"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... their heads nearly touched. In this tone and attitude he continued his narrative for a few minutes. At the end of this brief space, Marston rose up slowly, and with a movement backward, every feature strung with horror, and saying, in a long whisper, the one word, "yes," which seemed like the hiss of a snake before he makes his last deadly spring. Both were silent for a time. At last Marston broke ...
— The Evil Guest • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... Mr Carnaby knew, at that distance, what was going on, found that Holt was no longer by his side. In a moment, Holt returned to his seat, flushed and out of breath. A very slight hiss was heard from every form near, as he ...
— The Crofton Boys • Harriet Martineau
... manacled feet. Great gaping wounds, the marks of sword slash and spear stab, show crimson upon their naked chests and shoulders, while many lie huddled and senseless athwart the benches, careless for ever of the whips which still hiss above them. Now we can understand those empty portholes and ...
— The Last Galley Impressions and Tales - Impressions and Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... A death-like hiss rose from Jude's lips, "Repentigny? He is my enemy too. I will be your slave. I have too much fear of you to ever harm you. Let me tell you about this Repentigny. Life, life, I beseech—I ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... the sward, they raced as though the hounds were streaming in front; swerved here, tossed there, carried in a whirlwind over the mounds, wheeled through the gloom of the woven branches, splashed with a hiss through the shallow rain-pools, shot swift as an arrow across the silver radiance of the broad moonlight, borne against the sweet south wind, and down the odors of the trampled grass, the carriage ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... got wuz frum a wolf. Walkin' down a trail one day, I spied a wolf not more than ten feet away. Man, I wuz so scared dat I seemed to freeze in my tracks, and couldn't move. I tried to holler but all I could do wuz croak. Den I tried to whistle but de only sound I could make wuz a hiss. After standing for whut seemed hours, wid his ears sticking straight up, de wolf finally turned around and ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... a sea as black as onyx, swept the reflections of the lighted ports; and he could hear the faint hiss of foam ...
— The Dark Star • Robert W. Chambers
... altar of his God seems to have failed him. He asked for bread, and has got a stone,—he asked a fish, and has got a scorpion. Again and again the worldly, almost scoffing, tone of the superior to whom he has been confessing sounds like the hiss of a serpent in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... against his breast, and Eugene bent his face down to hers. They stood so, and for a minute had, indeed, the whole world to their two selves, for love as well as death has the power of annihilation; and then there was a stir in the lane, a crisp rustle of petticoats and a hiss of whispering voices; and they started and fell apart. There in the lane before them, their eyes as keen as foxes, with the scent of curiosity and gossip, their cheeks red with the shame of it, and their lips forming into apologetic and terrified smiles, stood ...
— Madelon - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... scoured the neighbourhood in her high dogcart, calling on the Ittlethwaites and Mandeville Porehams, all in vain. Nobody knew anything. Nobody had heard anything. The sudden exit of Maryllia from the scene took everyone by surprise. And when Miss Pippitt began to hiss a scandalous whisper concerning John Walden, and a possible intrigue between him and the Lady of the Manor, the 'county' sat up amazed. Here indeed was food for gossip! Here was ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... serpent. She had just succeeded in curving it down into a graceful zigzag, and was going to dive in among the leaves, which she found to be nothing but the tops of the trees under which she had been wandering, when a sharp hiss made her draw back in a hurry: a large pigeon had flown into her face, and was beating her violently with ...
— Junior Classics, V6 • Various
... by such rash effrontery and by his own fury, the dreaded Seneca war-chief groped for his hatchet with trembling hands; but a warning hiss from one of his own Mountain Snakes on guard brought him ...
— The Hidden Children • Robert W. Chambers
... very reverse. They inflate their bodies, having not only large lungs, but air-sacs in connection with them. The throat bulges; the body sways from side to side; and the creature expresses its sentiments in a hiss. The power of colour-change is very remarkable, and depends partly on the contraction and expansion of the colour-cells (chromatophores) in the under-skin (or dermis) and partly on close-packed refractive granules and crystals of a waste-product called guanin. The ...
— The Outline of Science, Vol. 1 (of 4) - A Plain Story Simply Told • J. Arthur Thomson
... doubts which may have remained. The metallic clang heard by Miss Stoner was obviously caused by her stepfather hastily closing the door of his safe upon its terrible occupant. Having once made up my mind, you know the steps which I took in order to put the matter to the proof. I heard the creature hiss as I have no doubt that you did also, and I instantly lit the light and ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and reached Sweden in safety. It was on 24th April 1880 that the little weather-beaten Vega, accompanied by flag-decked steamers literally laden with friends, sailed into the Stockholm harbour while the hiss of fireworks and the roar of cannon mingled with the shouts of thousands. The Royal Palace was ablaze with light when King Oscar received and honoured the ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... crossed a little river no wider than Silver Creek an there we was. No screamin wimmin, no stray shots out of attiks, no awtrocities. Nobody even took the trouble to come out an hiss at us. It made everybody feel pretty low I can tell you. The only ones that took any interest at all was a bunch of kids in soldiers caps an stand up collars like your father wears. They seemed to think we was goin to show in their town an trotted along beside us to watch the ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... had obliterated every vestige of the trail across the swamp lands. There was no sun, and the twilight of a slow yellow day in late September would soon, in complicity with the fog, leave him totally adrift on this remote strand—he could hear the curving fall and hiss of the breakers, the monotonous rumour of the sea. So he was determined to face Karospina, even if he had to force his way into ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... witnesses in abundance, on the right hand and on the left. Show me a cause anathematized by the chief priests, the scribes, and the pharisees; which politicians and demagogues endeavor to crush, which reptiles and serpents in human flesh try to spread their slime over, and hiss down, and I will show you a cause which God loves, and angels contemplate with admiration. Such is our movement. Do you want the compliments of the satanic press, The New York Times, Express, and Herald? ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... riven asunder. So tremendous was the concussion of it that I quite distinctly felt the longboat quiver and tremble under its influence. And the next instant down came the rain in a regular tropical, torrential downpour, causing the sea to hiss as though each individual drop of rain were red-hot, and starting us to work at once in both boats with the balers, to save our provisions from being ruined. I happened to be looking away in a westerly ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... Riseholme, and hardly less beautiful was Peppino's attitude towards it all. That large hearted man trusted them both, and his trust was perfectly justified. Georgie was in and out of the house all day, chiefly in; and not only did scandal never rear its hissing head, but it positively had not a head to hiss with, or a foot to stand on. On his side again Georgie had never said that he was in love with her (nor would it have been true if he had), but by his complete silence on the subject coupled with his constancy he seemed to admit the truth of this bloodless idyll. They talked and walked and ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... prospect ahead, but from his tense attitude I judged that it appeared interesting. He signed to me to come up another couple of points, took a firm grasp of the gaff and leaned over the bows. Then with a creak of straining tackle and a hiss of riven water a gig was on us. She swooped out of the blue, swept by not two fathoms to windward and with a boat-hook snapped up the treasure trove (it looked suspiciously like a small keg) right under our very noses as ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, December 8, 1920 • Various
... "the language of the place of despair is exhausted in describing and denouncing the South. If a man among us lifts up his voice to say good things about Southerners, one universal hiss goes up from all your conventions and anti-slavery prints. He may be seeking the same end with you, namely, the peaceful removal of slavery, with due regard to the highest good of all concerned; but let him utter a word in arrest of ...
— The Sable Cloud - A Southern Tale With Northern Comments (1861) • Nehemiah Adams
... plenty. While here, the "Calloo-calloo," is remarkably shy, very rarely venturing out of the seclusion of the thickest jungle, and warning off intruders with a curious note of alarm, half purr, half hiss. ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... this time, so accustomed to my going out in all weathers, that she troubled me with no expostulation. My spirits began to rise the moment I was in the wind. Keen, and cold, and unsparing, it swept through the leafless branches around me, with a different hiss for every tree that bent, and swayed, and tossed in its torrent. I made my way to the gate and out upon the road, and then, turning to the right, away from the village, I sought a kind of common, ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... the histories of that age, which furnish the most authentic memoirs of his life. See what Dom Coutant, the Benedictin monk, has recorded of him in his excellent edition of his works; as also Tillemont, t. 7, Ceillier, t. 5, and Rivet, Hiss. Lit. t. 1, part 2, p. 139. The two books, the one of his life, the other of his miracles, by Fortunatus of Poictiers, 600, are inaccurate. Both the Fortunatases were from Italy; and probably one was the author of the first, and the ...
— The Lives of the Fathers, Martyrs, and Principal Saints - January, February, March • Alban Butler
... range has been checked by the hand of man. In vain the flames jet out on all sides, seeking fresh element. A wide space has been cleared around them. Soon the crackling of the large trees, and the hiss of the burning grass, cease to be heard; and the whole plain becomes enveloped under a cloud of smoke rising upward from ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... nature, enfeebled by suffering, could not but have trembled at the idea of living in a lonely spot, (for the mission-house was nearly a mile from the barracks,) with the neighboring jungle swarming with "serpents that hiss, and beasts of prey that howl." In addition to this cause of alarm, there was opposite them, on the Burman side of the river, the old decayed city of Martaban; which was the refuge of a horde of banditti, who, armed ...
— Lives of the Three Mrs. Judsons • Arabella W. Stuart
... Fair overhead are the white of breasts, of plump bodies flashing through the mist, the swishing hiss of many wings cutting the air, the ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... loose. The "major-domo" had singled out Sponsilier and was trying issues with him, Bob Quirk was dropping them right and left, when the deposed commandant sprang upon a table, and in a voice like the hiss of an adder, commanded peace, and the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... villagers murmuring behind us while I hoisted the little sail and drew the sheet home. The night-breeze, fluking among the gullies, filled the sail at once, fell light again and left it flapping, then drew a steady breath aft, and the voices were lost in the hiss of ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... we were in black. They sent up a rocket once; it mounted above us in a slow flaming arc, hung poised an instant, and then descended, plunging into the sea a mile or so away. We heard distinctly the hiss of its contact with the water, and saw, like a quickly dissipating mist, the ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... lighted room—he could hear a sound, very slight: so slight that it seemed guarded, but none the less unmistakable: the hiss of carbonated water squirting from a syphon into ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... beginning to shoot tiny white, five-pointed flames through the purple sky. The fireflies were beginning to cut long arcs of gold in the sooty dusk. The waves were coming up the low-tide beach with a long roar and retreating with a faint hiss. Afterwards floated on the air the music of the shingle, hundreds of pebbles pattering with liquid footsteps down the sand. Peals of laughter, the continuous bass roar of the men, an occasional uncertain soprano lilting of the women, came from the group. The girls ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... he hurled himself forward. As he scrambled over the upturned chairs he heard a sound that struck terror to his soul: it was the unmistakable hiss of tearing linen. The hastily made garments of G. Lung Fat had proved unequal to the strain put upon them. Percival lost his head completely when he realized that his waistcoat was split up the back from hem to collar, and that he had become ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... up from out the waves' abyss— A monstrous little man with a black hide, Scarce four feet high, yet he was not remiss, But dash'd the waves about—and then he cried, With a demoniac laugh, or rather hiss, "Die, mortal, die!" and John sank down and died, The which, when Jeannie saw, she only sigh'd, "I come, my John, I come, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 12, Issue 330, September 6, 1828 • Various
... at the massive form on the great war-horse were charged with baleful meaning. Bismarck once or twice looked down on them with a grim smile under his moustache. At length the most daring of the "patriots" emitted a tentative hiss. With a little polite wave of his gloved hand Bismarck bent over his holster and requested "Monsieur" to oblige him with a light for his cigar. The man writhed as he compelled himself to comply. Little doubt that in his heart he wished the lucifer were a dagger ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... Manual for Soda and other Beverages. A Treatise especially adapted to the requirements of Druggists and Confectioners. By A. Emil Hiss. 12mo, cloth. 260 ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 1157, March 5, 1898 • Various
... "Hiss!" warned Tiger. "No more talking until we are inside the building. We are approaching the warehouse now and we must not let the watchmen see us. The only way we can get in is through a window in the basement that has been left open by mistake. ...
— Billy Whiskers' Adventures • Frances Trego Montgomery
... pussy-cats heard this, And they began to hiss, And stretch their claws, And raise their paws; "Me-ow," they said, "me-ow, me-o You'll burn to ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... the middle of the ship were now leaping fifty feet into the air. The river manuals played upon it, but made little or no impression. It seemed to hiss back contempt and defiance ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... descend a few feet, with perfect safety in the shape of solid earth beneath him, though, as he moved, he set free a little avalanche of fragments of granite, that seemed to go down into the shaft with a hiss, which was succeeded by the strange echoing splashes—weird whispers of splashes—as they reached, the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... figure. To the others his name, at all events, was known, and as he stood up on the floor of the court a swift and regular movement like a ripple of water passed through the throng. They leant forward to get a clearer view of him and for a moment there was a hiss of excited whispering. ...
— Witness For The Defense • A.E.W. Mason
... from somewhere on our right a whisper no louder than a mouse's hiss of warning or of threat. I scarcely was aware of it. It might have been a ripple under the prow of the canoe, a slightest turn of a paddle. Yet it conveyed a message that the natives instantly understood. ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... hardly well-timed question, but, on the contrary, waking out of his scowling abstraction, he turned his eyes towards me, and the shade seemed to clear off his brow. "Oh, I had forgotten Celine! Well, to resume. When I saw my charmer thus come in accompanied by a cavalier, I seemed to hear a hiss, and the green snake of jealousy, rising on undulating coils from the moonlit balcony, glided within my waistcoat, and ate its way in two minutes to my heart's core. Strange!" he exclaimed, suddenly starting again from the point. "Strange that I should choose ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... know, was to be done with all those who had advanced money in making and repairing turnpike-roads? What was to become of coach-makers and harness-makers, coach-masters and coachmen, inn-keepers, horse-breeders, and horse-dealers? Was the house aware of the smoke and the noise, the hiss and the whirl, which locomotive engines, passing at the rate of 10 or 12 miles an hour, would occasion? Neither the cattle ploughing in the fields or grazing in the meadows could behold them without dismay. Iron would be raised in price 100 per ...
— Lives of the Engineers - The Locomotive. George and Robert Stephenson • Samuel Smiles
... outside is allowed to enter, and he kneels in front of whom he thinks is the right one. If he should make a correct guess, the company clap their hands, and the person to whom he knelt goes outside. If, however, the guess is an incorrect one, the company hiss loudly, and the guesser has to go outside, come back, and try again. Of course, it will make more amusement if when a boy is sent outside the room a girl be chosen as the person to whom he has to kneel; and the opposite if a girl be ...
— Games For All Occasions • Mary E. Blain
... against the dark sky and looked in the midst of the smoke like a fiery meteor. The Eddystone Rock was suffused with a dull red light, as if it were becoming red hot, and the surf round it appeared to hiss against the fire, while in the dark shadow of the cave the three lighthouse keepers were seen cowering in terror,—as they well might, seeing that melted lead and flaming masses of wood and other substances were falling thickly ...
— The Story of the Rock • R.M. Ballantyne
... for a minute. Tiffles was silent, in order that he might not interrupt the quiet admiration of the spectators. The spectators were silent, because they could not exactly understand the scene, and did not know whether to laugh, hiss, or applaud. The silence was broken, by a boy in the ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... for a safe shot; in a minute he went down into the meadow on the other side. I then crept on hands and knees towards the nut-bushes: as I got nearer there was a slight rustle and a low hiss in the grass, and I had to pause while a snake went by hastening for the ditch. A few moments afterwards, being close to the hedge, I rose partly up, and looked carefully over the fence between the hazel wands. There was the pheasant not fifteen yards away, his ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... the former favorite of the Theatre de Francais, had in some way offended the Gardes du Corps. So one night they came in full force to the theatre and tried to hiss her down. ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... them pleasures wait, and joys for ever new. But cruel virgins meet severer fates; Expell'd and exil'd from the blissful seats, To dismal realms, and regions void of peace, Where furies ever howl, and serpents hiss. O'er the sad plains perpetual tempests sigh, And pois'nous vapours, black'ning all the sky, With livid hue the fairest face o'ercast, And every beauty withers at the blast: Where e'er they fly their lover's ghosts ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... interesting to see the difference of style. All three types of colonial woodsmen cut the tree almost breast high, but the Australian seemed to be the only one that took advantage of that understroke, with a hiss through the clenched teeth, which looks so formidable when you watch our timber-getters. It was a Canadian team which started. They cut coolly, and the one whom I watched struck one by his splendid condition. A wiry man, not thick-set, but well built and athletic, who never turned ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... eyes fastened themselves upon her with a look of yearning anguish, and then Hagar answered slowly, "Tell you what you've often wished to know—my secret!" the last word dropping from her lips more like a warning hiss than like a human sound. It was long since Maggie had teased for the secret, so absorbed had she been in other matters, but now that there was a prospect of knowing it her curiosity was reawakened, and while her eyes glistened ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... charms, that smite the simple heart Not touch'd by nature, and not reach'd by art. His never-blushing head he turn'd aside, (Not half so pleased when Goodman prophesied) And look'd, and saw a sable Sorcerer rise, Swift to whose hand a winged volume flies: All sudden, gorgons hiss, and dragons glare, And ten-horn'd fiends and giants rush to war. Hell rises, Heaven descends, and dance on earth: Gods, imps, and monsters, music, rage, and mirth, A fire, a jig, a battle, and a ball, Till one wide conflagration swallows all. Thence a new world, to nature's laws ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... few of those who had been sworn in as special constables were assembled; a little contemptible group of the abject, dependant tools of the corporation, who, as I suppose, from the appearance of their lips, attempted to raise a hiss, but their voices were instantly drowned by the cheers of the multitude; and thus the meeting passed off as peaceably as if there had not been any bustle made by the corporation and police of the city, in order ...
— Memoirs of Henry Hunt, Esq. Volume 3 • Henry Hunt
... the soft, sibilant sound of the escaping gas, not unlike the hiss of a snake. I was also sensible that my heart, not to mention other important organs, was trying to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Geese were taking their morning waddle, and Reddy ran plump into them. Now there was nothing that he liked better to eat than nice fat goose. Still, he didn't wait, but left them beating their wings and stretching their long necks to hiss, hiss, hiss, as they scattered in all directions. I guess Reddy wished his legs were as long ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... they're pretty complex," Ayesha Keithley said. "I identified stick-and-slip sounds and percussion sounds, and plucked-string sounds, along with the ordinary hiss-and-buzz speech-sounds. Making a vocoder to reproduce that speech is going to be fun. Just what are you using, in the ...
— Naudsonce • H. Beam Piper
... spoke, but missed; and the serpent, turning its head, gave a hiss at us, though it did not attempt to quit its raft. From the way it moved its tail, which served as a rudder, I believe that it could easily have guided itself to the shore; and as it was big enough to have crushed ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... was so spent, I could not climb the wall; and when I saw Turkey turn and face the bull, I turned too. We were now in the shadow of the hill, but I could just see Turkey lift his arm. A short sharp hiss, and a roar followed. The bull tossed his head as in pain, left Turkey, and came towards me. He could not charge at any great speed, for the ground was steep and uneven. I, too, had kept hold of my weapon; and although I was dreadfully ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... he comes to discover the chief of the plot of the play by the reading of along letter, which was so long and some things (the people being set already to think too long) so unnecessary that they frequently begun to laugh, and to hiss twenty times, that, had it not been for the King's being there, they had certainly hissed it off the stage. But I must confess that, as my Lord Barkeley says behind me, the having of that long letter was a thing so absurd, that he could not imagine how a man of his parts could possibly fall into ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... you for a kiss." As he said this he looked at her with all his eyes, with his mouth just open, so as to show the edges of his white teeth, with the wound down his face all wide and purple. The last word came with a stigmatizing hiss from his lips. Though she did not essay to speak, he paused again, as if he were desirous that she might realize the full purport of such a request. I think that, in the energy of his speaking, a touch of true passion had come upon him; that he had forgotten ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... hundred yards of their course lay under motionless trees, whose upper foliage began to hiss with falling drops of rain. By the time that they emerged upon a glade ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... bid hoist the sail and have out the oars. While this was doing the creature appeared again with a glowing mass of fused metal (massam igneam de scoria) in pincers, which he hurled at them. Where it struck the water about a furlong from them, it made the sea boil and hiss. They had only escaped about a mile when they saw beings swarming out upon the shore, throwing about molten masses, some after them and some at one another, and then all went back into the forges ...
— Brendan's Fabulous Voyage • John Patrick Crichton Stuart Bute
... swept over the camp with reckless disregard of all aim. It came with a sharp rattle. The bullets swept on with a biting hiss, and some of them terminated their careers with a vicious "splat" against the great overhang of rock or the ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be a lever to cast you into my arms. Your hatred ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... organization; they had closed the hall, and confiscated everything, typewriters and office furniture and books—including a book on Sabotage which they had turned over to the editor of the "Evening Times"! There was a hiss of anger at this. Also, they had taken to interfering with the mail of the organization; the I. W. W. were having to get out their literature by express. They were fighting for their existence, and they must find some way of getting the truth to people. ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... her and carried his prize to a lapidary's bench. He perched himself on a stool and reached for his magnifying glass. A queer little hiss broke through his lips. Cut-glass beads, patently Occidental, and here in Shanghai ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... pointed and saw a long, glossy neck surmounted by a small head rising above the surface of the river. Presently the back of the creature was exposed, brown and glossy as the water dripped from it. It turned its eyes upon us, opened its lizard-like mouth, emitted a shrill hiss and came for us. The thing must have been sixteen or eighteen feet in length and closely resembled pictures I had seen of restored plesiosaurs of the lower Jurassic. It charged us as savagely as a mad bull, and one would have thought it intended to destroy and devour ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the bridal finery, unmindful of the anguish tugging at the hearts of both the patient women, Marian and Helen, who worked on so silently, reserving their tears for the night time, when Katy lay sweetly sleeping and dreaming of Wilford Cameron. Helen had ceased to think that Hiss Hazelton had any designs on Dr. Grant, for her manner toward Uncle Ephraim was just as soft and conciliating, and she dismissed that subject from her mind with the reflection that it was the nature of some girls to be very pretty to the gentlemen, without meaning any harm. She liked Marian on the ...
— Family Pride - Or, Purified by Suffering • Mary J. Holmes
... shoulder to shoulder at his back. They niver tur-rned over their property to their wives.' 'Yes,' says wan man, 'Dewey was a cow'rd. Let's go an' stone his house.' 'No,' says the crowd, 'he might come out. Let's go down to th' v'riety show an' hiss his ...
— Mr. Dooley's Philosophy • Finley Peter Dunne
... appearing from the aerodrome. When they struck the water there was a hiss, which grew in volume and acuity as they skimmed the waves. After a few hundred yards, the machines rose as easily as from land, circled up to the clouds and into them. Coming down, the aviators practiced dipping and swerving by following and avoiding the purposely ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons
... Thou canst forsake me, then, To spare thyself a little bashful pain? Paolo, dost thou know what 'tis for me, A woman—nay, a dame of highest rank— To lose my purity? to walk a path Whose slightest slip may fill my ear with sounds That hiss me out to infamy and death? Have I no secret pangs, no self-respect, No husband's look to bear? O! worse than these, I must endure his loathsome touch; be kind When he would dally with his wife, and smile ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Francesca da Rimini • George Henry Boker
... though the whole wind slash at your bark, you are lifted up, aye—though it hiss to ...
— Some Imagist Poets - An Anthology • Richard Aldington
... term by which the ancient Greek or Roman used to distinguish hiss religion from the rival religions of other and heretical pagans. Just as Orthodoxy, according to DEAN SWIFT, means "my doxy," and Heterodoxy, the doxy of other people; so the pious Roman used to speak of "my thology" as the only genuine religion; the "thologies" of other men being cheap and worthless ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, Issue 10 • Various
... drink and swear, ye men that man the deathful whaleboat's bow—Death to Moby Dick! God hunt us all, if we do not hunt Moby Dick to his death!" The long, barbed steel goblets were lifted; and to cries and maledictions against the white whale, the spirits were simultaneously quaffed down with a hiss. Starbuck paled, and turned, and shivered. Once more, and finally, the replenished pewter went the rounds among the frantic crew; when, waving his free hand to them, they all dispersed; and Ahab retired within ...
— Moby Dick; or The Whale • Herman Melville
... answered Aulus. "I lack two front teeth, knocked out by a stone from the hand of a Briton, I speak with a hiss; still my happiest ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... time to time more deeply seated convulsion would upheave sudden to the surface vast tracts of semi-molten rock, soon again to disappear, and from which waves of bulk enormous would roll outwards, to meet in wild conflict with the giant waves of other convulsions, or return to hiss and sputter against the intensely heated and fast foundering mass, whose violent upheaval had first elevated and sent them abroad. Such would be the probable state of things during the times of the earlier gneiss and ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... hiss of concentrated fury in his voice that Winter was puzzled to account for the harmless expression the barrister had twice used. The detective knew that his distinguished friend never, by any chance, indulged in strong language, yet something had annoyed ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... finished for, with a menacing movement, Betty had thrust the stick toward the reptile and the latter with a hiss had struck. ...
— The Outdoor Girls at the Hostess House • Laura Lee Hope
... ringings were unheeded; so were the more dignified admonitions of the new clock; so was the tea-kettle, which hissed with the utmost fury at being boiled so long, but hissed in vain, for it was allowed to hiss its entire contents into thin air, and then to burn its bottom red hot! In like manner the large pot of potatoes evaporated its water, red-heated its bottom, and burned its ...
— Shifting Winds - A Tough Yarn • R.M. Ballantyne
... glimpse a pair of greenish eyes in silent motion, and, giving a low hiss of warning to his nephews, that same sound serving to check further progress on the part of the wild beast, his short rifle came to a level, then emitted a ...
— The Lost City • Joseph E. Badger, Jr.
... and sleeping. Sleep, indeed, you will enjoy most luxuriously, for the rapid bounding motion of the canoe as it leaps forward at every impulse of the crew, the sharp quick beat of the paddles on the water, and the roll of their shafts against the gunwale, with the continuous hiss and ripple of the stream cleft by the curving prow, combine to ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... wide, but chief the spacious hall (Though like a covered field, where champions bold Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's chair Defied the best of Paynim chivalry To mortal combat, or career with lance), Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in the air, Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As bees In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus rides. Pour forth their populous youth about the hive In clusters; they among fresh dews and flowers Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, The suburb of their straw-built citadel, New rubbed with balm, expatiate, ...
— Paradise Lost • John Milton
... voice came perceptibly nearer, and seemed to almost hiss in her ear—unconsciously she felt the antagonism. "That's absurd," she said, with sudden animation; "why, these people are nobody, the mother used to wash for me a few years ago. They are the very commonest sort—the father was only a section man. ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... said Belle; "do you hear? it already begins to hiss upon the embers; that fire of ours will ...
— Isopel Berners - The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825 • George Borrow
... quarter and all the Moors of Tetuan were alive to what was happening, and on the night of the marriage a great company of both peoples, though chiefly of the rabble among them, gathered in front of the Rabbi's house that they might hiss ...
— The Scapegoat • Hall Caine
... within late years, the people were wont to assemble yearly upon a mountain, to set fire to a huge wooden wheel, twined with straw, which, all ablaze, was then sent rolling down the hill, to plunge with a hiss ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... he would cry; and then his voice rang through the premises like a trumpet; and when, mimicking it, came the small pipe of a Ginevra, a Mathilde, or a Blanche, one understood why a hollow groan of scorn, or a fierce hiss of rage, rewarded ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... as we turned our heads, and contrasted on the two sides of the sail of the jolly-boat. And then we got within earshot. A great fire is terrible to see, but it is almost more terrible to hear, and it is curious how like it is to the sound of great waters or a great wind. The roar, the hiss, the crackle, ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... in the glass—a single flash of green that cut the blackness with an almost audible hiss. It was gone in an instant while a man's voice screamed once in fear and agony, one scream that broke like brittle steel in the ...
— Two Thousand Miles Below • Charles Willard Diffin
... guards dreamed that anything more dangerous than thoughts could or would come. And yet, within two minutes from the time he was spread upon his back and left alone, old Two Knives heard inside the lodge a low, warning hiss. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... it was in Geoffrey's face that the tide rose. Such a burning tide it was, he fancied he heard the blood hiss as it curled round the roots of his hair. He noted this as curious, and remembered that in hanging or drowning it was the trifles that stamped themselves upon the mind. Also, it appeared that he was ...
— Geoffrey Strong • Laura E. Richards
... not what they wanted. They flung themselves upon him, tore him from the pulpit, and thrust him into the midst of this howling mob, who dragged him to the altar with that sort of terrible cry which combines the hiss of the serpent and the roar of the tiger, the murderous zou! zou! peculiar to ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... parted, showing a gleam of strong white teeth. "My name," he said, speaking in a peculiarly soft voice that somehow reminded Merryon of the hiss of a reptile, "is Leo Vulcan. You have heard of me? Perhaps not. I am better known in the Western Hemisphere. You ask me what I want?" He raised a brown, hairy hand and pointed straight at the girl in Merryon's ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... was more apparent than ever, only the smile of Barnabas was the smile of youth, joyous, exuberant, unconquerable. Noting which Experienced Age laughed short and fierce, and strode in to strike Youth down—then came a rush of feet, the panting hiss of breath, the shock of vicious blows, and John Barty, the unbeaten ex-champion of all England, threw up his arms, staggered back the length of the room, and ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... dripped on my shining gossamer veil and white velvet dress. In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, my whole nature was metamorphosed; and my coming years swept in panoramic vision before me, beckoning me to the prompt performance of a stern and humiliating duty. The blood in my veins seemed to hiss and bubble like a seething cauldron, and my heart fired with a hate for which language has no name, no garb, no provision; but my brain kept faithful guard, and reason calmly pointed out my future path. When Mr. Carlyle ended his tirade against me and his curses on his ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson
... evil indeed; but dishonesty, infamy, villainy, ill reports carry no more hurt in them than a man is sensible of; and if a man have no sense of them, they are no longer evils. What are you the worse if the people hiss at you, so you applaud yourself? And that a man be able to do so, he ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... first thing he heard on entering the stage-door was a hiss. The story goes that the poor author was dreadfully frightened; and that in answer to a hurried question, Colman exclaimed, "Psha! Doctor, don't be afraid of a squib, when we have been sitting these two hours on a barrel of gunpowder." If this was meant as a ...
— Goldsmith - English Men of Letters Series • William Black
... engaged a black puff of smoke appeared behind my tail and I had the impression of hearing a piece of iron hiss by. "Must have got my range first shot!" I surmised, and making a steep bank piqued heavily. "There, I have lost them now." The whole art of avoiding shells is to pay no attention till they get your range and then dodge away, change altitude, and generally avoid going in a ...
— Aircraft and Submarines - The Story of the Invention, Development, and Present-Day - Uses of War's Newest Weapons • Willis J. Abbot
... perseveringly, no matter how thoroughly it may be refuted or proved absurd. Literally, make the greatest noise in opposition to it that you are able, especially at public meetings. There, recollect a groan is a groan, and a hiss a hiss, even though proceeding from a goose. On all such occasions do your utmost to create a disturbance, to look like a popular demonstration against the measure. In addition to shouting, yelling, and bawling, ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Vol. I. No. 3, July 15, 1850 • Various
... places. Faces, emotionally divided between fear and strong interest, peered at us as we ran by, disappearing at the first whistle of a bomb, for all the world like hermit-crabs into their shells. A whistle sent us both scurrying into a passageway; the shell fell with a wicked hiss, and, scattering the paving-stones to the four winds, blew a shallow crater in the roadway. A big cart horse, hit in the neck and forelegs by fragments of the shell, screamed hideously. Right at the bridge, the sentry, an old territorial, was watching ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... his bosom. And the serpent never crosses the path of man if he can help it. The most deadly is that which is too sluggish to get out of his way—therefore bites in self-defense. And the serpent generally gives some warning hiss, or a rattle. Indeed, almost every animal gives warning of its foul intent. The shark turns over before seizing its prey. But the false friend (I am obliged to couple these words) takes you in without changing his side.... In truth, a man, if ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... to proceed eastward, by the parishes of Greatham, Lysse, Rogate, and Trotton, in the county of Sussex; by Bramshot, Hedleigh, and Kingsley. This royalty consists entirely of sand covered with heath and fern; but is somewhat diversified with hiss and dales, without having one standing tree in the whole extent. In the bottoms, where the waters stagnate, are many bogs, which formerly abounded with subterraneous trees; though Dr. Plot says positively,* that 'there never were any fallen trees hidden in the mosses of the ...
— The Natural History of Selborne • Gilbert White
... Claudia gave her hand to Lord Vincent, who led her to the head of the first set. When Ishmael returned, Bee gave him her hand and told him Claudia's wish, which, of course, had all the force of a command for him, and he immediately led Bee to the place opposite Lord Vincent and Hiss Merlin. ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... be,—confidence easily passed for genius, and presumption for power. Tributes of admiration and envy poured in upon him,—anonymous missives, tender and daring, odorous with the atmosphere of luxurious boudoirs, and coarse scrawls, scented with orange-peel and lamp-smoke, and seeming to hiss with the sibilant whisper of green-room spite; and the young actor, valuing alike the sentiments, kindly or malign, which ministered to his egoism, intoxicated with the first foamy draught of fame, grew careless, freakish, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 23, September, 1859 • Various
... out of the Dish with him, and did so for a considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... in her breath with a hiss; and then to herself, "If he despises me for the act, well, I must bear it, too— while I ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... hard breathing of the man, and I could tell every time that his knife struck home, by a peculiar hiss that escaped the snake. It was like ...
— The Gold Hunter's Adventures - Or, Life in Australia • William H. Thomes
... escape it. As I did so, as quick as a flash there shot out a long tentacle from this mass of floating blubber, and it fell as light and sinuous as a whip-lash across the front of my machine. There was a loud hiss as it lay for a moment across the hot engine, and it whisked itself into the air again, while the huge, flat body drew itself together as if in sudden pain. I dipped to a vol-pique, but again a tentacle fell over the monoplane and was shorn off by the propeller as easily as it might have cut ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... part is just to coach and coach, to go over the lines a thousand times and the stage business ten thousand, and then to stay behind the scenes and hiss at them: 'More spirit! More life! Throw yourself into it!' and then to watch them walk it through like puppets! Well, The Taming of the Shrew is pretty stiff work for amateurs, no doubt of that—there's that much to be said. Breakfast time, childie! ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... light steals through the woods their forms grow less grotesque. In the half light a phoebe begins her shrill song. A blue-jay screams. The quail sounds his first "Bob White." Brown thrashers in the thicket—it is past their time of singing—respond with a strange, sibilant sound, a mingled hiss and whistle, far different from his ringing songs of May, now only memories; different also from her scoldings when she was disturbed on her nest and from her tender crooning calls to ...
— Some Summer Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... plains. By keeping to windward, she was able to approach very near these phenomenal objects; the ground was lukewarm in a few places, and she could hold her hand for several minutes at a time over the cracks whence the vapour escaped. No water was visible. The roar and hiss of the steam, combined with the violence of the wind, made a noise so deafening that she was glad to quit the scene, and feel a safer soil beneath her feet. It seemed to her excited fancy as if the entire mountain were converted ...
— The Story of Ida Pfeiffer - and Her Travels in Many Lands • Anonymous
... handling without resistance, the shred of bark, driven by the imperceptible zephyr, falls a few yards away, and in an agony of anxiety utters an imploring purr, or was it an imprecation? That half purr, half hiss has been the only sound of the episode. It is a warning to be gone and leave Nature to her ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... the wild rose face of me Ladybird looking through. I see the swale rocking, smell the sweetness of the blooming things, and the damp, mucky odor of the swamp; and I hear me birds sing, me squirrels bark, the rattlers hiss, and the step of Wessner or Black Jack coming; and whether it's the things that I loved or the things that I feared, it's all a part ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... snakes of dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a strong, ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... alarm, Dymes poured forth assurances of his good behaviour. He followed her down to the platform, and for a quarter of an hour she had to listen, in torment of mind and body, to remonstrances, flatteries, amorous blandishments, accompanied by the hiss of steam and ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... reached Kinton and bent to hiss and cluck into the latter's ear in what he presumably considered an undertone. The Terran laboriously spelled out the message inscribed on the limp, satiny paper held before his eyes. Then he rose and took one step toward ...
— Exile • Horace Brown Fyfe
... arm about the snarling creature perched on her shoulder; but the cat with a hiss only raised ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... innumerable crowd has gathered, for it is said that a ship is to sail against wind and weather, bidding defiance to the elements; the man who thinks he can solve the problem is named Robert Fulton. The ship begins its passage, but suddenly it stops. The crowd begins to laugh and whistle and hiss—the very father of the ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... earth-colored men, shoulders thrown back, bent forward, muscles of arms swelling and slackening, hoes flashing at the same moment against the sky, at the same moment buried with a thud in clods. And he felt reassured as a traveller feels, hearing the continuous hiss and squudge of well ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos |
