"Tightening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the place to be merry in, but I could not help smiling at some of the inscriptions. A fair upright marble slab commemorates the death of York Fleming, a cooper, who was killed by the explosion of a powder-magazine, while tightening the hoops of a keg of powder. It closes ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... came near, Captain Yorke released his hold upon Rob's collar; then tightening that upon Theodore's, the still stalwart old seaman lifted the boy from his feet, and, stepping close to the basin of the fountain, plunged him over his head in the icy water. The day had been a mild one, sunny and bright, for spring was in the air; but the water was still sufficiently ...
— Uncle Rutherford's Nieces - A Story for Girls • Joanna H. Mathews
... the sake of the money and the comfort. He was kind, and in his way he understood. And then, you know, misery didn't agree with you. You were often, even in those few hours we spent together, very hard and cold. Anyway," she added, with a little tightening of the lips, "I am going to get my money now. No one can stop that. You stay here and think it over. It would be better to marry me, Philip, and be safe, than to have the fear of that man Dane always before you. And wait—wait till ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... his pillow; for at the end of the room he saw a grim phantom whom, he felt sure, the doubly accursed Quong Lee had maliciously admitted. The old man should pay dearly for this on the morrow! Ah Moy felt his fingers tightening convulsively around the throat of the dying Quong Lee; he could hear the croaking in his victim's wind-pipe, and the gruesome death-rattle! The sounds were all well known to the Chinaman, and recalled ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... slightest show of resistance: instead of planting their heels in the ground and dragging back, they follow with joyful alacrity, singing their captor's praises the while; and from the eagerness with which they hurry after him to prevent the chains from tightening, one would say that release is the last thing they desire. Nor will I conceal from you what struck me as the most curious circumstance of all. Heracles's right hand is occupied with the club, and his left with the bow: how is he to hold the ends of the chains? The painter solves the difficulty ...
— Works, V3 • Lucian of Samosata
... merry hour of a long winter night, the green timbers cracking like pistol-shots to the tightening frost-grip, and the hearth logs at each end of the long, low-raftered hall sending up a roar that set the red shadows dancing among ceiling joists. After ward-room mess, with fare that kings might have envied—teal ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... too had noticed. She had been struck with the sudden tightening of the guardian's lip, the sudden stiffening of his hand lying on the table. She wondered anxiously what ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... which is often felt uncomfortably, and which is straining, because when present in more than a very slight degree it is injurious, owing to congestion or accumulation of blood in the blood-vessels, with all the bad consequences of such a state of things. When the tightening does not go beyond a certain point it is normal—indeed, such sphincter action is inevitable; but it is the excess which is so common in tenors and others who strain for undue power, and to produce tones too high in pitch for their development or their method, ...
— Voice Production in Singing and Speaking - Based on Scientific Principles (Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged) • Wesley Mills
... change, except for a slight tightening of the lips. Jimmie listened intently for the sound of a drum on the mountain side below. It now was quite light, and the watcher could see every movement made by the men he believed to be brigands and their prisoner. A chill of terror ran through ...
— Boy Scouts in Mexico; or On Guard with Uncle Sam • G. Harvey Ralphson
... with an eclat indeed which startled Europe as well as America. He had captured Savannah, and was marching North driving the army of General Joseph E. Johnston before him. General Grant meanwhile was tightening his hold on Richmond and on the army of General Lee. From his camp on the James he was directing military operations over an area of vast extent. The great victory which General Thomas had won over Hood's army in the preceding December at Nashville ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine
... few days the new prior arrived, and proved a very Tartar. At first he was absorbed in curing abuses, and tightening the general discipline; but one day hearing the vicar of Gouda had entered the convent as a novice, he said, "'Tis well; let him first give up his vicarage then, or go; I'll no fat parsons in my house." The prior then sent for Gerard, and he went to him; and the moment they ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... stands by most of those obstacles to give them strength," answered the Queen, her hands tightening a little. "The King would be pliant in my hands were this man not beside him to stiffen him. Is there any other man in the world who would have dared to put me to the test he did? I ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... various slits in it here and there; the weight of this lining had pulled the skirts aside, disclosing a dingy-hued flannel waistcoat beneath. With something of a coxcomb's manner, Fraisier fastened this refractory article of dress, tightening the girdle to define his reedy figure; then with a blow of the tongs, he effected a reconciliation between two burning brands that had long avoided one another, like brothers after a family quarrel. A sudden bright idea struck him, and ...
— Cousin Pons • Honore de Balzac
... up, and he shook himself, and buttoned his vest, and put on his hat, and as he had thin boots on, he told Ting-a-ling he was going to see if he couldn't take the river at one jump. So, tightening his belt, and going back for a good run, he rushed to the river bank, and with a spring like the jerk of five mad elephants, he bounded across. But the opposite bank was not hard enough to resist the tremendous fall of so many tons of giant as came upon it when Tur-il-i-ra's feet touched ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... the fallen needles of the pines. If there should come any wind, or storm of rain, the branches were thick overhead, and around them on three sides tall rocks and undergrowth made a barrier. He cut the pegs for the tent, and the front pole, stretching and tightening the rope, one end of it pegged down and one round a pine tree. When the tightening rope had lifted the canvas to the proper height from the ground, he spread and pegged down the sides and back, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... Why wouldn't I come den? Sure I'll come. I don't mean to do nuffin else; nor likewise let go of you, nor lose sight of you, de longest day as eber I lib, please my 'Vine Marster, don't I; so dere!" replied the old creature, tightening her ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... of a bit of blood-stained paper between Honore's stiffened fingers. It troubled her; she tried to gain possession of the paper, pulling at it gently, but the dead man would not surrender it, seemingly tightening his hold on it, guarding it so jealously that it could not have been taken from him without tearing it in bits. It was the letter she had written him, that he had always carried next his heart, and that he had taken from its hiding place in the moment of his supreme agony, as if to ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... procession around the arena of all who were to fight that day, the invariable preliminary of a gladiatorial show and always a splendid spectacle. When the fights began Brinnaria felt at first an unexpected tightening of the chest, as if a band were being drawn tight just under her armpits. Her breath came short and hard and her heart ...
— The Unwilling Vestal • Edward Lucas White
... "if I remember right, you were for restoring the more rigorous and stringent forms of religion; drawing the rein and tightening the girth." ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. I, No. 1, Nov. 1857 • Various
... a tightening—a screwing up of his whole life. Time had to be found. The hours had to be packed closer to make room for her. He grasped after fresh opportunities to make money with a white-hot assiduity. He worked harder. ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... were introduced, no satisfactory method had been devised for altering the force of the blow. The plan generally adopted was to have either a tightening pulley acting on the driving belt, a friction driving clutch, or a simple brake on the driving pulley, put in action by the hand or foot of the workman. Heavy blows were produced by simply increasing the number of blows per minute (and therefore the velocity), and light blows ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 344, August 5, 1882 • Various
... ran on, winding the cord meanwhile about Dick's limbs with the dexterity peculiar to seamen, and at every turn and cross securing it with a knot, and tightening the whole fabric ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... knew more of her!" snapped the lieutenant, with a grim tightening of his lips, while the girls looked on in wonder at the strange scene. "We're after her, too," the officer continued. "She's in the hands of a mutinous crew, and she's been trying to do some smuggling. We've orders to take her if we can, but first ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... instinct of every hunted animal, swung her lithe body and ducked beneath his arm. And at that moment, Eveley, tightening her hold upon the branches of the bush, drew up her feet, braced herself against the bank for a moment, and then sprang heavily against the man with both feet and sent him ...
— Eve to the Rescue • Ethel Hueston
... you try to sing a high note, you can feel something tightening and straining in your throat, until finally you can stretch it no tighter, and your voice "breaks," as you say, into a scream ...
— A Handbook of Health • Woods Hutchinson
... broncho. Our ponies have not all been tried of late with the pack saddle, but most of them quietly submit to the loading. But now comes one that does not yield itself to the manipulations of the packer. He stands quiet till the pack saddle is adjusted, but the moment he feels the tightening of the cinch he asserts his independence of all restraint and commences bucking. This animal in question belongs to Gillette, who says that if he does not stand the pack he will use him for a saddle horse. If so, God ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... What the devil did he mean by that? It was the fault of Daniel, the immobile, as much as anyone. In an airy room, under comfortable conditions, probably it wouldn't have happened. Savina's suit, her shoes, the bags, hadn't been disturbed. There was a faint tightening of her grasp, and he bent close, but he ...
— Cytherea • Joseph Hergesheimer
... sleepless by the roadside and see it pass. Whole cities had been kept astir till morning by the mere rumour that its flying wheels would be heard in the streets before dawn. Hatred and adoration, fear and that dread tightening of the heart-strings which is caused by the shadow of the superhuman, had sprung into being at the mere sound ...
— Barlasch of the Guard • H. S. Merriman
... had been satisfied, there would remain the friendly bill of Mr. Gore, and the deficiency at the bank, as well as the other debts which would make the assets shrink into unequivocal disproportion; "not more than ten or twelve shillings in the pound," predicted Mr. Deane, in a decided tone, tightening his lips; and the words fell on Tom like a scalding liquied, ...
— The Mill on the Floss • George Eliot
... call upon Frank's nerve, and tightening his reins to retain the mastery over his steed, the beautiful Arab resented the check and began to kick and plunge furiously, calling forth all its rider's skill to retain his seat; and it was not until after a couple of minutes' hard ...
— In the Mahdi's Grasp • George Manville Fenn
... to you?" he demanded tensely, the muscles of his firm jaws tightening as his teeth clenched. "Tell me who spread them, and I'll run him to earth, if he leads me through the ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... stalked over the earth. Already Chateaubriand, prince of poesy, wrapping the horrible idol in his pilgrim's mantle, had placed it on a marble altar in the midst of perfumes and holy incense. Already the children were tightening their idle hands and drinking in their bitter cup the poisoned brewage of doubt. Already things were drifting toward the abyss, when the jackals suddenly emerged from the earth. A cadaverous and infected literature which had no form but ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... had his cord-trousers pulled up a few inches and tied under his knees with a string, which made little bags of them there. He had to think for a mile after they left the public-house before he discovered that it was to keep them from tightening on his knees when he stooped, and so incommoding him ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... lips away from Marie's and spoke over his shoulder, his arms tightening in their hold ...
— Cabin Fever • B. M. Bower
... falls when a clock has run down and the machinery ceases to play, a heavy burden of lethargy settled down upon me, and I was weak and helpless as a child. Dull pain throbbed in my brain, as if it were girdled by a hard, tightening band. ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... color came into his face. "Sir Frederick Haldimand is a babbler!" he said, between tightening lips. "Never a secret, never a plan, but he must bawl it aloud to all who care to listen, or sound it as he gads about from camp to city—aye, and chatters it to the forest trees for lack of audience, I suppose. All New York is humming with it, is ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... Tightening his lips grimly, Orme drew the wet rope in and mechanically coiled it. There was nothing to say. He had failed. So good an opportunity to recover the papers would ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... situation of England bears a striking resemblance to the situation of Athens at the close of the Persian wars: a trading nation, a naval power, a governing race, a successful military people; the English completed the parallel by tightening the reins upon their colonies till they revolted. Of the other European powers, Portugal and Spain still preserved colonial empires in the West; but Spain was decaying. Great Britain had not only gained territory and prestige from ...
— Formation of the Union • Albert Bushnell Hart
... asked the referee. There was no reply. Only here and there a foot moved uneasily as weights were thrown forward, and there was a general, almost imperceptible, tightening of nerves and muscles. ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... male line, the beginnings of individual property in slaves, the tightening of the marriage bond, accompanied by the condemnation of sundry irregularities heretofore tolerated, are phenomena which we might expect to find associated together. They are germs of the upper status of barbarism, as well as of the earliest status ...
— The Discovery of America Vol. 1 (of 2) - with some account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest • John Fiske
... was now in his clutch, Washington lost no time in tightening his hold, for de Grasse 10 declared that his orders would not allow him to tarry much longer in the Chesapeake, and the failure of the other attempts to work with the French warned him to take ...
— Story Hour Readings: Seventh Year • E.C. Hartwell
... world of men Bind them by ever-tightening bonds again. If ye knew well the teaching of the Tree, What its shape saith; and whence ...
— The Bhagavad-Gita • Sir Edwin Arnold
... the girl clutched the side of the wagon as she felt the lash of the wind and noticed how the firs rushed past. It was jolting horribly, and she was relieved when as the trail grew steeper she saw the man tightening his grip on the reins and heard the grating of the brake. It ceased suddenly, one of the horses stumbled, then flung up its head, and they were going down faster than ever, while the man had flung his shoulders ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... he announced that he would ask the concurrence of Parliament to an Act which would allow him "to exercise with a more universal satisfaction that power of dispensing which he conceived to be inherent in him." But the Declaration was careful to add that no tightening of the most severe of the penal laws was to be construed as an intention of permitting equal toleration to ...
— The Life of Edward Earl of Clarendon V2 • Henry Craik
... or things? With dragging pace or footsteps fleet? Strong, willing sinews in your wings? Or tightening ...
— Fifty years & Other Poems • James Weldon Johnson
... been making a speech about "tightening colonial relations." The Press Ass made this charge somebody or other with "making tight the Colonel's relations." It was just like that fellow. I only succeeded by chance in saving him from sending across some stuff about the Cardinal Archbishop of ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... of tightening were tried, but none were very successful; and the wire hung in curves, some greater and some less, ...
— What Might Have Been Expected • Frank R. Stockton
... from the tightening of the grip, that Mariano had no intention of letting go, for the good reason that, not understanding a word of what was said, he regarded the seaman as an enemy. Feeling rather than seeing this, for the hole was deep and dark, Flaggan was under the necessity ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... this moment tightening their traditional bonds at a congress of fraternity whose importance has been indicated by the presence of our illustrious guest, who passes across the continent as the herald of the civilization of ...
— Latin America and the United States - Addresses by Elihu Root • Elihu Root
... in his pocket for his key-ring, chose from the many one particular key, inserted it, turned it, left it sticking in the hole, and then, with a curious breathless tightening of the lips, he raised the lid, put aside the knit wool shield of white and violet, and with the tender care which a mother bestows upon a very tiny baby lifted the violin from its resting-place. ...
— A Woman's Will • Anne Warner
... for a time, he brought her about handsomely a little way beyond the brigantine's course, and hung in the eye of the wind, the leach flapping and tightening with reports like rifle-shots, and the water sloshing about his calves—bailing-dish now altogether out of mind—while he watched the oncoming vessel, his eyes glistening ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... had felt that sensation, that odd tightening of the throat when he first saw a Varl on Santos. The Varl had been the dominant life form there until men had come. Now they were just another animal added to humanity's growing list of pets and livestock. The little Varl with their soft-furred bodies and ...
— The Lani People • J. F. Bone
... straight, would naturally be left longer than the other, which is twisted round and round it. This tendency the performer counteracts by drawing it partially back through the slip-knot at each pretended tightening. When he finally covers over the knots, which he does with the left hand, he holds the straightened portion of the handkerchief, immediately behind the knots, between the first finger and thumb of the right hand, and therewith, in the act of covering over the knots, ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... went to bed, and suddenly all the current of life in the Dabney House was changed. It was after five when Mr. V.V., returning from his rounds, heard the news, with a tightening feeling around his heart, and went down the long hall to ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... said Dumps, tightening her hold on his neck; and Mr. Smith, in memory of the little arms that once clung round him, and the little fingers that in other days clasped ...
— Diddie, Dumps, and Tot • Louise-Clarke Pyrnelle
... his journeys to the Bad Lands: an inexpensive trinket here and there, that the girl herself had made for him. The satchel was small, and soon, pitifully soon, it was full. A moment thereafter he stood beside it, looking about him; then with an effort he put on the cover and began tightening the straps. The leather was old and the holes large, but he found difficulty even then in fastening the buckles. At last, though, it was done, and he straightened. Both the white man and the girl were watching him; but no one spoke. For the second time, the last time, the Indian stood ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge
... a frown spread over his face. "I can bear anything but that you should be hurt, Polly," he exclaimed, his fingers tightening over hers. ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... can sleep too. I'll be very good and lie quite quiet; but oh! mother, I can't sleep unless his arms are round me. I'm afraid if they're not the sea will get me!' and she clung closer to Harold, tightening her ...
— The Man • Bram Stoker
... There was a tightening of the grasp as if in acquiescence and comfort; but the nurse came back to tidy the room, and still Fernando clung to Felix, and would not let him go. She opened the shutters, and then both she and Felix were dismayed to see how ill and spent ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... melting pity for the love that went to wreck, a sympathy for ourselves and everybody and everything—a relaxing of all the nerves in a wave of sentiment. This emotion is of the enervating order. There is no sweep of strong fire through the blood, no tightening grip on life, no set resolve to stand to the flag and see the battle through. It is well, then, a generation that has heard from a thousand platforms, in plaintive notes, of Sarah Curran and her love should turn to ...
— Principles of Freedom • Terence J. MacSwiney
... him, frankly admiring now; so she might have looked at any other of nature's triumphant creations. Then, before he had gone a score of yards, she saw how a little tightening of his horse's reins had brought the big brute down from a swinging gallop to a dead standstill. The bell was ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... romantic liaisons had not been entirely excluded and thus there was a sense in which the love-poetry of the early Indian middle ages had been partly paralleled by actual courtly or village practice. From the tenth century onwards, however, a tightening of domestic morals had set in, a tightening which was further intensified by the Muslim invasions of the twelfth and thirteen centuries. Romance as an actual experience became more difficult of attainment and this was exacerbated by standard views of marriage. In early ...
— The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry • W. G. Archer
... significantly, tightening his arm. Peter moved up on the other side and locked his own arm in her free one. And so they sat, silent, depressed, their shoulders touching, their sombre eyes fixed upon the shadowy depths of the forest into which an October fog ...
— Sisters • Kathleen Norris
... John Mark, and again there was that tightening of the muscles around his mouth. "A gambler has a certain way of masking his own face and looking at yours, as if he were dragging your thoughts out through your eyes; also, he's very cool; he belongs at a table with the cards on it ...
— Ronicky Doone • Max Brand
... attention was needed by the automobile, it appeared—such as a tightening up of chains, and a couple of lost grease-cups to replace; therefore Mr. Barrymore's time would be filled up without any sight-seeing. But Sir Ralph offered to take Beechy and me anywhere we liked to go. I was very glad that the Prince said nothing about accompanying us, for somehow I'd been ...
— My Friend the Chauffeur • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... fell on dim glazed eyes, A body shrunken from its garments' fold: An aged man whose bent knees could not rise, He tottered in the maiden's tightening hold. She shivered, but too slight was the disguise To hide from love what never yet was old; She held him fast, with open eyes did pray, Walked through the fear, and kept ...
— Poetical Works of George MacDonald, Vol. 2 • George MacDonald
... forced, and the army of Wallace was enveloped in the embrace of a hideous boa-constrictor—tightening, closing, crushing every semblance of life from the victim enclosed in his toils. The flanking parties of horse were forced in upon the centre, and though, as even Turner grants, they fought with desperation, a general ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... materialism, in such fear and powerless anger as a savage feels, when, during an eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the face of the sun. The advancing tide of matter threatens to drown their souls; the tightening grasp of law impedes their freedom; they are alarmed lest man's moral nature be debased by the increase ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... Battalion suffered great discomfort, not to speak of hardships. The rainfall was unusually heavy and the country all mud. Difficulty was experienced in getting up supplies. And every day and every hour the Turks were tightening their hold on Kut, so gallantly defended by General Townshend and his brave division. For in reading the history of the battles of this spring, we must always remember that the relief of Kut was the object in view, and for that object our Generals were right ...
— With a Highland Regiment in Mesopotamia - 1916—1917 • Anonymous
... son for any other; not even a better one," returned the captain laughingly, tightening his clasp of the sturdy ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... of the dogs, he recoiled, clasping his hands upon his breast and boldly thrusting out his elbows to ward off their ferocious attacks. With a sudden tightening of the muscles he repulsed the Danish hounds, which rolled over writhing on the ground, and then, with formidable baying, returned more furiously still to ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... financial programs of the various departments on a piecemeal basis. Instead it has called on the President to present a comprehensive Executive Budget. The Congress has shown its satisfaction with that method by extending the budget system and tightening its controls. The bigger and more complex the Federal Program, the more necessary it is for the Chief Executive to submit a single budget for action by ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... more with the coming of the Saxons. For, though Roman rule in Britain was said to end with the fourth century, Roman influence, Roman customs, Roman laws, survived and were paramount during the years of independence which followed, until throttled by the slowly tightening hand of Saxon barbarism. Then the old ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... Another tightening, and Gabriel da Costa would have fainted. Deadly pale beneath his mask, he felt sick and trembling—the cords seemed to be cutting into his own flesh. His heart was equally hot against the torturers and the tortured, and he admired the physician's courage ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... a moment that Tom stood appalled. He knew that, at any instant, by the tightening of its folds the great boa could crush every bone of Ned's body; while the very closeness of its embrace rendered it impossible for him to strike at it, for fear of injuring its captor. There was not an instant to be lost. Already the coils ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty
... from 35% in 1952. Traditional labor-intensive industries are steadily being moved off-shore and replaced with more capital- and technology-intensive industries. Taiwan has become a major investor in China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Vietnam. The tightening of labor markets has led to an influx of foreign workers, both legal and illegal. Because of its conservative financial approach and its entrepreneurial strengths, Taiwan suffered little compared with many of its neighbors from "the ...
— The 1999 CIA Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency.
... Hero Giles, tightening his belt and securing the clasps to the emerald-green war cloak. "Here, Friend Nelson, thou hadst best don a helmet; the podokos on occasion throw back their heads and so might wound thee." So saying, he set foot in stirrup and swung up into a saddle which was built up high in the ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... and her father and the guide to sleep in the only shelter, and of the guide's snores that were louder than the thunder—and Maria Angelina laughed somehow in the right places without taking in a word, for all the time apprehension was tightening, tightening like a violin string about ...
— The Innocent Adventuress • Mary Hastings Bradley
... He saw the quick tightening of one hand upon the other, and the slight start of the head, and in a flash he knew that all Annetta had told him was true. The silence that followed seemed longer than the awkward pause which ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... done, then?" she asked, tightening her reins, and making her horse fidget a foot or ...
— The Lunatic at Large • J. Storer Clouston
... great Army of the gallant dead seemed to gather round one on this famous road, and over these shell-torn flats, a sudden recollection of a letter which I received in August, 1918, brought a tightening of the throat. A Canadian lady, writing from an American camp in the east of France, appealed to myself and other writers to do something to bring home to the popular mind of America a truer knowledge of what the British Armies had done ...
— Fields of Victory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... may manage to "come through" with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings, nor can I persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tightening my girth-strap three or ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever
... well-modulated accents of Rudolph—Rudolph who recognized his voice after six years. It gave him a little thrill, this reminder of the life he was entering once more. He ordered one of the dinners he used to order, and hung up the receiver, with a smile and a little tightening about his heart at the entry he, the prodigal, would make that ...
— Murder in Any Degree • Owen Johnson
... and lodge her properly in return for her service, and I'm going to do it," said Miss Ethel with a tightening of ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... he placed the wrench on the massive engine bolt and slowly applied pressure in what felt like the completely wrong direction, as if he were tightening not loosening. It gave slowly, first a quarter then a half turn. And bit by bit the projection threads vanished until they were level with the surface of the nut. It turned easily now and within a minute it fell into the pit—he threw the wrench after it and scrambled ...
— The Ethical Engineer • Henry Maxwell Dempsey
... stared at Vittoria's face, all red and swollen with the choked blood, made horrid with the starting eyes, its beauty ruined by the grasp of those two strangling hands. Simone was a madman at the moment, with a madman's single thought, to kill his victim, his fingers tightening and his blood-stained face twisted into a hideous grin. Before the ghastly sight men stood still, and knew not what to ...
— The God of Love • Justin Huntly McCarthy
... even more composedly than before, and also with a little tightening of her lips, "that Lord Redgrave is the owner of this vessel, and that therefore it is quite impossible that anything out of the way could happen to us—I mean anything more out of the way than this wonderful jump from the sea to the sky has been, ...
— A Honeymoon in Space • George Griffith
... would she beg of him, never, she resolved, with a tightening of her soft lips. She would never let him know how miserable she was over this stupid scrape; when she returned to the hotel she would carry affairs with a high hand and hold forth upon the interesting quaintness of her experience and the old-world charm ...
— The Palace of Darkened Windows • Mary Hastings Bradley
... long enough to refresh my mind I felt that I would soon have had enough of it and that I must place the faithful homage of my remembrance on my little friend's last resting place. I felt a tightening of the heart as I reached her grave. Poor dear, she was so dainty, so loving and so white and fresh—and now—if one should ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... reply, though Duncan might have been warned by the dark red in her cheeks. She continued to work with the saddle, lacing the latigo strings and tightening ...
— The Trail to Yesterday • Charles Alden Seltzer
... said that Finsen was a sick man. A mysterious malady[1] with dropsical symptoms clutched him from the earliest days with ever tightening grip, and all his manhood's life he was a great but silent sufferer. Perhaps it was that; perhaps it was the bleak North in which his young years had been set that turned him to the light as the source of life and healing. He said it himself: "It was because I needed it so much, I longed for ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... prospect, more especially since my perch was anything but comfortable, and I was just about to descend, when two white-robed figures appeared at the edge of the open space near the house and walked slowly across it. I settled back into my place with a tightening of interest which made me forget its discomfort, for that these were the two ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... to this conclusion, and as he strode along with teeth and fists tight shut he kept muttering to himself: "She may die, she may die—we—we may never see her again." Then suddenly came the fear, the sickening sink of heart, the choke at the throat, first the tightening and then the sudden relaxing of all the nerves. Lashed and harried by the sense of a fearful calamity, an unspeakable grief that was pursuing after him, Bennett did not stop to think, to reflect. He chose instantly to believe that Lloyd was near her death, and once the idea ...
— A Man's Woman • Frank Norris
... of the Continent, has a break attached to it: the simplest kind of break is shown in fig. 2, which represents a cart tilted upwards. Fig 1 shows the break itself; fig. 2 explains how it is fitted on to the cart. [Fig 1.] It will easily be understood how, by tightening the free end of the cord, the break is pressed against the wheels. The bent piece of iron shown in fig. 2, by which the bar of the break is kept in its place, may be replaced by a piece of wood, ...
— The Art of Travel - Shifts and Contrivances Available in Wild Countries • Francis Galton
... hands were called, and detailed to their several posts on the tower, and about the rock. In order to give additional purchase or power in tightening the tackle, one of the blocks of stone was suspended at the end of the movable beam of the crane, which, by adding greatly to the weight, tended to slacken the guys or supporting-ropes in the direction to which the beam with the stone was pointed, and thereby enabled the men more easily to brace ...
— The Lighthouse • R.M. Ballantyne
... right. Had he not often heard his father say that the Christmas season epitomized all the rugged sympathy and heartiness and health of the country year! To-night the blazing Yule-log, his mother's face—how white her hair was growing, thought Doctor Ralph with a sudden tightening of his throat—all of these memories had strummed forgotten and finer chords. And darkly foiling the homely brightness came the picture of rushing, overstrung, bundle-laden city crowds, of shop-girls white and weary, of store-heaps of cedar and holly sapped by electric ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... hand across his tightening forehead. Slowly over his face came a stupid expression. He felt himself going, without power of retraining himself. His lips ...
— The Master Mystery • Arthur B. Reeve and John W. Grey
... look; besides, there are the shops at Wenatchee!" As if this settled the matter she said: "But we must change places. Now." She slipped into his seat as he rose, and took the reins dexterously, with a tightening grip, in her hands. "Whoa, whoa, Nip!" Her voice deepened a little. "Steady, Tuck, steady! That's right; be a man." There was another silent interval while he watched her handling of the team, then, "I did not know there ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... boat! The canal has not been abandoned. Ah! that boat has interrupted my dreams, and I feel quite wretched. I had hoped that the last had passed twenty years ago. Here it comes with its lean horse, the rope tightening and stretching, a great black mass with ripples at the prow and a figure bearing against the rudder. A canal reminds me of my childhood; every child likes a canal. A canal recalls the first wonder. We all remember ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... little because Hen had no eyewinkers to move, and suddenly felt pity because a man could be so altogether unlikeable as Hen. Also because his mother's face stood vividly before him for an instant, leaving him with a queer tightening of the throat and the feeling that he had been rebuked. He nodded to Hen, laid down the mandolin and picked up the guitar, turned up the a string a bit, laid a booted and spurred foot across the other knee, plucked a minor chord sonorously ...
— Cow-Country • B. M. Bower
... howling of the mastiff sounded eerily through the house, as did the clank-clank of the tightening chain as he threw the weight of his big body ...
— The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu • Sax Rohmer
... imagine with what courage I worked at the arsenal; nothing was too much for me. I would have passed night and day in mending the guns and adjusting the bayonets and tightening the screws. When the commandant, Mr. Montravel, came to see us, he ...
— Waterloo - A sequel to The Conscript of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... conscious of a sudden tightening about her throat. The sight of Maria, with her shrewd, kindly eyes smiling above her plump pink cheeks, and her hands thrust deep into the big, capacious pockets of her snowy apron, just as she remembered her in the long-ago nursery days at Lovell, ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... right or left, And reading in a book, his hands unbound, With short fleet smiles. The whole place catches breath, Looking at him; she seems at point to speak: Now she lies back, and laughs, with her brows drawn And her lips drawn too. Now they read his crime— I see the laughter tightening her chin: Why do you bend your body and draw breath? They will not slay him in her sight; I am sure She will not ...
— Chastelard, a Tragedy • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... whose care, tacitly it is true, he had left the safety of Antonia. Better perish a thousand times than owe your preservation to such people, he exclaimed mentally. The grip of Nostromo's fingers never removed from his shoulder, tightening fiercely, recalled ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... mishap, releasing as it might this immense accumulation of water, that it seemed desirable at whatever expense to provide additional safeguards against it. There are in the first place cross-chains, tightening under pressure, which may be drawn across the bows of a ship that threatens to become unmanageable. Secondly, the lock-gates are doubled at the entrance to all the locks, and at the lower end of the upper lock in each flight. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 21 - The Recent Days (1910-1914) • Charles F. Horne, Editor
... 'The Anaconda is tightening its folds,' and at every fold the South cries aloud. The following bit of merry nonsense, which has the merit of being 'good to sing,' may possibly enliven more than one camp-fire, ere the last fold of the 'big sarpent' has given the final stifle ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... o'clock that night Glory was putting on her hat and cloak to return home when the call-boy came to the dressing-room door to say that the stage manager was waiting to see her. With a little catch, in her breath, and then with a tightening of the heart-strings, she followed him to the stage manager's office. It was a stuffy place over the porter's lodge, approached by a flight of circular iron stairs and lumbered with many kinds of ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... illness, by impeding her breathing, and the circulation of her blood, and I bade them desist, and unfasten all the strings and ligatures, not only that they had put round her limbs, but which, by tightening her clothes round her body, caused any obstruction. How much I wished that, instead of music and dancing and such stuff, I had learned something of sickness and health, of the conditions and liabilities of the human body, that I might have known how to assist this poor creature, ...
— Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation - 1838-1839 • Frances Anne Kemble
... said the squire, quite unaware that he was the cause of her impatient movements by the way he was perpetually tightening her reins; and also, perhaps, he unconsciously addressed the injunction ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... have "amazed all Europe." We don't know whether Europe is harder to amaze than America. Certainly no one could be more admiringly astounded than the amateur clowns gazing entranced through the crack of the doorway. To that nerve-tightening roll of drums she spins deliriously high up in giddy air, floating, a tiny human pin-wheel, in a shining cone of light. One can hear the crowd catch its breath. She walks back, all smiles, while her maid trots ahead saying something unintelligible. Her tall husband is waiting ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... you'd better go when we get to Ipswich," said the girl, tightening her lips. "I'll ...
— Many Cargoes • W.W. Jacobs
... steps. Then, by the tightening of his hand, Valensolle knew he was making an effort. Presently a stone was raised, and through the opening a trembling gleam of twilight met the eyes of the young men, and a fragrant aromatic odor came to comfort their sense ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... to meeting human faces with some pleasure; but an hour or so later, as we rode on, I saw Auberry pull up his horse, with a strange tightening of his lips. "Boys," said he, "there's where it was!" His pointing finger showed nothing more than a low line of ruins, bits of broken fencing, a heap ...
— The Way of a Man • Emerson Hough
... need to say no more to tell him everything. At all times half a word was as much to Mr. Wilding as a whole sentence to another. She saw the tightening of his lips, the hardening of his eyes, beyond which he gave no other sign that ...
— Mistress Wilding • Rafael Sabatini
... our cloaks and garments and drugget and canvas, lest they be spoiled by the rain, and betook ourselves to prayer and supplication to Almighty Allah and humbled ourselves before Him for deliverance from the peril that was upon us. But the captain arose and tightening his girdle tucked up his skirts and, after taking refuge with Allah from Satan the Stoned, clomb to the mast-head, whence he looked out right and left and gazing at the passengers and crew fell to buffeting his face and plucking out his beard. ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 6 • Richard F. Burton
... the Pharisee against the Nazarene, of the Realist against the Nominalist, of the Church against the Franciscan and the Lollard, of the Respectable Person against the Artist, of the hedge-clippers of mankind against the shooting buds. And to-day, while we live in a period of tightening and extending social organisation, we live also in a period of adventurous and insurgent thought, in an intellectual spring unprecedented in the world's history. There is an enormous criticism going on ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells
... on the lake-side, he tortured himself with one question: Why had she—Zosephine—reached away out from Carancro to buy the uncultivable and primeval wilderness round about his lonely hiding-place? Hour after hour the inexplicable problem seemed to draw near and nearer to him, a widening, tightening, dreamlike terror, that, as it came, silently pointed its finger of death at him. He was glad enough to leave his cabin next day in his small, swift pirogue—shot-gun, axe, and rifle ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... terrified face. "It strikes me it is time you and I should come to a little understanding. Any more letters from the smuggler to-day, eh? Ah, would you, you young idiot!" and Mr. Landale's fingers gave a sudden twist to the collar, which strangled the rising yell. "Listen, Johnny," tightening his grasp gradually until the brown face grew scarlet, then purple, and the goggling eyes seemed to start out of their sockets; "that is what it feels like to be hanged. They squeeze your neck so; and they leave you dangling at the end of a rope till you are dead, dead, dead, and the crows ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... of her head and a tightening of her lips that gave her face a new expression, the girl suddenly pulled open a table drawer and began fiercely to polish the top of ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Outside World • Margaret Vandercook
... corral, there was no cover worth mentioning for miles. Among the cool-eyed five who prepared to make their stand, there was not one who hadn't faced death before and often. But never had the odds been more against them. They had slipped through the toils before, but now they were tightening again. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... something," cried Astor with tightening lips as he scanned the battlefield. "It may come at any moment. We've got them where we want them. Thousands and thousands of them! ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... not respond immediately, her gloved fingers perceptibly tightening about the prayer-book, her eyes carefully ...
— Beth Norvell - A Romance of the West • Randall Parrish
... again into mine, and walked on with me slowly. I felt her hand tightening its grasp mechanically on my arm, and I saw her getting paler and paler as I went on—but, not a word passed her lips while I was speaking. When I had done, she still kept silence. Her head drooped a little, and she ...
— The Moonstone • Wilkie Collins
... knew what had happened, one coil of the sinuous reptile's body was about his left hind-leg, and, as the startled Wolfhound wheeled in his tracks, the big snake's head rose at him with a forbidding, long-drawn "Ps-s-s-s-t!" of defiance. The rapidly tightening pressure about his muscular lower thigh produced something like panic in Finn's breast; but, luckily enough, his panic resulted in speeding him toward precisely the right course of action. He feinted in the direction ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... the reptile quivered convulsively. The head rolled from side to side. There was a quick tightening of the tentacle round my body until my bones felt as though they were being crushed into shapelessness; and as ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... chancing, I suppose, to lift his eyes from the paper, he had seen something that arrested his attention. His head was still bent; but I could see that his eyes were riveted upon the mirror. There was alertness in the tightening of his hand before his mouth—in the suspension ...
— In the Days of My Youth • Amelia Ann Blandford Edwards
... General Haig's troops had been tightening their grip around Bullecourt, which lies in the original Hindenburg line due east of Croisilles. The Australians who held this front had surrounded the village on three sides and its ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume VI (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various |
