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Engulf   /ɪngˈəlf/   Listen
Engulf

verb
(past & past part. engulfed; pres. part. engulfing)
1.
Devote (oneself) fully to.  Synonyms: absorb, engross, immerse, plunge, soak up, steep.
2.
Flow over or cover completely.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Engulf" Quotes from Famous Books



... course, but with so contrary winds from the north that they [as it were,] consumed the vessels; and the seas ran mountain high toward the heavens, so that one would believe that they were trying to engulf them. They reached Cape Bojeador, although after considerable danger. That is the end of the island of Manila, where one crosses to the island of Hermosa. At that point the storms increased so violently that, a council of the pilots having been called, ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume XXII, 1625-29 • Various

... 'stablished, so secure, A planet also? Did it also move Around the sun? If this were true, my friends, No revolution in this world's affairs, Not that blind maelstrom where imperial Rome Went down into the dark, could so engulf All that we thought we knew. We who believed In our own majesty, we who walked with gods As younger sons on this proud central stage, Round which the whole bright firmament revolved For our especial glory, must we creep Like ants ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes

... of jelly, to the rocks, put forth, as it were, a multitude of arms and wait till little fish or other small animalcules unwarily touched them, when they would instantly seize them, fold arm after arm around their victims, and so engulf them in their stomachs. Here I saw the ceaseless working of those little coral insects whose efforts have encrusted the islands of the Pacific with vast rocks, and surrounded them with enormous reefs. And I observed that many of these insects, though extremely minute, were very ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... one parts, we are lost!" I thought, at the time, he might have kept this piece of information to himself. Meanwhile nothing was visible from the cabin-windows but great rollers topped with crests of foam, which looked as if, every moment, they would engulf the little vessel. But she behaved splendidly. Although green seas were coming in over the bows, flooding her decks from stem to stern, and pouring down the gangway into the saloon, the Kaspia rode through the gale like a duck. To venture ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt

... had understood and seen the whole sequel of the awful trap which had all along been destined to engulf her as well as ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... opened into Volcanic Lake, a circular body of water, which is not a lake but simply a gathering together of the streams we had been losing, and here the water stands, depositing its mud. All the way across had no depth but a bottomless mud, so soft it would engulf a person if ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb

... combination. The plight of both Sisily and himself was desperate enough now without giving the enemy a chance by recklessness. He was like a man rowing a small boat in the immensity of a dark sea which threatened every moment to engulf him. Sisily was somewhere in that darkness, and she must be rescued. If his own cockleshell went down there could be no succour for her. That was a thought to make him keep afloat—to ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees

... of the poor Numa. This trail was the canyon gorge of the Colorado. Through it he led him; and when they had returned the deity exacted from the chief a promise that he would tell no one of the trail. Then he rolled a river into the gorge, a mad, raging stream, that should engulf any that ...
— Canyons of the Colorado • J. W. Powell

... Elliott, with scorn, "if you are moping and moaning over that girl,—the girl who has given you and myself every reason to wish that the ground would open and engulf us,—well, go on!" ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers

... mythus there is in the Shakspere question as it stands to-day. Beneath a few foundations of proved facts are certainly engulf d far more dim and elusive ones, of deepest importance— tantalizing and half suspected—suggesting explanations that one dare not put in plain statement. But coming at once to the point, the English historical plays are to me not only the most ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... who would make themselves our adversaries, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace; before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great ...
— Kennedy's Inaugural Address

... furiosos of the Terror in France did the aristocrats of the Regime Ancien? The issue between capital and labor, for example, is full of generating heat and hate. Who shall say that, let loose in the crowded centers of population, it may not one day engulf us all? ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson

... general impression that the tide of victory set in with Marshal Foch's splendid movement against the German flank on July 18th. That movement, it is true, started the irresistible sweep of the wave which was destined to engulf and destroy the hideous power of Prussianism. But the tide which gathered and drove forward the waters out of which that wave arose, had turned before. It turned with and through the supreme valor of ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood

... half a dozen and more, who, when reverses came, were subjected to trials for alleged fraudulent practices, resorted to in extremity as a means of sustaining their tottering credit and escaping the ruin that threatened to engulf them. One of these, in particular, was a young man whom I raised, and who had always acted with the most scrupulous honesty while in my store. But he was ardent, ambitious, and anxious to get rich. His father started him ...
— Words for the Wise • T. S. Arthur

... the norther continued with unabated violence, the wild wind and the boiling waves struggling on the agitated bosom of the ocean, great billows swelling up one after the other, and threatening to engulf us; the ship labouring and creaking as if all its timbers were parting asunder, and the captain in such a state of intense suffering, that we were in great apprehension for his life. Horrible days, and yet more horrible nights! But they were succeeded by fine weather, and at length we ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... who had caught hold of and made a lodgment in a tree-top, and around whom the waters were still rapidly rising, sending floating logs, trees, and driftwood against his frail support, and threatening momentarily to dislodge and engulf him. ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... evil WEED set you to burning The Cataline, and pocket all the plunder; Or did the patriot BEN engulf your little All ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... varying degree, of allowing their subconscious minds to engulf and enfold them. The real poets have written in words that live because, unknowingly, they have fallen back on and given expression to the accumulated hopes and visions of the mind of man. The prophets have simply been those with the power to make their instincts vocal. ...
— Heart and Soul • Victor Mapes (AKA Maveric Post)

... Belgian journal wound up with a few stinging comments on the great City of Paris, thus torn by civil war when the enemy was at its gates. Was it not the presage of approaching decomposition, the puddle of blood and mire that was to engulf a world? ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola

... deck, while to add to the horror the black darkness began to give place to a blood-red lurid glare. Toward this they were now being drawn, slowly at first, then faster and faster: as, after the three waves that had struck the vessel, another came towering on astern, threatening to engulf them, but plunging beneath the stern, lifting and bearing them along upon its tremendous crest with a rush and deafening hissing roar. Faster and faster, and on and toward the deep glow ...
— Fire Island - Being the Adventures of Uncertain Naturalists in an Unknown Track • G. Manville Fenn

... been known to declare it impossible and sneer at it with laughter. I trust every novel reader respects scientific folks as he should; but science is not everything. Our scientific friends have contended that the whale did not engulf Jonah; that the sun did not pause over the vale of Askelon; that Baron Munchausen's horse did not hang to the steeple by his bridle; that the beanstalk could not have supported a stout lad like Jack; that ...
— The Delicious Vice • Young E. Allison

... coming out of the water. Now it looks as if it had opened a cavernous maw" (I'm sure he nabbed that from some book) "as black as ink, ready to swallow any unfortunate mariner which came near. Below the base of this fearsome hole roars the cruel surf, ready to engulf a boat which would never be seen more if it was once caught ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price

... her interest in the Blind Spot and myself? Who is she? I cannot think of her as evil. She is too beautiful, too tender; her concern is so real. Sometimes I think of her as my protector, that it is she, and she alone who holds back the power which would engulf me. Once ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint

... expeditions. Boston was garrisoned by 8,000 men. All the provinces did their well-scared best. There was no danger except along the coast; for there were enough armed men to have simply mobbed to death any three thousand Frenchmen who marched into the hostile continent, which would engulf them if they lost touch with the fleet, and wear them out if they kept communications open. Those who knew anything of war knew this perfectly well; and they more than half suspected that the French force ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood

... themselves allied. The most immediate help in this new campaign against the social evil will probably come thus indirectly from those streams of humanitarian effort which are ever widening and which will in time slowly engulf into their rising tide of enthusiasm for human betterment, even the victims of the ...
— A New Conscience And An Ancient Evil • Jane Addams

... circle of rockets was fired from the tower of St. Stephen's as a signal of distress. This done the wretched Viennese waited for the coming day, almost hopeless of repelling the hosts which threatened to engulf them. At the utmost a few days must end the siege. A ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris

... deep wrinkles, and shall years at last On the great Parent fix a sterile curse? 10 Shall even she confess old age, and halt And, palsy-smitten, shake her starry brows? Shall foul Antiquity with rust and drought And famine vex the radiant worlds above? Shall Time's unsated maw crave and engulf The very heav'ns that regulate his flight? And was the Sire of all able to fence His works, and to uphold the circling worlds, But through improvident and heedless haste Let slip th'occasion?—So ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton

... was hazardous during early spring, for no one ever knew when the ground would open and engulf him. Ten thousand wash-outs, a dozen feet deep or thirty, ran "bank-high" with swirling, merciless waters, and the Little Missouri, which was a shallow trickle in August, was a torrent in April. There were no bridges. If you wanted to get to the other ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn

... own mother, fierce Nature herself, is his foe. Her whirlwinds are roused into wrath o'er his head: 'Neath his feet roll her earthquakes: her solitudes spread To daunt him: her forces dispute his command: Her snows fall to freeze him: her suns burn to brand: Her seas yawn to engulf him: her rocks rise to crush: And the lion and leopard, allied, lurk to rush On their startled invader. In lone Malabar, Where the infinite forest spreads breathless and far, 'Mid the cruel of eye and the stealthy of claw (Striped ...
— Lucile • Owen Meredith

... her lips as they were, a passion of anger and hopeless effort that somehow roused me into desire to help her and these strange people of hers. Too, if what she said was true, these raiders who had despoiled her people would in time engulf the world with a war of conquest, even if they were less able to defeat us than she estimated. I resolved to make the most of this opportunity to learn the worst of this hidden threat to men everywhere. I felt a kinship with Nokomee and her friend, silent and alert beside me, and I realized ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell

... furiously on the Trojans and killed Doryclus, a bastard son of Priam; then he wounded Pandocus, Lysandrus, Pyrasus, and Pylartes; as some swollen torrent comes rushing in full flood from the mountains on to the plain, big with the rain of heaven—many a dry oak and many a pine does it engulf, and much mud does it bring down and cast into the sea— even so did brave Ajax chase the foe furiously over the plain, ...
— The Iliad • Homer

... the blinding wind, the flying stones and sand, and the awful noise, confounded me. As the high watery walls came rolling in, and, at their highest, tumbled into surf, they looked as if the least would engulf the town. As the receding wave swept back with a hoarse roar, it seemed to scoop out deep caves in the beach, as if its purpose were to undermine the earth. When some white-headed billows thundered on, and dashed ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens

... sovereignty, and will raise their immemorial standards among all the 'laid-out' scenery of a park, just as they would have done far from any human interference, in a solitude which must everywhere return to engulf them, springing up out of the necessities of their exposed position, and superimposing itself upon the work of man's hands. And so it was that, at the foot of the path which led down to this artificial lake, there might be seen, in its two tiers woven of trailing forget-me-nots below ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust

... naught remains, and death is naught But life's last goal, so swiftly sought: Let those who cling to life abate Their fond desires, and yield to fate; Soon shall grim time and yawning night In their vast depths engulf us quite; Impartial death demands the whole— The body slays nor spares the soul. Dark Taenara and Pluto fell, And Cerberus, grim guard of hell— All these but empty rumours seem, The pictures of a troubled dream. Where then will the departed spirit ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler

... electrons will build your houses, my lightning do your errands, my winds sail your ships, on the same terms. You cannot live without my air and my water and my warmth; but each of them is a source of power that will crush or engulf or devour you before it will turn one hair's-breadth from its course. Your trees will be uprooted by my tornadoes, your fair fields will be laid waste by floods or fires; my mountains will fall on your delicate forms and utterly crush and ...
— The Breath of Life • John Burroughs

... from the salt waters, for it is so delightful to see the water's expanse all around, and traverse its mirror-like surface. The sea presents a beautiful picture, even when it storms and rages, when waves tower upon waves, and threaten to dash the vessel to pieces or to engulf it—when the ship alternately dances on their points, or shoots into the abyss; and I frequently crept for hours in a corner, or held fast to the sides of the ship, and let the waves dash over me. ...
— Visit to Iceland - and the Scandinavian North • Ida Pfeiffer

... effective resistance to these Asiatics, who combined superiority in numbers with surpassing generalship. Since the Arab attack in the eighth century Christendom had never been in graver peril. But the wave of Mongol invasion, which threatened to engulf Europe in barbarism, receded as quickly as it came. The Mongols soon abandoned Poland and Hungary and retired to their ...
— EARLY EUROPEAN HISTORY • HUTTON WEBSTER

... waves on the Lido; the piled storm-clouds parting like a curtain above a dead Venice; and behind, the gleaming eternal Alps, sending their challenge to the sea—the forces that make the land, to the forces that engulf it. ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... hesitated ere venturing out upon that angry stretch of water in such a frail craft. The crooked Kennebacasis was showing its temper in no uncertain manner. Exposed to the full rake of the strong westerly wind, the waves were running high, and breaking into white-caps, threatened to engulf the reeling canoe. But the Indian was master of the situation, and steered so skilfully that only an occasional wisp of spray was ...
— The King's Arrow - A Tale of the United Empire Loyalists • H. A. Cody

... this last day of March—one glimpses the workmen's houses, upright in space, hazy and fantastic chessboards, with squares of light dabbed on in places, or like vertical cliffs in which our swarming is absorbed. Scattering among the twilight colonnade of the trees, these people engulf themselves in the heaped-up lodgings and rooms; they flow together in the cavity of doors; they plunge into the houses; and there they are ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse

... nor the sight of an occasional mutile (soldier who has lost a limb), pathetically clumsy on his new crutches, quite sent home the presence of the war. The normal life of the city was powerful enough to engulf the disturbance, the theaters were open, there were the same crowds on the boulevards, and the same gossipy spectators in the sidewalk cafes. After a year of war the Parisians were accustomed to soldiers, cripples, and people in mourning. The strongest effect of the war was more subtle of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan

... and selfishness, and stubbornness, and penuriousness are still keeping many people in the trenches. But they will be dislodged. Just as sure as fate they will be driven from cover. They are fighting a losing battle. They are standing in the way of an irresistible movement that is sure to engulf them. If there were time I should like to describe just what is being done along this line in some places and give the reflex influence of the same on the community. It has surely meant a new heaven and a new earth to many a child, and glimmerings of the same to many ...
— On the Firing Line in Education • Adoniram Judson Ladd

... the prophet showed his teeth. "And woe unto you too, race of vipers, bladders of wind! As the fire devours the stubble, and the flame consumes the chaff, so your root will be rottenness and your seed go up as dust. Fear will engulf you like a torrent. The high peaks will be broken, the mountains will sever, and night be upon all. The valleys and hills will be strewn with your corpses, the rocks will run with your blood, the plain will drink it, and the vultures feast on your flesh. Woe unto you all, ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus

... all trades in an industry must act under one direction. Hence they strive to assimilate the engineers and machinists, whose labor is essential to the continuance of the operation of the plant. They thus reproduce on a minor scale the attempt of the Knights of Labor during the eighties to engulf the ...
— A History of Trade Unionism in the United States • Selig Perlman

... was dragging himself painfully to his hands and knees, as though to attempt the impossible feat of crawling back to the cabin hatch. The wave was almost upon Billy. In a moment it would engulf him, and then rush on across him to tear Theriere from the deck and hurl him beyond the ship into the tumbling, watery, chaos ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... to have been able to lift this sorrow from the girl riding beside her. For she was aware that Aline Harley might as well have reached for the moon as that toward which her untutored heart yearned. She had come to life late and traveled in it but a little way. Yet the tragedy of it was about to engulf her. No lifeboat was in sight. She must sink or swim alone. Virginia's unspoiled heart went out to her with a rush of pity and sympathy. Almost the very words that Waring Ridgway had used ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine

... called attractive. It lay forlorn and dismal at the foot of the slope, its forty or more buildings dingy, unpainted, ugly, scattered along the one street as though waiting for the encompassing desolation to engulf them. Two serpentine lines of steel, glistening in the sunlight, came from some mysterious distance across the dead level of alkali, touched the edge of town where rose a little red wooden station and a water tank of the same color, and then ...
— The Boss of the Lazy Y • Charles Alden Seltzer

... in soundness of morals; without which Liberty only means licence to be vicious; licence to ruin oneself, and diffuse misery to others. To a man not proof against the omnipresent drinkshop, high wages are a curse; days called holy and short hours of work do but more quickly engulf him in ruin. But he pulls others too down in his fall. That nearly every Vice tends to waste, and preeminently intoxication by liquors or drugs, certain Economists are strangely slow to learn. Moreover, nearly every widespread vice makes ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking

... the rim of the pit. She had fainted at sight of the ghost-shape, whose white-hot folds flapped there, reaching to engulf her in their all-consuming embrace. Carr babbled like a madman as he pulled her away from the horrible thing that pulsated with eager flutterings not three feet away, its hot breath singeing her silken lashes ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent

... too horrible to Saronia. Wild, heaving waves of furious thought rushed through her soul, threatening to engulf her reason, but like a shivering barque she determined to struggle through the breakers to the open sea and ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short

... dictating to his secretary a mass of intimate instructions to a contractor about how to build a rotunda in a hotel in Cuba, at the same time with his left hand on a drawer full of complicated notes on his philosophy of life, which with the other lobe of his brain he was traversing in order to engulf the interviewer as soon as the letter was finished. Shaughnessy never could have carried on such an interview, lasting four hours of a busy life. His talks to the press must be curt and comprehensive—or ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino

... lake of still, dead water; in which we see the light of the lantern reflected as in a mirror. It is fearful to look on—so black and motionless: a sluggish pool, thick and treacherous, which seemingly would engulf us without so much as a wave or a bubble; and we are within a foot of its surface! We draw involuntarily back, and creep up the steep stair to the ...
— A Tramp's Wallet - stored by an English goldsmith during his wanderings in Germany and France • William Duthie

... serpents, leaping kitten-like at our heels. Above us is a billowy canopy of fire soaring upward with a vast crackling roar. Fiery splinters shoot around us, while before us is a black pit of smoke. Smooth walls of fire uprear about us. We are in a cavern of fire, and in another moment it will engulf us. Oh, my rescuer, a last frenzied effort! We are almost at the door. Then I am lifted up and we both tumble out into the street. Not a second too soon, for, like a savage beast foiled of its prey, a blast of flame shoots after us, ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... ten thousand fears desiring To engulf their helpless prey? One faint hope, his grace inspiring, Is a mightier thing ...
— A Brief Memoir with Portions of the Diary, Letters, and Other Remains, - of Eliza Southall, Late of Birmingham, England • Eliza Southall

... beds of flowers seemed an impertinence almost—some little colored insect that sought to settle on a sleeping monster—some gaudy fly that danced impudently down the edge of a great river that could engulf it with a toss of its smallest wave. That Forest with its thousand years of growth and its deep spreading being was some such slumbering monster, yes. Their cottage and garden stood too near its running lip. When the winds were strong and lifted its shadowy ...
— The Man Whom the Trees Loved • Algernon Blackwood

... whereby it is primarily a picture of that life that the story gives us. He is represented as inordinately, as quite monstrously, endowed for the career that from the first absorbs and that finally is to be held, we suppose to engulf him; and it is a tribute to the truth with which his endowment is presented that we should scarce know where else to look for so complete and convincing an account of such adventures. Casanova de Seingalt is of course infinitely more ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio

... a day after his departure, a long and lonely Sunday. She walked five miles by herself. She thought of the momently more horrible fact that vacation was over, that the office would engulf her again. She declared to herself that two weeks were just long enough holiday to rest her, to free her from the office; not long enough to ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis

... smiled across at her. "So don't let us talk any more about the shadow. Only"—gently—"if I came nearer to you—the shadow might engulf you, too." He paused, then continued more lightly: "But if you'll forgive my barbarous incivility of Sunday, perhaps—perhaps I may be allowed to stand just on the outskirts of your life—watch you pass by on your road to fame, and toss ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler

... some one ran quickly into the hall, and, after much stamping of feet, burst into the room. This was Proshka—a thirteen-year-old youngster who was shod with boots of such dimensions as almost to engulf his legs as he walked. The reason why he had entered thus shod was that Plushkin only kept one pair of boots for the whole of his domestic staff. This universal pair was stationed in the hall of the mansion, so that any servant who was summoned to the house might don the said ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... awful loneliness could engulf the human spirit till he sat beside the fevered man in the vast solitude of the primeval forest, asking in his heart whether God Himself had ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green

... speak the truth," he began. "I was left to guard this creature, who sat upon a bench, shackled to the wall. I stood by the open doorway at the opposite side of the chamber. He could not reach me, yet, O-Tar, may Iss engulf me if he did not drag me to him helpless as an unhatched egg. He dragged me to him, greatest of jeddaks, with his eyes! With his eyes he seized upon my eyes and dragged me to him and he made me lay my swords and dagger upon the table and back off into a corner, and ...
— The Chessmen of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs

... great roomy, clean kitchen of the deacon's house might be seen the lithe, comely form of Diana Pitkin presiding over the roaring great oven which was to engulf the armies of pies and cakes which were in due course of preparation on the ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe

... approaching pro-slavery meeting. It seemed to the unawed and indignant champion of liberty that it were "better that the winds should scatter it in fragments over the whole earth—better that an earthquake should engulf it—than that it should be used for so unhallowed and detestable a purpose!" The anti-abolition feeling of the town had become so bitter and intense that Henry E. Benson, then clerk in the anti-slavery office, writing on the 19th ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke

... to engulf England to-morrow," said Jerrold, "the English would manage to meet and dine somewhere among the rubbish, just ...
— The Jest Book - The Choicest Anecdotes and Sayings • Mark Lemon

... his white handkerchief, saw his family carried far out to sea as if to another world, and he longed for some yawning earthquake to engulf him. He stood transfixed to the dock; the perspiration of excitement, now checked, was chilling him when Gertrude caught his arm and said, "Father, what is ...
— The Harris-Ingram Experiment • Charles E. Bolton

... plentiful crop of them; monsters of all sorts swarm suddenly upon the earth, comets blaze in the sky, eclipses frighten nature, meteors fall in rain, while mermaids and sirens beguile, and sea-serpents engulf every passing ship, and terrible cataclysms ...
— Lady Into Fox • David Garnett

... on their school reports: "Conduct excellent; no progress in studies." Of such children some teachers confine themselves to such a remark as: "They are so good," and by this they tend to protect them from any intervention, and leave them to sink undisturbed into the weakness which threatens to engulf them like a quicksand. Other children, whose natural impulses are strong, are noted merely as creators of disorder, and are set down as "naughty." If we enquire into the nature of their naughtiness, we shall be told almost invariably that "they will never keep still." These turbulent spirits are ...
— Spontaneous Activity in Education • Maria Montessori

... by a frenzied militia at helpless men and women; grows deeper with each splitting crack of the dynamite that is laid to tear asunder the conscienceless wielder of the goad; and must one day fall gaping in a cavernous embouchure that will engulf ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking

... is the safest way, in one respect, but with most danger in another. On the water he is powerless except at night. Even then he can only summon fog and storm and snow and his wolves. But were he wrecked, the living water would engulf him, helpless, and he would indeed be lost. He could have the vessel drive to land, but if it were unfriendly land, wherein he was not free to move, his position would still ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker

... went, he made a profound impression on the lives and minds of the people and won over his political opponents by his strength, sympathy, {242} and breadth of mind. At the period when storms threatened to engulf our Ship of State, he became President of our country. Although Lincoln was an untried pilot, he stood by the helm like a veteran master. A man of earnest and intense conviction, he strove to maintain the glory of our flag ...
— Boy Scouts Handbook - The First Edition, 1911 • Boy Scouts of America

... astronomers predicted at once what the inevitable result would be, and you can imagine the consternation of the world as this monstrous, fiery object bore down upon us, increasing in size and splendor every day, until it filled half the sky and threatened to engulf us in flame and destruction. There seemed to be no possible escape, and, in fact, there was to be no escape from a collision, but almost all the harm that followed was the result of pure fright. For as the comet came ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan

... of it, just out of reach of its beams. They made sure that houses and farms and all inhabited places were emptied of people before the moving terror beams could engulf them. They went into the town of Maplewood itself and frantically made sure that nothing alive remained in it. They went on ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins

... viewer with a more critical eye. The foliage which grew in riotous profusion was green right enough, and Terra green into the bargain—there was no mistaking that. But—Dane caught at the edge of Com-unit for support. But—What was that liver-red blossom which had just reached out to engulf ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton

... Ujiji and then to Uvira, the northernmost point of the lake, which they reached on April 26th. On their return voyage they were caught in a terrible storm, from which they did not expect to be saved, and while the wild tumbling waves threatened momentarily to engulf them a couplet from his fragmentary Kasidah ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright

... blasphemed his God and his Saviour. With a frightful outpouring of obscenity and blasphemy, he called on the earth to gape and swallow his persecutors, for Heaven to open and rain fire upon them, for hell to yawn and engulf them quick. It was as though each blow of the cat forced out of him a fresh burst of beast-like rage. He seemed to have abandoned his humanity. He foamed, he raved, he tugged at his bonds until the strong staves shook again; he writhed himself round upon the triangles ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke

... sentimentalist who is unterrified by nature. The man of reflection and imagination sees his race crawling ant-like over its tiny speck of slowly cooling earth and surrounded by titanic and ruthless forces which threaten at any moment to engulf it. The religious man knows that he is infinitely greater than the beasts of the field or the clods of the highway. Yet Vesuvius belches forth its liquid fire and in one day of stark terror the great city which was full of men ...
— Preaching and Paganism • Albert Parker Fitch

... to get a better idea of the several valleys which here seemed to compose the bottom of the great chasm, and did not reach camp till after dark. Everything now developed on a still larger and grander scale; we saw before us an enormous gorge, very wide at the top, which could engulf an ordinary mountain range and lose it within its vast depths and ramifications. Multitudinous lofty mesas, buttes, and pinnacles began to appear, each a mighty mountain in itself, but more or less overwhelmed by the greater grandeur ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... where they were standing—one of the most exposed parts of the ship—it was difficult to keep one's feet, to say nothing of hearing anyone speak. There was a heavy sea running, and each approaching wave looked big enough to engulf the vessel, but as the mass of moving water reached the bow, the ship rose on it, light and graceful as a bird, shook off the flying spray as a cat shakes her fur after an unwelcome bath, and again ...
— The Lion and The Mouse - A Story Of American Life • Charles Klein

... his watch. Somewhere in the pile at least one element was coming to life, a metal arm reaching out for brother metal to engulf in its cybernetic sweep. ...
— The Junkmakers • Albert R. Teichner

... or struck by tons of solid water when some huge mountain of a wave, toppling to its fall, rushed at her out of the blackness. From minute to minute the men never knew but that the next roaring billow would engulf them also, as already they had seen it roll over ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang

... to engulf her. Feeling my position keenly, I walked to the window, but soon turned and came back in response to her cry: "I must see Mrs. Carew instantly. Give my orders. I will start at once to New York. They will ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green

... breadth; but the entrance to it is so narrow that the tide pours into it like a torrent until it is full. The pent-up waters then rush out on one side of this narrow inlet while they are running in at the other, causing a whirlpool which would engulf a large boat and greatly endanger even a small vessel. Of course it was out of the question to attempt the passage of such a vortex in canoes, except at half flood or half ebb tide, at which periods the waters became quiet. On arriving at the mouth ...
— Ungava • R.M. Ballantyne

... after time, and to master automatism by dividing it against itself. He owes it to his language, which furnishes consciousness with an immaterial body in which to become incarnate, thus dispensing it from depending exclusively upon material bodies, the flux of which would drag it down and soon engulf it. He owes it to social life, which stores and preserves efforts as language stores thought, thereby fixing a mean level to which individuals will rise with ease, and which, by means of this initial impulse, prevents average individuals from going to sleep and urges better people to rise higher. ...
— A New Philosophy: Henri Bergson • Edouard le Roy

... only saw this goose-step work." This was an allusion to the fashion we had to employ in picking our steps on the lookout for holes. In this region the fair face of nature is distorted in every conceivable way with holes and ditches, some of the holes big enough to engulf a house, and it is no mere desire to avoid the water in these holes that compels us to pick our steps in this hell-swept part of the world; it is the first law of nature, self preservation, for many a poor lad has been done to death in them ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant

... what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures, it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. It has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. Whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it ...
— Preface to Shakespeare • Samuel Johnson

... was one of the curious characteristics of Madame Frabelle. Nobody made so many gaffes, yet no-one got out of them so well. To use the lawyer's phrase, she used so many words that she managed to engulf her own and her interlocutor's ideas. No-one, perhaps, had ever talked so much nonsense seriously as she did that day, but the Rev. Byrne Fraser said she was a remarkable woman, who had read and thought deeply. Also he was enchanted ...
— Love at Second Sight • Ada Leverson

... still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange, but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging to engulf us. And all unknowing, we walked ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... glorious embracing, and if I don't make you spend as you have never spent before, I shall be very much deceived. I intend to treat your delicious little con to a delicate morsel. Now, Kate, on your back—open your thighs, and let me engulf my staff in your ...
— The Life and Amours of the Beautiful, Gay and Dashing Kate Percival - The Belle of the Delaware • Kate Percival

... thought of all that he had done for her. He had delivered her from her labours in the Museum; he had introduced her to the young men of The Planet, and had made Maddox send her many books to review; he had lifted her from the obscurity that threatened to engulf her. And he had done more for her than this. He had given her back her youth and intellect; he had made her life a joy instead of a terror to her. But Miss Roots was just. The agony on his face would have melted her heart, but for another ...
— The Divine Fire • May Sinclair

... into bearing paying crops. The colonists had not the patient skill needed for the task. Neither had they the means. Above all, they lacked the market where to dispose of their crops when once raised. Discouragements beset them. Debts threatened to engulf them. The trustees of the Baron de Hirsch Fund, entering the field eleven years later, in 1891, found of three hundred families only two-thirds remaining on their farms. In 1897, when they went to their relief, there ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis

... mud hut to shelter him from the wind and the rain and the terror of the beyond. Outside is the wilderness ready to engulf him. Rather than be left alone at the mercy of elemental things, with no little hut, warm and dark and stuffy, to shelter one, a woman will sacrifice everything—liberty, ambition, health, power, her very dignity. There was a letter in Hadria's pocket at this moment, ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird

... not open and engulf them in the fissures of thy vast abyss and caverns, and no longer display in the sight of heaven such a cruel and ...
— The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci, Complete • Leonardo Da Vinci

... sinking beneath that treacherous mud which, while it seems to give it a firm standing with the low and debased classes of society, is nevertheless rising above its detested head, and will speedily engulf it for ever.' ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens

... are present. It is very different when a book has been completed. The launching has been arranged for and completed by expert hands; she like the ship gathers way and slides forth into an ocean: but, unlike the ship which is certain to float, the waters may close over and engulf her, or perchance she may be towed back to that haven of obscurity from which she emerged, to rust there in silence and neglect. There is excitement in the breast of one man alone—to wit, the author. If his book possesses ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey

... sweep, A wondrous stone there is, before whose strength Stout navies, weak to keep Their binding iron, sink engulf'd at length: So prove I, in this deep Of bitter grief, whom, with her own hard pride, That fair rock knew to guide Where now my life in wreck and ruin drives: Thus too the soul deprives, By theft, ...
— The Sonnets, Triumphs, and Other Poems of Petrarch • Petrarch

... emissaries aiding these movements against established authority and social order. Eastern Europe seemed to be a volcano on the very point of eruption. Unless something was speedily done to check the peril, it threatened to spread to other countries and even to engulf the very foundations ...
— The Peace Negotiations • Robert Lansing

... harvested the moments in which existence justifies itself, its profound depths remain below in their obscure commotion, depths that breed indeed a rational efflorescence, but which are far from exhausted in producing it, and continually threaten, on the contrary, to engulf it. ...
— The Life of Reason • George Santayana

... the non-essential, finds in the series of articles, reprinted in book-form under the title The Two Maps, a rock-basis of general principles on which it may rest secure from the hurling waves of sensationalism, ignorance, misrepresentation and foolishness which are striving perpetually to engulf it. ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell

... the country, consisting of a myriad independent units, regulated by no plan, without a brain centre of any kind. Either the organized town will hold its own against and gradually dominate and systematize the country chaos, or that chaos little by little will engulf the town organism. Every workman who leaves the town automatically places himself on the side of the country in that struggle. And when a town like Moscow loses a third of its working population in a year, ...
— The Crisis in Russia - 1920 • Arthur Ransome

... his game that by a few minor concessions he secured nearly all of the points he cared for, and, while sparing the dignity of the Lords, steered his bill triumphantly out of the breakers which had threatened to engulf it. Very different was his ordinary demeanor in debate when he was off his guard. Observers have often described how his face and gestures while he sat in the House of Commons listening to an opponent would express all the emotions that crossed his mind; with what ...
— William Ewart Gladstone • James Bryce

... the populace at a distance, while within the sacred precincts strolled the King and the ladies and cavaliers of his court treading all unconsciously on the brink of that red terror soon to engulf the monarchy. The gas in the reeling bag was no more inflammable than the air of Paris in those days just before the Revolution. With a salvo of cannon the guy-ropes were released and the balloon ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot

... Like many other of his ablest contemporaries, he saw with alarm the great movement, of which the French Revolution was the obvious embodiment, sweeping away all manner of local traditions and threatening to engulf the little society which still retained its specific character in Scotland. He was stirred, too, in his whole nature when any sacrilegious reformer threatened to sweep away any part of the true old Scottish system. And this is, in fact, the moral implicitly involved in Scott's ...
— Hours in a Library, Volume I. (of III.) • Leslie Stephen

... family circle, after a gloomy account of the disaster threatening to engulf the family fortunes if the proposed policy of fixing prices were carried out, Edwards spoke of Hamlin's disposition to come to his aid, and his suggestion concerning Desire's presence ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy

... . . you were good to me once. Oh! Maurice, I'm not a bad woman, not a wicked woman . . . but I've my son to think of . . . his happiness." She paused, mastering, with an effort, the emotion that threatened to engulf her. "Nothing else counts—nothing! If you go to the wall, ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler

... ancient Mother Earth, and she is dying. To the cliffs the waves are rolling, To the old man and his consort, To the two last living mortals. Now a flash—I saw them smiling, Then embracing, without speaking, Ever kissing. Night then—roaring, Did the flood engulf these beings. This I saw, and well I know now, That a kiss outweighs all language, Is, though mute, love's song of songs. And when words fail, then the singer Should be silent; therefore silent He returns now to the garden. On the stone steps of the terrace Lay ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... prosperity and sunshine you find yourself surrounded by flatterers and so called friends, but let the waves of adversity beat about and threaten to engulf you—then stretch forth your hands for the friends you have known and you will find yourself stranded and—alone. There may be a few timid, shrinking creatures who feel they would like to give the right hand of fellowship, but popular opinion ...
— Bohemian Society • Lydia Leavitt

... struggles, he would fan the sparks of his exhausted emotions into flame, so that she might warm herself by the glow. And when the burden became too great for him, when the black floods of anguish and despair which she poured out upon him threatened to engulf him altogether—then he would tramp away into the forest, or out upon the snow-encrusted hills, and call up the demons of his soul once more, and proclaim himself unconquered and unconquerable. He would spread his ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair

... and stones. Here he meets a rolling fire, but standing firm in the middle of the path, the fire passes harmlessly over his head. Hardly has it gone by, however, when he hears a terrible roar behind him, as though the sea in all its fury were at his heels ready to engulf him. He resolutely refuses to look back; and the noise subsides. A thick hedge of thorns closes the way before him; but he pushes through it, only to fall into a ditch filled with nettles and brambles on the other side, where he faints with loss of blood. When he recovers ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland

... the performance of a duty which he, true to his responsibility, would intrust to no other, in such an hour as this,—that of guiding his storm-tossed bark among the frightful billows that were threatening every instant, to engulf her. Thus swiftly onward drove the seemingly devoted ship, strained, shivering, and groaning beneath the terrible power of the gale, like an over-ridden steed, as she dashed, yet unharmed, through the mist and spray and constantly-breaking white caps ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson

... listening Heaven that the cup might pass from their lips, and it has not been permitted to pass, as His was not permitted to pass. In the souls of men and of women is something of the divine, something high and marvelous—a gift from Heaven to hold the human race above the mire which threatens to engulf it.... Every day it asserts itself somewhere; in sacrifice, in devotion, in simple courage, in lofty renunciation. It is common; wonderfully, beautifully common... yet there are men who do not see it, or, seeing, ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland

... extreme effect could be obtained from the full force of the attracting or repulsive energies. They darted this way and that but always found themselves closer to the milky billows that now were pulsating in seeming eagerness to engulf the new victim. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various

... point, a great danger appears. The conflict within threatens to engulf the society in self-war, group against group. The vital traditions may be lost—not merely altered or reformed, but completely destroyed in this period of chaos and anarchy. We have found many such examples ...
— The Defenders • Philip K. Dick

... have that ultimate passionate adventure for which the girls' cloaks were delicate and beautifully furred, for which their cheeks were painted and their hearts higher than the transitory dome of pleasure that would engulf them, coiffure, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald

... dispersed by General Sheridan's ten thousand cavalry. Everywhere, the soldiers laughed in the face of death. Each seemed to feel, as did the old statesman with whom I had conversed on that night at Richmond, that he was a sentinel on post, and must stand there to the last. The lava might engulf him, but he was "posted," and must stand until relieved, by his commanding officer or death. It was the "poor private," in his ragged jacket and old shoes, as well as the officer in his braided coat, who felt thus. For those private soldiers ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke

... heard the roar of the open exhaust from the girl's motor. Like a red streak the car shot down the hill of the Fox estate and into County Road. The Captain gasped as he watched a cloud of dust engulf the ...
— Captain Pott's Minister • Francis L. Cooper

... steam-ferry, and, to say the truth, I do not understand well how horses and waggons could have been transported over before the existence of steamboats, as, in that particular spot, the mighty stream rolls its muddy waters with an incredible velocity, forming whirlpools, which seem strong enough to engulf anything that ...
— Monsieur Violet • Frederick Marryat

... in these days, I imagine," replied Langton. "Autocracy on the part of a monarch is nowhere endured, save in Russia,—and what is Russia? A huge volcano, smouldering with fire, and ever threatening to break out in flame and engulf the Throne! Monarchs were not always wisdom personified in olden times,—and I venture to consider them nowadays less wise and more careless than ever. Only a return to almost barbaric ignorance and superstition would tolerate any complete monarchical authority in these present times of ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... position in the sphere of European politics just then. Ludwig, however, had dallied with the situation too long. Nothing that he could do now would save him. Unrest was in the air. All over Europe the tide of democracy was rising, and fast threatening to engulf the entrenched positions of the autocrats. Metternich, reading the portents, was planning to leave a mob-ridden Vienna for the more tranquil atmosphere of Brighton; Louis Philippe, setting him an example, had already ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham

... of the Libyan, as well as of many Asiatic deserts, have no such safeguards. The sands are fast encroaching upon them, and threaten soon to engulf them, unless man shall resort to artesian wells and plantations, or to some other efficient means of checking the advance of this formidable enemy, in time to save these islands of the waste ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh

... example; and away we went, careering on before the fast-rising seas. Very glad we were that we had so fine a harbour to run for. The gale blew harder and harder, and the waves looked as if every instant they would engulf us; for we were now exposed to the whole roll of the German Ocean. On sailing in we were struck by the remarkable appearance of the flesh-coloured pinkish rocks, whose needle-shaped points rose up out of the water. We had, however, little time to notice them, ere rushing by we brought-up in the ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston

... breakers and in we went. As I stood at the steer-oar I saw that this was a heavier surf than we had ever yet been in. We were swept along at a terrific rate, and yet it appeared as if each following wave must engulf us, so lofty were they, and so rapidly did ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 1 (of 2) • George Grey

... and as always battling for supremacy there, that principle of evil which, accepted by Tito as his life-law, and therefore consummating itself in him, "bringeth forth death;" death the most utter and, so far as it is possible to see, the most hopeless that can engulf the human soul. ...
— The Ethics of George Eliot's Works • John Crombie Brown

... started up-slope when Nymani cried out. A white bulk, hard to distinguish in that light against the gray of the earth, headed after them. Dane had a fleeting glimpse of curled tusks, of an open mouth, raw-red and wide enough to engulf his whole head, of shaggy legs driving at an unbelievable pace. Asaki snapped a beam from the needler. The white monster roared and came on. They dived for the scant cover offered as the graz bull died, not two yards away from the Chief Ranger, ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North

... by the ropes of the falling bowsprit, fell with a crash, dashing him downward into the gulf below. He felt the awful stinging pain of the blow, like the thrust of a spear; a mighty wave seemed to mount upward to meet and to engulf him. Then he lost all perception of what he was doing or of what happened to him; and it might to his consciousness have been either moments or hours before he found himself struggling in the icy water. He swam ...
— The Philistines • Arlo Bates

... men of experience in operatic management, took the house, giving the stockholders the free use of their boxes and 116 free admissions every night besides. The second season started brilliantly, but just as financial disaster was preparing to engulf it the performances were abruptly brought to an end by the prima donna, Signora, or Signorina, Fanti, who took French leave—an incident which remains unique in New York's operatic annals, at least in its consequences, ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel

... that when this corresponding song is sung, the ransomed of the Lord shall have correspondingly witnessed the overthrow of the adversaries of Jehovah, and shall themselves have escaped from the perils of the many waters which had threatened to engulf them. ...
— A Brief Commentary on the Apocalypse • Sylvester Bliss

... difference between the behavior of the folk in the bows and that of the rich or great people at the other end of the boat. The young mother clasped her infant tightly to her breast every time that a great wave threatened to engulf the fragile vessel; but she clung to the hope that the stranger's words had set in her heart. Each time that the eyes turned to his face she drew fresh faith at the sight, the strong faith of a helpless woman, a mother's faith. She lived by that divine promise, the loving ...
— Christ in Flanders • Honore de Balzac

... the Judiciary, nor assume the province of interfering in private rights, nor of overhauling the decisions of the courts of law." Otherwise, "the legislature would become one great arbitration that would engulf all the courts of law, [ac] and sovereign discretion would be 'the only rule of decision,—a state of things equally favorable to lawyers and ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... foundering. Few are so richly freighted as yours, but the same unknown depths are beneath each. But, Miss Amy, I pray you remember the whole of this suggestive Bible story. Those imperilled disciples were watched by a loving, powerful friend. He came to their aid, making the very waves that threatened to engulf the pathway of his rescuing love. He saved those old-time friends. They are living to-day, they will live forever. I can't explain the dark and terrible things of which this world is full, I cannot explain the awful mystery of evil in any of its forms. I know the pestilence ...
— A Knight Of The Nineteenth Century • E. P. Roe

... back and forth over its cushion of deep moss he passed, seeking for a treacherous place—a place wherein Shag would sink to the belly; where the sand-mud would grasp his legs like soft chains and hold him to his death, but not engulf the body—that must ...
— The Outcasts • W. A. Fraser

... natural forces seemed too startling to be real to the mind of a Spanish priest who, despite all the evidences of triumphant materialism, still clung to the Cross and kept his simple, faithful soul high above the waves that threatened to engulf it. Turning anew to his melancholy duties, he bent over a dying youth just lifted from beneath a weight of stones that had crushed him. The boy's fast glazing eyes were upturned to ...
— The Secret Power • Marie Corelli

... What hospitable land would receive us on its shores? My thoughts then reverted to our beloved country. Then starting suddenly from my reverie, I exclaimed: 'O terrible condition! that black and boundless sea resembles the eternal night which will engulf us! All those who surround me seem yet tranquil, but that fatal calm will soon be succeeded by the most frightful torments. Fools, what had we to find in Senegal, to make us trust to the most perfidious of elements! ...
— Thrilling Narratives of Mutiny, Murder and Piracy • Anonymous

... instead of obeying, they disappeared behind the cabin. For a moment the men rested on their oars, then at a command from the Captain they pulled furiously away from the sinking ship which threatened to engulf them as she went down. However, they had gained a safe distance before the doomed vessel, rocking back and forth, gained a dreadful momentum, showed her splintered and shattered hull as if in mute excuse for her action, and disappeared forever in ...
— The Boy Scouts on a Submarine • Captain John Blaine

... hatch again. He looked about him. David was not to be seen. Even during the time he had been below matters had grown worse—the ship was tumbling about more than ever, and the seas, which rose high above the bulwarks, seemed every instant about to engulf her. But where was David? He worked his way, not without great danger of being carried overboard, to the companion hatch, over which, stooping down, he shouted David's name. His heart sank within him. There was no answer. "David! David!" he cried again. "Oh, David, ...
— Adrift in a Boat • W.H.G. Kingston

... like a madman to keep from being sucked into the largest whirlpool along the course; which seemed to reach out eager fingers, and strive to the utmost to engulf him in its ...
— Canoe Mates in Canada - Three Boys Afloat on the Saskatchewan • St. George Rathborne

... manner, flowers to a woman he didn't know, and smiling, to put her at her ease! His pink face burned to a livelier pink, his ears went hot, his heart went cold. The bow he finally accomplished was the blighted bud of the bow he had projected; and, as the earth didn't, of its charity, open and engulf him, he hastened as best he could, and with a painful sense of slinking, to remove his crestfallen person ...
— My Friend Prospero • Henry Harland

... to and fro upon her bed; she writhed and shrieked as if she already saw hell opening to engulf her. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau

... one wide shoulder. Above prominent cheekbones, his eyes were hot and bright, his clipped beard pointed sharply from a jaw which must be grimly set, his face was flushed, and his energy and will was like a cloud to engulf the disheartened men as he ...
— Ride Proud, Rebel! • Andre Alice Norton

... that anything can happen here—that the city is quicksand where a chance step would engulf one." Billy stared frowningly out on the vivid street ahead of him. A pretty English bride and her soldier husband were out exercising their dogs. Two ladies in a victoria were advertising their toilettes. A blond baby toddled past with his ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley

... desire, Flung by man in his infinite courage, across the stern force of the water; And he looks at the river and fears, the bridge is so slight, yet he ventures His life to its fragile keeping, if it fails the waves will engulf him. O Arches! be strong to uphold him, and bear him across to the city, The beautiful city whose spires still glow with ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell

... failed, lights flamed before his eyes, in his ears was a drone that grew to a rushing roar, his lungs seemed bursting, and the quaking ooze yearning to engulf him. Then my Beltane knew the bitter agony of coming death, and strove no more; but in that place of darkness and horror, a clammy something crawled upon his face, slipped down upon his helpless body, seized hold upon his belt and dragged at him ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol

... swept. The leading Platoon was now covering the ground at such a pace that it was impossible to catch up with them. As the ground was open the whole line could be seen sweeping forward to engulf the enemy. The long dotted lines of brown advanced steadily and inexorably. Line upon line of them breasted the crest, and followed in the wake of the leading wave. It was scarcely a spectacular sight, yet it was the vindication of the ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"

... stands upon the threshold of a new social order. The capitalist system of production and distribution is doomed; capitalist appropriation of labor's product forces the bulk of mankind into wage slavery, throws society into the convulsions of the class struggle, and momentarily threatens to engulf humanity in ...
— Communism and Christianism - Analyzed and Contrasted from the Marxian and Darwinian Points of View • William Montgomery Brown

... before you. Ocean expands at your feet like a carpet; the mountains resemble ampitheatres; heaven's ether is above them like the arching folds of a stage curtain. Here we may breathe the thoughts of God, as it were like a perfume. See! the angry billows which engulf the ships laden with men seem to us, where we are, mere bubbles; and if we raise our eyes and look above, all there is blue. Behold that diadem of stars! Here the tints of earthly impressions disappear; standing on this nature rarefied by space do you ...
— Seraphita • Honore de Balzac

... enough of himself to leave everything behind, and jump over the precipice into the unknown? If ever he wishes to return to what he has left, he will have just the height of this jump to climb back to the old place. The old place is a certainty. The unknown may engulf in failure. He {178} must chance that, and all for the sake of a faith in himself, which has not yet been justified; for the sake of a vague star leading into the misty unknown. He knows that he could have been ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut



Words linked to "Engulf" :   steep, absorb, plunge, rivet, focus, concentrate, envelop, drink in, enclose, soak up, drink, centre, wrap, center, engross, enfold, enwrap, pore



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