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More "Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Mrs. Poe Tato-Bug say, but flying and jumping she hurried home. Her red speckled wings kept cracking louder and louder as she ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... this talk. The crowd continued to move by, because all the skaters kept coming. Of course it would have been much wiser if they had gone ashore at different points of the lake instead of crowding together at the end where the ice was already cracking. But, somehow, people do not stop to think when anything happens, and as soon as the boys and girls—and men and women, too—who were skating on the pond saw that something was happening at one end of the pond they skated there as fast as ...
— Sunny Boy and His Playmates • Ramy Allison White
... was only a 'yarn,' though, indeed, it would be only a just judgment upon the unbelievers to lose the finest part of the whole year. But when I went down there I found it true, sure enough. Instead of a good, honest, cracking frost to freshen everything up, as our ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, January 1878, No. 3 • Various
... with a can of milk in it, drawn by a goat came in sight around the corner, and who should be pulling it but Nanny, with the big, clumsy Mike Rooney cracking the whip at her and every once in a while giving her a stinging cut which had caused Nanny to cry out as Billy ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... on a level surface, letting the shoes dry on his feet, to the irregularities of which the leather is thus molded in the same way as it was previously molded over the shoe last. On taking the shoes off a very little neat's-foot oil should be rubbed into the leather to prevent its hardening and cracking. ...
— Manual for Noncommissioned Officers and Privates of Infantry • War Department
... The cracking of a tree limb had reached their ears, followed by a cry of alarm. A limb upon which Pat Malone was standing had broken, causing the fellow to slip to another ...
— Joe The Hotel Boy • Horatio Alger Jr.
... his head. There was a glass of water by his side. He thrust his finger into it and passed it across his lips. They were dry, almost cracking. ...
— Havoc • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... distinguished guests, caused to be driven past the corridors, for their inspection, all the poultry belonging to the Mission. The procession took an hour to pass. For music, there was the squeaking, cackling, hissing, gobbling, crowing, quacking of the fowls, combined with the screaming, scolding, and whip-cracking of the excited Indian marshals of the lines. First came the turkeys, then the roosters, then the white hens, then the black, and then the yellow, next the ducks, and at the tail of the spectacle long files of geese, some strutting, ...
— Ramona • Helen Hunt Jackson
... quick aim and not too good, for the animal disappeared in the farther bush, and the cracking of twigs told the young hunter that the quarry ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... two keels — one cleaving the water, the other the air —as the boat churned .. on through both opposing elements at once. A continual cascade played at the bows; a ceaseless whirling eddy in her wake; and, at the slightest motion from within, even but of a little finger, the vibrating, cracking craft canted over her spasmodic gunwale into the sea. Thus they rushed; each man with might and main clinging to his seat, to prevent being tossed to the foam; and the tall form of Tashtego at the steering oar crouching almost double, in order to ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... which he has us'd in such Perfection, that it is said [104] none can ever be weary of reading them, tho they be never so long. Nor could Death it self, in immediate view before his Eyes, suppress his merry Humour, and hinder him from cracking Jests on the Scaffold; tho he was a Man of great Piety and Devotion, whereof all the World was convinced by his Conduct both in his Life and ...
— A Discourse Concerning Ridicule and Irony in Writing (1729) • Anthony Collins
... the wind blew they could hear a distant cracking of branches as the dead boughs, broken by the swaying of the trees, fell off and came down. Had any one attempted to walk into the forest there they would have sunk above the ankle in soft decaying wood, hidden from sight by thick vegetation. Wood-pigeons rose every ...
— After London - Wild England • Richard Jefferies
... ourselves into believing it was nothing. My mother would not agree that she might have been sleepwalking; but she was ready to put the door opening down to the fault of the latch, which certainly snicked very lightly. As for the knocks, they might be the old warped woodwork of the house cracking a bit, or a mouse rattling a piece of loose plaster. The smell was more difficult to explain; but finally we agreed that it might easily be the queer night smell of the moist earth, coming in through the open window ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... the sake of the men, with whom he was a decided favourite, any slight misdemeanours which they could not contrive to hide were generally overlooked. Quirk occasionally paid a visit to the midshipmen's berth, where he sat up at table cracking nuts, "evidently under the impression," as Jack observed, "that he is one of us." Quirk had soon struck up a friendship with the bear, who was a very tame beast, and could play almost as many antics ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... sure I will give this youngster a slight injection. Pity you hadn't held him with the double arm-lock instead of cracking him over the head. Herr Kapitan Schwalbe won't want to be troubled with a ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... and purple—are all bad. The madders and lakes are all slow dryers; but unless carelessly used with other colors which are not yet dry they need not have a bad effect on the picture from cracking. ...
— The Painter in Oil - A complete treatise on the principles and technique - necessary to the painting of pictures in oil colors • Daniel Burleigh Parkhurst
... have my debt with you. The very memory I bear of you has saved me no inconsiderable sum in hop and henbane. Without any assistance from the sciences on the present occasion, I was soon asleep, and woke not till the cracking of whips, and trampling of horses' feet on the pavement of the coach-yard apprised me that the world had risen to its daily labour, and so should I. From the short survey of my present chamber which I took on waking, I conjectured it must have been the ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... of the stable. "This is the place where they keep them," remarked one of the men. "They are the finest horses in the rebel army, and it would be a good job to run them into the Union lines some fine night. I know a man that would pay a cracking good ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... tell you, old man, though I don't want it to go any farther, that I'm a bit worried about my jolly old father-in-law. I believe he's about to go in off the deep-end. I think he's cracking under the strain. Dashed weird his behaviour has been the ...
— Indiscretions of Archie • P. G. Wodehouse
... their state of phrenzy, they run at everything they see in motion; and, in this case, the only possible means of stopping them is by lighting a kind of artificial fire-works called wild-fire, the sparkling and cracking of which make ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... that he could hear the tumult of the torrent far away as it dashed over the rocks. A dog suddenly began to bark in the black, black valley—then ceased. He was vaguely over-awed with the "big mountings" for company and the distant stars. He listened eagerly for the first cracking of brush which told him that the other boys were near at hand. Then all three crept along cautiously among the huge boles of the trees, feeling very mysterious and important. When they reached the rude window, Ab sat for a moment on the sill, peering ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... time he tasted with his own lips the bitterness which makes the most wretched death sweeter by comparison than bread and honey to the hungry. At the end of it, when he stole away a madman, he felt within his own soul the cracking and upheaving of some immensity, and saw or felt the opening of abysses from which rose fearful exhalations of crime, shapes of corruption, things without shape that provoked to rage, pain and madness. He was not without cunning, since he closed ...
— The Art of Disappearing • John Talbot Smith
... my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could scarcely stand or support myself for exhaustion and fatigue. This, however, was only the first night, and ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... on the suggestion, that this may have been a romantic and nocturnal picnic party. Again, coming from Pradelles with his brother, they saw a great empty cart drawn by six enormous horses before them on the road. The driver cried aloud and filled the mountains with the cracking of his whip. He never seemed to go faster than a walk, yet it was impossible to overtake him; and at length, at the comer of a hill, the whole equipage disappeared bodily into the night. At the time, people said it was the devil ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... notes were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly lighted ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... I am not a superstitious person. I smile at those whimsical fancies which figure so conspicuously in many people's lives, such as the howling of dogs, the flickering of a candle, the arrangement of the grounds in a cup, the cracking of a mirror, the sudden stopping of the clock, the crowing of hens, the chirping of crickets, the hooting of an owl, the fall of a family portrait, the spilling of salt, a dream of the toothache, etc., etc., etc. If this particular cat had been ...
— The House - An Episode in the Lives of Reuben Baker, Astronomer, and of His Wife, Alice • Eugene Field
... the tabernacles, which we now see over the doors leading from the aisles into the presbytery, having been discovered, the tabernacles were reconstructed of the old with some new material. But more important work had to be undertaken in 1870. On Sunday, July 31st, the sound of cracking was heard in the tower, and Mr. J. Chapple, the clerk of the works, went up the next day to London to see Scott and asked him to come down at once to examine the tower; plaster was put over the crack to see if it was increasing ...
— Bell's Cathedrals: The Cathedral Church of Saint Albans - With an Account of the Fabric & a Short History of the Abbey • Thomas Perkins
... began, lay many bones, bleached and white almost as the salt itself, and amongst them were the bones of men. Snorting and afraid, the animals stepped gingerly on the smooth, snow-like surface, which yielded but an inch or two to their tread, and was pleasantly cool to their hooves, parched and cracking from their long trek in the burning sand. Beneath the white surface was a moist black mud, and the liquid brine oozed quickly into the horses' footprints. Used as we were to the glare of the sun on the ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... from the bank of the river are dented and broken as if some giant in the past had smashed them with his hammer, cracking some and punching deep holes in others. It was in one of these holes, or caves, that ...
— Bumper, The White Rabbit • George Ethelbert Walsh
... discourse as fully as a bishop, but that at this point there was a shouting and the noise of dry boughs cracking under advancing feet. In a moment the three men were standing, alert, astonished, in various ...
— The Tale of Timber Town • Alfred Grace
... old hotel, and "Dessein" has gone over to "Quillacq's." And I was there yesterday. And I remember old diligences, and old postilions in pigtails and jack-boots, who were once as alive as I am, and whose cracking whips I have heard in the midnight many and many a time. Now, where are they? Behold they have been ferried over Styx, and have ...
— Roundabout Papers • William Makepeace Thackeray
... in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... he proceeded with a vigorous volley of abuse against the sitting government, and showed how Walker, the Opposition candidate, was the only man to vote for. He shook his fists, stamped and raved, and illustrated how much a voice could endure without cracking, the back people carefully waiting till he had to pull up to take a drink out of one of the glasses on the spindley table, when ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... has produced great rearrangement of the minerals along the eastern side of the Catoctin Belt, and results at times in complete obliteration of the characters of the granite. The first step in the change was the cracking of the quartz and feldspar crystals and development of muscovite and chlorite in the cracks. This was accompanied by a growth of muscovite and quartz in the unbroken feldspar. The aspect of the rock ...
— History and Comprehensive Description of Loudoun County, Virginia • James W. Head
... bark and then did a sort of rude sewing till the wigwam seemed beautifully covered in. But when they went inside to look they were unpleasantly surprised to find how many holes there were. It was impossible to close them all because the bark was cracking in so many places, but the boys plugged the worst of them and then prepared for the great sacred ceremony—the lighting of the fire ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... is! My body is cracking all over!' said the Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting. 'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... Andy walked out to the edge of town to view the mudscape. Bird City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that used to be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream and its old bed was cracking and giving away, when we saw it, on account of the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time. That man's intellects was never idle. And then he unfolds to me a instantaneous idea that has occurred to him. ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... started down the river road, cracking his whip and swinging his halter. A couple of miles down the road, four Continental soldiers were in hiding. They had been sent out with instructions to pick up a prisoner, if possible, and bring him into Washington's headquarters ...
— Washington Crossing the Delaware • Henry Fisk Carlton
... only one left to laugh at all his companions. Two nights more passed, and he saw nothing; but on the third he came rushing from the garden to the other two before the house, in such an agitation that they declared—for it was their turn now—that the band of his helmet was cracking under his chin with the rising of his hair inside it. Running with him into that part of the garden which I have already described, they saw a score of creatures, to not one of which they could give a name, and not ...
— The Princess and the Goblin • George MacDonald
... little further away to the fire, and slowly stirred a pot of stew. The little party of cowboys came thundering up. There was a chorus of shouts and exclamations, whistlings and good-natured chaff, as they threw themselves from their horses. Long Jim stood slowly cracking his whip and ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... perfect, so here, with all its general apparent superiority to the baths of Turkey, this was inferior to them in the most essential points. The attendants seemed quite ignorant of the art of twisting the limbs, moulding the muscles, cracking the joints, opening the chest, and all that delicious train of operations in which the Turks are so skilful. The visitors were merely well though roughly scrubbed, and their impurities then rinsed ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 565 - Vol. 20, No. 565., Saturday, September 8, 1832 • Various
... fun of the thing that we went there. The fun indeed was fast and furious. The whole scene on the hustings, as well as around them, seemed to me one seething mass of senseless but good-humoured hustling and confusion. Suddenly in the midst of the uproar an ominous cracking was heard, and in the next minute the hustings swayed and came down with a crash, heaping together in a confused mass all the two or three hundreds of human beings who were on the huge platform. Some few were badly hurt. But my brother and I being young and active, ...
— What I Remember, Volume 2 • Thomas Adolphus Trollope
... nutpicks and bowls, and Mr. Maynard and Dick Fulton took the other two nutcrackers, and then work began in earnest. But the work was really play, and they all enjoyed cracking and picking out the nuts, though what they were doing it for nobody knew. But with so many at it, it was soon over, and the result was several bowlsful of kernels. The shells were thrown into the fire, and Mr. Maynard directed that the seven empty baskets be ...
— Marjorie's Busy Days • Carolyn Wells
... forward. It was a terrible time, when bounding over the last tree and crashing through some brush we came out within a short distance of the enemy's entrenchments, and it seemed as though a thousand rifles were cracking our doom. This fire was too deadly for men to stand against. Our brave fellows, shot down as fast as they could come up, were beaten back. Then occurred one of those heroic deeds we sometimes read about. The colors of the One Hundred and Fifty-ninth were left on the ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... the chariot, the good old family wagon, which was now crowded. According to the prearranged programme it was Gervais who held the ribbons, with Claire beside him. The two strong horses trotted on in their usual leisurely fashion, in spite of all the gay whip-cracking of their driver, who also wished to contribute to the music. Inside there were now seven people for six places, for if the three children were small, they were at the same time so restless that they ...
— Fruitfulness - Fecondite • Emile Zola
... avenue of escape, the herd commenced the ascent of the hill, cracking the branches and boughs, and rolling the loose stones down into the valley, as they made their ascent, and now adding their own horrid shrieks to the din which had been previously created. On they came, bearing everything down before them, carrying havoc in their rage to such an ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... my researches I have heard delicate raps, which sounded as if produced by a pin's point; a cascade of piercing sounds, like those of a machine in full motion; detonations in the air; light and acute metallic taps; cracking noises, like those produced by a floor-polishing machine; sounds which resembled scratching; ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... least prepared to make it hot for any of them who came fooling around within range provided they came to the surface. I was with the forward guns and, as we had several days of pretty rough weather, it was a wet job. Our wireless was continually cracking and sputtering so I suppose the skipper was getting his sailing orders from the Admiralty as we changed direction several times a day. We had no convoying war-ships and sighted but few boats, mostly Norwegian sailing vessels, until, one night about nine o'clock, several ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... himself, so as not to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them from ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... drainage against the accumulation of water under the concrete. Tile drains are better and cheaper than excessively deep foundations. The thorough tamping of the sub-base is essential to avoid settling and subsequent cracking of the concrete slab. This is a part of sidewalk ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette
... doors which escape the closest investigations. When the shutters are put up, light filters through the interstices of the boards. Go close up to them, apply your eye to one of those lighted crevices, listen to the cannon roaring, the mitrailleuses horribly spitting, the musketry cracking, and then look into the interior of the closed rooms. People are talking, eating, and smoking; waiters go to and fro. There are women too. The men are gay and silly. Champagne bottles are being uncorked. "Ah! ah! it's the fusillade!" Lovers and mistresses ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... ran shouting words of encouragement, and he was thus engaged when Mr. Sparling worked his way in from the pad room, as the open enclosure between the two dressing tents is called. Phil had picked up the ringmaster's whip and was cracking it to attract the attention of the people to what he was trying ...
— The Circus Boys In Dixie Land • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... the inside, and the border which surrounds the bend of the arch, are in the highest preservation. The latter represents clusters of grapes, olives, figs, and pomegranates with the accuracy of a miniature, and in a free and natural style. One of the pomegranates was represented as ripe and cracking, and every seed distinctly expressed. The mausoleum is, I should venture to say, a building perfectly unique in its way, as a remnant of antiquity; and therefore more difficult to describe by a recurrence to any known work of art. I cannot ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... easy in their movements. They told racy stories, laughed immoderately, chewed tobacco. Some of the passengers were drinking whisky, which was procured anywhere along the way, at taverns or stores. The stage rolled from side to side. The driver kept cracking his whip, but without often touching the horses, which kept an even pace hour after hour. We had to stop for meals. But the heavy food turned my stomach. I could not relish the cornbread, the bacon or ham, the heavy pie. When we reached La Salle, where I was to get the boat, ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... his eyes always, smooth and wide like a gray flood, but Two Whistles knew that Cheschapah would not let it sweep him away. He saw a horse without a rider floated out of blue smoke, and floated in again with a cracking noise; white soldiers moved in a row across his eyes, very small and clear, and broke into a blurred eddy of shapes which the flood swept away clean and empty. Then a dead white man came by on the quick ...
— Red Men and White • Owen Wister
... such they were, appeared to advance with considerable precaution; for although the party by the fire listened attentively, not the slightest noise could be heard—neither the cracking of a branch, nor the rustling ...
— Wood Rangers - The Trappers of Sonora • Mayne Reid
... cried Lennox, for the firing from the farther bank suddenly ceased, and the rustling and cracking of twigs somewhere overhead told that the fresh ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... loosely with the motion of the carriage, making no attempt at resistance. She had really the appearance of a corpse sitting up. The tarpaulin flapped monotonously. The coachman cried out in the dimness to his horses like a bird, prolonging his call drearily, and then violently cracking his whip. Domini kept her eyes fixed on the loose tarpaulin, so that she might not miss one of the wet visions it discovered by its reiterated movement. She had not slept at all, and felt as if there was a gritty dryness close behind ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... whitewashed wall. But he controlled himself and as he went out he called back to his adversary, "Wish you joy of the bargain, Ole Anderson. The peat bog won't beggar me, and the cattle at Ingvorstrup have all the hay they can eat." I could hear his loud laughter outside and the cracking of his whip. It is not easy to have to sit in judgment. Every decision makes ...
— The Most Interesting Stories of All Nations • Julian Hawthorne
... well, Malise," said the Lord James; "'twas you who did the skull-cracking at any rate. See if your leechcraft can tell us if any of these young rogues are likely to die. I would not have their deaths on my conscience ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... stirrups, eyeing the hounds spreading and sniffing about, now this way, now that—now pushing through a thicket, now threading and smelling along a meuse. 'Yo-o-icks—wind him! Yo-o-icks—pash him up!' repeated he, cracking his whip, and moving slowly on. He then varied the entertainment by whistling, in a sharp, shrill key, something like the chirp ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... themselves, with cracking ankle-joints, clattering feet, muffled blethering, a cloud of dust, and the inevitable sheep smell. Perhaps there is a moon, and then the herders must watch for ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... another report in the machine, which I believed was produced by the cracking of a cord. This new intimation made me carefully examine the inside of our habitation. I saw that the part that was turned towards the south was full of holes, of which some were of a ...
— Wonderful Balloon Ascents - or, the Conquest of the Skies • Fulgence Marion
... bonfires and lanterns. There was a danger-signal posted farther down where the ice was thin. He had avoided it all the afternoon, but intent on cutting some fancy figure one of the boys had taught him, he did not notice how near he was to the dangerous spot until he heard a cracking noise all round him, and it was too late to save himself from a plunge ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... one of the craziest escapades you can well imagine. I couldn't stop to think of the future yet, but must take one step at a time. I ran down the avenue, my feet cracking on the hard snow, planning hard my programme for ...
— Greenmantle • John Buchan
... horse-flesh, and the four dapple-greys which pressed their fine shoulders into the harness of his breaking plow might have delighted the heart of any teamster. As he sat on his steel seat and watched the colter cut the firm sod with brittle cracking sound as it snapped the tough roots of the wild roses, or looking back saw the regular terraces of shiny black mould which marked his progress, he felt that he was engaged in a rite of almost ...
— Dennison Grant - A Novel of To-day • Robert Stead
... the log cracking; and just then the door swung on its hinges, and Mr. Starkie entered with the great bunch of keys ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... indicated the next weakest, telling him to wait for a place until the next man died. Then, ordering one of the well men to take a squad from the field-force and build a lean-to addition to the hospital, he continued along the run-way, administering medicine and cracking jokes in beche-de-mer English to cheer the sufferers. Now and again, from the far end, a weird wail was raised. When he arrived there he found the noise was emitted by a boy who was not sick. The white ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... stove which glows red-hot in the winter. Newspapers, of the thinnest substance and the most microscopic type, and from every part of the Union, are scattered about in profusion; the human species of every kind may be seen variously occupied—groups talking, others roasting over the stove, many cracking peanuts, many more smoking, and making the pavement, by their united labours, an uncouth mosaic of expectoration and nutshells, varied occasionally with cigar ashes and discarded stumps. Here and there you see a pair of Wellington-booted legs dangling over the back of one ...
— Lands of the Slave and the Free - Cuba, The United States, and Canada • Henry A. Murray
... of these mild people, me that's heard grand stories in the forecastle of how this man was marooned in the Bahamas, and that man was married to a Maori queen, by God? Me, the hero that dowsed skysails, and they cracking like guns. Is this lousy room a place for me that's used to a ship as clean as a cat from stem to stern?' And you stand up bravely, and you look the man of the public house square in the shifty eyes, and you say: 'Listen, bastard! Do you ken e'er a master wants a sailing man? ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... as it is. If we should go away and lave the spalpeens down there without the rope, they might never find the way out, and would starve to death, and it would always grieve me to think I had starved six Apaches to death, instead of affording meself some enjoyment by cracking 'em over ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... it is well to protect them from injury and to prevent them drying up and cracking by the liberal application of ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... string, Donna Tullia and Del Ferice entered, and mounting half-a-dozen more steps, found themselves in the studio, a spacious room with a window high above the floor, half shaded by a curtain of grey cotton. In one corner an iron stove gave out loud cracking sounds, pleasant to hear on the damp winter's morning, and the flame shone red through chinks of the rusty door. A dark-green carpet in passably good condition covered the floor; three or four broad divans, spread with oriental rugs, and two very much dilapidated carved ...
— Saracinesca • F. Marion Crawford
... this in a husky voice over an egg beaten up in sherry. The only blot on the thing from his point of view was that it wasn't doing a bit of good to the old vocal cords, which were beginning to show signs of cracking under the strain. He had been looking his symptoms up in a medical dictionary, and he thought he had got "clergyman's throat." But against this you had to set the fact that he was making an undoubted ...
— Death At The Excelsior • P. G. Wodehouse
... coming like a swift fish directly at the vessel. "Torpedo!" was the cry, and men stood rooted to the spot. Far back, where the white streak started, you could see a periscope, moving slowly; there was a volley of cracking sounds, and the water all about it leaped high, and the little sea-terriers rushed towards it, firing, and getting ready their deadly depth-bombs. But of all that Jimmie got only a glimpse; there came ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... find the largest possible result. Divide the blocks into any two groups of five that you like, and arrange them to form two multiplication sums that shall produce the same product and the largest amount possible. That is all, and yet it is a nut that requires some cracking. Of course, fractions are not allowed, nor any tricks whatever. The puzzle is quite interesting enough in the simple form in which I have given it. Perhaps it should be added that the multipliers ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... gathered round the Hazel tree and the Nuts. The cracking of Nuts, with much fortune-telling connected therewith, was the favourite amusement on All Hallow's Eve (Oct. 31), so that the Eve was called Nutcrack Night. I believe the custom still exists; it ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... who does not visit England—the Count of Nut Land, who rides along with a sack of nuts, which he throws about for anyone to pick up. Strange to say, cracking these nuts is supposed to be a cure for toothache! Is not that ...
— Peeps At Many Lands: Belgium • George W. T. Omond
... came at last to India Pastinaca,(21) where I swear to you by the habit that I wear, that I saw pruning-hooks(22) fly: a thing that none would believe that had not seen it. Whereof be my witness that I lie not Maso del Saggio, that great merchant, whom I found there cracking nuts, and selling the shells by retail! However, not being able to find that whereof I was in quest, because from thence one must travel by water, I turned back, and so came at length to the Holy Land, where in summer cold bread costs ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... gases to benign or diabolical agency, as they happened to produce on the parties good or evil. So in the like manner old houses are generally said to be haunted, owing to the noises which arise from the cracking and yielding of their walls and timbers, and from the protection and easy passage which in the course of time they afford to rats, mice, weasels, &c. whose activity in the night-time affords the foundation of numerous apprehensions and fancies of ...
— A Morning's Walk from London to Kew • Richard Phillips
... obstreperousness in the mood of the elements now, when once roused, which grows, which grows continually. Tempests have become very very far more wrathful, the sea more truculent and unbounded in its insolence; when it thunders, it thunders with a venom new to me, cracking as though it would split the firmament, and bawling through the heaven of heavens, as if roaring to devour all things; in Bombay once, and in China thrice, I was shaken by earthquakes, the second and third marked by a certain extravagance of agitation, that might ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel
... last, when his head almost touched the ground, Darius groaned and his limbs relaxed. Instantly Zoroaster threw him on his back and kneeled with his whole weight upon his chest,—the gilded scales of the corselet cracking beneath the burden, and he held the king's hands down on either side, pinioned to the floor. Darius struggled desperately twice and then lay quite still. Zoroaster gazed down upon him with ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... his gauntleted hand, whereon divers of the officers go off hot-foot, some to muster the long files of arquebusiers, others to overlook the setting of more sail and the like. And now was a prodigious cracking of whips followed by groans and cries and screaming curses, and straightway the long oars began to swing with a swifter beat. From where I stood in my bonds I could look down upon the poor, naked ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... has the appearance of breaking. We had a strongish northerly breeze at midday with snow and hail storms, and now the wind has turned to the south and the sky is overcast with threatenings of a blizzard. The floe is cracking and pieces may go out—if so the ship will have to get up steam again. The hail at noon made the surface very bad for some hours; the men and ...
— Scott's Last Expedition Volume I • Captain R. F. Scott
... he pressed the matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... in the conversational line; but I made him understand by pantomimic telegraphy that I wanted to have a look round, to size up things. He took me to a "dump," where the ore at grass was stored, and converted himself into a human stone-cracking machine for my benefit, until I had seen all that I wanted to see in regard to the "ore at grass." He was very much like mine managers the world over—very ready to play tricks on anyone he considered "green" at the business. It was not his fault that he did not know that I had been a reporter ...
— Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa (1899-1900) - Letters from the Front • A. G. Hales
... some small dead trees and made up a good fire. I then gathered the large marrow bones from which the wolves had gnawed the meat, and, standing them up against a log close to the fire, I roasted them until the marrow inside was well cooked; then, cracking them open with the back of my axe, I had a famous supper upon what the ...
— Oowikapun - How the Gospel Reached the Nelson River Indians • Egerton Ryerson Young
... considerable value too. Besides all this, the United States possesses, what no other nation does, several professed jesters—that is, men who are not only humorous in the ordinary sense of the term, but make a business of cracking jokes, and are recognized as persons whose duty it is to take a jocose view of things. Artemus Ward, Josh Billings, and Mark Twain, and the Rev. P. V. Nasby, and one or two others of less note, are a kind of personages which no other society has produced, and could in no other society ...
— Reflections and Comments 1865-1895 • Edwin Lawrence Godkin
... since 1995, achieving positive GDP growth and curtailing inflation. However, the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout the regions. ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... destination was intended to be the Governor's mansion, and, as he walked along, certain thoughts concerning the Governor's daughter would keep whirling through his head, so that almost he forgot where he was, and took to smiling and cracking ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... There are hundreds of tents—all bright-coloured. When one approaches Boulogne from the sea the beach looks like a parterre of flowers. Near the Casino there are a quantity of old-fashioned ramshackly bathing cabins on wheels, with very small boys cracking their whips and galloping up and down, from the digue to the edge of the water, on staid old horses who know their work perfectly—put themselves at once into the shafts of the carriages—never go beyond a certain limit in ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... which begins to leaven must be burned, but he who eats it is free. When it begins to crack it must be burned, and he who eats it must be cut off. "What is leavening?" "Like the horns of locusts." "Cracking?" "When the cracks intermingle." The words of R. Judah. But the Sages say, "if either of them be eaten, the eater must be cut off." "And what is leavening?" "All which changed its appearance, as when a man's hairs stand on end ...
— Hebrew Literature
... torches. The victim—whether man, matron, or tender virgin—was stripped naked, and stretched upon the wooden bench. Water, weights, fires, pulleys, screws—all the apparatus by which the sinews could be strained without cracking, the bones crushed without breaking, and the body racked exquisitely without giving up its ghost, was now put into operation. The executioner, enveloped in a black robe from head to foot, with his eyes glaring at his victim through ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... was no short walk to reach the lower hall, but she was down at last. Doors opened from it into the ground-floor ware-rooms; glancing in, she saw vast, dingy recesses of boxes piled up to the dark ceilings. There was a crowd of porters and draymen cracking their whips, and lounging on the trucks by the door, waiting for loads, talking politics, and smoking. The smell of tobacco, copperas, and burning logwood was heavy to clamminess here. She stopped, uncertain. One ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... never behold the like, now seeing above ten thousand houses all in one flame; the noise, and cracking, and thunder of the impetuous flames, the shrieking of women and children, the hurry of people, the fall of towers, houses, and churches was like a hideous storm, and the air all about so hot and inflamed that at last one was not able to approach it; so that they were forced to stand still and ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 12 • Editor-In-Chief Rossiter Johnson
... of their movements, their hollow cheeks, the dark markings under their eyes and, above all, the terrible look of suffering and despair that was beginning to reveal itself in the eyes themselves. Yet not a word of discouragement or complaint passed their black and cracking lips; they simply lay about, moving as little as possible, and endured silently. As for me, I could think of nothing, do nothing to ...
— The First Mate - The Story of a Strange Cruise • Harry Collingwood
... reversing his rifle. There was a cracking sound as the gun butt struck the orator from Tete in the middle of the forehead. With a drowsy look the smitten man sank down as gently as if falling into a mound of feathers, and deliberately composed himself in sleep, his brown face against ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... at this time of the year to mention the fact that Lord SALISBURY always uses a poker in cracking walnuts. He says it saves the silver. The other day, whilst wielding the poker across the walnuts and the wine, Mr. GLADSTONE chanced to look in. The Premier, with his well-known hospitality, immediately furnished the Right Hon. Gentleman with another poker (brought in from the drawing-room), and ...
— Punch, or The London Charivari, Volume 101, October 31, 1891 • Various
... had instantly a great desire to let him draw a troublesome tooth of hers which, she took pains to assure us, was not impaired by natural decay, but only accidentally broken in cracking a cherry-stone. "The edge is so rough," said she, "that it hurts my tongue; and since this honest gentleman can extract it painlessly, I have a great mind to try ...
— Jacques Bonneval • Anne Manning
... the narrow confines of the sloping ledge they struggled fiercely, heaving, panting, with muscles cracking, each seemingly possessed with a grim determination to thrust the other into the abyss. Now Buck was uppermost; again Lynch, by some clever trick, tore himself from Stratton's hold ...
— Shoe-Bar Stratton • Joseph Bushnell Ames
... whom the exigencies of mountain travel had flung to the starboard side. Released from Dayton's crushing weight, his small person jounced freely about, or came butting against Discombe's back in the most spontaneous manner possible. The threatened dislocation of his joints, the imminent cracking of all his bones, the squeezing of his small person between the upper and the nether millstones of Dayton's portly form and the adamantine seat-cushions; each and every incident of the transit Mr. Fetherbee took in ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... had now become almost insufferable, and the sparks and flakes of fire fell so fast and thick, that the spectators were compelled to retreat to a considerable distance from the burning buildings. The noise occasioned by the cracking of the timbers, and the falling of walls and roofs, was awful in the extreme. All the avenues and thoroughfares near the fire were now choked up by carts, coaches, and other vehicles, which had been hastily ...
— Old Saint Paul's - A Tale of the Plague and the Fire • William Harrison Ainsworth
... and died, and the father didn't live long after him, for he got queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night, wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand, cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi' the poor dumb creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd left all his property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... especially important not to allow the battery to become discharged, as there is danger of the electrolyte freezing. A fully charged battery will not freeze except at an extremely low temperature. The water expands as it freezes, loosening the active materials, and cracking the grids. As soon as a charging current thaws the battery, the active material is loosened, and drops to the bottom of the jars, with the result that the whole battery may disintegrate. Jars may also be cracked by the expansion of the water when ...
— The Automobile Storage Battery - Its Care And Repair • O. A. Witte
... water, and the tardy Yukon took to stretching of days and cracking its stiff joints. Now an air-hole ate into the ice, and ate and ate; or a fissure formed, and grew, and failed to freeze again. Then the ice ripped from the shore and uprose bodily a yard. But still the river was ...
— A Daughter of the Snows • Jack London
... country. I should go on speaking as long as I could, and then I should say we didn't wish to go down to our graves angry, so we would forgive her, only we hoped the next children she had she would be kinder to. And then I would say good-bye; and the roof would be cracking underneath me; and nurse would scream and cry; and then I would take a leap right into the middle of the fire; and there would be a kind of explosion, and the house would fall in; and the next day there would be five heaps of bones and black ashes! all that was left of us! ...
— Odd • Amy Le Feuvre
... stood up to this time, and she had been listing over to the east, or away from the wind and the sea, but now all over and within the ship were heard loud noises of cracking beams and the sharp harsh snap of timbers breaking. The crew of the wreck, in dread of instant death, now again burned blue lights. Just before the lifeboat approached, as if in a death-throe, the ship reeled inwards, and her tottering masts ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... to the accuracy of this statement; and as the fears of the spectators were still further relieved by the fat boy's suddenly recollecting that the water was nowhere more than five feet deep, prodigies of valor were performed to get him out. After a vast quantity of splashing, and cracking, and struggling, Mr. Pickwick was at length fairly extricated from his unpleasant position, and once more stood on ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... sword out of the stone the King and all estates went thoughtful home unto Camelot, and so to even-song in the great minster. After that they went to supper, and every knight sat in his own place at the Round Table. Then anon they heard cracking and crying of thunder that should, as it seemed to them, shake the place all to pieces. In the midst of this blast entered a sunbeam more clear by seven times than ever they saw day, and all they were alighted of the grace of the ...
— Stories of King Arthur and His Knights - Retold from Malory's "Morte dArthur" • U. Waldo Cutler
... confine my remarks to the newer things that you haven't heard of. I will first note a shagbark hickory that stands in my own neighborhood, an outstanding variety we call Hand. This is very much like the Vest in shape and size and cracking quality. According to my tests, this variety cracks out 50% meat, and since it is a local variety and I know it is hardy and fruitful, I am placing it ahead of the Vest for the Middle West. It is certainly equal ...
— Northern Nut Growers Report of the Proceedings at the Twenty-First Annual Meeting • Northern Nut Growers Association
... rested on the feet and tarsi, the latter being bare on the under surface for that purpose. Its attitude in this situation much resembled that of a woodpecker. One that was kept alive with its wing broken sat across the finger, like another bird. When about to take flight it makes a cracking noise, as if the wings smote together, after the ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 20, - Issue 566, September 15, 1832 • Various
... would eagerly tear open a bird and eat it raw; indolent, secretive; would hide in the garden until hunger drove him to the kitchen; rolled in new snow like an animal; paid no heed to the firing of a gun, but became alert at the cracking of a nut; sometimes grew wildly angry; all his powers were then enlarged; was delighted with hills and woods, and always tried to escape after being taken to them; when angry would gnaw clothing and hurl furniture about; feared to look from a height, and Itard cured him of spasms ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... mouldings, generally alternated with deep hollows, so as to form strong shadows. Now look under the abacus of this capital; you will find the stone hollowed out wonderfully; and also in this arch-mould. It is often difficult to understand how it could be done without cracking off the stone. The difference between this and late work can be felt by the hand even better than it can be seen.' He suited the action to the word and placed his hand in ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... and ramie fibers. The chemicals used in "loading" or "dynamiting" to give the weight lost by cleaning or removing the gum from the raw silk give to the cheaper grades the stiff, harsh feeling and cause the splitting and cracking of the silk, hence the quality of the fiber should be considered when selecting a silk, not the weight. ...
— Textiles and Clothing • Kate Heintz Watson
... her room, Bobinette experienced a strange, a penetrating emotion. She felt as though something around her in which she had moved safely, was cracking; with a sudden and terrible lucidity she saw herself marching forward, powerless to draw back, marching helplessly towards an abyss—an abyss which was about to engulf her! She trembled, trembled violently. She was encompassed by vague and ...
— A Nest of Spies • Pierre Souvestre
... indifferent school of manners, whatever it might be for painting, and there this gifted lad was now often to be found late in the evening, carousing with hostlers and potboys, handing round the quart pot, and singing his song or cracking his joke. ...
— Anecdotes of Painters, Engravers, Sculptors and Architects, and Curiosities of Art, (Vol. 2 of 3) • Shearjashub Spooner
... on those four or five occasions when Tom, having put down a hole into one of the large pieces, called out to us to get to cover, when, running for shelter, we crouched behind some friendly rock until a sharp, cracking explosion told us that another of the big obstructions was ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... lie," Choflo returned. "Look! See how the sand in the islands and on the riverbank is cracking! Tumwah is angry. Soon his fiery breath will sweep the green earth, parching the vegetation, searing our flesh and leaving death and destruction in its wake. Long days of ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... in reality connected with the cooking of some snared bird or rabbit seemed to have a processional quality. The fire was replenished, the stew was stirred, there was a faint clatter of tin plates and a sharp cracking of twigs: a figure passed before the fire with extraordinary gestures and slid into the night: another figure appeared and followed its predecessor: smoke rose and a savoury smell floated on ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... criminals. Yet I suppose that all of them violate the law. May not this constant dodging or hurdling of statutes be a sign that there is something the matter with the statutes? Is it not possible that graft is the cracking and bursting of the receptacles in which we have tried to constrain the business of this country? It seems possible that business has had to control politics because its laws were so stupidly obstructive. In the trust agitation this is especially plausible. For there ...
— A Preface to Politics • Walter Lippmann
... firmly stopped up (for a reason to which I shall presently recur), but that the third one is only closed by a slight film or very thin shell, which can be easily bored through with a pocket knife, so as to let the milk run off before cracking the shell. So much we have all learnt during our ardent pursuit of natural knowledge on half-holidays in early life. But we probably then failed to observe that just opposite this soft hole lies a small roundish knob, imbedded in the pulp or eatable portion, which ...
— Falling in Love - With Other Essays on More Exact Branches of Science • Grant Allen
... dawn did the war cry sound. Shrill and near it rose from hundreds of throats. Strong men turned pale at the clamor of yells and cracking rifles. It seemed that the Indians must be at the very walls ...
— Four American Indians - King Philip, Pontiac, Tecumseh, Osceola • Edson L. Whitney
... sugar,—what was there not? Wines of France and Spain in pipes, in baskets, in hampers, in octaves; queensware from England; cheeses, like cart-wheels, from Switzerland; almonds, lemons, raisins, olives, boxes of citron, casks of chains; specie from Vera Cruz; cries of drivers, cracking of whips, rumble of wheels, tremble of earth, frequent gorge and stoppage. It seemed an idle tale to say that any one could be lacking bread and raiment. "We are a great city," said the patient foot-passengers, waiting long on street ...
— Dr. Sevier • George W. Cable
... than four or five in the whole winter were we out of the joyful candle-light of our own home. Even then our hands were busy making lighters or splint brooms, or paring and quartering and stringing the apples or cracking butternuts while Aunt ...
— The Light in the Clearing • Irving Bacheller
... day at my roots I will grant you a boon." So thenceforward the Goala every day poured milk at the roots of the tree and after some days he saw a crack in the ground; he thought that the roots of the tree were cracking the earth but the fact was that a snake was buried there, and as it increased in size from drinking the milk it cracked the ground and one day it issued forth; at the sight of it the Goala was filled with fear and made sure that the snake would devour him. But the snake said "Do not fear: I was ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... drapes before my eyes were wavering. Hung like rippled steel pieces of a caisson suspended by a perilously thin whisper of thread, they swayed, hesitated, shuddered their entire length, then began to bend in the middle from the combined weights of thirteen galaxies. The bend became a cracking bulge that in another second would explode destruction directly into my ...
— The Very Black • Dean Evans
... this may have been a romantic and nocturnal picnic party. Again, coming from Pradelles with his brother, they saw a great empty cart drawn by six enormous horses before them on the road. The driver cried aloud and filled the mountains with the cracking of his whip. He never seemed to go faster than a walk, yet it was impossible to overtake him; and at length, at the comer of a hill, the whole equipage disappeared bodily into the night. At the time, people said it was the devil ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... get loose in their state of phrenzy, they run at everything they see in motion; and, in this case, the only possible means of stopping them is by lighting a kind of artificial fire-works called wild-fire, the sparkling and cracking of which make them stand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume IX. • Robert Kerr
... and received the impression of vast extent, emptiness, and the scent of hay. She entered, looking about from side to side. At the opposite end of the great room, was an open door through which the sun shone, and as she approached it, she heard a voice and the cracking of cornstalks outside. ...
— The Girl at Cobhurst • Frank Richard Stockton
... Mariposa and Lady Sunderbund smoking cigarettes, which these ladies continued to do a little defiantly. They had hoped to finish them before the bishop came up. The night was chilly, and a cheerful wood fire cracking and banging on the fireplace emphasized the ordinary heating. Mrs. Garstein Fellows, who had not expected so prompt an appearance of the men, had arranged her chairs in a semicircle for a little womanly gossip, and before she could intervene she found her party, with the ...
— Soul of a Bishop • H. G. Wells
... that I don't play quite a fair game, but I'm sure, without even seeing him, that he plays a diabolically good game and I know I shall cut against him. Mrs. Shelley? Every one's always a success with her; talking to her is as demoralizing as cracking jokes from the Bench. Mrs. O'Rane wants me to write her a duologue—just as one draws a rabbit for a child . . . . That only leaves you. And you capitulated more completely even than Poynter, without the '63 port as an introduction ...
— The Education of Eric Lane • Stephen McKenna
... a silence as of death reigned in the mine; then there was a sharp cracking explosion, followed—or rather, prolonged—by another like thunder, and, while a flash of fire seemed to surround them, filling the air, firing their clothes, and scorching their limbs, the whole ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... them. The mother heart had not swelled in me yet; I did not know all men were my children, as the large woman knows when her heart is grown. I was too small to be tender. I liked my power. I was like a child with a new whip, which it goes about cracking everywhere, not caring against what. I could not wind it up and put it away. Men were curious creatures, who liked me, I could never tell why. Only one thing took from my pleasure; I could not bear that they had deserted her for ...
— Dream Life and Real Life • Olive Schreiner
... chains, who wants a letter written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained permission of the sentinel who guards him: who stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... "And," said Tomlinson, cracking his filberts,—Tomlinson was fond of filberts,—"were I to choose a home, it is in such a home as this that ...
— Paul Clifford, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... boys listened. At first they heard little but the rushing of the water over the rocks. Then came a sudden cracking of a rotten floor ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... Cracking.—Boil 2 ozs. of the best and clearest glue, with 1 pint of clear water, and a 1/2 oz. of alum, till dissolved. With this temper those colours intended ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... fast at first, when the cracklings are light-brown and float on the top, it is nearly done, and should cook slowly, when done, strain it into your vessels with a thin cloth put over a colander. If you put lard in stone or earthen jars, it should be cooled first, as there is danger of their cracking, white oak firkins with iron hoops, and covers to fit tight, are good to keep lard, and if taken care of will last for ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... fairies often go hunting, and faint sounds of fairy horns, the baying of fairy hounds, and the cracking of fairy whips are supposed to be heard on these occasions, while the flight of the hunters is said to resemble in sound the humming ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... for having it, and not something else in its place; and he treated Fulkerson and Frescobaldi as if they were in league to impose upon him. There were moments when Fulkerson saw the varnish of professional politeness cracking on the Neapolitan's volcanic surface, and caught a glimpse of the lava fires of the cook's nature beneath; he trembled for Dryfoos, who was walking rough-shod over him in the security of an American who had known how to make his money, and must know how to spend it; but he got him ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... occasion as an admirable provocative of thirst. He was much disposed to believe Mutimer guilty, but understood that it was none of his business to openly take part with either side. He stood well on the limits of the throng; it was not impossible that the debate might end in the cracking of crowns, in which case Mr. Dabbs, as a respectable licensed victualler whose weekly profits had long since made him smile at the follies of his youth, would certainly incur no needless risk to his ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... Realising the reason for their unfortunate plight he bustled up to the Commanding Officer and emphasised the urgent necessity to give us a meal. But he was not entirely successful. Then he inspected us one by one, giving a cheering word here, and cracking a friendly joke there. The hand of Prince L—— received instant attention, while other slight injuries were also sympathetically treated. The hearts of one and all went out to this ministering angel, to whose work and indefatigable ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... sixteen furnaces were belching out fire and smoke, and the firemen standing in front of them, like so many gladiators, tugged away with devil's-claw and slice-bar, inducing by their exertions more and more intense combustion and heat. The noise of the cracking, roaring fires, escaping steam, and the loud and labored pulsations of the engines, together with the roar of battle above and the thud and vibration of the huge masses of iron which were hurled against us produced a scene and sound to ...
— The Monitor and the Merrimac - Both sides of the story • J. L. Worden et al.
... calefaction^, tepefaction^, torrefaction^; melting, fusion; liquefaction &c 335; burning &c v.; ambustion^, combustion; incension^, accension^; concremation^, cremation; scorification^; cautery, cauterization; ustulation^, calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration^; carbonization; cupellation [Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion^, flagration^; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis^, incendiarism; arson; auto dafe [Fr.]. boiling &c v.; coction^, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... were defending the breach, the battering-ram was withdrawn; why, we were not long left in doubt. To our great horror, the battering, cracking sound was heard in the rear of the house. Still we were not at once to be defeated, and some of our party hurried to defend the spot. The attack on the front-door had cost the negroes so many lives that they were more cautious in approaching the second; and, when our party ...
— Old Jack • W.H.G. Kingston
... staring eyes of a fanatic, and his hair now very scanty, was plastered over his head in black shining streaks. He wore a rather faded black suit, a white low collar and a white bow tie. He had a habit, at moments of stress, of cracking his fingers. He had a very pronounced cockney accent when he was excited, at other times he struggled against this with ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... brought all his weight to bear upon it. There was a dull, cracking sound and a sort of rasping. ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... became cordial. From cordial he became affable, from affable affectionate, and from affectionate he passed to that degree of friendship in which you lean across the dinner-table, tap a man on the shoulder and call him "old pal." Finally, he insisted upon the Commandant cracking with him a bottle of champagne. I give the Commandant full marks for not persisting ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Sept. 19, 1917 • Various
... the luxury of a warm day's journey in such a vehicle, which has neither springs nor backed seats—three fiery horses fastened to it, and each pulling, plunging, and pirouetting on his own account; a ferocious yamtschick cracking his whip and shrieking "Shivar! shivar!"—faster! faster!—the wagon, rattling all over, plunging into ruts, jumping over stones, ripping its way through bogs and mud-banks; your bones shaken nearly out of their sockets; your vertebrae partially dislocated; your ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... of hard fruits and stalks and perhaps also grains and flesh. Observation of manlike apes shows that they chew their food more thoroughly than man. Doubtless nuts constituted a considerable part of primitive food and required cracking by the teeth. The work we now do in flour-mills or the kitchen or with the knife and fork, was then done with the teeth. We even have our cook mash our potatoes and make puddings and pap of our food after it reaches the kitchen. Having already shirked most of the task of mastication ...
— How to Live - Rules for Healthful Living Based on Modern Science • Irving Fisher and Eugene Fisk
... temper and new clothes. Her fringe—even halved—was prodigious. Her cheap lemon-coloured gloves were cracking on her large hands; and round her beflowered hat she had tied clouds on clouds of white tulle, which to some extent softened the tans and crimsons of her complexion. Her dress was of a stiff white cotton stuff, that fell into the most startling folds ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. I. • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the two friends were added to the music with which the rooms resounded—an ineffectual concert! The lights went out one by one, their crystal sconces cracking in the final flare. Night threw dark shadows over this prolonged revelry, in which Raphael's narrative had been a second orgy of speech, of words without ideas, of ideas for which ...
— The Magic Skin • Honore de Balzac
... if I composed and preached sermons, I should by no means confine myself to the Vicar's threadbare subjects— should preach the Wrath of God, and sound the Last Trump in the ears of my Hell-doomed congregation, cracking the heavens and dissolving the earth with the eclipses and thunders and earthquakes of the Day of Judgment. Then I might refresh them with high and incomprehensible Doctrines, beyond the reach of Reason—Predestination, Election, the Co-existences and Co-eternities of the incomprehensible ...
— Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... threw them into disorder. Gen. Lee sent all his disposable troops to the rescue, but the Federal fire was so terrible as to disconsert the coolest veterans. Whole ranks of the Confederate troops were hurled to the ground. Says an actor in the conflict: 'The thunder of cannon, the cracking of musketry from thousands of combatants, mingled with the screams of the wounded and dying, were terrific to the ear and ...
— Personal Recollections of the War of 1861 • Charles Augustus Fuller
... sun-parlor, extended along the wing, and toward this slight elevation the girl stealthily led him, without so much as the cracking of a dry twig underfoot, peering from left to right for indications ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... there were none, or none to throw me back. At the stream-side, holding by an elder-bough, I tested the ice with my weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind. Above it was an embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I crept—or, you might almost say, crawled—and, reaching ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... his chair, cracking his fingers fiercely, his keen eyes narrowly observant of every shade of expression on ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... in his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... drawing-room grate. She crouched down on the hearth-rug before the coals, and a moment later the flames that played among the closely-written sheets lighted her face. Nothing but a blackened parchment now for all that proud dream of fame! The room grew dark again, and only the coals cracking and snapping, and the steady ticking of the old clock on the mantel piece above her head, broke the stillness. It was done. She went to the ...
— Beth Woodburn • Maud Petitt
... careful at first, but we might just as well have walked through the lot, for we were all mud to our knees when we got in. We at last entered the communicating trenches and we followed each other, cracking a joke now and again to keep our spirits up; every little while whiz! would go a bullet overhead and we ducked our nuts—we were perfectly safe if we had only known. We passed some Highlanders (Canadians); I suppose they must have been amused at us, as we were all eager to know ...
— Into the Jaws of Death • Jack O'Brien
... the fingers and hands, letting the hands hang limply from the wrists, then shake them up and down and from side to side, as if cracking a whip. Then rotate them from the wrists. These movements should all be made with great rapidity, the hands being rendered as near lifeless ...
— The Royal Road to Health • Chas. A. Tyrrell
... they reached a turn in the road, about two miles from home; and there, all in a moment, quite suddenly, when nobody was thinking about the frost or the danger, down came the poor horse on his side, his feet having gone quite from under him, and a dreadful cracking sound of broken timber gave notice that a shaft was smashed. A shaft at least was smashed; if only ...
— Castle Richmond • Anthony Trollope
... hand, when Robert Moore was the guest, though he elicited no vivacities from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and the knitting of ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... cliff the snow-wreaths hung, dripping and cracking in the sun; but at its foot around the cave's mouth grew all fair flowers and herbs, as if in a garden, ranged in order, each sort by itself. There they grew gaily in the sunshine, and the spray of the torrent from above; while from the cave came the sound of music, and ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... as though compassionating our lot, a large floe grounded upon the bank, glided upwards with a cracking and a crashing, and ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... good sign; there are great hopes of any man who is honestly dissatisfied with himself. Folding his arms, he leaned idly on the deck-rails, and looked gravely and musingly down into the motionless water where the varied lines of the sky were clearly mirrored,—when a slight creaking, cracking sound was heard, as of some obstacle grazing against or bumping the side of the yacht. He looked, and saw, to his surprise, a small rowing boat close under the gunwale, so close indeed that the slow motion ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... out. Mr. Coleman was very pompous, and so distressingly polite, that everything like sociability was out of the question. When the ladies left us, matters did not improve; Freddy, finding the atmosphere ungenial to jokes, devoted himself to cracking walnuts by original methods which invariably failed, and attempting to torture into impossible shapes oranges which, when finished, were much too sour for any one to eat; while his father, after having solemnly, and at separate intervals, begged me ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... thousands and thousands of just such cases; and men bearing them, and cracking jokes, and hitting out as hard as they can. Jean de Rechamp knew this, and tried to crack jokes too—but he got his leg smashed just afterward, and ever since he'd been lying on a straw pallet under a horse-blanket, saying to himself: ...
— Coming Home - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... to melancholy on the part of Joachim gave Luther an opportunity of corresponding with him. While cheering him with spiritual consolation, he recommended him to seek for mental refreshment in conversation, singing, music, and cracking jokes. Thus he wrote to him in 1534 as follows: 'A merry heart and good courage, in honour and discipline, are the best medicine for a young man—aye, for all men. I, who have spent my life in sorrow and weariness, ...
— Life of Luther • Julius Koestlin
... rap at his head— The lad being easily heated, 'So ye chates me bekase I'm in grief! O! is that, by the Holy, the rason? Soon I'll give you to know you d—d thief! That you're cracking your jokes out of sason, And scuttle your nob ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... various compartments and its indefinite number of horses, harnessed with rope and leather, sometimes two, sometimes three abreast, and sometimes one in advance, with an outrider belaboring the poor beasts without cessation, and the driver yelling and cracking his whip. The uproar, confusion, and squabbles at every stopping place are overwhelming; the upper classes, men and women alike, rushing into each other's arms, embrace and kiss, while drivers and hostlers on the slightest ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... chase for them, and should find his way back to Witley," said Martin as he crouched down in a ditch which divided the road from a wood. Cracking branches might have betrayed him had he entered the wood just then. Half a dozen horsemen passed him, galloping in pursuit, and when the sounds had died away, and he was convinced that no others followed, he crawled from the ditch and ...
— The Brown Mask • Percy J. Brebner
... enjoy the felicity of staring at her, for Miss Frampton will not let him alone. She chatters unceasingly and gushingly. At an early period of the repast the string of her amber-bead necklace suddenly gives way with a snap. The beads trickle slowly down, one by one; half a dozen of them drop with a cracking noise, like little marbles, upon the polished floor, where there is a general scramble of waiters and gentlemen under the table together after them; two fall into her own soup, three more on to Denis Wilde's table-napkin; as fast as the truants ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... and isn't going to begin this night. It's thick heads you need, lad, and good, sound sense inside of 'em! As for what the captain says, I do hold it, truly. But, Lord! I'm like a boy at a fair when the crowns are cracking, and angels ...
— The House Under the Sea - A Romance • Sir Max Pemberton
... d'Armes, near this market, is a large square, having an area enclosed with rails in the centre: here the Indians usually congregate, and within this a curious-looking group or two may commonly be found. To see the tribe at toilet is not a little amusing: some hair-hunting, catching and cracking this game, with a keen sporting look and an obvious relish of the pursuit quite varmint; others mixing red or white paint for the adornment of the nose, cheek, or eye, as custom or ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... patricians of you. For your WANTS,—Your suffering in this dearth, you may as well Strike at the heavens with your staves, as lift them Against the Roman State, whose course will on The way it takes, cracking ten thousand curbs Of more strong link asunder, than can ever Appear in your impediment. For the dearth, The gods, not the patricians, make it; and Your knees to ...
— The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakspere Unfolded • Delia Bacon
... of flight. He stayed where he was, with aching back, cracking muscles, sweat-grimed brow, and worked, his breath coming in quick, sharp gasps as he frantically helped man, woman, child, one after another, like sheep huddling over ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... start until then, after the tramp he's given us. Oh, Bay Billy, you're a smart one—no mistake about that. Why in thunder don't you use your smartness in the right way?—there's more money in business than in cracking cribs." ...
— Romance of California Life • John Habberton
... clandestinely; but dissatisfaction with his lot grew with his growth and strengthened with his strength. It was a great mystery to him how his mother could consent to live so, for so many years. He would look at the black and crazy loggery, with its clay "chinking," that was ever more cracking, and crumbling, and falling to the floor, leaving holes between the logs, through which the wind and rain entered; and the one rickety chair, and the rude benches and boxes for sitting accommodations, ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... and always, when at comparative rest, balancing his body like a wild animal in a menagerie. His senses were incapable of being affected by anything not appealing to his personal feelings: a pistol fired close to his head excited little or no emotion, yet he heard distinctly the cracking of a walnut, or the touch of a hand upon the key which kept him captive. The most delicious perfumes, or the most fetid exhalations, were the same thing to his sense of smell, because these did not affect, one way ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 446 - Volume 18, New Series, July 17, 1852 • Various
... horses bounding, Wagon wheels resounding. Cracking my whiplash—Ehi la! Cold winds blowing steadily, Rain and snow falling readily! I care for nothing! ...
— Zanetto and Cavalleria Rusticana • Giovanni Targioni-Tozzetti, Guido Menasci, and Pietro Mascagni
... he slipped. There was no regaining his grip. With a howl of fright he felt himself plunging head downward more than thirty feet to the hard floor of the gym. He was in a fair way of landing on his head, cracking his skull and breaking his neck. Worse, in his sudden dread, he seemed to have ...
— Dave Darrin's Third Year at Annapolis - Leaders of the Second Class Midshipmen • H. Irving Hancock
... vespers. Long shadows are falling from the tower and the walls. The monastery and the steeple are bathed in the reddish light of the setting sun. Monks, novices and pilgrims pass along the board-walks. In the beginning of the act may be heard behind the scenes the driving of a village herd, the cracking of a herdsman's whip, the bleating of sheep, the lowing of cattle, and dull cries. Toward the end of the act it grows much darker, and the movement in the yard ceases ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... and the Cornishman, busy in camp with the packing for the voyage, had shared in the gloom of my temporary defeat. But now, as I plunged past them, I could see them leaping into the air and cracking their heels together with delight. They had wet every plank of her with their sweat, and they were as proud as I. In the light of the following days, their delight dwindled into ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... highway dipped to the stream that fed the Cresswell swamp squatted a square barn that slept through day and weeks in dull indifference. But on the First Sunday it woke to sudden mighty life. The voices of men and children mingled with the snorting of animals and the cracking of whips. Then came the long drone and sing-song of the preacher with its sharp wilder climaxes and the answering "amens" and screams of the worshippers. This was the shrine of the Baptists—shrine and oracle, centre and source of inspiration—and ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... was advancing rapidly; they could now hear the cracking of the whip with which the servant urged on the tow-horse. And now it stopped, at an easy landing-place, barely fifty paces from the terrace. Madame de Lamotte landed with her son and the stranger, and her husband descended from the terrace to meet her. Long before he arrived ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE
... dance, you say, nor sing, Nor troll a lilting stave; And when the rest are cracking jokes He's silent as ...
— Laura Secord, the heroine of 1812. - A Drama. And Other Poems. • Sarah Anne Curzon
... the bands, each the scene of some obstinate fight. Indians and buffalo make the poetry and life of the prairie, and our camp was full of their exhilaration. In place of the quiet monotony of the march, relieved only by the cracking of the whip, and an 'avance donc! enfant de garce!' shouts and songs resounded from every part of the line, and our evening camp was always the commencement of a feast, which terminated only with our departure on ...
— The Life and Adventures of Kit Carson, the Nestor of the Rocky Mountains, from Facts Narrated by Himself • De Witt C. Peters
... the Blood, I cannot say; yet I think, it might very well be, that both on the head, and on this side of the neck, there might be a very great blow, and a contusion upon it (and seems to have been so, by the tearing of the hat, and breaking the collar, if not also cracking of the skull) and yet no sign of such contusion, because dying so immediately, there was not time for the Blood to gather {226} to the part and stagnate there (which in bruises is the cause of blackness) and it was but as if such a blow had been given on ...
— Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - Vol 1 - 1666 • Various
... fire, in the middle of which, draped in flame, stood Mrs. Shchapoff. . . . I rushed to put it out with my hands, but I found it burned them badly, as if they were sticking to burning pitch. A sort of cracking noise came from beneath the floor, which also shook and vibrated violently." Mr. Portnoff and the miller "carried ...
— The Book of Dreams and Ghosts • Andrew Lang
... wiping the hands, but while they are still soft from the action of the water, gently push back the skin which is apt to grow over the nails, which will not only preserve them neatly rounded, but will prevent the skin from cracking around their roots (nail springs), and becoming sore. The points of the nail should be pared at least once a week; biting them should ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... have, in the wings or tail, peculiarly developed feathers which produce special sounds. In some of the little manakins of Brazil, two or three of the wing-feathers are curiously shaped and stiffened in the male, so that the bird is able to produce with them a peculiar snapping or cracking sound; and the tail-feathers of several species of snipe are so narrowed as to produce distinct drumming, whistling, or switching sounds when the birds descend rapidly from a great height. All these are probably recognition and call notes, useful to each species in relation to the ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... in an old grey-bearded Capuchin dog?" cried the frate, leaping about and cracking his fingers. "Could you have bettered it? Could any man living have bettered it? Confess me an old rogue-in-grain, or I break every bone ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett
... was retentive of good phrases which had once come up under his pen, as that witty phrase about crushing and cracking had come up in the course of a brief note scribbled on a half-sheet of paper. The phrase reappears five years afterwards, elaborated into an impressive sentence, in the preface to The Rod, the Root, and the Flower, dated ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... frontier. He called for a large stone and hammer, and proceeded to examine them. The Hindoos were all in a dreadful state of consternation, and expected to see the earth open and swallow up the whole camp, while he sat calmly cracking their gods with his hammer, as he would have cracked so many walnuts. The Tulasi is a small sacred shrub (Ocymum sanctum), which is a metamorphosis of Sita, the wife of Rama, the ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman
... a new opera, with your favourite song, se cerca, se dice: (568) Monticelli sings it beyond what you can conceive. Your last was of April 8th. I like the medal of the Caesars and Nihils (569) extremely; but don't at all like the cracking of your house, (570) except that it drives away your Pettegola. (571) What I like much worse is your recovering your strength so slowly; but I trust to ...
— The Letters of Horace Walpole, Volume 1 • Horace Walpole
... Silvermane was going down, step by step, with metallic clicks upon flinty rock. Whether he went down or up was all the same to Hare; he held on with closed eyes and whispered to himself. Down and down, step by step, cracking the stones with iron-shod hoofs, the gray stallion worked his perilous way, sure-footed as a mountain-sheep. Then he stopped with a great slow ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... caterpillar could be so magnificent; but indoors in the cardboard box he lost his sun-burnished colour and half his glory. Immediately afterwards he spun his cocoon, and there he stayed for seven long months, so that the moth thus suddenly appearing, without any cracking or opening of the cocoon, appeared to be created on the spot. At first, indeed, some thought it was a moth that had entered by the window, there being no rent or place of exit from the perfect case. Within, however, was the broken and blackened skin of the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... you have the decency to humor the dear old fellow as we all do, and treat him with the same courtesy with which he treated you, instead of insulting him by throwing the letter in his face. You'll excuse me, Mr. Klutchem, when I say it gets me pretty hot when I think of it. I don't blame him for cracking you over the head, and neither would you, if you understood him as ...
— Colonel Carter's Christmas and The Romance of an Old-Fashioned Gentleman • F. Hopkinson Smith
... night that the chair shook under me while my hair was being dressed. I trembled to such a degree from head to foot, and the rustling of the curl-papers as the man twisted them in my hair almost drove me distracted, for it sounded like a forest cracking and rattling in a storm. After the performance, my limbs ached as if I had been beaten across them with an iron bar, and I could scarcely stand or support myself for exhaustion and fatigue. This, however, was only the first night, and I suppose proceeded ...
— Records of Later Life • Frances Anne Kemble
... tongues pendant and red eyes rolling. Finally the bear, nearly exhausted, made a sudden charge, the bull leaped aside, backed again with incredible swiftness, caught the bear in the belly, tossed him so high that he met the hard earth with a loud cracking of bone. The vaqueros circled about the maddened bull, set his hide thick with arrows, tripped him with the lasso. A wiry little Mexican in yellow, galloping in on his mustang, administered the coup de grace amidst the wild applause of the spectators, whose shouting and clapping ...
— Rezanov • Gertrude Atherton
... either copy, but that both are offered to you by a bookseller at precisely the same price. What will be your feelings as you handle the repaired copy? It is more than probable that you will sigh 'Poor thing' as you open it gently for fear of cracking the old piece pasted on to the back. But, 'What a nice clean copy' you will say as you take up the other; and it is improbable that you will hesitate ...
— The Book-Hunter at Home • P. B. M. Allan
... wince still as she had winced in the beginning. She had contracted the habit of wincing in response to them. Whenever Jimmy jerked his thumb over his shoulder you saw her blink; and whenever he cracked his knuckles she shrank back. The blink followed the jerk, and the shrinking followed the cracking as the flash follows the snap ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... noises of the market-place made themselves prominent, quite agreeably—in particular the hard metallic stamping and slipping, on the bricked pavement under the window, of a team of cart-horses that were being turned in a space too small for their grand, free movements, and the good-humoured cracking of a whip. Again Hilda was impressed, mystically, by the strangeness of the secret relation between herself and this splendid effective man. There they were, safe within the room, almost on a footing of familiar friendship! The atmosphere ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... not much in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel in his heart by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... him cracking of nuts, with half a cloak about him, for all means are cut off, or borrowing sixpence, to shew his ...
— Wit Without Money - The Works of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher • Francis Beaumont
... him like an impassable wall. He made a desperate rush at length to overleap the fire, and his figure, magnified by the red light, looked gigantic as he sprang high in the air. A dozen pistols clattered together—the man fell heavily forward, tossing up his scorched hands, and the frizzing, cracking timbers closed darkly above him to the thunder of ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... forward, cracking the fellow's head with the butt of his clubbed gun. Just as he did so Prescott fired squarely over Hal's left shoulder, knocking over a Moro bent on stabbing the sergeant from behind. The noise of that explosion, so close to his ear, deafened ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... was thin; the true savage was cracking out through it. In the days of the Mutiny Umballa would have been the Nana Sahib's right hand. He would have given the tragedy at ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... hostile shores; Beneath the storm their shatter'd navies groan; The trembling deep recoils from zone to zone— Thus the torn vessel felt the enormous stroke, The boats beneath the thundering deluge broke; Tom from their planks the cracking ring-bolts drew, And gripes and lashings all asunder flew; Companion, binnacle, in floating wreck, With compasses and glasses strew'd the deck; The balanced mizen, rending to the head, 460 In fluttering fragments from its bolt-rope fled; The sides convulsive shook on groaning beams, And, rent ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... wish was destined to be fulfilled today, as my road lay between a burning forest and a burning rost. {40} The intervening space was not, at the most, more than fifty paces broad, and was completely enveloped in smoke. I could hear the cracking of the fire, and through the dense vapour perceive thick, forked columns of flame shoot upwards towards the sky, while now and then loud reports, like those of a cannon, announced the fall of the large trees. On seeing my guide enter this fiery gulf, I was, I must confess, ...
— A Woman's Journey Round the World • Ida Pfeiffer
... long after him, for he got queerer nor ever, and they said he used to go out i' the dead o' the night, wi' a lantern in his hand, to the stables, and set a lot o' lights burning, for he got as he couldn't sleep; and there he'd stand, cracking his whip and looking at his hosses; and they said it was a mercy as the stables didn't get burnt down wi' the poor dumb creaturs in 'em. But at last he died raving, and they found as he'd left all his property, Warrens and all, to a Lunnon Charity, and that's how the Warrens come to be Charity ...
— Silas Marner - The Weaver of Raveloe • George Eliot
... themselves in the warm sun on the shores of the lake. The gay woodpecker was tapping the hollow beech; the swallow and the martin were skimming along the level of the green vales. He heard no more the cracking of branches of trees beneath the weight of icicles and snow;—he saw no more the spirits of departed men dancing wild dances on the skirts of the Northern clouds(2); and the farther he travelled the milder grew the skies, the longer was the period of the sun's stay upon the earth, and the ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... there must have been some sinister purpose back of the robbery. In that respect it was like the scientific cracking of Langhorne's safe. Langhorne, too, though he had been robbed, had been careful to disclaim the loss of anything of value. I frankly had not believed Langhorne, yet Carton was not of the same type and I felt that his open face ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... slacked up awhile in the afternoon, so me and Andy walked out to the edge of town to view the mudscape. Bird City was built between the Rio Grande and a deep wide arroyo that used to be the old bed of the river. The bank between the stream and its old bed was cracking and giving away, when we saw it, on account of the high water caused by the rain. Andy looks at it a long time. That man's intellects was never idle. And then he unfolds to me a instantaneous idea that has occurred to him. Right there was organized a trust; and we ...
— The Gentle Grafter • O. Henry
... few seconds she seemed to tremble like a living creature, and every timber creaked. Then she was turned slowly on one side, until the crew of the Dolphin could see down into her hold, where the beams were giving way and cracking up as matches might be crushed in the grasp of a strong hand. Then the larboard bow was observed to yield as if it were made of soft clay, the starboard bow was pressed out, and the ice was forced into ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... landau, of ancient and decayed splendour, driven by two white horses. They came dashing up at a wild gallop. The native driver, in his red fez and white cotton jacket, barely gave Freddy time to jump into the carriage after Meg was seated when, with a noisy cracking of his whip, he urged the horses to a still more ...
— There was a King in Egypt • Norma Lorimer
... don't know whether he liked her, and I don't care, but what I'm not going to do is to wait here listening to you all cracking up a landlady's ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... drawing rein; and in a moment we had regained our former position behind the infantry. We had scarcely time to congratulate ourselves upon the success of our scheme, when a tremendous clattering noise in front, mingled with the galloping of horses and the cracking of whips, announced the approach of the artillery as they came along by a narrow road which bisected our path; and as they passed between us and the column, we could hear the muttered sentences of the drivers, cursing the unseasonable ...
— Charles O'Malley, The Irish Dragoon, Volume 2 (of 2) • Charles Lever
... pang of the disillusionment was none the less keen and sickening, and the pain was as that of a corporeal wound. It seemed strange and foreboding, when we entered the breakfast-room, not to find everybody cracking whips, jumping over chairs, and whooping. In ecstatic rehearsal of the wild ...
— Dream Days • Kenneth Grahame
... a little flattened,—often bursting or cracking longitudinally before attaining its full dimensions; skin deep scarlet; flesh rose-colored, crisp, mild, and pleasant; neck small; leaves few in number, and of smaller size than those of the common Scarlet Turnip-rooted. Season quite early,—two or three days ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... so lost, that he did not reply to the man even by a look. "Now, my lads, now: one, two, three, and a —-." Obedient to the call of the officer, with a simultaneous jerk at the sail, the holdfast of the stupid peasant was plucked from his cracking fingers; he fell back with a loud shriek from the yard, struck midway on the main rigging, and thence bounding far to leeward in the sea, disappeared, and for ever, amid the white froth of the curling wave, that ...
— Rattlin the Reefer • Edward Howard
... Island with the splendor of something new, and yet it was simply the old-time spirit in which Scott had steeped himself, which found a new birth—a Renascence. Scott was a stalwart Border chieftain born out of time. But as another writer says, instead of harrying cattle and cracking crowns, this Border chief was appointed to be the song-singer and pleasant tale-teller to Britain and to Europe. "It was the time for such a new literature; and this Walter Scott was the ...
— English Literature For Boys And Girls • H.E. Marshall
... familiarly slapped, mistaking him for a friend: 'I beg your pardon, I thought I knew you—but I'm glad I don't.' It was humor in the Southern orator, John Wise, to liken the pleasure of spending an evening with a Puritan girl to that of sitting on a block of ice in winter, cracking ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... oftentimes witnessed such struggles before, knew better than to utter another word; the child stood perfectly still. There was no sound in the room but the ticking of the clock and the cracking of the seeds with which Miss Pollina, the old grey parrot in the cage by the window, amused herself unceasingly from morn until night. Even Miss Pollina seemed to be aware that perfect quietness was necessary for the present, and she had hushed her ...
— The Captain's Bunk - A Story for Boys • M. B. Manwell
... shoved those same legs; they were hoisted laboriously on to their horses; the postmaster shouted, "Now then, in with your spurs, and let them go!" and off we went full tear, bells jingling and whips cracking, to the admiration of the women and children of the village gathered round to see the show. Once we were off, things calmed down; but the postboys had no control whatever over their horses, who knew the road, and did the stage, from force of habit, at their own pace. If we came across ...
— Memoirs • Prince De Joinville
... sat on the hollowed steps of the houses, and basked in the autumn sun. At one side was a barrowman with a load of walnuts, and beside the barrow a bedraggled woman with a black fringe and a chequered shawl thrown over her head. She was cracking walnuts and picking them out of the shells, throwing out a remark occasionally to a rough man in a rabbit-skin cap, with straps under the knees of his corduroy trousers, who stood puffing a black clay pipe with his back against the wall. What the cause of the quarrel ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Carolina, in 1886, the injury caused by it being largely due to the fact that it passed through a populous city. As it occurred after many of the people had retired, the confusion and terror due to it were greatly augmented, people fleeing in panic fear from the tumbling and cracking houses to seek refuge in the ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... close to the curb, waiting for a chance drunken fare. The outmoded cabs were worn and dirty—the cracked patent leather wrinkled like an old man's face, the cushions faded to a brownish lavender; the very horses were ancient and weary, and so were the white-haired men who sat aloft, cracking their whips with a grotesque affectation of gallantry. ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... were not long wanting to complete the infernal chorus. From the dense, dark forest came the blood-curdling roars of tigers, panthers, and bears mingled with the loud bellowing and heavy stampede of elephants; we could distinctly here the cracking of boughs hurled to the ground in their furious course, and the crashing of bamboo, which with them is a favourite food. One might have said that an immense legion of demons had invaded the forest, because in its intense, impenetrable obscurity, only dimly lighted for a yard or two by the blaze ...
— My Friends the Savages - Notes and Observations of a Perak settler (Malay Peninsula) • Giovanni Battista Cerruti
... are numberless. Seldom and slowly the mask falls, and the pupil is permitted to see that all is one stuff, cooked and painted under many counterfeit appearances. Hume's doctrine was that the circumstances vary, the amount of happiness does not; that the beggar cracking fleas in the sunshine under a hedge, and the duke rolling by in his chariot, the girl equipped for her first ball, and the orator returning triumphant from the debate, had different means, but the ...
— McGuffey's Sixth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey
... horrors of my misfortune, without being able to find any remedy; in vain did I rack my brain; it supplied me with no expedient. I feared nothing so much as daybreak; however, it did come, and the cruel Brinon along with it. He was booted up to the middle, and cracking a cursed whip, which he held in his hand, 'Up, Monsieur le Chevalier,' cried he, opening the curtains; 'the horses are at the door, and you are still asleep. We ought by this time to have ridden two stages; give me money to pay the reckoning.' 'Brinon,' said I, in a dejected tone, 'draw the ...
— The Memoirs of Count Grammont, Complete • Anthony Hamilton
... admirable provocative of thirst. He was much disposed to believe Mutimer guilty, but understood that it was none of his business to openly take part with either side. He stood well on the limits of the throng; it was not impossible that the debate might end in the cracking of crowns, in which case Mr. Dabbs, as a respectable licensed victualler whose weekly profits had long since made him smile at the follies of his youth, would certainly incur no needless risk to ...
— Demos • George Gissing
... to it with a thrill in her veins and a joy in her heart. She was tired out and cold; this humble log hut meant shelter from the storm and warmth and food. Bill hung the meat; then with his knife cut off thick steaks for their supper. In a few moments their fire was cracking. ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... his old bundle over one shoulder, and the torpedoes clutched in the other arm, being thus encumbered—for it did not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor—he tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,—in a twisted tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... and draw in your elbows [the fancy is of Milton standing on the scaffold pinioned], that Needham, the Commonwealth didapper, may have room to stand beside you ... He [Needham] was one of the spokes of Harrington's Rota, till he was turned out for cracking. As for Harrington, he's but a demi-semi in the Rump's music, and should be good at the cymbal; for he is all for wheeling instruments, and, having a good invention, may in time find out the way to ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson
... ugly urchin of five, the youngest of the family, was sitting on the doorstep, hammering with the iron-shod heel of his heavy boot a hazel nut he had found on his way home. The nut, instead of cracking, was being driven deep into the moist earth. He did not desist from his employment, ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... tongues fiercely. Others raced round the scene of slaughter with their heads full four feet high, or gathered about the dead and dying, and lashed the air with their sharp tails, producing sounds like the cracking of whips. The few copper-heads and rattlesnakes present coiled themselves up with their heads in the centre in readiness to strike their poison into whatever object came ...
— Wild Western Scenes • John Beauchamp Jones
... all, and the little crowd cheered lustily against the whine of the blizzard as, with cracking whip and hoarse shouts, they were wrapped in the cloudy ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... and not to be questioned, and that he desired at once to consult the spirits. Upon this I sat down at a table, and, after a brief silence, demanded in a solemn voice if there were present any spirits. By industriously cracking my big-toe joint, I was enabled to represent at once the presence of a numerous assembly of these worthies. Then I inquired if any one of them had been present when the robbery was effected. A prompt double-knock ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 20, No. 121, November, 1867 • Various
... the village twinkling like so many golden candles. But the berlin, which had drawn them so stoutly over these rugged mountain-roads, failed them at the last. One of the hind wheels jolted violently upon a great stone, there was a sudden cracking of wood, and the carriage lurched over, throwing its occupants one against ...
— Clementina • A.E.W. Mason
... made a hard rap at his head— The lad being easily heated, 'So ye chates me bekase I'm in grief! O! is that, by the Holy, the rason? Soon I'll give you to know you d—d thief! That you're cracking your jokes out of sason, And scuttle your nob with ...
— Musa Pedestris - Three Centuries of Canting Songs - and Slang Rhymes [1536 - 1896] • John S. Farmer
... And must I ravel out My weav'd-up follies? Gentle Northumberland, If thy offences were upon record, Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop To read a lecture of them? If thou wouldst, There shouldst thou find one heinous article, Containing the deposing of a king And cracking the strong warrant of an oath, Mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of heaven. Nay, all of you that stand and look upon me Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait myself, Though some of you, with Pilate, wash your hands, Showing an outward ...
— The Tragedy of King Richard II • William Shakespeare [Craig, Oxford edition]
... roast the fat deer which the foresters brought. The sports commenced; and, after an agreeable series of bowling, coiling, pitching, hurling, racing, leaping, grinning, wrestling or friendly dislocation of joints, and cudgel-playing or amicable cracking of skulls, the trial of archery ensued. The conqueror was to be rewarded with a golden arrow from the hand of the Queen of the May, who was to be his partner in the dance till the close of the feast. This stimulated the knight's emulation: young Gamwell ...
— Maid Marian • Thomas Love Peacock
... had been playing for almost an hour. The old wall, with its summit curved like a cupola, was cracking from dryness and from heat, under its paint of yellow ochre. The grand Pyrenean masses, nearer here than at Etchezar, more crushing and more high, dominated from everywhere these little, human groups, moving in a deep fold of their sides. And the sun fell ...
— Ramuntcho • Pierre Loti
... liquor. All tramped, kicked, plunged, shouldered, and jostled, doing as little service with as much tumult as could well be imagined. At length, while the dinner was, after various efforts, in the act of being arranged upon the board, "the clamour much of men and dogs," the cracking of whips, calculated for the intimidation of the latter, voices loud and high, steps which, impressed by the heavy-heeled boots of the period, clattered like those of the statue in the Festin de pierre, announced the arrival of those for whose benefit the preparations were made. The hubbub among ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... silence for a minute or two afterwards—no sound to be heard but the cracking of Toby's whip and the ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... guide, who was lying where he had fallen. I don't think he was mortally wounded, for he was quite thirty yards off when I fired. However, I made certain of him by cracking his skull with a long-handled club he carried. Then I loaded the Sharp's rifle, slung it over my shoulder by its sling; and started back for the village at a run, holding ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... to the fireside, and stood there, spreading out his trembling hands to the blaze. He dreaded the first word, as a man lying ill of brain fever dreads each cracking explosion in a thunderstorm. Strained as their relations had been for a long time, he had never failed to kiss Gloria when he came home. This evening he barely glanced at her, and stood watching the dancing tongues of the wood fire, not daring to think of the sound of his wife's ...
— Casa Braccio, Volumes 1 and 2 (of 2) • F. Marion Crawford
... time, too; Spring already Now gave signal of his coming— Buds were sprouting on the fig-trees; Shots were cracking, for with guns and Nets they were the quails pursuing, Who towards home their flight were taking; And the minstrel was in peril Then of seeing feathered colleagues Set upon the table roasted. This dread o'er him, pen and inkstand Flew against the wall together. Ready now and newly soled were My ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... to tell you. For several nights, I seemed to hear, both in the park and out of the park, round the pavilion, unusual sounds, sometimes footsteps, at other times the cracking of branches. The night before the attack on me, when I did not get to bed before three o'clock in the morning, on our return from the Elysee, I stood for a moment before my window, and I felt sure ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... those who studied such matters what he was. After one glance at Richard he never looked at him again, but stared straight before him, and talked in muttered tones unceasingly, and with lips as motionless as those of a ventriloquist. He was doing fourteen years for cracking a public-house, and had cracked a good many private ones, concerning the details of which enterprises he was very eloquent. When he had concluded his autobiography he began to evince some interest in the circumstances of his companion. Richard, ...
— Bred in the Bone • James Payn
... perfect enjoyment took the form of a tranquil and contented ecstasy. The stage whirled along at a spanking gait, the breeze flapping the curtains and suspended coats in a most exhilarating way; the cradle swayed and swung luxuriously, the pattering of the horses' hoofs, the cracking of the driver's whip, and his "Hi-yi! g'lang!" were music; the spinning ground and the waltzing trees appeared to give us a mute hurrah as we went by, and then slack up and look after us with interest and envy, or something; and as we lay and smoked the pipe of peace, and compared all this luxury ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... guarded, is unlike any other. The seedlings differ in traits of vigor, hardiness, susceptibility to disease, time of beginning to bear, productiveness, and longevity, and the nuts vary in size, form, thickness of shell, ease of cracking, and in kernel characteristics. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... went round and borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... side and one upon another, with heaps of trees and branches and drifting lumber holding them in place. Some of the blocks stood erect and towered like icebergs, and these, glittering in the lights of the twinkling lanterns, pushed solemnly forward, cracking, crushing, and cutting everything in their way. When the great mass neared the planing mill on the east shore the girls covered their eyes, expecting to hear the crash of the falling building; but, impelled ...
— Homespun Tales • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... we shouldn't," agreed Jack. "He's a good friend of mine and three heads might be better than two in cracking this hard nut I'm up against. But he looks as if he might be bringing us news. Ten to one he's going to say the way is cleared for us to take that long trip with him to Berlin and back in his ...
— Air Service Boys Over the Atlantic • Charles Amory Beach
... they set off at full speed and neither stop nor slacken their pace until they reach the next post-house. Within the distance of half a mile from it, the postilion gives warning of his approach by a repeated and great cracking of his whip, so that by the time of arrival another cart is got ready to receive the traveller' (p. 93). (This is still the system in practice in some parts of Russia, and the author travelled in this fashion, ...
— Roumania Past and Present • James Samuelson
... young fellow of twenty-two, a sailor from boyhood, who three years before, on a public highway, had been picked up penniless and hungry by Tom Grogan, after the keeper of a sailors' boarding-house had robbed him of his year's savings. The change from cracking ice from a ship's deck with a marlinespike, to currying and feeding something alive and warm and comfortable, was so delightful to the Swede that he had given up the sea for a while. He had felt that he could ...
— Tom Grogan • F. Hopkinson Smith
... owe gratitude any where I have my debt with you. The very memory I bear of you has saved me no inconsiderable sum in hop and henbane. Without any assistance from the sciences on the present occasion, I was soon asleep, and woke not till the cracking of whips, and trampling of horses' feet on the pavement of the coach-yard apprised me that the world had risen to its daily labour, and so should I. From the short survey of my present chamber which I took on waking, I conjectured ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)
... that had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and resolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just above his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound and the ring of something heavy falling close ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... swarmed into the dark gulf of the great hall to the foot of the staircase. But here they were at a disadvantage. The light of the burning stables, shining through the open doorway, revealed them to the defenders, whilst they themselves looked up into the dark. There was a sudden cracking of pistols and a few louder reports from the guns, and the mob fled, screaming, back into the yard, leaving a score of dead and wounded on the polished floor ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... the sombre firs, as if they had been roused by the wind from a deep magic trance, groaned hoarsely in a responsive chorus. The bare black walls of the castle towered above the snow-covered ground; we drew up at the gates, which were fast locked. But no shouting or cracking of whips, no knocking or hammering, was of any avail; the whole castle seemed to be dead; not a single light was visible at any of the windows. The old gentleman shouted in his strong stentorian voice, "Francis, Francis, where the deuce are you? In the devil's ...
— Weird Tales. Vol. I • E. T. A. Hoffmann
... shout that reached Dick's sleeping ears. He sprang to his feet and found that the gorgeous sun was flooding the prairie with light. Already the high, brilliant skies of the Great West were arching over him. Men were cooking breakfast. Teamsters were cracking their whips and the whole camp was alive with a gay and cheerful spirit. Everybody seemed to know now that they were going for the gold, and, like Dick, they had found it in ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... finding the land we were in search of. At noon we were in the latitude of 50 deg. 56' S., longitude 56 deg. 48' E., and presently after we saw two islands of ice. One of these we passed very near, and found that it was breaking or falling to pieces, by the cracking noise it made; which was equal to the report of a four-pounder. There was a good deal of loose ice about it; and had the weather been favourable, I should have brought-to, and taken some up. After passing this, we saw no more, till we returned again ...
— A Voyage Towards the South Pole and Round the World, Volume 1 • James Cook
... almost midnight, but it seemed like a week to the boys, when the cracking of twigs and the crunch of feet warned of the approach of men. It proved to be the party, for they heard a low growling imprecation from Green as he stumbled over some object. Garry nudged Fernald, and immediately felt two sharp taps on his shoulder. At once he imitated the plaintive ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... where the ice was thin. He had avoided it all the afternoon, but intent on cutting some fancy figure one of the boys had taught him, he did not notice how near he was to the dangerous spot until he heard a cracking noise all round him, and it was too late to save himself from a plunge into ...
— Flip's "Islands of Providence" • Annie Fellows Johnston
... hungry tongues of flame licking the stone walls. At first no impression was made, but suddenly there was a cracking of glass and an entrance was affected. The interior furnishings of the fourth floor were the first to go. Then as though by magic, smoke issued from the ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... eyelids, a snort, loud as a lion's roar, made us start. Then there came a long succession of chump, chump, from the molar teeth, and a snort, snort, from the wakeful nostril of our mute companions, (equo ne credite, Teucri!)—one stinted quadruped was ransacking the manger for hay, another was cracking his beans to make him frisky to-morrow, and more than one seemed actually rubbing his moist nose just under our bed! This was not all; not a whisk of their tails escaped us, and when they coughed, which was often, the hoarse roncione shook the very tressels of our bed; ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 62, Number 361, November, 1845. • Various
... sleep—on a Glacier which moves about ten feet a day—it is cracking, bursting exploding, trembling, groaning and together with the Glacier Bears and howling dogs, and Siberian wolves, and rolling around to keep from freezing is very soothing. Now I have fought buffalo flies in Michigan, Bed Bugs ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... to America with Sir John Hawkins, to subdue the Spanish colonies with the heaviest fleet he ever commanded. Though wrangles between the commanders made this expedition a comparative failure, still wherever the head of a don was seen, a cracking blow was struck at it. War was a crueller business then than it is to-day, in spite of our high explosives, our armored ships, our mighty guns, and our nimble tactics, and things were done that no captain would dare in these times; at least, no captain with ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... not let him alone. She chatters unceasingly and gushingly. At an early period of the repast the string of her amber-bead necklace suddenly gives way with a snap. The beads trickle slowly down, one by one; half a dozen of them drop with a cracking noise, like little marbles, upon the polished floor, where there is a general scramble of waiters and gentlemen under the table together after them; two fall into her own soup, three more on to Denis Wilde's table-napkin; as fast as the truants are picked up others ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... their work of disintegration to provide substance for the slender red stem of dogwood, which is growing out of the soil they have made. The fallen leaves of the surrounding trees follow the pioneer work of the mosses. The rain and the cracking frosts are other agencies. By and by the organic will triumph over the inorganic, the cell over the crystal, the plant over the rock, and where now the fossils lie ...
— Some Winter Days in Iowa • Frederick John Lazell
... one slipped, and the other struck under the shoulder. From the lower rib to the back there ran a white mark. The white mark turned black, and blood came out. At the pain of it the stricken bull grunted and struck up. His horn struck under the body, and with the cracking of his joints he heaved the other over. Haw! He rolled him right over and sprang at him. Wow!! He struck and stood back. The other was on his feet swiftly. With the swiftness of a little cat he gained his feet. So ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... stooped to pick up the piece of paper. There came a queer, cracking, snapping sound, almost audible, I have a strange recollection of Harry standing up by the side of the desk—a flitting vision. An intuition of some terrible force. It was out of nothing—nowhere—approaching. I turned about. And I saw it— the ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... Choflo returned. "Look! See how the sand in the islands and on the riverbank is cracking! Tumwah is angry. Soon his fiery breath will sweep the green earth, parching the vegetation, searing our flesh and leaving death and destruction in its wake. Long days of suffering ...
— The Black Phantom • Leo Edward Miller
... morning repast, for they must lose no time in starting. Every moment now was precious. By ten o'clock the savannas would be too hot to cross, and they lay some distance from Simiti. Reed and Harris were bustling about, assembling the packers and cracking jokes as they strapped the chairs to the men's backs. Dona Maria's eyes were red with weeping, but she kept silence. Jose wandered about like a wraith. Don Jorge grimly packed his own kit and prepared to set out for the Magdalena, for he had suddenly announced ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... difficult to describe as the noise of the bullet. It's a far quicker noise than an express train. It sounds like a taxi going at about a hundred miles an hour and then bursting; a bullet sounds like someone cracking a very loud whip just in your ear, and a bit noisier than that when it is close to you. A machine gun—there is one going now—sounds like a very noisy motor bike, exactly like one, shells and bullets both whistle as well as they are going on. Well, I must get on, I brought ...
— Letters from France • Isaac Alexander Mack
... some of them on horseback and others on foot, did not speak. The only sounds that rose from the densely packed flocks were the clatter of their hard feet on the earth, the cracking of their ankle bones, and an occasional bawl of protest. But even this last was rare, for the sheep, worn with fast traveling and ignorant of the meaning of the strange things that were happening to them, were half-frightened; and only contented ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... me L20 for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, "All tailors are cheats, and all men are ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... He had been too terrified to notice the direction in which he had drifted—even if he had possessed the ordinary knowledge of a backwoodsman, which he did not. He was helpless. In his bewildered state, seeing a squirrel cracking a nut on the branch of a hollow tree near him, he made a half-frenzied dart at the frightened animal, which ran away. But the same association of ideas in his torpid and confused brain impelled him to search for the squirrel's ...
— A Drift from Redwood Camp • Bret Harte
... intent face as, husbanding my strength for a few seconds, I passed tossed about on the confused welter close by the quartz shelf. Then, as the circling waters hurried me a second time round and outward toward the further shore, I made what I knew must be the last effort, made it with cracking sinews and bursting lungs, and drew clear by a foot or two of the eddy's circumference. A few more strokes and an easy paddling carried me down-stream, and a wild cry of triumph, which more resembled a hoarse cackle than a shout, went up when ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... Something was evidently cautiously approaching us, but whether panther, stag, or bear we could not tell—probably the last. We gave a glance at our rifles, cocked them, and pressed a few paces forward amongst the canes; when suddenly a bound and a cracking noise, which grew rapidly more distant, warned us that the animal had taken the alarm. One of our companions, who had as yet never seen a bear-hunt, ran forward as fast as the palmettos would allow him, and was soon out of sight. Unfortunately we had no dogs, and after half an hour's ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Vol. 56, No. 346, August, 1844 • Various
... of the score card will record the rating of the judges on the cracking qualities and other characteristics of the nuts themselves. Any form accepted and approved by the NNGA will ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Thirty-Seventh Annual Report • Various
... after age. But this is the zone of illimitable sun-force, which destroys as swiftly as it generates, and generates again as swiftly as it destroys. Here, when the forest giant falls, as some tell me that they have heard him fall, on silent nights, when the cracking of the roots below and the lianes aloft rattles like musketry through the woods, till the great trunk comes down, with a boom as of a heavy gun, re-echoing on from mountain-side ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... growth and curtailing inflation. However, the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout the ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... 'Bah!' murmured Slimak, cracking his whip at them, 'if I listened to you idlers, you and I would both starve under the fence. The beggars are playing ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... minute a silence as of death reigned in the mine; then there was a sharp cracking explosion, followed—or rather, prolonged—by another like thunder, and, while a flash of fire seemed to surround them, filling the air, firing their clothes, and scorching their limbs, the whole mine shook with a deep continuous ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... the name of the Sirkar, go forward!" shouted the Policeman; but there was an ugly cracking and splintering of shutters, and the crowd halted, with oaths and growlings, before the house whence the ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling
... elicited no vivacities from the cat, did nothing to it, indeed, beyond occasionally coaxing it from the stool to his knee, and there letting it purr, climb to his shoulder, and rub its head against his cheek; though there was no ear-splitting cracking off of firearms, no diffusion of sulphurous gunpowder perfume, no noise, no boasting during his stay—that still Caroline sat in the room, and seemed to find wondrous content in the stitching of Jew-basket pin-cushions and ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... but the Colonel himself along with his adjutant. It can be readily imagined what scrambling and endeavor there was on the part of the sorrowing ones to return undetected to the Colonel's headquarters his stolen property and belongings. For days thereafter, the garrison resounded to the cracking of the Colonel's knout, and this time the wailing and shedding of tears was undoubtedly more real than any that had been shed previously to that time. These various unfortunate affairs, while harmful enough in themselves, did far greater harm than such ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... connections"—alluded to himself and his sister as being of the "true breed"—and with a certain vigor of epithet, picked up in the familiarity of the camp during the days when she was known as "Old Ma'am Atherly" or "Aunt Sally," declared that they were "no corn-cracking Hoosiers," "hayseed pikes," nor "northern Yankee scum," and that she should yet live to see them "holding their own lands again and the lands of their forefathers." Quieted at last by opiates, she fell into a more lucid but scarcely less distressing attitude. ...
— Tales of Trail and Town • Bret Harte
... game of playing at horses is admirably calculated to increase health and vigour and needs no expensive resources. Yet what would be said and thought if a prelate and his suffragan ran nimbly out of a palace gate in a cathedral close, with little bells tinkling, whips cracking, and reins of red ribbon drawn in to repress the curvetting of the gaitered steed? There is nothing in reality more undignified about that than in hitting a little ball about over sandy bunkers. If the Prime Minister and the Lord Chief Justice trundled hoops round and round after breakfast in ...
— From a College Window • Arthur Christopher Benson
... and in determination to drive them back, each man personally seems to be the same. Consequently the "carnage" is being appalling, and we have been practically in it, as far as horrors go. Guns were cracking and splitting all night, lighting up the sky in flashes, and fires were burning on both sides. The Clearing Hospital close by, which was receiving the wounded from the field and sending them on to us, was packed and overflowing with badly ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... noise in her way as the dogs did in theirs, and the din was deafening; an exasperating kind of din too, not incessant, but intermittent, now swelling to a climax, now lulling, until there seemed some hope that it would cease altogether, then bursting out again, whip cracking, dogs howling and barking, feet scampering, Angelica ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... was the night, that the moment Billy crawled beyond the reach of her hand he was lost to sight. She sat and waited. The sound had ceased, though she could follow Billy's progress by the cracking of dry twigs and limbs. After a few moments he returned and crawled ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... so very irreligious, so exceedingly undutiful, so horribly profane,' rejoined his father, turning his face lazily towards him, and cracking another nut, 'that I positively must interrupt you here. It is quite impossible we can continue to go on, upon such terms as these. If you will do me the favour to ring the bell, the servant will show you to the door. Return to this roof no more, I beg you. Go, sir, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... up to this time, and she had been listing over to the east, or away from the wind and the sea, but now all over and within the ship were heard loud noises of cracking beams and the sharp harsh snap of timbers breaking. The crew of the wreck, in dread of instant death, now again burned blue lights. Just before the lifeboat approached, as if in a death-throe, the ship reeled inwards, and her tottering ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... shook himself fully awake, and sent the long lash cracking over the thin, sweat-drenched backs of the ox-team. They laboured with desperation at the yoke, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... the matter, and I agreed on condition he allowed me to tie his handkerchief over his head. I was wearing his hat and tying the ends of a big silk handkerchief beneath his chin when the cracking of a twig caused me to look up and see Harold Beecham with an expression on his ...
— My Brilliant Career • Miles Franklin
... ominous cracking sound; Agony uttered another shriek and turned away; the next instant the shrill cries of the bird ceased; the man in the chair gave vent to a long drawn "Ah-h!" Agony looked up to see the exhausted bird fluttering to the ground beside her, a length of string still hanging to its foot, ...
— The Campfire Girls at Camp Keewaydin • Hildegard G. Frey
... broke off short, and with good reason. A strange creaking and cracking sound had reached his ears, followed by a bump and a jar which nearly pitched him headlong. Sam was ...
— The Rover Boys on the Great Lakes • Arthur M. Winfield
... finished there was a silence. Miss West was busy serving coffee from a copper percolator. Mr. Pike, profoundly occupied with cracking walnuts, could not quite hide the wicked, little, half-humorous, half-revengeful gleam in his eyes. But Captain West looked straight at me, but from oh! such a distance—millions and millions of miles away. His clear blue eyes were ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... the mother, sitting suddenly up. A direful cracking resounded under the bed-clothes as she did so, but in the excitement of the moment its possible evil portent ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Friend Mrs. Lathrop • Anne Warner
... Evening: which created us a fresh disturbance, thinking them to be People that were coming to chace us. But at length we heard Elephants behind us, between us and the Voice, which we knew by the noise of cracking the Boughs and small Trees, which they break down and eat. These Elephants were a very good Guard behind us, and were methought like the Darkness that came between Israel and the Egyptians. For ...
— An Historical Relation Of The Island Ceylon In The East Indies • Robert Knox
... right. And how can you say that my nose went in the air? I'm sure Mr. Taynton will agree with me that that is really libellous. And as for your being afraid to tell me you had bought a motor-car yourself, why, that is sillier than cracking ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... violent swearing, coaxing and whip-cracking, would make at stated intervals a "spurt," and drag the coach a hundred or may be two hundred yards, stirring up a billowy cloud of dust that rolled back, enveloping the vehicle to the wheel-tops or higher, and making it seem afloat in ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... was Europe more happy than during the years which rolled by between 1750 and 1758," he has said in his Tableau du Siecle de Louis XV. The evil, however, was hatching beneath the embers, and the last supports of the old French society were cracking up noiselessly. The Parliaments were about to disappear, the Catholic church was becoming separated more and more widely every day from the people of whom it claimed to be the sole instructress and ...
— A Popular History of France From The Earliest Times - Volume VI. of VI. • Francois Pierre Guillaume Guizot
... the worthy priest—was swept away like a fragile bridge by the torrent of wild eloquence and ungovernable enthusiasm which Patience had accumulated in his desert. The vicar had to give way and fall back terrified upon himself. There he discovered that the shrine of his own science was everywhere cracking and crumbling to ruin. The new sun which was rising on the political horizon and making havoc in so many minds, melted his own like a light snow under the first breath of spring. The sublime enthusiasm of Patience; the strange poetic life of the man which ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... that night. They traveled slowly and cautiously, and with each day Peter came to understand more clearly there was some reason why they must be constantly on their guard. His master, he noticed, was thrillingly attentive whenever a sound came to their ears—perhaps the cracking of a twig, a mysterious movement of brush, or the tread of a cloven hoof. And instinctively he came to know they were evading Man. He remembered vividly their escape from Cassidy and their quiet hiding for many days in the mass of sun-baked ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... the roof, nor at the window. Kunda thought, "He has not risen yet, it is not time; I will sit down." She sat waiting amid the darkness under the trees; a fruit or a twig might be heard, in the silence, loosening itself with a slight cracking sound and falling to the earth. The birds in the boughs shook their wings overhead, and occasionally the sound of the watchmen knocking at the doors and giving their warning cry was to be heard. At length the cool wind blew, forerunner ...
— The Poison Tree - A Tale of Hindu Life in Bengal • Bankim Chandra Chatterjee
... East Side loafers standing on the wharf cap-log were nearly swept away by the end of our bowsprit, we came on so fast. Four or five of us leaped ashore, and with lines out and made fast in no time, we had her docked without so much as cracking a single shingle of the house across ...
— The Seiners • James B. (James Brendan) Connolly
... face to his breast and repeated, "Don't, don't, don't," feebly for a few times, without seeming to realize what he was saying. From some outpost of his being reinforcements came. For he rose suddenly, and shaking his haggard fist at the youth, exclaimed in a high, furious, cracking voice as he panted and shook his great hairy head: "No—by God, no, by God, no! You damned young cut-throat—you can break my bank, but you can't bulldoze me. No, by God—no!" He started to leave the room. Barclay caught the old man and swung him into a chair. The flint that Barclay's ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... let him off with a little slyness personal to Mr Dombey. Therefore, on the removal of the cloth, the Major developed himself as a choice spirit in the broader and more comprehensive range of narrating regimental stories, and cracking regimental jokes, which he did with such prodigal exuberance, that Carker was (or feigned to be) quite exhausted with laughter and admiration: while Mr Dombey looked on over his starched cravat, like the Major's proprietor, or like a stately showman who was ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... Some men are of an assurance, of a sang froid! They'll place themselves beside you, and walk with you, and talk with you, and even propose that you should pass the livelong afternoon cracking jokes with them in a garden, and never breathe a hint of their perplexity. They'll brazen ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume X (of X) • Various
... remote age when an idle-strenuous people lived only to be picturesque, to kill one another in tourneys, to rear with painful labour beautiful elaborate cathedrals, and yet had so much time on their hands that they could pass half their lives cracking unhallowed sconces in the Holy Land and, in that part of their ample leisure which they devoted to study, spell 'flourishes' as 'Florryschethe'. But if any one still anxious for literal truth should insist—'Is not the impression as false as the medium that conveys it? Were ...
— The Rowley Poems • Thomas Chatterton
... tents are put up in a line, and at once begins the work of gathering brush and sticks (or buffalo-chips), with which to cook a savory supper of bacon, potatoes, and hot coffee. This is the time for cracking jokes, telling stories of pioneer life,—and the colored boys are full of fun. We had one from the South named Tom Williams, belonging to Colonel Mason, of the 5th Cavalry. After enjoying our evening meal and getting ...
— Three Years on the Plains - Observations of Indians, 1867-1870 • Edmund B. Tuttle
... is a mud hearth, a wall of clay plastered over the stones of the fireplace. This will prevent the fire from cracking and chipping the stones, but clay is not absolutely necessary in this fireplace. When, however, you build the walls of your fireplace of logs and your chimney of sticks the clay is necessary to prevent the fire from ...
— Shelters, Shacks and Shanties • D.C. Beard
... hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The limpid spring bubbled and laughed at the foot of the hill. Flocks of nimble, noisy boys turned somersaults and ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... only would!' cried the Princess, and at the same moment she heard a crick-cracking in all her bones. She grew tall and straight and pretty, with eyes like shining stars, and a skin ...
— The Red Fairy Book • Various
... the window, cracking dried sunflower seeds, and looking out at the steppes of Little Russia. The evening shadows were already lying in the hollows of the fields of ripening wheat, but the late sun still reddened the crests and the column of smoke ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... revived; then I ate something he offered me, and was soon myself. I was in the library—sitting in his chair—he was quite near. "If I could go out of life now, without too sharp a pang, it would be well for me," I thought; "then I should not have to make the effort of cracking my heart-strings in rending them from among Mr. Rochester's. I must leave him, it appears. I do not want to ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... we ate our luncheon as fast as we could (a very bad habit, which I don't mean to keep up for man or brother), and even though the others had begun long before we did, we finished while they were still cracking nuts and peeling apples, their spirits somewhat subdued by ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... radiating tail. From every side-road came the miners' carts, the humble, ramshackle traps, black and bulging, with their loads of noisy, foul-tongued, open-hearted partisans. They trailed for a long quarter of a mile behind them—cracking, whipping, shouting, galloping, swearing. Horsemen and runners were mixed with the vehicles. And then suddenly a squad of the Sheffield Yeomanry, who were having their annual training in those parts, clattered and jingled out of a field, and rode as an ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... in lofty timber, and, as I paused, I heard the mighty cracking of fire coming through the wood. At the same instant the blinding smoke burst into a million tongues of flackering flame, and I saw the fire—not where I had ever seen it before—not creeping along among the scrub—but up aloft, a hundred and fifty feet overhead. It had caught the dry bituminous ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... of Culloden he was a frequent guest,—"a house, or castle," says the author of "Letters from the North," written previous to the year 1730, "belonging to a gentleman whose hospitality knows no bounds. It is the custom of that house, at the first visit or introduction, to take up war freedom, by cracking his nut, as he terms it; that is, a cocoa-shell, which holds a pint, filled with champagne, or such other sort of wine as you shall chuse. You may guess, by the introduction, of the contents of the volume. Few go away ...
— Memoirs of the Jacobites of 1715 and 1745 - Volume II. • Mrs. Thomson
... pavement, and the clatter of their wheels drew many inmates of the houses they passed to the windows, and a little crowd collected around them as they stood waiting for admission before the great entrance door of the Armes de France; the driver, meanwhile, cracking his whip till it sounded like a volley of musketry, to which the horses responded by shaking their heads, and making all the little bells about them jingle sharply and merrily. There was a wonderful difference between this and their arrival at the last inn they had stopped ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... driver came to the door to say the coach was waiting, for on the Plains stages stop not for accidents or dead men. I bade my friend good-night, hoping he would not again be interrupted on his journey by the redskins, and, the driver cracking his whip, the four fresh bays bounded forward at a gallop, and soon carried the coach out of ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the chatter of these mild people, me that's heard grand stories in the forecastle of how this man was marooned in the Bahamas, and that man was married to a Maori queen, by God? Me, the hero that dowsed skysails, and they cracking like guns. Is this lousy room a place for me that's used to a ship as clean as a cat from stem to stern?' And you stand up bravely, and you look the man of the public house square in the shifty eyes, and you say: 'Listen, bastard! Do you ken e'er a master wants a sailing man? A sailor ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... been long in slumber, when a slight noise, perhaps the cracking of a stick, drove sleep from my anxious brain, and I sat up with surprise, staring at a long figure in black that stood peering at me. The black gown, the beads and the broad-brimmed hat told me it was ...
— The Sequel - What the Great War will mean to Australia • George A. Taylor
... symptoms of fracture of the cranium are: Loss of appetite and failure of digestion, insomnia, difficulty in micturition, constipation, a febrile dyscrasia, difficulty in cracking nuts or crusts of bread with the jaws, or severe pain when a string is attached to the teeth and pulled sharply. If the meninges are injured we have further: headache, a slow and irregular but increasing ...
— Gilbertus Anglicus - Medicine of the Thirteenth Century • Henry Ebenezer Handerson
... him, fell flat on his breast and went scooting over the ice for about ten or fifteen yards before he could stop himself. What would have happened after that no one can tell, for just then the attention of the whole party was diverted by a shout in the distance, accompanied by the cracking of a whip and the usual sounds that announced ...
— The Walrus Hunters - A Romance of the Realms of Ice • R.M. Ballantyne
... woman without means of livelihood, breaks away from her moorings—well, it is as if a child were to fall into the midst of some gigantic machinery that is going at full speed. Let her try the feat, and the cracking of her bones by the big wheels will attest its hopelessness. And yet I long to try!" Hadria added beneath ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... given to be afraid,' said Bagwax. 'The ocean, if I know myself, would have no terrors for me;—not if I was doing my duty. But I should hear the ship's sides cracking with every blast if that secret were lodged ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... front seat of a landau under the peering eyes of his lady, safe in his disguise, if not self-betrayed, pouring out his young soul in passionate praise and prayer; around them the laughter and the cries, the cracking of whips, the roll of wheels, the presence of countless thousands, and yet these two young hearts alone under the pale winter sky. The rest of the Continent has outgrown the true Carnival. It is pleasant to see this gay relic of simpler times, when youth was young. No one here is too "swell" ...
— Castilian Days • John Hay
... incipient conflagration. Had the house itself not been built of granite, and—save the doors and windows and other trimmings—been practically fireproof, the result would have been disastrous; as it was, however, beyond badly scorching the door, and cracking a few of the stones by reason of the intense heat that was ...
— A Woman at Bay - A Fiend in Skirts • Nicholas Carter
... galley-slave in chains, who wants a letter written to a friend. He approaches a clerkly-looking man, sitting under the corner arch, and makes his bargain. He has obtained permission of the sentinel who guards him: who stands near, leaning against the wall and cracking nuts. The galley-slave dictates in the ear of the letter-writer, what he desires to say; and as he can't read writing, looks intently in his face, to read there whether he sets down faithfully what he is told. After ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... doing her utmost to keep ahead, but the Wolf, being the fastest ship of the two, gained rapidly on her. The men stood at their guns, waiting eagerly for the moment that the order to fire should be given, laughing, however, and cracking their usual jokes. The officers went their rounds, to see that all necessary preparations ...
— The Rival Crusoes • W.H.G. Kingston
... after a long, stealthy glance towards the house, had advanced to the extreme boundary of the potato patch. His behaviour here for the first time seemed to denote the hopeless lunatic. He swung his long arms backward and forwards, cracking his fingers, and talked unintelligibly to himself, hoarse, guttural murmurings without sense or import. Trent changed his place and for the first time saw the Kru boy. His face darkened and an angry exclamation ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... sake—he was more to her than all of nature's creatures. With expert fingers, she sent the life from the twisting eels, and gathering them into a small bag, Tessibel slung them over her arm and broke off into the dark forest, the twigs cracking under her small bare feet as she went. Here and there the curls of red hair would catch in the branches, and the girl would tear them loose, leaving a blazed trail of copper ...
— Tess of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... I mention merely to show what an effect dry, bright, intense cold produces on healthy bodies, and how much better it is to go out in it and enjoy it than to stay indoors and sulk. As we passed through the neighbouring village with cracking of whip and jingling of bells, heads popped up at the windows to stare, and the only living thing in the silent, sunny street was a melancholy fowl with ruffled feathers, which looked at us reproachfully, as we dashed with so much energy over the ...
— Elizabeth and her German Garden • "Elizabeth", AKA Marie Annette Beauchamp
... across the strip of wood that now divided us from the stockade, and at every step we took the voices of the buccaneers rang nearer. Soon we could hear their footfalls as they ran and the cracking of the branches as they breasted across ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... C. "We do." G. "Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left?" C. "I did not know she did. If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her." "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... creek," said the Major, sharply, and he touched spurs to his horse. How they raced through the woods, cracking brush and whisking around trees, and how they thundered over the turf and clattered across the road and on! For a few moments the Major kept close to Chad, watching him anxiously, but the boy stuck to the big bay like a jockey, and he left Dan and Harry ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the threshold of a long and glittering apartment; it was full of the ornate and complicated embellishments of the eighteenth century—an exhibition of decorative whip-cracking. Grilles, panels, mirror-frames all glimmered in green and gold, and a row of lustres, each multitudinously candled, hung from ...
— With the Procession • Henry B. Fuller
... down before the rifles, old Roper, with the Maluka riding him, standing like a rock under fire; and then, just as the mob was quieting down, a wild scrub cow with a half-grown calf at her heels shot out of the mob and headed straight for the pack team, Dan galloping beside her and cracking thunderclaps out of a stock-whip. Flash and I scuttled to shelter, and Dan, bending the cow back to the mob, shouted as he passed by, at full gallop: "Here you are, missus; thought you might ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... may praise one, without hitting at the other. Osborne has not had the strong health which has enabled Roger to work as he has done. I met a man who knew his tutor at Trinity the other day, and of course we began cracking about Roger—it's not every day that one can reckon a senior wrangler amongst one's friends, and I'm nearly as proud of the lad as you are. This Mr. Mason told me the tutor said that only half of Roger's success was owing ...
— Wives and Daughters • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... these as well as of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice, of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and cracking that foretold the mighty breaking ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen
... with her from the carriage and come to meet her from the house. Her glance involuntarily took in the familiar masses and details; the patches of short tough grass mixed with decaying chips and small weeds underfoot, and the spacious June sky overhead; the fine network and blisters of the cracking and warping white paint on the clapboarding, and the hills beyond the bulks of the village houses and trees; the woodshed stretching with its low board arches to the barn, and the milk-pans tilted to sun against the underpinning ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells
... friendships, and how they pine when separated. Then will he register his personal regrets, counting in the measure for fat, for, refusing food, the animals fall away in condition, so that the sorrows of two fat bullocks due to parting, enforced by determined men on horseback, cracking whips and using violent and threatening language, come home to the owner in terms ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... train. She gazed at this woman with an expression of ineffable scorn, and whispered to her: "Suffer yet awhile, you shall soon be released. This miserable trash will disappear. Only be firm—I hear already the cracking of the house which will soon fall a ...
— Old Fritz and the New Era • Louise Muhlbach
... moment in running back over the stile again, and demanding of Jacob Rigg that he should tell me whether he meant any thing or nothing; for I was not to be played with about important matters, like the boys in the church who were cracking nuts. ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... paced like a caged beast in the yard. I prowled thus for the space of twelve hours. I knew my prison to its smallest cranny. I knew the spots where the lichens and the mosses pushed up through the sections of the wall which had given way in cracking. Disgust for my corridor, for my truckle-bed flattened out like a pancake, for my linen rotten with dirt, took hold of me. I lived isolated, speaking to no one, beating the flint stones of the courtyard with my feet, straying, like a troubled soul, under the arcades whitewashed with yellow ...
— Sac-Au-Dos - 1907 • Joris Karl Huysmans
... the animal heat of the bees, it can more easily be worked, than if it parted with its heat too readily. By this property, the combs serve also to keep the bees warm, and there is not so much risk of the honey candying in the cells, or the combs cracking with frost. If wax was a good conductor of heat, the combs would often be icy cold, moisture would condense and freeze upon them, and they would fail to answer the ends for which they ...
— Langstroth on the Hive and the Honey-Bee - A Bee Keeper's Manual • L. L. Langstroth
... charm. The faint cracking became louder, nearer, turned from a suspicion to a certainty and from a certainty to a fact. The bushes parted and Percy stood before us. All he saw was three elderly women eating frogs' legs round a fire under a cloud of mosquitoes. ...
— Tish, The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... our luncheon as fast as we could (a very bad habit, which I don't mean to keep up for man or brother), and even though the others had begun long before we did, we finished while they were still cracking nuts and peeling apples, their spirits somewhat subdued ...
— The Motor Maid • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... addition to the comfort of studying with our mouths full, had every now and then two other delights, which were quite as good as cracking nuts. The back door communicated with the yard where the hen, surrounded by her brood of chicks, scratched at the dung hill, while the little porkers, of whom there were a dozen, wallowed in their ...
— The Life of the Fly - With Which are Interspersed Some Chapters of Autobiography • J. Henri Fabre
... city, or bowl along the velvet roads of a picturesque countryside as one frequently does in England is very delightful. To read Dickens' descriptions of journeys up to London is to long to don a greatcoat, wind a muffler about one's neck, and amid the cracking of whips and tooting of horns dash off behind the horses for the fairy city his pen portrays. Who would not have liked, for example, to set out with Mr. Pickwick for the Christmas holidays at Dingley Dell? Why, you cannot even read about it without seeing in your mind's ...
— Steve and the Steam Engine • Sara Ware Bassett
... magnificent, with a fitness Tartarean and diabolic. But under a glaring sun, amid green fields and blue skies, all its wickedness is revealed without its beauty. You see its works, and little more. The flame is hardly noticed. All that is seen is a canker eating up God's works, cracking the bones of its prey,—for that horrible cracking is uglier than all stage-scene glares,—cruelly and shamelessly under the very eye of ...
— Hereward, The Last of the English • Charles Kingsley
... the tank, just within the gate, and pelts the gold-fishes with mango-seeds. Presently comes along a pleasant peddler, all the way from Cabool, with a pretty bushy-tailed kitten of Persia in the hollow of his arm, and a cunning little mungooz cracking nuts on his shoulder. A score of tiny silver bells tinkle from a silken cord around Chinna Tumbe's loins, and the silver whistle with which he calls his cockatoos is suspended from his neck by a chain ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 5, March, 1858 • Various
... has gathered round the Hazel tree and the Nuts. The cracking of Nuts, with much fortune-telling connected therewith, was the favourite amusement on All Hallow's Eve (Oct. 31), so that the Eve was called Nutcrack Night. I believe the custom still exists; it certainly has not been very long abolished, for the Vicar of Wakefield and his neighbours ...
— The plant-lore & garden-craft of Shakespeare • Henry Nicholson Ellacombe
... scrambling sound on Tom's side of the wall, and the cracking of the stick, which had come in contact with the bricks, for the prisoner had escaped, and his footsteps could be faintly heard, as he dashed over the grassy field into the darkness, where Tom felt it would be useless ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... no mercy from an enemy and we were at least prepared to make it hot for any of them who came fooling around within range provided they came to the surface. I was with the forward guns and, as we had several days of pretty rough weather, it was a wet job. Our wireless was continually cracking and sputtering so I suppose the skipper was getting his sailing orders from the Admiralty as we changed direction several times a day. We had no convoying war-ships and sighted but few boats, mostly Norwegian sailing ...
— The Emma Gees • Herbert Wes McBride
... stores and other supplies for Constantinople for orders. Every stitch of canvas was set after getting clear of the harbour; studding sails lower and aloft were spread to the kiss of the singing wind, and the officers were made to understand that there was to be hard cracking on; nothing was to be taken in until the maximum amount of endurance of spars, ropes and rigging had been reached. The breeze freshened and the sea curled its white tops into angry combers Captain Macvie walked the starboard quarterdeck ...
— The Shellback's Progress - In the Nineteenth Century • Walter Runciman
... it is! My body is cracking all over!' said the Snow-man. 'The wind is really cutting one's very life out! And how that fiery thing up there glares!' He meant the sun, which was just setting. 'It sha'n't make me blink, though, and I shall keep quite cool ...
— The Pink Fairy Book • Various
... their manner to us when abroad. Nothing could have been more provincial and narrow than the ideas of our "smart" men at that time. They congregated in little cliques, huddling together in public, and cracking personal old jokes; but were speechless with mauvaise honte if thrown among foreigners or into other circles of society. All this is not to be wondered at considering the amount of their general education ...
— Worldly Ways and Byways • Eliot Gregory
... fashion accordingly grew up of baking the tablet in a kiln. In Assyria, where the heat of the sun was not so great as in the southern kingdom of Babylonia, the tablet was invariably baked, holes being first drilled in it to allow the escape of the moisture and to prevent it from cracking. Some of the early Babylonian tablets were of great size, and it is wonderful that they have lasted to our own days. But the larger the tablet, the more difficult it was to bake it safely, and consequently ...
— Babylonians and Assyrians, Life and Customs • Rev. A. H. Sayce
... over to the guide, who was lying where he had fallen. I don't think he was mortally wounded, for he was quite thirty yards off when I fired. However, I made certain of him by cracking his skull with a long-handled club he carried. Then I loaded the Sharp's rifle, slung it over my shoulder by its sling; and started back for the village at a run, holding my shot ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... and Wellsville, Paul had an awful time in an ice gorge. He could hear it cracking and grinding below as though warning him of danger. He succeeded in climbing on a cake which saved him from being carried under, and made his way to clear water ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... suite. But, like everyone else about the court, he lived in terror of the strong-willed, strong-drinking Czarina. His kennel must be kept a secret, and was accordingly located in his wife's bedroom. He would spend hours indoors cracking whips or emitting weird sounds on musical instruments. At night, after Madame Tchoglokoff, who was charged with the surveillance of the grand-ducal menage, had retired, under the impression that she had locked everyone up safely, he would call for lights again, like a schoolboy, ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, v. 13 • Various
... Favourable breezes blowing Bend the canvass o'er the mast. From aloft the signal's streaming, Hark! the farewell gun is fired, Women screeching, tars blaspheming, Tell us that our time's expired. Here's a rascal Come to task all, Prying from the Custom-house; Trunks unpacking, Cases cracking, Not a corner for a mouse 'Scapes unsearch'd amid the racket, Ere we sail on ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Letters and Journals, Vol. 1 • Lord Byron, Edited by Rowland E. Prothero
... deadmair by token, o' ane's cummer and neighbourbut there was queer things said about a leddy and a bairn or she left the Craigburnfoot. And sae, in gude troth, it will be a puir lykewake, unless your honour sends us something to keep us cracking." ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott
... still remained. Those of an earlier period showed bare wood, with a few tattered rags dangling therefrom. Earlier still, the wood lay in fragments on the floor of the niche, and the coffin consisted of naked lead alone; whilst in the case of the very oldest, even the lead was bulging and cracking in pieces, revealing to the curious eye a heap of dust within. The shields upon many were quite loose, and removable by the hand, their lustreless surfaces still indistinctly exhibiting the name and title ...
— A Pair of Blue Eyes • Thomas Hardy
... myself;" and Mrs. Treat lifted her slim husband into a chair, where he was out of her way, and again greeted Toby by kissing him on both cheeks with a resounding smack that rivalled anything Reddy Grant had yet been able to do in the way of cracking his whip. ...
— Mr. Stubbs's Brother - A Sequel to 'Toby Tyler' • James Otis
... mundungus. [He little believes How they laugh in their sleeves.] Hail, fellow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man; Who makes the best figure, The Dean or the digger; And which is the best At cracking a jest. [Now see how he sits Perplexing his wits In search of a motto To fix on his grotto.] How proudly he talks Of zigzags and walks, And all the day raves Of cradles and caves; And boasts of his feats, His grottos and seats; Shows all his gewgaws, And gapes for applause; A fine occupation ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... catch-cold; and I seem to regain, in buffeting with the wind, a little of the high spirit with which, in younger days, I used to enjoy a Tam-o'-Shanter ride through darkness, wind, and rain,—the boughs groaning and cracking over my head, the good horse free to the road and impatient for home, and feeling the weather ...
— The Journal of Sir Walter Scott - From the Original Manuscript at Abbotsford • Walter Scott
... he went out into the garden. He looked sadly at the closed shutters of the old house, and stood for a long time on the edge of the precipice, looking down thoughtfully into the depths of the thicket and the trees rustling and cracking in the wind. Then he turned to look at the long avenues, here forming gloomy corridors, and then opening out into open stately spaces, at the flower gardens now fading under the approach of autumn, at the kitchen garden, and at the ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... been for their bodily danger. It would have seemed to him that the intangible cloud settling down over them was a more tragic and sinister thing than the insurrectos besieging them, than the thirst which was cracking their lips and swelling and ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... place to sleep—on a Glacier which moves about ten feet a day—it is cracking, bursting exploding, trembling, groaning and together with the Glacier Bears and howling dogs, and Siberian wolves, and rolling around to keep from freezing is very soothing. Now I have fought buffalo flies in Michigan, Bed Bugs in Wisconsin, ...
— Black Beaver - The Trapper • James Campbell Lewis
... believes civilization is to be measured by artifice; and success lost some of its value, when it had been effected by the vulgar machinery of truth and common sense. No wonder then the retainer entered into the views of the Alderman, with more than a usual relish for the duty. He heard the cracking of the dried twigs beneath the footstep of him who followed; and in order that there might be no chance of missing the desired interview, the valet began to hum a French air, in so loud a key, as to be certain the sounds would reach ...
— The Water-Witch or, The Skimmer of the Seas • James Fenimore Cooper
... remarks were cut short by the appearance of Nan tearing round the corner at a break-neck pace, driving a mettlesome team of four boys, and followed by Daisy trundling Bess in a wheelbarrow. Hat off, hair flying, whip cracking, and barrow bumping, up they came in a cloud of dust, looking as wild a set of little hoydens as ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... greatly to little Eben's aggravation, who would end, Lizzy knew, by crying for the cake, and being sent to bed. Then there were Sam, and Lucy Peters, and Jim Boynton, up to all sorts of mischief in the kitchen,—Susan Boynton and Nelly James cracking nuts and their fingers on the hearth,—father and mother up-stairs in grandmother's room; for grandmother was bedridden, but kindly, and good, and humorous, and patient, even in her hopeless bed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 17, March, 1859 • Various
... recollect that some of us, faithful to our instructions, but slightly misguided, began ducking quite five miles behind the line when a flare went up), the constant order to keep closed up, the whizz of bullets, at every one of which we ducked instantly, the cracking of rifles, the 'dead cow' smell which afterwards became so painfully familiar, the arrival at the trenches and the posting of sentries. Later the cautious creeping over the parapet to look at the wire and at dawn stand-to, ...
— The Sherwood Foresters in the Great War 1914 - 1919 - History of the 1/8th Battalion • W.C.C. Weetman
... said. "I shall speak this once and never again! Listen!" For a moment the quiet voice stopped, so that the gentle cracking of the burning logs could alone be heard above the heavy thud of the girl's heart, which to her ears sounded like thunder of the surf at dawn. "You are mine, mine, do you understand? You are no silly child, you knew what you were doing when you came with me, neither ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... order. I find a dissertation on 'The Commerce of Carthage' stuck in my large paper copy of 'Dibdin's Decameron,' and an 'Essay on the Metaphysics of Music' (pray, my dear fellow, beware of magazine scribbling) cracking the back ...
— Vivian Grey • The Earl of Beaconsfield
... of Russians, trapped between the walls of fire, scattered heedlessly in vain. Shells gouged deep holes in the dissolving ranks. The air was filled with clamor and frantic shrieks were sometimes heard above the incessant roar and cracking of exploding projectiles. ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume V (of 8) • Francis J. (Francis Joseph) Reynolds, Allen L. (Allen Leon)
... two, boldly pursued the third without any such previous investigation; which, if true, would be an instance of a disjunctive hypothetical syllogism. Also Dugald Stewart spoke of the case of a monkey cracking nuts behind a door, which, not being a strict imitation of anything which he could have actually seen, implied an operation of abstraction, by which the clever brute had first ascended to the general notion of nut-crackers, which perhaps ...
— Loss and Gain - The Story of a Convert • John Henry Newman
... of high hills, which were almost destitute of trees, and lakes appeared in the valleys. The cracking of the ice was so loud during the night as to resemble thunder, and the wolves howled around us. We were now at the commencement of the woods, and at an early hour, on the 21st, continued our journey over high hills for three miles, when ...
— Narrative of a Journey to the Shores of the Polar Sea, in the years 1819-20-21-22, Volume 2 • John Franklin
... street the sledges ran evenly, the horses jangling the bells on their great arched collars, the drivers in their leather fur-lined coats, cracking their whips and shouting. ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... of his whip, whereupon the lion ran forward in haste. But he seemed to have forgotten which was his proper pedestal, for he hopped upon the three nearest in turn, only to hop down again with apologetic alacrity at the order of the cracking whip. At last, obviously flustered, he reached a pedestal on which he was allowed to remain. Here he sat, blinking from side to side and ...
— Kings in Exile • Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts
... resistance. Then, at last, when his head almost touched the ground, Darius groaned and his limbs relaxed. Instantly Zoroaster threw him on his back and kneeled with his whole weight upon his chest,—the gilded scales of the corselet cracking beneath the burden, and he held the king's hands down on either side, pinioned to the floor. Darius struggled desperately twice and then lay quite still. Zoroaster gazed down upon him ...
— Marzio's Crucifix and Zoroaster • F. Marion Crawford
... court at last, and came to the place of punishment. Many a piteous sight and sound was there—cracking of whips, shrieks of the burning, rack and gibbet and wheel; Chimera tearing, Cerberus devouring; all tortured together, kings and slaves, governors and paupers, rich and beggars, and all repenting their sins. ...
— Works, V1 • Lucian of Samosata
... hold us both!" But the Bear was too much excited by this time to heed any caution. He hurried to the centre of the log and seizing the pole from Bo's hand gave a fierce pull. The fish swung clear of the water and far out on the bank, but the strain on their support was too great. There was a loud cracking sound, and before they knew what had happened both were ...
— The Arkansaw Bear - A Tale of Fanciful Adventure • Albert Bigelow Paine
... picture in my mind of that ill-lighted room, of the startled faces on which the flickering glimmer of the candles shed odd shadows; of the humming and cracking of my whip; of my own voice raised in oaths and epithets of contempt; of Rodenard's screams; of the cries raised here and there in remonstrance or in entreaty, and of some more bold that called shame upon me. Then others took up that cry of "Shame!" so that ...
— Bardelys the Magnificent • Rafael Sabatini
... the waggon an idea popped into his mind, and he hurried forward to meet the great vehicle. He kept among the bushes so that the driver did not see him. The latter, indeed, from his high perch, was too busy cracking his whip over his team to urge them to the ascent to see that small, gliding figure slipping through the gorse. So Chippy dodged behind the waggon, swung himself up by the tail-board, and climbed in as nimbly as a cat. ...
— The Wolf Patrol - A Tale of Baden-Powell's Boy Scouts • John Finnemore
... four hours before dressing, soak the fish in salt and water to take off the slime; then thoroughly cleanse it, and with a knife make an incision down the middle of the back, to prevent the skin of the belly from cracking. Rub it over with lemon, and be particular not to cut off the fins. Lay the fish in a very clean turbot-kettle, with sufficient cold water to cover it, and salt in the above proportion. Let it gradually come to a boil, and skim very carefully; keep ...
— The Book of Household Management • Mrs. Isabella Beeton
... enough between them all to keep them busy the whole day, and they soon got to work at them, and such a popping and cracking began, as frightened all the cats and dogs about the house ...
— Aunt Fanny's Story-Book for Little Boys and Girls • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... who took chances. The tenderfoot staked his claim on the chance of selling it again. The prospector toiled in his overland tunnel on the chance of cracking the apex of a vein. The small companies sank shafts on the chance of touching pay ore, the big companies tunneled deep and drifted wide in the hope of cutting several veins. The merchants built in the belief that the camp was a permanent town, ...
— They of the High Trails • Hamlin Garland
... had come. The carriage was still waiting at the edge of the outer court, and once again the driver started off without instructions, but tooling his team this time at a faster pace, with a great deal of whip-cracking and shouts to pedestrians to clear the way. And this time the carriage had an escort of indubitable maharajah's men, who closed in on it from all sides, their numbers increasing, mounted and unmounted, until ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... suppose has become of Mr. Thorn?" said Constance. "I have a presentiment that you will find him cracking nuts sociably with Mr. Rossitur or drinking one of aunt Lucy's excellent cups of coffee—in comfortable expectation of ...
— Queechy • Susan Warner
... red fire shot from the muzzles of the revolvers, and the cracking of the weapons was followed ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... actually side by side, I a little in advance, as became a scout, and your father with his own men, as better suited a soldier of the king—on many a hard fi't and bloody day. It's the way of us skirmishers to think little of the fight when the rifle has done cracking; and at night, around our fires, or on our marches, we talk of the things we love, just as you young women convarse about your fancies and opinions when you get together to laugh over your idees. Now it was natural that the Sergeant, having such a daughter as you, should love her better than ...
— The Pathfinder - The Inland Sea • James Fenimore Cooper
... stroke had sounded they heard a kind of cracking, and, the next moment, came the terrible blast, complete, but so brief that they had only, so to speak, a vision of an immense sheaf of flames and smoke shooting forth enormous stones and pieces of wall, something like the grand finale of ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... the last gasp, the poor Queen sends to Raleigh for some of the same cordial which had cured her. Medicine is sent, with a tender letter, as it well might be; for Raleigh knew how much hung, not only for himself, but for England, on the cracking threads of that fair young life. It is questioned at first whether it shall be administered. 'The cordial,' Raleigh says, 'will cure him or any other of a fever, ...
— Sir Walter Raleigh and his Time from - "Plays and Puritans and Other Historical Essays" • Charles Kingsley
... prefer all this than the horrible wild beasts; he imagines he feels their teeth and their talons, and that he hears his back cracking under their jaws. ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... was soon put out, and the frightened occupants of the house, who had fled in scant attire, reassembled at dawn to find that little mischief had been done beyond the cracking of window panes and smoking of ceilings. In fact, the chief sufferer by the fire was Mrs. Manstey, who was found in the morning gasping with pneumonia, a not unnatural result, as everyone remarked, of her having hung out of an open window at her age in ...
— The Early Short Fiction of Edith Wharton, Part 1 (of 10) • Edith Wharton
... was cleared of the viands that the nuts and fruit were partaken of. The edible nuts mostly favoured before foreign supplies came into the market were the hazel, walnut, chestnut, and the famous Kent filberts. Although doubtless supplemented by any objects handy, the primitive method of cracking nuts with the teeth was generally practised by the common people. What more natural than for the early inventor to see in the human head the "box" in which to place his mechanical device and to give power and leverage by utilizing ...
— Chats on Household Curios • Fred W. Burgess
... part of them had brought their matchlocks, as the day was to be a grand field-day, and they were all in the highest spirits, laughing, and cracking jokes to an extraordinary amount. We started about seven A.M., and I remained till eleven A.M., till which time they had not succeeded in driving anything out of cover. Here I sprained my ankle in descending a broken gully, and was obliged to return to the tent. I came back about four P.M., ...
— Notes in North Africa - Being a Guide to the Sportsman and Tourist in Algeria and Tunisia • W. G. Windham
... encaustic, and was, according to Plutarch, the most durable of all methods. It was not generally adopted till the time of Alexander the Great. Wax was a most essential ingredient, since it prevented the colors from cracking. Encaustic painting was practiced both with the cestrum and the pencil, and the colors were also burnt in. Fresco was used for coloring walls, which were divided into compartments or panels. The Fresco composition of the stucco, and the method of painting, ...
— The Old Roman World • John Lord
... by the hand, led her into the next room and opened the window to see what was going on outside, where the cracking of whips and several voices were to be heard. A servant was walking up and down the yard leading a large horse which he had just brought from the stable; the Baron was holding a smaller one, which bore a lady's saddle, while he carefully examined all the buckles. As he heard the window ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... the ground floor, And turning his feet bore Straight on for the street door; When—what could astound more—' The spot he was bound for Was guarded in force by that great butter tubber, The patriot millionaire, Alderman Grubber: A smart riding-whip impatiently cracking, The food for his vengeance the only thing lacking. "Is the Editor in?" said the voice that had thrilled, A thousand times over the big Town Hall filled! While the crack of the whip and the stamp of the feet, Made the Editor wish himself safe ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... alternated with deep hollows, so as to form strong shadows. Now look under the abacus of this capital; you will find the stone hollowed out wonderfully; and also in this arch-mould. It is often difficult to understand how it could be done without cracking off the stone. The difference between this and late work can be felt by the hand even better than it can be seen.' He suited the action to the word and placed his hand in ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... of reading how this and that actress had played Juliet, and cracking my brain over the different readings of her lines and making myself familiar with the different opinions of philosophers and critics, I had gone to Verona, and just imagined. Perhaps the most wonderful ...
— The Story of My Life - Recollections and Reflections • Ellen Terry
... from the careless and the unscrupulous, I shall recommend improvements in the Food and Drug laws—strengthening inspection and standards, halting unsafe and worthless products, preventing misleading labels, and cracking down on the illicit sale ...
— Complete State of the Union Addresses from 1790 to the Present • Various
... just as I know that you, about May fifteenth, will pick up a dozen or more pals who are whole crooks and half sailors; that you will then leave on a boat, probably a steam yacht, May twenty-sixth, bound for Washington; and that the job of bin-cracking you will engage in is to be pulled off ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis
... was but a maid," the grandame said, "When my mother was dead; And many a time have I stood. In that beautiful wood, To dream that through every woodland noise, Through the cracking Of twigs and the bending of bracken, Through the rustling Of leaves in the breeze, And the bustling Of dark-eyed, tawny-tailed squirrels flitting about the trees, Through the purling and trickling cool Of the streamlet that feeds the pool, I could hear her voice. ...
— Verses for Children - and Songs for Music • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... an exasperating kind of din too, not incessant, but intermittent, now swelling to a climax, now lulling, until there seemed some hope that it would cease altogether, then bursting out again, whip cracking, dogs howling and barking, feet scampering, Angelica ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... another torture is added. Half the nationalities of Europe lie groaning together, each calling in his native tongue for water, or for help to loosen a bandage which in the shimmering heat has become unbearable. And as the rifle cracking rises to the storm it always does every few hours, more men will be brought in and laid on that gruesome operating table. The very passageways have been already invaded by men lying on long chairs, because there are ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... later, it is necessary to remove the lower part of the mould, this being done in supporting the entire affair by the middle. The piece and what remains of the mould are, in reality, suspended in the air. All these preparations are designed to prevent cracking. ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 484, April 11, 1885 • Various
... at the house. The blinds were all drawn down over the front windows, to keep out the sun. The little slip of garden was left solitary—baking and cracking in the heat. The square was silent; desolately silent, as only a suburban square can be. I walked up and down the glaring pavement, resolved to find out her name before I quitted the place. While still undecided how to act, a shrill whistling—sounding doubly ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins
... conviction of the innocence of Narcisse, and the guilt of cette coquine Anglaise. Cabmen en course ran down pedestrians by the dozen, as they discussed l'affaire Narcisse to an accompaniment of whip-cracking. In front of the Cafe des Automobiles a belated organ-grinder began to grind the air of Mademoiselle Sidonie's great song Bonjour Coco, whereupon the whole company rose with howls and cries of, 'A bas les Anglais, a bas les Juifs. 'Conspuez Coco.' In less than five minutes ...
— The Cook's Decameron: A Study in Taste: - Containing Over Two Hundred Recipes For Italian Dishes • Mrs. W. G. Waters
... with Jane for cracking up the doctor, that she gave her five shillings; and, after that, used to talk to her a great deal more than to the cook, which judicious conduct presently set all three by ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... of our conflicting glances was unbroken for several seconds, and then words came uncontrollably from my mouth and I managed to snap that nerve-cracking tension. ...
— The Homicidal Diary • Earl Peirce
... situation, in which the most poignant agony of mind and dreary anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... "do-nothings," I take to be a khan for the accommodation of travellers. In a partially open shed-like apartment are a number of demure looking maidens, industriously employed in weaving carpets by hand on a rude, upright frame, while two others, equally demure-looking, are seated on the ground cracking wheat for pillau, wheat being substituted for rice where the latter is not easily obtainable, or is too expensive. Waiving all considerations of whether I am welcome or not, I at once enter this abode of female industry, and after watching the interesting process of carpet-weaving for some minutes, ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... "4th. LOBSTER-CRACKING.—An external pressure of the magnetic atmosphere surrounding the person assailed. Williams has been so operated on, and says he felt as if he was grasped by an enormous pair of nut-crackers with teeth, and subjected to a piercing pressure, which he still remembers ...
— A Terrible Temptation - A Story of To-Day • Charles Reade
... quantities were piled up on the lawn. The men-servants came and looked after these; they had done all they could elsewhere; they left the work to the firemen now, and there was little hope of saving the house. The window-frames were smoking, and the panes were cracking with the heat, and fire was running along the piazza roofs before we left the building. ...
— We Girls: A Home Story • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... With a great cracking of whips and creaking of wheels the spectral party drove off, to the tune of "Good-night, ladies, we're going to leave you now." Far down the road the chorus came floating back to the listeners on the porch, "Merrily we roll ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... a cracking of wood, a splintering, breaking sound, and the heavy truck, loaded with children, the Bobbsey twins among them, seemed to ...
— The Bobbsey Twins at the County Fair • Laura Lee Hope
... upon him, blinded him, strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... descended and broke upon his shoulder. Had he not moved swiftly aside as the blow fell it must have taken him across the head, and possibly stunned him. As he moved, he dropped his hand to his pocket, and swift upon the cracking of Binet's breaking cane came the crack of the ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... the crowd filed out, "wise-cracking" about the picture and commenting favorably on the heroine's figure. There were shouts to this fellow or that fellow to come on over and play bridge, and suggestions here and there to go to a drug store and ...
— The Plastic Age • Percy Marks
... "Clowns cracking jokes, and lasses with sly eyes, And the smile settling on their sun-flecked cheeks Like noon upon ...
— Caesar's Column • Ignatius Donnelly
... no respectable female or timid man dares to pass them without receiving coarse insult; and, if complaint is made, they mark the complainant; and, if they keep a sleigh or carriage, make a point of running races near them, and cracking heavy whips to frighten their horses. One of these ruffians frightened a gentleman's horse last winter, and threw him, his wife, and daughter on the pavement, in consequence of the animal running away, and overturning the vehicle they were in. They know all the grooms and servants, and act ...
— Canada and the Canadians, Vol. 2 • Richard Henry Bonnycastle
... cracking of something, as if the dead man in the great, black parlor had carried his jealousy beyond his doom and was breaking from his coffin to upbraid her. A door burst open in the dining-room, which was behind her, and then ...
— Bohemian Days - Three American Tales • Geo. Alfred Townsend
... moved, at last, it was a convulsive jerk of his arm, and it was said, afterward, that his gun was all clear of the leather before the calm stranger stirred. No eye followed what happened. Can the eye follow such speed as the cracking ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... things were now his play. {70c} 1. He bore all in hand by Swearing, and Cracking and Lying, that he was as well to pass, as he was the first day he set up for himself, yea that he had rather got than lost; and he had at his beck some of his Companions that would swear to confirm it ...
— The Life and Death of Mr. Badman • John Bunyan
... comes over the landscape. A rumbling, cracking noise is heard among the mountains. Shadows of clouds sweep ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller
... Maggie. It had ended in that. A mound of earth, cracking a little, and sunken. She lay there, her nervous fingers motionless and her stammer silent. And could there be a more eloquent monument of what she was...? Then she remembered herself, and signed herself with the cross, while her lips moved an instant for the repose of ...
— The Necromancers • Robert Hugh Benson
... were watching alertly at the loopholes. Occasionally they would fire at some partly exposed Indians, and then dodge back as a straggling volley of bullets pelted the stockade. Over on the east side muskets were cracking in the same desultory fashion. The storm showed no signs of abating. On the contrary, the snow was falling more thickly and in finer flakes, and a bitter wind was constantly heaping it in higher drifts, and blowing ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... sealed. He tried, involuntarily, to listen more clearly, to know if this uncanny hush were really so. There was a sense of being imprisoned, but only most delicately, in a spell, which some sudden cracking might disrupt. ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... board, a little more than the length and breadth of the specimen, lay it upon the top of the skin and tie it to the board on which the fish is resting; by this means you will be enabled to reverse the fish without cracking the skin or destroying the "set" of it. Untie your boards and the object is before you right side uppermost. It will now be seen if your modelling is true or not; in the latter case, note where all imperfections occur, reverse ...
— Practical Taxidermy • Montagu Browne
... forced, once they had begun, to go on and on committing crimes—on the one hand to live, and on the other to pay tribute to Gottlieb and myself, who alone stood between them and jail. How they had cringed to us. We were their masters, cracking the lash of blackmail across their shoulders and sharing equally, if invisibly, in their crimes! And how I had scorned them—fools, as they seemed to me, to take such desperate chances! Yet, as the sun rose, I now ...
— The Confessions of Artemas Quibble • Arthur Train
... Invention for Cracking Beef Bones. Ivan invented a scheme for cracking large beef bones, to get at the ultimate morsels of marrow. He stands erect on his hind feet, first holds the picked bone against his breast, then with his right paw he poises ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... more lifted on Greased Lightning's back, and the manager cracking his whip, the beautiful horse began to trot round and round the arena. At first the creature went fairly quietly, and Orion managed to keep his seat. His piteous white face, the black shadows under his eyes, his little trembling hands were noticed, ...
— A Little Mother to the Others • L. T. Meade
... mother with her children about her knees sat cracking nuts. The older children picked out the kernels for themselves, but the mother stopped now and then to pick out some for the smaller children, who watched with eager eyes and ate the kernels with keen relish. Presently a nut fell to the floor. The smallest child picked it up; and as his mother ...
— Heart Talks • Charles Wesley Naylor
... he said, his voice cracking. "I ain't got no other job in mind. I wanna be a noospaper ...
— With a Vengeance • J. B. Woodley
... wanted to say," said Priest, sitting on the edge of Joel's bunk, "that I had my ear to the ground and heard the good fighting. Yes, I heard the sleet cracking. You never saw me, but I was with you the night you drifted to the Prairie Dog. Take it all along the line, ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... cart, in search of our company, picking my way out of a mass of bullock waggons, carts, mules, and every imaginable vehicle; men asking for this brigade and that division on every hand; transport officers cursing, conductors exhorting, and niggers yelling and cracking whips. ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... expense of coming, so I went round and borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction every eye seemed to be upon me, and I could not help thinking ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... his coming, and make a feint of driving him inside. Cree, when he observed them, sat down on his barrow-shafts terrified to approach, and I see them now pointing to the workhouse till he left his barrow on the road and hobbled away, his legs cracking ...
— Auld Licht Idyls • J.M. Barrie
... little flattened,—often bursting or cracking longitudinally before attaining its full dimensions; skin deep scarlet; flesh rose-colored, crisp, mild, and pleasant; neck small; leaves few in number, and of smaller size than those of the common Scarlet Turnip-rooted. Season quite early,—two ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... the evils that must come in order that the old woman's assertions might be vindicated, took so firm a hold of his mind that he felt chilled through and through. Hopeless of obtaining more news, he remounted, and traversed the woods afresh, calling Pierre with all his might, whistling, cracking his whip, and snapping the branches that the whole forest might reecho with the noise of his coming; then he listened for an answering voice, but he heard no sound save the cowbells scattered through the glades, ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... collapsing with a thunderous sound. On July 31, Harrisson and Watson had a narrow escape. After finishing their day's work, they climbed down to the floe by a huge cornice and sloping ramp. A few seconds later, the cornice fell and an immense mass of hard snow crashed down, cracking the sea-ice for more than ...
— The Home of the Blizzard • Douglas Mawson
... light-brown and float on the top, it is nearly done, and should cook slowly, when done, strain it into your vessels with a thin cloth put over a colander. If you put lard in stone or earthen jars, it should be cooled first, as there is danger of their cracking, white oak firkins with iron hoops, and covers to fit tight, are good to keep lard, and if taken care of will last ...
— Domestic Cookery, Useful Receipts, and Hints to Young Housekeepers • Elizabeth E. Lea
... as those of a General's charger brought forward for a review. The carts and vehicles are usually balanced in the centre upon two wheels, which diminishes much of the pressure upon the horse. Yet the caps of the wheels are frightfully long, and inconveniently projecting: while the eternally loud cracking of the whip is most repulsive to nervous ears. On market days, the horses stand pretty close to each other for sale; and are led off, for shew, amidst boys, girls, and women, who contrive very dexterously to get out of the way of their ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... bar, Burton brought all his weight to bear upon it. There was a dull, cracking sound and a sort of rasping. The ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... comes on the stage, he says, "I am the mandarin so-and-so." If the drama requires the actor to enter a house, he takes some steps and says, "I have entered;" and if he is supposed to travel, he does so by rapid running on the stage, cracking his whip, and saying afterwards, "I have arrived." The dialogue is written partly in verse and partly in prose, and the poetry is sometimes sung and sometimes recited. Many of their dramas are full of bustle and abound in incident. They often contain the life ...
— Handbook of Universal Literature - From The Best and Latest Authorities • Anne C. Lynch Botta
... he swung along at a cracking pace, for he could walk as well as he could run, and a finer three-quarter had never been known at Rushmere. He was a tall, powerful lad, nearly nineteen years of age, five foot ten and a half inches in his stockings, and turning ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... icing from cracking when it cuts add a teaspoon sweet cream to each unbeaten egg. When boiling syrup for icing add a pinch of ...
— The Suffrage Cook Book • L. O. Kleber
... cattle were growing wilder and wilder from the pain caused by the hamstringer's knife, the wild career of the unmounted man among them, and Ted and Stella pressing through them from the rear with shouts and cracking quirts. ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... one of the commandments cracking?" she laughed. "I've just been coveting one of those suits as hard ...
— The Fate of Felix Brand • Florence Finch Kelly
... every winter. I am not afraid of him, nor of his reindeer. And it is such fun to see him come dashing along, cracking his whip and calling out cheerily to his reindeer, who are able to run even swifter than we rabbits. And Santa Claus, when he sees me, always gives me a nod and a smile, and then I look after him and his big load of toys which he is carrying to the children, ...
— Mother Goose in Prose • L. Frank Baum
... milk-boiler for two hours. Just before taking it from the fire, add a tablespoonful of butter, a teaspoonful of vanilla, and three eggs beaten with a cup of sugar. The whites may be made in a meringue. Pour into a glass dish which has had warm water standing in it, to prevent cracking, and eat cold. Rice or sago cream is made in ...
— The Easiest Way in Housekeeping and Cooking - Adapted to Domestic Use or Study in Classes • Helen Campbell
... Socialists of all schools have so long been preaching to the laboring freemen of America. How would the millions of labor's noblemen in the American Federation of Labor like to see Debs, Hillquit and Victor L. Berger cracking the whip over them after the fashion of Lenine, Trotzky and ...
— The Red Conspiracy • Joseph J. Mereto
... Pohjola's old Mistress, Crone of Sariola the misty, Sometimes out of doors employ her, Sometimes in the house was busied; And she heard how whips were cracking, On the shore heard sledges rattling, And her eyes she turned to northward, Towards the sun her head then turning, And she pondered and reflected, "Wherefore are these people coming 10 On my shore, to me unhappy? Is it perhaps ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... collected the stray ears. The hammering of scythes after the day's work was done, this monotonous village music, had ceased; in its stead could now be heard by day the creaking of ox carts over the hardened clayey road, while cries of "gee," "haw" and the cracking of whips woke the echoes in the glimmering air ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... heard the beating of tired hoofs on the cobblestones, the tinkling of bells, the cracking of a whip and a man's voice shouting: "Ho! Ho! Here's ...
— Over Strand and Field • Gustave Flaubert
... a little behind, while Burrows had walked on. Suddenly, above the rattle of the door a cracking noise was heard. A voice of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... Gregor Jhaere, cracking the great whip again. I thought that Kagig looked a trifle restless, but nobody else went so far as to exhibit interest, except that the old Turk by the fire emerged far enough out of kaif to open one eye, ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... believe that a caterpillar could be so magnificent; but indoors in the cardboard box he lost his sun-burnished colour and half his glory. Immediately afterwards he spun his cocoon, and there he stayed for seven long months, so that the moth thus suddenly appearing, without any cracking or opening of the cocoon, appeared to be created on the spot. At first, indeed, some thought it was a moth that had entered by the window, there being no rent or place of exit from the perfect case. Within, ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... every day at my roots I will grant you a boon." So thenceforward the Goala every day poured milk at the roots of the tree and after some days he saw a crack in the ground; he thought that the roots of the tree were cracking the earth but the fact was that a snake was buried there, and as it increased in size from drinking the milk it cracked the ground and one day it issued forth; at the sight of it the Goala was filled with fear and made sure that ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire, and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking houses at their ruine. So home with a sad heart, and there find every body discoursing and lamenting the fire; and poor Tom Hater come with some few of his goods saved out of his house, which was burned upon Fish-street Hill. I invited ...
— The Diary of Samuel Pepys • Samuel Pepys
... dun dusk, thunder Rolling and battering and cracking, The caverns shudder with a terrible glare Again and again and again, Till the land bows in the darkness, Utterly lost and defenceless, Smitten and blinded and overwhelmed By the crashing ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... I began, cracking the straw in my hat, "my name is John Winthrop. I am a reporter. I have called to see if it is true that you have ...
— Arms and the Woman • Harold MacGrath
... set the boys to cracking nuts and picking them out, and when the time came, she added butter and a dash of vinegar to her boiling candy, watched with great interest by Cesar, whose French repertoire did not include any such strange ...
— Patty in Paris • Carolyn Wells
... his voice cracking into a squall. "Look at me and remember them that's dead and gone, your fathers and your grands'rs, whose old fists used to grip them bars right where you've got your hands. Think of 'em, and then set your teeth and yank ...
— The Skipper and the Skipped - Being the Shore Log of Cap'n Aaron Sproul • Holman Day
... remember, an unusually long time before she appeared, gliding out of the shadows. She seemed in a different mood, pensive and sad, as she bent down over the pool, staring into it intently. Suddenly there was a tremendous cracking sound, sharp as an explosion, and I was thrown backward upon ...
— The Girl in the Golden Atom • Raymond King Cummings
... bustled up to the Commanding Officer and emphasised the urgent necessity to give us a meal. But he was not entirely successful. Then he inspected us one by one, giving a cheering word here, and cracking a friendly joke there. The hand of Prince L—— received instant attention, while other slight injuries were also sympathetically treated. The hearts of one and all went out to this ministering angel, to whose work and ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... you flared up about Captain Costigan. He knew me at once; and he says, 'Sir, your father acted like a gentleman, a Christian, and a man of honour. Maxima debetur puero reverentia. Give him my compliments. I don't know his highly respectable name.' His highly respectable name," says Clive, cracking with laughter—"those were his very words. 'And inform him that I am an orphan myself—in needy circumstances'—he said he was in needy circumstances; 'and I ...
— The Newcomes • William Makepeace Thackeray
... home, he had imprisoned in one of his side pockets that had a flap; but, desirous of fondling the furry little object, he had incautiously inserted his bare hand once too often; for its long teeth, so useful for nut-cracking, went almost through his thumb, and gave his such an electric shock that in the confusion the frightened animal managed to escape once ...
— The Chums of Scranton High on the Cinder Path • Donald Ferguson
... plantation owner who lived near the Davis plantation; he had eleven plantations, the smallest one was cultivated by three hundred slaves. Oftimes they would work nearly all night. Will states that it was not an unusual thing to hear in the early mornings the echoes of rawhide whips cracking like the report of a gun against the bare backs of the slaves who were being whipped. They would moan and groan in agony, but the whipping went on until the master's wrath was appeased. John Stokes, a white plantation ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves - Florida Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... have an incalculable amount of fighting to face before they win to that area, the nut to be cracked, and then the cracking is still to be done. It is all sheer frontal fighting. The Germans have been twelve months trying frontal attacks against Warsaw on a comparatively narrow front, and in vain. What chance have they of success by ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... right behind her, and I thought my soul he'd got her sure enough,—when she gin sich a screech as I never hearn, and thar she was, clar over t' other side of the current, on the ice, and then on she went, a screeching and a jumpin',—the ice went crack! c'wallop! cracking! chunk! and she a boundin' like a buck! Lord, the spring that ar gal's got in her an't common, ...
— Uncle Tom's Cabin • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... of all this uproar we heard one of his machine-guns cracking overhead. Then another joined in—we could hear them traversing from flank to front and round to flank again. "Of course, the raiders cannot have got in," one thought. "Perhaps he has seen them crossing No Man's Land, and those machine-guns are on to them in the open. Poor beggars! Not much chance ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... Choate spoke to an audience of nearly five thousand in Lowell in favor of the candidacy of James Buchanan for the presidency. The floor of the great hall began to sink, settling more and more as he proceeded with his address, until a sound of cracking timber below would have precipitated a stampede with fatal results but for the coolness of B. F. Butler, who presided. Telling the people to remain quiet, he said that he would see if there were any cause for alarm. He found the supports of the floor in so bad a condition that ...
— Architects of Fate - or, Steps to Success and Power • Orison Swett Marden
... slight to be put with a child like me—Mr Carstairs depressed as he generally was, poor man!—I with a heavy weight inside me, feeling all of a sudden as if I hated parties and everything about them, and dear little Mr Nash, happy and complacent, cracking jokes to which no one deigned to listen. Isn't it funny to think how miserable you can be when you are supposed to be enjoying yourself? I dare say if you only knew it, lots of people have aching hearts when you envy them for being so happy. The people on the banks looked longingly ...
— The Heart of Una Sackville • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... a fiddler fiddle, and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The limpid spring bubbled and laughed at the foot of the hill. Flocks of nimble, noisy boys turned somersaults and skinned the cat and ran ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... sometimes close with a shorter statement of the proposition, a sort of aphorism or epigram. As this kind of sentence is fascinating, some books have said that paragraphs should close so; that it is like cracking a whip, and gives a snap to the paragraph not gained in any other way. Even if readers enjoyed having paragraphs close in this cracking manner, it must be borne in mind that not all conclusions are capable of such a statement, and, what is worse, ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster
... Boiling Eggs from Cracking—The four following suggestions are given in regard to boiling eggs. Use the one best suited to ...
— Fowler's Household Helps • A. L. Fowler
... master, and was the better of the two; quite separate from my lord although tied to him, and bound, as almost all people (save a very happy few), to work all her life alone. My lord sat in his chair, laughing his laugh, cracking his joke, his face flushing with wine—my lady in her place over against him—he never suspecting that his superior was there, in the calm resigned lady, cold of manner, with downcast eyes. When he ...
— The History of Henry Esmond, Esq. • W. M. Thackeray
... tatters torn upon thy splinter'd staff, Or clutch'd to some young color-bearer's breast with desperate hands, Savagely struggled for, for life or death, fought over long, 'Mid cannons' thunder-crash and many a curse and groan and yell, and rifle-volleys cracking sharp, And moving masses as wild demons surging, and lives as nothing risk'd, For thy mere remnant grimed with dirt and smoke and sopp'd in blood, For sake of that, my beauty, and that thou might'st dally as now secure up there, Many a good man have ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... cup. Sneezing was so superstitiously regarded, that it came to be counted among the number of gods. It was deemed inauspicious if a host sent his guests away from a feast without giving each of them a piece of cake, or such like, to take home. The cracking of a table and the spilling of wine or salt were regarded as evil omens. When a Greek ship was in danger in a storm, one of the crew or a passenger was chosen by lot, and thrown overboard, like Jonah, to appease the spirit that ruled ...
— The Mysteries of All Nations • James Grant
... orchestra, plunged through the scenery at the left upper entrance and charged excitedly down the stage. Having taken his musicians twice through the overture, he had for ten minutes been sitting in silence, waiting for the curtain to go up. At last, his emotional nature cracking under the strain of this suspense, he had left his conductor's chair and plunged down under the stage by way of the musician's bolthole to ascertain what ...
— The Little Warrior - (U.K. Title: Jill the Reckless) • P. G. Wodehouse
... my companions I assumed a genial tolerance toward all those poor dry devils known to us as "profs." I remember the weary sighs of our old college president as he monotoned through his lectures on ethics to the tune of the cracking of peanuts, which an old darky sold to us at the entrance to the hall. It was a case of live and let live. He let us eat and we let him talk. With the physics prof, who was known as "Madge the Scientist," our indulgence went still further. We took no disturbing peanuts ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole
... stage-office—only accented the general desolation. The latter building had a remoteness of prosperity far beyond the others, having been a wayside Spanish-American posada, with adobe walls of two feet in thickness, that shamed the later shells of half-inch plank, which were slowly warping and cracking like dried ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
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