"Swoop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... acquainted. A mediatised Prince is an unhappy victim of those Congresses which, among other good and evil, purged with great effect the ancient German political system. By the regulations then determined on, that country was freed at one fell swoop from the vexatious and harassing dominion of the various petty Princes who exercised absolute sovereignties over little nations of fifty thousand souls. These independent sovereigns became subjects; and either swelled, by their mediatisation, the territories of some already powerful potentate, or ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... Why is it? Like a snow-flurry, With swish of wings, And a swoop and a scurry, Comes a whole flock of them Now in a hurry! Busy and merry The little things, very; Watch them, and see How blithe they can be With their "Chick-a-dee-dee, Chick-a-dee-dee!" Each one such a bit ...
— The Nursery, March 1877, Vol. XXI. No. 3 - A Monthly Magazine for Youngest Readers • Various
... greatest enemy—besides the wild black man and the dingo—is the large eagle-hawk, which, though flying at an enormous height, is always on the watch; but it is only when the wallaby lets itself out, on to the stony open, that the enemy can swoop down upon it. The eagle trusses it with his talons, smashes its head with its beak to quiet it, and, finally, if a female, flies away with the victim to its nest for food for its young, or if a male bird, to some lonely rock or secluded tarn, to gorge its fill alone. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... eerie situation. The night was filled with multifarious noise—peculiar 'poops,' the distant crash of bombs, and all the mingled echoes of a battlefield. At one time German howitzers, firing at longest range, chimed a faint chorus high above our heads; anon a hissing swoop would plant a shell close to our whereabouts. Lights rose and sank, flickering. Red and green rockets, as if to ornament the tragedy of war, were dancing in the sky. Occasionally a gust of foul wind, striking the face, could make one fancy that ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... nearer, is a cruiser of about the same tonnage as the one that preceded her. No flag is flying and I cannot guess her nationality. She continues steaming at full speed in an effort to pass the zone of danger before other engines can be launched. But how can she escape them since they will swoop back ...
— Facing the Flag • Jules Verne
... the sirens whoop Shrill invitations to the Fair, The yellow swing-boats soar and swoop, The Gavioli organs blare; Bull-throated show-men, bracken-brown, Compete ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, August 11, 1920 • Various
... abated by time. So he went on to the close. When his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him; the latter, luckily, not very sure now. But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine-bottle, or his tumbler, ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... fire, he made a swoop for the fellow, and managed to give him a tremendous blow that toppled him over in ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... pay their appointed toll sometimes squandered much of their money in useless tribute. Karl is said to have freed them afterwards from the burden of this tax. After Gotrik had crossed Friesland, and Karl had now come back from Rome, Gotrik determined to swoop down upon the further districts of Germany, but was treacherously attacked by one of his own servants, and perished at home by the sword of a traitor. When Karl heard this, he leapt up overjoyed, declaring that nothing more delightful had ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... rapidly with her tail, she runs hither and thither, snuffing eagerly in the grass. Now Sancho comes up and catches the cold trail, for a covey has certainly been in that place to-day. Most probably they rose from the spot, frightened by the swoop of a hawk, and made for the nearest cover, for the dogs can do nothing with the scent. But that little whiff of the exciting effluvia has brought them down to their work, and a beautiful sight it is as they quarter the ground with quickly-beating tails and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - February, 1876, Vol. XVII, No. 98. • Various
... or three eggs of a brown or greenish-brown colour with darker spots or blotches are laid about the end of October, and, from this time till the chicks are reared, the parent exhibits much annoyance at the presence of any person in the vicinity. They utter shrill cries and swoop down continuously in an attempt to strike the invader with their wings. Several of our party received black eyes as a ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... and Germany had increased to the point where open rupture was feared. For years Germany had been waiting for a propitious moment to swoop down on France and overwhelm her. The French intrigues in Morocco, which were leading visibly to a French Protectorate over that country, aroused German resentment, for the Germans coveted Morocco themselves. The Kaiser went so far as to invite Roosevelt to interfere with him in Morocco, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... the spring disclose the violet. Through all my wilds a tameless mouse careers, And in that narrow boundary appears, Huge as the stalking lion of Algiers, Huge as the fabled boar of Calydon. And all my hay is at one swoop impresst By one low-flying swallow for her nest, Strip god Priapus of each attribute Here finds he scarce a pedestal to foot. The gathered harvest scarcely brims a spoon; And all my vintage drips in a cocoon. Generous are you, but I more generous still: ...
— New Poems • Robert Louis Stevenson
... amendment, to be sure; but what barbarity, after all! What! not thirty days' run from home, and lose our magnificent homeward-bounders! The homeward-bounders we had been cultivating so long! Lose them at one fell swoop? Were the vile barbers of the gun-deck to reap our long, nodding harvests, and expose our innocent chins to the chill air of the Yankee coast! And our viny locks! were they also to be shorn? Was a grand sheep-shearing, such as they annually ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... loosen her bridle bit, and follow into the meeting-house—a lofty building unplastered at the roof, whose open eaves and shingles give place in summer to nests of wasps, and in the winter to audacious birds, some of which swoop screaming to the pulpit, and beat the window panes in futile flight. Two uncarpeted aisles lead respectively to the men's side and the women's side—for, far be it from us, primitive Methodists, to improve upon ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... commented. "Here it is wrong!" And, grabbing up a slice of chalk, he made a deft swoop toward the material. Suddenly his arm stayed in mid air and he laid down the chalk with a muscular effort. "I think I take ...
— Five Thousand an Hour - How Johnny Gamble Won the Heiress • George Randolph Chester
... the bit of closely folded paper with a sharp sound of triumph there came with it a thick letter which dropped on the red tiles. He snatched at it but Honor's downward swoop was swifter. She stood staring at it, her eyes opening wider and wider, turning the plump ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... the Alexandrian platonist, of whom the Emperor Julian said that he was posterior to Plato in time but not in genius. At last, shutting up my book, I opened my door and took a last look at the dreary fell and still more dreary sky. As I protruded my head, a swoop of wind caught me and sent the red ashes of my pipe sparkling and dancing through the darkness. At the same moment the moon shone brilliantly out from between two clouds, and I saw, sitting on the hillside, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... bibliothecae experiar. Tragedy, comedy, chivalry, philosophy will be mine. I shall listen to their music perpetually and their colours will dance before my eyes. I shall soar from terraces of stone upon dragons with shining wings and make war upon Olympus. From the peaks of hills I shall swoop into recondite valleys and drive the pigmies, shrieking little curses, to their caverns. It may be my whim to wander through infinite parks where the deer lie under the clustering shadow of their antlers and flee lightly over the grass; to whisper with white prophets ...
— The Works of Max Beerbohm • Max Beerbohm
... but because it may reveal a tithe of the artist's fancy. Nero has reached the end of a world that he has depopulated; there remains the last ship-load of mankind which he is about to destroy at one swoop. The design is large in quality, the idea altogether in consonance with the early emotional attitude of ...
— Ivory Apes and Peacocks • James Huneker
... elder maiden of the two strove to "cut across lots" when she came near the south-eastern corner, whereat, facing north, stood the big house of the commanding officer; but Mrs. Miller was too experienced a hand, and bore down upon the pair in sudden swoop from her piazza to the front gate, and they had to stop and ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... occasioned by the sudden flight of the dove, which, escaping from her hold, soared aloft. Jennet followed the course of its silver wings, as they cleaved the blue sky, and then all at once saw a large hawk, which apparently had been hovering about, swoop down upon it, and bear it off. Some white feathers fell down near the little girl, and she picked up one of them and put ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... his own natural bent and genius, which no difficulties were strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... Swoop! Down went the extra noose over Tom's lifted arms, and then down to a snug noose under ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... days of Champlain—the warm allies of a people who fraternised naturally with them; and it would have been an unhappy day for the English colonists had eighty or a hundred thousand Canadians been able to arm and, under the skilful {227} generalship of Montcalm, swoop down with their savage allies on the English colonial settlements. But the French of Canada were never able, as a rule, to do more than harass by sudden raids and skirmishes—by a system of petite guerre, or petty warfare—the English of America, and at no time in colonial ...
— Canada • J. G. Bourinot
... purpose and an end which no one could misunderstand. Singularly devoid of anything like excitement—calm, even, self-controlled—there was something in the preacher's resolute concentrated way of getting hold of a single defined object which reminded you of the rapid spring or unerring swoop of some strong-limbed or swift-winged creature on its quarry. Whatever you might think that he did with it, or even if it seemed to escape from him, you could have no doubt what he sought to do; there was no wavering, confused, uncertain bungling in that ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... in thinking how well worth while it had been, since Ellen was such a dear, young, loving thing. She found consolation in this frost-polished morning: the pale, bright sky in which the light stood naked, her abandoned veil of clouds floating above the horizon; the swoop and dance over the marshes of the dazzling specks that were seagulls; the fur of rime that the dead leaves on the hedgerow wore, and the fine jewellery-work of the glistening grass tufts in its shadow. The world had neglected nothing in ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West
... mysterious way. Luck comes hand in hand with misfortune. What we lose on the swings we make up on the roundabouts. If Keggs had not seen twenty-five of his hard-earned dollars pass at one swoop into the clutches of the croupier at the apparently untenanted house on Forty-First Street, and become disgusted with the pleasing game of roulette, he might have delayed his return to the house on Fifth Avenue till a later hour; in which case he would have missed the remarkable and ...
— The Coming of Bill • P. G. Wodehouse
... the froth of a pint of porter at the canteen sergeant's daughter, who was in fits of laughing, when the pewter was knocked out of his grasp, and the big Highlander's hand was laid on his shoulder and bore him twenty or thirty yards from the place in one swoop. ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... it!" the little boy cried. With his hat he made a swoop for the butterfly, and then suddenly he and Flossie, who was close behind him, tumbled down through a hole in the ground, which seemed quickly to open at their very feet, between two ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... struggle between Britain and Germany. The involvement of other nations is merely accidental. It is ourselves whom Germany is making this huge effort to crush, and but for one small circumstance she would have come within a measurable prospect of success. To swoop down on France through Belgium, to crush her in three weeks, to seize her fleet, and with the combined fleets of France and Germany to attack ours—that was the proposition, and who can say that it might not have succeeded? The small circumstance which Germany overlooked was ...
— A Surgeon in Belgium • Henry Sessions Souttar
... miles north of Nashville, was occupied by a small Federal force and seemed to Morgan to offer a fair field for one of his characteristic raids. His men were ready,—they always were for an enterprise promising danger and loot,—and they fell on the town with a swoop that quickly made them its masters and ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... speaking straight ahead of her, into the air, as if, absorbed in her own bitter thoughts, she had for the moment forgotten her companion. At the girl's question she turned with a quick movement suggestive of the swoop of ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... heard the beat of hoofs upon the pavement, The doors flew back, the marble floors rang to a hurried tread. Two horsemen, with their swords in hand, came storming up the stairway, And with one swoop of their good swords they cut off Blue-beard's head! Down fell his cruel arm, the heavy cutlass falling with it, And, instead of its old, ugly blue, ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... swoop of a carrion bird an instant afterward—and the deafening strike. The Austrians had varied a little. A shrapnel battery had been emplaced among the rapid-fire pieces during the recent interval. A hundred yards down the works to ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... again, and Drake's orders were changed. He had been going as a lion. The peace party now tried to send him as a fox. But he stretched his instructions to their utmost limits and even defied the custom of the service by holding no council of war when deciding to swoop on Cadiz. ...
— Elizabethan Sea Dogs • William Wood
... hundreds of yards in length, were cleared among the palm trees by the whirling wind, which seemed to perform a demon-dance of revelry among them. In some cases it snapped trees off close to the ground. In others it seemed to swoop down from above, lick up a patch of trees bodily and carry them clean away, leaving the surrounding trees untouched. Sometimes it would select a tree of thirty years growth, seize it, spin it round, and leave it ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... upon the crumbling parapet of old Fort Louis, you feel yourself poised in middle air; the sea-birds soar and swoop around you, the white surf lashes the rocks far below, the white vessels come and go, the water is around you on all sides but one, and spreads its pale blue beauty up the lovely bay, or, in deeper tints, southward towards the horizon line. I know of no ...
— Malbone - An Oldport Romance • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... all the bush creatures miserable with its incessant, mournful "mo-poke! mo-poke!" As Dot could understand all the voices, it amused her to listen to the wrangles of the Flying Foxes, as they ate the fruit of a wild fig tree near by. She saw them swoop past on their huge black wings with a solemn flapping. Then, as each little Fox approached the tree, the Foxes who were there already screamed, and swore in dreadfully bad language at the visitor. For every little Fox on the tree was afraid some other Flying Fox would eat all ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... just as she was starting to join her other cousins, she unexpectedly descried, ahead of her, a pair of jade-coloured butterflies, of the size of a circular fan. Now they soared high, now they made a swoop down, in their flight against the breeze; ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... nearing the first long swoop downward at the rapids' head when those watching him from the high bank below the Chippewa River's mouth saw him put his boat stern with the current and cease rowing entirely, facing fairly the up-rushing ...
— Old Man Savarin and Other Stories • Edward William Thomson
... Mr Bickersdyke's memory poised motionless, like a hawk about to swoop. Then it darted at the mark. Everything came to him in a flash. The hands of the clock whizzed back. He was no longer Mr John Bickersdyke, manager of the London branch of the New Asiatic Bank, lying on a sofa in the Cumberland ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... not what to do or say, so advanced to speak with her, whereon with a swoop like that of a swallow she pounced upon his sword that lay in the sand and, leaping back to Morella, shook it on ...
— Fair Margaret • H. Rider Haggard
... she exclaimed, wildly, as I entered the room. "Your estate—mine—Mabel's—all swept away with one fell swoop, Miriam! The Bank of Pennsylvania has failed; it is discovered that Mr. Biddle has proved defaulter, and we ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... and cowled, they go, 'Neath Charlie's Wain they twitter and tweet, And away they swarm 'neath the Dragon's feet, With a whoop and a flutter they swing and sway, And surge pell-mell down the Milky Way. Betwixt the legs of the glittering Chair They hover and squeak in the empty air. Then round they swoop past the glimmering Lion To where Sirius barks behind huge Orion; Up, then, and over to wheel amain, Under ...
— Peacock Pie, A Book of Rhymes • Walter de la Mare
... buzz of a high-powered car, and presently two lights appeared at the further end. They came towards her swiftly, almost silently. It was like the swoop of an immense bird. And then in the strong glare shed forth by the hall-lamps she saw the huge body of an ambulance-car, and a Red Cross ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... What tempts me to believe in the transfer of thought without physical connection is that, given telepathy, all the mysterious phenomena that have persisted in popular belief through the centuries could be swept away at one fell swoop. By telepathy, working mainly through the Sub-Consciousness, I will explain you Clairvoyance (that is, not the mere seeing of pictures, which is a phenomenon akin to dreaming, but the vision of other people's Sub-Consciousnesses), ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... fish, the ship sang on through the eternal night. There was no impression of swimming; the fish shape had neither fins nor a tail. It was as though it were hovering in wait for a member of some smaller species to swoop suddenly down from nowhere, so that it, in turn, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the base of the Poetic mount 10 A stream there is, which rolls in lazy flow Its coal-black waters from Oblivion's fount: The vapour-poison'd Birds, that fly too low, Fall with dead swoop, and to the bottom go. Escaped that heavy stream on pinion fleet 15 Beneath the Mountain's lofty-frowning brow, Ere aught of perilous ascent you meet, A mead of mildest ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... the drifting powder smoke, two men lay wounded and three lay dead. The quarrel was personal, it was said, but the dial-hand of the times was left pointing with sinister prophecy at tragedy yet to come. And in the dark of the first moon of that century the shadowy hillsmen were getting ready to swoop down. And it was the dawn of the twentieth century of the Christian era that Burnham watched, the dawn of the one hundred and twenty-fifth year of the nation's life—of the one hundred and seventh year of statehood ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... the falcon took a totally opposite direction, soaring to an altitude that reduced it to a mere speck. By this time the heron had cleared the large expanse of water, and was at a great height, perpendicular with the dry land beneath. The falcon made a sudden swoop, and with the velocity of a meteor it shot downwards upon an oblique course towards the unlucky heron. This bird had evidently been watching the impending danger, and it attempted to evade the attack by rising rapidly in the air, in order to ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... lifted in the darkness and, gleaming, came down in a swoop, piercing the old woman. She gave a quick, shrill cry—and fell back dead. The Jew, terrified, ran away, filling the night air with his piteous wails. The children began to whimper. The hooligans marched ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, I continued to swing whenever ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... whenever a flock came within a seeing distance our stool pigeon was raised and then dropped. This would cause it to spread its wings and then flutter, which attracted the flying birds, and after a circle or two they would swoop down and commence to feed. Then the net was sprung, and in a trice we had scores of pigeons under it. I do not remember to have seen this method of capturing pigeons practised since. If we captured many we took ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... want to be left alone in this benighted land, with a couple of million Austrians likely to swoop down on it at any minute? I guess not. The air may not be safe, but it can't be any worse than I would have been if I were left behind to await the arrival of the invader. But ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... all brown, just a mess of earth. It's pitted with holes just like sand after a hailstorm. In the distance you can see real lovely trees, but nothing grows where the strafing is. Overhead the martins flicker and swoop, and starlings sail by in circling clouds, while the colossal noises crash and boom ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... with sleep, I had a curious sense of being whirled at a terrific speed into some subterranean suck of waters. There was nothing to do but wait. We struck rocks and went rolling, shipping buckets of water at every dip. Then there was a long sickening swoop through utter blackness. It ended abruptly with a ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... of the Simpsons from Riverboro, bag and baggage, the banquet lamp being their most conspicuous possession. It was delightful to be rid of Seesaw's hateful presence; but otherwise the loss of several playmates at one fell swoop made rather a gap in Riverboro's "younger set," and Rebecca was obliged to make friends with the Robinson baby, he being the only long-clothes child in the village that winter. The faithful Seesaw had called at the side door of the brick house on the evening before ...
— Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... pale blue arrested his attention. This little figure was far overhead across the space beside the higher fastening of one of these festoons, hanging forward from a little ledge of masonry and handling some well-nigh invisible strings dependent from the line. Then suddenly, with a swoop that sent Graham's heart into his mouth, this man had rushed down the curve and vanished through a round opening on the hither side of the way. Graham had been looking up as he came out upon the balcony, and the things he saw above and opposed to him had at first seized his attention to the exclusion ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... ambitions were finally reconciled I never could tell, but at last the starter's flag swept down and they were really off. Everybody could have seen perfectly well as they sat, but everybody rose and watched the swift swoop of the horses, bunched together in the distance, and scarcely distinguishable by the colours of their riders. The supreme moment came for me when they were exactly opposite the grand stand, full half a mile away—the moment that I remembered from year to year as one of exquisite ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... won't last forever. Still, it's hardly about future jobs that we're thinking now. It's what is liable to happen to us in the next few days. It will be tough times for Sunkhaze settlement if the Gideonites swoop down ...
— The Rainy Day Railroad War • Holman Day
... Calapnitan, king of the bats. He is so powerful and capable of mischief that in exploring a cave where bats are likely to have congregated the natives will speak in the most respectful terms of this deity, for he would be sure to hear them if they spoke flippantly of him, and might swoop from the cave roof and whip their eyes out with his leathern wings or tear them with his claws. Hence they bow their heads and speak with reverence of the Lord Calapnitan's cave, the Lord Calapnitan's stalactite, even recognizing his temporary ownership of their clothing, arms, lights, and ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... side, showing a moral courage sadly lacking in our public men, either then or later. By what I cannot help thinking was a most fortuitous circumstance for the League, at a moment when its existence was not known outside three or four parishes, Mr Gerald Balfour determined to swoop down upon it and to crush it with the whole might of the Crown forces. Two Resident Magistrates and the Assistant Inspector-General of Constabulary, with a small army corps of special police, were sent to ...
— Ireland Since Parnell • Daniel Desmond Sheehan
... soon as Clive himself, that the Mahrattas were on the move. The prospects of his communications being harassed, by these daring horsemen, filled him with anxiety. Murari Reo was encamped, with six thousand men, at a spot thirty miles to the west of Arcot; and he might, at any moment, swoop down upon the besiegers. Although, therefore, Riza Sahib had for six days been at work effecting a new breach, which was now nearly open to assault, he sent on the 30th of October a flag of truce, with an offer to Clive of terms, if he would ...
— With Clive in India - Or, The Beginnings of an Empire • G. A. Henty
... Death, who, unseen by them, acts as their cup-bearer. The wicked rich men of to-day demand fortifications and cannon to put aside the thought of a rising of the Jacquerie, whom art shows them at work in the shadow, separately awaiting the moment to swoop down upon society. The Church of the Middle Ages answered the terrors of the powerful ones of the earth by selling indulgences. The government of to-day allays the anxiety of the rich by making them pay for many gendarmes and jailers, bayonets ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... for that," answered the viking, "for the lad fell upon him with the quickness of an eagle's swoop, and although my master was well armed, yet he could not raise his sword ere he fell dead at our feet, and then Ole turned and fled with such speed ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... it was a fatal stoop, As ever monarch made; And, for that rash—that cruel swoop, He soon ...
— The Youth's Coronal • Hannah Flagg Gould
... dozen kites of various kinds were soaring in the air, some quite steadily and others darting angrily from side to side. One went up with a swoop, to come down with a bang on the rocks, thus knocking itself into ...
— The Rover Boys in the Jungle • Arthur M. Winfield
... their coach and with a single swoop Meacham flung his drill back into the crowd and caught up his hammer to strike. His partner dropped his hammer and chucked in a fresh drill—smash, the hammer struck it into the rock—and so they turned and struck while ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... elbow with her hands, as if hugging herself in sheer ecstasy, cried, "Oh, I just love to be knocked flat and have my breath taken away with unexpected news like that! It makes you tingle all over and at the same time have a queer die-away feeling too, like when you swoop down in a swing!" ...
— Mary Ware's Promised Land • Annie Fellows Johnston
... over tracts that we poor men could only enter by prodigious effort. Captivated by its grace of motion, and jealous of its freedom, I would for hours watch it. And this eagle I knew, from the height and distance from which it would swoop down on its prey, to be possessed of eyesight of unrivalled keenness in addition ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... shelters you is desecrated with the marks of your irreverential contempt for all things human and divine. Would that—(and the wish is expressed more in sorrow than in anger)—would that your entire species were condensed into one enormous bluebottle, that we might crush you all at a single swoop! ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 346, December 13, 1828 • Various
... Harry. But I'm in no position to take 'em away from you. Besides, we have some stuff that you'd like to have, too, so that makes us pretty much even. If we started confiscating illegal equipment from you, the JD's would swoop in here, take your legitimate equipment, bug it up, and they'd be driving us all nuts within a week. So long as you don't use illegal equipment illegally, the department will leave ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... good thing for you if you do catch two," exclaimed the boatswain. "We want good luck for the ship, for little enough of it we have had as yet." But before Hulk could get out his line the albatross was seen to swoop downwards, and immediately afterwards it rose with a huge fish in its talons, into which it plunged its powerful beak with a force which must have speedily put an end to its prey. Powerful, however, ...
— The South Sea Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... hours later came a chit for our Albert Edward, saying if he had nothing better to do would he drop in and swoop yarns with the General at noon that day? Our Albert Edward made his will, pulled on his parade boots, drank half a bottle of brandy neat, kissed us farewell and rode off to his doom. As he passed the borders of the camp The O'Murphy uncorked himself from a ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, June 6, 1917 • Various
... the forests are vocal with song; and when the gray and dewy morning calls the creeping things of the earth out of their night-cells, it summons from the neighboring wood legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down upon the fields to save man's harvests by devouring the destroying worm, and surprising the lagging beetle in his tardy retreat to the dark cover where he lurks through ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... dirigible. Across the desolate landscape it sailed, growing more and more distinct as it drew nearer. It circled, turning first to the right and then to the left, rising and descending, as if responding willingly to the touch of its unseen pilot, until with a majestic swoop it hovered like a great bird exactly over the cradle, and came to ...
— L. P. M. - The End of the Great War • J. Stewart Barney
... whole attitude is one of silent, motionless waiting and observation. If a mouse should be seen crossing the highway, or scudding over any exposed part of the snowy surface in the twilight, the owl would doubtless swoop down upon it. I think the owl has learned to distinguish me from the rest of the passers-by; at least, when I stop before him, and he sees himself observed, he backs down into his den, as I have said, in a very ...
— Bird Stories from Burroughs - Sketches of Bird Life Taken from the Works of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... piles watching for food, and seeming very tame as they pick up bits of bread or the refuse floating in the water. They follow steamers for miles, scarcely moving their wings as they float in the air; and if you throw a cracker from the deck, some gull will make a swift swoop and snatch it before ...
— Stories of California • Ella M. Sexton
... 'foreigners,' and to learn the American twang and method of spitting. And there is the peril of politics. Upon these scattered exotic communities, ignorant of the problems of their adopted land, ignorant even of its language, swoop the agents of political parties, with their one effectual argument—bad whisky. This baptism is the immigrants' only organised welcome into their new liberties. Occasionally some Church raises a thin protest. But the 'Anglo-Saxon' continues to take up his burden; and the floods from Europe pour in. ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... railway across the prairie, it was the Mounted Police that stepped in to see that the road was not blocked. Eastern contractors and workmen, who had not been used to seeing war-paint, were somewhat alarmed when a band of Indians would swoop down with the air of people who owned the earth, and in all such cases the Police were quickly called by wire or otherwise. Superintendent Shurtcliffe tells of a rather odd case in which an Indian chief with the appropriate name of "Front Man" stopped a railway contractor from getting out ties ...
— Policing the Plains - Being the Real-Life Record of the Famous North-West Mounted Police • R.G. MacBeth
... for those Jesuits, he had no doubt that they did love France, the eldest daughter of the Church, and the only daughter that could yet help her mother to reconquer universal sovereignty, but they loved her even as the black swarms of locusts love the harvests which they swoop upon and devour. Infinite sadness had returned to the young man's heart as he dimly realised that in that sorely-stricken mansion, in all that mourning and downfall, it was they, they again, who must have been the artisans of grief ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... of a large proportion of women and children. They had much valuable property with them. The stony desert, which stretches unbroken from the Euphrates to the uplands on the east of Jordan, was infested then as now by wild bands of marauders, who might easily swoop down on the encumbered march of Ezra and his men, and make a clean sweep of all which they had. And he knew that he had but to ask and have an escort from the king that would ensure their safety till they ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... in the flight of the falcon when it is released and flung towards its prey, but the odds are too heavy in its favour and the whimperings of the doomed quarry strike a chill in the heart. We flew our hawks at duck and plovers, and missed none. Often the first swoop failed, but the deadly implacable pursuer was instantly ready to swoop again, and rarely was a third manoeuvre necessary. Man, under the influence of the excitement of the chase, is the same all the world over, and there was no difference between these ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... from his clutches. I seen him lean down, I seen him look in her pale face, an' I hear her low, stranglin' moan o' fear, an' I pray, 'Lord he'p us!' den I rise to my feet an' start to'ard de baid, dough shakin' lak a leaf; but jest den de brack vilyun swoop down lak a hawk on a li'l chick, an' grab her up in his arms an' run to de do', me a-follerin' an' screamin' at de top o' my voice. Out de do' we dash, de good Lord givin' strength to my laigs, so dat in de hall I catch holt ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... belligerents, with whom it was quite possible to shake hands and sit down to draw up an agreement as to the proper method of conducting a policy of rapine, robbery, and murder. Needless to say, every Britisher was disgusted, and every genuine Russian patriot simply amazed. At one swoop down went all our hopes! We were crushed as much or more than the Russians, because we had the honour of our countries to defend, ...
— With the "Die-Hards" in Siberia • John Ward
... bosom like Spartacus in chains, or Catiline listening to Cicero. The banker, summoned by a sweet voice whose silvery tone recalled a boudoir not unknown to me, laid his violin on the window-sill and made off like a swallow who rejoins his companion by a rapid level swoop. The great monkey, whose chain was sufficiently long, approached the window and gravely took in hand the violin. I don't know whether you have ever had as I have the pleasure of seeing a monkey try to ...
— Analytical Studies • Honore de Balzac
... astonishingly perfect old town early in the afternoon, coming by way of Capel Curig (whence we saw Snowdon crowned with a double rainbow), sweet Bettws-y-coed, or "station in the wood," and so down the river valley in a bird swoop, to noble Conway, with its castle that was once a famous Welsh fortress. Now, in piping days of peace, its towers and turrets still dominate bridge and river, and the great pile is as fine, in its way, as Carcassone. Don't you remember, it was from ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... he that was vanquished crept into a hole, and hid himself for some time; but the victor flew up to an eminent place, clapt his wings, and crowed out victory. An Eagle, who was watching for his prey near the place, saw him, and, making a swoop, trussed him up in his talons, and carried him off. The Cock that had been beaten, perceiving this, soon quitted his hole, and, shaking off all remembrance of his late disgrace, gallanted the hens with all ...
— Favourite Fables in Prose and Verse • Various
... swoop On the air, or loop Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: To group with a troop On the gusty poop While the wind behind is roaring, O: I skim and swim By a cloud's red rim And up to the azure ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... mysterious aeroplane increased its speed. It circled about more quickly, and shot upward, as though to show the watchers of what it was capable. Then, with a quick swoop it darted downward, straight for the building where Tom's newest invention ...
— Tom Swift and his Sky Racer - or, The Quickest Flight on Record • Victor Appleton
... Missisque; a dull, roaring sound was heard astern; and all the mountain peaks had disappeared, closed in by the dense volume of black clouds. The episode of the bank director's coat had distracted the attention of the young pilot for a moment, and he had not observed the rapid swoop of the squall, as it bore down upon the sloop. He leaped over the piles of lumber to the forecastle, and had cast loose the peak-halyard, when Captain John tumbled up the companionway in time to see that he had lingered too ...
— Haste and Waste • Oliver Optic
... are not accustomed to your rough and ready Potts Point manners here. We knock at doors before we open them, and do at least inquire if a man is engaged before we swoop down upon him demanding his money or ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... small number of the enemy were rolling upon the sod, amid their plunging horses. A second rapid, but well delivered volley, brought down as many more, when the rest, in attitudes of frantic wonder and terror, unconsciously dropped their weapons and fled like affrighted fowls under the sudden swoop of the kite. Their dispersion was so outrageously wild and complete that no two of them could be seen together as they radiated over the plain. The men and horses seemed impelled alike by a preternatural panic; and ...
— Memoir of an Eventful Expedition in Central America • Pedro Velasquez
... that in his absence the English might swoop down upon his vessel and the prizes he ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... a Rajput rides, with a swoop and a swinging sabre and a silent, tight-lipped vow that he would prove himself. Green though he was yet, he knew that the troop had found for him—had rounded up for him—had made him his opportunity; so he took it, right under their eyes, straight ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... when the first stroke of the hurricane beat her down, and she continued to do so until, as she got dead before it, she rose suddenly to an even keel and went scudding away to leeward like a frightened sea-bird. The awful volume of sound given out by the fierce, headlong swoop of the wind as it bore down upon us quite prepared me to see both masts blown clean out of the schooner; but all her gear fortunately happened to be sound and good, and the loss of the foresail was the full extent of the damage ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... over-confident, must have been dozing; for it did not see him until he was within a few feet. Then it flew out wildly, with a sound like that made by the wings of a mother bird who leaves her nest at the last moment. But it was caught at last. With one skilful, triumphant swoop Schlorge had it. ...
— The Garden of the Plynck • Karle Wilson Baker
... tried to leave the room. She could not endure to be humiliated in Apollonius' presence till she was nothing but dirt under his feet. Her husband held her with a savage grip. He seized her with the swoop of a bird of prey. She would have had to scream aloud if her mental torture had not deadened her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... the bird. Ere long, it was seen returning, and soon, on motionless, expanded wings, it hovered over the rocky point. Then it caught sight of the floating bait. With a majestic swoop, it dived, caught it up, and next moment was flouncing wildly about, hooked by the tongue, while Bob Massey hauled in the line. He had provided himself with a stick, and when the huge bird came within reach he felled it, to the immense delight of the watchers in ...
— The Coxswain's Bride - also, Jack Frost and Sons; and, A Double Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... house, for the woman was reputed rich, secretive, and probably kept her personal property about her. From what the major had said the husband, Mowbray, evidently had been cast off by Helen Mowbray on account of his rascalities, and, being a bird of prey, would swoop down upon her property as soon as he learned ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Bend to your oars for the wood-tangled shore; We're off and afloat with earth's loveliest daughters, Worth all the argosies wave ever bore. Pull away gallantly—pull away valiantly— Pull with a swoop, boys; and pull for the shore: Merrily, ...
— Poems • George P. Morris
... did not wait to be interviewed. With a swoop, the airplane left the ground and started upward. His pursuers were so close at hand they could almost grasp the wheels, as they leaped upward. Yet not quite. Bullets whistled about him, and several pinged against the body of ...
— The Radio Boys on the Mexican Border • Gerald Breckenridge
... begin to leap along the lines, Leap up and hang and swoop and sputter out; A bullet hits a wiring-post and whines; I wish to Heaven that I was ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 26, 1917 • Various
... as that of Florimel's. Her moonlight hair, nearly as long as that of the fabled Godiva, was flung wildly about her in heavy masses. Her eyes were wild also; she looked like a holy Maenad. With a glide like the swoop of an avenging angel, she pounced upon Florimel, caught her by the wrist and pulled her towards the door. Florimel was startled, but made no resistance. She half led, half dragged her up a stair that rose from a corner of the hall gallery to the ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... over, lurched back like a great tree in a wind. Then very slowly it swayed again and did not come back. Falling to the east, its whole giant length came down in a great arc. The descent grew faster, until, in one great swoop it crashed upon the wreckage of the Grand Central Station. The roar of it surged over the city. The crash of masonry; the clatter of its myriad windows, the din of its rending, ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... FURST). Meanwhile to arms, and wait in readiness The fiery signal on the mountain-tops. For swifter than a boat can scour the lake Shall you have tidings of our victory; And when you see the welcome flames ascend, Then, like the lightning, swoop upon the foe, And lay the ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... spheres, and discoursed of astrology and other occult sciences. 'For hours and hours this wonderful white woman poured forth her speech, for the most part concerning sacred and profane mysteries.' From time to time she would swoop down to worldly topics, 'and then,' as her auditor frankly observes, 'I was interested.' She described her life in the Arab camps, and explained that her influence over the tribes was partly due to her long sight, a quality held in high ...
— Little Memoirs of the Nineteenth Century • George Paston
... across the pontoon bridge from the left to the right, so that Hart, who was formerly the extreme right, would now become almost the extreme left, and, having thus extended his right arm, to cross the river where it flowed east and west, and make a still wider swoop on the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... retreated from the breastworks that this fatal error was committed: and pointing toward the disordered Saxons with a wild laugh of revengeful joy, William set spurs to his horse, and, followed by all his chivalry, joined the cavalry of Poitou and Boulogne in their swoop upon the scattered array. Already the Norman infantry had turned round—already the horses, that lay in ambush amongst the brushwood near the dykes, had thundered forth. The whole of the late impregnable vanguard was broken up, divided corps from corps,—hemmed in; horse after horse charging ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... words were completely drowned, and he received a sudden shock when the brilliant beam of a searchlight flashed up from the ground, and, after a circling swoop, found them and held them in its fierce eye. Every stay and rivet was as clearly visible to him as though it had been noonday, and ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... half-closed eyes he went on up with outspread wings, an ecstasy clutching at his heart; clutching at it, clutching at it, till finally it was too exquisite to bear, and half-swooning, with dangling pinion he let himself swoop back through the dizzy ...
— The Trimming of Goosie • James Hopper
... afterwards for generations were the standing dread of Abram's descendants. Like the storm pillars in their own deserts, are these wild marauders with the wild names that never appear again in the history. Down on the rich valleys and peaceful pasture lands they swoop for booty, not for conquest. Like some sea-bird, they snatch their prey and away. They carry with them among the long train of captives Abram's ungenerous brother-in-law, Lot. Then the friend of God, the father of the faithful, musters his men, like an Arab sheikh as he was, and swiftly follows ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... tradesman would trust him. Shoals of little bills were sent him every day. Duns without number plagued him from morning to night. The Quebec attorneys were sharpening their bills, and preparing, like birds of prey, to swoop down upon him. In fact, taking it altogether, Jack had full before him the sure and certain ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... cousins repeatedly exulted as they admired the stupendous salons, the hundreds of men and women in pairs, the thousands of tipplers. "No, there certainly was nothing like that in Paris." He was sick of such boundless pretension. He seemed to be attending a fiesta of hungry mariners anxious at one swoop to make amends for all former privations. Like his father, he longed to get away. ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... monster of terrible aspect, having twelve feet, six heads with six long necks, and a voice which resembled the bark of a dog. This awful monster is said to have inhabited a cave at a very great height in the famous rock which still bears her name,[38] and was supposed to swoop down from her rocky eminence upon every ship that passed, and with each of her six heads to ...
— Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece and Rome • E.M. Berens
... of God! We come! We come! In swoop for fierce flesh, like a bird of prey, In scent of the blood of the brave to-day, By the splendor of God! We come! We come! Sword in hand, for the Love of God! Since blood is holy and royal wine, Advance! Drink health to the Norman line, ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... notion that they could heal scrofula by their touch. The disease was accordingly known as the King's Evil. Queen Elizabeth often exercised this miraculous gift of healing. On Midsummer Day 1633, Charles the First cured a hundred patients at one swoop in the chapel royal at Holyrood. But it was under his son Charles the Second that the practice seems to have attained its highest vogue. It is said that in the course of his reign Charles the Second touched near a hundred thousand persons for scrofula. The press to get near him was sometimes ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... chipmunks had won the victory, and now made their way along the branches towards Weeng. Their leader, a large, bold-looking chipmunk, made a fierce rush at Weeng, and almost touched him. But just as he did so, with a noiseless swoop, down came the mosquitoes upon him. They covered his head, until not a part of it was to be seen. He slapped wildly at them, lost his hold on the branch, and fell to the ground. With redoubled fury on rushed the other chipmunks and the red squirrels, who had by this time recovered. ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... about you," as Pip's means of paying his debts are lightened and made easy by his method of simply adding them up with a margin. "The time comes," says Herbert, "when you see your opening. And you go in, and you swoop upon it, and you make your capital, and then there you are! When you have once made your capital you have nothing to do but employ it." In like manner Pip tells us "Suppose your debts to be one hundred ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... alongside my road runs a bit of civilization in the shape of the splendid iron poles of the Indo-European Telegraph Company. Half a dozen times this afternoon I become the imaginary enemy of a couple of cavalrymen travelling in the same direction as myself; they swoop down upon me from the rear at a charging gallop, valiantly whooping and brandishing their Martini-Henrys; when they arrive within a few yards of my rear wheel they swerve off on either side and rein their fiery chargers up, allowing ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... can tell, Bob, what a detective would do," replied Tom. "You see I ain't no natural detective like you. But I should think he'd swoop down on ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... a fierce one. With the mass of fire between us and the ground directly below, blinded by the smoke and half suffocated by the heat, we were not conscious of the good fortune that awaited us, until, with a swoop and a plunge, we found ourselves submerged, and, with an equal velocity, immediately thrown back again by the buoyant force of the balloon into the open air. The flood of fire in which we had descended was instantly ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... in circle formation, with a view to surrounding it, each a little higher than the other. With a lightning-like swoop the British bird, getting right in front of it and turning sharply, let fly his machine gun in rapid fire, Fritz answering energetically. In less than three minutes' time, a distinct wabbling was noticeable and the ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... house the servant girl rushed into the dining room to serve the toast and the story at one swoop. Captain Elkanah's dignity deserted him for an instant and his egg spoon jingled to the floor. Annabel's face turned a dull red. Her eyes ...
— Keziah Coffin • Joseph C. Lincoln
... they had hauled this great weight up on the shore with a final swoop, there was something there that almost bewildered them—a living mass of fish floundering about in the wet seaweed—some springing into the air—others flopping out on to the sand—many helplessly entangled in the meshes. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... the mail home one day when I saw a great eagle, with wings spread, flying low and circling around as though ready to swoop upon its prey. It was noon on a late fall day with no sight or sound of life except that mammoth eagle craftily soaring. I turned off the trail to follow its flight. It was the kind of day when one must ride off the beaten trail, when the sun is warm, the ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... they had been told of the killing, and surely to the discredit of Pan and his followers. Pan vowed he would put Wiggate in possession of the facts. He gave himself some tasks, all the while trying to realize the truth. Fortune had smiled upon him and Blinky. Rich in one drive—at one fell swoop! It was unbelievable. The retrieving of his father's losses, the new ranches in sunny Arizona, comfort and happiness for his mother, for Bobby and Alice—and for Lucy all that any reasonable woman could desire—these beautiful and sweet dreams had become possibilities. All ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... focus of all malign influences. Accordingly, the Mikado Kwammu, in A.D. 788, built on the highest mountain called Hiyei a superb temple and monastery, giving it in charge of the Ten-dai sect, that there should ever be a bulwark against the evil that might otherwise swoop upon the city. Here, as on castellated walls, should stand the watchman, who, by the recitation of the sacred liturgies, would keep watch and ward. In course of time this great mountain became a city of three thousand edifices and ten ...
— The Religions of Japan - From the Dawn of History to the Era of Meiji • William Elliot Griffis
... Highway, as it was called, enabled him to be of occasional service to the police, hence he was on the most cordial terms of friendship with them. He could swoop plain-clothes men through intricacies which flashed with the flames of crime, without exciting the slightest suspicion of the object he had in view. He could talk, swear, and drink in accurate harmony with his acquaintances, and was looked upon with favour by a circle of estimable friends. ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... Hispaniola. Here in their most piping days flourished a buccaneer republic, where the seamen made their own laws and cultivated the land for sugar-cane and yams. Occasionally the Spaniards or the French, without any warning, would swoop down on the settlement and break up the small republic, but sooner or later the buccaneers would be back once ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... and the jarring thunder, loud and terrible, broke, peal after peal, on the ear! Then the howling wind, like ten thousand furies, came crashing and roaring through the forest, bearing whole trees on its driving wings, while others bent low before the blasting swoop of its ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... watch over the submission of my new allies, I have wrested Heligoland from England; and there I shall build an eagle's nest from which I shall be able to swoop down upon them, should they attempt to escape me. Those who had any doubts as to the importance of this surrender, have learned it from the speeches that I made when ...
— The Schemes of the Kaiser • Juliette Adam
... shadows as they wheel and circle, or flashing sunshine from brown wings by quick, sudden swoops, hovering and swooping throughout the sunshine, or rising to melt into blue depths of the heavens, where other arching, floating specks tell of myriads there, ready to swoop, and fall and gather and feast wherever their lowest ranks drop earthwards with ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... was not until the little lady in the claret-colored party-gown had drifted, still with a hand on Gantry's arm, in among the palm and banana trees of the herbarium that the bird-of-prey person made his swoop. A moment later Gantry, taking a low-toned command from his companion, was disappearing in the direction of the refreshment-tables, and the lady looked up to say: "Dear me, Mr. Hathaway, ...
— The Honorable Senator Sage-Brush • Francis Lynde
... has no children. All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O hell-kite! All? What, all my pretty chickens and their dam At one fell swoop? ...
— Shakespearean Tragedy - Lectures on Hamlet, Othello, King Lear, Macbeth • A. C. Bradley
... aboard and willing hands grasped the propellers and gave each a twist. Bang! bang! bang! went the explosions, and soon the propellers were revolving swiftly, and then with a swoop the Dartaway ran over the campus on its wheels and suddenly arose in the air. A cheer went up, and the students threw up their caps. Then Dick swung around in a quarter circle and headed directly ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... his people together an' swoop down with them on the murderin' convicts. He found out from signs, that I couldn't make nothin' of, that his tribe had divided into two parties, one going towards a hunting-ground called Big Cypress, an' the other to another place where deer an' bear ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... very near making two or three horse-trades, and no doubt would have succeeded, if I hadn't felt every minute that some one was going to swoop down upon me, and capture ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... now, by the uncertainty of night, like some monstrous and deformed creature of the waters, suddenly emerging from their vexed and dreary depths. This was the far-famed Crag, which had borrowed from tradition its evil and ominous name. And now, the stream, bending round with a broad and sudden swoop, showed at a little distance, ghostly and indistinct through the darkness, the mighty Waterfall, whose roar had been his guide. Only in one streak a-down the giant cataract, the stars were reflected; and this long train ...
— Eugene Aram, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... floats, To Aigiplanctos, waking the wild goats, Crying for "Fire, more Fire!" And fire was reared, Stintless and high, a stormy streaming beard, That waved in flame beyond the promontory Rock-ridged, that watches the Saronian sea, Kindling the night: then one short swoop to catch The Spider's Crag, our city's tower of watch; Whence hither to the Atreidae's roof it came, A light true-fathered of Idaean flame. Torch-bearer after torch-bearer, behold The tale thereof in stations ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... But Mrs. Harris was a rebel—intense, red-hot in her advocacy of Southern rights and her denunciation of Northern wrongs. Although she had not taken up arms against the Government, she was none the less subject to the indiscriminating swoop of the Proclamation; her niggers, according to that document, were free, and if the Confederacy failed, she could only get pay for them by establishing her loyalty in a court of justice. Her loyalty to the Yankee nation?—not she! She was spunky as a widow of thirty can be. She would see ...
— Incidents of the War: Humorous, Pathetic, and Descriptive • Alf Burnett
... to range the hills at night in perfect freedom. Captain Bonneville had his own horses brought in at night, and properly picketed and guarded. The evil he apprehended soon took place. In a single night a swoop was made through the neighboring pastures by the Blackfeet, and eighty-six of the finest horses carried off. A whip and a rope were left in a conspicuous situation by the robbers, as a taunt to the simpletons ...
— The Adventures of Captain Bonneville - Digested From His Journal • Washington Irving
... side of the street, where it had been silently patrolling under lowered speed, swerved and darted a wine-colored, surrey-built touring car with a cape top. Durkin recognized it at a glance; it was Penfield's huge machine. Its movement, as it swung in toward the startled woman, seemed like the swoop of a hawk. It appeared to stop only for a moment, but in that moment two men leaped from the wide-swung tonneau door. When they clambered into it once more Durkin saw that Frank was between them. And one of the men was ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer
... order that I may fly unto Thee with thine own wings, O my Divine Eagle! For as long a time as Thou willest I shall remain—my eyes fixed upon Thee. I long to be allured by Thy Divine Eyes; I would become Love's prey. I have the hope that Thou wilt one day swoop down upon me, and, bearing me away to the Source of all Love, Thou wilt plunge me at last into that glowing abyss, that I may become for ...
— The Story of a Soul (L'Histoire d'une Ame): The Autobiography of St. Therese of Lisieux • Therese Martin (of Lisieux)
... flexible and his good shoulders had a military squareness of build. He had also a nice square face, and a warmly blue eye and knew all the latest steps and curves and unexpected swirls. Robin was an ozier wand and there was no swoop or dart or sudden sway and change she was not alert at. The swing and lure of the music, the swift movement, the fluttering of airy draperies as slim sister nymphs flew past her, set her pulses beating with sweet young joy. A brief, uncontrollable ripple of laughter broke from her ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... lonely. I cannot, of course, see the sunset, but I watch for its coming on the eastern wall of the canyon. I see the shadow slowly creep up, driving the gold before it, until at last the canyon rim and pines are turned to golden fire. I watch the sailing eagles as they streak across the gold, and swoop up into the blue, and pass out of sight. I watch the golden flush fade to gray, and then, the canyon slowly fills with purple shadows. This hour of twilight is the silent and melancholy one. Seldom is there any sound save the soft ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... downfall of a planetary mass on the star, or the collision of the star with a star-cloudlet, or nebula, traversing space in one direction while the star swept onwards in another. A planet could not very well come into final conflict with its sun at one fell swoop. It would gradually draw nearer and nearer, not by the narrowing of its path, but by the change of the path's shape. The path would, in fact, become more and more eccentric; until, at length, at its point of nearest approach, the planet would graze ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... of England, on the other hand—although often listening to secret agents from Brussels and Madrid who offered peace, and although perfectly aware that the great abject of Spain in securing peace with England was to be able to swoop down at once upon the republic, thus deprived of any allies was beside herself with rage, whenever she suspected, with or without reason, that Brussels or Madrid had been sending peace emissaries ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... wits. Whenever a war is about to take place in the country in which they are located they will begin to make themselves scarce; and, on the other hand, they will not visit a country where war is going on till after it is over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the prey. This feature is one of their leading characteristics; with some honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as long-sighted, dark, deep, designing specimens of fallen humanity. For a number of years prior to the capture of Constantinople by Mohammed ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith |
