"Jagged" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the long way of the tunnel towards daylight, the candle-grease dripping over Peter's fingers. There were no accidents unless you count Phyllis's catching her frock on a wire, and tearing a long, jagged slit in it, and tripping over her bootlace when it came undone, or going down on her hands and knees, all four of ...
— The Railway Children • E. Nesbit
... fine glass imitation and to use the file and also to look with a high-power glass for any rounding bubbles. The emerald will never have the latter. The glass imitation frequently does have them. The sharp jagged flaws and cracks that so often appear in emerald are likely to appear also in tourmaline as both are brittle materials. The glass imitations frequently have such flaws put into them either by pinching or by striking the material. Frequently, too, wisps of tiny air bubbles are left in the ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... melodious language, which might be ascribed to the mountainous character of their country. I collected the following names: Kobboyakka, Nobungop, Kanbinycx, Manguradja, Apirk (Apek), Yaganyin, Kolar, Kadgupa, Gnanga Gnanga. Ayir meant stone spear; Ekolpen, jagged fish-spear. ...
— Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia • Ludwig Leichhardt
... that had thus outwitted the hungry Asas: it was the giant Old Winter, clothed in his eagle plumage. Over the lonely woods, and the snow-crowned mountains, and the frozen sea, he flew, dragging the helpless Loki through tree-tops, and over jagged rocks, scratching and bruising his body, and almost tearing his arms from his shoulders. At last he alighted on the craggy top of an iceberg, where the storm winds shrieked, and the air was filled with driving snow. As soon as Loki could speak, he begged the cunning giant to carry him ...
— Hero Tales • James Baldwin
... breaking ice arose on all sides. Still, for an hour nothing could be seen, until between three and four the snow gave place to a sleety rain, and the watchers saw that they were passing with frightful rapidity a line of jagged ice-cliffs, not two hundred yards away. La Salle called his companions, and they watched for nearly an hour in constant expectation of having to ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... nervous disposition, but his hand trembled slightly as he took the letter from its envelope. It was clear that this letter had been torn open hastily, for the edges of the opening were jagged and uneven. ...
— The Lamp That Went Out • Augusta Groner
... river. The first turn brought him to the old stone bridge over the Wandle. On the bridge before him, in the crook of the street, were the booths and stalls of the night market, lit by blazing naphtha, color heaped on color in a leaping, waving flare as of torches. On either side was a twisted and jagged line of houses—brown-brick, flat-fronted, eighteenth-century houses, and houses with painted fronts. Here a tall, red-brick modern Parade shot up the gables of its insolent facade. There, oldest of all, a yellow house stooped forward on the posts that propped it. Somewhere up in the sky a ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... me, Bon-Bon," said he; "ha! ha! ha!—he! he! he!—hi! hi! hi!—ho! ho! ho!—hu! hu! hu!"—and the devil, dropping at once the sanctity of his demeanor, opened to its fullest extent a mouth from ear to ear, so as to display a set of jagged and fang-like teeth, and, throwing back his head, laughed long, loudly, wickedly, and uproariously, while the black dog, crouching down upon his haunches, joined lustily in the chorus, and the tabby cat, flying off at a tangent, stood up on ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 5 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe
... glancing blow just above the water line; it punched a great, jagged hole and gouged out the paint clear to the stern. Dan drew a long breath and murmured in a half-sick voice, "They might as well kill a man as scare him to death," while Captain Barney's face made a gray streak ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry
... were directed by the boys at the hand toward which Jimmie was pointing. It bore a scar running clear across the back—an ugly, jagged scar that they had heard ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... the days, long past, when, as a student at the Italian Cavalry School, I was called upon to ride down the celebrated precipice at Tor di Quinto. But there, if your mount slipped, a thick bed of sawdust was awaiting you to break the fall. Here there was nothing save jagged rocks. We started in pitch darkness and for three hours rode through a night so black that I could not see my pony's ears. The trail, which in places was barely a foot wide, ran for miles along a sort of hogback, the ground falling sheer away on either side. It was like riding blindfolded ...
— Where the Strange Trails Go Down • E. Alexander Powell
... the inlet were jagged lines of white, the sparkling crystalline whiteness of eternal snow on sharp-pointed, almost lance-like mountain peaks; the water a broad band of blue, the sky above a canopy of blue, and there at the end of the inlet, closing it, like some colossal monster crouched awaiting ...
— Five Nights • Victoria Cross
... mountain, but between that and his pasture was a wide valley so one had to descend in order to climb up to the big one. But all around both pastures great dark masses of mountains looked down, some rocky, gray and jagged, others covered with snow, all reaching up to the sky, so high and mighty and with such different peaks and horns and some with such broad backs, that it almost seemed to Toni as if they were enormous giants, each one having his own face and looking down at him. It was a clear evening. The mountain ...
— Toni, the Little Woodcarver • Johanna Spyri
... each hard day's work, therefore a reserve supply is necessary in lands where none other are to be found. No makeshift contrivance, so far as I am aware, will replace the iron last used by shoemakers when they hammer nails into the boot. There is a well-known contrivance of screws with jagged heads, for screwing into boots when a little ice has to be crossed. They do excellently for occasional purposes, but not for regular ice-work, as they are easily torn out. Crampons are soles of leather with spikes; they are tied over the shoes, but neither English mountaineers nor modern ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... I'm feart," and he began to cry. Afraid to move, unable to see, he staggered from one side to another, bruising his face and arms against the jagged sides, the blood already streaming from his bruises, and his heart frantic ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... the vanished duties of his warlike predecessor? was the wraith of seneschal or man-at-arms conjuring up a ghostly beacon to stream into the soft air? was an evil spirit about to bewilder and mislead a fated ship to meet its doom on the jagged rocks beneath the dead calm of that glassy sea? So dense was the vapour that suddenly gathered over Earlscraig, till like an electric flash, a jet of flame sprang from a high casement and lit up the gathering obscurity. No horn blew, no bugle sounded, no tramp ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... convent I found an outhouse, built on to the wall—a clumsy, decayed building, with the greater part of the roof fallen in, and with a jagged hole in one of its sides, where in all probability a window had once been. Behind the outhouse the trees grew thicker than ever. As I looked toward them I could not determine whether the ground beyond me rose or fell—whether ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... that they had passed to the left of the jagged rock formation at the edge of the plateau, to the right of which my horse had borne me and the body ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... arms, and would be held womanish if they were seen unweaponed. These are generally battle-axes, spears cruelly and fantastically jagged, hooked and barbed, and curious leaf-shaped knives of archaic aspect; some of the latter have blades broader than they are long, a shape also preserved by the Mpongwe. The sheaths of fibre or leather are elaborately decorated, and it is chic for the scabbard to fit ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... because, being seneschal, people gave up to him instantly. It is true that he at that time beheld all his desires accomplished, the which would render even an imp of Satan calm and tranquil from his horns to his heels. And besides this he possessed a castle all jagged at the corners, and shaped and pointed like a Spanish doublet, situated upon a bank from which it was reflected in the Loire. In the rooms were royal tapestries, furniture, Saracen pomps, vanities, and inventions which were much admired by people of Tours, and even ...
— Droll Stories, Volume 1 • Honore de Balzac
... escort the travellers for twelve miles on their way, to a point where the inland road broke into cart-tracks, and the tracks diverged across a country newly disafforested and strewn with jagged stumps among which the heavy vehicle could by no means be hauled. Here Farmer Cordery was to be in waiting with ...
— Lady Good-for-Nothing • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... in the night And drags jagged reflections Like gilded combs Through the obscure water. Spun glass daisies ...
— Precipitations • Evelyn Scott
... on his head, which was from a piece of burning shell, making a jagged wound that, however, did not touch ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... man said, "it was so rough and broken that when they began to farm this country the farmers bought in the good land to the edge of it. That's why its boundaries are all gouged and jagged. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... making a pair of shears meet through a duly resisting mass of hair. One delicious grinding snip, and then another and another, and the hinder locks fell heavily on the floor, and Maggie stood cropped in a jagged, uneven manner, but with a sense of clearness and freedom, as if she had emerged from a wood into the ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... these are promptly washed down again whenever it rains; and the same is true of the smoke impurities in the air of our great cities. Air is also constantly being purified by the heat and light of the sunbeams, burned clean in streaks by the jagged bolt of the lightning in summer, and frozen sweet and pure by the frosts every winter. So that air in the open, or connected with the open, and free to move as it will, is always pure and wholesome. But to be ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... Hill, out of the murk ahead there met him a puff of wind, a hot wind that came and so was gone again, but far away beyond the distant horizon to his left, the sombre heaven was split and rent asunder by a jagged lightning flash whose quivering light, for one brief instant, showed him a glimpse of the wide valley below, of the winding road, of field and hedgerow and motionless tree and, beyond, the square tower of a church, very small with distance yet, above whose battlements a tiny weather-vane ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... flooded with gentle light which turned into gold the brown, shaggy Highland cattle scattered among the grass, and made the river as it flashed out and in among the trees a chain of silver, and took the hardness from the jagged rocks that emerged from the sides of the hills. As the sun entered in between high banks of cloud, the light began to fade from the plain, and it touched the river no more; but above the clouds were glowing and reddening like a celestial army clad in scarlet and escorting ...
— Graham of Claverhouse • Ian Maclaren
... the end of January and beginning of February, and the capsules are sliced in February and March with a little instrument like a saw, made of three iron plates with jagged edges, tied together. The cultivation is very carefully conducted, nor are there any very apparent means of improving this branch of commerce and revenue. During the N.W., or dry winds, the best opium is procured, ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... surf of boreal isles, Roar from the hidden, jagged steeps, Where the destroyer never sleeps; Ring through ...
— Poems • Elizabeth Stoddard
... twilight already, with streakings of faded rose in the sky, and faded rose, like long trails of petals, on the distant sea. I clambered down among the myrtle-bushes and came to a little semicircle of yellow sand, between two high and jagged rocks, the place where the sea had deposited Dionea after the wreck. She was seated there on the sand, her bare foot dabbling in the waves; she had twisted a wreath of myrtle and wild roses on her black, crisp hair. Near her was one of our prettiest ...
— Hauntings • Vernon Lee
... with increasing frequency, there would come interruptions, like iron bars striking dark, jagged holes in the tissue of life. From time to time I heard inexplicable noises—the whirring of motors, the skid-skid of tires on invisible streets, the rumble of carts around corners of a world where there were no carts. ...
— The Chamber of Life • Green Peyton Wertenbaker
... have deprived him swelled suddenly in Soames, so that he dreamed dreams opposite South Kensington Station. In the King's Road a man came slithering out of a public house playing a concertina. Soames watched him for a moment dance crazily on the pavement to his own drawling jagged sounds, then crossed over to avoid contact with this piece of drunken foolery. A night in the lock-up! What asses people were! But the man had noticed his movement of avoidance, and streams of genial blasphemy followed him across the street. 'I hope they'll run him in,' thought Soames viciously. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... uncharitable to surmise that one reason why such work (once so universal and now quite out of fashion) is not popular with needlewomen may be, the demand it makes upon the designer's draughtmanship: it is much easier, for example, to draw a stag than to render the creature satisfactorily within jagged lines ...
— Art in Needlework - A Book about Embroidery • Lewis F. Day
... But it made a difference to Hammond himself. When Hardwicke despatched the telegram to his address in town Godfrey lay on the turf at the Lizard Head, gazing southward across the sunlit sea, while the seabirds screamed and the white waves broke on the jagged rocks ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... should know it, because you may be tempted to do the same thing again. The water was deep there, and the brook swollen by the last rains; the current was very strong, and there is a fall just below. But your greatest danger was from the sharp jagged rocks; when I plunged after you I cannot express how alarmed ...
— The Old Stone House • Anne March
... the sea and densely over-spreading the whole sky, there were flying clouds of singular shape,—clouds tossed up into the momentary similitude of Titanesque human figures with threatening arms outstretched,—anon, to the filmly outlines of fabulous birds swooping downwards with jagged wings and ravenous beaks,—or twisting into columns and pyramids of vapour as though the showers of foam flung up by the waves had been caught in mid-air and suddenly frozen. Several sea-gulls were flying inland; two ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... at the richly coloured woods which covered the sides of the surrounding hills, at the purple blooming quaresma, the snake-like cacti, and the gorgeous flowering parasites hanging down even from the jagged and precipitous sides of the Sugar Loaf, and the rich verdure starting forth from every nook and crevice of the fantastically shaped rocks. Scarcely had the anchor been dropped, than the sun set behind the distant mountains, and, as darkness ...
— Villegagnon - A Tale of the Huguenot Persecution • W.H.G. Kingston
... was situated about two miles in front of the issue of the Komayli defile, on elevated rocky ground. To the east and west rose lofty cliffs, and in front extended a wide plain. The scenery was magnificent. Here rose masses of jagged rock, topped with acacia and juniper trees, deep valleys intervened with rushing streams, while heights extended as far as the eye could range over a vast extent of country. Tom fancied that the army was to push on without stopping, but he found that ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... and roots. Sometimes three or four men, with the frenzied eyes and hysterical shrieks and shouts of maniacs, would emerge from a brush hut by a river flat. Sometimes little bands of men and women, in a dazed aimless way, would go wandering about a huge jagged hole in the ground, where their homes and their loved ones lay buried. I came upon solitary refugees high up on the scarred mountain slopes, with nothing but a staff to lean upon and a deer-skin to keep them warm. I saw more than one twisted form lying motionless ...
— Flight Through Tomorrow • Stanton Arthur Coblentz
... in one corner, his arms full of bricks, hammers and jagged objects, labelled "American Notes." The rest of the picture is an immense drawing of a smiling Chesterton, his arms full of roses, labelled "Kind Words for America." He is pointing at Dickens and saying: "America must have changed a great ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... sink-hole in the top of Roark Mountain. This hole is said to be about two hundred feet long, one hundred feet wide and thirty-five feet deep. It is shaped like a great oblong bowl with sloping sides, divided irregularly near the middle, and having the bottom broken out in a jagged way that is very handsome and gives an ample support to the growth of ferns, wild roses, and other vegetation with which it is abundantly decorated. About half of the descent into the basin is accomplished ...
— Cave Regions of the Ozarks and Black Hills • Luella Agnes Owen
... mist before him. Then at last they came to the famous Devil's Cauldron. Here the river seemed to rise almost between cliffs, and the water boiled up on all sides. They rushed down what was practically a cascade, broken here and there by jagged rocks. Mr. Waterman steered the canoe most skillfully and they emerged at last on the smoother reaches below. Once more they turned around and Bob could hardly believe that he had come through such a swirl of waters in ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... there trace—and the pursuit shall profit thee—the steps of the sainted apostle; he who was so signally called forth, to hear witness to the truth of ONE, whom he had erst reviled. Yon cordelier will show you the bay, where his vessel took refuge in its distress; and will tell you, that yon jagged rock first gave its dangerous welcome, to the bark ...
— A Love Story • A Bushman
... to say that a friend of his, an Italian named Giulio Ansaldi, was arriving at the hotel and would meet me in strictest secrecy. I was to leave my bedroom door unlocked at midnight, when he would enter unannounced. Enclosed was half one of Duperre's visiting-cards torn across in a jagged manner. ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... hut many scores of tortoises, and tried out the oil, when, elated with their good success, and to reward themselves for such hard work, they, too hastily, made a catamaran, or Indian raft, much used on the Spanish main, and merrily started on a fishing trip, just without a long reef with many jagged gaps, running parallel with the shore, about half a mile from it. By some bad tide or hap, or natural negligence of joyfulness (for though they could not be heard, yet by their gestures they seemed singing at the time) forced in deep water against that ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... convulsive bombast, of stiff and tortuous exuberance, that the reader in struggling through some of the scenes and speeches feels as though he were compelled to push his way through a cactus hedge: the hot and heavy blossoms of rhetoric blaze and glare out of a thickset fence of jagged barbarisms and exotic monstrosities of metaphor. The straining and sputtering declamation of narrative and oratory scarcely succeeds in expressing through a dozen quaint and far-fetched words or phrases ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... steel-coloured ray that cut the darkness like a sword. I had managed to hoist myself again to the bowsprit, and, straddling it, had time in one glance aft to take in the scene of ruin. Yet in that glance I saw it—the yawning hole, the upheaved jagged deck-planks, the dark bodies hurled to right and left into the scuppers—by three separate lights: by the yellow light of the flames in the rigging, by the steel-grey light of dawn, and by a sudden white-hot flush as the lightning ripped open ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... death of fine scenery and mountains, 'scarped and jagged and rifted,' and all other kinds. I've seen so many grand landscapes, I never want to see another. I want to stay at the Branch or the Springs, and have nice dresses and a hop every night. And you know papa will go to some lonely place, where all my toilettes are ...
— Winter Evening Tales • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... and these riders was another tall tree that cast a jagged shadow athwart the white road, noting which, I kept my gaze on the lady's mount ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... 8 to 10 frs., Europe. Is situated at the junction of the Tavignano with the Restonico, in the midst of majestic mountains of the most varied form. The citadel or chateau, built in the early part of the 15th century, stands on precipitous and jagged rocks rising from the Tavignano, commanding from the top a magnificent view of the wild surrounding scenery. In the "Place" is a statue of Paoli, the Corsican patriot, born at Stretta in 1726, and ...
— Itinerary through Corsica - by its Rail, Carriage & Forest Roads • Charles Bertram Black
... resembled the buildings of a city. There were houses, and churches, and monuments, and spires, and ruins. There were also islands and mountains! Some of the pieces were low and flat, no bigger than a boat; others were tall, with jagged tops; some of the fields, as they are called, were a mile and more in extent, and there were a number of bergs, or ice-mountains, higher than the brig's topmasts. These last were almost white, but they had, in many places, a greenish-blue colour that was ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... up, in which case leap the wall), and find your way the best you can through among old pollarded and ivied ash-trees, intermingled with yews, and over knolly ground, brier-woven, and here and there whitened with the jagged thorn, till you reach, through a slate-stile, a wide gravel walk, shaded by pine-trees, and open on the one side to an orchard. Proceed—and little more than a hundred steps will land you on the front of Rydal-mount, ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... parapet, and I was now better able to examine this way of access, the ramparts of which arose from a prodigious depth; and they were extended along the sharp narrow ridge of the rock down to the very bottom of the valley. It was a long flight of jagged precipitous steps descending from the wolf's den, or rather eagle's nest, down to the ...
— The Man-Wolf and Other Tales • Emile Erckmann and Alexandre Chatrian
... enjoying every beautiful thing in earth, air, or sky, showing me what to sketch and how to sketch it; but vague, uneasy thoughts of him on his feverish couch and among half savage people. The channel of Cattaro lay below us, its jagged shores, studded with pretty villages; on all sides were craggy grey peaks, rising one behind the other, a sky of hazy blue arching over all. My guide Giuro was full of apologies for the roughness of the track we rode upon, telling me the old Montenegrin ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... almost unbroken curve. When for example the muscle attains its maximum contraction (corresponding to the frequency and strength of stimuli) it is thrown into a state of complete tetanus, in which it appears to be held rigid. If the rapidity be not sufficient for this, we have the jagged curve of incomplete tetanus. If there is not much fatigue, the upper part of the tetanic curve is approximately horizontal, but in cases where fatigue sets in quickly, the fact is shown by the rapid decline of the curve. ...
— Response in the Living and Non-Living • Jagadis Chunder Bose
... a judge of faces; persons accustomed for many years to command men usually are. He noted Walter Goddard's narrow jaw and pointed chin, his eyes set near together, his wicked lips, parted and revealing sharp jagged teeth, his ill-shaped ears and shallow temples, his flat low forehead, shown off by his cropped hair. And yet this man had once been called handsome, he had been admired and courted. But then his hair had hidden the shape of his head, his long ...
— A Tale of a Lonely Parish • F. Marion Crawford
... be aimed for the shore, and to be rushing, head on, upon the beach; her broad sail was blown straight out over her bow, and flapped there like a banner, while the heavy boom hammered the water as she rose and fell. A jagged line of red seamed the breast of the dark wall behind; a rending crash came, and as if fired upon, the boat flung up her sail, as a wild fowl flings up its wing when shot, and lay tossing keel up, on the top of the waves. It all looked ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... hurrying through the inextricable maze, still descending, still running through the substance of the earth's thick crust, a struggling denizen of geological 'faults,' crying, shouting, yelling, soon bruised by contact with the jagged rock, falling and rising again bleeding, trying to drink the blood which covered my face, and even waiting for some rock to shatter ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... Jasper made the girl out with his long glass. What does he do? Instead of standing on for another mile and a half along the shoals and then tacking for the anchorage in a proper and seamanlike manner, he spies a gap between two disgusting old jagged reefs, puts the helm down suddenly, and shoots the brig through, with all her sails shaking and rattling, so that we could hear the racket on the verandah. I drew my breath through my teeth, I can tell you, and Freya swore. Yes! She clenched her capable fists and stamped with her pretty brown boot ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... always wear the look of age, from their deep lines and jagged and angular character, while the really old mountains wear the look of youth from their comparative smoothness, their unwrinkled appearance, their long, flowing lines. Time has taken the ...
— Under the Maples • John Burroughs
... you spoke of. Roughly pyramidal in shape and hollowed out, I perceive. As you say, there appear to be grains of sawdust in it. Dear me, this is very interesting. And the cut—a positive tear, I see. It began with a thin scratch and ended in a jagged hole. I am much indebted to you for directing my attention to this case, Mr. Soames. Where does ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the Judge, taking away the handkerchief, and showing a jagged, red line on his forehead. "No! he struck me. I don't want any one to help me, or ...
— Elder Conklin and Other Stories • Frank Harris
... reports continued. One corner of the ledge over their heads split off, sending a volley of stones showering over them, leaving the faces of some of the party flecked with blood where the jagged particles had ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Grand Canyon - The Mystery of Bright Angel Gulch • Frank Gee Patchin
... the morning at the east end of Candia, and had a glorious scramble over the mountains, which seem built of adamant. Time has worn away the softer portions of the rock, only leaving sharp, jagged edges of steel; sea eagles soaring above our heads—old tanks, ruins, and desolation at our feet. The ancient Arsinoe stood here: a few blocks of marble with the cross attest the presence of Venetian Christians; but now—the desolation of desolations. ...
— Heroes of the Telegraph • J. Munro
... repeated them instinctively each time that all the horror of his position came over him in sudden flashes,—as in those dangerous mountain storms, when a sharp flash of lightning illumines the abyss to the very bottom, with the jagged projections of the walls and the clumps of bushes scattered here and there to supply the rents and bruises of ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... by walking, and best of all by sitting still. But it is a good method in any enterprise that involves a parody of the military or governmental quality—anything which needs to know quickly the whole contour of a county or the rough, relative position of men and towns. On such a journey, like jagged lightning, I sat from morning till night by the side of the chauffeur; and we scarcely exchanged a word to the hour. But by the time the yellow stars came out in the villages and the white stars in the skies, I think I understood his character; ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... musical church, had dared obey the promptings of his own blood and set down chords, melodies, rhythms, just as they sang in his skull, though all the world rise up to damn him. But the penning of music as jagged, cubical, barbarous as the prelude to the third act of Strawinsky's little opera, "The Nightingale," or as naked, uncouth, rectangular, rocklike, polyharmonic, headlong, as some of that of "Le Sacre du printemps" required ...
— Musical Portraits - Interpretations of Twenty Modern Composers • Paul Rosenfeld
... executing their final and most superb slide, heard or cared not. They came flying along the pond,—when all at once there was a shriek of horror, and Jack—who was not able to stop himself—finished the slide alone. Blanche had disappeared. Near the south end of the great pond was a round jagged hole in the ice, showing ...
— Clare Avery - A Story of the Spanish Armada • Emily Sarah Holt
... for him by his friend V.V., of the reformatory passions and the pen of a ready writer. And, the whole subject having been discussed several times in an indecisive sort of way, O'Neill one night whacked out a jagged argument. ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... longer as we saw them from the Kansas plains, dim in the western distance, unapproachable, but close at hand, neighborly, sheltering, for we nestle under their very shoulders. Here, to the west, just behind us, no great day's walk away and seemingly far nearer, in jagged outline against the blue of heaven, are the guardians of the old transcontinental pass. Here, to the west, where you see the rugged spurs jutting out from the range, runs the old trail which the engineers have followed, and carried the Union Pacific to its greatest altitude between ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... the wonderful show vividly displayed in the lonely darkness, the ground-fire advancing in long crooked lines gently grazing and smoking on the close-pressed leaves, springing up in thousands of little jets of pure flame on dry tassels and twigs, and tall spires and flat sheets with jagged flapping edges dancing here and there on grass tufts and bushes, big bonfires blazing in perfect storms of energy where heavy branches mixed with small ones lay smashed together in hundred cord piles, big red arches between spreading root-swells and trees growing ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... historical events of any sort are the jagged instruments with which Fate rough-hews our lives, leaving us to shape them as we will. In other days, no doubt, men rough-hewed, while Fate shaped. But as civilization advances men will wax so tender, so careful of the individual, that they ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... Mr. Wilding lost the delicate, precarious balance he had been sustaining on the edge of the ditch, and went over backwards, at the imminent risk—as he afterwards related—of breaking his neck. At the same instant a jagged, eight-pointed line of flame slashed the darkness, and the thunder of the volley pealed forth to lose itself in the greater din of battle ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... of some 6000 ft. Pop. (1901) 6971. The scenery of Dharmsala is of peculiar grandeur. The spur on which it stands is thickly wooded with oak and other trees; behind it the pine-clad slopes of the mountain tower towards the jagged peaks of the higher range, snow-clad for half the year; while below stretches the luxuriant cultivation of the Kangra valley. In 1855 Dharmsala was made the headquarters of the Kangra district of the Punjab in place of Kangra, and became ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various
... leading to the capture of Andre, by this one action saving, possibly, the collapse of the War for Independence. From a further spur of the same hill comes into view the broad expanse of Haverstraw Bay with its background of jagged hills known as Clove Mountain and High Tor, under whose shadow Arnold and Andre met. Elson's concise and graphic description of this event is worth quoting as it stands: "On a dark night in September, 1780, ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... bare, rugged, mountainous land was a solemn, chilly grey colour. The water was smooth and dark beneath the hills, but nearer the ship it was touched by the clear pale light of the rising sun. The hills rose jagged and sharp against the sky without a scrap of verdure on them; but the kindly atmosphere turned those in the distance to a soft and tender blue. It smoothed away the rugged lines and effaced the cruel-looking scars that seamed their sides, and covered them with a misty peace. It seemed ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... crest of a hill. Cocks crowed behind stucco walls. The road dropped from their feet through an avenue of pollarded poplars ghostly with frost. Far away into the brown west stretched reach upon reach of lake-like glimmer; here and there a few trees pushed jagged arms out of drowned lands. They ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... nature of the country rather increased than diminished, and, looking right and left, in front and rear, the jagged peaks were forever visible, the distances varying, but the number greater and greater. At times it seemed as if the ravine were about to terminate suddenly against the solid wall of the mountain, but, as they rode forward, the open way was there, albeit the angle was sharp, ...
— In the Pecos Country • Edward Sylvester Ellis (AKA Lieutenant R.H. Jayne)
... battle-axe; But myriads following undismayed Their valour in the fight displayed. Unnumbered Vanars rent and torn With shaft and spear to earth were borne. But crushed by branchy trees and blocks Of jagged stone and shivered rocks Which the wild Vanars wielded well The bravest of the giants fell. Their trampled banners strewed the fields, And broken swords and spears and shields; And, crushed by blows which none might stay, Cars, elephants, ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... forest makes it so. The shadows are mellow, like the colors in an old picture—greenish amber light and a blue-gray sky. Far ahead of us we could see the red rim rock of a mountain above timber line. The first rays of the sun turned the jagged peaks into golden points of a crown. In Oklahoma, at that hour of the day, the woods would be alive with song-birds, even at this season; but here there are no song-birds, and only the snapping of twigs, as our horses climbed the frosty trail, broke the silence. ...
— Letters on an Elk Hunt • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... to ye!" cried he, apostrophizing the off-horse, a tall, raw-boned beast, with a Roman nose, a dipped back, and a tail ragged and jagged like a hand-saw,—"bad luck to ye! there never was a ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... alone, agree in praising glaring realism as a virtue. Rather, some of them say, the value of their reflection lies in its misty indistinctness. Life may be sordid and ugly at first hand, but let the artist's reflection only be remote enough, and the jagged edges and dissonances of color which mar daily living will be lost in the purple haze of distance. Gazing at such a reflection, men may perhaps forget, for a space, how dreary a thing existence ...
— The Poet's Poet • Elizabeth Atkins
... or sandy surface, reddened here and there by ferruginous streamlets, and covered with weedy-looking brushwood which is quite at variance with the sloping gardens of the sunny south of France. Is the scenery Dolomitic? In a sense it is. The summits of the mountains are often very jagged, Rosszaehne or horses' teeth, as they are called, but they are dark grey and not white or yellow as the Dolomites. The trees are the same as in other alpine lands, firs, pines, larch, and birch growing thickly to a height of about 5,000 or ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... rocky base we formed in serried lines, While lightning with its jagged edge played on us from the pines; The mission ours to storm the pits 'neath Lookout's crest that lay; We stormed the very "gates of hell" with "Fighting ...
— Twilight Stories • Various
... Number one gun, fire!" The shot boomed across the sunny, blue expanse of water, driving a white puff of smoke before it. The shell disappeared in the waves about one hundred yards ahead of the Japanese steamer. The next shot struck the ship, leaving in her side a black hole with jagged edges just ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... three days for our refreshed caravan to reach the dry and precipitous bed of the Sanghu, which I found impossible to pass with my horse, in consequence of jagged rocks and immense boulders that covered its channel. But the men were resolved that my convenient animal should not be left behind. Accordingly, all hands went to work with alacrity on the trees, and in a day, they bridged the ravine with logs bound together by ropes made ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... and covered chiefly by gardens; but in one spot was a piece of rough ground jagged with great stones, which had never been cultivated since a landslip had ruined some houses there towards the end of the thirteenth century. Just above the edge of this broken ground stood a queer little square building, looking like a truncated tower roofed in ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... the rapidity of the current the river has many rapids and water-falls with jagged projecting rocks which make boating extremely hazardous. All these perils were conjectured but unknown to Major Powell's party, and every new bend of the river was liable to disclose a cataract more dangerous than any encountered ...
— Wealth of the World's Waste Places and Oceania • Jewett Castello Gilson
... the Himalaya. For it possesses two unmistakable characteristics which distinguish it from any cloud. Firstly, the lower edge is absolutely straight and horizontal: it is exactly parallel with the horizon. Secondly, the upper edge is jagged, and the outline of the jaggedness cuts clean and perfectly defined against the intense blue of ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... for one to picture the Tahoe basin at this time. There may have been water in it, or there may not. All the great mountain peaks, most of them, perhaps, much higher by several thousands of feet than at present, were rude, rough, jagged masses, fresh from the factory of God. There was not a tree, not a shrub, not a flower, not a blade of grass. No bird sang its cheering song, or delighted the eye with its gorgeous plumage; not even a frog croaked, ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... was quite clear now, and more space seemed necessary. The void filled in with flecks and streamers that floated above, some vague as mist, others with visibly jagged edges. They fell softly amid an utter silence, like snowy gauze, but fell on all sides together, so that below them suffocation set in swiftly; it took away the breath to see ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... a Soul," but the sense of being in a large vat filled with boiling human flesh into whose depths we were pressed ever more and more deeply was at last too much for us, and we stumbled our way into the open air. The black shadow of the barge, the jagged outline of the huddled buildings against the sky, the black tower at the end of the canal, all these swam in the ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... the thought of the first place that I have quoted: "the streets were more than a mere assemblage of houses," The puzzle is solved; the jig-saw—I think they call it—has been successfully fitted together, There in a box lay all the jagged, irregular pieces, each in itself crazy and meaningless and irritating by its very lack of meaning: now we see each part adapted to the other and the whole is one ...
— The Ghost Ship • Richard Middleton
... in normal size, with the wrecked dome-laboratory around us. The dome had a great jagged hole halfway up one of its sides, through which the snow was falling. The broken bodies ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... in two, the end draws back, and nine times in ten, if the artery is a small one, the drawing back shuts the end up entirely and the blood stops. But it is better to tear it than to cut it, because when torn the edges are jagged and it shrivels up more. I don't quite understand why, myself, but that is what the surgical books say. When anybody is hurt and bleeding badly, the first thing to do is to find out whether it is an artery or a vein that's cut. If the blood ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... more decrepit than the chestnut. It had been an elm once. For four centuries it had defied the elements, towering full fifty feet in rugged, imperial grandeur. The elements had outstayed it. All that remained was a caverned stump, whose jagged summit pointed, like an accusing finger, to ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... the lace, and just as he did so, a jagged piece of rock came whizzing past where his head had been a second before and crashed against ...
— Baseball Joe Around the World - Pitching on a Grand Tour • Lester Chadwick
... Nature goes with him; and whether he tarry among the Lagoons, where all seems Art or Death, or in the shadow and desolation of the Campagna, in the unclean villages of the Alban Hills, or where the shadows of deserted palaces fall black, broken, and jagged on the red earth of Granada, there she companions him. She shows him, that, after all, Venice is hers, and gives him the white marble enriched with subtilest films of gold, alabaster which the processes of her incessant years have changed to Oriental amber, a city made opalescent ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... like an old-fashioned full-rigger with all sails set, his black shadow, Jeff Poindexter, had already finished the job of putting the quarters to rights for the day. The cedar water bucket had been properly replenished; the jagged flange of a fifteen-cent chunk of ice protruded above the rim of the bucket; and alongside, on the appointed nail, hung the gourd dipper that the master always used. The floor had been swept, except, of course, in the corners and ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... over his collar, and the other with his head dragged forward by a bit of a broken bridle, held at arm's length by a man dressed like a mad beggar, in half a hat and half a wig, both awry in opposite directions; a long tattered great-coat, tied round his waist by a hay-rope; the jagged rents in the skirts of his coat showing his bare legs marbled of many colours; while something like stockings hung loose about his ankles. The noises he made by way of threatening or encouraging his steeds, I pretend not ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... new sorrow is a many-cornered thing; having its sharp points that sting, and its jagged points that wound; with others so dull and heavy and immoveable that one is ready to wish they could pierce through and make an end. And it is quite impossible to tell beforehand on which of them we may happen ...
— Wych Hazel • Susan and Anna Warner |
