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More "Crackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... struck a muffled note of grey. On the left the ribbon of road glistened white between the sentinel poplars silhouetted against the sky. The hot smell of the earth filled the air like spice. A thousand elfin sounds, the vibration of leaves, the tiny crackling of cornstalks, the fairy whirr of ground insects, melted into ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... poured water on the fire as soon as the supper was cooked—an act which somewhat astonished the rest. Soon afterward he went into the tent for a few moments, and when he returned he was beginning to advise Joe not to laugh quite so loud, when the crackling of branches was heard in the grove, and ...
— Harper's Young People, August 10, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... the dried grass took fire, the flames crackling and roaring as they spread with great rapidity, fortunately away from the broken-down seaplane. Through the whirling clouds of smoke could be faintly discerned the backs of the fugitives, many of whom dropped ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... rifle on the hill Rang in his ears: and stung to headlong flight, He started to his feet; and through the brake He plunged in panic, heedless of the sun That burned his cropped head to a red-hot ache Still racked with crackling echoes of ...
— Georgian Poetry 1913-15 • Edited by E. M. (Sir Edward Howard Marsh)
... or so had passed by, and enough trees had been cleared away to make room for a corn field and a potato patch, and a little chicken-house and cow-shed had been added to their log-cabin, the young farmer used to sit down before their rough stone fire-place, with its bright crackling fire, and trot his boy to sleep upon his knee, while he watched the pretty young mamma putting away the supper things, thinking all the time what a rich and happy man he was. And when at last a pig-pen was joined to the cow-shed, and two cunning little pink-nosed pigs had been bought of a neighbor ...
— Harper's Young People, April 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... having a good time with their toys in front of the fireplace in the sitting room. On the hearth blazed a snapping, crackling warm fire of logs. ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... not Godamighty to mak' t' rain gie over," was the man's cheerful reply, as he took the bellows to the damp wood which lay feebly crackling and fizzing on the wide hearth. His exertions produced a spasmodic flame, which sent flickering tongues of light through the wide spaces and shadows of the hall. Otherwise the deepening gloom of the October evening was lightened only by the rays of one feebly burning lamp standing ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... second with its antennae trembling as if in deliberation, and then stepped off as rapidly and strangely in the opposite direction. Brown cliffs with deep green lakes in the hollows, flat, blade-like trees that waved from root to tip, round boulders of grey stone, vast crumpled surfaces of a thin crackling texture—all these objects lay across the snail's progress between one stalk and another to his goal. Before he had decided whether to circumvent the arched tent of a dead leaf or to breast it there came past the bed the feet of ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... tales of wreck and wrong, Of shame and lust and fraud, They backed their toughest statements with The Brimstone of the Lord, And crackling oaths went to and fro ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... very cold; Madame Munster put on a shawl and walked about. Then she determined to have some fire; and summoning her ancient negress, the contrast of whose polished ebony and whose crimson turban had been at first a source of satisfaction to her, she made arrangements for the production of a crackling flame. This old woman's name was Azarina. The Baroness had begun by thinking that there would be a savory wildness in her talk, and, for amusement, she had encouraged her to chatter. But Azarina was dry and prim; ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... the room, shook hands with Thompson, flung her coat, hat, and furs across a chair, and drew another up to the crackling fire. Outside, the long Northern twilight was deepening. Carr rose and switched on a cluster of lights in frosted globes. In the mellow glow he resumed his seat, and his glance came to rest upon his daughter with a curious fixity, as if he ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... RASAGULLA and mango pulp, PAPAR biscuits, and an oil of the Indian KEORA flower which flavored our ice cream. The evening found us grouped around a huge sparkling Christmas tree, the near-by fireplace crackling ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... Thibet and planked down sixpence and asked for an idol wrapped up in brown paper you could not have done a more dreadful thing than Jackson had done; but the priest forgave him and produced in silence a trayful of Brownhills. Then was Jackson like unto ELIA'S little Chinese boy with "the crackling." He touched a briar and was converted. He stroked them as though they were kittens, bought ten of them, a pound of polish, fifty silver wind-pipes and a bale of chamois-leather. The priest took ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 12, 1917 • Various
... masses of lurid clouds came rolling up, and a crackling, like the rattle of musketry, resounded through the air. This was produced by a series of electrical con- cussions, in which volleys of hailstones were discharged from the cloud-batteries above. In fact, as the storm-sheet came in contact with a current of cold air, hail was formed ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... sluggish streams. Gordon turned off the road, and drove over a rough, short descent to a ledge of solid ground by a stream and fringe of willows. The spring torrents had subsided, leaving the grass, the willows, covered with a grey, crackling coat of mud; the air had a damp, fetid smell; beyond, the swamp bubbled gaseously. The close line of hitched teams disappeared about an elbow of the thicket; groups of men gathered in the noisome shadows, bottles were passed, heads thrown back and ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... some the folks from over to Jocelyn's, yist'd'y," he said, in a spasm of sharp, crackling speech, "and they seemed to think 't Mis' Mulbridge'd got to step round pretty spry 'f she did n't want another the same name in ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... seemed to rise up and fall on the disabled ship with a wild fury. There was a strange suggestion of passion in every wave as it crashed over the bulwarks. In the roar of the hurricane there was a faint sound of crackling wood. The deck was at an angle of thirty. The port boats on their davits were invisible; they were under water. If the Croonah righted quickly those boats would break up ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... pigs, from Berks, Oxford, and Bucks, possess a decided superiority over the eastern, of Essex, Sussex, and Norfolk; not to forget another qualification of the former, at which some readers may smile, a thickness of the skin; whence the crackling of the roasted pork is a fine gelatinous substance, which may be easily masticated; while the crackling of the thin-skinned breeds is roasted into good block tin, the reduction of which would almost require teeth of iron."—MOUBRAY ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... was a dead silence, save for the crackling of the fire, and the restless movements of the horses. Then from out of the darkness came a roar of laughter, and while all turned and stared in astonishment, Frontier Samson himself bounded into their midst ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... is a Latin and German Vocabulary, of which a good notion may be formed by the account of the second edition of it, in 1469, in a certain descriptive catalogue.[57] To be perfect, there should be 215 leaves. A full page has thirty-five lines. This copy is in as fine, clean, and crackling condition, as is that of Lord Spencer of the second impression. It is eight inches and a half in height, by five inches and ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... pushed past him. In the din he had not heard it. He turned as he crouched, and saw that it was a hen-pheasant, with blood on her breast and one wing trailing alongside. And in the same instant he was aware of a man—an under-keeper—crackling about in the hedge only ten yards away, looking ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... dame's forehead seemed to flicker like a live jewel in Helen's eyes; as the flame rose, her breast heaved too, a color rested on the pale cheek; as it fell, Helen fancied that she sighed; with all the quick lightning and darkening of the crackling fire the glance of the eyes shifted to and fro, the shadows round the mouth wavered; now they lowered, and now they smiled, and now the parted lips ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... himself as a big dog might have done, and went down into the valley. Only once did he pause in his descent, and that was when a crackling twig warned him some heavy body was moving near. Silently he sank into the bushes bordering the trail. He listened with his ear close to the ground. Presently he heard a noise as of two hard substances striking together. He resumed his walk, having recognized ...
— The Last Trail • Zane Grey
... back in her chair, her eyes shining under the stimulus of the laugh that ran through her circle. The Dean joined in it uneasily, conscious, no doubt, of the sharp, crackling movements by which in the distance Lady Grosville was dumbly expressing herself—through the Times. Cliffe looked at the small figure a moment, then seized a chair and sat down in front ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... finding their provisions run short. Two female skeletons were found twined together,—they had expired in each other's arms. One day Major Denham was roused from a reverie, by the sound caused by a skeleton crackling under his horses hoofs. The Arabs aimed blows at the limbs with their muskets, jesting at these melancholy remains ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... the clearing, running, shouting Krannon's name. There was a crackling behind him as two of the hidden men hurled the corpse through the foliage after him. He turned and fired without stopping, setting the thing afire ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... was inconceivably blue. The hard-frozen world was one immaculate glitter, the giant evergreens standing black against its brightness. The sonorous ring of axes on wood, the gnawing of saws, the crunching of runners, the crackling crash of distant trees falling to the woodsmen's onslaughts—Bijou Falls logging-camp was a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... Pentegoet could hear bushes crackling behind him. The position of the ladder had pointed the direction of the chase. He laughed in his headlong flight. This was not ignominious running from foes, but a royal exhilaration. He could run all night, holding ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... as habitable and full of comfort as they could, was now their pleasant care. In a short time, each had its cheerful fire glowing and crackling on the hearth, and reddening the pale old wall with a hale and healthy blush. Nell, busily plying her needle, repaired the tattered window-hangings, drew together the rents that time had worn in the threadbare scraps of carpet, ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... was crackling in a large kitchen range, suggesting, by its brightness and snapping, pine-knots full of pitch and resin. The front doors of the stove were open and the firelight danced across the room, filling it ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... the gold light to finish his load. Warm silence nestled over the cornfield. Sometimes a light breeze rose for a moment and rattled the stiff, dry leaves, and he himself made a great rustling and crackling as he tore the ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... no idle one. Soon the fire was crackling merrily and the chops and bacon were sizzling in the frying-pan. Bob unpacked the sandwiches and the thermos bottle of ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... laugh sometimes—wisely if one can; if not, quocumque modo! There are seasons when even "the crackling of thorns under a pot" has its uses. It seems to warm the pot—all the pots—and all the emptiness ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... making a crackling noise for a few seconds, attracted our attention from the direction of the Rhine; and immediately following upon this we heard a slow, harmonious call, quite in tune, although plainly the cry of numerous youthful voices. "That's his signal," exclaimed the ...
— On the Future of our Educational Institutions • Friedrich Nietzsche
... crushed and slew with his two forefeet and trunk. Indeed, the beast moved like the wheel of Death. Slaying men adorned with steel coats of mail, along with their horses and foot-soldiers, the chief of the Magadhas caused these to be pressed down into the earth, like thick reeds pressed down with crackling sounds, by means of that mighty and foremost of elephants belonging to him. Then Arjuna, riding on that foremost of cars, rushed quickly towards that prince of elephants in the midst of that host teeming with thousands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... among the twigs and causing the long white streamers to oscillate. It utters a wild and melancholy music. There are few other sounds, for it is winter, and the tree-frog and cicada are silent. I hear the crackling knots in the fire, the rustling of dry leaves swirled up by a stray gust, the "coo-whoo-a" of the white owl, the bark of the raccoon, and, at intervals, the dismal howling of wolves. These are the nocturnal voices of the winter forest. They ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... There was a crackling sound in the night on the Cathedral roof and a noise as of falling masonry. The belfry jackdaw said the frost was affecting the fabric, and as he had experienced many frosts it must have been so. In the morning it was seen ...
— The Toys of Peace • Saki
... delivered? The room is lighted by the flames. Clearly the time for action is short. The longest available ladder is placed against the house, but it is a little too short. The whole crowd is in dismay. Must the child perish in the flames? Above the crackling of the fire is heard its piteous cries. Will no one make the attempt to save it? The multitude is painfully irresolute; ...
— Love's Final Victory • Horatio
... the apartment in stately fashion, her black silk gown crackling pleasantly as she walked, and seated herself very primly, as befitted her ancestry and bringing-up, in one of the stiff, high-backed chairs. And presently the parson, his garden clothes off and his best coat on, came in hurriedly to know his honored ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... that station, and then descending by the stern ladder, had the good fortune to be taken into a boat belonging to the Aklerney sloop. The hull of the ship, masts, and rigging, were now in a blaze, bursting tremendously in several parts through horrid clouds of smoke; nothing was heard but the crackling of the flames, mingled with the dismal cries of terror and distraction; nothing was seen but acts of frenzy and desperation. The miserable wretches, affrighted at the horrors of such a conflagration, sought a fate less dreadful by plunging into the sea, and about three hundred ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... British shells bursting short of their opponents. The Long Toms laid at an angle of forty-five plumped their huge shells into the British guns at a range where the latter would not dream of unlimbering. And then gradually the rifle fire died away also, crackling more faintly as White withdrew to Ladysmith. At eleven o'clock Carleton's column recognised that it had been left to its fate. As early as nine a heliogram had been sent to them to retire as the opportunity served, but to leave the hill was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... example should be quite impassive, and should take no apparent notice of anything, but obey his mahout with the regularity of a machine. No noise should disturb the nerves, no sight terrify, no attack for one moment shake the courage; even the crackling of fire should be unheeded, although the sound of high grass blazing and exploding before the advancing line of fire tries the nerves of elephants more than any ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... said, was ludicrous: people should live up to their position; and he sneered at the place, and slightly wounded her, for she was open to a wound when the cold fire of a renewed attempt at warmth between them was crackling and showing bits of flame, after she had given proof of her power to serve. Service to himself and his relatives affected him. He deferred to her craze for The Crossways, and they lived in a larger London house, 'up to their position,' which means ever a trifle ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... in his breast-pocket at that moment, and as Roselle stirred against him he heard the slight crackling of the paper. It dropped like a trickle of cold water into his excitement and desire. He took Roselle's arm lightly in his ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... flame there glows A flame, which may from some chance cause ignite, (All while the whistling, puffing Boreas blows), Fanned by the wind sets all the growth alight, The shepherd's group, lying in their repose Of quiet sleep, aroused in wild afright At crackling flames that spread both wide and high, Gather their goods and to the village fly; So ...
— The Development of the Feeling for Nature in the Middle Ages and - Modern Times • Alfred Biese
... the look of habitation, the human look. You had only to go into the third room, which we did not use, and see its stones, its shifting earth, its tumbled litter; and then return to our lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the rack, the pail of bright water behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner, and perhaps the table roughly laid against a meal,—and man's order, the little clean spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once contrasted with the rich passivity of nature. And yet our house ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sudden plunge of a musquash, or saw one crossing the stream before us, or heard the sound of a rill emptying in, swollen by the recent rain. About a mile below the island, when the solitude seemed to be growing more complete every moment, we suddenly saw the light and heard the crackling of a fire on the bank, and discovered the camp of the two explorers; they standing before it in their red shirts, and talking aloud of the adventures and profits of the day. They were just then speaking of a bargain, in which, as I understood, somebody had cleared twenty-five dollars. We glided ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... There was a slight crackling sound, which was caused by the sudden drawing of a match along Paul's trousers. Instantly a tiny flame sprang into existence; and every eye was strained to discover the cause of ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts on a Tour - The Mystery of Rattlesnake Mountain • George A. Warren
... and silent, Christie was amazed to have his companion spring from his side as though he had been shot, dart across the road, and disappear in the bushes beyond. There was a momentary sound of crackling sticks and swishing branches, and then all was still. Unable to account for this mysterious proceeding, and not knowing what action to take, Ensign Christie stood motionless, where he was left, for some minutes. Then Donald reappeared, walking ...
— At War with Pontiac - The Totem of the Bear • Kirk Munroe and J. Finnemore
... front of their bodies instead of on their shoulders, so that there might be no danger of a sudden clang or rattle from the barrels striking the trees. Following the example of their guide, each one carefully avoided stepping on crackling twigs or dry branches, or rustling against bushes or boughs. The latter they would take gingerly in their hands as they approached them, bend them out of the way, and gently release them as they passed. Heroically they forebore to growl when their legs were scraped by jagged ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... all harm, he begins a powerful incantation, summoning Loge to surround her with an impassable barrier of flames. As this incantation proceeds, small flickering tongues of fire start forth on every side; they soon rise higher and higher, roaring and crackling until, as Wotan disappears, they form a fiery barrier ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... with an air. Her skirt testified that skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout fly. Even the hole in her stocking gave her piquancy; and she had wonderful black hair, which probably had not been combed properly for a month, and big, crackling black eyes. They told us that one day, a week or two before we came, she had been particularly cheerful—so cheerful that one of her patrons was moved to inquire the cause ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... dining-table with chairs. On the left of the table, towards the centre of the room, a chimney with two open fire-places, facing left and right. Several wicker armchairs are placed around the fire-place on the left in which a cheerful wood fire is crackling. To the left of centre, a round reading and writing table with a green-shaded electric lamp. Other electric lights are in brackets around the walls. Easy chairs stand near the table, which is stacked with magazines. ...
— The Straw • Eugene O'Neill
... the horizon news of further portents came thick and fast. A plum tree belonging to a farmer of good standing had unaccountably lost all its leaves. The Duchess arrived in a state of unusual trepidation, declaring that the tortoise-shell of her lorgnette gave forth a crackling sound. She appealed to Don Francesco to explain the meaning of this extraordinary circumstance; it crackled most distinctly, she declared. Not far from the little bay where only yesterday the streamlet ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... knew if I said anything the Chief would laugh at me, so I stayed behind him and looked after my own safety. We reached a little mesa at the head of the coulee and found Indians of all shapes and sizes assembled there. Two or three huge campfires were crackling, and a pot of mutton stewed over one of them. Several young braves were playing cards, watched by a bevy of giggling native belles. The lads never raised their eyes to the girls, but they were ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... others' fruits with greater frequency than he. He was guilty of every crime in the calendar of youth; and if there is one thing that delights him more than another, it is to sit on a winter's night before the crackling log and tell us yarns about his youthful ...
— Coffee and Repartee • John Kendrick Bangs
... illumined the whole sky; the dark mass of the fells could be seen far overhead, and the waters of the river in the bed of the valley glowed like amber. The stalwart figure stood out in the white light against the red glare, holding on to the cross-trees on the top of the mill, and with a wheel of crackling fire ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... about her limbs are cast, She shakes them off in pure and holy ire, As quietly as Paul, in ages past, Shook off the serpent in the crackling fire. ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... All at once he found himself aroused and wide-awake as ever. His headache had departed; his every sense seemed to have gained keenness. M. Villefort's voice had ceased, and for a few seconds utter, dead silence reigned. Then he heard the fire crackling, and shortly afterward a strange, startling ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... them every night to obtain the shelter of some one of these groves. They were almost certain during the day to obtain all the game they would need. A couple of hours' work with their axes, would enable them to rear a sufficient shelter for the night. With an immense fire roaring, and crackling, and throwing out its genial warmth in front of their camp, they could, wrapped in their furs and with their feet to the fire, enjoy all the comfort which the pioneers of the wilderness could desire. No matter how dismally the wintry storm ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... slight amusement, they followed him to the door where he gave a low whinnying sound that made Bob's stylish chestnut look up with intelligent expectancy. Then back in the thicket sounded a faint answer, followed by a crackling of brush, as the old mare came obediently forward. Jane's horse, also, spoke inquisitively from the shed where it was stabled, and the night sounds hushed again at this intrusion ...
— Sunlight Patch • Credo Fitch Harris
... where Jinnie had so many times brought forth her load of wood, he paused again and glanced about. As far north as he could see, the marsh stretched out in misty greenness. The place seemed to be without a human being, until Jordan suddenly heard the crackling of branches, and there appeared before him a young man with deep-set, evil eyes, and large, pouting mouth. Upon his ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... public or private library in Europe. It is just as if it had come fresh from the press of Vindelin de Spira, its printer. Some of the capital letters are illuminated in the sweetest manner possible. The leaves are white, unstained, and crackling; and the binding is of wood. Of the October impression, the copy is unequal: that is to say, the first volume is cruelly cut, but the second is fine and tall. It is in blue morocco binding. I must however add, in this biblical department, that they possess a copy of ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... These are denominated dry sounds, and they are occasionally so abundant and distinct, as to convey their vibrations to the hand applied to the chest, as well as to be audible to a bystander at some distance. As the disease progresses these sounds become to a large extent replaced by others of crackling or bubbling character, which are termed moist sounds or rales. Both these kinds of abnormal sounds are readily explained by a reference to the pathological condition of the parts. One of the first effects of inflammation upon the bronchial mucous membrane is ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various
... his hands over his eyes. The flash whitened, growing larger, expanding. Suddenly there was a roar, and a furious hot wind rushed past him, throwing him on his face in the sand. The hot dry wind licked and seared at them, crackling the bits of branches into flame. Mara and Jan shut their eyes, ...
— The Crystal Crypt • Philip Kindred Dick
... Arab boat, Flapping by night upon a glassy sea, Whereon the moon and planets seem to float, More bright of hue than they were wont to be, While shooting-stars rain down with crackling sound, And, thick as swarming locusts, ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... of magnolia leaves Rasps with the crackling scratch of old brocade, The low bird-voices ripple like the laugh Of Watteau beauties coiffured, with pomade; Here ribboned dandies offered scented snuffs To other ghosts, beneath the giant trees— Was that a flash of rose-flamingo stuffs— Azaleas?—was a sneeze ...
— Carolina Chansons - Legends of the Low Country • DuBose Heyward and Hervey Allen
... spires. David had often heard of islands that were volcanic and sent forth fire, and now he thought that this was one. He threw his wood to the ground and with palpitating heart drew closer and closer: but all he could see was smoke and flames. The crackling of the fire filled him with more fear. At last he saw that it was not from the earth that the fire issued. He realized that the wind had blown the flames of his little fire, which he always kept lighted, ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... guard the little children, because it was not safe there from wolves. We therefore made a blazing fire, sat ourselves around it, and heard the little folks say the Ten Commandments, when there was a rustling and crackling behind us, and my daughter jumped up and ran into the cavern, crying, "Proh dolor hostis!" But it was only some of the able-bodied men who had stayed behind in the village, and who now came to bring us word how things stood there. I therefore called to her directly, "Emergas amici" ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... not die under the broad wheels of the car of Juggernaut. So interested in Umballa were his men that they forgot the vigilance required to conduct such a ceremony free of interruption. A crackling of shots, a warning cry to drop their arms, the plunging of an elephant in the path of the car, which was already thundering down the ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... stopped. It was too late. The train was fired, and could not be extinguished. The signal passed with the rapidity of sound from steeple to steeple, till not only Paris, but entire France, was roused. The roar of human passion, the crackling fire of musketry, and the shrieks of the wounded and the dying, rose and blended in one fearful din throughout the whole metropolis. Guns, pistols, daggers, were every where busy. Old men, terrified maidens, helpless infants, venerable ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... dark-hair'd King And Priam's noble son were met in arms, And aided, this the Trojans, that the Greeks. High tow'rd the tents uprose the surging sea, As with loud clamour met th' opposing hosts. Less loud the roar of Ocean's wave, that driv'n By stormy Boreas, breaks upon the beach; Less loud the crackling of the flames that rage In the deep forest of some mountain glen; Less loud the wind, to wildest fury rous'd, Howls in the branches of the lofty oaks; Than rose the cry of Trojans and of Greeks, As each, with furious shout, encounter'd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... and a man might bend over it, and rub his hands slowly gazing into the red coals or little pointed flames which seemed the only things alive and worthy the watching. The flames were blue at the base and yellow at the top, and jumped looking merry, and caught at bits of black coal, and set them crackling and throwing off splinters till they were ablaze and as much alive as the rest. A man could get comfort and entertainment therefrom. There was naught else so good to live with. Nothing happened in the street, and every dull ...
— The Shuttle • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... niche in the side of the bank. The staff-sergeant fitter returned with a ten-foot stove-pipe that he had found in the neighbouring village; and before ten o'clock our first mess fire since the end of April was crackling merrily and burning up ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... found himself at length face to face with a ring of lurid fire, crackling and roaring with a noise like thunder. But without a moment's hesitation he plunged into the ...
— Told by the Northmen: - Stories from the Eddas and Sagas • E. M. [Ethel Mary] Wilmot-Buxton
... mischievous, like Robin Goodfellow, and will milk the cows, and sour the milk, or pull your hair, if you wander about at night in certain well-known uncanny places. A more dangerous demon is heard in the crackling of the dry leaves of the date-tree in the night wind; and some trees are haunted by a vampire, who will drag you up and devour you, if you venture near them in the darkness.' (N.W.P. Gazetteer, 1st ed., vol. vii. Supplement, p. 4.) See also the same author's ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... hot, and the trout were sizzling and curling up with the bacon in the pan. Never did a luncheon taste so good as that, with fried trout and bacon, and hard-boiled eggs, soda biscuits, and a mammoth apple pie. They listened to the fire crackling; they looked up into the shining trees; they watched the water beyond the ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... startled at the result of Jack's stamping. A crackling sound was heard, followed by a tiny spurt of flame from the floor under ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... reigned; not a sound broke the awful solemnity of the occasion, excepting the crackling of the fragrant pine limbs used as fuel, and the seething of the flesh as it melted ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... From the breast pocket of the trim blue and silver uniform of our Service he drew a long, crackling paper. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... crackling noise, tore open the fresh pack, while Liza and Lavretzky, as though in pursuance of an agreement, both rose, and placed themselves beside Marfa Timofeevna. They both, suddenly, felt so very much at ease that they were ...
— A Nobleman's Nest • Ivan Turgenieff
... which could reflect and neutralize for some little time even the terrific beam Costigan was employing. Nor was the pirate unarmed—a vicious flare of incandescence leaped from his Lewiston, to spend its force in spitting, crackling pyrotechnics against the ether-wall of the squat and monstrous Standish. But Costigan's infernal machine did not rely only upon vibratory destruction. At almost the first flash of the pirate's weapon the officer touched a trigger; there was a double report, ear-shattering ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... the men outside tried to batter down the car walls with a broken tree limb. Inside, they strained feverishly at the heavy timbers. Vain efforts all, at which the crackling flames, crawling always ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 7 • Various
... were afraid, but hopped silently from bough to bough, following the movements of the Kangaroo with eager little eyes. The Brush Turkey and the Mound-Builder left their heaped-up nests and joined the other thirsty creatures, and only by the crackling of the dry scrub, or the falling of a few leaves, could one tell that so many live creatures were together ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... of croupiers; the continual, languid in-rake and out-rake of golden piles, of crackling notes, of rouleaux—on one of which the old-time Joseph could have lived so well for months: here, side by side, the much-remarked woman, the pale-faced, angel-eyed youth, quietly took their ...
— The Genius • Margaret Horton Potter
... them, but I scarcely know how I answered them, although I was aware that everything—both my husband's luggage and mine—was being taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if she ought to put a light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . no . . . yes," and presently I heard the fire crackling. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... read, All doubt beyond, all fear above, Nor crackling pile nor cursing creed Can burn or blot it: GOD ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... precious bronzes, the marble bust of some princess royal disguised as Diana appeared about to fly out of her turbulent drapery, while on the ceiling a figure of Night, powdered like a marquise and surrounded by cupids, sowed flowers. Everything was asleep, and only the crackling of the logs and the light rattle of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... the moment, and he stretched forth a palsied hand which wandered tremblingly over the small heap of dry wood beside him. Reassured that it was indeed there, his hand returned to the shelter of his mangy furs, and he again fell to listening. The sulky crackling of half-frozen hides told him that the chief's moose-skin lodge had been struck, and even then was being rammed and jammed into portable compass. The chief was his son, stalwart and strong, head man of the tribesmen, and a ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... checks, if he knew he was the agent, not of Euphemia Setoun, of the honourable house of Winton, but of E. D., daughter of a Cameronian cowfeeder!—Jeanie, I can laugh yet sometimes—but God protect you from such mirth.—My father—I mean your father, would say it was like the idle crackling of thorns; but the thorns keep their poignancy, they remain unconsumed. Farewell, my dearest Jeanie—Do not show this even to Mr. Butler, much less to any one else. I have every respect for him, but his principles are over strict, and my case will not endure severe handling.—I ...
— The Heart of Mid-Lothian, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... of the valley was neared, the irregular crackling roar of the rifle shots abruptly ceased. Lennon's heart skipped a beat. The sudden hush might mean that Cochise had given up his attack on the cliff house. On the other hand, it might be due to an ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... like silk over the universe, Most cold and bleak; and yet my heart beat fast, Waiting until the stillness broke. I know not For what I waited — something very great — I dared not look up to the sky for fear A brittle crackling should clash suddenly Against the quiet, and a black line creep Across the sky, and widen like a mouth, Until the broken heavens streamed apart, Like torn lost banners, and the immortal fires, Roaring like lions, asked their meat from God. I lay there, a black blot ...
— Young Adventure - A Book of Poems • Stephen Vincent Benet
... darker and darker with clouds; mists rose in the forests and froze into fine crystals which instantly covered Maciek's sukmana, the child's shawl, and the horses' manes with a crackling crust. The logs became so slippery that his hands could scarcely hold them; the ground was like glass. He looked anxiously towards the setting sun: it was dangerous to return with a heavy load when the roads were in that condition. He crossed himself, put the child into ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... was no sound in the little room, save the crackling of the fire in the fire-place, and the sound of a stick that had burned in two, falling in ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... beans, Wherewith ye make those merry scenes, When as ye choose your king and queen, And cry out, 'Hey for our town green.' Of ash-heaps in the which ye use Husbands and wives by streaks to choose: Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds A plenteous harvest to your grounds; Of these, and such like things, for shift, We send instead of New-year's gift. Read then, and when your faces shine With bucksome meat and cap'ring wine, Remember ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... hush of the breathless morning On the thin, tin, crackling roofs, To the haze of the burned back-ranges And the dust of the shoeless hoofs— To the risk of a death by drowning, To the risk of a death by drouth— To the men of a million acres, To the Sons of the ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... hard lines on the philanthropists sometimes when they happened to be working in inhabited houses of the better sort. They always had to go in and out by the back way, generally through the kitchen, and the crackling and hissing of the poultry and the joints of meat roasting in the ovens, and the odours of fruit pies and tarts, and plum puddings and sage and onions, were simply maddening. In the back-yards of these houses there were usually huge stacks of empty beer, stout and wine ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... plains of the Andes, where the search would actually commence, and perhaps success was close at hand. He thought of Captain Grant and his two sailors, and their deliverance from cruel bondage. As these visions passed rapidly through his mind, every now and then he was roused by the crackling of the fire, or sparks flying out, or some little jet of flame would suddenly flare up and illumine the ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... throwing a rather longer line than usual to reach a little dark piece of crisp water that Lord Dennis heard the swishing and crackling of someone advancing at full speed. He frowned slightly, feeling for the nerves of his fishes, whom he did not wish startled. The invader was Miltoun, hot, pale, dishevelled, with a queer, hunted look on his face. He stopped on seeing his great-uncle, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... a deep, valley whence arose the bluish glare of what seemed to be a countless number of enormous, burning mounds; and after drawing nigh, I knew by their howling that they were men piled mountains high with terrible flames crackling through them. "That hollow," said the Angel, "is the abode of those who after committing some heinous deeds, exclaim: 'Well, I am not the first—I have plenty of companions,' and thus thou see'st they have plenty, to verify their words and add to their affliction." Opposite ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... burning log, for a blazing dry branch which she carried swiftly to the tree. Then she piled dry grass and dead twigs, logs as heavy as she could carry, bits of brush. The flames licked at the tree, ran up it, seemed to fall away, sprang at it again, hungering. Now and then a long tongue of fire went crackling high up along the side of the tree. Judith went back to a spot where, in a ring of boulders, there was another grassy plot, threw herself down an lay staring at the tongues of fire which were climbing ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... The sudden crackling of the almost static-jammed ultra-wave radio snapped through to his mind. Quickly he began to free himself from ...
— Rescue Squad • Thomas J. O'Hara
... noise, he said, like a bonfire. Those were his very words: like the crackling of a bonfire," finished the soldier, with a ...
— Three John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... were still laughing when they sat down to dinner. Luncheon had been in the sunshine-room, but dinner was served in the dining-room, a big, beautiful apartment all in oak, with a fire crackling at one end. The favors were knots of mistletoe and holly, and a roasted goose held the place of honor upon the table. All were in gayest holiday humor, from the mirthful host to quiet Miss Leatherland, who came far enough out of her shy self to show her friends that ...
— Polly and the Princess • Emma C. Dowd
... bundles of woody fibres which, instead of being laid in straight lines, behave in an erratic manner and are deposited in a twisted form; sometimes it may be caused by the intersection of branches, or possibly by the crackling of the bark pressing on the wood, and thus moving it out of its natural straight course, causing a wavy line ...
— Seasoning of Wood • Joseph B. Wagner
... the stake. My father saw one thus roasted. He said it did touch him with tenderness to see the gallant way she met her fate—cursing and reviling the hooting mob gathered about her, whilst the angry flames, leaping upward, licked her face, caught her locks, crackling about her old gray head. I trow it was a sorry sight, and God be praised, I never ...
— The Witch of Salem - or Credulity Run Mad • John R. Musick
... smiled his darker smile, and the rest grinned sheepishly Grandeur and riches had not spoiled their prince. He was theirs still and he had wanted them. He had sent for them. They gained courage to look around on the spotlessly clean room, on the nurse in her crackling dignity; on the dish of oranges which she promptly handed to them and of which each in awe partook a golden sphere; on the handful of bright flowers that Morton had brought but a few minutes before ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... sadly think Fill, till it raves above the brink, The stream of grief in which I sink,— The flood which naught can stay. Ne'er, brother, ne'er have I complained; Though long by toil and trouble pained, Without a murmur I sustained The woes of woodland life. But fiercer than the flames that rise When crackling wood the food supplies,— Flashing a glow through evening skies,— This sorrow for my wife. Some cruel fiend has seized the prey And torn my trembling love away, While, as he bore her through the skies, She shrieked aloud with frantic cries, In tones of fear which, wild and shrill, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... a sound in the room. Even the coals in the fireplace seemed to take that instant to hush their blithe crackling. Smith's listeners might have been absolutely breathless, they were so rigid. Each had the grotesque fear that he was about to point his finger at Hetty Glynn and call upon her to aaswer to an accusation from ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... met his ears, a little shower of twigs and leaves rained down upon him, and at the same instant a terrific upheaval occurred in the canoe, coil upon coil the vast length of the serpent's body leaped into view, and plunged over the side, there was a violent rustling and crackling of branches for a few seconds as the monster snake writhed its irresistible way through the neighbouring bushes; and then it was gone. And as the last sounds of its hurried retreat died away, Dick Chichester sank helplessly to the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... forget William's presence, because, in spite of his efforts to control himself, his nervousness was apparent. On such occasions his eyes protruded more than ever, and his face had more than ever the appearance of being covered with a thin crackling skin, through which every flush of his volatile blood showed itself instantly. By this time he had shaped so many sentences and rejected them, felt so many impulses and subdued them, that he was a ...
— Night and Day • Virginia Woolf
... stones." At last, after we had traversed a long suite of cold and gloomy apartments, Francis opened the door of a hall in which a fire blazing brightly in the grate offered us as it were a home-like welcome with its pleasant crackling. I felt quite comfortable the moment I entered, but my uncle, standing still in the middle of the hall, looked round him and said in a tone which was so very grave as to be almost solemn, "And so this is to be the justice-hall!" Francis held his candle ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... two youths were grappling together like wild cats, striking, kicking, and biting with no thought except of who should have the best of the battle. They rolled on the floor, now tussling among the crackling faggots, anon pitching soft as one body on the peat dust in the corner, again knocking over a bench and bringing down the tools thereon to the floor with a jingle which might have been heard far out on the loch. They were still ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... with the startled yell of the other party ringing after them, drowned at once by the crackling of the exhaust. Maclaren raised a furtive hand to wipe from his forehead a moisture which was not altogether rain, but immediately grasped the side of the seat again. Straight ahead the road swung up to meet a bridge and dropped sharply away from it on the further side. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... guide he rode out to find for himself how matters stood, and, after a hard and refreshing ride, in the early dawn he was able to see the enemy. There they were on the opposite bank of the Umgusa river, their fires crackling merrily, and they themselves apparently as happy as bean-feasters in Epping Forest. Not long after he had caught sight of these fires and the Matabele going backwards and forwards from the water, Baden-Powell was at the head of two ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... fellows!" he called, between his hands, for the roar of the flames and the crackling of timbers made some sort of trumpet necessary, even at ...
— The High School Left End - Dick & Co. Grilling on the Football Gridiron • H. Irving Hancock
... oil was applied to an old house and saw the flames go crackling up through the rafters. The black smoke curled away across the wasted land and the fire glowed upon the stolid faces of the soldiers and the trembling woman who owned it. To her it was a funeral pyre. Her home endeared by lifetime memories was being offered up on the altar ...
— In the Claws of the German Eagle • Albert Rhys Williams
... zigzag flash ripped open the dark screen, and a crackling peal came rattling over the lead-coloured sea and bellowed past ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... concerned, I might as well have been motoring through New England. But, though an atmosphere of tranquillity and security prevailed down here amid the villages and farm-steads of the plain, I knew that up there among those snow-crowned peaks ahead of us, musketry was crackling, cannon were belching, men were dying. But as we approached the front—though still miles and miles behind the fighting-line—the signs of war became increasingly apparent: base camps, remount depots, automobile parks, aviation schools, aerodromes, hospitals, ...
— Italy at War and the Allies in the West • E. Alexander Powell
... Salem Witchcraft delusion that one Jonathan Singletary, being then in the prison at Ipswich, gave his testimony as to certain fearful occurrences,—a great noise, as of many cats climbing, skipping, and jumping, of throwing about of furniture, and of men walking in the chambers, with crackling and shaking as if the house would fall ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... going on with frightful rapidity. The houses, built of fir-wood, blazed like torches—a hundred and fifty flaming at once. With the crackling of the fire was mingled the yells of the Tartars. The old boatman, getting a foothold on a near piece of ice, managed to shove the raft towards the right bank, by doing which a distance of from three to four hundred feet divided it from the ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... different color here. It tilted and creaked suddenly beneath his feet. He flung himself down upon it and struck it wildly with his fist. "Let me through," he stammered. But the ice resisted him. It made an ominous dry crackling, as if in mockery. It barely resisted him, but it did resist him. And he had no time, no time. He scrambled to his feet again, and it gave way instantly. The other self pounced suddenly upon him and came through with him, and they struggled ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... white weasel... No, it's my father running with my papers. Here he is!... Here he is! Must go; the moon is shining. Must go, look for my papers.... Ah! A flower, a crimson flower—there's Sophia.... Oh, the bells are ringing, the frost is crackling.... Ah, no; it's the stupid bullfinches hopping in the bushes, whistling.... See, the redthroats! Cold.... Ah! here's Asanov.... Oh yes, of course, he's a cannon, a copper cannon, and his gun-carriage is green. That's how it is he's liked. Is it a star has fallen? No, it's an arrow flying.... ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... cut away. Once up, he saw at the foot of a tree a blue mantilla and a black cloak, and not far off a man and woman, walking hand in hand, with their backs turned to the wall, and nearly hidden by the trees. Unluckily, with M. de Monsoreau's weight a stone fell from the wall on the crackling branches with ...
— Chicot the Jester - [An abridged translation of "La dame de Monsoreau"] • Alexandre Dumas
... firing from both armies. As when, on the Fourth of July, you set off a whole bunch of firecrackers, there is at first a crackling roar, and afterward a little explosion here and a little explosion there, so Gettysburg must have sounded to the gods in Olympus. Thunder-clouds begotten of the intense heat rolled across the heavens from east to west, accentuating the streaming ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... loud explosion, followed by a crackling sound, a flash of light, and the Mermaid ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... A steady crackling sound filled his earphones; a grid of light and shadow fluttered on the screen. A thought entered his mind. Maybe he had put too much planet curvature between Astro ...
— The Quantum Jump • Robert Wicks
... hunter, thus, who long has toil'd O'er mountain rude, and forest wild, Turns from the dark and cheerless way, Where howls the savage beast of prey, To where yon curls of smoke aspire, Where briskly burns his crackling fire; Towards his cot delighted moves, Cheer'd by the voice of those he loves, And welcom'd by domestic smiles, Sings ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... McComas might have amended it (though no such lack would have been noted or resented by Johnny himself). Bref, he knew what they all were without going to see. And as for "society," it rustled flimsily, like tissue-paper; bright, in a way, but still thin and crackling. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... the gauze stuck, crackling under the pull of the forceps, blood and puss leaping forward from the cavities as the steady hand of the doctor pulled inch after inch of the gauze to the light. And when one hole was emptied there was another, ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... it made dabs with a pencil at the illustrated plate of the ship's interior organs, and hand over your money. A child could do it, if in funds. At this thought his hand strayed to his trouser-pocket. A musical crackling of bank-notes proceeded from the depths. His quarterly allowance had been paid to him only a short while before, and, though a willing spender, he still retained a goodly portion of it. He rustled the notes again. There was enough in that pocket to buy ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... him dismount, heard the rustle and crackling of twigs under his feet as he approached, and then, feeling that it would be futile to dissemble further, she turned, a smile on ...
— The Range Boss • Charles Alden Seltzer
... steps over the ice to a distant black spot, somewhat more than a mile distant, which they knew to be open water. There, if there were any, the walrus would be found. As they were marching, a very faint crackling noise vibrated through the ice under their feet. They ceased singing. Four of the party paused and would have turned back. Ootah urged them onward. They paced off half a mile. The wind increased in volume and whined dolefully. Their ...
— The Eternal Maiden • T. Everett Harre
... set up on a hill. It was dark, except for one dim light in an upper story. In the shadow of the hedge, Craig silently vaulted the low fence and slipped up the terraces, as noiselessly as an Indian, scarcely crackling a twig or rustling a dead leaf on the ground. He paused as he came to a wing on ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... I heard it too, a rustle of leaves, crackling of twigs, voices and jingling spurs, coming nearer. Then as I rose with a premonition of approaching fate, forth into the clearing stepped my uncle George, my uncle Jervas and my aunt Julia. She was dressed for riding and carried the skirt of her close-fitting habit across her arm, and never ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... cheery confidence which exists almost before the first meeting between men who are neighbours and of the same rank, and the Lady Goda had put in a word now and then, as she sat in the high-backed chair, drying the bright blue cloth skirt of her gown before the crackling logs; and meanwhile, too, young Gilbert, who had his mother's hair and his father's deep-set eyes, walked round and round the solemn little dark- faced girl, who sat upon a settle by herself, clad in a green cloth dress ...
— Via Crucis • F. Marion Crawford
... into the great forest. At last she grew calmer, and asked me to set her down, and, striking a narrow track between the dark trees, we marched along silently and quickly, stopping now and then to listen if we were being followed. We heard nothing but the crackling tread of some nocturnal beast of prey, or the cry of some animal in the agony of death. On coming to an opening in the forest I made a shelter for the night. Atala then threw herself at my feet, and clasped my knees, and again begged me to leave her. ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... red, while the thunder continued to roll below them, and the crackling of the electric flashes was like minute guns. The Snowbird was winging its way along at about seventy-five miles per hour. Wash had gone into the covered galley to prepare breakfast. Jack was still in ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... sparks from the fire-pits flew ever round him, and now and then fell in showers over him. Neither did he hear now the pleasant sound of the voice of kindness; whether it were that it had died away, he knew not, or whether it were that the crackling and roaring of the fierce flames, and the voice of the beasts behind, and his own groans and crying, drowned its soft music, so that he ...
— The Rocky Island - and Other Similitudes • Samuel Wilberforce
... a crashing, crackling, thundering roar rose above the storm, filling the air, and shaking the solid earth till it trembled beneath our horses' feet, as if upheaved by a volcano. Nearer and nearer the sound came, till it seemed ...
— Among the Pines - or, South in Secession Time • James R. Gilmore
... was soon slumbering. Shep continued to guard the fire, and, to keep himself awake, walked up and down the narrow confines of the temporary shelter. He often paused to listen to the roaring of the wind, which, outside of the crackling of the blaze, was the only sound that broke ...
— Guns And Snowshoes • Captain Ralph Bonehill
... a most exhilarating splutter, flaring and crackling all along the edge of the wood, and even attracted the attention of the Boers. All of a sudden there was a furious rush and roar overhead; two or three little cassarina trees and a shower of branches fell to the ground. What on earth could ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... domes! Thy fruitful fields and peaceful homes. The hunter, thus, who long has toil'd O'er mountain rude, and forest wild, Turns from the dark and cheerless way, Where howls the savage beast of prey, To where yon curls of smoke aspire, Where briskly burns his crackling fire; Towards his cot delighted moves, Cheer'd by the voice of those he loves, And welcom'd by domestic smiles, Sings cheerly, and forgets ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... the day all too short, too fleeting. And by night about the crackling camp fire our happy voices, all united, are uplifted in song and roundelay. So, at length, wearied but happy, we seek repose in refreshing slumber until the rising sun or orb of day summons us to fresh ...
— Fibble, D. D. • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... through the crackling underbrush till the trees hid her and the noise of her going died away, till she was so far off that we heard the rain drops drip from the boughs and the horses ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... pounds are we nearer the string-bean state of existence, Mrs. Molly?" he asked me before I had finished tying the blouse, in the nicest voice in the world, fairly crackling with friendship and good humor and hateful things like that. Why I should have wanted him to huff over that letter is more than I can say. But I ...
— The Melting of Molly • Maria Thompson Daviess
... In those intervals of silence the darkness seemed to increase in proportion and grow almost palpable. Yet out of this sightless and soundless void now came the tinkle of a spur's rowels, the dry crackling of saddle leathers, and the muffled plunge of a hoof in the thick carpet of dust and desiccated leaves. Then a voice, which in spite of its matter-of-fact reality the obscurity lent a ...
— In a Hollow of the Hills • Bret Harte
... was gone, and before the crackling logs on the andirons in the library Mary Cary, on her knees, held out her hands to their blaze and nodded ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... fifty yards of them, when the fire was opened upon them; the fire was answered by loud yells, and the savages had already reached to the bottom of the sloping pile of faggots, when the yells and the reports of the muskets were drowned by a much louder report, followed by the crackling and breaking of the cocoa-nut trees, which made both parties start with surprise; another and another followed, the ground was ploughed up, and the ...
— Masterman Ready • Captain Marryat
... the doctor laughing. "Perhaps it would go better, my boy, if the dampers were not shut up tight. All it needs is a little draught,—see?" And in a moment there was a comfortable crackling sound ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... ledge beneath her, and at once perceived that she stood directly over the object of her search. A hole through its roof afforded a passage to the smoke, which, as it blew aside, showed her a clear and cheerful fire crackling and snapping on a rude hearth of stone. The approach to the front of the hut was by a winding path around the point of the rock on which she stood, and by this, she ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... these strips was held closely against the ear, and a loud sound proceeded from it whenever the other slip was touched with the other hand. The strips of brass were next held one in each hand. The induced currents occasioned a muscular tremor in the fingers. Upon placing my forefinger to my ear a loud crackling noise was audible, seemingly proceeding from the finger itself. A friend who was present placed my finger to his ear, but heard nothing. I requested him to hold the strips himself. He was then distinctly conscious of a noise (which I was unable to perceive) ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... bacon into a frying-pan. The weight of his loss was in the tired packer's eyes and face and the listless droop of his shoulders. John Aldous, with three hours between the blankets to his credit, was as cheery as the crackling fire itself. He had wanted to whistle for the last half-hour. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... could see a deep, valley whence arose the bluish glare of what seemed to be a countless number of enormous, burning mounds; and after drawing nigh, I knew by their howling that they were men piled mountains high with terrible flames crackling through them. "That hollow," said the Angel, "is the abode of those who after committing some heinous deeds, exclaim: 'Well, I am not the first—I have plenty of companions,' and thus thou see'st they have plenty, to verify their words and add to their affliction." Opposite this was a ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne
... invisible reproducer came a sharp, metallic crackling like machine-gun bullets rattling on a tin roof. The sparks on the screen became violently agitated, pushing around in erratic circles and ellipses. They glowed constantly in shades of bright green through the blues into the deep ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... pointed to the line of the horizon, which had hitherto been of grey, lead-coloured vapour. It was now becoming reddish in the south-west quarter, and the vapour had taken the appearance of smoke. At the same time we heard a sort of distant crackling, like a heavy running-fire of musketry, and which was repeated at short intervals. Each time it was heard, our horses appeared ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... "O'er crackling ice, o'er gulfs profound, With nimble glide the skaters play; O'er treacherous pleasure's flow'ry ground Thus lightly ...
— Anecdotes of the late Samuel Johnson, LL.D. - during the last twenty years of his life • Hester Lynch Piozzi
... for a loud crackling sound came from the place he had so lately left, and, to his horror, he saw the wreck crumble away and begin to sink steadily beneath the surface, long rafters raising their ends in the air and then diving down out of sight, while several shot by him, one of which he seized and held on to, ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... into the apartment in stately fashion, her black silk gown crackling pleasantly as she walked, and seated herself very primly, as befitted her ancestry and bringing-up, in one of the stiff, high-backed chairs. And presently the parson, his garden clothes off and his best coat on, came in hurriedly to ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... flying snow, and leave us staring blindly into vacancy. A long fringe of icicles hung round the visor of my cap, and my clothes, drenched with the heavy rain of the previous day, froze into a stiff crackling armour of ice upon my body. Blinded by the snow, with benumbed limbs and chattering teeth, I mounted my horse and let him go where he would, only entreating the guide to hurry and get down somewhere off from this exposed ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... stones for his own palaces. Even in his descriptive passages the dream-character of his scenery is notorious; it is not the clear, recognisable scenery of Wordsworth, but a landscape that hovers athwart the heat and haze arising from his crackling fantasies. The materials for such visionary Edens have evidently been accumulated from direct experience, but they are recomposed by him into such scenes as never had mortal eye beheld. "Don't you wish you had?" as Turner said. The ...
— Shelley - An Essay • Francis Thompson
... Moss, Rotha was then sitting alone, save for the silent presence of the unconscious Mrs. Ray. The day's work was done. It had been market day, and Willy Ray had not returned from Gaskarth. The old house was quiet within, and not a breath of wind was stirring without. There was no sound except the crackling of the dry boughs on the fire and the hollow drip ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... him, there was a moment of silence. The steps of the child and his companion were heard on the frozen gravel, and dying away, left no sound save the crackling of the fire, the chirps of the sparrows on the eaves, the distant pianos, and an indistinct murmur of voices—the ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... it was gone. From somewhere in another direction came a sharp, continual, crackling fusillade, like the snapping of dry bamboo-joints in a fire. The unstirring night grew heavier with the smell of burnt gunpowder. But Rudolph, sitting in the mud, felt only that his eyes were dry and leaden ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... least breath of air drove waves of gold. The light was so intense that the golden tone of the grain whitened in places and became silvery. In the rich mud of the Nile the grain had grown strong, straight, and high like javelins, and never had a richer harvest, flaming and crackling with heat, been outspread in the sun. The crop was abundant enough to fill up to the ceiling the range of vaulted granaries which ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... and I had a very soft and pleasant bed, so I soon fell into a heavy sleep. But I waked up at the slightest noise. Once Miss Laura turned in bed, and another time Miss Bessie laughed in her sleep, and again, there were queer crackling noises in the frosty limbs of the trees outside, that made me start up ...
— Beautiful Joe • Marshall Saunders
... conflagration of 1872; to my own congregation in the fiery downfall of the Tabernacle. Some saw in the flames that roared through its organ pipes a requiem, nothing but unmitigated disaster, while others of us heard the voice of God, as from Heaven, sounding through the crackling thunder of that awful day, saying, "He shall baptise you with the Holy ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... everything—both my husband's luggage and mine—was being taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if she ought to put a light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . no . . . yes," and presently I heard the fire crackling. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... and the hemlocks began to sob they had not returned. The little man sat close to his companion, the campfire, and encouraged it with logs. He puffed fiercely at a heavy built brier, and regarded a thousand shadows which were about to assault him. Suddenly he heard the approach of the unknown, crackling the twigs and rustling the dead leaves. The little man arose slowly to his feet, his clothes refused to fit his back, his pipe dropped from his mouth, his knees smote each other. "Hah!" he bellowed hoarsely in menace. A growl replied and a bear paced into the light ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... were a nobler occupation; weaving ropes of sand were better sport. The only things that are worth writing are inexpressible, and can't be written. The only things that can be written are obvious and worthless—the very crackling of thorns under a pot. Oh, why ...
— The Cardinal's Snuff-Box • Henry Harland
... body is left for our inspection. A mere suicide would not have caused him to send for me. As to the release of the lady, it would appear that she has been locked in her room during the tragedy. We are moving in high life, Watson, crackling paper, 'E.B.' monogram, coat-of-arms, picturesque address. I think that friend Hopkins will live up to his reputation, and that we shall have an interesting morning. The crime was committed before twelve ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... large, yet had a snug and cozy look, with its inviting little tables and chairs scattered irregularly over its red brick floor, and its great fire flaming and crackling in the wide chimney. It was a comfortable place to be in on such chilly and blustering March nights as these, and a goodly company had taken shelter there, and were sipping their wine in contentment and gossiping one with another in a neighborly ...
— Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc - Volume 1 (of 2) • Mark Twain
... determined to have some fire; and summoning her ancient negress, the contrast of whose polished ebony and whose crimson turban had been at first a source of satisfaction to her, she made arrangements for the production of a crackling flame. This old woman's name was Azarina. The Baroness had begun by thinking that there would be a savory wildness in her talk, and, for amusement, she had encouraged her to chatter. But Azarina was dry and prim; her conversation was anything but African; she reminded Eugenia ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... amended it (though no such lack would have been noted or resented by Johnny himself). Bref, he knew what they all were without going to see. And as for "society," it rustled flimsily, like tissue-paper; bright, in a way, but still thin and crackling. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... floundering through the snow, she reached the spot. A large pile of dry wood had already been collected by her husband and was ready for lighting, and in a few moments the heroic woman was warming her shivering limbs before a fire which blazed far up through the crackling branches and lighted the ...
— Woman on the American Frontier • William Worthington Fowler
... sacred word of honour," said the beast, casually scorching an eagle that flew by into ashes. The cinders fell, jingling and crackling, round the prince ...
— Prince Prigio - From "His Own Fairy Book" • Andrew Lang
... pines at the very edge of the river forming as picturesque a camp-ground as I have ever seen. A brilliant moon hung over the canyon, lighting up the foam of the water in strong contrast to the red fire crackling its accompaniment to the roar of the rapid. A lunar rainbow danced fairy-like in the mists rising from the turmoil of the river. The night air was calm and mild. Prof. read aloud from Hiawatha and ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... was the very world of the old print, only suffused with sunlight and colour, and bubbling with merry noises. What a scene it was! A square enclosed in fantastic painted buildings, and peopled with a throng as fantastic: a bawling, laughing, jostling, sweating mob, parti-coloured, parti-speeched, crackling and sputtering under the hot sun like a dish of fritters over a kitchen fire. Tony, agape, shouldered his way through the press, aware at once that, spite of the tumult, the shrillness, the gesticulation, there was no undercurrent of clownishness, ...
— The Descent of Man and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... Wabigoon soon followed their companion's example, and half an hour later nothing but the crackling of the fire disturbed the stillness of the camp. Mukoki was as regular as clockwork in his rising, and an hour before dawn he was up and preparing breakfast. When his young comrades aroused themselves they found the ducks they had shot the preceding day roasting on spits over the fire, and ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... condemned cell maintained his firmness, resolutely asserting his innocence of any capital crime and persistently refusing to give up his band. As a last motive of confession, the paper written by Gabriel Le Noir upon his death-bed was shown him. He laughed a loud, crackling laugh, and said that was all true, but that he, for his part, never had intended to harm a hair of Capitola's head; that he had taken a fancy to the girl when he had first seen her, and had only wanted to carry her off and force her into a marriage with himself; ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... was at its height about midnight, and had reached a large tree in a line with our house, when the wind from the lake caught and drove it back. The underbrush soon burnt out, but the trees were like pillars of flame, crackling and roaring in the silent night, till they fell with a crash to the ground. Half roused by the noise, old Cahill would mutter something about keeping watch until the master came home. The old fellow had wrapped himself in his great-coat, and was sitting on a chair in the yard ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... abuse of NERO, that when Rome was in flame he accompanied the crackling of doors and rafters with his very best fiddle. We grant this showed a want of fine sympathy on the part of NERO; there was, nevertheless, a boldness, an exhibition of nerve, in such instrumentation. Any way, it leaves us with a higher respect for NERO than if he had been found playing on the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... dwell; Neglected, or unfortunate, they called me; Of joy incapable, or ignorant, To think my lot the common lot of all, Mankind, the partner in my misery. At length, amid the odor of cigars, The crackling sound of dainty pastry, and The orders loud for ices and for drinks, 'Midst clinking glasses, and 'midst brandished spoons, The daily light of the gazettes flashed full On my dim eyes. I saw and recognized The public joy, and the felicity Of human destiny. The lofty state ...
— The Poems of Giacomo Leopardi • Giacomo Leopardi
... Richard pushed the crackling, stiffly-folded parchments, the letters frayed and yellow with age, the broken-backed, discoloured diaries and order-books, away from him, and sat, his elbows on the table, his chin in his hands, thinking. And the travail of his spirit was great, as it needs must ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... counted ten and threw up the sponge. The voice at the telephone became louder and more insistent. Flushed, hot and flurried, the G.S.O.3 thrust the receiver into the hands of the G.S.O.2, who handed it on to the General, who dropped it. Nobody spoke. Only the crackling and cackling voice could be heard from the receiver as it hung face downwards at the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Dec. 19, 1917 • Various
... to laugh sometimes—wisely if one can; if not, quocumque modo! There are seasons when even "the crackling of thorns under a pot" has its uses. It seems to warm the pot—all the pots—and all the emptiness thereof, if they ...
— Peter Ibbetson • George du Marier et al
... only their appearance and their character to his satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think the conversation never ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... daughter Mary stayed to guard the little children, because it was not safe there from wolves. We therefore made a blazing fire, sat ourselves around it, and heard the little folks say the Ten Commandments, when there was a rustling and crackling behind us, and my daughter jumped up and ran into the cavern, crying, "Proh dolor hostis!" [Our author afterwards explains the learned education of the maiden.] But it was only some of the able-bodied men who had stayed behind in the village, and who now came to ...
— Sidonia The Sorceress V2 • William Mienhold
... on the water and a long drive are excellent preparatives for a supper of broad rice-waffles toasted crisp and brown before the crackling hickory fire, of smoking spare-ribs and luscious tripe, of rich, fragrant Java coffee with boiled milk and cream; nor does a sound night's sleep unfit one for enjoying at breakfast a repetition of the same, substituting link sausages and black pudding ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 17, - No. 97, January, 1876 • Various
... while he grasped the abominable thing, wavering whether he should not put his son to death for an unnatural young monster, when the crackling scorching his fingers, as it had done his son's, and applying the same remedy to them, he in his turn tasted some of its flavor, which, make what sour mouths he would for pretense, proved not altogether displeasing to him. ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Vol. V (of X) - Great Britain and Ireland III • Various
... distant sounds from the village street round the corner, the chiming of the church clock, the crackling of the fire close beside her—she heard everything there was to hear, with unusual sharpness of ...
— Marcella • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... around the crack in the door and the air was hot and suffocating. Somewhere the sound of crackling, snapping wood, the lurid ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... seized his horn, which lay near, and blew thereon three shrill notes that echoed against the trees. A moment of silence ensued, and then was heard the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs like the coming of many men; and forth from the glade burst a score or two of stalwart yeomen, all clad in Lincoln green, like Robin, with good Will Stutely and the widow's three ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... way for the on-coming storm. Drop by drop, spattering, dashing, and at last crashing, comes the storm, the gathering gloom rent with the lightning, the "fire that ran along upon the ground," and the music fairly quivering and crackling with the wrath of the elements. But the storm passes, the gloom deepens, and we are lost in that vague, uncertain combination of tones where voices and instruments seem to be groping about, comprised in the marvellously expressive chorus, ...
— The Standard Oratorios - Their Stories, Their Music, And Their Composers • George P. Upton
... entered my room with a lighted candle in my hand, there came an awful crash at the window—the glass and framework were shivered to atoms, and in the current of air that rushed through the room, my light went out. Then there came a crackling, breaking sound from the branches of the old apple tree beneath my window; then a scraping on the bricks and window-ledge; then more splintering of glass and window-frame: the blind broke away at the top, and my toilet ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... it off and handed it to him. He took it and read the words, "You—told—a—lie." This was the bitterest moment in his life. He was only to know one more bitter, and it would come soon. He weighed the ring up and down in his palm and laughed a dry, crackling laugh. ...
— An Unpardonable Liar • Gilbert Parker
... his hand; perhaps meditating on the same subject. He had ceased drinking at a point below irrationality, and had neither stirred nor spoken during two or three hours. There was no sound through the house but the moaning wind, which shook the windows every now and then, the faint crackling of the coals, and the click of my snuffers as I removed at intervals the long wick of the candle. Hareton and Joseph were probably fast asleep in bed. It was very, very sad: and while I read I sighed, for it seemed ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... to the chair for murder, what good will it do Eve?" asked Smith. His lips were crackling ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... forest thick about him Bobby realized that he was no longer alone. A crackling twig or a loose stone struck by a foot might have warned him. He went slower, glancing restlessly over his shoulder. He saw no one, but that idea of stealthy pursuit persisted. Undoubtedly it was the detective, Howells, who followed him, hoping, perhaps, ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... under the covers, and all the shades were down, Jane stepped into the school-room, leaving the door slightly ajar. She snapped on the lights above the school-room table. Then Gwendolyn heard the crackling of a news-paper. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... slew with his two forefeet and trunk. Indeed, the beast moved like the wheel of Death. Slaying men adorned with steel coats of mail, along with their horses and foot-soldiers, the chief of the Magadhas caused these to be pressed down into the earth, like thick reeds pressed down with crackling sounds, by means of that mighty and foremost of elephants belonging to him. Then Arjuna, riding on that foremost of cars, rushed quickly towards that prince of elephants in the midst of that host teeming with thousands ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... to do," said Archie, "is to let me go and see him, taking the stuff in crackling bills. I'll roll them about on the table in front of him. That'll fetch him!" He prodded Mr. Brewster encouragingly with a roll. "I'll tell you what to do. Give me three thousand of the best and crispest, and I'll undertake to buy that shop. It ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... step, as though fearful they would be stopped and punished, one or the other turned his head. But no one halted them. With quickening footsteps the bears, now almost at a gallop, plunged forward. The next instant they were lost to sight, and only the crackling of the underbrush told that they ...
— The Nature Faker • Richard Harding Davis
... Pot boiled and bubbled over the crackling flames. Fat and lean, sweet and bitter, had gone to fill it, and all seethed merrily together. "Hubble ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... snapped above him, he stepped aside and barely from under the feet of the leaders as a long team wound by with the freight wagon creaking and swaying and rumbling behind it. The driver leaned from his seat in passing and volleyed a few crackling remarks in the very ear of Terry. It was strange that he did not resent it. Ordinarily he would have wanted to, climb onto that seat and roll the driver down in the dust, but today he lacked ambition. Pain numbed him, ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... this morning, and it is well that my banana clump has all the shelter of the gunyah, or its graceful leaves would suffer. The big cabbage palm outside the verandah makes a curious, dry, parchment-like crackling in the wind. But the three silver tree-ferns have a cool, swishing note, very pleasing to the ear; while for the bush trees beyond, theirs is the steady music of the sea on a sandy beach. I fancy this wind must be a shade too boisterous to be good for ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... Cintimba and the San Pedro, on the 28th of September 1789, a whole tract of ground, from three to four miles in extent, surged up like a foam-bubble, or the swell of a wave, to a height of upwards of 500 feet. Flames, lurid and crackling, broke forth over a surface of more than half a square league; and the earth, as if softened by heat, was seen to rise and sink like the rolling tide. Vast chasms opened in the earth, into which the two rivers poured their waters headlong; reappearing afterwards at no great distance ...
— The Story of the Herschels • Anonymous
... quite dusk when they entered the house again, and when the little girl returned to the study, after Chloe had taken off her wrappings, she found her father seated in an easy-chair, drawn up on one side of a bright wood fire that was blazing and crackling on ...
— Holidays at Roselands • Martha Finley
... sound in the room. Even the coals in the fireplace seemed to take that instant to hush their blithe crackling. Smith's listeners might have been absolutely breathless, they were so rigid. Each had the grotesque fear that he was about to point his finger at Hetty Glynn and call upon her to aaswer to ...
— The Hollow of Her Hand • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the beeches, passing at once on to a crackling carpet of old beech-mast and half rotten leaves, while all around him the great trees sent up their wonderfully clean, even-lined trunks, and boughs laden with dark green leaves, and the bronzy brown-red cases of the tiny triangular nuts, the former ready now ...
— The Weathercock - Being the Adventures of a Boy with a Bias • George Manville Fenn
... "HOOD heard a noise as of quickly moved musket-balls, and a slight crackling sound during an aurora. He also noticed the same noise on ...
— New and Original Theories of the Great Physical Forces • Henry Raymond Rogers
... the left the ribbon of road glistened white between the sentinel poplars silhouetted against the sky. The hot smell of the earth filled the air like spice. A thousand elfin sounds, the vibration of leaves, the tiny crackling of cornstalks, the fairy whirr of ground insects, melted ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... rocked and danced. The four hosemen staggered as the stream ripped from the nozzle, crackling like pistol discharges. There was no question as to Uncle Trufant's ability to get the most out of the ancient pride of ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... was sitting on the edge of my bed cudgelling my brains, I heard without a crackling of whips and pounding and scraping of horses' feet up the rocky path beyond the courtyard. With joy I hurried to the window, and saw drive into the yard two great leiter-wagons, each drawn by eight sturdy horses, and at the head of each pair a Slovak, with his wide hat, ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... de Gloria, I could not persuade myself to go as far as the Plaza, to see the Iscariots explode. At a distance we listened to the hissing and crackling of the fireworks, the ringing of all the bells, and the thundering of artillery; and knew by the hum of busy voices, and the rolling of carriages, that the Holy Week was numbered with ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca
... to invite volunteers amongst our respected readers to send in little statements of the lies which they know have been told about themselves: what a heap of correspondence, what an exaggeration of malignities, what a crackling bonfire of incendiary falsehoods, might we not gather together! And a lie once set going, having the breath of life breathed into it by the father of lying, and ordered to run its diabolical little course, lives with ...
— English Satires • Various
... and what materials could fancy find so effective as the exciting experiences of the last Autumn? Sitting before the great open fireplace in the evenings, while her mother dozed in the chimney corner, and the silence was only broken by the purring of the cat, the crackling of the fire, the ticking of the clock, and the low noise heard through the partition, of men talking over their cups with her father in the back room of the store, she fell into reveries from which she would be roused by the thick, ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... himself on a truss of straw beside his father, and thought he had never enjoyed a meal so much, in his life, as the bread and cold chicken, eaten as they were in the open air in front of the crackling fire. Each was provided with a horn, and these ...
— Orange and Green - A Tale of the Boyne and Limerick • G. A. Henty
... through the underscrub, until we finally reached a spot where, peering out from behind the trunk of a big baobab, we were able to catch an occasional glimpse of an enormous grey mass moving slowly among the trees, while the sound of swishing and snapping branches, the crackling of the undergrowth as the creature moved from time to time, and an occasional low grunt of satisfaction told us how near we were to our quarry. Luckily, too, for us, the wind was in exactly the right direction—that is to say, it was blowing from the elephant toward us, so that instead of him ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... their heads, and covered their faces with their hands; the yellow flames began to climb upward among the snapping and crackling faggots, and wreaths of blue smoke to stream away on the wind; the clergyman lifted his hands and began a prayer—just then two young girls came flying through the great gate, uttering piercing screams, and threw ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... there was a crackling and trampling of heavy feet coming up toward us through the under-wood in a deep dip of the ground. I knew that step as well as she knew it. 'Here I am,' she said, in a faint little voice. I kept behind the trees a few yards off, in some doubt on which side Armadale would come out of ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... say what—caused her to bend still lower, and put her ear to his chest. She heard within that mysterious box a rapid succession of thin, dry, crackling sounds: sounds such as she would have produced by rubbing her hair between her fingers close to her ear. The crepitation ceased, then recommenced, and she perceived that it coincided with the intake of his breath. He coughed; the sounds were intensified; ...
— The Old Wives' Tale • Arnold Bennett
... dark, cool, and quiet. The heavens were starry bright. A faint breeze brought the tiny crackling of the wheat. From far distant came the bay of a hound. The road stretched away pale and yellow into the gloom. In the silence and loneliness and darkness, in all around him, and far across the dry, whispering fields, there ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey
... against the ever-invading gloom, flickered for an instant over the brighter and more prominent objects in the room, then dropped back again into darkness. The profound silence was only interrupted by those weird house-noises which live in the death of night and die in the life of day; by that sudden crackling in the wall, by that mysterious creaking in the furniture, by those still small ghostly sounds from inanimate bodies, which we have all been startled by, over and over again, while lingering at our book after the rest of the family are asleep in bed, while waiting up ...
— Hide and Seek • Wilkie Collins
... could not be said, there was seen to be a serpent of flame swiftly stealing along the Elevated's track. A tiny frill of fire, under a feathery cloud of smoke, ran down the wooden ties; sharp crackling sounds were heard; and a moment later the frame roof of the raised depot burst into light. One would hardly have thought that there was here sufficient fuel to jeopardize greatly the stout stone walls of the South Station itself; even to the firemen, skilled in such matters, risking their ...
— White Ashes • Sidney R. Kennedy and Alden C. Noble
... forever. There was nothing unmaidenly in that. Mark would understand her. Mark had always understood her. And so she cheered her heavy heart through the breakfast hour, and the foolish jesting of the two that sounded to her anxious ears, in the language of scripture, like the "crackling of thorns ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... first and then more boldly upon the young flame, which was daintily nursed and fed, and fed more plentifully when it gained good strength. At last a whole armful of dry bushes was piled up over the fire, and presently, with a loud cheery crackling and crackling, a royal tall blaze shot up from the earth and showed me once more the shapes and faces of my men, and the dim outlines of the horses and mules that stood ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... roars of the jungle were seldom heard from our camp. Every day saw new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen, or half suspended in their rigging of lianas. The leaves withered, the flower petals fell and we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wind. Then the pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us; now a baby flying lemur, flung from its hole by the falling of some tree; young tupaias, nestling birds; a few out of the thousands of creatures ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... again in crisp and crackling language. When at last his vocabulary was exhausted, he turned savagely upon ...
— Steve Yeager • William MacLeod Raine
... knelt, for there was plenty of dead wood lying about. As the blaze grew I rose to my feet and, dragging larger wood, piled it on. A sort of joyful mania took possession of me as I watched the great tongues of flames shooting skyward and listened to the crackling of the burning wood, and I stood back and laughed. I had triumphed over fate and the elements. Our arms, our clothing, nearly all our food, our axes and our paddles, and even the means of making new paddles were gone, but for ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... herself like a child, listening to this dust crackling under her little feet, wished to hold ...
— Doctor Pascal • Emile Zola
... boisterous, and rough. Nothing had settled into the conventional grooves of habit. The whole community was fearless in its gayety. It had not learned to affect the sobriety and demureness of stupidity lest its frivolity should be likened to the crackling ...
— Eugene Field, A Study In Heredity And Contradictions - Vol. I • Slason Thompson
... indication of the waning moonlight outside the red-curtained, circular windows high above him, and a fainter speck of glowing cinder, left behind in the recently emptied furnace. He heard nothing, either, save a very faint crackling of the expiring ashes in that furnace. Presently even that minute sound died down, the one speck of light went out, and the silence and ...
— The Chestermarke Instinct • J. S. Fletcher
... been, I think, about the middle of October, for I remember that the sycamores were almost bare in the Luxembourg Gardens that morning, and the terrace about the queens of France were strewn with crackling brown leaves. The fat red roses, out the summer long on the stand of the old flower woman at the corner, had given place to dahlias and purple asters. First glimpses of autumn toilettes flashed from the carriages; wonderful little bonnets nodded at ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... the bushes about twenty feet below, and Wilier, who directed the defense, whispered that Tayoga and he would take aim, while Robert held his fire in reserve. Then the Onondaga and he picked their targets in the darkness and pulled trigger. Shouts, the fall of bodies and the crackling of rifles came back. A half dozen bullets, fired almost at random, whistled over their heads and then Robert sent his own lead at a shadow which appeared very clearly among the bushes, a ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... sanctifies all honest betrothals. Possible calamity weighed lightly upon her. We know that when the columns of battle-smoke leave the field, they journey through the heavy air to a thousand quiet homes, and play about the crackling blaze of as many firesides. But Lizzie's vision was never clouded. Mrs. Ford might gaze into the thickening summer dusk and wipe her spectacles; but her companion hummed her old ballad-ends with an unbroken voice. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... a crescendo of booming, crackling noises behind. Something else exploded dully. But he should be far enough away ...
— Space Platform • Murray Leinster
... for the crackling of the fire. Not a man cried out. All waited in hopeless expectancy. And then came a mighty yell from Northerner and Southerner alike, for Johnnie came crawling out of the end of the covered way—he had actually passed through that frightful place—and his clothes were ablaze, and ...
— Acres of Diamonds • Russell H. Conwell
... on which Darby Dene's eyes rested when the party halted at the hollow where the Satellite Circus Company had made their headquarters for the night. Within the shelter of the firs a fire of crackling sticks was burning brightly. Hanging over the flame, suspended by an iron chain from the centre of three crossed metal bars, swung a big black pot, from which there came such a savoury smell that, in spite of his disappointment over the break in their journey, ...
— Two Little Travellers - A Story for Girls • Frances Browne Arthur
... truth of old, when, amid thoughts of thee, I asked, 'Loves she, loves she not?' and the poppy petal clung not, and gave no crackling sound, but withered on my smooth forearm, ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... fire. The generous hickory logs seemed to open their arms to them. In a few seconds great panting streams of fire leaped up and rushed out of our sight, bearing with them all that was perishable of Esther Wynn's letters. Just as the crackling shadowy shapes were falling apart and turning black, my uncle sprang to an Indian cabinet which stood near, and seizing a little box of incense-powder which had been brought from China by his brother, he shook a few grains of it into the fire. A pale, ...
— Saxe Holm's Stories • Helen Hunt Jackson
... from the huge rocks. A strong breeze sprang up, and we were delighted—when we saw, fast approaching, a dense black and white cloud rolling, as it were, along the ground. As it got nearer there were such loud crackling and explosions that it seemed like the volleys of musketry in a battle. My horses and mules pricked up their ears, lifting their heads high—sniffing, neighing, and braying. They became restless. Before we had time to realize what was ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... he stepped through the door into the darkness; then her head dropped into the support of her hands. There was silence except for the crackling of the fire, until Neb moved uneasily. At the sound the girl looked up, seeing clearly the good-natured face ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish
... piercing cries, flapping the air as if with great leathern bat-like wings, or bestriding black, monstrous, misshapen steeds. Fantastical and grotesque were these objects, yet hideous and appalling. Now and then a red and fiery star would whiz crackling through the air, and then exploding break into numerous pale phosphoric lights, that danced awhile overhead, and then flitted away among the ruins. The ground seemed to heave and tremble beneath the footsteps, as if the graves were opening to give forth their dead, while toads and hissing ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... could reach the prairie. I had chosen to pass the hours of waiting in the wagon, feeling that I could better protect my dear little baby in this way. So when all the tired ones were still, and the silence only broken by the crackling of the burning fagots, the occasional falling of a dry twig or branch from the bare, ghostly looking trees about us, the hooting of an owl, the dismal howlings of the wolves in the forest, I sat there looking at the weary forms so illy protected from the cold, ...
— 'Three Score Years and Ten' - Life-Long Memories of Fort Snelling, Minnesota, and Other - Parts of the West • Charlotte Ouisconsin Van Cleve
... of the windows, the trio found their host, already in evening dress. Bristow was idling on the hearth with no more immediate concern than a cigarette and the enjoyment of the crackling logs, ...
— The Lighted Match • Charles Neville Buck
... thousands of armed Americans by whom he was threatened and encircled, could fire upon the flag of their own native Country. He and his garrison of seventy men, were soon to learn the bitter truth, amid a tempest of bursting shot and shell, the furnace-heat of crackling walls, and suffocating volumes of dense smoke produced by an ...
— The Great Conspiracy, Complete • John Alexander Logan
... exquisites were whispering like pigeons in a dovecot, exchanging snuff-boxes, and ogling the women. So intolerable it grew that the Doctor paused in his discourse and sternly rebuked them, speaking of the laughter of fools which is as the crackling of thorns under a pot. This silenced them for a little, but the noise broke out during the last prayer, and with the final word of the Benediction my gentlemen thrust their way through the congregation, ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... the galley and get into the open water beyond. This course brought the pirates ever closer and closer to the man-of-war, which now began to add its thunder to the din of the battle, and with so much more effect that at every discharge you might hear the crashing and crackling of splintered wood, and now and then the outcry or groaning of some man who was hurt. Indeed, had it been daylight, they must at this juncture all have perished, though, as was said, what with the night and the confusion and the hurry, they escaped entire destruction, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... silence reigned; not a sound broke the awful solemnity of the occasion, excepting the crackling of the fragrant pine limbs used as fuel, and the seething of the flesh as ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... ivory handle Which will have to be turned by hand, through a thousand revolutions, And through a thousand circles it moves the pivot. When you put a kernel in, you will turn the handle with quick hand— No delay—and you will wonder how the crackling kernel is With much grinding quickly reduced to a powder. Once only the lower compartment receives on its kindly bosom The crushed grains, which are placed in the very ...
— All About Coffee • William H. Ukers
... the left, and the Lancers, breaking into a trot, began to cross the Dervish front in column of troops. Thereupon and with one accord the blue-clad men dropped on their knees, and there burst out a loud, crackling fire of musketry. It was hardly possible to miss such a target at such a range. Horses and men fell at once. The only course was plain and welcome to all. The Colonel, nearer than his regiment, already saw what lay behind the skirmishers. He ordered, 'Right wheel into ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... suddenly heard close to me staggering footsteps and a stifled groan, accompanied by the hard panting of a man who laboured with a heavy load. That they were coming my way was evident by the crackling of the underwood and the impatience of the horse. What a year did those two minutes seem as I waited there, sword ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... and his frenzied cries were at last answered. The great bell overhead ceased ringing suddenly,—and its cessation created an effect of silence even amid the noise of the crackling fire and the continued grave music of the organ. Then came a quick tramp of many feet—a hubbub of voices—and loud battering knocks at the chapel door. Ambrosio ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... crashing of small twigs, the thing was gone. In childhood, Bruce had been told many stories of ghosts and goblins by his Irish nurse. He had never overcome his dread of them. But it was with the utmost difficulty that he suppressed a shout. Then he laughed softly, for the crackling twigs told him he had seen a creature of flesh and blood, no ghost. He chuckled again and far in the dark a hoot-owl seemed to answer him and his company was a ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... overcoats waited hungrily about for a job or scraps of food. After leaving Wolvehoek, we entered on Commandant De Wet's hunting-ground and the scene of his recent exploits. There, at almost every culvert, at every ganger's house, were pickets of soldiers, all gathered round a crackling fire at that chill morning hour; and at every one of these posts freshly constructed works of sandbags and deep trenches were in evidence to denote that their sentry work was no ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... His promise at the end of time in all His heavenly glory, and which will be sudden 'as lightning flashing from east to west.' No, He visited His children only for a moment, and there where the flames were crackling round the heretics. In His infinite mercy He came once more among men in that human shape in which He walked among men for three years fifteen centuries ago. He came down to the 'hot pavements' of the southern town in which on the day before almost a hundred heretics had, ad majorem ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... to think, threw the packet on the fire; even turning aside, lest the flames, while destroying, should reveal anything of the secret. Only once, forgetting herself, the crackling fire made her start and turn, and she caught a momentary glimpse of some curious foreign ornament; while near it, twisted in the flame into almost life-like motion, was what seemed a long lock of black ...
— Olive - A Novel • Dinah Maria Craik, (AKA Dinah Maria Mulock)
... reply, sought for the key where I knew it was secreted, unlocked the door, and went in. A fine fire was blazing upon the hearth. It was a novelty, and by no means an ungrateful one. I threw off an overcoat, took an armchair by the crackling logs, and awaited patiently the arrival of ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... about eleven o'clock at night ... but I strolled on still with the people.... Suddenly upon the left side of our road, a crackling was heard among the bushes; all of us were alarmed, and in an instant a tiger, rushing out of the jungle, pounced upon the one of the party that was foremost, and carried him off in the twinkling of an eye. The rush of the animal, and the crush of the poor victim's bones in his mouth, and his ...
— The Varieties of Religious Experience • William James
... Priam's noble son were met in arms, And aided, this the Trojans, that the Greeks. High tow'rd the tents uprose the surging sea, As with loud clamour met th' opposing hosts. Less loud the roar of Ocean's wave, that driv'n By stormy Boreas, breaks upon the beach; Less loud the crackling of the flames that rage In the deep forest of some mountain glen; Less loud the wind, to wildest fury rous'd, Howls in the branches of the lofty oaks; Than rose the cry of Trojans and of Greeks, As each, with furious shout, encounter'd ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... almost instantly a volume of smoke rolled up, followed by long tongues of eager flame, which looked strangely pallid and cruel in the afternoon sunshine. A yell broke from the Indians, and then there fell a silence, broken only by the crackling of the flames. The English troops, realizing in a moment what was to occur, bent to their oars with redoubled vigor, thinking to put a stop to the shameless work. And the name of Le Loutre was straightway ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... stone and iron to demolish the walls, but flaming balls of inextinguishable combustibles designed to set fire to the houses. One of these, which passed high through the air like a meteor, sending out sparks and crackling as it went, entered the window of a tower which was used as a magazine of gunpowder. The tower blew up with a tremendous explosion; the Moors who were upon its battlements were hurled into the air, and fell mangled in various parts of the town, and the houses in its vicinity were ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... says, Mary, 'for as the crackling of thorns under a pot, so is the laughter of the fool;' and thee can think of this the next time thee hears the chatter, and then thee can say to thyself, 'It may be nothing but ...
— A Flock of Girls and Boys • Nora Perry
... at hand, recalled him to himself, and turning, he beheld the marquis approaching with mincing manner, the paint and pigments cracked by the artificial smiles wreathing his wrinkled face. In that vast assemblage, amid all the energy, youth and surfeit of vitality, he seemed like a dried and crackling leaf, tossed helplessly, which any foot might crush to dust. The roar of the multitude subsided, a storm dying in the distance; the ladies sank in their seats—butterflies settling once more in the fields—and Leduc, ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... would," said Lord de la Poer; and though Lady Barbara eagerly exclaimed, "Oh! do not think of it; the child does not know what she is talking of. Pray excuse her—" he took out his purse, and from it came a crackling smooth five-pound note, which he put into the hand, saying, "There, my dear, cut that in two, and send the two halves on different days to Mr. Wardour, with my best wishes for his success in his good works. Will ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... were next prepared. A mattress composed of palm-leaves was covered with native cloth made of the paper mulberry-tree, in the same manner as in Otaheite; the sheets were of the same material; and it appeared, from their crackling, that they were quite new from the loom, or rather the beater. The whole arrangement is stated to have been comfortable, and inviting to repose; one interruption only disturbed their first sleep; this was the melody of the evening ...
— The Eventful History Of The Mutiny And Piratical Seizure - Of H.M.S. Bounty: Its Cause And Consequences • Sir John Barrow
... in those days of feudal magnificence. An immense furnace was fed by huge blocks of wood, which the ravening flame seized and in a moment enveloped in its embrace. Forms, grisly and indistinct, flitted past this devouring blaze, by the sputtering and crackling of which, mingled with the hissing delicacies before it, and the shrill scream of the presiding fury, a stranger might be warned of his approach to this pandemonium some time ere its wonders were ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... in answer to his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed into ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... were fairly well educated, and told what they had to tell in a very interesting way. Every once in a while those about the fire would leave to replace some of their companions who had been watching some time, and the men thus relieved would have a new batch of stories to relate. Around the crackling, roaring fire it was very warm and comfortable, and time flew by faster than the boys realized. They had never felt more wide awake in their lives, and they were much surprised when the first faint streaks of dawn in the eastern sky told of ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... little rest, while Maria and I sat up and watched with the old man. All was still except our whispers and his heavy breathing; there was a lamp burning in the next room; when all of a sudden a light shone into the windows, and about the same time we heard a roaring and crackling sound. We looked out, and saw the night all lighted up, as if by some great fire. As it appeared to be on the other side of the house, we ran to the door, and there what did we see but the old meeting-house all in flames! Some fellows had set fire to it to spite Jedwort. It must have been burning ...
— The Man Who Stole A Meeting-House - 1878, From "Coupon Bonds" • J. T. Trowbridge
... almost to the sliding ground when a bush caught at his feet and yanked them from under him with a crackling of branches, and the bottom tread of a flight of stairs swung at his head like a gigantic club. Among the sudden splintering of branches and snapping of vines was a crunching thud which ...
— The Man Who Staked the Stars • Charles Dye
... sheep waking and coughing when there is a great wind from the north. (Shak- ing herself loose. Conchubor makes a sign to Soldiers.) I'm going, surely. In a short space I'll be sitting up with many listening to the flames crackling, and the beams breaking, and I looking on the great blaze will be the end of Emain. [She goes out. CONCHUBOR — looking out. — I see two people in the trees; ...
— Deirdre of the Sorrows • J. M. Synge
... took effect—and then we were upon her. With scarcely any perceptible shock we struck her fair and square amidships, right in the wake of where I judged her boiler-room would be; there was a horrible crackling and rending of wood and iron as our stem sheared into and through her deck, a clamour of yells from the crew as they fought with each other in their mad haste to lower the boats, and the destroyer heeled over until she was almost ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... dense growths of impeding bushes and crackling underbrush, their feet sinking into a thick carpet of soggy, fallen leaves, the two at last reached the top of a steep, rocky elevation. From there, in the fast fading light, they could look down into a narrow valley, formed by the ...
— Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer • Jessie Graham Flower
... instructive political economist and the truant mechanic. But that trick of truly logical behavior seems harder to the man than to the child. For example, I climbed up to my den under the eaves last night—a sour, black sea-fog lying all about, and the December sleet crackling against the window-panes—in order to varnish a certain fly-rod. Now rods ought to be put in order in September, when the fishing closes, or else in April, when it opens. To varnish a rod in December ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... spotted, but after a wait, when we started again, we crawled within a few feet of the real target, now lifeless; he was in khaki and apparently he had strayed from his outfit. During our wait we saw a boche passing through the trees. From the crackling of the brush there seemed to be others. With my lips I made the words "Don't fire" to my runners, and then covered him, in case he saw us. He went by. Realizing that we might have something of a time of it getting through, I motioned the runners to ...
— Winning a Cause - World War Stories • John Gilbert Thompson and Inez Bigwood
... watched the slow torch as it fell. John gave the keeper two whole sous, And Jeanne that smile with which she woos John Brown to folly. So they lose The Paris train. But never mind! — All-Saints are rustling in the wind, And there's an inn, a crackling fire — (It's 'deux-cinquante', but Jeanne's desire); There's dinner, candles, country wine, ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... was just about to join a cavalry regiment; and I could well imagine, when military dignity was added to that gait, how grandly he would go. This young man, of whom I heard nothing more after our half-hour's conversation among the crackling fireworks and roaring cannon, left upon my mind an indescribable impression of dangerousness—of 'something fierce and terrible, eligible to burst forth.' Of men like this, then, were formed the Companies ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... streaming swarm Whistling in their tempest flight; Snap the tall yews 'neath the storm, Like a pine flame crackling bright. Swift though heavy, lo! their crowd Through the heavens rushing loud Like a livid thunder-cloud With its bolt ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
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