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More "Crackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... of the approach at that moment. The sound of crackling twigs was quite close, and we waited breathlessly, eying the green curtain through which we expected the unknown to ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... shoulder-shrugs, the smith rushes at his fire and pulls the bellows-chain, his yawning shoes making him limp like Vulcan. At each pull the bellows send spouting from the dust-filled throat of the furnace a cutting blue comet, lined with crackling and dazzling white, ...
— Light • Henri Barbusse
... visual perceptions, though they are aware that incorrect auditions are frequent matters of fact. Moreover, to the heard object a large number of more or less certain precautionary judgments are attached. If anybody, e. g., has *heard a shot, stealthy footsteps, crackling flames, we take his experience always to be *approximate. We do not do so when he assures us he has *seen these things or their causes. Then we take them—barring certain mistakes in observation,—to be indubitable perceptions in which ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... black hills and changed the river into a pale flood of rolling gold. The fragrant wreaths of smoke floated lazily away on the faint breeze of night. There was no sound save the rushing of the water and the crackling of the camp-fire on the shore. We talked of many things in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, and the waters under the earth; touching lightly here and there as the spirit of vagrant converse led us. Favonius ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... woke in the morning, I could hear the crackling of fire, and felt very warm and cosy wrapped in the big shawl. I got a cheery greeting from Uncle Eb, who was feeding the fire with a big heap of sticks that he had piled together. Old Fred was licking my hands with his rough tongue, and I ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... my arm, and we went into the house. The curtains were drawn, a fire was crackling on the hearth, the lamps were lighted, and as I dropped into a chair this living-room of ours seemed to take on the air of a refuge from the vague, threatening sinister things of the world without. I felt I had never valued ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... galley and get into the open water beyond. This course brought the pirates ever closer and closer to the man-of-war, which now began to add its thunder to the din of the battle, and with so much more effect that at every discharge you might hear the crashing and crackling of splintered wood, and now and then the outcry or groaning of some man who was hurt. Indeed, had it been daylight, they must at this juncture all have perished, though, as was said, what with the night and the confusion and the hurry, ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... evening; the wind was high, the night extremely dark, and the flames had mounted to the very tops of the lofty woods which surrounded a field called the ninety acres, in which were several stacks of wheat. The appearance was alarming, and the noise occasioned by the high wind, and the crackling of the flames among the trees, contributed to ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 2 • David Collins
... early morning. A fresh fire was crackling merrily about a pot of coffee. Beyond through the trees a river of swollen amber laughed in the morning sunlight under a cloudless sky. The ridge of a distant woodland was deeply golden, the rolling meadow lands of clover beyond the river bright with iridescent dew. But the storm had left ...
— Diane of the Green Van • Leona Dalrymple
... priest, old and blear-eyed as he was, saw him first: the others had heard nothing. With Jehane's hand in his own, the priest stopped and blinked. Who was this prowler, afoot when all else were on their knees? His jaw dropped; you saw that he was toothless. Inarticulate sounds, crackling and dry, came from his throat. Richard had stopped too, tense, quivering for a spring. The priest gave a prodigious sniff, turned to his book, looked up again: the crouching man was still there—but imminent. ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... longer led wide and trampled hard across the level prairie, but wound, an almost invisible riband, through tortuous hollow and over swelling rise, so narrow that in places the hoofs broke with a sharp crackling through the frozen crust of snow. That, Larry knew, might, by crippling the beast he rode, stop him then and there, and he pushed on warily, dazzled at times by the light of the sinking moon which the glistening white plain flung back into ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... made the timid rabbit sick and faint. She drew back and hopped away through the bushes without heeding the crackling twigs or the whispered cautions of Chatter Chuk, who ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf; a Practical Plan of Character Building, Volume I (of 17) - Fun and Thought for Little Folk • Various
... small room near the top of the deserted house, in the warmth and security of its neatly kept and comfortable home, the Joyeuse family resembles a family of birds in a nest at the top of a tall tree. They sew and read and talk a little. A burst of flame, the crackling of the fire, are the only sounds to be heard, save for an occasional exclamation from M. Joyeuse, who sits just outside of his little circle, hiding in the shadow his anxious brow and all the vagaries ...
— The Nabob, Volume 1 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... Curry found his packet of fine-cut and thrust a large helping into his left cheek. "'For as the crackling of thorns under a pot,'" he quoted, "'so is ...
— Old Man Curry - Race Track Stories • Charles E. (Charles Emmett) Van Loan
... the back of the house I plainly heard the crackling made by the burning brushwood, and saw the flames coming toward us ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... to stop the shower you have only to prick on the yellow part, and there will come so much sunshine that the hail will melt away. If you prick the red side then there will come out of it such fire, with sparks and crackling, that no one will be able to look at it. You may also get whatever you will by means of this point and stone, and they will come of themselves back to your hand when you call them. I can give you ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends; Scandinavian • Various
... swoop from the clouds to draw the fire of the battery from their stricken companion. Down they plunged through the battery smoke, firing their machine guns point-blank as they came; and so, wheeling in long spirals, their guns crackling viciously, they mounted again and soared cloudward together, but, there among the clouds and in comparative safety, Z. developed engine trouble. Their ruse had served, however, and X. had contrived to bring ...
— Great Britain at War • Jeffery Farnol
... ever stove like that! There's a pleasant smell to the polish as it burns off, and the wood has such a crackling, cheery sound; and the hot steam from the Indian cakes sends forth an inviting odor as the brown sides ...
— The Elm Tree Tales • F. Irene Burge Smith
... crackling of the grass and thought of leaving our concealment at the risk of discovery; but our guide wisely remarked that the wind was the wrong way to bring the fire towards our hiding-place, so we felt safe. The feeling of security was more pleasant, because ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... There was crackling of boughs and filling of bags, and cracking of nuts, and wild cries in pursuit of startled hare or rabbit, and though Ambrose and Stephen indignantly repelled the idea of St. John's Wood being named in the same day with their ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... Indeed, the beast moved like the wheel of Death. Slaying men adorned with steel coats of mail, along with their horses and foot-soldiers, the chief of the Magadhas caused these to be pressed down into the earth, like thick reeds pressed down with crackling sounds, by means of that mighty and foremost of elephants belonging to him. Then Arjuna, riding on that foremost of cars, rushed quickly towards that prince of elephants in the midst of that host teeming with thousands of cars and steeds and elephants, and resounding with the ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... windows, regardless of whom they might fall upon, and without thought of how they were to be carried away. He went on until close to the fire, and stood for a time watching. The noise was bewildering. Mingled with the roar of the flames, the crackling of woodwork, and the heavy crashes that told of the fall of roofs or walls, was the clang of the alarm-bells, shouts, cries, and screams. The fire spread steadily, but with none of the rapidity with which he had seen it fly along from ...
— When London Burned • G. A. Henty
... one. Soon the fire was crackling merrily and the chops and bacon were sizzling in the frying-pan. Bob unpacked the sandwiches and the ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... burning cabin she had dropped it. But that was not like Allie: she would have clung to the bag while strength and sense were hers. Perhaps she had not gotten out of the cabin. Neale searched again, growing more and more aware of the strife outside. He heard the crackling of wood over his head. Evidently the cabin was burning like tinder. There were men in the back room, fighting, yelling, crowding. Neale could see only dim, burly forms and the flashes of guns. Smoke floated thickly there. Some one, on the ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... to his satire, but also their work. I despaired of ever expressing myself with such aptness or with such fluency. In those days conversation was still cultivated as an art; a neat repartee was more highly valued than the crackling of thorns under a pot; and the epigram, not yet a mechanical appliance by which the dull may achieve a semblance of wit, gave sprightliness to the small talk of the urbane. It is sad that I can remember nothing of all this scintillation. But I think ...
— The Moon and Sixpence • W. Somerset Maugham
... with windows on each side of the fire-place, in which a fire of Ohio coal was leaping and crackling with a cheerful and unctuous noisiness. Out of one window yon could see a pretty garden of five or six acres behind the house, and out of the other a carefully kept lawn, extending some hundred yards from the front door to the ...
— The Bread-winners - A Social Study • John Hay
... in his breast-pocket at that moment, and as Roselle stirred against him he heard the slight crackling of the paper. It dropped like a trickle of cold water into his excitement and desire. He took Roselle's arm lightly in his hand, ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... Hastings and the girl, which led him to remember that he had no hired man, and that there was a good deal to be done. He decided that it might be well to wait until the afternoon before he called on them, and for several hours he drove his team through the crackling stubble. His doubts and irritation grew weaker as he did so, and when at length he drove into sight of Hastings's homestead, his buoyant temperament was commencing to reassert itself. Clear sunshine streamed down upon the prairie out of a vault ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... the old gentleman. "I want fire and shelter; and there's your great fire there blazing, crackling, and dancing on the walls, with nobody to feel it. Let me ...
— De La Salle Fifth Reader • Brothers of the Christian Schools
... gold. The light was so intense that the golden tone of the grain whitened in places and became silvery. In the rich mud of the Nile the grain had grown strong, straight, and high like javelins, and never had a richer harvest, flaming and crackling with heat, been outspread in the sun. The crop was abundant enough to fill up to the ceiling the range of vaulted granaries which rose ...
— The Works of Theophile Gautier, Volume 5 - The Romance of a Mummy and Egypt • Theophile Gautier
... stage setting. Cheerful, squatted figures sat in silhouette or in the relief of chance high light. Long switches of meat roasted before the fires. A hum of talk, bursts of laughter, the crooning of minor chants mingled with the crackling of thorns. Before our tents stood the table set for supper. Beyond it lay the pile of firewood, later to be burned on the altar of our safety against beasts. The moonlight was casting milky shadows over the river and under the trees opposite. ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... thick about him Bobby realized that he was no longer alone. A crackling twig or a loose stone struck by a foot might have warned him. He went slower, glancing restlessly over his shoulder. He saw no one, but that idea of stealthy pursuit persisted. Undoubtedly it was the detective, Howells, who followed ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... reverberation of whose voice revealed the distance it had to traverse and the emptiness of the room,—in which Cesar heard the crackling of a good fire, though the owner was ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... watch, and at that moment a big blue car trundled into view around the bend of the road. The rear wheels struck a slide of sand and dust, and skidded; a girl cried out; then the big machine gathered out of the cloud of dust, and came toward Andy with a crackling like musketry, and it was plain that it would leap through Martindale and away into the country beyond at a bound. Andy could see now that it was a roadster, low-hung, ponderous, to ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... streaming swarm Whistling in their tempest flight; Snap the tall yews 'neath the storm, Like a pine flame crackling bright. Swift though heavy, lo! their crowd Through the heavens rushing loud Like a livid thunder-cloud With its bolt of ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo
... companion tells me it is midnight. The fire glows brightly, crackling with a sharp and cheerful sound, as if it loved to burn. The merry cricket on the hearth (my constant visitor), this ruddy blaze, my clock, and I, seem to share the world among us, and to be the only things awake. The wind, high and boisterous but now, has died away ...
— Master Humphrey's Clock • Charles Dickens
... oneself how harmoniously the holy cursing of the Puritan of that day would have chimed in with the unholy cursing and the crackling wit of the Rochesters and Sedleys, and with the revilings of the political fanatics, if my imaginary plain dealer had gone on to say that, if the return of such misfortunes were ever rendered impossible, ...
— Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews • Thomas Henry Huxley
... only tenanted by an old man who keeps the place; we found him cooking his supper over a small crackling fire of sticks, which he had lighted in the main hall; his feeble old voice chirps about San Carlo this and San Carlo that as we go from room to room. We have no carpets here—plain honest brick floors—the chairs, indeed, have once been covered ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler
... pushed past him. In the din he had not heard it. He turned as he crouched, and saw that it was a hen-pheasant, with blood on her breast and one wing trailing alongside. And in the same instant he was aware of a man—an under-keeper—crackling about in the hedge only ten yards ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... poured out into a bladder, as it runs out of the meat, for hog's-lard. When all the lard has been drained off, the remains (which are called cracklings, being then baked quite crisp) resemble the crackling on a leg of pork, are eaten with potatoes, and from the quantity of salt previously added to them, to preserve the lard, are unpalatable to many mouths. The rough farmers' men, however, devour them as a savoury dish, and every time "lard" is being made, cracklings ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 358 - Vol. XIII, No. 358., Saturday, February 28, 1829 • Various
... blaze gained headway; and a dense column of smoke and sparks rose straight upward to a great height. Owing to the snow and the darkening heavens, the fire wore a very ruddy aspect, and I vividly recall how its melancholy crackling was borne along the white shore, as we turned away ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... bugles sounded the reveille on all sides, and the long lines began to form. About five o'clock, the first gun rang on the front—another and another, succeeding, as our skirmishers pressed on, until the musketry grew into the crackling, labored sound, which precedes the roar of real battle. The troops seemed excited to frenzy by the sound. It was the first fight in which the majority of them had ever been engaged, and they had, as yet, seen and suffered ...
— History of Morgan's Cavalry • Basil W. Duke
... all, be the weight of this bracelet?" P'ing Erh observed. "It was once our lady Secunda's. She says that this is called the 'shrimp-feeler'-bracelet. But it's the pearl, which increases its weight. That minx Ch'ing Wen is as fiery as a piece of crackling charcoal, so were anything to be told her, she may, so little able is she to curb her temper, flare up suddenly into a huff, and beat or scold her, and kick up as much fuss as she ever has done before. That's why I simply tell you. Exercise due care, and it will ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... passed by in unbroken silence. So still was the room that Mrs. Irvin could hear the faint crackling sound made by the burning charcoal in the brass vessel near her. Wisps of blue-grey smoke arose through the perforated lid and she began to watch them fascinatedly, so lithe they seemed, like wraiths of serpents creeping up ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... see the dark mass of one on a towering height far to the left. The bright glare soon showed me to my pursuers, who turned the boat's head towards me and gave way with might and main. They closed fast, and I gave myself up for lost. A heavy rifle-fire began crackling along the shore, and the balls frequently skimmed along the water disagreeably near me. I struggled on, but would inevitably have been retaken if the event had depended on my own efforts. There was a small coast battery near containing ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... fill it with materials for a splendid fire. These being arranged, with a core of dry moss and broken twigs in the centre, the patient man struck a light by means of flint, steel, and tinder, and applied it. While the first few tongues of fire were crackling in the core of moss, he spread a thick blanket on his bed, and then stood up leisurely to fill his pipe and dreamily to watch ...
— Wrecked but not Ruined • R.M. Ballantyne
... He did not wish to arrive too hot, so had to go slowly. Fortunately he was near the top, and Francesca came down the pergola to pilot him indoors, and having shown him where he could wash she put him in the empty drawing-room to cool himself by the crackling wood fire. ...
— The Enchanted April • Elizabeth von Arnim
... odd crackling, and then a purry little sound as of a kettle singing. These noises came from behind a curtain drawn before a deep bay window. Daisy snatched it back, gave one joyful, "Oh!" and then stood gazing with delight ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... I looked to the fastenings of the hall-door, examined the screws by which the bolts were attached to the wood, and having satisfied myself that everything of that kind was secure, went up to my room, where the fire was now crackling and blazing famously, put the kettle on the hob, drew a chair up close to the hearth, exchanged my boots for slippers, lit a pipe, pulled out my ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... her shoulders carelessly, "Doesn't the Bible say 'the laughter of fools is like the crackling of thorns under a pot'? I love to set the pot down ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli
... but she was too much interested in what was going on around her to give up either to sleep or to relaxation. The crackling of the fire and its wonderful odor, the little hushing noises of the birds going to rest, the gentle coming up of the moon and the myriads of stars, all were too fascinating to risk missing in sleep. Scott had gone after the horses and had tethered each by a long rope ...
— Across the Mesa • Jarvis Hall
... rock, I conclude, for, to my no small satisfaction, I discovered that I was alive, and could very speedily sit up. The spectacle which met my sight, however, was terrific in the extreme. Far as the eye could reach, the whole country was in a blaze, the flames crackling and hissing as they fiercely attacked clump after clump of the tall tussac grass, while the ground over which they had passed was charred and blackened, the globular masses of the bog balsam glowing with fervent heat. The flames also still burned brightly ...
— A Voyage round the World - A book for boys • W.H.G. Kingston
... her unconsciousness by the crackling flames and stifling smoke, the girl was just rising from the floor, and the despair on her face as she comprehended her terrible environment would haunt John Franklin to ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... sound proceeded from it whenever the other slip was touched with the other hand. The strips of brass were next held one in each hand. The induced currents occasioned a muscular tremor in the fingers. Upon placing my forefinger to my ear a loud crackling noise was audible, seemingly proceeding from the finger itself. A friend who was present placed my finger to his ear, but heard nothing. I requested him to hold the strips himself. He was then distinctly conscious ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... palpitation, transfiguring the country, imparting to it a feeling of supernaturalness—the vision of a better world, of a distant planet where men feed on perfume and live in eternal poetry. Everything was changed in this spacious love-nest softly lighted by a great lantern of mother-of-pearl. The sharp crackling of the branches sounded in the deep silence like so many kisses; the murmur of the river became the distant echo of passionate love-making, hushed voices whispering close to the loved one's ears words tremulous with adoration. From the canebrake a nightingale was singing softly, as if ...
— The Torrent - Entre Naranjos • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... two brilliant flashes illuminated the night for a moment: then two deafening reports, that could be produced only by a weapon of heavy calibre. So easy to pick out the dull thunder roar from those other crackling ...
— Debts of Honor • Maurus Jokai
... so. The trained ear of the hunter had detected the sound of crackling twigs and swishing branches made by some animals in ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... a long while, broken only by the sound of the waves breaking on the shore and the crackling of the paper as Betty turned page ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... and though his body is much shorter, his arms are Briarius-like, everywhere, and more than once Grandon is lifted from his feet. It seems as if the awful struggle went on for hours while the fire is creeping stealthily about with its long blue and scarlet tongues. He hears a crackling up-stairs, it grows lurid within, and he remembers stories of men struggling with fiends. There floats over his sight the image of Irene Lepelletier; of Violet, sweet and sad-eyed. Will it be too late for her to ...
— Floyd Grandon's Honor • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... air cleaned by leagues of lifeless barrens and voids of crackling frost till he ached with the exhilaration of a perfect ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... the tinkling note of the muffin-bell strikes agreeably upon the ear, suggestive of fragrant souchong and bottom-crusts hot, crackling, and unctuous. Now ensues a delicate savour in the atmosphere of the terrace kitchens, and it is just at its height when Smith, Brown, Jones, and Robinson are seen walking briskly up the terrace. They all go in at Smith's, where ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 448 - Volume 18, New Series, July 31, 1852 • Various
... next day, the two maiden ladies set off upon their hospitable errand. In their stiff, crackling dresses of black silk, with jet-bespangled jackets, and little rows of cylindrical grey curls drooping down on either side of their black bonnets, they looked like two old fashion plates which had wandered off into the wrong decade. Half curious and ...
— Beyond the City • Arthur Conan Doyle
... poverty; never. No man who can laugh, what we call laughing, will laugh at these things. It is some poor character only desiring to laugh, and have the credit of wit, that does so. Laughter means sympathy; good laughter is not 'the crackling of thorns under the pot'. Even at stupidity and pretension this Shakespeare does not laugh otherwise than genially. Dogberry and Verges tickle our very hearts; and we dismiss them covered with explosions of laughter: but we like the ...
— English Critical Essays - Nineteenth Century • Various
... light, warmth, connexion, the satisfaction of a thousand wants and the cure of a thousand ills. There it is and always has been in the life of man, and yet until a century ago it worked unsuspected, was known only for a disregarded oddity of amber, a crackling in frost-dry hair ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... The Mormons were excellent cooks, and most efficient camp men. We had abundant camp supplies, supplemented with fine fish brought to us by the Indians, so we settled down for a delightful rest. Every night the men would make a cheerful crackling fire of dry driftwood from the river, hobble the mules, and fall asleep for the night, leaving us to enjoy the soft summer air and brilliant moonlight, while discussing our future plans when possessed of the boundless wealth that only awaited the coming ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... his horn, which lay near, and blew thereon three shrill notes that echoed against the trees. A moment of silence ensued, and then was heard the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs like the coming of many men; and forth from the glade burst a score or two of stalwart yeomen, all clad in Lincoln green, like Robin, with good Will Stutely and the widow's three ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... she struck a match, and kindled the light once more, and fell to work again. A minute sufficed to heap the little furnace, and a faint crackling at the bottom gave proof that the living embers underneath were taking effect. When satisfied of this, she put out her lamp, took up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one hand over the draft, that the fire might ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... in place, glided back to procure another of the same. This he soon brought forward, and after doubling it up as he had done the first, and bundling it into the proper size and shape—regardless of the snapping of bones and the crackling of joints—he pushed it in alongside the other, until the two wedged each other, and completely shut ...
— Ran Away to Sea • Mayne Reid
... there the tiny light of an outpost on the open field warned them to make a wide detour. The crackling of the short burnt stubbles of grass under their feet caused them to hold their breath and listen with loudly beating hearts for the dreaded ...
— The Petticoat Commando - Boer Women in Secret Service • Johanna Brandt
... Now footsteps could be heard crackling forward through the undergrowth. There came the sound of a heavy blow, a stifled cry, a dull thud as though a body had fallen heavily. What had happened? And what was happening? Helplessly I stared about me, striving in vain ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... ending the movement in a plunge that took up the slack, and, with a sudden jerk, arrested his one hundred and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and from under the runners arose a crisp crackling. ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... which burst upon her view. There in the far corner of the cellar was a barrel of shavings blazing almost to the floor above. In the meantime Esther had reached the cellar, and stood looking at the crackling flames in blank astonishment. The water Olive had poured into the barrel was not enough to quench the flames, for in the excitement of the moment she had spilled more than half of it on her way down. What was to be ...
— The Haunted House - A True Ghost Story • Walter Hubbell
... curious whistling crackling noise, tightening against the fisherman's foot; and the knot would have jumped off but for his precaution. Then it stopped with a jerk, ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... only floor to these rude structures, but the blankets and furs served as so many rugs, and the dwellings, with the crackling fire in the center, could be made comfortable even in the depth of the ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... pitch roll down The crackling, sweating pines, And streams of smoke, like water-spouts, Burst through the rumbling mines; I asked the firemen why they made Such noise about the town; They answered not,—but all the while The brakes ...
— The Poetical Works of Oliver Wendell Holmes, Complete • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... He burned his fingers, and to cool them he applied them in his booby fashion to his mouth. Some of the crumbs of the scorched skin had come away with his fingers, and for the first time in his life (in the world's life indeed, for before him no man had known it) he tasted —crackling! [Footnote: Crackling: the brown crisp rind of roasted pork.] Again he felt and fumbled ...
— Short Stories and Selections for Use in the Secondary Schools • Emilie Kip Baker
... it was with that queer feeling of foreign surroundings we sometimes experience, and the snow, the forest, the pain in my leg, my own being, were as strange as the crackling fire, the warm blanket that wrapped me, and the Indian who bent over me smiling into my ...
— In the Time That Was • James Frederic Thorne
... sleep, though your eyes see her not, is she not there still smiling? As you lie in the night awake, and thinking of your duties, and the morrow's inevitable toil oppressing the busy, weary, wakeful brain as with a remorse, the crackling fire flashes up for a moment in the grate, and she is there, your little Beauteous Maiden, smiling with her sweet eyes! When moon is down, when fire is out, when curtains are drawn, when lids are closed, is she not there, the little ...
— The Lock and Key Library • Julian Hawthorne, Ed.
... somewhere about the same time, I began to get intimate with Jenkin; last came Colvin. Then, one black winter afternoon, long Leslie Stephen, in his velvet jacket, met me in the SPEC. by appointment, took me over to the infirmary, and in the crackling, blighting gaslight showed me that old head whose excellent representation I see before me in the photograph. Now when a man has six friends, to introduce a seventh is usually hopeless. Yet when you were presented, you took to them and they to you ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the teapot and rice-pan are bubbling pleasantly. I remain sitting at my writing-table and see the moonlight playing in a streak on the surface of the river. All is quiet and silent around us, and even the midges have gone to rest. I hear only the brands crackling in the camp fire and the sand slipping down the neighbouring bank as the water laps against it. A dog barking in the distance is answered by ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... behind him, there was a moment of silence. The steps of the child and his companion were heard on the frozen gravel, and dying away, left no sound save the crackling of the fire, the chirps of the sparrows on the eaves, the distant pianos, and an indistinct murmur of voices—the hum of ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... Nowel any more; instead we petition the janitor to send up a little more steam. But what a jolly picture Chaucer gives of Christmas! Wine to drink (fine ruddy wine, as red as the holly berries), crackling flitch of pig to eat, and a merry cry of welcome sounding at the threshold as your friends come stamping in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... evening of the same day, and Superintendent Merrington and Captain Stanhill were once more in the moat-house library. It was Captain Stanhill who asked the question, as he stood warming his little legs in front of a crackling fire of oak logs which had just been lighted in the gloomy depths of the big fireplace. Although it was early in autumn, the ...
— The Hand in the Dark • Arthur J. Rees
... conflagration of 1872; to my own congregation in the fiery downfall of the Tabernacle. Some saw in the flames that roared through its organ pipes a requiem, nothing but unmitigated disaster, while others of us heard the voice of God, as from Heaven, sounding through the crackling thunder of that awful day, saying, "He shall baptise you with the ...
— T. De Witt Talmage - As I Knew Him • T. De Witt Talmage
... upon us both, broken only by the crackling of the turf and wood fire, I busy with the past, and he sunk in his own reflections. At ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... like the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch your cap and flee from the house. I remember my old mother was alive then, and in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out of doors, and had sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she used to sit at her wheel, drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song, which I seem ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... hummed a lullaby In a high and nasal tone As she rubbed him with the salve 'Midst the crackling of the fire. ...
— Atta Troll • Heinrich Heine
... writhing in the blaze till, weary of their long suffering, they threw themselves with a sudden and hurried sweep on the funeral pile around. From the noble pine to the bending sprout, the trees were aflame, while the crackling underbrush seemed a fiery network cast over the prostrate forms of the monarchs of the forest. When the fire caught a dry stump, it ran up the huge trunk like a serpent, and coiling around the withered branches, shot out its fiery tongue as if in mad joy over the raging ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... The crackling of a twig brought her around as a sudden tight rein does a high-strung horse. The man had emerged from the prickly pears and was close upon her. His steps dragged. The sag of his shoulders indicated extreme fatigue. The dark hollows beneath the eyes told ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... again. Their giant staggering lunges had carried them five miles from her. They were almost the size of fighting titans. The blurred distant shapes of them were silhouettes against the glow of the sky. The forest out there was crackling under their tread ... a blurred ...
— The World Beyond • Raymond King Cummings
... frantic to revenge on the masters the death of her husband, she was the leader in the outrages perpetrated by the strikers in the Montsou district. It was she who gave the signal for the attack on the troops, but at the first volley fired by the soldiers she fell back stiff and crackling like a bundle of dry faggots, stammering one last oath in the ...
— A Zola Dictionary • J. G. Patterson
... discipline before fate that makes a man walk soldierly to the electric chair; inspires a caught spy to stand placidly before his own coffin and face the firing-squad; led Joan of Arc after one panic of terror to wait serene among the crackling fagots. ...
— We Can't Have Everything • Rupert Hughes
... poured in a steady stream through the portals. Groups of English and American students in their irreproachable evening attire, groups of French students in someone else's doubtful evening attire, crowds of rustling silken dominoes, herds of crackling muslin dominoes, countless sad-faced Pierrots, fewer sad-faced Capuchins, now and then a slim Mephistopheles, now and then a fat, stolid Turk, 'Arry, Tom, and Billy, redolent of plum pudding and Seven Dials, Gontran, Gaston and Achille, savoring of brasseries ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... true prophet, Big Otter," said Lumley, as a low rumbling of distant thunder broke the silence of the night, which would have been profound but for our voices, the crackling of the fire, and the tinkle of ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... and flying here and there, scared by the unusual sight and horrid sounds—the hissing streams of water which, thrown from huge buckets on the flames, seemed but to excite them to greater fury instead of lessening their devouring way—the crackling of straw and wood, as of the roar of a hundred furnaces—these were the varied sounds and sights that burst upon the eye and ear of Nigel, as, richly attired as he was, his drawn sword in his hand, his fair hair ...
— The Days of Bruce Vol 1 - A Story from Scottish History • Grace Aguilar
... massacre to be stopped. It was too late. The train was fired, and could not be extinguished. The signal passed with the rapidity of sound from steeple to steeple, till not only Paris, but entire France, was roused. The roar of human passion, the crackling fire of musketry, and the shrieks of the wounded and the dying, rose and blended in one fearful din throughout the whole metropolis. Guns, pistols, daggers, were every where busy. Old men, terrified maidens, helpless infants, venerable matrons, were alike smitten, and mercy ...
— Henry IV, Makers of History • John S. C. Abbott
... trunks of trees, they saw, wavering, flickering, leaping and dying, a line of fire. In some places it was a dozen feet high; in others it sank to within a few inches of the ground—but nowhere could the eye discern an opening through it. A roar and a crackling filled the air. Sparks were shooting upward in the suction. A blast of heat rushed against Bob's cheek. All at once he realized that a forest fire was not a widespread general conflagration, like the burning of a city block. It was a line of battle, a ring of flame advancing steadily. ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... the big grate, they sent up a leaping, crackling flame which was in itself an embodiment of cheer, and when the sixteen chairs were filled and ranged in a circle round the blaze, there was a Christmas picture complete, and as goodly and cheery a picture as one need wish to see. A basket of fir-cones stood at either ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... was sitting next to Rachel. She was curiously conscious of his presence and appearance—his well-cut clothes, his crackling shirt-front, his cuffs with blue rings round them, and the square-tipped, very clean fingers with the red stone on the little finger ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... instruments of ignition and combustion in Sam Winnington's hair, singeing it and scorching his ears. Had Sam not been the best-natured and most politic fellow in the world, he would have dragged the aggressor by the collar or the cuff over the smoking crackling wood, and made the ladies ...
— Girlhood and Womanhood - The Story of some Fortunes and Misfortunes • Sarah Tytler
... shadows. And, there being no need to stay awake, he dropped at once into heavy slumber. He was roused by hands dragging at him. Nas Ta Bega bent over him. It was broad daylight. The yellow wall high above was glistening. A fire was crackling and pleasant odors were wafted to him. Fay and Jane and Lassiter sat around the tarpaulin at breakfast. After the meal suspense and strain were manifested in all the fugitives, even the imperturbable Indian being more than usually watchful. His eyes scarcely ever left the black gap where the ...
— The Rainbow Trail • Zane Grey
... his eyes as well as he could. At last he saw that the otter was in the act of climbing up to the wild geese. But just then it shrieked shrill and wild. The otter tumbled backward into the water, and dashed away as if he had been a blind kitten. An instant later, there was a great crackling of geese's wings. They raised themselves and flew ...
— The Wonderful Adventures of Nils • Selma Lagerlof
... was going on with frightful rapidity. The houses, built of fir-wood, blazed like torches—a hundred and fifty flaming at once. With the crackling of the fire was mingled the yells of the Tartars. The old boatman, getting a foothold on a near piece of ice, managed to shove the raft towards the right bank, by doing which a distance of from three to four hundred feet divided it from ...
— Michael Strogoff - or, The Courier of the Czar • Jules Verne
... the old man mounted the rude steps which led to the door, and entered the room which was kitchen, dining, and drawing room at Storm Castle, as the lighthouse was called by its inhabitants. The room was light and cheerful, with a pleasant little fire crackling sociably on the hearth. The table was laid with a clean white cloth, the kettle was singing on the hob, and a little covered saucepan was simmering with an agreeable and suggestive sound; but no one was to be ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... fire. There are granite quarries near, and these had contributed an enormous block which formed a hearth raised about six inches above the level of the floor. On this an armful of brushwood was placed; and the match applied, it began to burn with cheerful crackling laughter and pleasant flame, filling the room with a fragrant perfume. For all other light a feeble oil lamp twinkled high up on the wall, and a candle burned on the table where ...
— Faces and Places • Henry William Lucy
... in his irritable manner—he always seemed to keep his hands ready for action—he pulled another sheet of paper from his pocket, unfolded it. The paper made a crackling noise. He handed it ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence
... showing his white, parted teeth. The Nabob also took his leave, his heart overflowing with gratitude, but not daring to allow that sceptic to see anything of it, for any sort of demonstration aroused his distrust. And the Minister of State, left alone, crouching in front of the crackling, blazing fire, sheltered by the velvety warmth of his luxurious garments, lined on that day by the feverish caress of a lovely May sun, began to shiver anew, to shiver so violently that Felicia's letter, ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... hastily set the kettle over the crackling coal, discovering a second later that she had overslept herself because Mr. Constant wished to be woke three-quarters of an hour earlier than usual, and to have his breakfast at seven, having to speak at an early meeting of discontented tram-men. She ran at once, candle in hand, to his ...
— The Big Bow Mystery • I. Zangwill
... foliage. The damp began to shew on the North walls of the rooms. A fire in the study now daily, for the sake of the books: one in the drawing-room, weekly, for the sake of the piano and the furniture. And for Betty, in far-away Paris, a fire of crackling twigs and long logs in the rusty fire-basket, and blue and yellow flames leaping to lick the royal arms of France ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... a sound of quick steps, and of the angry swirl of skirts, and the crackling and rending ...
— The Coast of Bohemia • William Dean Howells
... went. Jane, of course, accompanied her, and, contrary to orders, was allowed to romp about at pleasure. The day was cold, and the fire burned brightly in the open hearth. Nearer and nearer the little one crept to the blazing logs, watching the sparks fly up in a golden shower when the crackling masses fell to the ground, or when some rough soldier struck them with his mailed hand. No one looked to her while she played by the open hearth, and tried to seize the vivid sparks; once only, a trooper caught her roughly back; but again she stole towards the ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... cleared away the lunch with much shaking of the head. Olva lay in his chair watching, with eyes that never closed nor stirred, the crackling golden fire. Beyond the window the world was of blue steel. He could fancy the still gleaming waters of the lake that stretched beyond the grass lawns; he could fancy the red brick of the buildings that clung like some frieze to the horizon. Along the stone courtyard rang the heavy football boots ...
— The Prelude to Adventure • Hugh Walpole
... that I knew why he had come fast) "and we were tired. It was so beautiful here, and seemed so peaceful that we never thought of danger, at this time of day. We had just begun to pack up our things to move on again, when there was a rustling behind us, the crackling of a branch under a foot, and that wretch sprang out. I was frightened, but—I hate being a coward, and I just made up my mind he shouldn't have our things. Innocentina screamed, and I struck at the man with the stick she uses ...
— The Princess Passes • Alice Muriel Williamson and Charles Norris Williamson
... At last she grew calmer, and asked me to set her down, and, striking a narrow track between the dark trees, we marched along silently and quickly, stopping now and then to listen if we were being followed. We heard nothing but the crackling tread of some nocturnal beast of prey, or the cry of some animal in the agony of death. On coming to an opening in the forest I made a shelter for the night. Atala then threw herself at my feet, and clasped my knees, and again begged me to leave her. But I swore that, if she returned ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... duty is a prey to many an imaginary danger. The rustling of a leaf, the crackling of a twig, the flitting shadows of the ever-changing clouds, are made to assume the guise of a foe, endeavoring to steal upon him unawares. Again and again Teddy was certain he heard the stealthy tread of the strange hunter, or some prowling Indian, and his heart throbbed violently ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... and leapt and waded in the crackling pools of leaves for a long time, he grew hungry. "But there is no food here," he thought; "and anyway it doesn't matter. It's much better to be hungry here ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... listening apparently. The man no longer carried the sack. They exchanged a few inaudible words. Then they crossed the clearing and entered the wood a few yards to his right. He could hear the crackling of their footsteps diminishing in the direction of ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... dry brush and wood, built a fire and placed chunks of fresh meat upon the burning coals. As the blaze rose, they collected about the fire, sat down Indian-fashion and inhaled the odor of the meat as it twisted on the crackling fire. The rays of the sun, falling about them, cast a golden radiance over the bloody hide of a calf, lying on the ground nearby. The meat dangled from a rope fastened to a huizache tree, to dry in ...
— The Underdogs • Mariano Azuela
... discharged not merely balls of stone and iron to demolish the walls, but flaming balls of inextinguishable combustibles designed to set fire to the houses. One of these, which passed high through the air like a meteor, sending out sparks and crackling as it went, entered the window of a tower which was used as a magazine of gunpowder. The tower blew up with a tremendous explosion; the Moors who were upon its battlements were hurled into the air, and fell mangled in various parts of the town, and the houses ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... and chestnut and cypress and hickory and limetree and cottonwood and tuliptree and cactus and wildvine and tamarind and persimmon ... and tangles as tangled as any canebrake or swamp ... and forests coated with transparent ice, and icicles hanging from boughs and crackling in the wind ... and sides and peaks of mountains ... and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie ... with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild pigeon and high-hold and orchard-oriole ...
— Prefaces and Prologues to Famous Books - with Introductions, Notes and Illustrations • Charles W. Eliot
... the doctor laughing. "Perhaps it would go better, my boy, if the dampers were not shut up tight. All it needs is a little draught,—see?" And in a moment there was a comfortable crackling sound going on ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... be the weight of this bracelet?" P'ing Erh observed. "It was once our lady Secunda's. She says that this is called the 'shrimp-feeler'-bracelet. But it's the pearl, which increases its weight. That minx Ch'ing Wen is as fiery as a piece of crackling charcoal, so were anything to be told her, she may, so little able is she to curb her temper, flare up suddenly into a huff, and beat or scold her, and kick up as much fuss as she ever has done ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... indicate a water pool, and amid which they may seek refuge. None appears. On they rush, urging their horses by whip and spur—their steeds seeming to know their danger. Already they see the bright glare of the flames below the dark mass of smoke. Already the bursting and crackling of the leaves, as the threatening column rushes on, reaches their ears. A fearful death is following them. At length the sharp eyes of one of the guides discover a slight eminence; towards this, though almost ...
— The Western World - Picturesque Sketches of Nature and Natural History in North - and South America • W.H.G. Kingston
... darker smile, and the rest grinned sheepishly Grandeur and riches had not spoiled their prince. He was theirs still and he had wanted them. He had sent for them. They gained courage to look around on the spotlessly clean room, on the nurse in her crackling dignity; on the dish of oranges which she promptly handed to them and of which each in awe partook a golden sphere; on the handful of bright flowers that Morton had brought but a few minutes before and placed on a little stand by the bed; on the pictures ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... were having a good time with their toys in front of the fireplace in the sitting room. On the hearth blazed a snapping, crackling warm fire ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... reckoned without my host. On tiptoe I stole into the kitchen, where my sweetheart was frying ham and eggs. I thought I might snatch a kiss. Above the noise of the sizzling frying-pan and the crackling wood, I plainly heard the voice of my—well, let us say it—bride, weeping and complaining to an old house servant: 'It's a shame and a sin to enter matrimony with a lie. I can't wed this Michael: not because he is ugly; that doesn't matter in a man, but he comes too late! My heart belongs ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 1 • Charles Dudley Warner
... mother. The woman seemed more bewildered than ever. Evidently she could not understand why a total stranger should risk his life for her child when so many of her neighbors stood around; unless it might be the old fever still burned in Smith's veins, and he could not resist the lure of the crackling flames that seemed to be ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... and crackling flames got towards him he started up and began to trot off, coughing and roaring till all the ...
— Crusoes of the Frozen North • Gordon Stables
... Pole Star ever twisting and turning and coming before them again, until the sky seemed lit up with wonderful colours, and great bands of light were shooting up and sinking down only to shoot up again with a crackling like packs of ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... did not forget me. At first, not knowing what to do, she had remained watching the progress of events, hoping probably that the enemy would be driven back. When, however, the fire surrounded her house, she saw that it was time to fly. Seizing me in her arms she was about to do so, when the crackling and hissing flames burst forth around us. At that moment a man leaped up the steps. Though so long a time had passed since we had parted, I at once recognised my friend Jack. Snatching me from the woman's arms, he sprang down to the ground, telling ...
— Won from the Waves • W.H.G. Kingston
... past him. In the din he had not heard it. He turned as he crouched, and saw that it was a hen-pheasant, with blood on her breast and one wing trailing alongside. And in the same instant he was aware of a man—an under-keeper—crackling about in the hedge only ten yards ...
— The Way of the Wild • F. St. Mars
... of the revelation was almost unendurable. She felt as if he had caught her quivering soul and was thrusting it into an inferno from which it could never rise again. Through and above that awful laughter she seemed to hear the crackling of the flames, to feel the blistering heat that had consumed so many, to see the red glare of the furnace gaping ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... Pro-Consul at the Cape, Lucknow might have fallen, before there were forces to relieve it. That would have lit, for our rule in India, a bonfire in which Bombay would only have been a crackling twig. ...
— The Romance of a Pro-Consul - Being The Personal Life And Memoirs Of The Right Hon. Sir - George Grey, K.C.B. • James Milne
... to stern among the nipping masses. Water oozed in through her dry seams. Any moment a rougher touch or a sharper edge might cut her through. But that was a risk they had accepted. They did not take time to think of it, nor to listen to the crunching and crackling of the hungry ice around. They urged straight on, steadily, eagerly, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... the discordant voice of Mariana la Mursiana, crackling in strident protest. My door was still open; I turned to look and saw her, hot-faced, tousle-haired, insufficiently wrapped, striving to ascend the gallery steps, but valiantly opposed by Madame Brossard, who stood ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... death had banished all other thoughts. A few minutes more, and Ujarak, standing up in his eagerness, flourishing the great whip, and shouting at the pitch of his voice, drove the yelling dogs off the crackling sheet of ice to a place of safety on ...
— Red Rooney - The Last of the Crew • R.M. Ballantyne
... into father's den in the midst of a scene of great moment. I paused and listened with profound respect. Tradition was on trial and the result I felt would be momentous. Father sat in his huge chair before a small crackling fire in the wide chimney, and Martha's boy stood before him with a large, profusely illustrated volume of Hans Christian Andersen clasped passionately to his little ...
— The Heart's Kingdom • Maria Thompson Daviess
... came in sight of it, and they thrilled with excitement and joyful alarm. Suppose 'Lias's dreadful stepfather should come out and yell at them! They came forward on tiptoe, making a great deal of noise by stepping on twigs, rustling bushes, crackling gravel under their feet and doing all the other things that make such a noise at night and never do in the daytime. But nobody stirred inside the room with the lighted window. They crept forward and peeped cautiously inside ... ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... good fortune to be taken into a boat belonging to the Aklerney sloop. The hull of the ship, masts, and rigging, were now in a blaze, bursting tremendously in several parts through horrid clouds of smoke; nothing was heard but the crackling of the flames, mingled with the dismal cries of terror and distraction; nothing was seen but acts of frenzy and desperation. The miserable wretches, affrighted at the horrors of such a conflagration, sought a fate less dreadful by plunging into the sea, and about three hundred men were preserved ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... and ten minutes afterward Uncle Chirgwin was opening his cash-box and handing Thomasin the snowy, crackling ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... again, and dead silence reigned except for the crackling of the fire and the clicking of Aunty ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... the wagon was in a blaze, and from the straw and rushes with which it was laden on the top, the yellow flames rose crackling, while firebrands flew in all directions. The house was suddenly illuminated: masses of smoke ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag
... sometimes typify nationalities better even than variants of language or clothing. Take the lowly corn meal, for instance. We find that Italian polenti, Spanish tamale, Philadelphia scrapple and Southern Darkey crackling corn bread are but variants of the preparation of corn meal in delectable foods. It is a long step from plain corn meal mush to scrapple, which we consider the highest and best form of preparing this sort of dish, but all the intermediate steps come from a desire to please ...
— Bohemian San Francisco - Its restaurants and their most famous recipes—The elegant art of dining. • Clarence E. Edwords
... wandered from the crackling heat of his Nott stove, has taken it into his poetical imagination to liken this bay to that of Naples," said John Effingham; "and his fellow-citizens greedily swallow the absurdity, although there is scarcely a single feature in common to give the ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... his fire was crackling and blazing up, and his kettle beginning to sing, he felt more cheerful already. What, after all, if it did take some time to get his ring again? He must make some excuse or other; and, should the worst come to the worst, "I suppose," ...
— The Tinted Venus - A Farcical Romance • F. Anstey
... care That young men have to shoe the Mare; Of Twelfth-tide cake, of peas and beans, Wherewith ye make those merry scenes, When as ye choose your king and queen, And cry out, 'Hey for our town green.' Of ash-heaps in the which ye use Husbands and wives by streaks to choose: Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds A plenteous harvest to your grounds; Of these, and such like things, for shift, We send instead of New-year's gift. Read then, and when your faces shine With bucksome meat and cap'ring wine, Remember us in cups full crowned, And let ...
— Christmas: Its Origin and Associations - Together with Its Historical Events and Festive Celebrations During Nineteen Centuries • William Francis Dawson
... an infinite number of churches, for in the glare countless minarets and small cupolas were visible. There was no crowd, no voices, and no shouting; only a long line of low, blazing wooden houses. The place was deserted and silent save for the crackling blaze. Then down the street a short, fat man on horseback rode towards us. He was riding a white horse. He wore a grey overcoat and a cocked hat. I became aware of a rhythmical tramping: a noise of hundreds and hundreds of hoofs, a champing of bits, and the tramp of innumerable ...
— Orpheus in Mayfair and Other Stories and Sketches • Maurice Baring
... that I walked along the passage to see what it meant. I thought perhaps the young man had fallen asleep with the window open and left the gas flaring in the wind. I stood for a moment outside the door wondering what I ought to do. Then I heard a crackling sound, and smelt something burning. That alarmed me still more, because I knew no fire had been lit in the room that day. I wondered if the bedroom was on fire, and I knelt down and tried to see through ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... heard from our camp. Every day saw new phalanxes of splendid primeval trees fallen, or half suspended in their rigging of lianas. The leaves withered, the flower petals fell and we heard no more the crackling of bamboos in the wind. Then the pitiful survivors of the destruction were brought to us; now a baby flying lemur, flung from its hole by the falling of some tree; young tupaias, nestling birds; a few out ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... over yonder, and a most astonishing way of making you laugh only by talking about ordinary things. And when he joked anybody would laugh, even the Predikant, who was always preaching about the crackling of thorns under a pot. With him, in a black box like a little coffin, he had a machine he called a banjo, upon which he would play lewd and idolatrous music which was most pleasing to the ear; and he would sing songs while he played, which all ended with a yell. He was good at ...
— Vrouw Grobelaar and Her Leading Cases - Seventeen Short Stories • Perceval Gibbon
... and listened also. He cursed suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of sound from the ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... form of shares, script, bonds, promissory notes, it is a flea-bite. But when it has to be produced in the raw, in flat, hard lumps of gold or in crackling bank-notes, it's more like a bite from a hippopotamus. I can't raise it, and that's all about it. ...
— A Man of Means • P. G. Wodehouse and C. H. Bovill
... have some light on the subject. At the crackling of his match the negro uttered a low whine, and began to struggle slightly again, possibly fearing that he was about to ...
— Chums in Dixie - or The Strange Cruise of a Motorboat • St. George Rathborne
... westerly wind this morning, and it is well that my banana clump has all the shelter of the gunyah, or its graceful leaves would suffer. The big cabbage palm outside the verandah makes a curious, dry, parchment-like crackling in the wind. But the three silver tree-ferns have a cool, swishing note, very pleasing to the ear; while for the bush trees beyond, theirs is the steady music of the sea on a sandy beach. I fancy this wind must be a shade too boisterous ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson
... they could do to make any progress forward, or even to keep themselves upon their feet. While struggling and plunging blindly through the storm, amid the rushing of the wind and the rattling of the hail, and the crackling and creaking of the dry trees in the forest, and the rush of waters, and all the din of the tempest, Marian's ear caught the sound of a child wailing and sobbing. A pang shot through her heart. She listened breathlessly—and ...
— The Missing Bride • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... at Obbo the grass was not sufficiently dry to burn, in this country it was reduced to a crisp straw, and I immediately set fire to the prairies; the wind was strong, and we had a grand blaze, the flames crackling and leaping about thirty feet high, and sweeping along with so mad a fury that within an hour the entire country was a continuous line of fire. Not a trace of vegetation remained behind; the country appeared as though ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... He halted his team near the pyre, arena-slaves dragged away Hector's corpse, one brought a lighted torch and Palus himself kindled the pyre at each of its four corners, walking twice round it. When it was enveloped in crackling flames, he mounted the chariot and Narcissus drove him out; drove him out, to the horror of all beholders by ...
— Andivius Hedulio • Edward Lucas White
... spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout fly. Even the hole in her stocking gave her piquancy; and she had wonderful black hair, which probably had not been combed properly for a month, and big, crackling black eyes. They told us that one day, a week or two before we came, she had been particularly cheerful—so cheerful that one of her patrons was moved to inquire the ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... the baby, he put a yellow paper bag down on Thea's coverlid and winked at her. They had a code of winks and grimaces. When he went in to chat with her mother, Thea opened the bag cautiously, trying to keep it from crackling. She drew out a long bunch of white grapes, with a little of the sawdust in which they had been packed still clinging to them. They were called Malaga grapes in Moonstone, and once or twice during the winter the leading grocer got a keg of them. They were used mainly for ...
— Song of the Lark • Willa Cather
... which (also in broad daylight) I heard a strange crackling sound like the rustling of a large sheet of stiff paper or parchment turned slowly in the reader's hands. This noise also was one of frequent occurrence. Among the things seen by other members of the family was a light that glided ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 29. August, 1873. • Various
... of men. His miracles are mostly works of mercy and gentleness, relieving wants and sicknesses, drying tears and giving back dear ones to mourners. He is as complete a contrast to his stern, solitary, forceful predecessor, as the 'still small voice' was to the roar of the wind or the crackling ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... communicating with other juntas of the same sort to unite their little wars, or guerrillas, into a great combined and vigorous effort wherever the opportunity offered. Under the surface throughout all Spain the fires of resistance began to kindle; the crackling could be heard even while the assembly at Bayonne was adopting ...
— The Life of Napoleon Bonaparte - Vol. III. (of IV.) • William Milligan Sloane
... together with some other subtleties of thought transplanted hither not without advantage, the distinction between the Fancy and the Imagination, made much also of the cognate distinction between Wit and Humour, between that unreal and transitory mirth, which is as the crackling of thorns under the pot, and the laughter which blends with tears and even with the sublimities of the imagination, and which, in its most exquisite motives, is one with pity—the laughter of the comedies of Shakespeare, hardly less expressive than his moods of seriousness ...
— Appreciations, with an Essay on Style • Walter Horatio Pater
... hand and holding its roof on with the other. The sea was such a sight as I have not seen on shipboard, and while I luxuriously shuddered at it, I had the advantage of a mellow log-fire at my back, purring and softly crackling in a ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... feathers of the flaming bird were of steel, copper, brass, Corinthian bronze, silver, and gold. Especially resplendent was the bird's head, with its gleaming red circle around the brightly shining eye. This eye glowed and sparkled in the flickering light of the crackling wood fire until it seemed fairly endowed with ...
— Manasseh - A Romance of Transylvania • Maurus Jokai
... left for our inspection. A mere suicide would not have caused him to send for me. As to the release of the lady, it would appear that she has been locked in her room during the tragedy. We are moving in high life, Watson; crackling paper, 'E.B.' monogram, coat-of-arms, picturesque address. I think that friend Hopkins will live up to his reputation and that we shall have an interesting morning. The crime was ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... softly back in her chair, her eyes shining under the stimulus of the laugh that ran through her circle. The Dean joined in it uneasily, conscious, no doubt, of the sharp, crackling movements by which in the distance Lady Grosville was dumbly expressing herself—through the Times. Cliffe looked at the small figure a moment, then seized a chair and sat down in front ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... answer to his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... a curious whistling crackling noise, tightening against the fisherman's foot; and the knot would have jumped off but for his precaution. Then it stopped with a jerk, and ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... door wide. 'Twas a long room, wainscoted half up the wall in some dark wood, and in daytime lit by one window only, which now was hung with red curtains. By the fireplace, where a brisk wood fire was crackling, lean'd the young gentlewoman I had met at Hungerford, who, as she now turn'd her eyes upon me, ceas'd fingering the guitar or mandoline that she held against her waist, and raised her pretty head ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... well educated, and told what they had to tell in a very interesting way. Every once in a while those about the fire would leave to replace some of their companions who had been watching some time, and the men thus relieved would have a new batch of stories to relate. Around the crackling, roaring fire it was very warm and comfortable, and time flew by faster than the boys realized. They had never felt more wide awake in their lives, and they were much surprised when the first faint streaks of dawn in the eastern sky ...
— Bert Wilson on the Gridiron • J. W. Duffield
... of magnetism, of od, of electricity. As for electricity, Frederick just then had a peculiar experience of it. He was trying to find composure in front of the open fireplace; and whenever he touched metal with the tongs, crackling little sparks shot out. Everything in the room seemed to be charged. If he merely ran his finger tips lightly over the rug before the hearth, there were little flashes and reports, like the ...
— Atlantis • Gerhart Hauptmann
... shriek assails his heart,— A female shriek, so piercing wild, As makes his very life-blood start:— "My child! Almighty God, my child!" He hears, And 'gainst the tottering wall The ponderous ladder rears: While blazing fragments round him fall, And crackling sounds assail his ears, His sinewy arm, with one rude crash, Hurls to the earth the opposing sash; And, heedless of the startling din, Though smoky volumes round him roll, The mother's shriek has ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... he cried, and there was a little explosion; a cork spurted out and struck the ceiling; there was smoke and the crackling of glass. He turned round and faced me, a smudge of ink on one of his cheeks, and that customary nervous ...
— The Secret City • Hugh Walpole
... shouted, in order to make himself heard over the crackling flames and the greater noise of the pounding hoofs. "If we're not safe behind a curtain of flame, there is no other place near where ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... hiding-place she had chosen, and walked slowly back to the cottage she had left full of the signs of her shame. When she entered, she saw the wise woman on her knees, building up the fire with fir-cones. Already the flame was climbing through the heap in all directions, crackling gently, and sending a sweet aromatic odor through the ...
— A Double Story • George MacDonald
... perpetually exploring the pockets of her apron. Francine, who wore a roundabout apron of a white and crackling nature, adorned her conversation by attending to the hem of hers. When she asked about my last interview with her father, she ironed that hem with the nail of her rosy little thumb; when she fell into reminiscences of her mother, she smoothed the apron respectfully ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... many cars lay in heaps along the curve, and the trackmen like firebugs ran in and out of them. A tongue of flame leaped from the middle of a pile of stock cars. In five minutes the wreck was burning; in ten minutes the flames were crackling fiercely; then in another instant the wreck burst into a conflagration that rose hissing and seething a hundred feet ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... that crackling note in my hand at once restored my courage. Covering the lovely creature beside me with a protecting arm, I replied boldly to the ...
— Castles in the Air • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... given to decide, THOU ART THE MAN! The scales are in THY hand. Think well, and say,—Shall it be Peace or War? As thou, shalt say so shall it be with thee." But, ere the answer came, all vanished like A scrap of paper in a fire of coals. Then, with a crackling peal, the thick black vail That hangs before the face of men was rent, And in the ...
— Bees in Amber - A Little Book Of Thoughtful Verse • John Oxenham
... Joshua was a farmer's son, And a pondering he sat One night when the fagots crackling burned, ...
— The Wit of Women - Fourth Edition • Kate Sanborn
... friend forever. There was nothing unmaidenly in that. Mark would understand her. Mark had always understood her. And so she cheered her heavy heart through the breakfast hour, and the foolish jesting of the two that sounded to her anxious ears, in the language of scripture, like the "crackling ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... his arms, he crossed himself. The devil was speaking from the hilltop. On two other occasions he had heard the crackling of the flames near the old sheep-herder's shack on the crest of the hill. He had taken the wrong trail. Had gone too far. Worming his way down the path he fled from the flashes ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... no need to tell anyone who lives in the country what happens on the fifth of November, for they are sure to know well. The beautiful fireworks, with their streams of coloured fire; the crackling of the squibs; the gorgeous catherine-wheels and the coloured Roman candles; the great rockets that shoot up into the air with a swish, leaving behind them a long tail of golden fire, and then burst ...
— The Children's Book of London • Geraldine Edith Mitton
... granite, the narrow passage of the ugly wild-looking little harbour, supposed to be full of the skeletons of men and carcasses of ships. It looked like the mouth of a cavern, rather than the entrance of a port. They could hear the crackling of the pile on high within the iron grating. A ghastly purple illuminated the storm; the collision of the rain and hail disturbed the mist. The black cloud and the red flame fought, serpent against serpent; live ashes, reft by the wind, flew ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... looked large and his voice vibrated in the quiet room; Aunt Polly seemed dwindling, physically, while something about her—the light playing on her knitting needles and spectacles, probably—radiated. The crackling logs were like claps of thunder. Northrup pulled himself to an upright position as one does ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... like a strong crate. By some chance or other I had not before put my hands upon it. I now moved them all over it, and at one place came to a space into which I could thrust my fingers. The board seemed loose. I tugged and tugged away till off it came with a crackling sound, and down I came. I picked myself up, happily not the worse for my tumble, and eagerly inserted my hand into the crate. There appeared to be several articles within, but what they were I could not ...
— Dick Cheveley - His Adventures and Misadventures • W. H. G. Kingston
... to place them, but I scarcely know how I answered them, although I was aware that everything—both my husband's luggage and mine—was being taken into the large bedroom. A maid asked if she ought to put a light to the fire, and I said "Yes . . . no . . . yes," and presently I heard the fire crackling. ...
— The Woman Thou Gavest Me - Being the Story of Mary O'Neill • Hall Caine
... the ear, and a loud sound proceeded from it whenever the other slip was touched with the other hand. The strips of brass were next held one in each hand. The induced currents occasioned a muscular tremor in the fingers. Upon placing my forefinger to my ear a loud crackling noise was audible, seemingly proceeding from the finger itself. A friend who was present placed my finger to his ear, but heard nothing. I requested him to hold the strips himself. He was then distinctly conscious of a noise (which I was ...
— Little Masterpieces of Science: - Invention and Discovery • Various
... match for the story-teller of the present day, when he begins to lie, with a tongue as though he had had nothing to eat for three days, so that you snatch your cap and flee from the house. As I now recall it,—my old mother was alive then,—in the long winter evenings when the frost was crackling out of doors, and had so sealed up hermetically the narrow panes of our cottage, she used to sit before the hackling-comb, drawing out a long thread in her hand, rocking the cradle with her foot, and humming a song, which I seem ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors: Russian • Various
... stream before us, or heard the sound of a rill emptying in, swollen by the recent rain. About a mile below the island, when the solitude seemed to be growing more complete every moment, we suddenly saw the light and heard the crackling of a fire on the bank, and discovered the camp of the two explorers; they standing before it in their red shirts, and talking aloud of the adventures and profits of the day. They were just then speaking of a bargain, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. II, No. 8, June 1858 • Various
... into the apartment in stately fashion, her black silk gown crackling pleasantly as she walked, and seated herself very primly, as befitted her ancestry and bringing-up, in one of the stiff, high-backed chairs. And presently the parson, his garden clothes off and his best coat on, came in hurriedly to know his ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... others went to the stake actually rejoicing, the spectators wondering at the smile of ineffable peace which illumined their faces above the fierce glare of the flames, at the hymns of praise and thanksgiving heard amid the roar of crackling fagots. ...
— Pushing to the Front • Orison Swett Marden
... scant soil that covered the rocks, and held fast, despite the Arctic blasts that swept across the Bay to rake the island during the long winters. Here the tent was pitched, and everything carried up from the boat and stowed within to dry. Fifteen minutes later the tent stove was crackling cheerily and sending forth comfort to the drenched young mariners. "There'll be no hurry in the marnin'," said David when they had eaten supper and lighted a candle. "We'll stay up to-night till we gets the outfit all dried, and if we're late about un we'll sleep a bit later in ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... "Betty, dear," she said, "don't be unreasonable. You can't dislike me as much as you imagine you do! Why should you go on in this fashion?" As Fanny spoke she knelt down by the guard, put a match to the already well-laid fire, and soon it was crackling and ...
— Betty Vivian - A Story of Haddo Court School • L. T. Meade
... was at its height about midnight, and had reached a large tree in a line with our house, when the wind from the lake caught and drove it back. The underbrush soon burnt out, but the trees were like pillars of flame, crackling and roaring in the silent night, till they fell with a crash to the ground. Half roused by the noise, old Cahill would mutter something about keeping watch until the master came home. The old fellow had wrapped himself in his great-coat, and was sitting on a chair in the yard sound asleep. ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... mountain, shepherds overcome with sleep, Near to Bethlem's holy tower, kept at dead of night their sheep; Round about the trunk they nodded of a huge ignited oak, Whence the crackling flame ascending bright and ...
— The Bible in Spain • George Borrow
... were hurrying about on deck, was only shown by the somber figures who now and then passed in front of a single lantern. From out the engine room, already under water, arose the pound of heavy pounding and the weird crackling of the engines, as they were ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... was under the covers, and all the shades were down, Jane stepped into the school-room, leaving the door slightly ajar. She snapped on the lights above the school-room table. Then Gwendolyn heard the crackling of a news-paper. ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... stork's nest into the air and borne it quickly off, there would have been an end of the King and his daughter, and of our story too. However fortunately they were just in time: and still from afar off the aerial travellers saw the fireworks fly into the air, whizzing and fizzing, and crackling and sparkling, from the tower of the Townhouse, which was certainly all very splendid at a distance, but close by would have been certain death. So the King and his daughter returned safe and ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... off the wounded man to Wieltje with one of the stretcher-bearers who was to return with a bearer party. The other one and I watched by Duffy. It was an awful and wonderful time. Our field batteries never slackened their fire and the wood echoed back the crackling sound of the guns. The flare lights all round gave a lurid background to the scene. At the foot of the long slope, down which the brave lads had gone to the attack, I saw the black outline of the trees. Over all fell the soft light of the moon. A great storm of emotion swept ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... pedestal ornamented with precious bronzes, the marble bust of some princess royal disguised as Diana appeared about to fly out of her turbulent drapery, while on the ceiling a figure of Night, powdered like a marquise and surrounded by cupids, sowed flowers. Everything was asleep, and only the crackling of the logs and the light rattle of ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... pleasure in adding a few bits of lace to the bed, and in filling the vases on the chimney-piece with bunches of roses. Gentle warmth and pleasant fragrance reigned over all, and not a sound broke the silence, save the crackling and little sharp reports of the wood ...
— Therese Raquin • Emile Zola
... hero: trees on trees o'erthrown Fall crackling round him, and the forests groan: Sudden, full twenty on the plain are strow'd, And lopp'd and lighten'd of their branchy load. At equal angles these disposed to join, He smooth'd and squared them by the rule and line, (The wimbles for the work Calypso found) With those he pierced them and with ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer, translated by Alexander Pope
... room upstairs she assigned him, opening from that she had given the elder man. Cheerful fires burned in old-fashioned, open-hearthed Franklin stoves, in both rooms, and the atmosphere was fragrant with the mingled breath of crackling apple-wood, and lavender from the fine old linen with which both beds ...
— The Twenty-Fourth of June • Grace S. Richmond
... a weird and lurid fire-light Suddenly in fitful flashes Fell upon the group assembled. For the embers on the hearth-stone Had ignited the old pine-tree. Flaming fiery tongues now glided Through the branches full of resin; And the sparks flew crackling upward Wildly to ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel
... satisfaction of a thousand wants and the cure of a thousand ills. There it is and always has been in the life of man, and yet until a century ago it worked unsuspected, was known only for a disregarded oddity of amber, a crackling in frost-dry ...
— The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... right, Billy, my lad," said the boatswain good-humouredly. "He thinks if we waits for pork till I brings down a pig with a six-shooter the crackling won't burn and the ...
— Mother Carey's Chicken - Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle • George Manville Fenn
... climb a bulrush, to which he clings like a sailor to a mast, and send forth his shrill call. There is a Southern species, heard when you have reached the Potomac, whose note is far more harsh and crackling. To stand on the verge of a swamp vocal with these, pains and stuns the ear. The call of the Northern species is far more tender and musical. [Footnote: The Southern species is called the green hyla. I have since heard them in ...
— Birds and Poets • John Burroughs
... down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they raced amidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling through the seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon it, one over another, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong into the flames. A handful remained on the poop, cowering and undone with terror. Upon these turned Captain Harris, as Ready and I, stemming the torrent of maddened ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... as the whispered words fell from his lips a low, crackling sound caught his ear. Louder it grew, and, looking suddenly to the left, he saw a thin curl of smoke rising through the branches and gaining every instant in volume. Louder, louder snapped the blazing twigs. Denser, heavier grew the smoke. Then tiny darts ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... sudden, she heard the sound of a woodman's ax, and the crackling of the branches as they fell to ...
— The Iceberg Express • David Magie Cory
... gleam, and supposed they had kindled it to search for her. Her pulse beat wildly; yet, still she hoped to escape. It was not probable that they would search a tree so near the cabin; they would rather suppose she had fled to a distance. Presently a crackling noise was heard in the cabin, and a bright light, as of flame, flashed from the door and window. Presently the Indians rushed out, and, raising their wild yell, danced around the cabin with their usual demonstrations of joy, when they have accomplished ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 3 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... already working at capacity, transmitting the light and heat that filtered through the mirror-tone hull into stored, useful energy. Batteries were already overcharged and the voltage regulators snapped on and off like a crackling barrage of ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen
... hills came the sound of baying hounds, followed by a quick, springy step through the crackling underbrush, as a young man in close-fitting velvet hunting-suit and jaunty velvet cap emerged from the ...
— Daisy Brooks - A Perilous Love • Laura Jean Libbey
... ball hit me, and down I went. At the moment a Sepoy fell dead across me, hiding me partly from sight. The fight lasted a minute or two longer. I fancy a few fellows escaped, for I heard shots outside. Then the place became quiet. In another minute I heard a crackling, and saw that the devils had set the mess room on fire. One of our men, who was lying close by me, got up and crawled to the window, but he was shot down the moment he showed himself. I was hesitating whether to do the same or to lie still ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... his way eagerly across the street; slipping and sliding on the glassy surface, head bent against the driving sleet, clothes crackling where particles of ice had formed. Spike reached the door of the eating-house, opened it, and almost staggered as the warmth of the place smote him like ...
— Midnight • Octavus Roy Cohen
... regal-looking gown that became her aristocratic old countenance as a rich setting becomes an antique cameo. Her stately rooms were aglow with immense fire-places, each holding a small cart-load of hissing and crackling wood, the reflected light gleaming brightly from the shining fire-irons, while a number of brass sconces—the picturesque chandeliers of the past—polished to the similitude of gold, were softly shimmering overhead. The beautiful English furniture of the last century, ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... Vane. She had an invalid cap on, and a thick woolen invalid shawl, and she shook and shivered perpetually; though she had drawn so close to the wood fire that there was a danger of her petticoats igniting, and the attendant had frequently to spring up and interpose between them and the crackling logs. Little did it seem to matter to Lady Isabel; she sat in one position, her countenance the ...
— East Lynne • Mrs. Henry Wood
... and a rocky precipice towers up on the west shore, something like a thousand feet high. The crackling of fire-crackers innumerable and the report of larger and noisier explosions attract my attention as we gradually crawl up toward it; and coming nearer, flocks of pigeons are observed flying uneasily in and out of caves in the lower ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... hear the crackling of the shrubbery as the horses of the outlaws pushed their way through to the higher ground, and it was not long before he caught sight of them, riding in single file, the captain ...
— Bert Wilson in the Rockies • J. W. Duffield
... Pot boiled and bubbled over the crackling flames. Fat and lean, sweet and bitter, had gone to fill it, and all seethed merrily together. "Hubble bubble!" said ...
— The Silver Crown - Another Book of Fables • Laura E. Richards
... length the crackling noise and dreadful blaze Call'd up some waking lover to the sight; And long it was ere he the rest could raise, Whose heavy eyelids yet were full ...
— Six Centuries of English Poetry - Tennyson to Chaucer • James Baldwin
... short of their opponents. The Long Toms laid at an angle of forty-five plumped their huge shells into the British guns at a range where the latter would not dream of unlimbering. And then gradually the rifle fire died away also, crackling more faintly as White withdrew to Ladysmith. At eleven o'clock Carleton's column recognised that it had been left to its fate. As early as nine a heliogram had been sent to them to retire as the opportunity served, but to leave the hill was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... that adventurous journey to Bremen—recalled it all as some half-forgotten, misty dream. She could feel now the crisp crackling of those Bank of England notes which she had carried secreted in her cheap little dressing-case with its electro-plated fittings. She remembered, too, the face of the stranger, the fat, sandy-haired German, whom she had met ...
— The White Lie • William Le Queux
... electrical sea. The slope was free from snow, and as the electrical waves swept in close succession, about thirty seconds apart, they snapped, hummed, and buzzed in such a manner that their advance and retreat could be plainly heard. In passing by me, the noise was more of a crackling and humming nature, while a million faint sparks flashed from the stones (porphyry and rhyolite) as the wave passed over. But the effect on me became constant. Every muscle was almost immovable. I could climb only a few steps without weakening to the stopping-point. I ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... which met his eyes was Mademoiselle de Corandeuil stretched out in her armchair, head thrown back, arms drooping and letting escape by way of accompaniment a whistling, crackling, nasal melody. The old maid's spectacles hanging on the end of her nose had singularly compromised the harmony of her false front. The 'Gazette de France' had fallen from her hands and decorated the back of Constance, who, as usual, was lying ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... chlorate of potash. If a crystal of this is examined under a magnifying glass till its crystalline form and structure are familiar, and it is then placed in a test-tube and gently heated, cleavage will at once be evident. With a little crackling, the chlorate splits itself into many crystals along its chief lines of cleavage (called the cleavage planes), every one of which crystals showing under the microscope the identical form and characteristics of the larger crystal ...
— The Chemistry, Properties and Tests of Precious Stones • John Mastin
... was said, and not one of the three stirred, until a sharp crackling of the wood above told its own tale. The soldier still held up his brand till the place was well alight. Then withdrawing it, and beckoning to his companion, he began to retreat towards the mouth of the cave, saying as he did so, with a ...
— Boycotted - And Other Stories • Talbot Baines Reed
... from Berks, Oxford, and Bucks, possess a decided superiority over the eastern, of Essex, Sussex, and Norfolk; not to forget another qualification of the former, at which some readers may smile, a thickness of the skin; whence the crackling of the roasted pork is a fine gelatinous substance, which may be easily masticated; while the crackling of the thin-skinned breeds is roasted into good block tin, the reduction of which would almost require teeth of iron."—MOUBRAY on Poultry, ...
— The Cook's Oracle; and Housekeeper's Manual • William Kitchiner
... silence in the bush. Even the pigeons ceased to say they were afraid, but hopped silently from bough to bough, following the movements of the Kangaroo with eager little eyes. The Brush Turkey and the Mound-Builder left their heaped-up nests and joined the other thirsty creatures, and only by the crackling of the dry scrub, or the falling of a few leaves, could one tell that so many live creatures were ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... refunding to General Jackson the fine of one thousand dollars that had been imposed upon him by a New Orleans judge. Richardson's opening sentence was this: "I rise, Mr. Speaker, and throw myself into the crackling embers of this debate,"—from which, in the judgment of the House, ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... and the crackling of matches as Durand and Chauvenet sought to grasp the unexpected situation that confronted them. The big servant, Armitage knew, would hardly be able to clear matters for them at once, and he hurriedly ...
— The Port of Missing Men • Meredith Nicholson
... off with his ugly old mouth open. Worth Gilbert, the son of divorced parents, with a childhood that had divided time between a mother in the East and a California father, surveyed the parchment-like countenance leisurely after the crackling old voice was hushed. Finally he grunted inarticulately (I'm sorry I can't find a more imposing word for a returned hero); and answered ...
— The Million-Dollar Suitcase • Alice MacGowan
... a new geographical discovery as odd as the second trail. I had ridden over the trail a dozen times, and seen no communication between the ledge and trail. Nevertheless, I went on a hundred yards or so, when there was a sharp crackling in the underbrush, a shower of stones on the trail, and my friend plunged through the bushes to my side, down a grade that I should scarcely have dared to lead my horse. There was no doubt he was an accomplished rider,—another fact ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... in around the crack in the door and the air was hot and suffocating. Somewhere the sound of crackling, snapping wood, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in Army Service - Doing Their Bit for the Soldier Boys • Laura Lee Hope
... the dried grass took fire, the flames crackling and roaring as they spread with great rapidity, fortunately away from the broken-down seaplane. Through the whirling clouds of smoke could be faintly discerned the backs of the fugitives, many of whom dropped as they ran with ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... minute. I knew if I said anything the Chief would laugh at me, so I stayed behind him and looked after my own safety. We reached a little mesa at the head of the coulee and found Indians of all shapes and sizes assembled there. Two or three huge campfires were crackling, and a pot of mutton stewed over one of them. Several young braves were playing cards, watched by a bevy of giggling native belles. The lads never raised their eyes to the girls, but they were quite conscious of ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... A cheerful fire was crackling in a large kitchen range, suggesting, by its brightness and snapping, pine-knots full of pitch and resin. The front doors of the stove were open and the firelight danced across the room, filling it with cheer. It was one of those homelike kitchens where everything ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... high devotion was the service made, And all the rites of pagan honour paid: So lofty was the pile, a Parthian bow, With vigour drawn, must send the shaft below. The bottom was full twenty fathom broad, With crackling straw, beneath in due proportion strowed. The fabric seemed a wood of rising green, With sulphur and bitumen cast between To feed the flames: the trees were unctuous fir, And mountain-ash, the mother of the spear; The mourner-yew ...
— Palamon and Arcite • John Dryden
... a faintly crackling little pile of twigs, his face turned inquiringly toward Casey. Casey, glancing guiltily over his shoulder, felt the chill hand of discovery reaching for his very soul. It was as if a dead man were hidden away beneath that tarp. It seemed to him that the eyes of the stranger were ...
— The Trail of the White Mule • B. M. Bower
... catch up a bag, and hold it open, while two more stuff in the crackling leaves. Then I come along with my big feet, and pack the leaves in tight, and on to the rig ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... was positively crackling with an excitement which even her best friend could not have called suppressed. There was ...
— From One Generation to Another • Henry Seton Merriman
... go. Thou hast won great glory by thy death. For us, Fortune still tosses us to and fro in weltering labour and forbids us to see what chance the future hath in store.' So spake the Libyan, and straightway from the crackling flame the exulting spirit ...
— Post-Augustan Poetry - From Seneca to Juvenal • H.E. Butler
... petulantly, "I want fire and shelter; and there's your great fire there blazing, crackling, and dancing on the walls, with nobody to feel it. Let me in, I say; I only want ...
— Stories of Childhood • Various
... glass with which the room was full, on the little tray of tea-things which the nurse held, and on his sister's face of greeting as she lay back smiling among her pillows. There was such a cheerful home peace and brightness in the whole scene—in the crackling wood fire, in the sparkle of the tea-things and the fragrance of the tea, and in the fresh white surroundings of the invalid; it seemed to him incredible that under all this familiar household detail there should be lying in wait that last awful ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... entrance to the marsh. At the path where Jinnie had so many times brought forth her load of wood, he paused again and glanced about. As far north as he could see, the marsh stretched out in misty greenness. The place seemed to be without a human being, until Jordan suddenly heard the crackling of branches, and there appeared before him a young man with deep-set, evil eyes, and large, pouting mouth. Upon his ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... descent became so toilsome that conversation ceased, and nothing was heard but the crackling of twigs, the breaking off of branches, and the sharp, rustling noise that followed as the travellers forced their ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... soared into the sky. It illuminated a wide area of the bay, and revealed a number of crowded canoes darting in on the ship from all sides. Courtenay grasped the lines connected with the remaining mines and hauled for dear life. Already the Indian rifle fire was crackling with vivid spurts of flame, and stones and arrows were beginning to patter on the deck and bang against the steel plates. Two of the dynamite bombs exploded with the usual din, but it was impossible to ascertain their effect owing to the ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... start convulsively, as if she would go to him; then controlling herself, she stood silent. He had not seen the movement,—or, if he saw, did not heed it. He did not care to tame her now. The firelight flashed and darkened, the crackling wood breaking the dead ...
— Margret Howth, A Story of To-day • Rebecca Harding Davis
... girl, which led him to remember that he had no hired man, and that there was a good deal to be done. He decided that it might be well to wait until the afternoon before he called on them, and for several hours he drove his team through the crackling stubble. His doubts and irritation grew weaker as he did so, and when at length he drove into sight of Hastings's homestead, his buoyant temperament was commencing to reassert itself. Clear sunshine streamed down upon the prairie out of a vault of cloudless blue, and he felt that ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... had finished the tinker had a firm grip of her arm. "Hang it! If no one will take us in, we'll break in. Cheer up, lass; I'll have you by a crackling good fire if I have ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... they read the closely-written pages. There was silence in the room as they did so, broken only by the crackling of the paper, while Max Wyndham kept a motionless watch, his ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... Mare; Of twelf-tide cakes, of pease and beans, Wherewith ye make those merry scenes, Whenas ye chuse your king and queen, And cry out, 'Hey for our town green!'— Of ash-heaps, in the which ye use Husbands and wives by streaks to chuse; Of crackling laurel, which fore-sounds A plenteous harvest to your grounds; Of these, and such like things, for shift, We send instead of New-year's gift. —Read then, and when your faces shine With buxom meat and cap'ring wine, Remember us in cups ...
— A Selection From The Lyrical Poems Of Robert Herrick • Robert Herrick
... rear, where the big tree, which overshadowed it with its drooping branches, was most easily approachable. As he and Toko crept on, bending low, through that dense tropical scrub, in deathly silence, they were aware all the time of a low, crackling sound that rang ever some paces in the rear on their trail through the forest. It was Tu-Kila-Kila's Eyes, following them stealthily from afar, footstep for footstep, through the dense undergrowth of ...
— The Great Taboo • Grant Allen
... arms of a wind-mill revolved imperturbably. Mr. Brady, followed by the boys, went on around to the further side of the burning building. It was a huge hip-roofed structure. One end, that nearest the house, was already falling, and the tons of crackling hay in the mows glowed like a furnace. The heat, even at the foot of the wind-mill, a hundred feet or more away, was almost intolerable. A row of one-story buildings ran along one side of the barn, so near that the flying sparks blew over rather than on to them. Several other ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... weasel... No, it's my father running with my papers. Here he is!... Here he is! Must go; the moon is shining. Must go, look for my papers.... Ah! A flower, a crimson flower—there's Sophia.... Oh, the bells are ringing, the frost is crackling.... Ah, no; it's the stupid bullfinches hopping in the bushes, whistling.... See, the redthroats! Cold.... Ah! here's Asanov.... Oh yes, of course, he's a cannon, a copper cannon, and his gun-carriage is green. ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... never have moved from his chair since the day she had last seen him, thought Trix. The only difference in the surroundings was a crackling wood fire now ...
— Antony Gray,—Gardener • Leslie Moore
... shamed, humiliated, agonized radical—thus made a mark for gibes instead of winning honor as a martyr for the cause—began to wail and plead the men who were nearest the scene of flagellation started to laugh. The laughter spread like a fire through dry brambles. It ran crackling from side to side of the great square. It mounted into higher bursts of merriment. It became hilarity that was expended by a swelling roar that split wide the night silence and came beating back in ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... complex modern civilization," he said, "and the most difficult to deal with. It is a melancholy thought that the noblest of games should have produced such a scourge. I have frequently marked Herbert Pobsley in action. As the crackling of thorns under a pot.... He is almost as bad as poor George Mackintosh in his worst period. Did I ever ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... I felt every moment that the soul of Summer was passing. I scented the ascending incense of smoking and crackling boughs. What a requiem was being chanted by all the tremulous and broken voices of Nature! Would I, could I, longer forbear to join the passionate and tumultuous miserere? It seemed that I could not, for gathering about me the voluminous furs of Siberia, I bade adieu to friends, not without ...
— In the Footprints of the Padres • Charles Warren Stoddard
... withering under the growing domination of the Yankees. They abandoned our hearths when the old Dutch tiles were superseded by marble chimney-pieces; when brass andirons made way for polished grates, and the crackling and blazing fire of nut-wood gave place to the smoke and stench of Liverpool coal; and on the downfall of the last gable-end house, their requiem was tolled from the tower of the Dutch church in Nassau-street by the old bell that came from Holland. But poetry and romance ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... a great disposition to fall asunder into smaller pieces without any perceptible cause. It is full of cavities, containing compressed air, which, when the ice melts, bursts its attenuated envelope with a crackling sound like that of the electric spark. It thus behaves in this respect in the same way as some mineral salts which dissolve in water with slight explosions. Barents relates that on the 20/10th August ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold
... At the present moment a howitzer is going strong behind this, and the concussion is tremendous. The noise is like dropping a traction-engine on a huge tin tray. A shell passing away from you over your head is like the loud crackling of a newspaper close to your ear. It makes a sort of deep reverberating crackle in the air, gradually lessening, until there is a dull boom, and a mile or so away you see a thick little cloud of white smoke in the air or a pear-shaped cloud of grey-black smoke on ...
— Adventures of a Despatch Rider • W. H. L. Watson
... stuck, crackling under the pull of the forceps, blood and puss leaping forward from the cavities as the steady hand of the doctor pulled inch after inch of the gauze to the light. And when one hole was emptied there was another, ...
— A Diary Without Dates • Enid Bagnold
... were mostly rain at a temperature of thirty-five or forty degrees, with strong winds which sometimes roughly lash the shores and carry scud far into the woods. The long nights are then gloomy enough and the value of snug homes with crackling yellow cedar fires may be finely appreciated. Snow falls frequently, but never to any great depth or to lie long. It is said that only once since the settlement of Fort Wrangell has the ground been covered to a depth of four feet. The mercury seldom falls more than five or six degrees below ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... in a moment, had thrown off his nightshirt and was in his bath. Sausages! He was translated into a world of excitement and splendour. They had sausages so seldom, not always even on birthdays, and to-day, on a cold morning, with a crackling fire and marmalade, perhaps—and then all ...
— Jeremy • Hugh Walpole
... Becky, very late one night, as a party of gentlemen were seated round her crackling drawing-room fire (for the men came to her house to finish the night; and she had ice and coffee for them, the best in London): "I must have ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... green lane that led from the village street, and were soon in the forests. The half-muffled sunlight stole down sweetly and tenderly through the chaos of naked branches overhead; and there was a light crisp, crackling sound running through the dry fallen leaves, as though they had become tired of their position, and were striving to turn over. So quiet was the air that even this faint sound was distinctly audible. Hark! whang! whang! there rings the woodman's axe—crack! crash! b-o-o-m!—Hurrah! ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 3 September 1848 • Various
... of arriving before that hour. The people poured in a steady stream through the portals. Groups of English and American students in their irreproachable evening attire, groups of French students in someone else's doubtful evening attire, crowds of rustling silken dominoes, herds of crackling muslin dominoes, countless sad-faced Pierrots, fewer sad-faced Capuchins, now and then a slim Mephistopheles, now and then a fat, stolid Turk, 'Arry, Tom, and Billy, redolent of plum pudding and Seven Dials, Gontran, Gaston and Achille, ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers
... tossing in thorn sprays, and stirring about the blazing mass with a long-handled, three-pronged Beelzebub kind of fork, the heat shining out upon his streaming face and making his eyes like furnaces, the thorns crackling and sputtering; while Creedle, having ranged the pastry dishes in a row on the table till the oven should be ready, was pressing out the crust of a final apple-pie with a rolling-pin. A great pot boiled on the fire, and through the open door of the back kitchen a boy was seen seated ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... which lay near, and blew thereon three shrill notes that echoed against the trees. A moment of silence ensued, and then was heard the rustling of leaves and crackling of twigs like the coming of many men; and forth from the glade burst a score or two of stalwart yeomen, all clad in Lincoln green, like Robin, with good Will Stutely and the widow's three sons ...
— Robin Hood • J. Walker McSpadden
... they would have taken him away, or torn him in pieces. At some times they seemed to belch flame, at other times a continuous smoke, with horrible noises and roaring. Once he dreamed he saw the face of the heavens, as it were, all on fire; the firmament crackling and shivering with the noise of mighty thunders, and an archangel flew in the midst of heaven, sounding a trumpet, and a glorious throne was seated in the east, whereon sat one in brightness, like the morning star, upon which he, thinking it was the end of the world, fell upon his knees, and, ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... there's another, right on the edge of the horizon, just like a tiny star. Peasants are seated round it, keeping their night-watch, cooking potatoes and chatting. The fire yonder is blazing up and crackling merrily, while the horses stand, snorting, beside it. But at this distance it's only a little spark that ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... burning house. They won't forget that sight, I'll bet a sovereign, not even when they grow up. We rode away and left them, a forlorn little group, standing among their household goods—beds, furniture, and gimcracks strewn about the veldt; the crackling of the fire in their ears, and smoke and flame streaming overhead. The worst moment is when you first come to the house. The people thought we had called for refreshments, and one of the women went to get milk. Then ...
— With Rimington • L. March Phillipps
... we were well within the ravine which has already been described, and the old soldier had hardly ceased speaking when from amid the foliage ahead and on every side came a circle of fire like unto the lightning's flash, followed by the crackling of firearms, which served to drown the death-cries from every ...
— The Minute Boys of the Mohawk Valley • James Otis
... an answer. A startled voice whipped back at him through crackling static: "Cosmos XII, this is Traffic. Who did you say ...
— Next Door, Next World • Robert Donald Locke
... dead wood lying about. As the blaze grew I rose to my feet and, dragging larger wood, piled it on. A sort of joyful mania took possession of me as I watched the great tongues of flames shooting skyward and listened to the crackling of the burning wood, and I stood back and laughed. I had triumphed over fate and the elements. Our arms, our clothing, nearly all our food, our axes and our paddles, and even the means of making new paddles were gone, but for the present we were safe. Life, no matter how uncertain, is ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... onward: where to-day the martyr stands, On the morrow crouches Judas with the silver in his hands; Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling fagots burn, While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe return To glean up the scattered ashes ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
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