"Athwart" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... from his goal, he paused for a minute's respite. He turned his bloodshot eyes to the sky. A great eagle was soaring majestically athwart the blue. It seemed to mock him by its easy flight. It angered him as he followed its every movement. Why should a mere bird have such freedom of motion, while man was so helpless? To the eagle, distance was nothing; it laughed the highest mountain peak to scorn, and ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... we sat upon a beam athwart the afterdeck, in silence drinking in the strange phenomenon. We watched, after a small feed of curry and rice, long into the dark hours, when the thunder had passed us by, and in the distant booming one could now imagine the lower notes ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... water, as I found when I tried to get across to the deck-house sofa. At last I lay down on the floor, wrapped up in my ulster, and wedged between the foot stanchion of our swing bed and the wardrobe athwart-ship; so that as the yacht rolled heavily, my feet were often higher than my head. Consequently, what sleep I snatched turned into nightmare, of which the fixed idea was a broken head from the three hundredweight of lead at the bottom of our bed, swinging wildly from ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... half a mile to three-quarters. Moreover, each had patently been dashed in with two hurried strokes of the pen and without any pretence of accuracy. The first cross covered a "key" or sand-bank off the northern shore of the island; the second sprawled athwart what appeared to be the second height in a range of hills running southward from Cape Alderman, and down along the entire eastern coast at a mean distance of a mile, or a little over, from the sea; while the third was planted full ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... strain, Through the dull measure of a summer's day, In phrase most vile, prate long, long hours away, 460 Whilst friends with friends, all gaping sit, and gaze, To hear a Hogarth babble Hogarth's praise. But if athwart thee Interruption came, And mention'd with respect some ancient's name, Some ancient's name who, in the days of yore, The crown of Art with greatest honour wore, How have I seen thy coward cheek turn pale, ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... for the calm discussion of theological differences, the time for friendly salutation between the champions of the rival systems of faith, was rapidly drawing to a close. If some rays of sunshine still glanced athwart the landscape, conveying to the unpractised eye the impression of quiet serenity, there were also black and portentous clouds already rising far above the horizon. Those who could read the signs of the times had long watched their gathering, and they trembled ...
— History of the Rise of the Huguenots - Volume 2 • Henry Baird
... act according to his one opinion or to his two opinions; and all manner of influences, official representations cross one another in the foolishest way. Perhaps after all, the Project, desirable and yet not desirable, will dissipate itself, being run athwart by so many complexities; ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the reproaches of the civilized world. They see us as that star of empire which, half a century ago, was predicted as making its way westward. I wish they may see it as a mild, placid, though brilliant orb, making its way athwart the whole heavens, to the enlightening and cheering of mankind; and not a meteor of fire and ...
— Christopher Columbus and His Monument Columbia • Various
... itself! Into the cool, dim shadow, with its fretted pillars, and lowering domes, and candles, and incense, and blazing altar, and great pictures looking down from the walls athwart the gorgeous gloom. And right in front, above the altar, the colossal Christ, watching unmoved from off the wall, his right hand raised to ...
— The Speaker, No. 5: Volume II, Issue 1 - December, 1906. • Various
... extended its gloomy arms athwart the horizon; but did not arrest my aerial journey. The thick boughs groaned and crashed beneath me, as I was dragged through their matted foliage; my limbs lacerated and torn, and my hair tangled amid the thorny branches. Vainly I endeavoured to cling to the twigs ...
— The Monctons: A Novel, Volume I • Susanna Moodie
... glory 'gainst the pillow white; Softly her father stooped to lay His rough hand down in loving way, When dream or whisper made her stir, And huskily he said, "Not her." We stooped beside the trundle-bed, And one long ray of lamp-light shed Athwart the boyish faces there, In sleep so pitiful and fair. I saw on Jamie's rough red cheek A tear undried; ere John could speak, "He's but a baby too," said I, And kissed him as we hurried by. Pale, patient Robby's angel face Still in his sleep bore suffering's trace; "No, for a thousand crowns not ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... sun broke through the western clouds, sending his rays athwart the troubled ocean, and tinging the seas with a ruddy hue, while his heat dried ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... if to make the surer of their savage sympathies and give the climax to his barbarous appeal, Black Thunder suddenly threw back his robe and disclosed to view two scars—a deep and ugly one in the arm, a long and ghastly one athwart the breast. Whereat uprose a chorus of yells expressive not so much of savage sympathy as of savage delight. The moment after, seized foot, with brush-wood to feed the devouring flames heaped up against him to his ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... a loud shout. A huge shadow was thrown athwart the flying Snowbird. Some object was hovering over them and they cast their eyes upward, at Andy's cry, to see another aeroplane swooping down ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... up in the Strand, at the head of Adam-street, Adelphi, and I descended from my seat at his side. An extra shilling brought the glimmering of a surly smile athwart his blubber-cheeks, and we parted in good-humour. My fellow-travellers were all men of no very high class, but they had been civil, and were sufficiently attentive to my wants, when they found I was ...
— Recollections of Europe • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ought to remember that! And as he concentrated his thoughts the veil of the years was rent, and he saw, he saw quite clearly the white moonlit beach, the felucca with its mast bent like a sapling in a high wind, and the great yard of the sail athwart the beam of the boat, the black shadow of it upon the sand, ...
— The Summons • A.E.W. Mason
... belt that cuts off the prairie from the desolate barrens. In the fading light the straggling wood wore a dreary, forbidding look. The spruces were gnarled and twisted by the wind, a number of them were dead, and many leaned unsymmetrically athwart each other. ...
— The Intriguers • Harold Bindloss
... wastes of the Border. The heath was stained with the bell-heather's regal purple, interspersed with the vivid red of the more fragile ling, and where the uplands sloped away broad blotches of the same rich colors checkered the grass. In the foreground a river gleamed athwart the picture, and overhead there stretched an arch of cloudless blue. There was no wind; the day was still ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... Seraph! and he stood beside me There on the ridge, and look'd into my face With his unutterable, shining orbs, So that with hasty motion I did veil My vision with both hands, and saw before me Such colour'd spots as dance athwart the eyes Of those that gaze upon the noonday Sun. Girt with a Zone of flashing gold beneath His breast, and compass'd round about his brow With triple arch of everchanging bows, And circled with the glory of living light And alternations of all hues, he stood. 'O child of man, why muse ...
— The Suppressed Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... What solemn twilight! What stupendous shades Enwrap these infant floods! Through every nerve A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear Glides o'er my frame. The forest deepens round; And more gigantic still th' impending trees Stretch their extravagant arms athwart the gloom. Are these the confines of another world? A land of Genii? Say, beyond these wilds What unknown regions? If indeed beyond Aught ...
— Lives of the English Poets - From Johnson to Kirke White, Designed as a Continuation of - Johnson's Lives • Henry Francis Cary
... that the most fearful surgical operations would be performed without inflicting pain, because it was impossible to see how it could be done. Or if a person had been informed that two men, one in Europe and one in America, should converse in lightning athwart the bed of the Atlantic, he might have rejected it as an absurdity, because he could not conceive the mode. If destined to a future life, all we could reasonably expect to know of it now would be through hinting germs and mystic presentiments of it. And there we do experience to the fullest ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... a day, but when it matters not, Nor where, but mark! the sun was plaguy hot Falling athwart a long and dusty road In which same dust two dusty fellows strode. One was a tall, broad-shouldered, goodly wight In garb of motley like a jester dight, Fool's cap on head with ass's ears a-swing, While, with each stride, his bells did gaily ring; But, ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... sisters were like a pair of scissors, snipping off everything that came athwart them; or like a knife and a whetstone, the one ...
— Women in Love • D. H. Lawrence
... hath Force or War to do with thee? Girt by the azure tide, and throned sublime Amid thy floating bulwarks, thou canst see, With scorn, the fury of each hostile clime Dash'd ere it reach thee. Sacred from the foe Are thy fair fields: athwart thy guardian prow No bold invader's foot shall tempt the strand— Yet say, my country, will the waves and wind Obey thee? Hast thou all thy hopes resign'd To the sky's fickle faith, ...
— Poetical Works of Akenside - [Edited by George Gilfillan] • Mark Akenside
... follow the high road—indeed there is a choice of two, drawn at different levels—athwart the western skirts of the Braid Hills, now tenanted, crown and sides of them, by golf; then to the crossroads of Fairmilehead, whence the road dips down, to rise again and circumvent the most easterly wing of the Pentlands. You would like ...
— Robert Louis Stevenson - a Record, an Estimate, and a Memorial • Alexander H. Japp
... comment of his own Laeg stated what he had seen. Then long Cuchullain pondered; neither spoke, and the silence was broken only by the stamping of the steeds and the rumble of the chariot wheels. Dark clouds drifted athwart the moon, and the darkness gave more freedom of speech, for Cuchullain ...
— AE in the Irish Theosophist • George William Russell
... sun, though it could not make it very warm, as it looked only aslant on its slopes, yet lighted both sides of it. Great white clouds passed slowly across the sky, with now and then a nearer black one threatening rain, but a wind overhead was carrying them quickly athwart. ...
— What's Mine's Mine • George MacDonald
... Athwart the long, low-studded attic, a slant sunbeam from a single small window lay, filled with dancing motes, and only half illuminating the barren, dreary apartment. In the ray of this sunbeam she saw the child's ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... even as beauty should! Let the while plumes athwart her slumbers away! Why should I steep their swaling snows in blood, Or bid her think of battle's grim array? Truth will too soon her blinding star display, And like a fearful comet meet her eyes. And yet how peaceful they ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens
... filled at what depth they listed. Vpon this wall was the franticke person set to stand, his backe towards the poole, and from thence with a sudden blow in the brest, tumbled headlong into the pond; where a strong fellowe, provided for the nonce, tooke him, and tossed him vp and downe, alongst and athwart the water, vntill the patient, by forgoing strength, had somewhat forgot his fury. Then there was hee conveyed to the Church, and certain Masses sung over him; vpon which handling, if his right wits returned, S. Nunne had the ...
— History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom • Andrew Dickson White
... sooner discover'd than they wou'd have been at us with the like impudence, and in a trice one of them, his coat tuck'd under his girdle, laid hold on Ascyltos, and threw him athwart a couch: I presently ran to help the undermost, and putting our strengths together, we made nothing of the troublesome fool. Ascyltos went off, and flying, left me expos'd to the fury; but, thanks to my strength, ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... the lay brother his rebeck drew, And athwart the triple string The bow in gamesome mood he threw,— His joke-song preluding;— Soon, with sly look, the burly man, In burly ...
— The Baron's Yule Feast: A Christmas Rhyme • Thomas Cooper
... Randolph was unable for the rest of the day to get rid of a sort of lingering echo of Daisy's Bible words; they haunted him, and haunted him with a strange sense of the house being at cross purposes, and Daisy's line of life lying quite athwart and contrary to all the rest. "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you;"—who else at Melbourne considered that for ...
— Melbourne House, Volume 2 • Susan Warner
... drifted from one thing to another, and finally one of our party told Mark Twain's yarn about "the meanest man on earth." Our host listened at the kitchen door, a streak of flour shining white athwart the cataract of his auburn beard, and testified his amusement by a delighted roar that was like unto the rejoicings ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... ominously during the latter half of our long day of travel,—and as the sun set blood-red behind a heavy bank of vapor, it cast lurid reflections on large bodies of dense mist, which sailed heavily athwart the crests of the mountains, with low, ragged, trailing edges, that were too surely the precursors of a storm. Just before the orb finally disappeared, its slant rays streamed through some dark purple bars on the horizon's verge, and for an instant tinged the opposite ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... without their terrors. Crossing as they often do the paths of the planets in their progress to and from their perihelia, it cannot but be that they should now and then come in contact with one of these spheres. One, called Lexell's, did come athwart the satellites of Jupiter in 1769, and once again in 1779, so as to be deranged in its own course. It made, indeed, no observable change in the movements of the Jovian train, being of too light a consistence for that; but can we doubt, that it might nevertheless ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... they could see nothing. The light of the swinging-lamp had been lowered, and the interior of the room was veiled in shadow. Then their eyes detected a dark outline on the floor between the table and the window—the figure of a man, lying athwart the carpet with arms outstretched, face downwards, the spread finger-tips clutching at some heavy dark object between the head ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... grave straight] Make her grave from east to west in a direct line parallel to the church; not from north to south, athwart the regular line. ...
— Notes to Shakespeare, Volume III: The Tragedies • Samuel Johnson
... any gloomy thoughts disturb his rest? Did the shadow of the axe or gibbet fall athwart his dreams? If not, why turns he so uneasily in his slumber and ...
— The Fifth of November - A Romance of the Stuarts • Charles S. Bentley
... at that, a second shadow fell athwart the sunny sward, a hand pushed Gypsy's head from the opening, and Mrs. O'Neill's ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... tempt them. In all the dark night that may yet await them, when men shall so beset them as to threaten the sustaining influence of patriotism, grant from the dawn eternal the lighted taper of hope that shall throw its beams athwart the darkness, and furnish a cheering glimpse of the fair end of all things. Watch with thine all seeing eye and nail with thine omnipotent hand the machinations of those who would poison human hearts and destroy the humane instincts that are the graces of our faulty world. Abide ...
— The Hindered Hand - or, The Reign of the Repressionist • Sutton E. Griggs
... friends, let us set ourselves with our loins girt to the road. Never mind how hard it may be to climb. The slope of the valley of trouble is ever upwards. Never mind how dark is the shadow of death which stretches athwart it. If there were no sun there would be no shadow; presently the sun will be right overhead, and there will be no shadow then. Never mind how black it may look ahead, or how frowning the rocks. From ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... hour when all masks must be removed. The long red rays of the setting sun glinted athwart the many-hued costumes of the revellers trooping unmasked homeward to rest for the ...
— The Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories • Alice Dunbar
... "Oregon," "Massachusetts," "Iowa," and "Texas," were lost in the dense smoke of their guns. It was thrilling to see them, like moving clouds, emitting streams of fire which shot through the walls of vapor like flashes of lightning athwart a gloomy sky. ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... fixt fret, that runs athwart The strain and purpose of the string, For governance and nice consort Doth bar ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... commandments. They repose with simplicity on authority, and ask no questions. But there comes a time, as the world reaches its manhood, when they will ask questions, and stake, moreover, everything on the answers. That time is now. Hence we must exhibit our doctrines, not lying athwart the lines of the world's thinking, in a place reserved, and therefore shunned, for the Great Exception; but in their kinship to all truth and in their Law-relation to the whole of Nature. This is, indeed, simply following out the system of teaching begun by Christ Himself. And ...
— Natural Law in the Spiritual World • Henry Drummond
... had proposed to go ashore, in order to lighten the canoes, which were loaded to the water's edge; but the steersman insisted that we could go down safe, while the bow-man was turning the head of the pirogue toward the beach; by this manoeuvre we were brought athwart the stream, which was carrying us fast toward the falls; just then our frail bark struck upon a sunken rock; the lower canoe broke amid-ships and filled instantly, and the upper one being lighted, rolled ...
— Narrative of a Voyage to the Northwest Coast of America in the years 1811, 1812, 1813, and 1814 or the First American Settlement on the Pacific • Gabriel Franchere
... of joy with which the ingathering of the fruits of France's victory was celebrated, clouds unexpectedly drifted athwart the cerulean blue of the political horizon, and dark shadows were flung across the Allied countries. The second-and third-class nations fell out with the first-class Powers. Italy, for example, whose population is almost equal to that of her French sister, demanded ...
— The Inside Story Of The Peace Conference • Emile Joseph Dillon
... cheerless looked the earth when first I came above it, so dull and black, save where a few snowflakes had been drifted by the wintry winds; all else was bleak and bare. There was not a gleam of sunshine athwart the leaden sky to cheer us, nor a bird to meet us with a friendly greeting, for even the robins kept so near the houses for warmth and shelter, they came not to the spot where we grew, alone and sad; ...
— Parables from Flowers • Gertrude P. Dyer
... stood thus, Beltane with arms yet crossed, his lips up-curving at the other's fierce amaze, the stranger grim-faced and frowning, came a shadow athwart the level glory of the sun, and, turning, Beltane beheld the hermit Ambrose, tall and spare beneath his tattered gown, bareheaded and bare of foot, whose eyes were bright and quick, despite the snow of hair and beard, and in whose gentle face and humble mien ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... alien sound struck athwart the power and beauty of the spell did I come to know how high I had builded my castles; but the knocking at the gate toppled down the dreams as Leila swept a discord over the keyboard and crossed to the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... distracted artillerymen saw a smoke arise, thither did they direct their aim; and many of the flankers who had succeeded in obtaining the only position where they could be of any service, were thus shot down. Athwart the brow of the hill lay a large log, five feet in diameter, which Captain Waggoner, of the Virginia Levies, resolved to take possession of. With shouldered firelocks he marched a party of eighty men to the spot, losing but three on the way; and at once throwing ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... until recently that some dim perception of this complexity had begun to dawn upon her, athwart the sunshine of her life as bride and queen. When she had first landed on this fabled island she had been too much under the influence of the glamour with which her dreams had invested Cyprus during the ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... that ever fears to be forgot; And death, inevitable, waits in hall. But I, by some strange miracle, live on A prey to absence, jealousy, disdain; Racked by suspicion as by certainty; Forgotten, left to feed my flame alone. And while I suffer thus, there comes no ray Of hope to gladden me athwart the gloom; Nor do I look for it in my despair; But rather clinging to a cureless woe, All hope do ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... numbered, range first, second, third, and so on—commencing at the lower one. The doors are grates of iron—the bars of which are about an inch and a quarter wide, and half an inch thick, and are, perhaps, two inches apart, leaving, as they are placed upright and athwart, open spaces of two inches square between them. In front of each range of cells were balconies three feet wide, and ladders led from each one of these to the ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... postponement left him free to devote much more of his time to his wife than would otherwise have been possible, and for the first few months after their marriage it seemed as though no shadow could ever fall athwart their happiness. ...
— The Splendid Folly • Margaret Pedler
... who, enjoying a warm climate, used to cover their houses with them; but where the rain waters freeze, pavements of this sort are not to be trusted. To make a terrace of this sort, it is necessary to lay two courses of boards, one athwart the other, the ends of which ought to be nailed, that they should not twist nor warp; which done take two parts of new rubbish, and one of tiles stamped to powder; then with other three parts of ...
— Museum of Antiquity - A Description of Ancient Life • L. W. Yaggy
... to save you because my course lay athwart your own," said the wifeless man. "It is the first time for many days that I have been out ...
— Eskimo Folktales • Unknown
... flood is flashing Athwart the wide lee; Like a storm-struck encampment, The clouds rend and flee; At the scourge of the storm My cot quakes with affright; Far better the hearth Than the pavement to-night! Our Father, forget ...
— A Celtic Psaltery • Alfred Perceval Graves
... And Tweed's fair river, broad and deep, And Cheviot's mountains lone; The battled towers, the donjon keep, The loophole grates where captives weep, The flanking walls that round it sweep, In yellow lustre shone. The warriors on the turrets high, Moving athwart the evening sky, Seemed forms of giant height: Their armour, as it caught the rays, Flashed back again the western blaze, In lines of ...
— Marmion: A Tale of Flodden Field • Walter Scott
... stones were bruising the small feet. And when she lifted a keen cry and clave Forthright the gathering horror of the place, Mad with her love and pity, a dark wave Of clapping shadows swept about her face, And beat her back, and when she gained her breath, Athwart an awful vale a grizzled steam Was rising from a mute and murky stream, As cold and cavernous as the ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... hillside toward a lake and a white road where the sun shines hotly. Some of its branches should trail over an old, lichened and weather-stained stone wall, dropping their fruit into the highway for thirsty pedestrians. There should be a little path running athwart it, down toward the lake and the old flat-bottomed boat, whose bilge is scattered with the black and shriveled remains of angleworms used for bait. In warm August afternoons the sweet savor of ripening drifts warmly on ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... Athwart the unhealthy perceptions of an incomplete nature and a crushed intelligence, he was confusedly conscious that some monstrous thing was resting on him. In that obscure and wan shadow within which he crawled, each time that he turned his neck and essayed to ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... along one side of the room, and the boy's, catching eagerly the butt of a big revolver projecting from the mantel-piece, a Winchester standing in one corner, a long, old-fashioned squirrel rifle athwart a pair of buck antlers over the front door, and a bunch of cane fishing-poles aslant the wall of the back porch. Presently a slim, drenched figure slipped quietly in, then another, and Mavis stood on one side of the fire-place and little Jason on the other. The two girls ...
— The Heart Of The Hills • John Fox, Jr.
... orbs of heaven, And sent your blessed radiance to my heart In the still twilight of my calm content! Then came an answer to the unseen voice— "O holy calmness of the inner soul! Treasure of treasures! sweetness of all sense! Athwart the smoothness of whose liquid tide Floateth the spirit of eternal love, Tracing a pathway to the All-Divine! Thine is the perfectness of earthly bliss, The brimming of life's chalice o'er with peace, Till thro' all thought and feeling, the pure ...
— Eidolon - The Course of a Soul and Other Poems • Walter R. Cassels
... after our arrival within the realm of this great spider,—who, throned in the centre of his mesh, was able to catch almost every fly that flew athwart the web,—I landed at one of the minor factories, and sold a thousand quarter-kegs of powder to Don Jose Ramon. But, next day, when I proceeded in my capacity of interpreter to the establishment of Don Pedro, I found his Castilian plumage ruffled, and, though we were received ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... some mistake, some monstrous mistake! She had somehow been brought to the wrong house. It wasn't possible that a gentleman like Mr. Middleton could belong to a household such as this, she was saying incredulously to herself, when a shadow fell athwart the threshold and she looked up to see Mrs. Middleton ...
— Elsie Marley, Honey • Joslyn Gray
... about twenty leagues, according to report, from the shoal called Plaxel. In the morning of the 19th the coast of Cambodia was on our starboard side, about two leagues off, along which we steered S.E. by E. easterly, our latitude at noon being 13 deg. 31' N. estimating the ship to be then athwart Varella. We have hitherto found the wind always trade along shore, having gone large all the way from Firando, the wind always following us as the land trended. The 20th at noon we were in latitude 10 deg. 53', and three glasses, ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... funeral veil his head, and his horn of abundance, and slowly retiring from the Imperial tent. The monarch started from his couch, and stepping forth to refresh his wearied spirits with the coolness of the midnight air, he beheld a fiery meteor, which shot athwart the sky, and suddenly vanished. Julian was convinced that he had seen the menacing countenance of the god of war; [91] the council which he summoned, of Tuscan Haruspices, [92] unanimously pronounced that he should abstain ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 2 • Edward Gibbon
... the subdued voice of the priest, reciting his prescribed part at the altar, where he kneels and reads alternately. The boys in white gowns busily swing incense vessels; the tall, flaring candles cast long shadows athwart the high altar; the files of soldiers kneel and rise at the tap of the drum; seen through an atmosphere clouded by the fumes of burning incense, all this combines to make up a picture which is sure to forcibly impress itself upon ...
— Foot-prints of Travel - or, Journeyings in Many Lands • Maturin M. Ballou
... in long cruises to the West Indies for the purpose of forcing the English colonies to acknowledge parliamentary rule. The crews therefore were well trained, and the ships were larger, stronger and better armed than those of the Dutch. The position of England, lying as it did athwart the routes by which the Dutch merchant-fleets must sail, was a great advantage. Even more important was the advantage of having a central control, whereas in the Netherlands there were five distinct Boards of Admiralty, to some extent jealous of each other, and ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson
... Garnet Wolseley, to whom he said in effect, "Your duty one day will be to take away that bauble and close the doors of the House of Discord"; for Tyndall always; for Lecky, despite their differences; for Moncure Conway, athwart the question of "nigger" philanthropies; for Kingsley and Tennyson and Browning, the last of whom was a frequent visitor till near the end. Froude he had bound to his soul by hoops of steel; and a more faithful ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... other Anchor could be veered aground) she met with worse Luck: She drove so far as to open the whole Fire of the Castle of Boccachica, four of the Enemy's Ships of sixty and seventy Guns, that were moored athwart the Harbour's Mouth, the Battery of St. Joseph, and two Fascine Batteries, that were on the Barradera Side; all this Fire she lay singly exposed to till dark, when she took the Benefit of the Land-Wind, and ran off, being greatly shattered in her Hull, Masts, and Rigging, and a great ...
— An Account of the expedition to Carthagena, with explanatory notes and observations • Sir Charles Knowles
... Erikson crossed the room, and drew the heavy bar athwart the door. Then he turned ...
— Olaf the Glorious - A Story of the Viking Age • Robert Leighton
... judgment and fitness. Suppose a large number of Northern advocates of social equality should migrate to the Southern United States, and, true to their theory, intermarry with the blacks. Would it not then be true that a social theory had run athwart the course of physiological descent, leading to the production of a legitimate mulatto society? A new race might spring from such a purely psychological ...
— The Story of the Mind • James Mark Baldwin
... she spoke, a forked line of light burned downward athwart the heavy rising clouds. The smoke of the battle was lurid an instant; then came a peal which dwarfed the thunder of earthly artillery. Strange to say, the sound was reassuring to the girl; it was familiar. "Ah!" she cried, "the voice of heaven is ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... very puzzling, but—she turned toward the window as the afternoon sun fell athwart it and lit the plain interior of her new bedroom, searching the corners and the simple ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... artificial fountain that "Practique" was teaching him to make: "And for hindrance of the mischiefs of great waters which may be gathered in a few hours by great storms, when thou shalt have made ready thy parterre to receive the water, thou must lay great atones athwart the deep channels which lead to thy parterre. And so the force of the rushing currents shall be deadened, and thy water shall flow peacefully into his cisterns."—Oeuvres Completes, p. 178.] At a later period the Crusaders brought home from ...
— The Earth as Modified by Human Action • George P. Marsh
... because, although he was to the last degree vague as to how he had got back across the Channel and only seemed to know that he had had a bath at the Cavalry Club, he was able to give most useful and detailed information as to what he had noted after recovering consciousness while making his way athwart the German trains and troops in reserve as they poured along behind Von Kluck's troops in front line. One observed the same thing in the case of another cavalry officer who arrived some days later, after a prolonged succession of tramps by night ...
— Experiences of a Dug-out, 1914-1918 • Charles Edward Callwell
... 1795, so now in 1799, he appeared at Paris when French political life was in a stage of transition. If ever the Napoleonic star shone auspiciously, it was in the months when he threaded his path between Nelson's cruisers and cut athwart the maze of Sieyes' intrigues. To the philosopher's "J'ai vecu" he could oppose the crushing ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... glorious fever that desire To Know! And there are few sights in the moral world more sublime than that which many a garret might afford, if Asmodeus would bare the roofs to our survey—viz., a brave, patient, earnest human being, toiling his own arduous way, athwart the iron walls of penury, into the magnificent Infinite, which is ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... child; but though she recalled vividly many of her early experiences, they were in no way suggestive of this tiny antiquarian village, or of the rocky hillside stretching off toward the horizon. A narrow road wound athwart the hill, leading into the country beyond. It was steep and rugged, and finally it curved over ...
— The Stolen Singer • Martha Idell Fletcher Bellinger
... and whisper low, As moon to weeping clouds, until there rise Like pallid rainbow, wan with spectral glow, A thing of fearful joy athwart my skies, A hope, a joy e'en yet that this might be, That I should die ...
— Atma - A Romance • Caroline Augusta Frazer
... fought with uncommon bravery. The English admiral, without waiting to return the fire of the sternmost, which he received as he passed, used all his endeavours to come up with the Ocean, which M. de la Clue commanded in person; and about four o'clock in the afternoon, running athwart her hawse, poured into her a furious broadside: thus the engagement began with equal vigour on both sides. This dispute, however, was of short duration. In about half an hour admiral Boscawen's mizen-mast and topsail-yards were ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... a being once, his peaked head With a few lank and greasy hairs was spread; His visage blue, in length was like your own Seen in the convex of a table-spoon. His mouth, or rather gash athwart his face, To stop at either ear had just the grace, A hideous rift: his teeth were all canine, And just like Death's (in Milton) was his grin. One shilling, and one fourteen-penny leg, (This shorter was than that, and not so big), He had; and ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... glory. 165 It was a sight of wonder! Some were horned, And like the moon's argentine crescent hung In the dark dome of heaven; some did shed A clear mild beam like Hesperus, while the sea Yet glows with fading sunlight; others dashed 170 Athwart the night with trains of bickering fire, Like sphered worlds to death and ruin driven; Some shone like stars, and as the chariot passed Bedimmed all ...
— The Daemon of the World • Percy Bysshe Shelley
... are common and threadbare; these are worthy of our great and illuminated divines, as the world calls them! At these, if ever they fall athwart them, they prick up—as whether there was any instant of time in the generation of the Second Person; whether there be more than one filiation in Christ; whether it be a possible proposition that God the Father hates the Son; or whether ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... clang. Her hands crept to her breast as she strained her eyes into the darkness. Then the echo of a firm tread, and Craven's tall figure emerged from the surrounding gloom. With fluttering breath she watched him slowly cross the bright strip of moonlight lying athwart the rose garden and mount the steps. Only when he reached the terrace did he seem aware of her presence, and joined her with an exclamation ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... for parting, For athwart the leaden sky The heavy clouds came gathering And sailing gloomily: The earth was drunk with heaven's tears, And each moaning autumn breeze Shook the burthen of its weeping Off the overladen trees. The ...
— Poems • Frances Anne Butler
... your speech to-day, a bright light shot athwart my brain and revealed to me something glorious. I came home determined to work it out in detail. This I have done, and now I hand this plan to you to ascertain your views and secure your cooperation." So saying he handed Belton ...
— Imperium in Imperio: A Study Of The Negro Race Problem - A Novel • Sutton E. Griggs
... the man would not die. At high noon the sun, without raising its rim above the southern horizon, threw a suggestion of fire athwart the heavens, then quickly drew it back. Malemute Kid roused and dragged himself to his comrade's side. He cast one glance about him. The White Silence seemed to sneer, and a great fear came upon him. There was a sharp report; Mason swung into his aerial sepulcher, and Malemute Kid lashed ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... and looked out. Yes, it still rained; it still blew in long, shuddering gusts; the low-lying sky was inky black; athwart the darkness flashed ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... been growing even in advance of his story, that it is all true. This will explain Sybil's strange letter, and—that letter! what does it contain? She turns and gazes, as if fascinated, towards the west. There are no more golden gleams athwart the windows, only a dull red flush upon the horizon. The sun, ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the sea became lineless and shapeless. The sunset sky was green-blue, and black strips of cloud lay athwart it. Looking up to the crags above me, I missed the church: it was in heaven or in the clouds. A great wind blew, and ceased, and came no more—the one gust that I felt of a whole day's storm on the coast. ...
— A Tramp's Sketches • Stephen Graham
... and rainy is the night, No a starn in a' the carry;[84] Lightnings gleam athwart the lift, And winds drive wi' winter's fury. O! are ye sleeping, ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume II. - The Songs of Scotland of the past half century • Various
... shooting obliquely up one rapid; tacking with the quickness of light, and darting off zigzag among the rocks and eddies towards another, which was in turn surmounted; while the boat was forced, surging and bounding forward, with increasing impetus, now up and now athwart the rushing currents, till he had gained a resting-place in the still water of some sheltering boulder in the stream, when he would mark off, with a rapid glance, another reach of falls, and shoot in among them as before. Thus, with the quick tacks and turns and sudden leaps of the ascending ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... blazing hickory logs alone lighted up the large room, for my aunt liked thus to sit at or after twilight, and as yet no candles had been set out. As I stood at the door, the leaping flames, flaring up, sent flitting athwart the floor queer shadows of tall-backed chairs and spindle-legged tables. The great form of my Aunt Gainor filled the old Penn chair I had brought from home, liking myself to use it. Just now, as usual, she was sitting erect, for never ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell
... vision of Elise Rouquet's face, that face with its gaping cavities which seemed to her to be the image of death. And whilst the train increased its speed, bearing all this human despair onward, under the heavy sky, athwart the burning plains, there was yet another scare in the carriage. The strange man had apparently ceased to breathe, and a voice cried out that he ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... the water, whilst the men stretched out as if unconscious of the exertion of pulling, every one of them feeling his share of the excitement. From the western sky the last lingering rays of the sun shot athwart the wave, turning it, as it were, by the alchemy of light into a flood of gold. Overhead, the cope of heaven was gradually growing soberer in hue from the withdrawal of those influences which lately had warmed ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 2 • John Lort Stokes
... occasional crackle as a rotten twig or branch snapped beneath the hoofs. Slender trees slid athwart the moonlight, closed on one another, and opened out, and still, though the snow was scanty and in places swept away, Grant and a big Michigan bushman rode straight on. Breckenridge, who was young, felt the tension grow almost unendurable. At ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... have been some breeze in the dingy sails, for the vessel was moving athwart the line of their progress, and they were being carried ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... moon shone over the burning farmstead, and in its light they saw a long procession winding athwart the snow. Having carefully scrutinized it, the Dwarf descended where his comrades waited under the trees, and now, they too gradually distinguished four men on horseback behind a flock which ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Polish • Various
... was his masterful mind that rose equal to the emergency, grasped and directed the storm of battle. It was by the unparalleled courage of the troops of Hood, Humphreys, and Kershaw, and the temporary command under Longstreet, throwing themselves athwart the path of the great colossus of the North, that checked him and drove him back over the mountains to the strongholds around Chattanooga. And it is no violent assumption to say that had the troops on ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... then turned toward his home. His way led through an avenue of maples, whose dense foliage quite obscured the sky above his head. On either side, stretched green meadows, enameled with the fresh spring flowers; and beyond him, in the distance, the avenue seemed to open into the pure blue heavens, athwart which the fleecy clouds were ever and anon flitting like angels busied in doing their Master's will. The scene was rich and hallowed, and called forth the sweetest and purest emotions. "If the pathway through life was ever thus tranquil and serene," thought he, "and if the eye ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... wee arrived at our habitation, Young Gwillim & his man being sufficiently tired. I thought it not convenient that young Gwillim should see the 2 Englishmen that was at our House. I kept them privat, & fitted them to bee gon next morning, with 2 of my men, to goe athwart the woods unto their habitation, having promis'd Mr. Bridgar to send them unto him. I gave them Tobacco, Cloaths, & severall other things Mr. Bridgar desired; but when they were to depart, one of the Englishmen fell at my feet & earnestly desired that I would not send him away. I would not have ...
— Voyages of Peter Esprit Radisson • Peter Esprit Radisson
... exercises its satisfying power even over the hearer; the world of Euripides appears in the pale glimmer of speculation as much denuded of gods as it is spiritualised, and gloomy passions shoot like lightnings athwart the gray clouds. The old deeply-rooted faith in destiny has disappeared; fate governs as an outwardly despotic power, and the slaves gnash their teeth as they wear its fetters. That unbelief, which ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... same moment, without giving any audible direction to his crew, he ran the galley abroad of us. They had pulled one sudden stroke ahead, had got their oars in, had run athwart us, and were holding on to our gunwale, before we knew what they were doing. This caused great confusion on board the steamer, and I heard them calling to us, and heard the order given to stop the paddles, and heard them stop, but felt her driving down upon us irresistibly. In ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... did sweep full swing with thine! Then harmony with every spheric song, And conscious power, would give sureness divine. Who thinks to thread thy great laws' onward throng, Is as a fly that creeps his foolish way Athwart an engine's wheels ...
— A Book of Strife in the Form of The Diary of an Old Soul • George MacDonald
... lustrous gloom Of leaden-colored even, and fiery hills Mingling their flames with twilight on the verge Of the remote horizon. The near scene In naked, and severe simplicity Made contrast with the universe. A pine Rock-rooted, stretch'd athwart the vacancy Its swinging boughs, to each inconstant blast Yielding one only response at each pause, In most familiar cadence, with the howl, The thunder, and the hiss of homeless ...
— Modern Painters Volume II (of V) • John Ruskin
... transverse ridge, which is crowned by a low-cut abrupt rocky upheaval, worn down somewhat where the road passes over the crest by the friction of traffic. Just here the tribesmen had constructed a formidable abattis of prickly brushwood, which stretched athwart the road, and dammed back the fugitives in the shallow oval basin between the termination of the ravine and the summit of the ridge. In this trap were caught our hapless people and the swarm of their native followers, and now the end was very near. From behind the barrier, and around ...
— The Afghan Wars 1839-42 and 1878-80 • Archibald Forbes
... expressed by the surrounding disorder, and brought light films over the vision of those assembled, so that the air seemed full of intoxicating vapor. A glittering dust arose, as in the luminous paths made by a ray of sunlight, the most bizarre forms flitted through it, grotesque struggles were seen athwart it. Groups of interlaced figures blended with the white marbles, the noble masterpieces of ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... dreams into thy slumbering mind? Who, with bright Fear's lean taper, crossed a hand Athwart its beam, and stooping, truth maligned, Spake so thy spirit speech should understand, And with a dread "He's dead!" awaked a peal Of frenzied bells along the vacant ways Of thy poor earthly heart; waked thee to steal, Like dawn distraught upon unhappy ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... terrestrial men. Nearly thirty of our years the process lasts, during half of which time the northern hemisphere suffers, and during the other half the southern. The shadow band, which be it remembered stretches right athwart the planet from the extreme eastern to the extreme western side of the illuminated hemisphere, is so broad during the greater part of the time that in some regions (those corresponding to our temperate zones) the shadow takes two years in passing, during which time the sun cannot ...
— Myths and Marvels of Astronomy • Richard A. Proctor
... athwart the face of light Float the clouds of sullen Night! Odin's warriors watch for me By the earth-encircling sea! The water's dirges howl my ...
— Antonina • Wilkie Collins
... oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover! A savage place! as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath a waning moon was haunted By woman wailing for her demon lover! And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething, * * * * * It flung up momently the sacred river. Five miles meandering with a mazy motion Through ...
— Romance - Two Lectures • Walter Raleigh
... here and there shone cores of intense brilliance. A quick intelligence told him that they were ships on fire. The battle was yet on; nor could he say who was victor. Within the radius of his vision now and then ships passed, shooting shadows athwart lights. Out of the dun clouds farther on he caught the crash of other ships colliding. The danger, however, was closer at hand. When the Astroea went down, her deck, it will be recollected, held her own crew, and the crews ...
— Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ • Lew Wallace
... suspicion shot athwart Peter's mind. He seized her hands, glared into her eyes, dragged her to ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... French ship came athwart ours, it blowing then a stiff breeze, their boat, which was astern, and had in her two Moors and two Peguers, whom we had given to them, broke away. The French captain was now worse than before, and threatened sore to make us ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. VIII. • Robert Kerr
... shattering a nine-pounder and killing half of its crew. And it is only a miracle that I stand alive to be able to tell the tale. Then I caught a glimpse of the quartermaster whirling the spokes of our wheel, and over went our helm to lay us athwart the forefoot of the 'Serapis', where we might rake and rush her decks. Our old Indiaman answered but doggedly; and the huge bowsprit of the Serapis, towering over our heads, snapped off our spanker gaff and fouled ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... he, with the greatest expression in his honest, sunburnt countenance; 'I will go bail for you to any amount. And as for you (turning to the frightened actor), if you don't bear a hand, and shift your moorings, you lubber, it will be worse for you when I come athwart your bows.' Every creature in the house rose; the uproar was perfectly indescribable; peals of laughter, screams of terror, cheers from his tawny messmates in the gallery, preparatory scrapings of violins from the orchestra, were mingled together; ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... the cocktails supplied this very thing. They constituted a stone wall. He never drank during the morning, nor in office hours; but the instant he left the office he proceeded to rear this wall of alcoholic inhibition athwart his consciousness. The office became immediately a closed affair. It ceased to exist. In the afternoon, after lunch, it lived again for one or two hours, when, leaving it, he rebuilt the wall of inhibition. ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... hound!" ground out Tom, in a rage, as he threw himself athwart of the ex-foreman. Within the next thirty seconds Evarts received ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... year. Though no longer driven by the lust of adventure that had spurred him in his youth, he was still hunted athwart the world, hunted now by a restlessness due to the approach of old age. His yearning for Venice, the city of his birth, grew so intense that, like a wounded bird slowly circling downwards in its death flight, he began to move in ever-narrowing circles. Again and again, ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... land, and around the burgh of Rubens it is perhaps least lovely of all. Corn and colza, pasture and plough, succeed each other on the characterless plain in wearying repetition, and save by some gaunt gray tower, with its peal of pathetic bells, or some figure coming athwart the fields, made picturesque by a gleaner's bundle or a woodman's fagot, there is no change, no variety, no beauty anywhere; and he who has dwelt upon the mountains or amidst the forests feels oppressed as by imprisonment ...
— A Dog of Flanders • Louisa de la Rame)
... think that hopeless love and a noisy disordered dinner should lead a man to these speculations, but they did. "He DID mean that!" I said, and suddenly thought of what a bludgeon they'd made of His Christianity. Athwart that perplexing, patient enigma sitting inaudibly among publicans and sinners, danced and gibbered a long procession of the champions of orthodoxy. "He wasn't human," I said, and remembered that last despairing cry, "My God! My God! ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... Adventure slid square athwart the towering, gilt-bedizened stern of the Spaniard, and one after another, as they were brought to bear, her ordnance belched forth their charges of round and canister, smashing the Spanish gingerbread work to splinters, shivering ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... west again. Sundays were strictly observed by us all, as days of rest; a respect to the day that is not always observed in the forest; he who is in the solitude of the woods, like him who roams athwart the wastes of the ocean, often forgetting that the spirit of the Creator is abroad equally on the ocean and on the land, ready to receive that homage of his creatures, which is a tribute due to beneficence without bounds, a holiness that is spotless, and a truth ...
— Satanstoe • James Fenimore Cooper
... the son, and asked him my direction. He pointed loosely west and north-west, muttered an inaudible comment, and, without slackening his pace for an instant, stalked on, as he was going, right athwart my path. The mother followed without so much as raising her head. I shouted and shouted after them, but they continued to scale the hillside, and turned a deaf ear to my outcries. At last, leaving Modestine ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Ravenna, and the other older cities of Italy; the principal variations being that in many instances, including the very ancient basilica of St. Peter, now destroyed, the avenues all stopped short of the end wall of the basilica, and a wide and clear transverse space or transept ran athwart them in front of the apse. San Clemente indeed shows some faint traces of such a feature. In one or two very large churches five avenues occur,—that is to say, a nave and double aisles; and in Santa Agnese (Fig. 156a) and at least one other, we find a gallery over ...
— Architecture - Classic and Early Christian • Thomas Roger Smith
... swollen with winter rains, rose up like a writhing yellow serpent and cast itself athwart the land, it drew a line from east to west which neither sheep nor cattle could cross, and the cowmen who had lingered about Hidden Water rode gayly back to their distant ranches, leaving the peaceful Dos S where Sallie Winship had hung her cherished ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... canonize; the most vividly Christlike man who has ever submitted his character to the scrutiny of public criticism. His life, as Green says in his Short History of the English People, his life falls like a stream of light athwart the darkness of the mediaeval ages. Matthew Arnold speaks of him as a figure of most magical potency and sweetness and charm. Francis called men back to Christ and brought Christ back to men. 'All Europe woke with a start,' Sabatier affirms, 'and whatever was best in ...
— A Handful of Stars - Texts That Have Moved Great Minds • Frank W. Boreham
... the fan, when it tosses The grain in its breath, the grain flashes, So over the field of their losses Fly the vanquished. But now in their course Starts a squadron that suddenly dashes Athwart their wild flight and that stays them, While hard on the hindmost dismays them The pursuit of the ...
— Modern Italian Poets • W. D. Howells
... swam on: and now a light wind had been drawn up from the west, and was driving a little ripple athwart the lake, and she swam the swiftlier for it awhile, but then turned over on her back and floated southward still. Till on a sudden, as she lay looking up toward the far-away blue sky, and she so little and low on ...
— The Water of the Wondrous Isles • William Morris
... far buttes and faint ranges fading into the spaces of the north and south. The light deepened and spread to a great crimson pool, tideless round the bases of magic citadels and mighty towers. Golden minarets thrust their slender, fiery shafts athwart the wide pathway of the ascending sun. The ruddy glow palpitated like a live ember naked to the wind. The nearer buttes grew boldly beautiful. Slowly their molten outlines hardened to rigid bronze. Like ancient castles of some ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... leave to go with him. Sir Frederick refused, for he at once suspected mischief. The sampan was reached and diverted just before she swung athwart our bows. But scarcely was this achieved, when an explosion took place. My friend was knocked over, and one or two of the men fell back into the cutter. This is what had happened: Johnson finding no one in the sampan, ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... cloud, that, blown athwart my soul, Wears a false seeming of the pearly stain Where worlds beyond the world their mingling rays Blend in soft white,—a cloud that, born of earth, Would cheat the soul that looks for light from heaven? Must every ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... at. Not Turner, even, could paint those level shadows, all interfused with trembling light, that filled the hollows of the hills across the river, and brought out their wavy contour, and showed the depth and distance of the valley opening miles away. Could he throw athwart the dark mirror of the sleeping water in the gorge, which led the imprisoned river stealthily to the sea, the gliding snows of the sails rosy-white that stole swan-like from behind the bluffs? Could he bring ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 27, January, 1860 • Various
... unfamiliar to him; not a narrow winding brook wide enough for a canoe to float in that he did not know. He had spent all his days and many of his nights in these solitary wanderings. Visitors to the region grew wonted to the sight of the comely figure in the slight birch canoe, shooting suddenly athwart their track, or found lying idly in some dark and shaded stream-bed. On the approach of strangers he would instantly away, lifting his hat courteously if there were ladies in the boats he passed, otherwise taking no more note of the presence of human beings than of ...
— Between Whiles • Helen Hunt Jackson
... no attention to a tumble-weed gyrating across the Apache road. Neither did he seem disturbed when a rattler burred in the bunch-grass. Even the startled leap of a rabbit that shot athwart his immediate course was greeted with nothing more than a snort and a toss of his swinging head. Such things were excuses for bad behavior, but he was of that type which furnishes its own excuse. He would lull his rider to a false security, ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... too, was ankle-deep in water, as I found when I tried to get across to the deck-house sofa. At last I lay down on the floor, wrapped up in my ulster, and wedged between the foot-stanchions of our swing bed and the wardrobe athwart ship; so that, as the yacht rolled heavily, my feet were often higher than my head. Consequently what sleep I snatched turned into a nightmare, of which the fixed idea was a broken head, from the three hundredweight of lead at the bottom ...
— Celebrated Women Travellers of the Nineteenth Century • W. H. Davenport Adams
... heart within nourished black designs. But David came flying up at her screams—just in time. He caught the lady's shoulders as she glided over the brow of the slope, and lifted her by his great strength up out of the chair, which went the next moment bounding and jumping athwart the hill, and soon rolled over and groveled in rather an ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... as having ended its work, as having been worn done in the winds, and rains, and labours of the world. Not a tree stood in that churchyard. Hank grass was the sole covering of the soil heaved up with the dead beneath. What blasts from the awful space of the sea must rush athwart the undefended garden! The ancient church stood in the midst, with its low, strong, square tower, and its long, narrow nave, the ridge bowed with age, like the back of a horse worn out in the service of man, and its little homely chancel, like a small cottage that had leaned up against ...
— The Seaboard Parish Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... towers, A bunch of amethysts. Like one spell-bound Caught in the presence of some god, I stood, Nor felt the keen wind and the deadly air, But watched the sun go down, and watched the gold Fade from the town and the withdrawing hills, Their westward shapes athwart the dusky red Freeze into sapphire, saw the arc of rose Rise ever higher in the violet east, Above the frore front of the uprearing night Remorsefully soft and sweet. Then I awoke As from a dream, and from my shoulders shook The warning chill, till ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... black wing Is never spread athwart celestial skies; Its wailings blend not with the voice of spring, As some too ...
— The Christian Home • Samuel Philips
... itself of the under-water foot of the ness and make eastward so as to rush on toward the sea. But in the face of the wall, in the bight where the whirlpool turned from it, was a cave the height of a tall man, and some four feet athwart, and below it a ledge thrust out from the sheer rock and hanging over the terrible water, and it was but a yard wide or so. It was but ten feet above the water, and from it to the grass above must have been a matter of forty foot. But the ness as it thrust forth into the river rose also, so that ...
— The Sundering Flood • William Morris
... not at all an unfriendly review; but had an opacity, of matter-of-fact in it that filled one with amazement. Since the Irish Bishop who said there were some things in Gulliver on which he for one would keep his belief suspended, nothing equal to it, on that side, has come athwart me. However, he has made out that Teufelsdrockh is, in all human probability, a fictitious character; which is always something, for an Inquirer into Truth.—Will you, finally, thank Friend Ripley in my name, till I have time to write ...
— The Correspondence of Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson, - 1834-1872, Vol. I • Thomas Carlyle and Ralph Waldo Emerson
... shade has past, Athwart my brightest visions here, A cloud of darkest gloom has wrapt, The remnant of my brief career! No song, no echo can I win, The ...
— The Deerslayer • James Fenimore Cooper
... Mr. Farfrae this morning?" asked one. "He promised to meet me here at the stroke of twelve; but I've gone athwart and about the fair half-a-dozen times, and never a sign of him: though he's mostly a man ...
— The Mayor of Casterbridge • Thomas Hardy
... It was perfectly true. I had no eyes for anything but the Diana. It was she, then, was being taken away. She was already out of her berth and shooting athwart the river. "The way this loonatic plucked that ship out is a caution," said the awed voice of my mate close to my ear. "Hey! Hallo! Falk! Hermann! What's this infernal trick?" I ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... oak beams, one inside the other, forming together 4 feet of solid oak fore and aft, with a breadth of 15 inches. The three external plankings as well as the lining are all rabbeted into the stem. The propeller-post is in two thicknesses, placed side by side, and measures 26 inches athwart-ship and 14 inches fore and aft. It will be seen from the plan that the overhang aft runs out into a point, and that there is thus no transom. To each side of the stern-post is fitted a stout stern-timber parallel to the longitudinal ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... when,—a crash, which shook their vessel from stem to stern, caused every one to look upon the countenance of his fellow, there to read the words which he had no power to utter. A propeller was at that instant seen moving athwart their bows, and from the severity of the shock, it was thought that the smaller vessel must have sustained serious damage. Accordingly a boat was lowered from the steamer, under command of the first officer, ...
— Natalie - A Gem Among the Sea-Weeds • Ferna Vale |
