"Cavern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... The fact was, she had made a private marriage, and what would the confidante say, if, in early youth, she, Lady Randolph, had lost a husband? In the cold bosom of the earth was lodged the husband of her youth, and in some cavern of the ocean ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... empty arch was but dimly lighted, draughty, odorous, and gloomy. Beyond the extinguished footlights they could see the curved enormous cavern of the house, row upon row of empty seats. In the orchestra box two or three men, one in his coat sleeves, were disputing over an opera score. High up in the topmost gallery some one was experimenting with the calcium machine; ...
— The Story Of Julia Page - Works of Kathleen Norris, Volume V. • Kathleen Norris
... my hope shall have been fulfilled, even although my appointed life-term should be brought to end, for I have no further need of existence." To these words the Jinni made answer, "Learn thou, O Habib, that the cavern wherein thou art containeth the hoards of our Lord Solomon, David's son (upon the twain be The Peace!), and he placed them under my charge and he forbade me abandon them until such time as he shall permit me, and furthermore that I let and hinder both mankind and Jinn-kind from entering the ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... hotel we could view the huge glacier at very close range. After a rest we followed down a path which had been made in the steep inner frontage of the moraine, and stepped upon the glacier itself. One of the shows of the place was a tunnel-like cavern, which had been hewn in the glacier. The proprietor of this tunnel took candles and conducted us into it. It was three or four feet wide and about six feet high. Its walls of pure and solid ice emitted a soft and rich blue light that produced a lovely effect, and suggested enchanted caves, and ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was the only thing to do, and as they went back the sides of the cavern were examined, and the Professor took a number of samples, as he said: "Don't lose the candle until we get where we can see daylight. Although we are not more than two hundred feet from the mouth of the cave, the remarkable bend or ...
— The Wonder Island Boys: Exploring the Island • Roger Thompson Finlay
... screen Was broken there to give them light, While in ourselves it shuts the sight, We should no more admire, perchance, That these found truth out at a glance, Than marvel how the bat discerns Some pitch-dark cavern's fifty turns, Led by a finer tact, a gift He boasts, which other birds must shift Without, and grope as best they can." No, freely I would praise the man,— Nor one whit more, if he contended That gift of his, from God descended. Ah friend, what gift of man's does ...
— Browning's England - A Study in English Influences in Browning • Helen Archibald Clarke
... tribunal, we do not find ourselves in a midnight forest, nor in a dimly-lighted cavern or mysterious vault, as peasant traditions would tell us, but in the hall of some ancient castle, or on a hill-top, under the shade of lime-trees, and with an open view of the country for miles around. Here, on the seat of justice, presides ...
— Historical Tales, Vol 5 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality, German • Charles Morris
... Hebrews made between the grave, or sepulchre, and the under world, or abode of shades. The Hebrew words bor and keber mean simply the narrow place in which the dead body is buried; while Sheol represents an immense cavern in the interior of the earth where the ghosts of the deceased are assembled. When the patriarch was told that his son Joseph was slain by wild beasts, he cried aloud, in bitter sorrow, "I will go down to ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... robber from his cavern, and the midnight murderer from his den; summon the seducer from his couch, and beckon the adulterer from his embrace; cite the swindler to appear; assemble from every quarter all the various miscreants whose vices deprave, and whose villainies distress, mankind; ...
— Coleridge's Literary Remains, Volume 4. • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... shelter of chinked logs had been put up for the chickens, to which their roosts and nest boxes, of coarse wicker, boards nailed together, hollow bark from the hemlock logs, even worn-out tin pails, had all been transferred. The cellar had been well banked from the outside, and its darksome cavern held good store of apples, pork, and potatoes. There was dried beef in the stairway, squashes in the cupboard, flour in the pantry, and the great gentle black cow in the barn was a wonderful milker. In three ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... began, and sent a little shiver of delight through Betty's soul. The long, soft notes that died away like a summer breeze, the deep, grand rolls that seemed to come from a cavern below, and then blend with the clear, sweet echoes rising and falling, and at length ascending in a burst of praise and gladness—it seemed to her that the angels above would be stooping to listen ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... procured from a large cavern near the cone of the peak; it is almost full of the finest ice all ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... us— Robbed the Sea-Gull of her husband, Robbed the infant of her mother. From this cliff the treacherous woman Headlong into Gitchee Gumee Plunged the mother of my orphan. Then a Nebe-naw-baig caught me— Chief of all the Nebe-naw-baigs— Took me to his shining wigwam, In the cavern of the waters, Deep beneath the mighty waters. All below is burnished copper, All above is burnished silver Gemmed with amethyst and agates. As his wife the Spirit holds me; By this silver chain he ...
— The Feast of the Virgins and Other Poems • H. L. Gordon
... Thunder rolled across the heavens and the lightning glared fitfully. The heat had been unbearable before the storm, and the downpour of rain was terrific. The party was washed out of its encampment, and had it not been that Andy discovered shelter for them in a sort of cavern under a huge boulder, they ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... niches or recesses formed by a precipice in the cavern of Kickapoo Creek, which is a tributary of the Wisconsin, there is a gigantic mass of stone presenting the appearance of a human figure. It is so sheltered by the overhanging rocks and by the sides of the recess in which it ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends: North American Indian • Anonymous
... Philistines, and was crowned King of Israel. This act of open defiance was speedily followed by the invasion of Judah. At first the war went against the Israelitish king; he was forced to fly from his capital, Hebron, and take refuge in an inaccessible cavern. Here he organised his forces, and at last ventured into the field. The Philistine forces were defeated in battle after battle; the war was carried into their own territory, and their cities were compelled to surrender. Philistia thus became a part of the Israelitish kingdom, and never ...
— Early Israel and the Surrounding Nations • Archibald Sayce
... ikons for men to vow by; as lessons for women to show their children in days to come—when the Hun octopus roots himself again in the comity of civilised nations, lying in wait at our doorways, stretching out his antennae, like those foul things that lurk at sea-cavern mouths—these eight pictures have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, April 4, 1917 • Various
... exquisite; but the ulterior is most dazzling; and at the sight of the rich marbles and innumerable precious stones of all kinds with which it abounds, I was reminded of Aladdin and began to fancy myself in the cavern of the Wonderful Lamp. This church was built by Galeazzo Visconti, whose coffin is here, and his statue also, in white marble. There are several bas-reliefs of exquisite workmanship. There are no fewer than seventeen altars here and of the most beautiful structure ...
— After Waterloo: Reminiscences of European Travel 1815-1819 • Major W. E Frye
... faction.—O conspiracy, Shamest thou to show thy dangerous brow by night, When evils are most free? O, then, by day Where wilt thou find a cavern dark enough To mask thy monstrous visage? Seek none, conspiracy; Hide it in smiles and affability: For if thou pass, thy native semblance on, Not Erebus itself were dim enough To hide thee ...
— Julius Caesar • William Shakespeare [Hudson edition]
... at their feet; the insistent flow of the river, descending from the reservoirs far away; and the sharp chatter of the little beck leaping at their side from stone to stone. Passionately, in Meynell's heart the "buried life" awoke, which only love can free from the cavern where it lies, and bring into the full energy ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... fro carrying in their hands vessels, statues, images of animals and plants, and many other objects. The shadows of these men and of the objects that they carry are thrown upon that wall of the cavern which is opposite to the captives, who thus know nothing of the external world but these shadows which they take to be realities, and they spend their time discussing the shadows, naming ...
— Mrs. Piper & the Society for Psychical Research • Michael Sage
... sacrifices, drinking a water called Lethe, from its quality of making people forget every thing, the votaries went down into his cave, by small ladders, through a very narrow passage. At the bottom was another little cavern, the entrance of which was also exceeding small. There they lay down upon the ground, with a certain composition of honey in each hand, which they were indispensably obliged to carry with them. Their feet were placed within the opening of the little ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... inarticulate; but from the way he shook both gnarled fists in the direction in which Jim had fled, it was clear that he knew who was responsible for the death of his hound, and who had placed it where it was. With a sudden sense of superstition his memory went back to the fate of his great gorilla of the cavern that once had guarded his treasure in a cave in one of the islands off the coast of California. It was this same big, humorous, blond-headed boy, who had several times outwitted and beaten him, though not always, for the ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... but north winds blew for more than a week. Another time I was ordered to lift those ancient stones, the mighty bulls of Guisando, an enterprise that might more fitly be entrusted to porters than to knights. Again, she bade me fling myself into the cavern of Cabra—an unparalleled and awful peril—and bring her a minute account of all that is concealed in those gloomy depths. I stopped the motion of the Giralda, I lifted the bulls of Guisando, I flung myself into the cavern and brought to light the ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... some long, fierce struggle, or series of struggles, were at last accomplished; as if for a long period of time she had been involved in the maze and tortuous passages of some gloomy cavern, but at length, thence issuing, had again beheld the stars. A great tenderness, a certain tremulous joy in all things that were true and good and right, grew big and strong within her; the delight in living returned to her. ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... agreeable party, I spent a long summer day in exploring the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky. We traversed, through spacious galleries affording a solid masonry foundation for the town and county overhead, the six or eight black miles from the mouth of the cavern to the innermost recess which tourists visit,—a niche or grotto made of one seamless stalactite, and called, I believe, Serena's Bower. I lost the light of one day. I saw high domes, and bottomless pits; heard the voice of unseen waterfalls; paddled three quarters of a mile in the deep Echo ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... prisoner derived much comfort in having a living creature in this dungeon, and he caressed and fed her tenderly. The man who was entrusted to bring him supplies fell sick; and when another attempted to penetrate into the cavern the goat furiously opposed him, presenting her horns in all directions, till the fugitive, hearing a disturbance, came forward. This new attendant giving the watchword removed every doubt of his good intentions, ...
— A Hundred Anecdotes of Animals • Percy J. Billinghurst
... eager, that Percivale and I glanced at each other, and without a word, lifted her, and followed Wynnie. It was a little way that we had to carry her down, but it was very broken, and insomuch more difficult than the other. At length we stood in the cavern. What a contrast to the vision overhead!—nothing to be seen but the cool, dark vault of the cave, long and winding, with the fresh seaweed lying on its pebbly floor, and its walls wet with the last tide, for every tide rolled through in rising ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... phenomenon. All agreed that it was out of the question that so large a quantity of water had accumulated in any old workings, for the plan of the pit had been repeatedly inspected by them all. Some inclined to the belief that there must have been some immense natural cavern above the workings, and that when the fire in the pit burned away the pillars left to support the roof, this must have fallen in, and let the water in the cavern into the mine; others pointed out that there was no example whatever of a cavern of such dimensions ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... stream; this, it is said, was the Tsgi (the Navajo name for Canyon de Chelly). Here they built a large house in a cavernous recess, high up in the canyon wall. They tell of devoting two years[3] to ladder making and cutting and pecking shallow holes up the steep rocky side by which to mount to the cavern, and three years more were employed in building the house. While this work was in progress part of the men were planting gardens, and the women and children were gathering stones. But no adequate reason is given for thus toiling to fit this impracticable site for occupation; the ...
— A Study of Pueblo Architecture: Tusayan and Cibola • Victor Mindeleff and Cosmos Mindeleff
... shall win proud eminence 'Mid honoured founts, while I the ilex sing Crowning the cavern, whence Thy babbling ...
— Horace • Theodore Martin
... and the world is God's quarry. The stones for the temple were cut out of the great rock in the dark underground cavern. They were rough and shapeless. Then they were dressed into form, and this required a great deal of cutting, hammering, and chiselling. Without this stern, sore work on the stones, not one of them could ...
— Making the Most of Life • J. R. Miller
... below the castle before mentioned. It is even now a place that a careless pedestrian might easily pass without remarking, notwithstanding that its entrance is worn by many curious feet. The entrance is very narrow, and the cavern, like caverns in general, exceedingly dark. The river flows by more rapidly here than above; the grass grows long and wild, and there is a gloomy air about it that would make it an unpleasant place for a night rendezvous even without the horrid associations connected with it. ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. VI, June, 1862 - Devoted To Literature and National Policy • Various
... memorable fable of the Seven Sleepers; [43] whose imaginary date corresponds with the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. [44] When the emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain; where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured by the a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... towering tall Above the lands?" With eyes wild flashing, low He groaned: "O Lilith, ask me not. My foe He was—he is. Trembles with wrath my frame If I but faintly breathe his awful name." Lilith replied, "Meseemeth, master true Of every craft is He." Forth the two From that drear cavern passed. Ere the water's brim They gained, he plucked the wilding reeds, that slim Stood by a brook. "My pipe I make, one strain Harmonious to wake. Nor yet again Shalt thou such fresh notes hear. Music like mine Methinks thou hast not known ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... still there. It was a beautiful morning, but the warble of the bird in a tree near by, as he poured forth his morning song, awoke no echo in the heart of the soldier's wife. All was cheerless within her. The brightness of the morning only acted like a gleam of light at the mouth of a cavern. It made the darkness ...
— The Trials of the Soldier's Wife - A Tale of the Second American Revolution • Alex St. Clair Abrams
... would far prefer a cavern On some rocky sea-girt isle, Where the constant intonations Of the waves as they recoil With their soughing and deep moaning For a momentary rest, Tell of liquid matter only That bespeaks itself distressed, Than to live where human bodies Bend and writhe for ...
— Our Profession and Other Poems • Jared Barhite
... "for I know Bimbane, and am fully aware of her extraordinary powers of persuasion. Her magic is potent and wonderful, ay, even to the extent of enabling her to persuade you that this blaze of sunlight is the darkness of the great cavern whence we obtain our shining stones, that yonder sun is the day-old moon, or that she herself is young and beautiful. Therefore I am in nowise astonished that you insist upon my proofs being complete. I am fully aware that they will have to be so in order to convince ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... can look quite up into it and through it, while sitting in the cars; and yet it has stood thus, without falling into complete ruin, for more than two hundred years. I think that it was in this tower that we found the castle oven, an immense cavern, big enough to bake bread for an army. The railway passes exactly at the base of the high rock, on which this part of the castle is situated, and goes into the town through a great arch that has been opened in the castle wall. The tubular bridge across the Conway has been built in a style ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... reeking from those spicy bowers, And man the sacrifice of man Mingled his taint with every breath Upwafted from the innocent flowers. Land of the Sun! what foot invades Thy Pagods and thy pillared shades— Thy cavern shrines and Idol stones, Thy Monarch and ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... young man who is seeking an 'help meet,' chance to fall in with such beings as these—and some we fear there are in almost every part of our land,—let him shun them as he would the 'choke damp' of the cavern. ...
— Golden Steps to Respectability, Usefulness and Happiness • John Mather Austin
... to the deck, where an appalling spectacle presented itself. The ship had struck upon an iceberg. A body of floating ice twice as high as the masthead was on the lee beam, and the ship appeared to be entering a sort of cavern in its side. In a few minutes the rudder was torn away, a severe leak was sprung, and all hands worked for bare life at the pumps. The ship became comparatively unmanageable, and masses of overhanging ice threatened every moment to overwhelm her. At ...
— The Huguenots in France • Samuel Smiles
... to love still more the innocent ignorance of my past existence. Wiser than myself, you have remained in the service of the Lord; you have understood the divine mission which had been reserved for you; you have been unwilling to step over the profane threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant of what I have learned. Happy ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... intrepid poacher dragging by the leg, at the foot of a wall, the monstrous prize which she had just secured, doubtless at no great distance. At the base of the wall was a hole, an accidental chink between some of the stones. The Wasp inspected the cavern, not for the first time: she had already reconnoitred it and the premises had satisfied her. The prey, deprived of the power of movement, was waiting somewhere, I know not where; and the huntress had gone back to fetch it and store it away. It was at this moment that I met her. The Pompilus ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... this the heroic turnpike road), And then your hero tells, whene'er you please, What went before—by way of episode, While seated after dinner at his ease, Beside his mistress in some soft abode, Palace, or garden, paradise, or cavern, Which serves the happy couple for ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron
... being there beside us on the moss, we would hear his voice descending from the sky, and behold! he swung among the topmost branches, showering down upon us a hail-storm of nuts. There was a big cavern behind the kitchen chimney, which gradually became filled with these harvests, and on winter evenings they were brought forth and cracked with a hammer on ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... houses, or rather in a kind of cavern, which they sink in the earth; and, during summer, they occupy tents, made circular with poles, and covered with skins. Their only beverage is water. The men are extremely indolent; and all the laborious occupations, except that of procuring ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley
... shadows of the hill, so that hidden in some solitary cavern and happy in its darkness and wisdom, it might listen to ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... gloom. We tramped up the five long flights of stone stairs without a word, the echo of our footsteps sounding louder and louder, and the murky space behind us deepening into the damp darkness of a cavern. At last, after what seemed an interminable climb, we came to the studio entrance. I put the large key in the lock, turned it, and pushed open the door. A strong draught, like the lifeless breath from the mouth of a tunnel, extinguished ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... noisings died in the upward height, and all about us; and the utter disgust of the stink went from us; so that we knew that the Monster had gone past us, and did make downward through the dark Gorge; and mayhap then to some lone and dreadful cavern of the world, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... felt convinced that he had seen his face before, but it was not until he had taxed his memory for several minutes that the scene of his adventure with the smugglers near the Land's End flashed upon him, when he at once recognised him as the man named Joe Tonkin, who had threatened his life in the cavern. From a peculiar look that the man gave him, he saw ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... dish. Goat-cheese, hard and salt, and with a flavour that left no doubt as to the source from which it came, made up the frugal fare. I returned to the chimney-corner and smoked in silence, now peering up the sooty cavern where the wind moaned, and now watching the clear-obscure effects of the dimly-lighted room. Presently a trap stopped outside, and in walked the aubergiste, accompanied by a sprightly little man who I afterwards ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... steep rock. They made out, under the lighthouse, like a dark cutting between two plates of granite, the narrow passage of the ugly wild-looking little harbour, supposed to be full of the skeletons of men and carcasses of ships. It looked like the mouth of a cavern, rather than the entrance of a port. They could hear the crackling of the pile on high within the iron grating. A ghastly purple illuminated the storm; the collision of the rain and hail disturbed the mist. The black cloud and ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... Sky, we passed by the cavern in which it was the custom, as Martin relates, to catch birds in the night, by making a fire at the entrance. This practice is disused; for the birds, as is known often to happen, have changed ...
— A Journey to the Western Isles of Scotland • Samuel Johnson
... hours of boring, the drill head suddenly came off and rattled down into a cavern. We saw a light and heard guttural shouting below and the cracking of a gun as a few bullets spattered against the roof of our chamber. We heaved down our gas bombs and covered over our shaft. Within a few hours the ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... I was told, a few weeks ago, by the old man who acts as guide to the caves, of a recent instance of a man's being pixy-led. In going home, full of strong drink, across the hill above the cavern called the "Pixies' Hole," on a moonlit night, he heard sweet {511} music, and was led into the whirling dance by the "good folk," who kept on spinning him without mercy, till he fell down ...
— Notes and Queries, Issue No. 61, December 28, 1850 • Various
... I found a way down the cliff, to the mouth of a cavern in the rock, which extends under the whole castle to the sea. Sliding down a heap of sand and stones, I stood under an arch eighty feet high; in front the breakers dashed into the entrance, flinging the spray half-way to the roof, while the sound rang up through the arches like thunder. ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... them. Jekyll (who was composite) now with the most sensitive apprehensions, now with a greedy gusto, projected and shared in the pleasures and adventures of Hyde; but Hyde was indifferent to Jekyll, or but remembered him as the mountain bandit remembers the cavern in which he conceals himself from pursuit. Jekyll had more ...
— Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde • ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON
... mendicancy, had usually its charm for the sternest. So she generally obtained enough to buy bread and a night's lodging, and, if sometimes she failed, she could bear hunger, and was not afraid of creeping into some shed, or, when by the sea-shore, even into some sheltering cavern. Her child throve too—for God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb! But now, so far as physical privation went, the ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... rock in the elegant folds and easy drapery of a curtain, everywhere are pure white stalactites like icicles straining to meet the sturdier mounds of stalagmite below; whilst in the smaller caves slender tubes extend from top to bottom like congealed rain. One cavern is quite curtained round with dazzling and wavy tapestry; another has gigantic masses of the white spar pouring from its crannied roof like boiled Brobdingnag macaroni; others like heaps of snowy linen lying about or hanging from ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... tremendous speed so that the nearly full moon alternately appeared and disappeared, producing an ever-changing effect of light and shadow. At one moment a moon-bathed prospect stretched before me as far as the eye could reach, in the next I might have been looking into a cavern as some angry cloud swept across the face of the moon to plunge the scene into ...
— The Green Eyes of Bast • Sax Rohmer
... hush, and the sweetest song ever sung by sirens is heard, full of languor and soft seductiveness. When Tannhaeuser starts up declaring he has heard the village chime in his dreams, it is as if a breath of cool air, laden with the fragrance of wild flowers, blew into that hot, steaming cavern. Music of unimaginable beauty and freshness sings of the pleasant earth—the green spring, the nightingale. When Venus coaxes him, he responds with one of the world's greatest songs—the hymn to Venus. ...
— Richard Wagner - Composer of Operas • John F. Runciman
... a jovial roaring tone, Like one rebuking half in jest— Yet ah! I wish there could be shewn The wisdom that it hath exprest— Or sinking to a lambent glow, Its arched and silent cavern seems A magic glass whereon to shew, And shape anew, our ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 438 - Volume 17, New Series, May 22, 1852 • Various
... after the '45, of the worthy single-minded Lord Pitsligo, no bad prototype of the Baron of Bradwardine. It is entered by a small orifice like a fox's hole, in the face of the rugged cliffs which front the German Ocean near Trouphead. Gradually it rises to a noble arched cavern, at the end of which is the font cut into the stone, where it would catch the outpourings of a small spring. When I saw it long years ago, it was filled with clear living water, which, save when it had been the frugal ...
— The Book-Hunter - A New Edition, with a Memoir of the Author • John Hill Burton
... lime-burner's dull and torpid sense began to be impressed by an indescribable something in that thin, rugged, thoughtful visage, with the grizzled hair hanging wildly about it, and those deeply sunken eyes, which gleamed like fires within the entrance of a mysterious cavern. But, as he closed the door, the stranger turned towards him, and spoke in a quiet, familiar way, that made Bartram feel as if he were a sane and sensible ...
— Short-Stories • Various
... paces before he stopped. He was far enough from the cavern so he couldn't be heard, and an angle of the cave cut off all light from behind him. With carefully controlled movements he turned on the power, switched the set to transmit, and checked the broadcast frequency. All correct. Then slowly and clearly, he described what he had seen ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... was difficult, and when two days had gone without bringing any sign of her, I determined to follow the trail of my last expedition, and find out whether that strip of rocky coast, with its hidden cavern, actually did stand firm somewhere on the solid earth, or was merely a phantom ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... reposed under an almond tree till our luggage came up. The servants had mistaken the way, and one of the janissaries was obliged to go in search of them. We set forward again at eight, and rode till 1.30 P.M. We then rested near a rivulet, in the shade of a small cavern in the front of the mountain, commanding an extensive view of the rich plain, nearly the whole of which was in a state of cultivation. Almost all the crops were cut. On the mountain above us, Jacob and Laban made their league together, and called it Gal-ed. We started again at 4 P.M., ...
— Diaries of Sir Moses and Lady Montefiore, Volume I • Sir Moses Montefiore
... further extremity of a narrow, deep cavern in the rock, whose length appeared much extended by the perspective and the nature of the light by which it was seen, was seated the scout, holding a blazing knot of pine. The strong glare of the fire fell full upon his sturdy, weather-beaten countenance and forest attire, lending an ...
— The Last of the Mohicans • James Fenimore Cooper
... himself clear of these considerations, he found the keys and advanced towards the open door of the shop. Outside, it had begun to rain smartly; and the sound of the shower upon the roof had banished silence. Like some dripping cavern, the chambers of the house were haunted by an incessant echoing, which filled the ear and mingled with the ticking of the clocks. And, as Markheim approached the door, he seemed to hear, in answer to his own cautious tread, the steps ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... with the speed of light, When out of a cavern of rock Rushed towards me a spring with furious might; I was seized by the twofold torrent's wild shock, And like a top, with a whirl and a bound, Despite all ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Northern Lights, in regions haunted Of twilight, where the world is glacier planted, And pale as Loki in his cavern when The serpent's slaver burns him to the bones, I saw the phantasms of gigantic men, The prototypes of vastness, quarrying stones; Great blocks of winter, glittering with the morn's And evening's colors,—wild prismatic tones ...
— Myth and Romance - Being a Book of Verses • Madison Cawein
... the terrace, we found ourselves in its kitchen, which strongly resembled a cavern made habitable. It was hewn out of the rock on which the dwelling stood; and it only required the presence of the black man and the old woman who figure in Gil Blas's story to give, to the life, the cooking-department of the robbers' cave there. As we ascended a rude stone staircase that ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various
... had before me, around me, above me, beneath me, a perfect enchantment, which words cannot describe, and which the pencil would utterly fail to give any impression of. Imagine an immense cavern, all pure azure—as if God had made a tent there with some residue of the firmament; a surface of water so limpid, so transparent, that you seem to float on air: above you, the pendant stalactites, huge and fantastical, reversed pyramids and pinnacles: below you a sand of gold mingled with ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... the way of all trees. Death had been generous—had sent the three warnings: it was the biggest of its kind, its children were grown up, it was hollow. The wintry blast that sent it down had broken it across and revealed a great hole where should have been its heart. A long wooden cavern in the middle of a sunny opening, it now lay, and presented an ideal home for a Lynx when she sought a sheltered nesting-place ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... destruction. Gliding, with lightly-dipping oars, into the yawning chasm, he stepped nimbly from his boat, and making the painter fast to a projecting rock, he lighted a torch, and, armed only with a stout cudgel, penetrated into the innermost recesses of the cavern. There he found a vast quantity of birds and eggs, and soon became so engrossed with his sport that he paid no attention to the lapse of time, until the hollow sound of rushing waters behind him ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... and armed with a great spoon, while her vassals sat round, and grinned their fondness and delight in her small tyrannies; and the immense room, dimly lit, with the mystical implements of cookery glimmering from the wall, showed like some witch's cavern, where a particularly small sorceress was presiding over the concoction of an evil potion or the weaving of ...
— Venetian Life • W. D. Howells
... of men were therefore verified. He again descended, and collected a large bundle of grass and rushes for his bed. He discovered growing among the rocks many edible plants, whose seeds were probably sown there centuries before, and gathering some of these he made his way back to the cavern. The grass furnished him with an excellent bed, and ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... had been deeply implicated in the Jacobite risings of last century. The house had been searched several times, and on one occasion occupied by Hanoverian troops. As a provision against such contingencies, this hiding-place (a natural one as far as the cavern beyond is concerned, which has probably existed for thousands of years) was then first connected with the interior of the house, and rendered practicable at a moment's notice; and here on several occasions certain members of the ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... and Melisande stand in the darkness of the cavern we hear again (page 110, measure 2) the variant of the Fate motive which marked the close of the preceding scene; then, as a sudden shaft of moonlight illuminates the grotto, it is expanded and transmuted into a gleaming flood of orchestral ...
— Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande - A Guide to the Opera with Musical Examples from the Score • Lawrence Gilman
... the reverse of severe, but he is far from being base. "All is easy and good-humoured," wrote Sir Walter Scott, "gay, light, and lively; even the cavern of the robbers is illuminated with a ray of that wit with which Lesage enlightens his whole narrative. It is a work which renders the reader pleased with himself and with mankind, where faults are placed before him in the light of follies rather than vices, and where misfortunes ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... gorges where currents of hot air breathe in your face like the breath of some fierce animal. There are brilliant and noisy cataracts and cascades that silver the rocks with spray; and a huge winding cavern filled with mice and filth and the blackness of darkness, and out of which one emerges looking like a tramp and feeling like—well! There are springs bubbling and steeping and stagnating by the wayside; springs containing ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... wicket, cut in the folding doors, we found ourselves in the deep arched vestibule of the sacred edifice. To our left was the choir, forming one end of the church, and having a low vaulted ceiling, which gave it the look of a cavern. About this were ranged the monks, seated on stools, and chanting from immense books placed on music-stands, and having the notes scored in such gigantic characters as to be legible from every part of the choir. A few lights on these music-stands dimly illumined the ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... "score two," "No, by—, Charlie," "By —, I say it is, Phelps." And yet my only chance of slipping by them unperceived was to wait till they quarrelled more, and came to blows about it. Presently, as I made up my mind to steal along towards them (for the cavern was pretty wide, just there), Charlie, or Charleworth Doone, the younger and taller man, reached forth his hand to seize the money, which he swore he had won that time. Upon this, the other jerked his arm, vowing that he had no right to it; whereupon Charlie flung at his face the contents ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... which appear the horn of the crescent moon and the silver points of stars. Trees in the foreground, with two rope swings entwined with garlands of flowers. Flowers everywhere in profusion. On the extreme left the mouth of a dark cavern dimly seen. Boys representing the ...
— The Cycle of Spring • Rabindranath Tagore
... disclosed to view the entrance to a natural cave, into the wall of which was stuck a naming, pitch-pine knot. Entering, the blanket was dropped, and preceded by a man, whose features the fitful glare of the torch failed to reveal, the two adventurers were ushered into the main portion of the cavern. ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... "Light Draft," "Heavy Draft" horses and "Officers' Chargers"—in all some sixty animals—to trust themselves to be lowered into a dark and evil-smelling cavern, was no easy matter. Some shied from the gangway, neighing; other walked peaceably on to it, and, with a "thus far and no farther" expression in every line of their bodies, took up a firm stand, and had to be pushed into the hold with the combined weight of many men. Several of the transport section ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... the most showy part; others playing equally important parts are in the cavern below the turret; and most important of all is that of the man who keeps the gun on the target, whose true right eye may send twenty-five thousand tons of battleship to perdition. No one eye of any enlisted man can be as important as the gun-layer's. His the ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... wise Cheiron in his cavern dwelling yet, and had our sweet-voiced songs laid haply some fair magic on his soul, then had I won him to grant to worthy men some healer of hot plagues, some offspring of Leto's son, or ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... before Le Grand Sarrasin, and of his magnificence—How I saw Folly in his chamber, and was lodged in a cavern ...
— The Fall Of The Grand Sarrasin • William J. Ferrar
... of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through the narrow chinks of his cavern." WILLIAM BLAKE ...
— Practical Mysticism - A Little Book for Normal People • Evelyn Underhill
... Armitage's words. I waited by the Blue John Gap for half an hour or more, but there was no return of the sound, so at last I wandered back to the farmhouse, rather mystified by what had occurred. Decidedly I shall explore that cavern when my strength is restored. Of course, Armitage's explanation is too absurd for discussion, and yet that sound was certainly very strange. It still rings in ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... ascent. Eight into the bowels of the mountain a vast tunnel fifty feet in height was driven. At its inner extremity was excavated a chamber whose dimensions are imperfectly recorded in my notes, but which was certainly much larger than the central cavern from which radiate the principal galleries of the Mammoth Cave. Around this were pierced a dozen shafts, emerging at different heights, but all near the summit, and all so far outside the central plateau as to leave the solid foundation on which the ...
— Across the Zodiac • Percy Greg
... than he had at first imagined it to be; for, looking inward, he was able to follow the rough walls for a few yards, as they receded inward, when he lost sight of them in the gloom. Also he became aware of a curious charnel-house kind of stench that now and then issued from the cavern. It was just the kind of odour that one would expect to meet with in the den of a carnivorous beast, and Phil peered keenly into the darkness, more than half-expecting to see the shining eyes of a jaguar or puma glaring at him when his ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... in England. She had been on the watch ever since her landing, but terror for her own wretched life had prevented her addressing him openly. The tones of his well-known voice had reached her miserable cavern, and roused her from a troubled slumber. She understood too little of his language to comprehend the nature of his communication to Roupall, and her first impulse was to strike a dagger to his heart; but this, her womanly ...
— The Buccaneer - A Tale • Mrs. S. C. Hall
... up to the cavern, some of you there, and lay 'em side by side to cool," he said brutally, and his orders were instantly obeyed. Others of the crew brought buckets and swabs unbidden, and cleansed the place, after which Black addressed the men again as though the terrible ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... and, so to speak, orthodox oracles of the dead. They might be consulted by such as chose to sleep on tombs, or to visit the cavern of Trophonius, or other chasms which were thought to communicate with the under world. But the idea of bringing a shade, or a hero, a demon, or a god into a private room, as in modern spiritualism, meets us late in such works as the Letter of Porphyry, and the Reply of Iamblichus, ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... his features, shining 'neath the light The King has lit to make the cavern bright. "But oh, friend Izdubar, my King, when I From this dear earth to waiting Hades fly, Grieve not; and when to Erech you return, Thou shalt in glory reign, and Zaidu learn As thy companion all ...
— Babylonian and Assyrian Literature • Anonymous
... six miles to the eastward, resembled an island of crystal capped with an assemblage of marble ruins. Its perpendicular sides were rent here and there with deep fissures, and in the centre there yawned an immense cavern, the interior of which displayed every conceivable shade of the most lovely green, from the transparent tint of the emerald to the opaque colour of the malachite, a projecting bluff near at hand casting a strangely- contrasting shadow of the deepest, ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... title suit thee, Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie, Wha in yon cavern grim and sootie, Closed under hatches, Spairges about the brunstane cootie, ...
— The Humourous Poetry of the English Language • James Parton
... ran under the rocks, which met over it in a kind of gothic arch. A stream of water just sufficient for the requisite purposes, fell in through a fissure from above, forming such a little subterraneous cascade in the cavern as human design itself could scarcely have surpassed in felicity of adaptation to the objects ...
— The Emigrants Of Ahadarra - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... the earth, took up horses' legs and chariot-wheels. And as I was fighting, they, hard besetting my horses with rocks, attacked me together with (my) car. And with the crags that had fallen and with others that were falling, the place where I was, seemed to be a mountain cavern. And on myself being covered with crags and on the horses being hard pressed, I became sore distressed and this was marked by Matali. And on seeing me afraid, he said unto me, "O Arjuna, Arjuna! be thou not afraid; ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa Bk. 3 Pt. 2 • Translated by Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... that the unknown lady wrapped in a mantle whom we have escorted into the modern sibyl's cavern was no other than the beautiful Marie de Rossan, who before her marriage had borne the name of Mademoiselle de Chateaublanc, from that of an estate belonging to her maternal grandfather, M. Joannis ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - THE MARQUISE DE GANGES—1657 • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... Soldiers. Yonder is the secret cavern Of Carpophorus, at its entrance See him seated with ...
— The Two Lovers of Heaven: Chrysanthus and Daria - A Drama of Early Christian Rome • Pedro Calderon de la Barca
... Dante that this journey was the part of a Heavenly order and had been decreed by Heaven itself, and Dante, in great fear at what he was about to see, was led by Vergil through the forest until he came to the mouth of a black cavern. Carven on the rock above it was a verse that told Dante that here was the entrance to the lower world,—the gateway to Hell. And the verse concluded with the grim words—"All Hope Abandon, Ye ...
— A Treasury of Heroes and Heroines - A Record of High Endeavour and Strange Adventure from 500 B.C. to 1920 A.D. • Clayton Edwards
... her to his best man." So the Philistines went up, and burnt her and her father. Then Samson said to them, "If this is the way you do, I will not stop until I have had my revenge on you!" So he fought fiercely and killed many of them; then he went and stayed in a cavern in the ...
— The Children's Bible • Henry A. Sherman
... conscious of the confusion, and awakening uproar on both vessels. Cries of agony, shouts of alarm, and hoarse orders pierced the midnight air. He ran forward and saw the yawning cavern which the blow had made in the ship's side, and heard the rush of water into the hold. Across the chasm he saw the captain's pale face looking down with ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... officers of Nero's household, to obtain an audience of the emperor, he informed him that he had intelligence of the highest importance to communicate, which was, that on his estate in Africa, there was a large cavern, in which was stored an immense treasure. This treasure consisted, he said, of vast heaps of golden ingots, rude and shapeless in form, but composed of pure and precious metal. The cavern, he said, ...
— Nero - Makers of History Series • Jacob Abbott
... forth from a dark cavern in the sky, and then, far off, rattled and jarred the echoing thunder. Next came the rushing and roaring wind, bending the giant-limbed oaks as if they were but wands of willow, and tearing up lesser trees as a child tears up from its roots a ...
— Heart-Histories and Life-Pictures • T. S. Arthur
... mountain shrines there still might linger, feared and honoured, dolls like those black virgins, of unknown antiquity, which still work wonders on the European continent. In the mysterious cavern of Phigalia, for instance, on the Eleatic shore of Peloponnese, there may have been in remote times—so the legend ran— an old black wooden image, a woman with a horse's head and mane, and serpents growing round her head, who held a dolphin ...
— Literary and General Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... just breaking the rind of it." She put the fruit to her teeth, she tasted, she invited Adam also to taste of the fruit, the door of the world opened, and the monster Sin entered. Let the heavens gather blackness, and the winds sigh on the bosom of the hills, and cavern and desert and earth and sky join in one long, deep, ...
— The Wedding Ring - A Series of Discourses for Husbands and Wives and Those - Contemplating Matrimony • T. De Witt Talmage
... of many other things, till the bear's form stole over him, and he went forth a bear. She followed him, and saw that a great body of hunters had come over the mountain ridges, and had a number of dogs with them. The bear rushed away from the cavern, but the dogs and the king's men came upon him, and there was a desperate struggle. He wearied many men before he was brought to bay, and had slain all the dogs. But now they made a ring about him, and he ranged around ...
— The Book of Were-Wolves • Sabine Baring-Gould
... to a beautiful valley filled with parklike openings. Just at dark Tserin Dorchy turned abruptly into the stream and crossed to a pretty grove of spruces on a little island formed by two branches of the river. It was as secluded as a cavern, and made an ideal place in which to camp. A hundred feet away the tent was invisible and, save for the tiny wreaths of smoke which curled above the tree-tops, there was no ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... musician who plays an opportune at every opportunity?" inquired John St. John in a tone of gravity as deep as the cavern in which they ...
— Campfire Girls in the Allegheny Mountains - or, A Christmas Success against Odds • Stella M. Francis
... Lansdale's manner, rather than her words, ran through my darkened thoughts like a thread as I played the game that night. After a third defeat this thread seemed to guide me to daylight from a tortuously winding cavern. At first the thing was ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... halted on the tableland, backed by the mountain and fronting the valley, the woman left her companion, passed by the litter and the armed men, and paused by my side, at the mouth of the moonlit cavern. ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... to a fearful degree, and furnished in the dowdiest style of economy. The second-class room is a dark cavern, with nothing better than a ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... to the fugitives, whom we left concealed in a basaltic cavern on the rocky coast of Skye. The keen-witted Flora had devised a new and bold plan for the safety of her charge, no less a one than that of trusting the Lady Margaret McDonald, wife of Sir Alexander, with her dangerous secret. This seemed like penetrating the very stronghold ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... connection between cause and effect. Notwithstanding the extraordinary intelligence which this quadruped exhibits upon some occasions, upon others he shows himself to be one of the most stupid brutes imaginable. For example, when he has taken possession of a cavern, and the courageous hunter enters with a torch and rifle, it is said he will, instead of forcibly ejecting the intruder, raise himself upon his haunches and cover his eyes with his paws, so as to exclude the light, apparently thinking ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... politician, Amundsen, is celebrating the day with a white shirt and collar. [55] To-day I have moved with my work up into the deck-house again, where I can sit and look out of the window in the daytime, and feel that I am living in the world and not in a cavern, where one must have lamplight night and day. I intend remaining here as long as possible out into the winter: it is so cozy and quiet, and the monotonous surroundings are not constantly forcing themselves in ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... countless worm monsters! All were like the one who held them, thick long worm bodies with projecting tentacles and with black eyeless faces. They were crawling to and fro in this cavern far beneath the surface, swarming in hordes around and over each other, pouring in and out of the awful place from countless tunnels that led upward ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... We descended a cavern, extending underneath this magnificent flower exhibit. Our scrutinizing eyes met with quite novel features. We observed that the grotto was lined with glistening crystals from the mammoth cave of South Dakota. Emerging again to broad daylight, we bent our steps southward to ...
— By Water to the Columbian Exposition • Johanna S. Wisthaler
... earth and was concealed in a cavern, whence it was drawn by a divine person; that is, fire had disappeared and was concealed within the arani, whence it was extracted by the pramantha and bestowed upon man. Mataricvan, the divine deliverer, is therefore only the personification ...
— Myth and Science - An Essay • Tito Vignoli
... the most perfect, specimen, is the small rock temple, which, being hewn out of the solid stone, is still in complete preservation. This is a small chamber in the face of an abrupt rock, which, doubtless, being partly a natural cavern, has been enlarged to the present size by the chisel; and the entrance, which may have been originally a small hole, has been shaped into an arched doorway. The interior is not more than perhaps twenty-five feet by eighteen, and is simply fitted ...
— Eight Years' Wandering in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... the Wigalois, a story is told of a cavern in Asia full of everlasting flames, where costly fellat was made by the Salamanders, ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford
... tribe, who were assembled there. If it was strong and well-proportioned, they gave orders for its education, and assigned it one of the nine thousand shares of land; but if it was weakly and deformed, they ordered it to be thrown into the place called Apothetae, which is a deep cavern near the mountain Taygetus; concluding that its life could be no advantage either to itself or to the public, since nature had not given it at first any strength or goodness of constitution. For the same reason the women did not wash their new-born infants with water, ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... so large that that three sky-scrapers a half-mile apart could be built in the largest of its innumerable "rooms," according to Mr. Nicholson, who was there once before, about a year ago. Only 22 miles of the cavern's apparently limitless tunnels have been explored, revealing such natural beauties that President Coolidge established it as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 • Various
... again, and in the increasing light from the phosphorescent rock that lay embedded in great patches in the roughly arched roof of the cavern I had no difficulty in ...
— Warlord of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs |
