"Swirl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... piece of the meat into the water and it slowly sank. Paul, as he saw it going down, believed that the stories of the sharks were exaggerated; but suddenly it was drawn out of sight. Another piece was thrown in and had scarcely touched the surface when there was a rush and a swirl and the meat was snapped up in a twinkling. An old hat was thrown in next and it was torn to shreds in a second. This undeniable proof that sharks were plentiful in the straits, made Paul feel very blue, as he did ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... were small fish in the swirl of this more desperate venture. He knew Brad Steelman by sight and by reputation. The man's coffee-brown, hatchet face, his restless, black eyes, the high, narrow shoulders, the slope of nose and chin, combined somehow to give him the look of a wily and predacious wolf. The boy had never met ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... us, in the gift of life in Him, stability which will check the vacillations of our own hearts. We go up and down, we yield when pressure is brought to bear against us, we are carried off our feet often by the sudden swirl of the stream, and the fitful blast of the wind. But His grace comes in, and will make us able to stand against all assaults. Our poor natures, necessarily changeable, and sinfully vacillating and weak, will be uniform, ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... place beside the wall to the middle of the floor. "I was not dreaming," said Uncle Nathan; "I felt of my eyes twice to make sure, and they were wide open." Presently the door opened; he was sensible of the draught upon his head, and a woman's form stepped heavily past him; he felt the "swirl" of her skirts as she went by. Then there was a loud noise in the room as if some one had fallen their whole length upon the floor. "It jarred the house," said he, "and woke everybody up. I asked old Mr. ——— if he heard that noise. 'Yes,' said he, 'it was thunder.' ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... stones, and reddened growths beneath the water, a light that lets the red hues overcome the others—a wild rush of crowded waters rotating as they go, shrill voices calling. This next bend upwards dazzles the eyes, for every inclined surface and striving parallel, every swirl, and bubble, and eddy, and rush around a rock chances to reflect the sunlight. Not one long pathway of quiet sheen, such as stretches across a rippled lake, each wavelet throwing back its ray in just proportion, but a hundred separate mirrors vibrating, each inclined at a different ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... not attempt to look at her, but in the swirl of feeling that their meeting created he thought that he could forgive, and ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... the balloon, in order to maintain the full expansion of the envelope. The brothers Robert constructed the first balloon in which this was tried and placed the air bag near the neck of the balloon which was intended to be driven by oars, and steered by a rudder. A violent swirl of wind which was encountered on the first ascent tore away the oars and rudder and broke the ropes which held the air bag in position; the bag fell into the opening of the neck and stopped it up, preventing the escape of gas under expansion. The Duc de Chartres, who ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... a heavy step and a quick pull at the latch-string. An odd figure entered in a swirl of snow—a real Santa Claus, the mystery and blessing of Cedar Hill. For five years, every Christmas Eve, in good or bad weather, he had come to four little houses on the Hill, where, indeed, his coming had been as a Godsend. Whence he came and who he might be none had been able to ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... been agreed upon by the fishermen at the camp. To go to bed now was hardly worth while. Jack took a towel from the willow bush upon which it was hanging, went down to the river, stripped, and from a rock ten feet above a deep pool dived straight as an arrow into the black water. The swirl of the current swept him into the shallower stream below. He waded ashore, beautiful in his supple slimness as an Apollo, climbed the rock a second time, and again knew the delightful shock of a dive into icy water fresh from ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... a great whooping, a great thumping of hoofs, a monstrous swirl of dust, as the riders at the side of the race-course saw the Duke's maneuver and read his intention. Away they swept, a noisy troop, like a flight of blackbirds, hats off, guns popping, in a scramble to get up as close to ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... be suited at the Islands, the devotee of fashion can swirl around in its vortex, and for them who don't care for it there are beautiful quiet places where that vortex don't foam and geyser round, and all crowned with the ineffable beauty ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... energetic, almost fidgety, and her maid, Fadette, was compelled to move quickly. Fresh from her bath, a smooth, ivory Venus, she worked quickly through silken lingerie, stockings and shoes, to her hair. Fadette had an idea to suggest for the hair. Would Madame let her try a new swirl she had seen? Madame would—yes. So there were movings of her mass of rich glinting tresses this way and that. Somehow it would not do. A braided effect was then tried, and instantly discarded; finally a double looping, without braids, low over the forehead, ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... And cover your faces, and pray, if you can; There are wails in the wind, there are sighs on the shores, And alas, for the fate of a storm-beaten man! Oh, dark falls the night on the rain-rutted verge, So sad with the sound of the foam! Oh, wild is the sweep and the swirl of the surge; And his boat may never come home! Ah, never and never ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... time for a glimpse at the great dam, extending for over a mile in length and built of masonry eighty-two feet thick at the bottom. This banks up the water, we have already seen, among the hills into a prodigious lake when the great swirl of the river comes down at flood-time, and thus much of it, which would have rushed away and been lost, is stored and let out gradually through ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... in a swirl of raw November evening wind and Ches Maybin. He nodded sullenly to Mr. Fell and passed down the store to mutter a message to a ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... misery till the end of time.' And of a sudden from out her shoulders grew black, shadowy wings, and, with a piercing scream, she swirled upward, until the awe-stricken Dedannans saw nought save a black speck vanish among the lowering clouds. And as a demon of the air do Eva's black wings swirl her through space to ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... as they were termed in Gaelic, gave and got little mercy in Ireland. The saddles of the fallen were filled from the men in the wagons, and leaving the musketeers to hold off the unmounted men, Brian plunged into the swirl of fighting horsemen and ...
— Nuala O'Malley • H. Bedford-Jones
... and chased the Defender, and thus she abandoned her whaler. Imagine their feelings—alone in an open boat without food, twenty-five miles from the nearest land, and that land the enemy's fortress, with nothing but fog and foes around them. Suddenly a swirl alongside and up, if you please, pops his Britannic Majesty's submarine E-4, opens his conning tower, takes them all on board, shuts up again, dives, and brings them home, ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... back, Saw the Bedouins' wild attack, And heard the sharp Martini crack. But as he gazed, already The fierce fanatic Arab band Was closing in on every hand, Until one tawny swirl of sand, Concealed them ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... graceful, remember; death by drowning is generally ugly—stiff, stark, hideous, eyeless, fish-gnawed a week after the event. But what does it matter? You've painted a great picture. That sea, with the circular swirl, as each wave goes back into the belly of the next, is well done; and those lumps of spume fluttering above watermark—that was finely noted. Easy to write down in print, but difficult as the fiend to paint. And the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... on one side, and threw a swagger into his walk, cleverly remindful of the swirl of tartan skirts, then ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a test of character in the mode of going to the ferry. It is almost impossible not to be in a hurry, such is the swirl of the tide in which you find yourself. In my three years of almost daily transit I never ceased to revere the moral superiority of the admirable few who day after day could proceed with leisurely step and serene brow amid the heated, breathless, tugging, anxious multitude. It seemed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... flooding showers which had been falling upon hundreds of square miles of precipitous mountin sides were now gorging through the crooked, narrow throat of the Little Rockcastle. The torrent filled the ragged banks to the brim, and in their greedy swirl undermined and tore from there logs, great ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... tips of the red maples budding in the school campus. He was far away from Colversham and its round of duties. In imagination he moved with a gay, eager crowd through the gateway leading into the great city ball ground. He could hear the game called; watch the first swirl of the ball as it curved from the pitcher's hand; catch the sharp click of the bat against it; and join in the roar of applause as the swift-footed ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... may be due to material deposited in the eddy or swirl created by the corner of the west wall whenever a large volume of drainage water flowed from the westward in the main cave and was sharply deflected toward the south when it struck the east wall. This is no doubt ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... at any other season, who have been lounging among the weeds all day and snapping at passing minnows, have come to the surface; and are feeding steadily, splashing five or six times in succession, and then going down awhile to bolt their mouthful of victims; while here and there a heavy silent swirl tells of a fly taken before it has reached the surface, untimely slain before ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... thrown overboard; beyond was the jackal, making a great splashing; and further on was the face of Muata, who was crying out encouragement to his faithful companion as he swam swiftly towards it; and to the left, moving rapidly towards the jackal, was the crocodile, swimming in a great swirl, with only his eyes showing, and the end of his snout. The hunter steadied himself with a shoulder against a stanchion, and then, without hurry or excitement, and after a look round the deck at the people, to see if there was any further mischief brewing, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... not urge her. He and the other two took off their shoes and stockings; and went with squeals across the stubble, down a steep bank, to a pebbly point of sand, round which a sunny swirl of water chattered loudly, then went romping off into sparkling shallows. Edith's lifted skirt, as she stepped into the current, assured her against the wetting Eleanor had foreseen, and also showed ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... his eyes now began to wander over the walls and cupboards, she took an anxious step toward the side of the house looking toward her neighbors, and lifting one of the shades, which had all been religiously pulled down, she looked out. A swirl of snow-flakes alone confronted her. She could neither see her neighbors, nor could she be seen by them. A shout from her to them would not be heard. She was as completely isolated as if the house stood in the center ...
— Midnight In Beauchamp Row - 1895 • Anna Katharine Green (Mrs. Charles Rohlfs)
... glistening apparition of black showed where the unintended victims of the explosion, the gay-hued open-sea fish of the warm waters, had succumbed to the force of the shock. Of the intended victim there was no sign save a few fragments of wood bobbing in a swirl of water. ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... these distresses, And life's pathway strew with shawls, collars and dresses, Ere the want of them makes it much rougher and thornier, Won't some one discover a new California? O! ladies, dear ladies, the next sunny day, Please trundle your hoops just out of Broadway, From its swirl and its bustle, its fashion and pride And the temples of Trade which tower on each side, To the alleys and lanes, where Misfortune and Guilt Their children have gathered, their city have built; Where ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... day after day. Endlessly, ceaselessly the Pit, enormous, thundering, sucked in and spewed out, sending the swirl of its mighty central eddy far out through the city's channels. Terrible at the centre, it was, at the circumference, gentle, insidious and persuasive, the send of the flowing so mild, that to embark upon it, yielding to the influence, was a pleasure ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... accommodation that seemed at first merely austere, and became more and more manifestly inadequate as the moments fled by. She meditated profoundly through several enormous cold hours on all that had happened and all that she had done since the swirl of the suffrage movement had submerged ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Oh, the divine beauty of it all! How hot it is!—the splash of the fountains seems to cool things a little—and those jagged, silvery reflections of the stars, deep, deep in the pool there.... Did you see that fish swirl to the surface? Hark! ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... seen from this region: these incidental touches are always used). The hundred feet of silk swished through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on the water as a three-cent piece (which no slamming will give the weight of a ten) drops upon the contribution plate. Instantly there was a rush, a swirl. I struck, and "Got him, by—-!" Never mind what Luke said I got him by. "Out on a fly!" continued that irreverent guide; but I told him to back water, and make for the center of the lake. The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... also of great service in a commercial sense. One has to get out of the swirl of the great Republic to form a just estimate of the velocity with which it spins. I felt that a manufacturing concern like ours could scarcely develop fast enough for the wants of the American people, but abroad nothing ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie
... might have been more bearable, for the current of air would have carried the smoke and fire to one side. As it was, most of the smoke and flames went straight up, save now and then, when a draught created by the heat would swirl the black clouds down on the performer, hiding him from sight for a second or two. A breeze would have carried the sparks away instead of ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... friends came to supper that evening and later we all went down to the dock. There was no moon but the stars were out and the night was still, the slip was dark and empty. Suddenly with a rush and a swirl a motor boat rounded the end of the pier, turned sharply in and came shooting toward us. A boiling of water, she seemed to rear back, then drifted unconcernedly in to the bottom of ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... evening was Sundown able to make his errand known, and appreciated. A group of riders swung in in a swirl of dust, dismounted, and, as if by magic, the yard was ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... There was another swirl and the shark made a fresh effort, but this time it was weaker and the boat gained upon ...
— Bunyip Land - A Story of Adventure in New Guinea • George Manville Fenn
... do about it? What do we propose to do with more than two millions for whom Christ died, American citizens, in the very heart of our Nation, around whom the currents of commerce and industry swirl every day? Shall the greatest tidal wave of all time pass them by, and they not feel it for a moment? More than all, shall the great gospel of God, which is life, and hope, and peace, and home, for us, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... of its mediaeval calm and plunging it into the full swirl of modern progress, Bonaparte set sail for Egypt. His exchequer was the richer by all the gold and silver, whether in bullion or in vessels, discoverable in the treasury of Malta or in the Church of ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... wind, that seemed blowing from all points of the compass at once, and in a minute I was caught in a swirl of blinding rain. I took no heed of it, however, but hurried along the lonely road till I reached the cottage, which I knew at once was the one I sought. It was picturesque, ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... swift and noiseless rush underneath the stone; a few grains of sand rose up where the white under part of the trout had touched it as it glided beneath. Slowly and imperceptibly Winsome's hand worked its way beneath the stone. With the fingers of one hand she made that slight swirl of the water which is supposed by expert "guddlers" to fascinate the trout, and to render them incapable of resisting the beckoning fingers. Andra watched breathlessly from the bank above. Ralph came nearer ...
— The Lilac Sunbonnet • S.R. Crockett
... the richt, doctor; there's a hole yonder. Keep oot o't for ony sake. That's it; yir daein' fine. Steady, man, steady. Yir at the deepest; sit heavy in yir seats. Up the channel noo, and ye 'll be oot o' the swirl. Weel dune, Jess, weel dune, auld mare! Mak straicht for me, doctor, an' a'll gie ye the road oot. Ma word, ye've dune yir best, baith o' ye this mornin'," cried Hillocks, splashing up to the dogcart, now ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... in greater number along shore and near the craft itself. The gloom was lit up by flashes of guns, and the air was rent by the shouts of the combatants, for the white men could make as much noise as their enemies in the swirl and frenzy of ...
— The Phantom of the River • Edward S. Ellis
... to back up cautiously almost to the fall, till my boat was dancing so vigorously that I was spattered all over. Standing up in the boat there, I could see the oily water, like a great arched snake's back, swirl past the arch towards me, bubbleless, almost without a ripple, till it showed all its teeth at once in breaking down. The piers of the arches jutted far out below the fall, like pointed islands. I was about to try ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... come for you," suddenly broke in Grace; and stood before me all radiance, dropping somebody's arm. Excusing myself, I took her in charge and we moved gaily off. Waltzing with her was so easy that it made me feel my own motion graceful; the swirl of mingled feelings impelled me to recognize how superior she was in other things, and to proudly set her off against each lovely or dignified or sprightly figure there; and when the music closed abruptly, we started laughing together for the conservatory of which I have spoken, at the end of the ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... wise, and could tell by certain signs when the upper currents were seething and boiling. So when I darted upwards with a strong swirl that cut the waters apart for my passage, she thrust herself farther ahead, trying to drive me back, and ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... Penmarks; and, beyond them, the jutting Pointe du Raz, Douarnenez Bay, Pointe de Saint Mathieu, and the dangers that lurk between Ushant and the mainland, all bad enough in themselves, but with an added terror due to the furious currents that swirl round that part of the coast, and of the direction of which one can ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards Monte Mario. She had set up her household gods. The plaster bust of Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and, such as it was, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... his strength; and in an instant, as if touched by some divine spell, the agitation ceased, and he was himself again. In three minutes more he was by Susan's side, had gripped her by the bathing-dress at the back of the neck, and had managed to avail himself of a little swirl which turned inwards just before the rocks were reached. They were safe. She nearly swooned, but recovered herself after a fit ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... to discern anything ahead of us—the blinding, blazing sun prevented my seeing aught but a mad seething swirl of water just beneath our bows, and on each side of us. Evers, ...
— "Pig-Headed" Sailor Men - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... then there is a mighty rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim to and fro still further disturbing the ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... cavern, or on a rock, or being sucked down in the raging waters, or perhaps asphyxiated by want of air. All of these and many other modes of death presented themselves to my imagination as I lay at the bottom of the canoe, listening to the swirl of the hurrying waters which ran whither we knew not. One only other sound could I hear, and that was Alphonse's intermittent howl of terror coming from the centre of the canoe, and even that seemed faint and unnatural. Indeed, the whole thing ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... in, shoulder to shoulder, but those behind, eager to strike also, pressed us so recklessly that we hurled them back. To me it was all confusion, uproar, deadly fighting. I could think of nothing to right or left, only of the struggling devils in my front. Faces, forms, came and vanished in the swirl of smoke, brown gun-barrels whirled before me, flashes of fire burned my eyes, strange features, bearded, malignant, glared at me. I leaped straight at them, striking fiercely. Once I saw Grant, and aimed a blow at him. Then he was gone, swallowed ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... turning-point of my fortunes—indeed, the very turning-point of my whole life. As I look back upon that beautiful June evening, I again hear the rumble of the elevated trains in the street beyond, and again I hear the clang of the electric cars as they swirl out of the avenue into the street. Probably every man and woman who ever came a stranger to a great city has his or her own particular secret and holy place where angels came and ministered in the hour of need. I do not doubt it, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... all his strength, and, as he pulled, when he was no more than five fathoms from her, the Raven vanished with a huge swirl. ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... Broadway. Only one other intermediate move did he make, which was to as near as he could get to the Ashland Park Tract, where every purchaser of land was legally pledged to put up no home that should cost less than four thousand dollars. After that came Broadway. A strange swirl had come in the tide of the crowd. The drift was to Washington Street, where real estate promptly soared while on Broadway it was as if the bottom had fallen out. One big store after another, as the ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... big Yazoo George came near having a serious time of it; for his cranky little speed boat was caught in a swirl of mingling waters, and came within an ace of swamping. Only for the action of the frightened Nick in throwing his great bulk the other way, just by instinct, the Wireless would have gone ...
— Motor Boat Boys Mississippi Cruise - or, The Dash for Dixie • Louis Arundel
... had never gone beyond short skirts, a swirl of lace, and glittering sequins; but Miss Antonia had expressed herself on that subject in no ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... of old habitude they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing the better and the stronger. They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising beneath them, and knew that there had been a ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... "helpless foreigners" when we steamed away from St. Catherine's Docks, and found ourselves on the following day in Antwerp, amid what seemed to us a very Babel of conflicting tongues. Alas for our carefully spoken French, articulated laboriously! We were lost in that swirl of disputing luggage-porters, and could not understand a word! But Miss Marryat was quite equal to the occasion, being by no means new to travelling, and her French stood the test triumphantly, and steered us safely to a hotel. On the morrow we started again through Aix-la-Chapelle to Bonn, ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant
... and a wild feeling of exultation shot through Nic's breast, for he suddenly caught sight of the man's inert body approaching him, after gliding right round the basin. It was quite fifty feet away, and seemed for a few moments as if about to be swept out of the hollow and down the gully; but the swirl was too strong, and it continued gliding round the pool, ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... slain, with a smile in the face of death, And for happy news from the hungry wastes men yearned with bated breath; When WILSON pushed his eager way past torrent-swirl and crag, Till they saw o'er GORDON's citadel wave high—the ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... Silver Doctor that may do as the water is thick. I put one on, and begin again casting over where that fish rose. By George, there he came at me, at least I think it must have been at me, a great dark swirl, "the purple wave bowed over it like a hill," but he never touched me. Give him five minutes law, the hook is sure to be well fastened on, need not bother looking at that again. Five minutes take a long time in passing, when you are giving a salmon a rest. Good times and bad times and all times ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... destruction on the rounded cobbles of the paved streets, but once the gates were passed, and the dust of the high road underfoot, he loosed the light tension and pressed his heels home into the flanks. There, ahead, a shifting vision in the rising swirl of dust, was the bay, thundering at top speed. Behind there were shouts, cries, the clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through the roar of the blood ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... having sunk a German, had lowered a whaleboat to pick up survivors, when she was chased by a big German cruiser. So there, all alone, was her whaler, a mere open boat, on the enemy's part of the battlefield. But, through a swirl alongside, up came Submarine E4, opened her conning tower, took the whole boat's crew aboard, dived down again before the Germans could catch her, and ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... of him, blowing the top edge off it, filling the air with a volcano of mud, dirt, smoke, and shrieking splinters, and, either from the shock of the explosion or in an attempt to escape it, throwing the man off his balance on the ledge of the firing-step to sprawl full length in the mud. In the swirl of noise and smoke and flying earth Rawbon just glimpsed the plunging fall of a man's body, and felt a curious sickly feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Blue Nile in a fast steam launch. It was a Nile as blue as turquoise; and after the low island of Tuli had been left behind it was strange to see the junction of the Blue and the White Niles, in a quarrelsome swirl of sharply divided colours. Landing on the shore at Omdurman, we met carts loaded with elephant-tusks, and wagons piled with hides. Giant men, like ebony statues, walked beside pacing camels white as milk. The vegetable market was a town of little booths: the grain markets had gathered ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Cootaboot!" There was a rush and swirl, as the effervescent Muscovite burst his way through the throng and rushed to where Cuthbert sat. He stood for a moment eyeing him excitedly, then, stooping swiftly, kissed him on both cheeks before Cuthbert could get his guard up. "My dear young man, I saw you win ze French Open. ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... tobacco-box, and my eyes upon this window, I am unable to say, but, all at once, the door of the cottage burst open with a crash, and immediately the quiet room was full of rioting wind and tempest; such a wind as stopped my breath, and sent up a swirl of smoke and sparks from the fire. And, borne upon this wind, like some spirit of the storm, was a woman with flying draperies and long, streaming hair, who turned, and, with knee and shoulder, forced to the door, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... had lighted a cigarette and was smoking, sublimely unconscious of the blue smoke swirl that rose in telltale clouds high above her head. The baby had dropped asleep, and Claribel lay still. But her eyes were not on the ceiling; they were ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and he stood at his open window as he had done on the evening of his arrival, watching almost unconsciously for the first stars to shine out above the cathedral spire. The air was very quiet, disturbed by no sound but the swirl of the deep river against the stone piers of the bridge far down below the student's window. There was something melancholy in the ceaseless rush of the strong water, which reminded him of the sighing of the trees at home, on ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... light of the matter, 'Let it be so, since I see that you are so anxious to live and so afraid of death; I will return to the ship.' This was done, and the men rowing away looked back and saw the ship go down in a great swirl of waves with ...
— Days of the Discoverers • L. Lamprey
... first fort, the scene of a battle and the most celebrated heroine of the Revolution something? My sweetheart was the only thing not entirely novel; her smiles ever recalled the memory of Launa Probana. All the way home we stood on deck, leaning over the rail, watching the swirl and foam from the paddle wheels, and our tongues were loosened. As usual, in my attempts at seeming superior to girl companions, I undertook to explain things about which I knew nothing. Now, any boy could put me down in a minute with, "how big you talk;" ...
— Confessions of Boyhood • John Albee
... whose sinister possibilities were slowly framing themselves in his mind. While he stood there he was suddenly conscious of the sound of the opening gate, brisk footsteps up the tiled way, the soft swirl of a woman's skirt. The latch was raised, the door opened and closed. The newcomer stood upon the threshold, ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... showing a startling resemblance to the arms of a drowning person mutely appealing for help. Then a heavy trunk would strike a rock just below the surface, and the branches, dripping with spray, swept over in a huge semi-circle. The roar and swirl suggested the whirlpool below the falls of Niagara, one of the most ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis
... could not make himself heard, but he remained on his feet waiting for a lull. And then it happened. From my place in the gallery I saw nothing except the flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled my ears and I saw Ernest reeling and falling in a swirl of smoke, and the soldiers rushing up all the aisles. His comrades were on their feet, wild with anger, capable of any violence. But Ernest steadied himself for a moment, and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... roof the wild clouds leap And shriek as they hurtle past. The snow-waves hiss along the plain, Like spectral wolves they stretch and strain And race and ramp—with hissing beat, Like stealthy tread of myriad feet, I hear them pass; upon the roof The icy showers swirl and rattle; At times the moon, from storms aloof, Shines white and wan within the room— Then swift clouds drive across the light And all the plain is lost to sight, The cabin rocks, and on my palm The sifted ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... wreckage were packed so closely that the wonder was that my hulk moved through it at all. Of wind there was not a particle; indeed, as I found later, under that soft golden haze was a dead calm that very rarely in those still latitudes was ruffled by even the faintest breeze. Only a weak swirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes faster ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... the sharks, which have a new corpse in there,' said the man. 'See what a turmoil there is in the water. There must be six monsters together in that swirl. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... to the ground, the adventurers left the deadlight to use the windows. For a moment the view was obscured by a swirl of dust, raised by the spurt of the current; then this cloud vanished, settling to the ground with astounding suddenness, as though jerked down by some ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... seem heartless of them to run away and leave her alone to manage as best she could. Mona looked about her helplessly, her heart sinking right down, down. The tide at that point had a way of creeping up gently, stealthily, and then, with one big swirl would rush right in and around the group of rocks on which she stood. If the wind was high and the sea at all rough, as likely as not it would sweep right over the rocks and back again with such force that anyone or anything on them was swept away with it. There was not wind enough to-day for ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the baked earth; where had been dry channels, rents and scars, full of dust, were now singing torrents and broad pools fetlock deep. Prosper let his good beast go his own gait, which was a sober trot, and ever and again as he heard the ripple of running water and the swirl and suck of the eddies in it, he judged that he must soon or late touch the Wan river, whereon stood the Abbey and his bed. What to do with the girl when he got there? That puzzled him. "A well-ordered ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... moving over quickly to the stake on which the lantern hung. The wind was rushing through the tree-tops with increased fervor; the air was cool and wet with the signs of rain; a swirl of dust flew up into her face; the swish of leaves sounded like the splashing of water in the air. Holding her heart for minutes, she at last regained some of the lost composure. A hysterical laugh ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... instant Bob and Ned thought their chum had been killed. But Jerry sprang up again, and, seeing a knot of Germans just ahead of him, tossed a hand grenade among them. As a wisp of fog shuts out a view, so the smoke of the grenade hid the group of Huns for a moment. And when a swirl of the air lifted the smoke curtain, a gray heap on the ground was all that remained. It was like some vision of ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... leaves his stony hollows and swims over the sandy places, looking for soft crabs, or for his favourite food, the luscious crass. Last of all comes the beautiful sea-trout, skirmishing forward with short rushes, and sometimes making a swirl near the surface of the water. The fishermen wait until they think the trout have had time to reach the inner rocks, and then softly paddle the coble away from the shore. The net is dexterously shot, and a good man can manage ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... rode back to the claims, gravely discussing the potentialities of the future. Since they rode slowly while they talked, they were presently overtaken by a swirl of dust, behind which came the matched browns which were the Flying U's crack driving team, bearing Irish and Miss Allen of the twinkling eyes upon the front seat of a two seated spring-wagon that had seen far better days than this. Native Son helped to crowd the back seat ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... The edge of one of my freight-cars glowed suddenly with the imminent headlight, and galloping shots invaded the place. The horsemen flew by, overreaching, and leaning back and lugging against their impetus. They passed in a tangled swirl, and their dust coiled up thick from the dark ground and luminously unfolded across the glare of the sharp-halted locomotive. Then they wheeled, and clustered around it where it stood by our cars, its air-brake pumping deep breaths, and the internal steam ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... comes but one debut; it stands alone sweet in her memory when her hair has whitened; but to Chandler each ten weeks brought a joy as keen, as thrilling, as new as the first had been. To sit among bon vivants under palms in the swirl of concealed music, to look upon the habitues of such a paradise and to be looked upon by them—what is a girl's first dance and short-sleeved tulle ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... when all the canoes were ranged side by side, their gracefully curved bows came in line; dip, swirl, thud; dip, swirl, thud, sounded all the paddles together. The time was faultless. Then it was that the picturesque brigade appeared in wild perfection. Nearing a portage, spontaneously a race began for the best landing place. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... trying to work out his daily reckoning. According to the lad's inexpert calculations, the dock was drifting southeast at the rate of some six or seven miles each day. The dock was a prisoner in that vast central swirl between the North and South Atlantic, that was swinging in stagnating circles when Columbus sailed for the new world; it lay exactly the same when the Norsemen beat down the coasts of Europe; it would ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... rushing at his feet; the swirl of the unseen waters whispered to him of rest and peace he had not known since—it was so cold—and who was there to care, he thought bitterly. No one would ever know. He moved a little nearer the edge, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... fresh still in the fifties, daring, provocative to foot, swamping to intellect, arresting to judgment, irresistible, supreme! Before Mrs. Wade could protest, Brooks's arm had gathered up her slim figure, and with one quick backward sweep and swirl they were off! The floor was cleared for them in a sudden bewilderment of alarm—a suspense of burning curiosity. The widow's little feet tripped quickly, her long black skirt swung out; as she turned the corner there was not only a sudden revelation of her pretty ankles, but, ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... merchants, and others who have duties which allow of only occasional relaxation devoted to the river. To such the donning of wading gear for the first time in the season, the entrance into the clear running water, the cautious advance upon the amber gravel or solid rock, the swirl of the rushing stream around the knees, the sensation of cold through the waterproofing, the arrival at length at the point where the head of the pool is within range—these are a keen delight. The pulses ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... opposite bank draws in to form the narrow raceway of the rapids. It began to feel the stronger pull of those hidden hands that had carried it so easily down The Bend. And then—and then—the unguided, helpless craft responded to the gentle pressure of some swirl or crosscurrent in the main flow of the stream, and swung a little to one side. A few feet farther, and the new impulse became stronger. Yielding easily to the current that drew it so gently across the invisible dividing-line between safety and destruction, the boat swung in toward the shore. ...
— The Re-Creation of Brian Kent • Harold Bell Wright
... minutes later, Hetty in the pickup disappeared behind a hot swirl of yellow dust. Barney ambled to the cool pump house beneath the towering windmill. An electric motor, powered either from the REA line or from direct current stored in a bank of wet cell batteries, bulked large in the small shed. To the left, a small, gasoline-driven generator supplied standby ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... cheeks?" The question came along with a swirl of skirts from the great hall. "Cousin Anna, don't hate me for keeping you so long. Mr. Brockton, I owe you ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... the bank above, where lay a score of other anxious boats, Kit and his companions went ahead on foot to investigate. They crept to the brink and gazed down at the swirl of water. Sprague drew ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... paddle and set to work. He was by this time something of an adept in the use of a spruce blade, as most canoeists become in time. That is, he could propel a boat silently, not a swirl or a dripping blade betraying the labor that sent it on. Guides in the Maine woods had taught Frank how to approach a deer at night time on a lake ...
— The Outdoor Chums on the Gulf • Captain Quincy Allen
... hastily put on the first may-fly of the season; and no sooner have we made our cast than, as Rudyard Kipling once said to the writer, there is a boil in the water "like the launch of a young yacht," a tremendous swirl, and we are fast into a famous trout. Directly he feels the insulting sting of the hook he rushes down stream at a terrific rate, so that the line, instead of being taut, dangles loosely on the water. We gather the line through the rings in breathless haste—there is no time ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... swept across the plain-land. The sun was pale-bright in the east, slowly being obscured by gray clouds. Snow began to fall, first in scudding, scanty flakes, but increasing until the air was full of a great, fleecy swirl. Wade rode along the rim of a mountain wall, watching a beautiful snow-storm falling into the brown gulf beneath him. Once as he headed round a break he caught sight of mountain-sheep cuddled under a protecting ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... wondrous sweep and curve of tumbling brown water that descends by three horseshoe ledges to a swirl of sparkling spray. It is not alone the great volume of the dark river above sent over, thrust down, nor the height from which the olive is hurled to the white below. So, too, plunge and sweep other falls—the Grand Loup in Terrebonne, the Petit Loup in Joliette, the Pleureuse, the Grand Lorette, ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison
... before. We laboured on, and the dreams began where they had broken off. For we dreamed in these times, fitful and lurid, coloured dreams; flashes of horrible crises in one's life; Interminable precipices; a river skiff engulfed in a swirl of green sea-water; agonies of repentance; shameful failure, defeat, memories—and then the steady pulsing of the engine, and thick, impermeable darkness choking up the windows again. How I ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... lived without that window, she would have told you, nor without the river, which had lulled her to sleep ever since she could remember. It was in the south chamber upstairs that she had been born. Her mother had lain there and listened to the swirl of the water, in that year when the river was higher than the oldest inhabitant had ever seen it,—the year when the covered bridge at the Mills had been carried away, and when the one at the Falls was in hourly danger of succumbing to the force ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... measure withdrawing from the swirl of society in which so much of his life had been passed, he in no sense lost touch with the movements of the day, and in none of these did he take a more lively interest than in those which affected the state of France. And that seemed particularly unsettled. No one could ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... swirl of sound the two humans were swept down passages and across halls, as two leaves are borne by a tempest, and after frantic efforts, in which Spinrobin bruised his body against doors and walls without number, he found himself at last in the open air, and ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... a bad cayuse and the swirl and swish of the flying noose, And the cowboy's yell as he roped a steer, but nothing of this fell on his ear. Not even a wide-brimmed hat he spied, but derbies flourished on every side, And the spurs and the "chaps" and the flannel shirts, the high-heeled boots ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... that I really belong with her in the middle of the last century, and she, born to what father says was really the best society and privilege of New York life, like his college chum Martin Cortright, is now swept quite aside by the swirl. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... whirled around, his heavy robe following the movement in a practiced swirl. His liquid black eyes looked me over shrewdly, and he bowed toward me as he vaguely touched his chest, lips and forehead. I expected him to murmur, "Effendi," or "Bwana Sahib," or something, but he must have felt silence was ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... dashed towards this and vaulted across the flaming wall, our horses snorting and screaming with pain as we landed on the smoking turf of the other side. I gulped a great breath of the fresh air into my suffocating lungs, tore the buckskin covering from my broncho's head and we raced on in a swirl of smoke, always following the dust which revealed the tracks of the retreating Sioux. There was a whiff of singed hair, as if one of the horses had been burnt, and Little Fellow gave a shout. Looking back I saw his horse sinking on the blackened patch; but La Robe Noire and I ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... the train gathered around them. Gladys was pale herself, and had a strong sense of the sadness of the occasion, still she had a feeling of importance. Edwin Shaw came lumbering up timidly, and Maud Page pressed quickly to Maria's side with a swirl of her wide skirts. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... some mighty revulsion of nature's heart, into the air of the sweet heavens, there to stand marked for ever with the tide-flows of the nether world—scooped, and hollowed, and worn like aeonian rocks that have slowly, but for ever, responded to the swirl and eddy of the wearing waters. So, from the most troublous of times, will the Church of our land arise, in virtue of what truth she holds, and in spite, if she rises at all, of the worldliness of those who, instead ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... its crested waves of recognisable form; the river its eddy and swirl and separate vortices; but the grass! The wind bloweth where it listeth and the grass bows as the wind blows— "thou canst not tell whither it goeth." It takes no pattern, it obeys no recognised law; it is like ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... shimmering swirl of waters where many, many thoughts ago the slave-ship first saw the square tower of Jamestown have flowed down to our day three streams of thinking: one from the larger world here and over-seas, saying, the multiplying of human wants in culture lands calls for the world-wide co-operation of ...
— The Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, 1995, Memorial Issue • Various
... is a swirl of "ifs" and "ands." The Commander who enters upon it possessed by some just and clear principle is like a sailing ship entering a typhoon on the right tack. After that he lives from hand to mouth. How far will wise saws cut ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... of Life resembles the life history of the smallest things we know of, the electrons, and the largest, the great suns and stars of space. The electron begins, perhaps, as a swirl in the primeval ether, joins other electrons, forms colonies, cities, empires, elements of an increasing complexity, through stages of a relative stability, like lead or gold. Until it reaches the stage of integration which wills its own disintegration, that we have been taught to look ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... sweeping down on me like a flood. What work you are in the midst of! What a life! What a purpose! While I—I am lying here like an old slipper thrown up oil the sea-beach. Oh, the pity oft, the pity oft! It must be glorious to be in the rush and swirl of all this splendid effort, whatever comes of it! One's soul is thrilled, one's heart expands! As for me, the garden of my mind is withering, and I am consuming the seed ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine |
