"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... in a side direction, but it brought her as she passed within range of the party by the sledge. The owl kept above her as she ran. A dozen leaps was all the hare ever made. A loud crack was heard, and she was seen to spring up and fall back upon the snow, dead as a door-nail. Like an echo another crack followed—a wild scream rang through the air, and the great white owl fell fluttering to the earth. The ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... and Forty-nine ingenious men, struggling with their whole force and industry, for a long course of weeks, to do at bottom this: To stretch out the old Formula and Law Phraseology, so that it may cover the new, contradictory, entirely uncoverable Thing? Whereby the poor Formula does but crack, and one's honesty along with it! The thing that is palpably hot, burning, wilt thou prove it, by syllogism, to be a freezing-mixture? This of stretching out Formulas till they crack is, especially in times of swift change, one of the sorrowfullest ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... time we were about ten yards past the shack, standing all in a group. The person inside couldn't see us through the opening in front of the shack but for all we knew he might be peeking at us through some little crack or hole. It made me feel funny to think that he was in there staring at us and we not ...
— Roy Blakeley's Bee-line Hike • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... confronted the enemy in stubborn battle; and the work was hard. It was fighting, fighting, fighting—now, as in 1862, when he covered Lee's retreat after Sharpsburg. Day and night the cavalry had no rest. The crack of carbines, the clash of sabres, and the roar of cannon were incessant. It was a war of giants which Fauquier and Loudoun saw in those days—and not until the rear of Lee's column had nearly reached the Potomac, ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... fetched the horse himself and tightened the girths. They walked together towards the great gate of solid wood which fitted into the high wall so closely that none could peep through so much as a crack. At the door the colonel lingered, leaning against his great horse and stroking its shoulder thoughtfully with a ...
— The Isle of Unrest • Henry Seton Merriman
... vigorous new house at an humble salary. By processes such as I have analyzed above, he made himself the best man in technical work in the firm's employ. The next step was to demonstrate his ability as a manager and financier as well as a skilled workman. There was a nut to crack, was it not? But see, now, how simply he broke the shell ...
— The Young Man and the World • Albert J. Beveridge
... He is an old, grizzled man dressed in dungaree pants, a sweater, and a woolen cap with ear-flaps. His manner is sullen and angry. He stops stacking up the plates and casts a quick glance upward at the skylight; then tiptoes over to the closed door in rear and listens with his ear pressed to the crack. What he hears makes his face darken and he mutters a furious curse. There is a noise from the doorway on the right, and he ...
— The Atlantic Book of Modern Plays • Various
... loves a kiss beneath the berry. Then full many a shape hath he, All in said ubiquity: Now is he a green array, And now an "eve," and now a "day;" Now he's town gone out of town, And now a feast in civic gown, And now the pantomime and clown With a crack upon the crown, And all sorts of tumbles down; And then he's music in the night, And the money gotten by't: He's a man that can't write verses, Bringing some to ope your purses: He's a turkey, he's a goose, He's oranges unfit for use; He's a kiss that loves to grow Underneath the ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow—Book 3 - Christmas Poems from 'round the World • Various
... had been heavy, still; weatherwise pickers watched the white sky anxiously. In the middle of the night, Rose-Ellen woke to the shriek of wind and the crack of canvas. Then, with a splintering crash, the tent-poles collapsed and she was buried under ...
— Across the Fruited Plain • Florence Crannell Means
... at his rifle. A crack and a whizz in the air. The noble creature gave one mighty bound and fell dead. The ball had entered his broad forehead and penetrated ...
— Adele Dubois - A Story of the Lovely Miramichi Valley in New Brunswick • Mrs. William T. Savage
... apparently overlooked the point; therefore this morning I went down to Kew, and finding only a constable in charge, I made a thorough search through the place. In the dead man's room I naturally expected to find it, and after nearly a couple of hours searching in every nook and every crack I succeeded. It was hidden in the mould of a small pot-fern, standing in the corridor outside ...
— The Seven Secrets • William Le Queux
... in our places long before we heard a shot followed by another, and then two, then three. The first was evidently a chassepot; one recognized it by the sharp report, which sounds like the crack of a whip, while the other three came ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume III (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... balloting spurred the Algerian army to intervene and postpone the second round of elections to prevent what the secular elite feared would be an extremist-led government from assuming power. The army began a crack down on the FIS that spurred FIS supporters to begin attacking government targets. The government later allowed elections featuring pro-government and moderate religious-based parties, but did not appease the activists who progressively widened ...
— The 2007 CIA World Factbook • United States
... intolerable shame. A fierce peremptory longing seized him to kill his bliss and his shame at one stroke. Four words would do it. He had but to stand up and cry aloud, "I am an Englishman!" and the whole beautiful hideous dream would crack, shiver, dissolve. Only four words! Almost he heard his voice shouting them and saw through the trembling heat her body droop under the stab, her love take the mortal hurt and die with a face of scorn. Only four words, and an end ...
— Fort Amity • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... disabled by his lameness. And . . . was he sorry? He had not answered this question when the crash came—the ferry-boat striking the very stem of the keel, her gunwale giving way to it with a slow grinding noise, then with a bursting crack as the splinters broke inwards. As it seemed to him, there were two distinct bumps, and between them the boat filled slowly and the mare slid away into the water. He heard voices shouting on board the keel. The water rose ...
— Hetty Wesley • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... of the three had happened to look steadily at the back window of the bar-room, they might have detected, in the dusk, the face of Dougherty, the Irish ostler of the Unicorn Tavern. It disappeared instantly, but there was a crack nearly half an inch wide between the bottom of the back-door and the sill under it, and to that crack a large, ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... Second, there was a very bloody engagement between the English and Dutch fleets, in the heat of which a Scotch sea-man was very severely bit by a louse on his neck, which he caught; and stooping down to crack it between his nails, many of the sailors near him had their heads taken off by a chain-shot from the enemy, which dashed their blood and brains about him; on which he had compassion upon the poor louse, returned him to his place and bid ...
— Irish Wit and Humor - Anecdote Biography of Swift, Curran, O'Leary and O'Connell • Anonymous
... slab was forced outward not long ago. Before that this treasure was concealed in a narrow crack between the two rocks. That's why no one was able to find it when the search was made soon after the loss! Isn't it great that we have ...
— Betty Gordon at Boarding School - The Treasure of Indian Chasm • Alice Emerson
... capital essay on "Agricultural Drainage," which appeared in the Quarterly Review, No. CLXXI, says: "We really thought that no one was so ignorant as not to be aware that clay lands always shrink and crack with drought, and the stiffer the clay the greater the shrinking, as brickmakers well know. In the great drought, 36 years ago, we saw in a very retentive soil in the Vale of Belvoir, cracks which it was not very pleasant to ride among. ...
— Draining for Profit, and Draining for Health • George E. Waring
... implicit confidence in the killing power of the gun in my hand, and at the crack of the rifle the huge brute settled forward with hardly a quiver not ten feet from the kids upon which he was about to spring. A second shot was not necessary but was fired as a matter of precaution as the tiger had fallen behind rank grass, and the bullet passed through the ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... bed, and change into damp clothes, and put on the wet ones again the next morning. The villages were poor, and most of the houses were of boards rudely nailed together for ends, and for sides straw rudely tied on; they had no windows, and smoke came out of every crack. They were as unlike the houses which travellers see in southern Japan as a "black hut" in Uist is like a cottage in a trim village in Kent. These peasant proprietors have much to learn of the art of living. At Tsuguriko, the next stage, ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... water. The moon was quite full. Out on the horizon to the south its light shone on the sea, making it look like the silver beach of some distant fairy island. The girl appeared to be wrapped in thought, and it was not till the sharp crack of Sam's head against an overhanging stanchion announced his ...
— Three Men and a Maid • P. G. Wodehouse
... Arctic Circle, mountain ranges, some of great altitude, are everywhere visible. There are also many large lakes, surrounded by the swamps, and impenetrable forests, that formerly rendered Alaska so hard a nut for the explorer to crack. Only a few miles north of the coast range fertile soil and luxurious vegetation are replaced by Arctic deserts. Here, for eight months of the year, plains and rivers are merged into one vast wilderness of ice, save during the short summer when dog-roses bloom ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... whirled in the air and fell with a resounding crack, but the stallion merely switched his tail and started forward at a clumsy stumbling trot. The thunder of the host was too hoarse for applause; they saw a victory and a defeat but what they had wanted was blood, and a death. ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... also. Still, she knew that if she left her eggs and the ducklings in them to die none of her friends would ever speak to her again; so there she stayed, only getting off the eggs several times a day to see if the shells were cracking—which may have been the very reason why they did not crack sooner. ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... apparently rear two broods in the year. In the first nest, which we found under the root of an old spruce-fir on the 17th May, the eggs were quite hard-set; and I may remark that immediately over this nest, about 8 feet up the tree in a crack in the wood, a little Muscicapula superciliaris was sitting on five eggs. Later at the end of June we found fresh eggs in several nests. The eggs in our collection were all taken between the 17th May ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... silence for one brief moment. Then there was a red flash under the apple trees followed by the sharp crack of a rifle. There was another brief moment of silence, and then the young girl sighed softly, leaned forward, and fell ...
— Free Joe and Other Georgian Sketches • Joel Chandler Harris
... got to the top, his attention was attracted by loud shouts coming from the rear of the fort. Above them quickly rose a hearty British cheer. Showers of bullets came flying through the air. The shouts and cries increased. Amid the clash of steel, and the sharp crack of pistols, the voices of the officers reached him calling the men to abandon the guns and defend the fort. But it was too late. Already a strong party of ...
— From Powder Monkey to Admiral - A Story of Naval Adventure • W.H.G. Kingston
... I thought she was going to capsize. Harry sprang up from below. Tom had rushed forward, and with the hands stationed there let fly the jib-sheets, and was hauling down the forestay-sail—the foresail had been stowed. Suddenly she rose, and I heard a loud crack, like the report of a musket fired close to ...
— The Cruise of the Dainty - Rovings in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... dared to remove the barricade until a thin ray of sunlight appeared through a crack in ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... the accident, the patient usually gives the history that while making a sudden movement he was seized with an intense sickening pain in the knee, accompanied, it may be, by a sensation of something giving way with a distinct crack, and followed by locking of the joint. He may fall to the ground and be unable to rise. On examination, the knee is found to be fixed in a slightly flexed position; and while the surgeon may be able to carry out movements of flexion to a considerable ...
— Manual of Surgery Volume Second: Extremities—Head—Neck. Sixth Edition. • Alexander Miles
... a little," said Isabelle, whose father wrote articles much appreciated by the public in the 'Revue des Deux Mondes.' "But he said at the same time that it was horrid to give such crack-brained stuff to us poor girls. Happily, our subject this week is much nicer. We have to make comparisons between La Tristesse d'Olympio, Souvenir, and Le Lac'. That ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... declared to be outstanding in vigor and health of tree, and production of good regular crops of delicious nuts that crack well. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the 43rd Annual Meeting - Rockport, Indiana, August 25, 26 and 27, 1952 • Various
... one heard the crack of a whip behind the hedge; then the gates opened, a chaise entered. Galloping up to the foot of the steps, it stopped short and emptied its load. They got down from all sides, rubbing knees and stretching arms. The ladies, wearing ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... flash of lightning, followed by a crack like that of a cosmic whip-lash, and a long reverberating roar ...
— The Disentanglers • Andrew Lang
... I was compelled to hold that awful figure down upon the seat before me, lest it should slide to the floor. On we sped, past hedge and tree, by field and lonely wood. And ever in my ears was the whir of the wheels, the drumming of hoofs, and the crack of the whip; and ever the flitting moonbeams danced across that muffled face until it seemed that the features writhed and gibed at me, beneath the folds ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... than you; but fear not less; Twice sinking, twice I drew him from the press: But the victorious foe pursued so fast, That flying throngs divided us at last. As seamen parting in a general wreck, When first the loosening planks begin to crack; Each catches one, and straight are far disjoined, Some borne by tides, and others by the wind; So, in this ruin, from each other rent, With heaved-up hands we mutual farewells sent: Methought ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Volume 4 (of 18) - Almanzor And Almahide, Marriage-a-la-Mode, The Assignation • John Dryden
... from the darkness of the buckeye; a crack like the snap of a whip; Yuba Bill steadying himself for a moment, and then dropping ...
— Jeff Briggs's Love Story • Bret Harte
... Endelstow Church had reached the last weeks of its existence. It was to be replaced by a new one from the designs of Mr. Hewby, the architect who had sent down Stephen. Planks and poles had arrived in the churchyard, iron bars had been thrust into the venerable crack extending down the belfry wall to the foundation, the bells had been taken down, the owls had forsaken this home of their forefathers, and six iconoclasts in white fustian, to whom a cracked edifice was a species of Mumbo Jumbo, had taken lodgings in the village previous to ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... noise is heard outside, the big door opens, there is a rush forward, and four people flock in a man in a linen duster, a stout woman, a lad of ten, a smartly dressed young lady, and a dog. Movement, welcome, ringing of bells, tramping of feet—the whole machinery has started. It was adjusted to crack an egg-shell or smash an iron-bound trunk. The few drops presaged a shower. The next day there were a hundred on the register; the day after, two hundred; and the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... the road toward Richmond came the crack of a whip. I saw a team coming—four or six mules, I could not ...
— Who Goes There? • Blackwood Ketcham Benson
... evening the occupants of the camp kept careful watch, and then without warning, as before, the crack of repeating rifles broke the almost ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... has lost his seat from not observing that rule. In the open air pitch out a fact or two—not too many—or a couple of round sums of figures first of all, just to give them confidence in you, and then go straight for your opponent. No rapier play—it's lost then—but crack him on the top-knot with a bludgeon. They'll want to hear his skull ring before they'll believe that you have touched him. Phrases! Those are the things to get you in, not arguments. Pin a label on his coat-tails. You'll see them laugh as he squirms round to pull it off. And, ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the coarse lips. "I'll make you repent this interference, I swear I will. You shall swing some day, and I'll be there to hear your neck crack!" ...
— Five Thousand Dollars Reward • Frank Pinkerton
... Livingstone received a letter from his father giving an account of Burgoyne's surrender. "Soon we heard hollooing and other expressions of joy from him and others in the (lower) rooms. * * * He put the letter up through a crack in the floor for us to read. * * * The whole prison was filled with joy inexpressible. * * * From this time we were better treated, although the provision was bad, but we drew rather larger quantities of it. Some butter, and about a gill of rice and some cole were dealt out to us, which ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... he had heard. His faded old blue eyes were fixed steadily on the single crack in the rampart of mountains, through which the afternoon train was just now leaving the valley. Its whistle echoed back hollowly, as it fled away from the prison walls into ...
— Hillsboro People • Dorothy Canfield
... passed through the curtain which I had drawn across the entrance to the smoking cabin. Only a peculiar tremor from the mysterious engines broke the utter stillness. Was I growing deaf? I snapped my fingers to reassure myself, and the sound startled me like the crack of a pistol. Evidently my sense of hearing had become abnormally acute. My mind, too, was preternaturally clear, and the solitude became so irksome that I rose from my seat, and looked out of the scuttles to relieve the tension ...
— A Trip to Venus • John Munro
... could not be laid hold of mentally in any sort of way, so that one remained faced by the fact of a man blown to bits for nothing even most remotely resembling an idea, anarchistic or other. As to the outer wall of the Observatory it did not show as much as the faintest crack. ...
— Notes on My Books • Joseph Conrad
... the lawn! Covered with broken dishes, earless jugs, cracked plates, and bottomless saucepans," continued Mrs. Kitson. "What a dish of nuts for my neighbours to crack! They always enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense, on Kitson's clearing-up days. But what does he care for my distress? In vain I hide up all this old trumpery in the darkest nooks in the cellar and pantry—nothing ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... too cramped to stand on his feet so Chick-chick kneeled down at his side to rub some circulation into his wrists and ankles. Suddenly a great noise of running was heard. Chick-chick looked out through the crack of ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... down, Lige. You can't go for a while." Nor could he. It was long before he could venture out; the storm raged and roared without abatement; it was Carlow's worst since 'Fifty-one, the old gentleman said. They heard the great limbs crack and break outside, while the thunder boomed and the wind ripped at the eaves till it seemed the roof must go. Meanwhile the judge, after some apology, lit his pipe and told long stories of the storms of early ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... a hole we're goin' to make in the end of 'em. Then we're goin' to carry 'em in our pockets, and if anybody says anything to us—OH, oh! look out! They won't get a crack ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... hill to the top of a ridge, down the other side of the hill to a water-course, then up a hill to the top of a ridge, down again, up again, etc. That is all traveling is—valley, hill, valley, hill, valley, etc., though you wander till the crack o' doom. And so your map travels must go—valley, hill, valley, hill—till you run off the map or come back to the ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... frightened. It will be the interest of both not to revive an order that bullies with arsenic in its sleeve. The poisoned host will destroy the Jesuits, as well as the Pope: and perhaps the Church of Rome will fall by a wafer, as it rose by it; for such an edifice will tumble when once the crack has begun. ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole - Volume II • Horace Walpole
... he explained, "there are places out there where the horses have to climb like goats. It's only fair to them to distribute your weight equally. A side saddle is likely to turn and drop you a mile or two down a crack." ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... lingered until I heard the dinner-bell ring. But even this retreat was not without disaster, for in my hurry I trod upon one of the young lady's dresses; I don't know whether it was Dolly's or Polly's (they were named Dolly and Polly) and heard a dreadful crack about her middle as though she were breaking in two. Thereon Archibald giggled again and Dolly and Polly remarked with ...
— The Ancient Allan • H. Rider Haggard
... those dishes?" asked the old man, as he reached over and lifted the sugar bowl and pitcher from his window. "Ach! them is a great bargain. I let you have them cheap. And see, not a chip or a crack on 'em. Good china, too! Very valuable, but they is all I have left. ...
— Bobbsey Twins in Washington • Laura Lee Hope
... growing dark one Thursday evening, and Sarah Ann had just brought the lamp into her mistress's parlour. Miss Michin turned up the light slowly, remarking, as she did so, "I don't want this glass to crack. I might do nothing else but buy lamp-glasses if I left the turning-up of them to Sarah Ann. This one has been boiled, which, Mrs. Dodd says, is a good thing to make them stand heat." Then she broke off suddenly, and stared at her apprentice, exclaiming, ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 5, May, 1891 • Various
... camp near Conrad's store, the 7th Louisiana, Colonel Hays, a crack regiment, on picket down stream, had a spirited affair, in which the enemy was driven with the loss of a score of prisoners. Shortly after, for convenience of supplies, I was directed to cross the river and camp some miles to the southwest. ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... feelings of Engine Company No. 99 the details will be lightly touched. The company does not like to be reminded of that day. There was a great crowd, and hurry calls were sent in; and while the ambulance gong was clearing the way the men of No. 99 heard the crack of the S.P.C.A. agent's pistol, and turned their heads away, not daring to look ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... opened. Israel was sitting so that, accidentally, his eye pierced the crevice made by the opening of the door, which, like a theatrical screen, stood for a moment between Doctor Franklin and the just entering visitor. And behind that screen, through the crack, Israel caught one momentary glimpse of a little bit of by-play between the pretty chambermaid and the stranger. The vivacious nymph appeared to have affectedly run from him on the stairs—doubtless in freakish return for some liberal advances—but had suffered ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... built?' And yet all the while he has the most affecting consciousness that all this is not God's will, but the will of the flesh; that the house of fame is not the house of God; that its floor is not the rock of ages, but the sea of glass mingled with fire, which may crack beneath him any moment, and let the nether flame burst up. He knows that he is living in a splendid lie; that he is not what God meant him to be. He longs to flee away and be at peace. It is to this ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... usual for ladies who received in the evenings to wear what were called "simple dinner dresses": a close-fitting armour of whale-boned silk, slightly open in the neck, with lace ruffles filling in the crack, and tight sleeves with a flounce uncovering just enough wrist to show an Etruscan gold bracelet or a velvet band. But Madame Olenska, heedless of tradition, was attired in a long robe of red velvet bordered about the chin and ...
— The Age of Innocence • Edith Wharton
... me—but you did say you would the reward moany crack among us. No, it was not crack; he ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... is drifted into his worst crimes. His first one leads on by fell necessity to others. A man who has done no sin is conceivable, but a man who has done only one is impossible. Did you ever see a dam bursting or breaking down? Through a little crack comes one drop: will it stop there—the gap or the trickle? No! The drop has widened the crack, it has softened the earth around, it has cleared away some impediments. So another and another follow ever more rapidly, until the water pours ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... nearly to upset him by the waft of her petticoats, threw herself on to an ottoman, and hiding her face on the stump in the middle of it, sobbed and screeched, till Macassar feared that the buttons behind her dress would crack and fly off. ...
— The Three Clerks • Anthony Trollope
... the relief of pain, and massage is applied to the abdomen in cases of obstinate constipation; in certain cases they claim to break up hard lumps in the belly by squeezing them with the hands. Bodily aches and fatigue are relieved by pulling and bending the parts of the limbs until all the joints crack ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... earth which had been thrown out of the hole; and on the rough floor of the latter I stepped on the spade which had done the work. It nearly turned my ankle as I jumped on to it, but I hardly felt the pain. Torch and lantern showed clearly that the crevice in the wall was not a natural crack, but a man-made opening. It was as if a slab of rock fitted roughly into grooves had first been lifted, and had then fallen heavily ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... the grounds they disbanded, and then various games were begun. Baseball came first between two crack teams. Those not interested in this made for the shore, where, protected by thick trees, they were able to enjoy a ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... never had any privacy get a little crack at it?" Eddie demanded hotly. "Hell, you old people had plenty of privacy back when you were kids. I was born and raised in the middle of that goddamn barracks in ...
— The Big Trip Up Yonder • Kurt Vonnegut
... worse! I shall try to look between the fragile divisions, through a crack which has revealed itself ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the body of water over it, and yet close enough to the sea to overcome the intensity of subterranean heat. Needless to say, it was an extremely hazardous undertaking, despite the very careful surveys that had been made, for the little parties of workmen could never tell when they would strike a crack or an unexpected crevice that would let down upon them with a terrible rush, the waters of the Atlantic. But hazard is adventure, and as the two little groups of laborers dug toward each other, the eyes of the press followed them with more persistent interest than ...
— The Undersea Tube • L. Taylor Hansen
... Still he found her a very different creature from the proud Antonia of other years. Then, haughty and calm, she would show impertinence his place by a mere frown. It was the serenity of a majestic river flowing between its embankments. But now the embankment was giving way; there seemed to be a crack somewhere, through which was breaking the real nature of the woman. She had fits of rebellion against custom and social convention, which hitherto she had respected scrupulously, sudden desires to go somewhere else, and ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... wife and his paragon among huntsmen, Roesemeyer, for whose particular benefit he maintained a fine pack of hounds. He kept open house, and loved to divert his guests with stories, not in the braggart vein of Dugald Dalgetty, but so embellished with palpably extravagant lies as to crack with a humour that was all their own. The manner has been appropriated by Artemus Ward and Mark Twain, but it was invented by Munchausen. Now the stories mainly relate to sporting adventures, and it has been asserted by one contemporary of the baron that Munchausen ...
— The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen • Rudolph Erich Raspe
... step in dealing with many of them. It is very unfortunate for them that they have become a first-class power so rapidly and with so little preparation in many ways; it is a terrible task for them to live up to their position and reputation and they may crack under the strain. ...
— Letters from China and Japan • John Dewey
... hours, en dis was one un um, en 't wan't long 'fo' here he come. He got a mighty quick eye, mon, en he tuck notice dat ev'ything mighty still. When he got a little nigher, he tuck notice dat de front door wuz on de crack, en dis make 'im feel funny, kaze he know dat when his ole 'oman en de chillun out, dey allers pulls de door shet en ketch de latch. So he went up a little nigher, en he step thin ez a batter-cake. He peep here, en he peep dar, yit he ain't see nothin'. He lissen in ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... I can curb my emotions. But I fear that Comrade Windsor's generous temperament may at any moment prompt him to start throwing ink-pots. And in Wyoming his deadly aim with the ink-pot won him among the admiring cowboys the sobriquet of Crack-Shot Cuthbert. As man to man, Comrade Parker, I should advise you ...
— Psmith, Journalist • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... wouldn't!" said Ellen, throwing them back; "and you oughtn't to crack them there, Nancy; you'll make ...
— The Wide, Wide World • Susan Warner
... "Thank goodness then that if there BE a crack we know it! But if we may perish by cracks in things that we don't know—!" And she smiled with the sadness of it. "We can never then give each ...
— The Golden Bowl • Henry James
... toasting-fork. Ha, sonny, what a throw-in for me! Here was a game worth playing. I rode at the man I hated, loosening my stock-whip, and as I came near him, I turned aside and sent out the lash—so as not to touch him. The crack of it sounded in his ears and in his horse's as well, and the beast began to plunge. Here was my chance, and I took it. As the horse reared and plunged, I waited till it was facing away from me, and then sent the lash fair on to its flanks. It brought a lump out of the brute, ...
— Colonial Born - A tale of the Queensland bush • G. Firth Scott
... had a tool that was as frail as his mind, he would fear to use it. He would not trust himself on a plank so liable to crack. He would not venture into a boat so liable to go to pieces. He would not drive a tack with a hammer, the head of which is so liable to ...
— The Industrial Canal and Inner Harbor of New Orleans • Thomas Ewing Dabney
... come out!" said Julia's mouth, appearing at a crack of the scullery door, "I have as many lies told for ye—God ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... spell, period, season, interval; catch, clasp; fillip, crack, smack, fico; (Collog.) ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... where the hare had passed, and occasionally the huge, splayed imprints of a caribou. But, though the life of the wild creatures was teeming at this season, there was no sound in all the leagues of forest, except the sharp crack of some freezing tree-trunk and the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... he dropped to the steps and rolled quickly to one side Tebron heard the low vibration of a disintegrator beam pass over his shoulder and the crack of the wall behind him as it struck. And then the guards were on ...
— Warlord of Kor • Terry Gene Carr
... pocket, I snatched out the box, secured one; then, taking off the cap, which hung by a strap, I pulled the brass and leather telescope out to its full extent, presented the large end at the mob, uttered as savage a yell as I could and struck a fusee, which went off with a crack, and flashed and sparkled with ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... drawing,—angel, arabesque, caricature, or a mere hieroglyphic symbol of which I could make nothing. A rag of cloud on one page, as I remember, with a streak of red zigzagging out of it across the paper as naturally as a crack runs through a China bowl. On the next page a dead bird,—some little favorite, I suppose; for it was worked out with a special love, and I saw on the leaf that sign with which once or twice in my life I have ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 4, No. 24, Oct. 1859 • Various
... the bull likewise appeared on the edge of the glade, and stood with outstretched head, scratching his throat against a young tree, which shook violently. I aimed low, behind his shoulder, and pulled trigger. At the crack of the rifle all the bison, without the momentary halt of terror-struck surprise so common among game, turned and raced off at headlong speed. The fringe of young pines beyond and below the glade ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... who are left—the boatswain among them—are toiling on the wet deck to give a last signal from the little brass howitzer on the forecastle. As the sharp crack breaks on the air,—a miniature sound in that howl of the storm,—the red flash of the gun gives Reuben, as the boat lurches toward the wreck again, a last glance of Madam Maverick,—her hands clasped, her eyes lifted, and calm as ever. More ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... came into the hall the wild cry of the populace that the Swiss guards had been killed, and shouts accompanied the heads as they were carried about on the points of pikes. The crack of muskets was heard, and the roar of cannon. The last faithful regiments were contending against the army of the revolutionists, while within the hall the election by the French people of a General ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... time, until at last he seemed to receive the calmness and strength he prayed for so fervently; then he rose, tore the letter into pieces so small that not a word remained whole, and squeezed them so firmly together that they were compressed into a tiny, solid ball, which he let fall through a crack between the floor puncheons. After waiting twenty years for that letter, hungry as his heart was, he did not even open it when at last it arrived. He would never know what message it bore. The link between him and the old sweet days was broken forever. Now with God's help ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... hour and a half—taking their turns at chopping—almost without speaking. At length the top of the tree began to waver, and a loud crack announced that it was about to fall. Frank and Archie were chopping, and the blows of their axes resounded with redoubled force, and the other boys caught up the guns, and ran off in the direction in which the tree was about ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... sheriff, for the latter, having his rifle trained towards his right jerked it about with a short curse and blazed at the new target, again, again, and the line of the posse joined the fire. Before the crack of their guns went from the ears of Vic, long before the echoes bellowed back from the hills, Satan leaped high up. Perhaps that change of position saved both it and its rider. Straight across the pale moon drove the body ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... with drawn clubs, but there they stopped. They could not dent that compacted mass. The soldiers struggled manfully, but they were held at bay. Harrigan could see the heaving shoulders of the defender over the heads of the assailants, and the crack of hard-driven fists. The attackers were crushed together and had little room to swing their arms with full force, while the big man stood with his back against the wall of the cottage and made every ...
— Harrigan • Max Brand
... instinctively to watch the scene, without speaking, like great lovers that are mute. Starting from the sheltered pool, where the yachts lay in summer, they skirted the dark piles of the long pier, around which the black water gurgled treacherously. Beyond the pier there was a snakelike, oozing crack, which divided the inshore ice from the more open fields outside. This they followed until they found a chance to cross, and then they sped away toward the little island made by the ...
— The Web of Life • Robert Herrick
... cramping-point, and his hip-bones protruded like knots on a log. "I didn't know I had door-knobs on my hips," he remarked, with painful humor, and, looking down at his feet, he saw that a thick rime was gathering on his blanket. "This sleeping out at night isn't what the books crack it up to be," he groaned again, drawing his feet up to the middle of his bed to warm them. "Shall I resign to-morrow? No, I'll stay with it; but I'll have more clothing. I'll have blankets six inches thick. Heaps of blankets—the fleecy ...
— The Forester's Daughter - A Romance of the Bear-Tooth Range • Hamlin Garland
... Nova Scotians pushed their way up the Lens-Arras road to the village of Leauvette. Here they took a number of prisoners. At the other end of the line, east of the railway tracks, enemy dugouts were bombed. Their occupants belonged to the crack Prussian Guards Corps, the Fifth Guard Grenadiers, who refused in most cases to ...
— Kelly Miller's History of the World War for Human Rights • Kelly Miller
... forgotten her." She gave orders to one of the sisters, who at once entered the house, and returned in a minute with a young nun. The door was now opened, and they moved out in procession. Terence could hear regular volleys amidst the roar of guns and the incessant crack ...
— With Moore At Corunna • G. A. Henty
... children and they danced and sang. Then the two next-door girls handed round the nuts. Nobody could find the nutcrackers and Joe was nearly getting cross over it and asked how did they expect Maria to crack nuts without a nutcracker. But Maria said she didn't like nuts and that they weren't to bother about her. Then Joe asked would she take a bottle of stout and Mrs. Donnelly said there was port wine too in the house if she would ...
— Dubliners • James Joyce
... dusk found them with more than thirty miles to go. They were in an almost deserted section of the country when suddenly, as they were running slowly up a hill, there was a sudden crack, the auto gave a lurch to one side of the roadway and then settled heavily. Tom clapped on both brakes quickly, and gave ...
— Tom Swift and his Photo Telephone • Victor Appleton
... from such action, and thus moulding a new, or fuller character, which would create new Karma, which would determine the future birth, etc., and so on, and on. Those holding to this view believed that in this way the soul would learn its lesson, with many a crack over the knuckles, and with the pain of many an experience that would tend to turn it into the road most conducive to spiritual happiness and well-being; and lead it away from the road of material desires and pleasures, because ...
— Reincarnation and the Law of Karma - A Study of the Old-New World-Doctrine of Rebirth, and Spiritual Cause and Effect • William Walker Atkinson
... around into the alley. Peeping in at the back window, they took in the situation quickly: Dorcas on one side of the room, the little gray mouse on the other, the trap between. The silence lasted for several seconds. Then came a sharp crack! And Dorcas, throwing her arm across her eyes, ran out of the room with a shriek and fell upon ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... thrust his fingers between the carpet and the wood of the window-sill, holding it back with one hand while he passed his magnifying glass over the accumulation of dust and dirt and sweepings that lay in the crack. His pains were rewarded. A tiny scrap of something that glittered in its nest of dirt caught his eye, but it was not until it lay on the tip of one finger beneath his glass that he realized the importance of his treasure trove. It was ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... New.—The canvas you work on should not be too freshly primed. The painting is likely to crack if the priming is not well dried. You cannot always be sure that the canvas you get at stores is old, so you have an additional reason for getting a good stock and keeping it on hand. Then, if you have had it in your own possession a long while, you know it is not fresh. Canvas ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... down under a spreading elder-bush, and proceeded to open his violin-case. Drawing out the instrument with as much care as if he were a mother taking her babe from the cradle, he looked it all over with anxious scrutiny, scanning every line and crack, as the mother scans face and hands and tiny curled-up feet. Finding all in order, he wiped it with a silk handkerchief (the special property of the instrument; a cotton one did duty for himself), polished it, and tuned it, and polished again. "Must look well, ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... warp and crack, The silver plates turned filthy black, And drooping down on the carven rails Hung ...
— Forty-Two Poems • James Elroy Flecker
... a crack," Harry suggested, "and get the drop on him. If he starts anything, shoot him in ...
— Boy Scouts in Southern Waters • G. Harvey Ralphson
... Angelfyr He sprang on his courser's back: "And I will ride to Upsal too, Though the earth beneath me crack." ...
— The Fountain of Maribo - and other ballads • Anonymous
... his own weakness, and Andrew, crawling to the door and putting his ear to the crack under it, found that the sounds of the voices became instantly clearer; the others were plying Jeff with the liquor, and Jeff, knowing that he had had enough, was persistently refusing, but ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... validity of the arguments against me, that a wholesome green or goodly red wash would suffice. It would suffice indifferent well for a kennel of dogs. But mark this. Although your painter may drop hints for the soul, let him not strain above his pitch lest he crack his larynx. To his colour he may add form in the flat; but he cannot escape the flat, however he may wriggle, any more than the sculptor can escape the round, scrape he never so wisely. Buonarroti will scrape and shift; the Fleming has scraped and shifted all ...
— Earthwork Out Of Tuscany • Maurice Hewlett
... in the field, always carry a mace instead of a sword, so that they may not shed blood; though I say not that the cracking of a man's skull is to be accomplished, without some loss thereof. However, if a bishop may lawfully crack a man's head, as an eggshell, I see not that blame can attach to me, a humble and most unworthy son of the church, if some slight harm should come to any man, from the use of so peaceful an instrument as a staff. And ...
— Both Sides the Border - A Tale of Hotspur and Glendower • G. A. Henty
... alternatives to choose—the chair or the table, for, oddly enough, I never thought of the bed, when my host settled the question by leading me forcibly forward and flinging me down on the mattress. He then took a wooden wedge out of his pocket, and, going to the door, thrust it in the crack, giving the handle a violent tug to see whether the door stood the test. 'There now, mate,' he said with a grin—a grin that seemed to suggest something my tipsy brain could not grasp, 'I have just shut us in snug and ...
— Byways of Ghost-Land • Elliott O'Donnell
... from all sides, till at length there appeared to be hundreds of them. They seemed in high glee and danced and skipped and capered about, while Hok Lee grew so eager watching them that he crept farther and farther along his branch till at length it gave a loud crack. All the dwarfs stood still, and Hok Lee felt as if his ...
— The Junior Classics, Volume 1 • Willam Patten
... city. As he was passing through a street in that part of the town inhabited only by the meaner sort, he heard some people talking very loud; and going close to the house whence the noise proceeded, and looking through a crack in the door, perceived a light, and three sisters sitting on a sofa, conversing together after supper. By what the eldest said, he presently understood the subjeft of their conversation was wishes: "For," said ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments vol. 4 • Anon.
... curtain. There was a woman borne in a garden-chair, dangerously high, by the most zealous of the Cloudeslyites, while the rest followed in applauding procession, augmented every moment, and Tom's hands went together like the 'crack of doom' as he exclaimed: 'By jingo, it's ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 453 - Volume 18, New Series, September 4, 1852 • Various
... I could be one of them!" thought a little boy peeping through the crack of the door, by permission of the cook for whom he had been turning the spit. But no, his parents had not even a penny to spare, and his ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... thunderbolts often on every hand, And verily the earth quaked in answer back From Saint Michael of Peril unto Sanz, From Besencun to the harbour of Guitsand; No house stood there but straight its walls must crack: In full mid-day the darkness was so grand, Save the sky split, no light was in the land. Beheld these things with terror every man, And many said: "We in the Judgement stand; The end of time is presently at hand." They spake no truth; they did not ...
— The Song of Roland • Anonymous
... house. Three pulls at the bell brought no response, and all rattlings and shakings of the doorknob were without result. The door was as tightly closed as though it never expected to be opened again till the crack o' doom. ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905 • Various
... crack was station enough for me, With a fresh jackyarder blowing and the Vicarage goal a-lee! And I leaned and patted her centre-bit and eased the quid in her cheek, With a "Soh my lass!" and a "Woa you brute!"—for she could ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... wounded from among her dead. Grey night falls on your going and black night on your returning. You go Under the thunder of the guns, the shrapnel's rain and the curved lightning of the shells, And where the high towers are broken, And houses crack like the staves of a thin crate filled with fire; Into the mixing smoke and dust of roof and walls torn asunder You go; And only my dream ...
— A Journal of Impressions in Belgium • May Sinclair
... inexplicable. If they were interiorly shattered, it would be easy to understand that, in their hardened condition, they had been broken violently asunder; but it is not easy to conceive a firm cliff of limestone broken through a thickness of 2000 feet without showing a crack in any other part of it. If they were divided in a soft state, like that of paste, it is still less easy to understand how any such soft material could maintain itself, till it dried, in the form of a cliff so enormous and so ponderous: it must have flowed down from the top, or ...
— Modern Painters, Volume IV (of V) • John Ruskin
... distinct signs of age. Slates and tiles loosen and at last slide off, and leave bald the boards that supported them; shingles darken and decay, and soon the garret or the attic lets in the rain and the snow; by and by the beams sag, the floors warp, the walls crack, the paper peels away, the ceilings scale off and fall, the windows are crusted with clinging dust, the doors drop from their rusted hinges, the winds come in without knocking and howl their cruel death-songs through the empty rooms and passages, and ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... ambitious of making a good book; and, with all the calm impetuosity which characterises a youthful Hauteville, determined to have a crack stud at once. So at Ascot, where he spent a few pleasant hours, dined at the Cottage, was caught in a shower, in return caught a cold, a slight influenza for a week, and all the world full of inquiries and anxiety; at Ascot, I say, he bought up all the winning horses at an average ...
— The Young Duke • Benjamin Disraeli
... side. Yes! But which was the left side of the grotto? She had lost her bearings in the darkness. Ah, could this be it? She grasped it with both hands; it gave slightly; she wrenched at it, throwing all her weight against it. It resisted, and she felt as though her spine must crack with the immense strain; the veins of her temples seemed bursting, the tips of her fingers as though the blood must gush out. Still the heavy, rusty iron bar only gave a little. She could hear the noise outside, but it sounded faint ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... disapproved. But his twinkling little eyes burned with wrath and determination. He sniffed again that honey smell. He stared up at the bee tree, and noted that the opening was much larger than it had been before his visit. A big crack extended from it for nearly two feet down the trunk. Moreover, there did not seem to be so many bees buzzing ...
— Children of the Wild • Charles G. D. Roberts
... it?' she cried, becoming furious. 'It's no business of yours. I snap my fingers at your Fagerolles, do you hear? He knows very well that people don't quarrel with me. We know each other; we sprouted in the same crack between the paving-stones. Look here, whenever I like, I have only to hold up my finger, and your Fagerolles will be there on ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... the white woman on the charger. She was alone. I don't think even a highwayman, though, would tackle her," with a low laugh. "She'd be a pretty good handful for anybody. I could imagine her mesmerising a lion with those eyes. I have no doubt she is a crack shot, too, from the bold way she carried her gun. She ...
— When the Birds Begin to Sing • Winifred Graham
... not justification for going farther into its faded and, in some parts, almost obliterated writing. But so much may pass into these pages as a pleasant authentication of what otherwise might be altogether too sweet a double nut for the critic's teeth to crack. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... the door by the click of the latch; in the next second I made the discovery that she was still on my side of it. "What—" I was beginning, when she laid her hand over my mouth. A line of light showed through the crack. She had not quite closed the door on account of the noise of the latch. She tried again; again it rattled and she desisted. I heard her fluttered breathing and I heard something else—a rapid, heavy tread in the corridor without. ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... the attempt to force the Dardanelles. At the end of February the Allied Fleet bombarded the forts at the entrance, and landed a party of bluejackets. Since then these naval operations have been resumed, and our new crack battleship Queen Elizabeth has joined in the attack. We have not got through the Narrows, and some sceptical critics are asking what we should do if we got through to Constantinople, without a land force. It is a great scheme, if it comes off; and the "only ...
— Mr. Punch's History of the Great War • Punch
... as serenely as though he had come into an estate, instead of having lost one. "There'll be bonfires all over the place to-night, Lionel—left-handed compliment to me. Here comes Luke Roy. I told him to be here this morning. What nuts this will be for old Roy to crack! He has been fit to stick me, ever since I refused him the management ...
— Verner's Pride • Mrs. Henry Wood
... Soviet Union has surrounded itself with captive and sullen nations. Like a crack in the crust of an uneasily sleeping volcano, the Hungarian uprising revealed the depth and intensity of the patriotic longing for liberty that ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... last straw which breaks the camel's back; Mrs. Brinkley felt her moral vertebrae give way; she almost heard them crack; but if there was really a detonation, the drowned the noise with a harsh laugh. "Oh, he had other friends in Washington. I met him everywhere with Miss Anderson." This statement conflicted with the theory ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... various directions, the crack-brained revolutionists played their parts; nor should history overlook the contribution of the learned Dr. Faust, of Buckelburg, whose profound treatise, "Origin of Trousers," was read in Paris as a sort of historical endorsement of the great democratic ...
— Blood and Iron - Origin of German Empire As Revealed by Character of Its - Founder, Bismarck • John Hubert Greusel
... room with his big shoulders and bigger laugh as Dad is doing now while tossing Brother Gilbert. He, little Will, he will never be one like Goodman Sadler, Gammer's son-in-law, with a lean, long nose, and a body slipping flatlike through a crack ...
— A Warwickshire Lad - The Story of the Boyhood of William Shakespeare • George Madden Martin
... whole interior of the balloon being plainly visible. I kept as still as possible, as the slightest agitation of the car tended to hasten the ripping. The balloon had slowly descended nearly a thousand feet when suddenly, with a sharp crack, the rip extended upward about five feet more, until stopped by another seam. I now began to be alarmed, fearing the balloon would collapse entirely. I was over the roughest and most mountainous part of Vermont, ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... went to the door, and as he approached it there was a knock. He turned the key and cautiously opened a crack to look out. The door was instantly slammed in his face, and six men rushed in, with Campo, a burly, black-browed fellow, at their head. Three of the men threw the captain on his back, and pinioned his hands before he could draw a weapon, while ...
— The Second Deluge • Garrett P. Serviss
... said he again, with the same boisterous manner. "What grieves thee, man? and Betty too?—what loss hast thou sustained? Cuffed by fortune? Broken on her wheel? Ha! ha! I despise the old gammer, and will laugh out my furlough, though my lungs should crack in ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland Volume 17 • Alexander Leighton
... guessed how her reason trembled and almost fell in those moments when she began firing. Certainly John Graham and his men did not, for her first shot was a lucky one, and a man slipped down among the rocks at the crack of it. After that she continued to fire until the responseless click of the hammer told her the gun was empty. The explosions and the shock against her slight shoulder cleared her vision and her brain. She saw the men still coming, and they were so near she could see their ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... surface, weakening it in spots, and if one went through, the tide swept him under the ice, where the water was at least cold enough to chill one and make death easy. On such a day Father crossed the river on a crack, for, strange to say, one of the big cracks that always come in the ice had pushed or folded down, and not up, and the water had frozen over, making a streak of triple-thick ice, and on this streak he crossed the Hudson, ...
— My Boyhood • John Burroughs
... means, this air adheres to the gold in such a peculiar manner, that, in a moderate degree of heat, the whole of it recovers its elasticity in the same instant of time; and thus, by the violent shock which it gives to the air around, produces the loud crack or fulmination of this powder. Those who will imagine the explosion of such a minute portion of fixed air, as can reside in the aurum fulminans, to be insufficient for the excessive loudness of the noise, will consider, that it is not a large quantity of motion communicated ...
— Experiments upon magnesia alba, Quicklime, and some other Alcaline Substances • Joseph Black
... ceaseless activity of the city parish he had never once felt that intense satisfaction of emptying himself, nor, the sweet weariness that follows it. His seemed the weariness of futility. And introspection was revealing a crack—after so many years—in that self that he had believed to be so strongly welded. Such was the strain of the pent-up force. He recognized the danger-signal. The same phenomenon had driven him into the Church, where the steam had found an outlet—until now. And yet, so far ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... beautiful animals, the pride of the African forests! It was at my option to shoot any of them! Mine they were without money or without price; yet, knowing this, twice I dropped my rifle, loth to wound the royal beasts, but—crack! and a royal one was on his back battling the air with his legs. Ah, it was such a pity! but, hasten, draw the keen sharp-edged knife across the beautiful stripes which fold around the throat; and—what an ugly gash! it is done, and 1 have a superb animal at my ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... banishing, hanging and beheading all his Enemies, sending immense Sums to foreign Courts, to support his Power at Home, bribing Senates, and carrying all before him without Controul, when he vanish'd. My English Friend told me, that Soul belong'd to the Body of a Money-Scrivener, who almost crack'd his Brain with Politicks, and thought of nothing less than being a prime Minister. I knew him while I was in the World; his whole Discourse always ran on Liberty, Trade, Free Elections, &c. and constantly inveigh'd against ...
— A Voyage to Cacklogallinia - With a Description of the Religion, Policy, Customs and Manners of That Country • Captain Samuel Brunt
... awake in a minute. The fire had burned down and only a soft, indistinct glow from the embers lighted the room, while through a hole in the roof I could see a star glimmering frostily. It was Gavotte at the door and he called through a crack saying he had been hearing queer noises for an hour and he was going to investigate. He had called us so that we need not be alarmed should we hear the noise and not find him. We scrambled into our clothes quickly and ran outdoors ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... he read none now. Diana said: 'There are many Alexanders, but Alexander of Macedon is not dwarfed by the number.' She gave him an opening for a smarter reply, but he lost it in a comment—against Whitmonby's cardinal rule: 'The neatest turn of the wrist that ever swung a hero to crack a crown!' and he bowed to young Rhodes: 'I 'll read your versicler to-morrow morning early.' The latter expressed a fear that the hour was too critical ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... expected,—nothing but this oblong figure, which had something of the shape of a small window or door. In fact, as we stood gazing at it, it suggested to us the idea of a little door that opened into the side of the tree, for the crack all round its edge looked black, as if we could see into some dark cavity ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... heavy gale in the South Atlantic as a cure for a blase state of mind. It cannot be described; the sound, the sense of being hurled along without the smallest regard to 'this side uppermost'; the beauty of the whole scene, and the occasional crack and bear-away of sails and spars; the officer trying to 'sing out', quite in vain, and the boatswain's whistle scarcely audible. I remained near the wheel every day for as long as I could ...
— Letters from the Cape • Lady Duff Gordon
... calling many names, and at the same time the crack of a whip. But his name was not among the rest; and he just had time to notice that the Over-Lord stood still, with the other dogs about him. Then he was off in pursuit, straight as a line for the river. There the hare made ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... and her delirium transported her abruptly to the crime she contemplated, she said to herself that she would go up the stairs with the bottle well hidden under her shawl; she would knock at the door very loud and continuously. He would come at last and would open the door a crack. She would say nothing to him, not her name even. She would go in without heeding him. She was strong enough to kill him! and she would go to the bed, to her! She would take her by the arm and say: "Yes it's me—this is for your life!" And over ...
— Germinie Lacerteux • Edmond and Jules de Goncourt
... a scant hundred feet from the broad metal wings of the unsuspecting plane, when suddenly there was a tremendous jerk, and each man felt himself pressed to the floor beneath a terrific weight that made their backs crack with the load. Doggedly they fought to retain their senses; ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... said the emperor, scratching his head with an expression of ludicrous surprise; "then we have really got back from the peach- stone to political affairs and the war-question. Now, this war- question is a hard peach-stone to crack, and the mere thought of it sets ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... and to understand some of at least their simpler instincts. The large Diadem Spider, which spins so strong a web, that, in pressing my way through the furze thickets, I could hear its white silken cords crack as they yielded before me, and which I found skilled, like an ancient magician, in the strange art of rendering itself invisible in the clearest light, was an especial favourite; though its great size, and the wild stories I had read about the bite of its cogener ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... solicitudes, put on no gilt smiles, wore no reproaches: spoke to him as if so it happened—he had necessarily a journey to perform. One could see all the while big drops falling from the wound within. One could hear it in her voice. Imagine a crack of the string at the bow's deep stress. Or imagine the bow paralyzed at the moment of the deepest sounding. And yet the voice did not waver. She had now the richness of tone carrying ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... I'll teach you: think yourself a baby; That you have ta'en these tenders for true pay, Which are not sterling. Tender yourself more dearly; Or,—not to crack the wind of the poor phrase, Wronging it thus,—you'll tender me ...
— Hamlet, Prince of Denmark • William Shakespeare [Collins edition]
... stories has no pretentious purpose. It is merely the record of a most delightful hunting trip into those fascinating regions along the Equator, where one may still have "thrilling adventures" and live in a story-book atmosphere, where the "roar of the lion" and the "crack of the rifle" are part of the every-day life, and where in a few months one may store up enough material to keep the memory pleasantly occupied all the rest of a lifetime. The stories are descriptive of a four-and-a-half months' trip in the big game country and pretend to no more serious ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... said that if we meant to get up we'd better stick to him. Walters, however, sent this fellow off with Lucy, and then we fastened on the rope and began to climb. We got up perhaps a hundred feet by kicking steps in the snow, but that's a tiring job for the leader, and when he found a crack in the wall, where we could stop, the guide had ...
— Carmen's Messenger • Harold Bindloss
... damp blotting-paper, and the smell that had been only faintly in the air before was now heavy around them, blown in thick gusts as the wind moved through the trees. Shrapnel now could be distinctly heard at no great distance, with its hiss, its snap of sound, and sometimes rifle-shots like the crack of a ball on a cricket bat broke through the thickets. They separated, spreading like beaters in a long line: "Soon," Trenchard told me, "I was quite alone. I could hear sometimes the breaking of a twig or a stumbling footfall but I might have been alone ...
— The Dark Forest • Hugh Walpole
... more except to warn Luke of a bad piece of road about two miles on. Sure enough, in its very middle—crack!—we broke down. "De kingbolt done gone clean in two!" said Luke, and ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... of a town appears, in the shape of some straggling cottages: and the carriage begins to rattle and roll over a horribly uneven pavement. As if the equipage were a great firework, and the mere sight of a smoking cottage chimney had lighted it, instantly it begins to crack and splutter, as if the very devil were in it. Crack, crack, crack, crack. Crack-crack- crack. Crick-crack. Crick-crack. Helo! Hola! Vite! Voleur! Brigand! Hi hi hi! En r-r-r-r-r-route! Whip, wheels, driver, stones, beggars, children, ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... were a rackless foo, An' spent his days i' spreein'; At th' end ov every drinkin-do, He're sure to crack o' deein'; "Go, sell my rags, an' sell my shoon, Aw's never live to trail 'em; My ballis-pipes are eawt o' tune, An' th' wynt begins ...
— English Dialects From the Eighth Century to the Present Day • Walter W. Skeat
... up to the grub we get after a crack let-off in the Close,' added Will; for requisitions for their voices at private concerts had made the choir connoisseurs ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... street of the grain-sellers and the locksmiths. Here is the East, with its memories of Akbar and Shah Jehan, its fiery superstitions and its crudities of decoration. Gaudy chandeliers of coloured glass hang from the roof of a marble mosque, and though the marble may crack and no one give heed to it, the glass chandeliers will be carefully swathed in holland bags. Here is the East, but outside the city walls the pile of Mayo College rises high above its playing-grounds and gives to the princes and the chiefs of Rajputana a modern public ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason |
