"Blue-black" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... seaward was one great half-circle of blue-black, but in what sailors call the eye of the storm was another very regular patch, with true curved outlines of the arc and the horizon. Under this the sea was dazzlingly white, and then in front of that it was a curious green-black, and it was tossing and flopping ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... see a finer turkey?" he said. "He must weigh all uv forty pounds, an' he's as fat as he can be with the good food uv the wilderness. An' he's a beauty, too! Jest look at them glossy blue-black feathers. No wonder so many hens wuz in love with him. I could be pop'lar with the women folks, too, ef I wuz ez handsome ez ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Stillman quite alone, his hands blue-black with the smudge from a refractory typewriter ribbon which he was vainly endeavoring to adjust. It took some time for him to get his hands clean again, and Claire sharpened her pencils while she waited. But there really proved to be ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... was walking to the gangway, a lamp shone full upon her gypsy face. The blue-black hair, the dark eyes, and a deep red rose she wore in her bonnet, seemed to me an exquisite arrangement of harmonious colour. And the thought flashed into my mind very vividly, however trivial it may ...
— The Crack of Doom • Robert Cromie
... the Mexican houses had neat little yards, with tamarisk hedges and flowers, and walks bordered with shells or whitewashed stones. Johnny's house was dark. His wife, Mrs. Tellamantez, was sitting on the doorstep, combing her long, blue-black hair. (Mexican women are like the Spartans; when they are in trouble, in love, under stress of any kind, they comb and comb their hair.) She rose without embarrassment or apology, comb in hand, and ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... viewed at a distance a large flock had the appearance of a cloud, growing dark and thin alternately, and continually changing its form. It was somewhat larger than a starling, with a freer flight, and had a richer plumage, its color being deep glossy blue, or blue-black, and underneath bright chestnut. When close at hand and in the bright sunshine, the aerial gambols of a flock were beautiful to witness, as the birds wheeled about and displayed in turn, as if moved by one impulse, first the rich blue, then the bright ...
— A Crystal Age • W. H. Hudson
... rough angularity of twenty had softened. Tall, but robust and compact, no stooping shoulders or slouching gait. The chestnut hair was no longer faded, but still cropped close; and the eyes were so deep that they seemed to have a blue-black tint, large, slow-moving, with that unutterable wistfulness which makes one sad. The face was good, strong, and earnest; and, if his manners were not those of a gentleman of leisure, they bore the ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... embroidered French 100 cambric morning-dresses, with bullion and heavy satin ribbons running through; one lined throughout with pink, the other with blue silk 1 rich black silk glace, trimmed 200 with bugles and black velvet 1 blue-black Irish silk poplin, 125 made in Gabrielle style, trimmed with scarlet velvet all round the skirt; sleeves and body-belt and buckle to match 1 Cashmere, shawl pattern, 100 morning-dress, lined; sleeves and flies lined with red silk, cord ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the cleanest ships afloat. Her blue-black side, anointed daily with some mysterious compound rubbed on with serge, a compound the exact ingredients of which were known only to her commander and the painter who mixed it, was as smooth and as shiny as a mahogany table. Her decks were as clean as scrubbers, holystones, ...
— Stand By! - Naval Sketches and Stories • Henry Taprell Dorling
... close-fitting blouse of moose-skin, fantastically beaded, outlined faithfully the well-rounded lines of her body, while a silken kerchief, gay of color and picturesquely draped, partly covered great masses of blue-black hair. But it was the face, cast belike in copper bronze, which caught and held Mrs. Sayther's fleeting glance. Eyes, piercing and black and large, with a traditionary hint of obliqueness, looked forth from under clear-stencilled, clean-arching brows. Without suggesting cadaverousness, ...
— The God of His Fathers • Jack London
... old hunchback, a hundred years old at least, and stone-deaf, who took care of the gondola, spending the whole day, waiting for his master, washing the trim, graceful, blue-black boat, arranging the awning with the white cords and tassels, and polishing the little brass lions at the sides. People tried to question the old hunchback, but he gave no secrets away. The master always stood up behind and rowed; while ...
— The Mintage • Elbert Hubbard
... done; and five minutes later they had got the man—the only occupant of the wreckage as it proved—safe aboard the boat, and were pulling back towards the brig, now barely discernible as a small, faint, indistinct dark blot against the blue-black, star-spangled sky, with her anchor light hoisted to the gaff-end as a guide ...
— Dick Leslie's Luck - A Story of Shipwreck and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... great balls of white clouds rolling rapidly in the cold blue sky, and occasional lurid gleams of sunlight, broad and yellow, which made the black ridge of the storm, gathered on the horizon, look blue-black like ink. ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... straight, blue-black locks, rumpled and disordered, were piled elfishly around the low brow, was thrown up with the swift movement of some startled furry animal, alert even in the throes ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... second year, is from three to four feet in height, leafless, hollow, swollen just below the middle, and tapers to the top. The flowers are either white or rose-colored, and are produced at the extremity of the stalk in a regular, globular group, or umbel. The seeds ripen in August. They are deep blue-black, somewhat triangular, and similar in size and form in all the varieties. An ounce contains about seventy-five hundred seeds, which retain their vitality ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... Eve. She was beautiful. Not like Maria, who is like a fragile, fair, spun-sugar angel. Eve was more earthy, with skin like ivory, creamy and rich and pale. Her blue-black hair she wore long and gathered in the back. She looked about twenty-five, but a streak of pure white ran back from each of her temples. She was the most striking woman I have ever met. I had never known anyone like her, nor have I ...
— Each Man Kills • Victoria Glad
... face ghastly as if he were very ill. His eyes, sunk deep in blue-black sockets, burned into hers with an intensity that terrified her. ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... met for the first time a family of American mestizas—three sisters there were, if I remember rightly,—all pretty girls, with regular features and soft brown hair, this hair distinguishing them at once from the other women of the place with their more conventional blue-black tresses. It seems that the grandfather of these girls had been an American sailor, who for some reason or other was marooned at Cagayan, Mindanao. Making the most, or as a pessimist might think, the worst of a disadvantageous ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... with the prisoners, either male or female, for how could they escape in the centre of that huge plain? The Emir came towards them once, and stood combing out his blue-black beard with his fingers, and looking thoughtfully at them out of his dark, sinister eyes. Miss Adams saw with a shudder that it was always upon Sadie that his gaze was fixed. Then, seeing their distress, he gave an order, and a negro brought a water-skin, from which he gave ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came from the river, the night having been the most perfect they had seen, dark, sombre, picturesque. The moon was hidden behind the banks of clouds, which foretold the coming of rain, yet there was a soft, exquisite glow on land and water, as if blue-black tints were being cast from aloft by some mysterious, experimenting artist among the gods. It had been a quiet, dreamy hour for both. As they walked slowly across the little plain, followed by the oarsmen, they became cognizant of an ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... summit, detailing the enterprise, which, however, he considers not by any means so dangerous as has been represented. At 9,000 feet above the level of the Mediterranean the air becomes extremely rarified, and the sky exhibits a blue-black appearance. He does not consider it at all safe for persons to attempt the ascent, having a tendency to apoplexy, for at the height of 15,000 feet above the level of the sea, the extremely rarified state of the air, as well as the almost unbearable ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 14, Issue 383, August 1, 1829 • Various
... blue' or 'all the brown,' though some of us, it is true, are condemned to wear our hair brown or blue-black. But such are only unhappy exceptions. Yellow or gold is the rule. The bravest men and the fairest women have had golden hair, and, we may add, in reference to another distinction of the colour we are celebrating, golden hearts. Hair at the present time is ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... came swashbuckling up the hill M'tela was prepared. The blue-black beard and hearty, deep-chested carriage of ...
— The Leopard Woman • Stewart Edward White et al
... that he's a negro,—but he's one of these fellows with a blue-black beard that never can be shaved clean because it shows black under the skin. Then he's got a shifty eye and a sneaky look about him. Then, too," he added with a smile, "he's got a smashed nose where my fist landed when he put me ashore here. I certainly handed ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... come. He thought he had never seen her carry her dusky good looks more scornfully. With a movement of impatience she brushed back a rebellious lock of blue-black hair from her temple. ...
— Mavericks • William MacLeod Raine
... from the race of plain and prairie. The practiced eye detected it in the slender stateliness of carriage, in the graceful, yet voluptuous, curves of the lithe body, in the smallness and delicacy of hand and foot, in the purple sheen on straight-falling masses of blue-black hair, and, more than all else, in the long, dark eye, full and soft, yet alight with a slumbering fire. France, too, was responsible for somewhat in Tannis. It gave her a light step in place of the stealthy half-breed shuffle, it arched her red upper lip into a ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... came William Penn in the glory of a new bridle and saddle and a blanket of crimson cloth; his coat smooth as satin, his mane a tumbling cataract of white silk; bunches of wild roses at his ears; his blue-black eyes never so soft, and seeming to lift his feet cautiously like an elephant bearing an ...
— The Choir Invisible • James Lane Allen
... through it, is many tones lower and grayer than the color of the near-by branch as depicted on your paper, while the near-by branch, in comparison, pales into a sable gray-green, which you could perhaps get with yellow ochre, blue-black, and a ...
— Outdoor Sketching - Four Talks Given before the Art Institute of Chicago; The Scammon Lectures, 1914 • Francis Hopkinson Smith
... by the formula C{27}H{24}N{4}. It is produced from the sulphate of aniline by mixing it with a cold saturated solution of bichromate of potash, and allowing the mixture to stand for ten or twelve hours. A blue-black precipitate is then formed, which, after undergoing a process of purification, is dissolved in alcohol and evaporated to dryness. A metallic-looking powder is then obtained, which constitutes this all-important base. Mauve forms with acids ...
— The Story of a Piece of Coal - What It Is, Whence It Comes, and Whither It Goes • Edward A. Martin
... the trip across the bay to the Bangor. Just as everything was in readiness, one of those peculiar and rapid changes in the weather, that are so common here in the tropics near the equator, took place. A great blue-black cloud, looking like an immense cartridge, came up from the west. Through it played vivid flashes of lightning, and around it was a red haze. "A nasty animal," I heard the bo's'n tell the captain, and ...
— Tales of the Malayan Coast - From Penang to the Philippines • Rounsevelle Wildman
... it lent additional greenness to the beverage, whereas the white made it look pinkish and distasteful. It was because he used cake-tea. Later on, when the tea masters of Sung took to the powdered tea, they preferred heavy bowls of blue-black and dark brown. The Mings, with their steeped tea, rejoiced in light ...
— The Book of Tea • Kakuzo Okakura
... Salvador, Cuba; from Morocco and Senegal; blue-black negroes from the Pacific; ebony negroes from the South; brown, tan, yellow, and buff negroes from everywhere inhabit San Juan. Every language from Arabic to Spanish is spoken by these—the cosmopolites of cosmopolitan ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... anxiously into its depths ("Looking for I. O. W. probably," surmised the agent), and two commercial gentlemen from the smoker whiling away a commercially unproductive hiatus by playing pinochle on a suitcase held across their knees. Glancing at the vast, swollen, blue-black billows rolling up the sky, Banneker guessed that their ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... made, and gathered at the waist with a broad blue ribbon, her slim white hands playing with the book upon her knee, her eyes gazing afar off across the water, her mouth drooping in the curve which it had never known till recently, her wealth of blue-black hair forming a halo round her head. Ah, that she were there when I open my eyes again, that I might speak to her! For the bitterest thought that ever came to me is one which troubles my rest from time to time even now: Did I love ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... Fredericksburg, on the Rappahannock. The day was bright and cold, and the wind keen and cutting. A crowd of negroes came about the cars, with cakes, fruit, and other refreshments. The poor fellows seemed collapsed with the unusual cold; their faces and lips were of the color which drapers call blue-black. ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... one another, and yet each girl was sharply individual. There was no mistaking one for another. On the other hand, Maud, who was blue-eyed and yellow-haired, would remind one instantly of Henrietta, an olive brunette with large, languishing dark eyes and hair that was blue-black. The hint of resemblance that ran through them all, reconciling every differentiation, was Ah Chun's contribution. He had furnished the groundwork upon which had been traced the blended patterns of the races. He had furnished the slim-boned Chinese frame, upon which had been builded ...
— The House of Pride • Jack London
... the Fernandez plain that not the faintest outline of the rimming mountains penetrated its blackness. Like some palpable, suffocating substance it filled the plain and mounted far up into the air, even to the blue-black sky, whence a million gemming stars pierced it with their ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... Brady was sent to the rope by Molly McKeever's blue-black eyes he withdrew from the Stovepipe Gang. So much for the power of a colleen's blanderin' tongue and stubborn true-heartedness. If you are a man who read this, may such an influence be sent you before 2 o'clock to-morrow; if you are a woman, may ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... Petrarch's garden. On the other side of the Sorgue is a cigar-paper mill. There is a little hotel at Vaucluse, the Htel Petrarch et Laure. Under a stupendous cliff 1148 feet high is the source of the river Sorgue, the placid Fontaine de Vaucluse, about 30 yards in diameter— "amirror of blue-black water, so pure, so still, that where it laps the pebbles you can scarcely say where air begins and water ends." During floods, however, the cavern being no longer able to contain the increased volume, the water ...
— The South of France—East Half • Charles Bertram Black
... the table, with his agonised eyes fixed upon the blue-black square of the door. The man who had befriended me still swayed his body about with a singular half-smile upon his face. His skinny hand was twitching at the frill of his shirt, and I conjectured that he held some weapon concealed there. Toussac stood between them and the open door, and, much ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... The hair looked blue-black, like the plumage of a crow, the eyes burning—two fires veiled as yet by melancholy. But the appearance of the man was not single, straight or obvious, as it is when I describe it—any more than his passions throughout the play were. I ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... passed him, her eyes met his: at which he was conscious of a good deal of interior commotion. 'By Jove, she's magnificent, she's really stunning,' he exclaimed to himself. He perceived that she was rather a big woman, tall, with finely-rounded, smoothly-flowing lines. Her hair,—velvety blue-black in its shadows,—where the light caught it was dully iridescent. Her features were irregular enough to give her face a high degree of individuality, yet by no means to deprive it of delicacy or attractiveness. She had a superb white throat, and ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... through the streets on to the broad, hard road, and crept upwards with scarcely a sound, through the blue-black twilight. Around and in front of them little lights shone out from the villas and small houses dotted away in the mountains. Almost imperceptibly they passed into a different atmosphere. The air became cold and exhilarating. The flavour of the mountain snows gave life to the breeze. Hunterleys ...
— Mr. Grex of Monte Carlo • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... unlike the dismal croak of ravens. Perfectly built for the air, they were like feathers blown by a breeze. Light, thin, long, sharp, with enormous spread of wings, beautiful with the beauty of dead, blue-black sheen, and yet hideous, too, with their grisly necks and cruel, crooked beaks and vulture eyes, they were surely magnificent specimens ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... feel as if you had never before appreciated the loveliness of that rich tint. As your eye dwells upon it the rich lustrous violet darkens to indigo, and sinking into deeper hues becomes a majestic threat of color. It is ominous, vivid blue-black—solid, adamantine, a crystal wall of amethyst. It is all around you. You are cased, dungeoned in the solid masonry of the waters. It is beauty indeed, but the sombre and awful beauty of the night and storm. The eye turns for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the landscape and a breath of cool air accentuated the silence which fell at this point. We both looked up, and saw the edge of a blue-black cloud peeping over the shoulder of a ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... the fact that the protoplasm of some bacteria permits aniline gentian violet and Lugol's iodine solution, when applied consecutively, to enter into a chemical combination which results in the formation of a new blue-black pigment, only very sparingly soluble in absolute alcohol. Such organisms are said to "stain by Gram," or to be ...
— The Elements of Bacteriological Technique • John William Henry Eyre
... sixth day after leaving the mouth of the Ohio, the boat had passed the third Chickasaw Bluff, and was within fifty miles of Natchez, when blue-black clouds suddenly overcast the sky, and a violent storm burst upon the river. Buffeted by opposing forces, the Mississippi soon began to fume and rage like a wrathful brute. The ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... tall and broad of shoulder, but the head of the woman, shining like blue-black satin in the morning sun, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... loud talk of a coterie about a table. The center of the group was Count Storri—a giant Russ. This Storri did not belong to the Russian legation, did not indeed reside in town, and had been vouched into the club by one of his countrymen. He had onyx eyes, with blue-black beard and mustaches which half covered his face, and hair as raven as his beard. Also he valued himself for that a favorite dish with him was raw meat chopped fine with ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... aureole around her stately and well-poised head, I could see that she was a woman of extraordinary personal beauty. Her face was Spanish rather than English in its type—oval, olive, with black, sparkling eyes, and a sweetly sensitive mouth. From under the broad straw hat two thick coils of blue-black hair curved down on either side of her graceful, queenly neck. I was surprised, as I watched her, to see that her shoes and skirt bore witness to a journey rather than to a mere morning ramble. Her light dress was stained, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of the yacht club were reflected in the blue-black mirror of the boat basin. Bud parked and they ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... incorrect. Greater legibility will be obtained by staining the water with a few drops of caramel solution, or of indigo sulphate (indigo carmine); or, in the absence of these dyes, with a drop or two of common blue-black writing ink. If they are not erected in perfectly frost-free situations, the gauges may be filled with a mixture of glycerin and pure alcohol (not methylated spirit), with or without a certain proportion of water, ...
— Acetylene, The Principles Of Its Generation And Use • F. H. Leeds and W. J. Atkinson Butterfield
... the grass in front of his moccasins—tiny dried blades of yellow grass, and underneath them he saw the dark traceries of their shadows. Each had its own little shadow—its soul—its changeable thing—its other life—just as he himself was cut blue-black beside himself on the sandstone. There were millions of these grass-blades, and each one shivered in the wind, maundering to itself in the chorus, which made the prairie sigh, and all for fear of a big brown buffalo ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... breakfasted earlier than usual. Her luxuriant, blue-black hair had been dressed and she was debating the important question as to what gown she would wear. The business of her life was to make an effective carnal appeal, and she had a very sure sense of how ...
— Tangled Trails - A Western Detective Story • William MacLeod Raine
... asleep upon the bed, dressed as he had left him, with the exception of the slouched hat and the red cotton handkerchief. They lay on the carpet; and over the pillows, and over the coarse velveteen jacket streamed such a wealth of blue-black hair as the baronet in all his life never ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... Blue-black, the sky over Venice, With a pricking of yellow stars. There is no moon, And the waves push darkly against the prow Of the gondola, Coming from Malamocco And streaming toward Venice. It is black under the gondola hood, But the yellow of a satin dress Glares ...
— Men, Women and Ghosts • Amy Lowell
... Granary Burying Ground are the tombs of many whom history has gathered and recorded as her own. But history looks in vain among the blue-black slabs of semi-slate for the name of one who was greatest perhaps of them all; but whose last days were so strangely clouded and whose sepulchre was so obscure as to leave the world in doubt for more than a half century as to where the body of the great sleeper had been laid. Curiosity, ...
— James Otis The Pre-Revolutionist • John Clark Ridpath
... Pia di Donatello! Again he repeated the musical syllables. And yet—and yet—he'd have sworn she was English. There wasn't the faintest trace of a foreign accent in her speech. If anything, there was a hint of Irish,—the soft intonation of the Emerald Isle. Her colouring, too, was Irish, the blue-black hair, the dark violet eyes—he had discovered that they were violet; looking, for all the world, as if they had been put in with a smutty finger, as the saying goes. He revolved the problem in his mind, and a moment ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... in swift, unspeakable amazement. His eye traveled up the slender figure from the telltale skirt. This was no boy at all, but a girl. As he took in the mass of blue-black hair and the soft but clean-cut modeling from ear to chin, his hand fell from her shoulder. What an idiot he had been not to know from the first that such a voice could have come only from a woman! He had been deceived by the ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... stood hesitating at the beginning of the open furrow he had left behind him. His gaze was bent upon the horses, and for a moment she watched him in attentive silence, her eyes dwelling on his massive figure, which cast a gigantic blue-black shadow across the April sunbeams. She saw him at the instant with a distinctness, a clearness of perception, that she had never been conscious of until to-day, as if each trivial detail in his appearance was magnified by ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... spur of the moment. At least, others cannot. But when I have a new nib in my pen, then I can go straight from my breakfast to the blotting-paper, and a new sheet of foolscap fills itself magically with a stream of blue-black words. When poets and idiots talk of the pleasure of writing, they mean the pleasure of giving a piece of their minds to the public; with an old nib a tedious business. They do not mean (as I do) the pleasure ...
— Not that it Matters • A. A. Milne
... and most beautiful species of the family Phasianidae. Its white mantle, delicately vermiculated with black, extends like a wedding veil over the head, back and tail, in striking contrast to the blue-black underparts, red ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... blue-black shadows of the pines, I quickly lost all sense of direction. After we had ridden in wordless silence a short half hour or less, and I supposed we should be nearing the head of our descending ravine, our little cavalcade was halted ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... embon-point that threatened her, still savagely graceful. A purple veil, dotted with gold, floated about her hat, from which green-dyed ostrich plumes cascaded down across a cheek enamelled dead white. Her hair was plastered in blue-black waves, parted low on the forehead; her lips were splashed a startling carmine, the eyelids painted blue; and, from between lashes gummed into little spikes of blacking, she favoured her companion with a glance of carelessly simulated tenderness,—a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... first chill of mid-September, swift as the dividing of the blue-black thunder-cloud by the winking flame, fell the sword of God, smiting and shattering. It seemed hard that it should fall on the weaker and the more innocent. But then ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... A blue-black sky ablaze with stars for His glory, a fresh white robe for stained and tired earth; so we went to Bethlehem in the rare stillness of the early morning. The Church, having no stars, had lighted candles; and we poor sinful men having ...
— The Grey Brethren and Other Fragments in Prose and Verse • Michael Fairless
... on the smallest excuse. Mile after mile slipped easily behind him, and the sun began to show a blood-red face over the hill; a "hare limped trembling through the frozen grass," and crows cawed hungrily as they flew past on sluggish, blue-black wing, questing for food. The world was awake now, and M'Fadyen reckoned that by a couple of hours after noon he should be safe home with his money. Only—who was that on the road ahead of him? A soldier by his coat, surely, with his servant riding behind. Well, so much the better; that would be ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... earth, blurred and ragged clouds showed every conceivable tone of umber and grey, from purest pearl-white to darkest depths of indigo. Only low down, where a blue-black mass ended with level abruptness, a flaming strip of day was splashed along the west—one broad brush-stroke, as it were, by some Titanic artist whose palette held liquid fire. Snows and mist alike caught and flung back the radiance in a maze of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... in a chair at the desk where he had signed away his independence, gazing into a new-spilt ink-blot on the polished surface of the desk, seeing visions in its glistening, blue-black pool. ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... fingers; then he put it into his mouth and closed his lips. In a moment he took it out. The fly was moist and dejected. He placed it upon the gold-dust in the pan. The fly began to beat its wings and work its legs. In a moment its color changed from blue-black to yellow. It was coated with gold-dust. Hassan lifted it with a pair of tweezers, and popped it ...
— The Turquoise Cup, and, The Desert • Arthur Cosslett Smith
... as the sun sank below the blue-black horizon, exhausted, red-eyed, gasping men struggled up from the drenched, smothering interior of the ship, and hurled themselves, not into the sea, but prone upon the decks! They had conquered! The scattered, vagrant ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the Nautilus drew near the surface, those denizens of the Mediterranean I could observe most productively belonged to the sixty-third genus of bony fish. These were tuna from the genus Scomber, blue-black on top, silver on the belly armor, their dorsal stripes giving off a golden gleam. They are said to follow ships in search of refreshing shade from the hot tropical sun, and they did just that with the Nautilus, as they had once done ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... of lake, of gamboge, of sepia, of blue-black, of cobalt, and vermilion; and prepare gradated columns (exactly as you have done with the Prussian blue) of the lake and blue-black.[8] Cut a narrow slip, all the way down, of each gradated color, and set ...
— The Elements of Drawing - In Three Letters to Beginners • John Ruskin
... in the steely chill of dawn he came out upon a spacious lake. The night had been windless, and now, in the first of the coming light, the water was smooth like blue-black oil under innumerable writhing wisps and streamers of mist. A keen smell, raw but sweet, rose from the wet shores, the wet spruce and fir woods, and the fringe of a deep cedar swamp near by. The tired animal sniffed it with an uncomprehending delight. He did not recognize ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... shape, but her beauty was unearthly. Her skin was pearl white and other colors seemed to play faintly upon it, so that it reminded Garin of mother-of-pearl with its lights and shadows. The hair, which veiled her as a cloud, was blue-black and reached below her knees. She was robed in the silver net of the Folk and there was a heavy girdle of rose-shaded jewels about ...
— The People of the Crater • Andrew North
... the swallows go Like blue-black arrows to and fro, Now stooping where the rushes grow, Now flashing o'er a shallow; And overhead in blue and white High Spring and Summer hold delight; "All right!" the black-cap calls, "All right!" His mate says ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, May 20, 1914 • Various
... was neither Cantonese nor Pekingese. His long, rather supercilious face, his aquiline nose, the flare of his nostrils, the back-tilted head, the high, narrow brow, and the shock of blue-black hair identified the Chinese stranger, even if his abnormal, rangy height were not taken into consideration, as a hill man, perhaps Tibetan, perhaps Mongolian. Certainly he ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... carried on account of the wet weather. It was a large field of fifty to sixty acres, and as I walked by it the birds came flying leisurely over my head to settle with loud cawings on the stocks. It was a magnificent sight—the great, blue-black bird-forms on the golden wheat, an animated group of three or four to half a dozen on every stock, while others walked about the ground to pick up the scattered grain, and others were flying over them, for just then ...
— A Shepherd's Life • W. H. Hudson
... blemish. You would think it was a shower of pearls that was set in his mouth, his lips were rubies, his symmetrical body was as white as snow, his cheek was ruddy as the berry of the mountain-ash, his eyes were like the sloe, his brows and eye-lashes were like the sheen of a blue-black lance." ...
— The High Deeds of Finn and other Bardic Romances of Ancient Ireland • T. W. Rolleston
... gwine look foh Mars' Lupus?" he asked, barring my way with one wrinkled, blue-black hand on the brass door-knob. "Kaze ef you is, ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... took from his breast-pocket a large leather wallet, and, arising, laid its contents on the table. He opened a piece of folded paper, and drew from it two objects; one a lock of blue-black hair like his own, and the other a ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... through the canyons the light came in long red shafts that cut through the cobalt shadows like sharp lances of fire and reached half across Lost Valley. All the western part of the Valley lay in that blue-black shadow. They could see Corvan set like a dull gem in the wide green country, the scattered ranches, ...
— Tharon of Lost Valley • Vingie E. Roe
... by the colour of her face, Mademoiselle didn't need it. Did Mademoiselle think the chemist sold rouge or had she any false hair to spare? At this challenge Mademoiselle's pale fingers pulled out a dozen hairpins, and down came the loveliest blue-black hair, hanging to her knees ...
— The Enchanted Castle • E. Nesbit
... said, and for the first time I noticed her eyes blue-black, with gray rims, "I will kill you," and she whipped out an ugly-looking revolver. From her face I had no doubt that she would not hesitate to do as she had said. I changed my tactics, for I was anxious about my pony, and said, ...
— The Sky Pilot • Ralph Connor
... been in the depths as he sat on the log. But the loss of the pullet brought with it a still further depression, and Jimmy forgot all about his impersonation of the "Bald Eagle." He lost his conceit in the red ochre stripes on his face, and the iridescent feathers in his hat, and the blue-black mud on his nimble feet. For a few moments he was just a sad-eyed boy who saw the hand of the whole world raised against him. The cry of the new baby rang in his ears. The thought of the other boys teasing ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... commanded the avenue. Presently she espied her victim, and with a last glance around to assure herself that everything was as she wished it to be, she mounted to the top of the piano. There she hastily tucked the hem of her skirt between the piano and the wall. The reflection in a great blue-black Chinese jar showed her when Rangely appeared between the portieres, so that she was able to step back as if to view the effect of her work just as he reached the middle of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... clock. Good, Merciful Power! How came that shadow on the wall, No woman was in the room! His tall Chiffonier stood gaunt behind His chair. His old cloak, rabbit-lined, Hung from a peg. The door was closed. Just for a moment he must have dozed. He looked again, and saw it plain. The silhouette made a blue-black stain On the opposite wall, and it never wavered Even when the candle quavered Under his panting breath. What made That beautiful, dreadful thing, that shade Of something so lovely, so exquisite, Cast from a substance which the sight ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... of fruit and stone variations, and their characteristics as to color, weight, size, shape and consistency were fully described. Similar variations have been observed, as is well known, in the cultivated plums. Fine blue-black fruits were seen on some shrubs and purplish or yellow fruits on others. Some exhibit a firmer texture and others a more watery pulp. Even the stones show differences which are suggestive of ...
— Species and Varieties, Their Origin by Mutation • Hugo DeVries
... but there was not another sound, save the indescribable quiet talk of the runnel over the stones. I lay lazily smoking and studying the color of the sky, as we call the void of space, where it showed a reddish gray behind the pines to where it showed a glossy blue-black between the stars. As if to be more like a pedler, I wear a silver ring. This I could see faintly shining as I raised or lowered the cigarette; and at each whiff the inside of my hand was illuminated, and became for a second the highest light ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... clothed in loose draperies, the outer one of some rough material, which conceals others of daintier fabric and colour. Handsome in feature, with glossy blue-black hair, their dark gipsy faces also wear that look of sturdy independence ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Egypt • R. Talbot Kelly
... Jess's letter which made me hot was this: "What is the matter with you and Billy? Pat says (Pat is Patricia, Billy's sister) that you've been pretty horrid about writing him, and he's been blue-black at not getting letters from you; but at present he is having a good time with a very jolly girl from the West who is at their hotel. Chirp him something cheerful, Canary Bird. If I were younger or Billy older you shouldn't have him. I'd have him myself. I'm not going to ...
— Kitty Canary • Kate Langley Bosher
... this circumstance, "Sir, Prince Blucher and Prince Swartzenberg's measure's in the house now; and what's more, I've cut for Wellington." I believe he would have gone to St. Helena to make a coat for Napoleon, so great was his ardour. He wore a blue-black wig, and his whiskers were of the same hue. He was brief and stern in conversations; and he always went to masquerades and ...
— Men's Wives • William Makepeace Thackeray
... presented by the grim, but lithe torpedo boats, each hurrying across the waves to its appointed position, rolling in the sea hollows and pitching clouds of spray over grimy bows, appealed suggestively to Miss Wellington, who stood with her hand tightly clenched in Sara's. Huge blue-black clouds, with slivery shafts showing through the rents the wind had made, banked the western horizon, and out to seaward the yellow Brenton Reef light vessel rolled ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... down and wept with his face in the grass. He had slept so long that now he could not sleep, and when his tears would come no more, he sat up and watched the night through till the dawn grayed the blue-black sky. The noises of the noiseless woods made themselves heard: the cry of a night hawk, the hooting of an owl, the whirring note of the whip-poor-will; the long, plunging down-rush of a dead branch breaking the boughs ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... these types. Most prominent among the opals of to-day are the so-called "Black opals" from New South Wales. These give vivid flashes of color out of seeming darkness. In some positions the stones, as the name implies, appear blue-black or blackish gray. By transmitted light, however, the bluish stones appear yellow. Owing to the sharp contrast between the dark background and the flashing spectrum colors, black opals are most attractive stones and fine specimens command ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... clubs in Pall Mall were mostly shut. On the footways strolled the folk whom one only sees there in August and September, the entire families from the country, the less affluent American, guide book in hand. Here and there was a perennial type, the pale actor with soft hat and blue-black chin, the ragged sloucher from park to park. Langholm could have foregathered with one and all, such was the strange fascination of the town for one who was twice the man among his northern roses. But that is the kind of mistress that London is to those who have once felt ...
— The Shadow of the Rope • E. W. Hornung
... on the sand, the sunlight pouring like a silver liquid into the blue-black masses of her hair, her narrow brows, her thick eyelashes. Presently she fell asleep. Clara leaned against a low ledge of rock and spread her coppery mane across its surface. It dried almost immediately; ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... The forged signature is written with the same kind of nib as the genuine ones. Also, the bodies of the letters are written in a fountain-pen ink—the 'Swan,' I think. The signatures are written in Stephens' blue-black ink. The forged signature is also written in Stephens' blue-black ink. ...
— The Loudwater Mystery • Edgar Jepson
... Partah Singh paused, and his eyes wandered over the dark gardens, with their gleaming white colonnades and kiosks and graceful towers rising into the blue-black sky. He traced the starlight down to its reflection in the great tank before he spoke again. "If I should place my son and my kingdom under the protection of the English, what would happen in Agpur?" ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... seemed in the gray light of that winter morning, all those pathetic heads, graceful or laughable, which we were only in the habit of seeing when transfigured by the prestige of the stage. Chins had become blue-black under too frequent shaving; hair thin and dry under the hot iron of the hair-dresser; skins rough under the injurious action of unguents and vinegar; eyes dull, burned by the glare of foot-lights—blinded, almost fixed, like those of an owl ...
— Ten Tales • Francois Coppee
... face was still on fire when I heard the soft swish of skirts. Then she stood before me, more beautiful than even my forest-dreaming had pictured her, more desirable than ever. She courtesied low, and the amazing mass of blue-black hair seemed an over-heavy burden for the slim white neck ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... she was dreaming, her thoughts at loose-ends, her eyes studying the incalculable depths of blue-black night that swirled and eddied beyond the window-glass. The most shadowy of smiles touched her lips, the faintest shade of deepened color rested on her cheeks.... She was thinking of—him? As long as he dared, the young man, his ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... spoke I saw that my father had drawn himself up in bed, and that he too was staring at the strange, elfish figure. Gottfried Gottfried, as I remember him in these days, was a tall, dark, heavily browed man, with a shock of bushy blue-black hair, of late silvering at the temples—grave, sombre, ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... stood squarely blocked with cobalt shadows about it, and the hills were brooding in blue-black immensities—but over the valley was a flooding wash of platinum ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck |
