"Torrentine" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... now, passing over much that befell us on these treacherous seas, as scorching calms, torrential rains and rageful winds, and how in despite all these we held true on our course by reason of Sir Richard's sailorly skill, I will (I say) come to a certain grey dawn and myself at the tiller whiles Sir Richard slept and beside him the great hound ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... he could not manage to open it. In vain did he toil over it and perspire an hour through—the confounded apparatus would not come unfolded. There are some umbrellas which amuse themselves under torrential rains with just such tricks upon you. Fairly tired out with the struggle, the victim dashed down the machine and lay upon it, swearing like the regular Southron he was. "Tar, tar, ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... it to yourself. He was conscious of his parts and all too ready to be arrogant. Senhouse's goddess had been kind to him, and he had presumed upon that. Senhouse's own method was to alternate extreme friendliness with torrential contempt. He knocked Glyde down and picked him up again with the same hand. He treated him as his equal whenever he was not considering him a worm. There is no better way of gaining the confidence of a youth of his sort. At the end of a fortnight there was nothing Glyde would not have told ...
— Rest Harrow - A Comedy of Resolution • Maurice Hewlett
... undertook to fill it up. This they accomplished after years of heroic effort and an enormous expenditure of money, leaving the harbor only the slender, tortuous entrance of Boca Chica—"little mouth"—dangerous to incoming vessels because of the almost torrential flow of the tide through it, but much more readily defended. The two castles of San Fernando and San Jose, frowning structures of stone dominating this entrance, have long since fallen into disuse, but are still admirably preserved. Beneath ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... we suffered dire Hardships! What torrential rains Fell upon us at the peak Where was neither tree ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... broke loose, a great, torrential downpour. It came in sheets, with an impetuous, though genial, clatter. It seemed as though the valley was swiftly filling with water and in less than an hour's time it would reach the tops of the trees. I thought of Noah's flood. I could almost see ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... Beck. This great gorge is tenanted at the present time by Pickering Beck, an exceedingly small stream, which now carries off all the surface drainage and must therefore be only remotely related to its great precursor that carved this enormous trench out of the limestone tableland. Compared to the torrential rushes of water carrying along huge quantities of gravel and boulders that must have flowed from the lake at the upper end, Newton Dale can almost be considered a dry and ...
— The Evolution Of An English Town • Gordon Home
... mouth and stared at her. At first she hardly understood, then, suddenly grasping what was in Ellen's mind, she took in her breath for a torrential explanation of the whole matter. But the next minute she realized that this was hardly the moment to say anything which would prejudice her sister against Arthur Alce. If Ellen would value him more as a robbery, ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... regions already chilled, and they are still further chilled by their own expansion. The consequence might be foreseen. The load of vapor is in great part precipitated, dense clouds are formed, their particles coalesce to rain-drops, which descend daily in gushes so profuse that the word "torrential" is used to express the copiousness of the rainfall. I could show you this chilling by expansion, and also the consequent ...
— Young Folks' Library, Volume XI (of 20) - Wonders of Earth, Sea and Sky • Various
... openings just indicated by the dark- blue shadows in the distance, and descend the lofty walls of the Causses to find silvery cascades, impetuous rivers, and fountains gushing from mossy clefts. The showers of spring, the torrential rains of autumn, the snows of winter, have filtered to a depth of several ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... started. And in her turn suffered from a torrential rush of blood to the face. Saterlee perceived it through her spread ...
— The Spread Eagle and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... oratory O'Connell introduced a new style. Torrential and overwhelming as Flood and Grattan had never been, he proved more successful if less polished. The exaggerations of Gaelic speech found outburst in his English. Peel's smile was "the silver plate on a coffin", Wellington ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... the subterranean burrow system, each hole from 4 to 5-1/2 inches in diameter. These holes are nearly all situated a little above the surface of the surrounding soil, and as Price has suggested (in Allen, 1895, 213), this is doubtless a wise provision against flooding, as torrential rains sometimes occur ...
— Life History of the Kangaroo Rat • Charles T. Vorhies and Walter P. Taylor
... July the weather, hitherto so fine, broke hopelessly. Torrential rains followed, which inundated the flat country far and wide. After several postponements the Third Battle of Ypres commenced on July 31. Some two weeks later the Battalion moved forward by train from Arnecke to Poperinghe. We awaited ...
— The Story of the 2/4th Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry • G. K. Rose
... was in a state of excitement which bordered on delirium. She performed her duties in a trance of joy, gratitude, and amazement, and, when it was all over, her feelings poured themselves out into her journal in a torrential flood. The day had been nothing but an endless succession of glories—or rather one vast glory—one vast radiation of Albert. Everything she had seen, everything she had felt or heard, had been so beautiful, so wonderful that even ...
— Queen Victoria • Lytton Strachey
... superintending the dairy and poultry-yard arrangements of an English country estate. There are so many things, insect ravages, bird depredations, and so on, that one only knows on a small scale in England, that happen here in wholesale fashion, not to mention droughts and torrential rains and other tropical visitations. And then the domestic animals are so disconcertingly different from the ones one has been used to; humped cattle never seem to behave in the way that straight-backed cattle would, and goats and geese and chickens are not a bit the same here that they are in Europe—and ...
— When William Came • Saki
... appeared at once, for the torrential rains which annually since the deluge had fallen for forty days beginning with the month of Marheshwan, for the first time failed to come, and ...
— THE LEGENDS OF THE JEWS VOLUME IV BIBLE TIMES AND CHARACTERS - FROM THE EXODUS TO THE DEATH OF MOSES • BY LOUIS GINZBERG
... there was not the faintest chance of gaining the least shelter. All round them the earth was covered with low-growing bushes; there was neither tree nor hedge nor fence to break the force of the torrential downpour. A mile in front the road ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... in a torrential flow of passion, and those who listen are roused at once to a savage enthusiasm. There are no interruptions. The oration is received in complete silence. These are Indians taken into their sovereign's ...
— The Watchers of the Plains - A Tale of the Western Prairies • Ridgewell Cullum
... the assumed flood or the species of the supposed burrower depending to some extent upon locality, but principally upon the theorizer's insufficient knowledge of animal industry or of the action of torrential waters. Others are convinced they are formed by the piling up of earth around a bush, clump of grass, stone, or other object acting as a nucleus about which wind-borne material may accumulate—overlooking ...
— Archeological Investigations - Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 76 • Gerard Fowke
... herself away on the first man that offered! This was his chance, I told him; the one chance of his life; he was letting a piece of idiotic pride wreck the probable happiness of years. He agreed with me with moans and weeps. He had the candor of a child and the torrential sentiment of a German musician. Three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents stood between him and eternal bliss, and yet he waved my pocketbook from him! And all the while I saw ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... in the march occasional short halts were necessary; but at 2 a.m. there was a more serious check. The torrential rain had clogged Major Benson's compass, and he became uncertain whether the column had not trended away towards the left. Major-General Wauchope sent back for Lieutenant-Colonel Ewart. After a brief consultation, a slight change of direction to ...
— History of the War in South Africa 1899-1902 v. 1 (of 4) - Compiled by Direction of His Majesty's Government • Frederick Maurice
... sun rays fell like torrential rain. It was as if the triumphant orb seized upon the shadowless ground, and strained it to his blazing breast. Albine grew faint, staggered, and turned ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... the corner obscurest of the Salvation Army Headquarters in Bentinck street. It had become his accustomed place; sitting there he had begun to feel like the adventurer under Niagara, it was the only spot from which he could observe, try to understand, and cope with the torrential nature of his passion. Nearer to the fair charm of her presence in the uncertain flare of the kerosene lamp and the sound of the big drum, he grew blind, lost count, was carried away. His persistent refusal ...
— Hilda - A Story of Calcutta • Sara Jeannette Duncan
... factories and their great store-houses for oil; each factory likely enough with its flag at half-mast, which does not enliven the scenery either, for you know it is because somebody is "dead again." Throughout and over all is the torrential downpour of the wet-season rain, coming down night and day with its dull roar. I have known it rain six mortal weeks in Bonny River, just for all the world as if it were done by machinery, and the interval that came then was only a few wet days, where-after ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... beyond the garden, leading to the further side of the lake, but they were sailing serene and sunlit in the blue, as though their whole business were to dapple the hills with blue and violet shadows, or sometimes to throw a dazzling reflection down into the quiet water. There had been rain, torrential rain, just before the Sarratts arrived, so that the river was full and noisy, and all the little becks clattering down the fell, in their haste to reach the lake, were boasting to the summer air, as ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... were either of them to attempt a word they would make a sorry showing, and this would throw her into a torrential storm of tears. Of all three in the editor's office, her shoulders carried the heaviest burden. Each of the men was losing but one whom he loved; she was losing two—and, besides these two, there was Jeb! Jeb, who had thought more of his targets than of her return!—Jeb, who ...
— Where the Souls of Men are Calling • Credo Harris
... climbs upon the plains, The Llano Estacado (beyond lie wastes Of alkali and hunger gaunt and death),— And here is lost in shifting rifts of sand. Anon it lingers by a hidden spring That bubbles joy into the wilderness; Its pathway trenched that distant mountain side, Now grown to gulches through torrential rain. De Vaca gathered pinons by the way, Long ere the furrows grew on yonder hill, Cut by the creaking prairie-schooner wheels; La Salle, the gentle Frenchman, crossed this course, And went to death and to a nameless ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... illimitable domains of Spain and Portugal in the New World; and none displayed such remarkable contrasts in land and people. Boundless plains and forests, swamps and deserts, mighty mountain chains, torrential streams and majestic rivers, marked the surface of the country. This vast territory stretched from the temperate prairies west of the Mississippi down to the steaming lowlands of Central America, then up through tablelands in the southern continent to high plateaus, miles ...
— The Hispanic Nations of the New World - Volume 50 in The Chronicles Of America Series • William R. Shepherd
... case with meadows circumstanced like the one we have described—embosomed in deep woods, with the ground rising gently away from it all around, the network of tree-roots in which all the ground is clasped preventing any rapid torrential washing. But, in exceptional cases, beautiful lawns formed with great deliberation are overwhelmed and obliterated at once by the action of land-slips, earthquake avalanches, or extraordinary ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... in a deep communication trench, away back, where we had come together for a meal after a morning spent in digging. Torrential rain was falling. We were muddled and drenched and hustled by the flood, and we ate standing in single file, without shelter, under the dissolving sky. Only by feats of skill could we protect the bread and bully from the spouts that flowed from ...
— Under Fire - The Story of a Squad • Henri Barbusse
... of weather that take place among these watersheds would almost seem to be cause enough to explain the wearing down of the angularities of the heights. Even while we stand on the bridge at Hawes we can see three or four ragged cloud edges letting down on as many places torrential rains, while in between there are intervals of blazing sunshine, under which the green fells turn bright yellow and orange in powerful contrast to the indigo shadows on every side. Such rapid changes from complete saturation to sudden heat are trying to the hardest rocks, and at Hardraw, ...
— Yorkshire Painted And Described • Gordon Home
... by the deluge of torrential rain, thoroughly confused beyond all recognition of his whereabouts in the tangle of bush through which he was thrusting his way, all his senses dazed by the fierce overhead detonations, and the streams of blazing fire splitting ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... the conditions under which the work of this unit was carried out—often under a burning sun and again in bitter cold, mud and torrential rain—conditions which might well appal the stoutest heart, but here I note that the gallant author, as I expected, makes light of the many hardships and vicissitudes that he and his comrades were called upon ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie
... "Polar Star," but he expressed his usual fidelity to her. Miserable or fortunate, he was always the same to her; it was because of his unchangeableness of heart that he was so painfully wounded by her neglect. Carried away, as he often was, by his torrential existence, he might miss writing to her, but he could not understand how she could deprive him of the sacred bread which restored his courage and gave ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd
... diplomatic and persuasive in stating the case, and his attendants were animated with zeal that the Americans should have the credit of re-opening the cathedral for worship. It was true the Spanish garrison first occupied it, but if the necessity that its ample roof should protect soldiers from the torrential rains had existed perhaps it had ceased to be imperative. The matter was duly presented to the military authorities, and the objection found to immediate action that the Spanish prisoners of war should not for the time be located outside the walled ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead
... geology; monumental caprice of Nature in megalithic structure, as shown by the remarkable basalt columns of the profound Gorge of Itzala. Vari-coloured lichens cover these basalt pillars, affording singular contrast of light and shade. Through the gorge a torrential stream flows, and the floor of the valley is covered with fragments of obsidian, or volcanic glass, gleaming black and brilliant, which has been brought down by the waters from the Cerro de Navajas. This obsidian, or Itzli, was the material from which the Aztecs made their knives and weapons, and ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... in the barrels on board. But in a trice the preventive men were driven overboard and, as they leapt into the shallow water, were caught and held and drenched in the noisome mess; while the Riding Officer, plastered ere he could gain his saddle, ducked his head and galloped up the beach under a torrential shower ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... made September 2, 1914. Ten thousand troops were put ashore; but it was not until September 25, 1914, that the invaders made their first capture of a German outpost, Weihsien. The check on the Japanese advance, however, was due less to the defenders of Tsing-tau than to the torrential rains, which swelled the streams and for a time effectively barred further movements. The Japanese artillery was compelled to return to Lung-chow, their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... baroque, and encrusted with pleasing and unexpected tricks of ornamentation. That tropical redundancy for which her person was renowned reflected itself likewise in her temperament—in nothing more than the exuberance of her untruths which were poured out in so torrential a flood, with such burning conviction at the opulence of detail that persons who knew her well used to stand aghast (Catholics had been known to cross themselves) at the fertility of her constructive imagination, while the most ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... tremendous pathos; it compasses the sublime, and in its most torrential moments the composer never quite loses his mental equipoise. He, too, can evoke tragic spirits, and at will send them scurrying back to their dim profound. It has but one rival in the Chopin studies—No. 12, op. 25, ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... the torrential downpour still rose from the saturated earth. When Ruth jarred a bush in passing a perfect deluge fell from the trembling leaves. The girl began to feel that she had come far enough in what appeared ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... northwest of Bayaguana, flows south 25 miles through the plains and disappears in the ground a mile from the sea. Most streams ordinarily insignificant and innocent looking, are in a surprisingly short space of time converted by rains into raging torrents. The most formidable of these torrential rivers is the Nizao which flows into the Caribbean Sea near Point Palenque. In the lower part of this river's course its bed is about a mile wide, of which only a small portion is covered by the several branches ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... made off before they had a chance at a shot. But, say!" he exclaimed, "the storm's over an' the sun is out, an' here we are loafin' in here yet. Vamoose, boys! scatter!" and they all piled out into a fresh and made-over world. Everything was washed clean by the torrential rainfall, and, strange to say, comparatively little damage had been done by the terrific wind. The ranchmen set about repairing whatever had been destroyed, and the three comrades walked toward the ranchhouse, discussing Sandy's tale ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... of course. We soon struck a river, and at once surmised that if we followed it, it must bring us to the head of the bay, which meant only three miles of salt water ice to cover. Alas, the stream proved very torrential. It leaped here and there over so many rapid falls that great canyons were left in the ice, and instead of being able to dash along as when first we struck it, we had painfully to pick our way between heavy ice-blocks, which sorely ...
— A Labrador Doctor - The Autobiography of Wilfred Thomason Grenfell • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
... Doctor Geddes sent us Schmetz, the gardener, a gnarled little man with a peppery temper, a torrential flow of Alsatian French, and a tireless energy. I don't know why nor how Schmetz had come to Hyndsville, except that somehow he had acquired a small farm near by and couldn't get away from it. He explained to us, gently but firmly, that if we wouldn't meddle after the manner of women, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... consisting of more or less parallel mountain ranges and broad intervening troughs that are filled to great depths with rock waste washed from the mountains. These great deposits of rock waste were in large part laid down by torrential streams and are relatively coarse and porous. Because these deposits are porous the rain that falls upon them and the run-off that reaches them from the mountains sinks into them, and the valleys in which they lie are exceptionally ...
— Reno - A Book of Short Stories and Information • Lilyan Stratton
... an animated man; and she might be willing. Her willingness to listen to Vernon promised it. "A gentleman with a tongue would have a chance", Mrs. Mountstuart had said. How much greater the chance of a lover! For he had not yet supplicated her: he had shown pride and temper. He could woo, he was a torrential wooer. And it would be glorious to swing round on Lady Busshe and the world, with Clara nestling under an arm, and protest astonishment at the erroneous and utterly unfounded anticipations of any other development. And it would ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... different—almost a contradictory—tendency, which is no less clearly marked and hardly less important—the tendency towards pure Rhetoric. This love of language for its own sake—of language artfully ordered, splendidly adorned, moving, swelling, irresistible—may be seen alike in the torrential sentences of Rabelais, in the sonorous periods of Bossuet, and in the passionate tirades of Corneille. With the great masters of the seventeenth century—Pascal, Racine, La Fontaine, La Bruyere—the two influences met, and achieved ...
— Landmarks in French Literature • G. Lytton Strachey
... nowhere has Nature turned toward him a sterner and more forbidding face. But, though their coolies have died by the thousands from cholera and fever, though their laboriously constructed bridges have been swept away in a night by rivers swollen from the torrential rains, though the fast-growing jungle persistently encroaches on the hard-won right-of-way, though they have had to combat savage beasts and still more savage men, they have prosecuted with indomitable courage and tenacity the task of building a road ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... panther struggled to rise; but only to sink to earth again. Tarzan felt the giant muscles relax beneath him. Sheeta was dead. Rising, the ape-man placed a foot upon the body of his vanquished foe, raised his face toward the thundering heavens, and as the lightning flashed and the torrential rain broke upon him, screamed forth the wild victory cry of the ...
— Tarzan the Untamed • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was filled with the roar of driving hail. It swept the woods, rending leaves and smashing twigs, while a constant blaze of lightning flickered about the grass. Then the thunder died away and the hail gave place to torrential rain, while the slender trees rocked in the blast and small branches drove past the tent, where the men crouched inside. After the rain ceased, suddenly, a fierce red light streamed along the saturated grass from the huge ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... in and found Dean in the full tide of a torrential outpouring of passionate and enthusiastic, at times incoherent, tales of the Canadians, of their spirit, of their sacrifice and devotion ...
— The Major • Ralph Connor
... in the midst of the cyclone scene, as the dust storm was ending and the torrential rain succeeded. For the storm, a miniature village had been constructed in break-away fashion, partially sawed through and tricked for the proper moment. Many objects were controlled by invisible wires, including an actual horse and ...
— The Film Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve
... moon brought new songsters, with many a nightingale among them. A low bush near the plain was vocal during the full moon with the sweet but disconnected music of the yellow-breasted chat. The forest rang again and again with a wild, torrential strain of music that seemed to come from the stars. It sent peculiar thrill into Rolf's heart, and gave him a lump ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... good deal of shelling and some torrential showers. We set fire to some woods on the lower slopes of San Daniele, ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton
... view of Swift as opposed to his general view of politics, I find myself for the most part in harmony. I doubt, however, whether Swift has been pursued in his grave with such torrential malignity as Mr. Whibley imagines. Thackeray's denigration, I admit, takes the breath away. One can hardly believe that Thackeray had read either Swift's writings or his life. Of course he had done so, but his passion for the sentimental graces made him incapable of doing justice to a genius ...
— The Art of Letters • Robert Lynd
... the tumbril proceeded at a crawl, and the people surging about the cart screamed death and insult at the doomed woman. It took two hours to reach the Place de la Revolution, and meanwhile a terrific summer thunderstorm had broken over Paris, and a torrential rain had descended upon the densely packed streets. Charlotte's garments were soaked through and through, so that her red smock, becoming glued now to her body and fitting her like a skin, threw into relief its sculptural beauty, whilst a reflection of the vivid crimson of the ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Scott a minute or two later give a loud Coo-ee! for Jacky, and fancied she heard an answering cry from the blackboy, a long distance away. Then the rain again descended in a torrential downpour, and ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... light. At first it seemed to twitch with each opening of the heavens; but this must have been a trick of eyesight, for his head lay quiet against her arm as she raised him a little, shielding him against the torrential rain which now hissed down, in ten seconds drenching her to the skin, blotting out river and meadow in a sheet of grey. It forced her to stoop her shoulders, and, so covering him, she put out a hand and laid it over his heart. Yes, it beat, though feebly. Once more she picked up the phial ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of November the rains came. First in hesitant showers, then in steadier downpourings, finally, as December advanced, in torrential fury. Veils of water descended upon them, swept round their knoll till it stood marooned amid yellow eddies. The river rose boisterous, swirled into the pits, ate its way across the honey-combed reach of mud and fingered along the bottom of their hillock. They had ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... beautiful; they were happy; he could do his work in deliberation and comfort. She knew the value of money better than he, cared more for it in her own way; but she had not his desire to heap up vast and sudden sums, to revel in torrential golden showers. She was willing to let well enough alone. Clemens could not do this, and suffered accordingly. In the midst of fair home surroundings and honors we find him ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... foreseeing mind had been planning such a retreat. Black Strand even at his first visit had appeared to him in the light of a great opportunity, and the crisis of their quarrel did but release that same torrential energy which had carried him to a position of Napoleonic predominance in the world of baking, light catering and confectionery, into the channels of a scheme already very ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... too well balanced to risk its loss. So Mrs. Croix might be driven to rest her hopes on a trick of chance or a coup de theatre. But she was a very clever woman; and she was not unlike Hamilton in a quite phenomenal precocity, and in the torrential nature of her passions. ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... "Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society," volume 43, 1887, page 364). The Coombe Rock is a mass of unstratified flints and Chalk debris filling the lower parts of the dry valleys (Coombes) of the South Downs and gradually passing into the brick-earth (loam) of the coastal plain. It is clearly a torrential accumulation, and is supposed to have been formed while the Chalk was frozen, thus preventing percolation of water and causing the surface water to run off as strong streams. This must have occurred during some part of the glacial period, which would naturally ...
— The Antiquity of Man • Charles Lyell
... water except as a medium for quenching his thirst. He hated it because he connected it with the chill and discomfort of the torrential rains, and he feared it for the thunder and lightning and wind ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... content to rest his forces after such exertions. But French is never tired. The very day that Cronje surrendered news came through that a rescue party was coming to Cronje's assistance, and already held a hill on the south-east of the Modder. Although the river was in flood, as the result of torrential rains, French forthwith led out two brigades with their batteries to make a reconnaissance. In forcing the stream both French and his A.A.G. very nearly lost their lives. Losing its foothold the General's horse took fright and fell, flinging him into the raging torrent. As the animal strove ...
— Sir John French - An Authentic Biography • Cecil Chisholm
... about; but for sergeants suffering under a blight and characterless females masquerading as hospital nurses to come and ride rough-shod over an honest working woman was past endurance. Thus I paraphrase my memory of the lady's torrential speech. "Lay your hand on me," she cried, "and I'll summons ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... had been striking at the shackles of habit with a rancor bred of disillusionment. She had been on tiptoe for new and vital experiences, and yet, for any outward sign, her life bid fair to escape the surge of any torrential circumstance. Particularly, at the office, things had gone on smoothly. The other clerks had accepted Claire's advancement without either protest or enthusiasm. Even Miss Munch had veiled her resentment behind ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... these grains and the relative proportion of grains of the softer minerals which still remain give a rough measure of the distance in space and time which they have traveled from their source. The sand of many beaches, derived from the rocks of adjacent cliffs or brought in by torrential streams from neighboring highlands, is dark with grains of a number of minerals softer than quartz. The white sand of other beaches, as those of the east coast of Florida, is almost wholly composed of quartz grains; for in its long travel down the Atlantic coast the weaker minerals ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... the night I was awakened by a torrential downpour and by the roar of a heavy gale as it swept over the cliffs high above our heads. Despite the tarpaulins the wet found its way in and soaked us to the skin, so that with daylight we were glad to make preparations for ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... preventing wet feet; whale oil was rubbed in, and arrangements made in the village for drying 400 pairs of socks every 24 hours, while the R.A.M.C. provided hot baths in the factory by the pond. Unfortunately, most of the dugouts, after a short resistance, succumbed to the alternations of frost and torrential rain. Sometimes the roof and sides collapsed, as the Oxfords found to their cost when an iron girder killed four men. Sometimes the pressure of water merely caused leakage, but in either case the result was eventually the same. The plight ...
— The War Service of the 1/4 Royal Berkshire Regiment (T. F.) • Charles Robert Mowbray Fraser Cruttwell
... has heavy surf and no natural harbors; during the rainy season torrential flooding ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... remarks addressed to him by a Frenchman, with a most potently intelligent and understanding expression, by ejaculating "Nong, nong!" and a profoundly understanding "Ah, wee!" at intervals in the one-sided conversation. He tried this method when called upon by a puzzled private to interpret the torrential speech of a Frenchman, who wished to know whether the Towers had any jam to spare, or whether they would exchange a rum ration for some French wine. 'Enery interjected a few "Ah, wee's!" and then at the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... Roosevelt and his lieutenants knew that the enemy was perfecting his plan to defeat them. On Monday evening his zealots packed the Auditorium and he poured himself out to them in one of his torrential speeches calculated to rouse the passions rather than the minds of his hearers. But it fitly symbolized the situation. He, the daunt less leader, stood there, the soul of sincerity and courage, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... possession last autumn while my wife was away. I need not explain how I got it, for that has no importance; but it was the genuine fluid extract, and I could not resist the temptation to make an experiment. One of its effects, as you know, is to induce torrential laughter—" ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... detail our daily progress. Let it suffice to say that we worked all day and every day from dawn to sunset, until at length, after five weeks of strenuous but uneventful labour, punctuated at intervals by thunderstorms of terrific violence, accompanied by torrential downpours of rain—which we thankfully utilised for the replenishment of our fresh-water supply—the carpenter work of our projected house was finished, and then came the still ...
— The Strange Adventures of Eric Blackburn • Harry Collingwood
... the literary world were of course attended by a host of satellites of various magnitudes, who did all in their power to refute the romantic principles by reductiones ad absurdum. Endowed for the most part with considerable facility of composition, the poetasters poured forth their feelings with torrential recklessness, demanding freedom for their inspiration, and cursing the age that fettered them with its prosaic cares, its cold reason, and its dry science. At the same time the dramatists and novelists ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... all the stories of Balzac as one immense novel—of some forty volumes—dealing with the torrential life of the human race itself as it roars and eddies in its huge turbulency with France and Paris for a background. I am largely justified in this view of Balzac's work by his own catholic and ...
— Suspended Judgments - Essays on Books and Sensations • John Cowper Powys
... about where it had been, rose a column of dust from the ground beneath. The horses were so frightened that luckily they stood quite quiet, as I have often known animals to do in such circumstances. Then came the rain, a torrential rain as I, who was out in it holding the horses, became painfully aware. It thinned after a while, however, as the ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... most extensive stretches of tropical forest to be found anywhere. The forests of tropical West Africa, and of portions of the Farther-Indian region, are the only ones that can be compared with them. Much difficulty has been experienced in exploring these forests, because under the torrential rains and steaming heat the rank growth of vegetation becomes almost impenetrable, and the streams difficult of navigation; while white men suffer much from the terrible insect scourges and the deadly diseases which ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... with some strident accent of power and command, this voice of Earth rushed upon them over the quiet water—then died away again among the mountains and the night. Its passage through the sky was torrential. The whole pouring flood of it dipped back with abrupt swiftness into silence. The Irishman understood that but an echo of its main volume ...
— The Centaur • Algernon Blackwood
... against the wind-shield so that the road ahead was barely visible. Never had she seen such blinding sheets of water. It tore at the roof, it whipped about the curtains, it threatened to engulf them all in a torrential flood. The car was moving slowly forward—she could see Joe's outline bent slightly over the wheel—and in spite of his care the rear wheels would slew gently from side to side. As she peered ahead she could see a yellow flood of water rushing down the road ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... constitute the group 4,015 belong to Hawaii. Except in temperature, which varies only about 11 degrees mean for a year, diversity marks the physical features of these mid-sea islands. Lofty mountains where snow lies perpetually, huge valleys washed by torrential freshets, smooth sand dunes, or fluted ridges, arid plains and rain-soaked forests, fringes of white beach, or abrupt bluffs that drop sheer into the deep sea, days of liquid sunshine or fierce storms from the south that whip across the island for half a week, ...
— The Hawaiian Romance Of Laieikawai • Anonymous
... no Sharp family appeared—and at last I knew I had missed them somehow—a very easy thing in that path-bisected wood. So I told him he could drive like hell to my appartement in the Place des Etats Unis—and off we rushed in the now torrential rain—It was one of the worst thunder storms I have ever ...
— Man and Maid • Elinor Glyn
... walking along the weather shore of the island, which was strewn with loose slabs of coral stone, pure white in colour and giving forth a clear, resonant sound to the slightest disturbing movement On our right hand was a scrub of puka trees, which afforded no shelter from the torrential rain; on our left the ocean, whose huge, leaping billows crashed and thundered upon the black, shelving reef, and sent swirling waves of whitened foam up to ...
— Susani - 1901 • Louis Becke
... a heavy rain set in, and there was nothing for the baffled ape-man to do but wait in the partial shelter of a huge tree until morning; but the coming of dawn brought no cessation of the torrential downpour. ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... eyes was blazing upon him torrential fury and contempt. Yet she did not give him her truest reasons in her answer. She had no longer any fear of him for herself, but she trembled inwardly at the menace of ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... the night a terrific gale raged in Manchester and surrounding districts, hail and sleet being accompanied by a torrential rainfall varied by Pendleton, Eccles, ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, November 25, 1914 • Various
... for Miss Jessie Stone was torrential in her speech. There wasn't a chance to "get a word in edgewise" when once she was started upon a subject ...
— The Girl from Sunset Ranch - Alone in a Great City • Amy Bell Marlowe
... waves, spinning them out like silver manes of leaping horses. These flashed in the sunlight, till, over the central ridge of water, the air was full of a fine, misty spray that hung palpitating and luminous. Here was a torrential life—born of the endless and icy leagues of ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Near five o'clock a torrential rain fell, but it lulled neither wind nor sea. The hurricane was unleashed at a speed of forty-five meters per second, hence almost forty leagues per hour. Under these conditions houses topple, roof tiles puncture doors, iron railings snap in two, and twenty-four-pounder ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... not like other rains Baree had known. It was an inundation sweeping down out of the blackness of the skies. Within five minutes the interior of the balsam shelter was a shower bath. After half an hour of that torrential downpour, Nepeese was soaked to the skin. The water ran in little rivulets down her body. It trickled in tiny streams from her drenched braids and dropped from her long lashes, and the blanket under her became wet as a mop. To Baree it was almost as ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... night he was to be found afar in the snow-padded solitudes of the forest engaged in prayer. At last, in the spring of 1672, thaw set the ice loose and the torrents rushing. Downstream on June 10 launched Albanel, running many a wild-rushing rapid, taking the leap with the torrential waters over the lesser cataracts, and avoiding the larger falls by long detours over rocks slippery as ice, through swamps to a man's armpits. The hinterland of Hudson Bay, with its swamps and rough portages and dank forests of unbroken windfall, was then and is to-day ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... drought. Of late this particular region had proven itself to be one of violent extremes, of extreme dryness during which flowers failed to bloom, the grass shriveled and died, and even the trees refused to put forth leaves; or, more rarely, of extreme wetness, when the country was drowned beneath torrential rains. Sometimes, during unusual winters, the heavens opened and spilled themselves, choking the narrow watercourses, washing out roads and destroying fields, changing the arid arroyos into raging river beds. At such times life for the country people was scarcely less burdensome ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... began to twitch curiously. I thought at first he was really intending to make the best of things, but suddenly two great tears squeezed from his eyes and rolled lumberingly over his cheeks; then, as an unbridled torrential storm breaks in the tropics, he threw himself face down ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... the slightest noise, the rustling of a leaf or the breaking of a twig not escaping our attention. First, I would take the advance and then the Sergeant. When we passed through cane-fields we found the plowed grounds but little less than marshes, for the rainy season had just begun with torrential showers. Our bodies were soon soaked to the skin, for the leaves of the cane and banana stalks were burdened with water. The cane was a trifle higher than our heads, and the wide-spreading leaves of the banana hid the sky ...
— Bamboo Tales • Ira L. Reeves
... that stood nearest, swinging his rifle over his head. Forward sprang the doctor to his side, his poplar club likewise swung up to strike. Back fell the Indians a pace or two, the Chief following them with a torrential flow of vehement invective. Slowly, sullenly the crowd gave back, cowed but still wrathful, and beginning to mutter in angry undertones. Once more the tent flap was pushed aside and there issued two figures who ran to the side of the Indian boy, now swaying ...
— The Patrol of the Sun Dance Trail • Ralph Connor
... Marmaduke, was ever mine, until I was swept, I thought for ever, out of your path by a torrential spate of whisky." ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... of wooded hills were barrier enough. Even a few years ago their passes were dreaded by cartmen; most of the carriage of the country was effected by pack-bullocks. Even when roads were cleared through the forests, they were likely to be rendered impassable by torrential rains.[1223] ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... and it was impossible to think any harm of a girl one had played with at school; but she could not deny that Florrie was vulgar. As a matter of fact, Florrie's mother had been vulgar before her, and the thin strain of refinement inherited from her father's stock had obviously been overborne by the torrential ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow
... years Italy was unequally divided between the king of the Lombards and the exarchate of Ravenna. Rome relapsed into a state of misery. The Campania was reduced to the state of a dreary wilderness. The stagnation of a deluge caused by the torrential swelling of the Tiber produced a pestilential disease, and a stranger visiting Rome might contemplate with horror the solitude of the city. Gregory the Great, whose pontificate lasted from 590 to 604, reconciled the Arians of Italy and Spain to the Catholic Church, conquered Britain in the ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol XI. • Edited by Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... bed of loam which the fallen leaves enriched from year to year. It was the axes of their fathers that felled the trees, to sell for fuel, and the billhooks of their mothers that hacked away the bushes and grubbed up their very roots to burn on the household cooking hole. Then the torrential rains of the south-west monsoon came down on the naked, defenceless, parched and cracked soil and swept it in muddy cascades down to the sea, leaving flats of bare rock, strewn thick with round stones, sore to the best-shod foot of man and cruel to the hoofs of a horse. ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... never have been able to track the clan. The drizzle alternated with slashing bursts of rain, torrential enough to drive the trackers to the nearest cover. Overhead the sky was either dull bronze or night black. Even the coyotes paced nose to ground, often making wide casts for the ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... tank full of water, with a close-fitting lid to prevent their jumping out. I saw him take a seventh. The largest must have weighed nearly two pounds. It seems almost incredible that fish should inhabit water so cold, so opaque, and so torrential, and should find there any kind of nourishment. They make their way up by keeping close to the bank, and are able, even in that milky current, to perceive and snatch the unfortunate worm or grub which has been washed into the flood and is being hurried ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... importance and some who were really great; the energetic and violent Tertullian, beloved by Bossuet; Saint Cyprian, full of unction, gentleness, and charity; Lactantius, skilful Christian philosopher, ingenious and possessing insinuating subtlety; Saint Hilarius, an ardent polemist, impetuous and torrential; Saint Ambrose, exalted, wise, serene, very well read, very "Roman," who may be styled the Cicero of Christianity; Saint Jerome, ardent, impassioned, possessing lively sensibility, an animated and seductive imagination, who—excluding all ...
— Initiation into Literature • Emile Faguet
... night, far out to the northward, a storm descended like a cataclysm. Torrential rains were poured upon the hills from a cloudburst exceptionally savage. Only the scattered outposts, as it were, of the storm were blown as far as Goldite. A sprinkle of rain that dried at once was the ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... arm, swept from the room in a kind of torrential rage, banged the door behind her, ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... good seaman, but old and wanting in nerve. Still, with the aid of some of the terrified crew, and amidst a torrential downpour of rain which almost immediately began to fall, he did what he could to save the ship. In half an hour the rain ceased, and then the wind came with hurricane force from the southward; the crew again bolted, and ...
— The Call Of The South - 1908 • Louis Becke
... storm was on them in earnest. This blast came with zigzag flashes of lightning that showed the heavens riotous with battalions of charging clouds; it came with deafening thunder and a torrential discharge of rain. One would have thought the power of the wind sufficient to set a steel battleship scudding before it like a wooden shoe. And yet the extraordinary Jasper B., although she shrieked and groaned and seemed ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis |
