"Avalanche" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... condition greatly assisted by the slippery nature of the ground. Then, with wild shouts, and brandishing their iron-studded clubs and their formidable halberts and scythes, down the mountain-side rushed, with the fury of their native avalanche, the heroic Confederates; and falling on their foes literally slew them by thousands. Many hundreds of the Austrians perished in the lake, the men of Zurich alone making a stand, and falling each where he fought. Few succeeded ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... came like a flash upon the enemy, who were not aware of our coming until we pounced upon them like an avalanche, and though they fought obstinately, they were ...
— History of the Eighty-sixth Regiment, Illinois Volunteer Infantry, during its term of service • John R. Kinnear
... thoughts—if Mamie WERE as pretty as Woollett published her; as to which issue seeing her now again was to be so swept away by Woollett's opinion that this consequence really let loose for the imagination an avalanche of others. There were positively five minutes in which the last word seemed of necessity to abide with a Woollett represented by a Mamie. This was the sort of truth the place itself would feel; it would send her forth in confidence; it would point ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James
... answer: We bring Only ourselves! we lost Sight of the rest in the storm. Hardly ourselves we fought through, 120 Stripp'd, without friends, as we are. Friends, companions, and train, The avalanche swept from our ...
— Matthew Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum and Other Poems • Matthew Arnold
... of reaching the very pinnacle, that I could not withstand the impulse of making the effort to get there. Over the loose stones I scrambled, clinging with hands and feet as best I could, whilst an avalanche of rocky fragments slid, tumbled, and rattled ominously down ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 4, February 1878 • Various
... of the desert or scorpions and serpents are allowed to live? Let them live, but let us defend ourselves against their teeth and fangs. Are the overseers of God's people, in a world of shame, to be mere philosophical Gallios, indifferent to our higher interests? Is it a Christian duty to permit an avalanche of evils to overwhelm the Church on the plea of toleration? Shall we suffer, when we have the power to prevent it, a pandemonium of scoffers and infidels and sentimental casuists to run riot in the city which is intrusted to us to guard? Not thus will we be disloyal ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume IV • John Lord
... wheels were shattered, and with that the iron colossus came to a dead stop, the suddenness of which threw the carriages crashing on top of each other. This fearful havoc was not all. Through the breach which the great rock had made in the barricade, an incessant avalanche of stones, from the size of a cannon-ball to that of a wheelbarrow, descended upon the train, crushing everything beneath into fragments, pushing the unhappy train into the chasm below, into the valley of death and destruction. ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... Meanwhile, there was what might fairly be called a constant play of countenance: first he smiled, then looked grave; now raised his eyebrows, till they rose like rainbows, to the horizon of his pale, straw-coloured hair; and next darted them down, like an avalanche, over the twinkling, restless, fluttering, little blue eyes, which then became almost invisible. Mr. Douce had, in fact, all the appearance of a painfully shy man, which was the more strange, as he had the reputation of enterprise, and even audacity, in the business of ...
— Alice, or The Mysteries, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... his action, or it may have been indignant northern fairies, I know not, but certain it is that the Gaelic was instantly followed by an avalanche of snow from the branch over the Highlander's head, which knocked him down and reburied him. It also knocked Big Otter up and drew forth the ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... starts at a walk, then trots, and only gains its great momentum within a few yards of the enemy. This cavalry started at top speed, and never lost it until it buried itself into the advancing Turks as an avalanche bursts into a forest! No human enemy could ever have withstood that charge. Many of the horses fell in the first fifty yards, and none of these were able to regain their feet in time to be of use. Some of the riders were rolled on and killed. And some were slain by the half-dozen ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... attendants, one securely braced under each armpit, and the third with a more precarious grip under the mountain's chin. Every thirty seconds or so the heaving, sliding mass would emit one of those explosive groans: "O-o-o-o-o-oh!" Then it would collapse, an avalanche would threaten to slide, and the living ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... below swayed from the bank of the highway to the verge—the four mules stretched out at a gallop, as in a picture. The shouts dimly heard at the monastery had the effect they were intended to create, for the monk could see the carters and muleteers draw aside to let the living avalanche go past. ...
— Tomaso's Fortune and Other Stories • Henry Seton Merriman
... speak of a death-grip, but here is a death and life grip—death to the victim whose palpitating body furnishes life to its destroyer. It is the hot-cold-bloodedness of nature, the disregard for suffering of the tornado, the earthquake and the avalanche shown in little in the fangs and claws of these wild creatures. Then there are the battles of the more evenly-matched animals—not always as a result of the need of sustenance—such are the tiger transfixed by the elephant; the python's folds crushing the crocodile; ...
— The American Architect and Building News, Vol. 27, Jan-Mar, 1890 • Various
... knew about stocks and bonds he was as much of a novice in the presence of things electrical as were either his son or Walter King, and therefore to their avalanche of questions he added still others, gratefully accepting the information Bob offered with the eagerness of one who is not too superior ...
— Walter and the Wireless • Sara Ware Bassett
... an avalanche of snow on a burning crater. Lisbeth sat down. She gazed with despondent eyes on the youth before her, on his aristocratic beauty—the artist's brow, the splendid hair, everything that appealed to her suppressed feminine instincts, ...
— Poor Relations • Honore de Balzac
... looked up at him fearfully, tremulously, with all the revolt of the corporeal creature for the essence of the mysterious incorporeal. For a moment he could not speak. So much he must needs explain. The next instant he was whelmed in the avalanche of her words. ...
— His Unquiet Ghost - 1911 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... difficult point in it, where there ought to be a quite imperceptible transition to something fresh, then a subdued gliding finale, a prolonged murmur, ending at last in a climax as bold and as startling as a shot, or the sound of a mountain avalanche—full stop. But the words would not come to me. I read over the whole piece from the commencement; read every sentence aloud, and yet failed absolutely to crystallize my thoughts, in order to produce this scintillating climax. ...
— Hunger • Knut Hamsun
... brooding, sinister, like something created in a Bronte brain. The two children were twenty-four and twenty-two when the financial avalanche of '93 thundered across the continent sweeping Herman Handle, a mere speck, into the debris. Stocks and bonds and real estate became paper, with paper value. He clawed about with frantic, clutching fingers ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... for long. An avalanche of Aunt Lydia entered the room, quite filling it with her fluttering presence. Tante Lydia's morning cap was quite as youthful as that of her niece, her flowered wrapper as belaced and befurbelowed as the lingiere could make it, and her high heeled mules were at least two sizes too small, and ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... not uttered a word. Then she let flow a torrent of language such as had never before been heard within the sacred precincts of Le Bon Pasteur. She could no more be stopped than an avalanche. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... garden, where you labored with so much skill to graft in these wild olive plants, cutting off your sleep with watchings by night, that they should not be rooted up by the desert wind. Thus you watched them, till they became as noble forest trees that not even the avalanche can overturn. Your garden, now, not only gives a shade pleasant to the traveller, but it yields sweet fruits; clouds rise from it that give us the early and the latter rain; they empty themselves,—the plain rejoices, and the barren ...
— Woman And Her Saviour In Persia • A Returned Missionary
... Plattsburg on Lake Champlain an American officer came on board and allowed our portmanteaus to pass, on condition they contained only clothes. Very delightful scenery; beautiful islands with distant mountains on each side; a broad road up the mountain; an avalanche. Went on shore at Burlington and had a delightful bathe, the water pleasantly warm and a sandy slope. Quite a crowd at tea so had to attend the second course. Lay down in a berth till 12; then looked after luggage which I found to be all safely locked up; everything ...
— A Journey to America in 1834 • Robert Heywood
... the upper and more sacred depths the wood-thrush chants his litany and the brown mountain butterflies hover among the scented vines. Higher yet rises the "Rattlesnake Ledge," spreading over one side of the summit a black avalanche of broken rock, now overgrown with reindeer-moss and filled with tufts of the smaller wild geranium. Just below this ledge,—amid a dark, dense track of second-growth forest, masked here and there with grape-vines, studded with rare orchises, and pierced by a brook that vanishes suddenly where ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... and afterwards rising bare and black and threatening. He knows instinctively which of the ledges has a dangerous look—where such a bold mountaineer as John Lauener might slip on the polished surface, or be in danger of an avalanche from above. He sees the little shell-like swelling at the foot of the glacier crawling down the steep slope above, and knows that it means an almost inaccessible wall of ice; and the steep snowfields that rise towards the summit are suggestive of something very different ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)
... subservient to his will? He wondered. Everything depended upon that. If not, then he might as well try to stay the forces of a mighty avalanche with his breath, as halt the cube-army ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... let-up—no lull in the relentless advance. He was on his feet again, grim, grasping, reeling, hanging on! And again that avalanche of destruction ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... what was probably the first stylographic press sheet. This sheet, which contained news of the various attractions that Frohman booked, was sent to the leading newspapers throughout the country and was the forerunner of the avalanche of press matter that to-day is hurled at dramatic ...
— Charles Frohman: Manager and Man • Isaac Frederick Marcosson and Daniel Frohman
... his friends were without resources. In consequence of leading a wild life and sacrificing himself for his party, he had spent his entire fortune, and was overwhelmed with debts. The lawyer Vanier, who was entrusted with the management of his business affairs, lost his head at the avalanche of bills, protests and notes of hand which poured into his office, and which it was impossible to meet. The lawyer Lefebre, a fat and sensual free-liver, was equally low in funds, and laid on the government the blame of the ...
— The House of the Combrays • G. le Notre
... a sudden avalanche. "For why? Because then, just like now, you nagged me. You can take it from me, just so happy as now was me and mamma down by Rivington Street. I'm a plain man and with no time for nonsense. I tell you the shirtwaist business 'ain't ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... Abud seemed startled. Many times had Keston and I speculated on the danger of an avalanche at this point, and wondered why the Station had been built in such an exposed place. Once indeed we had ventured to suggest to the aristo Council the advisability of removing the Central Control to some other point, but the cold silence that greeted our diffident ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... With an avalanche's might to the gate spurs a knight, And beneath his wide mantle he's laden: "Hast there Russian money—the roubles so bonny?" "No, no! I've ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... head the length of his armoured tail. All this the eye perceived in the hilt of Sacnoth, who smote suddenly sideways. Not with the edge smote Sacnoth, for, had he done so, the severed end of the tail had still come hurtling on, as some pine tree that the avalanche has hurled point foremost from the cliff right through the broad breast of some mountaineer. So had Leothric been transfixed; but Sacnoth smote sideways with the flat of his blade, and sent the tail whizzing over Leothric's ...
— The Sword of Welleran and Other Stories • Lord Dunsany
... stark and dumb at the foot of the steps. The whole situation had rushed upon him like an avalanche. Harbert had filed his charges and the hasty visit of the reporter proved that David Cable was an instrument in them. The blood surged to his head; he staggered under the ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... July, compared with the horrid blasts of winter which here predominate by the will of God, when every rock is rendered smooth with snows so deep that every step the traveller takes is as if entering into his grave; for even should he escape an avalanche, his eye dreads to search the horizon, for full well he knows that snow—snow is all that can be seen. I watched the Ring Plover for some time; the parents were so intent on saving their young that they both lay on the rocks as if shot, quivering their wings and dragging their ...
— John James Audubon • John Burroughs
... the show, which was to be on a Saturday, it began to dawn upon me that I might be buried under an avalanche of quilts. The old ones were terribly large. They were made to cover a fat feather bed or two and to hang down to hide the trundle bed underneath, and, though the interlining of cotton was very thin and even, still the weight of a quilt ...
— Quilts - Their Story and How to Make Them • Marie D. Webster
... more, he saw a hideous turmoil in the black fabric—just wind—an avalanche of wind that gouged the sea, that could have shaken mountains.... The poor little Truxton stared into the End—a puppy cowering on the track of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... his ragouts, Covets the meat that Teutons use, And charges like an avalanche For German ...
— Punch or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 23, 1914 • Various
... But that avalanche had somewhat unnerved him, for he had been looking out for a place to camp, and it now seemed madness to think of coming to a ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn
... on the top of a bastion-like terrace, thrust avalanche-wise and immense between its pinnacled mountain walls; the site is not only of great beauty, but of great natural strength, like nearly all the other considerable settlements we saw on this journey. The two mountain ...
— The Head Hunters of Northern Luzon From Ifugao to Kalinga • Cornelis De Witt Willcox
... Great Snow Peak—mighty name My dusky tribes revered when time was young! Their god was I in avalanche and flame— In grove and mead and songs my rivers sung, As blithe they ran to make the valleys fair— Their Shrine of Peace where no avenger came To vex Tacoma, ...
— The Mountain that was 'God' • John H. Williams
... anyone who might be watching them off the trail, they changed the name of the publishing company to the Right Cause Publishing Co. and issued an avalanche of Nazi propaganda. It was through this secretly organized and secretly functioning propaganda center that Harry A. Jung, ultra-"patriot," distributed printed attacks on Roosevelt ...
— Secret Armies - The New Technique of Nazi Warfare • John L. Spivak
... of a general, the transition from comfort to living beyond our means, acquaintance with celebrities, etc., have scarcely affected me, and I have remained intact and unashamed; but on my wife and Liza, who have not been through the same hardening process and are weak, all this has fallen like an avalanche of snow, overwhelming them. Gnekker and the young ladies talk of fugues, of counterpoint, of singers and pianists, of Bach and Brahms, while my wife, afraid of their suspecting her of ignorance of music, smiles to them sympathetically and mutters: "That's exquisite... ...
— The Wife and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... regiment was carefully and doubly guarded, so that no man might glide away from our ranks and put the Union forces on their guard. This I noted particularly, as I was studying plans of escape that night, that I might put the loyal forces on their guard against the fearful avalanche ready to be hurled upon them. I already saw that they would stand no fair chance for victory, taken completely at unawares. But the orders were imperative to allow no man to leave the ranks, and to shoot the first who should ...
— Thirteen Months in the Rebel Army • William G. Stevenson
... recede. Above me are the Alps, The palaces of Nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned Eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche, the thunderbolt of snow! All that expands the spirit, yet appals, Gather around these summits, as to show How earth may pierce to heaven, yet leave vain ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... burst upon the philosopher like an avalanche! He was so full of his subject that he could not let it out in prudent driblets. No, he went souse ...
— My Novel, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... designate their highest mountain peaks by the name of Jokul, a modification of the word "Joetun." In Switzerland, where the everlasting snows rest upon the lofty mountain tops, the people still relate old stories of the time when the giants roamed abroad; and when an avalanche came crashing down the mountain side, they say the giants have restlessly shaken off part of the icy burden from their ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... silence is suddenly broken by the rush of an avalanche, that tears away the superincumbent masses, rolling them into the sea; and the ponderous block, laid open to the light, finds itself on the bleak shore of a desert island of the northern Scottish archipelago, with ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... money, and great amounts of time and trouble, to free themselves from a persecution as unparalleled as it was vicious and cruel. Those who, having neither fame nor fortune to lose, speak lightly and think not at all of the sorrows which were launched avalanche-like upon the devoted heads of the Tichbornes and their connections, would do well to ponder over what such personation as that of Arthur Orton means to its immediate victims. It means a sudden derangement of all the ties and sympathies ...
— Celebrated Claimants from Perkin Warbeck to Arthur Orton • Anonymous
... spurs or ridges of the mountain, or becoming hidden in the cloud-mists which lay heavily about its base; but the sound continued to roll back upon us for some time, like the roar of distant artillery. I could no longer wonder at the terror with which the cry of an avalanche is said to fill the ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... voice. "The panther!" responded twenty. "The panther!" thundered forth a hundred thousand, in a chorus like the roaring of an avalanche. A cage started up, as if by magic, from the midst of the sand, and as it rose, its side fell down, and freed the captive of the desert. With one graceful bound the elegant savage gained its liberty; and, though ...
— Journeys Through Bookland - Volume Four • Charles H. Sylvester
... coming. At first the sound of it was like the pattering of ten million tiny feet in dry leaves; then, suddenly, it was like the roar of an avalanche. It was an inundation, and with it came crash after crash of thunder, and the black skies were illumined by an almost uninterrupted glare of lightning. It had been a long time since Carrigan had felt ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... "on a flat ground, the projectile will remain motionless when it has once touched; whereas on a declivity it would roll like an avalanche, and not being squirrels we should not come out safe and sound. So it is all for ...
— Jules Verne's Classic Books • Jules Verne
... minutes elapsed, and he had not returned; and when he did so at last, he burst into the house far more like an avalanche than a young gentleman who could find ...
— Aunt Judy's Tales • Mrs Alfred Gatty
... influence of light on a large scale as soon as we reached the open hills and mountains of the Sierra del Cristal, and had to pass over those fearful avalanche-like timber falls on their steep sides. The worst of these lay between Efoua and Egaja, where we struck a part of the range that was exposed to the south-east. These falls had evidently arisen from the tornados, which from time ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... repeated ideas which literature has rendered trivial; but what matter where the whip comes from, or how it is made, if it touches the sensitive spot of a horse's hide? The emotion was in Flavie, not in the speech, just as the noise is not in the avalanche, though it produces it. ...
— The Lesser Bourgeoisie • Honore de Balzac
... the Grave spoiled. Death truly is in itself an unwelcome messenger at our door. It is the dark event in this our earth,—the deepest of the many deep shadows of an otherwise fair creation—a cold, cheerless avalanche lying at the heart of humanity, freezing up the gushing fountains of joyous life. But the Gospel shines, and the cold iceberg melts. The Sun of Righteousness effects what philosophy, with all its boasted power, never could. Jesus is the abolisher of Death. He has taken all that is ...
— Memories of Bethany • John Ross Macduff
... his children that Keane was his only creditor. Yes, because in order to make sure of the estate, the old lawyer had bought up all the others. He could thus come down upon the brave but reckless Scottish soldier, like an avalanche from a mountain's brow. ...
— As We Sweep Through The Deep • Gordon Stables
... was answered, in a slightly depressed voice; "yet the impulse to bear onward to the goal now in view is not the less ardent for the suggestion. I can no more pause than the avalanche once in motion. I must onward in the race ...
— The Good Time Coming • T. S. Arthur
... sleep, through whose hazy atmosphere floated wild sentences from the sick tent, which showed that the patient was back again in Nevada, quarreling over the price of a horse which was to carry him beyond the reach of some threatening avalanche. ...
— The Woman in the Alcove • Anna Katharine Green
... and stopped. There was that in Jimmy's eye that would have stopped an avalanche. His lordship twiddled ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse
... been held for just such an opening. It was sent forward with impetuous speed to strike like an avalanche. The lieutenant said that already the blow had started to fall, and that there could be no doubt about the Germans being in retreat, heading north again to positions they must have arranged ...
— The Big Five Motorcycle Boys on the Battle Line - Or, With the Allies in France • Ralph Marlow
... If the Projectile itself were floating in it, as was possible, would not such a good conductor of sound convey to their ears the reflexion of some lunar echo, the roar of some storm raging among the mountains, the rattling of some plunging avalanche, or the detonations of some eructating volcano? And suppose some lunar Etna or Vesuvius was flashing out its fires, was it not even possible that their eye could catch a glimpse of the lurid gleam? One or two facts of this kind, well attested, would ...
— All Around the Moon • Jules Verne
... seemed a strange metamorphosis indeed. Even those who were conversant with his study of the military aspects of the Revolution and had noticed the careful attention paid by Mr. Belloc to military matters in various books could scarcely have been prepared for such an avalanche of highly-specialized knowledge. For we are all prone to the mistake of confusing a man ...
— Hilaire Belloc - The Man and His Work • C. Creighton Mandell
... had, as if forcibly detaching itself, flown off from the avalanche and buried itself in the ground only a few feet beyond Harry and Pearl, and more than one uprooted tree lay near them. Death had missed them by only a ...
— The Black Pearl • Mrs. Wilson Woodrow
... lacked and would always lack; and, whenever the ubiquitous, dry celibacy of the Thespian smoking-room oppressed him, his thoughts drifted to Agnes Waring and a doll's house somewhere on the Eaton estate, with one table, two chairs and an avalanche of green silk cushions in the drawing-room. . . . He was not in love with her; but, when Sybil telephoned to find whether he was coming to the country for the week-end, he had resolved to retouch his conception of Agnes. For ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... the teapot and, after pouring out a little of the contents, put it down again and gave it another two minutes. At the end of that time, the colour being of the same unsatisfactory paleness, she set the pot down and was about to raise the lid when an avalanche burst into the room and, emptying some tea into the pot from a canister-lid, beat a ...
— At Sunwich Port, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... instant he was toppling over backward, the next, by a mighty effort, he had recovered his equilibrium, and finally managed to reach a safer place. As he hurried on another pillar went down. The roof sagged lower, and an avalanche of mortar and tiling slid into the court below. Yells, groans, and cries of fury rent ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... small convoy. He had contrived his negotiations with a wonderful skill and foresight. His whole object had been secrecy, and this had been difficult. To shout the wealth of the camp in Leeson Butte would have been to bring instantly an avalanche of adventurers and speculators to the banks of Yellow Creek. His capital was limited to the small amount he had secretly hoarded while his comrades were starving, and the gold he had taken from his claim. The latter was his chief asset not from its amount, ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum
... by his friendship with Minna Herzlieb. Bettina, left to draw her own conclusions, at once identified herself with "Oreas" in the sonnet, and reproached herself for having plunged, like a mountain avalanche, into the broad, full current of the poet's life. From the letter of September 17th it is plain that Bettina indulged, in all seriousness, the fanciful notion that her inspiration was, in a sense, necessary to Goethe's fame. In her fond, mystical interpretation of the sonnets, her ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VII. • Various
... was to befall the palace and the people. The dweller amongst mountains must be always exposed to their dilapidation; and a season of unusual rain, continuing to a much later period than usual, produced an earth-avalanche. ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... in proportion to their mass, and inversely in proportion to the square of the distance between them. In this concise rule are described the relations which have been actually determined for masses of varying sizes and at different distances apart,—for snowflakes falling to the earth, for the avalanche on the mountain slope, and for the planets of the solar system, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton
... the stillness of the mountain slopes, is the first warning of such a change in human conditions as mankind has scarcely imagined heretofore. In that satellite of ours there are new elements, new appliances, traditions, an overwhelming avalanche of new ideas, a strange race with whom we must inevitably struggle for mastery—gold as common ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... madder, swifter, more terrible waters, coming in sudden thuds, in furious drives, eddying and sculping and rearing in an orgy or remorseless and heartrending destruction. Down before that roaring avalanche went walls and trees and buildings. The shepherd boy saw men give up the struggle for escape, cowering by the roadside, and women, turning from the race to the hills, rushed back to meet the oncoming waters with arms outspread and insanity ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... that the pleasant room with its clutter of costly futilities disappeared and this agreeable woman ceased to be. The avalanche of the modulated announcement sent Lennox reeling not merely out of the room, but out of the world, ...
— The Paliser case • Edgar Saltus
... flew at me, and I received such an avalanche of boxes on the ears for this reply, that I was glad to make my escape as fast as I could, and locked myself up in my own room. Now I really believe that I was almost a single instance of a young lady having her ears well boxed for refusing to marry a ...
— Valerie • Frederick Marryat
... deferentially, but, once outside the door he executed a silent war-dance as an outlet for his rage. In its eccentric evolutions he hurtled against a servant bringing the luncheon, and fully half of the viands poured like an avalanche down the stairs. While the man strove to gather up the broken crockery the secretary snatched the tray and with ill-concealed triumph ...
— Romance of Roman Villas - (The Renaissance) • Elizabeth W. (Elizbeth Williams) Champney
... torrent! The very mixture and hurry of the metaphors In Milton's mind are a reflex of the facts around him. Current, torrent, rush, rapid, avalanche, deluge hurrying to a precipice: mix and jumble such figures as we may, we but express more accurately the mad haste which London and all England were making in the end of April 1660 to bring Charles over from the Continent. Of the only important relic of opposition, ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... toil, a snow man, down the slope, rejoicing with his playfellows over its swift descent towards the valley, until they noticed with what frightful speed its bulk increased as it sped over its snowy road, till at last, like a terrible avalanche, it swept away a herdsman's hut—fortunately an empty one. Now, also, his heedlessness had set in motion a mass which constantly rolled onward, and how terrible might be the harm ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... of the tepees, of the river beyond, of the face of Edmonton Ridgar, and of all these etched distinctly in that effect of sun and shade which picks out each smallest detail sometimes of a rare evening in early summer. Then the whole scene went out in a smother as an avalanche of bodies descended upon him. He could smell the heavy odour of flesh half-naked, the scent of the hidden paint, he felt arms that fought to grip him and fingers that clutched like talons. Under it all he ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... and the spume towered on the gale like grey smoke. Out of the foam rose harsh rubble and screes to incline against broken precipices, and those stark walls were interrupted by mid-air slopes of grass which appeared ready to avalanche into the tumult below, but remained, livid areas of a dim mass which rose into dizzy pinnacles and domes, increasing the tumbling menace of the sky. A fleet of clouds of deep draught ran into Africa from the north; went aground on those crags, were wrecked and burst, their contents streaming ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... read "Hodden;" another said he had plagiarized from that popular writer. The criticisms cut him like a whip. He wondered why he had rebelled at the previous silence. He felt like a man who had heedlessly hurled a stone at a snow mountain and had been buried by the resulting avalanche. ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... rush from the left: Cavalry, Indian scouts, regular cavalry, cavalry militia, volunteer regiments, and behind them all the machine-guns and the field-artillery—a perfect avalanche of human beings and horses wrapped in thick clouds of smoke from which showers ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... but Bartley had no intention of playing ping-pong with a roaring red avalanche. Bartley made for the side of the gulch and, catching hold of the bole of a juniper, drew himself up. Cheyenne stood to his guns, shied a third stone, scored a bull's-eye, and then decided to evacuate in ...
— Partners of Chance • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... somebody's bunk—he neither knew nor cared whose—and he was snoring unmelodiously, and not dreaming a thing; for when a cow-puncher has nothing in particular to do, he sleeps to atone for the weary hours when he must be very wide-awake. An avalanche descended upon his unwarned middle, and checked the rhythmic ebb and flow of sound. He squawked and came to ...
— Rowdy of the Cross L • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B.M. Bower
... optical illusion not unfrequent in mountains, seemed close to us, and yet how many weary hours it took to reach it! The stones, adhering by no soil or fibrous roots of vegetation, rolled away from under our feet, and rushed down the precipice below with the swiftness of an avalanche. ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne
... poured down for several minutes and then ceased abruptly. Evidently the warrior had realized the futility of his avalanche and must now be seeking some other mode of attack. It caused Will chagrin that he had not seen him once during all the long attack, but he noticed with relief that the sun would soon set beyond the great White Dome. The snow on the Dome itself was tinged ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... high above the adjacent banks, was sweeping by and onward, like the serried lines of an army advancing to the charge; while the broad valley around even back to the summits of the far-off hills, was resounding with the deafening din that rose from the extended line of the booming avalanche, with the deep rumblings of an earthquake mingled with the tumultuous roar ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... her hands, and, in spite of the fury into which he had lashed himself, a great pity took hold of him. He felt as if everything were slipping away from him, and he was trying to stand on an avalanche. But he told himself that he would not waver, that he would hold to his purpose, that he would stand firm as a rock. Heaving a deep sigh, he walked to and fro across ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... her in the futility of comprehension he had felt years ago, when Caddie, who had been "a great reader," as the neighbors said, before the avalanche of household cares had overwhelmed her, propounded to him, while he was drawing off his boots for an hour of twilight somnolence before going to bed, problems that, he knew, no man could answer. Neither were they to be illumined ...
— Country Neighbors • Alice Brown
... will soon break; and the spectator loves him and is sorry for him and would avert the destiny of woe that is darkly foreshadowed in his condition. McCullough gave the invectives—as they ought to be given—with the impetuous rush and wild fury of the avalanche; and yet they were felt to come out of agony as well as out of passion. The pathos of those tremendous passages is in their chaotic disproportion; in their lawlessness and lack of government; in the evident helplessness of the poor old man who hurls them forth ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... are the same breed as those engaged by the philanthropic monks of St. Bernard in hunting up the benumbed traveller when sinking from exhaustion, or already overwhelmed by the sudden rushing of an avalanche into some one ...
— The Dog - A nineteenth-century dog-lovers' manual, - a combination of the essential and the esoteric. • William Youatt
... with regard to our position and purpose. What! Is it to forsake the slave when I cease to be the aider and abettor of his master? What! When the North is pressing down upon four millions of slaves like an avalanche, and we say to her, 'Take off that pressure—stand aside—give the slave a chance to regain his feet and assert his freedom!' is that turning our backs upon him? Here, for example, is a man engaged in highway robbery, and ...
— William Lloyd Garrison - The Abolitionist • Archibald H. Grimke
... stricken and bowed by a calamity whose pathos penetrates every house-hold in Christendom, cries to these warning words, "Amen! Amen!" Like the slight sound amid the frozen silence of the Alps that loosens and brings down the avalanche, the solitary pistol-shot of the 2d of July has suddenly startled this vast accumulation of public opinion into conviction, and on every side thunders the rush and roar of its overwhelming descent, which will sweep away the host of evils ...
— American Eloquence, Volume IV. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... the idea never being quite submerged. Fascinating, full of perilous acclivities and sudden treacherous descents, this most brilliant of preludes is Chopin in riotous spirits. He plays with the keyboard: it is an avalanche, anon a cascade, then a swift stream, which finally, after mounting to the skies, descends to an abyss. Full of imaginative lift, caprice and stormy dynamics, this prelude is the darling of the virtuoso. Its pregnant introduction is like a madly jutting rock from which ...
— Chopin: The Man and His Music • James Huneker
... clung to each other in terror, the goats trembled, and Bello crept farther under the rock. "The avalanche!" gasped Leneli, shaking with fright. "Father thought there wouldn't be any more this spring! Oh, I ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... his feet the fabric of the vessel trembled as the chutes fed her through the three hatches. Sweating, coal-blackened men toiled in the depths of her, revealed below hatches by the electric lights, pecking at the avalanche ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... calm'st my mood: I'll sleep! But, as I thus conclude, The intrusions of her grace dispel The comfortable glooms of hell. A wonder! Ere these lines were dried, Vaughan and my Love, his three-days' Bride, Became my guests. I look'd, and, lo, In beauty soft as is the snow And powerful as the avalanche, She lit the deck. The Heav'n-sent chance! She smiled, surprised. They came to see The ship, not thinking to meet me. At infinite distance she's my day: What then to him? Howbeit they say 'Tis not so sunny in the sun But ...
— The Victories of Love - and Other Poems • Coventry Patmore
... situation, Merle—to lose caste, and take your place among menials? It is enough to make my poor brother rise in his grave, and your poor, dear mother too, to think of a Fenton stooping to such degradation." But I will forbear to transcribe all the wordy avalanche of lady-like invective that was hurled at me, accompanied by ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII: No. 353, October 2, 1886. • Various
... incidents of the story are employed to emphasise the distinctive features of each land. The explorers are almost frozen on the heights of the Andes, and almost drowned in the floods of the Patagonian Pampas. An avalanche sweeps some of them away; a condor carries off a lad. In Australia they are stopped by jungles and by quagmires; they hunt kangaroos. In New Zealand they take refuge amid hot sulphur springs and in ...
— In Search of the Castaways • Jules Verne
... and greater may befall us. Since the days of Jena and Auerstadt our sorrows have increased. We are constantly experiencing some new humiliation; even the treaty of Tilsit is not the climax of our calamities. They come as an avalanche, and sometimes I wish to be ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... to detain you here longer; it may be days before I can see him again, and I don't think it will be needful for you to confirm my statements. I fancy the fight is all out of him—it came upon him too suddenly—if he had known that I was here he might have braced himself up, but coming down like an avalanche upon him it stunned him. Now, Mr. Harford, you must permit me to draw a check for ten pounds for your expenses down here; when I come to my own again I shall be able properly to show my gratitude for the inestimable services ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... just time to shout the name of his companion when the avalanche struck him, and he was bowled over as neatly as ever a football tackle ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... the crisis. For a horrible moment he saw Mrs. Roderick Magsworth Bitts approaching like some fatal mountain in avalanche. She seemed to grow larger and redder; lightnings played about her head; he had a vague consciousness of the audience spraying out in flight, of the squealings, tramplings and dispersals of a stricken field. The ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... his boat-boys, and before their master could interfere, beat at the delirious wretch with their oars. He hung on tenaciously, enduring a perfect avalanche of blows. But mere flesh and bone had to wither under that onslaught, and at last, by sheer weight of battering, he was driven from his hold, and the beer-colored river covered ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... the propriety of exercising that power was a question which he reserved exclusively to himself. These words he fully made good. The whole country, wild with excitement and teeming with opinions almost co-numerous with its citizens, threatened to bury him beneath an avalanche of advice. But while all talked and wrote madly and endlessly, he quietly held his peace, did what he chose when he chose, and never delegated any portion of his authority over this most important business to any one. He took emancipation ...
— Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II • John T. Morse
... lucky that the lunch the automobilists had brought from Avalanche was ample and as yet untouched. The hotel waiter, who had attended to the packing of it, had fortunately been used to reckon with outdoor Montana appetites instead of cloyed New York ones. They unpacked the little hamper with ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... great and good man, Richard Maurice Bucke, once said, "After I had lost my feet in the Rocky Mountain avalanche, I lay for six weeks in a cabin, and having plenty of time to think it over, I concluded that, now my feet were gone, I surely could no longer depend upon them, so I must use my head." ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 13 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Lovers • Elbert Hubbard
... eight feet—causing him to shrink back and growl—as it rushed smoking onward over the level bit of sward beneath, through the mass of willows beyond, across the gravelly strand and out to the lake, into which it plunged and disappeared amid a magnificent spout of foam. But the avalanche of earth and stones which its mad descent had created did not let Bruin off so easily. One after another these latter, small and large, went pattering and dashing against him,—some on his flank, some on his ribs, and others on his head. He growled of course, ...
— The Norsemen in the West • R.M. Ballantyne
... taking such a vast sum of money for so slight a service; but Mr. Checkynshaw's mandate was imperative, and he departed, leaving her bewildered at the sudden fortune which had come down like an avalanche upon her. Leo went back to school, as delighted at her good luck as his own in finding himself entirely freed from the charge of ...
— Make or Break - or, The Rich Man's Daughter • Oliver Optic
... no more strength than a spider's web; but, once formed, it binds as with a chain of iron. The small events of life, taken singly, may seem exceedingly unimportant, like snow that falls silently, flake by flake; yet accumulated, these snow-flakes form the avalanche. ...
— Self Help • Samuel Smiles
... we little human animals are! An avalanche of love hadn't destroyed my hunger. A knife-thrust in my vanity killed it in an instant; and I can't believe this was simply because I'm female. I shouldn't be surprised if a man might feel exactly the same—or ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... assistant found an avalanche of new material and old on their hands. (The Q.M.S.'s are those individuals who keep ALL the new clothing in store and by only the wiliest of Tommies can such material be wangled.) The Q.M.S. of the Ten Hundred was ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... mountain ranges, Where nothing haps save vast AEonian changes, The slow moraine, the avalanche's wings, Summer and Sun,—the elemental things, Pulses of Awe,—Winter and Night and the lightnings. Land of the pines that rear their dusky spars A ready midnight for the earliest stars. The land of rivers, rivulets, and rills, Straining incessant ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... one on a stone, another on the waggon rails, a third on a piece of plank. Gradually the children stole away up the canyon to where there was another chute, somewhat smaller than the one across the dump; and down this chute, for the rest of the afternoon, they poured one avalanche of stones after another, waking the echoes of the glen. Meanwhile we elders sat together on the platform, Hanson and his friend smoking in silence like Indian sachems, Mrs. Hanson rattling on as usual with an adroit ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only a few remained. The battle, once begun, raged with the greatest fury; but Cromwell and his "Ironsides" (a name given to them because of their iron resolution) were irresistible, and swept through the enemy like an avalanche; nothing could withstand them—and the weight of their onset bore down all before it. Their spirit could not be subdued or wearied, for verily they believed they were fighting the battles of the Lord, and ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... casually as if dismissing once and for all an avalanche of contradictions. Dorn hesitated. It was one of his days of disquiet; and he had left a note with Rachel saying he would be home at ...
— Erik Dorn • Ben Hecht
... renewed energy in the Recapitulation and Coda. Observe the pathetic commentary which the solo oboe makes upon the main theme at the outset of the third part (268)—a flower growing out of the debris of the avalanche. The Coda begins, at measure 374, with a passionate insistence upon the fundamental rhythm, driven home with sharp hammer-blows and, as in all Beethoven's symphonic movements, furnishes an overpowering climax, not a mere perfunctory close. The second Movement, ...
— Music: An Art and a Language • Walter Raymond Spalding
... top of the cliff, of course. It must have made a big drift there and tumbled down—regular avalanche, you know—just as I tried to look out. Why! the place out there is filled up yards deep! We'd never be able to ...
— Ruth Fielding on Cliff Island - The Old Hunter's Treasure Box • Alice Emerson
... Crawling Water, the cattleman thought of a short-cut, through a little used timber-trail, which would save him several miles; but it was crossed by a ravine cut by a winter avalanche like the slash of a gigantic knife. To descend into this ravine and ascend on the farther side would be a tortuous process, which would take more time than to continue by the longer route. But if the ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... responsibilities of voting to a greater extent than was ever expected of them. During the week I was accorded a welcome home in the old Academy of Music, Rundle street, where I listened with embarrassment to the avalanche of eulogium that overwhelmed me. "What a good thing it is, Miss Spence, that you have only one idea," a gentleman once said to me on my country tour. He wished thus to express his feeling concerning my singleness of purpose towards effective ...
— An Autobiography • Catherine Helen Spence
... [20] The avalanche—the equivoque of the original, turning on the Swiss word Lawine, it is impossible to render intelligible to the English reader. The giants in the preceding line are the rocks that overhang the pass which winds now to the right, now to the left, of ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... the ice and buried deep under mountains of moraine matter, but added to the present desolation. We could not enjoy; we could only endure. Death from overturning icebergs, from charging tides, from mountain avalanche, threatened us. ...
— Alaska Days with John Muir • Samual Hall Young
... Vickers, with a slice of bread arrested half-way to his mouth, sat gazing in astonishment at Charles Vickers, clad for the first time in his life in new raiment from top to toe. Ere he could voice inquiries, an avalanche of squeaks descended the stairs, and the rest of the children, all smartly clad, with Selina bringing up the rear, burst into ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... sonorous youth whom the claret punch made loquacious, or smash with lemon squeezer the obstreperous, or hurl gutterward the cantankerous without a wrinkle coming to his white lawn tie, when he stood before woman he was voiceless, incoherent, stuttering, buried beneath a hot avalanche of bashfulness and misery. What then was he before Katherine? A trembler, with no word to say for himself, a stone without blarney, the dumbest lover that ever babbled of the weather in the presence ...
— The Trimmed Lamp • O. Henry
... publications of diplomatic documents that at the last moment, when the spectre of a general war definitely arose, Austria hesitated and entered upon a hopeful negotiation with Russia. It was Germany's criminal ultimatum to Russia which set the avalanche on its terrible path. Now Germany is notoriously a land of religious criticism and Rationalism. Church-going in Berlin is far lower even than in London, where six out of seven millions do not attend places of worship. ...
— The War and the Churches • Joseph McCabe
... was almost within reach of the helpless man, the ice-floe upon which the latter lay split in two with a deafening crash, and the pent-up masses behind, all breaking loose at once, came down upon Feodor like an avalanche. ...
— Harper's Young People, May 4, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... Scarlett's poor six squadrons—his two following regiments were then some distance off—and seeing those squadrons as yet without accompanying artillery, he should have judged them his easier quarry and ordered the wheel that should bring his avalanche down on them? ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... may contemplate it in peace. It does not exact from him quick decisions or disquieting activity. The storms that sweep over it contribute to his admiration without wetting his feet, and his high estimate of its beauty and greatness may be enjoyed without apprehension of an avalanche. So the historian is like a picturesque spectator cultivating his sense of the sublime upon a distant prospect of the Himalayas. It is easy for him to admire, and the appreciation of a far-off heroic movement gives him quite a pleasant time. ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... They are going to bring up a string of witnesses that will put art and literature out of the question. Clarke will throw up his brief. He will carry the case to a certain point; and then, when he sees the avalanche coming, he will back out and leave you in the dock. What you have to do is to cross to France to-night. Leave a letter saying that you cannot face the squalor and horror of a law case; that you are an artist and unfitted ...
— Oscar Wilde, Volume 2 (of 2) - His Life and Confessions • Frank Harris
... with his Heart's Desire, he tried in vain to catch the fragment of a smile from her. Instead of a smile, he found her threatening to make a face if he persisted. Piggy seemed to be buried in an avalanche of woe. Then it was that he saw what a small thing had started the avalanche of calamity thundering down upon him, and he smarted with remorse. In his anguish he tried to sing alto, and made a peculiar rasping sound that tore a reproof for him off ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... way along the ledge which did not appear to have much of a descent until they came to a place where a rocky slide had taken trail and all into the sea. The avalanche that had made it must have been a granddaddy of avalanches, for there was a steep slope of rocks and rubble from here to the water below. There, the stones had spilled out in all directions and the waves moiled over and about them for several hundred yards. Far out, ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam
... "father" and "mother" should be found. On this subject "the Golden Shoemaker" had talked much with his minister. He shrank from the thought of advertising his need. He was afraid of bringing upon himself an avalanche of mercenary applications. His idea was to fix upon some excellent Christian man and woman who might be induced to accept the post as a sacred and delightful duty. They must be persons who loved children, and who were not in search of a living; and it would be none the worse if it were ...
— The Golden Shoemaker - or 'Cobbler' Horn • J. W. Keyworth
... of his cot, still more than half asleep, and landing against me with a force that sent me spinning out through the open doorway to bring up prostrate with a crash in the cabin of the doctor opposite, half stunned by the concussion of my skull against the bulkhead and by the avalanche of ponderous tomes that came crashing down upon me as the worthy medico's tier of hanging bookshelves yielded and came down by the run at my wild clutch as I stumbled over the ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... there arose a tremendous commotion between the pillars of the Brandenburg Gate, and the host of marshals and generals, resembling a star-spangled avalanche, entered the city. Nothing was to be seen but golden epaulettes, orders glittering with diamonds, embroidered uniforms, and long white ostrich-plumes. Not on them, however, were the eyes of the crowd fixed; they gazed only at that grave, pale man, who rode by himself ...
— Napoleon and the Queen of Prussia • L. Muhlbach
... as with a ladle, and roused the whirlwind, and a good deal more (enough to raise a storm of itself),—when suddenly there came a black squall which nearly capsized the boat. The poet was extremely ill, and disgorged such an avalanche of minstrelsy (Scylla, Charybdis, the Cyclops, all came up bodily), that I had no difficulty in preserving a few snatches. I should like ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... Horn was swept off his legs by an avalanche of return boys who had cluttered the deck with the first squall. The squirming mass, of which he was part, slid down into the barbed wire of the port rail beneath the surface of ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... They had nine wagonloads of instruments, carrying telescopes fifteen feet long. A surgeon, two landscape painters, one instrument maker, five surveyors accompanied them, and "the convoy grew like an avalanche as it worked its way into Siberia." Behring seems to have moved this "cumbersome machine" safely to Yakutsk, though it took the best part of two years. Having left Russia in 1733, it was 1741 when Behring himself was ready to start from the harbour of Okhotsk for the coast of America with two ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... entrance consisted of Mr Davis; his assistant, Mr Ayrton; Mr Harold Jones; Mr Max Dalison, formerly of the Egypt Exploration Fund; and myself. Wriggling and crawling, we pushed and pulled ourselves down the sloping rubbish, until, with a rattling avalanche of small stones, we arrived at the bottom of the passage, where we scrambled to our feet at the brink of a large rectangular well, or shaft. Holding the lamps aloft, the surrounding walls were seen to be covered with wonderfully preserved paintings executed on ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... he moves like an avalanche, carrying destruction in his path. The peasantry sink before him. The country, too, is too poor for plunder, and too rough for a valuable conquest. Nature presents her eternal barrier on every side, to check the wantonness of ambition. And ...
— Successful Methods of Public Speaking • Grenville Kleiser
... than any action of his life to feel that he had stirred up this movement. It pleased him still more to know that he could now step back and watch the work of ruin go on. It was like disturbing the one small stone which starts the avalanche, which ...
— The Rangeland Avenger • Max Brand
... penetrating as it carried the news of a far-away world,—a world where the three waiting men knew that all had turned to a white hell of wintry fury; where the grim, forbidding mountains were now the abiding place of the snow-ledge and the avalanche; where even steel and the highest product of invention counted for nothing against the blast of the wind and the swirl of the tempest. Then finally, as from far away, a strained voice came, ...
— The White Desert • Courtney Ryley Cooper |
