"Swirl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a shotgun blast. The deck shook and a big swirl of smoke floated straight toward Jimmy, half blinding him and blotting Uncle ...
— The Mississippi Saucer • Frank Belknap Long
... blandishments and remained a widower, devoting his entire care to the one child he had brought with him as an infant from the Highland hills, and to whom he gave a brilliant but desultory and uncommon education. Life seemed to swirl round him in a glittering ring of gold of which he made himself the centre,—and when he died suddenly "from overstrain" as the doctors said, people were almost frightened to name the vast fortune his daughter inherited, accustomed as ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli
... corner of the station, but all he could see of either was through a swirl of dust as the motor car in which they were riding ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... would interest me to see what you would do with it. This is your 'flutter.' I like the way you face it. If you were a son instead of a daughter, I should see I might have confidence in you. I could not confide to Wall Street what I will tell you—which is that in the midst of the drive and swirl and tumult of my life here, I like what you see in the thing, I like your idea of the lord of the land, who should love the land and the souls born on it, and be the friend and strength of them and give the best and get it back ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... 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 of ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... eerily, They wheel about and whirl, They jeer at me, they fleer at me, They flout me as they swirl! As whirling fast or swaying slow, Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, Around, around the corpse they go, They chill me with their chants! These be neither men nor mists— Hearken to ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... Ben sneaked, but mistook the especial frog to which his friend had reference. Instead, he pounced upon a big yellow-throated beast weighing a pound and a half, and known colloquially as a "sockdolliger" or a "joogger-room." There followed a scuffling rush, a grunt, a startled yowl, and a swirl of water; then Omar Ben came up coughing, minus his frog, but plus an overcoat of mud ...
— A Night Out • Edward Peple
... forth sheets of flame. Dirigible and plane were hidden in an ugly swirl of yellowish smoke, rolling out into a purple cloud that spread into prismatic mist over the descent of cavorting human bodies and broken machinery and twisted braces, flying pieces of tattered or burning cloth. David has taken Goliath down with him ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... the two men. He knew the driving force which was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of forgetting that Mary Standish was a wife. He had almost fallen a victim ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... gleam of the helmets held upon the knees of the ten yeomen of his escort. At the very edge of the platform sat the reporters, five of them—three locals and two all the way from London. But where was the all-important referee? There was no sign of him, unless he were in the centre of that angry swirl of men near ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... 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 Hunger and Vice, ...
— Little Masterpieces of American Wit and Humor - Volume I • Various
... in her throat, the chair, the lamp, the shadowy figure of the man in the match flame to swirl before her eyes, and a sick nausea to come upon her soul itself. With a short, triumphant oath, Rough Rorke had stopped suddenly and reached in under the chair. And now he was dangling a new, black kid glove ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... and much broken by exposure and disease; the prospect of spending the remainder of his days among his hospitable neighbors on the banks of the Cumberland yielded deep satisfaction. The home-loving Mrs. Jackson, too, earnestly desired that he should not again be drawn into the swirl of public life. "I do hope," she wrote plaintively to a niece soon after her return to the Hermitage, "they will leave Mr. Jackson alone. He is not a well man and never will be unless they allow him to rest. He has done his ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... silent for several moments, looking over into the black gulf below, watching the swirl of the sea, listening to its dull booming against the distant rocks, the shriek of the backward-dragged pebbles. An owl flew out from some secret place in the cliffs and wheeled across the bay. She drew her shawl around ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... contrary, it sometimes manifests great flames, like those of a fiery furnace, which shoot forth great tongues, and dart forth suddenly in certain directions toward the objects attracting them. Under great emotional excitement the auric flames move around in swift circling whirlpools, or else swirl away from a centre. Again, it seems to throw forth tiny glistening sparks of psychic vibrations, some of which travel for ...
— Genuine Mediumship or The Invisible Powers • Bhakta Vishita
... beneath the tree since the departure of the first stealthy visitor, and the hope was quite strong within the lad that in the hurry and swirl of the fight the red-skins had failed to note him in his hiding-place. If such were really the case, it would seem that there was a chance of his passing through the lines ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... spirit of my Father were then running, with furious velocity, two hostile streams of influence. I was standing, just now, thinking of these things, where the Cascine ends in the wooded point which is carved out sharply by the lion- coloured swirl of the Arno on the one side and by the pure flow of the Mugnone on the other. The rivers meet, and run parallel, but there comes a moment when the one or the other must conquer, and it is the yellow vehemence ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... been privileged to view the photograph thus flattered, you would have thought at the first glance that you saw the picture of a many-petalled white flower, blown through the air by a storm. But the floral kingdom was not responsible for that swirl of petalous whiteness. ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... right. Well—we'd best be gettin' on—no tellin' how soon they may find you're gone." Once more the big Yankee bowed his back to the task in hand and a silence fell, broken only by the faint sound of the muffled oars and the swirl of water along the sides. Not even the thrill of the escape could keep the two tired boys awake, and it was nearly an hour later that they were roused by voices calling at no great distance. A tall black mass on which showed a single moving ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... 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 leases expired, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... 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, ...
— The Seaboard Parish Volume 1 • George MacDonald
... they were, actively intermingled. The rather low sound of his voice as he spoke to the horses came velvety to her nerves. How near he was, and how invisible! The darkness seemed to be in a strange swirl of violent life, just upon her. ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... seated in a commodious open-air theatre, watching an excellent vaudeville performance. He enjoyed it thoroughly, for it was above the average. In fifteen minutes, however, the last soubrette disappeared in the wings to the accompaniment of a swirl of music. Her place was taken by a tall, facetious-looking, bald individual, clad in a loose frock coat. He held up ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... arms; heavy ammunition wagons drawn by four horse; with a soldier outrider astride one of the leaders, and from time to time columns of reserves, older men for the most part, bound for guard duty, probably, shuffling along in loose order. Round and through these wagon-trains, in a swirl of dust, rumbled and swayed big motor-trucks, and once or twice, scattering everything with a lilting "Ta-te... Ta-da" the gray motor, the flash of scarlet, pale blue, and gold, and the bronzed, begoggled, imperial visage of some one high ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... for the absence of speeches; it is a record of the continued intrigues which followed the Sicilian disaster. Upheavals in Asia Minor brought into the swirl of plots Tissaphernes, the Persian satrap, anxious to recover control of Ionia hitherto saved by Athenian power. In 412 the Athenian subjects began to revolt, seventeen defections being recorded in all. At Samos a most important movement began; the democrats rose against ...
— Authors of Greece • T. W. Lumb
... loaded and fired as steadily as a veteran. The smoke of the guns, the wild whooping of the Iroquois Indians, the sight of his friends and neighbors continually dropping to the ground, some of them at his elbow, the deafening discharge of the rifles—all these and the dreadful swirl and rush of events dazed him at times; but he kept at it with a steadiness which caused more than one expression of praise ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... she has carious teeth—des dents Carrier!" But when, if ever, the truth about that dark episode of Le Pelletier and his schemes is told, it will be seen how much more gold and private ambitions had to do with the final fatal drift of things after the destiny of France fell into the swirl of Paris, than all the howlings and ravings of the philosophers and the patriots. What happened in the last century will happen again whenever and wherever human society ceases to be held together by the ...
— France and the Republic - A Record of Things Seen and Learned in the French Provinces - During the 'Centennial' Year 1889 • William Henry Hurlbert
... the history 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 ...
— The Glands Regulating Personality • Louis Berman, M.D.
... in the doorway talking to his reindeer, although they were far away in the mountains. He barred the wolf's way, and threatened the bear with spells; and then he opened his skin sack, so that the storm howled and piped, and there was a swirl of ashes into the hut. And when all grew quiet again, the air was thick with yellow humble-bees, which settled inside his furs, whilst he gabbled and mumbled ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... last bait, a large and luscious grub, struck the water there was a swirl, a splash, a tug. Neale excitedly realized that he had hooked a father of the waters. It leaped. That savage leap, the splash, the amazing size of the fish, inflamed in Neale the old boyish desire to capture, and, forgetting what little skill he possessed, he gave a mighty pull. The ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... 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
... before—a sound so compelling, so nerve-shattering, that even he was arrested, entrapped as it were by a horror of crashing elements that made him wonder if all the fiends in hell were fighting for his soul. And, as he paused, the swirl of a great wave caught him in the darkness like the blow of a concrete thing, nearly flinging him backwards. He staggered, for the first time stricken with fear, and then in the howling uproar of that dreadful place there came to him like a searchlight wheeling inwards the thought of the girl. ...
— The Tidal Wave and Other Stories • Ethel May Dell
... run, but the huge black-headed figure swept forward and engulfed him. He was trapped in a blinding swirl of radiance, with darkness above it. The light bored into his head, and he tried to scream. Then he ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... KEENE. Look at "Grandiloquence!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some few ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... of bread and bacon scraps. The tide was running up slowly, as could be noted from the bubbles and drift-wood that circled past the piling of the wharf, and Constans, happening to glance down into the swirl, saw something that brought him to his feet. Nothing more remarkable than a bottle of thick, greenish glass, but bottles of any kind had become valuable now that the art of glass blowing was so little practised, and such flotsam ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... shone like gold as the rising sun beat on them. Each gate had a solid square tower on each side of it that stood out from the wall and rose above it. Beyond the wall were more towers and houses, gleaming with gold and bright colours. Away to the left ran the steel-blue swirl of a great river. And the children could see, through a gap in the trees, that the river flowed out from the town under a great arch ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... lifting again its grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of a gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily alarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... to the grass-encircled goal of the maiden's hopes and ball, its gloomy depths appeared to move, swirl round, rise up, as a small green snake uncoiled in haste and darted beneath Dam's approaching upturned hand, and swiftly ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... 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 said ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... flight as though they were alone with the towers and the sunset. Below, the streets were full of people; the omnibuses rolled to and fro; the lamps were just lit; lines of straggling figures, dark in the half light, were crossing the street here and there. And to all the human rush and swirl below, the quiet of the Abbey and the infinite red distances of sky gave a peculiar pathos ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... concert—and felt my soul stirred up to a sort of sweet madness, not merely by the shouts and cheers of the mob around me, but by the loud fierce pulse of the rowlocks, the swift whispering rush of the long snake-like eight oars, the swirl and gurgle of the water in their wake, the grim, breathless silence of the straining rowers. My blood boiled over, and fierce tears swelled into my eyes; for I, too, was a man, and an Englishman; and when I caught sight of my cousin, ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... through the Red Sea; at the mouth of it where the entrance is narrow, and the currents run strong, when the ship approaches the dangerous place, the men take their stations at appointed places, and the ponderous anchors are loosened and ready to be dropped in an instant if the swirl of the current sweeps the ship into dangerous proximity to the reef. It is no time to cut the lashings of the anchors when the keel is grating on the coral rocks. And it is no time to have to look about for our weapons when the sudden temptation ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... and swirl of recent events he must have omitted to see that the clasp that fastened the bag was properly closed; for the bag, as it jumped on to the window-sill, gaped at him like a yawning face. And inside ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... of the road is loose, and scoured by winter rains, and on a windy day the dust comes swirling down it like a miniature sandstorm. I have, indeed, seen even a car obliged to draw up to let the blinding red swirl go by; and from Lynton, on the opposite side of the valley, the whole headland has been blurred and obliterated by the dust, as ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... into mist, in a swirl of graceful drapery, and he frowned again. A long line of men-at-arms stood before him, grim as he and as discontented. They leaned on spears, at ease, and that seemed to annoy him most of all. A spokesman stood out from ...
— King—of the Khyber Rifles • Talbot Mundy
... is called Tadousac, and consists of an hotel and French fishermen, to whom Quebec is a distant, unvisited city of legend. The afternoon was very hot. I wandered out along a thin margin of yellow sand to the extreme rocky point where the waters of the two rivers meet and swirl. There I lay, and looked at the strange humps of the Laurentian hills, and the dark green masses of the woods, impenetrable depths of straight and leaning and horizontal trees, broken here and there by great bald granite rocks, ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... believe in Nature—you're a friend of Nature?" asked Colville, following the lines of an oily swirl in the current ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... had gone by, and the Universe was very much as it had always been except for the wild swirl in it, and the faint sense of insecurity my episode ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... we have 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
... the top. One of the boys was just emerging from the blacksmith shop; from the build of him Andy knew it must be either Weary or Irish, though it would take a much closer observation, and some familiarity with the two to identify the man more exactly. In the corral were a swirl of horses and an overhanging cloud of dust, with two or three figures discernible in the midst, and away in the little pasture two other figures were galloping after a fleeing dozen of horses. While he looked, old Patsy came out of the messhouse, and went, ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... 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 ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... has sought the oak-dotted prairie miles to the south. Surely, something, somewhere must be unchanged! He has attained the spot where the trees were densest. He is in a swirl of hosts. He looks upon vast, splendid structures, such as the world has never seen before. Through shining thoroughfares are surging the people of all nations. And here was where the Miami Indian found ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... Chester crowds kept pretty much together. They could be picked out as a rule by the swirl of waving school colors, for every Chester girl and boy who had journeyed to Marshall to see their team win the game, made sure to carry the ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... 