"Swirl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about four miles off the northern end of the island when suddenly there shot up in the air to a tremendous height a column of smoke. The sky darkened and the smoke seemed to swirl down upon us. In fact, it spread all around, darkening the atmosphere as far as we could see. I called Chief Engineer ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... lap a sheugh or dyke. His honest, sonsie, baws'nt face Aye gat him friends in ilka place; His breast was white, his touzie back Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black; His gawsie tail, wi' upward curl, Hung owre his hurdie's wi' a swirl. ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... being dashed against the sides of the cavern, or on a rock, or being sucked down in the raging waters, or perhaps asphyxiated by want of air. All of these and many other modes of death presented themselves to my imagination as I lay at the bottom of the canoe, listening to the swirl of the hurrying waters which ran whither we knew not. One only other sound could I hear, and that was Alphonse's intermittent howl of terror coming from the centre of the canoe, and even that seemed faint and unnatural. Indeed, the ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... activity which leads all around the floor, up to the balcony and along the length of it, and plunges down at the other end. Often a bear that is chased will fling himself into the bathing pool, with a tremendous splash, quickly scramble out again and rush off anew in a swirl of flying water. ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... nightly, but great heroic figures of romance have stalked majestically along these mountain summits. Every waterfall foaming and dashing from its rocky bed in the glen has a legend in the toss and swirl of ...
— Penelope's Irish Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a swirl, a shock, a leap, horse and hunter working in perfect accord, and a fine big calf, bellowing lustily, struggled desperately for freedom under the remorseless knee. The big hands toyed with him; and then, secure in the double knots, the calf lay still, sticking out his tongue ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... tremendous detonation. The whole cloud mass collapsed like a pricked bubble, and a bottomless pit yawned underneath the ocean—and, next thing we knew, our raft was yanked from under our feet, plunging and bucking in a swirl of waters. ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... southward of us, on the seaward side of the spit, lay the Psyche, hard and fast aground, dismasted, and on her beam-ends, with the surf pounding at her, and her spars and rigging, worked up into a raft, floating in the swirl alongside the beach; while on the shore, opposite where she lay, the little company that had been left aboard to take care of her laboured to save such flotsam and jetsam as the surf ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... came a heavy step and a quick pull at the latch-string. An odd figure entered in a swirl of snow—a real Santa Claus, the mystery and blessing of Cedar Hill. For five years, every Christmas Eve, in good or bad weather, he had come to four little houses on the Hill, where, indeed, his coming had been as a Godsend. Whence ...
— Darrel of the Blessed Isles • Irving Bacheller
... he poured a glass tumbler half full and consumed it eagerly while his eyes scanned the room in search of the girl. He couldn't see her in the dim swirl of color. Had she arrived? Perhaps she was wearing a different costume than she had the night before. If so, ...
— A Bottle of Old Wine • Richard O. Lewis
... feel her husband entering and invisibly passing among the horses near to her, in darkness as they were, actively intermingled. The rather low sound of his voice as he spoke to the horses came velvety to her nerves. How near he was, and how invisible! The darkness seemed to be in a strange swirl of violent life, just upon her. She ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... the dreams began where they had broken off. For we dreamed in these times, fitful and lurid, coloured dreams; flashes of horrible crises in one's life; Interminable precipices; a river skiff engulfed in a swirl of green sea-water; agonies of repentance; shameful failure, defeat, memories—and then the steady pulsing of the engine, and thick, impermeable darkness choking up the windows again. How I ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... he drove safely off the bridge, and shook his head at the swirl of water that rushed and eddied, dark and muddy, close up under the rotten planking; then he cracked his whip, and the horses sturdily ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... swirl of wind and water dashed down upon her on the instant. The lamp behind her flickered and went out, but there was another at the head of the steps to light her halting progress, and, clinging with both hands to the rail, ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... a quaintly round dress of lightish-brown mohair, which would not fall into graceful folds. So there she sat in the little library, knitting Titanically; and I sat alone with her, learning to round Hatteras at the heel in a swirl of contradictory impressions. I felt that she ought to have been dressed in soft dark silks, with a large, half-idle fan before ...
— Memories of Hawthorne • Rose Hawthorne Lathrop
... rose-lipt thing has lost its pearl,— Death's chamber is its polished whorl; I am a life, and feel of Being No phantom touch, but the vital swirl. ...
— Song-waves • Theodore H. Rand
... she had taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards Monte Mario. She had set up her household gods. The plaster bust of Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and, such as it was, this place ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... of locked arms, swaying bodies, ribs all but crushed in the embrace of those bestial arms, and Mackenzie was conscious that he was fighting the battle alone. In the wild swirl of it he could not see whether Reid had fallen or torn free. A little while, now in the pressure of those hairy, bare arms, now free for one gasping breath, fighting as man never fought in the sheeplands before that hour, and ...
— The Flockmaster of Poison Creek • George W. Ogden
... it, it seemed to Linda that the cast filled all the room with a swirl of great white wings and heroic robes. In an instant the incense and the dark colors, the uncertain pallid faces and bare shoulders, were swept away into a space through which she was dizzily borne. The ...
— Linda Condon • Joseph Hergesheimer
... Barrels bumped in his head: dull porter slopped and churned inside. The bungholes sprang open and a huge dull flood leaked out, flowing together, winding through mudflats all over the level land, a lazy pooling swirl of liquor bearing along wideleaved flowers ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... children here," says the youngish father, frankly. He is altered now from the man he was when he inhabited a diminutive flat in the full swirl of New York. His face is calmer, milder, more benevolent, and more resignedly worried. And assuredly no one would recognize in him the youth who howled murderously at university football matches and cried with ...
— Your United States - Impressions of a first visit • Arnold Bennett
... valley. It swayed the tops of the tall pine and spruce trees as they shouldered up from the swift brook below. It tossed into driving spray the water of Break Neck Falls where it leaped one hundred feet below with a thundering roar and swirl. It tossed as well the thin grey hair, long beard, and thread-bare clothes of an old man standing upon a large rock which towered high ...
— Under Sealed Orders • H. A. Cody
... craft carried no heavier guns, was trying to keep at a safe distance until the friendly darkness of night should hide her from view. During sixty seconds or more the big cruiser held her course in silence, and then her entire bow was hidden from the spectators in a swirl of white smoke as a main battery gun roared ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... A vicious swirl of colour and dizzy, dislocated rhythms prefaced the incantations of the Czardas. Instantly the eating, gabbling crowd became silent. Alfassy Janos magnetized his hearers with cradling, caressing movements of his fiddle. He waved like tall grass in the wind; he twisted snakewise ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... was of the heart and will, not of the head. He had small hope of reaching the hut at the entrance of Dead Man's Gulch or, if he could struggle so far, of finding it in the white swirl that clutched at them. Near and far are words not coined for a blizzard. He might stagger past with safety only a dozen feet from him. He might lie down and die at the very threshold of the door. Or he might wander in an opposite direction and miss ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... into another street and were taken up, it seemed, by the swift trade currents that swirl at morning, rush through the noon, glide past the evening and rest for a time in the semi-calm of midnight. Chicago has begun to set the pace of a nervous nation's progress. It is a city whose growth ...
— The Colossus - A Novel • Opie Read
... pleasure to spend a whole day in a vineyard planted on the steep slope beyond the bridge. A grey stone seat had been placed beneath a shady laurel, and here he often sat without motion or gesture for many hours. Below him the tawny river swept round the town in a half circle; he could see the swirl of the yellow water, its eddies and miniature whirlpools, as the tide poured up from the south. And beyond the river the strong circuit of the walls, and within, the city glittered like a charming piece ...
— The Hill of Dreams • Arthur Machen
... really as bad as it looked. My first feat was to back up cautiously almost to the fall, till my boat was dancing so vigorously that I was spattered all over. Standing up in the boat there, I could see the oily water, like a great arched snake's back, swirl past the arch towards me, bubbleless, almost without a ripple, till it showed all its teeth at once in breaking down. The piers of the arches jutted far out below the fall, like pointed islands. I was about to try to climb on the top of one from the boat, a piece of madness which would probably ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... on the droop, seemed to find his toes of interest. But now and again he would look delicately up, and so sure as he did the brown eyes and the grey seemed to swim towards each other, to melt in a point, swirl in an eddy of the feelings, in which Vanna found herself drowning and found such death sweet. La Testolina still ran on, but now in a monologue. Fra Battista looked and longed, and Vanna looked again and thrilled. ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... measure withdrawing from the swirl of society in which so much of his life had been passed, he in no sense lost touch with the movements of the day, and in none of these did he take a more lively interest than in those which affected the state of France. And that seemed particularly unsettled. No one could ...
— Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. - In Two Volumes. VOL. II. • John Knox Laughton
... the warl', wi' a swirl an' a sway, An' a Rin, burnie, rin, That water lap clear frae the dark till the day, An' singin' awa' did spin, Wi' ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... loop twirl through the air than the trained cowpony braced itself backward. There was a swirl of dust in the air. The herd raced madly across the flat to the safety of the canyon beyond and the girls saw that Tommy had succeeded. A cow was scrambling to her ...
— The Merriweather Girls in Quest of Treasure • Lizette M. Edholm
... swirl was animating the multitude. Whenever the mass tended to congeal, something always seemed to stir it up again. This was due to the restless activity of Mrs. Pett, who held it to be the duty of a good hostess to keep her ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... minutes later, Hetty in the pickup disappeared behind a hot swirl of yellow dust. Barney ambled to the cool pump house beneath the towering windmill. An electric motor, powered either from the REA line or from direct current stored in a bank of wet cell batteries, bulked large in the small shed. To the left, a small, gasoline-driven generator ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... water so as to interrupt our view of what we hoped would take place. Then giving the string a jerk he loosened the coal, which began to descend rapidly, its bright black surface flashing in the brilliant sunshine till it was half-way down, when there was a tremendous swirl in the water, which danced and flashed and obscured our vision, only that we caught sight of something—of two somethings—quite white, and then by degrees the water calmed down, and there were the two sharks still there, but turned round ...
— The Golden Magnet • George Manville Fenn
... the darling Eva!" was my prayer. A pure, unconscious depth of earnestness Was in her eyes, so indescribable You might as well the color of the air Seek to daguerreotype, or to impress A stain upon the river, whose first swell Would swirl it to the deep. A calm, sweet soul, Where Love's celestial saints and ministers Did hold the earthly under such control Virtue sprung up like daisies from the sod. Oh, for one hour's sweet excellence like hers! One hour of sinlessness, that never more Can visit me this side the Silent Shore, ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... the duck; then there is a mighty rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim to and fro still ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... the colonel sat in the shade, beside the quiet stream, the little green book by his side. But he did not open it now, and though his gaze was on his line, where it cut the water in a little swirl, he did ...
— The Golf Course Mystery • Chester K. Steele
... swirl of song in the bright sky— The little lark adoring his lord the sun; Across the corn the lazy ripples run; Under the eaves, ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... a big Silver Doctor that may do as the water is thick. I put one on, and begin again casting over where that fish rose. By George, there he came at me, at least I think it must have been at me, a great dark swirl, "the purple wave bowed over it like a hill," but he never touched me. Give him five minutes law, the hook is sure to be well fastened on, need not bother looking at that again. Five minutes take a long time in passing, when you are giving ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, April 2, 1892 • Various
... break, and curve and hollow itself and break again. The sweet sea-breeze sang in her ears, and braced her with its freshness, while the continuous sound of wind and water went from her consciousness and came again with the ebb and flow of her thoughts. But the strength and swirl of the water, its tireless force, its incessant voices choiring on a chorus of numberless notes, invited her, fascinated her, filled her with longing—longing to trust herself to the waves, to lie still and let them rock her, to be borne out by them a little way and ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... about the ledge. It was nearly three feet wide, and had an easy downward trend. Yet you heard the hungry roar of the surf below, and try as you would not to, caught glimpses of the white swirl of it. I moved cautiously, keeping close to the face of the cliff. Crusoe, to my annoyance, sprang down upon the ledge after me. I had a feeling that he must certainly trip me as I ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... In the rush and swirl of recent events he must have omitted to see that the clasp that fastened the bag was properly closed; for the bag, as it jumped on to the window-sill, gaped at him like a yawning face. And ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... or twice last winter that such a clearing after snowfall took place at full moon. Then the moon rose in a swirl of fleecy vapour—clouds above, beneath, and all around. The sky was blue as steel, and infinitely deep with mist-entangled stars. The horn above which she first appears stood carved of solid black, and through the valley's length ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... . . . for I stared and stared at it—there, plain, looking up far beyond me, sightless—until a swirl of the tide washed it clear; and, as it passed out into darkness, it seemed ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... terrific swirl, carrying clouds of dust and leaves, swept over the country and battered down the crops, uprooting plants and shrubs in its mad fracas. Perrine could not withstand this whirlwind. As she was lifted off her feet, a deafening crash of thunder shook ...
— Nobody's Girl - (En Famille) • Hector Malot
... the sharks, which have a new corpse in there,' said the man. 'See what a turmoil there is in the water. There must be six monsters together in that swirl. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... boisterous wind, that seemed blowing from all points of the compass at once, and in a minute I was caught in a swirl of blinding rain. I took no heed of it, however, but hurried along the lonely road till I reached the cottage, which I knew at once was the one I sought. It was picturesque, but had ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... realized that the wind was much stronger than they had thought. The road could hardly be seen. The tracks left by the sledge-runners were immediately covered by snow and the road was only distinguished by the fact that it was higher than the rest of the ground. There was a swirl of snow over the fields and the line where sky and earth met could not be seen. The Telyatin forest, usually clearly visible, now only loomed up occasionally and dimly through the driving snowy dust. The wind came from the left, insistently blowing over ...
— Master and Man • Leo Tolstoy
... was a communion fortified by many associations. Practically the whole of their courtship, from the day when he dropped off the street-car with her in the rain and walked her over to the elevated and kept her note-books, down to the day on the bridge over the Drainage Canal in the swirl of that March blizzard, when she'd felt his first embrace, had been on foot like this, tramping along side by side; miles and miles and miles, as she'd told her mother. And there had been other walks since. Do you remember the last time they had walked together? It was from the stage ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... roll of wire which he carried there for some purpose or other, probably for the construction of a short length of fence whenever he stopped long enough to make it desirable. He glanced up at the gray sky, noting the swirl of snowflakes which settled down like a cloud. A few moments ago they had almost ceased, enabling him to glimpse the rider at a distance and now they were providentially falling again. Luck ...
— Louisiana Lou • William West Winter
... with a movement of the tail that caused the water to swirl and the dinghy to rock, turned upon his back and engulfed the head; then he slowly sank and vanished, just as if he had been dissolved. He had come off best in this their ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... and heavier, and the damp air was growing rawer and colder every moment. The sunshine of yesterday was forgotten in the gloom of to-day. The fresh green leaves, torn by the rising storm from the tall, waving branches, fell in a swirl at the feet of the tall, dark man, who, with folded arms, leaned against an old tree, utterly oblivious to the tempest which was ...
— The Northern Light • E. Werner
... certain, and that is, that in the cracks and crannies of its rocky bed must be gold in quantities beyond the dreams of a diseased avarice. But is this not all theory? No, it is not. At one part of the river, in the upper canyon, there is a place where the current stayed, and, with a long backward swirl, built up a bar. If you ask an old British Columbian about Boston Bar, he will, perhaps, tell stories which may seem to put Sacramento in the shade. Yet there will be much truth in them, for there was much gold found on that bar. Again, some years ago, ...
— A Tramp's Notebook • Morley Roberts
... BURNABY lay slain, with a smile in the face of death, And for happy news from the hungry wastes men yearned with bated breath; When WILSON pushed his eager way past torrent-swirl and crag, Till they saw o'er GORDON's ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Vol. 101, August 15, 1891 • Various
... at home. She felt disappointed and dreadfully alone. Her sober-minded room-mate was bobbing like a pigeon before Professor Grind, enthusiastically telling him "how much inspiration she got from his courses;" Katherine Graham was lost in a swirl of upper class-men. The Freshman had half turned toward the dressing-room when out of the press came Jack Smith, big, wholesome-looking, still smiling with some memory of his latest conversation. Why did ...
— Stanford Stories - Tales of a Young University • Charles K. Field
... knew the stream, its peculiarities and dangers. It was not the volume of water, nor its depth he feared, for wide as it appeared stretching from bank to bank, he realized its shallow sluggishness. The peril lay in quicksand, or the plunging into some unseen hole, where the sudden swirl of water might pull them under. Alone he would have risked it recklessly, but with her added weight in his arms, he realized how a single false step would be fatal. The farther shore was invisible; he could perceive nothing but the slight gleam of water lapping the sand at his ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... icy water to climb out of the carriage, but on the ground she smiled at him, her face little and childish and pink above the buffalo robe over her shoulders. In a swirl of flakes which scratched at their eyes like a maniac darkness, he unbuckled the harness. He turned and plodded back, a ponderous furry figure, holding the horses' bridles, Carol's hand ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... to change. Mile after mile we encountered the same impenetrable blanket of clammy moisture. I was huddling as tight as possible to the bottom of the seat, taking advantage of the least bit of cover from the biting, rushing swirl of icy-cold air. Mile after mile; it seemed hours up there in the solitude. I watched the regular dancing up and down of the valves on top of the engine. I was thinking of a tune that would fit to the regular ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... chance when young, he might have been great in any profession. As it was, he was merely a rough, uncouth man, but a well-trained and accomplished sailor. He had been trained in the hardest of all schools, that of the coasting trade, and he knew every swirl of the tide and every sandbank between St Abb's and Dungeness. He did not rise to be captain, though he frequently went as mate during the winter months. It was not until his ambition led him to a knowledge of ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... the light which existed in the shallows vanished. Red and yellow as colors went, but Ross was aware of blues and greens in shades and tints which were not visible above. He switched on his diving torch, and color returned within its beam. A swirl of weed, pink in the light, became darkly emerald beyond as if it possessed the ...
— Key Out of Time • Andre Alice Norton
... electric message sent through a mile of wire is not anything transmitted; matter is not transferred, but the particles are set to dancing in wavy motion from end to end. Particles are leaping within ordered limits and according to regular laws as really as the clouds swirl and the air trembles into song through the throat of a singer. When a wire is made sensitive by electricity the breath of a child can make it vibrate from end to end, ensouled with the child's laughter or fancies. Nay, more, and far ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... square tower on each side of it that stood out from the wall and rose above it. Beyond the wall were more towers and houses, gleaming with gold and bright colours. Away to the left ran the steel-blue swirl of a great river. And the children could see, through a gap in the trees, that the river flowed out from the town under a ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... gentleman caught at night, and one other; the 19th Brigade took a fourth prisoner. So we abandoned the battle, had breakfast at 2.30 p.m., and returned. The day was wearying beyond conception, yet the men, British and Indian alike, were singing as they passed Al-Ajik. Samarra camp was a swirl of dust after the day's busyness; almost a faery place in the ...
— The Leicestershires beyond Baghdad • Edward John Thompson
... are, indeed, lovely to watch, but they are always coming or gone, never in any taken shape to be seen for a second. But here was one mighty wave that was always itself, and every fluted swirl of it, constant as the wreathing of a shell. No wasting away of the fallen foam, no pause for gathering of power, no helpless ebb of discouraged recoil; but alike through bright day and lulling night, the never-pausing plunge, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... as they pushed off; and the good lass, who had done it many a time before, waded in, and was soon swimming behind. Hereward turned, and bent over the side in the darkness. There was a strange gurgle, a splash, and a swirl. He turned round, and sat upright again. ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... richt, doctor; there's a hole yonder. Keep oot o' 't for ony sake. That's it; yir daein' fine. Steady, man, steady. Yir at the deepest; sit heavy in yir seats. Up the channel noo, and ye 'ill be oot o' the swirl. Weel dune, Jess! Weel dune, auld mare! Mak' straicht for me, doctor, an' a' 'll gie ye the road oot. Ma word, ye've dune yir best, baith o' ye, this mornin'," cried Hillocks, splashing up to the dog-cart, now ...
— Stories by English Authors: Scotland • Various
... in the waters and along the banks; the barking, black-skinned otter came after me in lust and gust and swirl; the wild cat fished for me; the hawk and the steep-winged, spear-beaked birds dived down on me, and men crept on me with nets the width of a river, so that I got no rest. My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and escape, a burden and anguish of watchfulness—and ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... her wish a moment later, and it was rather more than she bargained for since the sea cow, in an effort to get rid of the rope that was twisted about its flipper, turned about with a swirl in the water, not unlike that made by the propeller of a motor boat, and came head-on for the ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... cup from the terrible steep, That, rugged and hoary, hung over the verge Of the endless and measureless world of the deep, Swirl'd into the maelstrom that madden'd the surge. "And where is the diver so stout to go— I ask ye again—to ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... came to look around we found that another big rock blocked the channel 300 yards below, and the water rushed around it with a terrible swirl. So we unloaded the boat again and made the attempt to get around it as we did the other rocks. We tried to get across the river but failed. We now, all but one, got on the great rock with our poles, and the one man was to ...
— Death Valley in '49 • William Lewis Manly
... rushing at his feet; the swirl of the unseen waters whispered to him of rest and peace he had not known since—it was so cold—and who was there to care, he thought bitterly. No one would ever know. He moved a little nearer the edge, ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... on one side, and threw a swagger into his walk, cleverly remindful of the swirl of tartan skirts, then ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... from the train gathered around them. Gladys was pale herself, and had a strong sense of the sadness of the occasion, still she had a feeling of importance. Edwin Shaw came lumbering up timidly, and Maud Page pressed quickly to Maria's side with a swirl of ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... turning from me with a disdainful swirl of her short petticoat, began to descend into the depths below, seeing which, I scrambled to my feet and crossed to the trap, only to behold her standing beneath me, the ladder dragged ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... the Chester crowds kept pretty much together. They could be picked out as a rule by the swirl of waving school colors, for every Chester girl and boy who had journeyed to Marshall to see their team win the game, made sure to carry the ...
— Jack Winters' Gridiron Chums • Mark Overton
... who was Cora's partner, gave a wonderful swirl to show just how beautifully he and Cora ...
— The Motor Girls Through New England - or, Held by the Gypsies • Margaret Penrose
... injunctions to her father, the undimmed Flora to her brother, and Anna laughed and laughed and waved hi all directions save one. There Mandeville had joined Kincaid and the conductor and amid the wide downpour and swirl of words and cries was debating with them whether it were safer to leave the shed slowly or swiftly; and there every now and then Anna's glance flitted near enough for Hilary to have caught it as easily as did Bartleson, Tracy, every lieutenant and sergeant ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... sweating, scared, and tremulous, swung a clumsy scow upon the sand at our feet. It was no child's play to cross that stream. Together with one of "The Little Dutchmen," and a representation from "The Mule Outfit," I stepped into the boat and it was swung off into the savage swirl of gray water. We failed of landing the first time. I did not wonder at the ferryman's nervousness, as I felt the heave and rush of the ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... seemed at first merely austere, and became more and more manifestly inadequate as the moments fled by. She meditated profoundly through several enormous cold hours on all that had happened and all that she had done since the swirl of the suffrage movement had submerged her ...
— Ann Veronica • H. G. Wells
... offering only variety and relaxation. There is the country, there is the lake for fishing; there is the dance hall where a pretty girl smiles as your arm encircles her waist; there is the ball field where on a fine day you may go and forget duty and strained effort in the swirl of an enthusiasm that emanates from the thousands around you as they applaud the splendid athletes; there is the good fellowship and pleasure that beckon as you bend to a task. To shut these out, to inhibit the temporary "good" for the permanent good, ...
— The Foundations of Personality • Abraham Myerson
... cheeks?" The question came along with a swirl of skirts from the great hall. "Cousin Anna, don't hate me for keeping you so long. Mr. Brockton, I ...
— Life at High Tide - Harper's Novelettes • Various
... sudden from out her shoulders grew black, shadowy wings, and, with a piercing scream, she swirled upward, until the awe-stricken Dedannans saw nought save a black speck vanish among the lowering clouds. And as a demon of the air do Eva's black wings swirl her through ...
— Celtic Tales - Told to the Children • Louey Chisholm
... the surging tide of driven waters. It reeled before the flaming weapons like rollers on a breakwater. There came the swirl and eddy. Then, in desperate defeat, it dropped back to gather fresh impetus from ...
— The Triumph of John Kars - A Story of the Yukon • Ridgwell Cullum
... and grovelled on the bed of the river, churning the water into a yellowish, foaming mass; her captain bellowed and barked, her crew yelped, her passengers shouted; the flat boats and perogues moored along the bank, aroused from their lassitude, began to romp gaily in the swirl of her crazy backwash; ropes whined and rasped and groaned, the deck rattled hollowly with the tread of heavy feet and the shifting of boxes and barrels and crates; the gangplank came down with a crash,—and so the mighty hundred and fifty ton leviathan ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... before the fire. Outside in the night ghostly shapes pass by, ghostly faces press against the window, and at the corners of the house ghostly voices pause for parley, muttering thickly through the swirl and smother of the snow. Inside burns the fire, kindling into glorious pink and white peonies on the nearest wall and glowing warm and sweet on her face as she reads. The children are in bed. She is ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right of free speech and free thought: ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... basilisk and slowly turning him to stone. Somebody sure had welshed! He had once been in a side show at Coney Island where the room simulated the motion of an ocean steamer. The courtroom began to do the same—slanting this way and that and spinning obliquely round and round. Through the swirl of its gyrations he could see old Tutt's vulture eyes, growing bigger, fiercer, more sinister every instant. It was all up with him! It was an execution, and the crowd down below were thirsting for his blood, waiting to tear ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... that I can even now recall the feeling of wondering how much longer it would be, ere all was over and I struck. Time seemed to stand still, and all the worlds seemed poised on their poles, as I fell, soul-becalmed, through the eddying whirl and swirl of ...
— White Jacket - or, the World on a Man-of-War • Herman Melville
... a nondomestic type of woman to-day is due to the rise of feminism and the fascination of industry. Where a woman has once been in the swirl of business, has been part of an organization and has tasted financial success, settling down may be possible, but is much more difficult than to the woman of past generations. Such a woman probably has never cooked a meal, or ...
— The Nervous Housewife • Abraham Myerson
... for yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil passions are traced. Were it not for the brute in it, it might be mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the impress of at least one evil passion. Every ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... a flowing tide occasionally (though not invariably) creates a gentle swirl in Brammo Bay, a swirl so placid as to be imperceptible in default of such indices as driftwood. Under such a condition Neptune makes playthings which possibly in some future age may puzzle men who happen to ponder seriously on first causes. I recall an afternoon when ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... "I only pulled you back. You'd have got badly hammered if you'd tried to cross that ledge. I'd noticed the inshore swirl close below it when we were packing along the bank, and remembered that we could land ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... pretty wild stories concerning the perils that might be expected while crossing these same inlets, where at the full sweep of the tide small boats were in danger of being upset in the mad swirl. ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... he suddenly caught sight of the man's inert body approaching him, after gliding right round the basin. It was quite fifty feet away, and seemed for a few moments as if about to be swept out of the hollow and down the gully; but the swirl was too strong, and it continued gliding round the ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... There was a constant twitching of the lips and the eyes were deep-set, little and dull. I left the glass and sat down by the window, looking out. I saw nothing in the street: I just looked into a blackness. My mind was as blank as the night and as soundless. There was a swirl outside the window, rain tossed by the wind; without noticing, I saw it, and my brain swung with the rain until it heaved in circles, and then a feeling of faintness awakened me to myself. I did not allow my mind to think, but now and again a word ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... connected with the outer world by a pathway of ammunition boxes, laid stepping-stone-wise; we went to and fro, lepping from box to box as leps the chamois from Alp to Alp. Should you miss your lep there would be a swirl of mud, a gulping noise, and that was the end of you; your sorrowing comrades shed a little chloride of lime over the spot where you were last seen, posted you as "Believed missing" and indented for another Second-Lieutenant (or Field-Marshal, as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 152, Feb. 7, 1917 • Various
... and his small guide reached the bars, the black stallion seemed to go suddenly mad. He flung himself into the air and came down bucking. Back and forth across the corral he threw himself in the wildest swirl of pitching that Bull Hunter had ever seen ...
— Bull Hunter • Max Brand
... far as they can be determined from the official orders and from the manner in which the respective movements were carried out, were three-fold. The first of these movements was the order given to General von Kluck to swirl his forces to the southeast of Paris, swerving away from the capital in an attempt to cut the communications between it and the Fifth French Army under General d'Esperey. This plan evidently involved a feint attack upon the Sixth French Army under General Manoury (though ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... inculcates such self-annihilation. Christ set the example of retirement from the world into the wilderness for forty days, to a mountain apart for one night, to teach men occasionally and for a limited period, to withdraw from the swirl of business and the clatter of tongues. And S. Paul retired from the society of men after his conversion to gather his thoughts together, and prepare for his great missionary work. But that was something altogether different from ascetic abnegation of life and flight ...
— Castles and Cave Dwellings of Europe • Sabine Baring-Gould
... flows the river Styx, black and terrible. It flows between the poplars and willows in the groves of Persephone, and meets the broad waters of Okeanos. Sail up its dark stream until thou dost reach the rock where its two branches meet and swirl and roar. There leave thy boat and dig a ditch in the ground, a foot deep and a foot wide, in which thou shalt pour honey, milk, wine, and water as an offering to ...
— Odysseus, the Hero of Ithaca - Adapted from the Third Book of the Primary Schools of Athens, Greece • Homer
... Solomon's Temple was nearly four hundred years' old. There were the city walls, some of them still older, the Palace and the Tombs of the Kings—perhaps also access to the written rolls of chroniclers and prophets. Above all, Anathoth lay within the swirl of rumour of which the capital was the centre. Jerusalem has always been a tryst of the winds. It gathers echoes from the desert far into Arabia, and news blown up and down the great roads between Egypt and Damascus and beyond to the Euphrates; or when these roads are deserted and ...
— Jeremiah • George Adam Smith
... spruce—and I was mighty careful not to shake the ground or to make any noise, for we needed fish. Nobody had been to the hole from this direction; it was too hard work. By reaching out with my pole I could just flip the hopper into the water. I tried twice; and the second time I landed him right in the swirl. He hadn't floated an inch when a yellowish thing calmly rose under ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... occur inside each episode, the textures sparkling with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... expressed it. And the whole reality of her relations to Evan and his relations to her stood in colours as distinct as those of the red and green maple leaves, and unsoftened by the least haze of self-delusion. In the dash of the rain and the roar of the wind, in the familiar swirl of the elm branches, she read as it were her sentence of death. Before this she had not been dead, only stunned; now she was wakened up to die. Nature herself, which had been so kind a year ago, brought her now the irrevocable message. A whole year had gone by, a year of silence; it was merely ...
— Diana • Susan Warner
... that, with incessant whirl, Rolled onward ever on their ponderous way: Gigantic marvels, deafening in their play, And swift, industrious, never-ending swirl. ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... water boiled all about him in a froth of light. A pair of huge, pincer-like claws seized him by the neck, and another pair by one arm, plucking him back. His convulsed face stared upward for an instant, and then, with a choked scream, he was dragged under. He disappeared in a swirl of pale blue, frantically waving claws, and eyes, and feelers, and ...
— In the Morning of Time • Charles G. D. Roberts
... came to the side I could see it was a boy, an' knew things was all right. Well—we'd best be gettin' on—no tellin' how soon they may find you're gone." Once more the big Yankee bowed his back to the task in hand and a silence fell, broken only by the faint sound of the muffled oars and the swirl of water along the sides. Not even the thrill of the escape could keep the two tired boys awake, and it was nearly an hour later that they were roused by voices calling at no great distance. A tall black mass on which showed a single moving light rose out of the gloom ahead. The hail was repeated. ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... Spreads them their daily feast, Sumptuous, of light, firing them as with wine; Of the old Moon's fitful solicitude And those mild messages the Stars Descend in silver silences and dews; Or what the buxom West, Wanton with wading in the swirl of the wheat, Said, and their leafage laughed; And how the wet-winged Angel of the Rain Came whispering . . . whispering; and the gifts of the Year— The sting of the stirring sap Under the wizardry ...
— The Song of the Sword - and Other Verses • W. E. Henley
... more, through the swirl of white flakes that cut into his face, blown on the wings of a bitter wind. He bent his head to the blast, and buttoned his overcoat more closely about him, as he fought his way ...
— Baseball Joe in the Big League - or, A Young Pitcher's Hardest Struggles • Lester Chadwick
... when a shout from Corp brought him, dazed, to his feet. It had been preceded by another cry, as the boy and the sapling he was twisted round toppled into the river together, uprooted stones and clods pounding after them and discolouring the pool into which the torrent rushes between rocks, to swirl frantically before it dives down a narrow channel and ...
— Tommy and Grizel • J.M. Barrie
... that I met nobody at all; but I must confess that my luck was better than my management. As I came upon the beck, a new sound reached me with the swirl. It was the jingle of bit and bridle; the beat of hoofs came after; and I had barely time to fling myself flat, when two horsemen emerged from the plantation, riding straight towards me in the moonlight. If they continued ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... them. Evil accumulated dissolves in misfortune upon them, they are swept with blasts of despair by the tempest of fatalities, there a downpour of trials and sorrows streams upon dishevelled heads in the darkness; squalls, hail, a hurricane of distress, swirl and whirl back and forth athwart them; it rains, rains without cease: it rains horror, it rains vice, it rains crime, it rains the blackness of night; yet we must explore this obscurity, and in the sombre storm the mind ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... great oak totter and then sway, while a sickening swirl of branches filled the air, and scarcely conscious of her own act she hurled herself upon Jim. With all the strength borne of her terror she pushed him from the heap of poles, sending him rolling out into the middle of the road, to ...
— Anything Once • Douglas Grant
... staring into the pale malevolent face drawing nearer and nearer, and wondering when the long twitching fingers would catch them by the throats, when the droshky with a mad swirl forward cleared the forest, and they found themselves gazing wildly into empty moonlit space, with no sign of their ...
— Werwolves • Elliott O'Donnell
... short jumps, a fish-like swirl sideways, and still Collie held his seat. He eased the hackamore a little. He was breathing hard. The horse took up the slack with a vicious plunge, head downward. The boy's face grew white. He felt something warm trickling down his mouth and chin. He threw ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... shepherd he herded his flock of golden specks so that not one should be lost. At last, of the pan of dirt nothing remained but his golden herd. He counted it, and then, after all his labor, sent it flying out of the pan with one final swirl of water. ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... mind as the actual turning-point of my fortunes—indeed, the very turning-point of my whole life. As I look back upon that beautiful June evening, I again hear the rumble of the elevated trains in the street beyond, and again I hear the clang of the electric cars as they swirl out of the avenue into the street. Probably every man and woman who ever came a stranger to a great city has his or her own particular secret and holy place where angels came and ministered in the hour of need. I do not doubt it, but I do often ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... them both to sudden destruction on the rounded cobbles of the paved streets, but once the gates were passed, and the dust of the high road underfoot, he loosed the light tension and pressed his heels home into the flanks. There, ahead, a shifting vision in the rising swirl of dust, was the bay, thundering at top speed. Behind there were shouts, cries, the clatter of iron shoes upon the stones, but La Mothe heard only the muffled rhythm of galloping hoof-beats sounding through the roar of the ...
— The Justice of the King • Hamilton Drummond
... fluttered from room to room in swarms, stately and gorgeous, dazzling with diamonds; flowers on their heads and breasts, in their hair, scattered over their dresses or lying in garlands at their feet. Light quiverings of the body, voluptuous movements, made the laces and gauzes and silks swirl about their graceful figures. Sparkling glances here and there eclipsed the lights and the blaze of the diamonds, and fanned the flame of hearts already burning too brightly. I detected also significant nods of the head for lovers and repellent attitudes for husbands. The ...
— Sarrasine • Honore de Balzac
... remember at exactly what stage of the proceedings the face of Jerry Durand impinged itself on his consciousness. Once, when the swirl of the crowd flung him close to the door, he caught a glimpse of it, tight-lipped and wolf-eyed, turned to him with relentless malice. The gang leader was taking no part in ...
— The Big-Town Round-Up • William MacLeod Raine
... rose from the negroes: a roar from the crew as from a cage of lions. There was a rush and a swirl along the surface of the stream; and ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... oh, the river runs swifter now; The eddies circle about my bow. 30 Swirl, swirl! How the ripples curl In many a ...
— The Ontario High School Reader • A.E. Marty
... cried, laughing with the excitement of the moment. "Heave all!"—she began the chant of sailors hauling at the ropes. Together, and bracing their feet against the schooner's rail, they fought out the fight with the great fish. In a swirl of lather the head and shoulders came above the surface, the flukes churning the water till it boiled like the wake of a screw steamship. But as soon as these great fins were clear of the surface the ...
— Moran of the Lady Letty • Frank Norris
... overhead, lowering, and a dirty gray. An uncommon chill, a rawness of atmosphere foretold the change. And shortly after they broke camp the first snowflakes began to drift down, slowly at first, then more rapidly, until the grayness of the sky and the misty woods were enveloped in the white swirl of the storm. It was not particularly cold. Bill wrapped her in a heavy canvas coat, and plodded on. Noon passed, and he made no stop. If ...
— North of Fifty-Three • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... a frequent need of reassuring the outer world has caused to be described by the phrase "never more peaceable." Raoul perceived it before he had left the shop twenty paces behind. By the time he reached the first corner he was in the swirl of the popular current. He enjoyed it like a strong swimmer. He even drank of it. It was better than wine and ...
— The Grandissimes • George Washington Cable
... vista of a gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily alarmed. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... Smith could get over his amazement there was a rush and a swirl in the water behind the insect. Spray was dashed over the rock, a huge form showed itself indistinctly beneath the waves, and next instant the borrowed eyes were showing the engineer, so clearly as to be undeniable, the most astounding sight ...
— The Devolutionist and The Emancipatrix • Homer Eon Flint
... the foam beneath. His eyes glared as he shot into the void, a great dark living mass against the white mist. Was he speared on those terrible shafts of rock below, or was his life dashed out in horrible crimson splashes against the cliffside? Or did he sink into the reeling swirl of the foaming waters, and die more mercifully in their steel-dark depths? I could not see. I saw only the flying form dart through the mist like an arrow from a bow. I heard only the appalling cry, like ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... and rain, till we came to the last of these labyrinths, liveliest and most treacherous of all. We were soaked, and only dreaded an upset for our provisions and equipments. The rapid was long, rough, swift, crooked. The Kleiner Fritz led the way into the swirl, and was caught, a hundred feet down, hard and fast by her bow-keel, swung around against another boulder at her stern, and was pinned fast in no sort of danger, the water boiling under and around her, while her captain sat at his leisure as under ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, September 1880 • Various
... when you are going to have an important interview with a man you ought to look your very best," said the Story Girl, giving her skirt a lustrous swirl and enjoying ...
— The Story Girl • Lucy Maud Montgomery |
