"Crackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... was a fine type of the American gentleman who is marked by a touch of the old school. There was a clean-cut crispness about him; the white mustache and the hair which matched it looked as if they would crackle if rubbed. His eyes were steely blue, and he held himself very erect as he walked, and he tapped the pavement briskly ...
— The Landloper - The Romance Of A Man On Foot • Holman Day
... her at the kitchen stove. There was the clink of iron lids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire. Presently she came ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... Tredgold. "As a matter of fact, I'm dying with curiosity myself. Bring it out and make it crackle, captain; it's a bank-note for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... grinning evilly, and his victim's shoulder blades lifted under the tight skin of his back as they took the strain. Shriek followed shriek, until the guard on the platform glanced furtively out into the central well. There came a dry, tearing crackle as the bones of the arms were drawn out of their sockets, and then the shrieks ceased as merciful unconsciousness came. Gore tossed the ...
— In the Orbit of Saturn • Roman Frederick Starzl
... completely tired out, was soon asleep. Barbara and Eleanor had succumbed to weariness the moment they rolled over on the beds. But Polly, tired and fatigued, too, knew that some one must keep the fires going all night, so she merely reclined on the pine-bough bed and started up at every sound or crackle of the fires. She piled pine upon them all night through until the first faint gleams of dawn, and then there was no more wood ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... to me." It is the world of "big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost, crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting ground of the Indians, and not yet settled ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... gamble, and love light loves with his fellows; to take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow Tina mixed the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll outward, thin and thicken again till the shining black faces came through, and in that hell every man was strictly responsible for his own head, and his own alone, and struck with an unfettered arm. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... show us a world alien to the place of beauty and of the making of beauty through which Leila moved. Even she must have felt the import of his mood, for she let her hands fall on the keys while Dick and I stared at each other before the shock of this crackle that seemed to threaten ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... large, since they had little to cook and the air was hot, but they made it so for the same reason that Jeekie answered questions, for the sake of cheerfulness. At least it gave light in the darkness, leaping up in red tongues of flame twenty or thirty feet high, and its roar and crackle were welcome in ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... feel the strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or a supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled and are frozen ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... garden of Eden is the land before them, And after them it is a desolate desert, Yea, nothing escapes them. Their appearance is as the appearance of horses, And like horsemen they run. Like the sound of chariots on the tops of the mountains they leap, Like the crackle of flames devouring stubble, Like a mighty people preparing for battle. Peoples are in anguish before them, All faces ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... firmly against the wood, he drew it downward vigorously and long. There was a faint crackle, a little splutter, and—glory of glories!—a tiny flame faltered out ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... would answer it; the shadow would pass and the moon would rise, deep gold, and lie hard and sharp against the thick, impending air; the shadow would pass and the stars come out, breaking with an almost audible crackle through the stuff of the sky... and only five minutes away the shop-lights were glittering, the Isvostchicks crying to clear the road, the tram-bells clanging, the boys shouting the news. Around and ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... them all winter. They live right opposite, and sit in the windows, drawing and writing. Dorris keeps house up there in two rooms. The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on the big sofa. Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over. She cooks with a little gas-stove. I think it is beautiful to keep house with not very much money. She goes out with a cunning white basket and buys her things; and she does all her work up in a corner on a white table, with ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... knowing that only the unwritten law of Western hospitality compelled that speech; it was the crackle and flare of the bright ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... way, behind the green roof of a large building, the dim, cold dawn was beginning to blush red. The keen frost of the spring morning which had stiffened the pools and mud and made them crackle under my feet now nipped my face and hands also. Not a cab was to be seen, though I had counted upon one to make the journey out and home the quicker. Only a file of waggons was rumbling along the Arbat Prospect, and a couple of bricklayers ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... and assimilating energy. For every lump of coal in your scuttles may be a parable; black and heavy, it is cast into the fire, and there it is turned into the likeness of the flame which it catches and itself begins to glow, and redden, and crackle, and break into a blaze. That is like what you and I may experience if we will. The incense rises in smoke to the heavens when it is heated: and our souls aspire and ascend, an odour of a sweet ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... hand a smouldering firebrand. Now crouching against the place from which the hottest fire belched forth, he blew upon this brand till a tongue of flame darted forth, and in a moment more the brushwood around the house had begun to crackle with a sound like that made by a hissing snake before ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... opposite of what one ought to be," she laughed, "and it almost makes me feel not legally married. But don't—don't, please, if you love me, use that awful word 'parson' again. I can't stand it. Don't you think it sounds just like the crackle of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... distinctness, and there with a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... crackle of the musketry began in front, and still the Gatling Gun Detachment lay beside the road with the 71st, waiting, swearing, broiling, stewing in their own perspiration, mad with thirst, and crazed with the fever of the battle. The colonel of the 71st was again approached, to ascertain ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... so rigid in his expectancy that he fairly ached. Ten minutes dragged by, with only the crackle of the fire on the hearth to disturb the silence ...
— Big Brother • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... then scalped the log, he felt that once before in those same woods he had trailed that same Indian, and with his own tomahawk split open his skull. Sometimes when he knelt to drink at a secret spring in the forest, the autumn leaves would crackle and he would raise his eyes fearing to see ...
— The Boy Scout and Other Stories for Boys • Richard Harding Davis
... the roar and crackle of the fire and the crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks and stones. * * * It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... hope that they might aroused him. He reached for the com key and a second later tore the headphones from his appalled ears. The crackle of static he knew—and the numerous strange noises which broke in upon the lanes of communication in space—but this solid, paralyzing roar was something totally ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... crossed the diminutive hall and went into the sitting-room, where the cheerful crackle of a small wood fire gave an air of comfort ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... small and, at your first halt, it will be well if you sew them in the lining of your boot. They will escape observation there, however closely you may be searched; for they are but of little bulk, and I have written them on the softest paper I could obtain, so that it will not crackle to ...
— Saint Bartholomew's Eve - A Tale of the Huguenot WarS • G. A. Henty
... There was a crackle of static over the loud-speaker and Miles' voice rang out on the control deck of the Polaris. "I'm here, ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman
... there was the faint crackle of a branch to his left, and one hand instantly closed over his pipe bowl, the other grasping the heavy revolver at his hip. Crouching like a startled tiger, with not a muscle moving, he peered anxiously into the darkness, his arm half extended, scarcely venturing to breathe. There came a plain, ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... ripening grain field not a single ear of wheat moves; when in the beaming heat the corn seems to crackle; when the poppy languishes and bends down under the feeble ...
— Books and Habits from the Lectures of Lafcadio Hearn • Lafcadio Hearn
... log. He found that it had burned through, and by three or four strokes with the tongs, he broke it up into large fragments of coal, of a dark-reddish color. The air being thus admitted, they soon began to brighten and crackle, until, in a few minutes, there was before him a large heap of glowing and burning coals. He put a log on behind, then placed the andirons up to the log, and a great forestick upon the andirons. ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... forget my very existence. He fell into a sort of trance, with his eyes fixed on vacancy. There was a dead hush in the place, nothing but the crackle of the fire and the steady drip of the rain. I endured it as well as I might, for though my legs were sorely cramped, I did not ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... pocket of her dress a letter. As they went in to dinner she could hear its paper very faintly crackle against her hand. It was from Falk and was ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... whether it was the high, mysterious Power which had been leading me slowly but very surely to this minute, or whether it was nothing more than a mental association between a khaki coat worn by Eagle's enemy on that disastrous night and a faint crackle of paper jarring tensely on strung nerves. I know which I like to think; but in either case ...
— Secret History Revealed By Lady Peggy O'Malley • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... of the open windows of the first story. Within the fire rumbled and crackled. There was a slow groaning sound, that turned into a rolling and crashing, and ended in a dull boom. Smoke, sparks, and flames issued in torment out of all the openings of the house. And then the flames began to play and crackle with redoubled strength and redoubled clearness. It was the middle part of the ceiling of the first floor that fell. Mogens with both hands seized a large scaling-ladder which leaned against the part of the factory which was not yet in flames. For a moment he held it vertically, ...
— Mogens and Other Stories - Mogens; The Plague At Bergamo; There Should Have Been Roses; Mrs. Fonss • Jens Peter Jacobsen
... silent night, I screamed with horrible delight, And in my brain an awful light Did seem to crackle, Rosaline! It is my curse! sweet memories fall From me like snow, and only all Of that one night, like cold worms, crawl My doomed heart over, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... woods, tiny lights were sparkling, picked out with ominous brilliancy against the velvet dusk. Peter Nicholaevitch leaned far out of the window, straining his ears to listen. And now he seemed to hear the crackle of flames, the distant sound of ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... kinswoman of our own, fancied the girl's fair countenance. I was to join them in a week or two,—not yet, because I had wished to send home the screens painted on white velvet, and they wanted yet a sennight's work, and I knew Mrs. Strathsay would be proud of them before the crackle of the autumn fires. The maids ran hither and yon, and the bells pealed, and the knocker clashed, and the coaches rolled away over the stone pave of the court-yard, and there was embracing and jesting and crying, when suddenly all the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... been practically abandoned, others are being erected very cautiously, very quietly, and without any ostentation, as if the enemy were preparing for eventualities which he knows must inevitably occur. Sometimes, too, there is even a little crackle of musketry in some remote corner, which remains quite unexplained. A secret traffic in eggs and ammunition is still going on with renegade soldiery from Tung Fu-hsiang's camp; but no longer can these things be purchased openly, for a Chinese ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... together we crawled through the jungle, with the bandar-log chattering above us and—for all I know to the contrary—snakes hissing beneath our feet. If I stepped, which I could hardly avoid doing sometimes, on a fallen branch, making it crackle, the man turned on me a glance so malignant I positively quailed. Breathlessly we crept to the water-side and the unsuspecting ducks, and then Major Griffiths fired into the brown,—is that the proper expression?—killing I don't know how many. I don't think ...
— Olivia in India • O. Douglas
... safe enough if the limb had been a good one, but it wasn't, and when Mr. Possum ran along it, before he could even get ready to swing, "crackle, snap," went the limb and down went Mr. Possum into a barrel of whitewash Mrs. Rabbit had ready to use on ...
— Sandman's Goodnight Stories • Abbie Phillips Walker
... Gondin who has cast the evil eye, may her eyes crack and fall out.' And at the same time they throw the mustard, chillies and salt on the fire so that the eyes of her who cast the evil eye may crack and fall out as these things crackle in the fire. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... The Champion's bat Seemed twice the breadth of postern door. The leather flew at pace immense To crackle on the boundary fence, Acknowledged by the public roar. Dobbin went on with Tweaks, Robin obliged with Sneaks, And Diccory Dizzard, as fast as a blizzard, Exhibited ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... plains it was clear and transparent, but towards the rocks that stretched there on one side all seemed black. Not a sound fell upon his ear, and so great was the stillness that the dull crackle of a piece of smouldering wood sounded ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... coming to the hottest and most sheltered places of the Corniche—a true exotic temperature, scattering dates, cactus, and aloes. Seeing these thin trunks, this fantastic vegetation in the white hot air, feeling the blinding dust crackle under the wheels like snow, de Gery, his eyes half closed, dreaming in this leaden noon, thought he was once more on that fatiguing road from Tunis to the Bardo, in a singular medley of Levantine carriages with brilliant liveries, of long-necked camels, ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... was streaked with faint blue lines where wandering airs came down from the heights above, and now and then an elfin sighing fell from the ragged summits of the firs. When it died away, the silence was broken only by the pounding of a heavy hammer and the crackle ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... helped one another into the saddle (so weak most of us were by that time) and went forward three days' march. Then we camped again, much closer to the Germans this time, in fact, almost within shouting distance; and they again set up their machine, causing sparks to crackle from the wires of a telescopic tower they raised, to the very great concern of the Afghans who were in and out of both camps all day long. One message that an Afghan told me the Germans had received, was that the British fleet was all sunk and Paris taken. But that sort of message ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... the counterpart of that to Bayonne. We fly smoothly on, above its hard, thin crackle of sand. We meet peasants afoot, and burdened horses, on their morning way to Biarritz or Bayonne. The men ornament their loose, blue linen frocks and brown trousers with the bright scarlet sash so popular in this region. Heavy oxen draw their creaking ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... little spark, the Megarian decree,(2) set the city aflame, and blew up the conflagration with a hurricane of war, so that the smoke drew tears from all Greeks both here and over there. At the very outset of this fire our vines were a-crackle, our casks knocked together;(3) it was beyond the power of any man to stop the ...
— Peace • Aristophanes
... there was no sound in the room except the soft crackle of the fire, and Amy thought deeply on the noble example before her of calm, trustful waiting. At last she became conscious that the house was growing strangely still; the faint tick of the great clock on the landing of the stairs struck her ear; the rush and roar of the ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... pictures, but you wouldn't have had these 'ere gloomy ideas. I don't say as how I don't hold with Gawd," he explained, with uplifted forefinger and cocked head; "but if ever I thinks of Him, I like to feel that He's in the wind or in the crickle-crackle of the earth, just near and friendly like, but not a-worrying of a chap, listening for every cuss-word as he uses to his old horse, and measuring every half-pint he pours down his dusty throat. No. That ain't my idea of Gawd. But ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... low dark hill with its twisted back Two wings of flame from the green cloud rack, A sprawling flank overlaid with leaf Glitter and gleam and shine like steel, Crackle and lash ...
— ANTHOLOGY OF MASSACHUSETTS POETS • WILLIAM STANLEY BRAITHWAITE
... door close and knew that the cook had gone to make the cakes ready as she said. And as he looked down he saw that the boy was bending over the bundle of fagots, blowing the spark that he had brought in upon the punk into a flame. The dry fagots began to crackle and blaze. "Now is my time," said Hans to himself. Bracing his elbows against each side of the chimney, he straightened his legs so that he might fall clear His motions loosened little shower of soot that fell rattling upon the fagots that were ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... My dreams that crackle under your breath... You have the dust of the world to blow on... Do not tag me and dance away, looking back... I am too old to ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... he topped the brow of the incline, above the whine of his motor, the crackle of road-metal beneath the tires, and the boom of the rushing air in his ears, he heard the sharp clatter of hoofs, and surmised that the gendarmerie had ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... pen, so extreme was my nervousness; but when I once fairly began, my ideas crowded upon me almost faster than I could write them. And so we all sat, nothing heard but the scratching of the pens and the occasional crackle of the examiner's "Times" as he quietly looked over the news of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... began to hum and crackle from coil to coil again. The invisible weight that pressed down was released as once more the giant planet's gravity was nullified. The Rogans got eagerly to their feet and began to race toward Brand in their normal ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... onomatopoetic words, words whose sound signifies the sense, is so common that we seldom give it a thought. We have the "splash" of water; the "bang" of a gun; the "crackle" of branches and so on indefinitely. In verse this idea is carried a step farther. Lines are constructed not only with the purpose of conveying a given idea, as in prose, but with the additional end of strengthening this idea and impressing it on the mind of the reader through the choice ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... Would they stop there, these two, for a talk—yes, her gentle treble, his booming bass, drifted down the hall. Presently Mrs. Tiffany heard Eleanor's laugh, followed by his. In that instant, she looked at the jackstone players by the hearth. Kate, on the crackle of that laugh, had arrested all motion. A jack which she had tossed in the air, descended with no hand to stop it. For a moment, Kate ...
— The Readjustment • Will Irwin
... forth in thicker, more suffocating volume; the red streamers shot up again and again, and the burning embers fell like thickest swarms of fire-flies, before a single hasty step roused an echo already lost in the roar and crackle of fire. A scared, half-dressed servant ran out into the court, flung up his hands as he looked around him, then hurried back, and suddenly the great bell pealed out its faithful alarum. "Good folk, good folk, danger is at the door! For Jesu's sake and your dear lives, up and flee! ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... moments seemed to split the sky asunder as a charge of gunpowder splits asunder a rock. The head wind rushed by, yet had never passed them, but was forever coming furiously to meet them. On the roof of the little cabin the rain made a noise that was no longer like the rustle of silk, but was like the crackle of musketry. ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... prone on the floor of the library in various positions of juvenile comfort, watching the firewood in the big wide grate sparkle and crackle, or the broad snowflakes "spat" against the window-panes, where they stuck awhile as if gummed, and then began reluctantly to trickle down. As Sir Toady Lion said, "It was certainly a nice day on ...
— Red Cap Tales - Stolen from the Treasure Chest of the Wizard of the North • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... them back to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I saw the nearby guard turn his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... below us. A few hundred yards to the west of the camp there were a number of small hummocks, which might indicate the presence of crevasses, but otherwise the surface looked safe enough. The small guns kept up a lively crackle all through the night, and combined with a good deal of uproar among the dogs to shorten our sleep. But the first night of a sledge journey is almost always a bad one. Stubberud declared that he could not close his eyes on account of "that filthy row." ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... is to the taste! how it bites back again! and is there any other sound like the snap and crackle with which it salutes the ear on being plucked from the stems? It is a threat to one sense that the other is soon to verify. It snaps to the ear as it smacks to the tongue. All other berries ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... dry as tinder and they crackle with the heat, And the sparks, like merry children, come a-dancing round my feet, In the cold, long nights of autumn I can sit before the blaze And watch a panorama born of all my yesterdays. I can leave the present burdens and ...
— When Day is Done • Edgar A. Guest
... man wants his own way and rights, we are blind to the fact that we want ours just as much; and yet we know there is something missing in our lives. Somehow we are not in vital fellowship with God. We are not spiritually crisp. Our service does not "crackle with the supernatural." Unconscious sin is none the less sin with God and separates us from Him. The sin in question may be quite a small thing, which God will so readily show us, if we are only ...
— The Calvary Road • Roy Hession
... saved him, for he had the sense to obey. After a few minutes of breathless racing, with a roar as of breakers in his ears and the crackle of clashing horns and the gleaming of rolling eyeballs close upon his horse's heels, he found himself washed high and dry, as it were, while the tumult swept by. Presently he was galloping along behind and wondering dully how he got there, though ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... and had come to New York on a mission similar to my own—to look for a job. We went together to her room, which was as small and shabby as my own, and a few minutes later we were sitting round the little Jenny Lind stove, listening to the pleasant crackle of the freshly kindled fire. Both were silent for a few minutes. Then ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... cardboard," continued she, making one crackle between her fingers. "My son does not complain, but it cuts his neck. To-morrow his neck will be all scratched when we ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... from Lowestoft and porcelain from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed so easily? Far from it. "This is real crackle," the collector insists, with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his specimen; and then ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... white-and-green cottage, squatting among the four giant masts, came the roar of a forest fire. One could hear the crackle of the flames, the crash of the falling tree-trunks. The air about the cottage was torn into threads; beneath the shocks of the electricity the lawn seemed to heave and tremble. It was like some giant monster, bound ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... of her spinning broke delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace, as if knowing it marked eternal hours. The flames waved softly upward without their former crackle and sheen; and the moving shadows were gentle and rhythmic ones come to keep the soul company. Amelia felt her ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... did we. Jean took the river side and I the inland thicket, feeling our way blindly through the blackness of forest and storm and night. Then the rain broke—broke in lashing whip-cords with the crackle of fire. Jean whistled and I signalled back; but there was soon such a pounding of rains it drowned every sound. For all the help one could give the other we might have been a thousand miles apart. I looked back. M. Radisson's fire threw a dull glare into the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... flint and steel, however, and began to strike sparks on to the prepared tinder, she drew back alarmed, although her woman's curiosity conquered her desire to run away. But when the sparks lighted the dried leaves, causing the wood to crackle and burn, she would have fled if I had ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... oaken log, green, huge and thick, And on its top the stout back-stick; The knotty forestick laid apart, And filled between with curious art The ragged brush; then, hovering near, We watched the first red blaze appear, Heard the sharp crackle, caught the gleam On whitewashed wall and sagging beam, Until the old, rude-furnished room ...
— Whittier-land - A Handbook of North Essex • Samuel T. Pickard
... edition. This was better fun than typesetting. Before you was a long roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After that you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of type on the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... the colour had run down to the horizon and flamed intensest crimson in the Nick of Benarick. Broader and broader mounted the scarlet flame, till he seemed in that still place to hear the sun's corona crackle, as observers think they do when watching a great eclipse. The set of the sun affected him like a still morning—that most mysterious thing in nature. He missed, indeed, the diffused elation of the dawn; but it was infinitely sweet to hear in that still place the softened ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... racing trooper. "My God, and Bob's all alone!" sobbed Ennis, as he sped through the snow, for already from the front dormer and from the lower windows the flames were mounting high in the trail of a black volume of smoke, and over the crackle and roar of the fire, the rush and clamor of men, the thrilling alarum of echoing bugle and trumpet, there rose on the night air the scream of a girl, imploring instant aid, and this time at least there could be no doubt, for the cry ...
— Lanier of the Cavalry - or, A Week's Arrest • Charles King
... all four over the open space of twenty yards. Three or four shots came zipping from aloft, but the instant ring of Winchesters back of them told that watchful eyes had noted every head that appeared, and the swift crackle of fire from the shop put instant stop to the fun up the slope. Into the store-room the manager led them, and unlocked a heavy little trap-door within; then, one by one, the ominous-looking cases were dragged forth, hoisted, and ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... sea, and immediately a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing as of a thousand serpents. We felt the strong suction under our keel, and staggered under the jerk of the ship's cable as she swung toward the beach. The paint was beginning to crackle along the rail. We could see nothing for the scalding white veil that enveloped us; we could hear nothing for the roar of steam, the bombardment of explosions, and the crash of thunder; but our nostrils were assaulted by a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... down the road they heard the crackle of a dozen rifle shots. The Southern advance undoubtedly had come into contact with the Union sentinels and skirmishers. After the first shots there was a moment's breathless silence, and then came a scattered and rapid fire, as if at least a ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... plodding oxen over the down-trodden snow. There is nothing the cities can give one to compare with the warmth of the log shack at night when you lie, aching a little, about the stove, telling stories with the boys, while the shingles snap and crackle under the frost. Perhaps it's finer still to stand by with the peevie, while the great trunks go crashing down the rapids with the freshets of the spring; and then there's the still, hot summer, when the morning air's ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... right and jolted over what seemed to be a shallow ditch. The road that followed was of the roughest character. If it was a road at all it was a wood-track; Evan heard the twigs crackle under the tires. They lurched and bumped alarmingly. Once they had to stop to allow the chauffeur to drag some obstruction out of the way. Evidently they had not had the car that way before, ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... now, and at the word struck one with a loud crackle, just as we were beginning to doubt the efficacy of our ruse, for the enemy were watching us keenly; and, though some of them moved uneasily and threatened to run for shelter, the greater part ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot. "Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come on home with me now, like ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... a slight stealthy crackle made itself heard amid the increasing moans of the night wind; the heap glowed brighter still, and burst into a flame; the flame sank, another breeze entered it, sustained it, and it grew to be first continuous and weak, then continuous ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... no sort of answer was vouchsafed. Nancy sat with her feet on the fender, and Tarrant kept up a great blaze with chips, which sputtered out their moisture before they began to crackle. He and she both seemed intent on this process ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... stood on a slope nearly a mile away. The ground was hard, and the grass seemed to crackle under the galloping hoofs. The horse she rode carried her with superb ease. He was the finest animal she had ever ridden, and from the first she believed the ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... building of some sort, with a high chimney, a little way from the end of the bridge, and heard the occasional bark of a watch-dog. Try as I would, I could not move an inch without causing a number of sticks to crackle loudly—it was almost as bad as crawling under the heap of sticks the morning before. Fortunately the wind must have drowned any noise made, or carried the sound away, for, though the dog continued to bark intermittently, it cannot have been aware ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... within, but without only the steady roaring crackle. Could it be possible the petition had not been heard? The childish hands met more tightly than before. ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... a deer that hears the crackle of a twig behind it. Here in the deep brazen voice of the marriage bells ringing out in the belfry above him he thought he heard the answer his incantation had forced from the white man's Okee. But the voice was ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... Yeomen prickers they are, who tend to the King's hunt. The gleeman is called Floyting Will. He comes from the north country, but for many years he hath gone the round of the forest from Southampton to Christchurch. He drinks much and pays little but it would make your ribs crackle to hear him sing the 'Jest of Hendy Tobias.' Mayhap he will sing it when the ale ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... with his old captain. He was sick and tired of assumed respectability, of honest piloting of ships to the harbor, of drinking with worthy merchantmen or the King's sailors. The itch for the old buccaneering game was hard upon him. To hear the fire crackle and roar through a doomed ship, to lord it over shiploads of terrified men and screaming women, to be sated with carnage and drunk with liquor, to dress in satins and velvets and laces, to let the broad pieces of eight run through his grimy fingers, to throw off restraint and be ...
— Sir Henry Morgan, Buccaneer - A Romance of the Spanish Main • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... be gone. Out of the mists behind them rose the shapes of war canoes not far away, and the fierce triumphant yell that swept far over the river sent a chill to Paul's very marrow. Once again rose the rifle fire, and it was now a rapid and steady crackle, but the bullets thudded in vain on the ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... upon Granada: the populace had sought their homes, and a profound quiet wrapped the streets, save where, from the fires committed in the late tumult, was yet heard the crash of roofs or the crackle of the light and fragrant timber employed in those pavilions of the summer. The manner in which the mansions of Granada were built, each separated from the other by extensive gardens, fortunately prevented the flames from extending. But the inhabitants ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... one end of the room to the other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang. "There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his side; "you can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the Winchester ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... Crack! Z-i-i-p! Crackle! What a funny noise! And yet he was obliged to throw himself flat upon the bough to keep from falling. It seemed to have snapped beneath him and benumbed his right leg. He did not know that the master's bullet, fired in the air, ...
— Cressy • Bret Harte
... 'Well, your highness,' said I, 'how about the pain?' 'Pah!' says the king, 'where's your philosophy? Did you never see a fly jump into a lamp-flame?' 'Yes, sure,' I answered. 'And what happened then? A moment's crackle, and an end of it. You've no time to feel pain.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'if your majesty will make a hole for me as near the middle as is convenient to yourself, I will jump into the bed straightway.' The king made a great spatter among the coals, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... the Bisley ranges, next year, much better. But the old windmill, which looked on in its time at thirty full meetings, still surely misses the week when the dells and the long stretches of heather rattled from the first gun to sunset with the crackle of Martinis and match rifles. The windmill watches red-coated golfers to-day, playing to some of the prettiest greens in the south of England; but the days for the windmill were when the tents were white ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... was the first to open his eyes the following morning, thinking it a glorious sunshine that gave such a brilliant light outside. Suddenly a snap and a crackle brought him to his feet. He found the barn ablaze. A war-whoop from the Indians then ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... In less than half an hour they crossed Market street and were galloping down Kearny toward the Square. At California street they were halted by a crowd, pushing, shouting, elbowing this way and that without apparent or concerted purpose. Above the human babel sounded a vicious crackle of burning wood like volleys of shots from small rifles. Red and yellow flames shot high and straight into the air. Now and then a gust of wind sent the licking fire demon earthward, and before its hot breath people fled ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... the fire smiled irritatingly as it illumined the dark figures about it; and the voices blended mournfully with the soft rustle and crackle of ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... thou canst not, taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve; hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates that way into the Outer Court: soft speeches producing ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... had the air of having forgotten their presence altogether. Aided by a microscope, with a grave absorbed face, he studied and compared a series of prints spread before him. So quiet was it all, that the crackle and purr of the coal fire in the old-fashioned grate made itself quite audible, and the leisurely tick of the clock in the hall ...
— The Little Red Chimney - Being the Love Story of a Candy Man • Mary Finley Leonard
... turned a bend where two trees had been blown up and flung across it, when there was a dull report near by, followed a moment later by a tremendous explosion out toward the enemy's trench. "Unsere Minen!" ("One of our bombs!") laughed a young soldier beside me, and a crackle of excitement ran along the trench. These bombs were cylinders, about the size of two baking-powder tins joined together, filled with dynamite and exploded by a fuse. They were thrown from a small mortar with a light charge of powder, just sufficient to toss them over into the opposite trench. The ...
— Antwerp to Gallipoli - A Year of the War on Many Fronts—and Behind Them • Arthur Ruhl
... good," answered his companion, shouldering the other prize. They descended the stairs. How the smoke had increased! They had been absent longer than they thought, and in that time the fire was rapidly advancing toward them. They heard a loud noise without, a shout rising above the crackle and roar of the flames. Then voices were heard at the foot of the stairs: "Come this way! Quick! Hurry!" As Will passed through the lower entry, he chanced to glance into the room whose door had been left open by the knight of the ax. A ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... cry, "Ship afire!" caught up by a hundred throats, And over the roar the captain shouting to lower the boats; Then cry upon cry, and curses, and the crackle of burning wood, And the place grew hot as a furnace, I could ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... Sir, you remember your grandmother's floor, of snowy boards sanded with whitest sand; you remember the ancient fireplace stretching quite across one end,—a vast cavern, in each corner of which a cozy seat might be found, distant enough to enjoy the crackle of the great jolly wood-fire; across the room ran a dresser, on which was displayed great store of shining pewter dishes and plates, which always shone with the same mysterious brightness; and by the side of the fire, a commodious wooden "settee," or settle, offered repose ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... startling," I said, as I listened to the noise he made rolling himself in his blanket, and making the fir-boughs crackle as he turned about. "I was horribly scared at first, but I don't think I ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... England, Bade blow the horns of war, And fling the Golden Dragon out, With crackle and acclaim and shout, ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... plain that the long Confederate lines, frayed on each flank, had crowded together making a vast wedge of attack. Then all along our miles of troops a crackle of musketry broke out, the big guns bellowing. The field was mostly lost to view in the dense smoke, under which the charging-force halted and steadily returned ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... her in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river that the gay crackle ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... the north down the valley of the Rhone, and everything is so cold that I have been obliged to indulge in a fire. There is a fine crackle and roar of burning wood in the chimney which is very homely and companionable, though it does seem to postulate a town all white with ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distant bonfires, burning heaps of useless stubble, shows against the dreamy purple hills like the pillar of cloud that led the Israelites. One smells the sharp odor of these fires everywhere, and hears them crackle in the fields. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... roared with laughter at sight of Lapoulle's face, who swallowed everything and was licking his chops in anticipation of the feast. That funny dog, Loubet, he was the man to cure one of the dumps if anybody could! And when the fire began to crackle in the sunlight, and the kettle commenced to hum and bubble, they ranged themselves reverently about it in a circle with an expression of cheerful satisfaction on their faces, watching the meat as it danced up and down and sniffing ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... he commands, giving her a shake till her old bones crackle at every joint. "A cry, a word from you above a whisper, and I'll close your windpipe so that you'll never grunt through it again. Come, muchachos! Let's to the other side! One of you bring on ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... at the table and put on his glasses. Agatha turned her face towards the wall; for her also everything was over. For a time no sound was audible save an occasional crackle of the note-paper in Lord Thrapston's shaking fingers. Then, to Agatha's indescribable indignation, there came another sort of crackle—a dry, grating, derisive chuckle—from that flinty-hearted ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... listening with his ear to the ground, like an Indian, for the last rustle of fern and crackle of underbrush, and then emerged, stiff and cramped from his concealment. But he no longer thought of flight; curiosity and ambition burned in his small veins. He quickly climbed up the outcrop, picked ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... fearful grew the noise outside. The crackle of musketry was more noticeable, and every now and then there seemed to be heavy strokes as if directed against the palace, sounding as if the people were attempting to force the iron gate ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach |
