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Whirlpool   Listen
noun
Whirlpool  n.  
1.
An eddy or vortex of water; a place in a body of water where the water moves round in a circle so as to produce a depression or cavity in the center, into which floating objects may be drawn; any body of water having a more or less circular motion caused by its flowing in an irregular channel, by the coming together of opposing currents, or the like.
2.
A sea monster of the whale kind. (Obs.) "The Indian Sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are; among which the whales and whirlpools, called "balaenae," take up in length as much as four... arpents of land."






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Whirlpool" Quotes from Famous Books



... be easy to overstate the efflorescence of distinctively feminine emotion, dressiness, mysticism, and vanity upon the suffrage movement. Those things showed for anyone to see. This was the froth of the whirlpool. What did not show was the tremendous development of the sense of solidarity among women. Everybody knew that women had been hitting policemen at Westminster; it was not nearly so showy a fact that women of ...
— What is Coming? • H. G. Wells

... faithfully fulfill its obligations towards the Transvaal by virtue of the political alliance existing between the two republics,' showed how impossible it was that this country, formed by ourselves and without a shadow of a cause of quarrel with us, could be saved from being drawn into the whirlpool. Everywhere, from over both borders, came the news of martial preparations. Already at the end of September troops and armed burghers were gathering upon the frontier, and the most incredulous were beginning at last to understand that the shadow of a great war was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... stand to the human world as the seething, boiling, bubbling waters of Niagara do to the world of Nature. Either a girl floats over its rapids like a boat, and in that case she draws her breath and thanks God, or she is tossed into its whirlpool like a dead body and goes round and round until she finds the ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine

... like a blow. Through the dense masses of smoke, terrifying glimpses of fierce, clean flame; a resinous dead stump burning like a torch; a great tree standing helpless like a martyr at the stake, suddenly transformed into a frenzied pillar of fire.... Along the front of this whirlpool of flame toiled, with despairing fury, four lean, powerful men. As they raised their blackened, desperate faces and saw the car there, actually there, incredibly there, black with its load of men, they gave a deep-throated shout of relief, though they did not for an instant stop the frantic plying ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... width being 600 to 800 feet. At the head of this valley is Split-Mountain Canyon, 8 miles long, with ragged, craggy walls 2700 feet high. It contains a number of medium rapids. Island Park separates it from Whirlpool Canyon. It is a charming little valley, full of islands, a mere expansion of the walls, 9 miles long,—9 miles of rainbow, for the surrounding rocks and marls are of every hue. Whirlpool, 2400 feet deep, is about 14 miles in length and contains a number of rapids, but ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... highness, I do not. I believe it originated from nothing but cause and effect. It is the nature of a whirlpool to draw down all substances that come within its vortex. The water pouring into the bottom of the ship is but the vortex of a whirlpool reversed; and the image of the saint, when it was thrown overboard to leeward of the ship, which was pressed down upon it by the power of the wind, was forced ...
— The Pacha of Many Tales • Frederick Marryat

... the hole and went back to the cleft. I lit a candle and looked down at the pool. It was no longer stagnant now, but seething and eddying like a whirlpool. I beckoned to Tupac, who was standing a little way behind me, and as he came and looked over my shoulder I pointed down into the dark gulf, out of which the bottom was ...
— The Romance of Golden Star ... • George Chetwynd Griffith

... out-spreading limbs showing a startling resemblance to the arms of a drowning person mutely appealing for help. Then a heavy trunk would strike a rock just below the surface, and the branches, dripping with spray, swept over in a huge semi-circle. The roar and swirl suggested the whirlpool below the falls of Niagara, one of the most appalling sights in ...
— The Land of Mystery • Edward S. Ellis

... lashes. I have heard Dr. Glazebrook describe a whole day of hideous hesitation, in which fugitives for whom he pleaded were allowed four times to embark and four times were brought back again to their prison. There is something there dizzy as well as dark, a whirlpool in the very heart of Asia; and something wilder than our own worst oppressions in the peril of those men who looked up and saw above all the power of Asiatic arms, their hopes hanging on a rocking mind like that of a maniac. The tyrant let them go at last, avowedly ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... a lost boat over a cataract down into a whirlpool of white roads far below, I saw afar a black dot crawling like an insect. I looked again: I could hardly believe it. There was the slow old woman, with her slow old donkey, still toiling along the main road. I asked my friend to slacken, but when he said of the car, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton

... or a whirlpool," she said, rather sententiously: "we have been stagnant for three days, and I begin to feel flat. Races are tabooed: besides, we cannot always leave mother alone. I propose we go out in the garden and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock;" for this had been ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... Islands, the current runs so strong north and south for six hours and then in the opposite direction for a similar period, that the water is thrown into tremendous whirls. This is the far-famed Maelstrom, or whirling-stream. The whirlpool is most active at high and low tide, and when the winds are contrary the disturbance of the sea is so great that few boats can live in it. In ordinary circumstances, however, ships can sail right across the Maelstrom without much danger, and the tales ...
— Little Folks (July 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... for me," said Myra, earnestly, "nor for you, weighted by me. We should never get round that eddying whirlpool. It would merely mean that we should both be drowned. But you can easily do it alone. Oh, go at once! Go quickly! And—don't look back. I shall be all right. I shall just sit down against the cliff, and wait. I have always been fond ...
— The Mistress of Shenstone • Florence L. Barclay

... dangers of the situation, Natalie writes Hardin that she has sent her own child away to a country institution, to prevent awkward inquiry. As months roll on, drawn in by the whirlpool of pleasure, Natalie de Santos' letters become brief. They are only statements of affairs to ...
— The Little Lady of Lagunitas • Richard Henry Savage

... whirlpool!" Mr. Henderson yelled as he leaped down the companionway and pulled the heavy steel cover ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood

... picnic dinner. Irene unbent a little at the sight of the rare china and beautiful old silver. She supposed every thing had gone down in the whirlpool of ruin, and that humiliation would be complete in delft and plated ware. Then she ventured to ...
— Hope Mills - or Between Friend and Sweetheart • Amanda M. Douglas

... great work, and have been rescued from the whirlpool and landed on this peaceful island that you might carry it on undisturbed, which you could not have done in the Fatherland. This is the first consideration; but not less highly do I rate the circumstances which have ...
— Chips From A German Workshop. Vol. III. • F. Max Mueller

... to the waves of the sea in time of storm, as if in fury at their sudden compression, rush over that rock, then curl back, and pause in the air a moment before tearing on, roaring and hissing with rage, to the whirlpool farther down the stream. See how they dash from side to side, see how the spray rises in the air for the dainty sunlight to play among its foam. Hear the noise, like that of thunder, as a great angry white horse dashes down that ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... a score of officious voices cry out "A ring!" and the surging waves fall back, as when a whirlpool opens ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed

... the world in search of pleasure and excitement. There were sight-seers and "country customers" from forty-five states; ranchers from Texas, and lumber kings from Maine, and mining men from Nevada. At home they had reputations, and perhaps families to consider; but once plunged into the whirlpool of the Tenderloin, they were hidden from all the world. They came with their pockets full of money; and hotels and restaurants, gambling-places and pool-rooms and brothels—all were lying in wait for them! So eager had the competition ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... agrees with Pasteur, who in the world of the infinitely little shows us the same antagonisms, the same vital competition, the same eternal movement of flux and reflux, the same whirlpool of life, which is extinguished only to reappear: tending always towards an equilibrium which is incessantly destroyed. And it is thanks to this balancing that the integral of life remains everywhere and ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros

... two hours, pass away. The struggle continues with unabated ferocity. The combatants alternately approach and recede from our raft. We remain motionless, ready to fire. Suddenly the ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus disappear below, leaving a whirlpool eddying in the water. Several minutes pass by while the fight goes ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... was as near fainting as ever lady was, without actually swooning. It was well they had stopped just by the stem of a great ash tree, against which Rachel leaned for some seconds, with darkness before her eyes, and the roar of a whirlpool in her ears. ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... madly the votaries of ambition whirl to the vortex of that moral Corbrechtan, which has ingulfed so many hapless victims. Our own noble Washington stands forth a bright beacon to warn every ruler, civil or military, of the thundering whirlpool. Father of your country! you stand alone on the pedestal of greatness; and slowly rolling years shall pour their waters into the boundless deep of eternity ere another shall ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... belonging to his religious profession, in the face of the whole school? Will not his opinions and manners be drowned as it were in the torrent of the opinions and manners of the rest? How can he get out of this whirlpool pure? How, on his return, will he harmonize with his own society? Will not either he, or his descendants, leave it? Such an education may make him undoubtedly both a good and an enlightened man, and so far one of the most desirable objects in life will have been accomplished, ...
— A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Clarkson

... should look on the tumultuous scene with saturnine satisfaction. There was little doubt now, they thought, that the Provinces, sick of their rebellion and that fancied independence which had led them into a whirlpool of political and religious misery, and convinced of their incompetence to govern themselves, would be only too happy to seek the forgiving arms of their lawful sovereign. Above all they must have learned that ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... reeds are waving; For trust is left no stay; Our thoughts, like whirlpool raving, No ...
— Rampolli • George MacDonald

... Playford at the beginning and end of the year.—From June 28th to Aug. 5th he was in Scotland (chiefly in the Western Highlands) with his wife and his sons Hubert and Osmund. In the course of this journey he visited the Corryvreckan whirlpool near the island of Scarba, and the following paragraph relating to this expedition is extracted from his journal: "Landed in Black Mile Bay, island of Luing, at 10.30. Here by previous arrangement with Mr A. Brown, agent of the steam-boat company, a 4-oared boat was waiting to take us ...
— Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy • George Biddell Airy

... wreaths of that black smoke which forms the canopy—occasionally a gorgeous one—of the more than Babel city. Stretching before me, the troubled breast of the mighty river, and, immediately below, the main whirlpool of the Thames—the Maelstrom of the bulwarks of the middle arch—a grisly pool, which, with its superabundance of horror, fascinated me. Who knows but I should have leapt into its depths?—I have heard ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas

... endure as long as this rock itself. The rock lasts, and the sea. The most ancient memory here is of them, for this is the shore of Charybdis. It is stated in Sallust and other Latin authors, as well as by writers throughout the Middle Ages, that all which was swallowed up in the whirlpool of the straits, after being carried beneath the sea for miles, was finally cast up on the beach ...
— Heart of Man • George Edward Woodberry

... Menia, and ordered them to grind salt. About midnight they asked Mysingr whether he had salt enough. On his ordering them to go on grinding, they went on a little longer till the ship sank under the weight of the salt. A whirlpool was produced, where the waves are sucked up by the mill-eye, and the waters of the sea have been salt ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various

... beyond the fragments, they applied a strong repulsion charge to the comet, creating thereby a perfect whirlpool among its particles, and quickly left it. Half an hour later they again shut off the current, as ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... and recall, from what had been a dear voice, followed my splashing descent into the deep water, and thrilled my nerves a moment; but I struck out bravely for the whirlpool, where, plunging, yelping, struggling, revolved the wretched beast, to whom my cousin had resolved to sacrifice my life, and for whose sake she was crying on the beach. Much time was lost in reaching, more in capturing the blundering fool, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 2, No 6, December 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... requires a full amount of patience to stay quietly watching the proceedings of an inattentive tradesman amid such a whirlpool of excitement as is now in action. Sweeting tells me that his negro waiter has demanded and receives ten dollars a-day. He is forced to submit, for "helps" of all kinds are in great demand, and very difficult to meet with. Several hundred people must have left here during the last ...
— California • J. Tyrwhitt Brooks

... conspicuous robbers. But you see there are with Antonius, and in what numbers. In the first place, there is his brother Lucius—what a firebrand, O ye immortal gods! what an incarnation of crime and wickedness! what a gulf, what a whirlpool of a man! What do you think that man incapable of swallowing up in his mind, or gulping down in his thoughts! Who do you imagine there is whose blood he is not thirsting for? who, on whose possessions and fortunes ...
— The Orations of Marcus Tullius Cicero, Volume 4 • Cicero

... that his stormy career in the whirlpool of state affairs was ended. But Felix shook hands with him ...
— A Son of the Immortals • Louis Tracy

... away, wishing he hadn't said it. Had he but known it, the Old Lady had forgotten the existence of all and any egg pedlars. He had blotted himself and his insignificance out of her consciousness by his last sentence. All her thoughts, feelings, and wishes were submerged in a very whirlpool of desire to hear Sylvia sing that solo. She went into the house in a tumult and tried to conquer that desire. She could not do it, even thought she summoned all her pride to her aid. ...
— Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... circle about in the outer edge of the whirlpool that sucks in its victims so relentlessly and remorselessly, always, in ...
— The Evolution of Dodd • William Hawley Smith

... the echo of their own voice. The river seems to have worked itself a passage through the chasm; and the boiling and noisy torrent, struggling to free itself from observation, foams and bellows like the gorge of a whirlpool, from whence originates its name, "The Orr," not unlike in sound to the effect that ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby

... clearer than the most mystic ball of crystal. Before the bottle the priests of Egypt and the Delphic oracle seem as faint, my son, as the echoes in a snail shell. Palmistry and astrology—let us fling them into the whirlpool of vanity! But give a man wine enough, and any observer can tell his possibilities. A touch of it—and where are the barriers with which he has surrounded himself? Another drop, and how futile are all the deceptions which he is wont to practice upon others! In St. ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... explain it to you," the weather expert replied. "You know that when water is running down a hole at the bottom of a basin, if it is in motion it doesn't go down straight but with a circular movement, finally making a whirlpool?" ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler

... dominant monotone above all the talk and the cackle of laughter; ears were dinned everlastingly by the thunder of the cataract near the village. The Noda waters break their winter fetters first of all at Adonia, where the river leaps from the cliffs into the whirlpool. The roar of the falls is a trumpet call for the starting of the drive, though the upper waters may be ice-bound; but when the falls shout their call the rivermen must be started north toward the landings where logs are piled on the ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day

... a strange thing is Man! and what a stranger Is Woman! What a whirlwind is her head, And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger Is all the rest about her! Whether wed, Or widow—maid—or mother, she can change her Mind like the wind: whatever she has said Or done, is light to what she'll say or do;— The oldest thing ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 6 • Lord Byron

... promises of silence, and when he complained bitterly to the head of a great daily, "But, my friend," the editor rejoined, "that daughter of yours is particularly fascinating, and certainly when you launched her into this whirlpool, you should have remembered that the only exits ...
— The Idol of Paris • Sarah Bernhardt

... heard by Greaves, and made public the accusation, that this individual, so recently distinguished by a mark of royal favor, for three weeks previous to the invasion of Canada, was so lost in a whirlpool of the most deplorable intemperance, as to be utterly incapable of opening or attending to the important dispatches which lay scattered and unheeded ...
— Ridgeway - An Historical Romance of the Fenian Invasion of Canada • Scian Dubh

... believe! When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you That I met him! What's to follow now may be for you to choose. Do you hear me? Won't you listen? It's an easy thing ...
— The Three Taverns • Edwin Arlington Robinson

... we only need a current of electricity flowing round and round in a whirl. A vortex or whirlpool of electricity is in fact a magnet; and vice versa. And these whirls have the power of directing and attracting other previously existing whirls according to certain laws, called the laws of magnetism. And, moreover, they ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 275 • Various

... into the dark whirlpool of his thoughts. He started. The Warden was leaning forward, had just said something ...
— Zuleika Dobson - or, An Oxford Love Story • Max Beerbohm

... seen in their veils, and at sufficient distance to appreciate the magical effects of these, and the light and shade. From the boat, as you cross, the effects and contrasts are more melodramatic. On the road back from the whirlpool, we saw them as a reduced picture with delight. But what I liked best was to sit on Table Rock, close to the great fall. There all power of observing details, all separate ...
— At Home And Abroad - Or, Things And Thoughts In America and Europe • Margaret Fuller Ossoli

... in this exercise, and, according to the golden motto of Thomas a Kempis, they find their chief delight in a closet, with a good book.[3] Worldly and tepid Christians stand certainly in the utmost need of this help to virtue. The world is a whirlpool of business, pleasure, and sin. Its torrent is always beating upon their hearts, ready to break in and bury them under its flood, unless frequent pious reading and consideration oppose a strong fence to its waves. The more deeply a person is ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler

... after the colossal blunder of the Lusitania, there existed in the deep undercurrents of German politics a most remarkable whirlpool of discord, in which the policy of von Tirpitz was a severe tax on the patience of von Bethmann-Hollweg and the Foreign Office, for it was they who had to invent all sorts of plausible excuses to ...
— The Land of Deepening Shadow - Germany-at-War • D. Thomas Curtin

... wind the ship was driven into this whirlpool, but Odysseus escaped on a broken piece of wreckage to the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... The earth itself is a gigantic magnet, a fact which makes the compass possible, and it is well known that the earth's magnetism is affected by those great outbreaks on the sun called sun-spots. Now it has been recently shown that a sun-spot is a vast whirlpool of electrons and that it exerts a strong magnetic action. There is doubtless a connection between these outbreaks of electronic activity and the consequent changes in the earth's magnetism. The precise mechanism of the connection, however, ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson

... off just in time to escape the whirlpool which the vessel produced as it sank, and which threatened ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis

... on the right the whirlpool Making a horrible crashing under us; Whence I thrust out my head with eyes ...
— Divine Comedy, Longfellow's Translation, Hell • Dante Alighieri

... dishonest merchant was now very much frightened. What was to be done? The mill would not stop grinding; and at last the ship was overloaded, and down it went, making a great whirlpool where it sank. The ship soon went to pieces; but the mill stands on the bottom of the sea, and keeps grinding out "salt, salt, nothing but salt!" That is the reason, say the peasants of Denmark and Norway, why the sea ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... "do you hear the roaring of the waters? We are floating toward a whirlpool which will swallow us up! Give me a ...
— Laboulaye's Fairy Book • Various

... central mast or the walls of the purse they climb to the opening. Do they wish to take flight and escape? By no means. On the threshold of the cavity, while already almost at liberty, they allow themselves to fall into the whirlpool, retaken by their madness. The lure is irresistible. None will break free from the swarm until the evening, or perhaps the next day, when the heady fumes will have evaporated. Then the units of the swarm disengage themselves from their mutual embraces, ...
— Social Life in the Insect World • J. H. Fabre

... me in cold contact: I stretched out my arms to clasp them and sink with them; and the demon pair glided between us, and separated me from them. This vain striving to join myself to my dead kindred when we touched each other in the slow, endless whirlpool, ever continued and was ever frustrated in the same way. Still we sank apart, down the black gulphs of the lake; still there was no light, no sound, no change, no pause of repose—and this was ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... destruction. No vessel ever yet tried that pass without being lost but the Argo, which owed her safety to the sacred freight she bore, the fleece of the golden-backed ram, which could not perish. The biggest of these rocks which you shall come to, Scylla hath in charge. There in a deep whirlpool at the foot of the rock the abhorred monster shrouds her face; who if she were to show her full form, no eye of man or god could endure the sight: thence she stretches out all her six long necks, peering and diving to suck up fish, dolphins, dog-fish, and whales, whole ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB

... surroundings, and in those days every one about me never spoke of Transcendentalism or "Germanism," or even "bookishness," without a sneer. I was borne by a mysterious inner impulse which I could not resist into this terrible whirlpool of belles- lettres, occulta, facetiae, and philosophy; but I had, God knows, little cause for pride that I read so much, for it was on every hand in some way turned against me. If it had only been reading ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland

... crater, he became conscious of a terrific side pressure which gripped him as a whirlpool seizes a luckless swimmer. The wind buffetted him from all angles, dealing him powerful blows on face and body, which, too strong for his weary body, sent him reeling weakly, drunkenly across the hard, glare ice towards the vortex. Twice he slipped, each time finding it harder to arise. But at ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various

... felt myself drifting off once more. I was as one afloat in a whirlpool, now carried near to a straw and anon swept away as ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... rushing population of 1,700,000.[172] Where the prairie land once stretched in solitude, a huge, roaring, choking city now stands, black with factories, the habitat of nearly two millions of human beings, living in a whirlpool of excitement and tumult, presenting extremes of wealth and poverty, the many existing in dire straits, the few rolling in sovereign luxury. A saying prevails in Chicago that the city now holds more millionaires than it did ...
— History of the Great American Fortunes, Vol. I - Conditions in Settlement and Colonial Times • Myers Gustavus

... her fate, if dead. From that moment at the door-step when she said good-by, Eunice stepped out of my life as completely as if the earth had opened and swallowed her up. Is she dead or alive? Did the unhappy girl seek self-destruction that June night, or was she swept into that great, black whirlpool, the name of which even a girl of the workaday world mentions always with bated breath? I do not know. I never expect to know the fate of Eunice. It is only in stories that such things are made clear, usually, and this was only an incident ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson

... depended a black cape, whose silk foundation was suffocated with bugles. A shrill scent of cherry-blossom ran with her like a crowd, and in her hand she carried an umbrella and a plush bag with a steel snap. Her face, in the midst of this whirlpool of finery, peeped out anxiously, covered as it was with a smear of paint and powder, and when she saw Valentine standing alone to receive her, her nervous eyes ranged uncomfortably about in obvious quest ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens

... the foot of the lawn, Lad's head and shoulders came into view above the little whirlpool caused by the sinking bodies' suction. And, at the same moment, the convulsed features of Homer Wefers showed through the eddy. The man was thrashing and twisting in a way that turned the lake around him into a ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune

... down beneath me whirled and swayed the broad cloud-plain. Once a great eddy formed in it, a whirlpool of vapour, and through it, as down a funnel, I caught sight of the distant world. A large white biplane was passing at a vast depth beneath me. I fancy it was the morning mail service betwixt Bristol and London. Then the drift ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle

... and the long, untrimmed grass in the courtyard below. For the story seemed to have laid hold of my inmost soul, and touched the spring of a long-hidden desire. Why I was so moved, I could not tell. What issue would open to this whirlpool of vague excitement in which I had fallen, I had no idea. But I was profoundly conscious both of the excitement and the emotion, and, with that refined epicureanism of which intellectual people alone are capable, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 2 • Various

... modifications of this broken line, a number of which I shall discuss more in detail when pottery ornamentation is considered. A design so distinctive and so widespread as this must certainly have a symbolic interpretation. The concentric spirals with a broken line, the Hopi say, are symbols of the whirlpool, and it is interesting to find in the beautiful plates of Chavero's Antigueedades Mexicanas that the water in the lagoon surrounding the ancient Aztec capital was indicated by the Nahuatl Indians ...
— Archeological Expedition to Arizona in 1895 • Jesse Walter Fewkes

... great boaster, 85 Break the line of Hiawatha!" Slowly upward, wavering, gleaming, Like a white moon in the water; Rose the Ugudwash, the sun-fish, Seized the line of Hiawatha, 90 Swung with all his weight upon it, Made a whirlpool in the water, Whirled the birch canoe in circles, Round and round in gurgling eddies, Till the circles in the water 95 Reached the far-off sandy beaches, Till the water-flags and rushes Nodded on the distant margins. ...
— The Song of Hiawatha - An Epic Poem • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

... the immensity, were solitary horsemen, camels in twos and threes, small troops of donkeys. And all the things that moved went towards the minarets as if irresistibly drawn onwards by some strong influence that sucked them in from the solitudes of the whirlpool ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... see that a man is attracted By the beauty and graces that are not for him, Don't lead him on to be half distracted; Keep out of deep waters although you can swim. For when he is caught in the whirlpool of passion, Where many bold swimmers are seen to drown, A man will reach out and, in desperate fashion, Will drag whoever ...
— The Kingdom of Love - and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox

... high water the sea flooded the cavern to its farthest extremity and beat upon the walls. Then there was a great surge and roar of waters through the passage from mouth to mouth, and at turn of tide—in hopeful agreement with the legend—the suck and commotion of a whirlpool, almost, as the sea drew back its waves. Now and again, it was to prove, even the water-worn pavement between the two archways was left bare, and one could walk dry-shod along the rocks under the high land of the point from the beach to the cave. But this was ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon

... embankment, laughing, as one could fancy, listening to the babble the waters made, watching the sparkling of the flying spray. Ah! many a rainbow shimmered about the waterfall; right dangerous was the whirlpool above and below the fall. Deep down in the ravine the waters meandered, calmly tranquil: very like mature thoughtful manhood, after the prankish follies ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various

... was noon when she came to the corner of State and Madison streets. It was a maelstrom that caught her up, and buffeted her about, and tossed her helplessly this way and that. The corner of Broadway and Forty-second streets has been exploited in song and story as the world's most hazardous human whirlpool. I've negotiated that corner. I've braved the square in front of the American Express Company's office in Paris, June, before the War. I've crossed the Strand at 11 p.m. when the theatre crowds are just out. And to my mind the corner of State and Madison ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber

... paused, for a second, to spin about in a kind of mental and spiritual whirlpool. Some began breaking off floral sprays to decorate hat-band or shirt-waist. But Missy, feeling her responsibility as a leader, glanced back, through leafy crevices, at those prison-windows open ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin

... moving in the same circuitous track, forms, according to Mr. Maury, to whose scientific labors the commercial world is deeply indebted, an IMMENSE WHIRLPOOL, whose circuit embraces the whole North Atlantic Ocean. In the centre of the whirl is a quiet spot, equal in extent of area to the whole Mississippi valley, unaffected by currents of any kind. And here, as a matter of course, the greater part of the gulf-weed and ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... while yet that awful touch thrilled through feet, and head, and heart, there passed over the dying man, as in great, heaving, ocean waves, the recollection of all that he had wrought and felt in his whole life; just as one shuddering glance into a whirlpool suffices to reveal in thought rapid as lightning, the entire unfathomable depth; just as in one momentary glance at the starry heavens we can conceive the infinite multitude of that glorious host ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells

... destroying human souls goes on. It is an awful thing to contemplate. Thousands of men and women, boys and girls, once innocent as the babes upon whom Christ laid his hand in blessing, are drawn into this whirlpool of evil every year, and few come out except by the way of prison ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... the green grass land as I had done; but the light was overstrong and the cliff quickly shut the view from us, so that we found ourselves presently in the loom of vast black rocks, with the tide running like a whirlpool, and a great sword-fish reef a mile from the shore, perhaps, to catch any fool that didn't want sea room. I took the tiller myself from this point, and standing well out I brought the launch round gingerly enough, but the water was deep and good once we were on the lee ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton

... by shocking all your opinions, counteracting all your schemes, working against objects which your father's fate and your early associations have so singularly made duties in your eyes-to do all this is a patriotism beyond me. Let us glide out of this whirlpool, and hoist sail for some nook in the country where we can hear gentler sounds than the roar of ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... in their hands, the servitors carried the Lady Sybilla to the farther end of the chapel, where they abode on either side, holding her fast. And as the last grains of sand began to swirl towards their fall and a little whirlpool to form funnel-wise in the midst of the hour-glass, the butcher was left alone with his victims upon the ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett

... has always been a river that wanders and widens and that waters many fields. Berlin, at its strongest, will never be anything but a whirlpool, which seeks its own centre, and is sucked down. It would only narrow all the rest of Europe, as it has already narrowed all the rest of Germany. There is a spirit of diseased egoism, which at last makes all things spin ...
— The Appetite of Tyranny - Including Letters to an Old Garibaldian • G.K. Chesterton

... in the brook, I suppose. I once saw a very large one, a great deal larger than any you ever saw in the brook. It was in the North Sea. This whirlpool does mischief sometimes. When vessels happen to get on the edge of it, they begin to go round and round, all the time coming near the middle of the whirlpool. When the captain of the vessel knows ...
— Jack Mason, The Old Sailor • Theodore Thinker

... had begun to act for Arnold, to play to his special consciousness, he was fastened to his chair, held down, so to speak, by a whirlpool of conflicting impulses. She did so much more than "lift" the inventive vulgarisation of the Bible story in the common sense; she inspired and transfused it so that whenever she appeared people irresistibly forgot the matter for her, or made private acknowledgments to the effect that ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... were sitting eating their luncheon at this romantic spot, an argument arose as to whether a man falling into the seething pool below the fall would be drowned or not. The water was only about two feet deep; but the place was a miniature whirlpool, and, once started down the pent-in torrent, a man would be dashed along the rocky bed and carried far out into the deep Macomber pool beyond. A gentleman from Lincolnshire argued that in would be impossible for any one to ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs

... which the reduction of speed necessary for the dynamo is then effected depends upon the fact that in a whirlpool the liquid near the centre runs nearly as fast as that on the outer periphery, and therefore—the circles being so very much smaller—the number of revolutions effected in a given time is much greater. ...
— Twentieth Century Inventions - A Forecast • George Sutherland

... apparent convalescence was of no long continuance; but what then?—the remedy was at hand and infallible. Alas! it is with a bitter smile, a laugh of gall and bitterness, that I recall this period of unsuspecting delusion, and how I first became aware of the Maelstrom, the fatal whirlpool, to which I was drawing just when the current was already beyond my strength to stem. The state of my mind is truly portrayed in the following effusion, for God knows! that from that moment I was the victim of pain and terror, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman

... with the inward world of thought and feeling, the whirlpool is still more rapid, the flame more eager and devouring. There it is no longer the gradual darkening of the eye and fading of colour from the wall,—the movement of the shore-side, where the water flows down indeed, though in apparent rest,—but the race of the ...
— The Renaissance - Studies in Art and Poetry • Walter Pater

... if thou canst come behind Them thou shalt hear Their voices clear, beating full seaward and filling all the twilight with sound of song, and thou shalt know the meaning of the gods. But where the cliffs turn southward there sits behind the gods Brimdono, the oldest whirlpool in the sea, roaring to guard his masters. Him the gods have chained for ever to the floor of the twilit sea to guard the door of the forest that lieth above the cliffs. Here, then, if thou canst hear ...
— Time and the Gods • Lord Dunsany [Edward J. M. D. Plunkett]

... the Wild Island, Pantagruel spied afar off a huge monstrous physeter (a sort of whale, which some call a whirlpool), that came right upon us, neighing, snorting, raised above the waves higher than our main-tops, and spouting water all the way into the air before itself, like a large river falling from a mountain. Pantagruel showed it to ...
— Gargantua and Pantagruel, Complete. • Francois Rabelais

... geese; its creamery, looms, and spinning wheel; its fruits and vegetables; the drives among the grand old hills; the blessed old grandmother, and the many aunts, uncles, and cousins to kiss, all this kept us still in a whirlpool of excitement. Our joy bubbled over of itself; it was beyond our control. After spending a delightful week at Canaan, we departed, with an addition to our party, much to Peter's disgust, of a bright, coal-black boy of fifteen summers. Peter kept grumbling ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... "engine" dropped into the whirlpool of Issy's thoughts with a familiar sound. In the chapter of "Vivian" that he had just finished, the beautiful shopgirl was imprisoned on board the yacht of the millionaire kidnaper, while the hero, in his own yacht, was miles astern. But the hero's faithful ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln

... the voyage to the south that, coming to the surface one day, the adventurers saw a strange island in the Atlantic Ocean, far from the coast of South America. On it was a great whirlpool, into which the Porpoise, their submarine boat, was nearly ...
— Lost on the Moon - or In Quest Of The Field of Diamonds • Roy Rockwood

... are the patrol boats, manned by the Englishmen who are seeking my life. Seeking it, not to gratify their private emotions, but because we are all in the whirlpool of ...
— The Diary of a U-boat Commander • Anon

... which sometimes tripled its volume and increased its width to that of a river. At such times a series of enormous rocks through which the creek at "low tide" lazily wound its way, lashed the turbid current into a fury somewhat like that seen in the "whirlpool" below Niagara. Could you have stood on the shore and looked at the furiously struggling waters, you would have been sure that even if a man were headed up in a barrel, he could not have lived to pass through the hundred yards of rapids, though there ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis

... geographical survey of any description, had ever been made anywhere in the neighboring region. It was generally supposed that it had no visible outlet; but, among the trappers, including those in my own camp, were many who believed that somewhere on its surface was a terrible whirlpool, through which its waters found their way to the ocean by some subterranean communication. All these things had made a frequent subject of discussion in our desultory conversations around the fires at night; and my own mind had become tolerably well filled ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters

... of his bad temper,—in ministering to his perverse will,—in his Sunday rambling,—in associating with the vile,—in his tippling habits,—and, finally, in throwing off all parental regard and restraint. He had now come to the verge of the whirlpool of destruction, and, in a frenzied moment, he threw himself into the awful vortex! Beware of the first sin! "Enter not into the paths of the wicked, and go not in the way of evil men. Avoid it, pass not by it, turn from it, and pass away." Prov. ...
— Charles Duran - Or, The Career of a Bad Boy • The Author of The Waldos

... Latour (October 15, 1836) gives a general idea of her life: "I do not know how I have slipped through so many shocks,—and yet I live. My fragile existence slipped sorrowfully into this world amid the pealing bells of a revolution, into whose whirlpool I was soon to be involved. I was born at the churchyard gate, in the shadow of a church whose saints were soon to ...
— Women in the Life of Balzac • Juanita Helm Floyd

... shot over my shoulder and the whistle was dashed from my grasp. Then came a whirl of maelstrom fighting with Smith and myself ever sinking lower amid a whirlpool, as it seemed, of blood-lustful eyes, ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer

... this, not as the ordinary sentimentalist or satirist does, by way of set-off against the indulgence of personal foibles, but from recognition of his own qualities, of the bounds set to our capacity of life, and of the limits of the world's power to satisfy us. "When my destiny threw me into the whirlpool of society," he wrote in his last meditation on the course of his own life, "I found nothing there to give a moment's solace to my heart. Regret for my sweet leisure followed me everywhere; it shed indifference or disgust ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley

... motive and purpose of a holy love. We know that He controlled nature, when on earth, and not nature Him. He taught the great love of God for man. He made it plain that men were not in a relation as atoms of matter in a whirlpool of action, but as sons to ...
— Studies in the Life of the Christian • Henry T. Sell

... uneventful course of things, and the lean fare proscribed by Mother Church, it was a very dispirited Boccadoro that wandered aimlessly whither his dulling fancy took him. But in Holy Week, at last, we received an abrupt stir which set a whirlpool of excitement in the Dead Sea of our lives. It was the sudden ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini

... the mud under the river bank, thought: "I will pretend to be a little crab." And he began to blow, "Puff, puff, puff! Bubble, bubble, bubble!" and all the great bubbles rushed to the surface of the river and burst there, and the waters eddied round and round like a whirlpool; and there was such a commotion when the huge monster began to blow bubbles in this way that the Jackal saw very well who must be there, and he ran away as fast as he could, saying, "Thank you, kind Alligator, thank you; thank you! Indeed, I would not ...
— Childhood's Favorites and Fairy Stories - The Young Folks Treasury, Volume 1 • Various

... bloody struggle between eternal falsehood and immortal truth, falsehood, through inconceivable ways, passed into truth, and truth became falsehood. I found in the human soul all the forces in the world, and none of them was dormant, and in the mad whirlpool each soul became like a fountain, whose source is the abyss of the sea and whose summit the sky. And every human being, as I have learned and seen, is like the rich and powerful master who gave a masquerade ball ...
— The Crushed Flower and Other Stories • Leonid Andreyev

... either his extended sword was touched, or his arm was unnerved by the electric fluid, for the weapon fell from his hand and instantly disappeared in the whirlpool beneath. 'My sword! my enchanted sword!' exclaimed Hengist with a loud cry of consternation: 'it is lost, it is gone! a hundred pieces of gold to him who recovers my precious weapon! I would plunge after ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 544, April 28, 1832 • Various

... and it will save the country. Our private interests may suffer, but the great interests of the Union will be strengthened and preserved, and the Constitution, which has been our pride and strength, will not be dragged down into the great whirlpool of disunion. I appeal to the venerable and able men around me, who bear historic names—who have been themselves long connected with the Union and its Government, to join us in our ...
— A Report of the Debates and Proceedings in the Secret Sessions of the Conference Convention • Lucius Eugene Chittenden

... beautiful phrase which pairs off with the one in my text, in which another Apostle speaks of the ultimate end as 'our gathering together in Christ.' All the scattered ones, like chips of wood in a whirlpool, drift gradually closer and closer, until they unite in a solid mass in the centre. So at the last the 'strangers' are to be brought and settled in their own land, and their lonely lives are to be filled with happy companionship, and they to be in a more blessed ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren

... nation against nation which succeeded the French Revolution we were enabled by the wisdom and firmness of President Washington to maintain our neutrality. While other nations were drawn into this wide-sweeping whirlpool, we sat quiet and unmoved upon our own shores. While the flower of their numerous armies was wasted by disease or perished by hundreds of thousands upon the battlefield, the youth of this favored land were permitted to enjoy the blessings of peace beneath the paternal ...
— State of the Union Addresses of Millard Fillmore • Millard Fillmore

... champagne, of debts, gaslight, supper-parties, morning light, coaching; a fabulous Bohemianism; a Bohemianism of eternal hard-upishness and eternal squandering of money,—money that rose at no discoverable well-head and flowed into a sea of boudoirs and restaurants, a sort of whirlpool of sovereigns in which we were caught, and sent eddying through music halls, bright shoulders, tresses of hair, and slang; and I joined in the adorable game of Bohemianism that was played round and about Piccadilly Circus, with Curzon Street for a ...
— Confessions of a Young Man • George Moore

... see one city of enormous magnitude, with thousands of cities and kingdoms within it, the wide ocean like a whirlpool around it, and other seas, like rivers, dividing it into parts. After gazing a longwhile, I observed that it was made up of three tremendously long streets, with a large and splendid gateway at the lower end of each street; on each gateway, a magnificent tower, and on each tower, in ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... to which is very fatiguing, but has been accomplished, is beautiful and extensive. On the largest lake travellers have embarked in a canoe, but I believe it has never been crossed, on account of the vulgar prejudice that it is unfathomable, and has a whirlpool in the centre. The volcano is about fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, and nine thousand above Toluca. It is not so grand as Popocatepetl, but a respectable volcano for a country town—muy decente(very decent), ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... fulfil a second cycle, and therefore a third, and so on for ever and ever, with no more chance of escape than a circulating decimal has, if the circumstances have been reproduced with perfect accuracy as to draw it into such a whirlpool. ...
— Selections from Previous Works - and Remarks on Romanes' Mental Evolution in Animals • Samuel Butler

... horses having the ten Avarttas, marks of excellence; they are, two on the breast, two on the head, two on the hollows of the ribs, two on the hollows of the flanks, and one on the crupper (Prapata); these are called the ten Avarttas. Avartta means an eddy, or whirlpool, and the name is applied to dispositions of the hair of a horse which resemble a ...
— Nala and Damayanti and Other Poems • Henry Hart Milman

... of sea-birds are floating in long lines on the billows, or skimming past you singly, and diving into the clear hissing waters as they near your vessel. One of the very first objects which arrests your senses is the Coryvreckan, or great whirlpool of the Hebrides, an awful feature in all the poetry and ballads belonging to ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors - Vol. II Great Britain And Ireland, Part Two • Francis W. Halsey

... one laid hold of the partial reprieve with a mighty grip and drew himself out of the reactionary whirlpool. ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... whirlpool about half way betwixt Niagara and Queenston. The river, boiling and eddying from the falls, enters a circular basin, round which the lofty cliff sweeps, like an antique wall, overgrown with trees at its base, and amid its clefts and crevices. The cause of the whirlpool is perceptible to the ...
— Travels in North America, From Modern Writers • William Bingley

... wealth to gain—don't forget that, Mr. Hamilton. Men of different caliber, I grant you, but all three in the same whirlpool of crime, bound by thieves' law to sink or swim together. It is because they are astute and far-seeing that they must inevitably have considered the possibility of exposure and safeguarded themselves against it with bogus corroborative proof. If that proof is in tangible form, and ...
— The Crevice • William John Burns and Isabel Ostrander

... why Bettina awaited with extreme impatience the day when she should leave Paris, and take up their abode in Longueval. She was a little tired of so much pleasure, so much success, so many offers of marriage. The whirlpool of Parisian gayety had seized her on her arrival, and would not let her go, not for one hour of halt or rest. She felt the need of being given up to herself for a few days, to herself alone, to consult and question herself at her leisure, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... But London was far away. It belonged to a life that seemed years ago and a world from which she had parted for ever. Moreover, this was undeniably a stupendous city through which her taxi-cab was carrying her. At Times Square the stream of the traffic plunged into a whirlpool, swinging out of Broadway to meet the rapids which poured in from east, west, and north. On Fifth Avenue all the automobiles in the world were gathered together. On the sidewalks, pedestrians, muffled against the nipping ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse

... the dim wild whirlpool of London, I was much afraid, but I was now ready to be willing to leave the narrow Devonshire circle, to see the last of the red mud, of the dreary village street, of the plethoric elders, to hear the last of the drawling voices of the 'Saints'. Yet I had a great difficulty ...
— Father and Son • Edmund Gosse

... a dozen of these wolves of hell upon him. Rasper, devilish, was riding on his back; the Venus—well for him!—had struck and missed; but Grip and Grapple had their hold; and the others, like leaping demoniacs, were plunging into the whirlpool ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant

... ran like a mill-race, and there was no spot on either bank where any one could land, or even grasp with his hand, except one. It was a narrow, sharp rock, that jutted out about two feet from the bank, quite close to the vortex of the whirlpool. This rock was Martin's only hope. To miss it would be certain destruction. But if he should gain a footing on it he knew that he could climb by a narrow fissure into a wild, cavernous spot, which it was exceedingly ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... difficult to carry out these orders; but, fortunately, friend Rippingille, the painter, was drinking pale ale at Bristol for the season, so that Clare, having nobody to lead him through his favourite taverns and concert-rooms, and being still afraid to hazard alone into the whirlpool of London life, was almost compelled to stop at home. For the first few days the sojourn at Mr. Taylor's house in Fleet Street appeared to him somewhat dreary, though it was not long before he came to like it, and at last got into a ...
— The Life of John Clare • Frederick Martin

... Sim's shoulder. Self-condemned, this poor man's conscience was already a whirlpool that ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine

... you than my aunt," she said, "or than my cousins, or my uncle. They would all make such a bustle, and it is that very bustle I dread—the alarm, the flurry, the eclat. In short, I never liked to be the centre of a small domestic whirlpool. You can bear a ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... drifted and fell from under her feet; she was sinking into a whirlpool, sucked down by a great spinning darkness and by an icy wind. She threw up her arms above her head like a dreamer awaking from sleep. She had done with ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair



Words linked to "Whirlpool" :   feed, eddy, whirl, current, vortex, stream, maelstrom, purl



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