"Avalanche" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... to the side of the ship, raised his hand to show that he wished to speak to the chief. But the island men rushed on like an avalanche and started to storm the ship. Snatching up arms, poles, rope-ends—whatever they could find—the men on board beat down upon the heads of the savages as they climbed up the ship's slippery side. One man after another sank wounded on the deck. The fight grew more obstinate, but ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... the maelstrom was again unleashed. And during the briefest of seconds he could fancy that the familiar bellow of its swirling, had taken on another pitch. Out of that hideous turmoil, he imagined, there issued a strange unwonted note; as it were, the first rasp and grind of a new avalanche just beginning to stir, a diapason more profound than any he had yet known, a hollow distant bourdon as of the slipping and sliding of some almighty ...
— The Pit • Frank Norris
... like a brigade of charging cavalry, tramping all before them. Forward they swept in blind panic, as relentlessly destructive as an avalanche, and no more easily stopped or ...
— Left on the Labrador - A Tale of Adventure Down North • Dillon Wallace
... single storm, or an impressive landscape come forth in a night. Here the god of erosion works incessantly and rapidly, dissecting the earth and the rocks. During a single storm a hilltop may dissolve, a mountain-side be fluted with slides, a grove be overturned and swept away by an avalanche, or a lake be buried forever. This rapid erosion of slopes and summits causes many changes and much upbuilding upon their bases. Gulches are filled, water-courses invaded, rivers bent far to one side, and ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... of Crawling Water, the cattleman thought of a short-cut, through a little used timber-trail, which would save him several miles; but it was crossed by a ravine cut by a winter avalanche like the slash of a gigantic knife. To descend into this ravine and ascend on the farther side would be a tortuous process, which would take more time than to continue by the longer route. But if the gelding could jump the narrow cleft in the trail, the distance saved might decide the issue ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Jane, and Charles, and Florence, and Bessy, did not come,—Boyce being a man who had his quiver full of them,—and Mrs Boyce, giving the usual answer, declared that she already felt that they had come as an avalanche. ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope
... no one else. Then she sat down to write letters and to prepare for her journey to New York, for she must now hasten her departure in order to escape the gossip and criticism which she saw hanging like an avalanche ...
— Democracy An American Novel • Henry Adams
... Beware the awful avalanche!" This was the peasant's last Good-night, A voice replied, far up the ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... sonorous youth whom the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... the philosopher like an avalanche! He was so full of his subject that he could not let it out in prudent driblets. No, he went souse ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 2, No. 4, March, 1851 • Various
... He lay two days on a couch with his hands beneath his head gazing vacantly at the ceiling. He did not wonder that his sacred father passed his time at the altars of the gods, but he could not understand how Herhor was able to manage the avalanche of business, which, like a storm, not only surpassed the strength of a man, but ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... to the corner a large lump of rock and earth was breaking away, a cleft was opening, so that presently, it seemed possible at any moment, the mass would fall headlong into the blue deeps below. This impending avalanche was not in my path along the Bisse, it was no sort of danger to me, but in some way its insecurity gave a final touch to my cowardice. I could not get myself ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... cube now be subservient to his will? He wondered. Everything depended upon that. If not, then he might as well try to stay the forces of a mighty avalanche with his breath, as halt the cube-army ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... but gazing at its surface more steadily, upon the face of a slope I caught sight of what seemed a larger stream than any of the rest; but it soon ceased to flow, and after came the thunder of its fall: it was a stream, but a solid one—an avalanche. Away up in the air the huge snow-summit glittered in the light of the Afternoon sun. I was gazing on the Maiden in one of her most savage moods—or to speak prose—I was regarding one of the wildest aspects of ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... through! I thought I fell a mile before I hit the water that was going to drown us; hit it knees first, just as I'd gone through, and—I sprawled in icy slush that rose no higher than my waist. I was in a sort of pocket between two rocks that were holding up the lolly. There was an avalanche of caving snow and ice all round me, but I was not drowned or likely to be,—only I barely thought of it. For I could not see Paulette. Suddenly, past belief, I heard ...
— The La Chance Mine Mystery • Susan Carleton Jones
... the cliff, where a fall had constituted a steep ramp. He scrambled up it, an avalanche of chalk slipping away from beneath his feet and half burying the ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... having tried out their range by the flashes of the automatic the previous evening were making the most of the occasion. "Uk-ung-n-ng!" the breaking jackets whipped out their grists. A crash on the roof brought a small avalanche of slate tumbling down. A concussion in the dining-room was followed by the tinkling of falling window-glass. The engineers had work immediately when two of the infantrymen and their rifles and the sand-bags on which they leaned were ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... with a poodly moustache and an eye-glass. He called our attention to every chasm, gorge and waterfall, as if we had been wholly incapable of seeing or appreciating anything without his aid. As for me, I did not feel like disputing his susceptibility. I was suffering an uneasy apprehension of an avalanche—not of snow, but of trunks and boxes from the topheavy diligences ahead of us. However, we reached the top of Mont Cenis safely by means of thirteen mules to each coach, attached tandem, and we stopped at the queer relay-house there some thirty minutes. Here some women ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 11, - No. 22, January, 1873 • Various
... found it impossible to escape the games. The potato and three-legged races brought the contestants to his side of the deck, and his reading was constantly interrupted by an avalanche of noisy spectators who rushed through the cross passages from one side of the boat to the other, exhibiting a ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... Germany prepared to take the field. They worked and worked quietly, persistently, continuously, without stint or strife, without restriction for months and months, through the autumn, through the winter, through the spring. Then came that avalanche of shot and shell which broke the great Russian armies and drove them back. That was the victory of ...
— England and Germany • Emile Joseph Dillon
... talk with the brilliancy which had astonished Philip when first he made his acquaintance. His proofs were corrected; and the volume was to come out among the publications of the early spring, when the public might be supposed to have recovered from the avalanche of Christmas books. ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... rapidity that Stephen, proudly enthroned at the wheel, had almost forgotten that any shadow rested on the hilarity of the day. He had been dubbed a good fellow, a true sport, a benefactor to the school—every complimentary pseudonym imaginable—and had glowed with pleasure beneath the avalanche of flattery. As the big car with its rollicking occupants had spun along the highway, many a passer-by had caught the merry mood of the cheering group and waved a smiling salutation in response to ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... in your rooms, ladies," interposed the polite landlord, doubly courteous under the avalanche of good fortune which had fallen upon him. "I will show you your rooms as ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... pleasant room with its clutter of costly futilities disappeared and this agreeable woman ceased to be. The avalanche of the modulated announcement sent Lennox reeling not merely out of the room, but out of ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... representation of the case; and it indicates a strange dullness of comprehension with regard to our position and purpose. What! Is it to forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider and abettor of his master? What! When the North is pressing down upon four millions of slaves like an avalanche, and we say to her, 'Take off that pressure—stand aside—give the slave a chance to regain his feet and assert his freedom!' is that turning our backs upon him? Here, for example, is a man engaged in ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... gone far, Cap'n Ira found himself seated on the moving plane of sand. He glanced fearfully behind him. The Queen of Sheba was seated on her tail, her forefeet braced against nothing more stable than the avalanche itself, and she was sailing down the slope behind him like a ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... one or two about him. Portman looked grave, and so did Breen. Nothing of that kind had ever soiled their hands; everything with them was open and above-board. They might start a rumor that the Lode had petered out, throw an avalanche of stock on the market, knock it down ten points, freezing out the helpless (poor Gilbert had been one of them), buy in what was offered and then declare an extra dividend, sending the stock skyward, but ...
— Peter - A Novel of Which He is Not the Hero • F. Hopkinson Smith
... she saw that he was not better, as she hoped, but that his face had a shrunken look, betokening the rapid failing of the vital forces. The poor girl felt that trouble was coming like an avalanche, and in spite of herself she sat down, and, burying her face in her father's bosom, sobbed aloud. But she soon realized the injury she might do him in thus giving way, and by a great effort controlled herself so as to tell him the softened ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... nearly all the rude independence of their primitive national character, others softened and disciplined by the aspect and contact of the manners and institutions of civilized life; for it is to be borne in mind that the Roman Empire in the West was not crushed by any sudden avalanche of barbaric invasion. The German conquerors came across the Rhine, not in enormous hosts, but in bands of a few thousand warriors at a time. The conquest of a province was the result of an infinite series of partial local invasions, carried on by little armies of this description. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 4 • Various
... an avalanche of news, I don't know where to begin. First, I must thank you for your dear letter and the wild flowers. They are lovely. We were immensely interested in hearing about your school, it is all so different from ours. What do you think father said, Chris Morrow! ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... upward over the great slope of ice into the recess, looking for steps abruptly ending above a crevasse or for signs of an avalanche. They came level with the lower end of a long rib of rock which crops out from the ice and lengthwise bisects the glacier. Here the search ended for a while. The rib of rocks is the natural path, and the guides climbed it quickly. They came to the upper glacier and spread out once ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... the lesser incidents of the story are employed to emphasise the distinctive features of each land. The explorers are almost frozen on the heights of the Andes, and almost drowned in the floods of the Patagonian Pampas. An avalanche sweeps some of them away; a condor carries off a lad. In Australia they are stopped by jungles and by quagmires; they hunt kangaroos. In New Zealand they take refuge amid hot sulphur springs and in a house "tabooed"; they escape by starting ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... at the foot of the steps. The whole situation had rushed upon him like an avalanche. Harbert had filed his charges and the hasty visit of the reporter proved that David Cable was an instrument in them. The blood surged to his head; he staggered under the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... falls on the Alps flake by flake, and day after day, and month after month, and after a while, at the touch of a traveler's foot, the avalanche slides down upon the villages with terrific crash and thunder. So the sins of our life accumulate and pile up, and after a while, unless we are rescued by the grace of our Lord Jesus, they will come down upon our souls in an ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... the lamp lighted than they sprang forward toward the heaving heap of blankets and folded tents, where the alarmed intruder was trying to emerge from the avalanche he ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... than a spider's web; but, once formed, it binds as with a chain of iron. The small events of life, taken singly, may seem exceedingly unimportant, like snow that falls silently, flake by flake; yet accumulated, these snow-flakes form the avalanche. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... was made took all things into consideration and determined that it was not worth it; that it would be better to let things slide. They slid. If those gentlemen had foreseen the full volume of the avalanche that was coming, I think that the money would ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... balked of any purpose which she might form. There was something at once impressive and terrible about the strength of this beautiful, smiling creature's will, about its silence, its impassibility before obstacles, its persistency. It was as inevitable and unswervable as an avalanche or a cyclone. People might shriek out against it and struggle, but on it came, a mighty force, overwhelming petty things as well as great ones. It really seemed a pity, taking into consideration Ida's tremendous strength of character, that she had not some great national purpose upon which ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... thickly streaked with mud, no single blade with any sign of life or greenness yet, when we came upon that star of concentrated beauty, more blue than the blue sky overhead, the whole passion of the earth in each pointed petal. A distant avalanche, as though the hills were settling, the bustle of the torrent, the wind in the pines and larches, only marked by contrast the incredible stillness of the heights—then, suddenly, this star of blue blazing among the desolation. I recall your cry and my own—wonder, joy, as of something unearthly—that ...
— The Garden of Survival • Algernon Blackwood
... other; the field of her battle, where Simon de Montfort defeated Henry III., is in view from her north-west slopes; while the new martyrs' memorial on the turf above the precipitous escarpment of the Cliffe (once the scene of a fatal avalanche) reminds one of what horrors were possible in the name of religion in these streets less ...
— Highways & Byways in Sussex • E.V. Lucas
... walked on the dry leaves with a sound like a thousand wapiti trooping down the mountain. Every little while, for want of something to do, I charged it. Then I carried a pine, which I had torn up, on my tusks, until the butt struck a boulder which went down the hill with an avalanche of small stones that set all the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... Damascus, was falling into ruins, a movement of these against Lebanon in the time of Jeroboam II. opened to Israel the alarming prospect that sooner or later they would have to meet the full force of the irresistible avalanche. ...
— Prolegomena to the History of Israel • Julius Wellhausen
... scattered up, Spangles the wind with lamp-like water-drops. The vale is girdled with their walls, a howl Of cataracts from their thaw-cloven ravines, Satiates the listening wind, continuous, vast, 35 Awful as silence. Hark! the rushing snow! The sun-awakened avalanche! whose mass, Thrice sifted by the storm, had gathered there Flake after flake, in heaven-defying minds As thought by thought is piled, till some great truth 40 Is loosened, and the nations echo round, Shaken to their roots, as do ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... was a sharp crack overhead, followed by a tremendous rattle and crash. Then down upon the buggy descended what, to Graves, appeared to be an avalanche of scratching, tearing twigs and branches. They ripped away the boot and laprobe and jammed him back against the seat, their sharp points against his breast. The buggy was jerked forward a ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... corrected, wrote a book embodying the amendments needed. Modest as his criticisms were, they raised a STORM of protest and angry denunciation, which even led to his deposition for the time being from his bishopric! While at the same time an avalanche of books to oppose his heresy poured forth from the press. Lately I had the curiosity to look through the British Museum catalogue and found that in refutation of Colenso's Pentateuch Examined some 140 (a hundred and forty) volumes were at that ...
— Pagan & Christian Creeds - Their Origin and Meaning • Edward Carpenter
... wonder was that he had not loved her before; for he had known her since his father brought him home from Paris, a boy of eight, after his mother died there. The passion that awoke in him that day, when he saw her at the gate, swept along like an avalanche, or like a prairie fire, or like anything that drives headlong over ...
— The Awakening and Selected Short Stories • Kate Chopin
... and the sacrifices that she consented to make saved him from inevitable failure, but he had to endure an avalanche of reproaches. At the age of twenty-nine he withdrew from business, with debts amounting to ninety thousand francs, and how could he, rebellious son that he was, ever hope to clear himself, when he might by this time have been a prosperous notary, well on the road towards honours, ...
— Honor de Balzac • Albert Keim and Louis Lumet
... they deceased. Still, there had to be undertakers. There was no more stain about that than about any other trade. And it was so as not to spoil his trade that the undertaker had enlisted, and to make the world safe for democracy, too. The phrase came to Andrews's mind amid an avalanche of popular tunes; of visions of patriotic numbers on the vaudeville stage. He remembered the great flags waving triumphantly over Fifth Avenue, and the crowds dutifully cheering. But those were valid reasons ...
— Three Soldiers • John Dos Passos
... poles with which they vainly tried to arrest our downward rush; cries and warning shouts from those in advance, multiplied by the mountain echoes, excited our dogs to still greater speed, until we seemed, as the rocks and trees flew past, to be in the jaws of a falling avalanche, which was carrying us with breathless rapidity down the dark canon to certain ruin. Gradually, however, our speed slackened, and we came out into the moonlight on the hard, wind-packed snow of the open steppe. Half an hour's brisk travel brought us into the ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... finally made and the lake sunk foot by foot while the trusting folk below made their prayers and waited. The answer came. One day when Quesada saw the treasure almost within his grasp, there was a mighty rumbling, a crash of falling stone, and behold! an avalanche of granite raged down, killing many of the soldiers, routing the rest, and filled in the man-made channel. Quesada ordered with fierce oath, but not a man would return to the work. He was forced to retreat, and died ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... effect of a plug. A pebble may block a log; a branch sometimes changes the course of an avalanche. The carronade stumbled, and the gunner, availing himself of the perilous opportunity, thrust his iron bar between the spokes of the back wheels. Pitching forward, the cannon stopped; and the man, using his bar for a lever, rocked it backward and forward. The heavy mass ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... rest, in the higher Alps, through many winters still secretly gaining bulk and encroaching inch by inch all unobserved upon the doomed valley below; then, at the dropping of a mere pebble, the ice begins to slide, nor does the dread avalanche pause for the sobs of the dying. So behind Bismarck's amazing preparedness his ofttimes long deferred but inevitable destruction of his enemies seems to be something that he borrows from the avalanche. It is at once massive and inexorable, the power given to but few master-spirits ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... stand on the Marne and the resultant battle not only checked the German avalanche and saved Paris, but dislocated the fundamental principle of the whole German plan of campaign—to crush France speedily with one mighty blow and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume IV (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... carriage pursued its way, and was lost to view in the mist. When it was seen again, it was disinterred from the bottom of a precipice—the men, the horses, and the vehicle all crushed together under the wreck and ruin of an avalanche. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... as if forcibly detaching itself, flown off from the avalanche and buried itself in the ground only a few feet beyond Harry and Pearl, and more than one uprooted tree lay near them. Death had missed them ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... top, and so fascinating seemed the prospect of reaching the very pinnacle, that I could not withstand the impulse of making the effort to get there. Over the loose stones I scrambled, clinging with hands and feet as best I could, whilst an avalanche of rocky fragments slid, tumbled, and rattled ominously ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... storms which had occurred of late Boreas had seen the destruction of numerous forests, and had even assisted in laying waste the country. But one night an avalanche had buried a hamlet from which only one living soul had escaped, and that was a young child—a mere sprig of a girl, with hair like the flax and eyes like its flowers, a little, timid, crying child—whom B.B. had actually ...
— Prince Lazybones and Other Stories • Mrs. W. J. Hays
... instant, they heard the horse directly over their heads. Laramie, whipping out his revolver, looked up. As he did so, a deafening crash blotted out the roar of the storm—the roof overhead gave way and amid an avalanche of rock and timbers, a horse plunged headlong ...
— Laramie Holds the Range • Frank H. Spearman
... body was small, not more than a score, compact, riding smartly but with military order and precision. The man at their head, the officer in command, no doubt, spurred on and began to shout at the oncoming northerners. He might as well have spoken fair words to an avalanche, and the men behind him began to waver and most of them pulled up. It was useless. The torrent swept into them and bore them backward, tumbling some of them over, men and horses together, but incorporating ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... such a vast sum of money for so slight a service; but Mr. Checkynshaw's mandate was imperative, and he departed, leaving her bewildered at the sudden fortune which had come down like an avalanche upon her. Leo went back to school, as delighted at her good luck as his own in finding himself entirely freed from the charge of being ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... He didn't know our table; he didn't know those balls; he didn't know those warped and headless cues; he didn't know the southeastern slant of the table, and how to allow for it. I judged it would be safe and profitable to offer him a bet on my scheme. I emptied the avalanche of thirteen balls on ...
— Chapters from My Autobiography • Mark Twain
... his lucid intervals; but there was that in his uncertain eye, and strange unnatural voice, which showed that a breath might dissolve the avalanche. Lord Vargrave looked anxiously round; none were near: but he knew that the more public parts of the garden were thronged, and through the trees he saw many forms moving in the distance. He felt that ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Book XI • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... of ice-water had been thrown over Jean he could not have cooled off more suddenly. He was dazed. Another marquis? This was a complication he had never dreamed of. It overwhelmed him like an avalanche. He must have time to dig himself out of ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... following day this rigorous order was carried into effect. The nose regiment was placed in front, and the battle opened with great spirit. The French troops swept down upon them like an avalanche. For an instant they looked behind, but, finding no hope of escape in that direction, each man of them suddenly grasped up a handful of mud, and, dashing it over his nostrils, shouted "Death, to the garlic-eaters!" and rushed against the enemy with indescribable ferocity. Never before were such ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... for weeks there had been accumulating evidence, which we could see pointed to a monumental success or an avalanche failure. The copper market was literally boiling, and investors from one end of America to the other and throughout Europe were on the qui vive for the anticipated announcement. At intervals in history great "booms" are started, which bloom into iridescent bubbles, ...
— Frenzied Finance - Vol. 1: The Crime of Amalgamated • Thomas W. Lawson
... beginning of July, compared with the horrid blasts of winter which here predominate by the will of God, when every rock is rendered smooth with snows so deep that every step the traveller takes is as if entering into his grave; for even should he escape an avalanche, his eye dreads to search the horizon, for full well he knows that snow—snow is all that can be seen. I watched the Ring Plover for some time; the parents were so intent on saving their young that they both lay on the rocks as if shot, quivering their ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... looked like a party of New Zealanders preparing dinner, hungry enough, too, to make an orthodox meal of each other. The next day the weather cleared up, and we made a trip of two miles over a rough mountain trail to Lake Avalanche, whose rocky and precipitous walls form a fit christening bowl, or baptistery-font ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... transportation for two-thirds of the Latham team, carrying them on his back, legs, and neck, as he strode down the field; a writ of habeas corpus could not have stopped the blond Colossus. Anyone would have stood more show to stop an Alpine avalanche than to slow up Thor, and the stretcher was constantly in evidence, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... cherished; as it was not they that engendered those beliefs, so they are powerless to destroy them; they can aim at them continual blows of contradiction and disproof without weakening them; and an avalanche of miseries and maladies coming, one after another, without interruption into the bosom of a family, will not make it lose faith in either the clemency of its God or the capacity of its physician. But when ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... An avalanche! and the ceremony was as yet incomplete! Ermentrude never forgot Carleton Roberts' look. Doubtless he never forgot ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... clumsily gathered up her parcels, while Lily looked round for the baggage-man. On the platform was an avalanche of bags, boxes, picture-frames, as at the departure from Euston; the basket trunks were being piled up in the theater-vans. Lily pointed out her hamper and her bike to the boy from the theater, who had come to meet the ...
— The Bill-Toppers • Andre Castaigne
... December of that year over a thousand pulajanes besieged the town of Taft (formerly Tubig), held by a detachment of native scouts, whilst another party, hidden in the mountains, fell like an avalanche upon a squad of 43 scouts, led by an American lieutenant, on their way to the town of Dolores, and in ten minutes killed the officer and 37 of his men. After this mournful victory the brigands went to reinforce their comrades at Taft, swelling their forces en route, ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... no debt whatever when Said Pasha signed the document. But when the work was completed, in 1869, the government of the ancient land of the Pharaohs was fairly tottering under its avalanche of obligations to European creditors, for every wile of the plausible De Lesseps had been employed to get money from simple Said, and later from Ismail Pasha, who succeeded him in the khedivate. For fully a decade the ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... seemed put to the test, in his view, for half an hour afterwards, on crossing a steep-sided ravine, my horse slipped and fell, and carried me down the almost vertical cliff face for 50 feet or more. The sand and stones poured down in an avalanche, but I kept my horse's head up, and we landed on the sandy bottom below, unscratched, in a normal position! "The senor has been saved because of the cross!" Jose and the arriero both averred, after congratulating me upon the almost miraculous ...
— Mexico • Charles Reginald Enock
... the rein taut and merely stared until he dipped away among the hills. For one thing she was quite assured that she could not overtake that hard rider; and, again, she felt that it was useless to interfere. To step between Lord Nick and one of his purposes would have been like stepping before an avalanche and commanding it to halt with a ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... that death would come As sweeps the avalanche from Alpine hight, As falls the flashing storm-sent lightning-bolt, Resistless in its terror and ...
— Debris - Selections from Poems • Madge Morris
... night to a low bank, with no thought of danger, it was startling, to say the least, to have an avalanche of earth from the bank above deposit itself upon my boat, so effectually sealing down my hatch-cover that it seemed at first impossible to break from my prison. After repeated trials I succeeded in dislodging the mass, and, thankful to escape premature interment, at once ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... sleep." And stretching myself out at full length under the tree, I remained quiet for two or three minutes. Then a slight rustling sound was heard, and I looked eagerly round for her. But the sound was overhead and caused by a great avalanche of leaves which began to descend on me from ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... learned, was sheer unadulterated hell. I was selected for the coke mine and put in three days at it—three days of smarting eyes and burning lungs, of aching and weary muscles. Then my chum, Billy Flanagan, was buried under an avalanche of falling coal and killed. There were no safeguards in the mine and the same accident might occur again at ...
— World's War Events, Vol. II • Various
... toppling over backward, the next, by a mighty effort, he had recovered his equilibrium, and finally managed to reach a safer place. As he hurried on another pillar went down. The roof sagged lower, and an avalanche of mortar and tiling slid into the court below. Yells, groans, and cries of fury ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... clothes, and turned out by hundreds to see the great plow come in,—its first voyage over the line. The locomotives set up a crazy scream, and you draw slowly into the depot. The door opened at last, you clamber down, and gaze up at the uneasy house in which you have been living. It looks as if an avalanche had tumbled down upon it,—white as an Alpine shoulder. Your first thought is gratitude that you have made a landing alive. Your second, a resolution that, if again you ride a hammer, it will not be when three engines have ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... hanging over a flour bin nearly empty, slipped. Her feet flew up, her head went down, and she tripped the grocery clerk. His long pole crashed into the neat pile of boxes arranged on the shelves and a shower of oatmeal, cornstarch, macaroni and other cereals fell in an avalanche. ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... question asked in things rather than in words, and so conditioned that no uncertain answer can be given. Nature says that all matter gravitates, not in words, but in the swing of planets around the sun, and in the leap of the avalanche. And men have devised ingenious machines through which Nature may tell us the invariable laws of gravitation, and give some hint as ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 286 - June 25, 1881 • Various
... for France. "He has gone," writes Callieres, "after quarrelling with everybody." The various points in dispute were set before the king. An avalanche of memorials, letters, and proces-verbaux, descended upon the unfortunate monarch; some concerning Mareuil and the quarrels in the council, others on the excommunication of Desjordis, and others on the troubles at Montreal. They ...
— Count Frontenac and New France under Louis XIV • Francis Parkman
... narrow, fissure-like opening in the rocky wall, a crack similar to, but larger, than the opening through which Bud had made his discovery. Then shale and dirt had been started, in a miniature avalanche, down the side of the slope, effectually hiding the means by which ...
— The Boy Ranchers on the Trail • Willard F. Baker
... Phil was on him quick as an avalanche. The Mayor, in his haste to get out of the way, toppled backward against the anvil. Phil's left arm shot out and finished the job. He caught Brenchfield straight on the point of the chin, sending him hurtling head first over the anvil and on ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... four years hustling to "make good" "over two thousand dollars." For the first time he questioned the wisdom of promoting himself. But he could n't back out now. He almost damned Honey's thrift. He would be piling up a debt which threatened to become an avalanche and swamp him, and for which he would get no equivalent but temporarily increased adulation. How could he nip this awful thing in the bud? He did n't see any way out of it unless it were to throw up his job and cut short this accumulating horror. But at least he had a year of grace—two years, ...
— Skinner's Dress Suit • Henry Irving Dodge
... village the natives were awakened from their lethargic sleep by the far-away crash of the avalanche. Their faces blanched as they thought of the hunters. "The hill spirits have smitten! Ioh! Ioh!" they moaned. In her igloo Annadoah, who had waited with sleepless anxiety, wept alone. Of all in the village only the heart ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... of a clog. A pebble may stop a log, the branch of a tree turn aside an avalanche. The carronade stumbled. The gunner, taking advantage of this critical opportunity, plunged his iron bar between the spokes of one of the hind wheels. The cannon stopped. It leaned forward. The man, using the bar as a lever, ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... tunnels, so that the passengers of those old underground trains could get to the platforms where they stopped. But the sun bomb had changed all that. The concussion had shaken loose rock at the top of the cliff and a minor avalanche had obliterated all indications of the tunnel's existence, except for one small, narrow opening near the top of what had once been a wide hole in ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... Six abreast they came, a regiment of strong, straight riders, hungry for battle, hot to retrieve the losing fortune of the day. The road was too narrow for a concentrated rush, so they streamed into the fields on either side, re-formed, and swept like an avalanche of blue upon their prey. The guns in the woods now thundered forth afresh, their echoes rolling out across the hills, and the attacking Rebels turned and fled, like ...
— The Littlest Rebel • Edward Peple
... the hand. I could reach the latter, from the platter beside me, to my mouth, with great effort, but no farther. Could I have broken the fastenings above the elbow, I would have seized and attempted to arrest the pendulum. I might as well have attempted to arrest an avalanche! ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 2 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... critical moment, Gonsalvo, whose eagle eye took in the whole operations of the field, ordered a general charge along the line; and the Spaniards, leaping their intrenchments, descended with the fury of an avalanche on their foes, whose wavering columns, completely broken by the violence of the shock, were seized with a panic, and fled, scarcely offering any resistance. Louis d'Ars, at the head of such of the men-at-arms as could follow ...
— The History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella The Catholic, V3 • William H. Prescott
... me, but which betrayed me on every occasion—all the hot anger that I had been accumulating during the rehearsals, the cries of revolt against the perpetual injustice of these two men, Perrin and Dumas—I burst out with everything in an avalanche of stinging words which were both furious and sincere. I reminded him of his promise made in former days; of his visit to my hotel in the Avenue de Villiers; of the cowardly and underhand manner in which he had sacrificed me, at Perrin's request and on the ...
— My Double Life - The Memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt • Sarah Bernhardt
... in, like eternal clouds. The bases of the mountains forming the gorge in which the little village lay, were richly green; and high above this gentler vegetation, grew forests of dark fir, cleaving the wintry snow-drift, wedge-like, and stemming the avalanche. Above these, were range upon range of craggy steeps, grey rock, bright ice, and smooth verdure-specks of pasture, all gradually blending with the crowning snow. Dotted here and there on the mountain's-side, each tiny dot a home, were lonely wooden cottages, so dwarfed by the towering ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... higher and higher by the faithful, untiring electric current. After a quarter of an hour's progress we paused high above the "snout" of the great Eiger glacier, and descended by a short path on to it, examined the ice, its crevasses and layers, and its "glacier-grains," and watched and heard an avalanche. The last time I was here it took a couple of hours to reach this spot from the Scheidegg, and probably neither I nor any of my fellow-passengers could to-day endure the necessary fatigue of reaching this spot on foot. Then we remounted the train, ...
— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester
... pools and lakelets are in like manner obliterated from the winter landscapes, either by being first frozen and then covered by snow, or by being filled in by avalanches. The first avalanche of the season shot into a lake basin may perhaps find the surface frozen. Then there is a grand crashing of breaking ice and dashing of waves mingled with the low, deep booming of the avalanche. Detached masses of the invading snow, mixed ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... enjoyment worked against the ideal that sprang and flowed forth from the sacred solitude of the forest. These poems contain the voice of warnings against the gorgeous unreality of that age, which, like a Himalayan avalanche, was slowly gliding down to an abyss of catastrophe. And from his seat beside all the glories of Vikramaditya's throne the poet's heart yearns for the purity and simplicity of India's past age of spiritual striving. And ...
— Creative Unity • Rabindranath Tagore
... circle as Samson burst the green withes: he paralysed all remonstrance; he vanished into the abyss which the great staircase presented. He must have borne a charmed life to reach thus far—when a mightier roar, a perfect column of fire, a thundering avalanche of glowing timber and huge stones descended with a shock of an earthquake, and rebounded into the sea, engulfing for ever the fair ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... fill it with adoration and sweet content. Not dark and dreary mountains riven by the bolts of angry Jove; not gloomy Walpurgis gorges where devils dance and witches shriek; not the savage thunder of the avalanche, but the sun-kissed valley of Cashmere, the purple hills of the lotus eaters' land, the pastoral beauties of Tempe's delightful vale. Here is repeated a thousand times that suburban home which Horace sang; here the coast where Odysseus, "the much-enduring man," cast anchor and ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... single spot; he burned a hole wherever he went. The secret of his power lay in his ability to concentrate his forces upon a single point. After finding the weak place in the enemy's ranks, he would mass his men and hurl them like an avalanche upon the critical point, crowding volley upon volley, charge upon charge, till he made a breach. What a lesson of the power of concentration there is in this man's life! He was able to focus all his faculties upon the smallest detail, as well as upon an empire. But, alas! Napoleon ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... between the handles of the wheel-barrow, Alfred attempted to overturn it. The handles overturned Alfred. Down the steep incline, rolled Alfred, wheel-barrow and contents in one conglomerate mass, Alfred under the avalanche ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... their shallow trenches leaped the Army Boys, the light of battle in their eyes, and fell like an avalanche upon the ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... about me, I saw the lady Aurelia lying among the smashed up gear to leeward. She had been lying down, reading in a sort of bunk which had been rigged up for her on the locker-top. The shock had flung her clean out of the bunk on to the deck. At the same moment an avalanche of gear had fetched to leeward. A cask had rolled on to her left hand, pinning her down to the deck, while a box of bottles had cut the back of her head. A more complete picture of misery you could not hope to see. There was all ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... where I had left my cousin talking with Uncle Mo and Aunt Maria was all but darkened, and the place was a cloud of dust. I could see that Uncle Mo was wrenching open the street-door, which seemed to have stuck, and then that it opened, letting in an avalanche of rubbish, and some light. Cries came from outside, and Aunt Maria called out that it was Mrs. Burr. Thereon Uncle Mo, crying 'Stand clear, all!' began flinging the rubbish back into the room with ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... water,—fiery isles Spring blazing from the ocean, and go back To their mysterious caverns,—mountains rear To heaven their bald and blackened cliffs, and bow Their tall heads to the plain,—new empires rise, Gathering the strength of hoary centuries, And rush down like the Alpine avalanche, Startling the nations,—and the very stars, Yon bright and burning blazonry of God, Glitter a while in their eternal depths, And, like the Pleiad, loveliest of their train, Shoot from their glorious spheres, ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... French army had been held for just such an opening. It was sent forward with impetuous speed to strike like an avalanche. The lieutenant said that already the blow had started to fall, and that there could be no doubt about the Germans being in retreat, heading north again to positions they must have arranged for ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... It is situated half-way up the mountain, and there is no living person within twelve miles of it. There used to be a populous village named Aralik, with 5000 inhabitants, a little above it, but in 1840 an earthquake shook Mount Ararat, and in four minutes an immense avalanche had buried this place so completely as to leave scarcely any vestige of its site. Not a single person escaped, which is not to be wondered at, considering the mass that fell. Stones of twenty or thirty ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume I • Demetrius Charles Boulger
... which each party bound itself to aid the other, should its territory be invaded. England thus sought a guaranty against France, and Prussia against Russia. She had need. Her King, Frederic the Great, had drawn upon himself an avalanche. Three women—two empresses and a concubine—controlled the forces of the three great nations, Austria, Russia, and France; and they all hated him: Elizabeth of Russia, by reason of a distrust fomented by secret intrigue and turned into gall by the biting ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... seven o'clock and we were again overtaken by the storm, which hurled itself upon us, fairly rocking the car in its violence. The train, which had been proceeding slowly and jerkily, now came to a full stop. An avalanche of snow, earth, and loose stones had fallen at the end of a deep cut. Had we been going at any speed an awful catastrophe would have resulted. As it was we were barely moving when we ran into the ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... had not uttered a word. Then she let flow a torrent of language such as had never before been heard within the sacred precincts of Le Bon Pasteur. She could no more be stopped than an avalanche. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... sought shelter under its ample roof from an impending thunder storm, of very threatening appearance, rapidly approaching from the west. We had scarcely passed the northern entrance, and reached the gallery by the nearest flight of steps, when the torrent—it was not rain, but an avalanche of water—struck the building; the gutters were filled on the windward side in a moment, and poured over an almost unbroken sheet of water, which was driven through the Venetian blind ventilators, into and half way across the north-west ...
— Outlines of a Mechanical Theory of Storms - Containing the True Law of Lunar Influence • T. Bassnett
... very wretched, sir," replied Albert to this avalanche of insults, "and you would ...
— The Widow Lerouge - The Lerouge Case • Emile Gaboriau
... AVALANCHE (adopted from a French dialectic form, avalance, descent), a mass of snow and ice mingled with earth and stones, which rushes down a mountain side, carrying everything before it, and producing a strong wind which uproots trees on each side of its course. Where ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 3, Part 1, Slice 1 - "Austria, Lower" to "Bacon" • Various
... not been seen since he disappeared from the ball room of Beau-Sejour:—my cousin, Caspar von Hazenfeldt, took to wandering alone over the Swiss mountains; and before three months had elapsed, from the time he met the old gentleman, was buried in the fall of an avalanche, near the pass ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... them, it lit up the whole scene. The hillside looked almost as if it were on fire. The earth vibrated, and the air had the sharp smell of ozone. This was followed by a frightening clatter and rumble. The force of the energy was sweeping down rocks, gravel, and shrubbery in a hillside avalanche! ...
— Tom Swift and The Visitor from Planet X • Victor Appleton
... avalanche of figures and species with an astonished blink, and now protested energetically that he had had not the slightest intention of precipitating any such flood. "Great Scott, Page, catch your breath! If you're talking to me, you'll have to use English, anyhow. I've no more idea what ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... the last moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship. It is almost as low as at Paris, where hardly a ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... might be watching them off the trail, they changed the name of the publishing company to the Right Cause Publishing Co. and issued an avalanche of Nazi propaganda. It was through this secretly organized and secretly functioning propaganda center that Harry A. Jung, ultra-"patriot," distributed printed attacks on Roosevelt just before the ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... bitter stress Of conflict were the more part compassed round, And needs must still abide the battle's brunt. But when full many had filled the measure up Of fate, mid tumult, blood and agony, Then to their ships did many Argives flee Pressed by Eurypylus hard, an avalanche Of havoc. Yet a few abode the strife Round Aias and the Atreidae rallying; And haply these had perished all, beset By throngs on throngs of foes on every hand, Had not Oileus' son stabbed with his ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... valour, the air of England became charged with an ominous feeling that something was wrong at the front. The German advance in the west had been well nigh triumphant. Reckless bravery alone could not prevail against the avalanche ...
— The War After the War • Isaac Frederick Marcosson
... Crossman had bunglingly prepared lay untouched on the table. Now and then the crash of an avalanche of snow from the overburdened branches emphasized the stillness. Dreading he knew not what, Crossman waited—and loneliness is not good for ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the earth bent like thin ice beneath his heel. Birds, beasts, serpents, and poachers fled affrighted to the right and left of his course. He came down upon the unsuspecting assassins like a mild Spanish avalanche. ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... but Bartley had no intention of playing ping-pong with a roaring red avalanche. Bartley made for the side of the gulch and, catching hold of the bole of a juniper, drew himself up. Cheyenne stood to his guns, shied a third stone, scored a bull's-eye, and then decided to evacuate in favor of the enemy. His feet were sore, but he managed to keep a good three jumps ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... mighty storm that tears The icy avalanche from its bed, They rushed against th' opposing spears— The student at their head! The bands of Austria fought in vain; A bloodier harvest heaped the plain At every charge they made; Each herdsman was a hero then— The mountain hunters stood ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... it was still of much more than average length, I heard no particular complaints, and at last adopted Tichatschek's view that, if he could stand it, so could the audience. For six performances therefore, all of which continued to receive a similar avalanche of applause, I let ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... first projection of the Victoria Bridge, the difficulties of executing such a work across a wide river, down which an avalanche of ice rushes to the sea every spring, were pronounced almost insurmountable by those best acquainted with the locality. The ice of two thousand miles of inland lakes and upper rivers, besides their tributaries, ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... leave the subject of Belgium, what have we done for Belgium? Have we saved her soil from invasion? Were we at her side with half a million men when the avalanche fell on her? Or were we safe in our own country praising her heroism in paragraphs which all contrived to convey an idea that the Belgian soldier is about four feet high, but immensely plucky for his size? Alas, when the Belgian soldier cried: "Where are the ...
— New York Times, Current History, Vol 1, Issue 1 - From the Beginning to March, 1915 With Index • Various
... was not for long. An avalanche of Aunt Lydia entered the room, quite filling it with her fluttering presence. Tante Lydia's morning cap was quite as youthful as that of her niece, her flowered wrapper as belaced and befurbelowed as the lingiere could make it, and her high heeled mules were at least two sizes too small, and ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... is not to get her moving, but to keep her from moving too rapidly. In his Civic Forum address in New York three years ago, Wu Ting Fang quoted Wen Hsiang's saying, "When China wakes up, she will move like an avalanche." A movement with the power of an ...
— Where Half The World Is Waking Up • Clarence Poe
... curving o'er her creamy cheek, Her bosom swells with all a lover's joy, When love receives a message that the coy Young love-god made a strong and true heart speak From far-off lands; and like a mountain-peak That loses in one avalanche its cloy Of ice and snow, so doth her breast employ Its hidden store of blushes; and they wreak Destruction, as they crush my aching heart,— Destruction, wild, relentless, and as sure As the poor Alpine ...
— When hearts are trumps • Thomas Winthrop Hall
... yells of the exultant savages were cut short and turned to howls of dismay by a fusillade which thundered from the south where a crowd of hard-riding, hard-shooting cow-punchers tore out of the thicket like an avalanche and swept over the open sand, yelling and cursing, and then separated to go in hot pursuit of the sprinting Apaches. Some stood up in their stirrups and fired down at a slant, making a short, chopping motion with their heavy Colts; others leaned forward, far over the necks ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... nothing,' said Madge, whose pink cheeks showed what she had faced. 'I left a whole avalanche in the hall. The streets are a foot deep already. Not a cab to be got. We had to fight our way from the theatre arm in arm; the wind and snow were like to lift us off our feet altogether. Frank said it reminded him of Canada. ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... couldn't have chosen better if he had looked through the walls and discovered Bea the sole student with time to burn—or to talk, for that matter. Trot along, Beatrice, and tell him that Gertrude is coming the moment she has dug her way out of this avalanche of manuscript. I can't possibly spare her for half an hour yet. Go and distract his mind from his unnatural sister by means ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... be sure, is only about Porto Rico, and it is only a very little island. But who believes he can stop the avalanche? What wise man, at least, will take the risk of starting it? Who imagines that we can take in Porto Rico and keep out nearer islands when they come? Powerful elements are already pushing Cuba. Practically everybody recognizes ...
— Problems of Expansion - As Considered In Papers and Addresses • Whitelaw Reid
... hands, and, in spite of the fury into which he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep sigh, he walked to and fro ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... Not a shout was uttered, the tramp of many feet alone was heard, when suddenly the comparative silence was broken by fierce shrieks and cries, and from all sides came showers of arrows and javelins, while from the heights above their heads rushed down a complete avalanche of rocks and stones. Ned saw Mohammed pierced through by an arrow; all the other chiefs the next instant shared the same fate. There was no hope of escaping by pushing forward, as the path was barred by a band of shrieking savages, ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... numerous evidences that people had been there very recently and left in a great hurry. A cloth partially laid and left hanging. Drawers of the buffet left open. A broom lying directly in the middle of the floor where it had been dropped. An upset work-basket, disgorging spools, needle packets, and an avalanche of stockings awaiting darning. A lamp with the chimney standing beside it on the table. These were some of the signs denoting sudden and important interruption ...
— Fair Harbor • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... rolled like an avalanche from house to house, from street to street, and even reached the major's door, who, in spite of the lateness of the hour, called a meeting of the magistrates, and sent policemen to all the hotels to demand a list of the strangers who had arrived during the last few days. In order ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... Luckily I managed to finish it in time, for a succession of terrific rolls emptied one of my book-shelves. Possum, crawling upward from my feet under the covered way of my bed, yapped with terror as the seas smashed and thundered and as the avalanche of books descended upon us. And I could not but grin when the Paste Board Crown smote me on the head, while the puppy was knocked gasping with Chesterton's What's ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... fast by the window The rushing winds go, To the ice-cumber'd gorges, The vast seas of snow! There the torrents drive upward Their rock-strangled hum; There the avalanche thunders The hoarse torrent dumb. —I come, O ye mountains! ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... underlying saigner a blanc have grown during the past four decades into a possible avalanche possessing huge potential energy; the momentum was given ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... cry re-echoed from every throat, Jim Reddin dropped beside him as swiftly and almost miraculously as a sparrow-hawk flashes upon its prey. With a terrific surge he swung Goodine backward and outward into the raging current, but away from the face of the impending avalanche. Then, as the logs all went with a gathering roar, he himself sprang outward in a superb leap, splashed mightily into the stream, disappeared, and came up some yards below. Side by side the two men struck out sturdily for shore, and ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... the dam has given way! An avalanche of water God's hand alone can stay! Oh, leap, ye hills, before it and keep this torrent back, Or devastated towns and homes ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... relations and proportions of things, one imagines the whole earth darkened by the cloud which is but hiding the sun from the spot where our feet stand. And before one has seen what wonders Time can do, the ruin wrought by an avalanche or a flood seems irreparable. It is inconceivable, that the bare and torn rocks should be clothed again, the choking piles of rubbish ever be anything but dismal and unsightly, the stripped fields ever be green and flourishing, or the torn-up trees be ever replaced. Yet Time does it all. Come ...
— The End of a Coil • Susan Warner
... to Sulby like an avalanche, shouting his greetings to everybody on the way. But when he got near to the "Fairy" he wiped his steaming forehead and held his panting breath, and pretended not to have heard ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... absent two months, and returned with some most marvellous stories about what they had seen and heard, and, as a proof of the existence of the animal, brought me the horn of a wild sheep they had picked up in one of the valleys in the snow, after an avalanche had melted. This physical fragment at once removed all my doubts, the horn being different from that of any tame sheep. I was now wound up to the highest pitch of excitement; my marching establishment was soon put in order, and we started on the following day. Fifteen forced marches brought ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... fairly be called a constant play of countenance: first he smiled, then looked grave; now raised his eyebrows, till they rose like rainbows, to the horizon of his pale, straw-coloured hair; and next darted them down, like an avalanche, over the twinkling, restless, fluttering, little blue eyes, which then became almost invisible. Mr. Douce had, in fact, all the appearance of a painfully shy man, which was the more strange, as he had the reputation of enterprise, and even audacity, ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... death-grip, but here is a death and life grip—death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness of nature, the disregard for suffering of the tornado, the earthquake and the avalanche shown in little in the fangs and claws of these wild creatures. Then there are the battles of the more evenly-matched animals—not always as a result of the need of sustenance—such are the tiger transfixed by the elephant; the python's folds crushing the crocodile; and the bear dragging ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... the earth directly above them, was dislodging itself, was falling! At her cry Landless raised his eyes, saw the threatening mass, caught her around the waist, and with one supreme effort swung her out of the path of the avalanche which descended the next moment, bearing him with ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... want to say right at this time that the idea that seems to be prevalent in the minds of many that the German is not a good fighting man is a lamentable mistake; he is a good fighter. He has not perhaps the initiative of the British, or the avalanche-like ardor in a charge of the French soldier, but with his officers pressing him behind and in mass formation, he is as formidable a foe as ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... hard to write of these things now that many days have passed between, for events followed each other with the swiftness of a mighty avalanche. ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... a ferocious chorus from throats hoarse with their song of battle. It came with a wild headlong rush, that recked nothing of the storm of fire with which it was met. A dozen lifeless bodies piled themselves before the staunch resistance. It made no difference. The avalanche swept on, and over the human barricade, till it reached striking distance ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum |
