"Thudding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... lift her head, but it seemed to her that the sound of the thudding hoofs died very quickly away. For seconds that seemed like hours she crouched there in the afternoon stillness. Then at last—at last—she ventured to raise ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... here and there, small dark objects came dropping, thudding, crashing down. You might have thought some cosmic gardener had shaken his orchard, his orchard where the ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... was thrusting up over the glassy lake when, next morning, the big tug with a slow thudding of her propeller, moved from her anchorage. At Clark's orders they passed on down the channel, and just where the lake began to broaden was a cluster of white tents. Two Indians were warming their fingers at a rekindled fire. Clark stared hard, ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... to the ladder, his heart thudding painfully. Surely, he thought, he had done nothing to offend even the most particular of deities. Yet, the implications of Ladro's glances and his conversation with the ship's officer were too obvious for even the dullest to misinterpret. ...
— The Players • Everett B. Cole
... face was gone, and in place of it he wore the head of a cat, for she, the watcher, could see its glowing eyes fixed upon her. And Meg—look how her lean limbs gripped him round the body. Listen to the thudding noise as the great knife fell between his shoulders. And now, see—she was growing tall, she had become a giantess, her face shot across the gulf of water and swam upwards through the shadows till it was within a foot of her. Oh! she must fall, but first she would scream for help—surely ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... once how matters were between her and "John." Just then there was a sound of thudding and grinding above my head, and I realised that we were beginning to weigh anchor. Quickly tying on my yachting cap and veil, I hurried on deck, and was soon standing beside my host, who seemed pleased at the ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli
... the world seemed suddenly to be full of many noises and many voices. From beyond the gate on the ways that led to the city walls came the clamour of hoarse shouts and cries and the thudding din of running feet. From the other side, from the street that led to the Louvre, came ...
— If I Were King • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... footsteps receding, heard the front door open and close, heard a car engine start. Then, slowly, he walked through the living room of his dead uncle's house and across the long, narrow kitchen and to the basement stairs. His hands were very dry and he felt his heart thudding. He was nervous, which ...
— My Shipmate—Columbus • Stephen Wilder
... and he did not look back again. He rode somewhat to the fore, and was constantly aware of the rapid thudding of hoofs behind, as Stevens kept close to him. At sunset they reached the willow brakes and the river. Duane's horse was winded and lashed with sweat and lather. It was not until the crossing had been accomplished that Duane halted to rest his animal. Stevens was ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... sorting what remained. However, no more diamonds could I find. I had brought in my pocket a lump of roster-koek (a lump of unleavened dough, flattened out and roasted on a gridiron). This I munched as I worked. More and more people arrived. Soon the thudding of picks and the "whish, whish" of sieves sounded from ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... from his hiding-place and ran down the walk, the sound of his quick, soft footfalls thudding faintly out into the silence. The young man felt no pain, however, so scrambled to his feet, felt himself over with care, and then swore roundly. He was untouched; the other had missed him cleanly. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... her head down, smiling, thanking God for her beauty, with all her heart. Was that a step?—hurrying back. Only Coly stamping in the stable. It was eight o'clock. The woman's heart kept time to the slow ticking of the clock, with a sick thudding, growing heavier every moment. He had been in the mountains but once since the war began. It was only George he came to see? She brought out her work and began to sew. He would not come: only George was fit to be his friend. Why should he heed her poor old ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... thudding against my dress, not from fear, but from excitement. My situation seemed impossible to me, utterly passing belief. Yesterday I had been a staid spinster, attended by a maid, in a hotel of impeccable propriety. Today ...
— Sacred And Profane Love • E. Arnold Bennett
... guard-house for saying it. There was little point to throwing down your shovel and refusing to shovel coal if they clapped you into the guard house for doing it; and made you shovel harder than ever when you came out. He learned what it was to rise at dawn and go thud-thud-thudding down a dirt road for endless weary miles. He became an olive-drab unit in an olive-drab village. He learned what it was to wake up in the morning so sore and lame that he felt as if he had been pulled apart, limb from limb, during the night, ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... couple of maids, screaming and white-faced, leaning and pressing against the door, immediately below the one he had just come through himself. The door was plainly barred as well, for it was now thudding and cracking with blows that were being showered upon it from the other side. The maids, it seemed to him, in a panic had locked the door; but that panic might be his salvation. He dashed down the stairs; ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... came thudding up the track and scattered the gravel by the gate; then there was silence for a moment, voices and laughter, and quick footsteps, and Jim and Norah came ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... to be seeking sociability by bellowing ferociously, thudding his hard fist on the counter. Mayo was not easily surprised by the temperamental vagaries of queer old 'longcoast crabs like Captain Candage, but this sudden conversion did take ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... the thudding sounds, treading heavily on the kitchen stairs, and Mrs. Bunting's heart began to beat as if in response. She put out the flame of the gas-ring, unheedful of the fact that the cheese would stiffen and ...
— The Lodger • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... the frightened girl. Hilary seemed to uncoil. His fist shot straight up with all the power of his body behind it. It crashed into the jutting jaw of the Mercutian like a charge of high explosive dynol. For all his height and massive strength, the giant toppled over, thudding heavily against the floor. ...
— Slaves of Mercury • Nat Schachner
... which flopped out of the trench, and the evil-smelling fumes of lyddite. The cry for stretcher-bearers was passed hurriedly up the line again. Followed "crash" after "crash," and the pinging of shrapnel which flicked into the top of the trench, the purring noise of flying nose-caps and soft thudding sounds as ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing
... Fenley's caught her shoulder in a reassuring grip. A tall figure brushed by, and she heard a curious sound that had a certain smack in it—a hard smack, combined with a thudding effect, as if some one had smitten a pillow with a fist. A fist it was assuredly, and a hard one; but it smote no pillow. With a gurgling cough, Robert Fenley toppled headlong to the edge of the lake, and lay there probably some minutes, for ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... came the sound of thudding hoofs in the lane, and a clear voice, the echo of Kate's own, calling, "Mother! Where are you? Mother! Answer me. ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... runway came sounds from the ring, the thudding of hoofs, followed by a child's shrill, joyous laughter. ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with a creaking of the pulley, the bucket would descend—bumping and thudding against the lining of the well as it did so, and bespattering afresh my head and shoulders with its filth. Rightly speaking, the Birkins ought to have ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... would not half denote his wrath. At last! It was here—the time for revolt, when he was going to be defiant. He had been careful; old Goglefogle was only barking; but why should he be barked at? With his voice palpitating and his heart thudding so that ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... gloom of these thoughts that the foreman did not hear the thudding hoofs of a horse which trotted up through the trees. Not until horse and rider appeared in the clearing was Hervey roused and then in the first glance by the size and the tossing head of the approaching pony, he recognized ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... milk, others for fruit juices. I was not too much shocked when the unnerved Babu requested whisky! The Mohammedan gave an order; the obliging Hazrat sent sealed containers sailing down the air and thudding to the floor. Each man found his ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Once more the dull thudding of the artillery was heard above the roar of rifle volleys and the snarling rattle of the machine guns; and when this ceased there was a hurried sound, mingled with wailing, within the walls of the Emir's house; two of the guards passed quickly by the windows of the Hakim's ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... chambers came a photograph and an article from Michaelstown, Massachusetts. A boy placed the packet and many others upon the desk of a young man who was standing before a window and thoughtfully drumming upon the pane. He turned at the thudding of the packets upon his desk. " Blast you," he remarked amiably. " Oh, I guess it won't hurt you to work," answered the boy, grinning with a comrade's Insolence. Baker, an assistant editor for the Sunday paper, took scat at his desk and began the task of examining ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... still on his feet, seized hold of his man-horse to escape being blown away. The Jessie was blotted out, and a strange ominous sound arose as multitudinous wavelets struck foaming on the beach. It was like the bubbling of some colossal cauldron. From all about could be heard the dull thudding of falling cocoanuts. The tall, delicate-trunked trees twisted and snapped about like whip-lashes. The air seemed filled with their flying leaves, any one of which, stem-on could brain a man. Then came the rain, a deluge, a straight, horizontal sheet that poured along ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... the wind had just the proper slant. At last it started for the real thing; a great night of aircraft going ahead to bomb the defences and a squadron of monitors staying some miles astern to pour in shells at the same time. The crash of air bombs and the thudding of the distant monitors were quite familiar sounds to the German garrison, whose "archies" (anti-aircraft guns) barked hoarsely back, while the bigger guns roared at where they thought the monitors might be. (Monitors are slow, strong, heavy, and very "bargy" craft, useful only ...
— Flag and Fleet - How the British Navy Won the Freedom of the Seas • William Wood
... released a bit of quivering wire connected with a set of wheels, and set in motion the entire insides of this hidden object. There was a sound of grating. This hard, metallic sound rose through the feathers, a clicking, thudding noise that reached her brain. It was—she knew instantly—the stopped alarum clock. It had been overwound. The weight of her head ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... the only thing that our lads—and the pirates too, apparently—had been waiting for, for the next moment the guns of our port battery crashed forth, one after the other, while our port Maxim— the only one of the two that could be brought to bear—started its savage thud-thudding tattoo, and in less than half a minute the ship was enveloped in a cloud of acrid smoke which, hanging motionless in the stagnant air, effectually cloaked the approach of the attacking force, and as effectually prevented anything like ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... imagine the fairy picture it made with its myriad of winking fires, with the soft effulgence of a thousand glowing tents, and with the wonderful magic of the night over it all. As we drew nearer, the unusual sounds of a strange merrymaking came to us—the soft thudding of drums, the weird melody of the dances, the stir and the confusion of crowded animal life. In the daylight it would have been sufficiently picturesque, but under the wizard hand of the darkness it became ...
— Laughing Bill Hyde and Other Stories • Rex Beach
... could the slingers hurl their stones, so close were friend and foe. From side to side stretched the thin line of the English, lightly armed and quick-footed, while against it stormed and raged the pressing throng of fiery Spaniards and of gallant Bretons. The clink of crossing sword-blades, the dull thudding of heavy blows, the panting and gasping of weary and wounded men, all rose together in a wild, long-drawn note, which swelled upwards to the ears of the wondering peasants who looked down from the edges of the cliffs upon the swaying turmoil ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... common sounds of daily human life one hears in that one land the rattle and clash of arms and the unending thudding tread of marching feet," he said after one such visit. "Two generations of men creatures bred and born and trained to live as parts of a huge death dealing machine have resulted in a monstrous construction. Each man ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... to the mare and loosed the reins, but she started into a full gallop too late. There came a brief hum, a thudding blow, and Grey Molly ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... glaring; the smoke reached from the ground to the clouds, and I could see great red sparks go soaring to enormous heights; while always, in the calm air, hour after hour there was the buzzing and rattling and thudding of guns, and, but ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... very confusion of the household. It was lucky if the children slept till seven o'clock. Usually, soon after six, a chirp was heard, a voice, an excited chirrup began, announcing the creation of a new day, there was a thudding of quick little feet, and the children were up and about, scampering in their shirts, with pink legs and glistening, flossy hair all clean from the Saturday's night bathing, their souls ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... no order to fire. The men were reaching into the wagons to unsling their rifles from the riding loops fastened to the bows. It all was a trample and a tumult and a whirl of dust under thudding hoofs outside and in, a phase which could last no more than an instant. Came the thin crack of a squirrel rifle from the far corner of the wagon park. The Crow partisan sat his horse just a moment, the expression on his face frozen there, his mouth slowly closing. Then he slid off his ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... and the one-eyed man bent over their paddles, and very swiftly the long, dark canoe went gliding down the stream, but not any too swiftly, for in an instant they heard a triumphant yell behind them, and then light, thudding feet along the path. ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... form and wing to the sacred vulture of Egypt, flew to welcome us with swoopings of wide purple wings. Their shadows on the water were like passing spirits; and at night when the Nubian boatmen danced, their feet thudding on the lower deck to the cry of the darabukah, the Nile whispered of the past, with a tinkling whisper, like the music of Hathor's sacred sistrum. Gyassas glided by, loaded with pots like magic melons, ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... feel her limbs trembling; but gradually the heavy thudding of her pulses quieted; nobody molested her; nobody had followed her. That she was quite lost did not matter; she had also lost this man who had denied her, somewhere in the depths of the confusion behind her. That was all that mattered—escape from him, from the terrible woman who ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... dirks or sgians out to give him his welcome. And yet the dragoon put no check on his horse. The beast, in a terror at the din of the battle, was indifferent to the rein of its master, whom it bore with thudding hooves to a front that must certainly have appalled him. He was a person of some pluck, or perhaps the drunkenness of terror lent him the illusion of valour; at least, when he found a bloody end inevitable he made the best of the occasion. Into the heaving sides of the brute ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... jerked their heads up to listen; Tressa felt their arms tighten about her. Through the darkness they strained down the track to the east, their hearts thudding almost audibly. ...
— The Return of Blue Pete • Luke Allan
... of his seat and was just raising the locker lid when a long streak of flame burst from the Huascar's side. There was a deafening, thudding roar, and a stream of machine-gun bullets screeched and hummed over their heads. They had indeed walked right into a cunningly contrived trap, and the Peruvians had been on the watch for ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... career of humpbacked antics, which jarred Franklin to the marrow of his bones. The air became scintillant and luminously red. His head seemed filled with loose liquid, his spine turned into a column of mere gelatine. The thudding of the hoofs was so rapid and so punishing to his senses that for a moment he did not realize where he actually was. Yet with the sheer instinct of horsemanship he clung to the saddle in some fashion, until finally he was fairly forced to relax the muscular strain, and so by accident fell ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... than they thought. . . . The cordon of native beaters was still a mile away in its nearest arc, but there is never any telling what a pig will do. . . . They turned back, walking together without haste, Nels behind. They heard the thudding of a mount that runs and swerves and runs again. It was nearer. . . . Their hands touched, ...
— Son of Power • Will Levington Comfort and Zamin Ki Dost
... choose him." So he went, And there was silence in the summer night; Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep. Then, far away, the thudding ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... they could hear something heavy floundering in the bushes, choking, moaning, thudding on ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... made a demon of Dale, and he struck her. She fell, soundlessly, her head striking the edge of a chair with a deadening, thudding crash. ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... long I endured, I know not. Only I remember marvelling to find myself so strong and the keen joy of it was succeeded by sudden weariness, a growing sickness: I remember a sound of groaning breaths all about me, of thudding blows, hoarse shouts, these, waxing ever fainter, until smiting with failing arms and ever-waning strength, they dragged me down at last and I lay vanquished and unresisting. As I sprawled there, drawing my breath in ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... when a thudding knock on the door seemed to beat down the shriller sounds and stop the sliding bow. Dan went to see who it was, and found standing on the threshold a tall, lean old man in a long, ragged coat, with a thick, knotted blackthorn in his ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... glare and soft, lush-carpeted spots of shade, she chose the hobbly, rock-strewn glare! On and on and on! Till dust turned sweat! And sweat turned dust again! On and on and on! With the riderless gray thudding madly after her! And Barton's sulky roan balking frenziedly at each new ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... overhead, and the shrapnel ripped down along the trench behind them with a storm of bullets thudding into the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... in giving up her life to a man? Then he smiled, half grimly, half tenderly. Judith would never be any man's really, to know and to hold. Her fiery charm was a thing ever to pursue, never fully to overtake. "Forever would he love and she be fair!" He waited silently, his heart thudding heavily. At last she turned from the window and came slowly toward him with a look in her eyes he could not pretend to read to its depths. He only knew that there was faith in him there and a passionate affection. What more, he was willing ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... his hand on the lever. The great locomotive panted, and Grant, staring out through the glasses, saw a blinking light slide back to them. Then, the plates beneath him trembled, the hammering wheels got hold, and the muffled clanging and thudding swelled into a rhythmic din. The light darted past them, the filmy whiteness which had streamed down through the big headlamp's glare now beat in a bewildering rush against the quivering glass, and the fan-shaped blaze of radiance drove ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... strong with an excellent homely aroma of cow and horse; one had only to open a door in the upper hall, a door that looked just like a bedroom entrance, to find oneself in the haymow. There I used to lie for hours reading, and listening to the summer rain thudding on the shingles. Sitting in the little gallery under the eaves, looking happily down the white road where the yellow coach brought the mail twice a day, one could see the long vista of the valley, the women with bright red jackets working in the fields, and the dark masses of forest on ...
— Shandygaff • Christopher Morley
... great house on the hill they heard it—the boy in his white nightdress leaning from the open window, and his sleepy sister kneeling beside him, pushing back her thick hair to peer out into the morning mist. On came the battery, thudding and clanking, horses on a long swinging trot, gun, caisson, forge, mounted artillerymen succeeding each other, faster, faster under the windows. A guidon danced by; more guns, more caissons, then a trampling, plunging gallop, a rattle of ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... the same breath and in a jumble of shock and terror she saw Dudley Stackpole emerge into full sight, and standing clear a pace from his doorway return the fire; saw the thudding frantic hoofs of the nigh horse spurn Harve Tatum's body aside—the kick broke his right leg, it turned out—saw Jess Tatum suddenly halt and stagger back as though jerked by an unseen hand; saw him drop his weapon and straighten again, and with both ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... waked to the knowledge that a casement window was pounding somewhere in the house. For a while I lay and listened in that helpless, exaggerated resentment one feels at such a time. I'd drop off, get nearly to sleep, only to be jerked broad awake again by the thudding. Listening carefully I decided that the bothersome window was in Worth's room, and finally I got up sense and spunk enough to roll out of bed, stick my feet into slippers, and sneak over with ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... then. It was a pulse of sound obscure as the thudding of his heart. But it was a human sound and it made his throat close up tightly, as if a hand were settling around his wind-pipe. Buck Daniels rose from his chair; that half-mad, half-listening look was still in his eyes—behind his eyes. Staring at him the doctor understood, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... crashed. And after a swimming interval they heard him moving. "Cuckoo!" he called; a level flame stabbed the dark; something fell, thudding through the staccato uproar of the explosion. At the same moment the outer door opened on the crack and Carfax's ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... a horrid, long-drawn scream of a horse and the thudding of heavy hoofs. Venters sprang erect and wheeled south. Along the canyon rim, near the edge, came Wrangle, ...
— Riders of the Purple Sage • Zane Grey
... had taken the enemy. Cheschapah, leading the line closer to the central pot, began a new figure, dancing the pursuit of the bear. This went faster; and after the bear was taken, followed the elk-hunt, and a new sway and crouch of the twelve gesturing bodies. The thudding drums were ceaseless; and as the dance went always faster and always nearer the dog pot, the steady blows of sound inflamed the dancers; their chests heaved, and their arms and bodies swung alike as ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... silent afternoon and she wandered in the great and lonely hall, sickened with the hate in her soul and her fear for her boy. Suddenly she heard flying footsteps—a boy's, running in mad haste in the outer hall, and, following them, bare feet, soft, thudding. ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... was drowned out by the tremendous crash of splintering wood and thudding flesh, as the half-breed's body hurtled through the air to smash Jack Hardy down to ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... the English centre rose a heavy, thudding sound which was new to war. It came from the mouths of cannons now for the first time fired on a field of battle, and at the report of them the Genoese, frightened, fell back a little. Seeing that the balls fell short and did but hop toward them slowly, ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard |
