"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Apache among their guards dreamed that anything more dangerous than thoughts could or would come. And yet, within two minutes from the time he was spread upon his back and left alone, old Two Knives heard inside the lodge a low, warning hiss. ...
— The Talking Leaves - An Indian Story • William O. Stoddard
... Beaching, writhing, rolling far. Sweeping all away to war! While the men that walk beside, Dusty, silent, heavy-eyed, Cannot tell why we or they March and suffer day by day. Children of the Camp are we, Serving each in hiss degree; Children of the yoke and goad, Pack ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... their centre were often like hollow trees, and might easily have received the three travellers in one embrace. But as before, the mounds were alive with serpents that evidently made them their homes, and raised an angry hiss whenever the men approached. ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor
... himself to the ground as the Hadji fired, heard a hiss, and saw a jagged heatburn score the brick building next to which he ...
— The Status Civilization • Robert Sheckley
... Sir William can cut him off; no mortal power can help the title going down, if Bill chooses to be such a—— [He draws in his breath with a sharp hiss.] ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... pavement, rolled in at the open door. Each paused as he lifted his glass and thought of the harvest. As for Hodge, who was reaping, he had to take shelter how he might in the open fields. Boom! flash! boom!—splash and hiss, as the hail rushed along the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... sleeping Gorgons dreamed of tearing some poor mortal all to pieces. The snakes, that served them instead of hair, seemed likewise to be asleep; although, now and then, one would writhe, and lift its head, and thrust out its forked tongue, emitting a drowsy hiss, and then let itself subside among ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... A death-like hiss rose from Jude's lips, "Repentigny? He is my enemy too. I will be your slave. I have too much fear of you to ever harm you. Let me tell you about this Repentigny. Life, ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... hue as they moved, and rolling together in huge opaque masses, which presently began to close in and become denser as the night advanced. By and by a wild wind awoke, as it were, from the very cavities of ocean, and the waves began to hiss warnings all along the coast, and to rise higher and higher over each other's shoulders as the gale steadily increased. Rene Ronsard, sitting in his cottage, feeble and somewhat ailing, heard the beginnings of the tempest with long-accustomed ears. He was depressed ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... voices affect us like music, Some voices arouse to action and ambition. Some voices fill you with despondency. Some voices irritate like a buzz-saw. Some voices snap like turtles, and some hiss ...
— The Colored Girl Beautiful • E. Azalia Hackley
... congratulate the foolhardy fanatics on getting off as easy as they did; and we commend the forbearance of the considerate crowd in not carrying their coercive measures to extremes, because, the humbug being exploded, all that is necessary now is to laugh, hiss, and vociferously applaud. When men make up their minds to vilify the Bible, denounce the Constitution, and defame their country (although this is a free country), they should go down in some obscure cellar, remote from mortal ken, and, even there, whisper their hideous treason ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... grew silent, the tired watchers dozed in their chairs, the doctor nodded and nodded, bringing his eel-skin cue dangerously near the flame of the candle that stood on the table. Suddenly there was heard a sharp explosion, a hiss, a sizzle; and when the smoke cleared, and the terrified occupants of the room collected their senses, the watcher and wife were discovered under the valance of the bed; the doctor stood scorched and bareheaded, ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... mangrove-tops, and illuminated the silvery sands, casting reflections upon the water, where there was now a perfect calm. Far away was heard the lonely cry of a laughing gull. The gentle break of the waves upon the sands gave out a soft, musical sound, and, as we held our breath, a sharp hiss was heard, seemingly but ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, October 1885 • Various
... hell To souls cast forth who hear all hell-fire hiss All round them, and who feel the red worm's kiss Shoot mortal poison through the heart that rests Immortal: serpents suckled at her breasts, Fire feeding on her limbs, less pain should be Than sense of pride laid waste and love laid low, If she ...
— Locrine - A Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... may guess, poor young Aspinall had a very bad time of it. He began to cry as soon as the first question was propounded. But this demonstration failed to shelter him. A general hiss greeted the sound of his whimper, and cries of, "Where's ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... only by an occasional hiss and crackle of some far distant mountain storm. Then, faint as a whisper, came an ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... The arrows hiss like a shower of snakes, The bullets puff in a smoky gust, Out fly loose reins from the bronchos' bits And hunters ride on ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... know, we chaps, A-putten on our woldest traps, Went up the highest o' the knaps, An' meaede up such a vier! An' thou an' Tom wer all we miss'd, Vor if a sarpent had a-hiss'd Among the rest in thy sprack vist, Our fun 'd ...
— Poems of Rural Life in the Dorset Dialect • William Barnes
... the searchlight of its cover. When he had swung open the big lens Tommy struck a match, which blew out. His second was blown out by a hiss of air that preceded the flow of gas, and the professor jumbled matters by trying his hand. But these efforts scarcely took more time than the telling, and when the powerful streak of light finally pierced the darkness ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... now upheaved at such short intervals that the scene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on the hills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening shock, and heard a momentary and horrible crash and hiss which seemed to fill all the air. The instantaneous motor-bombs were tearing up the sea-board, ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... motto—"I bide my time." Snoring has been the order of the day in these parts for many years; but the kettle-screaming roads of the North have at last disturbed the Southern slumberers, and, like giants refreshed, they are now working vigorously at their own kettle, which will soon hiss all the way from Louisville to Nashville. Till then, I say, Patience.—One of our companions in the stage very kindly offered to take us to the club, which is newly formed here, and which, if not large, is very comfortable. I mention this as one among the many instances which have occurred ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... impassioned will grow, until she has lost all her woman's nature. She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender jailers their sick prisoner ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... its hire was two pounds ten shillings. Stopped at the "Crown Inn," upon the road, for refreshments, and on handing a ragged little urchin a shilling for his voluntary service of standing at the door of our barouche, on starting off were saluted by a hiss for our generosity. A greater douceur was expected from the drivers of ...
— Kathay: A Cruise in the China Seas • W. Hastings Macaulay
... the name), in the Queen's livery, was stopped by the populace, under a belief that it was Madame de Polignac, whom they would have insulted; the Queen, going to the theatre at Versailles with Madame de Polignac, was received with a general hiss. The King, long in the habit of drowning his cares in wine, plunges deeper and deeper. The Queen cries, but sins on. The Count d'Artois is detested, and Monsieur, the general favorite. The Archbishop of Toulouse is made minister principal, a virtuous, patriotic, ...
— Memoir, Correspondence, And Miscellanies, From The Papers Of Thomas Jefferson - Volume I • Thomas Jefferson
... rapidly unwinding from the branches. In the agony of the moment Serena flung a hatchet she had in her hand at the head she now for the first time saw. A frightful hiss, and a loathsome and deadly odour, told us it had taken effect. Again it coiled itself round the tree, which rocked and groaned with its furious movements. Faint with fear and the horrible smell, I knew not my own voice, as I said to Serena, ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... fifty paces from us; and then with hiss and rattle as of the first gust of a storm in dry branches the arrows flew among them, smiting man and horse alike, and down went full half of the foremost line, while over the fallen leapt and plunged those behind them unchecked, and were upon us sword in air; and the tough spear ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... A slight hiss was heard, which enraged him so much that he stopped, and looked among the audience with indignation, trying to discover what jealous rival was endeavouring to discompose him—a silence ensued for a minute; Vaughan ...
— The Mirror of Taste, and Dramatic Censor - Vol I, No. 2, February 1810 • Samuel James Arnold
... waters!—from the headlong height Velino cleaves the wave-worn precipice; The fall of waters! rapid as the light The flashing mass foams shaking the abyss; The hell of waters! where they howl and hiss, And boil in endless torture; while the sweat Of their great agony, wrung out from this Their Phlegethon, curls round the rocks of jet That gird the gulf ...
— Childe Harold's Pilgrimage • Lord Byron
... and by the light of the great lantern at their prow they saw the white seas hiss past as they drove shorewards beneath bare masts. For they dared ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... sisters, in my realm of wo, Whose only glory streams From its lost childhood, like the artic glow Which sunless Winter dreams! In the red desert moulders Babylon, And the wild serpent's hiss Echoes in Petra's palaces of stone And ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... stood, A giant spectre, weeping tears and blood; Guilt shrunk appall'd, Despair embraced his shroud, And Terror shriek'd, and Pity sobb'd aloud;— Then, first Thalia with dilated ken And quicken'd footstep pierced the walks of men; Then Folly blush'd, Vice fled the general hiss, Delight met Reason with a loving kiss; At Satire's glance Pride smooth'd his low'ring crest, The Graces weaved the dance.—And last and best Came Momus down in Falstaff's form to earth. To make the world one universe ...
— Poems (1828) • Thomas Gent
... groan, The roots, upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the wreck-strewn precipice, The raging storm-blasts howl and hiss! Aloft strange voices dost thou hear? Distant now and now more near? Hark! the mountain ridge ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... through this horrid cincture, will then be undiscoverable. Amid the untamed forest and untrod precipices that lie beyond, all the beasts most inimical to man reside. There the hills re-echo the tremendous roarings of the boar; the serpents hiss among the thickets; and the gaunt and hungry wolf roams for prey. Oh, Imogen, how fearful is the picture! And can your tender frame, and your timid spirits ...
— Imogen - A Pastoral Romance • William Godwin
... courageous indeed, Hiss Elfrida. That is done by a woman who is invited, every where in her proper person, and knows 'tout Paris' like her alphabet I believe she holds stock in Raffini; anyway, they would double her pay rather than lose her. You would have more chance of ...
— A Daughter of To-Day • Sara Jeannette Duncan (aka Mrs. Everard Cotes)
... in the crowd. Many women present rustled as they turned in their seats; some stood up and craned forward; people in the gallery leaned over, looking eagerly down; a loud murmur and a wide hiss of whispering emphasized the life in the court. The tall, loose-limbed figure of Esme Darlington, looking to-day singularly dignified and almost impressive, pushed slowly forward, followed by the woman whose social fate was so soon to ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... she had lost the battle and forgetting her cunning, Madame Clemenceau threw off the veil and showed herself the direct offspring of the infernal regions. Her voice sounded like the hiss of fiery serpents, and her frame quivered as if she stood in a current of consuming vapor. Her eyes, too, wore that painful expression of depth of agony as though her disappointment were excruciating. With his pardon, love, ...
— The Son of Clemenceau • Alexandre (fils) Dumas
... metallic voice sank to a hiss. "I employ no force. You shall yield to me your heart as a love offering. Of such motives as jealousy and revenge you know me incapable. What I do, I do with a purpose. That compassion of yours shall be ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... approaching calamity, as well as for that which had been already felt. The whole country, in fact, was weltering and surging with the wet formed by the incessant overflow of rivers, while the falling cataracts, joined to a low monotonous hiss, or what the Scotch term sugh, poured their faint but dismal murmurs on the gloomy silence which ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... Fair overhead are the white of breasts, of plump bodies flashing through the mist, the swishing hiss of many wings cutting the air, the rhythmic pat, ...
— A Breath of Prairie and other stories • Will Lillibridge
... added, and the whole is to be "boiled in a human skull, with the aid of the three Kabra-goyas, which are tied on three sides of the fire, with their heads directed towards it, and tormented by whips to make them hiss, so that the fire may blaze. The froth from their lips is then to be added to the boiling mixture, and so soon as an oily scum rises to the surface, the ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... hurriedly, we entreated the boatswain to "shove the blamed Finn overboard." Then, all together, we yelled down at the planks:—"Stand from under! Get forward," and listened. We only heard the deep hum and moan of the wind above us, the mingled roar and hiss of the seas. The ship, as if overcome with despair, wallowed lifelessly, and our heads swam with that unnatural motion. Belfast clamoured:—"For the love of God, Jimmy, where are ye?... Knock! Jimmy darlint!... Knock! You bloody black beast! Knock!" ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... stream spurted out, and Arnold aimed it right for the piece of blazing paper. The water fell in a small shower on the fire, and then with a hiss and spluttering, and sending up a cloud of ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... sixpenny benches answered No; the ostler and the fiery-faced woman being the most vociferous of all. Here and there, certain dissentient individuals raised a little hiss—led by Jervy, in the interests of ...
— The Fallen Leaves • Wilkie Collins
... auld man mean, quo' I, Sittin' upo' the auld rock? The tide creeps up wi' moan and cry, And a hiss 'maist like a mock. The words he mutters maun be the en' O' a weary dreary sang— A deid thing floatin' in his brain, That the tide will no lat gang. "Robbie and Jeannie war twa bonnie bairns, And they played thegither upo' the shore: Up cam the tide 'tween the mune and the sterns, ...
— Alec Forbes of Howglen • George MacDonald
... could hear the soft, sibilant sound of the escaping gas, not unlike the hiss of a snake. I was also sensible that my heart, not to mention other important organs, was trying to get into ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... and the guilt of the meanest sort of a man is excused on account of an agreeable manner. Thus the poison of the snake, and the blight of his venom on many a reputation and many a womanly heart, is all forgotten in the drawing-room, because of the fascination of his hiss and the glitter of his skin. Again, the Tempter has an Ally in the world of Traffic, wherever bad things are stamped with respectable names—when, for instance, swindling is called "smartness," and robbery ...
— Humanity in the City • E. H. Chapin
... truth evident to his fellowmen, who are as a rule incredibly stupid and ignorant of both, but whose judgment he must nevertheless not despise. If he can make something that they will cheer, or something that they will hiss, he may not have done any great thing, but if he has made something that they will neither cheer nor hiss, he may well have his misgivings, no matter how well, how finely, how truly he has done ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... a good look at his fireman. The latter was muddled, it was plain to see that, but he went about his duties with a mechanical routine born from long experience. Only once did he lurch towards Ralph and speak to him, or rather hiss out the words. ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... Daphne, the appearance and situation of which are in agreeable unison. The monastery was then fast verging into that state of the uninhabitable picturesque so much admired by young damsels and artists of a romantic vein. The pines on the adjacent mountains hiss as they ever wave their boughs, and somehow, such is the lonely aspect of the place, that their hissing may be imagined to breathe satire against the pretensions ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt
... fruits, especially the sour Goyava (Psidium sp). The natives say it devours the fruit of arborescent Arums (Caladium arborescens), which grow in crowded masses around the swampy banks of lagoons. Its voice is a harsh, grating hiss; it makes the noise when alarmed or when disturbed by passing canoes, all the individuals sibilating as they fly heavily away from tree to tree. It is polygamous, like other members of the same order. It ...
— The Naturalist on the River Amazons • Henry Walter Bates
... same old excitement, with just enough vague forebodings in it to make it pleasant. Still, I had grown a foot or so since I used to fish there, and perhaps I could return the compliment by throwing the old gentleman over his own fence, and then hiss ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... The next minute, however, he laughed at his fright, for it was merely a mother burro and her baby colt which his steps had routed from their hiding-place and sent flying across the flats for safety. A twig snapping sharply under his feet startled him; what sounded like a warning hiss close by brought his heart into his mouth; and trembling from head to foot he paused by a clump of Spanish bayonets, ...
— Tabitha's Vacation • Ruth Alberta Brown
... abundance, on the right hand and on the left. Show me a cause anathematized by the chief priests, the scribes, and the pharisees; which politicians and demagogues endeavor to crush, which reptiles and serpents in human flesh try to spread their slime over, and hiss down, and I will show you a cause which God loves, and angels contemplate with admiration. Such is our movement. Do you want the compliments of the satanic press, The New York Times, Express, and Herald? (Roars of laughter). If you want the compliments ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume I • Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Matilda Joslyn Gage
... doth blow, And coughing drowns the parson's saw, And birds sit brooding in the snow, And Marian's nose looks red and raw, When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl, Then nightly sings the staring owl, To-who; Tu-whit, to-who, a merry note, While greasy Joan ...
— Required Poems for Reading and Memorizing - Third and Fourth Grades, Prescribed by State Courses of Study • Anonymous
... applauding, blocking up the road. Sir Francis could not complain of one thing—that he got no audience; for it was the pleasure of West Lynne extensively to support him in that respect—a few to cheer, a great many to jeer and hiss. Remarkably dense was the mob on this afternoon, for Mr. Carlyle had just concluded his address from the Buck's Head, and the crowd who had been listening to him came rushing up to swell the ranks of the other crowd. They were elbowing, and pushing, ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... that somewhere or other in the hall, there rises a faint, almost whispered, hiss. Slight as it is, it falls with startling effect upon the dead silence which reigns. Then, like the first whisper of a storm, it suddenly grows and swells and rushes, angrily and witheringly, about the head of the wretched ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... about singing would see that in an instant. Yet she's quite as popular as Necker, who's a great artist. How can I get much satisfaction out of the enthusiasm of a house that likes her atrociously bad performance at the same time that it pretends to like mine? If they like her, then they ought to hiss me off the stage. We stand for things that are irreconcilable, absolutely. You can't try to do things right and not despise the people who do them wrong. How can I be indifferent? If that doesn't matter, then nothing matters. Well, ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... goal, The masts are swaying as with terror, And quivering does the vessel roll. The mad wind frolics with the billows, Now smooths them low, now lashes high. Now they are storming up like lions, And now like serpents sleek they lie; And wave on wave is ever pressing, They hiss, they whisper, soft of tone. Alack! was that the vessel splitting? Are sail and mast and rudder gone? Here, screams of fright, there, silent weeping, The bravest feels his courage fail. What stead our prudence or our wisdom? The soul itself can ...
— The Poems of Emma Lazarus - Vol. II. (of II.), Jewish Poems: Translations • Emma Lazarus
... young June-rose with its crimson heart— And would'st not sooner peril life to win That royal flower, that thou might'st proudly wear The trophy on thy breast, than idly pluck A thousand meek-faced daisies by the way? How dost thou shudder at Love's gentle tones, As though a serpent's hiss were in thine ear. Albeit thy heart throbs echo to each word. Why wilt not rest, oh weary wanderer, Upon the couch of flowers Love spreads for thee, On banks of sunshine?—voices silver-toned Shall lull thy soul with strange, wild harmonies, Rock thee to sleep ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... Let me illustrate this last point by what I saw this afternoon. A dog about as large and strong as a young lion was barking vigorously behind a low fence at a cat, who sat serenely on the other side, meeting his Bombastes Furioso plunges at the intervening pickets with a contemptuous hiss and an occasional buffet with her claw upon his muzzle. I have yet to see a dog that dares attack my goat of a year old, except when he is harnessed to his wagon. They are not, however, afraid of sheep. And they are much more clear in their minds about attacking children ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, September, 1885 • Various
... the companionway; and a moment later he heard the water hiss along the deck. He was not in the least sorry for what he had done; still, he regretted the act. Craig was a beast, and there was no knowing what he might do or say. But the hose had been simply irresistible. He chuckled audibly on the way down to his cabin. There was one ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... dogs and the sheep and the birds are never deaf—nor the hills—nor the flowers. It is only people that are deaf. I suppose they are always hearing their own steps and voices and wheels and windlasses and the cries of the children and the hiss of the frying-pans. I suppose that is why. Well, let them be deaf. Rusignuola and I do not ...
— Wisdom, Wit, and Pathos of Ouida - Selected from the Works of Ouida • Ouida
... poured forth assurances of his good behaviour. He followed her down to the platform, and for a quarter of an hour she had to listen, in torment of mind and body, to remonstrances, flatteries, amorous blandishments, accompanied by the hiss of steam and the roar ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... Nay, obvious coil, and hiss most unequivocal, betray the Snake; As fell ophidian as in fierce meridian of Afric ever lurked in swamp or brake; And yet Corinthian LYCIUS never doted on the white-throated charmer of his soul With blinder ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 4, 1891 • Various
... serpent set openly to view. So fares it with us novices, that here betray our imperfections: we, afraid to look on the imaginary serpent of envy, painted in men's affections, have ceased to tune any music of mirth to your ears this twelvemonth, thinking that, as it is the nature of the serpent to hiss, so childhood and ignorance would play the gosling, contemning and condemning what they understood not. Their censures we weigh not, whose senses are not yet unswaddled. The little minutes will be continually striking, though no man regard them: ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VIII (4th edition) • Various
... across our well-planned getaway. Which was just what happened, and almost at once. Probably that great horned owl had been hooting for some time, but we had been too busy to notice. I heard the wicket door turning on its hinges, and ventured a warning hiss to Brower and Tim Westmore, who had not yet descended. An instant later I could make out shadowy forms stealing toward the willows. Evidently those who served Old Man Hooper were accustomed ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... short, brawny arms, stood out like great ropes; and then Balmung, descending, cleft the air from right to left. The waiting lookers-on in the plain below thought to hear the noise of clashing steel; but they listened in vain, for no sound came to their ears, save a sharp hiss like that which red-hot iron gives when plunged into a tank of cold water. The huge Amilias sat unmoved, with his arms still folded upon his breast; but the smile ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... together in one and pour their waters into the Caucasian Sea. And through fear young mothers awoke, and round their new-born babes, who were sleeping in their arms, threw their hands in agony, for the small limbs started at that hiss. And as when above a pile of smouldering wood countless eddies of smoke roll up mingled with soot, and one ever springs up quickly after another, rising aloft from beneath in wavering wreaths; so at that time ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... second or two. Then all of us in the turret were startled. Transfixed. From below came a sudden hiss. It sounded in the turret; it came from the shifting room call grid. The hissing of the pneumatic valves of the plate shifters in the lower control room. The valves were opening; the plates automatically shifting ...
— Brigands of the Moon • Ray Cummings
... water, with wings helpless, the flying boat was no match for the Streamline now. She struck at an acute angle, rebounded in the air for a moment, and with a hiss skittered along over the waves, planing with the help of her exhaust under ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... shrieked, adding its voice to the roar of traffic at Victoria Station. There came the pounding hiss of escaping steam. The crowd pressed close to the rails and peered down the foggy platform. A train had stopped, and the engine was panting close to the gate-rail. A few men in khaki were alighting from compartments. In a moment there was a stamping of many ...
— Four Days - The Story of a War Marriage • Hetty Hemenway
... from various innocent tubes there belched forth into the water of the central lagoon and into the air over it a flood of deadly vapor. As the Nevian turned toward the prisoner there was an almost inaudible hiss and a tiny jet of the frightful, outlawed stuff struck his open gills, just below his huge, conical head. He tensed momentarily, twitched convulsively just once, and fell motionless to the floor. And outside, ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... rattles sprung on every side, and it never occurred to us to be afraid. I used to take sun-baths and do calisthenics in a certain pleasant nook among azalea and calcanthus, the rattles whizzing on every side like spinning-wheels, and the combined hiss or buzz rising louder and angrier at any sudden movement; but I was never in the least impressed, nor ever attacked. It was only towards the end of our stay, that a man down at Calistoga, who was expatiating on the terrifying nature of the sound, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... see the felling of one giant tree. A wedge-shaped cut had been made upon the side where the great elm was to fall, and, upon the other side, two men were sawing through the trunk. There was no sound but the steady hiss of steel teeth gnawing inch by inch to the wine-red heart of the tree. Sunshine glimmered on its leafy crown, and as yet distant branch and bough knew nothing of the midgets and ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... she gasped. "He has spoken to you? So, Charles Sadler, Charles Sadler!" Her voice came through her white lips like a snake's hiss. ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... wild eyes fastened themselves upon her with a look of yearning anguish, and then Hagar answered slowly, "Tell you what you've often wished to know—my secret!" the last word dropping from her lips more like a warning hiss than like a human sound. It was long since Maggie had teased for the secret, so absorbed had she been in other matters, but now that there was a prospect of knowing it her curiosity was reawakened, ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... voice came perceptibly nearer, and seemed to almost hiss in her ear—unconsciously she felt the antagonism. "That's absurd," she said, with sudden animation; "why, these people are nobody, the mother used to wash for me a few years ago. They are the very commonest sort—the father was only a section man. The doctor enjoys ...
— Purple Springs • Nellie L. McClung
... Works Illustrious, or that cou'd merit Censure? Indeed some People are not to be reclaim'd by Ridicule; and Mr. Collier knowing their Vertues, with how much Compos'dness and Resignation they can bear a Hiss, out of Compassion, took Example by the Town and ...
— A Letter to A.H. Esq.; Concerning the Stage (1698) and The - Occasional Paper No. IX (1698) • Anonymous
... Chief the spacious Hall Thick swarm'd, both on the Ground and in the Air, Brush'd with the Hiss of rustling Wings. ...
— Letters Concerning Poetical Translations - And Virgil's and Milton's Arts of Verse, &c. • William Benson
... only a few feet away. Tom began to advance, not directly, but just a trifle on the bias, across Mux's bows so to speak, as if to give him a broadside. They were within range. Tom was heaving to. I trembled for the young coon. Suddenly there was a hiss, a flash of yellow in the air, and—a very big surprise awaiting Thomas! That little coon was no stupid after all. He had not rolled up his sleeves, nor doubled up his fists, nor put a chip upon his shoulder; but he knew what was expected of ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... ungratefully regarded. How such hours rise up before the mind! Even now as I write I think of such a scene, when I walked with a friend, long dead, on the broad yellow sands beside a western sea. I can recall the sharp hiss of the shoreward wind, the wholesome savours of the brine, the soft clap of small waves, the sand-dunes behind the shore, pricked with green tufts of grass, the ships moving slowly on the sea's rim, and the shadowy headland ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... hubbub! scent the fumes! Are those real men or ghosts? The stillness spreads of Death abroad—down come the temple posts, Their molten bronze is coursing fast and joins with silver waves To leap with hiss of thousand snakes ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... quarrelsome, vaguely miserable, and blaming his misery upon all the world. He took to spending much time, with small profit to himself, among the chained gangs of slaves, where were cruel sounds and crueller sights. At the hiss and cut of the lash on bared backs and thighs he thrilled with savage exultation; he took morbid delight in the sight of pain inflicted; and this he could not at all understand. At this season his tales were all of war and blood and violence, of treachery and despair. When ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... disagreeable to be informed of one's stupidity by an ignorant audience that shouts after you like a pack of hounds after a hare. In spite of my pretension of being the least susceptible regarding an author's vanity of all the writers in Paris, it is perfectly impossible to be indifferent to such a thing—a hiss is a hiss. However, vanity aside, there was a question of money which, as I have a bad habit of spending regularly my capital as well as my income, was not without its importance. It meant, according to my calculation, some sixty thousand francs cut off from my ...
— Gerfaut, Complete • Charles de Bernard
... question drove sleep from his eyes. At one o'clock he was up again and with the faithful Bertrand plashed to the front through long rows of drenched recumbent forms. Once more they strained their ears to catch through the hiss of the rain some sound of a muffled retirement. Strange thuds came now and again from the depths of the wood of Hougoumont: all else was still. At last, over the slope on the north-east crowned by the St. Lambert Wood there stole the first glimmer of gray; little by little ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... she made a strange little noise that was something between a grunt and a hiss: and she repeated this many times. At last Dot saw what looked like a bit of black stick, just above the surface of the pool, coming towards their side, and, as it moved forward, leaving two little silvery ripples that widened out ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... breat', shoost make a liddle pause, Und see sechs hundert gapin' eyes - sechs hundert shdaring' chaws! Dey shtanden erstarrt like frozen - von faindly dried to hiss:- Und von saidt: "Ish id shleeps I'm treamin' - ...
— The Breitmann Ballads • Charles G. Leland
... ball of the eye burnt away, and the roots thereof crackled in the flame. And as when a smith dips an axe or adze in chill water with a great hissing, when he would temper it—for hereby anon comes the strength of iron—even so did his eye hiss round the stake of olive. And he raised a great and terrible cry, that the rock rang around, and we fled away in fear, while he plucked forth from his eye the brand bedabbled in much blood. Then maddened ...
— DONE INTO ENGLISH PROSE • S. H. BUTCHER, M.A.
... 'Boats,' and 'Waggons!' Oh! ye shades Of Pope and Dryden, are we come to this? That trash of such sort not alone evades Contempt, but from the bathos' vast abyss Floats scumlike uppermost, and these Jack Cades Of sense and song above your graves may hiss— The 'little boatman' and his 'Peter Bell' Can sneer at ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron
... up all over the meeting-house, and rises high above the hiss of the sleet on the great windows. Somebody's got on the stove, to add to the confusion and horror. The only man in the whole place who is not excited is Jethro Bass himself, who sits in his chair regardless of those pressing around him. Many years afterward he confessed to some one ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... out now and then at the trees, which tossed like green waves under the roaring August rain. Sometimes a gust drove a shower down the chimney and made the logs hiss. The room was warm and still; in the interval of work it seemed to have paused and be sleeping. The tiger-cat, with his paws folded under him, lay beside the hearth, and Mary on her little bench nursed ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... does not apply the rod to your own, lord cardinal," retorted Will Sommers. "If he scourges you according to your deserts, your skin will be redder than your robe." And his mocking laugh pursued Wolsey like the hiss of a snake into ...
— Windsor Castle • William Harrison Ainsworth
... swift command, and the English ranks rose to their feet, uncased their bows and strung them all as though with a single hand. A second command and every bow was bent. A third and with a noise that was half hiss and half moan, thousands of arrows leapt forward. Forward they leapt, and swift and terrible they fell among the ranks of the advancing Genoese. Yes, and ere ever one had found its billet, its quiver-mate was hastening on its path. Then—oh! the sunlight showed it all—the Genoese ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... of the serpent within the adjacent house, and the lesser strains of the fiddler, reached the spot as an accompaniment to the surging hiss of the flying rain on the sod, its louder beating on the cabbage-leaves of the garden, on the eight or ten beehives just discernible by the path, and its dripping from the eaves into a row of buckets and pans that ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... vibrated a triple tongue, and showed a triple row of teeth. No sooner had the Tyrians dipped their pitchers in the fountain, and the in- gushing waters made a sound, than the glittering serpent raised his head out of the cave and uttered a fearful hiss. The vessels fell from their hands, the blood left their cheeks, they trembled in every limb. The serpent, twisting his scaly body in a huge coil, raised his head so as to overtop the tallest trees, ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... comes to an end, and we sit wide awake in the diligence, amid a silence only broken by the hiss of rain against the windows, and the sweep of gusts upon the roof. The diligence stands still; there is no rattle of harness, nor other sound to prove that we have arrived at the spot by other means than ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells
... again, and before they could speak he was gone. The tone of his voice lingering upon their ears was like a hiss. It was ...
— Trumps • George William Curtis
... think so if you really were turned into one, Florrie; you would be very proud of your crest. And as long as you were yourself (not that you could get there if you remained quite the little Florrie you are now), you would like to hear the serpents sing. They hiss a little through it, like the cicadas in Italy; but they keep good time, and sing delightful melodies; and most of them have seven heads, with throats which each take a note of the octave; so that they can sing chords—it is very ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin
... overhead with a might that shook the ship from stem to stern. The flaps of the mad canvas were like successive thumps of a giant's fist upon a mighty drum. The sheets were jerking at the belaying-pins, the blocks rattling in sharp snappings like castanets. You could hear the hiss and seething of the sea alongside, and see it flash by in sudden white patches of phosphorescent foam, while all overhead was black with the flying scud. The English second-mate was stamping with vexation, and, with all his ills misplaced, storming at the men:—"'An'somely the weather ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Number 9, July, 1858 • Various
... already been several demonstrations of feeling in court, but at this statement by the lawyer there was a general hiss. The schoolmaster hesitated ...
— Through the Fray - A Tale of the Luddite Riots • G. A. Henty |
