"Pitch-black" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... only tell you what I've heard; but the essentials are true. Well, we got that farmhouse. We got it single-handed. Boyce put up the most amazing bluff that has ever happened in this war. He crawls out by himself, without anybody knowing—it was a pitch-black night—gets through the barbed wire, heaven knows how, up to the house; lays a sentry out with his life-preserver; gives a few commands to an imaginary company; and summons the occupants—two officers and fifteen men—to surrender. ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... runs up. She hid in the garret, baffled discovery, and waited till night came. Then, gliding down-stairs, she tried each screen-door in turn, till she found one unlatched, and escaped into the black August night. Pitch-black to man's eyes, it was simply gray to her, and she glided through the disgusting shrubbery and flower-beds, took a final nip at that one little bush that had been an attractive spot in the garden, and boldly took her back ...
— Animal Heroes • Ernest Thompson Seton
... in a pitch-black place, which might have been almost anything but the sheepfold Major Marchand told Ruth it was. He produced an officer's trench whistle and blew a long and peculiar blast ...
— Ruth Fielding at the War Front - or, The Hunt for the Lost Soldier • Alice B. Emerson
... out, and peeped after them. "Come away," said Sleep, and snatched me up to the top of the highest turret of the palace. Thence I could see the prisoners proceeding to their eternal perdition. Presently a whirlwind arose, and dispersed the pitch-black cloud, which was spread universally over the face of the land of Oblivion, and by the light of a thousand candles, which were burning with a blue flame, at a particular place, I obtained a far distant view of the verge of the Bottomless ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... through that pitch-black forest, and finding somebody to bring the gasolene back for me was about the weariest job I ever tackled. I couldn't imagine why it wasn't daylight when we finally got to the place where I had left the motor. It seemed to me as if I had been gone twelve hours when I finally caught sight ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... billow! Out, away my dragon good, Bathe again thy pitch-black bosom in the briny boiling flood; Wave in clouds thine inky pinions, let the sea a path prepare, Fly as far as star can guide us, far as conquered ...
— Fridthjof's Saga • Esaias Tegner
... was an immediate reaction. The scene with Tick-Tock and the door vanished; and Telzey felt she was standing in a pitch-black room, knowing that if she moved even one step forwards, something that was waiting there silently would reach out ...
— Novice • James H. Schmitz
... apparently solid. Suddenly he put out his foot and stepped upon nothing but air. He tried to draw back, but it was too late, and with a cry that could not be suppressed he went down into pitch-black space. He struck on some sharp rocks, and then his ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... heads of an enormous multitude stretching out to meet and follow it, amidst long avenues of columns and statues gleaming white, of standards rainbow-colored, of golden eagles, of pale funereal urns, of discharging odors amidst huge volumes of pitch-black smoke, ...
— The Second Funeral of Napoleon • William Makepeace Thackeray (AKA "Michael Angelo Titmarch")
... his house; sometimes telling himself sternly that there was but one course open to him, and then, suddenly overcome by his love for her, crying out bitterly that he would never, never give her up. The pitch-black night seemed interminable to him, but dawn came at last, deep blue behind the frost-ferns on the window, slowly fading to pale azure, then suddenly changing to rosiest pink as the sun rolled up ...
— The Second Chance • Nellie L. McClung
... lactified. Was it an effect of the moon's rays? No, because the new moon was barely two days old and was still lost below the horizon in the sun's rays. The entire sky, although lit up by stellar radiation, seemed pitch-black in comparison with ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... distant place. Vague memories of books he had read when a boy came back to him as he ran through the unkempt wilds of the Regent's Park. He saw himself a stowaway hidden in a hold, alone with rats and ships' biscuits. He saw himself working his way out before the mast, sent aloft in hurricanes on pitch-black nights, or turning the wheel the wrong way round and bringing the ship to wreck upon iron-bound coasts swarming with sharks and savages. The lions roared again, and the black panthers snarled behind their prison bars. He thought of the peaceful waters of the river Mouse, of the library ...
— The Prophet of Berkeley Square • Robert Hichens
... and the gags all removed. But the liberty of hands and feet and tongues, though it left them free to express their rage, still left them as far as ever from the banquet which, as they soon suspected, was disappearing rapidly under the teeth of the Lakerimmers. They groped around in the pitch-black darkness, and finally one of the men in the cupola found a little round window through which he could put his head and yell for help. His cry was soon answered by another that seemed to come faintly from the depths ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... us to guess how the troops were disposed or where the outposts lay. We made our escape through the little garden, and, blundering along the woodland path behind it, came at length to a thicket of brambles over which hung the scarp of the quarry with a fringe of trees above it pitch-black against the foggy moonlight. Here on the soaked ground I found a clear space and a tumbled stone or two, on which we crouched together, sleepless ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... while standing under a piece of sailcloth, spread from the rail to the top of the round-house—rigged up by the carpenter as a sun screen, while doing some work during the heat of the day, and so left. The sky being now starless and pitch-black, with this additional obstruction to light, Harry Blew stands in obscurity impenetrable to the eye. A man passing, so close as almost to touch, could ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... against a pair of —— that Longfellow would never have apostrophised the welcome, the thrice-prayed-for, the most fair, the best-beloved Night, if he had known what it was to work his passage through pitch-black purgatory, in a state of paradise—nudity, with the incongruity of the association pressing on his mind. Ignorance again; but such ...
— Such is Life • Joseph Furphy
... me the notion of the feeblest creature that ever breathed. His voice was thin like the buzzing of a mosquito. As it would have been cruel to demand assistance from such a shadowy wreck I went to work myself, dragging my chest along a pitch-black passage under the poop deck, while he sighed and moaned around me as if my exertions were more than his weakness could stand. At last as I banged pretty heavily against the bulkheads he warned me in his faint breathless wheeze to be ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... was broken. First it was a fox which came and barked at my ear and woke me to a pitch-black night, with scarcely a star showing. The next time it was nothing but a wandering hill-wind, but as I sat up and listened I thought I saw a spark of light near the edge of the sea. It was only for a second, but it disquieted me. I got out and climbed on the top of the rock, but ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... was so huge that no horse could carry him, and he wore a whole wagon-load of weapons. His armor was pitch-black except his shield, which was blood-red and had a white owl painted upon it. He was a fearsome sight to look upon, and as he strode along shaking his spear every one ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... minute the grizzly stood with his head and shoulders in the cavern door. Then he entered. Muskwa followed. Deep back they went through a pitch-black gloom, and it grew warmer and warmer, and the wailing of the wind died away until it ...
— The Grizzly King • James Oliver Curwood
... to know that on Monday when he went into the forge he found the Lad already at work, and if he had been pitch-black at their parting he was no less so at their meeting. He appeared to be out of humor, and for some time regarded his apprentice with dissatisfaction, but only remarked ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... his work, and how much his wages would be, the witch bade him follow her, and led the way through a narrow damp passage into a vault, which served as a stable. Here he perceived two pitch-black horses in ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... a few minutes later and with much more immediacy, from the escape hatch, made no sense—seemed simply to have no meaning. The pressure meters said there was a vacuum outside the Queen's skin. That vacuum was dark, even pitch-black but here and there came momentary suggestions of vague light and color. Occasional pinpricks of brightness showed and were gone. And there had been one startling phenomenon like a distant, giant explosion, ...
— The Winds of Time • James H. Schmitz
... the bright glancing eyes. The sweet breath touched his cheek. The candlestick was taken from him by a swift, deft movement. He heard it knock the wainscoting as it was set down. He went out into a pitch-black corridor, where a soft hand seized his own and led him—by a back door, it seemed—out into the open air of the ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Edward J. O'Brien and John Cournos, editors
... to grow dark; in the castle windows the lights began to show. Then came trouble! Slower, and slower, went the gray donkey; slower, and slower, till, in the very middle of a pitch-black wood, he stopped and stood still. Not a step would he budge for all the coaxing and scolding and beating his rider could give. At last the rider kicked him, as well as beat him, and at that the donkey felt that he had had enough. Up went his hind heels, and down went his head, ...
— Stories to Tell to Children • Sara Cone Bryant
... unctuous rind Hid thief-like first, now grips the tough tree-bole, And mounting to the leaves on high, sends forth A roar to heaven, then coursing through the boughs And airy summits reigns victoriously, Wraps all the grove in robes of fire, and gross With pitch-black vapour heaves the murky reek Skyward, but chiefly if a storm has swooped Down on the forest, and a driving wind Rolls up the conflagration. When 'tis so, Their root-force fails them, nor, when lopped away, Can they recover, and from the earth beneath Spring to like ...
— The Georgics • Virgil
... whimpered once more.... I tried to clutch at my companions, but already we were all crushed, buried, drowned, swept away by that pitch-black, icy, thundering ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... the storming of the Temple, but they were in the minority. All along, the crowd had been more inclined for private revenge than for martial deeds of valour; the Bastille had been taken by daylight; the effort might not have been so successful on a pitch-black night such as this, when one could not see one's hand before one's eyes, and the drizzling rain went ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... for her three dead. They had no families. She held a taper in her hand and read a service over them. One bastion and so many men being disabled, a sentinel was posted in the turret after the gunners descended. The Swiss took this duty on himself, and felt his way up the pitch-black stairs. He had not seen Marguerite in the hall when he hurriedly took food, but she was safe in the tower. No woman ventured out in the storm of shot. The barracks were charred ...
— The Lady of Fort St. John • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... safely after all. The house he found empty. A profound silence encompassed him all the time, except once, just as he got down the ladder with Tony in his arms, when a faint groan reached his ears. It seemed to come from the pitch-black space between the posts on which the house was built, but he did ...
— Within the Tides • Joseph Conrad
... he was he got it, and that evening the lessons began. Going back to their billet, they had to cross a field. It was a pitch-black night, and before they had proceeded twenty yards Reggie could hardly see his hand in ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... slowly about, glancing every now and then down the road. The others stood about, talking in low tones. The storm seemed to have been blown aside, as the rumble of thunder no longer reached the ears of the waiting men. Still the moon was covered with clouds, making the night almost pitch-black. A soft glow from the low-turned lamp within the ranch house ...
— The Boy Ranchers on Roaring River - or Diamond X and the Chinese Smugglers • Willard F. Baker
... a rainy and pitch-black night, Gaspard Roussillon came home. He tapped on the door again and again. Alice heard, but she hesitated to speak or move. Was she growing cowardly? Her heart beat like a drum. There was but one person in all the world that she could think of—it was not M. Roussillon. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... so good; but then the spring came, and it was so warm that it was really pleasant to live in rooms with a northern aspect. His bedroom joined the sitting-room; he always kept his bedroom in pitch-black darkness by letting down the Venetian blinds; there were no Venetian blinds in the sitting-room, because ...
— In Midsummer Days and Other Tales • August Strindberg
... well up. This increased the speed of the schooner quite as much as I thought desirable, more, indeed, than was at all prudent; for, let me tell you, it is risky work to be flying along before a gale of wind at a speed of fully nine knots an hour on a pitch-black night, with a suspicion, amounting almost to absolute certainty, that there is another vessel directly ahead, and close aboard of you for aught that you can tell to the contrary. And, indeed, we soon ...
— The Log of a Privateersman • Harry Collingwood
... was he at first nothing but an incandescent mist? Had he already lived in the heart of the porphyries? Had he, incombustible, escaped from their boiling lava, in order to inhabit each in turn the cell of granite and of the alga before he dared show his nose to the world? Did he owe his pitch-black eyes to the molten jet, his fur to the clayey ooze, his soft ears to the sea-wrack, his ardent blood to the ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... brighter light; and if it is ever so dark, be it red or blue as strong as may be, let an inch or two of its outline tell out against a still stronger dark in the background, if you have to paint it pitch-black to do so. ...
— Stained Glass Work - A text-book for students and workers in glass • C. W. Whall
... It was pitch-black outside, with the moon not yet up. The bloomy, peaceful dark out there! Wistaria and early roses, clustering in, had but the ghost of color on their blossoms. Nedda took a rose in her fingers, feeling with delight its soft fragility, its coolness against ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... of the ancient pines, which bowed their dark heads to and fro unbidden. Arrived at the verge, he had looked down into an abyss whose depths his eye could never plumb. Jagged reefs of rock stood high in shape of human limbs and terribly distorted faces. Beside them heaps of pitch-black stones in form of giant toads and lizards; they moved and crept and rolled in heavy ragged masses; but under them the ground could no more be distinguished. From thence foul vapors rose incessantly and spread a pestilential stench ...
— A Book of Operas - Their Histories, Their Plots, and Their Music • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... come to my knee! Hark, how the rain is pouring Over the roof, in the pitch-black night, And the ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 1 (of 4) • Various
... crepe-like fog outside was utter gloom within. The corridor was pitch-black, the stair, as he climbed to his room, was like a wolf's throat, as the saying goes; but as he felt his way up, a door somewhere above him suddenly opened and shut, lending for a moment a gleam of reflected light to his ...
— Doom Castle • Neil Munro
... an open boat. Out of the pitch-black heaven there rushed a mighty wind, and the pitch-black seas above me rose high, and ever higher, flecked with hissing white; wherefore I cast me face downwards in my little boat, that I might not behold the horror of the waters; and ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... had been a longer one I should have trodden on him. With his legs thrust forward and his hands pressed on the floor, he was making an effort to raise his handsome face, which was deathly pale against his pitch-black beard. In the big eyes which he lifted upon me, I read unutterable terror, pain, and entreaty. A cold sweat trickled in big drops down his face. That sweat, the expression of his face, the trembling of the hands he leaned upon, his hard ...
— Love and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... autumnal rains of bygone seasons had streamed upon it no doubt, with the result that all the rest of the saloon was several inches deep in the same sort of covering. There were naturally no stores in the pitch-black lazareet which one reached through a trap-door in the saloon deck; but among the lumber there we found an old bucket, a number of empty tins, packing-cases, and the like, a coal shovel with a broken handle, and two tanks in which ship's biscuits ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... avoid the Japanese cruisers. All had gone well, and we were fast approaching the entrance to the Gulf of Pechili, when we encountered one of those tempests which are only to be met with in the Eastern seas—pitch-black darkness, rain in one sheeted flood, like a second Deluge, blinding flashes of forked lightning more terrific than the gloom, and an almost uninterrupted crash of thunder amidst which the uproar of a pitched field would be inaudible. With our enormous steam-power we held our own ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... with his blazing eyes of wrath and the stick concealed somewhere behind his coat-tails, his most familiar aspect to Patsy, was better than this solitude, with that old Echo across the bog there cackling in that unchancy way. Soon, very soon, the lower road, overhung with trees, pitch-black, where one had to pass by old Hercules' tomb, just above the fall of the river over its weir, would swallow Mr. Terence, while Sir Shawn's way would wind upwards towards the mountains. Unless indeed Sir Shawn was to go home to Inch with Mr. Terence, seeing he was riding Spitfire and so ...
— Love of Brothers • Katharine Tynan
... Whose pitch-black hull roll'd darkly on the wave, No gayer than one single stripe of blue Could make her swarthy sides. She seem'd a slave, A negro among boats—that only knew Hardship and rugged toil—no pennons brave Flaunted upon the mast—but oft a few Dark dripping jackets flutter'd ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... heels sharply and determinedly, savagely trampling the ferns beneath his feet, and strode forward into the pitch-black mirk. ...
— Drolls From Shadowland • J. H. Pearce
... and youthful of the Centaurs was Cyllarus. His long hair and beard were golden; his smile was friendly; his neck, shoulders, hands and breast were as beautiful as if formed by an artist. Even the lower part of his body, the part which resembled a horse, was faultless, pitch-black in color, with legs and tail of lighter dye. He had come to the feast with his wife, the beautiful Centaur, Hylonome, who at the table had leaned gracefully against him and even now united with him in the raging fight. ...
— Famous Tales of Fact and Fancy - Myths and Legends of the Nations of the World Retold for Boys and Girls • Various |
