"Swash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... ripples in the stream are still, Save now and then a low and gentle swash, All which doth try me sore against my will— So hot! And all my ducks are in ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... system. Hark! I hear the clanking of the ploughman's chains in the fields; I hear the tramping of the feet of the hoe-hands. I hear the coarse and harsh voice of the negro driver and the shrill voice of the white overseer swearing at the slaves. I hear the swash of the lash upon the backs of the unfortunates; I hear them crying for mercy from the merciless. Amidst these cruelties I hear the fathers and mothers pour out their souls in prayer,—"O, Lord, how long!" and their cries not only awaken ...
— My Life In The South • Jacob Stroyer
... great distance from the Minnesota lay the strangest-looking craft I ever saw. It was a platform of iron, so nearly on a level with the water that the swash of the waves broke over it, under the impulse of a very moderate breeze; and on this platform was raised a circular structure, likewise of iron, and rather broad and capacious, but of no great height. It could not be called ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... morning seemed a foolish business to me that day and I lay a long time looking up at the rustling canopy overhead. I remember listening to the waves that came whispering out of the further field, nearer and nearer, until they swept over us with a roaring swash of leaves, like that of water flooding among rocks, as I have heard it often. A twinge of homesick ness came to me and the snoring of Uncle Eb gave me no comfort. I remember covering my head and crying softly as I thought of those who ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... raised our voices, and shouted till our lungs were exhausted, but no answer came, the only sounds we heard being the thrapping and swash of the waves against our boat. Five minutes—which seemed hours—passed, and then we suddenly lost sight of the barque's headlight, and saw the dull gleam of those aft shining through ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of the sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across the field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads cracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one of ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the Pickt-hatch in Turnbull Street, near Clerkenwell; old Tom Wootton, once a notorious harbourer of "masterless men," at his house at Smart's Quay, but now a sheriffs officer; and, perhaps, it ought to be mentioned, that there were some half-dozen swash-bucklers and sharpers from Alsatia, under the command of Captain Bludder, who was held responsible for their ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... through me. It was a meal for the very young or the very hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humoring. A huge cheese faced us in almost a swash-buckling way, and I noticed that the professor shivered slightly as he saw it. Sardines, looking more oily and uninviting than anything I had ever seen, appeared in their native tin beyond the loaf of bread. There was a ham, in its third quarter, ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... on board, the schooner spread her white wings and stood in for Sandy Hook, while the ship was headed towards the "Swash Channel." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking his eyes and shaking with ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... for a short distance we sat upon a rock and looked out over the ocean, which extended afar, under a sky that was dark with mountainous masses of piled-up clouds. The great roll of the sea struck the foot of the cliffs rather slowly, as if performing some solemn function, and the swash of the returning water was like some strange dirge. The very waves had lost their blueness and were tinted with a leaden, ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... "The Utica Republican is an aggressive sheet. It calls George William Curtis 'the Apostle of Swash.'"—New ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... hooted in my chimney like a drunken banshee, and nearly frightened me to death. And me a musician. And me the gentlest of God's creatures—who never did any harm, but killed the mice in father's barn. I ask you, as a man of the world, is it delicate, is it fair? Drip, drip, drip—swish, swish, swash,—ugh, the rain! If it could guess how I despise it!" He made a face and shook his fist at it. "Do you think the weather knows how disagreeable it is? We all know how disagreeable other people can be, but so few of us know how ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... rude, rough, hectoring Swash, an't please your Highness; nay, and two or three times, Gad forgive me, he ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... mournful shining, Delicate sniffs of sea-breeze, smells of sedgy grass and fields by the shore, death-messages given in charge to survivors, The hiss of the surgeon's knife, the gnawing teeth of his saw, Wheeze, cluck, swash of falling blood, short wild scream, and long, dull, tapering groan, These ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... discovered a steamer, which had just passed through the narrow opening between Odderoe and the main land, and whose course lay close to the point of the island where the cutter was moored. He saw that the swash of the steamer was likely to throw the boat on the rocks, and grind her planking upon the ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... fibrous roots of the pond-lilies. He splashes along till he finds a suitable spot, when he begins feeding, sometimes thrusting his bead and neck several feet under water. The hunter listens, and when the moose lifts his head and the rills of water run from it, and he hears him "swash" the lily roots about to get off the mud, it is his time to start. Silently as a shadow he creeps up on the moose, who by the way, it seems, never expects the approach of danger from the water side. ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... ill-fortune to be born in the nineteenth century instead of the seventeenth. Romance and adventure, politely amorous but vigorously attractive, came up to him from the seventeenth century, perhaps through the blood of some swash-buckling ancestor, and he was held enthralled by the possibilities that lay hidden in some far off or even nearby corner of this hopelessly unromantic world of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... adventurous coast has scarcely known for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other eminent swash-bucklers bombarded and pounded it in the ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... of all this cargo was to bring the yawl quite low in the water; and every seafaring man in her had the greatest apprehensions about her being able to float at all when she got out from under the lee of the Swash, or into the troubled water. Try it she must, however, and Spike, in a reluctant and hesitating manner, gave the final order to ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... linger, gazing and listening, while the storm was in its richest mood—the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this varied throng of sounds I ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... bottle-green, And the other eye was out, my dear; And the calves of his wicked-looking legs Were more than two feet about, my dear. Oh, the great big Irishman, The rattling, battling Irishman— The stamping, ramping, swaggering, staggering, leathering swash of an Irishman! ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... A heavy noise, like that of some huge flouring-mill in full operation, could be plainly heard above the swash of the waves and the drive and patter ...
— Left on Labrador - or, The cruise of the Schooner-yacht 'Curlew.' as Recorded by 'Wash.' • Charles Asbury Stephens
... blight, a greyness out ahead and the deck whitens all awash, and the "old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of following seas, and as our ship rolls the swash of shipped seas hisses, and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once and again as she rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout geyser-like and gurgle. As she ran like a beaten thing she wallowed a little, dived, scooped up seas and shook them off. ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... Wabash lies off the Main Ship Channel. Of course, all the others are blockaded, too, but General Beauregard thinks that if we can torpedo the flagship the others will hurry to her assistance and the blockade-runners can get out through the Swash Channel. Our magazines are running low, and we must have arms, powder, everything. There are two or three shiploads at Nassau. This is an attempt to get to them. If we can blow up Admiral Vernon's flagship, perhaps we can raise the blockade. ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... on the wharf, climbing on the timber pile, where Peterson and his gang were rolling down the big sticks with cant-hooks. Not a quarter of a mile away was a big steamer, ploughing slowly up the river; the cough of her engines and the swash of the churning water at her bow and stern could be plainly heard. Peterson stopped work for ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... us. We were lying on a little sand island, and the waves nibbled at its edges—nibbled and nibbled and nibbled—the island was being nibbled up. This would never do! We must move! And I woke. Ripple, ripple, swash! ripple, ripple, swash! went the unconscious waves. As I raised my head I saw the pale beach stretching off under the moon-washed mists of middle night. Reassured, I sank back, and when I waked again the big sun was well ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... or hears or cares, and those horrid boys will never catch up!" she cried in despair, as the boat began to rock more and more, and the loud swash of water dashing in and out of the Chasm drew nearer and nearer. Holding on now with both hands she turned and looked straight before her, pale and shivering, while her eyes tried to see some sign of hope among the steep cliffs ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... cheeks as if to blow a fly off the next bite of cheese. "So-oftly, so-oftly, muster," drawled he; "do na go to ruffling it here. This shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. I'll stand aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground. Come, now, what wilt thou o' the lad?—and speak thee fair, good muster, or thou'lt get a dab o' the red-hot shoe." As he spoke he gave the black tongs ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballads, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my over-strained ear as if every footstep of my own must be heard for miles. However, I could ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... came to consciousness after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... souls, it may be that she gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as an ordinary mainmast. ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... alike ceased. Every boat saw only the outline of the one before it and the rolling current of the Ohio beneath it. Noise had ceased on the fleet at the stern command of Adam Colfax and his lieutenants. The men talked only in whispers, there was no flapping of sail, only the swash of the oars in the water, drowned by the wind. Since the lightning had ceased, both shores were lost permanently in the darkness, and the five, who now knew this part of the river thoroughly, moved up to the head of the line, leading the way. After ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... On the New York Central, where the road-bed is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still. Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill." On the New York and New Haven, where there are many switches, and the engine whistles at every cross road, I have often heard, "Tommy make room for your whooopy! that's a little clang; ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... fens and Kesteven. What meant this news, that Hereward of St. Omer was come again, and an army with him? That he was levying war on all Frenchmen, in the name of Sweyn, King of Denmark and of England? He is an outlaw, a desperado, a boastful swash-buckler, thought William, it may be, to himself. He found out, in after years, that ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... was a little pale-faced, delicate-looking boy in the class, who blundered a good deal. Every time he did so the cruel serpent of leather went at him, coiling round his legs with a sudden, hissing swash. This made him cry, and his tears blinded him so that he could not even see the words which he had been unable to read before. But he still attempted to go on, and still the instrument of torture went swish-swash round ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... now aged twenty-one, was possibly the sole member of the house of Talbot-Lowry for whom a successful future might confidently be anticipated. Judith, a buccaneer by nature and by practice, was habitually engaged in swash-bucklering it on a round of visits. She was good-looking, tall, talkative, and an able player of all the games proper to the state of life to which she had been called. She was a competent guest, giving as much entertainment as she received, being of those who contribute as efficiently ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... enough day, no sun, with occasional splatters of rain and a persistent crash of seas over the weather rail and swash of water across the deck. With my eyes glued to the cabin ports, which gave for'ard along the main deck, I could see the wretched sailors, whenever they were given some task of pull and haul, wet through and through by the boarding seas. Several times ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... yer could cut it 'Thout reachin' a foot over-side, The dory she'd nose up ter butt it, And then git discouraged an' slide; No noise but the thole-pins a-squeakin', Or, maybe, the swash of a wave, No feller ter cheer yer by speakin'— 'Twas lonesomer, ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in the wind of ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... to him, when I had stepped out into the swash of the rain. "Frankly, I hardly enjoyed it. You drive ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... Swash! Down fell the Fiddler into the apple-tree and down fell a dozen apples, popping and tumbling ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... he made his plans. Swish-swash the sponge-staff ran in and out—he would try to steal away at dog-watch. He struck the sponge smartly on ma couzaine's muzzle, cleansing it—he would have to slide into the water like a rat and swim very softly to the shore. He reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it into the throat of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... none are ready, dashes in, and with it tumble ashore, in one great wreck of humanity, small craft and large, stout hulk and swift clipper, helm first, topsail down, forestay-sail in tatters, keel up, everything gone to pieces in the swash of ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... and died. Despite the lazy swash of the swells on the beach below the sunny afternoon was heavy with silence. Ellen's eyes swept the vast circle of the distance. The smoke of the south-bound steamer was no more. Far down the tundra toward ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... it. I could n' 'elp myself from goun in, an' when I got out I was astarn of all, an' there was the schooner carryun on, right through to clear water! So, hold of a bight o' line, or anything! an' they swung up in over bows an' sides! an' swash! she struck the water, an' was out o' sight in a minute, an' the snow drivun as ef 't would bury her, an' a man laved behind on a pan of ice, an' the great black say two fathom ahead, an' the ...
— Little Classics, Volume 8 (of 18) - Mystery • Various
... stone, it is for us to trace back the dim vista of the centuries to the life, the zeal, the energy, of which this stone is the poor memorial. The rock-fenced islet was covered with cedars, and when the tide was out the shoals around were dark with the swash of sea-weed, where, in their leisure moments, the Frenchmen, we are told, amused themselves with detaching the limpets from the stones, as a savory addition to their fare. But there was little leisure at St. Croix. Soldiers, sailors, and artisans ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... Mount, and when he desired victuals he would wade across the tides to the mainland and furnish himself forth with all that came in his way. The poor folk and the rich folk alike ran out of their houses and hid themselves when they heard the swish-swash of his big feet in the water; for if he saw them, he would think nothing of broiling half-a-dozen or so of them for breakfast. As it was, he seized their cattle by the score, carrying off half-a-dozen fat oxen on his back at ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... smells and the pestilential odor of oil, were to be seen the great majority of the passengers. Some were silently gazing at the changing scenes along the banks, others were playing cards or conversing in the midst of the scraping of shovels, the roar of the engine, the hiss of escaping steam, the swash of disturbed waters, and the shrieks of the whistle. In one corner, heaped up like corpses, slept, or tried to sleep, a number of Chinese pedlers, seasick, pale, frothing through half-opened lips, and bathed in ...
— The Reign of Greed - Complete English Version of 'El Filibusterismo' • Jose Rizal
... that fine wine-dark mahogany sheen that resides upon excellent briar of many years' service. He has had (though I speak only by guess) a rummer of hot toddy to celebrate the greatest of all Evenings. At his elbow is a porthole, brightly curtained with a scrap of clean chintz, and he can hear the swash of the seas along his ship's tall side. And now he is reading. I can see him reading. I know just how his mind feels! Oh, the Perfect Reader! There is not an allusion that he misses; in all those lovely printed words he sees the subtle secrets that a lesser soul would miss. He ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... rear, and began to heehaw' in a most melodious strain. The nags pricked up their ears in a twinkling, and made no more ado but bolted. Poor aunty tugged! but all in vain; her bay-cob ran into the water; and she lost both her presence of mind and her seat, and plumped swash into the pond—her riding habit spreading out into a beautiful circle—while she lay squalling and bawling out in the centre, like a little piece of beef in the middle of a large batter-pudding! Miss Scragg, meanwhile, stuck to her graymare, and went bumping along to ...
— The Sketches of Seymour (Illustrated), Complete • Robert Seymour
... of the deck. In a few minutes seven bells were struck, the log hove, the watch called, and we went to breakfast. Here I cannot but remember the advice of the cook, a simple-hearted African. "Now,'' says he, "my lad, you are well cleaned out; you haven't got a drop of your 'long-shore swash aboard of you. You must begin on a new tack,— pitch all your sweetmeats overboard, and turn to upon good hearty salt beef and ship bread, and I'll promise you, you'll have your ribs well sheathed, and be as hearty as any of 'em, afore you ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... fast, and I could hear the loose cargo, which had broken adrift below in the main hold, playing the devil's own game; smashing and crushing from side to side as the vessel rolled, and coming in contact with the stanchions and beams, with a surging swash of water, too, which told the tale without the trouble of breaking open the hatches. I took, however, the precaution to run my eye over the manifest to see if, perchance, there was any treasure in the after run or any where else, as, in case ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... tasks over, he went out and took his favorite seat under the apple tree. All was still, save for the crickets' ceaseless chirp, the soft thud of an August sweeting dropping in the grass, and the swish-swash of the water against his boat, tethered in ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... to the river, down the lane, and one of the men stumbled and rolled several yards, picking himself up with a grunt and a groan and a lot of bad language, and then hurrying after the rest. Dick heard the swash of the water on the gravel bank, and then saw the river itself dimly, but in another moment some dark object loomed up before him, and then he and Bob were taken into a house, the front of which was much lower than the back on account of ...
— The Liberty Boys Running the Blockade - or, Getting Out of New York • Harry Moore
... prestige in the eyes of his people, and there was no mistaking the offensive demeanour of his troops. They evidently thought that British soldiers had gone never to return, and they swaggered about in swash-buckler fashion, as only Natives who think they have the ...
— Forty-one years in India - From Subaltern To Commander-In-Chief • Frederick Sleigh Roberts
... catching occasional glimpses between bubbles of a vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... whistling. Eight years of hard work had not done much for these sturdy souls, but they had managed to secure with incredible toil a comfortable little house surrounded with outbuildings. Calves and chickens gave life to the barn-yard, and fields of wheat rippled and ran with swash of heavy-bearded heads and ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was still as the bosom of a fried chicken when the ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... was the lovely bay of Bolinas, blue and sparkling in the summer afternoon sun, its borders dotted with thrifty ranches, and the woody ravines and bristling Tamalpais Range rising over all. The tide was running out, and only a peaceful swash whispered along the level sandy beach on our left, where the busy sandpiper chased the playful wave as it softly rose and fell along the shore. On the higher centre of the sandspit which shuts in the bay on that side, a row of ashy-colored gulls sunned themselves, and blinked at ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... Pantomime there were many other personages in these dumb shows which we never had in the English Pantomimes. To note a few of them:—The Captain, a bragging swash-buckler; the Apothecary, a half-starved individual with a red nose; and a female soubrette, who acted for her mistress, Columbine, similar duties as what Clown performed as valet for his master. The Doctor brought at first ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... Hull bargee gave his name as ALFAINA SWASH. Nevertheless the Court did not decide to hear the rest of his evidence ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, November 3, 1920 • Various
... writers flourished. Rich men and magistrates, whilst yet they live, They flatter palpably, in hope of gain. Smooth-tongued orators, the fourth in place— Lawyers our commonwealth entitles them— Mere swash-bucklers and ruffianly mates, That will for twelvepence make a doughty fray, Set men for straws together by the ears. Sky-measuring mathematicians, Gold-breathing alchemists also we have, Both which are subtle-witted humourists, That get their meals by telling ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... mused the storm, which had threatened all the afternoon, broke. The swash and patter of the rain against the windows, and the moaning of the trees on the lawn, made a dreary accompaniment to his melancholy musings. It grew chill, and a footman entered, put a match to the laid fuel, and lighted the gas. Then John Campbell made an effort to shake off ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... ecstasy around the rocks, springing aloft and tipping the waves with a silvery radiance or clashing its emerald waters in plumes of spray. One never tires gazing at the waters leaping and gliding like living creatures as they dash themselves to pieces on the rocks, or listening to the swash and gurgle of the rapid waters or the keen ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... loose boards that rattled beneath me, I discovered one that could be shifted without difficulty. But scarcely had I stooped to raise it when an emotion of fear seized me, and I started back alert and listening, though I was unconscious of having heard any thing more than the ordinary swash of the water beneath the windows and the beating of my own overtaxed heart. An instant's hearkening gave me the reassurance I needed, and convinced that I had alarmed myself unnecessarily, I bent again over the board, and this time succeeded in moving ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... which the poor maimed Althea was wallowing along at a speed of about eight and a half knots, with a dismal groaning of timbers that harmonised lugubriously with the clank of the chain pumps and the swash of water washing nearly knee-deep about the decks—for the hooker laboured so heavily that she was leaking like a basket, necessitating the unremitting use of the pumps throughout the watch. And—worst of all—Keene whispered to me that, even with the pumps going constantly, the water was ...
— A Pirate of the Caribbees • Harry Collingwood
... teach you, and fast enough, too, with a rope's-end if you don't look sharp about you," said the captain, with a laugh, "and soon make you dip your hands in the tar-bucket and swash-tub. Have you got any working ...
— The History of Little Peter, the Ship Boy • W.H.G. Kingston
... making shelter for their straws with a clout or kerchief, womenfolk skipping off with kirtles catched up soon as the pour came. In Ely place, Baggot street, Duke's lawn, thence through Merrion green up to Holles street a swash of water flowing that was before bonedry and not one chair or coach or fiacre seen about but no more crack after that first. Over against the Rt. Hon. Mr Justice Fitzgibbon's door (that is to sit with Mr Healy the lawyer upon the college ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... keep you out of the swash," he advised her. "Sit there in the stern while I toss ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... hitherto so amiable friend, the Caribbean, suddenly flung a spiteful wave right over the quarter upon us, and put a very unexpected extinguisher on our pastime. The ladies, who were reclining on the deck, came in for the chief share of the compliment, and were in some danger of an indiscriminate swash down the cabin gangway; but the mate gallantly picked up one, and her husband the other, and saved them from all mischief but the drenching. This sudden interruption of amicable relations with the powers of the wave was followed up by a night of unmerciful rocking, ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No 3, September 1863 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various
... him from running the launch so that I shall get all the swash? It would make me lose a quarter minute or more, ...
— The Young Oarsmen of Lakeview • Ralph Bonehill
... bent over its sheltered pools, as in a lookin' glass, wavin' locks that scattered gold light down into the water, bright eyes that shone like stars above it. I shouldn't wonder a mite if it missed 'em and tried to say so in its gentle, pensive swish, swash, swish. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... clothing and let it drop. The cut in my shoulder was raw and made me faint. It was not dangerous, but deep enough to give me trouble, and would make my swimming slow, if, indeed, I could swim at all. I felt the water swash against me and knew the Indian was swimming back. There was only a thin wall of reeds between us, and in a moment he would come to where the channels joined and see my floating garments. I could not stop to secure them, though I had ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith |
