"Pelting" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... there came the muffled roar of their thousand hoofs, overtoned by the constant popping and scraping of their clashing horns. The noise filled his ears and could not quite be drowned even by the rattling peals of thunder. Swift drops of rain stung his face and the water of a pelting shower dripped from his hat brim and trickled from his boot heels. The beating rain, the vivid flashes of lightning and the loud peals of thunder drove the maddened creatures on at a still faster pace. Mead put frequent spurs to his horse and held on to the side of the mob of cattle, bent only ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... have thought that the very roof was coming in. In the gardens themselves, leaping into your view and passing out of it again as a picture shuttered by light, great trees were split and broken, the woods fired, the gravel driven up in a shower of pelting hail. I have seen storms in my life a-many, but never one so loud and so angry as the storm of that ebbing sleep-time. There were moments when a whirlwind of terrible sounds seemed to envelop us, and the very heavens might ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... the prelude to Tristan and Isolde, trying vainly to conjecture what that seething turmoil of strings and winds might mean to her, but she sat mutely staring at the violin bows that drove obliquely downward, like the pelting streaks of rain in a summer shower. Had this music any message for her? Had she enough left to at all comprehend this power which had kindled the world since she had left it? I was in a fever of curiosity, but Aunt Georgiana sat silent ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... lightened. A downpour of rain was imminent, but the sky had lost its terrifying aspect of abnormality; the yellowish haze that in superstitious eyes presaged some dreadful convulsion of nature had drifted away before the rising wind—it would be a pelting shower and nothing more. ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... slim tapered, cylinder that gleamed, a thing of beauty, in the reflected light of Jupiter which now was millions of miles distant. The sun was not visible and the light of the mother planet cast long shadows on the copper plates. Pelting ice particles clattered resoundingly against the metal helmets: frozen moisture from ...
— The Copper-Clad World • Harl Vincent
... the arbour, they were very willing to sit down, for they were all in a pelting heat. Then said Mercy, How sweet is rest to them that labour[114] (Matt. 11:28). And how good is the Prince of pilgrims, to provide such resting-places for them! Of this arbour I have heard much; but I never saw it before. But here let us beware of sleeping; for, as I have heard, for that it ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... an impatient glance at my panting steed. "It is cursed unlucky you should be so badly mounted, and we shall have a pelting shower presently." ...
— Pelham, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... she had daily dressed, afterwards recognising her as he passed by her garden railing, saluted her with the words, 'May Allah ever hold your hand, O lady!' This kindness it was that won her a way among the poor of the city. In lanes and streets where she had been met by pelting with dust and cries of 'Cursed Nazarene!' she was now met by the salutation, 'Blessed be thy hands and feet, O lady!' or similar words of welcome. 'Sitt Mariam' (literally Lady Mary) became a household ...
— Excellent Women • Various
... good nature!" Then she conjured him, by her life, to stand up and dance, and he arose, and capered about, and there was not a cushion in the house but she threw it at his head, and in like manner did all her women who also kept pelting him with oranges and lemons and citrons till he fell down senseless from the cuffing on the nape of the neck, the pillowing and the fruit pelting. "Now thou hast attained thy wish," said the old woman when he ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... were there, nude under woollen blankets, little Moors in tatters, Negroes, Tunisians, Port Mahonese, M'zabites, hotel servants in white aprons, all yelling and shouting, hooking on his clothes, fighting over his luggage, one carrying away the provender, another his medicine-chest, and pelting him in one fantastic medley with the names ...
— Tartarin of Tarascon • Alphonse Daudet
... to return to the house, but found that I had lost my way in the obscurity and pelting rain. For hours I wandered about, without the slightest clue as to where I was. I was literally soaked to the skin. Several times I fell into holes in a morass, and was up to my hips in moss and mud and water. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... three of them who were several years older than Johnnie Jones, and a year older than the other children. Lately these big boys had commenced to tease the smaller ones, and especially Johnnie Jones. They did not intend to be unkind, but would often make him cry by rolling him off his sled, pelting him with snowballs, or calling ...
— All About Johnnie Jones • Carolyn Verhoeff
... demanded an eager voice, as Nan came pelting in at the door, having flung down stairs in such a whirl that they had scarcely realized she had started before she ...
— The Governess • Julie M. Lippmann
... desirable object. All labor, without a result, is clear loss. To pay sailors for transporting rough dirt and filthy refuse across the ocean, is about as reasonable as it would be to engage their services, and pay them for pelting the water with pebbles. Thus we arrive at the conclusion that political Sophisms, notwithstanding their infinite variety, have one point in common, which is the constant confounding of the means with the end, and the ...
— Sophisms of the Protectionists • Frederic Bastiat
... descended from the scriptural lean ones, was munching the discarded tail of a large codfish which probably still held a faint flavor of the salt with which it had been preserved. Nondescript dogs, bearing very little resemblance to the original well-known breed, wandered aimlessly under the pelting rain. ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... of the pelting which our little earth receives, it seemed not an excessive requisition upon the meteoric supply to suppose that the requisite amount of matter may fall into the sun, and for a time this explanation of his incandescence was pretty generally ...
— A History of Science, Volume 5(of 5) - Aspects Of Recent Science • Henry Smith Williams
... a strength and fidelity of attachment to which the more lively land-spaniel cannot always lay just claim. The writer of this work once saved a young water-spaniel from the persecution of a crowd of people who had driven it into a passage, and were pelting it with stones. The animal had the character of being, contrary to what his species usually are, exceedingly savage; and he suffered himself to be taken up by me and carried from his foes with a kind of sullenness; ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... moose-bush bent, weighted with snow and scarlet berries; the hurrying streams ran dark and somber in their channels between dead-white banks; swamps turned blacker for the silvery setting; the flakes grew larger, pelting in steady, thickening torrents from the clouds as we came into a clearing called Jerseyfield, on the north side of Canada Creek; and here at last we were met by a crackling roar from ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... followed him, trying to be as good as they could—though it was difficult work. One of them proposed pelting him with snowballs, as they pelted each other. But at the first—which fell in his neck—he turned round so furiously, that they never sent a second, but walked behind him as ...
— The Adventures of A Brownie - As Told to My Child by Miss Mulock • Miss Mulock
... the rain, I should like to know. That damned pelting shower was vexatious enough—coming on when I was just in full swing: and then to come and find nobody in to tea! and you know I can't make the ...
— Agnes Grey • Anne Bronte
... Quebec, toiling in the western part of the colony. Wasting no time, he turned his steps toward the threatened city. His road lay through an almost trackless wilderness; his progress was impeded by the pelting rains of the autumnal storms. But through forest and through rain he rode fiercely; and at last as he burst from the forest, and saw towering before him the rocks of Cape Diamond, a cry of joy burst from his lips. On the broad, still bosom ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 1 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... of others, seeming to stand still just now, and different in no way in appearance from those others lying out before them. But wait! In a little while, in a few minutes indeed, they were moving, they were sweeping on under the cold, inquisitive beams of the search-light, on under the pelting hail of shrapnel which the French 75's were now hurling at them, and, crossing those irregular lines of grey corpses, dashing to the assault, were charging uphill at a rate which threatened to bring them to grips with the French in a ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... a minor kind of dilemma. The rain reminded him that his hat and great-coat had been left downstairs, in the front part of the house; and though he might have gone home without either in ordinary weather it was not a pleasant feat in the pelting winter rain. Retracing his steps to Viviette's room he took the light, and opened a closet-door that he had seen ajar on his way down. Within the closet hung various articles of apparel, upholstery lumber of all kinds filling the back part. Swithin thought ...
— Two on a Tower • Thomas Hardy
... them at any moment. Crash after crash echoed far above their heads, as the earth came together where it had split, and stones and chunks of clay rattled around them on every side. These they could not see, but they could feel them pelting the buggy top, and Jim screamed almost like a human being when a stone overtook him and struck his boney body. They did not really hurt the poor horse, because everything was falling together; only the stones and rubbish fell faster ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... after me up the Roods one day, pelting me with remarks, though I was doing my best to get away from him. "Even Rob Dow sees there's something come ower the minister," he bawled, "for Rob's fou ilka Sabbath now. Ay, but this I will say for Mr. Dishart, that he aye gies me a civil word," I thought I had left the policeman behind ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... a fool, and that no one who had not always lived at home like me would have let out that we had been for the suppression policy. As I was rather shocked, he went off to bed, saying he should look in to see what remained of Clarence after the pelting of the pitiless storm he was sure to bring on himself by his ridiculous faltering instead of speaking ...
— Chantry House • Charlotte M. Yonge
... little flat by the Ny, at the point where I had last seen my comrades the evening before, when, to my astonishment, the roar of cannon broke forth again, and the shells came hissing over my head and bursting all around me. There was not even a stump or stone for shelter from the pelting storm of iron, and in the woods just over the stream, the trees were being torn and rent asunder as if by thunderbolts. This was more of a joke than I had bargained for. Reflecting a moment, I concluded ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... witty colleague who ... used to write, became defunct, having been killed by a much more cynical rival, thanks to the much more venomous pen of a much more brilliant and witty colleague who .... Then, the insults of the latter having become pure and simple mud-pelting, his style soon became worn out, to the disgust of the public, and the celebrated Mr. What's his name had great difficulty in getting onto some obscure paper, where he was transformed into the ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume II (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... stranger in a fancy dress: not yet sufficiently well used to the same, to wear it with confidence, and defy public opinion. All the carriages were open, and had the linings carefully covered with white cotton or calico, to prevent their proper decorations from being spoiled by the incessant pelting of sugar-plums; and people were packing and cramming into every vehicle as it waited for its occupants, enormous sacks and baskets full of these confetti, together with such heaps of flowers, tied up in little nosegays, that some carriages were not only brimful of flowers, but literally running ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... pouring as they left the piazza, and before they were off the grounds big stones of hail were pelting their umbrella. The Doctor hurried along, the lightning glaring about them and the air ...
— Polly of the Hospital Staff • Emma C. Dowd
... Hosack was far from happy. One was because Mrs. Barnet Thatcher was seated on his right pelting him with brightness and the other because Joan, on his left, looked clean through his head whenever he tried to engage her in sentimental ...
— Who Cares? • Cosmo Hamilton
... one Sunday morning in a pelting rain for a walk of about six miles. It had been raining more or less for several days; the roads were in a sad condition for a "travelling praacher," as he often styled himself. The streams by the roadside were swollen over, and pouring their abundance out on the highroad, until it was very little ...
— Little Abe - Or, The Bishop of Berry Brow • F. Jewell
... imagination I saw myself rushing away pursued by a mob of lads, hooting, yelling, and pelting me; but I felt not the slightest inclination to be hunted in this fashion, and hence it was that I walked steadily and watchfully on, stick in hand, and prepared to use it too, if ...
— Patience Wins - War in the Works • George Manville Fenn
... him down that first time; which indeed did not despond at all then, though it felt the weight of life's undertakings and drawbacks. And the warm rain, and yellow, sun-coloured mist of this April day, had no likeness to the cold, pitiless, pelting December storm. Yet passing all the times between, his mind went back constantly to that first one. He felt over again, though as in a dream, its steps of loneliness and heart-sinking — its misty looking forward — and most especially that Bible word 'Now' — which his little sister's ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... might as well fall down in the sand at the base of the far Egyptian sphinx, open your eyes for a moment to the blue sky that spreads away to the horizon before its staring face, its cold, chiselled, inscrutable smile, and the next moment shut your eyes against the pelting dust the idle ...
— Christ, Christianity and the Bible • I. M. Haldeman
... the same day, and Marie's position became worse than ever. The children would not let her pass now in the streets, but annoyed her and threw dirt at her more than before. They used to run after her—she racing away with her poor feeble lungs panting and gasping, and they pelting her ...
— The Idiot • (AKA Feodor Dostoevsky) Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... the northern ocean is! How inspiriting the shrieking and howling of the boisterous wind! Even the fierce pelting of the rain is home-like, and the cold in which one shivers is stimulating! You cannot imagine the delight of being in a room with a door that will lock, to be in a bed instead of on a stretcher, of finding twenty-three letters containing good news, and of being able to read them ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... goes a shell. The poor fellows in the woods rejoice as it crashes through the trees over their heads, and cheer when it explodes over the enemy's line. Now, what a chorus! Thunder, gun after gun, shell after shell, musketry, pelting rain, ...
— Detailed Minutiae of Soldier life in the Army of Northern Virginia, 1861-1865 • Carlton McCarthy
... the gust came roaring down furiously upon them, pelting fiercely with rain, flapping and tearing at Theodora's cloak, like the wind in the fable, trying to whirl her off her feet, and making vehement efforts to wrench the umbrella out of Percy's hand. A buffet with wind and weather was a frolic which she particularly enjoyed, running ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge
... apprehension. What joy there was, was a martial joy. The people were confident of victory at last,—a victorious end, whatever might lie between, and of even what lay between they would confess no fear. Richmond was safe, Memphis safer, New Orleans safest. Yea, notwithstanding Porter and Farragut were pelting away at Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Indeed, if the rumor be true, if Farragut's ships had passed those forts, leaving Porter behind, then the Yankee sea-serpent was cut in two, and there was an end of him in ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... with flowers, and through the meadow sped a sunlit stream. They followed the stream until it led them into a garden of roses, and beyond the garden, standing on a gentle hill, was a palace white as snow. Before the palace was a crowd of fairy maidens pelting each other with rose-leaves. But when they saw the children they gave over their play, and came ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... coverlid. In crowds his brave war-comrades gathered round; stripped their cloaks, their coats, and strove in noble rivalry which of them should have the happiness to screen the Father of the Army at their own cost of exposure, and by any device keep the pelting of the weather from that loved head!" [Cogniazzo, Gestandnisse eines OEsterreichischen Veterans, ii. 251.] There is a picture for you, in the heights of Lichtenhayn, as you steam past Schandau, in contemplative mood; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Seven-Years War: First Campaign—1756-1757. • Thomas Carlyle
... twisting, with heads bent forward a little as if in a pelting rain. Only the old Sergeant and some of the younger ...
— "A Soldier Of The Empire" - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... observation to Mr. Seward, to whom he lent the book: 'This fellow must be a blockhead. They don't know how to go about their abuse. Who will read a five shilling book against me? No, Sir, if they had wit, they should have kept pelting ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 2 • Boswell
... found she could talk to him best when she was in short skirts and had her dog-whip, and she gesticulated with that and was always a little contemptuous and shrill. But sometimes the Vicar played master—a minute, middle-aged, rather breathless David pelting a childish Goliath with reproof and reproach and dictatorial command. The monster was now so big that it seems it was impossible for any one to remember he was after all only a child of seven, with all a child's desire for notice and ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... much surprised as the three marauders, heard the rocks pelting around them. Suddenly they looked up. Standing on a high rock above the place where Masterson and his cronies were talking, was a strange-looking figure in tattered ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... a fierce thunder-storm in the valley of the Chaudiere. It had come suddenly from the east, had shrieked over the village, levelling fences, carrying away small bridges, and ending in a pelting hail, which whitened the ground with pebbles of ice. It had swept up to Vadrome Mountain, and had marched furiously through the forest, carrying down hundreds of trees, drowning the roars of wild animals and the crying and fluttering of birds. One hour of ravage and ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... this they traversed until the lieutenant believed he had reached the point at which to turn off. Here he paused for a full minute, looking about him and peering into the darkness. The rain was still pelting down, though not so heavily as at first; and away to the eastward the clouds were already beginning to break, allowing a star to peep through here and there. At length Mildmay thought he had got his bearings right; and, selecting a star to steer by, away he plunged into the long thick wet ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... been the rainiest since 1857, and the continuous pelting rains had not beaten down upon the last half of this imperfect macadam in vain; for it has left it a surface of wave-like undulations, from out of which the frequent bowlder protrudes its unwelcome head, as if ambitiously striving to soar above its lowly surroundings. ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the steading? Far better To perish in a flare, than smoulder away Your life in smother: and what are faggots for, If not for firing? But, you've suffered, woman, More than need be, because you were ashamed. The lurcher that slinks with drooping tail and lugs Just asks for pelting. It's shame makes life bad travelling— The stone in the shoe that lames you. Other folk Might be ashamed to do the things I've done: That's their look-out; they've got no call to do them: I've never done what I would blush ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... something. Soon a man was seen to dart along the road they were following. As he drew near they observed that he stumbled as he ran, yet forced the pace and panted violently—like one running for his life. A few moments more and the crowd was close at his heels, pelting him with stones and yelling like wild beasts. The fugitive turned up a narrow lane between high walls, close to where our party stood. He was closely ...
— The Fugitives - The Tyrant Queen of Madagascar • R.M. Ballantyne
... Mr. Beecher with his correspondence; at the close of one afternoon, while he was with the Plymouth pastor at work, an organ-grinder and a little girl came under the study window. A cold, driving rain was pelting down. In a moment Mr. Beecher noticed the girl's bare toes sticking out of her ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... satisfaction, we had by mere accident in the boat. And yet, had it been daylight, they are, it seems, such exact marksmen, that if they could have seen but the least part of any of us, they would have been sure of us. We had, by the light of the moon, a little sight of them, as they stood pelting us from the shore with darts and arrows; and having got ready our firearms, we gave them a volley that we could hear, by the cries of some of them, had wounded several; however, they stood thus in battle array on the shore till break of day, which we supposed was that they might ...
— The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe • Daniel Defoe
... succor safely home. He passed them, first the tower at Fort Point, then the taller one at Whale's Back, steadfastly holding aloft their warning fires. There was no signal from the warning bell as he rowed by, though a danger more subtle, more deadly, than fog, or hurricane, or pelting storm was passing swift beneath it. Unchallenged by anything in earth or heaven, he kept on his way and gained the great outer ocean, doubtless pulling strong and steadily, for he had no time to lose, and the longest ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... pardoning mercy. The gospel finds us shipwrecked; the wave beneath ready to swallow us, the storm above pelting us, our good works foundered, there is no such thing as getting ashore unhelped. The gospel finds us incarcerated; of all those who have been in thick dungeon darkness, not one soul ever escaped by his own power. If a ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... finished an indifferent dinner, paid a large bill, and went out to survey the preparations for departure, so far as the pelting rain in the court-yard would let him. He was going over the Simplon, starting rather late in the day, and the weather was abominable. His valet, Richard Dell, kept watch over the luggage and encouraged the ostlers, with a fairly stoical countenance. He was an old ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... they love not censure Better than mortals. Friends, a thought has struck me: Were there no temples, would there, think ye, be Air worshippers?[v] that is, when it is angry, 50 And pelting as even now. ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... boy—he is said to be still alive in St. Vincent—was herding cattle on the mountain-side. A stone fell near him; and then another. He fancied that other boys were pelting him from the cliffs above, and began throwing stones in return. But the stones fell thicker: and among them one, and then another, too large to have been thrown by human hand. And the poor little fellow woke up to the fact that not a boy, but the mountain, was throwing ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... Hen!" he cried, "what can she mean, really? How can I be her brother? She lives in a town on the land, and I live in my kingdom of mud and water. How could two creatures possibly be more unlike? How"—but while he had been thinking of these hows, once more the Hen had managed to escape, and was pelting back to her barnyard as fast ...
— The Curious Book of Birds • Abbie Farwell Brown
... go, though not by the usual path, to where your friends reside. I am not your enemy, but a swain who esteems it his happiness to have come between you and your distress, and to have rescued you from the pelting of the storm. Suspend, my love, for a few moments your suspicions and your anxiety, and we shall arrive where all your doubts will be removed, and all I hope will be pleasure and felicitation." While he thus spoke the chariot hastened to the conclusion of their journey, and entered the area ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... disturbances. Upon this fact no very great stress need be laid; but it tends to prove that while the Catholic church has not power to purchase land for its chapels to stand upon, the laws for its protection are of no avail. In the mean time, the Catholics are at the mercy of every "pelting petty officer," who may choose to play his "fantastic tricks before high heaven," to insult his God, ...
— The Works of Lord Byron: Letters and Journals, Volume 2. • Lord Byron
... appearance of which indicated that its inhabitants were of a more peaceful character than were those who, a few years before, had occupied the prison-like houses of strength. She now resided in a small mud-built and turf-covered hovel, which in winter afforded but a sorry shelter from the "pelting of the pitiless storm." ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... wanted to sleep at night, I went to the school in a pelting rain; I came back by moonlight; and I beg you to remark that monsieur, who was so good as to escort me, has come upstairs to bid you good-bye, because he leaves Paris ...
— The Deputy of Arcis • Honore de Balzac
... gave way to a half-hearted April, days of pelting rain with a few hours now and then of warm sunshine. Patches of grass showed green against the dirty snowbanks lingering stubbornly in sheltered corners; here and there a tiny purple or yellow crocus put up its bright head; a few brave robins started their nest-keeping ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... like a fountain of masonry. When fire encounters high explosives in a tunnel the results are remarkable. Torches dropped or were blown out, and stumbling, cursing men ran right and left—anywhere to escape the pelting stones. Padraig, holding to his master's arm, guided him out of the gate and toward the sound of trampling hoofs upon a little hillock. There they found Edrupt, Guy and Alan struggling with their frantic horses. Swart came up with two more horses, and soon the party ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... streams. There no harsh and boisterous winds are permitted to shake and disturb the air, and ravage the beauty of the groves; there prevails no melancholy, nor darksome weather, no drowning rain, nor pelting hail; no forked lightning, nor rending and resounding thunder; no wintry pinching cold, nor withering and panting summer heat; nor any thing else that can give pain or sorrow or annoyance; but all is bland and gentle and serene; a perpetual youth and joy reigns throughout all nature, and ...
— The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (Vol. II) • Washington Irving
... Perhaps Dr. Holmes, whose felicitous genius overflowing in wit and music has long put the sparkling bead upon the Phi Beta Kappa goblet, recited the lines whose response was the gay laughter that rang through a pelting shower of rain far over the college grounds. Perhaps as "Auld Lang Syne" was sung with locked hands at the end of the dinner, if "Auld Lang Syne" is ever sung at Phi Beta Kappa dinners, there was a general feeling that the day had been a red-letter day for the university, and a white day in ...
— From the Easy Chair, vol. 1 • George William Curtis
... threw a brickbat in return. He was but one against fifty lads pelting him with snowballs, which knocked off his hat, struck him in the face, compelling him to flee, the jeering boys following him to ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... were, of course, of the "noblest" type. The husband was fooled (naturally), and the chief amusement of the piece appeared to consist in his being shut out of his own house in dressing-gown and slippers during a pelting storm of rain, while his spouse (who was particularly specified as "pure") enjoyed a luxurious supper with her highly moral and virtuous admirer. My wife laughed delightedly at the poor jokes and the ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... sail, so as to keep at that distance astern, and the chase, after having lost several men by musketry, the captain of her waved his hat in token of surrender. We immediately shortened sail to keep the weather-gage, pelting her until every sail was lowered down: we then rounded to, keeping her under our lee, and firing at every man who made his appearance on deck. Taking possession of her was a difficult task: a boat could hardly live in such a sea and when the captain called aloud for volunteers, ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... given by the late Mr. Warry, so many years consul at Smyrna, of the astonishment and envy of his mother's neighbours at Sawbridgeworth, in Herts, where his father had a country-house, when he ran home and came back with an umbrella, which he had just brought from Leghorn, to shelter them from a pelting shower which detained them in the church-porch, after the service, on one summer Sunday. From Mr. Warry's age at the time he mentioned this, and other circumstances in his history, I conjecture that it occurred not later than 1775 or 1776. ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 32, June 8, 1850 • Various
... to him. He muttered something unintelligible. The third and fourth cans made him hop around like a surprised robin beneath an apple tree, with fruit pelting the ground near it. At length he hobbled off, talking to himself about a new lead he had found, without solving the mystery of the tin cans dropping ...
— A Mountain Boyhood • Joe Mills
... to be seen anywhere, not a living being of any description. In a shower of pelting rain we took possession of the largest hut. It is decidedly annoying to get thoroughly wet at the end of a long day, and the prospect of a night in damp clothes was in no way pleasing. The hut was ...
— The Land of the Black Mountain - The Adventures of Two Englishmen in Montenegro • Reginald Wyon
... space just as a puff of white smoke burst from the bastion. Instead of instantly seeking shelter till the shot had struck, he, in his inexperience, thought the shot must have struck, and all danger be over. He stayed there mooning instead of pelting under cover: the shot (eighteen-pound) struck him right on the breast, knocked him into spilikins, and ...
— White Lies • Charles Reade
... many pelts looked like an impossible task for a boy. But Dell recalled, among the many experiences with which Forrest, when a cripple, regaled his nurses, was the skinning of winter-killed cattle with a team. The same principle applied in pelting a wolf, where by very little aid of a knife, about the head and legs, a horse could do the work of a dozen men. The corral fence afforded the ready snubbing-post, Dog-toe could pull his own weight on a rope from ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... down; that's what you're here for," I observed, closing and holding the outside door. "Ugh! there's a chill in the air. The dew is pelting down from the pines like ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... Sherwood vociferously. The giant waved his hand and shouted in reply. Nan cowered between him and Tom, on the seat, shielding her face from the flying snow from the ponies' hoofs, though the tears in her eyes were not brought there only by the sting of the pelting she received. ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... excitement, transported by her blissful fever, and insensible, so it seemed, to the pelting of the rain, he only drew this answer: "Pooh! what does it matter, now that we are soaking? It is by stopping that we might do ourselves harm. Let us make haste, all haste. In three minutes we shall be at home and able to make fine sport of those ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... storm and wind, and pelting hail, Their efforts were of no avail. The golden anchor forth they threw; Towards ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... forbidden at length by the authorities of several towns. Every class in colonial days seems to have found its own peculiar way of enjoying itself, whether by fascinating through beauty and brilliance the supposedly sophisticated French dukes, or by pelting barn-storming actors with eggs and ...
— Woman's Life in Colonial Days • Carl Holliday
... for compassion, a few moments attention. Emily's heart, perhaps, pleaded as powerfully, but she had resolution enough to resist both, together with the clamorous entreaties of Theresa, that she would not venture home alone in the dark, and had already opened the cottage door, when the pelting storm compelled her ...
— The Mysteries of Udolpho • Ann Radcliffe
... it is good to be with Theocritus, for he lets you live awhile in the happy age and under the happy heaven that were his. He gives you leave and opportunity to listen to the tuneful strife of Lacon and Comatas; to witness the duel in song between Corydon and Battus; to talk of Galatea pelting with apples the barking dog of her love-lorn Polypheme; under the whispering elms, to lie drinking with Eucritus and Lycidas by the altar of Demeter, 'while she stands smiling by, with sheaves and ...
— Views and Reviews - Essays in appreciation • William Ernest Henley
... in the man as he sat tranquilly upon the cushions, the amber mouthpiece of the nargileh between his lips; no sound of wrath in the gentle voice which bid the Ethiopian eunuch to remain prostrated upon the floor, until the arrival of the other slaves, who could be heard pelting through the house from every direction in answer to the summons ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... right the French as well as the British had exhausted their ammunition, and the singular spectacle was presented of two hostile forces pelting each other with stones, by which many heavy blows were given on both sides, and some killed, among them a sergeant of the 28th. The grenadiers and a company of the 40th presently moved out against ...
— At Aboukir and Acre - A Story of Napoleon's Invasion of Egypt • George Alfred Henty
... gave backward; in one mighty toss, he threw off his conqueror, turned, and galloped down the orchard with his tail curved like a pretzel across his back. Behind him followed the youth, lashing him with the halter as long as he could keep it up, pelting him with rocks and clods as the retreat gained. So, in a cloud of dust, they vanished into ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... scorched July Drives the pelting hail, From thunderous lightning-clouds, that blot Blue heaven grown lurid-pale. Weedy waves are tossed ashore, Sea-things strange to sight Gasp upon the barren shore And fade away ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... seized with a fit of kitten-like yawning which she does not even trouble to hide behind her hand, and which appears to be endless. She pulls a very long face at the thought of the steep hill we must struggle up tonight through the pelting rain. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... candidates who come from heaven knows where, but dead against Ministers, and an experienced Parliamentary man. Hawley's rather rough: he forgot that he was speaking to me. He said if Brooke wanted a pelting, he could get it cheaper than by ...
— Middlemarch • George Eliot
... children of the city ran down the hill to their home, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was weeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and brittle and active with the pelting hail. ...
— Tales of Space and Time • Herbert George Wells
... came hurtling and struck me. Then a rain of pebbles, like hailstones was pelting ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... only an example, and, before one could have counted ten, young men and boys were pelting the informer with such missiles as ...
— Under the Liberty Tree - A Story of The 'Boston Massacre' • James Otis
... noted—in short he must obtain an eye photograph of the country he observes and grasp exactly what is happening there. In winter, with the thermometer well down, a blood-freezing wind blowing, wreaths of clouds drifting below and obscuring vision for minutes at a time, the rain possibly pelting down as if presaging a second deluge, the plight of the vigilant human eye aloft ...
— Aeroplanes and Dirigibles of War • Frederick A. Talbot
... and unrivalled circuit. And what is more wonderful than all, the noble organ screen, designed by "Vathek" himself, has still survived; its gilded lattices, though exposed for twenty years to the "pelting of the pitiless storm," yet glitter in the last rays of the setting sun. We entered the doorway of the southern entrance hall, that door which once admitted thousands of the curious when Fonthill was in its glory. This wing, though not yet in ruins, ...
— Recollections of the late William Beckford - of Fonthill, Wilts and Lansdown, Bath • Henry Venn Lansdown
... act of this play, the House of Lords was represented, and Sir Brougham made an eloquent speech in the Queen's favor. Presently the shouts of the mob were heard without; from shouting they proceeded to pelting; and pasteboard-brickbats and cabbages came flying among the representatives of our hereditary legislature. At this unpleasant juncture, SIR HARDINGE, the Secretary-at-War, rises and calls in the military; the act ends in a general row, and the ignominious ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... that had failed to find shelter in time, and Bo, peeping out between the weeds, saw half a dozen darkies frantically trying to open the big door of the sugar house, which had been hastily closed by those within, while the angry bees were pelting furiously ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the captain stood struggling for speech, then, stepping back with a suddenness that overturned his chair, he grabbed his cap from the sideboard and dashed out of the house. The amazed Mr. Hartley ran to the window and, with some uneasiness, saw his old friend pelting along at the rate of a ...
— Salthaven • W. W. Jacobs
... ripening for a stampede. Its component delegates had contained the stampede fever for weeks before they assembled. Men leaped and screamed. It was a storm of enthusiasm; two thousand feet furnished the thunder-roar; hats went up and came down like pelting rain; and voices bellowed like the bursting wind volleys of ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... and hearing were somewhat blunted by age, and he was proceeding very slowly; for his horse was old and feeble, like his owner. He was suddenly disturbed by loud hurrahs from behind, and by a furious pelting of balls of snow and ice upon the top of ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... away rapidly. The General had instructed the C.O. to report to him by telephone at 2.50. At that hour there was not the slightest diminution apparent in the spray of bullets which was lashing our front. At least one machine-gun was pelting, at very close range, the barricade blocking the northern end of the stretch of F12 held by us—the very barricade behind which one of our patrols was waiting to slip out into the open. Others were ripping up our sandbags here and there along the line. No patrol could ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... and who can determine the point in a city like London? A crowd gathers and disperses here, as the wind plays with a volume of dust on a March day. But, anyhow, the onlookers favoured the band against Babbage, and they let their views be understood, by pelting him with mud. Still, he held to his purpose, routed out a policeman, and had the band driven off. That time, at all events, he was able to resume his ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... kindred virtues which flourish in a frozen soil. Not that we grieve when, after some seven months of storm and bitter frost, Spring, in the guise of a flower-crowned virgin, is seen driving away the hoary despot, pelting him with violets by the handful and strewing green grass on the path behind him. Often ere he will give up his empire old Winter rushes fiercely buck and hurls a snowdrift at the shrinking form of Spring, yet step by step he is compelled to retreat ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... a pelting hail storm Jerkline Jo and Hiram went into camp beside the mountain lake, and the stage was set for the second act in the plot cooked up by the two who had lost all principle under Ragtown's subtle influence—Al ...
— The She Boss - A Western Story • Arthur Preston Hankins
... its banks, upon the sloping hill-side and in every shady nook and dell, smiling in strange beauty among the stern features of the woodland scene. Sweet flowers, so fair and fragile, that they flourish only when sheltered from the rude blast and pelting storm by some friendly shade, and so modest and retiring in their habits, that they shun the open field, where they must encounter the scrutinizing gaze of the noonday sun, and choose this sweet seclusion ...
— The Snow-Drop • Sarah S. Mower
... clouds rushed up from the horizon, throwing into relief the slopes of the mountains on which the sun was still shining brilliantly, and deepening the verdure of the rice-fields by their shadows. A few minutes of pelting rain and a flash or two of vivid lightning low down on the horizon, and once more the sky was clear and ...
— A Visit to Java - With an Account of the Founding of Singapore • W. Basil Worsfold
... day, Sunny sat up in the chocolate tree, listening to one of the stories that Honey the gardener's son was so fond of telling her; and Honey the gardener's son lay on the grass below, and tried to catch the chocolate drops with which she was pelting him. ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... he made but slow progress through the pitiless, pelting storm, and he heartily cursed his folly in attempting the task of coming home at all, on such a night as this. But a change came o'er the spirit of his dream. As the contents of the canteen had diminished, Billy's spirits had risen in exact proportion, ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... attempted to return, urged them onwards, and we had the satisfaction in about fifteen minutes to see them all safe on the other side. It was a matter of greater difficulty to manage the asses: their natural stubbornness of disposition made them endure a great deal of pelting and shoving before they would venture into the water; and when they had reached the middle of the stream, four of them turned back, in spite of every exertion to get them forwards. Two hours were spent in getting the whole of them over; an hour more was employed in ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... with the duke commenced in a very singular manner. During the discussions on the Reform Bill, his grace was often the object of popular pelting; and I was, on one occasion, among a crowd of free-born Englishmen who, disliking his political opinions, were exercising the constitutional privilege of hooting him. Fired by the true spirit of British patriotism, and roused to a pitch of enthusiasm by ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... when they're wanted.' He turned his collar down from his ear and listened, but as before only the whistling of the wind could be heard, the flapping and fluttering of the kerchief tied to the shafts, and the pelting of the snow against the woodwork of the sledge. He again ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... those females whose office is to multiply, and rear the multiplied: who, when at last they consent to leave off pelting one out of every room in the house with babies, hover about the fair scourges that are still in full swing, and do so cluck, they seem to multiply by proxy. It was in this spirit she entreated Eli to let her stay at Rotterdam, while he went back ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... not heal, though they may divert your attention from, your gaping wounds. You have friends, and the like, but though you have all these and much beside, these will not avail. 'The covering is shorter than that a man can wrap himself in it.' Naked and shivering, exposed to the pelting and the pitiless storm, with rags soaked through, and chilled to the bone, what is there but death before the man in the wild weather on some trackless moor? And what is there for us if we have ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... had expected and came down in the early afternoon upon a good road that ran up the eastern side of the Ridge. I was just congratulating myself that I would be with my men before dark, when a troop of Confederate cavalry came pelting over a rise in ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... "terra-cotta" dress, And we stayed, because of the pelting storm, Within the hansom's dry recess, Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless We ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... A PELTING rain volleyed against the great glass dome of the terminus, a roaring wind boomed in the roof. Passengers, hurrying along the platform, glistened in big coats and tweed caps pulled close over their ears. By the platform the night express was drawn up—a glittering mass of green and gold, shimmering ...
— Golden Stories - A Selection of the Best Fiction by the Foremost Writers • Various
... charming. The place was so dark that the sparks seemed as large and bright as stars, while the darkness that followed was deeper by contrast. Forgetting the pipe and tobacco in this new-found joy, Doocheek kept pelting away at the flint, sending showers of sparks past his knees, and some of them were so large that they even fell upon ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... of scorched July Drives the pelting hail, 50 From thunderous lightning-clouds, that blot Blue heaven grown lurid-pale. Weedy waves are tossed ashore, Sea-things strange to sight Gasp upon the barren shore And ...
— Goblin Market, The Prince's Progress, and Other Poems • Christina Rossetti
... in a sense,' brushing the spurious argument aside, 'but I don't like any of you to meddle with them. And there she sat, pelting the two of them ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... a pelting rain to the Academy, and saw many pictures. A Pieta, by Guido, was very striking. The desolate mother, with her dead son on her knees, haunted me long afterwards. St. Jerome and the infant Christ, by Elizabeth Sirani, I liked. Raphael won't suit yet. Sad for me, but I cannot ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... effigies of the principal ministers, which, after hanging and beheading them, they committed to the flames with great uproar. On another day Mr. Charles Fox (as yet a vehement Tory) complained to the House that the mob in Palace Yard had insulted him, breaking the glasses of his chariot, and pelting him with oranges, stones, etc.—Parliamentary History, ...
— The Constitutional History of England From 1760 to 1860 • Charles Duke Yonge
... tales except with bolts, that flew invisible, fatal arrows, from the jungles, if the American soldier had not been of stuff that was like pure steel, and marched unflinchingly through the deadly hail, regarding the bitter pelting as a summons to "come on" and carry the trenches and ambuscades by storm. The incapacity of the Spaniards to put down the Cuban Rebellion caused grave misapprehensions, both as to the Spanish and Cuban soldiery, for few Americans understand the conditions ...
— The Story of the Philippines and Our New Possessions, • Murat Halstead |
