"Swoop" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... frightens them out of their wits. Whenever a war is about to take place in the country in which they are located they will begin to make themselves scarce; and, on the other hand, they will not visit a country where war is going on till after it is over, and then, vulture-like, they swoop down upon the prey. This feature is one of their leading characteristics; with some honourable exceptions, they are always looked upon as long-sighted, dark, deep, designing specimens of fallen humanity. For a number of years ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... the vicinity of safety that not one of us realized our chauffeur had forgotten to light up. All I remember is that we seemed suddenly to swoop down on a crowd, the peremptory "Halt!" rang out sharp and clear, and we came to a sudden standstill. The car was besieged by officials of every kind, and we all felt the genuine hostility in the air. A man in plain clothes was chief spokesman. ...
— An Account of Our Arresting Experiences • Conway Evans
... blows right and left at an imaginary foe, then soared, and did it all over again two or three times, just to show how far he was from being tired, and how much better he could have done it had it been necessary. Then with a final swoop and a volley of "clickers" he dashed into the bush to receive the congratulations of the one for whom it all was meant and the only spectator for whose opinion he cared in ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... principles in our universe, the sun-principle and the moon-principle. And these principles are known to us in immediate contact as fire and water. The sun is not fire. But the principle of fire is the sun-principle. That is, fire is the sudden swoop towards the sun, of matter which is suddenly sun-polarized. Fire is the sudden sun-assertion, the release towards the one pole only. It is the sudden revelation of the cosmic One Polarity, ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... a chance to redd up this, either," poor John Upham whispered in his ear, and gathered up with a furtive swoop some ...
— Jerome, A Poor Man - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... We come! We come! In swoop for fierce flesh, like a bird of prey, In scent of the blood of the brave to-day, By the splendor of God! We come! We come! Sword in hand, for the Love of God! Since blood is holy and royal wine, Advance! Drink health to the Norman line, Sword in hand, ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... time than it takes to describe the deed, the defenceless company of Boer farmers were slaughtered in cold blood—slaughtered before they could lift even a fist in self-defence! This horrible act of treachery served to do away at one fell swoop with the whole Boer party. Their bones, piled in a heap without the kraal, alone remained to tell to their kindred the tale of their undoing. The Zulus then proceeded in their tens of thousands to attack the nearest encampment, and cut down ...
— South Africa and the Transvaal War, Vol. 1 (of 6) - From the Foundation of Cape Colony to the Boer Ultimatum - of 9th Oct. 1899 • Louis Creswicke
... of the vicious attack. He followed out his prearranged programme with machine-like movements, sending his first bomb with such cleverness that it struck close to the stern, for Jack had made his hawk-like swoop so as to pass completely along the entire length of the deck—this in order to give his working pal a better chance to ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... hope?" I moaned, "so strong, so fair! Our Fowler whose proud bird would brook erewhile No rival's swoop in all our western air! Gather the ravens, then, in funeral file For him, life's morn yet golden ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... the one question which Bosambo had neither the desire nor the ability to answer. He might swoop down upon a warlike people, surprising them to their abashment, rendering their armed forces impotent, but exactly what would happen afterwards he had ...
— Bones - Being Further Adventures in Mr. Commissioner Sanders' Country • Edgar Wallace
... shivered at the thought. She knew too much about the way the trick was done, had followed, too often, all the sinuosities of such approaches. Not that they were very sinuous nowadays: more often there was just a swoop and a pounce when the time came; but she knew all the arts and the wiles that led up to it. She knew them, oh, how she knew them—though with Streff, thank heaven, she had never been called upon to exercise them! His love was there for ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... Craig, it ees right I should go. Besides, I am well acquaint wiz ze commandant. Zen let us consider ze business as settle. I sall away to ze Kasbah, and zen in due time look for ze swoop of ze French zouaves. Begar! if Emile Constans may have a hand in ze capture of zat deevil, ze reward will allow him to visit ze adorable Paris again. I am off. I sall let ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... such a swoop Will raise an obstacle to their retreat And refuge in the fastness of the isle; And show this victory-gorged adventurer That striking with a river in his rear Is not the safest tactic to be played Against an Austrian ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... mail home one day when I saw a great eagle, with wings spread, flying low and circling around as though ready to swoop upon its prey. It was noon on a late fall day with no sight or sound of life except that mammoth eagle craftily soaring. I turned off the trail to follow its flight. It was the kind of day when one must ride off the beaten trail, when the sun is warm, the air cool and sparkling; even Lakota ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... had been successful. "The falcon, after many airy circlings, had made its swoop at last," and its polished talons had done their work not unsuccessfully. The stricken quarry might flutter for a while, but the end would ...
— Bucholz and the Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... she had drifted no man knew. The sun had not been visible for a week, nor the stars, and the captain had been unable to take observations in order to determine his position. At any moment a cruiser might swoop down and hale the crew away to Siberia. The fate of other poaching seal-hunters was too well known to the men of the Mary Thomas, and there was ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... the helmet of Achilles, its plume waving in the morning air. Speechless and helpless the three friends stood, and would have given the last penny in their savings banks if a hawk or some other large bird would swoop down upon it and send ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... Charles. The evening came on slowly. Cries of sea-birds rang weird upon the water. Puffins and cormorants circled round our heads in the gray of twilight. Charles suggested that they might even swoop down upon us and bite us. They did not, however, but their flapping wings added none the less a painful touch of eeriness to our hunger and solitude. Charles was horribly depressed. For myself, I will confess I felt so much relieved ...
— An African Millionaire - Episodes in the Life of the Illustrious Colonel Clay • Grant Allen
... his words, would not be driven off, and came back in greater numbers than before. This put the little man in a great passion, and, snatching up in his anger a bag of cloth, he brought it down with a merciless swoop upon them. When he raised it again he counted as many as seven lying dead before him with outstretched legs. "What a fellow you are!" said he to himself, astonished at his own bravery. "The whole town must hear of ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... I stoop and swoop On the air, or loop Through the trees, and then go soaring, O: To group with a troop On the gusty poop While the wind behind is roaring, O: I skim and swim By a cloud's red rim And up to the azure flooring, O: And my wide wings drip As I slip, slip, slip Down through ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... invasion of their hunting ground by the English. The French-Indians incited by the French settlers in the Mississippi Valley who wanted the wealth of fur-bearing animals for themselves, began to swoop down on the settlements of the English-speaking people along the frontier, ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... marks! Ingred gasped with amazed indignation. One at a time was the usual forfeit, but to lose five "at one fell swoop" seemed excessive, and would make a considerable difference to her weekly record. She blazed against the injustice. No girl in the form had ever had ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... soft as heaped feathers or drifted snow; it moved and shifted under him, took shape; it was a chair—no, a carriage. And there were reins in his hand—white reins. And a horse? No—a swan with wide, white wings. He grasped the reins and guided the strange steed to a low swoop that should bring him near the flare of torches in the street, outside the great front door. And as the swan laid its long neck low in downward flight he saw his cousins in a carriage like his own rise into the sky ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... cowardice. It was a most ambitious swing, ascending to a height beyond any that I have since seen in fairs or public gardens. Horror was at my heart regularly as the swing reached its most aerial altitude; for the oily, swallow-like fluency of the swoop downwards threatened always to make me sick, in which it is probable that I must have relaxed my hold of the ropes, and have been projected, with fatal violence, to the ground. But, in defiance of all this miserable panic, ...
