"Curdling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Were I friend Clement Marot (Whose experience of nature's but narrow And whose faculties move in no small mist When he versifies David the Psalmist) I should study that brute to describe you Illum Juda Leonem de Tribu. 50 One's whole blood grew curdling and creepy To see the black mane, vast and heapy, The tail in the air stiff and straining The wide eyes, nor waxing nor waning, As over the barrier which bounded His platform, and us who surrounded The barrier, they reached and they rested On space that might stand him in best ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... left Waterloo at 10.25 a.m. on Friday June 24th 1904 accompanied by Sir Alfred Jones and Sir Ralph Moor who saw us off at Southampton. The latter has had much experience of Africa and told some blood-curdling stories of the manners of the natives. Adulterers used to be punished in a most barbarous way. A youth who had erred with one of the numerous wives of a Chief, was nailed by the ears to a tree in the forest and ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... when it was given to me (this marvellous brochure furnished with strange illustrations and wonderful tassels), I thought it absurdly obscure. Since then, however, it has been rendered by force of contrast with the brain-curdling enigmas the author has since published a marvel of lucidity; and were I to read it now I should appreciate its many beauties. It bears the same relation to the author's later work as Rienzi to The Walkyrie. But what is symbolism? Vulgarly speaking, saying the opposite to what you mean. ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore
... storm, and he became a human dynamo. He pounded the frightened crew unmercifully, dragging the screaming islanders back to their work by the hair of their heads, and heaping upon them curses that were strange and blood-curdling. That he was a good sailorman I had little doubt. He handled The Waif with skill and patience, while the crew, with rolling eyes and quivering lips, were so terrorized by his wrath that they fled to ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... blood-curdling shouts rent the air, the three women were so stupefied that for a moment they could say or do nothing. This gave Marjorie additional time, and she made the most of it. Her entire lung power spent ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... spermaceti-whale, into the solid substance called spermaceti, heretofore produced from his head alone; 2. of refining the Greenland whale-oil, so as to take from it all smell, and render it limpid and luminous as that of the spermaceti-whale; 3. of curdling the oil of the Brazil whale into tallow, resembling that of beef, and answering all its purposes. This person is engaged by the company, which has established the refinery at Rouen: their works will cost them half a million of livres; will be able to refine all the oil which can be used ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... Then with a wild, blood-curdling yell he fell on the floor. Something from above had leaped on him, something that enveloped him, that grappled with him. He went down screaming and stabbing like a madman. His companion at the door fired one shot in the air, ...
— The Desert Fiddler • William H. Hamby
... impulse was to start up, but a long, skeleton leg with tiny claws at the end—horribly hairy in a miniature way—slowly protruded over the front brim of his headgear, sending a curdling chill through his veins as he wondered what kind of a ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... by a gastric mucous membrane. The gastric juice secreted converts the protein into peptones. In the young a milk curdling ferment is also secreted by the ...
— Common Diseases of Farm Animals • R. A. Craig, D. V. M.
... they got under cover and we were alone again, when a hoarse cry arose in the court—it was blood-curdling to us, as every sound these days is full of terror and possibilities. But it turned out to be only the cry of the sentry. There had been promiscuous shooting along the railroad in the village and all our brave soldiers tumbled ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... of houses and trees in a chill, gray lake. I shuddered. An indefinable apprehension possessed me, something like the vague discomfort of my dreams; then, almost instantly, it crystallized into the blood-curdling suggestion: What if this were divine chastisement? what if all the outer and inner dreariness that had so steadily enveloped me since I had witnessed the tragedy were punishment for my disbelief? what if this water were really holy, and ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... turned him Again to that fierce strife; And Caius Cossus mounted, And rode for death and life. Loud clanged beneath his horse-hoofs The helmets of the dead, And many a curdling pool of blood Splashed him heel to head. So came he far to southward, Where fought the Roman host, Against the banners of the marsh And banners of the coast. Like corn before the sickle The stout Laninians ...
— Lays of Ancient Rome • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... show, I made up my mind that when Royal and I were old enough we would unite our fortunes with those of a circus, and in my imagination I already pictured huge and gaudy posters announcing the blood-curdling performances of the dashing bareback equestrian, Samuel Cowles, upon his fiery Morgan steed, Royal! This plan was not at all approved of by Judge Phipps, who continued to insist that it was on the turf and not ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... kill you, you unspeakable young miscreant, but I think I ought to thrash you," I answered, for, though greatly relieved at the turn things had taken, I was excessively annoyed at having experienced all those sensations of blood-curdling horror for nothing. ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... early December. The sunshine was pale, but it suited his hurt eyes better: it crept slowly in the mornings over the snuff-colored carpet on the floor, up the brown foot-board of the bed, and, when the wind shook the window-curtains, made little crimson pools of mottled light over the ceiling,—curdling pools, that he liked to watch: going off, from the clean gray walls and rustling curtain and transparent crimson, into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... in a blood-curdling tone, "has a bigger prize than any cash you'll plunder from one of his shot-down retainers! He's got the Lady Fani! He won't stop before he has her behind castle walls! We've got to catch up with him! Do you want to try to climb into his castle ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... itself clear, there was no one there, including the burlesquer himself, who was not smitten with a desolating dismay. There fell a silence, weighing many tons to the square inch, which deepened from moment to moment, and was broken only by the hysterical and blood- curdling laughter of a single guest, whose name shall not be handed down to infamy. Nobody knew whether to look at the speaker or down at his plate. I chose my plate as the least affliction, and so I do not know how Clemens looked, except when I stole a glance at him, and saw him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... then every one, particularly those belonging to the household of the deceased, goes in for the most demonstrative exhibition of grief. Long, low howls creep up out of the first silence—those blood-curdling, infinitely melancholy, wailing howls—once ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... the midst of the flames and the cry he let out was truly blood-curdling. Excited as he was, Pawnee Brown did not let the intonation of that cry escape him. Understanding the Indian language well, he knew it was more than a cry of terror or pain, it was a call for help! Other Indians must be ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... should have stayed on for supper, but I couldn't; I should have choked. As it was, my soul was curdling. Another ten minutes and I should have jumped down on the lawn and run round the house on all fours, yapping and foaming at the mouth, and have wound up ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... up." He quoted Manville Fenn and other writers of boys' adventure stories thirty or forty years old to show the dangers of Australia and his own indomitable courage in tackling them: he told of Captain Cook's heart and many other blood-curdling tales, and was greeted with ironical cheers and laughter. They explained to him at great length all about the civilization of Australia, and when, an hour after the Devon coast had dropped below the horizon he became miserably sea-sick, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... arm of his father, which clutched his neck. Then they saw a supernatural sight, the head of Don Juan, young and beautiful as an Antinoues, a head with black hair, brilliant eyes and crimson lips, a head that moved in a blood-curdling manner without being able to stir the skeleton to ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... wheel of the police car already in his hand. And then the little party seemed suddenly turned to stone. For a few breathless seconds not one of them moved. Out into the clammy night air came the echoes of a hideous, inhuman, blood-curdling scream. Quest was the first to recover himself. He leaped from his seat and rushed back across the empty hall into the study, followed a little way behind by French and the others. An unsuspected panel door which led into the garden, stood slightly ajar. The Professor, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... others of ghosts and apparitions; of blood-curdling visitations or solemn warnings to men who had blasphemed or spoken ill of the priests. Then, as no one could be persuaded to sing, they played at cards and the conversation dropped to more commonplace themes. The only memory that Maria ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... What would you give to know? Who are you? Carl Walraven's wife, I suppose. His wife! Ha! ha!" she laughed—a weird, blood-curdling laugh. "I wish you joy of your husband, most magnificent madame! Tell me, fellow," turning with sudden fierceness upon the dismayed understrapper, "is your master ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a .. gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... could see Mr. Hall milking his cow in the pasture. It had a rail fence around it. I could see what he could not—some Indians sitting in one of the corners of the fence stretching Sioux scalps over withes. When they finished, they got up all at the same time, giving a blood curdling war-whoop. The cow kicked over the milk and fled bellowing. I think that Mr. Hall made even better time and ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... weak to attempt the hard march through the jungle. For an hour the party traversed the trail in the wake of von Horn and his savage companions. They had come almost to the spot when their ears were assailed by the weird and blood curdling yells of native warriors, and a moment later von Horn's escort dashed into view ...
— The Monster Men • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... hotly; the shadows of the Lombardy poplars curdling up into a sluggish pool of black at their roots along the dry gutters. The old school-master in the shade of the great horse-chestnuts (brought from the homestead in the Piedmont country, every one) husked corn for his wife, composing, meanwhile, a page of his essay on ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... in their precarious position on the limb, saw the great lion halt in his restless pacing as the blood-curdling cry smote his ears, and then slink quickly into the jungle, to ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... quarter. But the worst passions of the Virginia's crew were by this time fully aroused; they thought of nothing but the fact that their enemies were pirates, men steeped to the lips in crime of the vilest description, and guilty of unnumbered deeds of blood-curdling atrocity, and many of the Spaniards were ruthlessly slaughtered before George and Bowen could induce them to stay their hands. Then, when order and authority were once more restored, heads were counted, and it was found that, out of a crew of over eighty, twenty-three ...
— The Voyage of the Aurora • Harry Collingwood
... and over, Deadwood Dick, outlaw, road-agent and outcast, read the notice, and then a wild sardonic laugh burst from beneath his mask—a terrible, blood-curdling laugh, that made even the powerful animal he bestrode start and prick up ...
— Deadwood Dick, The Prince of the Road - or, The Black Rider of the Black Hills • Edward L. Wheeler
... send my compliments," he whispered, and, looking about him furtively, he repeated the blood-curdling request. ...
— Judith Of The Plains • Marie Manning
... curdling spirals through her tea. Bette remind her of the word: metempsychosis. An example would ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... the landing— From that dark ship bring they aught? In the stern sheets ONE is standing, Though their eyes perceive him not; But a curdling horror creepeth Thro' their veins, with icy darts, And each hurried oar-stroke keepeth ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... shades flit past; She smiled on my words as idle play, But wept when her sire, in the midnight fray, Felled to the dust by the Tory's blade, Died in the home where his bones are laid; When the cold drops stood on the forehead fair, And the curdling blood on the thin, gray hair. But the dead in silence forgotten sleep; She is weaving on earth a vision deep, Of joyous hopes that must fade and die, Like the bow that smiles when the tempests fly, In vain the strength of her youth is shed, In a path ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... ruffian's eyes fairly started from his head, while the men who held the ropes, stood as if turned to stone, as a long wailing cry came from the dark shadows under the bluff. There was a moment of death-like silence. Then another awful, sobbing groan, rising into a blood curdling scream, came from down the road, and, from the direction of the ruined cabin, advanced a ghostly figure. Through the deep shadows and the misty light, it seemed to float toward them, moaning ...
— The Shepherd of the Hills • Harold Bell Wright
... at his place of business with the same regularity as before this gigantic scheme was planned, some of his admirers insisted that he worked nights, spending the time when he should have been asleep in bringing forth the most startling and blood-curdling scenes, to be given with all their attendant horrors on the night of the ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... are you there?" "Yes, mamma," replied the unlucky corsair, curdling with fear, the whole of his long body on its hands and knees beneath the desk. "What are you doing, my treasure?" "I am... h'm, I am making Mile. ...
— Tartarin On The Alps • Alphonse Daudet
... the Crau presents contrasts most extreme. In winter the thermometer falls and remains below zero for many nights in succession, and the glacial bise sweeps over the face of the desert, curdling the blood; the flocks and herds seek shelter from this blast behind the long walls of dry stones, which sometimes the violence of the ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... loves a sensation, and the bigger and more blood-curdling it is the better. Nothing is more gratifying on arising in the morning and sitting down to partake of a daintily served breakfast than to glance hurriedly over the front page of one's favorite newspaper and see it covered with startling ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... the river or the shore, loud splashings right away out in the direction of what they supposed to be the main current, and an occasional trumpeting wail or shriek from the forest—sounds that chilled and produced blood-curdling sensations at the first, but to which the men became more and more accustomed as the hours slowly ...
— The Ocean Cat's Paw - The Story of a Strange Cruise • George Manville Fenn
... beyond his fortitude to endure. Love, however, gave excitement, if not courage, and he resolved either to succeed or perish in the attempt. The stairs were partially illumined by an uncertain glimmer from a narrow window into the street. He felt his way, and every step sent the life-blood curdling to his heart. He reached the topmost stair; laid one hand on the latch. He listened; all was still save the hollow gusts ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 2 (of 2) • John Roby
... chuckled Jack, "as a vender of blood curdling noises you're in need of repairs. Listen! I'll sound a much ...
— The Submarine Boys and the Spies - Dodging the Sharks of the Deep • Victor G. Durham
... blood curdling yells from out the pall of smoke and flame at the rear, bombarded ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in New Mexico • Frank Gee Patchin
... fourteen quartz. These are floated in large tanks of water. From these pails the cream is carefully taken and sent to market. The skimmed milk is then placed in a large vat and heated, by means of steam pipes to about 80 deg.. Then the rennet is put in. From twenty to thirty minutes suffices for curdling, and the mass is then stirred to separate the curd from the whey. After which it is heated still more; and then the whey, passing off through a strainer, goes to feed hogs, while the curd remains in the vat, to be salted and worked before putting into ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... nearer; and Nelly, even in her blinding terror, distinguished that it was no shadowy apparition, but mortal like herself. The curdling blood rushed back to Nelly's face, flooding the colourless cheek, and firing her with a new impulse. She snatched her child from its slumber, and clasped it to her breast with ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... plaintive voice alone she hears, Sees but the dying man. She stooped her by the runnel's side, But in abhorrence backward drew; For, oozing from the mountain's side, Where raged the war, a dark-red tide Was curdling in the streamlet blue, Where shall she turn!—behold her mark A little fountain cell, Where water, clear as diamond-spark, In a stone basin fell. Above, some half-worn letters say, Drink : weary : pilgrim : drink : and : pray : for : the : kind : soul : of : Sybil : Gray ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... was as though hundreds of millions of powerful rockets were exploding in successive volleys of millions each. Beneath the earth, thunders and crashings went on at the same time. Then, in every direction, the earth fissured and gaped and yawned wider than ever, and with blood-curdling roarings and crashings, a whole tenth part of the city tottered and fell into the yawning gulfs, with ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... always seems to me a weird tragic place. I cannot think why this is so, but its influence is to me rather curious. I feel as if all the time I was living in some blood-curdling ghost story or a horrid dream. Every day I try to overcome the feeling, but I can't succeed. This afternoon I made up my mind to return to our villa and write my diary. The day was lovely, and I meant to enjoy a rest and a scribble, ...
— My War Experiences in Two Continents • Sarah Macnaughtan
... hands curves in over the feet to add to the illusion. There used to be a saying that cross-eyed people could not be honest. Similarly, perhaps, Newman thought the appearance of bow-legs would increase the villainy of his pirate. Certainly, no such blood-curdling ruffian has been seen out of ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... silence which lay everywhere, a blood-curdling thing happened. Betty's "clanking chain" came in contact with something of iron reared up near the window and gave forth a fearsome sound. Cold chills played about Cyril's back, a distant dog barked—and ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... a crossing. "Big Six" never gave up for any one. "Forty-one" was another famous engine on the East side. Indeed they had a rather menacing song they sometimes shouted out to their rivals, which contained these two blood-curdling lines: ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... trembling,—till, as she came near the bottom of the basket, she flung out all the rest with a hasty movement, looked upon the olive-purple leaflets as if paralyzed for a moment, shrunk up, as it were, into herself in a curdling terror, dashed the basket from her, and fell back senseless, with a faint cry which chilled the blood of the startled listeners ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... existence, screened from the stern realities of life and death, that many of us are impelled to draw aside the curtain now and then, and gaze for a while behind it. This exhibition of the snakes at their feeding-time, which gave to me, as it doubtless did to several others, a sense of curdling of the blood, had no such effect on many of the visitors. I have often seen people—nurses, for instance, and children of all ages—looking unconcernedly and amusedly at the scene. Their indifference was perhaps the most painful element of the whole transaction. Their ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... and bent down to examine a beautiful flower. The major walked on, but had not gone many paces when three lions walked out of a thicket not twenty paces off. Tom had risen, and saw the lions, and, for the first time in his life, felt a sensation about the heart which is popularly known as "the blood curdling in the vein." The major, being totally unarmed, stopped, and stood motionless like a statue. The lions stopped also, being evidently taken by surprise at the sudden and unexpected apparition of a man! ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... "big wars that make ambition virtue,"—"The widow sits upon my arm, and the wronged orphan's tear glues it to the scabbard,—it will not be drawn," etc., etc.,—or something of the sort. It was not so much a thrilling as a curdling ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... good humor. I did not wait long in the kitchen, so much now must be done. Alas, Christmas day was so near I could not celebrate my festival on that day; but another day might find us just as happy; and after all it would be "curdling" too much joy into one of the shortest of ...
— Medoline Selwyn's Work • Mrs. J. J. Colter
... "What did you expect? They go everywhere," and she turned her attention to her plate. "One must be fortified by a good meal," she said in a solemn whisper to Barbara as they rose, "to prepare one for the blood-curdling tales we are about to hear while seeing over ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... superstitious awe. More potent than all else together were those frightful monsters, the horses. Before these animals men, women, and children fled like sheep, or skulked and peeped from behind their walls in an ecstasy of terror. It was that paralyzing, blood-curdling fear of the supernatural, against which no amount of physical bravery, nothing in the world but modern knowledge, is ...
— South American Fights and Fighters - And Other Tales of Adventure • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... interest; for in Roderick Random and in Peregrine Pickle, the wonderful situations serve chiefly to amuse. In Fathom, however, there are some designed to excite horror; and one, at least, is eminently successful. The hero's night in the wood between Bar-le-duc and Chalons was no doubt more blood-curdling to our eighteenth-century ancestors than it is to us, who have become acquainted with scores of similar situations in the small number of exciting romances which belong to literature, and in the greater number which do not. Still, even to-day, a reader, with his taste jaded by trashy novels, ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... her hand still on his arm, and a second or two later caught the sound which she had previously heard. Faintly and thinned by long distance it came, a long curdling cry. ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... his feet and went through the same horrid motions. This time the performer took from the fire a sharp nail and, with a piece of the sandy limestone common to this region, proceeded with a series of blood-curdling howls to hammer it down into the top of his head, where it presently stuck upright, while he tottered dizzily around until it was pulled out with apparent effort and with a hollow snap by ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... upper air, side by side with the fleshless anatomy of a brute, over-sailed by gray fishes with speckled sides, whose broad, unwinking eyes glared at me with maddening shine and stare,—oppressed, and almost struggling, yet all unable to achieve the struggle with the curdling blood that gorged every vein and air-cell with the hurried rush of death,—did I go out of this life red with the sin of murder? Did ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... "Nothing blood-curdling, since you see me without bruise or scratch. Only Yorick and I got tangled up with a herd of buffaloes on the Kajiar Road. In his fright, the little fool slipped half over the khud, and if a knight-errant ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... beings sang their hymns, rending the hearts of the guilty, and enchaining all their faculties. It rose and swelled, overpowering the sound of the instruments, stealing the judgment, palsying the heart, curdling the blood. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... gavel fell, and again and again an announcement of failure was followed by blood-curdling howls. When Sugar struck 80—not 180, but plain 80—it seemed that the last day of stock speculation was at hand. Announcements were being made every few minutes of the failure of this bank, the closing of the doors of that trust ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... before had been a noble-looking animal. Suddenly a strange hissing noise issued from its jaws, its lips curled upward until it smiled—smiled, Mr. Cleek!—oh, the ghastliest, most awful, most blood-curdling smile imaginable and then, with a sort of mingled snarl and bark, it clamped its jaws together and crushed the boy's head as though it ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... too bright and sunny on this especial morning for George's blood- curdling readings about "Bar. falling," "atmospheric disturbance, passing in an oblique line over Southern Europe," and "pressure increasing," to very much upset us: and so, finding that he could not make us wretched, and was only wasting his time, he sneaked the cigarette that I had ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... blood-curdling yell seemed to fill earth and heaven, a yell at the memory of which even now I feel faint, although I am writing years after ...
— She and Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... headless, and that their blood-curdling cries seem to emerge from a phosphorescent glow of evil smoke that hovers about the place where the head should be. Others describe them as gaunt, dark beasts with huge white ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... lay in the road; other horses were reined in furiously, not to trample on it as well. The American lady had run over her own child. That blood-curdling shriek of horror! that jolt on a soft yielding substance was the passage of her wheels on her flesh, the additional weight of stout Countess di Moccoli and of Count Martellini aiding, if possible, in ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... Kingston when lamp-lighting time came. A little gleam came cheerfully toward him out of the dark. He hurried to it, thinking of the fine supper the kind-hearted farmers would doubtless give him, when, just as he reached the gate of the door-yard, there was a most blood-curdling uproar, and two or three furious dogs came bounding shadowily ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... could whip five times their number, especially when fortified by those immense white covered prairie schooners in corral formation. On they came in single file, their blood-curdling war whoop enough to weaken the bravest. Closer they came, bedecked in war-paint and feathers, their chief in the lead resembling the devil incarnate with all his aids bent on exterminating as brave a band of freighters as ever crossed the plains. Nearer they came, their ...
— Dangers of the Trail in 1865 - A Narrative of Actual Events • Charles E Young
... Christmas turkey shooting, young feller, so look sharp," and with a noiseless tread Pete vanished in the wood, while I with beating heart and bulging eyes watched the thicket at the end of the ledge. I had not long to wait before I heard a blood-curdling yell and then crash! crash! crash! came a big boulder tearing down the mountain side. It reached a point just over the thicket, struck a small pine tree, broke the tree and leaped high into the air, then crashed into the middle of ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... the angler's idle cork, Till e'en the patient man breathes half a curse; We steal the morsel from the gossip's fork, And curdling looks with secret straws disperse, Or stop the sneezing chanter at mid verse: And when an infant's beauty prospers ill, We change, some mothers say, the child at nurse: But any graver purpose to fulfil, We have not wit ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... some fresh game that appeared now to have struck their keen olfactories. The affrighted maiden, who had been witnessing this hideous scene from her hitherto unsuspected concealment above, with blood curdling in horror at the sights and sounds that reached her recoiling senses, now shuddered in fresh alarm; for she but too well understood what this new and fearfully-significant movement of the wolves portended. And, instinctively withdrawing ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... romances, like a page out of their favourite novelettes. They were interrupted by an extraordinary noise from the French singer, who seemed suddenly to have gone mad. The Push had watched in ominous silence the approach of the Frenchman. But, as he passed them and finished a verse, a blood-curdling cry rose from the group. It was a perfect imitation of a dog baying the moon in agony. The singer stopped and scowled at the group, but the Push seemed to be unaware of his existence. He moved on, and began another verse. As he stopped to take breath the cry went ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... Che' Wan Ahman's representative, and interrogated. He denied all knowledge of Wan Bong's hiding-place; but Malays have methods of making people speak the truth on occasion. They are grim, ghastly, blood-curdling methods, that need not be here described in detail; suffice it to say that the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... with trial. Who'd care to swim in a cork jacket! Trouble is a privilege, believe me, friend, to those who know from whose hand, for what purpose, it is sent. I do not mean the trouble people cut out for themselves by curdling all the milk of kindness in their neighbors. But when a man will be a man, will labor with Truth, Charity, and Self-Reliance—always frank and open in his dealings—always giving credit to his neighbors for their good deeds, and humbly abstaining from a judgment of what looks like evil in ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... of faith and virtue, be Heirs of bright hopes and immortality. Oh! great mind's proud inscriptions! Who shall tell What hand engraved those lines within that cell? What heart yet steadfast while around him stood Phantoms of death to chill his curdling blood, Could battle with despair on reason's throne, And conquer where the fiend would reign alone? Ah! who can tell what sorrows pierced his breast— Ran through each vein, usurp'd his hours of rest? What struggle nerved his ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 57, No. 352, February 1845 • Various
... old Mrs. P——. That estimable lady is spilled into the third-story window of an establishment where sits our old friend Hannah binding shoes. The shock so far upsets poor Hannah's reason that she turns a blood-curdling somersault out upon an awning, bounces back, and on her return trip carries away a swinging sign and a barber's pole. These heavy articles strike on a copper soda-fountain, which explodes with a fearful noise, and mortally wounds a colored man uninsured against accident. (Full particulars for ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various
... Departure. Squabbles. Port Augusta. Coogee Mahomet. Mr. Roberts and Tommy. Westward ho!. The equipment. Dinner and a sheep. The country. A cattle ranch. Stony plateau. The Elizabeth. Mr. Moseley. Salt lakes. Coondambo. Curdling tea. An indented hill. A black boy's argument. Pale-green-foliaged tree. A lost officer. Camels poisoned. Mount Finke in the winter. Wynbring. A new route. A good Mussulman. Depart from Wynbring. New places. Antediluvian cisterns. Still westwards. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... kept in hiding, and when they heard these blood-curdling sounds, they at first did not know what caused them, because, of course, they could not see what was happening below, but they knew very soon that they were not made by a wild animal because ...
— The Scotch Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... and enmity even took me for a sleigh-ride. With this improvement came other privileges or, rather, the granting of my rights. Late in December I was permitted to send letters to my conservator. Though some of my blood-curdling letters were confiscated, a few detailing my experiences were forwarded. The account of my sufferings naturally distressed my conservator, but, as he said when he next visited me: "What could I have done to help you? If the men in this ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers
... window. The officer had been at Cold Harbor, but he felt himself getting colder this time. Eliphalet knew it was the ghost who haunted the house. As this weird sound died away, it was followed by another, sharp, short, blood-curdling in its intensity. Something in this cry seemed familiar to Eliphalet, and he felt sure that it proceeded from the family ghost, the ...
— Tales of Fantasy and Fact • Brander Matthews
... and then suddenly he sat up transfixed. From the cell next to him had come a cry, a horrible blood-curdling screech, more like the scream of a wild cat than any human sound. Samuel listened, ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... or less in clumps, with plenty of open spaces between, many of which were occupied by native villages, the inhabitants of which turned out en masse to gaze in awe at the wonderful sight of the huge ship rushing through the air overhead, and to greet her appearance with weird, blood-curdling cries and the beating of their great war drums. Then they crossed the Aruwimi River—an important tributary of the great Congo, shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori, glistening in the sun. And here the villages abruptly ceased, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... little cry, and coming again, sat crowned, incarnadine in the blushing depths of the gold. Nor did I send her home to her lonely yali, till the pale and languished moon, weary of all-night beatitudes, sank down soft-couched in quilts of curdling opals to the Hesperian realms ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... them were lost! and what wonderful and blood-curdling experiences their crews underwent when they were castaways, or deserted, or were marooned on "the islands"! Here is a story of a vessel lost in Torres Straits in 1836—not a whaler, but an East Indiaman. ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... disclosing the innate coarseness which underlay all her veneer of harmless gentility and fine manners, raised a loud, shrill laugh, ending in a multitude of reverberations like a bell. There was about this unnatural metallic laughter something fairly blood-curdling in its disclosure of overstrained emotion. She laughed and laughed, while the room was silent except for that, and every eye was fixed upon her. Poor, little Estella Griggs, of all that accusing company of Arthur Carroll's petty ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... stories of the ghosts of the castles about the mouth of the Zillerthal. Of course the old man believed every word he said, and you can imagine his horror and amazement when, after telling his guests the particularly blood-curdling story of Kropfsberg and its haunted keep, the elder of the two boys, whose surname I have forgotten, but whose Christian name was Rupert, calmly said, "Your story is most satisfactory: we will sleep in Kropfsberg Keep to-morrow night, and you must provide us ...
— Black Spirits and White - A Book of Ghost Stories • Ralph Adams Cram
... enough of a boy rather to relish things that were blood-curdling. Years after, a friend of Roosevelt's, who had himself committed almost every crime in the register, remarked; in commenting in a tone of injured morality on Roosevelt's frank regard for a certain desperate character, that "Roosevelt had a weakness for murderers." The ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... it never could have spread, unless the conditions had in all the other places been highly congenial.... Predisposing causes cannot long accumulate and fester, without curdling into vital action. The provisional assumption with me concerning smallpox, is, that wherever its predisposing causes exist, there the disease will not long be absent. In new foci it may meet new influences which modify its aspect, so that medical men do not recognize ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... a long breath, and gave vent to a blood-curdling shriek which would have made the fortune of an actress on the stage. Odd! I couldn't help thinking of that at the time. One thinks of queer things at the most ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... curdling with horror, Barbara found no voice, no strength, to speak or stir; but she became, so to speak, all eye; and as the murderer, swiftly cramming into his hat and pockets something which she could not define, rose up, and forgetful of the ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, August 1850 - of Literature, Science and Art. • Various
... Dave, and then, as quickly as he could, he leveled his shotgun, took aim, and fired. The report of the firearm was followed by a blood-curdling cry from the wildcat, and down from the tree limb it tumbled, to roll over and over on the ground ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... telling satire of Platen. The fashion,—a thoroughly bad fashion in the main,—was undoubtedly set by 'The Bride of Messina'; but we cannot make Schiller answerable for the hair-raising and blood-curdling inventions of Werner, Houwald, ...
— The Life and Works of Friedrich Schiller • Calvin Thomas
... come to the conclusion that war is rather a dull game, not that blood-curdling, dashing, mad, sabre-clashing thing that is seen in pictures, and which makes one fearful for the soldier's safety. There is so much of the "everlastin' waitin' on an everlastin' road." The road to the war is a journey of many stages, and there is much of ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... the left bank of the North Platte, and constructed in the same general way described in the preceding paragraphs. As it is naturally to be supposed, there existed always a desperate rivalry between the two forts. Some of the scenes enacted there long ago are full of blood-curdling adventure and reckless indifference to the preservation of life. The following is a true picture of one of the annual gatherings of the Indian trappers who came there to dispose of their season's furs, more ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... half-boiled white of an egg; two slits of eyes looked out of it, mild blue in tint, but appallingly malignant in expression; and the owner, an insignificant young man, was completely hidden by the veteran's opaque person. It was a blood-curdling voice, a sound between the mewing of a cat and the wheezy chokings ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... brutally unjust and unkind, expressed in blood-curdling cartoons representing the Socialist as a bomb-throwing assassin. According to the one view, Socialists were all sordid, ...
— Socialism - A Summary and Interpretation of Socialist Principles • John Spargo
... threatened me with a hundred deaths. He was fulfilling his threat to the letter; for, notwithstanding the unskilful practice, I felt, on the eve of each discharge, a certain creeping of the flesh, and curdling of the blood, as if that moment was to be my last. If I had not yet died a hundred times, for at least so many had I felt all the sensations that should precede actual death. In truth over a hundred times: for although but fifty shots had been fired, twice ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... following morning to get her. At the hotel Bennington spent an interesting evening viewing the pioneers with their variety of costume, manners, and speech. He heard many good stories, humorous and blood-curdling, and it was very late before he ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... passed when, all at once, every man in the car was suddenly startled by a blood-curdling yell and a wild commotion somewhere in the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... dove downward and back into the cabin, aroused the ship. Determined to solve the mystery, in spite of everything, the professor made a leap forward. He slipped, and tumbled down the iron stairway. At the same time, the ghost, with a blood curdling yell, leaped over the professor's back, and disappeared down the stairs of the ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... never tried corn syrup), add one half cup sugar, stir well and put on fire to boil for at least five minutes. Let cool for a short time, than add three well-beaten eggs, stirring constantly to keep the eggs from curdling. Add a tablespoonful of cornstarch. Bake in pie crust in the regular way but slowly. To keep from browning too quickly I sometimes place a tin in oven ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... bear had grievous statements to make, and so blood-curdling were some of their recitals that it was decided to begin war at once against the ...
— Algonquin Indian Tales • Egerton R. Young
... small urchins after fuel. Some of the women are kneading flour hoe-cakes; others, gathered about a table under a great mulberry tree, are peeling fruit for pies, while now and then they raise their voices with blood-curdling threats to hasten the lagging steps of a little gang, which, looking like a string of black beetles, troop slowly along from the orchard, each holding in the skirt of his solitary garment the small store of fruit ...
— Plantation Sketches • Margaret Devereux
... most fantastic dream. We paced slowly down the central avenue. The bases of the columns are buried among the fallen fragments of the roof and a mass of superincumbent earth; from his hiding-place, amidst which the jackal began to steal forth, and wake the echoes of the ruins with his blood-curdling shriek; while the shadowy bat flitted, spirit-like, from dusky pillar to pillar. From the centre of the hall, whichever way we looked through the deepening gloom, there seemed no end to the labyrinthine ruins. Obelisks and columns, some erect in their pristine beauty, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, July, 1850. • Various
... answer, and the men were ordered to close the for'd hatches, and soon the iron doors were screwed down. The gas engines shot off black smoke into the curdling wake of the vessel's twin propellers, and as we surged along into the uninteresting sea the skipper sang out to have the aft hatches shut. The well-disciplined bluejackets instantly obeyed the order, and the iron slabs banged to, and I knew that ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... his desire sufficiently to put the threat into blood- curdling Arabic, and the Somali whined that he was a poor man, who only obeyed orders, but, if the god-like Nazarene would spare his life, he was ready ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... judge by—it helped conscious criticism, which was to fit on wings (for use ever after) to the shoulders of appreciation. In the light of that advantage I could be sure my second Eliza was less dramatic than my first, and that my first "Cassy," that of the great and blood-curdling Mrs. Bellamy of the lecture-room, touched depths which made the lady at the National prosaic and placid (I could already be "down" on a placid Cassy;) just as on the other hand the rocking of the ice-floes of the Ohio, with the desperate Eliza, infant in arms, balancing ...
— A Small Boy and Others • Henry James
... what power the seas Swell from their depths, and, every barrier burst, Sink back upon themselves, why winter-suns So haste to dip 'neath ocean, or what check The lingering night retards. But if to these High realms of nature the cold curdling blood About my heart bar access, then be fields And stream-washed vales my solace, let me love Rivers and woods, inglorious. Oh for you Plains, and Spercheius, and Taygete, By Spartan maids o'er-revelled! Oh, for one, Would set me in ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... movement of his master's foot, waited. Shortly, he knew that this hereditary enemy of his would fly to one side of the room or the other. The great question was—which? It would hit the wall, and rebound on to the floor, where it would be seized, and borne back with blood curdling growls for the process to be repeated . . . The game, it may be said, was not governed by any foolish time ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... was relating his blood-curdling story, a tremendous noise and loud exclamations poured forth from the garret, and the innkeeper, suddenly remembering all the many wine-skins he had hung up there on the previous night sprang out of his chair and toward the scene of action, ...
— The Story of Don Quixote • Arvid Paulson, Clayton Edwards, and Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... scum rises skim carefully. Strain off the liquor and add to it three-quarters lb. butter and one-quarter lb. flour, rubbed to a cream. Let this boil and carefully stir in a quart of milk, guarding against curdling and pour over ...
— Favorite Dishes • Carrie V. Shuman
... music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious conjecture, whether a sort of anti-music might not be invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of "sinking the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, and inspiring despair and cowardice and consternation." "'T is probable," he says, "the roaring of lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... pass—a man on a grey horse with his hat down on his eyes—without a word of greeting; but by-and-by we heard him galloping after us. We faced about, but that did not seem to intimidate him. He rode up at speed, and touching my foot with the toe of his boot, asked me for a cigar, with a blood-curdling laugh. He did not seem armed, but when he put his hand back to reach for the matches I saw an enormous revolver strapped to his waist. I shuddered. He had very fierce whiskers, Don Carlos, and as he did not offer to go on we dared ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... that every distressing, blood-curdling story told to a child, every superstitious fear instilled into his young life, the mental attitude they bear towards him, the whole treatment they accord him, are making phonographic records in his nature which will be reproduced with scientific exactness in ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... down and out the back door of the hotel and crept along the rear of the buildings till I came to Fitzsimmons's. The yelling and whooping of those savages was something blood-curdling to hear. There was a window for lighting the cellar close to the ground in the rear foundation-wall. A wide board stood in front of it, but I dug the snow away, pushed this board a little to one side, and looked in. They seemed to be having a ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... pass for a blood-curdling Levantine oath the man of the fez seized the window-curtain and pulled it down; ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... mastiffs, exceeding great and fierce, that ran hard upon her track, and not seldom came up with her and bit her cruelly; and in the rear he saw, riding a black horse, a knight sadly accoutred, and very wrathful of mien, carrying a rapier in his hand, and with despiteful, blood-curdling words threatening her with death. Whereat he was at once amazed and appalled, and then filled with compassion for the hapless lady, whereof was bred a desire to deliver her, if so he might, from such anguish and peril of death. Wherefore, as he was unarmed, he ran and took in lieu ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... city, I heard on all hands some of the most blood-curdling stories of the dire distress which, like a dark cloud, still menaces the people, some of which are too dreadful ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... to kill him," she ran on in a blood-curdling tone. "Wouldn't it be like Mr. Wharton to be stabbed to the heart on the steps of a church, just as his great work was done? Do you know I think he would like it. He is dying to be tragic like the Venetians, ...
— Esther • Henry Adams
... her mother die, had heard her father's drunken revelry, and bent their aged heads to listen on that wild wintry night, when in blood-curdling curses his soul rent itself from the degraded tenement of clay. Apparently peace brooded over earth, sky, and water; but to that lonely figure under the riven beech, every object within the range of vision babbled horrible tales ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... salt, mustard and pepper together, add to the beaten eggs, then add the vinegar. Place the saucepan on the range in a pan of boiling water. Stir constantly until the dressing becomes thick and light. Take from the fire and turn into a cold bowl at once to prevent curdling. Beat the cream to a thick froth and stir it into the cold dressing. (When cream is not available use the same quantity of milk, previously thickened to the consistency of cream with a little cornstarch, add a tsp. of butter; when cold, ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... and beheld him suddenly grasp her with what he meant to be a loving cry, but which to my ears at that moment sounded strangely ferocious, and after holding her a moment suddenly release her, at which she uttered one low, curdling moan and sank at his feet. At the same instant I heard a click, which I did not understand then, but which I now know to have been the head of the hat-pin striking ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... intimate account of this duel with all the cruel incidents from Henry A. Wise, a party to it, and a blood-curdling narrative it made. They fought with rifles at thirty paces, and Cilley fell on the third fire. It did much to discredit duelling in the South. The story, however, that Graves was so much affected that thereafter he could never sleep in a darkened ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... the amusements that used to come here. Mr. Baring-Gould tells us that when he first saw Looe it struck him as one of the oddest old-world places in England. There was a booth-theatre fitted up, and luring the folk to its dingy green canvas enclosure. "The repertoire comprised blood-curdling tragedies. I went in and saw 'The Midnight Assassin; or, The Dumb Witness.' Next evening was to be given 'The Vampire's Feast; or, The Rifled Tomb.' This tragedy was followed by Allingham's play, 'Fortune's Frolick,' adapted to the narrow capacities of the company. It was performed ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... Pink, there's a funnier side to it than that, and it's near driving me crazy trying to figure it out. Yuh needn't tell anybody, Pink, but it's like this: I was just merely and simply romancing when I told that there blood-curdling tale! I never was south uh the Wyoming line except when I was riding in a circus and toured through, and that's the truth. I never was down in the San Simon basin. I never set on no pinnacle with no field glasses—" ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... We had to pass through the heart of all these camps, and the squaw yelled as only a scared squaw can. The savages swarmed about our party by the hundreds and thousands, threatening vengeance, and flourishing their guns in a blood-curdling manner. A shot from one of them, or from one of us, would have sent us all into heaven in less than a moment. The shot was not fired, and we succeeded in reaching the agency in safety. I have always attributed our escape to the moral force ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... towns flared red, Nearer the noise of fighting rolled. And brothers' blood, by brothers shed, Crept curdling over pavements cold. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... showed himself, alone, To do his ghostly battling, With curdling groan and dismal moan, And lots of chains a-rattling! But no—the chiel's stout Gaelic stuff Withstood all ghostly harrying; His fingers closed upon the snuff Which ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... you are in a moody state of mind, my friend." My answer is, I have described myself as a public character with a blight upon him—which fully accounts for the curdling of the ...
— Somebody's Luggage • Charles Dickens
... Platte, we heard distant sounds of tomtoms on the other side of the river. Jim, the half-breed, and Louis differed as to the tribe, and hence the friendliness or hostility, of our neighbours. Louis advised saddling up and putting the night between us; he regaled us to boot with a few blood-curdling tales of Indian tortures, and of NOUS AUTRES EN HAUT. Jim treated these with scorn, and declared he knew by the 'tunes' (!) that the pow-wow was Sioux. Just now, he asserted, the Sioux were friendly, and this 'village' was on its way to Fort Laramie to barter 'robes' (buffalo skins) for blankets ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... excited in the mind of the reader in the development of the story is entrancing, while with a masterly skill he reserves his greatest surprise for the last page of the book. Scenes of adventure, blood-curdling affrays, and all the 'moving incidents of flood and field,' fill the pages with peculiar interest, and carry the reader to the end with a sigh that the end is come.... As a story of the early colonial days it is bound to almost surfeit the mind of the ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... which are carefully learned, costumed and rehearsed, and supervised by a committee from the faculty—are amusing little farces in one or two short scenes. "Sherlock Holmes," on the other hand, was a four act, blood-curdling melodrama, with three different stage settings, an abundance of pistol shots, a flash-light fire, shrieks and a fainting fit on the part of the heroine, the raiding of a robbers' den in the denouement, and "a lot more excitement all through than there ...
— Betty Wales Freshman • Edith K. Dunton
... flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time showers of scalding water. We saw red heads bobbing up and down in the hut. The family of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire, and blood-curdling yells of defiance were the only answers to ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... it," he said brokenly, "I haven't the heart to cut it down in its prime. It looks so lonely and helpless there by itself." He swept his razor around several times with a free-handed, blood-curdling swoop of his arm. "Well, here goes," he said, shutting his eyes and approaching me. Tony turned away as if unable to witness the scene. I was unnerved, but I stood my ground. The deed was done and I was at last free to depart. "That's ...
— Biltmore Oswald - The Diary of a Hapless Recruit • J. Thorne Smith, Jr.
... down and to dip themselves in loops, and the stones of the brink showed dark green stripes on their sides as they stood naked. Then fine little cakes of conglomerated stuff, which only a great man of nature could describe, came floating about, and curdling into corners, and holding on to one another in long-tailed strings. But they might do what they liked, and make their very best of it, as they fell away to nothing upon stones and mud. For now more important things began to open, the like of which never had been yielded up before—plots ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... there whole eggs, beat them well up in a basin; then pour boiling hot tea over them; pour it gradually to prevent curdling. It is difficult from the taste to distinguish it ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... In that city of Archangel with nowhere to retreat, nervous times were bound to come. "The wind up their back," that is, cold shivers, made kind-hearted, level-headed men do harsh things. Comrade Danny Anderson of "Hq" Company could tell a blood-curdling story of the execution he witnessed. Six alleged agents of the German war office, Russian Bolo spies, in one "windy" moment were brutally put away by British officers. Their brains spattered on the stone wall. Sherman said it. We are glad ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... question of Labour and Capital brought on by BARTLEY. CUNNINGHAME-GRAHAM let House see what a terrible fellow he is. Doesn't look the part; but after speech to-night no question of his innate ferocity. Sim Tappertit not in it for such blood-curdling remarks. "I have," he said just now, "often interfered between Capital and Labour; but, thank Heaven! I have never interfered in the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, May 3, 1890. • Various
... of the first real oubliette which I ever had seen, and I was just shivering with the vision of that fiendish Catharine de' Medici who used to drop people into these holes every morning before breakfast, just as an appetizer, we heard a most blood-curdling shriek, and there stood that wretched Jimmie watching us from an open door, waving his Baedeker at us, with Mrs. Jimmie's lovely Madonna smile seen ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... lawn, her dreams ripple like water along a vessel's side, the white wake of the past in bubble behind her; and when the life of the landscape is burnt out, and the day in dying seems to have left its soul behind, she stands watching, her thoughts curdling gently, the elliptical flight of the swallows through the gloom, and the flutter of the ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... inevitable concomitant of refinement and delicacy? Does the knowledge of Greek and Latin cast a blight over the flower-garden, or a mildew in the pantry and linen closet; or do the classics possess the power of curdling all the milk of human-kindness, all the streams of tender sympathy in a woman's nature, as rennet coagulates a bowl of sweet milk? Can an acquaintance with literature, art, and science so paralyze a lady's energies, that she is rendered utterly ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... the magistrate's study and directed to stand right opposite the light, while Mr. Landale installed himself in an arm-chair with a blood-curdling air of judicial sternness, Johnny Shearman, at most times as dare-devil a pickle of a boy as ever ran, but now reduced to a state of mental and physical jelly, underwent a terrible cross-examination. It was comparatively little that he had to say, and no doubt he wished ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... streaming across the waste fields from some distant window! How often was he appalled by some shrub covered with snow, which, like a sheeted spectre, beset his very path! How often did he shrink with curdling awe at the sound of his own steps on the frosty crust beneath his feet; and dread to look over his shoulder, lest he should behold some uncouth being tramping close behind him! and how often was he thrown into complete ...
— Legends That Every Child Should Know • Hamilton Wright Mabie
... oft; and in each calm or frightful guise Death comes in,—on the bloody battle-field; When with each gush of black and curdling life A curse was uttered,—when the pray'rs I've pour'd, Have been all drown'd with din of clashing arms— And shrieks and shouts, and loud artillery, That shook the slipp'ry earth, all drunk with gore— I've seen it, swoll'n with subtle poison, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Volume 19. Issue 539 - 24 Mar 1832 • Various
... World"—that there is a great gulf between the powers it indicates, and the task of leading the age—and that, on the whole, it is rather a prodigious comet in the poetical heavens, than either a still, calm luminary, or even the curdling ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... over and over and spilling Eeny-Meeny and her piney bed into the river. As the spill occurred, Hinpoha and Gladys and Sahwah and Katherine, who were playing the parts of the bereaved companions of the sacrificed maiden, tore their hair and uttered blood-curdling shrieks of despair. ...
— The Campfire Girls on Ellen's Isle - The Trail of the Seven Cedars • Hildegard G. Frey
... anthropoid that attempted to scramble to its feet. Froth flecked its hideous lips. Red were the little eyes. Blood curdling roars tumbled from the deep chest. But it did not reach its feet. The Killer stood waiting above it, and the moment that the hairy chin came upon the proper level another blow that would have felled an ox sent the ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sound. Suddenly the last candle winked out, leaving the dismayed avengers in Stygian darkness. Their sharp cries and frightened exclamations were summarily drowned, however, by a new pandemonium of blood-curdling shrieks and groans which proceeded from the hall. Through the half open door leading into the hall came a menacing shuffle as of countless approaching feet. It was the final touch needed to demoralize the hazers. Forgetful of the two front windows, they ...
— Marjorie Dean, College Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... proofs and tokens of the love which would have created comfort in the midst of desolation and given even that miserable nook in winter's dreary domain the semblance of a home. In the heart of that frozen waste, far from human fellowship, with hunger gnawing at her vitals and the frost curdling the genial current in her veins, still burned brightly in that poor lonely heart the pure and deathless flame ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... gave up the chase and, with a series of blood-curdling moans and roars, turned angrily back in search of another and an easier dinner. So Tarzan came to his cabin unattended, and a few moments later was curled up in the mildewed remnants of what had once been a bed of grasses. Thus ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... to reach the crossroad, with its protecting pines. If they could but reach that road! Sally was sobbing, and Peggy's own breath came gaspingly. She leaned forward, and in utter desperation tried to call to the horses, but her cries were lost in a series of blood-curdling yells ...
— Peggy Owen and Liberty • Lucy Foster Madison
... attempt was futile as that of a sparrow in the jaws of the little ermine. Only too well he knew the strength of these pitiless arms that clasped him now. He had learned it the night before, and his lust for vengeance gave way to ghastly and blood-curdling terror. What would these two avengers do to him; what justice would they wreak on him, now that they had him in their power? The resistless shoulders hurled him to the floor. Virginia left her bed and came creeping to be of such aid ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... nearer. Suddenly it was dominated by a blood-curdling shriek of agony. Through the wide gateway he saw five or six men fleeing across the farther courtyard, which was surrounded by a high wall. Behind them rushed a huge tusker elephant, ears and tail cocked, eyes aflame with ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly |
