"Overhead" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... child's thin "Yes, Sor, m' Faather;" then the child burst into a joyous laugh. Eleanor wondered what he could have said to elicit that laugh. When she glanced back, the old frontiersman had Lizzie standing on his outstretched hand holding to a branch overhead peering in a deserted hawk's nest. Even as Eleanor looked, the little future acrobat went scrabbling up into the ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... guide and his companion. She went to the door, and stood for a minute on the narrow platform of rough stones that provided the only level space in a witches' cauldron of moss covered boulders and rough ice. Beneath her feet was an ultramarine mist, around her were masses of black rock; but overhead was a glorious pink canopy, fringed by far flung circles of translucent blue and tenderest green. And this heaven's own shield was ever widening. Eastward its arc was broken by an irregular dark mass, whose pinnacles glittered like burnished gold. That was the Aguagliouls Rock, which rises ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... and smooth, with the woods closing in on both sides and making long vistas through their boles and under their boughs. By and by we took another path that led off from this one, wide enough for two horses to go abreast. The pine trees were sweet overhead and on each hand, making the light soft and the air fragrant. Preston and I wandered on in delightful roaming; leaving the house and all that it contained at an unremembered distance. Suddenly we came out upon a cleared field. It was many ...
— Daisy • Elizabeth Wetherell
... where it blended almost indistinguishably into the grey curtain of the sky. A deserted road wound into the distance, passing at one spot a low boulder and farther on a little expanse of dark water, and vanishing then into the far-off heavens. Overhead, through the level clouds, the light pierced at intervals, wan and cold, save near the horizon where a single spot of crimson gave hint of the rising or the setting sun. There lay over the whole a sense of inexpressible desertion, as if it were ...
— The Jessica Letters: An Editor's Romance • Paul Elmer More
... piers, and with the sweet darkness of green hills, and far-away gleaming of lake and Alps alternating upon the eye on either side; and the gloomy lesson frowning in the shadow, as if the deep tone of a passing-bell, overhead, were mingling for ever with the plashing of the river as it glides by beneath; just so far, I say, as this differs from the straight and smooth strip of level dust, between two rows of round-topped acacia trees, wherein the inhabitants of an English watering-place ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... as of yore, in the green fields among his former friends, and to dismiss all thoughts of changing his old course of life. It was late at night when the coach rattled into Stamford; but John Clare would not hear of stopping at his friend's house, even for a few minutes. The clouds were dark overhead, and no lights visible anywhere; yet through night and darkness he groped his way home, and bursting into his little hut, clasped wife and ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin
... snow had warmed suddenly to a reflected flame. Beneath it Sarah Revercomb was sowing portulaca seeds in a rockery she had made over a decaying stump. Her back was strained with bending, but not once had she stopped to gaze at the glorified pear-tree overhead. All her life she had distinguished carefully between the aristocracy and the common herd of blossoms, and not all the magic gilding of the spring sunshine could delude her into regarding the useful product of a fruit-tree ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... vengeance and visit his wrath upon these innocent people?" No one saw the speaker. The day was oppressively hot and the King came near fainting in the saddle. As he rode out of the city toward the camp, a bolt of lightning struck the ground beside him and a mighty crash of thunder rolled overhead. Pale and thoughtful, he rode on. But Landshut was spared. That evening General Horn brought the anxious citizens the King's promise ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... whistled overhead, but none of them struck the water within many yards of the boat, and the launch was still four or five hundred yards away when the bow of the boat touched the shore. Several muskets were discharged as Vincent and Tony leaped ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... he stared up overhead, and, thanks to the fact that the night was not excessively dark, was able to detect the line of roof as it cut across the sky. From its height it gave promise of a loft under its shelter, and, searching round for some access to it, Henri presently stumbled upon a wooden staircase. ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... one hundred feet in width and often narrows to seventy-five or less, the forest of cyprus and sycamore trees, mingled with great cottonwoods and thickly twining wild grape-vines, formed a perfect arch overhead, shutting out the rays of the sun; and, though generally high enough to allow the tall smoke-stacks to pass underneath, sometimes grazed their tops and again swept them down to the deck as the swift current bore ...
— The Gulf and Inland Waters - The Navy in the Civil War. Volume 3. • A. T. Mahan
... respectable-looking unsoldierlike figures, mostly in black, dodging about upon a ridge perhaps a mile away. I took a shot at one of these figures just before it vanished into a gully. One or two bullets came overhead, and I tried to remember what I had picked up about cover. They made a sound, whiff-er-whiff, a kind of tearing whistle, and there was nothing but a distant crackling to give one a hint of their direction until ...
— The Passionate Friends • Herbert George Wells
... when I was asked what I wanted there? I hesitated, but went in nevertheless. As soon as I entered the court-yard, I became conscious of a disgusting odor. The yard was frightfully dirty. I turned a corner, and at the same instant I heard to my left and overhead, on the wooden balcony, the tramp of footsteps of people running, at first along the planks of the balcony, and then on the steps of the staircase. There emerged, first a gaunt woman, with her sleeves rolled up, in a faded pink ...
— The Moscow Census - From "What to do?" • Lyof N. Tolstoi
... importunate grass. For it is hard to be beaten—and the weed does so prevail, is so small, and so dominant! The sun takes its part, and one might almost imagine a sensitive Municipality in tears, to see grass running, overhead and underfoot, through the "third" (which is in truth ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... before. They always carried me up to the top of the donjon whenever it was fair overhead; but my friends, who did not doubt that all the Court wanted was to get some expression from me of my inclination to resign, in order to discredit me with the public, charged me to guard warily my words, which advice I followed; so that when a captain ...
— The Memoirs of Cardinal de Retz, Complete • Jean Francois Paul de Gondi, Cardinal de Retz
... serpents up the chimney; she heard the wild howling of the night wind, the ceaseless dash and fall of the rain, the indescribable roar of the raging sea; she heard the trees creak and toss and groan; she heard the rats scampering overhead; she heard the dismal moaning of the old house ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... talked together the thought came to them that alchemy was the gradual distillation of the contents of the soul, until they were ready to put off the mortal and put on the immortal. An owl passed, rustling among the vine-leaves overhead, and then an old woman came, leaning upon a stick, and, sitting close to them, took up the thought where they had dropped it. Having expounded the whole principle of spiritual alchemy, and bid them found the ...
— Rosa Alchemica • W. B. Yeats
... came in golden gleams through the thickly-leaved hedges above them. What life could possibly be happier? There were the birds flying about, cheering them with merry twitterings, as they sped from tree to tree, or perched in the boughs overhead, warbling ever their songs of gladness. Then the bees would come, and ask them, in drowsy, murmuring voices, for just a sip of nectar from their cups, a boon which was never refused, and in return the busy little ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... his feet to the fire, he motioned Jean and me to come into the shelter of the slant canvas; for the clouds were rolling overhead black as ink and the wind roared up the river-bed with a wall of pelting rain. M. Radisson gazed absently into the flame. The steel lights were at play in his eyes, ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... praise the G.P.O. as a repository of ancientest tradition!) is represented by a view of Captain Hodgson's legs where he stands on the Control Platform that runs thwart-ships overhead. The bow colloid is unshuttered and Captain Purnall, one hand on the wheel, is feeling for a fair slant. The dial shows 4300 feet. "It's steep to-night," he mutters, as tier on tier of cloud drops under. "We generally pick up an easterly draught below three thousand at ...
— Actions and Reactions • Rudyard Kipling
... following. After they had traveled for ten or fifteen yards, the undergrowth thinned until they were going on pine-needle- covered ground as soft as moss. The silent forest with its sentinel pines, spreading a canopy overhead, seemed like another world from the bright glare of the one left behind ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... piling up in the west, blotting out the light from the setting sun. Over all a heavy silence had settled down, so that in all the woods there was no sound of living thing. Lashing his pony into a gallop, heedless of the obstacles on the trail, or of the trees overhead, Brown crashed through scrub and sleugh, with old Portnoff following as best he could. Mile after mile they rode, now and then in the gathering darkness losing the trail, and with frantic furious haste searching it again, till at length, with their ponies foaming ...
— The Foreigner • Ralph Connor
... struck a rocky bottom, the case would have been very different. We passed by herds of hippopotami, some with young ones on their backs, and although they sank as we approached, they soon came to the surface to breathe. On the trees overhead were numbers of iguanas, which, on seeing us, splashed into the water. The chief canoeman carried a light javelin, with which he speared a couple, the flesh proving to be tender ...
— Adventures in Africa - By an African Trader • W.H.G. Kingston
... had cleared away and the stars were shining brightly overhead, so that they had to keep under cover as much as possible. Jack hoped, however, that all the inhabitants of the place would be in bed. Again the dog barked. Jack, in a whisper, ordered the gunner and Jerry to crouch down and remain perfectly quiet for a few minutes, ...
— The Three Commanders • W.H.G. Kingston
... High overhead drifted a few rosy clouds, part of that changeless nature which alone did not repel or mystify these two beleaguered waifs, these chance survivors, this man, this woman, left alone together by ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... play—a sense built up from old voyages over these very seas. The result of his meditations was that he swung more to the south, and events proved him wise. For on the fifteenth day came a lift in the fog and with it the noise of tides washing near at hand on a rough coast. Suddenly almost overhead they were aware of a great white headland, on the summit of which ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... tropic wilderness. I listened with a dim jealous understanding—not of the words, but of the facts. I saw them instinctively, as in a dream. She pointed up to me in terror and disgust, as I sat gnashing and gibbering overhead. He threw up the muzzle of his rifle carelessly, and fired—I fell dead, but conscious still. I knew that my carcase was carried to the settlement; and I watched while a smirking, chuckling surgeon dissected me, bone by bone, and nerve ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... such friendly persons as it was natural he should meet on the public road. They were few. Caius walked listening to the sea lapping below the low cliff near which the road ran, and watching the bats that often circled in the dark-blue dusk overhead. Thus going on, he gradually recognised a little group walking in front of him. It was the woman, Mrs. Day, and her three children. Holding a child by either hand, she tramped steadily forward. Something in the way she walked, in the way the children walked—a ...
— The Mermaid - A Love Tale • Lily Dougall
... light and stood with his face at the open port-hole. Only the soft throbbing of the vessel as she made her way slowly through the last of the Narrows into Frederick Sound came to his ears. The ship, at last, was asleep. The moon was straight overhead, no longer silhouetting the mountains, and beyond its misty rim of light the world was dark. Out of this darkness, rising like a deeper shadow, Alan could make out faintly the huge mass of Kupreanof Island. And he wondered, knowing the perils of the Narrows in places scarcely wider than the length ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... conquer him too, in spite of all that his Mother Earth could do for him. Watching his opportunity, as the mad Giant made a rush at him, Hercules caught him round the middle with both hands, lifted him high into the air, and held him aloft overhead. ...
— Tanglewood Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... La Fere, and soon the cannon of heaven joined in that loud play. Two continents of cloud met and exchanged salvos overhead; while all round the horizon we could see sunshine and clear air upon the hills. What with the guns and the thunder, the herds were all frightened in the Golden Valley. We could see them tossing their heads, and ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the illimitable patience which is a necessity of the wild. He saw the fire, before which the white men and the chiefs lay sleeping, sink lower and lower. The night remained dark. The heavy drifting clouds which nevertheless were not ready to open for rain, moved overhead in solemn columns. The surface of the river grew dim, but now and then there was a light splash as a strong fish leaped up and fell back into the current. The Indian guards knowing well what made them, paid no attention ...
— The Keepers of the Trail - A Story of the Great Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... housetops the sound of the oration ceased. At the door of the church a slight commotion was visible. The coffin was being carried out. It was placed in the hearse. Every head was bared. There followed a slight pause; then from overhead the church-bell boomed out once. Another bell in the next block answered; a third, more distant, chimed in. From all parts of the city ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... as if jokes and laughter belonged to a self that ought to have been dead long ago. Perhaps, if the fat old book-keeper had known it, he would have said that the man was better than he knew. But then,—poor Huff! He passed slowly through the alleys between the great looms. Overhead the ceiling looked like a heavy maze of iron cylinders and black swinging bars and wheels, all in swift, ponderous motion. It was enough to make a brain dizzy with the clanging thunder of the engines, the whizzing spindles of red and yellow, and the hot daylight glaring over all. The looms were ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... drew nearer and nearer. "It is the French and Indians coming," cried the men; but no one could tell from which direction the enemy was advancing; the dreadful noise seemed to come from all sides at once, even from overhead in the sky. ...
— Once Upon A Time In Connecticut • Caroline Clifford Newton
... the countryside. At the same instant there breaks out the boom of our heavy guns, the sharp staccato of sixty-pounders, the dull roar of howitzers, and the ear-splitting clamour of whizz-bangs—a bedlam of noise. Shells whistle and whine overhead; they cannot be distinguished one from another, but merge into a ...
— The Masques of Ottawa • Domino
... Reprint Society is a non-profit, scholarly organization, run without overhead expense. By careful management it is able to offer at least six publications each year at the unusually low membership fee of $2.50 per year in the United States and Canada, and $2.75 in Great ...
— The Theater (1720) • Sir John Falstaffe
... true words seemed to rebuke the three listeners for wasted lives, and for a moment there was no sound but the crackle of the fire, the brisk click of the old lady's knitting needles, and Ruth's voice singing overhead as she made ready to ...
— Kitty's Class Day And Other Stories • Louisa M. Alcott
... In the room overhead the light had leapt to full brilliancy. An uncertain hand pulled the shade down crookedly. As the young man turned for a last look at the house he perceived a shadow hurriedly passing and repassing the lighted window. ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... swaying to and fro piped a family of blackbirds, busily chattering to each other. Overhead in the cloudless sky floated a ...
— Uncle Robert's Geography (Uncle Robert's Visit, V.3) • Francis W. Parker and Nellie Lathrop Helm
... in my weird little mind? We arrived at length at wide gates and drove up an avenue, lined by stately trees and running between broad grain fields, which led to a court shaded with leafy giants of elms and cobbled in an antique fashion; and under the woof of boughs and leaves overhead ran a very long old country-house, cottage-built. Surpassingly peaceful, and secluded was its air. It had oblique-angle-faced, shingled gables, and many windows with thin-ribbed blinds; and a high bit of gallery. On one hand near it, under the hugest of the trees was a cool, white, well-house of ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... have run o'er half the space Listed for mortal's earthly race; We both have crost life's fervid line, And other stars before us shine: May they be bright and prosperous As those that have been stars for us! Our course by Milton's light was sped, And Shakespeare shining overhead: Chatting on deck was Dryden too, The Bacon of the rhyming crew; None ever crost our mystic sea More richly stored with thought than he; Tho' never tender nor sublime, He wrestles with and conquers Time. To learn my lore on Chaucer's knee, I left much prouder company; Thee gentle Spenser fondly ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... Jack. "I think other people have been here before us, Dick. I can see black spots on the rock overhead, as if smoke from torches had made them. Then the rock under our feet is worn somewhat. Some one has been in here ...
— The Hilltop Boys - A Story of School Life • Cyril Burleigh
... was a-soak, but in the snug cabin of the sloop dry blankets and a dry bunk were mine; and we lay and smoked and yarned of old days, while overhead the wind screamed through the rigging and taut halyards ...
— John Barleycorn • Jack London
... guiltily about, and then laid her hand in the broken moss with a quick passionate touch. The baby caught her chin in its fingers. She hugged it to her breast, and kissed it again and again. From the hemlock overhead a tanager suddenly flashed up into the air with a shrill peal of song. Jane looked up, her face and throat dyed crimson. Did he know? She glanced down at the grass, at the friendly trees all alive with rustling and chirping. The sky overhead was so deep and warm a blue to-day. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... a pause of a few moments. The whole camp had turned in by now and distant voices had ceased. A cricket chirped somewhere close by. An acorn fell from a tree overhead and rolled down the roof of the troop cabin a few yards distant, the sound of its falling emphasized by the stillness. Hervey hitched up his stocking again. Mr. Denny watched him. Perhaps he was studying this wandering minstrel of his more closely ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... come to the surface. Then he felt himself lying on his back in the water, supported by Frank. The motion was not unpleasant as he rose and fell on the waves, although now and then a splash of water came over his face, and made him cough and splutter for breath. He could see nothing but the blue sky overhead, could feel nothing except that occasionally he received a blow from one or other of Frank's knees, as the latter swam beneath him, with Ruthven's head on his chest. It was a dreamy sensation, and ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... minutes later there was a great screaming crash overhead—shrapnel. I ran to my bicycle and stood by waiting ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... happened here. I spent the mornings on the cliff reading, and watching the sun-sparks raining on the sea. It's grand up there with the gorse all round, the gulls basking on the rocks, the partridges calling in the corn, and now and then a young hawk overhead. The afternoons I spent out in the orchard. The usual routine goes on at the farm all the time—cow-milking, bread-baking, John Ford riding in and out, Pasiance in her garden stripping lavender, talking to the farm hands; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... I climb upon the upright ironwork of the platform and stand upon the wheel of the hand-brake. This has taken up the moment of grace and I hear the shacks strike the steps on either side. I don't stop to look. I raise my arms overhead until my hands rest against the down-curving ends of the roofs of the two cars. One hand, of course, is on the curved roof of one car, the other hand on the curved roof of the other car. By this time both shacks are coming up the steps. I know it, though I am too busy to see them. All this is ...
— The Road • Jack London
... well for one to keep a watch, lads," the mate said. "We have seen no signs of natives, but there may be some about. The sun is nearly overhead, so it will be another four or five hours before we can set to work. I will take the first watch. In an hour I will wake Mr. Joyce; Mr. Embleton will follow him; then you, Nixon; that will take us on ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... superb and, although it was night, one could see reasonably well by the light of the stars; but as in these circumstances it is much easier to see what is overhead than to see what is below one's feet, I brought my squadrons as close as possible to the hillock so that its shadow would conceal the riders, and after ordering silence and ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... came to himself, instead of its being night, it was still noonday, and he was sitting on the same stone in the same quiet roadside grove from which he had caught sight of his Aunt Jane in her wonderful coach. A blue jay screamed at him from overhead. For Aunt Jane, the coach, and the enchanted castle had been only a dream. Peter, you see, had fallen asleep under the pines, and while he slept, he had dreamed the dream he purchased ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the purple Sea That gave them scanty bread, They lied about the Earth beneath, The Heavens overhead, For they had looked too often on Black rum when ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... with the latest edition of "The Coaster's Sailing Directions," in another; while in an adjoining state-room, nearly large enough to accommodate an arm-chair, if the chair could have but contrived to get into it, I caught a glimpse of my friend's printing press and his case of types, canopied overhead by the blue ancient of the vessel, bearing, in stately six-inch letters of white bunting, the legend, "FREE CHURCH YACHT." A door opened, which communicated with the forecastle, and John Stewart, stooping ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... Frances and her mother had the conversation about their neighbors overhead, the former ...
— The Spectacle Man - A Story of the Missing Bridge • Mary F. Leonard
... in heaven. Sometimes the fiend suggested impious doubts, and at ether times suicide. He attributed his chronic vertigo to the Devil, because the physic he took did him no good. So familiar did the Devil become that Luther, hearing him walk overhead at night, would say "Oh, is it you?" and go to sleep again. Once, when he was marrying-an aristocratic couple, the wedding ring slipped out of his fingers at a critical moment. He was frightened, but, recovering himself, he exclaimed, ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... thousand memories kindling with the sound; The early favorite's unforgotten charms, Whose blue initials stain his tawny arms; His first farewell, the flapping canvas spread, The seaward streamers crackling overhead, His kind, pale mother, not ashamed to weep Her first-born's bridal with the haggard deep, While the brave father stood with tearless eye, Smiling and choking with ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... cold and chilling gloom that was communicated by the dreary aspect of every thing around. The sky was obscured by a heavy canopy of low, dull clouds that had about them none of the grandeur of storm, but lay overhead charged with those wintry deluges which we feel to be so unnatural and alarming in autumn, whose bounty and beauty they equally disfigure and destroy. The whole summer had been sunless and wet—one, in fact, of ceaseless rain which fell, day after day, ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... surface of the rock, and then pass into the air, and the thought flashed through my brain that I was lost. But no! In another instant my feet struck against a rocky floor, and I felt that I was standing upon something solid, and out of reach of the wind, which I could hear singing away overhead. As I stood there thanking Heaven for these small mercies, there was a slip and a scuffle, and down came ...
— She • H. Rider Haggard
... all directions, broken by the tramp of tens of thousands of armed men, followed by the guns and heavy transport of a modern army, with its hundreds of motor-lorries, its miles of wagons, its vast concourse of black porters; while overhead the aeroplane, or, as the natives call it, the "bird," more dreaded and more feared than even the crocodile in the river, passes on swiftly with its bombs for the foe retreating ahead. And what an effect this movement, continued for many months over many thousands of miles, produced on the minds ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... sister Jane Were walking down a shady lane, They saw some berries, bright and red, That hung around and overhead. ...
— Rhymes Old and New • M.E.S. Wright
... train arrived at the big Liverpool terminus—rather late in the day to begin all the numerous enquiries which Gipsy was determined to make; but, nothing daunted, she set out at once for Waterloo, to try to find the residence of her old friend Captain Smith. She was directed by a policeman to take an overhead electric car, and travelled several miles above what seemed a wilderness of streets before she reached the suburb in question. Not knowing where to make a beginning, she decided to go first to a post office, thinking that there she might be able to gain the information ...
— The Leader of the Lower School - A Tale of School Life • Angela Brazil
... enough to Stephen's remonstrances and Miss Anne's gentle teaching; but yet Stephen could never feel sure, when he was at his dismal toil underground, that all things were going on right in his home overhead. Often and often, as he looked up to Fern's Hollow, where the new red-brick house was now to be seen plainly, like a city set on a hill, he longed to be back again, and counted the months and weeks until the spring should bring home the ...
— Fern's Hollow • Hesba Stretton
... without roofs. In the centre was a well, probably ten or twelve feet wide, over which slanted a cross arm and wheel for the drawing of water. No human being was in sight; the gate had been unlatched by an overhead cord. ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... our expectations, the wind did not go down with the sun. It seemed to increase with the darkness, howling overhead and shaking the willows round us like straws. Curious sounds accompanied it sometimes, like the explosion of heavy guns, and it fell upon the water and the island in great flat blows of immense power. It made me think of the sounds a planet must ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... approaching the wall, keeping up a tremendous musketry fire, whilst behind them three batteries of field-guns were sending their messengers of death. From every upper window of the convent the answering flashes came thick and fast, while overhead hummed the shot from the British guns, on the Serra Hill. Oporto itself was in a state of uproar. Drums were beating, trumpets sounding, bells clanging, while from the house-tops the population, men ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the sandy shoal of the Dogger, in twenty fathoms of water, and overhead I could see great black ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... distant hum of a motor. One of the pilots emerges from the tent and gazes fixedly up into the blue sky. He points, and one glimpses a black speck against the blue, high overhead. The sound of the motor ceases, and the speck grows larger. It moves earthward in steep dives and circles, and as it swoops closer, takes on the shape of an airplane. Now one can make out the red, white, and blue circles under the wings ...
— Flying for France • James R. McConnell
... field artillery gun crews camped together in a wood near Charsoney. The canvas overhead keeps the fire from being observed ...
— "I was there" - with the Yanks in France. • C. LeRoy Baldridge
... High overhead the windless air Throbbed with the homesick coursing cry Of swallows that did everywhere Wake ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... curiosity on the part of her Lieutenant-Commander to investigate the approaches to the anchorage. As for U77, she was flying blindly for safety, with a couple of destroyers hard on her track, and a naval sea-plane overhead to direct them in ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... day long Sat often in the seaward-gazing gorge, A shipwreck'd sailor, waiting for a sail: No sail from day to day, but every day The sunrise broken into scarlet shafts Among the palms and ferns and precipices; The blaze upon the waters to the east; The blaze upon his island overhead; The blaze upon the waters to the west; Then the great stars that globed themselves in Heaven, The hollower-bellowing ocean, and again The scarlet shafts ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the wall of the stable yard we passed into a beautiful garden full of violets, mignonette, scarlet geraniums, and late autumn flowers; besides gooseberries, raspberries, currants, and other English fruits; while overhead stretched a long trellis covered with fine Muscatel vines from which some late bunches of grapes were ...
— The Last Voyage - to India and Australia, in the 'Sunbeam' • Lady (Annie Allnutt) Brassey
... somewhere rearward a bell jangles. On the deck overhead is a scurry of feet. In the mysterious bowels of the ship a mighty mechanism opens its metal mouth and speaks out briskly. Later it will talk on steadily, with a measured and a regular voice; but now ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... chimes and cadences of silver melody. I have heard some fine music, as men are wont to speak—the play of orchestras, the anthems of choirs, the voices of song that moved admiring nations. But in the lofty passes of the Alps I heard a music overhead from God's cloudy orchestra, the giant peaks of rock and ice, curtained in by the driving mist and only dimly visible athwart the sky through its folds, such as mocks all sounds our lower worlds of art can ever ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... and blue. The sun had just risen, and was shedding his early splendor on the myriad snow-drops as brightly as if to atone for the darkness and gloom of yesterday. It was a cheerful and beautiful view; but Mr. Hardesty heard the sound of shuffling footsteps overhead; so he turned shivering from the window to dress himself for the day. 'It'll never do to be caught in this ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, January 1844 - Volume 23, Number 1 • Various
... Of Eden, where delicious Paradise, Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green, As with a rural mound, the champaign head Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides, With thicket overgrown, grotesque, and wild, Access denied; and overhead up grew Insuperable height of loftiest shade, A sylvan scene, and as the ranks ascend Shade above shade, a woody theatre Of ...
— The Greville Memoirs - A Journal of the Reigns of King George IV and King William - IV, Volume 1 (of 3) • Charles C. F. Greville
... deep, jarring report in front, followed by the startling rush of a shell, which passing overhead exploded in the edge of a thicket, setting afire the fallen leaves. Penetrating the din— seeming to float above it like the melody of a soaring bird—rang the slow, aspirated monotones of the captain's several commands, ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... enemy's rigging. It was, in miniature, a contest as unequal as that by which Sir Francis Drake and his fellows overcame the Great Armada of Spain in 1588, and with like result. The heavy shot of the Gamo riddled the Speedy's sails, but, passing overhead, did no mischief to her hulk or her men. During an hour there was desperate fighting with small arms, and twice the Spaniards tried in vain to board their sturdy little foe. Lord Cochrane then determined to meet them on their own deck, and the daring project was facilitated ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... the distance came a dull sound, like a deep groan, and immediately after it the signal whistle of the steamer drawled out as in a frightened manner over Foma's and his guest's heads. From the distance came a more distant reply, and the whistle overhead again gave out abrupt, timorous sounds. Foma opened the window. Through the fog, not far from their steamer, something was moving along with deep noise; specks of fantastic lights floated by, the fog was agitated and ...
— Foma Gordyeff - (The Man Who Was Afraid) • Maxim Gorky
... viands were various, to each of their taste, And the Bee brought the honey to sweeten the feast. Then close on his haunches, so solemn and wise, The Frog from a corner looked up to the skies; And the Sparrow, well pleased such diversions to see, Mounted high overhead, and looked down from a tree. Then out came the Spider, with finger so fine, To show his dexterity on the tight line. From one branch to another his cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an arrow he darted along. But just in the middle, oh, shocking to tell! From his ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... building (with a gigantic "No. 10" whitewashed outside) stands close to the breakers, just above high-water mark in winter. It is divided into two large rooms, upper and lower, with a tiny kitchen in the rear and an equally comfortless bedroom overhead. The doors of the lower room (which, like those of a barn, fill the whole end of the house) being closed, we sought for Old Probabilities up stairs, and found very little at first sight to gratify curiosity or any craving for mystery. There was a large wooden room, with walls ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... edge of the sloping shores; the beautiful trees occupied all the central portion of Pingaree, forming a continuous grove where the branches met high overhead and there was just space beneath them for the cosy houses of the inhabitants. These houses were scattered everywhere throughout the island, so that there was no town or city, unless the whole island might be called a city. The canopy of leaves, high overhead, formed ...
— Rinkitink in Oz • L. Frank Baum
... This is laughter at its best. A man to whom such laughter has often been granted may happen to die in a work-house. No matter. I will not admit that he has failed in life. Another man, who has never laughed thus, may be buried in Westminster Abbey, leaving more than a million pounds overhead. What then? I regard him as ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... to the house that was intended for me, which I found ready with servants to attend. It consisted of a hall, with a room at each end, and a loft overhead; and was surrounded by a piazza with an outer apartment in one corner and a communication from the back part of the house to the street. I therefore determined, instead of separating from my people, to lodge them all with me; and I divided the house as follows: ...
— A Voyage to the South Sea • William Bligh
... tribulations—records a singular phenomenon in the nocturnal habits of the last-named vermin. "Every night they had a jubilee. The first symptom was an unusual clustering and humming amongst the swarms lining the beams overhead, and the inside of the sleeping-places. This was succeeded by a prodigious coming and going on the part of those living out of sight. Presently they all came forth; the larger sort racing over the chests ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 380, June, 1847 • Various
... June day, the blue sky overhead just flecked with soft, fleecy white clouds, and with enough breeze stirring to lift Patricia's short brown curls and fan her ...
— Patricia • Emilia Elliott
... of the dead, Which do outnumber all earth's races, rise, And high in sumless myriads overhead Sweep past him in a cloud, as 'twere the skirts Of the Eternal ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... blew a strong gale from the northward, accompanied by such a constant snowdrift, that, although the weather was quite clear overhead, the boathouse at the distance of three or four hundred yards could scarcely be seen from the ships. On such occasions no person was permitted on any account to leave the ships. Indeed, when this snowdrift occurred, as ...
— Three Voyages for the Discovery of a Northwest Passage from the • Sir William Edward Parry
... trade. Dawn on its fluted brow painted rainbow light, Close on its pinnacled crown trembled the stars at night. Here and there in a cleft clustered contorted trees, Or the silver beard of a stream hung and swung in the breeze. High overhead, with a cry, the torrents leaped for the main, And silently sprinkled below in thin perennial rain. Dark in the staring noon, dark was Rua's ravine, Damp and cold was the air, and the face of the cliffs was green. Here, in the rocky pit, accursed already ...
— Ballads • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the vessel awoke me at last with a start; it was still dark, but I heard loud talking and running about on deck overhead. Alarmed I sat up in my berth, and wondered what was the matter. All at once the screw again revolved and then again stopped, and was once more in motion. We seemed to be going backward. I knew we were at least one hundred miles ...
— A Girl's Ride in Iceland • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie
... warned by my companion that we should have a long, uninteresting drive, I had lain down in the tarantass and gone to sleep. On awaking I found that the tarantass had stopped, and that the stars were shining brightly overhead. A big dog was barking furiously close at hand, and I heard the voice of the yamstchik informing us that we had arrived. I at once sat up and looked about me, expecting to see a village of some kind, but instead of that I perceived a wide open space, and at a short ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... on the side of the cabin next the shore, where she could watch the beach and the rocks and give timely notice of the approach of either friend or foe. Hetty was also placed on watch, but it was to keep the trees overhead in view, lest some enemy might ascend one, and, by completely commanding the interior of the scow, render the defenses of the ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... been on the road to Pyecrafts at all—altogether. He found himself upon a highway running across a flattish plain, and presently discovered by the sight of the Great Bear, faint but traceable in the blue overhead, that he was going due north. Well, presently he would turn south and west; that in good time; now he wanted to feel; he wanted to think. How could he best help England in the vast struggle for which the empty silence and beauty of this night seemed to be waiting? But ...
— Mr. Britling Sees It Through • H. G. Wells
... valleys between them, into whose depths the ship plunged down from each watery height as it came under her, seeming as if she could never rise again. Still once more she was lifted upwards among showers of spray, which flew off from the white-crested seas, deluging us fore and aft. Overhead the wild scud flew fast, the stern Cape looked more solitary and grand, and the sea-fowl with discordant shrieks flew round and round, closing in the circles they were forming till they almost touched our masts. The ship struggled bravely onward on the starboard-tack, rapidly increasing ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... reached the shield, and on hands and knees we crawled out into one of its compartments. Here we experienced for the first time the weird realisation that only the "air" stood between us and destruction from the tons and tons of sand and water overhead. At some points in the sand we could feel the air escaping, which appeared at the surface of the river overhead in bubbles, indicating to those passing in the river boats just how far each tunnel heading below had proceeded. When the loss of air became too great, I learned, ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... political society makes a larger number of officers necessary. The people are demanding the right to do more things by themselves, which leads to increased expenses in the cost of administration, great bonded indebtedness, and higher taxation. It will be necessary to curb expansion and reduce overhead charges upon the government. This may call for the reorganization of the machinery of government on the basis of efficiency. At least it must be shown to the people that they have a full return for the money paid by taxation. It is possible only by study, ...
— History of Human Society • Frank W. Blackmar
... deck before he understood the reason for the summons. Overhead all was clear; but towards the land a dense bank of black cloud was rising, and approaching the vessel with great rapidity. It was as though some vast blanket were being thrown seawards. The air was oppressively ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... white hair and a gray, stern face, who sat beside a table on which were paper and lighted candles. A letter lay before him, but he was not reading it. When the sound of the rocking began, he started and turned pale. A little boy once used to rock in that way in the garret overhead, but it was long ago, and for many years past the garret had been silent and deserted. "Harry's horse!" muttered the old man with a look of fear as he heard the sound. He half rose from his chair, then he ...
— Nine Little Goslings • Susan Coolidge
... in municipal street railway transportation were made between 1875 and 1890. In 1876 New York began the construction of an overhead or elevated railway on which trains were drawn by small locomotives. The first electric street railways were operated in Richmond, Va., and in Baltimore. Electric street lighting was introduced in ...
— The United States Since The Civil War • Charles Ramsdell Lingley
... set fire to a long line of grass on the hill from which they were firing. An innocent, harmless-looking hill it seemed, with not a Boer visible on it, yet the bright summer air simply sang with the notes of Mauser bullets—clear and musical notes when they pass high overhead, but with a sharp and bitter ping when they ...
— Impressions of a War Correspondent • George Lynch
... nap. We were sleeping away "at the rate of knots,'' when three knocks on the scuttle and "All hands, ahoy!'' started us from our berths. What could be the matter? It did not appear to be blowing hard, and, looking up through the scuttle, we could see that it was a clear day overhead; yet the watch were taking in sail. We thought there must be a sail in sight, and that we were about to heave-to and speak her; and were just congratulating ourselves upon it,— for we had seen neither ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... this curious abode is marked by a swinging wooden gate opening into a narrow tunnel which dodges under the front house. It is an uncanny sort of passageway, mouldy and wet from a long-neglected leak overhead, and is lighted at night by a rusty lantern with ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... returned home as the young master was standing at the door, staring at the driving clouds overhead. He gave Pelle's shoulder a familiar squeeze. "How was it they didn't pay you for the shoes at ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... mats spread, and with one of his children sitting at my head to fan away the flies, I lay and watched, through the belt of coconuts that lined the beach, the blue rollers breaking on the reef and the snow-white boatswain-birds floating high overhead. ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... descended hard by where the heroes of Communipaw had made their late repast. And he lit his pipe by the fire, and sat himself down and smoked; and as he smoked the smoke from his pipe ascended into the air, and spread like a cloud overhead. And Oloffe bethought him, and he hastened and climbed up to the top of one of the tallest trees, and saw that the smoke spread over a great extent of country—and as he considered it more attentively he fancied that the great volume of smoke assumed a variety of marvelous forms, where in dim obscurity ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... locally of Joanna was full of profound suggestions to a heart that listened for the stealthy steps of change and fear that too surely were in motion. But if the place were grand, the times, the burthen of the times, was far more so. The air overhead in its upper chambers were hurtling with the obscure sound; was dark with sullen fermenting of storms that had been gathering for a hundred and thirty years. The battle of Agincourt in Joanna's childhood had re-opened the wounds of France. ...
— Miscellaneous Essays • Thomas de Quincey
... Cornelia had taken off her shoes and let her little white feet trail down into the water. She wore only her white tunic, and had pushed it back so that her arms were almost bare. At the moment she was resting lazily on one elbow, and gazing abstractedly up at the moving ocean of green overhead. She was only sixteen; but in the warm Italian clime that age had brought her to maturity. No one would have said that she was beautiful, from the point of view of mere softly sensuous Greek beauty. Rather, she was handsome, as became the daughter of Cornelii and Claudii. ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... bare, white trees, ghosts of a departed forest, the miry ground strewn with eggs of all sizes, shapes and colors, and dead birds of many kinds, in amongst which writhed and twisted dirty-looking, repulsive water moccasins and brilliant yellow and black swamp snakes, while overhead on the whitened limbs, roosted hundreds of birds partly roused from their sleep by the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... coupled with the sun in a conjunction, from which proceeded a germ of stars, and there each female world was embracing a male world; but in place of the words used by creatures, the worlds were giving forth the howls of tempests, throwing up lightnings and crying thunders. Then still rising, I saw overhead the female nature of all things in love with the Prince of Movement. Now, by way of mockery, the Succubus placed me in the centre of this horrible and perpetual conflict, where I was lost as a grain of sand in the sea. Then still cried ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 2 • Honore de Balzac
... in the spring, Thee and Robert—through the trees, When we all went gathering Boughs of May-bloom for the bees. Do not start so! think instead How the sunshine overhead Seem'd to trickle through ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... who had taken a particular liking to the companion of whom he was now about to be deprived. "Fare ye well," he said, "my young friend," taking Julian's hand in both his own uplifted palms, in which action he somewhat resembled the attitude of a sailor pulling a rope overhead,—"Many in my situation would think himself wronged, as a soldier and servant of the king's chamber, in seeing you removed to a more honourable prison than that which I am limited unto. But, I thank God, I grudge you not the Tower, nor the rocks of Scilly, nor even Carisbrooke ...
— Peveril of the Peak • Sir Walter Scott
... whole song was sung out.... I often looked out of the window to see them at a short distance, grouped before a house, singing their stanzas, well muffled in shawls, for the air is cold in spite of the bright sunshine.... The flat, white houses all round, the pure sky overhead, gave an Oriental setting to ...
— Christmas in Ritual and Tradition, Christian and Pagan • Clement A. Miles
... a shot startled him. To his dizzy hearing came the sound of curses overhead, the stamp and shift of feet, the crashing fall of struggling men, and, what brought him unsteadily to his legs, the agonized scream of a woman. It echoed through the house, chilling him, and dwindled to ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... plain that we must face this agitation; and beyond the dull clouds overhead hangs in the horizon Venus, as morning-star, no less fair, though of more melting beauty, than the glorious Jupiter, who shares with ...
— Memoirs of Margaret Fuller Ossoli, Vol. II • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... glowing, all her curls awave, The colt's-foot in millions makes the ground like a bed, So sweet-breathed and green now, in winter scarlet brave, And blossom lips of tulip trees are meeting overhead, But never shall a tear fall for their love spent and dead. Doves are building yonder in that clump of maples deep, Do maple leaves come soonest for they love to hide The earliest nest and hear the first faint cheep Telling them of joy too dear, too sweet ...
— Path Flower and Other Verses • Olive T. Dargan
... Overhead, under our feet, and upon the sides of the drift, lies the vein of copper are, presenting a different appearance at different places. The various ores sparkle in the light and we gather specimens of each. ...
— The Western United States - A Geographical Reader • Harold Wellman Fairbanks
... begin a systematic search," said Mr. Bobbsey, who had already found out from the conductor and brakeman that they knew nothing about the lost box. "We will look in and under every seat. Then we will go through all the baggage in the hangers" (meaning the overhead wire baskets), "and see if we cannot ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the Seashore • Laura Lee Hope
... front, behind and on all sides of the Sylph threw up the water in mighty geysers, as if it were a typhoon that surrounded the little vessel. Shells screamed overhead, but none ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... the pastures that are burned to flax-colour burns too like burnished brass. A pillar of dust on the long hog-back of the road across the hills shows where a team is lathering between farms, and the roofs of the wooden houses flicker in the haze of their own heat. Overhead the chicken-hawk is the only creature at work, and his shrill kite-like call sends the gaping chickens from the dust-bath in haste to their mothers. The red squirrel as usual feigns business of importance among ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... inside our pigeon-cot— Oh, the bustle and the sweeping there has been! For the pigeons didn't scrub their house (I think they all forgot), And the fairies like their home so scrup'lous clean; There are fairy dusters hanging from the sumach as you pass; Tiny drops are dripping still from overhead; Broken fairy-brooms are lying near the fir-tree on the grass, Though the fairies went an ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... far-away crackle and plunge of larger animals through the undergrowth. A chipmunk, with inquisitive eyes, sat on the root of a knotted oak, but he whisked away when Menard and the canoemen stepped into the shallow water. Overhead, showing little fear of the canoe and of the strangely clad animals within it, scampered a family of red squirrels, now nibbling a nut from the winter's store, now running and jumping from tree to tree, until only by the shaking of the twigs and the leaf-clusters could ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... north for the summer's campaign of nesting. Everywhere the sky was harrowed by the wedged wild geese, their voices as sweet as organ tones; and ducks quacked, whistled and whirred overhead, a true rain of birds beating up against the wind. Over every slew, on all sides, thousands of ducks of many kinds, and several sorts of geese hovered, settled, or burst up in eruptions of birds, their back-feathers shining like bronze as they turned so as to reflect ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... sundown the full fury of the gale broke forth, such a gale as I have never seen in summer, nor, seeing how swiftly it had come, even in winter. Mary and I sat in silence, the house quaking overhead, the tempest howling without, the fire between us sputtering with raindrops. Our thoughts were far away with the poor fellows on the schooner, or my not less unhappy uncle, houseless on the promontory; and yet ever and again we were startled back to ourselves, when the wind would rise and strike ...
— The Merry Men - and Other Tales and Fables • Robert Louis Stevenson
... While overhead bird whistles to bird, And round about plays a gamesome herd: "Safe with us,"—some take up the word,— "Safe with us, dear lord and friend: All the sweeter if long deferred Is ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... for night prayers. It was still quite light enough to read, so each Cub had a little homemade book of Morning and Night Camp Prayers. Kneeling in a quiet corner of the field, with just the evening sky overhead, with a pale star or two beginning to appear, it was easy to feel God near and to pray. The camp prayers started with "A prayer that we may pray well." It was a very old prayer, really, but it seemed ...
— Stories of the Saints by Candle-Light • Vera C. Barclay
... into the tropics. Even in the heat of the day the deck was pleasant under the awnings; the sun rose and set in crimson splendor; and the nights, with the moon at the full, were wonderful. At night Orion blazed overhead; and the Southern Cross hung in the star-brilliant heavens behind us. But after the moon rose the constellations paled; and clear in her light the tree-clad banks stood on either hand as we steamed steadily against the swirling current of ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... that the heavens themselves were in league with him. Overhead, scattered ranks of chimneypots were bitten out of a sky scarcely less blue and ardent than Italy's own. In every open space young leaves flashed, golden-green, on soot-blackened branches of chestnut, plane, and lime. And there were ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... small room, with a loft upon one side of it. The floor was covered with sticks, straw and litter. In one corner was a barrel, three quarters filled with hay. There were two or three bars overhead for the hens to roost upon. Stuyvesant looked around upon all these objects for a few minutes in silence, and then pointing up to the ...
— Stuyvesant - A Franconia Story • Jacob Abbott
... seen some shadows on the wall, in wondrous ways. Lives Pascal yet? None dares to dress The spicy broth,{11} to leave beside the nuptial door; And so another hour goes o'er. Then floats a lovely strain of music overhead, A sweet refrain oft heard before, 'Tis the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles |
