"Creaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... happier than other people,' answered the friend. Then they walked on in silence. Nothing was heard but the creaking ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... black swans could have been cited in a simile illustrating profusion. Bass quaintly stated that the "dying song" of the swan, so celebrated by poets, "exactly resembled the creaking of a rusty ale-house sign on a windy day." The remark is not so pretty as, but far more true than, that of the bard who would have us believe that the ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... my boy of two and a half years, seems also noteworthy as an onomatope independently invented, because it was used daily for months in the same way merely to designate the whistle. The voice of the hen, of the redstart, the creaking of a wheel, were imitated by my child of his own accord long before he could speak a word. But this did not go so far as the framing of syllables. It is not easy in this to trace so clearly the framing of a concept as attaching itself directly to onomatopoetic ...
— The Mind of the Child, Part II • W. Preyer
... nobles the word which he had rashly pledged to a fair, false woman: but Herod was not done with John when John's body, tenderly buried by his disciples, lay silent in the grave. Many times by night and day the king saw that gory head again lying on the charger—it would not go out of his sight. The creaking of a door, or the sighing of the wind among the trees, seemed the footfall of the Baptist stalking forth to reprove him. When an attendant reported to Herod the miracles of Christ, reporting at the same time that some took Jesus of Nazareth for Elias, ...
— The Parables of Our Lord • William Arnot
... now so loud, The minister paused (though his head was bowed). Rappety-rap! This will never do, The girls are peeping, and laughing too! So the sexton tripped o'er the creaking floor, Lifted the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... long and low and weathered gray like a part of the earth. By day it had rested in a green sun-dazzle of trees or a glistering purity of snow. By night you heard the boards creaking and the lonesome sound of wind talking down the chimney. Yes, it ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... came a low, long, musical shouting; then with creaking and straining of wagons, four great black mules dashed into sight with twelve bursting bales of yellowish cotton looming and swaying behind. The drivers and helpers were lolling and laughing and singing, but Miss Taylor did not ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic[obs3], asthenic[obs3]; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate[obs3], womanly. frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy[obs3]; drooping, tottering &c. v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c. 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish[obs3]; sickly &c. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... is a point beyond which hope deferred maketh the heart sick, and Henry had passed that point. He waited patiently till he was naked of scalp and deaf of ear. He endured without repining the bent back, the sightless eyes, and the creaking joints incident to over-maturity. But when he saw a man perish of senility, who in infancy had called him "Old Hank," Mr. Wolfe thought patience had ceased to be commendable, and he abandoned his post of duty ...
— The Fiend's Delight • Dod Grile
... could possibly compass. The thunder and the wind were howling each other down in emulous din, and the very hiss of the lightning could be distinctly heard, like some huge snake, at times above the creaking and snapping of the trees before the gale ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... hear the rusty hinges of my beloved's door give me creaking invitation. My heart creaks and throbs with respondent trepidations: Whimsical enough though! for what relation has a lover's heart to a rusty pair of hinges? But they are the hinges that open and shut the door of my beloved's ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... and the men had not had a meal since the few biscuits which had been given out in the early morning. At last, however, the Regimental Transport was heard creaking up the small lane which led to the position. Then the trouble began. The road was dark, deeply rutted and narrow, and crossed by a little stream. A nervous horse took fright at the running water, dashed up one of the banks, ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... were perilous, and it behooved those whose duty it was to keep the wheels of the machine sufficiently lubricated to run without over-much creaking, to see that not only were all possible precautions taken to secure the Queen's safety, but that everything that might promote the loyalty of the uncertain ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... from wall and tower and town, and from the ships lazily rocking at the anchorages, filled the water with a thousand points of fire. The gentle breeze wafted the little craft past reefs and rocks into the harbour noiselessly, save for the creaking of the yards, the complainings of the block, the wimple of wavelets at the bow, and the gurgle of eddies at the pintles and under the plashing counter. On deck forward only a few figures were silhouetted against the background of white ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... was roused from her sleep by a strange sound, the sound of a cradle being rocked. She imagined herself dreaming. Who would come to this distant tower to rock the little Hugo? Not Amina, of that she was sure! Again the sound was heard, unmistakably the creaking of the cradle. Drawing aside her bed-curtains, the crone beheld a strange sight. Over the cradle a woman was bending, clad in long, white garments, and singing a low lullaby, and as she raised her pale face, behold! it was that of the dead Kunigunda. The nurse ...
— Hero Tales and Legends of the Rhine • Lewis Spence
... in full swing. Even with so small a craft as the Lizzie there was commotion. Orders flew from lip to lip. Creaking cables strained at unyielding bollards. Gangways clattered out from deck, and ran down on to the quay with a crash. Hatches were flung open and the steam ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... the feeling that shot through me as I suddenly discovered that the right sleeve of her white satin gown hung empty at her side? The train disappeared, and the tone of the church bells changed to a strange, dry, creaking sound, and the gate below me complained as it turned on its rusty hinges. I faced toward my own door. I knew that it was shut and locked, but I knew that the ghostly procession were coming to call me to account, and I felt that no walls could keep them out. My door flew open, there ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... of artificiality, of strained pomposity and affectation, which is the plague of classical tragedy, is everywhere apparent, and one hears, as it were, the cords and pulleys of these majestic colossi creaking and groaning. I much prefer Racine and Shakespeare; the one from the point of view of aesthetic sensation, the other from that of psychological sensation. The southern theater can never free itself from masks. Comic masks are bearable, but in the case of tragic heroes, ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... have nothing but my feathers, nothing but my feathers!" So the crocodile goes away till next year. There are not many singing birds in Borneo besides this thrush. The soft voices of many doves and pigeons may always be heard, and often the curious creaking noise made by the wings of rhinoceros hornbills as they fly past. More musical is the voice of the Wawa monkey, a bubbling like water running out of a narrow-necked bottle, always to be heard at early dawn, and the sweetest of alarums. ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... their way to school. In his day the blank row of houses had been a mud taipa wall, broken just here by the little gate of the priest's house. In his day there had been that long, high-plumed bank of bamboos, forever swaying and creaking, behind the screen of which had lain the wonder ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... end of his electric torch, softly and then loudly. He went on rapping, and knew the fear that assails the assaulter of impregnable, unyielding silence, the panic of him who calls aloud in an empty house and is answered only by the tiny sounds of creaking, scuffling, and whispering that cause the skin to creep, the blood to curdle, the marrow to freeze, the heart to stop, and the spirit to be poured out like water. Strange and horrid symptoms! Curdled blood, frozen marrow, unbeating heart ... who first discovered that this is what ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... the woman, who was stout and consequently slow in her movements, led the way up the creaking stairway and then through the hall on the second floor. The floor here also was loose and every step was announced by creakings, while various other sounds were emitted as the boards resumed their ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... really believed to have taken place as described, though it was the mere product of chance noises and breaths of air on minds intently expectant; and we are bidden to remember "that in these decisive hours a current of wind, a creaking window, an accidental rustle, settle the belief of nations for centuries." But at any rate it was ...
— Occasional Papers - Selected from The Guardian, The Times, and The Saturday Review, - 1846-1890 • R.W. Church
... rain! No such thing as putting a foot out of doors, and no occupation nor amusement within. By and by I heard some one walking overhead. It was in the stout gentleman's room. He evidently was a large man, by the heaviness of his tread; and an old man, from his wearing such creaking soles. "He is doubtless," thought I, "some rich old square-toes, of regular habits, and is now ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving
... overhead the gentle summer breeze stirred the great branches of the elms, causing the crisp leaves to mutter a long-drawn hush-sh-sh in the stillness of the night. From far away came the appealing call of a blackbird chased by some marauding owl, while on the ground close by, the creaking of tiny branches betrayed the quick scurrying of a squirrel. From the remote and infinite distance came the ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... "the creaking of the oar." (The word kaji to-day means "helm";—the single oar, or scull, working upon a pivot, and serving at once for rudder and oar, being now called ro.) The mist passing across the Amanogawa is, according to commentators, the spray from ...
— The Romance of the Milky Way - And Other Studies & Stories • Lafcadio Hearn
... separated him from the advancing Italian. Faintly to his ears came the sound of creaking boards behind him. Perhaps Mascola's men were pressing in from the rear. He dared not look to see. His eyes were held by Mascola's crooked arm. That was what he ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... the sound of a creaking axle, which grew louder and louder as the waggon drew nearer, till it approached a shriek. The sleeper moved uneasily, but recognising the noise even in his dreams, did not wake. The horrible sounds stopped; there was the sound of voices, as ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... close to his side, and they locked the kitchen door behind them. It was a relief to get up again. In the hall there was more light than before, for the moon had travelled a little further down the stairs. Cautiously they began to go up into the dark vault of the upper house, the boards creaking under ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... seat beside the embers, and fixing upon me those eyes, with the hell-light in them, that burn into my brain; and at rare times she smiles, and all my Being passes out of me, and is hers. I make no attempt to work. I sit listening for her footsteps on the creaking bridge, for the rustling of her feet upon the grass, for the tapping of her hand upon the door. No word is uttered between us. Each day I say: 'When she comes to-night I will speak to her. I will stretch out my hand and touch her.' Yet when she enters, all thought ...
— The Idler Magazine, Volume III., July 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... That in the sunshine floats, beneath the blue, Glad skies. And through the deep, all sparkling, slip A thousand insect-swarms, that, rippling, dip Amid the merry waves. Bright voyagers That roam the sultry seas! Look, the wind stirs Our creaking sails! Thy pinnace flying o'er The ocean's swell, fast leaves the fading shore; Yet faster still the Nautilus sails by, And darts the spider quick. And swifter fly The insect-fleets among the foam; yet think Not ...
— Lilith - The Legend of the First Woman • Ada Langworthy Collier
... things was the lift in which, at no great pace and with much rumbling and creaking, the porter conveyed the two gentlemen to the alarming eminence, as Mr. Longdon measured their flight, at which Vanderbank perched. The impression made on him by this contrivance showed him as unsophisticated, yet when his companion, at the top, ushering him in, gave a touch ...
— The Awkward Age • Henry James
... was still the fanlight, over which the remembered title of "St. Charles," in gilded letters, was now reinforced by the too demonstrative legend, "Apartments and Board, by the Day or Week." Was it possible that this narrow, creaking staircase had once seemed to him the broad steps of Fame and Fortune? On the first landing, a preoccupied Irish servant-girl, with a mop, directed him to a door at the end of the passage, at which he knocked. The door was opened by a grizzled negro servant, who was still holding a piece ...
— A Ward of the Golden Gate • Bret Harte
... less mechanically brutal. They were not monstrous enough to require motor tractors to draw them at a stately gait, but behind their teams could be up and away across the fields on short notice, their caissons of ammunitions creaking behind them. Along the communication trenches perspiring soldiers carried "plum puddings" or the trench-mortar shells which were to be fired from the front line and boxes of egg-shaped bombs which fitted nicely in the palm of the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the best opportunity of venturing to the breach in the wall, with the least chance of being observed. In waiting for the hour, she observed some stir in the castle, which had been silent as the grave ever since the seclusion of the Duke of Rothsay. The portcullis was lowered and raised, and the creaking of the machinery was intermingled with the tramp of horse, as men at arms went out and returned with steeds hard ridden and covered with foam. She observed, too, that such domestics as she casually saw from her window were in arms. All this made her heart throb high, for it ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... hardening, though still damp from the dews of Mr. Newlington's garden. He cast them aside, and, taking a key from his pocket, unlocked an oak cupboard and withdrew the heavy muddy boots in which he had ridden from town. He drew them on and, taking up his hat and sword, went down the creaking stairs and out into ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... Stephen Lockley had again to pass the Blue Boar. This time he did not give it "a wide berth." There were two roads to the hut, and the shorter was that which passed the public-house. Trusting to the strength of his own resolution, he chose that road. When close to the blue monster, whose creaking sign drew so many to the verge of destruction, and plunged so many over into the gulf, he was met by Skipper Ned Bryce, a sociable, reckless sort of man, of whom he was rather fond. Bryce was skipper of the Fairy, an iron smack, which was known in ...
— The Lively Poll - A Tale of the North Sea • R.M. Ballantyne
... was nothing for it but submission. It seemed three hours at the least before the ranger snapped up his watch, stepped down from the barrel, walked backwards, still covering us with his weapon, to the door behind him, and then passed rapidly through it. We heard the creaking of the rusty lock, and the clatter of his horse's hoofs, ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... generous proportions, hangings, curtains and covers of chintz, over which faded purple and crimson roses were flung broadcast on a honey-yellow ground. The colourings were discreetly cheerful, the atmosphere not unpleasantly warm, the quiet, save for the creaking of a board as he crossed the floor, unbroken. Outwardly all invited to peaceful slumber. And Tom felt more than ready to profit by that invitation this last night on shore, last night in England. His attention had been upon the stretch for ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... and creaking with fatigue. He was remorselessly hungry. There was water, but he could ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... All night long have I watched through the storm. I knew by the signal-fires thou wert off the harbour mouth. Dost thou think I could rest when my lord rode on the top of crested waves, and the creaking timbers of the vessel sang omens fierce and loud? No, no; Nika is of different mould. My father is a warrior and a sailor, and ofttimes has he told me of the fearful perils of ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... Cumberland Mountain. The three mountains were not far apart and looked almost as if they had been carefully planted at equal distances in the midst of the wilderness by some giant hand. Some of the cliffs were so wild and rugged that when the creaking wagons drew near the edge the children screamed in their terror. In the main, however, the trail was less difficult than had been expected. The huge masses of rock had been torn asunder in places by some volcanic action in preceding ages and had left narrow passageways through which the ...
— Scouting with Daniel Boone • Everett T. Tomlinson
... were in fact all ship-shape, taut and true, like the nerves in a human body. There was no need to steer her enormous bulk to avoid the waves or pass them by; it was enough to let her crush them with all her weight, let her grind them down and push them before her like drifts of snow. Groaning and creaking she ploughed straight on through all that came against her, heeling before the wind right down to her gunwale and leaving behind her a long furrow in the sea. High above the deck of this magnificent vessel, between two ...
— Seven Icelandic Short Stories • Various
... the well and in a moment the little peaceful spot was the scene of noisy confusion; men shouting, scrambling and gesticulating, horses squealing, and above all the creaking whine of the tackling over the well droning mournfully as the bucket rose and fell. Said swung himself easily to the ground and held his brother's plunging horse while he dismounted. For a few moments they ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... with the stray rooks and jackdaws looking after him with their heads cocked slyly, as if they knew how much more knowing they were in worldly affairs than he, if any sort of vagabond could only get near enough to his creaking shoes to attract his attention to one sentence of a tale of distress, that vagabond was made for the next two days. It was so notorious in the house, that the masters and head-boys took pains to cut these marauders ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... morning she covered some of the books with brown paper and pasted labels on their backs. She tried not to listen for the creaking of the great gates as they swung open, for the grating of wheels against the stones, for Jean's voice calling to his brother, for his quick step upon the stair, but she heard all as she wrote Vita Nuova on the slip intended ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... renew my impressions of the position, and found that sharp skirmishing was going on at every point. When I returned to Savage's, where McClellan's headquarters had temporarily been pitched, I found the last of the wagons creaking across the track, and filing slowly southward. The wounded lay in the out-houses, in the trains of cars, beside the hedge, and in shade of the trees about the dwelling. A little back, beside a wood, lay Lowe's ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... There was a creaking and straining of the woodwork around them which they had not noticed before. Laura ran to a window, followed by Alene. The hills appeared to be gliding by! Sure enough, the boat was moving; it had left the shore while they ...
— Peggy-Alone • Mary Agnes Byrne
... finest, the cleanest fellow he had ever known; his life, so full of promise, had just begun, and yet he had been ruthlessly stricken down. Norvin shuddered at the memory. He saw the road to Martinello stretching out ahead of him like a ghost-gray canyon walled with gloom; he heard the creaking of saddles, the muffled thud of hoofs in the dust of the causeway, the song of a ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... a time there was a pool Fringed all about with flag-leaves cool And spotted with cow-lilies garish, Of frogs and pouts the ancient parish. Alders the creaking redwings sink on, Tussocks that house blithe Bob o' Lincoln. Hedged round the unassailed seclusion, Where muskrats piled their cells Carthusian; And many a moss-embroidered log, The watering-place of summer ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 54, April, 1862 • Various
... once more stirred up his impatience with his mother's disregard of hygiene. He tiptoed into the room and decided to remove the lamp and open the high, small window to admit a little air. He moved noiselessly and had stooped for the lamp when there came a creaking and a heavy sigh from the bed, and ...
— Birthright - A Novel • T.S. Stribling
... later the small, creaking cavalcade was directly in front of the two soldiers. Another officer, riding with the skillful abandon of a cowboy, galloped his horse to a position directly before the general. The two unnoticed foot soldiers made a little show of going on, ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... bulbs at night and by day casting an amber radiance on the patient crowd. The scent of dust and trampled grass and sun-baked wood gave her an illusion of Syrian caravans; she forgot the speakers while she listened to noises outside the tent: two farmers talking hoarsely, a wagon creaking down Main Street, the crow of a rooster. She was content. But it was the contentment of the lost hunter ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... every moment in fury. Still the Arabs held on. The schooner came after us at a great rate. Night was coming on: we hoped to escape in the darkness. On we drove. Where we were going no one seemed to know. The little vessel plunged and tore through the fast rising seas, every timber in her creaking and groaning. The wind howled, the waters roared, and the poor wretches below cried out and shrieked ...
— My First Voyage to Southern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... He liked the well-wheel's creaking tongue,— He liked the thrush that fed her young,— He liked the drone of flies among His netted peaches; He liked to watch the sunlight fall Athwart his ivied orchard wall; Or pause to catch the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... even a strong man in a very short while. When the victim is fairly helpless, he is conducted to his room. There may be other "boarders" in this apartment, but they are generally too drunk to notice what is going on. The doors are utterly without fastenings, and are oiled to prevent them from creaking. When all is quiet, and the victim is plunged in a heavy slumber, the "Jackal" creeps up the stairs, enters the room, and robs the poor fellow of whatever money or valuables he may have on his person. In the morning, when the ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe
... the railroad labourers vanished, passing on yet farther to the West, only the engineers remaining at Ellisville and prosecuting from the haven of the stone hotel the work of continuing the line. The place of the tents was taken by vast white-topped wagons, the creaking cook carts of the cattle trail, and the van of the less nomadic man. It was the beginning of the great cattle drive from the Southern to the Northern ranges, a strange, wild movement in American life which carried in its train a set of ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... came another boat's crew, big and little, grown men and little children, rattling and creaking. ...
— Weird Tales from Northern Seas • Jonas Lie
... of the "rigging" that could not stand the efforts of the poor beasts to move from their position. At length, however, you get fairly under weigh, with about a four knot breeze, and continue to make some progress for an hour or two amidst a noise caused by the rumbling of the vehicle, the creaking, jingling, rattling, and clanking, of the atalage, the unceasing crack of the whip, and the chattering of your companions, to which the sounds at Babel were music. The movement then becomes adagio, and soon afterwards the conducteur's voice is heard, begging the passengers ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... was the pacifier. He strode across the room, and the sharp sound of his heels on the creaking floor broke the tension. He said softly to Pierre: "You've raised hell enough. Now let's go and get Jack down here to undo what you've just finished. Besides, you've got to ask her for ...
— Riders of the Silences • Max Brand
... Vagg Hollow, Little boy, when you go In the morning at five on your lonely drive?" "—I see men's souls, who follow Till we've passed where the road lies low, When they vanish at our creaking! ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... glanced at his watch. "We pull out in thirty seconds," he said. And at two o'clock No. 14 started northward on what was to prove a most eventful run in the history of the M. & T. The train rattled over the yard switches, slid creaking under the brakes down to the river, rumbled across the bridge, and then toiled up the first of the long grades between Truesdale ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... turned his coat collar up, plunged hands in pockets and viewed the grey mist scowlingly. Then he began to listen for footsteps crunching the sand. But no sound save the lapping of water on the beach and the creaking of a boom on an unseen boat ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... five years old stands at the head of a little beach of white shingle, just inside the harbour's mouth, so that all day long Kit could see the merchant-ships trailing in from sea, and passing up to the little town, or dropping down to the music of the capstan-song, and the calls and the creaking, as their crews hauled up the sails. Some came and went under bare poles in the wake of panting tugs; but those that carried canvas pleased Kit more. For a narrow coombe wound up behind the cottage, and down this coombe came not only the brook that splashed ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... words followed, but spoken so low that the boys could not understand them. They heard a faint creaking of the flooring of the old mill, but that ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... had come to a crashing halt. The locomotive reared upon its forward wheels and then settled back on a slant, creaking at every joint. Ralph had swung the air lever or there would ...
— Ralph on the Engine - The Young Fireman of the Limited Mail • Allen Chapman
... howls of the wind, and the night fell over the city and the black, winding river. The man ate his supper in silence, furtively casting his eyes now and then upon the slender figure of the woman. He chewed fast, uttering no word, and the creaking of the heavy jaws and the smacking of the coarse lips were the only sounds to be heard after the woman had taken her place at the table. Scraggy dared not yet begin to eat; for something new in her master's manner filled her with sudden fear. By sitting very quietly, she hoped to keep his attention ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... the nurse; the creaking of the baggage-wagon, starting on its journey, was heard outside, and the shrill roll of the drums was renewed in the ...
— The New Magdalen • Wilkie Collins
... servant, bent all their strength to the task, and inch by inch they moved the great, creaking structure. When at last they had succeeded, and paused to take breath, the light in the distance had become stronger and more apparent. Together the three men watched it grow; master and servant, ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sensibly felt; but if that speed is considerably increased and the concussion made quicker without a corresponding increase in the strength of the frame and hull of the ship generally, we shall find the ship creaking, straining, and yielding to the pressure, until finally it works itself to pieces, and also disconcerts the engines, whose stability, bracing, and keeping proper place and working order depend first and essentially on the permanence ...
— Ocean Steam Navigation and the Ocean Post • Thomas Rainey
... came on a countless throng, a throng that neither earth nor wave could hold. Thick flared all their camp-fires, and the whole wood blazed up; the flame betokened a numberless array. The earth sank under the fraying of the horse-hoofs; creaking waggons rattled swiftly. The wheels rumbled, the driver rode upon the winds, so that the chariots sounded like thunder. The earth hardly bore the throngs of men-at-arms, speeding on confusedly; they trod ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... and surrounded by a separate stockade, there suddenly resounded an infernal din. It was like the roar of a lion, like thunder, like the rumbling of a drum, like the laughter of a hyena, the howling of a wolf, and like the shrill creaking of rusty iron hinges. The King hearing these dreadful sounds, began to trumpet, Saba barked, the donkey, on which Nasibu sat, brayed. The warriors leaped as if scalded, and pulled the spears out of the ground. ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... for the reception of the company, the rooms should be lighted up as the hour appointed approaches. Attendants in the drawing-room, even more than in the dining-room, should move about actively but noiselessly; no creaking of shoes, which is an abomination; watching the lights from time to time, so as to keep up their brilliancy. But even if the attendant likes a game of cribbage or whist himself, he must not interfere in his master or mistress's game, nor even seem ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... with the greatest exertion of will power that he controlled his muscles at all; but at last he succeeded in finding and striking one. At the flare of the light there was a sound from below—a scratching sound and the creaking of boards as beneath a heavy body; then came the clanking of the chain once more, and the bannister against which they leaned shook as though a hand had been laid upon it below them. The youth stifled a shriek and simultaneously the match went out; but not before Bridge had seen in the momentary ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... which floated a few inches from the earth, toward the side of the hill farthest from where the doctor stood. Three of them held it, while the fourth went forward and bent over some controls on the ground. A creaking sound came through the night and the men moved forward with the globe. Presently its movement stopped and men reappeared. Again came the creaking sound and the glow faded out as though a screen had been ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... slowly down the street. The air was heavy, and the sun beat down furiously on the yellow cotton awnings stretched over his head. Clouds of dust rose in the roadway as the white bullocks shuffled along, drawing their creaking wooden carts, and swarms of flies buzzed noisily in the yellow, dusty sunshine. Hamilton went on aimlessly; he was hot, he was tired, his eyes and head ached, he was thirsty; but all these disagreeable sensations ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... second father, To the servant-folk of strangers, From thy native hills and lowlands. There and here the homes will differ, Happier thy mother's hearth-stone; Other horns will there be sounded, Other portals there swing open, Other hinges there be creaking; There the doors thou canst not enter Like the daughters of Wainola, Canst not tend the fires and ovens As will please the minds of strangers. "Didst thou think, my fairest maiden, Thou couldst wed and on the morrow Couldst return, if thou shouldst wish it, To ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... worked hard to live and grow and to weather the roaring fierce winds. The crows sat gasping, open-beaked, as if protesting against having been born into so sulphurous an existence. Here and there a well, with its huge lumbering wheel and patient bullocks, went creaking and groaning night and day, as if earth grudged the tiny rivulet coming so toilfully from her dry breast, and gave it up with sighs of pain. The sky was cloudless, pitiless, brazen. The sun rose into it without a single fleck of vapour to mitigate its fierceness ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall
... oxen in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and goes, he talks to his team for company; his conversation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The logs are chained and dragged creaking along over the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the ice has gone. The river flows visible; and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... quarter past ten o'clock by the parlour timepiece when my father went off to his room, and left Esther and myself together. We heard his slow steps dying away up the creaking staircase, until the distant slamming of a door announced that ...
— The Mystery of Cloomber • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of once; some of the shopkeepers, as well as Mr. Lash, the carpenter, advocated it strenuously at Bulcher's grocery store in the evenings, because, they said, they were at the mercy of Phibbs, the package man, who brought their wares on his slow, creaking cart over the dusty turnpike from Mercer. But others, looking into the future, objected to a convenience which might result in a diminution of what little trade they had. Among the families, however, who did not have to consider "trade" there was great unanimity, though the Draytons ...
— John Ward, Preacher • Margaret Deland
... a chaise with several outriders, as Buckingham thought, by the tramp of horses' feet, and a creaking of wheels pulling ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... long composed entirely of women, always feels to its very foundations the incursion of one of the "nobler sex." From the first morning when there resounded the multiplied ringing of bells, and the creaking of boots on the staircase, the glory of the feminine dynasty was departed. Its easy laisser-aller, its lax rule, and its indifference to regular forms were at an end. Mrs. Rothesay could no longer indulge ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... Nic lay puzzling his weary, confused head as to the meaning of a strange creaking, and a peculiar rising and falling, and why it was that he did ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... in the air in the early summer morning, only the creaking of a spar, the scream of a seagull now and then. How pale the lamps were growing on board the yachts. Paler still, yellow, and dim, and blurred yonder in the town. The eastward facing windows were golden with the rising sun. Yes, this was morning. The yachts ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... along a bad road in a four-wheeler, and riding well to hounds in a close country on a good hunter. I was horribly tired for about five days, but now I rather like it, and never know whether it blows or not in the night, I sleep so soundly. The noise is beyond all belief; the creaking, trampling, shouting, clattering; it is an incessant storm. We have not yet got our masts quite safe; the new wire-rigging stretches more than was anticipated (of course), and our main-topmast is ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... china figures; a gay Red Riding-Hood, with a pink wolf, set primly opposite a striped Bo-peep and a sky-blue lamb. There were pebbles and shells and pieces of coral, and baskets of beadwork, and many other ornaments dear to Miss Arabella's heart. She closed the old, creaking door, placed the one chair against it, and trembling as though she were about to commit a burglary, she stealthily opened the lowest drawer of the dresser and took from it a large parcel. She sat down on the low rocker and carefully untied ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... well finished speaking, his Italian sailors had begun their work, the slower and more apathetic Greeks needing, even in that moment of danger, to be urged with many words before they would obey. Thus it was but slowly that the heavy sails, creaking and swaying in the wind, were drawn in and bound to the masts, and before half the work was done, the storm in its full fury had struck the ship, and each man clung for life to the nearest support, as the reeling vessel ploughed heavily through the ...
— Famous Islands and Memorable Voyages • Anonymous
... are you turning music-mad at this time of day? Mad—that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, old addle-pate!" she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked it to and fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old man; isn't it the creaking of the wheels that ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... stir about it, and the rapid whirl of voices and rattle of dishes disperses sadness. But a solitary dinner in an old, respectable, sombre, solid London inn, where nothing makes any noise but the old waiter's creaking shoes; where one plate slowly goes and another slowly comes without a sound; where the two or three guests would as soon think of knocking each other down as of speaking; where the servants whisper, and the ...
— The Warden • Anthony Trollope
... and he felt himself tumbled in on the heap of sails. Hour after hour, he lay comfortably there. He could hear the straining of the masts, the creaking of the boom, and the singing of the ropes with the roaring of the wind; also the surge of the waves past the ship's sides and the thud with which every now and ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... Creaking through the valley, on the tawny road that lay below the tapestry, went, each night, waggons heavily laden with baskets packed into crates. Far beyond the frame of pines was a small group of houses, whither the workers went with their armfuls of purple, ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... all the years had vanished, All folly, greed, and stain— The old, old song, the creaking chair, The dearest arms again! (O lucky little manny boy, To feel those ...
— Songs for a Little House • Christopher Morley
... to creep away. Out in the country every one is wise: We can be only wise on Saturday. There you are waiting, little friendly house: Those are your chimney-stacks with you between, Surrounded by old trees and strolling cows, Staring through all your windows at the green. Your homely floor is creaking for our tread; The smiling tea-pot with contented spout Thinks of the boiling water, and the bread Longs for the butter. All their hands are out To greet us, and the gentle blankets seem Purring and crooning: 'Lie in us, ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... obliged to make a long circuit across the highway to reach his favorite granary. On the highway he could hear the creaking of the sledges, the whinnying of horses, the groaning of the seats ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... without a word among themselves, gathered their horses and struck down the valley out of Alder. The padding and swish of the sand about the feet of their mounts; the very creaking of the saddle leather seemed to alarm them, and they were continually turning and looking back. That is, Gus Reeve and Ronicky Joe manifested these signs of trouble, but Sliver Waldron, riding in the center of the trio, never moved his head. They were hardly well out of the town when a swift ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... stayed where he was, with the gate creaking to and fro between them. Dixie circled till his back was to the wind. "I hope you don't think you're going to mill around out here ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... and together we drew the creaking bolts, bringing the kaid to his feet with a jump. There was plenty of time for explanation, because he always carried his gun, at best a harmless weapon, in the old flannel case secured by half a dozen pieces of string, with knots that defied haste. He warned us not ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... opinion is as good as anybody's." I was just getting nicely started, and a little forgetting my distaste for the man in the corner, when the fellow himself interrupted. He left his leaning place, and came creaking across the floor to our circle around the store. I say he came "creaking" for as he came he did creak. "Shoes," I naturally, almost unconsciously decided, though the crazy notion was in my mind that the cracking I heard did sound like bones and joints and sinews ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... abandoned. Now and then a tuft of neglected date-palms might be seen, but the river's banks, formerly verdant with heavy crops, had become a wilderness. Villages once crowded had entirely disappeared; the population was gone. Irrigation had ceased. The night, formerly discordant with the creaking of countless water-wheels, was now silent as death. There was not a dog to howl for a lost master. Industry had vanished; oppression had driven the inhabitants ...
— Ismailia • Samuel W. Baker
... seemed to fall away from him into the night. He scrambled out, and snatching the crutch ran along the brink, staring at their black shadows. By-and-by the shadows came to a standstill. He heard the mare panting, the creaking of saddle-leather came across the nine or ten ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... The creaking of a chair;—the man within had seated himself. There was no other sound; a soul in turmoil wakens no echoes. Sweetwater envied the walls surrounding the unsympathetic reader. They could see. He ...
— Initials Only • Anna Katharine Green
... the horse pleased the old gentleman, and his neat way of harnessing suited as well; but Ben got no praise except a nod and a brief "All right, boy," as the equipage went creaking and jogging away. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various |
