"Crackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the heavy fur, and leaning against the most sheltered wall of the porch, steeled his nerves to face the devil and all his works. No sound of voices came from within; the most distinct sound was the crackle and roar of ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... way, behind the green roof of a large building, the dim, cold dawn was beginning to blush red. The keen frost of the spring morning which had stiffened the pools and mud and made them crackle under my feet now nipped my face and hands also. Not a cab was to be seen, though I had counted upon one to make the journey out and home the quicker. Only a file of waggons was rumbling along the Arbat Prospect, and a couple of bricklayers talking noisily together as they strode ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... affrighted by the thunderous rumblings and cracking of the breaking floe—a sound that an experienced Arctic explorer says is the most terrifying ever heard by man, having in it something of the hoarse rumble of heavy artillery, the sharp and murderous crackle of machine guns, and a kind of titanic grinding, for which there is no counterpart in the world of tumult. Living thus in constant dread of death, the little company drifted on, seemingly miraculously preserved. Their ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of starch, like a turkey when it ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... issuing from the hole under the porch. The mother skunk and her kittens scampered out into the weeds. He heard the crackle of flames. That boy had dropped his torch under the porch. Screaming, Panhandle ran to alarm his mother. But it was too late. There were no men near at hand, so nothing could be done. Panhandle stood crying beside his mother, watching their little home burn to the ground. Somehow in his mind the ...
— Valley of Wild Horses • Zane Grey
... and begin walking homewards, but all the time I know I have stayed out too long. I walk faster, then run; Asop understands there is something the matter, and pulls at the leash, drags me along, sniffs at the ground, and is all haste. The dry leaves crackle about us. ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... that big pool. You listen. You can hear me crackle with the salt and dust caked over me. I'm afraid to laugh, for fear I should ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... He was dressed in rusty black, with a very broad-brimmed top-hat and a loose white necktie—the whole effect being that of a very rustic parson or of an undertaker's mute. Yet, in spite of his shabby and even absurd appearance, his voice had a sharp crackle, and his manner a quick ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Brandon. From out some drawer or chest or closet, another treasure will appear and lure you away with another story of the long ago. With the inimitable sheen of old silver still in our eyes, our ears caught the crackle of ancient parchment; and we turned to the fascinations of venerable records and dingy red seals and queer blue tax stamps. The papers were delightfully quaint and yellow and worn, but from their very age a little ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... angels. She is jolted off her course in four ways at once, and cuffed into place again, only to be swung aside and dropped into a new chaos. We are never without a corposant grinning on our bows or rolling head over heels from nose to midships, and to the crackle of electricity around and within us is added once or twice the rattle of hail—hail that will never fall on any sea. Slow we must or we ...
— With The Night Mail - A Story of 2000 A.D. (Together with extracts from the - comtemporary magazine in which it appeared) • Rudyard Kipling
... and left, Ned heard again the rising crackle of the rifle fire, and he also heard the steady monotonous beat of the hoofs. He knew that the charge was still coming on, but Bowie would attend to that. He and his immediate comrades never took their eyes from the gun. New cannoneers, an entire complement, were rushing forward to take the place ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... not wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Japan; and a porcelain decorated with a fine, open-work design cut through the ware, and styled 'grains-of-rice pattern.' Moreover they manufactured a variety which in firing took on a crackled effect and has for that reason been christened Chinese Crackle. You see how many kinds of ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... spinning broke delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace, as if knowing it marked eternal hours. The flames waved softly upward without their former crackle and sheen; and the moving shadows were gentle and rhythmic ones come to keep the soul company. Amelia ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... heard that rose far above all the other noises—a cry more terrible than the screams of the parrots, or the shrieks of the howling monkeys—it was the cry of the jaguar! It came from a piece of wood close to the juvia-trees, and the branches were heard to crackle ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... the old man had lighted his fire and was listening to its cheerful crackle when his visitors came, laughing. With a boisterous shout Tom kicked the door open, and when the girl remonstrated with him, he grabbed her and ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... consented. Kleber, who was of gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice—a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry—he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French battery, watched the sight with eager eyes—the French grenadiers running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets that barred ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... now heaped against the timber posterns of the building, and set on fire. Volumes of smoke roll to the sky, mingling with sheets of red flame. The huge pine-beams of the azotea catch the blaze, burn, crackle, and fall inwards, and in a short while the Presidio becomes a ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... sacrifice was ordained to be free from any stain of gore. Our hour of sacrifice, alas, has not yet come. When it does — ( et haud procul absit!) — let the offering be no bloodless one, but let (for choice) a fat and succulent stationmaster smoke and crackle on the altar ...
— Pagan Papers • Kenneth Grahame
... inhabitants had fled, and he carried in his hand a smouldering firebrand. Now crouching against the place from which the hottest fire belched forth, he blew upon this brand till a tongue of flame darted forth, and in a moment more the brushwood around the house had begun to crackle with a sound like that made by a hissing snake before it makes ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... stood around were nearly all of slender growth; but, as their stems grew thickly together, the horse, with his strange rider, could make but slow way among them; and every now and then the former, half blind with affright, dashed his sides against the trunks, causing them to crackle ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... was still waiting for the news that he had to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... was easy enough to move the books silently, and at last she discovered the blue envelope, tucked between two of them. She drew it out without a sound,—careful lest the paper should crackle,—and started to retrace her stealthy steps upstairs again, when she saw the hem of the portiere move the ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... Ben Gile, "let's have a fire in the fireplace, then we can have a crackle of our own." He had noticed how nervous Mrs. Reece grew, and that the little girls were watching her. He could not help thinking that it was foolish, even wicked, to waste strength in fear of something which ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... grandeur, and, in hopes of having a fine yule log, both brothers strained and strove with all their might till, between pulling and pushing, the great old root was safe on the hearth, and beginning to crackle and blaze ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... Bijah, screwing up his face. "Guess your watch is a-comin' out." He tucked it back caressingly, and started for the door—the back door. Involuntarily Wetherell put his hand to his pocket, felt something crackle under it, and drew the something out. To his amazement ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... as Christian came near; a string of patchwork coloured mandarin-ducks propelled themselves in jerks towards her, confident that any human being meant food. Two gigantic turquoise dragon-flies rose, with a dry crackle of talc-like wings, from a dead log under Joker's feet. One of them swung round the horse's head, and lit on his shaven neck. It brooded there, apparently unperceptive of the difference of this resting place from the one that it had abandoned; its ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... saw a figure as plainly as I see that fire, and I heard the steps as clearly as I hear the crackle of the fagots. Besides, we could ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river that the gay crackle of them might ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... Aunt Margaret's in the past, that spoke of their old happy life in France. He spread an embroidered cloth on the floor and pitched his treasure trove into it—working feverishly, choking and gasping, until the flames began to crackle through the wall, and the ceiling above him split across. Then he plunged through the window, and staggered across the lawn with his burden—falling beside it at last, spent and breathless, his throat parched with smoke, and his eyes almost sightless. ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... that crackle under your breath... You have the dust of the world to blow on... Do not tag me and dance away, looking back... I am too old to play ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... lofty woods are thrown On diff'rent sides, and both by winds are blown; The laurels crackle in the sputt'ring fire; The frighted sylvans from their shades retire: Or as two neighb'ring torrents fall from high; Rapid they run; the foamy waters fry; They roll to sea with unresisted force, And down the rocks precipitate ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... crackle of the musketry began in front, and still the Gatling Gun Detachment lay beside the road with the 71st, waiting, swearing, broiling, stewing in their own perspiration, mad with thirst, and crazed with the fever of the battle. ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... silence, blue sparks began sputtering from the masthead of the "Sister Sue." The girls could hear the sparks crackle and snap spitefully. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... his hands to measure off a distance. "About so long—ten inches, I guess; maybe six inches wide and four deep. Thin sheet steel, with a gray crackle finish. There was a lock on it, but it wasn't much of one; since it was kept in the safe, there was no ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... the warrior's head, And by the foot Patroclus drags the dead: While all around, confusion, rage, and fright, Mix the contending hosts in mortal fight. So pent by hills, the wild winds roar aloud In the deep bosom of some gloomy wood; Leaves, arms, and trees, aloft in air are blown, The broad oaks crackle, and the Sylvans groan; This way and that, the rattling thicket bends, And the whole forest in one crash descends. Not with less noise, with less tumultuous rage, In dreadful shock the mingled hosts engage. Darts shower'd on darts, ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... I heard the crackle of a dry twig, and looking down saw my first Fire-Man. He was creeping stealthily along on the ground and peering up into the tree. At first I thought he was a wild animal, because he wore around his waist and over his shoulders a ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I saw the nearby guard turn his head as ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... wait in my canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was in plain sight; but she gave ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... to pull down the slender saplings for these same buds. The moose returned from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the pole in its ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... to talk about the perfumed and restful bed of balsam boughs, and the crackle of the campfire at dusk, and the dip in the mirrored bosom of the pellucid lake at dawn—old Emerson Hough does all that to perfection; but these things assume a different aspect when it rains. There are three conditions in life ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... read when the blood is cool. It is the Action, Action and again Action of such hefty knock-abouts as WILL EVANS, ROBERT HALE and STANLEY LUPINO that makes the dry bones live and the old squibs crackle. And it is good fun to watch the audience at their share of authorship, setting the seal of their approval upon the happy wheeze, the well-contrived business, and blue-pencilling with their silence the wash-out or the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 152, January 3, 1917 • Various
... through the trees the whitewashed walls and red pottery roofs of Weerde, while a short distance to the right, in a heavily wooded park, was a large stone chateau. The only sign that the town was occupied was a pall of blue-grey vapour which hung over it and a continuous crackle of musketry coming from it, though occasionally, through my glasses, I could catch glimpses of the lean muzzles of machine-guns protruding from the upper windows of ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... Pudneys, who had taken him to Birmingham, had already got rid of him, and we had a horrible consciousness of his wandering roofless, in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide and I, ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... to stock the boats, and the captain on the bridge overlooking all, the whole deck brilliantly illuminated by every available electric lamp, while overhead the steam still roared out of the pipes, and the crackle of the wireless obtruded itself ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... chemicals are too strong, or the sheets remain too long in the bath, or are not thoroughly cleansed from the bleach before they are re-sized, the certain seeds of decay are planted in the paper, and although for a time the leaves may look bright to the eye, and even crackle under the hand like the soundest paper, yet in the course of a few years the enemy will appear, the fibre will decay, and the existence of the books will terminate in a state ...
— Enemies of Books • William Blades
... twist and twine itself about the giddy stair, and twirl the groaning weathercock, and make the very tower shake and shiver! High up in the steeple, where the belfry is, and iron rails are ragged with rust, and sheets of lead and copper, shrivelled by the changing weather, crackle and heave beneath the unaccustomed tread; and birds stuff shabby nests into corners of old oaken joists and beams; and dust grows old and grey; and speckled spiders, indolent and fat with long security, swing idly to and fro in the vibration of the bells, ...
— The Chimes • Charles Dickens
... spring-lamb in green-pea time, when the scent is in the julep and the bloom is on the mint; or possibly, now and then, the removal from the pasture to the pantry of a bit of lowing roast-beef, when I feel an inner craving for the crackle and the steak. ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... how are you getting on?" said the manager to the young actress, Constance, as he helped himself to the crackle. "Have you ...
— The Strollers • Frederic S. Isham
... swift the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we had our little ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... coming out, Aunt Olivia with her. Rebecca Mary could hear the crackle of their starched skirts; Aunt Olivia's crackled loudest. Rebecca Mary had always had a queer feeling that Aunt Olivia herself was starched. There had never been a time when she could not remember her ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... for two," he said. "He's a big man," looking at the soldier. There was now somewhere, apparently not very far away, hot rifle fire. The crackle sparkled in the air, as though one were living in a world in which all the electricity was loose. The other firing seemed to have drawn away, and the "Boom—Boom—boom" in front of us was echo ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... put before the fire in pairs, instead of by threes as in Ireland, and named for a lover and his lass. If they burn to ashes together, long happy married life is destined for the lovers. If they crackle or start away from each other, dissension ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... course, that, in the end of ends, nothing but the right conquers; the prevalent thorns of wrong, at last, crackle away in indiscriminate flame: and of the good seed sown, one grain in a thousand some day comes up—and somebody lives by it; but most of our great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson themselves, are a little too encouraging ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... a galloping curve and with one catlike leap, incredibly light for a man of his chunky build, was down from the seat and crashing through the bushes on the trail of that fugitive whose noisy flight had already become a faint crackle in the distance. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... moments, which I occupied in making a list of the gear I wished to take with me. Then there was a hiss and a crackle, and in the receiver of the desk a book appeared. I unzipped the case, took it out, and opened it to the pages marked on the attached ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... the diminutive hall and went into the sitting-room, where the cheerful crackle of a small wood fire gave an air of comfort ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... was dawning! We children poked one another, and fairly giggled with unreproved delight as we listened to the crackle of the slowly unfolding document. That great sheet of paper impressed us as something supernatural, by reason of its mighty size and by the broad seal of the State affixed thereto; and when the minister read therefrom, "By his Excellency, the Governor ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... jacket, pulled loose his black tie, and was unfastening his studs, which were headed each with a pearl. She listened, watching, hoping no one would hear the starched linen crackle. It seemed ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... is," rejoined Bessie coolly. "And if you will not bedizen me with artificial flowers, and will exonerate me from wearing dresses that crackle, I shall be happy. Did you not promise to give me simplicity and no imitations, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... promised. For days they had had no fighting worthy the name. Amigos everywhere, villages peopled only by women and children, treacherous peacefulness on every side; this had been their encounter: an occasional rifle shot from the rice fields, a crackle of guns far ahead, a prisoner or two who had not been quick enough in transforming himself from combatant to friend, that was all. Now, there seemed to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... distinctness, and there with a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... prey he caused fires to be lighted here and there where the gaps were widest, so that we forged onwards not only to the accompaniment of the shrill cries of the mahouts and the noise of plunging and overwhelming elephants, but to the fierce roar and crackle of burning stalks. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... elms—those lovely old elms which grow to such majestic beauty in France; and Jack was environed by the mysteries of nature,—nature in the springtime of the year, when one can almost hear the grass grow, the buds expand, and the earth crackle as the tender herbage shoots forth. All these faint, vague noises bewildered little Jack, who began to sing a nursery rhyme with which his mother formerly ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... had worked a while in Chicago, and had come to New York on a mission similar to my own—to look for a job. We went together to her room, which was as small and shabby as my own, and a few minutes later we were sitting round the little Jenny Lind stove, listening to the pleasant crackle of the freshly kindled fire. Both were silent for a few minutes. Then my ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... started, when the sun sank, for the shadows of the valley at the mouth of Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old mother knocked the ashes from her clay pipe and quietly went into the kitchen, and Jack, for all his good manners, could not restrain a whine of eagerness when he heard the crackle of bacon in a frying-pan and the delicious smell of it struck his quivering nostrils. After dark, old Joel, the father of the house, came in—a giant in size and a mighty hunter—and he slapped his big thighs and roared until the rafters ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... a deer that hears the crackle of a twig behind it. Here in the deep brazen voice of the marriage bells ringing out in the belfry above him he thought he heard the answer his incantation had forced from the white man's Okee. But the voice was so terrible, so loud, that, forgetting ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... himself to the cellar in search of a curious bon-bouche; and of nearly every bin in it he had a little anecdote or a pedigree to relate. And his laugh was frequent and hearty, and somehow the room and all in it felt the influence of his presence like the glow, and cheer, and crackle of a bright ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... sounded the drumming thud of the hoofs. I could feel the sodden marsh jarring now—hear the brush crackle and snap. ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.—The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... came from the distance, on the other side of the house. For some seconds, there was an uninterrupted crackle of musketry; then it came at rarer intervals; and, presently, there was no ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... necessity of supplying the barbecue every now and then with fresh embers, a large fire had been kept up during the day. It still continued to blaze and crackle in a bright red pile. The meat remained resting upon the saplings, where it had been ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... in the air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate and loud that he shook his head. "I give it up," he said. "I've ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... wagon and started homeward, but it was so dark that we had to plod along slowly. Old Sol was unusually torpid, as if the ominous obscurity had dazed him, too. After a time he stopped short and snorted; we heard the brush crackle and caught a glimpse of a large animal crossing the ...
— A Busy Year at the Old Squire's • Charles Asbury Stephens
... sea, and immediately a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing as of a thousand serpents. We felt the strong suction under our keel, and staggered under the jerk of the ship's cable as she swung toward the beach. The paint was beginning to crackle along the rail. We could see nothing for the scalding white veil that enveloped us; we could hear nothing for the roar of steam, the bombardment of explosions, and the crash of thunder; but our nostrils were assaulted by a most ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... the kitchen stove. There was the clink of iron lids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire. Presently she came in ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... see from my high perch, people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors, ready to plunge in again. As the first shell again flew they dived, and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved: we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... sample of Mulligan Jacobs. The venom of hatred I had already seen in his face was as nothing compared with what now was manifested. I had a feeling that, like stroking a cat in cold weather, did I touch his face it would crackle electric sparks. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... and crackle of the fire and the crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks and stones. * * * It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for by this ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... up the stairs everything assumed gigantic and menacing shapes—the clock, the pot-pourri bowls, the window-curtains, and the brass rods on the stairs. In the room there was that grey half-light that seemed so terrible, and the spurt and crackle of the fire seemed to fill the place with sounds. He scarcely saw his grandfather. In the centre of the bed, something was lying; the eyes gleamed for a moment in the light of the fire, the lips seemed to ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... cast the evil eye, may her eyes crack and fall out.' And at the same time they throw the mustard, chillies and salt on the fire so that the eyes of her who cast the evil eye may crack and fall out as these things crackle in ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... and with a bold, swift step I walked past the fearful spot. No sooner had I passed than there came another crackle; I turned and beheld a luminous eye between the branches. Whether I turned pale with fright or not, I cannot tell; but a hand came forth, a foot, then, with considerable difficulty, an entire body; and on the ...
— The Wings of Icarus - Being the Life of one Emilia Fletcher • Laurence Alma Tadema
... Then we knew it was British infantry retiring—a terrible sight, no matter how small the loss or how wise the order given. Chiefly they were the 60th (K.R.R.) and the Leicesters. I believe the Dublins were there too. Behind them the enemy kept up the incessant crackle of ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... tapped and smoothed his moustache. He had a red moustache; it grew very thickly, but was cropped short and square, and its fiber was so strong that it stood out above his lip like wire. One expected it to crackle when he touched it, ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... a slope nearly a mile away. The ground was hard, and the grass seemed to crackle under the galloping hoofs. The horse she rode carried her with superb ease. He was the finest animal she had ever ridden, and from the first she believed the ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... funereal business of dinner, when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the evening through; and such papers!—Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's Vade-Mecum, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used never to feel ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... the hollow roll of drums. Victor was going there tomorrow. Here one could take a train for Verdun, or thereabouts, as at home one took a train for Omaha. He felt more "over" than he had done before, and a little crackle of excitement went all through him. He tried ...
— One of Ours • Willa Cather
... gave him a convulsive little squeeze—and felt the crackle of paper under his shirt. "Something hidden there! What is it, Sonling?" she asked with laughing eyes: and suddenly shyness overwhelmed him. For the moment he had forgotten his treasure; and now he was wondering if he ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... down at the table and put on his glasses. Agatha turned her face towards the wall; for her also everything was over. For a time no sound was audible save an occasional crackle of the note-paper in Lord Thrapston's shaking fingers. Then, to Agatha's indescribable indignation, there came another sort of crackle—a dry, grating, derisive chuckle—from that ...
— Comedies of Courtship • Anthony Hope
... the cabman and went up his stairs, he could not shake off his dreaminess; he saw the flames catching the village, and the forest beginning to crackle and smoke. A huge, wild bear frantic with terror rushed through the village. . . . And the girl tied to the ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... reddened sky supplied the usual landmark. Its crest was black with shovelers, and up and down in lurid light climbed the scraper-teams; climbed and dumped, and dropped over the bank to climb again, like figures in a stage procession. There was a bedlam roar and crackle of pitchy fires, rattle of harness, clank of scraper-pans, shouts of men to the cattle, oaths and words of command; and this would go forward unceasingly till the banks held water. And what ...
— In Exile and Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... name as Hank Brown had repeated it to him. He stopped on a ledge and stared wildly, in a sudden panic, lest he should somehow miss her. He called again, even while reason told him that his voice could not carry any distance, with all that crackle and roar. He forced himself to stand there for a minute to get his breath and to see just how far the fire had already swept, and ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... Bulgarian evangelist, who had happened to mistake the up-lever for the east-lever in the cockpit of his flier and who was the sole witness of the event, afterward described it as "the foaming of a sea of diamonds, the crackle of God's knuckles." ...
— Bread Overhead • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... Brock lived with these merchant princes on terms of close intimacy. He was sensible enough, as a man of the world, to enjoy the creature comforts of life. The blazing log-fire, with its glow and crackle, in contrast to the blizzard that raged outside; the dim-lighted splendour of spacious dining-hall, with hewn rafters and savage trophies of the explorers; the polished oak floor and carved ceiling, hung with rare fur and gaudy feathers, ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... a little perfumed paper, just peeping out of the side-pocket, may have attracted her by its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark room through a crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in her arms and feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to crackle: or else she may have been informed of the state of things by a foreign odor that she has long noticed upon him, and may have ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... classic form might avert from them all desecration. I ought by rights to have eaten their ashes, or drunk a decoction of them, or at least treasured them in a golden urn, but contented myself with watching them shrivel and crackle with much sentimental satisfaction. I remember a most beautiful myrtle tree, which, by favor of a peculiarly sunny and sheltered exposure, had reached a very unusual size in the open air in Edinburgh, and in the flowering season might have borne comparison with the finest shrubs of the warm terraces ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble
... now," entreated Mr. Tredgold. "As a matter of fact, I'm dying with curiosity myself. Bring it out and make it crackle, captain; it's a bank-note for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... arcades the clearing which he must cross to reach the spot where he was expected. The angry barks of the wolves had increased during the last quarter of an hour, and the sound of their paws making the snow crackle inspired the old man with an indescribable terror. The number of animals seemed momentarily to be augmented; it resembled an ant-heap seen through the magnifying-glass ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... off the edition. This was better fun than typesetting. Before you was a long roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After that you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of type on the ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... stepped forward and touched her flaming brand to the wood that had been made ready by the other Fire Makers, and soon the flames began to blaze and crackle, filling the air with a spicy fragrance, and sending a vivid glow across the circle of intent young faces. Laura caught her breath as she looked ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... sends away her little daughter so that she must go alone. She rides with her mother to the railroad and sees her little one walking directly upon the tracks, so that she cannot avoid being run over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the car window to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. She then reproaches her mother for allowing ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... boxes came, and we smuggled them into my room. The unwrapping of the tissue paper folds was a ceremony. We reveled in the very crackle of it. I had scuttled home from the office as early as decency would permit, in order to have plenty of time for the dressing. It must be quite finished before Herr Nirlanger should arrive. Frau Nirlanger had purchased three tickets ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... the sofa watching Smith, who stood before me. He had not changed countenance and seemed neither troubled nor surprised; but two drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, and I heard an ivory counter crackle between his fingers, the pieces falling to the floor. He held out ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... intense. The track stony and uneven. It was hopelessly congested with ambulances, stragglers, and wounded men. I soon had to leave my horse, and then toiled upwards, finding everywhere streams of men winding about the almost precipitous sides of the mountain, and an intermittent crackle of musketry at the top. Only one solid battalion remained—the Dorsets. All the others were intermingled. Officers had collected little parties, companies and half-companies; here and there larger bodies had formed, but there was no possibility, in the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... the populace had sought their homes, and a profound quiet wrapped the streets, save where, from the fires committed in the late tumult, was yet heard the crash of roofs or the crackle of the light and fragrant timber employed in those pavilions of the summer. The manner in which the mansions of Granada were built, each separated from the other by extensive gardens, fortunately prevented ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... room and on his own bed, whither he had been brought by an ambulance party of his men; and that Mama Faquita, poor Senorita Isolda's nurse, had taken him in charge, cleaned and dressed his wound, and was looking after him generally. An intermittent crackle of rifle fire told him that the attack was still being pressed, but Faquita informed him that there had been very few serious casualties thus far, and that all was going well. The old woman would fain have kept him confined to his room; but Jack knew that with the darkness ...
— The Cruise of the Thetis - A Tale of the Cuban Insurrection • Harry Collingwood
... the way across the hall that separated her office from her partner's. Halfway across, she stopped and surveyed the big, bright, busy main office, with its clacking typewriters and rustle and crackle of papers and its ...
— Emma McChesney & Co. • Edna Ferber
... bush, and as we did so the Boers came through the Nek. They must have known exactly where our usual camp was, and crept up overnight to cut us off. It wasn't by much that they missed. Three or four loiterers, as it was, had a warm minute or two. The first single shots grew to a sudden fierce crackle, like the crackle of a dry thorn branch on the fire, as they came through the bush. But they came on nevertheless, one horse hit only, and joined us, and we formed up and started at a steady gallop for the hills beyond the plain, six miles off; where there was a quite ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... at once and the bonfire began to smoke and roar and crackle just as the great army of wooden Gargoyles arrived. The creatures drew back at once, being filled with fear and horror; for such as dreadful thing as a fire they had never before known in all the ...
— Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz • L. Frank Baum.
... enthralling, with its two stoves, each as big as the dining room table at home, its shelves and barrels of supplies, its rows of pies and loaves of bread, and all the crackle and bustle and aroma of its preparations. Time passed on wings. At length Corrigan glanced up at the square wooden clock and uttered some command to his two subordinates. The latter immediately began to dish into large receptacles of tin the hot ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... embers of his camp fire, he spread his oilskin and drew a blanket over him, the night sounds of the forest, a-crackle with mystery, became the woodland spirits of King Arthur's men, blowing their ghostly horns by the light of the moon. Likely the wee folk would come and dance beside the embers ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... and the main body began to descend gradually, when the dominie slipped and his piece went off, the trigger having caught in his red window cord, startling the echoes. Then came the diffusive boom and crackle of the blunderbuss, and the doctor, inwardly anathematizing Wilkinson, hurried his men on. They heard axes at work, as if trees were being felled; it was the Captain and the Richards at the barrier. No enemy appeared on the rocks, but ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... beauties of the plain had passed away or grown familiar. The plover and blackbird fell silent. The prairie-chicken's piping cry ceased as the flocks grew toward maturity, and the lark and cricket alone possessed the russet plain, which seemed to snap and crackle in the midnight frost, and to wither away ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... wreath of smoke curled upwards from a small fire in front of the hut; and as Tom drew nearer two children began to throw twigs and branches on the fire, making it crackle and blaze while they danced wildly round the flames, giving little squeals of delight and hitting at each other with the sticks ...
— The Gap in the Fence • Frederica J. Turle
... face of the fire smiled irritatingly as it illumined the dark figures about it; and the voices blended mournfully with the soft rustle and crackle ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky |
