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 15, - No. 87, March, 1875 • Various
... when your castigated pulse Gies now and then a wallop, What ragings must his veins convulse That still eternal gallop: Wi' wind and tide fair i' your tail, Right on ye scud your sea-way; But in the teeth o' baith to sail, It ...
— English Poets of the Eighteenth Century • Selected and Edited with an Introduction by Ernest Bernbaum
... size and length. But Captain Blowser saw something more with his glass—for the Susan Jane could not approach very near to the water-logged hull that was almost level with the surface of the sea, for fear of colliding through the "scud" of the waves—something that made him take in the clipper's lighter sails, despite his anxiety to take advantage of every breath of the wind and make a rapid passage to Boston, and lay the ship to; while he had a boat lowered, ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... rate, I shall tell the abbot that, if he will consent quietly to the monk's unfrocking himself, until he can obtain for him release from his vows; I will scud him away to one of the other castles, whence I can fetch him, if you need him to accompany you on any errand, and where he can form part of the regular garrison. But the knave must be informed that it ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... the management of our little boat, which from one moment to another was in danger of being swamped. However, I was certain that, being provided with two large beams of bamboos, it could keep its position in the current between two waters and not capsize, if we had the precaution and strength to scud before the wind, and not turn the side to a wave, for in such case we should all have been drowned. What I foresaw, happened. A wave burst upon us; for a few minutes we were plunged in the deep, but when the wave passed over we came above water. Our ...
— Adventures in the Philippine Islands • Paul P. de La Gironiere
... line, the outfit is complete. The jugs, some twenty or thirty, are put out at the head of the channel, and are followed by the fishermen in a skiff or john-boat. When a channel-cat takes the bait, the jug stands on end and begins to scud through the water. The fisherman pursues in his boat, and coming up, pushes his dip-net under the fish as he draws him to the surface. It is the most exciting and fascinating method known in ...
— Shawn of Skarrow • James Tandy Ellis
... as swift as, when to land Bluster the winds and tides the self-same way, Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand, Torn ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... 117.) "After sailing southward half a day, they found themselves suddenly among shoals and breakers" (a ledge of rocks and shoals which are a terror to navigators to this day); and the wind shifting against them, they scud back to Cape Cod, and, as Bradford says, "thought themselves happy to get out of those dangers before night overtook them, and the next day they got into the Cape harbour, where they rode in safety. Being thus arrived in a good harbour, and brought safe to land, they fell upon ...
— The Loyalists of America and Their Times, Vol. 1 of 2 - From 1620-1816 • Egerton Ryerson
... were tearing along the hillside, all together, like a white scud. After them, galloping like a Waterloo winner, raced Red Wull. And last of all, leaping over the ground like a demoniac, making not for the two flags, but the plank-bridge, the white-haired figure ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... her waiting isolation was broken upon by another intrusion. The morning had been threatening, with an opaque, motionless, livid arch above, which had taken the place of the usual flying scud and shaded cloud masses of the rainy season. The whole outlying ocean, too, beyond the bar, appeared nearer, and even seemed to be lifted higher than the Bay itself, and was lit every now and then with wonderful clearness by long flashes of breaking foam like summer lightning. ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte |
