"Crashing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... or at Chattanooga on the mountain top, Saw I your gait and saw I your sinewy limbs clothed in blue, bearing weapons, robust year, Heard your determin'd voice launch'd forth again and again, Year that suddenly sang by the mouths of the round-lipp'd cannon, I repeat you, hurrying, crashing, sad, distracted year. ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... man; how the dominating egotism of a man and his confident professions and his demands confuse them; how deeply his appeals for his own happiness stir them to pity.... They have heard of love—and they do not know. If they ever dream of it it is not what they have imagined when a man suddenly comes crashing through the barriers of friendship and stuns them with an incoherent recital of his own desires. And yet, in spite of the shock, it is with them instinctive to be kind. No woman can endure an appeal unmoved; except for them there would be no beggars; their ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... sprang into being, rushing in white torrents to join the swollen river. Cascades fell from every ledge and parapet. Now and again a great boulder was loosened and went crashing down a hillside with terrifying roar. The river, freed from its ice shackles, overflowed its banks, and in the wild, unrestrained ardour of its new power uprooted trees and washed them away upon its turbulent bosom ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... their horrid encounter with one another, dost thou think, Ballockasso, that so horrible a noise as is heard there proceedeth from the voice and shouts of men, the dashing and jolting of harness, the clattering and clashing of armies, the hacking and slashing of battle-axes, the justling and crashing of pikes, the bustling and breaking of lances, the clamour and shrieks of the wounded, the sound and din of drums, the clangour and shrillness of trumpets, the neighing and rushing in of horses, with the fearful claps and thundering of all sorts of guns, from ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais
... straight on. If a fool, he was no coward. The soldiers carried axes at their belts, and, dismounting, he led them up to the gate and showed them where to attack. Blow after blow rained on the stout timbers. At length two fell crashing. ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Waves crashing across the gallery broke against tante-gra'mere's closed shutters and spurted between the sashes. This freak of the storm devastating Kaskaskia she regarded with sidelong scrutiny, such as a crow gives to the dubious figure set to ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of crashing through water as black as black marble because it's so deep, and you sit in the fore-chains day after day and see the sun rise almost afraid because the sea's ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... reached the camp the rush of the rain had begun. Through a network of boughs he caught the red eye of the fire and beyond had a vision of stampeding mules with the men in pursuit. Then crashing through the bushes he saw why the fire still burned—Susan was holding an umbrella over it, the rain spitting in the hot ash, a pan of biscuits balanced in the middle. Behind her the tent, one side concave, the other bellying out from restraining pegs, leaped ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... floating down the valley to her. It was merry and quick, but it struck terror to the girl's breast. That meant a man. She stood and watched, with terrified gray eyes, and presently she saw him: he was crashing through a heavy undergrowth of bush and fern not far away. Daphne gathered her skirts in one hand and fled. She ran as only an athletic girl can run, swiftly, gracefully. Her skirt fluttered behind her; her soft dark hair fell and floated on ...
— Daphne, An Autumn Pastoral • Margaret Pollock Sherwood
... knew nothing of his idle canon, that the opening of poems must be humble and subdued. But my own sensibility told me how much of additional grandeur accrued to these two lines as being the immediate and all-pompous opening of the poem. The same feeling I had received from the crashing overture to the grand chapter of Daniel—"Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords." But, above all, I felt this effect produced in the ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... clubs, and pistols, and daggers, poured, an interminable throng, through the halls and apartments where kings, for ages, had reigned in inapproachable pomp and power. The servants of the king, in terror, fled in every direction. Still the crowd came rushing and roaring on, crashing the doors before them, till they approached the apartment in which the royal family was secluded. The king, who, though deficient in active energy, possessed passive fearlessness in the most eminent degree, left his wife, children, and sister ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... listen to that leader's last instructions. And at the same moment the east stand broke into cheers as the gallant sons of Yates bounded on to the grass. Back and forth rolled the mighty torrents of sound, meeting in midair, breaking and crashing back in fainter reverberations. They were singing the college songs now, and the merits and virtues of both colleges were being chanted defiantly to the tunes of popular airs. Thousands of feet "tramp-tramped," keeping time against the stands. The Yates band and the Harwell band were ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... heart-uplifted leapt she on the foe, Resistless as a tigress, crashing through Ranks upon ranks of Argives, smiting now With that huge halberd massy-headed, now Hurling the keen dart, while her battle-horse Flashed through the fight, and on his shoulder bare Quiver and bow death-speeding, close to her hand, If mid that revel of blood ...
— The Fall of Troy • Smyrnaeus Quintus
... spectre would cry; and as Anne Lisbeth murmured these words to herself, the whole of her dream was suddenly recalled to her memory, when the mother had clung to her, and uttered these words, when, amid the crashing of worlds, her sleeve had been torn, and she had slipped from the grasp of her child, who wanted to hold her up in that terrible hour. Her child, her own child, which she had never loved, lay now buried in the sea, and might rise ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... than anything. Yet even as Matthews watched it, in his stupefaction, the smile changed, broadened, hardened. And Magin, sitting up straight again with his back to the room, began to execute a series of crashing chords. ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... coachman Anton; Filled with joy is his whole being. To give vent unto this feeling He is going to the wine-house, To the tavern del Fachino. And to-night he is not drinking Country wine in fogliette; He has ordered a straw-covered Bottle of good Orvieto And of Monte Porzio. Panes are crashing, fragments flying; For he throws each empty bottle In his rapture through the window. Though indignant at the oil-drops Which upon the wine are floating, Just like comets in the ether, Still he drinks and drinks with ardour; ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... there an end in view that has governed in the great question of evolution of species, and the survival of the fittest? Darwin seems to think so. The wonderful "machine" that Strauss talked about in connection with the "smashing" and "crashing" that destroys parent forms did not smash the simplest forms of life. Why? The answer is, "It would be of no service for them to become highly organized." Then all the smashing and crashing known in the doctrine of "the survival of the fittest" and ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... Mowrah Nawut for all of the forgotten years the gods had waited and forborne until the people of Mlideen should have carven one hundred gods. Never came lightnings from Mowrah Nawut crashing upon Mlideen, nor blight on harvests nor pestilence in the city, only upon Mowrah Nawut the gods sat and smiled. The people of Mlideen had said: "Yoma is god." And the gods sat and smiled. And after the forgetting of Yoma and the passing of years the people had said: "Zungari is ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]
... so desperately that the pîpal branch broke, and he came crashing through the tree to the ground, without much hurt beyond a great fright and a few bruises. However, he was so dreadfully alarmed that he rushed into the sleeping-room, and rolling himself up in his quilt, shook from head to foot as if ...
— Tales Of The Punjab • Flora Annie Steel
... time the road held them near railroad tracks. A train hurtled past them, running eastwards: a roaring streak of orange light crashing through the world of cool night ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... bodies swaying to a barbarous chorus. In the bow were ten prime young warriors, their heads gay with the feathers of the parrot, crimson and grey: at the stern eight men with long paddles decorated with ivory balls guided the boat, while ten chiefs danced up and down from stem to stern. The crashing of large drums, a hundred blasts from ivory horns, and a song from two thousand voices did not tend to assure the little fleet under Stanley. The Englishman coolly anchored his boats in mid-stream and received the enemy with such well-directed volleys that the savages were utterly paralysed, ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... and with the shouts of Bhimasena, and also with the reports produced by the striking of his arms, the caves of the mountain seemed as if they were roaring. And hearing those loud arm-strokes, like unto the crashing of thunder, the lions that were slumbering in the caves, uttered mighty howls. And being terrified by the yelling of the lions, the elephants, O Bharata, sent forth tremendous roars, which filled the mountain. ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... had merit, or why should Lord Brougham, in the great "Edinburgh Review," go after it with a slashing, crashing, damning criticism? ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... still a long time and was beginning to think that his trip had been in vain, when he heard a soft crackling of the twigs above him, a heavy tread crashing through the bushes, a puffing snorting breath from the porpoise-like Pat, and he held his own breath and lay very still. Suppose Pat should take a new trail and discover his hiding place? His heart pounded with great dull thuds. But Pat slid ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... whom stands no type or title given In all the squalid tales of gore and pelf; Though cowed by crashing thunders from all heaven. Cain never said, 'My ...
— The Wild Knight and Other Poems • Gilbert Chesterton
... Donald's wife and another young woman who stayed with her to keep her company were alone. The latter young woman, with Mrs. Blake's baby in her arms, was standing at the door of the house, when suddenly she heard a crashing noise in the bush in front of her, and the next moment there loomed up before her affrighted vision in the gloaming the apparition of a gaunt and ragged man, dripping wet, and running towards her with long, black hair and straggling beard streaming ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... the wall and projected outwards from it; and whenever a ram was being brought up, they drew up the beam at right angles to it, and then, letting go the chains, dropped the ponderous timber, which came crashing down on the ram, ...
— Stories From Thucydides • H. L. Havell
... we sit looking expectantly at the curtain, we hear, not the deep booming of the Rhine, but the patter of a forest downpour, accompanied by the mutter of a storm which soon gathers into a roar and culminates in crashing thunderbolts. As it passes off, the curtain rises; and there is no mistaking whose forest habitation we are in; for the central pillar is a mighty tree, and the place fit for the dwelling of a fierce chief. The door opens: and an ...
— The Perfect Wagnerite - A Commentary on the Niblung's Ring • George Bernard Shaw
... Beatrice and Steve had a chance to argue the matter out to a fine point—Mark Constantine had a stroke. It was like the sudden crashing down of a great oak tree which within had been hollow and decayed for some time but to all exterior appearances quite the sturdy monarch. Without warning he became first a mighty thing lying day after day on a bed, fussed over and exclaimed over ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... be for you. I saw visions of the days, when, together, we might fill high office in our country's affairs, with an ambition ever growing, as, together, we mounted the ladder of success. Vain enough thought, eh? Guess it was not long before I brought the roof of my castle crashing about my ears. I have failed in my work a second time, and only succeeded in ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... any subject whatsoever. So, at large, with very competent learning, no small philosophical acumen, much logical formality and numeration of propositions and paragraphs, but a frequent liveliness of style, and every now and then a crashing shot of practical good sense, Comenius reasons and argues for a new System of Education, inspired by what would now be called Realism or enlightened Utilitarianism. Objections, as they might occur, are ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson
... heavily armored ships, but at the repeller ray columns, which automatically drew the rockets upward where they exploded in the generators of the aircraft; how the Wyomings threw the first thrill of terror into the Airlords by bringing an entire squadron crashing to earth; how a handful of us in a rocketship successfully raided the Han city of Nu-Yok; and how by the application of military principles I remembered from the First World War, I was able to lead the Wyomings to victory over the Sinsings, a Hudson River tribe which ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... pomp are ne'er enduring found, Like brightest glass they fall, and break upon the ground; So when the luck of men has mounted up to heaven, It soon comes crashing down, and on the ...
— Paul Gerhardt's Spiritual Songs - Translated by John Kelly • Paul Gerhardt
... keep her from falling. But she was not going to fall; she had merely closed her eyes to blot out the scene which she could not turn from. She held her breath in an agony of suspense, and it seemed an age until she heard a crashing report—and ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... ceaseless, rolling, and crashing, reached their ears from all sides; from all sides frothy, bubbling masses of water dashed themselves against the rocks, and now—now an immense rock fell crashing in the flood, which overflowed into the wide plain like ...
— The Son of Monte-Cristo, Volume II (of 2) • Alexandre Dumas pere
... almost childlike delight in watching it, her eager, animated looks contrasting strongly with the utter indifference of her companion, who, during the whole time the piece lasted, never even moved, not even when the furious, crashing din produced by the trumpets, cymbals, and Chinese bells sounded their loudest from the orchestra. Of this he took no heed, but was, as far as appearances might be trusted, enjoying soft repose and bright celestial dreams. The ballet ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the darkness, but his speed was no match for the madness of fear, and his steps were still to be heard crashing through the furze bushes and loose stones, when the white coiffe had flitted, like some bird of night, round the projecting boulders ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... shot his fist, and the bully of Nautical Hall got a crashing blow in the chin that knocked him clean ...
— The Wizard of the Sea - A Trip Under the Ocean • Roy Rockwood
... the starting word, and Jean leaped in. Pete met him with a crashing right to the ribs and dodged out of reach of the clutching hands that reached for his throat. They circled around a moment and again the Frenchman came, this time in one ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... pursuers did not increase. But the confusion among the latter had become so great that the warriors' cries of terror and their leaders' shouts of encouragement and menace were distinctly heard whenever the fierce crashing of ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... uncertain of our distance from a place of safety; the surf burst over the vessel in a dreadful cascade, the crew despairing and clinging to her sides to avoid its violence, while the ship was breaking up with a rapidity and crashing noise, which added to the roaring of the breakers, drowned the voices of the officers. The masts were cut away to ease the ship, and the cutter cleared from the booms and launched from the lee-gunwale. When the long wished-for ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 14, - Issue 403, December 5, 1829 • Various
... weak, to succor the needy, to relieve the suffering, to confound the oppressor. While vigor leaps in great tidal pulses along your veins, you stand in the thickest of the fray, and broadsword and battle-axe come crashing down through helmet and visor. When force has spent itself, you withdraw from the field, your weapons pass into younger hands, you rest under your laurels, and your works do follow you. Your badges are the scars of ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... clanked and clattered through the riotous German dances, adding their martial clangor to the regal sounds. Trains were stepped on, dresses torn. The retiring rooms were often sought for repairs. Now and again commotion was caused by some heavy person tripping on her skirts and crashing to the floor. It was Triumphant Germany celebrating her undisputed position and pride—celebrating her mastery of ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... of Caspar and Ossaroo were already turned upon it.—Away down the ravine as far as they could see the surface of the glacier appeared in motion, like sea-billows; huge blocks of ice were thrown to the top and rolled over, with a rumbling crashing noise, while large blue fragments raised high above the general surface, were grinding and crumbling to pieces against the faces of the cliffs. A cloud of snow-spray, rising like a thick white mist, filled the whole ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... his grasp on his assailants, who were now striving to rise. There was another crashing blow, and then his last opponent slipped ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... The roar of its howling monkeys strikes terror to the timid heart. The plaintive calls of its persecuted feathered denizens echo through the mysterious vastnesses like despairing voices from a spirit world. The crashing noises, the strange, weird, unaccountable sounds that hurtle through its dimly lighted corridors blanch the face and cause the hand to steal furtively toward the loosely sheathed weapon. The piercing, frenzied screams which arise with blood-curdling effect through the awful stillness ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... that burns out my soul and brain and reduces me to rave like a lovelorn early Victorian tailor! Which was worse I know not—the spasm of jealousy or the spasm of self-contempt that followed it. At that moment the music ceased suddenly on a loud crashing chord. ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... I seized a stool and hurled it at him. He avoided it nimbly, and it went crashing through the half of the casement that ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... about two acres of scrub. The bushes were only about five feet high, but they were very thick and well-leaved, so we decided to lay up there for the day. Nothing happened until about four o'clock in the afternoon, when we were startled by hearing some one coming crashing through the bushes. We hugged the ground as closely as we could and hardly breathed, as the footsteps were coming nearer. The bushes were so thick that we couldn't see the person, but it sounded as though he was coming straight for us. We determined to sell our liberty dearly in case we were discovered, ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... bliss of earth to bear, With storms to wrestle, brave the lightning's glare, And mid the crashing shipwreck not despair. ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
... to cut a fishing-pole, and will be back in a minute." And Ned went crashing into the thickest part of ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... angry sea is lashing; But I launch my little bark, Though the thunder peals are crashing, And the sea is pitchy dark! See by lightning's vivid flashing How to shift my tattered sail— Far across the billows dashing, I am floating with ...
— The Sylvan Cabin - A Centenary Ode on the Birth of Lincoln and Other Verse • Edward Smyth Jones
... wing-feather is arched towards the tip and is much more attenuated than in the female. In an allied bird, the Penelope nigra, Mr. Salvin observed a male, which, whilst it flew downwards "with outstretched wings, gave forth a kind of crashing rushing noise," like the falling of a tree. (54. Mr. Salvin, in 'Proceedings, Zoological Society,' 1867, p. 160. I am much indebted to this distinguished ornithologist for sketches of the feathers of the Chamaepetes, and ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... this ideal man upright, straight, rigid, unbending. More recently we might have drawn him as a super-man, the fittest-to-survive kind of man, all muscular will, intent only on bending every other will to his and crashing relentlessly on through life like a bison in the forest. But nowadays we want a man with the same reliability as the upright type, but with grace and suppleness in place of rigidity; and with the same strength as the super-man, but with gentleness and consideration ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... a splendid picture of the deer, before a crashing of branches and the rattle of pebbles announced that the doe was leaping to the rescue of her little one. But she could not be seen, as she was wise in woodlore and remained safely screened from men. Possibly she knew that a human carried a death-dealing weapon when he sought ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... fibre of his body favored the mad, clawing rush to the surface. His intellect, and the craft thereof, favored the slow and cautious meeting with the thing that menaced and which he could not see. And while he debated, a loud, crashing noise burst on his ear. At the same instant he received a stunning blow on the left side of the back, and from the point of impact felt a rush of flame through his flesh. He sprang up in the air, but halfway to his feet collapsed. His body crumpled in like a leaf withered in sudden heat, ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... times better than I. The snapping of the smallest stick under the stealthy tread of fox or wildcat would send him scurrying out of sight in wild alarm; yet I watched a dozen of them at play one night when a frightened moose went crashing through the underbrush and plunged into the lake near by, and they did not seem to mind ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... time the men were pouring in behind and fast filling the ditch. A fire-ball came crashing over the rampart, rolled down the grass slope and lay sputtering, and in the infernal glare he saw all his comrades' faces—every detail of their dress down to the moulded pattern on their buttons. "Fourth! Fourth!" some one shouted, and then voice and vision were caught up and drowned together ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... there single houses, even houses built of boards, were spared at the commander's word. The convent was burnt and pillaged, stones and mortar littered the street in front of the Hotel de Ville, and upon the sidewalk lay the famous bells which came crashing to the street below when shells burst in the belfry. From cellar to garret nearly every remaining house was systematically drenched with naphtha and the torch applied, and when all was over hundreds of gallons were tossed into the River Scheldt. Over ...
— The Log of a Noncombatant • Horace Green
... maniac; I returned to find my child—my boy—great God!—he had run to hide himself, in terror at the torches and the grim men; they had failed to discover him, till, too late, his shrieks, amidst the crashing walls, burst on his mother's ear,—and the scorched, mangled, lifeless corpse lay on that ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... was wild and strong, It shriek'd, it whistl'd and it roar'd, And went with whirl and swoop along, 'Mid falling trees and crashing board. ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... we forged ahead, now clambering along the banks of the swirling torrent, and again crashing through the darkened forest, using our axes energetically. More than once, in the stiller waters between the curves, huge crocodiles were seen disporting themselves cumbrously, and when we approached ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... and subtle music of Turgenev's clavichord were followed by the crashing force of Tolstoi's organ harmonies, and by the thrilling, heart-piercing discords struck by Dostoevski. Still more sensational sounds come from the younger Russian men of to-day, and all this bewildering audacity of composition has in certain places drowned for a time the less pretentious ...
— Essays on Russian Novelists • William Lyon Phelps
... horror followed these words, which rolled like a crashing thunder-clap through the careless, coquetting, and unsuspecting company. ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... all but done for thyself," said the saint, with a glory burning round his head; "by that last invocation. Yet give us the name of the one, my friend, if one there be; it will save thee, with the cross upon thy breast. All is crashing round us; dear brother, who is ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... on another log. As the flames blazed higher, the green lights disappeared. There was a crashing ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... in the race of water. Nancy, too, was hurled floundering in the scuppers. They were flung and beaten, crashing about in the swirling sea that swept ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... any they had heard yet drowned Ned's reply. The walls in the passage seemed shaking as if about to fall. From the passage in their rear came shrieks and groans. An odor of sulphur came blowing upon their backs. A crashing and grinding noise filled the air. Jack and Harry closed in upon ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the next instant would have fired, when the parroquets began chattering, screaming, and fighting together, fluttering down towards the bushes which concealed our watcher. Then there was a rush, a crashing of the undergrowth, and the owner of the eyes—a good-sized deer—bounded into sight for an instant, and then disappeared in a series of spring leaps, which soon took it out of sight ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... poured a deadly fire and rounded up masses of bewildered prisoners. It was well-nigh dusk before even the semblance of a line of defense could be formed to cover the disorganized masses of men, but the gathering darkness increased the terror of the hapless fugitives, who, stumbling and crashing their way to safety, carried ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... lost the power of speech. Then from nerveless hands his own cards fell face downward, still unrevealed, upon the table. The next moment he was on his feet, the chair in which he had been seated flung crashing behind him on ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... and heavy as if upon a grass sward; nearer and nearer it came, and the man, starting up, rushed out of the tent, and looked around anxiously. I arose from the stool upon which I had been seated, and just at that moment, amidst a crashing of boughs and sticks, a man on horseback bounded over the hedge into the lane at a few yards' distance from where we were: from the impetus of the leap the horse was nearly down on his knees; the rider, ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... A crashing blow upon the door startled Mrs. Breckenridge so that she cried out under her breath. Brown went to the door. A furious gust of wind hurled it wide open beneath his hand, but there was no one upon the doorstep. No one? At his feet lay ...
— The Brown Study • Grace S. Richmond
... realizing even yet the nature of his antagonist, struggled blindly to escape the fingers clawing at him, and flung one hand down to the knife in his belt. Warned by the movement, the assailant drove his head into the gambler's chest, sending him crashing to the floor, falling himself heavily upon the prostrate body. Hawley gave utterance to one cry, half throttled in his throat, and then the two grappled fiercely, so interlocked together as to make weapons useless. Whoever the assailant might be, the gambler was fully aware ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... stay to speak, but fired immediately; I dodged my head to one side just in time and heard the bullet go crashing into the looking-glass ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... had made the Empire; they had long ago sold their birthright of valour and of honour for the pottage of luxury and the favours of a tyrannical madman. What cared they if after they had feasted and shouted themselves hoarse in praise of a deified brute, the ruins of Rome came crashing down over their graves? What cared they if in far-off barbaric lands the Goths and Huns were already whetting ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... fields waiting for orders, now marching into the trenches to take their turn there—they knew that they were marching into the jaws of death, but they walked as quietly and as cheerfully as if they were going to a parade, the guns crashing close by them all the time. The firing being too hot for the women, the captain in charge of them was relieved when they elected to ...
— The War on All Fronts: England's Effort - Letters to an American Friend • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... overhung in a frightful manner, and looked as if the next gust would precipitate them into the river. With great difficulty, Wood forced a path through the ruins. It was a work of no slight danger, for every instant a wall, or fragment of a building, came crashing to the ground. Thames Street was wholly impassable. Men were going hither and thither with barrows, and ladders and ropes, removing the rubbish, and trying to support the tottering habitations. Grace-church Street was entirely deserted, except by a few stragglers, whose curiosity ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth
... two raced in the wake of old Parrish. Behind them they could hear the Drilgoes shouting, but a dense, impenetrable darkness was already beginning to settle down over the valley. They lost the track and went crashing through the ferns, on and on until ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... first supposed by the Austrians to be Persano's flagship, was a center of attack and had her steering gear disabled. As she could go only straight ahead or astern, the Austrian flagship seized the chance and rammed her squarely amidships at full speed, crashing through her armor and opening an immense hole. The Italian gunboat heeled over to starboard, then back again, and in a few seconds went down, with ...
— A History of Sea Power • William Oliver Stevens and Allan Westcott
... the mountainous pair, darting in and out, evidently with some plan of drawing off the male. Both the whales struck out incessantly with their mammoth flukes; their great tails, crashing upon the sea-surface, lashed it to mountains of foam. Our boats tossed as ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... together. The horse struggled to his knees, then fell again. He screamed, an agonising sound, that in Rita's excited mind seemed to mingle with the smoke and the dust in a cloud of horror. Every moment she expected to feel the iron hoofs crashing into her, as the frenzied creature struggled ...
— Rita • Laura E. Richards
... their subsistence. The stream on which they were encamped was filled with beaver sign, and the redoubtable Ben Jones set out at daybreak with the hope of catching one of the sleek fur animals. While making his way through a bunch of willows he heard a crashing sound to his right, and looking in that direction, saw a huge grizzly bear coming toward him with a terrible snort. The Kentuckian was afraid of neither man nor beast, and drawing up his rifle, let ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... after her like the wind. As they tore through the little barnyard Kirsty called to them not to go near the well, but neither of them heard. Into the woods they dashed, over mossy logs and stones, tearing through the undergrowth and crashing among fallen boughs. In spite of her fleetness Scotty caught his tormentor as she dodged round a tree; he held her in a sturdy grip and shook her for her impudence until her sunbonnet fell off. He was somewhat disconcerted to find her accept this ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... gave a groan like a single man. One of the gargoyles at the corner, under the parapet, a demon figure that had jutted grinning over the churchyard for three centuries, broke loose and fell crashing on to the gravestones below. There was silence for a minute, and then the murmurings of the onlookers began again. Everyone spoke in short, breathless sentences, as though they feared the final crash might come before they could finish. Churchwarden Joliffe, with pauses ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... same." And off Bob went, whistling like a calliope and not even turning his head to look at the cabin. In half an hour Hale thought he heard something crashing through the bushes high on the mountain side, and, a little while afterward, the boy crawled through the bushes to him alone. His cap was gone, there was a bloody scratch across his face and he ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... opened through two small rooms into the kitchen, and one day, as I sat at the table, waiting for Jack to come in to supper, I heard a strange sort of crashing noise. Looking towards the kitchen, through the vista of open doorways, I saw Ellen rush to the door which led to the courtyard. She turned a livid white, threw up her hands, and cried, "Great God! the Captain!" ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... after the glory reached us, and as on all sides the country shone in spectral illumination, a great mass, decrepitating with minute explosions along its oncoming side, plunged down upon the noble amphitheatre of glass. A dreadful sound of crashing stone followed, and then, rapidly fired from the aerial batteries, came still more of the dark, half ignited bodies, bathed in hurrying streams of evanescent blades, and splinters ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... without understanding it, the language of the tribes of the birds! (Puts hands over ears again.) There's too many sounds in the world! The sounds of the earth are terrible! The roots squeezing and jostling one another through the clefts, and the crashing of the acorn from the oak. The cry of the little birdeen in under the silence ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... going to the window, she threw out the water with a splash, and tossed the crackers after it. She hesitated for a moment, and then hurled the plate and glass after them, with an angry determination which sent them crashing far across the uneven ground beneath her window. That done, she sat down to ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray
... Major was telling him, in effect, that he might have kept the Platform from crashing on take-off. It was a good but upsetting sensation. It was still more important to Joe that the Platform get out to space than that he be credited with saving it. And it was not reassuring to hear that ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... who laid down a Noah's Ark he was just looking at and started toward the back of the store. As he did so the noise became louder; bumping, banging, crashing, and above it all sounded the shrill toot-toot ...
— The Story of a Plush Bear • Laura Lee Hope
... that as one stands on the deck one may feel it give and spring to the blow of a wave, and the ship is all the swifter. But though the outer planking is closely riveted together with good iron, that could not withstand the crashing weight of so great a bell when it was ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... gathering a wild momentum, it went bounding into the air. About half-way down the hill it struck a tree several inches through and cut it clean off. This turned its course a little, and the negro in the cart, who heard the noise, saw it come crashing in his direction and made a wild effort to whip up his horse. It was also headed toward a cooper-shop across the road. The boys watched it with growing interest. It made longer leaps with every bound, and whenever it struck the fragments the dust would fly. They were ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... teeth still gleaming in a smile, and not until he launched himself like a cat at Dixon's throat was the Englishman convinced that he meant attack. In a flash Dixon stepped a little to one side, and sent out a crashing blow that caught Jean on the side of the head and sent him flat upon his ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... rushed. The Christians saw before them for the first time the ghostly winding way of a street, where blind pale houses heeled to each other, six feet apart. There was a breathless fight in that pent way, a strangling, throttled business; Richard with his peers of Normandy, swaying banners, the crashing sound of steel on steel, the splash of split polls: but it could not be carried. The Turks, surging down on them, a wall of men, bodily forced them out. There was no room to swing an axe, no space for a horse to fall, least of all for draught ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... the pointing of her uplifted hand, I saw the straight line of the window-ledge before me dip and curve, and yielding to the force of her agonized strength, I let myself be dragged across the floor, while before us, beneath us, above us, all was one chaos of heaving and crashing timbers, which, in another instant, broke into a thunder of confused sounds, and we beheld beneath us a pit of darkness, death, and tumult, where, but an instant before, were all the appurtenances of a comfortable and ...
— The Forsaken Inn - A Novel • Anna Katharine Green
... three crashing sounds, and by other peculiar phenomena. All these, unlike the scribe, he regarded as sent 'for my particular conviction ...
— Cock Lane and Common-Sense • Andrew Lang
... which William had occupied twelve months before. The batteries, on which were planted guns and bombs, very different from those which William had been forced to use, played day and night; and soon roofs were blazing and walls crashing in every corner of the city. Whole streets were reduced to ashes. Meanwhile several English ships of war came up the Shannon and anchored about a mile ...
— The History of England from the Accession of James II. - Volume 4 (of 5) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... forth by the crashing of a stray shot, which entered the ship close to the spot where they stood, and passed out on the starboard side, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions, without ...
— The Battle and the Breeze • R.M. Ballantyne
... brought the axe down with a crashing sweep, and the splinters flew out into the air like a cloud of witnesses to the efficacy of ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... enemy, the task of summarily sinking the Dutch fleet, he cut the cable of the St. Augustine and drifted farther into the bay. Heemskerk, not allowing himself to be foiled in his purpose, steered past two or three galleons, and came crashing against the admiral. Almost simultaneously, Pretty Lambert laid himself along her quarter on the other side. The St. Augustine fired into the AEolus as she approached, but without doing much damage. The Dutch admiral, as he was coming in contact, discharged his ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... understood one another, though they hardly exchanged three words in a day) gazed up at his friend attentively for a moment, then taking a short clay pipe out of his mouth, offered it without a word. Singleton put out his arm towards it, missed, staggered, and suddenly fell forward, crashing down, stiff and headlong like an uprooted tree. There was a swift rush. Men pushed, crying:—"He's done!"... "Turn him over!"... "Stand clear there!" Under a crowd of startled faces bending over him he lay on his back, staring upwards in a continuous and intolerable manner. In the ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... sterling qualities, and that women will rise from its persual with a stronger determination than ever to become unselfish, useful, and devoted. Are there not lives yet to be saved? Are there no wrecks as awful as those which are caused by ships crashing among rocks, or stranding upon dangerous sands? These are days of civilisation and culture, of the multiplication of schools, and extension of churches. But no reflective observer can pass along the streets without seeing perilous places, which, ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope
... the hard stone. With the creaking and groaning of the windlass the iron-pointed portcullis would be slowly raised, and with a clank and rattle and clash of iron chains the drawbridge would fall crashing. Then over it would thunder horse and man, clattering away down the winding, stony pathway, until the great forest would swallow them, and they would ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... a dead weight, and shrieking as she fell against his breast. Instinctively he clasped her, and in the terror of the moment it was for a brief instant no more to him that his embrace enfolded her than if she had been the veriest stranger. A hideous din of yells, of crashing wood and rending iron, of shivering glass, of escaping steam, of indescribable sounds which had no resemblance to anything which he had ever heard or dreamed of, and which seemed to beat upon his ears and his brain like blows of bludgeons wielded by the hands of ...
— The Puritans • Arlo Bates
... delicate woman is the best instrument; she has such a magnificent compass of sensibilities! From the deep inward moan which follows pressure on the great nerves of right, to the sharp cry as the filaments of taste are struck with a crashing sweep, is a range which no other instrument possesses. A few exercises on it dally at home fit a man wonderfully for his habitual labors, and refresh him immensely as he returns from them. No stranger can get a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... still green jungle, as a man on the top of a mast can see for miles across the sea, and then the branches and leaves would lash him across the face, and he and his two guards would be almost down to earth again. So, bounding and crashing and whooping and yelling, the whole tribe of Bandar-log swept along the tree-roads ...
— The Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... chile. O, sir, he did not hear the word precisely. Listten, my chile, to yo' teacher! remember that his honor and the school's honor is in yo' spelling!" He drew back a step, poised himself, and gave the word. It came like an anchor-chain crashing through a hawse-hole. ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... paused in its quick beating. In one mad moment of indiscretion I had destroyed her confidence in me, had brought down in crashing ruins my hopes, my ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... not stay in very long, but emerged glowing from the effects of exercise and the cold water. As they were getting into their clothes they heard voices coming toward them, and they had hardly finished dressing when the voices' owners came crashing through the underbrush close to where the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... savage who at the moment was engaging Henry's undivided attention. Bounding forward with a burst of anger, Gascoyne sought to close with Keona. He succeeded but too well, however; for he could not check himself sufficiently to deliver an effective blow, but went crashing against his enemy, and the two fell ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne |
