"Thumping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were subsequently replaced by another two, by the order of their hospitable entertainer. On Donald, however, his libations were now beginning to produce, in a very marked manner, their usual effects. He was first getting into a state of high excitation; thumping the table violently with his fist, and sputtering out furious discharges of Gaelic and English, mingled in one strange and unintelligible mess of words, and seemingly oblivious of the fact that not a syllable of what he said could be comprehended ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume 2 - Historical, Traditional, and Imaginative • Alexander Leighton
... saw was ripping away yesterday in the carpenter's shop, and the hammer was noisy enough. Today there is not a sign of life there. The anvil makes no music to-day. Tommy Taft's buckets and barrels give forth no hollow, thumping sound. The mill is silent—only the brook continues noisy. Listen! In yonder pine woods what a cawing of crows! Like an echo, in a wood still more remote other crows are answering. But even a crow's ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 4 • Charles Dudley Warner
... paused, thinking that he had heard the sound of voices. Ten minutes passed while he crouched in the mud, listening. There was another brief instant of moonlight, this time brighter, and the shadows cast by the trees seemed living, moving things. Tom could feel his heart thumping. ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... was thumping so his ribs shook, and his breath was coming in gulps between parted lips. Garman's lips were smashed beyond all resemblance to a mouth, and the heaving of his great chest told how the pace was telling. His first kick had done the work, however. A ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... was no use trying to. The thumping of her heart beat down her thoughts. Her brain swam in a warm darkness. Every now and then names drifted to her out ...
— Anne Severn and the Fieldings • May Sinclair
... in every agitation of a new idea when the most prosperous weapon against it is a thumping epithet. The name must be apt enough to stick. Furthermore, no matter how misleading, it must be suggestive of ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 20, July, 1891 • Various
... the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the colonel, thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"... he dwelt particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he ended, again turning to the count. ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... teachers of voice, who not having voices themselves are obliged to give their pupils the pitch of each note by pounding it out on the pianoforte. Voice quality has nothing in common with pianoforte quality of tone, yet constant thumping of the pianoforte by a singing-teacher in order to give the pupil the pitch, is apt to mix pianoforte color into a pupil's voice and mar its translucent vocal quality. A teacher need not be a fine singer—few vocal teachers are—but, at least, he should be able to give ...
— The Voice - Its Production, Care and Preservation • Frank E. Miller
... contact with about two feet of the haft standing out of the thatch, and he began tugging at it to draw it forth. "Won't come, won't you? All right, then, go;" and catching hold of the bamboo staff with his left hand, he doubled his fist and turned his right into a mallet, thumping the butt, which readily yielded and went farther and farther through, till he struck the bamboo and mat together, when a final blow sent the weapon right through, and it ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... gang] O' randie, gangrel bodies [rowdy, vagrant] In Poosie Nansie's held the splore, [carousal] To drink their orra duddies. [spare rags] Wi' quaffing and laughing, They ranted an' they sang; Wi' jumping an' thumping The very ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... commencement which consists in watching the flies when standing close to the master who is showing off his skill on a customer, to being able to play the guitar with such proficiency that, holding the neck in his left hand and pressing the cords with the fingers, he shall, by thumping the instrument on the big toe of his left foot, cause it to vibrate the air of the immortal Cachucha or the Bolero, while with his right hand he plays ...
— Tales from the Lands of Nuts and Grapes - Spanish and Portuguese Folklore • Charles Sellers and Others
... been thinking that after the next logging season he would annex Joyce Birkdale to his few belongings—the cabin, his dog and gun. The idea had not roused him much, but it had been a pleasurable conclusion to arrive at; and now? Every nerve was aching and the boy's heart was thumping heavily. Again he dropped his head, and he cursed everything his thought touched upon—even the girl he meant, in some way, still ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... the garden never losing sight of the gate—or any other point for that matter—for more than a minute. Each sound of the church clock striking a few streets away would have brought her young heart thumping into her throat. ...
— The Head of the House of Coombe • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... sheet grows to an end, and so does the pleading of the learned counsel, who is thumping the poor bar as I write. He hems twice. Forward, sweet Orator Higgins!—at least till I sign myself, ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... Gambetta, when someone remarked that he was very lucky in having conquered renown by a single speech, broke out impetuously, "I was years preparing that speech—twenty times I wanted to deliver it, but did not feel that I had it here (touching his head), though it palpitated here (thumping his breast) as if it ...
— Great Men and Famous Women. Vol. 4 of 8 • Various
... raised his voice, and the dogs, who had been eyeing each other with no friendly looks, snarled and sprang upon each other, and the small entry was the scene of such a fierce battle, and resounded with such shrill yelps and much thumping and bumping about that the very coats and hats on the pegs trembled. Pixy was full of fight, but the strange dog was much the larger, and scored a victory, while Pixy ran howling under ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... approached, the guests began to arrive in considerable numbers; and carts, and cars, and waggons came bumping and thumping over the uneven path, though the greater part made their appearance on horseback. I was looking out of a window which commanded the approach to the castle, when I saw coming along the road a large party of naval officers, whose well-known uniform ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... the others. In the next ten miles there were, perhaps a dozen more. They'd been hard to start, perhaps, and so left later than the rest. Jill wasn't in any of them. There was one car traveling slowly, making thumping noises. Its driver made the best time ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... Department of the Interior in the pacific purposes of its red children, the wards of the nation. All along in the summer and the early autumn the "ghost-dance" had been spreading from tribe to tribe, the war drum had been thumping in the villages, the Indian messiah, a transparent fraud, as all might see, wandered unrebuked from band to band—half a dozen messiahs, in fact—and along in September, instead of Geordie Graham's best-loved chum and classmate, Connell, of the ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... the ship could be seen more distinctly. She lay upon a shoal, held partly by her anchor, which the crew had let go before she struck. Thus confined she had been knocked down by the seas, and now lay thumping violently at every rising and falling of the surge, and in danger every moment of going to pieces. She was covered with human beings, who were seen clinging to her in every part—each separate group forming a separate and frightful spectacle ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 3, July, 1851 • Various
... a moment before she could open it. Her heart was still thumping, her voice failed her, she turned white and red in a moment. The strongest emotion of which she was conscious was the hope that Arthur had not heard her ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... doctor, thumping the table. "Here hi! You Vane, why don't you cheer, sir, when our Queen of Sheba speaks such words of wisdom. Your aspirations shall not be stopped, boy. There, no more words about the trouble. It's only the loss ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... rigging hung in large bights at every lurch. One of the main top-gallant shrouds had parted; and, to crown all, the galley had got adrift, and gone over to leeward, and the anchor on the lee bow had worked loose, and was thumping the side. Here was work enough for all hands for half a day. Our gang laid out on the mizzen topsail yard, and after more than half an hour's hard work, furled the sail, though it bellied out over ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... a quick thumping of heavy feet on the landing, and a moment later a young country girl entered. It was Betty, one of the serving girls whom Dame Burton had brought with ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... do you do in my house, Mary Ann!" Then there was silence, save for the thumping of his own heart. ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... been unfortunate once," he muttered unemotionally, and turning his back on me he went away, thumping slowly the plank floor as if his feet had been ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... Queensland schooners ran full "nigger" cargoes to Bundaberg, Maryborough, and Port Mackay; when the Government agents, drunk nine days out of ten, did as much recruiting as the recruiters themselves, and drew—even as they may draw to-day—thumping bonuses from the planters sub rosa! In those days the nigger-catching fleet from the Hawaiian Islands cruised right away south to palm-clad Arorai, in the Line Islands, and ran the Queensland ships close in the business. They came down from Honolulu in ballast-trim, save for the liquor and firearms, ...
— Concerning "Bully" Hayes - From "The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton and Other - Stories" - 1902 • Louis Becke
... surprising. The swearing and pounding went on with great vigor for some minutes, those not directly engaged cheering the others on with hoots and yells. In fact, a free fight was going on down there in the intense darkness, every body thumping every one within reach, thinking to spot the thief. Finally some one struck a match. As its flickering rays lighted up the gloom, they revealed a dozen or so of disgusted combatants glaring savagely on each other, and each wanting to know who was the ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... but I fear that obedience to God is not the strongest natural passion of the human heart, and I doubt whether resistance to tyrants can often be promoted by putting about a general conviction that the tyrant has a thumping big stick in his hand, and may be relied upon to use it. Even Tom Paine had the wit to see that it was his "good heart" which brought Louis XVI. ...
— Ireland Under Coercion (2nd ed.) (1 of 2) (1888) • William Henry Hurlbert
... she passed on, sustained by the musicians, to a most rollicking, Little Russian, thumping ...
— Yama (The Pit) • Alexandra Kuprin
... Mike was busy thumping the green balls with his knuckles, and feeling of the stems, and when he had tested each in turn, he answered, "Yis, I'll sell thim for you, but ye'd better wait a week or two. They ...
— At the Little Brown House • Ruth Alberta Brown
... loves me. It was really Bobs' welcome, I think, across the cold prairie air, that took the tragedy out of my homecoming. There were gladness and trust in those deep-throated howls of greetings. He even licked the snow off my overshoes and nested his head between my knees, with his bob-tail thumping the floor like a flicker's beak. He sniffed at the Twins rather disgustedly. But he'll learn to love them, I feel sure, as time goes on. He's too intelligent a ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... first day and night out from Queenstown, when the ship rolled and pitched with straining and squeaking noises, and a thumping of the lifted screws, there was no rough weather, and at last the ocean was livid and oily, with a long swell, on which she swayed with no perceptible motion save from ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... thumping rapidly as he took a step toward the deeper shadows. He swallowed hard, as if to clear a knot out of his scrawny throat. But he had made up his mind. Something was compelling him, and he would go in. Slowly the gloom engulfed him, and once again the ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... hard-favoured old girl. I make no doubt she leads him a rich life. Nobody else is let near him. He is chiefly in the dark. It is my belief she knocks him about terribly in that chamber. I listen at the wall sometimes when I am in bed, and I think I hear her thumping him. You should see her fist. She could hold half a dozen hands like yours in her one palm. After all, notwithstanding the chops and jellies he gets, I would not be in his shoes. In fact, it is my private opinion that she eats most of what goes ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... well warmed and refreshed, we proceeded to the place pointed out by him, where we found the boat thumping in the surf, on a ledge of rocks. After hauling it up, we proceeded to lift the blanket, when a shocking sight presented itself. The dead man was sitting upright on the seat, with his mouth and ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... sitting on the bench and striving vainly to quiet her thumping heart. She heard him come lightly up behind her, but she did not turn her head though she had no tears to conceal. She was possessed by an insane desire to spring up and flee. It took all her resolution to ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... tossed and twisted, all in mad effort. But the weight clung fast. He whirled again, and again leaped, leaped clear of the ground, returning to it this time on stiffened legs. But he could not shake off the weight. He flung across the corral, twisting, writhing, bucking; flung back again—heart thumping, lungs shrieking for air, muscles wrenching and straining; and again across, responding, and continuing to respond, to the ringing voice within, like the king of kings that he was. But he could not dislodge ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... cried Paul. 'What to do?' He walked backwards and forwards, pondering his reply. 'I believe the only excuse that will pass with Royalty is illness or death. Shall I send word that I died suddenly this morning? Ah, well, here goes for a thumping lie.' ...
— Grey Roses • Henry Harland
... there was something beyond the ocean that he was still to do; something that he had left undone experimentally and speculatively, to see if it could content itself to remain undone. But it was not content: it kept pulling at his heartstrings and thumping at his reason; it murmured in his ears and hovered perpetually before his eyes. It interposed between all new resolutions and their fulfillment; it seemed like a stubborn ghost, dumbly entreating to be laid. Till that was done he should never be ...
— The American • Henry James
... road, which he had some difficulty in accomplishing, and when there he would not go a bit better than in the field. He had no preference to the turnpike road, and George, after fatiguing himself, and getting into a violent heat by beating and thumping the animal's impenetrable skin, considered that he had better get him back again into the field, and there leave him. But here again the stubborn beast perplexed him; he would not budge an inch, no, not even when George pulled and dragged him by the halter ...
— Forgotten Tales of Long Ago • E. V. Lucas
... and go to Yves's rescue; he must not be allowed to go on thumping in that manner. Let us take a lantern, and see what ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... perceive a confusion and noise of struggling on board, and angry voices, as if people were trying to force their way up the hatchways from below; and a heavy thumping on the deck, and a creaking of the blocks, and rattling of the cordage, while the mainyard was first braced one way, and then another, as if two parties were striving for the mastery. At length a voice hailed distinctly "We are captured by a"—A sudden sharp cry, and a splash overboard, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... the turtle, who is the most powerful man/id[-o] of the J[)e]s/sakk[-i]d/, and through him, with numerous other malevolent man/id[-o]s, especially the Animiki/, or thunder-bird. When the prophet has seated himself within his lodge the structure begins to sway violently from side to side, loud thumping noises are heard within, denoting the arrival of man/id[-o]s, and numerous voices and laughter are distinctly audible to those without. Questions may then be put to the prophet and, if everything be favorable, the response ...
— The Mide'wiwin or "Grand Medicine Society" of the Ojibwa • Walter James Hoffman
... thumping on the door of my bathing-machine. What a glorious scent of salt rose from the sea-washed floor! "Are you coming out?" asked a persuasive voice. "No, no, no!" I shouted joyously. "I am going in." What a dive! I never ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... transactions came to claim a payment that was not due him. Aunt Mary explained to him that he was not entitled to it, and refused to see him again. He returned another day, and she would not allow the door to be opened. He then remained outside pulling the bell and thumping for admittance. Aunt Mary spoke to him from the balcony above, and requested him to leave. He vowed he would not stir without his money, and tried to coerce her by the most frightful threats and oaths. "When his imprecations were at their highest, Aunt Mary descended, and throwing ...
— The Story of a Summer - Or, Journal Leaves from Chappaqua • Cecilia Cleveland
... shivering with cold. He still whistled mechanically, but the hand that held the sputtering candle shook to the trip-hammer thumping of his heart. "The balance of 'em must of got lost," he thought, listening to the lonesome howl of the wind across the prairie. "It's too c-cold for snipe, I reckon. I wisht I'd staid at home. I c-can't w-whistle any longer," he whimpered aloud, dropping the candle-end, ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... attempt at any display of science; he simply relied on his superior strength and size, and charged down upon his adversary with the intention of thumping and pounding him till he gave in. Jack Vance knew very little about the "noble art," except that it was the proper thing to hit straight from the shoulder; and following out this fundamental principle, he succeeded in landing his opponent a good hard drive ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... was thumping and kneading him on the slab, Tanno went on talking a cheerful monologue of frothy gossip. I asked ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... into the gig, expressing her gratitude in a very touching and modest manner. Spires buttoned the apron over her, and taking a look at the child, said in a cheerful tone to comfort her, "Bless me, but that is a fine thumping fellow, though. I don't wonder that you are tired, carrying ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... time in an insufferable nasal monotone. Three o'clock would strike directly; Andrea looked at the titles of the books, keeping an eye on the gates of the palace, while the voice of the bookseller mingled confusedly with the loud thumping of his heart. ...
— The Child of Pleasure • Gabriele D'Annunzio
... face. She closed her lips and compelled her eyelids to obey the dictates of a resentful heart: she lowered them until they gave one the impression of indolent curiosity, even indifference. All the while, her incomprehensible heart was thumping with a rapture that knew ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... dancing around the circle in a most frantic manner, pulling with all his might, so as to stretch out the rope, and by his jerking movements loosening himself by tearing out the flesh. The young man's dance was accompanied by a chant by those who were standing around, assisted by the thumping of a hideous drum, to keep the time. The young brave who was undergoing this self-torture finally succeeded in tearing himself loose, and the rope relaxed from its sudden tightness and fell back toward the centre pole with a piece of the ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... grinding sound set the black fog vibrating. Then a brief clamor of panic-stricken voices rang in to the shore. Silence followed that—a silence that was suddenly broken by the thumping report of a cannon. The light ...
— The Harbor Master • Theodore Goodridge Roberts
... thumping and feel chills running down his spine. How should he ever live up to a bronze cross—the precious cross given for valor alone, which marked him as heroic for life—when all he wanted to do was to crawl away to some quiet, safe place and munch more biscuits? He had once been a buttons who looked ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... took a drink or two, and sprinkled to their several huts, and Black Hat was at peace, There were no dogs or cats to make night hideous—no uneasy roosters to be sounding alarm at unearthly hours—no horrible policemen thumping the sidewalks with clubs—no fashionable or dissipated people rattling about in carriages. Excepting an occasional cough, or sneeze, or over-loud snore, the most perfect peace ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... which thoughts like these received for nearly half an hour was from a sudden burst of her father's, not at all calculated to compose them. At a more than ordinary pitch of thumping and hallooing in the passage, he exclaimed, "Devil take those young dogs! How they are singing out! Ay, Sam's voice louder than all the rest! That boy is fit for a boatswain. Holla, you there! Sam, stop your confounded pipe, or I shall be ...
— Persuasion • Jane Austen
... his phials to his cages, and from his cages back to his flasks. While he told Pentaur of the state he had found his room in on his return home, he wandered about in feverish excitement, unable to keep still, now kicking over a bundle of plants, now thumping down his fist on the table; his favorite birds were starved to death, his snakes had escaped, and his ape had followed their example, apparently in his ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... like so many nightmare hands trying to hold them back to their destruction. They were young and hardy, but their physical strength was sorely tested by the battle with the elements. Their hearts were thumping as though they would burst through their ribs, and their breath came ...
— Army Boys on German Soil • Homer Randall
... not so," said the young lord thumping the table, "where have I got the money from?" This was an argument that the rector could not answer;—so he merely shook his head. "I am bound to acknowledge them after taking ...
— Lady Anna • Anthony Trollope
... teacher too, and the responsibility. She never betrayed her own ignorance, nor did anything to shake Emily's touching belief in her superiority; and she never shook Emily. She knew she could have done better herself if there had been less thumping and shaking, and she had the wisdom to profit by her mother's errors of judgment already—not that Emily ever provoked her. The child was apt and docile, and the lessons were a sort ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... With a heart thumping against his ribs at this strange and amazing coincidence, the American ducked his head carefully under the port hood and ...
— The Cruise of the Dry Dock • T. S. Stribling
... way, upon my folly; for his railing at the company I keep hits me by implication. I believe these old courtiers of the late King are Puritans at heart; and that if Archbishop Laud were alive he would be as bitter against the sins of the town as any of the cushion-thumping Anabaptists that preach to the elect in back rooms and blind alleys. My father talks and thinks as if he had spent all his years of exile in the cave of the Seven Sleepers. And yet he fought shoulder to shoulder with some of the finest ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... were the last of them. Understand, my comrade, that shell-fire is not all very pleasant, and there are times when a man must sit in the fire-trench, crouching at the bottom, whilst they rain all round him, some bursting in the trench and shattering the traverses, some thumping pits behind or in front big enough for a platoon to camp in, and others blowing in the parapets, and smothering the fellows behind them. Rifle-fire is nothing to it—a mere pastime—for then, if a man keeps his head well down, there ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... schoolboy: an expedition against bargemen, or a match at cricket, may be very pretty things to recollect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things very near as pretty. The beginning of my Roman history was spent in the asylum, or conversing in Egeria's hallowed grove; not in thumping and pommelling king Amulius's herdsmen. I was sometimes troubled with a rough creature or two from the plough; one, that one should have thought, had worked with his head, as well as his hands, they were both so callous. One of the most agreeable circumstances I can recollect is the ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Three shots, thumping in rapid succession, the last of them depositing the cap almost in her hands. Clutching it, she scrambled to her feet, and Dick, catching her by the arm beneath the shoulder, forced her into a thirty yards' sprint, in which, while her heart beat ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... along the front of the French ramparts under cover of night, one of them carrying a mallet, with which he was to hammer the ground at short intervals. The French sentinels, it seems to have been supposed, on hearing this mysterious thumping, would be so bewildered as to give no alarm. While one of the two partners was thus employed, the other was to lay his ear to the ground, which, as the adviser thought, would return a hollow sound if the artful foe ...
— A Half-Century of Conflict, Volume II • Francis Parkman
... policemen, and the roofs all shining gray in the gray dawn. They passed through the pitmen's village, all shut up and silent now, and through the turn-pike; and then they were out in the real country, and plodding along the black dusty road, between black slag walls, with no sound but the groaning and thumping of the pit-engine in the next field. But soon the road grew white, and the walls likewise; and at the wall's foot grew long grass and gay flowers, all drenched with dew; and instead of the groaning of the pit-engine, they heard the skylark, saying his matins high up in the air, and ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V2 • Charles H. Sylvester
... the tallow dip and sprang to the door. The cat passed me like a demon, and the tallow dip went out, but my long knife flew swifter than she, and I heard her screech, and I knew that my knife had found her. For a moment I listened to her tumbling and thumping about in the darkness, and then when her frenzy ceased, I lighted a lamp and raised it over my head. Mr. Wilde lay on the floor with his throat torn open. At first I thought he was dead, but as I looked, a green sparkle came into his sunken eyes, his mutilated ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... that dreary hour When, as with misty eyes, To call the old familiar roll The solemn sergeant tries,— One feels that thumping of the heart As no prompt ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... his whirligig and the Gymnasium, where he set himself to developing a chest to match the big head above, which head no longer ached with eight or ten hours of study. Harvesting beans and raking up leaves seemed to have a soothing effect upon his nerves, for now he fell asleep at once instead of thumping his pillow with vexation because his brain would go on working at difficult problems and passages when he wanted it ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... Simple, is it not, to go on patrol from a line you cannot see towards another line you also cannot see ... sometimes you lost touch with the others and gazed round into the blackness with that primordial fear of the unknown inspired by the night. Lost! God, it nearly unmans you. With fast-thumping heart you hear the approach of guttural Hun voices ... DOWN and QUIET. At last calm thinking points out that yon burning house is in your own lines. Make for it and all is well. Aye. Scouts, does the pulse ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... from the swaying of the yokes on the rocky trail, their tongues out, their eyes glassy with the unspeakable toil they so long had undergone; the loose wheels wabbling, the thin hounds rattling, the canvas sagged and stained, the bucket under each wagon empty, the plow at each tail gate thumping in its lashings of rope and hide—the train of the covered wagons now had, indeed, won through. Now may the picture of our own Ark of Empire never perish from ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... begin to fall in four months, and then you will see it at its best. I am also going to make a garden, and plant no end of vegetables and flowers and things. There is a lovely little spot on one of the creeks; and Jim and I have been going over a thumping big box of seeds which I bought yesterday. You can consider that garden as made, with rock-melons and watermelons, and 'punkens' and other fruit growing in ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... cots, From women widowed, sonless, fatherless, That then oppressed our eyes. There is no salve For such deep harrowings but to fight again; The enfranchisement of Europe hangs thereon, And long she has lingered for the sign to crush him: That signal we have given; the time is come! [Thumping ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... lunch. The constable said 'Well! Well! Well!' and marched him to a dungeon cell. At Vine Street Station out it came—Lord Belpher was the culprit's name. But British Justice is severe alike on pauper and on peer; with even hand she holds the scale; a thumping fine, in lieu of gaol, induced Lord B. to feel remorse and learn he mustn't punch ...
— A Damsel in Distress • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... catch the blouse and try to wrap it around her, while she sagged against the wall and stared at the door. The hoof beats pounded to a solid thumping halt just outside. ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... joined in with varying notes till it swelled to a weird chorus of baying hounds which the banjo and the musician's voice made most realistic. Next the fox was spied and there were cries of "Hello! Ho! Here he is!" "There he runs," with the banjo thumping like mad! Then the medley shaded down into a wild, monotonous drumming from the strings and the voice, which represented most thrillingly the chase at full height. At last the fox was caught with dogs barking, men calling, and banjo shrilling a triumphant ...
— The Boy from Hollow Hut - A Story of the Kentucky Mountains • Isla May Mullins
... guttural exclamation of surprise The Red Man gave in poking about the mill Over the great big thumping shuffling mill-stone Disgusted the Miller physically as coming From one who had no right to be heard from. "Come, John," he said, "you want to ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... thought. One upturned mass rose above the gunwale, smashed in the bulwarks, and deposited half a ton of ice on deck. Scarcely had this danger passed when a new enemy appeared in sight ahead. Directly in their way, just beyond the line of floe-ice against which they were alternately thumping and grinding, lay a group of bergs. There was no possibility of avoiding them, and the only question was whether they were to be dashed to pieces on their hard blue sides or, perchance, in some providential nook to find a refuge from ...
— The World of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... and without the least appearance of hurry, though my heart was thumping like a big ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... the grass, and Prince sat at her feet, thumping his tail on the ground, and watching intently every change that flitted across her face. Now and then he would make a snap at some flies; if Betty spoke to him, his whole body would wriggle with ecstasy; he seemed to live on her ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... of beef-pasty which had been set at the end of the board. The runaways, four or five in number, herded together lower down, with a few travellers of lower degree, all except the youth who had been boasting before their arrival, and who retained his seat at the board, thumping it with the handle of his knife to show his impatience for the commencement of supper; and not far off sat Tibble, the same who had hailed their arrival, a thin, slight, one-sided looking person, with a ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... strain on the giant, but he held fast as if his own life depended on it. The cords stood out on his neck and forehead, and perspiration rolled down his face. He could hear his own heart thumping like a hammer ...
— Frank Merriwell's Bravery • Burt L. Standish
... saw Ralph before he went away. He seemed very down on his luck, poor dear! He's been trying to persuade Penelope to say yes and to fix an early date for their wedding, as he's got the offer of a very good short tour in America—really thumping fees—and he won't accept it unless she'll marry him first and ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... often that great chub, or any other coarse fish, are in earnest about anything; but just then they were thoroughly bent on feeding, and in half an hour Master Tom had deposited three thumping fellows at the foot of the giant willow. As he was baiting for a fourth pounder, and just going to throw in again, he became aware of a man coming up the bank not one hundred yards off. Another look told him that it was the under-keeper. Could ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... thing I knew, was the loud thumping of a handspike on deck as the watch was called again. It was now four o'clock in the morning, and when we got on deck the first signs of day were shining in the east. The men were very sleepy, and sat down on the windlass without speaking, and some ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the chest rises and falls and the flanks are powerfully brought into action. If the pulse can be felt at all it will be found beating very frequently, one hundred or so to a minute. The heart may be felt tumultuously thumping if the hand is placed against the chest behind the left elbow, or it may be scarcely perceptible. The animal may tremble all over. If the ear is placed against the side of the chest a loud murmur will be heard and perhaps a fine, ...
— Special Report on Diseases of the Horse • United States Department of Agriculture
... itself with its shod hoofs, in vain did its rider lay round him with his whip: for not only did the Spanish mules assail him with their teeth, but, turning tail as well, they sent their heels whistling around his head, and now and then thumping against his legs, until his leather boots and breeches ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... while bad thoughts Were troubling Edward's rest; But soon they heard his hard quick pants, And the thumping in his breast. ...
— Poems of Coleridge • Coleridge, ed Arthur Symons
... sat with folded hands peering out from her room upon the damp hillside to the west. From across the street came the bawdy thumping of a mechanical piano and the swish of a sluggish tide. Her encounter with Sawyer Flint had forced the door of her virginal seclusion and thrust her at once into the primitive and elemental open. She felt like one who was coming out of voluntary exile to the pathos of a deferred ...
— The Blood Red Dawn • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... kind to describe, at any rate," said his father. "It is a kind of quivering, which begins in one place and spreads in every direction. Don't you hear a kind of a thumping sound?" ...
— Rollo's Philosophy. [Air] • Jacob Abbott
... foul-smelling dissecting room, my only company being several partially dissected subjects, and numerous rats which kept up a lively racket coursing over and below the floor and within the walls of the room. Their piercing and vicious shrieks as they fought together, the thumping caused by their bodies coming into forcible contact with the floor and walls, and the rattling produced by their rush over loose bones, furnished a variety of sounds that would have been highly creditable to any old-fashioned haunted house. I must acknowledge that the eeriness ...
— McGill and its Story, 1821-1921 • Cyrus Macmillan
... with waving banners and thumping drums rode King William himself in brave array, mounted on a white steed which bore a strong resemblance to Tom Caldwell's old grey mare, and followed by a troop of loyal subjects, all to the stirring ...
— The Silver Maple • Marian Keith
... o' Kenmuir!" he cries. In an instant there is uproar: the merry applause of clinking pewters; the stamping of feet; the rattle of sticks. Rob Saunderson and old Jonas are cheering with the best; Tupper and Ned Hoppin are bellowing in one another's ears; Long Kirby and Jem Burton are thumping each other on the back; even Sam'l Todd and Sexton Ross are roused from ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... the hotel was locked, of course, and the poor little porter kept Colville thumping at it some time before he unlocked it, full of sleepy smiles and apologies. "I'm sorry to wake ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... the light which the case threw on the manners of counsel that interested me. After all, these things are part of the game. They have no more reality than the thumping blows which the Two Macs exchange in the pantomime. I have no doubt that after their memorable encounter in the Bardell v. Pickwick case, Serjeant Buzfuz and Serjeant Snubbin went out arm-in-arm, ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... we refreshed our fancies by witnessing the kanga, or drums beating to the dances of the maidens of Zinder. It is always the same thing, two or three fellows thumping upon their drums, dancing round them occasionally themselves, and the maidens approaching these drummers with timid steps. To-night they had a sort of hopping-dance, on one leg, keeping time to the beating of the drums. These coy maidens soon approached, or rather ran at ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 2 • James Richardson
... and cook for us!' They—shamming love—beseech. 'Oh, tell us about Saxon times! The course of history teach!' But what they really want is 'tin;' A thumping share for each. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 103, September 17, 1892 • Various
... with a great deal of noise, boots thumping, squeaking, knives and forks rattling, voices ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... to follow Wampus when a revolver shot arrested him. This sound was followed by a quick thumping against the ground of the steel bar, and then Wampus emerged from the tent holding a dark, squirming object on the end of the rod extended ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces and Uncle John • Edith Van Dyne
... morning till night they keep thumping away,— No sound but the anvil the whole of the day; His afternoon's nap and his daughter's new song, Were banished and spoiled by ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... went out to many adventures in the heart of war, so that for me it will always hold a great memory, was on that day in October a place of wild chaos, filled with the murmur of enormous crowds, and with the steady tramp of innumerable feet which beat out a tragic march. Those weary footsteps thumping the pavements and the cobble-stones, made a noise like the surging of waves on a pebble beach—a queer, muffled, shuffling sound, with a rhythm in it which stupefied one's senses if one listened to it long. I ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... is the nearer of the two, missy," decided Captain Dresser, thumping his malacca cane down to give greater effect to his words. "Strange to say, you've almost hit upon the very name; for, the fisher- folk hereabouts and down the coast call the things 'mermaids' purses.' They once contained the ...
— Bob Strong's Holidays - Adrift in the Channel • John Conroy Hutcheson
... there was a rattling and thumping at the cabin door, as if something was being removed; and as the prisoners listened, the skipper's voice was heard at ...
— The Black Bar • George Manville Fenn
... contact that, on one occasion, when she and Sally had been climbing up to the second floor, and the door of his room was opened, through which his voice had sounded, calling to Sally, she had run hurriedly up the stairs out of sight, her heart thumping with excitement when he ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... a little distance through the bushes, he caught sight of the red fox coming back, with an air of having forgotten something. The Child longed to warn the little partridge mother, but, realizing that he must not, he waited with thumping heart for a tragedy to be ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... piano, playing for her, when he became conscious that another lady had entered the room, and, turning, saw Nellie Travers. He rose and bowed to her, extending his hand as he did so, and knowing that his heart was thumping and his color rising as he felt the soft, warm touch of her slender fingers in his grasp. She, too, had flushed,—any one could see it, though the lamps were not turned high, ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... sprang to his feet. For an instant he looked wonderingly about as if in doubt whether to call the watch or begin the hunt for his cattle. Then the pine door caught his eye and the low, measured breathing of his uncle fell upon his ear, and with a quick lift of his arms, his strong hands thumping his broad chest, he stretched himself to his full height: he had work to do, and he ...
— Kennedy Square • F. Hopkinson Smith
... man who hails you Tom or Jack, And proves, by thumping on your back His sense of your great merit, Is such a friend as one had need Be very much his friend, indeed, To ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... was thumping wildly and he was tempted to shout to the intruder. Hastily banishing the impulse he watched the man. The dim outline of his figure was distinctly seen. Perhaps the intruder had been startled by the discovery of the ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... is said to have been peopled in ancient times. However, Miss Edgeworth's Irish postilion and “Knockecroghery,” could scarcely have afforded us more amusement than our Sarde driver and his horse, whose good qualities he ludicrously vaunted, alternately cursing and glorifying, thumping and coaxing, the vicious beast, while we heaved at the wheels. Our united efforts at length succeeded in extricating the vehicle from the sandy hollow; and after jolting for awhile over the new-formed road, ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the painful conclusion was come to, that with the slender resources available, it was impracticable to repair the damage done to the Uranie, especially as the original injury had been aggravated by the repeated shocks occasioned by thumping on the beach. "What was to be done?" Should the explorers calmly wait until some vessel chanced to put in at Berkeley Sound? This would be to leave the sailors with nothing to do, and this enforced idleness would open the door to disorder and insubordination. Would it not be better to build a ...
— Celebrated Travels and Travellers - Part III. The Great Explorers of the Nineteenth Century • Jules Verne
... heart to stop thumping, I lighted the match and shielded it with both hands until it was well under way, and then dropped the blazing splinter on the slender ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... sound, and then the sickening thud of a heavy blow. Before the boys could quite grasp what it meant, there was a sharp rattling, as if a big stick was being rapidly moved in the chimney, then another yell, a fresh rattling as of another great stick against the stone sides of the chimney, with a heavy thumping overhead. ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... The intense earnestness of Trennahan's gaze magnetised her out of self-consciousness. When she was concluding the third, his horse shied suddenly at a snake, and while he quieted it she tumbled back to the present. She sat with parted lips and thumping heart. Had she talked as well as that? She, Magdalena Yorba, the dull, the silent, the terrified? She felt a glad pride in herself, and a profound gratitude to the wizard who ...
— The Californians • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... them come, and backed against the wall. His heart was thumping furiously. He was in for it now, he felt. He had come down to the town with this very situation in his mind. A wild idea of doing something to restore his self-respect and his credit in the eyes of the house had driven him ...
— The White Feather • P. G. Wodehouse |
