"Hissing" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... savages, all in perfect silence around the king, who, in an infuriate manner, with a bloody, knife in his hand, and a foot on the dead body of a negro, was addressing the carcass. By his side stood a pot of hissing oil, in which the heart of his ...
— Captain Canot - or, Twenty Years of an African Slaver • Brantz Mayer
... match, a kind of cord that burns slowly like punk. When Blackbeard went into battle, he twisted some of these slow matches or cords round his head, and stuck some of them under his hat. The ends of these matches were burning, and they looked like fiery, hissing snakes. With his beard turned back over his ears, and fire all about his head, he seemed to be ...
— Stories of American Life and Adventure • Edward Eggleston
... years before, when a city hotel was on fire, and one of its guests in imminent danger from the locality of his room, and his own nervous fear which made him powerless to act, another guest braved fearlessly the hissing flame, and scaling the tottering wall, dragged out to life and liberty one who, until that hour, was to him ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... which was so tender that they seemed almost attractive. This singular magnetism had a novel effect on the invalid. But his brow soon became contracted; a violent storm seemed to agitate his heart; and the hissing was heard. ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various
... room, Give the engines room, Lest souls be trapped In a terrible tomb." The sparks and the pine-brands Whirl on high From the black and reeking alleys To the wide red sky. Hear the hot glass crashing, Hear the stone steps hissing. Coal black streams Down the gutters pour. There are cries for help From a far fifth floor. For a longer ladder Hear the fire-chief call. Listen to the music Of the firemen's ball. Listen to the music Of the firemen's ball. To be read or chanted in a heavy bass. "'Tis the NIGHT Of ...
— The Congo and Other Poems • Vachel Lindsay
... that I lay in the room immediately above the archway; and listening intently, I perceived above the other faint sounds of the night, or thought that I perceived, the hissing of the gas ...
— The Return of Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... common about Calcutta, frequenting ruins, dark places and hollow trees. It is allied to N. tenuis (Horsfield), and it is mentioned as inhabiting hollow trees in such numbers as to attract attention by the hissing noise from within, every available spot in the interior being occupied. A synonym ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... I had my arrangements to make for the expedition. The weather did not look very promising, for the Thal wind was bringing the heavy mist-spume pouring over the throat of the pass, and driving past the hotel in thin hissing wisps on a chill breeze. However, even in May the frost was keen at night, and to-morrow might be a day after the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... blaze—the black, snake-like coils of the leather hose rising and falling like things of life, whilst a hundred arms work at the pump, their central heart—the applause that rings out clear above the roaring flame as the adventurous band throw the first hissing jet—cheer following cheer, as stream after stream shoots against the burning mass, now flying into the socket-holes of fire set in the black face of the house-front, now dashing with a loud shir-r against the ...
— Fires and Firemen • Anon.
... miles and then the harbour! Here we cannot choose but stand, Faces thrust towards the day-break, listening for our native land! Close-reefed topsails shuddering over, straining down the groaning mast; For a tempest cleaves the darkness, hissing, howling, shrieking past! Lo! the air is flecked with stormbirds, and their melancholy wail Lends a tone of deeper pathos to the melancholy gale! Whilst away they wheel to leeward, leaving in their rapid flight Wind and water grappling wildly through ...
— The Poems of Henry Kendall • Henry Kendall
... minding where he was going, and the only light he had was the shimmering moonlight, which descended as faintly through the waters as if it came through muffled glass. He had not gone very far when he heard a horrible hissing, and straight before him he saw what he thought were two flaming coals. After a few more steps he found himself face to face with the dragon of the lake, the guardian of the palace of the fairy ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... one, with every prospect of success. The water was apparently of no great depth, and did not run with nearly as much force on the north side of the rapids as it did on the south, towards which by a bend of the river the principal current was directed; still, as we looked at the foaming, hissing, roaring waters below us, we saw the fearful danger to which we should be exposed should we miss our footing and be carried away in them. Indeed, without a rope, the passage seemed ...
— Snow Shoes and Canoes - The Early Days of a Fur-Trader in the Hudson Bay Territory • William H. G. Kingston
... came for, he once more shouldered his crowbar, and let himself out into the dark passage. Here he stopped in terror! Something was snorting and hissing without, something that sounded as if it ...
— A Romance of Billy-Goat Hill • Alice Hegan Rice
... reserving one road for those on foot and the other for carriages. The throng was so dense that they could not advance; cries were succeeded by cries, and exertions by exertions. Occasionally the hissing of a bullet was heard, as it came to open a horrible gap in the compact mass, who shrank in terror. The weak, drawn into the confused crowd, succumbed, and were trodden under foot, without those that crushed them even observing their fall Night and darkness brought back ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... demonstration of good will beyond the usual civility of lifting the hats as she passed. Indeed, Horace Wilson told me that, when he was crossing the park at the time of her driving through it, there was some—though not much—decided hissing. ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... hearts. On the second night of their camping, the men were aroused from sleep by the frightful screams from the women's tent; rushing out, they saw in the light of the great fire kept burning to frighten the wild-cats and mountain lions, a circle of venomous rattle-snakes, hissing like fiends and coiled for springing. The men fought desperately all night with shotguns and clubs. Life is scarcely worth the living with these demons, and their natural attendants, ...
— The Gentleman from Everywhere • James Henry Foss
... gentle hissing along the level stretch of brown mud was the tide. It was pushing the women upward, as if it had been a hand—the hand of a relentless fate—instead of a little, ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... let such things annoy us. Anyway, we expected to reach camp just after noon, so a little delay about dinner didn't seem so bad. We had entered the desert by noon; the warm, red sands fell away from the wheels with soft, hissing sounds. Occasionally a little horned toad sped panting along before us, suddenly darting aside to watch with bright, cunning eyes as we passed. Some one had placed a buffalo's skull beside a big bunch of sage and on the sage a splendid pair of elk's antlers. ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... the form of a man had been slain, he reappeared in the form of a great hissing serpent, and took up his abode in a hole in the ground without being noticed by Horus. Ra, however, saw him, and gave orders that Horus, the son of Isis, in the form of a hawk-headed staff, should set himself at the mouth of the hole, so that the monster ...
— The Literature of the Ancient Egyptians • E. A. Wallis Budge
... trials when the good man must appeal to God from the injustice of man; and amidst the whining candour or hissing of envy, erect a pavilion in his own mind to retire to, till the rumour be overpast; nay, the darts of undeserved censure may pierce an innocent tender bosom through with many sorrows; but these are all exceptions to general rules. And it is according to these common laws that human behaviour ...
— A Vindication of the Rights of Woman - Title: Vindication of the Rights of Women • Mary Wollstonecraft [Godwin]
... Land's-End, or had emigrated to the back woods of America. All the world goes at a gallop, and he creeps. Finally, he is removed to Hanwell, and endeavours to persuade Dr Conolly that he is one of Stephenson's engines, and goes hissing and spurting in fierce imitation of Rapid or Infernal. And all this is the natural consequence of having settled in an ancient city inaccessible to rails. A list could easily be made out that would astonish any one who had not reflected ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various
... offing soon ploughed hissing furrows through the misty waves. There were three craft, all of different rig—a schooner, a ketch, and the said bilander. All were laden as heavily as speed and safety would allow, and all were thoroughly well manned. They laid their course for the Dogger Bank, where ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... five. The decks had been swept, the windlass oiled and made ready to heave up the anchor; the big tow-rope lay in long bights along one side of the main deck, with one end carried up and hung over the bows, in readiness for the tug that would come paddling and hissing noisily, hot and smoky, in the limpid, cool quietness of the early morning. The captain was ashore, where he had been engaging some new hands to make up his full crew; and, the work of the day over, ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... was lifted from the anvil and plunged, hissing, into the bucket beside the forge; above the bucket a cloud of steam rose and showed clearly against the brilliant square of the door, and the peculiar scent which came from the iron went sharply to the nostrils of Jasper. He ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... there, as they wound in and out among the trees, they came upon soft, boggy places, where the ground was hot; and as the pressure of the foot sent hissing forth a jet of steam, it was evident that a step to right or left of the narrow track meant being plunged into a pool of heated mud ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... fire lay black before him; there was no hissing in response to the jet from the hose. Far below him the works of the clock rattled. It struck two! Two strokes! Two! And he stood and did not plunge headlong into space. How different in reality from what his feverish forebodings had threatened! In his brooding, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... there was a welcome hissing sound from the valve, the order was given, and once more the yacht began to throb, as if it had its heart pulsating rapidly, and the distance which separated them from the opening in the reef was soon passed, the panorama being lovely in the extreme. Once there ...
— Jack at Sea - All Work and no Play made him a Dull Boy • George Manville Fenn
... and clothes-lines; of manure heaps and disorganised pumps; of caged thrushes, blackbirds, and magpies; of dead dogs and cats, and colonies of thriving rats; of imprisoned terriers and goats let out on parole; of shrill and angry maternity and mud-loving infancy; and of hissing, curry-combing grooms and haltered horses, to which Londoners have given the designation of a Mews. Mr Peter Bowley, the landlord of the 'Mother Bunch,' was the late butler of the late Sir Plumberry Muggs; and having succeeded, on the demise of the baronet, to a legacy of L.500, and finding ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 427 - Volume 17, New Series, March 6, 1852 • Various
... their white walls; and when it does not shine!—why, in the winter, there's no resource left for a man but hopeless and shivering resignation, with their wide, windy chimneys, and their damp, crackling, hissing, sputtering, tantalizing fagots."—I confirmed my argument in favour of our metropolitan obscurity by another stroke of the poker against the largest fragment of the broken coal; and then, letting fall my weapon, and turning my back to the fire, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 10, No. 270, Saturday, August 25, 1827. • Various
... rose suddenly, and it began to make a sinister hissing among all the passes and gorges. Robert felt something damp upon his face, and he brushed away a melting flake of snow. But another and another took its place and the air was soon filled with white. And the flakes were ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... hut, leaving a lantern burning in it, and started down toward the ocean. Through the darkness Larry could see a line of foam where the breakers struck the beach. They ran hissing over the pebbles and broken shells, and then surged back again. As the two walked along, a figure, carrying a lantern and clad as they were, in yellow oilskins, ...
— Larry Dexter's Great Search - or, The Hunt for the Missing Millionaire • Howard R. Garis
... The hissing of the acetylene burners sounded loud in the room during the pause in which the sunburned planters waited the Major's answer. He spoke to Hoffman, ...
— Terry - A Tale of the Hill People • Charles Goff Thomson
... along on the bitter pebbles some yards higher up the beach, each pebble leaving its own particular bruise, and the suspended sand filling the eyes. Then the wave left her, and she awoke from the watery nightmare to the bright sunlight, and the hissing foam as it subsided, prone at full length, high and dry like a stranded wreck. Perhaps her head had tapped the wheel of the machine in a friendly way—a sort of genial battering ram. The defeat was a perfect rout; ...
— The Open Air • Richard Jefferies
... or seemed to read, these words, with scarce an accent to mar their impetuous flow, Dr. Englehart drew in his breath with the hissing sound of passion, and folded his arms tightly across his padded breast, as if they enfolded the bride he was suing for in ...
— Sea and Shore - A Sequel to "Miriam's Memoirs" • Mrs. Catharine A. Warfield
... as we were engaged in giving the last finish to our staircase, we were alarmed at hearing at a distance strange, sharp, prolonged sounds, like the roars of a wild beast, but mingled with an unaccountable hissing. Our dogs erected their ears, and prepared for deadly combat. I assembled my family; we then ascended our tree, closing the lower door, loaded our guns, and looked anxiously round, but nothing appeared. I armed my dogs with their porcupine coats of mail and ...
— The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island • Johann David Wyss
... and her cordiality was so demonstrative that the future bride found it more difficult to account for than Lady Ascot's coldness, till she heard the old lady, as they passed into the hall, breathe in a hissing whisper to her nephew: "Streff, dearest, when you have a minute's time, and can drop in at my wretched little pension, I know you can explain in two words what I ought to do to pacify those awful money-lenders.... And you'll ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... mysterious under a sky which glowed like a furnace, until both were illuminated by lightning so vivid that one could but bow the head and close the eyes before it. A gusty wind, which had sprung up suddenly, chased the carriage all the way, while the rain, which came down in sheets, hissing as it struck the ground, thundered on the hood drawn over their heads, but left their vision clear to gaze in wondering awe at the ...
— Kitty Trenire • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... to illustrate some new sword trick which they have heard about; and between the duels, on the day whose history I have been writing, the swords were not always idle; every now and then we heard a succession of the keen hissing sounds which the sword makes when it is being put through its paces in the air, and this informed us that a student was practicing. Necessarily, this unceasing attention to the art develops an expert occasionally. He becomes famous in his own university, his renown spreads to other universities. ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which shows what a ninny I was. The thing the world loves is the opposite of what it is. The pat-pat-pat of their gloves came in to me when I got through. They were too polite to hiss. But it wasn't necessary. I was hissing myself. Inside of me there was ...
— In the Bishop's Carriage • Miriam Michelson
... of a host of women in a condition of ecstatic exaltation bordering on madness, who appear girdled with snakes, or hissing like snakes, tear living animals to pieces, and devour the flesh. The classic examples here are the Greek Maenads, and the Indian Senas, who ...
— From Ritual to Romance • Jessie L. Weston
... With a voice like a viper hissing. (Though I had crossed her palm with gold), That from the ranks a spirit bold Would be to-day ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... of Savonarola was discerned, none dared conspicuously to break the stillness by a sound which would rise above the solemn tramp of footsteps and the faint sweep of garments; nevertheless his ear, as well as other ears, caught a mingled sound of slow hissing that longed to be curses, and murmurs that longed to be blessings. Perhaps it was the sense that the hissing predominated which made two or three of his disciples in the foreground of the crowd, at the meeting of the roads, fall on their knees as if something divine were passing. ...
— Romola • George Eliot
... brightly shining, the brilliant stars are sparkling in a sky of melancholy calmness, the shrill whistlings of a northerly wind—cold, bleak, and evil-bearing—are increasing: winding about, and bursting into violent blasts, with their harsh and hissing gusts, they are sweeping the heights of Montmartre. A man is standing on the very summit of the hill; his lengthened shadow, thrown out by the moon's pale beams, darkens the rocky ground in the distance. The traveller is surveying the huge city lying at his feet—the ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... door fell, a great gust of wind rushed out with a hissing shriek, almost overbalancing the men from the earth. They stood still for a while, breathing hard from their exertion, trying in vain to peer into the blackness before them. Under no circumstances would either of them have admitted that he was ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... burlesque and parody. Error and folly have had their hecatombs of martyrs. Reduce the grandest type of man hitherto known to an abstract statement of his qualities and efforts, and he appears in dangerous company: say that, like Copernicus and Galileo, he was immovably convinced in the face of hissing incredulity; but so is the contriver of perpetual motion. We cannot fairly try the spirits by this sort of test. If we want to avoid giving the dose of hemlock or the sentence of banishment in the wrong ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... hangman. And so it was on the 3rd, but not without a riot, which conveys a vivid picture of those "good old" or turbulent days; for the mob, encouraged by well-dressed people from the shops and balconies, who cried out, "Well done, boys! bravely done, boys!" set up such a hissing, that the sheriff's horses were frightened, and brave Alderman Hurley with difficulty reached the place where the paper was to be burnt. The mob seized what they could of the paper from the burning torch of the executioner, ...
— Books Condemned to be Burnt • James Anson Farrer
... sounds: when unmarked it has its sharp or hissing sound, as in yes; when marked thus, s, it has the buzzing sound ...
— McGuffey's Eclectic Spelling Book • W. H. McGuffey
... Madame herself was superb in a regal-looking gown that became her aristocratic old countenance as a rich setting becomes an antique cameo. Her stately rooms were aglow with immense fire-places, each holding a small cart-load of hissing and crackling wood, the reflected light gleaming brightly from the shining fire-irons, while a number of brass sconces—the picturesque chandeliers of the past—polished to the similitude of gold, were softly shimmering overhead. The beautiful English furniture of the last century, artistic ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... perceptibly. A heavy, pointed instrument broke through; was withdrawn; and a hissing stream ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... a dirty trick that they played Stent and Brown—the three Mysterious Sisters, Fate, Chance, and Destiny. But they're always billed for any performance, be it vaudeville or tragedy; and there's no use hissing them off: they'll dog you from the stage entrance if they take ...
— Barbarians • Robert W. Chambers
... glance at the water below. The man's fingers clawed at her back. In another instant she would have leapt over; but she felt the ground tremble and give under her feet. She staggered, and with a desperate leap, gained a firm foothold beyond. Behind her, with a rumble and a hissing roar a great section of the bank half slid, half fell to the river beach beneath, carrying down ...
— Two on the Trail - A Story of the Far Northwest • Hulbert Footner
... too late, for almost at the same time we struck with a crash, and the current, catching the boat's stern, slewed her round broadside on to the reef, where she lay hard and fast, though shaking in every timber as a wall of water, hissing like a boiling cauldron, ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... talking loudly, and laughing hilariously as they ate and drank, while pale-faced, perspiring waiters ran here and there with steaming chafing dishes and silver buckets of frozen "wine." Here champagne was king! The frothy, golden, bubbling, hissing stuff seemed to be the only beverage called for. No one counted the cost. Supplied with fat purses, all flung themselves into a reckless orgy of high living and ordered without reckoning. It was the gay rendezvous of the girls ...
— The Easiest Way - A Story of Metropolitan Life • Eugene Walter and Arthur Hornblow
... two more, and to pour the whole of my canful of water over the fire before the third stone came down the chimney. The live embers on the floor I easily disposed of after that. The man on the roof must have heard the hissing of the fire as I put it out, and have felt the change produced in the air at the mouth of the chimney, for after the third stone had descended no more followed it. As for either of the ruffians themselves dropping down by the same road along which the stones had come, that was ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins
... into unusual activity. She was remembering the misery of the cold in Cincinnati—the misery that had driven her into prostitution as a drunken driver's lash makes the frenzied horse rush he cares not where in his desire to escape. This wind of Broadway—this first warning of winter—it was hissing in her ears: "Take hold! Winter is coming! ...
— Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise • David Graham Phillips
... drunken Reason mad. Much longer, Pope restrain'd his awful hand, Wept o'er poor Niniveh, and her dull band, 'Till Fools like Weeds rose up, and choak'd the Land. Long, long he slumber'd e'er th' avenging hour; For dubious Mercy half o'er-rul'd his pow'r: 'Till the wing'd bolt, red-hissing from above Pierc'd Millions thro'——For such the Wrath of Jove. Hell, Chaos, Darkness, tremble at the sound, And prostrate Fools bestrow the vast Profound: No Charon wafts 'em from the farther Shore, Silent they sleep, alas! to rise ...
— An Essay on Satire, Particularly on the Dunciad • Walter Harte
... met by a force as palpable,—the warm blast within answering to the cold blast without. The wide chimney then becomes the scene of contest: wind meets wind, sparks encounter rain-drops, they fight in the air like the visioned soldiers of Attila; sometimes a daring drop penetrates, and dies, hissing, on the hearth; and sometimes a troop of sparks may make a sortie from the chimney-top. I know not how else we can meet the elements by a defiance so magnificent as that from this open hearth; and ...
— Oldport Days • Thomas Wentworth Higginson
... did not resent his inspection; rather they felt a sense of security in this watching manly figure with the gun, for they were rather afraid of villains themselves: it was reported that many looters had been stood against hissing walls and shot by the stern orders of General Punston. They asked their more immediate protector questions as to the progress of the fire, which he answered curtly, as ...
— The Sisters-In-Law • Gertrude Atherton
... a match to the rocket, but instead of going up in the air, it flew wildly down into the grass, running some distance with a hissing kind of sound, and causing the masses to jump round in ...
— The Complete Works of Artemus Ward, Part 3 • Charles Farrar Browne
... hound," he roared, hissing in his face. "So I've got you at last. That's where your vacuum is, is it? I know your vile hiding-place at last." He shook him like a dog. "I've been after him all night," he cried, turning to Shorthouse, "all night, I tell you, and I've got him ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... begun to fall, hissing gently on the leaves, but he had still a boy's love of getting wet, and stayed where he was, on the stone. Some people saw fairies in woods and down in water, or said they did; that did not seem to ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... dogs in the well-known experiments related by travellers. This bar-room used to be famous for drinking and story-telling, and sometimes fighting, in old times. That was when there were rows of decanters on the shelf behind the bar, and a hissing vessel of hot water ready, to make punch, and three or four loggerheads (long irons clubbed at the end) were always lying in the fire in the cold season, waiting to be plunged into sputtering and foaming mugs of flip,—-a goodly compound, speaking according to the flesh, made with beer and sugar, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume V, Number 29, March, 1860 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... away To where, by silent tarns, the wild deer stray. Below, with gentle tide, the Atlantic Sea Laves the curved beach, and fills the cheerful quay, Where frequent glides the sail, and dips the oar, And smoking steamer halts with hissing roar." ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... it was, a cloud, low-hung and lurid, and stretching across the whole northern side of the horizon. I had scarce time to gather my clews and bobbins into a hurried wisp, and take shelter under an overhanging bank hard by, when down it came, heavy, hissing, and pelting the whole surface of the river into spray. I drew myself close to the back of the hollow, where I lay in a congratulatory sort of reverie, watching the veins of muddy red, as they slowly at first, and then impetuously, flowed through and finally displaced ...
— Tales from Blackwood, Volume 7 • Various
... It was not as is often the case when a storm is brewing; a few light clouds come first like the skirmishers in advance of an army; but the whole body came on in one dense mass, the sea below it foaming, and hissing, and curling with a noise which we could hear even before the wind reached us. A hurricane was coming, and one of ...
— Marmaduke Merry - A Tale of Naval Adventures in Bygone Days • William H. G. Kingston
... the death of my fair-haired boy be melted in their sockets with ceaseless tears, shed for those that are nearest and most dear to thee! May the ears that heard his death-knell be dead hereafter to all other sounds save the screech of the raven, and the hissing of the adder! May the tongue that tells me of his death and of my own crime, be withered in thy mouth—or better, when thou wouldst pray with thy people, may the Evil One guide it, and give voice to blasphemies instead ...
— Chronicles of the Canongate • Sir Walter Scott
... comfort her by assuring her that the crocodile would not attack us, and would more likely swim away than follow us. On landing, we hauled up the canoe, and then commenced collecting sticks for a fire. Kate's kettle was soon hissing merrily, suspended by a high tripod over the fire, and by the time the provisions were spread, Stanley and his companions had arrived. While we were so engaged, we saw, approaching among the trees, a black man, with a shield ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... the bottom and the water all muddied. He could not see, but plunged to grope for the tomahawk. The snapper gave a great lurch to escape, releasing the injured hand, but jerking the man off his legs. Then, finding itself held by a forepaw, it turned with gaping, hissing jaws, and sprang on the foe that struggled in bottom of ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... Lance from a rush into the garden paths, where he did not discover much. Then they looked into the eddy at the meeting of the waters; and turning back to Tripp's neatest of kitchens, were there regaled upon shrimps, rashers hissing from the fire, and the peculiar native species of hot-buttered cake, which Felix recollected as viewed in the nursery as the ne plus ultra of excellence, probably because it was an almost prohibited dainty. Lance was in his element, delighting himself and Miss Kerenhappuch Tripp by assisting ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Philip could have seen a caribou if it had passed. He sat close to his fire, with the heat of it reflected from the blackened face of a huge rock, finishing the snare which had taken him an hour to weave. For a long time he had been conscious of the curious, hissing monotone of the Aurora, the "music of the skies," reaching out through the space of the earth with a purring sound that was at times like the purr of a cat and at others like the faint hum of a bee. Absorbed in his work he did not, for a time, hear ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood
... the mud from his feet on the porch, Mr. Stamps appeared at the doorway, and, after his usual precautionary glance about him, made his way to the stove. His manner was at once propitiatory and friendly. He drew up a chair and put his wet feet on the stove, where they kept up a comfortable hissing sound as ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... both heaven and earth and seas are seen; Queen of the nether skies, where half the year Thy silver beams descend, and light the gloomy sphere; Goddess of maids, and conscious of our hearts, So keep me from the vengeance of thy darts, (Which Niobe's devoted issue felt, When hissing through the skies the ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... wonderful "heap of notions," which at their birth made quite a different sensation from that which their "bare remembrance" would seem to sanction now. The statement made in a "morning paper" before us, of a fine horse being actually scared stone and instantaneously dead, by a roaring and hissing locomotive, brings to mind "a circumstance," which though it did not exactly do our knitting, it ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... by his palace, Giovanni Baptisti Danti unexpectedly and by means of a contrivance of wings that he had constructed proportionate to the size of his body took off from the top of a tower near by, and with a horrible hissing sound flew successfully across the great Piazza, which was densely crowded. But (oh, horror of an unexpected accident!) he had scarcely flown three hundred paces on his way to a certain point when ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... that title. The whole family partook of his character, and was notorious for unwearied plotting. The gliding, deadly, snake-like smoothness with which Annas and his sons seized their prey is said to have won them the name of hissing vipers. ...
— Love to the Uttermost - Expositions of John XIII.-XXI. • F. B. Meyer
... coward and a slave at heart. In thy fear of the curse that the False Hathor hath laid on us, she whom thou dost worship, to thy shame, thou hast let these slaves go. Otherwise had our father dealt with them, great Rameses Miamun, the hammer of the Khita. Now they are gone hissing curses on the land that bare them, and robbing those who nursed them up while they were yet a little people, as a mother nurses ...
— The World's Desire • H. Rider Haggard and Andrew Lang
... in the direction of the cabin, murmured that it did him credit, and Mr-Green made a low, hissing noise, intended to signify admiration. Flower, with a cheery smile, looked round ...
— A Master Of Craft • W. W. Jacobs
... a flaring torch. He snatched the brand from his hand, and stabbed the straw with it in a dozen places, from each of which there leapt at once a tongue of flame. When, at last, he flung the torch into the heart of the pile, it was all a roaring, hissing, crackling blaze. ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... first? His round, innocent stare of amazement cut her to the quick. But he was not looking at her. His stare was directed to Heemskirk, who, with his back to him and with his hands still up to his face, was hissing curses through his teeth, and (she saw him in profile) glaring at her balefully with one ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... accustomed to the glare of the hissing gas, he saw that in the centre figures were painted standing on the edge of a pillar that revolved without pause. There was a woman with flaming red cheeks, a gold dress and dead white dusty arms, a man with a golden crown and a purple robe, ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... steed the Tartar wheels; The Turcoman has left his herd, The sabre round his loins to gird; And there the volleying thunders pour, Till waves grow smoother to the roar. The trench is dug, the cannon's breath Wings the far hissing globe of death; Fast whirl the fragments from the wall, Which crumbles with the ponderous ball; And from that wall the foe replies, O'er dusty plain and smoky skies, With fires that answer fast and well. The summons ...
— Mosaics of Grecian History • Marcius Willson and Robert Pierpont Willson
... The hissing of the kettle interrupted him. "Water's boiling," cried Uncle Felix; "hand round the cups and cut the loaf." A cup was given to each. The tea ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... blood for vengeance cried in vain: Her gallant lord begins his awful reign, In vain her murderers for refuge fly, Spain's wildest hills no place of rest supply. The injur'd lover's and the monarch's ire, And stern-brow'd Justice in their doom conspire: In hissing flames they die, and yield their souls in ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... occasionally heard aloft as the strain upon the spars increased, the sails "went to sleep," the sheets tautened out, the ripple under the bows grew louder and louder, until it emulated the rush of a mountain torrent, and the foam gathered round the cutwater, hissing along the side, and swirling far away in our wake, as the "Juno," yielding to the freshening breeze, swept out past the Needles, and hauled up a point or two ...
— Under the Meteor Flag - Log of a Midshipman during the French Revolutionary War • Harry Collingwood
... regrets. We are not children, you see. No! Let me go. Do not squeeze me like that!" Very pale, she struggled in his embrace. "I swear to you that I will go away and that you shall never see me again if you do not let me loose." Her voice became hard. She was almost hissing her words. He let go of her. "Sit down there behind the table. Do that for me." And tapping the floor with her heel, she said, in a tone of melancholy, "Then it is impossible to be friends, only friends, with a man. But it would be very nice to come and see you without ...
— La-bas • J. K. Huysmans
... color went and came; he bit his lip, till the blood trickled down his clean shorn chin; he clinched his hands, and smote them heavily together, and uttered in a harsh hissing whisper the most appalling imprecations—on his own head—on him who had deceived him—on Rome, and all her myriads of inhabitants—on earth, and sea, and heaven—on everything divine ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 1 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... of long sea-weed brushed against the rim of the bell. Vanderhoek immediately seized the hammer, rang two loud peals, and the motion downwards ceased. We hung suspended in the sea, I know not how many fathoms down. A loud hissing sound came from the air-valves; but it was every moment interrupted, as if some part of the apparatus failed in its continuous working. The eyes of both Jenkins and Vanderhoek were again intensely fixed upon the holes; it was too manifest to me that they both saw something wrong in the ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume III • Various
... ushered in my Lord Glenkindie, hot from a midnight supper. I am not aware that Glenkindie was ever a beautiful object, being short, and gross-bodied, and with an expression of sensuality comparable to a bear's. At that moment, coming in hissing from many potations, with a flushed countenance and blurred eyes, he was strikingly contrasted with the tall, pale, kingly figure of Glenalmond. A rush of confused thought came over Archie - of shame that this was one of his father's elect friends; of pride, that ...
— Weir of Hermiston • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hissing under the bows, and a shock which ran through the vessel from stem to stern, and then grinding and grinding and grinding until all motion ceased, and a gentle surf began to curl itself against the stern ...
— The Adventures of Captain Horn • Frank Richard Stockton
... are coals that bake And scorch his fevered skin; A fire no hissing hail may slake Consumes his heart within. Still must he hasten on to rake ...
— Green Bays. Verses and Parodies • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... winning depths of her eyes. The sea was blue around them; the sky overhead had not a speck of cloud in it; the white sand-bays, the green stretches of pasture and the far and spectral mountains trembled in a haze of sunlight. Then there was all the delight of the fresh and cool wind, the hissing of the water along the boat, and the joyous rapidity with which the small vessel, lying over a little, ran through the crisply curling waters, and brought into view the newer ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... coat-sleeve never recovered from the oily stain), he led me to the ship's side and steadied the rope ladder while I went down, the purser following behind, or rather on my head. We sat on the barrels, M. Jacques took a paddle to steer, and hissing and gasping, the queer-smelling crew started for the beach. When we came near, M. Jacques turned with his pleasant smile to the purser, and said, "Surf no good! Plenty purser live for drown ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... kind of a lamp out on the floor beyond, and it burned with a sputtering and a hissing and a roaring, and it threw a big bluish kind of a flame straight out, like ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... absorbed in studying the quiet face so finely formed by Nature and so pathetic to look at. No thoroughly depraved miscreant could look like that. Yet it was like a peaceful sea: when the hurricane should break loose, what a boiling whirl of gray, hissing, tossing, foaming waves would disfigure ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... away abruptly, as if disconcerted; but the ill-favoured cat, whisking round, stood like a demon sentinel upon the corpse, growling and hissing, with arched back and ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... of the huts. The effect of the discharge was tremendous and cumulative! As the first rocket plunged into the throng a sudden silence ensued, and every savage stood death-still, gazing with eyes of horror upon the hissing fiery thing as it darted hither and thither inflicting painful burns and bruises wherever it went. Then, long before the first had run its course, the second was also among them, playing similar antics, and ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... curious and unpleasant sensation of her seeing through him most thoroughly and clearly. He felt ridiculously like a captive, and his doubts as to his immediate escape increased. The gaudy drawing-room, the dingy stairs, the gas hissing in the hall, had been, in all conscience, depressing enough, but now this heavy, mute, ominous woman, trailing her black robes so funereally behind her, seemed, to his excited fancy, some implacable Frankenstein created by his own ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... she had recently been widowed, and her miserable prospects in a strange town whither she was going. Adela made an effort to speak in words of comfort, but her own voice sounded hopeless in her ears. In the station was a constant roaring and hissing, bell-ringing and the shriek of whistles, the heavy trundling of barrows, the slamming of carriage-doors; everywhere a smell of smoke. It impressed her as though all the 'world had become homeless, and had nothing to do but journey hither and thither in vain search of ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... and the water bubbling and hissing under us at times, and it was understood that the confined air above the water in the hull had kept her afloat. But this air had all escaped as the Guardian-mother approached us, and with no warning she went to the bottom. We were floated by our life-preservers ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic
... both elbows on the rail, and looked out at the misty banks, puffing at his cigar. Then he dropped it hissing into the water, and, stifling a yawn, looked up and down the length of the deserted deck. It seemed ...
— The Princess Aline • Richard Harding Davis
... around the stove on the warm robes and listened to the wind howling above our little roof and the stories of Uncle Eb. The hissing of the snow as it beat upon the sledgehouse grew fainter by and by, and Uncle Eb said he guessed we were pretty well covered up. We fell asleep soon. I remember he stopped in the middle of a wolf story, and, seeing that our eyes were shut, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... wild October evening about a year ago that my wife and I arrived by train at a well-known watering-place in the North of England. The wind was howling and roaring with delight at its resistless power; the rain came hissing down ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... cannot go to it, it must come to the kitchen. If this goes to the basement, or to the attic, that must follow, but always with impassable barriers between, protecting each one of our five senses. The confusion usually attending the dinner-hour should be out of sight; the hissing of buttered pans and the sound of rattling dishes we do not wish to hear; our sharpened appetites must not be dulled by spicy aromas that seem to settle on our tongues; we do not like, in summer weather, to be broiled in the same heat that roasts our beef; while, as for scents, wrath ...
— Homes And How To Make Them • Eugene Gardner
... still, for I was afraid they'd be after me. I got almost to a streak of light when there was such a rumpus in the cave that gave me the trembles. Doors was slamming, dogs growling and rattling their chains, and all the devils a-screaming. They come a-charging; the snakes was hissing sharp and wiry; the beasts howled long and mournful, and thunder rolled up overhead, and the imps was yelling and screeching like they ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... larger island. The record of several consecutive centuries is graven deep in it by the brand and bayonet, and by the more incisive teeth-marks of hate. The slumbering antipathies of race and religion even now crop out here and there, over the unfused boundary, in hissing tongues of flame. The Briton and the Celt are still struggling for the precedence in the Irishman's breast; but it is not a war of extermination. His ardent nature is given to martial memories, and all the battles he boasts of are British battles, in which he or his father played the hero ...
— A Walk from London to John O'Groat's • Elihu Burritt
... its heat hissing at the [25] "still, small voice" of Truth; but it can neither silence nor disarm God's voice. Spiritual wickedness is stand- ing in high places; but, blind to its own fate, it ...
— Miscellaneous Writings, 1883-1896 • Mary Baker Eddy
... hens, too, were strutting up and down, and in and out among their rivals; some, with wings brushing upon the ground; others, with a single wing spread out, against which they frequently kicked the nearest foot as they circled round each other. A continuous hissing was kept up, along with a shaking of heads from side to side, a ceremonious bowing, and a striking of bills upon the ground. But—though the cock was doing his best to dazzle them with the display of his charms—the hens appeared unconscious of his presence ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... The advance of the season has ripened the oranges and mangoes since we left Bahia, and has increased the number of insects, so that the nights are no longer silent. The hissing, chirping, and buzzing of crickets, beetles, and grasshoppers, continue from sunset to sunrise; and all day long the trees and flowers are surrounded by myriads of brilliant wings. The most destructive insects are the ants, and every variety of them that can hurt ...
— Journal of a Voyage to Brazil - And Residence There During Part of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823 • Maria Graham
... heights to the wild ravines below, Near and far-off, the limitless wings of the tempest hurl and go In roaring gusts that plunge through the cracking forest, and lull, and lift, All day without stint and all night long with the sweep of the hissing drift. But winter shall pass ere long with its hills of snow and its fettered dreams, And the forest shall glimmer with living gold, and chime with the gushing of streams; Millions of little points of plants shall prick ...
— Alcyone • Archibald Lampman
... son of Oeneus has different success; and of two discharged by him, the first spear is fastened in the earth, the second in the middle of his back. There is no delay; while he rages, while he is wheeling his body round, and pouring forth foam, hissing with the fresh blood, the giver of the wound comes up, and provokes his adversary to fury, and buries his shining hunting spear in his opposite shoulder. His companions attest their delight in an ...
— The Metamorphoses of Ovid - Literally Translated into English Prose, with Copious Notes - and Explanations • Publius Ovidius Naso
... rose hissing out of the East River, a broad, red disc of heat. It swept the cross-streets of the city as pitilessly as the search- light of a man-of-war sweeps the ocean. It blazed brazenly into open windows, and changed beds into gridirons on which the sleepers tossed and turned and woke unrefreshed ...
— Gallegher and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... but a hearty laugh from Chew-chew showed there was nothing to fear. Chew-chew knew that the hissing sound was not the hiss of a snake. It was the sizzling of the water when it touched ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... increasing rapidity, the blaze of artificial light quickly obtained ascendency over the mistress of the night; and the shrapnel shells, throwing their contents of danger in all directions, together with the hissing and roaring of all the other exploding missiles of death, formed a diapason of sound that makes one of those wonder-moments that come so seldom in ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... up, and lo! its bulb was a palpitating heart of human flesh; or how Bhanavar called the unwilling serpents too often, and failed to win her beauty back, till, at an awful price she once more, and for the last time, contrived to call her body-guard of snakes hissing and ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse
... by a whizzing sound, which seemed to be often repeated, and wishing to know the cause, she stole halfway down the stairs, when the mischievous Maggie greeted her with a "serpent," which, hissing beneath her feet, sent her quickly back to her room, from which she did not venture again. Mrs. Jeffrey was very good-natured, and reflecting that "young folks must have fun," she became at last comparatively calm, and at an early hour sought her ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... heard the regular footfall of thousands of men walking together to defend the frontiers over the resounding soil of their country, the plaintive notes of women, the wailing of children, the neighing of horses, the hissing of flames as they devoured palaces and huts; then gloomy strokes of vengeance, striking again and again with the hatchet, and immolating the enemies of the people, and the profaners of the soil. The notes of this air rustled like a ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine
... frequented. As a mere audacity it has long faded before the flowers, themselves "over" now, of that Naturalism which it helped to bring about; and the once world-popular composer who founded almost, if not quite, his most popular opera on it, has become for many years an abomination and a hissing to the very same kind of person who, sixty years since, would have gone out of his way to extol La Traviata, and have found in Il Trovatore something worth not merely all Rossini[353] and Bellini and Donizetti put together, but Don Giovanni, ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... right between the windows, where nearly every pane of glass was broken out, stood a brand new cooking stove, with all its shining pots and pans and kettles, set in order on the top, as if the most magnificent dinner that ever was dreamed of, was hissing and stewing and broiling and baking and ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... and abruptly I became aware that across our open window, where the insulation barrage was flung, the air was faintly hissing. An interference there! I saw a tiny swirl of purple sparks. Someone—some hostile ray from the deck beneath us, or from the spider bridge that led to our little room—someone out ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... the charred logs forward and stooped amid their sparks to lay a fresh one with its back to the chimney. Then he rose and looked out; as he stood in the door, I could hear the hissing of fine snow turning to rain and the drenched bamboo whipping the piazza posts; over all, the larger lament of the pines, and, from the long rows of lights in the gulch, the diapason of the stamp-heads thundering ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... the most picturesque of headlands; see how their round foreheads of glistening grey shale sink down into two dark, jagged moles, running far out to seaward, and tapering off, each into a long black horizontal line, vanishing at last beneath its lace-fringe of restless hissing foam. How grand the contrast of the lightness of those sea-lines, with the solid mass which rests upon them! Look, too, at the glaring lights and Tartarean shadows of those chasms and caves, which the tide never leaves, or ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... taught her by the mountain spirit, and raised her T-shaped wand. In a moment her fair head and lovely face, body, limbs and feet lengthened out, disappeared, or became demon-like, and a fire-darting, hissing-tongued serpent, with eyes like moons trailed over the ground towards the temple, swam the river, and scenting out the track of the fugitive, entered the belfry, cracking the supporting columns made of whole tree-trunks into a mass ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... sort that even a Maury or a Talleyrand, could still be the symbol for it?—Enough, and Clergy has strength, the Clergy has craft and indignation. It is a most fatal business this of the Clergy. A weltering hydra-coil, which the National Assembly has stirred up about its ears; hissing, stinging; which cannot be appeased, alive; which cannot be trampled dead! Fatal, from first to last! Scarcely after fifteen months' debating, can a Civil Constitution of the Clergy be so much as got to paper; and ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... blae North was streaming forth Her lights, wi' hissing, eerie din, Athort the lift they start and shift, Like Fortune's favours, tint as win. A ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... their camp-soul lit, Streamed incense from the hissing cones, Large, crimson flashes grew and whirl'd Thin, golden nerves of sly light curl'd Round the dun camp, and rose faint zones, Half way about each grim bole knit, Like a shy child that would bedeck With ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... trebled in their hands. They had at the same time done good to the Church, not a few of the reverend clergy having got great sums by the project. In short, they had enriched the whole nation, and he hoped they had not forgotten themselves. There was some hissing at the latter part of this speech, which for the extravagance of its eulogy was not far removed from satire; but the directors and their friends, and all the winners in the room, applauded vehemently. The Duke of Portland spoke in a similar strain, and expressed his great wonder why anybody should ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... bring dark news: Boadicea the British Queen is risen, And like a fire is hissing through the isle, Londinium and Camulodunum In ashes lie; the loosed barbarians In madness rage and ravish, murder ...
— Nero • Stephen Phillips
... already at the door with the hissing urn. "Tell her to keep away, will you?" said Godfrey; and when the door was closed again he exerted himself ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... into my face, All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives His red-hot talons in my burning scalp. Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and down Like hissing cinders; wasps and waterflies Scorch deep like ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... assistant engineer watched the main engines in their twin compartments, while the subordinate aids and machinists attended to the dynamos, motors, and auxiliary cylinders that worked the turrets, pumps, and ammunition-hoists. All boilers were hot and hissing steam; all fire-pumps were working; all fire-hose connected and spouting streams of water. Perspiring men with strained faces deluged one ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... expelled the day before, our broken and disordered regiments inextricably intermingled, and drunken with the wine of triumph, dashed confidently against a pair of trim battalions, provoking a tempest of hissing lead that made us stagger under its very weight. The sharp onset of another against our flank sent us whirling back with fire at our heels and fresh foes in merciless pursuit—who in their turn were broken upon the front of the invalided brigade previously mentioned, which had moved up ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... the tightly inflated portion underneath as they left the ground." While speaking he had moved rather near, when suddenly a partially concealed mouth opened, showing the unmistakable tongue and fangs of a serpent. It emitted a hissing sound, and the small eyes gleamed maliciously. "Do you believe it is a poisonous species?" asked Ayrault. "I suspect it is," replied the doctor; "for, though it is doubtless able to leap with great accuracy upon its prey, we saw it took some time to recharge the ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds • J. J. Astor
... Beasts lost the naturall motion of each limbe, Forgott to goe with practiseing to swime: A trout now here you would not thinke how soone Taken and drest for th'Emperour o'the Moone, The fixed Starres, though to our eyes were missing Wee knew yet were by their continuall hissing. Weomen were mermaides sailing with the wind, The greatest miracle was fish behind: But men were all kept chast against their wish, And could comitt but ...
— A Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. II • Various
... of meaningless noises had never been heard by human ears. There were spluttering and bubbling, jerking and rasping, whistling and screaming. There were the rustling of leaves, the croaking of frogs, the hissing of steam, and the flapping of birds' wings. There were clicks from telegraph wires, scraps of talk from other telephones, and curious little squeals that were unlike any known sound. The lines running east and west were noisier than the lines running north ...
— The History of the Telephone • Herbert N. Casson
... cried out that this archer had not yet given in his name, but even as he spoke, Robin's arrow flew hissing from his bow. A silence fell upon the onlookers, and even the smiling Prince leaned forward in his box. Then a great shout went up of amazement and incredulity. The markers and heralds thronged about the target and hid it from the ...
— Robin Hood • Paul Creswick
... forbidden fruit, and gives part to Adam. They propose, according to the stage directions, to make themselves, subligacula a folis quibus tegamus pudenda, cover their nakedness with leaves and converse with God. God's curse. The Serpent exits, hissing. They are driven from Paradise by four angels, and the Cherubim with a flaming sword. Adam appears digging the ground, and Eve spinning. Their children, Cain and Abel, enter, the former kills his brother. Adam's lamentation. Cain ...
— A History of Pantomime • R. J. Broadbent
... against a tree. His resuscitation and flight now pleased me doubly, a malicious pleasure combining with the prettiest sight in the world; and I was on the point of sending all the other Greeks after him, when suddenly hissing waters spurted at me on all sides, from stones and wall, from ground and branches, and, wherever I turned, ...
— Autobiography • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... fire-dogs (the newest thing in furnishing in those days though now so common) on the hearth. The log burned as little as possible, being, perhaps, not quite so thoroughly dry and serviceable as it would have been in its proper period, and made a faint hissing sound in the silence as it burned, and diffused its pungent odour through the house. The bow window was open behind its white curtains, and it was there that the little party gathered out of reach of the unnecessary heat and ...
— The Marriage of Elinor • Margaret Oliphant
... she perform her task that in a very short time the flames were leaping up the chimney, the shadows dancing cheerfully over the ceiling, the kettle hissing and puffing on the fire. The sight and sound drew Francis once more from his bed to the basket chair, where he sat and lazily watched his wife as she cut bread, made tea, fried bacon and eggs, with the ease and celerity of a woman to whom domestic offices are familiar. When at last the tea-table ...
— Brooke's Daughter - A Novel • Adeline Sergeant
... him, there's rope enough to spare," and Ned, securing the slack end of the rope under his arms and seizing the spare oar, dashed forward in time to grasp the man just as the black, exhausted by his exertions, was on the point of letting him go. Another wave breaking at the moment, and hissing as it rushed back in a sheet of foam over the beach, would have swept away the almost rescued man, but Edward, planting his oar deep in the sand, held on while the lieutenant was engaged in hauling Tom ...
— Ned Garth - Made Prisoner in Africa. A Tale of the Slave Trade • W. H. G. Kingston
... traced three blue furrows on Gregory's shoulders. Ivan took another spring, and with the same skill as before he again enveloped the culprit's body with the hissing thong, ever taking care that the tip of it should not touch him. Gregory uttered another shriek, and Ivan counted "Two." The blood now began ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - VANINKA • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... demonstration, the phoenix next took flight bodily and disappeared, apparently up the chimney, with a rattling, rasping sound, as of the creaking of cogged wheels, leaving a wide opening where it had been. The coals which still glowed on the hearth presently died with a hissing noise, and only the soft light of the shaded lamp diffused itself through the room. Out of the mysterious depths of the fireplace stepped the white-clad ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... grown silent, and a clock near at hand had struck two when he found himself on the little bridge which crosses the canal. It was too dark to see the water below, but he heard the hard rain hissing on its surface. ...
— A Dog with a Bad Name • Talbot Baines Reed
... me, and did he come to fetch it himself like a man? Not he. He sent the son to rob the father." Then, leaning forward in his chair and glaring at the girl, "Ay, and mair than that! The night the lad set on me he cam'"—with hissing emphasis—"straight from Kenmuir!" He paused and stared at her intently, and she was still dumb before him. "Gin I'd ben killed, Wullie'd ha' bin disqualified from competin' for the Cup. With Adam M'Adam's Red Wull oot o' the way—noo d'ye see? ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... frisking o'er the spacious plain, Too shy to bear a lover's yoke, A husband's rein. The wood, the tiger, at thy call Have follow'd: thou canst rivers stay: The monstrous guard of Pluto's hall To thee gave way, Grim Cerberus, round whose Gorgon head A hundred snakes are hissing death, Whose triple jaws black venom shed, And sickening breath. Ixion too and Tityos smooth'd Their rugged brows: the urn stood dry One hour, while Danaus' maids were sooth'd With minstrelsy. Let Lyde hear those maidens' guilt, Their famous ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace
... Raoul, yon mass of various flesh is fused And melted quite in one by white-hot words The friar speaks. Sir, sawest thou ne'er, sometimes, Thine armorer spit on iron when 'twas hot, And how the iron flung the insult back, Hissing? So this contempt now in thine eye, If it shall fall on yonder heated surface May bounce back upward. Well: and then? What then? Why, if thou cause thy folk to crop some villein's ears, So, evil falls, and a fool foretells the truth. Or if some ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... acid meets the alkali, How they sputter, snap, and fly! Such a crackling, such a pattering! Such a hissing, such ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. II. July, 1862. No. 1. • Various
... asked triumphantly, as they stood at the prow, and rose and sank with the vessel's careering plunges. It was no gale, but only a fair wind; the water foamed along the ship's sides, and, as her bows descended, shot forward in hissing jets of spray; away on every hand flocked the white caps. "You had better keep my arm, here." Lydia did so, resting her disengaged hand on the bulwarks, as she bent over a little on that side to watch the rush of the sea. "It really ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... such an artist as this one was creates his spells and his sorcery. How, after tasting, drop by drop, that draught of "lingered sweetness long drawn-out" of his unequalled style, can we bear to fall back upon the jabbering and screeching, the howling and hissing, of the voices we have to listen to in common resort? Ah, child, child! Think carefully before you turn your candid-innocent eyes to the fatal entrance to these mysteries! It is better never to have known what the high, terrible loveliness of Her of ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... he uttered these words than the gentleman came back again, while, among the lookers-on, some hissing was heard. He raised both hands with an air of authority, and speaking with quite incredible vehemence and fire, he successfully harangued ...
— Marguerite de Navarre - Memoirs of Marguerite de Valois Queen of Navarre • Marguerite de Navarre
... in the pathless sweep Of the terrible northern blast; Above its roof the wild clouds leap And shriek as they hurtle past. The snow-waves hiss along the plain, Like spectral wolves they stretch and strain And race and ramp—with hissing beat, Like stealthy tread of myriad feet, I hear them pass; upon the roof The icy showers swirl and rattle; At times the moon, from storms aloof, Shines white and wan within the room— Then swift clouds drive across the light And all the plain is lost to sight, The cabin rocks, ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... on finding himself alone! For the Ethiopians had departed with their victim! Slowly rising from his supine posture, Ibrahim approached the table, filled a crystal cup with sherbet to the brim, and drank the cooling beverage, which seemed to go hissing down his parched throat—so dreadful was the thirst which the horror of the scene just enacted ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... height, states that Scaliger had observed women who were virgins emit urine in a high jet against a wall, but that married women could seldom do this. Bouaciolus also stated that the urine of virgins is emitted in a small stream to a distance with an acute hissing sound. (Parthenologia, p. 281.) A folk-lore belief in the reality of this influence is evidenced by the Picardy conte referred to already (ante, p. 53), "La Princesse qui pisse au dessus les Meules." There is no doubt a tendency ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 5 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis
... night, nor was the situation of those on board of the tender much better. The rolling and pitching motion of the ship was excessive; and, excepting to those who had been accustomed to a residence in the floating light, it seemed quite intolerable. Nothing was heard but the hissing of the winds and the creaking of the bulkheads or partitions of the ship; the night was, therefore, spent in the most unpleasant reflections upon the condition of the people on the beacon, especially in the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 16 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... modes of endless being.' Act ii. sc. 8. 'Directs the planets with a careless nod.' Ib. 'Far as futurity's untravell'd waste.' Act iv. sc. 1. 'And wake from ignorance the western world.' Act iv. sc. 2. 'Through hissing ages a proverbial coward, The tale of women, and the scorn of fools.' Act iv. sc. 3. 'No records but the records of the sky.' Ib. '... thou art sunk beneath reproach.' Act v. sc. 2. 'Oh hide me from myself.' Act ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... entered a dark room; where, railed off with iron railings, you beheld a long perspective of caverns in the interior of the earth, and a molten lake in the distance. In the foreground were the most horrible monsters that could be invented—bears with men's heads, growling—snakes darting in and out, hissing—here a man lying murdered, with a knife in his heart; there—a suicide, hanging by the neck—skeletons lying about in all directions, and some walking up and down in muslin shrouds. The machinery was ...
— Diary in America, Series Two • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... way off through the straining and hissing trees, and Mitchell followed, growling but obedient. And Henderson, faint upon his log in the raving tumult, knew nothing of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... conquering. And such a wound, I easily believe, As eats into thy soul and rages there; Yea, I that know thee, Judith, know thy soul Worse rankling hath in it from heathen insult Than flesh could take from steel bathed in a venom Art magic brewed over a charcoal fire, Blown into flame by hissing of whipt lizards. Yet is it likely, by too much regarding, Thy hurt is pamper'd in its poisonous sting. Wounds in the spirit need no surgery But a mind strong not to insist on them. See, then, thou hast not too much horror of this; Who that fights well in battle comes home sound?— Much ...
— Emblems Of Love • Lascelles Abercrombie
... pace. But after a while, little by little, the landscape lost patience, forgot its good manners, and flew faster and faster than before. The road rushed furiously beneath us, like a river in spate. Avenues of poplars flashed past us, every tree of them on each side hissing and swishing angrily in the draft we made. Motors going Rouen-ward seemed to be past as quickly as motors that bore down on us. Hardly had I espied in the landscape ahead a chateau or other object of interest before I was craning my neck round for a final glimpse of it as it faded on ...
— James Pethel • Max Beerbohm
... scarcely been uttered when there came from the interior of the steam yacht a dull explosion. Then, of a sudden, something that looked like a bunch of rockets flew up into the air. With a loud hissing and with sparks flying in all directions, the bunch of rockets described a graceful curve and then headed directly for the deck ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... hissing breath; her sister got up swiftly and went to her, as she sat down in Sir Nicholas' chair, still holding the ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson |
