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More "Crackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under foot with ice. ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... accompaniment to the meal; his stories brought glimpses of wet hedgerows, stiff ploughlands, leafy spinneys and muddy brooks in among the rich old Worcester and Georgian silver of the dinner service, the glow and crackle of the wood fire, the pleasant succession of well-cooked dishes and mellow wines. The world narrowed itself down again to a warm, drowsy- scented dining-room, with a productive hinterland of kitchen and cellar beyond ...
— When William Came • Saki
... stationed with orders, I for one would have been willing to sit and rest, just for a minute, and let the blamed fire go. But I didn't, and Kit and Jed didn't; all of a sudden the dragon quit, and with roar and crackle went plunging on, along the ridge inside the willow bog. We had held the fire line—and we didn't know that Jim Bridger and the Red Fox Scouts were in those willows which we had saved because we had ...
— Pluck on the Long Trail - Boy Scouts in the Rockies • Edwin L. Sabin
... 1 lb. of birdlime and half a pint of the drying oil into an iron or copper vessel, whose capacity should equal about a gallon, and let it boil very gently over a slow charcoal fire, till the birdlime ceases to crackle, which will be in about half or three-quarters of an hour; then pour upon it 2-1/2 pints more of the drying oil, and let it boil about an hour longer, stirring it frequently with an iron or wooden spatula. As the varnish, whilst boiling, and especially when nearly ready, swells ...
— Young's Demonstrative Translation of Scientific Secrets • Daniel Young
... time were more precious than gold, stewards hurrying up from below with provisions with which to stock the boats, and the captain on the bridge overlooking all, the whole deck brilliantly illuminated by every available electric lamp, while overhead the steam still roared out of the pipes, and the crackle of the wireless obtruded itself insistently ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... a few moments, which I occupied in making a list of the gear I wished to take with me. Then there was a hiss and a crackle, and in the receiver of the desk a book appeared. I unzipped the case, took it out, and opened it to the pages marked ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... infatuated dupe chose to "sit into" one where they were against him! Deceived by the cappers' fairy tales, dazed by the complex and incomprehensible "calculations" put forth for his undoing, and having ever in the ear of his imagination the crackle and roar of the impoverishing flames, he grasped at the hope of beating—in an unwelcome way, it is true—"the man that kept the table." He must have known for a certainty that if the company could afford to insure him he could not afford ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce • Ambrose Bierce
... sat up stiffly, and felt something crackle inside her dress. With a little start she realised what it was, and drew ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... that the cook had gone to make the cakes ready as she said. And as he looked down he saw that the boy was bending over the bundle of fagots, blowing the spark that he had brought in upon the punk into a flame. The dry fagots began to crackle and blaze. "Now is my time," said Hans to himself. Bracing his elbows against each side of the chimney, he straightened his legs so that he might fall clear His motions loosened little shower of soot that fell rattling ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... chair crackle as he moved to look at Webster. It was the weight of the detective's gaze, however, that drew the lawyer's attention; when he looked up, his eyes were half-closed, as if the light had suddenly become ...
— No Clue - A Mystery Story • James Hay
... himself had shot up through the floor in a crackle of blue flame, I don't think it could have had a more striking effect on my late partner. With his mouth open and his face the colour of freshly mixed putty, he stood perfectly still in the centre of the room, gazing at me like a man in a trance. For a ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... it would also be decidedly stiff and inconvenient. Just imagine how one's aluminium knees would crackle and bend going up and down-stairs, and what an awful job one would have conforming one's aluminum spinal column to the back of ...
— Mr. Hawkins' Humorous Adventures • Edgar Franklin
... faint crackle of a branch to his left, and one hand instantly closed over his pipe bowl, the other grasping the heavy revolver at his hip. Crouching like a startled tiger, with not a muscle moving, he peered anxiously into the darkness, his arm half extended, scarcely venturing to breathe. ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... I should crackle like a wicker Bottle in her Arms— no, Seignior, there's no venturing without a Grate between us: the Devil wou'd not give her due Benevolence— No, when I'm marry'd, I'll e'en show her a fair pair of Heels, her ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... noise of the fall ceased, the man stopped and on hands and knees waited. He could hear the thing moving about, searching for him, and he was afraid to advertise his location by attempting further flight. He knew that inevitably he would crackle the underbrush and be pursued. Once he drew out his revolver, then changed his mind. He had recovered his composure and hoped to get away without noise. Several times he heard the thing beating up the thickets for him, and there were moments when it, too, remained still and listened. ...
— The Night-Born • Jack London
... business of dinner, when we all talk vapid nonsense, with an ever-present consciousness of the parlourmaid. I am tired of the dull dinners, and of mamma's peevish complaints about Ann Woolper's ascendancy downstairs; and of Mr. Sheldon's perpetual newspapers, that crackle, crackle, crackle all the evening through; and such papers!—Money Market Monitor, Stockholder's Vade-Mecum, and all sorts of dreadful things of that kind, with not so much as an interesting advertisement in one of them. I used ...
— Charlotte's Inheritance • M. E. Braddon
... clearly defined against the greying sky before he distinguished signs of activity in the room below. Striker was up and moving about. He could hear him stacking logs in the fireplace, and presently there came up to him the welcome crackle of kindling-wood ablaze. A door opened and a gruff voice spoke. The settler was routing Zachariah out of his slumbers. Far off in some unknown, remote land a rooster crowed,—the day's champion, the first of all to greet ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... coo in the wood to the right. Hear the leaves crackle down on that slope where the snow is off under those tall beeches. The ground is fairly blue with them. Softly there over the dry brush! See them turning up the leaves for beech-nuts: they are all moving this way. Down, behind this ...
— The Knickerbocker, or New-York Monthly Magazine, May 1844 - Volume 23, Number 5 • Various
... courtesies. For her the name of the ocean-going tug was sufficient introduction. Throwing ahead of her a solid shell, she raced in pursuit, and as The Three Friends leaped to full speed there came from the gun-boat the sharp dry crackle ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... of answer was vouchsafed. Nancy sat with her feet on the fender, and Tarrant kept up a great blaze with chips, which sputtered out their moisture before they began to crackle. He and she both seemed intent on ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... groaning, I suppose; certainly the Volunteers liked the Bisley ranges, next year, much better. But the old windmill, which looked on in its time at thirty full meetings, still surely misses the week when the dells and the long stretches of heather rattled from the first gun to sunset with the crackle of Martinis and match rifles. The windmill watches red-coated golfers to-day, playing to some of the prettiest greens in the south of England; but the days for the windmill were when the tents were white about the heather, ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the year, were leafless. This avenue was lighted here and there, and beneath one of the gas lamps Godfrey wheeled round to see Madame Riennes advancing on him out of the gloom. Her stout form padded forward noiselessly, except for the occasional crackle of a dead and frosted leaf beneath her foot. She wore a thick cloak of some sort with a black hood that framed her large, white face, making her look like a monk of the Inquisition as depicted in various old prints. Beneath the blackness of this hood ...
— Love Eternal • H. Rider Haggard
... began to rustle and crackle, and by this noise betrayed the fugitives. The flax bristled up. Happily for her, Mary was near a juniper; the hospitable tree opened its branches as arms and enclosed the Virgin and Child within their folds, affording them ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... toward the south. In a few minutes it would all be gone. Out of the mists behind them rose the shapes of war canoes not far away, and the fierce triumphant yell that swept far over the river sent a chill to Paul's very marrow. Once again rose the rifle fire, and it was now a rapid and steady crackle, but the bullets thudded in vain on the thick sides ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... unaccustomed to the effects of rifle fire and imagined that we only possessed two or three guns in all, stopped their advance as though paralyzed. For a few seconds there was silence, except for the intermittent crackle of the rifles as my men loaded and fired. Next came the cries of the smitten men and horses that were falling everywhere, and then—the unmistakable sound ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... from niches where the winds had gathered them, showered fitfully into the valley. He began drawing himself along by shrubs and young trees that covered a long outward curve in the face of the cliff. Those below heard the crackle of frozen twigs, and the swish of released boughs that marked his progress. Phil stood watching him with an absorbed interest in which fear became dominant. Better than the others Phil knew the perils of the cliff, the scant footholds offered by even the least formidable ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... to toddle out himself to the cellar in search of a curious bon-bouche; and of nearly every bin in it he had a little anecdote or a pedigree to relate. And his laugh was frequent and hearty, and somehow the room and all in it felt the influence of his presence like the glow, and cheer, and crackle of a bright ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... hydrangeas were already pink with frost, and the leaves of the maples, fallen upon the ground, covered the earth with patches of yellow and red. By the side of the road, piles of leaves, raked together by Mr. Tomkins, were set on fire; they burned with a crackle and a roar, and gave off an odor at once pungent and regretful, which mingled in the fresh autumn air with the fragrance of grapes and cider, as the last apples of the season, too old and ripe to keep, went to the press back of ...
— Autumn • Robert Nathan
... well-dried fen or stubble-land, Short time the stalk endures, or stridulous reed, Against the flames, which careful rustic's hand Scatters when Boreas blows the fires to feed; What time they take, and by the north-wind fanned. Crackle and snap, and through the furrow speed; No otherwise, with little profit, those King Mandricardo's kindled ...
— Orlando Furioso • Lodovico Ariosto
... Ken!' muttered Dave. 'Fix bayonets!' Colonel Conway's voice rang like a trumpet above the crackle of ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... of an eye the whole house rose and shuddered. There was a sharp crack-crackle, followed by smoke, and forked tongues of flame licked the imitation forest, and with a swish all the chorus fled from the stage. Far away up in the gallery somebody was roaring "Fire!" A rush to the ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... had taken him to Birmingham, had already got rid of him, and we had a horrible consciousness of his wandering roofless, in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide and I, who were old enough friends to stare at each other in silence, ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... do. Then he saw some rocks ahead, and he urged the bewildered and staggering beast forward through the darkness of the storm. Night seemed to have returned. There was a flash of lightning overhead, and a crackle of thunder rolled down the valley, heard louder than all the howling of the hurricane across the mountain sides. And then, when they had reached this place of shelter, Macleod dismounted, and crept as close as he could into ...
— Macleod of Dare • William Black
... The crackle of firing broke out on the flanks. The Canadian and Indian sharpshooters, from the shelter of houses, bushes and knolls, had opened fire. Now and then a man in scarlet fell, but the army of Wolfe neither moved nor replied, though some of the New England rangers, stealing ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... knew Bob and Tommy valued most—things that had been Aunt Margaret's in the past, that spoke of their old happy life in France. He spread an embroidered cloth on the floor and pitched his treasure trove into it—working feverishly, choking and gasping, until the flames began to crackle through the wall, and the ceiling above him split across. Then he plunged through the window, and staggered across the lawn with his burden—falling beside it at last, spent and breathless, his throat parched ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... sweet corn, potatoes, and other vegetables. On a shoulder of rock near the swamp borders Burroughs has built a rustic house, sheathed outside with slabs, and smacking in all its arrangements of the woodlands and of the days of pioneering. It has an open fireplace, where the flames crackle cheerfully on chilly evenings, and over the fireplace coals most of the cooking is done; but in really hot weather an ...
— A Year in the Fields • John Burroughs
... heard on the floors above. Roused by the merry crackle of occasional china, the house party was bestirring itself to investigate. Voices sounded, muffled ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... crackle of the fire, the roar of the wind, and the ticking of his watch bore him company. He strode to the window and looked down at the few dim lights that proclaimed the existence of Upper Asquewan Falls. Somewhere, down there, was the Commercial House. Somewhere the girl who ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... sea, and immediately a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing as of a thousand serpents. We felt the strong suction under our keel, and staggered under the jerk of the ship's cable as she swung toward the beach. The paint was beginning to crackle along the rail. We could see nothing for the scalding white veil that enveloped us; we could hear nothing for the roar of steam, the bombardment of explosions, and the crash of thunder; but our nostrils were assaulted by a ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... the old man had lighted his fire and was listening to its cheerful crackle when his visitors came, laughing. With a boisterous shout Tom kicked the door open, and when the girl remonstrated with him, he grabbed her and ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... but the time when you feel the strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... considered every possible method of reaching his goal without going round the dead leaf or climbing over it. Let alone the effort needed for climbing a leaf, he was doubtful whether the thin texture which vibrated with such an alarming crackle when touched even by the tip of his horns would bear his weight; and this determined him finally to creep beneath it, for there was a point where the leaf curved high enough from the ground to admit him. He had just inserted his ...
— Monday or Tuesday • Virginia Woolf
... Charles will be very angry, but he'll have to put up with it. If you explained to him, Aunt Rose, he'd understand. And I'd really rather sit with you. I shall be able to look at people and if I crackle my programme you won't glare. Of course, I shall try not to. Will you explain to him? And I did promise to go to a concert with him ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... the street he heard the crackle of musketry and saw the Seine running grey under the lowering smoke-cloud of burning Paris. Red uniforms appeared on the Quai de l'Ecole. The Pont-au-Change was thick with federes. Not knowing where to fly, he was for going back into the prison; but a body of Vengeurs ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... stepped forward and touched her flaming brand to the wood that had been made ready by the other Fire Makers, and soon the flames began to blaze and crackle, filling the air with a spicy fragrance, and sending a vivid glow across the circle of intent young faces. Laura caught her breath as she looked around ...
— The Torch Bearer - A Camp Fire Girls' Story • I. T. Thurston
... glass. cristalino, -a crystalline, transparent, bright. Cristo pr. n. m. Christ, image of Christ. crudeza f. severity, cruelty. crudo, -a raw. cruel adj. cruel, intolerable. crujido m. crackling. crujir clash, click, clank, crack, crackle, creak, rustle. cruz f. cross. cruzar cross, pass, pass through, cruise. cuadrar befit, suit. cuadro m. picture, scene. cuajar coagulate, coat over. cual adv. like, as. cul pron. interrog. which, which one, what, what one. cualquier, -a any whatever; ...
— El Estudiante de Salamanca and Other Selections • George Tyler Northup
... Rhodesian past the alert sentries; then, with Wilmshurst's good wishes for the best of luck, MacGregor vanished into the night. In vain the young officer strained his ears to catch the faint noise of the Rhodesian's footsteps or the crackle of a dry twig under the pressure of his boot, but not a sound did the scout give of ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... little strong," exclaimed Mr. Morgan, after a few moments of silence, broken only by the crackle of paper. ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... some sixty years ago, because he dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... to do now but wait. Quonab sat placidly smoking, Rolf was sewing a rent in his coat, the storm hissed, and the wind-driven ice needles rattled through the trees to vary the crackle of the fire with a "siss" as they fell on the embers. The low monotony of sound was lulling in its evenness, when a faint crunch of a foot on the snow was heard. Rolf reached for his gun, the fir tree screen was shaken a little, and a minute later there bounded in upon them the snow covered form ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... the right and jolted over what seemed to be a shallow ditch. The road that followed was of the roughest character. If it was a road at all it was a wood-track; Evan heard the twigs crackle under the tires. They lurched and bumped alarmingly. Once they had to stop to allow the chauffeur to drag some obstruction out of the way. Evidently they had not had the car that way before, for the ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... lip, clippety, lip, lip, lip! comes the bread horse down the street. He stops in front of Ruth's house. Ruth hears him. Then she hears the driver jump out and pat, pat, pat, she hears his feet coming to the door. Rattle, crackle, goes the paper as he puts down the loaves of bread all wrapped up to keep them clean. Then fast she hears his feet, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat. "Go on, Bill!" she hears him call and clippety, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... an occasional crackle as a rotten twig or branch snapped beneath the hoofs. Slender trees slid athwart the moonlight, closed on one another, and opened out, and still, though the snow was scanty and in places swept away, Grant and a big Michigan bushman ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... But they were trees,—tall, slender poplars,—or a clump of elms—those lovely old elms which grow to such majestic beauty in France; and Jack was environed by the mysteries of nature,—nature in the springtime of the year, when one can almost hear the grass grow, the buds expand, and the earth crackle as the tender herbage shoots forth. All these faint, vague noises bewildered little Jack, who began to sing a nursery rhyme with which his mother formerly rocked him ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... not, taking some one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve; hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot. "Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come on home with me ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... the heel. A fresh detachment of Boers, firing from a range of nearly one thousand yards, took this defence in the rear. Bullets fell among the men, and smacked up against the stone breastwork. The two companies were withdrawn, and lost heavily in the open as they crossed it. An incessant rattle and crackle of rifle fire came from all round, drawing very slowly but steadily nearer. Now and then the whisk of a dark figure from one boulder to another was all that ever was seen of the attackers. The British fired slowly and steadily, for ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... behind him. He had walked half the distance, and already saw through the forest arcades the clearing which he must cross to reach the spot where he was expected. The angry barks of the wolves had increased during the last quarter of an hour, and the sound of their paws making the snow crackle inspired the old man with an indescribable terror. The number of animals seemed momentarily to be augmented; it resembled an ant-heap seen through the magnifying-glass of a ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... though the straining monster were pausing to catch its breath—then a roaring, sweeping onrush as if bent on irresistible destruction. And on top of this glare, this rage, was the thousandfold crackle, rattle, ...
— Counsel for the Defense • Leroy Scott
... Brock lived with these merchant princes on terms of close intimacy. He was sensible enough, as a man of the world, to enjoy the creature comforts of life. The blazing log-fire, with its glow and crackle, in contrast to the blizzard that raged outside; the dim-lighted splendour of spacious dining-hall, with hewn rafters and savage trophies of the explorers; the polished oak floor and carved ceiling, hung with rare fur and ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... built by sheer force of millions, trains launched at full speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all the formidable traffic of this country of effort and ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... of the storm without, the thresh of the rain upon the lattice casement, and the irregular whipping gusts which shook the house, the soft wheeze of the engrossing quill could be heard, the crackle of the burning logs and the heavy regular breathing of the couchant she-wolf being the only other sounds audible within ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... mortar on the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; —Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hewed log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-coloured chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes; The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, bulk-heads, floats, stays against the sea; —The city fireman—the ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... to explode directly ahead. A blinding flare swept the ground, a hissing crackle was drowned in an overwhelming roar of thunder. Bob dodged, and his horse whirled. When he had mastered both his animal and himself he spurred back. California John had reined in his mount. Not twenty feet ahead of him the bolt had ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... last rays of the sun, I had found time to read a long, dear letter from Richard Hall, and though I had transferred it from my pocket to my desk, while I dressed for the afternoon, its crackle was still in my mind. I wondered what it all meant, this dissatisfied longing that human beings send out across time and distance, one to and ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... moment Mary hesitated, knowing that only the unwritten law of Western hospitality compelled that speech; it was the crackle and flare of the bright fire ...
— Riders of the Silences • John Frederick
... could almost imagine I heard the crash away off here, even with all that thunder from Big Berthas and the crackle of ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... supper stood on the table near him, where his Etchemin servants had placed it before they trotted off to the camps. The high windows flickered, and there was not a sound in the house except the low murmur or crackle of the glowing backlog, until the door-latch clanked, and the door flew wide and was slammed shut again. Saint-Castin looked up with a frown, ...
— The Chase Of Saint-Castin And Other Stories Of The French In The New World • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... of beauty and of the making of beauty through which Leila moved. Even she must have felt the import of his mood, for she let her hands fall on the keys while Dick and I stared at each other before the shock of this crackle that seemed to threaten the perfection ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... hear the roar and crackle of the fire and the crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks and stones. * * * It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for by this time nearly everyone ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... I've learned a lot from you, too. I never knew what your game was here. I only know that the Saadat saved your life, and got you started again with Kaid. I only know that you called yourself a Christian, and worked on him till he believed in you, and Hell might crackle round you, but he'd believe, till he saw your contract signed with the Devil—and then he'd think the signature forged. But he's got to know now. We are not going out of Egypt, though you may be going to the Nile; but we are going to the Soudan, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the noise outside. The crackle of musketry was more noticeable, and every now and then there seemed to be heavy strokes as if directed against the palace, sounding as if the people were attempting to force the iron gate of ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... as you do, and that he was a lucky man to have got you when so many other men wanted you, and he loved you, good-bye—would have fairly made your heart turn over with joy and made you kiss the hurried lines and thrust the letter in your belt, where you could crackle it now and then just to make ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... very evident from the increased smoke that rolled out and the crackle of fire that now could be heard above the puffing of the engines and the ...
— Joe Strong The Boy Fire-Eater - The Most Dangerous Performance on Record • Vance Barnum
... door was all ablaze and escape that way was impossible, so I picked up a chair and slammed it through the window over the table, and climbed out taking a loose set of instruments with me. The wires were still working, and above the crackle of the flames I heard "DS" still calling me. I reached in through ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... King of England, Bade blow the horns of war, And fling the Golden Dragon out, With crackle and acclaim and shout, ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... runs swift the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we had ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... papa strike a light and then the wood began to crackle. Then, by jinks! it began to get hot and ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... the staircase and passages, and cast a fiery glow out on the carriage, and glorified the steep helmets and breast-plates of the dead Rabys on the wall, and the sparkling eyes of the two beautiful women who now stood opposite it in the pride of their youth, and were warmed to the heart by its crackle and glow. "Oh! what a glorious fire, this bitter night. Why, ...
— Put Yourself in His Place • Charles Reade
... little daughter so that she must go alone. She rides with her mother to the railroad and sees her little one walking directly upon the tracks, so that she cannot avoid being run over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the car window to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. She then reproaches her mother for allowing ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... bundle of dried canes and reeds on the end of a spear was thrust into the flickering glow, and at once took fire and burned with the utmost fury. Fresh bundles were pushed forward beside it, and these, too, flared up with a shrill crackle of snapping canes and the roar of a fire fanned by a strong draught. Inch by inch the flames moved forward, themselves a terrible enemy, and behind them crept up and up a savage ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... open from it (a dozen or two) off their hinges, and a bare board on tressels for a table, at which thirty people might dine easily, and a fireplace large enough in itself for a breakfast-parlour, where, as the faggots blaze and crackle, they illuminate the ugliest and grimmest of faces, drawn in charcoal on the whitewashed chimney- sides by previous travellers. There is a flaring country lamp on the table; and, hovering about it, scratching ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... There was a crackle, a flash, and presently a steady glow, which the surrounding darkness seemed to resent. The faces of the two men thus revealed were singularly alike. The same thin, narrow outline of jaw and temple; the same dark, grave eyes; the same brown growth of curly beard and mustache, which concealed ...
— The Twins of Table Mountain and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... to measure off a distance. "About so long—ten inches, I guess; maybe six inches wide and four deep. Thin sheet steel, with a gray crackle finish. There was a lock on it, but it wasn't much of one; since it was kept in the safe, there was no need for a ...
— Damned If You Don't • Gordon Randall Garrett
... moving on, the noise above became sharper. There was a slight crackle. The linen roofing sagged under a burden, and Drew caught his breath in a gasp. Miraculously the yellow cloth supported the object—a bulge as big as a saddlebag. A portion of the roof ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... not depend too much on the hold he had got of the creature, if it was merely a hold of one of the great claws. For a moment it would remain passive in his grasp; he would then be sensible of a slight tremor in the captured limb, and mayhap hear a slight crackle; and, presto, the captive would straightway be off like a dart through the deep-water hole, and only the limb remain in the fisher's hand. My uncle has, however, told me that lobsters do not always ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller
... deafeningly. The thud of its paws shook the ground. It lashed out with monstrous claws that sliced his skin. Half-stunned, Jerry kept lunging toward it, till finally his cross touched its coarse hide. There was a crackle of blue flame, a shriek that split the night, and the thing disintegrated in roiling ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... cool breeze of evening sucked up the river. Over near the cook-camp a big fire commenced to crackle by the drying frames. At dusk the rivermen straggled in ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various
... Then with a laughing crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... As he crept tremblingly up the stairs everything assumed gigantic and menacing shapes—the clock, the pot-pourri bowls, the window-curtains, and the brass rods on the stairs. In the room there was that grey half-light that seemed so terrible, and the spurt and crackle of the fire seemed to fill the place with sounds. He scarcely saw his grandfather. In the centre of the bed, something was lying; the eyes gleamed for a moment in the light of the fire, the lips seemed to move. But he did not realise that those things were ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... upward at the stars and listening to the dear, minute sounds of peace; and in another the great gray slate was clean, and every bone of me set in plaster of Paris, and sniping beginning between pickets with the day. It was an occasional crack, not a constant crackle, but the whistle of a bullet as it passed us by, or a tiny transitory flame for the one bit of detail on a blue hill-side, was an unpleasant warning that we two on ours were a target in ourselves. But Raffles paid no attention to their fire; he was pointing downward through the bushes to ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... heard to howl. You know how Brian loves dogs. When he found that the sound came from a certain room on the ground floor, he determined to get in somehow. Masses of ivy cloaked that side of the chateau. It was beginning to crackle with fire that flamed out from other windows, but Brian climbed the thick, rope-like stems, hundreds of years old, and smashed his way through the window. The room was filling with smoke. The dog's voice was choked. Brian's eyes ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... stepped out beside Kitty into the drizzle was not the Cutty she had admitted into the apartment. She did not recognize this remarkable transition until later; and then she discovered that Cutty, the suave and lackadaisical in idleness, was a tremendous animal hibernating behind a crackle shell. ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... know a bright world of snowy hills at Boonton, A blue and white dazzling light on everything one sees, The ice-covered branches of the hemlocks sparkle Bending low and tinkling in the sharp thin breeze, And iridescent crystals fall and crackle on the snow-crust With the winter sun drawing cold blue shadows ...
— Flame and Shadow • Sara Teasdale
... of blue smoke-puffs broke out along the edge of the wood in front, succeeded by a crackle of rifles. There were keen, sharp hissings in the air, terminating abruptly with a thump near by. The man at Captain Graffenreid's side dropped his rifle; his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward, falling upon his face. Somebody ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... the side of the fire, and pulled forward the log. He found that it had burned through, and by three or four strokes with the tongs, he broke it up into large fragments of coal, of a dark-reddish color. The air being thus admitted, they soon began to brighten and crackle, until, in a few minutes, there was before him a large heap of glowing and burning coals. He put a log on behind, then placed the andirons up to the log, and a great forestick upon the andirons. He placed the forestick so far ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... for five minutes more, and then set to work quietly, after the fashion of English mastiffs, though, like those mastiffs, they waxed right mad before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters (sight beloved) began to crackle ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... slow-passing minutes. Dellarme aimed to keep down the fusillade from Fracasse's trench and yet not to neglect the fair targets of the reserves advancing by rushes to the support of the 128th. Reinforced, the gray streak at the bottom of the slope poured in a heavier fire. Above the steady crackle of bullets sent and the whistle of bullets received rose the cry of "Doctor! Doctor!" which meant each time that another Brown rifle had been silenced. The litter bearers, hard pressed to remove the wounded, left ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... lengthen the meals, and make even the servants and page-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes which every one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady could sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no gentleman could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff shirt-front. As the hands of the clock neared eleven, on this particular Sunday, various people tended to draw together in the hall, clasping little red-leaved books in their hands. The clock marked a few minutes to the hour when a stout black figure passed through ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... grandeur, and, in hopes of having a fine yule log, both brothers strained and strove with all their might till, between pulling and pushing, the great old root was safe on the hearth, and beginning to crackle and blaze ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... chokes him, and he drops with a groan. He will lie there for a long time before his burning throat is moistened by a cup of water, and he knows only too well that the surgeon will merely shake his head when he sees him. The brigade still advances; gradually the sputtering crackle in their front grows into a low steady roar; a stream of lead whistles in the air, and the long lurid line of flame glows with the sustained glare of a fire among furze. Men fall at every yard, but the hoarse murmur of the dogged advance ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... a sheep as for a lamb," hiccuped Blinkey, as he rushed through the yard with a lighted brand. I tried to stop him, but fell on my face in the deep straw, and got round the barns to the rick-yard just in time to here a crackle—there was no mistaking it; the windward stack was in a blaze ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... even hear the crackle of the flames, whenever the night wind happens to blow this way," Babe Adams asserted; and they all agreed with him, for the same sound had come to ...
— Boy Scouts on a Long Hike - Or, To the Rescue in the Black Water Swamps • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... slender saplings for these same buds. The moose returned from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the pole in its ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... that they might aroused him. He reached for the com key and a second later tore the headphones from his appalled ears. The crackle of static he knew—and the numerous strange noises which broke in upon the lanes of communication in space—but this solid, paralyzing roar was something totally new—new, ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... captain meant that we should see all the fun that was going, so he took us right up to the front positions. We went through the wood silently in single file, taking care that if possible not even a twig should crackle under our feet, till we came to the very front trenches at the edge of the wood. We crouched down and watched for some time. Everything was brilliantly illuminated by the moonlight, and we had to be very careful not to show ourselves. A very fierce German attack was going on, and ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... it all in all! You say: Stop your depreciation! We were all rocked in that. For about fifteen years that cradle was going much of the time. When the older child was taken out, a smaller child was put in. The crackle of the rockers is pleasant yet in my ears. There I took my first lessons in music as mother sang to me. Have heard what you would call far better singing since then, but none that so thoroughly touched me. She never got five hundred ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... words, words whose sound signifies the sense, is so common that we seldom give it a thought. We have the "splash" of water; the "bang" of a gun; the "crackle" of branches and so on indefinitely. In verse this idea is carried a step farther. Lines are constructed not only with the purpose of conveying a given idea, as in prose, but with the additional end of strengthening this idea and impressing it on the mind of the reader ...
— Rhymes and Meters - A Practical Manual for Versifiers • Horatio Winslow
... the cry, "Ship afire!" caught up by a hundred throats, And over the roar the captain shouting to lower the boats; Then cry upon cry, and curses, and the crackle of burning wood, And the place grew hot as a furnace, I could ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... revolver—and again the expected match failed to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding his breath. But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled his pent-up breath in a ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... same factory," continued he, selecting a second specimen from the cabinet. "This is a copy of the Chinese 'conventional dog,' made of blue 'crackle-ware.' You see, the glaze is cracked all over the surface," ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... Kleber, who was of gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice—a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry—he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French battery, watched the sight with eager eyes—the French grenadiers running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets that barred it, the sudden roar of the English guns as from every side they ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... the eyes of Tom and Ned, the fire seemed to die out as a picture melts away on a moving picture screen. The smoke rolled away in a ball-like cloud, and the flames ceased to crackle and roar. ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... the road they heard the crackle of a dozen rifle shots. The Southern advance undoubtedly had come into contact with the Union sentinels and skirmishers. After the first shots there was a moment's breathless silence, and then came a scattered and rapid fire, as if at least a ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... neither allegorical nor photographic, but highly interpretative of the luxuriant picturesqueness of nature and the everyday labors of man. The luminosity of color, dash and daring of contrast, fairly crackle with life and yet have rich depths of quietness. The two panels of Earth glow with the earth's abundance. The first, the "Fruit Pickers," here shown, in which harvesters gather fruits from high trees and the laden ground, is notable for its marvelous massing of composition and ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... name as Hank Brown had repeated it to him. He stopped on a ledge and stared wildly, in a sudden panic, lest he should somehow miss her. He called again, even while reason told him that his voice could not carry any distance, with all that crackle and roar. He forced himself to stand there for a minute to get his breath and to see just how far the fire had already swept, and how ...
— The Lookout Man • B. M. Bower
... counsel find A balmy med'cine for my troubled mind? Or whose discourse with innocent delight Shall fill me now, and cheat the wint'ry night, While hisses on my hearth the pulpy pear, And black'ning chesnuts start and crackle there, While storms abroad the dreary meadows whelm, And the wind thunders thro' the neighb'ring elm? 70 Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Or who, when summer suns their summit reach, And Pan sleeps ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... may be made by noting the subcutaneous swellings which appear upon the patient. Those of blackleg are found to crackle under pressure with the finger, owing to the presence of gas within the tissues, while the tumors of anthrax, being caused by the pressure of serum, are entirely free from this quality and have a somewhat doughy consistence. The tumors ...
— Special Report on Diseases of Cattle • U.S. Department of Agriculture
... far above all the other noises—a cry more terrible than the screams of the parrots, or the shrieks of the howling monkeys—it was the cry of the jaguar! It came from a piece of wood close to the juvia-trees, and the branches were heard to crackle as the ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... cry for help when the key was turned for the last time. There was no sound now of any kind, to give token that he was still alive. I heard nothing but the quickening crackle of the flames, and the sharp snap of the glass in the ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... a fine thing to talk about the perfumed and restful bed of balsam boughs, and the crackle of the campfire at dusk, and the dip in the mirrored bosom of the pellucid lake at dawn—old Emerson Hough does all that to perfection; but these things assume a different aspect when it rains. There are three conditions in life when any latent ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... there came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed to hop like hailstones on the stones ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... as Albert touched the match to some pine shavings which were to form the kindling wood. The shavings caught, a light blaze leaped up, there came a warning crackle, and smoke, too, arose. Which way would it go? The little column wavered a moment and then shot straight up the chimney. It grew larger, but still shot straight up the chimney. The flames roared and were drawn in ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... that big pool. You listen. You can hear me crackle with the salt and dust caked over me. I'm afraid to laugh, for fear ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the side-pocket, may have attracted her by its whiteness, like a ray of the sun entering a dark room through a crack in the window: or else, while taking Adolphe in her arms and feeling his pocket, she may have caused the note to crackle: or else she may have been informed of the state of things by a foreign odor that she has long noticed upon him, and may have read ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Second Part • Honore de Balzac
... moment they rolled over on the beds. But Polly, tired and fatigued, too, knew that some one must keep the fires going all night, so she merely reclined on the pine-bough bed and started up at every sound or crackle of the fires. She piled pine upon them all night through until the first faint gleams of dawn, and then there was no more wood ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... last remaining rations were quickly distributed, and a picked number of the freshest of the men, i.e. those who had had no night duty, went out doggedly against the enemy, with trailing steps and gray, tired-out faces. The crackle of their lively firing aroused the French from sleep, and perhaps from dreams of conquest and fame, put them to confusion, and drove them back toward Dijon. The Germans followed, this time without shouting, and as the ...
— The Malady of the Century • Max Nordau
... consciousness wholly disembodied she was mainly aware of a great pain that seemed to fill all the region and atmosphere, an atmosphere charged with mysterious dim green light and full of great boomings amid a crackle of smaller ones; of shouts and cheers and of a placid quaking of myriad leaves; all of which things might be things or only divers manifestations ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... The Prussians, in regular force, appear on the Kaninchen Berg (Cony Hill, so called from its rabbits), south of the River, evidently taking post there. Roth fires a signal shot; the Southern Suburbs of Neisse, as preappointed, go up in flame; crackle high and far; in a lamentable manner (ERBARMLICH), through the grim winter air." This is the day Friedrich came over to Ottmachau, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... not yet daylight. We could see the flicker of rifle-fire, and the crackle sounded first on one part of the bay, and then another. Among the dark rocks and bushes it looked as if people ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... unique strangeness. But now her unreason became formidable. There she sat with her striking forehead and her quite unimportant nose, in the large austere drawing-room of the Spatts, which was so pervaded by artistic chintz that the slightest movement in it produced a crackle—and wondered why she was so much queerer than other girls ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... and the resultant crackle was so immediate and loud that he shook his head. "I give it up," he said. "I've never seen ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... reached them through the dense October air with a softened and muffled sound. The evenings, however, were growing cool, and before long they lighted the first fire of the season in Mrs. Vivian's heavily draped little chimney-piece. On this occasion Bernard sat there with Angela, watching the bright crackle of the wood and feeling that the charm of winter nights had begun. These two young persons were alone together in the gathering dusk; it was the hour before dinner, before ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... it was "goin' to be one of the biggest funerals ever given in Ostable." Mr. Sharon nodded. Then, after waiting a moment or two, he tiptoed along the front hall and took up his stand by the parlor door. There was a final rustle of gowns, a final crackle of Sunday shirtfronts, and then ...
— Mary-'Gusta • Joseph C. Lincoln
... days they had had no fighting worthy the name. Amigos everywhere, villages peopled only by women and children, treacherous peacefulness on every side; this had been their encounter: an occasional rifle shot from the rice fields, a crackle of guns far ahead, a prisoner or two who had not been quick enough in transforming himself from combatant to friend, that was all. Now, there seemed to be real ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... I got a sample of Mulligan Jacobs. The venom of hatred I had already seen in his face was as nothing compared with what now was manifested. I had a feeling that, like stroking a cat in cold weather, did I touch his face it would crackle electric sparks. ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... aloud. A pang goes through me; I turn at once and begin walking homewards, but all the time I know I have stayed out too long. I walk faster, then run; Asop understands there is something the matter, and pulls at the leash, drags me along, sniffs at the ground, and is all haste. The dry leaves crackle about us. ...
— Pan • Knut Hamsun
... examined them, he looked straight ahead, that he might not see. He could hear them crackle as she unfolded them—could hear her ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... is built wholly of wood and the roof is thatched. Whenever there was an earthquake the timbers seemed to crackle rather than creak. The temple is relatively new and seems to have been built with materials given by the villagers and by means of a gift of 1,000 yen. The workmanship was local and a good deal of it was faulty. This may have been due to lack of experience, but it is more ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... five minutes more, and then set to work quietly, after the fashion of English mastiffs, though they waxed right mad before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters began to crackle and fly. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... a damascened suit of Milanese armour glittered in one corner; loves and nymphs of porcelain, Chinese grotesques, vases of celadon and crackle-ware, Saxon and old Sevres cups encumbered the shelves and nooks of ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... me, Seignior, I should crackle like a wicker Bottle in her Arms— no, Seignior, there's no venturing without a Grate between us: the Devil wou'd not give her due Benevolence— No, when I'm marry'd, I'll e'en show her a fair pair of Heels, her Portion will ...
— The Works of Aphra Behn, Vol. I (of 6) • Aphra Behn
... and his thin blue shirt harmonized with the warm yellow of the corn and the color of his sunburnt skin. The thin material showed the fine modeling of his figure as his body followed the sweep of the gleaming scythe. The forward stoop and recovery were marked by a rhythmic grace, and the crackle of the oat-stalks hinted at his strength. His face was calm and Grace saw his mind dwelt upon his work. He looked honest, clean, and virile, but she turned her head and struggled with a poignant sense of loss. She knew now what it would cost her ...
— The Buccaneer Farmer - Published In England Under The Title "Askew's Victory" • Harold Bindloss
... fusees now, and at the word struck one with a loud crackle, just as we were beginning to doubt the efficacy of our ruse, for the enemy were watching us keenly; and, though some of them moved uneasily and threatened to run for shelter, ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... you were right, Ken!' muttered Dave. 'Fix bayonets!' Colonel Conway's voice rang like a trumpet above the crackle of ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... report to the commander of the column, and soon the trumpets were calling the men to battle. The crackle of rifle shots ahead increased rapidly. The skirmishers were already pulling trigger, and, as Dick galloped back to Hertford he saw many puffs of white smoke down the road and in the fields and woods on either side. The Union men began to cheer. ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and waited; there was no sound in the room except the soft crackle of the fire, and Amy thought deeply on the noble example before her of calm, trustful waiting. At last she became conscious that the house was growing strangely still; the faint tick of the great clock on the landing of the stairs struck her ear; the rush and roar of the wind had ...
— Nature's Serial Story • E. P. Roe
... here beside me, with a quick patter—the twigs crackle—it is he! Move not! not for your life, Peacock! There! he has broken cover fairly! Now he is half across the field! he stops to listen! Ah! he will head again. No! no! that crash, when they came upon the warm blood, has decided him—away he goes, with his brush high, and its white tag brandished ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... a little grandeur, and, in hopes of having a fine yule log, both brothers strained and strove with all their might till, between pulling and pushing, the great old root was safe on the hearth, and beginning to crackle and blaze with ...
— Good Stories For Great Holidays - Arranged for Story-Telling and Reading Aloud and for the - Children's Own Reading • Frances Jenkins Olcott
... feet, and ran out to call for succor. He went into the house, but it was empty. He rushed to the door, and saw the rest of the party in full retreat. He shouted, but his voice was lost in the crackle of musketry fire. He ran back to Ned and again tried to lift him, and had got him on his shoulders, when there was a tremendous explosion. Johannes' house had ...
— In Times of Peril • G. A. Henty
... of the day, and their assertive crackle broke in upon the finest passages. Elizabeth wished her cousin would take a walk; and by and by she did, politely inviting Elizabeth to go along; but she declined, and they were left to sit through the remainder of ...
— The Girl from Montana • Grace Livingston Hill
... answer. She was still waiting for the news that he had to tell her. The logs on the fire fell about with a crackle, and Deulin rose to put them in order. While thus engaged ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... sheer force of millions, trains launched at full speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all the formidable traffic of this country of effort and struggle, all its labor,—these are what have made ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... grow to such majestic beauty in France; and Jack was environed by the mysteries of nature,—nature in the springtime of the year, when one can almost hear the grass grow, the buds expand, and the earth crackle as the tender herbage shoots forth. All these faint, vague noises bewildered little Jack, who began to sing a nursery rhyme with which his mother ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... three youths sat, and looked again over the great expanse of rolling country, dotted at intervals by puffs of smoke from the long lines of trenches. Where they sat it was so still that they could hear the faint crackle of the distant rifles, and now and then the heavier crash of ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... consciousness of his wandering roofless, in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide and I, who were old enough friends to stare ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... minute the men in the speeding automobile were close enough to hear the sputtering crackle of the pistol shots. ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... by that time Giles had swept away the debris of the donkey-cart, with Mrs Twitter imbedded therein, and had stretched the blanket with five powerful volunteers to hold it. "Jump, sir, jump!" he cried. Samuel Twitter jumped—unavoidably, for Welland pushed him—just as the hiss and crackle of the ...
— Dusty Diamonds Cut and Polished - A Tale of City Arab Life and Adventure • R.M. Ballantyne
... it, a sort of chill settling upon him even while he reached. The crackle of the envelope in his hands was loud. Green paper money lay soft within ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... too, had had good picking along the creek flats and ditches of the meadows. Their powerful wing-beats and constant play told of full crops and no fear for the night, already softly gray across the white silent fields. The air was crisper; the snow began to crackle under foot; the twigs creaked and rattled as I brushed along; a brown beech leaf wavered down and skated with a thin scratch over the crust; and pure as the snow-wrapped crystal world, and sweet as the soft gray twilight, came the call of ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... understand the full depth of the great thought that joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a saying in the Old Testament compares to the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it; and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish, short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down so soon into ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... line of her granddaughter's finger, Cecily looked out into the garden and saw Nina turn toward them as though she knew they were angry. The child pointed with one finger directly at them in the house. There was a sharp crackle, and something of a brilliant and vibrating blue leaped between the out-stretched fingers of mother and daughter, and flew up like a bird to the power ...
— The Putnam Tradition • Sonya Hess Dorman
... I heard the crackle of parchment. The certificate was being unfolded. (It occurred to me that while she was about it the princess might just as well have forged the rascal's name and wholly dispensed with his services. The whole affair struck me as being ineffective; ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath
... who, be it remembered, were totally unaccustomed to the effects of rifle fire and imagined that we only possessed two or three guns in all, stopped their advance as though paralyzed. For a few seconds there was silence, except for the intermittent crackle of the rifles as my men loaded and fired. Next came the cries of the smitten men and horses that were falling everywhere, and then—the unmistakable sound ...
— The Ivory Child • H. Rider Haggard
... on the lowest rung. There was a crackle of glass, and then a cloud of smoke streamed out of a broken window. For an instant the bright glare was obscured. But it burst forth afresh, and leaped with great white ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... the colour had run down to the horizon and flamed intensest crimson in the Nick of Benarick. Broader and broader mounted the scarlet flame, till he seemed in that still place to hear the sun's corona crackle, as observers think they do when watching a great eclipse. The set of the sun affected him like a still morning—that most mysterious thing in nature. He missed, indeed, the diffused elation of the dawn; but it was infinitely sweet to hear in that still ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... spluttered and went out again. So seeing her disappointment Young Gerard hung the lantern up, saying, "Firelight is prettier." And he set her by the fire and filled her lap with cones and dry leaves and dead bracken to burn and make crackle and turn into fiery ferns. And ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... forms while his father ran off the edition. This was better fun than typesetting. Before you was a long roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After that you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... you—the mournful cold of the sidereal spheres from which nothing now seems to protect you, so rarefied—almost non-existent—does the limpid atmosphere appear. And the gravel, the poor dried herbs, that crackle under foot, give the illusion of the crunching noise we know at home on winter nights when the frost is on ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... length, sat up stiffly, and felt something crackle inside her dress. With a little start she realised what it was, and drew forth ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... down the passage, and the roar of the flames came nearer and Grant fancied he could hear the crackle of it. Chopini was on his knees clutching at the crevices in the wall; Hogan and Dooley dug with their hands into the chinks, then four men were on their feet, with the burden, and in the blackness, hands within ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... abruptly, and a look of consternation came to him. The black silence enveloping us had without warning begun to crackle. The metal cone in Wolfgar's hand glowed red with interference-heat—but he clung to it, though it burned him. Sparks were snapping in the blackness around us. Our isolation was dissolving. Someone—something—was breaking it down, struggling to get ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... was going on behind him. He had walked half the distance, and already saw through the forest arcades the clearing which he must cross to reach the spot where he was expected. The angry barks of the wolves had increased during the last quarter of an hour, and the sound of their paws making the snow crackle inspired the old man with an indescribable terror. The number of animals seemed momentarily to be augmented; it resembled an ant-heap seen through the magnifying-glass of ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... afternoon to a point on the lake nearest the fawns' hiding-place, and wait in my canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... below him, on the black water, was the dim outline of the skiff which the boatman kept to paddle out to her. The silence was so intense that Wrayford fancied he heard a faint rustling in the shrubbery on the high bank behind the boat-house, and the crackle of gravel on the path descending ...
— The Choice - 1916 • Edith Wharton
... our orders, taking the gun and limber up separately, with all my oxen and 100 men pulling. We found the position was held by the 10th Brigade, and very heavy sniping going on down the N.W. slopes—a regular crackle of musketry. ...
— With the Naval Brigade in Natal (1899-1900) - Journal of Active Service • Charles Richard Newdigate Burne
... wind-bowed and scanty bushes, and all golden brown with the winter, like a grouse. Right over against the girl the last red embers of the sunset burned under horizontal clouds; the night fell clear and still and frosty, and the track in low and marshy passages began to crackle under ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... this pile the guardian of the Sunrise Camp Fire took from her pocket a bit of flint and a piece of steel, striking them sharply together. Tiny sparks flew forth but no answering crackle resounded from the wood and paper, although the sparks darted in and out among them like miniature fireflies. Once more Miss McMurtry tried her flint and steel according to the prescribed rules, but again the ...
— The Camp Fire Girls at Sunrise Hill • Margaret Vandercook
... There was only the crackle of an open mike and the sound of breathing. "That is your decision," he said finally. "I'll have a ship standing by. But won't you let us take ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... up to the Otto home very early of a morning, or in the dusk of evening. Very frequently he was filled with a desire to stand outside the red-and-white striped walls of the tent-house and listen unseen. Inside there was always cheer: at night the crackle of fire and the glow of light, the happy laughter of the gentle-hearted Scotchwoman, and the affectionate banter of her "big mountain man," who looked more like a brigand than the luckiest and most contented husband in the mountains—the luckiest, ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... St. Luc's skirmishers. Black Rifle, uttering fierce shouts, was leading a strong attack in the center. The firing was now rapid and much heavier than it had been at any time before. Flashes of flame appeared everywhere in the thicket. Above the crackle of rifles and muskets swelled the long thrilling war cry of the Mohawks, and back in fierce defiance came the yells ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the storm without, the thresh of the rain upon the lattice casement, and the irregular whipping gusts which shook the house, the soft wheeze of the engrossing quill could be heard, the crackle of the burning logs and the heavy regular breathing of the couchant she-wolf being the only other sounds audible within ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... Mr. Tredgold. "As a matter of fact, I'm dying with curiosity myself. Bring it out and make it crackle, captain; it's a bank-note for half ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... came from the forest, and there was a sharp crackle of rifle fire. Bullets thudded into the stout walls of the cabin, and Paul's soul swelled with derision. His vivid mind pictured himself as safe from the warriors as if they were a thousand miles away. He was attracted suddenly by a slight, gurgling sound, and then a cry ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... was the first to open his eyes the following morning, thinking it a glorious sunshine that gave such a brilliant light outside. Suddenly a snap and a crackle brought him to his feet. He found the barn ablaze. A war-whoop from the Indians then aroused ...
— Some Three Hundred Years Ago • Edith Gilman Brewster
... came a long crackle of musketry, and bullets seemed to hop like hailstones on the stones in front ...
— The Man Who Was Thursday - A Nightmare • G. K. Chesterton
... malkuragxulo. Cowardice malkuragxeco. Cowherd bovgardisto. Cow shed bovinejo. Cowl kapucxo. Cowslip verprimolo. Coxcomb dando. Coy rezerva. Coyness rezerveco. Cozen trompi. Crab kankro. Crack (split) fendi. Crack (noise) kraki. Crackle kraketi. Cradle lulilo. Craft ruzo. Craft (vessel) sxipeto. Crafty, to be ruzi. Crafty ruza. Cram (of food) supersatigi. Cram plenegigi. Cramp (metal) krampo. Crane (bird) gruo. Crane sxargxlevilo. Crape krepo. Crater kratero. Cravat ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... his face became set in concentration once more. After some moments of silence, broken only by the slight noise of the receiver, he pressed his hand on the sending apparatus and the Southern Cross's wireless began to crackle and spit and emit a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... measure of an unheard song, and the pleasant hum of her spinning broke delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace, as if knowing it marked eternal hours. The flames waved softly upward without their former crackle and sheen; and the moving shadows were gentle and rhythmic ones come to keep the soul company. Amelia ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... all will look bright and bustling as we children are set to shell peas or poppies, and the damp twigs crackle in the stove, and our mother comes to look fondly at our work, and our old nurse, Iliana, tells us stories of bygone days, or terrible legends concerning wizards and dead men. At the recital we little ones will press closer to one another, ...
— Poor Folk • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... embers began to crackle, the members of the party below grew more visible, and some one uttered a few words in an eager tone—words which evoked an ejaculation or two of satisfaction, followed by an eager conversation that sounded ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... hung for a sheep as for a lamb," hiccuped Blinkey, as he rushed through the yard with a lighted brand. I tried to stop him, but fell on my face in the deep straw, and got round the barns to the rick-yard just in time to here a crackle—there was no mistaking it; the windward stack was in a ...
— Alton Locke, Tailor And Poet • Rev. Charles Kingsley et al
... methods of philology suggest a rule which will often be found useful. In comparing, the vocabularies of different languages, those words which directly imitate natural sounds—such as whiz, crash, crackle—are not admitted as evidence of kinship between the languages in which they occur. Resemblances between such words are obviously no proof of a common ancestry; and they are often met with in languages which have demonstrably ...
— Myths and Myth-Makers - Old Tales and Superstitions Interpreted by Comparative Mythology • John Fiske
... down in the big rocker and gave herself up to the charm of her surroundings. Her glance fell upon a vase of flowers that stood on a table near another window. She rose and went to them, bending over to inhale their fragrance. "How strange!" she exclaimed, as she felt them crackle in her fingers. Poor child, they were artificial! But she would learn, ere long, that they fittingly symbolized the life of the great city in which she ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... eye the whole house rose and shuddered. There was a sharp crack-crackle, followed by smoke, and forked tongues of flame licked the imitation forest, and with a swish all the chorus fled from the stage. Far away up in the gallery somebody was roaring "Fire!" A rush to the doors was ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... word), instead of merely pretending with an unlighted taper, Mhor dashed to the fire, lit the taper, and before anyone could stop him thrust it among the dry twigs, which at once began to light and crackle. Immediately all was confusion. "Mhor!" shouted Jean, as she sprang towards the stage. "Gosh, Maggie!" Jock yelled, as he grabbed the burning twigs, but it was "Imperial Caesar, dead and turned to clay," who really put out the fire by rolling on it wrapped ...
— Penny Plain • Anna Buchan (writing as O. Douglas)
... Coleman rode moodily onward. The hot dust continued to sting the cheeks of the travellers and in some places great clouds of dead leaves roared in circles about them. All of the Wainwright party were utterly fagged. Coleman felt his skin crackle and his throat seemed to be coated with the white dust. He worried his dragoman as to the distance to Arta until the dragoman lied to the point where he always declared that Arta was only off ...
— Active Service • Stephen Crane
... on a mission similar to my own—to look for a job. We went together to her room, which was as small and shabby as my own, and a few minutes later we were sitting round the little Jenny Lind stove, listening to the pleasant crackle of the freshly kindled fire. Both were silent for a few minutes. ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... from the distance, on the other side of the house. For some seconds, there was an uninterrupted crackle of musketry; then it came at rarer intervals; and, presently, there was no sound ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... the crackle of a piece of brushwood immediately out in our front. The intruder had gotten into our entanglement. "Halt! Who goes there?" No answer. I repeated the challenge; still no answer. We made our way cautiously through the hedge, unclicked our safety catches and ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... "Hist—Skip! Crackle!" came a volley from far away to the north, and Eben cast himself down behind a heather bush to draw breath. They had fired, and he was a proven man. He had faced death to certify his truth to the salt he was eating, and now nothing ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... moments, which I occupied in making a list of the gear I wished to take with me. Then there was a hiss and a crackle, and in the receiver of the desk a book appeared. I unzipped the case, took it out, and opened it to the pages marked on ...
— The Day of the Boomer Dukes • Frederik Pohl
... past, that spoke of their old happy life in France. He spread an embroidered cloth on the floor and pitched his treasure trove into it—working feverishly, choking and gasping, until the flames began to crackle through the wall, and the ceiling above him split across. Then he plunged through the window, and staggered across the lawn with his burden—falling beside it at last, spent and breathless, his throat parched with smoke, and his eyes almost sightless. But he picked himself up presently ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... moments she stood so, fingering the white handle of the weapon, and there was no sound in all the vast assemblage save the crackle of the flames. Then they saw her muscles tauten throughout her whole young body, saw her draw herself up to her full height, and again for a second's space she stood still. In that moment she had deliberately put herself back in the surging turmoil of Grand Portage, ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic wood; nor was there any treacherous bramble to crackle beneath his feet. For upon this chill, grey carpet no flood of sunshine ever came to coax tiny sprays out of the ground; and the layers of fine needles, or tufts of dank, sunless moss were soft and noiseless as down under his tread. The stately trees grew far enough apart to ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the carriage, and it opened in its austere majesty of solid type—opened with the crackle ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... the arm, just as any man might have done, and led her to the fire that was beginning to crackle cheerfully. He set her down on the side where the smoke would be least likely to blow her way and proceeded to dress the grouse, stripping off skin and feathers together. He unrolled the slicker and laid out ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... eyes from the maddening heat and glare, and drove straight on. Not so fast as to hurry the greedy flames that were doing their worst upon him, but at a rate that ran them over the river and upon solid earth as the fuel in the tender burst into a blaze and the forward car began to crackle and smoke in the hot draught. At that point steam and air-brakes did their work in effecting a ...
— The Little Gold Miners of the Sierras and Other Stories • Various
... to himself, he threw out that little spark, the Megarian decree,[312] set the city aflame, and blew up the conflagration with a hurricane of war, so that the smoke drew tears from all Greeks both here and over there. At the very outset of this fire our vines were a-crackle, our casks knocked together;[313] it was beyond the power of any man to stop the disaster, ...
— The Eleven Comedies - Vol. I • Aristophanes et al
... remark no sort of answer was vouchsafed. Nancy sat with her feet on the fender, and Tarrant kept up a great blaze with chips, which sputtered out their moisture before they began to crackle. He and she both seemed intent on ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... and fifes of a martial band. The best times are always the old times. The huge lady in the seat next to Jeremy almost swallowed him up, so that he peered out from under her thick arm, and heard every crunch and crackle of the peppermints that she was enjoying. He grew hotter and hotter, so that at last he seemed, as once he had read in some warning tract about a greedy boy that Aunt Amy had given him, "to swim in his own fat." But he did not mind. Discomfort only emphasised his happiness. Then, peering ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... men who had asked in the past to be allowed to paint Joan and received a curt negative from Gray Michael. But the other discovery meant more. Pushing her hand about the drawer she found a pile of paper, felt the crackle of it, and pulled it eagerly to the light. Then, and before she learned the grandeur of the sum, she was seized with a sudden palpitation and sat down on Joan's bed. Her mouth grew full as a hungry man's before a feast, her lips were wet, her hand shook as she opened and spread the ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... with his ear to the ground, like an Indian, for the last rustle of fern and crackle of underbrush, and then emerged, stiff and cramped from his concealment. But he no longer thought of flight; curiosity and ambition burned in his small veins. He quickly climbed up the outcrop, picked up the fallen stone, and in spite of its weight ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... here and there where the gaps were widest, so that we forged onwards not only to the accompaniment of the shrill cries of the mahouts and the noise of plunging and overwhelming elephants, but to the fierce roar and crackle of burning stalks. ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... populace had sought their homes, and a profound quiet wrapped the streets, save where, from the fires committed in the late tumult, was yet heard the crash of roofs or the crackle of the light and fragrant timber employed in those pavilions of the summer. The manner in which the mansions of Granada were built, each separated from the other by extensive gardens, fortunately prevented the flames from extending. But the inhabitants cared so little for ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... said, as I listened to the noise he made rolling himself in his blanket, and making the fir-boughs crackle as he turned about. "I was horribly scared at first, but I ...
— To The West • George Manville Fenn
... Pedro stood beside the unconscious man. Then he looked cautiously around. The figure of his companion was lost in the shadow of the rocks above; only a slight crackle of brush betrayed his whereabouts. Suddenly Pedro flung his serape over the sleeper's head, and then threw his powerful frame and tremendous weight full upon Concho's upturned face, while his strong arms clasped the blanket-pinioned limbs of his victim. There was a momentary ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... was anything but joyous. But the draught from the open windows finally stimulated the lazy chimney to greater exertions, and just as Peggy crossed the threshold, a brave little flame leaped up from the smoking, smouldering mass, and a cheery crackle made music plainly audible ...
— Peggy Raymond's Vacation - or Friendly Terrace Transplanted • Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith
... will lie there for a long time before his burning throat is moistened by a cup of water, and he knows only too well that the surgeon will merely shake his head when he sees him. The brigade still advances; gradually the sputtering crackle in their front grows into a low steady roar; a stream of lead whistles in the air, and the long lurid line of flame glows with the sustained glare of a fire among furze. Men fall at every yard, but the hoarse murmur of the dogged advance never ceases. At last the time ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... infantry company was armed with the new Springfield breech-loader, and when the band came exultantly on, having, as they supposed, drawn the fire when full four hundred yards away, they were confounded by the lively crackle and sputter of rifles along the timber in front of them, toppling many a dashing warrior to earth and strewing the ground with slaughtered ponies. That charge failed, but they rallied in furious force. ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... time since Shann had heard the crackle of the Throg attack he remembered the reason he had been heading into the hills. Of all the men on the Survey team, Shann Lantee had been the least important. The dirty, tedious clean-up jobs, the dull routines which required ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Then the Colonel called a whispered halt, and choosing two of us to guide him, the dauntless and discerning commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are reconnoitring, or anxious to escape detection for ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... The paintings are neither allegorical nor photographic, but highly interpretative of the luxuriant picturesqueness of nature and the everyday labors of man. The luminosity of color, dash and daring of contrast, fairly crackle with life and yet have rich depths of quietness. The two panels of Earth glow with the earth's abundance. The first, the "Fruit Pickers," here shown, in which harvesters gather fruits from high trees and the laden ground, is notable for its marvelous massing ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... she gave him a convulsive little squeeze—and felt the crackle of paper under his shirt. "Something hidden there! What is it, Sonling?" she asked with laughing eyes: and suddenly shyness overwhelmed him. For the moment he had forgotten his treasure; and now he was wondering if he ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... the time when you feel the strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... flint and steel, however, and began to strike sparks on to the prepared tinder, she drew back alarmed, although her woman's curiosity conquered her desire to run away. But when the sparks lighted the dried leaves, causing the wood to crackle and burn, she would have fled if ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... fright, Mix the contending hosts in mortal fight. So pent by hills, the wild winds roar aloud In the deep bosom of some gloomy wood; Leaves, arms, and trees, aloft in air are blown, The broad oaks crackle, and the Sylvans groan; This way and that, the rattling thicket bends, And the whole forest in one crash descends. Not with less noise, with less tumultuous rage, In dreadful shock the mingled hosts engage. Darts shower'd on darts, now round the carcase ring; Now flights of arrows ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... frank and elemental. It had the crisp crackle that goes with free, unfettered youth. In a parlor some of it would have been offensive, but under the stars of the open desert it was as natural as the life itself. They spoke of the spring rains, of the Crawford-Steelman feud, of how they meant to turn Malapi upside down in their ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... Sloane, waltzing from one end of the room to the other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang. "There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his side; "you can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... remembrance I was disguised as a midshipmite, with white duck trousers of a prodigious width. They used to crackle, I remember. There was ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... when the scent is in the julep and the bloom is on the mint; or possibly, now and then, the removal from the pasture to the pantry of a bit of lowing roast-beef, when I feel an inner craving for the crackle ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... fragile and transparent of which we now get from Japan; and a porcelain decorated with a fine, open-work design cut through the ware, and styled 'grains-of-rice pattern.' Moreover they manufactured a variety which in firing took on a crackled effect and has for that reason been christened Chinese Crackle. You see how many kinds ...
— The Story of Porcelain • Sara Ware Bassett
... her hands, I pray, or she will kill me. The trees were so full of yellow birds that it sounded as if a mighty wind passed over them, and the birds lit on Goody Corey's head. And black beasts ran alongside through the bushes, which did break and crackle, and they were at Goody Corey and me to go to the witch dance on the hill. And they said to bring Olive Corey and Paul Bayley. And Goody Corey told them how she and Olive would presently come, but not Paul, for he never ...
— Giles Corey, Yeoman - A Play • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... across the crackle of the fire came the confident word of David the Singer: "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein," intoned in the old man's reverent voice, something led Everett's glance out through the open door to see the bit ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... looked straight at the officer, standing erect and waiting, as if he expected a quick answer, and only the kind of answer, too, that he wished. Meanwhile there was silence, save for an occasional crackle of burning wood. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... wait to see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Bessie coolly. "And if you will not bedizen me with artificial flowers, and will exonerate me from wearing dresses that crackle, I shall be happy. Did you not promise to give me simplicity ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of starch, like a turkey when ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... big pool. You listen. You can hear me crackle with the salt and dust caked over me. I'm afraid to laugh, for fear I should crack ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... wheel struck the log, throwing full weight upon it. There was a snapping crackle, then ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... They exercise a tyranny over the leaves, as bad as that of eastern despots over their prostrate slaves. Let them look a little into the bindings of those volumes before described by me, in the lower regions of the Royal Library[152]—and hence learn, that, to hear the leases crackle as they are turned over, produces nearly as much comfort to the thorough-bred collector, as does the prattling of the first infant to the ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Two • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... join them in a week or two,—not yet, because I had wished to send home the screens painted on white velvet, and they wanted yet a sennight's work, and I knew Mrs. Strathsay would be proud of them before the crackle of the autumn fires. The maids ran hither and yon, and the bells pealed, and the knocker clashed, and the coaches rolled away over the stone pave of the court-yard, and there was embracing and jesting ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... wood are now heaped against the timber posterns of the building, and set on fire. Volumes of smoke roll to the sky, mingling with sheets of red flame. The huge pine-beams of the azotea catch the blaze, burn, crackle, and fall inwards, and in a short while the Presidio becomes a ...
— The White Chief - A Legend of Northern Mexico • Mayne Reid
... grew the noise outside. The crackle of musketry was more noticeable, and every now and then there seemed to be heavy strokes as if directed against the palace, sounding as if the people were attempting to force the iron ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... his own, and Hawk-eye at once took steps to secure his capture. While Heyward held the runner in conversation, the scout and the two Mohicans crept silently through the undergrowth to surround him, but the slight crackle of a breaking stick aroused Magua's suspicion, and, even as the ambush closed on him, he dodged under Heyward's arms and vanished into ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... must have felt it too, for all at once he ceased to speak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of tenderness that I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we walked on but the crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and the measured boom of the sea which we were leaving behind us—nothing but that and the quick beating in my ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... dry leaves, the crackle of dry twigs snapt, and looking up, saw a herd of deer feeding in a ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... sound of strange footsteps outside the door. There was a crackle as of paper, the soft sound of things laid upon the floor, a gentle rapping on the panels, a light laugh, a rustle of draperies, footsteps moving away. As in a dream she got to her feet, she knew not how. ...
— And Thus He Came • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... dry branches crackle, the crucible shines as with gold, As they carry the hot flaming metal in haste from the fire to the mould; Loud roars the bellows, and louder the flames as they shrieking escape, And loud is the song of the workmen who watch o'er the fast-filling shape; To and fro in the red-glaring ...
— Poems • Denis Florence MacCarthy
... fusillade from Fracasse's trench and yet not to neglect the fair targets of the reserves advancing by rushes to the support of the 128th. Reinforced, the gray streak at the bottom of the slope poured in a heavier fire. Above the steady crackle of bullets sent and the whistle of bullets received rose the cry of "Doctor! Doctor!" which meant each time that another Brown rifle had been silenced. The litter bearers, hard pressed to remove the wounded, left the dead. Already death was a familiar ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... sufficient distance, since the most irregular undulations are, in a long journey through the air, wrought to an equality, and made subject to exact law,—as in this universe all irregularities are sure to be in the end. Thus, the thunder, which near at hand is a wild crash, or nearer yet a crazy crackle, is by distance deepened and refined into that marvellous bass which we all know. And doubtless the jars, the discords, and moral contradictions of time, however harsh and crazy at the outset, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... escape Pierre Radisson gave small heed, and so did we. Jean took the river side and I the inland thicket, feeling our way blindly through the blackness of forest and storm and night. Then the rain broke—broke in lashing whip-cords with the crackle of fire. Jean whistled and I signalled back; but there was soon such a pounding of rains it drowned every sound. For all the help one could give the other we might have been a thousand miles apart. I looked back. M. Radisson's fire threw a dull glare into the cavernous upper ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... two sides of the sail of the jolly-boat. And then we got within earshot. A great fire is terrible to see, but it is almost more terrible to hear, and it is curious how like it is to the sound of great waters or a great wind. The roar, the hiss, the crackle, ...
— We and the World, Part II. (of II.) - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... plants. I looked at my questions, but for some moments could hardly hold my pen, so extreme was my nervousness; but when I once fairly began, my ideas crowded upon me almost faster than I could write them. And so we all sat, nothing heard but the scratching of the pens and the occasional crackle of the examiner's "Times" as he quietly looked over the news of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... trees cry for help—all the birds of the prairie—but they cry for naught. My father hears them cry. The cry is sweet to his ears. He is waiting for me. We are all about to die. When the wheat-fields blaze and the stacks take fire, and the houses crackle, then we shall all die. So says Waubeno." ...
— In The Boyhood of Lincoln - A Tale of the Tunker Schoolmaster and the Times of Black Hawk • Hezekiah Butterworth
... I spoke I was startled by a sharp crackle followed by a stealthy rustle, as if some one had inadvertently stepped upon a dry twig and had then glided quickly away. I turned at once to the woods, and could almost have sworn I caught a fleeting glimpse of a copper-colored hand, and the flash of a rifle-barrel. But as I gazed longer I ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... vegetation had scented us out and, having found us, was quite determined that we should never escape them alive. When presently we again began to move, it seemed impossible to take a single step without tripping over a land-crab's hole, or treading upon one of the creatures and hearing and feeling it crackle and writhe ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... with Wade. Frequently they sat together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without permitting a single crackle, she ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... Sometimes the arterial vessels are so dilated as to impart to the tumour an aneurysmal pulsation and bruit. The enlargement or "expansion" of the bone results in the cortex being represented by a thin shell of bone, which may crackle ...
— Manual of Surgery - Volume First: General Surgery. Sixth Edition. • Alexis Thomson and Alexander Miles
... and most of the afternoon, taking up one after another of the Riverbend girls and boys, and agreeing that we had reason to be well satisfied with most of them. Finally, after a long pause in which I had listened to the contented ticking of the clock and the crackle of the coal, I put the question I had until then ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... silence followed, broken only by the patter of the rain without, the crackle of the wood fire within, and the scratch of a busy pen from a curtained recess at the end of the long room. In the sudden hush the girls heard it and remembered that they ...
— A Garland for Girls • Louisa May Alcott
... other way. If Manning was cleared of the responsibility for the crash, he was free, and it would not show up against his record. If he wasn't, however, then he'd have to pay. Yes, thought Connel to himself, as Stefens' voice began to crackle harshly on the audiograph, if Manning was guilty, then Manning would most certainly pay. Connel would ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... a snail's pace, as it seemed to those anxious men—the space narrowed between the bergs and the ships; the grinding crash and crackle of the ice grew momentarily more loud and distracting; the freezing wind from the bergs cut their faces like an invisible razor as it swept down upon them in sudden powerful gusts, apparently intent upon retarding their progress ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... roar and crackle of the fire and the crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks and stones. * * * It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for by this time nearly everyone had recovered from the shock ...
— The California Birthday Book • Various
... Crackle the laurels under the pot; Thrice I stir, thrice I chant the mystic number three. Who shall withstand the philtre Endora of Hecate brews? Simmer, ye potion! Brew, ye philtre! Spirits of Hades, draw out the essence Of fish and beasts, birds and men! Make ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... minutes it would all be gone. Out of the mists behind them rose the shapes of war canoes not far away, and the fierce triumphant yell that swept far over the river sent a chill to Paul's very marrow. Once again rose the rifle fire, and it was now a rapid and steady crackle, but the bullets thudded in vain on the ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... careful look-out from behind an immense projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not one leopard, but two. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report of his rifle. Another report followed sharp and quick. We were ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... on the sofa watching Smith, who stood before me. He had not changed countenance and seemed neither troubled nor surprised; but two drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, and I heard an ivory counter crackle between his fingers, the pieces falling to the floor. He held out ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... quick!" commanded Mac Strann, and they started hastily down the barn towards the door. The fire behind them, after the puff of flame from the hay, had died away to a ghastly and irregular glow with the crackle of the slowly catching wood. It gave small light to guide them; only enough, indeed, to deceive the eye. The posts of the stalls grew into vast, shadowy images; the irregularities of the floor became high places and pits alternately. But ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... upward. They lick the bare sticks put ready for them, and climb over the logs until they reach the figure of Guy Fawkes himself, a stuffed figure like a scarecrow, which stands at the highest point. The flames crackle gaily; the heat is in contrast with the fresh air of the November evening; all the people standing by look strange and unlike themselves with that weird glow on their faces. Then Guy's hands curl up, an ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... of all, there was the crackle of a little volley, and the faces of the fierce warriors were for a moment illumined, efforts being made to strengthen the position by dragging a charpoy across, planting a second upon the first, and heaping thereon everything that could ...
— Fix Bay'nets - The Regiment in the Hills • George Manville Fenn
... noise outside. The crackle of musketry was more noticeable, and every now and then there seemed to be heavy strokes as if directed against the palace, sounding as if the people were attempting to force the iron gate of the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... that had been Aunt Margaret's in the past, that spoke of their old happy life in France. He spread an embroidered cloth on the floor and pitched his treasure trove into it—working feverishly, choking and gasping, until the flames began to crackle through the wall, and the ceiling above him split across. Then he plunged through the window, and staggered across the lawn with his burden—falling beside it at last, spent and breathless, his throat parched with smoke, and his eyes ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... one firm decision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches will not serve; hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates that ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... tameness is shocking to me." It is the world of "big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost, crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting ground of the Indians, and not ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... or dagger. We like to picture this small room, fitted with solid, rude furniture, monastic in its austerity of appearance; full of students working eagerly in their quest for knowledge— making extracts in pencil, or with styles on their tablets, amid a silence broken only by the crackle of vellum leaves, and ...
— Old English Libraries, The Making, Collection, and Use of Books • Ernest A. Savage
... buds. The moose returned from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... little grand sometimes, and in hopes of having a fine Yule log, both brothers strove with all their might till, between pulling and pushing, the great old root was safe on the hearth, and soon began to crackle and blaze with the red embers. In high glee, the cobblers sat down to their beer and bacon. The door was shut, for there was nothing but cold moonlight and snow outside. But the hut, strewn with fir branches, and decked with holly, looked cheerful ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... drove out of the wood, the rustle of the leaves under his wheels changed from the soft murmurs in the moist hollows to the crisp crackle in the open places. In the west Venus hung silver white over the new moon, and below the star and the crescent a single pine tree stood as clearly defined as if it were pasted on a ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... was all ablaze and escape that way was impossible, so I picked up a chair and slammed it through the window over the table, and climbed out taking a loose set of instruments with me. The wires were still working, and above the crackle of the flames I heard "DS" still calling me. I reached in through ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... see the smoke coming through the roof of a house and the flames breaking out of the windows to know that the building is on fire. Hark! There is a quiet, steady, unobtrusive, crisp, not loud, but very knowing little creeping crackle that is tolerably intelligible. There is a whiff of something floating about, suggestive of toasting shingles. Also a sharp pyroligneous-acid pungency in the air that stings one's eyes. Let us get up and see what is going ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... a little bushy hillock just outside a village. But occasionally, it was difficult to say from which direction, came the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and beyond, the far-off thud of cannon. The afternoon was ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... the air, and although it was three o'clock in the afternoon the light was fading, when Charnock opened the door of the caboose. A bitter wind rushed past him and eddied about the car, making the stove crackle. The iron was red-hot in places and a fierce twinkle shone out beneath the rattling door. Half-seen men lay in the bunks along the shadowy wall, tools jingled upon the throbbing boards, but the motion was gentler than usual and the wheels ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... flash ran along the line of hills close in the foreground where, an instant before, had been only empty ground. There was a sharp crackle, a strident hum and then the muffled plop of bullets burying themselves in the earth six hundred feet in the rear. The Nig grew taut in every muscle; then she edged slowly towards the huge khaki-colored horse that bore the Captain, and, for ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... don't know how long, all dead asleep. At last it seemed to me that I heard a noise in my sleep, something like a thing moving, very faint, however, far away; then it died, and then it came again upon my ear as I slept, and now it appeared almost as if I heard crackle, crackle; then it died again, or I became yet more dead asleep than before, I know not which, but I certainly lay some time without hearing it. All of a sudden I became awake, and there was I, on the ridge of the hill, ...
— The Pocket George Borrow • George Borrow
... whereon is the Count.' So off we go to Doolittle's Wharf, and there we find a man in an office. From him we inquire of the goings of the Czarina Catherine. He swear much, and he red face and loud of voice, but he good fellow all the same. And when Quincey give him something from his pocket which crackle as he roll it up, and put it in a so small bag which he have hid deep in his clothing, he still better fellow and humble servant to us. He come with us, and ask many men who are rough and hot. These be better fellows too when ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... to reach the Eiffel Tower, and from its base would come sharp reports, at the same time that the different platforms spit out a fierce stream of shrapnel. As it zigzagged over the city, the discharge of rifles would crackle from roof and street. Everyone that had arms in his house was firing—the soldiers of the guard, and the English and Belgians on their way through Paris. They knew that their shots were perfectly useless, but they were firing for ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... the ground, but moves silently among the leaves and litter of old ferns, such as are found near ponds and streams. A stick will crackle perhaps, and thus draw your attention to him. When he knows that he is seen, he will flip his wings and flirt his tail, like suddenly opening and shutting a fan, as he flits on before you with his head on one side, giving ...
— Citizen Bird • Mabel Osgood Wright and Elliott Coues
... the highway, we could see through the trees the whitewashed walls and red pottery roofs of Weerde, while a short distance to the right, in a heavily wooded park, was a large stone chateau. The only sign that the town was occupied was a pall of blue-grey vapour which hung over it and a continuous crackle of musketry coming from it, though occasionally, through my glasses, I could catch glimpses of the lean muzzles of machine-guns protruding from the upper ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... the sea, and immediately a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing as of a thousand serpents. We felt the strong suction under our keel, and staggered under the jerk of the ship's cable as she swung toward the beach. The paint was beginning to crackle along the rail. We could see nothing for the scalding white veil that enveloped us; we could hear nothing for the roar of steam, the bombardment of explosions, and the crash of thunder; but our nostrils were assaulted by a most ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... physician, "Go your ways!" and is, as it were, a standard which Death plants on his conquests. He clutched in one hand his pen, his poor last pen, inky and ragged, in the other a crust of his last piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death in the room as a practised sailor recognises the tempest in the whistle of the ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... themselves heard on the floors above. Roused by the merry crackle of occasional china, the house party was bestirring itself to investigate. Voices sounded, ...
— Something New • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... outer line we ward A crackle of skirmishing goes on. Our lads creep round on hand and knee, They fight from behind each trunk and stone; And sometimes, flying for refuge, one Finds 'tis an enemy shares the tree. Some scores are maimed by boughs shot off In the glades by the Fort's big gun. We mourn the loss of colonel Morrison, ...
— Battle-Pieces and Aspects of the War • Herman Melville
... up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one hand over the draft, that the fire might not ignite too rapidly, and crept out of the cellar. Any person awake in the house, might have traced the dark progress of this woman by a faint crackle, and the sparks that shot now and then up through the black mass of coal, which was kindling so fast, that the hand which she still kept upon the draft ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... then the English guns roared out in a well-sustained cannonade in which every shot told. It was the first of modern naval battles, the fights decided by gunfire, not by hand-to-hand conflict on the decks. The Spaniards answered back with their lighter and more slowly served artillery, and with a crackle of musketry fire. Before noon the Spanish cannon were mostly silent, for sheer lack of ammunition, and the galleons defended themselves only with musket and arquebuse, while striving in vain to close and grapple with their enemies. Spars and rigging were badly cut up, shots between wind ...
— Famous Sea Fights - From Salamis to Tsu-Shima • John Richard Hale
... an unheard song, and the pleasant hum of her spinning broke delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace, as if knowing it marked eternal hours. The flames waved softly upward without their former crackle and sheen; and the moving shadows were gentle and rhythmic ones come to keep the soul company. Amelia felt her ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... piece from the same factory," continued he, selecting a second specimen from the cabinet. "This is a copy of the Chinese 'conventional dog,' made of blue 'crackle-ware.' You see, the glaze is cracked all ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... cups and spoons is crown'd, The berries crackle, and the mill turns round; On shining altars of Japan they raise The silver lamp; the fiery spirits blaze: From silver spouts the grateful liquors glide, While China's earth receives the smoking tide: 110 At once they gratify their scent and taste, And frequent cups prolong the ...
— The Poetical Works Of Alexander Pope, Vol. 1 • Alexander Pope et al
... strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff beneath ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... trooper was moving on, the noise above became sharper. There was a slight crackle. The linen roofing sagged under a burden, and Drew caught his breath in a gasp. Miraculously the yellow cloth supported the object—a bulge as big as a saddlebag. A portion of the roof which had ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... Fracasse's trench and yet not to neglect the fair targets of the reserves advancing by rushes to the support of the 128th. Reinforced, the gray streak at the bottom of the slope poured in a heavier fire. Above the steady crackle of bullets sent and the whistle of bullets received rose the cry of "Doctor! Doctor!" which meant each time that another Brown rifle had been silenced. The litter bearers, hard pressed to remove ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer
... have a respect for it. Uncle Tim, do you just give Mrs. Barclay some of the best of that pig, and let us see how she likes it. And the stuffing, uncle Tim, and the gravy; and plenty of the crackle. Mother, it's done just as you ...
— Nobody • Susan Warner
... her by the arm, just as any man might have done, and led her to the fire that was beginning to crackle cheerfully. He set her down on the side where the smoke would be least likely to blow her way and proceeded to dress the grouse, stripping off skin and feathers together. He unrolled the slicker and laid out a piece of bacon, a package of coffee, a small coffeepot, bannock ...
— The Quirt • B.M. Bower
... British infantry retiring—a terrible sight, no matter how small the loss or how wise the order given. Chiefly they were the 60th (K.R.R.) and the Leicesters. I believe the Dublins were there too. Behind them the enemy kept up the incessant crackle ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river that the gay crackle of them ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... every few seconds little croaks of hate. Three telephone operators were working with strained faces at their highest speed. The windows had been smashed by shrapnel, and bits of glass and things crunched under foot. The room was full of noises—the crackle of the telephones, the crooning of the woman, the croak of the wounded old man, the clear and incisive tones of the general and his brigade-major, the rattle of not too distant rifles, the booming of guns and occasionally the terrific, overwhelming crash of a shell bursting ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... utter mystification; his second was more corporeal: the consciousness of physical misery, of consuming fever, of aches that ran over his whole body, converging to a dreadful climax in his head, of a throat so immoderately partched it seemed to crackle, and a thirst so avid it was a passion. His eye fell upon a carafe of water on a chair at his bedside; he seized upon it with a shaking hand and drank half its contents before he set it down. The action attracted ...
— His Own People • Booth Tarkington
... reached all the way to his house. As he watched the rapid manner in which the fire extended, he saw that no time was to be lost. Fast as his horse galloped, the flames went faster, leaping as it were from tree to tree with a loud roar and crackle, the thick smoke forming a black cloud overhead, while kangaroos and other animals rushed out of the bush to find safety in the open country. Had Joseph been able to venture through the forest he would soon have reached his hut, but he had ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... paid the cabman and went up his stairs, he could not shake off his dreaminess; he saw the flames catching the village, and the forest beginning to crackle and smoke. A huge, wild bear frantic with terror rushed through the village. . . . And the girl tied to the saddle was ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... to hum and crackle from coil to coil again. The invisible weight that pressed down was released as once more the giant planet's gravity was nullified. The Rogans got eagerly to their feet and began to race toward Brand in ...
— The Red Hell of Jupiter • Paul Ernst
... cottage, squatting among the four giant masts, came the roar of a forest fire. One could hear the crackle of the flames, the crash of the falling tree-trunks. The air about the cottage was torn into threads; beneath the shocks of the electricity the lawn seemed to heave and tremble. It was like some giant monster, bound and fettered, struggling to be free. Now it growled sullenly, ...
— The Lost Road • Richard Harding Davis
... all winter. They live right opposite, and sit in the windows, drawing and writing. Dorris keeps house up there in two rooms. The little one is her bedroom; and Mr. Kincaid sleeps on the big sofa. Dorris makes crackle-cakes, and asks us over. She cooks with a little gas-stove. I think it is beautiful to keep house with not very much money. She goes out with a cunning white basket and buys her things; and she does all her work up in a corner on a white table, with a piece of oil-cloth on the ...
— Real Folks • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... exclaimed Hassan, quietly. "We have, indeed, met with good fortune." Again we heard the brushwood crackle, and a second man, resembling the first in appearance and dress, came forward, and together they held a conversation, interspersed largely with the gestures which play so prominent a part in the language ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... simple human life. The paintings are neither allegorical nor photographic, but highly interpretative of the luxuriant picturesqueness of nature and the everyday labors of man. The luminosity of color, dash and daring of contrast, fairly crackle with life and yet have rich depths of quietness. The two panels of Earth glow with the earth's abundance. The first, the "Fruit Pickers," here shown, in which harvesters gather fruits from high trees and the laden ground, is notable for its marvelous massing of composition and ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... he heard the crackle of musketry and saw the Seine running grey under the lowering smoke-cloud of burning Paris. Red uniforms appeared on the Quai de l'Ecole. The Pont-au-Change was thick with federes. Not knowing where to fly, he was for going ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... to hear the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and artillery on my right opened fire on the German position, and then the heavy boom, boom of the guns from the sea. Looking in that direction, I discerned several of our battleships opening fire, the shells giving a fearful ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... to the sound produced in a really big pitched battle. But it was confusing enough, and, what with the baffling effect of the cross-fire, the whining in the air, and the continuous noise of the explosions, the rattle and crackle of musketry, the galloping hither and thither of orderlies and messengers, and the unpleasantness resulting from the whole thing's happening in so small an area, provided excitement enough to satisfy the ...
— The Relief of Mafeking • Filson Young
... to court the danger and the excitement that was promised. For days they had had no fighting worthy the name. Amigos everywhere, villages peopled only by women and children, treacherous peacefulness on every side; this had been their encounter: an occasional rifle shot from the rice fields, a crackle of guns far ahead, a prisoner or two who had not been quick enough in transforming himself from combatant to friend, that was all. Now, there seemed to ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... lofty woods are thrown On diff'rent sides, and both by winds are blown; The laurels crackle in the sputt'ring fire; The frighted sylvans from their shades retire: Or as two neighb'ring torrents fall from high; Rapid they run; the foamy waters fry; They roll to sea with unresisted force, And down ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... before the eyes of Tom and Ned, the fire seemed to die out as a picture melts away on a moving picture screen. The smoke rolled away in a ball-like cloud, and the flames ceased to crackle and roar. ...
— Tom Swift among the Fire Fighters - or, Battling with Flames from the Air • Victor Appleton
... There is a great jar full of autumn branches and berries in one corner that sends out a sort of sunset radiance, and a cabinet of china and various curious matters. But the fire of logs is the crowning glory. The light dances and shimmers, the logs crackle and send up glowing sparks, the easy-chairs look tempting. They are all in the midst of an animated discussion when the carriage drives around. At the last moment Mrs. Grandon has given out with a convenient ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... appeared fully to partake of his terror; for after dancing about, and causing the branches to crackle, the animal at length broke away from its fastenings, and, galloping off, joined company with the horses of Costal and Clara that stood nearer the edge ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... the Dialogue is cut short by sudden musket-shots from the woody fields to right; crackle of about twelve shots in all; which hurt nothing but some horse's feet,—had been aimed at the light, and too low. Instantly the light is blown out, and there is a hunting out of Croats; Lissa or environs not evacuated yet, it seems; and the ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVIII. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—Seven-Years War Rises to a Height.—1757-1759. • Thomas Carlyle
... to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods against the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... counterpart of that to Bayonne. We fly smoothly on, above its hard, thin crackle of sand. We meet peasants afoot, and burdened horses, on their morning way to Biarritz or Bayonne. The men ornament their loose, blue linen frocks and brown trousers with the bright scarlet sash so popular in this ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... marine habits and forms, or to assume terrestrial ones;—and the occasional inspection of surprising shapes might strengthen this fancy. Queer flat-lying and many-branching things, which resemble sea-weeds in juiciness and color and consistency, crackle under your feet from time to time; the moist and weighty air seems heated rather from below than from above,—less by the sun than by the radiation of a cooling world; and the mists of morning or evening ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... conflagration, the black smoke covering half the heavens. The hawks and the crows fled before it, swooping down on the vermin that were forced to leave the shelter of log and bush. The great silence that had reigned for so long was broken by the roar, and crash, and crackle of a sea of flames; and beneath this fiery blast every vestige of the lost explorers ...
— The History of Australian Exploration from 1788 to 1888 • Ernest Favenc
... was only the crackle of an open mike and the sound of breathing. "That is your decision," he said finally. "I'll have a ship standing by. But won't you let us take Miss ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... all and all, America is a trying place of sojourn for the aforesaid canny Scot—the man who without being stingy (oh, dear, no!) has "all his generous impulses under perfect control." The sixpences do not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot from a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fare is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes inappreciable when you don't want to ride more than half a mile. ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... uttered a shout of rage, and made the boat leap through the water as now, in addition to the sharp crackle of the Winchesters, they heard the heavier report of a Snider, and Harvey, jumping up on the after whaleback, and steadying himself with one hand on Atkins's shoulder, saw that only two or three of Oliver's crew were now paddling—the rest had ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... our own, fancied the girl's fair countenance. I was to join them in a week or two,—not yet, because I had wished to send home the screens painted on white velvet, and they wanted yet a sennight's work, and I knew Mrs. Strathsay would be proud of them before the crackle of the autumn fires. The maids ran hither and yon, and the bells pealed, and the knocker clashed, and the coaches rolled away over the stone pave of the court-yard, and there was embracing and jesting and crying, when suddenly all the pleasant hubbub stood still, for ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Black Rifle, uttering fierce shouts, was leading a strong attack in the center. The firing was now rapid and much heavier than it had been at any time before. Flashes of flame appeared everywhere in the thicket. Above the crackle of rifles and muskets swelled the long thrilling war cry of the Mohawks, and back in fierce defiance came the yells of ...
— The Shadow of the North - A Story of Old New York and a Lost Campaign • Joseph A. Altsheler
... and then their Wings and Legs would fall off, and their Heads and Backs would turn red like boil'd Shrimps, being before brownish. Their Bodies being full, would eat very moist, their Heads would crackle, in one's Teeth. I did eat once of this Dish, and liked it well enough; but their other Dish my Stomach would ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898—Volume 39 of 55 • Various
... the Cocotte above him began to crackle and blaze. Plip-plop-plank! the bullets smacked all about him. He was under fire and he didn't like it. He wanted to dodge under the bulwark and lie there; but he daren't. So he ran breathlessly, skipping as a bullet spanked ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... Thornton had been slow to grasp the fact that his rival was making hints that both affronted and threatened. His conscience accused him of nothing. He felt the crackle of paper in his breast-pocket. He promptly suspected that Linton had gleaned a hint of the proposed legislation which ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... energy. For every lump of coal in your scuttles may be a parable; black and heavy, it is cast into the fire, and there it is turned into the likeness of the flame which it catches and itself begins to glow, and redden, and crackle, and break into a blaze. That is like what you and I may experience if we will. The incense rises in smoke to the heavens when it is heated: and our souls aspire and ascend, an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable to God, when the fire of that Divine Spirit has loosed them from the bonds ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... walked idly through the garden, and entered the kitchen again. Presently Tom heard the crackle of branches, and Jasper, his eyes and mouth wide ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... been the heart of Paris. It was one of the few houses left in this quarter with a large garden. And the traffic passing in and out of the Ruelle St. Jacob went slipshod on its own feet. The busy crackle of the wood was the only sound to break a silence which seemed part of this vast ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... several of the fellows did not know a single thing until they were rudely aroused, perhaps some hours later on. The last thing Steve remembered hearing as he rolled himself up in his blanket was the crackle of the fire, the mournful sighing of the wind through the tops of the whispering pines, and then the distant call of an ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... little harshly to himself. So far, so good—but the game was not ended yet for all the crackle of the crisp notes in his pocket. There was still the map, still the robbery at Mittel's house—the ten-thousand-dollar "theft" would not in any way change that, and it was a question of time now to forestall any move the Weasel ...
— The Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... saved! But the thought had scarcely crossed his mind before it seemed to him that a blinding crackle of sparks burst out along the whole slope below the wall, a characteristic yell which he knew too well rang in his ears, and an undulating line of dusty figures came leaping like gray wolves out of the mist upon his pickets. He heard the shouts ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... midnight she began to be worried. Just then the light went out. Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with her motion. ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... joy of humanity. Surprise is the first reason for a baby's laughter. And at Christmas time, when we are all a little childish I hope, surprise is the flavor of our keenest joys. We all remember the thrill with which we once heard, behind some closed door, the rustle and crackle of paper parcels being tied up. We knew that we were going to be surprised—a delicious refinement and ...
— Mince Pie • Christopher Darlington Morley
... cleared, I saw the enemy's foreyard was gone and her sides streaked and splintered by our shot, and from our decks rose shouts of fierce exultation, drowned in the answering thunder of their starboard broadside, the hiss of their shot all round about us, the crackle of riven woodwork, the vicious whirr of flying splinters, wails and ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... mightn't have got all these bright pictures, but you wouldn't have had these 'ere gloomy ideas. I don't say as how I don't hold with Gawd," he explained, with uplifted forefinger and cocked head; "but if ever I thinks of Him, I like to feel that He's in the wind or in the crickle-crackle of the earth, just near and friendly like, but not a-worrying of a chap, listening for every cuss-word as he uses to his old horse, and measuring every half-pint he pours down his dusty throat. No. That ain't my idea of Gawd. But then I ...
— The Fortunate Youth • William J. Locke
... promote that prospect she had through Susan's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied to the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would prove to have been the circumstance of one's being called a horrid low thief for refusing to part with one's own. The redeeming point of this tension was, on the fifth day, that it actually appeared to have had to do with a breathless perception ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... Champion's bat Seemed twice the breadth of postern door. The leather flew at pace immense To crackle on the boundary fence, Acknowledged by the public roar. Dobbin went on with Tweaks, Robin obliged with Sneaks, And Diccory Dizzard, as fast as a ...
— More Cricket Songs • Norman Gale
... Manning was cleared of the responsibility for the crash, he was free, and it would not show up against his record. If he wasn't, however, then he'd have to pay. Yes, thought Connel to himself, as Stefens' voice began to crackle harshly on the audiograph, if Manning was guilty, then Manning would most certainly pay. ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... shall I confide? Whose counsel find A balmy med'cine for my troubled mind? Or whose discourse with innocent delight Shall fill me now, and cheat the wint'ry night, While hisses on my hearth the pulpy pear, And black'ning chesnuts start and crackle there, While storms abroad the dreary meadows whelm, And the wind thunders thro' the neighb'ring elm? 70 Go, seek your home, my lambs; my thoughts are due To other cares than those of feeding you. Or who, when summer suns their summit reach, And Pan sleeps hidden ...
— Poemata (William Cowper, trans.) • John Milton
... grey tufts beneath his feet, and the thick, dusk-green branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic wood; nor was there any treacherous bramble to crackle beneath his feet. For upon this chill, grey carpet no flood of sunshine ever came to coax tiny sprays out of the ground; and the layers of fine needles, or tufts of dank, sunless moss were soft and noiseless as down under his tread. The stately trees grew far enough apart to allow him to move with ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... blue smoke-puffs broke out along the edge of the wood in front, succeeded by a crackle of rifles. There were keen, sharp hissings in the air, terminating abruptly with a thump near by. The man at Captain Graffenreid's side dropped his rifle; his knees gave way and he pitched awkwardly forward, falling ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... to the right and jolted over what seemed to be a shallow ditch. The road that followed was of the roughest character. If it was a road at all it was a wood-track; Evan heard the twigs crackle under the tires. They lurched and bumped alarmingly. Once they had to stop to allow the chauffeur to drag some obstruction out of the way. Evidently they had not had the car that way before, for ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... nurse," Margaret exclaimed. "I think though, the wireless one has a crackle the hospital brand lacks. Kitty's nurse was ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... ambulances, stragglers, and wounded men. I soon had to leave my horse, and then toiled upwards, finding everywhere streams of men winding about the almost precipitous sides of the mountain, and an intermittent crackle of musketry at the top. Only one solid battalion remained—the Dorsets. All the others were intermingled. Officers had collected little parties, companies and half-companies; here and there larger bodies ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... her head high and went about the school as if she were a princess royal and Margaret were the dust under her feet. Triumph sat upon her like a crown and looked forth regally from her eyes. She laid her hand upon her heart and felt the crackle of his letter inside her blouse. She dreamed with her eyes upon the distant mountain and thought of the tender names he had called her: "Little wild Rose of his heart," "No rose in all the world until you came," and a lot of other meaningful sentences. A ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... wrath that seemed to crackle in the young clansman's eyes stilled themselves and altered into something like tenderness as he moved with catlike softness of footfall to where the elder man sat, and let a hand fall on his ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... rose from the plain beneath, like the snarling of a sullen wild beast, and a little knot of tribesmen fell into a struggling heap, caught in the blast of lead from a Gardner. Their comrades pressed on over them, and sprang down into the ravine. From all along the crest burst the hard, sharp crackle of Remington fire. ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... thing good," answered his companion, shouldering the other prize. They descended the stairs. How the smoke had increased! They had been absent longer than they thought, and in that time the fire was rapidly advancing toward them. They heard a loud noise without, a shout rising above the crackle and roar of the flames. Then voices were heard at the foot of the stairs: "Come this way! Quick! Hurry!" As Will passed through the lower entry, he chanced to glance into the room whose door had been left open by the knight of the ax. A draft had been created, and Will could see ...
— The Knights of the White Shield - Up-the-Ladder Club Series, Round One Play • Edward A. Rand
... strong," exclaimed Mr. Morgan, after a few moments of silence, broken only by the crackle of paper. "Just ...
— The Slave Of The Lamp • Henry Seton Merriman
... wrought to an equality, and made subject to exact law,—as in this universe all irregularities are sure to be in the end. Thus, the thunder, which near at hand is a wild crash, or nearer yet a crazy crackle, is by distance deepened and refined into that marvellous bass which we all know. And doubtless the jars, the discords, and moral contradictions of time, however harsh and crazy at the outset, flow into exact undulation along the ether of eternity, and only as a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... phut jawe,' 'If it be a Telin, Tambolin, Mararin or Gondin who has cast the evil eye, may her eyes crack and fall out.' And at the same time they throw the mustard, chillies and salt on the fire so that the eyes of her who cast the evil eye may crack and fall out as these things crackle ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... Flames began to crackle, and in the glare Murguia was seen frantically driving burros and peons to safety. The leader of the troop leaned over in his saddle and had him by ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... pink letter made him reflect and guess, and turn things over in his mind, and wish himself at the devil—that little pink letter which he carried day and night on his breast and made it crackle as it lay there, when he laid his hand on the satin folds so near his heart! It had an odor of sweet violets which seemed to him to overpower the smell of pitch and of salt water, to fill the ...
— Jacqueline, Complete • (Mme. Blanc) Th. Bentzon
... esper, cried out as soon as she read this new menace in my mind. I rode the brakes easily and came to a stop long before we hit it. In back sounded a crackle of rifle fire; in front, three men came out waving their ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... the hair and make it cling to the teeth. Sometimes persons emit sparks in pulling off their flannels or silk stockings. The fur of a cat, or even of a garment, stroked in the dark with a warm dry hand will be seen to glow, and perhaps heard to crackle. During winter a person can electrify himself by shuffling in his slippers over the carpet, and light the gas with a spark from his finger. Glass and sealing-wax are, however, the most convenient means for investigating the ...
— The Story Of Electricity • John Munro
... but a few minutes of sunset. No further demonstration had occurred. Not an Indian had been seen within a radius of six miles, when, all on a sudden, there came a shot—then two, almost together, then a quick crackle and sputter of small-arms afar down the stream. "By Jove!" cried Bonner, from a perch by the lookout at the office. "They've opened on ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... a longish uphill walk to the trader's store, and the night fell while they were yet on the way. With the darkness came a breeze, cool and refreshing; the sky filled with sharp points of light, and the bush woke with a new life. The crackle of their boots on the stiff grass as they walked sent live things scattering to left and right, and once a night-adder hissed malevolently at the Frenchman's heel. They talked little as they went, but Mills noticed that now and again his companion appeared ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... one end of the room to the other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang. "There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his sides, "you can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the Winchester ...
— Cinderella - And Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... will to see—that is a known law of psychology. Electricity was a force in the world six thousand years before man really saw it. Now we hear it crackle in our hair and stir in our garments. By studying the conditions of its manifestation we are able to call it forth in giant power. So of these invisible ones—they are all about us, eager to bless, to prove their presence. ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... The sharp crackle of the musketry began in front, and still the Gatling Gun Detachment lay beside the road with the 71st, waiting, swearing, broiling, stewing in their own perspiration, mad with thirst, and crazed with the fever of the battle. The colonel of the 71st ...
— The Gatlings at Santiago • John H. Parker
... the son of Richard, and father of Duncan Yordas, with fierce satisfaction struck the bosom of his heavy Bradford riding-coat, and the crackle of parchment replied to the blow, while with the other hand he drew rein on the brink of the Tees ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... green earth to roam, Where sights of awe the soul inspire; But oh, it's best, the coming home, The crackle of one's own hearth-fire! You've hob-nobbed with the solemn Past; You've seen the pageantry of kings; Yet oh, how sweet to gain at last The peace and rest ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... kicked four grumbling men out of a four-by-seven hole on the second floor. Gordon's money had carried more weight than his brother's reputation; for that, Corey humored his guest's wish for privacy. "All yours, cobber, while your crackle's blue." ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... ain't waiting! No, no; you ain't waiting," mimicked Miss Krakow, and her voice was like autumn leaves that crackle underfoot. "Well, then, if you ain't waiting here he comes now. I dare you to come on home with me now, like you ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... reins to Duggan and obeyed. The cabin door was open, and he entered. One look assured him that Duggan had good reason to be "sot up." The first big room reminded him of the Shack. Beyond that was another room in which he heard someone moving and the crackle of a fire in a stove. Outside Duggan was whistling. He broke off whistling to sing, and as Keith listened to the river-man's bellowing voice chanting the words of the song he had sung at McCoffin's Bend for twenty years, he grinned. And ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... in this early visit indications of a runaway match. But they don't want to be married—'Only,' says the gentleman, 'to walk round the church.' And as he slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs Miff, her vinegary face relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry figure dip and crackle. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... rays of the sun, I had found time to read a long, dear letter from Richard Hall, and though I had transferred it from my pocket to my desk, while I dressed for the afternoon, its crackle was still in my mind. I wondered what it all meant, this dissatisfied longing that human beings send out across time and distance, one to ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... and soon they went indoors to a friendship fire in the stone fire-place. They watched the flames roar up the chimney, then crackle cheerily, and at last flicker away to little blue tongues, which died almost as soon as they were born. There was no other light in the cabin. Virginia had said that none was needed, and she did not notice the apprehensive glances which the other Vigilantes ...
— Virginia of Elk Creek Valley • Mary Ellen Chase
... Eden is the land before them, And after them it is a desolate desert, Yea, nothing escapes them. Their appearance is as the appearance of horses, And like horsemen they run. Like the sound of chariots on the tops of the mountains they leap, Like the crackle of flames devouring stubble, Like a mighty people preparing for battle. Peoples are in anguish before them, All faces glow ...
— The Makers and Teachers of Judaism • Charles Foster Kent
... one failure in what is perhaps his masterpiece, The Return of the Native, is in the words put into the mouth of Eustacia and Yeobright in the perfectly imagined scene before the mirror, a scene which should be the culminating scene of the book; and it is, all but the words: the words are crackle and tinsel. ...
— Figures of Several Centuries • Arthur Symons
... Some bodies give out flashes and sparks by being rubbed. If you stroke a black cat briskly in the dark, you will see faint flashes of light come from her fur; and on very cold nights in the winter season, flannels that are worn next the skin crackle, and give sparks when taken off ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... now across a brawling stream, now along a sunlit road, now adown some sweet forest path, over which the trees met in green and rustling canopy, and at the end of which a herd of startled deer dashed away, with rattle of leaves and crackle of branches. Onward they walked with song and jest and laughter till noontide was passed, when at last they came to the banks of a wide, glassy, and lily-padded stream. Here a broad, beaten path stretched ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... key being pushed into a drawer lock, the drawer pulled out, the chink of coin and the crackle of bank-notes. Then he heard ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... pointed his revolver—and again the expected match failed to crackle and flare. Slade stood silent for several seconds, holding his breath. But Lennon was no less still. The tense listener expelled his pent-up breath in a ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... a clear, crisp evening and freezing hard. He could feel the frost crackle under his feet, as he tramped along the ...
— The Upas Tree - A Christmas Story for all the Year • Florence L. Barclay
... we had every night was just as cheerful. Before the men came in out of the field, a large fagot was flung upon the fire. The wood used to crackle, and blaze, and smell delightfully. And then the crickets, who loved the fire, began to sing. The old shepherd loved the fire almost as well as the crickets did, and he would take his place in the chimney corner at supper time. He had a seat near the ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... which had been constantly flattered by triumph, brought, his whole nature into play with the prospect of the morrow: not much liking it either. There is a nerve, in brave warriors that does not like the battle before, the crackle of musketry is heard, and the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... the diminutive hall and went into the sitting-room, where the cheerful crackle of a small wood fire gave an air of comfort ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... spat and roared deafeningly. The thud of its paws shook the ground. It lashed out with monstrous claws that sliced his skin. Half-stunned, Jerry kept lunging toward it, till finally his cross touched its coarse hide. There was a crackle of blue flame, a shriek that split the night, and the thing disintegrated in roiling clouds of ...
— The Invaders • Benjamin Ferris
... faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness rolled back like ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... reached, where a narrow wooden bridge spanned the stream a few yards from its mouth. The advance-guard were half-way over the bridge, and the main body crowding after them, when, from a black ridge in front, the crackle of musketry arose, and half the advance-guard fell. The narrow stream ran red with their blood, and ever after this night it was known as Bloody Run. On the high ground to the north of the creek a barricade of cordwood had been erected, and behind this and behind ...
— The War Chief of the Ottawas - A Chronicle of the Pontiac War: Volume 15 (of 32) in the - series Chronicles of Canada • Thomas Guthrie Marquis
... china-hunters concerning, for instance, the difference between porcelain from Lowestoft and porcelain from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed so easily? Far from it. "This is real crackle," the collector insists, with more than a suspicion that ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... roof of the house fell in on the three young men above, and immediately buried them for ever in its destructive flames. The assailing crowds set up a terrific shout of triumph. The floor above now began to crackle, and so dense was the smoke below, that the old man and the woman were in a state little short of suffocation. At last the Proctor became desperate, and opening one of the ground windows, and taking his poor wife by the hand, he attempted to throw himself and her out through it. No ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... of the Italians could have improved upon the distribution and balance of this composition. The blazing background, the sense of a densely crowded host beyond what the eye can grasp, of captives and captors—all the stupendous crackle and roar and shout and sudden strained silence of Saul's immediate followers—is amply matched by those two typical protagonists, just then repeating the old drama with varying fortunes on the world's new stage. The Secular Arm has been short in the service of God, as interpreted by his Vicar; ...
— Holbein • Beatrice Fortescue
... they had some other design! Ha! what means that blue column slowly curling upward? It is smoke! See! Another and another—a dozen of them! From all sides they shoot upward, encircling the mound! Hark to those sounds! the "swish" of burning grass—the crackle of kindling sticks? They are making fires around us! The columns are at first filmy, but soon grow thicker and more dense. They spread out and join each other—they become attracted towards the rocky mass—they fall against its sides, and wreathing upward, wrap ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... Thus up the slope she went, enjoying already the vintage, And that festive day on which the whole country, rejoicing, Picks and tramples the grapes, and gathers the must into vessels: Fireworks, when it is evening, from every direction and corner Crackle and blaze, and so the fairest of harvests is honored. But more uneasy she went, her son after twice or thrice calling, And no answer receiving, except from the talkative echo, That with many repeats rang back from the towers of ...
— Hermann and Dorothea • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
... Albert touched the match to some pine shavings which were to form the kindling wood. The shavings caught, a light blaze leaped up, there came a warning crackle, and smoke, too, arose. Which way would it go? The little column wavered a moment and then shot straight up the chimney. It grew larger, but still shot straight up the chimney. The flames roared and were ...
— The Last of the Chiefs - A Story of the Great Sioux War • Joseph Altsheler
... were swirling down the passage, and the roar of the flames came nearer and Grant fancied he could hear the crackle of it. Chopini was on his knees clutching at the crevices in the wall; Hogan and Dooley dug with their hands into the chinks, then four men were on their feet, with the burden, and in the blackness, hands within the ...
— In the Heart of a Fool • William Allen White
... nothing so lovable as a coin. He is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs. And as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages are, when ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... questions, but for some moments could hardly hold my pen, so extreme was my nervousness; but when I once fairly began, my ideas crowded upon me almost faster than I could write them. And so we all sat, nothing heard but the scratching of the pens and the occasional crackle of the examiner's "Times" as he quietly looked over the news ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... stinging rain had lashed the drive into the semblance of a frothy estuary; all round the lightning jagged its course through the incessant tremulous glow of more distant lightning, while the thunder only ceased its muttering to turn at close quarters and crackle viciously. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... to the Otto home very early of a morning, or in the dusk of evening. Very frequently he was filled with a desire to stand outside the red-and-white striped walls of the tent-house and listen unseen. Inside there was always cheer: at night the crackle of fire and the glow of light, the happy laughter of the gentle-hearted Scotchwoman, and the affectionate banter of her "big mountain man," who looked more like a brigand than the luckiest and most contented husband in the mountains—the luckiest, ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the end further from the main building, was a small hobbed grate. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals, and was now lighting a fire, of which the paper was flaming high and the wood began already to crackle. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... which tore through them from every direction; bursting shells set fire to the woods, suffocating the wounded or burning them to death; wild charges were made, ending in wilder stampedes or bloody repulses; the crackle of flames rose high above the pandemonium of battle and dense smoke-clouds drifted chokingly above this hideous carnival of death. Thus for two days the armies staggered backward and forward with no result save a horrible loss of life. Once ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... need us to help them. Only to send a message," was the reply, as the wireless spark began to crackle again. "We are telling the Government about her plight and a revenue cutter will be sent out to tow the schooner into some near port. She has drifted a good way off shore, but the weather is settled and there is nothing ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... everything assumed gigantic and menacing shapes—the clock, the pot-pourri bowls, the window-curtains, and the brass rods on the stairs. In the room there was that grey half-light that seemed so terrible, and the spurt and crackle of the fire seemed to fill the place with sounds. He scarcely saw his grandfather. In the centre of the bed, something was lying; the eyes gleamed for a moment in the light of the fire, the lips seemed to move. But he did not realise that those ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... P.M. General Weitzel's brigade attacked, and after a severe fight, drove the Rebels out of the woods. While this was going on our right, we could hear the yells, hurrahs and the crackle of musketry, roar of artillery and many other concomitants of the fight, but could see but little. Consequently we stood and fidgeted round not knowing when ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... September, Friedrich crosses the Elbe at Jaromirz. Entirely unopposed; the Austrians were all busy firing FEU-DE-JOIE for the Election of their Grand-Duke: Election done five days ago at Frankfurt, and the news just come. So they crackle about, and deliver rolling fire, at a great rate; proud to be "IMPERIAL Army" henceforth, as if that could do much for them. There was also vast dining, for three days, among the high heads, and a great deal of wine spent. That probably would have been the chance to undertake ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... he would go his way, ruffling out his cravat with a crackle of starch, like a turkey ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... breastplate of a damascened suit of Milanese armour glittered in one corner; loves and nymphs of porcelain, Chinese grotesques, vases of celadon and crackle-ware, Saxon and old Sevres cups encumbered the shelves ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery In Four Volumes - Mystic-Humorous Stories • Various
... dark and dismal; its occupants were hurried up a stairway and into a room filled with law-books, where a sleepy Justice of the Peace was nodding in a cloud of cigar smoke. There followed a noisy shuffling of chairs, some mumbled questions and answers, the crackle of papers, a deal of unintelligible rigamarole, then a man's heavy seal-ring was slipped upon Lorelei's finger, and she knew herself to be Mrs. Robert Wharton. It was all confused, unimpressive, unreal. She was never able fully to recall the picture of that room ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... luxury when, at the close of a toilsome day, a few pieces of bark could be so piled as to protect from wind and rain, and a roaring fire could blaze and crackle before the little camp. Then the appetite which hunger gives would enable him to feast upon the tender cuts of venison broiled upon the coals, with more satisfaction than the gourmand takes in the choicest viands of the restaurant. Having feasted ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... at their backs, driving the great world-plough which wins the world's bread up and up over the shoulder of the world—a spectacle, as it might be, out of some tremendous Norse legend. North of them lies Niflheim's enduring cold, with the flick and crackle of the Aurora for Bifrost Bridge that Odin and the Aesir visited. These people also go north year by year, and drag audacious railways with them. Sometimes they burst into good wheat or timber land, sometimes into mines of treasure, and all the North is foil of voices—as South ...
— Letters of Travel (1892-1913) • Rudyard Kipling
... old ship was finished and had sailed at last and for once our wireless plant up there began to get messages from the sea. I dreamed I was sitting up there with the operator. It was a dark, stormy night. The wireless began to crackle. He jumped up to see what was coming. He was getting messages from our own ship, away out there on the ocean. She was calling for help. 'Sinking fast,—sinking fast,—sinking fast.' Over and over ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... to go on, he spat speculatively. There was a sharp, explosive crackle that startled him. He spat again. And again, in the air, before it could fall to the snow, the spittle crackled. He knew that at fifty below spittle crackled on the snow, but this spittle had crackled in the air. Undoubtedly it was colder than fifty below—how much ...
— Lost Face • Jack London
... canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was in plain ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log, shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... display. He knew how to distinguish, and how to commend, the qualities of his companion; but, when he wishes to make us weep, he forgets to weep himself, and diverts his sorrow by imagining how his crown of bays, if he had it, would crackle in the fire. It is the odd fate of this thought to be the worse for being true. The bay-leaf crackles remarkably as it burns; as, therefore, this property was not assigned it by chance, the mind must be thought sufficiently at ease that could attend to such minuteness ...
— Lives of the Poets, Vol. 1 • Samuel Johnson
... the sun, I had found time to read a long, dear letter from Richard Hall, and though I had transferred it from my pocket to my desk, while I dressed for the afternoon, its crackle was still in my mind. I wondered what it all meant, this dissatisfied longing that human beings send out across time and distance, one ...
— The Tinder-Box • Maria Thompson Daviess
... fiercely than a fire in daylight. She heard wild voices singing; on still days she saw the trees in Knapp Forest bent to a furious wind. When Mabilla crept up the fell on noiseless feet to spy for Andrew King, Bessie Prawle heard the bents hiss and crackle under her, as if she set ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... landing, in the darkness, sipping our first tot of rum. Our hearts were merry, for had we not just heard that Achi Baba had fallen, that Bulgaria and Roumania had declared war on Turkey, and that the crackle of musketry to the north-east was due to certain Boers who were swarming up the heights overhanging the Kishlar Rocks? She must be a woman of temperament, Rumour, for when she smiles she is so charming; but when she frowns, ...
— In Mesopotamia • Martin Swayne
... woods shot a beam of the greenish-red light. It darted to and fro for an instant, almost vertically in the air, and Mercer heard the crackle of the tree-tops as they burst into flame under its heat. Then it swung downward, but before it could reach the water level the rise of ground at ...
— The Fire People • Ray Cummings
... saw you get so much—so much fun out of your food. I've heard about gourmands. I think I can guess now what they are and act like. Hark! What's that noise? Kind of a crackle, as if a cat or something was overhead among those vines. I hope it isn't. Cats love fish. I always have to shut up Lady Rosalind when Mother Martha has it for dinner. Isn't 'finnan ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... and again worked over Jean, so that, when the fire had begun to crackle and give out heat, he saw the upturned eyes swim down, and the blessed look of consciousness take the place of terrible blankness. Then, with a sob of joy, he gathered her in his arms, and laid her down in the zone of life-giving ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... speculations in land, cities undertaken and built by sheer force of millions, trains launched at full speed over bridges built on a Babel-like sweep of arch, the creaking of cable cars, the quivering of electric cars, sliding along their wires with a crackle and a spark, the dizzy ascent of elevators, in buildings twenty stories high, immense wheat-fields of the West, its ranches, mines, colossal slaughter-houses,—all the formidable traffic of this country of effort and struggle, all its labor,—these are what have made possible this ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... were two flying bodies headed toward the gully's bottom. Corporal Noll Terry, standing there, had heard the ominous crackle of ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys as Sergeants - or, Handling Their First Real Commands • H. Irving Hancock
... paintings are neither allegorical nor photographic, but highly interpretative of the luxuriant picturesqueness of nature and the everyday labors of man. The luminosity of color, dash and daring of contrast, fairly crackle with life and yet have rich depths of quietness. The two panels of Earth glow with the earth's abundance. The first, the "Fruit Pickers," here shown, in which harvesters gather fruits from high trees ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... afire!" caught up by a hundred throats, And over the roar the captain shouting to lower the boats; Then cry upon cry, and curses, and the crackle of burning wood, And the place grew hot as a furnace, I could feel it where ...
— Poems Teachers Ask For, Book Two • Various
... possessed of esper, cried out as soon as she read this new menace in my mind. I rode the brakes easily and came to a stop long before we hit it. In back sounded a crackle of rifle fire; in front, three men came out waving their rifles ...
— Highways in Hiding • George Oliver Smith
... when fortunately, as it seemed to Hale, the character of the storm changed. The snow no longer fell in such large flakes, nor as heavily. A bitter wind succeeded; the soft snow began to stiffen and crackle under the horses' hoofs; they were no longer weighted and encumbered by the drifts upon their bodies; the smaller flakes now rustled and rasped against them like sand, or bounded from them like hail. They seemed to be moving more easily and rapidly, their ...
— Snow-Bound at Eagle's • Bret Harte
... and from the smoking-car drifts back a visible blue line of stinging tobacco smoke, and with it a crackle of laughter over the story which the young man in the bright blue suit and lavender tie and light yellow shoes has just told to the squat man in ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... in and out as if the long low windows were monstrous dragons' mouths, from which the darting forks came to play over golden stony lips, and lick the mullions and buttresses around. Then came a fresh explosion, as pent-up gases, generated by heat, burst forth to augment the fire with hiss, crackle, and flutter, as it seemed to gain its climax, and then sank down with a low ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... forest arcades the clearing which he must cross to reach the spot where he was expected. The angry barks of the wolves had increased during the last quarter of an hour, and the sound of their paws making the snow crackle inspired the old man with an indescribable terror. The number of animals seemed momentarily to be augmented; it resembled an ant-heap seen through the magnifying-glass of a ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... night when the palace-guard Had passed the measured rounds, The young princess awoke to feel A shudder of blood at the crackle of steel Within ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... or to assume terrestrial ones;—and the occasional inspection of surprising shapes might strengthen this fancy. Queer flat-lying and many-branching things, which resemble sea-weeds in juiciness and color and consistency, crackle under your feet from time to time; the moist and weighty air seems heated rather from below than from above,—less by the sun than by the radiation of a cooling world; and the mists of morning or evening appear to simulate the vapory exhalation of volcanic forces,—latent, but ...
— Chita: A Memory of Last Island • Lafcadio Hearn
... muffled sound, that was lost in the song of the pines a few score yards from Alton's camp. He knew where to find the resinous knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood still and listened again before he went down to the river with the kettle. Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a moment behind a wide-girthed trunk. It was only a deer he heard moving along the hillside above him, and there was nothing visible ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... substances, when heated, have this property. Some bodies give out flashes and sparks by being rubbed. If you stroke a black cat briskly in the dark, you will see faint flashes of light come from her fur; and on very cold nights in the winter season, flannels that are worn next the skin crackle, and give sparks when taken off ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... dinner and he was himself again and would have spoken alone with me, I ran and got on my horse, and all the brothers stood on the corridor to see me go. He came up to me and blessed me, and whispered: 'Tell no one, my son. If you do'—and he gave me a look that made my hair crackle at the roots. And to this day I have told no one. Did I tell my parents the priest would know in six hours. No boy has stayed here that ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... writhed, I heard him cry, I felt the life-light leap and lie, I saw him crackle there, on high, I ...
— Darkwater - Voices From Within The Veil • W. E. B. Du Bois
... big bucket of water, which they always kept in a certain spot. She flung the water on the flames, but water will not quench the flames made from oil. The rail began to crackle, the sparks to fly. The "Merry Maid" was afire, with only one, feeble girl to ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... have a fire in the fireplace, then we can have a crackle of our own." He had noticed how nervous Mrs. Reece grew, and that the little girls were watching her. He could not help thinking that it was foolish, even wicked, to waste strength in fear of something which no one of them could stop. "Build a ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... cracking on both sides, and the bullets with furious spat drove deep into the adobe or whizzed through the gunny-sacks into the barley. The unseen foe was once more investing them on every side and not a shot could be wasted in return. Once more the furious crackle and roar of flames was heard close at hand, and then the smoke grew thicker, the heat increased, and poor Ned Harvey, his eyes smarting, knelt steadfast at his post and prayed, prayed for the coming ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... hills across the fields and captured the city streets with a blare of northern winds, which had been met and tempered by the mellow autumn breezes that had been slow to retreat and abandon the gold and crimson banners still fluttering on the trees. The snap and crackle of the Thanksgiving frost had melted into a long lazy silence of a few more Indian summer days so that, with lungs filled with the intoxicating draught of this late wine of October, everybody had ridden, driven, ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... anxiously grouped around the spot where Philips had fallen. At first, only the outline of a man of large stature and proportions could be seen lying in a cramped position, as if produced by some strong convulsive agony, and then when the fire began to kindle and crackle, the dress could be distinguished, and then as the light grew brighter, the scalpless head, and then the marked and distorted features of the murdered master of the house, who lay in a pool of blood that slowly trickled along the ...
— Hardscrabble - The Fall of Chicago: A Tale of Indian Warfare • John Richardson
... season, when the leaves and twigs crackle under foot, the rifle is as good as useless, for it becomes impossible to approach a deer within shooting range. And there are other times when ammunition is exhausted, and the trapper is thus forced to rely only on his traps for his supply of food. In such circumstances, the necessities ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... I heard the crash away off here, even with all that thunder from Big Berthas and the crackle of hundreds ...
— Air Service Boys Flying for Victory - or, Bombing the Last German Stronghold • Charles Amory Beach
... Lowestoft and porcelain from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed so easily? Far from it. "This is real crackle," the collector insists, with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his specimen; and then ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... of my remembrance I was disguised as a midshipmite, with white duck trousers of a prodigious width. They used to crackle, I remember. There was room ...
— The Independence of Claire • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... did once hire a horse and carriage of a friend and took Alice for a drive! More than thirty-five years have passed since that adventure and yet I can see every turn in that road! I can hear the crackle of my starched shirt and the creak of my suspender ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... had been reading last night's paper, dropped it quickly and tiptoed toward us. He peered between the partly open curtains, closed them quietly and went back, ostentatiously solemn, to his seat. The very crackle with which he opened his paper added to the bursting curiosity of the car. For the passengers knew that something was amiss: I was conscious of a ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... with my head half in the field, I don't know how long, all dead asleep. At last it seemed to me that I heard a noise in my sleep, something like a thing moving, very faint, however, far away; then it died, and then it came again upon my ear, as I slept, and now it appeared almost as if I heard crackle, crackle; then it died again, or I became yet more dead asleep than before, I know not which, but I certainly lay some time without hearing it. All of a sudden I became awake, and there was I, on the ridge of the hill, with my cheek on the ground towards the stubble, with ...
— George Borrow - The Man and His Books • Edward Thomas
... dew sent them back to the camp. Piute and Peon were skinning coyotes by the blaze of the fire. The night wind had not yet risen; the sheep were quiet; there was no sound save the crackle of burning cedar sticks. Jack began to talk; he had to talk, so, addressing Piute and the dumb peon, he struck at random into speech, and words flowed with a rush. Piute approved, for he said "damn" whenever his intelligence grasped a meaning, and the peon twisted ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... first heard nothing, and was just about to say that it must be the screech-owl come closer, when from a corner of the house there came a distant and sharp crackle. I heard Alf scuffle to his feet. "We ...
— The Jucklins - A Novel • Opie Read
... abound, "Their tameness is shocking to me." It is the world of "big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost, crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The Great Lone Land," until lately the hunting ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... I could do more," said Mrs. Bradford, comfortably turning her page with a rustling crackle. "But my legs have given way ever since I was married. I don't know why, I'm sure; but marriage does seem to affect the constitution in ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... her in the new one, bought in honor of her coming, seating her deferentially as if she had been a Queen, and went hurriedly about, building a fire of little dry twigs he had torn from shrubs along the river that the gay crackle of them ...
— The Way of the Wind • Zoe Anderson Norris
... was allowed to be brought home. All the parish waited at their cottage doors in the evening for its arrival: I remember how, as a very little girl, I stood by my mother's side. About eight o'clock, as we hearkened on our door-stones in the cold bright starlight, we could hear the faint crackle of a waggon from the direction of the turnpike-road. The noise was lost as the waggon dropped into a hollow, then it was plain again as it lumbered down the next long incline, and presently it entered Longpuddle. The coffin was laid in the ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... highway, we could see through the trees the whitewashed walls and red pottery roofs of Weerde, while a short distance to the right, in a heavily wooded park, was a large stone chateau. The only sign that the town was occupied was a pall of blue-grey vapour which hung over it and a continuous crackle of musketry coming from it, though occasionally, through my glasses, I could catch glimpses of the lean muzzles of machine-guns protruding from the upper ...
— Fighting in Flanders • E. Alexander Powell
... back to me. Grotesquely distorted, blurred with tube-hum and interference crackle, they roared in my ear-grids so loudly that I saw the nearby guard turn his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various
... securely had he entangled himself in the head-rope that, despite the freedom of his heels, and spasmodic efforts to regain his feet, he remained pinned to earth, not many yards from where the fire was raging,—his fear and misery increased by wind-blown fragments of lighted straw, by the roar and crackle of the ...
— Captain Desmond, V.C. • Maud Diver
... Swirroo! Crackle! He was gliding over the tops of the trees, ploughing through them, tumbling into a cloud of green sharp leaves and black twigs. There was a sudden snapping, and he fell off the saddle forward, a thud and a crashing of branches. Some twigs hit ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... gave him a convulsive little squeeze—and felt the crackle of paper under his shirt. "Something hidden there! What is it, Sonling?" she asked with laughing eyes: and suddenly shyness overwhelmed him. For the moment he had forgotten his treasure; and now he was wondering if he could show ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice—a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry—he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French battery, watched the sight with eager eyes—the French grenadiers running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets that barred it, the sudden roar of the English ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... were obliged to dodge at every turn. At all the caves I could see from my high perch, people were sitting, eating their poor suppers at the cave doors, ready to plunge in again. As the first shell again flew they dived, and not a human being was visible. The sharp crackle of the musketry-firing was a strong contrast to the scream of the bombs. I think all the dogs and cats must be killed or starved, we don't see any more pitiful animals prowling around.... The cellar is so damp and musty the bedding has to ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... supposition was well founded, for Cyril was feeling unusually grave as he sat opposite to his father and sister in a room of the homestead. A brief silence had fallen upon the group, emphasized by the crackle of poplar billets in the stove. Jernyngham, in whose appearance there had been a marked improvement since his son's return, wore an eager expression; Gertrude was watching her ...
— Prescott of Saskatchewan • Harold Bindloss
... love a great many things—birds and trees and books, and all things beautiful, and horses and rifles and children and hard work and the joy of life. We have great fireplaces, and in them the logs roar and crackle during the long winter evenings. The big piazza is for the hot, still afternoons of summer. As in every house, there are things that appeal to the householder because of their associations, but which would not mean much to others. Naturally, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... concealed beside it, its laughter so outrivaled every other sound that she had difficulty in discerning the Howes' approaching tread, and it was not until the distinct crackle of underbrush reached her ear that she became aware they were approaching. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... to help them. Only to send a message," was the reply, as the wireless spark began to crackle again. "We are telling the Government about her plight and a revenue cutter will be sent out to tow the schooner into some near port. She has drifted a good way off shore, but the weather is settled and there is nothing ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... the steady pull, growing weaker and weaker as the strength of the fish was exhausted. Suddenly into the idler's lotus-eating Paradise came a rushing sound. A sharp swerve of the horse was followed by an exasperating crackle, and, lo! the beloved fishing-rod was broken,—yes, broken, and that delicate, quivering, responsive, tapering end lay trailing in the dust which whirled in eddies around ...
— Flint - His Faults, His Friendships and His Fortunes • Maud Wilder Goodwin
... the steps. Already the stinging rain had lashed the drive into the semblance of a frothy estuary; all round the lightning jagged its course through the incessant tremulous glow of more distant lightning, while the thunder only ceased its muttering to turn at close quarters and crackle viciously. ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... Alfred, King of England, Bade blow the horns of war, And fling the Golden Dragon out, With crackle and acclaim and shout, Scrolled and aflame ...
— The Ballad of the White Horse • G.K. Chesterton
... was discovered by the pursuing party, who mistook it for a general flight of the fugitives. They rushed forward with a shout. They had a rugged and barren hill to ascend. Half way up the slope they saw flashes of fire burst from the rocks above, heard the rapid "crack—crackle—crack!" of a dozen pieces, and retreated in confusion down the ...
— Cudjo's Cave • J. T. Trowbridge
... avoid them. But ought he not to turn back? He resolved not to be frightened from his object. After lying still awhile, he went back along the road, then turned aside, walked softly from tree to tree, careful not to crackle a twig beneath his feet, crept on his hands and knees through the thick underbrush, and gained the road in the rear of the picket. Being inside of the enemy's lines, he knew that he could move more freely, for if any of the sentinels ...
— Winning His Way • Charles Carleton Coffin
... opposite of what one ought to be," she laughed, "and it almost makes me feel not legally married. But don't—don't, please, if you love me, use that awful word 'parson' again. I can't stand it. Don't you think it sounds just like the crackle of ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... down some wide blankets and quilts and put Red Chief between us. We weren't afraid he'd run away. He kept us awake for three hours, jumping up and reaching for his rifle and screeching: "Hist! pard," in mine and Bill's ears, as the fancied crackle of a twig or the rustle of a leaf revealed to his young imagination the stealthy approach of the outlaw band. At last, I fell into a troubled sleep, and dreamed that I had been kidnaped and chained to a tree by a ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... penetrates the woods like a rifle-shot. Again it comes, and nearer! Down in the canoe a paddle blade touches the water noiselessly from the stern; and over the bow there is the glint of moonlight on a rifle barrel. The roar is now continuous on the summit of the last low ridge. Twigs crackle, and branches snap. There is the thrashing of mighty antlers among the underbrush, the pounding of heavy hoofs upon the earth; and straight down the great bull rushes like a tempest, nearer, nearer, till he bursts with tremendous crash through the last fringe of alders out onto the grassy point.—And ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... drink," she said, as if these actions were the cardinally important ones of life. "Flo, you carry her bags up to that west room we always give to some particular person we want to love Lolomi." Next she threw sticks of wood upon the fire, making it crackle and blaze, then seated herself near Carley and beamed ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... familiar. The plover and blackbird fell silent. The prairie-chicken's piping cry ceased as the flocks grew toward maturity, and the lark and cricket alone possessed the russet plain, which seemed to snap and crackle in the midnight frost, and to wither away in ...
— The Moccasin Ranch - A Story of Dakota • Hamlin Garland
... minutes of that interval had made quite another creature of his cousin. The wires were down and no one from any quarter gave a response to her frantic ringing. Through the receiver she could hear only the sweep of the rain and the harsh crackle of the wind. Sometimes praying, sometimes fainting, and sometimes despairing, she stood clinging to the instrument, ringing and pounding upon it like one frenzied. Lance looked at her in amazement. "Why, God a'mighty, ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... the bushes on the alert for a charge from the wounded bull; but nothing stirred. No sound came to his ears except the soft padding noise of his horse's hoofs upon the turf. There was not a crackle of the brushwood, and the trees seemed carved out of metal. He rode through absolute silence in a suspension of all movement. Once his horse trod upon a bough, and the snapping of the twigs sounded like so many cracks of a pistol. At first the silence ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... and he could not get past in time, for the half-seen trooper was closing with him fast, and another still rode between him and the edge of the bluff, cutting off his road to the prairie. It was evident he could not go on, while the crackle of twigs, roar of hoofs, and jingle of steel behind him, made it plain that to turn was to ride back upon the carbines of men who would be quite willing to use them. There alone remained the river. It ran fast below him, and the ice was thin, and for just a moment he tightened ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... of their common bond of sympathy with Wade. Frequently they sat together in the sickroom reading the newspapers, which came out from town each day. On one such occasion, when Santry had twisted his mouth awry in a determined effort to fold the paper he was reading without permitting a single crackle, she ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... without only the steady roaring crackle. Could it be possible the petition had not been heard? The childish hands met more tightly than before. The small body ...
— Ben Blair - The Story of a Plainsman • Will Lillibridge
... beneath his feet, and the thick, dusk-green branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic wood; nor was there any treacherous bramble to crackle beneath his feet. For upon this chill, grey carpet no flood of sunshine ever came to coax tiny sprays out of the ground; and the layers of fine needles, or tufts of dank, sunless moss were soft and noiseless as down under his tread. The stately trees grew far enough apart to ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... helplessness, with blind, unappeasable rage against the chance that had crippled him, with bitter and useless questionings as to why such a moment should have been selected for the one accident of his young life. Outside he could hear the crackle of the little fire, the unusual sound of the Indian girl's voice as she talked low to the dog, the animal's whine of appreciation and content. Suddenly he felt the need of companionship, the weariness of ...
— The Silent Places • Stewart Edward White
... streaked with faint blue lines where wandering airs came down from the heights above, and now and then an elfin sighing fell from the ragged summits of the firs. When it died away, the silence was broken only by the pounding of a heavy hammer and the crackle ...
— Vane of the Timberlands • Harold Bindloss
... smoke and upflung billowing clouds of thick dust. So far the noise was only and all of guns and shell fire, but now from far out on one of the flanks a new note began to weave itself into the uproar—the sharper crackle and clatter ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... air, and although it was three o'clock in the afternoon the light was fading, when Charnock opened the door of the caboose. A bitter wind rushed past him and eddied about the car, making the stove crackle. The iron was red-hot in places and a fierce twinkle shone out beneath the rattling door. Half-seen men lay in the bunks along the shadowy wall, tools jingled upon the throbbing boards, but the motion was gentler ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... came from the distance, on the other side of the house. For some seconds, there was an uninterrupted crackle of musketry; then it came at rarer intervals; and, presently, there was no sound ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... Compromise but in Success. Use a worm if you will, but you must have fish to show for it, if you would escape the finger of scorn. If you find yourself camping by an unknown brook, and are deputed to catch the necessary trout for breakfast, it is wiser to choose the surest bait. The crackle of the fish in the frying-pan will atone for any theoretical defect in your method. But to choose the surest bait, and then to bring back no fish, is unforgivable. Forsake Plato if you must,—but you may do so only at the price of justifying yourself in the ...
— Fishing with a Worm • Bliss Perry
... Death plants on his conquests. He clutched in one hand his pen, his poor last pen, inky and ragged, in the other a crust of his last piece of bread. His legs knocked together, so as to make the crazy bed crackle. I listened carefully to his hard breathing; I heard the rattle with its hollow husk; and I recognised Death in the room as a practised sailor recognises the tempest in the whistle of ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... the first time since Shann had heard the crackle of the Throg attack he remembered the reason he had been heading into the hills. Of all the men on the Survey team, Shann Lantee had been the least important. The dirty, tedious clean-up jobs, the dull routines which required no technical training but which had ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... Ah! The man was going away at last! She waited a long, nervous half hour. But there was no sound. She dared not move, for even when she shifted her position against the tree the oppressive silence seemed to crackle with ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher
... Mother Corey kicked four grumbling men out of a four-by-seven hole on the second floor. Gordon's money had carried more weight than his brother's reputation; for that, Corey humored his guest's wish for privacy. "All yours, cobber, while your crackle's blue." ...
— Police Your Planet • Lester del Rey
... lip, lip, lip, clippety, lip, lip, lip! comes the bread horse down the street. He stops in front of Ruth's house. Ruth hears him. Then she hears the driver jump out and pat, pat, pat, she hears his feet coming to the door. Rattle, crackle, goes the paper as he puts down the loaves of bread all wrapped up to keep them clean. Then fast she hears his feet, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat, pat. "Go on, Bill!" she hears him call and clippety, lip, lip, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... her little daughter so that she must go alone. She rides with her mother to the railroad and sees her little one walking directly upon the tracks, so that she cannot avoid being run over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the car window to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. She then reproaches her mother for allowing the little one to go out alone." Analysis. It is not an easy matter ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... but his mouth was too dry for speech. He could only glare dumbly into their evil faces, and they glared back at him in fiendish triumph. Nearer to the red glow they came, nearer yet. He could hear the crackle of the licking flames. They danced ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... minutes more, and then set to work quietly, after the fashion of English mastiffs, though they waxed right mad before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters began to crackle and fly. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... been practically abandoned, others are being erected very cautiously, very quietly, and without any ostentation, as if the enemy were preparing for eventualities which he knows must inevitably occur. Sometimes, too, there is even a little crackle of musketry in some remote corner, which remains quite unexplained. A secret traffic in eggs and ammunition is still going on with renegade soldiery from Tung Fu-hsiang's camp; but no longer can these things be purchased ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... head firmly against the wood, he drew it downward vigorously and long. There was a faint crackle, a little splutter, and—glory of glories!—a tiny flame faltered ...
— Captivating Mary Carstairs • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... We could see the flicker of rifle-fire, and the crackle sounded first on one part of the bay, and then another. Among the dark rocks and bushes it looked as if people were striking thousands ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... loves nothing so lovable as a coin. He is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs. And as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... an edging of turf that the crackle of the pebbly gravel might not betray me: he was standing among the beds at a yard or two distant from where I had to pass; the moth apparently engaged him. "I shall get by very well," I meditated. As I crossed his shadow, thrown long ...
— Jane Eyre - an Autobiography • Charlotte Bronte
... to the commander of the column, and soon the trumpets were calling the men to battle. The crackle of rifle shots ahead increased rapidly. The skirmishers were already pulling trigger, and, as Dick galloped back to Hertford he saw many puffs of white smoke down the road and in the fields and woods on either side. The Union men began to cheer. In the ...
— The Rock of Chickamauga • Joseph A. Altsheler
... innocent gift from some of the young men who had asked in the past to be allowed to paint Joan and received a curt negative from Gray Michael. But the other discovery meant more. Pushing her hand about the drawer she found a pile of paper, felt the crackle of it, and pulled it eagerly to the light. Then, and before she learned the grandeur of the sum, she was seized with a sudden palpitation and sat down on Joan's bed. Her mouth grew full as a hungry man's before a feast, her lips were wet, her hand shook as she opened and spread ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... the distant mountains to the westward came a low, soft, almost inaudible murmur, such as one hears when many miles from the calm ocean, and which has been called the voice of silence itself. In the stillness he heard the faint crackle of one of the embers as it fell apart, and, though the night wind scarcely stirred the leaves over his head, he caught the rustle. The fact that there was nothing from the direction of the ponies showed they had ceased to crop the grass and were lying down. The safety of the camp ...
— Two Boys in Wyoming - A Tale of Adventure (Northwest Series, No. 3) • Edward S. Ellis
... life-giving, stimulating, purifying, but also transforming and assimilating energy. For every lump of coal in your scuttles may be a parable; black and heavy, it is cast into the fire, and there it is turned into the likeness of the flame which it catches and itself begins to glow, and redden, and crackle, and break into a blaze. That is like what you and I may experience if we will. The incense rises in smoke to the heavens when it is heated: and our souls aspire and ascend, an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable to God, when the fire ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... splashes muddily against the very thresholds of the cottages. It penetrates the brine-soaked soil and wells turn brackish. It wanders far inland through winding straits. The wayfarer, stepping across what seems to be a ditch at the end of a field far from the sea wonders to hear brown wrack crackle under ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... lake nearest the fawns' hiding-place, and wait in my canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes the canoe was in plain sight; ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... a laughing crackle, as though scorning his weakness, the flames ran up a climbing vine and the next moment wrapped a ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... "I think though, the wireless one has a crackle the hospital brand lacks. Kitty's nurse was ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... distinctness, and there with a leaping of faint flashes along the edge of the further ways. By their light Graham saw the heads and bodies of a number of men, armed with weapons like those of his guards, leap into an instant's dim visibility. The whole area began to crackle, to flash with little instantaneous streaks of light, and abruptly the darkness ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... full depth of the great thought that joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a saying in the Old Testament compares to the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it; and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish, short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... began to hear the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and artillery on my right opened fire on the German position, and then the heavy boom, boom of the guns from the sea. Looking in that direction, I discerned several of our battleships opening fire, the shells giving a fearful shriek as ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers whose black faces Peer out of their bed-places; And the captain he was bawling, ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... of night fell swiftly, and it was dark by the time the hunters finished the meal. Then the campfire had burned low. One of the three dragged branches of dead cedars and replenished the fire. Quickly it flared up, with the white flame and crackle characteristic of dry cedar. The night wind had risen, moaning through the gnarled, stunted cedars near by, and it blew the fragrant wood-smoke into the faces of the two hunters, who seemed too ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... of her spinning broke delicately upon the ear. It seemed to waken all the room into new vibrations of life. The clock ticked with an assured peace, as if knowing it marked eternal hours. The flames waved softly upward without their former crackle and sheen; and the moving shadows were gentle and rhythmic ones come to keep the soul company. ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... over her work. Quenu had not listened. He had been cutting some little rounds of onion over a pot placed on the fire; and almost at once the onions began to crackle, raising a clear shrill chirrup like that of grasshoppers basking in the heat. They gave out a pleasant odour too, and when Quenu plunged his great wooden spoon into the pot the chirruping became yet louder, and the whole kitchen was filled with ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... ripping the sleeve from the neck. According to Mrs. Webb's ideas, it had been basted in. According to Mrs. Tate's, it had been sewed, but as there was no argument, and the needle was indeed gone, Mrs. Tate got up and went over to the fire. Punching it, she made the coals crackle and blaze cheerily, and, pulling up her skirt, she leaned against the mantel and looked happily around the ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... the dead: While all around, confusion, rage, and fright, Mix the contending hosts in mortal fight. So pent by hills, the wild winds roar aloud In the deep bosom of some gloomy wood; Leaves, arms, and trees, aloft in air are blown, The broad oaks crackle, and the Sylvans groan; This way and that, the rattling thicket bends, And the whole forest in one crash descends. Not with less noise, with less tumultuous rage, In dreadful shock the mingled hosts engage. Darts shower'd ...
— The Iliad of Homer • Homer
... calm. "Read it—out loud," she said. "Then we'll know." She tried to smile, and made so great a failure of it that she came very near crying. The faint crackle of the cheap paper when Lite unfolded the letter made her start nervously. "Read it—no matter—what it is," she repeated, when she saw Lite's eyes go rapidly ...
— Jean of the Lazy A • B. M. Bower
... eleven, but couldn't hear well on the up-stairs extension, so I went to the instrument down-stairs, where the operator told me it was long-distance, from Buckhorn. So I listened, with my heart in my mouth. But all I could get was a buzz and crackle and an occasional ghostly word. It was the storm, I suppose. Then I heard Peter's voice, thin and faint and far away, ...
— The Prairie Child • Arthur Stringer
... gold, stewards hurrying up from below with provisions with which to stock the boats, and the captain on the bridge overlooking all, the whole deck brilliantly illuminated by every available electric lamp, while overhead the steam still roared out of the pipes, and the crackle of the wireless obtruded itself ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... unregenerate life again,—to scuffle, swear, gamble, and love light loves with his fellows; to take ship and know the sea once more, and by her beget pictures; to talk to Binat among the sands of Port Said while Yellow 'Tina mixed the drinks; to hear the crackle of musketry, and see the smoke roll outward, thin and thicken again till the shining black faces came through, and in that hell every man was strictly responsible for his own head, and his own alone, and struck with an unfettered arm. It was ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... than a fire in daylight. She heard wild voices singing; on still days she saw the trees in Knapp Forest bent to a furious wind. When Mabilla crept up the fell on noiseless feet to spy for Andrew King, Bessie Prawle heard the bents hiss and crackle under her, as if she ...
— Lore of Proserpine • Maurice Hewlett
... save at the end of sentences, the ultimate word being pronounced with distinct emphasis. Page after page was turned; the droning sound of his voice went on and on, with its clock-like inflections at the end of sentences; the revived crackle of coals lent spirit to an otherwise dreary solo, and always it was Melissa who poked the grate and at the same time rubbed her leg to renew the circulation that had been checked by the limp weight of Katie Sykes; the deep sighs of Mrs. Bingle and the ...
— Mr. Bingle • George Barr McCutcheon
... their stems grew thickly together, the horse, with his strange rider, could make but slow way among them; and every now and then the former, half blind with affright, dashed his sides against the trunks, causing them to crackle and ...
— Bruin - The Grand Bear Hunt • Mayne Reid
... Prussians, in regular force, appear on the Kaninchen Berg (Cony Hill, so called from its rabbits), south of the River, evidently taking post there. Roth fires a signal shot; the Southern Suburbs of Neisse, as preappointed, go up in flame; crackle high and far; in a lamentable manner (ERBARMLICH), through the grim winter air." This is the day Friedrich came over to Ottmachau, and ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XII. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... quietly. "We have, indeed, met with good fortune." Again we heard the brushwood crackle, and a second man, resembling the first in appearance and dress, came forward, and together they held a conversation, interspersed largely with the gestures which play so prominent a part in the language ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... Tredgold. "As a matter of fact, I'm dying with curiosity myself. Bring it out and make it crackle, captain; it's a bank-note for ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs
... before the fire in pairs, instead of by threes as in Ireland, and named for a lover and his lass. If they burn to ashes together, long happy married life is destined for the lovers. If they crackle or start away from each other, dissension and ...
— The Book of Hallowe'en • Ruth Edna Kelley
... but their curiosity was not satisfied immediately by Frank. Instead his face became set in concentration once more. After some moments of silence, broken only by the slight noise of the receiver, he pressed his hand on the sending apparatus and the Southern Cross's wireless began to crackle and spit and emit a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... of the smoke, but it soon became impossible to communicate with the men with anything like regularity, for the roar and crackle of the flames grew deafening, many of the bamboo posts exploding like muskets, and before long Murray had hard work to satisfy himself that the men were not ...
— Hunting the Skipper - The Cruise of the "Seafowl" Sloop • George Manville Fenn
... because he dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... personal safety, is devoured with anxiety concerning the too imminent fate of her hostess' china. There is a little Lowestoft tea-service that was picked up only last week at Christie and Manson's, a turquoise blue crackle jar that is supposed to be priceless, and a pair of "Long Eliza" vases, which her hostess loves as much as she does her toy terrier, and far better than she ...
— Vera Nevill - Poor Wisdom's Chance • Mrs. H. Lovett Cameron
... little old ship was finished and had sailed at last and for once our wireless plant up there began to get messages from the sea. I dreamed I was sitting up there with the operator. It was a dark, stormy night. The wireless began to crackle. He jumped up to see what was coming. He was getting messages from our own ship, away out there on the ocean. She was calling for help. 'Sinking fast,—sinking fast,—sinking fast.' Over and over again,—just those two words. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... the brilliant light and the crackle of the tindery fuel, Miss Bab refilled her apron, and fed the fire till the chimney began to rumble ominously, sparks to fly out at the top, and soot and swallows' nests to come tumbling down upon the hearth. Then, scared at what she had done, the little mischief-maker hastily buried her fire, ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... was promised. For days they had had no fighting worthy the name. Amigos everywhere, villages peopled only by women and children, treacherous peacefulness on every side; this had been their encounter: an occasional rifle shot from the rice fields, a crackle of guns far ahead, a prisoner or two who had not been quick enough in transforming himself from combatant to friend, that was all. Now, there seemed ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... had thought that she might hear. Other people had their letters and were reading them on the veranda, but there was nothing for her. She sat there for a while, cold with disappointment, listening to the tearing open of envelopes and the pleasant crackle of thick letter-paper. Then, when Timmy, the black cat, suddenly leapt off her lap, as if in a mad rush after something he fondly hoped was a mouse, Angela was glad of an excuse to follow. But Timmy, who was of an independent ...
— The Port of Adventure • Charles Norris Williamson and Alice Muriel Williamson
... she said; "and it seems such a treat to get away from the Lawn—of course I am sorry to leave mamma, you know," she added, parenthetically—"and the stiff breakfasts, and Mr. Sheldon's newspapers that crackle, crackle, crackle so shockingly all breakfast-time; and the stiff dinners, with a prim parlor-maid staring at one all the time, and bringing one vegetables that one doesn't want if one only ventures to breathe a little louder than usual. Here it is Liberty Hall. Uncle Joe—he is aunt Dorothy's ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... countenance; curiously mingling with its ardors and audacities. A beautiful childlike soul! He was naturally a favorite in conversation, especially with all who had any funds for conversing: frank and direct, yet polite and delicate withal,—though at times too he could crackle with his dexterous petulancies, making the air all like needles round you; and there was no end to his logic when you excited it; no end, unless in some form of silence on your part. Elderly men of reputation ...
— The Life of John Sterling • Thomas Carlyle
... only the crackle of an open mike and the sound of breathing. "That is your decision," he said finally. "I'll have a ship standing by. But won't you let us take Miss Morees ...
— Planet of the Damned • Harry Harrison
... the men fighting each other like animals; trees were cut down by the bullets which tore through them from every direction; bursting shells set fire to the woods, suffocating the wounded or burning them to death; wild charges were made, ending in wilder stampedes or bloody repulses; the crackle of flames rose high above the pandemonium of battle and dense smoke-clouds drifted chokingly above this hideous carnival of death. Thus for two days the armies staggered backward and forward with no result save a horrible loss of life. Once the Union forces almost ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... dress!" rang the calm orders as a wood, almost behind them, was suddenly fringed with white smoke and a long, rolling crackle broke out. ...
— Special Messenger • Robert W. Chambers
... innate love of contention, which had been constantly flattered by triumph, brought, his whole nature into play with the prospect of the morrow: not much liking it either. There is a nerve, in brave warriors that does not like the battle before, the crackle of musketry is heard, and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... turned back and waited, and in a few minutes the Southern horsemen came in sight, opening fire at once. Their infantry, too, soon appeared in the woods and fields and the dark hours before the dawn were filled with the crackle of small arms. ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... flashed up and the steady crackle of flames began. From the debris below came the scream of ...
— The One Woman • Thomas Dixon
... year, much better. But the old windmill, which looked on in its time at thirty full meetings, still surely misses the week when the dells and the long stretches of heather rattled from the first gun to sunset with the crackle of Martinis and match rifles. The windmill watches red-coated golfers to-day, playing to some of the prettiest greens in the south of England; but the days for the windmill were when the tents were white about the heather, and when they sold Stewart's ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... blanket when you're in bed to-night, Mrs. Pittis. 'Well, your highness,' said I, 'how about the pain?' 'Pah!' says the king, 'where's your philosophy? Did you never see a fly jump into a lamp-flame?' 'Yes, sure,' I answered. 'And what happened then? A moment's crackle, and an end of it. You've no time to feel pain.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'if your majesty will make a hole for me as near the middle as is convenient to yourself, I will jump into the bed straightway.' The king made a great spatter among the coals, and in I jumped. You know, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... and every sense on the alert, was keeping a careful look-out from behind an immense projecting buttress of the tree. All was deadly quiet. H. and myself were occupied watching the gambols of some monkeys in our front. The beaters were yet far off. Suddenly Pat heard a faint crackle on a dried leaf. He glanced in the direction of the sound, and his quick eye detected the glossy coats, the beautifully spotted hides of not one leopard, but two. In a moment the stillness was broken by the report of ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... still hot from recent use, placed one hand over the draft, that the fire might not ignite too rapidly, and crept out of the cellar. Any person awake in the house, might have traced the dark progress of this woman by a faint crackle, and the sparks that shot now and then up through the black mass of coal, which was kindling so fast, that the hand which she still kept upon the draft ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... on the appointed afternoon. There was a fire on her hearth and a March snow-squall tapped against the window panes. The crackle of the logs inside and that eerie, light sound outside were so associated with Prosper that, even before he came, Joan, sitting on one side of the hearth, closed her eyes and felt that he must be opposite to her in his red-lacquered chair, his long legs stuck ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... here Mrs. Stanton and I are, scratching, scratching every hour, not each other's eyes but the History papers. I am a fish out of water.... It makes me feel growly all the time.... I can not get away from my ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... meditatively at Violet. Violet looked smilingly at James. The morning was just as ripping as it had been a moment before. James was still twenty-two. And the editor's letter had not ceased to crackle in ...
— The Man Upstairs and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... careful movements, it was easy enough to move the books silently, and at last she discovered the blue envelope, tucked between two of them. She drew it out without a sound,—careful lest the paper should crackle,—and started to retrace her stealthy steps upstairs again, when she saw the hem of the portiere move ...
— Patty's Social Season • Carolyn Wells
... the bundle of dry grass on the badger's back. The badger, hearing the crackle of the burning grass, ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... upward scramble clattered down noisily. Withered leaves, shaken free from niches where the winds had gathered them, showered fitfully into the valley. He began drawing himself along by shrubs and young trees that covered a long outward curve in the face of the cliff. Those below heard the crackle of frozen twigs, and the swish of released boughs that marked his progress. Phil stood watching him with an absorbed interest in which fear became dominant. Better than the others Phil knew the perils of the cliff, ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... spacious, and lighted by two large windows opening on the garden; the floor was of oak, and there was a great fireplace where the largest logs used in a country in which the wood costs nothing could find ample room to blaze and crackle. It took the young man several days to make the necessary changes, and during that time he enjoyed a respite from the petty annoyances worked by the steady hostility of Manette Sejournant and her son. To the great indignation of the inhabitants of the chateau, he packed off the massive billiard-table, ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... to the saloon the captain passed the room of the wireless operator, and the tense crackle of the spark told him that the SOS signal was winging its beseeching flight through ...
— Blow The Man Down - A Romance Of The Coast - 1916 • Holman Day
... broke line upon line of yelling figures clothed in uniform. Screaming the battle-cry, the warriors charged, led by Zalu Zako, Bakahenzie, and Kawa Kendi, who in the excitement had dashed from the enclosure. Howls and yells were drowned in the spiteful crackle and cough. Warriors were mown like weeds under a sickle. Scarce a hundred scrambled inside the enclosure at the ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... are called mountains in the North, and where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves, who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere there were the rushing torrents of melting snows, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree, and each night the cold, pale glow of the Aurora Borealis crept farther and farther toward the ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... assault. Napoleon consented. Kleber, who was of gigantic stature, with a head of hair worthy of a German music-master or of a Soudan dervish, led his grenadiers to the edge of the breach and stood there, while with gesture and voice—a voice audible even above the fierce and sustained crackle of the musketry—he urged his men on. Napoleon, standing on a gun in the nearest French battery, watched the sight with eager eyes—the French grenadiers running furiously up the breach, the grim line of levelled muskets that barred it, the sudden roar of the English guns as from ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett
... been urged to extend. It was pitch dark, with a steadily increasing drizzle of rain and an occasional rumble of thunder. In front there were as yet no indications of shell-fire, only an intermittent crackle ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... all, America is a trying place of sojourn for the aforesaid canny Scot—the man who without being stingy (oh, dear, no!) has "all his generous impulses under perfect control." The sixpences do not "bang" in this country: they crepitate, they crackle, as though shot from a Maxim quick-firer. For instance, the lowest electric-trolley fare is twopence-halfpenny. It is true that for five cents you can, if you wish it, ride fifteen or twenty miles; but that advantage becomes inappreciable ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... which rises just before the sun, blew into their faces, and shook the snow off the swinging twigs with a dry crackle. ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... backing, step by step, away from the heat of the burning stacks. The roar, and the crackle, and the heat were terrific; it was as if the whole world was burning around them, and they only were left. A brand flew low over Val's head as she ran staggeringly, with a bewildered sense that she must hurry somewhere and do something immediately, to save something which ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower
... it, its laughter so outrivaled every other sound that she had difficulty in discerning the Howes' approaching tread, and it was not until the distinct crackle of underbrush reached her ear that she became aware they were approaching. ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... talking and looked straight at the officer, standing erect and waiting, as if he expected a quick answer, and only the kind of answer, too, that he wished. Meanwhile there was silence, save for an occasional crackle of burning wood. ...
— The Great Sioux Trail - A Story of Mountain and Plain • Joseph Altsheler
... out, is the most stimulating on earth. Its summer breezes fill the lungs with wine. Its autumns are incomparable, a golden glow in which valley and hill bask lazily. Its winters are warm with sunshine and cold with the crisp crackle of frost. Its springs—they might be worse. Any Coloradoan will admit the climate is superlative. But there is one slight rift in the lute, hardly to be mentioned as a discord in the universal harmony. Sudden weather changes do occur. A shining summer sun vanishes and in a twinkling of ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... have felt it too, for all at once he ceased to speak, and I was trembling so much with this new feeling of tenderness that I could not utter a word. So I heard nothing as we walked on but the crackle of our footsteps on the gravel path and the measured boom of the sea which we were leaving behind us—nothing but that and the quick beating in ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... believe in the danger which menaced him, and already an imposing army was advancing against his scattered and divided forces. Already Lannes had beaten General Ott at Montebello, after a hotly disputed engagement. "I heard the bones crackle like a hailstorm on the ...
— Worlds Best Histories - France Vol 7 • M. Guizot and Madame Guizot De Witt
... proceeded to kindle a fire with a tinder-box lent her by Mrs. Chivers. It amused the babe to watch the sparks as they flew about, and when the pile of turves and sticks and heather was in combustion, to listen to the crackle, and watch the play ...
— The Broom-Squire • S. (Sabine) Baring-Gould
... Duggan and obeyed. The cabin door was open, and he entered. One look assured him that Duggan had good reason to be "sot up." The first big room reminded him of the Shack. Beyond that was another room in which he heard someone moving and the crackle of a fire in a stove. Outside Duggan was whistling. He broke off whistling to sing, and as Keith listened to the river-man's bellowing voice chanting the words of the song he had sung at McCoffin's Bend for twenty years, he grinned. And then he heard the humming of a voice in the kitchen. Even ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... know how long, all dead asleep. At last it seemed to me that I heard a noise in my sleep, something like a thing moving, very faint, however, far away; then it died, and then it came again upon my ear as I slept, and now it appeared almost as if I heard crackle, crackle; then it died again, or I became yet more dead asleep than before, I know not which, but I certainly lay some time without hearing it. All of a sudden I became awake, and there was I, on the ridge of the hill, with my cheek on the ground towards the stubble, with ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... ship, and all the ocean, Woke up in wild commotion. Then the wind set up a howling, And the poodle dog a yowling, And the cocks began a crowing, And the old cow raised a lowing, As she heard the tempest blowing; And fowls and geese did cackle, And the cordage and the tackle Began to shriek and crackle; And the spray dashed o'er the funnels, And down the deck in runnels; And the rushing water soaks all, From the seamen in the fo'ksal To the stokers whose black faces Peer out of their bed-places; And the captain he was bawling, And the sailors pulling, hauling, And the quarter-deck tarpauling ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... sea that swirling tower of scarlet flame hurled its illumination. For miles on every hand it could be seen. The sound of its crackle and hiss and roar was deafening. The twigs, dry and dead, caught fire from the surrounding blaze of moss, and communicated their flame to the thicker branches and to the tree's ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... the rapids was, when circumstances took us into the black current we fared no better. For good all-round inconvenience, give me going full tilt in the dark into the branches of a fallen tree at the pace we were going then—and crash, swish, crackle and there you are, hung up, with a bough pressing against your chest, and your hair being torn out and your clothes ribboned by others, while the wicked river is trying to drag away the canoe from under you. After a good hour and more of these experiences, we went hard on to a large black reef ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... on shore!" quoth little Love Winslow, clapping her hands. "Dost hear, mother? I've been counting the strokes—fifteen— and then crackle! crackle! crackle! ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... awful thing. Judgment is to go before Him, He bears 'His fan in His hand,' and kindles 'unquenchable fire,' into which the leafy trees that have no fruit upon them are to be flung, there to shrivel and crackle and disappear. This is what he expects at the worst, and at the best a baptism in the Holy Ghost, from Messiah's hands, which, however, is likewise to be fiery even whilst it quickens, and searching and destructive ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... the sputter and crackle of road-surfacing machines—the cheap Western type which fuse stone and rubbish into lava-like ribbed glass for their rough country roads. Three or four surfacers worked on each side of a square of ruins. The brick ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... chair and sat down before the mirror. For a full minute he sat, as if enchained, then at length—in obedience to the force that was dominating him—his fingers crept under the string, there came to the ear a faint, sharp crackle, and the ...
— Max • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... the great thought that joy is a Christian duty. The true joy is not the kind of joy that a saying in the Old Testament compares to the 'crackling of thorns under a pot,' but something very much calmer, with no crackle in it; and very much deeper, and very much more in alliance with 'whatsoever things are lovely and of good report,' than that foolish, short-lived, and empty mirth that burns down so ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans Corinthians (To II Corinthians, Chap. V) • Alexander Maclaren
... was in the sitting room, as usual. His spirits were as gray as the weather. He was actually lonesome for the first time since his return home. He had kindled a wood fire in the stove, just for the sociability of it, and the crackle and glow behind the isinglass panes only served to remind him of other days and other fires. The sitting room had not ...
— Cy Whittaker's Place • Joseph C. Lincoln
... and the men of Jakoits village, rushed along the narrow path that led to his house, they heard the roar and crackle of the flames; when they gained the open they saw the bright light shining on the old cannon, whose polished brass was stained and streaked with red. Tiaru lay ...
— The Brothers-In-Law: A Tale Of The Equatorial Islands; and The Brass Gun Of The Buccaneers - 1901 • Louis Becke
... my chrysalist and waiting for the right time, When—I thought—they'd bust to wings and Bill would rise and fly, Tick, tack, tick, tack, as if it came in answer, Sweeping o'er my head again the tide o' dreams went by,— I must get to Piddinghoe to-morrow if I can, sir, Tick, tack, a crackle in my chrysalist, a cry! Then the warm blue sky Bust the shell, and out ...
— Collected Poems - Volume Two (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... the song of the pines a few score yards from Alton's camp. He knew where to find the resinous knots with their sticky exudations, and was a master of the axe, while it was noticeable that when the fire commenced to crackle he stood still and listened again before he went down to the river with the kettle. Nor did he at once return into the light, but slipped for a moment behind a wide-girthed trunk. It was only a deer he heard moving along the hillside above him, and there was nothing visible but the row of ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... sends away her little daughter so that she must go alone. She rides with her mother to the railroad and sees her little one walking directly upon the tracks, so that she cannot avoid being run over. She hears the bones crackle. (From this she experiences a feeling of discomfort but no real horror.) She then looks out through the car window to see whether the parts cannot be seen behind. She then reproaches her mother for allowing ...
— Dream Psychology - Psychoanalysis for Beginners • Sigmund Freud
... in the little breakfast-room. Susy could be heard moving about overhead; she would be down directly. Meanwhile the winter sunshine came broadly in; the singing of the tea-kettle, the crackle of the fire made domestic music. But Lydia's soul was far away. It stood ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... crosses the Elbe at Jaromirz. Entirely unopposed; the Austrians were all busy firing FEU-DE-JOIE for the Election of their Grand-Duke: Election done five days ago at Frankfurt, and the news just come. So they crackle about, and deliver rolling fire, at a great rate; proud to be "IMPERIAL Army" henceforth, as if that could do much for them. There was also vast dining, for three days, among the high heads, and a great deal of wine spent. That probably ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... recommended a thorough investigation. There was no other way. If Manning was cleared of the responsibility for the crash, he was free, and it would not show up against his record. If he wasn't, however, then he'd have to pay. Yes, thought Connel to himself, as Stefens' voice began to crackle harshly on the audiograph, if Manning was guilty, then Manning would most certainly pay. ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... supper that we had every night was just as cheerful. Before the men came in out of the field, a large fagot was flung upon the fire. The wood used to crackle, and blaze, and smell delightfully. And then the crickets, who loved the fire, began to sing. The old shepherd loved the fire almost as well as the crickets did, and he would take his place in the chimney corner at supper time. He had a seat near the fireplace, quite under the chimney, and over ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... the same factory," continued he, selecting a second specimen from the cabinet. "This is a copy of the Chinese 'conventional dog,' made of blue 'crackle-ware.' You see, the glaze is cracked all over the ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... several times with his stick on the brick floor of the King's Head kitchen, and had not heard a sound in answer. The clock ticked to and fro, and the tabby cat purred softly as she sat before the fire, and the wood now and then gave a little crackle as it burned gently away, and those were all the signs of life to ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... gunpowder, dynamite, gun cotton, nitroglycerine, nitrocellulose, plastic explosive, plastique, TNT, cordite, trinitrotoluene, picric acid, picrates, mercury fulminate (arms) 727. whack, wham, pow. V. rap, snap, tap, knock, ping; click; clash; crack, crackle; crash; pop; slam, bang, blast, boom, clap, clang, clack, whack, wham; brustle^; burst on the ear; crepitate, rump. blow up, blow; detonate. Adj. rapping &c v.. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... waltzing from one end of the room to the other. "And we're off to Ab-yss-in-ia in the morn-ing," he sang. "There's plenty in my money belt," he cried, slapping his side; "you can hear the ten-pound notes crackle whenever I breathe, and it's all yours, my dear boy, and welcome. And I'll prove to you that the Winchester is ...
— The Exiles and Other Stories • Richard Harding Davis
... posts is father to the man who cannot eat an egg which has been boiled either more or less than four minutes; who cannot work without absolute silence; who cannot sleep if steam-pipes crackle; and who must straighten out all the tangles of his life, past, present, and future, before he can close his eyes in slumber or take a vacation. The boy Carlyle, proud, shy, sensitive, and pugnacious, was father to the man who made war upon ...
— Why Worry? • George Lincoln Walton, M.D.
... poetry of fire are wanting; you have nothing but an atmosphere that will be comfortable or asphyxiating, according to the taste of your hosts. Years ago in South Germany you burnt nothing but logs of wood in the old-fashioned iron stoves, and there was some faint pleasure in listening to their crackle. You could just see the flames too, if you stooped low enough and opened the little stove door. But the wood burnt so quickly that it was most difficult to keep a big room warm. Nowadays you always find the porcelain stove that Mark Twain says looks like the family monument. ...
— Home Life in Germany • Mrs. Alfred Sidgwick
... air, and the resultant crackle was so immediate and loud that he shook his head. "I give it up," he said. "I've never seen ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... all four over the open space of twenty yards. Three or four shots came zipping from aloft, but the instant ring of Winchesters back of them told that watchful eyes had noted every head that appeared, and the swift crackle of fire from the shop put instant stop to the fun up the slope. Into the store-room the manager led them, and unlocked a heavy little trap-door within; then, one by one, the ominous-looking cases were ...
— To The Front - A Sequel to Cadet Days • Charles King
... which grow to such majestic beauty in France; and Jack was environed by the mysteries of nature,—nature in the springtime of the year, when one can almost hear the grass grow, the buds expand, and the earth crackle as the tender herbage shoots forth. All these faint, vague noises bewildered little Jack, who began to sing a nursery rhyme with which his mother formerly rocked him ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... the polished narra table, sipping a sweet, false Spanish wine from which we drew, not a convivial spirit, but rather a quiet, reflective gloom. All the shell shutters were drawn back; we could see the tin-roofed city gleam and crackle with the heat, and beyond the lithe line of cocoanuts, the iridescent sea, tugging the heart with offer of coolness. But, all of us, we knew the promise to be Fake, monumental Fake, knew the alluring depths to be hot as ...
— The Spinner's Book of Fiction • Various
... and sparks by being rubbed. If you stroke a black cat briskly in the dark, you will see faint flashes of light come from her fur; and on very cold nights in the winter season, flannels that are worn next the skin crackle, and give sparks when taken off ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... dauntless and discerning commander went on, on foot, with an orderly. He chose Dicky and Oswald as guides. So we led him to the ambush, and we went through it as quietly as we could. But twigs do crackle and snap so when you are reconnoitring, or anxious to escape detection for ...
— The Wouldbegoods • E. Nesbit
... and crackle from the stove, the grinding of the gray dog's teeth, the bumping and hissing of the gale outside, the boom of the cascades at the precipices, made up most of the sounds for that evening. Of chat there was a paucity. My knowledge of Norsk extends to few parts ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... go together: and dost thou reckon I would miss that—yea, so much as one of them—out of regard for that which is, saith Solomon, 'sonitum spinarum sub olla'? [Ecclesiastes chapter seven, verse 6]. Ha, jolife! let the thorns crackle away, prithee; they shall ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt
... sorts of Paste made, and among them, are some which are made with Eggs, according to the old fashion; but these are always hard, when they are baked, though they will fly and crackle in the Mouth, but they taste like Sticks: while, on the other side, leave out your Eggs, and use Butter and Water only, as in the following Receipts, and your Paste will melt in the Mouth, and be ...
— The Country Housewife and Lady's Director - In the Management of a House, and the Delights and Profits of a Farm • Richard Bradley
... streamed up, not red alone, but, delicately green and blue, pale rose and pearly white, while crimson sparks leapt and fell again in the midst of that rainbow, not of hope, but of despair; and dull explosions down below mingled with the roar of the mob, and the infernal hiss and crackle of ...
— Sanitary and Social Lectures and Essays • Charles Kingsley
... life. He felt the stress and strain of life, its fevers and sweats and wild insurgences—surely this was the stuff to write about! He wanted to glorify the leaders of forlorn hopes, the mad lovers, the giants that fought under stress and strain, amid terror and tragedy, making life crackle with the strength of their endeavor. And yet the magazine short stories seemed intent on glorifying the Mr. Butlers, the sordid dollar- chasers, and the commonplace little love affairs of commonplace little men and women. Was it because the editors of the magazines were commonplace? he demanded. ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... he was a lucky man to have got you when so many other men wanted you, and he loved you, good-bye—would have fairly made your heart turn over with joy and made you kiss the hurried lines and thrust the letter in your belt, where you could crackle it now and then just to make ...
— From a Girl's Point of View • Lilian Bell
... which had to last for two more days, was very welcome. The damp had not reached the biscuits, and for several minutes it could be heard cracking under the solid teeth of Dick Sand and his companions. Between Hercules's jaws it was like grain under the miller's grindstone. It did not crackle, it powdered. ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... good guess who that smart chap is; but don't bother trying to deny it, Hugh. The only bad thing about it in my mind is that we'll miss those jolly fires. It's always been so fine to skate up and stand before one, to get warm, and hear the flames crackle, while the girl you're skating with sits on a log, or something like that, to ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... shout of rage, and made the boat leap through the water as now, in addition to the sharp crackle of the Winchesters, they heard the heavier report of a Snider, and Harvey, jumping up on the after whaleback, and steadying himself with one hand on Atkins's shoulder, saw that only two or three of Oliver's crew were now paddling—the rest had been ...
— Tessa - 1901 • Louis Becke
... disappeared into the blackness of the brush. Joe swung the horses up in a galloping curve and with one catlike leap, incredibly light for a man of his chunky build, was down from the seat and crashing through the bushes on the trail of that fugitive whose noisy flight had already become a faint crackle in the distance. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... the lake nearest the fawns' hiding-place, and wait in my canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she would jump for the lily pads. Sometimes ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... and went up his stairs, he could not shake off his dreaminess; he saw the flames catching the village, and the forest beginning to crackle and smoke. A huge, wild bear frantic with terror rushed through the village. . . . And the girl tied to the saddle ...
— The Darling and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... thrown the paper down, with no thought of reading it, and paused to hang up his coat and hat. Upon his return, he was confronted by a black headline in letters two inches deep, and flinging the paper open with a sharp crackle, he stood rigid while the meaning ...
— The Mayor of Warwick • Herbert M. Hopkins
... the stars and listening to the dear, minute sounds of peace; and in another the great gray slate was clean, and every bone of me set in plaster of Paris, and sniping beginning between pickets with the day. It was an occasional crack, not a constant crackle, but the whistle of a bullet as it passed us by, or a tiny transitory flame for the one bit of detail on a blue hill-side, was an unpleasant warning that we two on ours were a target in ourselves. But Raffles paid no attention to their fire; he was pointing downward through the bushes ...
— Raffles - Further Adventures of the Amateur Cracksman • E. W. Hornung
... course, that, in the end of ends, nothing but the right conquers; the prevalent thorns of wrong, at last, crackle away in indiscriminate flame: and of the good seed sown, one grain in a thousand some day comes up—and somebody lives by it; but most of our great teachers, not excepting Carlyle and Emerson themselves, are a little too encouraging in their proclamation ...
— Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne - Twenty-five Letters to a Working Man of Sunderland on the Laws of Work • John Ruskin
... just as if there was a whole battery of small guns in action down in the depths below us. A few hundred yards to the west of the camp there were a number of small hummocks, which might indicate the presence of crevasses, but otherwise the surface looked safe enough. The small guns kept up a lively crackle all through the night, and combined with a good deal of uproar among the dogs to shorten our sleep. But the first night of a sledge journey is almost always a bad one. Stubberud declared that he could not ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
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