"Swirl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... her, in darkness as they were, actively intermingled. The rather low sound of his voice as he spoke to the horses came velvety to her nerves. How near he was, and how invisible! The darkness seemed to be in a strange swirl of violent life, just upon ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... follies, Seneca took the death of Burrhus as an opportunity to retire. Then Nero, freed from the last person who still retained any influence over him, gave himself up entirely to the insane swirl of his caprices. He ended one day by presenting himself in the theatre of Naples. Naples was yet then a Greek city. Nero had chosen it for this reason; he was applauded with frenzy. But the Italians of the other cities ...
— Characters and events of Roman History • Guglielmo Ferrero
... says caustically that I really belong with her in the middle of the last century, and she, born to what father says was really the best society and privilege of New York life, like his college chum Martin Cortright, is now swept quite aside by the swirl. ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... small fish in the swirl of this more desperate venture. He knew Brad Steelman by sight and by reputation. The man's coffee-brown, hatchet face, his restless, black eyes, the high, narrow shoulders, the slope of nose and chin, combined somehow to give him the look of a wily and predacious ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the swirl of the busy city's midday rush, engulfed in Broadway's swift moving flood of hustling humanity, jostled unceremoniously by the careless, indifferent crowds, discouraged from stemming further the tide of pushing, elbowing ...
— The Third Degree - A Narrative of Metropolitan Life • Charles Klein and Arthur Hornblow
... a faint, far-away buzzing made him glance upward. Two sharp winged points were skimming through the air. He felt a thrill—the thrill of the unknown. He knew it must be one of the craft, foreign as yet to the hill country. In the distance he saw it swirl, loop and maneuver, spiral gracefully downward, skim the earth lightly, rise again and then descend from sight hidden ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... upstanding young chap, despite his horse-bowed legs, walked over to the bunk-house for flash-mirror and gun, came back to his already caught-up and saddled horse, turned stirrup and set foot in it, caught hold of mane and horn, beat the quick swirl of his pony sidewise with the fling of leg over cantle and went streaming off for the Bald Butte in a cloud of dust. Sandy called to Buck Perches, oldest of his riders, whose exposed skin matched ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... this time, so far as they can be determined from the official orders and from the manner in which the respective movements were carried out, were three-fold. The first of these movements was the order given to General von Kluck to swirl his forces to the southeast of Paris, swerving away from the capital in an attempt to cut the communications between it and the Fifth French Army under General d'Esperey. This plan evidently involved a feint attack upon the Sixth French Army under ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... the soft swirl of a woman's gown passing over the marble floor. They all turned. It was Madame Christophor ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... horde came like the surging tide of driven waters. It reeled before the flaming weapons like rollers on a breakwater. There came the swirl and eddy. Then, in desperate defeat, it dropped back to gather fresh impetus from ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... the reins and followed them; but, as bridges are not made for the traffic of ponies, Tom o' Dint was bound to go through the water. Never interrupting the sweep and swirl of the march he was playing, he gave the pony a prod with his foot, and it plunged in. But scarcely had it taken two steps and reached the depth of its knees, when, from the intenser cold, or from coming sharply against a submerged stone, or from indignation at ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... great oak totter and then sway, while a sickening swirl of branches filled the air, and scarcely conscious of her own act she hurled herself upon Jim. With all the strength borne of her terror she pushed him from the heap of poles, sending him rolling out into the middle of the road, to safety. Then she tried to spring ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... in her throat, the chair, the lamp, the shadowy figure of the man in the match flame to swirl before her eyes, and a sick nausea to come upon her soul itself. With a short, triumphant oath, Rough Rorke had stopped suddenly and reached in under the chair. And now he was dangling a new, black kid glove in front of her. Caught! Yes, she was caught! She remembered ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... open-air theatre, watching an excellent vaudeville performance. He enjoyed it thoroughly, for it was above the average. In fifteen minutes, however, the last soubrette disappeared in the wings to the accompaniment of a swirl of music. Her place was taken by a tall, facetious-looking, bald individual, clad in a loose frock coat. He held up ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... group of survivors waited in breathless anxiety while the canoe sped swiftly up the river, with a line of foam on either side of her, and a long forked swirl in the waters behind. They could see that she appeared to be very crowded, but they remembered that the wounded of the other boat were aboard her. On she shot and on, until as she came abreast of the fort she swung round, and the rowers raised their paddles and burst into a shrill yell ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... a muffled jingling of bells from somewhere down in the liner's interior, and her propeller began to revolve, churning up the water into a frothy swirl about her rudder as she gathered way and began to forge ahead. At the same moment the professor sent his own engines ahead; and in a few minutes the two ships, as dissimilar in outward appearance as they were in every other respect, ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... thus in a measure withdrawing from the swirl of society in which so much of his life had been passed, he in no sense lost touch with the movements of the day, and in none of these did he take a more lively interest than in those which affected the state of ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... other. They were clear and crisp—he was to fire the mine, but only at the latest possible minute. That was all he got, and indeed all he wanted; and, since they did not concern him, there is no need here to tell of the swirl of other orders that buzzed and ticked and talked by field telegraph and telephone for miles up and down and behind ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... supposedly far speedier York boat. Faster and faster we seemed to fly, for we had the grand incentive that we must catch the steamer at any price that night. Weeso now, for the first time, showed up strong; knowing every yard of the way he took advantage of every swirl of the river; in and out among the larger islands we darted, and when we should have stopped for the night no man said "Stop", but harder we paddled. We could smell the steamer smoke, we thought, and pictured her captain eagerly ...
— The Arctic Prairies • Ernest Thompson Seton
... and even fight: now and then one will descend with a rush and rise carrying a rat or other delicacy in its claws; but these interruptions of the pattern are only momentary. For the rest of the time they swirl and circle and never cease to watch. Bombay also has its predatory crows, who are so bold that it is unsafe to leave any bright article on the veranda table. Spectacles, for example, set up a longing in their hearts which they make no effort to control. But these birds ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... the swirl of foam upon their crests and the wind. Two men would be needed to row the boat, and the boat must make three trips. The skipper and the first hand had been on deck all night. There remained four, or rather three, ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... was older and wise, and could tell by certain signs when the upper currents were seething and boiling. So when I darted upwards with a strong swirl that cut the waters apart for my passage, she thrust herself farther ahead, trying to drive me back, and said ...
— Lord Dolphin • Harriet A. Cheever
... pipeing East, at shrilly puffs between the Tower and the Custom House, encountered it to whip and ridge the flood against descending tug and long tail of stern-ajerk empty barges; with a steamer slowly noseing round off the wharf-cranes, preparing to swirl the screw; and half-bottom-upward boats dancing harpooner beside their whale; along an avenue, not fabulously golden, of the deputy masts of all nations, a wintry woodland, every rag aloft curling to volume; and here the spouts and the mounds of steam, and rolls of brown smoke there, variously ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... has no thought of flinging herself into the seething swirl, though she means to do ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... approached. He saw men outlined against the stars and then some gleams of lanterns. Something stirred ponderously near to him. It might be a crocodile, but he dared not move. The figures seemed to stay on the top of the bank for hours. He remained rigid, expecting a swirl of water ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... to the two men. He knew the driving force which was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of forgetting that Mary Standish was a wife. ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... them. Gladys was pale herself, and had a strong sense of the sadness of the occasion, still she had a feeling of importance. Edwin Shaw came lumbering up timidly, and Maud Page pressed quickly to Maria's side with a swirl ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... with incessant whirl, Rolled onward ever on their ponderous way: Gigantic marvels, deafening in their play, And swift, industrious, never-ending swirl. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... very carefully chosen phrasing the orchestra was to represent the ocean, and, as far as might be, the ship upon it. A forcible, pathetically yearning and aspiring theme was the only comprehensible idea amid the swirl of enveloping sound. When the whole had been repeated, there was a sudden jump to a different theme in extreme pianissimo, accompanied by the swelling vibrations of the first violins, which was intended to represent a Fata Morgana. I had secured three pairs of trumpets in different keys, ...
— My Life, Volume I • Richard Wagner
... drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank, on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... who was Cora's partner, gave a wonderful swirl to show just how beautifully he and Cora could ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... answer him there came from above us—indeed, it had begun while he was speaking—a deafening mingling of terrific noises, of rending planks, of falling spars, the rush and swirl and roar of waters, amid which could be heard the faint cries of ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... only a few minutes when they sighted Mascola's speed-boat astern. The girl frowned as the Fuor d'Italia roared by in a swirl of white water. ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... Mistress Stewart, good woman, this is a sair predeecament for ye to be in. I would jist counsel ye to be candid. Doubtless yer mind is a' in a swirl. Ye kenna what way to turn. Maybe ye are like the Psalmist and say: "I lookit this way and that, and there was no man to peety me, or to have compassion upon my fatherless children." But, see now, ye would be wrong; and, if ye tell me a' ye ken, I'll stand freends ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... even gave her a glance as he came up; his machine flew by with a swirl, amid a crashing crescendo; then it disappeared in the ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... sat in the shade, beside the quiet stream, the little green book by his side. But he did not open it now, and though his gaze was on his line, where it cut the water in a little swirl, he did not seem ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... next I was not quick enough to see. But there was a swirl and a heave in the crowd, and presently Dicky became visible, standing in a very heroic attitude with his arm round Dilly; while the policeman, with an awe-inspiring deliberateness which implied "Now you have gone and done it!" extricated himself majestically but painfully ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... whooping of the Iroquois Indians, the sight of his friends and neighbors continually dropping to the ground, some of them at his elbow, the deafening discharge of the rifles—all these and the dreadful swirl and rush of events dazed him at times; but he kept at it with a steadiness which caused more than one expression of praise ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... companions swept up and stopped in a swirl of dust and asked questions until Hopalong shut them up. Their arrival and the manner of their speech riled Cranky Joe, who turned around and loosed one more remark; and he never knew how near to death he was at ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... Beneath the swirl of a gown that lay in an iridescent avalanche of sequins about her feet, her foot, tilted to an unbelievable hypothenuse off a cloth-of-silver heel, beat a small and twinkling tattoo, her fingers tattooing, too, ...
— Gaslight Sonatas • Fannie Hurst
... air with a volcano of mud, dirt, smoke, and shrieking splinters, and, either from the shock of the explosion or in an attempt to escape it, throwing the man off his balance on the ledge of the firing-step to sprawl full length in the mud. In the swirl of noise and smoke and flying earth Rawbon just glimpsed the plunging fall of a man's body, and felt a curious sickly feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger to his feet, dripping mud and filth, and swearing at ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... void, a great dark living mass against the white mist. Was he speared on those terrible shafts of rock below, or was his life dashed out in horrible crimson splashes against the cliffside? Or did he sink into the reeling swirl of the foaming waters, and die more mercifully in their steel-dark depths? I could not see. I saw only the flying form dart through the mist like an arrow from a bow. I heard only the appalling cry, like nothing earthly ever heard before; and I woke in ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... manifests great flames, like those of a fiery furnace, which shoot forth in great tongues, and dart forth suddenly in certain directions toward the objects attracting them. Under great emotional excitement the auric flames move around in swift circling whirlpools, or else swirl away from a centre. Again, it seems to throw forth tiny glistening sparks of astral vibrations, some of which ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... bed-chamber in one where neither the door nor the window would shut, and where there were besides two locked doors that did not fit, and as the mistral was blowing, my hours in that room were spent in a swirl of draughts. Moreover, an old party with bronchitis was in the adjoining room, also suffering from the draughts, and in despair of recovering his health in such a situation. I complained, and was ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... big salmon comes to the top, there is a great swirl on the water. You don't see the salmon, but you know he is there," ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... a mad rush and swirl of muddy water; the swish and hiss of it smote their ears five minutes before they saw the brown, writhing thing itself. The girl tensed on her seat; her breathing was momentarily suspended; her cheek went a little ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... cube settled slowly to the ground, the adventurers left the deadlight to use the windows. For a moment the view was obscured by a swirl of dust, raised by the spurt of the current; then this cloud vanished, settling to the ground with astounding suddenness, as though jerked down by ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... before the war, the Army had placed very little reliance upon the patriotism or integrity of the country. The Army was a thing apart—detached from the swirl of conflicting ideas, and the eddies of political strife. The Army was, so to speak, on the bank, and it looked with stern disapproval at the river sweeping so swiftly by. It neither understood the forces that were hurrying ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... and down her room in something very like a rage. Her trunk, half-packed, stood against the wall and her pictures lay face down on the bed, and she hovered between laughter and tears. It seemed as if every evil passion in her nature had been stirred up by this desperate affray and in the fierce swirl of emotions her joy in her victory was strangely mingled with rage at Rimrock. After scheming for months to prove her superiority, and arranging every possible detail, she had been cut down in her pride and seen her ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... the river. We heard the branches as they pushed through. After a while Wilson asked me if I could go a little way around our position and find out what the Kaffirs were doing. I always think he heard something, but he did not say so. I slipped out and on our right heard the swirl of boughs and the splash of feet. Circling round for a little time I came on more Kaffirs. I got so close to them I could touch them as they passed, but it was impossible to say how many there were, it was so dark. This I reported to Wilson. Raising his head ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various
... swam hard for the north side of the pool, for there he had noticed that the current was least strong, and there also the rock bank overhung a little. He reached it safely, and rising once more grasped a knob of rock with one hand, and lay still where in the shadow and the swirl of waters he could not be discovered by any watching from above. He breathed deeply and moved his limbs; it was well, he was unhurt. The priest whom he had taken with him, being heaviest, had met the water first, so that though the leap was great the ...
— The People Of The Mist • H. Rider Haggard
... water. The coarser aggregations of these we see in bewildering profusion and variety every time the tides fall back and leave the rocks bare. At the bottom of the ebb I like to climb perilously down the rough Glades cliffs to life-brooding pools and inlets, where lazy waves swirl or are for a brief hour cut off. At the half-tide line the rock that is a reddish granite becomes chalky white with the shells of barnacles that cover every inch of space from there down. Acorn-like, they cluster closer than ever acorns did on the most prolific ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... candle with a lading tin. She was going to the coal-house for some coal. Her husband passed her on the threshold. She could be heard breaking the bits of coal and placing them on the dustpan. The light from her candle fell faintly behind her. Then she went back, blown by a swirl of wind. But again she was at the door, hastily standing her iron shovel against the wall. Then she shut the back door with a bang. These noises seemed to scrape and strike ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... experienced the annoyance of missing fish when looking elsewhere for a single moment—either at another boat, or at a fish "rising to itself," or at the sky, or at something else. When the eyes were turned to the point from which they should not have been diverted, they were just in time to see the water swirl, and the hand gave a futile strike at what had disappeared a second before. Perhaps we should have said at the beginning of this chapter to place implicit faith in the flies with which you are fishing. ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... there's a hole yonder. Keep oot o't for ony sake. That's it; yir daein' fine. Steady, man, steady. Yir at the deepest; sit heavy in yir seats. Up the channel noo, and ye 'll be oot o' the swirl. Weel dune, Jess, weel dune, auld mare! Mak straicht for me, doctor, an' a'll gie ye the road oot. Ma word, ye've dune yir best, baith o' ye this mornin'," cried Hillocks, splashing up to the ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... for a long time, but sat holding Patty's hand tightly, and gazing under a horrible fascination at the green, foam-flecked water that was creeping so stealthily nearer to them. How cold it looked, and how cruel! How easily it could swirl away their light weights, and dash them against those jagged points opposite, or sweep them out into the midst of those long waves, the white crests of which were just dimly visible through the wall of fog! Inch by inch it rose; it was only a foot now from the top of the rock, far above the ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... A swirl of red fury swept to the beach comber's brain. Wordless, face distorted, he flung himself at ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... from Pike's Peak, I was caught in a snowfall that gave the ground quite a frosty aspect for a few minutes. One can readily fancy, therefore, that the nests of these birds are often surrounded with snow, and that the bantlings may get their first view of the world in the swirl of a snow-squall. The nests are built in pine bushes and trees at various distances from the ground. Of all the hurly-burlies ever heard, that which these birds are able to make when you go near their nests, or discover them, bears off the palm, their voices being as raucous as a buzz-saw, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... a barren historical event, though the vikings' ships reached a new hemisphere. Iceland is the only land in this sub-arctic region which ever figured upon the stage of history; and its role was essentially passive. Such prominence as it acquired was due to its island nature and its situation in a swirl of the Gulf Stream, which ameliorates the worst climatic effects of its far northern location, and brings it just within the upper limit of the temperate belt. The wide sub-arctic lowlands of Russia and Siberia, which, from the Ural Mountains to the lower Amur ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple
... a flowing tide occasionally (though not invariably) creates a gentle swirl in Brammo Bay, a swirl so placid as to be imperceptible in default of such indices as driftwood. Under such a condition Neptune makes playthings which possibly in some future age may puzzle men who happen to ponder seriously on first causes. I ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... had hit Inaccessible Island, and not until he arrived in its lee did he discover that his hand was frost-bitten. Having waited there for some time he groped his way to the western end, and then wandering away in a swirl of drift to clear some irregularities at the ice-foot, he completely lost the island when he could only have been a few yards from it. In this predicament he clung to the old idea of walking up wind, and it must be considered wholly providential that on this ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... down; so, taking my line in hand, I began to lift him bodily up. He came easily enough till his tail cleared the water; then the wiggling, jerky strain was too much. The fly pulled out, and he vanished with a final swirl and slap of his broad tail to tell ...
— Wood Folk at School • William J. Long
... stopped and looked back as though for guidance. Before them was a swirl of water. In the darkness it was impossible to say how deep the wash-out might be, or how wide. Ross hesitated. His father had warned him against foolhardiness, and here he was facing the crossing of a swift current of ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... the other. "I only pulled you back. You'd have got badly hammered if you'd tried to cross that ledge. I'd noticed the inshore swirl close below it when we were packing along the bank, and remembered that we could ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... "I didn't know you ... you know." A silence. Emmy continued to swirl the water round with the small washing-mop, her face averted. Jenny's lip stiffened. She made another attempt, to be the last, restraining her irritation with a great effort. "If you like I won't ... I won't go out with him ...
— Nocturne • Frank Swinnerton
... the sides of the cavern, or on a rock, or being sucked down in the raging waters, or perhaps asphyxiated by want of air. All of these and many other modes of death presented themselves to my imagination as I lay at the bottom of the canoe, listening to the swirl of the hurrying waters which ran whither we knew not. One only other sound could I hear, and that was Alphonse's intermittent howl of terror coming from the centre of the canoe, and even that seemed faint and unnatural. Indeed, the whole thing overpowered ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... experience in public affairs. Of such qualifications, Grant had very few. He was egotistical, a poor judge of men, without experience in statesmanship, and unwilling to submit to guidance. As a result, his administration was marked by inefficiency and extravagance, and ended in a swirl of scandal. ...
— American Men of Action • Burton E. Stevenson
... flock of golden specks so that not one should be lost. At last, of the pan of dirt nothing remained but his golden herd. He counted it, and then, after all his labor, sent it flying out of the pan with one final swirl ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... out in the night, and "Pronti!" came as a faint echo on before. We laboured on, and the dreams began where they had broken off. For we dreamed in these times, fitful and lurid, coloured dreams; flashes of horrible crises in one's life; Interminable precipices; a river skiff engulfed in a swirl of green sea-water; agonies of repentance; shameful failure, defeat, memories—and then the steady pulsing of the engine, and thick, impermeable darkness choking up the windows again. How I ached for ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... grew black, shadowy wings, and, with a piercing scream, she swirled upward, until the awe-stricken Dedannans saw nought save a black speck vanish among the lowering clouds. And as a demon of the air do Eva's black wings swirl her through ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... from the Hall. To reach it they had to follow the course of the Swirl, which ran ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... the Chester crowds kept pretty much together. They could be picked out as a rule by the swirl of waving school colors, for every Chester girl and boy who had journeyed to Marshall to see their team win the game, made sure to carry the ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... me to the door. I glanced in passing through the windows of the sitting-room; and there stood Edwarda, tall, upright, holding the curtains apart with both hands, looking out. I did not bow to her: I forgot everything; a swirl of confusion overwhelmed me and ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr. Daly's comedian, the late James Lewis, of beloved memory, and I casually mentioned that I was going to call upon Mr. Daly in the evening at 8. He looked surprised, and said he reckoned not. For answer I handed him Mr. Daly's note. Its ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... A few moments later, four broad-shouldered men in blue had him in their grasp, pinioned and guarded, clattering over the noisy streets behind two spirited horses. They drew after them a troop of noisy, jeering boys, who danced about the wagon like a swirl of autumn leaves. Then came a halt, and Luther was dragged up the steps of a square brick building with a belfry on the top. They entered a large bare room with benches ranged about the walls, and brought him before a ...
— A Mountain Woman and Others • (AKA Elia Wilkinson) Elia W. Peattie
... shadows are apt to swirl in a green pool when a stone is dropped into it; and a bit of board two feet long and some eight inches wide cracked against the ...
— Gunman's Reckoning • Max Brand
... pretty wild stories concerning the perils that might be expected while crossing these same inlets, where at the full sweep of the tide small boats were in danger of being upset in the mad swirl. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... heard a splash, and quick as a flash I knew he could not swim. I saw him whirl in the river swirl, and thresh his arms about. In a queer, strained way I heard Dick say: "I'm going after him," Throw off his coat, leap down the boat — and then I gave a shout: "Boys, grab him, quick! You're crazy, Dick! Far better one than two! Hell, man! You know ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... What Druid lore ye know! What ancient rites— Gray guardians of ten thousand days and nights, Watching the stars swim round their sapphire pole, The ocean surges break about earth's brimming bowl. The cyclone's driving swirl, the storm-tossed seas. Hymning for aye ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... cold, and monastically silent even at the noisiest hours of the day. It will be remarked, also, that this portion of the Cite, crowded between the flank of Notre-Dame and the river, faces the north, and is always in the shadow of the cathedral. The east winds swirl through it unopposed, and the fogs of the Seine are caught and retained by the black walls of the old metropolitan church. No one will therefore be surprised at the sensations Godefroid felt when he found himself in this old ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... swelling psalm as it rose from the seated multitude—for they stood to pray, but sat to sing. From the fast-gathering mists that now threaten those receding years, surviving ones still rescue images of the precentor's ruffled locks, swept by the pentecostal swirl—so seemed it to his worshippers—of Dr. Grant's Geneva gown. And in this same box Sabbath after Sabbath appeared the stalwart form of Archie M'Cormack, modern in ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... day, the American was in the mate's cabin trying to work out his daily reckoning. According to the lad's inexpert calculations, the dock was drifting southeast at the rate of some six or seven miles each day. The dock was a prisoner in that vast central swirl between the North and South Atlantic, that was swinging in stagnating circles when Columbus sailed for the new world; it lay exactly the same when the Norsemen beat down the coasts of Europe; it ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... on the wind, holding to the tips of the Hoheria and their white gowns flutter and swirl, and their ringlets float and sway, and sometimes in the joy of the dance a Lovely Lady lets go of her branch and comes fluttering down ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... side show at Coney Island where the room simulated the motion of an ocean steamer. The courtroom began to do the same—slanting this way and that and spinning obliquely round and round. Through the swirl of its gyrations he could see old Tutt's vulture eyes, growing bigger, fiercer, more sinister every instant. It was all up with him! It was an execution, and the crowd down below were thirsting for his blood, waiting to tear him ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... one island to another by different routes, according to the direction of the winds. While the sea rages on one side of the archipelago, on the other it may be still and safe, lying heavy like oil. In the straits the waves may swirl high in furious whirlpools, but with a mere turn of the wheel, a slight shifting of her course, the vessel may glide into the shelter of an island where she will ride in tranquil waters, paradisiacal, limpid, affording views ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... pieces of the building, which by this time had collapsed and was disintegrating. All of the children were drowned save the oldest boy, who caught a tree and was taken out almost unhurt near Blairsville. Miss Caddick clung to her fraction of the building, which was pushed into the water out of the swirl, and in an hour she was taken out safe. She said her agony in having to cut away from the children was greater than her fear after she got ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... under his feet, and a layer of storm clouds cut off the wan heat of Kel's sun. He drew in a deep breath, watching the swirl of white as he exhaled. It was a good world—a world to build men. It was the world from which a ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... run, but the huge black-headed figure swept forward and engulfed him. He was trapped in a blinding swirl of radiance, with darkness above it. The light bored into his head, and he tried to scream. Then he ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... ditch, wall] His honest sonsie, bawsent face [pleasant, white-marked] Aye gat him friends in ilka place, [every] His breast was white, his tousie back [shaggy] Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black: His gawsie tail, wi' upward curl, [joyous] Hung o'er his hurdles wi' a swirl. [buttocks] ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... boy-private, glancing back, Saw the Bedouins' wild attack, And heard the sharp Martini crack. But as he gazed, already The fierce fanatic Arab band Was closing in on every hand, Until one tawny swirl of sand, Concealed ...
— Songs of Action • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sank again, and the water closed in a swirl over his head, while, after taking a long breath, I dived under into the depths, with the water thundering in my ears, as, during what seemed to be a long space of time, though less than a minute, of course, I groped and swam about till a curious sensation of confusion ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... make, which was to as near as he could get to the Ashland Park Tract, where every purchaser of land was legally pledged to put up no home that should cost less than four thousand dollars. After that came Broadway. A strange swirl had come in the tide of the crowd. The drift was to Washington Street, where real estate promptly soared while on Broadway it was as if the bottom had fallen out. One big store after another, as the leases expired, ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... They wheel about and whirl, They jeer at me, they fleer at me, They flout me as they swirl! As whirling fast or swaying slow, Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, Around, around the corpse they go, They chill me with their chants! These be neither men nor mists— Hearken ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... and sunny, seemed to mock him, and the torn white clouds sailing before the March wind might have been a beaten navy, carrying with it a wreck of hope. The gusty air brought a swirl of sere leaves across his path, and the dust rose chokingly. "Caw! caw!" sounded the crows from a nearby field. The dust fell, the wind passed, the road lay quiet and bright. "Never!" said Cary between his teeth. "I will never ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... restless by reason of the horsemen threading it, shifted, gave ground, expanded, and contracted, so that its shape and size were always changing in the constant area guarded by the sentinel cowboys. Dust arose from these movements, clouds of it, to eddy and swirl, thicken and dissipate in the currents of air. Now it concealed all but the nearest dimly-outlined animals; again it parted in rifts through which mistily we discerned the riders moving in and out of the fog; again it lifted high and thin, ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... suggestive. A wet yard, a pail and mop, and a servant washing fish under a pump could become, in the hands of Peter de Hoogh, and thanks to the magic of light and shade, as beautiful and interesting in their way as a swirl of angels and lilies by Botticelli. But this redemption of the vulgar was at the expense, as I have elsewhere pointed out, of a certain growing callousness to vulgarity. What holds good as to the actual artistic, visible quality, holds good also as ...
— Renaissance Fancies and Studies - Being a Sequel to Euphorion • Violet Paget (AKA Vernon Lee)
... nearly time to light the gas. In the fading light Anstey walked over to a window, watching the snow swirl down into the area outside. At West Point the snowstorms are ...
— Dick Prescott's First Year at West Point • H. Irving Hancock
... all the canoes were ranged side by side, their gracefully curved bows came in line; dip, swirl, thud; dip, swirl, thud, sounded all the paddles together. The time was faultless. Then it was that the picturesque brigade appeared in wild perfection. Nearing a portage, spontaneously a race began for the best landing place. Like ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... beneath the tree since the departure of the first stealthy visitor, and the hope was quite strong within the lad that in the hurry and swirl of the fight the red-skins had failed to note him in his hiding-place. If such were really the case, it would seem that there was a chance of his passing through the lines ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... had watched her from the steps until she had reached the end of the Square where the swirl of passing traffic had engulfed her. At the last moment she had looked back and smiled. For some minutes after she had vanished, he had stood there recalling the way in which her brave little figure had tripped out of sight ...
— The Kingdom Round the Corner - A Novel • Coningsby Dawson
... are strangers forever, Work and wonder ever apart, And the laws of life eternally sever The ways of the brain from the ways of the heart; Be it flower or pearl, or the face of a girl, Or the ways of the waters as they swirl. ...
— The Lonely Dancer and Other Poems • Richard Le Gallienne
... them both to sudden destruction on the rounded cobbles of the paved streets, but once the gates were passed, and the dust of the high road underfoot, he loosed the light tension and pressed his heels home into the flanks. There, ahead, a shifting vision in the rising swirl of dust, was the bay, thundering at top speed. Behind there were shouts, cries, the clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through the roar of the blood swelling his temples and booming in his ears like the surf ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... setting foot in the icy water, and moving out into the shadow with no more noise than a chub's swirl or a minnow's spatter-leap when a great ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... grew heavier and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie could keep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and a little arch of sweat came out in ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... Instead of entering the house, he silently motioned me to come further along the sand, where we reached an open spot clear of coco palms. Ned sat down and filled his pipe. I waited patiently. The wind had died away, and the soft swish and swirl of the tide as the ripples lapped the beach was the only sound that broke upon the ...
— By Reef and Palm • Louis Becke
... through the air, and the tail-fly fell as lightly on the water as a three-cent piece (which no slamming will give the weight of a ten) drops upon the contribution plate. Instantly there was a rush, a swirl. I struck, and "Got him, by—-!" Never mind what Luke said I got him by. "Out on a fly!" continued that irreverent guide; but I told him to back water, and make for the center of the lake. The trout, as soon as he felt the prick of the hook, was off like a shot, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... their proud behest And creeps more darkly as it deeper flows, And fitful winds swirl through the long defile Where the great Highlands keep their ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... for a bad cayuse and the swirl and swish of the flying noose, And the cowboy's yell as he roped a steer, but nothing of this fell on his ear. Not even a wide-brimmed hat he spied, but derbies flourished on every side, And the spurs and the "chaps" and the flannel shirts, the high-heeled ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... the car out into the storm. As the door was opened in came a swirl of white flakes, and Trouble tried to catch them by ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis
... That sate upon the damn'd one's camps As hell-winds gleam most glorious— Each Vandal's music day or night! Vain! vain! Each isle of hidden Hope! Alas! Alas! Each olpe of Remorse! Each vaulted soul and spiral thought, Swirl in the throes of waters cold; Where rivers with the venom crawls, Croak bat-faced incubi till hoarse. And succubi that Hecate taught, Bedecked in byss and spangled gold, Sing runes unto the dungeoned halls. Then burning ghauts and crimsoned peaks, Vomit each, green, abhorrent clouds; The ...
— Betelguese - A Trip Through Hell • Jean Louis de Esque
... had anything to do with flying saucers, the summer of 1952 was just one big swirl of UFO reports, hurried trips, midnight telephone calls, reports to the Pentagon, press interviews, and very ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... production, a young lady remarked that he had a little of the northern manner of speech, he burst out "Good God! I hope not. I would rather the whole d——d country was sunk in the sea. I the Scotch accent!" But, in the passage from which we have quoted, the swirl of feeling ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... Indians yet speak of it as 'The Battle Ground of the West Wind.' All his mighty forces he now brought to bear against the oncoming canoe; he swept great hurricanes about the stony ledges; he caused the sea to beat and swirl in tempestuous fury along its narrow fastnesses, but the canoe came nearer and nearer, invincible as those shores, and stronger than death itself. As the bow touched the land the Four Men arose and commanded the West Wind to cease his war cry, and, mighty though he had been, his voice ...
— Legends of Vancouver • E. Pauline Johnson
... angels have thee in their keeping, lord and master!" he sighed, and so turned with head a-droop and was gone. And now Beltane began to clamber out across the swirl of dark waters, while the tough bough swung and swayed beneath him in every gust of wind, wherefore his going was difficult and slow, and he took heed only to his hands ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... has stored in it somewhere a fearful vitality. The swiftness of its movements when seizing prey is most astonishing; a swirl of water, the sweep of a powerful tail, and the unfortunate victim has disappeared. For this reason it is especially dangerous to approach the actual edge of any of the great rivers, unless the water is so shallow that the crocodile could not ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... valley. It swayed the tops of the tall pine and spruce trees as they shouldered up from the swift brook below. It tossed into driving spray the water of Break Neck Falls where it leaped one hundred feet below with a thundering roar and swirl. It tossed as well the thin grey hair, long beard, and thread-bare clothes of an old man standing upon a large rock which towered ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... dimly through the streaked and dripping glass, throwing little circles upon the glistening cobblestones. The air was full of the sounds of the rain, the thin swish of its fall, the heavier drip from the eaves, and the swirl and gurgle down the two steep gutters and through the sewer grating. There was only one figure in the whole length of Scudamore Lane. It was that of a man, and it stood outside the door of ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... one. The bronco was carried down into a swirl of deep, angry water. So swift was the undertow that Powder River was dragged from beneath its rider. Bob caught at the mane of the horse and clung desperately to it with one hand. A second or two, and this was torn ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... look at her, but in the swirl of feeling that their meeting created he thought that he could forgive, and ...
— Jennie Gerhardt - A Novel • Theodore Dreiser
... city confines, they redoubled in fury and tore down to earth—and enveloped Felipe Montoya, a young and good-looking Mexican, and his team of scrawny horses plodding in a lumber rigging, all in a stinging swirl. ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... they kept together, but as the swirl of the battle tore them apart, Tom and Billy were lost sight of by Bart and Frank, who were laying about them right and ...
— Army Boys on the Firing Line - or, Holding Back the German Drive • Homer Randall
... a squad of four men marched him to an open car. He was shoved into the back seat and the guards climbed in, three with him and one in front. Stan was grateful for the packed condition in the rear seat, because chill air began to swirl back on him as they roared away. He got a little warmth from the ...
— A Yankee Flier Over Berlin • Al Avery
... moved by the look of mingled inquiry and curiosity with which his eyes now began to wander over the walls and cupboards, she hurried to the window overlooking her nearest neighbour, and, lifting the shade, peered out. A swirl of snowflakes alone confronted her. She could neither see her neighbours, nor could she be seen by them. A shout from her to them would not be heard. She was as completely isolated as if the house stood in the centre ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... dimly visible from our deck; but we rowed in vain along the tall and rusty sea-walls. No whaler could attack the huge rollers that raised their monstrous backs, plunged over with a furious roar, and bespread the beach with a swirl of foam. At last, seeing a fine surf-boat, artistically raised at stern and bow, and manned by Cabindas, the Kruboys of the coast, made fast to a ship belonging to Messrs. Tobin of Liverpool, we boarded it, and obtained ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 2 • Richard F. Burton
... near the door opening to the illumined garden, with its late roses, now at their best, and hydrangea clumps plumed in foggy bloom. They stepped out of the swirl of the dance like particles thrown from a wheel, not missed that moment even by those interested in ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... mad-houses. He always shuddered when he heard their names, and rebelled with sick fear against the mere mention of them. They had worked as he had worked, they had been stricken with the delirium of accumulation—accumulation—as he had been. They had been caught in the rush and swirl of the great maelstrom, and had been borne round and round in it, until having grasped every coveted thing tossing upon its circling waters, they themselves had been flung upon the shore with both hands full, the rocks about them strewn with rich possessions, while ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of a gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily alarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred by these ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... swoops, then a mad plunging through a succession of buffeting, curling waves that slapped viciously at him as he dashed through, a great heave or two over the humping billows at the foot, then the swirl of the eddy caught him, and lifted him clear over into the quiet water. One minute of wild thrills and the Long ...
— The Doctor - A Tale Of The Rockies • Ralph Connor
... mouth and sent a cheerful hail ringing in response. Simultaneously the last, least, indefinite blur that stood for the boat in the darkness, vanished in a swirl of snow; and he was alone with the storm and his misgivings. Upon these he put a check—would not dwell upon them; but their influence none the less proved strong enough to breed in him a resistless restlessness and keep him tramping up and down a five-yard stretch of comparatively solid ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... their clear notes, and Sergius and his companions threw themselves upon their kneeling chargers. Then they rode out and down the bank, behind the consul who, with head hanging upon his breast, had turned his rein the moment he had given the word. What if the dust did swirl up in blinding sheets from the south? Before them lay the Roman battle, horse and foot—such an army as the city had never sent forth. What if its masses were somewhat cramped? its front narrow? its general an amateur? They were to fight at last, and how should a mongrel horde ...
— The Lion's Brood • Duffield Osborne
... has sought the oak-dotted prairie miles to the south. Surely, something, somewhere must be unchanged! He has attained the spot where the trees were densest. He is in a swirl of hosts. He looks upon vast, splendid structures, such as the world has never seen before. Through shining thoroughfares are surging the people of all nations. And here was where the Miami Indian found ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... his head. Maryllia had used the strongest weapon in all woman's armoury,—humility,—and he went down before it, completely overwhelmed and conquered. A swirl of emotion swept over him,—his brain grew dizzy, and for a moment he saw nothing in earth or heaven but the sweet upturned face, the soft caressing eyes, the graceful yielding form clad in its diaphanous ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... in March, Hodder alighted from an electric car amid a swirl of dust and stood gazing for a moment at the stone gate-houses of that 'rus in urbe', Waverley Place, and at the gold block-letters written thereon, "No Thoroughfare." Against those gates and their contiguous grill the rude onward rush ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... propose to do about it? What do we propose to do with more than two millions for whom Christ died, American citizens, in the very heart of our Nation, around whom the currents of commerce and industry swirl every day? Shall the greatest tidal wave of all time pass them by, and they not feel it for a moment? More than all, shall the great gospel of God, which is life, and hope, and peace, and home, for us, ...
— American Missionary, Volume 43, No. 12, December, 1889 • Various
... Harrigan had made them delay too long, for now they had not time to swim beyond the reach of the swirl that would form when the ship went down. The Mary Rogers lurched to her grave as they sprang from the rail. A wave caught them and washed them beyond the grip of the whirlpool; another wave swung them back, and the waters sucked them down. Such was the force of that downward ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... a shimmering lake, and gazing on such a scene under the spell of an English June day, one might easily forget the present and fancy himself back in the time when knighthood was in flower, though the swirl of a motor rushing past us would have dispelled any such reverie had we been disposed to entertain it. We reached London early, and our party was agreed that our pilgrimage to Canterbury could not very well have been omitted from ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... where I live," said the sack-backed squirrel, And he turned his sack with a swing and a swirl. ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... bonds on secondary markets reached historically low levels in late 2003, reflecting investor optimism and the government's fiscal restraint. Despite the strong macroeconomic performance, political intrigue and allegations of corruption continued to swirl in 2003, with the TOLEDO administration growing increasingly unpopular, and local and foreign concern rising that the political turmoil could place the country's hard-won fiscal and financial stability at risk. Moreover, as of late 2003, unemployment had yet ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... of music-hall costumes had never gone beyond short skirts, a swirl of lace, and glittering sequins; but Miss Antonia had expressed herself on that subject in ...
— Of Human Bondage • W. Somerset Maugham
... restless surges, piling the little canoes on their crests and swallowing them in the troughs. The canoes thrashed the water as they flew along, half in, half out, but they rode like ducks. The Abwees took off their hats, gripped their double blades, made the water swirl behind them, howled in glee to each other through the rushing storm. To be five miles from shore in a seaway in kayaks like ours was a sensation. We found they stood it well, and grew contented. It was the complement ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... of storms, whether driving the winds a-swirl Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl In the magnet earth,—yea, thou with a storm for a heart, Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed ...
— Poets of the South • F.V.N. Painter
... bed now was hardly worth while. Jack took a towel from the willow bush upon which it was hanging, went down to the river, stripped, and from a rock ten feet above a deep pool dived straight as an arrow into the black water. The swirl of the current swept him into the shallower stream below. He waded ashore, beautiful in his supple slimness as an Apollo, climbed the rock a second time, and again knew the delightful shock of a dive into icy water ...
— The Highgrader • William MacLeod Raine
... lived without that window, she would have told you, nor without the river, which had lulled her to sleep ever since she could remember. It was in the south chamber upstairs that she had been born. Her mother had lain there and listened to the swirl of the water, in that year when the river was higher than the oldest inhabitant had ever seen it,—the year when the covered bridge at the Mills had been carried away, and when the one at the Falls was in hourly danger of succumbing to the force of ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... canopy of cloud, glowing faintly and testifying to the moon riding behind it. There was much phosphorescence. Fitfully before the ship and at her sides arose those stranger little swirls of mist that swirl up from the Southern Ocean like breath of sea monsters, whirl for an ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... spoon round and round, stared into the swirl of the tea, and remained silent. Mr. Clacton, meanwhile, framed a question which, after a moment's hesitation, he ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... front of his own big, verandaed house, down the Blue Nile in a fast steam launch. It was a Nile as blue as turquoise; and after the low island of Tuli had been left behind it was strange to see the junction of the Blue and the White Niles, in a quarrelsome swirl of sharply divided colours. Landing on the shore at Omdurman, we met carts loaded with elephant-tusks, and wagons piled with hides. Giant men, like ebony statues, walked beside pacing camels white as milk. The vegetable market ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... about me, trying to collect my scattered wits. The strip of shingle stood perhaps a foot above the river and was only a few yards wide. In front, the horrible eddy lapped upon the pebbles at each revolving swirl, and behind us rose a smooth wall of rock absolutely unclimbable, even if it had not overhung. That, however, was not the worst, for a numbing sense of dismay, colder far than the chilly snow-water, crept over me as I remembered that most mountain streams in British Columbia rise and fall ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... dazzling full moon sailing in the blue beyond the tumbled chaos of loose cloud so near the earth; the riot of the wind-swept trees fighting to keep a shred of their old green on their bareness, making new concessions to the blast, and beating their stripped limbs together in their despair; the endless swirl of leaves at liberty, free now at last to enjoy a short and merry life before becoming food for worms. She could see the face she had just parted from, but twenty years younger—the same bone-structure ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan
... water were really as bad as it looked. My first feat was to back up cautiously almost to the fall, till my boat was dancing so vigorously that I was spattered all over. Standing up in the boat there, I could see the oily water, like a great arched snake's back, swirl past the arch towards me, bubbleless, almost without a ripple, till it showed all its teeth at once in breaking down. The piers of the arches jutted far out below the fall, like pointed islands. I was about to try to climb on the top of one from the boat, a piece of madness which ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield |