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 ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... arrived, he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, recognition ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... man may not be able to see the forest because of the trees, so Mr. Wells is as one who has stood by a great river's bank for a few minutes and has not seen the river for the flash of the ripples in the sun, the swirl of an eddy here and there, the flotsam swinging by on the current; and he has gone away and prattled of the ripples and the eddy and the floating branch. The great flow of the river down below does not expose itself to the vision of three minutes. He only comes to understand it who ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... arms up to the skies, While through your leaves pour Ocean's symphonies! What Druid lore ye know! What ancient rites— Gray guardians of ten thousand days and nights, Watching the stars swim round their sapphire pole, The ocean surges break about earth's brimming bowl. The cyclone's driving swirl, the storm-tossed seas. Hymning for aye ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... order promptly, and backed water with all their might; and it was fortunate that they did so, or they would have been caught in the swirl of the sinking vessel. Before they had retreated twenty feet, the stern of the Fatime suddenly went down, with a mighty rush of the water around her to fill up the vacant space inside of her, and then she shot to the bottom, ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... crystal-like, a phantom shape, staring at you with strange black eyes; then he is gone. Vanished! Absolutely without your seeing a movement, even a faint streak! By peering keenly you may discern a little swirl in the water. As for the strength of a bonefish, I actually hesitate to give my impressions. No one will ever believe how powerful a bonefish is until he has tried to stop the rush and heard the line snap. As for his cunning, it is utterly baffling. As ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... takes his bow of arrows and goes his way and comes to the riverside and turns his face south, and goes slowly along the very edge of the water; and the water itself drew his eyes down to gaze on the dark green deeps and fierce downlong swirl of the stream, with its sharp clean lines as if they were carven in steel, and the curling and upheaval and sudden changing of the talking eddies: so that he scarce might see the familiar greensward of the ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... 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 ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... are still. There are no waves lapping, but only a steady swirl of water softly running against the hawser. I can hear men's voices calling, near and far, and the roll and creak of oars in the rowlocks. A gun is fired somewhere, the echo of it seems far away. There ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... 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 ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... break, and curve and hollow itself and break again. The sweet sea-breeze sang in her ears, and braced her with its freshness, while the continuous sound of wind and water went from her consciousness and came again with the ebb and flow of her thoughts. But the strength and swirl of the water, its tireless force, its incessant voices choiring on a chorus of numberless notes, invited her, fascinated her, filled her with longing—longing to trust herself to the waves, to lie still and let them rock her, to be borne out by them a little ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... 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 fell from her lips. "What a goose! It was an owl and I've heard hundreds of ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... 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 rode on. The fugitives ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... demoniacal hate; at the altar foot a great censer erupted a dense cloud of pungent smoke that rendered the altar and those about it still more vague and ghostly. And the glade was full of cowering, slavering blacks and half-breeds, whose superstitious terrors reached high tide with each succeeding swirl of smoke or outflash of ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... the faces that swirl through the streets of a city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil passions are traced. Were it not for the brute in it, it might be mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... and looked back as though for guidance. Before them was a swirl of water. In the darkness it was impossible to say how deep the wash-out might be, or how wide. Ross hesitated. His father had warned him against foolhardiness, and here he was facing the crossing of a swift current of unknown depth on a ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... wire which he carried there for some purpose or other, probably for the construction of a short length of fence whenever he stopped long enough to make it desirable. He glanced up at the gray sky, noting the swirl of snowflakes which settled down like a cloud. A few moments ago they had almost ceased, enabling him to glimpse the rider at a distance and now they were providentially falling again. Luck ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... came to look around we found that another big rock blocked the channel 300 yards below, and the water rushed around it with a terrible swirl. So we unloaded the boat again and made the attempt to get around it as we did the other rocks. We tried to get across the river but failed. We now, all but one, got on the great rock with our poles, and the one man was to ease the boat down with the rope as far as he could, then let ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... dress of lightish-brown mohair, which would not fall into graceful folds. So there she sat in the little library, knitting Titanically; and I sat alone with her, learning to round Hatteras at the heel in a swirl of contradictory impressions. I felt that she ought to have been dressed in soft dark silks, with a large, half-idle ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... soft swirl of a woman's gown passing over the marble floor. They all turned. It was ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a faint, far-away buzzing made him glance upward. Two sharp winged points were skimming through the air. He felt a thrill—the thrill of the unknown. He knew it must be one of the craft, foreign as yet to the hill country. In the distance he saw it swirl, loop and maneuver, spiral gracefully downward, skim the earth lightly, rise again and then descend from sight hidden by one of ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... and all the golden twilight was hazy with the dust suspended in swirl and strata over the ugly roofs. In the canvas-faced main street the throng and noise had increased rather than diminished at the approach of dusk. Although clatter of dishes mingled with the cadence, the people acted as if they had no thought of eating; and while aware of certain pangs myself, ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... wind or the man's plight 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 letting ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-boat - or, The Rivals of Lake Carlopa • Victor Appleton
... pang of misery as this fair, severe, and happy face passed him by. He wondered if she had been up to Charlotte's, and if Charlotte or her mother had been talking to her, and if she knew about Thomas Payne. He watched her out of sight in a swirl of gay skirts, her blue and golden head bobbing with her dancing steps; then he glanced over his shoulder at his poor new house, with its fireless chimneys. If all had gone well, he and Charlotte would have been ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... the front steps; no one saw me to the door. I glanced in passing through the windows of the sitting-room; and there stood Edwarda, tall, upright, holding the curtains apart with both hands, looking out. I did not bow to her: I forgot everything; a swirl of confusion overwhelmed me ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... the darling Eva!" was my prayer. A pure, unconscious depth of earnestness Was in her eyes, so indescribable You might as well the color of the air Seek to daguerreotype, or to impress A stain upon the river, whose first swell Would swirl it to the deep. A calm, sweet soul, Where Love's celestial saints and ministers Did hold the earthly under such control Virtue sprung up like daisies from the sod. Oh, for one hour's sweet excellence like hers! One hour of sinlessness, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... sketched: these constituents clustered and combined to give me further support, to give me what I may call the note absolute. There it stands, accordingly, full in the tideway; driven in, with hard taps, like some strong stake for the noose of a cable, the swirl of the current roundabout it. What amplified the hint to more than the bulk of hints in general was the gift with it of the old Paris garden, for in that token were sealed up values infinitely precious. There was of course the seal to break and each item of the ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... dugout, driven by half-a-dozen paddles in the hands of lusty natives, came racing down stream. As the canoe drew abreast of us, the paddlers chanting a barbaric chorus, there was a sudden swirl in the water and the object which I had taken for a log ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... "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.' But it ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... heels of a tragedy. Some days before, in this surging swirl of waters two priests pushed out in a canoe. The older man had been in the North for years and was "going out," the other had come from Europe to take his place; the Father would show to his successor all the beauties of the rapids. In their enthusiasm they ventured ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... Gunnison had 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 ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... a swirl of petticoats. The infant had seen the stars for the first time, and had some trouble in explaining the nature of his find. When it was known that he had discovered the solar system and its neighbouring fragment of the universe, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... floats Through the unmoving air and back to me. I am alone with the declining day And the declining forest where the notes Of all the happy minstrelsy, Birds and leaf-music and the rest, Sink separately in the hush of fall. The sun and clouds conflicting in the west Swirl into smoky light together and fade Under the unbroken shadow; Under the shadowed peace that is the night; Under the night's great quietude of shade. The sheep below me in the meadow Seem drifting on the haze, serene and ...
— The Five Books of Youth • Robert Hillyer
... ends of sea, To see the day steal up the bay, where the enemy lies in wait, To run your ship to the harbor's lip and sink her across the strait:— But better the golden evening when the ships round heads for home, And the long gray miles slip swiftly past in a swirl of seething foam, And the people wait at the haven's gate to greet the men who win! Thank God for peace! Thank God for peace, when the great gray ships ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... bring into play her starboard batteries. Both her masts and three of her four funnels were shot away. At length the German flagship began to settle down rapidly in the waters. It was about a quarter past four. There was a swirl of the seas and a rush of steam and smoke. The Scharnhorst disappeared. She went down with her flag flying to an ocean grave, bearing 760 brave men and a gallant admiral, whose name will deservedly rank high in the annals of German ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... was the only one who dared speak to her to-day. Mrs. Larabee was dressed in the overalls and jersey that simplified both the dressing and the labor of busy Monday mornings; her sleek black hair arranged fashionably in a "turban swirl." She ran out to the cart with a little cry of welcome, a smile on her thin, brown face that well concealed the trepidation this unheard-of circumstance caused her. "Lord, make me say the right thing!" prayed Johnnie, fervently. Mrs. Waters saw her coming, stopped the ...
— Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories • Kathleen Norris
... A dash, a swirl, a shock, a leap, horse and hunter working in perfect accord, and a fine big calf, bellowing lustily, struggled desperately for freedom under the remorseless knee. The big hands toyed with him; and then, secure in the double ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... 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 a beautiful creature ...
— The Roadmender • Michael Fairless
... room in swarms, stately and gorgeous, dazzling with diamonds; flowers on their heads and breasts, in their hair, scattered over their dresses or lying in garlands at their feet. Light quiverings of the body, voluptuous movements, made the laces and gauzes and silks swirl about their graceful figures. Sparkling glances here and there eclipsed the lights and the blaze of the diamonds, and fanned the flame of hearts already burning too brightly. I detected also significant nods of the head for lovers and repellent attitudes for husbands. ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... his home came to him like distant music. He saw himself opening his door; he saw a small ball of white coming down the stairs backward in a terrifying fury of speed, the little, fat, half-bare legs and a swirl of tiny skirts all that was visible of his wee daughter coming to greet him. He saw himself catch her off the last step and lift her in his arms, burying his face against the baby's hot, panting little body, then he heard Helen's voice and the ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... episode, the textures sparkling with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering proves especially authoritative. His specifications ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... production of good art is at all widespread and continuous, near at hand I shall expect to find a restless generation. Also, having marked a period of spiritual stir, I shall look, not far off, for its manifestation in significant form. But the stir must be spiritual and genuine; a swirl of emotionalism or political frenzy will provoke nothing fine.[8] How far in any particular age the production of art is stimulated by general exaltation, or general exaltation by works of art, is a question hardly to be decided. ...
— Art • Clive Bell
... this discord from the outside, came the personal letters. The book was hardly under way before the storm of them set in. It began like a New England snow-storm, with a few large, earnest flakes; then came the swirl of them, big and little, sleet and rain, fast and furious, regular and irregular, scurrying and tumbling over each other ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. VI., No. 6, May, 1896 • Various
... their plight, and was racing madly to their rescue, with a yard-high swirl of water thrown up from its nose and a fusillade of ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... 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 not fancy giving up an undertaking after ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... not move, but held the three fingers out for a full minute. Finally he dropped them and bent to pick up the case instruments. Again the little swirl in the air, and the instruments vanished. In their place lay three of the blue gems. My mouth twitched in the first amusement I had felt since we entered this uncanny place. Evidently bargaining with the Silent Ones was not a great ...
— The Door Through Space • Marion Zimmer Bradley
... vaguely aware, at times, that she was traveling. She felt the motion of a sled under her and knew that she was lying on the warm hide of some freshly killed beast and that a blanket and a canvas covering protected her from a swirl of snow. Then she thought she heard a voice babbling queerly and saw a face quite terribly different from other human faces. The covering was taken from her, snowflakes touched her cheek, a lantern shone in her ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... live together. Any one could see that. The human race was going to be one long row, sometime—great nations of us and little ones all at last huddled up along the equator to keep warm. Just outside of this a little way, it would be perfectly empty star, all in a swirl of snowdrifts. ...
— The Voice of the Machines - An Introduction to the Twentieth Century • Gerald Stanley Lee
... to 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, in the measure in which the grace of God comes into our hearts. Just ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... cube settled slowly 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
... 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 'ill 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 dog-cart, now ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... all sides monks and nuns came flying from the town, wringing their hands as if the horrors of the last judgment had surprised them in their sins. The guards of the Archbishop were scattered among them like chaff in the swirl of the wind: then his Grace came himself on Sir David Hamilton's fleet mare, with Sir David and divers of his household fast following. The wrath of heaven was behind them, and they rattled past my grandfather like the distempered phantoms that hurry ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... Majesty, that Colonel Toll, One of Field-Marshal Price Kutuzof's staff, In the retreating swirl of overthrow, Found Alexander seated on a stone, Beneath a leafless roadside apple-tree, Out here by Goding on the Holitsch way; His coal-black uniform and snowy plume Unmarked, his face disconsolate, his grey eyes Mourning in tears ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... still and listened. Down on the shingles I could hear the sea come thundering in with a loud increasing roar, dying monotonously away at regular intervals. I could hear the harsh grinding of the pebbles, the backward swirl of long waves thrown back from the land. I heard the wind come booming across the waste lands, rustling and creaking amongst the few stunted trees in the grounds of Braster Grange. Of slighter sounds there seemed ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... electric message sent through a mile of wire is not anything transmitted; matter is not transferred, but the particles are set to dancing in wavy motion from end to end. Particles are leaping within ordered limits and according to regular laws as really as the clouds swirl and the air trembles into song through the throat of a singer. When a wire is made sensitive by electricity the breath of a child can make it vibrate from end to end, ensouled with the child's laughter or fancies. Nay, more, ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... rises in surging curves, but dies away among the quick festal sounds, where the personal motive is still supreme, chasing its own ardent antics, and plunges headlong into the swirl of dance. ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... needed, for as soon as the door was opened wide enough Bill Glutts staggered into the living room, followed by his crony. A swirl of snow followed them, and continued until Gif and Jack managed to close ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... the tinkle and swirl of the elf dances; here is no more of the tireless search for novelty in movement and color. This is "a flash of the soul that can." Here is Beethoven redivivus. For half a century we have had so much pioneering and scientific exploration after piano color and tenderness and fire, that men ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... running only a few minutes when they sighted Mascola's speed-boat astern. The girl frowned as the Fuor d'Italia roared by in a swirl of white water. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... stretched up to my 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, and so leaned ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... and like a common weed The sea-swell took her hair. Dead as she was I clung about her waist, nor ceas'd to pass Fleet as an arrow through unfathom'd brine, 630 Until there shone a fabric crystalline, Ribb'd and inlaid with coral, pebble, and pearl. Headlong I darted; at one eager swirl Gain'd its bright portal, enter'd, and behold! 'Twas vast, and desolate, and icy-cold; And all around—But wherefore this to thee Who in few minutes more thyself shalt see?— I left poor Scylla in a niche ...
— Endymion - A Poetic Romance • John Keats
... burnished skin; the snaky swell smoothes over ... While he, the man of the steerage, goes down, down, Feet foremost, sliding swiftly down the dim water, Swift to escape Those plunging shapes with pale, empurpled bellies That swirl and veer about him. He goes down Unerringly, as though he knew the way Through green, through gloom, to absolute watery darkness, Where no weed sways nor curious fin quivers: To the sad, sunless deeps where, endlessly, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... blaze! What moments of pathos she lived! What moods of holy self-abnegation and of exalted power she brought to many a sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she used to move—the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits of a delighted multitude—came strongly ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... Smith could get over his amazement there was a rush and a swirl in the water behind the insect. Spray was dashed over the rock, a huge form showed itself indistinctly beneath the waves, and next instant the borrowed eyes were showing the engineer, so clearly as to be undeniable, the most astounding ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... an upstanding young chap, despite his horse-bowed legs, walked over to the bunk-house for flash-mirror and gun, came back to his already caught-up and saddled horse, turned stirrup and set foot in it, caught hold of mane and horn, beat the quick swirl of his pony sidewise with the fling of leg over cantle and went streaming off for the Bald Butte in a cloud of dust. Sandy called to Buck Perches, oldest of his riders, whose exposed skin matched the ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... the eyes of each and found his way out with the astonishing certainty of movement that made so many forget his infirmity. Possibly he was not desirous of encountering Draycott's embarrassed gratitude again, for in less than a minute they heard the swirl of ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... 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. Like contending chargers, forward they bounded at every stroke. ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... 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 ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... pursued a diagonal course, veering constantly nearer to the left shore. Occasionally a swirl of the current pitched it toward midstream, but a little ...
— Canoe Boys and Campfires - Adventures on Winding Waters • William Murray Graydon
... almost fatally burned by the furnace gases, should have had presence of mind and the courage to endeavor to shut the door is a great example of heroic devotion to duty as is possible for one to imagine. Immediately after attempting to close the door he was caught in the swirl of inrushing water and thrust up a ventilator leading ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... 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 runner sped ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... is no time for embarrassment. How did she know that young Dante Alighieri had returned—she must have been dreaming of him—thinking of him! There she stands right before him—tall, graceful, intellectual, smiling. Eyes look into eyes and flash recognition. The earth seems to swirl under Dante's feet. He uncovers his head and is about to sink to his knees, but she sustains him with a word of welcome and holds out the tips of her fingers for ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... book before the fire. Outside in the night ghostly shapes pass by, ghostly faces press against the window, and at the corners of the house ghostly voices pause for parley, muttering thickly through the swirl and smother of the snow. Inside burns the fire, kindling into glorious pink and white peonies on the nearest wall and glowing warm and sweet on her face as she reads. The children are in bed. She ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... the personal life. The remembrance of the whole course of my personal life is a vivid one to me, and it seems to have run through all these things like a thin thread of silver through a mass of stuff. Looking back, this swirl of the social world, its functions, its movements, the acquaintanceships it brought me, seem to me all strangely unreal. I seem to be aware of a large, swarming vision, amid which I have lived. But nothing of it has ever in-mingled with my real sense of happiness ...
— Cleo The Magnificent - The Muse of the Real • Louis Zangwill
... Rocks. There was the broad, dark pool, like a little lake, with a rapid running in at the head, and close beside the rapid, the mouth of the brook. He sent his fly out by the edge of the alders. There was a huge swirl on the water, and the great-grandfather of all the trout in the river was hooked. Up and down the pool he played for half an hour, until at last the fight was over, and for want of a net Luke beached him on the gravel bank at ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... satyr on the fresco appeared to be struggling against the limitations of paint and plaster to complete his bound; he saw Cornelia lift her head and begin to address him, but what she said was drowned by the buzzing and swirl which unsteadied the young man's entire faculties. Drusus felt himself turning hot and cold, and in semi-faintness he caught at a pillar, and leaned upon it. He felt numbed mentally and physically. Then, by a mental reaction, his strong, well-balanced nature reasserted itself. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... I little minded loneliness when in the depths of the backwoods, but this was different. I cared nothing for the honk of wild fowl overhead, nor those sounds of varied animal life borne to us from off the black land; but that strange, dull roar, caused by great logs grinding together in the swirl of the current, and the groaning of bits of undermined shore as they gave way and dropped heavily into ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... that struck through even his heavy sweater and coat, he went on, following the tracks he had made coming down. They were almost obliterated with the snow, that went slithering over the drifts like a creeping cloud, except when a heavier gust lifted it high in air and flung it out in a blinding swirl. Battling with that wind sent the warmth through his body again, but his hands and feet were numb when he skirted the highest, deepest, solidest drift of them all and crept into the desolate fissure that was the opening ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... A great swirl of wind and water dashed down upon her on the instant. The lamp behind her flickered and went out, but there was another at the head of the steps to light her halting progress, and, clinging with both hands to the ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... waters of the vast prairie region are descending over huge boulders and rocky islets between banks not a third of a mile apart, there is a wild river scene. Far ahead the paddlers can hear the roar of the swirl. Now the surface of the river rounds and rises in the eddies of an undertow, and the canoe leaps forward; then, a swifter plunge through the middle of a furious overfall. The steersman rises at the stern and ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... advice sound, we 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 ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... 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 mighty rain ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... through a withering gale of sleet all the way up from New York, came to a standstill, with many an ear-splitting sigh, alongside the little station, and a reluctant porter opened his vestibule door to descend to the snow-swept platform: a solitary passenger had reached the journey's end. The swirl of snow and sleet screaming out of the blackness at the end of the station-building enveloped the porter in an instant, and cut his ears and neck with stinging force as he turned his back against the gale. A pair of lonely, ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... brick cellars; there was a path that led underground to the alligator tank and a trap-door that opened just above the water edge. Night, and the fungus-fouled long jaws, and slimy, weed-filled water—the creak of rusty hinges—a splash—the bang of a falling trap—a swirl in the moonlit water, and ring after heavy, widening ring that lapped at last against the stone would write conclusion to a tragedy. There would be no ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... the winged seeds of the plane trees, and the fragments of hay dropped from the mouths of the horses. The dust is nothing remarkable in itself; but as I watch it flying, I remember a moment in my childhood when I watched just such a swirl of dust; and my old Parisian soul is much affected by that sudden recollection. All that I see from my window—that horizon which extends to the left as far as the hills of Chaillot, and enables me to distinguish the Arc de Triomphe like a die of stone, the Seine, river of glory, and ...
— The Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard • Anatole France
... jumps, a fish-like swirl sideways, and still Collie held his seat. He eased the hackamore a little. He was breathing hard. The horse took up the slack with a vicious plunge, head downward. The boy's face grew white. He felt something warm trickling down his mouth and chin. He threw back his ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... to return the clasp, his warm smile flashing to his cousin; then the swirl of preparation swept between them and Dick next saw him as a part of one of the throbbing, flaming row of machines before ...
— The Flying Mercury • Eleanor M. Ingram
... being dashed against the sides of the 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 overpowered my brain, and I began to believe ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... not far to seek. The tyrant river that she loved, had received her, had taken her life, and then had borne her on its swirl of waters straight for that little creek where, once before, it had tossed a ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... A sudden swirl of the wind threw a dense cloud of hot white smoke about them. They stood still with the flannel of their shirt-sleeves pressed over eyes and nostrils, waiting ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... bonds on secondary markets reached historically low levels in late 2003, reflecting investor optimism and the government's fiscal restraint. Despite the strong macroeconomic performance, political intrigue and allegations of corruption continued to swirl in 2003, with the TOLEDO administration growing increasingly unpopular, and local and foreign concern rising that the political turmoil could place the country's hard-won fiscal and financial stability at risk. Moreover, as of late 2003, unemployment had yet to respond to the strong ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... quickness of a cat the man caught the woman in his arms, groped his way to the open, laid her prostrate body on the charred grass—sprang back into the swirl and choke of the deadly gas and smoke, and the next instant reappeared with the stunned and half-conscious Holcomb on his back, his hair singed, his clothes on fire; then ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... did she look, And meikle had she fleeched; Out shot his hand—alas! alas! Fast in the swirl he screeched. ...
— The Book of Old English Ballads • George Wharton Edwards
... him there came from above us—indeed, it had begun while he was speaking—a deafening mingling of terrific noises, of rending planks, of falling spars, the rush and swirl and roar of waters, amid which could be heard the ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... course, lost in the forest growth that fringed its banks, were hidden away yet more villages, human herding-grounds where men dwelt and worked and bartered, squabbled and worshipped, sickened and perished, while the river went by with its endless swirl and rush of gleaming waters. One could well understand primitive early races making propitiatory sacrifices to the spirit of a great river on whose shores they dwelt. Time and the river were the two great forces that seemed to ...
— The Unbearable Bassington • Saki
... Dutch Henry's house," Park shouted above the roar. "I'll bet he's cussing things blue on some pinnacle up there." He laughed at the picture his imagination conjured, and rode out into the swirl. ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... galloping began again, gently at first, then faster and faster in obedience to her wishes, until she seemed only a swirl of white dress and blue ribbon and flying brown curls. But this time the giddy going up and down was in tame silence. There was no accompanying song to make the game lively. Mrs. Triplett had more to say, and Mr. Darcy was too ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... looking towards Guanaco Hill, but swept all parts of the coastline constantly with his binoculars. The Spaniard's field-glasses were slung around his neck. He was not using them. He appeared to be deep in thought. More often than not, his glance rested on the eddy created by the swirl of the current past the ship's quarter. With a species of divination, she guessed somewhat the nature of his reverie. The notion stung her into a sort of fury. To quell ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... fell from the boat, for there was a great swirl in the water where his minnow was spinning along, a broad tail came out and hit the water with a tremendous splash, and he struck but did not hook the fish, which, however, he saw to ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... swirl of the big wooden spoon, the last drops of mush fell into grandfather's bowl, while a sly and injured look appeared instantly on the face of his wife. She was not hungry, but it annoyed her unspeakably that she should not be given the larger portion of food. Her rheumatism ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... its depth he feared, for wide as it appeared stretching from bank to bank, he realized its shallow sluggishness. The peril lay in quicksand, or the plunging into some unseen hole, where the sudden swirl of water might pull them under. Alone he would have risked it recklessly, but with her added weight in his arms, he realized how a single false step would be fatal. The farther shore was invisible; he could perceive nothing ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish |
