"Plash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the fellow was to ride was a great plash of water of a good depth: through this must he of necessity ride. No sooner was he in the midst of it, but Robin Good-fellow left him with nothing but a pack-saddle betwixt his legs, and in the shape of a fish swam to the shore, and ran away laughing, ho, ho, hoh![4] leaving ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... straining rowlocks and the even plash of dripping oars, muffled by the numbing curtain of the fog, broke through the silence. Then followed the gentle thudding noise of a boat as it bumped against the jetty ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... where the body lay; the same solemn silence prevailed while it was being read; and I am not sure that some of our Jacks did not even shed a tear—on the sly, that is, for your true sailor ever tries to hide two things, his grief and his tender-heartedness—as with dull plash the body ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... ostiary^, mouth; lagune^, lagoon; indraught^; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles^; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough^, mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin^, puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c (store) 636; alberca^, barachois^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... came out of the darkness behind us, and we knew that he had sent a party into the fixed boat to rock it from side to side. Then came a cheer, as the water rolled hissing and whispering among the reeds; there was the simultaneous plash of oars, and ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... in the shade of the pine forests. The coach was changing horses; the two young men walked along the village street, picking their way between dunghills, breathing the light, cool air, and listening to the plash of the fountain and the tinkle of cattle-bells. The coach overtook them, and then Rowland, as he prepared to mount, ...
— Roderick Hudson • Henry James
... half-ashore, was bordered by a fringe of silver. When at one moment a gentle breeze lifted the water into ripples, countless stars floated, down a white waterway from yonder argent moon. Not a house on the banks of the mere; not a sign of life; only the low plash of wavelets on the pebbles. Hark! What cry was that coming clear and shrill? It was the curlew. And when the night bird was gone she left ...
— The Shadow of a Crime - A Cumbrian Romance • Hall Caine
... which madame had hung against the arbor shed a yellow light, throwing into clear relief the sharply cut features of monsieur. Up and down the silent stream drifted here and there a phantom boat, the gleam of its light following like a firefly. From some came no sound but the muffled plash of the oars. From others floated stray bits of song and laughter. Far up the stream I heard the distant whistle ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... vague murmur, fraying off into nothing, ending like a wave with a long upward plash ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... new-launched argosies of rhyme Gilds and makes brave this sombreing tide of time. Far be the hour when lesser brows shall wear The laurel glorious from that wintry hair— When he, the sovereign of our lyric day, In Charon's shallop must be rowed away, And hear, scarce heeding, 'mid the plash of oar, The ave atque ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... second crop of clover, and the bees hummed as if it still were June. There was a flashing of white gulls over the water where the fleet of boats rode the low waves together in the cove, swaying their small masts as if they kept time to our steps. The plash of the water could be heard faintly, yet still be heard; we might have been a company of ancient Greeks going to celebrate a victory, or to worship the god of harvests, in the grove above. It was strangely moving to see this and to make part of it. The sky, the sea, have watched ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... nothing the scratching of briars or the whipping of stiff twigs as she sped on. But for all their eager hunting, the quarry outran both dogs and folk, and gat him into a great thicket, amidmost whereof was a wide plash of water. Into the thicket they followed him, but he took to the water under their eyes and made land on the other side; and because of the tangle of underwood, he swam across much faster than they might have any hope to come round on him; and so were the hunters ...
— The Wood Beyond the World • William Morris
... way lay through that orchard exactly; yet, walled up as was that orchard with all its forbidden fruit, that evil fruit would hang over the wall so that if any lusty youth wished to taste it, he had only to reach up to the over-hanging branches and plash down on himself some of the forbidden bunches. Now, that was just what Matthew had done. Till we have him lying at the House Beautiful, not only not able to enjoy the delights of the House and of the season, but so pained in his ...
— Bunyan Characters (Second Series) • Alexander Whyte
... the boats draw near and go by. The houses to the left hid them from her: but she leaned out, hearkening to the soft plash of oars, the creak of thole-pins, the girls' voices in hushed chorus practising the simple native harmonies they would lift aloud as they returned after sunrise. She recognised the tune, too; the old tune of ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... spyglass turned full upon us a minute ago." We all four stepped from the parade upon the rocks, and approached the Delameres' party, who were seated on rugs and shawls spread upon the huge dry rocks overlooking the deep, clear water which lapped underneath with a gentle and regular plash and sucking sound. It was a brilliant day. Not a cloud was in the sky, and the blue-green seas lay basking in the sunshine. A brisk but gentle air had begun to crisp the top of the water, making it sparkle and bubble; and there was just visible a small ...
— Interludes - being Two Essays, a Story, and Some Verses • Horace Smith
... along, like the rush of a gorgeous fish through the glassy water. Opposite my canoe he checked himself, poised an instant in mid-air, watching the minnows that my paddle had disturbed, and dropped bill first—plash! with a silvery tinkle in the sound, as if hidden bells down among the green water weeds had been set to ringing by this sprite of the air. A shower of spray caught the rainbow for a brief instant; the ripples gathered ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... lofty green island, with deep folds of a darker green, in which you divine silent valleys; there is mystery in their sombre depths, down which murmur and plash cool streams, and you feel that in those umbrageous places life from immemorial times has been led according to immemorial ways. Even here is something sad and terrible. But the impression is fleeting, and serves only to ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... me wherever life reaches, Thy day-dreams of fancy, thy night's balmy sleep, The plash of thy waters along the smooth beaches, The shade of thine evergreens, ...
— Bay State Monthly, Vol. II, No. 1, October, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... and in another moment were on top of the big rock. It was almost as good as being at sea; for when they turned their backs to the shore nothing could be seen but water and sails and flying birds, and nothing heard but the incessant plash and dash ...
— A Little Country Girl • Susan Coolidge
... the mass, you may see Monte Gennaro's dark peak looking over the Campagna, and all the Sabine hills trembling in a purple haze,—or, strolling down through the green avenues, you may watch the silver columns of fountains as they crumble in foam and plash in their mossy basins,—or gather masses of the sweet Parma violet and ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 5, No. 28, February, 1860 • Various
... last words of the conversation; but Ethel, leaning from her window to listen to the plash of the waves, suspected that the slowly moving meteor she beheld, denoted that a cigar was soothing the emotions excited by their dialogue. She mused long over that revelation of the motives of the ...
— The Trial - or, More Links of the Daisy Chain • Charlotte M. Yonge
... summer sea; then came the fog again and they laid on their oars that night. All around them dim islands seemed to float, scarcely discernible in the fog; sometimes from the top of each a point would show itself, as of a mighty hand, and they could hear an occasional plash and roar, as if this hand came downwards. Once they heard a cry, as if of sailors from another vessel. Then they strained their eyes to gaze into the fog, and a whole island seemed to be turning itself upside down, its peak coming down, while its ...
— Tales of the Enchanted Islands of the Atlantic • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... the front curtain of the tent rolled up, and sat about on the boxes in silence for some time, listening to the plash of the sea upon the beach, every ...
— The Empire Annual for Girls, 1911 • Various
... take the air only in walks with her governess, or drives with her mamma, in being obliged to wear fine clothes, to learn music and dancing, "and other tiresome things," and never being free to run wild on the hills and heaths, wade in the ponds, and plash in the burns, like ...
— Stories of Many Lands • Grace Greenwood
... that magic bird, the fulmar, a wanderer from the Scottish archipelago, dropping from his bill an oil which the islanders used to burn in their lamps. Nor do you ever find in the evening, in the plash of the ebbing tide, that ancient, legendary neitse, with the feet of a hog and the bleat of a calf. The tide no longer throws up the whiskered seal, with its curled ears and sharp jaws, dragging itself along on its nailless paws. On that ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... the twilight world he loved. Nature had ceased her noise and commenced her melody. From the brook below came the dull plash of the rising trout; now and then one could catch a stealthy rustle in the herbage—the beetles were abroad, ay and the mice and the beasts of prey; a hare paced by with easy lilting stride; his gentle footfall hardly stirred the dust. In the distance sounded ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... remains of Mohammedan culture, and, though the fury of Christian conquest dragged the harrow over the soil of Granada, even yet streams and fountains spring up there and gush abundantly and one seldom loses the sound of the plash of water. The flower of Christian chivalry and Christian intelligence went to Palestine to wrest the Holy Sepulchre from the hands of pagan Mohammedans. They found there many excellent things which they had not gone ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 4 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... speech of the uncultured wherever the English language is spoken. Among others are these words: chapellin', chanch, coxy, corchey, dawnin', fettle, franzy, gell, megrim, nattering, nesh, overrun, queechy, plash. In a letter to Professor Skeats, published in the Transactions of the English Dialect Society, she has explained her methods ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke
... boughs o'erhead. My coming strikes a terror on the scene. All the sweet sylvan sounds are hushed; I catch Glimpses of vanishing wings. An azure shape Quick darting down the vista of the brook, Proclaims the scared kingfisher, and a plash And turbid streak upon the streamlet's face, Betray the water-rat's swift dive and path Across the bottom to his burrow deep. The moss is plump and soft, the tawny leaves Are crisp beneath my tread, and scaly twigs ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII. No. 3. March 1848 • Various
... space Of silence, then the plash and spray, The sound of eager waves that ran To kiss the perfumed locks astray, To touch these lips that ne'er said 'Nay,' To dally with the helpless hands; Till the deep sea in silence lay ...
— Ban and Arriere Ban • Andrew Lang
... sharpened his vision. He saw a thin shadow a little darker than the gloom of the river; it grew into shape; something grated lightly upon sand and pebbles, and then he heard the guarded plash of feet in shallow water and saw some one pulling the canoe up higher. A second figure joined the first. They advanced a few paces and stopped. In a moment ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... as usual, were tempting the trout with false fly or real worm, and I was roaming along the bank, seeking spring flowers, and hunting early butterflies and moths. Suddenly there was a little plash in the water at the spot where Ralph was fishing, the slender tip of his rod bent, I heard a voice cry out, "Strike him, sonny, strike him!" and an old man came quickly but noiselessly through the bushes, just as Ralph's line flew up into space, ...
— Fishin' Jimmy • Annie Trumbull Slosson
... scientific one. There are days when he may be deeply moved by a Guido Reni martyrdom, or absorbed in the "Marriage a la Mode"; days when even Giorgione's Pastoral may (as in Rossetti's sonnet) mean nothing beyond the languid pleasure of sitting on the grass after a burning day and listening to the plash of water and the tuning of instruments; the same thought and emotion, the same interest and pleasure, being equally obtainable from an inn-parlour oleograph. Then, as regards scientific interest and pleasure, ...
— The Beautiful - An Introduction to Psychological Aesthetics • Vernon Lee
... out on a small and rather quiet piazza, with an immense palace on the left hand, and a smaller yet statelier one on the right, and just round the corner of the street, leading out of our piazza, is the Fountain of Trevi, of which I can hear the plash in the evening, when ...
— Passages From the French and Italian Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... steps of some old palace, step into a gondola, and glide swiftly and noiselessly away, instead of jolting and rumbling along over the cobble-stones! And then to come back by moonlight, and hear the low plash of the oar in the water, and the distant voices of the boatmen singing some love-sick song,—oh, it's as good ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... further side of the lawn, so that I could hear it but not see it, a fountain was playing into a basin. By the sound it was one of those high French fountains which the people who built such houses as these two hundred years ago delighted in. The plash of it was very soothing, but I was so tired and drooping that at one moment it sounded much further ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... is the green earth renewed 5 With the bright sea-wind and the yellow blossoms. From the cool shade I hear the silver plash Of the blown ...
— Sappho: One Hundred Lyrics • Bliss Carman
... sacrificed some of his own bundle to wipe down the wet walls; but it was all in vain. During the silence, while his master was meditating at the window, the melancholy sound of falling water—drip, drip—plash, plash—was heard all around, within and without the cell. When he had wiped down the walls, from the door in the corner round to the door again, the place from which he had set out was as wet as ever, and his straw was spoiled. He angrily kicked the wet straw into the fire; ...
— The Hour and the Man - An Historical Romance • Harriet Martineau
... The gentle plash of the waterfall at his right hand accentuated the stillness. From his height he glanced down into the broad, pellucid pool, into whose depths the water fell, and there, perfectly visible, lay the bag ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... let them drag after them. One end of this Rattan is stuck in the fisher's girdle, and the other knotted, that the fish should not slip off: which when it is full, he discharges himself of them by carrying them ashore. Nay every ditch and little plash of water but anckle deep hath ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... dark fens! The she-wolf will stir the brake, And the copper-snake breathe in his ear, And the bitterns will start by tens, And the slender junipers shake With the weight of the nimble bear, And the pool resound with the cayman's plash, And the owl will hoot in the boughs of the ash, Where he sits so calm and cool; Above his head, the muckawiss[B] Will sing his gloomy song; Frogs will scold in the pool, To see the musk-rat carry along The perch to his hairy brood; And, coil'd at his ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... progressed the pungent odour of seaweed refreshed him and grew stronger every moment. Suddenly he became aware that although high land lay upon his left hand there was to his right a hollow darkness without shadow or depth. No merry plash of waves came to explain this; the smell of the sea was there, but the joyous tumble of its waters was not to be heard. The traveller stooped low and peered into the darkness. Gradually he discerned a ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... though outwardly of such fair respectability that he attained an honour, unknown to Robert Burns, of acting as an elder of the kirk, was not always so chaste in his words as he might seem to be in his deeds; he took his plash as a poet, and not always in the clearest waters; besides, he had a terrible lash at his command, which he could wield with an effect at times that paid little respect to the bounds set in such matters ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes
... as the princess had sat down to dinner, she heard a strange noise—tap, tap—plash, plash—as if something was coming up the marble staircase: and soon afterwards there was a gentle knock at the door, and a little ...
— Grimms' Fairy Tales • The Brothers Grimm
... thorns of the marine needle, making it round and oblong in shape like a fisherman's basket, and after deftly and closely weaving it together, subjects it to the action of the sea waves, that its surface may be rendered waterproof by this plash and cement, and it is hard for even iron or stone to break it. And what is more wonderful still, so symmetrically is the entrance of the nest adjusted to the kingfisher's shape and size, that no beast either greater or smaller can enter ...
— Plutarch's Morals • Plutarch
... when I reached the other bank. Now for a better country. Vain presage! Who were the strugglers, what war did they wage, Whose savage trample thus could pad the dank 130 Soil to a plash? Toads in a poisoned tank, Or wild cats in ...
— Selections from the Poems and Plays of Robert Browning • Robert Browning
... of alluvial soil. It was a solitary, a melancholy scene. A luxuriant growth of reeds fringes the margin of the lagoon, and heat and moisture combine to throw up a rank vegetation on its marshy banks. The peasants fly from its pestiferous exhalations, and nothing is heard or seen but the plash of the fish in the still waters, the sharp cry of the heron and gull, wheeling and hovering till they dart on their prey, and some rude fisherman's boat piled with baskets of eels for the market ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... only all I had to trouble me! Oh, sir, work is occupation, but work harassed with care for others becomes unreal. I cannot sleep, thinking for Agnes. I cannot teach, my head throbs so. That river, so cold and impure, going along by the wharves, seems to suck and plash all day in my ears, as we see and hear it now. At my desk I seem to see those low shores and woods and marshes, on the other side, and the chatter of children, going all day, laps and eddies up like dirty waves between me and that indistinct boundary. I am floating on the river current, drowning ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... the passing beetle's hum The Elfin army's goblin drum To pigmy battle sound; And now, where dripping dew-drops plash On waving grass, their bucklers clash, And now their quivering lances ...
— The Sylphs of the Season with Other Poems • Washington Allston
... to hear the noise Of the rapid, rushing rain— And the plash of the wintry drops, that beat Through the blinds, ...
— War Poetry of the South • Various
... of love, time was not marked for them except by the cool plash of the water, which at intervals broke under the half-open window. To the caressing praise of her ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... so likewise ash, in crash, rash, gash, flash, clash, lash, slash, plash, trash, indicate something acting more nimbly and sharply. But ush, in crush, rush, gush, flush, blush, brush, hush, push, imply something as acting more obtusely and dully. Yet in both there is ...
— A Grammar of the English Tongue • Samuel Johnson
... ground, over the Wansbeck; past Morpeth; by Warkworth, and its castle, and hermitage; over the Coquet stream, beloved by the friends of gentle Izaak Walton; on, by the sea-side - almost along the very sands - with the refreshing sea-breeze, and the murmuring plash of the breakers - the Misses Green giving way to childish delight at this their first glimpse of the sea; on, over the Aln, and past Alnwick; and so on, still further north, to a certain little station, which is the terminus of their railway ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... went into the woods above and behind our house, and sat down and wove wreaths of red and russet leaves, and dreamed and mused with a far-off sound of booming waves and plash of sea on smooth beach in the pine-trees about us. It was beautiful to see the serene gleam of Una's face, fleckered with sunlight; and Julian, with his coronet of curls, sitting quiet in the great peace. My husband, at full length on the carpet of withered ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... house, while Fenwolf lingered to offer some attention to Mabel, which was so ill received that he was fain to hurry forth to the boathouse, where he embarked with his companion. As soon as the plash of oars announced their departure, Mabel went forth to watch them. The stranger, who was seated in the stern of the boat, for the first time fixed his large melancholy eyes full upon her, and did not withdraw his gaze till an angle of the lake hid ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the party passed the gateway, and came upon the mole, with the bay before them beautiful in the morning light. To the veteran sailor the plash of the waves was like a greeting. He drew a long breath, as if the perfume of the water were sweeter than that of the nard, and ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... the landscape. Presently a thunderbolt crashes through the crisp air, ringing like steel on steel, sharp and clear, its startling detonation breaking into a spray of echoes against the cliffs and canon walls. Then down comes a cataract of rain. The big drops sift through the pine-needles, plash and patter on the granite pavements, and pour down the sides of ridges and domes in a network of gray, bubbling rills. In a few minutes the cloud withers to a mesh of dim filaments and disappears, leaving the sky perfectly clear ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... knives, or doing some job or other, while her grandmother bustled back and forth, talking loudly, that her voice might reach above the frizzling of the frying-pan. But to-day there was a strange, most marked silence, broken only by the singing of the kettle, the plash of the rain outside, and a curious sound which Jessie could not make out, only she thought it sounded as though some ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... his shadow lengthened across the river, which, reflecting the lurid glare, became strangely suggestive of unfathomable depths. The moorhen called again from the reeds near the ford, then flew away over the fire-flushed river and disappeared into the gloom; and a water-vole dropped with a gentle plash into the pool. ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... room opened to the level of the ground upon the terrace at the head of the garden. It was in the end of July, and everything was open, for the weather was warm. As I sat alone I heard the unceasing plash of the great fountains, and I fell to thinking of the Woman of the Water. I rose, and went out into the still night, and sat down upon a seat on the terrace, between two gigantic Italian flower-pots. The air was deliciously soft and ...
— The Upper Berth • Francis Marion Crawford
... moving across one of the Canadian lakes, during a season of profound calm. The uniform and steady pull of the crew, directed in their time by the wild chaunt of the steersman, with whom they ever and anon join in fall chorus—the measured plash of the oars into the calm surface of the water—the joyous laugh and rude, but witty, jest of the more youthful and buoyant of the soldiery, from whom, at such moments, although in presence of their officers, the trammels of restraint are partially removed—all ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... their heads the rooks went flying, singing "caw, caw," on their way to bed. And how the sun was turning the water to gold! It seemed to be making a great golden pathway across the lake, and the mountains were turning a deep blue, and plash, plash, went the little waves on the rocks, so softly they seemed to be ...
— Milly and Olly • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the plash of scarlet mud Stained at the mouth, drunk with our common air, Not lack of love was her defect; The Fury mourned and raged and bled for France Breathing from exultation to despair At every wild-winged ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... satisfied so long as it could keep its head and ears in the warmth and shelter, and never once attempted to creep in nearer; and so another hour passed, only broken by the low murmur of Dale's voice as he talked to the guide, and the plash and rush of water. For the dripping was drowned now by the enormous amount which fell, and this went on increasing till there was quite a heavy roar, as of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn
... were in their master's confidence or not is not certain, but just before midnight they plunged into a narrow, miry road that traversed wastes and low coppices; the plash of the horses' feet showed the tract to be marshy and full of pools. Her ladyship looked out across the dreary fen ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... to think amid the awful scenes of Fort Wagner, and when wounded at Olustee was prepared to live or die, whichever was God's will. Mrs. Marsh was sitting beside his bed, in quiet conversation with him, when without warning, the hemorrhage commenced. The plash of blood was heard, as the life-current burst from his wound, and, "Go now," he said in his low calm voice. "This is the end, and I would ...
— Woman's Work in the Civil War - A Record of Heroism, Patriotism, and Patience • Linus Pierpont Brockett
... holidays came on, and Saint Werner's was deserted. Scarcely even a stray undergraduate lingered in the courts, and the chapel was closed; no sound of choir or organ came sweetly across the lawns at morning or evening; the ceaseless melancholy plash of the great fountain was almost the only sound that broke the stillness. Julian, Lillyston, and Owen had all gone down for the holidays, full of grief at the thought of leaving their friend in such a precarious state, but as yet ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... meadow sank down into bottoms, shaded by trees, and overgrown with reeds and palmettos, shining, as the wind stirred them, like sails in the sunshine. The profound stillness of the sky-bounded plain, only broken by the plash of the waterfowl, or the distant howl of the savanna wolf, and the splendour of the rising sun, imparted an indescribable solemnity and grandeur to the scene. Lower down the river were detached groups of trees, amongst which grazed ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 367, May 1846 • Various
... about them, emphasized rather than broken by the droning chant of a fisherman mending his nets on the beach below, the intermittent plash of the waves on the shingle, and the scream of the gulls that circled overhead. Before the eyes of his flesh was stretched a wide desert of sky and water, and before the eyes of his mind the hopeless desert ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... deep indigo vault overhead. The silence of night lay heavy upon the breast of the placid deep, and seemed to be emphasised rather than broken by the faint sigh of the breeze through the maze of spars and rigging that towered aloft, the soft seething and plash of water along the bends, the light creak or cheep of some parral or sheave up in the velvet darkness, and the occasional clank of the tiller chains as the watchful helmsman, with his eye upon some star peering past the weather leach of the main-royal, found it necessary to give ...
— Overdue - The Story of a Missing Ship • Harry Collingwood
... and far, and though Miss Tita gave no high-pitched voice to her satisfaction I felt that she surrendered herself. She was more than pleased, she was transported; the whole thing was an immense liberation. The gondola moved with slow strokes, to give her time to enjoy it, and she listened to the plash of the oars, which grew louder and more musically liquid as we passed into narrow canals, as if it were a revelation of Venice. When I asked her how long it was since she had been in a boat she answered, "Oh, I don't know; a long time—not ...
— The Aspern Papers • Henry James
... of his own daughter,' Herbert said smiling. 'But it hasn't mattered your keeping me waiting here, Selah. Of course I'd have enjoyed it all far better in your society—I don't think I need tell you that now, dear—but the sunshine, and the sea breeze, and the song of the larks, and the plash of the waves below, and the shouts of the fishermen down there on the beach mending their nets and putting out their smacks, have all been so delightful after our humdrum round of daily life at Oxford, that I only wanted your presence ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen
... repent me of it, Winter. I upbraid myself as bitterly as any can upbraid me for the folly. But hark—listen! I hear the plash of oars. See, there is a boat! It is he—it is Fawkes! I know him by his height and his strong action. Heaven be praised! All cannot yet be lost! Move upwards yet a few paces, and we will speak to him here alone before we take him within doors ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... slept again, they saw the lights go out one by one, save those in the mill itself, for barges had come with loads of grain, and the mill was working all night. They could hear the steady "throb," "throb" of the great mill-wheel and the plash of the distant waters; but just before the new dawn these sounds gave way to a hum that played a muffled music in the trees. The men's footsteps never sounded at all, till they were close at hand; ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... through the Cascine down to the Arno, where its yellow waters plash monotonously about a couple of stray willows. There I sit, and cast up my final accounts with existence. I let my entire life pass before me in review. On the whole, it is rather a wretched affair—a few joys, an endless number of indifferent and worthless things, and between these ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... said Bob. He did not speak more; but as he leant back his head, and looked straight up at the roof of the shed, (there was a great hole in it which the stars shone through, and now and then a big drop of water from the top came plash, plash, on the muddy floor below,) he looked up, I say, and I wonder whether he was thinking the same thing as I was at that moment: "Rats help one another; do none but human beings ...
— The Rambles of a Rat • A. L. O. E.
... swift blades dip and plash Of unseen rowers; On unknown land the waters dash; Who knows how it be wise or rash To meet the rowers! Premi! Premi! Venetia's boatmen lean and cry; With voiceless lips I drift and lie Upon ...
— The Golden Treasury of American Songs and Lyrics • Various
... sitting-room, through the main part of the bedroom into the cabinet de toilette. She moved about in the cabinet de toilette thinking that the waltz out of The Rosenkavalier was divinely exciting. The delicate sound of her movements and the plash of water came to him across the bedroom. As he played he threw a glance at her now and then; he could see well enough, but not very well because the smoke of the shortening ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... ill-made houses, that gave free admittance to the moist outer world; tree ferns, springing to sudden life on moss-clad trunks and boughs, showed brilliant as emeralds on velvet. The whole earth was quick with hidden stirrings and strivings, the whole air quick with living sound—plash of rain-drops; evensong of birds; glad shouting of cicadas among the branches, and the laughter of ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... therefore Tranio, for the time I studie, Vertue and that part of Philosophie Will I applie, that treats of happinesse, By vertue specially to be atchieu'd. Tell me thy minde, for I haue Pisa left, And am to Padua come, as he that leaues A shallow plash, to plunge him in the deepe, And with sacietie seekes to quench ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... patient, these two men, so different in age, came gradually to spend much time together. For the sake of the minister's health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the sea-shore, or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind-anthem among the tree-tops. Often, likewise, one was the guest of the other, in his place of study and retirement. There was a fascination for the minister in the company of the man of science, in whom he recognized ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... are deeply impressive. The waves plash at your feet, and the seagull, strangely tame, screams close overhead; but glorious as is the unbroken view of sky and ocean, the loneliness of the place, and the unutterable mystery of the sea, and the deep sullen roar, ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... the descent is rather dangerous in time of high water, the shelving rocks being then slippery on account of spray, but if one should chance to slip when the water is low, only a bump or two and a harmless plash would be the penalty. No part of the gorge, however, is safe ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... view, they saw his picturesque figure and gleaming silvery hair outlined clearly against the background of the sky—a sky now tenderly flushed with pink like the inside of a delicate shell. When they could no longer perceive him they still rowed on speaking no word,—the measured, musical plash of the oars through the smooth, dark olive-green water alone breaking the stillness around them. There was a curious sort of hushed breathlessness in the air; fantastic, dream-like lights and shadows played on the little wrinkling waves; sudden ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... there were. Arul rises in the same scant garment in which she slept, snatches up the pot of unglazed clay that stands beside the door, poises it lightly on her hip, and runs singing to the village well, where each house has its representative waiting for the morning supply. There is the plash of dripping water, the creak of wheel and straining rope, and the chatter of ...
— Lighted to Lighten: The Hope of India • Alice B. Van Doren
... more definite than a cry, often swept out from her into the vast silence, unbroken except by her husband's breathing or the plash of the wave or the creaking of the masts; but if ever she thought of definite help, it took the form of Deronda's presence and words, of the sympathy he might have for her, of the direction he might give her. It was sometimes after a white-lipped fierce-eyed ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... and the man that she since wadded does not think her a pin the waur for the misfortune.—They live, Mr. Mannering, by the shore-side, at Annan, and a mair decent, orderly couple, with six as fine bairns as ye would wish to see plash in a salt-water dub; and little curlie Godfrey—that's the eldest, the come o' will, as I may say —he's on board an excise yacht—I hae a cousin at the board of excise—that's 'Commissioner Bertram; he got his commissionership in the great contest for the county, that ye must have heard of, ...
— Guy Mannering • Sir Walter Scott
... at each other for a moment. They had passed through much together—danger, excitement, and now they were dabbling in sorrow. It would appear that this same sorrow runs like a river across the road of our life. Some of us find the ford and plash through the shallows—shallow ourselves—while others flounder into deep water. These are they who look right on to the greater events, and fail to note the trivial details of each little step. Paul was wading through the deep water, and this good friend of his was not inclined ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... found its way into the lake by another descent of a few feet. Around the basin, and on both sides of the waterfall, were several curious columns of basalt, and irregular picturesque piles of basaltic rock. The plash of the water, falling into the rocky basin, was the only sound that broke the Sabbath-like silence that pervaded the valley. There was, or seemed to be, something unreal and dream-like about the scene, that made us pause where we stood, in silence, as though the whole were an illusion, which a word ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer
... tries gold, And see now—on before thee— Those lines of tender light that creep The clouded sky along: O night! that trieth gold of love, This love is proven perfect! O lines that streak the touchstone sky, Plash forth true shining gold! O rose-leaf feet, go boldly! O night!—that lovest lovers— Thy softest robe of silence About these ...
— Indian Poetry • Edwin Arnold
... close upon seven o'clock, and night was at hand. Already the moon was showing her large, full face above the tree-tops by Chambord, and casting a silver streak athwart the stream. The plash of oars from the Marquis's boat was waxing indistinct despite the stillness, whilst by the eye the boat itself was no longer to ...
— The Suitors of Yvonne • Raphael Sabatini
... our being in a valley. As we sat in the piazza in the evening, we saw the light from on board some vessel move slowly through the distant obscurity,—so slowly that we were only sensible of its progress by forgetting it and looking again. The plash and murmur of the waves around the island were soothingly audible. It was not unpleasantly cold, and Mr. Laighton, Mr. Thaxter and myself sat under the piazza till long after dark; the former at a little distance, occasionally smoking his pipe, ...
— Passages From The American Notebooks, Volume 2. • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... raining, apparently, but she didn't mind—she would put on stout shoes and walk over to Plash. She was restless and so fidgety that it was a pain; there were strange voices that frightened her—they threw out the ugliest intimations—in the empty rooms at home. She would see old Mrs. Berrington, whom she liked ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... fashioned by man's ingenuity. There were no perceptible banks, for the water spread out on either side of them, further than they could follow its flashings through the rank underbrush. The dull plash of some object falling into the water, or the wild call of a lonely bird were the only sounds that broke upon the stillness, beside the monotonous dipping of the oars and the occasional low undertones of their own voices. When Gregoire called the girl's attention to an object near ...
— At Fault • Kate Chopin
... being indicated by the peculiar character of the sound emitted by the falling drops. Sometimes a soaking hiss proclaimed that they were passing by a pasture, then a patter would show that the rain fell upon some large-leafed root crop, then a paddling plash announced the naked arable, the low sound of the wind in their ears rising and falling ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... a flight of stairs thickly carpeted, and bordered on each side by tropical ferns and flowers, placed in exquisitely painted china pots and vases. I heard the distant singing of many birds mingled with the ripple and plash of waters. We reached a landing where the afterglow of the set sun streamed through a high oriel window of richly stained glass. Turning towards the left, Heliobas drew aside the folds of some azure satin hangings, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... child might shoot with his toy-bow. There the long drooping grass drooped to the wave; And, ever as the moth-wind lit thereon, A small-leafed tree, whose roots were always cool, Dipped one low bow, with many sister-leaves, Upon the water's face with a low plash, Lifting and dipping yet and yet again; And aye the water-drops rained from the leaves, With music-laughter as they found their home. And from the woods came blossom-fragrance, faint, Or full, like rising, falling harmonies; ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... peaceful here in the hot haze that brooded over the still mountains, and there seemed to be nought to fear. We drew swiftly up to the mound, with the plash of oars only to break the silence, and there was nought amiss that we could see. They had made it on a little flat tongue of land that jutted from the mountain's foot into the deep water, so that on two sides the mound was close to its edge. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... stir of life around me in the dark, and there in that mine—after we struck the spring of water—I thought I heard voices all the time in the plash of the water. I suppose it seemed like insanity, for I ruined Dan and Biddy without mercy. I couldn't stop. I was sure if we could only hold out a little while we would reach it. But we didn't. Biddy ...
— The Spirit of Sweetwater • Hamlin Garland
... and stolen back to the balcony that opened upon the Canal Grande from the vast upper salon, impelled by her longing for freedom and light. The ripple of the water to the plash of passing gondolas took on the note of distance and soothed her like a lullaby, as the charming maid yielded herself to the golden daydream—the soft breezes lifting the bright rings of hair that clustered about her dainty head, while the wonderful light of the skies of Venice smiled down ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... this ejaculation the kicking animal was launched into the air. I could not resist looking after. The yellow body bounded from the face of the opposite cliff, and fell with a heavy plash upon the ...
— The Rifle Rangers • Captain Mayne Reid
... Falloden's feet. He stood looking out into Beaumont Street. The long narrow street, which only two days before had been alive with the stream of Commemoration, was quiet and deserted. A heavy thunder rain was just beginning to plash upon the pavements; and in the interval since he had taken the note from the maid's hand, it seemed to Falloden that ...
— Lady Connie • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to the edge of the lake, where a couple of boats were always moored; they got into one of them, and Felix, with gentle strokes, propelled it to the opposite shore. The day was the perfection of summer weather; the little lake was the color of sunshine; the plash of the oars was the only sound, and they found themselves listening to it. They disembarked, and, by a winding path, ascended the pine-crested mound which overlooked the water, whose white expanse glittered between the trees. The place was ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... back. The hotel stood clear and sharp in the morning sunshine, and a light wind was making the little waves plash on the pebbles with a ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... over half a score of books for the passage in question, and can't find it. Expect to hear the drum and the musquetry momently (for they swear to resist, and are right,)—but I hear nothing, as yet, save the plash of the rain and the gusts of the wind at intervals. Don't like to go to bed, because I hate to be waked, and would rather sit up for the row, if there is to ...
— Life of Lord Byron, With His Letters And Journals, Vol. 5 (of 6) • (Lord Byron) George Gordon Byron
... interval a shout was heard from far down the river; then later the plash of oars; then a cry hailing the approaching boats, and the answer, "All safe!" Presently the boats had come alongside, and the passengers crowded down to the guard to learn the details of the search. Basil heard a hollow, moaning, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... and stamping on the mighty, but mouldering keystone, he forced it from its form, and broke the masonry of a thousand years. Amid a loud and awful shriek, horses and horsemen, and the dissolving fragments of the scene for a moment mingled as it were in airy chaos, and then plunged with a horrible plash into the fatal depths below. Some fell, and, stunned by the massy fragments, rose no more; others struggled again into light, and gained with difficulty their old shore. Amid them, Iskander, unhurt, swam like a river god, and ...
— The Rise of Iskander • Benjamin Disraeli
... you will cross that bay first at night, for there is no more romantic hour in which to enter San Francisco; the bay spreading out back of you a-plash with all kinds of illuminated water craft and the city lifting up before you ablaze with thousands of pin point lights; for San Francisco's site is a hilly one and the city lies like a jewelled mantle thrown carelessly ...
— The Californiacs • Inez Haynes Irwin
... Nubra, and eight wild-looking, half-naked satellites, were the Charons of that Styx. They poled and paddled with yells of excitement; the rapids seized the scow, and carried her broadside down into hissing and raging surges; then there was a plash, a leap of maddened water half filling the boat, a struggle, a whirl, violent efforts, and a united yell, and far down the torrent we were in smooth water on the opposite shore. The ferrymen recrossed, pulled our saddle horses by ropes into the river, the gopa held them; again ...
— Among the Tibetans • Isabella L. Bird (Mrs Bishop)
... scattered and smouldering fires, the rude shelter-tents of the men, the white tops of the army wagons; beyond these the dark outlines of the massive hills; above them all the brilliant, placid stars; around them the hush of nature, broken only by the drowsing swish and plash of rapid, running waters, the stir of the night wind in the scattered trees, the stamp and snort of some startled troop-horse, the distant challenge of the night sentries. Something important had ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... if not of the lapidary; outlooks that opened upon great seas of billowing forest, whence blue mountains peered up, sank and rose again like ocean monsters at play; glens where the she-bear suckled her drowsing cubs to the plash of yeasty waterfalls that leapt and whimpered to be in human service, but wherein the otter played all day unscared; crags where the eagle nested; defiles that echoed the howl of wolves unhunted, though the very stones cried out their open secret of immeasurable ...
— John March, Southerner • George W. Cable
... clearer sources, we were all once well acquainted with: considerable little moorland river, with several branches coming down from Ruppin Country, and certain lakes and plashes there, in a southwest direction, towards the Elbe valley, towards the Havel Stream; into which latter, through another plash or lake called GULPER SEE, and a few miles farther, into the Elbe itself, it conveys, after a course of say 50 English miles circuitously southwest, the black drainings of those dreary and intricate Peatbog-and-Sand countries. "LUCH," it appears, signifies LOCH (or Hole, Hollow); ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Appendix - Frederick The Great—A Day with Friedrich.—(23d July, 1779.) • Thomas Carlyle
... back to town, Richard was again selected to sit by Mrs. Mount. Brayder and Adrian started the jokes. The pair of parasites got on extremely well together. Soft fell the plash of the oars; softly the moonlight curled around them; softly the banks glided by. The ladies were in a state of high sentiment. They sang without request. All deemed the British ballad-monger an appropriate interpreter of their emotions. After good wine, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... he heard nothing but the ripple and plash of the ice-brook descending the side of the berg fifty yards away; but with the burial of his enemy, the lad's self-control had deserted him, and he burst into a passionate outbreak of sobs ...
— Adrift in the Ice-Fields • Charles W. Hall
... breathe, Exulting saw the vale beneath. When, launch'd in some lone boat, I sought A little kingdom for my thought, Within a river's winding cove, Whose forests form a double grove, And, from the water's silent flow, Appear more beautiful below; While their large leaves the lilies lave, Or plash upon the shadow'd wave; While birds, with darken'd pinions, fly Across that still intenser sky; Fish, with cold plunge, with startling leap, Or arrow-flight across the deep; And stilted insects, light-o-limb, ...
— The Lay of Marie • Matilda Betham
... who pace its lanes and squares may yet hear the echoes of their footsteps on the sounding stones, and read upon its gates, in passing from the tumult of the Strand or Fleet Street, 'Who enters here leaves noise behind.' There is still the plash of falling water in fair Fountain Court, and there are yet nooks and corners where dun-haunted students may look down from their dusty garrets, on a vagrant ray of sunlight patching the shade of the tall houses, and seldom troubled to reflect a passing stranger's form. There is yet, in ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... transparent dusk of Venice settled down. In the broad canal of the Misericordia a faint plash and drip from a passing gondola; then, in a moment, as the boat rounded into the rio, a resounding "Stai"; again silence and ...
— Literary Love-Letters and Other Stories • Robert Herrick
... on the brink of the stream, and the plash of the ferryman's oar could be heard plainly; the world behind him had already grown distant and dim; even of the book which had been in his mind so long, he thought but little—he had done with it all; whether it brought him ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... I met my little maid, There saw her flaxen tresses first; She filled the cup for one who lean'd (A soldier, crippl'd and athirst) Against the basin's carven rim; Her dear small hand's white loveliness Was pinkly flush'd, the gay bright drops Plash'd on her brow and ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... boatman were now pulling easily, and the long skiff darted up to them faster and faster still. Jack watched their pursuers with a fascinated eye. There was not the faintest sound made, save for the regular plash of the rising and falling oars. They were so near that he could see the naked backs of the oarsmen glisten as they swung their bodies to and fro in the starshine. Nearer, nearer, came ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... Platz. "How uncertain life is. It seems that I did not come to Bleiberg carelessly in the way of amusement, but to work out a part of my destiny." He arrested his steps at the fountain and listened to the low, musical plash of the water, each drop of which fell with the light of a dazzling jewel. The cold stars shone from above. They were not farther away than she. A princess, a lonely and forlorn princess, hemmed in by the fabric of royal laws; a princess yet ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... woman lay, still and straight. Midnight was long past. Outside, the hot wind could be heard every now and then, listlessly flapping the carved wooden lattice-work shutters of an overhanging balcony built out on timber props over the river Maritza, whose turbid waters surged beneath with steady plash. Inside, the striped silken curtains were closely drawn. The atmosphere was stuffy and airless, filled with ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... Stream"), famous for its silk, we came to the Omei, which has its sources on the lower slopes of the Great Mountain. After this the country was more broken, but everywhere there was the same careful cultivation, and on all sides we heard the plash of falling water and the soft whirr of the great Persian wheels busily at work bringing water to the thirsty land; and occasionally we saw men working with the foot a smaller wheel by which the next higher ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... was delay. The sun peeped into the new-made graves and made blistering hot the gallows' floor. The old pump made its familiar music to the cool plash of blessed water. The grass withered in the fervid heat. The bronzed faces of the soldiers ran lumps of sweat. The file upon the jail walls looked down into the wide yard yawningly. No wind fluttered the two battle standards condemned to unfold their trophies upon this coming ...
— The Life, Crime and Capture of John Wilkes Booth • George Alfred Townsend
... knew what he, after all, hadn't, or even had, gained? The beauty of her condition was keeping him, at any rate, as he might feel, in sight of the sea, where, though his personal dips were over, the whole thing could shine at him, and the air and the plash and the play become for him too a sensation. That couldn't be fixed upon him as missing; since if it wasn't personally floating, if it wasn't even sitting in the sand, it could yet pass very well for breathing the bliss, in ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... tons. Through this immense arterial and venous system circulates the life-blood of the plants, hot water being the vehicle of warmth in winter. These invisible streams will flow when the brooks at the foot of the hill are sealed by frost and the plash of the open-air fountains ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XVII. No. 101. May, 1876. • Various
... branches over the wall; and being mellow, they that found them did gather them up, and oft eat of them to their hurt. So Christiana's boys, as boys are apt to do, being pleased with the trees, and with the fruit that did hang thereon, did plash[58] them, and began to eat. Their mother did also chide them for so doing, but still the ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... favourite song was "Come, Lasses and Lads"; his was "John Peel"; and they would sing them off and on for an hour at a spell. Thus on a summer evening, when the bay was lying like a tired monster asleep, and every plash of an oar was echoing on the hills, the people on the land would hear them coming around the castle ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... leaves an impression of melody on the soul like the echo of a sweet song just sweetly sung. High up the lanes run;—low down on the shoreline they come to an end,—and the wayfarer, pacing along at the summit of their devious windings, can hear the plash of the sea below him as he walks,—the little tender laughing plash if the winds are calm and the day is fair,—the angry thud and boom of the billows if a storm is rising. These bye-roads, of which there are so many along the Somersetshire ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... goes on to explain the force of his bold figure in regard to the safety promised by it, when he says: 'Wherein shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.' Not a keel of the enemy shall dare to cut its waters, nor break their surface with the wet plash of invading oars. And so, if we will only knit ourselves with God by simple trust and continual communion, it is the plainest prose fact that nothing will harm us, and no foe will ever get near enough to us to shoot his arrows ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Isaiah and Jeremiah • Alexander Maclaren
... house, and catching it as it came down; but by and by it did not come down—it bounded into the tin eave-trough and rolled slowly along till it came to the big pipe that led to the cistern, and into this it dropped, and went whirring down, and stopped somewhere with a faint plash. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, May, 1878, No. 7. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... up in the boat. Gigantic forest trees were about me; through which, like a silver snake, twisted and twined the great river. The little waves, when I moved in the boat, heaved and fell with a plash as of molten silver, breaking the image of the moon into a thousand morsels, fusing again into one, as the ripples of laughter die into the still face of joy. The sleeping woods, in undefined massiveness; the water that flowed in its sleep; ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... he sat after that, while a gloom as of death settled over the ocean, broken only by the plash of waves and the constant creaking of the yawl as it rolled and pitched in the trough ...
— Ralph Granger's Fortunes • William Perry Brown
... between banks now overhung by mangrove thickets, now receding in plains dotted with gloomy clumps of gumtrees, as far as the eye, from our low position and by the imperfect light afforded, could reach. As we advanced, the measured plash of the oars frightened from their roosting places in the trees, a huge flock of screeching vampires, that disturbed for a time the serenity of the scene by their discordant notes; and a few reaches further up, noisy flights of our old friends, the whistling-ducks, greeted ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... mocking expression. He looked as though he wanted to say: "Yes, in a minute I will tell you something that will make you split your sides with laughing." The little round window was open and a soft breeze was blowing on Pavel Ivanitch. There was a sound of voices, of the plash of oars in the water.... Just under the little window someone began droning in a high, unpleasant voice: no doubt it was ...
— The Witch and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... the meridian. The port behind us was still and dead, but a handful of navy-folk had come to one of the wharves to see us off. Yes, there was something of a stir—you know, the kind of stir that's made when boats go to sea: shouted orders, the plash of dropped cables, vagrant noises. It didn't take a great time to get under way; we were ready, waiting for the word to go. The flotilla—mother-ship, tugs and all—was out to sea long before the dawn. You would have liked the picture: the immense ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... circle, silent and still, as Prudence had ordered, their eyes tightly closed. They felt the hot beams of the sun pouring over them, and the cool salt wind blew on their faces and through their hair; their toes curled and wriggled in the warm, wet sand, and in their ears was the plash-plash of the little waves beating backwards and forwards on the beach. It was very pleasant. It seemed quite easy to think of those three nice things. And presently each child felt a warm and friendly glow steal up ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... till there smote my ear A movement in the stream that checked my breath: Was it the slow plash of a wading deer? But something said, "This water is of Death! The Sisters wash ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... Bruce says there was something inexpressibly fearful and sublime in the roar of the torrent, which by this time filled the valley, the ceaseless plash of the rain, and the frequent and fitful gusts of the north wind that groaned among the woods. The river had now undermined the bank the house stood on, and this bank had already been carried away to within ...
— The Rain Cloud - or, An Account of the Nature, Properties, Dangers and Uses of Rain • Anonymous
... basking in the balmy atmosphere, looking lazily at that bright, almost insupportable picture of blue sea under blue sky, there came the dip of oars, making music, and a sound of coolness with every plash of water. ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... stars that were bright, Nor by tally nor price shall their worth be replaced; Ah, boded the morning of our brave unreturning, When it drifted the clouds in the rush of its blast. As we march'd on the hill, such the floods that distil, Turning dry bent to bog, and to plash-pools the heather, That friendly no more was the ridge of the moor, Nor free to our tread, and the ire of the weather Anon was inflamed by the lightning untamed, And the hail rush that storm'd from the mouth of the gun, Hard pelted the ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... gives such a sense of companionship in Venice—human voices calling in ceaseless interchange from shore to shore, resonant in the brilliant atmosphere, quarrels softened to melodies across the water, cries of the gondoliers telling of ceaseless motion, the constant lap and plash of the wavelets and the drip of the oars making ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... of its source. They were superabundantly crude as yet—happily for Olive, who promised herself, as we know, to train and polish them—but they were as genuine as fruit and flowers, as the glow of the fire or the plash of water. For her scrutinising friend Verena had the disposition of the artist, the spirit to which all charming forms come easily and naturally. It required an effort at first to imagine an artist so untaught, so mistaught, so poor in experience; but then it required an ...
— The Bostonians, Vol. I (of II) • Henry James
... heavy smell of decay—sheep skins were stored there in great, stiff bales. She went on, feeling as though horror happened wherever she went. But along by the sea wall it was very peaceful; only the soft lapping of the landlocked tide against the stone, the slow gliding of ferry boats, the lazy plash of oars and the metallic clanking in the naval dockyard on Garden Island came to her. On a man-of-war out in the stream the sailors were having a washing day; she could hear their cheery voices singing and laughing as they hung vests and shirts and socks among the rigging, ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... lover! And thou dost not glance at her, oh hard, hard that thou art, but still thou sittest at thy sweet piping. Ah see, again, she is pelting thy dog, that follows thee to watch thy sheep. He barks, as he looks into the brine, and now the beautiful waves that softly plash reveal him, {36} as he runs upon the shore. Take heed that he leap not on the maiden's limbs as she rises from the salt water, see that he rend not her lovely body! Ah, thence again, see, she is wantoning, light as dry thistle-down in the scorching summer weather. She flies when thou ...
— Theocritus, Bion and Moschus rendered into English Prose • Andrew Lang
... disappeared. The carriages were nearly all departed. The lights were twinkling here and there all over the placid bay. It was still nearly an hour to dinner-time at the general's mess, and he wished to be alone to think over matters, to hear the soothing plash and murmur of the little waves, and Stuyvesant vowed in his wrath and vexation that Satan himself must be managing his affairs, for, over and above the longed-for melody of the rhythmic waters, he was hailed by the ...
— Ray's Daughter - A Story of Manila • Charles King
... set in the water, and its rugged and buttressed walls are reflected stone by stone in the clear, tremulous mirror. The glancing lights on the bright stream, the wealth of leafy foliage, the sweet cadence of the ripples as they plash against the walls of the Quay, and the beauty of the long reflections—quivering lines of grey, green, and purple—increase the beauty of what is probably the most picturesque corner of the town, while over the tops of the trees ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... went a gun in my very ear. Flame, smoke—much of both—and the stifling smell of sulphur. Jorian had fired at the face of the pop-gun knave. That putty-white countenance had a crimson plash on it ere it vanished. Then came back to us a scream of dreadful agony and the sound ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... sea, bayou [U.S.], fiord, armlet; frith[obs3], firth, ostiary|, mouth; lagune[obs3], lagoon; indraught[obs3]; cove, creek; natural harbor; roads; strait; narrows; Euripus; sound, belt, gut, kyles[obs3]; continental slope, continental shelf. lake, loch, lough[obs3], mere, tarn, plash, broad, pond, pool, lin[obs3], puddle, slab, well, artesian well; standing water, dead water, sheet of water; fish pond, mill pond; ditch, dike, dyke, dam; reservoir &c. (store) 636; alberca[obs3], barachois[obs3], hog wallow ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... strong as a mountain cavern, graceful as a bow just bent; when first, before its moonlike circumference was all risen, the gondolier's cry, 'Ah! Stali!" struck sharp upon the ear, and the prow turned aside under the mighty cornices that half met over the narrow canal, where the plash of the water followed close and loud, ringing along the marble by the boat's side; and when at last the boat darted forth upon the breadth of silver sea, across which the front of the Ducal palace, flushed with its sanguine veins, looks to the snowy dome of Our Lady ...
— The Glory of English Prose - Letters to My Grandson • Stephen Coleridge
... sod. He fell, in his weariness, in an awkward and helpless mass; the knife, still in his hand, pierced him on the shoulder, and thus the injury I could not give him by my will was given him by Providence. Over on his back he turned with a plash of blood oozing at his shirt, and he grasped with clawing fingers to stanch it, yet never relinquishing his look of bitter anger at me. With cries, with tears, with names of affection, the gillie ran to his master, who I saw was not very ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... lulled into an almost death-like slumber by the cadence of innumerable fountains. Near the Patenta is the Garden of Fountains, which I shall tell you about in another message. It was the plash and rivulous current of these water courts that brought ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... fancies; so I leaped contentedly upon the firm sands of the village of Mojada, telling myself I should be sure to find there the rest that I craved. After all, far better to linger there (I thought), lulled by the sedative plash of the waves and the rustling of palm-fronds, than to sit upon the horsehair sofa of my parental home in the East, and there, cast down by currant wine and cake, and scourged by fatuous relatives, drivel into the ears of gaping neighbors ...
— Options • O. Henry
... What wouldst thou with them—fancies all!— Thy hunting and thy fountain brink? What wouldst thou? By the city wall Canst hear our own brook plash and fall ...
— Hippolytus/The Bacchae • Euripides
... not, but she stood the image of doubt and painful indecision. Then the plash of oars was heard in the water, and at the next moment the pinnace was seen gliding over the element, impelled by the strong ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... The two men, as they stood in the street looking seaward, could hear already the solemn hum through the breathless air, and feel the first cool whiff of the breeze on their faces, while at their feet there fell with a sudden plash a heavy drop ...
— Roger Ingleton, Minor • Talbot Baines Reed |
