"Inky" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Madeline, "I don't believe I can pick out my own horse. It's inky dark here under the trees." Madeline had ridden all her life but she seldom went out at Harding, and so hadn't a regular mount, like most of the ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... the other with another; one comes out like water as we see it; the other, though not less limpid in our sight, like ink. The eye sees through it, but not the lens. The eye sees emptiness as though the acid itself were pure crystal; the lens flings an inky image on the plate. The trouble is that, while you can procure that acid at the nearest chemist's, no money and no power on earth can summon or procure at will the ...
— The Camera Fiend • E.W. Hornung
... At first oval and hard; margin then separating from the stem; then equally cylindrical, margin turning black; finally expanded, and decaying by dissolution into inky fluid. Color of pileus variable from brown to pure white, always woolly, shaggy, the cuticle coming off in layers like the scales of ...
— Mushrooms of America, Edible and Poisonous • Anonymous
... Merrick, and good cheer! I shout my greeting to you across the ripples of that inky lake which is our ...
— A Chair on The Boulevard • Leonard Merrick
... a printer's error—the advertisement gave the date wrong. A crowd turned up at the empty hall, and two days later, when we arrived, they were so tired of us that they booed our demonstration. Just the stupidity of an inky printer between ...
— This Is the End • Stella Benson
... Roselands, neither horse nor mare was spared. Rand travelled at speed beneath an inky sky. At the turn to Greenwood he looked once toward the distant house, half hidden by mighty oaks. It was no more than once. He had a vision of a riderless horse, tearing away from a stream, through the woods, and he thought, "How ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... flat nose; Willis Collins had had a particularly high one. Carson Wildred's hair was inky black; Willis Collins's had been a bright auburn. Wildred's face was smooth; Collins's mouth and chin had been concealed by a heavy though close-cropped red beard. So far as I knew there was but one man living who could have effected so radical a change, not only ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... only the prelude of a lively scene. To the westward, beyond the low coast line dimly seen in the distance, was a dense mass of black clouds, rising rapidly towards the zenith. Low, muttering, muffled thunder came over the sea. The sun went into the inky veil; and then the lightnings flashed, faintly at first, but glaring brighter and brighter ...
— Dikes and Ditches - Young America in Holland and Belguim • Oliver Optic
... smallest chinks, and flow up to him like a cloud of dust intent on burying him. However, increasing apathy crept upon him as he lay there with shrunken arms and pallid features; his weakness augmented as the earth grew more ailing. At times, when the clouds were inky black, when the bending trees cracked, and the grass lay limp beneath the downpour like the hair of a drowned woman, he all but ceased to breathe, and seemed to be passing away, shattered by the hurricane. But at the first gleam of light, at the tiniest speck ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... morning, probably two hours before daylight, we crossed a peat-bog. There was a road at first which helped us, but it ran into a pile of cut peat, drying for the winter. There were also other roads leading to peat-piles, but these were very misleading, and as the night was of inky blackness, with scarcely any breeze, it became harder and harder to keep our direction. Consulting the compass so often was depleting our match supply, and I tried to depend on the faint breath of a breeze which sometimes seemed to die away altogether. This bog, like all the others, had ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... eddying gusts. Cold gray clouds were beating from the north, hanging now over the cliffs on the western side, now over the bare screes and steep slopes of the northern and eastern walls. Gray or inky black, the sharp edges of the rocks cut into the gloomy sky; while on the floor of the valley, blanched grass and winding stream seemed alike to fly ...
— The Case of Richard Meynell • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... to breakfast. None of the children—except Lubin, who always thought eating and drinking a very important affair—could attend much to their meal, they watched with such surprise and amusement the movements of Mr. Learning. Helping himself to his inky draught with a pen, which he used instead of a spoon, he then devoured sheet after sheet of foolscap paper with such evident relish, that Dick could hardly help bursting out into a laugh, and Matty was inclined to titter. Mr. Learning used a pen-wiper instead of a napkin, which saved ...
— The Crown of Success • Charlotte Maria Tucker
... surprise. One steps from his hotel, not thinking of the Lake—the blue of it rises through the trees, over the rocks, everywhere, with startling vividness. Surely never before was so large and wonderful a lake of inky blue, sapphire blue, ultra-marine, amethystine richness spread out for man's enjoyment. And while the summer months show this in all its smooth placidity and quietude, there seems to be a deeper blue, a richer ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James
... pride of the Garibaldian was not far behind the generosity of the former zouave. With an abruptness equal to that of Montfanon, he took up the volume and grumbled as he turned it over and over in his inky fingers: ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... The inky blackness had lifted somewhat, and they could plainly perceive the hull of one of their own ships, presumably; but her ports were open, and her interior appeared as a glowing furnace, while, even as they looked, tongues of fire spurted up from her deck and ...
— Across the Spanish Main - A Tale of the Sea in the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... severe; the genuine reverence of the author for virtue; the spectacle revealed of a man uniting in himself all that is good in sense, with all that is agreeable in the man of the world,—how pleasing it must all have been to our inky apprentice as he ...
— Benjamin Franklin, A Picture of the Struggles of Our Infant Nation One Hundred Years Ago - American Pioneers and Patriots Series • John S. C. Abbott
... great bunchy black humps of night; but they seemed to kneel like docile elephants as we drew near, to let Apollo mount upon their backs. We passed lovely old cottages, which in the strange white light of our Bleriots looked flat, as stage scenery, against that wide-stretched "back-cloth" of inky velvet. It was like motoring in a dream—one of those dreams born before you've quite dropped asleep, while your eyes are still open. We tore through Boscastle, and on to Bude, along an empty road, with the trees flying by like torn black flags, and the ...
— Set in Silver • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... have noted its weak spots, and strengthened them. He would have seen the thin streams that silently, but steadily and in ever-increasing volume, were working their way through the embankment near its base. In the inky blackness of the night they were unheeded; and while spade and pick were plied with unflagging zeal to strengthen the higher portions, these insidious foes were equally busy ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... principal island bearing the name of Mainland. Fields, yellow with flowers, among which stood here and there a cottage, sloped softly down to the water, and beyond them rose the bare declivities and summits of the hills, dark with heath, with here and there still darker spots, of an almost inky hue, where peat had been cut for fuel. Not a tree, not a shrub was to be seen, and the greater part of the soil appeared never to ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... disorder. When, closing my eyes, I contemplate these results of the convulsion of the soil in my mind's eye, when I hear the screaming of the eagles, which go wheeling through the bottomless abysses, whose inky shadows the eye dares hardly plumb, vertigo seizes me, and I open my eyes to reassure myself ...
— Fabre, Poet of Science • Dr. G.V. (C.V.) Legros
... courtesy because he had given it to her. As she sat, drawing long breaths that meant the ebbing of emotion, he let his eyes feed on her face. She was paler than he had seen her. There were shadows under her eyes, and the lashes on her cheek looked incredibly long: a curved inky splash. Her hood had fallen back, but she kept the blue cloak about her to her chin, as if it made a seclusion, a protection even against him. But it was only an instant before she withdrew her ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... a man who might have been of peasant origin. An inky black beard hid the lower part of his face, but his nose was blunt and pugnacious, and his eyes were like black shoe-buttons sewn close together. He stuck out his stomach importantly, and the care with which ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... rose of anywhere, I'd soon wilt in this stuffy little office of inky smells," she answered pleasantly. "A rose would need petals of leather ...
— Dust • Mr. and Mrs. Haldeman-Julius
... between the earth and the sun, and it is then that it does not reflect the sun's light and it is then that we have nights of inky blackness. ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... the Wind To the ship within the dock "Or dost thou fear the shock Of the ocean-hidden rock, When tempests strike thee full and leave thee blind; And low the inky clouds, Blackly tangle in thy shrouds; And ev'ry strained cord Finds a voice and shrills a word, That word of doom so thunderously upflung From the tongue Of every forked wave, Lamenting o'er a grave Deep hidden at its ...
— Old Spookses' Pass • Isabella Valancy Crawford
... meal. From time to time the ranger thrust a stick into the fire, and so kept the flames alive. But it was a dim little blaze at best. Yet it was mighty cheering and comforting as the darkness wrapped the forest, and the gloom beneath the rhododendron thicket became inky and impenetrable. ...
— The Young Wireless Operator—As a Fire Patrol - The Story of a Young Wireless Amateur Who Made Good as a Fire Patrol • Lewis E. Theiss
... the room, so that Betty was obliged to do her simple dressing for dinner by the aid of a candle, whose flickering beams seemed intent on lighting every corner of the room, and leaving the mirror in inky darkness. It was only within the last three months that Dr Trevor had left his old-fashioned house in Bloomsbury, hoping that the change of residence would help him in his ambition to extend his practice among a better class of patients. The neighbourhood ...
— Betty Trevor • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... slightly rolling action into the valleys, and out of the wool-white waves sudden sharp dark forms upthrust like strange masters of the deep. Towers took shape and islands upheaved, crowned with dark fortresses. To the west a vast and inky-black Gibraltar magically appeared. Soon the sea was but a prodigious river flowing within the high walls of an ancient glacier, a ghost of the icy stream that once ground its slow way ...
— Cavanaugh: Forest Ranger - A Romance of the Mountain West • Hamlin Garland
... inky cloak, good mother, Nor customary suits of solemn black, * * * * * But I have that within which passeth show; These but the trappings and the suits ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris
... aide-de-camp who stood waiting, looking out of the window at the gunboat which was now churning in toward the wharf, billows of inky smoke pouring from ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... Inky black shapes flitted back and forth through great clouds of dust, each carrying a basket on its head. Hoarse commands were shouted, demoniacal voices answered somewhere from the pit, and then would come ...
— A Woman's Journey through the Philippines - On a Cable Ship that Linked Together the Strange Lands Seen En Route • Florence Kimball Russel
... was Ferdinand Lopez mounted high on his horse,—for he had triumphed greatly in his marriage, and really felt that the world could give him no delight so great as to have her beside him, and her as his own. But the inky devil sat close upon his shoulders. Where would he be at the end of three months if Mr. Wharton would do nothing for him,—and if a certain venture in guano, to which he had tempted Sexty Parker, should not turn out the right way? He believed in the guano and he believed in Mr. Wharton, but it is ...
— The Prime Minister • Anthony Trollope
... to the Cyclostyle. I like the Cyclostyle ink; it is so inky. I do not think there is anyone who takes quite such a fierce pleasure in things being themselves as I do. The startling wetness of water excites and intoxicates me: the fieriness of fire, the steeliness of steel, the unutterable muddiness ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... only companions—but steadily persevered in his business. No amusements attracted him. He was never at any place of public resort. He was the talk of the town, though none had seen him unless they visited the little, dirty, inky office in which he was employed. He never seemed to know he was an object of curiosity, and when—as sometimes was the case—half a dozen persons would come expressly to see him, he never turned his head from his work, or seemed to ...
— The Memories of Fifty Years • William H. Sparks
... and delight in horsemanship, because horsemanship requires no brains; driving a "buggy" in good style is respectable, but "shoving along" a four-in-hand the highest exercise of human intellect, as for Milton and Shakspeare, and such inky-fingered old prigs, who never had a good horse in their lives, they despise such low fellows thoroughly. Their chief companions, or rather, their most intimate friends, are the fellows who hang about ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various
... inky odors of a newspaper plant took me by the throat during my progress in the whiny ...
— Blister Jones • John Taintor Foote
... men, each darting at once to his own post—and not an instant too soon. A huge white cloud seemed to leap upward through the inky sky like smoke from a cannon, a long line of foam glanced like a lightning flash across the dark sea, and then came a rush and a roar, and over went the ship on her beam ends, and every man on board was blinded, deafened, and strangled, all in ...
— Harper's Young People, April 27, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... slid beneath me, dropping away as my course took me further from the Highland borders. The Lowlands lay patched with inky shadows and splashes of moonlight. Domes with upstanding, rounded heads; plateaus of naked black rock, ten thousand feet below the zero-height; trenches, like valleys, ridged and pitted, naked in places like ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... She followed the Ranger's glance over the edge of the Ridge into the Valley where the smoke-stacks of the distant Smelter City belched inky clouds ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... at hand. The rich golden glow of night, to which the dwellers on the earth's surface are accustomed, as we passed to higher altitudes, had given place to a thin inky blue. This was obscured by no fleck or mist, and yet the stars shone through it faint and dim, despoiling the firmament of its glory. The same loss of power was manifest on the ushering in of day. The auroral flame, which ordinarily ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 25, November, 1859 • Various
... marched more swiftly after all, seeing that Stonewall Jackson would not march more slowly! Build a bridge! How could they build a bridge over the wide stream, angry itself, hoarsely and violently thrusting its way under an inky, tempestuous sky! They had no need to spare ammunition, and so they fired recklessly, cannon, carbine, and revolvers into the night after the ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... arm; the doctor has lighted a cigar, and seems to take much comfort in the mechanical puffs of smoke which he sends out into the darkness—not that there is anything of the inky pall about this, throwing a silvery path way along the mysterious waters of the romantic sea, and besides, the lanterns that flash on trees and from house fronts serve to render the scene far ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... exception of Sir Jasper, had retired to rest, and there was no sound, save the ticking of the old-fashioned time-piece, with its monotonous and never varying tick, tick, and the scratching noise made by the quill as it traced its inky characters on the yet incomplete codicil the Baronet was preparing. The candles had burned low in their sockets, and the fire on the hearth had died out unheeded by him who sat writing line after line. Suddenly a spasm seized him. He, ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... "A dancing nymph, belonging to the secondary order of Hindu divinities and known as an apsara." Here is a problem which the next convert to philately may undertake to solve. You see there are still worlds to conquer, in spite of all the inky battles that have been waged ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... Peter's genius needed to see and help old Dr. Chubb drench Buttercup with a can of condition-mixture. Now, could I supply all that, or enough of it to keep Peter from being murdered in his father's office? The inky bundle at my side began to look as if it weighed a ton, but my loyalty and affection for Peter made me know that I must put my back to the burden and raise it somehow. If it had been a simple burden, like three sick cows, ...
— Over Paradise Ridge - A Romance • Maria Thompson Daviess
... snow all the shipmen of Shoreby came clustering in an inky mass, and tailing out rearward in isolated clumps. Every man was shouting or screaming; every man was gesticulating with both arms in air; some one was continually falling; and to complete the picture, when one fell, a dozen would fall upon the top ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... victim was drawn down to the waiting beak, among the bases of the tentacles, all the tentacles awoke to dreadful life, writhing in aimless excitement, although there was no work for them to do. In a few seconds the fish was torn asunder and engulfed—those inky eyes the while unwinking and unmoved. A darker, livid hue passed fleetingly over the pallid body of the octopus. Then it slipped back under the shelter of the rock; and the writhing tentacles composed themselves once ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... on a locomotive in broad daylight. At night of course the dangers and risks are increased ten-fold. The head-light pierces into the inky darkness, and frequently exaggerates the size of objects on and near the track. The slightest misunderstanding, the most trivial misinterpretation of an order, the least negligence on the part of any one connected with or employed by the road, may involve a wreck, to the total destruction ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... returned home, shaking his head sorrowfully, but patting his purse comfortably; whence it appears that he suffered from a conflict of feelings, his mind being ill at ease, but his purse heavier. And when in the evening the Sultana came, attended only by one tall, formidable, and inky-black attendant, Hassan ushered her into the reception room of the harem, telling her that Lallakalla, the first wife of his master, would attend her immediately. Then he went out, and, having brought in the big ...
— Frivolous Cupid • Anthony Hope
... the fast-descending twilight was hovering over the level plain as we two went forth. In the west, the red tinge of the sun, which had just disappeared below the horizon, lingered well up in the sky. Against it we could see, clearly outlined in inky blackness, the distant Indian wigwams; while to the eastward the crimson light was reflected in fantastic glow upon the heaving surface of the lake. For a moment we paused, standing upon the slope of the mound on which the Fort was built, and gazed about us. There was little movement ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... taking upon us to be poets in despite of Pallas. Now, wherein we want desert, were a thankworthy labour to express. But if I knew, I should have mended myself; but as I never desired the title so have I neglected the means to come by it; only, overmastered by some thoughts, I yielded an inky tribute unto them. Marry, they that delight in poesy itself, should seek to know what they do, and how they do, especially look themselves in an unflattering glass of reason, if they ...
— A Defence of Poesie and Poems • Philip Sidney
... shudder of satisfaction passed through the ranks, from the "Robber" leading the forlorn-hope, with the Intelligence officer and the leader of the Tigers beside him, to little Meadows and his troop of the 20th Dragoons in rear. Then, preceded by a brief ten minutes of inky darkness, the storm broke. It does not rain in South Africa—water is voided from above in solid sheets. A wall of beating rain pours down, obliterating the landscape by day, intensifying the darkness by night. The column came to ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... Dimbula pitched and chopped, and swung and slewed, and lay down as though she were going to die, and got up as though she had been stung, and threw her nose round and round in circles half a dozen times as she dipped; for the gale was at its worst. It was inky black, in spite of the tearing white froth on the waves, and, to top everything, the rain began to fall in sheets, so that you could not see your hand before your face. This did not make much difference to the ironwork below, but it troubled ...
— Kipling Stories and Poems Every Child Should Know, Book II • Rudyard Kipling
... bottom of the steps the soldier stopped and took aim at the lad. With a backward sweep of his sword, Hal knocked the chandelier crashing to the floor, throwing the hall into inky darkness, and with a quick leap was several steps ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... know when I have envied anybody more than I did the other day the directors and clerks of the Zecca. There they sit at inky deal desks, counting out rolls of money, and curiously weighing the irregular and battered coinage of which Venice boasts; and just over their heads, occupying the place which in a London countinghouse would be occupied by a commercial almanack, ...
— The Life of John Ruskin • W. G. Collingwood
... found in sleeping-car dressing- rooms had taught Emma McChesney to rise betimes that she might avoid contact with certain frowsy, shapeless beings armed with bottles of milky liquids, and boxes of rosy pastes, and pencils that made arched and inky lines; beings redolent of bitter almond, and violet toilette water; beings in doubtful corsets and green silk petticoats perfect as to accordion-plaited flounce, but showing slits and tatters farther up; beings jealously guarding their ten inches of mirror space ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... this spring there is another hole, the water of which is quite cold, and of an inky colour. This hole has attributes opposite to the other, that is—a body will sink quickly in its water. The blacks have a tradition that a gin jumped into it, and was never seen again. These springs are on ...
— Reminiscences of Queensland - 1862-1869 • William Henry Corfield
... rained cats and dogs and hammer-handles," said one of the soldiers afterward. "It was inky dark—darker than I have ever known it to be anywhere on the plains. The water made a muddy pond of the whole camp, and the trenches were half filled in no time. Everything was blown helter-skelter by the furious wind, and some of our outfits we never ...
— American Boy's Life of Theodore Roosevelt • Edward Stratemeyer
... one of the physical traits that so often make her race uncomely to our eyes; even her nose was good; her very feet were well made, her hands were slim and shapely, the fingers long and neatly jointed, and there was nothing inky in her amazing blackness, her red blood so enriched it. Yet she was as really African in her strong, eager mind as in her color, and the English language, on her tongue, was like a painter's palette and brushes in the hands of a monkey. Her first question to me after my last want was supplied came ...
— The Flower of the Chapdelaines • George W. Cable
... seem to recognize a genius and my P. O. box is always filled with long yellow comebacks—slip enclosed "Sorry we find your valuable Mss. unavailable for our publication, etc." However, nothing beats trying but failure. And although everything on this mud ball looks inky, and I am once more Past Grand Master of Hoodoo Philosophy, I shall grit my teeth and push ahead as I have done a thousand times before. My debts are growing like a snow ball and although I am not entirely ...
— Letters of a Dakota Divorcee • Jane Burr
... or golden rufous, beneath less brilliant and more yellow; wing membranes inky black, with rich orange stripes along the fingers extending in ...
— Natural History of the Mammalia of India and Ceylon • Robert A. Sterndale
... now—they've been drained. But the place would be too damp for a dwelling-house. It's all right as offices. They burn enormous fires. The rooms are quite charming. This is what happens to the stately homes of England—they buzz with inky clerks, or their equivalent. Stateliness is on ...
— Touch and Go • D. H. Lawrence
... see a pretty sight?" he said. She nodded and followed him out. For miles in front of them stretched the hilly country, dotted here and there in the half light by clumps of trees and bushes showing inky black in the night, while in the distance stretched the mountains, irregular, dark, and mysterious looking. Over all shone the moon, while the stars—but who can describe the stars ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... man usually insisted that notes in the palm of the left hand were safe from detection, only to be met by the objection that they had to be written in ink, and if one's hand perspired, "and it was sure as hell to," nothing was left but an inky smear. Another held that a fellow could fasten a rubber band on his forearm and attach the notes to those, pulling them down when needed and then letting them snap back out of sight into safety. "But," one of the conspirators was sure ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... afternoon's journey began to roll hoarsely over the prairie. Only a few minutes elapsed before the whole sky was densely shrouded, and the prairie and some clusters of woods in front assumed a purple hue beneath the inky shadows. Suddenly from the densest fold of the cloud the flash leaped out, quivering again and again down to the edge of the prairie; and at the same instant came the sharp burst and the long rolling peal of the thunder. A cool wind, filled with the smell of rain, just ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... and was captured to the wild and jubilant shouting of the boys in blue and gray. Pause fell at nine o'clock. The Americans were mustering for the final terrible rush. The moon had gone behind a cloud, and the darkness was inky. Then a shout from the Canadian side split the very welkin. Hercules Scott had arrived with his twelve hundred men on a run, breathless and tired from a march and countermarch of twenty miles. The Americans took up the yell; for fresh reserves had joined them, too, and Lundy's Lane became a bedlam ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Hypholoma perplexum, often grows in clusters, and so does the inky Coprinus, C. atramentarius, also the glistening Coprinus, C. micaceus. The honey-colored mushroom, Armillaria melloea, is often found in crowded clusters, and this growth is common ...
— Among the Mushrooms - A Guide For Beginners • Ellen M. Dallas and Caroline A. Burgin
... jewels, so curiously brilliant were its waters and mixed of so many hues. Its course among the rocks was a flash of foaming rapids, broken here and there by pools of exquisite blue-green, deepening into inky-violet under the shadow of the cliffs. And such cliffs!—one, two, three thousand feet high; not deep-colored like those about St. Helen's, but of steadfast mountain hues and of magnificent forms,—buttresses and spires; crags whose bases were lost in untrodden forests; needle-sharp pinnacles ...
— Clover • Susan Coolidge
... was the virtual end of the canvass. Seen again, as he viewed it now, the town would look raw and provincial despite patriotic throes of self-deception. On moonlit nights the New Babylon Electric Light and Power Company hoarded its energies, and an inky pall accordingly lay over the muddy streets which the pale melon rind in the clouded zenith did nothing to dissipate. The contrast between this niggardliness and the midnight brilliance of up-town Broadway was inevitable, and the jolting Tuscarora House free 'bus came readily ...
— The Henchman • Mark Lee Luther
... providence, which the very thoughts of it might convert a heathen! We had been to sea about five days when a dreadful storm riz. Oh, marster! the inky blackness of the sky, the roaring of the wind, the raging of the sea, the leaping of the waves and the rocking of that wessel—and every once in a while sea and ship all ablaze with the blinding lightning—was a thing to see, not to hear tell of! I tell you, marster, that looked like ...
— Hidden Hand • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... one side behind it. A silver crescent, tinged with red. From this near viewpoint, all of the little globe's disc was visible. The shadowed portion lay dimly red, mysteriously; the sunlit crescent—widening visibly is we approached—was gleaming silver. Inky moonlike shadows in the hollows, brilliant light upon the mountain heights. The seas lay in gray patches. The convexity of the disc was sharply defined. So small a world! Fair and beautiful, shrouded ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science April 1930 • Various
... buck a score of times. Jim watched the sky anxiously, very disgusted with himself. He knew they had no chance of getting home dry, but at least they must be out of the timber before the storm broke. It was coming very near now—the thunder was more frequent, and jagged lightning tore rents in the inky curtain that covered the sky. He took Monarch by the head, and sent him tearing along the track, passing the boys—Wally riding hard on Nan, and Cecil sitting back on Betty with a pale face. Before him Bobs was galloping freely, Norah ...
— Mates at Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... pink and white, flying bannerets, go out to meet her. With their gay colours, the white steamer, and the gleam of brass-work, you have a subject for a picture after the style of Van Beers—if there was only time! I just make a modest grab at it with an inky pen. ...
— From Edinburgh to India & Burmah • William G. Burn Murdoch
... saw that he had understood the matter better than I. He put a hook into the nose of this huge monster, wallowing in his inky pool and bespattering the passers-by; he dragged him to the land and made him tractable. One suit followed another; one editor was sued, I thinly half-a-dozen times; some of them found themselves under a ...
— Precaution • James Fenimore Cooper
... the inky cloak, Mr. Applebite," replied Mrs. Greatgirdle, "that truly indicates regret; but it's here," (laying her hand upon her left side): "no—there, under his liver wing, that he feels it, poor bird! It's a shocking ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... Inky words take a long time to write, but Leonie's perilous career towards the river was merely the matter of a few cyclonic minutes, leaving the drivers of bullock and water-buffalo carts, gharries and trams no time in which to make an ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... played the game of the cuttlefish, which when pursued by its enemies darkens the water behind it by a sudden outgush of inky fluid and thus escapes the eye ...
— Edison's Conquest of Mars • Garrett Putnam Serviss
... cliffs gleamed faintly through the darkness, a sense of tragic certainty came to me that a summons of war would come to England, asking for her manhood. Perhaps it would come to-night. The second mate of the boat came to the side of the steamer and stared across the inky waters, on which there were shifting pathways of white radiance, as the searchlights of ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... (hammered out of railing); all logic reduced to this one primitive thesis, An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!—Peltier, dolefully aware of it, ducks low; escapes unscathed to England; to urge there the inky war anew; to have Trial by Jury, in due season, and deliverance by young Whig eloquence, ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... the lower wharf. Before us loomed the Santa Teresa; we passed so close beneath her huge black sides that we heard the wind whistling through her rigging. When she, too, was gone, the river lay bare before us; silver when the moon shone, of an inky blackness when it was obscured by one of the ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston
... the trees, against an inky sky veined with lightning, three men came out upon the further edge of the hog-back which they had traversed a few minutes before, and seated themselves there In the shelter of the crag. ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... sky, and moved, though no wind blew. Where the sun's rays touched them they were gold and red and purple, but above these of an inky blackness. They took strange shapes those clouds, and marshalled themselves like a host gathering for battle. There were the commanders moving quickly to and fro; there the chariots, and there the sullen lines of footmen with their gleaming spears. Now one cloud higher than ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... of evening was already deepening to darkness, a gloom more noticeable far up in the heavens than among the myriad of lights in the city streets. For not a star was visible in the murky sky, and away in the west huge banks of inky clouds were sweeping up toward the zenith, indicating the rapid ...
— With Links of Steel • Nicholas Carter
... and shivering at the bare idea, raced along the passage and up the staircase with his youthful ally to the dormitory. There they found they had been anticipated by the blanket-snatchers; and as they entered, one of these, the hero of the inky head, was deliberately abstracting one of those articles of comfort ...
— The Fifth Form at Saint Dominic's - A School Story • Talbot Baines Reed
... theoretically, much superior trenches, although very cramped and narrow. I waited for another star shell in order to see the view out in front. One hadn't long to wait around there for star shells. One very soon sailed up, nice and white, into the inky sky, and I saw how we were placed with regard to the Germans, the hill and Messines. We were quite near a little stream, a tributary of the Douve, in fact it ran along the front of our trenches. Immediately on the ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... canals and look the eloquence of love into the soft eyes of patrician beauties, while the gay gondolier in silken doublet touched his guitar and sang as only gondoliers can sing! This the famed gondola and this the gorgeous gondolier!—the one an inky, rusty old canoe with a sable hearse-body clapped on to the middle of it, and the other a mangy, barefooted guttersnipe with a portion of his raiment on exhibition which should have been sacred from public scrutiny. Presently, as ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... standing on her head as I've never known ship do before. Consequence was the cargo got shifted and there was a list to port, so that every time she ducked that side, she shipped half the channel. Skies black as thunder and the sea the colour of inky water. We had the devil's own job getting the cargo straight. Just imagine a black rolling dungeon full of great packing cases weighing about half a ton each all gone murderous mad. Just imagine getting down among them, as practically all hands had to do, save the ...
— Jaffery • William J. Locke
... provoked over his failure, and, when he wasn't helping Inky Jed get out the bogus tickets, he followed the show and tried to prevail on Harry to play another trick on me. Just what it was Harry doesn't know. He refused to do it, and then he came and confessed to me. So much for Harry. He's a sorry boy, and I think he'll ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... scattered little town she loved. Everywhere around were the eternal, undulating hills, enclosing the Valley in a world by itself. The night had just lately closed in. The sky was clear and presented a wall and a dome of almost inky blue. Away due south, right over the peak of a hill, on the wall of blue hung a great star, bright and scintillating like a floating soap bubble, while a handspan straight above that again a thin, crescent moon lay coldly on its back sending up a reflection of its own streaky, ghostly ...
— The Spoilers of the Valley • Robert Watson
... while the Fijian gathered a pile of rotten wood, but before he could set fire to the heap I was on my feet clawing my way into the darkness in front. From somewhere out of the inky night came the voice of Edith Herndon lifted up in a little Italian melody that I had heard her singing the night we left Levuka. It seemed to me that she suspected my near presence, and that she was singing to guide me to the spot where the party ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... swine!" sez Hammy, after he began to quiet down a little. "I would I had his treacherous throat within my grasp, that I might squeeze his inky soul back to the lower depths from ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... adversary and I had stripped to the shoes; and the chill of the night enveloped our bodies like a wet sheet. The man was better at fencing than myself; he was vastly taller than I, being of a stature almost gigantic, and proportionately strong. In the inky blackness of the shed it was impossible to see his eyes; and from the suppleness of the wands, I did not like to trust to a parade. I made up my mind accordingly to profit, if I might, by my defect; and as soon as the signal should be given, to throw myself down and lunge at the same moment. It ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... that filtered in from above showed him a large, low-ceiled vault from which several doorways led off into inky darkness, but there was no need to thread an unknown way, for there before him lay the objects of his search—the mad brute had the girl upon the floor, and gorilla-like fingers were clutching frantically at her throat as ...
— The Return of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... was that he found himself sitting up, wide awake. He had a distinct impression that he had been roused by the sound of a human voice. How long he had slept he could not tell. The lamp had gone out and the room was in inky darkness. As he sat listening, all at once he heard a sound of some ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Geological Survey • Robert Shaler
... he lays the lash Straight across her inky back, Till the mountains wake and shout Echoes to ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... than that on which the house stood, and beyond the brow of this declivity the sky had the appearance of a huge fire, whose bright-red flames shot up into great clouds of rolling, whirling smoke, their inky hue gradually expanding until the whole sky became covered. Still the flames raged on in a weird stillness broken only by the sound of rushing wind, the crackling and swaying of branches, or a low, distant moan that warned us the storm was on its way. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... like his great elder brother, rather lacking in height, but his head and throat, and the manner of their rising from his shoulders, were truly beautiful, His colouring was unusual—the ivory pallor of his skin, the inky blackness of his densely thick hair, the heavy lids of his glowing eyes were all Oriental, and they gave a touch of mystery to his face when it fell into gravity—but there was generally a flash of white teeth behind his silky moustache, and a laugh ...
— [19th Century Actor] Autobiographies • George Iles
... She slipped from his embrace, blushing, glancing at the Three shyly, half-fearfully. And again I saw the tenderness creep into the inky, flame-shot orbs of the woman being; and a tenderness in the others too—as though they regarded ...
— The Moon Pool • A. Merritt
... he saw the innkeeper and the waiter carrying chairs from the lumber room downstairs into the empty room, where Ann dusted them. Then they carried in a small table from another room. Superintendent Galloway, with inky fingers and a red face, and a sheaf of foolscap papers in his hand, came bustling out of the bar parlour to superintend the arrangements. When the chairs had been placed to his liking he ordered the innkeeper to bring him a glass ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... winds, before unheard, Forth from their cloudy caves begin to blow, Till all the surface of the deep is stirr'd, Like to the panting grief it hides below; And heaven is cover'd with a stormy rack, Soiling the waters with its inky black. ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... handed, stood his post and held off the patrol until assistance arrived. We had orders to hold this front at all cost. By the use of field glasses we could see considerable activity in the villages in front of us and on our flanks, and during the night the inky blackness was constantly being illuminated by flares and rockets from many different points. It is the writer's opinion that these flares were used for the purpose of guiding and directing the movements of the troops that on the following day annihilated the platoon ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... their finny inhabitants; and unless we can also change the characters of the surrounding country, and the bed of the watery basin, we shall seek in vain to people "the margins of our moorish floods" with delicate trout, lustrous without any red of hue within, in room of those inky-coated, muddy-tasted tribes, "indigenae an advectae," which now dwell within our ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various
... like a silver stream, except where it was interrupted and bridged over by jagged black shadows. The chapel itself was black, the clustering trees around it were black also; the porch seemed to cover an inky well of shadow; the windows were rayless and dead, and in the chancel one still left open showed a yawning vault of obscurity within. Nevertheless, she opened the door softly, glided into the dark depths, and made her ...
— A Protegee of Jack Hamlin's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... INKY PEN.—We sympathise much with your anxiety, but we can only say to you as we say to all who wish to succeed in literary work, you must try and try again for a long time before you will succeed, and success is not even ...
— The Girl's Own Paper, Vol. VIII, No. 357, October 30, 1886 • Various
... appeared again; but this time, when halfway up the skies, it had changed its direction until it was heading directly over the spot where the two thrilled campers were watching; and as it approached they saw its color fade slowly until it had disappeared completely from sight among the inky patches between the stars overhead. For minutes the two were not able to locate it—until Jim, once again, had pointed to a faint red spot that grew in color and intensity as it drew away from the zenith. Once again it had disappeared over the rim of the western world—and from then on there ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... her hair dressing parlor, and her foreign face, with its natural olive tones, was very much fixed up with many touches of peach and carmine, as well as darker hints under the eyes; and her lashes—well, perhaps Dolorez had been crying inky tears; that was the effect one gathered from a glance at ...
— Jane Allen: Junior • Edith Bancroft
... house looked dark and forbidding, like everything else under this wild gray sky; but Noll had long ago ceased to consider it as resembling a prison. It was home, now, and so took a fairer, brighter shape in his eyes. Beyond, the pines stood up against the sky, full of sombreness and inky shadow. ...
— Culm Rock - The Story of a Year: What it Brought and What it Taught • Glance Gaylord
... produced a hymn-book from his pocket and opened it and found his place with the same air of smug efficiency. Robert had no book. He longed for one. He knew that the clergyman was watching him again. His companion nudged him, and by a stab of a stumpy, inky forefinger indicated the verse which he himself was singing in an aggressive treble. But Robert only stared helplessly. At another time he might have recognized "God—love—dove—" and other words of one syllable, ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... that Agar devoted too much thought to his work—in strong contrast, perhaps, to the literary tendency of his day. He nibbled the leisure end of his penholder too much, and allowed the business extremity thereof to dry in inky conglomeration. The result was a distinct sense of labour in the style of the work. After having called in vain, perhaps for assistance, the scribe returned to the contemplation of his latest effort. The book was one of Letts's diaries, three days in a page, which ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... had died from out the western sky, the waters of the Georgian Bay lay colorless at his feet, night was covering the world and stealing with inky blackness into his soul. ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... dejection. 'If he wakes not I must go away. I cannot do it so,' he told himself, as finally he sat down by the wall. It grew dusk. He was tired, sick, giddy; his head dropped, he slept. When he woke up, as with a snort he did, it was inky dark. Now was the time, not even God could see him now. He turned himself about; inch by inch he crept forward, edging along by the bed's edge. Painfully he got on his knees, threw up his head. 'Jehane, my robbed lost soul!' he howled, ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... perform your part well, and have employ'd oyl of Vitriol Cleer and Strong enough) see the Darkness of the liquor presently begin to be discuss'd, and grow pretty Cleer and Transparent, losing its Inky Blackness, which you may again restore to it by the affusion of a small quantity of a very strong Solution of Salt of Tartar. And though neither of these Atramentous liquors will seem other than very Pale Ink, if you write with a clean Pen dipt in them, yet that is common to them ...
— Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours (1664) • Robert Boyle
... for they felt they would be blown away if they exposed themselves there to the full force of the wind. Looking round, the scene was terrible. The surface of the sea was almost hidden by the clouds of spray blown from the heads of the waves; a sky that was inky black hung overhead. The sea, save for the white heads, was of similar hue, but ahead there seemed a gleam of light. Jim Tucker, holding on by the rail, raised himself two or three feet higher to have a better ...
— A Chapter of Adventures • G. A. Henty
... was, all the scouts admitted. Some of them were filled with a certain awe, as they saw how inky the clouds looked. But what boy, or man either, for that matter, is there who has not felt this sensation when watching scurrying clouds that tell of an ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts Afloat • George A. Warren
... the west and its approach was preceded by an inky black sky which, coupled with thoughts of the havoc of Sunday's storm in Nebraska, caused a general consternation. A heavy downpour accompanied by thunder ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... in itself," he said afterwards, with an apologetic allusion to his anxiety, "and might not matter to another man. But any little misadventure—a yesterday's collar or a razor-cut, or even an inky finger—would render me helpless in dealing with people. They would simply look at the weak spot, and one would lose all authority. Some of the juniors smile when I impress on them to be very careful about ...
— McClure's Magazine, Volume VI, No. 3. February 1896 • Various
... The Englishman would send for the certificates, but his agent would not find them. The abduction? He would carry it through as he had promised. It was five thousand crowns in addition to his hundred thousand. He was rich! He shook his hand toward the inky sky, toward the palace, toward all that signified the ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... vivid flash of lightning cut from one black hill in the clouds and buried itself behind another. As if piercing the fathomless blanket and renting holes in its inky cover, a downpour of rain broke through, and even before reaching the earth it could now be seen descending in a heavy mist ...
— The Girl Scouts at Bellaire - Or Maid Mary's Awakening • Lilian C. McNamara Garis
... them by the hour. For although it may be news to some closet ophiologists, serpents are not all so mute as we think them. At all events this kind, the Philodryas aestivus—a beautiful and harmless colubrine snake, two and a half to three feet long, marked all over with inky black on a vivid green ground—not only emitted a sound when lying undisturbed in his den, but several individuals would hold a conversation together which seemed endless, for I generally fell asleep before it finished. A hissing conversation it is true, but not unmodulated or without considerable ...
— Far Away and Long Ago • W. H. Hudson
... gave the fall its name stood round us, dark and solemn, waving their long arms to and fro in the gusty winds that swept the valley. It was a wild picture. The pine-trees standing in inky blackness the rushing water, white with foam-above, the rifted thunder-clouds. Soon the lightning began to flash and the voice of the thunder to sound above the roar of the cataract. My Indians made me a rough shelter with cross-poles and a sail-cloth, ...
— The Great Lone Land - A Narrative of Travel and Adventure in the North-West of America • W. F. Butler
... Demetrius stared down into the inky water. "It will not give back those who are gone forever. Achilles could ask Hephaestus for his armour, but he could not put breath into the body of Patroclus. Plutus and Cratus[162] are, after all, but weaklings. A! ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... closed upon him at the same time—a short scuffle ensued— then the long bony heads separated, and the huge reptiles were seen swimming off again—each with a morsel in his teeth. A few bubbles and blotches of red froth mottling the inky surface of the water, were all that remained where the hound ...
— The Quadroon - Adventures in the Far West • Mayne Reid
... the dark with the wind in one's face at a kind of funeral goose step it is very easy to fall asleep. The odds were that we should blunder into some Turkish picket or patrol. Looking back it was hard to realize that the inky masses behind, like a column of following smoke, was an army on the march. The stillness was so profound one heard nothing save the howl of the jackal, the cry of fighting geese, and the ungreased wheel ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... face—striking usually in the eyes or mouth—and then again her horse would stumble and almost throw her over his head, as he sank, knee deep, into some unexpected hole. All of this, with the thousand and one noises that broke the still worse silence of the inky night soon began to work upon her nerves and make her fearful. The road was full of dangers aside from stumbling horses and broken necks, for many were the stories of murder and robbery committed along the ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... breathlessly, feeling her way around the hatch, "we've been out on the prow for hours, and it was simply gorgeous. All inky black except the phosphorescence, miles and miles of it! And some dolphins, all covered with silver, kept racing with us and leaping clear out of the water, like wriggly bits of fire. And the stars—why, Mr. Hascombe's been telling me the most fascinating ...
— The Honorable Percival • Alice Hegan Rice
... and the water was standing on one side of me in a pool. It took me so by surprise that I was bewildered. Finally I decided to leave that place and seek shelter. I wrung the water out of my blanket and groped about in the inky darkness and went into the engine room, where I stayed until morning. That drenching rain seemed to affect all who were exposed to it and resulted in severe colds in every instance. The twenty-fourth of March we were about fifteen miles from ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... least three sheets to start with—no Greek lines of punishment in his boyhood had ever appeared such a task as this. He found himself scribbling profiles on the paper, chiselled profiles with inky ...
— Three Weeks • Elinor Glyn
... impossible. It is all knocked to pieces with traffic, and frequently pitted with shell holes, and as a rule very narrow. There is no moon, which is just as well, and no lights can be carried. The driver feels his way through inky blackness by some sixth sense begotten of many such journeys. Every now and then a flare lights up the broken cobbles for a few seconds. His wheels are only a couple of feet from the mud on either side, and ...
— On the King's Service - Inward Glimpses of Men at Arms • Innes Logan
... a dull, booming, subterranean sound was heard, and instantly afterwards, with a crash like thunder, the whole of the green circle beneath slipped off, and from a yawning rent under it burst forth with irresistible fury, a thick inky-coloured torrent, which, rising almost breast high, fell upon the devoted royalist soldiers, who were advancing right in its course. Unable to avoid the watery eruption, or to resist its fury when it came ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... won't interfere in the least with the flow of inky inspiration," laughed Beau. "And as for your mother, I'm in love with her, as you are aware! I admire her almost as much as I do Lady Bruce-Errington—and that's saying a great deal! By-the-by, if Phil can get through his share ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... a step or two. Beyond was inky darkness. If only a speck of light were down below! Why did I shut the door? Go on I could not. I turned my face upward, where the friendly light, packing up its robes of every hue for the journey of a night, looked kindly in. And so I went back, and sat in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... the woman who picked for her companion the easiest path through the inky-black alley, and with her own hands she pulled down noiselessly the broken slats of the rotting wooden wall at the back of the house. And then, soon, they were inside, with the reeking heat of the boxed-up house and the knowledge that at any moment ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... for examination by some learned Board. If any one thing definitely committed me to poesy it was that poem; and as has nearly always happened to me, the crisis of discovery came in a flash. We were all there ranked at our inky desks on some drowsy afternoon. The books lay open before us, the lesson, I suppose, prepared. But what followed had not been prepared—that ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... strolled back slowly through the inky summer dark, finding the house hot and close when they came in. Margaret went upstairs, hearing her mother's apologetic, "Oh, Dad, why didn't I give you back your club?" as she passed the dining-room door. She knew Mother hated whist, and ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... guess of what it was that France or the world might be with child: nobody, till the birth in 1789, and even for a generation afterwards. France is weakly and unwieldy, has strange enough longings for chalky, inky, visionary, foolish substances, and may be in the family-way for ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XXI. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... bell for her coat. The night, though windy and dark, was warm. Stars shone out from unexpected places, pencil-like streaks of inky-black clouds stretched menacingly across the sky. The wind came down from the moors above with a dull boom which seemed echoed by the waves beating against the giant rocks. The beads of the bare trees among which ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... rolled in volumes over the mountain tops; their summits still bright and snowy, but the lower parts of an inky blackness. The rain began to patter down in broad and scattered drops; the wind freshened, and curled up the waves; at length, it seemed as if the bellying clouds were torn open by the mountain tops, and complete torrents of rain came rattling down. The lightning leaped from cloud to cloud, and streamed ...
— McGuffey's Fifth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxx. p. 178, has given us some amusing particulars of Steevens's literary life: of his coming from Hampstead to London, at the chill break of day, when the overhanging clouds were yet charged with the 'inky' purple of night—in order, like a true book-chevalier, to embrace the first dank impression, or proof sheet, of his own famous octavo edition of Shakspeare; and of Mr. Bulmer's sumptuous impression of the text of the same. All this is well enough, and savours of the proper spirit ...
— Bibliomania; or Book-Madness - A Bibliographical Romance • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... an easy change? One would think so at first, on seeing how quickly it is performed by the action of the grubs. Moreover, certain mushrooms, the coprini, liquefy spontaneously and turn into a black fluid. One of them bears the expressive name of the inky mushroom (Coprinus atramentarius, BULL.) and dissolves into ink of its own accord. The conversion, in certain cases, is singularly rapid. One day, I was drawing one of our prettiest coprini (Coprinus sterquilinus, FRIES), which ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... underneath the Dragon's cave, or he would have done great mischief. As it was, the people on the coast looked out across the water toward Japan, and saw three inky-black clouds stretching from the ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... bail, which may be allowed to be somewhat poignant, are admitted to interfere; and, as wrath and revenge commonly strike in the dark, the colors are laid on with a grossness which I am convinced must often defeat its own purpose. The fish that casts an inky cloud about him that his enemies may not find him, cannot more obscure himself by that device than the blackening representations of these angry advertisers must inevitably serve to cloak and screen the persons of those who have injured ...
— The Works of Charles Lamb in Four Volumes, Volume 4 • Charles Lamb
... of sickness on board and plenty for Gudrid to do. The wind blew gaps in the fog, and as it stiffened tore it into flying shreds and rags. The ship heaved and lurched in water now inky-black. They got steerage way, and ran before a gale which they judged came from the south-west; they held this course for many days, hoping to get a sight of land. And land was nearer than they thought, for one morning Thorstan saw a darkening in the fog, a kind of shape, ...
— Gudrid the Fair - A Tale of the Discovery of America • Maurice Hewlett
... that wild, swift ride, we found a moral which we close with—for the printer-boy with inky fingers is waiting for this paragraph—Never take the last train when you can help it. Much of the trouble in life is caused by the fact that people, in their engagements, wait til' the last minute. The seven-o'clock train will take them to the right place if everything goes straight, but in ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... happened. I suppose there is some theory that has been written down in books to explain how these things work, at any rate to the satisfaction of the fellow who wrote the book. But Grim, referring to it afterward, called it naked luck. I would rather agree with Grim than argue with any inky theorist on earth, having seen too many theories upset. Luck looks to me like a sweeter lady, and more worshipful than any of the goddesses they rename nowadays and then dissect in clinics. At any rate, by naked luck I prodded Abdul Ali where ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... of the cottage lamp and then hurrying on to the public house beyond, where the hostler frowned moodily at being called out to care for a stranger's horse, the stranger meanwhile turning back a foot to where the cottage lamp shone a beacon light through the inky darkness. The stranger reached the little gate and, undoing the fastening, went hurrying up the walk, his step upon the crackling snow catching Maddy's ear at last and making her wonder who could be coming there on such a night ...
— Aikenside • Mary J. Holmes
... spread around them, the whole sky and lake were faintly shining though the goddess herself had not yet topped the trees. The shadows were becoming blacker and more sharply defined. In front of them the point loomed, inky black. Like a bird of the night the little canoe shot towards it, skimmed its darkness and then slipped, effortless, into shining silver space. The smile of the moon! Pleasing old hypocrite! Always she smiles the same upon two ...
— Up the Hill and Over • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... Street, and Johnson began that life of struggle against debt, ridicule and unkind condition that was to continue for forty-seven years; never out of debt, never free from attacks of enemies; a life of wordy warfare and inky broadsides against cant, affectation and untruth—with the weapons of his dialectics always kept well burnished by constant use; hated and loved; jeered and ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... it was a cry,' Frank thought, and as he wrapped the body in the blankets and buffalo robe as tenderly and reverently as if the stiffened limbs had belonged to his mother, he saw distinctly before him as if painted upon canvas the driving gale, the inky sky, the half-opened door, through which the sleet was driving, the light behind, and the frantic, freezing woman, screaming for help, while only the winds made answer, and the pitiless storm ...
— Tracy Park • Mary Jane Holmes
... he had been up all night. The team was harnessed and hitched to the wagon. The landlord was there to see the sleepy minstrels off. The last good-byes were scarcely spoken ere the door of the big room was closed by the landlord and the lights put out. It was inky dark to Alfred as he sat on the high seat by the driver and ...
— Watch Yourself Go By • Al. G. Field
... make any mistake about that. A darkness that was almost inky settled down over them. Bending through the hatchway, the young sailing master yelled to Powell Seaton to switch on the ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... standing was sinking. Almost before she was aware of the startling movement of the floor, which, after it had begun to move, seemed to fall rather than sink, it stopped suddenly, perhaps eight feet below. The floor above closed silently over her head, and she found herself alone with the inky man in almost total darkness. She was too badly frightened to scream, or even to speak, and stood in silence, awaiting with benumbed senses whatever calamity ...
— The Touchstone of Fortune • Charles Major
... bellow. Then other tentacles waved in the moonlight, and in a flash the tyranosaur was enmeshed as by a score of slimy cables. He was not altogether helpless. Suddenly the steam shovel of a beak buried itself in the jelly body of the water animal, and there spurted out a flood of inky liquid. The water animal emitted a sickening gurgle. But the tyranosaur's advantage was only temporary. Closer and closer drew the ugly, scabrous tentacles. The tyranosaur never had a chance. Its green eyes ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the small funereal cedars and monumental poplar-trees rise strangled from the underbrush, the dark-brown streams flowing into inky mill-ponds, the close, small pines, scarcely large enough to moan, but trying to do so in a baby tone, and her eyes turned to the sand, where she was soon to be. Not agony nor repentance nor any hope of escape fluttered ...
— The Entailed Hat - Or, Patty Cannon's Times • George Alfred Townsend
... least, on that portentous morn, 480 The sixteenth story, where himself was born, His patrimonial garret, fell to ground, And pale Edina shuddered at the sound: Strewed were the streets around with milk-white reams, Flowed all the Canongate with inky streams; This of his candour seemed the sable dew, That of his valour showed the bloodless hue; And all with justice deemed the two combined The mingled emblems of his mighty mind. But Caledonia's goddess hovered o'er 490 The field, and saved him from the wrath of Moore; From either pistol snatched ...
— Byron's Poetical Works, Vol. 1 • Byron
... the wind, raging and roaring like discharges of artillery, and not like wind as known in our seas, seemed to have put out all the lights of heaven. The sky was inky black, and quite close to their heads: and the wind still increasing, the vessel came down to her extreme bearings, and it was plain she would soon be on her beam ends. Sharpe and Dodd met, and holding on by the life-lines, applied their speaking ...
— Hard Cash • Charles Reade
... another animal took to the water, then the new-comer dislodged the other with a snap of the jaws, and the first, with a complaining grunt, surged down the channel. Venning could see nothing in the inky blackness, but he knew the beast had seen the Okapi from the short note of alarm it sounded. Immediately the alarm was repeated. Snorts and splashes arose from all sides. Some great beast who had been standing unnoticed ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... Bok said as he took one from the President's case. He looked at the cigar and remembered all he had read of Benjamin Harrison's black cigars. This one was black—inky black—and big. ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok
... the inky pen beside it, was an unfinished sermon, with a sentence broken in the midst, where his thoughts had ceased to gush out upon the page two days before. He knew that it was himself, the thin and white-cheeked minister, who had ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... was blurred, and vague, and distant from his ears. He fell. He knew he fell. For hours it seemed to him he continued to fall in an abyss of blackness that was wholly horrifying. It was a blackness peopled with hideous invisible shadows. So impenetrable was the inky void that even sound had no ...
— The Forfeit • Ridgwell Cullum |
