"Rumbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... practical result would be that the clergy would enjoy bigger salaries and more popular respect. We had only got thus far in the investigation of the subject when our conversation was interrupted by the rumbling of a peasant's cart. In a few seconds our friend Batushka appeared, and the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... at the hatch to allow the Hoobat freedom in its hunt. And Sinbad crouched behind them, snarling and giving voice to a rumbling growl which was his negative ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... and found it desperate; discussed the immediate future to discover it threatening. Yet the gloom was irradiated by the glowing light of the prospective future; the rumbling of present fears was lost in the tinkling music of their voices, striking ...
— Once Aboard The Lugger • Arthur Stuart-Menteth Hutchinson
... was raging and dashing its huge, slow, foamy waves along the coast with the rumbling sound of thunder. The waves followed each other close, rolling in as high as mountains, scattering the foam ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... talking to Doctor Norbury, I could hear him knocking out the nails and wrenching up the lids; and when I entered the doorway leading to the stairs, I could still hear him. Just as I closed the staircase door behind me, I heard a rumbling noise from above; then all ...
— The Vanishing Man • R. Austin Freeman
... Parthenon not of the great and of the few and of the gods, but of the great many, where, through mighty corridors, day and night, democracy wanders and sleeps and chatters and is sad and lives and dies, streets rumbling below. The hotel—the crowd fireside—being more than any other one thing, perhaps, the thing that this civilization is about, the token of what it loves and of how it lives, is bound to be a masterpiece ...
— Crowds - A Moving-Picture of Democracy • Gerald Stanley Lee
... silent. There was a low, rumbling, awful noise, neither like distant thunder nor the report of cannon—nor, indeed, anything else I ever heard; the earth seemed to sink under our feet, and then as if it were being crushed together—rocks, ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... shortly. "Your mother sent you two umbrellas, but I don't think we'd better start now; the storm is 'most ready to break. Guess you were having such a good time you never heard the rumbling." ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... mild, the night clear and bright. Cayrol's carriage rolled rapidly along the broad avenue of the park shadowed by tall trees, the lanterns throwing, as they passed, their quivering light on the thickets. The rumbling carriages took the last guests to the railway station. It was past midnight. A nightingale began singing his song of love ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... advanced quivering towards Vooda in short, abrupt springs, all the things hanging about him clashed and rattled together. He bent down and beat the ground with the palms of his hands and the soles of his feet, making the while a low rumbling in his throat, the apple of which worked up and down. His eyes glared and his nostrils dilated. The snake hissed, and wound itself round his neck and limbs. The whole audience appeared to be ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... ever dreamed of asking or giving quarter, in which a disabling wound was immediately followed by death upon the spear-points of the enemy, and the salient characteristics of which were continuous ear-splitting yells, the shrill whistling of the savages, the rumbling thunder of thousands of fiercely rushing feet, blinding clouds of dust through which there appeared a phantasmagoria of ferocious countenances, gnashing teeth, glaring eyeballs, the ruddy flash of ensanguined spear-points, hurtling ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... as the Hermit rambled on In one long listless monotone, We heard a wild and mournful groan Come rumbling down the tunnelled way; A voice, an awful mournful bray, Singing some old funereal lay; Then solemn footsteps, muffled, dull, Approached as if they trod on wool, And as they nearer, nearer drew, We saw our Host ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... disregard his bellowing abuse. They had heard it before, and knew that he didn't mean a word he said. They were almost at the foot of the hill now, and the thick white dust, kicked up in choking spurts by the rumbling wheels, sifted down on the leathery mesquite ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... troops on the Peninsula. At the appointed hour I walked up the cliff's edge whence I clearly heard the roll of fire. The question of whether musketry sounds will carry so far is settled. Evidently the Turks have taken up the challenge for it was quite a long time before the distant rumbling died away. In the cool of the evening took a walk. Commandant Bertier and la ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... The rumbling grew louder, and soon the boys knew that it must be close to the bridge. Then they saw the lamps of an auto truck sending out their beams of light a hundred feet in advance, and could just discern above them the massive ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... the rumbling guns. I saw the smoke, The unintelligible shock of hosts that still, Far off, unseeing, strove and strove again: And Beauty flying naked down ...
— Poems New and Old • John Freeman
... eye twinkled Like a candle-flame where salt is sprinkled; And ere three shrill notes the pipe uttered You heard as if an army muttered; And the muttering grew to a grumbling; And the grumbling grew to a mighty rumbling; And out of the houses the rats came tumbling. Great rats, small rats, lean rats, brawny rats, Brown rats, black rats, grey rats, tawny rats, Grave old plodders, gay young friskers, Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins, Cooking tails and pricking whiskers, Families by tens and dozens, Brothers, ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... the hose-cart. Billy and Jack secured the particular prize, the head of the engine drag-rope, and like a pair of young colts pranced out with it to its full length. Others seized it, and with the cry of "Let 'er go!" they went rumbling forth, and swung ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... not gain anything by staying, for Peaceful had little to say, seeming to be occupied mostly with dreamy meditations. He nodded, now and then, in response to Baumberger's rumbling monologues, and occasionally he removed his pipe from his mouth long enough to reply with a sentence where the nod was not sufficient. Baumberger droned on, mostly relating the details of cases he had won against long odds—cases for the most part ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... remark that would have procured him a beating in a sailor's dive, and Barry lurched to his feet with a lurid, rumbling oath. Little started up, too, but half-heartedly, then sat down to follow the action of his friend. He too had caught that last remark, and his fingers itched to feel Leyden's ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... a house or a barn coming down next," cried Fred. "Gee, this certainly is some storm!" he added, as another flash of lightning lit up the sky. Then came the thunder, rolling and rumbling along the river and ...
— The Rover Boys in the Land of Luck - Stirring Adventures in the Oil Fields • Edward Stratemeyer
... occur. On went the schooner, almost brushing the base of the volcano, causing Roswell many a bound of the heart, when he fancied she must strike; but she went clear. All this time, it was crack, crack, crack, from the crater, rumbling sounds and heavy explosions; the last attended by flames, and smoke of a pitchy darkness. A dozen times the Sea Lion had very narrow escapes when nearest to the danger, stones of a weight to pass through her decks and ...
— The Sea Lions - The Lost Sealers • James Fenimore Cooper
... hundred nine and sixty, Came the hissing locomotive, Came the train of rumbling coaches, Dashing through the quiet city; Came the smoking iron monster, Of the "Louisville and Nashville," Sounded loud the shrill steam-whistle Of the railroad "On to Richmond." And the Old Church walls so sacred, Fell beneath the stormy cargo, Our Republican ancestress ...
— The Song of Lancaster, Kentucky - to the statesmen, soldiers, and citizens of Garrard County. • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... was growing rosy now, and he could hear the rumbling of the milk train. It was late. Pat would not lose his job this time, for he must have had plenty of time to get back to the station. Billy wormed himself under cover as the train approached, and bided his time. Cautiously, peering ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... manner; and continually, while he thought and she wept, and an impenetrable curtain of darkness hid the one from the other, the chaise held on its course up-hill and down-hill, now bumping and rattling behind flying horses, and now rumbling ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... A long, rumbling snore stopped him with a mental jolt. He came back to reality and looked at the Happy Family. Every one of them, save Rosemary, was sound asleep; and even Rosemary was dreaming at the fire with her eyes half closed, and her fingers moving ...
— The Phantom Herd • B. M. Bower
... the freshness of spring. It was toward the close of one of those charming September days, when Lizzie Heartwell stepped to the door of her school-room to watch the descending sun, and to see if she were detaining the children too long. Instantly her attention was arrested by the rumbling of the tri-weekly stage-coach, toiling up the hill before her. For a moment she stood watching its slow approach, apparently unmindful of the class that was already "in line" upon the floor, eagerly awaiting the last recitation, which would set them free. And yet the school-mistress gazed at ...
— Leah Mordecai • Mrs. Belle Kendrick Abbott
... from in front of his kennel he watched a heavy thunder cloud gather over the hills and come rumbling toward him. The sky grew black; the orchard trees, the creek bottoms, the distant hills took on strange colours, as if autumn had miraculously come. Out of her cabin hurried Aunt Cindy and toward the garage, her white apron like a flag ...
— Frank of Freedom Hill • Samuel A. Derieux
... solar heat, that there was scarcely room for the horses to tread, and they kept constantly slipping their hind feet into chasms from eight to ten feet deep, into which the earth fell with a hollow rumbling sound, as if into a grave. The poor horse in the cart had a sad task, and it surprised me, how we all at length got safely over the plain, which was between five and six miles in breadth, but we managed it, and at that distance found ourselves ...
— Expedition into Central Australia • Charles Sturt
... rumbling sound caused the guests to look toward the garden, and in a moment Miss Celia appeared, pushing a wheeled chair, in which sat her brother. A gay afghan covered the long legs, a broad-brimmed hat half hid the big eyes, and a discontented ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... the people was apparent, for the road swarmed with voitures of every description, diligences, gondoles, co-cous, cabs, fiacres, omnibuses, dame-blanches, all rolling and rumbling along, occasionally interrupted by the lilting and tilting of a light English cab or tilbury, drawn by a thoroughbred, and driven by a dandy. The spirit of the old white horse even seemed roused as he got among the carriages and heard ...
— Jorrocks' Jaunts and Jollities • Robert Smith Surtees
... to the bottom it emits a sound as if some one were uttering a loud sigh. The first noise it makes on its being first parted with affects the ear like a subterranean thunder. This rumbling or thundering noise continues for some time, and then decreases as the stone falls against first one hard rock and then another at a greater and a greater depth, and at length, when it has for some time been falling, the noise stops ...
— Travels in England in 1782 • Charles P. Moritz
... The rumbling thither in the cab after the stillness of the water seemed long. Happily his charge had been quiet since her fit of weeping, and submitted like a tired child. When they were in the cab, she laid down her hat and tried to rest her head, but the ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... rumbling sound borne on the air, and as the muffled whistle of the unseen train came to them from the wilderness to the west, with one accord the Indians turned their attention to their wares, and the white people to their baggage. When the train ...
— That Girl Montana • Marah Ellis Ryan
... snows come, there will be avalanches by day and night, rushing into all parts of the valley. The Hermit hears a rumbling in the clouds, as he hoes his potatoes. He looks; a granite pilaster, hewn out by the hurricanes centuries ago, at last grown weary of clinging to that precipitous bluff, lets go its hold, and is dashed from crag to crag in a prolonged and horrible ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... spring, which yielded them a cool, refreshing draught, and soon were on their way once more. They had proceeded perhaps two miles further, when the rumbling of wheels was heard behind them, and a farm wagon soon came up alongside. The driver was a man of ...
— Helping Himself • Horatio Alger
... panels of the door were producing cracks and the cheap door handle flew many ways at once. An empty whisky keg on the stoop boomed out mournfully at intervals and finally rolled down the steps with a rumbling protest. Wisps of smoke slowly climbed up the walls and seemed to be waving defiance to the curling ...
— Hopalong Cassidy's Rustler Round-Up - Bar-20 • Clarence Edward Mulford
... on yourself is, in itself, one of the best teachers you could have, because it begins to instill confidence and control. As the machine darts forward, going ten or fifteen miles an hour, with the din of the engine behind you, and feeling the rumbling motion of the wheels over the uneven surface of the earth, you have the sensation of going forty miles ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... and the heap blazed up merrily. With great care the old man now sprinkled some curious-looking powder on the flames, and muttered strange words. In an instant the earth beneath their feet trembled, and they heard a rumbling like distant thunder. Then the ground opened in front of them, and showed a great square slab of stone ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 3 (of 12) - Classic Tales And Old-Fashioned Stories • Various
... the room, and young Bawdrey and Captain Travers carried the stricken man up the stairs to his own bed-chamber, his wife flying in advance to see that everything was prepared for him, Cleek, standing all alone beside the shattered cabinet, could hear Mr. Robert Murdock's dismal croakings rumbling steadily out as he mounted the staircase with ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... through a road which had become for miles only a great muddy lane running between military encampments, halted at every bridge and crossroads to exhibit their passes; they passed never-ending trains of army waggons cither stalled or rumbling slowly toward Alexandria. Everywhere were soldiers, drilling, marching, cutting wood, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning arms, mending, working on camp ditches, drains, or forts, writing letters at the edge of shelter tents, digging graves, skylarking—everywhere ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... to us, was a clash of drums, trumpets, and trombones all jumbled together. After the three knocks of the director, which started up the dust of ages into our faces until we were almost suffocated, the curtain rose slowly with great noise and rumbling. ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... motors, the high, shrill laughter of children playing in the streets, the clang of the locomotive bell from the railroad station, all softened by distance. But as they listened there came another sound like nothing they had ever heard in that place before. A strange, confused rumbling, with cries jutting out through the dull, rolling noise. A little later came the faint clash of rhythmic, tumultuous cheering. Patricia's quick ears were the first ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... Clara was highly entertained by these events, and said: "Heidi has not done it on purpose and must not be punished. In her hurry to get away she caught on the table-cover and pulled it down. I think she must never have seen a coach in all her life, for when she heard a carriage rumbling by, ...
— Heidi - (Gift Edition) • Johanna Spyri
... the eight there burst forth an exclamation, a rumbling curse of comprehension. They understood it all now as plainly as though their own eyes had seen the tragedy. Blair had reached the river and, despite its rotten ice, had tried to cross. One by one ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... the pressure. The horses swerved, and he had trouble to keep them on the trail, but their speed slackened and they fell into a labored trot. For a few minutes they struggled against the gale, and then the roar Festing had heard behind the scream drowned the rumbling thunder. He threw up his arm to guard his face as the terrible hail of the plains drove ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... Que had been taking only a light, after-dinner nap, he would have been wide awake as soon as the cart stopped; for the hill was a long one, and the rumbling had been as long, and merely from lack of that lullaby, a well-conditioned boy should have wakened at ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... With this he marched off, the light growing quickly faint in the darkness. "Oya! Oya! 'Tis strange. The stench—it is unendurable. The darkness too thick even for the torch. It fails to burn." For a time his voice was heard rumbling off with increasing distance. To repeated shouts no answer was returned. Said Heima—"Isuke has gone too far, out of range. Some other must bear him aid.... What! All milk livers? You, Gensuke, love the wine cellar. Its care would seem to be your calling. ...
— Bakemono Yashiki (The Haunted House) - Tales of the Tokugawa, Volume 2 (of 2) • James S. De Benneville
... who was only waiting for the order, whipped up his horses; the carriage departed rapidly, rumbling like a roll of thunder, and disappeared through the ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas
... these outcries the two youths, standing so bravely at their posts, heard no sound save the deep rumbling of the engine and cars, as they sped swiftly on their ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... bush had! She pulled again with all her might, and the earth round the roots began to stir and crack, so she gave another big pull, and then she let go. She thought there was a rumbling noise right below her feet, and she wondered if the roots went down to some dragon's cave. Then she tried once again, and up came the bush so quickly that Proserpina nearly fell backwards. There she stood, holding the stem in her hand and looking at the big hole which ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various
... broad and flat, and looked very strong, while its head, with the bloodshot eyes and the horrid red bladder hanging from the mouth, was not nice to see. It stood there with its fore feet fastened together by a chain, its hind ones spread wide apart, twitching its tail about, and roaring with a rumbling gurgle, either in rage or challenge. It was a sight to strike terror into ...
— In the Musgrave Ranges • Jim Bushman
... me and flung himself on the wall. There was a click as if a lever had been pulled. Then came a low rumbling far, far below the ground, and through the window I saw a cloud of chalky dust pouring out of the shaft of ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan
... had fled the world. The mutterings and moanings of the impending tempest could be heard on all sides. A subterranean rumbling was audible throughout all lands; a dull thundering and outcry, as though the solid earth were about to change into one vast volcano—one measureless crater—that would dash to atoms, and entomb, with its blazing lava-streams ...
— Queen Hortense - A Life Picture of the Napoleonic Era • L. Muhlbach
... Czar's train was blown up near Lividia. They tore my mother away from me and placed her in that gray prison-van, the sight of which in the streets of Petersburg strikes terror into the heart of every Russian, for a person once in that rumbling vehicle is, as you know, lost for ever to the world. I watched her from the window being placed in that fatal conveyance, and then I think I must have fainted, for I recollect nothing more until I found myself upon the floor, with the gray dawn spreading, and all the horrible truth ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... noise? I hear a kind of noise, as if an iron wheel were rumbling, or stones falling from a mountain, large stones coming down ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... an easy-chair. Maraton, however, did not at once respond to his gesture of invitation. He was standing, tense and silent, with head upraised, listening. From the street outside came a strange, rumbling sound. ...
— A People's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... '58 was approaching its culmination. The great earthquake that for months had been making itself heard afar off by its portentous rumbling was heaving to the final crash. Already the weaker houses had ...
— Faith Gartney's Girlhood • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... Jules, and Stuart. Crouching between the wall of the tunnel and the passing train, they listened to it as it rumbled away in the distance towards a mere dot of light which disclosed the far end of the tunnel. Then that dot was of a sudden blotted out of sight, and the rumbling ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton
... the centre of the earth, they heard a low monotonous rumbling. They listened breathlessly. Every moment the sound increased. They could feel the ground trembling as if shaken by ...
— The Land of the Changing Sun • William N. Harben
... taste of ham-sandwiches out of her mouth, then resumes pen, and writes with increasing interest for fifteen minutes. Everything is steeped in quiet. Suddenly a faint murmur of voices is heard; it increases, it approaches, mingled with the tread of many feet, and a rumbling as of mighty chariot-wheels. It is only Barnum's steam orchestrion, Barnum's steam chimes, and Barnum's steam calliope, followed by an array of ruff-scruff. They stop exactly opposite the house. The orchestrion ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... was not so many years ago,—far in the North there were at a certain place many Indians assembled. And there was a frightful commotion, caused by the ground heaving and rumbling; the rocks shook and fell, they were greatly alarmed, and lo! Glooskap stood before them, and said, "I go away now, but I shall return again; when you feel the ground tremble, then know it is I." So they will know when the last great war is to be, for then Glooskap will make the ground ...
— The Algonquin Legends of New England • Charles Godfrey Leland
... old gentleman shook his head from side to side, and was seized with a hoarse internal rumbling, accompanied with a violent swelling of the countenance, and a sudden increase in the breadth of all his features; symptoms which alarmed his son ...
— The Pickwick Papers • Charles Dickens
... wondering and fearing, a low, deep rumbling was heard beneath their feet. Then the earth ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... river bank where booms lined the shore, and scores of men were rafting. They had left the water-logged hollow behind them, and debouched on the busy world of the mill. Ahead lay the new extensions where the saws were shrieking the song of their labours upon the feed for the rumbling grinders. It was a township of buildings of all sizes crowding about ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... pointed downward. Beneath them spread the valley with the band of the river winding tenuously through the bottoms of the Harper farm. About that green bowl the first voices of the coming storm were already rumbling with the constant growl ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... Forgetful of past warnings, and undisturbed by present misgivings, the unreflecting crowd plunged into the exciting pleasures of gay carnival. About half-past five o'clock, the town was alarmed by a distant rumbling, such as might be produced by the rapid passage of a number of carriages over a stone pavement. This unnatural sound was followed by another, and a louder, which seemed to combine the crackling of flames, the rattling of ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... over, and there was a moment of silence while the mate peered at his list.—"Sixteen, seventeen," he muttered. "I am one hand short, bo'sen," he said aloud. The big west-countryman at his elbow, swarthy and bearded like a gigantic Spaniard, said in a rumbling bass:—"There's no one left forward, sir. I had a look round. He ain't aboard, but he may, turn up before daylight."—"Ay. He may or he may not," commented the mate, "can't make out that last name. It's all a smudge.... That will ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... you hear the rumbling of its wheels? Nearer it comes and nearer! Oh, what light! The tent is full; 'tis glory everywhere! Dear Jesus, I am coming! Then she fell— As falls a meteor when the skies ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... and died away in the foliage of the distant island, whence the nightingale trilled an answer that was like a fainting sigh. Leonora tried to reproduce with her lips the majestic sonorousness of the Wagnerian chorus, mimicking the rumbling accompaniment of the orchestra, while Rafael beat the water with his oars in time with the pious, exalted melody with which the great Master had turned to popular poetry adequately to greet the outbreak ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the doctor thought of returning home, when a rumbling of distant thunder made him pause. They reascended the Tower, to reconnoitre the elements from the library. The windows were so arranged as to ...
— Gryll Grange • Thomas Love Peacock
... which Antonia and I came on that night when we got off the train at Black Hawk and were bedded down in the straw, wondering children, being taken we knew not whither. I had only to close my eyes to hear the rumbling of the wagons in the dark, and to be again overcome by that obliterating strangeness. The feelings of that night were so near that I could reach out and touch them with my hand. I had the sense of coming home to myself, and of having found out what a little circle man's experience is. For Antonia ...
— My Antonia • Willa Sibert Cather
... did not falter. They dragged their rumbling engine as fast as they could, the bell clanging loudly as Cole pulled the cord attached to it. The little company was constantly being increased in numbers. Many of the young firemen, however, had proceeded directly to ...
— The Young Firemen of Lakeville - or, Herbert Dare's Pluck • Frank V. Webster
... another car came rumbling out of the tunnel, with its load of cracked rock, they all accompanied it into an adjoining apartment, where it was cast into a metallic shute, through which, they were informed, it reached ...
— The Moon Metal • Garrett P. Serviss
... sound but the drone of dull, falling tones, that multiply like the spirits of the sorcerer apprentice, in large form and small, with the big rumbling in a quick ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... which he walked a mile or two, and then broke into a run again. The grass was short; he struck no brush, and the ax did not encumber him. He imagined that dawn must be getting near when a dazzling flash swept the prairie and there was a long reverberatory rumbling overhead. He was almost blinded and bewildered, doubly uncertain where he was going; and then a great stream of white fire fell from the zenith. The thunder that followed was deafening, and for the next few minutes blaze succeeded blaze, and there was ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... scenes of violence and blood these demonstrations were the precursors, threw up their windows, and looked out with fainting hearts upon the dusky forms crowding by like apparitions of darkness. The rumbling of the wheels of heavy artillery, the flash of powder, with the frequent report of firearms, and the uproar and the clamor of countless voices, were fearful omens of a day to dawn in blacker darkness than the night. The Girondists had ...
— Madame Roland, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... of Madame de Cintre's relatives. Confidence—excessive confidence, perhaps—quite as much as timidity prompted his retreat. He was nursing his thunder-bolt; he loved it; he was unwilling to part with it. He seemed to be holding it aloft in the rumbling, vaguely-flashing air, directly over the heads of his victims, and he fancied he could see their pale, upturned faces. Few specimens of the human countenance had ever given him such pleasure as these, lighted in the lurid fashion ...
— The American • Henry James
... heard in her sleep the great, rough, gruff voice of the Great, Huge Bear, but she was so fast asleep that it seemed to her no more than the roaring of the wind, or the rumbling of thunder. And she had heard the middle-sized voice of the Middle-Sized Bear, but it was only as if she had heard some one speaking in a dream. But when she heard the little, small, wee voice of the Little, Small, Wee ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... and his strenuous voice, rumbling and echoing through the silent morning, seemed to calm them all. "Get down on your faces! Drop!" commanded the cowboy, while puffs of smoke, flashes of fire and nerve-racking reports told that the attack from ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... the district. During the autumn of 1789 loud noises, unaccompanied by any concussion, were heard by the inhabitants of Glenlednock; but on the 5th of November of that year they were alarmed by a loud rumbling noise, accompanied with a severe shock of earthquake, which was felt over a tract of country of more than twenty miles in extent. The Rev. Mr Mackenzie, successor to Mr M'Diarmid, writing in 1838, in the last ...
— Chronicles of Strathearn • Various
... A good deal of rumbling was heard on Friday; it might have been thunder, or perchance artillery. Some said it was nature; others that it was guns' work. But nobody seemed to think that it mattered a great deal. We had grown ...
— The Siege of Kimberley • T. Phelan
... pulled out a pitch-pipe from his pocket and making a slight sound, furnished the starting note. The singing proceeded principally from a certain part of the room, as if by some understanding the singers had been collected together, although scattered sounds also, of either rumbling bass or shrill treble whose trembling modulations betrayed the advanced age of the performers, were here and there heard. Some of these guerrilla passages were sadly out of time and tune, and according to the humor of the hearer might either provoke a smile or ...
— The Lost Hunter - A Tale of Early Times • John Turvill Adams
... time. I'll say that for Oldisworth [though I lost by his Timothy's] he translates an ode of Horace the quickest of any man in England. I remember Dr. King would write verses in a tavern, three hours after he could not speak: and there is Sir Richard, in that rumbling old chariot of his, between Fleet Ditch and St. Giles's pound shall make you ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... been remarked by some to happen usually upon sudden changes of weather, and particularly after violent heats; but I do not vouch this upon my own experience, which has been pretty ample. They are preceded by a low rumbling noise like distant thunder. The domestic cattle and fowls are sensible of the preternatural motion, and seem much alarmed; the latter making the cry they are wont to do on the approach of birds of prey. Houses situated on a low sandy soil are least affected, and those which stand on ...
— The History of Sumatra - Containing An Account Of The Government, Laws, Customs And - Manners Of The Native Inhabitants • William Marsden
... Paris fog covered the city that night as they drove to the station, and the fog detonators and horns followed them as they glided out slowly from beneath the great glass roof. Slowly at first, then more swiftly over rumbling bridges and clicking point, more swiftly still, breaking from the fog-banked Seine valley, through snarling tunnel and chattering cutting, faster now and freer, by long lines of poplar trees, mist-strewn, and moonlit ponds and fields, spectral white roads, little winking towns; and now, as if drawn ...
— The Pools of Silence • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... Miss Harlowe, to forbid her to correspond with her daughter. Mr. Hickman, she says, is of opinion, 'that she ought not to obey her mother.' How the creeping fellow trims between both! I am afraid, that I must punish him, as well as this virago; and I have a scheme rumbling in my head, that wants but half an hour's musing to bring into form, that will do my business upon both. I cannot bear, that the parental authority should be thus despised, thus trampled under foot. But observe the vixen, ''Tis well he is of her opinion; for her mother having set ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... she would discern a smell of gas, the next there might be a hole in the fly-screens, or a little carpentering to do, or a caster broken under the piano. Husbands with a turn for plumbing would find the club basement a perpetual place of solace, with a fresh leak or a rumbling pipe every ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... of June came and the herds had not appeared. The brothers were beginning to get uneasy for fear of bad news, when near dark one evening a buckboard drove up. Its rumbling approach hurried the boys outside the tent, when without a word of hail, Quince Forrest sprang from the vehicle, grasped Dell, and the two rolled over and ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... denominated exhibited the most unaccountable symptoms. A low, rumbling sound was heard; and a sort of undulation was discernible beneath ...
— Omoo: Adventures in the South Seas • Herman Melville
... The earth and hills and trees were covered with snow, and the lightnings seemed to be playing "King, King Canico" along its crusted surface. If it thundered at all, it seemed to be between a groaning and a rumbling sound. The trees and hills seemed white with livid fire. I can remember that storm now as the grandest picture that has ever made any impression on my memory. As soon as it quit lightning, the most blinding snow storm ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... little more than a wilderness of wooden sheds,—picturesque, indeed, as paper lanterns are, but scarcely less frail. And there is no great stir and noise anywhere,—no heavy traffic, no booming and rumbling, no furious haste. In Tokyo itself you may enjoy, if you wish, the peace of a country village. This want of visible or audible signs of the new-found force which is now menacing the markets of the West and changing the maps of the far East gives one a queer, ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn
... hurried on, and presently the rumbling of the artillery died away, and they ventured to push to their left, and to get on the road, which they found deserted. Half an hour's run, for they knew that every minute was of importance, and they heard the welcome challenge, "Who comes there?" "Two British officers," they answered, and ...
— The Young Buglers • G.A. Henty
... the most exact care for the detail of their organization. Provided these things were held foremost in their minds there was small enough chance of interruption. Had not the train, with its all unconscious driver, passed upon its rumbling way toward Amberley? Had not all suspicion been lulled in the mind of the bucolic agent, who was even now laboriously expending a maximum of energy for a minimum return of culinary delicacies in ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the deep, rumbling diapason he heard a sharp click— then another and another. He ...
— The Valley of the Giants • Peter B. Kyne
... week of stifling heat, we moved slowly forward. The sound of the guns grew in intensity, from a faint rumbling to a subdued roar, until one evening, sitting in the open windows of a stable loft, we saw the far-off lightenings of bursting shells, and the trench rockets soaring skyward; and we heard bursts of rifle and machine-gun fire, very faintly, like the ...
— Kitchener's Mob - Adventures of an American in the British Army • James Norman Hall
... stroke! The frescoed plaster Clashes downward, fast and faster. Hark, I hear an outer stone Down the rough rock rumbling thrown! There's a cranny! there's a crack! The great sun is at its back! Lo, a mass is outward flung! In ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... mother tried hard to keep up a conversation on different topics, it was useless. Tears would fill our eyes, and brother Ben, though at that time only about thirteen, was forced to leave his breakfast untasted, and, rising hastily, to take himself out of Hal's sight; but the stage came rumbling down the road, and almost ere we knew it, our good-byes were said, and Hal was waving his handkerchief from his high seat beside the driver, from whence he could see the old ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... Viva Gesu!" A far-rumbling thunder broke from the swaying mob. His own fire caught extra flame ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... main-togallants'l, an' she's to work on the foretops'l now. Guess you'd better look in the alminick agin, and fin' out when this moon sets.' So the cappen thought 'twas 'bout time to go on deck. Dreadful slow them Dutch cappens be." And X. walked away, rumbling inwardly, like the rote of the ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VIII (of X) • Various
... closing the register with her foot: "I don't hear any strange, hollow, rumbling, mumbling kind of noise. Do ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... Tripe turned up, and Yasmini came down-stairs to talk with him, Trotters remaining outside the window with his ash-colored hair on end and a succession of volcanic growls rumbling ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... among the crowd on her deck, when there was a sound of a rolling chain and a slight rocking of the boat, which provoked an indelicate man near me to take off his helmet and pretend to be sick in it. There was a rumbling of the engines as their wheels began to revolve, and a throbbing of the Redbreast's heart as though she found difficulty in getting under way with such a load. Then a sudden and alarming snort from her siren drew cries ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... distant rumbling roar of thunder sounded dismally over the leaden-gray, white-capped water; and the wind, rising instantly into a fierce gale, hurled the dark storm-clouds across the sky, blotting the lurid glow of sunset and mantling the heavens above her in ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... even so. Baird and the girl both laughed convulsively, the former with rumbling chuckles that shook his frame. When he had again composed himself he said, "Well, Mr. Gill, I think you and I can do a little business. I don't know what your idea about a ...
— Merton of the Movies • Harry Leon Wilson
... he saw something like a big tree moving, and that was the giant. Then he felt the ground trembling as if a railroad train was rumbling past, and he heard a noise like thunder, and that was ...
— Uncle Wiggily's Adventures • Howard R. Garis
... here which appeared to throw some light on the cause of the tremendous surf at Ampanam. One evening I heard a strange rumbling noise, and at the same time the house shook slightly. Thinking it might be thunder, I asked, "What is that?" "It is an earthquake," answered Inchi Daud, my host; and he then told me that slight shocks were occasionally felt there, but he had never known them to be severe. This happened on ...
— The Malay Archipelago - Volume I. (of II.) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... scalding pitch roll down The crackling, sweating pines, And streams of smoke, like water-spouts, Burst through the rumbling mines; I asked the firemen why they made Such noise about the town; They answered not,—but all the while The brakes ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... of newspaper hawkers came out of a side street, and darted through the crowd shouting the titles of the evening journals. A fresh edition of the "Voix du Peuple" gave rise, in particular, to a deafening clamour, which rose above all the rumbling of wheels. At regular intervals hoarse voices raised and repeated the cry: "Ask for the 'Voix du Peuple'—the new scandal of the African Railway Lines, the repulse of the ministry, the thirty-two bribe-takers of the Chamber and the Senate!" And these announcements, set in huge type, could ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... I am sure, twenty seconds before the usual roar and rumbling reverberation of the report from the hills, and among the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... little snowy cloudlets, almost before the sound of the explosion would reach us. Suddenly a great column of smoke shot upward from the redoubt; dark at first, but turning to a silver whiteness, as the rays of the sun touched it. A sound that seemed to shake the earth came rumbling through the air. A shell had reached and exploded the magazine. A laugh, with a cheer here and there, ran along our heavy picket-line. The rebels called out: "Stop laughing, Yanks!" "Stop ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... sundown, just as we finished supper, there came from the near prairie the mighty, portentous rumbling roar of a bull—the bellow that he utters when he is roused to fight, the savage roar that means "I smell blood." It is one of those tremendous menacing sounds that never fail to give one the creeps and make one feel, oh! so puny ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... voices somewhere below them, but Bess and Nan could not see them yet. They knew that the boys had divided into sides and were playing old-fashioned hockey, "shinny-on-your-own-side" as it was locally called. Above the rumbling of the train they heard the crack of the shinny-stick against the wooden block, and the "z-z-z-zip!" of the missile as it scaled over ...
— Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp - or, The Old Lumberman's Secret • Annie Roe Carr
... herds, long lanes winding without the sound of a traveller through fields of the universal brooding stillness. The sun no longer blazing, but muffled in a veil of palest blue. No more black clouds rumbling and rushing up from the horizon, but a single white one brushing slowly against the zenith like the lost wing of a swan. Far beneath it the silver-breasted hawk, using the cloud as his lordly parasol. The eagerness of spring gone, now ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... frightened, anything is apt to happen. Wilbur's judgment was not gone, but he was ready to yell. The herd behind grew closer and closer. Presently the walk broke into a short trot, the horns of the following bunch of steers appeared at Kit's flanks, a rumbling as of half-uttered bellows was heard from the rear of the herd, and, on the instant, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Foresters • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... stones looking like rough walls, which half cut off the entrances. In another place what seemed to be a cavern was completely shut in, save that a hole was left, into which Mark pitched a loose stone that he managed to dislodge, to hear it go rumbling away into the darkness as if it had fallen to where there was a ...
— Dead Man's Land - Being the Voyage to Zimbambangwe of certain and uncertain • George Manville Fenn
... had explained the situation and announced his intention of running for Mangareva, an uproar broke out. Against a background of throaty rumbling arose inarticulate cries of rage, with here and there a distinct curse, or word, or phrase. A shrill Cockney voice soared and dominated for a moment, crying: "Gawd! After bein' in ell for fifteen days—an' now e wants us to sail this floatin' ell to ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... Shepherds had them to another place, in a bottom, where was a door in the side of a hill, and they opened the door, and bid them look in. They looked in, therefore, and saw that within it was very dark and smoky; they also thought that they heard there a rumbling noise as of fire, and a cry of some tormented, and that they smelt the scent of brimstone. Then said Christian, What means this? The Shepherds told them, This is a by-way to hell, a way that hypocrites go in at; namely, such as sell ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... along with a despatch of the emperor or the senate; a casual traveller coming at a lively trot in his hired gig; a couple of ladies carefully protecting their complexions from sun and dust as they rode in a kind of covered wagonette; a pair of scarlet-clad outriders preceding a gorgeous but rumbling coach, in which a Roman noble or plutocrat is idly lounging, reading, dictating to his shorthand amanuensis, or playing dice with a friend; a dashing youth driving his own chariot in professional style to the disgust of the sober-minded; a languid matron lolling in a litter carried ...
— Life in the Roman World of Nero and St. Paul • T. G. Tucker
... big German sailors bundled the whole variegated horde overside. It was time to go, and our anchor chain was already rumbling in the hawse pipes. They tumbled hastily into their boats; and at once swarmed up their masts, whence they feverishly continued their interrupted bargaining. In fact, so fully embarked on the tides ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... a wild night, Tom, I think," said Uncle Richard; and as he spoke there was a rumbling noise amongst the woodwork overhead, caused by a passing blast. "There, ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn |
