"Pitch-dark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that's a crime. I've shown your boy to-day how men kill badgers, and maybe that's wrong. But look here, sir—I've taught him some things besides; the ways of birds and beasts, and their calls; how to tell the hour by sun and stars; how to know an ash from a beech, of a pitch-dark night, by the sound of the wind in their tops; what herbs will cure disease and where to seek them; why some birds hop and others run. Sirs, I come of an old race that has outlived books and pictures and ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... purchase, at a fair price, and you will find the farmers nearly all voting against Home Rule. No, the priests would not be able to stir us once we were comfortably settled. Why, we'd all become Conservatives at once. Sure anybody with half-an-eye could see that in a pitch-dark night in a bog-hole." ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... exposure, where light and air are needed. They may be fitted with boxings, into which they are folded, or arranged to slide into the wall. I like the old-fashioned boxing, window-seat and all, also the ancient close-panelled shutters. True they make a room pitch-dark when closed, and it is doubtless wisest to have some of their central folds made with movable slats, but they give a charming sense of security and seclusion when the wintry blasts roar around our castle. On the other hand, the light outside blinds, that shake ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... pitch-dark. Heavy clouds had come up and obscured the stars and a drizzle of rain was falling. The car went forward at a good pace and Desmond, after one or two ineffectual attempts to make out where they were going, was lulled by the steady ...
— Okewood of the Secret Service • Valentine Williams
... this wine for instance,' said old Sol, 'which has been to the East Indies and back, I'm not able to say how often, and has been once round the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... his pillow and sprang like a cat out of his bed; and then began a strange and bloody fight, one man, stark naked, with a short-bladed knife in his hand, against seven men with their long facons, in a small pitch-dark room. The advantage Jack had was that his bare feet made no sound on the clay floor, and that he knew the exact position of a few pieces of furniture in the room. He had, too, a marvellous agility, and the intense ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... the marquee towards the farther corner where the stores were kept. Raymonde, as leader, went first, with her body-guard in close attendance behind her. Very, very gently she drew back the curtains and entered the larder. It was pitch-dark in here, and she began to grope her way along the wall. Then she stopped, for in front of her she fancied she heard breathing. She listened—all was silent. She started again, intending to go to the far side of the table. She put out her hand ...
— The Madcap of the School • Angela Brazil
... sailors' faces. The women had hurried to the hills. The old king was hidden in a cave, where he could be reached only by a rope ladder; and emissary after emissary tried to lure the whites ashore. One pitch-dark night, paddles were heard under the keels. The sentinels fired; but by lantern light two terrified faces appeared above the rail of the Resolution. Two frightened, trembling savages crawled over the deck, prostrated themselves ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... All remonstrance and power of lungs to reclaim him were vain! He darted into the whiskey-house with the carman—re-appeared before Lord Colambre could accomplish getting out, remounted his seat, and, taking the reins, "I thank your honour," said he; "and I'll bring you into Clonbrony before it's pitch-dark, though it's nightfall, and that's four good miles, but 'a spur in the head is worth two ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. 6 • Maria Edgeworth
... in the darkness, with the black loom of the craggy hills around us, and the yellow speck of light burning steadily in front. There is nothing so deceptive as the distance of a light upon a pitch-dark night, and sometimes the glimmer seemed to be far away upon the horizon and sometimes it might have been within a few yards of us. But at last we could see whence it came, and then we knew that we were indeed very close. A guttering candle was stuck in a crevice of the rocks ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... excellent, his manners both cordial and elegant. There is no doubt, as there is no wonder, that the Indian maiden felt some tender palpitations on his account. Once again, when, owing to some misunderstanding, Powhatan had decreed the death of all the whites, Pocahontas spent the whole pitch-dark night climbing hills and toiling through pathless thickets, to save Smith and his friends by warning them of the imminent danger. Smith offered her many beautiful presents on this occasion, evidently not appreciating the sentiment that was animating her. To this offer of presents ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... Towards the top of the hill there was no paving, and mud lay thick. Indescribable the confusion of this toilers' settlement—houses and workshops tumbled together as if by chance, the ways climbing and winding into all manner of pitch-dark recesses, where eats prowled stealthily. In one spot silence and not a hint of life; in another, children noisily at play amid piles of old metal or miscellaneous rubbish. From the labyrinth which was so familiar to her, Eve ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... low and narrow—up on the fifth floor of one of the huge tenement houses in the Rue Jolivet in the Montmartre quarter of Paris. A narrow stone passage led to it—pitch-dark at all times, but dirty, and evil-smelling when the concierge—a free citizen of the new democracy— took a week's holiday from his work in order to spend whole afternoons either at the wineshop round ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... great unsheltered plain before us—the hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment—the forked lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped together near the spot where we had halted—the furze-cutter pointed to them with ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... that room, and pursued their investigations elsewhere. They went all through the house without finding any clue to the mystery. They attempted to search the grounds, but the night was pitch-dark, and the rain was falling fast. Finally, they returned ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... That Landgrave of Hesse who wished to create a second Potsdam in Pirmasens, and was made blissful by the thought that he could hold his court in the tobacco-reeking guard-room, who celebrated the greatest triumph of his reign when he had his entire grenadier regiment manoeuvre in the pitch-dark drill-hall without the least disorder occurring in the ranks, he is a real Rococo figure, for by his mad fancies he humorously destroyed the long pigtail appended ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... of a savagely haunted night, Banneker staggered from his cot. For weeks he had not known sleep otherwise than in fitful passages. His brain was hot and blank. Although the room was pitch-dark, he crossed it unerringly to a shelf and look down his revolver. Slipping on overcoat and shoes, he dropped the weapon into his pocket and set out up the railroad track. A half-mile he covered before turning into the desert. There he wandered aimlessly for a few minutes, and after ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... spout in the north corner which will help me up; and if I reach the top without a broken neck, I make fast my rope, and slide on to the moor. From thence, no matter how dark it is—and it will be pitch-dark, I reckon—I can make Bergen Wood. No power on earth shall stop me. If you told the warder yonder of my plan this moment, I should still escape—in another and more certain fashion." To look at him and read the resolute ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... the reply, "leastways as far as one can be sartain on sich a pitch-dark night as this. It's lightnin' a little away down there to the west'ard, and durin' one o' the flashes I sartaintly did think I see some objek a-movin' away over there in the direction where the felucca came from, but when the ...
— The Rover's Secret - A Tale of the Pirate Cays and Lagoons of Cuba • Harry Collingwood
... some of the men he approved. Others won only his grudging toleration, one or two he loathed—especially the most frequent caller, a man with black hair and a black goatee and a pitch-dark soul, who seemed to Merlin vaguely familiar, but whom he was never quite ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... like the effect of lightning oh a pitch-dark night—the same vivid and lurid illumination of things unperceived before. It must be like the revelation of death, I should think, without, thank God, that fearful sense of the irrevocable which death must bring with it. Will you ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... followed. We were barefoot both and naked to the waist. Cautiously as a pair of cats, we worked along the bowsprit to the foremast stay, at the foot of which the foresail lay loose and ready for hoisting. With a fold of this I covered myself and peered along the pitch-dark deck. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... for a while," said Inspector Val. "They've got a good ways to come, and a pitch-dark drain ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... through the remaining seven miles to Lindley. We covered its retirement till dark, and then followed it with all speed. I shan't forget those seven miles. They included the worst drifts of the whole journey, and getting up and down them in pitch-dark was unpleasant work and a pretty severe test of driving. Three mule-waggons of the convoy had to be abandoned at one place, but the rest of it reached Lindley safely, as did we. It was rather like making a port after a storm ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... sentry-box, and whispered, "Mate, whisper me a word, for pity's sake." He received no answer; but even to have spoken himself relieved his swelling soul for a minute or two. Half an hour later four turnkeys came into his cell, and took him down stairs and confined him in a pitch-dark dungeon. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... Soon the hitherto pitch-dark sea was flooded in a blaze of light. Giant beams from the Isle of Wight shore joined with those of Hurst Castle to sweep slowly across the waves, supplementing the twin rays projected from the two search-lights on ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... or so, moored to the boulder-strewn shore, was a shanty-boat. In the bustle of landing, last night, we had not noticed this neighbor, and it was pitch-dark before we had time to get our bearings. I think it is the most dilapidated affair we have seen on the river—the frame of the cabin is out of plumb, old clothes serve for sides and flap loudly in the wind; while two little boys, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... each, what 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 not? ...
— Christmas Eve • Robert Browning
... full as beautiful as the moving ones of water. By night we reached the western part of the channel; but the water was so deep that no anchorage could be found. We were in consequence obliged to stand off and on in this narrow arm of the sea, during a pitch-dark night of fourteen ...
— The Voyage of the Beagle • Charles Darwin
... his companions saw with pleasure the night approaching, and the darkness falling more and more dense and black around them; two or three carriages had already given false alarms, but had had no other effect than preparing them for the real attack. At half-past eight the night was pitch-dark, and a sort of natural fear, which the conspirators had felt at first, began ...
— The Conspirators - The Chevalier d'Harmental • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... a wild autumnal night, moonless, pitch-dark, with a storm of wind and rain. The waters were out—for the dykes had been cut in all 'directions by the defenders of the city—and, with exception of some elevated points occupied by Parma's forces, the whole country was overflowed. Before the party ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... It was growing pitch-dark. Grim counted noses and gave the order to be off. Two or three men mounted, and that brought all the kneeling camels to their feet. One of Ali Baba's sons caught the beast assigned to me, brought him round to the gate, and ...
— The Lion of Petra • Talbot Mundy
... awe-inspiring woman letting loose her passion on the dead—so much more horrible even than anything that had gone before—that I could no longer bear to look at it, and, turning, began to creep, shaking as I was in every limb, slowly along the pitch-dark passage, feeling in my trembling heart that I had seen a vision ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... if scarcely a moment had passed before he opened them again. But he knew that it must be several hours later, for it had been pitch-dark when he went to sleep, and now a square of moonlight lay across the floor under the southern window, bringing into faint relief the outlines of ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... lubbers she must have had aboard. Jonathan, the coast-guard, came down to Lizard Town this morning, and said he seed a big vessel nigh under the cliffs toward midnight, or fancied he seed her: but fustly Jonathan's a buffle-head, and secondly 'twas pitch-dark; so if as he swears there weren't no blue light, 'tain't likely any man could see, let alone a daft fule like Jonathan. But, there, 'tain't no good for to blame he; durn Government! say I, for settin' one man, and him a ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the room by a small circular door behind the hangings, followed the black servant along a pitch-dark passage, and in a few moments came to a bridge, similar to the one they had crossed before. As they felt their way over it cautiously one by one, the sound of rushing water came to them from below, and a cold breeze fanned their cheeks. A little further on ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... and lay down. Hendrick and Ruyter lay on one side of the fire under one blanket, and John Stofolus lay on the other. At this moment I was sitting taking some barley-broth; our fire was very small, and the night was pitch-dark and windy. Owing to our proximity to the native village the wood was very scarce, the Bakalahari having burnt it all ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... and D'ri flung our "duds" into the darkness that lay beyond it. Then he made down the ladder, and I after him. It was pitch-dark in the cellar—a deep, dank place with a rank odor of rotting potatoes. We groped our way to a corner, and stood listening. We heard the tramp of horses in the dooryard and the clinic of ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... a boy of brains: A drop of oil from a live man's veins; A six-leaved clover; three nice hairs From a Woozy's tail, the book declares Are needed for the magic spell, And water from a pitch-dark well. The yellow wing of a butterfly To find must Ojo also try, And if he gets them without harm, Doc Pipt will make the magic charm; But if he doesn't get 'em, Unc Will always ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... midnight sun and of the sunless winter of the North. They are features of all tales of Arctic exploration. Yet, in order to see the sun shining at midnight or to experience pitch-dark days, it is not necessary to be actually a seeker after the North Pole. Sunny nights and black winter days may be enjoyed, or otherwise, even in Norway, but only in the Far North—within ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... all their drums,—Prussian march, rat-tat-tan, sharply through the gloom of Chaos in that manner; and join themselves, with no mistake made, to Mollendorf's, to Ziethen's left and the saddle-flap there, and fall on. The night is pitch-dark, says Archenholtz; you cannot see your hand before you. Old Hulsen's bridle-horses were all shot away, when he heard this alarm, far off: no horse left; and he is old, and has his own bruises. He seated himself on a cannon; and so rides, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... we commenced our journey. It was pitch-dark, so our driver let the cattle go as they liked, for guiding them was perfectly out of the question. I shall never forget the way our oxen galloped down those steep hills. Miss W. was dreadfully frightened. All we could do was to hold on and trust in Providence. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... a pitch-dark room, and there a bargain was struck between him and men unseen. He and two more were to go to Cairnhope, and DO Little. He was to avoid all those men who had lately stood at the door with him, and was to choose for his companions ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... newest too, on board, which costs him, at the most, supposing he has nothing of interest to impart in return, a roll of tobacco, a bottle of spirits, or a strand of rope. But it is to the captain who, on some pitch-dark winter night, when the sea is running mountains high, has come in beneath bare poles under the Torungens, and who knows that he is doomed if he cannot get a pilot, that these Merdoe men are most familiar. When, perhaps, he has given up all hope, he suddenly hears himself hailed from the ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... His cell was almost pitch-dark. The window was shuttered within and without, and the merest glimmer from the cell next door struggled in through a chink four inches broad. At meals alone he was permitted half a candle. For bedding he had a leather ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... pitch-dark, but it was evident to me that it was an empty house. Our feet creaked and crackled over the bare planking, and my outstretched hand touched a wall from which the paper was hanging in ribbons. Holmes's cold, thin fingers closed round my wrist and led me forwards down a long hall, until I dimly ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... His train pulls silently in. There is not a single light on it from one end to the other. It creeps in like a great snake. There is nobody to tell you whether this is your train or not, but you take a chance and climb into a compartment which is pitch-dark. ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... chamber to secure a few hours' rest, I went out into the dimly lighted street, and, striking a smart pace, arrived in a few moments at the house of my old friend, Peter Van Schaick, now Colonel in command of the garrison. The house was pitch-dark, and it was only after repeated rapping that the racket of the big bronze knocker aroused an ancient negro servant, who poked his woolly pate from the barred side-lights and informed me, in a quavering voice, that Colonel Van Schaick was not at home, refusing ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... pitch-dark night, And then have something left to say; But, Mary, am I wrong or right, Or, do I throw ...
— Wild Flowers - Or, Pastoral and Local Poetry • Robert Bloomfield
... my state-room, at the bulwark, holding fast to a stanchion, and looking over the side at the white and seething water caused by her sudden and violent stoppage. The sea was comparatively smooth, the night pitch-dark, and the fog deep and impenetrable; the ship would rise with the swell, and come down with a bump and quiver that was decidedly unpleasant. Soon the passengers were out of their rooms, undressed, calling for help, and praying ...
— Memoirs of Three Civil War Generals, Complete • U. S. Grant, W. T. Sherman, P. H. Sheridan |
