"Deafened" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... breathless, deafened and wounded by the shook of the waves, emerged from the little lake and stretched themselves on the sand, where they rested ...
— A Romance of the West Indies • Eugene Sue
... probably she never heard it, because the accustomed tones were as familiar as the striking of the hour—the striking of an hour that bore no special significance for her, and therefore set no chord vibrating in her soul. The thoughts of her mind deafened her heart to it as completely as the thunder of a waggon had at the same time deafened the waggoner's ears while the bells uttered their message above him. And so it was with the doctor, overworked and anxious, hurrying on his rounds; ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... and all the convenience and luxury of a club. Few people would mind being an hour or so longer going to Paris from London, if the railway travelling was neither rackety, cramped, nor tedious. One could be patient enough if one was neither being jarred, deafened, cut into slices by draughts, and continually more densely caked in a filthy dust of coal; if one could write smoothly and easily at a steady table, read papers, have one's hair cut, and dine in comfort[9]—none of which things are possible at present, and none of which require any new ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... flowing hautboy of Susan Bates, and to the deep diapason of Tom Bingham; but his daughter had now pulled out the coupler and was screaming shrilly above all the other voices of the organ. He felt almost deafened, stunned. ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... away, and her silk petticoat was as wet as if she had been taking a bath in it. In vain she ran hither and thither, trying to find a way through the trees, while the rain blinded her, and the thunder deafened her, till at last she was forced to sink down on the ground, feeling more wretched and frightened and cold than any queen ever felt before. Oh, if she were only safe back in her beautiful palace! If only she had the tent the king wanted to send with her! But there all night she had to stay, ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... afterward I was seized with a fit of giddiness, and felt more completely intoxicated than ever. The room whirled round and round furiously; the old soldier seemed to be regularly bobbing up and down before me like the piston of a steam-engine. I was half deafened by a violent singing in my ears; a feeling of utter bewilderment, helplessness, idiocy, overcame me. I rose from my chair, holding on by the table to keep my balance; and stammered out that I felt dreadfully unwell—so unwell that I did not know how ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery - Riddle Stories • Various
... we had been fighting out in that field, events were taking place near us, of which we, absorbed in the work before us and deafened by the roar of our guns, had taken little notice at the time. As had been described, there was a body of woods some distance off to our right, and another, to our left. When we went into position we had not seen ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... laughed together, he all the while holding her close crushed against him, and she deafened almost by the warm beating of a man's ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... of it in an instant, and for a while eddied and swirled this way and that, thrust onward by the worshippers who had issued from the church and backwards by those who had been first in the square, and had no mind to be hustled out of hearing. A stranger, confused by the sea of excited faces, and deafened by the clamour of "Vive le Roi!" "Vive Anjou!" mingled with cries against the Huguenots, might have fancied that the whole city was arrayed before him. But he would have been wide of the mark. The scum, indeed—and a dangerous scum—frothed and foamed and spat under ...
— Count Hannibal - A Romance of the Court of France • Stanley J. Weyman
... it seemed the three stiff, crouching men leaped into instant and united action. She saw streaks of fire—streaks of smoke. Then a crashing volley deafened her. It ceased as quickly. Smoke veiled the scene. Slowly it drifted away to disclose three fallen men, one of whom, Monty, leaned on his left hand, a smoking gun in his right. He watched for a movement from the other two. ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... do. dandrin', sauntering. dang, broke, driven. darkenin', darkness. daur, dare. Daylicht has mony een, daylight reveals many things, explains mysteries. deaved, deafened. dee, die. deevil, deil, the Devil. deid, dead. deleerit, delirious. denners, dinners. devauled, ceased. dichtit, wiped. dingin', dingin' on, falling. dinna, do not. dirk, dagger. distrackit, distracted. dizzen, dozen. doobled, doubled. ...
— The Auld Doctor and other Poems and Songs in Scots • David Rorie
... deafened, Louis recollected that they must show Mary at the House Beautiful; and they took leave. The Earl begged James to come back to dinner with them, and Louis asked if Clara could not find room in the carriage ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. II) • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the crest and, with a lurch, shot from under the boy as he sprang far out into space. It seemed an eternity to Piang before he plunged into the waters below; then he sank down, down. The roaring and thundering deafened him, and he wondered if he should ever stop tumbling over in the water. It tossed him, tore from his hands any support he was able to grasp, and finally, after almost depriving him of breath, left him ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... paralyzed her thought and bound her always to the same name, the same memory." As she listened to her own depths, "she caught a momentary something like a weak, quickly beating echo of her own slow heart, a busily living little heart, that ticked louder and louder until at last it deafened hers. A trembling joy seized her at that moment through all her senses as she knew that she bore a life within her life, that she enclosed in her body the germ of a new life that was not growing from her alone and of ...
— Sleep Walking and Moon Walking - A Medico-Literary Study • Isidor Isaak Sadger
... on and up and up sailed Tom and Mr. Damon, and as they left behind them the shops and the Swift homestead, the two passengers were aware of their almost silent flight. The big aeroplane, the exhaust of which, ordinarily, would have nearly deafened them, was now ...
— Tom Swift and his Air Scout - or, Uncle Sam's Mastery of the Sky • Victor Appleton
... outline gradually forces upon us a sense of how the harmony has been built up, and we become familiar with something of nature's mannerism. This is the true pleasure of your "rural voluptuary,"—not to remain awe-stricken before a Mount Chimborazo; not to sit deafened over the big drum in the orchestra, but day by day to teach himself some new beauty—to experience some new vague and tranquil sensation that has before evaded him. It is not the people who "have pined and hungered after nature many a year, in the great ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. XXII (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... before calling upon the chief of police. He had already obtained an accurate description of the man he was in search of, and had no doubt of recognizing him, should he be fortunate enough to meet him. Passing quietly along, he came to the large switch-yards, and here he was almost deafened by the rumble and noise of the trains, and the screeching and puffing of the engines. Here Manning paused awhile in the hope of seeing his man among the number of brakemen engaged about the yard; but finding no one that answered his description, he approached ...
— The Burglar's Fate And The Detectives • Allan Pinkerton
... shut her eyes in momentary fear. The boisterous tempest of confused sounds deafened her. The earth rocked under her feet; terror impeded her breathing. The startling whistles of the policemen pierced the air. The rude, commanding voice of the captain was heard; the women cried hysterically. The wooden fences ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... that. But whatever you turn out to be, it'll be no harm to have had the extra schooling you're getting, so you'll stay on a monitor for a while longer. And now quit talking, do, or you'll have me deafened with your clatter!" ...
— The Foolish Lovers • St. John G. Ervine
... German tailor below, who once made him a pair of pantaloons,—so they were connected sartorically and pecuniarily, and, when they met, recognized one another: and there was the concierge below, who knew when he came in and went out,—that was all. All day long the deafened roar of carts and carriages, and the muffled cry of the marchands des legumes, were faintly heard from below. And in an adjoining room a female voice (my friend could never tell whether child's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... was what no Southern man of means is not—a politician. His country, or rather his section and State, made demands upon his time and attention so exacting that to those of his family he was compelled to turn an ear partly deafened by the thunder of the political captains and the shouting, his ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... crew and went searching for his "strait"; by which steadfastness of purpose he just missed discovering the Pacific Ocean. It has been said that Fate was always a little niggardly with Columbus, and never was it truer than at this moment when she at last deafened his ear to the tale of ...
— Christopher Columbus • Mildred Stapley
... herself lifted into the many-oared boat by the wild-looking Arabs, of whom she had caught a glimpse from above. But she could not close her ears; and as they approached the shore, strange sounds almost deafened her. She closed her eyes again, as she was lifted from the boat and heard the wild yells and shrieks around her. There was a clashing of brass, a jingling of bells, and the screams grew more and more terrific. If she did open her eyes, she saw wild figures ...
— The Last of the Peterkins - With Others of Their Kin • Lucretia P. Hale
... can her quick ear be deafened to the little wail that echoes pitiful within the chambers of her heart! When we remember the great passion of motherhood, the intensity of the drama, the prolongation into years of its deep interplots, we cannot marvel longer at the perennial, lasting character ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern
... emptied—were full before him, as well as the whole continuous stream of billowy froth, which, dashing from the one, was eddying and boiling in the other. They were so near this grand phenomenon that they were covered with its spray, and well-nigh deafened by the incessant roar. But crossing in the very front of the fall, and at scarce three yards distance from the cataract, an old oak-tree, flung across the chasm in a manner that seemed accidental, formed a bridge of fearfully ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the coming storm became more ominous, but the King of France, deafened by the clamour of cackling advice from his aristocracy, either could not or would not hear. Almost bankrupt because of the extravagance of the court, he needed money, still more money, and called an "assembly of notables" to assist in devising measures to relieve his embarrassed finances. ...
— The Spirit of Lafayette • James Mott Hallowell
... grey Allan's mates with awe Heard of the visioned sights he saw, The legend heard him say; But the Seer's gifted eye was dim, Deafened his ear, and stark his limb, Ere closed that bloody day. He sleeps far from his Highland heath, But often of the Dance of Death His comrades tell the tale On picquet-post, when ebbs the night, And waning watch-fires glow less bright, ...
— Some Poems by Sir Walter Scott • Sir Walter Scott
... environment. In effect, we would cast a cloak around the adversary and permit the adversary to see and know what we alone provided. This would leave an adversary blind, deaf, and dumb. With superior and rapid firepower, the blinded, deafened enemy would be destroyed and defeated as we saw fit. This would maximize Shock and Awe and ...
— Shock and Awe - Achieving Rapid Dominance • Harlan K. Ullman and James P. Wade
... now into deep moaning, then rising into a shrill anguish, that was answered by the sobbing of the waves upon the beach. All nature seemed stirred to the heart at the hopeless misery of this her cherished child. But Wanda's eyes were blank, and her ears deafened to the sights and sounds around her. With the desperation of despair she rowed fast and strenuously out into the heaving lake, while hours passed, and the black night, like a pall, enveloped all things earthly. At last, with her strength utterly gone, she dropped the oars and drifted wherever ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... be, oftener than they are deserved: led-captain is a term of frequent reproach, but it must always be considered that that sort of talent will be chiefly noticed and rewarded which is in demand in certain circles; fashionable people desire neither to be deafened with wit, nor bewildered with philosophy, nor oppressed with learning; their business, to which they have been brought up, is to glide smoothly through life, and their patronage is chiefly extended to those who offer to relieve them of its petty cares and small annoyances, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... his profession, he first commenced physician at Northampton, where Dr. Stonehouse then practised with such reputation and success, that a stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him. Akenside tried the contest awhile; and, having deafened the place with clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a ...
— The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. in Nine Volumes - Volume the Eighth: The Lives of the Poets, Volume II • Samuel Johnson
... neither attended to by the old dame who presided in the kitchen, of whom Gil Blas's Leonarda was a faint type, nor by the maid who screamed rejoinders at the top of the stairs, to the ravings of her mistress at the bottom, in a tone that deafened us. The arrival of the Draguignan diligence, which we had passed on the road, heavily laden with money and passengers, and travelling at a foot pace, escorted like a condemned cart by two gens d'armes, accounted for this mighty sensation. We were glad enough to escape from ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... the launch; he scrambled over the low rail and ran forward, deafened by the din. A woman in oilskins hung to the companion-rail; he saw her white face as he passed. Haggard, staggering, he entered the wheel-house, where the young man in dripping flannels seized his arm, calling him by ...
— A Young Man in a Hurry - and Other Short Stories • Robert W. Chambers
... avoid the amenities of Bola Bola's we rode thirty-four miles, and towards evening descended the tremendous steep, which leads to the surf-deafened village of Laupahoehoe. Halemanu had given me a note of introduction to a widow named Honolulu, which Deborah said began thus, "As I know that you have the only clean house in L," and on presenting it we were made very welcome. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... swayed violently, then dipped sharply sideways. With a cry Jack sprang off backwards, and threw himself flat on his face on the sleepers. Trembling, deafened by the roar of the cataract just beneath him, he lay afraid to move, believing the swaying structure would give way every instant. But finally the rails steadied, and partly righted; and regaining his courage, ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... made an effort to speak; but no sound came. It seemed as if the raging strife of thoughts deafened and ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... fixed hour, and its passengers run to it; a vetturino leaves at all hours, and runs after its passengers. Hardly have you set your foot out of the boat that brings you from the steam-vessel to the shore, than you are assailed, stifled, dragged, deafened by twenty drivers, who look on you as their merchandise, and treat you accordingly, and would end by carrying you off bodily, if they could agree among them who should have the booty. Families have been separated at the port of Livorno, to find each other how ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Vol. 53, No. 331, May, 1843 • Various
... the aunts Rennsdale had taken what charge she could of the deafened and distracted maids and waiters who were working to stem the tide, while the other of the aunts Rennsdale stood with her niece and Miss Lowe at the foot of the stairs, trying to say good-night reassuringly to those of the terrified little girls who were able to tear themselves away. This latter ...
— Penrod and Sam • Booth Tarkington
... a cloth-weaver came to live in a house next to Sandro's, and erected no less than eight looms, which, when at work, not only deafened poor Sandro with the noise of the treadles and the movement of the frames, but shook his whole house, the walls of which were no stronger than they should be, so that what with the one thing and the other he could not work or even stay at home. Time after ...
— Lives of the Most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 3 (of 10), Filarete and Simone to Mantegna • Giorgio Vasari
... seen the Cossacks fall, and all the old hatred that had sent their fathers to the Rhine in '92, again sprang to life in their veins. They rushed from out their shelter, regardless of danger. They heard Simon's voice, but did not understand his order, their rage deafened them. They had hitherto been amenable to discipline, but they were intoxicated by victory. It seemed to them that they could crush the invasion then and there. In vain did Simon shout "Halt!" They went ...
— The Son of Monte Cristo • Jules Lermina
... jarring, even when you chance to cut a caper with the baby, defer building till you are a little richer. Floors need the well-nailed linings, too, especially those of the upper stories, almost as much as the outer walls, and should be deafened with mortar if you can stand the cost; if not, with felt. The upper floors we will talk over by and by. Some people have a fancy for filling in between studs with soft brick, but I don't believe in it. It is seldom well done, it injures the frame, and costs more than back plastering, ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... desperately back, skirting the edge of the logs which now the very seconds alone seemed to hold back. They were drenched and blinded with spray, deafened with the crash of timbers settling to the leap. The men on shore could no longer see them for the smother. The great crush of logs had actually begun its first majestic sliding motion when at last ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... spacious open ground that stretches along the Clyde. One part of it was occupied with the booths and temporary theatres and wagons of showmen, around and among which a vast throng was assembled, who seemed to delight in being deafened with the cries of the showmen and the music of their instruments. In one place a band was playing, in another a gong was thundering, and from one of the balconies a fellow in regal robes and a pasteboard crown, surrounded by several persons of both sexes ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... lightning, before us, behind us, on every side, bathing us in flaming minutes at a time. And all the while we were deafened by the unceasing uproar of thunder. It was a weird sight—far aloft the black skeleton of spars and masts from which the sails had been removed; lower down, the sailors clinging like monstrous bugs as they passed the gaskets and furled; beneath them the few set sails, filled backward ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... either deafened him, or paralysed the nerves of his obedience, for the first call of his master was insufficient to stop him. At the second, however, he halted, turned mechanically, went to him trembling, and stood before him speechless. But when the marquis, to satisfy himself that he was really as dry ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... whole civilization, seems to me to re-echo this planlessness, this indeterminate confusion of purpose. Plain issues are harder and harder to find, it is as if they had disappeared. Simple living is the countryman come to town. We are deafened and jostled and perplexed. There are so many things afoot ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... the moon. I didn't make any bones about it this time. I put the bad end of that gun against the scar on her head and squeezed the trigger. It snicked on an empty shell. I tell you a fact; I was almost deafened by the report that ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... the green boughs, and the thunder rolled along the sky. The leaves all tossed about in a strong wind and their soft rustles grew into a roar, and the branches and the whole tree caught it up and called out so loud, as they writhed and twisted about that Flax was almost deafened, the words ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... whistled and roared till the steam gave out, and the answer nearly deafened us. There was a sound of frantic threshing in the water, apparently about fifty yards away, and something shot past in the whiteness that looked as though it ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... of the dripping little shrubbery frightened me. It was so still that I was afraid to move; so still, that I could count each drop of moisture falling from the oozing wall; so still, that when I held my breath to listen, I was deafened by my own heart-beats. I made a step forward in the direction where the arbour ought to be, and the rustling and jingling of my clothes terrified me into immobility. The house was only two hundred yards off; and if any one had been about, the noise I had already made opening ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... fellow's head with the butt of his clubbed gun. Just as he did so Prescott fired squarely over Hal's left shoulder, knocking over a Moro bent on stabbing the sergeant from behind. The noise of that explosion, so close to his ear, deafened the young sergeant temporarily. ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... bosom! ages let me grasp thee! All that the hardest-tempered weathered flesh, With fiercest human spirit inspired, can dare, Or do, I dare; but, oh you powers, this was, By infinite degrees, too much for man. Methinks my deafened ears Are burst; my eyes, as if they had been knocked By some tempestuous hand, shoot flashing fire;— ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... ocean, spread out into the fish-ponds and duck swamps of Kailua. It would seem as if this must have been the very picture the idyllic poet had in mind. This smiling, yet rock-walled, amphitheater was the vast dance-hall of Lono—Halau loa o Lono (verse 4)—whose walls were deafened, stunned (pa-a-a, verse 6), by the tumult and uproar of the multitude that always followed in the wake of a king, a multitude whose night-long revels banished sleep: Moe pono ole ko'u po (verse 17). The poet seems to be ...
— Unwritten Literature of Hawaii - The Sacred Songs of the Hula • Nathaniel Bright Emerson
... went for it by brigades and divisions, with a rush, and there ensued a fight which filled the prospect with a tumultuous chaos of plunging heads and bodies and flashing tails, and the storm of howlings and barkings deafened all speech for the time; but that was no matter, for the dog-fight was always a bigger interest anyway; the men rose, sometimes, to observe it the better and bet on it, and the ladies and the musicians ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... deafened,' said Rose, laughing, as she escaped from him a moment, to arrange for a song from a tall formidable maiden, built after the fashion of Mr. Gilbert's contralto heroines, with a voice which bore out the ample ...
— Robert Elsmere • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Sam," said Joe, who, to prove his powers straightway gave a shrill kildee whistle, which nearly deafened them all. ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... like two lovers out of a novel. Then reflection would come to my rescue. My past would come tumbling into my mind like an old bell fallen from its tower. I had forgotten that past, and its recurrence deafened me with its overwhelming jangle vibrating with memories. 'Poor man!... Into what a world of compromises and entanglements I am going to involve him!... No! No!' And I fled from you with the cunning of a ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... but he had to fight his way to the Med Ship, nevertheless. He was surrounded by ecstatically admiring citizens of Dara. They shouted praise and rejoicing in his ears until he was half-deafened, and they almost tore his clothing from them in their desire to touch, to pat, to assure him of their gratitude and affection, minutes since they'd ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... churchyard quakes and forgotten graves open and from them rise forgotten ghosts. Spots appear on the sun and the sun grows dark, and what theory can fight with darkness? And in this city live also men deafened by false wisdom who hear no crash, and blinded by false wisdom, so that they say "our sun will shine more brightly than ever and soon the last spots will disappear." But sometime even these men will ...
— Concerning the Spiritual in Art • Wassily Kandinsky
... of the breakers over the reef finally deafened them. The rocking schooner, buffeted by waves that could not drive her completely over the reef, towered finally above the heads of the men in ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... mass of creatures, who crowded one another in the river for their share of the spoils, they threw bomb after bomb. The dynamite deafened them, and acrid fumes choked them, but they fired their rifles at the prodigious animals and there, in the big river cavern, was a seething mass of horrible life, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, June, 1930 • Various
... be boring his audience. One familiar with the trade of electioneering, as it has always been conducted by men, would strut and shout and brag, never for a moment worrying whether or not he came anywhere near the truth or feeling the slightest qualm, though he deafened his hearers with his trumpeting or bored them to complete extinction, and would refuse to be silenced even by "eggs of ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... at the same time a beautiful one, which I believe he intended for Campbell, but his avarice got the better, and he commuted his gift into the offer of a tune, and pitching it in a high key, he went through a Tibetan air that almost deafened us by its screech. He tried bravely to maintain his equanimity, but as we preserved a frigid civility and only spoke when addressed, the tears would start from his eyes in the pauses of conversation. In the evening he came again; he was excessively agitated and covered with perspiration, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... the heavens, and thunder under the earth deafened and terrified every soul. Fierce, wide, jagged ribbons of awful flame came out of the blackened heavens. Scores of thunderbolts, red and flaming, leaped out of the blackness of cloud above, and, hissing as they came, wrought awful death among the mobs upon which they descended. The smell of burning ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... and tasteless demonstration that was still continuing. Ultimately the creature lost all tone from his laughter. It went on, soundless but uncannily poignant. Such was the effect that the Wilbur twin wondered if his own ears had been suddenly deafened. This Whipple continued to shake silently. The other, who had not laughed, whose face seemed ill-modelled for laughing, nevertheless turned sparkling eyes from under shelving brows upon Juliana and said in words stressed with emotion: "My dear, ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... down, poured at last into the scuppers, and occasionally spouted from the vents. About the wreck, thus transformed into an overflowing granary, the sea-fowl swarmed in myriads and with surprising insolence. The sight of so much food confounded them; they deafened us with their shrill tongues, swooped in our midst, dashed in our faces, and snatched the grain from between our fingers. The men—their hands bleeding from these assaults—turned savagely on the offensive, drove their knives into the birds, drew them ...
— The Wrecker • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... hackneyed cant of men or the bloodthirstiness of women, utter no prophecy to us of the great To-Morrow of content and right that holds the world. Yet the To-Morrow is there; if God lives, it is there. The voice of the meek Nazarene, which we have deafened down as ill-timed, unfit to teach the watchword of the hour, renews the quiet promise of its coming in simple, humble things. Let us go down and look for it. There is no need that we should feebly vaunt and madden ourselves over ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, No. 48, October, 1861 • Various
... lair Tera could see a group of natives banging, screaming, yelling and beating pans, accompanied by a horrible drumming sound which nearly deafened her. The cubs, frightened and bewildered, crouched round their mother and ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... building two sounds deafened an unfamiliar ear: a steady roar, deep and persistent, and through it, like a staccato pulse, a louder, more painful, more penetrating din. The bass to this harsh treble arose from humming belts and running wheels; the crash that punctuated their deep-mouthed riot ...
— The Spinners • Eden Phillpotts
... ears the furious clatter of hoofs. It deafened him, the familiar, glorious din of it. The blood raged in his veins like fiery needle points. To see them—the cavalry, the cavalry! Then they were gone—a flashing streak of centaurs, a streamer of red in a blur of dust, maniac oaths, and pistol shots, and sweeping ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... going to kill us, why did they not cut our throats and have it done with? Still the people came running, till the whining of their voices almost deafened us; and still they hustled us along, until at last we came to a house larger than ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... batteries were posted on both sides of him, and they, too, had found the range. All along the front hundreds of guns were opening and John hastily thrust portions that he tore from his handkerchief into his ear, lest he be deafened forever. ...
— The Forest of Swords - A Story of Paris and the Marne • Joseph A. Altsheler
... iron hand-rail and looked down upon the tumultuous scene, his ears deafened by the roar, his eyes dazed by the conflicting lights and the million swift reflections from moving faces and arms and hats and handkerchiefs. The man is not born who can receive unmoved a frenzied public ovation. A lump rose ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... ineffective spreading shot. Resolved to sell their lives dearly, they retreated, keeping their backs to the wind, with the poisonous dragons in front. But the breeze was very slight, and they were being rapidly blinded and asphyxiated by the loathsome fumes, and deafened by the hideous roaring and snapping of the dragons' jaws. Realizing that they could not much longer reply to the diabolical host with lead, they believed their last hour had come, when the ground on which they were making their last stand shook, there was a rending of rocks and ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... showed me the orders for the next day, issued by the British General. He told me that at seven o'clock it would be "Hell let loose", all down the line. Next morning I woke up before seven, and blocked up my ears so that I should not be deafened by the noise of artillery. But for some reason or other the plans had been changed and I was quite disappointed that the Germans did not get the hammering it was intended to give them. We were on the left of the British line during the battle of Neuve Chapelle, ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... to his feet, reaching the controls of the screen and cutting the sound. He was just in time to save them from being, at least temporarily, deafened, for no sooner had he silenced the speaker than the lorry vanished in a flash ...
— A Slave is a Slave • Henry Beam Piper
... and every now and then a group of men scattered as shrapnel bullets came pattering down. We were in an inferno of noise. It seemed as though we stood in the midst of the guns within sight of each other's muzzles. I was deafened and a little dazed, but very clear in the head, so that my thoughts seemed extraordinarily vivid. I was thinking, among other things, of how soon I should be struck by one of those flying bullets, like the men who lay moaning inside the doorway of one of the cottages. On a calculation of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... the hysteric shrieks of several women, but the feelings of the audience generally had not been drawn onward in the current with her own. They remained stupefied, stranded as it were, in the midst of a torrent, which deafened them by its roaring, but might not move them by its violence. The clergyman, who could not hitherto have ejected the usurper of his pulpit otherwise than by bodily force, now addressed her in the tone of ...
— Bible Stories and Religious Classics • Philip P. Wells
... in darkness, in great pain, bound hand and foot, and deafened by many unfamiliar noises. There sounded in my ears a roaring of water as of a huge mill-dam, the thrashing of heavy sprays, the thundering of the sails, and the shrill cries of seamen. The whole world now heaved giddily up, ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... compare notes, and get a little knowledge sometimes, they are only barriers between us and what there is to know. Rodriguez and Morano were outside these barriers. They saw without the imperfections of eyesight; they heard on that journey what would have deafened ears; they went through our atmosphere unburned by speed, and were unchilled in the bleak of the outer spaces. Thus freed of the imperfections of the body they sped, no less upon a terrible journey, whose direction as yet ...
— Don Rodriguez - Chronicles of Shadow Valley • Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, Baron, Dunsany
... his signal, he was startled by the result. A hundred echoes were awakened within the cavern, and the uproar fairly deafened him. It seemed to him that ten thousand little imps were perched all around the cavern, with their fingers thrust in their mouths, waiting for him to start the tumult, when they joined in, with an effect ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... it were the echo, whether my ears had by this time been utterly deafened and confused I do not know, but now the shock and rumble of the cannon seemed to come directly from under my feet. I felt perhaps as though I were on one of those railways that I have seen in London at a ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... made, which exasperated the cats, and their complaints deafened the whole neighbourhood. Their advocate advised returning absolutely to the old rules and decrees. The law books were searched for, but could nowhere be found. And that was no wonder, for the books which had been hidden in a corner by one set of partisans ...
— The Original Fables of La Fontaine - Rendered into English Prose by Fredk. Colin Tilney • Jean de la Fontaine
... noon the hall was crammed full of men of the most diverse nations, all pushing about and immersed to the eyes in business, so that the ears were deafened by the confused din. But when the exchange hours were over, and the merchants had gone to dinner, and only a few odd individuals hurried through the hall on business (for it served as a means of communication between two streets), that ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... I stand, And gaze into the depths profound, In ecstacy at sights so grand, And deafened by the sound Of rushing waters, as they leap Like maddened steeds, ...
— Gleams of Sunshine - Optimistic Poems • Joseph Horatio Chant
... the aged Marquis in the farthest corner of the room, comforted to find that he whom they so trusted still expected victory; but nearly fainting with fear, and deafened with the sounds of the conflict. To de Lescure the sight was pleasure itself; as he could not be in the fight, the next thing was to see the combatants and cheer his friends. The foremost of the republican soldiers soon gave way beneath the weight of the attack; though ...
— La Vendee • Anthony Trollope
... and dashes and foams, lashed by scores of active hands and feet, until the boys are fairly deafened ...
— Harper's Young People, July 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... a safe place but are deafened for a time by the loud noise of falling trunks, broken boughs, the crackling of leaves and the snapping asunder of the thick masses of foliage that the creepers have woven amongst the branches. The turmoil is indescribable. Reptiles, birds, ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... door opened somewhere ahead; a white haze of light filtered through, and I floated slowly into a room, that seemed strangely familiar. All at once, there came a bewildering, screaming noise, that deafened me. I saw a blurred vista of visions, flaming before my sight. My senses were dazed, through the space of an eternal moment. Then, my power of seeing, came back to me. The dizzy, hazy feeling ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... church while the peal was ringing. First he was in the bell-chamber steadying himself by the beams of the cage, while he marked the wide-mouthed bells now open heavenwards, now turn back with a rush into the darkness below. Then he crept deafened with the clangour down the stairs into the belfry, and sat on the sill of a window watching the ringers rise and fall at their work. He felt the tower sway restlessly under the stress of the swinging ...
— The Nebuly Coat • John Meade Falkner
... enclosed within a prison-house can act as a free agent. Alas! to see HIM, who could so well describe what this malady was in others, a prey himself to its infirmities! I shall never forget the solemn tone of expression with which he summed up the incapacities of the paralytic—the deafened ear, the dimmed eye, the crippled limbs—in the noble words ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... place for your lives!" he commanded in a tone of thunder. I took Adele's arm, we all rushed for the door. We had barely reached it before the floor began to heave, the windows to fall in, and a report like thunder deafened us! We emerged into the street, wrapped in a thick cloud of curling smoke, with masonry and fragments of furniture falling all around us. But we emerged safely, though of the Cafe Suisse there was scarcely left ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... But Mr Vanburgh was always at home. According to report, his farthest expedition was into the garden, where surely he would be able to receive a visitor on a bright spring afternoon. Surprise held them dumb, until Mrs Maitland had reached speaking distance, when, with one accord, they deafened her with inquiries, to which she did her best to reply after ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... eyes that never saw the day Christ pours the bright celestial ray; And deafened ears, by him unbound, Catch all the ...
— Hymns for Christian Devotion - Especially Adapted to the Universalist Denomination • J.G. Adams
... those words, 'They were nothing, Sir, be they addressed to what they may,' convinces me that the old lion's jaws never gave forth a louder roar. Boswell does not record that there was any further conversation before the announcement of dinner. Perhaps the whole company had been temporarily deafened. But I am not bothering about them. My heart goes out to the ...
— And Even Now - Essays • Max Beerbohm
... us as we passed over the stupendous edifice; carriages filled the narrow lanes, and vessels in the water had been detained in order that their crews might gaze up at the gorgeous pageant passing far above their masts heads. Here again was a grand stand, and here again enthusiastic plaudits almost deafened us. Shortly, we passed the borough of Newton, crossing a fine bridge over the Warrington road, and reached Parkside, seventeen miles from Liverpool, in about four minutes under the hour. At this place the engines were ranged under different watering stations to receive fresh water, ...
— Railway Adventures and Anecdotes - extending over more than fifty years • Various
... surprised and baffled and agitated him. He understood now that sense of impending lightning; and, at the same time, he had a sense that a peremptory brass gong had been struck beside him, and that he was deafened by the reverberations. Mrs. Grove's still pallid face, her contained, almost precise, manner, took on a new meaning—he saw them, fantastically, as a volcanic crust that, under observation, had hardened against the fire within. Then he was at a loss to grasp why he, ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... forces more unconscious of their destiny—utterly unselfconscious as animals, babies, the flowers of the field. Still there to be driven, perhaps to be persuaded, to be whipped, to be cajoled, to be blinded, to be tricked and deceived, drugged and deafened—but not for long! The end of that old world had come—the new world was ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... hurry to kill the beautiful animal he seized his rifle and emptied the eight shots out of his magazine, firing the first three shots close to my head on the left side, the other five just as close on the other side. The muzzle of his rifle was so near my ear that the noise deafened me for several minutes and my hair was almost singed off. The ariranha, needless to say, escaped unhurt, and luckily so ...
— Across Unknown South America • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... men in the cavern were thrown to the ground. Shaken by the fall and deafened by the tumult, they hung onto irregularities of the rock on which they lay. Gradually the tumult and the shaking subsided. The cries from above became more apparent. Silence finally reigned in the cavern and the metallic ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... about, and the ancient hills to be shaken to their foundations: the furious storm sweeps along, smoking through the vale and over the resounding hills: the face of the earth is obscured by the deluge descending from the firmament, and I am deafened by the din of the thunder. The tempestuous scene damps my spirits, and my horse sinks under me at the tremendous peals, as I hasten ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... determination to bring to a head that trouble about the necklace and end it for ever. He was continuing his remarks when the wall suddenly fell down with an unimaginable crash. Eve said nothing, but the soundless crash deafened Mr. Prohack. Nevertheless the mere fact that Sissie's wedding lay behind and not before him, helped him somewhat to keep ...
— Mr. Prohack • E. Arnold Bennett
... firmly. It was then that Wilson stepped into the radius of shallow light. But before he had time to speak, he saw the eyes raised swiftly to his, saw a quick movement of the hand, and then, as the candle dropped and was smothered out in the carpet, he was blinded and deafened by the report of a pistol almost ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... said the prince, bitterly, "that I am free to wander through the stupid streets of Potsdam; appear at his table; that my clothes may be soiled by his unbearable four-legged friends, and my ears deafened by the dull, pedantic conversation of his ...
— Frederick The Great and His Family • L. Muhlbach
... supper, too," she said, in a clear, shrill, little voice, which penetrated easily through old Oliver's deafened hearing. ...
— Alone In London • Hesba Stretton
... the breastworks and mattresses. They were using their swords as though they were machetes, and the Irishmen were swinging their guns around their shoulders like sledge-hammers, and beating their foes over the head and breast. The guns at his own side sounded close at Langham's ear, and deafened him, and those of the enemy exploded so near to his face that he was kept continually winking and dodging, as though he were being taken by a flashlight photograph. When he fired he aimed where the mass was thickest, so that he might ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... I was standing, dazed and deafened on the edge of a triangle of streets, looking up at a great building that was like a rock on the edge of a noisy sea, and bore on its face the startling inscription, "The Earth is the Lord's and the ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... but when they reached the ridge of down that led to the Ring, they were glad they had come. They were half-drowned, and half-blinded, and half-deafened, but there is a reward to every effort. There was an enormous sky, and the sunlight spilled between the clouds to fall in pools upon the world. There was a chord made by many larks in the sky; the valleys held joy as a cup ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... all about, dense, multitudinous cold, Mixed with the wind's one devilish thrust and shriek Which whiffled out men's tears, deafened, took hold, Flattening the flying drift ...
— Halleck's New English Literature • Reuben P. Halleck
... his fevered face and his pitiful little moans and sighs; of the guileful flatteries of Ambition that had deafened her mother ears to the pleadings of her sick babe; of the brilliant theatre and the applause of royalty and of the last moments of her lonely, ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... nearly deafened the men, a solid sheet of blinding flame reached in a flaming cone into the air for nearly fifty feet. The screeching roar continued for a moment, then the heat was so intense that Arcot could stand no more, and pulled ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... distinguished opponent to his civil rights, but to have given him more than he had lost, is a deed which raises you above humanity, and makes you most like to God. Your wars will be spoken of to the end of time in all lands and tongues; but in tales of battles we are deafened by the shoutings and the blare of trumpets. Justice, mercy, moderation, wisdom, we admire even in fiction, or in persons whom we have never seen; how much more must we admire them in you, who are present here before ...
— Caesar: A Sketch • James Anthony Froude
... overhead, it was dusk in the ghyll; and moreover as Osberne drank (and he was in no hurry about it) with his face to the force and his back to the length of the ghyll, the tinkling and splashing of the force deafened his ears to any sound but a somewhat big one. So he drank and thought no evil; but of a sudden he felt a sharp pain in his left side, and ere he could say that he knew he had been smitten, another and another, and he rolled over on the greensward and lay still, ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... In some of the great cities of England more than one-third of all the deaths among children under ten years of age arose from small-pox. Two-thirds of all the applicants for relief at the Hospital for the Indigent Blind had lost their sight by small-pox. The number of hopeless deafened ears, crippled joints, and broken-down constitutions from the same cause cannot be accurately computed, but was certainly very large. Vaccination is all that now stands between us and all these horrors of ...
— The Physical Life of Woman: - Advice to the Maiden, Wife and Mother • Dr. George H Napheys
... the front of the snow castle. They saw her stoop forward and put on speed, and then—in a flash—the middle of the roof settled and crashed to the floor—and the sound of the wreck almost deafened the onlookers! ...
— The Corner House Girls at School • Grace Brooks Hill
... anxious to put his pen down and go to his tea: "Then she seemed swallowed up in a cloud of blackness and knew no more"—till it was convenient to the narrator to begin a fresh chapter. But with me it must be the relentless truth and nothing but the truth, in all its aspects. Vivie was deafened, nearly stunned by the frightful noise of the volley in a confined space. Next, she was being unceremoniously pushed out of the verandah, into the corridor, and so out into the snow-covered space in front of the brick building; whilst the officer was examining the ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... lines tagged to the end, with a new exordium and what not, hot from my anvil before I cleared the Channel? The Mediterranean and the Atlantic roll between me and criticism; and the thunders of the Hyperborean Review are deafened by the roar of ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. I. (of VI.) - With his Letters and Journals. • Thomas Moore
... in boats. The sky black, the sea on fire with crested billows, that broke over them every minute; their light was washed out; their provisions drenched and spoiled; bail as they would, the boat was always filling. Up to their knees in water; cold as ice, blinded with spray, deafened with roaring billows, they tossed and tumbled in a fiery foaming hell of waters, and still, though despairing, clung to their lives, and ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... out and stared at it in a state of mystification. Each of its ticks sounded like a small hammer striking sharply against a metal plate. I held it to my ear and was almost deafened. For a moment I wondered whether I were not in the throes of some acute nervous disorder, in which the senses became sharpened to an incredible degree. Such an exultation of perception could only be due to some powerful intoxicant at work on my body. Was I going mad? I laid the watch on the counterpane ...
— The Blue Germ • Martin Swayne
... removal of the skin; and then, after comfortably seating himself in his physiological laboratory by the side of his victim, scientifically picking, and piercing, and pricking the wound, without respite— constantly, without ceasing—until the blinded and deafened and tortured creature is driven into frenzy by torments which it felt continually, which it could not comprehend, and from which, by no exertion, it was able to defend itself! Think of the scientist asking ...
— An Ethical Problem - Or, Sidelights upon Scientific Experimentation on Man and Animals • Albert Leffingwell
... exactly what she was doing, with her ears deafened by the shouts of the crowd, among whom Lienhard now, with anxious suspense, watched her every movement, she again raised the rope and prepared to spring, she fancied that her narrow path rose higher and higher. One more step, and suddenly, with Loui's shriek of horror and ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... subtle points of divinity excited an intense interest throughout Europe, and nowhere more than in England. He was placed in the very thick of the conflict. He was in power at the time of the Synod of Dort, and must for months have been daily deafened with talk about election, reprobation, and final perseverance. Yet we do not remember a line in his works from which it can be inferred that he was either a Calvinist or an Arminian. While the world was resounding with the noise of a disputatious philosophy ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 2 • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were watching them. Jim had an instinct which assured him that the deer was fascinated by the light, and so he pushed toward him silently, then stopped, and held his boat perfectly still. This was the signal for Mr. Balfour, and in an instant the woods were startled by a discharge that deafened ...
— Sevenoaks • J. G. Holland
... out with a hesitating finger the first word of his message when he felt a bullet whiz by his ear and the report flashed so close to him that it deafened him and scorched ...
— The Boy Aviators in Africa • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... knowledge of the weight behind him, started up anew. When his load was fairly on the move, three or four cars would be cut off, and .007 would bound forward, only to be held hiccupping on the brake. Then he would wait a few minutes, watching the whirled lanterns, deafened with the clang of the bells, giddy with the vision of the sliding cars, his brake-pump panting forty to the minute, his front coupler lying sideways on his cow-catcher, like a tired dog's tongue in his mouth, and the whole of him covered ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... jump below and fetch up his oil-skins for him; and a minute or two later the sound of a heavy shower advancing over the water became audible, rapidly increasing in volume until it reached us, when in a moment we were almost deafened by the loud pelting of the rain upon the deck overhead as the overladen clouds discharged their burden with all the fierce vehemence of ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... nearly deafened me, and my nerves were so shattered that for a time I was helpless. I felt myself go up and up into the air, until soon I was far above the clouds. Then I recovered my wits, and when I began to come down again I tried to ...
— The Surprising Adventures of the Magical Monarch of Mo and His People • L. Frank Baum
... tarry here, but bade Scrooge hold his robe, and passing on above the moor, sped whither? Not to sea? To sea. To Scrooge's horror, looking back, he saw the last of the land, a frightful range of rocks, behind them; and his ears were deafened by the thundering of water, as it rolled, and roared, and raged among the dreadful caverns it had worn, and fiercely tried to ...
— Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, March 1844 - Volume 23, Number 3 • Various
... about a hundred yards from them, the foremost ones began firing. This feu-de-joie continued until we had reached them and had dashed through the lines of fire, for they continued loading and firing as rapidly as possible. Our ears were almost deafened with the continuous reports, and our nerves were somewhat tried, as the younger braves especially consider it great fun to fire off their heavy charges of powder as close to their visitors' heads as possible. But a well- singed ...
— By Canoe and Dog-Train • Egerton Ryerson Young
... carry out the analogy we will now suppose that that State was California, that the gold of that State attracted a large inrush of American citizens, who came to outnumber the original inhabitants, that these citizens were heavily taxed and badly used, and that they deafened Washington with their outcry about their injuries. That would be a fair parallel to the relations between the Transvaal, the Uitlanders, and the ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... happy youth; of the hideous, rending pang of the explosion; of the possibility that he might not be killed, that he might be cruelly mangled, crippled for life, condemned to life-long pains, blinded perhaps, and almost surely deafened. Ah, you spoke lightly of the dynamiter's peril; but even waiving death, have you realised what it is for a fine, brave young man of forty, to be smitten suddenly with deafness, cut off from all the music of life, and from the voice of friendship and love? How little ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 5 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... entered the little apartment he shared with Pauline. In the sitting room he paused a minute, poured out a glass of wine and drank it at a draught, to give himself courage to tell her his good news like a man. His hand turned the key of his bedroom; his heart beat so wildly that its throbbing deafened him; he could not hear his own voice as he cried: 'Pauline—darling! —we are rich! my luck has turned!' . . . But then he stopped, stricken by a blow worse than the stroke of death. Before him stood Dr S., and a woman whom he did not recognise, bending ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... depths of Rivers's nature there heaved and roared something that, had Northrup not held the reins, would have meant battle to the death. It was not outraged honour, love, or justice that blinded and deafened Larry; it was simply the brutish resentment of the savage who, bound and gagged, watches a strong foe take all that he had believed was his by right of conquest. At that moment he hated Mary-Clare as ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... whither we were going. Suddenly there was an explosion that seemed to shake the very earth under us, and Ready, the orderly, and myself, lay sprawling with our horses on the ground. Before we could collect our senses and get up, we were nearly deafened by a tremendous roar of artillery close to us, and at the same moment a shower of stones and fragments of brick and ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... collectors of the neighbouring rookeries. The crookedest men of Paris, the most hideous women, the squalidest tatters were on hand. They whirled and jumped furiously in their unwashed feet; they became almost invisible in the clouds of dust; the odour sickened, the screeching and jumping deafened one. Bad, but maddening, wine was drunk in torrents. A man would kick his partner and the combatants tumble over each other in the midst ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... black devil!" cried the pedlar, turning fiercely round upon the negro. "Am I to be deafened by your cussed croakin'? Don't mind him, ladies and gentlemen—pay no attention to him. Who cares about a nigger? He only cries out for his amusement. It's all his tricks and cunnin'; he'd like to git some more of my sarve on his black hide! He ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 349, November, 1844 • Various
... were pleased to describe the river as hurled into the gulfs of Syne with so great a roar that the people of the neighbourhood were deafened by it. Even a colony of Persians, sent thither by Cambyses, could not bear the noise of the falls, and went forth to seek a quieter situation. The first cataract is a kind of sloping and sinuous passage six and a quarter miles in length, ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 1 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... heard nothing of the shouts which yet deafened me, and durst not so much as raise my eyes, ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... for a while that occupied him, enabling him to endure. But fear and dismay soon passed in the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across the bed, deafened by the riotous clamour of his pulses, conscious that he was holding out, unconscious how long he could ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... of Takruries came pouring in from all directions, armed with sticks or spears, a few mounted, the majority on foot, all howling and screeching (I believe they call it singing), so that before even the dust raised by a new party could be seen, the ear was deafened by their clamour. Every Takrurie warrior—that is, every one who can howl and carry a bludgeon or lance—is entitled to a vote; for this privilege he pays a dollar. The polling consists in counting ...
— A Narrative of Captivity in Abyssinia - With Some Account of the Late Emperor Theodore, - His Country and People • Henry Blanc
... amazingly little evidence of "reverential care for unoffending creation" in the arrangements of nature, that I can discover. If our ears were sharp enough to hear all the cries of pain that are uttered in the earth by men and beasts, we should be deafened ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 2 • Leonard Huxley
... teacher, a real terror, armed with a long switch which came down without pity on idle boys. Seated on benches around him, or crouched on mats, the boys sang out all together: "One and one are two, two and two are four"—horrible refrain which deafened the whole neighbourhood. The school was often a mere shed, or a pergola in the fields which was protected fairly well from sun and rain by cloths stretched overhead—a hut rented for a trifle, wide open to the winds, ...
— Saint Augustin • Louis Bertrand
... the river bubble. For the first few minutes the Confederates were appalled by the fierceness of the fire, which stands on record as the fastest in the war; but, when the forts did get down to their work, they went in with a roar that almost deafened the Federal soldiers three miles away. Great shells burst over the gunboats, or, falling into the water close by their sides, threw up columns of water that deluged the decks. The vessels found the greatest difficulty ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... if you do not send him away," was her husband's impatient answer; "it is not pleasant for a man to be deafened when he is tired after a long journey. Why, I do believe you are going to cry too, Fay; what is the good of a nurse if you exhaust yourself like this?" And he ...
— Wee Wifie • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... the path became more slippery and difficult. Still I was not near the sheet of water, and felt not the slightest dizziness. I speedily arrived at the difficult point of my progress: heavy gusts almost blew me away; showers of spray nearly blinded me; I was quite deafened and half-drowned; I wished to retreat, and essayed to use my voice to stop the progress of my guide. I raised it to a scream, but it was lost in the thunder of the cataract. The negro saw my incertitude and extended his hand. I shuddered even there ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... and pails, his pens where he kept his live animals; but those he had driven forth to pasture with him when he went out in the morning. While they were feasting their eyes with a sight of these curiosities, their ears were suddenly deafened with a noise like the falling of a house. It was the owner of the cave who had been abroad all day feeding his flock, as his custom was, in the mountains, and now drove them home in the evening from pasture. He threw down a pile of firewood, which he had been gathering against ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb
... no pretence of giving an accurate description of the combat. To me it was a confused medley of men and horses inextricably mixed; of shining swords, of blinding red flashes; and my ears were deafened with the fierce cries and shouts of men spending their lives recklessly under ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... again before our whirling, swinging weapons. Gradually we paused, looking about in wonder. Then the barrage ceased, and the sudden absence of the deafening roll, and the wall of light, in themselves, deafened ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... and glancing to the left, another cavalry regiment, and another, formed on our left. Another bugle note, and to the right another cavalry regiment formed, and for half a mile there was a line of horsemen, deafened by the waiting the command of some man, through a bugle. If the rebels had time to notice those four regiments of cavalry, fresh and ready for a gallop, they must have known that it was a good time to get away. Finally, our artillery ceased firing and it seemed still as death, except ...
— How Private George W. Peck Put Down The Rebellion - or, The Funny Experiences of a Raw Recruit - 1887 • George W. Peck
... while excitement blinded, nay, deafened me. I tried to realize that I was gazing upon the last individuals of an all but extinct race—the sole survivors of the gigantic auk, which, for thirty years, has been accounted ...
— In Search of the Unknown • Robert W. Chambers
... could have despatched them and him in one direction while she took another; the art of driving oxen quietly was certainly not among the doctor's accomplishments. She was almost deafened. She tried to escape from the immediate din by running before to shew Philetus about tapping the trees and fixing the little spouts, but it was a longer operation than she had counted upon, and by the time they were ready to leave the tree the doctor was ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... movement downward was with a rush that gave no time for putting on the brakes. You were at the bottom, a wreck, almost before you knew it. So it was in this case. Every thing was swept away, a mountain of unpaid debts was piled up, credit was gone, clamor of creditors deafened him, and the gaunt wolf of actual want looked in through the door of the cottage upon the dear wife and little ones. Another shadow, and a yet darker one, settled upon them. The unhappy man had been tampering with the delusion of spiritualism, and ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... on me! What an appalling list! Isn't it nearly done? My ears are deafened! I am overcome with the thought of such activity!" Nevertheless the smile with which he regarded her was distinctly approving, for, like most men, he preferred domestic women who did not despise home work. "I'll tell you what it is," he ...
— The Love Affairs of Pixie • Mrs George de Horne Vaizey
... moment I ain't likely to forget, for we stood there, the whole ship's company, hanging on by backstay and rail, peering out into the smother of the snow, while the amazing rush of that unknown craft deafened us. ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... came a hurricane of lightning! A cataract of electric flame poured into the crack, splashed and guttered down the granite walls. We were blinded by it; were deafened with thunders. ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... I, weak vessel whose only ballast is a cargo of interrogations past which life swirls with a thunder of derisively contradictory replies, pretend to say whether Priscilla ought to have had conscience-qualms or not? Am I not deafened by the roar of answers, all seemingly so right yet all so different, that the simplest question brings? And would not the answering roar to anything so complicated as a question about conscience-qualms deafen me for ever? I shall leave the ...
— The Princess Priscilla's Fortnight • Elizabeth von Arnim
... was torn by bullets and reddened by dripping wounds. When they shouted to one another their voices came strained and husky from painful throats. Half the time they were blinded by the smoke and blaze of the firing. The crash did not seem so loud to them now, because they were partly deafened for the time by a cannonade of ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... now to live by his profession, he first commenced physician at Northampton, where Dr. Stonehouse then practised, with such reputation and success, that a stranger was not likely to gain ground upon him. Akenside tried the contest a while; and, having deafened the place with clamours for liberty, removed to Hampstead, where he resided more than two years, and then fixed himself in London, the proper place for a man of accomplishments like his. At London he was known as a poet, but was still to make his way as a physician; and would perhaps ...
— Lives of the Poets: Gay, Thomson, Young, and Others • Samuel Johnson
... principal street, which runs with a gentle ascent along the base of the hill. Accustomed for some months past to the melancholy silence of Seville, I was almost deafened by the noise and bustle which reigned around. It was Sunday night, and of course no business was going on, but there were throngs of people passing up and down. Here was a military guard proceeding along; ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... such scenes as these, when the air was filled with the shouts and yells of attackers and besieged, when the crack of the muskets and the intermittent reports of the cannon almost deafened her, Lady Cholmley was assiduously attending to the wounded and the many cases of scurvy, which was rampant among the garrison. One of her maids who shared these labours crept out of the castle one night with a view to reaching the town and escaping further drudgery and privations; ...
— Yorkshire—Coast & Moorland Scenes • Gordon Home
... din of its treads and engines deafened him—and, in panic, he turned and ran, his old legs racing, his old heart pumping madly. The noise of the tank increased as machine guns joined the uproar. He felt the first bullet strike him, just above the hips—no pain; just a tremendous impact. He might have felt the second bullet, too, as the ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... ear, but Graham was deafened to that. All the others save the woman gesticulated towards the hall. He perceived what had happened to the uproar. The whole mass of people was chanting together. It was not simply a song, the voices were gathered together ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... thinking was neither extremely high nor notably laborious. Yet in this very particular there is something rather restful and pleasant to the eye wearied by the sight of incessant movement, and to the ear deafened by the continual shout that nothing is good that does not change, and that all change must be good. We should probably find great discomforts and many unpleasant limitations in the life and habits of a hundred years ago on any part of the globe, and yet at a time when it ...
— George Washington, Vol. I • Henry Cabot Lodge |
