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More "Creak" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... blowing horses a rod away, made their saddles creak as they shifted to see this little dash of melodrama. Macdonald's face was swept by a sudden paleness, as if a sickness had come over him. He clenched his lean jaw hard; the firmness of his mouth was grimmer still ...
— The Rustler of Wind River • G. W. Ogden
... down an unfathomable well and hears ages afterward the faint sound of disturbed waters. When I look back at that time I figure myself as forever sitting with uplifted pen, waiting for a word that would not come, and that I did not much care about getting. The panels of the room would creak sympathetically to the opening of the entrance-door of the house, the faintest of creaks; people would cross the immense hall to the room in which they plotted; would cross leisurely, with laughter and rustling of garments that after a long time reached my ears in whispers. ...
— The Inheritors • Joseph Conrad
... parasol aloft and looked down with a great wonder at the frowsy, unkempt creature, trying to reconcile it with the little part of life that she knew. To her ears came the cries of men, the stamp of hoofs on the bridge, and the creak and groan of wagons heavy-laden. It was a breathless California Indian summer day. Light fleeces of cloud drifted in the azure sky, but to the west heavy cloud banks threatened with rain. A bee droned lazily by. From farther ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... effort. She would storm the all but hopeless attic chambers. Up the twisting turnpike stairs on the outer wall she ran, to where the swallows wheeled about the cornices, and she could hear the iron cross of the Knights Templars creak above the gable. Then, all the way along a dark passage, at one door after another, she knocked, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... make you rottenly wretched," admits Beauvayse, with a confirmatory creak of the bamboo chair. "But, on the other hand, they can make you ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... I have sat in its boughs and looked seaward for hours. I remember the creak of its branches, the scent of the flowers That climbed round the mouth of the cave. It is odd I recall Those little things best, that I scarcely ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... was very low, but I recognised that some one was opening the door from the outside. Another creak, and then silence. Very quietly I reached for my sword and prepared to spring from the bed. Presently, as if satisfied that the sound had not disturbed me, my uninvited guest pushed the door ajar and slipped into the room. I could not perceive ...
— My Sword's My Fortune - A Story of Old France • Herbert Hayens
... the summit of the hay, by the glimmer of the half-extinguished lantern over the toll-house, is seen the drowsy visage of his comrade, who has enjoyed a nap some ten miles long. The toll is paid,—creak, creak, again go the wheels, and the huge haymow vanishes into the morning mist. As yet, nature is but half awake, and familiar objects appear visionary. But yonder, dashing from the shore with ...
— The Toll Gatherer's Day (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... "How the woodwork does creak!" said the Director as he came up to the glass case, with a young lady to whom he was showing ...
— Soap-Bubble Stories - For Children • Fanny Barry
... prisoner in the closet, the door of which was an old-fashioned one and thick. But by bracing his feet against the back wall, Dick got a firm hold and soon his shoulder on the barrier caused it to bend and creak. Then the lock gave way and the door flew open with ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... cart was empty and he upon his return journey, dared to be upon the road at night. There was no moon, and in the starlight Walter Skinner could see but imperfectly. "And who art thou?" he demanded loftily, "that thou shouldest creak and rumble along over the road and block the way of a rising man? The sun doth rise, and why not I? Only the sun riseth not in the middle of the night, and neither will I. Nay, verily, but I will wait to rise till I be come ...
— A Boy's Ride • Gulielma Zollinger
... the seat in front of her, moved away to the smoking car; and the woman in gray listened to the creak and whirr of the wheel of torturing dread, upon which some malignant fate once more bound her. Bertie had been safe in his mountain fastness, until her ill-starred advertisement coaxed him within reach of the police Briareus. Could she discern the hand of merciful warning in this fortuitous ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... wagons there would be four or five men and women, and here and there one would be playing a musical instrument and they would all be singing, while the creaking of the wagon came in with an orchestral quality which seemed grotesquely suitable. The mules, too, looked as though they ought to creak, and an inspection of the harness suggested that it was held together, not so much by the string and wire with which it was mended, as by the fingers of that especial Providence which watches over all kinds of absurd repairs ...
— American Adventures - A Second Trip 'Abroad at home' • Julian Street
... heat has made the men silent, for scarcely a word is spoken; if it were, in the stillness it must be heard, though they are at some distance. The wheels, well greased for the heavy harvest work, do not creak. Save an occasional monosyllable, as the horses are ordered on, or to stop, and a faint rustling of straw, there is no sound. It may be the flood of brilliant light, or the mirage of the heat, but in some way the waggon and its ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... her ears pricked up to catch the first sound. When everybody had gone to bed, she went downstairs and hid herself, until break of day, in a recess in the entrance-hall. She was prepared to spring out at the least creak on the stair, for she felt convinced that Suzanne would slip out in the dark with the object of joining Philippe. This time, Marthe would have killed her. And her jealousy was so exasperated that she lay in wait, not with fear, but with the fierce hope that ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... knowing east from west or north from south in the strange surroundings. The "lot" they have known so well and crossed so often has been transformed into a trackless wilderness, through which strange objects rumble and creak, over which queer, ghastly lights play for the benefit of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... by almost unnoticed. It was not until eleven o'clock that a halt was made. He could just discern in the darkness the dim outlines of what appeared to be a large farm-house, surrounded by barns and outhouses. Some transport had got jammed in the yard. He could hear the creak of wheels, the stamping of hoofs, and shouts. There was not a light anywhere, and they waited for half-an-hour that seemed interminable, for they were drenched through, and tired, and were longing ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... thing, creak, When I touch you with elbow or knee; That is the way you speak Of one ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... Creak! Nearer 'It' came, and our floor was reached. Clutching his revolver, Doctor Matthai sprang out of bed and ran to the door. Then a horrible scream of terror and anguish rang through the house. An invisible hand seemed to drag the unfortunate man out of the room. There ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... not the whir of windmills but the creak of a gate in the storm that brought Mr. Magee at last to a stop. He walked gladly up the path to Elijah ...
— Seven Keys to Baldpate • Earl Derr Biggers
... added Paul, as he heard the creak of the windlass on deck. "I'm afraid they are up to ...
— Little By Little - or, The Cruise of the Flyaway • William Taylor Adams
... veins stand out on his flushed forehead, but all in vain—the house continues to diverge, and Ian feeling the game to be all but lost, pulls with the concentrated energy of rage and despair. The sculls bend like wands, the rowlocks creak, the thole-pins crack. It won't do. As well might mortal ...
— The Red Man's Revenge - A Tale of The Red River Flood • R.M. Ballantyne
... line that stood nearest the spigot, now staggering and splashing as he lugged a full pail, now scampering back happily with an empty one. And he was beside a stairway, and on the point of taking in a drink to the horse stalled closest to the entrance, when he heard several voices, the creak of doors, and footsteps. So he paused, the bucket swinging from both hands, until half a dozen pairs of shaggy legs appeared just above him. Then as the big hats were bobbing into view, so that he knew his labors could be seen and appreciated, he faced round ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... bed creak he still waited awhile, walking slowly round the house in silence and darkness. Then, as he passed the side where the bedroom was, there came the sound of a slight sleeping snore, repeated as regularly as the breath might come and go in a ...
— The Zeit-Geist • Lily Dougall
... had seen him, passed into the corridor. Dormitory X was in the room next to that occupied by Mr. Weevil, on the floor above. Paul crept up the stairs. They seemed to creak horribly, but it was the silence of the building that magnified the sound to Paul's ears. He glanced along the passage. A light was still burning in Mr. Weevil's room. He could see it stealing faintly through a crack in ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... nature has pleasant and cheery tones enough for us when she comes in her dress of blue and gold over the eastern hill-tops; but when she follows us upstairs to our beds in her suit of black velvet and diamonds, every creak of her sandals and every whisper of her lips is ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... candle in her hand and softly unhasped her door. It was a well-oiled lock and made no click or noise of any kind as she turned the handle. When she opened the door wide it did not creak. The long corridor outside had a stone floor and was richly carpeted. No fear of treacherous, creaking boards here. Priscilla prepared to walk briskly down the length of the corridor, when she was arrested by seeing a light streaming out of Maggie ...
— A Sweet Girl Graduate • Mrs. L.T. Meade
... looks as if he might straighten them out all of a sudden, and jump instead of walking. Wears goggles very commonly; says it rests his eyes, which he strains in looking at very small objects. Voice has a dry creak, as if made by some small piece of mechanism that wanted oiling. I don't think he is a botanist, for he does not smell of dried herbs, but carries a camphorated atmosphere about with him, as if to keep the moths from attacking him. I ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... alone with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to prick through the darkening sky. The Sylph was running smoothly, with the wind almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Steve moved the wheel to starboard. In the stillness they could hear the gear creak under the deck. No warning came from the two lookouts and, after a moment, Steve again turned gingerly. For all the watchers could tell, the Adventurer never altered her course, but Steve, his gaze on the compass card, knew ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... Hiram abruptly as the Racer struck a lower air current a strong blast of wind made it shake and reel. Then there was a creak, ...
— Dave Dashaway and his Hydroplane • Roy Rockwood
... make the boards creak, I suppose; and do you think John wouldn't have more sense than to be walking about our room at half-past ten at ...
— Not Pretty, But Precious • John Hay, et al.
... latch of the inner room. The door opened with a dismal creak, and Ellen entered. There was one old, broken-backed chair, which he offered her, and sat down himself on a rough bench, with a sorrowful, embarrassed expression on his pale, interesting features. Ellen, still noticing Willie's painful confusion, knew not what to ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... gay gulls as they flutter Like snowflakes and fall down the sky, To swoop in the deeps of the hollows, Where the crow's-foot tosses awry; And gnats in the lee of the thickets Are swirling like waltzers in glee To the harsh, shrill creak of the crickets And the song of ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... treated it lightly to Maude, and she to him, but each suffered horribly, and each was well aware of the other's real feelings. Sometimes there was a lull, and they could almost believe that the whole thing was over. And then the old machine gave a creak, and the rusty cog-wheels took one more turn, and they both felt the horrid thing which ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... Liberalism and became politically conservative. But it must be remembered that the good poet lived into the time when the glut and gore of the French Revolution made people hold their breath, and when every man who lifted a humane plaint against the incessant creak and crash of the guillotine was reckoned by all mad reformers a conservative. I think, if I had lived in that day, I should have been a conservative, too,—however much the pretty and bloody Desmoulins might have made faces ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various
... night. Hark! Through the woods the tempests roar! The owlets flit in wild affright. Hark! Splinter'd are the columns that upbore The leafy palace, green for aye: The shivered branches whirr and sigh, Yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan, The roots, upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the wreck-strewn precipice, The raging storm-blasts howl and hiss! Aloft strange voices dost thou hear? Distant now and now more near? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... copying-clerks and the engrosser, whose pens forthwith began to creak over the stamped paper, making as much noise in the office as a hundred cockchafers imprisoned by schoolboys in ...
— Colonel Chabert • Honore de Balzac
... of a woman who is as life to him in the other. But again I told myself that the hours flew, and laid hold of the jewel which is studded into the forehead of the image with one hand, and then stretching out, thrust at a corner of the eyebrow with the other. With a faint creak the massive eyeball below, a stone that I could barely have covered with my back, swung inwards. I stepped off the stair, and climbed into the gap. Inside was the chamber which is hollowed from the head ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... him so that he staggered on the threshold and nearly fell. Scundoo shoved him inside and closed the door. A long time went by, during which could be heard only the boy's weeping. Then, very slowly, came the creak of his steps to the far corner, a pause, and the creaking of his return. The door opened and he came forth. Nothing had happened, and he was ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... when a violent shaking of the arm woke me, and Le Marchant's whisper in my ear—"Carre, there's something wrong. Don't speak! Listen!"—brought me all to myself in a moment, and I heard what he heard,—the hushed movement of people in the outer room off which our bedroom opened, the soft creak of a loose ...
— Carette of Sark • John Oxenham
... sounded above the rattle of ropes and creak of hawsers—and a broadside cut into the La ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... inflicts, never machine of its kind, ancient or modern, got before. Simon and his companions are in ecstasies; but such cross-grained, such painful jingling of sounds! Its charm is irresistible with the negro; he mustn't lose a note of the tune; every creak is exhausted in a break-down dance, which the motion of the "Jim Crow" car makes more grotesque by every now and then jolting them into a huddle ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams
... thrusting his arm through, he reached the lock, turned the key, and the door swung open with a dismal creak. ...
— The Bag of Diamonds • George Manville Fenn
... it so. The skeleton is there and it's covered with flesh. Some of the joints creak a little and maybe there's an ear or an eyebrow ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... lamps were dim, and dull as death the street, It might be that the watchman slept that night upon his beat, When lo! a heavy foot was heard to creak upon the stair, The door revolved upon its hinge—Great Heaven!—What ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... air was stirring, and the absolute quiet that prevailed was broken only by the moving men and the rhythmic creak, creak of the snow-shoes as they came in contact with the hard ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... they might not creak loudly enough to disturb that circle of mesmerized individuals ...
— The Mighty Dead • William Campbell Gault
... trot blew the night-wind To me so life-weary, But only the creak of the gibbets Or ...
— Wessex Poems and Other Verses • Thomas Hardy
... rattle of oars and raced down the beach in the direction of the dory. Some one was meddling with their boat. When he reached the place where they had left the skiff, he found it gone. From the waters of the little cove came the creak of oar-locks. Plunging into the water, Gregory swam rapidly in the direction of the launch. Whoever had taken the boat was ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... around. At first we thought nothing of this, having escaped so many dangers of the kind last autumn, but by degrees the pressure increased alarmingly. We were jammed against a great ice-field which was still fast to the shore. In a few moments the sides of our little vessel began to creak and groan loudly. The men laboured like tigers at the ice-poles, but in vain. We heard a loud report in the cabin. No one knows what it was, but I suppose it must have been the breaking of a large bolt. At any rate it was followed by a series of crashes and reports that left ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... Dickie, and when everybody was asleep, Edred got up and dressed. He put his bedroom candle and matches in his pocket, crept down-stairs and out of the house and up to Beale's. It was a slow and nervous business. More than once on the staircase he thought he heard a stair creak behind him, and again and again as he went along the road he fancied he heard a soft footstep pad-padding behind him, but of course when he looked round he could see no one was there. So presently he decided that it was cowardly to keep looking round, ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... now to be seen under normal conditions. From the street below rises the sound of clatter and creak as the rude oxen wagons bump over the cobblestones. Morning, noon, and night they rumble along unceasingly, and whenever I look down I see martial figures clad in tattered, muddy, and blood-stained uniforms, with rudely bandaged body or head or foot. Every now and ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... bamboos, every step we took produced its creak; but, although the whole seemed but a crazy affair, yet it did not want for strength, being well and firmly bound together. There were two apartments, each about thirteen by twenty-five feet, which could be divided ...
— The Former Philippines thru Foreign Eyes • Fedor Jagor; Tomas de Comyn; Chas. Wilkes; Rudolf Virchow.
... and put forth thy snow-white head, come forth from thy hiding into the battle. The carnage that is being done without calls thee. By now the council-chamber is shaken with warfare, and the gates creak with the dreadful fray. Steel rends the mail-coats, the woven mesh is torn apart, and the midriff gives under the rain of spears. By now the huge axes have hacked small the shield of the king; by now the long swords ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... which shall wash out the leprous stain Of our slavery—foul and grim, And shall sunder the fetters which creak and clank On the down-trodden ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick
... to creak and show signs of toppling over, give it a few sharp blows and as it falls jump sideways. Never jump or run backward. This is one way that men get killed in the woods. A falling tree will often kick backward like a shot. It will rarely go ...
— Outdoor Sports and Games • Claude H. Miller
... twelve, he cautiously rose from the bed, and pulled off his boots, which a proper respect for his host or the bed had not prompted him to do before. The house was old, and the floors had a tendency to creak beneath his tread. With the utmost care, he crawled on his hands and knees to one of the doors of the lumber hole, which he succeeded in opening ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... the left where the lights of the lighthouse are supposed to be, borrow the captain's glasses, but see nothing.... Half an hour passes, then an hour. The mast sways regularly, the devils creak, the wind makes dashes at my cap.... It is not pitch dark, ...
— Letters of Anton Chekhov • Anton Chekhov
... "It can creak and groan when it gets dry for a little oil. And it will be like a camel if you put too heavy a load on ...
— A Little Girl of Long Ago • Amanda Millie Douglas
... soundlessly, closed again and Tom was gone. They listened, and, although the transom was slightly open, not a creak or a shuffle reached them. "He's all right," whispered Tim. "Me for bed, fellows. Want to come in with me, Clint, or will you luxuriate on ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... a whisper from without—the creak of a board. Andrew Lanning slipped to the door and turned the key in the lock. When he rejoined her in the middle of the room ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... bent the sturdy trees out-doors and made the timbers of the old farmhouse creak and groan. Think of the sufferings the poor fellows would have to endure should the winter be severe, fighting in the snow, without ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... you shall all have exactly the same quantity of oil, neither more nor less. You little machines there, with oil running all over you, how smoothly and uncomplainingly you work! You big machines, you may creak as you please, your journals may get hot, blaze up and produce universal smash: but you can't get any more oil; we can't allow you to lick up any of that which is running over your little neighbour there—that is for the pigs, and for us." Is not this amazing folly? ...
— Six Years in the Prisons of England • A Merchant - Anonymous
... She expected to see no one; looked for no one. A moment she paused by the door that led into the garden, and in that pause she heard a slight sound. It might have been anything. It probably was a creak from one of the wicker chairs that stood in a corner. Whatever its origin, it startled her to greater haste. She fumbled at the door ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... she thought of it. She forced the note, no doubt. Afterward she was unpleasantly conscious of that. But at any rate the talk flowed. There was some give and take. The joints of their intercourse did not creak as if despairingly appealing to be oiled. Of course it was very banal to talk about Italy. But, still, these moments must come sometimes to all those who go much into the world. And what is Italy, beautiful, siren-like Italy, for if not to be talked about? Charmian said that to herself ...
— The Way of Ambition • Robert Hichens
... worked on undisturbed. Presently he heard the front gate creak, and looking up beheld a bicycle, a lady's bicycle, propped against the garden wall. Someone rapped loudly at the front door, and whoever it was had hard knuckles, for there was ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... to the three young Misses, fair and fat,—at the Seventh Circle, nevertheless, my pupils are sticking fast; and I, to set them going again, recite, explain, and blow myself up red-hot with useless enthusiasm, when—a creak of boots in the passage outside, and in comes the golden Papa, the mighty merchant with the naked head and the two chins.—Ha! my good dears, I am closer than you think for to the business, now. Have you been patient so far? ...
— The Woman in White • Wilkie Collins
... stood easy chairs, with such high backs, and so carved out, and with arms on both sides. "Sit down! sit down!" said they. "Ugh! how I creak; now I shall certainly get the gout, ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... I believe there are spirits about to-night—Ugh! it's the cold increasing; then the beams always creak, like an old ship. Here's your Christmas supper. Now perhaps you'll quit gnawing the bell-rope and eating up the tallow, ...
— Lucky Pehr • August Strindberg
... were married—if his death would leave wailing orphans in his home, and a broken-hearted widow at the desolate hearthstone. Absorbed in her melancholy task, she heard neither the sound of strange voices in the passage, nor the faint creak of the door as it swung back on its rusty hinges; but a shrill scream, a wild, despairing shriek terrified her, and her heart seemed to stand still as she bounded away from the side of the coffin. The light of the setting sun streamed through the window, and over the white, convulsed ...
— St. Elmo • Augusta J. Evans
... "Down, down to hell, and sye I sent thee thither"; and to dead O'Hara near he gave one in the cheek, with "Go up, thou bald-head, it is": all in two seconds' space; and he was now about to turn anew to hack at Frankl, when his keen ear heard a creak; and he sprang up a spinning ...
— The Lord of the Sea • M. P. Shiel
... a country of mountains and harbors, where the farmers and herdsmen of the hills can hear in the morning the creak of oars and the crackling of cordage as the great booms of the wing-shaped sails are hoisted to the tops of the stumpy masts of the fishermen's boats. Barcelona with its fine harbor nestling under the towering slopes of Montjuic has been a ...
— Rosinante to the Road Again • John Dos Passos
... crypt; for it had begun as a temple of Neptune. The sacristan practically lived in those depths and the chill sanctuary above them, and-he was so full of rheumatism that you could almost hear it creak as he walked; yet he was a cheerful sage, and satisfied with the fee which my guide gave him and which he made small, as he explained, that the sacristan might not be discontented with future largesse. I need not say that each church we visited had its tutelary ...
— Roman Holidays and Others • W. D. Howells
... separate room if his return late was likely to disturb her. She agreed that, perhaps, that would be best. So, at about eleven-thirty that night, Dion made his way to their spare room, walking tentatively lest a board should creak and ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... footstep in the room above, and then a creak from the steps, and then another creak, and another. I saw Jim's face as if it had been carved out of ivory, with his parted lips and his staring eyes fixed upon the black square of the stair opening. He still held the light, but his fingers ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... And yet he sensed something wrong. Somers knew every creak, rattle and groan that Dierdre was capable of making. During blastoff, he had heard something different. In space, something different ...
— Death Wish • Robert Sheckley
... marred only by creak of gear and flap of idle sails. The schooner barely moved now, though the western sky held promise of a breeze later on. Then came a cry from one of the negro crew forward, and its tenor stirred the ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... were safe from the wind which howled above and around them, rattling the small windows and making the springs creak. There was no help for the discomfort of soaking garments, but Wilfred lighted a reserve lantern and placed it in a corner, while thick leather cushions and stage-blankets offered ...
— Lahoma • John Breckenridge Ellis
... better or safer than this here 'Sary Ann' along the shore," said the boat's master, grimly. "I sot every timber in her myself. She ain't got a crack or a creak in her. I keeled her and calked her, and I'll lay her agin any of them painted and gilded play-toys to weather the toughest gale on this here coast. You're as safe in the 'Sary Ann,' Padre, as if you were ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... the boat carried up to him an impression of mixed doubt and discomfort—ultimate disbelief in his possession of arms, an energetic oath or two, and another creak of the oar. ...
— A Maid of the Silver Sea • John Oxenham
... flicker to burn themselves out in his black face, and then he would lie blinded and invisible in the midst of an intense darkness. He could hear on the quiet deck soft footfalls, the breathing of some man lounging on the doorstep; the low creak of swaying masts; or the calm voice of the watch-officer reverberating aloft, hard and loud, amongst the unstirring sails. He listened with avidity, taking a rest in the attentive perception of the slightest sound from the fatiguing ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... stretching away to right and left of you, with the constant roar of sluice boxes and cradles, the creak of windlasses, and the perpetual noise of human voices. There's the excitement of pegging out your claim and sinking your first shaft, wondering all the time whether it will turn up trumps or nothing. There's the honest, ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... irresistibly overpowered me that I fell back, involuntarily, behind a cask which stood upon the deck. It was rather lethargy than sleep, for I plainly heard the sea beat against the side of the vessel, and the sails creak and whistle in the wind. All at once I thought I heard voices, and the steps of men upon the deck. I wished to arise and see what it was, but a strange power fettered my limbs, and I could not once open my eyes. ...
— The Oriental Story Book - A Collection of Tales • Wilhelm Hauff
... not answer or seem to hear, and now Judith gave up asking questions. Carried along at his side in silence, she listened to the muffled creak of the skates on the snow-covered ice, hushed by the steady and sleepy sound of it, half closing her eyes. His left arm was behind her shoulders now, to support her, and she could feel it there, warm and ...
— The Wishing Moon • Louise Elizabeth Dutton
... imponderable pat. Ah, mine no more! for lo! 'tis noised around How thou wilt soon cost seven bob a pound. As well demand thy weight in radium As probe my 'poverished poke for such a sum. Wherefore, farewell! No more, alas! thou'lt oil These joints that creak with unrewarded toil; No more thy heartsick votary's midmost riff Wilt lubricate, and, oh! (as WORDSWORTH ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... "profession"—a piece of stiff wire, a skeleton key and other paraphernalia calculated to reduce the obstinate mechanism to submission. For a minute, two, three, he worked at the ancient lock; then, without a creak, the door swung open. A touch of oil to the hinges had insured their silence. Jimmie O'Hara believed in being artistic in his work, especially when it came to ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... not follow his own suggestion, for when he heard the front door creak on its hinges, he laid down his revolver and covered his ears with his hands. This made Rodney turn as white as a sheet and get upon his feet again, fully expecting to hear the roar of a shotgun, followed by the clatter of buckshot in the hall; but instead of that, there came the calm, ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... from a cascade that hummed aloft somewhere in the darkness with a low continuous thunder as of a mill with a turning wheel. I lifted my head to the sound, and in that instant my ears caught a slight creak from the footbridge on my left. I faced about, and stood rigid, at gaze. A woman was stepping across the bridge, there in the moonlight; a slight figure, cloaked and hooded and hurrying fast; a woman, with a gun slung behind her and the barrel of it glimmering. ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... his crew— Naught has reached us of the Fight—but if I have dreamed aright, 'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through! Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out, And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir— There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings, Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar! But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen), That on the Infinite Shore their place was ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... the shocks are being overhauled for the corn, which is shucked as gathered, while the pumpkins are still accumulating sunshine for the golden Thanksgiving pie. From the barn yards come the pounding of the steam thresher or the creak of a windlass, suggesting that the hay crop is being baled. Everything is busy but the cows, who evidently do not like frosting on their cake and, having the day before them, can afford to wait till the good sun comes along to undo ...
— The New York and Albany Post Road • Charles Gilbert Hine
... there?" A movement from within, a creak from the bed, a rustle of a garment, then silence. Listening there, ear to her door, I heard distinctly the steady breathing of some one also ...
— The Reckoning • Robert W. Chambers
... aught wondrous, they will tell it her In a mouthful of strange moans,—will bring from far, Her ears being keen, the lowing and the mad Masterful tramping of the bison herds, Tearing down headlong with their bloodshot eyes, In savage rifts of hair; the crack and creak Of ice-floes in the frozen sea, the cry Of the white bears, all in a dim blue world Mumbling their meals by twilight; or the rock And majesty of motion, when their heads Primeval trees toss in a sunny ...
— Poems by Jean Ingelow, In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Jean Ingelow
... Her appearance of majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... him by the shoulders, and you will shake him, applying the ear to the chest, so as to recognize on which side the sign occurs'. This sign is still used by physicians and is known as Hippocratic succussion. In another passage in the same work the symptoms of pleurisy are described and 'a creak like that of leather may be heard'. This is the well known pleuritic rub which the physician is accustomed to seek in such cases, and of which the creak of leather is an ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... red during this wandering discourse. He sat pulling his beard and shifting the position which, with his stalwart person, he had taken up on a little gilded chair—a piece of furniture which every now and then gave a delicate creak. ...
— Confidence • Henry James
... eaves, and a stone chimney was embedded irregularly in its log side. The windmill, towering its conical roof and rusty weather-vane a little distance off, and stretching out its gray skeleton arms as if to creak more freely in the sweep of gales from the river, was one of those rembrandtesque relics which prove so picturesquely that Time is an artist inimitable by man. A clay oven near the cot completed this group of erections, around ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... minute or two, then drew a deep breath, and pressed it ever so slightly inward. The door did not budge. Tommy was annoyed. If he had to use too much force, it would almost certainly creak. He waited until the voices rose a little, then he tried again. Still nothing happened. He increased the pressure. Had the beastly thing stuck? Finally, in desperation, he pushed with all his might. But the door remained ...
— The Secret Adversary • Agatha Christie
... Guppy tries to compose himself before the fire for waiting a long time. But in no more than a minute or two the stairs creak and Tony comes ...
— Bleak House • Charles Dickens
... there was little sign of change, beyond an indefinable presence of busier life, even in the hush of the hot autumnal noon. But at night the drawbridges rose and the portcullises descended—each with its own peculiar creak, and jar, and scrape, setting the young rooks cawing in reply from every pinnacle and tree-top—never later than the last moment when the warder could see anything larger than a cat on the brow of the road this side the village. For ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... stared, everyone being too bemused with terror to do aught to protect ourselves, even had we been possessed of weapons. And as we remained thus, an instant, like silly sheep awaiting the butcher, I heard the framework creak and crack, and there ran splits all across the glass. In another moment, the whole thing would have been torn away, and the cabin undefended, but that the bo'sun, with a great curse at us for our landlubberly lack of use, seized the other cover, and clapped ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... to my boyish fancy it seemed a greater triumph of engineering than the Victoria bridge at Montreal. And the same old thrill went through me as I started to run—just as I did when a boy—and felt the planks loosen and creak under my feet. Here was a home-coming worth ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... found its way inside his own. The sharp eyes of the old negress snapped. She gave a grunt as she withdrew her head. It was speedily to develop, though, that she had not entirely betaken herself away. Almost immediately there came to the ears of the couple the creak-creak of a rocking-chair just inside the hall, but out of view from their end of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... by Hastings Mill I lingered in my going To smell the smell of piled-up deals and feel the salt wind blowing, To hear the cables fret and creak and the ropes stir and sigh (Shipmate, my shipmate!) ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 3 (of 4) • Various
... With a creak and lurch, the sleigh left the grade, and took the white snow edging the shoal water that led out to the deep green of the middle ice. The watcher ...
— The Wilderness Trail • Frank Williams
... Then I was suddenly conscious of an odor of tobacco, as though some one smoking a cigar had entered the room, and an instant later I heard that chair before the desk creak as though it had been swung around. I switched on the light at once. The chair had turned. It had been facing away from the desk, and it was now ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... salt sea. From the moment that the Sea Queen leaves lower New York bay till the breeze leaves her becalmed off the coast of Florida, one can almost hear the whistle of the wind through her rigging, the creak of her straining cordage as she heels to the leeward. The adventures of Ben Clark, the hero of the story and Jake the cook, cannot fail to charm the reader. As a writer for young people Mr. ...
— Robert Coverdale's Struggle - Or, On The Wave Of Success • Horatio, Jr. Alger
... to be heard all around; not a sound broke the peaceful stillness of awaking nature; only the wind howled and whistled, and caused the branches of the trees to creak. The sun had risen higher and higher, and shed already its golden rays through ...
— Andreas Hofer • Lousia Muhlbach
... tread, and as wary an outlook, as a thief entering a chamber where a man lies only half asleep—or, it may be, broad awake—with purpose to steal the very treasure which this man guards as the apple of his eye. In spite of his premeditated carefulness, the floor would now and then creak; his garments would rustle; the shadow of his presence, in a forbidden proximity, would be thrown across his victim. In other words, Mr. Dimmesdale, whose sensibility of nerve often produced the effect of spiritual intuition, would become ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the Senior Surgeon suggested sincerely that the house was much too big for the White Linen Nurse to run all alone, but conceded equally sincerely, under the White Linen Nurse's vehement protest, that servants, particularly new servants did creak considerably round a house, and that maybe "just for the present" at least, until he finished his very nervous paper on brain tumors perhaps it would be better to ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... fellow-spooks," the Doctor began, when all were seated on the visionary camp-stools—which, by the way, are far superior to those in use in a world of realities, because they do not creak in the midst of a fine point demanding absolute silence for appreciation—"I do not know why I have been chosen to preside over this gathering of phantoms; it is the province of the presiding officer on occasions of this sort ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... a prisoner in the closet, the door of which was an old-fashioned one and thick. But by bracing his feet against the back wall, Dick got a firm hold and soon his shoulder on the barrier caused it to bend and creak. Then the lock gave way and the door flew open with ...
— The Rover Boys on Treasure Isle - or The Strange Cruise of the Steam Yacht. • Edward Stratemeyer (AKA Arthur M. Winfield)
... bell-push towards the end of last guest-night the Adjutant said he should mark me down for the job of Physical Training Officer; but I hope he was only joking. I am not built for the work. My frame is puny and my countenance irresolute. I hate bending and stretching my arms; they creak and frighten me. I never could squat on my heels like ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, April 23, 1919 • Various
... beautiful tomb I can see the sunlight through the open door, with a black splash across the gold, of the great yews beyond; I hear the crowing of cocks and the voice of children, the creak of a passing cart and the song of birds, all the simple, jolly sounds of that everyday life which is the plain fabric on which all history, of nations and empires and monarchs, is (if you ...
— Lynton and Lynmouth - A Pageant of Cliff & Moorland • John Presland
... wind and creak of bough And rustle of the frost, And winter's inner voice—avow The holy hour is crossed, And far, mysterious music sounds, Sweet like a ...
— In The Yule-Log Glow, Vol. IV (of IV) • Harrison S. Morris
... courtesied in an unconcerned, wooden way, as if they were moved by some ingenious piece of Swiss clock-work. The stiff old curee, too, had an air of having been wound up and set a-going. I could almost hear the creak of his mainspring. I was smiling at that, perhaps, and thinking how strongly the scenery of some portions of our own country resembles ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... river about 1/2 a mile below the last mentioned Creek another Creek falls in, my guide informed me that our rout was up this Creek by which rout we would Save a considerable bend of the river to the South. we proceeded on a well beeten Indian parth up this Creak about 6 miles and passed over a ridge 1 mile to the river in a Small vally through which we passed and assended a Spur of the Mountain from which place my guide Shew me the river for about 20 miles lower & pointed out ...
— The Journals of Lewis and Clark • Meriwether Lewis et al
... if you were familiar enough to go upstairs, you could not find the steps which had been wont to creak. And peeping into the parlor you could see that some pretty new furniture had taken the place of the shaky old lounge and chairs; one good marine picture hung between the windows and a new rug lay ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... lair. He peeped over to assure himself of her complete somnolence. Satisfied that Mex would not likely be roused by any slight disturbance, he stole to the front door and undid the fastenings so softly that not a creak of the bolt sliding from its staple was heard even by his own quick ear. But when he swung the door open, providing for his ready escape, the hinges gave out a complaining sigh. The sound was faint, but it startled Mex. She raised her drowsy head, and ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... carefully a little way; it was forbearing enough not to creak, and the next moment he was outside, free ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... heard what he had heard first—they heard the tonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them along the hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There was no creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards—and the bell jangled faster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right to the door and Squire Gathers wallowed ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... idea became distinct. He had one of those clear visions that cross the mind at such times. He saw the doctor with his ear pressed against his daughter's back and he listened with him. He thought he heard the bed creak as it does when any one turns on it. It was over, they would be coming now; but no one came. He began pacing up and down again, as he could not keep still. He grew irritable with impatience and thought the doctor was a very long time, but the next minute he said to himself ...
— Rene Mauperin • Edmond de Goncourt and Jules de Goncourt
... nothing. Then I was suddenly conscious of an odor of tobacco, as though some one smoking a cigar had entered the room, and an instant later I heard that chair before the desk creak as though it had been swung around. I switched on the light at once. The chair had turned. It had been facing away from the desk, and it was now ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... to listen. Few travelers passed by their cabin in the winter, but he was sure that he heard a faint noise in the distance. It sounded like the creak of wheels. The noise came again—this time much closer. A man's ...
— Abe Lincoln Gets His Chance • Frances Cavanah
... Cling, clang—creak! Cling, clang—creak! So the discordant bell sounded forth in the playground, the interval between the strokes being filled by a harsh, rusty squeak that set one's teeth on edge. The message it bore to the boys ...
— Jack of Both Sides - The Story of a School War • Florence Coombe
... heifers and young bulls, the scene grew livelier and livelier. They stretched their necks and rubbed against their chains. They fell on their knees as soon as the unlooped chains slipped from their necks, and as they sprang up again you could hear their legs creak,—so stiff were they from standing in the stall all winter. They ran plump against the side wall or up into the wrong passageway. They dashed noisily against the door, two reaching it at the same time and trying ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... only fastened by the catch of the lock. Dagobert was about to open it, when Agricola said to him: "Take care! do not make it creak on its hinges." ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... however, try as he might, sleep would not come that night; an unaccountable feeling of restlessness and of vague apprehension had him in its grip. Hour after hour he lay, listening irritably to the snoring of his fellow-shepherd, Borthwick, starting nervously at every scraping of rat or creak of timber. At last, long after midnight, he rose and looked out. The wind had fallen, but snow still fell; there was nothing abnormal in the night, and the weather might have been described as merely "seasonable." But away in the northern ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... relates[283] that when he was studying the law at Thoulouse, he was lodged near a house where an elf never ceased all the night to draw water from the well, making the pulley creak all the while; at other times, he seemed to drag something heavy up the stairs; but he very rarely entered the rooms, and then he made but ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet
... old ruin, when The noon's beams burn like red-hot iron bars, A laden sleep draws with its heavy breath All weary skippers and all mariners: The harpoons creak not in the hand's hard clasp; The fish alone stir in the realm of dew; The calm lagoon about is all agleam, A shield of silver, plaited ...
— Life Immovable - First Part • Kostes Palamas
... short chairs listening and watching. They used to be great friends of her grandmother's. Oh no; if I could go to see them they would insist upon my going into the best room, and we should all be quite uncomfortable. It is much better to sit here and think about them and hear their flat-irons creak away over the little boys' ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... o'clock, Caleb Rivers was walking stolidly along the country road, when his ear became aware of a strangely familiar sound,—a steadily recurrent creak. It was advancing, though intermittently. Sometimes it ceased altogether, as if the machinery stopped to rest, and again it began fast and shrill. He rounded a bend of the road, and came full upon a remarkable vision. Approaching him was ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... had eaten some fine oysters. Thus the ordinary broth, that faithful old friend of the king's, implored vainly from its golden basin; it attracted no attention. The king began to attack the partridge soup, and was at his fourth mouthful, when a light step near him made the floor creak, and a well-known ...
— The Forty-Five Guardsmen • Alexandre Dumas
... aloft and looked down with a great wonder at the frowsy, unkempt creature, trying to reconcile it with the little part of life that she knew. To her ears came the cries of men, the stamp of hoofs on the bridge, and the creak and groan of wagons heavy laden. It was a breathless California Indian summer day. Light fleeces of cloud drifted in the azure sky, but to the west heavy cloud banks threatened with rain. A bee droned lazily by. From farther thickets came the calls of quail, and from the fields the songs of meadow ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... golden-globed, plain waving in golden increase; Hopfields fairer than vineyards, green laughing tendrils and bine; Woodland misty in sunlight, and meadow sunny with kine;— Havens of heaving blue, where the keels of Guienne and the Hanse Jostle and creak by the quay, and the mast goes up like a lance, Gay with the pennons of peace, and, blazon'd with Adria's dyes, Purple and orange, the sails like a sunset burn in the skies. Bloodless conquests of commerce, ...
— The Visions of England - Lyrics on leading men and events in English History • Francis T. Palgrave
... up," said Wade. Craig nodded and replaced his pipe between his teeth. The noise became multisonous. With the clangor of the pounding wheels came the stertorous gasping of the engines, the creak and clatter of protesting metal. The uproar filled the ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... the wall, then stopped and made the floor creak once more. Next came a tremendous sigh, followed by a cry of horror from Christine, ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... rustling like a person undressing, whereupon being satisfied that it was my fellow-lodger, I dropped asleep, but was awakened again by a kind of heavy plunge upon the other bed, which caused it to rock and creak, when I observed that the light had been extinguished, probably blown out, if I might judge from a rather disagreeable smell of burnt wick which remained in the room, and which kept me awake till I heard my companion breathing hard, when, turning on the other ...
— The Romany Rye - A Sequel to 'Lavengro' • George Borrow
... the cliff brink. At a signal from the Navaho he again vanished. The hoist rope tautened. With a creak, the cage scraped on the ledge and began to swing up the cliff face above ...
— Bloom of Cactus • Robert Ames Bennet
... of the past, and might well supply some of the cravings that have to be satisfied by the "pictures." Most of us have to keep ourselves well in hand when we listen to a recitation in much the same way as when a slate pencil used to creak; it would be very much better if the art of storytelling were cultivated at school, encouraged at home, and applied to entertainments. Indeed the entertainments of a village school, instead of being the unnatural ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... piers were run out to sea the water in the Tyne has been much deepened; but this advantage has its drawback in the fact that the sea pours through the deepened channel like the swirl of a millrace. As soon as the tiers of shipping begin to creak and moan with the lurching swell the people know that there may be bad work. The brigadesmen sit chatting in their warm shed. They know that they must go to work in the morning; they know that they may ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... up to the end of the breakwater, old Luigione standing at the stern with the tiller between his knees and the slack of the main-sheet in his hand. She was running wing and wing, with her bright new sails spreading far over the water on each side. Then came a rattle and a sharp creak as the main-yard swung over and came down on deck, the men taking in the bellying canvas with wide open arms and old Luigione catching the end of the yard on his shoulder while he steered with his knees, his great gaunt profile black against the bright ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... place to give an example of the entertainment which he is likely to find in this province of his; and if the reader can detect any smell of dust or hear any creak of dead bones in the story which follows, it will be a ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... lock as they left the cabin. Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... going to make a big attempt at it," answered the miner. They heard the rope creak and knew that he had thrown his weight ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... roses of June. It would be a blessing, if we could quite discard the tendency. And while your trap runs smoothly and noiselessly, while the leather is fresh and the paint unscratched, do not worry yourself with visions of the day when it will rattle and creak, and when you will make it wait for you at the corner of back-streets when you drive into town. Do not vex yourself by fancying that you will never have heart to send off the old carriage, nor by wondering where you shall find the money to buy a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... With unbending dignity, Captain Stephens let his left eyelid droop slowly, while a boyish grin spread widely over his face. Simultaneously, orders rang sharp and fast from the bridge, the crew broke into feverish life, the creak of booms and the clank of ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... the grace of the wind, which sometimes blew them about him in a chorus, and again shut off all except that lonely calling of the grouse, and often whisked away every murmur and left Gregg, in the center of a wide hush with only the creak of the pack-saddle and the click of the burro's accurate feet ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... which spread quickly through the ranks, that they were making for the communications of the boaster Pope, the regiments stepped out with renewed energy. "There was no need for speech, no breath to spare if there had been—only the shuffling tramp of marching feet, the rumbling of wheels, the creak and clank of harness and accoutrements, with an occasional order, uttered under the breath, and always the same: "Close up, men! Close up!""* (* "Battles and Leaders volume 2 ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... more marked than that of the street, a silence as heavy and profound as the grave's, so that sheer instinct prompted Lanyard to tread lightly as he made his way down the passage and across the courtyard toward the stairway; and in that hush the creak of a greaseless hinge, when the concierge opened the door of his quarters to identify this belated guest, seemed little ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... write intelligently, today, because so much is happening. Following on His Majesty King Albert's magnificent discourse [Vive le roi!], the spirit of a great and glorious decision has set the empire in motion. The vast machine moves—though some of the bolts creak and protest a little in their rusty coats and the earth trembles to the rhythm of tramping feet. Hundreds of soldiers and cannon have been passing all night, and this morning routes in every direction are blockaded by detachments from different ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... attitudes drying their wings. Above the rim of the silver-blue sea—patched with purple stains in the middle distance—webs of steamer smoke lay along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been enervating to the point of mental, as ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... if it lay not resting, A bright-eyed pearl, in the heart enclosed, In heav'nward gazes its sparkle vesting, When crumbling shell leaves the core exposed? Sweet slumber follows When pain expires.... And creak the gallows, And flame the fires, Lo, martyr! heaven shall open thence, And ...
— The Angel of Death • Johan Olof Wallin
... for eight hundred, and I'll sell it for four hundred, in a year.'" Here he laid his finger on his nose—lengthwise, the Norman in him supplanting the priest in his remembrance of a good bargain. "And now it is twenty years since then. Everything creaks and cracks over there: all of us creak and crack. You should hear my chairs, elles se cassent les reins—they break their thighs continually. Ah! there goes another, I cry out, as I sit down in one in winter and hear them groan. Poor old things, they are of the Empire, no wonder they groan. You should see us, when our brethren come ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... follow his own suggestion, for when he heard the front door creak on its hinges, he laid down his revolver and covered his ears with his hands. This made Rodney turn as white as a sheet and get upon his feet again, fully expecting to hear the roar of a shotgun, followed by the clatter of buckshot in the hall; ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... the glistening lanes; His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins; Hearing the saddle creak, He'll wonder if the frost will come next week. I shall forget him in the morning light; And while we gallop on he will not speak: But at ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... were dim, and dull as death the street, It might be that the watchman slept that night upon his beat, When lo! a heavy foot was heard to creak upon the stair, The door revolved upon its ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... indeed swore, but the mind was unsworn. It was agreed that we should keep pinching one another to prevent our going to sleep. We did so at frequent intervals; at last our patience was rewarded with the heavy creak, as of a stout elderly lady labouring up the stairs, and presently ...
— The Fair Haven • Samuel Butler
... Romeo Augustus; and he held out Elias's jacket and trousers. Elias took the hint, also the clothes. Down the stairs crept the two. Out the front door, which would creak, into the moon-lit yard stole they. Elias's eyes were snapping with excitement; for, as I said, Elias was poetical, and, like all poets, he was always expecting something to turn up. At this present he was on the look-out for ...
— Harper's Young People, March 23, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... beside me, I sat on the matted floor of the hut in which I lived, smoking my pipe and listening to the fury of the squalls as the force of the wind bent and swayed the thatched roof, and made the cinnet-tied rafters and girders creak and work to and fro under the strain. Suddenly the wicker-work door on the lee side was opened, and Nalik jumped in, dripping with rain, but smiling ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... any discussion of the capabilities of the actor. The phrase, then, does not imply—as the ignorant might possibly be led to believe—a new type of tree. It does not grow in the tropics amongst a riotous tangle of pungent undergrowth; it does not creak sadly in the north wind on the open hill. It shelters not the hibiscus anthropoid, it gives not lodging to the two-tailed newt. From a botanical point of view, the tree is a complete and utter frost. It is, in point of hard and bitter fact, not ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... hesitation. Creak, creak! Bolts were being withdrawn. Next the door swung open, and we dimly saw the bearded, rum-bloated face of Pierre Lagarde. The lieutenant's ruse had thoroughly deceived him, and at sight of us he was ...
— The Cryptogram - A Story of Northwest Canada • William Murray Graydon
... truly like a stage villain, and then hauled my unpleasant burden along the irregularly paved path and on to the little wharf. Out in mid-stream a Thames Police patrol was passing, and I stood for a moment until the creak of ...
— The Golden Scorpion • Sax Rohmer
... Indian red down to the eaves, and a stone chimney was embedded irregularly in its log side. The windmill, towering its conical roof and rusty weather-vane a little distance off, and stretching out its gray skeleton arms as if to creak more freely in the sweep of gales from the river, was one of those rembrandtesque relics which prove so picturesquely that Time is an artist inimitable by man. A clay oven near the cot completed this group of erections, around and behind which the ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... heard upon the other side of the hut, and a moment later a metallic scraping and clinking. The man was trying to force the lock! This time his skill was greater or his tool was better, for there was a sudden snap and the creak of the hinges. Then a match was struck, and next instant the steady light from a candle filled the interior of the hut. Through the gauze curtain our eyes were all riveted upon the ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes - Magazine Edition • Arthur Conan Doyle
... upon her, and she yielded herself to it, lying inert upon the couch in the drawing-room dully listening to the creak of the punkah that stirred without ...
— The Lamp in the Desert • Ethel M. Dell
... broadcloth—there he was planted on his massive feet as on a pedestal! She did not see him; she was aware of him. And she was aware of the closed door behind them. One of the basket-chairs, though empty, continued to creak, like a thing alive. Faintly, very faintly, she could hear the piano—Mrs. Boutwood playing! Overhead were the footsteps of Sarah Gailey and Hettie—they were checking the linen from the laundry, as usual on Saturday afternoon. ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... to listen while I walk about in his room. One can't be too particular, when rest is of such importance to your young lady—and it has struck me as just possible, that the floor of his room may be in fault. My dear, the boards may creak! I'm a sad fidget, I know; but, if the carpenter can set things right—without any horrid hammering, of course!—the sooner he is sent for, the ...
— Heart and Science - A Story of the Present Time • Wilkie Collins
... sheaves of the blocks as the schooner rose to the short seas. There wasn't anything to be seen, but it seemed to him that the sheet made a queer noise in the blocks. It was a new manilla sheet; and in dry weather it did make a little noise, something between a creak and a wheeze. I looked at it and looked at the man, and said nothing; and presently he went on. He asked me if I didn't notice anything peculiar about the noise. I listened awhile, and said I didn't notice anything. Then he looked rather sheepish, ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... material enough for as many musical love stories, as there are novels in the handwriting of Sir Walter Scott, but this being a limited work, the covers already begin to bulge and creak, and it will be necessary to crowd into one swift mail-coach such other composers as we can hardly afford ...
— The Love Affairs of Great Musicians, Volume 2 • Rupert Hughes
... heard the soft jingle of keys in her hands; lock after lock she found swiftly in the dark until she must have shot back five or six bolts; a door opened before them. He could not see it, since beyond was a dark no less impenetrable, but caught the familiar creak of hinges. He heard the door close softly when they had gone through; he heard the several bolts shot back. Then Zoraida left him, groped a moment and thereafter the tiny flare of a match in her upheld hand showed her to him and, vaguely, ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... lady within, 70 Busily there to renew love's even duty together; Thither afoot mine own mistress, a deity bright, (70) Came, and planted firm her sole most sunny; beneath her Lightly the polish'd floor creak'd to ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... feel; I was as alone and powerless as a lost canoe in the ocean; but somewhere on earth or in air I heard a company of men pass me by. The sounds were unmistakable. I heard the swish of wet leaves, the pad of feet, and even the creak of the damp leather of the carrying-straps. Something cracked, pricking in my ears in a blur of sound, and I knew that the men had brushed a branch with the canoe that they were carrying on their heads. They were near me; at any moment they might come within touch of my hand. ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you may look at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can—"Hear this new sound." Watch the elder children coming ...
— The World's Greatest Books—Volume 14—Philosophy and Economics • Various
... glimmer of day came relief, but she did not sleep. The night's terror had left her nerves too shaken for repose. Yet as the sun rose and the farmyard sounds began, as she heard the mill-wheel creak and turn and the rush and roar of the water below, common sense came to her aid, and she was able to tell herself that her night alarm might have been due to nothing more than her ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... colour, only crested with wreaths of snowy whiteness: wind about west by north. What an instantaneous elasticity does the spirit gather up from a change like this! I had quitted my room despondingly, having slept sound and hearing no indications of a breeze; the dull heavy creak of the bulk-heads alone spoke of motion; when, on gaining the poop-deck, a fair, free breeze, and an atmosphere filled with life and vigour, ...
— Impressions of America - During The Years 1833, 1834, and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume II. • Tyrone Power
... listen; they all could hear the one great straining breath; the creak of wood slowly yielding; the wrench of iron; the mighty fall of the ponderous gates. Fanny stood up tottering—made a step or two towards her mother, and fell forwards into her arms in a fainting fit. Mrs. Thornton lifted her up with a strength that was as much that of the ...
— North and South • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... made myself look as fine as I could, and though my heart beat loudly as I mounted the bridle-path, I put on a bold look and rang the bell. It was a clanging thing, that seemed to creak on a hinge, as I pulled the stout string from outside. A man appeared, and on my inquiry said I might wait in the porch behind the great wooden gate, while he delivered my message to his excellency the baron. It seemed to take a long time, and I sat on a stone bench, eying the courtyard curiously ...
— A Roman Singer • F. Marion Crawford
... shouted Lieutenant Bishop. The brave tars seize the ropes, the trucks creak, and the great eleven-inch gun, already loaded, is out in a twinkling. Men are bringing up shot and shell. The deck is clearing of all ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... will be of little use," replied the Major; "creak they will. I don't know whether the oxen here are like those in India; but this I know, that the creaking of the carts and hackeries there is fifty times worse than this. The natives never grease the wheels; they say ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat
... did, heavily and noisily, exactly on the last word of the psalm proper, and pulled Mrs. Jock's silk wrap to make her give a like condemnation to the bit of popery. Lawyer Ed sat in the pew opposite Jock and heard the protesting creak of Jock's seat when he descended and, in a spirit of mischief, he turned round till he faced the McPherson and rolled out the "Amen" directly at its objector. It was shocking conduct for an elder, as J. P. said afterwards, ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... rubbed his hands, laughed as if he had outwitted the people of whom he was thinking, and whispered to his daughter: "The baker will wonder when he gets paid this time in glittering gold, and the butcher and Master Reinhard! My boots still creak softly when I step, and you know what that means. The soles of your little shoes probably only sing, but they, too, are ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... and saw nothing except a light which went up the stairs, through the rooms, and rested before a fine window, where probably the lady was also. You can believe that the poor lover remained melancholy and dreaming, and not knowing what to do. The window gave a sudden creak and broke his reverie. Fancying that his lady was about to call him, he looked up again, and but for the friendly shelter of the balcony, which was a helmet to him, he would have received a stream of water and the utensil which contained it, since the handle only remained in the grasp of ...
— Droll Stories, Complete - Collected From The Abbeys Of Touraine • Honore de Balzac
... our ears save the soft puff now and then of a porpoise, the slow creak of the masts, as we swayed gently on the swell, the patter of the reef-points, and the occasional flap of the hanging sails. An awning covered the fore and after parts of the schooner, under which the men composing the watch on deck ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... picture, was running along in the furrow beside the plow, pricking the flanks of the oxen with a long, light goad but slightly sharpened. The spirited animals quivered under the child's light touch, making their yokes and head-bands creak, and shaking the pole violently. Whenever a root stopped the advance of the plowshare, the laborer would call every animal by name in his powerful voice, trying to calm rather than to excite them; for the oxen, irritated by the sudden resistance, bounded, pawed the ground with their great ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... than a whisper from without—the creak of a board. Andrew Lanning slipped to the door and turned the key in the lock. When he rejoined her in the middle of the room ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... by going slowly, and trying each board with his foot advanced, to guard against a creak, finally to reach the door that opened into the room where ...
— Jack of the Pony Express • Frank V. Webster
... start, and away it goes shooting down like greased lightning, making the water fly up all around you, just like the snow does when you're tobogganing. Oh, but if it isn't grand! The timbers of the crib rub against the bottom of the slide, and groan and creak as if it hurt them. And then, besides coming in over the bow, the water spurts up between the timbers, so that you have to look spry or you're bound to get soaking wet. I got drenched nearly every time; but that didn't matter, for the sun soon made me dry again, and it was too good ...
— The Young Woodsman - Life in the Forests of Canada • J. McDonald Oxley
... and I have a premonition that that is good old Nurse with him. She has been with family ever since the birth of the first daughter twenty-four years ago. Look at her cap ribbons; note the fit of the stiff black silk over her comfortable shoulders; you can almost hear her creak in it!" ...
— Penelope's English Experiences • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sun was touching the higher hilltops with a faint rush of crimson the next morning when the back door of the Roney house opened with a creak, and Mr. Roney, still heavy-eyed with sleep, stumbled out upon the porch, stretched his arms above his head, yawned, blinked at the dazzling snow, and then shambled off ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... minds on the subject. There was something decidedly wrong, but what it was they could not discover. They were both awakened by a rustling sound in the hallway, outside of their room, and this time there was a creak on ...
— Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs
... of bones and a creak of chains sounded like a laugh. It was midnight when the boat pulled in at Communipaw, and as the storm continued Vanderscamp, drenched to the skin, made quick time to the Wild Goose. As he entered, a sound of revelry overhead smote his ear, and, being no less ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... occupied in thoughtfulness he became aware of the monotony of a tuneless chant, as if, it struck him, an insane young chorister or canon were galloping straight on end hippomaniacally through the Psalms. There was a creak at intervals, leading him to think it a machine that might have run away with the ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... compass at odds, no man knowing east from west or north from south in the strange surroundings. The "lot" they have known so well and crossed so often has been transformed into a trackless wilderness, through which strange objects rumble and creak, over which queer, ghastly lights play for the benefit of ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... 'tidings of Pepito—wait—' So I did wait, congratulating myself on the success of my scheme, and handling my knife with a confident expectation of making sure work of my man, when I heard the floor creak, and looking through the key-hole, I saw the confounded Inglez cocking a pistol and putting a fresh cap on it. And do you know, General, it somehow happened that when he opened the door, I was at the bottom ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I, No. V, May, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... rock there hangs a tree, And chains do creak thereon; And in those chains his memory hangs, Though ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... same to me. I can't stay indoors. Just to tramp through wet or dry heather, or under dripping or shining trees, is enough. How can one believe one has ever lain sweating with one's tongue lolling out, and listened to the whining creak of the punkah through nights too deadly hot to sleep in! It's like remembering hell while one ...
— Emily Fox-Seton - Being The Making of a Marchioness and The Methods of Lady Walderhurst • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... She did not seem to be going to bed; she kept moving about in her room. Poor Nora could scarcely restrain herself from calling out, "Oh, do be quick, Linda! What are you staying up for?" but she refrained from saying the fatal words. Presently she heard the creak of Linda's bed as she got into it. This ...
— Light O' The Morning • L. T. Meade
... masterpieces of others. Is not this common? The least little critic, in reviewing some work of art, will say, "pity this, and pity that;" "this should have been altered,—that omitted." Yea, with his wiry fiddlestring will he creak out his accursed variations. But let him sit down and compose himself. He sees no improvement in variations THEN! Every man can control his fiddle when it is his own work with which its ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... silence, broken only by the soft melancholy murmur of the forest. They refilled the magazines of their carbines, built up the tinder fire, and stretched their ears to catch the first warning note of danger. Then the whisperings swarmed in upon them. A creak of a branch, the turn of a leaf, the scraping of creeping insects, the whizzing of moths, and the murmur of the forest, all seemed to them the whisperings of stealthy foes. Every now and again they moistened their lips, ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... door closed with a dull bang, and from the entrance hallway came a sound of voices. She stood petrified in dread till the voices fell and she heard stairs creak under an ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... open country. The night was still and clear, though there was no moon. Lavretsky rambled a long time over the dewy grass. He came across a little narrow path; and went along it. It led him up to a long fence, and to a little gate; he tried, not knowing why, to push it open. With a faint creak the gate opened, as though it had been waiting the touch of his hand. Lavretsky went into the garden. After a few paces along a walk of lime-trees he stopped short in amazement; he ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... pause Bechamel went back to the dining-room. They heard a chair creak under him. Interlude of ...
— The Wheels of Chance - A Bicycling Idyll • H. G. Wells
... to Mrs. Klopton's expostulating tones in the lower hall and the creak of the boards as she came heavily up the stairs. She had a piece of paper in her hand torn from a pocket account-book, and on it was the name, "Mr. Wilson Budd Hotchkiss. ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... away to right and left of you, with the constant roar of sluice boxes and cradles, the creak of windlasses, and the perpetual noise of human voices. There's the excitement of pegging out your claim and sinking your first shaft, wondering all the time whether it will turn up trumps or nothing. There's the honest, manly labour from dawn to dusk. And then, when daylight fails, and the ...
— A Bid for Fortune - or Dr. Nikola's Vendetta • Guy Boothby
... on the verandah, he caught the complaining creak of an old plank, and while she waited for her bag there came to his ears the whining scrape of a tree branch against the eaves. The little voices of the hermitage ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the straining creak of gear and came rattle of yokes as the pins were loosed. Cattle guards appeared and drove the work animals apart to graze. Women clambered down from wagon seats. Sober-faced children gathered their little arms full of wood for the belated breakfast fires; boys came ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... shutting softly, then a slight creak on the stairs, as if some one were coming up slowly. I was not exactly frightened. I never thought of burglars—I don't think there has been a burglary at Middlemoor within the memory of man—but my heart did beat rather faster than usual and I listened, straining ...
— My New Home • Mary Louisa Molesworth
... door leading on to the side-porch creak stealthily, then pause, and creak again. Perhaps Annie was ill, and she ought to follow her. She softly tiptoed back to her room and peeped from her window. Her sister was stealing down through the orchard, her light summer dress plainly ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... closing of a door," he replied; "but before that I had distinctly heard a stair creak. Someone crossed the hall then, Knox. Yet, as you perceive for ...
— Bat Wing • Sax Rohmer
... the light now, Calvin! creep softly, softly, down the rickety stairs, testing each board as you go, lest it creak. Out to the barn, where the good brown horse is dozing peacefully. He has had a good supper and a good rest; he is fit for the ten miles that lie between you and safety. Stow the bells under the seat, muffling them carefully in the horse-blanket lest any faintest jingle betray you. Now ...
— The Wooing of Calvin Parks • Laura E. Richards
... pitiless. Far off some slender columns of smoke told of two or three hearth-fires, but mainly the plain was level and lifeless as the Polar Ocean, appallingly silent, no cry or stir in the whole expanse, no tree to creak nor ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... go on? It must be now or never. With a tremendous effort he went quickly up the remaining steps, stood on tiptoe to unlatch the door, and pushed it open. It swung back with a creak upon its rusty hinges, and a cold wind rushed in Ambrose's face, for the window was open. The room was faintly lighted, not with glowworms, but by the pale rays of a watery moon, which made some of the objects whitely distinct, and left others ...
— The Hawthorns - A Story about Children • Amy Walton
... uncarpeted, twisting stairs! Now that Willy and I have "grown up and gone away," do they creak gaily beneath the happy feet of children still, I wonder, or only groan with the heavy tread of sober grown-ups? Often and ...
— A Sheaf of Corn • Mary E. Mann
... creak of gear and flap of idle sails. The schooner barely moved now, though the western sky held promise of a breeze later on. Then came a cry from one of the negro crew forward, and its tenor stirred ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... sitting upon one of the stone projections, hatless in the April sun, her beautiful figure thrown into bold lines and curves as she looked down upon the road, sitting, but half turned upon her seat. She heard the crazy door of the turret creak and rattle, and she moved so that she could ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... of majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... was able to walk slowly into the house, very slowly up the stairs. Dave, in the room above, hearing the well-known stair-creak under his heavy tread, rushed down to find him lying on the bed in his clothes. Mo drew the child's face to his own as he lay, saying:—"Here's a kiss for you, old man, and one to take ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... had gone but a little way, the noise of wheels reached her suddenly, and she shrank into the shadow beside the wall. A cloud of dust chased toward her as the wheels came steadily on. They were evidently ancient, for they turned with a protesting creak which was heard long before the high, old-fashioned coach they carried swung into view—long indeed before the driver's ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... uttered about thee by many foremost of Rishis, I never expected that Suyodhana would win success and prosperity or that thou thyself wouldst be afflicted with the fear of Karna! Thou ridest upon an excellent car constructed by the celestial artificer himself, with axles that do not creak, and with standard that bears the ape. Thou bearest a sword attached to thy belt of gold and silk. This thy bow Gandiva is full six cubits long. Thou hast Keshava for thy driver. Why, then, through ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... been a cannon-ball; and though she sat with her book in her lap by the fire in Mary's room, all the dear old furniture and pictures round her, her head was weaving an unheard-of imagination, about robbers coming in rifling everything—coming up the stairs—creak, creak, was that their step?—she held her breath, and her eyes dilated—seizing her for the sake of her watch! What article there would be in the paper—"Melancholy disappearance of the youthful Countess of Caergwent." Then Aunt Barbara would be sorry she had treated her so cruelly; then ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... inequalities, the dogs never breaking their tireless trot. They mounted a swelling ridge and rushed down to the level river ice beyond, but as they did so they felt their footing sag beneath them, heard a shivering creak on every side, and, before they could do more than cry out warningly, saw water rising about the sled-runners. The momentum of the heavy sledge, together with the speed of the racing dogs, forced them out upon the treacherous ice before ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... roar sounded above the rattle of ropes and creak of hawsers—and a broadside cut into the La Confidence ...
— Famous Privateersmen and Adventurers of the Sea • Charles H. L. Johnston
... of Latin, it was the custom of his day, as it was the custom for a gentleman to envelop his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park; and lets the King's party, and the Prince of Orange's party battle it out among ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... I die for it," said Deborah, and whirled up the wooden steps in a silent manner surprising in so noisy a woman. Paul heard the trap-door drop with a stealthy creak. ...
— The Opal Serpent • Fergus Hume
... Lutheran, was busily engaged in picking the lock of the case where were deposited the Book of Jasher and Aulus Gellius. Telling Monteagle to guard the door, I approached very softly, keeping behind the plaster casts. I was within a yard of him before he heard my boots creak. Then he turned round, and I found myself face to face with Dr. Groschen. I have never seen such a look of terror on any ...
— Masques & Phases • Robert Ross
... voice from the next mummy-case; and a creak told of the cabinet door swinging open. ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... bridge and shot off into space on the other side like a hurdler clearing an obstacle. With a creak and a thud the big car landed, reeled drunkenly, and straightened out in earnest, Maclaren craned his head to see the speedometer, but had not the heart to look; he began to ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... the blow. And when it came he was malevolently disappointed. A mere slithering along over the sand, a creak, a slight jar, and she lay dead in the flat, calm sea—it was ridiculous that that smooth beaching would break an oil tank, that the engine spark would flare the machine waste, leap to ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... his turn a lance, But miss'd Patroclus and the shoulder pierced Of Pedasus the horse; he groaning heaved His spirit forth, and fallen on the field 565 In long loud moanings sorrowful expired. Wide started the immortal pair; the yoke Creak'd, and entanglement of reins ensued To both, their fellow slaughter'd at their side. That mischief soon Automedon redress'd. 570 He rose, and from beside his sturdy thigh Drawing his falchion, with effectual ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... their dusty leather. A procession of men were wheeling and dumping slag into a dreary area beyond. There was a stir of constant life about the Furnace, voices calling, the ringing of metal on metal, the creak of barrows, dogs barking. The plaintive melody of a German song ...
— The Three Black Pennys - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... business, its floor of operations the smooth ground worn bare about the camp fire. One of them lay flat with a careful hand patting the dust into mounds, the other squatted near by watching, a slant of white hair falling across a rounded cheek. They did not heed the creak of the wagon wheels, but as a woman's voice called from the tent, raised their heads listening, but not answering, evidently deeming silence the best ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... help half envying these fellows, as he saw with what glee and self- satisfaction they entered into their own at Wakefield's. They were all so glad to be back, to see again the picture of Cain and Abel on the wall, to scramble for the corner seat in the ingle-bench, to hear the well-known creak on the middle landing, to catch the imperturbable tick of the dormitory clock, to see the top of Hawk's Pike looming out, down the valley, clear and sharp in ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... River to the Syr-darya.[9] It is extremely flat and looks like a frozen sea. Day after day we drive southwards, the horses ready to run away; there is nothing to drive over, no ditches to fall into, no stones to carry away a wheel. The hoofs hammer on the hard ground, the wheels creak, I and my things are shaken and thrown about in the carriage, the coachman plants his feet firmly against the foot-board lest he should tumble off, and on we go over the flat dreary steppe. As we drive on day and night the tarantass seems ...
— From Pole to Pole - A Book for Young People • Sven Anders Hedin
... porch; and an uncut brush of sunburnt grass and weeds all about. From May until September you never passed the Decker place without hearing the plunketty-plink of a mandolin from somewhere behind the vines, accompanied by a murmur of young voices, laughter, and the creak-creak of the hard-worked and protesting hammock hooks. Flora, Ella, and Grace Decker had more beaux and fewer clothes than any other girls in Chippewa. In a town full of pretty young things they were, undoubtedly, the prettiest; and in a family of pretty sisters (Sophy always excepted) ...
— Half Portions • Edna Ferber
... seat in front of her, moved away to the smoking car; and the woman in gray listened to the creak and whirr of the wheel of torturing dread, upon which some malignant fate once more bound her. Bertie had been safe in his mountain fastness, until her ill-starred advertisement coaxed him within reach of the police Briareus. Could she discern the hand of ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... but steadily, my guide seeming to know the way, and presently he opened a door with only a slight creak, and then whispered in ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various
... might reach home by the end of the week. "He might come to-night! I must do it—before he comes home." She said that while the March dawn was gray against the windows of her bedroom, and the house was still. She lay in bed until, at six, she heard the creak of the attic stairs and Mary's step as she crept down to the kitchen, the silver basket clattering faintly on her arm. Then she rose and dressed; once she paused to look at herself in the glass: those gray hairs! ... Edith had called his attention ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... poor and untidily served one—Andrey Yefimitch would walk up and down his rooms with his arms folded, thinking. The clock would strike four, then five, and still he would be walking up and down thinking. Occasionally the kitchen door would creak, and the red and sleepy ...
— The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... more; but angry, fiery rays, From scars his visage bore, seemed suddenly to blaze. Four times he turned his heel upon, Then bade the door stand wide, or ere his foot he stayed; With one long creak the door obeyed, And lo! ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... heard them lift a box, And creak across my soul With those same boots of lead, again. Then ...
— Poems: Three Series, Complete • Emily Dickinson
... was eager to be out in all this blindman's holiday; but, "Nay," said Carew; "not so much as thy nose. A fog like this would steal the croak from a raven's throat, let alone the sweetness from a honey-pot like thine—and bottom crust is the end of pie!" With which, bang went the door, creak went the key, and Carew was off ...
— Master Skylark • John Bennett
... they drove in silence. Only the whistle of the iron-bound runners on the powdery snow, the creak of the warming leather on the horses, the regular breathing of the team, broke the stillness of the forest. Paul hoped against hope that Catrina was asleep. She sat by his side, her arm touching his sleeve, ...
— The Sowers • Henry Seton Merriman
... The sharp eyes of the old negress snapped. She gave a grunt as she withdrew her head. It was speedily to develop, though, that she had not entirely betaken herself away. Almost immediately there came to the ears of the couple the creak-creak of a rocking-chair just inside the hall, but out of view from ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... mind, there is something indescribably satisfactory in the intense solidity of those old stairs and floors—no spring in the planks, not a creak; you walk as over strata of stone. What clumsy grandeur! What Cyclopean carpenters! What a prodigality ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... ridges, sinking into valleys; and being just then uncarpeted, the face of the boards was seen to be eaten into innumerable vermiculations. Every window replied by a clang to the opening and shutting of every door, a tremble followed every bustling movement, and a creak accompanied a walker about the house, like a spirit, ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... A gentle creak came from the confessional; the Mother of God, in a halo, in the dazzlement of her golden crown and mantle smiled tenderly with tinted lips upon the infant Jesus; and the heated clock throbbed out the ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... stirring it up, she fell in and scalded herself. Thereupon the flea began to scream. And then the door asked: "Why are you screaming, flea?" "Because Little Spider has scalded herself in the beer-tub," replied she. Thereupon the door began to creak as if it were in pain, and a broom, which stood in the corner, asked: "What are you creaking ...
— Italian Popular Tales • Thomas Frederick Crane
... come. Wherefore look to your faith, and pray heartily that the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing. 2. Learn of Abraham not to faint, stumble, or doubt, at the sight of your own weakness; for if you do, hope will stay below, and creak in the wheels as it goes, because it will want the oil of faith. But say to thy soul, when thou beginnest to faint and sink at the sight of these, as David did to his, in the places made mention of before. 3. Be much in calling to mind ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... backs, 'that yon paper was your finger, one finger only of your hand, and it burned like that for ever and ever, and think of your hand and your arm and your whole body all on fire, never to go out.' We shuddered that you might have heard the form creak. 'That is hell, and that is where ony laddie will go who does not repent ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... was not touched again; but, directly afterward, I heard the basket, in which the cat lay, creak. I tell you, I fairly pringled all along my back. I knew that I was going to learn definitely whether whatever was abroad was dangerous to Life. From the cat there rose suddenly a hideous caterwaul, that ceased abruptly; and then—too late—I snapped off the flashlight. In the great ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... pleasant and cheery tones enough for us when she comes in her dress of blue and gold over the eastern hill-tops; but when she follows us upstairs to our beds in her suit of black velvet and diamonds, every creak of her sandals and every whisper of her lips is full of mystery ...
— Many Thoughts of Many Minds - A Treasury of Quotations from the Literature of Every Land and Every Age • Various
... bee-master sighed also, with a profundity that made his chair creak, well-seasoned as it was. Then he said, "But I'll say this, Master Jack, next to going to such places the reading about 'em must come. A penny a week's a penny a week to a poor man, but I reckon I shall have to make shift to ...
— We and the World, Part I - A Book for Boys • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... a motion that made you expect to hear his back creak (it was intended for a bow)—"please, sir, can ...
— The Young Fur Traders • R.M. Ballantyne
... make the time pass. I was too restless to sit down. I wouldn't let myself look out of the window to see the car come along the drive. I dared not walk up and down like the caged thing I was, lest the floor should creak, for the tower-room—the den—is over the entrance-hall. I felt like a hunted animal—I, the one creature to whom Jim Beckett deliberately meant to be cruel! I, in this room which was a tribute to his kindness of heart, his faithfulness, his loyalty! But why should it not be so? I had no ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... the tall trees, which, in the darkness, had seemed a compact black roof. The crowing of cocks rang out from the court-yard of the temple, and, as the Corinthian rose with a shiver to warm himself by a rapid walk backwards and forwards, he heard a door creak near the outer wall of the temple, of which the outline now grew sharper and clearer every instant in ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... lung, my liver is a swelling sponge, eating crowds my waistband like a balloon, I have a swimming in my head and a sinking at my heart, and I can not say litany for happy release from these for my knees creak with rheumatism. The devil has done his worst, Robert, for these are his—plague and pestilence, being final, are the will of God—and, upon my soul, it is an absurd comedy of ills!" At that he had a fit of coughing, and I gave him a glass of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the case of ghosts, any phenomenon which people don't understand, from a sudden crash on a quiet day to a midnight creak of a cupboard, has an affect of alarm upon nervous minds. So also a spy is spoken of with undue alarm and abhorrence, because he is ...
— My Adventures as a Spy • Robert Baden-Powell
... his heavy feet upon the stairs and the thud of them overhead. He waited for some time; then he heard the bed creak. He closed the windows, personally inspected the fastenings of the doors, and went to his little office ...
— The Man Who Knew • Edgar Wallace
... But again I told myself that the hours flew, and laid hold of the jewel which is studded into the forehead of the image with one hand, and then stretching out, thrust at a corner of the eyebrow with the other. With a faint creak the massive eyeball below, a stone that I could barely have covered with my back, swung inwards. I stepped off the stair, and climbed into the gap. Inside was the chamber which is hollowed from the ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... hot, after he had taken them from the pan. Willis tended the fire and kept the embers banked over the potatoes; and Addison got on water for coffee. About this time the door of the girls' cabin was heard to creak; and we saw ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... with a few strokes of his wings he was out of the cage; but at the same moment the door, which was only ajar, and which led to the next room, began to creak, and supple and creeping came the large tomcat into the room, and began to pursue him. The frightened Canary fluttered about in his cage; the Parrot flapped his wings, and cried, "Come, let us be men!" The Clerk felt a mortal fright, and flew through ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... terrify. He also had in readiness a curious machine which we find it rather difficult to describe. Every one has heard, no doubt, of the wooden wheels, with wooden axles, attached to the carts in some eastern countries, which groan, and creak, and yell, and shriek for want of grease, in a manner that is almost maddening to all but native ears. Dick's invention was founded partly on the principle of these eastern carts, only it was worked by turning a handle, and its sounds were ...
— The Wild Man of the West - A Tale of the Rocky Mountains • R.M. Ballantyne
... certain period. What impediments were there between me and liberty which I could not remove, and remove with so much caution as to escape notice? Motion and sound inevitably go together; but every sound is not attended to. The doors of the closet and the chamber did not creak upon their hinges. The latter might be locked. This I was able to ascertain only by experiment. If it were so, yet the key was probably in the lock, and might be ...
— Arthur Mervyn - Or, Memoirs of the Year 1793 • Charles Brockden Brown
... captain, with fifty men under him to care for and discipline and lead into battle. There was not a man in my troop who was not at least a few years older than myself, and as I rode in advance of them and heard the creak of the saddles and the jingle of the picket-pins and water-bottles, or turned and saw the long line stretching out behind me, I was as proud as Napoleon returning in triumph to Paris. I had brought with me from the Academy my scarlet ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... there scarcely came the distant noises of the city, which filtered in like a pale sound; it was as quiet as in a remote hamlet; now and then a dog would bark, some cart would creak as it bumped along the road, then silence would be restored and in the kitchen nothing would be heard save the glu glu of the pot, like a ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja
... came a sweet-faced child And reached her dimpled hand to take A nickel to send to the heathen poor And a nickel to spend for her stomach's sake. She pressed the hidden secret spring, And lo! the bank flew open then With a cheery creak that seemed to say: "I'm glad to ...
— John Smith, U.S.A. • Eugene Field
... and the detective knocked again, somewhat more insistently. Now they were intent for the slightest noise behind that closed door, and they caught a subdued groan or whine, followed by the metallic creak of a bed-frame. ...
— One Wonderful Night - A Romance of New York • Louis Tracy
... hands, laughed as if he had outwitted the people of whom he was thinking, and whispered to his daughter: "The baker will wonder when he gets paid this time in glittering gold, and the butcher and Master Reinhard! My boots still creak softly when I step, and you know what that means. The soles of your little shoes probably only sing, but ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... he brought his chair so suddenly and heavily back to its four-legged condition that the frail thing responded with an ominous creak. "What on earth do ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... own suggestion, for when he heard the front door creak on its hinges, he laid down his revolver and covered his ears with his hands. This made Rodney turn as white as a sheet and get upon his feet again, fully expecting to hear the roar of a shotgun, followed by the clatter of buckshot in the hall; but instead of that, there came the calm, even ...
— Rodney The Partisan • Harry Castlemon
... Should mischief thee, imponderable pat. Ah, mine no more! for lo! 'tis noised around How thou wilt soon cost seven bob a pound. As well demand thy weight in radium As probe my 'poverished poke for such a sum. Wherefore, farewell! No more, alas! thou'lt oil These joints that creak with unrewarded toil; No more thy heartsick votary's midmost riff Wilt lubricate, and, oh! (as WORDSWORTH says) ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 28th, 1920 • Various
... you were familiar enough to go upstairs, you could not find the steps which had been wont to creak. And peeping into the parlor you could see that some pretty new furniture had taken the place of the shaky old lounge and chairs; one good marine picture hung between the windows and a new rug lay ...
— Suzanna Stirs the Fire • Emily Calvin Blake
... somewhere, but I might be mistaken. Yet the voices sounded as if they came from that quarter—and—and I am sure I heard one note on the piano to give the pitch. Hark! I hear the parlor door softly shut, and now the stairs creak, and betray them stealing up, as they probably betrayed me stealing down. They only blew out the ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... her neighbor, playing ball down the street, she forgot every thing but the desire to show her new shoes; and away she went marching primly along as vain as a little peacock, as she watched the bright buttons twinkle, and heard the charming creak. Kitty saw her coming; and, being an ill-natured little girl, took no notice, but called out to her ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... a good man, after all,' said the Owl sententiously. And then there came by a British manufacturer, in a gold watch-chain and patent creaking leather boots, warranted to creak everywhere ...
— 'That Very Mab' • May Kendall and Andrew Lang
... old door leading on to the side-porch creak stealthily, then pause, and creak again. Perhaps Annie was ill, and she ought to follow her. She softly tiptoed back to her room and peeped from her window. Her sister was stealing down through the orchard, ...
— 'Lizbeth of the Dale • Marian Keith
... to October 13. — The wind is blowing hard from the northeast, and the Chancellor, under low-reefed top-sail and fore-sail, and laboring against a heavy sea, has been obliged to be brought ahull. The joists and girders all creak again until one's teeth are set on edge. I am the only passenger not remaining below; but I prefer being on deck notwithstanding the driving rain, fine as dust, which penetrates to the very skin. We have been driven along in this fashion ...
— The Survivors of the Chancellor • Jules Verne
... the tiller between his knees and the slack of the main-sheet in his hand. She was running wing and wing, with her bright new sails spreading far over the water on each side. Then came a rattle and a sharp creak as the main-yard swung over and came down on deck, the men taking in the bellying canvas with wide open arms and old Luigione catching the end of the yard on his shoulder while he steered with his knees, his great ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... simplicity of boyhood, I maintain that travelling by coach is by no means the least of our sublunary pleasures. Man is a wheelable animal as well as walking one. Winter is the time for a nice inside jaunt. What divine evaporations from the coachman's muzzle! What a joyous creak in the down-flying steps!—and, oh! that comfortable alertness with which we deposit ourselves in the padded corner, and fold our coatflaps over our knees, glance at the frosty steam of the window; and then, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Issue 266, July 28, 1827 • Various
... were frozen into utter silence, and beyond the door an equal quiet prevailed for a long minute; then a great force made the door creak and a weird scratching sounded high up upon the old fashioned panelling. Bridge heard a smothered gasp from the boy beside him, followed instantly by a flash of flame and the crack of a small caliber automatic; The Oskaloosa Kid had fired through ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... thought I heard, a voice say, "Don't know the cove." Then there was a rustling like a person undressing, whereupon being satisfied that it was my fellow-lodger, I dropped asleep, but was awakened again by a kind of heavy plunge upon the other bed, which caused it to rock and creak, when I observed that the light had been extinguished, probably blown out, if I might judge from a rather disagreeable smell of burnt wick which remained in the room, and which kept me awake till I heard my companion breathing hard, ...
— The Romany Rye • George Borrow
... held up his hand for silence. Both men listened intently, and from the river bank they heard the steady, lumbering creak ...
— For the Liberty of Texas • Edward Stratemeyer
... the spigot, now staggering and splashing as he lugged a full pail, now scampering back happily with an empty one. And he was beside a stairway, and on the point of taking in a drink to the horse stalled closest to the entrance, when he heard several voices, the creak of doors, and footsteps. So he paused, the bucket swinging from both hands, until half a dozen pairs of shaggy legs appeared just above him. Then as the big hats were bobbing into view, so that he knew his labors could be seen and appreciated, ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... from end to end of the long verandah of his bungalow with clank of steel, creak of leather, and groan of travailing soul. As the top of his scarlet, blue and gold turban touched the lamp that hung a good seven feet above his spurred heels ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... went on into the dining-room. Mrs. Thorne knocked, in a whisper as it were. There was no answer. She softly unlatched the door, and a draft of air crept through, widening it with a prolonged and wistful creak. The sleeper did not stir. She had changed her pillows to the foot of the bed, and was lying in the full light, with her window-curtains drawn. In all the room there was an air of abandonment, an exhausted memory of the night's ...
— A Touch Of Sun And Other Stories • Mary Hallock Foote
... light. This effort yielded but a glimpse of one corner of the seemingly deserted interior, and I crouched down within the rail, cautiously seeking to discover more. Fortunately the wooden support did not creak under my weight. The apartment was apparently parlor and sitting-room combined, some of the furniture massive and handsome, especially the centre-table and a sofa of black walnut, but there was also a light ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... my mark—mark!" Mac tightened his grip, and then sagged backward as the main motors fired. The vibrations shook him slightly but deeply, and he fought to keep his hold. He felt his back creak and pop with the sudden surge of weight. Then the motors shut off, and Mac skidded several feet up the ladder. No matter how fast a man's reactions were, they couldn't be applied quickly enough to keep him from starting an involuntary leap after bracing against ...
— Tight Squeeze • Dean Charles Ing
... wrought-iron gates at the end of the avenue. Through these they beheld the waiting yellow chaise which had brought Andre-Louis. From near at hand came the creak of other wheels, the beat of other hooves, and now another vehicle came in sight, and drew to a stand-still beside the yellow chaise—a handsome equipage with polished mahogany panels on which the gold and azure of armorial bearings flashed ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... which opened with a creak, and I shut it after him. I felt somewhat uneasy as I followed B., who crossed the garden with a rapid stride. I felt uneasy at the thought of his essentially military eloquence, and of the use to which he proposed to put it. But I knew, too, that he was not easily induced to abandon a ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... his imagination with far different fare. His mind had never yet been filled with an absorbing passion; but it lay like a still twilight open to any wind, whether the low breath that wafts but odours, or the storm that bows the great trees till they strain and creak. He saw everything as through a rose-coloured glass. When he looked from his window on the street below, not a maiden passed but she moved as in a story, and drew his thoughts after her till she disappeared in the vista. When he walked in the streets, he always ...
— Phantastes - A Faerie Romance for Men and Women • George MacDonald
... dust Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor." How could I till my forty acres Not to speak of getting more, With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos Stirred in my brain by crows and robins And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle— And ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... Small, drawing herself up with a creak and rustle of her whole person, said, shivering ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... and they soon heard the slight creak of the weighted wheel as Droop set off with the ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... on, trying the floor of the verandah with his bare feet at each step, lest the boards should creak a little under his weight. He reached the window door of his own room, and slipped ...
— Whosoever Shall Offend • F. Marion Crawford
... emperor had fallen asleep, the beds began to creak, and amid this creaking the empress fancied she heard words that no ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... hinges creak an' cry, An' de bahs go slantin' down, You kin reckon dat hit's time Fu' to cas' yo' eye erroun', 'Cause daih ain't no 'sputin' dis, Hit's de trues' sign to show Dat daih 's cou'tin' goin' on Wen de ol' ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... not at the time know exactly why I did this, but it seemed as if some one had taken me by the hand and was leading me into the depths. But the water splashing above my ankles and a scream from Euphemia made me drop the line, which immediately spun out to its full length, making the stake creak and ...
— The Rudder Grangers Abroad and Other Stories • Frank R. Stockton
... came as yesterday and every day supper, reading, a sleepless night, and endless thinking about the same thing. At three o'clock the sun rose; Alyona was already busy in the corridor, and Vera was not asleep yet and was trying to read. She heard the creak of the barrow: it was the new labourer at work in the garden. . . . Vera sat at the open window with a book, dozed, and watched the soldier making the paths for her, and that interested her. The paths ...
— The Duel and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... agitated servant lest it freeze between kitchen and dining room. Even while Belding carved it the gravy began to stiffen. Behind Clark was a glowing fireplace, ineffectual against the outside temperature, the windows were white with frost and the whole house seemed to creak. ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... up the front stairway toward the garret, where he had passed many a happy hour playing with Margaret and Harry and the boy whom he was after as an enemy, now. The door was open at the first landing, and the creak of the stairs under Dan's feet, heard plainly, stopped. The Sergeant, pistol in hand, started ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... the door of the gypsy's store a few minutes before four. Her face was white and her lips set in a thin line; she breathed with difficulty and with every move she made she could feel her old bones creak. ...
— Hex • Laurence Mark Janifer (AKA Larry M. Harris)
... the verandah, he caught the complaining creak of an old plank, and while she waited for her bag there came to his ears the whining scrape of a tree branch against the eaves. The little voices of the hermitage were giving ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... Oh, hear the benches creak and strain! (A long pull for Stavanger!) She thinks she smells the Northland rain! (A long pull ...
— Songs from Books • Rudyard Kipling
... of paper, the bare spots hung with tapestry moth-eaten and filled with spiders! And what have we for table?—a board laid on cross-bars! And the oaken chairs are rush-bottomed, and so straight the backs are a persecution! The door hinges creak in these inns, ...
— Lazarre • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... Suddenly a sharp creak, like that of a rusty spring, broke the silence. Don Juan, in his surprise, almost dropped the flask. A perspiration, colder than the steel of a dagger, oozed out from his pores. A cock of painted wood came forth from a clock ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... the last scene of the Sonnambula, for instance, in her night-chemise with a lamp in her hand, and had to go out of the window, and pass over the plank of the mill, it was all she could do to squeeze out of the window, and the plank used to bend and creak again under her weight—but how she poured out the finale of the opera! and with what a burst of feeling she rushed into Elvino's arms—almost fit to smother him! Whereas the little Lederlung—but a truce to this gossip—the fact is ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray
... The crickets creak, and through the noonday glow, That crazy fiddler of the hot mid-year, The dry cicada plies his wiry bow In long-spun cadence, thin and dusty sere: From the green grass the small grasshoppers' din Spreads ...
— Among the Millet and Other Poems • Archibald Lampman
... saint, generally that of San Gennaro. The exact part that the barrel and the row of studs play in this mystic battle against the Evil Eye is unknown, but the two revolving flags of brass that swing and creak above the pommel itself are believed to represent "the flaming sword which turned every way," and finally expelled Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Certainly this shimmering metal has the appearance of a flaming sword in the ...
— The Naples Riviera • Herbert M. Vaughan
... jumping up, asked him in her own way whether the others were coming soon, but getting no answer from him, she returned to her post of observation and sank into repose again, her head on one side, and one ear pricked up to listen. At last the door opened with a creak, and Stepan Arkadyevitch's spot-and-tan pointer Krak flew out, running round and round and turning over in the air. Stepan Arkadyevitch himself followed with a gun in his hand and a ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... it creak, and then the sound of a small voice came to him. "Jimmie! Jimmie! Are yehs dere?" it whispered. The urchin started. The thin, white face of his sister looked at him from the door-way of the other room. She crept to ...
— Maggie: A Girl of the Streets • Stephen Crane
... was in semi-darkness. She expected to see no one; looked for no one. A moment she paused by the door that led into the garden, and in that pause she heard a slight sound. It might have been anything. It probably was a creak from one of the wicker chairs that stood in a corner. Whatever its origin, it startled her to greater haste. She fumbled at the ...
— The Safety Curtain, and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... their beams bravely through the big windows of the gallery upstairs. She looked at the sleeping roses, the velvet lawns, the tall trees; and her eyes were very peaceful. The golden moonlight transfigured the scene; from the dreaming river came the creak of oars moving gently in their rowlocks; and the nightingale's song was dying softly, tenderly, on the ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... peeped over to assure himself of her complete somnolence. Satisfied that Mex would not likely be roused by any slight disturbance, he stole to the front door and undid the fastenings so softly that not a creak of the bolt sliding from its staple was heard even by his own quick ear. But when he swung the door open, providing for his ready escape, the hinges gave out a complaining sigh. The sound was faint, but it startled Mex. She ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... in the piney woods. Down in the valley you see little but the flocking of blackbirds in the streets, or the low flight of mallards over the tulares, and the gathering of clouds behind Williamson. First there is a waiting stillness in the wood; the pine-trees creak although there is no wind, the sky glowers, the firs rock by the water borders. The noise of the creek rises insistently and falls off a full note like a child abashed by sudden silence in the room. This changing of the stream-tone ...
— The Land Of Little Rain • Mary Hunter Austin
... the word," said he, with another hateful chuckle. And then suddenly I heard, amidst the roar of the storm, the creak and whine of the winch-handle turning and the rattle of the grating as it passed through the slot. Great God, he was ...
— Tales of Terror and Mystery • Arthur Conan Doyle
... it is wrong; because at least it does give a system, and therefore forces its opponents to present an alternative system, instead of simply cutting a hole in the shoe when it pinches, or striking out the driving wheel because it happens to creak unpleasantly. And I think so the more because I cannot but observe that whenever a real economic question presents itself, it has to be argued on pretty much the old principles, unless we take the heroic method of discarding argument altogether. I should be the last to deny that the ...
— Social Rights and Duties, Volume I (of 2) - Addresses to Ethical Societies • Sir Leslie Stephen
... the ranks, that they were making for the communications of the boaster Pope, the regiments stepped out with renewed energy. "There was no need for speech, no breath to spare if there had been—only the shuffling tramp of marching feet, the rumbling of wheels, the creak and clank of harness and accoutrements, with an occasional order, uttered under the breath, and always the same: "Close up, men! Close up!""* (* "Battles and Leaders volume ...
— Stonewall Jackson And The American Civil War • G. F. R. Henderson
... glass rattling to the ground), they are unusually dark to-night. The darkness is augmented and confused, by flying dust from the earth, dry twigs from the trees, and great ragged fragments from the rooks' nests up in the tower. The trees themselves so toss and creak, as this tangible part of the darkness madly whirls about, that they seem in peril of being torn out of the earth: while ever and again a crack, and a rushing fall, denote that some large branch ...
— The Mystery of Edwin Drood • Charles Dickens
... claret and blue which shine Under the moon like lees of wine. A coronet done in a golden scroll, And wheels which blunder and creak as they roll Through the muddy ruts of a moorland track. ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... and we went down to the harbour, where the long line of ships lay side by side along the wharf with their bows shoreward. The great dragon stem heads towered over us, shining strangely in the moonlight, and the gentle send of the waves into the harbour made them sway and creak as though they were coming ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... migratory birds are still in the piney woods. Down in the valley you see little but the flocking of blackbirds in the streets, or the low flight of mallards over the tulares, and the gathering of clouds behind Williamson. First there is a waiting stillness in the wood; the pine-trees creak although there is no wind, the sky glowers, the firs rock by the water borders. The noise of the creek rises insistently and falls off a full note like a child abashed by sudden silence in ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... on the brightest days. To-night the heavens held no lamps aloft to guide us, and soon the darkness folded around us like a garment. I could see neither the driver nor his horses. I could hear only the sibilant whisper of the trees and the creak of our slow wheels ...
— The Story of a Pioneer - With The Collaboration Of Elizabeth Jordan • Anna Howard Shaw
... permitted on board, no smoking, no other lights in cabin or saloon. There was scarcely a sound to be heard on the ship, save the throbbing of her engines, the long, splintering crash of heavy seas, and the dull creak of her steel vertebrae tortured by a ...
— In Secret • Robert W. Chambers
... he laid his finger on his nose—lengthwise, the Norman in him supplanting the priest in his remembrance of a good bargain. "And now it is twenty years since then. Everything creaks and cracks over there: all of us creak and crack. You should hear my chairs, elles se cassent les reins—they break their thighs continually. Ah! there goes another, I cry out, as I sit down in one in winter and hear them groan. Poor old things, they ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... again a projection so narrow that it seemed to grudge him foothold. Some of the ledges, however, were wider, and occasionally a dwarfed huckleberry bush, nourished in a fissure, lifted him up like a helping hand. He quaked as he heard the roots strain and creak, for he was a pretty heavy fellow for sixteen years of age. They did not give way, however, and up and up he went, every moment increasing the depth below him and the danger. His breath was short; his strength ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... custom for a gentleman to envelop his head in a periwig and his hands in lace ruffles. If he wears buckles and square-toed shoes, he steps in them with a consummate grace, and you never hear their creak, or find them treading upon any lady's train or any rival's heels in the Court crowd. When that grows too hot or too agitated for him, he politely leaves it. He retires to his retreat of Shene or Moor Park; and lets the ...
— Henry Esmond; The English Humourists; The Four Georges • William Makepeace Thackeray
... broom-colored hair or stroking his large, long chin, while his shirt-tab moved ceaselessly in time to his breathing, he read a Norwegian paper. Carl's mother darned woolen socks and thought about milk-pans and the neighbors and breakfast. The creak of rockers filled the unventilated, oilcloth-floored sitting-room. The sound was as unchanging as the sacred positions of the crayon enlargement of Mrs. Ericson's father, the green-glass top-hat for matches, or the violent ingrain rug with ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a current of cool air rushed in and over her before ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... over my head, and stood craning over the starboard bulwarks and watching the ripples spreading wide before the bows. I might have fallen without a struggle for my life, had not a sudden disquietude seized upon me and made me turn my head. Perhaps I had heard a creak or seen his shadow moving with the tail of my eye; perhaps it was an instinct like a cat's; but, sure enough, when I looked round, there was Hands, already halfway toward me, with the dirk in ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Juan had got out on Shooters' Hill Sunset the time, the place the same declivity Which looks along that vale of good and ill Where London streets ferment in full activity; While everything around was calm and still Except the creak of wheels which on their pivot he Heard—and that bee-like, babbling, busy hum Of cities, that boil ...
— England of My Heart—Spring • Edward Hutton
... Captain Stephens let his left eyelid droop slowly, while a boyish grin spread widely over his face. Simultaneously, orders rang sharp and fast from the bridge, the crew broke into feverish life, the creak of booms and the clank ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... the scenes. Our arms a Baylen Have been smirched badly. Twenty thousand shamed All through Dupont's ill-luck! The selfsame day My brother Joseph's progress to Madrid Was glorious as a sodden rocket's fizz! Since when his letters creak with querulousness. "Napoleon el chico" 'tis they call him— "Napoleon the Little," so he says. Then notice Austria. Much looks louring there, And her sly new regard for England grows. The English, next, have ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... the clover field, And crops its juicy blossoms. All the while A ceaseless murmur from the populous town Swells o'er these solitudes: a mingled sound Of jarring wheels, and iron hoofs that clash Upon the stony ways, and hammer-clang, And creak of engines lifting ponderous bulks, And calls and cries, and tread of eager feet, Innumerable, hurrying to and fro. Noon, in that mighty mart of nations, brings No pause to toil and care. With early day Began the tumult, and shall only cease When midnight, hushing one ...
— Poems • William Cullen Bryant
... with his legs stretched out. In the peaceful gloom of the verandah, with its lowered screens, they heard faint noises from the world outside in the blazing sunshine: a hail on the river, the answer from the shore, the creak of a pulley; sounds short, interrupted, as if lost suddenly in the brilliance of noonday. Lingard got up slowly, walked to the front rail, and holding one of the screens aside, looked out in silence. ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... shriek! Make the branches creak! Battle with the boughs till break of day! In a snow cave warm and tight Through the icy winter night The rabbit sleeps the peaceful ...
— The Child's World - Third Reader • Hetty Browne, Sarah Withers, W.K. Tate
... mechanics. Neither had any use for the cards, curds and custards of what is called polite society. They hated hypocrisy, sham, pretense, and scorned the soft, the warm, the pleasant, the luxurious. They liked stormy weather, the sweep of the wind, the splash of the rain and the creak of cordage. They gloried in difficulties, reveled in the opposition of things, and smiled at the tug of inertia. In their natures was a granitic outcrop that defied failure. It was the Anglo-Saxon, with a goodly cross of the Norse, that gave them ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... the Doctor began, when all were seated on the visionary camp-stools—which, by the way, are far superior to those in use in a world of realities, because they do not creak in the midst of a fine point demanding absolute silence for appreciation—"I do not know why I have been chosen to preside over this gathering of phantoms; it is the province of the presiding officer on occasions of this sort to say pleasant things, which he ...
— A House-Boat on the Styx • John Kendrick Bangs
... of his works expressed his dissent from several of the rigid canons of that Church, and an example occurs in that graphic scene in the Antiquary, the funeral group of Steenie Mucklebacket, where "the creak of the screw nails announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates us for ever from the mortal relicks of the person we assemble to mourn has usually its effect upon the most ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... chimney-piece, and made a profound bow, with a sort of peculiar majesty. Then he paced twice, slowly and in silence, from the fireplace to the window and from the window to the fireplace, traversing the whole length of the room, and making the polished floor creak as though he had been a stone ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... neighbor, playing ball down the street, she forgot every thing but the desire to show her new shoes; and away she went marching primly along as vain as a little peacock, as she watched the bright buttons twinkle, and heard the charming creak. Kitty saw her coming; and, being an ill-natured little girl, took no notice, but called out to ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... was carefully closed and they soon heard the slight creak of the weighted wheel as Droop set off with the trunks for ...
— The Panchronicon • Harold Steele Mackaye
... laid on external things the blame of her mind's internal disorder, and thus became by degrees an accomplished scold. She often went her daily rounds through a series of deserted apartments, every creature in the house vanishing at the creak of her shoe, much more at the sound of her voice, to which the nature of things affords no simile; for, as far as the voice of woman, when attuned by gentleness and love, transcends all other sounds in harmony, so far does it surpass all others ...
— Nightmare Abbey • Thomas Love Peacock
... watch the gay gulls as they flutter Like snowflakes and fall down the sky, To swoop in the deeps of the hollows, Where the crow's-foot tosses awry; And gnats in the lee of the thickets Are swirling like waltzers in glee To the harsh, shrill creak of the crickets And the song of ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... into the house, I said to Mattia: "Now, I'll take this seat by the fire so that she'll find me here. When she opens the gate, you'll hear it creak; then ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... all heard what he had heard first—they heard the tonk-tonk-tonk of a cowbell, coming near and nearer toward them along the hallway without. It was as though the sound floated along. There was no creak of footsteps upon the loose, bare boards—and the bell jangled faster than it would dangling from a cow's neck. The sound came right to the door and Squire Gathers wallowed among ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... slipped by almost unnoticed. It was not until eleven o'clock that a halt was made. He could just discern in the darkness the dim outlines of what appeared to be a large farm-house, surrounded by barns and outhouses. Some transport had got jammed in the yard. He could hear the creak of wheels, the stamping of hoofs, and shouts. There was not a light anywhere, and they waited for half-an-hour that seemed interminable, for they were drenched through, and tired, and were longing for any cover out of the wet. Sounds of shuffling ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... slaves, And troops of sun-burn'd husbandmen with reaping-hooks and staves, And droves of mules and asses laden with skins of wine, And endless flocks of goats and sheep, and endless herds of kine, And endless trains of wagons that creak'd beneath the weight Of corn-sacks and of household goods, choked ...
— The Ontario Readers: The High School Reader, 1886 • Ministry of Education
... mud of the river bank. When the river is low there are three such basins, placed one above the other, as if they were stages by which the precious water mounts to the fields of corn and lucerne. And then three "shadufs," one above the other, creak together, lowering and raising their great scarabaeus' horns to the rhythm of ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... his head to study the compass in the lantern's ray. "Not wanted"—"not wanted"—the paddles took up the burden and beat it into a sort of tune to the creak of the thole-pins. As a young officer he had started with high notions of duty; nor, looking back on the wasted years could he tax himself that he had ever declined its call; only the call which in youth had always carried a promise with it, definitely clear ...
— Major Vigoureux • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... One struck, and two, and we had almost for the second time given it up in despair, when in an instant we both sat bolt upright in our chairs, with all our weary senses keenly on the alert once more. We had heard the creak of ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... they creak and groan with every heave of the long glassy swell. How those sails flap, and thunder, and rage, with useless outcries and struggles—only because they are idle. Let the wind take them, and they will be ...
— Prose Idylls • Charles Kingsley
... fallen asleep, the beds began to creak, and amid this creaking the empress fancied she heard words that no one ...
— Roumanian Fairy Tales • Various
... once, even as the coffin descended, supported by the cords, whose knots made it strain and creak, a tremendous uproar arose in the poultry-yard on the other side of the wall. The goat began to bleat. The ducks, the geese, and the turkeys raised their loudest calls and flapped their wings. The fowls all cackled at once. The yellow cock, Alexander, crowed ...
— Abbe Mouret's Transgression - La Faute De L'abbe Mouret • Emile Zola
... but in time. Peering over the balusters they saw two troopers pass out of the guardroom, and cross the hall to the door. A bolt was drawn and a chain rattled, then followed the creak of hinges, and on the stone flags rang the footsteps and the jingling of spurs of those ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... white hands, his broadcloth—there he was planted on his massive feet as on a pedestal! She did not see him; she was aware of him. And she was aware of the closed door behind them. One of the basket-chairs, though empty, continued to creak, like a thing alive. Faintly, very faintly, she could hear the piano—Mrs. Boutwood playing! Overhead were the footsteps of Sarah Gailey and Hettie—they were checking the linen from the laundry, as usual on Saturday afternoon. And she was aware of herself, thin, throbbing, ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... my grasp, slammed the lattice and went yelling around the corner of the house like a jocular demon. I began to dress, thinking, as I had often thought before, that the place had a kind of fantastic kinship with the sea; every timber in it seemed to strain and creak to the repeated onsets of the storm, like those of any ship. The house stood steady enough, yet our position, open to all the winds of heaven, and within a few hundred paces of the furious water, was ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol 31, No 2, June 1908 • Various
... with long years of speaking against the wash of the waves, and the thunder of wind in sail and rigging, and the roll and creak of oars; and as he said this, every one turned towards him, for a silence had fallen on the crowd of folk who watched Neot the king's cousin ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... opposite, three cormorants—glossy black against the yellow—postured in extravagant angular attitudes drying their wings. Above the rim of the silver-blue sea—patched with purple stains in the middle distance—webs of steamer smoke lay along the southern sky. Occasionally a sound of voices, the creak of a wooden windlass and grind of a boat's keel upon the pebbles as it was wound slowly up the foreshore, came from the direction of the ferry and of Faircloth's Inn. The effect was languorous, would have been enervating to the point of mental, ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... dreamed aright, 'Twas a loud one and a long, as ever thundered through! Right stiffly, past a doubt, the Dragon fought it out, And his Angels, each and all, did for Tophet their devoir— There was creak of iron wings, and whirl of scorpion stings, Hiss of bifid tongues, and the Pit in full uproar! But, naught thereof enscrolled, in one brief line 'tis told (Calm as dew the Apocalyptic Pen), That on the Infinite Shore ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... noises that can make a night seem so long. The distant click of the elevator, depositing a night-hawk. A plong of the bed spring. Somebody's cough. A train's shriek. The jerk of plumbing. A window being raised. That creak which lies hidden in every darkness, like a mysterious knee-joint. By three o'clock she was a quivering victim to these petty concepts, and her pillow so explored that not a spot but what was rumpled to the aching ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his ear and his lip. Shaw's face was bleeding, too, and soon one of the Italians had joined the meek young secretary in his slumbers on the floor. Then Laurie felt his head agonizingly twisted backward, heard the creak of a rusty bolt, and, in the next instant, was hurled headlong through the suddenly opened door, to ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... very loud, in fits and starts. Then it came to her turn to take her candle and go up stairs; she was a good half-hour later than Moggy—all was quiet within the house—only the sound of the storm—the creak and rattle of its strain, and the hurly-burly of the gusts over ...
— The House by the Church-Yard • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... away toward the castle, which lay about a quarter of a mile from the village. Approaching to within fifty yards of the gate, he sat down to watch. About eleven o'clock he heard the creak of the gate, and presently was startled by seeing two horsemen ride past him. "They must have muffled their horses' feet," he said to himself. "They are up to no good. I wish there had only been one ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... clock struck twelve, he cautiously rose from the bed, and pulled off his boots, which a proper respect for his host or the bed had not prompted him to do before. The house was old, and the floors had a tendency to creak beneath his tread. With the utmost care, he crawled on his hands and knees to one of the doors of the lumber hole, which he succeeded in ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... of the loft a glimmer of light through a crack seemed to indicate a door. Cautiously Alex rose to his knees, and began creeping forward to investigate. When half way a loud creak of the boards brought him to a halt with his heart in his mouth. But the loud conversation below continued, and heartily thanking the drumming rain on the roof overhead, Alex moved on, ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... vessel for some moments. She saw it swing around a long, narrow point of land a short distance to the south of the camp and boldly enter a bay. She was unable to make out with any distinctness what was being done there, but she heard the creak of the boom as it swung over and the rattle of the tackle as the sails came down, though unable to interpret these sounds. Soon there came a sharp whistle from human lips, answered by a similar whistle from the shore, then ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... from his horse (almost as though "by numbers") the General, followed by his smart and dapper Brigade-Major and the perspiring Colonel Dearman, strode with clank of steel and creak of leather, through the Headquarters building and emerged upon the parade-ground where steadfast stood seven companies of the Gungapur Fusilier Volunteers in quarter column—more or less ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... of dust Or whirling leaves meant ruinous drouth; They looked to me like Red-Head Sammy Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor." How could I till my forty acres Not to speak of getting more, With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos Stirred in my brain by crows and robins And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle— And a broken laugh, and a thousand ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... and I am in the body that I have always had. But ye, who are ye, in whom such woe distills, as I see, down your cheeks? and what punishment is on you that so sparkles?" And one of them replied to me, "The orange hoods are of lead so thick that the weights thus make their scales to creak. Jovial Friars[2] were we, and Bolognese; I Catalano, and he Loderingo named, and together taken by thy city, as one man alone is wont to be taken, in order to preserve its peace; and we were such as still is apparent round about the Gardingo." I began, "O Friars, your evil"—but ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... to see it, and the humility to adopt it? What can be more manifest than the desire of children for intellectual sympathy? Mark how the infant sitting on your knee thrusts into your face the toy it holds, that you too may look at it. See when it makes a creak with its wet finger on the table, how it turns and looks at you; does it again, and again looks at you; thus saying as clearly as it can—"Hear this new sound." Watch the elder children coming into the room exclaiming—"Mamma, see ...
— Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library • Herbert Spencer
... his window. His sleepy eyes seemed to make out a face just disappearing from sight outside. He dismissed his suspicions as the manufactures of sleep, and was about to fall back again on the comfortable divan when he heard footsteps outside, and the creak of his door-knob. He rose quickly ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... ice beneath the keel. Presently the 'Endurance' listed heavily to port against the gale, and at the same time was forced ahead, astern, and sideways several times by the grinding floes. She received one or two hard nips, but resisted them without as much as a creak. It looked at one stage as if the ship was to be made the plaything of successive floes, and I was relieved when she came to a standstill with a large piece of our old "dock" under the starboard bilge. I had the boats cleared away ready for lowering, got up some additional stores, and set ...
— South! • Sir Ernest Shackleton
... have slept for three hours, and King and the coachman for two, when the unguided carriage gave a violent jolt, a loud creak, a revolving motion, and fell, wheels uppermost, on the road-side. King awoke in an instant, but too late to resist being plunged to the top of a high, irritable bramble hedge that showed him no mercy, while R—— and P—— found themselves, in a state of perfect sensibility, on ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... in his stateroom and went back. For the moment I was alone with his wife by the rail, watching the stars beginning to prick through the darkening sky. The Sylph was running smoothly, with the wind almost aft; the scud of water past her bows and the occasional creak of a block aloft were the only sounds audible in the silence that lay like a benediction ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1920 • Various
... was much flattered by Mr. Bartlett's politeness to a total stranger, but, summoning all my courage, replied that I was not in the least afraid. Thereupon they all took their leave; I heard the door creak, the bolt was drawn, and the ladder removed, and I was left to my meditations ...
— A Visit to the Holy Land • Ida Pfeiffer
... each stile along the glistening lanes; His hand will be upon the mud-soaked reins; Hearing the saddle creak, He'll wonder if the frost will come next week. I shall forget him in the morning light; And while we gallop on he will not speak: But at the stable-door he'll ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... louder than a whisper from without—the creak of a board. Andrew Lanning slipped to the door and turned the key in the lock. When he rejoined her in the middle of the room he gave her ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... hear the benches creak and strain! (A long pull for Stavanger!) She thinks she smells the Northland rain! (A long ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... being thus against the current, a higher and more confused sea than ever was heaped up, giving us some uneasiness. We had, indeed, several unwelcome visitors come tumbling aboard of our craft, one of which furiously crashing down on her made all of her timbers bend and creak. However, I could partially remedy this danger by ...
— Voyage of the Liberdade • Captain Joshua Slocum
... agricultural enterprises. Occasionally, also, he went out to sea with the sailors of Yport. On several occasions he went fishing for mackerel and, again, by moonlight, he would haul in the nets laid the night before. He loved to hear the masts creak, to breathe in the fresh and whistling gusts of wind that arose during the night; and after having tacked a long time to find the buoys, guiding himself by a peak of rocks, the roof of a belfry or the Fecamp ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... ceased; the wild howls sank into a continuous weak pitiful wailing. The creak of pullies and cordage, the shouts of men plying levers, and hauling ropes, succeeded, and slowly sullenly uprose, hardly seen in the black night air, a huge black cross. It reached its elevation, and was ...
— The Roman Traitor (Vol. 2 of 2) • Henry William Herbert
... Third, bouncing madams, and a pack of sneaking curs on both sides of them, for no man, but for downright fear of them, would ever go nigh them. Fourth, scolds, become a hundred times more horrible than vipers, with their poisonous stings going creak, creak ...
— The Sleeping Bard - or, Visions of the World, Death, and Hell • Ellis Wynne
... almost unbroken silence, studying his hostess so perpetually that Anne's nerves began to creak at last ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... better than prepare the shrouds and write the epitaphs of those other busy living men? The practical faith of all men belies the preacher's consolation. What is any man's discourse to me, if I am not sensible of something in it as steady and cheery as the creak of crickets? In it the woods must be relieved against the sky. Men tire me when I am not constantly greeted and refreshed as by the flux of sparkling streams. Surely joy is the condition of life. Think of the young fry that leap in ponds, the myriads of insects ushered into being ...
— Excursions • Henry D. Thoreau
... easy chairs, with such high backs, and so carved out, and with arms on both sides. "Sit down! sit down!" said they. "Ugh! how I creak; now I shall certainly get the gout, like the ...
— A Christmas Greeting • Hans Christian Andersen
... were carefully arranged, and they were off,—off in the beautiful Harmer,—off to the country,—to the mountains and canyons,—to climb one of the sunny slopes that had beckoned to them so enticingly. Almost they held their breath at first, afraid the first creak of the car would waken them from the ...
— Sunny Slopes • Ethel Hueston
... o'er that rock there hangs a tree, And chains do creak thereon; And in those chains his memory hangs, Though all ...
— Life and Remains of John Clare - "The Northamptonshire Peasant Poet" • J. L. Cherry
... deadly, for suddenly he saw Johnson wilt in the saddle, drop his revolver, drop the reins, and clutch at his left arm. Also he heard a cry—heard it sharp and clear above the pounding of the gray's hoofs and the creak and crunch ...
— Bred of the Desert - A Horse and a Romance • Marcus Horton
... emblem of the Indian administration. The wheels creak and groan, the bullock goes on round and round with a bandage over its eyes, and the little boy on its back cuts a fine important figure and looks as if he were doing ever so much, and somehow the water comes up—that's the great thing, the water is fetched up somehow and the land watered. ...
— The Broken Road • A. E. W. Mason
... them the pile of baggage and the overturned boat; while the dark stream flowed by with a murmuring sound. Beyond, though we were sheltered from the wind, I could see the lofty summits of the trees waving in the gale, which howled amid their branches, making them rattle and creak; while from the depths of the forest came strange unearthly cries. At first they seemed almost supernatural, and a feeling of awe, somewhat allied to alarm, crept over me; till I recollected that they were probably produced by howling monkeys ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... arm I pressed it home. A creak sounded; there was a rusty wheeze, and a portion of the wall seemed to shake and move ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... the sides of the stair-treads to avoid making them creak. The stairway turned on itself in the middle, and at the top he was facing the front of the house again. Here he had to flash his light for a second. Immediately before him a pair of doors gave on the big room. They stood ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... either you or Johnnie ... it isn't that I'm thinking of at all ... but everything has been so uncanny here to-night ... I could not sleep ... every little rustle of curtains, every creak or motion in the whole house vibrated through me ... something's ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... man was on the after deck, steering, and he was fully armed. Save that his brown arm swayed a little, resting on the carven tiller, as the waves lifted the steering oar with a creak now and then, he was motionless, looking steadily ahead under the arch of the foot of the sail. The run of the deck set me higher than him, and I could not see more than the feet of some men who were clustered on the fore ...
— A King's Comrade - A Story of Old Hereford • Charles Whistler
... I was as alone and powerless as a lost canoe in the ocean; but somewhere on earth or in air I heard a company of men pass me by. The sounds were unmistakable. I heard the swish of wet leaves, the pad of feet, and even the creak of the damp leather of the carrying-straps. Something cracked, pricking in my ears in a blur of sound, and I knew that the men had brushed a branch with the canoe that they were carrying on their heads. They were near me; at any ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... white, ghost-like form, in a fluttering dress, on the skirts of the forest? The wheels creak, and rattle along the stony road—no sounds can be distinguished in ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 3, No. 1, April, 1851 • Various
... and though she sat with her book in her lap by the fire in Mary's room, all the dear old furniture and pictures round her, her head was weaving an unheard-of imagination, about robbers coming in rifling everything—coming up the stairs—creak, creak, was that their step?—she held her breath, and her eyes dilated—seizing her for the sake of her watch! What article there would be in the paper—"Melancholy disappearance of the youthful Countess ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... but before he could reply, they chattered with fear. We heard a loud scream overhead. "What was that?" cried he. I confess that I was as much alarmed as Tom. The scream was repeated, and it had an unearthly sound. It was no human voice—it was between a scream and a creak. Again it was repeated, and carried along with the gale. I mustered up courage sufficient to look up to where the sound proceeded from; but the darkness was so intense, and the snow blinded me so completely, that I could see nothing. Again and again did the ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat
... seems well advanced toward its fall, and laden with the fruit and foliage of the season, with bright autumnal tints, but soon the winter will scatter its myriad clustering and shading leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak in the blasts of ages. We cannot escape the impression that the Muse has stooped a little in her flight, when we come to the literature of civilized eras. Now first we hear of various ages and styles of poetry; it is pastoral, and lyric, and narrative, and didactic; but the ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... or safer than this here 'Sary Ann' along the shore," said the boat's master, grimly. "I sot every timber in her myself. She ain't got a crack or a creak in her. I keeled her and calked her, and I'll lay her agin any of them painted and gilded play-toys to weather the toughest gale on this here coast. You're as safe in the 'Sary Ann,' Padre, as if you were in church saying ...
— Killykinick • Mary T. Waggaman
... The treaders—big, perspiring men, in shirts and tucked-up trousers—spattered to the eyes with splatches of purple juice, lean upon their wooden spades, and wipe their foreheads. But their respite is short. The creak of another cart-load of tubs is heard, and immediately the wagon is backed up to the broad open window, or rather hole in the wall, above the trough. A minute suffices to wrench out tub after tub, and to tilt their already ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 434 - Volume 17, New Series, April 24, 1852 • Various
... braced his feet and kept the door tightly closed on the bear's neck. But the creature's struggles made the portal groan and creak as if it would be shoved off ...
— The Ocean Wireless Boys And The Naval Code • John Henry Goldfrap, AKA Captain Wilbur Lawton
... two shut off the upper part of the bed from Menard's view. The Lieutenant stood behind the Captain, looking over his shoulder; both were motionless. There was no sound save a low word at intervals between the two surgeons, and the creak of a bore-worm that sounded distinctly from a ...
— The Road to Frontenac • Samuel Merwin
... a dingy old warehouse, with narrow, dark, cobwebbed windows, and wide, rusty iron shutters, which, as the bleak October wind swept up old Long Wharf, swung slowly on their hinges with a sharp, grating creak. I heard them in my boyhood. Perched on a tall stool at that old desk, I used to listen, in the long winter nights, to those strange, wild cries, till I fancied they were voices of the uneasy dead, come back to take the vacant seats beside me, and to pace again, with ghostly ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol 3 No 3, March 1863 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to the turning. There was something of spring in the sunshine, or else it was in my heart; and the appearing of the great sails one after another from behind the hill diverted me extremely. At times I could hear a creak of the machinery; and by half-past eight of the day Catriona began to sing in the house. At this I would have cast my hat in the air; and I thought this dreary, desert ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 11 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... gear all ready beside me, I sat on the matted floor of the hut in which I lived, smoking my pipe and listening to the fury of the squalls as the force of the wind bent and swayed the thatched roof, and made the cinnet-tied rafters and girders creak and work to and fro under the strain. Suddenly the wicker-work door on the lee side was opened, and Nalik jumped in, dripping with rain, ...
— "Martin Of Nitendi"; and The River Of Dreams - 1901 • Louis Becke
... Hugh, and he brought his chair so suddenly and heavily back to its four-legged condition that the frail thing responded with an ominous creak. "What ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... as decrepit as himself, but not nearly so cheerful; for though he spoke up briskly with a spirit uttered from far within the wrinkles and the stubble, the cart had preceded him with a very lugubrious creak. It groaned, in fact, under a load of tin cans, and I was to learn from the old man that there was, and had been, in his person, for thirteen years, such a thing in the world as a peddler of buttermilk, and that these cans were now filled with that pleasant drink. They did not invite me ...
— Suburban Sketches • W.D. Howells
... his addled wits to invent some plausible way to elude this Amazon) he was at once startled and still further dismayed to hear the bed-springs creak, a light double thump as two bare feet found the floor, and again the woman's voice flavoured with ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... figures and Joe's quick footsteps merging with the night. Still she did not turn to go; did not alter her position, nor cease to gaze down the dim street. Few lights shone; almost all the windows of the houses were darkened, and, save for the summer murmurs, the faint creak of upper branches, and the infinitesimal voices of insects in the grass, there was silence: the pleasant and somnolent hush, swathed in which that part of Canaan crosses to the far side of ...
— The Conquest of Canaan • Booth Tarkington
... as he mounted the servants' staircase, that he was divided but by thin walls from the object of all these strivings and diplomacies—that for the second time in his life he was under her home roof with Annette. It was a firm, old house. Their footsteps made not the slightest creak on the thick-carpeted stairs. At the door of her room, Rosalie stopped and put her ...
— The House of Mystery • William Henry Irwin
... their lines were finely moulded under water and with a favoring wind they could log a fair distance in a day's run. It goes without saying that this tall brig was shoved along for all she was worth before a humming breeze that made her creak, and during the night she was reckoned to be a few miles to seaward of the sandy islands which extended like a barrier outside of Cherokee Inlet. Jack Cockrell stood a watch of his own, dead weary but with no thought of sleep until he could hear ...
— Blackbeard: Buccaneer • Ralph D. Paine
... expected to feel lonesome right at home entertainin' guests! but I was gettin' acquainted with the sensation. There's no musical doings, no happy groups and gay laughter about the house; nothing but now and then a whisper from dark corners, or the creak of ...
— Odd Numbers - Being Further Chronicles of Shorty McCabe • Sewell Ford
... Sometimes she'd sit down to tickle her neck with her hind-feet. Then she'd give a big jump, casual-like, to one side of the path, and sit down again, with her ears twitching and turning as if she thought there was mischief in every flutter of a leaf or creak ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... hens, the ducks, and all the animals in the next yard are creatures too. Now I have a great opinion of the yard cock on the plank; he is certainly of much more importance than the weather-cock who is placed so high and can't even creak, much less crow. The latter has neither hens nor chicks, and only thinks of himself and perspires verdigris. No, the yard cock is really a cock! His step is a dance! His crowing is music, and wherever he goes one knows what a trumpeter is like! If he would ...
— Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen • Hans Christian Andersen
... don't mean to say you are going to make a lady of her!" gasped Annabel, upsetting her treasures as she fell back with a gesture that made the little chair creak again, for Miss Bliss was as ...
— Rose in Bloom - A Sequel to "Eight Cousins" • Louisa May Alcott
... and prosperous, but not in the least romantic house it was. A house with no rambling wings giving opportunities for winding passageways and odd nooks and corners; no unexpected closets where skeletons might be in hiding, or dusky stairways to creak in the dead of night, or upon which, even by day, one was almost certain he caught a glimpse of a shadowy figure flying before him as he groped his way up or down them. A house with no mysteries—just the house in which one might have expected to find Elmira Royster who, as the ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... The great gulf storm had not yet reached its climax, and none could tell what pitch of fury that might mean. The dull jar of the boat as she time and again was flung down by the waves, the shiver and creak and groan of the sturdy craft, told us that the end might come at any instant, though now the anchor held firm and our crawl on to the shoal had ceased. All around us was water only four or five feet deep, but water whose waves were twice as high. ...
— The Lady and the Pirate - Being the Plain Tale of a Diligent Pirate and a Fair Captive • Emerson Hough
... no tales ever reached the outside world of who did die down in the echoing brick cellars; there was a path that led underground to the alligator tank and a trap-door that opened just above the water edge. Night, and the fungus-fouled long jaws, and slimy, weed-filled water—the creak of rusty hinges—a splash—the bang of a falling trap—a swirl in the moonlit water, and ring after heavy, widening ring that lapped at last against the stone would write conclusion to a tragedy. There would be ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... warning, there was a heavy grating creak; a door was thrown open; and what to his eyes seemed to be a dazzling light shone into the place, revealing a narrow passage not ten feet from where he lay, but which he had passed over in the ...
— In the King's Name - The Cruise of the "Kestrel" • George Manville Fenn
... in the lock, when the bolt sprang back, the door flew wide, and Christian and Hopeful both came out. When they got to the yard door the key did just as well; but the lock of the last strong gate of Doubting Castle went hard, yet it did turn at last, though the hinge gave so loud a creak that it woke up Giant Despair, who rose to seek for the two men. But just then he felt his limbs fail, for a fit came on him, so that he could by no means reach their cell. Christian and Hopeful now fled back to the high way, and were safe out of his grounds. When they sat ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress in Words of One Syllable • Mary Godolphin
... beneath that gray sky. There is some mystery in all this. It seems more beautiful than a merely mortal earth vexed by sinful men has any right to be. There is some ice palace in Hans Andersen which is something like it. In a little grove, the boughs, bent down with their shining glaziery, creak softly as they sway in the moving air. The evergreens are clotted with lumps and bags of transparent icing, their fronds sag to the ground. A pale twinkling blueness sifts over distant vistas. The sky whitens in the south and points of light ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... ascend those creaking stairs again. His already heavily encumbered pockets could not be persuaded to receive more than a small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and prepared to redescend the perilous stairs. He walked as lightly as possible, dreading that every creak would bring Mrs. Wilson from her parlour. A few more steps, and he would be in the passage. A smell of dust, sounds of children crying, children talking in the kitchen! A few more steps, and, with his eyes on the parlour door, Hubert had reached the rug at the foot of the stairs. He hastened ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... offered up a prayer. But although a Presbyterian in practice, Sir Walter in several parts of his works expressed his dissent from several of the rigid canons of that Church, and an example occurs in that graphic scene in the Antiquary, the funeral group of Steenie Mucklebacket, where "the creak of the screw nails announced that the lid of the last mansion of mortality was in the act of being secured above its tenant. The last act which separates us for ever from the mortal relicks of the person we assemble to mourn has usually its effect upon the most indifferent, selfish, and hard-hearted:" ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 571 - Volume 20, No. 571—Supplementary Number • Various
... beggars. They bowed and courtesied in an unconcerned, wooden way, as if they were moved by some ingenious piece of Swiss clock-work. The stiff old curee, too, had an air of having been wound up and set a-going. I could almost hear the creak of his mainspring. I was smiling at that, perhaps, and thinking how strongly the scenery of some portions of our own country resembles ...
— The Queen of Sheba & My Cousin the Colonel • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... temple is built wholly of wood and the roof is thatched. Whenever there was an earthquake the timbers seemed to crackle rather than creak. The temple is relatively new and seems to have been built with materials given by the villagers and by means of a gift of 1,000 yen. The workmanship was local and a good deal of it was faulty. This may have been due to lack of experience, but it ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... in, barely overlapping one another, the vanes at the mastheads wake, and become agitated. As the tide rises, the fishing-boats get into good spirits and dance, the flagstaff hoists a bright red flag, the steamboat smokes, cranes creak, horses and carriages dangle in the air, stray passengers and luggage appear. Now, the shipping is afloat, and comes up buoyantly, to look at the wharf. Now, the carts that have come down for coals, load away as hard ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... supper, an' didn't see us when we clumb aboard the Lass. When it was pitch-black we cast off the lines, an' she drifted out on the ebb tide, which just there runs easy a knot an' a half. Then we got up our headsails so as to get steerage-way on her, and bless my soul if the blocks made a creak! Might have been pullin' silk thread through a fur mitten, for all ...
— The Harbor of Doubt • Frank Williams
... lightly as he went, for in spite of his bulk Mhtoon Pah had an almost soundless walk. Having gone over everything and stood to count the silver bowls, he waited as though he was listening, and after a little the light creak of the staircase warned him that steps were coming towards the ...
— The Pointing Man - A Burmese Mystery • Marjorie Douie
... daughter's utmost efforts to prevent him, and she sat in silent consternation, listening to his heavy tread overhead. She heard the bed creak in noisy protest as he climbed in, and ten minutes later the lusty snoring of a healthy man of full habit resounded ...
— Sailor's Knots (Entire Collection) • W.W. Jacobs
... of ten minutes, however, the wind carried with it the creak of rowlocks. A moment later a light, flat duck-boat shot around the bend and drew ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
... written. As it was, I experienced only the terror of the thief dodging the constable: my cleverness might save me; it afforded me no further satisfaction. My humour, when I heard the people laughing at it, I remembered I had forged listening in vague fear to every creak upon the stairs, wondering in what form discovery might come upon me. There was one speech, addressed by the hero to the villain: "Yes, I admit it; I do love her. But there is that which I love better—my self-respect!" Stepping down to the footlights ...
— Paul Kelver • Jerome Klapka, AKA Jerome K. Jerome
... gladness o' the moment, an' then his eyes would sadden as he thought of all the good eatin' he had missed by not knowin' the proper kind o' diplomacy to use in handlin' a cook. An' me!—say, I mowed away until my skin begun to creak under the strain an' I couldn't roll my eyes more'n two degrees. Then I got up an' I shook hands ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... near the entrance, in his shirt and trousers; with a candle dripping over his fingers, and his face as white as the wall behind him. The first creak of the oak startled him like an electric shock: the light leaped from his hold to a distance of some feet, and his agitation was so extreme, that he could hardly pick ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... ignorant, admiration of my technical knowledge of nautical affairs and phrases.) I looked aloft and saw the sails taut with a stiff breeze, and. I heard a faint whistling of the wind in the rigging, but very faint, and rather, it seemed to me, as if it came from the creak of cordage in the ships of Crusaders; or of quaint old craft upon the Spanish main, echoing through remote years—so far away ...
— Prue and I • George William Curtis
... thickens night. Hark! Through the woods the tempests roar! The owlets flit in wild affright. Hark! Splinter'd are the columns that upbore The leafy palace, green for aye: The shivered branches whirr and sigh, Yawn the huge trunks with mighty groan, The roots, upriven, creak and moan! In fearful and entangled fall, One crashing ruin whelms them all, While through the desolate abyss, Sweeping the wreck-strewn precipice, The raging storm-blasts howl and hiss! Aloft strange voices dost thou hear? Distant now and now more near? ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke
... this vaulted passage, her firm, quick step falters. As she approaches the door, she is visibly agitated. Her hand trembles as she places it on the heavy outside lock. The lock yields; the door opens with a creak. She draws aside a heavy curtain, then ...
— The Italians • Frances Elliot
... iron gate, which opened with a creak, and I shut it after him. I felt somewhat uneasy as I followed B., who crossed the garden with a rapid stride. I felt uneasy at the thought of his essentially military eloquence, and of the use to which he proposed ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... night fell, moved away toward the castle, which lay about a quarter of a mile from the village. Approaching to within fifty yards of the gate, he sat down to watch. About eleven o'clock he heard the creak of the gate, and presently was startled by seeing two horsemen ride past him. "They must have muffled their horses' feet," he said to himself. "They are up to no good. I wish there had only been one of them." Mike slipped off his shoes and started in pursuit, keeping just far enough ...
— Friends, though divided - A Tale of the Civil War • G. A. Henty
... shores all was black as Egypt; but out in the middle the outlines of the pond could be followed vaguely by the heavy cloud of woods against the lighter sky. The stillness was intense; every slightest sound,—the creak of a bough or the ripple of a passing musquash, the plunk of a water drop into the lake or the snap of a rotten twig, broken by the weight of clinging mist,—came to the strained ear with startling suddenness. Then, ...
— Secret of the Woods • William J. Long
... Lavretsky rambled a long time over the dewy grass. He came across a little narrow path; and went along it. It led him up to a long fence, and to a little gate; he tried, not knowing why, to push it open. With a faint creak the gate opened, as though it had been waiting the touch of his hand. Lavretsky went into the garden. After a few paces along a walk of lime-trees he stopped short in amazement; ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... they left the cabin. Then, as he strained at his bonds, he heard their footsteps pass up the companion and along the quarter-deck to where the dinghy hung in the stern. Then, still struggling and writhing, he heard the creak of the falls and the splash of the boat in the water. In a mad fury he tore and dragged at his ropes, until at last, with flayed wrists and ankles, he rolled from the table, sprang over the dead mate, kicked his way through the closed door, and rushed hatless ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... through the big windows of the gallery upstairs. She looked at the sleeping roses, the velvet lawns, the tall trees; and her eyes were very peaceful. The golden moonlight transfigured the scene; from the dreaming river came the creak of oars moving gently in their rowlocks; and the nightingale's song was dying softly, tenderly, ...
— The Making of a Soul • Kathlyn Rhodes
... New-comers fell in behind so that some rough semblance of rotation was maintained. The bobs' crews settled themselves with the deftness of long practice. Then bending to his task the pusher at the rear dug his toes in, while the others hunched. With a creak the runners gave way their hold on the frozen snow; the bobs began slowly to move. As momentum and the downward curve of the hill exerted their influence, the pusher found his task easier and easier. His then the nice decision as to just how long to continue ...
— The Adventures of Bobby Orde • Stewart Edward White
... hair, smiling. He jumped as high as ever he could, twined his legs behind her back, and hugged. He heard her gasp, and felt her hugging back. His eyes, very dark blue just then, looked into hers, very dark brown, till her lips closed on his eyebrow, and, squeezing with all his might, he heard her creak and laugh, and say: ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... looked to me like Red-Head Sammy Stepping it off, to "Toor-a-Loor." How could I till my forty acres Not to speak of getting more, With a medley of horns, bassoons and piccolos Stirred in my brain by crows and robins And the creak of a wind-mill—only these? And I never started to plow in my life That some one did not stop in the road And take me away to a dance or picnic. I ended up with forty acres; I ended up with a broken fiddle— And a broken laugh, and a thousand memories, ...
— Spoon River Anthology • Edgar Lee Masters
... doors and passed into the inner room, accompanied by Jessie. Julian waited for her. He found himself listening to her movements in the other room, to the creak of wood, as she pulled out drawers, to the rustle of a dress lifted from a hook, the ripple of water poured from a jug into a basin. He heard the whole tragedy of preparation, as this girl armed herself for the piteous battle of ...
— Flames • Robert Smythe Hichens
... "For," said he, "the creak of these rusty bars would have been heard had the door been made patent; and if you passed through the keyhole, truly, sir, put what face you will on it, you are not fit to be enrolled in ...
— A Legend of Montrose • Sir Walter Scott
... if they do? No threat shall creak our hinges wide, no torch Shall light a fear in us; we will come ...
— Lysistrata • Aristophanes
... tree; I have sat in its boughs and looked seaward for hours. I remember the creak of its branches, the scent of the flowers That climbed round the mouth of the cave. It is odd I recall Those little things best, that I scarcely took ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... stood listening and alert, as a creature of the wild startled from its lair. Not a sound disturbed the house. Everything was wrapped in silence. Quietly he moved out of his room, and crept softly down the stairs, fearful lest at every creak Nellie should be aroused. Reaching the kitchen he put on his shoes, which he had left by the stove. Next he went into the pantry, found some cold meat, bread, cheese and biscuits. A paper bag lying near was soon ...
— The Fourth Watch • H. A. Cody
... and the bulls are behind. Rama the king of the buffaloes stamped with his foot. Waters of the Waingunga whither went Shere Khan? He is not Sahi to dig holes, nor Mor, the Peacock, that he should fly. He is not Mang, the Bat, to hang in the branches. Little bamboos that creak together tell me where he ran? Ow! he is there. Ahoo! he is there. Under the feet of Rama lies the Lame One! Up, Shere Khan! Up and kill! Here is meat; break the necks of the bulls. Hsh! he is asleep. We will not wake him, for his strength is very ...
— The Kipling Reader - Selections from the Books of Rudyard Kipling • Rudyard Kipling
... did come—when the wind swept over the fir-trees, and made the branches which hung over the caravan creak and sway to and fro—Rosalie trembled with fear. Poor child! the want of sleep the last few nights was telling on her, and had made her nervous and sensitive. At last she found the matches and lighted a candle, that she might ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... and took a seat. A heavy step made the narrow stairs creak, and Adeline could not restrain a piercing cry when she saw her husband, Baron Hulot, in a gray knitted jersey, old gray flannel trousers, ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... feet of drawing paper. From these sheets was painted a panorama of London and the environs, first exhibited at the Colosseum, in Regent's Park, in 1829. The view from St. Paul's extends for twenty miles round. On the south the horizon is bounded by Leith Hill. In high winds the scaffold used to creak and whistle like a ship labouring in a storm, and once the observatory was torn from its lashings and turned partly over on the edge of the platform. The sight and sounds of awaking London are said to have much impressed ...
— Old and New London - Volume I • Walter Thornbury
... died away, till the sea became smooth as glass, and rose and fell in gentle undulations, which made the vessel roll from side to side, and caused every timber and bulkhead to groan and creak. ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... ceased to creak under the departing feet did Grandma again open her lips. She had seemed to be thinking intently, as if making up her mind how to begin. Perhaps she was praying for guidance, Barrie told herself; but the morning and evening prayers in the dining-room with a few servants assembled were ...
— The Heather-Moon • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... as they liked, but I could not get it out of my head that I had heard steps below. Cautiously, with a thumping heart, I stole from stair to stair, pausing at the bottom of the flight. I heard plainly the sound of moving above me, and of voices; but below not a whisper, not a creak. It must have been my silly fears. Resolved to choke them, I planted my feet boldly on the next flight, and descended humming, to prove my ease, the rollicky tune of Peyrot's catch. Suddenly, from not three feet off, ...
— Helmet of Navarre • Bertha Runkle
... hinges of the gigantic portals gave an ominous creak, and, amid the huzzas of men and the shrieks of women, ...
— The Infernal Marriage • Benjamin Disraeli
... along in the furrow beside the plow, pricking the flanks of the oxen with a long, light goad but slightly sharpened. The spirited animals quivered under the child's light touch, making their yokes and head-bands creak, and shaking the pole violently. Whenever a root stopped the advance of the plowshare, the laborer would call every animal by name in his powerful voice, trying to calm rather than to excite them; for the oxen, irritated by the sudden resistance, bounded, pawed the ground with their ...
— The Devil's Pool • George Sand
... market-cart or the Sunday chaise, are hitched up to bear out the merry loads. Old waggons, whose wheels have known no other decoration than the mud and clay of rutty roads, are festooned gaily with cedar wreaths, oak leaves, or the gaudy tissue-paper rosettes, and creak joyfully on their mission of lightness and mirth. On foot, by horse, in waggon or cart, the crowds seek some neighbouring grove, and there the day is given over to laughter, mirth, and song. The children roll and tumble on the sward in the intoxication ...
— The Uncalled - A Novel • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the boats draw near and go by. The houses to the left hid them from her: but she leaned out, hearkening to the soft plash of oars, the creak of thole-pins, the girls' voices in hushed chorus practising the simple native harmonies they would lift aloud as they returned after sunrise. She recognised the tune, too; the old tune ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... great height and waved a long green scarf. From one of the galleys behind the screen of rocks a trumpet rang out in immediate answer to that signal; it was followed by the shrill whistles of the bo'suns, and that again by the splash and creak of oars, as the two larger galleys swept out from their ambush. The long armoured poops were a-swarm with turbaned corsairs, their weapons gleaming in the sunshine; a dozen at least were astride of the crosstree of each mainmast, all armed with bows and arrows, ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... The silence became distinct and burdensome to him, and a chill moisture gathered to his brow. While he stood irresolute and in suspense, striving to collect his thoughts, his ear, preternaturally sharpened by fear, caught the faint muffled sound of creeping footsteps—he heard the stairs creak. The sound broke the spell. The previous vague apprehension gave way, when the danger became actually at hand. His presence of mind returned at once. He went back quickly to the fireplace, seized ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... between the pair as they faces each other,—young Hiscock all bristled up bantam like and glarin' through his student panes; while Nutt Hamilton, who'd make three of him, tilts back easy in the heavy office armchair until he makes it creak, and just chuckles. ...
— Torchy, Private Sec. • Sewell Ford
... heard the creak of a board and it came from the direction of the door leading to the sitting-room. With one bound he was out of bed in time to see the door flung open and a figure slip through. He was after it in a second. The burglar ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... silence, studying his hostess so perpetually that Anne's nerves began to creak at last under ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... day within the dreamy house, The doors upon their hinges creak'd; The blue fly sung in the pane; [8] the mouse Behind the mouldering wainscot shriek'd, Or from the crevice peer'd about. Old faces glimmer'd thro' the doors, Old footsteps trod the upper floors, Old voices called her from without. She only said, "My life is dreary, He cometh ...
— The Early Poems of Alfred Lord Tennyson • Tennyson
... weakness come? It is not from ignorance, for I have noticed the same thing as in the others, in several clerics who have studied in the university for ten or twelve years. One day I was in a convent where the boards of the floor began to creak because of dryness, and the coadjutor became so frightened that he went away to sleep in another house; and the Christian reflections, jests, and anger of the Spanish cura could not restrain him.... The Filipino cura, Don J. Severiano Mallares, committed and ...
— The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898 - Volume 40 of 55 • Francisco Colin
... when I found myself alone, climbing a musty, winding ramp between the first and second floors of the deserted building. Not a sound, except the sharp intake of my breath and the dismal creak of the wooden stairs, echoed through that tomb of death. There was no light, not even the usual dim glow that is left to illuminate an unused corridor. Moreover, I had brought no means of light with me—nothing but a half empty box of safety matches which, by some unholy premonition, I had forced ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... fragile, and diminutive. The little deal table, which occupied an inconveniently large proportion of the space, was clothed in a garment similar to that of the bed. The one solitary chair was of that cheap construction which is meant to creak warningly when sat upon by light people, and to resolve itself into match-wood when the desecrator is heavy. Two pictures graced the walls—one the infant Samuel in a rosewood frame, the other an oil painting—of probably the first century, for its subject was quite undistinguishable—in ...
— The Young Trawler • R.M. Ballantyne
... and blew the sealers' call—the poaching cry o' the sea— And they raised the Baltic out of the mist, and an angry ship was she: And blind they groped through the whirling white, and blind to the bay again, Till they heard the creak of the Stralsund's boom and the clank of her mooring-chain. They laid them down by bitt and boat, their pistols in their belts, And: "Will you fight for it, Reuben Paine, or ...
— The Seven Seas • Rudyard Kipling
... on the seat in front of her, moved away to the smoking car; and the woman in gray listened to the creak and whirr of the wheel of torturing dread, upon which some malignant fate once more bound her. Bertie had been safe in his mountain fastness, until her ill-starred advertisement coaxed him within reach of the police Briareus. Could she discern the hand ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... centuries. The Algerine Corsairs were masters of the sea, and they made their mastery felt by all who dared to cross their path; and not merchantmen only, but galleys-royal of his Catholic Majesty learnt to dread the creak of ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... divan creak under his weight, but not until Gaston came back bringing his supper. As he ate he spoke, and his first words provoked an exclamation of dismay from the Frenchman, which was hastily smothered with a murmured apology, and then Diana became aware that others had come into the room. He spoke to ...
— The Sheik - A Novel • E. M. Hull
... downstairs, but what they talked of is not known. And then came silence. Had I been at home I should have been in the room again several times, turning the handle of the door softly, releasing it so that it did not creak, and standing looking at them. It had been so a thousand times. But that night, would I have slipped out again, mind at rest, or should I have seen the change coming ...
— Margaret Ogilvy • James M. Barrie
... white hand which somehow had found its way inside his own. The sharp eyes of the old negress snapped. She gave a grunt as she withdrew her head. It was speedily to develop, though, that she had not entirely betaken herself away. Almost immediately there came to the ears of the couple the creak-creak of a rocking-chair just inside the hall, but out of view from their end of ...
— From Place to Place • Irvin S. Cobb
... of Concho glittering in his new-found glory of shining bit and spur, wide-brimmed Stetson, and chaps studded with nickel-plated conchas. The creak of the stiff saddle-leather was music to him. His brand-new and really good equipment almost made up for the horse—an ancient pensioner that never seemed to be just certain when he would take his next step and ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... the tongues of flame leaped like red serpents up the chimney; she heard the wild howling of the night wind, the ceaseless dash and fall of the rain, the indescribable roar of the raging sea; she heard the trees creak and toss and groan; she heard the rats scampering overhead; she heard the dismal moaning of the old house itself ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... followed as we stood on the beach, listening to the creak of the thole-pins in the departing boat. After a minute our new acquaintance turned to us with a slightly ...
— The Laird's Luck • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... Alaire and Dave rode back toward Las Palmas. The dry, gray grass was beginning to jewel with dew; the paths were ribbons of silver between dark blots of ink where the bushes grew. Behind rose the jingle of spurs and bridles, the creak of leather, the voices of men. It was an hour in which to talk freely, an environment suited to confidences, and Dave Law was happier than he had been for years. He closed his eyes to the future, he stopped his ears to misgivings; ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... come away! — for the scenes we leave behind us Are barren for the lights of home and a flame that's young forever; And the lonely trees around us creak the warning of the night-wind, That love and all the dreams of love are away beyond the mountains. The songs that call for us to-night, they have called for men before us, And the winds that blow the message, they have blown ten thousand years; But this will end our wander-time, ...
— The Children of the Night • Edwin Arlington Robinson
... The timbers creak'd, the rafters sway'd, And e'en some roofs, upheav'd and torn, Came crashing to the earth, and laid Before the view, ...
— Canada and Other Poems • T.F. Young
... unaccountable feeling of restlessness and of vague apprehension had him in its grip. Hour after hour he lay, listening irritably to the snoring of his fellow-shepherd, Borthwick, starting nervously at every scraping of rat or creak of timber. At last, long after midnight, he rose and looked out. The wind had fallen, but snow still fell; there was nothing abnormal in the night, and the weather might have been described as merely "seasonable." But away in the northern sky, low down, appeared a strange break in the mist, ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... to escape in the skiff which was towing astern the Kentuckian rushed toward the bow. At his back he heard the door creak on its hinges as it was pushed open by Betty and the boy, and again he called to them to escape by the skiff. The fret of the current had grown steadily and from beneath the wide-flung branches of the trees ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... his blue chin, his wide white hands, his broadcloth—there he was planted on his massive feet as on a pedestal! She did not see him; she was aware of him. And she was aware of the closed door behind them. One of the basket-chairs, though empty, continued to creak, like a thing alive. Faintly, very faintly, she could hear the piano—Mrs. Boutwood playing! Overhead were the footsteps of Sarah Gailey and Hettie—they were checking the linen from the laundry, as usual on Saturday ...
— Hilda Lessways • Arnold Bennett
... laughing. Even when she was asleep she laughed. Olivier, lying awake in the next room, would suddenly start up in the middle of the stories he was telling himself, at the sound of the wild laughter and the muttered words which she would speak in the silence of the night. Outside, the trees would creak with the wind, an owl would hoot, in the distant villages and the farms in the heart of the woods dogs would bark. In the dim phosphorescence of the night Olivier would see the dark, heavy branches of the pines moving like ghosts outside ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... straw basket, green and red, and lined it with leaves; and now I put on my white flounced gown and my flat green hat, so that when I should come in with my basket as they sat at breakfast it would seem like a little fete. Then I went a-tiptoe down the stairs that would creak, for I could hear Lee, the China boy, stirring in the kitchen, and it would have spoiled everything to be caught going out with my empty basket. When I had let myself into the street I felt very naughty and festive ...
— The Other Side of the Door • Lucia Chamberlain
... tired of waiting, you know what to tell her. If she asks when I am expected to return, say that I dine at my club, and spend the evening at the theatre. Now then, softly, Thomas! If your shoes creak, I am a ...
— The Haunted Hotel - A Mystery of Modern Venice • Wilkie Collins
... the chair gave a creak, and began to move out of the cottage, and into the forest, the very way Dame Frostyface had taken, where it rolled along at the rate of a coach and six. Snowflower was amazed at this way of travelling, but the chair never stopped nor stayed the whole summer ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... out the candle and slipped the end into his pocket, as he tiptoed after Dan down the stairs. At every step the old boards seemed to creak as though in pain. As they paused breathless half-way down on the landing, they heard no sound save the loud ticking of the clock in the hall below and the gentle whispering of the breeze without. The moon gave light enough ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... Clifford. And then, in an instant, "What 's the matter with that buggy?" His practiced ear had apparently detected an unnatural creak in the wheels of the light vehicle which had been brought to the portico, and he hurried away to investigate so ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... splashing as he lugged a full pail, now scampering back happily with an empty one. And he was beside a stairway, and on the point of taking in a drink to the horse stalled closest to the entrance, when he heard several voices, the creak of doors, and footsteps. So he paused, the bucket swinging from both hands, until half a dozen pairs of shaggy legs appeared just above him. Then as the big hats were bobbing into view, so that he knew his labors could be seen ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... baggage and the overturned boat; while the dark stream flowed by with a murmuring sound. Beyond, though we were sheltered from the wind, I could see the lofty summits of the trees waving in the gale, which howled amid their branches, making them rattle and creak; while from the depths of the forest came strange unearthly cries. At first they seemed almost supernatural, and a feeling of awe, somewhat allied to alarm, crept over me; till I recollected that they were probably produced by howling monkeys and ...
— The Young Llanero - A Story of War and Wild Life in Venezuela • W.H.G. Kingston
... bulwarks and watching the ripples spreading wide before the bows. I might have fallen without a struggle for my life had not a sudden disquietude seized upon me and made me turn my head. Perhaps I had heard a creak or seen his shadow moving with the tail of my eye; perhaps it was an instinct like a cat's; but, sure enough, when I looked round, there was Hands, already half-way towards me, with the dirk in ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... going to black my boots before he goes? with a glance at the new shoes which caused them to creak uneasily. ...
— Under the Lilacs • Louisa May Alcott
... wonderful! It even repeated the creak of those old, rusty springs while you waited for her. And when she came—well, anyway, I got every word you said, engraved in wax, like one of those old poets of yours used to ...
— In a Little Town • Rupert Hughes
... the place to give an example of the entertainment which he is likely to find in this province of his; and if the reader can detect any smell of dust or hear any creak of dead bones in the story which follows, it will be a matter of ...
— The Treasury of Ancient Egypt - Miscellaneous Chapters on Ancient Egyptian History and Archaeology • Arthur E. P. B. Weigall
... long time munching the cake, and before they had finished it began to be rather dark, because a thunder-storm was coming up. The wind rose and made the old tree rock, and creak, and tremble. The little Fairies were so frightened that they got out of the nest and crept into ...
— Boys and Girls Bookshelf (Vol 2 of 17) - Folk-Lore, Fables, And Fairy Tales • Various
... air, and to see, at intervals, the trees above the quarry bowing their heads, and the reeds waving in the swamp, and the water of the meadow-ponds dimpling and rippling, as the wind swept over the Levels. Oliver soon heard something that he liked better still—the creak of the truck that brought the gypsum from the quarry, and the crack of the ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... the uppermost flight that led to the attic. A heavy brisk energetic footstep, — not Mrs. Nettley's soft and slow tread, nor the more deliberate one of her brother. Winthrop listened a moment, and then as the last impatient creak of the boot stopped at his threshold he knew who would open the ...
— Hills of the Shatemuc • Susan Warner
... Sarpedon's glitt'ring spear Flew wide; and Pedasus, the gallant horse, Through the right shoulder wounded; with a scream He fell, and in the dust breath'd forth his life, As, shrieking loud, his noble spirit fled. This way and that his two companions swerv'd; Creak'd the strong yoke, and tangled were the reins, As in the dust the prostrate courser lay. Automedon the means of safety saw; And drawing from beside his brawny thigh His keen-edg'd sword, with no uncertain ...
— The Iliad • Homer
... him restive beyond his wont. She knew the reason. For two days there had been no scented letter, and she saw how he started at every creak of the garden-gate, as he waited for the last post. When at length a step was heard crunching on the gravel, he rushed from the room, and Mrs. Cohn heard the hall-door open. Her ear, disappointed of the rat-tat, morbidly followed every ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... quick his fleet-foot courser, Puts his racer to the snow-sledge, Straightway springs upon the cross-seat, Snaps his whip adorned with jewels. Like the winds the steed flies onward, Like a lightning flash, the racer Makes the snow-sledge creak and rattle, Makes the highway quickly vanish, Dashes on through fen and forest, Over hills and through the valleys, Over marshes, over mountains, Over fertile plains and meadows; Journeys one day, then a second, So a third ...
— The Kalevala (complete) • John Martin Crawford, trans.
... he went to Church without seeing anything he looked at. He heard his name called from the pulpit among many others, and trembled; rose up with every emotion petrified; counted the spots on the carpet; looked piteously up at the cornice; heard the fans creak in the pews near him; felt thankful to a fly that lit on his face, as if something familiar at last had come to break an awful trance; heard faintly a reading of the Articles of Faith; wondered whether he should be struck dead for not feeling more—whether he ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume III (of 6) - Orators and Reformers • Various
... a horrible fright," he thought; and, creeping up, he softly inserted the key, unlocked this door, and withdrew the key without a sound. Then slowly and silently he pressed down the thumb-latch, the door yielded with a faint creak, and he passed in, to ...
— The Vast Abyss - The Story of Tom Blount, his Uncles and his Cousin Sam • George Manville Fenn
... gave scope of liberal entry; Gave me an house of love, gave me the lady within, 70 Busily there to renew love's even duty together; Thither afoot mine own mistress, a deity bright, (70) Came, and planted firm her sole most sunny; beneath her Lightly the polish'd floor creak'd to the sandal again. ...
— The Poems and Fragments of Catullus • Catullus
... the inner room. After the lamp was blown out and everything was dark, her mother heard a soft stir and the pat of a naked foot in there, then she heard the door swing to with a cautious creak and the bolt slide. She knew with a great pang, that Lois had locked her door against ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... empties into a basin made out of the mud of the river bank. When the river is low there are three such basins, placed one above the other, as if they were stages by which the precious water mounts to the fields of corn and lucerne. And then three "shadufs," one above the other, creak together, lowering and raising their great scarabaeus' horns to the rhythm of ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti
... tiller between his knees and the slack of the main-sheet in his hand. She was running wing and wing, with her bright new sails spreading far over the water on each side. Then came a rattle and a sharp creak as the main-yard swung over and came down on deck, the men taking in the bellying canvas with wide open arms and old Luigione catching the end of the yard on his shoulder while he steered with his knees, his great gaunt profile black against ...
— The Children of the King • F. Marion Crawford
... (a cry wherein was none of the human) the which, dying to a whine, was lost in the stir and bustle of the great galleass. But ever and always, beneath the hoarse voices of the mariners, beneath the clash of armour and tramp of feet, beneath the creak and rumble of the long oars, came yet another sound, rising and falling yet never ceasing, a dull, low sound the like of which you shall sometimes hear among trees when the wind is high—the deep, sobbing moan that was the voice of our anguish as we poor wretches urged the great "Esmeralda" ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... a week that was! Rain, wind, fog; creak, pitch, toss; noise, smells, cold. Broken sleep by day, woe in every variety by night; food and drink a delusion and a snare; society an affliction; life a burden; death a far-off blessing not to be had at any price. Slowly, slowly the victims emerge from the lower depths of gloom, feebly smile, ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott
... confidence with which Zenobia had inspired her, our guest showed herself disquieted by the storm. When the strong puffs of wind spattered the snow against the windows and made the oaken frame of the farmhouse creak, she looked at us apprehensively, as if to inquire whether these tempestuous outbreaks did not betoken some unusual mischief in the shrieking blast. She had been bred up, no doubt, in some close nook, some inauspiciously sheltered ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... voluntarily. Even wood has a certain elasticity, and an imperceptible increase followed by an imperceptible relaxation of pressure on the surface of the table will alter the tension of the wood, the molecules of which in springing back to their prior position will emit a creak or a tap, just as a piece of extended elastic will when let go again. Both the raps and the movements, then, are in essence phenomena of the same order: simple results of muscular pressure, ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... appearance of majesty was somewhat lessened by the creak of stays, but her instinct for unpleasantness was always good. She said nothing as she left them, and she plodded up-stairs with a train ...
— Our Mr. Wrenn - The Romantic Adventures of a Gentle Man • Sinclair Lewis
... slept gently on, while the little girl still held the parasol aloft and looked down with a great wonder at the frowsy, unkempt creature, trying to reconcile it with the little part of life that she knew. To her ears came the cries of men, the stamp of hoofs on the bridge, and the creak and groan of wagons heavy laden. It was a breathless California Indian summer day. Light fleeces of cloud drifted in the azure sky, but to the west heavy cloud banks threatened with rain. A bee droned lazily by. From farther thickets came the calls of quail, and ...
— Brown Wolf and Other Jack London Stories - Chosen and Edited By Franklin K. Mathiews • Jack London
... Peering over the balusters they saw two troopers pass out of the guardroom, and cross the hall to the door. A bolt was drawn and a chain rattled, then followed the creak of hinges, and on the stone flags rang the footsteps and the jingling of spurs ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... in a creak meant for a whisper: "I'm right glad she's took to religion for onct, an' is givin' us somethin' about them Crusaders. They was in Palestine, you know. She's been away to boardin' school all winter, an' I guess it'll be a high-falutin' ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... not heard, for I could still catch the murmur of their voices. The creak of the jib-boom and the swish of my own boat beneath had frightened me at first. It seemed impossible that it should not disturb them. But after a moment my courage returned, and I pulled myself up on to the bowsprit, and lying almost at full length along it, ...
— Dead Man's Rock • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... making a clean breast of the ownership of Hester. Now, as he sat still, the trouble grew upon him. He started a new sheet, and ruined that: Once he got as far as his feet, and sat down again. But at length he had quieted to the extent of deciphering ten lines of Mr. Whipple's handwriting when the creak of a door shattered his ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... Bernadine wiped the sweat from his forehead as he listened. He still gripped the revolver in his hand. Peter had changed his position a little and was standing now behind a high-backed chair. They heard the door creak open, a voice outside, and presently the tramp of ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with a "firm tread," as the papers say, and "dying game" before the admiring eyes of soldiers and natives. With him it was steel-ribbed facts. He could hear the bang of the trap, the snap of the rope, and the quivering creak of the scaffold. And afterward, the lonely, hopeless years. Besides, the dishonor of it. What irony to parade with thirty years of service chevrons on his sleeves, and be pointed out as the father of a man hanged for ...
— McClure's Magazine, Vol. XXXI, No. 3, July 1908. • Various
... came in for the first time to see her, Rose knew. Harriet was living here now, running the house for Rodney, while Rose was laid up. Doing it beautifully well, too, through all the confusion of nurses and all. Not the slightest jar or creak of their complex domestic machinery ever reached Rose in the big chamber ...
— The Real Adventure • Henry Kitchell Webster
... fool Jeb was. An' when the ole folks goes to bed, Nance lays thar under a quilt a-watchin' an' a-listenin'. Well, Jeb knowed the premises, ef he couldn't talk, an' purty soon Nance heerd Jeb's cheer creak a leetle, an' she says, Jeb's a-comin', and Jeb was; an' Polly Ann 'lowed Jeb was jes a leetle TOO resolute an' quick-like, an' she got her hand ready to give him one lick anyways fer bein' so brigaty. I don't know as she'd 'a' ...
— 'Hell fer Sartain' and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... Cap'n Abe as he heard the bedcords creak and the patter of the girl's feet on the matting. "Cap'n Am'zon knows of a craft that'll sail to-day from Boston and I must ...
— Cap'n Abe, Storekeeper • James A. Cooper
... of a horrible horse-and-precipice accident; Murree has a merry ghost, and, now that she has been swept by cholera, will have room for a sorrowful one; there are Officers' Quarters in Mian Mir whose doors open without reason, and whose furniture is guaranteed to creak, not with the heat of June but with the weight of Invisibles who come to lounge in the chairs; Peshawur possesses houses that none will willingly rent; and there is something—not fever—wrong with a big bungalow in Allahabad. The older Provinces ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... Clerk obeyed; with a few strokes of his wings he was out of the cage; but at the same moment the door, which was only ajar, and which led to the next room, began to creak, and supple and creeping came the large tomcat into the room, and began to pursue him. The frightened Canary fluttered about in his cage; the Parrot flapped his wings, and cried, "Come, let us be men!" The Clerk felt ...
— Andersen's Fairy Tales • Hans Christian Andersen
... desperate effort. She would storm the all but hopeless attic chambers. Up the twisting turnpike stairs on the outer wall she ran, to where the swallows wheeled about the cornices, and she could hear the iron cross of the Knights Templars creak above the gable. Then, all the way along a dark passage, at one door after another, she knocked, ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... led the Lord knows whither, and seemed just made for ghosts to air themselves in, when they turned out of their graves at midnight. The wind would spring up into a hoarse murmur through this passage, and creak the door to and fro, as if some dubious ghost were balancing in its mind whether to come in or not. In a word, it was precisely the kind of comfortless apartment that a ghost, if ghost there were in the chateau, would single out for its ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... rottenly wretched," admits Beauvayse, with a confirmatory creak of the bamboo chair. "But, on the other hand, they can make ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
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