"Pitch-dark" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... astonished. I had seen George drop a pack in the bush, where everything for miles around looked alike to me, and without marking the spot or apparently taking note of any guiding signs, he would go directly to it again. I was with him one pitch-dark night when he left a pack among alders and willows in the depth of a marsh, and in the morning he went back two miles straight to the very spot. How a man that could do this could get lost was beyond my understanding. ...
— The Lure of the Labrador Wild • Dillon Wallace
... out the staples that held the lock, and the big barn door swung slowly open. The interior of the stable was pitch-dark, of course. As we made a movement to enter, a sudden scrambling, and the sound of heavy bodies leaping in all directions, caused us ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... caravansary was hardly settled at the Olm when the air became intensely hot and oppressive. Day by day black thunder-clouds gathered on the horizon. They crested the mountains in three directions, at times appearing to repel each other, at others marching fiercely on to conflict, when, the zenith becoming pitch-dark, they flung out long spears of lightning and exploded in overwhelming thunder. Very terrible were these perpetual storms. With the first peal the church-bells along the valley began solemnly to toll. It mattered not whether by night or day, the faithful bellringer was ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - Vol. XI, No. 27, June, 1873 • Various
... my chamber to secure a few hours' rest, I went out into the dimly lighted street, and, striking a smart pace, arrived in a few moments at the house of my old friend, Peter Van Schaick, now Colonel in command of the garrison. The house was pitch-dark, and it was only after repeated rapping that the racket of the big bronze knocker aroused an ancient negro servant, who poked his woolly pate from the barred side-lights and informed me, in a quavering voice, that ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... did the honours of the castle, showing them mouldy chapels, sepulchral halls, rickety stairs, grubby cells, and pitch-dark passages, till even the romantic Matilda was glad to see the light of day, and repose in the pleasant gardens while removing the cobwebs from her countenance and ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... the lanes, and got to Kingswear by half-past eleven. The horse-ferry had stopped running, and we had a job to find any one to put us over. We hired the fellow to wait for us, and took a carriage at the 'Castle.' Before we got to Black Mill it was nearly one, pitch-dark. With the breeze from the southeast, I made out he should have been in an hour or more. The old man had never spoken to me once: and before we got there I had begun to hope we shouldn't find the fellow after all. We made the driver pull up in the road, and walked round and ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... southern exposure, where light and air are needed. They may be fitted with boxings, into which they are folded, or arranged to slide into the wall. I like the old-fashioned boxing, window-seat and all, also the ancient close-panelled shutters. True they make a room pitch-dark when closed, and it is doubtless wisest to have some of their central folds made with movable slats, but they give a charming sense of security and seclusion when the wintry blasts roar around our castle. On the other hand, the ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... pitch-dark before seven, and it was after ten when the dear wanderers staggered into camp out of the dripping forest. Stickeen did not bounce in ahead with a bark, as was his custom, but crept silently to his piece of blanket and curled down, ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... whisky-house with the carman—reappeared before Lord Colambre could accomplish getting out, remounted his seat, and, taking the reins, 'I thank your honour,' said he; 'and I'll bring you into Clonbrony before it's pitch-dark yet, though it's nightfall, and that's four good miles, but "a spur in the head is ...
— The Absentee • Maria Edgeworth
... effect of lightning oh a pitch-dark night—the same vivid and lurid illumination of things unperceived before. It must be like the revelation of death, I should think, without, thank God, that fearful sense of the irrevocable which death must bring with it. ...
— Cecilia de Noel • Lanoe Falconer
... It is pitch-dark when I am called, and still dark when we make a start by the light of lanterns. After a little a curious sound is heard across the plain. The clang becomes louder, coming nearer to us, and tall, dark ghosts pass by with silent steps. Only bells are heard. The ghosts are camels coming ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... farm proper lay a number of large and small outbuildings —the calves' stable, the pigsties, the tool-shed, the cart-shed and a smithy that was no longer used. They were all like so many mysteries, with trap-doors that led down to pitch-dark, underground beet and potato cellars, from which, of course, you could get by secret passages to the strangest places underground, and other trap-doors that led up to dark lofts, where the most wonderful treasures were preserved in the form of ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... to me—pitch-dark. I returned to the smoking-room, lighted a cigar, sat fumbling at the new situation. I was in no worse plight than before—what did it matter who was attacking me? In the circumstances, a novice could ...
— The Deluge • David Graham Phillips
... on the third floor," said he. "Come on up," and he led the way up the somewhat narrow stairs. It was pitch-dark, and Nat kept close behind, so as not to run ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... "beating the Prussian march, they," sharply on all their drums,—Prussian march, rat-tat-tan, sharply through the gloom of Chaos in that manner; and join themselves, with no mistake made, to Mollendorf's, to Ziethen's left and the saddle-flap there, and fall on. The night is pitch-dark, says Archenholtz; you cannot see your hand before you. Old Hulsen's bridle-horses were all shot away, when he heard this alarm, far off: no horse left; and he is old, and has his own bruises. He seated himself on a cannon; ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... It was a pitch-dark night; nothing broke the blackness save the scattered points of light from the sentries' lanterns. Stepping to the side of the half-garroted Maratha, who was leaning passively against the shed, the sinewy hand of the Gujarati still pressing ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... call a "snow-blind day." On these days the sky is covered with a white, even pall of cloud, and cloud and plateau seem as one. One walks into a deep trench or a sastruga two feet high without noticing it. The world seems one huge, white void, and the only difference between it and the pitch-dark night is that the one is white and ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... could not have seen farther than about two, or at most three, lengths from the ship. As it was, with the outfly of the hurricane that weird, unnatural, ruddy light of which I have spoken almost immediately died out from the sky, leaving the night as pitch-dark as before, save for the ghostly gleam of phosphorescent light which arose from the storm-swept ocean, and which gave the water, as far as it could be seen, the appearance as if moonlight were shining up ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... of Miners—an historical fact which inimical capitalists later endeavored to make use of from time to time to do him harm. How I loved to listen by the hour to the stories of those grilling days—up at four in the pitch-dark and snow, to crawl to his job, with the blessing of a dear old Scotch landlady and a "pastie"! He would tell our sons of tamping in the sticks of dynamite, till their eyes bulged. The hundreds of times these last six months I've wished I had in writing the stories of ...
— An American Idyll - The Life of Carleton H. Parker • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... soon as I can find my way to the knob. It's so pitch-dark in here that I'm as blind as an owl till I get used ...
— Other People's Business - The Romantic Career of the Practical Miss Dale • Harriet L. Smith
... won't be here for a while," said Inspector Val. "They've got a good ways to come, and a pitch-dark drain isn't the Bowery." ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... the north corner which will help me up; and if I reach the top without a broken neck, I make fast my rope, and slide on to the moor. From thence, no matter how dark it is—and it will be pitch-dark, I reckon—I can make Bergen Wood. No power on earth shall stop me. If you told the warder yonder of my plan this moment, I should still escape—in another and more certain fashion." To look at him and read the resolute despair in his white face was to have ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... having moderated, we raised our anchor and with a fair wind continued our voyage. When the night came it was so pitch-dark that I could not distinguish the sea from the horizon and the sky. It was impressive. I felt so little in the immensity that surrounded our craft. Our ship, to my eyes, when compared with the size of the ocean, was not bigger than a tiny hazelnut tossed ...
— The Land of the Long Night • Paul du Chaillu
... commenced our journey. It was pitch-dark, so our driver let the cattle go as they liked, for guiding them was perfectly out of the question. I shall never forget the way our oxen galloped down those steep hills. Miss W. was dreadfully frightened. All we could do was to hold on and trust in Providence. ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... little slums behind Hopital de la Pitie, [Footnote: Hopital de la Pitie: literally, "Hospital of Pity."] and I saw him disappear into a dirty old house. I waited outside a minute or two and then I groped my way through the pitch-dark entrance, climbed up a filthy staircase, and found a door slightly ajar. An icy, dark room, in the middle three ragged little children crouched together around a half-extinct braziero, [Footnote: Brazier: a pan for burning coals. Tuscan. Tuscany is one of the divisions of northern ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... listen, and at last the slightest sound thrilled him from head to foot. At length, all was still as death in the wood; and the world seemed as if it never would wake again. The Child bent forward to see whether it were as dark abroad as in the cave, but he saw nothing save the pitch-dark night, who had wrapped everything in her thick veil. Yet as he looked upwards his eyes met the friendly glance of two or three stars, and this was a most joyful surprise to him, for he felt himself no longer so entirely alone. The stars were, indeed, far, far away, but yet he knew them, and they ...
— Peter Schlemihl etc. • Chamisso et. al.
... to attempt any further protest; the gaolers seized the singer by his arms again, one on each side, and in ten minutes he was left to his own reflections, locked up in a pitch-dark cell that smelt like a wet grave. They had brought a lantern with them, and had shown him a stone seat, long enough to lie down upon, and at one end of it there was a loose block of sandstone for a pillow, a luxury which had been provided for a political prisoner ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... Clotilde, Countess de Tourville, with the Marquis de Montrecour, colonel of the French Mousquetaires, &c. The paper dropped from my hands. I rushed out of the house; and, scarcely knowing where I went, I hurried on, until I found myself out of the sight or sound of mortal. The night was pitch-dark; there was no lamp near; the wind roared; and it was only by the flash of the foam that I discovered the broad sheet of water before me. I had strayed into Hyde Park, and was on the bank of the Serpentine. With what ease might I not finish all! It was another ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. CCCXLV. July, 1844. Vol. LVI. • Various
... Sophia also embraced him. The Dean shook him warmly by the hand, and talked eloquent patriotism. Doggie already felt a hero. He left the house in a glow, but the drive home in the two-seater was cold and the pitch-dark night presaged other nights of mercilessness in the future; and when Doggie sat alone by his fire, sipping the hot milk which Peddle presented him on a silver tray, the doubts and fears of the morning racked ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... us have been young once; but I have also hunted panthers, and so has King, and to walk unarmed or even with weapons—into a black panther's cage is something that calls, I should say, for inexperience. The more you know about panthers the less likely you are to do it. It was almost pitch-dark; you could see the brute's yellow eyes gleaming, but no other part of him now, because he matched the shadows perfectly; but, being a cat, he could see us, and the odds against a man who should walk into that cage were, as a rough guess, ...
— Caves of Terror • Talbot Mundy
... pitch-dark inside the car, for the rain swished down in torrents and Jeremy fastened the flaps after he got in. Rene's change of expression was a thing that you could feel, not see. He kept perfect silence for about two minutes, ...
— Affair in Araby • Talbot Mundy
... were with General Morgan in the front. The continual straggling of some companies in the rear of Johnson's brigade caused me to become separated from the remainder of the column by a wide gap, and I was for some time entirely ignorant of what direction I should take. The night was pitch-dark, and I was compelled to light torches and seek the track of the column by the foam dropped from the mouths of the horses and the dust kicked up by their feet. At every halt which this groping search necessitated, scores of ...
— Famous Adventures And Prison Escapes of the Civil War • Various
... of solid rock. But though they rise not so high above the water, they go down a long way below it; so that there is fifty fathom right up to the cliff, and many a good craft out of reckoning in fog, or on a pitch-dark night, has run full against that frowning wall, and perished, ship and crew, without a soul to hear their cries. Yet, though the rock looks hard as adamant, the eternal washing of the wave has worn it out below, and even with the slightest swell there is a dull and distant booming ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... cheerless than the remainder of that night journey it would be hard to conceive. In the first place, when there are forty men in an open truck, it is very difficult to find room for two more. In the second place, it was bitterly cold, and a pitch-dark night. In the third place, the even-money chance of a slab or two of gun-cotton on the line ahead was not a pleasing one to contemplate. In the fourth place, the men were ordered to 'charge magazines,' and to spend several hours jolting along with the cold barrel of a loaded rifle poking one ...
— The Second Battalion Royal Dublin Fusiliers in the South African War - With a Description of the Operations in the Aden Hinterland • Cecil Francis Romer and Arthur Edward Mainwaring
... sentry-box, and whispered, "Mate, whisper me a word, for pity's sake." He received no answer; but even to have spoken himself relieved his swelling soul for a minute or two. Half an hour later four turnkeys came into his cell, and took him down stairs and confined him in a pitch-dark dungeon. ...
— It Is Never Too Late to Mend • Charles Reade
... they took some reindeer hides, out of which they cut sandals, and bound them under their feet, with the hoofs of the reindeer feet trailing behind. But before they set off they set fire to a large corn barn which was close by, and then ran out into the pitch-dark night. The barn blazed, and set fire to many other houses in the village. Thorod and his comrade travelled the whole night until they came to a lonely wood, where they concealed themselves when it was daylight. In the morning they were missed. ...
— Heimskringla - The Chronicle of the Kings of Norway • Snorri Sturluson
... time when you ought to be within fifty feet of it. You can't see a snag in one of those shadows, but you know exactly where it is, and the shape of the river tells you when you are coming to it. Then there's your pitch-dark night; the river is a very different shape on a pitch-dark night from what it is on a starlight night. All shores seem to be straight lines, then, and mighty dim ones, too; and you'd run them for straight lines, only you know better. You boldly drive your boat right into ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... beads with shaking fingers. One or other of them, she thought, might come home either soon or late, for she did not believe that any amorous intimacy was the reason that they were both out — God knew where — in this windy, pitch-dark night. ...
— The Waters of Edera • Louise de la Rame, a.k.a. Ouida
... rods or so, moored to the boulder-strewn shore, was a shanty-boat. In the bustle of landing, last night, we had not noticed this neighbor, and it was pitch-dark before we had time to get our bearings. I think it is the most dilapidated affair we have seen on the river—the frame of the cabin is out of plumb, old clothes serve for sides and flap loudly in the wind; while two little boys, who peered at us through slits in ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... not pitch-dark, but even the possessor of keen eyesight would have had to look closely in order to make certain that a moving object was a human being and not ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... and more miles from Keston home, up two long hills, down two short hills. He was often tired, and he counted the lamps climbing the hill above him, how many more to pass. And from the hilltop, on pitch-dark nights, he looked round on the villages five or six miles away, that shone like swarms of glittering living things, almost a heaven against his feet. Marlpool and Heanor scattered the far-off darkness with brilliance. And occasionally ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... calls. Of some of the men he approved. Others won only his grudging toleration, one or two he loathed—especially the most frequent caller, a man with black hair and a black goatee and a pitch-dark soul, who seemed to Merlin vaguely familiar, but whom he was never ...
— Tales of the Jazz Age • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... world as baked potatoes and salt, provided the company was agreeable; and now and then she would thrill us with reminiscences of that evening's entertainment—with wonderful accounts of railway accidents— and of one in particular that happened on a pitch-dark night when fires had to be made to light the workers as they toiled fearfully amongst the wreck of the trains, searching for the mangled and mutilated, the dying and the dead, while the air was filled with ...
— Ideala • Sarah Grand
... he said excitedly, "that some one has entered that pitch-dark storeroom by the broken window. Let me take the receiver back again. Ah, the buzzing is coming back. He is leaving the room. I suppose he has found the electric light cane and the pistol where he left them. Now, Walter, since you have become accustomed to ...
— The Dream Doctor • Arthur B. Reeve
... time he stood with about a dozen others on the river-bank. The tide was about at half-flow and running strongly; moreover, a breeze was coming up behind it from the south-west. There was no moon, clouds were packing, and there was every sign of a pitch-dark night. The admiral's roomy boat, with its mast stepped and sail ready for hoisting, bobbed up and down on the water. Drake himself was there ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... dear Thorndyke," I expostulated, "I have told you how I was conveyed to the house. Now, will you kindly explain to me how a man, boxed up in a pitch-dark carriage, is going to identify any place to which he ...
— The Mystery of 31 New Inn • R. Austin Freeman
... city clocks tolled heavily—eleven. The night was pitch-dark; the sheet-lightning blazed across the blackness, and now and then a big drop fell. Still the girl sped on until she reached ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... to watch, and telling them to keep a hand on each of the lines because the scullery was pitch-dark, he went next to his room and looked again from the window. He feared they might be trying to get in at some other place, for they would not readily abandon their accomplices, and doubtless knew what a small household it was! He ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... provoked, doubtless, by some very innocent cause. Many of these volleys were often fired during the night, sometimes for ten minutes together, at other times singly, at intervals; anon the boom of a cannon would vary the entertainment. Occasionally, when unable to sleep, I would creep down the pitch-dark corridor to a room overlooking the sleeping town and the veldt, the latter so still and mysterious in the moonlight, and, peeping through a large jagged hole in the wall caused by a shell, I marvelled to ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... connection whatever with cowardice; and they will understand the amount of resolution that it required in Peterkin to allow himself to be dragged down to a depth of ten feet, and then, through a narrow tunnel, into an almost pitch-dark cavern. But there was no alternative. The pirates had already caught sight of us, and were now within a short ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... that in the least impresses me in our little church, and then the very bareness and ugliness of the place and the ceremonial produce an effect that a snug service in a well-lit church never would. Last night we took Irais and Minora, and drove the three lonely miles in a sleigh. It was pitch-dark, and blowing great guns. We sat wrapped up to our eyes in furs, and as mute ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... the hatch, and paused to turn the slide of his lantern. The shaft of light fell down the companion as into a pitch-dark well. He could feel his heart thumping against his ribs as he began the descent, and jumping with every creak of the rotten boards, while always behind his fright lurked a sickening sense of the ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Fort San Antonio Abad (Malate) with five guns, Blockhouse No. 14 with two guns, and connecting infantry trenches, concentrated fire upon the American breastworks, which caused considerable annoyance to the Americans. The night was pitch-dark, it rained in torrents, there was mud and water everywhere, and the ground was too flat to drain. The 10th Pennsylvania Regiment and four guns of the Utah Batteries occupied the American line, with two batteries of the 3rd Foot Artillery in reserve. ...
— The Philippine Islands • John Foreman
... the door, and D'ri flung our "duds" into the darkness that lay beyond it. Then he made down the ladder, and I after him. It was pitch-dark in the cellar—a deep, dank place with a rank odor of rotting potatoes. We groped our way to a corner, and stood listening. We heard the tramp of horses in the dooryard and the clinic of spurs ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... with tyranny: I was roughly roused and obliged to live. I got up and dressed myself, and creeping outside the casement close by my bed, sat on its ledge, with my feet on the roof of a lower adjoining building. It was wet, it was wild, it was pitch-dark. Within the dormitory they gathered round the night-lamp in consternation, praying loud. I could not go in: too resistless was the delight of staying with the wild hour, black and full of thunder, pealing out such an ode as language never delivered to man—too terribly glorious, ...
— Villette • Charlotte Bronte
... the third cellar, a tremendous, pitch-dark place, something extraordinary and horrible manifested itself. I had stationed Miss Hisgins in the center of the place, with her father and Parsket holding the background as before. When all was ready and just as I pressed the trigger of the 'flash,' ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... affair at the Katzbach, Marshal Macdonald, in an attempt to re-unite his troops, indicated as rallying points the towns of Bunzlau, Lauban, and Gorlitz. A pitch-dark night, rutted roads and continuous torrential rain made movement slow and very difficult; and many soldiers, particularly those of our allies, ...
— The Memoirs of General the Baron de Marbot, Translated by - Oliver C. Colt • Baron de Marbot
... train pulls silently in. There is not a single light on it from one end to the other. It creeps in like a great snake. There is nobody to tell you whether this is your train or not, but you take a chance and climb into a compartment which is pitch-dark. ...
— Soldier Silhouettes on our Front • William L. Stidger
... knife near his pillow and sprang like a cat out of his bed; and then began a strange and bloody fight, one man, stark naked, with a short-bladed knife in his hand, against seven men with their long facons, in a small pitch-dark room. The advantage Jack had was that his bare feet made no sound on the clay floor, and that he knew the exact position of a few pieces of furniture in the room. He had, too, a marvellous agility, and the intense darkness ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... we did not turn to the right or the left along any of the by-roads lest we should get lost on the moors. It was not without some feeling of regret that we bade the landlady "Good night" and started out from the comfortable inn on a pitch-dark night. Fortunately the road was dry, and, as there were no trees, the limestone of which it was composed showed a white track easily discernible in the inky darkness which surrounded it. As we got farther on our way we could see right in front a great illumination in the mist or clouds ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... and narrow—up on the fifth floor of one of the huge tenement houses in the Rue Jolivet in the Montmartre quarter of Paris. A narrow stone passage led to it—pitch-dark at all times, but dirty, and evil-smelling when the concierge—a free citizen of the new democracy— took a week's holiday from his work in order to spend whole afternoons either at the wineshop round the corner, or ...
— The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel • Baroness Orczy
... by the hand, the marshal opened the window of the balcony over the Danube. The river at this moment, trebled in volume by the strong flood, was nearly a league wide; it was lashed by a fierce wind, and we could hear the waves roaring. It was pitch-dark, and the rain fell in torrents, but we could see on the other side a long line of bivouac fires. Napoleon, Marshal Lannes, and I being alone on the balcony, the marshal said, "On the other side of the river you see an Austrian camp. Now, the emperor is keenly desirous to know ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... trainer who did a little farming, or a farmer who did a little horse training, and his management of young horses followed no known rules, and indeed knew none, but it was generally successful. He fed them by rule of thumb; he herded them in hustling, squabbling parties in pitch-dark sheds; he ploughed them at eighteen months; he beat them with a stick like dogs when they transgressed, and like dogs they loved him. He had what gardeners call "a lucky hand" with them, and they throve with him, and he had, moreover, that gift of winning their wayward hearts that ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... but at last consented, and soon all three were down under the bridge. Here it was pitch-dark, and the feeble rays of the lantern only lit up a circle that was less than three ...
— Young Auctioneers - The Polishing of a Rolling Stone • Edward Stratemeyer
... we'll show you the way"; so off I went through the forest, going straight toward them. The path was lost in a moment, and was never recovered. I was tript up by pine roots, I tumbled over rhododendron bushes, I fell over rocks. The night was pitch-dark, and after a time the lights of Zermatt became obscure or went out altogether. By a series of slides or falls, or evolutions more or less disagreeable, the descent through the forest was at length accomplished, ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume VI • Various
... strange that she should be here in the pitch-dark hall in the middle of the night; but—after all—no stranger than that he should be. In this dream world in which he now moved it had to be taken for granted that people did all sorts of odd things from all sorts of ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... Indian camp was not far off. The night was pitch-dark. Led by Washington, we got through the thick underbrush without much trouble. The grave was dug near the water's edge, where the Missouri and the Yellowstone, meeting, form an angle. A large fire of dry cottonwood at the head of the grave fitfully lit up the dismal ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, August, 1878 • Various
... hitherto pitch-dark sea was flooded in a blaze of light. Giant beams from the Isle of Wight shore joined with those of Hurst Castle to sweep slowly across the waves, supplementing the twin rays projected from the two ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... do migrating birds guide their courses high in air on a pitch-dark night,—their busy time for flying? Do they, too, know about the mariner's Southern Cross, and steer by it on starlit nights? Equally ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... pitch-dark, and for the moment he stood still, not knowing in what direction to move next. All ...
— The Mansion of Mystery - Being a Certain Case of Importance, Taken from the Note-book of Adam Adams, Investigator and Detective • Chester K. Steele
... she must have had aboard. Jonathan, the coast-guard, came down to Lizard Town this morning, and said he seed a big vessel nigh under the cliffs toward midnight, or fancied he seed her: but fustly Jonathan's a buffle-head, and secondly 'twas pitch-dark; so if as he swears there weren't no blue light, 'tain't likely any man could see, let alone a daft fule like Jonathan. But, there, 'tain't no good for to blame he; durn Government! say I, for settin' one man, and him a born ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a charge in half-earnest or he would have brought the gate down. An elephant is a very short-sighted beast, and it was pitch-dark. He could not believe that a dog could disappear through a solid iron gate, and after testing the obstruction for a moment or two, grumbling to himself angrily, he stood to smell the air and listen. There was a noise farther along the street of a stampede ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... of the swamp was split by the light's white sword, and softer beams from its sharp radiance illumined the pitch-dark gloom for a few yards to either side of the tortuous path. The shadows of the man and the woman were cast in monstrous grotesquely floating shapes behind ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... arranged that I should be down at a certain wharf at three o'clock in the morning, when I should find a boat waiting for me. I waited up with Bob Cross until the clock had struck two, and then the crimp let me out. He did not offer to go down with me, as he had no money to receive; and, as it was pitch-dark, there was little chance of my being picked up by a press-gang at that hour. I wished Cross good-bye, and set off for Plymouth Dock with my bundle ...
— Percival Keene • Frederick Marryat
... I ventured forth again. It was pitch-dark in the village street, and the darkness seemed only the greater for a light here and there in an uncurtained window or from an open door. Into one such window I was rude enough to peep, and saw within ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... of the midnight sun and of the sunless winter of the North. They are features of all tales of Arctic exploration. Yet, in order to see the sun shining at midnight or to experience pitch-dark days, it is not necessary to be actually a seeker after the North Pole. Sunny nights and black winter days may be enjoyed, or otherwise, even in Norway, but only in the ...
— Peeps at Many Lands: Norway • A.F. Mockler-Ferryman
... do their business," Colin had said, referring to the trees, as we heard the wind and rain tearing and splashing through the pitch-dark woods. "It will be a different ...
— October Vagabonds • Richard Le Gallienne
... is there. In front of us the German salient. All comparatively quiet. How lovely it is! The sounds of our men digging in the wet soil mingle now with other small noises. Voices underground. Listen. And a mouth-organ's cheery bray coming from the bowels of the earth. It is pitch-dark. We stand up like Generals surveying the battle-field. No danger. The Boche does not ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... surged to his head—and at that moment the person opened the door in a light blue dressing-gown, no longer young, but buxom, and with good-natured eyes. And by the gleam of a miserable kitchen lamp, which lighted up the pitch-dark passage even at noon, he had seen a smart top-coat and a fine felt hat hanging in the entrance, and had recognised Wolfgang's things. So he was really there? There? So the anonymous letter had not ...
— The Son of His Mother • Clara Viebig
... and demijohns, to large boxes of vegetable- and flower-seeds, to great piles of books, speeches, and documents not yet directed to people who will never read them, and to an abominable odor of boiling cabbages. This odor steals in from a number of pitch-dark tunnels and shafts, misnamed passages and staircases, in which there are more books, documents, and speeches, other boxes of seeds, and a still stronger odor of cabbages. The piles of books are traps set here ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 7, No. 39, January, 1861 • Various
... mystified Mitchell, the whole family issued out of the Queen Anne porch, and were conducted by Treuherz, who, to their intense confusion, insisted on walking backwards to the car, while the heralds performed another flourish on their silver trumpets. It was pitch-dark when they had got to the asphalt pavement outside their gates, but they could just make out the contours of the car in the light that streamed across the hedge ...
— In Brief Authority • F. Anstey
... him in again, and then went back to his fireside and lay down. Hendrick and Ruyter lay on one side of the fire under one blanket, and John Stofolus lay on the other. At this moment I was sitting taking some barley-broth; our fire was very small, and the night was pitch-dark and windy. Owing to our proximity to the native village the wood was very scarce, the Bakalahari having burnt it ...
— Forest & Frontiers • G. A. Henty
... with, a double-bladed penknife to scratch 'em out with, a book of printed tables to calculate your income with, and a camp-stool to sit down upon while you give your mind to it! Stop! And an umbrella to keep the moon off when you give your mind to it on a pitch-dark night. Now I won't ask you how much for the lot, but how little? How little are you thinking of? Don't be ashamed to mention it, because my fortune-teller knows already." (Then making believe to whisper, I kissed her,—and she kissed me.) "Why, she says ...
— Doctor Marigold • Charles Dickens
... is certainly not misapplied, when we remember that Lee passed over miles of the kind of ground above described in a pitch-dark night, without light or companion, with no guide but the wind as it drove the pelting rain against his face, or an occasional flash of lightning, and with the danger of falling into the hands of Valencia or Santa Anna if he should happen to stray to the right or the left. It is doubtful ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 2 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... moment while Billy followed. We were barefoot both and naked to the waist. Cautiously as a pair of cats, we worked along the bowsprit to the foremast stay, at the foot of which the foresail lay loose and ready for hoisting. With a fold of this I covered myself and peered along the pitch-dark deck. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... said, laughing, "there is no great credit due to me, Fleetwood; for I would much rather fight a ship twice the size of my own with the deck under my feet, than have to scramble up such a place as you describe, on a pitch-dark night, to thrash a ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... happy one, and the flow of blood diminished. Then, scrambling up, I got, not a moment too soon, to a place of safety, and fainted away. The sun was setting when consciousness returned, and it was pitch-dark before the Great Staircase was descended; but by a combination of luck and care, the whole four thousand seven hundred feet of descent to Breil was accomplished without a slip, or ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... asleep, and when he woke up again the night was come. He woke up without a start or even a movement, as was his habit, and sat silently and bitterly reproaching himself for that he had yielded to fatigue. It was pitch-dark within the carriage; he stared through the window and saw dimly the moving mountain-side, and here and there a clump of trees rush past. The steady breathing of Gaydon, on his left, and of Mrs. Misset in the corner opposite to Gaydon, showed that those two guardians slept as well. His ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... the snow crust. I put on my 'pesk' (a fur blouse), got hold of my double-barrelled rifle, and went on deck. The whole crew were collected aft, gazing out into the night. We let loose 'Ulenka' and 'Pan,' and went in the direction where the bear was said to be. It was pitch-dark, but the dogs would find the tracks if there was anything there. Hansen thought he had seen something moving about the hummock near the ship, but we found and heard nothing, and, as several of the others had by this time come out ...
— Farthest North - Being the Record of a Voyage of Exploration of the Ship 'Fram' 1893-1896 • Fridtjof Nansen
... scorn under the sailors' faces. The women had hurried to the hills. The old king was hidden in a cave, where he could be reached only by a rope ladder; and emissary after emissary tried to lure the whites ashore. One pitch-dark night, paddles were heard under the keels. The sentinels fired; but by lantern light two terrified faces appeared above the rail of the Resolution. Two frightened, trembling savages crawled over the deck, prostrated themselves at Clerke's feet, and slowly unrolled a small wrapping of cloth that ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... was ill with fever, nevertheless we went down to the work-shed. It was a pitch-dark night, the air was like that in a hothouse, smelling of earth and mould. The surf boomed sullenly on the beach, and heavy squalls flogged the forest. Sometimes a rotten branch snapped, and the sound travelled, dull and heavy, through ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... wine for instance,' said old Sol, 'which has been to the East Indies and back, I'm not able to say how often, and has been once round the world. Think of the pitch-dark nights, the roaring winds, ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... which was our home, and two other single-room apartments, similarly tenanted, opened into a pitch-dark vestibule which my fancy peopled with "evil ones." A steep stairway led up to the yard, part of which was occupied by a huddle of ramshackle one-story houses. It was known as Abner's Court. During the summer months it swarmed with tattered, ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... and he would not. Then I bid him run, and he would not. And it was too pitch-dark for fighting; so I took him by the ears, and shook the wind out of him, and so ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... entered a small man-of-war—the Vesuvius, which was captured by two French ships, when she was sent to the prisons of Dunkirk. Here she was incarcerated for eighteen months, but, having been discovered planning an escape with a young midshipman, she was confined in a pitch-dark dungeon for eleven weeks, on a diet of bread and water. An exchange of prisoners set her at liberty, and, hearing accidentally an American merchant captain inquiring in the streets of Dunkirk for a lad to go to New York as ship's steward she offered ...
— Strange Pages from Family Papers • T. F. Thiselton Dyer
... night, moonless, pitch-dark, with a storm of wind and rain. The waters were out—for the dykes had been cut in all 'directions by the defenders of the city—and, with exception of some elevated points occupied by Parma's forces, the whole country was overflowed. Before the party set forth on their ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... The room is pitch-dark always, and it is full of tables and tomes. The tables are waiting-room tables and the tomes are as Mr. ASQUITH has described them. It is divided into two by a swing-door. One part is the female Private Secretary part, the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, April 14, 1920 • Various
... Wolf, and feared that whatever might happen to us, they would never be free. For ourselves, too, the prospect was not a very pleasing one. The whole ship was smothered in coal-dust, the saloon was almost pitch-dark, as awnings had been hung over all the ports, the atmosphere was stifling, the cabins we were to occupy were still littered with the belongings of their former occupants, and the outlook was certainly very dreary. To make things worse a thick drizzle ...
— Five Months on a German Raider - Being the Adventures of an Englishman Captured by the 'Wolf' • Frederic George Trayes
... of thunder over the great unsheltered plain before us—the hail and sleet driven so fiercely before the hurricane, that a man was half-blinded if he turned his face towards it for a moment—the forked lightning shooting from pitch-dark clouds, leaping and running fearfully over the level ground, blackening, splitting, tearing from their places the stoutest rocks on the moor. Three masses of granite lay heaped together near the spot where we had halted—the ...
— Rambles Beyond Railways; - or, Notes in Cornwall taken A-foot • Wilkie Collins
... and maybe that's wrong. But look here, sir—I've taught him some things besides; the ways of birds and beasts, and their calls; how to tell the hour by sun and stars; how to know an ash from a beech, of a pitch-dark night, by the sound of the wind in their tops; what herbs will cure disease and where to seek them; why some birds hop and others run. Sirs, I come of an old race that has outlived books and pictures and meeting-houses: you ...
— Noughts and Crosses • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... followed this decisive reply. Every one expected instant destruction. The night was pitch-dark; and there was no light in the boat. They dreaded being landed on some part of the island of Skye, where the militia were in arms to prevent the Prince's escape. But, to use the words of the pilot, ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume III. • Mrs. Thomson
... his, feeling a strange emotion as she touched his muscles that were hard as steel. Thus they went on in the darkness, through the woods to the river. In the wood it was pitch-dark, as if all the trees had been fused and melted in a warm, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... where George Washington was tethered. The father of his country was tired of standing alone in the damp, and he trotted off briskly. The first mile of their journey was accomplished safely, although the night was pitch-dark, and when they turned into the Bayport Road, which for two-thirds of its length leads through thick soft pine and scrub-oak woods, it was hard to distinguish even the horse's ears. Miss Parker insisted that every curtain of the carryall—at the back and both sides—should be closely buttoned ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln |
