"Swash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... history, Judith, and she, now aged twenty-one, was possibly the sole member of the house of Talbot-Lowry for whom a successful future might confidently be anticipated. Judith, a buccaneer by nature and by practice, was habitually engaged in swash-bucklering it on a round of visits. She was good-looking, tall, talkative, and an able player of all the games proper to the state of life to which she had been called. She was a competent guest, giving as much entertainment as she received, being of those who contribute ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross
... would wade across the tides to the mainland and furnish himself forth with all that came in his way. The poor folk and the rich folk alike ran out of their houses and hid themselves when they heard the swish-swash of his big feet in the water; for if he saw them, he would think nothing of broiling half-a-dozen or so of them for breakfast. As it was, he seized their cattle by the score, carrying off half-a-dozen fat oxen on his back at ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... phosphorescent, and I remember that the phrase "wan water," so familiar in the Scottish ballads, struck me just then as peculiarly appropriate. A gentle breeze, from which I had hoped for a ripple, had utterly died away, and it was a warm, breathless Southern night. There was no sound but the faint swash of the coming tide, the noises of the reed-birds in the marshes, and the occasional leap of a fish; and it seemed to my over-strained ear as if every footstep of my own must be heard for miles. However, I could have no more postponements, and the thing must be ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Mr. Mulford?" called out Capt. Stephen Spike, of the half-rigged, brigantine Swash, or Molly Swash, as was her registered name, to his mate—"we shall be dropping out as soon as the tide makes, and I intend to get through the Gate, at least, on the next flood. Waiting for a wind in port is lubberly seamanship, ...
— Jack Tier or The Florida Reef • James Fenimore Cooper
... Soon the swash and flow of light flooding the street and sidewalks shines the clearer. Fewer dots and lumps of man, cab, and cart now cross its surface. The crowd has begun to thin out. The doors of the theatres are deserted; some flaunt signs of "Standing Room ...
— Felix O'Day • F. Hopkinson Smith
... saw the spread table. The pine walls of the kitchen were glowing in the warm light from the stove. Too, he remembered how he and his companions used to go from the school-house to the bank of a shaded pool. He saw his clothes in disorderly array upon the grass of the bank. He felt the swash of the fragrant water upon his body. The leaves of the overhanging maple rustled with melody in ...
— The Art Of Writing & Speaking The English Language - Word-Study and Composition & Rhetoric • Sherwin Cody
... who gave a boat-load of bluejackets shore leave at New York was liable to find them all Americans when their leave was up. Other nations looked covetously upon our great body of able-bodied seamen, born within sound of the swash of the surf, nurtured in the fisheries, able to build, to rig, or to navigate a ship. They were fighting sailors, too, though serving only in the merchant marine. In those days the men that went down to the sea in ships had to be prepared to fight other ...
— American Merchant Ships and Sailors • Willis J. Abbot
... as the hours passed, although hardly aware of doing so. The soft, continuous chugging of the engine, the swash of water alongside, the ceaseless sweep of the current, and the dark gloom of the shadows through which we struggled, all combined to produce drowsiness. I know my eyes were closed several times, and at last ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... to avoid the swash of water which poured over the rock at her feet; then she exclaimed ruefully: "If I wasn't sure before, I am now! The fudge is just under that rock, between ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... squares of the guard, standing motionless in the swash of the rout, like rocks in running water, held out till night. They awaited the double shadow of night and death, and let them surround them. Each regiment, isolated from the others, and no longer connected with the army, which was broken on all sides, died where ...
— Volume 1 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann
... had fallen short of his printed promise. The hurricane had come by night, and with one fell swash had made an irretrievable sop of everything. The circus trailed away its bedraggled magnificence, and the ring ...
— Short Stories for English Courses • Various (Rosa M. R. Mikels ed.)
... jurisdiction—for they were soldiers, and once having them in his gripe, the court of appeal could never get them out of it. I tell you what it is, friend, he has a devil within him, that same conde de Punonrostro. Seville, and the whole country round it for ten leagues, is swept clear of swash-bucklers; not a thief ventures within his limits; they all fear him like fire. It is whispered, however, that he will soon give up his place as corregidor, for he is tired of being at loggerheads at every hand's turn with the senores ...
— The Exemplary Novels of Cervantes • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... down an ass, by all means," said Barker calmly; "but please explain what you mean. I told you not to buy in the Green Swash Mine, and now I suppose you have gone and done it, because I said it might ...
— Doctor Claudius, A True Story • F. Marion Crawford
... over, he went out and took his favorite seat under the apple tree. All was still, save for the crickets' ceaseless chirp, the soft thud of an August sweeting dropping in the grass, and the swish-swash of the water against his boat, tethered ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... into the wild- looking creeks and rivers, more than one hundred of which enter the parent stream along the thousand miles of its course. Here, in these secluded nooks, I found security from the steamer's swash. ...
— Four Months in a Sneak-Box • Nathaniel H. Bishop
... the swash on the right that goes through the big marsh and comes out at the Devil's Elbow. You hug the channel bank, an' mebbe ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa
... you, Birkenshead? What has happened? Bah! this is horrible! I have swallowed the sea-water! Hear it swash against the sides of the boat! Is the boat going ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... him was foulest and the insult from him to her deepest, she assuredly conceived and cherished a bitter loathing. But there was one man who had always been ready to champion her cause, the daring, reckless, ruffianly James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who nevertheless was no mere swash-buckler, but according to Scottish standards of the day, a man of education [Footnote: Lang, Hist. Scotland, ii., p. 168.] and even, it would seem, of some culture. From this time, Bothwell was her one ally. She had the policy and the self-control ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... discredit, and I cannot say that of my part in the war, of which I now loathe the thought for other reasons. The battlefield was no place for me, and neither was the camp. My ineptitude made me the butt of the looting, cursing, swash-buckling lot who formed the very irregular squadron which we joined; and it would have gone hard with me but for Raffles, who was soon the darling devil of them all, but never more loyally my friend. Your fireside fire-eater ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... have grown stupid at his work, for suddenly there was a growling of water, and a crest came with a roar and a swash into the boat, and it was a wonder that it did not set the cook afloat in his life-belt. The cook continued to sleep, but the oiler sat up, blinking his eyes and shaking with the ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... sheds rather than houses, of broken plaster and crazy timbers. But here and there were open places of public reception, crowded with the lower followers of the puissant chief; and the eye rested on many idle groups of sturdy swash-bucklers, some half-clad in armour, some in rude jerkins of leather, before the doors of these resorts,—as others, like bees about a hive, swarmed in and out with a ...
— The Last Of The Barons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... vivified hair trunk of monstrous compass, whose knobby lid opened at one end and showed a red morocco lining, when the pretty girl, in leaning over to point out the rising monster, dropped into the water one of her little gloves, and the swash made by the hippopotamus drifted it close under Billy's hand. Either in play or as a mere coincidence the animal followed it. The other children about the tank screamed and started back as he bumped his nose against the side; but Billy manfully bent down and grabbed ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... swung only to show its whiteness in the bright moonlight. Every cord upon it hung lifeless, serving only the purpose of pictured lines, one silvered in the light, the dark shadow of the other traced in clear outlines on the sail. The swash of the waves against the side of the boat was too slight to sway it; the sheet dipped in the water and swung almost imperceptibly, while now and then a few straws floated against it and caught there. The moon, high in the ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume II. No. 2, November, 1884 • Various
... to swash his bucket up and down, up and down, in the stream until the water fairly rocked. Then he pulled the bucket out of the water, set it beside him, and ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... laboring with all her might. Stern heard her breath, gasping and quick, above the roar and swash of the mad waters. And all at once revulsion seized him—rage, and a kind of mad exultation, a defiance ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... ill-fortune to be born in the nineteenth century instead of the seventeenth. Romance and adventure, politely amorous but vigorously attractive, came up to him from the seventeenth century, perhaps through the blood of some swash-buckling ancestor, and he was held enthralled by the possibilities that lay hidden in some far off or even nearby corner of this hopelessly unromantic world of ...
— Truxton King - A Story of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... one should happen to pass, he could not, from the land, see Mortimer, on account of the willows. The nearest house was three or four miles distant; and a voice could be heard but a little distance, above the swash of the flood and the rush ...
— Chums of the Camp Fire • Lawrence J. Leslie
... his ear to the door and listening intently. "I can hear the swash of water just the same, Dick. We had better be a ...
— The Hilltop Boys on Lost Island • Cyril Burleigh
... when I had stepped out into the swash of the rain. "Frankly, I hardly enjoyed it. You drive like ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... on board, the schooner spread her white wings and stood in for Sandy Hook, while the ship was headed towards the "Swash Channel." ...
— Wakulla - A Story of Adventure in Florida • Kirk Munroe
... the ship. As he did so, he discovered a steamer, which had just passed through the narrow opening between Odderoe and the main land, and whose course lay close to the point of the island where the cutter was moored. He saw that the swash of the steamer was likely to throw the boat on the rocks, and grind her planking upon the ...
— Up The Baltic - Young America in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark • Oliver Optic
... that were becoming so frequent and outrageous. Vigorous measures were taken to check and punish them. Several of the most noted freebooters were caught and executed, and three of Vanderscamp's chosen comrades, the most riotous swash-bucklers of the Wild Goose, were hanged in chains on Gibbet-Island, in full sight of their favorite resort. As to Vanderscamp himself, he and his man Pluto again disappeared, and it was hoped by the people of Communipaw ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... the tones that come from deep chests, and with a prolonged, sustained capacity for enduring the toil of men. But the high-pitched laughter proved them women, as did their loud and unceasing gossip. The battle of the voices rose above the swash of the waves, above, also, another sound, as incessant as the women's chatter and the swish of the water as it hissed ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... cares, and those horrid boys will never catch up!" she cried in despair, as the boat began to rock more and more, and the loud swash of water dashing in and out of the Chasm drew nearer and nearer. Holding on now with both hands she turned and looked straight before her, pale and shivering, while her eyes tried to see some sign of hope among the steep cliffs that rose up on ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... younger England, the heir to the throne. On the deck before him his passengers were gathered in merry groups, singing, laughing, chatting, the ladies in their rich-lined mantles, the gentlemen in their bravest attire; while to the sound of song and merry talk the well-timed fall of the oars and swash ...
— Historical Tales, Vol. 4 (of 15) - The Romance of Reality • Charles Morris
... the body of the wagon, and the swift ripples deluded the eye into almost conviction that horses, vehicle, and all were not gaining an inch in forward progress, but drifting surely down. They came up out of the depths, however, with a tug, and a swash, and a drip all over, and a scrambling of hoofs on the pebbles, at the very point aimed at in such apparently sidelong fashion,—the wheel-track that led them up the bank and into the ten-mile pine woods through which they were to skirt the base ...
— A Summer in Leslie Goldthwaite's Life. • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... in the stream are still, Save now and then a low and gentle swash, All which doth try me sore against my will— So hot! And all my ...
— Cap and Gown - A Treasury of College Verse • Selected by Frederic Knowles
... spurred with the spikes in our soles; There is water a-swash in our boots; Our hands are hard-calloused by peavies and poles, And we're drenched with the spume of the chutes; We gather our herds at the head, Where the axes have toppled them loose, And down from the hills where the rivers are fed We ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI. (of X.) • Various
... north, and the waves ran so high as to cause some anxiety in the minds of those who were not accustomed to the motion of a canoe; for, now they rose lightly to the top of the wave and anon sank with a swash into the trough, splashing and dashing the water over their bows. Gradually, however, as they became more used to their frail barks, their anxiety lessened, and they began to enjoy the beautiful prospect before them, and to inhale with delight ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... for hundreds of years whom rightly to call its master. Pizarro, Balboa, Sir Francis Drake, and Bolivar did what they could to make it a part of Christendom. Sir John Morgan, Lafitte and other eminent swash-bucklers bombarded and pounded it ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... sharp decline to the river, down the lane, and one of the men stumbled and rolled several yards, picking himself up with a grunt and a groan and a lot of bad language, and then hurrying after the rest. Dick heard the swash of the water on the gravel bank, and then saw the river itself dimly, but in another moment some dark object loomed up before him, and then he and Bob were taken into a house, the front of which ...
— The Liberty Boys Running the Blockade - or, Getting Out of New York • Harry Moore
... precipice descends sheer into deep water, waves swash up and down the face of the rocks but cannot break and strike effective blows. They therefore erode but little until the talus fallen from the cliff is gradually built up beneath the sea to the level at which the waves drag bottom ...
— The Elements of Geology • William Harmon Norton
... great distance from the Minnesota lay the strangest-looking craft I ever saw. It was a platform of iron, so nearly on a level with the water that the swash of the waves broke over it, under the impulse of a very moderate breeze; and on this platform was raised a circular structure, likewise of iron, and rather broad and capacious, but of no great height. It could not be called a vessel at all; it was a machine,—and I have seen one ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 57, July, 1862 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... out in its cool shallows. Pretty faces that bent over its sheltered pools, as in a lookin' glass, wavin' locks that scattered gold light down into the water, bright eyes that shone like stars above it. I shouldn't wonder a mite if it missed 'em and tried to say so in its gentle, pensive swish, swash, swish. ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... but the expression was incorrect, except as a figure. Bucklers went out fifty years ago, "about the twentieth of Queen Elizabeth"; men do not now swash with them, or fight in that way. Iron armor has mostly gone out, except in mere pictures of soldiers; King James said, It was an excellent invention; you could get no harm, and neither could you do any ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... an' when I got out I was astarn of all, an' there was the schooner carryun on, right through to clear water! So, hold of a bight o' line, or anything! an' they swung up in over bows an' sides! an' swash! she struck the water, an' was out o' sight in a minute, an' the snow drivun as ef't would bury her, an' a man laved behind on a pan of ice, an' the great black say two fathom ahead, an' the storm-wind blowun 'im ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IX., March, 1862., No. LIII. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics, • Various
... Swash! Down fell the Fiddler into the apple-tree and down fell a dozen apples, popping and tumbling about ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... it drop. The cut in my shoulder was raw and made me faint. It was not dangerous, but deep enough to give me trouble, and would make my swimming slow, if, indeed, I could swim at all. I felt the water swash against me and knew the Indian was swimming back. There was only a thin wall of reeds between us, and in a moment he would come to where the channels joined and see my floating garments. I could not stop to secure them, though I had hoped to tie them in a bundle on my back. I dropped ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... gloried in her shame, like other fallen creatures; for her large, slanting oval hawse-pipes and boot-top stripe gave a fine, Oriental sneer to her face-like bow, and there was slur and insult to respectable craft in the lazy dignity with which she would swash through the fleet on the port tack, compelling vessels on the starboard tack to give up their right of way or be rammed; for she was a large craft, and there was menace in her solid, one-piece jib-boom, thick as an ordinary mainmast. An outward-bound coasting-schooner, resenting ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... matter of course, notice was immediately given to all foreign vessels in port of the proposed blocking of the Narrows and the Main, Swash and East Channels with torpedoes, and forty-eight hours' time was accorded them wherein to take their departure. The European steamers were the first to leave, each one towing from two to five sailing-vessels. Later on, General Hancock impressed ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 5 • Various
... will walk out and saunter down among the rocks; but no one ever does. Just at the right is a little beach, with a few old houses, and a mimic stir of life, a little curve in the cliff, the mouth of the gorge, where the waves come in with a lazy swash. Some fishing-boats ride there; and the shallow water, as I look down this sunny morning, is thickly strewn with floating peels of oranges and lemons, as if some one was brewing a gigantic bowl of punch. And there is an uncommon stir of life; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... welkum, young man," said the woman tartly. "And if you'll take my advice, you won't bring him into these parts again, where they're doing nothing else but swash-buckling from morning to night. The broken heads I've seen this ...
— In Honour's Cause - A Tale of the Days of George the First • George Manville Fenn
... orgeats, capillaires, lemonades, and aw your slips and slops, with which you drench your weimbs, when you are dancing.—Upon honour, they always make a swish-swash in my bowels, ...
— The Man Of The World (1792) • Charles Macklin
... of strength into the effort, Hollingsworth heaved amain, and up came a white swash to the surface of the river. It was the flow of a woman's garments. A little higher, and we saw her dark hair streaming down the current. Black River of Death, thou hadst yielded up ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... before with my beloved pardner by my side, and it seemed to me as if Niagara missed him, and its great voice seemed to roar out: "Where is Josiah? Where is Josiah? Why are you here without him? Swish, swash, roar, roar, Where is Josiah? Where? ...
— Around the World with Josiah Allen's Wife • Marietta Holley
... jubilee for offenders; every culprit started up into an accuser." All the ills of the colony, many of them inevitable in such an enterprise, many of them due to the shiftlessness and folly, the cruelty and lust of idle swash-bucklers, were now laid at the door of Columbus. Aguado was presently won over by the malcontents, so that by the time he was ready to return to Spain, early in 1496, Columbus felt it desirable to go along with him and make his own explanations to the ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... mused the storm, which had threatened all the afternoon, broke. The swash and patter of the rain against the windows, and the moaning of the trees on the lawn, made a dreary accompaniment to his melancholy musings. It grew chill, and a footman entered, put a match to the laid fuel, and lighted the gas. Then John ...
— A Daughter of Fife • Amelia Edith Barr
... awoke, next morning, the engines were at work again, and their heavy thud, thud, was mingled with the swash of water, as the Bengali boys washed down decks, while a rattling of spars and creaking of cordage showed that sails were being set, ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... sooty cheeks as if to blow a fly off the next bite of cheese. "So-oftly, so-oftly, muster," drawled he; "do na go to ruffling it here. This shop be mine, and I be free-born Englishman. I'll stand aside for no swash-buckling rogue on my own ground. Come, now, what wilt thou o' the lad?—and speak thee fair, good muster, or thou'lt get a dab o' the red-hot shoe." As he spoke he gave the ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... highly the "refrescos" of the cook. His imagination, excited by the frequent reading of novels of travel, had made him conceive a type of heroic, gallant, dashing sailor—a regular swash-buckler capable of swallowing by the pitcherful the most rousing drinks without moving an eyelid. He wanted to be that kind; every good sailor ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... sky. More and more she leans over to the whale, while every gasping heave of the windlass is answered by a helping heave from the billows; till at last, a swift, startling snap is heard; with a great swash the ship rolls upwards and backwards from the whale, and the triumphant tackle rises into sight dragging after it the disengaged semicircular end of the first strip of blubber. Now as the blubber envelopes the whale precisely as the rind does an orange, ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... we went to breakfast. Here I cannot but remember the advice of the cook, a simple-hearted African. "Now,'' says he, "my lad, you are well cleaned out; you haven't got a drop of your 'long-shore swash aboard of you. You must begin on a new tack,— pitch all your sweetmeats overboard, and turn to upon good hearty salt beef and ship bread, and I'll promise you, you'll have your ribs well sheathed, and be as hearty as any ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... bar, or 'swash,' which stretches inside Ocracoke Inlet, (at that time the only passage to the sea,) the vessels take in but a part of their cargoes at Newbern, while lighters with the remainder accompany them across the 'swash,' where ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... Ship Channel. Of course, all the others are blockaded, too, but General Beauregard thinks that if we can torpedo the flagship the others will hurry to her assistance and the blockade-runners can get out through the Swash Channel. Our magazines are running low, and we must have arms, powder, everything. There are two or three shiploads at Nassau. This is an attempt to get to them. If we can blow up Admiral Vernon's flagship, perhaps we can raise the blockade. At any ...
— A Little Traitor to the South - A War Time Comedy With a Tragic Interlude • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... SWASH. A sudden surge of the sea. Also, a shoal in a tide-way or mouth of a river, over which the water flows, and the tide ripples ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... chamber, indolently trimming his nails. A tall swash-buckler, with a red nose and a black patch over his eye, was with him, also seated and conversing with familiar earnestness, as the ...
— St George's Cross • H. G. Keene
... we filed into the dining room, sent a chill through me. It was a meal for the very young or the very hungry. The uncompromising coldness and solidity of the viands was enough to appall a man conscious that his digestion needed humoring. A huge cheese faced us in almost a swash-buckling way, and I noticed that the professor shivered slightly as he saw it. Sardines, looking more oily and uninviting than anything I had ever seen, appeared in their native tin beyond the loaf of bread. There was a ham, in its third quarter, and a chicken ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... rattled beneath me, I discovered one that could be shifted without difficulty. But scarcely had I stooped to raise it when an emotion of fear seized me, and I started back alert and listening, though I was unconscious of having heard any thing more than the ordinary swash of the water beneath the windows and the beating of my own overtaxed heart. An instant's hearkening gave me the reassurance I needed, and convinced that I had alarmed myself unnecessarily, I bent again over the board, and this time ...
— The Mill Mystery • Anna Katharine Green
... response, turned away toward the shed and the deep, wet, burring sound of a wash-board. The woman bending over it did not hear his footfall. Presently he stopped. She had just straightened up, lifting a piece of the washing to the height of her head, and letting it down with a swash and slap upon the board. It was a woman's garment, but certainly not hers. For she was small and slight. Her hair was hidden under a towel. Her skirts were shortened to a pair of dainty ankles by an extra under-fold at the neat, round waist. Her feet were thrust ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... to this charge, we have to pay from ten to twenty francs for a pilot, depending upon the tonnage, and the same for each passenger. Through the greater portion of the canal the speed of steamers is limited to five miles an hour; otherwise the swash of the propeller would injure the embankments on either side. It takes steamers about sixteen hours to go ...
— Asiatic Breezes - Students on The Wing • Oliver Optic
... Battery, overlooking another harbor, or estuary, landlocked save for an entrance about a mile in width. Behind him lay, not a great, but a little, city; hardly more than a big town; before him a few vessels of moderate tonnage placidly plied the main or swash channels. ...
— A Man and His Money • Frederic Stewart Isham
... books of maritime adventure. There being a ferry hard by the mouth of the Tunnel, I recrossed the river in the primitive fashion of an open boat, which the conflict of wind and tide, together with the swash and swell of the passing steamers, tossed high and low rather tumultuously. This inquietude of our frail skiff (which, indeed, bobbed up and down like a cork) so much alarmed an old lady, the only other passenger, that the boatmen essayed to comfort her. "Never fear, mother!" grumbled one of them, ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... probably been there all night. But he did not bother his head about the fog, for he knew the sound which the waves made upon every portion of the shore. As one skilled in music knows the note he hears, Leopold identified the swash or the roar of the sea when it beat upon the rocks and the beaches in the vicinity. By these sounds he knew where he was, and he had a boat-compass on board of the Rosabel, which enabled him to lay his course, whenever he ...
— The Coming Wave - The Hidden Treasure of High Rock • Oliver Optic
... parts, "What he means, then, by invading the British Territories, while a solid Peace subsists?" Mr. George had a long ride up those desert ranges, and down again on the other side; waters all out, ground in a swash with December rains, no help or direction but from wampums and wigwams: Mr. George got to Ohio Head (two big Rivers, Monongahela from South, Alleghany from North, coalescing to form a double-big Ohio for the Far West); and thought to himself, "What an ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... cold. A swash of ice-water filled the bottom of the skiff. She was low enough down without that. They could not stop to bail, and the miniature icebergs they passed began to look significantly over the gunwale. Which would come to the point ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... the stoat, the swash-buckler. He cleared his throat with a short, rasping bark, glared round him, ...
— "Wee Tim'rous Beasties" - Studies of Animal life and Character • Douglas English
... and the crash of thunder. Dreary uplands, the hiss of rain, the sough of drifting snow, the patient plod of a mule along a perilous trail. And then the jungle: its discordant uproar, its hammering of frogs, its hoots and howls, the dismal swash of flood waters. A monotonous ebb and flow of life, punctuated by sudden flares of fight. Then a long, ...
— The Pathless Trail • Arthur O. (Arthur Olney) Friel
... October to July. The cold lake-breeze died away, and on the little inland river the sun was actually oppressive. Seal-skins were cast aside, and we sent hastily below for sun-umbrellas. The speed of the steamer was slackened to four miles an hour. You heard no click of machinery or swash of water against the sides: we were gliding on through a green and lovely marsh, with water-lilies all about us and wild roses in the distance. Cattle stood knee-deep in pleasant brooks, locusts hummed and buzzed in the warm air, all sweet summer sounds and scents encompassed us. There ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... indebted to him for the glowing picture of a knight-errant of the sixteenth century, moving with the port of a swash-buckler across the field of vision, wherever cities were to be taken and heads cracked in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and, in the language of one ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... ran across the tracks and out on the wharf, climbing on the timber pile, where Peterson and his gang were, rolling down the big sticks with cant-hooks. Not a quarter of a mile away was a big steamer, ploughing slowly up the river; the cough of her engines and the swash of the churning water at her bow and stern could be plainly heard. Peterson stopped work for ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... came to consciousness after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down my side as ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... at my ears, with the little round holes over the ear openings. It was marvellous. I could hear the men washing down one of the cars, the swash of water, and, best of all, ...
— Guy Garrick • Arthur B. Reeve
... least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage in with a blow-pipe. Throw a cup of tea over the whole, and ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... just almost there. She could hear the buttermilk begin to swash! She turned her head to call to her mother-in-law to bring a pitcher for the buttermilk, when a sound of galloping hoofs echoed from the road. Nelly frowned, released her hold on the dasher, listened an instant, and ran into the house. She went right ...
— The Brimming Cup • Dorothy Canfield Fisher
... whitens all awash, and the "old man" shivers in his oilskin coat as he hangs on to a pin in the rail to watch us. The poop is wet and gleaming, wet with the spray of following seas, and as our ship rolls the swash of shipped seas hisses, and her cleanness is as the cleanness of something newly varnished. Once and again as she rolls (the wind now quartering) the scuppers spout geyser-like and gurgle. As she ran like a beaten thing she wallowed a little, dived, scooped up seas and shook ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... almost expecting that the rusted hinges will creak a warning and the wooden halves begrudgingly divide, and that from under the slewed arch will issue a most gallant swashbuckler with his buckles all buckled and his swash swashing; hence the name. ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... and shouted till our lungs were exhausted, but no answer came, the only sounds we heard being the thrapping and swash of the waves against our boat. Five minutes—which seemed hours—passed, and then we suddenly lost sight of the barque's headlight, and saw the dull gleam of those aft shining through the ...
— Ridan The Devil And Other Stories - 1899 • Louis Becke
... its richest mood—the gray rain-flood above, the brown river-flood beneath. The language of the river was scarcely less enchanting than that of the wind and rain; the sublime overboom of the main bouncing, exulting current, the swash and gurgle of the eddies, the keen dash and clash of heavy waves breaking against rocks, and the smooth, downy hush of shallow currents feeling their way through the willow thickets of the margin. And amid all this varied throng of ...
— The Mountains of California • John Muir
... the lovely bay of Bolinas, blue and sparkling in the summer afternoon sun, its borders dotted with thrifty ranches, and the woody ravines and bristling Tamalpais Range rising over all. The tide was running out, and only a peaceful swash whispered along the level sandy beach on our left, where the busy sandpiper chased the playful wave as it softly rose and fell along the shore. On the higher centre of the sandspit which shuts in the bay on that side, a row of ashy-colored gulls sunned themselves, and blinked at us sleepily ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... and wide blue expanses appeared here and there on the vault of the sky. They spied the red lanterns marking the wharf, about which a multitude of boats lay, moored to stakes, and with three skilful tacks Atle made the harbor. It was here, standing on the pier, amid the swash and swirl of surging waters, that the pilot seized Carina's tiny hand in his big ...
— Boyhood in Norway • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen
... save the low, tremulous swash of the sleet outside, or the death-rattle in the throat of the bath-tub. Then all was still as the bosom of a fried chicken when ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... Its members elected to be known as the Alemannia, and invited her to accept the position of Ehren-Schwester ("honorary sister"). Lola was quite agreeable, and reciprocated by setting apart a room in her villa where the swash-bucklers could meet. Not to be outdone in paying compliments, the Alemannia planted a tree in her garden on Christmas Day. Their distinguishing badge (which would now probably be a black shirt) was a red cap. As was inevitable, they were ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... old Tom Wootton, once a notorious harbourer of "masterless men," at his house at Smart's Quay, but now a sheriffs officer; and, perhaps, it ought to be mentioned, that there were some half-dozen swash-bucklers and sharpers from Alsatia, under the command of Captain Bludder, who was held responsible ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 1 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth
... their times what writers flourished. Rich men and magistrates, whilst yet they live, They flatter palpably, in hope of gain. Smooth-tongued orators, the fourth in place— Lawyers our commonwealth entitles them— Mere swash-bucklers and ruffianly mates, That will for twelvepence make a doughty fray, Set men for straws together by the ears. Sky-measuring mathematicians, Gold-breathing alchemists also we have, Both which are subtle-witted humourists, That get their meals by telling miracles, Which ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... the swash of the night boat from the south caused the Goldwing to bump against the wharf. It was five o'clock in the morning. He felt in his pocket, and found that his money was safe. He slept another hour after this, and then went on shore. He got his breakfast ...
— All Adrift - or The Goldwing Club • Oliver Optic
... House of Commons," who made themselves somewhat disagreeable in the Parliament of 1348, were not the warriors who had gone out to fight the King's battles, but the burghers who stayed at home, heaped up money, and grumbled. It was otherwise with the roistering swash-bucklers who came back in that glorious autumn. They are said to have returned laden with the spoils of France, the plunder of Calais, and so on and so on. Calais must have been rather a queer little place ...
— The Coming of the Friars • Augustus Jessopp
... differs on the different railways. On the New York Central, where the road-bed is quite perfect and the steel rails continuous, I have heard this irreverent train give the words of a certain popular revival hymn after this fashion: "Hold the fort, for I am Sankey; Moody slingers still. Wave the swish swash back from klinky, klinky klanky kill." On the New York and New Haven, where there are many switches, and the engine whistles at every cross road, I have often heard, "Tommy make room for your whooopy! that's a little clang; bumpity, bumpity, boopy, clikitty, clikitty, ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... you began the dishes, but rattle and swash that mop about in the pan as if you were mining the ore from the cave," complained Polly, as she managed to ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the swash and eddying of the current; she closed her eyes to keep from falling, when she felt a hand on the bridle, and in a moment had reached the opposite shore. The jester made no motion to remount, but remained ...
— Under the Rose • Frederic Stewart Isham
... fine wine-dark mahogany sheen that resides upon excellent briar of many years' service. He has had (though I speak only by guess) a rummer of hot toddy to celebrate the greatest of all Evenings. At his elbow is a porthole, brightly curtained with a scrap of clean chintz, and he can hear the swash of the seas along his ship's tall side. And now he is reading. I can see him reading. I know just how his mind feels! Oh, the Perfect Reader! There is not an allusion that he misses; in all those lovely printed words he sees the subtle secrets that a lesser soul would miss. ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... architecture could have made it. Neighbours it had none, for contrast; but a low woody point of land stretched off behind it, reaching out even into the Mong. And the Mong itself—with its cool sharp glitter in the stirring wind, and the swash of its blue waves at the very foot of the little paling about the house; its white-sailed craft, ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... me that day and I lay a long time looking up at the rustling canopy overhead. I remember listening to the waves that came whispering out of the further field, nearer and nearer, until they swept over us with a roaring swash of leaves, like that of water flooding among rocks, as I have heard it often. A twinge of homesick ness came to me and the snoring of Uncle Eb gave me no comfort. I remember covering my head and crying softly as I thought of those who had gone away ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... upon one of the boats anchored in the ferry-way. Paddling away, he suddenly heard the swash of waves, and found himself approaching a wharf, but on which side the river he could ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... is an aggressive sheet. It calls George William Curtis 'the Apostle of Swash.'"—New ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... Mrs. Barnes took up the lantern. Its flame was much less bright than it had been and the wick sputtered. She held the lantern to her ear and shook it gently. The feeble "swash" that answered the shake was not reassuring. The ...
— Thankful's Inheritance • Joseph C. Lincoln
... beach, ran up on both sides of us, closed in behind us. We were lying on a little sand island, and the waves nibbled at its edges—nibbled and nibbled and nibbled—the island was being nibbled up. This would never do! We must move! And I woke. Ripple, ripple, swash! ripple, ripple, swash! went the unconscious waves. As I raised my head I saw the pale beach stretching off under the moon-washed mists of middle night. Reassured, I sank back, and when I waked again the big sun was well above the rim of the waters and all ...
— More Jonathan Papers • Elisabeth Woodbridge
... drunken banshee, and nearly frightened me to death. And me a musician. And me the gentlest of God's creatures—who never did any harm, but killed the mice in father's barn. I ask you, as a man of the world, is it delicate, is it fair? Drip, drip, drip—swish, swish, swash,—ugh, the rain! If it could guess how I despise it!" He made a face and shook his fist at it. "Do you think the weather knows how disagreeable it is? We all know how disagreeable other people can be, but ...
— The Lady Paramount • Henry Harland
... was so thick yer could cut it 'Thout reachin' a foot over-side, The dory she'd nose up ter butt it, And then git discouraged an' slide; No noise but the thole-pins a-squeakin', Or, maybe, the swash of a wave, No feller ter cheer yer by speakin'— 'Twas ...
— Cape Cod Ballads, and Other Verse • Joseph C. Lincoln
... a little pale-faced, delicate-looking boy in the class, who blundered a good deal. Every time he did so the cruel serpent of leather went at him, coiling round his legs with a sudden, hissing swash. This made him cry, and his tears blinded him so that he could not even see the words which he had been unable to read before. But he still attempted to go on, and still the instrument of torture went swish-swash round his little thin legs, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... awake full of thought both for myself and for the poor souls around me. At last, however, the measured swash of the water against the side of the vessel and the slight rise and fall had lulled me into a sleep, from which I was suddenly aroused by the flashing of a light in my eyes. Sitting up, I found several sailors gathered about me, and a ...
— Micah Clarke - His Statement as made to his three Grandchildren Joseph, - Gervas and Reuben During the Hard Winter of 1734 • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I could hear the loose cargo, which had broken adrift below in the main hold, playing the devil's own game; smashing and crushing from side to side as the vessel rolled, and coming in contact with the stanchions and beams, with a surging swash of water, too, which told the tale without the trouble of breaking open the hatches. I took, however, the precaution to run my eye over the manifest to see if, perchance, there was any treasure in the after run or any where else, as, in case there had been, ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... effete-growing civilization; and yet here it is, a few miles from St. Louis, on a charming little river, in the wilds of the West, near the Mississippi. I went down that way to-day by the Iron Mountain Railroad—was switch'd off on a side-track four miles through woods and ravines, to Swash Creek, so-call'd, and there found Crystal city, and immense Glass Works, built (and evidently built to stay) right in the pleasant rolling forest. Spent most of the day, and examin'd the inexhaustible and peculiar sand the glass is made of—the ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman |
