"Screech" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... elevated road, slowing up for the station near by. The engineer saw one wild whirl of fire within the room, and opening the throttle of his whistle wide, let out a screech so long and so loud that in ten seconds the street was black with men and women rushing out to see what dreadful thing ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... which had been artistically made, but was, unfortunately, out of order, began to moan and whistle, ever worse and worse. The guests burst out laughing; the Chamberlain had to break off again. "My dear Warden," he cried, "or rather screech owl,95 if you value ...
— Pan Tadeusz • Adam Mickiewicz
... had heard and seen. He swung round and struck out with the sword Silence. The assassin was far from him, still the tip of the long steel reached the outstretched murderous hand, and from it fell a broken knife, while he who held it sped on with a screech of pain. Martin darted back and seized the knife, then he leapt into the boat and pushed off. At the bottom of it lay Foy, who had fallen straight into the arms of Red Bow, dragging her down ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... sound of rapid steps, Gianbattista turned his head and a part of his body to see what had happened. The sudden movement shifted the weight, and definitely destroyed the balance of the ladder. With a sharp screech, like that of a bad pencil scratching on a slate, the lower ends of the uprights slipped outward from the pillar. Gianbattista clutched at the metal bars desperately, but the long screw-driver in his hands impeded him, and ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... pastime, and the warning screech of the brakes informed that he had no time to scheme, but had best continue on the plan of action that had brought him thus far—that is, trust to his star and accept what should ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very slowly lifts his head. The starling with impatient screech has flown The chimney, and is watching from the tree. They thought us gone for ever: mouse alone Stops in the middle of the floor to see. Now all you idle things, resume your toil. Hearth, put your ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... in an opposite direction, steering at once for the nearest point of the river, which was at the termination of a long, sharp sweep of the stream to the west, and nearer by a mile than in most other parts of its course. I had not proceeded more than a quarter of a mile before the same savage screech,—which was more frightful than I can describe, being seemingly made up of the mingling tones of a man's and a woman's voice, raised to the highest pitch in an agony of rage or pain,—the same awful screech, I say, rose and thrilled through ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... in fierce and anxious amazement. Presently, as the smoke lifted, he discerned the settler kneeling for a second shot. With a high screech of fury, the lithe brute sprang upon his enemy, taking a bullet full in his chest without seeming to know he was hit. Ere the man could slip in another cartridge the beast was upon him, bearing him to the ground and fixing keen fangs in his shoulder. Without a word, the man set his strong fingers ...
— Earth's Enigmas - A Volume of Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... transient anxieties this amiable couple had,— traceable in that last short croak from Grumkow,—lest the English might consent to that of the "Single-Marriage in the mean time" (which the English never did, or meant to do). For example, this other screech of Nosti, which ...
— History of Friedrich II of Prussia V 7 • Thomas Carlyle
... Fielding.' Then she said as to our other books they would all sink to nothingness before yours, that they were not fit to be mentioned in the same day, and that she felt quite discouraged from writing when she thought of yours. The whole conversation of the aunties [3] made her screech with laughing; and, in short, I can neither record nor describe all that she said; far from exaggerating it, I don't say half enough, but I only wish you had seen the effect it produced. I am sure you will be the first ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... were avenged. The hen, feverish and unhappy from the loss of her hope of progeny, had gone to the but to sip a little water. Tommy, appearing on the wall above her, startled her. She, flying up with a screech, startled Tommy, and became her ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... prowling here again, I'll have my men and my dogs out at you!" bawled William, whose blood was well up. "I live handily, just behind yon clump of trees. Rosamund has but to lift up her voice in a good screech, and I'll loose every dog in the place upon you! You'll not forget the feel of their fangs so soon as you'll forget the ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... lightning's helpless harms, Nor let the Puck, nor other evil sprites, Nor let mischievous witches with their charms, Nor let hobgoblins, names whose sense we see not, Fray us with things that be not: Let not the screech-owl nor the stork be heard, Nor the night raven, that still deadly yells; Nor damned ghosts, called up with mighty spells, Nor grizzly vultures, make us once afraid: Nor let the unpleasant choir of frogs still croaking Make us ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... the darkness, saying, "Well, boys, don't you want company? I have got my sap all boiled in, and as I felt kinder lonesome, I thought I would come across, and sleep by your shanty fire." The old man enquired why I seemed so much terrified, and my brothers told him that I would persist in calling a screech-owl, a catamount. Old Rufus did not often laugh, but he laughed heartily on this occasion, and truly it was no wonder, and when he corroborated what my brothers had already told me, I decided that what he said must be true. ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... She thrust him away with both hands. He turned. Without speaking, without looking at her again he walked away. She watched him with a desperate feeling of being abandoned, of losing something powerful and valuable. The faint, thin screech of a locomotive from a station far down the line made him pause, and turn, and gaze under his hand in the strong sun. So for a moment she saw him, a lowering, peering figure moving away from her over the lawn between broad flower-beds. Then he ...
— The Coast of Chance • Esther Chamberlain
... were working like the flying pistons of a locomotive, and his bush hair and beard were streaming aft in the breeze as he neared the corner. Suddenly he stopped, turned about, and dashed right into the foremost of the crowd, letting out a screech and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... the grayest, most shaggy part of the woods, I come suddenly upon a brood of screech owls, full grown, sitting together upon a dry, moss-draped limb, but a few feet from the ground. I pause within four or five yards of them and am looking about me, when my eye lights upon these, gray, motionless figures. They sit perfectly upright, some with ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... eastern hills and seemed almost to pause as if some Oriental Magic was being wrought. A mist arose from the river and hovered over the valley below us; the complaining water of Brush creek mingled with the wailing of the screech owl as the ghostly footfalls sounded more remote. The bullfrog's harsh troonk "ushered in the night" and, imagining one of them as the very one that escaped the serpent and leaped into the creek centuries ago, we left the place to the spirits of that unknown ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... Chirpy Cricket was always uneasy when Simon screeched his warning that he was awake and looking for his supper. Chirpy knew that he could not depend on Simon to stay long in one place. Though you heard his screech in the orchard one moment, you might see him in the farmyard soon afterward. He never ate a whole meal in just one spot, but preferred to move about wherever his fancy took him. Simon himself said that he could eat off and on all night ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... Captain Pharo, rising. "Plackards said 'twas goin' to be a re'listic play—and here, by clam! I've rode twelve miles over a hubbly road an' waited 'round here all day, jest t' hear a spear o' female grass screech, an' see a pint bottle o' water busted! Come along! ...
— Vesty of the Basins • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... waited; looking at his wrist-watch he noted that his arm was soaked with blood. He thought: 'A wound! Now I shall go home. Thank God! Oh, Noel!' The passing bullets whirled above him; he could hear them even through the screech and thunder of the shell-fire. 'The beastly things!' he thought: A ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... all at once, hebens, golly! I see'd somefin' bright-like shine trough de winder, and I looked out and de barn was all afire. Den dar come a yell dat nearly blowed de roof off de house. Big Mose gib a screech and run, and bang-bang went a lot ob guns all around us. De Injines was dar, burnin', tomahawkin', screechin', shoutin', and killin' de poor niggers as fast as dey showed ...
— Oonomoo the Huron • Edward S. Ellis
... And so it appeared to me, for the Germans were dropping their shells from the southeast, at least one kilometer over range. We were standing beside a strawstack and looking due south, watching the just discernible line of French guns, when we heard the ominous whistling screech of an approaching shell. Down on our faces behind the stack, down we went like lightning, and over to the left, not 200 yards away, rose a huge column of black smoke and earth, and just afterward a very loud boom. A big ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... [Footnote 1: Screech-owls, dark ravens, and amphibious monsters, Are screaming in that voice.—Mary Queen of ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... is a sympathy in muskets, in heaped masses of men: nay, are not Mankind, in whole, like tuned strings, and a cunning infinite concordance and unity; you smite one string, and all strings will begin sounding,—in soft sphere-melody, in deafening screech of madness! Mounted Gendarmerie gallop distracted; are fired on merely as a thing running; galloping over the Pont Royal, or one knows not whither. The brain of Paris, brain-fevered in the centre of it here, has gone mad; what you ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... rings the command and everyone goes to bed, and then one appreciates the real silence of the equatorial forest which one has heard about at home. Within a few yards, hundreds of frogs commence to croak loudly and continue steadily, with a few pauses to breathe, until daybreak. Hundreds of monkeys screech shrilly in the trees and millions of mosquitoes hum steadily within an inch or two of one's ears. All manner of animal cries are heard in the forest and the hippos blow loudly as they rise to the surface to breathe. As a matter of fact, the noise at midnight ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... immeasurably hard. And accurate. Her exact movements were the movements of a mechanism. Including her voice, which had a purely mechanical timbre. She could do two things with this voice and two only—screech and boom. At times she tried to chuckle and almost fell apart. Renee was in fact dead. In looking at her for the first time, I realised that there may be something stylish ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... boys began to settle down again. Owen was the first to drop back into the comfortable position he had occupied at the time that weird screech first shocked them, and brought about a ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... screech which is supposed to mean "Tally-ho!" from a group of beaters and keepers in the distance, and there, against the park-palings, a beautiful red thing scudding along the soft ride, flat to the ground, his bushy tail flying straight behind him. Reynard himself! Now let all look out ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... dad, and I though I should die. Dad heard my snake rattle his self in the box, and he stepped on my prairie dog and yelled murder, and he got into my box of horned toads, and my young badger scratched dad's bare feet, and a young eagle I had began to screech, and dad began to have a fit. He said the air seemed fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on the window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman came up a ladder from the outside and turned the hose on dad, then the police came and broke in ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... little task which he had laid out for himself, paid no particular attention to Larry for several minutes. He was suddenly startled by a shrill screech from his chum. This caused him to leap quickly to his feet; and what he saw was enough to send a thrill ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... place over his putrefying carcass, and the screech of the vulture, mingled with the angry growl of the wolf, as they contended for the remains of the man of crimes in their wild fury ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... little hut, on the reed-thatched roof of which the screech-owl now lays its eggs, dwelt thirty years ago, a crazy old woman, they called her Magdolna. She must have been for a long time out of her wits; some said she had been born so, others maintained that the roof had fallen right upon her head and injured her brain; others again affirmed that ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... the battle which I was busily observing, was the extraordinarily small number of combatants that were visible, when suddenly—it was about two o'clock in the afternoon—the Versailles batteries at Courbevoie, which had been silent for some time, began firing furiously. The horrid screech of the mitrailleuse drowned the hissing of the shells; the whole breadth of the long avenue was covered by a kind of white mist. The bastion in front of me replied energetically. It seemed to me ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. The sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... of guilty embarrassment upon their vis-a-vis' face had begun to swell into the cringing leer familiarly precedent to an appeal for leniency, when the fellow leaned forward, stared fearfully at the Judge, and, dropping the pullet with a screech, recoiled against the wall. ...
— Anthony Lyveden • Dornford Yates
... the shrill, demoniacal laugh coming out of the night tells of the sleepless activity of the loon. The whip-poor-will in the adjacent shrubbery seems companionable, and there is a friendly spirit in the short, shrill tremolo of the night-hawk from the invisible sky. Even the plaint of the screech-owl has a tone of human sympathy. But the dreary cadence of the loon is the voice of the inhospitable night, repelling every thought of human association. It does not entreat, it does not warn; yet there is a fascination in its expressionless strength. ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... which they heard the whummle and screech of the wind outside and the angry squalling of the sheathing of the ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... hours through the volcanic wilderness; always the same rigid mamane, (Sophora Chrysophylla?) the same withered grass, and the same thornless thistles, through which the strong wind swept with a desolate screech. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... the coxswain swept upward in a shrill scream. A gun boomed; the air rocked with the screech and roar ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... gentle feminine girl, with a most lovely and winning countenance, and I did inherently like to hear her pronounce the word "Jack"—it was so different from the boisterous screech of the Eton boys, or the swaggering call of my boon ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... The orfraie and the screech-owl are looked upon with terror in the Landes: their approach to any dwelling bodes evil in all forms: the dead quit their tombs at night and flit about in the fens, and covered with their white shrouds come wandering into ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello
... among the flying arms and jaws of steel, a false motion meaning death or mutilation. Imagine the air space above filled, instead of air, with a mixture of stenches of oil and filth, unwashed human bodies, and foul clothing. Conceive a perpetual clang and clash of machinery like the screech of a tornado. ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... knows that pigments cannot rival the brilliancy of the buttercup and poppy, enhanced by their surroundings. What is more, he does not care to attempt it. Nor does the musician wish to imitate the screech of a siren or the explosion of a gun. These are not subjects for art. Harmonious sounds are the study of the musician, and tuned colors are the materials of the colorist. Corot in landscape, and Titian, Velasquez, and Whistler in figure painting, show us that Nature's richest effects ...
— A Color Notation - A measured color system, based on the three qualities Hue, - Value and Chroma • Albert H. Munsell
... with the scalps held aloft, dance in between the lines of men from opposite directions, until they meet, when they chasse to the right and left, then dance back and forward again, every once in a while emitting a sharp little screech which I have never known to be successfully imitated. During the dance, the men join in a kind of shuffle from right to left, and back again, keeping the music going all the time. The whole performance is one of the most savage and weird ceremonies I have ever witnessed. ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... head— The lapwing striking the air with long-drawn, weak blows And the plover, that comes like a bullet, cutting the night with its whistle; And I hear the wild geese higher again with their rough screech. But I do not hear any other sound, it is that increases my grief— Not one other cry but the cry and the call of ...
— Poets and Dreamers - Studies and translations from the Irish • Lady Augusta Gregory and Others
... the whole circumference of the world that is without the walls and privileges of this city, it shall be but like an old ruinous house, in which dwells nothing but cormorants, bitterns, owls, ravens, dragons, satyrs, the screech-owl, the great owl, the vulture, and the like most doleful birds. All their princes shall be nothing, saith the prophet, and when they call their nobles to the kingdom, none shall be there. In their ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... the flitter in two leaps. Without orders he had the spray gun ready for action, on point and aimed at the bobbing machine heading toward them. From the earphones Soriki had left on the seat the gabble had risen to a screech and one part of Raf's brain noted that the sounds were repetitious: was an order to surrender being broadcast? His thumb was firm on the firing button of the gun and he was about to send a warning burst to ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... paid signs no mind—nuver paid no 'tention to all dem 'stitions an' sich lak." He didn't have any superstitions to tell only he did hear "ef a screech owl fly 'cross yo' do' hits er sign of a death in dat house, an' ef a whippowill calls at de' do' hit's er sign of death. Dat's what folks say, I don't know nothin' ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... My goodness! didn't he screech, much worse than my father when his legs were broken. And didn't everybody else roar and shout, and didn't I dance? Off I went right over the fat boy, who had tumbled down, up to the end of the field, then so bewildered was I with shock and the ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... rose from her chair, and looked at him. 'Do you wonder that that is a story that a woman should hesitate to tell? But not from shame. Do you suppose that the sight of that dying wretch does not haunt me? that I do not daily hear his drunken screech, and see him bound from the earth, and then fall in a heap just below my hand? But did they tell you also that it was thus alone that I could save myself,—and that had I spared him, I must afterwards ...
— The Way We Live Now • Anthony Trollope
... I could have squeezed myself into the little screech-owl perched in a corner of the arbor, I would gladly have crept into the hollow of an oak and closed my eyes. Still, how was I to foresee what I should do? A man's conversation may be his own; his conduct may vibrate with the ...
— Aftermath • James Lane Allen
... she said. "I can hear the screech ov the sufferin'; oa tes wisht, terrible wisht, Maaster Roger, but tes yer fate, my deer. I'll tell 'ee more another time, but you must go now, go and help em, you father wants 'ee go, and be keerful of they ...
— Roger Trewinion • Joseph Hocking
... that she is writing about lively and entertaining people because there emerges, now and then, a page of dialogue that is witty and alive; and I know that her story is dramatic because she tells us now that someone "let out a screech," and now that he "uttered sharp little sounds remarkably like oaths." I know, too, that the sea is encroaching upon somebody's dwelling-place, and that someone else tries to keep the waves in their place, but is no more ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, June 10, 1914 • Various
... distance there floated to him a sound strangely incongruous here in the early stillness, a subdued screech or scream, a wild, clamorous, shrieking noise which for the life of ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory
... first reached them in a sudden screech—then there was a confused noise resembling a scuffle—and Jan was again heard crying aloud for help, while at the same time his voice was interrupted, and each call appeared to come from a greater distance! Something or somebody ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... her eyes, and there's no telling what "foolishness" she might have committed had it not been that suddenly, right at her side, arose a most jubilant screech. ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... dead certain I did; and now that we know it was a man who got the scare I reckon he gave a little screech. I thought it was a yelp from some wild animal at the time, but it could have been ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... Louis, you know it won't make any difference whether we go or not, and so we shan't engage the servants. I don't see why, because you like nice singing, you should go to the chapel where they screech so abominably." ...
— Louis' School Days - A Story for Boys • E. J. May
... would wake him up," said he, demurely. "Killin' 's killin', and a critter can't sleep over it 's though 'twas the stomachache. I guess he'd kick some, ef he was asleep—and screech some, too!" ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... and sometimes even to repress his own. The long, sallow visage, the goggle eyes, the huge under-jaw, which appeared not to open and shut by an act of volition, but to be dropped and hoisted up again by some complicated machinery within the inner man, the harsh and dissonant voice, and the screech-owl notes to which it was exalted when he was exhorted to pronounce more distinctly,—all added fresh subject for mirth to the torn cloak and shattered shoe, which have afforded legitimate subjects of raillery against ...
— Guy Mannering, or The Astrologer, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... ways; but, for all that, it is more seemly for an eagle to mate with an eagle than with a screech-owl. Thou wilt see her anon; thy pet slave waiteth without for her mistress. Now go to her for me and bid her come; and, love-sick boy, be sure she does not fascinate thee that thou be so transfixed to her side that passers-by think they see two statues by Scopas, dressed by some wanton wit ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... unforeseen events that the immediate future held in store for me so weighed upon my mind that I could scarcely close my eyes. I really do not understand how any of the boys slept. We could hear the screech of the shells as they whizzed by, but, fortunately, none of them hit near us. Only a few days before several hundred American boys were gassed in this same woods, and our gas guard kept a ...
— In the Flash Ranging Service - Observations of an American Soldier During His Service - With the A.E.F. in France • Edward Alva Trueblood
... for luck. But I do believe the screeching of an owl is a sign of death. I found et to be true. I had an Uncle named Haywood. He stayed at my house and was sick for a month but wasn't so bad off. One night uncle had a relapse and dat same night a screech owl come along and sat on de top of de house and he—I mean the owl,—"whooed" three times and next morning uncle got "worser" and ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume IV, Georgia Narratives, Part 1 • Works Projects Administration
... birds in the grove were mute, The bittern forgot his toot, And the owl forbore his hoot, And the king-bird set his wing, And the woodpecker ceas'd his tap On the hollow beech, And the son of the loon on the neighbouring strand Gave over his idle screech, And fell to sleep in his ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... day by day for thousands of years. A human figure—or it might be superhuman, for his mien seemed more than mortal—lifted from the crag, to which he hung suspended by massy gyves and rivets, eyes mournful with the presentiment of pain. The eagle's screech clanged on the wind, as with outstretched neck he stooped earthward in ever narrowing circles; his huge quills already creaked in his victim's ears, whose flesh crept and shrank, and involuntary convulsions agitated his hands and feet. Then happened what all these millenniums ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... the cook's fire, wrapped themselves in their white cloths, and dropped into slumber. 'Toby,' 'Nettle,' 'Whisky,' 'Pincher,' and my other terriers, resembled so many curled-up hairy balls, and were in the land of dreams. Occasionally an owl would give a melancholy hoot from the forest, or a screech owl would raise a momentary and damnable din. At intervals, the tinkle of a cow-bell sounded faintly in the distance. I tossed restlessly, thinking of various things, till I must have dropped off into an uneasy fitful ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... weeping, and then suddenly he sat up transfixed. From the cell next to him had come a cry, a horrible blood-curdling screech, more like the scream of a wild cat than any human sound. ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... things; now, he was like an old man, longing for death but afraid to lose his life. There were stars above him, but no moon, and the tall trunks of the trees stood up like black phantoms before him, moaning and crying in the wind. He could hear the screech-owls hooting in the dark, and the lonely yelp of ...
— Changing Winds - A Novel • St. John G. Ervine
... fantastic as the music. The pianist seems to get excited and to want to prove himself a Hans von Bulow of rapid execution. The fiddler weaves excitedly over his fiddle. The cornetist toots in a screech like a car-engine whistle. The movements of the dancers grow licentious and more and more rapid. They have begun the Cancan. Feet go up. Legs are exhibited in wild abandon. Hats fly off. There are occasional exhibitions of nature that would put Adam and ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... larger than his two hands, and at his side, watching him, stood a girl with two braids of black hair rippling down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was Keok. She dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner of her coming, ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... ["Spectator," No. 7, March 8th, 1710-11.] "as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest, and have seen a man in love grow pale and lose his appetite upon the plucking of a merrythought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... death ... But had she? She had only thought that, if Lady Asher were not to recover, it were better that she died before she, Evelyn, arrived at Riversdale. As the carriage drove through the woods she noticed that they were empty and silent, save for the screech of one incessant bird, and she thought of the dead woman's face, and contrasted it ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... little thing used to stand on a chair and wash dishes, and they'd seen her carrying in sticks of wood most as big as she was many a time, and they'd heard her mother scolding her. The woman was a fine singer, and had a voice like a screech-owl when she scolded. ...
— The Wind in the Rose-bush and Other Stories of the Supernatural • Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman
... quart o' tar will leak in: I hev hearn tell o' winged words, but pint o' fact it tethers The spoutin' gift to hev your words tu thick sot on with feathers, An' Choate ner Webster wouldn't ha' made an A 1 kin' o' speech, Astride a Southun chestnut horse sharper 'n a baby's screech. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 51, January, 1862 • Various
... said that lady defiantly; 'I've heard it all before; I'm used to it; but here I sit until you tell me where my lodger is;' and suiting the action to the word, Mrs Cheedle sat down in a chair with such a bang that Billy gave a screech of alarm and ...
— Madame Midas • Fergus Hume
... first ye'arn made for; the plague o' both man and beast,—the worst plague that e'er Pharaoh waur punished wi'. Screech on; I'll ha' my think out, ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... a pickpocket; he is robbing birds'-nests, and he is very anxious that nothing should be said about it, but in the fall none so quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief!" as he. One December morning a troop of jays discovered a little screech owl secreted in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree near my house. How they found the owl out is a mystery, since it never ventures forth in the light of day; but they did, and proclaimed the fact with great emphasis. I suspect the ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... wrought-up condition of his nerves, that when a branch which some one had held back, and then let slip, came in contact with the shins of Noodles, he gave out a screech, and ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... upon whom he could always implicitly rely when his military duties prevented him from looking after them. On the day preceding the start Heideck was at tiffin with the Colonel, and coming events were being discussed in a serious manner, when from outside the dull screech of an automobile's horn caught their ears. Two minutes later, covered with dust and with his face a dark red from the heat, an officer appeared on the verandah who introduced himself as ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... in the open all the night sounds came to them with startling distinctness;—the cry of the nighthawk and the chirping of a cricket, the peeping of hylas and the croaking of frogs and the wild, tremulous, mournful cry of the screech-owl. ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... on the accelerator, trying to pull free. The truck at once swerved off the road, steering around a utility pole. As the cable tautened, there was a sickening screech of metal and the sports car was brought to ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... rolling and straining like ships in foul weather, can be heard a mile off, owing to the humming screech of the wheels, which are never greased, but on the contrary have powdered charcoal put in them to increase the noise. Without this music (?) the bullocks do not work so well. How the poor animals could manage to draw the load was often a mystery ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... jolly," Percy answered. "You see, she has been with us boys, and she can play, and doesn't screech if you touch her, or mind a bit if she tears her frock. So are our cousins in England—some of them. Yes, there are some jolly girls, of course; still, after all, what's the good of them, taking them altogether? They are very nice in their way—quiet and well behaved, and so on—but they ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... blows. We never had the pleasure of seeing a stranger among us. We might hear him approaching, nearer and nearer, till, just as the eager listener fancied he might alight in sight, there would burst upon the air the screech of a jay or the war-cry of a robin, accompanied by the precipitate flight of the whole clan, and away would go the stranger in a most sensational manner, followed by outcries and clamor enough to drive ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... my back dreaming, wondering why a locust who was in full screech close by, took the trouble to make that terrible row when it was so hot, and hoping that his sides might be sore with the exertion, when to my great astonishment I heard the sound of feet brushing through the grass towards me. "Black fellow," ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... you, Miss Blake. You heard a screech, in short, and you hurried across the hall, and found Miss Elmsdale in a fainting condition, on the floor of the library. ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... The winds screech down from the open west, And the thunders beat and break On the amethyst Of your rugged breast,— But you never arise ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... joyous grab at the horn, which he immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing screech, Maurice struck it down. ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... And when Michael, with his brand-new bushy whiskers, broke from the grasp of the stranger and turned to run, and the weird little shaven creature in the low-necked shirt followed his example with a bird-like screech, and the stranger (finding the rest of his prey escape him) pounced with a rude grasp on Morris himself, that gentleman's frame of mind might be very nearly expressed in the colloquial ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Square and the huckster's drawling call seemed the subtones of a strangely beautiful oratorio of nature into which every sound of earth had softly melted. Even the roar of the elevated trains on Sixth Avenue and the screech of their wheels as the cars turned the corner of the filthy street in the rear were music. A secret joy filled the world. Nothing could break its spell—not even the devilish incessant rattle of the machine hammers flattening the heads of the rivets on the huge steel warehouse of the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... that fotches us to the hoss-lifting," he said, in his slow drawl. Then he laid his commands upon us. "Ord'ly, and in sojer-fashion, now; no whooping and yelling. If the hoss-captain's got scouts out a-s'arching for us, one good screech from these here varmints we're a-going to put out'n their mis'ry 'u'd fix our flints for kingdom come. I ain't none afeard o' your nerve,"—this to Richard and me—"leastwise, not when it comes to fair and square sojer-fighting. But this here onfall has ...
— The Master of Appleby • Francis Lynde
... screech-owl, you fools!" he cried, though the sound of his own voice made him falter; "an old mouse-teaser," he went on in a much lower voice. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... her. The way was lonely; the hard road echoed under the old cart-horse's hoofs; many a black and desolate tract of forest lay across their twenty miles' ride; more than once the tremulous shriek of a screech-owl smote ominously on Sally's wakeful sense, and quavered away like a dying groan; more than once a mournful whippoorwill cried out in pain and expostulation, and in the young leaves a shivering wind foreboded evil;—but they rode on. Presently Sally's drooping head rose erect; she listened; ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... its orchestra that he had not brooded on and become, which becoming is magic. The long-drawn moan of it; the thrilling whisper and hush; the shrill, sweet whistle, so thin it can scarcely be heard, and is taken more by the nerves than by the ear; the screech, sudden as a devil's yell and loud as ten thunders; the cry as of one who flies with backward look to the shelter of leaves and darkness; and the sob as of one stricken with an age-long misery, only at times remembered, but ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... dry; there, on ropes, dance clean-washed shirts; higher up, on a shelf, volumes display their freshly marbled edges; women sing, husbands whistle, children shout; the carpenter saws his planks, a copper-turner makes the metal screech; all kinds of industries combine to produce a noise which the number ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... but it sounds particularly soft and true out in the open air this way, and without a piano to accompany her. Mine doesn't—I'm all right to sing in a crowd, but when I try to sing by myself, it's just a sort of screech. There isn't any beauty to my tones at all, and I know it and don't try to ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... again. Wood dust flew as hinge screws gave with a loud screech. The door was just hanging now. One more smash! It flew inward and Red and Brad charged, two ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... observation from the castle-wall. At intervals, the maiden applied her delicate ear to the window, catching eagerly at every strange sound muttered forth by the growing storm. She had resumed her seat many times, when the castle-bell tolled eleven, and almost at the same moment the cry of a screech-owl was distinctly heard. The expectant damsel glided on tiptoe to the window, and listened eagerly. The cry was repeated. Emma's eye sparkled at length with joy, a deep blush overspread her cheeks, and she produced from an aperture ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... Asio) or Screech Owl, is somewhat larger than the Acadian or Whetsaw, and not so familiar as the Barn Owl of Europe, though resembling it in general habits. He commonly builds in the hollow of an old tree, also in deserted buildings, whither he resorts in the daytime to find repose and to escape annoyance. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... clown, a vulgar person—and there are such in all ranks—will prefer flaring reds and blues and yellows heaped together in staring contrast. A thrush or a blackbird is but a soberly clad creature by the side of macaws and paroquets; but the one has a song and the others have only a screech. The gentle virtues are the truly Christian virtues—patience and meekness and long-suffering and sympathy and readiness to efface oneself for the sake of God and ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... have, sor; but the Irish pipes are soft, mellow, gentle things—like the Irish girls—not like them big Scotch bellows that screech for all the world like a thousand unwillin' pigs bein' forced ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... over now, and long has been. To-day the iron horse, with its rattling train, carries such travellers by a different route—the screech of its whistle being just audible to wayfarers on the old road, as in mockery of their crawling pace. Of its ancient glories there remain only the splendid causeway, still kept in repair, and the inns encountered at short distances ...
— The Land of Fire - A Tale of Adventure • Mayne Reid
... called from their use of the cry of the screech-owl (chathouan) as a signal, were the revolted peasants of Brittany ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, v3 • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne
... avidity on the minuter traits of a nation, to note with what attention the English valet, would listen to a Milanese arietta; whose love notes, delivered by the unmusical Pietro, were about as effectively pathetic as the croak of the bull frog in a marsh, or screech of owl sentimentalising in ivied ruin; and to mark with what gravity, the Italian driver would beat his hand against the table; in tune to "Ben Baxter," or "The British Grenadiers," roared ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... strange tidings. They must have been created in her sleep, and now were realized in the glorious burst of golden sun, in the sweep of creamy clouds across the blue, in the solemn music of the wind in the pines, in the wild screech of the blue jays and the noble bugle of a stag. These heralded the day as no ordinary day. Something was going to happen to her. She divined it. She felt it. And she trembled. Nothing beautiful, hopeful, wonderful could ever happen to Ellen Jorth. She had ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... it had not been lifted for many years, and had rusted to the staple. Carefully Alex threw his weight upward against it. It still refused to move. He pushed harder, and suddenly it gave with a piercing screech. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... upon the stage, is their simplicity in contrast with the ghastly and contorted horrors that envelop them. A dialogue abounding in the passages I have already quoted—a dialogue which bandies 'O you screech-owl!' and 'Thou foul black cloud!'—in which a sister's admonition to her brother to think twice of suicide assumes a form ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... in pursuit he followed as fast as his feet would let him. The man undoubtedly heard him coming, for, if anything, his fright increased. Out upon the open deck they flew, Frank just a few feet in the rear. He had even stretched out his arm and touched the garments of the runner, when with a screech the fellow made a furious plunge straight over the side of ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... Frenchwomen (excuse the impertinence) have none. I met with a friend, and got introduced to a manager; and I have been singing at the theater—not the great parts, only the second. Your amiable countrywomen could not screech me down on the stage, but they intrigued against me successfully behind the scenes. In short, I quarreled with our principal lady, quarreled with the manager, quarreled with my friend; and here I am back at Pisa, with a little money saved in my pocket, and no great notion what ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... the screech of a siren, and a demon car that spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their head-lights, they saw that men in khaki ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... say or what they do. They think the world's bound to swallow any story they like to tell. . . He stands listening for a bit. And it gives him quite a turn to hear a thump at the door and a sort of muffled raving screech inside the captain's room. He thinks he hears his own name, too, through the awful crash as the old Sagamore rises and falls to a sea. That noise and that awful shock make him clear out of the cabin. He collects his senses on the poop. But his heart sinks a little ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... a fine mind—a poetic mind. His ideas respectin his property never come upon him so strong as when he sat upon a barrel- organ and had the handle turned. Arter the wibration had run through him a little time, he would screech out, "Toby, I feel my property coming—grind away! I'm counting my guineas by thousands, Toby—grind away! Toby, I shall be a man of fortun! I feel the Mint a jingling in me, Toby, and I'm swelling out into the Bank of England!" Such is the influence of music on a poetic mind. Not that he was partial ...
— A House to Let • Charles Dickens
... when the cep plui sings near the encampment. The Sakais consider it quite as unlucky as the grating screech of the night owl (birds kept in awe by the Sakais as being in familiarity with the Evil Spirit) on the roof of a house, or the spilling of salt is believed to be in many ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... know how long I meditated, but suddenly there was a great tumult on the stairs near my door. There were the shouts and heavy breathings of men, struggling, and over all rang a screech as from some wild bird. I ran to the door and poked my head discreetly out; for my coat and waistcoat were off as well as my sword, and I wished to see the manner of tumult at a distance before I saw it close. As I thrust forth my head ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... throw it upon the hearth to-night, for that doleful wail penetrates everywhere: even the demon that lurks at the bottom of Pomoyssin must shudder as he hears it. When at length the bells stop swinging and their vibrations die away, a screech-owl flies close by the open gallery of the house, which we call a balcony, and startles me with ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... the coarse jokes of these men and women. He had long since grown painfully accustomed to it. His poor brain understood that there was no difference between the monotonous unchanging screech of a turning wheel and the shrill ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... spokes of a wheel. She heard a voice calling, "Hey! There!" and answered with a wild scream. So, he could call yet! He was calling after her to stop. Never! . . . She tore through the night, past the startled group of seaweed-gatherers who stood round their lantern paralysed with fear at the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing shadow. The men leaned on their pitchforks staring fearfully. A woman fell on her knees, and, crossing herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl with her ragged skirt full of ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... got ready. In it she put magic herbs, with seeds and flowers of acrid juice, stones from the distant East, and sand from the shore of all-surrounding ocean; hoar frost, gathered by moonlight, a screech-owl's head and wings, and the entrails of a wolf. She added fragments of the shells of tortoises, and the liver of stags, animals tenacious of life, and the head and beak of a crow, that outlives nine generations of men. These, with many other things without a name, she boiled together for her purposed ...
— TITLE • AUTHOR
... the bushes taking a nap," said Polly, and they crouched to look under the shrubbery. An ear-piercing screech made them spring to their feet, and there, flying down the road, was Gyp, tearing along as if in fright, but what could so have startled wild, ...
— Princess Polly's Gay Winter • Amy Brooks
... was, laird; and her first screech waked me up and garred me grew sae till I couldna move, and didna move till I heard her screech again and again, and saw her rin acrass the floor, and tear back the bolt and flecht fra the room, followed close behind by Mistress Berners. And ...
— Cruel As The Grave • Mrs. Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... uttering from time to time a lusty halloo, in hopes of making myself heard by some belated reaper or returning woodman. But my calls had no other effect than to awake the mocking echoes of the wood, or the mysterious and almost human shout of the screech-owl, and to leave me to a still more intense feeling of solitude, when these had died away. I found myself at length in a deep, hollow field-road, like those which abound in South Devon, and high overhead, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 441 - Volume 17, New Series, June 12, 1852 • Various
... report seemed to shatter the whole scene. Its echoes were mixed with the scattering of the horrified beavers as they rushed for the water—with the short screech of the lynx, as it bounced into the air and fell back on its side, dead—with an exclamation of astonishment from Jabe—and with a crashing of branches just behind the thicket. The Boy looked around, triumphant—to see that Jabe's ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... and others—Mercurius Radamanthus, the Chief Judge of Hell, his Circuits through all the Courts of Law in England, etc., etc. Other newspapers bore such quaint titles as the following: The Dutch Spye—The Scots Dove—The Parliament Kite—The Secret Owle—The Parliament Screech Owle, and other ornithological monstrosities. Party spirit ran high, and the contending scribes carried on a most foul and savage warfare, and demolished their adversaries, both political and literary, without the slightest compunction or mercy. Some ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, Issue 2, February, 1864 • Various
... that, Mas'r Harry, they weren't ghosts' cries. I'll bet that. Now, if my old mother was here she'd stick out as it was a spirit as couldn't—Oh, Mas'r Harry, though, what a horrid screech!" he whispered, as again a long-drawn, hollow, echoing cry ran through ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... in a conspicuous place—on the top of the signal-staff. Perhaps I only fancied him larger on account of the position in which he was placed; but I noticed that before any of the others took to flight, he had shot upward with a screech, as if it were a command for the rest to follow example. Very likely he was either the sentinel or leader of the flock; and this little bit of tactics was no other than I had often seen practised by a flock of crows, ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid
... But oftentimes the air is changed; and in the screech of the night wind, chasing navies, subverting the tall ships and the rooted cedar of the hills; in the random deadly levin or the fury of headlong floods, we recognise the "dread foundation" of life and the anger in Pan's heart. Earth wages open war against her ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... bewitched. Next minute I was out of bed like a rabbit, and turning off the light, dashed outside just as the second went over. I naturally looked skyward, but there was not a sign of anything and, stranger still, not even the throb of an engine. A third went over with a loud screech, and my hair was blown into the air by the rushing wind it caused. I saw a flash from the sea and Thompson said she was wakened by my voice calling, "I say, come out and see this new stunt." Soon everyone was up and the shells came on steadily, blowing our hair about, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... it all, the convent, the company, the last refrain of former triumphs, the faithful romantic Matthieu de Montmorenci, and above all the poor Marechale, who will screech for ever in her garlic. Let us turn the page, we find another picture from these ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie) |
