"Booming" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had played incessantly in pale flashes across the low clouds in the south, now leaped to higher peaks and became more vivid, and the muttering of the thunder changed to long, booming peals. Thirteen years before, the Virginia storms had struck us with terror. Compared with those of the Old World we had left, they were as cannon to the whistling of arrows, as breakers on an iron coast to the dull wash of level seas. Now they were nothing to me, but as the peals changed ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... all other sounds, then lagoon and forest and cypress branch awoke; and through the steadily sustained tumult of woodland voices I could hear the dry bark of the fox-squirrel, the whistle of the raccoon, ducks softly quacking or whimpering as they prepared for sleep among the reeds, the soft booming of bitterns, the clattering gossip of the heronry, ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Nature, and is heard most frequently in the morning twilight, when the birds are busy collecting their repast of insects. During an early morning walk, while they are circling about, we may hear their cry frequently repeated, and occasionally the booming sound, which, if one is not accustomed to it, and is not acquainted with this habit of the bird, affects him with a sensation of mystery, and excites his curiosity ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... Winchester and his troops galloped rapidly back toward the army, which they soon met, toiling through swamps and even through shallow overflow toward the Tennessee. The men had been hearing for more than an hour the steady booming of the cannon, and every face ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the high-hung road along the top of the Brow. The wind here was of great force, and made a strange booming noise as it swept high overhead; though not the sound of cracking and tearing as it passed through the woods of high slender trees which grew on either side of the road. Mimi could hardly keep her feet. She was not afraid; but the force to which she was opposed ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker
... were running hither and thither in all ways. The artillery booming, forward, rearward, and on the flanks made jumble of ideas of direction. Landmarks had vanished into the gathered gloom. The youth began to imagine that he had got into the center of the tremendous quarrel, and he could perceive no way out of it. From the mouths ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... the murderous combat brought a restlessness that pleased him. But human nature is strange—passing strange. At intervals he was mild and gentle. Standing upon the battlefield, when night had drawn her silvery curtain over the ghastly and hideous spectacle, when the booming shot and frightful discord—the shriek, the groan, the shout, and ceaseless rush of angered men were passed away, he had looked round upon the cold and bloody scene, and wept—his sternness softened, and he ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... ten, but, though it was scant for these bouffant days, she was the old Virginia still—slim and strong and dainty, and highbred in every line, with dark eyes that mirrored passing thoughts. She was the Virginia he had played with when Keno was booming and his own sisters had been there for company; and now after ten years he remembered the time when he had asked her, ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge
... several bridges which the Germans had destroyed, but which had been made temporarily good again by the French engineers. Over these our train had to travel gingerly. As we neared the fighting zone the booming of the guns could be heard, and a little further on things became more warlike. We noticed the devastated stations, villages, and large shell holes in the embankment ...
— A Soldier's Sketches Under Fire • Harold Harvey
... as can be procured. The soldiers should wear a showy military suit and bearskin hats. The muskets must be furnished with bayonets, and a thin smoke should be made to float over the scene. The roll of the tenor drum, the shrill music of the fife, the rattle of musketry, and the booming of cannon, should be heard in the distance. A red light must be thrown upon all the figures; if this is not sufficient to light up the piece, the footlights fronting Napoleon can be lighted. The person who takes the ...
— Home Pastimes; or Tableaux Vivants • James H. Head
... for big man tell!" broke in another voice; a deep, booming voice that could only proceed from a powerfully ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... The wind was blowing a gale from the north and the rain was flying with the clouds in a wide passionate horizontal flood, as if it were all passing over the country instead of falling on it. The main perennial streams were booming high above their banks, and hundreds of new ones, roaring like the sea, almost covered the lofty gray walls of the inlet with white cascades and falls. I had intended making a cup of coffee and getting something like a breakfast ...
— Stickeen • John Muir
... Cullingworth, he is booming along as merrily as ever. You say in your last, that what you cannot understand is how he got his hold of the public in so short a time. That is just the point which I have found it hard to get light upon. He told me that after his first coming he had ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... the English edition would be as perfect as he could make it. He secured a berth on the Geranium, sailing from Liverpool, and cabled Brant to that effect. The day before he sailed he got a cablegram that bewildered him. It was simply, "She's a-booming." He regretted that he had never learned ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... glimpses of dim country, the vague mystery of night overshadowing the woods and meadows. A warm wind blew gusts of odor from the meadowsweet by the brook, now and then bee and beetle span homeward through the air, booming a deep note as from a great organ far away, and from the verge of the wood came the "who-oo, who-oo, who-oo" of the owls, a wild strange sound that mingled with the whirr and rattle of the night-jar, deep in the bracken. The moon swam up through the films ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... spirit kept him from the warmth of the blankets. He chose rather to slip on his trousers, and then again to gaze blindly out into the mysterious dark of this new world. He found himself hearkening intently for the varied calls of warning that went wailing hither and yon. The mellow, softly booming, yet penetrant notes of the conch-shells blown by the skippers of smaller craft, came almost soothingly to his ears. All the others, harsher, seemed tocsins ...
— Heart of the Blue Ridge • Waldron Baily
... head-waters of the Yazoo River. Early in February the gunboats Indianola and Queen of the West ran the batteries of Vicksburg. The latter was afterward crippled in Red River, and was captured by the rebels; and the Indianola was butted and sunk about forty miles below Vicksburg. We heard the booming of the guns, but did not know of her loss till some days after. During the months of January and February, we were digging the canal and fighting off the water of the Mississippi, which continued to rise and threatened to drown us. We had no ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan
... should never become sensible again. Rightly is it called "spanker-boom,"—that is if it is called so, or some name very like it,—for I never got such a whack on the head in all my life before. I hear the Booming still ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 99, August 30, 1890. • Various
... ridiculous side of things, where would this devoted pair have been? Why, of course they would have fallen out long ago. Mrs. Sarrasin would soon have seen that her husband was a ridiculous old Don Quixote sort of person, whom she was puffing and booming to an unconscionable degree, and whom people were laughing at. Captain Sarrasin would have seen that his wife was unconsciously 'bossing the show,' and while professing to act entirely under his command was really doing ...
— The Dictator • Justin McCarthy
... song! it came and went, Went and came. I have not learned Half the lore whereto it yearned, Half the magic that it meant. Water booming in a cave; Or the swell of some long wave, Setting in from unrevealed Countries; or a foreign tongue, Sweetly talked and deftly sung, While the meaning is half sealed; May be like it. You have heard Also;—can you find a word For the naming of such song? No; a name would do it wrong. You have ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... masts and spreading sails, and a thousand variegated flags flew and flapped in the morning breeze. The huge line of battle-ships, with their triple decks and their long rows of oars, looked like hundred-eyed sea-monsters swimming with hundreds of legs on the surface of the water, and the booming reverberation of the thunder of their guns was re-echoed from the broad foreheads of the palaces ...
— Halil the Pedlar - A Tale of Old Stambul • Mr Jkai
... of the Pony Rider Boys rose in the National anthem, the deep bass voice of Professor Zepplin booming out ...
— The Pony Rider Boys with the Texas Rangers • Frank Gee Patchin
... a buccaneer, A burly velveted rover, Who loves the booming wind in his ear As he sails the ...
— Songs from Vagabondia • Bliss Carman and Richard Hovey
... saw me trembling with a nausea of fear. And, with the winds booming from all sides, the deck as slippery as the body of a live eel, he gave me a shove far out on the slant of the poop. I sped in the grey drive of sleet clear to the rail. The ship dipped under as a huge wave smashed over, all fury and ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... on one side appeared the smooth rock of Scylla; on the other Charybdis ceaselessly spouted and roared; in another part the Wandering rocks were booming beneath the mighty surge, where before the burning flame spurted forth from the top of the crags, above the rock glowing with fire, and the air was misty with smoke, nor could you have seen the sun's light. Then, though Hephaestus had ceased from his toils, ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... the little tin dinner bucket, and his slate, and all their books under his arm and go booming ahead about half a mile in advance, while Madge with brown Little Stumps clinging to her side like a burr, would come stepping along the trail under the oak-trees as fast as ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... rapidly than the deep, though it may not be made so warm after all, and every evening it is being cooled more rapidly until the morning. The day is an epitome of the year. The night is the winter, the morning and evening are the spring and fall, and the noon is the summer. The cracking and booming of the ice indicate a change of temperature. One pleasant morning after a cold night, February 24th, 1850, having gone to Flint's Pond to spend the day, I noticed with surprise, that when I struck the ice with ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... and now David perceived that she was young, and possessed of pathetic and appealing beauty. He was startled from the contemplation of her forlorn loveliness by the booming voice of the marquis. ...
— Roads of Destiny • O. Henry
... infernal luck, have been good for any youth of Jeff's impetuous credulity? Mightn't Jeff have got the idea that life is an easy job? The colonel felt now that he had always distrusted Reardon's bluff bonhomie, his sympathetic voice, his booming implication that he was letting you into his absolutely habitable heart. He knew, too, that without word of his own his distrust had filtered out to Anne and Lydia, and that they were prepared, while they stood by Jeff to unformulated issues, to trip up Reardon, somehow bring him ...
— The Prisoner • Alice Brown
... but broken at the bottom into frothy surges. Innumerable confused sounds issue from these watery tumults, which, borne by the winds across the forest, now sink in distance, now all at once swell out, booming on the ear like the bells of a cathedral. The air, kept ever in motion by the running water, preserves upon the banks of the river, amid all the summer heats, a freshness and verdure rarely found in this island, even on the ...
— Paul and Virginia • Bernardin de Saint Pierre
... Hill that the young Confederate led his troops into battle, and all day long the booming of the cannon and the crash of musketry rising above the cries of the wounded and dying came to the ears of the slave waiting in his tent for his master's return. Then in the afternoon a scattered fragment came straggling back into the ...
— The heart of happy hollow - A collection of stories • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... catch in all that was that, actually, I was not so much a rich, brilliant, successful man. I was a booming, ...
— Inside John Barth • William W. Stuart
... now Pouchskin's turn; and in a second after the loud report of the grenadier's gun went booming over the lake, while the ball splashed the water right into the eyes of the bear. Though it did not hit any part of his body, it had the effect of half-turning him—so that he now swam towards Alexis, stationed at ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... gave the command, and all the while more sail were counting from the crosstrees, until their number had reached forty-one. The news spread over the ship; the starboard watch trooped up with their dinners half eaten. Then a faint booming of guns ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Loramer watched him awhile, listening to the storm booming without, as he lay stretched on the straw. ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... of contrast we rode out into old ruined Rome, after all this firing and booming, to take our leave of the Coliseum. I had seen it by moonlight before (I could never get through a day without going back to it), but its tremendous solitude that night is past all telling. The ghostly pillars in the Forum; the Triumphal Arches ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... climbing about to make fast every loose thing. Great waves had already swept overboard. The salt water was trickling and flowing over the deck. As if that were not enough, the heavens were driving down rain and snow. The rigging was howling, groaning, booming, and whistling in every pitch and key. That severity, that awfulness of the elements, that eternal rushing and roaring and seething of great masses of water, through which the steamer was staggering forward as if in mad, ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... with rage, with terror for her little one, and with the pain of her wounds, the tormented mother broke into a deep booming bellow, as of a hundred bulls. The mysterious sound sent all the gulls screaming into the air, and frightened the basking walruses on the ledges three miles away. Every seal that heard it shuddered and dived, ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, but all our weary world knew that was only pretence. It was a shade cooler in the press-room ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... Pittsburgh went through northern Ohio to a junction where Hugh would get another train for Bidwell. Great booming towns, Youngstown, Akron, Canton, Massillon—manufacturing towns all—lay along the way. In the smoker Hugh sat, again playing with the colored stones held in his hand. There was relief for his mind in the stones. The light continually played about them, and their ...
— Poor White • Sherwood Anderson
... If you cling to those old things, Hoping still to hold the strings, And, for your ungodly gains, Life to bind with golden chains;— Man! you're mightily mistaken! From such dreams you'd best awaken To the sense of what is coming, When you hear the low, dull booming Of the far-off tocsin drums. —Such a day of vast upsettings, Dire outcastings and downsettings!— You have held the reins too long,— Have you time to ...
— 'All's Well!' • John Oxenham
... through that fog like lost wild things, like the ducks and geese bewildered of a stormy night, which mangle themselves against the wire nettings of light houses. Now and then the land abeam would give forth response to the booming of our whistle. The old man Sammy had taken the wheel and his grim face was frozen into an expression of desperate energy, as his keen little grey eyes peered through the murk. By this time there was a heavy roll and our tall spars were slashing at the mist ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... rustle of the wind in the glossy leaves of the live-oak and the soft, sifting, hushing tones of the pines, to the loudest rush and roar of storm winds and thunder among the crags of the summit peaks. The low bass, booming, reverberating tones, heard under favorable circumstances five or six miles away are formed by the dashing and exploding of heavy masses mixed with air upon two projecting ledges on the face of the cliff, the one on which we are standing and another about 200 feet above it. The ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... newspaper; the idea of opening a newspaper never occurred to her. But she was accustomed to the feverish atmosphere of Paris. She had lately seen regiments of cavalry flashing and prancing in the Luxembourg Gardens, and had much admired the fine picture. She accepted the booming as another expression of the high spirits that had to find vent somehow in this feverish empire. She so accepted it and forgot it, using all the panorama of the capital as a dim background for her ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... moments of the desperate voyage crept by like the pangs of Tantalus. Slowly they saw unfolding the fog-clothed mountains, a forest, scattered bits of white they knew were stuccoed houses; but while their eyes brought joy, their ears brought sadness. The booming of the surf upon an outlying ledge grew ever clearer. Almost ere they knew it the drifting mast was stayed with a shock. They saw two rocks swathed in dripping weed that crusted with knife-like barnacles, thrust their black heads ...
— A Victor of Salamis • William Stearns Davis
... immense planet shone pre-eminent in the purple sky, throwing a golden path down on to the still waters. Quantities of big fish sprung out of the water, their glistening silver-white scales flashing so that they look like slashing swords. Some bird was making a long, low boom-booming sound away on the forest shore. I paddled leisurely across the lake to the shore on the right, and seeing crawling on the ground some large glow-worms, drove the canoe on to the bank among some hippo grass, and ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... his shack the storm was beating up against the wind which had turned unexpectedly to the northeast. Mutterings of thunder grew to sharper booming. It was the first real thunderstorm of the season, but it was going to be a hard one, if looks meant anything. Irish went in and got his slicker and put it on, and then hesitated over riding on in search of the cattle and the men ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... wish to forget the past and live only in the booming present, to get careless of gain and breathe brand-new air that has never been used, to appease an irritated liver, or straighten out a torpid lung, let me say, pick out a high, dry clime, where there are trout enough to give you an excuse for going there, take what is ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... their transports in deep terror and dismay, And their great grandchildren's children will be shamed to name that day; For the woe they came to bring to the people of the South Was returned tenfold to them at the cannon's booming mouth: And the proud old Mississippi ran that day a horrid flood, For its banks were deeply crimsoned with the hireling ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... Giraffe, as they gathered around the supper that evening; "This is our last camp in Maine, seems like; for to-morrow Thad says we start for the railroad station at Eagle Lake, through Lake Winthrop; and soon we'll be booming along for home." ...
— The Boy Scouts in the Maine Woods - The New Test for the Silver Fox Patrol • Herbert Carter
... Burma were meeting us all day. Miles away the booming of their gongs sounded in the silent hills; a long time afterwards their bells were heard jingling, and by-and-by the mules and horses appeared under their huge bales of cotton, the foremost decorated with scarlet tufts and plumes of pheasant ...
— An Australian in China - Being the Narrative of a Quiet Journey Across China to Burma • George Ernest Morrison
... Then, above the booming of the fire, voices reached them, hoarse, anxious voices, and white faces peered up at them through the smoke ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Unfortunately no surface water can be obtained. The formation is limestone, in which are found "blowholes"—that is to say, circular holes two to four feet in diameter, which go down vertically to a depth never yet ascertained. They derive their name from the curious booming noise which they emit, probably caused by the wind. Judging from the growth of saltbush and other herbage it would seem likely that the rainfall on these elevated plains is considerable, and apparently ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... underneath. As the crest of a breaking wave utters its separate note of foam above the general booming of the sea that bears it, so the flying wave of daisy-tones rose out of this deeper sound beneath. Both humans became aware that it was but a surface-voice they imitated. They heard this other foundation-sound that bore it—deep, booming, thunderous, half lost and very far away. ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... know that the people of Brussels, whenever a strong wind carries the booming of heavy guns miles in from the front, think that French and English are going to recapture the city? Any day that we can hear the guns faintly, we know that there is an undercurrent of nervous expectancy running through the whole city. It goes down alleys and avenues and ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... as he goes forth upon the great waters. O sacred emblem of the faith with which we launch upon life's stormy main—of the hope that assures that we shall reach the port when the night and the tempest are past! When the winds are high, the booming of the breakers on the cliff sounds as if nature were impatient of the long, long delay, and had anticipated the last thunders that wake the sleeping dead. On a clear day, the blue Pacific, stretching away beyond the snowy surf-line, symbolizes the shoreless sea that rolls through eternity. ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... and over again, but only the rain beat in his face and around him was darkness, mystery. Then he heard the voices higher up on the side of the hill, first a laugh, then some shouts and cries. A thick voice raised the refrain of a song, and it came booming through the murky atmosphere. The ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... imprudence," he called out, "when I'd just been booming you! Now you come up in person ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... had not been firing for some two hours, and the silence was just beginning to get irritating and mysterious, when the booming of guns in the distance aroused us to the highest pitch of excitement. We were saved! We could not say what guns these were—they might be British or Boer—but, any way, it proved the neighborhood of another force. All faces lighted up, for somehow the welcome ...
— The Defence of Duffer's Drift • Ernest Dunlop Swinton
... the booming, melancholy sound of the minute guns from sea, making the brothers more impatient than ever; and, at that moment, the fog suddenly lifted, being rapidly wafted away to leeward over the island, enabling the two anxious watchers to see a bit of bright sky overhead, with a twinkling ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... big gong began booming, and a white puff of smoke was followed by the thud of a signal-gun. The boats, long canoe-like craft and round-bowed, many-oared barges, put out hastily into the river; through binoculars they could see people scattering from the surrounding fields, driving ...
— Space Viking • Henry Beam Piper
... still, it is hard to find because it has been starved, or hurt, or laughed at—but always when a certain current of thought or sound sweeps by, that wonderful part of our souls upon this little altar is set a-quivering. Old soldiers feel its pulsing at the booming of a cannon; old women feel it at the laughter of a child; others know it is there while beneath the spell of an orchestra, a breeze in the pines, a bird's note, the fragrance of certain flowers, the caress of a voice. You ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... were also handicapped by the fact that they had no candidate. The machine had been craftily booming Perkins for years; the reformers had boomed nobody[19]. They were, then, without material for a positive fight; all they could do was negative, which is always confession of weakness. In addition, aside from the Bulletin, there was ...
— Story of the Session of the California Legislature of 1909 • Franklin Hichborn
... reference to Marconi speculations which caused Rodgers to shake the dust from his feet (an easy thing on the Great Suburban line) and leave the compartment at the next station. Then Chalmers and Simcox bore down on Filmer with statistics about our booming trade. When we reached the next station, Filmer darted out of the compartment, declining to travel any longer with a set of miserable Cobdenite Little Englanders. I was horrified—not at the absence of Rodgers and Filmer, which could have been endured—but at the idea that the gaps they ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, February 25, 1914 • Various
... step of the Victoria Hotel, sucking a black dhudeen, sending out smoke like a factory chimney, the picture of innocent enjoyment. The streets were full of pigs from the rural parts, and great was the bargaining and chaffering in Irish, a language which seemed to be composed of rolling r's and booming gutturals. A sustained conversation sounds like the jolting of a country cart over a rocky road, a sudden exclamation like the whirr of a covey of partridges, an oath like the downfall of a truck-load of bricks. I arrived in time for the great pig fair, and Tuam was very busy. It is a poor town, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... say he was gallied," replied the sailor, with a knowing look, "but I'll bet he is. The booming of that war ship's guns was too much for his nerves, and he's going to quit pirating and go to blockade running. I don't see but that one is about as dangerous as the other." One by one the members of the crew were sent into the cabin, and as fast ...
— Marcy The Blockade Runner • Harry Castlemon
... damned remarkable case," exclaimed Merrington, in his booming voice. "I do not remember its parallel. An English lady is murdered in her home, with a crowd of people sitting at dinner in the room underneath, and the murderer gets clean away, without leaving a trace. No weapon, no finger-prints ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... works at first, had proven a failure, and now the wonderful siege began. For forty-six days the digging and mining went patiently forward, while screaming shells and booming shot produced a reign of terror in the city, until at last, Pemberton could hold out no longer and surrendered his starving garrison to the superior prowess and strategy of Grant. It was the morning of the fourth ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... Judge's voice, booming in front of the hotel: "Tell them to get that wagon around here in a hurry—we'll get these two engine stealers started for Chattanooga, and hunt down the other ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... of any spirit, thought he, could be expected to stand such work, paying all her wealth into a foreign treasury and yielding up the flower of her youth under foreign conscription. It was not so very long ago, either, since English guns had been heard booming close by in the German Ocean; well—all the fighting was over at last. Holland was a snug little monarchy now in her own right, and Ben, for one, was glad of it. Arrived at this charitable conclusion, he was prepared to ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... down on a fallen tree trunk to readjust his boot strap, he had mistaken for the booming of a huge jungle insect something which whizzed through the space where his head ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... so on my nerves that I had to get out and do something. With a British intelligence officer, formerly of Sir John French's staff, I wandered down to the southern quarter of the city known as Berchem. As usual, the guns at the outer forts had been booming throughout the evening. From the city's ramparts you could not only feel the shudder of the earth, but you could see occasional splashes of flame from the Belgian batteries, answered, in the dim distance to the south, by smaller, less vivid ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... And this time the file on shorts was stimulated by Poppa. The big, rough, booming voice had always scared Oley a bit when it sounded mad, ...
— Poppa Needs Shorts • Leigh Richmond
... this deluge of blood, mangled bodies, and the groans of the wounded and dying, our ears were continually greeted by the awful, everlasting rattle of the musketry, the roar of the field batteries, and the booming, shaking, and trembling of the siege guns from ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... wave broke behind her with a sound like the booming of a gun; and she realised that she would be surrounded in less than thirty seconds if she remained where she was. She slipped and slid down the side of the rock with the speed of terror, and plunged recklessly into a foot of water at the bottom. Before another wave broke ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... turned again toward me and started to cross-examine me upon the amount of damage we had sustained. I thought that the white, shapely hand tightened its grip upon my wet sleeve at the moment Leith's bass voice came booming to our ears, and I blessed the big brute's interference for the thrill which I derived from the pressure of her fingers ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... would he be wrecked in port after all? His ear, unnaturally strained, caught the sound of the front door being opened, he heard the Doctor's deep voice booming faintly below, then the noise ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... of the following week passed; then on Thursday, August the fourth, within an hour or two after sunrise, the solemn booming of guns began far away to the south-west; but the hours passed; and before nightfall all was ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... coming home, I heard the bell toll, and I learned that it was for the funeral of one of my companions with whom I had been accustomed to play, and with whom I had grown up. I did not know that he had been sick, but he had dropped into eternity; and the ringing, swinging, booming of that bell, if it had been the sound of an angel trumpet of the last day, would not have seemed to me more awful. I went into an ecstasy of anguish. At intervals, for days and weeks, I cried and prayed. There was scarcely a retired place in the garden, in the woodhouse, in the carriage-house, ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... amid smiles and tears, amid bells and drums, and waving flags and merry song, amid noisy shout and booming guns, that double bridal day was kept; and when the sun went down it left a glory on the western clouds, as if they, too, had donned their best attire ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... The darkness melted from the city. The fog whisked off into an azure sky. The roar of traffic turned into booming of the sea. There was a whistling among cordage, and the floor swayed to and fro. He saw a sailor touch his cap and pocket the two-franc piece. The syren hooted—ominous sound that had started him on many a journey of adventure—and the roar of London became mere insignificant ...
— Four Weird Tales • Algernon Blackwood
... whirring sound like a child's rattle." One bird after another thus performs for hours together, but only during the courting-season. At this season, and at no other time, the males of certain night-jars (Caprimulgus) make a strange booming noise with their wings. The various species of woodpeckers strike a sonorous branch with their beaks, with so rapid a vibratory movement that "the head appears to be in two places at once." The sound thus produced is audible at a considerable distance but cannot be described; ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... prove unpleasant. Across the hall is Aladdin's lamp, otherwise my banker; and above all is Haroun al Raschid. Am I not wise? In the morning, if it is fair, I take a walk among the bulkheads on the roof, and watch the blue deception of the lake. Perhaps, if the wind comes booming in, I hear the awakening roar in the streets and think of work. Perhaps the clear emptiness of a Sunday hovers over the shore; then I wonder what you will say to this letter. Will you feel with me that you should live on a housetop ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... A booming roar came down upon them from the frigate, which had fired a broadside, which was followed presently by the whistling of shot over their heads. Great rents were seen in the canvas, pieces of running gear fell to the deck, there was a crashing, rending sound, and a part of the rail, left standing ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... closed behind Mr. Peters. Lord Emsworth was alone. For some moments he stood where he had been left, a figure with small signs of alertness about it. But Mr. Peters did not return immediately. The booming of his voice came faintly from some distant region. Lord Emsworth strolled to the window and ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... merely as a stage of education; it is a piece of privilege besides, and a step that separates him further from the bulk of his compatriots. At an earlier age the Scottish lad begins his greatly different experience of crowded class-rooms, of a gaunt quadrangle, of a bell hourly booming over the traffic of the city to recall him from the public-house where he has been lunching, or the streets where he has been wandering fancy-free. His college life has little of restraint, and nothing ...
— Memories and Portraits • Robert Louis Stevenson
... knoll, the key to the position; and finally to hurl his General Reserve in a decisive counter-attack on the Russians when they were involved in battle with his right wing. When the rattle of musketry and booming of the guns showed that his right was engaged, Napoleon launched Murat, Bernadotte, and Soult against the allied centre; when Soult was master of the village and the knoll, and as the broken remnants ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous
... French coast. The fugitives were hoping to reach their port. They were also hoping every moment to see some friendly French ships appear in sight to rescue them. To balance this double hope, there was a double fear. There were their pursuers behind them, whose shots were continually booming over the water, threatening them with destruction, and there was a storm arising which, with the great press of sail that they were carrying, brought with it a danger, perhaps, ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... bells and the booming cannon Proclaimed on a summer morn That in the good king's royal palace A ...
— On the Tree Top • Clara Doty Bates
... Buck, whose mildness of the last question had been merely the cover for a bursting wrath that now sent his voice booming, "maybe you know a whole pile, boy—I hear Jasper has give you consid'able education—but what you know is plumb wasted on me. Understand? As for lookin' up another blacksmith, you ought to know they ain't another shop in ten miles. ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... to the open pane and listened. The Easter chimes floated into the room with a whiff of fresh spring air. The booming of the bells mingled with the rumble of carriages, and above the chaos of sounds rose the brisk tenor tones of the nearest church ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... was divinely guided, for as in a trance he saw and heard marvellous things. For the war-steeds of the Ultonians neighed loudly in their stables, and from the Tec Brac, the Speckled House of the Red Branch, rose a clangour of brass, the roar of the shield called Ocean, and the booming of the Gate-of-Battle, and the singing of swords long silent, and the brazen thunder of the revolution of wheels; and he saw strange forms and faces in the air, and the steady sun dancing in the heavens, ...
— The Coming of Cuculain • Standish O'Grady
... Then saw I Denmark's Hother, prince of battle, Like the rock-pine, which o'er the ocean beetles; He stood, and storm-winds with his locks were playing, Then from the brake a wolf sprang, grim and frightful, And big as Fenri's Wolf: the Skoldung saw it, And brandish'd high his spear. Forth went it booming, As booming goes from the cold North a whirlwind; Straight vanished wolf and spear; but deep a-forest Was heard as from a thousand wolves a howling. "See, see," it howl'd, "the Skoldung Hother loses His spear, and ...
— The Death of Balder • Johannes Ewald
... was ushered in by the booming of the cannon. All the Turkish ships had hoisted their flags, and garlands of coloured paper were twined round the masts ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... a trail of happy, monotonous whistling behind him all day, as his dog followed the winding trail of prairie-chickens, as a covey of chickens rose with booming wings and he swung his shotgun for a bead. He stopped by prairie-sloughs or bright-green bogs to watch for a duck. He hailed as equals the occasional groups of hunters in two-seated buggies, quartering the fields after circling dogs. He lunched contentedly on sandwiches of cold ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... such joy, such life, such fanfares of war, in all hearts. Never was there such pure sunlight as that which dried all this blood. God made the sun for this man, men said; and they called it the Sun of Austerlitz. But he made this sunlight himself with his ever-booming guns that left no clouds but those which ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... of the king's scholars boarding in his house; and thence to other houses in the neighbourhood. All with the same result; all denied knowledge of Charles. The college bell struck eleven, the sound booming out in the silence of the night on their listening ears; and with ...
— The Channings • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Hansei and Walpurga, with their family and worldly possessions, embarked to cross the lake on the first stage of their "flitting." All vexations were forgotten in the hearty send-off, and as the boat glided across the silent lake it was followed by music, cheering, jodling, and the booming of mortars. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various
... seated before a camp fire on a slope of hill overlooking the town. To both of them the cessation of alarm was as yet strange and almost incomprehensible, and the sudden silence after so many months lived amongst the booming of cannon had even a disquieting effect. Both were particularly alert on this night when vigilance was never less needed. If a gust of wind caught the fire and drove the red flare of the flame like a ripple across the grass, one ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... easy grades in the powerful car. "No more Teals for me," he cried, in the ecstasy of handling an engine that slowed to a demure whisper, then, at a touch of the accelerator, floated up a rise, effortless, joyous, humming the booming song of the joy in speed. He suddenly hated the bucking tediousness of the Teal. The Gomez-Dep symbolized ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis
... instant a wave lifted itself from the security of the vast depths, the fluid was borne away before the tornado in glittering spray. Along this frothy but comparatively motionless surface, then, the stranger came booming with the steadiness and grandeur with which a cloud is seen sailing in the hurricane. No sign of life was discovered about her. If men looked out from their secret places, upon the straitened and discomfited ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... particular about a few turnips this far out in the country." So we were all disappointed about our turnip soup. It would have been so nice with a few peppers. The navigation of the river was dangerous during high water. One night, while we were up in the second canal, the river rose several feet and was booming as we came out into it, and the strong current carried our boat against a drift on a small overflowed island, and came near sinking or capsizing it. Then the only way we could get off was down over a rough, shoaly slough, where she ...
— The Southern Soldier Boy - A Thousand Shots for the Confederacy • James Carson Elliott
... Sea was booming on the rocks of the harbor; and from its hazy surface a cold east wind swept over the flat, bleak coast of Crail; a star peeped at times between the flying clouds, and even the moon looked forth once, but immediately veiled her face again, as if one glance at the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... far-off hills and valleys. One might well imagine the scene a very inferno; so terrible was the conflict. Stern, dark, and resolute, Defiance stood for hours-not a gun dismounted, not a man dismayed. But the day grew late, and still the booming cannons roared. The heavens above were overcast, as though nature were ready with a flood of tears to weep over the deeds of humanity. The lightning flashed, and the guns flashed, and here and there and everywhere the dreadful shells fell ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... rear of the centre. The picket lines were within a few hundred yards of each other. At two o'clock in the afternoon all were ready to advance. By this time the clouds had lifted so that the enemy could see from his elevated position all that was going on. The signal for advance was given by a booming of cannon from Fort Wood and other points on the line. The rebel pickets were soon driven back upon the main guards, which occupied minor and detached heights between the main ridge and our lines. These too were carried before halting, and before the enemy had time to reinforce ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... ship had discovered the Young America, as it appeared from the efforts they were using to attract her attention. The booming of a gun was occasionally heard from her, but she was yet too far off ...
— Outward Bound - Or, Young America Afloat • Oliver Optic
... lines over their backs and let them out. Their response was superb to witness, and brought Hughie some moments of ecstatic rapture. Along the hard-packed road that wound about among the big butternuts, the rangey bays sped at a flat gallop, bounding clear over the cahots, the booming of the bells and the rattling of the chains furnishing an exhilarating accompaniment to the swift, swaying motion, while the children clung for dear life to the bob-sleighs and to each other. It was all Billy Jack could do to get his team down to a ...
— Glengarry Schooldays • Ralph Connor
... the chimney behind him like wind booming and tearing its way down. The windows rattled. The candle flickered and went out. The glacial atmosphere closed round him with the cold of death, and a great rushing sound swept by overhead as though the ceiling had lifted to a great height. He heard the door shut. Far away it ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... his disappointment, the ruin of his country, the splendid past which lay behind him like a dream. True: but he wished to forget likewise Torfrida fasting and weeping in Crowland. He could not bear the sight of Crowland tower on the far green horizon, the sound of Crowland bells booming over the flat on the south-wind. He never rode down into the fens; he never went to see his daughter at Deeping, because Crowland lay that way. He went up into the old Bruneswald, hunted all day long through the glades where he and his merry ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... raged with such fury that the volleying peals of thunder quite outroared the booming of the Russian artillery and rifle-fire, which gradually died down as the Muscovites began to realise that there was no attack; and about two o'clock in the morning the storm passed away, still rumbling ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... struck eleven booming strokes. Zaidos could not believe that it was so early, but immediately another faint chime verified the first. Here and there in the room heavy snoring or muttered words sounded. There were no guards in the room as the door ...
— Shelled by an Unseen Foe • James Fiske
... Bruce, who, either from character or experience, or both, took a conservative view of everything—even of trifles. I know Robert Hart afterwards attributed some of his own caution to his friend's example. "In all things go slowly," Bruce was wont to say in his booming, bell-like tone. "Never be in a hurry—-especially don't be in a hurry about answering letters. If you leave things long enough and quiet enough they answer themselves, whereas if you hurry matters balanced on the edge ...
— Sir Robert Hart - The Romance of a Great Career, 2nd Edition • Juliet Bredon
... never have known. Anyway I got to the hospital and there was Gloria, looking absolutely beautiful. There were press photographers everywhere. We went through with the ceremony and that was that. Nine months later, with a lot of sonic booming, Boy America was ...
— Mother America • Sam McClatchie
... had arranged for the Hole-in-the-Ground Theater, as the Canadians called their amphitheater. For this performance, of course, I had no piano. Johnson and the wee instrument were back where we had left the motor cars, and so I just had to sing without an accompaniment—except that which the great booming of the guns ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... his breath and listened. The wind had for the moment lessened in violence, and its booming roar had dropped to a moaning sigh. Now and again there was a pause that was almost silence, and during one of these intervals he fancied—but surely it was only fancy!—that he actually did hear a faint human cry. He looked at Priscilla questioningly and in ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli
... although brilliant flashes of lightning several times lighted up the queer room, gleaming upon the gayly-painted lid of an Egyptian sarcophagus or throwing into horrid relief some anatomical specimen in one of the cases, the thunder crashed no more over the house. But its booming reached my ears from away upon a remote spur of the hills. I became aware of a growing uneasiness in the company of my chance host, who sat by the oddly littered table, watching me with those ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... would be time for me to breathe the bashful and burning vows of first-love; thither, after gathering fame abroad, I would return to enjoy the loud plaudit of the world, a vast but unobtrusive sound, like the booming of a distant sea; and thither, at the far-off close of life, an aged man would come, to dream, as the boy was dreaming, and be as happy in the past as lie was in futurity. Finally, when all should be finished, in that spot so hallowed, in that soil so impregnated with the most precious of my bliss, ...
— Other Tales and Sketches - (From: "The Doliver Romance and Other Pieces: Tales and Sketches") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... distant booming sounded; then another and another. It was the guns at either Soissons or Rheims—the first thunder of man's hatred of ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, December 16, 1914 • Various
... like a knell, the great gong of the prison sounded the first stroke of twelve; but before it had counted three there came suddenly from all the city about them a great chorus of clanging bells and the shrieks and tooting of whistles and the booming of cannon. From far down town the big bell of the State-house, with its prestige and historic dignity back of it, tried to give the time, but the other bells raced past it, and beat out on the cold crisp air joyously and uproariously from Kensington to the ...
— Van Bibber and Others • Richard Harding Davis
... with booming enthusiasm. Then the happy house started in at the beginning and sang the four lines through twice, with immense swing and dash, and finished up with a crashing three-times-three and a tiger for "Hadleyburg the Incorruptible and all ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... tides of fight are booming, And the barren blood is spilt; Still the banners are up-looming, And the hands are on the hilt; But the old world waxes wiser, From behind the bolted visor It descries at last the ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... The Barrel of Butter, Dropnose and Hellweather— Started to boast of their conquests together, Of drowned men and gallant, tall vessels laid low While gulls wheeled about them like flurries of snow And green combers romped at them smashing in thunder, Gurgling and booming in caverns down under, Sending their diamond-drops flying in showers. "Oh," said the reefs, "what a business is ours! Since saints in coracles paddled from Erin (Fishing our waters for sinners and herrin') And purple-sailed ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 14th, 1920 • Various
... of Tennessee by the Confederate army under the command of Gen. J. B. Hood was now on, and only a day or two after our arrival at Murfreesboro we began to hear the sullen, deep-toned booming of artillery towards the west, and later north-west in the direction of Nashville. And this continued, with more or less frequency, until the termination, on December 16th, of the battle of Nashville, which resulted in the defeat of the Confederates, and their retreat from the State. About December ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... afternoon Gifford Barrett strolled down to the beach. The wind had been on shore for the past two days, and the breakers, too heavy now to allow any bathing, crashed on the sand with a dull booming that sounded far inland, while close at the water-side was heard the crash of the grinding pebbles. Under the McAlister awning, Mrs. McAlister, Hope and the Farringtons sat in a cozy group, and Mac, close ...
— Phebe, Her Profession - A Sequel to Teddy: Her Book • Anna Chapin Ray
... and a yard wide, that Martin," asserted Toby, after they had turned their faces toward home again, and were booming along the road that presently would take them close to the shore of ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... her dead. She rode about the veld, she sat by the lake and watched the wild fowl, or at night heard them flighting over her in flocks. She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air. She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary. She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she sought it in the starlit skies, and ...
— Benita, An African Romance • H. Rider Haggard
... different, and the time almost doubled. Yet there are compensations. Think of the New York-Boston trip as bringing you beyond New Haven to the exact rear of battle, of battle but fifteen miles away, with the guns booming in the distance and the aeroplanes and balloons in full view. Think also of this same trip, which from Hartford to Worchester follows the line of a battle not yet two years old, a battle that has left its traces in ruined villages, ...
— They Shall Not Pass • Frank H. Simonds
... booming tones, somewhat muffled by his respirator.) Dearly beloved, we are gathered here together in the face of this company to join together this man and this woman in holy matrimony, which is commended by God to be honorable among men, and ...
— A Book of Burlesques • H. L. Mencken
... resumed his promenade of the deck. In the bows he stood for some time, leaning with folded arms against a pillar, his eyes fixed upon the line of lights ahead. The great waves now leaped into the moonlight, the wind sang in the rigging and came booming across the waters, the salt spray stung his cheeks. High above his head, the slender mast, with its Marconi attachment, swang and dived, reached out for the stars, and fell away with a shudder. The man who watched, ...
— The Illustrious Prince • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... board a well-ordered vessel when there is occasion for exertion. That occasion now appeared to exist in earnest, for while the men were sheeting home the topsail, a flash of light illuminated the scene, when the roar of a gun came booming across the water, succeeded by the very distinct whistling of its shot. We regret that the relict of the late Captain Budd did not behave exactly as became a shipmaster's widow, under fire. Instead ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... in the distance, a broken Roman ruin, blue Apennines half hidden in clouds. A few shepherds were going home, looking immense on the flatness, and goats and horses. Song of larks, and suddenly an unexpected booming of surf. Following the sound inexplicably loud, across the deeper black sandy soil, we got to the sea. Most strange against it, a fringe of marshy grass, of bulrushes! Far off the tower of Astura, and the faint Cape of Circe among mists. ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee |
