"Swirl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the swirl of water, Leroy had been carried up against the deck of the lighter. Instinctively he had clutched at a crossbeam. The water raced over his head, and then, to his surprise, receded, beat up once or twice as the ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... gorgeous, dazzling with diamonds; flowers on their heads and breasts, in their hair, scattered over their dresses or lying in garlands at their feet. Light quiverings of the body, voluptuous movements, made the laces and gauzes and silks swirl about their graceful figures. Sparkling glances here and there eclipsed the lights and the blaze of the diamonds, and fanned the flame of hearts already burning too brightly. I detected also significant nods of the head for lovers and repellent attitudes for husbands. The exclamation ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... I heard a splash, and quick as a flash I knew he could not swim. I saw him whirl in the river swirl, and thresh his arms about. In a queer, strained way I heard Dick say: "I'm going after him," Throw off his coat, leap down the boat — and then I gave a shout: "Boys, grab him, quick! You're crazy, Dick! Far better one ...
— Rhymes of a Rolling Stone • Robert W. Service
... found himself now bewildered by this fresh swirl of emotion. He knew that if Myra had flung herself into his arms he would have found some strange comfort in that embrace, that he could not possibly have repulsed her. It was a prop to his soul—or was it, he asked himself, merely ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... evening sky lighted up the vast rift for a while, and Bart forgot his hunger in the contemplation of this strange freak of nature, of a river running below in a channel whose walls were perfectly perpendicular and against which in places the rapid stream seemed to beat and eddy and swirl, while in other parts there were long stretches of pebbly and rocky shore. For as far as Bart could judge, the walls seemed to be about four hundred feet apart, though in the fading evening light it was hard to tell ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... in summer landed at the village, which was a couple of miles from the point where the boys were. The shore off from where they sat was full of hidden rocks and sand bars running out under the froth and swirl of the waves, against which no ship could run without having her bottom ...
— Tom, The Bootblack - or, The Road to Success • Horatio Alger
... analysis of his banal man, who, in another turn of Fate, might pursue him as dispassionately as he now stood before him for his commands. With a few rapid strides he crossed the room, lit a cigar, blew into the swirl of smoke this caprice of his imagination, and returned stolidly, as became a man of ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... and its swirl in the pot slower, Hattie could keep the twist out of her face only by biting her tongue. She did, and a little arch of sweat came ...
— The Vertical City • Fannie Hurst
... upon the pride of her race; and it was a greater demand than her demand, just as the race was greater than she. So she put foot upon the log, and, with the eyes of the alien people upon her, walked down into the foam-white swirl. ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... quickly to the stake on which the lantern hung. The wind was rushing through the tree-tops with increased fervor; the air was cool and wet with the signs of rain; a swirl of dust flew up into her face; the swish of leaves sounded like the splashing of water in the air. Holding her heart for minutes, she at last regained some of the lost composure. A hysterical laugh fell from her lips. "What a goose! It was an owl and I've heard hundreds of them up here. ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... deeply. The village is called Tadousac, and consists of an hotel and French fishermen, to whom Quebec is a distant, unvisited city of legend. The afternoon was very hot. I wandered out along a thin margin of yellow sand to the extreme rocky point where the waters of the two rivers meet and swirl. There I lay, and looked at the strange humps of the Laurentian hills, and the dark green masses of the woods, impenetrable depths of straight and leaning and horizontal trees, broken here and there by great bald granite rocks, and behind me the little village, where the earliest ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... beginning to draw the ship towards itself, blessed Columba cast part of the earth of Saint Kiaranus into the sea. Most wondrous to relate, immediately the storm of the air, the movement of the waves, and the swirl of the whirlpool all ceased, till the ship had long escaped from it. Then Saint Columba, giving thanks to God, said to his followers, "Ye see, brethren, how much favour hath the earth of most blessed Kiaranus ...
— The Latin & Irish Lives of Ciaran - Translations Of Christian Literature. Series V. Lives Of - The Celtic Saints • Anonymous
... down, and he stood at his open window as he had done on the evening of his arrival, watching almost unconsciously for the first stars to shine out above the cathedral spire. The air was very quiet, disturbed by no sound but the swirl of the deep river against the stone piers of the bridge far down below the student's window. There was something melancholy in the ceaseless rush of the strong water, which reminded him of the sighing of the trees at home, on that last morning when he had sat ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... are still. There are no waves lapping, but only a steady swirl of water softly running against the hawser. I can hear men's voices calling, near and far, and the roll and creak of oars in the rowlocks. A gun is fired somewhere, the echo of it seems far away. There is tramping of feet overhead, and ropes and chains are dragged along. What ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... lowered by the run; the mate had the pinnace in the water, men were swarming into her. As the gig struck water, the barque heeled to the rail awash. We crowded in, old Burke the last to leave her, and pushed off. Our once stately Hilda reeled in a swirl of broken water, and ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various
... his strength; and in an instant, as if touched by some divine spell, the agitation ceased, and he was himself again. In three minutes more he was by Susan's side, had gripped her by the bathing-dress at the back of the neck, and had managed to avail himself of a little swirl which turned inwards just before the rocks were reached. They were safe. She nearly swooned, but recovered herself ...
— Miriam's Schooling and Other Papers - Gideon; Samuel; Saul; Miriam's Schooling; and Michael Trevanion • Mark Rutherford
... ladies without either bonnets or shawls, merely plucking a little branch of willow to brush away the mosquitoes; and so the evening wore away in alternate intervals of chat and song. At midnight, seawards again began to swirl the tide, and we rose to go,—not without having first paid a visit to the room where the little daughters of the house lay folded in sleep. Then descending to the beach, laden with flowers and kind wishes waved ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... three companions swept up and stopped in a swirl of dust and asked questions until Hopalong shut them up. Their arrival and the manner of their speech riled Cranky Joe, who turned around and loosed one more remark; and he never knew how near to death ...
— Bar-20 Days • Clarence E. Mulford
... swirl of recent events he must have omitted to see that the clasp that fastened the bag was properly closed; for the bag, as it jumped on to the window-sill, gaped at him like a yawning face. And inside ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... no effect on Jean's spirits, and to-day, happy in having David at home, she cared nothing for the depressing mist that shrouded the hills, or the dank drip from the trees on the carpet of sodden leaves, or the sullen swirl of Tweed coming down big with spate, foaming against the ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... screen, Rosie had lighted a cigarette and was smoking, sublimely unconscious of the blue smoke swirl that rose in telltale clouds high above her head. The baby had dropped asleep, and Claribel lay still. But her eyes were not on the ceiling; ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... of land, a furze-fringed rag of a by-way, Coign of your foam-white cliffs or swirl of your grass-green waves, Leaf of your peaceful copse, or dust of your strenuous highway, But in our hearts is sacred, dear as our cradles, our graves? Is not each bough in your orchards, each cloud in the skies above you, Is not each byre or homestead, furrow or farm or fold, Dear ...
— The Rainbow and the Rose • E. Nesbit
... holding to the tips of the Hoheria and their white gowns flutter and swirl, and their ringlets float and sway, and sometimes in the joy of the dance a Lovely Lady lets go of her branch and ...
— Piccaninnies • Isabel Maud Peacocke
... their crests and swallowing them in the troughs. The canoes thrashed the water as they flew along, half in, half out, but they rode like ducks. The Abwees took off their hats, gripped their double blades, made the water swirl behind them, howled in glee to each other through the rushing storm. To be five miles from shore in a seaway in kayaks like ours was a sensation. We found they stood it well, and grew contented. It was the complement to the golden lazy days when the water ...
— Crooked Trails • Frederic Remington
... his feet waiting for a lull. And then it happened. From my place in the gallery I saw nothing except the flash of the explosion. The roar of it filled my ears and I saw Ernest reeling and falling in a swirl of smoke, and the soldiers rushing up all the aisles. His comrades were on their feet, wild with anger, capable of any violence. But Ernest steadied himself for a moment, and ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... when you are going to have an important interview with a man you ought to look your very best," said the Story Girl, giving her skirt a lustrous swirl and ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... immediately disappear. At length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim to and fro still further ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... only a few minutes when they sighted Mascola's speed-boat astern. The girl frowned as the Fuor d'Italia roared by in a swirl of ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... cap, without noticing it, as to lose most things. Here is a big Silver Doctor that may do as the water is thick. I put one on, and begin again casting over where that fish rose. By George, there he came at me, at least I think it must have been at me, a great dark swirl, "the purple wave bowed over it like a hill," but he never touched me. Give him five minutes law, the hook is sure to be well fastened on, need not bother looking at that again. Five minutes take a long time in passing, when you are giving a salmon a rest. ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... tried to wag his tail, but it was too bushy a tail to wag well in such a wind. After a while the blizzard became so blinding and the track so deep with snow that we had to leave it and follow the telegraph poles on the edge of the right of way, stopping and clinging to one pole till a little swirl in the snow gave me a glimpse of the next one; then we would plunge ahead for it, and by not once stopping or thinking I would usually bump up against it all right; though when I had gone fifty steps if I did not find it I would stop and stand still till ...
— Track's End • Hayden Carruth
... next moment the maw of the beast opened and in the swirl of foam and blood-streaked water I caught ...
— Swept Out to Sea - Clint Webb Among the Whalers • W. Bertram Foster
... her back to the waiting mother, Eleanor had spent an unconscionable time tying the ponies, trying to control her own trembling lips and threshing round for some way to tell the untenable. She remembered the roil of the raging waters, the floating star blossoms on the muddy swirl, the light sifting in beaten rain dust through the silver pine needles, the curve and dip of the joyous swallows. Then, she had followed the little white haired lady ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... the great diamond at Brennerstadt and how the tickets had been reduced from monkeys to ponies because the monkeys were too shy, when there came the sound for which she waited—a hand upon the window-catch and the swirl of sand blown in by the draught ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... from Colversham and its round of duties. In imagination he moved with a gay, eager crowd through the gateway leading into the great city ball ground. He could hear the game called; watch the first swirl of the ball as it curved from the pitcher's hand; catch the sharp click of the bat against it; and join in the roar of applause as the swift-footed runner sped to ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... river rushing at his feet; the swirl of the unseen waters whispered to him of rest and peace he had not known since—it was so cold—and who was there to care, he thought bitterly. No one would ever know. He moved a little nearer the edge, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... hert o' the warl', wi' a swirl an' a sway, An' a Rin, burnie, rin, That water lap clear frae the dark till the day, An' singin' awa' did spin, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... build of him Andy knew it must be either Weary or Irish, though it would take a much closer observation, and some familiarity with the two to identify the man more exactly. In the corral were a swirl of horses and an overhanging cloud of dust, with two or three figures discernible in the midst, and away in the little pasture two other figures were galloping after a fleeing dozen of horses. While he looked, old Patsy came out of the messhouse, and went, ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... dripping oilskin hat from her head, with a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over us; attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt; laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... been their preparations, but the presence of the submarine was betrayed by the phosphorescent swirl of the water caused by the churning of the twin propellers as she ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... of the caboose until the fluttering green flags faded out in the swirl of dust that pursued into the distance. Then Kendrick scrambled down to find the message. It was in a sealed envelope, bound around the stick with twine. One glance at the yellow telegram inside sent him back up the embankment ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... course of erection on the Kanawha to facilitate the transportation of coal from the immense deposits now being mined to the great markets of the Ohio River. A little farther on, the brown front of a timber dam and cribbed lock looks down upon a wild swirl and rush of water; for through a cut gap in its centre Elk flows unobstructed,—a penniless mob having made the opening one night that their canoes might pass free and capitalists be encouraged to remove such worthless stuff as money from the growing industries of the river. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, August, 1885 • Various
... miles off the northern end of the island when suddenly there shot up in the air to a tremendous height a column of smoke. The sky darkened and the smoke seemed to swirl down upon us. In fact, it spread all around, darkening the atmosphere as far as we could see. I called Chief Engineer Farrish ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... the ship bends under the even pressure of the warm wind in her sails; and her wake becomes a trail of fire. Large sparks dash up through it continuously, like an effervescence of flame;—and queer broad clouds of pale fire swirl by. Far out, where the water is black as pitch, there are no lights: it seems as if the steamer were only grinding out sparks with her keel, striking fire with ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... mud, with a shallow, yellow stream dividing it into two unequal portions, is not exhilarating; but when the sea makes its wild rush up the estuary, quickly filling the wide river-bed from bank to bank, then the Severn is noble enough, and one looks upon it with pride. The swirl and roar of the waters was music to Sir Francis, and the tide was an old and well-beloved friend that came up daily to embrace him. The happiest of the knight's waking hours were those he spent by the side of ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... annoyance of missing fish when looking elsewhere for a single moment—either at another boat, or at a fish "rising to itself," or at the sky, or at something else. When the eyes were turned to the point from which they should not have been diverted, they were just in time to see the water swirl, and the hand gave a futile strike at what had disappeared a second before. Perhaps we should have said at the beginning of this chapter to place implicit faith in the flies with which you are fishing. Nothing is more ...
— Scotch Loch-Fishing • AKA Black Palmer, William Senior
... and crannies of its rocky bed must be gold in quantities beyond the dreams of a diseased avarice. But is this not all theory? No, it is not. At one part of the river, in the upper canyon, there is a place where the current stayed, and, with a long backward swirl, built up a bar. If you ask an old British Columbian about Boston Bar, he will, perhaps, tell stories which may seem to put Sacramento in the shade. Yet there will be much truth in them, for there was much gold found on that bar. Again, some years ago, at Black Canyon, on ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... like those of a fiery furnace, which shoot forth in great tongues, and dart forth suddenly in certain directions toward the objects attracting them. Under great emotional excitement the auric flames move around in swift circling whirlpools, or else swirl away from a centre. Again, it seems to throw forth tiny glistening sparks of astral vibrations, some of ...
— Clairvoyance and Occult Powers • Swami Panchadasi
... hastily put on the first may-fly of the season; and no sooner have we made our cast than, as Rudyard Kipling once said to the writer, there is a boil in the water "like the launch of a young yacht," a tremendous swirl, and we are fast into a famous trout. Directly he feels the insulting sting of the hook he rushes down stream at a terrific rate, so that the line, instead of being taut, dangles loosely on the ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... the Chester crowds kept pretty much together. They could be picked out as a rule by the swirl of waving school colors, for every Chester girl and boy who had journeyed to Marshall to see their team win the game, made sure ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... Nature—you're a friend of Nature?" asked Colville, following the lines of an oily swirl in ...
— Indian Summer • William D. Howells
... stony hollows and swims over the sandy places, looking for soft crabs, or for his favourite food, the luscious crass. Last of all comes the beautiful sea-trout, skirmishing forward with short rushes, and sometimes making a swirl near the surface of the water. The fishermen wait until they think the trout have had time to reach the inner rocks, and then softly paddle the coble away from the shore. The net is dexterously shot, and a good man can manage to do this without making a splash. The long curtain is about four feet ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... Diderot, of Mirabeau and Danton, listen to this apologist of the faith you despised! Voltaire's face is wreathed with ineffable irony, Diderot contemplates the speaker as a new species for a psychological monograph, Mirabeau flings back his leonine head with a swirl of the black mane and a glare of the great eyes, and Danton roars a titanic laugh that shakes the very ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (Second Series) • George W. Foote
... In the swirl and tumult of the hotel lobby I ran across Mr. Daly's comedian, the late James Lewis, of beloved memory, and I casually mentioned that I was going to call upon Mr. Daly in the evening at 8. He looked surprised, and said he reckoned not. For answer I handed him Mr. Daly's note. Its substance ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... oval in shape, soles well padded, and the toes arched and close together. The hind feet less arched, the hocks well let down and powerful. THE BRUSH should be moderately long carried low when the dog is quiet, with a slight upward "swirl" at the end, and may be gaily carried when the dog is excited, but not over the back. THE COAT should be very dense, the outer coat harsh to the touch, the inner or under coat soft, furry, and very close, so close as almost to hide the skin. The mane and frill should ...
— Dogs and All About Them • Robert Leighton
... that the most approved forms could incorporate. She stood out for a bishop, a surpliced choir, a wedding-breakfast after the English manner—in short, for the utmost attainable in the way of spendor, thoroughness, and distinction. The preparations moved on with a swirl and a sweep, and involved the whole household to ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... deliberate. I hurried down to the steps, and leaped into the launch. Before I had fairly landed in her sternsheets the slim little craft darted away from the jetty with a sudden swirl of her propeller and the hard, rapid puffing of the exhaust in her vaguely ...
— The Shadow-Line - A Confession • Joseph Conrad
... far to seek. The tyrant river that she loved, had received her, had taken her life, and then had borne her on its swirl of waters straight for that little creek where, once before, it had tossed a human prey ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... around, his heavy robe following the movement in a practiced swirl. His liquid black eyes looked me over shrewdly, and he bowed toward me as he vaguely touched his chest, lips and forehead. I expected him to murmur, "Effendi," or "Bwana Sahib," or something, but he must have felt silence was ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... blowing the top edge off it, filling the air with a volcano of mud, dirt, smoke, and shrieking splinters, and, either from the shock of the explosion or in an attempt to escape it, throwing the man off his balance on the ledge of the firing-step to sprawl full length in the mud. In the swirl of noise and smoke and flying earth Rawbon just glimpsed the plunging fall of a man's body, and felt a curious sickly feeling at the pit of his stomach. He was relieved beyond words to see the figure rise to his knees and stagger to his feet, dripping mud and filth, and swearing ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... had anything to do with flying saucers, the summer of 1952 was just one big swirl of UFO reports, hurried trips, midnight telephone calls, reports to the Pentagon, press interviews, and ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... he could do. It seemed unbelievable that such things could be, in a sane world. But then, the world was no longer sane; it had gone mad nearly two years before, and he was only one of the myriad atoms caught into the swirl ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... swirl of a woman's gown passing over the marble floor. They all turned. It was Madame Christophor who ...
— The Mischief Maker • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to the two men. He knew the driving force which was sending him to the mountains was not only an impulse, but almost an inspirational thing born of necessity. Each step that he took, with his head and heart in a swirl of intoxicating madness, was an effort behind which he was putting a sheer weight of physical will. He wanted to go back. The urge was upon him to surrender utterly to the weakness of forgetting that ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... richt, doctor; there's a hole yonder. Keep oot o' 't for ony sake. That's it; yir daein' fine. Steady, man, steady. Yir at the deepest; sit heavy in yir seats. Up the channel noo, and ye 'ill be oot o' the swirl. Weel dune, Jess! Weel dune, auld mare! Mak' straicht for me, doctor, an' a' 'll gie ye the road oot. Ma word, ye've dune yir best, baith o' ye, this mornin'," cried Hillocks, splashing up to the ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... towards this and vaulted across the flaming wall, our horses snorting and screaming with pain as we landed on the smoking turf of the other side. I gulped a great breath of the fresh air into my suffocating lungs, tore the buckskin covering from my broncho's head and we raced on in a swirl of smoke, always following the dust which revealed the tracks of the retreating Sioux. There was a whiff of singed hair, as if one of the horses had been burnt, and Little Fellow gave a shout. Looking back I saw his horse sinking on the blackened patch; but La Robe Noire and ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... and sent a cheerful hail ringing in response. Simultaneously the last, least, indefinite blur that stood for the boat in the darkness, vanished in a swirl of snow; and he was alone with the storm and his misgivings. Upon these he put a check—would not dwell upon them; but their influence none the less proved strong enough to breed in him a resistless restlessness and keep ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... Virginia that she had but just fallen asleep when she was rudely awakened by the jar and grind of the Rosemary's wheels on snow-covered rails. Drawing the curtain, she found that a new day was come, gray and misty white in the gusty swirl ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde
... runs swifter now; The eddies circle about my bow. Swirl, swirl! How the ripples curl In many ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... historically low levels in late 2003, reflecting investor optimism and the government's fiscal restraint. Despite the strong macroeconomic performance, political intrigue and allegations of corruption continued to swirl in 2003, with the TOLEDO administration growing increasingly unpopular, and local and foreign concern rising that the political turmoil could place the country's hard-won fiscal and financial stability at risk. Moreover, as of late 2003, unemployment ...
— The 2004 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... monastically silent even at the noisiest hours of the day. It will be remarked, also, that this portion of the Cite, crowded between the flank of Notre-Dame and the river, faces the north, and is always in the shadow of the cathedral. The east winds swirl through it unopposed, and the fogs of the Seine are caught and retained by the black walls of the old metropolitan church. No one will therefore be surprised at the sensations Godefroid felt when he found himself in this old dwelling, ...
— The Brotherhood of Consolation • Honore de Balzac
... a faint, far-away buzzing made him glance upward. Two sharp winged points were skimming through the air. He felt a thrill—the thrill of the unknown. He knew it must be one of the craft, foreign as yet to the hill country. In the distance he saw it swirl, loop and maneuver, spiral gracefully downward, skim the earth lightly, rise again and then descend from sight hidden by one ...
— Penny of Top Hill Trail • Belle Kanaris Maniates
... damp boisterous wind, that seemed blowing from all points of the compass at once, and in a minute I was caught in a swirl of blinding rain. I took no heed of it, however, but hurried along the lonely road till I reached the cottage, which I knew at once was the one I sought. It was picturesque, but ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... too soon, my friend," rejoined the captain of the voyageurs, casting an eye back across the great lake, which lay black and ominous under a threatening sky, the sweep and swirl of its white caps ever racing hard after the frail craft, as though eager to break through its paper sides and tear away the human beings who ...
— The Mississippi Bubble • Emerson Hough
... other. They were clear and crisp—he was to fire the mine, but only at the latest possible minute. That was all he got, and indeed all he wanted; and, since they did not concern him, there is no need here to tell of the swirl of other orders that buzzed and ticked and talked by field telegraph and telephone for miles up and down ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... of the coastline constantly with his binoculars. The Spaniard's field-glasses were slung around his neck. He was not using them. He appeared to be deep in thought. More often than not, his glance rested on the eddy created by the swirl of the current past the ship's quarter. With a species of divination, she guessed somewhat the nature of his reverie. The notion stung her into a sort of fury. To quell it, she ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... bank above, where lay a score of other anxious boats, Kit and his companions went ahead on foot to investigate. They crept to the brink and gazed down at the swirl of ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... again for a long time, but sat holding Patty's hand tightly, and gazing under a horrible fascination at the green, foam-flecked water that was creeping so stealthily nearer to them. How cold it looked, and how cruel! How easily it could swirl away their light weights, and dash them against those jagged points opposite, or sweep them out into the midst of those long waves, the white crests of which were just dimly visible through the wall of fog! Inch by inch it rose; ...
— The Nicest Girl in the School - A Story of School Life • Angela Brazil
... end, carried him clear of the edge, and he found himself in an instant eight feet deep in the ice-cold stream. Once and twice his gasping face and clutching fingers broke up through the still green water, sweeping outwards in the swirl of the current. In vain were sword-sheaths, apple-branches and belts linked together thrown out to him by his companions. Alleyne had dropped his shattered sword and was standing, trembling in every limb, with his rage ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the foam beneath. His eyes glared as he shot into the void, a great dark living mass against the white mist. Was he speared on those terrible shafts of rock below, or was his life dashed out in horrible crimson splashes against the cliffside? Or did he sink into the reeling swirl of the foaming waters, and die more mercifully in their steel-dark depths? I could not see. I saw only the flying form dart through the mist like an arrow from a bow. I heard only the appalling cry, like nothing earthly ever heard before; and I woke in a panic, with hands ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... distances upon a scale that made the one sole precedent, the corn ships of imperial Rome, a petty incident; and a huge migration of peoples between Europe and Western Asia and America was in Progress, and—nobody seems to have realised that something new had come into human life, a strange swirl different altogether from any previous circling and mutation, a swirl like the swirl when at last the lock gates begin to open after a long phase of accumulating water and ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... ground," thinks he. So thinks Tom, and trusts to his tackle, keeping a steady strain on trouty, and creeping gently down stream. "No go," says the fish as he feels his nose steadily hauled round, and turns a swirl downstream. Away goes Tom, reeling in, and away goes the fish in hopes of a slack—away, for twenty or thirty yards—the fish coming to the top lazily, and again, and holding on to get his second wind. ...
— Tom Brown at Oxford • Thomas Hughes
... I was not quick enough to see. But there was a swirl and a heave in the crowd, and presently Dicky became visible, standing in a very heroic attitude with his arm round Dilly; while the policeman, with an awe-inspiring deliberateness which implied "Now you have gone and done it!" extricated himself majestically but painfully from the chasm ...
— The Right Stuff - Some Episodes in the Career of a North Briton • Ian Hay
... one of them, and the man at the tiller went forward to help them. Hillyard leaned over the side of the heavy boat and stared down into the water. But the night was too dark for him to see anything but the swirl of green fire made by the movement of the chain and the fire-drops falling from the links. At last something heavy knocked ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... craft took the plunge! Here, where the waters of the vast prairie region are descending over huge boulders and rocky islets between banks not a third of a mile apart, there is a wild river scene. Far ahead the paddlers can hear the roar of the swirl. Now the surface of the river rounds and rises in the eddies of an undertow, and the canoe leaps forward; then, a swifter plunge through the middle of a furious overfall. The steersman rises at the stern and leans forward ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut
... while they were resaddling that Collins caught sight of a cloud of dust a mile or two away. He unslung his field-glasses, and looked long at the approaching dust-swirl. Presently he handed ...
— Bucky O'Connor • William MacLeod Raine
... cheese, he heard, at first far away, then quite near at hand, the clear notes of a coachman's horn. The notes of the second call died away in a great pattering of hoofs and tinkling of little bells, and suddenly, arriving in a great swirl of yellow dust, came a magnificent coach drawn by twelve white horses. A lady, very richly dressed and wearing many sparkling diamonds, sat within the coach. To Peter's astonishment, the lady was ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... opened the front door, we were confronted by a solid wall of snow reaching to the eaves of the house. There was no drift over the back door, looking north, but, as I opened it, I was blown almost from my feet by the swirl of the snow, which literally filled the air, so that it was impossible to see any of the surrounding ranch-buildings or even the fence, less than fifty feet distant. It was like a tornado of pure white dust or very fine sand, icy cold, ...
— Roosevelt in the Bad Lands • Hermann Hagedorn
... deceive him to the fatal rush. At some new lure he would rise lazily once in awhile, revealing his bulk to the ambitious angler,—but never to take hold. Contemptuously he would flout the cheat with his broad flukes, and go down again with a grand swirl to his lair ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... unclamped the seat belt, then slammed his magnetic clamp suit boots against the outer plates of the carrier. His suit buoyancy dragged him into an awkward crouching position and he swayed and fought against both the upwards lift and the current swirl. ...
— The Thirst Quenchers • Rick Raphael
... musket and ran to the bulwarks. A heave of the swell had lifted the boat up to receive our discharge, which must have burst point-blank upon her bottom boards; for I leaned over in bare time to see her settling down in a swirl beneath the feet of her crew, who, after vainly grabbing for hold at the Gauntlet's sides, flung themselves forward and were swimming one and all in a sea already discoloured for ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... thus in a measure withdrawing from the swirl of society in which so much of his life had been passed, he in no sense lost touch with the movements of the day, and in none of these did he take a more lively interest than in those which affected the state of France. And that seemed ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... summer's day, when sea and sky and shore are enveloped in soft mist, nothing can be more delightful than to flit with a favouring wind past the picturesque Chines, or by the white cliffs of Studland. The water in the little inlets and bays lies still and blue, but out in the dancing swirl of waters set up by the sunken rocks at the base of a headland, all the colours of the rainbow seem to be running a race together. Yachts come sailing in from Cowes, proud, beautiful shapes, their polished brass-work glinting in the sunlight, while farther out in the ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... the highway through an opening in the trees of the many-towered old house surrounded by a shimmering lake, and gazing on such a scene under the spell of an English June day, one might easily forget the present and fancy himself back in the time when knighthood was in flower, though the swirl of a motor rushing past us would have dispelled any such reverie had we been disposed to entertain it. We reached London early, and our party was agreed that our pilgrimage to Canterbury could not very well have been omitted from ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... the rail. Plainly Harrigan had made them delay too long, for now they had not time to swim beyond the reach of the swirl that would form when the ship went down. The Mary Rogers lurched to her grave as they sprang from the rail. A wave caught them and washed them beyond the grip of the whirlpool; another wave swung them back, and the waters sucked them down. Such was the force of that downward ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... plain which covered one half of the moor was drifting closer and closer to the house. Already the first thin wisps of it were curling across the golden square of the lighted window. The farther wall of the orchard was already invisible, and the trees were standing out of a swirl of white vapour. As we watched it the fog-wreaths came crawling round both corners of the house and rolled slowly into one dense bank, on which the upper floor and the roof floated like a strange ship upon a shadowy sea. Holmes struck his hand passionately upon the rock in front of us and ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... was a communion fortified by many associations. Practically the whole of their courtship, from the day when he dropped off the street-car with her in the rain and walked her over to the elevated and kept her note-books, down to the day on the bridge over the Drainage Canal in the swirl of that March blizzard, when she'd felt his first embrace, had been on foot like this, tramping along side by side; miles and miles and miles, as she'd told her mother. And there had been other walks since. Do you remember the last time they had ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... shoulders, water was dashed repeatedly at our faces, girths were tightened, and then, with shouts and yells, the whole caravan plunged into deep water, strong, and almost ice-cold. Half an hour was spent in that devious ford, without any apparent progress, for in the dizzy swirl the horses simply seemed treading the water backwards. Louder grew the yells as the torrent raged more hoarsely, the chorus of kabadar grew frantic, the water was up to the men's armpits and the seat of my saddle, my horse tottered and swerved several times, the nearing shore presented an ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... unsheltered, cut with the weight of wind— you shudder when it strikes, then lift, swelled with the blast— you sink as the tide sinks, you shrill under hail, and sound thunder when thunder sounds. You are useless— when the tides swirl your boulders cut and wreck ...
— Sea Garden • Hilda Doolittle
... familiarity and still more moved by the look of mingled inquiry and curiosity with which his eyes now began to wander over the walls and cupboards, she hurried to the window overlooking her nearest neighbour, and, lifting the shade, peered out. A swirl of snowflakes alone confronted her. She could neither see her neighbours, nor could she be seen by them. A shout from her to them would not be heard. She was as completely isolated as if the house stood in the centre of a ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... the huge black-headed figure swept forward and engulfed him. He was trapped in a blinding swirl of radiance, with darkness above it. The light bored into his head, and he tried to scream. Then he ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... a great thumping of hoofs, a monstrous swirl of dust, as the riders at the side of the race-course saw the Duke's maneuver and read his intention. Away they swept, a noisy troop, like a flight of blackbirds, hats off, guns popping, in a scramble to get up as close to ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... and as the smokes of both swirl up, the gambler is seen astretch upon the sward—the blood spurting from his breast, and spreading ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... crocodile has stored in it somewhere a fearful vitality. The swiftness of its movements when seizing prey is most astonishing; a swirl of water, the sweep of a powerful tail, and the unfortunate victim has disappeared. For this reason it is especially dangerous to approach the actual edge of any of the great rivers, unless the water ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... pursuer rise up in a peculiar way in the water, raise its two black paws to its head, take it off, and dash it at the second alligator, which seized it on the instant, a second head appearing just above the surface, closing upon the first with a snap, and then there was a tremendous swirl in the water, a tail appeared above the surface as the brute dived down, and as I swam on panting, the surface of ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... running, with furious velocity, two hostile streams of influence. I was standing, just now, thinking of these things, where the Cascine ends in the wooded point which is carved out sharply by the lion- coloured swirl of the Arno on the one side and by the pure flow of the Mugnone on the other. The rivers meet, and run parallel, but there comes a moment when the one or the other must conquer, and it is the yellow vehemence that drowns ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse
... he sped along the foot of the rise, of a sudden there burst on his ear the myriad patter of galloping feet. He turned, and at the second a swirl of sheep almost bore him down. It was velvet-black, and they fled furiously by, yet he dimly discovered, driving at their ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... rosy, radiant, as lovely as Diana. Carmichael swung his cap boyishly; and there was a swirl of dust ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... July. He loaded and fired as steadily as a veteran. The smoke of the guns, the wild whooping of the Iroquois Indians, the sight of his friends and neighbors continually dropping to the ground, some of them at his elbow, the deafening discharge of the rifles—all these and the dreadful swirl and rush of events dazed him at times; but he kept at it with a steadiness which caused more than one expression of praise from the ...
— The Daughter of the Chieftain - The Story of an Indian Girl • Edward S. Ellis
... that, with incessant whirl, Rolled onward ever on their ponderous way: Gigantic marvels, deafening in their play, And swift, industrious, never-ending swirl. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... the wet streets, lost in a hundred miseries and exaltations. The sensation was that of a man struggling with a rising tide, carried helplessly in the rush and swirl of it. Yet conscience had very little to say, and, when it did speak, got little but contempt for its pains. What had any clumsy code, social or moral, to do with it? When would Marcella Maxwell, by word or look or thought, betray the man she loved? ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... thrilling scene now passed with the speed almost of thought. The boat rose under them. Bax at once let the rope run. Down they went, but a swirl in the treacherous waves swept the boat two or three fathoms to leeward. Instantly they were both in the sea, but Guy did not loosen his hold or lose his presence of mind for a moment. Bax hauled on the rope and raised him half out of the water for a few seconds; the boat made a wild sheer ...
— The Lifeboat • R.M. Ballantyne
... Shouts of demoniac laughter fitfully piercing and pealing, Waves, air, midnight, their savagest trinity lashing, Out in the shadows there milk-white combs careering, On beachy slush and sand spirts of snow fierce slanting, Where through the murk the easterly death-wind breasting, Through cutting swirl and spray watchful and firm advancing, (That in the distance! is that a wreck? is the red signal flaring?) Slush and sand of the beach tireless till daylight wending, Steadily, slowly, through hoarse roar never remitting, Along the midnight edge by those ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman |
