"Screeching" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... stop with a screeching of brakes. The horseman raised his hands as he saw two rifles leveled at him from the rear seat. There were five men in the car besides the driver. One of the men, who had been sitting in the front with the driver, leaped from the machine and ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... groaning, confusion and clamor,—one long, deafening din. A bewildering, maddening mob of reckless, terrified human beings rush hither and thither, unseeingly and distractedly. Will she go? Yes! No! Yes! Then comes the screeching, the scrunching, the straining, and then—a final snap! Back we go, sheering helplessly, swayed to and fro most dangerously by the foaming waters, and almost, but not quite, turn turtle. The red boat follows us anxiously, and watches our timid little ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... full on the point of Thorold's jaw stopped the man's rush—but only for the fraction of a second. Thorold, recovering instantly, flung his body forward, and his arms wrapped themselves around Jimmie Dale's neck. And now, old Jake, screeching like a madman, was circling around them, snatching, clawing, striking at ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... full of reason, but a little out of season, And the proper tone of talking Mr. Fairman did restore, When he sneered at priests and preaching, and indorsed the Index teaching, And with philanthropic screeching, said he sought for evermore The light of sense and freedom into darkened minds to pour; Truly this, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... stick your claws into me, cat?" shouted Umbezi, catching the old woman a savage cut across the back with the light dancing-stick which he still held in his hand, whereon she fled away screeching and ...
— Child of Storm • H. Rider Haggard
... eleven o'clock to-night they followed me to the door in a stream, and I stooped down to stroke the one nearest to me. Bah! The brute hissed and spat, and struck at me with her paws. The claw caught my hand and drew blood in a thin line. The others danced sideways into the darkness, screeching, as though I had done them an injury. I believe these cats really hate me. Perhaps they are only waiting to be reinforced. Then they will attack me. Ha, ha! In spite of the momentary annoyance, this fancy sent me laughing ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... a Terrorist, a huge red rosette streaming from his buttonhole, suddenly ran at Ilse and seized the broken staff and the rags of the red flag. And Palla, alarmed, caught him by the coat-collar and dragged him screeching and cursing away from her friend, rebuking him in a ...
— The Crimson Tide • Robert W. Chambers
... terribly beautiful. Quite close to us—only a kilometre away across the fields to the left—there were Belgian batteries at work, and rifle-fire from many trenches. We were between two fires, and the Belgian and German shells came screeching across our heads. The enemy's shells were dropping close to us, ploughing up the fields with great pits. We could hear them burst and scatter, and could see them burrow. In front of us on the road lay a dreadful barrier, which brought us to a halt. An enemy's ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... a camp about 1,000 feet below the top, among the pines, with snow lying all around us, and in the night a flock of parrots flew screeching past the tents. I was surprised to find the temperature so mild; there was no ice on the water, not even at night. The aneroid showed the height of the top to be 10,266 feet (20.60 in. at a temperature ...
— Unknown Mexico, Volume 1 (of 2) • Carl Lumholtz
... and their shells commenced bursting round me. God in Heaven! I died a hundred deaths in that old ruin. Once a shell hit what roof there was and a score of bricks came crashing about me. Not one touched. I seemed charmed. I could hear the shells screeching through the air a second before they burst near where I lay. Of bodily pain I had little. The discomfort was great; the thirst was appalling. I thought I should bleed to death before help reached me. But there was nothing to compare with the mental strain of waiting—waiting—waiting ...
— Private Peat • Harold R. Peat
... we had occasion to witness the great yearly, festival of the re-election of the Sheik. Early in the morning a crowd of Takruries came pouring in from all directions, armed with sticks or spears, a few mounted, the majority on foot, all howling and screeching (I believe they call it singing), so that before even the dust raised by a new party could be seen, the ear was deafened by their clamour. Every Takrurie warrior—that is, every one who can howl and carry ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... you are to come back, whether or no," said Mr Winterbones, screeching out of the window, and putting all his emphasis ...
— Doctor Thorne • Anthony Trollope
... Hodgson, we are going, Our embargo's off at last; Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvass o'er the mast. From aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here 's a rascal, Come to task all, Prying from the Custom-house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... Street was only just chiming Eight; while the ships' bells over the water were repeating the same piece of information in various tones and the shrill steam whistle from the dockyard workshops hard by screeching its confirmation ...
— Crown and Anchor - Under the Pen'ant • John Conroy Hutcheson
... had fallen asleep, was awakened suddenly by the creaking of a door. It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued. One door was opened, then another. The bolt of the front door was thrown back with an effort. But neither Pyramus ...
— Fromont and Risler, Complete • Alphonse Daudet
... 2 p.m. I am sitting in a juniper bush in the middle of the bar, scribbling, all the country in a scorching haze, the shells from the ships screeching over our heads, searching all the ridges and hollows in front of us. The Turks' guns have been silent for the last hour, no doubt in anticipation of giving us something warm; our bearers are off and have just passed in twos and threes across the north side of the lake, which at this period ...
— The Incomparable 29th and the "River Clyde" • George Davidson
... canariensis. It is to them—according to Mr. Piazzi Smyth—a demon who would kill them, if it could only run after them; but as it cannot, they shout Spanish curses at it, and pelt it with volleys of stones, "screeching with elfin joy, and using worse names than ever, when the poisonous milk spurts ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... carried out their sinister intention, but for Judas Iscariot. Seized with a mad fear for Jesus, as though he already saw the drops of ruby blood upon His white garment, Judas threw himself in blind fury upon the crowd, scolding, screeching, beseeching, and lying, and thus gave time and opportunity to Jesus and ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev
... squaws; away, right, left, anywhere, everywhere, scattered the blanketed, jabbering groups, leaving on the scene of action only the agent, the quickly rallying guard, and upward of fivescore of jeering, taunting screeching warriors, at least a dozen of them now dismounted, dancing and brandishing knife and tomahawk, rifle or revolver, about the still writhing group rolling upon the wooden floor,—McPhail and his assailants. ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... was new to the duty of receiving visitors. Possibly, she was bewildered by a sudden invasion of children in dirty frocks, darting out on us in the hall, and then darting away again into invisible back regions, screeching at the sight of a stranger. At any rate, she too appeared to be at a loss what to do with me. After staring hard at my foreign face, she suddenly opened a door in the wall of the passage, and admitted me into ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... well, still she is not hateful or vile, or anything but droll. I know how maddening that kind of woman can be in real life to those immediately about her, but onlookers find her purely funny; they never think of poor Bob Sawyer's cruel humiliation; they only laugh themselves helpless over the screeching little woman on the stairs, who humbles her wretched consort and routs the party with such consummate strategy. Mrs. Raddle and Mrs. Mackenzie are as far apart as two creatures may be; nevertheless they are veritable specimens of the British shrew, and it should be within the ...
— Side Lights • James Runciman
... of this nestful tree is the sulphur-crested cockatoo, whose eggs are laid deep down in a hollow. Two or three hundred of the shining colonists, a brood of sea-eagles, white-headed, snowy-breasted and red-backed, and a couple, perhaps, three, screeching white cockatoos, represent the annual output of this single tree, in addition, of course, to its own crop of sweet savoured flowers (on which birds, bees, beetles and butterflies, and flying-foxes feast) and seeds ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... most plentiful. Some came with clumsy carts, loaded with the produce of the surrounding country. The vehicles were very trying to the nerves of the ladies and some of the gentlemen; for they creaked and groaned, and seemed to be screeching for grease, reminding them of the carts of Lisbon, where some of the party had had ...
— Four Young Explorers - Sight-Seeing in the Tropics • Oliver Optic
... carcases of the three rhinoceroses. The lions feasted peacefully, but the hyenas and jackals fought over every mouthful, and chased one another round and round the carcases, growling, laughing, screeching, chattering, and howling without any intermission. The hyenas did not seem afraid of the lions, although they always gave way before them; for I observed that they followed them in the most disrespectful manner, and stood laughing, one ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Vol. 1, No. 7 - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 12, 1850 • Various
... Then thrilling is the grandeur of the calm; The only sounds which come upon the ear, To tell the mind that life remaineth near, Are the soft murmurings of the silvery stream, The gentle winds which whisper to the trees As they go wandering in the border woods, Or now and then the screeching of an owl, The bleeting lamb, or ...
— A Leaf from the Old Forest • J. D. Cossar
... the birds once more begin to chirp and trill, they salute the setting sun and fly away to rest. Then the monkeys commence their screeching and chattering and soon after the owls and other night birds take their turn, making the now dense darkness more terrible with their harsh, sinister cries. Little by little as the night deepens, bellows, roars and howls resound upon every part in a slow crescendo ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... club two feet long and three inches thick at the broadest end; peel or shave off the bark smoothly and sharpen the smaller end neatly. Then stick the sharpened end in the ground near the fire, leaning the broad end toward a bed of live coals, where it will get screeching hot. While it is heating, mix rather more than a half pint of best Minnesota flour with enough warm water to make a dough. Add a half teaspoon full of salt and a teaspoon full of sugar and mould and pull the dough until ...
— Woodcraft • George W. Sears
... manner of hideous uproar—they could shake buildings; they could out-thunder the thunder, deafen the deaf, and kill the sick with noise; or they could walk the streets or drive through them bawling, squawking, or screeching, as they chose, if the noise was traceably connected with business; though street musicians were not tolerated, being considered a nuisance and an interference. A man or woman who went singing for pleasure through the streets—like a crazy Neopolitan—would have been stopped, and belike locked ...
— The Turmoil - A Novel • Booth Tarkington
... through the open south window of the attic when Shad awoke. Just outside the window a jay was screeching noisily. Bob's bunk was vacant. It was evident that Shad had slept long and that the hour was late, and he sprang quickly from his bed and consulted his watch, but the watch, flooded with water when the canoe capsized ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... terrible time I had yet lived through in this experience. To every blow of the billows the schooner trembled fearfully; the crackling noises of the ice was as though I was in the thick of a heavy action. The full weight of the wind seemed to be upon the ship, and the screeching of it in the iron-like shrouds pierced to my ear through the hissing and tearing sounds of the water washing along the decks, and the volcanic notes of the surges breaking over the vessel. I say, to hear all this and not to be able to see, to be ignorant of the situation of the schooner, ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell
... women were dragged by their limbs out before the door, screeching as they went, and filling the air with their loud, agonizing cries. Momont walked after them, with his head hanging down, his knees shaking, and his back bent double; but still he was walking himself; he was still able to save himself the ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... precious things, They surely must all be queens and kings! They look so proud Above the crowd, O my, how fine it must feel to ride On golden wagons that hide inside Strange animals caught in cannibal isles And brought in ships for a million miles! But hark! it's near The end, for hear That sudden screeching in piercing key! The steaming, screaming cal-li-o-pe! Just plain pianos sound terribly tame Beside this one with the wonderful name, And wouldn't you love some day to sit In a circus wagon and play ...
— Child Songs of Cheer • Evaleen Stein
... scraping the bone for four or five inches. Meantime he shot a warrior through the head, sent another off with a hole in the shoulder, and fired one barrel without effect. He had but a single charge left (saving this for himself in the last extremity), when he burst through the prancing throng of screeching, thrusting ragamuffins, and reached ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... "They are still in the big cabin at the end of the saloon where you left them when you went away, and, I'm afraid they are very ill indeed, for all the time the firing was going on overhead Madame was screeching and screaming, and I am sure I heard Monsieur groaning a good deal. He was doing so again just now, before I found my way upstairs to you, to find you, and to see what had happened, everything had become so suddenly still after all the noise, and—and—those—awful horrible yells of the negroes—oh! ...
— The Ghost Ship - A Mystery of the Sea • John C. Hutcheson
... fell down.[35] But the thing which most of all portended destruction to them, so that it became plain even to their enemies, was that many vultures and many other birds, too, that devour corpses gathered only above the heads of the conspirators, gazing down upon them and squawking and screeching with terrible and ...
— Dio's Rome, Vol. III • Cassius Dio
... through the air the screeching of the bullets around me convinced me that only by a miracle could I escape, but the die was cast, and throwing on full speed I raced a straight course toward Helium. Gradually I left my pursuers further and further behind, and I was just congratulating myself ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... The juice is pressed out of the canes by rude wooden rollers set upright in threes, the centre one driving the one on each side of it by projecting cogs. The whole are set in motion by oxen travelling round the same as in a thrashing-mill. The ungreased axles of the rollers, squeaking and screeching like a score of tormented pigs, generally inform the traveller of their vicinity long before he reaches them. The juice is boiled, and an impure sugar made from it. I do not think that the sugar-cane was known to the ancient inhabitants of the country: it is not mentioned by the historians of the ...
— The Naturalist in Nicaragua • Thomas Belt
... ever been made mad by cats screeching in the night, and jumped out of bed and opened the window and yelled at them? Did they ever budge an inch for that, though you shrieked loud enough to skeer the dead, and waved your arms about like a man in a play? Not ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... the sleepers, not knowing that they who were to possess the land watched every man with his weapon. But when I would have sounded the trumpet of warning, I heard a rifle shot, and all the Indians rose up screeching and ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of three several Terraces or sides of the Schloss; and on the fourth it is impassable. Bridge first, coming from the palisade and Office-house Court, has not only human sentries walking at it; but two white Eagles perch near it, and two black ditto, symbols of the heraldic Prussian Eagle, screeching about in their littery way; item two black Bears, ugly as Sin, which are vicious wretches withal, and many times do passengers a mischief. As perhaps we shall see, on some occasion. This is Bridge first, leading to the Court and ...
— History Of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Volume IV. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Friedrich's Apprenticeship, First Stage—1713-1728 • Thomas Carlyle
... if the last great day of vengeance had come, and you could hear the screeching of a thousand fiends in the air hastening to their destiny, come upon the ear, as Tybee utters her thunders, and pours out her vials of wrath. See that cloud of dust which shoots up like a volcano, and looks ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... other worlds I cannot tell Flashes that screeching strife; Yet the shrill colour and shrill crying Sing through my blood and set my heart replying And ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... those flapping carrion fowls had found him out; they were famishing too, and half forgot their natural distaste for living meat. He fought them vainly, as the dying fight; soon there were other screams in that echoing solitude, besides the screeching falcons! and when they reached his heart (if its matter aptly typified its spirit), that heart should have been a ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... in the advancing line filled as soon as each screeching ape went down, the attackers leaped on until Kirby knew they would be upon the girls in a matter of seconds. A sweat broke ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... sudden into puny shape her body huge she shrank, A fowl that sits on sepulchres, and desert roofs alone In the dead night, and through the mirk singeth her ceaseless moan; In such a shape this bane of men met Turnus' face in field, And, screeching, hovered to and fro, and flapped upon his shield: Strange heaviness his body seized, consuming him with dread, His hair stood up, and in his jaws his ...
— The AEneids of Virgil - Done into English Verse • Virgil
... a creature more fit for a national emblem? I believe not. For would any wise man compare a useless, screeching eagle, or a useless, roaring lion—each a creature of prey—to a silent, hard-working, and useful beaver who remains true to his wife all his life, who builds a comfortable home for his children, provides them well with food ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... at a window on the top floor suggested that the officer of the night might be awake, but what with the screeching of owls and a wind that sighed among the shrubs, headquarters looked and sounded more like a deserted ancient castle than the cranium ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... golden watch in the pocket of a tramp to be stolen; a giant meteor, the skeleton of an iguana, a twisted-looking Nerva in the Royal Museum of Berlin, I take to be indubitably original, and indubitably imitations in the college museum of a small town. The same is true of events: I hear a child screeching in the house of the surly wife of the shoemaker so I do not doubt that she is spanking it; in the mountains I infer from certain whistles the presence of chamois, and a single long drawn tone that might be due to anything ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... for some time in our small, oak-panelled sitting-room listening to the screeching and howling of the blast and to the rattle of the gravel and pebbles as they pattered against the window. Nature's grim orchestra was playing its world-old piece with a compass which ranged from the deep diapason of the thundering ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... breakfast. Nothing had changed in the house during his absence. But the whole house was changed. It was a house unconvincing, incredible, which might vanish at any moment. He himself was incredible. What had happened was incredible. The screeching voices of the children were not real voices, and the children were apparitions. The newspaper was illegible. Its messages for the most part had no meaning, and such as bore a meaning seemed to be utterly unimportant. ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... Screeching profanity, the Wowzer grappled; and, for an instant, the two men rocked, reeled, and swayed in each other's embrace; then, both men losing their balance, they shot suddenly backward, the Wowzer, undermost, striking his head against ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... a hollow—the little circular copse was on the slope—and jays came to it as they worked from tree to tree across the park. Their screeching often echoed through the open casement of the gunroom. A faint mark on the sward trended towards this hollow; it was a trail made by the squire, one of whose favourite strolls was in this direction. This summer morning, taking his gun, he ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... was a new but pleasant chill in the frosty, sunlit air. The great buildings of New York, at which he had been gazing for hours, were standing, heterogeneous but magnificent, clear-cut against an azure sky. The ferry boats, with their amazing human cargo, seemed to be screeching a welcome as they churned their way across the busy river. Wherever he looked, there was something novel and interesting, yet nothing sufficiently arresting to enable him to forget that he was face to face now with the first crisis of ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... by VASHTI and laying her hand on her.] I'll put summat in your mouth as'll stop you if you start screeching, mother. Why, hark you here. 'Tis enough of this old place as I've had this night, and 'tis out upon the roads as I be going. Th' old woman— there's naught much changed in she—And Steve—well, Steve be wonderful hard in the soul of him. "Can I get you an old sack," says he—and never ...
— Six Plays • Florence Henrietta Darwin
... the child in his arms from the horrible height in the sea, Shrill screeching, "Revenge!" in the wind-rush; and pallid Maclean, Age-feeble with anger and impotent pain, Crawled up on the crag, and lay flat, and locked hold of dead roots ...
— Select Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... bright-eyed. A plaintive twitter of wild canaries came from the region above the treetops—first voices of birds in their pilgrimage toward the south. Pine cones dropped with soft thuds. The blue jays followed these intruders in the forest, screeching their displeasure. Like rain pattered the dropping seeds from the spruces. A woody, earthy, leafy fragrance, damp with the current of life, mingled with a cool, dry, sweet smell of ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... to me, last night, and had it hidden under her bed. The creature was quite quiet all night, as is its nature, I suppose, and very likely frightened and not knowing where it was. But this morning all of a sudden it started the most awful screeching; it really sounded much worse than common crowing, or else it was hearing it half in one's sleep like. I thought, to be sure, one of those dear boys had got some awful fit. And to think it was nothing but Miss Hoodie's naughtiness—real mischievous ...
— Hoodie • Mary Louisa Stewart Molesworth
... captain," pointing to a man who was walking, or rather pushing his way, rapidly towards them through the maddened, screeching mob. Lord Holmhurst caught him ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard
... sunrise on the morning of Palm Sunday I heard the sharp sound of a screeching fife, the metallic clash of cymbals, the shouts of boys, the rattle of a little drum. It was the rataplan beating before a troop of wrestlers and jugglers who were traversing the Marche and Reggio Emilia. The troop stationed themselves in a little ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various
... hung in blue and silver, and lit by a huge crystal chandelier—should be put at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms of her native Russia), and that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker cage of screeching parakeets, should come and go when and where and how he listed, and that an electric alarm bell be connected with ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... terrace was waterlogged and as he went down it slowly, choosing his steps amid heaps of wet rubbish, he heard a mad nun screeching in the nuns' madhouse beyond ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Then she lifted the lower wire of the barbed fence. Pete crouched, and wiggled his flattened body through. Ben hadn't expected this—he turned and ran. The skurrying legs of the dog carried him quickly on after the fisherman. While Ben, screeching like a great night owl, hooted out his fear of the maddened dog, and yelled for Tess to ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... Home, but my granfa never came to church at all so long as he was alive. 'Time enough when I'm dead for that' he used to say. He was a big man down to the Chapel, my granfa was. Mostly when he did preach the maids would start screeching, so I've heard tell. But he were too old for preaching when ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... we were to live in such close ties of friendship, it was necessary that my friend should have a name, and that he, too, should be able to address me by mine. The title, "Friend Parrot," was rather too formal, and his screeching at me in some unmeaning way every time he wanted me could not for ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... scarcely lighted candle. He got up, his teeth set, his hands clenched in his pockets, and followed his mother through the Yards—vast, hideous wastes, scorching in the September heats, full of endless rows of pig, piles of scrap, acres, it seemed to Blair, of slag. The screeching clamor of the place reeked with the smell of rust and rubbish and sour earth, and the air was vibrant with the clatter of the "buggies" on the narrow-gauge tracks that ran in a tangled network from one furnace to another. ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... A.M., by the tinkling of a shrewish-sounding hand-bell, which says, as plainly as ever the chimes of Bow hailed Whittington lord mayor of London, "Arise, and shave, and make your toilet, and prepare to come forth; for the cow is milking, and the kettle is screeching, and the hot rolls beginning ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power
... him. This one was so tall and ugly and long that the lad had to look up and up, right up to the sky. And when he took him all in with his eyes, and saw how very, very tall and ugly and ragged he was, he fell a-screeching and screaming again. ...
— East O' the Sun and West O' the Moon • Gudrun Thorne-Thomsen
... patch which he entered hoping to get some of them. Here a young woman, who had been stooping down digging potatoes, started up. "I was, of course," he continues, "naked, my head excepted. She was, or appeared to be, excessively frightened, and ran towards a house, screeching and screaming at every step." Hawkins ran in the other direction, and got safely away. At last the poor boy found another barn, and lay, that night, upon a heap of flax. After sunrise next morning he concluded to go on his way. "I could see the farmers at their labor in the fields. ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... bank which formed the bounds of Dillsborough Wood. Just at this side of the gate leading into the stubble-field there was already a concourse of people when Tony arrived near it with the hounds, and immediately there was a holloaing and loud screeching of directions, which was soon understood to mean that the hounds were at once to be taken away! The Captain rode on rapidly, and then sharply gave his orders. Tony was to take the hounds back to Mr. Twentyman's farmyard as fast as he could, and shut them up in a barn. The whips were put ...
— The American Senator • Anthony Trollope
... "I guess he named her rightly. There must be something altogether wrong with the poor creature to make her wander about these wet woods, screeching like ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... themselves, put of which such an artist as this one was creates his spells and his sorcery. How, after tasting, drop by drop, that draught of "lingered sweetness long drawn-out" of his unequalled style, can we bear to fall back upon the jabbering and screeching, the howling and hissing, of the voices we have to listen to in common resort? Ah, child, child! Think carefully before you turn your candid-innocent eyes to the fatal entrance to these mysteries! It is better never to have known what the high, terrible loveliness ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... woods, most lovely in decay, The many clouds, the sea, the rock, the sands, Lie in the silent moonshine: and the owl, (Strange! very strange!) the scritch-owl only wakes! Sole voice, sole eye of all this world of beauty! Unless, perhaps, she sing her screeching song To a herd of wolves, that skulk athirst for blood. Why such a thing am I?—Where are these men? I need the sympathy of human faces, To beat away this deep contempt for all things, Which quenches my revenge. O! would to Alla, The raven, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... other days. What of that? From the tent came the loud clanging of hammers, the sounds of instruments, the neighing of horses, the roaring of lions and tigers and panthers, the howling of wolves, the bleating of camels, the screeching of monkeys! Wonderful noises! Who cared for the school bell? ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... of her canvas in time received it pluckily: she yielded reluctantly to the violent onset; then coming up with a stately and irresistible motion, brought her spars to windward in the teeth of the screeching squall. Out of the abysmal darkness of the black cloud overhead white hail streamed on her, rattled on the rigging, leaped in handfuls off the yards, rebounded on the deck—round and gleaming in the murky turmoil like a shower of pearls. It passed ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... pray for thee." We were still sighing over such words as these when we came near to the churchyard, and there sat the accursed witch Lizzie Kolken at the door of her house with her hymn-book in her lap, screeching out at the top of her voice, "God the Father, dwell with us," as we drove past her; the which vexed my poor child so sore that she swounded, and fell like one dead upon me. I begged the driver to stop, and called to ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... yelling and screeching and snarling from the kitchen at the back, for all the world like a mad dog. But the Swiss Saturday evening customers at the other tables smoked on and talked in their ugly dialect, without trouble. Then the landlady came in, and soon after the landlord, he collarless, with ...
— Twilight in Italy • D.H. Lawrence
... had expected him to say something, but he never did. Instead, he would take a long breath, almost like a sigh, and, after closing his eyes for a moment, he would move into the room and light the screeching gas-jet. "Never thought of turning down the gas." This, particularly, was a sore point with Great Taylor. "Never thought of anything. Just ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... screeching whirlwind of claws and teeth hurled itself from the smoldering branches and crashed against the robot, clawing insanely at the antenna and blaster barrel. With an awkward jerk the robot swung around and fired its blaster, completely dissolving the lower half ...
— Survival Tactics • Al Sevcik
... wire sprang from some hole and hung caracoling about my ankle. Tin cans spun from my stride. But we made a conspicuous race. Two of us waved hats, and there was no moment that some one of us was not screeching. It meant ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... The obeah, screeching, reeled back. But he was not dead. Not dead, only stunned a moment. And Stern, horrified, found himself holding only a gun-barrel. The stock, shattered, had whirled away and vanished among the tall and ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... the arctic storm was crashing in a mighty fury, as if striving to beat down the little cabin that had dared to rear itself in the dun-gray emptiness at the top of the world, eight hundred miles from civilization. There were curious waitings, strange screeching sounds, and heart-breaking meanings in its strife, and when at last its passion died away and there followed a strange quiet, the two men could feel the frozen earth under their feet shiver with the rumbling reverberations of the crashing and breaking fields of ice out in Hudson's Bay. With ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... whom he took down to the market at Cheaping Knowe, as I had not done if I had once my arms about her. For she was as fair as a flower; and yet so well built, that she could bear as much as a strong man in some ways; and, saith Nosy, when she was taken, there was no weeping or screeching in her, but patience rather and quietness, and intent to bear all and live....Master, may I ask thee a question?" "Ask on," said Ralph. Said Bull: "The pair of beads about thy neck, whence came they?" "They were ...
— The Well at the World's End • William Morris
... a rude deal table; before him were scattered some dirty sheets of music, and around him the place was dreary and bare. By the light of a tallow dip he was playing, in screeching tones, the commonest of ditties and polkas by note. His coat was once of the richest; but now it was old and threadbare. His hands were once white and elegantly shaped; now they were dirty, and blue with cold. His face once beamed with contentment; now it was worn with care and marked by the ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... and screeching, always playing and fighting, always skip—skip—skipping on the pavement, and chalking it for their games! Oh—I know their tricks and their manners!" Shaking the little fist as before. "And that's not all. Ever so often calling names in through a person's keyhole, and imitating ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... just time to splutter out these comforting words and redescend the carriage, when the train put itself into movement, and the lifelike iron miracle, fuming, hissing, and screeching, bore off to London its motley convoy of human beings, each passenger's heart a mystery to the other, all bound the same road, all wedged close within the same whirling mechanism; what a separate and ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rail. At once, no longer buoyed up by the Elsinore's two-knot drag ahead, the wounded men began to swim and flounder. The circling hosts of huge sea-birds descended upon them, with carnivorous beaks striking at their heads and shoulders and arms. A great screeching and squawking arose from the winged things of prey as they strove for the living meat. And yet, somehow, I was not very profoundly shocked. These were the men whom I had seen eviscerate the shark and toss it overboard, and shout with joy as they watched it devoured ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... pitch-dark when we emerged suddenly into the highroad. A flash of lights and the whir of a motor went past us at the same moment at uncomfortably close quarters. A thud and a sharp screeching yell followed a second later. The car drew up, and when I had ridden back to the spot I found a young man bending over a dark motionless mass lying ...
— The Chronicles of Clovis • Saki
... should be put at her disposal night and day; that the electric lights should be replaced with dozens of wax candles (after the manner of the ballrooms of her native Russia); that her one-eyed companion, with his wicker cage of screeching parakeets should come and go when and where and how he listed, and that an electric alarm bell be connected with her sleeping ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... half-broken lid, standing over against him on a little shelf. As he looked at it more narrowly, the ugly features of a wrinkled old woman by degrees unfolded themselves; and in a few moments, the Apple-wife of the Black Gate stood before him. She grinned and laughed at him, and cried with screeching voice: "Ey, Ey, my pretty boy, must thou lie in limbo now? To the crystal thou hast run; did I not tell ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: - Masterpieces of German Literature Translated into English, Volume 5. • Various
... weariness from her strained position, and it is possible that she dozed off for a few moments. In fact, that was what she did do. She dreamed that she was at the circus and all the wild animals had broken loose and were running about the audience. She could hear the roar of the lions and the screeching of the tigers. She woke up with a start and thought for a moment that her dream was true. The barn was full of wild animals which were roaring and chasing each other around. Then her senses cleared and she recognized the heavy bark of a large dog and the startled ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at School • Hildegard G. Frey
... now, sir. That wasn't Donna Roma. It was the little Princess Bellini. She is always stretching her neck and screeching like ...
— The Eternal City • Hall Caine
... jabbed the knife at my face, screeching through gritted teeth. I jerked my head aside far enough that the scalpel grated along my cheekbone instead of slashing my mouth. ...
— Greylorn • John Keith Laumer
... instantly perceived his fearful mistake, and made a desperate attempt to dodge to one side, but though the loon may elude the bullet of the hunter's rifle, no man has ever yet been equal to the task. No screeching Indian was ever hit more fairly, surprised more suddenly, ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... helter-skelter, as if they were running for dear life. He now recollected the fiddle would save him all further trouble, and drew the bow across the strings as the lady had told him, but instead of the exquisite music she drew from them, he only obtained a sort of screeching noise, that seemed to spread a panic amongst the flock, and after hurrying through the glen, the sheep dispersed both right and left. Gilbert ran after first one group and then another, scraping away at his fiddle as hard as ...
— Up! Horsie! - An Original Fairy Tale • Clara de Chatelaine
... the most hideous women, the squalidest tatters were on hand. They whirled and jumped furiously in their unwashed feet; they became almost invisible in the clouds of dust; the odour sickened, the screeching and jumping deafened one. Bad, but maddening, wine was drunk in torrents. A man would kick his partner and the combatants tumble over each other in the midst ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... Indians for peltries. These were brought to them in large quantities in the early summer, when the ice had broken up, and fleets of canoes descended the St. Lawrence laden with skins. Then there was amazing stir at the sleepy little posts on the great river. Painted savages, howling and screeching, mostly half-drunk, swarmed about the stations, and at night the sky was red with the glare of their {189} fires. There was an enormous profit in the traffic, for the Indians had no idea of the cheapness of the goods which they took in exchange for their furs, ...
— French Pathfinders in North America • William Henry Johnson
... the sinuous snake Glide through his forests of fern and brake; Ipswich River; its old stone bridge; Far off Andover's Indian Ridge, And many a scene where history tells Some shadow of bygone terror dwells,— Of "Norman's Woe" with its tale of dread, Of the Screeching Woman of Marblehead, (The fearful story that turns men pale Don't bid me tell it,—my speech ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the screeching blue-jays fly In countless flocks, and as they hasten by The children look up from their merry play To watch them slowly, slowly fade away; And night steals up ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... the hair;' and then there is a good deal about Woman, in the style of a Yankee after-dinner speech in proposing such a toast. After a little we have a highly romantic description of a battle-field after the battle, in which gasping steeds, midnight ravens, spectral bats, moping owls, screeching vultures, howling night wolves appear. These animals are suddenly startled by a figure going about with a lantern 'to find the one she loves.' Of course the figure is a woman; and the paragraph winds up ...
— The Recreations of A Country Parson • A. K. H. Boyd
... mean to drive away the plague with singing—as if that bugaboo were a hater of music. But, of course, it wouldn't be a wonder if he did flee from their hoarse screeching. ...
— Master Olof - A Drama in Five Acts • August Strindberg
... a bullock cart bringing hay into the city, a tradesman's cart, a lumbering wine waggon, with its three great white horses and great barrels. Nothing hurried in the hot sunshine. The Rhone, very low, flowed sluggishly. Only now and then did a screeching, dust-whirling projectile of a motor-car hurl itself across this bridge ...
— The Mountebank • William J. Locke
... cadet referee could drop his hand, a powerful, low-slung jet car, its exhaust howling, pulled to a screeching stop at the edge of the field and a scarlet-clad enlisted Solar Guardsman jumped out and spoke to him. Sensing that it was something important, the two teams jogged over to ...
— The Space Pioneers • Carey Rockwell
... made out better, although his lips were cut and bleeding by having been forced so sharply against his teeth. But the worst was to come. One of his forepaws slipped out through the slats or bars and rested on the bottom of the wagon where the trunks were squeaking, screeching, and jigging. A rut in the roadway made the nearest trunk tilt one edge in the air and shift position, so that when it tilted back again it rested on Michael's paw. The unexpectedness of the crushing hurt of it caused him to yelp and at the ...
— Michael, Brother of Jerry • Jack London |
