"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. At last, his emotional nature cracking under the strain of this suspense, he had left his conductor's chair and plunged down under the stage by way of the musician's bolthole to ascertain what ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... face. In the silence and peace of the temple she had plunged reckless hands into the woven threads of his life. Amidst the shriek of war, face to face with death, she sought to save him. It was another woman who stood opposite the yielding, cracking door, past whose head a half-spent bullet spat its way, burying itself in the wall behind her,—another woman, disheveled, forgetful of her wan beauty, trusting to no power but that which her heart gave her to face the man she had betrayed ...
— The Native Born - or, The Rajah's People • I. A. R. Wylie
... dug his spurs into his horse and cantered, elbows flapping, broad-brimmed hat drawn over his eyes. For hours he had been fighting the demon of thirst. His tongue was dry, his lips cracking. The trail continued to be marked with its double stones, but it did not enter the cool canyon ahead. It turned and skirted the base of the bare mountain slope. The man's eyes sharpened. He knew very definitely what he was looking for, and at last he ...
— Dangerous Days • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... notes were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... that slope up from the bank of the river are dented and broken as if some giant in the past had smashed them with his hammer, cracking some and punching deep holes in others. It was in one of these holes, or caves, that ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... tribe is regular and well proportioned, presenting no traces of negroid antecedents. Noses are slender and slightly retroussed, lips clean-cut, chins modestly assertive with lower jaws superbly adapted to cracking cocoanuts and oysters, foreheads low with sufficient projection at the eye-line for shade purposes. All in all, they are entitled to an A-plus in beauty and reminded me less of Polynesians than of a ...
— The Cruise of the Kawa • Walter E. Traprock
... and it is frightful so long as the cause does remain a mystery, if the child lives to be a hundred years old. During a thunder-storm children will picture to themselves a battle going on above. Some think of the sky cracking or the moon bursting, or conceive of the firmament as a dome of metal over ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... and seemed to stretch her skin to cracking-point, she would not go to bed, and nobody could persuade her. She huddled by the fire, rocking herself, until the evening; but directly it was dusk she was restless. The wind used to moan about the house, and she heard in it the voices of the dead. She thought she could ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... was till he should set their meat in order. So he vanished behind, the barriers. Then, when he had prepared the beasts' horrid victual, though I saw not what, he opened the narrow gate, and the howling, clambering throng broke helter-skelter for the troughs, cracking and crunching the thigh-bones, tearing at the flesh, and growling at one another till the air rang with ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... up in the direction of the tree, and saw a big Kookooburra perched on a bough, with all the creamy feathers of its breast fluffed out, and its crest very high. The Kookooburra is one of the jolliest birds in the bush, and is always cracking jokes, and laughing, but this one was keeping as quiet as he could. Still he could not be quite serious, and a smile played all round his huge beak. Dot could see that he was nearly bursting with suppressed ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... attempts to embrace Helen she turns into a snake—and when he is finally carried off by the demon, Kasperle gives (what Euripides is accused of sometimes giving) a comic turn to the tragic catastrophe by cracking jokes. ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... other with tongues pendant and red eyes rolling. Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in on his mustang, administered the coup de grace amidst the wild applause of the ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... every winter. I am not afraid of him, nor of his reindeer. And it is such fun to see him come dashing along, cracking his whip and calling out cheerily to his reindeer, who are able to run even swifter than we rabbits. And Santa Claus, when he sees me, always gives me a nod and a smile, and then I look after him and his big load of toys which he is carrying to the children, until he has ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. "If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to leave ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... a blue sky so deep that it looks black: the stars are steel points: the glaciers burnished silver. The snow rings and thuds to your footfall. The ice is cracking to the falling temperature and the tide crack groans as the water rises. And over all, wave upon wave, fold upon fold, there hangs the curtain of the aurora. As you watch, it fades away, and then quite suddenly a great beam flashes ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... of grapes. Put them on the stove in a kettle, with a little water, and cook until tender. Strain through a flannel bag. Do not squeeze it. Return juice to the kettle, add sugar, and boil for five minutes. Seal in glass jars when boiling hot. Slant the jars, when filling, to prevent cracking. When serving, add nearly the same amount ...
— Things Mother Used To Make • Lydia Maria Gurney
... civilization was thin; the true savage was cracking out through it. In the days of the Mutiny Umballa would have been the Nana Sahib's right hand. He would have given the tragedy at ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... intended to keep to their word, as they stood with their shirts off, handkerchiefs bound round their heads, and belts round their waists, ready to fire as soon as the order should be given. In a line behind where we stood were the powder-boys seated on their tubs, cracking jokes, and seeming altogether to forget that we should have, in a few minutes, showers of round shot rattling about our ears. Though we used to call Mountstephen Molly, he didn't look a bit like a Molly now, ...
— The Missing Ship - The Log of the "Ouzel" Galley • W. H. G. Kingston
... find that the free horse has made another jump, and again flew back, and now he has them both badly balked, and so confused that neither of them knows what is the matter, or how to start the load. Next will come the slashing and cracking of the whip, and hallooing of the driver, till something is broken or he is through with his course of treatment. But what a mistake the driver commits by whipping his horse for this act. Reason and common sense should teach him that the horse was willing ...
— The Arabian Art of Taming and Training Wild and Vicious Horses • P. R. Kincaid
... molecular bond won a Nobel Laureate. | | Read Watson's explanation of why Pauling | failed to crack the genetic code. | | Guenther Stent, the molecular biologist of | U.C. Berkeley is an avowed Kantian | who narrowly missed cracking the genetic | code, His philosophy of science is | highly relevant to the application of | neo-hermeneutics to contemporary biology. | | Today's philosophy of physics, as developed | by John Wheeler and David Bohm ...
— Valerius Terminus: of the Interpretation of Nature • Sir Francis Bacon
... south, yawing, of course, all the time. Each time she fell off her sails partly filled, and these brought her in a moment right to the wind again. I have said this was the worst thing possible for me; for helpless as she looked in this situation, with the canvas cracking like cannon and the blocks trundling and banging on the deck, she still continued to run away from me, not only with the speed of the current, but by the whole amount of her leeway, ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... place to sleep—on a Glacier which moves about ten feet a day—it is cracking, bursting exploding, trembling, groaning and together with the Glacier Bears and howling dogs, and Siberian wolves, and rolling around to keep from freezing is very soothing. Now I have fought buffalo flies ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... form offers the least resistance to wind pressure, and for a given height and sectional area requires less material to secure stability than the octagonal and still less than the square; on the other hand, there is more liability to cracking. Brick is the material commonly used, but many chimneys are now made of iron or steel. Reinforced concrete ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 2 - "Chicago, University of" to "Chiton" • Various
... slaves to inform anyone who wished to know, that they belonged to J.D. Ingram. "Once," said Pattillo, "my brother Willis, who was known for his gambling and drinking, left our plantation and no one knew where he had gone. As we sat around a big open fire cracking walnuts, Willis came up, jumped off his horse and fell to the ground. Directly behind him rode a 'paterroller.' The master jumped up and commanded him to turn around and leave his premises. The 'Paterroller' ignored ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Georgia Narratives, Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... yoked to the big wagon, and amid much shouting and cracking of whips and lowing of oxen and creaking of wagon-joints, John Mackenzie, Shomolekae, and the others, started from Kuruman northward ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... suit in a peaceful manner, Peter was morose and resentful at the thought of having sacrificed his career to his mother, and at Papa having done nothing of the kind—a by no means surprising circumstance, Peter probably said to himself. Next, I can see Papa taking no notice of this ill-humour, but cracking quips and jests, while Peter gradually found himself forced to treat him as a humorist with whom he felt offended one moment and inclined to be reconciled the next. Indeed, with his instinct for making fun of everything, Papa often used to address Peter ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... many of the "invincible" ships of Spain, came to America with Sir John Hawkins, to subdue the Spanish colonies with the heaviest fleet he ever commanded. Though wrangles between the commanders made this expedition a comparative failure, still wherever the head of a don was seen, a cracking blow was struck at it. War was a crueller business then than it is to-day, in spite of our high explosives, our armored ships, our mighty guns, and our nimble tactics, and things were done that no captain would dare in these times; at least, ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... saw the cook-house disrupt itself and disintegrate into a thousand flying timbers and twisted sheets of tin which soared upward and outward over their heads and into the night. As the rocking hills ceased echoing, the sound of the Vigilantes' rifles recurred like the cracking of dry sticks, then everywhere about the defenders the earth was lashed by falling debris while the iron roofs rang at ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... and sends post-haste for Justice Palmworm, her gossip indeed, and one of those trading magistrates that so disgraced our bench before Mr. Henry Fielding the writer stirred up Authority to put some order therein. The Justice comes; and he and the Gaoleress, after cracking a bottle of mulled port between them, poor Mother Drum was brought up before his Worship for mutinous conduct. The Justice would willingly have compounded the case, for Lucre was his only love; but 'twas vengeance the Gaoleress ...
— The Strange Adventures of Captain Dangerous, Vol. 1 of 3 • George Augustus Sala
... faithful to our instructions, but slightly misguided, began ducking quite five miles behind the line when a flare went up), the constant order to keep closed up, the whizz of bullets, at every one of which we ducked instantly, the cracking of rifles, the 'dead cow' smell which afterwards became so painfully familiar, the arrival at the trenches and the posting of sentries. Later the cautious creeping over the parapet to look at the wire and ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... may have been a portent either of good or of evil. As you know, I am not a superstitious person. I smile at those whimsical fancies which figure so conspicuously in many people's lives, such as the howling of dogs, the flickering of a candle, the arrangement of the grounds in a cup, the cracking of a mirror, the sudden stopping of the clock, the crowing of hens, the chirping of crickets, the hooting of an owl, the fall of a family portrait, the spilling of salt, a dream of the toothache, etc., etc., etc. If this particular cat had been ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... almost midnight, but it seemed like a week to the boys, when the cracking of twigs and the crunch of feet warned of the approach of men. It proved to be the party, for they heard a low growling imprecation from Green as he stumbled over some object. Garry nudged Fernald, and immediately felt two sharp taps on his shoulder. ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... And the balls whistled deadly, And in streams flashing redly, Blazed the fires: As the roar On the shore Swept the strong battle breakers o'er the green-sodded acres Of the plain; And louder, louder, louder, cracked the black gunpowder, Cracking amain! ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... on his face. His wrists were cracking, the skin was torn from his hands. The fingers still gripped the stick. There was ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... hinder me so in my work; if you want to turn double somersets, go and do it in your dear mamma's parlor; go and plague Mr. Sherwood, or Patrick, or, still better, torment Jane, and leave me to plant my cabbages." Do you know how he answers? By cracking me over the shoulders with his switch, and crying out, "Look out, old potato top, or I'll tumble you into the pond." I might as well ask the river to run up hill. And look here, ma'am, see this picture (shows picture) he drew of me, watering the garden in a thunder storm, as if I ever did such ...
— The Two Story Mittens and the Little Play Mittens - Being the Fourth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... situation, in which the most poignant agony of mind and dreary anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... where some soft-footed beast had just trod. And he heard the melancholy notes of birds, the twitter of grouse, the sough of the wind, the light dropping of pine-cones, the near and distant bark of squirrels, the deep gobble of a turkey close at hand and the challenge from a rival far away, the cracking of twigs in the thickets, the murmur of running water, the scream of an eagle and the shrill cry of a hawk, and always the soft, dull, steady pads of the hoofs of ...
— The Man of the Forest • Zane Grey
... myself from the wind, which was blowing violently, lashing the lake into foam, I made a bower of pine boughs, crept under it, and very soon fell asleep. How long I slept I know not, but I was aroused by the snapping and cracking of the burning foliage, to find my shelter and the adjacent forest in a broad sheet of flame. My left hand was badly burned, and my hair singed closer than a barber would have trimmed it, while making my escape from the semi-circle of burning trees. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... angles. The slope fell away beneath his hurrying feet; the sage-brush dwindled, and at length ceased; the sand gave place to a fine powder, white as snow; and an hour after he had fired the rifle his mule's hoofs were crisping and cracking the sun-baked flakes of alkali on the surface of ...
— McTeague • Frank Norris
... hacking of dull knives and cracking of limbs, with the occasional swish of an armful into the camp. The boys worked like beavers for a while, and got thoroughly warmed again, and the air within was filled with resinous fragrance. That done and arranged to their experienced leader's satisfaction, they wrapped themselves ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... oozing through the walls. However, they cast around them a glance of satisfaction, while eating on the little table on which a candle was burning. Their faces were reddened by the strong air. They stretched out their stomachs; they leaned on the backs of their chairs, which made a cracking sound in consequence, and they kept repeating: "Here we are in the place, then! What happiness! It seems to me that it is ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... it down to my barn and put it on the open rafters over the cow stalls. A cow stable is warm and not too dry, so that a hickory log cures slowly without cracking or checking. There it lay for many weeks. Often I cast my eyes up at it with satisfaction, watching the bark shrink and slightly deepen in colour, and once I climbed up where I could see the minute seams making way in ...
— Adventures In Contentment • David Grayson
... the struggle to save our stock. From early morning to night the ring of the ax was unceasing. The cattle, especially, soon learned the meaning of the cracking of a tree and bolted for the spot. To prevent them being killed by the falling trees, the smaller children were pressed into service to herd them away until the tree was on the ground. The stock soon began to thrive and cows gave an increased amount of milk which was hailed with delight ...
— Reminiscences of a Pioneer • Colonel William Thompson
... water, except what they had in their dinner-pails; and it's been three days and a half since the explosion! They are breathing bad air; their heads are aching, the veins swelling in their foreheads; their tongues are cracking, they are lying on the ground, gasping. But they are waiting—kept alive by the faith they have in their friends on the surface, who will try to get to them. They dare not take down the barriers, because the gases would kill ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... confidants of the king's flight, were at Varennes on his arrival, nor did they reach there until an hour after. The carriages had stopped at the entrance of Varennes. The king, surprised to meet neither M. de Choiseul nor M. de Guoguelas, neither escort nor relays, hoped that the cracking of the postilions' whips would procure them fresh horses to continue their journey. The three body-guards went from door to door, to inquire where the horses had been placed, but could ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... spluttered, cracking his fingers, 'so my Richard is the badger, ha? So then I have him, ha? If I do not draw him myself, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... and uprooted, lay prostrate on the ground, or, half suspended by the creepers entangled in their branches, were balanced like the formidable battering-rams of the ancients. Lucien was speechless at the sight before his eyes. A sudden cracking noise was heard, and another forest giant slowly bent over, and, describing a rapid curve, crushed its branches against the ground; ten seconds ...
— Adventures of a Young Naturalist • Lucien Biart
... coach; the wheels, the horses, the whip, the bridle, etc., may be chosen. These the leader jots down on a piece of paper and then begins to tell a thrilling story. "The stage coach left the old Stag Inn, amidst the thundering of the horses' hoofs and the cracking of the driver's whip." Some member will probably have chosen to be the horses, another the whip, and as their names are mentioned they must rise, twirl round and sit down again. Then the narrator continues: "For some miles all went well, then ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... himself, so as not to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them from ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... then once more the earth had subsided and the waters of the ocean had rushed in. The edge of the rim-rock had been sheered by torrential floods, erosion had fashioned the far heights; until once more, with infinite groanings, the earth had risen from the depths. There it stayed, cracking and trembling, as the inner fires cooled down and the fury of the conflict died away; and boiling waters bearing ores in solution burst like geysers from every crack. And there atom by atom, combined with quartz and acids, the metals of the earth were brought to the surface and deposited ...
— Silver and Gold - A Story of Luck and Love in a Western Mining Camp • Dane Coolidge
... snapped, when the earth seems to reel and the mountains to shake, and the rivers are lashed into foam and fury. Then the poet sees the Maruts approaching with golden helmets, with spotted skins on their shoulders, brandishing golden spears, whirling their axes, shooting fiery arrows, and cracking their whips amid thunder and lightning. They are the comrades of Indra, sometimes, like Indra, the sons of Dyaus or the sky, but also the sons of another terrible god, called Rudra, or the Howler, a fighting god, to whom many hymns are addressed. In him a new character is evolved, that of ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... and sat at the table a long time, talking of many things. Then said the old gentleman, My good landlord, while we are cracking your nuts, if you please, do ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... form, is the public opinion of Great Britain. Even the Times cannot deny this. It may not be generally known in the United States, but while the Southern and some of the Northern newspapers are making a target of Miss Wells, the young colored woman who started this English movement, and cracking their jokes at the expense of Miss Florence Balgarnie, who, as honorable secretary, conducts the committee's correspondence, the strongest sort of sentiment is really at the back of the movement. Here we have crystallized every phase of political opinion. ...
— The Red Record - Tabulated Statistics and Alleged Causes of Lynching in the United States • Ida B. Wells-Barnett
... personal regrets, counting in the measure for fat, for, refusing food, the animals fall away in condition, so that the sorrows of two fat bullocks due to parting, enforced by determined men on horseback, cracking whips and using violent and threatening language, come home to the owner in terms of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... The cracking of a tree limb had reached their ears, followed by a cry of alarm. A limb upon which Pat Malone was standing had broken, causing the fellow to slip to ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... thought these melancholy thoughts, a huge wave took him and washed him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he struggling afar off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet held, her mast cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed winds that struck it, sails and sailyards fell into the deep, and he himself was long drowned under water, nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave, as if they strove which should depress ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... into a gulley, where were walls of black rock and a river filled with snow, and a still blue sky above. Through a covered bridge they went, drumming roughly over the boards, crossing the snow-bed once more, then slowly up and up, the horses walking swiftly, the driver cracking his long whip as he walked beside, and calling his strange wild HUE-HUE!, the walls of rock passing slowly by, till they emerged again between slopes and masses of snow. Up and up, gradually they went, through the cold shadow-radiance of the afternoon, silenced by the imminence of the mountains, ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... mud, move slowly, and after three hours, it seemed as though every man in the United States was under arms and stumbling and slipping down that trail. The lines passed until the moon rose. They seemed endless, interminable; there were cavalry mounted and dismounted, artillery with cracking whips and cursing drivers, Rough Riders in brown, and regulars, both black and white, in blue. Midnight came, and they were ...
— Notes of a War Correspondent • Richard Harding Davis
... if it is not squirting bullets from a machine gun as it advances. Against infantry in the open this sort of thing is extremely demoralising. It is a method of attack still in its infancy, but there are great possibilities for it in the future, when the bending and cracking German line gives, as ultimately it must give if this offensive does not relax. If the Allies persist in their pressure upon the western front, if there is no relaxation in the supply of munitions from Britain ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... well as at other places that I have held to be the scenes of unrecorded, immemorial slaughters; and as I gazed round it seemed to gather and fall on me here. The very stillness was appalling, for there was now a good deal of wind blowing from the sea, as I could tell from the rustling and cracking of the fir boughs all about, and the sound of the sea on the sand; but here there was an oppressive heaviness, as if the place was still brooding over the ancient horror it had seen. And this was succeeded ...
— Memoirs of Arthur Hamilton, B. A. Of Trinity College, Cambridge • Arthur Christopher Benson
... ratio of eight inches to the mile—the very quantity that science to-day admits to be the curviture of the earth—and accepts in surveying. It was their knowledge of this fact that kept the building sound, without the cracking of a joint, through centuries, though so high. The Egyptians did not use the sacred amma, or cubit, which is about twenty-five of our inches. They used a profane cubit, ...
— The Lost Ten Tribes, and 1882 • Joseph Wild
... March 30 at a point near Baracoa, where many times in years gone by Maceo had seen the flash of machete and bayonet. True to the traditions of the place, hardly had he touched his foot on Cuban soil before Spanish rifles were cracking and bullets were singing all about him. The force of Spaniards numbered about fifty. Maceo had with him only nineteen men in addition to his brother Jose, Crombet, and Cabreco. There was a running fight along the road in ...
— Sparkling Gems of Race Knowledge Worth Reading • Various
... very power that women possess. They can wait round without wishing to strike back. Saving life gives them sufficient spiritual resource to stand up to artillery. They have no wish to relieve their nervousness by sighting an alien head and cracking it. ...
— Golden Lads • Arthur Gleason and Helen Hayes Gleason
... wants a letter written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained permission of the sentinel who guards him: who stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After a time, the galley-slave ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... a little behind, while Burrows had walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was heard. A voice of agony rang ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... dark corner in a large deserted room, where we had stowed away bales and bales of goods we did not care to open. Climbing over the top of these stores, I landed on the other side, and went to the spot I had chosen. I had not prayed long before I heard master coming, cracking his whip, and saying, 'I'll teach you to pray.' This made me tremble exceedingly, and pray all the harder; but hearing that he was very near and coming after me, I opened my eyes, and to my surprise there was a beautiful silver ladder before me. As quick ...
— From Death into Life - or, twenty years of my ministry • William Haslam
... C.! Their performance of TOM TAYLOR'S romantic, pathetic, melodramatic, crib-cracking, head- (though not always side-) splitting play, was an admirable one, carefully rehearsed, well stage-managed, and played with a fine feeling for the capital situations in which the piece abounds. Especially good was Mr. BROMLEY-DAVENPORT'S ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 104, February 4, 1893 • Various
... I detected the noise of padded feet and the scraping noise of claws on the wood. A shudder ran through me. Was a panther, a mountain lion, about to spring upon me? No, I abandoned the thought and instinctively I knew that it must be one of the black wolf pack. Then I remembered hearing the cracking and breaking of sticks or timber while I was trying to sleep in the bedroom, and I felt that Pluto had broken out of the pen and was creeping up on us slowly and stealthily as I have seen a fox creep up on a ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... sense or motion, more than a hundred feet below. As soon as we recovered from the shock, we found that we had been most mercifully preserved; strange to say, neither horse nor rider had received any serious injury. We heard, above our heads, the hissing and cracking of the fire; we contemplated with awe the flames, which were roaring along the edge of the precipice—now rising, now lowering, just as if they would leap over the space and annihilate all life in ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat
... found at the hut of some priest within the enemy's frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the seventh incarnation ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... eight or ten are breaking stones by the road-side, at which I somewhat marvel, since there is a compulsory school law in Germany; but perhaps to-day is a holiday; or maybe, after school hours, it is customary for these unhappy youngsters to repair to the road-sides and blister their hands with cracking flints. "Hungry as a buzz-saw" I roll into the sleepy old town of Rothenburg at six o'clock, and, repairing to the principal hotel, order supper. Several flunkeys of different degrees of usefulness come in and bow obsequiously from time to time, as I sit around, expecting ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... Wellsville, Paul had an awful time in an ice gorge. He could hear it cracking and grinding below as though warning him of danger. He succeeded in climbing on a cake which saved him from being carried under, and made his way to clear water ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... twinkling like so many golden candles. But the berlin, which had drawn them so stoutly over these rugged mountain-roads, failed them at the last. One of the hind wheels jolted violently upon a great stone, there was a sudden cracking of wood, and the carriage lurched over, throwing its occupants one ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... said at last, "that means something that one has not, and that is to come—is it so?" "Something that one never has, and that never comes," muttered the old man, wearily cracking the flints in two; "something that one possesses in one's sleep, and that is farther off each time that one awakes; and yet a thing that one sees always, sees even when one lies a dying they say—for ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... he put out a trembling hand. For a moment he groped blindly for something tangible in the nothingness before him. Then, with a groan, he let his arm fall nerveless to his side. The vision disappeared, and Lem's presence and even Fledra's faded; for Lon again felt the agonizing cracking of his bones under the prison strait-jacket, and ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... successfully conveyed of a dim remote age when an idle-strenuous people lived only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'. But if any one still anxious for literal truth should insist—'Is not the impression as false as the medium that ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... Bob!" cried Lennox, for the firing from the farther bank suddenly ceased, and the rustling and cracking of twigs somewhere overhead told that the fresh ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... opposed to any change. Francis E. Spinner, of New York, said he would never change his vote from me, and Thaddeus Stevens said he never would do so until the crack of doom. When afterwards reminded of this Mr. Stevens said he thought he "heard it cracking." ...
— Recollections of Forty Years in the House, Senate and Cabinet - An Autobiography. • John Sherman
... gaze was, however, attracted by an old dame, reclining alone on a divan. Behind her sat a girl, a regular beauty, clothed in gauze, engaged in patting her legs. Lady Feng was on her feet in the act of cracking some joke. ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... cleared the robes and lit plump in the drift. The deacon's horse knew before the deacon did that something had happened in his favor, and was quick to respond. With his first jump of relief the deacon suddenly revived, his hopes came fast again, his blood retingled, he gathered himself, and, cracking his lines, he shot forward, and three minutes later he had passed the squire as though he were hitched to the fence. For a quarter of a mile the squire made heroic efforts to recover his vanished prestige, but effort was useless, and finally concluding that he was practically left standing, ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... 'Don't stand there cracking the glass,' said Psmith. 'I tell you I am practically a human three-shies-a-penny ball. My father is poising me lightly in his hand, preparatory to flinging me at one of the milky cocos of Life. Which one ...
— Psmith in the City • P. G. Wodehouse
... in the cracking of the rifles working as regularly as punching-machines in a factory. Every soldier was seeing only his sight and the running figures under it. Mechanically and automatically, training had been projected into action, anticipation ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... gentleman, thought I, not much fancying, however, his levity concerning my great-uncle, he'll be cracking his jokes the whole voyage; and so I afterward said to one of the riggers on board; but he bade me look out, that he ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... whistling wind bareheaded. We saw a tall wooden scaffolding on the very peak of the summit, a hundred yards away, and made for it. We rushed up the stairs to the top of this scaffolding, and stood there, above the vast outlying world, with hair flying and ruddy blankets waving and cracking ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chimneys rose up between. There were red roses all over the pillars and eaves of the porch. Seemed to me it was a good enough place. Fu Shan smoked scented and sugared tobacco in a porcelain pipe with an ivory stem. The fellows down by the creek ran away, feeling pretty good and cracking their revolvers in the air, and the Chinamen got bunched about ...
— The Belted Seas • Arthur Colton
... Jeffrey excepted, no Whig could be found who was adapted to the office. The solicitor laid strict injunctions on Napier not to go if a Whig were not in office. No Whig was, and he stayed away. I think this is good?—bearing in mind that all the old Whigs of Edinburgh were cracking their throats in the room. They gave out that they were ill, and the lord-advocate did actually lie in bed all the afternoon; but this is the real truth, and one of the judges told it me with great glee. It seems ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... habit that I wear, that I saw pruning-hooks(22) fly: a thing that none would believe that had not seen it. Whereof be my witness that I lie not Maso del Saggio, that great merchant, whom I found there cracking nuts, and selling the shells by retail! However, not being able to find that whereof I was in quest, because from thence one must travel by water, I turned back, and so came at length to the Holy Land, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... bundle over one shoulder, and the torpedoes clutched in the other arm, being thus encumbered—for it did not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor—he tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,—in a twisted tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... Cracking his whip, the new driver kept the four horses on a galloping pace, until very soon he called out "whoa," before the frowning high gateway ...
— Welsh Fairy Tales • William Elliot Griffis
... free from all troublesome feelings, So little encumbered by faith in my dealings (And that I'm consistent the world will allow, What I was at Newmarket the same I am now). When such are my merits (you know I hate cracking), I hope, like the Vender of Best Patent Blacking, "To meet with the generous and kind approbation "Of a ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... stones built into a wall by mortar or cement but as concrete, eternal as the hills, needing not to be chiselled and split but only to be moulded and "set" at just the right moment. If this gives any suggestion of want of permanence, of liability of cracking, then the figure is not fortunate. I mean only to suggest, by still another metaphor, that out of the myriad rugged individualities, idiosyncrasies, and independences a ...
— The French in the Heart of America • John Finley
... adventure came about noon of the seventh day. Plenty of evidences of animals had been found, but they were not eager to hunt. The trail for home had far more fascination than all the animals on the island. It was the custom to stop at intervals for rest. During one of these stops the cracking of bushes was heard, as though produced by a cautious tread. The boys were alert at once and, with their guns in hand, moved in the direction of ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: The Mysteries of the Caverns • Roger Thompson Finlay
... noise, Winnie. It was simply the rending and cracking of the poor churchyard trees ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... back his heartburn. He wanted to take a couple of his pills but not in front of Dorwin. The banker might think he was cracking up. These damned New Yorkers had no idea of the pressure under which he labored. He sipped a glass of ...
— Reel Life Films • Samuel Kimball Merwin
... our few hands; we were almost at the mercy of the current, which appeared to increase in rapidity every minute; however, by exertion and good management, we contrived to keep in the middle of the stream until the wind sprung up and drove us on to the southern bank of the river, and then all was cracking and tearing away of the wood-work, breaking of limbs from the projecting trees, the snapping, cracking, screaming, hallooing, and confusion. As fast as we cleared ourselves of one tree, the current bore us ...
— Diary in America, Series One • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... that monkeys do not eat you will seldom get poisoned. My men said that they had never seen the fruit before, but as it looked pretty they were going to eat it, and a lot of it. So they stopped some time cracking the nuts and eating them ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... as this meant a most energetic demonstration of savagery on his part, following a fawning and submissive manner, while madame, wearing a large sombrero and a man's coat, moved about in the cage, cracking ...
— The Missing Link • Edward Dyson
... strong enough for our car to go over," said Mr. Brown. Slowly he steered the big machine on it. Hardly had it reached the middle when there was a cracking of wood, and the bridge bent down. The automobile ...
— Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour • Laura Lee Hope
... pools, their jagged edges piled with floe ice. For days at a time the big trees moaned ceaselessly; often the snow fell silently all through the day, all through the bitter cold of the night, until the knotted arms of the hemlock were cruelly laden to the cracking point, and the moose hopple and scrub pines lay smothered up to their tops. Always the crying wind ...
— The Lady of Big Shanty • Frank Berkeley Smith
... were the merry, cunning little squirrels to watch, cracking nuts on the branches of the old trees, and every now and then a rabbit would hurry away through the tall ferns, or a great bee come buzzing near her, and she would stop to watch it gathering honey from the flowers, and wild thyme. So she went on very ...
— The National Nursery Book - With 120 illustrations • Unknown
... at the poor little chap's expressions of grief as he gathered up the pieces tenderly in his arms, the brutal sailor had seized upon a carter's whip, and cracking it loudly, declared that he would lay it over the boy's shoulders unless he mounted a table ...
— Darry the Life Saver - The Heroes of the Coast • Frank V. Webster
... is! My body is cracking all over!' said the Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting. 'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... silence; the log cracking; and just then the door swung on its hinges, and Mr. Starkie entered with the great bunch of ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... the lowest branches of the tree, swaying and crackling while he looked at the anger frozen on their faces. Then he climbed swiftly up again, and crackling and cracking, chuckling to himself, he went off, leaping from fir tree to fir tree, this way and that through ...
— Old Peter's Russian Tales • Arthur Ransome
... motto for Arctic seamen. My faith in this axiom was soon put to the proof. After a short sleep I was called on deck, as the vessel was suffering from great pressure. My own senses soon made it evident; every timber and plank was cracking and groaning, the vessel was thrown considerably over on her side, and lifted bodily, the bulkheads cracking, and treenails and bolts breaking with small reports. On reaching the deck, I saw indeed ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... bent both his knees till they touched the ground, and remained kneeling until the director, cracking his ...
— Pinocchio - The Tale of a Puppet • C. Collodi
... crook episcopal. Still borne before him since the Fall, Blackens with its ill-omened sign The old blue heaven of faith benign. Whence? Whither? Wherefore? How? Which? Why? All ask at once, all wait reply. 80 Men feel old systems cracking under 'em; Life saddens to a mere conundrum Which once Religion solved, but she Has lost—has Science ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... match to the inflammable material to start an incipient conflagration. Had the house itself not been built of granite, and—save the doors and windows and other trimmings—been practically fireproof, the result would have been disastrous; as it was, however, beyond badly scorching the door, and cracking a few of the stones by reason of the intense heat that was ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... absolute that the ears felt dull and sealed. He tried, involuntarily, to listen more clearly, to know if this uncanny hush were really so. There was a sense of being imprisoned, but only most delicately, in a spell, which some sudden cracking might disrupt. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... Pastinaca,[331] where I swear to you, by the habit I wear on my back, that I saw hedge-bills[332] fly, a thing incredible to whoso hath not seen it. But of this Maso del Saggio will confirm me, whom I found there a great merchant, cracking walnuts and selling the shells ...
— The Decameron of Giovanni Boccaccio • Giovanni Boccaccio
... was two o'clock and they were pulling on their togs in the locker-room; and Danny Moore was circulating about in very high spirits, cracking jokes and making them laugh, and Coach Robey was dispatching Jim Morton and Jim's assistant on mysterious errands and referring every little while to his red-covered memorandum book and looking very untroubled and serene. And then there was a clamping ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... he pressed the matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on his face ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... sphere of metal was gone—snapped off into space. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, tortured arms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; what if the wire broke, and left ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... finally heard from some teamster— "All's set," is directly responded from every quarter. "Stretch out!" immediately vociferates the captain. Then the "heps!" to the drivers, the cracking of whips, the trampling of feet, the occasional creak of wheels, the rumbling of the wagons, while "Fall in" is heard from head-quarters, and the train is strung out and in a few moments has started on ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... Olaf. Twice Lugur moaned. At the end he screamed—horribly. There was a cracking sound, as of a stout ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... these are firmly stopped up (for a reason to which I shall presently recur), but that the third one is only closed by a slight film or very thin shell, which can be easily bored through with a pocket knife, so as to let the milk run off before cracking the shell. So much we have all learnt during our ardent pursuit of natural knowledge on half-holidays in early life. But we probably then failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a small roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable portion, ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... noisy proclamation of peril. Swift as a wink of light, the beaver dropped his stick and dived head first into the pond. The Boy straightened up just in time to see him vanish. As he vanished, his broad, flat, naked tail hit the water with a cracking slap which resounded over the pond like a pistol-shot. It was reechoed by four or five more splashes from the upper portion of the pond. Then all was silence again, and the Boy realized that there would be no more chance that night for him to watch ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... a loud cry and loosed the hold I had on my victim. A cracking in my left arm: one of the Tuareg had seized it and twisted until my shoulder ...
— Atlantida • Pierre Benoit
... spent the money with the young artist. A common tap-room was an indifferent school of manners, whatever it might be for painting, and there this gifted lad was now often to be found late in the evening, carousing with hostlers and potboys, handing round the quart pot, and singing his song or cracking his joke. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... that this was the day of the Highland gathering of the county. A dance was going on as he approached, and four tall and stalwart Highlanders in complete national costumes, bonneted and kilted, were leaping and wheeling, cracking their fingers and uttering shrill cries as they danced with astonishing vigour and adroitness on a raised ...
— Little Folks (Septemeber 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... young women placed under circumstances of such striking interest. The mirth and song and general murmur diminished by degrees, until they altogether ceased, and. nothing was to be heard but the perpetual cracking of the reels, the hum of the rapid wheels, and the voices of the reelers, as they proclaimed the state of this enlivening pool of industry. As for the fair competitors themselves, it might have been observed that even those among them who had no, or at ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... upheaval of spring with the ice-jams and terrors, the Moose roaring by untamable, the torrents rising, rising foot by foot to the very dooryard of her father's house. Strange spirits were abroad at night, howling, shrieking, cracking and groaning in voices of ice and flood. Her Indian nurse told her of them all—of Maunabosho, the good; of Nenaubosho the evil—in her lisping Ojibway dialect that sounded like the softer voices ...
— Conjuror's House - A Romance of the Free Forest • Stewart Edward White
... make me say it again? This Fort was right. At least one intelligent man lived in your world, I'm pleased to know. The sky is a dome holding the sun, the stars and the wandering planets. The problem is that the dome is cracking ...
— The Sky Is Falling • Lester del Rey
... let our fancy share the rest which seems to pervade all around, while we enjoy the perfect stillness. There is not a sound, except the ripple of the water. Houses, streets, ships, men, women, and children, all seem resting peacefully in the silent night. But, hark! there was a sound of cracking from the window! Again and again we hear it, and whispering too outside. A few moments more, and the window is opened, and two men have crept in. They are some of the guests of the evening come to recover thus what ...
— Adventures of a Sixpence in Guernsey by A Native • Anonymous
... the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still reddened the crests and the column of smoke from our engine. Frightened larks rose from the tall grain. We passed ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... for the materialism of our own days. "Never was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between 1750 and 1758," he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil, however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole instructress and directress. The natural heads of the nation, the priests and the great lords, thought ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... inclosing cement is porous, and admits the finer parts of the surrounding fluid. In order to reach the muscles, this cement must be broke with large hammers; and it may be truly said, the kernal is not worth the trouble of cracking the shell. [These are found in great plenty at Ancona and other parts of the Adriatic, where they go by the name of Bollani, as we are informed by Keysler.] Among the fish of this country, there is a very ugly ...
— Travels Through France and Italy • Tobias Smollett
... is cracking and breaking For a look, for a touch,—for such slight things; But he's such a very great musician Grimacing and fingering ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... down the bank on to the ice; and she followed him. The ice cracked somewhat noisily at their weight, and at intervals it cracked again. Erebus paid no heed to its cracking beyond telling Wiggins not to go far from the edge. She skated round and across the pond several times, then settled down to make a figure of eight, resolved to have it scored deeply in the ice before the Terror came. Wiggins skated ...
— The Terrible Twins • Edgar Jepson
... crowded in the lee of the straw-stacks, their rough flanks crawling, and in the folds the ewes, yet frail from their travail, stood stung and still, mothering their weak-kneed lambs. Beside the thud of the horse's hoofs toward town there was no sound on the road save a little, dry cracking of the frost. The doctor, as he started in his carriage for Davie's house, drew his robes closely about him and scowled at the fierceness of the blast; but Davie, riding far ahead, his elbows flying wildly up and down, did not know that he had forgotten to fasten his shabby overcoat. ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various |
