"Crackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... birdlime and half a pint of the drying oil into an iron or copper vessel, whose capacity should equal about a gallon, and let it boil very gently over a slow charcoal fire, till the birdlime ceases to crackle, which will be in about half or three-quarters of an hour; then pour upon it 2-1/2 pints more of the drying oil, and let it boil about an hour longer, stirring it frequently with an iron or wooden spatula. As the varnish, whilst boiling, and especially when nearly ready, swells ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... key-board, the chords themselves seemed to roll along the heavens, though in truth some vanished here and others appeared yonder. Up and down they darted, and away and back—and always in the direction he did not expect them to take. He thought he heard them crackle, and he stood still to listen; but he could not be sure that it was not the snow sinking and crisping beneath his feet. All around him was still as a world too long frozen: in the heavens alone was there motion. There this entrancing dance of colour and shape went on, wide ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... was shattered, it was with a crash to wake the dead. The girl marvelled that one man could fire so rapidly, and so often. The night seemed to crackle with rifle and revolver shots. To judge from the sound, there ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... the fire kindle, blaze, and go out. I gathered up from the hearth enough for profitable reflections. Our life is just like the fire on that hearth. We put on fresh fagots, and the fire bursts through and up, and out, gay of flash, gay of crackle—emblem of boyhood. Then the fire reddens into coals. The heat is fiercer; and the more it is stirred, the more it reddens. With sweep of flame it cleaves its way, until all the hearth glows with the intensity—emblem of full manhood. Then comes a whiteness to the ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage
... leaves rustle here beside me, with a quick patter—the twigs crackle—it is he! Move not! not for your life, Peacock! There! he has broken cover fairly! Now he is half across the field! he stops to listen! Ah! he will head again. No! no! that crash, when they came upon the warm blood, has decided him—away he goes, with his brush high, and its white ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from a Gardner. Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into the ravine. From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of Remington fire. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mile after mile, they strode along, now across a brawling stream, now along a sunlit road, now adown some sweet forest path, over which the trees met in green and rustling canopy, and at the end of which a herd of startled deer dashed away, with rattle of leaves and crackle of branches. Onward they walked with song and jest and laughter till noontide was passed, when at last they came to the banks of a wide, glassy, and lily-padded stream. Here a broad, beaten path ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... The crackle of a match told him that the leader of the couple wished to take a look at him, so as to be satisfied. And when the little piece of wood flared up, Max was able to see that both men were, as Steve had declared, dressed in gray uniforms, that were decorated with the ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... for a long time before his burning throat is moistened by a cup of water, and he knows only too well that the surgeon will merely shake his head when he sees him. The brigade still advances; gradually the sputtering crackle in their front grows into a low steady roar; a stream of lead whistles in the air, and the long lurid line of flame glows with the sustained glare of a fire among furze. Men fall at every yard, but the hoarse murmur of the dogged advance never ceases. At last the time comes for the rush. The ranks ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... through the dense October air with a softened and muffled sound. The evenings, however, were growing cool, and before long they lighted the first fire of the season in Mrs. Vivian's heavily draped little chimney-piece. On this occasion Bernard sat there with Angela, watching the bright crackle of the wood and feeling that the charm of winter nights had begun. These two young persons were alone together in the gathering dusk; it was the hour before dinner, before the lamp had ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... waited for five minutes more, and then set to work quietly, after the fashion of English mastiffs, though, like those mastiffs, they waxed right mad before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters (sight beloved) began to crackle and fly. ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... were other horrors to be endured. The din became incessant. Simultaneous with the hiss and crackle and crack of the lightning there was a continuous deafening detonation in the air above him, crash on crash and roar on roar. The terrors of the first few seconds had been chiefly those felt and heard. ...
— The Heart of Thunder Mountain • Edfrid A. Bingham
... through the forest we do not notice many of them, and we do not hear many. We do not everywhere find great flocks of birds as we see swarms of insects. And we do not find the forest resounding with the songs of birds as it does with the hum and crackle of insects. In this respect ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... which abound, "Their tameness is shocking to me." It is the world of "big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost, crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting ground of the Indians, and not yet settled or traversed, ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... twelve, and he had entered upon the last section of his two hours, when Kennedy distinctly heard footsteps in the wood. He had heard so many mysterious sounds since his patrol began at eleven o'clock that at first he was inclined to attribute this to imagination. But a crackle of dead branches and the sound of soft breathing convinced him that this was the real thing for once, and that, as a sentry of the Public Schools' Camp on duty, it behoved him to ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... advanced slowly between the bushes on the alert for a charge from the wounded bull; but nothing stirred. No sound came to his ears except the soft padding noise of his horse's hoofs upon the turf. There was not a crackle of the brushwood, and the trees seemed carved out of metal. He rode through absolute silence in a suspension of all movement. Once his horse trod upon a bough, and the snapping of the twigs sounded like ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... lost in the song of the pines a few score yards from Alton's camp. He knew where to find the resinous knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood still and listened again before he went down to the river with the kettle. Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a moment behind a wide-girthed trunk. It was only a deer ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... of answer was vouchsafed. Nancy sat with her feet on the fender, and Tarrant kept up a great blaze with chips, which sputtered out their moisture before they began to crackle. He and she both seemed intent on this ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... batteries. Then we knew it was British infantry retiring—a terrible sight, no matter how small the loss or how wise the order given. Chiefly they were the 60th (K.R.R.) and the Leicesters. I believe the Dublins were there too. Behind them the enemy kept up the incessant crackle of their rifles. ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... spread down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnapped and chained to a tree by a ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... little beast, whose rider, sitting firmly astride, lashed first at his quivering flank and then at the fur gauntleted hands,—even at the laughing, bearded faces—sure sign of another squaw, and a game one. Far out to the front the crackle of carbine and rifle told that Webb was driving the scattered braves before him,—that the comrade squadron was coming their way,—that Bear Cliff had been sought by the Sioux in vain,—that Indian wiles and strategy, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... look bright and bustling as we children are set to shell peas or poppies, and the damp twigs crackle in the stove, and our mother comes to look fondly at our work, and our old nurse, Iliana, tells us stories of bygone days, or terrible legends concerning wizards and dead men. At the recital we little ones will press closer to one another, yet smile as we do so; ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... season, when the leaves and twigs crackle under foot, the rifle is as good as useless, for it becomes impossible to approach a deer within shooting range. And there are other times when ammunition is exhausted, and the trapper is thus forced to rely only on his traps for his supply of food. ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... him, I lay awake a while, watching the sparks fly, and the shadows flit, feeling the cold wind on my face, listening to the crackle of the fire and ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... this point the Dialogue is cut short by sudden musket-shots from the woody fields to right; crackle of about twelve shots in all; which hurt nothing but some horse's feet,—had been aimed at the light, and too low. Instantly the light is blown out, and there is a hunting out of Croats; Lissa or environs not evacuated yet, it seems; and the King's Entrance ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... The crackle of blaster fire, the shrill whine of needlers in action, raised a bedlam from the other end of the camp. Backing up a little, Dane went down on one knee, his weapon ready to sweep over the bewildered natives, the drum resting on the earth against his body. ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... to do it much more picturesquely. They rode in coats of scarlet, in the crisp, clear morning, to the winding of horns and the baying of hounds, to the thud-thud of hoofs, and the crackle of underbrush. Across fresh-plowed fields they went, crashing through forest paths, leaping ditches, taking fences, scrambling up the inclines, pelting down the hillside, helter-skelter, until, panting, wide-eyed, ...
— Personality Plus - Some Experiences of Emma McChesney and Her Son, Jock • Edna Ferber
... Gale was heard to reply, in his deep tones—there was a crackle of dead brush, a sound as of a man tripping and falling heavily, then oaths in a voice ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... a key in the semi-darkness, and with a rending crackle there leaped between two brass knobs a spark, streams of ...
— Traffics and Discoveries • Rudyard Kipling
... board with cups and spoons is crown'd, The berries crackle, and the mill turns round; On shining altars of Japan they raise The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze: From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, While China's earth receives the smoking tide: 110 At once they gratify their scent and taste, And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... all winter. They live right opposite, and sit in the windows, drawing and writing. Dorris keeps house up there in two rooms. The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on the big sofa. Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over. She cooks with a little gas-stove. I think it is beautiful to keep house with not very much money. She goes out with a cunning white basket and buys her things; and she does all her work up in ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Then with a laughing crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a tall ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... and the excitement that was promised. For days they had had no fighting worthy the name. Amigos everywhere, villages peopled only by women and children, treacherous peacefulness on every side; this had been their encounter: an occasional rifle shot from the rice fields, a crackle of guns far ahead, a prisoner or two who had not been quick enough in transforming himself from combatant to friend, that was all. Now, there seemed to be real ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... it was long past midnight she began to be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... tiny lights were sparkling, picked out with ominous brilliancy against the velvet dusk. Peter Nicholaevitch leaned far out of the window, straining his ears to listen. And now he seemed to hear the crackle of flames, the distant sound of hoarse ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... immediately a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing as of a thousand serpents. We felt the strong suction under our keel, and staggered under the jerk of the ship's cable as she swung toward the beach. The paint was beginning to crackle along the rail. We could see nothing for the scalding white veil that enveloped us; we could hear nothing for the roar of steam, the bombardment of explosions, and the crash of thunder; but our nostrils were assaulted by a most ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... he discovered that he and the horse were not the only ones who were out that night. He heard stones roll down and branches crackle, as if animals were breaking their way through the forest. He remembered that wolves were plentiful in that section and wondered if the horse wished to lead him to an encounter with ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... helplessness, with blind, unappeasable rage against the chance that had crippled him, with bitter and useless questionings as to why such a moment should have been selected for the one accident of his young life. Outside he could hear the crackle of the little fire, the unusual sound of the Indian girl's voice as she talked low to the dog, the animal's whine of appreciation and content. Suddenly he felt the need of companionship, the weariness of his ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... to dodge at every turn. At all the caves I could see from my high perch, people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors, ready to plunge in again. As the first shell again flew they dived, and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has to be carried out and laid in the sun every ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... That burning ache to rest and to uncurl of nervousness. All the thousand thousand little pores of her body, screaming each one to be placated. They hurt the entire surface of her. That great storm at sea in her head; the crackle of lightning ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... of her dress a letter. As they went in to dinner she could hear its paper very faintly crackle against her hand. It was from Falk and was ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... palm-leaves and reeds, had begun to crackle when Antinous rushed into the tower only a few paces off crying: "Fire—fire!" and up the stairs which led to the ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... waited at their cottage doors in the evening for its arrival: I remember how, as a very little girl, I stood by my mother's side. About eight o'clock, as we hearkened on our door-stones in the cold bright starlight, we could hear the faint crackle of a waggon from the direction of the turnpike-road. The noise was lost as the waggon dropped into a hollow, then it was plain again as it lumbered down the next long incline, and presently it entered Longpuddle. The coffin was laid in the ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... were so firmly compressed as to render the crevice of the mouth no more strongly marked than a wrinkle in the brow of a man of sixty. His complexion was naturally fair, but exposure had tanned the skin of his face to the color of the crackle of a roasted pig; those parts which a painter would be apt to term the "high lights" being indicated by touches of red, nearly as bright as fourth-proof brandy. His eyes were small, stern, fiery, and very gray; and ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... Philosophical Journal at a soiree; we invite our friends that we may thrust a book into their hands, and presuppose an exclusive desire in the "ladies" to discuss their own matters, "that we may crackle the Times" at our ease. In fact, the evident tendency of things to contract personal communication within the narrowest limits makes us tremble lest some further development of the electric telegraph should reduce ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... out some drawer or chest or closet, another treasure will appear and lure you away with another story of the long ago. With the inimitable sheen of old silver still in our eyes, our ears caught the crackle of ancient parchment; and we turned to the fascinations of venerable records and dingy red seals and queer blue tax stamps. The papers were delightfully quaint and yellow and worn, but from their very age ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous cry,—a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature had stopped to ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... the air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate and loud that he shook his head. "I give it up," he said. "I've never ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... went about the school as if she were a princess royal and Margaret were the dust under her feet. Triumph sat upon her like a crown and looked forth regally from her eyes. She laid her hand upon her heart and felt the crackle of his letter inside her blouse. She dreamed with her eyes upon the distant mountain and thought of the tender names he had called her: "Little wild Rose of his heart," "No rose in all the world until you came," and a lot of ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... forewarning two heavy hands gripped him, one on either shoulder, and he was forced to his knees. At the same instant, with a snapping crackle a spurt of blue flame shot down from the zenith, and where it fell with a thunderclap a dazzling glare of emerald light ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... crackle and a snap the grapevine swing sagged down on one side. Janet tried to hold Trouble in her arms, but he slipped from her lap, just as she slipped off the piece of carpet which Ted had folded for the seat of the swing. Then Janet toppled down as the vine broke, and she and ...
— The Curlytops on Star Island - or Camping out with Grandpa • Howard R. Garis
... the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and artillery on my right opened fire on the German position, and then the heavy boom, boom of the guns from the sea. Looking in that direction, I discerned several of our battleships opening fire, the shells giving a fearful shriek as they passed ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... I said, as I listened to the noise he made rolling himself in his blanket, and making the fir-boughs crackle as he turned about. "I was horribly scared at first, but I don't think ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... coughed and choked with the smoke; he could hear the sticks beginning to crackle and burn in the fireplace down below. He made up his mind to climb right to the top, and get out on the slates, and try ...
— A Collection of Beatrix Potter Stories • Beatrix Potter
... not, taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve; hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the Outer Court: soft speeches producing no clearance ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... meditatively at Violet. Violet looked smilingly at James. The morning was just as ripping as it had been a moment before. James was still twenty-two. And the editor's letter had not ceased to crackle in his breast-pocket. ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... when the sun sank, for the shadows of the valley at the mouth of Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old mother knocked the ashes from her clay pipe and quietly went into the kitchen, and Jack, for all his good manners, could not restrain a whine of eagerness when he heard the crackle of bacon in a frying-pan and the delicious smell of it struck his quivering nostrils. After dark, old Joel, the father of the house, came in—a giant in size and a mighty hunter—and he slapped his big thighs and roared until ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... crackle from the Prussian trenches, and to his amazement, after firing a few rounds in reply, the French infantrymen ran for the cover of the brush. He saw the reason for this a moment later when a big troop ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... to respond to that order, but they were stopped by a crackle of sound that could be only one thing—rapid-fire guns. Somewhere in this warren a fight was in progress. Ross, remembering the arrogant face of the bald ship's officer, wondered if this was not an attack in force—the aliens against ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... crackle, a flash, and presently a steady glow, which the surrounding darkness seemed to resent. The faces of the two men thus revealed were singularly alike. The same thin, narrow outline of jaw and temple; the same dark, grave eyes; the same brown growth of curly beard and mustache, ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... up the straight, narrow stairs; she placed the telegram under Fernand's pillow; she pressed her fists deep into the feathers; the crackle of paper made her heart stand still. There were tears starting in her eyes; she held them back. Grand'mA"re had enough of sorrow; she must never know of the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... be kinder to me than aunt Dorothy. I am always so happy here," she said; "and it seems such a treat to get away from the Lawn—of course I am sorry to leave mamma, you know," she added, parenthetically—"and the stiff breakfasts, and Mr. Sheldon's newspapers that crackle, crackle, crackle so shockingly all breakfast-time; and the stiff dinners, with a prim parlor-maid staring at one all the time, and bringing one vegetables that one doesn't want if one only ventures to breathe a little louder than ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... sacrifice was ordained to be free from any stain of gore. Our hour of sacrifice, alas, has not yet come. When it does — ( et haud procul absit!) — let the offering be no bloodless one, but let (for choice) a fat and succulent stationmaster smoke and crackle on the altar ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... damage his signal-guns could do against a dhow, if they were provided with orthodox solid shot. As a point of fact they never came into action. As soon as the second night came down, and the darkness became fairly fixed in hue, there began to crackle out of the distance a desultory rifle fire from every quarter of the compass. It was not very heavy—at the outside there were not a score of weapons firing, and it could not be called accurate since not one bullet in ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... slaughter of a spring-lamb in green-pea time, when the scent is in the julep and the bloom is on the mint; or possibly, now and then, the removal from the pasture to the pantry of a bit of lowing roast-beef, when I feel an inner craving for the crackle ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... in the evergreen thicket, and after supper they sat in its mouth in the glow of the fire. Its crackle drowned out the voices of the wilderness about them,—such accusations as the Red Gods pour out upon the unworthy. And for all their shelter they were wretched and terrified, crushed by the might of the wilderness ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... in a tone that rose clearly above the roar and crackle of the fire. As the men reached him he handed out the implements from great stacks at his feet—rubber buckets, wooden buckets, tin and iron buckets, new, old, rusty and galvanized. It was Pete Ellinwood, the fire marshal of the village ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... the windward side, rising and falling in intensity, like the coal of a cigar. Then a superincumbent bundle rolled down, with a whisking noise; flames elongated, and bent themselves about with a quiet roar, but no crackle. Banks of smoke went off horizontally at the back like passing clouds, and behind these burned hidden pyres, illuminating the semi-transparent sheet of smoke to a lustrous yellow uniformity. Individual straws in ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... to climb a tree and they stayed around till they heard some other dogs barkin' and ran off. I come down then and took my bucket and left. Nother time some hogs chased me. They rooted all around the tree till they heard somethin' crackle in the woods and run off and then ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... mighty conflagration, the black smoke covering half the heavens. The hawks and the crows fled before it, swooping down on the vermin that were forced to leave the shelter of log and bush. The great silence that had reigned for so long was broken by the roar, and crash, and crackle of a sea of flames; and beneath this fiery blast every vestige of the ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... be My dreams that crackle under your breath... You have the dust of the world to blow on... Do not tag me and dance away, looking back... I am too old to play with ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... strip. She settled herself comfortably again full length. All around her were the innumerable tiny noises of the desert, the hum of countless insect life, the rustling of the sand and the occasional dry crackle of the camel thorns made by the slipping of a twig or the displacing of a branch, sounds that would have been incomprehensible some weeks before. For a few minutes a sand spider attracted her attention and she watched his hurried painstaking operations with wondering interest. Gradually ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... You listen. You can hear me crackle with the salt and dust caked over me. I'm afraid to laugh, for fear I should ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... Donald returned, and again worked over Jean, so that, when the fire had begun to crackle and give out heat, he saw the upturned eyes swim down, and the blessed look of consciousness take the place of terrible blankness. Then, with a sob of joy, he gathered her in his arms, and laid her down in the zone of life-giving heat. ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... crackle of the musketry began in front, and still the Gatling Gun Detachment lay beside the road with the 71st, waiting, swearing, broiling, stewing in their own perspiration, mad with thirst, and crazed with the fever of the battle. The colonel of the 71st was again ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... by this pile the guardian of the Sunrise Camp Fire took from her pocket a bit of flint and a piece of steel, striking them sharply together. Tiny sparks flew forth but no answering crackle resounded from the wood and paper, although the sparks darted in and out among them like miniature fireflies. Once more Miss McMurtry tried her flint and steel according to the prescribed rules, but ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... Martin must have felt it too, for all at once he ceased to speak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of tenderness that I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we walked on but the crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and the measured boom of the sea which we were leaving behind us—nothing but that and the quick beating ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... a crackle and Retief stiffened. Magnan heard a sharp intake of breath. The globe slowed, and Retief ...
— Gambler's World • John Keith Laumer
... in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river that the gay crackle of them might ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... helped one another into the saddle (so weak most of us were by that time) and went forward three days' march. Then we camped again, much closer to the Germans this time, in fact, almost within shouting distance; and they again set up their machine, causing sparks to crackle from the wires of a telescopic tower they raised, to the very great concern of the Afghans who were in and out of both camps all day long. One message that an Afghan told me the Germans had received, was that the British ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... out beside Kitty into the drizzle was not the Cutty she had admitted into the apartment. She did not recognize this remarkable transition until later; and then she discovered that Cutty, the suave and lackadaisical in idleness, was a tremendous animal hibernating behind a crackle shell. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... of the wood, the rustle of the leaves under his wheels changed from the soft murmurs in the moist hollows to the crisp crackle in the open places. In the west Venus hung silver white over the new moon, and below the star and the crescent a single pine tree stood as clearly defined as if it were pasted on a grey ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... him, for he had the sense to obey. After a few minutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears and the crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs close upon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as it were, while the tumult swept by. Presently he was galloping along behind and wondering dully how he ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... open space of twenty yards. Three or four shots came zipping from aloft, but the instant ring of Winchesters back of them told that watchful eyes had noted every head that appeared, and the swift crackle of fire from the shop put instant stop to the fun up the slope. Into the store-room the manager led them, and unlocked a heavy little trap-door within; then, one by one, the ominous-looking cases were dragged ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... set on the lowest rung. There was a crackle of glass, and then a cloud of smoke streamed out of a broken window. For an instant the bright glare was obscured. But it burst forth afresh, and leaped with great white tongues into ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... fine thing to talk about the perfumed and restful bed of balsam boughs, and the crackle of the campfire at dusk, and the dip in the mirrored bosom of the pellucid lake at dawn—old Emerson Hough does all that to perfection; but these things assume a different aspect when it rains. There are three ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... shots. Then more in a sharp, steady crackle. The mass began breaking, out on the edges I could see men starting to run. But down the street came a troop of mounted police on the gallop, and straight through the multitude they rode. I saw the three prisoners seized and surrounded and thrown ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... Tredgold. "As a matter of fact, I'm dying with curiosity myself. Bring it out and make it crackle, captain; it's a bank-note for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... Rylton's mind is full of evil thoughts as he strides onward into the recesses of the wood. The falling autumn leaves crackle beneath his swift tread, and through the trees the sky shows signs of storm. But what storm in all Nature can be compared with the rage that stirs the ...
— The Hoyden • Mrs. Hungerford
... again the expected match failed to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding his breath. But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled his pent-up breath in a ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... motives of personal safety, is devoured with anxiety concerning the too imminent fate of her hostess' china. There is a little Lowestoft tea-service that was picked up only last week at Christie and Manson's, a turquoise blue crackle jar that is supposed to be priceless, and a pair of "Long Eliza" vases, which her hostess loves as much as she does her toy terrier, and far better ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... fancied he had caught a white gleam between the trees that was neither sunshine nor water. He groped his way through the underwood, putting the branches back that they might not crackle, and then all at once he stood still; for he saw a little runlet of a stream making dimples of eddies round a fallen tree, and a great silver birch sweeping over it; and there, in her soft spring dress, with ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... shout of rage, and made the boat leap through the water as now, in addition to the sharp crackle of the Winchesters, they heard the heavier report of a Snider, and Harvey, jumping up on the after whaleback, and steadying himself with one hand on Atkins's shoulder, saw that only two or three of Oliver's crew were now paddling—the ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... fought their way toward the platform. It sunk for a moment and then rose again. As the dome swung back a sharp crackle of machine-gun fire sounded and the water before them was whipped into foam by the plunging bullets. One of the soldiers gave a sharp cry and slumped forward into ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... as much afraid the next morning after breakfast but she did not look it, by reason of the flush on her cheeks and the glint in her brown eyes. She had put Tom's letter in the bosom of her dress and she pressed her fingertips on it that the crackle might ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1907 to 1908 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... street he heard the crackle of musketry and saw the Seine running grey under the lowering smoke-cloud of burning Paris. Red uniforms appeared on the Quai de l'Ecole. The Pont-au-Change was thick with federes. Not knowing where to fly, he was for going back into the prison; but a body of Vengeurs de Lutece, ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... Birds.—As with mankind, some races have well-developed tendencies toward polygamy. In the warmer regions of the United States there dwells a great, splendid, glossy Blackbird, the Boat-tailed Crackle. The nest of this bird is a wonderfully woven structure of water plants and grasses and is usually built in a bush growing in the {55} water. When you find one nest of the Crackle you are pretty certain to find several ...
— The Bird Study Book • Thomas Gilbert Pearson
... men who had asked in the past to be allowed to paint Joan and received a curt negative from Gray Michael. But the other discovery meant more. Pushing her hand about the drawer she found a pile of paper, felt the crackle of it, and pulled it eagerly to the light. Then, and before she learned the grandeur of the sum, she was seized with a sudden palpitation and sat down on Joan's bed. Her mouth grew full as a hungry man's before a feast, her lips were wet, her hand ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... fire in daylight. She heard wild voices singing; on still days she saw the trees in Knapp Forest bent to a furious wind. When Mabilla crept up the fell on noiseless feet to spy for Andrew King, Bessie Prawle heard the bents hiss and crackle under her, as if ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... followed by a wait as Mother Corey kicked four grumbling men out of a four-by-seven hole on the second floor. Gordon's money had carried more weight than his brother's reputation; for that, Corey humored his guest's wish for privacy. "All yours, cobber, while your crackle's blue." ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... For the first time since Shann had heard the crackle of the Throg attack he remembered the reason he had been heading into the hills. Of all the men on the Survey team, Shann Lantee had been the least important. The dirty, tedious clean-up jobs, the ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... chick-peas began to rustle and crackle, and by this noise betrayed the fugitives. The flax bristled up. Happily for her, Mary was near a juniper; the hospitable tree opened its branches as arms and enclosed the Virgin and Child within their folds, affording them a secure hiding-place. ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... last words died away in the far woodland, Trove and Darrel turned, wiping their eyes in silence. That flood of inspiration had filled them. Big thoughts had come drifting down with its current. They listened a while, but heard only the faint crackle ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... malicious crackle the old man held up a small white swaddling garment. "Look!" he quavered. "This is what they had ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... 157. To vibrate the tympanic membrane and the little ear-bones. Shut the mouth, and pinch the nose tightly. Try to force air through the nose. The air dilates the Eustachian tube, and is forced into the ear-drum. The distinct crackle, or clicking sound, is due to the movement of the ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... end further from the main building, was a small hobbed grate. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals, and was now lighting a fire, of which the paper was flaming high and the wood began already to crackle. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... the crackle of the flames, whenever the night wind happens to blow this way," Babe Adams asserted; and they all agreed with him, for the same sound had come ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... beside a row of dusty boxes of books. The heat threatens the amateur with sunstroke. Then, says M. Octave Uzanne, in a prose ballade of book-hunters—then, calm, glad, heroic, the bouquineurs prowl forth, refreshed with hope. The brown old calf-skin wrinkles in the sun, the leaves crackle, you could poach an egg on the cover of a quarto. The dome of the Institute glitters, the sickly trees seem to wither, their leaves wax red and grey, a faint warm wind is walking the streets. Under his ...
— The Library • Andrew Lang
... each, in relation to their service to simple human life. The paintings are neither allegorical nor photographic, but highly interpretative of the luxuriant picturesqueness of nature and the everyday labors of man. The luminosity of color, dash and daring of contrast, fairly crackle with life and yet have rich depths of quietness. The two panels of Earth glow with the earth's abundance. The first, the "Fruit Pickers," here shown, in which harvesters gather fruits from high trees and the laden ground, ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... horrible consciousness of his wandering roofless, in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide and I, who were ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... found us, was quite determined that we should never escape them alive. When presently we again began to move, it seemed impossible to take a single step without tripping over a land-crab's hole, or treading upon one of the creatures and hearing and feeling it crackle and writhe ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... at the kitchen stove. There was the clink of iron lids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire. Presently she came in with ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... gentle reader, ever saunter through a chestnut grove in the later fall, when the yellow had been browned by the frosts which brought to the ground alike leaves and remaining burs? There is something especially pleasant in the warmth of color and the crackle of sound on the forest floor, as one really shuffles through chestnut leaves in the bracing November air, stooping now and then for a nut perchance remaining in the warm and velvety corner ...
— Getting Acquainted with the Trees • J. Horace McFarland
... touched her flaming brand to the wood that had been made ready by the other Fire Makers, and soon the flames began to blaze and crackle, filling the air with a spicy fragrance, and sending a vivid glow across the circle of intent young faces. Laura caught her breath as she looked ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... wheel struck the log, throwing full weight upon it. There was a snapping crackle, ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... the rapids was, when circumstances took us into the black current we fared no better. For good all-round inconvenience, give me going full tilt in the dark into the branches of a fallen tree at the pace we were going then—and crash, swish, crackle and there you are, hung up, with a bough pressing against your chest, and your hair being torn out and your clothes ribboned by others, while the wicked river is trying to drag away the canoe from under you. After a good hour and more of these experiences, we went hard on to a large black ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... swift the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we had ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... thus, and nothing happened. How I kept them at it I do not now understand, but they stayed. We sang, joked, told stories, gossiped in desperate effort to kill time, and not one rap, tap, or crackle came to guide us or to give indication of the presence of any unusual power. Part of the time Mrs. Smiley was awake and sorely grieved at her failure. She understood very well the position in which I seemed to stand. ...
— The Shadow World • Hamlin Garland
... constantly flattered by triumph, brought, his whole nature into play with the prospect of the morrow: not much liking it either. There is a nerve, in brave warriors that does not like the battle before, the crackle of musketry is heard, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was only the crackle of an open mike and the sound of breathing. "That is your decision," he said finally. "I'll have a ship standing by. But won't you let us take ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... he appeared to forget my very existence. He fell into a sort of trance, with his eyes fixed on vacancy. There was a dead hush in the place, nothing but the crackle of the fire and the steady drip of the rain. I endured it as well as I might, for though my legs were sorely cramped, I did not dare to ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... so rigid in his expectancy that he fairly ached. Ten minutes dragged by, with only the crackle of the fire on the hearth to disturb the silence ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... skirmishers. Black Rifle, uttering fierce shouts, was leading a strong attack in the center. The firing was now rapid and much heavier than it had been at any time before. Flashes of flame appeared everywhere in the thicket. Above the crackle of rifles and muskets swelled the long thrilling war cry of the Mohawks, and back in fierce defiance came the yells of ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... The hum and crackle from the stove, the grinding of the gray dog's teeth, the bumping and hissing of the gale outside, the boom of the cascades at the precipices, made up most of the sounds for that evening. Of chat there was a paucity. ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... the roar and crackle of the fire and the crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks and stones. * * * It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for by this time nearly everyone had recovered from the shock of the earthquake; ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot. "Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come on home with me now, like ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various |