— Autobiographic Sketches • Thomas de Quincey
... beauteous feature of the valley was disclosed to her inspection. The early morning haze had lifted, and the few fleecy clouds that floated in the blue bowl of sky were motionless, their majestic billows glowing in the sun. She saw a Mexican eagle swoop over the cloud, sailing on slow wing high above it, and growing so distant in her vision that he became a mere speck moving in the ...
— 'Drag' Harlan • Charles Alden Seltzer
... is. Just short of the roofs the taut wings flash a reverse, there is a lightning swoop, a startling hollow wind-sound, and the rushing bird is beating skyward again, hawking deliberately as before, and uttering again ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... steamers, impelled by unseen powers within them. Alas! that power was not the force of innocent steam, but the arms of Christian rowers chained to the oar. Sure as the pounce of a hawk upon a partridge was the swoop of the corsairs upon the French vessel. A signal to surrender followed, but the captain boldly refused, and armed his crew, bidding them stand to their guns. But the fight was too unequal, the brave little ship was disabled, the pirates boarded her, and, after a sharp fight on deck, three ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... excited in love. You want to be carried away in love. You want to whoosh off in a nice little love whoosh and love yourself. Don't deny it. I know you do. You want passion to sweep you off on wings of fire till you surpass yourself, and like the swooping eagle swoop right into the sun. I ...
— Aaron's Rod • D. H. Lawrence
... power to make any pictures of the fortifications whatsoever. He appeared to nurse a horrid fear that the secret of the fortifications might become known above the line, and that some day, armed with this information, the Boy Scouts or a Young Ladies' High School might swoop down and capture the whole works. He explained to the lady, that, much as he regretted it, if she persisted in her suspicious and spylike conduct, he would have to smash her camera for her. ...
— Roughing it De Luxe • Irvin S. Cobb
... bolt fell. A well-known mining weekly, which I here poetically veil under the title of the Red Dog "Jay Hawk," was first to swoop down upon the tuneful and unsuspecting quarry. At this century-end of fastidious and complaisant criticism, it may be interesting to recall the direct style of the Californian "sixties." "The hogwash and 'purp'-stuff ladled ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... consisted of rich clothing, silks and other stuffs, wine, vestments, and altar hangings from churches, arms and armour, hides and skins. The prices obtained were far below the real value of the articles, for money was scarce, and none could say when the Danes might again swoop down and clear out the contents of the warehouses. Nevertheless the sum obtained was a large one for those days, and this did not include the value of the gold and silver goblets, salvers, vases, and utensils used in the celebration of ...
— The Dragon and the Raven - or, The Days of King Alfred • G. A. Henty
... desirable for your possession; the stream of light which falls from the setting sun on the advancing tide stands similarly in need of some force of near object to relieve its brightness. But the incident which Turner has here adopted is the swoop of an angry seagull at a dog, who yelps at it, drawing back as the wave rises over his feet, and the bird shrieks within a foot of his face. Its unexpected boldness is a type of the anger of its ocean element, and warns us of the sea's advance just as surely as the ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... face of the clock, coated with verdigris as thick as a diachylon plaister, was rubbed till the figures emerged into day; while, inside the case of the same chronometer, the cobwebs that formed triangular hammocks, which the pendulum could hardly wade through, were cleared away at one swoop. ...
— The Trumpet-Major • Thomas Hardy
... his throat, as though all the truth lived in that man and he hoped to get it from him at one swoop, to ...
— The Hollow Needle • Maurice Leblanc
... was right," thought she. "He is unhappy. Why should this eagle—for he has the eyes of an eagle—swoop down on Besancon? Oh, I must know everything! ...
— Albert Savarus • Honore de Balzac
... battle. Yet it is easier to travel in England, and to gain a commanding view of the river-system of the country, than it was three thousand years ago to travel over India, even over that part of India which the poet of our hymn commands. He takes in at one swoop three great river-systems, or, as he calls them, three great armies of rivers—those flowing from the north-west into the Indus, those joining it from the north-east, and, in the distance, the Ganges and the Jumnah with their tributaries. Look on the map and ...
— India: What can it teach us? - A Course of Lectures Delivered before the University Of Cambridge • F. Max Mueller
... So he went on to the close. When his temper was stirred, he cursed and swore in a way that made decent people tremble. It was a word and a blow with him; the latter, luckily, not very sure now. But he would seize his crutch and make a swoop or a pound at the offender, or shy his medicine-bottle, or his tumbler, at ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... Thus at one fell swoop perished the only chance which ever came to French Canada of growing into a self-governing colony and of working out its own destiny. The physical conditions and administrative necessities of the land were, indeed, from first to last, ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... Turtle Island, a small island lying off the west coast of Hispaniola. Here in their most piping days flourished a buccaneer republic, where the seamen made their own laws and cultivated the land for sugar-cane and yams. Occasionally the Spaniards or the French, without any warning, would swoop down on the settlement and break up the small republic, but sooner or later the buccaneers would be back once ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... subterfuge to outwit the authorities. On one occasion I purchased a consignment of silk Union Jacks for wearing in the lapel of the coat. I knew full well that if I placed these on sale in my shop the stern hand of authority would swoop down swiftly and confiscate the hated emblem without the slightest compunction. So I evolved a special means of clearing them out and that within a ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... to the panel of British prisoners of war by the hawk-like swoop of De Wet and the brothers Prinsloo almost under the eyes of three Divisions of the British Army. For not only were Colvile and Rundle aware of Spragge's predicament, but as soon as it was reported to Lord Roberts, Methuen was ordered to ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited
... last long, however: he soon spent himself, and Mr. McGrath received him with a graceful swoop of his landing-net and secured him. Four more soon followed, all large fish—two to the credit of Mr. McGrath and two to myself. When caught they are of a dark olive-green on the back and sides, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, October, 1877, Vol. XX. No. 118 • Various
... the meeting in the street below, which I was just in time to witness. Berry's swoop was so sudden that his prey appeared to realize that the game was up, and made no attempt to fly. It was almost piteous. An apprehension of certain embarrassment to come extinguished the instant impulse ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... that it needed two people to circumvent his clever resistance. He had wonderfully acute vision, and would let me know directly a hawk was in sight, though it might be but the merest speck in the sky. He once had a narrow escape, for a sparrow-hawk made a swoop at him in his cage just outside the drawing-room window, and had no one been at hand would probably have dragged him through the bars. Whenever he saw a jay or magpie, a jackdaw or cat, his clicking note always told me of some enemy in sight. For many years Birdie was ...
— Wild Nature Won By Kindness • Elizabeth Brightwen
... gadgets that you and the other operators on the Row have worked out, Harry. But I'm in no position to take 'em away from you. Besides, we have some stuff that you'd like to have, too, so that makes us pretty much even. If we started confiscating illegal equipment from you, the JD's would swoop in here, take your legitimate equipment, bug it up, and they'd be driving us all nuts within a week. So long as you don't use illegal equipment illegally, the department will leave ...
— Unwise Child • Gordon Randall Garrett
... tearing up stubble and rending straws?—Stretch forth your hand, and grasp the oak—Labours worthy of your Herculean mind await and invite you. Away to the temple of Error; shake its pillars, and make its foundations totter!—Be yourself—Shall the soaring eagle swoop at reptiles, the prey of ...
— Anna St. Ives • Thomas Holcroft
... every giant of them a hundred feet high. Now about the time you have reduced your universe to complete effeminacy some fool with a pick-axe will break through the thin partition—the mere ice curtain—separating these giants from us, and then they will sweep through and swoop down and swallow you, sir, and the likes of you, with your topsy-turvy civilization, your boasted ...
— Marse Henry, Complete - An Autobiography • Henry Watterson
... seemed perilously to sway. Breathless, awesome seconds. It swayed over, lurched back like a great tree in a wind. Then very slowly it swayed again and did not come back. Falling to the east, its whole giant length came down in a great arc. The descent grew faster, until, in one great swoop it crashed upon the wreckage of the Grand Central Station. The roar of it surged over the city. The crash of masonry; the clatter of its myriad windows, the din of its ...
— The White Invaders • Raymond King Cummings
... The man who expected to get attention should claim it by the strident shrillness of his tones, should be able to bend his two knees in eloquent unison, and send one clenched hand with a driving swoop into the palm of the other—and repeat as often as necessary. Abner questioned as well his mental powers, his quality of brain-fibre, his breadth of view. The feeble creature rested in no degree upon the great, broad, fundamental ...
— Under the Skylights • Henry Blake Fuller
... not feel disposed to give his fish up if he could help it, for it was what Harry called a regular robbery; so, for three or four minutes, it was—pull pike—pull Philip,—till at last, quite in disgust, the pike let go, gave one swoop with his tail, and ...
— Hollowdell Grange - Holiday Hours in a Country Home • George Manville Fenn
... shall rest with the outlaws of the Yorkshire forests. I have sure spies on the Saxon's motions—To-night they sleep in the convent of Saint Wittol, or Withold, or whatever they call that churl of a Saxon Saint at Burton-on-Trent. Next day's march brings them within our reach, and, falcon-ways, we swoop on them at once. Presently after I will appear in mine own shape, play the courteous knight, rescue the unfortunate and afflicted fair one from the hands of the rude ravishers, conduct her to Front-de-Boeuf's Castle, or to Normandy, if it should be necessary, ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... long swoop, an abandonment of all the furious energies that for so long had been hurling her over burning sand and black crag, Nissr slanted to the grassy sward. A sudden, furious hissing burst out beneath her, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... balmy, the sun not too warm, so Peter lay back among the grasses in the sand smoking a fresh cigarette. Far overhead buzzards were wheeling. They recalled those other birds of prey that he had often watched, ready to swoop down along the lines of the almost defenseless Russians. Here all was so quiet. The world was a very beautiful place if men would only leave it so. The voice of the girl was silent now. Shad had probably joined her. Somehow, Peter hadn't been able to think of any relationship, ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... Reply to the Passionate Shepherd, if it be his, as Izaak Walton without suspicion assumes, and, if it did not compel comparison with Marlowe's more exquisite melody, would assure his place among the poets of the age. He was able to barb a fierce sarcasm with courtly grace. How his fancy could swoop down and strike, and pierce as it flashed, may be felt in each ringing ...
— Sir Walter Ralegh - A Biography • William Stebbing
... be considered is as to what food is best for breeding birds, and I say unhesitatingly maize. There is practically no waste, and you have not the mortification of seeing crowds of sparrows swoop down on your ducks' food as you ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... Scriptures. But if we should look at the matter earnestly, and give deep thought to the relative positions, lives, and endings of these two noble men, Issa and Christ, we could scarcely doubt that they are one. Without trying, as does the author, to break down with one fell swoop, the entire structure of the Bible, we cannot but admit the probability of the ...
— Violets and Other Tales • Alice Ruth Moore
... I can tell, Bob, what a detective would do," replied Tom. "You see I ain't no natural detective like you. But I should think he'd swoop down on the den and ...
— The Boy Broker - Among the Kings of Wall Street • Frank A. Munsey
... low gentling words of the riders. Why the colonel did not spring his trap at once I could not guess; though I learned later that he had magnified our two-man spying venture into a patriot foray meant to capture the whole houseful of British officers at a swoop, and was taking his ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... to get it!" the little boy cried. With his hat he made a swoop for the butterfly, and then suddenly he and Flossie, who was close behind him, tumbled down through a hole in the ground, which seemed quickly to open at their very feet, between two ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on Blueberry Island • Laura Lee Hope
... impossibility, they still were quite sure Winston harbored in his secret soul some plan for cheating the workmen at the last. Here would be all this accumulation of capital, and by some successful coup-d'etat Winston and Darcy would swoop down upon it, and take the lion's share. They were very much afraid that the workmen were going to be wronged in some underhand way. A defaulting cashier, unprincipled managers, thieves and forgers, committed their ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas
... with crushing weight on intellectual Germany! Soon she will absorb the old kingdoms of Scandinavia,—to wit, Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. On the shores of Norway the ruler of the Sclavonic race will hang over Scotland and England, like a bird of prey about to swoop upon his victim. All despots and absolutists will array themselves under his banner or be his auxiliaries. The old hierarchies will be banded with him to crush out Protestantism, which is a plant of Teutonic growth. Old Asia, with her rancor and despotic ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... the eminent Twynintuft. Like every spirit that was ever called for, this ex-elocutionist happened to be within a few seconds' flight of the circle, and had nothing in the world to do but to swoop down and tip as long as the company could possibly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 80, June, 1864 • Various
... Honor last completes the stately group, With eye like eagle's in descending swoop, Fronted like goddess beautiful and proud When sailing on the "lazy-pacing cloud": Prouder her port than that of all the rest, With radiant forehead and translucent breast, She needs no gesture of supreme command ...
— A Wreath of Virginia Bay Leaves • James Barron Hope
... if we haven't any horses, we won't follow them; they will, therefore, take their time and travel so slow, that we'll have the chance to swoop down on them when they are not ...
— A Waif of the Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... morning, when Mr. Archibald went out of his cabin door, he looked over the lake and saw a bird suddenly swoop down upon the water, breaking the smooth surface into sparkles of silver, and then rise again, a little silvery fish glittering ...
— The Associate Hermits • Frank R. Stockton
... watched her hand travelling across the sheet of note-paper, and returning at regular intervals, with a sure swoop, to begin a fresh line. There was no sound except the gentle scratching of ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... the entreating brown eyes at her elbow, straightway forgave Toady, and released her victim so suddenly that he fell sprawling into a nest of sharp-thorned Mormon pears; but of this she was unaware, for with one swoop she gathered up the now hysterical baby, and stalked off toward the house, saying grimly, "You boys stay right where you are until you are willing to apologize and promise to behave yourselves in the future. I've a mind to turn you over to the sheriff now. Come, girls!" Followed by the troop ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... came to Australia? Was there a chance of that? They had islands, naval bases, not so far away. They were Australia's neighbors. What of the German navy? Was it out? Were there scattered ships, here and there, that might swoop down upon Australia's shores and bring death and ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... the midday meal, which was hurriedly eaten. Lars Gunnarson and the clerk still sat on the fence, laughing and chatting. They reminded Jan of a pair of hawks biding their time to swoop down upon helpless prey. Finally the men got down off the fence, opened the gate, and went toward ...
— The Emperor of Portugalia • Selma Lagerlof
... less ferocious than their nature is. Again, in Tishri, at the time of the autumnal equinox, the great bird ziz[7] flaps his wings and utters his cry, so that the birds of prey, the eagles and the vultures, blench, and they fear to swoop down upon the others and annihilate them in their greed. And, again, were it not for the goodness of God, the vast number of big fish had quickly put an end to the little ones. But at the time of the winter solstice, in the month of Tebet, the sea grows restless, for then leviathan spouts ...
— The Legends of the Jews Volume 1 • Louis Ginzberg
... against the current, thus forming a temporary dam. The water drains off below them, and when it has reached its lowest point, at a signal from one of their number who from the bank watches the proceedings, they rise and swoop upon the fish, frogs, etc., which the lowering of the ...
— The Seven Great Monarchies Of The Ancient Eastern World, Vol 4. (of 7): Babylon • George Rawlinson
... look—here's a whole benchful accounted for at one swoop." Still Jemmy did not reply. The sunbeam drifting between the benches before him fell on a little patch of earth—a patch collected by one of the slaves whose comrades, humouring his whim, had brought him a handful or two in ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he was the only one of the lot who heard with no misgivings the vicious swoop of the storm; so long as the tent-pegs held he didn't care how hard it rained. But the others who woke to the roar of wind and the crash of thunder and to the swish and beat of much falling water, turned uneasily ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... discontented ones who dare not act, like the vultures, they flee the living man, but swoop upon the corpse. The consuls of those countries who love not England or Claridge Pasha, and the holy men, and the Cadi, all scatter smouldering fires. There is a spirit in the Palace and beyond which is blowing fast to a ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... boats are lowered; sail is immediately set, and, like swift huge-winged birds, they swoop down upon the prey. Driving right upon the back of the nearest monster, two harpoons are plunged into his body up to the "hitches." [Footnote: Hitches: a knot or noose that can be readily undone.] The sheet [Footnote: Sheet: ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... the winds of the morning, Yon dread pennon streams as a lurid bale-star: Hark! shrill from his trumpets an ominous warning Is blown with the breath of the demon of war;— Then bright flashed his steel as the eye of an eagle, Then spread he his wings to the terror-struck foe; Then on! with the swoop of a conqueror regal, He rushed, and his talons struck victory's blow:— Wild then their shouts arose, Fled then their shivered foes, And snowy Ben-Nevis re-echoed their wail; Far from the field of dread, Scattered, they singly fled, As hound-startled ...
— The Celtic Magazine, Vol. 1, No. 1, November 1875 • Various
... Nap," I ventured, climbing into the seat. "One would think this was a funeral. I must get a hustle on as I've got to do 120 miles before I can get to business, so if everything's right, I'll swoop up." ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... broad brown hand which held her. He whipped it back with an oath, while she tore herself free and slipped behind Alleyne, cowering up against him like the trembling leveret who sees the falcon poising for the swoop ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... termed the insolence of a handful of outlaws, and the cowardice of his picked troops, who had flaunted their banners and gone forth as if to assured victory, and had then fled like some gay-plumed bird before the swoop of the eagle. Not only the oppressed inhabitants of Jerusalem and its environs had cause to tremble at the rage of the tyrant, but his own Syrian officers and the obsequious courtiers who stood in his presence. And none more ...
— Hebrew Heroes - A Tale Founded on Jewish History • AKA A.L.O.E. A.L.O.E., Charlotte Maria Tucker
... the panting of the horses throbbed through the still air. The pale-blue shadows on the western side of the road grew longer. The sun, declining through its shallow arch, dropped behind the tree-tops. Darkness followed swiftly, as if it had been a bird of prey waiting for this sign to swoop down ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... down maps; and we arrived in this astonishingly perfect old town early in the afternoon, coming by way of Capel Curig (whence we saw Snowdon crowned with a double rainbow), sweet Bettws-y-coed, or "station in the wood," and so down the river valley in a bird swoop, to noble Conway, with its castle that was once a famous Welsh fortress. Now, in piping days of peace, its towers and turrets still dominate bridge and river, and the great pile is as fine, in its way, as Carcassone. Don't you remember, it was from Conway Castle that ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... would call a good time, because he couldn't help thinking of his mother's warning. He kept looking all around to see whether a weasel or a mink or a fox might be trying to steal up behind him. And he kept looking up to make sure that no big bird was ready to swoop down ...
— The Tale of Sandy Chipmunk • Arthur Scott Bailey
... the forests are vocal with song; and when the gray and dewy morning calls the creeping things of the earth out of their night-cells, it summons from the neighboring wood legions of their winged enemies, which swoop down upon the fields to save man's harvests by devouring the destroying worm, and surprising the lagging beetle in his tardy retreat to the dark cover where he lurks through the hours ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... hand on the arm of his companion, and speaking with the gravity of a judge, "whin ye swoop yer gaze on thim playthings out there, bear in mind that there's our breakfast, as me grandmither obsarved whin the dinner table upsit and ivery thing ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... With a swoop his hand took her aloft and away. Then we saw her, twenty feet or so in the air, still on his hand as he held ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... whole heart confidence, for he had been forced to veil from her his hopes of winning a fortune by one fell swoop upon the ...
— The Midnight Passenger • Richard Henry Savage
... it was a fine, exhilarating experience; for, added to the joy of battle with the elements, there was the wild grandeur of the scene, the great masses of black cloud scurrying athwart the sky, with little patches of starlit blue winking in and out between, the roar and swoop of the wind, and the menacing hiss of the phosphorescent foam-caps as they came rushing down upon the boat in endless succession, all combining together to form a picture the like of which, as viewed from a wildly leaping, half-swamped, spray-smothered ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... glide, coming up astern with obvious intentions. As the two men watched—and as a score of other eyes, from other galleries and ports likewise observed—the lean wasp carried out her driver's plan. With a sudden, plunging swoop, she dived at the Eagle of the Sky for all the world like a hawk ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... upon the deep-piled dais, Wrought in hallowed looms of Sais, O'er the impetuous torrent's swoop, Stands the ...
— Fringilla: Some Tales In Verse • Richard Doddridge Blackmore
... crowed. All at once a voice burst suddenly in swaggering tremolo out of the darkness of the road beneath them, rising, rising, then fading off, then flaring up hotly like a red scarf waved on a windy day, like the swoop of a hawk, like a rocket intruding ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... from his Salon d'Exposition, which is hung about with a couple of hundred pictures presented by his admiring painter guests from time to time. The viands are bountiful and splendidly garnished and the consommations au premier choix. Then there are the occupants of "les petits menages" to swoop down on your table for crumbs,—pigeons only,—and in cages a score or more of canary-birds, and, as a sort of contrast, dogs and cats and fowls of all ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... that Hart, who was formerly the extreme right, would now become almost the extreme left, and, having thus extended his right arm, to cross the river where it flowed east and west, and make a still wider swoop on the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... a Rajput rides, with a swoop and a swinging sabre and a silent, tight-lipped vow that he would prove himself. Green though he was yet, he knew that the troop had found for him—had rounded up for him—had made him his opportunity; so he took it, right ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... to dwell in imagination upon your surprise when you realize what you have overlooked. It seems so simple! To abolish, prohibit, banish, and remove, at one swoop, the chief preoccupation of mankind! The simple and high-minded felicity of still having something prohibitable subject to your omnipotent legislation! But there, I dare say I am wrong. Probably you ...
— In the Sweet Dry and Dry • Christopher Morley
... one swinging swoop, and I wished that Jerry and I had been strong enough to do that last night. Greg had only time for one gasp before he was quite comfortable against our man's shoulder. But he was brave, because it must have hurt like ...
— Us and the Bottleman • Edith Ballinger Price
... of his words was electric. There was a sharp intaking of breath from the spectators. The dark man's face froze, and his eyes darted red. His right hand seemed to hang on the instant for the swoop to his gun. Rathburn appeared to be smiling queerly out of his eyes. ...
— The Coyote - A Western Story • James Roberts
... greater cheapness of the one or the other. So also with Hawes, never yet pardoned by the financiering economist of "cheese parings and candle ends" for the splendid Thames tunnel job, and L200,000 of the public money at one fell swoop. These people range under the generic head Charlatanerie, as of the distinct species classified as farceurs according to the French nomenclature. For other species, and diversities of species, of a lower scale, but of capacity to ascend into the higher order ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 54, No. 334, August 1843 • Various
... loaded with gun carriages, ammunition wagons, and field kitchens. On one car of every train were three mounted machine guns with their crews, in readiness for any daring Boche plane that might swoop down on them. Most of the trains that traveled by day were camouflaged with branches of green leaves broken from ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... in the air, his schemes for revenge, his hopes of wealth, had vanished at one fell swoop. "Patrick Henry Keogh" seemed to grin up at him out of the paper. His case had crumbled about his ears; his defeat would be known all over the district, and nothing could much longer stave off the inevitable exposure of his misappropriations. But he was a fighter all over, and he still ...
— An Outback Marriage • Andrew Barton Paterson
... and kill fish for food, saw them carve the thick, spongy hearts from certain giant growths and eat them. I saw a pair of killer sharks swoop down on the band, and the quick, deadly accuracy with which both men and woman met the attack. One man, older than the rest, was injured before the sharks were vanquished, and when their efforts to staunch his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... salmon in the new style. The day is promising better. I'm sure we'll have sport yet. Hilloa! I've another!" and Murphy began hauling in the salmon. "Billy, you rascal, get ready; watch him—that's it—mind him now!" Billy put out his gaff to seize the prize, and, making a grand swoop, affected to miss the fish. "Gaff him, you thief, gaff him!" shouted Murphy, "gaff him, or he'll ...
— Handy Andy, Volume One - A Tale of Irish Life, in Two Volumes • Samuel Lover
... days became insufferably warm, but the nights were glorious. Talbot and I liked to sleep on the deck; and generally camped down up near the bitts. The old ship rolled frightfully, for she was light in freight in order to accommodate so many passengers; and the dark blue sea appeared to swoop up and down beneath ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... laughing. "I'll steer clear of the rocks! And as it happens, I have got a piece of news that will put your doings into the background at one fell swoop. Rosalind is going to give a party! The Earl and Countess of Berkhampton are coming down to the Larches the week after next, and are going to bring their two girls with them. They are great lanky ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... he said boyishly. "But of course his case is no different from that of hundreds of others who have come out here to 'God's Country' in the hope of beating the daily grind and jumping to fortune at one fell swoop. That sounds rather Irish, doesn't it?" he ...
— The Outdoor Girls in the Saddle - Or, The Girl Miner of Gold Run • Laura Lee Hope
... a fierce one. With the mass of fire between us and the ground directly below, blinded by the smoke and half suffocated by the heat, we were not conscious of the good fortune that awaited us, until, with a swoop and a plunge, we found ourselves submerged, and, with an equal velocity, immediately thrown back again by the buoyant force of the balloon into the open air. The flood of fire in which we had descended ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... teachers as the Whole Arm, or Free Arm Movement, in which the arm is lifted free from the desk and completes the letter with a dash or a swoop, is necessary in ornamental penmanship and flourishing, but has no place in a practical style of business writing. The man of business would hardly stop, in the midst of his writing, to raise the arm, and execute an "off-hand ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... myself for a while," I said cheerfully; "I have had a deal of business swoop down upon me, and in order to dispatch it, must shut myself up for a time, and ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... Duzer allowed interest at a liberal rate upon all deposits left in their hands by their workmen, all his surplus earnings remained untouched. The consequence was that the accumulations of years were swamped at one fell swoop, and he found himself reduced to poverty. And as though misfortune was not satisfied with visiting him thus heavily, the very day of the failure he was stricken down by typhoid fever: not the typhoid ...
— The Gerrard Street Mystery and Other Weird Tales • John Charles Dent
... so that nothing of the moon showed but a living brightness imprisoned, like the eyes and life of a bird, between those swift sweeps of darkness. This great uncanny spirit, brooding malevolent over the high leagues of moon-wan grass, seemed waiting to swoop, and pluck up in its talons, and devour, all that intruded on the wild loneness of these far-up plains of freedom. Barbara almost expected to hear coming from it the lost whistle of the buzzard hawks. And her dream came back to her. Where were her wings-the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... thus cutting off the chief centers of Italian industry. At the same time, they undoubtedly meant to send an invading army through the passes of the Carnic and Julian Alps from their base at Tarvis, and by a sudden swoop southward take the Italian forces on the Isonzo in the flank. At least this is what the Italian staff believed was their plan, and they arranged their ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... sudden swoop of the tempest arrived. The tall elms writhed as though taken with St. Vitus's dance. The hens began to screech and run to cover. Thunder ...
— Ruth Fielding Down East - Or, The Hermit of Beach Plum Point • Alice B. Emerson
... on the scene at Bannu. Up in the hills to the westward lived the Umarzai Waziris, among the worst of the outlaws. The knowledge that a fresh ruler had been appointed over them troubled them not a whit, and they proceeded to swoop down on the villages in the plain for the purpose of taking toll as aforetime. Nicholson acted promptly. Placing himself at the head of 1500 mounted police, he carried war into the enemy's country, penetrating the hill-fastnesses into ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... woman. The fact that Ted was contentedly munching a red apple told that he had already made his hawk-like descent on the stand of the market woman, and was now seeking to distract her attention so that his companion might also swoop down to seize a prize, when they would go off, laughing uproarously, as though they ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... Colonel had to drive them through the city with his own right hand. I saw his martial form looming in the rear of a skittish column of cows, and even as the vulture scenteth the carcase afar off, even so, scenting interesting matter, did I swoop down on the unhappy Colonel, startling him severely with my sudden dash. He said, "I'm driving cows now," and, truth to tell, there was no denying it. Even as he spoke, a perverse beast of Nationalist tendencies ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)
... was cut down upon his own deck by a sweeping blow from Hennessy's cutlass. Then, followed by Arguello's curses, the Irish captain went back to his brig and set sail for Callao, leaving Martinas to get the better of his wound and swoop down upon the natives of Easter Island ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... between France and Germany had increased to the point where open rupture was feared. For years Germany had been waiting for a propitious moment to swoop down on France and overwhelm her. The French intrigues in Morocco, which were leading visibly to a French Protectorate over that country, aroused German resentment, for the Germans coveted Morocco themselves. The Kaiser went so far as to ...
— Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography, • William Roscoe Thayer
... shout, and cheer on cheer, as first one, then another of the enemy was overturned or dodged. The more he achieved, the less his enemies ventured against him, and he dashed through their "forwards" and between their "quarter-backs." Next moment, with a mighty swoop, their "half-back" fell ...
— The Adventures of a Three-Guinea Watch • Talbot Baines Reed
... was a substantial one; he seemed resolved, at one ample swoop, to repay Lady Annabel for all her hospitality; and he really took such delight in their participation of it, that his principal guest was constrained to check herself in more than one warning intimation that moderation was desirable, were it only for the sake of the strawberries and cream. All ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... And do you suppose she will sign a lease to empower you to wipe her off the face of the earth—abolish her and her pretty island at one fell swoop?" ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... he was afraid. But the great god ceased not, but arose upon him with darkness on his crest, that he might stay noble Achilles from slaughter, and ward destruction from the men of Troy. And the son of Peleus rushed away a spear's throw, with the swoop of a black eagle, the mighty hunter, strongest at once and swiftest of winged birds. Like him he sped, and on his breast the bronze rang terribly as he fled from beneath the onset, and behind him ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer (Lang, Leaf, Myers trans.)
... some of the boys to trace the steps, and while they were gone outlined his plans to the others. Once they knew where the marauders were, they were to spread out fan-shape and swoop down upon the enemy. ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... good many years now," he told me. "I've seen them tackle a man, a bull, a team, and stand against the swoop of an eagle. Two ganders may be hard as swordsmen at each other, when they're drawing off their flocks, but they'll stand back to back against any outsider. Yes, I've watched them a long time, and I've never yet seen them do anything a man would be ashamed of. Why, I'd like to see the wild goose ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... the water before him from high in the air. The water spouted up, causing an osprey to swoop ...
— True to His Home - A Tale of the Boyhood of Franklin • Hezekiah Butterworth
... this twenty-second of March did we realise fully the vast conception and the extent of the German swoop, and that our Brigade was as jetsam and as flotsam carried along on the mightiest part of the ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... more significant of his ruthless nature. Then Snap's courting of the girl, the cool assurance, the unhastening ease, were like the slow rise, the sail, and the poise of a desert-hawk before the downward lightning-swift swoop on his quarry. ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... The bishops, the universities, and the Dominican Inquisitors exercised this privilege; and by their means, in the age of manuscripts, the life of a book was soon extinguished. Whole libraries were sometimes sacrificed at one fell swoop, as in the case of the 6000 volumes destroyed at Salamanca in 1490 by Torquemada, on a charge of sorcery.[111] After the invention of printing it became more difficult to carry on this warfare against literature, while the rapid diffusion of Protestant opinions through the press rendered ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... and came to the conclusion that he could swoop down, nip Mrs Gummidge, and get back to his bust of Pallas without being caught. He tried it, but his master was too quick for him, and foiled, he lay sullenly in Gethryn's hands, his two long claws projecting helplessly between the brown fists ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... a part of the garrison had gone to the rescue, as you call it, another party of redskins would swoop down and gobble up the remnant left ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... appeared upon the little knoll several warriors, mounted and uttering the usual war-whoop, as if they were about to swoop down upon a human enemy. This touched the dignity of Mato, and he immediately prepared to accept the challenge. Every Indian was alive to the possibilities of the occasion, for it is well known that Mato, or grizzly bear, alone among animals is given the rank of a warrior, so ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... It was like the swoop of a carrion bird an instant afterward—and the deafening strike. The Austrians had varied a little. A shrapnel battery had been emplaced among the rapid-fire pieces during the recent interval. A hundred ...
— Red Fleece • Will Levington Comfort
... beneath a shady ledge to watch the small creatures that speed like lightning on the rippling top. I saw the dragon-flies flash and dart and turn, with a poise, with a speed that no other winged thing knows: I saw the hawk hover and stare and swoop: he fell like a falling stone, but he could not catch the king of the salmon: I saw the cold-eyed cat stretching along a bough level with the water, eager to hook and lift the creatures of the ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... on fire, he made a swoop for the fellow, and managed to give him a tremendous blow that toppled him ...
— The Saddle Boys of the Rockies - Lost on Thunder Mountain • James Carson
... of spirit; I longed to see a thousand wild and painted warriors swoop down upon the train. I thought of our peaceful dry-goods store at home, and I would gladly have sat down in another butter-tub could I have been there. I even thought of earthquakes with a sudden longing; ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... in readiness for the cruise, the Osprey ran through the inlet on the morning of the third day out from Newbern, and spread her wings to swoop down upon the first unsuspecting merchantman which happened to be holding along the coast inside of Diamond Shoals. Now the crosstrees were manned for the first time, a small pull taken at the sheets fore and aft, and with a fine breeze over her quarter the ...
— True To His Colors • Harry Castlemon
... sweeps War's lengthening coast, where each sea-swell Is Humans, gasping. Hope drags each cold form From hearth to hearth, to find no ember warm; Then, their eyes glitter frost, who hear hope yell As up she climbs the rocks and falls pell-mell Back from small herbs, where monsters swoop ...
— Freedom, Truth and Beauty • Edward Doyle
... arrival in New York she felt almost easy in her mind. New York, with its shoving, jostling, hurrying crowds; a giant fowl-run, full of human fowls scurrying to and fro; clucking, ever on the look-out for some desired morsel, and ever ready to swoop down and snatch it from its temporary possessor, had numbed her. But now she felt a slackening of the strain. New York might be too much for her, but she could ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... farm—a solid house of stone and red timbers, softened by the long grasses that made the orchard a pleasant place. They passed berry-bushes—raspberry and blackberry and currant, now turned wild; green-gold bushes that were a net for sunbeams. They saw yellow warblers flicker away, a king-bird swoop, a ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... the warning whistle of an imaginary gas attack sounds. One backward fling of the head and the steel helmet falls off, for there is no time to lift it off. A dive into the bag carried on the chest and the respirator is grasped and with one skilful swoop it is drawn over the face. Your nose is pinched shut by a clamp, your teeth grip the rubber mouthpiece, and, like a diver, you must now get your one safe stream of pure air through the respirator. You draw in the air from a tube which rises from a tin of chemical ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy
... at table in my London boarding-house meant that, though he put it in a way all his own. He was a benevolent enough crank, but no friend of preaching. Being a crank, he condemned preachers with one fell swoop:— ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... Ameshof, who with Mr. Kotze had made a stand against the President in this matter, was also obliged to relinquish his judgeship. Thus it will be seen that at one swoop Mr. Kruger disposed of three reputable intermediaries whom he had used to great advantage at one time or another. 'Something for nothing,' for Mr. Kruger! Whether Mr. Kotze acted in haste or whether Sir Henry de Villiers' plea for more time was justified ...
— The Transvaal from Within - A Private Record of Public Affairs • J. P. Fitzpatrick
... the pack, and in about five minutes the boar was found in his lair. They could have killed him at once, or at least shot at him, but that would have ended the hunt too quickly. The huntsmen launched the whole pack at the animal, which, seeing this troop of pygmies swoop down upon him, started off at a slow trot. He crossed the road, Roland giving the view-halloo, and headed in the direction of the Chartreuse of Seillon, the three riders following the path which led through the woods. The boar led them a chase which lasted until five in the afternoon, ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... aboard and willing hands grasped the propellers and gave each a twist. Bang! bang! bang! went the explosions, and soon the propellers were revolving swiftly, and then with a swoop the Dartaway ran over the campus on its wheels and suddenly arose in the air. A cheer went up, and the students threw up their caps. Then Dick swung around in a quarter circle ...
— The Rover Boys in New York • Arthur M. Winfield
... albatrosses accompanied us all across the South Pacific. These birds never seem to tire and but rarely rest on the water, except when they swoop down and settle a moment to pick up something that has been thrown overboard; this is quickly devoured, and they are again in pursuit. The albatrosses, some white, some grey, and some almost black, are huge birds; some that we shot, and for which the boat was sent, measured nine feet ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... mile along a deep lagoon or bayou, he did not know which, and saw hawks swoop down and draw fish from its dark surface. The whole scene was ugly and cruel, and he was glad when he left it and entered the woods again. Once he thought he heard the mellow voice of a negro singing, but that was the only ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and the spell of the great, simple, and primitive emotions; he had sat down to eat with buccaneers; he had seen the fierce, quick leap of unleashed passions, and had felt death swoop close at his nape and pass like a swift spurt of cold air. City life, his old life, had no charm for him now. Wilbur honestly believed that he was changed to his heart's core. He thought that, like Moran, he was henceforth to ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... amendment, to be sure; but what barbarity, after all! What! not thirty days' run from home, and lose our magnificent homeward-bounders! The homeward-bounders we had been cultivating so long! Lose them at one fell swoop? Were the vile barbers of the gun-deck to reap our long, nodding harvests, and expose our innocent chins to the chill air of the Yankee coast! And our viny locks! were they also to be shorn? Was a grand sheep-shearing, such as they annually have ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... careful irrigation avails to grow nothing less hardy than millet, peas and buckwheat. In crossing to the valley, or rather trench, of the upper Indus, we have the choice of two passes, one 13,060 and the other 13,500 feet above tide. Having selected the least of these two evils, we swoop nearly six thousand feet down upon the village of Astor and a new language, the Dard. The temptation to stop and study either is small. If we are insatiate of climbing or find the heat at Astor—only 7853 feet above the sea—oppressive, we have ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various
... over Lake Gorgopis then it floats, To Aigiplanctos, waking the wild goats, Crying for "Fire, more Fire!" And fire was reared, Stintless and high, a stormy streaming beard, That waved in flame beyond the promontory Rock-ridged, that watches the Saronian sea, Kindling the night: then one short swoop to catch The Spider's Crag, our city's tower of watch; Whence hither to the Atreidae's roof it came, A light true-fathered of Idaean flame. Torch-bearer after torch-bearer, behold The tale thereof in stations manifold, Each one by each made perfect ere ...
— Agamemnon • Aeschylus
... be heard, sometimes with a noise of wrangling and discordance, sometimes in single cries of bodeful complaint. Occasionally the din is such that it is difficult to hear a friend speaking; the birds cluster and hover and swoop above with fierce argument and angry parleying. They are so accustomed to human presences that, even if sometimes a nuisance, they are more often a joy. They are never molested; they have a sense of privilege—the good women of the houses will come out and talk ...
— The Cornwall Coast • Arthur L. Salmon
... class stand up to those of the Allies. They are not nimble in the air. Such champions as they have produced have been men of one trick; one of their great men, Immelmann—he was put down by an English boy a month or so ago—had a sort of hawk's swoop. He would go very high and then come down at his utmost pace at his antagonist, firing his machine gun at him as he came. If he missed in this hysterical lunge, he went on down.... This does not strike the Allied aviator as very brilliant. A gentleman of that sort ...
— War and the Future • H. G. Wells
... thus suddenly taken possession of the world, lost no time in setting up the signs of his rule. The leaves, whether green or brown, disappeared at one swoop; snow-gusts obscured the little remaining sunshine; the inhabitants came forth in furs and bulky wrappings; oysters and French pears became unreasonably dear; and sledges of frozen fish and game crowded down from the northern forests. In a few days the physiognomy of the capital was completely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 93, July, 1865 • Various
... the escape of Cornelia. Pompeius half rose from his seat; the boat was pitching in the choppy harbour swell; the general steadied himself by grasping the hands of Philip the freedman. Suddenly, like the swoop of a hawk on its prey, Agias saw the right hand of Septimius tear his short sword from its sheath. A scream broke from the Hellene's lips; before the Magnus could turn his head, the blow was struck. Pompeius received the blade full in the back, and staggered, while Salvius ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... for I have ceased To justify my deeds unto myself— The last infirmity of evil. Aye, Thou winged and cloud-cleaving minister, 30 [An Eagle passes. Whose happy flight is highest into heaven, Well may'st thou swoop so near me—I should be Thy prey, and gorge thine eaglets; thou art gone Where the eye cannot follow thee; but thine Yet pierces downward, onward, or above, With a pervading vision.—Beautiful! How beautiful is all this ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... birds and squirrels. Probably this much talked of fascination is nothing more than by its presence near their nests to incite them to attack, and to hazard near and nearer approaches to their enemy in hope to force him to retreat, until once within the compass of his fell swoop they fall victims to their temerity. I have often watched a cat act thus. Whatever explanation may be received, the fact cannot be questioned, and is ever attributed by the unreflecting, to some diabolic spell cast upon them by the animal. They have ...
— The Myths of the New World - A Treatise on the Symbolism and Mythology of the Red Race of America • Daniel G. Brinton
... stroke of the hurricane beat her down, and she continued to do so until, as she got dead before it, she rose suddenly to an even keel and went scudding away to leeward like a frightened sea-bird. The awful volume of sound given out by the fierce, headlong swoop of the wind as it bore down upon us quite prepared me to see both masts blown clean out of the schooner; but all her gear fortunately happened to be sound and good, and the loss of the foresail was the full extent of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... transformation-sleep? I do not know yet, What I do know is that her slender legs and her dainty velvet dress do not allow her to make underground searches. When she has found the propitious place, suddenly she will swoop down, lay her egg on the surface in that lightning touch with the tip of her abdomen and straightway fly up again. What I suspect, for reasons set forth presently, is that the grub that comes out of the Bombylius' egg must, of its own motion, at its own risk ...
— The Mason-bees • J. Henri Fabre
... tracking we came up with the beasts. There were four of them altogether, and right wild and vicious-looking brutes they were. They marched close together in a band, and never parted company. The moment I and my men tried to separate and head them off, the leader would swoop down upon us with open mouth, and the result of this appalling apparition was that my black assistants fled precipitately. Alone I followed the camels for several days in the hope of being able ultimately to drive them into some ravine, where I thought I ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... they are perfectly nice, well-behaved brigands, but occasionally they forget their manners and swoop down upon the caravan road less than a dozen miles away. This is done only when scouts bring word that cargo valuable enough to make it worth while is about to pass. Each time the brigands make a foray a return raid ...
— Across Mongolian Plains - A Naturalist's Account of China's 'Great Northwest' • Roy Chapman Andrews
... Swoop! Down went the extra noose over Tom's lifted arms, and then down to a snug noose under ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... difficulties were strong enough to overcome. His first great action on record, although not successful in the end, and tinctured with the innocence of youth, is yet highly creditable to him. He made a general swoop of a hundred and twenty nightcaps belonging to his companions, and disposed of them to his satisfaction; but as it was discovered that of all the youths in the college of Clermont, he only was the possessor of a cap to ...
— The Paris Sketch Book Of Mr. M. A. Titmarsh • William Makepeace Thackeray
... saw her swoop down like a mother bird to her young. (Winthrop tries to speak; his voice fails; he sinks limply back on the blanket). Steve! Only fainted. Ah! (he rises and goes slowly to Fair; when he speaks, his ...
— The Southern Cross - A Play in Four Acts • Foxhall Daingerfield, Jr.
... party of hostile Lipans made a swoop around and skirting the garrison, killing a herder—a discharged drummer-boy—in sight of the flag-staff. Of course great excitement followed. Captain J. G. Walker, of the Mounted Rifles, immediately started with his company in pursuit of the Indians, and I was directed to accompany ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 1 • Philip H. Sheridan
... because I find it already said to my hand, as it were, in a pretty verse, and because I must needs liken Montmorenci to something that is soft and light. Yet a cloud does not represent the glinting of the water in its downward swoop; it is like some broad slope of sun- smitten snow; but snow is coldly white and opaque, and this has a creamy warmth in its luminous mass; and so, there hangs the cataract unsaid as before. It is a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sail in the opposite direction? Death and destruction are concomitants of constitutional changes and revolution, no doubt; but you are such an impersonation of change, that, as you twist and turn and double, you deal destruction on all sides. At one swoop you are the ruin of a thousand oligarchs at the hands of the people, and at another of a thousand democrats at the hands of the better classes. Why, sirs, this is the man to whom the orders were given by the generals, in the sea-fight off Lesbos, to pick up the crews of ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... either. I heard that savage, "chacking" noise which brown owls make when they are perched. This great gleaming owl, five times greater than any earthly owl, was making that chacking noise, as though it would soon spread its wings, to swoop on some such wretched mouse as myself. I could see its eyes roll. I thought I saw the feathers stiffen on its breast. Then, as the sweat rolled down my face, both the horrible things vanished as suddenly as they had appeared. They were gone ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... of 'Letters,' in which a number of miscellaneous scientific subjects were treated in a mildly speculative and popular style. The volume was rather dull, and very unimportant; but it happened to appear at this particular moment, and Voltaire pounced upon it with the swift swoop of a hawk on a mouse. The famous Diatribe du Docteur Akakia is still fresh with a fiendish gaiety after a hundred and fifty years; but to realise to the full the skill and malice which went to the making of it, one must at least have glanced ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey |
