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More "Swish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... both left and right, the swish of paddles, the ripple of water against the side of a canoe, men talking. They were coming to the chain that had been stretched in front of them, and their fate would soon be decided. Now, they must be not only brave to the uttermost, but they ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... summit of the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the edge of the steep hillside,—so close that there were times when every one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over, it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,—a swish through the air and a smash at the bottom,—but a tumbling, and a rolling over and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden turn ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, dim, in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The arras blows sidewise out from the wall, and then falls ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... there was a faint rustling within the house: the swish of draperies on the stairs, a delicious whispering when light feet descend, tapping, to hearts that beat an answer, the telegraphic message, "We come! We come! We are near! We are near!" Lige Willetts stared ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... air escaping from tires, punctured tire; escaping steam, steam, steam radiator, steam release valve. V. hiss, buzz, whiz, rustle; fizz, fizzle; wheeze, whistle, snuffle; squash; sneeze; sizzle, swish. Adj. sibilant; hissing &c. v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... was as yet no clear meaning in those mysterious whisperings. What he listened for was a sound that he could interpret, and it came very soon in the grunt of a leopard, harsh and grating. The reeds rustled just before him, and then there came a sound, regular and strange—a thump and a swish, then a thump and a swish. Creeping forward, he put a match to the heap, then went back; and as the red flame crackled through the hard shining stems, he saw a dark form crouching beyond, the green eyes blinking in the reflection, and the tufted tail nervously jerking from side ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... It was all so sudden. A door flung open and a swish of rushing silk. A woman! A beautiful girl! The ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... had said that morning. There was something unpleasant in the isolation; it made us look longingly down to earth, wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the air. I, too, longed for the sound of human voices, and all that I heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through wires and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... meekly watching with wonder and envy as Marcia made her bargain with the kindly merchant, and selected her chintz. What a delicious swish the scissors made as they went through the width of cloth, and how delightfully the paper crackled as the bundle was being wrapped! Mary Ann did not know whether Kate or Marcia ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... going through the jungle that night, Kopee would shiver with terror whenever there was a swish of a snake's body in the grass below or in the leaves above, and I had to put my hand on his back and whisper, "Don't be afraid, you are on the elephant's back ...
— Kari the Elephant • Dhan Gopal Mukerji
... repulse any assault that might be made in the daylight, it was felt that such an attack would cause terrible loss, and possibly grave disaster, if delivered at night. The enemy might not be discovered until within a few yards of the camp. The swish of the rain, and the almost incessant crash of thunder, would deaden the sound of their approach; and, long before the troops could leap to their feet and prepare to receive them calmly, the Dervishes would be upon them. As the latter were enormously stronger in numbers, the advantage of superior ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... or a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... of thing I shall cut out of the book!" cried Henley, turning the soda-water into his whisky with a cheerful swish. ...
— The Collaborators - 1896 • Robert S. Hichens
... into the darkness, the panel closed, and he heard the swish of the hanging as it ...
— The Girl and The Bill - An American Story of Mystery, Romance and Adventure • Bannister Merwin
... inclination of the head, had swung about and left her. She saw the heavily-shouldered, muscularly-built figure crossing the drift a little way down, stepping from boulder to boulder with those curiously small, neat feet, twirling his old horn-handled hunting-crop as he went, with a decidedly vicious swish of the doubled thong. Now he was knee-deep in the reeds of the north shore; now he was climbing the bank. A black-and-white crow flew up heavily, and was lost among the intertwining branches of the oaks and the blue-gums, and a cloud of finches and linnets rose as the covert of tree-fern and cactus ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... him even more rapidly than did a loaf of soppy bread which at that moment was dashed in his face by the counter swish of the water against the side of the cabin, and he sprang up ready for action as cool and collected as possible, considering ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... "Swish—pat!" one, two, three, they fell. These were not men to miss. Three ropes, three horses, leaping away to bear on the great beast's neck. But swifter than thought the supple paws went up. The ropes were slipped, and the spurred cow-ponies, ready for the shock, went, shockless, bounding—loose ...
— Monarch, The Big Bear of Tallac • Ernest Thompson Seton
... coal fell on to the grate. Not a sound came from the sofa. Macdougal leaned forward, his white face distorted with passion. The life-preserver bent and quivered behind him, cut the air with a swish and crashed full upon ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... under the spell of this marvellous night, lay on their stomachs alert for alarms. A heavy-wheeling white owl had come by with a swish, and Biagio had called aloud to Madonna in his agony. Astorre had crossed himself over and over again: this was the Angel of Death cruising abroad on the hunt for goats or goat-herds; but "No, no!" cried Luca, eldest of the three, "the wings ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... suddenly in the silence I heard a sound which sent my heart into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish of the leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp still stood upon the floor where I had placed it when examining the trough. By its light I saw that the black ceiling was coming down upon me, slowly, jerkily, but, ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... took no notice. He even increased his speed. Duncombe was in the act of turning round when he felt the sudden swish of a wet cloth upon his face. He tried to break away, but he was held from behind as in a vise. Then his head fell back, and ...
— A Maker of History • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... As they waited and listened to the whining of the wind, the swish of the rain and the angry muttering of the thunder, and saw the vivid lightning, it was no wonder they did not want to decide hurriedly to go out in that out burst of the elements. But it was also trying on the nerves to stay in the stalled auto, exposed ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... Emperor. Now we shall see. Caesar: I ask you whether it is fair for the Retiarius, instead of making a fair throw of his net at me, to swish it along the ground and throw the dust in my eyes, and then catch me when I'm blinded. If the vestals had not turned up their thumbs I should have been ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... length of the chamber back and forth, and there was silence save for the soft swish of his ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... on enquiry it's the father—not as one would naturally expect, the mother—who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... party crossed the long toll-bridge, the horses stepping hesitatingly and curveting a little at the swish of the noisy water, climbed the sunny hills beyond, and dipped down to a level stretch of wood, in the heart of which they chose a picnic-ground by the side of a ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... McFeeters, all grim and severe, Who the long night before, with a feeling of fear, Had slumbered but fitfully, hearing the swish Of the sky-rocket over his roof, with a wish That the urchin who fired it were fast to the end Of the stick to forever and ever ascend; Or to hopelessly ask why the boy with the horn And its horrible havoc had ever been born! Or to wish, in his wakefulness, staring ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... summer comes people praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have not seen Tochty woods in their glory. Each autumn carries me to the harvest field, till in my study I hear the swish of the scythe and feel the fragrance of the dry, ripe grain. And in winter I see the sun shining on the white sides of Glen Urtach, and can hardly keep pen to paper in ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... empty hush which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... an instant. Then she held out the note to him, and simultaneously stood up. As he took it, she went swiftly past him and out of the door. He heard the swish of her dress pass up the stairs, and then the closing of a door. But he hardly heeded it. He was reading the note she had given him. It was a short, perfectly formal offer of marriage to her ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson
... was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown about ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... going, in a rhythm, which carried their feet and their bodies in tune. She stooped, she lifted the burden of sheaves, she turned her face to the dimness where he was, and went with her burden over the stubble. She hesitated, set down her sheaves, there was a swish and hiss of mingling oats, he was drawing near, and she must turn again. And there was the flaring moon laying bare her bosom again, making her drift and ebb like ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once having been ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... to consciousness after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down my side as I endeavored to stand ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... crossed himself. His face looked as if he saw something startling just beyond his adversary. Possibly this sudden change of expression caused Farnsworth to hesitate for a mere point of time. Then there was the swish of a woman's skirts; a light step pattered on the frozen ground, and Alice sprang between the men, facing Farnsworth. As she did this something small and yellow,—the locket at her throat,—fell and rolled under her ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... also rose. There was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in the centre of ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... with the beat of the Indian drum, the eerie penetrations of the turtle rattle that set the time of the dancers' feet. Dance? It is not a dance, that marvellously slow, serpentine-like figure with the soft swish, swish of moccasined feet, and the faint jingling of elks'-teeth bracelets, keeping rhythm with every footfall. It is not a dance, but an invocation of motion. Why may we not worship with the graceful movement of our feet? The paleface worships by moving his lips and tongue; ...
— The Moccasin Maker • E. Pauline Johnson
... drink tae," put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... cheering, had reached the house from the garden just beyond the broad veranda. As the three Rover brothers hurried through the hallway and outside, the yelling and cheering were renewed. Then, just as Tom Rover stepped out on the veranda, there was a sudden swish and a stream of water from a garden hose caught him ...
— The Rover Boys at Colby Hall - or The Struggles of the Young Cadets • Arthur M. Winfield
... cub with whom Nero used to play, was far off in Africa, so our circus friend had to stay by himself. He curled up on the leaves, listened to the swish and patter of the rain, ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... heat of them almost overwhelmed her. The shrieks of the frantic throng at the main door of the theatre died away. She heard the shouted commands of the police and firemen—then the swish of water from the first pipe brought to play upon the flames. ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... den, when my orderly confusion, upon which I prided myself, was turned into worse confusion and less order, though it looked neat enough to the eye. I never could find anything when they had departed. But now, alas, how welcome would have been the feel of their presence, the frou-frou and swish-swish of their skirts which I had so cordially detested! I am sure, if I ever get home, that I shall never be irritable with them again. They may dose me and doctor me morning, noon, and night, and dust and sweep and put my den to rights ...
— The Sea-Wolf • Jack London
... I were standing close to Flannagan (one of the men's horses), and the men were at stables. We were all looking up and longing to see a Hun aeroplane hit, when suddenly "s-s-s-swish, plop!" just behind me. It was one of the Archie shrapnel cases. It buried itself deep in the ground 3 yards from where we were standing. We dug it up, and I'll bring it home for you. If it isn't ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... think Mr. Beeton cheats much," said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and the ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... of my adversary; and then he launched his hatchet and I released my arrow. At the instant that our missiles flew I leaped to one side, but the Sagoth sprang forward to follow up his attack with a spear thrust. I felt the swish of the hatchet at it grazed my head, and at the same instant my shaft pierced the Sagoth's savage heart, and with a single groan he lunged almost at my feet—stone dead. Close behind him were two more—fifty yards perhaps—but the distance gave me time ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... post-office parade who was hailing Roderick so gaily. A pretty group was rustling past the office, all muslin frills and silk sashes and flowers of every colour, and the prettiest and best dressed of them all came running up the steps to his side, with a swish of silken skirts and a ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... of her life, could forget the morning that letter reached them. It was a wet, dark November morning, and she had been lying awake for a long time listening to the patter-patter, swish-swish of the rain pouring against her window. She had heard her grandfather go down and open the front door as usual, and light the fire in the kitchen; then she heard him fill the kettle at the pump and put it on to boil. After that ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... stood, George could not resist this little bit of sarcasm at the expense of Arabi's prowess. Apparently his interrogator had no sense of humour, for although Helmar could not see the man he was convinced that he gave some sign. There was a horrid swish in the air, and the kourbash fell across his bare shoulders with ruthless force, and a great wale was raised where it struck. George uttered no sound, but, bursting with indignation and in great pain, waited ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... the clover, and on the other would be the minute blue flower of the flax; and an old dog drowsing on the threshold.... And this would be in his mind as he wandered the hot foreign streets.... And there would be the droning of the bees in the clover, and the swish of the swallows darting to and from the eaves, and in the evening would be the singing of the crickets.... And these he would hear over the capstan's clank.... When he tumbled into his cabin after his watch, ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... of his detestable ironmongery. Sometimes he would hover overhead and follow the long line till we were almost at the lip of the nullah before releasing his bombs, and this was the very refinement of torture. During the whole of the two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the hope of catching us in the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... Craddock lay in the dark of the sail-room working patiently at his wrist-irons. One he had slipped off at the cost of a row of broken and bleeding knuckles, but, do what he would, he could not free the other, and his ankles were securely fastened. From hour to hour he heard the swish of the water, and knew that the barque must be driving with all set in front of the trade wind. In that case they must be nearly back again to Jamaica by now. What plan could Sharkey have in his head, and what use did he hope to make of him? Craddock ...
— The Green Flag • Arthur Conan Doyle
... echoing away through the black and dripping forest. After that Paul heard nothing, but to the keener ears of Henry came now and then the soft, sliding sound of rapid footsteps, a word or two uttered low, and the faint swish of bushes, swinging back into place after a body passed. He knew that the warriors were now seeking eagerly for them, but with the aid of the intense darkness he hoped that he and Paul would steal safely through their lines. ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to its kiss; if the odor of spearmint from the brookside was wafted around him he breathed it into his nostrils with delight. He saw the shadow of a crow flying across the field and stopped to look up and listen for the swish of her wings and her loud, hoarse caw as she made her way to the nesting grounds; then he gazed beyond her, into the fathomless depths of the blue sky, and his soul was stirred with an indescribable awe. Everything ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... him if I stay here," he thought; and as the thought crossed his mind, with a shriek and a swish of silk, in rushed Miss Silver and flung herself ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... heart gave a leap! He could hear the swish-swish of the water on the other side of the banco as something made its way toward him. The eddy was the only thing that saved him, for he could see the dread thing twirling round and round as it tried to reach him. The boy was almost paralyzed with fear. ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... bumper, and taking a deep breath, jerked the cord. Tired legs failed and Solomon slipped backward when the hub cap broke free of the tape and sailed through the air to clang against the wagon's fender. Lying on his back, struggling to rise, Solomon heard a slight swish as though a whirlwind had come through the yard. The scent of air-borne dust bit his nostrils as he ...
— Solomon's Orbit • William Carroll
... dreamily out over the water. A fresh, salty breeze was now blowing in. She could hear the flap, flap of the canvas of the tents off in the camp, a thin veil of mist was obscuring the stars, the pound of the surf was growing louder and the swish of the water on ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... watch it performed, strongly yet easily, by a skilled hand is a liberal education in the art of casting; the swiftness, sureness, low trajectory, and lightness of the fall of the line, shot out by a dexterous swish of the lifting and propelling power of the strong yet supple rod, illustrate a phase at once beautiful and practical of the poetry of motion. Among the native salmon fishermen of Speyside, quorum ...
— Camps, Quarters, and Casual Places • Archibald Forbes
... cave man, but the men who had been with him were already distant. The shadows were growing long now, but the light was still from the sunshine of the early afternoon. The man lying along the limb, knife in hand, could hear no sound save the soft swish of leaves against each other as the breeze of later day pushed its way through the forest, or the alarmed cries of knowing birds who saw on the ground beneath them a huge thing slip along with scarce a sound from the impact of his fearfully clawed but padded feet as he sought the ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... launching out too soon And so not carrying the tree away Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise To the top branches, climbing carefully With the same pains you use to fill a cup Up to the brim, and even above the brim. Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish, Kicking his way down through the air to the ground. So was I once myself a swinger of birches. And so I dream of going back to be. It's when I'm weary of considerations, And life is too much like a pathless wood Where your face burns and tickles with ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... motion of the steamer, for her plunges are few and of small moment. A silence broods over the scene; the tired passengers have gone to sleep; all John can hear as he lies there is the dull throb of the engines and the swish of water against the side ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... away beneath his feet, a swish of branches was about him, the soft, cool touch of leaves against his face. A moment he was flung and tangled among willows—it was a strange revelation through a chink of consciousness in that turmoil of life and death that swept ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
... gaze at him, but at his first movement to arise, the frisky animal gave a swish of his brush and was gone up the tree ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... the cottage door, followed by the soft murmur of women's voices instead of by the high treble of the telegraph boy which she had expected. Then the swish of a skirt, the lifting of a latch, and Cara ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... England farms and villages, suddenly leap out upon the man and his sons working in their clearings, upon the woman and her children in the hut: a whoop, a popping of musket shots and whistling of arrows, then the vicious swish and crash of the murderous tomahawk, followed by the dexterous twist of the scalping-knife, and the snatching of the tuft of hair from the bleeding skull. That is all—but, no: there still remains a baby or two who must be caught up by the leg, and have ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... thing was like some bird of prey that circled in the sky just above him—its shadow filling him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was no time in his life when he was not in a state of inward war. His intellect rebelled; and on the other hand, there was a part of his nature that craved this sex-experience and welcomed it—and this part, it seemed, ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... footing; death awaited them hourly upon many a day at the bottom of some sheer walled cliff. They climbed with the sharp slopes on the mountains, they dropped down into the narrow, flinty canons, they heard only the swish of tree tops and the quarrelling of streams lost to their eyes in the depths below them. And they came in two weeks to Blue Lake having seen no other man or other trail than ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... glad of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of the ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... how it happened. Kid Wolf's arms were lifted. Apparently he was helpless. But suddenly there was a swish—a lightning-like gleam of light. Something hit Stover's gun arm ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... of the sierra, on fearsome dizzy trails, in the somber shadows of virgin forests, in the rustling of wind-blown leaves (the seductive swish of elfin skirts) she heard the voices of Juno's sylvan train. Enchanted she listened to the syren's call, and ere the echo died within her ear she had devoted her talent to literature, a priestess self-ordained in Arizona's temple ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... foot of the stairs to listen again, when the swish of garments fell on her ear, then a voice, which she immediately ...
— Katherine's Sheaves • Mrs. Georgie Sheldon
... wayside will not be noticed, and you alone know when it is time to get the young couple home; you know, alas! when the courtship—blissful period of loitering for you—is ended and when the marriage is made, by the tighter rein, the sharper word, and the occasional swish of the whip. Ah, Dobbin, you and I—" ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... voice is now heard again, only when he utters an ejaculation of impatience. All at once the joyous expression is restored. There is a noise in the woods, and it proceeds from the right direction—a rustling of dead leaves that litter the path, and occasionally the "swish" of recoiling branches. Some one approaches the glade. The young hunter springs to ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... astir at Fort Point and the man with the new motor boat over at Hough's Neck is giving it a little run before breakfast, with the muffler off, as usual. A gull goes over, flying low. You do not see but you hear the soft swish of the wings. By and by the sun shows through a rift in the fog and you begin to move before a faint air from the southwest. A half hour more and the shreds of fog are melting upward into the blue of a clear day, the wind fills your sail and ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... grey dress of some soft material, and a large black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... and sign signals, once vanished from the brush in front of me so quickly and so silently that it seemed uncanny. One single note of command from a gibbon troop leader is sufficient to set the whole company in instant motion, fleeing at speed and in good order, with not a sound save the swish of the small branches that serve as the rungs of their ladder ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... the world save only themselves seemed to have been frozen into oblivion. There was no sound, save the monotonous swish, swish of their own snowshoes, to disturb the silence—a silence otherwise as absolute and vast as the uttermost depths ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... thus, thinking her own thoughts, when the light swish of silken drapery near caused her to look round, and to her astonishment the girl who was called Flora stood in the shelter of the window by ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... us reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. He himself confesses that after reading Swedenborg he turns to Shakespeare and reads "As You Like It" with positive delight, because Shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. The monks of the olden time read Rabelais ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... mate, and leading Willems on the poop, sat on the breech of one of the brass six-pounders with which his vessel was armed. The boat went off again to bring back the messenger. As soon as it was seen returning dark forms appeared on the brig's spars; then the sails fell in festoons with a swish of their heavy folds, and hung motionless under the yards in the dead calm of the clear and dewy night. From the forward end came the clink of the windlass, and soon afterwards the hail of the chief mate informing Lingard that the ...
— An Outcast of the Islands • Joseph Conrad
... low, hoping that, as before, he would change his mind as to direction. But now he was no longer looking, but travelling. Nearer and nearer he came. We could see plainly his little eyes, and hear the regular swish, swish, swish of his thick legs brushing through the grass. The regularity of his trot never varied, but to me lying there directly in his path, he seemed to be coming on altogether too fast for comfort. From our low level he looked as big as a barn. Memba Sasa ...
— The Land of Footprints • Stewart Edward White
... great, heavy, swaying yard slid a few inches up the short, thick mast, as though reluctantly, while away on our weather quarter we heard the fierce shouts of the men in the approaching boat as they encouraged each other, punctuated by the quick jerk of the oars in the rowlocks, and the swish of the water as the oar-blades clipped into it. With the passage of every second those menacing sounds drew appreciably nearer, dominating even the thunderous rustle and slatting of the sail that slowly climbed into the air over our heads, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... chair by the window, a deathly lassitude weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding heels of departure—a stillness that settled like a mist through hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... reminded me of Spain, while the blended coloring on the parapet and walls (which only time can give) was like Ponta Delgada of the Azores. Our hotel stood on an eminence overlooking the sea, indeed so near the sea that the moan and swish of the waves were always with us. The view from my balcony brought to mind the outlook from the old monastery at Amalfi, Italy. The whole atmosphere of the place was peaceful, and this was its chief attraction. We ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... time I was fulfilling the duties of a runner for our unit;—he also told me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... she whispered, "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen for his place of concealment. He knelt there ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... true," he burst in, for the swish of silken skirt was heard down the long passage. "Il est mort,—mort" he whispered, mustering up what little French he knew and then cursing ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... believed to come from the Northern Lights. Indeed, he has often felt that with all the light-producing energy and with all the rapid movement of the aurora it was mysterious that there should be absolutely no sound. The aurora often looks as if it ought to swish, but to his ears it has never done it; so much phosphorescent light might naturally be accompanied by some chemical odour, but to his nostrils ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... still on fire when I heard the soft swish of skirts. Then she stood before me, more beautiful than even my forest-dreaming had pictured her, more desirable than ever. She courtesied low, and the amazing mass of blue-black hair seemed an over-heavy burden for the slim white ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... two further and in the swish of the storm he heard hoofbeats again. Looking forth from the bushes he saw another line of horsemen, but now they were going in the direction of Pope's army. Dick recognized these figures. Shapeless as ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... flow of waters ceased, and a rush of saturated steam succeeded. At the same time the fierce swish of ascending waters and of descending cascades ceased, and a clear, definite note, as of a trumpet, exceeding long and loud, was blown. No archangel could have done better. As the steam rolled skyward it was condensed, ...
— Among the Forces • Henry White Warren
... cold on me. The fog pinioned me like a clammy winding-sheet; I could see nothing; I was too chilled to 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 ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... they swayed beneath the bitter blasts stiff with frost, and the moan of swinging boughs in a far-off willow bluff. It was these things that guided him, for he had left the rutted trail, and here and there the swish beneath the wheels told of taller grass, while the bluff ran black athwart the horizon when that had gone. Then twigs crackled beneath them as the horses picked their way amidst the shadowy trees stunted by a ceaseless struggle with the wind, and Winston ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... like his own back yard—not in sunny weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... squarely over the house at the same moment. They seemed to swing in circles, spiral-shaped like corkscrews. The dull whiz and swish of their flight made the most blood-curdling unearthly noise. Her grandmother fumbled at the door trying to turn the ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... less than three-quarters of an hour to low water. At that state of the tide the causeway was usually pretty bare; but, as she descended the hill, Eyebright, even in the darkness, could see that it was not nearly bare now. She could hear the swish of the water on the pebbles, and, by the light of her lantern, caught sight of more than one long wave sweeping almost up to the crest of the ridge. She would not wait, however, but set bravely forward. The ...
— Eyebright - A Story • Susan Coolidge
... brutal carelessness, in the responsible Power, whoever that may be. "What is it all," we say, "but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?" We feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless giant may at any moment crush. We dream of the swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of fact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... same swish and thud which had puzzled Lanyard at first hearing, the portrait slipped ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Whisk, swish, click, click, through the little crowd at Stokesley on a fine April afternoon, of jocund children just let loose from school, and mothers emerging from their meeting, collecting their progeny after the fashion of ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... dream-city, before us the Mediterranean shimmered and shone like a sultana's satin tunic. We could drop a stone from our windows into the sea; we ran dripping from our sea-baths up long stairs, across tiled balconies, into our vast rooms; all day and all night the swish and lisp of the soft tides mingled with ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... ignorant of seafaring matters as myself; but the captain said we were making a good voyage, and with that we were content. A stiff breeze blew the schooner along merrily, the blue sky was flecked only by the softest white clouds, and the swish, swish of the water against the vessel's sides sounded pleasantly in our ears. I began to think there were worse ways of earning a living than by ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... Swish! came the well-directed stream of water plump against the helmsman's face. Again and again it flew, until dripping and sore he dropped the tiller and dashed down the companion-way calling ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... wood, the steady swish of a sickle was heard; and this made a fearsome noise in the tenuous night. A gigantic man stood there; his head looked over the trees and his wide-stretched arms swung the sickle and a pick-hook; and, stroke ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... a gasp. There was a quick patter of light feet down the stairs, the last two cleared with a jump, a swish of silken skirts, a little gush of perfume, and then, bright as a flash of light, blue-eyed Mollie stood before him. She held his card in her fingers, and all the yellow hair fell over her plump shoulders, like ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... each swish with a yell of pain and fear, and the ever-ready Kloot dropped the curtain ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... to Noumea. But he was never wholly persuaded. A strange fear knocked at his heart, a fear that had no name. He never quite saw its face. Like a haunting ghost, it was always behind him, and he could hear the swish of its garments, the stealthy sound of its footfalls; but when he turned upon it the thing was gone, leaving only the impression of a black shadow with ...
— The Castle Of The Shadows • Alice Muriel Williamson
... a swish over a bridge, where as one rather felt than saw the full green Anio dashing through rocks; and just at sunset we came upon Subiaco—rising violet, with its great pointing castle mound, from the green valley of water and budding poplars into a purple ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... was a swish of silken petticoats, and she disappeared in an alcove, where she sat down at a desk. Keralio looked after her with undisguised admiration and puffed his cigar in silence for a few ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... rapid steps to her study. Bazarov followed her quickly, not raising his eyes, and only with his ears catching the delicate swish and rustle of her silk gown gliding before him. Madame Odintsov sank into the same easy-chair in which she had sat the previous evening, and Bazarov took up the same position ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... journey is continued. But though the respite has been short, it has been valuable; local inconvenience acts as a sedative to the nerves. Besides, there is less silence. The track that was parched and spongy has now become soft and slippery. Horses flounder and slide. Wet mackintoshes swish against the animals' flanks, and hoofs are raised with a rinsing, sucking sound. But there is man's work afoot. As the rain-mists sufficiently clear, the "Robber" is able to take his bearings. The head of the column has now reached ...
— On the Heels of De Wet • The Intelligence Officer
... trophies on the wall, to the parlour, and there I awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of her skirts, and, looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at the Governor's house the winter before, and was therefore a man of ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... stopped short. His quick ears had caught the swish of woman's gown passing along the passage outside. Emil too ...
— The Yellow Crayon • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... gathered himself to rise upward, catching as he did so a swish of The Hollander's pipe-length which made his cigarette leap neatly, holder and all, upward and outward. The Young Pole had by this time recovered sufficiently to get upon his hands and knees behind the Zulu; who was hurriedly but calmly propelling himself in the direction of the cherished ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... direct challenge to those who concede nothing more than instinct to the brute mind. He knew that Pierrot was dead without exactly knowing what death was. But of one thing he was sure: he would never see Pierrot again. He would never hear his voice again; he would never hear again the swish-swish-swish of his snowshoes in the trail ahead, and so on the trap line he did not look for Pierrot. Pierrot was gone forever. But Baree had not yet associated death with Nepeese. He was filled with a great uneasiness. What came to him from out of the chasm had made him tremble with fear ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... detailed. That night the village was bombed. The boy, who was really frightened, watched the two girls, being too proud to run for shelter while they were so calm. He trembled and shook while they sat quietly listening to the swish of falling bombs and the crash of anti- aircraft guns. In spite of his fright, he was so ashamed of his fears that he forced himself to stand in the street and watch the progress of the raid. The next day he reported to his ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... a wretched metal structure with an askew sign reading, "El Grande Hotel." Jane hurried through the double portals, the swish of air flapping her outer garments as the air conditioning unit fought savagely to keep out the ...
— Foundling on Venus • John de Courcy
... does not mind them more than the carabao in some muddy pond, and one is just about as cleanly as the other. They make little noise going to and fro, all being barefoot; but it was not long until I learned to know whether there were three, fifty, or one hundred passing by the swish of ...
— An Ohio Woman in the Philippines • Emily Bronson Conger
... you that a blow from a swan's wing will break a man's leg, and a peck from a swan's bill would knock out both your eyes. Hie! Swish!" ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... swish, the lady principal came hurrying through the reception hall beyond, with her silk skirts rustling, and her face quite pale. And the girls turned their heads toward her. She raised her hand and said in her soft voice: "Are Miss Martha ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... greater. The passing of enemy shells was less frequent, but precautions for safety were increased. Advantage was taken of ravines, of fences, of fourth and fifth line trenches. The troops ere not beyond range of the German sharpshooters, and the swish of bullets was heard occasionally in the air above ...
— The Flag • Homer Greene
... the father—not as one would naturally expect, the mother—who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... and then climbed on to the little steed himself; and as soon as they were properly seated the little man said "swish," and away went the steed, galloping over the sea without wetting hair or hoof. But fast as he galloped the nine little pipers were always ahead of him, although they seemed to be going only at a walking pace. ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... hours passed and he did not stir. His stillness made his hearing more acute. The trampling of feet over his head came to him with great distinctness. He heard the singing of wind at the porthole, and, now and then, the swish of waters as they swept past the schooner. He wondered what Tayoga was doing and what would Willet think when he came back to Albany and found him gone. It gave him a stab of agony. His pride was hurt, too, that ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... his attention was drawn away by the swish of oars, and a large boat full of men passed immediately underneath ...
— The Refugees • Arthur Conan Doyle
... cry, almost drowned by the noise of the carriage as it bumped on the rocks at the bottom of the river, the swish of the water and the noise of the horse's hoofs. Each took his dunnage bag on his lap and in the center of the river they had to lift up their feet as the water came into the body of the buggy. It almost seemed that they would be swept down the river. Bob looked at the driver and at ...
— Bob Hunt in Canada • George W. Orton
... off almost simultaneously outside, and the dining-room was plunged into pitchy darkness. Steel instantly caught up a chair. He was no coward, but he was a novelist with a novelist's imagination. As he stood there the sweetest, most musical laugh in the world broke on his ear. He caught the swish of silken drapery and the subtle scent that suggested the fragrance of a woman's hair. It was vague, undefined, ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... dark, rich soil. He sensed behind him the silent quiver of Martian laughter, and felt a new ecstasy of hate for his late guards, their race, and the red planet that spawned them. Not until he heard the rumble and swish of the ship's departure did he take note of the little world that was now his ...
— The Devil's Asteroid • Manly Wade Wellman
... caught the sound of swearing and he saw men moving quickly about on the deck, then the gray white of sails spreading like gaunt ghosts. The swish of water told him that the boat was moving, that his quarry was slipping into ...
— Little Lost Sister • Virginia Brooks
... said Durant calmly. He had caught a furtive flash from Frida's eyes that lighted upon, glanced off him and fell to the ground. The woman in her had appealed to his chivalry. At the same instant there was a swish, as if the skirts of heaven were trailing across the earth, and the rain came down. He hastily thrust Miss Tancred's arms into the sleeves of her mackintosh and wriggled into his own. The final speeches were short and to ...
— The Return of the Prodigal • May Sinclair
... salon, where there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, then came up to me, called me by name, and introduced ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... boat, set free, lurched forward with a flap of her sail, which was like the report of a cannon. For a moment, all seemed confusion and flapping chaos, then came a sense of tenseness, and the boat heeled over with a swish, which added a hundred-weight of solid water to the beating of the hail on the spare sail, beneath which ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... well as it could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... short, for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... Canadian homestead to which her thoughts wandered. She could recall the unpolished stove, filling the place with its curious, unpleasant smell, and the icy draughts that eddied about it. She could imagine the swish of driving snow about the quivering wooden building when the dreaded blizzards raged; the strange, oppressive silence when the prairie lay still in the grip of the Arctic frost; and George coming in with half-frozen limbs ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... and another. It was slow work, one step at a time; but at length they found that there was firm ground in this new region. They concluded that the world was only a larger calf pen, after all; but it was a wonderfully light calf pen, and its walls were certainly a long way off. Swish! up went their tails into the air and away they scampered like the wildest of ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... rose. There was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... reached the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... in the pit. He was perturbed, and cursing. We dropped, gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of foam as it sheered the water. ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... and the farm-hands were abroad in the dark of the early mornings with lanterns, to feed the stock and take them out to water, singing cheerfully. All morning spread the clamour of the flail and the fanning-mill, the swish of the knife through the turnips and the beets, and the sound of the saw and the axe, as the youngest man of the family, muffled to the nose, sawed the wood into ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... be heard, little gurgles of laughter, which in Egypt, thanks be to Allah, do not degenerate into giggles, the swish of a whip in the shadow, followed by a woman's cry, and through all, above ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... These acres of my home, Some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high Where once ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... away the raindrops of the night before. Signs of activity are abroad in the inn; the swish of brooms; the noisy clatter of pails. A warm aroma of coffee floats up the stairs and under the door of number fourteen, awaking Arnaud to pleasant thoughts of breakfast. He is partly dressed before his eye lights on the canvas he ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... foot in long cloaks and veils, lay about the floor or on the divans round the walls, hardly distinguishable from the bundles except that now and then they moaned or uttered some brief lamentation. From other parts of the house came sounds of hammering and the hurried swish of cleaning walls. From the long windows a deep and quiet harbour could be seen, and a few orange lights were beginning to glimmer from the quay and anchored boats. Across the purple of the water rose ...
— Essays in Rebellion • Henry W. Nevinson
... Suddenly it was broken by a swift, complete sound, a heavy boom-roar, and on the heels of this noise came a throbbing, whistling sigh that, at first faint as the sound of ocean on a distant beach, increased with incredible speed to a whistling swish, ending in a HISH of tremendous volume and a roaring, grinding burst. The sound of a great shell is never a pure bang; one hears, rather, the end of the arriving HISH, the explosion, and the tearing disintegration of the thick wall of iron in one grinding hammer-blow ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... that for some purpose of their own the men had been going round and round the island for some time, waiting for an opportunity to land. I strained my eyes to follow them in the darkness, but the night had completely swallowed them up, and not even the faintest swish of the paddles reached my ears as the Indians plied their long and powerful strokes. The canoe would be round again in a few moments, and this time it was possible that the men might land. It was well ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... sunset they did not progress five miles. Their two pack animals found insecure footing; death awaited them hourly upon many a day at the bottom of some sheer walled cliff. They climbed with the sharp slopes on the mountains, they dropped down into the narrow, flinty canons, they heard only the swish of tree tops and the quarrelling of streams lost to their eyes in the depths below them. And they came in two weeks to Blue Lake having seen no other man or other trail than ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... night when it came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... crossed the long toll-bridge, the horses stepping hesitatingly and curveting a little at the swish of the noisy water, climbed the sunny hills beyond, and dipped down to a level stretch of wood, in the heart of which they chose a picnic-ground by the side of ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... not told us, go to Christ and say, 'Grant that we may sit, the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom.' That was what he wished and hoped for, and what he got was years of service, and a taste of persecution, and finally the swish of the headsman's sword. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... in the dusty heat We lay and heard the bullets swish and sing Like scythes amid the over-ripened wheat, And we the harvest of ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... open. Congratulating himself on this fact, and with the fingers of his right hand reaching instinctively for his pistol butt, Captain Plum mounted the stair. When half way up he heard voices. As he reached the landing at the top he caught the quick swish of a skirt. Another step and he was in the open door. He was not soon enough to see the person who had just disappeared through an opposite door but he knew that it was a woman. Directly in front of him as if she had been expecting his arrival ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... for . . . well, say forty years. Anne was of two minds whether to have her cry out then and there, or wait till she was safely in her own white room at home. Before she could decide there was a click of heels and a silken swish on the porch floor, and Anne found herself confronted by a lady whose appearance made her recall a recent criticism of Mr. Harrison's on an overdressed female he had seen in a Charlottetown store. "She looked like a head-on collision between a ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... only one experience. One night last week, clear and frosty, I had just gone to my room at about eleven o'clock when the doctor called me to come out and "hear the lights." I thought surely I must have misunderstood, but on reaching the balcony and listening, I could distinctly hear the swish of the "spirits" as they rushed across the sky. It sounds like a diminished silk petticoat which has lost its blatancy, but retains ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... the wall, to the parlour, and there I awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of her skirts, and, looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... two corners of the feather pallet, and made it travel in a swift swish across the attic boards to the window at the front, which he opened. Supporting Maria in his arms, he signaled Angelique, with an amused face, to obey her tyrant; and she did so. But Peggy stalked behind the screens, and put her face close to the black eyes in the great soft ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... Boat whistles, bridge bells, electric alarm tinglings and the swish of water like the sound of wood tapping wood. Lights that have different colors. The yellow of electric signs. Around one of them that hoists its message in the air runs a green border. The electric lights quiver and ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... left alone, glad of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of the water ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... a very hot and very weary crowd of fellows who thronged the dressing room in the gymnasium five minutes later and, above the swish of water in the showers, shouted back and forth and discussed the game from as many angles as there had been participants. Possibly Brimfield had no very good reason for feeling proud of her afternoon's work, for last year she had defeated Thacher ...
— Left Guard Gilbert • Ralph Henry Barbour
... above and chloritic yellow below, ended in a thick bed of water-rolled pebbles, not in ground-rock; nor did it show the couch of excellent clay which usually underlies the surface, and which, I have said, is extracted through pits to make sun-dried brick, swish, and other building materials. We also secured some of the blood-red earth from the eastern tail of the northern "Shigh," the manganese-stained Tau and the gravelly sand washed out of the Cascalho-gravel, the latter very promising. The result of our careless working, however, was not successful; ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... at that moment uppermost in his thoughts came down the dusky silence from the further end of the hall. She turned her inscrutable eyes upon him in passing, and flitted noiselessly and with languid grace up the stairway, the faint swish of her gown vanishing with her. He hesitated a moment, overpowered by conflicting emotion; then he sprang recklessly ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... him. He was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown about ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... He could hear the swish of the waters, white at her foot; he could see the wet sail, the bucketing bows, the fore-deck awash. She would pass bang beneath his feet. He could see no man at the helm—only the jumping bowsprit, ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... The swish of the air current through the narrow corridors made a constant murmur of sound, but he found himself listening for something else, for a footfall other than his own, for the betraying rasp of clothing against a wall—for even a whisper of voice. And time and ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... cheats much," said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... advance and the interest reached a fever heat. The swamp was five or six hundred yards long, and for the first three hundred yards nothing of a thrilling sort occurred. The shouts of the beaters blended into a rhythmic, melodious chant and the swish of their sticks as they thrashed the reeds was enough to make even the ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... how long his search lasted, how long he heard the swish and the bang of rockets, the vehement music of the band, the cries and laughter of the people, the sound of footsteps as if a world were starting on some pilgrimage; how long he saw the dazzling avenues of fire stretching away into the city's heart; how long he looked ...
— A Spirit in Prison • Robert Hichens
... what manner of man thou art in the flesh, sir, but figure thee bearded and blackavised, and of a lean tortuous habit of body, that moves ever with a swish. Every morning, I swear, thou readest avidly the list of male births in thy paper, and then are thy hands rubbed gloatingly the one upon the other. 'Tis fear of thee and thy gown and thy cane, which are part of thee, that makes the fairies to hide by day; wert thou to linger but once ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... sound he heard was the labored pumping of his own heart and the swish of the wavelets against the timbered buttress of the Sawdust Pile. The conviction slowly came to his torpid brain that he was seeking admittance to a deserted house, and he leaned against the door ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... The artist's face was set and stern. His eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just warming up ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... dark night and silent. The swish and lapping of the waters on the Port Moresby beach on the southern shore of the immense island of New Guinea, filled the air with a quiet hush ...
— The Book of Missionary Heroes • Basil Mathews
... Indeed, he has often felt that with all the light-producing energy and with all the rapid movement of the aurora it was mysterious that there should be absolutely no sound. The aurora often looks as if it ought to swish, but to his ears it has never done it; so much phosphorescent light might naturally be accompanied by some chemical odour, but to his nostrils never ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... the blacksmith-shop and fumbled for a match. Just as he was about to strike it he heard the swish of oiled clothes passing, and waited for some time. Then, igniting his punk and hiding it under his coat, he opened the door to listen. The wind had died down now and the rain sang ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... accepted fashion, shivering despite their warm clothing and mufflers, and woollen caps and thick great-coats in the raw-edged cold of the breaking day. For an hour they stood there listening to the whine of overhead bullets and the sharp 'slap' of well-aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crash of shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and the boom ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... sinewy, hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not an eating-house, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... this thing was like some bird of prey that circled in the sky just above him—its shadow filling him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was no time in his life when he was not in a state of inward war. His intellect rebelled; and on the other hand, there was a part of his nature that craved this sex-experience and welcomed it—and this ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... the air; there followed it, leaping after the beam, a great swish of steel, soon a ...
— The Life and Death of Richard Yea-and-Nay • Maurice Hewlett
... can't believe it exciting, hop up on the load, and let us jog you home. Swish! bang! thump! tip! turn! joggle! jolt! Hold on to your ribs. Pull in your popping eyes. Look out for the stump! Isn't it fun to go leafing? Is n't it fun to do anything that your heart does with you?—even though you do ...
— The Hills of Hingham • Dallas Lore Sharp
... A sudden swish, then from under a tangled elderberry bush there emerged a darling little boy. At the sight of the intruders he stood stock ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... of the finding of a man's body, stark and cold, not fifty yards from his own threshold; he had fallen helpless, faint from incessant struggling through the snow-drifts and too weak to make his cries for help heard above the rushing of the wind and the swish of the snow on the window behind which his terrified wife was anxiously ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... supplemented by occasional "pieces"—simple, yet boasting a name. But when Penelope played "Down by the Mill," one heard only the notes—accurate, rhythmic, an excellent imitation; when Hester played it, one might catch the whir of the wheel, the swish of the foaming brook, and almost the spicy smell of the sawdust, so vividly was the scene ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... the lion cub with whom Nero used to play, was far off in Africa, so our circus friend had to stay by himself. He curled up on the leaves, listened to the swish and patter of the rain, and ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly destroyed, even as his ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... carelessness, in the responsible Power, whoever that may be. "What is it all," we say, "but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?" We feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless giant may at any moment crush. We dream of the swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of fact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... long council with Mabel, he had made up his mind to walk up-stream as far as the spot where two brooks met, and formed body enough for a fly flipped in very carefully to sail downward. Here he began, and the creak of his reel and the swish of his rod were music to him, after the whirl of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... old, but it was now continuous along the whole horizon behind us. The noise was that of a large orchestra of street boys each heartily banging his kerosene-tin drum. Our shells streamed overhead with an almost continuous swish. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... our infantry could be seen advancing toward this fort. As the cannon at our side would bang, and the shell would swish through the air with its querulous, vicious, whining note, we would watch its explosion, and then turn our attention to the little black specks of infantry dodging in and out among the groups of trees. Now they would disappear wholly from sight in the brush, and again would be ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... came the honking of the motor-car, and a great swish where it grazed a wet bush near the house. Somebody lowered the gas in the hall, and Mrs. Paget's voice said regretfully, "I wish we had had a fire in the parlor—just one of the times!—but there's no help for it." They all came in, Margaret flushed, starry-eyed; her father and mother ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... Mrs. Drack's which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide; but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin. It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his posture—as if to show he could patronize ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... had gone under a cloud as the afternoon shadows began to lengthen, and a light tenderer than sunlight and warmer than moonlight fell across the river. The water slipped over the stones behind them with a pleasant swish and swirl, and the mint that was crushed by the prow of their boat gave ...
— Sandy • Alice Hegan Rice
... to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear the stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now and then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. The rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew they were following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to overtake him. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel faster through the night, but ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... climb out on the roof. There, with nothing on but my nightgown, tennis shoes, and the moonlight, I would dance frenetically. The tiles would break loose beneath my gossamer tread and, accompanied by sections of gutter, go poppity-swish into the street below and hit all manner of funny things. I fancy that some of the funny things complained. I know the police called, and I seem to remember rather a nasty letter from the landlord's agent. I ...
— Marge Askinforit • Barry Pain
... road which wound up to the summit of the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the edge of the steep hillside,—so close that there were times when every one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over, it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,—a swish through the air and a smash at the bottom,—but a tumbling, and a rolling over and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden turn of the road the ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... Venus de Milo beaten on Points and Style, and when the Way the Skirt sets isn't so Poor, and she is Coy and introduces the Startled Fawn way of backing up without getting any farther away, and when she comes on with short Steps, and he gets the remote Swish of the Real Silk, to say nothing of the Faint Aroma of New-Mown Hay, and her Hesitating Manner seems to ask, "Have I or have I not met a Friend?"—in a Case of that kind, the Victim is just the same as Strapped to the Operating-Table. ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... patched by trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an occasional bee that came and was gone in ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... things may be put and yet the truth retained. Yesterday we reclined at our ease in our cosy floating cottage, towed up the lovely river by a picturesque crew of bronze Kashmiris, the swish of the passing water only broken by their melodious voices. The brilliancy of the morning gave way in the afternoon to a soft haze which fell over the snowy ranges, mellowing their clear tones to a soft and pearly grey, while the reflections of ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... he watched till the kopje was blotted from his sight, and the demons of the storm came shrieking back. Then suddenly there came a crash that shook the world and made the senses reel. He heard the rush and swish of water, water torrential that fell in a streaming mass, and as his understanding came staggering back he knew that the first, most menacing danger was past. The cloud ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... deal of poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the fence and superintends the cutting of the dew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the "swish" and a rhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not much time to attend to it, for it is lively business "spreading" after half a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low, ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... Castleman Hall, and to all the scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, a special horse ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... sharply and evidently take to a by-road, for she could hear the swish of leaves on overhanging branches ...
— The Perils of Pauline • Charles Goddard
... answer at first. He was looking at Andrew, who was sweeping the path at a little distance. Swish, swish, went his broom to right and left amongst the yellow leaves, leaving a bare ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... the door and went in with a swish of silk and patchouli. The candles were unlit. Miss Darrell, still wearing her hat and scarlet wrap, sat at the window contemplating ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... breath enough left to shout "Here!" and sufficient presence of mind to wriggle as far as he could when he had done it. The instant swish of a sword, delivered with such good will that it smashed on the stone floor where he had lain but a moment before, showed his wisdom, and he tried to roll out of the fray, but Charteris, who must have struck his head in falling, lay a dead weight across his legs. While he tried ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... letting in a wealth of sunshine, it appeared startlingly lifeless and void. The maids seemed unusually quiet. She heard no movement on the staircase or in the rooms above. Neither gardener nor garden-boy was visible. She would have hailed the whirr of the mowing machine or swish of a broom on the lawn.—Oh! if only her poor dear Nannie were still alive, safe upstairs, there in the ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... or two further and in the swish of the storm he heard hoofbeats again. Looking forth from the bushes he saw another line of horsemen, but now they were going in the direction of Pope's army. Dick recognized these figures. Shapeless as he might appear on his horse that ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... have us reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. He himself confesses that after reading Swedenborg he turns to Shakespeare and reads "As You Like It" with positive delight, because Shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. The monks of the olden time read ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... the teeth of the brisk trade wind. This necessitated frequent tacks, so that, overhead, the mainsail was ever swooping across from port tack to starboard tack and back again, making air-noises like the swish of wings, sharply rat-tat-tatting its reef points and loudly crashing its mainsheet gear along the traveller. Half a dozen times, as it swooped overhead, Jerry leaped for it, mouth open to grip, lips writhed clear of the ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... on the other would be the minute blue flower of the flax; and an old dog drowsing on the threshold.... And this would be in his mind as he wandered the hot foreign streets.... And there would be the droning of the bees in the clover, and the swish of the swallows darting to and from the eaves, and in the evening would be the singing of the crickets.... And these he would hear over the capstan's clank.... When he tumbled into his cabin after his watch, into the heeling room where the lamp swung overhead ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... movement in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They seemed ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... were the smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... passed, and then he too heard a footfall in the passage outside, and the swish of ...
— The Coryston Family • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... against the walls. She hoped Mildred Caniper slept through a wailing that might have a personal note for her, and as she prepared to leave the room and listen on the landing, she thought she heard a new sound cutting through the swish of the rainfall and the shriek of wind. It was a smaller sound, as though a child were alone and crying in the night, and she leaned from her window to look into the garden. The rain wetted her hair and hands and neck, while she stared into varying depths of blackness—the poplars ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... to me, sergeant, that this is pretty near to Heaven," said Dick as he sat on the bank and let the water swish around his ankles. ...
— The Guns of Shiloh • Joseph A. Altsheler
... has muddied the spring for me—robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and yellow down and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... dancing in there; she saw Lady Hesketh floating in the determined grip of Cecil Page, she saw Sir Thorald proudly prancing to the air of the farandole; Betty Castlemaine, Jack, Alixe, Barbara Lisle passed the window only to re-pass and pass again in a whirl of gauze and filmy colour; and the swish! swish! swish! of silken petticoats, and the rub of little feet on the polished floor grew into a rhythmic, monotonous cadence, beating, beating ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... which terminated in an eminence commanding a wide and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, they paused. The sea lay far below them, dimly covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and roll of the tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the grave and graduated ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... followed. When but a few hundred yards down the path, someone called her. She thought it was a fancy and went onward, nevertheless feeling a sudden silence and trouble. Immediately she heard footsteps and the rustling swish ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... The riotous swish of the water sounded distant but insistent in the warm, quiet room, and faintly, at rare intervals, the bell, rung by unseen forces, struck dully. It had given up ...
— At the Crossroads • Harriet T. Comstock
... jingle of bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... scarcely hear her. The driving rain, the swish of some great boughs against the house, the rattling of casements and doors, and the shrieking of wind in the chimney made all other sounds wellnigh inaudible. Yet as he listened he seemed to catch the accents of a far-off voice calling, now wistfully, now imperatively, "Thomas! ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... not to see the soldiers, the sky, the horses or the crowd. He did not feel the cold, the terror or the shame. He did not hear the swish of the knout in the air or the savage howl of pain and despair. He only saw the bare back of a man's body swelling up and covered over evenly with white and purple stripes. Gradually the bare back lost the semblance of human ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... the grown-ups who had begun the voyage together, and were friendly by now, were in the music-room below having a concert. The ship was utterly still but for the throb of the engines and the "swish" of the water as the bows cut through it. They were running at full speed, without a pitch or a roll, the sea as clear as glass, when all of a sudden there was an awful crash, and the boat shuddered from bow ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... there sounded a dull bang, followed by the loud ring of tin, a breathless cry, and the swish of flying water—as Johnnie came hurtling headlong out of the stall, the bucket preceding him, a shod hoof in his immediate wake, and the contents of the pail showering in all directions. There was a second bang also dull, as he landed against the bottom step of the stairs at the very ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... the edge of the cliff, where the heathery hill comes to an end and the steep rocks begin. About a mile to the west there was a long headland, 'Feakle Callaigh' ('The Witch's Tooth '), covered with mists, that blew over me from time to time with a swish of rain, followed by sunshine again. The mountains on the other side of the bay were covered, so I could see nothing but the strip of brilliant sea below me, thronged with girls and men up to their waists in the water, with a hamper in one hand and a stick in the other, gathering the moss, ...
— In Wicklow and West Kerry • John M. Synge
... the air almost faint with their perfume. Margaret stretched out her hand, plucked a handful of the creamy petals and held them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away they heard the soft swish of ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... would be found spread about very much where it is to-day? "Bull-roarer" is just one of our local names for what survives now-a-days as a toy in many an old-fashioned corner of the British Isles, where it is also known as boomer, buzzer, whizzer, swish, and so on. Without going farther afield we can get a hint of the two main functions which it seems to have fulfilled amongst ruder peoples. In Scotland it is, on the one hand, sometimes used to "ca' the ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... eager to put forth, was now indeed putting forth if he did no more than sit on the steamer's deck, watching green shore and landlocked bays fall astern, feeling the steady throb of her engines, hearing the swish and purl of a cleft sea parting at the bow in white foam, rippling away in a churned wake ...
— The Hidden Places • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... to see his yacht lying so near him, and Davy on the deck, and to hear the blows of the hammer and the swish of the plane as the carpenter went on with the alterations to which he had set him, but he got tired of sharing in activity only with his ears and eyes. One thing he had by it, however, and that was—a good lesson in quiescent waiting—a grand thing for any man, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... chaps, baint you? A rare honest gentleman of the right sort war he—he war!" and he pulled down another boy and put me up instead, and told me all about the great fire at Stubbs's factory. You can't think what fun it was. Roar, roar, up went the flame. Swish, wish, went the water—such a bellowing—such great ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a smothered exclamation, and then sounds of somebody moving hastily about the room and the swish of clothing ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... straddle. Stron't, lanted. Strunt, liquor. Strunt, to swagger. Studdie, an anvil. Stumpie, dim. of stump; a worn quill. Sturt, worry, trouble. Sturt, to fret; to vex. Sturtin, frighted, staggered. Styme, the faintest trace. Sucker, sugar. Sud, should. Sugh, sough, sigh, moan, wail, swish. Sumph, churl. Sune, soon. Suthron, southern. Swaird, sward. Swall'd, swelled. Swank, limber. Swankies, strapping fellows. Swap, exchange. Swapped, swopped, exchanged. Swarf, to swoon. Swat, sweated. Swatch, sample. Swats, new ale. Sweer, v. dead-sweer. Swirl, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... was. It is a dreadful noise, when heard for the first time. I did not then know what a mass of water can come aboard a ship without doing much harm. So, when the head of a wave, rushing across the deck, came with a swish down the hatch to wash the 'tweendecks I started up in my hammock, pretty well startled. I soon learned that all was well, for I heard the sailors laughing in their rough, swearing fashion as they ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... come!" she whispered, "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen for his place of concealment. He knelt there motionless, a cocked pistol clenched in his right hand. His breath seemed to have stopped, ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... a sense of bewilderment held him. Then in a rush came back the memory of what had happened. He listened intently. Back and forth, back and forth somewhere near went a soft footstep, the swish and glide of a moccasin. He strained his eyes, which smarted terribly, into the darkness, and presently descried a tall form pacing slowly up against the skyline of his vision and back again into the shadows. ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... prone during the blinks of moon, stealing forward in the dark; till, at length, the swish of the rain on the waters of the Tarn, and the sobbing of the flock in front, warned ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... to see that!" he cried. "What is it like down there? Do sharks come by,—swish! with their great tails? And why don't they eat you, like the man in the geography book? And is there really a sea-serpent? And do the oysters open and shut their mouths, so that you can see the pearls, or how do you know which ...
— Nautilus • Laura E. Richards
... head filled with these musings, and my heart weighed down almost to crushing by the sense of vast loneliness and peril which the spectacle of naked marsh-lands and dark, threatening forests inspired, the sound of the chopping ceased, and there followed, a few seconds later, a great swish and ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... characteristic of the two that when the uproar broke out Vance Cornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sister Elizabeth ran to the window with a swish of skirts around her long legs. After the first shot there was a lull. The little cattle town was as peaceful as ever with its storm-shaken houses staggering away down ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... yet about three hundred yards distant. I might not have heard him, even with the aid of the cleft, but tonight Areskoui has given uncommon power to my ear, perhaps to aid us, and I know he is walking among thick bushes. I can hear the branches swish as they fly back into place, after his body has passed. Ah, a small stick popped as it broke under ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... warm drink tae," put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near wishin'—" ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... by others, he darted into the companion-way and made his way back to the stateroom of the sick passenger. Through the lightless porthole he listened for the terrifying shout, "Man overboard!" It did not come, but his ear caught the staccato beat of a motor near by, striking up abruptly out of the swish of rushing waters. In his ignorance, he decided that it was a boat from the ship going to the rescue of the daring deserters, and calmly waited for the engines of the mighty Doraine to cease their rhythmic pulsing. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... quickly and so silently that it seemed uncanny. One single note of command from a gibbon troop leader is sufficient to set the whole company in instant motion, fleeing at speed and in good order, with not a sound save the swish of the small branches that serve as the rungs of ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... chair before the fire and invited me to sit there. While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments. Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass. It contained what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow river with the shingly bottom. I must have ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... Till would be ready early, and that when Little Jim's folks came driving up to their front gate tomorrow, Little Tom, with his best clothes on, would come running out of their dilapidated old unpainted house, carrying his New Testament, which Old Man Paddler had bought for him.... Then they'd all swish away together to ...
— Shenanigans at Sugar Creek • Paul Hutchens
... mattress, fall asleep. On one of these occasions you find unexpectedly that the velvet-gray night has become steel-gray dawn, and that the kindly old quartermaster is bending over you. Sleepily, very sleepily, you stagger to your feet and collapse into the nearest chair. Then to the swish of water, as the sailors sluice the decks all around and under you, you fall into ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... thick standing trees, the path arcaded over by leafy branches appearing as dark as a tunnel. As the horses move on, the boughs, bent forward by their breasts, swish back in rebound, striking against the legs of their riders; while higher up the hanging llianas, many of them beset with spines, threaten to tear ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like 'swish,' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent forth a vapour, or, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... - All my thirst for a little warmth, a little sun, a little corner of blue sky avails nothing. Without, the rain falls with a long drawn SWISH, and the night is as dark as a vault. There is no wind indeed, and that is a blessed change after the unruly, bedlamite gusts that have been charging against one round street corners and utterly abolishing and destroying all that is peaceful in ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... at him, but at his first movement to arise, the frisky animal gave a swish of his brush and was gone up the tree ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... remembered that they were in pursuit of a German spy. The remainder of his scepticism forsook him. Amid such surroundings, with the singing of the wind and the gurgling swish of the flying boat in his ears, any adventure seemed possible. The prosaic limitations of ordinary life dropped off from him. Only it seemed a pity to find the spy, since finding him would stop ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... the circle of faces around the sitting-room table. The girls had volunteered to help her pick over berries for canning the following day. It was a sacrifice to make, too, with the midsummer evening calling to them in all its varied orchestral tones: Katydids and peep frogs, the swish of the wind through the big Norway pines on the terraces, and the scrape of Shad's old fiddle from the back porch. It was Friday evening, and Mr. and Mrs. Robbins had driven over to the Judge's to attend a community meeting, ...
— Kit of Greenacre Farm • Izola Forrester
... the way!" Swish! Swish! Swish! they shot by. Livingstone had to dodge for his life. Of course, no ...
— Santa Claus's Partner • Thomas Nelson Page
... they had gone the silence was at an end. He heard the breathing of his comrades, the timbers creaked, the wind whistled, and the waves swish-swashed against the ship. Then he knew that he was still among the living, and on ...
— Jerusalem • Selma Lagerlof
... paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf had disappeared. The hazel ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... foyer, save for a meagre shaft of light that came through a slightly parted pair of portieres to the left and not a dozen feet from where he stood. He strained his ear toward this shaft of light until there came an unmistakable swish of sound, whereupon he moved forward in ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... investigate afterwards. At the instant he felt that strange feeling of fear he was passing a certain big, hollow log. Without really knowing why he did it, because, you know, he didn't stop to do any thinking, he dived into that hollow log, and even as he did so there was the sharp swish of great wings. Terror the Goshawk had missed catching Peter by the fraction of ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... House you could have heard delighted "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" from the children. There was a rustling of programs, a swish of skirts, several coughs, and one or two sneezes. Then the fiddles squeaked, there was rumble and boom of the drums, and the orchestra ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... the air had that limpid clearness which makes the first hole look about 100 yards long instead of 345, Ramsden Waters, alone as ever, stood on the first tee addressing his ball. For a space he waggled masterfully, then, drawing his club back with a crisp swish, brought it down. And, as he did so, a voice behind ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... Tay Ho's hooded head for the first time showed in front—only to be instantly eclipsed by the white star of Aldegonde. Aramis began to hang—the angry roar of his backers told he was out of it. Simultaneously, the jockeys sat down to ride—there was the cruel swish of catgut, the crueler prodding of steel. In the crowd a great hushed breath, like the sigh of a forest before the storm, told ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... tail in his face, and then kick over the pail when he was milking her, after which he would always give her a beating with the stool on which he sat. But he got the blessing, and his heart was overflowing with peace. The next morning he went to milk that cow, and when the pail was nearly full, swish! came the tail in his face, and with a vicious kick she knocked over the pail, and then ran across the barn-yard. The blessed man picked up the empty pail and stool and went over to the cow, which stood ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... to have lain there ages, scarcely breathing, when, in a little lull, above the fierce swish of rain she thought she heard voices. Cautiously she lifted her head; listened. She had left her door open for air and, now, she was sure she heard Uncle Charlie's deep voice. She couldn't hear what he ...
— Missy • Dana Gatlin
... cat duet. A silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack— A loud swish, Squish! "What's that?" ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... really consists of one room, but she maintains that there are two; so, rather than argue, let us say that there are two. The other one has no window, and she could not swish her old skirts in it without knocking something over; its grandest display is of tin pans and crockery on top of a dresser which has a lid to it; you have but to whip off the utensils and raise the lid, and, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... The faint swish of bushes as Lieutenant Boggs's ten men scuttled into the brush behind them—the distant beat of the army's feet getting fainter ahead of them, ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... literary efforts," Master continued, "I went to the Rai Ghat here to bathe in the Ganges. The ghat was deserted; I stood still for awhile, enjoying the sunny peace. After a dip in the sparkling waters, I started for home. The only sound in the silence was that of my Ganges-drenched cloth, swish-swashing with every step. As I passed beyond the site of the large banyan tree near the river bank, a strong impulse urged me to look back. There, under the shade of the banyan, and surrounded by a few disciples, sat ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... head, with great flat nose and huge flapping nostrils. It was a Thessian head! The mouth, fifty feet across, wrinkled into an horrific grin, and broken, stained teeth of iron showed in the mouth. Great talons upraised, it rent the misty wall that bound them, and writhed its awful length in. The swish of its scales seemed to come to the watchers, as it chased after a great battleship whose pilot fled in terror. Faster than the mighty spaceship the awful Thing caught it in mighty talons that ripped through solid relux. Scratching, fluttering enormous, blood-red wings, the silvery claws tore away ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... homewards. Already I could discern the black outlines of the willows on the pond's edge, and the light in my window peeped out at me through the apple-trees in the orchard—peeped at me, and hid again, like the eye of some man keeping watch on me—when suddenly I heard behind me the faint swish of the rapidly parted air, and something at once embraced and snatched me upward, as a buzzard pounces on and snatches up a quail.... It was Alice sweeping down upon me. I felt her cheek against my cheek, her enfolding arm about my body, and ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... hardened; I was not afraid to hide in the woods; devils and evil spirits I did not fear any more. I had learned well enough that no devil will ever trouble a man as much as one human being can trouble another. And yet, when I remembered the swish of the rods over the naked flesh, the spurting blood, the loose flaps of skin, and the futile outcries, I was paralyzed with fear. No, it was not really fear: it was a sort of submissive adoration. Had a birch-rod been lying near me, I should have ...
— In Those Days - The Story of an Old Man • Jehudah Steinberg
... scudding ring reversed within scudding ring, the bowmen outermost. Around and 'round and 'round they galloped, yelling, gibing, taunting, shooting so malignantly that the air was in a constant hum and swish. The lead whined and smacked, the ...
— Desert Dust • Edwin L. Sabin
... "listening to a landscape," knowing by the voice of the wind what trees it touched; the buzz of olive leaves bunched like hives of silver bees against the blue; the sea-murmur of pines; the skeleton swish of palms; the gay, dancing rustle of poplars. And he showed her how he gathered beauty and colour from words, which ...
— Everyman's Land • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... now continuous along the whole horizon behind us. The noise was that of a large orchestra of street boys each heartily banging his kerosene-tin drum. Our shells streamed overhead with an almost continuous swish. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... forget the night when it came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with my courage. There ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... on his knees, and the broad brim of his soft hat swept the marble floor with a gentle rhythmic swish, as it swung idly from his loosened grasp. I heard it as ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... in swiftly. Through the dark we could hear the low swish of the rising river, and Burton, with a sly twinkle in his eye, remarked, "For a semi-arid country, this ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to the fire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to each other, and listened to Dr. Silence's voice as it mingled with the swish and whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Falcone's sword with a swish, and into the dark closet beyond went the equerry with a roar, ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... in the night, with monotonous swish-swish and swelling wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... comes!" screamed Madaline, as a moving figure could be outlined in the shadows of the low brush, and tall swamp berry trees, that just towered high enough to hide the form that bent and broke the impeding young birches. It was the swish and motion of the brush that indicated his advance ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... big red ox with a pointed stick, the two beasts settled their massive shoulders to the collar, and with a soft greasy swish and a crackle of half-burnt stubble the moldboard rolled aside the loam. I too felt that this was a great occasion. At last I was working my own land; with the plowshare I was opening the gate of an unknown ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... to fish in such a place and at such an hour! The novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar that one feels at home—the motion of the rod, the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the rising fish—it all brings back a hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around the forest camp-fire in Maine or Canada, and some with whom we shall keep company no more ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... drooping roses made the air almost faint with their perfume. Margaret stretched out her hand, plucked a handful of the creamy petals and held them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away they heard the soft swish of the river. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... bunk, which I found to be narrow, and plainly at some distance from the deck, for I laid hold upon one of the rough beams above me. By its curvature I knew it to be a knee, and thus I came to the caulked sides of the vessel, and for the first time heard the rattling thud and swish of water on the far side of it. I had no sooner made this discovery, which drew from me an involuntary groan, when a ship's lanthorn was of a sudden thrust over me, and I perceived behind it a head covered with shaggy ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... exclamation, and then sounds of somebody moving hastily about the room and the swish of clothing ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... and in the swish of the storm he heard hoofbeats again. Looking forth from the bushes he saw another line of horsemen, but now they were going in the direction of Pope's army. Dick recognized these figures. Shapeless as he might appear ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... during the blinks of moon, stealing forward in the dark; till, at length, the swish of the rain on the waters of the Tarn, and the sobbing of the flock in front, warned ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... mists through which the mountains revealed and concealed proportions exaggerated into unearthly grandeur. Deep in the clefts of the box canons the streams were filling. The roar of their rapids echoed from innumerable precipices. A soft swish of water ...
— Arizona Nights • Stewart Edward White
... distress they got to imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he had heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—questions ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... be heard the swish of whips and the camels, having changed from an ambling pace into a full gallop, began to speed like the whirlwind, throwing up with their feet the sand and ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... their chatting, and the cracks of their powerful whips. Suddenly, a shout at the front, and an abrupt pull up, brought the whole column to a halt. The Captain's dogs had broken into a gallop. On turning suddenly round a spur of a glacier about as big as Saint Paul's Cathedral, they went swish into a shallow pond which had been formed on the ice. It was not deep, but there was sufficient water in it to send a deluge of ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... musical swish of brooms and water as the bare-legged watch scrubbed decks. A burly Hollander stood on the spare topmast lying in the port scuppers, one leg crooked over the bulwark rail, scooping water from the ocean with a draw-bucket and discharging it with consummate skill ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle
... to the butlers and the upper maids, especially to the butlers, who make it resplendent on Sunday afternoons when the weather is good. As the weather had thickened in the late afternoon, our party walked in a dumb-show, listening to the soft swish of the waves on the rocks below, and watching the figures of other promenaders, who were good enough ladies and gentlemen in this ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... pressure of Paul's footsteps. The cry behind them at the cabin was repeated once, echoing away through the black and dripping forest. After that Paul heard nothing, but to the keener ears of Henry came now and then the soft, sliding sound of rapid footsteps, a word or two uttered low, and the faint swish of bushes, swinging back into place after a body passed. He knew that the warriors were now seeking eagerly for them, but with the aid of the intense darkness he hoped that he and Paul would steal safely through their lines. ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... up and out, shouting and chasing, the lord of the morning. Poplars swayed and tossed with a roaring swish; dead leaves sprang aloft, and whirled into space; and all the clear-swept heaven seemed to thrill with sound like a ...
— The Golden Age • Kenneth Grahame
... the rowers. Perpheela, the guide, signalled Ledyard to embark; and before the white man could solve the problem of how three men were to sit in two manholes, he was seized head and heels, and bundled clear through a manhole, lying full length imprisoned like Jonah in the whale. Then the swish of dipping paddles, of the cold waves above and beneath, shut out by parchment thin as tissue paper, told Ledyard that he was being carried out to sea, spite of dark and storm, {250} in a craft light as an air-blown bladder, that bounced forward, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... secured by the forehanded Hobbs. The thin drizzle now aspired to something more definite in the shape of a steady downpour, and the decks were almost deserted, save for the few who huddled in the unexposed nooks where the sweep and swish of the rain failed to penetrate. There was a faraway look in the young man's eyes, as of one who dreams pleasantly, with little effort but excellent effect. His pipe had gone out, so his dream must have been long and uninterrupted. Eight bells sounded, but what is time to a ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... harnessed and the barge in readiness to start. As soon as we were all on the boat the horses began to trot along the towing path; we glided over the water without feeling a movement, and the only sound to be heard was the song of the birds, the swish of the water against the boat, and the tinkle of bells around the ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a somewhat speculative ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... soft voices of the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once having been felt, these loved voices rustle, buzz, hum, flutter, and ripple ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of the water ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... Maria who brought on the FLOOD I have learned today.... With a stone she found uncovered by the filtering from the little opening she began pounding against the wall.... Suddenly the wall bulged inward.... There was a swish, and a roar, and a deadening GUSH,—and then a RUSHING FLOOD tore open the side of the wall and burst like a torrent into our muddy, narrow cell. Higher and higher it mounted, enveloping us to our arm pits.... My 'prisoner' moved ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... his heels from under him and dropped him on the floor, while Loomis confronted the others who would have made some show of obeying orders. And then there was the whirr of a whip-lash, a crack and snap and swish, and a red welt shot across Burleigh's livid face as he himself staggered back to his desk. With raging tongue and frantic oath he leaped out again, a leveled pistol in his hand, but even before he could ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... and ran up the steps with a singular return of her old occasional nymph-like nimbleness—the movement of a woman who had never borne children—and a swish of her long skirts that he remembered for many a day after, as she disappeared in the corridor. He remained looking after her—indignant, outraged, and unconvinced. There was a rattling at ...
— Clarence • Bret Harte
... of the fight sank in a kind of sob as the roar of a breaking wave sinks with an angry swish back into silence; and as there is a pause before the next wave is flung upward to break and roar, so was there a pause now. Then came the yell of fury, faction quarrel forgotten. They were all of one mind ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... was passing a certain big, hollow log. Without really knowing why he did it, because, you know, he didn't stop to do any thinking, he dived into that hollow log, and even as he did so there was the sharp swish of great wings. Terror the Goshawk had missed catching Peter by ...
— The Burgess Bird Book for Children • Thornton W. Burgess
... at the table, the accountant in the centre, Farintosh on the right, and Frank on the left. There was no talk save an occasional abrupt question and answer. For two hours the swish and rustle of the great blue pages of the ledgers were the chief sound, with the scratching of Mr. Wingfield's pen as he totalled up long columns of figures. Frank's heart turned to water as he saw the huge sums which had passed through this man's hands. How much had remained there? His whole ...
— A Duet • A. Conan Doyle
... violin were doing what they could to make all our hearts beat young! A picture show across the street sprayed its gay crowd over the sidewalks and a vaudeville house down stairs gathered up rivulets of humanity from the spray. Somewhere near by was a dance, for we heard the rhythmic swish and lisp of young feet and the gay cry of the music. Here and there came a soldier; sometimes we saw a woman in mourning; but uniforms and mourners were uncommon. The war was a tale ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... uneasiness and examined the room carefully. Then he gave a deep sigh of relief. It was all right this time; this was his own house! He sank into the green rocker and mechanically began to fill his pipe. From the floor above came the swish of the broom and Zephania's ...
— The Lilac Girl • Ralph Henry Barbour
... sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river; the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the reeds and grasses of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... ghostly fears had been swept away. They were on the windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy forms of other promenaders. The whole experience, even the regular throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing, the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds of the seaborne hostel, were unfamiliar and exhilarating. And inside his hand, even though given him of ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... magnolias, or a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf made the ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... I felt as if I could not speak. All I wanted to do was to fly at him and strike out wildly, while something seemed to hold me back as he stood vapouring before me, swishing about the thin, black, silver-handled cane he carried, and at every swish he cut some ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... a clutching hand within her breast. Here was loneliness and solitude vastly different from that of Oak Creek Canyon, yet it held the same intangible power to soothe. The swish of the surf, the moan of the wind in the evergreens, were voices that called to her. How many more miles of lonely land than peopled cities! Then the sea—how vast! And over that the illimitable and infinite sky, and beyond, the endless realms of ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no arriere pensee. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more than sixty cents a day. ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a reaping ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... wedge into the saw-cut as it opens when the tree sways. It sways—it staggers; a loud crack as the fibres part, then with a slow heave over it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt is blue with stains from the steel of ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... limestone cliffs running westward to the revolving light at Hartland Point that sent us alternate flashes of ruby and white across the water. Clovelly lamps made glittering disks in the quay pool, shining there side by side with the reflected star-beams. We could hear the regular swish-swash of the waves on the rocks, and to the eastward the dripping of a stream that came tumbling over ...
— Penelope's Postscripts • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... came strident through the megaphone. "Be good, you two," he bellowed, "I've got the binoculars!" And so, under fire, we walked sedately back to the house. My pulses were throbbing—the little swish of her dress beside me on the grass was pain and ecstasy. I had but to put out my hand to touch ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... sunny weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... of the big basswood tree. Mister Crow was circling around, and around, and looking down into the woods, but he was not saying a word. He was trying to see what had frightened the other birds and the squirrels. Robert Robin could hear Jim Crow's wings go "Swish! Swish!" ...
— Exciting Adventures of Mister Robert Robin • Ben Field
... for with a turn of the wrist Uncle Gilbert jumped the machine across the road, and all he could feel was the sharp swish of an old cow's tail across his cheek as they rushed on and out of that animal's ...
— You Should Worry Says John Henry • George V. Hobart
... up the cave with a swish and rustle of wings, and the children went down the hill as quickly as they could—which was not very quickly because of Dickie's poor lame foot. The boy who had killed a Cromwell's man with his little sword had ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... the dock and get a boat. She might risk being scalped, but a boat at any cost she would have, and one was sent her—as to the fearless and determined all their desires are sent. She heard the thump of oars in rowlocks, bringing the relief guard, and with a swish, out of the void of the lake a keel ran ...
— Marianson - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... at least a minute after Jack and Jake had left, then he heard a soft swish, and a few stars which had been visible through the upper half of the window were blotted out. ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... of coal fell on to the grate. Not a sound came from the sofa. Macdougal leaned forward, his white face distorted with passion. The life-preserver bent and quivered behind him, cut the air with a swish and crashed full upon ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... was about to ascend the steps of the companionway, he heard the swish of skirts and then a sharp scream. In an instant he was half way up, his arms extended. Lord Huntingford's daughter plunged into them, and he literally carried her to the foot. She was pale and trembling and he was flushed. He ...
— Nedra • George Barr McCutcheon
... Turner, sat on the veranda, smoked their pipes, and even while keeping up a semblance of talk, had an eye and an ear on the bungalow—the "Old Man's" quarters not three hundred feet away. The boom of his jovial laughter still rang out upon the air, and presently the tinkle of guitar, the swish of feminine garments, the rasp of chairs and the merry mingling of voices told that the little dinner party, the first the camp had ever known—for what is a dinner party without women—had quit the table and ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... it was," replied Don Quixote, "for I have had the most prodigious and stupendous battle with the giant that I ever remember having had all the days of my life; and with one back-stroke-swish!—I brought his head tumbling to the ground, and so much blood gushed forth from him that it ran in rivulets ...
— Don Quixote • Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
... a chair before the fire and invited me to sit there. While I sat before the fire I could hear the quick but quiet step of her feet about the kitchen, the little swish of her garments. Presently she drew near to the fire and held out a glass. It contained what looked like discoloured water, very like the water in the shallow river with the shingly bottom. I must have expressed ...
— Waysiders • Seumas O'Kelly
... that harsh judgment. And now Val could hear what Ricky had heard earlier—a faint swish as of a paddle through water. Again Ricky's lips shaped words ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... upon him when a sudden swish in the bushes close by attracted his attention. The girl too was looking down; but she saw nothing but the angry ape scrambling to his feet. Then, like a bolt from a cross bow, a mass of spotted, yellow fur shot into view straight ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... A silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack— A loud swish, Squish! "What's ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... about," he answered. "I heard the twang of a bowstring and the swish of an arrow over my head. Some one aimed—Ah, there ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... Now we shall see. Caesar: I ask you whether it is fair for the Retiarius, instead of making a fair throw of his net at me, to swish it along the ground and throw the dust in my eyes, and then catch me when I'm blinded. If the vestals had not turned up their thumbs I should have ...
— Androcles and the Lion • George Bernard Shaw
... quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out. And the smell—good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse, and there I had to lie until I felt better. Just like parade it had been a minute before—then stumble, bang, swish!" ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... followed meekly watching with wonder and envy as Marcia made her bargain with the kindly merchant, and selected her chintz. What a delicious swish the scissors made as they went through the width of cloth, and how delightfully the paper crackled as the bundle was being wrapped! Mary Ann did not know whether Kate or Marcia was ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... up into the tree and around from branch to branch. As the rays traveled through the cedar there was a sudden wild cry from the animal, and then came a swish and a whirr as the wildcat sprang to the outer end of a limb and ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... moment's pause. Arnold moved to the door and held it open. They heard the swish of her skirts as she came through the outer office, and the heavier footsteps of the doctor who followed. Mr. Weatherley tried vainly to rise to his feet. He held out his arms. Fenella ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... shouted to Chet. "Down on the ground!" And he felt the swish of another liquid mass above his head as he obeyed his ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... unheeding— Swish swirling this pen in my haste, And, deaf to thy pitiful pleading, Just ...
— The Re-echo Club • Carolyn Wells
... the door pushed open, and a swish of fresh air sweeps in, men along with it; as they enter, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the darkness. Long small windows grew into light at one end of the place, curved into an outline that suggested a deep recess. The figure of a crowned woman, that moved rigidly up and down, was silhouetted over my body. Groaning creaks of wood and the faint swish of ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... forcing its way through hard rocks, under arches of alabaster ice, through fringes of crystalline ice, thumping with a hollow sound in cavernous recesses cold and dark, or leaping in foam from heights with rush and swish; always bright and riotous, never pausing in still pools to rest, dashing through gates of rock, pine hung, pine bridged, pine buried; twinkling and laughing in the sunshine, or frowning in "dowie dens" in the blue pine gloom. And there, for a mile or two in a sheltered spot, owing ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... path there dropped with a swish and crash the ten-foot branch of a coco palm, falling without warning or apparent reason, as the overripe branches of coco palms do fall. The girl whirled round; and Payne was shocked and chilled to the marrow by the sight of her ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... moment later, the hot breath of a human being upon my neck. I sprang aside, barely in time to escape a blow obviously aimed at me with some weapon or other, which cut through the air with the soft, nervous swish of an elastic life-preserver. I knew that some one who sought my life was within a few feet of me, striving to make sure before the second blow was aimed. In my stockinged feet I crept along by the wall. I could hear no sound of movement ...
— The Great Secret • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... ("Unnecessary detail!" my contemporaries will moan, "Overloaded with uninteresting details!" But that's because they haven't got the details—and it's the details that go.) Then Harry skipped back to his horse, jumped on, gathered up the bridle reins, and used his spurs. There was a swish and a clang, a scrunch and a clock-clock and rattle of wheels, and a surprised human sound; then a bump and a shout—for there was no underground drainage, and the gutters belonged to the Stone Age. There was a swift clocking and rattle, more shouts, another ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... the morning was spent in tobogganing in wood while the snow was good. It was great fun to see the great logs slide down with a long swish and pile up in front of the cabin. The fellows worked with a will, and by noon a large supply had been pulled in. The next thing was to cut it and pile it away in the house. Smith undertook to build a sawbuck, and, with Mr. Allen's help, the job was soon ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... how in "Sylvie and Bruno" his idea of the thoughts of a child has become deeper and more spiritual. Yet in the earlier tale, told "all in a golden afternoon," to the plash of oars and the swish of a boat through the waters of Cherwell or Thames, the ideal child is strangely beautiful; she has all Sylvie's genuineness and honesty, all her keen appreciation of the interest of life; only there lacks that mysterious charm of deep ...
— The Life and Letters of Lewis Carroll • Stuart Dodgson Collingwood
... He had gone to McQueen's house to ask the doctor to accompany him to the Kaims, but with the knocker in his hand he changed his mind, and now he was at the place of meeting alone. It was a day of thaw, nothing to be heard from a distance but the swish of curling-stones through water on Rashie-bog, where the match for the eldership was going on. Around him. Gavin saw only dejected firs with drops of water falling listlessly from them, clods of snow, and grass that rustled as if animals were crawling through ...
— The Little Minister • J.M. Barrie
... was interrupted by them all making a rush for the book. There was a swish and a whirr and a rustling of leaves, and an instant later the book lay upon the floor looking just like any other book, while Jane Gladys' strange ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... if not patriotic. Every legal holiday was observed in true Dry Lake manner, to the tune of violins and the swish-swish of slippered feet upon a more-or-less polished floor. The Glorious Fourth, however, was celebrated with more elaborate amusements. On that day men met, organized and played a matched game of ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... on this side. Head for the cove." He pointed to the north end of the floating mass, and Captain Cromwell put about. The island, now that he was close, appeared to be making good headway—at least four or five miles an hour. There was a swish and a swirl of water on the sides that showed it would have been folly to have run in shore there. But after he had rounded a hummock of glistening sand he saw the cove, and in a few minutes more had entered it and discovered a roughly constructed wharf. John Washington reluctantly obeyed a sharp ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... crags of the sierra, on fearsome dizzy trails, in the somber shadows of virgin forests, in the rustling of wind-blown leaves (the seductive swish of elfin skirts) she heard the voices of Juno's sylvan train. Enchanted she listened to the syren's call, and ere the echo died within her ear she had devoted her talent to literature, a priestess self-ordained in Arizona's temple ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... a moment. As they waited and listened to the whining of the wind, the swish of the rain and the angry muttering of the thunder, and saw the vivid lightning, it was no wonder they did not want to decide hurriedly to go out in that out burst of the elements. But it was also trying on the nerves to stay in the stalled auto, ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... polished floor was a crowd of couples dancing to the music they had heard. It came loud through the open lattices, the insistent, luring, irresistible measure, violent now in solicitation, in appeal; and over it and under went the trailing, shuffling slur of the feet of the dancers and the delicate swish of women's gowns ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... she slackened her pace to a walk once more. Then a great shout went up from the people on the ramparts, and they began waving their hands and handkerchiefs wildly. To them the two figures seemed to be moving so slowly and the great sea behind so terribly fast. Barbara could hear its swish, swish, near enough now, and she felt Jean's hand tremble in her own. "Run yourself," she said, dropping ...
— Barbara in Brittany • E. A. Gillie
... 'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed to pierce through me, but his twitching lips uttered no word, and the austere exaltation of a certitude ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... so bright that our boat started about three o'clock instead of waiting for daylight, and the start swung my state-room door open. It was so warm that I let it remain, and lay there hearing the gentle swish of the water curling against the side of the steamer, and seeing the soft moonlight form a silver pathway from the yellow bank across the river to my cabin door. The machinery made no noise. There was no more vibration ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... dungeon of Peter and Paul, in the slimy pits lying under the Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who sometimes received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them, never uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there was heard only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille, who continued to protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief of Police a savage. Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood had ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... There's composition! There's effect! Stretch of sea, schooner, PAT's petty craft, grandiloquent PAT himself, a nautical Colossus astride on his own cock-boat, with stable sea-legs firmly dispread, the swirl of the sea, the swish of the waves, the very whiff of the wind so vividly suggested!—and all in some few ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, March 21, 1891 • Various
... all is well from the easy motion of the steamer, for her plunges are few and of small moment. A silence broods over the scene; the tired passengers have gone to sleep; all John can hear as he lies there is the dull throb of the engines and the swish of water against ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed atop ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... could it mean? Again my eyes fell upon the queer, bandaged thing which must be my hand. Had there been an accident? I could not remember, and while my mind was still wrestling with the question in a helpless, flabby way, I heard the swish of skirts at the door, and there entered ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... then climbed on to the little steed himself; and as soon as they were properly seated the little man said "swish," and away went the steed, galloping over the sea without wetting hair or hoof. But fast as he galloped the nine little pipers were always ahead of him, although they seemed to be going only at a walking pace. When at last he came up rather close to the ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... at the time, what was ailing me, but I had a feeling of some impending and deadly illness. My nerves were all awry, and, from the astounding tricks they played me, my senses seemed to have run riot. Strange sounds disturbed me. At times I heard the swish-swish of grass being shoved aside, and once the patter of feet across a patch of ...
— Moon-Face and Other Stories • Jack London
... of strain. In answer to the word 'Germany,' a train of vague thoughts dragged across his brain. The pompous middle-class vulgarity of the building of Berlin; the wide and restful beauty of Munich; the taste of beer; innumerable quiet, glittering cafes; the Ring; the swish of evening air in the face, as one skis down past the pines; a certain angle of the eyes in the face; long nights of drinking, and singing, and laughter; the admirable beauty of German wives and mothers; certain friends; some tunes; ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... the cowboys talked or laughed, but for the most part they were silent, the creak of the saddle leathers and the swish of the horses' legs as they brushed through the grass being the only sounds to tell that a body of men were ...
— Comrades of the Saddle - The Young Rough Riders of the Plains • Frank V. Webster
... Astorre, under the spell of this marvellous night, lay on their stomachs alert for alarms. A heavy-wheeling white owl had come by with a swish, and Biagio had called aloud to Madonna in his agony. Astorre had crossed himself over and over again: this was the Angel of Death cruising abroad on the hunt for goats or goat-herds; but "No, no!" cried Luca, eldest of the three, "the wings are too short, friends. That is a fluffy new soul just ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... gun cradle hurtled backward through the air with a vicious swish. A piece of the bore splintered the wheels and buried itself in the ammunition caisson. Thick hunks of gun metal crumbling like dry cake filled ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... may be put and yet the truth retained. Yesterday we reclined at our ease in our cosy floating cottage, towed up the lovely river by a picturesque crew of bronze Kashmiris, the swish of the passing water only broken by their melodious voices. The brilliancy of the morning gave way in the afternoon to a soft haze which fell over the snowy ranges, mellowing their clear tones to a soft and pearly grey, while the reflections ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... Third Avenue L, empty clapping of horses' hoofs on the asphalt ... the yowl of a sentimental tomcat ... a dull and distant grumble, vague, formless, like a long, unending roll of thunder down the horizon ... the swish and sough of waters breaking away from the flanks of the Autocratic ... and then, finally, like a tocsin, the sonorous, musical chiming of the grandfather's clock in ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... the timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but twice as many ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... other. I swung the lantern over them just as Dutch got upon his feet, gripping his antagonist by the collar. He flung him backward over the stone curbing of the pool and fell upon him in the walk with a swish of wet garments. The guards from the outer edges of the garden had clambered down and they gathered about us as I began ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... uncovered one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... moment the door was half opened, and Lady Groombridge, in a heavy, dark-coloured gown, made her way in, with the swish of a long, silk train. She half opened the door with an air of mystery, and she closed it softly while she held her flat silver candlestick in her hand as if she wished she could conceal it, yet ...
— Great Possessions • Mrs. Wilfrid Ward
... Carlists any glimmer of the sunshine of a victorious issue to their uprising? (egad, that was a strong blast, and the waves do swish as if they were enraged at last!). Thieblin thinks not. And yet they are active, and, like the storm outside, they are gaining strength. Those of them under arms are four times as numerous as the Republicans in the northern provinces. ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... myself in a kind of loggia at the back of the house, which was our common place of rendezvous. We exchanged the usual greetings, and for some minutes nothing more was said, so pleasant was it to sit silent in the shade listening to the swish of scythes (they were cutting the grass in the meadow opposite) and to the bubbling of a little fountain in the garden on our right, while the sun grew hotter every minute on the fir-covered slopes beyond. I wanted ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... over quickly to the stake on which the lantern hung. The wind was rushing through the tree-tops with increased fervor; the air was cool and wet with the signs of rain; a swirl of dust flew up into her face; the swish of leaves sounded like the splashing of water in the air. Holding her heart for minutes, she at last regained some of the lost composure. A hysterical laugh fell from her lips. "What a goose! It was an owl and I've heard hundreds of them up here. Still, they do sound different ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Charles. "That's just the point. They do. They say to me, 'You play golf and cricket; of course you can play tennis. Easiest thing in the world.' Swish! swish! they go, making a ferocious cross-hand top-lead from baulk with their umbrellas. 'That's how to do it. You'll soon get into the way of the stroke.' 'That's just what I'm afraid of,' I say, leaping nervously on to the table. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, August 26th, 1914 • Various
... journey as she hurried up the corridor, having safely passed Miss Marlowe's door, she suddenly heard a soft footfall or the swish of a kimono, and then discovered a dark form bearing down upon her. Could it be Miss Marlowe? No, it wasn't tall enough. It must be Miss Ashwell. Judith flattened herself against the wall, which was fortunately in the shadow, in the hope that she would not be seen. ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... a faint rustling at his door, and what seemed to be a slight tap on the panel. He rose and opened it—the long passage was dark and apparently empty, but he fancied he could detect the quick swish of a skirt in the distance. As he re-entered his room, his eye fell for the first time on a rose whose stalk was thrust through the keyhole of his door. The consul smiled at this amiable solution of a mystery. It was undoubtedly the playful mischievousness ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... the fare airily, as he climbed into the vehicle. The cab had started off into a cross-street, when Phil imagined he heard a shout in the distance. He looked forth but could see no one in the rushing darkness, The rattle of the cab, the growing roar of the night and toe swish of the rain, which was now falling quite heavily, drowned all other sounds and he leaned ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... consists of one room, but she maintains that there are two; so, rather than argue, let us say that there are two. The other one has no window, and she could not swish her old skirts in it without knocking something over; its grandest display is of tin pans and crockery on top of a dresser which has a lid to it; you have but to whip off the utensils and raise the ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, then came up to me, called ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... stalwart young men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... caught the sound of a light footstep approaching them, evidently coming straight and with confidence. He realized that until now he had not really believed, despite the footprints, despite everything, that a woman was on the mountain. But he knew at last. He even heard the swish of her skirts once or twice against the bushes. Then she came through the dwarfed cedars, stepping boldly, and stood ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Bakuma crouched in her hut listening in awe to the swish of the ghosts through the air, to the moans, groans and howls of the wizards doing battle with them. Tightly did she hold the amulet as she strove to conceal curiosity regarding the welfare of Zalu Zako; for did her mother suspect the presence of this evil ...
— Witch-Doctors • Charles Beadle
... mounted guard over Carlotta, and Antoinette and her cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... Beeton cheats much," said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... may be readily guessed in what thrilling night-work these canoe-men are engaged as they skim over Squaw Pond, with no swish of paddle, nor jar of motion, nor even a noisy breath, disturbing the brooding silence through which they glide. They are "jacking" or "floating" for deer, showing the radiant eye of their silvery jack to attract any antlered ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... the fiendish young ladies began literally, as the slang phrase is, to mop the deck with him. He felt himself being slowly pushed back and forward across the deck, and he wondered how long he would last if this treatment were kept up. By and by he found himself lying still in his bunk, and the swish, swish above him of the men scrubbing the deck in the early morning showed him his dream had merged into reality. He remembered then that it was the custom of the smoking-room steward to bring a large silver pot of fragrant coffee early every morning ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... covered with fore-cabin passengers. I warped the lady and the children upward—Heaven knows how; for the sea was breaking over us very sharp—till we were at the mainmast stump, and holding on by the wreck of it. I felt the ship stagger as if a whale had struck her, and heard a roar and a swish behind me, and looked back—just in time to see mizen, and poop, and all the poor women and children in it, go bodily, as if they had been shaved off with a knife. I suppose that altered her balance; for before I could turn again she dived forward, and then rolled over upon her beam ...
— Two Years Ago, Volume I • Charles Kingsley
... at a fine residence with just a nameplate on the door. They were ushered into a handsome parlor and in a few moments Madam came sweeping down the broad stairway, her silken gown making a soft swish on the polished floor. She was surprised and delighted to see Mrs. Crawford, who introduced her daughter and soon stated her errand. The green was to be a walking suit for Miss Marguerite and trimmed with ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... comment. She laid a second palm, on the upraised booty, made one whole revolution, her soft crinoline ballooning and subsiding with a seductive swish as she paused: "And you shall share these blessings, grannie, love, although of the assets themselves"—she returned the bag to its sanctuary and smoothed the waist where the paper proceeds of the schoolmistress's gold still ...
— Kincaid's Battery • George W. Cable
... most part sinewy, hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not an eating-house, God forbid!' ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... his way inside the blacksmith-shop and fumbled for a match. Just as he was about to strike it he heard the swish of oiled clothes passing, and waited for some time. Then, igniting his punk and hiding it under his coat, he opened the door to listen. The wind had died down now and the rain sang musically upon the ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... little while there was a sound—very, very slight. No dry stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping sound of branches ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... circuit until it dies out. If there be no E.M.F. present it will cease suddenly, and neutrality will be attained at once. Telephone circuits indicate the operation by peculiar and characteristic sounds. An iron wire circuit produces a long swish or sigh, but a copper wire circuit like the Paris-London telephone emits a short, sharp report, like the crack of a pistol, which is sometimes startling, and has created fear, but there is no danger or liability to shock. Indeed, the start has more than once thrown the listener off ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred it from ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... channel into the teeth of the brisk trade wind. This necessitated frequent tacks, so that, overhead, the mainsail was ever swooping across from port tack to starboard tack and back again, making air-noises like the swish of wings, sharply rat-tat-tatting its reef points and loudly crashing its mainsheet gear along the traveller. Half a dozen times, as it swooped overhead, Jerry leaped for it, mouth open to grip, lips writhed ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... and brightly lighted; a strong contrast to the lonely Canadian homestead to which her thoughts wandered. She could recall the unpolished stove, filling the place with its curious, unpleasant smell, and the icy draughts that eddied about it. She could imagine the swish of driving snow about the quivering wooden building when the dreaded blizzards raged; the strange, oppressive silence when the prairie lay still in the grip of the Arctic frost; and George coming in with half-frozen limbs and snow-dust on ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... when the ship had left St. Vincent that a certain amount of peace came to establish itself in his heart, and the large and beautiful consolation of the sea began to make itself felt. The weather was calm and clear, and the monotonous slap and swish of the water against the ship's side was in itself soothing. The company on board were all strangers to him, and this helped to give him a feeling that he was starting anew in life. Also he was on his way to do the best he could to find his brother, if he were living, or to clear ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... with a soft "swish" upon the sand brought with it something round and shiny that rolled back again as the wave receded. The next influx beached it clear, and Geddie picked it up. The thing was a long-necked wine bottle of colourless glass. The cork had been driven in tightly to the level ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... Incandescent the other evening and had the joy of seeing her put on that sweet ickle f'ock she wears for the Jazz supper scene in Oh My! All the materials used are three yards of embroidered chiffon, six yards of tinsel fringe and six dozen tinsel tassels; and anything so completely swish and so immensely ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Apr 2, 1919 • Various
... napkins of white linen. Then we heard heavy steps, the clank of scabbards on a stairway, the feet of ladies, and the swish of their gowns. With a quick movement our faces were uncovered. I rose to my feet, for there before me stood Louison and the Baroness de Ferre, between two guards, and, behind them, Louise, her eyes covered, her beautiful ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... illness, and was also recommended a sunbath, so we travelled together. The hotels being all full, we took up our quarters in a small boarding-house, standing in dense groves of orange trees, where each shiver of the night breeze sent the branches of the orange trees swish-swishing, and wafted great breaths of the delicious fragrance of orange blossom into our rooms. I was in bed, when the Guardsman, who had never been in the tropics before, rushed terror-stricken into my room. "I have drunk nothing whatever," he faltered, "but I must be either very drunk or else ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly destroyed, even as his life had been; it was expiring in agony, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... be better frequented than that of which he already had experience. More than once dark, sheeted figures passed them by, noiseless save for the underfoot swish in the mud, and presently the alley widened into a little square, at one side of which there was a fresh rustle of green things. At the side of it a dim light showed through a big open door, from which came a musical murmur of voices, and ...
— The Second Class Passenger • Perceval Gibbon
... hour of the afternoon the day's work of tramping the rounds of the agents' offices is over. Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things and a swish of silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odor of gaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious young comedians, with versatile Adam's apples, gather in doorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching from somewhere comes the smell of ham and red cabbage, and the ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... the right sort war he—he war!" and he pulled down another boy and put me up instead, and told me all about the great fire at Stubbs's factory. You can't think what fun it was. Roar, roar, up went the flame. Swish, wish, went the water—such a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... into her hands the roll of papers upon the table. As softly as she had come she went. The deep sobbing breaths of the two men, the half-stifled cries with which Vine was seeking for outside help, effectually deadened the faint swish of her skirts and the tremor of her footsteps upon the ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the chamber back and forth, and there was silence save for the soft swish of his slippers along ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... tae," put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near wishin'—" ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... enjoying his new quarters quite as much as he had the old ones. Madam was a never-ending source of amusement and interest to him, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid soon had each her individual appeal. He liked the swish of their silk petticoats, and the play of their slim white hands about the coffee-tray. He liked their super-feminine delicacies of speech and motion, and the flattering interest they began to take in ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... immediately opposite to him, and the two jets meeting and mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till, what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat of the furrovahs or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which at first is of a ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... glimpses of deserts, snowcapped mountains, men moving in the blur of smoke, long watches in the night. Thirteen years in God-forsaken outposts, with never a sight of a woman's face, the sound of her voice, the swish of her gown, nor a touch of the spell which ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... of the steamer, for her plunges are few and of small moment. A silence broods over the scene; the tired passengers have gone to sleep; all John can hear as he lies there is the dull throb of the engines and the swish of water against the side ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... whoever that may be. "What is it all," we say, "but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?" We feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless giant may at any moment crush. We dream of the swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of fact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities just as an elephant ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... to be narrow, and plainly at some distance from the deck, for I laid hold upon one of the rough beams above me. By its curvature I knew it to be a knee, and thus I came to the caulked sides of the vessel, and for the first time heard the rattling thud and swish of water on the far side of it. I had no sooner made this discovery, which drew from me an involuntary groan, when a ship's lanthorn was of a sudden thrust over me, and I perceived behind it a head covered with shaggy hair and beard, and beetling ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... immortal overhead. As in late Autumn, when the leaves are shed And dismal flit about the empty ways, And country folk provide against dark days, And heap the woodstack, and their stores repair, Attent you know the quickening of the air, And closer yet the swish and sweep and swing Of wings innumerable, emulous to bring The birds to broader skies and kindlier sun, And know indeed that winter is begun— So seeing first, then hearing, she knew the hour Was come when Troy must fall, and not a tower Be left to front the morrow. And she covered ...
— Helen Redeemed and Other Poems • Maurice Hewlett
... yards distant. I might not have heard him, even with the aid of the cleft, but tonight Areskoui has given uncommon power to my ear, perhaps to aid us, and I know he is walking among thick bushes. I can hear the branches swish as they fly back into place, after his body has passed. Ah, a small stick popped as ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... never happy away from the sound of the surf on the reef and the swish of the cocoanuts. I was fourteen years in the British army in England when I made up my mind to quit civilization. I put it to the missus, a London woman, and she was for it. I've had nearly ten years now in the Cook group. D'ye know, I've learned one thing—that ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... from both left and right, the swish of paddles, the ripple of water against the side of a canoe, men talking. They were coming to the chain that had been stretched in front of them, and their fate would soon be decided. Now, they must be not only brave to the ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... fell upon the queer, bandaged thing which must be my hand. Had there been an accident? I could not remember, and while my mind was still wrestling with the question in a helpless, flabby way, I heard the swish of skirts at the door, and there entered who ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... naturally expect, the mother—who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account in the giddy whirl ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... her. She would take the herd in to the bedding-ground by the river, to a landing-point on the opposite side, never twice the same, and drift noiselessly through the canebrake, choosing blowy hours when the swish of cane over woolly backs was like the run of the wind. Days when the marsh would be full of tapirs wallowing and wild pig rootling and fighting, there might be hundreds feeding within sound of you and not a hint of it except the occasional toot-toot of some silly cow calling ...
— The Trail Book • Mary Austin et al
... have said, listening. There were several distinct sounds that saluted their ears. There was the "sough" of the sea, as it came swelling up the gorge; the "whish" of the wind, as it impinged upon the crests of the ridges; and the "swish" of the sand as it settled ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... of the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once having been felt, these loved voices rustle, buzz, hum, flutter, and ripple in my ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... lines, the boys sitting either side of him on the bottom of the boat where they could stretch out at full length in case they felt inclined to sleep, and after they had listened to the swish of the sea under the stern for some time Neal asked as he raised his head to look over ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... the steady swish of a sickle was heard; and this made a fearsome noise in the tenuous night. A gigantic man stood there; his head looked over the trees and his wide-stretched arms swung the sickle and a pick-hook; and, stroke ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded—that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... said Esther, "or you—oh, it really is too bad!" she exclaimed abruptly as a soft swish along the corridor and the click of a latch told her that she had been again forestalled, and Angela was now in possession of the bathroom. "I ought to go first, because I am the eldest, and Poppy last because ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... of noise in the hall, the angry barking of a small dog, the sound of a girl's voice laughing and scolding, the swish of silk skirts. A scandalized butler, obeying Lady Grosville's summons, threw the door open, and in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... gasped, moving over quickly to the stake on which the lantern hung. The wind was rushing through the tree-tops with increased fervor; the air was cool and wet with the signs of rain; a swirl of dust flew up into her face; the swish of leaves sounded like the splashing of water in the air. Holding her heart for minutes, she at last regained some of the lost composure. A hysterical laugh fell from her lips. "What a goose! It was an owl and I've heard hundreds of them up here. Still, they do sound different ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... Get as many as you can carry, and tell the others. They'd be far more interesting than linoleum. Think of being able to swish one's toes about in them. I hope the ...
— A harum-scarum schoolgirl • Angela Brazil
... a miserable cry against the walls. She hoped Mildred Caniper slept through a wailing that might have a personal note for her, and as she prepared to leave the room and listen on the landing, she thought she heard a new sound cutting through the swish of the rainfall and the shriek of wind. It was a smaller sound, as though a child were alone and crying in the night, and she leaned from her window to look into the garden. The rain wetted her hair and hands and neck, while she stared into varying depths of ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and a yell. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... my bedroom window in the Albany I cannot see the moon silvering the Mediterranean, or hear the soft swish of pepper-trees; it is true that oranges and eucalyptus do not flourish in the Albany Court-yard as they do in this hotel garden at Mustapha Superieur; it is true that the blue African sky and sunshine are more agreeable than Piccadilly fogs; but, after all, his own kennel is ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of foam as it sheered the water. We lay rocking in ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... drew back into the shadow. I waited also in the shadow for nearly ten minutes, then I passed on, ascended some steps and reentered the hotel. In the lounge I sank into a seat in a hidden corner and lit a cigarette. Presently I heard the swish of a woman's skirt behind me, and rising, peered out. It was Lady Lydbrook on her way out. She was carrying the cheque ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... them, she stood for them, with the other foot. You see, Doro, sometimes the much despised slang is—the real thing," and with a tantalizing swish of her skirts, and a most frivolous toss of her head Tavia called "Ta-ta!" and dashed across the fields with the lunch box under ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... Father Beret turned deadly pale and swiftly crossed himself. His face looked as if he saw something startling just beyond his adversary. Possibly this sudden change of expression caused Farnsworth to hesitate for a mere point of time. Then there was the swish of a woman's skirts; a light step pattered on the frozen ground, and Alice sprang between the men, facing Farnsworth. As she did this something small and yellow,—the locket at her throat,—fell and rolled under her feet. Nobody ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... and comfortably. I didn't like to go back to the other salon, where there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, then came up to me, called me by name, and introduced herself, Mme. A. the ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... morning was spent in tobogganing in wood while the snow was good. It was great fun to see the great logs slide down with a long swish and pile up in front of the cabin. The fellows worked with a will, and by noon a large supply had been pulled in. The next thing was to cut it and pile it away in the house. Smith undertook to build a sawbuck, and, with Mr. Allen's help, the job was ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... The sharp swish of the wings of lapwings, as they dived towards her, filling the moors with their hard rasping double note, and also battling for possession of a mate, stirred her frightened blood; and at every step some new terror ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... He sat down amid the ruins of his hope, and wondered what could have caused the fiasco. Still puzzled, he drew from his pocket a box of matches, and, lighting one, he held it to the seared end of a rocket he had tried in vain to light four hours ago. It smouldered for an instant, then shot with a swish into the air and broke into a hundred points of fire. He tried another and another with the same result. He made a fresh attempt to fire the set piece. Point by point the whole picture—minus the captain and one mast—came out of the night, and stood revealed in ...
— The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... beginning to congratulate himself on the important capture he had made, and with his hand on his captive's collar, and his revolver to his ear, was moving towards the center of the street, when a whistling "swish" was heard, the dull thud of a slung shot on the detective's head followed, and, every muscle relaxed, he sank a senseless man in the dust of ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... country children walking to and from school or roaming the hedges. Whether true slum children, or from streets a little better off, quickly they all pass out of youth into the iron drive of commerce and manufacture, into the clang and clatter, the swish and whirr of wheels, the strange, dragging, saw-like hubbub of industry, or the clicking and pigeon-holes of commerce; perch on a devil's see-saw from monotonous work to cheap sensation and back. Considering the conditions it is wonderful that they stand it as well as they do; and ...
— Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy
... the top of the staircase she heard the man turn the switch, and the hall below her was plunged in sudden darkness. Before her the long corridor was dimly lighted by a few lights at a long distance from each other. All was very still. She heard the swish-swishing of her gown on the thick carpet and that was all. "How quiet," she thought, "so different from the glare in the passages of the hotel last night, with its echo of voices and perpetual banging ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... the faint swish of scything as she moved toward him, and he withdrew, taking hold of ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... 'Swish-h-h' went the clumsy slug past Roland's ear. He grasped his revolver; and the resolution of the moment was to stand at bay and fight the churls. But the reflection not occupying the hundredth part of a second showed him that such a course was not to be thought of. His antagonist had fallen; ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... the dark we could hear the low swish of the rising river, and Burton, with a sly twinkle in his eye, remarked, "For a semi-arid country, this is a pretty ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... bolts in the glass upper doors and heard the heavy clash of the wooden contact as Bruce slid the great leaves of the big door into place, when with a swish and ...
— Miss Pat at School • Pemberton Ginther
... of maidens' winsome purity and frank disdain, of strong men who take their lives in hand and hurl themselves upon the push of pikes. And though I cannot grasp more than a hint of the plot, yet as my feet swish through the dewy swathes of the hyacinths or crisp along the frost-bitten snow, a wild thought quickens within me into a belief, that one day I shall hear them all, and tell these tales for my very own so that the ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... Thames is best, the marsh worst, and clear spring water next worst; "the fattest standing water is always the best." Cider and perry were made in some parts of England, and a delicate sort of drink in Wales, called metheglin; but there was a kind of "swish-swash" made in Essex from honey-combs and water, called mead, which differed from the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... safe position near the door, while the horses were groomed and bedded down for the night. Again the pungent odors from the stalls, the scent of the straw and the hay in the loft, the smell of harness leather damp with sweat was in his nostrils and in his ears, the soft swish of switching tails, the thud of stamping hoofs, the contented munching of grain, the rustle of hay, with now and then a low whinny or an angry squeal. And fearlessly to and fro in this strange world moved the hired man. In and out among the ...
— Their Yesterdays • Harold Bell Wright
... dragon swings over the door. Its race has fallen since its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... the net; of a bird caught in a snare. She had left him. She had left him—sick—helpless—thirsty. The spear of the hunter had entered his very soul. 'Why?' he cried in the penetrating and indignant voice of a man calling to a responsible Maker. A gust of wind and a swish ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... She was resting under her favorite oak, close to the library window, one warm afternoon, planning as usual for the day when she could walk again; and lulled by the drowsy hum of the bees and the soft swish of the leaves above her, she drifted off to slumberland. A slanting beam of the setting sun waked her as it fell across her face, and she sat up abruptly, hardly realizing what had roused her. Then she became aware of voices issuing from the library beyond, and Allee's ...
— Heart of Gold • Ruth Alberta Brown
... his way back to the stateroom of the sick passenger. Through the lightless porthole he listened for the terrifying shout, "Man overboard!" It did not come, but his ear caught the staccato beat of a motor near by, striking up abruptly out of the swish of rushing waters. In his ignorance, he decided that it was a boat from the ship going to the rescue of the daring deserters, and calmly waited for the engines of the mighty Doraine to cease their rhythmic ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... whirled down it, so that he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the shuffle-shuffle of a footstep can be heard in the distance, the tinkle of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro, the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds. All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or a man's? ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the Doctor ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... to see Miss Norman shed her pretty brunetteness and reappear as an old apple-woman, who besought him to buy of her wares. He even saw himself being transformed into a hooligan, or a smart R.A.F. officer, complete with a toothbrush moustache and "swish." ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very deep and strong, with sleek black eddies and occasional spoutings ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... together, and only once—on the quarter-deck of the Diana. Hermann sat smoking with a shirt-sleeved elbow hooked over the back of his chair. Mrs. Hermann was sewing alone. As Falk stepped over the gangway, Hermann's niece, with a slight swish of the skirt and a swift friendly nod to ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... it is to fish in such a place and at such an hour! The novelty of the scene, the grandeur of the landscape, lend a strange charm to the sport. But the sport itself is so familiar that one feels at home—the motion of the rod, the feathery swish of the line, the sight of the rising fish—it all brings back a hundred woodland memories, and thoughts of good fishing comrades, some far away across the sea, and, perhaps, even now sitting around the forest camp-fire in Maine or Canada, and some with whom we shall keep ...
— Little Rivers - A Book Of Essays In Profitable Idleness • Henry van Dyke
... who they were. Undoubtedly they were the smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I knew ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... Cliff. The chuckle of oars in rowlocks tells you that the old fisherman is astir at Fort Point and the man with the new motor boat over at Hough's Neck is giving it a little run before breakfast, with the muffler off, as usual. A gull goes over, flying low. You do not see but you hear the soft swish of the wings. By and by the sun shows through a rift in the fog and you begin to move before a faint air from the southwest. A half hour more and the shreds of fog are melting upward into the blue of a clear day, ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... hard time for Tristram and his companions below. They tugged and sweated, and presently L'Heureuse began to leap through the water. Above the swish of the long sweeps rose a tumult of oaths, imprecations, outcries, sobs, as the overseers plied their whips, not caring where they struck. Overhead they heard the guns running out, the rolling of shot and trampling of feet, the shouts and replies ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... dirt the breezes blow And all the germs that flutter May find a refuge in the gowns That swish along the gutter. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... gun he made his plans. Swish-swash the sponge-staff ran in and out—he would try to steal away at dog-watch. He struck the sponge smartly on ma couzaine's muzzle, cleansing it—he would have to slide into the water like a rat and swim very softly to the shore. He reached for a fresh cartridge, and thrust it into ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Austin, Texas, by establishing a zone system for ideas, for conveying the ideas of the great central newspapers and magazines in which a whole nation thinks together—with one huge national thoughtless provincial swish of his own provincial mind coolly takes ten thousand cities that like to do their thinking when they like, in New York or in Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago, jams them down into their own neighborhoods, glues them to their own papers, tells all these thousand of cities ...
— The Ghost in the White House • Gerald Stanley Lee
... spacious halls; the courts were inlaid with mosaic; there were festooned partitions and a great profusion of architectural fancies; and everywhere reigned a silence so deep that the swish of a sash or the echo of a ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... fine residence with just a nameplate on the door. They were ushered into a handsome parlor and in a few moments Madam came sweeping down the broad stairway, her silken gown making a soft swish on the polished floor. She was surprised and delighted to see Mrs. Crawford, who introduced her daughter and soon stated her errand. The green was to be a walking suit for Miss Marguerite and trimmed with whatever fur would be considered most appropriate. The lavender would ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... bright that our boat started about three o'clock instead of waiting for daylight, and the start swung my state-room door open. It was so warm that I let it remain, and lay there hearing the gentle swish of the water curling against the side of the steamer, and seeing the soft moonlight form a silver pathway from the yellow bank across the river to my cabin door. The machinery made no noise. There was no more vibration than on a sail-boat. And there ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he soon caught up, but he was just raining water from his clothes, and it made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they could wring Jim Leonard's clothes out, and lay them on the shore ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... over the house at the same moment. They seemed to swing in circles, spiral-shaped like corkscrews. The dull whiz and swish of their flight made the most blood-curdling unearthly noise. Her grandmother fumbled at the door trying to turn the bolt ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... Then, with a swish and a splash, the rain began. It came down in gusty torrents, and dashed in at the open windows ...
— Marjorie's Vacation • Carolyn Wells
... came to consciousness after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down my side as I endeavored to stand upright. I had ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... in the mirror of the lake. He convinced himself that his eyes and his mind were having sport with him, and turning away, he made a little circle in the woods about their camp. All was well. He heard a swish overhead, but he knew that it was a night bird, a rustling came, and an ungainly form lumbered through a thicket, but it was a small black bear, and coming back to the hollow, he looked down at ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... unpleasantnesses were sharply accentuated by the darkness, which fell upon us like a pall; for now the stars began to be obscured by great black clouds that came sweeping in from seaward, while the increasing roar and swish in the boughs overhead seemed to indicate that the wind was freshening. Progress was difficult enough, under such conditions, while we were traversing solid ground and had no special need to pick ...
— A Middy of the Slave Squadron - A West African Story • Harry Collingwood
... overhead and follow the long line till we were almost at the lip of the nullah before releasing his bombs, and this was the very refinement of torture. During the whole of the two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the hope of catching us ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... tree sways. It sways—it staggers; a loud crack as the fibres part, then with a slow heave over it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt is blue with stains from the steel of ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were all awake, but ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of which ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... of shadows. The blind ones are the shadows of things. These are the tame shadows— they love to play on the wall with you and follow you about like cats and dogs. Sometimes they hiss at you softly like snakes that do not bite, or swish like women's dresses, but if you poke a candle at them they pull ...
— Sun-Up and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... they got to imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he HAD heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—questions which were so random and incoherent and seemingly ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... these inestimable beasts. The man who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who employs stockmen by the dozen, who sends off hundreds of fat, contented, happy, liberty-loving oxen in droves to end their days in an unknown locality amid the clatter and swish of machinery and with the fearful scents of blood and decaying offal defiling the air, has few opportunities of studying the nicer qualities of his possessions. He may be full of bullock lore and able to recite sensational and entertaining stories illustrative of the ways of the big mobs which ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... sails swept the Gentle Jane along at a scudding pace. Hilda, who had never been sailing before, was delighted at the swift motion. The sky was as blue as blue could be, with flecks of white clouds all over it, the water was sparkling and clear, and dashed with a delightful little swish against the bow. ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... delicate scented blossoms of the garden. It tore off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly destroyed, even as his life had been; it was expiring in agony, even as he ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... word to the girl's statement. Iredale did not move. His eyes were still upon the paper. The silence of death reigned in the room. Even the storm seemed suddenly to have ceased; only was there the incessant swish of the ...
— The Hound From The North • Ridgwell Cullum
... just as he was turnin' away, I heard the swish of skirts and then I got Miss Vincent's voice. It was low and sweet and kinda soothin' and—well, she was the kind of dame guys kill each other for! Do ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... the ceaseless swish, swish of the rain on the dirty panes and the smell of cabbage and coal that came in under the door when she shut the window. This nauseating foretaste of the luncheon she must presently go down to was more than she could bear. It brought with it a vision of the dank coffee-room below, the ...
— The Glimpses of the Moon • Edith Wharton
... eagerly. The effort to do so was unpleasant as well as somewhat risky, for he had to turn back the old fur cap from his tingling ears; and he shivered at every variation of the stinging blast. There was nothing to be heard except the soft swish of the snow as it swirled among the stones and the hollow rumble of the river pouring down a rapid beneath a rent ...
— The Long Portage • Harold Bindloss
... it was broken by a swift, complete sound, a heavy boom-roar, and on the heels of this noise came a throbbing, whistling sigh that, at first faint as the sound of ocean on a distant beach, increased with incredible speed to a whistling swish, ending in a HISH of tremendous volume and a roaring, grinding burst. The sound of a great shell is never a pure bang; one hears, rather, the end of the arriving HISH, the explosion, and the tearing ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... soundlessly scuttling unnoticed in the dimness. And it was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish, and surge of the water against the hull; the voices of ...
— Astounding Stories, March, 1931 • Various
... all so sudden. A door flung open and a swish of rushing silk. A woman! A beautiful girl! The Nervina! It ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... stopped short, for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" about Mr. Hayne? It could ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... There was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in the ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the quarry, below the level of the ground, they had the most weird of sounds. A dull rumbling in the rear and a continual whizz and hiss high overhead. Hardly a sound of the guns firing and no sound of the shells bursting. Only that terrible grinding swish in the air above. Twenty minutes of that, and then, with a terrific roar, all our field guns opened, and we knew that our comrades in front, the 4th N.F. on the right and the 7th N.F. on the left, had 'gone over the top.' The noise in front of the field batteries ...
— Q.6.a and Other places - Recollections of 1916, 1917 and 1918 • Francis Buckley
... and after her, Caesar. As she passed, one heard the swish of her silk petticoats. The travellers looked ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... the enemy from their defences, with artillery and small arms. The rockets were brought to bear as soon as possible, and the first one thrown set fire to a house in the town; but the buildings being principally composed of "swish," and the natives having taken the precaution of removing the thatched roofs of the greater number, the rockets produced but little effect, as they could do no injury to the walls. Towards noon some of the enemy were observed leaving the rear of the town, and ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... and very poor. Their cottages are rather cabins; not a tiled roof is in the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more than half the colour—over all the chocolate and all the blue—with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight sunshine ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... climbed into the vehicle. The cab had started off into a cross-street, when Phil imagined he heard a shout in the distance. He looked forth but could see no one in the rushing darkness, The rattle of the cab, the growing roar of the night and toe swish of the rain, which was now falling quite heavily, drowned all other sounds and ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... of the burned region," said Jack. "It's dismal, and I like to hear the wind cutting through the dry grass with its sharp swish." ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... swear!" The old man was crying. Neither heard the swish in the bluff growth, neither saw the brave light in the two eyes that ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... colour, certain harmonious arrangements of black; and the most distressing symptom of all is that Mr. Brabazon could not hold an exhibition of some very nice tints of rose and blue without inspiring Mr. Steer to go and swish water-colour about in the same manner. Mr. Steer has the defect of his qualities; his perceptions are naive: and just as he must have thought seven years ago that all modern landscape-painters must be more or less like Monet, he must have thought last summer that all modern ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... or sat upon some rock warmed by the sun and watched the penguins bathing in the lake which had formed in the sea-ice between us and Inaccessible Island. All round us were the cries of the skua gulls as they squabbled among themselves, and we heard the swish of their wings as they swooped down upon a man who wandered too near their nests. Out upon the sea-ice, which was soggy and dangerous, lay several seal, and the bubblings and whistlings and gurglings which came from their throats chimed musically in contrast to the hoarse aak, aak, ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard
... fellow could scarcely have been five yards away. Another voice answered, and we were aware of bodies, stealing along through the wood; there was a faint rustling of dead leaves, and the occasional swish of a branch. We crouched low in the trail, fairly holding our breath, every nerve tense. There was no sound from below, but in the other direction one warrior—I could see the dim outline of his naked figure—passed within reach ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... that I heard a footfall on the carpet, but I think I did, and then came an unmistakable sound; the swish of the bed hangings suddenly ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner
... worried him. He was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... stand them, she stood for them, with the other foot. You see, Doro, sometimes the much despised slang is—the real thing," and with a tantalizing swish of her skirts, and a most frivolous toss of her head Tavia called "Ta-ta!" and dashed across the fields with the lunch ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... to crouch there alone, with the great balloon swaying over my head, each plunge threatening to dislodge me from the seat to which I clung, the cords and the wicker-work straining and creaking, and the swish of the silk sounding like the hiss of a hundred snakes. It was alarming in no small degree to know how little prevented me from shooting up solitarily to take an indefinite place among the stars. I confess that I was nervous, but ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 26, February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... companion-way and made his way back to the stateroom of the sick passenger. Through the lightless porthole he listened for the terrifying shout, "Man overboard!" It did not come, but his ear caught the staccato beat of a motor near by, striking up abruptly out of the swish of rushing waters. In his ignorance, he decided that it was a boat from the ship going to the rescue of the daring deserters, and calmly waited for the engines of the mighty Doraine to cease their rhythmic pulsing. ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... train of thought. Mechanically, dip by dip, swaying gently with each stroke as to a kind of rhythm, he drove the canoe onward, while he pondered it. It was easy to meditate out here, on the wide, empty lake, for no sound broke the midnight stillness but the soft swish of the paddle and the skimming of the broad keel along the water. It was not by any orderly system of analysis, or synthesis, or syllogism, that Ford, as the hours went by, came at last to his final conclusion; and ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... on the world, and try to fathom The past and get some strangeness out of it. But rain spoiled all. The day began uncertain, With clouds low trailing and moments of rain that misted. The young folk held some hope out to each other Till well toward noon when the storm settled down With a swish in the grass. "What if the others Are there," they said. "It isn't going to rain." Only one from a farm not far away Strolled thither, not expecting he would find Anyone else, but out of idleness. One, and one other, yes, for ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... go no further,' spake Covan to the cows. And they began to eat the grass by the side of the stream, while Covan listened to them and longed for some supper also, for they had travelled far, and his limbs were weak under him. Then there was a swish of water at his feet, and out peeped the head of the famous otter ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... heavy, swaying yard slid a few inches up the short, thick mast, as though reluctantly, while away on our weather quarter we heard the fierce shouts of the men in the approaching boat as they encouraged each other, punctuated by the quick jerk of the oars in the rowlocks, and the swish of the water as the oar-blades clipped into it. With the passage of every second those menacing sounds drew appreciably nearer, dominating even the thunderous rustle and slatting of the sail that slowly climbed into the air over our heads, while the felucca, now fast gathering stern-way, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... village which lay at their feet was silent and lifeless—there was, indeed, a curious absence of sound, except when the incoming waves broke upon the rocks and ground the pebbles together in their long, backward swish. Very soon the sleeping country, now wrapped in shadows, would take form and outline in the light of the rising moon; hedges would divide the square fields, the black woods would take shape and the hills their mystic solemnity. But those few minutes ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... toward the door. One stood close beside it and struck it twice, loudly, with a metal implement that rang sharply; then it waited. Steps were heard inside,—the steps of a man in military boots: Fernandez. There was a swish of steel, too, like a sword whipped out of its scabbard, but almost at the instant when this was heard the door was opened. A blow, a faint cry, a fall, a hurry of steps in the grass; then a light. Fernandez held it. A long, agonized scream quavered ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... were soothed into repose. The last remnants of his ghostly fears had been swept away. They were on the windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy forms of other promenaders. The whole experience, even the regular throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing, the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds of the seaborne hostel, were ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the grief become joy, when a chill silence fell over the ship. The only sounds were the rattling of the rigging against the masts, the groaning of the timbers of the vessel, and the swish of the waves cut by the prow. These were not Kamchatka shores. This was only another of the endless island reefs they had been chasing since July. The tattered sails flapped and beat dismally against the cordage. Night fell. There was a retributive glee in ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... but the camp was soon abandoned and the chute is in decay, for between the hours of ten and twelve each night the wraith of the Indian, accompanied by the bad spirit of the stream, ranges through the wood, his form shining blue in the gloom, his groans sounding above the swish and lap ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner
... exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no arriere pensee. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... own feet there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; the two thin, tanned legs ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... station that was our destination by rail. Sunlight bathed the grey buildings on the platform and the sleepy village beyond. From the blue overhead came the thin, sweet notes of a lark, and as we listened in the stillness we heard a faint whispering "swish" like the sound of a very distant reaper. It was the wind flowing across miles of reeds and grass and heather from the distant Atlantic. But it was not until half an hour later, when we breasted the crest of the great hog-back that stretched before us like a rampart, ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... controlled voices of civilization. Yet, as the lights pierced the gloom they looked like bandits dividing the spoil. One picture, though far from war, stays with me. A perfectly built, dark-skinned young giant had peeled himself out of his blue coat and had brought it down with a swish upon the shoulder of a half-stripped comrade who was kneeling at his feet with some footgear. They stood against a background of semi-luminous blue haze, through which glimmered a pile of coppery straw half covered by a red blanket. By ...
— France At War - On the Frontier of Civilization • Rudyard Kipling
... was beating heavily, her hands trembling. She strove hard to control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... not answer at first. He was looking at Andrew, who was sweeping the path at a little distance. Swish, swish, went his broom to right and left amongst the yellow leaves, leaving a ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... me, and had surmised who they were. Undoubtedly they were the smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I knew ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... but the door was closed, the bar was very still and quite empty save for my own presence, and the crowing of a cock and the clucking of hens were at first the only sounds that reached me from outside. Then I became conscious of a soft and regular "swish," rising and falling constantly and perpetually, and I remembered the sea close at hand, and a shiver of gratitude ran through me to think how narrowly I had escaped having that heaving ...
— The Man From the Clouds • J. Storer Clouston
... indeed, that they were sailing in a regular sloop, and that, too, going "with lee rail awash"; for instead of the soft crooning sound the runners made usually, there was a slash and a swish of ripples cloven apart; and instead of the little fountains of ice-dust which rise from the heels of the sharp shoes when the boat is skimming the frozen surface, there rose long spurting ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... stockade. This was kept up for five hours, and was as vigorously returned by the enemy from their defences, with artillery and small arms. The rockets were brought to bear as soon as possible, and the first one thrown set fire to a house in the town; but the buildings being principally composed of "swish," and the natives having taken the precaution of removing the thatched roofs of the greater number, the rockets produced but little effect, as they could do no injury to the walls. Towards noon some of the enemy were observed leaving the rear of the ...
— The History of the First West India Regiment • A. B. Ellis
... crossed seemed to be a raging torrent, its waters racing at top speed," said one traveler who arrived in Chicago on March 26th. "We could hear the swish of the waters and hear the cries of people in distress," ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... his veins at the rumbling swish of a car speeding through the pneumatic tube beneath their feet. His nerves were on edge. Then the captain of police looked up from the book and there was a peculiar glint in ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... permeates places of death! No human sound could be detected—no sound of any kind, except an uncanny creaking beneath the floor where the old masts rested in their steps, and a gentle swish of ...
— Wings of the Wind • Credo Harris
... it's the father—not as one would naturally expect, the mother—who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... of bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a reaping machine. And ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... restlessly back and forth, now on the turf and now on the brick walk. He closed his eyes, but he still saw Evelina and noted the slight difference of sound in her footfalls as she crossed the walk. He heard the swish of her skirts as she lifted them when she passed the pool of water—was it possible that his hearing was becoming more keen? He was sure that he had not heard it from ...
— A Spinner in the Sun • Myrtle Reed
... me that the biggest fish lurked in the deep pools, to reach which it was necessary to creep and worm myself over the open flats of sharp stones and patches of heather, but once on the vantage ground the swish of a trout rod sounded there for the first time since ...
— The Black Wolf Pack • Dan Beard
... all quarters came a loud uproar; a thousand piercing, whistling yells; a rackety, rumbling, rattling commotion mixed with the beat and swish of wings. This was followed by an upward rush which ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1921 and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... Esther, "or you—oh, it really is too bad!" she exclaimed abruptly as a soft swish along the corridor and the click of a latch told her that she had been again forestalled, and Angela was now in possession of the bathroom. "I ought to go first, because I am the eldest, and Poppy last ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... I stay here," he thought; and as the thought crossed his mind, with a shriek and a swish of silk, in rushed Miss Silver and flung herself ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its skirts ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... noise becomes louder, and then with a loud "swish" the birds come right at you. Throw up your gun quietly and quickly and fire at once—don't dwell on your aim, and let us hope that the dog has no difficulty in retrieving a bird that was evidently ...
— Wild Ducks - How to Rear and Shoot Them • W. Coape Oates
... with her aunt and Verena, but the insistent voice of the sea, as with each swish of the waves it cried, "Come, wash and be clean," hit like a hammer ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... rudder lines, the boys sitting either side of him on the bottom of the boat where they could stretch out at full length in case they felt inclined to sleep, and after they had listened to the swish of the sea under the stern for some time Neal asked as he raised his head to look over ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... hands, set her teeth and waited for the shock. Mahommed Khan's right arm rose and his sword flashed in the sunlight as he stood up in his stirrups. She shut her eyes. But there was no shock! There was the swish of whirling steel, the thunder of hoofs, the sound of bodies falling. There was a scream or two as well and a coarse-mouthed Rajput oath. But when she dared to open her eyes once more they were thundering still, headlong down the city street and Mahommed Khan was whirling ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... company, and, hiding my head under the bedclothes, I used to lie quaking because of the crying of the ghosts. It was a wild winter when Theobald left us, and they cried every night. It is a sound I have never grown used to, though I have heard it every winter I can remember. And also the swish of the satin as it went by my door, and the tap of high-heeled shoes. They cried more that winter than I ever heard them, except in the winter after Uncle Luke went away (but then I was little, and had the company of Maureen ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... showed in front—only to be instantly eclipsed by the white star of Aldegonde. Aramis began to hang—the angry roar of his backers told he was out of it. Simultaneously, the jockeys sat down to ride—there was the cruel swish of catgut, the crueler prodding of steel. In the crowd a great hushed breath, like the sigh of a forest before the storm, told of ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... with the eager appetite of youth and health. From far down the gulch the muffled roar of the stamps rose and fell on the light airs that drifted up and down. Through it all was the soft swish of the falling spray, the sharp blip! blip! as points of light, gathered from dripping boughs, grew to sparkling gems, then, losing their hold, fell into little pools at the foot of the cliff. High above the straggling town the great ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... Presently came two sounds—a swish of seas at our stern and the booming of surf against coast rocks. Then M. de Radisson did the maddest thing that ever I have seen. Both sounds told of the coming tempest. The veering wind settled to a driving nor'easter, and M. de Radisson was ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... and Astorre, under the spell of this marvellous night, lay on their stomachs alert for alarms. A heavy-wheeling white owl had come by with a swish, and Biagio had called aloud to Madonna in his agony. Astorre had crossed himself over and over again: this was the Angel of Death cruising abroad on the hunt for goats or goat-herds; but "No, no!" cried Luca, eldest of the ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... whirlwind of noise in the hall, the angry barking of a small dog, the sound of a girl's voice laughing and scolding, the swish of silk skirts. A scandalized butler, obeying Lady Grosville's summons, threw the door open, and in ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... sympathetic curiosity of Mrs. Drack's which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide; but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin. It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his posture—as if to show he ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... them at the cabin was repeated once, echoing away through the black and dripping forest. After that Paul heard nothing, but to the keener ears of Henry came now and then the soft, sliding sound of rapid footsteps, a word or two uttered low, and the faint swish of bushes, swinging back into place after a body passed. He knew that the warriors were now seeking eagerly for them, but with the aid of the intense darkness he hoped that he and Paul would steal safely through their ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... words spoken in a familiar tongue, and marvelled that a white man should speak it. Bones was carrying a stick and taking deliberate aim, and after two trial strokes he brought the nobbly end round with a "swish!" ...
— The Keepers of the King's Peace • Edgar Wallace
... distracted by the extraordinary behavior of a silk underskirt hanging on a peg at the foot of the bed. It was swinging to and fro with the regularity of a pendulum, and that which is regular in a pendulum is fantastically irregular in an underskirt. She sat up quickly, and listened. There was a swish of water outside. Now and again she heard a slight movement of the rudder chains in their boxes. Then, all aglow with wonder and excitement, she jumped out of bed and drew the curtain of one of the two tiny portholes that gave light ...
— The Wheel O' Fortune • Louis Tracy
... dashed into the water with paeans and shouts and the broken pitchers of fallen Jericho. The violet phosphorescence lighted them on their way, and tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... was set and stern. His eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... looked very like an old grizzly bear, laughed in the depths of his great, hairy chest. "Dream of glory, and end on a grabat! Just so, just so. And yet one has pleasures—to sweep off an Arbico's neck nice and clean—swish!" and he described a circle with his lean, brawny arm with as infinite a relish as a dilettante, grown blind, would listen thirstily to the description of an exquisite bit of Faience ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... branches of the magnolias, or a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage in with a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... for some minutes the boat moved silently, save for the swish of the water and the patter of the mules' feet on the narrow ...
— From the Valley of the Missing • Grace Miller White
... sentence. There was a rush of swift feet, a swish of skirts, then full upon him there fell a whirlwind of sobs, clinging arms, ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... of climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very deep and strong, with sleek black eddies and occasional ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... dead winter silence, that was broken only by the hoots of a flitting owl hungry for the food that it could not find, and the swish of the feet of a galloping fox as it looped past them through the snow. Presently they came to an open place ringed in by forest, so wet that only marsh-trees would grow there. To their right lay a little ice-covered mere, with sere, brown reeds standing ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... a distance, while again and again overhead there was the flutter and swish of wings, probably those of the oil-birds circling about the mouth of ...
— Old Gold - The Cruise of the "Jason" Brig • George Manville Fenn
... me to put my ear against the wall. At once the sounds all became incredibly louder. It was a confusion of sound: the mechanisms of the vessel, some of which I thought I could identify, and some not; the strange swish and thump of what might have been people moving; ...
— Wandl the Invader • Raymond King Cummings
... silent on the pavement if his fool-mistress would but cease from trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings. But Mr. Lingnam only talked. He talked—we all sat together behind so that we could not escape him—and he talked above the worn gears and a certain maddening swish of one badly patched tire—and he talked of the Federation of the Empire against all conceivable dangers except himself. Yet I was neither brutally rude like Penfentenyou, nor swooningly bored like the Agent-General. I remembered a certain Joseph Finsbury who ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... came with a swish similar to that made by a wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air, curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates. Stoner ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... of spring came against the window, bringing a confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swaying and touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl. Then the great silence reigned once more. Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping; but in this repose beside the dead was nothing unseemly or wanting ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... Argo in the pit. He was perturbed, and cursing. We dropped, gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... doorway of the gray-stone, red-roofed mill laughed, and anxious children ran down from a knot of storybook cottages and gay dooryards. "I'll gie ye ten shullin's for the sperity bit dog," the miller shouted, above the clatter of the' wheel and the swish of the dam. ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... was a glorious flush in her cheeks; and in her eyes, a kind of fear. So he let her go, and opened the door for her and stood listening to the soft swish of her draperies as she sped up the ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... the broad expanse of valley opening away to the south is just lighting up in chill, half-reluctant fashion, as though the night had been far too short or the revels of yester-even far too long. There is a swish and plash of rapid running waters close at hand, and here and there, where the stream is dammed by rocky ridge, the wisps of fog rise slowly into air, mingling with and adding to the prevailing tone of chilly gray. Through these fog-wreaths there stands ...
— A War-Time Wooing - A Story • Charles King
... looked again at the water. As the safest place for their excursions they had picked by chance on the harbour with its fleet of steamers that threaded every bay and cove, and little by little, in the exaltation of the senses following his love for this woman, the swish of the water slipping past the bows, the panorama of rock and sandy beach, and the salt smell of the sea were for ever part of this strange, emotional condition where reality and dream blended without ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... the side of the Russian ironclad, and a shot leaped towards us. Its size was such that we could trace it from the muzzle of the gun. Describing, as I thought (for strange is the power of thought), a rather high trajectory, it passed over us and plunged into the sea with a swish that sent hundreds of tons of water like an inverted cascade into the air. A gush of indignation filled my breast. That the warship of a nation with which we were at peace should fire at us without provocation was more than ...
— In the Track of the Troops • R.M. Ballantyne
... found, to his surprise, that he was enjoying his new quarters quite as much as he had the old ones. Madam was a never-ending source of amusement and interest to him, and Miss Isobel and Miss Enid soon had each her individual appeal. He liked the swish of their silk petticoats, and the play of their slim white hands about the coffee-tray. He liked their super-feminine delicacies of speech and motion, and the flattering interest they began to take in ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice
... with Mabel, he had made up his mind to walk up-stream as far as the spot where two brooks met, and formed body enough for a fly flipped in very carefully to sail downward. Here he began, and the creak of his reel and the swish of his rod were music to him, after the whirl of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. He himself confesses that after reading Swedenborg he turns to Shakespeare and reads "As You Like It" with positive delight, because Shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. The monks ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... so still that the shuffle-shuffle of a footstep can be heard in the distance, the tinkle of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro, the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds. All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or a man's? Neither yet ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... and looking round she saw a multitude of curious, great-eyed, black heads, something like the heads of boys, and something like the heads of dogs, thrusting from the water, and flashing under it again at sight of them with a swish that sent the spray into the air. She sprang to her feet. "Oh, look at those things! Look at them! Look at them!" She laid vehement hands upon the young man, and pushed him in the direction in which she wished him to look, at some risk of pushing ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... of silence. It was so quiet outside that even the birds seemed to be listening and watching; then came the swish of weeds trampled ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... beside me lay my equipment; revolver, and a sodden packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life, and then—swish, bang—back to the reality that the damp clay wall is only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am—that the Boche is just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the slightest chance of leaving except in ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... much where it is to-day? "Bull-roarer" is just one of our local names for what survives now-a-days as a toy in many an old-fashioned corner of the British Isles, where it is also known as boomer, buzzer, whizzer, swish, and so on. Without going farther afield we can get a hint of the two main functions which it seems to have fulfilled amongst ruder peoples. In Scotland it is, on the one hand, sometimes used to "ca' the cattle hame." A herd-boy has been seen to ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... cut the day before the stubble had been woven overnight into a white carpet of cobwebs, which neither sun nor step of man had yet dispelled. There were the smell of the straw, the cawing of the rooks in the glen, the hissing to the breeze of the barley still standing, the swish of the scythe and the gling of the sickle, the bending and rising of the shearers, the swaying of the binders dragging the sheaves, the gluck of the wheels of the cart, the merry head of a child peeping out of a stook like a young bird out of the broken egg, and a girl in scarlet, whom ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... at last, and then "swish." They could not see anything, for it was broad daylight now, but they heard the sigh of the rocket as it passed and knew it had missed. A despairing cry went up from the perishing men, for they, like the second mate, were counting their chances and reckoning them poor indeed. It ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... signalled Ledyard to embark; and before the white man could solve the problem of how three men were to sit in two manholes, he was seized head and heels, and bundled clear through a manhole, lying full length imprisoned like Jonah in the whale. Then the swish of dipping paddles, of the cold waves above and beneath, shut out by parchment thin as tissue paper, told Ledyard that he was being carried out to sea, spite of dark and storm, {250} in a craft light as an air-blown bladder, that bounced forward, ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... the wind picked it up, carried it a few feet and then dropped it, smashing in the wooden side and setting Billy free. For once the old saying came true: "That it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." With a swish of his stubby tail Billy was off down a side street, and as he ran he could hear above the peals of the thunder and the rushing of the wind, the lions roaring and the elephants trumpeting for fear amid the confusion and excitement ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... unnoticed in the dimness. It was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and surge of the water against the hull; the voices of ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... all grim and severe, Who the long night before, with a feeling of fear, Had slumbered but fitfully, hearing the swish Of the sky-rocket over his roof, with a wish That the urchin who fired it were fast to the end Of the stick to forever and ever ascend; Or to hopelessly ask why the boy with the horn And its horrible havoc had ever been born! Or to wish, in his wakefulness, staring aghast, ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... them off, I turned Newman over on his back, and, with my arm about him, prepared to lift him erect. Before I could do so, assistance arrived. Light feet pattered down the lazaret ladder; there was a swish of skirts, a gasp, and the lady was on her knees by Newman's side. "Roy—Roy—I was in time—" she cried. Her ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... the two that when the uproar broke out Vance Cornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sister Elizabeth ran to the window with a swish of skirts around her long legs. After the first shot there was a lull. The little cattle town was as peaceful as ever with its storm-shaken houses staggering ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... Samuel stood motionless, hearing the swish of the rain and the crashing of the thunder as an echo of the storm in his own soul. It was as if a chasm had yawned beneath his feet, and all the castles of his dreams had come down in ruins. He stood there, stunned and horrified, staring at the wreckage ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... forty years. Anne was of two minds whether to have her cry out then and there, or wait till she was safely in her own white room at home. Before she could decide there was a click of heels and a silken swish on the porch floor, and Anne found herself confronted by a lady whose appearance made her recall a recent criticism of Mr. Harrison's on an overdressed female he had seen in a Charlottetown store. "She looked like ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... the one-step. The music was heavenly. The swish of her silken skirts was divine. The fragrance of the roses upon ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... struggle—a great gasping for breath. Then Lablache reeled backwards and fell to the ground with Bill hanging to his throat like some tiger. In the fall the money-lender's pistol went off. There was a sharp report, and the bullet tore up the ground. But no harm was done. Bill held on. Then came the swish of a skirt. Jacky was at her lover's side. She dragged the money-lender's pistol from his pocket. Then Bill let go his hold and stood panting over the prostrate man. The whole thing was done in silence. No word ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... interest reached a fever heat. The swamp was five or six hundred yards long, and for the first three hundred yards nothing of a thrilling sort occurred. The shouts of the beaters blended into a rhythmic, melodious chant and the swish of their sticks as they thrashed the reeds was enough to make even ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... beautiful out in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that make up the silence of a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... a range of about a mile on a calm night presents a curious sound which almost defies description. Its principal constituent consists of a "clankety clank! clankety clank!" at first barely distinguishable from the low swish of the water past the face of the submerged microphone, then louder when the sound has been distinguished and the human ear is on the alert. But when this sound was heard in war there was little time for analysing or noting. It was the call to action. The microphone was hauled ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... went in with a swish of silk and patchouli. The candles were unlit. Miss Darrell, still wearing her hat and scarlet wrap, sat at the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... on the stage. Ladies rushed into print to expose foibles men never guessed, and to say of the sex at large what less gifted women say only of their personal friends. For years we have never ceased for a moment to hear the lash of the whip, the swish of the birch, the whizz of the arrow, the ping of the bullet, the thwack of the flail, the thud of the hammer, the buzzing of the hornet. And what does it all amount to? How much execution has been done? Is society purer or nobler? Have less daughters been ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... following: Procuring a boat—loaned frequently with the owner's knowledge of what it is to be used for—these boys will row, with muffled oars, under some dock having valuable goods upon it. The only sound that disturbs the silence of the night is the dull splash, splash and swish of the waters against the dock or some vessel moored there. Everything is quiet, while the night watchman slowly paces along his narrow beat, at the one end of which are the dancing, moonlit waters and at the other the sleeping city. A favorable chance offering, the heads of ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... comfortably. I didn't like to go back to the other salon, where there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, then came up to me, called ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... it dies out. If there be no E.M.F. present it will cease suddenly, and neutrality will be attained at once. Telephone circuits indicate the operation by peculiar and characteristic sounds. An iron wire circuit produces a long swish or sigh, but a copper wire circuit like the Paris-London telephone emits a short, sharp report, like the crack of a pistol, which is sometimes startling, and has created fear, but there is no danger or liability to shock. Indeed, the start has ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... with a little swish. The Russian was gone. With him went the stifling air of treachery, murder and intrigue, yet it left Johnny wondering. Why was every man's hand lifted against the sharp-chinned Russian? Had Wo Cheng been ...
— Triple Spies • Roy J. Snell
... contemporaries will moan, "Overloaded with uninteresting details!" But that's because they haven't got the details—and it's the details that go.) Then Harry skipped back to his horse, jumped on, gathered up the bridle reins, and used his spurs. There was a swish and a clang, a scrunch and a clock-clock and rattle of wheels, and a surprised human sound; then a bump and a shout—for there was no underground drainage, and the gutters belonged to the Stone Age. There was a swift clocking ...
— The Rising of the Court • Henry Lawson
... when he was milking her, after which he would always give her a beating with the stool on which he sat. But he got the blessing, and his heart was overflowing with peace. The next morning he went to milk that cow, and when the pail was nearly full, swish! came the tail in his face, and with a vicious kick she knocked over the pail, and then ran across the barn-yard. The blessed man picked up the empty pail and stool and went over to the cow, which stood trembling, awaiting the usual kicks and beating; but instead he patted her gently, and said, ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... Beret turned deadly pale and swiftly crossed himself. His face looked as if he saw something startling just beyond his adversary. Possibly this sudden change of expression caused Farnsworth to hesitate for a mere point of time. Then there was the swish of a woman's skirts; a light step pattered on the frozen ground, and Alice sprang between the men, facing Farnsworth. As she did this something small and yellow,—the locket at her throat,—fell and rolled under her feet. ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... for some long time in a reverie, as they went on seizing the ears of corn, drawing out the straw, gathering it under their arms, and cutting off the ears with their bill-hooks, nothing sounding in the barn but the swish of the straw and the crunch of the hook. Then Tess suddenly flagged, and sank down upon the heap of wheat-ears ...
— Tess of the d'Urbervilles - A Pure Woman • Thomas Hardy
... of baffled rage was enacting itself on the starboard bow of the Jasper B., a no less strange and far less explicable thing was occurring on the port side. The swish of oars and the ripple of a moving boat drew Cleggett's attention in that direction as Loge's booming threats grew fainter. He saw that two oarsmen, near the eastern and farther side of the canal, had allowed ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... russets! Then there are the pears, and all the hickory nuts which rattle down on us every time the wind blows. The leaves are everywhere. We would rake them up into big piles, and jump into them, and 'swish' about in them. How bracing the air is! How silvery the sun! How red your cheeks would get! And think ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... would steal down upon the New York and New England farms and villages, suddenly leap out upon the man and his sons working in their clearings, upon the woman and her children in the hut: a whoop, a popping of musket shots and whistling of arrows, then the vicious swish and crash of the murderous tomahawk, followed by the dexterous twist of the scalping-knife, and the snatching of the tuft of hair from the bleeding skull. That is all—but, no: there still remains a baby or two who must be caught up by the ...
— The History of the United States from 1492 to 1910, Volume 1 • Julian Hawthorne
... always give her a beating with the stool on which he sat. But he got the blessing, and his heart was overflowing with peace. The next morning he went to milk that cow, and when the pail was nearly full, swish! came the tail in his face, and with a vicious kick she knocked over the pail, and then ran across the barn-yard. The blessed man picked up the empty pail and stool and went over to the cow, which stood trembling, awaiting the usual ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... edge of the timber-line it was black, black not only with the gloom of night, but with the concentrated darkness of spruce and balsam and a sky so low and thick that one could almost hear the wailing swish of it overhead like the steady sobbing of surf on a seashore. It was black, save for the small circles of light made by the Eskimo fires, about which half a hundred of the little brown men sat or crouched. The masters of the camp were ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... world, and try to fathom The past and get some strangeness out of it. But rain spoiled all. The day began uncertain, With clouds low trailing and moments of rain that misted. The young folk held some hope out to each other Till well toward noon when the storm settled down With a swish in the grass. "What if the others Are there," they said. "It isn't going to rain." Only one from a farm not far away Strolled thither, not expecting he would find Anyone else, but out of idleness. One, and one other, yes, for there ...
— North of Boston • Robert Frost
... instinctively summoned to my side the radiant shade of Aurea, for indeed she had seemed made of gold—gold and water lilies. And, as of old, when I had called to her, she came swiftly with a luxurious rustle of fragrant skirts, like the sound of the west wind among the summer trees, or the swish and sway of the foam about the feet of Aphrodite. There she sat facing me once more, "a feasting presence made of light"—her hair like a golden wheat sheaf, her eyes like blue flowers amid the wheat, and her bosom, by no means ...
— Vanishing Roads and Other Essays • Richard Le Gallienne
... one would naturally expect, the mother—who devotes his time and attention to the congenial task of hatching or feeding them. It is he who builds the nest, and sits upon the eggs, and nurses the young, and imparts moral instruction (with a snap of his jaw or a swish of his tail) to the bold, the truant, the cheeky, or the imprudent; while his unnatural spouse, well satisfied with her own part in having merely brought the helpless eggs into this world of sorrow, goes off on her own account ...
— Science in Arcady • Grant Allen
... could be heard the swish of whips and the camels, having changed from an ambling pace into a full gallop, began to speed like the whirlwind, throwing up with their feet the sand and gravel of ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... drowsy heat, and it was not long before his eyes grew heavy. He could still hear the wailing of the wind and the swish of the snow that whirled about the lonely building, and listened for a while with tranquil contentment; for the wild weather he was not exposed to enhanced the comfort of the warmth and brightness ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... grim and severe, Who the long night before, with a feeling of fear, Had slumbered but fitfully, hearing the swish Of the sky-rocket over his roof, with a wish That the urchin who fired it were fast to the end Of the stick to forever and ever ascend; Or to hopelessly ask why the boy with the horn And its horrible havoc had ever been born! Or to wish, in his wakefulness, staring aghast, That this ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... and with a sharp swish of his cane walked on. The other, his eyes resentfully bright, looked after the tall, aristocratic, ...
— Half A Chance • Frederic S. Isham
... Deirdre's lips, her keen eyes would see the stags grazing high up among the grey boulders of the mist-crowned mountains, and would warn the brothers of the sport awaiting them. The crow of the grouse, the belling of stags, the bark of the hill-fox, the swish of the great wings of the golden eagle, the song of birds, the lilt of running water, the complaining of the wind through the birches—all these things made music to Deirdre, to whom ...
— A Book of Myths • Jean Lang
... I had been asleep again about twenty minutes when a rolling boom, the scream of approaching shells, and regular cracking bursts to right and left woke me up. Now and again one heard the swish and the "plop" of gas-shells. A hostile bombardment, without a doubt. I looked ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)
... carpet; the wondering cows looked up at us as they peacefully chewed their cuds; a man in corduroy breeches came from a corner of the pasture, and with a sharp, narrow hoe rooted out a thistle or two that had found their way into this sweet feeding-ground. Suddenly we heard the swish of a dress behind, and turned, conscience-stricken, though ...
— Penelope's Experiences in Scotland • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... a mighty creak of the ladder, the swish of a heavy body through the air, an interrupted growl, and then a ripping thud. Swallow's chubby body shot squarely through the opening, accompanied by a trusty though somewhat sadly stretched vest, and the deed was done. A cry of delight came from the beam, a shout of pride and relief from the ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... the old woman again appeared in the hatchway. A bar of keen, white light thrust its way into the cabin. It came from somewhere above. No longer could Peter hear the groan and swish of the sweep, and the cabin no longer keeled from side to side. He guessed that the ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... confusion, snorting and flinging great flecks of foam from their dilated nostrils, trampling over each other in mad haste, each for himself, and the American horse sweeping after them. Now the vaquero stands up in his saddle, and the lasso swings round and round in a circle over his head. Swish! It sings through the air with a whirring sound, and opens out in great rings, while the loop spreads wider and wider, and at last drops plump over the head of a mustang. The vaquero's horse pulls up with ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, V. 5, April 1878 - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... hear her. The driving rain, the swish of some great boughs against the house, the rattling of casements and doors, and the shrieking of wind in the chimney made all other sounds wellnigh inaudible. Yet as he listened he seemed to catch the accents of a far-off voice calling, now wistfully, now imperatively, "Thomas! Thomas!" And, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... Miss Sally remained in a daze, looking at the door by which he had gone. She was still looking at it helplessly when Mrs. Tarbro-Smith came in with a swish of skirts and put her arm ...
— Kilo - Being the Love Story of Eliph' Hewlitt Book Agent • Ellis Parker Butler
... faces with napkins of white linen. Then we heard heavy steps, the clank of scabbards on a stairway, the feet of ladies, and the swish of their gowns. With a quick movement our faces were uncovered. I rose to my feet, for there before me stood Louison and the Baroness de Ferre, between two guards, and, behind them, Louise, her eyes covered, her beautiful head bent low. I could see that she was crying. The ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... true that from my bedroom window in the Albany I cannot see the moon silvering the Mediterranean, or hear the soft swish of pepper-trees; it is true that oranges and eucalyptus do not flourish in the Albany Court-yard as they do in this hotel garden at Mustapha Superieur; it is true that the blue African sky and sunshine are more agreeable than Piccadilly fogs; but, ...
— Simon the Jester • William J. Locke
... and she covered her face with her hands. A moment she stood rocking there—a fair, lissom plant swept by a gale of ineffable emotion. Then the breath seemed to go all out of her in one great sigh, and Gregory, who dared not look her way, heard the swish of her gown, followed by a thud as she collapsed and lay swooning ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... while I began to recover, and to look with interest at objects which we passed and at the hind-quarters of the led horse which was trotting on my side. I watched how it would swish its tail, how it would lift one hoof after the other, how the driver's thong would fall upon its back, and how all its legs would then seem to jump together and the back-band, with the rings on it, to jump too—the whole covered with the horse's foam. ...
— Childhood • Leo Tolstoy
... overcome me, and had surmised who they were. Undoubtedly they were the smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I knew ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... over the dale, And he went over the plain; And backward and forward he swish'd his tail As a gentleman ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... lay at their feet was silent and lifeless—there was, indeed, a curious absence of sound, except when the incoming waves broke upon the rocks and ground the pebbles together in their long, backward swish. Very soon the sleeping country, now wrapped in shadows, would take form and outline in the light of the rising moon; hedges would divide the square fields, the black woods would take shape and the hills their mystic solemnity. But those few minutes were minutes of suspense. Lessingham ...
— The Zeppelin's Passenger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... our head it came with a swish similar to that made by a wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air, curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates. Stoner was deadly pale; it ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... see Miss Norman shed her pretty brunetteness and reappear as an old apple-woman, who besought him to buy of her wares. He even saw himself being transformed into a hooligan, or a smart R.A.F. officer, complete with a toothbrush moustache and "swish." ...
— Malcolm Sage, Detective • Herbert George Jenkins
... with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... vague thoughts dragged across his brain. The pompous middle-class vulgarity of the building of Berlin; the wide and restful beauty of Munich; the taste of beer; innumerable quiet, glittering cafes; the Ring; the swish of evening air in the face, as one skis down past the pines; a certain angle of the eyes in the face; long nights of drinking, and singing, and laughter; the admirable beauty of German wives and mothers; certain friends; some tunes; the quiet length of evening over the ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... in darkness and the telegraph instrument stilled. Backing into a corner, Henry waited, his eyes still blinded by the change from light to darkness; but he heard the opening of the panel, and the soft swish of ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the walls and ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... very near to Nature's generous heart, and often, when he stood shoulder-high in a silver-green sea of sugar-cane, or looked up to the tufted palms that made a murmuring over his head, or listened to the rustle of corn in the sunshine, or to the swish of the heavily-podded doura in the light wind that came in from the desert, he would compare his growing love for Ruby to the growing of Nature's children in this beneficent clime. And the luxuriant richness of the green world round ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... artist's face was set and stern. His eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just warming up ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... baint you? A rare honest gentleman of the right sort war he—he war!" and he pulled down another boy and put me up instead, and told me all about the great fire at Stubbs's factory. You can't think what fun it was. Roar, roar, up went the flame. Swish, wish, went the water—such a bellowing—such great ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... marshaled past, thirteen in all; and there were glimpses of deserts, snowcapped mountains, men moving in the blur of smoke, long watches in the night. Thirteen years in God-forsaken outposts, with never a sight of a woman's face, the sound of her voice, the swish of her gown, nor a touch of the spell which radiates from ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learnt from Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at home and took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing," again, is deliberate—it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But the things I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, like the "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire—great, disconnected, time-worn chunks amidst the natural herbage of it. "The Rivers of the East Coast; the Tweed, the Tyne, the Wear, the ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... and walked with her aunt and Verena, but the insistent voice of the sea, as with each swish of the waves it cried, "Come, wash and be clean," hit like a hammer ...
— Girls of the Forest • L. T. Meade
... followed. They paused now and then to listen, but the only sound they heard was caused by the waves of the Pacific breaking on the rocky shore, the rattle of the pebbles on the beach, and the soft swish of ...
— The Motor Boys on the Pacific • Clarence Young
... "diggings." Now he loved his home and everything that was in it. How he would miss the stealthy blue linen nurses, and the expressionless doctors, and the odour of broths and soups, and the scent of roses, and the swish of petticoats, and the elevating presence of pretty women, and the fragrance of them, and the sweet chatter of them—Oh my, oh me-oh-my! If George would only get well ...
— From the Housetops • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the Doctor ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... drowsy swish of the water past the bottom of the boat, and snatches of merriment or song drifting aft from the cutter, broke the silence in the skiff. Then Mouldy Jakes's companion apparently ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... an interview with the head. From it Benham emerged more whitely strung up than ever. "He said he would certainly swish me if I deserved it, and I said I would certainly ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... hammering of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... renewed his alarm. He gained the door in two jumps. He could hear the opening and closing of drawers and see the flash of an electric lamp as the thief moved swiftly about, apparently taking it for granted that he had the house to himself. The swish of the swing-door between dining-room and pantry marked his investigations in the rear of the house. He evidently found nothing there, for he was back in the hall again in a moment. Then through the vast silence of the big house the unknown gave voice to his anger ...
— Blacksheep! Blacksheep! • Meredith Nicholson
... in a moment and threw myself flat on my face. As I lay there I heard the report of his gun, the swish of the charge, and a cry from my loader. He had ...
— A Queen's Error • Henry Curties
... himself for the swing, grasped the hooks, and then, with good momentum, landed in the hammock. There was a swish, a distinct thud, and young Potter rolled out upon the deck with a gasp of amazement. Turning as quickly as he could, he looked up and saw the hammock swinging in its proper place. It was physical labor ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... about in the cabin, heard the rattle of dishes, the swish of a broom on the rough floor. And then presently she came out, dragging another rocker. Then she re-entered the cabin, returning with a strip of striped cloth and a sewing basket. She seated herself in the chair, placed ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ink-smeared rent through ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... to the parlour, and there I awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of her skirts, and, looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at the Governor's house the winter ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... He was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown about ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... and swiftly crossed himself. His face looked as if he saw something startling just beyond his adversary. Possibly this sudden change of expression caused Farnsworth to hesitate for a mere point of time. Then there was the swish of a woman's skirts; a light step pattered on the frozen ground, and Alice sprang between the men, facing Farnsworth. As she did this something small and yellow,—the locket at her throat,—fell and rolled under her feet. Nobody ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... hundred and eighty seconds there was no sound but the steady swish of the bow wave and the beat ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... left them, with a swish of a frilled silk petticoat under a tailored skirt, when Sylvia looked at Lucinda. "You ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... watching with wonder and envy as Marcia made her bargain with the kindly merchant, and selected her chintz. What a delicious swish the scissors made as they went through the width of cloth, and how delightfully the paper crackled as the bundle was being wrapped! Mary Ann did not know whether Kate or Marcia was ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... young men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and a yell. ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... fellows!" he cried, as the ship quivered under the blow of a heavy sea, and they heard the thud of many tons of water breaking over the bows and fore hatch, while the defeated monster washed the tightly screwed ports with a venomous swish. "They cannot harm us now. Let us rather thank kindly Providence which provided Magellan's water-way; think what it would mean were we ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... there was a sound—very, very slight. No dry stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping sound of ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... to insinuate I haven't grown up?" she mocked. "Thank you! Look OUT!" she cried suddenly, "the Boojum will catch us," and picking up her skirts she fairly flew down the narrow stairs. Orde could hear the light swish of her draperies down the hall, and then the pat of her feet on the stair carpet of the ...
— The Riverman • Stewart Edward White
... been sailing before, was delighted at the swift motion. The sky was as blue as blue could be, with flecks of white clouds all over it, the water was sparkling and clear, and dashed with a delightful little swish against ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... dark wood, the steady swish of a sickle was heard; and this made a fearsome noise in the tenuous night. A gigantic man stood there; his head looked over the trees and his wide-stretched arms swung the sickle and a pick-hook; and, stroke by stroke, the foliage and the flowers fell beneath his hands ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... darkness, waking vague swift fears Among the mighty hulks of Spain that lay Nearest, then fading through the mists inshore North-west, then growing again, but farther down Their ranks to Westward with each dark return And dark departure, till the rearmost rank Of grim sea-castles heard the swish and creak Pass plashing seaward thro' the wet sea-mists To windward now of all that monstrous host, Then heard no more than wandering sea-birds' cries Wheeling around their leagues of lanthorn-light, Or heave of waters, ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... work was over, and I was on my way to my berth, it occurred to me that I should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail, and whistling away gently to himself; and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around the sides of ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... for hours, for days. He suddenly threw open the shutters and roared at them, an unexpected and fearful challenge. A moment of paralyzed terror was followed by a wild rush, the bracken breaking under their flying feet. After they had passed from his sight he could hear the swish and crashing of their frantic flight. Two boys, so frightened, would not take long to reach home and gasp ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... alertness. We joined Argo in the pit. He was perturbed, and cursing. We dropped, gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... above the clink of the teacups. It was in the swish of every silk petticoat. If I went to the theater, church or concert, the call of that germ-ridden spot of the unholy name beat into my brain with the persistency of a tom-tom on ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... stanchions and the deck, upon the beards and moustaches of the male part of the voyagers, upon the woolly texture of the garments of all, even upon the smoothly brushed silk of the Honourable John's top hat; save for the swish of the paddles and the running of the engines, with a whispered exclamation here and there, we could hear nothing; and we could scarcely see the length ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... little longer Karl, heralded by the swish of the gondola, would come in regularly at eight o'clock for a few hours chat over our tea. Very rarely did I vary this routine by a visit to one of the theatres. When I did, I preferred the performances at the Camploi Theatre, ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... the other children had disappeared. Most of the grown-ups who had begun the voyage together, and were friendly by now, were in the music-room below having a concert. The ship was utterly still but for the throb of the engines and the "swish" of the water as the bows cut through it. They were running at full speed, without a pitch or a roll, the sea as clear as glass, when all of a sudden there was an awful crash, and the boat ...
— Queensland Cousins • Eleanor Luisa Haverfield
... crossed the bayou when the log on which he was walking tipped a little, and although Tom made frantic efforts to save himself by seizing all the branches within his reach, it set the whole structure in motion. There was a "swish" of tree-tops, and in a moment more the bridge and Tom went into the water together. The negro looked, but did not see ...
— Elam Storm, The Wolfer - The Lost Nugget • Harry Castlemon
... our left, and then a voice spoke, low and rumbling. It sounded so close at hand the fellow could scarcely have been five yards away. Another voice answered, and we were aware of bodies, stealing along through the wood; there was a faint rustling of dead leaves, and the occasional swish of a branch. We crouched low in the trail, fairly holding our breath, every nerve tense. There was no sound from below, but in the other direction one warrior—I could see the dim outline of his naked figure—passed within reach of ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... drunken cats came in their joy In the sunrise, a glittering wave. "We are tigers, are tigers," they yowled. "Down, Down, Go the swine to the grave." But we tramp Tramp Trampled them there, Then charged with our sabres and spears. The swish of the sabre, The swish of the sabre, Was a marvellous tune in our ears. We yelled "We are men, We are men." As we bled to death in the sun.... Then staunched our horrible wounds With the cry that the battle was won.... And at last, When the black-mammoth ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... him! He fancied he heard a rustle in the open space under the stairs. Were any one to step forth, Robert or——With a start, he paused and clutched the banister. Some one had stepped forth; a woman! The swish of her skirts was unmistakable. He felt the chill of a new dread. Never in his short but triumphant career had he met coldness or disapproval in the eye of a woman. Was he to encounter it now? If so, it would go hard with him. He trembled as he turned his head to ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... aching nerves were soothed into repose. The last remnants of his ghostly fears had been swept away. They were on the windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy forms of other promenaders. The whole experience, even the regular throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing, the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds of the seaborne hostel, were unfamiliar and exhilarating. And inside his hand, even though ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... side of the ship and a grating sound followed. Then came other gentle thuds combined with the soft swish of water disturbed. Peggy and Brewster were on the point of going below when their attention was caught by these ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... his house! And for the most part sinewy, hairy, grumbling old fellows, with stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not an eating-house, ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... lighted in the cantina. Drew sat down at a table. There was a swish of full skirts, and he looked up at a girl. She smiled as if she liked what she saw of this brown-faced stranger with quiet, disciplined features and ...
— Rebel Spurs • Andre Norton
... sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... fire-bell had been a decoy; a sort of seething the kid in its mother's milk, leading men into a snare through their kindliest feelings. Some dull sense of this added to utter dismay, and made them struggle and strain to get to all the outlets save that in which a fight was now going on; the swish of heavy whips, the thud of bludgeons, the groans, the growls of wounded or infuriated men, coming with terrible distinctness through the darkness to the quickened ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. II • Elizabeth Gaskell
... to solitudes more vast and awful still. As we drew near the lake again, a little light-house gleamed, and, as we swept past it out into the broad expanse of limitless waters, the cheerful throb of the machinery quickened again upon the sea, the pleasant swish of the water against the ship greeted us once more, life, movement, and gayety sprang out again on board, and in an instant the entire steamer had burst into laughter and chat and song. We were really in far more danger, from storm or ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... spot undefended, Gerald made a dash for it, and had already one foot on the wall, preparatory to scaling the cottage, when 'swish' came a lump of sea-weed in his face; and before he had recovered from the shock a pair of strong hands seized him and Marjorie's voice shouted, ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... these were so keenly alive to every noise that not the chirp of a cricket escaped them, and from time to time their owner started at the smallest sound. Owing to this attention, they heard presently the creak of the stairs, the soft opening of the front door, and even the swish of feet on the grass. Then, though the ears fairly strained to catch the least noise, came a silence, save for the squire's trumpeting, for what seemed to the girl ...
— Janice Meredith • Paul Leicester Ford
... consciousness after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... broad daylight, I saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to the fire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to each other, and listened to Dr. Silence's voice as it mingled with the swish and whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near wishin'—" ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... impassivity had any bearing on the moment he had no way of knowing; but no further movement came from behind the partition. Whatever the emotions that had caused the sharp swish of skirts and the sharp scrape of the chair, they had evidently subsided or ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... fingers dread to caress some slimy head, Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape, And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore.... And when things swish or fall, they ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... I have said, listening. There were several distinct sounds that saluted their ears. There was the "sough" of the sea, as it came swelling up the gorge; the "whish" of the wind, as it impinged upon the crests of the ridges; and the "swish" of the sand as it settled ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" about Mr. Hayne? It could not mean that the ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... Presently—swish! They were circling in the opposite direction to Tam, which meant that the object passed him at the rate of one hundred and forty miles an hour. But he had seen the German coming.... Something dropped from the fuselage, there was the rending crash of ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... trembling. She strove hard to control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... think we're babies? Here, shy us the reins. Come along, you fellows, there's room for all three on the box. Now then, Joe, give her her head. Come up, you beast! Swish! See if we don't make her step out. ...
— Follow My leader - The Boys of Templeton • Talbot Baines Reed
... strength into the beginning of the down stroke. The lumberjacks drew back quite deliberately, swung forward almost lazily. But the power constantly increased, until the axe met the wood in a mighty swish and whack. And each stroke fell in the gash of the one previous. Methodically they opened the "kerf," each face almost as smooth as though it had been sawn. At the finish they left the last fibres on one side ...
— The Rules of the Game • Stewart Edward White
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