"Crackled" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... rushed again, making a magnificent show of strength, quickness and accuracy. The sparks hissed and crackled from the rasping and ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... was already up, and anxiously awaiting the return of her husband and his brother. A cheery fire crackled on the hearth, and the coffee-pot was simmering beside it. When Gilbert had been partially revived by the warmth, the men conducted him into an adjoining bed-room, undressed him, and rubbed his limbs with whiskey. Then, a large bowl of ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... they had used, took fire at once. The flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison wall, and twining up its lofty front like burning serpents. At first they crowded round the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their looks; but when it grew hotter and fiercer—when it crackled, leaped, and roared, like a great furnace—when it shone upon the opposite houses and lighted up not only the pale and wondering faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of each habitation—when, through the deep red heat and glow, the fire ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern — Volume 11 • Various
... high flames when she was gone, and the fire crackled again, and took on new life, ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... chintz curtains flamed and blazed into nothingness while she was looking at them. The wood-work round the windows crackled and blistered, but the flame died out into ashes. Only the intolerable smoke remained, and the ever-increasing glow of the fire below, more vivid with every moment. She made one mad rush for the balcony. Great Heaven, what a scene greeted her eyes as she ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... the world, coming from the bedroom, where one movement of the clothes had always been enough to summon her with flying feet. She caught her breath, and held it, to listen. She was ready, undisturbed, for any sign. But a great fly buzzed drowsily on the pane, and the fire crackled with accentuated life. She was quite alone. She put her hand to her heart, in that gesture of grief which is so entirely natural when we feel the stab of destiny; and then she went wanly into the sitting-room, looking ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... perhaps; but proud also, for part of their money had gone to buy the share). He had likewise purchased second-hand a huge pair of boots that were as soft and pliable as grease could make them; and he carried a brand-new yellow oilskin in his hand that crackled as he walked. Neil, Duncan, and Nicol watched him throw his oilskin into the boat, and go forward to the bow, and take his place there at the oar; and they knew very well that if there was any one who ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... he lighted a fire of dead wood that crackled joyously. During this time, Conseil and I chose the best fruits of the bread-fruit. Some had not then attained a sufficient degree of maturity; and their thick skin covered a white but rather fibrous pulp. Others, the greater number yellow ...
— Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea • Jules Verne
... forgotten. The sultry air was surcharged with the magic fluid, which made itself evident in most unexpected ways and places. Points of dull iron about the steamer would suddenly break into a soft glow, like an astral lamp silently lighted by unseen hands; certain fabrics crackled fiercely at the touch, and soft waves of light flitted over exposed surfaces, only half perceived till gone. The slow moving waves of the sea glowed and sparkled in phosphorescent fire, and the sky was a constantly changing curtain, upon ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... content. Beside the campfire it came to him that in this world he had discovered two things—a suffering that he had never known, and a peace he had never known. And Oachi stood for them both. He thought of her until drowsiness drew a pale film over his eyes. The birch crackled more and more faintly in the fire and sounds died away. The stillness of sleep fell about him. Scarce had he fallen into slumber than his eyes seemed to open wide and wakeful, and out of the gloom beyond the smouldering fire ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... tempestuous North-wind; earth alike And sea with storms he overhung, and night Fell fast from heav'n. Their heads deep-plunging oft Our gallies flew, and rent, and rent again Our tatter'd sail-cloth crackled in the wind. 80 We, fearing instant death, within the barks Our canvas lodg'd, and, toiling strenuous, reach'd At length the continent. Two nights we lay Continual there, and two long days, consumed With toil and grief; but when the beauteous morn Bright-hair'd, had brought the third ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer
... guns still purred and crackled, but no reply came. Presently they, too, ceased, and the silence in front was complete, save for the faint groans and the swish of the drifting snow. John shivered, and it was not with cold. His feeling of horror was increasing. ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... slender ribbons, a rosy mist crept over the fields; it covered everything with the softest of warmly tinted light. There was a morning frost, and thin sheets of ice crackled in the dykes. An invigorating breeze stirred gently, as if but half- awakened, and tenderly ruffled fronds of bracken, sliding softly upward from moss and roots, tremulously caressing the sweet-smelling grass, to sweep ...
— Tales of the Wilderness • Boris Pilniak
... smiled old lady Chia, "if the snuff of the lamp crackled time and again; and if it formed and reformed into a head! It was, indeed, sure to come ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... the French battery, after the usual custom of French batteries, lavished its shells upon the task. For five minutes the battery spoke in four-tongued emphatic tones, and the shells screamed over the forward trench, crackled and crashed above the German line, dotted the German parapet along its length, played up and down it in long bursts of fire, and deluged the suspected hiding-place of the mortar with a torrent of high explosive. When it stopped, the bombing also had ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... The live coal crackled, kindling with the heat, The kettle sang, melodious and sedate, A music for the visionary feet Of ...
— Bohemians of the Latin Quarter • Henry Murger
... sword, by a hair. There were tracks on the desks where the knife-blades had wandered in search of their prey; Their tops were as duskily spattered as if they drank ink every day. The square stove it puffed and it crackled, and broke out in red flaming sores, Till the great iron quadruped trembled like a dog fierce to rush out-o'-doors. White snowflakes looked in at the windows; the gale pressed its lips to the cracks; ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... them increasing in number and in audacity. Taking courage to themselves from the courage of their apostle, these, his disciples, were beginning to shout from the housetops what once they had only dared whisper beneath the eaves. Disloyalty no longer smouldered; it was blazing up. It crackled, and threw ...
— The Thunders of Silence • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... sunset snow began to fly, driven by a cold wind, and by the time we reached the cabin, though we had not far to go, everything looked wintry. At half-past nine we ate supper, while a good fire crackled cheerily in the ingle and a wintry wind blew hard. The little log cabin was only ten feet long, eight wide, and just high enough under the roof peak to allow one to stand upright. The bedstead was not wide enough for two, so Le Claire spread the blankets on the floor, ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... The clock ticked, The Times crackled, the fire sent forth its rustling purr. Aunt Juley dropped ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... frost when Miss Foster left the tent in the morning, but a fire of branches crackled cheerfully near-by and Kermode was busy with a frying-pan. A light cloud of smoke rose into the still, cold air, and day was breaking ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... Glutts and Gabe Werner, and also with the wildcat and on the road, were, for the time being, forgotten. Outside the wind was rising, making a mournful sound as it swept through the cedars and the other trees in that vicinity. But inside the fire crackled merrily and the heat of the fitful flames as they roared up the chimney ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... grew cold, very cold! The Duckling was forced to swim about in the water, to prevent the surface from freezing entirely; but every night the hole in which it swam about became smaller and smaller. It froze so hard that the icy covering crackled again; and the Duckling was obliged to use its legs continually to prevent the hole from freezing up. At last it became exhausted, and lay quite still, and thus froze ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... who sprang forward right into the fire and smoke; but they were beaten back, scorched and blinded, and an awful silence fell upon the crowd, while the woodwork crackled and sputtered and the gas-main sent forth its great waving pillar of flame, roaring with a sonorous note; and all felt that the scarlet-coated figure they had seen leap in ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... tragedy began in one of those extraordinary moving pictures that the French make after a catastrophe, giving to the imitation even greater terrors than were in the genuine happening. Here before them now leaped redder and fiercer flames than ever crackled through the real Charity Bazaar; here were women and children perishing in more savage torture than the actual victims endured; here were horrors piled on horrors, exaggerated horrors, manufactured horrors, ...
— Through the Wall • Cleveland Moffett
... was young or not," said Tim, in a puzzled tone. "She had young yellow hair, and very young shiny teeth, white as china; but her neck was crackled underneath, like Miss Vilda's;—it had no kissing places in ...
— Timothy's Quest - A Story for Anybody, Young or Old, Who Cares to Read It • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... Her voice crackled like burning timber, and sputtered in groans that would have been fanged curses had breath not failed her: for my aunt Elinor possessed a nimble tongue, whetted, as rumor had it, by the attendance of divers ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... the staple, he tumbled the contents on the floor, and set the whole ablaze. The papers curled and crackled; and their dreadful secret escaped joyfully ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... external, unsympathetic. Here, least of all places, could she escape from herself, from her hateful thoughts. It was a chilly day, and a bright fire crackled on the hearth. The square was almost deserted, though the sun illuminated it, and showed all the delicate tracery of the branches and twigs. It was a December sun. Her easy-chair was drawn to the fire and her book-stand by it, with the novel turned down that ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... had shielded her face from the fire, and she always would—it was the proper thing to do. The parlor gloomed and lightened around her, the shifting light touching here a bit of gold lacquer, there a Venetian mirror or an ivory statuette. The fire purred and crackled softly; there was no other sound. The tiny figure in the ebony chair was as motionless as one of the Indian idols that grinned ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... defiled," &c. So that all the columns were levelled with the ground by the frequent strokes of the battering-ram, all the husbandmen routed, together with their bishops, priests, and people, whilst the sword gleamed, and the flames crackled around them on every side. Lamentable to behold, in the midst of the streets lay the tops of lofty towers, tumbled to the ground, stones of high walls, holy altars, fragments of human bodies, covered with livid clots of ...
— On The Ruin of Britain (De Excidio Britanniae) • Gildas
... a pair of moccasins for winter's use, while Job lay half asleep, half awake, living over again the glories of the week just closing. Toward evening the old Indian came in and sat by his guest and began to talk. Far into the night hours, while the camp-fire flashed and crackled without, he kept up his stories, till Job, intensely interested, forgot his pains and his dreams. In quaint English, shorn of all ...
— The Transformation of Job - A Tale of the High Sierras • Frederick Vining Fisher
... Majesty by the blare of the trumpets and the roll of the drums, had proceeded to meet him, and waited, kneeling and prostrate, in the court paved with great stone slabs. Captives, of the despised race of Scheto, bore urns filled with salt and olive oil, in which was dipped a wick, the flame of which crackled bright and clear. These men stood ranged in line from the basalt gate to the entrance of the first court, motionless like ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... his hands on the parapet of the river drop, blinked as a lightning bolt crackled in a sky-splitting glare of violet fire. This was about as far from the steaming islands of Xecho as a man ...
— Voodoo Planet • Andrew North
... into the garret to look at it there, for I had no wish to set the parsonage on fire, and I brought down a pile of old corn husks for kindlings which I found on the garret floor. I built my fire carefully, with two bricks for andirons, and when I lit it it blazed up gayly, I poked it and it crackled, and though I was very well contented there alone I wished for some friend to keep me company, it was selfish to have so much pleasure with no one to share it. The rain came faster than ever against the windows, and the room would have been dark if it had not been for my ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... the best of it," said the visitor. With that he got up, carefully lifted an iron piece in the back of the stove, turned a key thus disclosed in the pipe, and so materially altered the mood of the fire that in a few moments it stopped smoking and crackled nicely. ...
— What Necessity Knows • Lily Dougall
... me to do things that are against my nature, do you?" So whenever the squares of gay calico came out, and the golden head bent to and fro over them, like a paradise bird hovering over a bed of gaudy flowers, the story came out, too, between puffs of the pipe, while the fire crackled a cheery accompaniment, sputtering defiance to the wind that whistled outside. Some tale of the southern seas, and the wild tropic islands, of coral reefs and pearl-fisheries, sharks and devil-fish; or else ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... The paper crackled in Owen's trembling hand. So the Baskinelli incident had gone a little too far. Harry Marvin had sense enough to know that he would not have to fight three murderous Italians and a rabble of Chinese unless there had been a plot ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... Guard officer on the control deck smiled at the young cadet beside him as the good-natured argument crackled over the intercom speaker overhead. "Looks like those two will never stop battling, Corbett," ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... that day was impossible, so with an axe Ichabod chopped a hole through the wall into the big pile, and on wood thus secured sawed steadily in the tiny kitchen, while the kerosene lamp at his side sputtered, and the fire crackled in a silence, like that surrounding a ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... And then, just as the contest was becoming interesting, Daylight effected one of his lightning shifts, changing all stresses and leverages and at the same time delivering one of his muscular explosions. French Louis resisted till his huge frame crackled, and then, slowly, was forced over and under ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... them to his wood-laden wagon; for a long while he had not given his hand so gayly to his wife at parting as to-day. Now he started with his heavily-laden vehicle through the village; the wheels creaked and crackled in the snow. At the parsonage he stopped, and looked away yonder where his brother was still sleeping; he thought he would wake him and tell him his intention: but suddenly he whipped up his horses, and continued his route. He wouldn't yet bind ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: German (V.2) • Various
... across to the chest and leaned over it. The fire crackled—and he leaped back! Then, loathing himself for his weakness, he knelt before the treasure trove and tried the key in ...
— Joyce of the North Woods • Harriet T. Comstock
... again he hurled out into ether his cry of warning and distress, of hope, of invitation—the last lone call of man to man—of the last New Yorker to any other human being who, by the merest chance, might possibly hear him in the wreck of other cities, other lands. "S. O. S.!" crackled the green flame. "S. O. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... heads, fell upon their knees, and with the simple faith which so strongly characterised the religious feeling of the time, humbly commended the soul of Vilcamapata to the mercy of God who gave it. By the time that they had finished their petitions the pile was a mass of flame which roared and crackled fiercely as it shot straight upward in the still evening air; and, with a last parting glance at the body, which could be seen shrivelling in the midst of the flames, they turned and silently wended their way back to their camping place. And thus passed Vilcamapata, ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... crackled a rain of grease, filled with its continual sputtering the intervals of these thousand dialogues, which intermingled from one end of the apartment ...
— Notre-Dame de Paris - The Hunchback of Notre Dame • Victor Hugo
... wild Florida forest, and all was still save for the hooting of a distant owl and the occasional plaintive call of a whip-poor-will. In a little clearing by the side of a faint bridle-path a huge fire of fat pine knots roared and crackled, lighting up the small cleared space and throwing its flickering rays in amongst ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... in sleep. In the rash lustihead of my young powers, I shook the pillaring hours And pulled my life upon me; grimed with smears, I stand amid the dust o' the mounded years - My mangled youth lies dead beneath the heap. My days have crackled and gone up in smoke, Have puffed and burst as sun-starts on a stream. Yea, faileth now even dream The dreamer, and the lute the lutanist; Even the linked fantasies, in whose blossomy twist I swung the earth a trinket at my wrist, Are yielding; ...
— Poems • Francis Thompson
... Harriet would not take advice, She lit a match, it was so nice! It crackled so, it burn'd so clear,— Exactly like the picture here. She jump'd for joy and ran about, And was too pleas'd ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... in the wreck was out now, save that here and there little blazes appeared, only to be quenched at once. But smoldering timbers crackled like rifle-shots, and there were thunderous ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... slight experience with small target rifles, made a good shot at a fine stag, and we were all very cheerful. The fire burned brightly before the tent she shared with Susie, and the dry dead pine with logs of long-burning birch crackled merrily. Over the little lake, behind the dark conifers and the distant hills, the sun had gone down in a glory of incandescent ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... To roast a Papist by, my gracious Sire!— But ah! the Evidence—(weeps again) I mourned to see— Cast as it burned, a deadly light on thee: And Tales and Hints their random sparkles flung, And hissed and crackled, like an old maid's tongue; While Post and Courier, faithful to their fame, Made up in stink for what they lackt in flame. When, lo, ye Gods! the fire ascending brisker, Now singes one now lights the other whisker. Ah! where was then the Sylphid that unfurls Her fairy standard ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... was so strong and quick that she soon learned, and she really liked the larger car better, as it was more powerful. Many an hour was spent out with Clay these first wintry days, out on frosted country roads that crackled under the heavy tires ...
— The Heart of Arethusa • Francis Barton Fox
... but the same sensible Mary who did not believe in any of the customary agonies of grieving proper, as she afterward told him. The old house had not assumed a funereal air. There were flowers on the tables and the cheery fire crackled in the grate, and even the face of the dead woman seemed more content and optimistic than it had ever ...
— The Gorgeous Girl • Nalbro Bartley
... sprung forward as she entered, and was vigorously stirring the fire, which blazed and crackled merrily in the open grate. She accepted thankfully my mother's efforts to relieve her of her wet wraps, but the little girl drew back haughtily when she was approached, and refused obstinately to slip out of her cloak, ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow
... angry because no one understood him. Then suddenly he looked very sad; he covered his face with his hands; the tall man put his hand on the short man's shoulder and whispered into his ear. The dry wood of the fires crackled, the Illanuns slept, cooked, talked, but with their weapons at hand. An armed man or two came up to stare at the prisoners and then returned to their fire. The two whites sank down in the sand in front of Daman. Their clothes were soiled, there was sand in their hair. The tall man had lost ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... her coy and reluctant debut, there had been a sharp change in the weather and winter again held the center of the stage. Regardful of this fact, Tatsu had built a roaring fire in the library to cheer Hayden's home-coming. The flames crackled up the chimney and cast ruddy reflections on the furniture and walls; last night's orchids seemed to lean from their vases toward this delightful and tropical warmth, and there, with a chair drawn up as near the hearth as comfort permitted, was Horace Penfield, long, lean, ...
— The Silver Butterfly • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... like tears along the sea wrack, forming pools on the uneven ground where countless crustaceans increased and multiplied into hideous shapes. Enormous crabs, crayfish, giant lobsters and sea spiders crackled under the dwarfs feet, then crawled away leaving some of their claws behind, and in their flight rousing horrible molluscs and octopuses centuries old that suddenly writhed their hundred arms and spat fetid poison out of their bird-beaks. And yet King Loc went on undaunted. He made his way to ...
— Honey-Bee - 1911 • Anatole France
... were ever able to flush when it had already gained cover. Usually the birds depend entirely upon their ability to hide or run through the bushes. After several attempts we learned that it was impossible to stalk the peacocks successfully. The jungle was so crisp and parched that the dry leaves crackled at every step and even small birds made a loud noise ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... hearth of stones, And kindled the fire for cooking, and sat and sang o'er the roast The song of his fathers of old, and the Wolflings' gathering host: So there on the Glittering Heath rose up the little flame, And the dry sticks crackled amidst it, and alow the eagles came, And seven they were by tale, and they pitched all round about The cooking-fire of Sigurd, and sent their song-speech out: But nought he knoweth its wisdom, or the word that they would speak: And hot grew the Heart of Fafnir ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... plank, so that to our downward gazing eyes the suspended craft seemed a coral boat grown up to us from the bottom of the ocean. The wind increased to a howl; the waves dashed their bucklers together; the whole squall roared, forked, and crackled around us like a white fire upon the prairie, in which, unconsumed, we were burning; immortal in these jaws of death! In vain we hailed the other boats; as well roar to the live coals down the chimney of a flaming furnace as hail those boats in that storm. Meanwhile the driving ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... the hill, and presently stepped on to the pavement; but at the edge of the asphalt, where tufted grass should grow, something crackled and hissed under my feet. Under the torchlight the unnatural grass was white and brittle with rime, fanciful as a stage fairy scene, and the ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... a pity, he told himself, watching her erect figure diminish over the boardwalk. He had a feeling of having come in contact with an extraordinarily potent force. By heaven, she positively crackled! He smiled, thinking of the misguided people who had employed her, ignorant of all that underlay that severe prudent manner. At the same time he was flattered that she had confided in him. It was clear she recognized that he, at least, was a man. He was really ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... before. I opened my eyes and was thrilled by a terror, the memory of which has never been effaced. The room was brightly illuminated without any candle having been lighted, and when I turned my head I saw a huge blaze shoot up outside the window. Flames crackled and sparks flew. It was a world of fire. It was a neighbouring school that was burning. Uncle Jacob put his hand under my "night gown," a long article of clothing with a narrow cotton belt round the waist, and said laughing: "Do you have palpitations of the heart when you are afraid?" I had never ...
— Recollections Of My Childhood And Youth • George Brandes
... our first breakfast in the woods, we were fortunate. The sun shone brightly on the surrounding trees and bushes; the fires blazed and crackled; pots boiled, and cooks worked busily on a green spot, at the side of a small bay or creek, in which the boats quietly floated, scarce rippling the surface of the limpid water. A little apart from the men, ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... always." And the long, very close pressure of her two arms about her friend said as much. There was a long pause. The cheek of Alice rested on Ellen's head which nestled against her; both were busily thinking, but neither spoke; and the cricket chirped and the flames crackled without being listened to. ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... and then consumed away, the amazement of the natives was intense. Ned then made signs to them to pull up some bushes, and cast on the fire. They all set to work with energy, and soon a huge pile was raised on the fire. At first great volumes of white smoke only poured up, then the leaves crackled, and presently a tongue of flame shot up, rising higher and higher, till a great bonfire blazed away, far above their heads. This completed the wonder and awe of the natives, who again prostrated themselves, with every symptom of worship, before the boys. These again raised them, and ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... seated at an old desk, going over old papers, looked up as Cary entered the library. A fire of hickory crackled and flamed on the hearth, making a light to play over the portrait of Henry Churchill and over the swords crossed beneath. An old hound named Watch slept under the table, the tall clock ticked loudly, and through the glass doors, beyond the leafless trees, showed the long wave ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... and a half mps, which Johnson calculated to bring them in on the station on the "going away" side of its orbit, and settled back for the tedious two hours of free wheeling. For ten or fifteen minutes, the interphone crackled with the gregariousness born of recent peril, and gradually the ship fell silent as each man returned to his own ...
— Slingshot • Irving W. Lande
... and crossed his legs, and leant his body against two sacks which contained something that crackled slightly under his weight. ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... found matches, and weapons, and clothing, the latter of thin material wound as tightly as cotton on a spool; and, as stated, as the fire burned and blazed and crackled, he felt quite comfortable; and, as the storm broke over his cabin, a warm glow of satisfaction ...
— The Dock Rats of New York • "Old Sleuth"
... sat in the library at Bluff Head. A fire of driftwood crackled on the hearth and a stiff ...
— Janet of the Dunes • Harriet T. Comstock
... pauses that often occur when two people are thinking intensely on different subjects. For perhaps five minutes the cheerful fire crackled on uninterrupted. Then, suddenly recollecting himself, Code sprang to his feet and held ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... powerless, so he only asked to be allowed to have one chew of tobacco before he died; the leopard assented and Ledha felt in his cloth for his tobacco, but the tobacco did not come out easily and as Ledha felt about for it the dry tobacco leaves crackled; the leopard asked what the crackling sound was, and Ledha said "That is the lizard which bit you yesterday;" then the leopard got into a terrible fright and ran away as hard as he could, calling out "Don't let it loose: ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... over school tasks, with a huge slate-pencil his crumpled fingers held like a walking-stick, watched and listened in silence. He was ever fearful, perhaps, lest his superior man's knowledge might be called upon and found wanting. Questions poured and crackled like grapeshot, while the truth slowly emerged from the explanations the parents were occasionally permitted to interject. The personality of Cousin Henry Rogers grew into life about them—gradually. The result was a curious one that Minks would certainly have resented with indignation. ...
— A Prisoner in Fairyland • Algernon Blackwood
... in front of a back-brand to give substance, blazed a fire of thorns, that crackled 'like the laughter of ...
— Wessex Tales • Thomas Hardy
... nothing going on anywhere, or uppermost in the mind of anybody, but preparations for this mighty voyage. This, with the bright cold sun, the bracing air, the crisply-curling water, the thin white crust of morning ice upon the decks which crackled with a sharp and cheerful sound beneath the lightest tread, was irresistible. And when, again upon the shore, we turned and saw from the vessel's mast her name signalled in flags of joyous colours, and fluttering ...
— American Notes for General Circulation • Charles Dickens
... it there was a long gun-barrel heated to a red heat. An Indian warrior, a staid, sober man, came forward with much dignity of manner, and taking the red-hot gun-barrel pressed it upon the soles of the victim's feet, and moved it slowly up his legs. The skin and flesh smoked and crackled under the terrible infliction. The agony was such that the poor boy could not refrain from loud shrieks, and he was thrown into the most ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... at length, carried downward by the torrent; but a wild bird darted after it, as if to reveal the secret of its concealment, and then a noise like a human footfall crackled ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... a light, and a minute after he was kneeling, dazed, drenched, and bedraggled by the hearth side. The brushwood flamed, and the brushwood crackled, and soon my grandfather began to feel a little warm and dry and ...
— Celtic Fairy Tales • Joseph Jacobs (coll. & ed.)
... and stumbled about the city's streets. But nothing diverted him. Before his eyes a sheet of fire burned, and a blinding light seemed to shut out everything else from his vision. Even his thoughts crackled like dry ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... behind a monstrous oak-tree. It came on. The oak-tree crackled, crashed, and went down. It was ground under by the monstrous war-engine that went over it. The Wabbly was unbelievably impersonal and horrible in its progress. There had been a filling-station for gyrocars close by the place where the artillery-train ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... turned over a log, and out of the willow basket on the hearth took another and laid it carefully on the top. As it sputtered and crackled she sat down on the rug and clasped her hands over her knees, looking with half-shut eyes in the dancing flames, unmindful of their heat or ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... something that "boys who go to school never have"—the last of the Christmases of divine magic, when the snow fell and the waits sang and the stockings were filled and the turkey fattened and the candles blazed and the holly crackled by the will of God rather than the power of man. It would be many years before he would realise that, after all, in those early days he ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... blotting out the bright stars; a steady, low roar of water came from the outlet of the lake. The camp-fire flickered and burned out, so that no sparks blew into the blackness, and the red embers glowed and paled and crackled. Wade at length got up and made ready for bed. He threw back tarpaulin and blankets, and laid his rifle alongside where he could cover it. His coat served for a pillow and he put the Colt's gun under that; then pulling off his boots, he slipped ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... up the discarded clothing, which crackled stiffly under her touch and parted from the bare boards with a ...
— The Iron Trail • Rex Beach
... anything; but what I did perceive was a sight no tongue can describe nor the mind of a mortal dwell upon. I fainted. Oh, that limitless abyss, so dire and terrible, opening out upon another world! How those awful flames crackled incessantly as they darted upwards above the banks of the accursed ravine, and the shafts of impetuous lightning rent the thick, black smoke which the yawning chasm belched forth! When my beloved companion awoke me, he gave me ambrosial ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... With every turn of the ever-mounting forest road his reluctance grew. Grisly memories, grisly pictures, flooded his mind. It was night, and the trees in the darkness whispered like evil men. The bushes huddled like crouching figures. And what was it, moving stealthily over there, that crackled twigs? At last he could ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... toil in preparing for this occasion, and the result was now so perfect in her eyes that it was well worth the labour. The silk skirt crackled and rustled and glistened with every movement; the new hat was perched on her head with all its ribbons and flowers nodding. She was now engaged in painfully forcing on a pair of lemon-coloured gloves, but suddenly there ...
— White Lilac; or the Queen of the May • Amy Walton
... hand in the flabby stuffed glove that served the Scarecrow for a hand, and the Scarecrow pressed it so cordially that the straw in his glove crackled. ...
— The Patchwork Girl of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... a resting-place full of incongruities; but apart from, or perhaps because of, its oddities it had a cosy attractiveness. From the moment of our entrance we felt at home. I think the logs that purred and crackled on the hearth had much to do with its air of welcome. There is a sense of companionship about a wood fire that more enduring coal lacks. Like a delicate child, the very care it demands nurtures your affection. There ...
— A Versailles Christmas-Tide • Mary Stuart Boyd
... become quite oblivious of Joe, who was staring at her, and walked back slowly over the hard-packed snow that crackled under her ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... white to black; through red and sombre browns, pale and brilliant yellows, dead and living blacks. Through her opera-glasses Mary scanned their hair; she noted everything from the infinitely twisted, crackled, dead, and grayish-black to the piled mass of red golden sunlight. Her eyes went dreaming; there below was the gathering of the worlds. She saw types of all nations and all lands swirling beneath her in human brotherhood, and a great ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... was of the Porcupines, who are never long without raising their quills, and they are fond of heat. Now there was in the cave much hemlock bark, and this she began to heap on the fire. Then it blazed, it crackled and roared; but Pulowech sat still, and said naught, neither did his eyes change. And he called unto himself all his might, the might of his magic did he awaken, and the spirit came unto him very terribly, so that all the boo-oin, with their vile black witchcraft, ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... was well along, Otto threw more wood on the flames which crackled and gave out a cheerful glow. Deerfoot rose to his feet, and without a word passed out into the gloom. The hour for retiring was close at hand, and he preferred to make a reconnaissance before trusting ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... Merryweather, cheerfully resigned to "company," possessed his soul and his pipe (being duly assured that Mrs. Grahame liked the smell of tobacco), and the Colonel puffed his cigar beside him. A little fire crackled on the hearth, "just for society," Mrs. Merryweather said, and most of the windows were wide open, making the air fresh and sweet with the fragrance of wet vines and flowers. The two ladies were deep in household matters, each finding it very ...
— Hildegarde's Neighbors • Laura E. Richards
... Dolorosa. The pointed green caps of the cypresses, as they waved, seemed bent on frightening away the white butterflies that were fluttering about over the rosemary and the nettles. The parasol-pines projected patches of shade across the burning road, where the sun-baked earth crackled and crumbled to dead dust under ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... dawn. A thin mist floated beneath them, hiding the depths of the ravine. Musketry still crackled in the distance, but ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... Leicester, that doughty guest was seated in the prior's chamber, in company with his host. The day was most uninviting without, but the fire blazed cheerfully within. The snow kept falling in thick flakes, which narrowed the vision so that our friends could hardly see across the moat, but the fire crackled on the great hearth where five or six logs fizzed and spluttered ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... scalping were done. Horrible struggles would take place in the confined rooms of the little cabins; blood and mangled corpses desecrated the familiar hearths, and throughout sounded the wild yell of the savages, and the flames crackled and licked through ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... and he was wise, so he learned of his mother, who was wisest of them all. He learned that the grass on the sun side of a rock is sweet, and though it looks the same in the dark hollows, it is there worthless. He learned that when his mother's hoofs crackled he must be up and moving, and when all the herd's hoofs crackled there was danger, and he must keep by his mother's side. For this crackling is like the whistling of a Whistler Duck's wings: it is to keep the kinds ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... down, rapidly, to keep from freezing, for the frost bit into the flesh like fire. His beard was white with his frozen breath when the perplexed and frowning brows relaxed and decision came into his face. He had made up his mind to his course of action, and his frigid lips and cheeks crackled into a chuckle over it. The pails were already skinned over with young ice when he picked them up ...
— Love of Life - and Other Stories • Jack London
... It be there in the paper?" Imber's voice sank in whisperful awe as he crackled the sheets 'twixt thumb and finger and stared at the charactery scrawled thereon. "It be a great medicine, Howkan, and thou art a ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... you good, reader (supposing you to be possessed of sympathetic feelings), to have witnessed those three nor'-westers enjoying their supper in the snowy camp. The fire had been replenished with logs, till it roared and crackled again, as if it were endued with a vicious spirit, and wished to set the very snow in flames. The walls shone like alabaster studded with diamonds, while the green boughs overhead and the stems around were of a deep ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... which was towards the fire became so hot that the steam rose from it every time the thin stream of water swept over it. And now all at once a large part became covered with small sparkling flames, just as if sheets of gold leaf had been thrown against it, which crackled in the wind, and at last got fast hold in the oakum seams between the planking. The hose played upon them and swept them away; in another moment they were there again. They broke out in other places, ever gaining ground, taking ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... hiding-place, Del Mar's men were watching breathlessly. The leader was just about to press the plunger when all of a sudden a branch in the thicket beside him crackled. There stood the farmer ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... opposite side of a narrow strip of jungle. He accordingly left his elephant and began to creep through the long dry bramble-choked grass with his rifle in his hand. As he pushed his way through the thick jungle he fancied he heard an animal breathing and then something crackled. Intent on the deer before him, he concluded that he had broken a twig or a branch with the end of his rifle and pushed on. As he emerged from the thicket on the opposite side from where he had entered, he came ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... stare out a little longer, shot the heavy oaken bolt into its socket, and, opening a door leading to the inner room, disclosed a scene whose ruddy cheerfulness shone all the brighter in contrast to the dreary streets outside. A mighty bunch of fagots blazed and crackled on the hearth, and above the carved chimney-place hung branches of holly, their scarlet, berries glowing deeply in the firelight. In one corner, half-veiled by a tapestry curtain, a waxen Bambino nestled in its little manger, while before it burned a small ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... and came down stairs. All at once it proved to be drowsy time. The dark had fallen and the lamps were lit. A new fire crackled in the fireplace, anticipating the chill that was already descending. Carrie played the piano in the other room. The General snorted over something in his city paper. Mrs. Kitty had disappeared on household business. Pete and Pup, having been mistaken one for the other by some innocent ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... hand, keeping his quarry's head-and shoulders well in sight over the coping. This was laborious work, for he plunged ankle-deep at every step; but the leaves, sodden with a week's rain, made a noiseless carpet, whereas the brushwood might have crackled ...
— Two Sides of the Face - Midwinter Tales • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the jet-black lattice-work of the tree-tops the August moon spotted brightly down on them. Mile after mile through rolling pastures the moon-plaited stubble crackled and sucked like a sheet of wet ice under their feet, then roads began—mere molten bogs of mud and moonlight; and little frail roadside bushes drunk with rain lay ...
— Little Eve Edgarton • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... chauffeur, assuring himself that the man understood the directions for reaching their camp with supplies late that afternoon, and then fell into step with the other scouts for their all-day hike. Beneath their feet the broken shells of the road crackled, overhead the towering palms waved, near the roadside the stiff grass bent noisily in the breeze, and around them momentarily day grew clearer ...
— The Boy Scouts on Picket Duty • Robert Shaler
... was fired, nevertheless, in several spots. It was dry, and caught like tinder; the flames crackled and leaped, and raced down upon the thicket. The smoke rose densely. The Indians might be dimly seen, running about in the drifting veil and carrying off their killed ...
— Boys' Book of Frontier Fighters • Edwin L. Sabin
... face warned him to desist, he pulled it into its usual evening position between Mac's right foot and the fireplace. He sank down with a sigh of relief, as one who finishes a journey long and perilous. The fire crackled and the sparks flew gaily. Kaviak sat there in the red glow, dressed only in a shirt, staring with incredulous, mournful eyes at the Farva ...
— The Magnetic North • Elizabeth Robins (C. E. Raimond)
... opened its branches as arms and enclosed the Virgin and Child within their folds, affording them a secure hiding-place. Then the Virgin uttered a malediction against the brooms and the chick-peas, and ever since that day they have always rustled and crackled." The story goes on to tell us that the Virgin "pardoned the flax its weakness, and gave the juniper her blessing," which accounts for the use of the latter for Christmas decorations, —like the holly in England ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... holds such a position, and he thinks, also, that, when his son sings and prays before the Lord, the Lord will prosper him in his business, and forgive all his sins. So he did not take the book to the Rabbi, but thrust it into the fire, and, when it burned and crackled, he leaped and danced ...
— An Obscure Apostle - A Dramatic Story • Eliza Orzeszko
... Griffith gave utterance to a volley of blasphemous expletives that crackled on the air like an ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet
... on the day of his capture, and his head was bandaged with a linen cloth. His red hair hung down upon his bloodless face; his beard was torn, and twisted into knots; his eyes shone with a terrible light; his unwashed flesh crackled with the fever that burnt him up. Eight—nine—then. If it was not a trick to frighten him, and those were the real hours treading on each other's heels, where would he be, when they came round again! Eleven! Another struck, before the voice of the previous hour had ceased to vibrate. At eight, ...
— Oliver Twist • Charles Dickens
... place where the Willis family had lived for many generations. In the large living-room was a huge fireplace in which now a roaring fire crackled and leaped high. There was a small seat close to it and on this Edna ...
— A Dear Little Girl's Thanksgiving Holidays • Amy E. Blanchard
... local interest; among the few straggling houses men came and went, while a knot of women, children, and countless mongrel dogs had congregated just outside of the hut where the injured man lay. A brush fire in the street crackled right ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... in the court-yard crackled under the discreet footsteps of the coming lady, who was accompanied by a page supplied with a lantern. Seeing this lad, Mariotte removed her stool to the great hall for the purpose of talking with him by the gleam ...
— Beatrix • Honore de Balzac
... about sundown," Tommy replied. "Thanks just the same. Gad, but it was cold this afternoon. The air fairly crackled." ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... had to creep out by the chimneys; but that was nothing remarkable up there. While all was thus bleak and wretched without, within there were warmth and comfort. The mingled peat and wood fires—the wood obtained from wrecked ships—crackled and blazed cheerfully, and Mr. Broenne read aloud old chronicles and legends; among others, the story of Prince Hamlet of Denmark, who, coming from England, landed near Bovbjerg, and fought a battle there. His grave was ...
— The Sand-Hills of Jutland • Hans Christian Andersen
... the fourth day. He had knelt to stir his fire to more active burning. Its brightness made him blink, its warmth was grateful, and he reclined before it, with elbow on the floor and head resting on his hand. How cheerily the logs hummed and crackled, yet how drowsily—how slow the hours were—how dull the watch! Lower, lower sank the head, and heavier grew the eyes. At last he lay full length on the floor, and the long ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... Lucy, ashamed, she knew not why, followed her more slowly. In a few minutes, owing to Mrs. Brett's breezy talk, there were seven girls, all apparently happy, very busily preparing tea. The fire soon crackled and blazed; the kettle quickly did its part by singing merrily and boiling sturdily. Tea was made in the old brown teapot which was always kept for such occasions. How good it tasted in the open air! how different from ...
— A Modern Tomboy - A Story for Girls • L. T. Meade
... must not—burn!" said I dully, and struggling to my feet I saw a thin column of smoke that curled up the hatchway. Gasping and choking, I fought my way down where flames crackled and smoke grew ever denser. Suddenly amid this swirling vapour I heard a ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... suddenly put on twenty years of age more than she came to the village with. The room was quite too cold for Jane, she remembered; and softly she went up and down for kindling and lighted up the fire again. Till she had done that, she felt grey and stern, like the November morning; but when the fire crackled and sparkled before her, and gave its cheery look and comforting warmth to her chilled senses, some curious sympathy with times that were gone and that she dared not hope to see again, smote Eleanor with a softer sorrow; ...
— The Old Helmet, Volume I • Susan Warner
... reveals them as members of a fraternity well qualified to lead public opinion rather than to follow it, as has been the province of engineers in the past. Each when he has spoken or entered upon action having the public welfare in mind has pronounced or demonstrated a truth which fairly crackled with sanity. ...
— Opportunities in Engineering • Charles M. Horton
... and entered the cloverleaf that took him onto the bypass expressway. Even as he did so, the radio crackled and the thin voice of the Chief sounded over ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... her way rapidly to the foot of the back stairway. When she opened the door to ascend, a thick, black smoke rushed down, almost overpowering her. The opening of the door seemed to aid the fire, too, and there was a sort of explosive eagerness in the new start it took as it now crackled and roared above her. Then she recognized in the sickening smoke a smell of burning feathers, and she felt faint and weak as she thought that it might be his ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I. February, 1862, No. II. - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... amongst the darkness of the cobbles; where pools had been the ice crackled beneath our feet, then the snow scrunched.... I loved the sound, the sharp clear scent of the air, the pools of stars in the sky, the pools of ice at our feet, the blue like the thinnest glass stretched across the sky. I felt the poignancy of my age, ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... on and on—down the wind and down the vale; and the canter became a gallop, and the gallop a long straining stride; and a hundred horsehoofs crackled like flame among the stubbles, and thundered fetlock-deep along the heavy meadows; and every fence thinned the cavalcade, till the madness began to stir all bloods, and with grim earnest silent faces, the initiated ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... bright bold flame as before. "O, Manito!" he softly said, "thou art not angry—receive my gift." Again, he threw tobacco into the fire, and, this time, no portent interposed. The greedy flame seized upon the dry leaves, which crackled in the heat, and bore them on its shining billows high into the air. The fire continued burning till all was consumed, and the heap sent up only a spiral of ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... rushing through the wood as fast as he might fly, and all the branches of the trees crackled and waved around him. "O thou false knight and traitor to all knighthood!" shouted he, "who taught thee ...
— The Legends Of King Arthur And His Knights • James Knowles
... The wind had sent the fire licking up the woodwork, dancing over slates and tiles, springing at the roof of the hall; and all at once the far block was involved. A furnace blast of flame leaped at it, billowing waves of smoke rolled through it; and it crackled and screamed and blazed. The bigger girls had just time to escape; but the children, seven of the smallest, were left on the ...
— The Devil's Garden • W. B. Maxwell
... not a pleasant place for either of the lads, for in front of them was a ring of fire where, upon the ground, burned and crackled and fumed a quantity of short wood, which was replenished from time to time by Mark Hickathrift, the ...
— Dick o' the Fens - A Tale of the Great East Swamp • George Manville Fenn
... opened, all his dread had gone! The room was light and cheerful, the shutters were unclosed, and the blinds were up. A cheerful fire blazed and crackled, and dear Harry lay beside it on a sofa, looking lovely and lovingly as ...
— The Young Emigrants; Madelaine Tube; The Boy and the Book; and - Crystal Palace • Susan Anne Livingston Ridley Sedgwick
... jerkily, Landor filled the brier bowl and pressed the brown flakes tight with his little finger. The match he lit crackled explosively, and he started at the unexpected sound as one whose nerves were on edge. The pipe aglow, he still sat for a ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... on more wood. Fire crackled in the chimney. I saw, and seemed to have known all night, that she had taken pieces of unbroken bread and meat left by Pierre Grignon on my table; that her shoes were cleaned and drying in front of the fire; that ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... forty seconds the sparks crackled out their snappy signals into the crisp night air, and then the settled calm returned, and we stood in breathless silence like beings on the edge of a world waiting for the answer to come as ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... mainly of minute jagged cracks of the character peculiar to brittle materials such as both emerald and tourmaline. So far it will be noted either of the above minerals might have furnished the lady's gem. As glass can be artificially crackled to produce similar flaws the stone might have been only an imitation as far as anything ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... spark of charity at once crackled and burst into a flame. There is sure to be a little something that is bad in everybody's philanthropy when it is first put to use; it requires to be filed down like a faulty casting before it will run without danger to anybody. Samaritanism ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 6 • Various |
