"Flapping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shells were flip-flapping and hooting. Occasional bullets buzzed in the air and spanged into tree trunks. Wounded men and other stragglers were slinking through ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... relaxation; loosening &c v.; freedom; disjunction &c 44; rope of sand. V. make loose &c adj.; loosen, slacken, relax; unglue &c 46; detach &c (disjoin) 44. Adj. nonadhesive, immiscible; incoherent, detached, loose, baggy, slack, lax, relaxed, flapping, streaming; disheveled; segregated, like grains of sand unconsolidated &c 231, uncombined ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... that Bernard was struggling to turn over on his side, flapping about with his slow uncouth gestures like a bird with a broken wing. "Let me—!" Laura's "No, Lawrence!" came too late. Hyde had taken the cripple in his arms, lifting him like a child: "You're light for your height," he ...
— Nightfall • Anthony Pryde
... All was consternation;—sails flapping; breakers roaring; ropes snapping and beating; masts creaking; hull thumping; men shouting! The captain and his wife were on deck in the wink of an eye. Every one issued an order and no one obeyed. At last, the lady shouted—"let go the anchor!"—the worst ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... Chauncey Dike, and he had won the race for the bottle of "Black Betty,"—Chauncey Dike, his long, black hair shining with bear's oil. Amid the cheers of the bride's friends he leaped from his saddle, mounted a stump and, flapping his arms, crowed in victory. Before he had done the vanguard of the groom's friends were upon us, pell-mell, all in the finest of backwoods regalia,—new hunting shirts, trimmed with bits of color, and all armed to the teeth—scalping knife, tomahawk, and all. Nor had Chauncey ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... screaming from a tangle of vines; its heavy, flapping wings flashed red against the pale trees. A pandemonium of shrieking cries echoed its alarm as other birds took flight; the forest about them was in an uproar of harsh cries. And faintly, from far in the rear, came a babel of shrill calls—weird, inhuman!—the voices ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the sprinter! Going home? Good-bye! Good-bye!" were among the derisive cries that he heard. There could be no mistake, the attention of the entire student body was upon him, he was convinced, and his speed increased. His long legs, his flying coat tails, his flapping carpet-bag, indeed his entire appearance was such that shrieks of laughter arose from his pursuers, but Peter John never once glanced behind him. Every fresh call served to increase his terror. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness were about to be taken from him and his sole ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... cider in its sociable stage of incipient snappiness. Sleepy dogs bayed far away. Lone trees approached me, the motion seeming to belong to them rather than to me, and drifted slowly past—austere spectral figures. Somewhere about midnight I fell asleep and was awakened by a flapping sail and a groaning mast, to find myself sprawling over the wheel. The wind had changed; it was once more blowing up-stream, and a drizzling rain was driving through the gloom. During my sleep the boat had gone ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... other to be had. Of the tea and coffee it might be said as once it was said of two bad roads—"whichever one you take you will wish you had taken the other;" the beefsteak was a problem of impracticability; and the chickens—Fleda could not help thinking that a well-to-do rooster which she saw flapping his wings in the yard, must in all probability be at that very moment endeavouring to account for a sudden breach in his social circle; and if the oysters had been some very fine ladies they could hardly have retained ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... manoeuvring with troops in battle. The Imperial troops were formed in heavy masses. Gustavus, taking his lesson from the Roman legion, had introduced a more open order—he had lightened the musket, dispensed with the rest, given the musketeer a cartridge box instead of the flapping bandoleer. He had trained his cavalry, instead of firing their carbines and wheeling, to charge home with the sword. He had created a real field artillery of imperfect structure, but which told on the ...
— Lectures and Essays • Goldwin Smith
... may care (I don't!). Fier, fiere, companion. Fier, sound, active. Fin', to find. Fissle, tingle, fidget with delight. Fit, foot. Fittie-lan', the near horse of the hind-most pair in the plough. Flae, a flea. Flaffin, flapping. Flainin, flannen, flannel. Flang, flung. Flee, to fly. Fleech, wheedle. Fleesh, fleece. Fleg, scare, blow, jerk. Fleth'rin, flattering. Flewit, a sharp lash. Fley, to scare. Flichterin, fluttering. Flinders, shreds, broken pieces. Flinging, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... loveliest pigeons, mostly white, but of all colours, walking about, making bows to each other, and talking a language she could not understand. She clapped her hands with delight, and up rose such a flapping of wings that she in her ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... letting fly the jib-sheet with his own hands, when the cutter came swiftly up to the breeze, with all her canvas flapping, or was running into the wind's eye, as seamen term it, until the light craft was a hundred feet to windward of her former position. Quick and dexterous as was this movement, and ready as had been the expedient, it was not quicker or more ready than that of the Tuscarora. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... for her bureau, and snatching her own motto down, crumpled its face securely against her skirt and started for the door. Just what the motto was no one but herself knew. Sprawling in paint-brush hieroglyphics on a great flapping sheet of brown wrapping-paper, the sentiment, whatever it was, had been nailed face down to the wall ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... suppressed whisperings, now roared like a rock-bound sea-coast in a tempest. As if by magic, men appeared decorated with tricolored ribbons, and all joined with the soldiers in moving directly toward the place where the white flag was flapping its misplaced triumph over eyes which glared at it in hatred and hands which quivered to rend it piecemeal. Their wishes were anticipated; for the foremost rank had scarcely reached the threshold of the palace, when ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... sail, and rope, What anvils rang, what hammers beat, In what a forge and what a heat Were shaped the anchors of thy hope! Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 'Tis but the flapping of the sail, And not a rent made by the gale! In spite of rock and tempest's roar In spite of false lights on the shore, Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea! Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee, Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, Our faith triumphant ...
— America First - Patriotic Readings • Various
... e'en reddy to haud me ain wi' any lassie i' the house," said she, nodding her tall, flapping ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... she thereby, as it seem'th to me, The OTHER leg? For vainly I, at least, Did search for the amissing Fellow-jewel —Namely, the other leg— In the sanctified precincts, Nigh her very dearest, very tenderest, Flapping and fluttering and flickering skirting. Yea, if ye should, ye beauteous friendly ones, Quite take my word: She hath, alas! LOST it! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! Hu! It is away! For ever away! The other leg! Oh, pity for that loveliest other leg! Where may it now tarry, all-forsaken weeping? The lonesomest ...
— Thus Spake Zarathustra - A Book for All and None • Friedrich Nietzsche
... of birds. The right way to achieve flight, as events were to prove, was by the study and practice of gliding. But birds were believed to support, as well as to raise, themselves in the air chiefly by what in the jargon of science is called orthogonal flight, that is, by direct downward flapping of the wings. This view received authoritative support from a famous treatise written in the seventeenth century by Giovanni Alfonso Borelli, an Italian professor of mathematical and natural philosophy. Borelli, ...
— The War in the Air; Vol. 1 - The Part played in the Great War by the Royal Air Force • Walter Raleigh
... have heard them at night working away so hard and flapping and spattering with their tails, that I could imagine there were fifty men at work instead of a hundred of these small animals, but they work by day and by night, and never seem tired, till the dam is sound ...
— The Settlers in Canada • Frederick Marryat
... unconscious of the approach of an enemy, stood for some time suckling her young one, which seemed about two years old; they then went into a pit containing mud, and smeared themselves all over with it, the little one frisking about his dam, flapping his ears and tossing his trunk incessantly, in elephantine fashion. She kept flapping her ears and wagging her tail, as if in the height of enjoyment. Then began the piping of her enemies, which was performed by blowing into a tube, or the hands closed ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... was necessarily swept out of sight for the moment. The wealthier citizens were in a state bordering on panic,—all but Mr. Lemuel Shackford. In his flapping linen duster, for the weather was very sultry now, Mr. Shackford was seen darting excitedly from street to street and hovering about the feverish crowds, like the stormy petrel wheeling on the edges of a gale. Usually ...
— The Stillwater Tragedy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... on the terrasse of a large cafe near the Place des Ternes, a few hundred yards away from the Avenue Hoche. The cafe was nearly empty, citizens being either in the Bois or on the main boulevards. Mr. Ingram sadly ordered bocks. The waiter, flapping his long apron, called out in a loud voice as he went within: "Deux ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... was verily persuaded that it was a faultless baby, without its peer in the realm of England, and was quite content to catch meek glimpses of things in general from behind its skirts, or over its limp flapping bonnet, and to go staggering about with it like a very little porter with a very large parcel, which was not directed to anybody, and could never be ...
— The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargin • Charles Dickens
... and violets— Blue and gold, and Baby ferns, tucked Within sheltering gnarled roots! And mossy mounds, starred With Trillium and Crane's bill; And patches of lavender sunlight, (No, it's wild Phlox, In the flickering light)— And fire-flies and flapping owls, At twilight, and furry rabbits, Bobbing ahead ...
— A Little Window • Jean M. Snyder
... windward, but his lee-way carried him towards the land, and he was caught when he least expected the trap. The gale increased—the night grew pitchy dark—the roaring breakers were on his lee-beam—the drifting vessel strikes, rebounds, and strikes again—the cry of horror rings through the flapping cordage, and despair is in the eyes of the demon-crew. Helpless they lie amid the wrath of the storm, and the darkened face of Heaven, for the first time, strikes terror on their guilty hearts. Death ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... mighty;—Raphael has his palace—Michael his dome—respect protects and crowds traverse the sacristy and the saloon; but the frescoes of Titian fade in the solitudes of Padua, and the gesso falls crumbled from the flapping canvas, as the sea-winds shake ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin
... that as long as the deer go on feeding and flapping their ears, you may continue your approach. As soon as they throw up the head, and keep the ears still, their suspicions have been aroused, and if you want venison, you must be as still as a rock, till your game is again lulled into security, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... Tiverton folk who disapproved of her shiftlessness in letting the golden hours, run thus to waste, did grudgingly commend her for airing well. Her bed might not even be spread up till sundown, but the sheets were always hanging from her little side window, in fine weather, flapping dazzlingly in the sun; and sometimes her feather-bed lay, the whole day long, on the green slope outside, called by Dilly her "spring," only because the snow melted first there on the freedom days of the year. The new editor of the Sudleigh "Star," seeing her slight, wiry figure ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... thunder and Of hurricane.—'Tis on us now! Awake! [Shouting in Dimsdell's ear. My friend, awake! Dost thou not hear the storm? Oh! how it shrieks and whistles through the shrouds! The awful guns of heaven boom in our ears— Nay, that was the mainsail gone by the board, Flapping with cannon roar. You do not follow me. O, come, I say! This is no sermon. You cannot be asleep, Yet feign you are to cheat me of my story. Wake up, my friend. You ...
— The Scarlet Stigma - A Drama in Four Acts • James Edgar Smith
... violently back as he turned his face within, once more afforded me the golden opportunity so lately lost. Quick as thought I dropped the cord I held, and in the sudden gust the leaves of the inner door, thus released, flew open and impelled my foe irresistibly forward. With his flapping coat and hat he drifted into the lighted hall before the driving blast, and, roused to instantaneous action, I slid from the niche I filled to the icy platform without, and swift and silent as a spectre sped down the sleety steps to the outward darkness. ...
— Miriam Monfort - A Novel • Catherine A. Warfield
... Dominie appeared to enjoy the lobscouse very much. In the course of half-an-hour all was over; that is to say, we had eaten as much as we wished; and the Newfoundland dog, who, during our repast, lay close by young Tom, flapping the deck with his tail, and sniffing the savoury smell of the compound, had just licked all our plates quite clean, and was now finishing with his head in the saucepan; while Tom was busy carrying the crockery into the cabin, and bringing ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... place,—an anachronism belonging to a prehistoric period, drawing a cart which seems also to date back to the days before the Deluge. In the fields the buffalo has usually a complete suit of grey mud, and during the quiet evening hour, goggles at you through the clouds of flies, which surround his flapping ears and brutal nose, the only parts that can be seen of him, above the surface of the mud-hole, or the running water of the river. In both cases he is unlovely, but in the bull-ring he has something magnificent about him. His black coat has a gloss upon it which would not ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... dark curls, Pin fair, and both wore them flapping at their backs, the only difference being that Laura, who was now twelve years old, had for the past year been allowed to bind hers together with a ribbon, while Pin's bobbed as they chose. Every morning early, Mother brushed and twisted, with a kind of grim pride, these silky ringlets ...
— The Getting of Wisdom • Henry Handel Richardson
... grandfather's farm sometime before daybreak, after a drive of nearly twenty miles with heavy work-horses. When I awoke, it was afternoon. I was lying in a little room, scarcely larger than the bed that held me, and the window-shade at my head was flapping softly in a warm wind. A tall woman, with wrinkled brown skin and black hair, stood looking down at me; I knew that she must be my grandmother. She had been crying, I could see, but when I opened my eyes she smiled, peered at me anxiously, and sat down ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... is not necessary in ordinary class work, as the aim there is to teach as many good songs as possible, in order to form a standard of real musical literature. But at the set performance nothing is more delightful than to see children rise, and, without any flapping of pages, or uncomfortable attitudes for seeing the words in a book, sing straight from their hearts. However simple the music or the words, the effect will be well ...
— Music As A Language - Lectures to Music Students • Ethel Home
... caravan with her, for which kindness Nell thanked the lady with unaffected earnestness. She helped with great alacrity to put away the tea-things, and mounted into the vehicle, followed by her delighted grandfather. Their patroness then shut the door, and away they went, with a great noise of flapping, and creaking, and straining, and the bright brass knocker, knocking one perpetual double knock of its own accord ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... out the object he carried. It was a bird, apparently a pigeon of some sort. It seemed to have been stunned, but as Arthur held it out it stirred, then struggled, and in a moment was flapping wildly in an ...
— The Runaway Skyscraper • Murray Leinster
... mass moved into sight, and from it came spoutings of fire that showed dark, jagged wings heavily flapping. It walked a little and stopped; then walked again. Geoffrey could see a great snout and head rocking and turning. Dismal and unspeakable sounds proceeded from the creature as it made towards the cellar-door. After it had got close and leaned against the panels in a toppling, swaying fashion, came ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... was not appeased by the shred of linen he had secured, and again began bending the sapling over. This time he had to bend it further to get Foster within reach, but the flapping coat-tail again tempted him too soon, and although he secured most of the skirt, he let go his hold and the tree sprang back like a bended bow. Foster let go his hold too in mid-arc and went sailing through the air and across the ravine, landing in a ...
— Bears I Have Met—and Others • Allen Kelly
... placed there by the French, and its accuracy may be doubted; as far as I can recollect. The grass growing in the wide streets of Ferrara is no poetical exaggeration; I saw it rank and long even on the thresholds of the deserted houses, whose sashless windows, and flapping doors, and roofless walls, ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... pictures than the realities. Your Helen and your Lady Leonora are too good for me, and I pity you from my soul for being shut up in that old castle. I suppose it is like an old castle in Dauphiny, where I once spent a week, and where I was nearly frightened to death by the flapping of the old tapestry behind my bed, and by the bats which flew in through the broken windows. They say, however, that our chateaux and yours are something different. Of this I have no ...
— Tales And Novels, Vol. 8 • Maria Edgeworth
... know that in the middle of the moor there is something like a lake," continued stork-papa. "You can see one corner of it if you raise yourself a little. There, by the reeds and the green mud, lay a great alder stump; and on this the three swans sat, flapping their wings and looking about them. One of them threw off her plumage, and I immediately recognized her as our house princess from Egypt! There she sat, with no covering but her long black hair. I heard her tell the others to pay good heed to the swan's plumage, while she dived down into ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... entreaty would be vain, and time is already flapping his wings, loaded with inevitable ruin, over yon devoted city and its inhabitants. Thy father shall be safe—trust that to me; and trust me, too, that what I promise I can perform. But thou, my loved one, thou must not ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, - Issue 284, November 24, 1827 • Various
... of hysterics occupied Persis till noon. She looked pale and heavy-eyed as she alighted from her car at her own door. She was about to enter when an object on the lawn caught her eye. Tacked to an upright stake driven into the turf, was a flapping piece of brown paper on which appeared straggling letters, executed in ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... rescuers had reached the opening in the Atlas Chamber, clung a solid crowd, and little energetic black figures clinging to pillars and projections were strenuous to induce these congested masses to stir. Behind him, at a higher point on the scaffolding, a number of men struggled upwards with the flapping folds of a huge black standard. Through the yawning gap in the walls below him he could look down upon the packed attentive multitudes in the Hall of the Atlas. The distant flying stages to the south came out bright and vivid, brought nearer as it seemed by an unusual ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... readers all round, has he once forgotten the laws of politeness, and showed the monster's hideous tail above water? No! Those who like may peep down under waves that are pretty transparent and see it writhing and twirling, diabolically hideous and slimy, flapping amongst bones, or curling round corpses; but above the waterline, I ask, has not everything been proper, agreeable, and decorous, and has any the most squeamish immoralist in Vanity Fair a right to cry fie? When, however, the Siren disappears and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to breathe freer, their coat-tails flapping like wings, they take one by the waist—as one takes his own property. Informing you by a look that they are about to do you the honor of removing you, they whirl you away; then, panting for breath, inform you by another look that they will do themselves the ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... didn't like it! That's the boy, see him kick, he hits out with his fists like a good one. Now then, young Brooke, pitch into a man of your own size, will you?" cried Laurie, delighted with a poke in the face from a tiny fist, flapping aimlessly about. ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott
... teepee, flapping in the breeze, appeared hardly larger than a kerchief caught upon a bush, and the disheartened collie seemed nervously apprehensive of its being utterly swept away. The great peaks were now hid by the rain, and little could be seen but wet rocks, twisted junipers, and the trickling gray streams ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... Supposing he were to peep out into the yard... would there still be a terrible black cloud? Why not try? He put his head out of the back door and saw the blue sky flecked with little white clouds hurrying eastwards. The cock was flapping his wings and crowing, heavy drops were sparkling on the bushes, golden streaks of sunlight penetrated into the passage, and bright reflections from the surface of the waters ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Tante in a soiled cotton bedgown and flapping kappje, appearing, copper stewpan in hand, from between the canvas tilt-curtains of a living-waggon. "You are come at last; the Lord be thanked for it! I have much, much trouble inside." She groaned, and laid her fat, unoccupied ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... of rushes bend Under the flapping of the breeze's wing, Departing and revisiting The haunts of the river ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... they must have come from out of town. They wore khaki suits, with flapping brimmed hats of a color to match and their faces were brown with the wholesome, permanent tan of outdoor life. They seemed greatly amused with themselves and their breezy manner and negligee which smacked of the ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... no sound of all that singing and dancing served to rouse Messer Dante for one moment from his book. Though the air was full of shrill voices and sweet notes and the clapping of hands and the flapping fall of dancing feet, he remained motionless, and never once lifted up his eyes to look at the merry crowd. As for the dancers, I do not think that they saw him, certainly they paid him no heed. Why should such merry fellows as they take ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... after my custom, in the place whither all manner of birds resort. And as I sat I heard a cry of birds that I knew not, very strange and full of wrath. And I knew that they tare and slew each other, for I heard the fierce flapping of their wings. And being afraid, I made inquiry about the fire, how it burned upon the altars. And this boy, for as I am a guide to others so he guideth me, told me that it shone not at all, but smouldered and was dull, and that the flesh which was burnt upon the altar spluttered in the flame, ...
— Stories from the Greek Tragedians • Alfred Church
... these soarings than in observing a bloodless contest in the air, last April. Standing beside a little grove, on a rocky hill-side, I heard Crows cawing near by, and then a sound like great flies buzzing, which I really attributed, for a moment, to some early insect. Turning, I saw two Crows flapping their heavy wings among the trees, and observed that they were teasing a Hawk about as large as themselves, which was also on the wing. Presently all three had risen above the branches, and were circling higher and higher in a slow spiral. The Crows kept constantly swooping at their enemy, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... the exercises were given looked out over the quiet garden, and no sound penetrated there but the far-off muffled noises of the peaceful village life, the rustle of the wind in the evergreens, and the occasional coo or soft flapping flight of a pigeon from the cote in the garden. The room itself was furnished with two or three faldstools and upright wooden arm-chairs of tolerable comfort; a table was placed at the further end, on which stood a realistic Spanish crucifix with two tapers always ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... inconceivable rapidity, already filled half the sky, and as the boy gazed into this cloud, he saw to his astonishment that it was not a cloud at all, but hundreds and hundreds of thousands of great gray birds, flapping their long wings. The shadow of the birds fell over the platform on which the cruel Malefico sat waiting for the King and the bird-boy to be brought forth, and then ceased moving even as a ship that has come ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... answer for, she never did,' said Felix. 'When I saw the exquisite delight it afforded, not only to this Lance but to Captain Audley, to fill the boat with slimy, flapping, uncomfortable dying fishes, I felt that I was never made ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... man obeyed; then looking up, stared. A girl stood before them in the doorway. Anitra, with cheeks ablaze and eyes burning, her traveling dress flapping damp about her heels, and on her head the red shawl she preferred to any hat. Behind her shoulder peered the anxious face of ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... and thickets of thorn and bramble, with a few trees of great size. Nor was wild life wanting in this natural park; some deer were feeding near the bank, while on the water numbers of wild duck and other water-fowl were disporting themselves, splashing and flapping over the surface and ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... plunging into the storm, brought me forward to see instantly a dark cliff ahead and breakers so close under the bows that I felt surely lost, and in my thoughts cried, "Is the hand of fate against me, after all, leading me in the end to this dark spot?" I sprang aft again, unheeding the flapping sail, and threw the wheel over, expecting, as the sloop came down into the hollow of a wave, to feel her timbers smash under me on the rocks. But at the touch of her helm she swung clear of the danger, and in the next moment she was in the lee of ...
— Sailing Alone Around The World • Joshua Slocum
... 'twas dingy enough, being a dirty, narrow place, with high black houses on either side, their windows broken and stuffed with bits of rag and paper, their doorways ornamented with slatternly women or sodden-faced men, while up and down ran squalid, noisy children under the flapping pieces of poor wearing apparel hung ...
— His Grace of Osmonde • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to be a good day. I ran down the hotel corridor to look at the flags flying over the legation quarter, the flags of most of the nations of the world. The sight was reassuring. No wind at all, apparently; they were all idly flapping from their poles, whereas yesterday they had been frantically tearing at them, whipped out stiff by a piercing, cold north wind. So we took rickshaws and were soon running along toward the Hankow station, where we ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... monotonous bass, and on the other there came from the lagoon the many-toned murmur of a thousand bird voices, some familiar and some strange, whooping of cranes and chattering of coots, ducks, and divers, cries of pelicans, and now and then the sound of flapping wings, as if some great bird had been routed out and had changed his feeding-ground. Around me on the sand ran and crawled the host of crabs, some pulling curiously at the gauze of my shelter; and now and then a huge spider crab climbed up the netting like a squirrel and ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume I • Stillman, William James
... racket had stopped, and the men had taken their chutes and thrown them into the wagons, and they had climbed up into their seats, and they had rattled off, in a procession, but they had left the cellar windows flapping. ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... dinner served up just as the king had given these orders, the bird, flapping his wings, hopped off the king's hand, and flew on to the table, where he began to peck the bread and victuals, sometimes on one plate, and sometimes on another. The king was so surprised, that he immediately sent ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... they come!" quickly followed by bang, bang, bang along the glade; and here indeed they are, at first by twos and threes, and then a compact flight, whirling along with appealing cries of love, fluttering, and flapping their wings, and pursuing one another from bush to bush. They show now neither fear nor circumspection, and crazy, blind, and deaf, scarcely seem to notice the noise, the flashes, or the cries of the sportsmen. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... the flapping brim of his slouch-hat and lifted it—an act of courtesy that he had learned only after Happy Valley was blessed by the advent of the Mission school: making it, he ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... presence of Mrs. Snow was inexorably to be counted on, though it came always as one of those exasperating recurrences which bring with them a ridiculously fresh irritation each time. It seemed to be the one extra thing you couldn't stand. In either trouble or joy, she affected one like a clinging, ankle-flapping mackintosh on a rainy day. She bowed now to Dosia with a patronizing dignity, pointed by the plaintive warmth of the greeting to Lois, who had come hurrying down-stairs out of those passion-depths of darkness, so that Mrs. Snow wouldn't suspect anything. ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... just let me do the interpreting. Father Noble is going to take me under his big, flapping capes and speak ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... shouted to the men to lower the sail, which was bellying and flapping violently, but before his orders could be obeyed there was a crash. The mast snapped off at the slings of the yard, and the wreck fell over the bow of the boat. All hands were employed for some minutes in getting the sail on board and furling it ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... backward and forward with distraction in their looks, halloaing to one another, and undetermined what they should attend to first. Some clung to the yards, endeavouring to unbend the sails that were split into a thousand pieces flapping in the wind; others tried to furl those which were yet whole, while the masts, at every pitch, bent and quivered like twigs, as if they would have shivered into innumerable splinters! While I considered this scene with equal terror and astonishment, one of the main ...
— The Adventures of Roderick Random • Tobias Smollett
... a flock of birds flying thither! Oh! oh!" said he, flapping his wings, "I must try my wings! I am tired of bright tail feathers. I want ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... old blue heron among the cowslips below me. I had almost scared it to death, and it arose on flapping wings and paid me back by frightening me so I screamed as I dodged ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... builders of flying machines have taken what may be called "the architecture" of birds as a model. This is readily noticeable in the form of construction. When a bird is in motion its wings (except when flapping) are extended in a straight line at right angles to its body. This brings a sharp, thin edge against the air, offering the least possible surface for resistance, while at the same time a broad surface for support is afforded by the flat, under side of the wings. Identically the same thing is done ...
— Flying Machines - Construction and Operation • W.J. Jackman and Thos. H. Russell
... in his far northern home, of the strange Kablunets or foreigners who had arrived there to trade with the Eskimos—men who, so the reports went, wore smooth coats without hair, little round things on their heads instead of hoods, and flapping things on their legs instead of sealskin boots—men who had come in monster kayaks (canoes), as big as icebergs; men who seemed to possess everything, had the power to do anything, and feared nothing. No fabrications in the Arabian Nights, or Gulliver, or Baron Munchausen, ever transcended ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... rode in the shade of a sombrero a yard wide, crusted with silver embroidery. His Mexican saddle was embossed with huge Mexican dollars; his jacket as gaily ornamented as a bull-fighter's; his trousers open from the hip, and with a chain of silver buttons down their flapping hems; his spurs, huge wheels with murderous spikes, were fringed with little bells that jangled as he rode,—and this to the accompaniment of much strumming of guitars and the incense ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... cool, powdery mist to where there was an expectant look in the Eastern horizon, our perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... children gazed, breathlessly, at those shrunken and twisted limbs that resembled the limbs of a strong man no more than the empty, flapping sleeves of a scarecrow resemble the arms of a ...
— Helen of the Old House • Harold Bell Wright
... instead of the gallows, I shall be glad. Redfox has fortunately recovered himself after the murderous attack and is going into my cabin." The Captain started across the deck. "But hello, here!—What's the matter? The wind has changed all of a sudden, or rather the breeze has ceased. The sails are flapping against the mast, and the pennons are not moving. Every man to his post," he shouted. "I fear the wind will veer suddenly before we have time to turn round, and blow harder than will be pleasant for us. Gray, go to ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... after her voice had lost its quality, continued to sing in oratorio and concert. So did Adelina Patti. Muriel Starr once told me of a parrot she encountered in Australia. The poor bird had arrived at the noble age of 117 and was entirely bereft of feathers. Flapping his stumpy wings he cried incessantly, "I'll fly, by God, I'll fly!" So, many singers, having lost their voices, continue to croak, "I'll sing, by God, I'll sing!" The Earl of Mount Edgcumbe, himself a man of considerable ...
— The Merry-Go-Round • Carl Van Vechten
... Receiver. Glowing with the consciousness of victory, the Private Secretary dressed for dinner and started out to his club. His good-humor was impaired, when he observed in his hall a pendant triangle of wall-paper flapping in the draught of the open door through which the Poet had dragged his trunks. Further on, the paint was scarred on the stairs, and the carpet of the main hall was rucked and disordered; there was also a lingering suggestion ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... mounted into the vehicle, followed by her delighted grandfather. Their patroness then shut the door and sat herself down by her drum at an open window; and, the steps being struck by George and stowed under the carriage, away they went, with a great noise of flapping and creaking and straining, and the bright brass knocker, which nobody ever knocked at, knocking one perpetual double knock of its own accord as they ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... a mile from the stables John Straker's overcoat was flapping from a furze-bush. Immediately beyond there was a bowl-shaped depression in the moor, and at the bottom of this was found the dead body of the unfortunate trainer. His head had been shattered by a savage blow from some heavy weapon, and he was wounded on the thigh, where there was a long, ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... so as not to catch cold," she panted; and run they did, their wet skirts flapping against their bare legs, hats and sunbonnets sent scattering in every direction. While Custard, regarding it as a game gotten up for his especial benefit, urged them on, barking and leaping about them, ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... every one, at the fifth watch, beginning from dowager lady Chia and those who enjoyed any official status, appeared in full gala dress, according to their respective ranks. In the garden, the curtains were, by this time, flapping like dragons, the portieres flying about like phoenixes with variegated plumage. Gold and silver glistened with splendour. Pearls and precious gems shed out their brilliant lustre. The tripod censers burnt the Pai-ho incense. In the ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... different kind: "Can you wag your left ear?" I asked him one day what had made him invent so ridiculous a question as this. "Because I can wag my left ear," was his prompt response, and straightway I saw the organ in question flapping about like a sail in a breeze. The Theatre Royal at Newcastle in those days was under the management of Mr. E. D. Davis, a well-known figure in the provincial theatrical world. It was before the days of touring companies, and Mr. Davis was supported by an excellent body of artists, including his ...
— Memoirs of Sir Wemyss Reid 1842-1885 • Stuart J. Reid, ed.
... An empty sleeve was flapping in the rain, and Fenneben did not notice then that the man kept that side of himself all the time in the shadows. Fenneben had only one thought as he hurried away in the darkness, to save the woman and child. His companion said little, ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... and prepared a feast upon the shore, and having first, in accordance with their invariable custom, made offerings to the gods, they proceeded "to banquet on the rich viands." But they had hardly begun their meal when the Harpies, with noisy flapping of wings and fearful cries, swooped down upon them, snatched off a great portion of the meat, and so spoiled the rest with their unclean touch that it ...
— Story of Aeneas • Michael Clarke
... voice full of fury and defiance, and tearing open his vest he drew forth with one hand a dagger and with the other a large hussar pistol. The broken-winged young eagle had turned upon its pursuers, hacking at them with its wounded beak and flapping its still uninjured pinion ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... been our companions a great part of the time off the Cape. I had been interested in the bird from descriptions, and Coleridge's poem, and was not at all disappointed. We caught one or two with a baited hook which we floated astern upon a shingle. Their long, flapping wings, long legs, and large, staring eyes, give them a very peculiar appearance. They look well on the wing; but one of the finest sights that I have ever seen was an albatross asleep upon the water, during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... off her wet mantle. It was a very comfortable room, with a wide chimney, and deep windows glazed with thick circles of glass, the spaces between leaded around in diamond panes, through which vine branches could dimly be seen flapping and beating in the storm. A table stood under one with various glasses and vessels of curious shapes, and a big book, and at the other was a distaff, a work-basket, and other feminine gear. Shelves with pewter dishes, and red, ...
— Grisly Grisell • Charlotte M. Yonge
... be chosen. "She'll be rarely vexed if she ain't," he thought seriously. So the day went by, and after five o'clock had sounded from the church tower Peter and his beasts left off work and went leisurely down the hill towards home; two of the Pleasants in front with their harness clanking and flapping loosely about them, and their master following, seated sideways on the back of the third. Peter had done a long day's work and was hungry, but he did not go into the house till he had seen his horses attended to by ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... pleasant sound. This bay was full of boats, small painted boats, with just room in each for one person, with a small rudder to guide them at the stern, and a little sail as white as snow, and over all a flag, on which a bright red cross was flapping ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... though he was inwardly pleased. At the time they were walking up Fifth Avenue, both in uniform, with their caps on one side, sailor fashion, and their wide trousers flapping about their ankles. People looked at them kindly as they passed, for the shadow of the war lay on everyone and all hearts went out to the men who were to uphold the flag. Raymond was flattered and yet somewhat overcome by the attention his companion ...
— Love, The Fiddler • Lloyd Osbourne
... me, I saw the flowers and detected their fragrance; I heard the hum of bees and the contented chirp of well-fed birds; I marveled at great butterflies flapping so slowly that it seemed as if they must have cheated gravitation in some subtle way to win such lightness and disregard of earth-pull. I heard no ugly murmur of long hours and low wages; the closest scrutiny revealed ...
— Edge of the Jungle • William Beebe
... stood there all alone, Loosely flapping, torn and tattered, Till the brood was fledged and flown, Singing o'er those walls of stone Which the cannon-shot ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... neither a smile nor a glance, but rode straight onward. Beside him walked the fly-flappers, flapping the air before his podgy cheeks with long scarfs of silk, and behind him rode his Ministers of State, five sleek dogs who daily fed his appetites on carrion that his head might be like his stomach, and their power over him thereby the greater. ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... the wildness of the loon's weird hullo, coming in at the open flaps of the tents from afar; and the clumsy fluttering and flapping of great beetles against the canvas, attracted by the lantern light that shone through. The cawing of crows just above their heads awoke ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... fast as they could toward the wall; but poor Will in his fright tumbled down, and lay screaming. Ned and Polly had reached the wall, and, looking back, saw that their shadows had not followed. Ned's stood before Will, brandishing his pole; and Polly's was flapping a shadowy sun-bonnet with all its might. As soon as they saw that, back they went,—Ned to threaten till he broke his pole, and Polly to flap till the strings came off. As if anxious to do its part, the bonnet flew up in the ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... to harmonize with her plain Anglo-Saxon name, "when Dr. Lith was down here in his office checking off the objects in the catalogue which were either injured or missing. I had been working in the library. The noise of something like a shade flapping in the wind attracted my attention. I listened. It seemed to come from the art-gallery, a large room up-stairs where some of the greatest masterpieces in this country are hung. I ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... afternoon there was a wave of homesickness in the air, and on the part of those men who were up and about, who shuffled up and down the ward in flapping carpet slippers, ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Arctic snowstorm was beat to rags When the hoppers rose for their morning flight With a flapping noise like a million flags: And the kitchen chimney was stuffed with bags For they'd fall right into the fire, and fry Till the cook sat down and began to cry— And never a duck ...
— Saltbush Bill, J.P., and Other Verses • A. B. Paterson
... drifted landward Till he grated on the pebbles, Till the listening Hiawatha Heard him grate upon the margin, 160 Felt him strand upon the pebbles, Knew that Nahma, King of Fishes, Lay there dead upon the margin. Then he heard a clang and flapping, As of many wings assembling, 165 Heard a screaming and confusion, As of birds of prey contending, Saw a gleam of light above him, Shining through the ribs of Nahma, Saw the glittering eyes of sea-gulls, 170 Of Kayoshk, the ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... very hot. The punkahs go all day—not the flapping kind of Mofussil punkahs, but things like bits of windmills fastened to poles. I never like to sit or sleep exactly underneath one, they look so insecure; besides, they make one so untidy. At a dinner-party it is really dreadful ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... an untouched glass of beer. The Vielhaber establishment was already suffering under the stigma of pro-Germanism put upon it by certain of the watchful towns-people. Judge Penniman, that hale old invalid, had even declared that Herman was a spy, and signalled each night to other spies by flapping a curtain of his lighted room above the saloon. The judge had found believers, though it was difficult to explain just what information Herman would be signalling and why he didn't go out and tell it to his evil confederates by word of mouth. ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... an hour or two when they've got a life sentence comin' to 'em. Dammit, you jest ought to see them clothes!" And by very force of his vociferations he succeeded in exacting the promise of a brief stay in the proceedings before he bolted out, the rags of his yellow mackinaw flapping excitedly. ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... From the trees around and below comes a great cawing of rooks, drowning the rush of the water below; they settle into their nests in the great green elms, then suddenly there is a caw, a scurry, a rush, and they fly up as if shot out of the tree-tops. There is a flapping of wings, and much angry sound; they circle once or twice, and then sink back to their homes again. It is a beautiful sight to watch a rook volplaning down to a tree as you can watch them from the terraces at Lynton; moving on a level ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... reckless splash into the dashing waves, the man had it, and an easy, athletic figure swung up the causeway, holding it away from him, as if it might nip at him. He wore a dark blue jersey, and loose, flapping trousers of ...
— The Militants - Stories of Some Parsons, Soldiers, and Other Fighters in the World • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... house," was the answer, tossed back over a man's shoulder as he ran. Instantly there flashed into Alec's mind the remembrance of the muslin curtains flapping across his face, and the lamp left near them on his desk. Had he blown it out or not? He could not remember. He tried to think as he dashed up the street after ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... that among these African barbarians, as well as among our own forefathers, the clouds have been conceived as birds carrying the lightning which can cleave the rocks. In America we find the same notion prevalent. The Dakotahs explain the thunder as "the sound of the cloud-bird flapping his wings," and the Caribs describe the lightning as a poisoned dart which the bird blows through a hollow reed, after the Carib style of shooting. [146] On the other hand, the Kamtchatkans know nothing of a cloud-bird, ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... animals going, and the next 'dobe-hole was like the last, and busy with the black flapping of the birds. "You didn't fool me," said Genesmere, addressing the mud. "I knew you'd be dry." His eye ran over the cattle, that lay in various conditions. "That foreman was not too soon getting his live-stock out of your country," he continued to the hole, his tongue ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... and it traveled fast. Coburn jerked his head upright from the hood of the car. A whiskered villager with flapping trousers came pounding up the single street. His eyes were panic-stricken and his mouth was wide. He emitted the yell in a long, sustained note. Other villagers popped into view like ants from a disturbed ant-hill. Some instantly ...
— The Invaders • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... tragi-comic in it: there was now an air of sad repining foolishness, superadded to his natural one of no meaning and idiotism, as he stood with his label of manhood, now lank, unstiffened, becalmed, and flapping against his thighs, down which it reached half way, terrible even in its fall, whilst under the dejection of spirit and flesh, which naturally followed his eyes, by turns, cast down towards his struck standard, or ...
— Memoirs Of Fanny Hill - A New and Genuine Edition from the Original Text (London, 1749) • John Cleland
... remain in a reverent doubt as to whether he would, on the same principles, have presented a diplomatist to a dipsomaniac or a ratiocinator to a rat catcher. He was a big, fair, bull-necked young man, abounding in outward gestures, unconsciously flapping his gloves and ...
— The Man Who Knew Too Much • G.K. Chesterton
... &c. Instead of the prim, neat, little man we had always imagined him to be, we found him tall, coarse, slovenly, and unshaven; a man of 46 years of age; hair of an iron-grey, rough and uncombed; features large; cheek-bones prominent; and the straps of his trowsers unbuttoned, and flapping about his slippers. But, under this unpromising exterior, we discerned a soul of great intelligence, frankness, and brotherly kindness. Mrs. Todd has been a woman of great beauty, and, though she has brought up a large family of children, is still ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... ward was adrift, and at first the doctor suggested farther study of Latin or chemistry, but afterward philosophically resigned himself to patience, feeling certain that some indication of the right course would not be long withheld, and that a wind from the right quarter would presently fill the flapping sails of this idle young craft and send ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... come at last!" I said, and I opened the door, nerving myself up to sustain the blow which I believed was impending. Mercury stood without, flapping the wings that sprouted from ...
— Olympian Nights • John Kendrick Bangs
... by way of answer there followed instantly a sudden burst of wind. The torrent of it drove against the house; it boomed down the chimney, puffing an odour of soot into the room; it shook the door into the passage; it lifted an edge of carpet, flapping it. It shouted, whistled, sang, using a dozen different voices all at once. The roar fell into syllables. It was amazing. A great throat uttered words. They ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood |
