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More "Inaudible" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... into the lists in answer to the challenge; and now all clamor was hushed. The Sheriff's daughter, a pale, hard-faced girl, with straw-colored hair and mincing ways, announced in inaudible voice the terms of the contest. The heralds repeated them afterwards in stentorian tones; and the rivals wheeled about, the white knights couching their lances from under the Sheriff's box. The others prepared ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... she almost dragged him forward, and introduced him to her guests. Signor Cesarini returned their salutations with a mixture of bashfulness and hauteur, half-awkward and half-graceful, and muttering some inaudible greeting, sank into a seat and appeared instantly lost in reverie. Maltravers gazed upon him, and was pleased with his aspect—which, if not handsome, was strange and peculiar. He was extremely slight and thin—his ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... a doubtless scathing though, to Carteret, inaudible remark, at which Damaris laughed outright; and the fresh young voices trailed away in the distance alternately mocking ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... a huge banner with "No Surrender" across it, were walking off the ghastly field. Twelve or fourteen years old at most, they disdained to run. They were singing, singing the National Anthem, though their voices were inaudible through the turmoil. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... clashing cymbals, blaring trumpets and pealing organ, the tremendous vault seemed hardly capacious enough for the deafening combination of sound. As a relief came the funeral march of Chopin, the more subdued strains seeming almost inaudible after the tumult of the moment before. Never surely ...
— East of Paris - Sketches in the Gatinais, Bourbonnais, and Champagne • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... is tenderness between them. Their bodies, indeed, seem to have become overtones that mate in a delicious and inaudible melody. But this melody must be brought closer so that its beauty may be more definitely enjoyed. This melody must be played on instruments and not on ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... silence, the lady, as if she had mustered all her energy to perform a desperate act, said to me, in an almost inaudible voice: ...
— The Extraordinary Adventures of Arsene Lupin, Gentleman-Burglar • Maurice Leblanc
... partly inaudible in the roar of the artillery, but Maurice caught their significance clearly enough, and it left him dumfounded by astonishment and alarm. What! Marshal MacMahon wounded since early that morning, General Ducrot commanding in his place for the last two ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... with its graphic and horrible details that even Mr. Fitzgerald-Grenville, the well-known member for the Baroness Drummond-Lloyd (whose rotten or at least decomposing borough of Cherbury Minor he faithfully represented in three successive Parliaments), had mumbled out a few half-inaudible apologetic sentences about this state of things being truly deplorable, and about the necessity for meeting such a distressing social crisis by the prompt and vigorous application of that excellent specific and familiar panacea, ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... while he stood in the woods, silent and listening, was a peculiar swashing noise, which continued a few seconds, followed by the same space of silence—the intervals being as regular as the ticking of a huge pendulum. Accompanying the sound was another, a soft, almost inaudible flow, such as one hears when standing on the bank of a vast stream ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... away, the two women stood silently following their diminishing outlines into the darkness and listening to the creaking of the saddles and the dull regular thud of the horses' feet upon the soft earth, until the sounds grew inaudible, when they turned to the inner shelter of the veranda. Melicent once more possessed herself of the hammock in which she now reclined fully, and Therese sat near enough beside her to intertwine her fingers between ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... just that. 'When we are paying a dollar a look at eggs, what do you mean by sending me two cracked ones out of twelve? To be sure somebody has been sitting on these eggs, but I'll swear it wasn't a hen.' His reply was inaudible, but he was just going out to his wagon, and he was opening up his heart to the butcher boy as I passed. 'I'd give five dollars, poor as I am,' he said, 'for one look at that old woman's face, for she talks for all ...
— At Home with the Jardines • Lilian Bell
... system, and involves us not only in new calculations but in a newer phase of things. At any rate it can do no harm, in the present period of excitement, to preach a little moderation, even though our voice should be as inaudible as the chirp of a sparrow on the house-top. The speculative spirit of the age may be checked and controlled, but it cannot be put down, nor would we wish to see it pass away. All great improvement is the fruit of speculation, upon which, indeed, commerce ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... It may be said of them as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of Chester, that they are horny-handed sons of toil and worthy of their wage. But one would like to say a little more. Granting that this is praise, it is so faint as to be almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote good stories he would be merely doing his duty, and therefore accounted an unprofitable servant. ...
— The Bibliotaph - and Other People • Leon H. Vincent
... in all his terrors," and shrank from the encounter. The fierce lightnings of his dreadful eyes seemed to shrivel and paralyze her; even his demoniac cunning and persuasiveness filled her with mortal fear. Her voice shook with a pathetic tremor, became hoarse and almost inaudible; her eyes sank, or wandered wildly; her brow was bathed with the sweat of a secret agony; she might have given way utterly under the paralyzing spell, had not some sudden inspiration of genius or ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... Swims to the surface of the silk like cream And curdles to fair patterns. Ye behold!"— "These delicatest muslins rather seem Than be, you think? Nay, touch them and be bold, Though such veiled Chakhi's face in Hafiz' dream."— "These carpets—you walk slow on them like kings, Inaudible like spirits, while your foot Dips deep in velvet roses and such things."— "Even Apollonius might commend this flute:[13] The music, winding through the stops, upsprings To make the player very rich: ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... window, and her answer was inaudible. Ladywell and Neigh looked up, and their eyes met. Both had been reluctant to remain where they stood, but they were too fascinated to instantly retire. Neigh moved now, and Ladywell did the same. Each saw that the face of his ...
— The Hand of Ethelberta • Thomas Hardy
... with Olga. It was very brief. For barely the fraction of a second her hand lay in Max's. Her greeting was quite inaudible. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... himself. In solitude his melancholy grew more black and sullen. He spent whole days—indeed, it was his sole occupation—in communing with the serpent. A conversation was sustained, in which, as it seemed, the hidden monster bore a part, though unintelligibly to the listeners, and inaudible except in a hiss. Singular as it may appear, the sufferer had now contracted a sort of affection for his tormentor, mingled, however, with the intensest loathing and horror. Nor were such discordant emotions incompatible. Each, on the contrary, imparted strength and poignancy to its opposite. ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... lies between, say, thirty and many thousand vibrations per second—the cry of the earthquake and the cricket; it is our limitation that renders the voice of the dewdrop and the voice of the planet alike inaudible. We even mistake a measure of noise—like a continuous millwheel or a river, say—for silence, when in reality there is no such thing as perfect silence. Other life is all the time singing and thundering about us," he added, holding up a giant finger ...
— The Human Chord • Algernon Blackwood
... outstretched wings of his swooping hawk, but it did not get on fast. With a pathetic clinging to Phebe he seldom let her stay long out of his sight, but followed her about like a child, or sat on the hearth watching her as she went about her house-work. Only by those unconscious sobs and outcries, inaudible to himself, did he betray the grief that was gnawing at his heart. Very often did Phebe put aside her work, and standing before him ask such questions as the following on her swiftly ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... says that changes of the apparent impression of light are proportional not to the changes of the intensity but to these changes divided by the primitive intensity. A similar law is valid for all sensations. A conversation is inaudible in the vicinity of a waterfall. An increase of a load in the hand from nine to ten hectograms makes no great difference in the feeling, whereas an increase from one to two hectograms is easily appreciable. ...
— Lectures on Stellar Statistics • Carl Vilhelm Ludvig Charlier
... continued the poet, with difficulty, "rung my door bell at night, nor eaten me out of house and home, nor written begging letters—" this phrase was well-nigh inaudible—"nor ...
— At the Sign of the Jack O'Lantern • Myrtle Reed
... from the vast herd that now encompassed them on every side came the low purring that in an elephant denotes pleasure. Almost inaudible from one throat, it sounded from these many hundreds like the rumble of distant thunder. And in answer to it there came from Badshah's trunk a low sound, indicative of his pleasure. Then it dawned on Dermot that it was to meet this vast gathering of his kind that the ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... ministerial gallery. The most conspicuous persons were two Parsee merchants, dressed in a showy oriental costume, who occupied the first bench in the Speaker's gallery, and who, the previous evening, were admitted behind the throne in the lords. Lord John was nearly inaudible at first, his elocution throughout the speech was inferior, and utterly unworthy of his great name as a speaker. He was listened to with evident partiality, and every period which told at all against the conduct of the war elicited ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... Woman's sting are unequal to the task of stopping a Woman's mouth; and as the wife has absolutely nothing to say, and absolutely no constraint of wit, sense, or conscience to prevent her from saying it, not a few cynics have been found to aver that they prefer the danger of the death-dealing but inaudible sting to the safe sonorousness of a ...
— Flatland • Edwin A. Abbott
... publications is sufficiently well known. Nor did I relinquish the purpose of concluding these "Tales of my Landlord," which had been so remarkably fortunate; but Death, which steals upon us all with an inaudible foot, cut short the ingenious young man to whose memory I composed that inscription, and erected, at my own charge, that monument which protects his remains, by the side of the river Gander, which he has contributed so much to render immortal, and in a place of his own selection, not ...
— Waverley Volume XII • Sir Walter Scott
... floor plates and rested the unconscious man's head and shoulders against his knees as the engine began to rock furiously. Nothing was said for a while; the uproar made by the banging cars would have rendered speech inaudible, but when they had been left behind, the engineer looked ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... with Minnie on his arm, clothed in pure white, emblematic, it struck him, of her pure gentle spirit. Friends were with him, all gaily attired, and very happy, but unaccountably silent. Perhaps it was the noise of the wedding-bells that rendered their voices inaudible. He was struck by the solemnity as well as the pertinacity of these wedding-bells as he entered the church. He was puzzled too, being a Presbyterian, why he was to be married in church, but being a man of liberal mind, he made no ...
— The Lighthouse • Robert Ballantyne
... was inaudible for the merry group came on at a rapid rate and surrounded them with all the ...
— Marguerite Verne • Agatha Armour
... woman's step was inaudible to Tom; but the heavy, deliberate waddle of the banker was not. He opened the house-door, and then the parlour-door, without knocking; but when he saw the visitor, he stopped on ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume II. • Charles Kingsley
... a silence. She repeated the question. But Graylock's reply was inaudible and she thought he said good-bye instead of ...
— Between Friends • Robert W. Chambers
... wings, and proclaiming, "All men are equal—all men, that is to say, who possess umbrellas," and so he was obliged to assert gentility, lest he slipped into the abyss where nothing counts, and the statements of Democracy are inaudible. ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster
... you are suffering!" she said, in the same inaudible language. This time he discovered that the sense of what she said was received by his brain through the organ on ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... upon their knees where they stood; and Dr Drummond did little less than order Divine interference; but the prayer that was inaudible was ...
— The Imperialist • (a.k.a. Mrs. Everard Cotes) Sara Jeannette Duncan
... into place with one hand and pulling her skirt modestly close with the other, activities leaving her very little to grasp the ladder with. The firemen seemed quite accustomed to this sort of irrationality, and paying no heed to the rush of words—inaudible to us on the street—bursting from her, they coaxed her expertly up onto the roof. Here she stood, statuesquely outlined against the bright sky, berating her succorers, until Mr Dinkman, rounded, bald, and ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... Mr. Ellerton?" went on Mary, rivalling Dora in composure. And she also added a barely visible and quite inaudible "Hush!" ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... a short and intensely subdued cough, as he turned his lips to a brown ear which seemed to rise out of the grass for the purpose, and spoke something that was inaudible to all save that ear. Instantly hand, lips, and ear withdrew, leaving the trapper in apparently deep repose. A sharp knife, however, had touched his bonds, and he knew that ...
— Twice Bought • R.M. Ballantyne
... little behind a timid woman Crimson which stained the tops and steeps of snow Errors of a weak man, which were usually the basest Exchanging inaudible banalities He might walk home with her if he would not seem to do so He's the same kind of a man that he was a boy Hollow hilarities which people use to mask their indifference If one must, it ought to be champagne Intent upon some ...
— Widger's Quotations from the Works of William Dean Howells • David Widger
... Murfrey, whose eyes were ever on the alert, noticed that Roland gave some injunctions to The Lifter, and he likewise observed the latter lay his finger upon his lips. Turning to the Captain, he muttered a few words in a voice that was inaudible, and the chief turned ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... extinguished the light Then, with almost inaudible step, he walked out of the room into the dark passage; noiselessly he proceeded to unbolt the street-door. Almost at the same moment a ...
— A Ghetto Violet - From "Christian and Leah" • Leopold Kompert
... the audience, silenced and steadied them in an instant, just as they were on the point of falling into fresh confusion. Every one stretched forward eagerly to hear what he would say. His lips moved; but the few words that fell from them were inaudible, except to the persons who happened to be close by him. Having spoken, he left the table supported by a police agent, who was seen to lead him toward the private door of the court, and, consequently, also toward the prisoners' platform. He stopped, however, ...
— After Dark • Wilkie Collins
... part formed a group to themselves, and while the new-comer spoke to the proprietress, they indulged in a confidential chat about him as about other people, which the noise of the van rendered inaudible to himself and Mrs. ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... soliloquy of Brutus. He was resolving whether he would sacrifice his son's life to his fatherland. There was a solemn pause, and now, in the midst of the profound silence, the Duchess Ventadour in a shrill voice, which she believed to be inaudible, said to her servant: 'Do not fail to serve mustard with ...
— Berlin and Sans-Souci • Louise Muhlbach
... there!' he said, in an almost inaudible tone. He was supported, as before, by his hands resting on the table, and could only bow with his head towards the glass to intimate what he meant. 'Look in ...
— Mugby Junction • Charles Dickens
... that the general attention was fixed upon him, blushed, and said in an almost inaudible voice that he could ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Latter. "That if wars there had been, you'd have driven him to the nearest, I make no doubt at all; though your departed—if I may make so bold—was never the sort to hurt a fly. . . . Though, by God," wound up Mr Latter in an inaudible murmur as he blew the sawdust from the vent-hole, "the man must have had pluck, ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... thought of loosening them for service in such a tempest. Her black sides, as they emerged from a wave, glistened and seemed to frown; but the wind howled through her rigging, whistling the thousand notes of a ship; and the hails and cries that escape a Frenchman with so much readiness were inaudible. ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... the jubilations of their kinsfolk; and although no account of any battle was more beclouded than that of Pultusk which the Emperor sent to Paris, the approbation of the fatherland could not reach Poland until long afterward, and in tones that were low and almost inaudible. It is an old French saying that next to the kingdom of heaven France is the most beautiful land, and every Frenchman believes it. The Emperor himself said that his French soldiers were unfitted for distant expeditions by their yearnings for home. In his mind, therefore, the one essential ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... at any rate, she was not dying now, and she began to start into strength. She sat up all the evening, she walked round the garden, she drove out, she came down to breakfast. The day after that achievement, she came to me sobbing for joy with something inaudible about "his sake," while George was assuring Dermot that there was only one woman ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the woman at the street corner is weeping for her Coffintop, and will not be comforted. We settle down with a rollicking ease into our seats (for we are a bold, devil-may-care race, the C's of Battersea), and an oath is administered to us in a totally inaudible manner by an individual resembling an Army surgeon in his second childhood. We understand, however, that we are to well and truly try the case between our sovereign lord the King and the prisoner at the bar, neither of whom has put in an appearance ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... down the great steps alone, and I felt as if I wanted the steps swept and cleaned. I followed later, and as I went to find my hat in the low, dark passage where it hung, I suddenly heard his voice again, but the words were inaudible. I stopped, startled; but then I heard the voice of one of the vilest of his associates saying, "Nobody can possibly know." And then I heard those two or three words which I remember in every syllable and cannot forget. I heard the Diabolist say, "I tell you I ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... seeped into her consciousness, the expression of her face changed little by little. "Making people happy!" She repeated the phrase as she had formulated the idea again, very softly, with a persistence that would have surprised Mrs. Delancy, could she have caught the inaudible murmur. Presently, the faint rose in the pallor of her cheeks blossomed to a deeper red, and the amber eyes grew radiant, as she lifted the long, curving lashes, and fixed her gaze on her aunt. There was a new animation in her voice as she spoke; there was a new determination in the resolute set ...
— Making People Happy • Thompson Buchanan
... advanced thereto in little groups, gazed down into the ravine, and then retired again. When this had continued for some few minutes the sound of hoofs again became audible; but now the hoofs were retiring instead of advancing, and in the space of ten minutes had become inaudible. The creatures had retired to seek a safer ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... expensively decorated, but neither the senator nor any of the other men in the room were looking at anything else except the big thirty-six-inch screen that glowed and danced with color. The network announcer's words were almost inaudible, since the volume had been turned way down, but his voice sounded almost as excited as those from ...
— Hail to the Chief • Gordon Randall Garrett
... he conducted himself. It was now necessary to examine Feemy, and at last she came in, almost carried in Mrs. McKeon's arms, with a thick veil over her face, which, however well it hid her countenance, by no means rendered her sobs inaudible. Two chairs were placed for them by the table, and when they were both seated the book was handed to Feemy; then she had to take her glove from her right hand, and this was so wetted with her tears, and she herself was so weak, that ...
— The Macdermots of Ballycloran • Anthony Trollope
... you, sir," he demanded, at last, in a tone far from being inaudible, "point out to a customer a defect in her purchase, and so ...
— The Brother Clerks - A Tale of New-Orleans • Xariffa
... blossoms covered by a veil of Honiton lace. The bridal bouquet was composed of orange blossoms, white rosebuds, orchids and sprigs of myrtle. The actual ceremony was a very short one, the Prince giving his responses clearly, though the Princess was at times almost inaudible. The whole function had been a brilliant one—the first marriage celebrated in this Chapel since that of Henry I. in 1122—and no touch of mourning was allowed to mar the pageantry of the scene and the bright colours ...
— The Life of King Edward VII - with a sketch of the career of King George V • J. Castell Hopkins
... filled with wonder! That host of Danvas then, O Bharata, of frightful visages and hair, set up a loud howl while I was waiting for it. In that fierce battle. I then, with the object of destroying them, fixed on my bow-string the weapon capable of piercing the foes if but his sound was inaudible. Upon this, their shouts ceased. But those Danavas that had sent up that shout were all slain by those shafts of mine blazing as the Sun himself, and capable of striking at the perception of sound alone. And after the shout had ceased at one place, ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 1 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and octave-leaps, assisted by her peculiar attitudes of strangulation, came out well in this scene. The murmurs concerning the sour privileges to be granted by a Lazzeruola were inaudible. But there has been a witness to the stipulation. The ever-shifting baritono, from behind a pillar, has joined in with an aside phrase here and there. Leonardo discovers that his fealty to Camilla is reviving. He determines to watch over her. Camillo now ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... read the Declaration of Independence. He read it from the original document, and it was an impressive moment when that time-honored parchment was exposed to the view of the wildly cheering crowd.... Mr. Lee's voice was inaudible, but at last I caught the words, 'our sacred honors,' and ...
— Susan B. Anthony - Rebel, Crusader, Humanitarian • Alma Lutz
... allusion to Barbara, Richard's rage boiled up with the swelling heave in a full caldron on a great furnace. Lady Ann turned pale, pale even for her, murmured something inaudible, put her hand to her forehead, and left ...
— There & Back • George MacDonald
... his mind a hundred times all that he should say to her on that occasion. If he had said all that he was fully resolved to say, it is hardly credible that any woman, however well disposed towards him, would have accepted so tedious a suitor. But what he really said, in a hoarse, inaudible voice, was, "Rachel, will you marry me?" He was looking so intently into a little grove of Roman hyacinths, that perhaps the hyacinths heard what he said; at any rate, she did not. But she supposed, from long experience, that he was proposing, and ...
— Red Pottage • Mary Cholmondeley
... at Amberley was fitted, as a library should be, with a silent door, a door with an inaudible latch and pneumatic hinges. It shut itself behind Straker with a ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... Rounds of cheering marked progress of narrative, concluding passages inconveniently rendered inaudible ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 29, 1914 • Various
... here we cannot equal quadrupeds; we have made no notable advance in our circulatory, digestive, renal, or hepatic functions. Even as regards vision and hearing, there are many animals that are more keen-sighted than man, and many that are capable of hearing sounds that to him are inaudible. But there are no animals in whom the sexual instinct is so sensitive, so highly developed, so varied in its manifestations, so constantly alert, so capable of irradiating the highest and remotest parts of the organism. The sexual activities ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... at all," she said, in almost inaudible tones; "last night we flew over the house." He stared at her, his hands trembling, and no longer able to play ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... with no response, when the Medium made an observation which was partly inaudible at the Reporter's seat, the purport of which was that the Spirit communications are sometimes retarded or facilitated by a compliance by the listeners with certain conditions. Another interval of probably ...
— Preliminary Report of the Commission Appointed by the University • The Seybert Commission
... flew, nothing walked, nothing talked. But the thing in the hollow was stirring in stiff jerks like a snake with its back broken or a clockwork toy running down. When the movements stopped, there was a click and a strange sound began. Thin, scratchy, inaudible more than a yard away, weary but still cocky, there leaked from the shape in the hollow the sound ...
— Accidental Death • Peter Baily
... protested with a choked cry; and Linda's voice, that new, deep, terrible voice, answered him, "Never mind, my dearest—just a minute, that's all! Mother is taking care of you!" And Harriet heard her sister say, in a breath almost inaudible: "Thy will be done—Thy will ...
— Harriet and the Piper - (Norris Volume XI) • Kathleen Norris
... glancing at her husband, showing him a valorous and sympathetic face, Kitty went into the sick-room, and, turning without haste, noiselessly closed the door. With inaudible steps she went quickly to the sick man's bedside, and going up so that he had not to turn his head, she immediately clasped in her fresh young hand the skeleton of his huge hand, pressed it, and began speaking with that soft eagerness, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... disconnected yarns, to which Milton could make neither head nor tail, and which grew at last to be inaudible to him, just as the steady boom and snarl of the great machine did. Then he fell to studying the old man's clothes, which were a wonder to him. He spent a good deal of time trying to discover which were ...
— Other Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... full of charm, full of interest, expressing both audacity and gentleness. She spoke with fire without raising her voice. The man listened round-shouldered, but seeming much too stupid to understand. I could see now and then that he was speaking, but he was inaudible. At one moment Dona Rita turned her head to the room and called out to the maid, "Give me my hand-bag ...
— The Arrow of Gold - a story between two notes • Joseph Conrad
... night. He passed again the Cradle, and was bold enough to listen again. Alas! the wail was weaker, the bright lamp of these eyes was fast losing its oil. So he thought; for he could hear only now and then a very inaudible sob, and occasionally a very weak wail, shrill and yet low. He could not stay, for Janet would be coming stealthily with her cruse,—yes, her cruse; for, so far as he could see by the narrow slips, ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Vol. XXIII. • Various
... snow-drift, and with his bare head bent against the storm floundered onward to Peter's door. There was such a creaking and groaning and rattling, and such an ominous shaking, throughout the crazy edifice that the loudest rap would have been inaudible to those within. He therefore entered without ceremony, and groped his way to the kitchen. His intrusion even there was unnoticed. Peter and Tabitha stood with their backs to the door, stooping over a large chest which apparently ...
— Twice Told Tales • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... which vanished as soon as he had stepped through it; Costigan kicked a valve open; and from various innocent tubes there belched forth into the water of the central lagoon and into the air over it a flood of deadly vapor. As the Nevian turned toward the prisoner there was an almost inaudible hiss and a tiny jet of the frightful, outlawed stuff struck his open gills, just below his huge, conical head. He tensed momentarily, twitched convulsively just once, and fell motionless to the floor. And outside, the ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... le Baron?" he enquired in a voice which was naturally loud and strong, but had been reduced by careful training to a tone inaudible at the distance of a ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... superior voice, "you can't drag business into religion, sir. Religion is one thing and I respect it,"—titters from the listening angels, "—and business is another thing, and we think, sir, that you are trying to mix the insoluble, and as business men who have our own deep religious convictions—" inaudible guffaws from the angels, "—we feel the sacrilege of asking this blatherskite Adams to speak on any subject in so sacred a place as our consecrated pulpit, sir." Hoarse hoots ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... requires, after all, as much breath support. A soft note which is taken with the "head voice" without being supported by a breath taken from the diaphragm is a helpless sort of thing. It does not carry and is inaudible at any distance, whereas the soft note which does possess the deep breath support is penetrating, concentrated ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... issuing in wide-tufted undulating plain country, rich in all charms of field and town. Waving blooming country of the brightest green, dotted all over with handsome villas, handsome groves crossed by roads and human traffic, here inaudible, or heard only as a musical hum; and behind all swam, under olive-tinted haze, the illimitable limitary ocean of London, with its domes and steeples definite in the sun, big Paul's and the many memories attached to it ...
— English Men of Letters: Coleridge • H. D. Traill
... motion for some time, and was now winding through the rocky defiles into the long narrow strath which lay below him; but such was the extent of the train that the rear had but just cleared the sea-shore. It was a solemn and impressive spectacle to look down from such a height upon the sable and inaudible procession stealing along and meandering upon the narrow ribbon-like paths that skirted the base of the mountains. The mourners were naturally a silent train even when viewed from a nearer station: ...
— Walladmor: - And Now Freely Translated from the German into English. - In Two Volumes. Vol. I. • Thomas De Quincey
... glanced back irresolute across the flat, now ankle deep in water. The electric light had been extinguished, and in the greenish gloom between decks he looked a small and very forlorn figure. He pointed towards the wreckage of the after-cabin, called something inaudible, and, turning, was lost to ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... human voices crying for aid, but put it down to my imagination, till I saw, to my horror, not a hundred yards from the shore, a French Chasse-mare, or fishing boat, driving straight for the rocks. I shouted, but the noise of the breaking sea rendered it inaudible five yards off against such a wind. Two of her three masts were gone, and by the next flash I could distinguish several men crouching by the bulwarks, and one at the tiller. Then came a sudden lurch and a dead stop, a tremendous sea crashed ...
— Jethou - or Crusoe Life in the Channel Isles • E. R. Suffling
... soon after their departure, with an odd, dishevelled, abstracted look, and muttering something inaudible about not knowing the time. His depression absolutely courted notice, but as a slight cough would at any time reduce him to despair, he obtained no particular observation, except from Sophy, who made much of him, flushed at Genevieve's name, and looked reproachful, that ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Montreuil had just struck one, when an almost inaudible sound of a light footstep came from the second flight of stairs. The Marquis and his daughter, both believing that M. de Mauny's murderer was a prisoner above, thought that one of the maids had come down, and no one was at all surprised to hear the door open ...
— A Woman of Thirty • Honore de Balzac
... Natural Law. Theology continues to be considered, as it has always been, a thing apart. It remains still a stupendous and splendid construction, but on lines altogether its own. Nor is Theology to be blamed for this. Nature has been long in speaking; even yet its voice is low, sometimes inaudible. Science is the true defaulter, for Theology had to wait patiently for its development. As the highest of the sciences, Theology in the order of evolution should be the last to fall into rank. It is reserved for it to perfect the ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... and into the main corridor. Here he met a guard who had just come in from the outside. The man addressed him in the language of the country, and his heart almost stopped beating. How was he to answer? Mumbling something almost inaudible, he hurried on to the ground floor, trembling with fear lest the man should call to him to halt. He was relieved to find, in the end, that his progress was not to be impeded. In another moment he ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... by him to a part of the station where only a porter passed occasionally. The echoings beneath the vaulted roof allowed them to speak without constraint, for their voices were inaudible a yard or two off. Hilliard would not look into her face, lest he should be softened ...
— Eve's Ransom • George Gissing
... goodness! Redwood and Cossar were coming out of the inaudible darknesses, and Redwood was ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells
... Marcos as she spoke, but the remark must have been addressed to Sarrion, whose reply was inaudible. For some reason the two men seemed ill at ease and tongue-tied. There was a dull glow in Marcos' eyes. Juanita was quite cool and collected and mistress of ...
— The Velvet Glove • Henry Seton Merriman
... very reverent and stately bow it was too—regarded him for a moment, and, taking a pace backward to the door, called after the retreating turnkey, to whom he addressed some order in a tone to me inaudible. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... tall and robust in stature, but all his life suffered from "scald-head"; for a definition of which ailment we may refer the curious to the dictionary. He possessed, for a chieftain and a fighting man, the disadvantage of a voice so hoarse as to be inaudible at a few paces distant. In default of offspring he maintained at his charges five hundred corsairs, whom he called his children. He died in the year 1580, and with him what has been called the "Grand Period of ...
— Sea-Wolves of the Mediterranean • E. Hamilton Currey
... inaudible once more. Timokles, waiting a long time, imagined his foe might have gone. As the lad was about to lift his head, a hand brushed along the side of his rock, and reached out into the dark, underneath. Timokles was perfectly quiet. The hand above him felt down the sides of the rock, waved in the ...
— Out of the Triangle • Mary E. Bamford
... almost as much of matter-of-fact Nature as in Turner's "Swiss Valley." The eye untrained by study of Turner's works finds nothing but a blaze of color with no intelligible object, just as we have, in opera, music of which the words are inaudible;—both are there for practised ear and eye, but in neither case as of primary importance. Turner has even gone farther, and given us pictures of pure color, as in the illustration of Goethe's theory of colors,—a fantasie of the palette. And why shall Turner ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 4, February, 1858 • Various
... a rough, swashing, popular air; and long after the words became inaudible the swing of the music, rising and falling, echoed insult in the Prince's brain. He fled the sounds. Hard by him on his right a road struck towards the palace, and he followed it through the thick ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 7 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... replied Douglas, in almost inaudible accents. "It is impossible!" he exclaimed, after a pause, during which the physician waited quietly until his patient should have in some manner recovered his calmness of mind. "It is quite impossible. I have every confidence in your skill, your science; but in this instance, Dr. ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... the mirror to discover a flushed and dishevelled disorder. She began at once a hasty readjustment of her hair, while Ramage parleyed with inaudible interrogations. "A glass slipped from the table," he explained.... "Non. Fas du tout. Non.... Niente.... Bitte!... Oui, dans la note.... Presently. Presently." That conversation ended and ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... Polynesians, when thus collected in large numbers. Every robe is rustling, every limb in motion, and an incessant buzzing going on throughout the assembly. The tumult is so great that the voice of the placid old missionary, who now rises, is almost inaudible. Some degree of silence is at length obtained through the exertions of half-a-dozen strapping fellows, in white shirts and no pantaloons. Running in among the settees, they are at great pains to ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... his position a little and glances through the window. His eyes are full of irritation, and the girl knows it, though they are turned from her. She gives a suppressed, inaudible sigh; his attitude now brings out the impatient discontent on his mouth and the rigid determination ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... difficult. There had not been much sympathy between them in recent years, yet he recalled his early boyhood on the farm, and it went against him to aim his piece at her. But after all it was his duty, and with an inaudible sigh he pulled the trigger. It was done. No one could have noticed his reluctance. It was quite likely that some of the soldiers that afternoon felt as much compunction as that. But as Sam went over all this long list of tests and passed them successfully, he felt, almost unconsciously, ...
— Captain Jinks, Hero • Ernest Crosby
... power, in common with Napoleon III. and the goggle-eyed perch, of throwing a film over his eyes, rendering opaque the windows of his soul. Once when we left him unpaid, with egregious excuses, I looked back and saw him shaking with inaudible laughter behind his film. Now and then we ...
— The Four Million • O. Henry
... a head above the others, had a certain savage majesty, and they gazed upon him in silence. He seemed to know what they felt and his eyes gleamed with pride out of his darkly painted face. He laughed again a low laugh, not like that of the white man, but the almost inaudible chuckle of ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Service Estimates furnished Mr. HOPKINS with an opportunity of delivering an appeal, doubtless cogent but mainly inaudible, for the restoration of the exchange value of the pound sterling. Mr. A.M. SAMUEL, on the other hand, was more audible than orthodox. At least it rather shocked me to be told that we were getting too much for the pound before the War. Mr. BALDWIN, for the Government, made a speech ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 158, April 21, 1920 • Various
... read, no psalm sung or prayer read. Somehow it seemed like an impiety in the face of what was going on down there. Mr. Richard talked far the most. At first his mood was all of stormy anger, and the replies of the other, as I have said, almost inaudible. ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... period of a single month makes wild changes in the prospects of the system, and involves us not only in new calculations but in a newer phase of things. At any rate it can do no harm, in the present period of excitement, to preach a little moderation, even though our voice should be as inaudible as the chirp of a sparrow on the house-top. The speculative spirit of the age may be checked and controlled, but it cannot be put down, nor would we wish to see it pass away. All great improvement is the fruit of speculation, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... organ noted the reply (Inaudible to ear of flesh the tone): "The Finest Climate in the World am I, From Siskiyou to San Diego known— From the Sierra to the sea. The zone Called semi-tropical I've pulled about And placed it where it does most good, I trust. I shake my never-failing ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... her head and listened. The murmur of voices, as her brother and mother talked in low tones, did not disturb her, and the almost inaudible lowing of the cattle on the distant ranges was but a part ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... exorcise, and purify, and cleanse the house. It is that—that"—shaking his stick at the panel—"which hinders the Event! Bury it deep! bury it deep! give it the holy rites, and then!" His voice dropped. He muttered something inaudible, and walked feebly ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... spiritual in lace and pearls, against his own rude and sordid surroundings; always silent with parted lips, until the night wind smote some chord of recollection, and then mingled a remembered voice with his own. For at those times he seemed to speak also, albeit with closed lips, and an utterance inaudible to all ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... answer at once. His lips moved in an inaudible whisper and the beads passed through his fingers with a dry click. All waited in respectful silence. "I shall come if my ship can enter this river," said Abdulla at last, in ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... ensued. Just as the modern "talkies" become inaudible motion pictures when the sound apparatus goes out of order, so the Divine Hand, by some strange miracle, stifled the earthly bustle. The pedestrians as well as the passing trolley cars, automobiles, bullock carts, and iron-wheeled hackney carriages were all in noiseless transit. ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... There is tenderness between them. Their bodies, indeed, seem to have become overtones that mate in a delicious and inaudible melody. But this melody must be brought closer so that its beauty may be more definitely enjoyed. This melody must be played on instruments ...
— Fantazius Mallare - A Mysterious Oath • Ben Hecht
... to his quick steps resounding on the waxed floor of the next room, traversing the anteroom lined with bookshelves, where he paused to put his chibouk in the pipe-stand before passing into the drawing-room (these were all en suite), where he became inaudible on the thick carpet. But I heard the door of his study-bedroom close. He was then sixty-two years old and had been for a quarter of a century the wisest, the firmest, the most indulgent of guardians, extending over me a paternal care and affection, ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... tres VIEILLE." Jeanne had acquired a habit of raising her voice, owing to Madame's deafness, which resulted in her whispers partaking of the phonetic quality of those stage asides which, by a curious convention, while audible at the very back of the dress circle, are quite inaudible to the other characters on the stage. Whether Madame ever overheard these auricular confidences I know not. If she did, I doubt if she regarded them, for she was under the illusion, common to very old people who live in the society ...
— Leaves from a Field Note-Book • J. H. Morgan
... more streak of the deck planking. Mr. Timmins looked round towards the captain, who was clinging to the wheel. The latter waved his hand, and the mate again began to make his way forward. He passed the boys without a word, for the loudest shout would have been inaudible in the howling of the wind. He stopped at the main-shrouds again, the axe descended and the mainmast went over the side. The relief from the weight of the mast and the pressure of the wind upon it was immediate; the Wild Wave rose with a surge and her lee-rail appeared above the surface, ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... was almost inaudible. Marcel wrenched the wood in half with his powerful hands. It snapped, and he examined ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... greater dimness of an echoing interior. I scurried back across the lurching room and again wedged myself under the couch. Babs stood at the lattice ten feet away. We dared to talk in low tones; the rumbling voices and footsteps outside would make our tiny voices inaudible to Polter. ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... life so valuable to the city. "Yes, Mr. Burgess," Sir Peter said to old Barty of the bank, "our friend will get over it this time, and without any serious damage to her constitution, if she will only take care of herself." Barty made some inaudible grunt, intended to indicate his own indifference on the subject, and expressed his opinion to the chief clerk that old Jemima Wideawake,—as he was pleased to call her,—was one of those tough customers who would ...
— He Knew He Was Right • Anthony Trollope
... mine was silent as a grave. Only the faint drip, drip, drip of water from the warm spring and the almost inaudible tremble-mumble of the throbbing earth disturbed ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... inclusiveness of these trials confirmed the doubts of the waiting country as the narrow gap before the salt was closed and the weed rolled to it near Capistrano. I would like to think of the meeting as dramatic, heightened by inaudible drumrolls and flashes of invisible lightning. Actually the ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... does not attain it. The common fakir is an idiot. He may, by fasting and self-torture, of a kind no adept would approve, sharpen his senses till he can hear and see some sounds and sights inaudible and invisible to you and me. But his whole system lacks any intellectual basis: he regards knowledge as something instantaneously attainable when it comes at last; he believes he will have a vision, and that everything will be revealed to him. His devotion ...
— Mr. Isaacs • F. Marion Crawford
... to descend, getting at each instant less and less distinct, until, in the end, it became quite inaudible. Dutton looked uneasy, for at that instant a noise was heard, and then it was quite clear some heavy object was falling down the face of the cliff. Now it was that the mariner felt the want of good nerves, and experienced the sense of humiliation ...
— The Two Admirals • J. Fenimore Cooper
... eyes and peer back into my obscure childish world I can see him sitting in his straight-backed cane-bottomed chair, drumming on the rungs with his fingers, keeping time to some inaudible tune—or chanting with faintly-moving lips the wondrous words of John or Daniel. He must have been at this time about seventy years of age, but he seemed to me as old as a ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... a well-appointed opium resort. Here the roar of the bazaar and pulsing of tom-toms were blurred and almost inaudible. A reek of bhang and betel hung in the air; there were rows of neat bunks, lacquered pillows, and small trays containing the opium pipe, lamp and other necessaries. Everything was apparently carried out decently and in order; the clients were of ...
— The Road to Mandalay - A Tale of Burma • B. M. Croker
... fallen tree-trunks or clattered from great boulders, and in the peace and order and beauty of the forest they all recovered a serener outlook on the noisome tumult they were leaving behind them. Invisible as well as inaudible, the serpent of ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... of Richmond had spoken, Chatham rose. For some time his voice was inaudible. At length his tones became distinct and his action animated. Here and there his hearers caught a thought or an expression which reminded them of William Pitt. But it was clear that he was not himself. He lost the thread of his discourse, hesitated, repeated ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... him, kneeling on a little cushion or the carpet, a conversation would begin in murmurs, not inaudible, though subdued. I caught a snatch of their tenor now and then; and, in truth, some influence better and finer than that of every day, seemed to soothe Graham at such ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... a sour grin on the face of old Trudel. He grunted some inaudible answer, then, after a pause, added: "I'd have been hung for murder, if she'd answered the question I asked her once as I ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... summer is ended, and I am not saved." There he lay in agony, every few minutes this lamentation breaking from him. Just as the sun was going down behind those Western prairies, his wife leaned over him, and in an almost inaudible voice, he whispered, "The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and I am not saved," and he died. He had lived a Christless life, he died a Christless death, he was wrapped in a Christless shroud, and he was buried in a Christless grave. Oh, how dark ...
— Moody's Anecdotes And Illustrations - Related in his Revival Work by the Great Evangilist • Dwight L. Moody
... until their talk became inaudible, and presently I heard one of them go out of the room. After waiting a minute longer I left the room and went along the short passage, which I now knew must lead to the room where I ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... disappeared through the room in which Joe was sleeping, so as not to give suspicion to the man in the battery room, Slim slid into Jerry's chair and centered every faculty upon listening to the almost inaudible ...
— The Brighton Boys in the Radio Service • James R. Driscoll
... so softly that his voice was almost inaudible. "I shall kill you very soon. I shall make it a point ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... still, and as the campfire burns low they are apt to come about it, knowing well that beside deserted campfires scraps of food may be found. On such expeditions they come on noiseless wing, whinnying one to another in voices inaudible a few rods away. If one sees you he may utter a single loud note of warning, but that will be all, and the flock will scuttle away on noiseless wings ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... tapers to symbolize the eternal radiance that awaited the pure in spirit. The nuns finished the procession that wound its way slowly through the long ill-lighted corridors, chanting the litany of the dead. From the chapel, at first almost inaudible, but waxing louder every moment, came the same solemn monotonous chant; for the Bishop and his assistants were already ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... held out her hand. "Good-bye, then, till to-morrow," she said, her voice so low as to be almost inaudible. ...
— Studies in love and in terror • Marie Belloc Lowndes
... and darkness, and with them came the sense of a solemn celebration, as if the gloom were canopy as well as pall—black, but bordered and hearted with purple and gold; and the stillness seemed to tremble as with the inaudible tones of a great organ, at the close or commencement of ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... here? He had the uneasy feeling that hidden, unseen eyes were watching his every move, and yet he could detect nothing. There was no sound except the faint humming from the device in the room behind him, and a deeper, almost inaudible, rushing, rumbling sound that seemed to come from ...
— Viewpoint • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the faint songs of grasshopper sparrows rising from the ground on either side of the lane. It was a fine contrast: the mocker flooding the air from the topmost bough, and the sparrows whispering their few almost inaudible notes out of the grass. Yes, and at the self-same moment the eye also had its contrast; for a marsh hawk was skimming over the field, while up in the sky soared a ...
— A Florida Sketch-Book • Bradford Torrey
... half-past seven; they would not retire before ten, they might not before midnight, and the prospect was unpleasant. In a lull of the wind I could hear from the inside the voice of Flora reading aloud; the words of course inaudible—only a flow of undecipherable speech, quiet, cordial, colourless, more intimate and winning, more eloquent of her personality, but not less beautiful than song. And the next moment the clamour of a fresh squall broke out about the cottage; the voice was drowned ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Whispers inaudible to Henry passed between the members of the party; then, one by one, the three figures descended through the open trap into the bowels of the earth, and the lid ...
— Mystery at Geneva - An Improbable Tale of Singular Happenings • Rose Macaulay
... The pushing back of her chair roused the white dog's smouldering animosity, and he drowned his mistress's further confidences in another outburst of hysterics. Through the tumult Anna signed an inaudible farewell, and Mrs. Birch, having momentarily succeeded in suppressing her pet under a pillow, called out: "Do come again! I'd love to ...
— The Reef • Edith Wharton
... Philip mutters something inaudible under his breath. The chilly air of winter creeps through the hayfield behind Copthorne Farm—the voices of birds are dead—it is cold, cruel ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... a distant, almost inaudible moan seemed to issue from its lips, and the arms began to stir. The terror of the sight forced Stephen backwards and he awoke to the fact that he was indeed standing on the cold boarded floor of the passage in the full light of the moon. With ...
— Ghost Stories of an Antiquary • Montague Rhodes James
... discover in which direction the boyl-yas, when drawn out of the earth by the fire, would take flight. Their departure was not audible to common ears or visible to the eyes of ordinary mortals, but his power of boyl-ya gaduk enabled him to distinguish these sights and sounds which were invisible and inaudible to ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey
... audience, should happen much on one side or very far back; to this may be added the suggestion, hardly novel, that the first few minutes of each act should be confined to immaterial affairs; blame the unpunctual—even if you blame unfairly, since, as a rule, the entr'acte warning bell is inaudible in most parts of the theatre—but do not make the guiltless suffer by presenting important matters during the time when the stage is half hidden by the people struggling (through a passage as a rule shamefully narrow) to get to their seats. Sardou's precepts ...
— Our Stage and Its Critics • "E.F.S." of "The Westminster Gazette"
... general attention was fixed upon him, blushed, and said in an almost inaudible voice that he could not do ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... Feinheimer's, the prize-fighter at the training quarters and the milk-wagon driver. All these things passed through her mind in the brief instant of the introduction and her acknowledgment of it. She was too well-bred to permit any outward indication of her recognition of the man other than the first almost inaudible ejaculation that had ...
— The Efficiency Expert • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sun-cracked deserts, and grassy prairies, watered by a thousand rivers, ranged by a thousand warlike tribes, passed beneath the scepter of the Sultan of Versailles; and all by virtue of a feeble human voice, inaudible at half a mile. ...
— Great Epochs in American History, Volume I. - Voyages Of Discovery And Early Explorations: 1000 A.D.-1682 • Various
... profoundly to Napoleon, her pale face illumined by inward emotion, his lips murmured a few inaudible words, and his iron countenance quivered for an instant with pain. As she then walked through the chamber, her children, Hortense and Eugene, on either side, and greeted all with a last soft look, a last inclination of the head, nothing could be heard but weeping, ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... returned to me from the States. Daphne had arranged it all so cleverly that I was some time in tracing her. By the time I had got to Sioux Falls she was through a month of her necessary residence. My God!"—his voice dropped, became almost inaudible—"if I'd only carried Beatty off then!—then and there—the frontier wasn't far off—without waiting for anything more. But I wouldn't believe that Daphne could persist in such a monstrous thing, and, if she ...
— Marriage a la mode • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... look quite calm, but often whispered something to the little Louise, which sent her very importantly in and out of the room. Elise's entertainment, both that part which was audible, and that which was inaudible, was probably at the moment carried on ...
— The Home • Fredrika Bremer
... For a moment the boy glanced back irresolute across the flat, now ankle deep in water. The electric light had been extinguished, and in the greenish gloom between decks he looked a small and very forlorn figure. He pointed towards the wreckage of the after-cabin, called something inaudible, and, turning, was lost to ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... room were low, and the stage, which was a small grove of evergreen trees, was dark. Then, through the trees, appeared slowly a faint, pink light, as of breaking dawn. Some unseen violins breathed almost inaudible strains ...
— Patty Blossom • Carolyn Wells
... Queen entered. The first words she spoke were inaudible, but, gathering courage, she trailed her white satin, with its large brocaded pattern, in true queenly fashion, and questioned the Minister as to his opinion of the looks of the new Princess. But she gave no point to her words. The scene was, fortunately, a short one, ...
— Muslin • George Moore
... world with which WE are concerned, in which we have to fear and love, this almost invisible, inaudible world of delicate command and delicate obedience, a world of "almost" in every respect, captious, insidious, sharp, and tender—yes, it is well protected from clumsy spectators and familiar curiosity! We are woven into a strong ...
— Beyond Good and Evil • Friedrich Nietzsche
... grinding and squealing under their windows. The manager (if that was the quality of the patient and amiable old official who received us) seemed surprised to see the cars there, perhaps because they were so inaudible; but he said we could have rooms in the annex, fronting on the adjoining plaza and siding on an inoffensive avenue where there were absolutely no cars. The interior, climbing to a lofty roof by a succession of galleries, was hushed by four silent senoras, all in black, and seated in mute ceremony ...
— Familiar Spanish Travels • W. D. Howells
... that except in the very latest period of all, when the language survived only in the mouths of the least educated persons, the so-called “corruptions” were to a great extent due to differences of spelling, to a want of appreciation of almost inaudible final consonants, and to an intensification of phonetic tendencies existing in germ at a much earlier period. Thus it is that inflections which in the late Cornish often seem to have been almost, if not quite, inaudible, have been written in full, for that is the author’s notion, founded ...
— A Handbook of the Cornish Language - chiefly in its latest stages with some account of its history and literature • Henry Jenner
... a grunt of disappointment, and McMurtrie turned to von Bruenig, who was frowning thoughtfully, and made some almost inaudible remark in German. The latter answered at some length, but he kept his voice so low that, with my rather sketchy knowledge of that unpleasant language, it was impossible for me to overhear what he was saying. Besides, he evidently ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... over the horizon to whisper to the earth, and a hush of expectation filled the air. I saw the palm leaves clapping their hands to the beat of inaudible music, and the moon exchanged glances with the ...
— The Fugitive • Rabindranath Tagore
... church at Kenlis. It may be his heart, it may be his brain. But so it has happened three or four times, or oftener, that after proceeding a certain way in the service, he has on a sudden stopped short, and after a silence, apparently quite unable to resume, he has fallen into solitary, inaudible prayer, his hands and his eyes uplifted, and then pale as death, and in the agitation of a strange shame and horror, descended trembling, and got into the vestry-room, leaving his congregation, without explanation, to themselves. This occurred when his curate was absent. When he goes down to Kenlis ...
— Green Tea; Mr. Justice Harbottle • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... nothing of it, but she insisted and we followed the music, inaudible to me, up the slopes of the garden that is the foot-hill of the mighty mountain of Mahadeo, and still I could hear nothing. And Vanna told me strange stories of the Apollo of India whom all hearts must adore, even as the herd-girls adored him in his golden youth by Jumna river ...
— The Ninth Vibration And Other Stories • L. Adams Beck
... up in his place, with his head bent, and his face covered with an ashy whiteness. "I burnt it, sir," he said, in an almost inaudible voice, and trembling ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... his head, obeyed her; as the door closed behind them he could hear that she cried softly, and that Lightmark, his silence at last broken, consoled her with inaudible words. ...
— A Comedy of Masks - A Novel • Ernest Dowson and Arthur Moore
... it is customary to pronounce in a more or less inaudible voice the names of the two persons introduced. Circumstances compel me in the present case to depart from received custom. The truth is, I do not know the names of the two people whom I wish to bring together! The reader who knows his own name will readily pardon ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... observing the precaution, however, of keeping in the shadow of the walls, and taking care that the noise made by the footsteps of the men and of the horses should render the sound of his own inaudible. ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... or two there was a hush of intense silence of mental suspense and expectation as Vane faced his audience and looked steadily about him before he began to speak, and when he did begin, the silence changed to an almost inaudible murmur and movement which is always the sign of relaxed tension among a large ...
— The Missionary • George Griffith
... discredited, too. The relieved audience hung back for a moment, taking in the full force of the picture, before it broke ranks to crowd round the Colonel and offer him belated support. The Colonel said a few inaudible words to Judge Saxon, and then turned from him and his protege with the air of washing his hands of the whole affair. He looked surprisingly unruffled by it, even stimulated by it. The interruption to his ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... it; our supplies are very imperfect; in the wild weather of this (the hurricane) season we have much discomfort: one night the wind blew in our house so outrageously that we must sit in the dark; and as the sound of the rain on the roof made speech inaudible, you may imagine we found the evening long. All these things, however, are pleasant to me. You say L'ARTISTE INCONSCIENT set off to travel: you do not divide me right. 0.6 of me is artist; 0.4, adventurer. First, I suppose, come letters; then adventure; and since I have indulged ...
— Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 2 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... but it did not get on fast. With a pathetic clinging to Phebe he seldom let her stay long out of his sight, but followed her about like a child, or sat on the hearth watching her as she went about her house-work. Only by those unconscious sobs and outcries, inaudible to himself, did he betray the grief that was gnawing at his heart. Very often did Phebe put aside her work, and standing before him ask such questions as the following on her ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are running;—the pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds like a heavy shower.... Then the chanting grows fainter in distance; the Devil's immense basso becomes inaudible;—one only distinguishes at regular intervals the crescendo of the burden,— a wild swelling of many hundred boy-voices all rising together,— a retreating storm of rhythmic song, wafted to the ear in gusts, in ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... the pain ceased; his breathing was deeper and calmer, and through the white veil sounds and shapes became more or less plain. But all seemed faint and futile, as if they came from afar. He heard sounds plainly, and then again they were inaudible; the figures moved noiselessly as those in a cinematograph; familiar faces appeared strange and he could not ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... to voices they could not hear. His lips moved silently, forming inaudible words. His eyes were bright and joyful. He stretched out his arms, fell back, and died with a smile upon his lips. Our Lady had come for him, and with her he went home. Dawn was breaking on the Feast of ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... give evidence of his whereabouts by so much as a single cry. Both tongue and ears were sealed by infirmity, and any low sound such as that he might have been able to utter would have been rendered inaudible by the torrent rushing through the ravine hard by. At nightfall the search was suspended, to be renewed before daybreak with fresh assistance from the nearest village. Some of the new-comers spoke of a cave on the slope of the meadow, into which the boy ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... the cause of every sound without, distinguishing with the marvellous acuteness of senses excited to the highest pitch by passion, sounds which would have been inaudible to another person. ...
— The Honor of the Name • Emile Gaboriau
... stir of almost inaudible applause, such as is sometimes heard in church. Then a large old man, with a long and venerable white beard, perhaps the only real working-man present, ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... a great deal of trouble in the Norris family, and for weeks old Bill Norris had gone about scowling as blackly as a thunder-cloud, speaking to no one but his wife and daughter, and oftentimes muttering inaudible things that, however, had the tone of invective; and accompanied, as these mutterings were, with a menacing shake of his burley head, old Bill finally grew to be an ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... deeply affected by the address of Miss Foster, as to be for some time inaudible. When heard, he ...
— Woman in the Ninteenth Century - and Kindred Papers Relating to the Sphere, Condition - and Duties, of Woman. • Margaret Fuller Ossoli
... engaged in his inaudible devotions, he heard a footstep behind him. The solitude of his morning walk was seldom disturbed by the intrusion of others. Turning, he recognized the friend ...
— The Boat Club - or, The Bunkers of Rippleton • Oliver Optic
... with the chime which Antwerp cathedral clock plays at half-hours. The tune has been haunting me ever since, as tunes will. You dress, eat, drink, walk and talk to yourself to their tune: their inaudible jingle accompanies you all day: you read the sentences of the paper to their rhythm. I tried uncouthly to imitate the tune to the ladies of the family at breakfast, and they say it is "the shadow dance of Dinorah." It may be so. I dimly remember ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... was lit by a cheap lamp, which threw splashes of light and left tracts of shadow. John lay on the bed, muttering words that were inaudible. His coat and waistcoat had been removed, and his shirt was open at the neck. The high wall of his forehead was marble white, but his cheeks were red and feverish. One of his arms lay over the side of the bed and Glory took it up and held it. Her great eyes were moist, but she did not cry, neither ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... dared not turn and go upstairs: the fire and the singing tea-kettle were, at least, companions. But something impelled me to take the bow and draw it across the crwth-strings. Presently I thought I heard a door overhead softly open, and this was followed by the almost inaudible creak of a light footstep descending the stairs. With paralysed pulses I kept my eyes fixed on the half-open door, in the certainty of seeing her pass along the little passage leading from the staircase to the front door. ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture ...
— Essays, First Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... It was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any country. The young professor had been toiling over it for three years and it had constantly baffled him, until, on this hot afternoon in June, 1875, he heard an almost inaudible sound—a faint TWANG—come from ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... his pockets, and his quid in his mouth, with very much the air of one who had nothing to do but look about him, and spit right and left; addressing this old tar, Charley made known to him his wish in slang, which to Mary was almost inaudible, and quite unintelligible, and which I am too much of a land-lubber ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... "Hoch!" Men and women squeezing aimlessly around corners. Closely packed drifts of bobbing heads. A crack of rifles dropping punctuations into the scene. "Hoch! Hoch!" from faces clustered darkly about the grimacing, inaudible orators in ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... much conversation is kept up in an inaudible tone of voice. Harry has an instinctive knowledge that it is about him, for he hears the words, "Peter! Peter!" his name must be transmogrified into "Peter!" In another minute he hears dishes rattling on the table, and Bengal distinctly complimenting the adjuncts, as he orders some for ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... of impending gloom. She was evidently rehearsing a speech, for her lips moved in scornful curves, and her bristling black locks were tossed in defiance. Mike, venturing out of a shady corner and catching a glimpse of her face, thought her inaudible remarks were addressed to him and retired with guilty eyelid and ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... words, a silence in which both stood watchful and listening. Then, very faintly, I seemed to detect the silvern ringing receding away through distant rooms. Finally it became inaudible, and in the stillness of The Gables I could distinctly hear my companion breathing. For fully ten minutes we two remained thus, each momentarily expecting a repetition of the ringing, or the coming of some new and more sinister manifestation. ...
— The Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... an enormous fraud, dropped his cap, in his confusion, twice, murmured something inaudible, rose to his feet, and backed out of the room, making one comprehensive bow to everybody, and saying "Good-night" ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... mirror to discover a flushed and dishevelled disorder. She began at once a hasty readjustment of her hair, while Ramage parleyed with inaudible interrogations. "A glass slipped from the table," he explained.... "Non. Fas du tout. Non.... Niente.... Bitte!... Oui, dans la note.... Presently. Presently." That conversation ended and he turned ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... very graciously, and, in spite of all the temptations of her toys, Venetia could not refrain from peeping over her mother's shoulder at its contents. 'Mother,' she whispered, in a voice inaudible save to Lady ...
— Venetia • Benjamin Disraeli
... How the wretched machine did rattle! Even the roar of the streets we traversed was inaudible, quenched in the frightful din. All I could do was to inspect the memorials of my predecessors in that box. The sides were scrawled over with their names (or nicknames) and sentences. Their brief observations had a jovial tone. I suppose the miserable passengers in that black ferry-boat to Hades ...
— Prisoner for Blasphemy • G. W. [George William] Foote
... pulling her skirt modestly close with the other, activities leaving her very little to grasp the ladder with. The firemen seemed quite accustomed to this sort of irrationality, and paying no heed to the rush of words—inaudible to us on the street—bursting from her, they coaxed her expertly up onto the roof. Here she stood, statuesquely outlined against the bright sky, berating her succorers, until Mr Dinkman, rounded, bald, and calm, ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... the branches, and anon darting to the ground again—as though they were under some spell from those fiery eyes, and were unable to take themselves away. Their motions appeared to grow less energetic, their chirping became almost inaudible, and their wings seemed hardly to expand as they flew, or rather fluttered, around the head of the serpent. One of them at length dropped down upon the ground within reach of the snake, and stood with open bill, as if exhausted, and unable to ...
— Chambers' Edinburgh Journal - Volume XVII., No 422, New Series, January 31, 1852 • Various
... seamen short of her complement and three hundred short of what I should consider an efficient crew, whilst the bad quality and ignorance of the landsmen, makes the task of managing her in action no easy matter, the incessant bawling going on rendering the voices of the officers inaudible. Had this ship yesterday been manned and equipped as she ought to have been, and free from the disadvantages stated, there is no doubt whatever in my mind, but, that singly, we could have dismantled half the ships of ...
— Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru and Brazil, - from Spanish and Portuguese Domination, Volume 2 • Thomas Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald
... I say, one can hardly make him responsible for being a Jew, can you? What has that got to do with it?" exclaimed Maurice, this being a point of view that had never presented itself to him. And as Johanna only murmured something that was inaudible, he added lamely: "Then you ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... minor); once, and perhaps a second time in like circumstance; but had always to renounce it again, when the Prince of Orange came to maturity. And ever since, the Chapter of Liege sighs as before, 'Herstal is perhaps in a sense ours. We had once some kind of right to it!'—sigh inaudible in the loud public thoroughfares. That is the Bishop's claim. The name of him, if anybody care for it, is 'Georg Ludwig, titular COUNT OF BERG,' now a very old man: Bishop of Liege, he, and has been snatching at Herstal again, very eagerly ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... any forefather in comparison with the dubious and mythical Sir William. I now remembered once that, in going over the pedigree, I had been struck by the name of Herbert,—the only Herbert in the scroll,—and had asked, "What of him, uncle?" and Roland had muttered something inaudible, and turned away. And I remembered also that in Roland's room there was the mark on the wall where a picture of that size had once hung. The picture had been removed thence before we first came, but must have hung there for years to have left that mark on the wall,—perhaps suspended by Bolt ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... her remark, uttered something that was inaudible; the name of "Christina," however, was substituted ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... Colonel thought he heard his name mentioned by General Braxton, and although the words were inaudible, the tone was sharp and commanding. He turned and glanced back. The girl's face was flushed, and she looked excited, something unusual to her self-contained, reposeful manner. As they moved out of hearing, the General was still talking with great earnestness, and a feeling of uneasiness began to ...
— Southern Lights and Shadows • Edited by William Dean Howells & Henry Mills Alden
... out in astonishment on beholding Clarissa in a loose nightdress, dancing with an expression of ecstasy and with passionate movements. Her eyes were tightly closed, as if they were sealed, her eyebrows lifted in coquettish anxiety, her shoulders rocked in a stream of inaudible tones whose tempo seemed now hurried, now excessively slow. Suddenly she seized something and held it before her,—it was a mirror; glancing into it, she recoiled with a shudder and let it fall, so that ...
— The German Classics, v. 20 - Masterpieces of German Literature • Various
... given—the search of the living and uninjured for those dead, dying or imprisoned ones who lay beneath the great masses of stone and mortar. Sometimes, in answer to the desperate cries of those outside or already rescued, smothered, almost inaudible cries for help might be heard, so faint as to seem scarcely human, and yet growing fainter and fainter still, until those who were working for the release of the captive became aware that their labor was in vain, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... up when Farren had been lifted into the cab. Then he sat down on the floor plates and rested the unconscious man's head and shoulders against his knees as the engine began to rock furiously. Nothing was said for a while; the uproar made by the banging cars would have rendered speech inaudible, but when they had been left behind, the engineer ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... her in words or requested her to take a lower seat, but some rude giggles were not inaudible; and Priscilla, who would thankfully have taken her dinner in the scullery, heard hints about a certain young person's presumption, and about the cheek of those wretched freshers, which must instantly be put down ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... quite inaudible, and at last Leonard said, 'No, old fellow; as long as you don't get ashamed of me, thinking about you, and knowing what you are about, will be one of the best pleasures I shall have. And look here, Aubrey, ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... upon the table, and with the other hand she still held his hand over which her head was bowed. "My friend," she said, still sobbing, and sobbing loudly now; "my friend, that God has sent me in my trouble." And then, with words that were wholly inaudible, she murmured ...
— Orley Farm • Anthony Trollope
... words were almost inaudible from emotion, and she hurried away, leaving the guest sole ...
— Elsie's Motherhood • Martha Finley
... rejoined Rochester; "you have nothing to apprehend from me. You have promised to meet some one to-night," he added, in so low a tone as to be inaudible to ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... after all, as much breath support. A soft note which is taken with the "head voice" without being supported by a breath taken from the diaphragm is a helpless sort of thing. It does not carry and is inaudible at any distance, whereas the soft note which does possess the deep breath support is ...
— Caruso and Tetrazzini on the Art of Singing • Enrico Caruso and Luisa Tetrazzini
... sound-speakers to keep the ship from sounding like a grave. The reel played and the speakers gave off minute creakings, and meaningless hums, and very tiny noises of every imaginable sort, all of which were just above the threshold of the inaudible. ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... with the distress Nelson unquestionably felt at having missed the enemy, he was touchingly undeceived. As soon as the "Victory" and his flag were made out, the people flocked to Portsmouth, collecting on the ramparts of the town and other points of view, in inaudible testimony of welcome. As the barge pulled to the shore, and upon landing, he was greeted with loud and long-continued cheering. In London the same demonstrations continued whenever he was recognized in public. "Lord Nelson arrived a few days ago," wrote Radstock. "He ...
— The Life of Nelson, Vol. II. (of 2) - The Embodiment of the Sea Power of Great Britain • A. T. (Alfred Thayer) Mahan
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