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More "Thud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... book fell to the floor with a thud of amazement that reverberated indignation. "Well upon my word!" gasped she. Then, recovering her book—and more—"Why what a kindly gentleman he ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... next morning, the engines were at work again, and their heavy thud, thud, was mingled with the swash of water, as the Bengali boys washed down decks, while a rattling of spars and creaking of cordage showed that sails were being ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... close to one end of the log, while another person delivers a succession of smart blows with a hammer or mallet upon the opposite end, when a continuance of the vibrations will indicate to an experienced ear even the degree of soundness. If only a dull thud meets the ear, the listener may be certain that ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... jangling of the church hell; she heard also, suddenly, with a surprise that made her heart beat for a moment with furious leaps, a tapping on the window-pane. Then directly after that she fancied that there came from her father's room above the thud of some sudden fall or collapse. She listened. The bell swallowed all other noise. She thought that she had been mistaken, but the tapping at the window began again, now insistent; the church bell suddenly stopped and in ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... work again, and she could hear the wet sack thud, thud upon the ground. Other sacks and blankets went thud, thud, and down here at close range the fire was not so beautiful as it had been from the hilltop. Down here the glamour was gone. She climbed up to the high wagon seat and took the reins from ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... trust to luck for some of us getting through. The Spaniards were well hidden, and could not be dislodged, unless, which was out of the question, we came to hand-grasps with them. So urging our jaded beasts to a spurt, we quickened the pace, while now and again a groan and a thud told that a bullet had found ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... rapid pace for nearly an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but the fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the still October air the husks above our heads would loosen, and the brown nuts rustle through the foliage, and with a dull short thud, like drops of thunder-rain, break down upon the sod. At the foot of this rich forest, wedged in between huge buttresses, we found Pontremoli, and changed our horses here for the last time. It was Sunday, and the little town was alive with country-folk; ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... flowers planted in fire, with trees that seemed to be dropping golden fruit, in which all the crowd of beautiful girls were lying on banks and under trees, and perched like splendid birds up in the air. Then the curtain came down with a thud, smothering up the fire, and hiding everything. The storm of music broke off with a crash, and the crowd began to shout and yell, and stamp their feet till the whole ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... Quebec continued to be invested till spring, the thud of exploding bombs doing little harm except in the case of one family, during spring, when a shell fell through the roof to a dining-room table, killing a son where he sat at dinner. As the ice cleared from the river in spring, both sides were on the watch for first aid. ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... Giles Peram, whose legs were six feet from the ground. He howled and yelled; but all were too busy to pay any attention to him, and at last his strength gave out, and he fell with a stunning thud upon the ground, where he lay gasping for breath, partially unconscious, but with ...
— The Real America in Romance, Volume 6; A Century Too Soon (A Story - of Bacon's Rebellion) • John R. Musick
... has been longing to do; but something in her voice or her face as she turns aside jars upon him. As they stand there they can hear the thud of horses' hoofs coming at a rapid pace down the Boyne road—it is Mrs. Dundas's guests returning. It is getting dark fast now, and the wind is already furious in its strength as it sweeps down ...
— Only an Irish Girl • Mrs. Hungerford
... of the great trees the fever of discontent left him, and, forgetting all except the happiness of being surrounded by the silent oaks, he penetrated deeper and deeper into the forest. The brushing of a branch against a tree, the thud of a falling nut, the dart of a squirrel, and the sight of a bushy tail disappearing round a limb—all these things which indicated that the little gray fellows were working in the tree-tops, and which would usually have brought Isaac to a standstill, now did not seem to ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... had noticed about the stream, and with a few words to my companions I rode until the noise of rushing water was no longer oppressive to the ear, and listened with all my might. I heard a thousand distant-seeming noises, which had in them no reality—shoutings and stealthy whispers, the thud and jingle of cantering troops of horse, lonely far-away footfalls, all manner of phantom sounds. Suddenly, in the midst of these illusions, my heart stood still for a mere half-beat at a noise which ...
— In Direst Peril • David Christie Murray
... euphonium in the manner of a telescope. I was thinking of the reproaches in prospect, when I was startled by a loud shriek, to which the euphonium imparted a metallic vibration, and Mrs. Nagsby dropped the instrument on to the floor, the good lady herself following it with a thud. A wee mouse scuttled across her face, disappeared behind the easy chair, and doubtless rejoined his anxious family. Mrs. Nagsby recovered after her maid-of-all-work and I had burnt a few sheets of brown paper under her nostrils; but I had great ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... of these new tactics of mine altered alike the complexion not only of the fight but that of my antagonist as well; for he went down on the deck with a heavy dull thud, almost all his remaining breath knocked ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... start. Something had flown in through the open midmost window, and fallen with a thud on the floor a few ...
— Shining Ferry • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... he likewise possessed within him the white-hot flame of youth, and now, with a nameless fear to spurn him on, he ran as any healthy, frightened young animal would run. At the second turn Skinner had not passed him, but the thud of his feet ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... house. Captain Lynch looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. He put on a coat of pilot cloth, unhooked the barometer, and stowed it away in a capacious pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a heavy thud, and the light building tilted, twisted, quarter around on its foundation, and sank down, its floor at an angle of ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... write I am in my own little morning-room at Brosna, which love has made beautiful for me. Outside I see velvet lawns and bright flower-beds, and beyond the lawns and the ha-ha I can see in the park a herd of deer feeding. At the moment it is quiet. Then I hear the thud-thud of hoofs. Our boy comes riding by on a little rough mountain pony. Terence Murphy is giving him his riding lesson. He sits in the saddle as straight as his father, although he is little more than a baby. He will have Anthony's straight, ...
— The Story of Bawn • Katharine Tynan
... wooden partition in one end of which was an ordinary office door; and immediately at the back of the chair appeared a little opening or window, some three feet up from the floor. The sound of a groan, followed by that of a dull thud, came ...
— Dope • Sax Rohmer
... almost to his full height, fired his arrow, and quickly stooped again. His enemy was evidently on the watch for such an opening, for the two bowstrings twanged together, and while Estein's shaft struck something with a soft thud, the other hit the Viking hard ...
— Vandrad the Viking - The Feud and the Spell • J. Storer Clouston
... not know all that transpired afterward. When he achieved safe ground he fell, striking the sand with each particular part of his body. It was as if he had dropped from a roof, but the thud ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... his knife and with one thrust, cut a deep gash in my neck. A terrible fight followed. I remember being knocked over and my head stricking something. I reached out my hand and discovered it was the ax. With this awful weapon I struck my friend, my more than brother. The thud of the ax brought me to my senses as our blood mingled. We were both almost mortally wounded. The boss came in and tried to do something for our relief but John said, 'Oh, George? what an awful thing we have done? We have never said a cross word to each ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - From Interviews with Former Slaves: Indiana Narratives • Works Projects Administration
... had no illusions concerning his own marksmanship. The most he could hope for, he thought, was to have the primitive weapon thud home painfully on the other's armored hide. Perhaps, if he were very lucky, he could knock the other from his clawed feet. But that chance which hovers over any battlefield turned in Shann's favor. At just the right moment the Throg stretched his ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... jubilation for every boy in the town—which means every male of any age. The roar of the flames, the hissing of the steam, the crash of the timber, the shrieks of the foremen, the yells of applause or of sarcastic comment from the crowd, and the thud of the numerous pumps made a glorious row. Everybody, except the owners of the buildings, was hugely delighted, and when the fire was all over it was customary for the unfortunate owner further to increase the amount of his loss by dealing out liquid refreshments to ...
— The Forty-Niners - A Chronicle of the California Trail and El Dorado • Stewart Edward White
... end of a few minutes I heard a rustle and a creak; then Gunga Dass in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking to himself; then a soft thud—and I ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... had finished eating, and were all six falling asleep as they sat round the table. Every now and then a forehead fell with a thud on the board, and the man, awakened suddenly, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... utter. In seconds my arms were free, and I was led out, a tall grim-faced guard on each side, with a firm grip on my arms. I wondered what was happening to the lovely Zoorph, but I did not get a chance to look. I was thrown into a cell, and the heavy wooden door shut. The thud of a bar dropped in place punctuated the evening's experience ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... dash for Sinclair. But the rebel leader heard the pounding of footsteps and turned to fire at Roger as the cadet sailed through the air in a flying tackle. The jolting ray hit him squarely and he landed on the ground with a thud a few feet from Sinclair, ...
— The Revolt on Venus • Carey Rockwell
... minutes to push up the lower sash. He managed to open it some ten inches, and then, as a protest against this interference with its gradual decay, the sash-cord broke. He heard with a jump of the heart the weight thud down behind the woodwork: then, as he groped hastily behind him for a brick, to prop the sash, it came down with a run, and closed its descent with a jar that shook out two of its bottle panes to drop into the water that rushed below. Prompt upon this ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... fell with a thud upon the polished boards between the tiger-skins, and the body dropped writhing and ...
— Snake and Sword - A Novel • Percival Christopher Wren
... thunder of the guns had been. The recruits could hear the great pulses in their temples throbbing. Then the silence was pierced by the shrill notes of a brazen bugle, steadily rising higher and always calling insistently to the men to come. Then they heard the heavy thud of many men advancing with ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... the water raged below. Between the two Helena shrank, wilted. She took hold of Siegmund. The great, brutal wave flung itself at the rock, then drew back for another heavy spring. Fume and spray were spun on the wind like smoke. The roaring thud of the waves reminded Helena of a beating heart. She clung closer to him, as her hair was blown out damp, and her white dress flapped in the wet wind. Always, against the rock, came the slow thud of the waves, like a great heart beating under the breast. There was something brutal about ...
— The Trespasser • D.H. Lawrence
... became twisted around his with a steel-like grip that speedily convinced the younger man he would have to give way or a bone would break. He gave way accordingly, and the next thing he knew he came down on his back with a thud that seemed to shake ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... says one, and he fires a pistol-shot right into the cave. I was down with my mouth to the ground, flat as I could lay, but the sound of a gun always made me holler out, and holler I did as the ball seemed to come thud! right at me; but it stuck in the back ...
— Old Caravan Days • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... That speeds the startled partridge down the wind; The whistled warning as the winged ones rise Large and more large upon our straining eyes, Till with a sweep, while every nerve is tense, The chattering covey hurtles o'er the fence; The double crack of every lifted gun, The dinting thud of birds whose course is done— These sounds, delightful to his listening ear, He heeds no longer, for he cannot hear. None stauncher, till the drive was done, defied Temptation, rooted to his master's side; None swifter, when his master gave the ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... with the thud of the trochee[9] falling in each instance in a different vowel; and still more on the continuous sequence of five stanzas, from Judex ergo to non sit cassus, in which not a word could be displaced or replaced by ...
— The Flourishing of Romance and the Rise of Allegory - (Periods of European Literature, vol. II) • George Saintsbury
... had witnessed, during the uprisings, and which her hostess had so vividly recounted. The girl smiled, and gazing toward the mountains, pictured long lines of naked horsemen stealing silently into the valley. She started violently. Through the open window came sounds, the muffled thud of hoofs upon the soft ground, the low rattle of bit-chains and spur-rowels, and the creak of saddle leather. There were horsemen in the valley, and the horsemen were passing almost beneath her windows—and they were ...
— The Gold Girl • James B. Hendryx
... nearly an hour, and Davy's eyelids were beginning to flutter drowsily, when they heard the slow thud of a horse's hoofs in the thick dust of the road. Betty stopped reading to listen, and Davy ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... worry! It isn't anything!" But as Bet switched on the light and reached the top step she was just in time to see a figure in bright clothes go out the window. She heard the sound of a thud on the veranda of the second floor and ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... by surprise that I sat as if paralysed; but I was conscious of a quick movement from behind, something red passed over me, and, all instantaneously, there was the flash of another blade, a horrible thud—the pirate was driven under water; and I wrenched, as it were, my eyes round from him to look up over my shoulder at the marine, who with a dexterous twist of his rifle withdrew his bayonet from the ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... there for, ye drunken beast?" shouted the angry waiter, as he came down with a thud. "Why don't you walk on your ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... the scene; they only haunted it. A stranger might have thought the field entirely deserted until he came on a coat and a billy at the foot of saplings amongst the holes, and heard, in the shallow ground underneath, the thud of a pick, which told of some fossicker below rooting out what ...
— While the Billy Boils • Henry Lawson
... roared as Y'Nor pushed a control button and the ship lifted slowly. The roaring faltered and died as Y'Nor pushed another button which called for a crewman who was not there. The ship dropped back with a ponderous thud, careened, and fell with a force that shook the ground. It made no ...
— The Helpful Hand of God • Tom Godwin
... down the stairs to Roman Alley, she heard some one stumble, and then the thud, thud, of ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... hold, dragged him across the grass under my window. By the sycamore he halted, but only to shift his hands a little; and so, swaying on his hips, sent the carcase with a heave over the wall. I heard it drop with a thud on ...
— The Splendid Spur • Arthur T. Quiller Couch
... to reach his supreme moment and typical example about the time when Dickens was writing that thundering and thrilling and highly unlikely scene in Nicholas Nickleby, the scene where Nicholas hopelessly denounces the atrocious Gride in his hour of grinning triumph, and a thud upon the floor above tells them that the heroine's tyrannical father has died just in time to set her free. That is the apotheosis of the pure heroic as Dickens found it, and as Dickens in some sense continued it. It may be that it does not appear with quite so much unmistakable youth, beauty, ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... dark the great walls of the atmosphere plant loomed suddenly before me, and with a sickening thud I plunged to the ground before the small door which was withholding the spark of life from the inhabitants of ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Max, attends!" cried Louis and Geoffrey, as Louis sprang down after his friend. Thud went the boards again, with ...
— The Lost Girl • D. H. Lawrence
... understand something that had not even been considered before. She looked away, but he kept his eyes fast upon her half-turned face, finding delight in the warm tint that surged so shamelessly to her brow. He wondered if she could hear the pounding of his heart above the thud of the ...
— The Man From Brodney's • George Barr McCutcheon
... had left me I was on the upper deck and looking out to sea. I saw all at once the wash of a torpedo, indicated by a snake-like churn of the surface of the water. It may have been about thirty feet away. And then came a thud." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... pebbles and bits of dirt! The bullets ricochet away with a peculiar singing hiss, or crack overhead when they go too high. The shells which burst on the other side of the parapet shake the ground with a dull thud and crash. There are two minutes to wait before going over. Then is the time when a man feels a sinking sensation in his stomach; when his hands tremble ever so slightly, and when he offers up a pathetic little prayer to God that if he's a bit of a sportsman he may be ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... They never saw her again. As for Estra, he came back in a moment carrying a small, white bundle, which stirred in his arms. He unhesitatingly handed the child to Billie. His mouth moved soundlessly as a muffled shriek arose from the other end of the corridor; there was a thud, a metallic crash, and a great roar of voices. The mob had broken in, and up, through the back of the house. The first of the attackers thrust his head and shoulders into sight ...
— The Lord of Death and the Queen of Life • Homer Eon Flint
... long-armed and big-headed red devils swarming in from every direction. Carr dodged none too quickly to save his skull from a swift-flung stone, which clanged against the Nomad's hull. There was a perfect hail of the missiles now: one struck his left arm a numbing blow, and he heard a sickening thud and Ora's moan as she was hit. And there were winged darts, ...
— Creatures of Vibration • Harl Vincent
... draw a crowd where it went, is no more. The rush and the swing of the long line, the crack of the driver's mighty whip and his warning shouts to "Jack" or "Pete" to pull and keep step, the steady chop-chop thud of the sand-shaker, will be seen and heard no more. In the place of the horse-plough has come the electric sweeper, a less showy but a ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... afternoon, and by nine o'clock the wind was at its height and the sea rapidly rising. The waves pounded like Titanic sledgehammers against the vessel's quivering timbers; the gale roared a deep diapason through the cordage; and the regular thud, thud, thud of the pumps, and the long melancholy whistling of the wind through the blocks, filled our minds with dismal forebodings, and banished all ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... till the following Sunday before he could see Bryda. Everything was against him, for a heavy rain was falling, and there was no chance of Bryda coming out for a Sunday walk. But he went boldly up the steps before Mr Lambert's house and gave a heavy thud on ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... a foot each way. The little lanterns that burn in front of the houses were blown out by the wind, and when I peered out there was nothing but the inky darkness, the howling of the wind, the thrashing of the cocoanut trees, and the thud of falling nuts. From my side window I could see the native family next door to me all on their knees in front of an image of the Virgin, and once, in a lull, caught ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... I had time to begin my retreat, a very extraordinary sound, which I cannot describe by any word I know, reached my ears. It was not a roar, nor a clank, nor a boom, nor a clap, nor a crash, nor a thud, but if you have ever heard a noise combining all those elements, with a small percentage of screech to enliven them, that comes as near it as I can contrive to tell. We know from Holy Scripture that there used to be such creatures as dragons, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... short a distance on Earth would have meant instant death. Here, where gravitation's pull was but one-sixth that of Earth, he still struck on a rocky floor with a thud that made him sick for lack ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... much—or anybody—it doesn't matter which—do you turn red all over? Do you have creeps all down your back? And do you feel it just here?" The child clapped her yellow claw to Miss Quincey's heart. "You do, you do, Miss Quincey; I can see it go thump, I can feel it go thud!" ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... twenty times a day to some other locality, twenty times a day he brought them back, and arranging them upon the bench sat down by them defiantly, kicking vigorously against the side of the house in token of his victory, and wholly unconscious that every thud of his little heels sent a stab to his ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... walked off to the woods. At first it was difficult to guess what they were doing. Soon, however, there was a distant echo as of someone drumming with his fingers on the table; at last the sound of the axe and the thud of falling trees was heard quite plainly. Fresh inroads on the wavy contour of the forest appeared continually; first crevices, then windows, then wide openings, and for the first time since the world was ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... parallel to the quay wall, and then a derrick chain was hauled out and I heard the scrape of the big gangway as it drew along the gravel, and the thud of its iron-shod heel as it fell on deck and bridged the intervening two fathoms of water. But the black hull of the steamer blotted out all view of the people beyond it, and on the cutter I could learn nothing more of what was going ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... L. A. men, poised, breathless, menacing. There was a muttering roar from the bleachers, hoarsely pleading, commanding—"Block-that-kick! Block-that-kick! BLOCK-THAT-KICK!" The kneeling quarter back opened his muddy hands; the muddied oval came sailing lazily into them.... There was the gentle thud of Gridley's toe against the leather, and then—unbelievably, unbearably, it was an accomplished fact, a finished thing. Gridley had executed his place kick. They were scored on. It stood there on the board, glaring white ...
— Play the Game! • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... highest point upon the roof stands a dark figure in a desperate strait, the hands making frantic gestures, the arms swinging wildly—and then the body shoots off into frightful space, plunging upon the pavement with a revolting thud. The man's arm strikes a bystander as he darts down. The crowd shudders, sways, and utters a low murmur of pity and horror. The faint-hearted lookers-on hide their faces. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... of him, he finally emerged upon a fresh clearing where the young trees, waist-high, afforded little shelter and less hiding. Just as he emerged, stepping out a pace, a rifle cracked to his right, and though he did not hear the bullet in passing, the thud of it came to his ears when it struck ...
— Adventure • Jack London
... tired that night, and it was a luxury to lie flat upon my back on the beach, listening to the rhythmical thud of the big, long wave at my feet, and the song of the stars overhead. There is something unspeakably tranquillizing in the studded dome of heaven; there is also something unspeakably sad. It bends over the struggling, yearning, aching ...
— How to Cook Husbands • Elizabeth Strong Worthington
... gloves! She followed that. English tried to hit him! She followed that. And then thud! thud! thud! She could not beat as swiftly with one fist the palm of her other hand as Perry's glove struck ...
— Winner Take All • Larry Evans
... Oscar, as he scanned the wide river, apparently almost bare to its bed. "I suppose there is a channel, and I suppose that pilot up there in the pilot-house knows where it is, but I don't see any." Just then the water before them suddenly shoaled, there was a soft, grating sound, a thud, and the boat stopped, hard and fast aground. The "New Lucy" had joined the fleet of belated steamers on the shoals ...
— The Boy Settlers - A Story of Early Times in Kansas • Noah Brooks
... anger and a shrug of the shoulders he turned from her, and despatched one of his men with an order. A few moments later, with a creaking of hinges and a clanking of chains, the great bridge swung down and dropped with a thud to span the gulf. Instantly the Count spurred his horse forward, and followed by Lanciotto rode across the plank and under the archway of the entrance tower ...
— Love-at-Arms • Raphael Sabatini
... the floor with a dull thud. Sarudine, startled, opened his eyes and, in the dimly-lighted room, saw a basin with water, a towel, and the dark window, that like an awful ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... horns looked; each palm was like an enormous silver fish fork with twenty prongs. Then he went out of my sight for a minute as he passed around a little bay in the southwest corner, getting nearer and nearer to Billy. But I could still hear his steps distinctly—slosh, slosh, slosh—thud, thud, thud (the grunting had stopped)—closer came the sound, until it was directly behind the dense green branches of a fallen balsam tree, not twenty feet away from Billy. Then suddenly the noise ceased. I ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... the shiny object descended, the dome vibrated beneath their feet. As long as the vibration remained they were safe, but when it felt like a thud—the metal ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... screaming, seventy feet he fell, smashing to the earth with an audible thud and crunch, his body rebounding slightly and settling down again. Still he lived, for he moved and squirmed, clawing with his hands and feet. I remember the Fire-Man running forward with a stone and hammering him on the head...and then ...
— Before Adam • Jack London
... replaced his revolver. And even as he did so the flap of the bar was shut down and the bolt clicked, and then with a tremendous thud the catch of the door snapped and the bar-parlour door burst open. They heard Marvel squeal like a caught leveret, and forthwith they were clambering over the bar to his rescue. The bearded man's revolver cracked and the looking-glass at the back of the parlour ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... with a jerk by the soft thud of little hoofs on the prairie, for Felix was beating it back toward Willer Bend, with a speed that astonished his late rider. Whitey started after him instinctively, but he soon realized that that was useless, and he stood and watched, while Felix ...
— Injun and Whitey to the Rescue • William S. Hart
... struck the marble with her spear. Then the noises arose all about and around the very spot where we stood, and the clang of the arms was so close that it shook and thrilled the very columns beside me. And the neighing and snorting of horses, and the thud of their ponderous hoofs flying over the earth made, as it were, a wind in my ears, so that it seemed as though a furious battle were raging all around us. But I could see nothing. Only the sounds increased, and became so violent that they awoke me, and even after waking I still ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... held a stout club. I do not know what followed; there came—all in a confused blur of instant sequence—an oath from Rupert, a rush from me, a scuffle, as though some one sought to hold him back; then he was on me; I felt a great thud on my forehead, and I felt nothing more. Again I was on my back, with a terrible pain in my head, and a dull, dreamy consciousness of a knot of men standing over me, talking eagerly to ...
— Rupert of Hentzau - From The Memoirs of Fritz Von Tarlenheim: The Sequel to - The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... turn alone; next he had slid in a flash among his brothers, and the whole of them like a school of playful fish whipped round the corral, kicking up the fine dust, and (I take it) roaring with laughter. Through the window-glass of our Pullman the thud of their mischievous hoofs reached us, and the strong, humorous curses of the cow-boys. Then for the first time I noticed a man who sat on the high gate of the corral, looking on. For he now climbed down with the undulations of a tiger, ...
— The Virginian - A Horseman Of The Plains • Owen Wister
... priest was standing over the grave bathed in a cold perspiration, his heart throbbing violently, every new thud of the earth, as it sounded violently against the coffin, sending a cold chill of horror through every nerve. Already enough earth had been thrown to cover three-quarters of the lid, and at the foot it was heaped up some distance. He tried to frame some excuse ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... the ex-counterfeiter, and fell in a heap on the head of Sid Jeffers. Then the hatch came into place with a thud and in a twinkling ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... bit, and soon she scrambled out of the manger and ran out of the stall. As she did so the little girl heard a bump, or thud, over her head. That bump made her think of Bunny, and how he was swinging ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... something crash through the window of the barn and fall with a dull, sickening thud on the outside. The neighbors came to see what it was that caused the noise. They found that I had done it ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... up from the rock and slipped the frog's skin into the earth beneath it. As she settled it in place, her pulses gave a startled leap, and she stood terror-stricken beside the stone. A thud of footsteps ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... something in his hand. He hurled it. A distant thud and a small report merged at once into a great explosion, which reverberated about the Bluff. Doe laughed shrilly. He fell. But it could only have been the shock which knocked him over, for he was on his feet ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... wall, her slanting rays leaving its foot in deep shadow. It seemed as if she had come a-tiptoe from behind, and clasped the darkness over the eyes, smiling mischievously. When I came near the bank of chrysanthemums, I saw a figure stretched on the grass in front. My heart gave a sudden thud. The figure also sat up with a ...
— The Home and the World • Rabindranath Tagore
... impressed. He made no answer. He turned out of bed, his feet making one solid thud on the floor. He marched from the room, a grotesque figure in baggy union-pajamas. She heard him drawing a drink of water at the bathroom tap. She was furious at the contemptuousness of his exit. She snuggled down in bed, and looked away from him as he returned. He ignored ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... fit nicely into the Hospital square. Instinctively I put my head down sheltering it as best I could with my arms, while bricks, mortar, and slates rained on, and all around, us. There was a heavy thud just in front of us, and when the dust had cleared away I saw it was a coping from the Cathedral, 2 feet by 4! Notre Dame had remained standing, but the bomb had completely smashed in the roof of the chapel, against ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... He acknowledged with sorrow his crime, and urged upon all the necessity of being true to God and their country. He stepped back on the "trap," the black cap was drawn over his head, the noose placed about his neck, the "trap" sprung, and with a sickening thud he dropped to his doom. For twenty minutes, from nine fifty to ten ten, his body hung there before he was pronounced by the attending surgeon ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West
... results of Hicks' effort to propel the pigskin over the crossbar were hilarious, for he missed the oval by a foot, nearly dislocated his knee, and, slipping in the mud, he sat down violently with a thud. However, so the excited Theophilus now narrated, even as the convulsed students jeered Hicks, hurling whistles, shouts, cat-calls, songs and humorous remarks at the downfallen kicker, one of Hicks' celebrated inspirations had smitten the pestersome Junior, evidently ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... great delight of his companions, the rattle of a wagon and the thud of a horse's feet sounded from up the road. And since some one must soon drive over the bridge, which crossed right above the dam, Red scurried back again and dived into the pond, into which Johnnie Green and the others had ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... before the child, who was laughing and trying to grasp them. Then she forgot them, and dropped them in the bottom of the boat, for something had struck the keel with a thud, and the water was boiling ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... left and brought down showers of plaster from the wall. I feared he might have seen me by the pistol-flash. I did not fire back. There was no need. Something moved swiftly like a black ghost through the open door. There was a thud—and the ring of a steel ...
— Jimgrim and Allah's Peace • Talbot Mundy
... of battle continued until it became unendurable, and I was put into the ambulance by Tom and the driver, the former following with the horses. We took the route by which the troops had marched, the din of conflict increasing with every mile, the rattle of small arms mingling with the thud of guns. After weary hours of rough road, every jolt on which threatened to destroy my remaining vitality, we approached Cold Harbor and met numbers of wounded. Among these was General Elzey, with a dreadful wound in the head ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... Thud, and a cloud of stars! He was on his back, and the ostrich, which did not seem to be affected by giddiness, was on him, punishing him dreadfully. Luckily an ostrich cannot kick a man very hard when he is flat on the ground. If ...
— Jess • H. Rider Haggard
... ran Joel and Kingdon. The line blocked desperately. A streak of brown flew by, and a moment later Joel heard the thud as the full-back's shoe struck the ball. Then down the field he sped, through the great gap made by the Yates forwards. The Harwell ends were well under the kick and stood waiting grimly beside the Yates full-back as the ball settled to earth. As it thudded against his canvas ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... bandit chief leaped forward, knife swishing aloft. Never had Kid Wolf struck so hard a blow as he struck then! Added to the power of his own tremendous strength and leverage was The Terror's own speed as he lunged in. Fist met jaw with a sickening thud. ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... brushed something strange to him—a small, hard, and irregular body which, escaping his clutches, fell with a soft thud to the ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... momentarily above the fence across the alley, behind the tormentor. Herbert's expression was implacably resentful, and so was the gesture with which he hurled an object at the comedian preoccupied with the opposite fence. This object, upon reaching its goal, as it did more with a splash than a thud, was revealed as a tomato, presumably in a useless state. The taunter screamed in astonishment, and after looking vainly for an assailant, began necessarily ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... so well begun, but in his second stride tripped over a heavy body hidden in the shadows, and pitched headlong. Falling, he was conscious of a flashing thing that sped past his cheek, immediately above his shoulder. There followed an echoing thud against the ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... had struggled to this upright position, he was making frantic, miserable efforts to raise himself still further. He, too, had heard the dull thud of feet, the shuffling gait of men when carrying a ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... military drills and maneuvers, police officers with loaded revolvers, and sentinels at their posts with bayonets on their rifles; when one hears for whole days at a time (as I hear it in Hamovniky where I live) the whistle of balls and the dull thud as they fall in the sand; when one sees in the midst of a town where any effort at violence in self-defense is forbidden, where the sale of powder and of chemicals, where furious driving and practicing as a doctor without a diploma, and so on, are not allowed; thousands of disciplined troops, ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... listened wonderingly. It came again—tap! tap! tap!—then a pause; and then an unmistakably human exclamation of impatience, while a bit of rock went whirling past her, to plunge with a resounding thud into the ...
— Sara, a Princess • Fannie E. Newberry
... as, with compressed lips, and eyes that appeared to fairly flash fire, he bent so low in his saddle as to almost touch his horse's mane. On, on, we sped! Not a word was spoken—not a sound could be heard, save the dull, heavy thud of our horses' feet upon the soft ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... quickly. She was still, listening. All the doors in the house seemed to be open. The house was alive with soft, quick steps and running voices. The green baize door that led to the kitchen regions swung open and shut with a muffled thud. And now there came a long, chuckling absurd sound. It was the heavy piano being moved on its stiff castors. But the air! If you stopped to notice, was the air always like this? Little faint winds were ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... revolver and Tierney followed his example. Then Morgan gave the door a quick push and stood back. It swung back against the wall with a resounding thud, but outside of that sound everything remained silent. The three men then moved warily into the doorway, with Tierney and Morgan in the lead. While Marsh remained in the entrance hall, Tierney stepped into the living room and Morgan crept cautiously through the ...
— The Sheridan Road Mystery • Paul Thorne
... sudden thud, as if something had fallen somewhere in the house; then silence, except for the loud beating of my heart, that threatened to suffocate me. "Nonsense," I said to myself, "I am foolishly nervous to-night. It is nothing here, or Bogie would bark;" so I tried again to sleep. ...
— J. Cole • Emma Gellibrand
... not thus to be cheated. At the order of the Magistrate the executioner thrust a sword into the criminal's bowels, then, unbinding the body, let it fall upon the ground with a thud: it rolled over on its back, and lay still for a moment, the white, emaciated face staring at the sky. Then the executioner seized an axe and quartered the corpse. Some sickened and turned away, but ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... there," thundered "Poker" John, and Jacky heard a thud as of a fist falling upon the table. "You've taken the unwarrantable liberty of poking your nose into my affairs, and, because of our old acquaintance, I have allowed it. But now let me tell you this is no d——d business of ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... wound at a rapid pace for nearly an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but the fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the still October air the husks above our heads would loosen, and the brown nuts rustle through the foliage, and with a dull short thud, like drops of thunder-rain, break down upon the sod. At the foot of this rich forest, wedged in between huge buttresses, we found Pontremoli, and changed our horses here for the last time. It was Sunday, and the little town was alive with country-folk; tall stalwart fellows wearing peacock's ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... the tiger spring and have it over? Why does—but look, look, the brute has let go the branch and fallen down, down with a crash, and Archie hears the dull thud of the ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... morning, and Gloria and the cat were occupying the broad piazza. At last Abou Ben Adhem slid with a soft thud to the piazza floor. It was his signal that no more petting was desired for the time. Gloria, too, got out of the big rocker and went into ...
— Gloria and Treeless Street • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... became still more cyclonic. He had a left arm which seemed to open out in joints like a telescope. Several times when the Kid appeared well out of distance there was a thud as a brown glove ripped in over his guard and jerked his head back. But always he kept boring in, delivering an occasional right to the body with the pleased smile of an infant destroying a Noah's ark with a tack-hammer. Despite these efforts, however, he was plainly getting ...
— The Prince and Betty - (American edition) • P. G. Wodehouse
... man raised his staff and smote twice upon the ground, once to the right and once to the left. The one gave a dull thud, ...
— Sir Nigel • Arthur Conan Doyle
... some distance after a sudden shock had cut the gaff halliards and let the jaws of the gaff free; so now the sail would neither haul up nor come down. Like a cat Bob sprang up the remaining rings, and hacked at the gear; the sail fell—and so did Bob, with a dull thud. ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Everything was against him, for a heavy rain was falling, and there was no chance of Bryda coming out for a Sunday walk. But he went boldly up the steps before Mr Lambert's house and gave a heavy thud on ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... rug tells me that a breeze has blown my papers off the table. A round thump is a signal that a pencil has rolled on the floor. If a book falls, it gives a flat thud. A wooden rap on the balustrade announces that dinner is ready. Many of these vibrations are obliterated out of doors. On a lawn or the road, I can feel only running, stamping, ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... side of this door. Howard and Graham passed in, and Graham, glancing back, saw the white-robed Council still standing in a close group and looking at him. Then the door closed behind him with a heavy thud, and for the first time since his awakening he was in silence. The floor, even, was noiseless ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... the gray mists of morning came soldiers, six or eight, with ring of weapons and shuffling thud of feet; and with them was a centurion in command. These overtook Nicanor where he went slowly back toward Thorney; and the centurion laid a rough hand upon him and bade him halt. Nicanor turned; but before he could ask angrily why they had stopped him, his wrists were fast in handcuffs ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... the two great giants meet; and when they do, all the world knows it for a mile around, without it being seen. The crashing of the antlers as they close, the roars of hate, the squeals of combat, the cracking of breaking branches as they charge and charge, and push and strive, and—sometimes the thud of a heavy ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... graze his arm, and heard a heavy thud at his side. It was a ripe Durian which had fallen from an immense height and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... before I was clear of the window, he had hold of me and half drew me back, holding to me tightly, and not without need, for there was a dull thud, the house quivered from the tremendous blow, and I felt the water leap over me, deluging me from head to foot, and making me gasp for breath as I ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... a thud and took off his hat as he gazed at this astonishing woman. She was giving him advice in a most superior manner; and yet she ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... destroyed our sails, consumed more stores than the crew, affably shared our beds and our dangers, and now, when the ship was made seaworthy, concluded to clear out. I called Mahon to enjoy the spectacle. Rat after rat appeared on our rail, took a last look over his shoulder, and leaped with a hollow thud into the empty hulk. We tried to count them, but soon lost the tale. Mahon said: 'Well, well! don't talk to me about the intelligence of rats. They ought to have left before, when we had that narrow squeak from foundering. ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... little singer. Nothing but starvation or scientific research could justify the slaughter of one of these innocents. I believe I shut my eyes when I pulled the trigger of my gun, and I know my heart gave a regretful thump when I heard the thud of its poor, bleeding body upon the ground. When we started for Franklin Point the next day, Lieutenant Schwatka concluded to follow Toolooah's advice, and keep upon the smooth ice near the shore, even ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... the spell-bound multitude in the streets, for in a moment more the fate of the doomed adventurers must be decided. Suddenly two human forms dropped from the loosened basket and struck with a fearful thud against the elevated railway, then rebounded to the street below a mass of mangled flesh. Death was instantaneous. With one impulse the throng surged about the bodies; but Dr. Gardner's eyes were still fixed upon the balloon, for as if relieved by the rapid lightening of its burden ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... invisible behind the lights of his cabin; and the thud of oars, the voluble noises of the water, and the crackling of the cresset overhead had, too, the quality of impersonal and supernatural ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... it did not produce the ringing sound it would have done in an empty gun, but went home with a soft thud, I sung out, "Stand clear, sir. By Jupiter, the ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... resounded with the thunderous racket of heavy wings as the flock burst into flight, clattering away through leafy obscurity; but under the uproar of shot and clapping wings sounded the thud and splash of something heavy crashing earthward; and the Indian, springing from root to tussock, vanished into ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... was nearer than either of them dreamed. At that very moment the soft thud of the closing housedoor sounded through the house. It brought her sharply to her feet, and loose from his coiling arms, with quickened breath and blanching face. A moment she hung there, tense, then sped to the door of the room, set it ajar ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... Horse waited in the hall. Soon he heard a little thud on the carpet. That was the Sawdust Doll sliding down out of Dorothy's bed to the floor. A moment later she stood beside the Rocking Horse in ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... roof. Down into its valleys and up over its ridges the little fugitive slid and scrambled. She reached the sheer edge, the lady at the window hid her face in her hands, there came a dull, jarring thud in the paved court beneath, and the lady, looking down, saw the child lifted from the ground and borne out ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... out again close behind them. The pheasants poured over the top of a belt of tall firs. They could see young Mr. Meyer, in his new yellow gaiters, very busy and excited at the end of the line, and they could hear the thud of the ...
— Puck of Pook's Hill • Rudyard Kipling
... bell was being rung he distinctly heard the window flung wide open, and a soft thud on the pavement. Sylvia had thrown her purse into the street. From his own room next to the schoolroom, he saw the man pick it up and go away. The doors were closed now, but he imagined the governess's anger. The incident had afterwards seemed ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... attempts to inspect a redstart's nest containing young, the female drops from the nest a dead weight and falls from branch to branch of any tree in the way, striking the ground with a dull thud. Her next move is to trail a helpless wing along the ground. At another time she flies from the nest and alights on the ground with spread wings and tail. The yellow markings on the wing and tail show conspicuously as the bird moves forward by the wings, as if her legs were too weak ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... and she mechanically drew the folds of her scarf around her shoulders, her eyes fixed on vacancy, her thoughts wandering. Did she not hear the violins of her ball, which reached their ears in the intervals of silence, like bursts of savage irony, with the heavy thud of the dancers shaking the floors? An iron hand, falling upon her, aroused her abruptly from her torpor. Risler had taken her by the arm, and, leading her before ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... close to his feet. This shell, Kirk explained afterwards, had arrived a few minutes before, and striking the parapet of the communication trench some distance away, had ricocheted and landed with a thud and a cloud of dust beside him. He was still in the state of being uncertain whether he was alive or not and was very glad, when spoken to, to find that he was able ...
— The Fifth Battalion Highland Light Infantry in the War 1914-1918 • F.L. Morrison
... door swung back on its rawhide hinges and ten men, with a revolver in each hand, filed quietly in. Sims and Larkin remained outside on guard. Presently there was a sound of muttering and cursing that grew louder. Then one yell, and the solid thud of a revolver butt coming in contact with a human skull. After that there was ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... trying to show him that she could run away from him if she chose; and with a quiet smile on his lips and a firm hand on his tugging horse, he kept behind her until she was a good way up the field. Then he gave his horse its head and it sprang forward. She heard the eager thud of the heavy hoofs drawing up behind, and in a few seconds he was level with her. For a minute they galloped neck and neck, though at a little distance from each other. Then she saw him ahead, riding with a seat looser than most Englishmen's, yet with an assurance, a grace of ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... hells that batter a coastal town, Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down. And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day, Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away — Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun, And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost and won, — As a mother or wife in the years to come, will kneel, wild-eyed and white, And pray to God in her darkened home for the ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... instinct warned him of danger, but I knew I could not get up the rough bank with my lame foot, and drove him past. As I limped by his side with the whip, I thought I heard the current gurgle under the ice, but we went on, the dogs snuffing and treading cautiously. Then there was a soft thud and a splash, the team was jerked back and I saw that the sledge had vanished. I suppose it had broken through a snow-bridge that our ...
— The Lure of the North • Harold Bindloss
... beside her flew into one, and the stones of the parapet between them stormed into the cistern. Had her presence been the attraction to that thunderbolt? Often after this, while she watched the engine below in the workshop, she would hear the dull thud of an iron ball against the body of the tower; but although it knocked the parapet into showers of stones, their artillery could not make the ...
— St. George and St. Michael • George MacDonald
... a council of war, which overruled the plan for an immediate return to France. Presently a thud, followed by groans of mortal agony, was heard in the new commander's cabin. The door was burst open, and he was found dying from the thrust of his own sword. La Jonquiere, afterwards governor-general of Canada, ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... in the thick of the battle of Tamai with Davis's square, and at Abu Klea, the smoke cloud that hung like a curtain before our eyes was a source of danger. Save for the erratic, occasional whizzing of the enemy's bullets, the thud of a hit and the dropping, weltering in his blood, of a man here and there, watched from our firing lines the combat enlisted and fascinated the attention with barely a suggestion of danger to the onlooker. Few will ever see again so great and brave a show. A vast army, with a front ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... for very fear I dared not refuse. And when I had handed it in by a chink in the open door, first there was a sound like drinking, then an awful cry, "Potash again!" and then a heavy soft thud, as if you had knocked over a bolster stuffed with ...
— HE • Andrew Lang
... leaped and seemed to stand still. Jim could not have locked more terrible if he were really a murderer. He opened his coat. Then he flung a black object upon the table and it fell with a soft, heavy, sodden thud. It was a ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... sickening thud, and the bookmaker went over like a shot rabbit. His legs twitched for a moment—a little moan that was scarcely audible broke from his lips. Then he lay quite still. Sir Richard bent over him with the life ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to move the adjournment, although he and his friends were joined by some of the Scotch and Irish malcontents, the total muster was only thirty-three, and the motion accordingly came to earth with a thud. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Nov 21, 1917 • Various
... one, and he brought up with a painful thud at the bottom of a deer pit—a covered trap which the natives dig to catch their ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... again, and she could hear the wet sack thud, thud upon the ground. Other sacks and blankets went thud, thud, and down here at close range the fire was not so beautiful as it had been from the hilltop. Down here the glamour was gone. She climbed up to the high wagon seat and took ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower
... gold and glare, and flowers planted in fire, with trees that seemed to be dropping golden fruit, in which all the crowd of beautiful girls were lying on banks and under trees, and perched like splendid birds up in the air. Then the curtain came down with a thud, smothering up the fire, and hiding everything. The storm of music broke off with a crash, and the crowd began to shout and yell, and stamp their feet ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... of his knife. In another second of time he would have driven the blade through me; but that second was all I now required. Straight from my waist, and from under my poncho, I fired. His knife fell ringing on to the floor; he swerved, then fell back, coming to the ground with a heavy thud. Over his falling body I leaped, and almost before he had touched the ground was several yards away, then, wheeling round, I found the other two ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... I tried to imagine the entire animal from the little of it that I saw, aimed for the spot among the grass which I pictured as being just behind the shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack of the rifle broke in upon the stillness of the night with startling effect. I heard the thud of the bullet, instantly followed by a savage snarl that ended in a moan, and as the smoke drifted away I caught a momentary glimpse of a great, tawny, black-spotted form writhing convulsively in the air from its death spring and then collapsing ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... the weather side of the Cape, he could hear the seas thud and the surf growl like the distant booming of heavy batteries. Over his head the wind whistled and whined in the firs with a whistle and a whine like machine-gun bullets that have missed their mark. But neither ...
— Burned Bridges • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... feeling toward this place was like that about a ruin, only this seemed older than a ruin. I could not hear my horse's foot-falls, and an apple startled me when it fell with a soft thud, and I watched it roll a foot or two and then stop, as if it knew it never would have anything more to do in the world. I remembered the Enchanted Palace and the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and it seemed as if I were on the way to it, and this was a corner of ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... this conclusion—which disappointed Susan a little, I think—my spade struck with a heavy thud against a piece of wood. Clearing the earth away, I disclosed some fragments of rotten plank, and beneath these I saw something that glittered! Susan, standing beside me on the edge of the hole, saw the glitter too. She did not say ...
— Our Pirate Hoard - 1891 • Thomas A. Janvier
... bright red streaks, rushed into the captain's cabin, broke open the closet beside the desk with a bayonet and seized the keys of the ammunition rooms. Now down the stairs and through the narrow openings in the bulkheads, where the thud of the hostile projectiles sounds more and more hollow, and here, at last, is the door of the shell-chamber containing the shells for the 8-inch guns in ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... castle on patrol, with Haddan at his side. Dreamily the watchers in the cool balcony looked down upon the somber park and its occasional guardsman. Neither was in the mood to talk. As they rose at last to go to their rooms, something whizzed through the air and dropped with a slight thud in the center of the balcony. The two young women started back in alarm. A faint light from Beverly's window filtered ...
— Beverly of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... Dunbar. Men began to say that he 'jawed' too much and would not let them go to bed, little knowing how he used to try to prolong a conversation so that he might not be left alone with a horrible fear always ready to pounce upon him when night fell, and when only the thud of the engines playing some maddening tune broke ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... virago's—broke in from the passage behind, demanding to know if the door was being kept open to invite the whole town. The child stood her ground on the doorstep. An instant later a hand reached out, clutched her—it seemed by the hair— and dragged her inside. Then followed a strangling sob and the thud ...
— Merry-Garden and Other Stories • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a shrubbery that led to the training-field, and there came the quick thud of hoofs galloping on short turf as ...
— Charles Rex • Ethel M. Dell
... the ceaseless thud, the chopping, pounding of the machinery, the long soughing of ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... lighted with a few lamps—the walls black as night or reflecting slender rays from the polished watery surface. Distinctly Dantesque was the gulf between the huge mountain sides which threatened every moment to fall. One heard the click and thud of hammers, the wild chants of the borers, the slush of water. Being like gnomes and kobolds glided hither and thither—half naked figures muffled up by the mist. Here dark bodies, gleaming with beaded heat drops, hung in what seemed frightful positions; "they ...
— The Life of Sir Richard Burton • Thomas Wright
... already landed on the further side of the wall when thud! thud! thud! other members of the flock came thumping down upon the ledge beside him. He moved aside a little way, because he didn't want to ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... he thought his lungs would burst. But he was making progress. Now, he dared back off a trifle and take a long breath of air from the burrow he had made. Then a sound stirred him to renewed effort. It was the thud and jar of an impact. The tiger, having made his first leap, had missed. How many more times would he do this? The boy once more jamming his head against the snow renewed his swimming motions. Again he was obliged ...
— Lost In The Air • Roy J. Snell
... he did not come down. She could not imagine that he had turned into bed and gone to sleep—that he did not know she was sitting here waiting for him in the dawn. For a moment she thought of going up and knocking at his door—then she heard a thud of footsteps and creaking of boards, which announced that Mene Tekel and Nan Gregory of Windpumps were stirring in their bedroom. In an incredibly short time they were coming downstairs, tying apron-strings and screwing ...
— Joanna Godden • Sheila Kaye-Smith
... scarcely regained his balance after being almost knocked over in this humiliating way, and the horrible, as it were, sodden, thud of the blow in the face had scarcely died away in the room when he seized Shatov by the shoulders with both hands, but at once, almost at the same instant, pulled both hands away and clasped them behind his back. He did not speak, but ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... swung smartly around the bend into the narrow wagon-road that stretched its aimless way through the scrubby bottom-lands and over the ridge to the open sweep of the plains beyond. Presently he urged the mare to a rhythmic lope, and all the while his ears were alert for the thud of galloping horses behind. It was not until he reached the table-land to the south that he drove the rowels into the flanks of the swift four-year-old and leaned forward in the saddle to meet the rush of the wind. Full well he knew ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... a bang, a scuffle, and then a dull thud; but the first to follow was only in time to see eight finger-tips clinging for a moment outside to the ledge of one of the narrow windows, which ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... in progress. The members of the other houses who had come to look on at the match stood in knots, and gazed with approval at the efforts of Kay's and Blackburn's juniors to wipe each other off the face of the earth. The air was full of shrill battle-cries, varied now and then by a smack or a thud, as some young but strenuous fist found a billet. The fortune of war seemed to be distributed equally so far, and the combatants were ...
— The Head of Kay's • P. G. Wodehouse
... There was a metallic thud as they let down a burden, which I knew must be a sack of gold. I lay quiet for a minute, and then began to wriggle through the brush to get a glimpse of them, and, in case it proved to be the camp, learn what might be the most ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... a study, as, with compressed lips, and eyes that appeared to fairly flash fire, he bent so low in his saddle as to almost touch his horse's mane. On, on, we sped! Not a word was spoken—not a sound could be heard, save the dull, heavy thud of our horses' feet upon ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... A crashing thud, from a heavy beam, snapped the bolt from its screws, another blow tore loose the door. Through the opening and over the debris sprang a short, broad-shouldered man in a gray suit, while three other heavily built men entered, barring ...
— A Village of Vagabonds • F. Berkeley Smith
... much inclined that, way" agreed Anne ruefully. "When I think something nice is going to happen I seem to fly right up on the wings of anticipation; and then the first thing I realize I drop down to earth with a thud. But really, Marilla, the flying part IS glorious as long as it lasts . . . it's like soaring through a sunset. I think it ...
— Anne Of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... creaking of the boom, the singing of the ropes, the banging of the blocks as they put the vessel about, all fell in with the roaring of the wind above, the surge of the waves past her sides, and the thud with which every now and then one would strike her; while through it all Diamond could hear the gurgling, rippling, talking flow of the water against her planks, as she slipped through it, lying now on this side, now on that—like a subdued air running ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... into which had been poured, as was supposed, the ill-gotten gain of all the pirates, from Captain Kidd down to the last outlaw of the ocean. Twenty-seven years the sound of the hammer and the drill and the thud of blasting-powder echoed through the leafy forests, and then all ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... driving. Try them on and see," and he tossed them through the door on to Eustace's bed, and went on with his unpacking. A minute later he heard a shrill cry of terror. "Oh, Lord," he heard, "it's in the glove! Quick, Saunders, quick!" Then came a smacking thud. Eustace had thrown it from him. "I've chucked it into the bathroom," he gasped, "it's hit the wall and fallen into the bath. Come now if you want to help." Saunders, with a lighted candle in his hand, looked over the edge of the bath. There it was, old ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... alive with the dances, and the dull thud of the Indian drum was continually in the air. The council had agreed that Antelope was entitled to wear a war-bonnet of eagles' feathers. He was accordingly summoned before the aboriginal parliament, and from the wise men of ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... hand; he heard it fall with a thud upon the carpet; and then he heard nothing else except the beating of his own arteries in his ears. Time seemed to stop suddenly and then to whirl madly forward while he stood rooted to his square of carpet, with ...
— The Wheel of Life • Ellen Anderson Gholson Glasgow
... every demonstration of joy, and for some weeks he and dyspepsia had it all their own way on Piccadilly. (Report says that he drank! Several times while under the influence of liquor he abdicated the throne with a dull thud, but ...
— Comic History of England • Bill Nye
... down on us, and past us, and I watched the prophet. His eyes were wide, his whole face expressing anguish. "Oh God, my Father!" he whispered, and seemed to quiver with each thud of the tramping feet on the pavement. After the storm had passed, he stood motionless, the pain still in his face "It is Rome! It is Rome!" ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... holding them up before the child, who was laughing and trying to grasp them. Then she forgot them, and dropped them in the bottom of the boat, for something had struck the keel with a thud, and the ...
— The Blue Lagoon - A Romance • H. de Vere Stacpoole
... The governor refused a pardon, and Dr. Schoeppe heard the hammer driving the nails into his scaffold beneath the prison-window. He was measured for his coffin, but at the last moment was reprieved, and listened to the heavy thud as the drop fell and a man whose companion he was to have been on the scaffold was launched into eternity. Finally, moved by the incessant pleadings of Mr. Hepburn, the junior counsel, by the urgings of the public press, led ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... heard something crash through the window of the barn and fall with a dull, sickening thud on the outside. The neighbors came to see what it was that caused the noise. They found that I had done it in ...
— Remarks • Bill Nye
... the Edgeworth eleven. Never was such confusion! I was already starting for the second run, whilst my stout fellow batsman was halfway through the first, when the ball came down like a meteor, and, narrowly shaving the luckless "Podder's" head, hit the ground with a loud thud about five yards distant from the outstretched hands of the anxious bowler, who collided with his ally, the wicket-keeper, in the middle of the pitch. Half stunned by the shock, and disappointed at his want ...
— A Cotswold Village • J. Arthur Gibbs
... upon me that tremor of passionate misery which, at the time, often made me ill. The senseless routine of mechanic exercise was in itself all but unendurable to me; I hated the standing in line, the thrusting-out of arms and legs at a signal, the thud of feet stamping in constrained unison. The loss of individuality seemed to me sheer disgrace. And when, as often happened, the drill-sergeant rebuked me for some inefficiency as I stood in line, when he addressed me as "Number Seven!" I burned with shame and ...
— The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft • George Gissing
... and leaped to his feet, hoping for a shot at a stray otter. The next instant the rifle slipped from his nerveless fingers and struck upon the ground with a muffled thud. ...
— The Promise - A Tale of the Great Northwest • James B. Hendryx
... cause the sand to fall in; we had therefore to start a new vertical shaft from the surface. After a considerable amount of digging we reached water level, and were preparing to bail the water, when with a thud the whole thing caved in, and our labour had to be recommenced. At the time the wedge of ground fell in Godfrey was working below and narrowly escaped being buried. A timely rope fortunately saved him. I never saw a man come quicker out of a hole! Now we were a bit puzzled. Our position was this: ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... the way!" cried he; and while we ran off and hid behind convenient trees, Tom struck a match and lighted the fuse. The dull thud of an explosion shortly followed; but on walking back to the spot we were all greatly surprised to see that the rock had remained intact—it ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... his foe, gripping him by the throat until every vein in his forehead stood out in blue knots. The action was so unexpected and so rapid that Dixon found it impossible to free himself. The men swayed to and fro in each other's embrace, finally falling heavily together with a sickening thud upon the road. Tom was uppermost, and picked himself up with a rather ghastly smile, but Dixon lay there ...
— The Village by the River • H. Louisa Bedford
... isn't anything!" But as Bet switched on the light and reached the top step she was just in time to see a figure in bright clothes go out the window. She heard the sound of a thud on the veranda of the second floor and running feet ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... exactly what I felt in No. 3 when I slept there on March 1st. Well, it is rather difficult to describe! I never felt frightened out of my wits at nothing before, if it was nothing. I certainly saw no shadows or figures, and the only noise I heard was the thud twice, which sounded as if it came from the storey below. If I shut my eyes for a minute I felt as if I was struggling with something invisible (not indigestion, as I never have it!). I was so paralysed that I dare not call out to Miss Langton, ...
— The Alleged Haunting of B—— House • Various
... against the rocky defences of Gravelotte, only for them to fall back impotently, like the broken foam and spent wash of billows which have assailed in vain the precipitous peaks of some cliff-defended coast that repels their every attack; when the sharp clash of steel met opposing steel and galloping thud of flying squadrons, urged on with savage oath and triumphant cheer, filled the air; when the gurgling groan of the death-agony and moan of painless pain, made the treble of the devil-music, to the thundering sustained bass of the cannon roar, and the growling arpeggio accompaniment ...
— Fritz and Eric - The Brother Crusoes • John Conroy Hutcheson
... the moment I discovered this apparition, upon which the wild stare of the Judge in life and in death had rested, I ran forward. I thought as I did so that I heard the scrape of clothing on the iron balcony rail and the thud of a heavy object dropping on the grass below. Flinging open the glass doors, through which a torrent of wind poured into the room, and leaning out under the twisted branches of the vine, I tried in vain to penetrate the ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... far down the street (Ah me, and alack a day.) And I heard the thud of his horse's feet Beating a roundelay. And I felt a little song coming, coming Over my lips as humming, humming, I turned my eyes ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... went down the library corridor. I knocked on the library door. There was no reply. Then I heard a shot and a sort of thud." ...
— The Yellow Streak • Williams, Valentine
... nothing; you press your hands on your wound and take two reeling steps forward; you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon, and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice; your clinched hand comes down with a thud on the boards, ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... ever I hard. But I'll tell ye what I hae hard: I hae hard the flails gaein' thud, ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... and after he was downed under a mass of players, a fist would thud against his jaw or hard knuckles would be rubbed across his nose. Once when an opposing player had fallen across Robertson's right leg, another of his opponents seized his ankle and turned it. Though he fought against it, his temper was slowly ...
— The Upward Path - A Reader For Colored Children • Various
... order he had acknowledged and executed, as I discovered, the moment I tumbled out of my hammock; for the boat was kicking up her heels more madly than ever, while every few seconds there resounded a heavy thud on the deck overhead, and the craft shivered from stem to stern as she drove her sharp nose into the heart of a great comber, throwing the water in tons over herself. This was the rough side of work aboard a destroyer, with a vengeance, and I spent four miserable ...
— Under the Ensign of the Rising Sun - A Story of the Russo-Japanese War • Harry Collingwood
... and were all six falling asleep as they sat round the table. Every now and then a forehead fell with a thud on the board, and the man, awakened suddenly, ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... were appalled. At a signal from the King the first unfortunate wretch was instantly seized by two executioners and held over the bowl, while a third lifted his keen sword, and with a dull, sickening thud brought it down upon the poor fellow's neck, hacking into his spine until the head was severed. Then there arose a loud shout of triumph. The offering to the fetish was the signal for the most enthusiastic rejoicing, and the shouts ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... sensibility can help feeling proudly stirred when a Cavalry regiment goes by. The clean, alert, upright men, with their sure seat; the massive war-horses champing their bits and shaking their accoutrements: the rhythmic thud of hoofs, the keen glitter of steel, and the general air of power, all combine to form a spectacle that sets the pulses beating faster. Then, again, observe the strange elastic rhythm of the march as a battalion of tall Highlanders ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... rising in the east when she found herself again looking out upon the water, the stone still clutched tightly. She gazed at the river, then at the stone, and again at the river. The stone dropped with a thud at her feet. The savage in her had not abated in the least; only her body was terribly worn and wearied and the robe, muddied and torn, enveloped her like a veil of ice. Above her the lonely yellow sky; below her the sickly ...
— The Adventures of Kathlyn • Harold MacGrath
... about the time when Dickens was writing that thundering and thrilling and highly unlikely scene in Nicholas Nickleby, the scene where Nicholas hopelessly denounces the atrocious Gride in his hour of grinning triumph, and a thud upon the floor above tells them that the heroine's tyrannical father has died just in time to set her free. That is the apotheosis of the pure heroic as Dickens found it, and as Dickens in some sense ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... commotion behind him, a swift rush of feet, a muffled thud, and a gasping, agonized grunt. The next instant the huge acetelyne lamp that lighted the room fell to the floor with a crash and the place ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... that he failed to hear the light thud of hoofs along the sand-cushioned and half-obliterated road which skirted his dilapidated fence line, and he straightened up at length to see a horseman who had drawn rein there and who now sat sidewise gazing at him with one leg thrown across ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... by the perfect stillness of the night, I pursued my occupation, until I felt disposed for sleep. On the following night, while engaged in the same way, and at the same midnight hour, came the same heavy, sharp, distinct thud upon the floor directly above my head. I was disposed to philosophize on the subject, and, though the coincidence was certainly peculiar, I still conceived that this unusual sound, at such an unusual hour, might be attributed to some natural cause. ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... up and looked out of the window; below, in the race, there was a jam of logs, and the air was keen with the pungent smell of sawdust and new boards. The whir and thud of the machinery down-stairs sent a faint quiver through the planks under his feet. "The mill will net a good profit this year," he said to himself, absently. "'Thalia can have pretty nearly anything she wants." And even as he said it he had ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... forward, too, will you?" said Steve. Neil joined Phil and for some minutes the Adventurer stole quietly along through the grey void with little sound save the slow working of the engine below deck and the lazy thud of the propeller. It was so quiet that when Perry suddenly worked the fog-horn Han almost fell over the wet rail on which he was sitting. It was Ossie who broke the ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... seeing Storch crumple over, but he felt a thud shake the cluttered room to its foundations... He went over quietly and closed the open door. Then he put on his hat. Storch lay quite still and an ugly red pool was already luring flies to a crimson ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... himself round as closely as he could in his great coat, he heard a thud just in front of him, and the man lying there gave a gasp and straightened his limbs. Strachan rose and went to ...
— For Fortune and Glory - A Story of the Soudan War • Lewis Hough
... with a steel-like grip that speedily convinced the younger man he would have to give way or a bone would break. He gave way accordingly, and the next thing he knew he came down on his back with a thud that seemed ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... cheeping thud of the axe was immediately heard, accompanied by a sharp twang as the tautly strained line parted; then followed the sound of the shores falling to the ground; there was a gentle jar, and the ...
— The Pirate Island - A Story of the South Pacific • Harry Collingwood
... she implored once more, extending her hands to secure her treasured book, "oh, uncle." In reply all I heard was a dull thud, and I saw Paula fall to the ground. Beside himself, my father had given her a tremendous blow on the ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... it must be known, are gifted with insatiable curiosity, and they are not troubled much with the fear of man, or, indeed, of anything else. Hearing the thud of the coils on the ground, this monster grizzly walked up to and smelt them. He was proceeding to taste them, when, happening to cast his little eyes upwards, he beheld Little Tim sitting within a few feet ...
— The Prairie Chief • R.M. Ballantyne
... minister were just argle-bargling some few words on the doctrine of the camel and the eye of the needle, when, in the midst of our discourse, as all was wheesht and attentive, an awful thud was heard in the closet, which gave the minister, who thought the house had fallen down, such a start, that his very wig louped for a full three-eighths off his crown. I say we were needcessitated to let the cat out of ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... consulted nervously. The new turn of affairs was not at all to their liking. The clamors of the mob continued. Once a fanatic pushed against a soldier. There was a thud, a howl, and a mouth masked with liquid red gasped to the sun ...
— Mary Magdalen • Edgar Saltus
... the grave was filled and the turf laid down, a trying quarter of an hour. Ah me! the thud of the spade on your mother's grave! None gave any sign of what he felt save Drumsheugh, whose sordid slough had slipped off from a tender heart, and Chalmers, who went behind a tombstone and sobbed aloud. Not even Posty asked the reason so much as by a look, and Drumtochty, as it ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... the stranger's hug was so close that at last stout William's muscles softened under his grip, and he gave a sob. Then the youth put forth all his strength and gave a sudden trip with his heel and a cast over his right hip, and down stout William went, with a sickening thud, and lay as though he would never ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... leg. He pushed the little dog rather roughly away and stepped back to the arcade. The priest looked puzzled and slightly hurt. At this moment the soft thud of horse's hoofs was audible on the road and Domini came cantering back to the hotel. Her eyes were sparkling, her face was radiant. She bowed to the priest and reined up before the hotel ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens
... steward had left me I was on the upper deck and looking out to sea. I saw all at once the wash of a torpedo, indicated by a snake-like churn of the surface of the water. It may have been about thirty feet away. And then came a thud." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... terrible yell the powerful savage wrenched his arm free; in a last superhuman effort he swung his knife upward as Rod's blade sank to the hilt in his breast, and the blow fell with a sickening thud under Rod's arm. With a sharp cry the young hunter staggered to his feet, and the Indian's knife fell from him, red with blood. Making an effort to control himself he picked up the knife and loosed ...
— The Gold Hunters - A Story of Life and Adventure in the Hudson Bay Wilds • James Oliver Curwood
... thing burst among the 13th Battery, which stands under shelter of Tunnel Hill, in a straight line with my road, less than 300 yards away. I was just mounting my horse and stopped to see the burst, when a fragment came sauntering high through the air and fell with a thud in the garden just behind me. It was a jagged bit of outer casing about three inches thick, and weighing over 6 lbs. The extraordinary thing about it was that it had flung off exactly at right angles from the line of fire. Gunners say that melinite ...
— Ladysmith - The Diary of a Siege • H. W. Nevinson
... The thud of hoofs smote his ear sharply, so close was he to the ground. Slowly Pablo raised his head. Over the hog's back which separated the draw in which Pablo lay concealed from the draw down which Don Miguel had ridden, the gray horse ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... presentment of that face of which the mere clumsy copy had made him dream and desire. He had been tossed by it to a height so vertiginous as to involve a retreat from the table; but the next day he had dropped with a resounding thud at the very feet of his apparition. On the following, with an equal incoherence, a sacrifice even of his bewildered sisters, whom he left behind, he made an heroic effort to escape by flight from a fate of which he already felt the cold breath. That fate, in London, very little later, ...
— Embarrassments • Henry James
... summoned a council of war, which overruled the plan for an immediate return to France. Presently a thud, followed by groans of mortal agony, was heard in the new commander's cabin. The door was burst open, and he was found dying from the thrust of his own sword. La Jonquiere, afterwards governor-general ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... described. There was such a raging, roaring clamor rising to the heavens in the distance, the confused uproar of other sounds was so violent, that in it she failed to distinguish the report of musketry. As she was turning the corner of a house there was a deadened thud close at her ear, succeeded by the sound of falling plaster, which brought her to a sudden halt; it was a bullet that had struck the facade. She was pale as death, and asked herself if her courage would be sufficient to carry her through to the end; and ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... all over, the heavy thud of a policeman's truncheon was heard, and a few minutes later, with Bob's help, the two men were led away to the ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... "trying times"; and one moonlight night, when the Gray Goose was sound asleep upon one leg, the Green was rudely shaken under her by the thud of a horse's feet. "Ga, ga!" said she, putting down the other ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... of us spoke. The silence was broken by a thud, as if a flying squirrel had dropped from the roof to the balcony. A stick of wood fell apart in the grate, and the crow of the baby in the hooded cradle was answered by the ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... with the flashlight tested the flaccid neck by bending the head to one side and back sharply. He ended this inspection by letting the head fall back to the moist earth. It landed with a thud ...
— The Fourth R • George Oliver Smith
... him; he rallied, gathered himself, stumbled, and then, plunging heavily forward, crashed down upon his master, rolled completely over him, and then went sliding and pawing desperately to the edge of the rocky precipice, over which he shot, a huge, living bowlder and fell with a thud upon the jagged rocks below. For some minutes Gwynne lay where he had been hurled, stunned and senseless; then he slowly revived, found that his left arm was severely wrenched and bruised, and that the blood was streaming from a long gash in his forehead. ...
— Sunset Pass - or Running the Gauntlet Through Apache Land • Charles King
... pleasant to rest awhile on the parapet in the shadow of the bushes. The low thud-thud of sculls in the rowlocks of a distant punt travels up the water. By-and-by a hare comes along, enters on the bridge, and almost reaches the gate in the middle before he spies anything suspicious. Such a spot, and, indeed, any gateway, used to be a favourite place ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... listened for a second scream. She had chosen the inside bedroom that had a window opening on the corridor. Now in the breathless silence, she heard a swift creak ending in the bang of an up-flung sash. A swish of light garments, a thud shaking the floor outside, and then bare feet flying in frantic haste past her room and ...
— Beatrice Leigh at College - A Story for Girls • Julia Augusta Schwartz
... thousand casualties somewhere else. We knew, at that rate, it couldn't possibly last until we got to the other side, but we prayed loudly that it would. In April we heard of the gassing of the first Canadians at Ypres. Then the casualty lists from that field arrived and hit Vancouver with a thud. Instantly a change came over the city. Before that day, war had been a romance, a thing far away about which to read and over which to wave flags. It was intangible, impersonal. It was the same attitude the States ...
— Introduction to the Science of Sociology • Robert E. Park
... sounded the trampling of feet once more, and crash! the end of the log struck the door. This time the impact was so great the door could not withstand it, and down it came with a thud. At least a dozen forms could be seen through the opening, outlined against ...
— The Dare Boys of 1776 • Stephen Angus Cox
... still fell around us, we kept steadily on our course, while occasionally I turned an uneasy glance over my shoulder to see how far we had got from the enemy. At length scarcely a shot reached us; a gentle thud every now and then showing us that those which did so had almost lost their power. I was able now to pay more attention to my young companion. I ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston
... reminded myself. Followed the voice, a voice from the stable, the cracked, whining tenor of a very aged vassal of the Arrowhead, one Jimmie Time. Jimmie, I gathered, was currying a horse as he sang, for each bar of the ballad was measured by the double thud of a currycomb against the side of a stall. Whistle, guitar, and voice now attacked the thing in differing keys and at varying points. Jimmie might be said to prevail. There was a fatuous tenderness in his attack and the thudding currycomb gave it spirit. Nor did he slur any of the affecting ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson
... bullet strike, or seem to strike, and a few seconds later I heard something else—the noise of a heavy thud upon the ground. I looked, and there with outstretched wings lay the foul bird dead, stone dead, eight or ten paces ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... what a grip on the mainsheet is like!" I thought; and even as the hand closed there came the yell, and the thud of the earthen drum, and I was ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... German trenches. Instinctively he clapped the cover on the canteen and dived for shelter, while the great, black trench-mortar bomb came twisting and turning down through the air. It fell to ground with a dull thud, there was a second's silence, then an appalling explosion. The roof of the dug-out in which "Pongo" had found refuge sagged ominously, the supporting beam cracked, and the heavy layer of earth and bricks and branches subsided ...
— Mud and Khaki - Sketches from Flanders and France • Vernon Bartlett
... and a puff of smoke leaps out. At the highest point upon the roof stands a dark figure in a desperate strait, the hands making frantic gestures, the arms swinging wildly—and then the body shoots off into frightful space, plunging upon the pavement with a revolting thud. The man's arm strikes a bystander as he darts down. The crowd shudders, sways, and utters a low murmur of pity and horror. The faint-hearted lookers-on hide their faces. One woman ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... Cicely's manner has been that of utter weariness. She has picked up the London Times and thrown it aside; taken up a copy of Punch and let it fall with a thud to the floor, looked idly at a piece of music and decided, evidently, not to sing it. Sir John runs out of technical terms ...
— Behind the Beyond - and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge • Stephen Leacock
... a shelf of battered, dog-eared books, and taking down an armful proceeded to strew the volumes upon the table. The red blooms of the columbine being in the way, he took up the bunch and tossed it out of the window. With the light thud of the mass upon the ground eyes of husband ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... lights of his cabin; and the thud of oars, the voluble noises of the water, and the crackling of the cresset overhead had, too, the quality of impersonal and supernatural phenomena. His ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... his eyes the big man is swaying from side to side like a mighty tree before a tempest. Cameron and Ross both spring to him. On the hillsides men stand rigid, pale, shaking; women shriek and faint. One ghastly moment of suspense, and then a horrid sickening thud; one more agonising second of silence, and then from a score of throats rises ...
— Corporal Cameron • Ralph Connor
... their wraps, Tam-o-Shanters, fore-and-aft caps, steamer chairs, rugs, and copies of paper-covered novels. The deck was almost deserted, yet here and there a steamer chair had already been placed, and one or two were occupied. The voyage had commenced. The engine had settled down to its regular low thud, thud; the vessel's head rose gracefully with the long swell of the ocean, and, to make everything complete, several passengers already felt that inward qualm—the accompaniment of ...
— In a Steamer Chair And Other Stories • Robert Barr
... un," shouted Tom, and his brothers, stoical Dolph and Rube, danced about madly. Even with underholds, Chad, being much the shorter of the two, had no advantage that he did not need, and, with a sharp thud, the two fierce little bodies struck the road side by side, spurting up a cloud ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon, and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice; your clinched hand comes down with a thud on the ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... quarter mile she had to go before she came to another; but here she found things altogether different and more interesting. As she came softly around a great snow-draped boulder there was a snarl, a sharp rattle of steel, and a thud. She shrank back swiftly, just beyond reach of the claws of a big lynx. The lynx had been ahead of her in discovering the trap, and with the stupidity of his tribe had got caught in it. The inexorable steel jaws had him fast by the left fore leg. He had heard the almost soundless ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... second day of our journey the people on board celebrated a church feast, and the pilot, in his anxiety to do it well, got helplessly drunk. The result was that during that night I was thrown out of the top berth I occupied by a terrific thud. The steamer had run on the sandbank of an uninhabited island, and there she stuck fast—immovable. We were landed on the shore, and there had further time for reflection on the mutability of things. In the white sand there were distinct footprints of a large jaguar ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray
... over-confident Osmanlis leaping from their intrenchments to advance along the road and drive them back; now I come to the Nabi Tchai ravines, where the concealed masses of Eussian infantry suddenly sprang up and cut off their retreat; I fancy I can see- chug! wh-u-u-p! thud!-stars, and see them pretty distinctly, too, for while gazing curiously about, locating the Russian ambushment, the bicycle strikes a sand-hole, and I am favored with the worst header I have experienced for many a day. I am-or rather was, a minute ago-bowling along quite ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... the floor with a thud that shook the house, and in this change of base I had the luck to come out uppermost. Then my courage rose as I found that I could hold my man. I feared a knife, but if he had one he had not drawn it, and I was able to keep his hands too busy to allow him to get possession of it now. ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott
... away behind them as the pace increased and they reached the edge of the oasis and emerged on to the open desert. A few minutes more and the fretting horses settled down into a steady gallop. The dense ranks of tribesmen were silent at last, and only the rythmical thud of hoofs sounded with a muffled beat against ...
— The Shadow of the East • E. M. Hull
... of the way!" cried he; and while we ran off and hid behind convenient trees, Tom struck a match and lighted the fuse. The dull thud of an explosion shortly followed; but on walking back to the spot we were all greatly surprised to see that the rock had remained intact—it was as solid ...
— The Boys of Crawford's Basin - The Story of a Mountain Ranch in the Early Days of Colorado • Sidford F. Hamp
... crowd started, horsemen, vehicles, and pedestrians, rolling slowly over the broad face of the moorland. The carriages rocked and pitched like boats in a seaway, as they lumbered along, fifty abreast, scrambling and lurching over everything which came in their way. Sometimes, with a snap and a thud, one axle would come to the ground, whilst a wheel reeled off amidst the tussocks of heather, and roars of delight greeted the owners as they looked ruefully at the ruin. Then as the gorse clumps grew thinner, and the sward more level, those on foot began to run, ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... of falling wood, or of iron chains slipping to the ground, the heavy thud of loads of vegetables discharged from the waggons, and the grating of wheels as the carts were backed against the footways, filled the yet sonorous awakening, whose near approach could be felt and heard in the throbbing gloom. Glancing ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... no time. He was afraid of falling behind the hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him, leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the hussars running all around him, their spurs ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... sister was gripping my arm with both hands. A third horseman shot into view out of the woods at tight angles, to stop them, and it seemed that the three horses must crash together in a heap. With a moan the Blight buried her face on my shoulder. She shivered when the muffled thud of body against body and the splintering of wood rent the air; a chorus of shrieks arose about her, and when she lifted her frightened face Marston, the Discarded, was limp on the ground, his horse was staggering to his feet, and the Wild Dog was galloping ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... passed like hours, but at last the sun rose, evidently very much against its will. About ten o'clock next morning I faintly heard the thud of horse's hoofs approaching at a canter from the direction of the village. At first I thought nothing of it, but as these grew rapidly louder and louder, my uneasiness increased and I lay perfectly still ...
— 'Brother Bosch', an Airman's Escape from Germany • Gerald Featherstone Knight
... searching his thoughts there. Suddenly from somewhere in the bows a song spurted and dropped and spurted again and shot up in the stillness, slender and clear, like a rod oft white water. The Belgian boys were singing the Marseillaise. On the deck their feet beat out the thud of the march. ...
— The Romantic • May Sinclair
... to the saddle, swept off his hat to the girl, who stood with the lantern light upon her in the doorway, smiling but flushed, and shook his bridle. Then there was a jingle that was lost in the thud of hoofs, and the men vanished into the shadowy prairie. Half an hour later the homestead was once more dark and silent; but three men sent out by Grant were riding at a reckless gallop across the great dusky levels, and breakfast was not finished when ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... for a moment, stifle not only the fear of arrest, but even the torments of conscience. For a moment, oh, only for a moment! I can picture the state of mind of the criminal hopelessly enslaved by these influences—first, the influence of drink, of noise and excitement, of the thud of the dance and the scream of the song, and of her, flushed with wine, singing and dancing and laughing to him! Secondly, the hope in the background that the fatal end might still be far off, that not till next morning, at least, they would come and take him. So he had a few hours ...
— The Brothers Karamazov • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... crackling sails gybed over with a thud, and the "Starlight" lay on the starboard tack, head down and ...
— Swirling Waters • Max Rittenberg
... in a flash and dropped to the floor below with a thud. Then he leaped away toward the wall out of sight of Terry. Suddenly a loud, nasal voice spoke through one ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... A faint, sharp thud from behind had been followed instantly by the shattering of a ground-floor window ...
— The Red Thumb Mark • R. Austin Freeman
... in breathless suspense. The thud of their horses' hoofs alone told me their nearness. My finger was on the trigger. I awaited the word. "Fire!" she said at last, in a calm, unflinching voice. "He ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen
... of thatch slid off the roof and fell into the road with a deadened thud, whilst white flakes of straw and wood-ash were flying in the wind like feathers. At the same time two of the cottages adjoining, upon which a little water had been brought to play from the rector's engine, were seen to be on fire. The attenuated spirt of water ...
— Desperate Remedies • Thomas Hardy
... A violent thud resounded against the door. Someone had placed his shoulder against it. Henrietta clung to the table to ...
— The Poor Plutocrats • Maurus Jokai
... there was no hesitation. Both sides knew that the deadly duel must be fought to the close, and at dawn the roll and thud of cannon began. From hill to hill gun answered gun, shells screamed and hissed, and the whole valley seemed to be encircled with flame and smoke. But the Confederates gained ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... on to the slim black leg, but the sudden movement of the train had jerked Amy off the seat. She clung for a moment to the rack, but her hand slipped, and she fell headlong on to the opposite seat, and there was a dull thud as her head crashed on to a little ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... flung himself against the farther wall. Just as he was about to pass out he had heard something click above his head and he but barely had the time to leap back and escape being struck by an iron curtain which fell in front of him with a terrible thud. ...
— The Teeth of the Tiger • Maurice Leblanc
... With a thud of hoofs and a rustling of parting foliage the cavalryman disappeared amid the underwood. A minute or two later a thin, dropping rattle of musketry, five hundred yards or so to the front, announced that the sharpshooters of the Fourteenth ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... "'The dull thud of the tomahawk cut short my father's dying prayer, an' his brains were spattered on the bush where I was concealed; an', a'most at the same moment, another of the band buried his knife in ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... this question when she heard the thud of a horse's hoofs upon the grass, and, looking up, saw a man riding towards her. He was leaning across his horse's head, looking down at her in the next moment—a dark figure shutting out the waving line of fir-trees and the warm light in the western sky. "What ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... just come on to relieve 4434, lived up to his duty most practically by catching the leg of the battling Jimmie, and giving it a wrestling twist which threw the tough with a thud on the ...
— Traffic in Souls - A Novel of Crime and Its Cure • Eustace Hale Ball
... upstairs again," said Dick cheerfully. But he met Nell in the passage. There was the sound of a thud, a clear, low voice expostulating, and a girl's footstep on the stairs, as Nell, smoothing her hair, carried ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... hugest bolts of Messrs. KRUPP Hissed harmless through his hair; The Bosch might blow his billet up, But he would be elsewhere; And if with soul-destroying thud A monstrous Minnie hit the mud, The thing was sure to be a dud If only Jones ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various
... cheerful view, saying to herself that David might have needed more important papers, papers which he would not like everyone to know about, and had sent by special messenger to her to get them. Then her face would brighten and her step grow more brisk. But always would come the dull thud of possibility of something more serious. Her heart beat so fast sometimes that she was forced to lessen her speed to get her breath, for though she was going through town, and must necessarily walk somewhat soberly lest she call ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... and moneyless man, who dominated the clans of San Francisco simply by right of his manhood. He was not without a sort of eloquence of his own. He spoke right to the point, and his words fell like the thud of a shillalah; or rang like the clash of steel. He dealt with the rough elements of politics in an exciting and turbulent period of California politics, and was more of a border chief than an Ivanhoe in his modes of warfare. He reached the United ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... one end of the log, while another person delivers a succession of smart blows with a hammer or mallet upon the opposite end, when a continuance of the vibrations will indicate to an experienced ear even the degree of soundness. If only a dull thud meets the ear, the listener may be certain that ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... able to surmount so small a difficulty. So I fastened a black cockade amid the blood-red of the roses, and, rising in my stirrups, threw them firmly and gently, and saw them rise in the air, top the window-sill, and fall with a slight thud upon the floor. I did not wait for more, but turned and rode away; but it seemed to me that as I gained the shadow of the forest and looked back I saw the faint suggestion of a girlish form standing at the open window. I looked once again ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... worked upon the redoubt which had been located under counsel of Gridley, Prescott, Knowlton, and other officers, the dull thud of the pickaxe and the grating of shovels were the only sounds that disturbed the pervading silence, except as the sentries' "All's well!" from Copp's Hill and from the warships, relieved anxiety and stimulated work. Prescott and Putnam alike, and more than once, visited the beach, to be ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... and seemed to stand still. Jim could not have locked more terrible if he were really a murderer. He opened his coat. Then he flung a black object upon the table and it fell with a soft, heavy, sodden thud. It was a leather belt ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... miricle," said George, bringing down a fist like a leg of mutton with a thud upon the table, "it ain't no use of your talking to me, Squire. I knaw it, I tell you I knaw it. There'll never be no other than a de la Molle up at the Castle while we're alive, no, nor while our childer is alive either. If the money's to be found, why drat it, it will be found. ...
— Colonel Quaritch, V.C. - A Tale of Country Life • H. Rider Haggard
... be? Then Hewet picked up a red fruit and threw it as high as he could. When it dropped, he would speak. They heard the flapping of great wings; they heard the fruit go pattering through the leaves and eventually fall with a thud. The silence ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... solemn—if a trifle uncertain—as they slowly daundered up the road between the trees. It was a still Sabbath evening, when one can hear the very whispers of the fir branches, the murmur of a burn far away—when suddenly the stillness was broken by the thud of a horse's hoofs. Beat—beat—beat—on the turf by the side of the road they came, and each man of the party cocked his ears and strained his eyes into the darkness to see who might be the horseman who profaned the Sabbath by riding in such hot haste. ...
— Stories of the Border Marches • John Lang and Jean Lang
... wrists and held them fast. Her frightened eyes glanced through the window. She heard a confused thud of hoofs, now and again the deep bellowing of cattle, in the distance dogs barking, drivers yelling. She could see horned heads moving up and down. The coach was now moving very slowly. It was surrounded by a drove of bullocks from the ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... awoke, next morning, the engines were at work again, and their heavy thud, thud, was mingled with the swash of water, as the Bengali boys washed down decks, while a rattling of spars and creaking of cordage showed that sails were being ...
— All Aboard - A Story for Girls • Fannie E. Newberry
... had hushed—the strident call of voices had ceased. Somewhere a woman was pounding grain in a wooden mortar—a dull monotonous "thud, thud, swish, thud" carrying on the dead air. Night-jars were circling above the trees, their plaintive call, "chy-eece, chy-e-ece!" filtering downward like the weird cry of spirits. Once the deep sonorous bugling note of a saurus, like the bass pipe of an organ, smote the stillness as the giant ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... of the willows and swung out into mid-stream. The thud of the oars and the splash could be heard on the other bank and shouts came: "Quicker! Quicker!" After another ten minutes the barge bumped heavily ...
— The House with the Mezzanine and Other Stories • Anton Tchekoff
... flank on the right. And, still farther to the right, a cloud of yellowish smoke rose skyward across the yellower sunshine. Then, of a sudden, out from the heart of the wall of smoke came a muffled thud and roar, confused at first, growing strident and more detached until, sweeping from the haze of smoke, five score Boer horsemen rode in a bolt-like rush, fierce and uncheckable. Without swerving to right or left, they charged straight towards ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... buzzed like a saw—my heart made such a loud thud against my side I thought stars! she wanted "an ounce o' snuff," and that article was kept in a glass jar in plain sight on the other side of the store. There was a movement in that direction, and I recovered partially, I half resolved to rise ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... the shot hit the mark without Alec's trying for it, and a heavy thud informed the scouts that the bullet was fatal! Instantly, however, there was such a commotion in the leaves, and such a Bedlam of screeching! Finally a great flock of crows swept out of the high tree and flew away to find a less ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... even distracted attention from the Dervish army. The dome of the tomb rose tall and prominent above the mud houses of the city. A lyddite shell burst over it—a great flash, a white ball of smoke, and, after a pause, the dull thud of the distant explosion. Another followed. At the third shot, instead of the white smoke, there was a prodigious cloud of red dust, in which the whole tomb disappeared. When this cleared away we saw that, instead of being pointed, it was now flat-topped. Other shells continued to strike ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... were quicker in those days. For a minute we listened in silence, and then on the wind I heard more distinctly still the regular thud of a galloping horse. So he was coming, as I knew he would. I knew he would be ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand
... the song and the country become as one, I see it as music, I hear it as light; Prismatic and shimmering, trembling to tone, The land of desire, my soul's delight. And always it beats in my listening ears With the gentle thud of a horse's stride, With the swift-falling steps of many dogs, Following, following at my side. O Roads that journey to fairyland! Radiant highways whose vistas gleam, Leading me on, under crimson leaves, To the opaline gates of the Castles ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... cool night air swept up the stairs, and Georgie saw the panel of light from the open drawing-room door diminish in width, and presently the door shut with a soft thud, leaving him in the dark. At that his desperation seemed pressed and concentrated into a moment of fictitious courage, for he unerringly reasoned that they had left the drawing-room window open, and that perhaps in a few moments now they would have finished ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... slab and iron railing—jutted out from my window. I thought I saw a hand on the railing, another on the slab, then both together on the lower level for one instant before they disappeared. There was a dull yet springy thud on the grass below. Then no more noise but the distant thunder of the traffic, and the one that woke me, until the window ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... funeral procession stretching away over the plains—a straggling procession on foot, in dingy white dresses, carrying banners and flags and parasols. The coffin was slung on a pole between bearers, and the wailing drone of a horn, and the thud of a big drum came down the wind. Then the dust rose again, and the melancholy sight was shut out. How curious was this little pleasure spot of the Europeans, in the midst of this barbaric setting, in the heart of ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... was lifted a little off the ground by the broken boughs which took its weight, and with a single movement, so active is one in such necessities, I flung myself beneath it. As I did so, I heard the trunk of the elephant descend with a mighty thud on the back of my poor horse, and the next instant I was almost in darkness, for the horse, whose back was broken, fell over across the tree under which I lay ensconced. But he did not stop there long. In ten seconds ...
— Allan's Wife • H. Rider Haggard
... long-drawn sound. A cuckoo was calling on a tree near at hand, and the evening was charged with spring scents—scents of leaf and grass, of earth and rain. Below, in an oak copse across the road, a stream rushed; and from a distance came the familiar rattle and thud of ...
— Sir George Tressady, Vol. I • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... and fine and useless, and she felt for the high comb Prosper had put into her hair. Then she stared around the gorgeous little room, snug from the world, so secret in its winter canyon. She heard Wen Ho's incessant pattering in the kitchen, the crunch and thud of Prosper's shoveling outside. It was suddenly a horrible nightmare, or less a nightmare than a dream, pleasant in the dreaming, but hideous to an awakened mind. She was awake. Isabella's story had thrown her mind, so abruptly dislocated, back to a time before ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... throwing up white clouds, burst with terrifying detonations overhead, or actually struck the engine and the iron wreckage. Besides the three field-guns, which proved to be 15-pounders, the shell-firing Maxim continued its work, and its little shells, discharged with an ugly thud, thud, thud, exploded with startling bangs on all sides. One I remember struck the footplate of the engine scarcely a yard from my face, lit up into a bright yellow flash, and left me wondering why I was still alive. Another hit the coals in the tender, hurling a black shower into the air. A ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... is stopped by a rough thud of basses and a fierce clang of chords. In the sharp blare of brass on the ascending phrase is almost lost the original motto in lowest basses. It is now heard in gradually quickened speed, while the rising phrase runs more timidly. At last the quickened motto sinks gently ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... sound. At that moment the kaishaku, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with one blow the head had been ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... heard the thud of hoofs and Dick Freeman dismounted in the light that streamed from the ...
— The Heart of the Desert - Kut-Le of the Desert • Honore Willsie Morrow
... floor of his tunnel, and sat still in the darkness. Once he whispered an answer into the telephone to his Corporal, and once he flicked his lamp on an instant to glance at the watch on his wrist. Then he crouched still and silent again. The thumping of his heart nearly drowned the thud of the picks, he was shivering with excitement, and his mouth grew dry and leathery. He felt a desire to smoke, and had his case out and a cigarette in his lips when it occurred to him that, when the Germans broke through, the smell of the smoke would tell them instantly that they were ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... fishermen rowed a boat quietly out to sea, the sharp creaking of the rowlocks coming lazily to our ears in the pauses of the wind. The little waves fell with a soft thud, followed by the crisp echo of the surf, feeling all round the shingly cove. The whole place, in that fresh spring day, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... said the young merchant—and turned round to pick up the bottle which stood on a table behind him. Quick as a flash Burt sprang upon him and struck him down with a life-preserver. With a gasping cry and a heavy thud Ezra fell face downwards upon the floor, the bottle still clutched in his senseless hand, and the escaping rum forming a horrible mixture with the blood which streamed from a great gash ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... summit of the column tightened; the gaping hole in the masonry below, gradually closed; the statue bent forward in the rays of the setting sun, and then suddenly describing in the air a gigantic sweep, fell among the flags with a dull, heavy thud, scattering a whirlwind of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... then I saw her reach up high, high toward the sky and give a leap into the air. There came a crash of breaking glass, and I saw a whirl of white garments far above me that came fluttering down in a spiral motion. I rushed toward it ere it fell: there came a sickening thud on the ground beside me, and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 22. October, 1878. • Various
... see very far in front or behind, and was taken by surprise by the thud of a horse's feet on the beaten snow behind her. She turned, thinking it was her father, who for some reason had returned home, and, learning whither she had gone, had followed her. But it was not the prince. It was Cartoner. ...
— The Vultures • Henry Seton Merriman
... sprang back, crushing the birchbark case with its red flower into shapeless ruin. There was a muffled word, the flash of a figure, and McElroy the factor had flung himself before her. She caught the thud of a blow upon flesh and in a moment there were two men locked in deadly combat before the post gate. In less time than the telling, a circle of faces drew round, dark faces of Indians and Bois-Brules, light faces of De Courtenay's ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... the uniform reverberation proceeding from metal. We have already seen how readily the strings take up vibrations which are only pure when, as secondary vibrations, they arise by reversion from the sound-board. If vibration arises from imperfectly elastic wood, we hear a dull wooden thud; if it comes from metal, partials of the strings are re-enforced that should be left undeveloped, which give a false ring to the tone, and an after ring that blurs legato playing, and nullifies the staccato. I do not pose as the obstinate advocate of parallel stringing, although ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... A little while later there was a thud of heavy boots on the pavement, and Macklin and his sergeant came, together. The latter was about to say something but Field produced his card and ...
— The Slave of Silence • Fred M. White
... object, what his scheme, for the amelioration of mankind's woes? Gerald's stomach warned him that coffee and rolls were far dearer to him than the downfall of tyranny's bastions, and impatiently he began whistling. The rhythmic thud never ceased. He noticed an open door at the back of the house, and he went out, his long legs carrying him about the yard, toward the beach. The air was glorious, a soft breeze blowing landward from the ocean. He almost forgot his hunger in the face of such a spectacle. The breakers were racing ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... came the faint thud of hoofs as two riders came warily up to the water-hole. One dismounted and stooped over Winthrop. The other sat ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... steadily. All manner of things were wont to come into his mind. Just now it was a certain field behind Greenwood covered with blackberry bushes—and the hot August sunshine—and he and Easter's Jim gathering blackberries while Mammy watched from beneath a tree. He heard again the little thud of the berries into the bucket. He took the cartridges from two young men—brothers from the resemblance and from the fact that, falling together, one, the younger, had pillowed his head on the other's breast, while the elder's arm was around him. They lay like children ...
— The Long Roll • Mary Johnston
... A.M.—Woke up just as we arrived at Bailleul to hear most incessant cannonade going on I ever heard, even at Ypres. The sky is continually lit up with the flashes from the guns—it is a pitch-dark night—and you can hear the roar of the howitzers above the thud-thud of the others. I think we are too far N. for there to be any French 75's in it. I had to wake Sister D. to see it, as she had never seen anything like it before. We are only a few miles ...
— Diary of a Nursing Sister on the Western Front, 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... off, for in the terrible darkness sounded a low but perfectly audible thud! thud! thud! thud!—and also the subtle noise of some rough surface rasping gently over the stone. His nerves ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... up, slow, and off the wicket on the on-side. Perhaps if it had been allowed to pitch, it might have broken in and become quite dangerous. Mike went out at it, and hit it a couple of feet from the ground. The ball dropped with a thud and a spurting of dust in the road that ran along one side ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... a handful of pebbles from the path and threw them, one by one, against the wooden shutter, the thud of the last pebble being answered by a slight noise from within the room. Presently the shutter was opened ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... Swifts fled, on the night of the flood, the walls of their house had fallen with a thud, and only the strong beams remained standing. By the time the house collapsed, the baby in its cradle had drifted many miles down the river, along the banks of which much damage had been wrought. The cradle ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... Graustark sat agape. With his concluding words, Mr. Blithers deposited his clenched fist upon the table with a heavy thud, and, as if fascinated, every eye shifted from his face to the white ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... tumbled in on the heap of sails. Hour after hour, he lay comfortably there. He could hear the straining of the masts, the creaking of the boom, and the singing of the ropes with the roaring of the wind; also the surge of the waves past the ship's sides and the thud with which every now and ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • Elizabeth Lewis and George MacDonald
... Seneca Lake. The horses which had brought the little company to the edge of the water, having been tied among the trees, made a constant rustling and trampling among the fallen leaves. The sharp rustle, the thud of the hoofs upon the ground, were sounds long connected in her mind with the crisis of her doubt, which then began. The maples stood above them, tall and leafless; the waters of the lake were leaden in hue and cold. Looking southward ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... procession, rouse your horse and take the lead at a pace neither too fast nor yet too slow, but in a way to bring out the best qualities in all the animals, their spirit, fire, grace of mien and bearing ripe for action—I say, if you take the lead of them in this style, the collective thud, the general neighing and the snorting of the horses will combine to render not only you at the head, but your whole company (10) down to the last ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... safe inside the room, than Peter began hurriedly to close the shutter, when we heard the report of a gun, and a bullet with a loud thud struck it. Fortunately the wood was thick, or one of us might have been shot. Peter, quick as lightning, closed the shutter and ...
— With Axe and Rifle • W.H.G. Kingston
... saw us slipping through and ran at us with his stick. My mother went first and escaped him. Then came my sister, then I, then my brother. My father was last of all. The man hit with his stick and it came down thud along side of me, just touching my fur. He hit again and broke the foreleg of my brother. Still we all managed to get through into the wood, except ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... gripped me so hard, that the machine, slipping from my palsied hands, fell to the ground with a crash. The next instant something—for the life of me I knew not what, its outline was so blurred and indefinite—alighted on the open space in front of me with a soft thud, and remained standing as bolt upright as a cylindrical pillar. From afar off, there then came the low rumble of wheels, which momentarily grew in intensity, until there thundered into view a waggon, weighed down beneath a monstrous stack of hay, on the top of which sat a man ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... tossed them through the door on to Eustace's bed, and went on with his unpacking. A minute later he heard a shrill cry of terror. "Oh, Lord," he heard, "it's in the glove! Quick, Saunders, quick!" Then came a smacking thud. Eustace had thrown it from him. "I've chucked it into the bathroom," he gasped, "it's hit the wall and fallen into the bath. Come now if you want to help." Saunders, with a lighted candle in his hand, looked over the edge of the bath. There it was, old and maimed, dumb and blind, with a ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... the number she had backed, and she opened a small silken bag, that already bulged with her evening's gains, and added the winnings of the last coup. At the same moment, some one pressing from behind jolted her arm, and the bag fell with a little thud, its contents spilling out on the floor. Tony, engrossed in the play, failed to notice the mishap and went on staking, but the Englishman, apparently quite unconcerned as to the chances he might be missing, stooped at once and collected the bag ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... commotion beyond the thicket, one sound running off among the trees, while the other, the greater sound, first made a brittle crash, then a ponderous thud as of a large object falling among ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... go forward, too, will you?" said Steve. Neil joined Phil and for some minutes the Adventurer stole quietly along through the grey void with little sound save the slow working of the engine below deck and the lazy thud of the propeller. It was so quiet that when Perry suddenly worked the fog-horn Han almost fell over the wet rail on which he was sitting. It was Ossie who broke ...
— The Adventure Club Afloat • Ralph Henry Barbour
... before he was sure that the thud of Whiskey Bill's hoofs was almost at his heels. He called on the cowpony for a last spurt. The plucky little horse answered the call, gathered itself for the home stretch, for a moment held its advantage. Again Bob Hart's ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... when the sudden glare of the sun caused him to blink and then sneeze. He caught his toe on the last step, stumbled, dropped his prize, and fell forward on to the deck. The canister struck the step, jolted twice, plunged to the bottom with a smart thud— ...
— The Astonishing History of Troy Town • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... bulls. I gave him a glancing blow that skinned his head for about three inches. The next time there was a crash, a jar that shook the boat and drew a shriek of terror from the passengers, for the nigger fell with a dull thud on the deck. He lay as stiff and cold as ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... if only the room had not been so dreadfully close, and I stood while the Professor looked at the bottles and finally picked one up and put it down again in the same place. Then, as if the exertion was too much for him, he sank with a thud into the chair. ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... sport as if I had been waiting, rifle in hand, for big game. Soon the intruder peeped into my berth, looked cautiously around him, and then proceeded to walk stealthily across my feet. In an instant he was shot upwards. First was heard a sharp knock on the ceiling, and then a dull "thud" on the floor. The precise extent of the injuries inflicted I never discovered, for the victim had sufficient strength and presence of mind to effect his escape; and the gentleman at the other side of the cabin, who had been roused by the ...
— Russia • Donald Mackenzie Wallace
... line of snow still glimmered white and cold high up beyond the trees until the trail plunged into the blackness of the forest. Then the lights of the settlement were blotted out behind them, the hum of voices ceased, and they were alone in the primeval silence of the bush. The thud and splash of tired hoofs only served to emphasize it, the thin jingle of steel or creak of pack-rope was swallowed up and lost, for the great dim forest seemed to mock at anything man could do to disturb ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... minute (so long did it take the stone to fall that depth) we heard a muffled, distant, crunching thud—and then immediately after, a great hissing of escaping air. The Doctor, his face tense with anxiety, sat down in the throne again still watching the blue water of the ocean with ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... close-reefed maintopsail. The storm began late in the afternoon, and by nine o'clock the wind was at its height and the sea rapidly rising. The waves pounded like Titanic sledgehammers against the vessel's quivering timbers; the gale roared a deep diapason through the cordage; and the regular thud, thud, thud of the pumps, and the long melancholy whistling of the wind through the blocks, filled our minds with dismal forebodings, and banished all ...
— Tent Life in Siberia • George Kennan
... frying pork over the stove of a little ranch near the Dakota line, when there was a quick thud of hoofs outside, and presently the Easterner entered with the letters and ...
— The Monster and Other Stories - The Monster; The Blue Hotel; His New Mittens • Stephen Crane
... Virginia sensed rather than saw clearly the perfect, beautiful creature which carried her, delighted in the swinging gallop, drew into her soul something of the serene glory of a starlit night on the desert. The soft thud of shod hoofs upon yielding soil was music to her, mingled as it came with the creak of saddle leather, the jingle of bridle and spur-chains. She wondered if there had ever been so perfect a night, if she had ever mounted so finely ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... a questioning note in the cry now and the heavy thud-thud of feet was slacking. The clan party had seen them, were hesitant about the wisdom of trying ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... a few paces, then Hector gave another pull. The rope gave way at once. He flattened himself against the house, and the hook fell with a dull thud a foot or ...
— Won by the Sword - A Story of the Thirty Years' War • G.A. Henty
... shoulders as though to squeeze the information he needed out of her. But he got no answer, and, in a sudden access of demoniacal rage, he swung her round and hurled her across the room with all his strength. She fell with a thud, and beyond a low moan lay quite still. Her head had struck the sharp angle of ...
— The One-Way Trail - A story of the cattle country • Ridgwell Cullum
... the ambulance by Tom and the driver, the former following with the horses. We took the route by which the troops had marched, the din of conflict increasing with every mile, the rattle of small arms mingling with the thud of guns. After weary hours of rough road, every jolt on which threatened to destroy my remaining vitality, we approached Cold Harbor and met numbers of wounded. Among these was General Elzey, with a dreadful wound in the head and face. His aide was ...
— Destruction and Reconstruction: - Personal Experiences of the Late War • Richard Taylor
... swept down on us, and past us, and I watched the prophet. His eyes were wide, his whole face expressing anguish. "Oh God, my Father!" he whispered, and seemed to quiver with each thud of the tramping feet on the pavement. After the storm had passed, he stood motionless, the pain still in his face "It is Rome! It is Rome!" ...
— They Call Me Carpenter • Upton Sinclair
... obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step between the crime and the dock. But look at these ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... door. A moment later a thud from without, and the quick footsteps crunching on the snow told him that ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... third of the distance toward the buffaloes was covered when suddenly the herd stopped short. They had heard the dull thud of the horses' hoofs, and now looked around to see what the sound meant. Then came a wild snorting and throwing of shaggy heads, and away went the herd due west and making the best speed of which their ...
— On the Trail of Pontiac • Edward Stratemeyer
... 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, ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... howling dervish, grunting, snorting—unseeing, and almost unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He came to earth with a thud, his legs whirling uselessly in the air. He resembled a beetle in molasses. We sat upon his ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... through the opening in a flash and dropped to the floor below with a thud. Then he leaped away toward the wall out of sight of Terry. Suddenly a loud, nasal voice spoke through one of the ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... The "thud" of the arrow, as it struck the door, had drawn the attention of the lion. Of course, none of them saw him, but his angry growl told them that it was so. He did not show himself, however, and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... Stood up, but how Ide shook, Then the Spaniard yelled like a devil, "Now look, Jim Barnet!—look!"— With that he jumped 'n' gripped her; She fought, but he broke her hold, Grabbed at the rope, 'n' missed it— Off of the bar they rolled, Clinched, 'n' Ide a screamin'; Thud!—they struck the ground; I turned all sick and dizzy, 'N' everything went round. How still it were for a second!— It seemed like an hour—'n' then The women was all a screechin', 'N' the ring was full of men. Poor Jim was stoopin' to lift her, But flopped right down, 'n' said, Sez he, "Her lips ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... suddenly a slight noise brought me out of my chair with my skin creeping with apprehension. I had never particularly observed before what sort of sound the tapping of a crutch was, but my quivering nerves told me that I heard it now in the sharp wooden clack which alternated with the muffled thud of the foot fall. Another instant and my servant had shown ...
— The Parasite • Arthur Conan Doyle
... decided upon the latter course, and, just as he was comparing the image of the lean, spotted animal with its future well-rounded condition, he heard the hoofs of the donkey driven by Mopsus, the heavy thud of a stick on the elastic flesh, and after every ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... immediate duties elsewhere stampeded out of the mess. Overhead there was a thud of feet and ropes ends and the shrilling of pipes as the watch fell in. A Midshipman thrust his head inside the door of the Wardroom. "Boat's alongside, sir!" he ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... its mission of death. So swiftly had the arrow passed through the eagle's body that, thinking White Plume had missed, a great wail went up from the crowd, but when they saw the eagle stop in his flight, give a few flaps of his wings, and then fall with a heavy thud into the center of the village, there was a greater cheer than before. "The red eagle shall be used to decorate the seat of honor in your tepee," said the chief to White Plume. Last came the white rabbit. "Aim good, aim good, ...
— Myths and Legends of the Sioux • Marie L. McLaughlin
... gazed round the weird and exciting room which Queen had brought into existence for the illustration of herself, and as he pictured the slim, pale figure outside clinging in the night to the vast chimney, and as he listened to the faint intermittent thud of far-off guns. He had a spasm of delicious temptation. He was tempted by Queen's connections and her prospective wealth. If anybody was to possess millions after the war, Queen would one day possess millions. Her family and her innumerable powerful relatives would be compelled ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... one of her children. For a moment the child looked down at her mother's white face, so strangely still, and then, terrified, suddenly jumped to her feet and her mother's head fell back against the boards with a dull thud. The children huddled together, crying. A peasant whipped up the little horse, and the ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... swift and terrible nightmare to him—the squadrons breaking into a gallop, the woods suddenly belted with smoke, the thud and thwack of bullets pelting leather and living flesh, the frantic plunging of stricken horses, the lightning down-crash of riders hurled earthward at full speed, the brief glimpses of scarlet streaks ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... blanket, which advertises the approach of the roaming Zepp. From constant practice, too, we have learnt, sitting in our drawing room or study, to distinguish the crash of the overturned nursery table upstairs from the duller, less resonant thud of baby's head as it strikes the floor. But can we positively state from the note of the blackbird at the bottom of the garden whether it has three, four or five eggs in its nest, or indeed if it is a house-holder at all? No, we cannot; but ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 150, May 10, 1916 • Various
... rider bore down on the centre post of the double gate, the deviation of course being calculated to entangle the rope's victim. The horse flashed through the gate, something snapped, the rope stood in air, and a dull thud was heard in the bewilderment of the moment. The blur passed in an instant, and a monster dog wolf lay at the gatepost, relaxing in a ...
— Wells Brothers • Andy Adams
... in the bulkhead was open, and now and then a blaze from the stokehold lighted the engine-room. Shovels clanged and the thud of a hammer jarred upon the throb of machinery. Men moved about like ghosts. Their feet made no noise; for a moment one saw their sweat-streaked faces and then they vanished. Lister sat on a tool-box, an old pipe in his mouth, and was happier than he had been for long. For one thing, ...
— Lister's Great Adventure • Harold Bindloss
... the building he had just left. The colonel gave him time, and then retraced his steps. He took off his boots in the vestibule and went upstairs quietly. He was half-way up when he heard the soft thud of his own door closing, and grinned again. He gave the intruder time to get inside before he too inserted his key, and turning it without a sound, came into the darkened hall. There was a light in his room, and he heard the sound of a drawer being pulled open. Then he gripped ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... night wore on, and we were still tumbling about in the rising sea without wind enough to fill our sails, a rayless sky overhead, and with breakers continually under our lee. Once we saw lights on shore, and heard the sullen thud of rollers that smote against the rocks; it was aggravating, as the fog lifted for a space, to see the cheerful windows of the Cliff House, and almost hear the merry calls of pleasure-seekers as they muffled themselves ...
— Stories by American Authors (Volume 4) • Constance Fenimore Woolson
... sudden crashing thud at the back of the room. Honey Hoke had fallen out of his chair. Now he lay on the floor, his legs drawn up and the back of his frowsy head resting against a rung of the chair in which still sat the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... devils, and immediately a hideous uproar is heard from the shed. It is really made by men in the shed with bamboo trumpets, but the women and children think it is the devils. Then the priest enters the shed with the boys, one at a time. A dull thud of chopping is heard, a fearful cry rings out, and a sword dripping with blood is thrust out through the roof. This is the token that the boy's head has been cut off, and that the devil has taken him away to the other world, whence he will return born again. In a day ...
— Ancient Art and Ritual • Jane Ellen Harrison
... with a frightening thud. Red pieces of glass and streaming water poured in a cataract down across the broncho's eyes as if very doom itself had suddenly cracked. A cataclysm could not have been more horrible. An indescribable ...
— The Furnace of Gold • Philip Verrill Mighels
... without observing the bouquet on the table or the opened window. Mechanically she threw aside her mantilla, and changed her muddy shoes for satin slippers; then she sank down on the divan, and closed her eyes. After a brief minute she was awakened from her dream by the thud of something falling on the floor. She opened her eyes and saw on the floor a great sheaf of orange blossoms, which had plainly been thrown ...
— The Precipice • Ivan Goncharov
... Bartlett's right leg became twisted around his with a steel-like grip that speedily convinced the younger man he would have to give way or a bone would break. He gave way accordingly, and the next thing he knew he came down on his back with a thud that ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... farther down the creek, the rustle of the yellow beech-leaves as they whispered of the time to go, and how they would drift down like little brown boats to the stream and glide away to the end. Now and then a nut would fall with a tiny crisp thud, and a squirrel would whisk from a limb overhead. They were very quiet, and let the beauty of the spot sink deep into their souls. Then at last Julia Cloud took up her Bible, ...
— Cloudy Jewel • Grace Livingston Hill
... swept on. The wind tore the sails to shreds. The sailors cast the anchor. With a thud it went into the sea, and for ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... had set her biscuits down with a sharp thud, reckless of results. A sharp, metallic tinkle sounded at the closet where Sara had struck the edge of her tray against a shelf. The sound seemed to loosen the paralyzed tongues, and everybody began talking and exclaiming at once. Clear and shrill above ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... new referee, was in its twentieth round. Not a sound could be heard beyond the shuffling of the pugilists' feet and the thud ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 147, September 2nd, 1914 • Various
... always be white, and the fountains. A curious effect the gate has, like lace upon pale green. Even in the window you hear the plates; a hum of talk, too, from the diners; the Hall lit up, and the swing-doors opening and shutting with a soft thud. Some are late. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... modus operandi is to discharge a large cylindrical bomb into the air. The bomb, which is about fifteen inches long and some eight inches in diameter, describes a leisurely parabola, performing grotesque somersaults on the way, and finally falls with a soft thud into the trench, or against the parapet. There, after an interval of ten seconds, Minnie's offspring explodes; and as she contains about thirty pounds of dynamite, no dug-out or parapet can ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... clink of spurs on steel stirrup and the thud of boots on the ground. There followed a short silence which was broken by a sharply ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... summer. A huge fire-place is in one end of the room. If you would have a view of humanity in its simplicity, visit one of these mountain homes. You will find everything of the most primitive kind. The hum of the spinning-wheel and the heavy thud of the loom will greet your ears. In one room you will very often see several beds, while the rest of the furniture will consist of a few wooden chairs, a table and perhaps a cupboard, and into this ...
— American Missionary, Volume 50, No. 8, August, 1896 • Various
... followed a scuffle, a creaking of leather on leather, a thud. I watched them, a bit enviously, walking backwards until a twist in the road hid them from view. That same twist transformed my path into a real country road—a brown, dusty, monotonous Michigan country road that went severely about its business, never once stopping to ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... sudden shout, a crashing of glass and a scrambling, tearing noise, the hideous bay of the boarhounds in the court-yard, a scream, and a thud. ...
— High Noon - A New Sequel to 'Three Weeks' by Elinor Glyn • Anonymous
... came swiftly near. I heard the reports of muskets and pistols. There was a loud thud, as of some sort of ram—a fallen branch or trunk from the forest—being borne powerfully against the gate. This was answered by defiant, profane shouts and more loud detonations. My guards in the passage groaned, ...
— The Bright Face of Danger • Robert Neilson Stephens
... goes on among the guests; the hosts keep a little apart, near a scaffolding, on which yams are attached. The men circle slowly round this altar, carrying decorated bamboos, with which they mark the measure, stamping them on the ground with a thud. They sing a monotonous tune, one man starting and the others joining in; the dance consists of slow, springy jumps from one foot to ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... felt that they were indeed vain things to a man in my situation. At last, overcome with weariness, I sat down upon a rock, but I had hardly closed my eyes when I was startled by something which fell to the ground with a thud close beside me. ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... and in a frenzy screamed a volley of Spanish, of which Gale distinguished "Gringo!" The Mexican stamped and made a threatening move with his right hand. Dick swung his leg and with a swift side kick knocked the fellows feet from under him, whirling him down with a thud. ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... distinguish nothing ahead in the increasingly thick white fog. All I could hear was the sound of pickaxes on the ground and the thud of falling clods. The enemy had, no doubt, decided not to attack again and were digging new trenches. They no longer uttered their contemptuous guttural cries of "Cavalry! Cavalry!" They had learnt to their cost that these French cavalrymen, at the sight of whom their own are so ready to ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... the steady thud, thud of the pumping machinery was heard, and the boys understood that the efforts of the caretaker were at last bringing results. The sounds also aided them in direction, and in a short time they stood at the shaft ...
— Boy Scouts in the Coal Caverns • Major Archibald Lee Fletcher
... would come down with measured thud, thud, and drink, and then return without noticing the ...
— A Dictionary of Austral English • Edward Morris
... tap-tap of sticks beating against trees began; then with a fitful rushing noise a pheasant came straight out. George threw up his gun and pulled. The bird stopped in mid-air, jerked forward, and fell headlong into the grass sods with a thud. In the sunlight the dead bird lay, and a smirk of triumph played on George's lips. He was feeling the joy ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... feebly for help and stumble against the sofa, which you fall upon, and, finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice, your clinched hand comes with a thud on the boards, and all ...
— Revenge! • by Robert Barr
... squarely-built and squarely-planted body of the Earthman below him. But to no avail. Grasping a shoulder and a thigh, Fenton straightened his thick arms and Kulan was hoisted aloft. Amazingly then, the madly struggling guard was flung out and away to land with a sickening thud, smashed and ...
— Vulcan's Workshop • Harl Vincent
... crowbar and the pick wedged against the flat rock they pushed upon the pointed rock with all the force at their command. Several times the tools slipped, but at last they held, and slowly the pointed rock went up, until with a thud it rolled over and ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... sufficiently recovered to be capable of answering questions, she told a strange story. She had heard, so she said, a voice raised as though in anger, but had been unable to distinguish the words, and just afterwards a dull thud. She then walked quickly towards where these sounds had come from, and was just able to distinguish two men running away. This was all that could be elicited ...
— Kafir Stories - Seven Short Stories • William Charles Scully
... Rocking Horse waited in the hall. Soon he heard a little thud on the carpet. That was the Sawdust Doll sliding down out of Dorothy's bed to the floor. A moment later she stood beside the Rocking Horse in ...
— The Story of a White Rocking Horse • Laura Lee Hope
... Swish! Thud! She faced the woods quickly. It was only a sound that she had heard how many hundreds of times! It was the snow slipping from some broad branch of the fir-trees to the ground. Yet she started now. Something was on her mind, agitating ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the whistle blew, but Charnock and his companion did not stop, and Festing heard the thud of the hammer as he went on. This rather puzzled him. The work was hard and he had not expected Charnock's assistant to continue his task longer than he need. Festing was fastidiously just, and thought ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... weariness; at the moment it was something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into Garland's gloves like a round-shot. "Well bowled!" said Raffles with less reserve. Another delivery was merely ignored, both at the wicket and at my side, and then came a high full-pitch to leg ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... saddle as if trying to balance himself, his legs bent back from the knee in the sharpness of a biting pain. The heavy stirrups swung free. Then, slowly, Conyngham toppled forward and rolled out of the saddle, falling to the road with a thud. ...
— In Kedar's Tents • Henry Seton Merriman
... low," glad to avail themselves of the shelter afforded by the side of the zareba. The bullets whizzed overhead, or struck the biscuit-boxes with a sharp smack, while some dropped with a sickening thud into the mass of camels. They were patient sufferers, and even when struck made no sound or attempt to move. Stretchers being constantly carried to and fro showed that the medical staff had plenty of work; ...
— Soldiers of the Queen • Harold Avery
... incessant slapping and chatter at the bows now, varied by a solid thud and a little spout of spray that clattered down on the foc'sle. The rigging dripped clammy drops, and the men lounged along the lee of the house—all save Uncle Salters, who sat stiffly on the main-hatch nursing ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... length a shot aimed at me struck my horse in the face, just above the nostril, and passing up under the skin emerged near the eye, doing the horse only temporary harm, and letting me off scot-free, much to my satisfaction, as may be supposed. Captain Baker, lying on the ground near by, heard the thud of the ball as it struck the horse, and seeing me suddenly dismount, cried out, 'the Colonel is shot,' and sprang to my side, glad enough to find that the poor horse's face had been a shield to save my life. I was sorry that the animal could not appreciate the gratitude I ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... men worked upon the redoubt which had been located under counsel of Gridley, Prescott, Knowlton, and other officers, the dull thud of the pickaxe and the grating of shovels were the only sounds that disturbed the pervading silence, except as the sentries' "All's well!" from Copp's Hill and from the warships, relieved anxiety and stimulated work. Prescott and ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... brooding over this question when she heard the thud of a horse's hoofs upon the grass, and, looking up, saw a man riding towards her. He was leaning across his horse's head, looking down at her in the next moment—a dark figure shutting out the ...
— The Lovels of Arden • M. E. Braddon
... shawl, wept and laughed by turns. They had taken the deepest interest in every essay and every speech. The old man clapped his large hands (which were encased in loose, black kid gloves) with unflagging vigor. He wore a pair of heavy boots, the soles of which made a noble thud ...
— Stories of a Western Town • Octave Thanet
... state of suspense; the chase had turned another way. There were faint distant yaps. The fire burned low and fell together with a shower of sparks. The smaller boys began to grow chilly and sleepy, when there was a thud and rustle and snapping of twigs close at hand, then the gasp of a breathless dog. Two dim shapes rushed by; a shower of bark fell, and a dog began to sing at the foot of the great twisted pine not ...
— Modern Prose And Poetry; For Secondary Schools - Edited With Notes, Study Helps, And Reading Lists • Various
... brazier, there was a quick hissing sound, an awful double howl of pain and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air. The next moment the two men fell scrambling forward into the arena, and the iron gate closed behind them with a thud. ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... rush up the alley past her hiding-place, a shout, and the savage thud of blows. Very cautiously, as became one wise in the ways of life in that place, Cake peered around a barrel. She saw Red Dan, who sold papers in front of Jeer Dooley's place, thoroughly punishing another and much larger boy. The ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... the rising swell was in truth lifting the vessel every few seconds and letting her down with a soft thud on the coral reef. It soon became evident to every one on board that the Walrus had not many hours to live—perhaps not many minutes—for the squall to which the Captain had referred was rapidly bearing down, and each successive thud ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... perfect stillness of the night, I pursued my occupation, until I felt disposed for sleep. On the following night, while engaged in the same way, and at the same midnight hour, came the same heavy, sharp, distinct thud upon the floor directly above my head. I was disposed to philosophize on the subject, and, though the coincidence was certainly peculiar, I still conceived that this unusual sound, at such an unusual hour, ...
— Old New England Traits • Anonymous
... with such fidelity that Mary was almost able to see them. She also theorized about the cause and ultimate effect of these symptoms, and explained the degrees of heat and cold which burned or chilled her, and the growth of a pain to its exquisite startling apex, its subsequent slow recession, and the thud of an india-rubber hammer which ensued when the pain had ebbed to its easiest level. It did not occur to either of them to send for a doctor. Doctors in such cases are seldom sent for, seldom even thought of. One falls sick ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... It lacked five minutes of eight. The preparations for an execution had been reduced almost to a formula. One minute in the cell, twenty seconds to the trap, forty seconds for the hangman to complete his arrangements: two minutes, and then the thud ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... of music from afar and a thud, thud, thud, which foretold the advent of a steamer. Now there would be waves—real, true, up-and-down waves, and you could pitend you were going to be drowned, and the boat go upside down. What fun! What fun! The gurgles of excitement, the clutchings of Mamzelle's skirts, the shrieks of exultation ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... place one cold bleak day in the margin of Seneca Lake. The horses which had brought the little company to the edge of the water, having been tied among the trees, made a constant rustling and trampling among the fallen leaves. The sharp rustle, the thud of the hoofs upon the ground, were sounds long connected in her mind with the crisis of her doubt, which then began. The maples stood above them, tall and leafless; the waters of the lake were leaden in hue ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... the stick in his middlerib, told the spectators of a scientific adversary; and loudly now the gentleman was cheered. An undercurrent of warm feeling ran for the plucky little one at it hot again in spite of the strokes, and when he fetched his master a handsome thud across the shoulder, and the gentleman gave up and ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... room with a heavy thud. She shut her eyes tight and prayed harder. The object of her fear was a long gray boot, which had been thrown in at the window and had fallen harmlessly by her side. It was followed in an instant by its mate, ...
— Mistress Nell - A Merry Tale of a Merry Time • George C. Hazelton, Jr.
... the corridor and gained her room in safety. It was an instant's work to throw off her cloak and compose herself rigidly under the single white sheet. But though she lay still her heart was beating to suffocation as she heard the creak and thud of a heavy step coming up the stairs. Then the door was opened in a stealthy way and Henson came in. He could see the outline of the white figure, and a sigh of satisfaction escaped him. A less suspicious man would have retired at once; a man less engaged upon his task would ...
— The Crimson Blind • Fred M. White
... imperative: it was turned towards the floor. With difficulty Fandor raised the head and shoulders, for they were unusually large and strongly built. Fandor glanced at the face and suddenly withdrew his hand: the corpse fell back on the floor with a thud! ...
— Messengers of Evil - Being a Further Account of the Lures and Devices of Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... swung back on its rawhide hinges and ten men, with a revolver in each hand, filed quietly in. Sims and Larkin remained outside on guard. Presently there was a sound of muttering and cursing that grew louder. Then one yell, and the solid thud of a revolver butt coming in contact with a human skull. After that there was ...
— The Free Range • Francis William Sullivan
... it's getting daylight;' but on striking my repeater we found to our regret that this was a mistake. In the moonlight I could see columns of nasty brown cockroaches ascending the bedposts, crawling along the top of the curtains, dropping with a thud on to the bed, and then descending over the side to the ground. At last I could stand it no longer, and opening the curtains cautiously, I seized my slippers, knocked half-a-dozen brown beasts out of each, wrapped myself in a poncho—previously ...
— A Voyage in the 'Sunbeam' • Annie Allnut Brassey
... down, with a loose, loose bracelet jingling on the brittle brown wrist. And her poor little feet with the rotting shoes upon them moved delicately, as if they trod the impalpable air. Once her head struck, with a hollow thud, as we turned a corner. It was almost more than flesh and blood could bear,—like things you were afraid of when you were a child in the dark—the candles melting audibly, and walls, ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... all too short, the signal came and she sprang up and poised herself mechanically. Again the waltz music struck up and Don Juan's hoofs fell with a soft thud upon the tan. The hurdles and gates had all been cleared successfully, and now she must dismount and let her steed go round alone while she ran across from the opposite side of the ring and vaulted from ...
— The Hippodrome • Rachel Hayward
... was the answer as the cowboy coiled his rope for a throw. Then, galloping his pony up behind the steer, Buster threw the lariat over the head of the animal, and brought it with a thud ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Rocky Ranch - Or, Great Days Among the Cowboys • Laura Lee Hope
... her brow angrily, lay down, and curled up her legs. Someone in the tavern gave a loud, prolonged yawn. Soon afterwards there was the squeak of the swing door and the sound of indistinct voices. Someone came in, shaking the snow off, and stamping in felt boots which made a muffled thud. ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... race. At a certain point they stopped and changed to a sort of slow, swinging stamp, numbering not a quarter of the steps, but occupying about the same time. The moment the last echoing stamp had died away would come again the run or ripple of light, hurrying feet, and then again the thud of the heavier walking. It was certainly the same pair of boots, partly because (as has been said) there were no other boots about, and partly because they had a small but unmistakable creak in them. Father Brown had the kind of ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... of moonlight lay across the sea. Into it drifted a great ship, her engines almost stopped, so that only a dull, slow throb came up from below, instead of the swift thud-thud of the screw that had pounded for many weeks. It was late; so late that most of the ship's lights were extinguished. But all through her was a feeling of pulsating life, of unrest, of a kind of tense excitement, of long-pent expectation. There were low voices everywhere; feet paced ...
— Back To Billabong • Mary Grant Bruce
... a path beaten through fern and clawing blackberry vine toward the camp, Benton carrying the two grips. A loud, sharp crack split the stillness; then a mild swishing sound arose. Hard on the heels of that followed a rending, tearing crash, a thud that sent tremors through the solid earth under their feet. ...
— Big Timber - A Story of the Northwest • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... arrow rose, flew straight, descended, struck the beast, and started again into the air, doubled like a letter V. Quickly Photogen snatched the other, shot, cast his bow from him, and drew his knife. But the arrow was in the brute's chest, up to the feather; it tumbled heels over head with a great thud of its back on the earth, gave a groan, made a struggle or two, and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... play is stopped by a rough thud of basses and a fierce clang of chords. In the sharp blare of brass on the ascending phrase is almost lost the original motto in lowest basses. It is now heard in gradually quickened speed, while the rising phrase runs more timidly. At last the quickened motto sinks gently into lulling motion, ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... and almost diabolical laugh, Long Robin rose to his feet and leaned over the well. He seemed to be raising from it some heavy weight, and Cuthbert heard a heavy thud fall upon the grass. ...
— The Lost Treasure of Trevlyn - A Story of the Days of the Gunpowder Plot • Evelyn Everett-Green
... life, for his feet had hardly struck the ground when he heard the thud of a rifle bullet, the sharp crash of the weapon, and saw the leaden missile rip the leather on the ...
— Square Deal Sanderson • Charles Alden Seltzer
... nipple. He passed his hand across his damp forehead, for he felt faint with dread. But the task had to be accomplished. He unscrewed the ramrod and picked out the wad, a piece of white paper which dropped on the floor. From the barrel held downward a bullet dropped with a dead, fateful thud on the floor. More paper wad—a slithering shower of gunpowder. He put the pistol down, and took up the one he himself had used from the chair where he had thrown it. It was unloaded. His eye fell on the bits of white paper. He picked them up and ...
— Viviette • William J. Locke
... across the moon, plunging the woods into Stygian darkness. Out on the sand of the prairie the thud, thud, thud of Garman's galloping horse grew fainter and died away. A rift in the clouds revealed the moon for an instant. Roger whirled round, seeking to see the man who had called himself Harney. The clouds closed up again, the woods were black; and a Southern whippoorwill chuckled foolishly. ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... passages into, and exits from them, whether well marked or ill defined, are to be stopped just as day breaks; not too early, so that, in case the line of nets be in the neighbourhood of covert to be searched for game, (10) the animal may not be scared at hearing the thud close by. (11) If, on the contrary, there should be a wide gap between the two points, there is less to hinder making the net lines clear and clean quite early, so that nothing may cling to them. The keeper ...
— The Sportsman - On Hunting, A Sportsman's Manual, Commonly Called Cynegeticus • Xenophon
... finally the Kimbroi. He also mentions the three islands called Alokiai, at the northern end of the peninsula. This would point to the fact that the Limfjord was then open at both ends, and agree with Adam of Bremen (iv. 16), who also speaks of three islands called Wendila, Morse and Thud. The Cimbri and Charydes are mentioned in the Monumentum Ancyranum as sending embassies to Augustus in A.D. 5. The Promontorium Cimbrorum is spoken of in Pliny, who says that the Sinus Codanus lies between it and Mons Saevo. The latter place is probably to be found ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... arranged. It was a village nestling among wooded hills. Instead of waiting for the next train to Paris, they decided to go part of the way on foot, as far as the nearest town. They wanted to be alone. They set out through the silent woods, through which from a distance there resounded the dull thud of an ax. They reached a clearing at the top of a hill. Below them, in a narrow valley, in German territory, there lay the red roof of a forester's house, and a little meadow like a green lake amid the trees. All around there stretched the dark-blue ...
— Jean Christophe: In Paris - The Market-Place, Antoinette, The House • Romain Rolland
... make the shot of his life. Steadying himself, he waited until the bear was exactly in the place and position mentioned by the experienced old hunter, who stood just behind him. Then he fired. As the report rang out there was also heard a dull thud, that told that somewhere the fierce brute had been struck, but to Alec's mortification he gave some desperate bounds and finally reached the shore. There among the rocks he suddenly dropped as in a heap. A few seconds after, ...
— Three Boys in the Wild North Land • Egerton Ryerson Young
... it to be? Then Hewet picked up a red fruit and threw it as high as he could. When it dropped, he would speak. They heard the flapping of great wings; they heard the fruit go pattering through the leaves and eventually fall with a thud. ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... shot over the frozen bank a deal faster than ever I intended and dropped on the roadway with a thud, the trooper, bawling his chorus, did not turn in his saddle. I tip-toed after him, between a walk and a run, and still he did not turn. Not till I was level with his stirrup did he guess that I was on him; and even so he could scarcely roar out a curse before I had my sash flung ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... The white man will not go into the forest with his ax at daybreak, unless the need of haste is great, but it is not a fort they build. Mingled with the fall of the axes I hear another note. It is a humming and a buzzing. It is heard in these forests much less often than the thud of the ax. Ah! I was in doubt at first, but I know it now! It is the sound made by a great saw as it eats ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... that moment the light went out. They heard a quick movement on the officer's part and the thud of the light-stick on the ground. Both Billy and the constable fumbled for it, but Billy found it and flashed it on the other. They saw a gray-bearded man clad in streaming oilskins. He was an old man, and reminded Saxon of the sort she had been ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... an' you're the chiel that's fund it," cried the Squire, with exultation. The lawyer peered in too, when, suddenly, he heard a shot, a bullet whizzed past his ear, and, the next moment, with a sickening thud, Carruthers fell to the ground. Coristine rose to his feet like lightning, and faced an apparition; the Grinstun man, with pistol in one hand and life preserver in the other, was before him. Without a moment's ...
— Two Knapsacks - A Novel of Canadian Summer Life • John Campbell
... Nothing but starvation or scientific research could justify the slaughter of one of these innocents. I believe I shut my eyes when I pulled the trigger of my gun, and I know my heart gave a regretful thump when I heard the thud of its poor, bleeding body upon the ground. When we started for Franklin Point the next day, Lieutenant Schwatka concluded to follow Toolooah's advice, and keep upon the smooth ice near the shore, even ...
— Schwatka's Search • William H. Gilder
... I heard a dull thud ... and the thing disappeared from my view, yet— and remembering the supreme terror of that visitation I am not ashamed to confess it—I dared not move from the spot upon which I stood, I dared not make to pass that which lay between me ...
— The Hand Of Fu-Manchu - Being a New Phase in the Activities of Fu-Manchu, the Devil Doctor • Sax Rohmer
... plunge of ten feet, or may be fifty where the edge of the causeway fell over to the lower furrows of the ravine. It was a matter of policy to go with caution, and a thing of some moment to hear the thud and splintering of little distant icefalls about one in the darkness. Now and again a cold arrow of wind would sing down from the frosty peaks above or jerk with a squiggle of laughter among the fallen slabs in the valley. And these were the only voices to prick me on through ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... spark of human and vulgar interest was momentarily kindled by the collection and the simultaneous movement of reluctant hands towards their owners' pockets; but the coins fell on the baize-covered plates with a dull thud, like clods on a coffin, and the dreariness returned. Then there was another hymn and a prolonged moan from the harmonium, to which mysterious suggestion the congregation rose and began slowly to file ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... face almost the entire school! Her eyes were downcast and her lips were pressed together in a thin, bluish line. She heard a low murmur from every side. Above it her steps seemed to fall in a heavy, echoing thud. ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... next instant they darted out upon the roof. Down into its valleys and up over its ridges the little fugitive slid and scrambled. She reached the sheer edge, the lady at the window hid her face in her hands, there came a dull, jarring thud in the paved court beneath, and the lady, looking down, saw the child lifted from the ground and borne out of sight, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... heavy footfalls, and a thud as a rifle-butt descended to the earth again. Brown moved the lamp, and its beams fell on a rifleman who stood close beside him at attention—like a jinnee ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... his supreme moment and typical example about the time when Dickens was writing that thundering and thrilling and highly unlikely scene in Nicholas Nickleby, the scene where Nicholas hopelessly denounces the atrocious Gride in his hour of grinning triumph, and a thud upon the floor above tells them that the heroine's tyrannical father has died just in time to set her free. That is the apotheosis of the pure heroic as Dickens found it, and as Dickens in some sense continued it. It may ...
— Appreciations and Criticisms of the Works of Charles Dickens • G. K. Chesterton
... scene dissolved in a blur of motion. He felt his rifle thud against his shoulder, knowing he had fired, but not hearing the explosion. And the mastodon was almost on top of him, bearing down like some mighty and remorseless engine of ...
— Project Mastodon • Clifford Donald Simak
... cries suddenly resounded from Wade's room across the hall—then there was a dull thud, as he too, forgetting the weightlessness, jumped and hit the ceiling. Then the cries were gone, like the snuffing of a candle. From the control room there rose loud laughter—and a moment later they felt more normal, as they again saw the four ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... A muffled thud, a stifled groan followed as a heavy section of lead pipe wrapped in a newspaper descended on the crass skull of Limpy. The wielder of the improvised but fatal weapon permitted himself the luxury of an instant's cruel smile—then ...
— The Exploits of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... toss. Then one would know where one was. As it is, the entire form is dependent on the man sitting under the window. The form-master turns to write on the blackboard. The only hope of the form shoots up like a rocket, gazes earnestly in the direction of the Pavilion, and falls back with a thud into his seat. 'They haven't started yet,' he informs the rest in a stage whisper. 'Si-lence,' says the form-master, and the whole business must be gone through again, with the added disadvantage that the master now has his ...
— A Prefect's Uncle • P. G. Wodehouse
... and his hands tied behind, the thongs that bound them being held by a man standing close in his rear. Thus disposed, he received a tremendous flogging from a whip with a fearful heavy leathern lash, which made me think of the Russian knout. The blows fell with a thud that made my nerves shiver, and the back of the sufferer was covered with blood, which was thrown here and there by the ensanguined instrument of torture as it whistled through the air. He took his punishment, however, to use the language of ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... them was lowered slowly, carefully. Why, look at that pile of books upon the floor! do you imagine they were ever tossed down from their shelves, as they appear to have been, without striking upon the floor or each other, with a thud? I can see the whole operation; one man held the lantern while the other disarranged the room. But they did not do it well. That much of the business looks like the work of an amateur. Perhaps you wonder why I ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... and, stringing It with caution and with care, Sent that arrow singing, winging Towards the eagle in the air. Straight it went, without an error, And the target, bathed in blood, Lurched, and lunged, and fell to terra Firma, landing with a thud. ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... shore thus at about 11 A.M., and the hours that followed were truly the most dreadful I have ever spent. Each moment the ship came down with a sickening thud which shook her from stem to stern, and each thud seemed to show more plainly that, strong as was her build, she could not long ...
— The Voyages of Captain Scott - Retold from 'The Voyage of the "Discovery"' and 'Scott's - Last Expedition' • Charles Turley
... affably shared our beds and our dangers, and now, when the ship was made seaworthy, concluded to clear out. I called Mahon to enjoy the spectacle. Rat after rat appeared on our rail, took a last look over his shoulder, and leaped with a hollow thud into the empty hulk. We tried to count them, but soon lost the tale. Mahon said: 'Well, well! don't talk to me about the intelligence of rats. They ought to have left before, when we had that narrow squeak from foundering. There you ...
— Youth • Joseph Conrad
... box as well as shoot. He was quite calm, though very pale. He waited for the attack, and then, judging his opportunity, let out his left with terrific force. The blow struck Dick behind the ear, and he fell to the ground with a heavy thud. ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
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