"Deafening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that big tree," thought Tom "It will give me some shelter. I'll wait there—" His words were interrupted by a deafening crash of thunder which followed close after a blinding flash. "No tree for mine!" murmured Tom. "I forgot that they're dangerous in a storm. I ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... daring. They not only came close to the korinda bush, but they actually parted the branches, and the noise became so terrible and deafening that at last Tranta grew bewildered, and sprang out, scarcely knowing what he was doing, and not ...
— Rataplan • Ellen Velvin
... loud, a. deafening, stentorian, resonant, clarion; clamorous, vociferous, boisterous; gaudy, flashy, ostentatious, showy; ...
— Putnam's Word Book • Louis A. Flemming
... they were treated to a splendid spectacle. A terrific thunder storm raged beneath them; and as they looked below into the inky depths of the thunder clouds, pierced and riven by jagged lightnings, followed by deafening bellowings and crashings of thunder, and then cast their eyes up to the sun shining in full-orbed splendor over all, they realized as never before the presence and majesty ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... But more careful, and laborious, and minute, was he in the manoeuvre of a feigned retreat. Not ere the acting of some modern play, does the anxious manager more elaborately marshal each man, each look, each gesture, that are to form a picture on which the curtain shall fall amidst deafening plaudits than did the laborious captain appoint each man, and each movement, in his lure to a valiant foe:—The attack of the foot, their recoil, their affected panic, their broken exclamations of despair;—their retreat, first ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... sweeping over the waters of Massachusetts Bay. We were considerably retarded between Boston and Halifax by contrary winds. I had retired early to my berth to sleep away the fatigues of several preceding months, and was awoke about midnight by the most deafening accumulation of sounds which ever stunned my ears. I felt that I was bruised, and that the berth was unusually hard and cold; and, after groping about in the pitch-darkness, I found that I had been thrown out of it upon the floor, a fact ...
— The Englishwoman in America • Isabella Lucy Bird
... must get home before the storm broke, and Grierson brought out his spirited team. It had grown nearly dark; a curious leaden haze obscured the prairie; and when the man was getting into his light, spring-seated wagon, a jagged streak of lightning suddenly reft the gloom and there was a deafening roll of thunder. The horses started. Grant fell backward from the step, dropping the reins; and while the others stood dazzled by the flash, the terrified animals backed the vehicle with a crash against the stable. Then they plunged madly forward toward ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... moving the body from the hips downwards, whilst H. R. H. alone stood stationary and smileless as a French demoiselle of the last century, who came to the ball not to causer but to danser. At times, when King Fitevanga condescended to show his agility, the uproar of applause became deafening. The orchestra consisted of two men sitting opposite each other,—one performed on a caisson, a log of hollowed wood, four feet high, skin-covered, and fancifully carved; the other on the national Anjya, a rude "Marimba," the prototype of the pianoforte. It is made of seven or eight ...
— Two Trips to Gorilla Land and the Cataracts of the Congo Volume 1 • Richard F. Burton
... glittering column of ice, with its ridgy and bristling top towering high above the adjacent banks, was sweeping by and onward, like the serried lines of an army advancing to the charge; while the broad valley around even back to the summits of the far-off hills, was resounding with the deafening din that rose from the extended line of the booming avalanche, with the deep rumblings of an earthquake mingled with the tumultuous roar of ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... things he will do to Wiseli when he has her there in his own house. It is not right, but just let him try"—But now Otto was interrupted by a repeated and heavy stamping that prevented his being heard. "Why do you make such a deafening noise, you pussy cat, there behind the stove?" he cried, turning his indignation towards another quarter. Pussy came out from behind the stove, but stamped more violently than before; for she was trying to force her feet into her wet boots, which it had taken the old Trine ...
— Rico And Wiseli - Rico And Stineli, And How Wiseli Was Provided For • Johanna Spyri
... impassable track, was the most deafening and distracting accumulation of noises ever heard since the time of Babel. The water as it roared and rushed and dropped itself from boulder to boulder, the rattling and banging of empty wagons, the cracking of the drivers' whips, the shouting of the men, and the ...
— In the Early Days along the Overland Trail in Nebraska Territory, in 1852 • Gilbert L. Cole
... last straggler had entered, gone his way, and disappeared, and dead silence reigned. Katie felt as though she were alone in the universe, and almost wondered if she were to be left there forever, when a short, sharp, deafening whistle echoed through the hall, and at the same instant the great building vibrated from top to bottom, the roar of machinery swallowed up the silence, ...
— Katie Robertson - A Girls Story of Factory Life • Margaret E. Winslow
... o'clock," says the Annual Register, "the guns in the park fired a salute, and immediately afterwards the Queen made her appearance at the window of the tapestried ante-room adjoining the ante-chamber, and was received with deafening cheers. She stood between Lords Melbourne and Lansdowne, in their State dresses and their ribands, who were also cheered, as was likewise her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent. At this and the two other ...
— Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1. • Sarah Tytler
... last day we had a close shave for our lives. We were crossing a narrow bushy point, the upper portion of which had caught a returning fire, and it was coming down upon us with the wind, with a deafening roar and volumes of smoke. Our chance of safety lay in getting into the open and across the water before the fire reached us, and we were nearly, very nearly caught. The bush grew denser as we went on, and was filled ...
— Five Years in New Zealand - 1859 to 1864 • Robert B. Booth
... was that they were out of harm's way when the two ships disappeared from sight with a deafening roar as the waters closed over them; they were ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... place of Vincent. The enemy having been foiled at the centre and right, stole around through the woods and turned the left of the line; but Chamberlain's regiment—the 20th Maine—was folded back by him, around the rear of the mountain, to resist the attack. The rebels came on like wolves, with deafening yells, and forced Chamberlain's men over the crest; but they rallied and drove their assailants back in their turn. This was twice repeated and then a brigade of the Pennsylvania Reserves and one of the Fifth Corps dashed over the hill. The 20th Maine ...
— Chancellorsville and Gettysburg - Campaigns of the Civil War - VI • Abner Doubleday
... assembled in a body before our house to bid good-bye to the ispravnik and the Major. Eight heavily loaded sledges were ranged in a line in front of the door, and almost a hundred dogs were springing frantically against their harnesses, and raising deafening howls of impatience, as we came out of the house into the still, frosty atmosphere. We bade everybody good-bye, received a hearty "God bless you, boys!" from the Major, and were off in a cloud of flying snow, which stung our faces like burning sparks of fire. Old Paderin, the chief of the Gizhiga ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... in order, like true Newfoundland sailors, Tom Rook, the first hand, the last of all. When they were all ashore, they scrambled like mad up the cliff; and they were no more than out of danger when the First Venture was blown to atoms. There was a flash, a deafening roar—and darkness; broken only by the spluttering splinters ...
— Billy Topsail & Company - A Story for Boys • Norman Duncan
... "Magna Charter," and being half drunk, I fell into Hull harbour, with upwards of eight stones of coal on my back, but through foolish bravado I refused to let the bag drop into the water. After being in the water several minutes, I swam to the landing with the coals on my back, amid the deafening shouts of scores of spectators. I look back on this act of temerity with feelings of shame and ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock
... been long barren, or who have lost their children, are wont to dedicate to the service of the fetich the unborn fruit of the womb, and to present to the village priest the new-born babe. He exercises it, at an early age, in those wild dances with deafening drum-accompaniment, by means of which he is accustomed to gain the requisite degree of spiritual exaltation; and in later years he instructs his pupil in the art of understanding, while his frame is wracked with convulsions, the inspirations of the ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... made every hour. Wulf preferred working to lying still, for as the craft rolled the water washed over them, while the din of the waves striking the ship's side, and the cataracts of spray falling on to the canvas above were deafening, and it was impossible to get a moment's sleep. All were glad when morning broke, although the scene that met their eyes was the reverse of comforting. Small as was the amount of sail the vessel tore through the water under the pressure of the following ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... who stood over them was swallowed in the hot air. Then the coach began to move and at the same time the giant trees stirred in a peculiar way. They, like a vast army, bent low with a sound as of heavy artillery rumbling over a bridge that covered vacuous depths. Then they began a deafening noise, their branches sweeping hard against the ...
— Mistress Penwick • Dutton Payne
... of Berthe asleep yonder in the servant's room. Then a cart filled with long strips of iron passed by, and made a deafening metallic vibration against ...
— Madame Bovary • Gustave Flaubert
... the engines, showing that he knew them by heart, and I could almost imagine the blurring, deafening sound which for seven seconds rent the air through the roar of winds ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... after breakfast to view the cathedral, which is very well worthy the attention of the curious, and certainly contains some very ancient relics of the great and the good of earliest times. On our return, the deafening shouts of the multitude, who were congregated outside the Sessions House, proclaimed a favourable verdict for the farmers, who, in the excess of their joy at having beaten their reverend adversary, gave loose to the most unrestrained expressions of exultation: ...
— The English Spy • Bernard Blackmantle
... much to him. He had forgotten the toasts at dinner. Pottpetschmidt in the carriage and Schulz and Kunz on the step were making a deafening noise, they were marveling at their encounter. They climbed into the train as it was going. Schulz introduced Christophe. Pottpetschmidt bowed as stiff as a poker and his features lost all expression; then when the formalities were ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... hands so it should be set right. The conductor passed him a bar, but Gertrude could not see; she could only hear the ring of the frosty steel. Then with a scream the safety valve of the engine popped and the wind tossed the deafening roar in and out of the car, now half dark. Stunned by the uproar and disturbed by the failing light she left her chair, and going over sat down at the window beneath which Glover was working; some instinct made her seek him. When the car door ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... several declarations were read—that of the Bolsheviki, that of the Socialist-Revolutionists (read by Chernov), that of the Mensheviki (read by Tseretelli). The partizans of each fraction greeted the reading of their own declaration with deafening applause (for the audience was one of "comrades" and did not hesitate to take part in the debates); cat-calls and shouts greeted the orators of the opposing fractions. Each word of the declarations of the Socialist-Revolutionists and of the Mensheviki (declarations which every ...
— Bolshevism - The Enemy of Political and Industrial Democracy • John Spargo
... white-haired figure in the middle, who was quickly recognized as Jackson. Passing through the building, the party, reinforced by Chief Justice Marshall and certain other dignitaries, emerged upon the east portico, amid the deafening cheers of the spectators. The President-elect bowed gravely, and, stepping forward to a small cloth-covered table, read in a low voice the inaugural address; the aged Chief Justice, "whose life was a protest against the political ...
— The Reign of Andrew Jackson • Frederic Austin Ogg
... nature to be an ornament of those Institutions opposed them and when thinking of the rights and the conduct of the decrepit Legitimate—virulent in a heathen vindictiveness declaring itself holy—she had Nature's logic, Nature's voice, for self-defence. It was eloquent with her, to the deafening of other voices in herself, even to the convincing of herself, when she was wrought by the fires within to feel elementally. The other voices within her issued of the acknowledged dues to her family ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... Bearded sailors with brown faces and large horny hands clasped their partners in a tight embrace. The women wore nothing but a shift. Now and then two sailors would get up and dance together. The noise was deafening. People were singing, shouting, laughing; and when a man gave a long kiss to the girl sitting on his knees, cat-calls from the English sailors increased the din. The air was heavy with the dust beaten up by the heavy boots of the ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... fewer minutes than we have occupied in describing this charge, a tremendous and prolonged roar and rattle told us that the battle was on behind us more than in front. Amid the din arose a quick succession of deafening crashes, and shot and shell came singing and howling over us from the left. Russell's Division (First of the Sixth Corps) comprising eleven infantry regiments and one of heavy artillery, behind which the broken battalions of Ricketts had been reassembling, ...
— Lights and Shadows in Confederate Prisons - A Personal Experience, 1864-5 • Homer B. Sprague
... on with unabated fury, and Zoe, as she listened to the howling of the wind and the deafening thunder peals, grew wild with terror for her husband. She could not be persuaded to go to bed, even when her accustomed hour for retiring was long past, but would sit in her chair, moaning, "O Ned! Ned! my husband, my dear, dear ...
— Elsie at Nantucket • Martha Finley
... spectator on the stairs stood stunned. The noise was deafening; the appearance of the man, whose expression was one of settled rage but whose actions were of the coldest regularity, was most bewildering, partially obscured as it was by the flying billets of wood; the mechanical attempts of Miss Gould to rise from the soap-box, ...
— A Philanthropist • Josephine Daskam
... curve was rounded, and there, almost in front of me, was a mass of buildings, and there, too, spanning the river, was what looked to me like a trellis-work bridge, and on the bridge was a human figure. The roar and noise of the cataract were deafening, but louder than all was my piercing cry for help. He who stood on the bridge heard it. I saw him fling up his hands as if in sudden horror, and that was the last thing I did see. I sank down with closed eyes in the bottom of the boat, and my heart went up in a silent cry to Heaven. Next moment ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 1, January, 1891 • Various
... the midst of this deafening din against all banks, that, if it shall create such a panic as shall shut up the banks, it will shut up the treasury of ...
— The Great Speeches and Orations of Daniel Webster • Daniel Webster
... without saying—but on Wednesday morning at nine o'clock, it is peculiarly dirty and noisy. Wednesday is Valedolmo's market day, and the square is so cluttered with booths and huxters and anxious buyers, that the peaceable pedestrian can scarcely wedge his way through. The noise moreover is deafening; above the cries of vendors and buyers, rises a shriller chorus of bleating kids and squealing ...
— Jerry Junior • Jean Webster
... billow lifted the boat as if it had been a cork, fell under it with a deafening roar and bore it shoreward in a tumult of seething foam. Next moment the wave let it down with a crash and retired, leaving it still, however, in two or three feet ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... quick to note the new tone of black amid the vividly white patches of snow. She waited until the deafening thunder peal was dying away in eerie cadences. "Why are the rocks black here and almost white ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... know," I answered. The lights after the dark and the snow bewildered me, and the noise and excitement of the Russian officers were deafening. ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... unfinished, immature Childe Harold, and the Turkish and other "Tales," which raised this sudden and deafening storm of applause when the century was young, and now, at its close (I refer, of course, to the Tales, not to Byron's poetry as a whole, which, in spite of the critics, has held and still holds its own), are ignored if not forgotten, passed over if not despised—which but few know thoroughly, and ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron
... about him. Jacques Three was nearly at his side; Madame Defarge, still heading some of her women, was visible in the inner distance, and her knife was in her hand. Everywhere was tumult, exultation, deafening and maniacal bewilderment, astounding ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... was deafening. From four to six negroes were trying to speak at the same time. Aleck's majestic mouth with blue gums and projecting teeth led the chorus as he ambled down the aisle, his ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... became still deeper, but at the same time there arose, slumbering on high and awakened by the whirlwind, thunder; it began to roll between the Arabian and Libyan deserts,—powerful, threatening, one might say, angry. It seemed as if from the heavens, mountains and rocks were tumbling down. The deafening peal intensified, grew, shook the world, began to roam all over the whole horizon; in places it burst with a force as terrible as if the shattered vault of heaven had fallen upon earth and afterwards it again rolled with a hollow, continual rumble; again it burst ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... Military Hospital had just reached the minute mark of 7:50 a.m. when a great brown cloud was seen to issue from the side of the volcano, followed almost immediately by a cloud of vapory blackness, which separated from it and took a course downward to the sea. Deafening detonations from the interior preceded this appearance, and a lofty white pennant was seen to rise from the summit of ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... complete his sentence. The distant rumbling that had at first attracted their attention suddenly merged into a deafening roar, and the trail quivered under their feet. The ponies snorted and threw up their heads, chafing ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Alaska - The Gold Diggers of Taku Pass • Frank Gee Patchin
... dark and heavy clouds filled the atmosphere, mingling with the top-gallant streamers of the ship. Night hovered over the ocean, rendered horrible by the intermitting blaze of lightnings, the awful crash of thunder, and the deafening roar of winds and waves. The sea was rolled into mountains, capped with foaming fire. Now the ship was soaring among the thunders of heaven, now sunk in ...
— Alonzo and Melissa - The Unfeeling Father • Daniel Jackson, Jr.
... with the traitor, away with the recreant Knight! out upon him!" cried in a loud voice Sir John Chandos, while the shout was taken up by a deafening multitude of voices—in the midst of which the degraded Knight and landless Baron made his way to the gate, and, as he passed out, a redoubled storm of shouts and yells arose ...
— The Lances of Lynwood • Charlotte M. Yonge
... hanged, and in his case the public executioner—"Masto Donato" as he was nick-named by the populace—gave vent to many pleasantries concerning the episcopal rank of his victim. Blindfolded and with the cord of infamy depending from his neck, the Bishop was led up to the fatal ladder amid deafening shouts of ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... down from above or pierced by the spears and arrows through the holes in the parapet. Fresh swarms of assailants took their places on the ladders. The drums kept up a ceaseless rattle, and the yells of the mass of negroes standing inactive were deafening. Their efforts, however, were in vain. Never did the Amazons fight with more reckless bravery; but the position was too strong for them, and at last, after upwards of a thousand of the assailants ...
— By Sheer Pluck - A Tale of the Ashanti War • G. A. Henty
... its fiercest heat. The smoke whirled upward in mighty eddies or rolled along in huge convolutions. Through the fleecy rolls here and there tongues of flame shot fiercely. The river steamed. The roar of the rushing flames was deafening. The tops of the huge pines that stood along the banks would wave and toss as the fiery line reached them, and then burst into blaze, as if they were but the mighty torches that lighted the path of the passing destruction. ...
— How Deacon Tubman and Parson Whitney Kept New Year's - And Other Stories • W. H. H. Murray
... at last" (deafening cheers) "and we must make our concert a stunner. It must go with a bang from start to finish. It must lick every other fag's concert that ever was, and 'be the bright harbinger of—' What is the ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... red-hot iron to the port fire; there was a puff of smoke, a deafening crash; and the great gun gave a little jump, as if for joy. A thousand pairs of eyes strained after the solid shot as it flew, then as it disappeared over the British earthworks and was heard to go tearing its way through some wall a great shout went up from one end of ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... across the middle of London; so, hastily doffing his overall, he left the Gardens and walked rapidly towards Portland Place. He had hardly got past the fountain presented by Sir Jamsetjee Jeejeebhoy in wasted benevolence, than he heard the deafening report of the bomb which had wrecked his studio, reduced it to a tangle of iron girders and stanchions, strewn its floor with brick rubble and thick dust, and left his wife a human wreck, lying unconscious with a broken spine, surrounded by splinters of glass, broken ...
— Mrs. Warren's Daughter - A Story of the Woman's Movement • Sir Harry Johnston
... Massachusetts, which none who were there can forget. Russell had delivered two addresses there before. On that night there were two addresses before his by prominent lawyers, but there was evident impatience to hear 'The boy.' When he came forward there was the most deafening applause. He really seemed inspired by miraculous powers. Every auditor was fascinated and held closely bound. There was for a time breathless suspense, and then at some telling sentence the whole building ...
— Russell H. Conwell • Agnes Rush Burr
... in the extreme. A band of musicians is usually engaged, after protracted haggling, to enliven the proceedings. Two or three native fiddles of most primitive make wail incessantly, cymbals clash recklessly, a kind of flute resembling bagpipes in sound squirls, while a wooden drum adds to the deafening din. The girls squeak and posture, the place reeks with pungent tobacco smoke and the smell of garlic, the guests munch dried melon seeds, spitting the husks on to the floor, and shout to make each other hear above ...
— Life and sport in China - Second Edition • Oliver G. Ready
... to discover. When at length one of the champions shows signs of yielding, by his movements in the water, and the shaking of the pole he is holding to, the excitement becomes very great. "Lobon—lobon," is shouted louder and more rapidly than before. The shouts become deafening. The struggles of the poor victim, who is fast losing consciousness, are painful to witness. The champions are generally plucky, and seldom come out of the water of their own will. They stay under water until ...
— Children of Borneo • Edwin Herbert Gomes
... had reached the crowd without, and was received with repeated shouts, and cries of 'Long live David!' 'Long live the prince of artists!' But the cheers became almost deafening, when the pretty Lizette, having heard the wonderful story of a sign having been painted that was to hasten her marriage, and give her a dowry of 200 guineas, made her appearance, and, without a moment's hesitation, threw her arms about the neck of her benefactor, who returned her caresses ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... charges on our batteries, determined to capture them as they had captured Canby's at Valverde. At one time they were within forty yards of Slough's batteries, their slouch hats drawn down over their faces, and rushing on with deafening yells. It seemed inevitable that they would make the capture, when Captain Claflin gave the order to cease firing, and Captain Samuel Robbins with his company, K of the First Colorado, arose from the ground like ghosts, delivering a galling fire, charged ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... a deafening voice, for it had at once perceived that the terror inspired by its speech was its ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... flatter his vanity, and he became a vocalist on very trifling occasions. This neither agreed with our dear invalid landlady, nor was a fitting example for "baby boy," who speedily tried his own little treble in admiring imitation of Jack's deafening bass; and recourse was at last had to the aid of a young friend, who bestowed a few gentle raps on his head with the bent end of a hooked cane, and then locked him up in a dark kitchen for half an hour, saying to me, rather regretfully, ...
— Personal Recollections • Charlotte Elizabeth
... cut a path through tangled underwood Of old traditions out to broader ways. She lived to hear her work called brave and good, But oh! the thorns, before the crown of bays. The world gives lashes to its pioneers Until the goal is reached—then deafening cheers. ...
— Memories of Jane Cunningham Croly, "Jenny June" • Various
... get my breath, but the big trees were swinging backwards and forwards with a deafening noise. Their shadows, which looked like great black animals, threw themselves flat along the road and then slipped away and hid behind the trees. Some of these shadows had shapes which I recognized. But most of them hovered and jumped about in front of me as though they wanted to prevent me from ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... consternation into the opposition camp, because some of the Archbishop's troops had fought against the heathen in the East, and they now recognised the clamour which had before, on many an occasion, routed them, and they thought that the Saracenes had turned the tables and invaded Germany; indeed from the deafening clamour it seemed likely that all Asia was let loose upon them. The alarm spread quickly to Castle Bernstein itself, and torches began to glimmer on its battlements. With a roar the Crusaders rushed up to the foot of the ...
— The Strong Arm • Robert Barr
... wagon, Paul, a little child!" almost shrieked Jack; for the clamor was deafening by now, and ordinary sounds could ...
— The Banner Boy Scouts - Or, The Struggle for Leadership • George A. Warren
... was slowly swinging around broadside to the beach. She was too high out of water for the seas to board her, though they pounded her weather side with deafening noise, and with each impact she was lifted shoreward a few feet more. Finally the crashings ceased, and they knew that, with water in the hold, she had gone as high as the seas could drive her. Then, with the going down of the tide, the heavy poundings of the sea grew less and the voices of the ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... date this year, I for one would not have blamed them had they sailed away, never to come back. For a quarter of a mile off shore scattered boulders curried the surf and fluffed it into white foam. Its deafening roar was filled with menace. Salt spray and sleet mingled cut one's face rods back from the shore, and high up the dark hill behind rose the gnarled woodland, wailing and tossing its giant branches. With the fall of night no light was visible ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... and seemingly very busy. But immediately she caught sight of Madame Grandjean and her daughter, sitting on the ground in the front of the lawn, she ran down, overwhelmed them with embraces, and poured a deafening flood of ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... not quite so low. Don't stand so near the Queen, William Brown. No, not so far away—you'll pull the train off. Walk when the Queen walks, William Brown, don't stand still. Sing up, please, train bearer. No, not quite so loud. That's deafening ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... water in a cauldron when it is boiling over upon a great fire, and the spray reached the top of the rocks on either side. When she began to suck again, we could see the water all inside whirling round and round, and it made a deafening sound as it broke against the rocks. We could see the bottom of the whirlpool all black with sand and mud, and the men were at their wits ends for fear. While we were taken up with this, and were expecting each moment to be our last, Scylla pounced down suddenly ...
— The Odyssey • Homer
... doting years, Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears, Whether thy airy, insubstantial shade (The rights of sepulture now duly paid) Spread abroad its hideous form On the roaring civil storm, Deafening din and warring rage Factions wild with factions wage; Or under-ground, deep-sunk, profound, Among the demons of the earth, With groans that make the mountains shake, Thou mourn thy ill-starr'd, blighted birth; Or in the uncreated Void, Where seeds ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... with the revolver made a sudden movement, and Bell flung his weight upon it as the clutching hand pulled the trigger. There was a deafening report.... ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various
... of shelter, sat followers of various trades and vendors of divers commodities, each in the place which had become his from daily association and long habit. These good people, together with keepers of stalls and shops, extolled their wares in deafening shouts; snatches of song, shouts of laughter, and the clang of pewter vessels came in bursts of discord from open tavern doors; women discoursed with or abused each other, according to their temper and inclination as they leaned from the jutting small-paned windows and ...
— Royalty Restored - or, London under Charles II. • J. Fitzgerald Molloy
... were running and barking, and the canaries, hanging in cages above the windows, were straining their throats in rivalry and adding to the general uproar by the shrill trilling of their piercing notes. At the very height of this deafening merry-making a mud-bespattered carriage stopped at the gate, and a man of five-and forty, in a travelling dress, stepped out of it and stood still in amazement. He stood a little time without stirring, watching the house with attentive ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... o'clock quite a number of the commanders of regiments had fallen, and in some instances not a single field officer remained; yet the fighting continued with an earnestness that plainly showed that the contest on both sides was for death or victory. The almost deafening sound of artillery and the rattle of musketry was all that could be heard as the men stood silently and delivered their fire, evidently bent on the work of destruction which knew no bounds. Foot by foot the ground was contested, a single narrow strip of open land ...
— Reminiscences of Pioneer Days in St. Paul • Frank Moore
... storm? I have seen it when its crags seemed frantic, Butting against the mad Atlantic, When surge on surge would heap enorme, 260 Cliffs of emerald topped with snow, That lifted and lifted, and then let go A great white avalanche of thunder, A grinding, blinding, deafening ire Monadnock might have trembled under; And the island, whose rock-roots pierce below To where they are warmed with the central fire, You could feel its granite fibres racked, As it seemed to plunge with a shudder ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... the moor with smoke, among which I saw moving figures, sudden glimpses of men in rank, sudden men on horseback, struggling with their horses. The noise was worse than I had expected; it came on me with repeated deafening shocks. I could hear cries in the lulls when the firing slackened; then the uproar grew worse again, sounds of desperate thuds, marking cannon shot. I heard balls going over my head with a shrill "wheep, wheep," which ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... were again confused as to which way to go, and many were stuck in the mire which was concealed by the snow, except here and there an opening above a spring from which there issued a steaming vapor. The game scout and his valiant dog led on the force of canines with deafening war-cries, and one could see black heads here and there popping from behind the embankments. As the herd finally swept toward the opposite shore, many dead were left behind. Pierced by the arrows of the hunters, they lay like black ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... patting his mother's shoulder, "there are eleven kids packed away upstairs like sardines—we hid 'em away while dad and you were lost, and—" but here with a deafening racket the stairs door burst wide open and with a swoop and a scream eleven pajama-ed young bandits with starry eyes bore down upon Aunt Ellen ...
— When the Yule Log Burns - A Christmas Story • Leona Dalrymple
... in the stone. He lighted the fuse and, warning the others, they hastily recrossed the dangerous bridge. They had reached the edge of the forest when, a flash leaped up amid the foam and a sharp crash was followed by a deafening, drawn-out uproar. Rending, grinding, smashing, the jam broke up. It hammered upon the partly shattered boulder, and, carrying it away or driving over it, washed in tremendous ruin down the rapid. When the wild clamor had subsided, Salter gave the men some instructions; and then, as they approached ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... which were being fired down from machines already in the air and the lights fired up from the ground, all combined and whirled through my excited brain like a meaningless nightmare. Then there was a deafening roar and we shot down a path of light, bumped hard, bumped less hard, bumped again, and the huge plane with its great load of bombs was in the air. Lights on the ground and the lights of machines in the air became mixed until I could not tell one ...
— Night Bombing with the Bedouins • Robert Henry Reece
... the hill, pausing at the end of what seemed like hours in a sort of hollow just large enough to mask their bodies and stared over its edge into one of the craters of the Moon. Out of the depths of that crater came the discordant sounds, which now were almost deafening, and out of that crater too came the almost invisibly bluish column whose outer tip ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... wolf; it consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the branches of the forest, and the tremendous crash of deafening thunder. ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... second span succumbed. There followed a series of minor chutes with short intervening silences. At last so long an interval of calm ensued that we plucked up courage to believe it all over. A single stone rolled a few feet and hit the rock floor with a bang. Then, immediately after, the first-deafening thunder was repeated as evidently another span gave way. It sounded as though the whole mountain had moved. I was almost afraid to stretch out my hand for fear it would encounter the wall of debris. The roar ceased as abruptly as it had begun. ...
— The Killer • Stewart Edward White
... for them to talk to one another now, as Jack had the motor going almost full speed, and the noise it made was deafening, or it would have been except for the warm, fur hoods that covered the ears of the fliers. They were warmly dressed for they did not know how high they might ascend, and it is always cold up above, no matter how hot it ...
— Air Service Boys in the Big Battle • Charles Amory Beach
... always had time to adjust her faculties for the overpowering contrast these lower regions presented. Long before she reached the end of the gorge she heard the sullen thunder of the river. The river was low, too, for otherwise there would have been a deafening roar. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... deeper tones of the men chimed in, and the mob of naked children, bringing up the rear of the procession, added their shrill voices to the clamor, which, upon the booming in of a drum and the furious shaking of the conjurer's rattle, became deafening. ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... made and carried quickly, was greeted with deafening applause by the visitors sitting, standing, or balanced in the window- seats, and then some one moved for an executive session, and slowly the crowd began ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... whence yon glare That fires the arch of heaven?—that dark red smoke Blotting the silver moon?... Hark to that roar whose swift and deafening peals, In countless echoes, through the mountains ring, Startling pale midnight ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans
... swam within her as loose and as dim as the green sea depths, that a wave never stirs. She struggled, but it was only as one in a dream strives to lift himself out of the power that holds; and when the conductor waved his stick for the last time, and the curtain came down amid deafening applause, irritated and enervated, she shrank from Hender, as if anxious ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... moment the sky was lit up by all manner of S.O.S. lights and the innumerable flashes from our guns, which were now showing their maximum strength for the first time. They belched forth concentrated death, the roar reached such a deafening crescendo that conversation was entirely out of the question—indeed it was impossible to hear one's own voice. However, the scene was truly impressive, and the grandeur was beyond anything ...
— Three years in France with the Guns: - Being Episodes in the life of a Field Battery • C. A. Rose
... drank more freely of the subtle fermented liquor, his eyes gained a new and more unnatural light, and his gestures grew more wild, while the whole body of voices rose together from an even and dignified chant to an indistinguishable discord of deafening yells. ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... their weaker brethren away from it, and fighting over it as if the sea was not covered with other bits equally good. All the time the noise they made "poultering" down in the water, and quacking or cackling—I do not know which to call it—was most deafening. ...
— Peter the Whaler • W.H.G. Kingston
... and gloomy bazaar the din of hundreds of wooden hammers on as many pieces of copper being made into jugs, trays, pots or pans, is simply deafening, echoed as it is under the vaulted roofs, the sound waves clashing in such an unmusical and confused way as to be absolutely diabolical. A few of these copper vessels are gracefully ornamented and inlaid, but the majority ...
— Across Coveted Lands - or a Journey from Flushing (Holland) to Calcutta Overland • Arnold Henry Savage Landor
... shrill, shrill, O Pan! Your Panic-pipes, far from the river! Deafening shrill, O Poster-Pan! Turning a man to a timorous brute With irrational fear. From your frantic flute ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... looking about him, a third knight appeared at the end of the courtyard. He was quite as large as Sir Brune, and as he came spurring up, the noise of his horse's hoofs was deafening. Sir Brune recognized him as Sir Plenorius, ...
— King Arthur and His Knights • Maude L. Radford
... ships were abreast of each other, and almost at the same instant both discharged a deadly broadside. The conflict became general. The crashing of the woodwork and the roaring of the guns was deafening. A thick smoke enveloped the two vessels, so that nothing could be seen of the one from the other; still the firing and crashing went on. The sails were torn to shreds, the deck was encumbered with fragments of timber; men were now and then falling, either killed or wounded, ...
— Willis the Pilot • Paul Adrien
... vessels, gay with their pennons and streamers, whose crews were either gazing idly at passers-by, or else were busily loading with chests, bales, and casks the lighters which were to bear them to the shore. And with it all was a deafening noise, the constant halloh cry of steersmen, the calling of traders from the shore, and the scolding of the custom-house officials who, in their red coats and with their white maces and white faces, jumped from ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. VI. • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... for forcibly separating them, others for allowing them to fight their own battles and loud-voiced arguments, subsidiary quarrels, mingled with the shrill cries of terror and caused a din which grew in deafening intensity, degenerating into a wild orgy as glasses were knocked off the tables, cards strewn about, candles sent flying ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... obstacles AFTER forming! Think only of one fact: Daun, on sight of their intention, has opened 400 pieces of Artillery on them, and these go raging and thundering into the hem of the Wood, and to whatever issues from it, now and for hours to come, at a rate of deafening uproar and of sheer deadliness, which no observer ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XX. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... toward Montgomery. Instantly there came an answering crackle, and exasperated fire-fighters rushed to meet the latest sortie of their enemy. Once more three men, keg laden, made their way through smoke and showering brands. Again the deafening report reverberated and ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... life, and to have consulted his senses, not his imagination. He meets with no basilisks that destroy with their eyes, his crocodiles devour their prey without tears, and his cataracts fall from the rocks without deafening the neighbouring inhabitants[270]. ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell
... of the world. There was nothing else in the world but a crimson-purple glare and sound, deafening, all-embracing, continuing sound. Every other light had gone out about her and against this glare hung slanting walls, pirouetting pillars, projecting fragments of cornices, and a disorderly flight of huge angular sheets of glass. She had an impression of a great ball of crimson-purple fire like ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... some parts where a good shower of rain has fallen, the stridulous piercing notes of the cicadae are perfectly deafening; a drab-colored cricket joins the chorus with a sharp sound, which has as little modulation as the drone of a Scottish bagpipe. I could not conceive how so small a thing could raise such a sound; it seemed to make the ground over it thrill. When cicadae, crickets, ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... were standing on the mound of sand. A song and dance began. One by one three of the four opposing players were summoned to guess under which tube the ball was hidden. At each guess the cries of the opposing party became deafening, and the mock struggles approached the violence of combat. The last guesser found the ball; and as he victoriously carried the latter and the tubes across to his own mound, his side scored ten. The process was repeated. The second guesser found the ball; ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... a deafening staccato in the hall outside the library. Bibby rushed gurgling from the room. Several tall men in knee breeches and silk stockings dashed excitedly up and down stairs using expressions such as had never before been heard by Mr. Hepplewhite, and the clanging gong of ...
— Tutt and Mr. Tutt • Arthur Train
... wicked thoughts about hot potatoes and dexterity in throwing them persist in coming to the fore. Several scrimmages and quarrels occur between the chapar-jee and his shagirds, and the crowd, who persist in invading the premises, and the tumult around is something deafening, for it is holiday times and the people feel particularly self-indulgent and disinclined for self-denial. In the midst of the uproar, from out the chaotic mass of rainbow-colored costumes, there forms a little knot ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... to Serena, whom I tried to grasp as she lightly sprang down. We all followed, save Schillie and the two invalids. The pirates shouted with great deafening shouts, and ran towards us, rudely grasping hold of us as we each descended. We shuddered and shrieked with horror. The pirate king ran and brought Schillie down in spite of her struggles. The captain was instantly seized, and would ...
— Yr Ynys Unyg - The Lonely Island • Julia de Winton
... head rose above the level of the steep black wall his ears were filled with a deafening roaring and rushing, supplemented by most tremendous dull thuddings which shook the stack like the ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... crash like that of mighty thunder brought them startled out of the land of dreams. Instinctively both reached for their belts and pistols, which they had placed close to their hands on retiring. There was no need for their use, however, for the author of the deafening racket was only Chris who, with a grin on his face, was beating on a tin-pan ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... south-born, sun-nurtured. They broke away from their midday rest as from their military toil, moved as by one swift breath of fire, and flung themselves out to meet her, the chorus of a thousand voices ringing in deafening vivas to the skies. She was enveloped in that vast sea of eager, furious lives; in that dizzy tumult of vociferous cries and stretching hands and upturned faces. As her soldiers had done the night before, so these did now—kissing her ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... shells fell thick and fast on the bastions at Point-du-Jour; and so well aimed were they, that between the bastions a looker-on was in comparative safety. The noise, however, of the duel between the bastions and the batteries was so deafening, that it was literally impossible for two persons to hear each other speak at a few feet distance; the shells, too, which were passing to the right and left, seemed to give the whole air a tremulous motion. At the bastions the artillerymen were working ...
— Diary of the Besieged Resident in Paris • Henry Labouchere
... and the shouting of the combatants, became so deafening, that even the group of troopers unoccupied in the fight, and in the rear, could scarcely hear each other's voice. Gray's party mounted their horses now, in order to have a better view of the battle, and from the situation of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction. - Volume 13, No. 359, Saturday, March 7, 1829. • Various
... arrival, a perfectly deafening volley of shouts and yells elicited from my companion the careless remark that the customary sabbath-day's fight was apparently more serious than usual. Almost as he spoke there succeeded a deathlike silence, broken ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... band of the 6th Massachusetts, instruments slung; behind these, filling the street from gutter to gutter, surged the sweating drummers, deafening every ear with their racket; then followed the field and staff, then the Yankee regiment, wave on wave of bayonets choking the thoroughfare far as the eye could see, until there seemed no end to their coming, and the cheering ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... particular brand of patriotism manifested itself in beating with small bars of iron on a large circular saw, suspended on a stick thrust through the hole in its centre and borne triumphantly between two youths. The reverberation, the deafening clangour of this, cannot possibly be described, or appreciated by one that has never heard it. Suffice it to say, that the fish-horns, even the cannon, were ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... sea-birds from their nests; They dart and wheel with deafening screams; Now dark—and now their wings and breasts Flash back amid disastrous gleams. O, sin! what hast thou done on this fair earth? The world, O man! is wailing o'er ...
— The Crater • James Fenimore Cooper
... into a broad street, where there were, oh! such numbers of people, walking so fast, and the road was full of carriages and horses and waggons, and the noise was just deafening. ...
— Little Folks (November 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... mind. His advocacy of strenuous discipline procured him relentless enemies among the Genevese of the "Libertine" party. Those were stormy times for Calvin, when, in derision of the student, legislator, and theologian, deafening salutes were fired by night before his doors, and when the dogs were set upon him in the streets.[423] But, when we read of the violent antagonism elicited by the publication of the severe provisions of the "Ordinances," regulating even the minor details ...
— The Rise of the Hugenots, Vol. 1 (of 2) • Henry Martyn Baird
... they fell on the buildings. Two more shells came shrieking over. The few people about were quickly making for the cover of their cellars. Getting my camera into position, ready to swing in any direction, I waited. With deafening explosions the shells exploded in a small street behind me. The Germans were evidently trying to smash up the old Flemish town hall, which was in the corner of the market-place, so I decided to fix my focus in its direction. But though I waited for over an hour, nothing ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... God's sake!" exclaimed Horatio, and the curtain slowly descended amid deafening roars of laughter, and shouts of ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various |
