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More "Swish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the cost of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he could not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened. From hour to hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the barque must be driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that case they must be nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could Sharkey have in his head, and what use did he hope to make of him? ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... about in the cabin, heard the rattle of dishes, the swish of a broom on the rough floor. And then presently she came out, dragging another rocker. Then she re-entered the cabin, returning with a strip of striped cloth and a sewing basket. She seated herself in the chair, placed the basket in her lap, and with a half smile on her ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... careless as a foolish young recruit who fears lest he should be thought to be afraid. My pistols I had left behind in my hurry. My sword was at my belt, but it is not always the most convenient of weapons. I lay back in my seat in the gondola, lulled by the gentle swish of the water and the steady creaking of the oar. Our way lay through a network of narrow canals with high houses towering on either side and a thin slit of star-spangled sky above us. Here and there, on the bridges which spanned the canal, there was the dim ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... gentleman of the right sort war he—he war!" and he pulled down another boy and put me up instead, and told me all about the great fire at Stubbs's factory. You can't think what fun it was. Roar, roar, up went the flame. Swish, wish, went the water—such a bellowing—such great ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... three hundred yards distant. I might not have heard him, even with the aid of the cleft, but tonight Areskoui has given uncommon power to my ear, perhaps to aid us, and I know he is walking among thick bushes. I can hear the branches swish as they fly back into place, after his body has passed. Ah, a small stick popped as it ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... him. He was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown about ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... Carlotta, and Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its skirts ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... exquisite masses of bloom, the glorious and delicate scented blossoms of the garden. It tore off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... Mabel, he had made up his mind to walk up-stream as far as the spot where two brooks met, and formed body enough for a fly flipped in very carefully to sail downward. Here he began, and the creak of his reel and the swish of his rod were music to him, after the ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... he found, to his surprise, that he was enjoying his new quarters quite as much as he had the old ones. Madam was a never-ending source of amusement and interest to him, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid soon had each her individual appeal. He liked the swish of their silk petticoats, and the play of their slim white hands about the coffee-tray. He liked their super-feminine delicacies of speech and motion, and the flattering interest they began to take ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... The swish of a body against the curving rail, as if for guidance, was plain enough, and now whoever it was had reached the foot of the staircase and had caught a glimpse of our rigid silhouettes against the billiard-room doorway. Halsey threw me off then and ...
— The Circular Staircase • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... crossed the bayou when the log on which he was walking tipped a little, and although Tom made frantic efforts to save himself by seizing all the branches within his reach, it set the whole structure in motion. There was a "swish" of tree-tops, and in a moment more the bridge and Tom went into the water together. The negro looked, but did not see him ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... the swish of the trees lining the gorge was in her straining ears and half drowned its sullen sound. With feelings impossible to describe, she tossed up her arms to the skies, where a single brilliant star was looking through the mass of quickly ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... There was a swish and rustle of silk by the door—Mrs. Polkington did not wear silk skirts, only a silk flounce somewhere, but she got more creak and rustle out of it than the average woman does out of two skirts. An imposing woman she was, with an eye that had once been ...
— The Good Comrade • Una L. Silberrad
... water. As the safest place for their excursions they had picked by chance on the harbour with its fleet of steamers that threaded every bay and cove, and little by little, in the exaltation of the senses following his love for this woman, the swish of the water slipping past the bows, the panorama of rock and sandy beach, and the salt smell of the sea were for ever part of this strange, emotional condition where reality and dream blended without visible jar ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... three-quarters of an hour to low water. At that state of the tide the causeway was usually pretty bare; but, as she descended the hill, Eyebright, even in the darkness, could see that it was not nearly bare now. She could hear the swish of the water on the pebbles, and, by the light of her lantern, caught sight of more than one long wave sweeping almost up to the crest of the ridge. She would not wait, however, but set bravely forward. The water must be shallow, she knew, and fast growing more so, and she dared not delay; ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... done there in Etienne Garcin's gloomy spider's den. He even laughed when the red-bodiced she-devil laughingly pointed down at the loosened floor-planks in the back room, underneath which mantrap the swish of the throbbing ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... felt as if I could not speak. All I wanted to do was to fly at him and strike out wildly, while something seemed to hold me back as he stood vapouring before me, swishing about the thin, black, silver-handled cane he carried, and at every swish he cut ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... long rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door, the soft whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter's temperish protest, "I won't! I won't!" and the White Linen Nurse's fervid pleading, "Oh, you must,—you must!" and the Little Girl's mumbled ultimatum, "Well, ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... in the night, with monotonous swish-swish and swelling wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment a wet streak of sand or gravel, a dozen feet in width; in quick succession come heavy, ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... she whispered, "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen for his place of concealment. He knelt there motionless, a cocked pistol clenched ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... as it reached the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... incidentally, he has muddied the spring for me—robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... long hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... men gathered behind a ruined house at a place we called Enfiladed crossroads and went over to see who they were. The moment I stepped out of my trench a German machine gunner got after me and I could hear the "swish swish" of the bullets a few feet in front of me. I realized that death was very near, so I stepped short and let him get his range a little ahead of me. His gun followed me for a hundred yards. I found Captain Victor Currie ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... heat of them almost overwhelmed her. The shrieks of the frantic throng at the main door of the theatre died away. She heard the shouted commands of the police and firemen—then the swish of water from the first pipe brought to play upon the flames. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... to be better frequented than that of which he already had experience. More than once dark, sheeted figures passed them by, noiseless save for the underfoot swish in the mud, and presently the alley widened into a little square, at one side of which there was a fresh rustle of green things. At the side of it a dim light showed through a big open door, from which came a musical murmur ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... that Colonel Frost comes very soon. His health seems quite shattered. I believe—you knew—of them—slightly that is to say, Miss Prime, did you not?" But even with her words she cast an anxious, furtive glance along the dim reach of the lanai, for the pit-a-pat of footfalls, the swish of feminine draperies was distinctly heard. Two dainty, white-robed forms came floating into view, and, with changing color, their hostess suddenly arose and stepped forward to meet them. Just one second of silence intervened, then, all grace and gladness, smiles and cordiality, both ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who employs stockmen by the dozen, who sends off hundreds of fat, contented, happy, liberty-loving oxen in droves to end their days in an unknown locality amid the clatter and swish of machinery and with the fearful scents of blood and decaying offal defiling the air, has few opportunities of studying the nicer qualities of his possessions. He may be full of bullock lore and able to recite sensational and entertaining stories illustrative ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... The faint swish of bushes as Lieutenant Boggs's ten men scuttled into the brush behind them—the distant beat of the army's feet getting fainter ahead of them, and then silence—dead, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with my courage. There was warmth and cheer ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... buttermilk spouting into the pail held by Aunt Abigail. And she poured the water in to wash the butter, and screwed on the top herself, and, again all herself (for Uncle Henry had gone off as soon as the butter had "come"), swung the barrel back and forth six or seven times to swish the water all through the particles of butter. She even helped Aunt Abigail scoop out the great yellow lumps—her imagination had never conceived of so much butter in all the world! Then Aunt Abigail let her run the curiously shaped wooden butter-worker ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... breath he watched till the kopje was blotted from his sight, and the demons of the storm came shrieking back. Then suddenly there came a crash that shook the world and made the senses reel. He heard the rush and swish of water, water torrential that fell in a streaming mass, and as his understanding came staggering back he knew that the first, most menacing danger was past. The cloud had burst upon ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... of the stairs, and flashed through the hall-way overhead and out on the front veranda, and he, instead of pursuing, stood stone still, rooted to the floor, his heart beating hard, his hands clinching in amaze. What stunned him was the fact that with the footfalls went the swish of dainty ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... She had heard no sound of approaching feet. The swish of the waves had covered all beside. She looked up at him with a feeling of utter helplessness. ...
— The Obstacle Race • Ethel M. Dell
... All about is the swish of ghostly wings which brush her face or neck and the air is full of chattering noises like the grinding of hundreds of tiny teeth. Sometimes a soft little body plumps into her lap and if she dares to take her hands from her face long enough to disengage the clinging ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... the thing emanated a gentle rattle and swish of crockery and suds. Hawkins stood ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... Swish!!! The exclamation-marks signify the suddenness with which the train swept into the station. I leapt down on to the platform and drew a long breath. The sea! In huge whiffs the ozone rolled into my nostrils. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, September 1st, 1920 • Various
... Rai Ghat here to bathe in the Ganges. The ghat was deserted; I stood still for awhile, enjoying the sunny peace. After a dip in the sparkling waters, I started for home. The only sound in the silence was that of my Ganges-drenched cloth, swish-swashing with every step. As I passed beyond the site of the large banyan tree near the river bank, a strong impulse urged me to look back. There, under the shade of the banyan, and surrounded by a few disciples, sat ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack— A loud swish, Squish! "What's ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just warming up ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... Shortly after sunrise a low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a somewhat speculative thinker ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... noise? After a time it came again—the dry swish of dead leaves and the sharp crackle of dead ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... by an oath, cut the dying echoes of the song. She could hear the swish of a quirt falling again and again, and the sound of trampling hoofs thudding on the hard, sun-cracked ground. Startled, she sprang to her feet, and saw silhouetted against the skyline a horse and ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... young men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... blood and life together. With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... rest of the food is commonplace; poi is the dish. It is one-finger poi, two-finger poi, or three-finger poi, according as it is thick enough to be lifted out of the pot sticking to one finger, or so thin as to require a dextrous swish of two ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... summit of the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the edge of the steep hillside,—so close that there were times when every one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over, it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,—a swish through the air and a smash at the bottom,—but a tumbling, and a rolling over and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden turn of the road ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... there come a swish and flash as if a kag of black powder had changed its state of bein'. I s'pose everybody yelled and dodged except the picture man. He says, 'Thank you, gents; very ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... a grey dress of some soft material, and a large black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of which were ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... stood so, and the three stared at him. Then with a swish of leaves in the wind and a spatter of rain in their faces, the candle blew out. The girls screamed and sprang up. The hound backed into his corner and barked furiously. Whatever it was, it had crossed the threshold and was ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... length of the chamber back and forth, and there was silence save for the soft swish of ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... a swish over a bridge, where as one rather felt than saw the full green Anio dashing through rocks; and just at sunset we came upon Subiaco—rising violet, with its great pointing castle mound, from the green valley of water and budding poplars into a purple and fiery sky. Then in the ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... could be heard the swish of whips and the camels, having changed from an ambling pace into a full gallop, began to speed like the whirlwind, throwing up with their feet the sand ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... bellowing of a great thunderstorm. The lightning flashed fearfully all about us, killing two oxen quite near to my wagon, and the thunder rolled and echoed till the very earth seemed to shake. Then came a wail of cold wind, and after that the swish of torrential rain. Although I was well accustomed to such natural manifestations, especially at this season of the year, I confess that these sights and sounds did not tend to raise my spirits, which were already lower than they should have been on that eventful day. Hans, however, ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... curiosity of Mrs. Drack's which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide; but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin. It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his posture—as if to show he could patronize her from ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that make up the silence of a wood ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... would but cease from trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings. But Mr. Lingnam only talked. He talked—we all sat together behind so that we could not escape him—and he talked above the worn gears and a certain maddening swish of one badly patched tire—and he talked of the Federation of the Empire against all conceivable dangers except himself. Yet I was neither brutally rude like Penfentenyou, nor swooningly bored like the Agent-General. ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... and look out there," cried Dan, who was in command; and Billy stood ready, while we could hear the swish of the waves against the cutter's bows, and every man instinctively put his hand on ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... no!" Jeanne shuddered. "It is because I like to live, to breathe the sweet air, to run over the grass, to linger about the woods and hear all the voices. The pines have one tone, the hemlocks and spruces another, and the soft swish of the larches is like the last tender notes of some of the hymns I sing with the sisters occasionally. And the sun is so glorious! He clasps the baby leaves in his unseen hands and they grow, and he makes the blades of grass to dance for very joy. I catch ...
— A Little Girl in Old Detroit • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... congratulate himself on the important capture he had made, and with his hand on his captive's collar, and his revolver to his ear, was moving towards the center of the street, when a whistling "swish" was heard, the dull thud of a slung shot on the detective's head followed, and, every muscle relaxed, he sank a senseless man in the dust of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... becomes louder, and then with a loud "swish" the birds come right at you. Throw up your gun quietly and quickly and fire at once—don't dwell on your aim, and let us hope that the dog has no difficulty in retrieving a bird ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... tae," put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... grew to a faint and distant murmur, the murmur to a long swish like a million rustling garments. A tree fell, with a crash, far away. Then the ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... obey when I heard a splash and the canoe received a terrific shock. A tremendous bulk fell upon it. With a sudden swing I was hurled into the air and fell twenty feet away. In the water I heard a swish, and glimpsed the giant ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... is to fish in such a place and at such an hour! The novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar that one feels at home—the motion of the rod, the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the rising fish—it all brings back a hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... a little swish. The Russian was gone. With him went the stifling air of treachery, murder and intrigue, yet it left Johnny wondering. Why was every man's hand lifted against the sharp-chinned Russian? Had Wo Cheng been actuated by hate, or by greed? Johnny could not but wonder if some of Russia's ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... this mighty effort was just enough. But for the birch-tree it was just too much. The shallow earth by which it held gave way; and the next moment, with a clatter of loosened stones and a swish of leafy branches, it crashed majestically down into the crevice, closing one end of it with a mass of boughs and foliage, and once more frightening the imprisoned cub almost ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... Then with a swish, a line dropped out of the sky, and a little seat rested on the ground beside me. I climbed into it, and without further ado was whisked up into the swooper that floated a few hundred feet ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... clutched the handle of his whip, and the lash suddenly cut the air with a swish. It circled Rod's shoulders, sharply flicking his face, leaving a crimson streak upon ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear the stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now and then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. The rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew they were following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to overtake him. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel faster through the night, but Nada's ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... cats came in their joy In the sunrise, a glittering wave. "We are tigers, are tigers," they yowled. "Down, Down, Go the swine to the grave." But we tramp Tramp Trampled them there, Then charged with our sabres and spears. The swish of the sabre, The swish of the sabre, Was a marvellous tune in our ears. We yelled "We are men, We are men." As we bled to death in the sun.... Then staunched our horrible wounds With the cry that the battle was won.... And at last, When the black-mammoth legion Split the ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... permeates places of death! No human sound could be detected—no sound of any kind, except an uncanny creaking beneath the floor where the old masts rested in their steps, and a gentle swish of water outside ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... and hot. Our camp is pitched on the west bank of the river; we are asleep. Suddenly there is what sounds like an explosion just outside. Then another and another,—such a bursting bang,—then a s-s-swish, and I am out of bed, standing out on the sand; and for a moment I am sure the kitchen tent is on fire. Then it dawns on me, in the slow way things dawn in the middle of the night: it is only fireworks being let off ...
— Things as They Are - Mission Work in Southern India • Amy Wilson-Carmichael
... Tay Ho's hooded head for the first time showed in front—only to be instantly eclipsed by the white star of Aldegonde. Aramis began to hang—the angry roar of his backers told he was out of it. Simultaneously, the jockeys sat down to ride—there was the cruel swish of catgut, the crueler prodding of steel. In the crowd a great hushed breath, like the sigh of a forest before the storm, told ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... fulfilling the duties of a runner for our unit;—he also told me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only left ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... with Master Mordacks, who of all born men was foremost, with his wiry fingers spread, to pass them through the scattery forelock of that mettlesome horse, old Time. The old horse galloped by him unawares, and left him standing still, to hearken the swish of the tail, and the clatter of the hoofs, and the spirited nostrils neighing for a race, on the wide breezy down at the end of the lane. But Geoffrey Mordacks was not to blame. His instructions were to move slowly, until he was sure of something worth moving for. And of this he had no ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... gloomy and dark and dreary. It snowed and sleeted and rained. I remember how the rain roared on the roof. It roared so loud we didn't hear the horse. But we heard heavy boots on the porch outside the living-room, and the swish of a slicker thrown to the floor. There was a bright fire. Dad looked up with a wild joy. All of a sudden he changed. He blazed. He recognized the heavy tread of his son. If I ever pitied and loved him it was then. I thought of the return ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... in the air; there followed it, leaping after the beam, a great swish of steel, soon a ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... As they waited and listened to the whining of the wind, the swish of the rain and the angry muttering of the thunder, and saw the vivid lightning, it was no wonder they did not want to decide hurriedly to go out in that out burst of the elements. But it was also trying on the nerves to stay in the stalled auto, exposed as it ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... weapons as they could clutch, the men dashed into the water with paeans and shouts and the broken pitchers of fallen Jericho. The violet phosphorescence lighted them on their way, and tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes of a shark and beaten it off with actual blows. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though he ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Oddly enough, though she had not heard the sound of the waves before, the melancholy swish! swish! now echoed through her very soul. When she felt a salt taste on her lips she thought it was a drop of spray from the sea, then she felt the faint trickling sensation of another and another ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... with the beat of the Indian drum, the eerie penetrations of the turtle rattle that set the time of the dancers' feet. Dance? It is not a dance, that marvellously slow, serpentine-like figure with the soft swish, swish of moccasined feet, and the faint jingling of elks'-teeth bracelets, keeping rhythm with every footfall. It is not a dance, but an invocation of motion. Why may we not worship with the graceful movement of our feet? The paleface worships ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... their uninvited, or, rather, self-invited, guest, before they ventured to give him a greeting. Presently they discovered that he was not a collector, hunter, nest-robber, or ogre of any other kind, and there was the swish of wings around me, and a medley of chirps and songs filled the sequestered spot. Away up here the gray-headed juncos were trilling like warblers, and hopping about on their pine-needle carpet, creeping in and out among the rocks, hunting for ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser
... have come up!" he shouted in her ear, as he fairly carried her along the sloping deck. He had to shout to be heard above the roar of the wind, the pounding of the broken mast against the side of the schooner, and the swish of the salt water whipped into spray by ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Sea - or, A Pictured Shipwreck That Became Real • Laura Lee Hope
... lower sank the Monarch, like a bird with a broken wing. In a few minutes there came a sudden jar that told the ship had struck the ice. Then, with a swish and rustle the silk bag, emptied of gas fell on the roof of the cabins. The Monarch had come down between two big hummocks of ice, and rested almost ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... most part sinewy, hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not an eating-house, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, a special horse to ride, special ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... muffled cries of terror: a swish through the air as the two passengers came sliding down: a louder shriek: and, lastly, a thud on the hall floor that made the hearts of the waiting group of boys stand quite still for a second ...
— A Big Temptation • L. T. Meade
... turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... second line, hit in the groin. When he returned we had some cruelly broken cases in, and that nulla saw a deal of pain, and grew stale with the smell of blood. A fair number of bullets flew over, and there was the occasional swish of a machine-gun. Mules were killed far back in the second line, and men hit. But the nulla was safe. The misguided Turk shelled and machine-gunned the empty space ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... turning over to get into a more comfortable position, when he heard something hiss through the air with a swishing sound. For an instant he thought of rattlesnakes, but almost at once it was borne to his mind that he had heard this sound before—the swish of a ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... with fierce cheering, had reached the house from the garden just beyond the broad veranda. As the three Rover brothers hurried through the hallway and outside, the yelling and cheering were renewed. Then, just as Tom Rover stepped out on the veranda, there was a sudden swish and a stream of water from a garden hose caught him ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... spears, clattered in about him. He heard the swish and tang of them; heard the leaves flutter ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... were sailing in a regular sloop, and that, too, going "with lee rail awash"; for instead of the soft crooning sound the runners made usually, there was a slash and a swish of ripples cloven apart; and instead of the little fountains of ice-dust which rise from the heels of the sharp shoes when the boat is skimming the frozen surface, there rose long spurting ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... left alone, glad of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of the water along ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... memory. It was but last winter that he had read of the finding of a man's body, stark and cold, not fifty yards from his own threshold; he had fallen helpless, faint from incessant struggling through the snow-drifts and too weak to make his cries for help heard above the rushing of the wind and the swish of the snow on the window behind which his terrified wife ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... singer lady out of sight down the Road, with her spray of brown blossoms in her one hand and her garden hat in the other, she espied young Eliza rapidly approaching from up the Road and there was excitement in every movement of her slim, little body and in every swish of her short calico skirts, as well as in the way her long pigtail swung ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... foot-fall on the stairs, the soft swish of skirts in the hallway, Croyden turned, expectantly—and Miss Cavendish ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
... started off into a cross-street, when Phil imagined he heard a shout in the distance. He looked forth but could see no one in the rushing darkness, The rattle of the cab, the growing roar of the night and toe swish of the rain, which was now falling quite heavily, drowned all other sounds ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... who brought on the FLOOD I have learned today.... With a stone she found uncovered by the filtering from the little opening she began pounding against the wall.... Suddenly the wall bulged inward.... There was a swish, and a roar, and a deadening GUSH,—and then a RUSHING FLOOD tore open the side of the wall and burst like a torrent into our muddy, narrow cell. Higher and higher it mounted, enveloping us to our arm pits.... My 'prisoner' moved calmly over ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... on top of which the two men had stood. With Jerry, holding the lantern to guide them, Ned and Bob followed. They paused now and then to listen, but the only sound they heard was caused by the waves of the Pacific breaking on the rocky shore, the rattle of the pebbles on the beach, and the soft swish ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... submarine heard at a range of about a mile on a calm night presents a curious sound which almost defies description. Its principal constituent consists of a "clankety clank! clankety clank!" at first barely distinguishable from the low swish of the water past the face of the submerged microphone, then louder when the sound has been distinguished and the human ear is on the alert. But when this sound was heard in war there was little time for analysing or noting. It was ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... the long toll-bridge, the horses stepping hesitatingly and curveting a little at the swish of the noisy water, climbed the sunny hills beyond, and dipped down to a level stretch of wood, in the heart of which they chose a picnic-ground by the side of a merry ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... half way, keeping his elbow fast at his side. But the doctor would not be thus partially obeyed. "Hold out your hand, sir!" he would thunder; and out would go the arm to its fullest length, and with a sharp swish through the air, down would come the strap, covering the hand from the wrist to finger tip, and sending a thrill of agony through every nerve in the body. Ten, twenty, thirty, or in extreme cases, ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... flower of the flax; and an old dog drowsing on the threshold.... And this would be in his mind as he wandered the hot foreign streets.... And there would be the droning of the bees in the clover, and the swish of the swallows darting to and from the eaves, and in the evening would be the singing of the crickets.... And these he would hear over the capstan's clank.... When he tumbled into his cabin after his watch, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... think we're babies? Here, shy us the reins. Come along, you fellows, there's room for all three on the box. Now then, Joe, give her her head. Come up, you beast! Swish! See if we don't make her step out. Let ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... drooping roses made the air almost faint with their perfume. Margaret stretched out her hand, plucked a handful of the creamy petals and held them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away they heard the soft swish ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... there. The bombardment was not half a minute old, but it was now continuous along the whole horizon behind us. The noise was that of a large orchestra of street boys each heartily banging his kerosene-tin drum. Our shells streamed overhead with an almost continuous swish. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... him were already distant. The shadows were growing long now, but the light was still from the sunshine of the early afternoon. The man lying along the limb, knife in hand, could hear no sound save the soft swish of leaves against each other as the breeze of later day pushed its way through the forest, or the alarmed cries of knowing birds who saw on the ground beneath them a huge thing slip along with scarce a ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... the water like lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he soon caught up, but he was just raining water from his clothes, and it made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they could wring Jim Leonard's clothes out, and lay them on the shore to dry, and stay in long enough to let them dry. That was what they did, and they ran ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... outstretched to help her down. She pushed them aside with mocking looks. Shouts of admiration, compliments, clamourous declarations of love were rained on her by the soldiers she had charmed and now swung past with a provocative swish of her skirt ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... swish, a crunching thud: the bound body bowed over the rice sacks,—two long blood-jets pumping from the shorn neck;—and the head rolled upon the sand. Heavily toward the stepping-stone it rolled: then, suddenly bounding, it caught the upper edge ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... me. The fog pinioned me like a clammy winding-sheet; I could see nothing; I was too chilled to feel; I was as alone and powerless as a lost canoe in the ocean; but somewhere on earth or in air I heard a company of men pass me by. The sounds were unmistakable. I heard the swish of wet leaves, the pad of feet, and even the creak of the damp leather of the carrying-straps. Something cracked, pricking in my ears in a blur of sound, and I knew that the men had brushed a branch with the canoe that they were carrying ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... rose suddenly to a considerable height and started for somewhere else. The trees had colic; everything became as dark as winter twilight; streaks of wildfire ran miles in a second, and somebody seemed to be ripping up sheets of copper and tin the size of farms. The rain came with a swish, then with a rattle, and then with a roar, while people listened at their garret doorways and marveled. Window-panes turned to running ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... comes!" screamed Madaline, as a moving figure could be outlined in the shadows of the low brush, and tall swamp berry trees, that just towered high enough to hide the form that bent and broke the impeding young birches. It was the swish and motion of the brush that indicated his ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... sound was heard save the regular rattle of the oars in the rowlocks, the swish of the foam as it flew from the cutwater, and the occasional sob or gasp of the men as they exerted themselves to the utmost limit of their powers in the ...
— The Island Queen • R.M. Ballantyne
... of exceptional vigor assaulted Julius Caesar upon the flank, and his tail not whisking as well as usual, because of the incumbrance, he missed the enemy at the first swish and moved uneasily forward for several feet. As it chanced, this movement left the other string of firecrackers fairly in the lap of Cocoanut. The boys were still ...
— The Wolf's Long Howl • Stanley Waterloo
... sunken reef on this side. Head for the cove." He pointed to the north end of the floating mass, and Captain Cromwell put about. The island, now that he was close, appeared to be making good headway—at least four or five miles an hour. There was a swish and a swirl of water on the sides that showed it would have been folly to have run in shore there. But after he had rounded a hummock of glistening sand he saw the cove, and in a few minutes more had entered it and discovered ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... stopped short, for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" about Mr. Hayne? It could not mean that ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... scuttling unnoticed in the dimness. And it was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish, and surge of the water against the hull; ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... morning sun chases away the raindrops of the night before. Signs of activity are abroad in the inn; the swish of brooms; the noisy clatter of pails. A warm aroma of coffee floats up the stairs and under the door of number fourteen, awaking Arnaud to pleasant thoughts of breakfast. He is partly dressed before his eye lights on the canvas he ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... for the moment had overcome me, and had surmised who they were. Undoubtedly they were the smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I knew ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... and looked half with fear, half with defiance, at the black void outside. There was the patter of the dog's feet coming down the stairs swiftly. The man lifted himself on his elbow and listened. Side by side with the dog's feet came the swish, swish of a silken gown on the stairs. He looked a wild-eyed inquiry at his second wife. She slammed the door to before she answered him. 'It has been so for years,' she said; 'every one knew but you. She has not forgotten as easily ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... when you've ascinded that precipice splindid You see on its summit a wondtherful show— A lovely Swish building, all painting and gilding, The famous Pavilion of ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... enquiry it's the father—not as one would naturally expect, the mother—who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... The sharp swish of the wings of lapwings, as they dived towards her, filling the moors with their hard rasping double note, and also battling for possession of a mate, stirred her frightened blood; and at every step some new terror thrilled her, ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... and had the joy of seeing her put on that sweet ickle f'ock she wears for the Jazz supper scene in Oh My! All the materials used are three yards of embroidered chiffon, six yards of tinsel fringe and six dozen tinsel tassels; and anything so completely swish and so immensely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... soundlessly scuttling unnoticed in the dimness. It was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and surge of the water against the hull; the voices ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... sierra, on fearsome dizzy trails, in the somber shadows of virgin forests, in the rustling of wind-blown leaves (the seductive swish of elfin skirts) she heard the voices of Juno's sylvan train. Enchanted she listened to the syren's call, and ere the echo died within her ear she had devoted her talent to literature, a priestess self-ordained in ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... of the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once having been ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; the two thin, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... through the circuit until it dies out. If there be no E.M.F. present it will cease suddenly, and neutrality will be attained at once. Telephone circuits indicate the operation by peculiar and characteristic sounds. An iron wire circuit produces a long swish or sigh, but a copper wire circuit like the Paris-London telephone emits a short, sharp report, like the crack of a pistol, which is sometimes startling, and has created fear, but there is no danger or liability to shock. ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... revolver, and a sodden packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life, and then—swish, bang—back to the reality that the damp clay wall is only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am—that the Boche is just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the slightest chance of leaving except ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... over Carlotta, and Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its skirts ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Bakuma crouched in her hut listening in awe to the swish of the ghosts through the air, to the moans, groans and howls of the wizards doing battle with them. Tightly did she hold the amulet as she strove to conceal curiosity regarding the welfare of Zalu ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... unit;—he also told me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... heard, little gurgles of laughter, which in Egypt, thanks be to Allah, do not degenerate into giggles, the swish of a whip in the shadow, followed by a woman's cry, and through all, above all, unfinished catches ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... noisier cocks, whinnying horses and lowing cattle, the rattle of milk-tins, the squeak of the well-boom, the clank of mowing-machines, the swish of a passing brush-harrow, and, finally, the clamoring gong, were too much for Nelton. Lewis, on his way to look for a bath, caught him stuffing what he called "cotton an' ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... kinds of shadows. The blind ones are the shadows of things. These are the tame shadows— they love to play on the wall with you and follow you about like cats and dogs. Sometimes they hiss at you softly like snakes that do not bite, or swish like women's dresses, but if you poke a candle at them they pull ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... Beeton cheats much,' said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and the ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... and smouldering fires, the rude shelter-tents of the men, the white tops of the army wagons; beyond these the dark outlines of the massive hills; above them all the brilliant, placid stars; around them the hush of nature, broken only by the drowsing swish and plash of rapid, running waters, the stir of the night wind in the scattered trees, the stamp and snort of some startled troop-horse, the distant challenge of the night sentries. Something important ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... say positively that I heard a footfall on the carpet, but I think I did, and then came an unmistakable sound; the swish of the ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... the lion cub with whom Nero used to play, was far off in Africa, so our circus friend had to stay by himself. He curled up on the leaves, listened to the swish and patter of the rain, and soon he ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... Carlists any glimmer of the sunshine of a victorious issue to their uprising? (egad, that was a strong blast, and the waves do swish as if they were enraged at last!). Thieblin thinks not. And yet they are active, and, like the storm outside, they are gaining strength. Those of them under arms are four times as numerous as the Republicans in the northern provinces. Leader swears to me that everyone who can shoulder a musket ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... she stopped short, for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" about Mr. Hayne? ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... impudently at Arlie, turned on his heel, and went trailing off with jingling spur. They heard him cursing at his horse as he mounted. The cruel swish of a quirt came to them, after which the swift pounding of a horse's hoofs. The cow pony had found its gallop ...
— A Texas Ranger • William MacLeod Raine
... of profound silence, only broken by the croak of the buzzards and the swish of their spread wings. The bodies of the dead lancers lie neglected; and, the Rangers now further off, the birds go nearer them. Wolves, too, begin to show themselves by the edge of the underwood—from the stillness thinking the time arrived to commence their ravenous repast. It has but come to increase ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... some soft material, and a large black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of which were in ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... occurred to me to put my ear against the wall. At once the sounds all became incredibly louder. It was a confusion of sound: the mechanisms of the vessel, some of which I thought I could identify, and some not; the strange swish and thump of what might have been people moving; and there ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage in with a blow-pipe. Throw a cup of tea over the whole, and there's your ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... followed meekly watching with wonder and envy as Marcia made her bargain with the kindly merchant, and selected her chintz. What a delicious swish the scissors made as they went through the width of cloth, and how delightfully the paper crackled as the bundle was being wrapped! Mary Ann did not know whether Kate or Marcia was ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... correction, to a rose on the bonnet, smoothed the lapels of her Alexandra jacket—so-called after the newly-made Princess of Wales—and pulled up her gloves under its pegtop sleeves. Then she turned with a swoop and a swish of ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... and accepted fashion, shivering despite their warm clothing and mufflers, and woollen caps and thick great-coats in the raw-edged cold of the breaking day. For an hour they stood there listening to the whine of overhead bullets and the sharp 'slap' of well-aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crash of shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and the boom ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... his mess-mates at their second-class table; but when the new passengers from Colombo came to dinner, he heard behind him the swish of stiff skirts, felt some one brush his shoulder, and saw, sliding into the next revolving chair, the vision of a ...
— Dragon's blood • Henry Milner Rideout
... that day, so gloomy and dark and dreary. It snowed and sleeted and rained. I remember how the rain roared on the roof. It roared so loud we didn't hear the horse. But we heard heavy boots on the porch outside the living-room, and the swish of a slicker thrown to the floor. There was a bright fire. Dad looked up with a wild joy. All of a sudden he changed. He blazed. He recognized the heavy tread of his son. If I ever pitied and loved him it was then. I thought of the return ...
— The Mysterious Rider • Zane Grey
... come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... the spacious halls; the courts were inlaid with mosaic; there were festooned partitions and a great profusion of architectural fancies; and everywhere reigned a silence so deep that the swish of a sash or the echo of a sigh ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... cabin of the tug came a confused series of sounds. First there was the swish and pelt of the rain, varied as the wind blew the sheets of water across the deck. But, above it all, was a deep, ominous note—a grinding, crushing noise, as of giant rocks piling one on top of the other, smashing to powder between them the ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... patches of the narrow channel into the teeth of the brisk trade wind. This necessitated frequent tacks, so that, overhead, the mainsail was ever swooping across from port tack to starboard tack and back again, making air-noises like the swish of wings, sharply rat-tat-tatting its reef points and loudly crashing its mainsheet gear along the traveller. Half a dozen times, as it swooped overhead, Jerry leaped for it, mouth open to grip, lips ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... often wish, I'd give prizes to the worst boys at school. The good boys I would like to swish, But alas! I would not break ...
— Silver Links • Various
... and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though he had ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and there is no protest against the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... Bridge had died away now to a mere confused murmur. It was raining heavily, and the gas shone dimly through the streaked and dripping glass, throwing little circles upon the glistening cobblestones. The air was full of the sounds of the rain, the thin swish of its fall, the heavier drip from the eaves, and the swirl and gurgle down the two steep gutters and through the sewer grating. There was only one figure in the whole length of Scudamore Lane. It was that of a man, and it stood outside the door ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Tom took him to the lookout far ahead on the tow and Paul forgot all about home and gave himself up to the delight of watching the swiftly passing banks while he listened to the swish, swish of the water as it beat against the bows of the barges. He was seated with the men on the watch, who passed the time telling stories and laughing at rough jokes. When it was getting late his big friend ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... in the silence I heard a sound which sent my heart into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish of the leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp still stood upon the floor where I had placed it when examining the trough. By its light I saw that the black ceiling was coming down ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... man then led Chan to the door, and gave a wave of his hand in the direction of the sky. Instantly the sound of the fluttering and swish of wings was heard, and in a moment a splendid eagle landed gracefully at their feet. Taking their seats upon its back, they found themselves flashing at lightning speed away through the darkness of the night. Higher and higher they rose, till they had pierced the heavy ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... slow work, one step at a time; but at length they found that there was firm ground in this new region. They concluded that the world was only a larger calf pen, after all; but it was a wonderfully light calf pen, and its walls were certainly a long way off. Swish! up went their tails into the air and away they scampered like the wildest ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... Scattering their buds and dew upon These acres of my home, Some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high Where once lay ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... on the subject of slang has given us two good examples of meaningless and expressive slang. The people who first called marmalade "swish" could have no reason for inventing the new name except to seem odd and different from other people. Swish is certainly not a more expressive or descriptive word than marmalade. The one means nothing, while the other has an interesting history coming to us through ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... stalwart young men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and a yell. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... at a distance, while again and again overhead there was the flutter and swish of wings, probably those of the oil-birds circling about ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... a strange sound, a roaring swish of water. Not one of them was certain which direction ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... there was a faint rustling within the house: the swish of draperies on the stairs, a delicious whispering when light feet descend, tapping, to hearts that beat an answer, the telegraphic message, "We come! We come! We are near! We are near!" Lige Willetts stared at Harkless. He had never thought the latter good-looking until ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... Underwood's little chaps, baint you? A rare honest gentleman of the right sort war he—he war!" and he pulled down another boy and put me up instead, and told me all about the great fire at Stubbs's factory. You can't think what fun it was. Roar, roar, up went the flame. Swish, wish, went the water—such a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the dark wood, the steady swish of a sickle was heard; and this made a fearsome noise in the tenuous night. A gigantic man stood there; his head looked over the trees and his wide-stretched arms swung the sickle and a pick-hook; and, stroke by stroke, the foliage and the flowers fell beneath his hands ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... slimy pits lying under the Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who sometimes received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them, never uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there was heard only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille, who continued to protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief of Police a savage. Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... crash of hoofs on the sod. Stella's clear voice rang out, and the swish of a quirt came ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... Farrington at the Incandescent the other evening and had the joy of seeing her put on that sweet ickle f'ock she wears for the Jazz supper scene in Oh My! All the materials used are three yards of embroidered chiffon, six yards of tinsel fringe and six dozen tinsel tassels; and anything so completely swish and so ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... for us to hide in, and in front of us was a glade with a big fallen tree lying across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods was all gray and quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he called again. At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees. Next I heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. Now we got to do some real callin'.' ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... heard at a range of about a mile on a calm night presents a curious sound which almost defies description. Its principal constituent consists of a "clankety clank! clankety clank!" at first barely distinguishable from the low swish of the water past the face of the submerged microphone, then louder when the sound has been distinguished and the human ear is on the alert. But when this sound was heard in war there was little time for analysing or noting. It was the call to action. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... at first. He was looking at Andrew, who was sweeping the path at a little distance. Swish, swish, went his broom to right and left amongst the yellow leaves, leaving a bare space ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... of the cottage door, followed by the soft murmur of women's voices instead of by the high treble of the telegraph boy which she had expected. Then the swish of a skirt, the lifting of a latch, and Cara came ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... started, they came swiftly, and in half an hour all were there. Each got a hearty welcome from old Joel, who, with a wink and a laugh and a nod to the old mother, gave a hearty squeeze to some buxom girl, while the fire roared a heartier welcome still. Then was there a dance indeed—no soft swish of lace and muslin, but the active swing of linsey and simple homespun; no French fiddler's bows and scrapings, no intricate lancers, no languid waltz; but neat shuffling forward and back, with every note of the music beat; floor-thumping "cuttings of the pigeon's wing," and ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... picture vanished, as I felt the swish of the tide round my ankles. It would soon be up ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... dark night and silent. The swish and lapping of the waters on the Port Moresby beach on the southern shore of the immense island of New Guinea, filled the air with a quiet ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... those days which make one long intensely for the shade of ilexes upon the sea shore, and the swish of idle waters upon ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 2, February, 1891 • Various
... with swift, silent footsteps, and gathered into her hands the roll of papers upon the table. As softly as she had come she went. The deep sobbing breaths of the two men, the half-stifled cries with which Vine was seeking for outside help, effectually deadened the faint swish of her skirts and the tremor of her footsteps upon ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... broken by a swift, complete sound, a heavy boom-roar, and on the heels of this noise came a throbbing, whistling sigh that, at first faint as the sound of ocean on a distant beach, increased with incredible speed to a whistling swish, ending in a HISH of tremendous volume and a roaring, grinding burst. The sound of a great shell is never a pure bang; one hears, rather, the end of the arriving HISH, the explosion, and the tearing disintegration of the thick wall of iron in one grinding ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... with the faint swish of scything as she moved toward him, and he withdrew, taking hold of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... full length—my eye had centered its sharp point upon the left breast of my adversary; and then he launched his hatchet and I released my arrow. At the instant that our missiles flew I leaped to one side, but the Sagoth sprang forward to follow up his attack with a spear thrust. I felt the swish of the hatchet at it grazed my head, and at the same instant my shaft pierced the Sagoth's savage heart, and with a single groan he lunged almost at my feet—stone dead. Close behind him were two more—fifty ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... door in two jumps. He could hear the opening and closing of drawers and see the flash of an electric lamp as the thief moved swiftly about, apparently taking it for granted that he had the house to himself. The swish of the swing-door between dining-room and pantry marked his investigations in the rear of the house. He evidently found nothing there, for he was back in the hall again in a moment. Then through the vast silence of the big house the ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... back up the cave with a swish and rustle of wings, and the children went down the hill as quickly as they could—which was not very quickly because of Dickie's poor lame foot. The boy who had killed a Cromwell's man with his little ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... experienced eye, tried in vain to penetrate through this wall of solid blackness. The wind kicked up the sea and the bridge was entirely flooded with water. There was hot a sound to be heard, save the heavy droning of the motor and the swish of the water ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... Mordacks, who of all born men was foremost, with his wiry fingers spread, to pass them through the scattery forelock of that mettlesome horse, old Time. The old horse galloped by him unawares, and left him standing still, to hearken the swish of the tail, and the clatter of the hoofs, and the spirited nostrils neighing for a race, on the wide breezy down at the end of the lane. But Geoffrey Mordacks was not to blame. His instructions were to move slowly, until he was sure of something worth moving ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... There were no hedges but rough, tumbled ground only, which was patched by trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an occasional bee that came and was ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... a cloud as the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, and a light tenderer than sunlight and warmer than moonlight fell across the river. The water slipped over the stones behind them with a pleasant swish and swirl, and the mint that was crushed by the prow of their boat gave forth an ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... quite suddenly. The door had opened and closed before he heard even the swish of her skirts. She stood there looking at him a little appealingly. She was dressed in dark travelling clothes and she carried a heavy dressing case in her hand. He sprang forward and took it ...
— The Profiteers • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... out into full blaze as the rising sun just threw its rays along the crest of the ocean swell; and then, dipping down into the rolling mass, the hue would change to a dark green, and, coming up again under the brig's black counter, would swish out into a little shower of bubbles, and ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... once there was a roar as of a desert lion bursting from its lair. They looked and saw a huge black form leap from the porch of the other house and bound toward them. He was on them in a minute. There was the swish of a saber swung by a practiced hand, and the high-peaked mask of the leader bent over the hissing blade, and was stripped away, leaving a pale, affrighted face glaring stupidly at the ebon angel of wrath in the luried fire-light. A fearful oath came through the white, strong teeth, which showed ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... smothered exclamation, and then sounds of somebody moving hastily about the room and the swish ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... was the swish-swish of grasses about their feet and poor Bunting snatched mouthfuls as all three staggered downward. The light began to grow, and somewhere in the shadowy bowl there was the most blest sound known in the desert, the gurgle of ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... house! And for the most part sinewy, hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... hands and gazed dreamily out over the water. A fresh, salty breeze was now blowing in. She could hear the flap, flap of the canvas of the tents off in the camp, a thin veil of mist was obscuring the stars, the pound of the surf was growing louder and the swish of the water ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... there, he had no means of knowing, when suddenly his ears detected the soft swish of paddles. He leaped to his feet and, peering toward the water, saw, close to the shore, a canoe manned by four stalwart paddlers. He looked closer, scarcely able to credit his eyes. And at the same moment, in ...
— The Gun-Brand • James B. Hendryx
... Argo in the pit. He was perturbed, and cursing. We dropped, gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... complained. Secret dissatisfaction preyed upon her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no arriere pensee. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more than sixty cents a day. She left us and ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... soldier, whose trade is war. With us, your yeomen whenever they have a chance, I have observed, most uncivilly poke about the lieges with but and bayonet, or thump and rump them with their chargers, and entice the ill-broken brutes with insidious prods of the spur to swish their tails, if tails they have, into the upturned phizes of ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... how it happened. Kid Wolf's arms were lifted. Apparently he was helpless. But suddenly there was a swish—a lightning-like gleam of light. Something hit Stover's gun arm like a ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... he is!" spouted the whale, with a gleeful gurgle, and before any one could say "Jack Robinson!" Mr. Jonah appeared upon the deck of the Ark, and with a swish of his great tail the whale ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... own feet there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... when the singing stopped and presently he heard Downs's voice in excited conversation. Then a woman's voice in low, urgent, persuasive whisper became faintly audible, and this surprised Todd beyond expression. He had thought to go and take a look and see who it could be, when there was a sudden swish of skirts and scurry of feet, and then Mr. Truman's voice was heard. Then there was some kind of sharp talk from the lieutenant to Downs, and then, in a sort of a lull, there came that uncanny cry out on the mesa, and, stopping only long enough to see that the lieutenant ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... sank in a kind of sob as the roar of a breaking wave sinks with an angry swish back into silence; and as there is a pause before the next wave is flung upward to break and roar, so was there a pause now. Then came the yell of fury, faction quarrel forgotten. They were all of one mind ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... round suddenly. The door had opened; he heard the swish of skirts, and knew it could ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... been revealed of the patience and amiability of these inestimable beasts. The man who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who employs stockmen by the dozen, who sends off hundreds of fat, contented, happy, liberty-loving oxen in droves to end their days in an unknown locality amid the clatter and swish of machinery and with the fearful scents of blood and decaying offal defiling the air, has few opportunities of studying the nicer qualities of his possessions. He may be full of bullock lore and able to recite sensational and entertaining stories illustrative of the ways of the big ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... with defiance, at the black void outside. There was the patter of the dog's feet coming down the stairs swiftly. The man lifted himself on his elbow and listened. Side by side with the dog's feet came the swish, swish of a silken gown on the stairs. He looked a wild-eyed inquiry at his second wife. She slammed the door to before she answered him. 'It has been so for years,' she said; 'every one knew but you. She has not forgotten as easily ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... must have had some knowledge of the sea, for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment, all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness, and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... a faint movement in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They seemed scarcely ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... that he stopped short and suddenly wheeled round as he caught the swish of a dress on the stairs. He looked up into Avery's face as she came swiftly down, and the blood rose in a deep, dark wave to his forehead. He made no attempt to cover or excuse his passionate outburst, which it was perfectly obvious she must have ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the sierra, on fearsome dizzy trails, in the somber shadows of virgin forests, in the rustling of wind-blown leaves (the seductive swish of elfin skirts) she heard the voices of Juno's sylvan train. Enchanted she listened to the syren's call, and ere the echo died within her ear she had devoted her talent to literature, a priestess self-ordained in Arizona's temple of ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... a dull bang, followed by the loud ring of tin, a breathless cry, and the swish of flying water—as Johnnie came hurtling headlong out of the stall, the bucket preceding him, a shod hoof in his immediate wake, and the contents of the pail showering in all directions. There was a second bang also dull, as he landed against the bottom ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... see a man in the second line, hit in the groin. When he returned we had some cruelly broken cases in, and that nulla saw a deal of pain, and grew stale with the smell of blood. A fair number of bullets flew over, and there was the occasional swish of a machine-gun. Mules were killed far back in the second line, and men hit. But the nulla was safe. The misguided Turk shelled and machine-gunned the empty space ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... called for "Lord Gregory," and she sang it with the same thin, silvery piping which was all she could contribute now to the demand of drama. It was both an annoyance and a surprise to hear a footfall and the swish of robes and to turn and see ...
— The Side Of The Angels - A Novel • Basil King
... well what I intend to do." The artist's face was set and stern. His eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... an oath, cut the dying echoes of the song. She could hear the swish of a quirt falling again and again, and the sound of trampling hoofs thudding on the hard, sun-cracked ground. Startled, she sprang to her feet, and saw silhouetted against the skyline a horse and his rider ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... holding his book gripped it very tightly. He did not glance back again, but walked slowly and steadfastly, reading an ode that he could not have translated to save his life, and listening acutely for her approach. And after an interminable time, as it seemed, came a faint footfall and the swish of skirts ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... yellow under the darkness. Henry's heart began to beat high. Nature, as it so often did, was coming to their help. The droning song of the scalp dance had ceased and with it the voices of the warriors talking. No sound came from the river, save the soft swish of the flowing waters, and now and then a gurgle and a splash, when some huge catfish raised part of his body above the surface, and then ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... valve, pressure release valve, safety valve, tires, air escaping from tires, punctured tire; escaping steam, steam, steam radiator, steam release valve. V. hiss, buzz, whiz, rustle; fizz, fizzle; wheeze, whistle, snuffle; squash; sneeze; sizzle, swish. Adj. sibilant; hissing ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in a cave amidst the rocky Mount, and when he desired victuals he would wade across the tides to the mainland and furnish himself forth with all that came in his way. The poor folk and the rich folk alike ran out of their houses and hid themselves when they heard the swish-swash of his big feet in the water; for if he saw them, he would think nothing of broiling half-a-dozen or so of them for breakfast. As it was, he seized their cattle by the score, carrying off half-a-dozen fat oxen on his back at a time, and hanging sheep and pigs to his waistbelt like bunches ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... know how it happened. Kid Wolf's arms were lifted. Apparently he was helpless. But suddenly there was a swish—a lightning-like gleam of light. Something hit Stover's gun arm like a ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... He could hear the swish of the waters, white at her foot; he could see the wet sail, the bucketing bows, the fore-deck awash. She would pass bang beneath his feet. He could see no man at the helm—only the jumping bowsprit, the thrashing ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... made her meet it with a look intended to be dignified, but which was also somewhat defiant, and more than one smile passed over Warwick's countenance as he watched her. The moment the boat glided with a soft swish among the rushes that fringed the shore, she sprang up the bank, and leaving a basket behind her by way of hint, hurried to the sandy knoll, where, to her great satisfaction, she found the vines heavy with berries. As Warwick joined her ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... and down the platform, passing his pile of luggage, solitary and eloquent on the barrow. Never in his life having been made to look a fool, he felt the red heat of the thing, as a man who has not blessedly become acquainted with the swish in boyhood finds his untempered blood turn to poison at a blow; he cannot healthily take a licking. But then it had been so splendid an insanity when he urged Diana to fly with him. Any one but a woman would have appreciated ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... was a flutter and a swish on the stairs. Laura Bentley and Belle Meade came gliding forward, ...
— Dick Prescott's Second Year at West Point - Finding the Glory of the Soldier's Life • H. Irving Hancock
... are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more than half the colour—over all the chocolate and all the blue—with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine and ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... gone under a cloud as the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, and a light tenderer than sunlight and warmer than moonlight fell across the river. The water slipped over the stones behind them with a pleasant swish and swirl, and the mint that was crushed by the prow of their boat gave forth an ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... was just enough. But for the birch-tree it was just too much. The shallow earth by which it held gave way; and the next moment, with a clatter of loosened stones and a swish of leafy branches, it crashed majestically down into the crevice, closing one end of it with a mass of boughs and foliage, and once more frightening the imprisoned cub almost ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... shot past the most prominent branch of the tree that happened to stand directly in the way of the rising aeroplane. Andy believed that the wheels below must have actually brushed through the foliage, for he always declared that he heard a fierce "swish" as they passed. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... in the dusty heat We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat, And we the harvest of ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... an instant. Then she held out the note to him, and simultaneously stood up. As he took it, she went swiftly past him and out of the door. He heard the swish of her dress pass up the stairs, and then the closing of a door. But he hardly heeded it. He was reading the note she had given him. It was a short, perfectly formal offer of marriage to ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... feet there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... morning the domestic entrails of Jordan County were out of doors, piled in the sun, hanging upon the clotheslines, flapping in the wind. The swish of wet brooms could be heard in every house, mingled with the sharp voices of scolding women. The air was filled with clouds of dust, the sound of sticks in muffled strokes upon rugs and carpets ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... they were sailing in a regular sloop, and that, too, going "with lee rail awash"; for instead of the soft crooning sound the runners made usually, there was a slash and a swish of ripples cloven apart; and instead of the little fountains of ice-dust which rise from the heels of the sharp shoes when the boat is skimming the frozen surface, there rose long ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... mighty creak of the ladder, the swish of a heavy body through the air, an interrupted growl, and then a ripping thud. Swallow's chubby body shot squarely through the opening, accompanied by a trusty though somewhat sadly stretched vest, and the deed was done. A cry of delight came from the beam, a shout of pride and ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... white waves foaming from her cut-water. She was within a quarter of a mile. My moment had arrived. I signalled full speed ahead and steered straight for her course. My timing was exact. At a hundred yards I gave the signal, and heard the clank and swish of the discharge. At the same instant I put the helm hard down and flew off at an angle. There was a terrific lurch, which came from the distant explosion. For a moment we were almost upon our side. Then, after staggering and trembling, the ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... carriage went back up the cave with a swish and rustle of wings, and the children went down the hill as quickly as they could—which was not very quickly because of Dickie's poor lame foot. The boy who had killed a Cromwell's man with his little sword ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... to put my ear against the wall. At once the sounds all became incredibly louder. It was a confusion of sound: the mechanisms of the vessel, some of which I thought I could identify, and some not; the strange swish and thump of what might have been people moving; and there ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... some kind. Mark the swish of silken skirts; unless my eyes fail me, I caught a glimpse of silken hose as she flitted into ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... under the spell of this marvellous night, lay on their stomachs alert for alarms. A heavy-wheeling white owl had come by with a swish, and Biagio had called aloud to Madonna in his agony. Astorre had crossed himself over and over again: this was the Angel of Death cruising abroad on the hunt for goats or goat-herds; but "No, ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... Whisk, swish, click, click, through the little crowd at Stokesley on a fine April afternoon, of jocund children just let loose from school, and mothers emerging from their meeting, collecting their progeny after the fashion of old ewes with their lambs; Susan Merrifield in a huge, carefully preserved ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fears lest he should be thought to be afraid. My pistols I had left behind in my hurry. My sword was at my belt, but it is not always the most convenient of weapons. I lay back in my seat in the gondola, lulled by the gentle swish of the water and the steady creaking of the oar. Our way lay through a network of narrow canals with high houses towering on either side and a thin slit of star-spangled sky above us. Here and there, on the bridges which spanned the canal, there was the dim glimmer of an oil lamp, ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... It was the swish and splutter of hoofs on the road before the door. The Sacramento coach! In an instant every man was expectant, and Starbuck darted outside on the platform. Then there was the usual greeting and bustle, the hurried ingress of thirsty passengers into the saloon, and a ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the faint swish of scything as she moved toward him, and he withdrew, taking hold of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... whips and trophies on the wall, to the parlour, and there I awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of her skirts, and, looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at the Governor's house the winter before, and ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... advantages enjoyed by the man-about-town of today is that of the companionship, at his dinner in camera, of ladies having an honorable vocation. In the corridors of the "French restaurant" the swish of Pseudonyma's skirt is no longer heard; she has been superseded by the Princess Tap-tap (with Truckle & Cinch), by my lady Snip-snip (from the "emporium" of Boltwhack & Co.), by Miss Chink-chink, who sits at the receipt of customs in that severely un-French restaurant, the Maison Hash. ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... with the pioneer. If you've ever been really dying of thirst, and have reached water again, its sounds become wonderful to you ever after that—the trickle of a creek, the wash of a wave on the shore, the drip on a tin roof, the drop over a fall, the swish of a rainstorm. It's the same with birds and trees. And trees all make different sounds—that's the shape of the leaves. It's ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... infrequent windy roar of trains on the Third Avenue L, empty clapping of horses' hoofs on the asphalt ... the yowl of a sentimental tomcat ... a dull and distant grumble, vague, formless, like a long, unending roll of thunder down the horizon ... the swish and sough of waters breaking away from the flanks of the Autocratic ... and then, finally, like a tocsin, the sonorous, musical chiming of the grandfather's clock ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... patter and swish of the gloomy rain—the gusty sighs of the wind through the shade-trees' naked branches—louder still the rolling of heavy wheels over the rough streets; and all these were torn and rent by the shrieks of ...
— The Red Acorn • John McElroy
... pack starts out on the trail, the bells of the leaders jingling, the rattle and crunch of buckles and saddle-leather, the click of the horses' feet against the rocks, the swish as they ford a singing stream. The wind is in the trees and birds are chirping. Then comes the long, hard day, the forest, the first sight of snow-covered peaks, the final ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... excitedly and peer into the brake, which was a signal for him to slip away under the willows. He made no noise, and he assured himself he must be invisible. Nevertheless, he heard shouts, then the cracking of rifles, and bullets began to zip and swish through the leafy covert. The day was hot and windless, and Duane concluded that whenever he touched a willow stem, even ever so slightly, it vibrated to the top and sent a quiver among the leaves. Through this the guards had located his position. Once a bullet ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... rough, tumbled ground only, which was patched by trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an occasional bee that came and was ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... talented lady contributor to the ICONOCLAST once asserted that 'tis not for good women that men have done great deeds. Perchance this is true, for men who do great deeds are goaded thereto, not by the swish of crinoline, but by the immortal gods. Such acts are bred in the bone, are born in the blood and brain. It certainly is not for bad women that men soar at the sun, for every man worth the killing despises corruption in womankind. He ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... whirled at the head of the stairs, and flashed through the hall-way overhead and out on the front veranda, and he, instead of pursuing, stood stone still, rooted to the floor, his heart beating hard, his hands clinching in amaze. What stunned him was the fact that with the footfalls went the swish of dainty silken skirts. ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... stampede of hurrying feet, the solitary oath and scream, the half-hysterical laughter, and silence. Then the tumult was reawakened to the sound of high voices, talking all together, or the impatient calling of absentees in halls and corridors. Then I heard the quick swish of female skirts on the staircase, and one of the fair guests knocked impatiently at the door of the end room, still immovably fixed. At the first knock there was a sudden cessation of the hurried whisperings ...
— Stories in Light and Shadow • Bret Harte
... a moment. As they waited and listened to the whining of the wind, the swish of the rain and the angry muttering of the thunder, and saw the vivid lightning, it was no wonder they did not want to decide hurriedly to go out in that out burst of the elements. But it was also trying on the nerves ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... Mimosa tree. The sand, pink above and chloritic yellow below, ended in a thick bed of water-rolled pebbles, not in ground-rock; nor did it show the couch of excellent clay which usually underlies the surface, and which, I have said, is extracted through pits to make sun-dried brick, swish, and other building materials. We also secured some of the blood-red earth from the eastern tail of the northern "Shigh," the manganese-stained Tau and the gravelly sand washed out of the Cascalho-gravel, the latter very promising. The result of our careless ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the big red ox with a pointed stick, the two beasts settled their massive shoulders to the collar, and with a soft greasy swish and a crackle of half-burnt stubble the moldboard rolled aside the loam. I too felt that this was a great occasion. At last I was working my own land; with the plowshare I was opening the gate of an unknown future; and my fingers tingled as I jerked the lines. Then while the coulter ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... have any conflicting views on the subject, and she nestled down again with a deep sigh. For the next ten minutes the room was full of small sounds—the splashing of cold water in the basin, the shuffle of coarse linen, the click of fastening stays, the rhythmic swish of a hair brush. Then came two silent minutes, while Joanna knelt with closed eyes and folded hands beside her big, tumbled bed, and said the prayers that her mother had taught her eighteen years ago—word for word as she had said them ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... himself on the important capture he had made, and with his hand on his captive's collar, and his revolver to his ear, was moving towards the center of the street, when a whistling "swish" was heard, the dull thud of a slung shot on the detective's head followed, and, every muscle relaxed, he sank a senseless man in the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... or two further and in the swish of the storm he heard hoofbeats again. Looking forth from the bushes he saw another line of horsemen, but now they were going in the direction of Pope's army. Dick recognized these figures. Shapeless as he might appear on his horse that ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... door behind him, the woman at that moment uppermost in his thoughts came down the dusky silence from the further end of the hall. She turned her inscrutable eyes upon him in passing, and flitted noiselessly and with languid grace up the stairway, the faint swish of her gown vanishing with her. He hesitated a moment, overpowered by conflicting emotion; then he sprang recklessly ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... was To learn about not launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs Broken ...
— The Second Book of Modern Verse • Jessie B. Rittenhouse
... impenetrable, not even the water reflecting a gleam of light; indeed, so dense was the surrounding gloom that in the deeper shadows I could not even distinguish the figure of the girl seated beside me in the cockpit. Yet there was scarcely a break in the steady chug of the engine, or the gentle swish ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... a word among themselves, gathered their horses and struck down the valley out of Alder. The padding and swish of the sand about the feet of their mounts; the very creaking of the saddle leather seemed to alarm them, and they were continually turning and looking back. That is, Gus Reeve and Ronicky Joe manifested these signs of trouble, but Sliver Waldron, riding in the center of the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... staggers; a loud crack as the fibres part, then with a slow heave over it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt is blue with stains from the steel of ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... hiding my head under the bedclothes, I used to lie quaking because of the crying of the ghosts. It was a wild winter when Theobald left us, and they cried every night. It is a sound I have never grown used to, though I have heard it every winter I can remember. And also the swish of the satin as it went by my door, and the tap of high-heeled shoes. They cried more that winter than I ever heard them, except in the winter after Uncle Luke went away (but then I was little, and had the company of Maureen Kelly, my nurse); ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... schooner's saloon the atmosphere was peaceful by contrast with the hurly-burly outside; yet even here the steep slant of the deck, the shrill, protesting squeal of working frames and beams, the sullen thud and swish of racing seas along the vessel's skin, kept the storm ever in mind: the dizzy plunge of the bows into great gray seas, with its accompanying rise of the stern and the hollow jar and thump of the rudder-post in its port, kept the interior ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... no longer, and she slackened her pace to a walk once more. Then a great shout went up from the people on the ramparts, and they began waving their hands and handkerchiefs wildly. To them the two figures seemed to be moving so slowly and the great sea behind so terribly fast. Barbara could hear its swish, swish, near enough now, and she felt Jean's hand tremble in her own. "Run yourself," she said, dropping it. ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... a little longer Karl, heralded by the swish of the gondola, would come in regularly at eight o'clock for a few hours chat over our tea. Very rarely did I vary this routine by a visit to one of the theatres. When I did, I preferred the performances at the Camploi Theatre, where Goldoni's ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life, and then—swish, bang—back to the reality that the damp clay wall is only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am—that the Boche is just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the slightest chance of leaving except ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... me—robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... of waters ceased, and a rush of saturated steam succeeded. At the same time the fierce swish of ascending waters and of descending cascades ceased, and a clear, definite note, as of a trumpet, exceeding long and loud, was blown. No archangel could have done better. As the steam rolled skyward it was ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... mother—who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, forgetful ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... that kite fell down right by the old walnut tree," said Sunny Boy to himself for the twentieth time. "I saw it go down—swish! I'll bet Grandpa didn't look under ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... rhythm, which carried their feet and their bodies in tune. She stooped, she lifted the burden of sheaves, she turned her face to the dimness where he was, and went with her burden over the stubble. She hesitated, set down her sheaves, there was a swish and hiss of mingling oats, he was drawing near, and she must turn again. And there was the flaring moon laying bare her bosom again, making her drift and ebb like ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Paul, in the slimy pits lying under the Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who sometimes received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them, never uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there was heard only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille, who continued to protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief of Police a savage. Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood had ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... kindly not told us, go to Christ and say, 'Grant that we may sit, the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom.' That was what he wished and hoped for, and what he got was years of service, and a taste of persecution, and finally the swish of ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... His host of children, come, Scattering their buds and dew upon These acres of my home, Some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... Brush's lips, and quite to drollery, of that sympathetic curiosity of Mrs. Drack's which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide; but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin. It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his posture—as if to show he could patronize ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... fallen tree lying across it. Edd waited a few moments. The woods was all gray and quiet. I don't know when I've felt so good. Then he called again. At once turkeys answered from all around in the trees. Next I heard a swish of wings, then a thump. Then more swishes. The turkeys were flying down from their roosts. It seemed to me in my excitement that there were a hundred of them. We could hear them pattering over the dry ground. Edd whispered: 'They're down. ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the way!" Swish! Swish! Swish! they shot by. Livingstone had to dodge for his life. Of course, ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... is the swish of ghostly wings which brush her face or neck and the air is full of chattering noises like the grinding of hundreds of tiny teeth. Sometimes a soft little body plumps into her lap and if she dares to take her hands from her face long enough to disengage the clinging animal she is ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... veered crazily; and at the some moment, Frank, who was standing where Jack had been a moment before, heard something swish past. ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... great expanse of the Pacific Ocean, sparkling in the sun as blue as the waters at Amalfi. A low surf beats along the miles and miles of white sand continually, with the impetus of far-off seas and trade-winds, as it has beaten for thousands of years, with one unending roar and swish, and occasional shocks of sound as if of distant thunder on the shore. Yonder, to the right, Point Loma stretches its sharp and rocky promontory into the ocean, purple in the sun, bearing a light-house on its highest elevation. From this signal, bending in a perfect crescent, with ...
— Our Italy • Charles Dudley Warner
... clothes clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear the stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now and then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. The rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew they were following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to overtake him. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel faster through ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... and sweet Over its shallows singing,— I hear before I awaken The Bound of the church-bells ringing, And the sound of the leaves wind-shaken, Complaining and sun-forsaken, And the oriole warbling and singing, And the swish of ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... keeping Bob," she repeated, putting the camera down. "Maybe I'd better go back into the car. How those trees do swish about! I don't believe if I shouted, I'd be heard above the noise of the wind and ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... she paused on the threshold, to glance down the hall first, and then back to Allie. Her smile was beautiful. She closed the door and locked it. Allie heard the soft swish ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... moi. If there is a trout rising well under the pendant boughs that trail in the water, if there is a brake of briars behind me, a strong wind down stream, for that trout, in that impregnable situation, I am impelled to fish. If I raise him I strike, miss him, catch up in his tree, swish the cast off into the briars, break my top, break my heart, but—that is the humour of it. The passion, or instinct, being in all senses blind, must no doubt be hereditary. It is full of sorrow and bitterness and hope deferred, and entails the mockery of friends, ...
— Angling Sketches • Andrew Lang
... climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very deep and strong, ...
— A Desert Drama - Being The Tragedy Of The "Korosko" • A. Conan Doyle
... and waved before us, as we rushed on through the mountains, past the beautiful place of Gelert's grave, up toward Pen-y-gwrd. And the tinkling swish of the rain on the glass sounded to me as the Welsh names had begun to sound. I wish you could hear them spoken, for the spelling gives no idea of their pronunciation, or the pleasant, muffled music of them. But all I can tell you is, that when you come into Wales ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... wayside will not be noticed, and you alone know when it is time to get the young couple home; you know, alas! when the courtship—blissful period of loitering for you—is ended and when the marriage is made, by the tighter rein, the sharper word, and the occasional swish of the whip. Ah, Dobbin, you and I—" The Professor ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... To one standing in the quarry, below the level of the ground, they had the most weird of sounds. A dull rumbling in the rear and a continual whizz and hiss high overhead. Hardly a sound of the guns firing and no sound of the shells bursting. Only that terrible grinding swish in the air above. Twenty minutes of that, and then, with a terrific roar, all our field guns opened, and we knew that our comrades in front, the 4th N.F. on the right and the 7th N.F. on the left, had 'gone over the top.' The noise in front of the field batteries ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... silence. It was so quiet outside that even the birds seemed to be listening and watching; then came the swish of ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... was plunged into pitchy darkness. Steel instantly caught up a chair. He was no coward, but he was a novelist with a novelist's imagination. As he stood there the sweetest, most musical laugh in the world broke on his ear. He caught the swish of silken drapery and the subtle scent that suggested the fragrance of a woman's hair. It was vague, ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a reaping ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... ironmongery. Sometimes he would hover overhead and follow the long line till we were almost at the lip of the nullah before releasing his bombs, and this was the very refinement of torture. During the whole of the two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the hope of catching us in the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... thing was like some bird of prey that circled in the sky just above him—its shadow filling him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was no time in his life when he was not in a state of inward war. His intellect rebelled; and on the other hand, there was a part of his nature that craved this sex-experience and welcomed it—and this part, it ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... against this wall—washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish—seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog of a ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... put on that sweet ickle f'ock she wears for the Jazz supper scene in Oh My! All the materials used are three yards of embroidered chiffon, six yards of tinsel fringe and six dozen tinsel tassels; and anything so completely swish and so immensely tra-la-la ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... came the honking of the motor-car, and a great swish where it grazed a wet bush near the house. Somebody lowered the gas in the hall, and Mrs. Paget's voice said regretfully, "I wish we had had a fire in the parlor—just one of the times!—but there's no help for it." They all came in, Margaret flushed, starry-eyed; her father and mother ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... drew swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... strange feeling of fear he was passing a certain big, hollow log. Without really knowing why he did it, because, you know, he didn't stop to do any thinking, he dived into that hollow log, and even as he did so there was the sharp swish of great wings. Terror the Goshawk had missed catching Peter by ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... oh, Zeus! The eyelids tremble like flower-petals under the wind of heaven. Was that a sigh or the swish of wings? Oh, wonder of wonders! ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred it from ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... accepted fashion, shivering despite their warm clothing and mufflers, and woollen caps and thick great-coats in the raw-edged cold of the breaking day. For an hour they stood there listening to the whine of overhead bullets and the sharp 'slap' of well-aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crash of shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and the boom of ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... the looking-glasses lest the quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like 'swish,' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent forth a vapour, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... and I can tell you it puzzled me no end, for I went miles and miles and I did not see so much as the swish of a tail," answered Rumple, with a dramatic flourish of the broken basin from which he had been eating ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... ka khanas or "camel thorn compartments" are being built some four feet deep, filled with camel thorn. To make them effective two coolies are employed all day long to swish buckets of water on to them. The wind forcing its way through causes rapid evaporation and consequent cooling of the air in the rooms. When the wind stops the heat is, however, unbearable. The rooms are also provided with badjirs, or wind-catchers, ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more than half the colour—over all the chocolate and all the blue—with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... with the eager appetite of youth and health. From far down the gulch the muffled roar of the stamps rose and fell on the light airs that drifted up and down. Through it all was the soft swish of the falling spray, the sharp blip! blip! as points of light, gathered from dripping boughs, grew to sparkling gems, then, losing their hold, fell into little pools at the foot of the cliff. High above the straggling town the great cables ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... screamed Madaline, as a moving figure could be outlined in the shadows of the low brush, and tall swamp berry trees, that just towered high enough to hide the form that bent and broke the impeding young birches. It was the swish and motion of the brush that indicated his advance ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... with whom Nero used to play, was far off in Africa, so our circus friend had to stay by himself. He curled up on the leaves, listened to the swish and patter of the rain, and soon he ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... enough to see the great trees that had fallen from the bank into the water. These, when the rapids were not too noisy, we could listen for, because the black current rushes through their branches with an impatient "lish, swish"; but when there was a rapid roaring close alongside we ran into those trees, and got ourselves mauled, and had ticklish times getting on our course again. Now and again we ran up against great rocks sticking up in the black ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... marvellous change had come upon it! It began in the quiet little valley of Kunwald: it ended in the noisy streets of Prague. It began in peace and brotherly love: it ended amid the tramp of horses, the clank of armour, the swish of swords, the growl of artillery, the whistle of bullets, the blare of trumpets, the roll of drums, and the moans of the wounded and the dying. It began in the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount: it ended amid the ghastly horrors of ...
— History of the Moravian Church • J. E. Hutton
... roar Tom clutched the handle of his whip, and the lash suddenly cut the air with a swish. It circled Rod's shoulders, sharply flicking his face, leaving a crimson streak upon the ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... for it was necessary to reach the dock and get a boat. She might risk being scalped, but a boat at any cost she would have, and one was sent her—as to the fearless and determined all their desires are sent. She heard the thump of oars in rowlocks, bringing the relief guard, and with a swish, out of the void of the lake a keel ran ...
— Marianson - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the fence and superintends the cutting of the dew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the "swish" and a rhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not much time to attend to it, for it is lively business "spreading" after half a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... found, to his surprise, that he was enjoying his new quarters quite as much as he had the old ones. Madam was a never-ending source of amusement and interest to him, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid soon had each her individual appeal. He liked the swish of their silk petticoats, and the play of their slim white hands about the coffee-tray. He liked their super-feminine delicacies of speech and motion, and the flattering interest they began to take ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... enemy shells was less frequent, but precautions for safety were increased. Advantage was taken of ravines, of fences, of fourth and fifth line trenches. The troops ere not beyond range of the German sharpshooters, and the swish of bullets was heard occasionally in the air above the ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... great hand had grasped her coat collar, and she felt herself swung round, stood down and swung round again. Then a sharp swish lashed ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... road that seemed real boulevard to Johnny, who was accustomed to the trails of Arizona. Later they emerged upon asphalt, and trudged along the edge of that for a time, moving aside as swift bars of light bathed them briefly, with the swish of speeding automobiles brushing close. Johnny's head was roaring with the remembered beat of the Thunder Bird's motor. In the silence between automobiles it deafened him so that Bland's drawling voice came to ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... pairs of feet that first touched good earth so hesitatingly with those crumpled shoes are now standing firmly in wool-lined rubber boots topped by brown corduroy trousers, upon the winter slat walk that leads to the tool house, while their owners, touched by the swish of the Whirlpool that has recently drawn this peaceful town into its eddies, are busy trying to turn their patrol wagon, that for a year has led a most conservative existence as a hay wain and a stage-coach dragged by a curiously assorted team ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... different tones. Boat whistles, bridge bells, electric alarm tinglings and the swish of water like the sound of wood tapping wood. Lights that have different colors. The yellow of electric signs. Around one of them that hoists its message in the air runs a green border. The electric lights quiver and run round the glaring frame like a mysterious green water. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... "Swish—thud! swish!" Half blinded by a blow dealt between the eyes by a hurling slungshot, the young engineer could discern a break in the program, the appearance of a new element that startled and astonished him. He had expected to see the furious Fogg join ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... standing close to Flannagan (one of the men's horses), and the men were at stables. We were all looking up and longing to see a Hun aeroplane hit, when suddenly "s-s-s-swish, plop!" just behind me. It was one of the Archie shrapnel cases. It buried itself deep in the ground 3 yards from where we were standing. We dug it up, and I'll bring it home for you. If it isn't too ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... conflicting views on the subject, and she nestled down again with a deep sigh. For the next ten minutes the room was full of small sounds—the splashing of cold water in the basin, the shuffle of coarse linen, the click of fastening stays, the rhythmic swish of a hair brush. Then came two silent minutes, while Joanna knelt with closed eyes and folded hands beside her big, tumbled bed, and said the prayers that her mother had taught her eighteen years ago—word for word as ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... sympathetic curiosity of Mrs. Drack's which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide; but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin. It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his posture—as if to show he could patronize her from below upward quite as ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... and carnival jest, the three boys were struggling through the crowd toward the rising flame of a distant capannucci, when suddenly, with a swish and a thud, there came plump against the face of the young Giovanni one of the thin sugar eggs which, filled with red wine, was one of the favorite carnival missiles. Like a flow of blood the red liquid streamed down the broad, brown cheek of the lad, and streaked his ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... eluded the hunter well enough; but in herds of thousands, he cared not a whit for the shooting at the flanks of his army. Any Indian or trapper, stationed behind some shrubs or earth hill, could kill dozens of buffalo without disturbing the herd by the swish of the arrow, the report of the rifle, or the dying groans of the wounded animals. A general stampede ensued at times, which often led the herd into morasses, or the quick-sand of the rivers, where they perished miserably. The destruction was still greater when the leader of the herd ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... only when the ship had left St. Vincent that a certain amount of peace came to establish itself in his heart, and the large and beautiful consolation of the sea began to make itself felt. The weather was calm and clear, and the monotonous slap and swish of the water against the ship's side was in itself soothing. The company on board were all strangers to him, and this helped to give him a feeling that he was starting anew in life. Also he was on his way to do the best he could to find ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... and before the white man could solve the problem of how three men were to sit in two manholes, he was seized head and heels, and bundled clear through a manhole, lying full length imprisoned like Jonah in the whale. Then the swish of dipping paddles, of the cold waves above and beneath, shut out by parchment thin as tissue paper, told Ledyard that he was being carried out to sea, spite of dark and storm, {250} in a craft light as an air-blown bladder, that bounced forward, through, under, over the waves, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I turned Newman over on his back, and, with my arm about him, prepared to lift him erect. Before I could do so, assistance arrived. Light feet pattered down the lazaret ladder; there was a swish of skirts, a gasp, and the lady was on her knees by Newman's side. "Roy—Roy—I was in time—" she cried. Her ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... was like some bird of prey that circled in the sky just above him—its shadow filling him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was no time in his life when he was not in a state of inward war. His intellect rebelled; and on the other hand, there was a part of his nature that craved this sex-experience and welcomed it—and this part, it seemed, was favored ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the end of the first act. The girls were changing for the second act. The change was complete; tights and all. And an alarm was rung in. B-r-r-r-r!! went the big gong downstairs. And swish! swish! went the red-shirted firemen down the pole. The girls thought the firehouse itself was afire and ran shrieking around the room begging ...
— Continuous Vaudeville • Will M. Cressy
... talked or laughed, but for the most part they were silent, the creak of the saddle leathers and the swish of the horses' legs as they brushed through the grass being the only sounds to tell that a body of men were ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... rich soil. He sensed behind him the silent quiver of Martian laughter, and felt a new ecstasy of hate for his late guards, their race, and the red planet that spawned them. Not until he heard the rumble and swish of the ship's departure did he take note of the little world that was ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... preyed upon her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no arriere pensee. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more than sixty ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... o'clock, however,—patroling his long rangy book-shelves, he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door, the soft whirring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices. Faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter's temperish protest, "I won't! I won't!" and the White Linen Nurse's fervid pleading, "Oh, you must,—you ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... when Little Jim's folks came driving up to their front gate tomorrow, Little Tom, with his best clothes on, would come running out of their dilapidated old unpainted house, carrying his New Testament, which Old Man Paddler had bought for him.... Then they'd all swish away together to ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... and cold, not fifty yards from his own threshold; he had fallen helpless, faint from incessant struggling through the snow-drifts and too weak to make his cries for help heard above the rushing of the wind and the swish of the snow on the window behind which his terrified wife ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... westward to the revolving light at Hartland Point that sent us alternate flashes of ruby and white across the water. Clovelly lamps made glittering disks in the quay pool, shining there side by side with the reflected star-beams. We could hear the regular swish-swash of the waves on the rocks, and to the eastward the dripping of a stream that ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a high voice called, and a tall slender girl in a swish of lace and pink draperies rushed across one side of the square. A portly trousered figure essayed to gain the tree she had left, but a romping girl in white caught him easily, while Mrs. Dud, the tail of her gown thrown over her arm, skimmed triumphantly across ...
— Mrs. Dud's Sister • Josephine Daskam
... on board. Tom took him to the lookout far ahead on the tow and Paul forgot all about home and gave himself up to the delight of watching the swiftly passing banks while he listened to the swish, swish of the water as it beat against the bows of the barges. He was seated with the men on the watch, who passed the time telling stories and laughing at rough jokes. When it was getting late his big friend ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... faint swish in the air to indicate that anyone had moved, a sound so faint that the thief in the office did not hear it. He was busily engaged on the ...
— Paul the Courageous • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... gained the door in two jumps. He could hear the opening and closing of drawers and see the flash of an electric lamp as the thief moved swiftly about, apparently taking it for granted that he had the house to himself. The swish of the swing-door between dining-room and pantry marked his investigations in the rear of the house. He evidently found nothing there, for he was back in the hall again in a moment. Then through the vast silence of the big house the unknown gave voice to his anger ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... literary efforts," Master continued, "I went to the Rai Ghat here to bathe in the Ganges. The ghat was deserted; I stood still for awhile, enjoying the sunny peace. After a dip in the sparkling waters, I started for home. The only sound in the silence was that of my Ganges-drenched cloth, swish-swashing with every step. As I passed beyond the site of the large banyan tree near the river bank, a strong impulse urged me to look back. There, under the shade of the banyan, and surrounded by a few disciples, sat the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... limbs, blood and life together. With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... head it came with a swish similar to that made by a wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air, curled slowly upwards, and gradually ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object of pleased consideration;—and all the time, with the river ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... distant. I might not have heard him, even with the aid of the cleft, but tonight Areskoui has given uncommon power to my ear, perhaps to aid us, and I know he is walking among thick bushes. I can hear the branches swish as they fly back into place, after his body has passed. Ah, a small stick popped as it broke under ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... had prompted the action. With the first forward step of the animal, the moment the rider's intention became evident, the mob stopped dead, and the uproar of execrations gave place to a silence of perfect astonishment, in which you could have heard the swish of a bird's wing. As the horse's head touched the line of men, they slunk aside as if they knew not what they did, their eyes falling abashed before Sedgwick's quiet glance and air, as devoid of a trace of fear as it was of ostentatious defiance. ...
— The Duke of Stockbridge • Edward Bellamy
... her moving about in the cabin, heard the rattle of dishes, the swish of a broom on the rough floor. And then presently she came out, dragging another rocker. Then she re-entered the cabin, returning with a strip of striped cloth and a sewing basket. She seated herself ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... fruit—and poi. All the rest of the food is commonplace; poi is the dish. It is one-finger poi, two-finger poi, or three-finger poi, according as it is thick enough to be lifted out of the pot sticking to one finger, or so thin as to require a dextrous swish of two ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... of a safety rocket to which a line is attached. To watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate a phase at once beautiful and practical of the poetry of motion. Among the native salmon fishermen of Speyside, quorum ego parva pars fui, there are two distinct manners which may be severally ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... to an interview with the head. From it Benham emerged more whitely strung up than ever. "He said he would certainly swish me if I deserved it, and I said I would certainly kill him ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the rear of the right flank of the 7th I saw some men gathered behind a ruined house at a place we called Enfiladed crossroads and went over to see who they were. The moment I stepped out of my trench a German machine gunner got after me and I could hear the "swish swish" of the bullets a few feet in front of me. I realized that death was very near, so I stepped short and let him get his range a little ahead of me. His gun followed me for a hundred yards. I found Captain Victor Currie there trying to get ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... lain there ages, scarcely breathing, when, in a little lull, above the fierce swish of rain she thought she heard voices. Cautiously she lifted her head; listened. She had left her door open for air and, now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard Aunt Isabel's ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... She wore a grey dress of some soft material, and a large black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of which were ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bedclothes, I used to lie quaking because of the crying of the ghosts. It was a wild winter when Theobald left us, and they cried every night. It is a sound I have never grown used to, though I have heard it every winter I can remember. And also the swish of the satin as it went by my door, and the tap of high-heeled shoes. They cried more that winter than I ever heard them, except in the winter after Uncle Luke went away (but then I was little, and had the company of Maureen ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... soft voices of the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once having been felt, these loved voices ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... on a thousand hills, who employs stockmen by the dozen, who sends off hundreds of fat, contented, happy, liberty-loving oxen in droves to end their days in an unknown locality amid the clatter and swish of machinery and with the fearful scents of blood and decaying offal defiling the air, has few opportunities of studying the nicer qualities of his possessions. He may be full of bullock lore and able to recite ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... we crossed seemed to be a raging torrent, its waters racing at top speed," said one traveler who arrived in Chicago on March 26th. "We could hear the swish of the waters and hear the cries of people in distress," ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... offering to take it or look at him—and, after a miserable pause, he left the study. But before he had reached the front door he heard a swish and swirl of drapery behind him, and felt her light hand on his arm. "Ah, no!" she said, clinging to him, "I can't let you go like this. I didn't mean all the things I said just now. I do believe in you, Horace—at least, I'll try hard to.... And I shall always, ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... outdoors rose suddenly to a considerable height and started for somewhere else. The trees had colic; everything became as dark as winter twilight; streaks of wildfire ran miles in a second, and somebody seemed to be ripping up sheets of copper and tin the size of farms. The rain came with a swish, then with a rattle, and then with a roar, while people listened at their garret doorways and marveled. Window-panes ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... the weather was great. It was less fine, however, than was usually the case, and when Percival turned into his berth one night, he noticed that the stars were hidden, and that rain was beginning to fall. He slept lightly, and woke now and then to hear the swish of water outside, and the beat of the engines, the dragging of a rope, or the step of a sailor overhead. He was dreaming of Elizabeth, and that she was standing with him beside Brian Luttrell's grave, when suddenly he awoke with a violent start, and a sense that the world was coming to an ...
— Under False Pretences - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate. (They fear not men in the woods. Because they see so few) You will hear the beat of a horse's feet, And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods ... But there is ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... grew nearer—while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded—that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... shouted to Chet. "Down on the ground!" And he felt the swish of another liquid mass above his head as he obeyed his ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... a whirlwind of noise in the hall, the angry barking of a small dog, the sound of a girl's voice laughing and scolding, the swish of silk skirts. A scandalized butler, obeying Lady Grosville's summons, threw the door open, and in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... on his knees, and the broad brim of his soft hat swept the marble floor with a gentle rhythmic swish, as it swung idly from his loosened grasp. I heard it as an accompaniment ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of foam as it sheered the water. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... Again my eyes fell upon the queer, bandaged thing which must be my hand. Had there been an accident? I could not remember, and while my mind was still wrestling with the question in a helpless, flabby way, I heard the swish of skirts at the door, and there entered ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... and musically as the brook whose sparkling and darkling course she followed. When but a few hundred yards down the path, someone called her. She thought it was a fancy and went onward, nevertheless feeling a sudden silence and trouble. Immediately she heard footsteps and the rustling swish of ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... the heat of them almost overwhelmed her. The shrieks of the frantic throng at the main door of the theatre died away. She heard the shouted commands of the police and firemen—then the swish of water from the first pipe brought to play upon the flames. But they ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... had reached the house from the garden just beyond the broad veranda. As the three Rover brothers hurried through the hallway and outside, the yelling and cheering were renewed. Then, just as Tom Rover stepped out on the veranda, there was a sudden swish and a stream of water from a garden hose caught him directly in the ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... the kitchen unexpectedly, with a swish of silk that was like the retreat of waves down the shingle ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... parade who was hailing Roderick so gaily. A pretty group was rustling past the office, all muslin frills and silk sashes and flowers of every colour, and the prettiest and best dressed of them all came running up the steps to his side, with a swish of silken skirts and a whiff of ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... she turn back to the little road leading down from Anscombe? but that was rough and difficult, and could not be undertaken quickly with a led horse; or should she make the best of her way to the nearest villas, outskirts of Rockquay? However, after a moment the swish of bicycles was heard, and up came two young men, clerks apparently, let loose by Saturday. They halted, and in answer to her agitated question where there was a house, pointed to a path which they ...
— The Long Vacation • Charlotte M. Yonge
... not sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river; the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the reeds and grasses of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... color areas can be important. Light conditions might make them look different, but their size and location are positive keys. The sound of their wings can help as much as their calls. Flying goldeneyes make a whistling sound; wood ducks move with a swish; canvasbacks make a steady rushing sound. Not all ducks quack; ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. He himself confesses that after reading Swedenborg he turns to Shakespeare and reads "As You Like It" with positive delight, because Shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. The monks of ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... say it was!" exclaimed Harry, as he heard the swish of the drops against the windows ...
— The Bobbsey Twins on a Houseboat • Laura Lee Hope
... world just now; the sun was only a little over the zenith. Only the cries of the sea gulls and the soft swish of the waves broke the silence. It would be pleasant to sleep here as her comrades were sleeping, but if she slept then she would miss the consciousness of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... my wits, with the fore quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out. And the smell—good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse, and there I had to lie until I felt better. Just like parade it had been a minute before—then stumble, bang, swish!" ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... recruit who fears lest he should be thought to be afraid. My pistols I had left behind in my hurry. My sword was at my belt, but it is not always the most convenient of weapons. I lay back in my seat in the gondola, lulled by the gentle swish of the water and the steady creaking of the oar. Our way lay through a network of narrow canals with high houses towering on either side and a thin slit of star-spangled sky above us. Here and there, on the bridges which spanned the canal, there was the dim glimmer of an oil lamp, and ...
— The Adventures of Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... faint rustling within the house: the swish of draperies on the stairs, a delicious whispering when light feet descend, tapping, to hearts that beat an answer, the telegraphic message, "We come! We come! We are near! We are near!" Lige Willetts stared ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... the cave man, but the men who had been with him were already distant. The shadows were growing long now, but the light was still from the sunshine of the early afternoon. The man lying along the limb, knife in hand, could hear no sound save the soft swish of leaves against each other as the breeze of later day pushed its way through the forest, or the alarmed cries of knowing birds who saw on the ground beneath them a huge thing slip along with scarce a ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... cased lightly in ice about the shoulders, loins, and feet, and we were also covered with the unpleasant rime which our backs had brushed off the tent walls when we had camped. On we went, however, confident but silent. No other sound now but the swish, swish of our ski as we sped through the soft new snow. In the light of the Aurora objects stood out with the razor-edge sharpness of an after-blizzard atmosphere, and the temperature seemed to fall even lower than at midnight. Our fingers seemed to be cut with the frost burn, and ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... the shafts pulling buggy and him. That was his weakness, but in it there also lay his strength. As soon as I started to dream or to be absorbed in the things around, he was sure to fall into the slowest of walks. When then he heard the swish of the whip, he would start with the worst of consciences, gallop away at breakneck speed, and slow down only when he was sure the whip was safe in its socket. When we met a team and pulled out on the side ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... in the spacious halls; the courts were inlaid with mosaic; there were festooned partitions and a great profusion of architectural fancies; and everywhere reigned a silence so deep that the swish of a sash or the echo of a sigh ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... the time, what was ailing me, but I had a feeling of some impending and deadly illness. My nerves were all awry, and, from the astounding tricks they played me, my senses seemed to have run riot. Strange sounds disturbed me. At times I heard the swish-swish of grass being shoved aside, and once the patter of feet across ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... Labrador must know it all like his own back yard—not in sunny weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the Doctor ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... tells you that the old fisherman is astir at Fort Point and the man with the new motor boat over at Hough's Neck is giving it a little run before breakfast, with the muffler off, as usual. A gull goes over, flying low. You do not see but you hear the soft swish of the wings. By and by the sun shows through a rift in the fog and you begin to move before a faint air from the southwest. A half hour more and the shreds of fog are melting upward into the blue of a clear day, the wind fills your sail and you are sweeping eastward with wind and tide ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... were soothed into repose. The last remnants of his ghostly fears had been swept away. They were on the windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy forms of other promenaders. The whole experience, even the regular throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing, the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds of the seaborne hostel, were unfamiliar and exhilarating. And inside his hand, even though ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of one room, but she maintains that there are two; so, rather than argue, let us say that there are two. The other one has no window, and she could not swish her old skirts in it without knocking something over; its grandest display is of tin pans and crockery on top of a dresser which has a lid to it; you have but to whip off the utensils and raise the lid, and, behold, a bath with hot and cold. Mrs. Dowey is very proud of this possession, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... restlessly back and forth, now on the turf and now on the brick walk. He closed his eyes, but he still saw Evelina and noted the slight difference of sound in her footfalls as she crossed the walk. He heard the swish of her skirts as she lifted them when she passed the pool of water—was it possible that his hearing was becoming more keen? He was sure that he had not heard it ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... over quickly to the stake on which the lantern hung. The wind was rushing through the tree-tops with increased fervor; the air was cool and wet with the signs of rain; a swirl of dust flew up into her face; the swish of leaves sounded like the splashing of water in the air. Holding her heart for minutes, she at last regained some of the lost composure. A hysterical laugh fell from her lips. "What a goose! It was an owl and I've heard hundreds of them up here. Still, they do sound different outside ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, dim, in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The arras blows sidewise out from the wall, and then ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... dead winter silence, that was broken only by the hoots of a flitting owl hungry for the food that it could not find, and the swish of the feet of a galloping fox as it looped past them through the snow. Presently they came to an open place ringed in by forest, so wet that only marsh-trees would grow there. To their right lay a little ice-covered mere, with sere, ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... silently that it seemed uncanny. One single note of command from a gibbon troop leader is sufficient to set the whole company in instant motion, fleeing at speed and in good order, with not a sound save the swish of the small branches that serve as the rungs of their ladder ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... whose name is kindly not told us, go to Christ and say, 'Grant that we may sit, the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom.' That was what he wished and hoped for, and what he got was years of service, and a taste of persecution, and finally the swish of the headsman's sword. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... he was milking her, after which he would always give her a beating with the stool on which he sat. But he got the blessing, and his heart was overflowing with peace. The next morning he went to milk that cow, and when the pail was nearly full, swish! came the tail in his face, and with a vicious kick she knocked over the pail, and then ran across the barn-yard. The blessed man picked up the empty pail and stool and went over to the cow, which stood trembling, awaiting the usual ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... voice rang loudly in his ears, too loudly, for all sound had been wiped out with the light. The faint swish of the ventilating system, of which he had not been actively aware until it had disappeared, was also missing. A trace of the same panic he had known in the cockpit of the atomjet tingled along his nerves. But this time he could ...
— The Time Traders • Andre Norton
... hands holding his book gripped it very tightly. He did not glance back again, but walked slowly and steadfastly, reading an ode that he could not have translated to save his life, and listening acutely for her approach. And after an interminable time, as it seemed, came a faint footfall and the swish of skirts ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... came loud through the open lattices, the insistent, luring, irresistible measure, violent now in solicitation, in appeal; and over it and under went the trailing, shuffling slur of the feet of the dancers and the delicate swish of women's ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... were supplemented by occasional "pieces"—simple, yet boasting a name. But when Penelope played "Down by the Mill," one heard only the notes—accurate, rhythmic, an excellent imitation; when Hester played it, one might catch the whir of the wheel, the swish of the foaming brook, and almost the spicy smell of the sawdust, so vividly was the scene ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... I can tell you that a blow from a swan's wing will break a man's leg, and a peck from a swan's bill would knock out both your eyes. Hie! Swish!" ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... Palestine received each swish with a yell of pain and fear, and the ever-ready Kloot dropped the ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... villages, suddenly leap out upon the man and his sons working in their clearings, upon the woman and her children in the hut: a whoop, a popping of musket shots and whistling of arrows, then the vicious swish and crash of the murderous tomahawk, followed by the dexterous twist of the scalping-knife, and the snatching of the tuft of hair from the bleeding skull. That is all—but, no: there still remains a baby or two who must be caught up by the leg, and have ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... poop, sat on the breech of one of the brass six-pounders with which his vessel was armed. The boat went off again to bring back the messenger. As soon as it was seen returning dark forms appeared on the brig's spars; then the sails fell in festoons with a swish of their heavy folds, and hung motionless under the yards in the dead calm of the clear and dewy night. From the forward end came the clink of the windlass, and soon afterwards the hail of the chief mate informing Lingard that the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... strength into the strokes of the broad paddle. He had paddled a canoe often enough at home on the river which ran near the school, and his powerful young arms backed up the boatman's efforts to such purpose that the sampan travelled as it had never done before. Behind him he heard the fierce swish of oars, and knew that the skiff was once more ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... went—the agonised remembrance of all that banging, trampling; the swish of her own scrubbing-brush; the voices round the table where old Mrs. Cohen had stood ironing for hours and ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... be your batteries, Tim, and run the ensign to the peak." Which was done; and passed on in glory did the Ligonier, the old six-pounder adorning one rail, a swish of white foam burying the other, the colors aloft, and Sam Leary singing war-songs to the wheel. And perfectly happy would he have been only the snow was thickening and no Bess in sight. But maybe she had got safely home. Maybe. And just then ...
— Sonnie-Boy's People • James B. Connolly
... kite fell down right by the old walnut tree," said Sunny Boy to himself for the twentieth time. "I saw it go down—swish! I'll bet Grandpa didn't look under ...
— Sunny Boy in the Country • Ramy Allison White
... a distance, while again and again overhead there was the flutter and swish of wings, probably those of the oil-birds circling about the mouth of ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... of a minute; then a swish as of garments agitated by some swift motion; then Annette's well-remembered contralto voice of a boy—Annette's voice, which had spoken such things ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... on fire when I heard the soft swish of skirts. Then she stood before me, more beautiful than even my forest-dreaming had pictured her, more desirable than ever. She courtesied low, and the amazing mass of blue-black hair seemed an over-heavy burden for the slim white neck ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only left ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... up and waited. The Countess sent word that she would be down shortly. I smoked three cigarettes. Still no Countess. I have yet to meet a woman who could or would be punctual. Finally I heard the soft swish and frou-frou of silk garments and looking up saw her ladyship coming down the grand stairway. She was brilliantly robed, jewels flashed at her neck and wrists. She was of that type of beauty difficult to classify, although assured ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... set the seal of despair on this fine and handsome visage. He is shown, not as a sea monster, but as some rabid, evasive, impatient thing, dashing from point to point—as from policy to policy—with the angry swish that tells the unspoken anger failure everywhere compels. For the victories do not bring surrender, nor does frightfulness inspire terror. The merchant ships still put to sea—and the ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... by CHARLES KEENE. Look at "Grandiloquence!" (No. 220) There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some few square ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... all were there. Each got a hearty welcome from old Joel, who, with a wink and a laugh and a nod to the old mother, gave a hearty squeeze to some buxom girl, while the fire roared a heartier welcome still. Then was there a dance indeed—no soft swish of lace and muslin, but the active swing of linsey and simple homespun; no French fiddler's bows and scrapings, no intricate lancers, no languid waltz; but neat shuffling forward and back, with every note of the music beat; floor-thumping ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... plain fare with the eager appetite of youth and health. From far down the gulch the muffled roar of the stamps rose and fell on the light airs that drifted up and down. Through it all was the soft swish of the falling spray, the sharp blip! blip! as points of light, gathered from dripping boughs, grew to sparkling gems, then, losing their hold, fell into little pools at the foot of the cliff. High above the straggling town the great cables of ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... "I'm never happy away from the sound of the surf on the reef and the swish of the cocoanuts. I was fourteen years in the British army in England when I made up my mind to quit civilization. I put it to the missus, a London woman, and she was for it. I've had nearly ten years ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... were going through the jungle that night, Kopee would shiver with terror whenever there was a swish of a snake's body in the grass below or in the leaves above, and I had to put my hand on his back and whisper, "Don't be afraid, you are on the elephant's back and nothing ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... they sped away with the dogs through the sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white, and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the most part sinewy, hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... dhrunken buzzard,' says the Pooka, 'Don't offer fur to desave me,' liftin' up his hoof agin, an' givin' his tail a swish that sounded like the noise av a catheract, 'Didn't I thrack ye for two miles be yer breath,' says he, 'An' you shmellin' like a potheen fact'ry,' says he, 'An' the nose on yer face as red as a turkey-cock's. Get up, or I'll lift ye,' says he, jumpin' up an' cracking his hind ...
— Irish Wonders • D. R. McAnally, Jr.
... tearin' and stumblin' and bumblin' and tumblin' And foamin' and roarin' And plungin' and pourin' And wastin' the waters God gave to us creechers To wash down our liquor and wash up our feechers— Then what in the deuce Is the swish-bingled use O' keepin' them noisy old cataracts busy To give folks a headache and ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... stairs. Mrs. Black was sweeping the parlor, and the rear of the house was deserted. Down the precipitous back stairs crept the young minister, listening to the sound of the broom on Mrs. Black's parlor carpet. As long as that regular swish continued he was safe. Through the kitchen he passed, feeling guilty as he smelled new peas cooking for his delectation on Mrs. Black's stove. Out of the kitchen door, under the green hood of the back ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley
... that they were in pursuit of a German spy. The remainder of his scepticism forsook him. Amid such surroundings, with the singing of the wind and the gurgling swish of the flying boat in his ears, any adventure seemed possible. The prosaic limitations of ordinary life dropped off from him. Only it seemed a pity to find the spy, since finding ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a somewhat speculative thinker with whom I had ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... half. Then the light died out suddenly, and she and the little girls drew their chairs close up to the stove. The house was very quiet, but she could hear the mournful wailing of the wind about it, and now and then the soft swish of driven snow upon the ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... sun chases away the raindrops of the night before. Signs of activity are abroad in the inn; the swish of brooms; the noisy clatter of pails. A warm aroma of coffee floats up the stairs and under the door of number fourteen, awaking Arnaud to pleasant thoughts of breakfast. He is partly dressed before his eye lights on the canvas he ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... spoiled by a summons from one of the four rods of which I was in command. For one hour my pencil wrought without a pause, and delightful it was under the sunshine to indite to the steady strokes of two pair of oars, the rhythmic swish of the water, now tranquilly flowing, and easy for ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... where the road-bed is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still. Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill." On the New York and New Haven, where there are many switches, and the engine whistles at every cross road, I have often heard, "Tommy make room for your whooopy! that's a little clang; bumpity, bumpity, boopy, clikitty, clikitty, clang." ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... at his master's bidding, had thrown himself upon the young officer, who then deftly tripped his heels from under him and dropped him on the floor, while Loomis confronted the others who would have made some show of obeying orders. And then there was the whirr of a whip-lash, a crack and snap and swish, and a red welt shot across Burleigh's livid face as he himself staggered back to his desk. With raging tongue and frantic oath he leaped out again, a leveled pistol in his hand, but even before he ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... in praise of that which had come unto him, "Allah, there is no God but Thee," just as, with a sudden swish, a flock of startled pigeons flashing like jewels in the setting sun new low down across his head, bringing an end ...
— The Hawk of Egypt • Joan Conquest
... this queer tableau of baffled rage was enacting itself on the starboard bow of the Jasper B., a no less strange and far less explicable thing was occurring on the port side. The swish of oars and the ripple of a moving boat drew Cleggett's attention in that direction as Loge's booming threats grew fainter. He saw that two oarsmen, near the eastern and farther side of the canal, had allowed the dainty, ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... close as possible to the wall, so that they would not be seen if a sentinel should happen to look over the parapet; and being barefooted, the slight sound they might make would be inaudible through the never-ceasing swish of the surf. Their feet were cut by the sharp edges of the rocks; many a bruise they got; but they kept on their silent way ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... how in "Sylvie and Bruno" his idea of the thoughts of a child has become deeper and more spiritual. Yet in the earlier tale, told "all in a golden afternoon," to the plash of oars and the swish of a boat through the waters of Cherwell or Thames, the ideal child is strangely beautiful; she has all Sylvie's genuineness and honesty, all her keen appreciation of the interest of life; only there lacks that mysterious charm of deep insight into the hidden forces of nature, the gentle ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown about ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... unrealities of the civilised scheme. We seemed a little transitory circle of light in a universe of darkness and violence; an effect to which the diminishing smell of burning rubber, the trampling of feet overhead, the swish of water, added enormously. Everybody—unless, perhaps, it was Evesham—drank rather carelessly because of the suppressed excitement of our situation, and talked the louder and ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... mare made no effort to draw away when Alcatraz sprinted up beside her. She gave him not so much as a toss of the head or a swish of the tail but kept her gaze on the far Western mountains for she was still sick with the scent of blood; and she maintained a purposeful, steady, lope. It was far other with the stallion. He kept at her side with his gliding canter but he was not thinking of the peace and the shelter from ...
— Alcatraz • Max Brand
... and quite empty save for my own presence, and the crowing of a cock and the clucking of hens were at first the only sounds that reached me from outside. Then I became conscious of a soft and regular "swish," rising and falling constantly and perpetually, and I remembered the sea close at hand, and a shiver of gratitude ran through me to think how narrowly I had escaped having that heaving surface ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... better frequented than that of which he already had experience. More than once dark, sheeted figures passed them by, noiseless save for the underfoot swish in the mud, and presently the alley widened into a little square, at one side of which there was a fresh rustle of green things. At the side of it a dim light showed through a big open door, from which came a musical murmur of voices, ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... their heads over the other side, facing us with their rifles, at the present, and it was hard to convince them we were friends, so excited were they. We were not allowed to remain at peace long, for evidently some one had spied us. Ping, ping, came the Mauser bullets; swish, swish, the Martinis. We soon got to rather close quarters and were able to do some good shooting. I was still close to Mr. Brine, and we had been talking some few minutes, when some one spied him and he had two or three narrow escapes. He ...
— From Aldershot to Pretoria - A Story of Christian Work among Our Troops in South Africa • W. E. Sellers
... Between the clicking needles and the slap Of cards upon the table and the swish Of rain upon the window my host speaks: "It says here when the Germans are defeated, And that means when the Turks are beaten too, The Christian world will take back Palestine, And drive the Turks out. God be praised, I hope so." "Amen" breaks in the wife. "May we both live To see the day. Perhaps ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... crouched in her hut listening in awe to the swish of the ghosts through the air, to the moans, groans and howls of the wizards doing battle with them. Tightly did she hold the amulet as she strove to conceal curiosity regarding the welfare of Zalu Zako; for did her mother suspect ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the walls and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... Lewis! don't you hear?" Mandy kept her eyes gloomily fixed on the curve of her father's back, as it bent and rose in the boat below, in time with the scra-a-a-pe, swish, of the bailer. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... could scarcely hear her. The driving rain, the swish of some great boughs against the house, the rattling of casements and doors, and the shrieking of wind in the chimney made all other sounds wellnigh inaudible. Yet as he listened he seemed to catch the accents of a far-off voice calling, now wistfully, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... cloud; moisture began to form in tiny drops upon the stanchions and the deck, upon the beards and moustaches of the male part of the voyagers, upon the woolly texture of the garments of all, even upon the smoothly brushed silk of the Honourable John's top hat; save for the swish of the paddles and the running of the engines, with a whispered exclamation here and there, we could hear nothing; and we could scarcely see ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... little sound, far off. It sounded like "Swish, swish," very soft and far away. He listened. It was a queer little sound, low down in the grass, "rustle—rustle—rustle"; Raggylug was interested. But he never moved his nose or his paws; he lay still. Then the sound came nearer, "rustle—rustle—rustle"; then grew fainter, then came ...
— How to Tell Stories to Children - And Some Stories to Tell • Sara Cone Bryant
... hours, for days. He suddenly threw open the shutters and roared at them, an unexpected and fearful challenge. A moment of paralyzed terror was followed by a wild rush, the bracken breaking under their flying feet. After they had passed from his sight he could hear the swish and crashing of their frantic flight. Two boys, so frightened, would not take long to reach home ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... simply because the dress worn is somewhat out of the common, giving a touch of color to these gray times, and bringing associations of days of old, as the men swing along, with a swish of their kilts, to the skirl ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... toss a flat disk of wood so that it falls with an audible splash a few yards away. This manoeuvre is intended to deceive the fish into thinking something eatable has fallen into the water. Woe betide the guileless fish, however, whose innocent, confiding nature is thus imposed upon, for "swish" goes a circular drop-net over the spot, from the meshes of which the luckless captive tries in vain ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... he has often felt that with all the light-producing energy and with all the rapid movement of the aurora it was mysterious that there should be absolutely no sound. The aurora often looks as if it ought to swish, but to his ears it has never done it; so much phosphorescent light might naturally be accompanied by some chemical odour, but to his ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... heard the swish of whips and the camels, having changed from an ambling pace into a full gallop, began to speed like the whirlwind, throwing up with their feet the sand and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... beginning to congratulate himself on the important capture he had made, and with his hand on his captive's collar, and his revolver to his ear, was moving towards the center of the street, when a whistling "swish" was heard, the dull thud of a slung shot on the detective's head followed, and, every muscle relaxed, he sank a senseless man in the ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... knowledge of the sea, for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment, all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness, and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which the ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... glorious and delicate scented blossoms of the garden. It tore off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... withdrawn to a second position a thousand yards in rear of the top of the hill. From this they directed a most accurate and damnable fire on all who showed themselves on the plateau. Beneath the crest one sat in safety and listened to the swish of bullets passing overhead. Above, the men were content to lie quite still underneath the rocks and wait for darkness. I had a message for Major Childe and found him sitting on this dangerous ground, partly sheltered by a large rock—a ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... meeting and mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till, what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat of the furrovahs or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which at first is of a yellowish ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... broke in: "For heaven's sake, Connie, don't stand here any longer. Our reputations are bad enough as it is. Good night—Roxbury!" He distinctly heard the heartless Edith giggle. Then came the soft, quick swish of garments and the nocturnal visitors were gone. He picked up the envelope and, waiting until they were safely down the hall, turned ...
— The Husbands of Edith • George Barr McCutcheon
... foot of the stairs to listen again, when the swish of garments fell on her ear, then a voice, ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... and I were standing close to Flannagan (one of the men's horses), and the men were at stables. We were all looking up and longing to see a Hun aeroplane hit, when suddenly "s-s-s-swish, plop!" just behind me. It was one of the Archie shrapnel cases. It buried itself deep in the ground 3 yards from where we were standing. We dug it up, and I'll bring it home for you. If ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... muscularly-built figure crossing the drift a little way down, stepping from boulder to boulder with those curiously small, neat feet, twirling his old horn-handled hunting-crop as he went, with a decidedly vicious swish of the doubled thong. Now he was knee-deep in the reeds of the north shore; now he was climbing the bank. A black-and-white crow flew up heavily, and was lost among the intertwining branches of the oaks and the blue-gums, and a cloud of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail, and whistling away gently to himself; and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... shelter, and drawing hard upon his pipe, he listened eagerly. The effort to do so was unpleasant as well as somewhat risky, for he had to turn back the old fur cap from his tingling ears; and he shivered at every variation of the stinging blast. There was nothing to be heard except the soft swish of the snow as it swirled among the stones and the hollow rumble of the river pouring down a rapid beneath a rent bridge ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... patched by trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an occasional bee that came and was gone ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... darkly against the saffron sky. Behind them the moon was rising out of the sea that grew all radiant and transfigured in her light. Every little cove along the curving road was a marvel of dancing ripples. The waves broke with a soft swish on the rocks below them, and the tang of the sea was ...
— Anne Of Green Gables • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... above the top of the big basswood tree. Mister Crow was circling around, and around, and looking down into the woods, but he was not saying a word. He was trying to see what had frightened the other birds and the squirrels. Robert Robin could hear Jim Crow's wings go "Swish! Swish!" ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... upon the head, repeated again and again with every attack. In vain the horse reared and tried to overthrow its enemy with swooping shoulders and pawing hoofs. Cool, swift and alert, the man sprang swiftly aside from under the very shadow of death, and then again came the swish and thud of the unerring blow from ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Texas, by establishing a zone system for ideas, for conveying the ideas of the great central newspapers and magazines in which a whole nation thinks together—with one huge national thoughtless provincial swish of his own provincial mind coolly takes ten thousand cities that like to do their thinking when they like, in New York or in Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago, jams them down into their own neighborhoods, glues them to their own papers, tells all these thousand ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... rapid steps to her study. Bazarov followed her quickly, not raising his eyes, and only with his ears catching the delicate swish and rustle of her silk gown gliding before him. Madame Odintsov sank into the same easy-chair in which she had sat the previous evening, and Bazarov took up the ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... black and dripping forest. After that Paul heard nothing, but to the keener ears of Henry came now and then the soft, sliding sound of rapid footsteps, a word or two uttered low, and the faint swish of bushes, swinging back into place after a body passed. He knew that the warriors were now seeking eagerly for them, but with the aid of the intense darkness he hoped that he and Paul would steal safely through their lines. They went slowly forward for perhaps half ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... ever shown a scene of such entrancing loveliness as the one spread out before them. In the broad path made by the moon hung ghostly sails, rose great masts, twinkled myriads of lights. It was so still they could hear the swish of the tide creeping up below, the dip of near-by oars and the chug of a motor boat, far away down by ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... to get into a more comfortable position, when he heard something hiss through the air with a swishing sound. For an instant he thought of rattlesnakes, but almost at once it was borne to his mind that he had heard this sound before—the swish of ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded—that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... across. An instant of numbing silence fell. A swish! A cat on a small bear's back. A scene impossible! A hairy tornado, rolling, twisting, flopping, yelling, screeching, roaring, and howling, tore, bit, scratched, clawed, and walloped all over the place. An epileptic ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... for an instant. Then she held out the note to him, and simultaneously stood up. As he took it, she went swiftly past him and out of the door. He heard the swish of her dress pass up the stairs, and then the closing of a door. But he hardly heeded it. He was reading the note she had given him. It was a short, perfectly formal offer of marriage to her ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... wall—washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish—seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog of a ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... of which he gathered himself to rise upward, catching as he did so a swish of The Hollander's pipe-length which made his cigarette leap neatly, holder and all, upward and outward. The Young Pole had by this time recovered sufficiently to get upon his hands and knees behind the Zulu; who was hurriedly but calmly propelling himself in the direction ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... obeyed, and the next thing he was aware of was the swish of the filly's thoroughbred tail as she disappeared round ...
— Boy Woodburn - A Story of the Sussex Downs • Alfred Ollivant
... his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding heels of departure—a stillness that settled like a mist through hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then absolute, echoless silence. And for ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... come!" she whispered, "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen for his place of concealment. He knelt there motionless, a cocked pistol clenched ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... world and far beyond it. The sweet mixed warbling of birds, the thousand indistinguishable odours of flowers, made the air both fragrant and musical. The glorious sunshine, the clear blue sky, the rustling of the young leaves, the whispering swish of the warm wind through the shrubberies,—all these influences entered the mind and soul of the man and aroused a keen joy which almost touched the verge of sadness. Life pulsated about him in such waves of creative passion, ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... A swish of soft skirts and she was there—in the hall. Helbeck could see her quite plainly as she stood by the oak table in her white dress. There was just room at the throat of it for a pearl necklace, ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... lying under the Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who sometimes received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them, never uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there was heard only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille, who continued to protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief of Police a savage. Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood had ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... for me—robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and yellow down and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... unnoticed in the dimness. And it was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish, and surge of the water against the hull; ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... critter. Couldn't neither on 'em understan' it. The boy c'u'd see the eyes o' the panther 'n the dark. Shone like tew live coals eggszac'ly. The panther 'd never sot 'n a tree when he was hungry, 'n see a boy below him. Sumthin' tol' him t' jump. Tail went swish in the leaves like thet. His whiskers quivered, his tongue come out. C'u'd think o' nuthin' but his big empty belly. The boy was scairt. He up with his gun quick es a flash. Aimed at his eyes 'n let 'er flicker. Blew a lot o' smoke 'n bird shot ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... people on the ramparts, and they began waving their hands and handkerchiefs wildly. To them the two figures seemed to be moving so slowly and the great sea behind so terribly fast. Barbara could hear its swish, swish, near enough now, and she felt Jean's hand tremble in her own. "Run yourself," she said, dropping ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... when the log on which he was walking tipped a little, and although Tom made frantic efforts to save himself by seizing all the branches within his reach, it set the whole structure in motion. There was a "swish" of tree-tops, and in a moment more the bridge and Tom went into the water together. The negro looked, but did ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... Against her windows screamed and whined the wind, driving a swish of fine, hard snow in its breath. From two rivers came the dull groaning of the fog horns. But the storm which kept her eyes hot and sleepless was one ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... and the three stared at him. Then with a swish of leaves in the wind and a spatter of rain in their faces, the candle blew out. The girls screamed and sprang up. The hound backed into his corner and barked furiously. Whatever it was, it had crossed the threshold and was in the room ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... across the street sprayed its gay crowd over the sidewalks and a vaudeville house down stairs gathered up rivulets of humanity from the spray. Somewhere near by was a dance, for we heard the rhythmic swish and lisp of young feet and the gay cry of the music. Here and there came a soldier; sometimes we saw a woman in mourning; but uniforms and mourners were uncommon. The war was ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... street the wind whirled down it, so that he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though he had ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the mandolin with a swish of its red ribbons, and laid it upon the piano, where it quivered and thrummed again like a living thing, awaking weird echoes from the instrument ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... while the blended coloring on the parapet and walls (which only time can give) was like Ponta Delgada of the Azores. Our hotel stood on an eminence overlooking the sea, indeed so near the sea that the moan and swish of the waves were always with us. The view from my balcony brought to mind the outlook from the old monastery at Amalfi, Italy. The whole atmosphere of the place was peaceful, and this was its chief attraction. We were there over Sunday, and the impression was deepened. Our arrival being ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... have lain there ages, scarcely breathing, when, in a little lull, above the fierce swish of rain she thought she heard voices. Cautiously she lifted her head; listened. She had left her door open for air and, now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... which he stood, George could not resist this little bit of sarcasm at the expense of Arabi's prowess. Apparently his interrogator had no sense of humour, for although Helmar could not see the man he was convinced that he gave some sign. There was a horrid swish in the air, and the kourbash fell across his bare shoulders with ruthless force, and a great wale was raised where it struck. George uttered no sound, but, bursting with indignation and in great pain, waited ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... Striddle, to straddle. Stron't, lanted. Strunt, liquor. Strunt, to swagger. Studdie, an anvil. Stumpie, dim. of stump; a worn quill. Sturt, worry, trouble. Sturt, to fret; to vex. Sturtin, frighted, staggered. Styme, the faintest trace. Sucker, sugar. Sud, should. Sugh, sough, sigh, moan, wail, swish. Sumph, churl. Sune, soon. Suthron, southern. Swaird, sward. Swall'd, swelled. Swank, limber. Swankies, strapping fellows. Swap, exchange. Swapped, swopped, exchanged. Swarf, to swoon. Swat, sweated. Swatch, sample. Swats, new ale. Sweer, v. dead-sweer. Swirl, curl. Swirlie, twisted, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... Another silence followed. Suddenly it was broken by a swift, complete sound, a heavy boom-roar, and on the heels of this noise came a throbbing, whistling sigh that, at first faint as the sound of ocean on a distant beach, increased with incredible speed to a whistling swish, ending in a HISH of tremendous volume and a roaring, grinding burst. The sound of a great shell is never a pure bang; one hears, rather, the end of the arriving HISH, the explosion, and the tearing disintegration of the thick wall of iron in one grinding hammer-blow of terrific violence. ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... so sure," the girl answered. "I think that associations always have an effect on me. I can imagine how one might wait there, near the entrance, hear the soft swish of the oars, look down and see the smugglers, hear perhaps the muffled tramp of men marching from the village. Fancy how breathless it must have been, the excitement, the ...
— Jeanne of the Marshes • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... himself in his chair beside Grosvenor's hammock, and closed his eyes in the hope of wooing sleep to them, than he became aware of other and nearer sounds, dominating the first, the sound of crackling flames, frequent low, muttered ejaculations, the occasional soft thud and swish of feet running through long grass, followed by a shout or two which was almost invariably responded to by a low, angry snarl, while the clashing of horns, the rattling of the trek chain, the almost continuous lowing and moaning of the oxen, the stamping of the horses tethered ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... the tug came a confused series of sounds. First there was the swish and pelt of the rain, varied as the wind blew the sheets of water across the deck. But, above it all, was a deep, ominous note—a grinding, crushing noise, as of giant rocks piling one on top of the other, smashing to powder between ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... belated pedestrians, the infrequent windy roar of trains on the Third Avenue L, empty clapping of horses' hoofs on the asphalt ... the yowl of a sentimental tomcat ... a dull and distant grumble, vague, formless, like a long, unending roll of thunder down the horizon ... the swish and sough of waters breaking away from the flanks of the Autocratic ... and then, finally, like a tocsin, the sonorous, musical chiming of the grandfather's ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... "Down on the ground!" And he felt the swish of another liquid mass above his head as he ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... would have us reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. He himself confesses that after reading Swedenborg he turns to Shakespeare and reads "As You Like It" with positive delight, because Shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. The monks of the olden time read Rabelais ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... out-of-doors, cigarettes in hand, and the rhythmic swish-swash of the river told that the tide was rising. The dried-up gullies and canals became silver-streaked with the incoming spray, and it needed only a windmill to make the scene as Dutch as a Van Der Neer. Piloti was moody. Something worried him, but as ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... told me that the biggest fish lurked in the deep pools, to reach which it was necessary to creep and worm myself over the open flats of sharp stones and patches of heather, but once on the vantage ground the swish of a trout rod sounded there for the first time since the ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... he could take a step, there was a swish of woman's garments, and before the father's astonished eyes there stood his daughter by the side of her lover. Her form was drawn to its full height, her bosom was heaving, her eyes were flashing. ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... answer; I felt as if I could not speak. All I wanted to do was to fly at him and strike out wildly, while something seemed to hold me back as he stood vapouring before me, swishing about the thin, black, silver-handled cane he carried, and at every swish he cut some ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... forward to their haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... swept up and down the room once more, watching her train, over her shoulder, and listening with a rapturous countenance to the silken swish of ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... hoped Mildred Caniper slept through a wailing that might have a personal note for her, and as she prepared to leave the room and listen on the landing, she thought she heard a new sound cutting through the swish of the rainfall and the shriek of wind. It was a smaller sound, as though a child were alone and crying in the night, and she leaned from her window to look into the garden. The rain wetted her hair and hands and neck, while she stared into varying ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... with these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and crash ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... Ann, who's oldest, bein' the first chicken on the domestic roost. But the other thirteen is carried off one evenin' when, what with the rains an' what with the snow meltin' back on Gingham Mountain, the Hawgthief gets its back up. Swish comes a big wave of water, an' you hear me them children goes coughin' an' kickin' an' ...
— Faro Nell and Her Friends - Wolfville Stories • Alfred Henry Lewis
... professional instincts roused him even more rapidly than did a loaf of soppy bread which at that moment was dashed in his face by the counter swish of the water against the side of the cabin, and he sprang up ready for action as cool and collected ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... seemed to be a raging torrent, its waters racing at top speed," said one traveler who arrived in Chicago on March 26th. "We could hear the swish of the waters and hear the cries of people in distress," ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... quiet after this, and listened to the swish of the rain and the mighty howling of the wind. It had grown very dark, and the air was chilly. The lightning was incessant, and traced zigzag pathways of fire across the sombre heavens. The thunder was terrific, and often shook the solid earth. I asked ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... they reached the narrow fringe of trees and underbrush—deciduous and wind-tortured all—which bordered the big, muddy, low-lying Missouri; and soon they could hear the throb of the engine at the mill, and the swish of the saw through the green lumber; a sound that heard near by, inevitably carries the suggestion of scalpel and living flesh. Nothing but green timber was sawed thereabout in those days. The country was settling rapidly, lumber was imperative, and ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... his mind intensely on the movable ceiling. For a moment, there was resistance, then, very slowly, it began to open. A crack appeared in its center, and the air of the room hissed out with the swish of a minor tempest. After that, it was easier. The crack widened swiftly, and the roof rolled back to the walls, leaving the room open ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" about Mr. Hayne? It could not mean that ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... wish to see, yet he had plenty of company. To say nothing of the birds chattering on the fence, the tall thick grass was as full of hopping, fluttering, and creeping things as a wheat beard is of grain. These tiny little creatures seemed to find life so pleasant and comfortable, and the glisten and "swish" of John Goodnow's scythe so very odd and amusing, that they kept only a little out of his way as he mowed, and when he stopped to whet his scythe they flocked around and settled on his boot-legs, on the brim of his hat, and even in the creases of ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... for at least a minute after Jack and Jake had left, then he heard a soft swish, and a few stars which had been visible through the upper half of the window were blotted out. The ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... all quarters came a loud uproar; a thousand piercing, whistling yells; a rackety, rumbling, rattling commotion mixed with the beat and swish of wings. This was followed by an upward rush which darkened ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... and silent. The swish and lapping of the waters on the Port Moresby beach on the southern shore of the immense island of New Guinea, filled the air with a ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... in swiftly. Through the dark we could hear the low swish of the rising river, and Burton, with a sly twinkle in his eye, remarked, "For a semi-arid country, this is a ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... of bewilderment held him. Then in a rush came back the memory of what had happened. He listened intently. Back and forth, back and forth somewhere near went a soft footstep, the swish and glide of a moccasin. He strained his eyes, which smarted terribly, into the darkness, and presently descried a tall form pacing slowly up against the skyline of his vision and back again into the shadows. A single feather slanted against the stars. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... Presently—swish! They were circling in the opposite direction to Tam, which meant that the object passed him at the rate of one hundred and forty miles an hour. But he had seen the German coming.... Something dropped from the fuselage, there was the rending crash ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... day of Graham's expected return, Dick was alone in his workroom at eleven. Bending over his desk, signing letters, he heard Paula tiptoe into the room. He did not look up, but while he continued writing his signature he listened with all his soul to the faint, silken swish of her kimono. He knew when she was bending over him, and all but held his breath. But when she had softly kissed his hair and called her "Good morning, merry gentleman," she evaded the hungry sweep of his arm and laughed her way out. What affected him as strongly as the disappointment was the happiness ...
— The Little Lady of the Big House • Jack London
... it is to fish in such a place and at such an hour! The novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar that one feels at home—the motion of the rod, the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the rising fish—it all brings back a hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around the forest camp-fire in ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... dipped to the stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... not much given to the vague and poetic. In the field beyond the bank where her skiff lay up, a machine drawn by a grey horse was turning an early field of hay. She watched the grass cascading over and behind the light wheels with fascination—it looked so cool and fresh. The click and swish blended with the rustle of the willows and the poplars, and the cooing of a wood-pigeon, in a true river song. Alongside, in the deep green water, weeds, like yellow snakes, were writhing and nosing with the current; ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... showed in front—only to be instantly eclipsed by the white star of Aldegonde. Aramis began to hang—the angry roar of his backers told he was out of it. Simultaneously, the jockeys sat down to ride—there was the cruel swish of catgut, the crueler prodding of steel. In the crowd a great hushed breath, like the sigh of a forest before the storm, told ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... a faint and distant murmur, the murmur to a long swish like a million rustling garments. A tree fell, with a crash, far away. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... for to stick our bacon-hog; But th' hog he cock'd a knowing eye, As if he twigg'd the reason why, And dodg'd and dodg'd 'un such a dance, He didn't give the noose a chance; So Master Blogg at last lays off, And shams a rattle at the trough, When swish! in bolts our bacon-hog Atwixt the legs o' Master Blogg, And flops him down in all the muck, As hadn't been swept up by luck— Now that, accordin' to my guess, Be ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... has long hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the walls ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... more immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between my shins in ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... finally replied. "Won't you come in?" She was shown into the parlor, where she sat down. The room was most interesting, furnished in unimpeachable taste. A few good pictures were on the walls, and Mrs. Cresswell was examining one when she heard the swish of silken skirts. A lady with gold brown face and straight hair stood before her with pleasant smile. Where had Mrs. Cresswell seen her before? She tried to remember, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... answer to the word 'Germany,' a train of vague thoughts dragged across his brain. The pompous middle-class vulgarity of the building of Berlin; the wide and restful beauty of Munich; the taste of beer; innumerable quiet, glittering cafes; the Ring; the swish of evening air in the face, as one skis down past the pines; a certain angle of the eyes in the face; long nights of drinking, and singing, and laughter; the admirable beauty of German wives and mothers; certain friends; some tunes; the quiet ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... and steadfastly, reading an ode that he could not have translated to save his life, and listening acutely for her approach. And after an interminable time, as it seemed, came a faint footfall and the swish of skirts behind him. ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... inestimable beasts. The man who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who employs stockmen by the dozen, who sends off hundreds of fat, contented, happy, liberty-loving oxen in droves to end their days in an unknown locality amid the clatter and swish of machinery and with the fearful scents of blood and decaying offal defiling the air, has few opportunities of studying the nicer qualities of his possessions. He may be full of bullock lore and able to ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... representative of the United States government I can't become publicly involved in this international muddle. I've just got to keep my lips sealed. If it were discovered that I knew of all this, my head would be under the snickersnee in no time at all. Swish! ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... ground-vault gaunt As your telescope's skeleton moon. Barren comfort to these will she dole; Dead is her face to their cries. Intelligence pushing to taste A lesson from beasts might heed. They scatter a voice in the waste, Where any dry swish of a reed By ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Mechanically, dip by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here, on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final conclusion; and yet he reached ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... interval, after which the invisible orchestra started again with renewed energy. The sounds poured and rolled in unrestrainable, overwhelming waves. We had never heard anything like this inconceivable wonder. Listen! A storm in the open sea, the wind tearing through the rigging, the swish of the maddened waves rushing over each other, or the whirling snow wreaths on the silent steppes. Suddenly the vision is changed; now it is a stately cathedral and the thundering strains of an organ rising under its vaults. The powerful notes now rush together, now spread ...
— From the Caves and Jungles of Hindostan • Helena Pretrovna Blavatsky
... flashed through the hall-way overhead and out on the front veranda, and he, instead of pursuing, stood stone still, rooted to the floor, his heart beating hard, his hands clinching in amaze. What stunned him was the fact that with the footfalls went the swish of ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... 'Swish-h-h' went the clumsy slug past Roland's ear. He grasped his revolver; and the resolution of the moment was to stand at bay and fight the churls. But the reflection not occupying the hundredth part of a second showed him ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... from the dreadful vision that has set the seal of despair on this fine and handsome visage. He is shown, not as a sea monster, but as some rabid, evasive, impatient thing, dashing from point to point—as from policy to policy—with the angry swish that tells the unspoken anger failure everywhere compels. For the victories do not bring surrender, nor does frightfulness inspire terror. The merchant ships still put to sea—and the U ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... warbling of birds, the thousand indistinguishable odours of flowers, made the air both fragrant and musical. The glorious sunshine, the clear blue sky, the rustling of the young leaves, the whispering swish of the warm wind through the shrubberies,—all these influences entered the mind and soul of the man and aroused a keen joy which almost touched the verge of sadness. Life pulsated about him in such waves ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... think Mr. Beeton cheats much," said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... given me an idea. As soon as I heard Miss Patricia's silk skirts coming slowly through the hall with their soft swish, swish, I ran and sat in the doorway with my hands over my eyes, in token that there was something that she ought not to look at. It should have amused her, for she knew the story of the ebony paper-weight, but instead it seemed to arouse her suspicion that something ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... warm drink tae," put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near wishin'—" Domsie waved ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... the empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of the servants, laughing ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... this book is to fill your apartment—your lonely farm parlor or little 'flat' drawing-room in which few sit—with the rustle of silks and the swish of lawns; to comfort your ear with seemly wit and musical laughter; and to remind you how sweet an essence ascends from the womanly heart to the high altar of the Maker of ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... first. He was looking at Andrew, who was sweeping the path at a little distance. Swish, swish, went his broom to right and left amongst the yellow leaves, leaving a bare space ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... beneath the bitter blasts stiff with frost, and the moan of swinging boughs in a far-off willow bluff. It was these things that guided him, for he had left the rutted trail, and here and there the swish beneath the wheels told of taller grass, while the bluff ran black athwart the horizon when that had gone. Then twigs crackled beneath them as the horses picked their way amidst the shadowy trees stunted by ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... two of climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... on the bonnet, smoothed the lapels of her Alexandra jacket—so-called after the newly-made Princess of Wales—and pulled up her gloves under its pegtop sleeves. Then she turned with a swoop and a swish of her wide blue ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... faced the barred stone door. He swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column beside him, and the much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who stood and spoke with him kept a very leery eye on it; he seemed to expect the binding swish of it across his own shins, and ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... neversomeless I ain't gwine run away: I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blessed day. YOU screech, and swish de water, Satan! I'se a gwine ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... face was set and stern. His eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just warming ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... down. Each one had broken a stick; some had stripped off the leaves entirely; others had left a tuft at the end. In both cases the weapons looked dangerously destructive to Ethel, as she ran toward them and saw one pole after another swish past the home of the paper wasps and expected the colony to rush forth to defend their abode. With a cry of warning she bore down on them and with a sweep of her arms turned them all back into the open field. Dicky ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... superior advantages enjoyed by the man-about-town of today is that of the companionship, at his dinner in camera, of ladies having an honorable vocation. In the corridors of the "French restaurant" the swish of Pseudonyma's skirt is no longer heard; she has been superseded by the Princess Tap-tap (with Truckle & Cinch), by my lady Snip-snip (from the "emporium" of Boltwhack & Co.), by Miss Chink-chink, who sits at the receipt of customs in that severely ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... the ship had left St. Vincent that a certain amount of peace came to establish itself in his heart, and the large and beautiful consolation of the sea began to make itself felt. The weather was calm and clear, and the monotonous slap and swish of the water against the ship's side was in itself soothing. The company on board were all strangers to him, and this helped to give him a feeling that he was starting anew in life. Also he was on his way to do the best he could to find his brother, if he were living, or ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I knew the tide ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... they should be done and have been for a hundred thousand years, falls into none of these fooleries. He goes forward very steadily, his scythe-blade just barely missing the ground, every grass falling; the swish and rhythm of his ...
— Hills and the Sea • H. Belloc
... Incandescent the other evening and had the joy of seeing her put on that sweet ickle f'ock she wears for the Jazz supper scene in Oh My! All the materials used are three yards of embroidered chiffon, six yards of tinsel fringe and six dozen tinsel tassels; and anything so completely swish and so immensely tra-la-la ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... really consists of one room, but she maintains that there are two; so, rather than argue, let us say that there are two. The other one has no window, and she could not swish her old skirts in it without knocking something over; its grandest display is of tin pans and crockery on top of a dresser which has a lid to it; you have but to whip off the utensils and raise the lid, and, behold, a bath with hot and cold. Mrs. Dowey is very proud of this ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... step at a time; but at length they found that there was firm ground in this new region. They concluded that the world was only a larger calf pen, after all; but it was a wonderfully light calf pen, and its walls were certainly a long way off. Swish! up went their tails into the air and away they scampered like the ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... didn't know. He swung around in sudden uneasiness and examined the room carefully. Then he gave a deep sigh of relief. It was all right this time; this was his own house! He sank into the green rocker and mechanically began to fill his pipe. From the floor above came the swish of the broom and Zephania's ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... 'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... There were no sounds in the house. The fire began to drop very low. There were no more coals. The room began to be very chilly. She laid her head back on the sofa; she was half asleep. She was dreaming—Paul was there and Grace—the Skeaton sands—the Revival procession with the lanterns—the swish of the sea... ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... wrapped in a cloud; moisture began to form in tiny drops upon the stanchions and the deck, upon the beards and moustaches of the male part of the voyagers, upon the woolly texture of the garments of all, even upon the smoothly brushed silk of the Honourable John's top hat; save for the swish of the paddles and the running of the engines, with a whispered exclamation here and there, we could hear nothing; and we could scarcely see the ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air, curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates. Stoner was deadly pale; it seemed as if all ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... smelled any odour that he believed to come from the Northern Lights. Indeed, he has often felt that with all the light-producing energy and with all the rapid movement of the aurora it was mysterious that there should be absolutely no sound. The aurora often looks as if it ought to swish, but to his ears it has never done it; so much phosphorescent light might naturally be accompanied by some chemical odour, but to his nostrils ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head, Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape, And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore.... And when things swish or fall, they shiver but ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... beautiful out in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that make up the silence of ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the breezes blow And all the germs that flutter May find a refuge in the gowns That swish along the gutter. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... artist would have done well to preserve. For a time no sound was heard but the distant roar of the surf, the sighing of the wind through the pines on the hill, the less romantic grunts of the women and the swish of the linen in the water. Suddenly Mariquita, the proscribed, exclaimed from her ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... hardly needed to glance before knowing the truth. It was his old company, the Gray Horse Truck. There was his old driver, there were his old team mates. In a flash there passed from Silver's mind all memory of his humble condition, his wretched state. Tossing his head and giving his tail a swish, he leaped toward the apparatus, neatly upsetting the filled ash-can over the head and shoulders of the ...
— Horses Nine - Stories of Harness and Saddle • Sewell Ford
... accounts? At home, in their distress they got to imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he HAD heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—questions which were so random and incoherent and seemingly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... himself for the swing, grasped the hooks, and then, with good momentum, landed in the hammock. There was a swish, a distinct thud, and young Potter rolled out upon the deck with a gasp of amazement. Turning as quickly as he could, he looked up and saw the hammock swinging in its proper place. It was physical labor for us to keep from howling with glee at ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... mead; the lawn is fair And the birds sing sweet on the lea; But the echo soft of a song aloft Is the strain that pleases me; And swish of rope and ring of chain Are music to men who ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... hours passed and he did not stir. His stillness made his hearing more acute. The trampling of feet over his head came to him with great distinctness. He heard the singing of wind at the porthole, and, now and then, the swish of waters as they swept past the schooner. He wondered what Tayoga was doing and what would Willet think when he came back to Albany and found him gone. It gave him a stab of agony. His pride was hurt, too, that he had been ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... please!" pleaded Grace, watching the bushes swish back from the place she felt Reda ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... doing some work done many times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... There was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in the centre ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the sea, for he obeyed at once, and the boat, set free, lurched forward with a flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment, all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness, and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... arrangement of the streets reminded me of Spain, while the blended coloring on the parapet and walls (which only time can give) was like Ponta Delgada of the Azores. Our hotel stood on an eminence overlooking the sea, indeed so near the sea that the moan and swish of the waves were always with us. The view from my balcony brought to mind the outlook from the old monastery at Amalfi, Italy. The whole atmosphere of the place was peaceful, and this was its chief attraction. We were there over Sunday, and the impression was deepened. ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... the boat and it was impossible to move him a foot. He was about two hundred and fifty yards from us. Every once in a while he would come up. His sword would appear first, a most extraordinary sight as it pierced the water. We could hear the swish. Once he leaped half out. We missed this picture. I kept a steady, hard strain on him, pumping now and then, getting a little line in, which he always got back. The first hour passed swiftly with this surface fight alternating with his slow heavy work down. However, ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... one of the brass six-pounders with which his vessel was armed. The boat went off again to bring back the messenger. As soon as it was seen returning dark forms appeared on the brig's spars; then the sails fell in festoons with a swish of their heavy folds, and hung motionless under the yards in the dead calm of the clear and dewy night. From the forward end came the clink of the windlass, and soon afterwards the hail of the chief mate informing Lingard that ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... like some bird of prey that circled in the sky just above him—its shadow filling him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was no time in his life when he was not in a state of inward war. His intellect rebelled; and on the other hand, there was a part of his nature that craved this sex-experience and welcomed ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... "or you—oh, it really is too bad!" she exclaimed abruptly as a soft swish along the corridor and the click of a latch told her that she had been again forestalled, and Angela was now in possession of the bathroom. "I ought to go first, because I am the eldest, and Poppy last ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... of the timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but twice as many ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... will pay my price... in fine weather," he shouted over his shoulder. One of the men unbuttoned his wet coat rapidly, threw it at his head. "Here, Taffy—take that, you thief!" "Thank you!" he cried from the darkness above the swish of rolling water. He could be heard splashing; a sea came on board with a thump. "He's got his bath already," remarked a grim shellback. "Aye, aye!" grunted others. Then, after a long silence, Wamibo made strange noises. "Hallo, what's up with ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... rattle and the swish of big feathers and vast wings—he felt the draught of them—the dim outline, as it were, of a ghost, of some great shape rising into the gloom, and as instantly vanishing over the sea-"wall," and he was alone, and—there were now three upright and faded reeds in the clump near which ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... alone, glad of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of the water along ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... as it opens when the tree sways. It sways—it staggers; a loud crack as the fibres part, then with a slow heave over it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt is blue with stains from the steel of ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... it, so that he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though he had ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... maidens' winsome purity and frank disdain, of strong men who take their lives in hand and hurl themselves upon the push of pikes. And though I cannot grasp more than a hint of the plot, yet as my feet swish through the dewy swathes of the hyacinths or crisp along the frost-bitten snow, a wild thought quickens within me into a belief, that one day I shall hear them all, and tell these tales for my very own so ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... the roses sent up and waited. The Countess sent word that she would be down shortly. I smoked three cigarettes. Still no Countess. I have yet to meet a woman who could or would be punctual. Finally I heard the soft swish and frou-frou of silk garments and looking up saw her ladyship coming down the grand stairway. She was brilliantly robed, jewels flashed at her neck and wrists. She was of that type of beauty difficult to classify, although assured of approval in ...
— The Secrets of the German War Office • Dr. Armgaard Karl Graves
... very quiet world just now; the sun was only a little over the zenith. Only the cries of the sea gulls and the soft swish of the waves broke the silence. It would be pleasant to sleep here as her comrades were sleeping, but if she slept then she would miss the ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... sense of maleficence, or at any rate of brutal carelessness, in the responsible Power, whoever that may be. "What is it all," we say, "but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?" We feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless giant may at any moment crush. We dream of the swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of fact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities just as an elephant might treat an ant-hill. ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... nerves were soothed into repose. The last remnants of his ghostly fears had been swept away. They were on the windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy forms of other promenaders. The whole experience, even the regular throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing, the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds of the seaborne hostel, were unfamiliar and exhilarating. And inside his hand, even though given ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he stood, George could not resist this little bit of sarcasm at the expense of Arabi's prowess. Apparently his interrogator had no sense of humour, for although Helmar could not see the man he was convinced that he gave some sign. There was a horrid swish in the air, and the kourbash fell across his bare shoulders with ruthless force, and a great wale was raised where it struck. George uttered no sound, but, bursting with indignation and in great pain, waited for ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed atop ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... our faces with napkins of white linen. Then we heard heavy steps, the clank of scabbards on a stairway, the feet of ladies, and the swish of their gowns. With a quick movement our faces were uncovered. I rose to my feet, for there before me stood Louison and the Baroness de Ferre, between two guards, and, behind them, Louise, her eyes covered, her beautiful head bent low. I could see that she was crying. ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... grinn'd and swish'd his tail For joy and admiration; And he thought of his daughter, Victory, ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... eyes to try and see more clearly, for surely these means of happiness, these elaborate arrangements for it all round them, couldn't be for nothing? There must be some of it somewhere, if only they could discover where? And there was none. Not a trace of it. Not even the faintest little swish of its skirts. ...
— Christopher and Columbus • Countess Elizabeth Von Arnim
... out, and Miss Sally remained in a daze, looking at the door by which he had gone. She was still looking at it helplessly when Mrs. Tarbro-Smith came in with a swish of skirts and put her arm gently ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... and still it is that, listening, I hear the flowers talking in the dawn; And where a sunken basin cuts the lawn, Cinctured with iris, pale and glistening, The sudden swish Of a ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... from the side of the Russian ironclad, and a shot leaped towards us. Its size was such that we could trace it from the muzzle of the gun. Describing, as I thought (for strange is the power of thought), a rather high trajectory, it passed over us and plunged into the sea with a swish that sent hundreds of tons of water like an inverted cascade into the air. A gush of indignation filled my breast. That the warship of a nation with which we were at peace should fire at us without provocation was more ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... Previously, all she could hear in the entire valley, on the pond, in the big trees and the foliage, was the mysterious rustling of the birds as they returned to the nests for the night. Now the silence was disturbed by all kinds of noises—the blow of the forge, the grind of the axle, the swish of a whip, and the murmur ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... Great Swamp was led by a wrinkled old cow, wise beyond belief. Scrag we called her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the occasional toot-toot of some silly cow calling for Scrag, ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... lightened, and there was loud talk in the sterns among the Bearsarks. In the night the wind freshened, and the long shallow boats rolled filthily so that the teeth shook in a man's head, and over the swish of the waves and the creaking of the sheets there was a perpetual din of arms clashing. Biorn was miserably ill for some hours, and made sport for the ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... there sounded a dull bang, followed by the loud ring of tin, a breathless cry, and the swish of flying water—as Johnnie came hurtling headlong out of the stall, the bucket preceding him, a shod hoof in his immediate wake, and the contents of the pail showering in all directions. There was a second bang also dull, as he landed against the bottom step of the stairs ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... feet that first touched good earth so hesitatingly with those crumpled shoes are now standing firmly in wool-lined rubber boots topped by brown corduroy trousers, upon the winter slat walk that leads to the tool house, while their owners, touched by the swish of the Whirlpool that has recently drawn this peaceful town into its eddies, are busy trying to turn their patrol wagon, that for a year has led a most conservative existence as a hay wain and a stage-coach dragged by a curiously assorted team of dogs and goat, into the semblance of some weird sort ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... along either side of the Philippa had stood motionless waiting for their orders, but now there was a sharp shout from their leader, and every string twanged together. The air was full of their harping, together with the swish of the arrows, the long-drawn keening of the bowmen and the short deep bark of the under-officers. "Steady, steady! Loose steady! Shoot wholly together! Twelve score paces! Ten score! Now eight! Shoot wholly together!" Their gruff shouts broke through the high ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... movement in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They seemed scarcely ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... whose trade is war. With us, your yeomen whenever they have a chance, I have observed, most uncivilly poke about the lieges with but and bayonet, or thump and rump them with their chargers, and entice the ill-broken brutes with insidious prods of the spur to swish their tails, if tails they have, into the upturned phizes ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her trailing ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of her skirts, and, looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at the Governor's house the winter before, and was ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... did not progress five miles. Their two pack animals found insecure footing; death awaited them hourly upon many a day at the bottom of some sheer walled cliff. They climbed with the sharp slopes on the mountains, they dropped down into the narrow, flinty canons, they heard only the swish of tree tops and the quarrelling of streams lost to their eyes in the depths below them. And they came in two weeks to Blue Lake having seen no other man or other ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... some of his detestable ironmongery. Sometimes he would hover overhead and follow the long line till we were almost at the lip of the nullah before releasing his bombs, and this was the very refinement of torture. During the whole of the two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the hope of catching us ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... on to the grate. Not a sound came from the sofa. Macdougal leaned forward, his white face distorted with passion. The life-preserver bent and quivered behind him, cut the air with a swish and crashed full ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... upon her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no arriere pensee. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more than sixty cents ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... had been with him were already distant. The shadows were growing long now, but the light was still from the sunshine of the early afternoon. The man lying along the limb, knife in hand, could hear no sound save the soft swish of leaves against each other as the breeze of later day pushed its way through the forest, or the alarmed cries of knowing birds who saw on the ground beneath them a huge thing slip along with scarce a sound from the impact of his fearfully clawed but padded feet ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... A sudden swish, then from under a tangled elderberry bush there emerged a darling little boy. At the sight of the intruders he stood stock still ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... between the shafts pulling buggy and him. That was his weakness, but in it there also lay his strength. As soon as I started to dream or to be absorbed in the things around, he was sure to fall into the slowest of walks. When then he heard the swish of the whip, he would start with the worst of consciences, gallop away at breakneck speed, and slow down only when he was sure the whip was safe in its socket. When we met a team and pulled out on the side of the road, he would take ...
— Over Prairie Trails • Frederick Philip Grove
... Through the dark we could hear the low swish of the rising river, and Burton, with a sly twinkle in his eye, remarked, "For a semi-arid country, this is a pretty ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... could clutch, the men dashed into the water with paeans and shouts and the broken pitchers of fallen Jericho. The violet phosphorescence lighted them on their way, and tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes of a shark and beaten it off with actual blows. It was the Thermopylae ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... something incomparable about such work—the long steady pull of willing and healthy muscles, the mind undisturbed by any disquieting thought, the feeling of attainment through vigorous effort! It was a steady swing and swish, swish and swing! When Dick led I have a picture of him in my mind's eye—his wiry thin legs, one heel lifted at each step and held rigid for a single instant, a glimpse of pale blue socks above his rusty shoes and three inches of whetstone sticking from his tight hip-pocket. ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... comfortably furnished, warm, and brightly lighted; a strong contrast to the lonely Canadian homestead to which her thoughts wandered. She could recall the unpolished stove, filling the place with its curious, unpleasant smell, and the icy draughts that eddied about it. She could imagine the swish of driving snow about the quivering wooden building when the dreaded blizzards raged; the strange, oppressive silence when the prairie lay still in the grip of the Arctic frost; and George coming ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... suddenly. The door had opened; he heard the swish of skirts, and knew it could not ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... know it all like his own back yard—not in sunny weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... McFeeters, all grim and severe, Who the long night before, with a feeling of fear, Had slumbered but fitfully, hearing the swish Of the sky-rocket over his roof, with a wish That the urchin who fired it were fast to the end Of the stick to forever and ever ascend; Or to hopelessly ask why the boy with the horn And its horrible havoc had ever ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... no reply to that harsh judgment. And now Val could hear what Ricky had heard earlier—a faint swish as of a paddle through water. Again Ricky's lips shaped ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... merchandise store below was not open. Congratulating himself on this fact, and with the fingers of his right hand reaching instinctively for his pistol butt, Captain Plum mounted the stair. When half way up he heard voices. As he reached the landing at the top he caught the quick swish of a skirt. Another step and he was in the open door. He was not soon enough to see the person who had just disappeared through an opposite door but he knew that it was a woman. Directly in front of him as if she had been expecting ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... her, and looking round she saw a multitude of curious, great-eyed, black heads, something like the heads of boys, and something like the heads of dogs, thrusting from the water, and flashing under it again at sight of them with a swish that sent the spray into the air. She sprang to her feet. "Oh, look at those things! Look at them! Look at them!" She laid vehement hands upon the young man, and pushed him in the direction in which she wished him to look, at some risk of pushing him overboard, while ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... there ages, scarcely breathing, when, in a little lull, above the fierce swish of rain she thought she heard voices. Cautiously she lifted her head; listened. She had left her door open for air and, now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he was saying. Then she heard Aunt Isabel's ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... gear first. I found the spoon-shaped pram a wonderful boat to handle. You could go in to the very edge of the breaking surf, lifted like a cork on top of the waves, and as long as you kept head to sea and kept your own head, you need never have got on the rocks, as the tremendous back-swish took you out like a shot every time. It was quite exciting, however, as we would slip in close in a lull, and the chaps in the whaler would yell, 'Look out!' if a big wave passed them, in which case you would pull out for dear life. Our ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... to see his yacht lying so near him, and Davy on the deck, and to hear the blows of the hammer and the swish of the plane as the carpenter went on with the alterations to which he had set him, but he got tired of sharing in activity only with his ears and eyes. One thing he had by it, however, and that was—a good lesson in quiescent waiting—a grand thing for any man, and most of ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... how long his search lasted, how long he heard the swish and the bang of rockets, the vehement music of the band, the cries and laughter of the people, the sound of footsteps as if a world were starting on some pilgrimage; how long he saw the dazzling avenues of fire stretching away into the city's heart; how long he looked at the faces ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... telling of spring came against the window, bringing a confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swaying and touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl. Then the great silence reigned once more. Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping; but in this repose beside the dead ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... a dark night and silent. The swish and lapping of the waters on the Port Moresby beach on the southern shore of the immense island of New Guinea, filled the air with a quiet hush ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... certain, unless something happens right off; though, of course, I didn't see how anything could happen, placed as I was. But just as I said those words, something did happen—and about the last thing I would have expected. The first I saw was a big shadow, and the first I heard was a kind of swish in the air, and the first I knew I wasn't in the water any more, but was on the way to the sky with Mr. Eagle, who had one great claw around my hind leg and another hooked over my shell, not seeming to mind my weight at all, and paying no attention to Old Man Moccasin, who was beating his ...
— Hollow Tree Nights and Days • Albert Bigelow Paine
... the gloom they looked like bandits dividing the spoil. One picture, though far from war, stays with me. A perfectly built, dark-skinned young giant had peeled himself out of his blue coat and had brought it down with a swish upon the shoulder of a half-stripped comrade who was kneeling at his feet with some footgear. They stood against a background of semi-luminous blue haze, through which glimmered a pile of coppery straw half covered by a red blanket. By divine accident of light and pose it St. Martin giving his cloak ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learnt from Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at home and took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing," again, is deliberate—it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But the things I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, like the "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire—great, disconnected, time-worn chunks amidst the natural herbage of it. "The ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... which had gone out. How the rain kept at it! He could hear the swish of it on the wall of the house across the garden. ...
— A Venetian June • Anna Fuller
... suddenly in the silence I heard a sound which sent my heart into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish of the leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp still stood upon the floor where I had placed it when examining the trough. By its light I saw that the black ceiling was coming down upon me, slowly, jerkily, but, as none knew better ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... time they needed no longer to search for places to wade in the snow, for it was so thick already that they felt it soft under their soles and up around their shoes. And when all was so silent and peaceful it seemed to them that they could hear the swish of the snow ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VIII • Various
... time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl of society, forgetful ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and the bank, but he scrambled up out of the water like lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he soon caught up, but he was just raining water from his clothes, and it made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they could wring Jim Leonard's clothes out, and lay them on the shore to dry, and stay in long enough to let them dry. That ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... the soldiers, the sky, the horses or the crowd. He did not feel the cold, the terror or the shame. He did not hear the swish of the knout in the air or the savage howl of pain and despair. He only saw the bare back of a man's body swelling up and covered over evenly with white and purple stripes. Gradually the bare back lost the semblance of human flesh. The blood oozed and ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... on the stairs, the soft swish of skirts in the hallway, Croyden turned, expectantly—and Miss Cavendish ...
— In Her Own Right • John Reed Scott
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