"Pitchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... impenetrable barrier, and Sam needed all his knowledge of the forest to enable him to work his way southward at night through such woods as those. The little party of wanderers sometimes found themselves apparently walled in in the pitchy darkness, with no possible way out but Sam's instinct, as he called it, which was simply his ability to remember the things he had learned, and to put two facts together to find out a third, always extricated them. Once they found themselves in a swamp, where the water ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... of the ship was thus divided into cells, and when candles and lanterns were removed the places were in pitchy darkness. I went on board the Success one day, while she was on exhibition here, long after she had given up her old occupation, and as a matter of curiosity, I had myself shut up in one of the cells and the light removed. I told them ...
— The Land of the Kangaroo - Adventures of Two Youths in a Journey through the Great Island Continent • Thomas Wallace Knox
... pitchy gloom, wondering what and where this scuttle might be, I crouched, a very wild and desperate creature, peering into the gloom and starting at every sound; thus presently I heard the scrape of a viol somewhere beyond the bulkheads that shut me in and therewith ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... am, then, at length, anchored off the coast of Borneo! not under very pleasant circumstances, for the night is pitchy dark, with thunder, lightning, rain, ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... magilp[obs3], lacquer, japan. artificial resin, polymer; ion-exchange resin, cation-exchange resin, anion exchange resin, water softener, Amberlite[obs3], Dowex[Chem], Diaion. V. varnish &c. (overlay) 223. Adj. resiny[obs3], resinous; bituminous, pitchy, tarry; asphaltic, asphaltite. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus • Peter Mark Roget
... our whereabouts. We might be at the very southern end of the lake, should the wind have shifted to the northward, or we might be at its western extremity. Wherever we were, there we must remain until daylight; for were we to attempt moving, in the pitchy darkness which hung around, we might fall off into the water, or lose ourselves in ...
— In the Rocky Mountains - A Tale of Adventure • W. H. G. Kingston
... a lighted lantern, and Tom McChesney stood ready to seize it at the first alarm. On such occasions the current of time runs sluggish. Thrice our muscles were startled into tenseness by the baying of a hound, and once a cock crew out of all season. For the night was cloudy and pitchy black, and the dawn ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... were far outnumbered by the Burgundians, and it was only by dint of their desperate courage and by reason of the pitchy darkness and of the locality with its unknown roughness that the former inflicted the ...
— Charles the Bold - Last Duke Of Burgundy, 1433-1477 • Ruth Putnam
... darkness, plunging and diving at every stroke, striking my head and hands against jagged stones and sharp corners, clutching at last something in my fingers, and dragging it up with all my might. I spoke, I cried aloud, but there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy blackness with my burden, and the house was five hundred yards away. Struggling still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of moonlight—the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad and shallow brook as I stumbled over the stones and at last ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... mouth of the portals seven Above our abodes he hover'd With lances that yawn'd for carnage; But vanish'd, afore his chaps With slaughter of Thebes were glutted; Afore the flicker of pitchy flame Might to the crown of turrets climb. So fierce the rattle of war around Was pour'd on his rear by the serpent-foe Hard match'd in deadly encounter. For Jove the over-vaunting tongue Supremely hates. Their ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... a shriek of terror, shrunk into the bed, and in an instant the room was involved in pitchy darkness. A freezing ague seized her limbs, and drops of chilling sweat stood upon her face. Immediately a horrid hoarse voice burst from amidst the gloom of her apartment, "Begone! begone from this house!" The bed on ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... I resolutely turned my meditations elsewhere, and again in a little while I seemed to think of nothing, but lay and bathed in the silence, and indulged my eyes with the good red light of the torch, inhaling its pitchy scent. I was conscious, yet for a time I had no thought: I was like something half animal, half vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor has sense, but only lives. I seemed hung in space, as one feels when ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... entrance at Belle Plain, past a break in the wall of the forest where the pale light of stars showed Betty the corn-field she and Hannibal had but lately crossed, and then on into pitchy darkness again. She clung to the desperate hope that they might meet some one on the road, when she could cry out and give the alarm. She held herself in readiness for this, but there was only the steady ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... thy Sphere, May'st follow still thy Calling there. To thee the Bull will lend his hide, By Phoebus newly tann'd and dry'd. For thee they Argo's Hulk will tax, And scrape her pitchy Sides for Wax. Then Ariadne kindly lends Her braided Hair to make thee Ends. The Point of Sagittarius' Dart Turns to an awl, by heav'nly Art; And Vulcan, wheedled by his Wife, Will forge for thee a Paring-Knife. ...
— The Bickerstaff-Partridge Papers • Jonathan Swift
... kissed her lips; but the kiss ended in a crashing sound, and a shock of pain in his whole body which expelled the breath from his lungs. The moonlit island, sandy beach, blue sea and sky were swallowed in a blaze of light, which gave way to pitchy darkness, with rain on his face and whistling wind in his ears, while he clung with both arms, not to a girl, but to a hard, wet, and cold mizzentopgallant-yard whose iron jack-stay had bumped him severely between the eyes. Below him in the darkness a scream rang ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... the surface he estimated, his hands encountered an opening in the wall. He felt about, learned it Was unscreened, and boldly entered. Almost before he was in, he found he could come up; but he came up slowly, breaking surface in pitchy blackness and feeling about him ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... the tent was torn from the grasp of the four scouts, and went sailing off into the pitchy darkness. Paul could only hope that it might become fast in some friendly tree, and be found again when ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... thing. How man in bacchanalian sphere Soars to the heat of Pleasure's sun, Then, by gradations dark and drear, Sinks low as thee, poor wingless one: How hearts from proud Ambition's height Have drooped to darkest, lowest hell— From blazing noon to pitchy night, With pangs a demon-tongue may tell: How aspirations glory-fraught Have gained the goal in dark despair; How golden hopes have come to nought But ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... was an appalling one—but the midshipmen did not lose heart. Away flew the drogher amid the roaring seas into the pitchy darkness, which now settled ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... Wednesday, the nineteenth, found their vanguard in a deep forest of pines, less than a mile from Fort Caroline, and near the low hills which extended in its rear, and formed a continuation of St. John's Bluff. All around was one great morass. In pitchy darkness, knee-deep in weeds and water, half starved, worn with toil and lack of sleep, drenched to the skin, their provisions spoiled, their ammunition wet, and their spirit chilled out of them, they stood in shivering groups, cursing the enterprise ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... leave, she had been seen from the threshold by Mr. Sturgiss and by Laetitia's Harry. It was pitchy dark, emerging from the brightness of the interior, and he had stepped with her to conduct her to the gate. "It was an extraordinary coincidence, meeting you here," ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... eyelids sent, The sidelong light of two such wondrous eyes, That all the saints grew sinners . . . Then a professor of God's word he seemed, And o'er a multitude of upturned eyes Showered blessed dews, and made the pitchy path, Down which howl damned Spirits, seem the bright Thrice hallowed way to Heaven; yet grimly through The glorious veil of those seducing shapes, Frowned out the ...
— Welsh Folk-Lore - a Collection of the Folk-Tales and Legends of North Wales • Elias Owen
... servants. O let them not bring about their damned designs that stand now at the entrance of the bottomless pit, expecting the watchword to open and let out those dreadful locusts and scorpions to reinvolve us in that pitchy cloud of infernal darkness, where we shall never more see the sun of Thy truth again, never hope for the cheerful dawn, never more hear the bird of morning sing. Be moved with pity at the afflicted state of this our shaken monarchy, that now lies ...
— Life of John Milton • Richard Garnett
... country-houses, large and crooked chimneys, which had been altered again and again, till they ran one into another, anastomosing (as Professor Owen would say) considerably. So Tom fairly lost his way in them; not that he cared much for that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was as much at home in a chimney as a mole is underground; but at last, coming down as he thought the right chimney, he came down the wrong one, and found himself standing on the hearthrug in a room the like of which he had ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... half drowned with rain. He told me it was like being swept by a flood through a cavern. They turned their backs to the squall; the skipper, it seems, got an oar over the stern to keep the boat before it, and for two or three minutes the end of the world had come through a deluge in a pitchy blackness. The sea hissed "like twenty thousand kettles." That's his simile, not mine. I fancy there was not much wind after the first gust; and he himself had admitted at the inquiry that the sea never got up that night to any extent. He crouched down in the bows and ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... orderly. First thick clouds rose from all the liquid plains; Then mists from marishes, and grounds whose veins Were conduit-pipes to many a crystal spring; From standing pools and fens were following Unhealthy fogs; each river, every rill Sent up their vapours to attend her will These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt earth and heaven And as Night's chariot through the air was driven, Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue Talk'd to the Echo; satyrs broke their dance, And all the upper world lay in a trance. Only the curled ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... cave-like chamber, gloomy as a bad conscience. On the shelf over the stove there stood a miserable little lamp whose light fell on two sheriff's officers and a lawyer's clerk, with stern countenances, leaning against the wall. The windows were hung with rags, the alcoves were pitchy dark, a mute ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... dark and dirty road full of plaster, odd shavings, and all the raffle that builders leave in the waste room of a house. The passage was perhaps three feet wide, and, except for the struggling light round the edges of the cupboards (there was one to each dormer), almost pitchy dark. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... heard a sound of axes far down the lake, followed by the faint glow of a distant fire. The inference was plain, that an enemy was there, and that the necessity of warming himself had overcome his caution. Then all was still for some two hours, when, listening in the pitchy darkness, the watchers heard the footsteps of a great body of men approaching on the ice, which at the time was bare of snow. The garrison were at their posts, and all the cannon on the side towards the lake vomited grape and round-shot ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... of some monstrous heavy man were on my chest, cords were being circled and knotted about my hands and arms. My feet were already bound so fast that the slightest movement of them was an agony. Dumb, blind, bound, what could I do but lie where I was? The work was done swiftly, in the pitchy dark, and in silence so profound that I could hear Virginia's even breathing, separated as she was from me by the length of a long floor. There was but one effort I could make with my tied ankles, and that was to raise both legs together and bring the heels down with a thud upon ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... faint hope that some one of them might come in the drowning man's way and enable him to keep afloat till daylight, if by any chance his purpose of self-slaughter—for so it seemed to me—had changed with his souse into the water. The night was pitchy black, and the waves were running a tremendous pace, so that there really seemed to be little likelihood of the strongest swimmer keeping himself long afloat; but we did our best and hoped our hardest, even those of us who, like myself, disliked ...
— Marjorie • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... in turn are forced to abandon the attempt in despair. First of all, the weather is against us. It is maddeningly uncertain, and the best-arranged entertainment cannot be considered a success if the guests have to struggle through rain and tempest and streets ankle-deep in water and pitchy darkness to assist at it. People are hardly likely to make themselves pleasant at a party when their return home through storm and darkness is on their minds all the time: at least, I know I cannot do so. But the weather is only one of the lets and hinderances to society in Natal. We are ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XVII, No. 102. June, 1876. • Various
... pistol, Julie, and let us go." The night was pitchy dark, although the fog had rolled away; for the moon had not yet risen, and no light came from the few feeble stars that were out. Over swamp and tangle, across bare marsh, and through dense wood they went, lightly as a pair of fawns, till the warm, ruddy glare of the strange ...
— Annette, The Metis Spy • Joseph Edmund Collins
... pitchy blasts from hell up-born Stop the outgoings of the morn, And Nature play her fiery games In this forced night, with ...
— England's Antiphon • George MacDonald
... his surmises. The pitchy darkness of a winter night would scarcely have sufficed to hide the movements attendant on the sudden arrival of a large body of men in the English camp, had not the hoarse artillery of the wind, moaning, sweeping, and then rushing o'er the hills with a crashing sound like thunder, completely ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... stops at its base, nor dares to gaze into that light above; and the silence is more impressive than all words. Instead of pagan attempts at a likeness of God, we have next painted, with equal descriptive accuracy, poetic force, and theological truth, the pitchy blackness which hides Him. In the gloom of its depths He makes His "secret place" His "tent." It is "darkness of waters," that is, darkness from which streams out the thunder-rain; it is "thick clouds of the skies;" or perhaps the expression should be rendered, "heavy masses of clouds." ...
— The Life of David - As Reflected in His Psalms • Alexander Maclaren
... south-west, where such persons dwell, having not yet departed to their infernal abodes." He took me by the hand and led me there. I saw some small houses, in which were apartments for the studious, and in the midst of them one which served as a principal hall to the rest. It was constructed of a pitchy kind of stone, covered with a sort of glazed plates, that seemed to sparkle with gold and silver, like the stones called Glades Mariae; and here and there were interspersed shells which glittered in like manner. We approached and knocked at the door, which was ...
— The Delights of Wisdom Pertaining to Conjugial Love • Emanuel Swedenborg
... strike," he growled. "Wait till the moon is from behind that cloud. Ugh! It is black here, pitchy black." A full, heavy minute elapsed, disturbed by the scuffle of the negro's feet as he ran and cowered in the furthest corner, and the soft creaking of the iron door, and a sudden suck and soughing of the night air. ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... before my vacation, but I never seem to get around to it." As, alack-a-day! he did not get around to me before that occasion, I went, packed in the bottom of a trunk, with the young man and his wife on their annual holiday. In my pitchy gaol I had, of course, no means of calculating the flight of time, but when I next saw the light, after what seemed to me an interminable spell, I appeared to be the occasion of some excitement. The young man brought me up after several vigorous dives into the bottom of the trunk, ...
— Walking-Stick Papers • Robert Cortes Holliday
... consternation of the discovery! Oh, the thunders of remonstrance with which Hades resounded! The wheel of Ixion might whirl, and the pitchy depths blaze with the fires of indignation, but all this did not dry the tears of the nymph, nor soothe her bitterness of woe. Every tenderness that could reconcile, every enjoyment that could wean, was vainly essayed; ...
— Trifles for the Christmas Holidays • H. S. Armstrong
... a running skirmish was kept up for some miles. Hobson was close in rear, and Judah's men were approaching Buffington. Morgan reached the river near the ford about eight o'clock in the evening. The night was pitchy dark, and his information was that a small earthwork built to command the ford was occupied by a permanent garrison. He concluded to wait for daylight. The work had in fact been abandoned on the preceding day, ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... for excursionizing in all directions, and the place itself is full of quiet charm. There is wonderful sweetness and solace in these undulating hill-sides, clothed with brightest green, their little tossing rivers and sunny glades all framed by solemn hills—I should rather say mountains—pitchy black with the solemn pine. You may search far and wide for a picture so engaging as Gerardmer when the sun shines, its gold-green slopes sprinkled with white chalets, its red-roofed village clustered about a rustic church tower, and at its feet the ...
— In the Heart of the Vosges - And Other Sketches by a "Devious Traveller" • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... command, including the Harris Light, which had been kept mostly in reserve during the conflicts of the past few days. Thus reenforced, this intrepid leader marched directly toward the Monterey Pass, arriving at the foot of this rocky defile in the mountains in the midst of pitchy darkness. ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... rain, which was now as heavy as hail, I could see nothing clearly. The rain had already extinguished the candle. I heard an oath from Belville, a laugh from Raffles, and for a second that was all. Raffles was coming to me, and the other could not even see to fire; that was all I knew in the pitchy interval of invisible rain before the next crash ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... the general giving them leave, they lay down in the tent next to his, wrapped in their blankets. Harry slept soundly, but while the pitchy darkness of a winter night still enclosed the land he was awakened by a heavy rumbling noise. His nerves had been attuned so highly by exciting days that he was awake in an instant and sprang to his feet, Dalton also ...
— The Star of Gettysburg - A Story of Southern High Tide • Joseph A. Altsheler
... stretched her arms, and sank. Was it a sin To love that sinful mother? There I lay— And in the spirit far away I prayed; What words I spoke, I know not, nor how long; Until a small still voice sighed, 'Child, thou art heard:' Then on the pitchy dark a small bright cloud Shone out, and swelled, and neared, and grew to form, Till from it blazed my pardoned mother's face With nameless glory! Nearer still she pressed, And bent her lips to mine—a mighty spasm Ran crackling through my limbs, ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... John Mangles, "they must have perished, for in the midst of these breakers in a heavy swell on that pitchy night, they ran to ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... the men without numbered not less than four or five. Once let a light reveal to them that the house was held only by a single girl, they could overpower her in a few seconds. It was only that horrible pitchy darkness, out of which those deadly shots came ringing with such precision and promptness, that filled them with the idea that the cabin was protected by a body of desperate and straight-shooting miners. It was the fears of ...
— A Girl of the Klondike • Victoria Cross
... closer. The flames roared down the canon like a blast furnace. Driven back by the intense heat, the men retreated across the break and clung to their line. Already their lungs were sore from inhaling smoke and their throats were inflamed. A pine, its pitchy trunk ablaze, crashed down across the fire-trail and caught in the fork of a tree beyond. Instantly the foliage leaped ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... dark before we reached the river; we had been much delayed by repeated falls into deep holes, and over hidden stones; thus I was well satisfied to find myself once more at home after having crossed the river, in pitchy darkness, in a similar manner as before. Every person in the village had had a good view of the stalk; therefore, as two giraffes had been seen to fall, the Arabs were waiting on the bank in expectation ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... musketry flamed, thundered, roared in the cavern, bringing down enormous fragments from the vaults. The cavern was lighted for an instant by this discharge, and then immediately returned to pitchy darkness rendered thicker by the smoke. To this succeeded a profound silence, broken only by the steps of the third brigade, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... fallen asleep that same night than I was aroused by an extraordinary din. I lay there, comatose and semi-conscious in the pitchy darkness, and wondered what had happened. Presently I distinguished the bray of trumps, and I knew. "Golly!" I whispered to myself, "I'm dead. Cheer-o!" Then I recollected something I had read concerning ye sports and customs of ye Ancient British and decided it must be "Waits." I ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. CLVIII, January 7, 1920 • Various
... aged trees they go, The wild-beasts' lair. The holm-oak rings amain, Smit with the axe, the pitchy pine falls low, Sharp wedges cleave the beechen core in twain, The mountain ash comes rolling to the plain. Foremost himself, accoutred as the rest, AEneas cheered them, toiling with his train; Then, musing sadly, and with pensive ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil - Translated into English Verse by E. Fairfax Taylor • Virgil
... rod Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day, Wav'd round the coast, up call'd a pitchy cloud Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind, That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung Like night, and darken'd all the land of Nile; So numberless where those bad angels seen Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, 'Twixt upper, nether, ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... Palafox reached the southern edge of the bayou at the point opposite his only house and home, and it was pitchy dark, when, having swam across the stagnant channel, he trudged, wet and weary, to the barred door of Cacosotte's Tavern, and knocked. Mex undid the bolts and let her master in, her sagacious eyes swiftly taking note of his bodily plight and desperate mood. ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... ere long with awful fury and grandeur, the elements warring with incredible vehemence. Rain fell in such floods that it was scarcely possible to keep the fires burning, and the night was so pitchy dark that the hand could scarcely be seen when held close to the eyes. To add to the horror of the scene, crashing peals of thunder appeared to rend the sky, and these were preceded by flashes of lightning so vivid that each left the travellers with ...
— Hunting the Lions • R.M. Ballantyne
... a single instant. The Scheldt yawned to its lowest depth, and then cast its waters across the dykes, deep into the forts, and far over the land. The earth shook as with the throb of a volcano. A wild glare lighted up the scene for one moment, and was then succeeded by pitchy darkness. Houses were toppled down miles away, and not a living thing, even in remote places, could keep its feet. The air was filled with a rain of plough-shares, grave-stones, and marble balls, intermixed with the heads, limbs, and bodies, of what had been human beings. Slabs ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... head to hear if Venning slept, for he dreaded what would happen if the boy awoke in the pitchy darkness and heard that demoniac cry. The boy's breathing came at regular intervals, and with a muttered prayer that he would sleep on, the Hunter felt ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... dissolved; the waterfall deluged the valley; the mountains were covered with waves; the skies grew pitchy ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... known as pitchy copper-ore (Ger. Kupferpecherz), and of some importance as an ore of copper, is usually classed as a variety of chrysocolla containing much admixed limonite. It is dark brown to black in colour, with a dull to glassy or resinous ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... who tumbled from their tents in answer to his voice. But though they searched the village again and again they found no trace of the Belgian. Foaming with anger, Achmet Zek called his followers to horse, and though the night was pitchy black they set out to scour the adjoining ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... walked a few yards my nerve began to go; for the gleam on the walls faded, the last glimmer of light went out. I was walking along an unknown path in pitchy darkness, hearing only the drip, drip, splash of the water slowly falling from the roof. Suddenly I ran against a sort of breastwork of mortared stones, and the shock almost made me faint. I stretched my hand out beyond it, but could feel nothing, and then downward on the ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... In the pitchy darkness, this awful figure throwing his eyes about, the gas in the boxes shuddering out of sight, and the wind-instruments bugling the most horrible wails, the boldest spectator must have felt frightened. But hark! what is that silver shimmer ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... fife rail at the crojack braces could have told them a different story. Clearly he saw the danger. There ahead, a little to leeward, were the long line of breakers; even in this pitchy darkness he could see their white foam-topped crests against the inky water; he fancied that even above the roaring of the wind through the rigging he could distinguish the crash with which they flung themselves ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... headache in pitchy darkness; and with the twilight of returning consciousness there grew in him an awful fear that he had been coffined and buried alive. For he lay at full length in a bed which yet was unlike any bed of his acquaintance, being ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... At no time during my period of exile did I experience so much mental suffering from the cravings of hunger as when, exhausted with this long clay of fruitless search, I resigned myself to a couch of pine foliage in the pitchy darkness of a thicket of small trees. Naturally timid in the night, I fully realized the exposure of my condition. I peered upward through the darkness, but all was blackness and gloom. The wind sighed mournfully through the pines. The forest seemed alive with the screeching of night birds, the ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... here," Lady O'Gara went on. "It must be pitchy towards nightfall. I shall ask my husband to cut down ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... with his conservative grammar and quiet speech, was accepted for our sakes. They took an arm on either side of us to help us up the hill, and in proof of heart-to-heart esteem shouted "Oopsidaisy!" when we stumbled in the pitchy dark. When we were brought to a stand at last by a snarled challenge and the click of rifles overhead, they answered with the chorus of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, a classic that ought to have died an unnatural death almost a quarter of a ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... were not at all feeble or despairing, but they were unmistakably anxious. Stockdale had no weapon, and before plunging into the pitchy darkness of the plantation he pulled a stake from the hedge, to use in case of need. When he got among the trees he shouted—'What's ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... they ran her, in that pitchy blackness, into the surf; she went through it close hauled, and beyond it into the deep sea the other side, and searched the outside edge of the sands, but to no purpose. Then, having shouted all together and ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... flash revealed for an instant the sides and roof of the cavern, which seemed to glitter as if studded with thousands of jewels, while ahead all was pitchy darkness, showing that they had not yet got to the extremity. The sound of the report, greatly increased in loudness, went echoing amid the arches and pillars, until it died away in the far distance, proving the ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... long, still nights this cry was hers, As on her couch she lay till dreary dawn, Her large eyes dark with horror looking out Upon the pitchy darkness unafraid. And as the breathings of the new spring breeze, Soft sights of sad complaint, to autumn's storms That hold the burdened sorrow of a year, Was this, her sigh of, "oh, the happy world!" To this despairing cry of, ...
— Poems • Marietta Holley
... the sacred Fire in this Temple of Humanity, and the Muses are its especial and vestal Priestesses. Though I cannot prevent the vile drugs and counterfeit Frankincense, which render its flame at once pitchy, glowing, and unsteady, I would yet be no voluntary accomplice in the Sacrilege. With the commencement of a PUBLIC, commences the degradation of the GOOD and the BEAUTIFUL—both fade and retire before the accidentally ...
— A Publisher and His Friends • Samuel Smiles
... saints and glorified men; and the last and lowest were occupied by mere men who had not passed through this life to the regions of eternity. On one side of this lowest platform was the resemblance of a dark pitchy cavern, from whence issued appearance of fire and flames; and when it was necessary the audience were treated with hideous yellings and noises, as imitations of the howlings and cries of the wretched ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... smoke. Mere wind they are not, but foul, black, blinding smoke. And writings of this description are published or republished in great quantities to the present day. And people read them, and fill themselves with wind and filthy fumes, and wrap themselves in smoky, pitchy clouds, and go through the world in a spiritual darkness thick enough ...
— Modern Skepticism: A Journey Through the Land of Doubt and Back Again - A Life Story • Joseph Barker
... wind may shift round, and if we were to be taken aback, it would be all over with us. As long as I can keep my eyes open I'll stay where I am, if you please." And O'Carroll was as good as his word; hour after hour he sat there, as we rushed on up and down the watery hills through the pitchy darkness—it was indeed a long, long night. Though we had eaten nothing since the hurricane came on, we were all of us rather weary than hungry. As for sleepiness, that was very far from any one. When compelled to rest, we could employ ...
— James Braithwaite, the Supercargo - The Story of his Adventures Ashore and Afloat • W.H.G. Kingston
... he at last muttered, fixing his eye upon the further bank of the river, a dark mass of hill and forest that rose in dim relief against the clouded sky, overshadowing the whole stream, which lay like a pitchy abyss betwixt it and the travellers,—"right, Peter! thee eyes is as good as thee nose—thee is determined the poor women shall ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... moreover, certain portions of her cargo were being hoisted out and transferred to the hidden vessel. The inference was obvious: the hidden craft was a pirate which had somehow managed to sneak up alongside and surprise her in the pitchy darkness of the early hours of the morning—Henderson had actually caught a glimpse of the very act of capture—and now she was being plundered by the audacious ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... of moderating, and that night, as Salve Kristiansen and another were taking their turn at the wheel, there gleamed suddenly out of the pitchy darkness to leeward of the fore-rigging the white crest of a tremendous eddy wave, which a moment after came crashing down upon the deck, carrying clean away the round-house, binnacle, and long-boat, damaging the wheel, and leaving many of the drenched and ...
— The Pilot and his Wife • Jonas Lie
... sensation unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, stooping ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... corner. Here began the path leading through the vineyards. It still led along the wall. Having walked it twice by daylight, Casanova had no difficulty in the dark. Half way up the hill came a second angle in the wall. Here he had again to turn to the right, across soft meadow-land, and in the pitchy night had to feel along the wall until he found the garden door. At length his fingers recognized the change from smooth stone to rough wood, and he could easily make out the framework of the narrow door. He unlocked it, entered the garden, and made ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... quite dark, but not what is called pitchy dark. As the eyes became accustomed to the obscurity, they were able to see a considerable distance. So it was with Carl. From his place of concealment he occasionally raised his head and looked across the way to the factory. An hour passed, and he grew tired. It didn't look ...
— Driven From Home - Carl Crawford's Experience • Horatio Alger
... grotto in the thick darkness, plunging and diving at every stroke, striking my head and hands against jagged stones and sharp corners, clutching at last something in my fingers and dragging it up with all my might. I spoke, I cried aloud, but there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy darkness with my burden, and the house was five hundred yards away. Struggling still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of moonlight- -the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad and shallow ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... a sonnet to the princess, who regarded him wide-eyed. The troll came back from a tunnel after he finished, and said curtly: "This way." Cappen took the girl's hand and followed her into a pitchy, reeking dark. ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... examined the huge state-bedstead, and with a little exertion trundled it forward. Behind its tapestry hangings a secret door, suspected only by a crack in the wainscotting, opened beneath his prying fingers, and revealed a spiral staircase leading downward into pitchy darkness. Comprehending Malespini's admonition, he hastily appropriated the candles, and, drawing the bedstead into its place behind him, descended the dizzily circling steps. Eighty-seven he counted, ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... spacious one story edifice, built of sun-baked bricks, called adobe. The dwelling was a hundred feet long, and the roof was rendered impenetrable to rain, being covered with a thick coating of asphaltum, mingled with sand. There was a spring of this valuable pitchy substance near the village; and the roofs of all the houses in Los Angelos ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... industry, emulating Peabody, whose generosity gushed like rivers. He asks each to make the most of courage and self-reliance, emulating Livingstone in self-denying service. He bids each emulate and look up to Jesus Christ, as Dante, midst the pitchy night, looked up toward the star. He bids each move heaven and earth to achieve for himself a worthy manhood. For thus only can earth ever be moved back ...
— A Man's Value to Society - Studies in Self Culture and Character • Newell Dwight Hillis
... the mastheads of the smacks to the sea-wall; brown and deeply wrinkled sails are hoisted to dry in the sun and air. The broad red streaks on the smacks' sides stand out distinctly among the general pitchy hues of gunwales and great coils of rope. Men in dull yellow tan frocks are busy round about among them, some mending nets some stooping over a boat turned bottom upwards, upon which a patch is being placed. It needs at least three or four men to manage this patch properly. These tan frocks ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... awaited came. The whole valley seemed to be lit from end to end. Then it was gone as swiftly as it had come, leaving a pitchy blackness behind it. But in that brief flash Bill told himself he had seen the trail just beyond the clump of bush in the midst of which he stood. Summoning all his strength he hurled himself to thrust his way toward it. He fought the resisting boughs with all his great strength, backed ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... corridor that was almost as dark as the cells themselves. Here, so we were told, countless wretched beings, awaiting the tardy pleasure of the torturer or the headsman, had moldered in damp and filth and pitchy blackness, knowing day from night only by the fact that once in twenty-four hours food would be slipped through a hole in the wall by unseen hands; lying here until oftentimes death or the cruel mercy of madness came upon them before the overworked executioner found time to rack their ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... sea was now a liquid Paradise: its great pellucid braes and hillocks shone with the sparkle and the hues of all the jewels in an emperor's crown. Imagine—after three days of inky sea, and pitchy sky, and Death's deep jaws snapping and barely missing—ten thousand great slopes of emerald, aquamarine, amethyst and topaz, liquid, alive, and dancing jocundly beneath a gorgeous sun: and you will have a faint idea of what met the eyes and hearts of the rescued looking out of ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... evidently indeed a serious case. Cape Norman lies thirty miles to the northward of St. Anthony, and the trail is a rough one. The night was moonless and pitchy black, but Grenfell set out at once to look for dogs. He borrowed four from one man, hired one from another, and arranged with a man, named Walter, to furnish four additional ones and to drive the team. Walter was to report ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. Oh, let's not wait for rain to make it safe. The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough Down dark converging paths between the pines. Let's not care what we do with it to-night. Divide it? No! But burn it ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... enough to find what they wanted. There was a broad skylight of dark green glass propped up a foot or more above the level of the rest of the flat roof. Beside it Terry dropped upon his knees and pushed his head under the glass. All below was pitchy-black, but he distinctly caught the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... herbage; moistens all the grass With rivulets of tears. And here, they say, The Naiaed nymphs their bubbling art supply'd. Ne'er drought to know: more to afford, their power Sure could not. Straightway, as the pitchy drops Flow from the fir's cleft bark; from solid earth As stiff bitumen oozes; or as streams, By cold congeal'd, thaw with the southern wind And warming sun: Phoebean Byblis so By her own tears exhausted, was transform'd, A fount becoming; which still in that ...
— The Metamorphoses of Publius Ovidus Naso in English blank verse Vols. I & II • Ovid
... nature with the character of all those lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together in solitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. And they were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a great distance, with the pitchy water, still as if frozen, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... are to remember the sky was overcast and the night was pitchy dark, and how the old borderer could read a sign of any sort was far beyond my comprehension. Yet when we had gone a scant half-mile along the river brink he stopped short, sniffed the air and stooped to feel and grope on the ground like a blind man seeking for something ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... first Arab treatise on the Astrolabe and adopted the Greek division of the seven Climates to the new learning. Solyman, at the time of closest intercourse between China, India, and the Caliphate, travelled in every country of the Further East, sailed in the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness" on the east coast of Asia, and by his voyages became the ...
— Prince Henry the Navigator, the Hero of Portugal and of Modern Discovery, 1394-1460 A.D. • C. Raymond Beazley
... the noise of the storm, but by a curious movement of my bedstead. I had once felt the slight shock of an earthquake, and it seemed to me that this must be something of the kind. Certainly my bed moved under me. I sat up. The room was pitchy dark. In a moment I felt another movement, but this time it did not seem to me to resemble an earthquake shock. Such motion, I think, is generally in horizontal directions, while that which I felt was more like the movement of a ship upon the water. The storm was at its height; the wind raged ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... careering about in all directions, and bearing down upon every promising stump or dead pine-tree they saw in the distance. Hugh and Mr. Olmney took turns in the labour of hewing out the fat pine knots, and splitting down the old stumps to get at the pitchy heart of the wood; and the baskets began to grow heavy. The whole party were in excellent spirits, and as happy as the birds that filled the woods, and whose cheery "chick-a-dee-dee-dee" was heard whenever they paused to rest, and let ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell
... was dark expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity that encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at the open window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely that, leaning ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... tempting villainy. Sound in himself, yet when such flaws appear, He doubts of all, and learns that self to fear: For where so dark the moral view is grown, A timid conscience trembles for her own; The pitchy-taint of general vice is such As daubs the fancy, and you dread the touch. Far unlike him was one in former times, Famed for the spoil he gather'd by his crimes; Who, while his brethren nibbling held ...
— The Borough • George Crabbe
... ship as close to the wind as possible, in order to clear a point that stretched outward, and beat off to windward, but his lee-way carried him towards the land, and he was caught when he least expected the trap. The gale increased—the night grew pitchy dark—the roaring breakers were on his lee-beam—the drifting vessel strikes, rebounds, and strikes again—the cry of horror rings through the flapping cordage, and despair is in the eyes of the demon-crew. Helpless they lie amid ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... extinguished the candle. In his impetuous attempts to subdue the brightness of the fire, he overset the stove, which came tumbling forward, and fell with a crash upon the burning embers it had shot forth in its descent, leaving the room in pitchy darkness. The noise at the gate still continuing, he felt his way to the door, and ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... sloops, it is true, generally differed among themselves in their accounts of these apparitions; but that may have arisen from the uncertain situations in which they saw her. Sometimes it was by the flashes of the thunder-storm lighting up a pitchy night, and giving glimpses of her careering across Tappan Zee or the wide waste of Haverstraw Bay. At one moment she would appear close upon them, as if likely to run them down, and would throw them into great bustle and alarm, but ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... still fell and the wind blew fiercely among the somber mountains. A second engine had been added to the train, and the speed of the train was slackened. The engineer in front stared at the slippery rails, but he could see only a few yards. The pitchy darkness closed in ahead, hiding everything, even the peaks and ridges. The heart of that engineer, and he was a brave man, as brave as any soldier on the battlefield, had sunk very low. Railroads were little past their infancy then and this was the first to cross ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... perceived his mother stirring a cooked mess in an ugly-looking pot. Also he looked up at three snakes hanging from above by a thin cord, from whose mouths flowed a slaver which dribbled drops of moisture on the meal. Now two of these were pitchy of hue, while the third seemed to have whitish scales, and was hung somewhat higher than the others. This last had a fastening on its tail, while the others were held by a cord round their bellies. Roller thought the affair looked like ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... the Hotel, or opposite: making the visitor feel as if the beating hammers were his own heart, palpitating with a deadly energy! I wonder why jealous corridors surround the bedroom on all sides, and fill it with unnecessary doors that can't be shut, and will not open, and abut on pitchy darkness! I wonder why it is not enough that these distrustful genii stand agape at one's dreams all night, but there must also be round open portholes, high in the wall, suggestive, when a mouse or rat is heard behind the wainscot, of a ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... too dark to see her. I do not think, however, that it kept many of the officers awake at night, although it must be confessed Jack was ill at ease. If it were possible for the enemy to steal near enough in the pitchy dark portion of the night, the first intimation of her presence might be a raking broadside that would sweep the decks fore and aft; then ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... merely the destructive power of death, not merely its negation of life, that terrifies our author. The pitchy darkness that stretches beyond, the impossibility of penetrating the veil that separates existence from non-existence—in a word, the riddle of the universe—is, to a mind constituted like Andreyev's, ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... I salute thee, but with wounded nerves, Wishing the golden splendor pitchy darkness. What's here? THE ARRAIGNMENT! ay; this, this is it, That our sunk eyes have waked for all this while: Here will be subject for my snakes and me. Cling to my neck and wrists, my loving worms, And cast you round in soft and amorous folds, ...
— The Poetaster - Or, His Arraignment • Ben Jonson
... these Arabs to the explorers of the vigorous north. They always travelled by land and not by that sea which was life to the Viking folk. To the Arabs the encircling ocean was a very "Sea of Darkness"; indeed, the unknown ocean beyond China was called the "Sea of Pitchy Darkness." Their creed taught that the ocean was boundless, so that ships dared not venture out of sight of land, for there was no inhabited country beyond, and mariners would assuredly be lost in mists and fogs. So, while the Vikings tossed ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... of their upper decks: they were like the high-priced steeds that war had transformed into simple beasts of battle. Former mail-packets, swift racers of the waves, had descended to the humble service of transport boats. Others, black and dirty, with the pitchy plaster of hasty reparation and a consumptive smokestack on an enormous hull, plowed along, coughing smoke, spitting ashes, panting with the jangle of old iron. The flags of the Allies and those of the neutral ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... mountains, Starr got up and dressed in the dark, fumbling for a pair of "sneakers" he had placed beside his bed. He let himself out into the corral, being careful to keep close to the wall of the house until he reached the high board fence. Here, too, he had to feel his way because of the pitchy blackness of the night; and if the rattling wind prevented him from hearing any footsteps that might be behind him, it also covered the slight sound of his own progress down the fence to the shed. But he did not think he would be ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... came to another crater very similar to the first, only the sides of it, instead of being formed, like the first, of perpendicular cliffs, consisted of steep, sloping banks of volcanic sand and gravel. There was, however, the same pitchy bed of lava spread out all over the bottom of it below, and in the centre a black cone thirty feet high, with a fiery furnace mouth at the top, glowing with heat, and throwing out continually the same thundering puffs of steam, and projecting ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... begins to break, and night is fled, Whose pitchy mantle over-veil'd the earth. Here sound retreat, and ...
— King Henry VI, First Part • William Shakespeare [Aldus edition]
... rugged as well as winding, and so pitchy dark that the youth could not have advanced at all without stumbling, unless his host had held him all the way. At last a glimmer of light was seen in the distance. It seemed to increase suddenly, and in a few moments the two emerged from ...
— Blown to Bits - or, The Lonely Man of Rakata • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... prophet, like that which in an earlier age fell upon Abraham, but without the "horror;" and, as the Divine Spirit moves on the face of the wildly troubled waters, as a visible aurora enveloped by the pitchy cloud, the great doctrine is orally enunciated, that "in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Unreckoned ages, condensed in the vision into a few brief moments, pass away; the creative voice is again heard, "Let there be light," and straightway ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... Storm's impending rage, When to the Clouds the Waves ambitious rise, 10 And seem with Heaven a doubtful war to wage, Whilst total darkness overspreads the skies; Save when the lightnings darting wingd Fate Quick bursting from the pitchy clouds between In forkd Terror, and destructive state[2:2] 15 Shall shew with ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... wrench, which pitched 'Lina headlong against the window, and the steep, shelving bank was reached, but in endeavoring to climb it the carriage was upset, and 'Lina found herself in pitchy darkness. Perfectly sobered now, Caesar extricated her as soon as possible. The carriage was broken and there was no alternative save for 'Lina to walk the remaining distance home. It was not far, for the scene ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... in that pitchy blackness, except when the lightning flashes came. Then she was like a ghostly wraith, with drenched clothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... markets of a great city. The appearance of one of these towering river transports as she comes sailing down the turbid stream of the great Father of Waters, laden to the water's edge with brown bales of cotton, and emitting from her lofty, red crowned smoke-stacks dense clouds of pitchy black smoke, is most wonderful. Unlike ocean-steamers, the river-steamer carries her load upon her deck. Built to penetrate far towards the head-waters of rivers and bayous that in summer become mere shallow ditches, these steamers have a very light ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... candles stuck by lumps of clay to their felt hats, the travellers have painfully descended by perpendicular ladders and along dripping-wet rock passages, fathoms down into pitchy darkness; the miner who guides them calls ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... attacked, the enemy driven out, and they were set on fire. The blaze lighted up the midnight sky, announcing to the fainting garrison that relief was approaching. Barrier after barrier was passed, and for many an hour in the midst of the howling storm and pitchy darkness a fierce battle raged. The victorious Hollanders pushed further on, but still two forts of great strength, those of Zoeterwoude and Lammen, lay between them and the city, garrisoned by the enemy's best troops and armed with heavy artillery. They must be captured before the city ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... fastened one end round his waist, and ordered the men to hold the other while he felt his way across the seeming gulf. Jack and Adair strained their eyes eagerly after him as he disappeared in the pitchy darkness among the roaring waters. On he went, they gradually paying out the rope. Suddenly it slackened, and with horror they felt that he was being carried off by the hungry waves. They were about to haul in the rope to try to save his life, when once ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... their hold should ever do anything more than blindly rove hither and thither, arriving at nothing. Cardinal was adrift, like thousands and hundreds of thousands of others, and amidst the storm and pitchy darkness of the night, thousands and hundreds of thousands of voices offer us pilotage. It spoke well for him that he did nothing worse than take a few useless phantoms on board which did him no harm, and that he held ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... forests at all. Where the ground is damp, with drouth occurring only at intervals of centuries, fine forests may be found, other conditions being favorable. But it is only where fires never run that truly ancient forests of pitchy coniferous trees may exist. When the Washington forests are seen from the deck of a ship out in the middle of the sound, or even from the top of some high, commanding mountain, the woods seem everywhere perfectly solid. And so in fact they are in general found to be. The largest ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir |
