"Harmlessly" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... conservatories at the farther end of the house. There were just enough people left in the long suite of rooms to make their progress conspicuous, and Lily was aware of being followed by looks of amusement and interrogation, which glanced off as harmlessly from her indifference as from her companion's self-satisfaction. She cared very little at that moment about being seen with Rosedale: all her thoughts were centred on the object of her search. The latter, however, was not discoverable in the conservatories, and Lily, oppressed ...
— House of Mirth • Edith Wharton
... intention that made him duck and plunge headlong through the suddenly opened door of the private car at the glimpse of his pursuer standing beside his horse in the open camp street. This was why the pistol barked harmlessly. Springing to his feet, and leaving the frightened negro who had admitted him trying to barricade the door with cushions from the smoking-room seats, Ford burst into ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... the same. It is like those cloud shadows." He pointed out over the mountains. Overhead a number of summer clouds were winging their way from the west, casting on the earth those huge irregular shadows which sweep across it so swiftly, yet with such dignity; so rushingly, and yet so harmlessly. "The hills are sunny and bright enough, and all at once one of the shadows crosses them, and it is dark. Then in another ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... remain very long on the plateau, and had just returned to the Brigadier when the Boer guns began to shell the tip of the hill. The first two or three projectiles skimmed over the surface, and roared harmlessly away. But the Boers were not long in striking their mark. Two percussion shells burst on the exposed side of the hill, and then a well-exploded shrapnel searched its summit, searched and found what it sought. Major Childe was instantly killed by ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... it would have been cruel to press her further. The first necessity was to compose her by promising compliance with all that she desired. The second was to induce her to see another medical man. Mr. Brock contrived to reach his end harmlessly in this latter case by reminding her that she wanted strength to travel, and that her own medical attendant might restore her all the more speedily to herself if he were assisted by the best professional advice. ...
— Armadale • Wilkie Collins
... quarter, luffed up a little into the wind, and fired a broadside of eight guns. There was a crashing of wood. The Madras was hulled in three places; two more holes appeared in her sails; while the other shot passed harmlessly just ...
— The Tiger of Mysore - A Story of the War with Tippoo Saib • G. A. Henty
... arrowhead, those underneath the water being long and ribbon-like, to bring the greatest possible area into contact with the air with which the water is charged. Broad leaves would be torn to shreds by the current through which grass-like blades glide harmlessly; but when this plant grows on shore, having no longer use for its lower ribbons, it loses them, and expands only broad arrow-shaped surfaces to the sunny air, leaves to be supplied with carbonic acid to assimilate, and sunshine to turn off the oxygen and store up the carbon ...
— Wild Flowers, An Aid to Knowledge of Our Wild Flowers and - Their Insect Visitors - - Title: Nature's Garden • Neltje Blanchan
... that splendid carelessness of the people, from which misfortune of every sort seems harmlessly to glide. She had had her share of unhappiness. Three months ago she had lost a boy of fifteen whom she dearly loved: it had been a great grief to her: but now she was once more busy and laughing. ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland
... hedonistic philosopher into a petulant pessimist, because it seemed that no one was the better for the incident; certainly, if life is worth having at all, the beetle was no better off, and in my own case I could trace no moral improvement. I had been harmlessly enough employed in getting air and exercise in the middle of hard work. It was no vicious enjoyment ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dodge, a scuffle, a bullet whistling harmlessly up into the purple night, and that revolver was ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... spoke, a pyrotechnic display enveloped the entire ship as a radiation from the foreign vessel struck the other neutralizing screen and dissipated its force harmlessly in the ether. Instantly Seaton threw on the full power of his refrigerating system and shot in the master switch that actuated the complex offensive armament of his dreadnought of the skies. An intense, livid violet glow hid completely main and auxiliary power bars, and long flashes leaped between ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... took the strength of seven Blueskins to raise it. When all was in readiness, the King pulled the cord a second time, and Trot at the same instant pulled upon her rope. The same thing happened as before. Cap'n Bill rolled away in his frame, and the knife fell harmlessly. ...
— Sky Island - Being the further exciting adventures of Trot and Cap'n - Bill after their visit to the sea fairies • L. Frank Baum
... Johnston fell, and that if he had not fallen the army under me would have been annihilated or captured. IFS defeated the Confederates at Shiloh. There is little doubt that we would have been disgracefully beaten IF all the shells and bullets fired by us had passed harmlessly over the enemy and IF all of theirs had taken effect. Commanding generals are liable to be killed during engagements; and the fact that when he was shot Johnston was leading a brigade to induce it to make a charge ...
— Personal Memoirs of U. S. Grant, Complete • Ulysses S. Grant
... corner Hare glanced back. Yelling men were rushing from the saloon and some of them fired after him. The bullets whistled harmlessly behind Hare. Then the corner house ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... strangers, who may destroy thee? Name of a name, hast thou no heart? They would steal thee from me—and above all, now! Well then, no! One shall see if such things are permitted! Vagabond!" And with this parting shot, which passed harmlessly over the head of the offender, and launched itself full at Madame Sergeot, the outraged epiciere flounced back into her own domain, where, turning, she threatened the empty ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various
... and I saw a shudder of terror run over Desiree's face as she, too, recognized the black form below. At the same instant the spear darted forward from the hand of the Child of the Sun, but it landed harmlessly against ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... length roused from his revery by the voice of Faria, who, having also been visited by his jailer, had come to invite his fellow-sufferer to share his supper. The reputation of being out of his mind, though harmlessly and even amusingly so, had procured for the abbe unusual privileges. He was supplied with bread of a finer, whiter quality than the usual prison fare, and even regaled each Sunday with a small quantity of wine. Now this was a Sunday, and the abbe had come to ask his young companion to share ...
— The Count of Monte Cristo • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... the martial music, kept up to drown the cries of the wounded, and the heavy booming of Baum's artillery, that still maintained its regular fire on the hill, though only to send—as it now became evident it had done from the first—its iron missiles high and harmlessly over the heads of the Americans, into the tops of the crashing ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... "Cumberland" within grape-shot distance. Fire was opened upon her with the heaviest guns; and officers and men watched breathlessly the course of their shot, and cried aloud with rage, or groaned in despair, as they saw them fall harmlessly from the iron ship. Still they had no thought of surrender. The fire of the "Cumberland" was received silently by the "Merrimac;" and she came straight on, her sharp prow cutting viciously through the water, ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... now the centre of his wanderings, which never extended further than the immediately neighboring towns. At times he would disappear from East Haven for weeks, maybe months; then suddenly he would appear again, pottering aimlessly, harmlessly, around the streets or byways; wretched, foul, boozed, and sodden with vile rum, which he had procured no one knew how or where. Maybe at such times of reappearance he would be seen hanging around some store or street corner, maundering with some ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... discharged from the side next the still receding "Dolphin." The iron messenger was seen bounding along the surface of the sea, skipping lightly from wave to wave, until it cast a little cloud of spray upon the very deck of their enemy, as it boomed harmlessly past her hull. Another, and yet another, followed, without in any manner extracting signal or ...
— The Red Rover • James Fenimore Cooper
... irresponsibility of the vivacious young animal. It could not be possible that he was really touched with the placid frigidities of Miss Mannersley. I remembered his equally elastic gallantries with Miss Pinkey Smith, a blonde Western belle, from which both had harmlessly rebounded. As we walked on slowly I continued more persuasively: "Of course this is only your nonsense; but don't you see, Miss Mannersley thinks it all in earnest and really your nature?" I hesitated, ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... front of him, shot his right hand out and knocked the officer backward from the fence. Before the latter could get on his feet again the cowpuncher was scudding through the night. He reached his horse, flung himself on, and galloped away. Harmlessly a bullet or two zipped after him ...
— Brand Blotters • William MacLeod Raine
... nothing to play with. The Mirans were dodging these now as they loosed atomic bombs, only to see them exploded harmlessly by neutron guns, or caught in the magnetic screen. Gamma ray bombs were as useless. Again the beam of ...
— The Ultimate Weapon • John Wood Campbell
... young, to be readily impressed. If his father had received his uncertainty with kindliness and had answered his hunger's demand for enlightenment with arguments and reasoning, the crisis probably would have passed harmlessly. His father had seen fit not to use diplomacy, but to assert autocratically the power of Bonbright Foote, Incorporated. Bonbright's individuality had thought to lift its head; it had been stamped back ...
— Youth Challenges • Clarence B Kelland
... looking still over the blackened unlovely prospect, but now cheerfully and with hope; for the eastern sky was piled up range beyond range with the scarlet and purple splendour of cloud-land, and, as darkness gathered, we saw the lightning, not twinkling and glimmering harmlessly about the horizon, as it had been all the summer, but falling sheer in violet-coloured rivers behind the dark curtain of rain that hung from the black edge of ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... heart stood still; but it was only for an instant, for Dick was on his feet again immediately, and Archie drew a long breath of relief when he saw the lasso, which he feared had settled around his friend's neck, glide harmlessly over his shoulder. The trapper, from force of long habit, was always on the watch for danger, and when he heard that whistling sound in the air, he did not stop to look for his enemy, but dropped like a flash to ...
— Frank Among The Rancheros • Harry Castlemon
... blindly in his fury at the gracious, sunny poet- warrior who shows so bright, so full of resource, so nimble, so generous, by contrast with the heavy strength of the moody giant, and ever escapes the javelin that quivers harmlessly in the wall, with an inevitable destiny hanging over his head, and at last creeping to 'wizards that peep and mutter,' and dying a suicide, with his army in full flight and his son dead at his feet—what a course and what an ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... have accurately indicated where danger is to be found, this quiet channel is of the greatest use to the vessels frequenting that portion of the ocean, for they avoid the whole swell of the broad Pacific, which now thunders against and breaks harmlessly on the huge coral wall, instead of wasting its fury on the coast itself. In the second place on the Barrier Reef is found the 'Holothuria', from which the 'beche-de-mer' is prepared. It is a kind of sea-slug, averaging from one to over two feet in ...
— Australian Search Party • Charles Henry Eden
... ambition and passion which here have met to shake the foundations of society than the hazard of these consequences! * * * I appeal to Southern men,who contemplate a step so fraught with hazard and strife, to pause. Clouds are about us! There is lightning in their frown! Cannot we direct it harmlessly to the earth? The morning and evening prayer of the people I speak for in such weakness rises in strength to that Supreme Ruler who, in noticing the fall of a sparrow, cannot disregard the fall of ...
— American Eloquence, Volume III. (of 4) - Studies In American Political History (1897) • Various
... rapidity of musketry, making an uproar as of a great battle. The English gunners made poor practice, however, and the projectiles falling within the city did almost no damage. Twenty-six cannon-balls dropped harmlessly in the garden of the Ursuline convent, and furnished new ammunition for the garrison. On the other hand, the decks of the attacking vessels were swept by fire from the cliffs. One shot carried away the ...
— Old Quebec - The Fortress of New France • Sir Gilbert Parker and Claude Glennon Bryan
... straight into the pleasant snare, utterly blind, because she fancied that she saw clearly. In the pride of her mysticism, she had fancied herself above so commonplace a passion as love. It was a curious feature of lower humanity, which she might investigate and analyse harmlessly as a cold scientific spectator; and, in her mingled pride and purity, she used to indulge Lancelot in metaphysical disquisitions about love and beauty, like that first one in their walk home from Minchampstead, ...
— Yeast: A Problem • Charles Kingsley
... forth his rage, and menacing me with uplifted hand," pursued the familiar, "I seized him by the throat, dragged him from his horse, and in spite of the efforts of his men, whose blows fell upon me thick as hail, and quite as harmlessly, I bore him through the garden to the back of the house, where my shouts soon brought Nicholas and others to my assistance, and after delivering my captive to them, I dismounted. The squire, you will imagine, was astonished to see me, and greatly ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... distance. Then he turned and strode up the face of the hill, the dogs at his heels. Louie turned on her elbow, and threw such small stones as she could discover among the heather after him, but they fell harmlessly about him, and did not answer their purpose of provoking him to turn ...
— The History of David Grieve • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... she had always viewed her good-natured husband as the most willing and most natural butt for her caustic wit; she still was fond of aiming a shaft or two at him, and he was still equally ready to let the shaft glance harmlessly against the flawless shield of his own imperturbable good humour, but now, contrary to all precedent, to all usages and customs of London society, Marguerite seldom was seen at routs or at the opera without her husband; she accompanied him to all the races, and even one night—oh horror!—had ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... it as much thought as did you when you risked coming to the manor with nothing but a walking-stick to battle with four thieves. One ought not stop to think of the risk when a danger is to be averted. This adventure may end as harmlessly as the other." ...
— The Nameless Castle • Maurus Jokai
... wished to row, he should row; and since the Jewish Mrs. Grundy was not on hand, anything harmlessly enjoyable was permissible. ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... feet and the excited orders of the German section commanders announced that the men were aware of the loss of the machine gun. Musketry fire was opened upon the retiring raiders, but in the darkness the shots whizzed harmlessly overhead. ...
— Wilmshurst of the Frontier Force • Percy F. Westerman
... steeped in the English optimism and the English dislike of severity), the whole thing seemed a fuss about nothing. It looked like turning out one of the best armies in Europe against ordinary people walking about the street. The cavalry charged us once or twice, more or less harmlessly. But, of course, it is hard to say how far in such criticisms one is assuming the French populace to be (what it is not) as docile as the English. But the deeper truth of the matter tingled, so to speak, through the whole noisy night. This people has a natural faculty for feeling itself ...
— Tremendous Trifles • G. K. Chesterton
... again hit the centipede right in the middle of its head, but instead of glancing off harmlessly as before, it struck home to the creature's brain. Then with a convulsive shudder the serpentine body stopped moving, and the fiery light of its great eyes and hundred feet darkened to a dull glare like the sunset of a stormy ...
— Japanese Fairy Tales • Yei Theodora Ozaki
... on the horse-block, his soul filled with horror. So fate had decided for him at last, and duty, not love, had won the mighty game. A third broadside passed harmlessly over the ship, doing little damage, the rough weather making aiming uncertain. Again the field-piece replied. Seymour never turned his head in the direction of the frigate. He could not look upon the catastrophe; besides, the exigency of the situation demanded that ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... unwilling to let him see how the remembrance hurt her—that was all. A sad, sad story; but it must be told. In her mother's time she had been the sweetest, the most lovable of children. In later days, under the care of her mother's friend, her girlhood had passed so harmlessly and so happily—it seemed as if the sleeping passions might sleep forever! She had lived on to the prime of her womanhood—and then, when the treasure of her life was at its richest, in one fatal moment she had flung it away on the man in ...
— Man and Wife • Wilkie Collins
... danger for Hubert: a flight of arrows across the stream—they rattle on his chain mail, and generally glance harmlessly off, but one or two find weak places, and although his vizor is down, Hubert knows that one unlucky, or, as the foe would say "lucky," shot penetrating the eyelet might end sight and life together. So he blows his horn, which he had scorned ...
— The House of Walderne - A Tale of the Cloister and the Forest in the Days of the Barons' Wars • A. D. Crake
... magic, sending the Apaches back to cover, where they began to return the fire briskly enough, though they did no more harm than to flatten their bullets, some of which dropped harmlessly into the rifle-pits, and were coolly appropriated by the Beaver's followers for melting ...
— The Silver Canyon - A Tale of the Western Plains • George Manville Fenn
... saw what seemed to be a swarm of tiny gnats flying about the mighty plane. They appeared to be attacking the giant as vainly as gnats might attack an eagle, for they could not damage the giant machine. The flashing bombs burst in blasts of yellow flame as harmlessly as so ...
— The Black Star Passes • John W Campbell
... brilliant staff, joined the first-comers, and the Akinji or light troops spread fire and sword around. A fifty-pounder fired nineteen shots in three days, but only five struck the fortress: the Turks fired too high, and many of their missiles fell harmlessly into the sea beyond. In spite of storm and rain the Grand Vez[i]r would not desist from making the round of the trenches by night. Suleym[a]n offered liberal terms of capitulation, but the besieged sent back his messenger with never an answer. Alexandro Tron worked ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... reputation of having charmed lives. No one suspected the secret. To the ordinary beholder, the man seemed accoutred in the ordinary fashion of soldiers; but, whenever a bullet struck him, it glanced off harmlessly as if turned back by a spell. It was so with Stephen White's silence: in ordinary intercourse, he was social genial; he talked more than average men talk; he took or seemed to take, more interest than men usually take in the common small talk ...
— Mercy Philbrick's Choice • Helen Hunt Jackson
... contempt of the study of Natural History. I have said, too, it may be hoped, enough to show that contempt to be now ill-founded. But still, there are those who regard it as a mere amusement, and that as a somewhat effeminate one; and think that it can at best help to while away a leisure hour harmlessly, and perhaps usefully, as a substitute for coarser sports, or for the reading of novels. Those, however, who have followed it out, especially on the sea- shore, know better. They can tell from experience, that over and above its accessory charms of pure sea-breezes, and wild ...
— Glaucus; or The Wonders of the Shore • Charles Kingsley
... was too alert to be caught in that fashion. The moment he observed the action of the red men, he dropped his head behind the swell of earth, and the bullets clipped the grass and scattered the dirt harmlessly within a few inches of ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... finish. Quicker than his gun could flash and bang harmlessly in the air the man before him had dropped the axe and leaped upon him with the roar of a lion. The empty gun flew one way and its owner another and almost before either struck the ground the axe was swinging and ...
— Strong Hearts • George W. Cable
... Kantos Kan perceived my coup and stepping quickly to my side he placed his foot upon my neck and withdrawing his sword from my body gave me the final death blow through the neck which is supposed to sever the jugular vein, but in this instance the cold blade slipped harmlessly into the sand of the arena. In the darkness which had now fallen none could tell but that he had really finished me. I whispered to him to go and claim his freedom and then look for me in the hills east of the city, and ...
— A Princess of Mars • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... harmlessly, and in a few minutes the frightened folk were on their feet amid the wreck of stools and tables floating. The wave that had beaten them to earth had extinguished the lights. When they stumbled to their feet and got the water out of their eyes ...
— An Isle in the Water • Katharine Tynan
... he asked kindly, and then, making an effort of memory of which he felt harmlessly proud, he said:—"Let me see, one was Peter and the other was Paul, eh? I hope they're ...
— What Timmy Did • Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes
... of arrows was the only answer, but they missed the joints, and rattled harmlessly from the well-tempered armour which Edmund wore. Still the position was critical, and Alfgar, with gentle violence, persuaded him to descend ...
— Alfgar the Dane or the Second Chronicle of Aescendune • A. D. Crake
... here—four or five heat-ray hand projectors that could send a pencil-ray a hundred feet or so. I shot one diagonally up at the turret where Johnson was leering down at our rear window, but he saw my gesture and dropped back out of sight. The heat-beam flashed harmlessly up and struck the turret roof. Then across the turret window came a sheen of radiance—an electro-barrage. And behind it, Hahn's suave, evil face ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various
... All Venice on this occasion takes to the boats for the night and loads them with lamps and provisions. Wedged together in a mass it sups and sings; every boat is a floating arbour, a private cafe-concert. Of all Christian commemorations it is the most ingenuously and harmlessly pagan. Toward morning the passengers repair to the Lido, where, as the sun rises, they plunge, still sociably, into the sea. The night of the Redentore has been described, but it would be interesting to have an account, from the domestic point of view, of its usual morrow. It is mainly an ...
— Italian Hours • Henry James
... one was different, armored to the full save for its soft cranium. The steel bar glanced harmlessly from the heavy horn breastplate. In answer, the monster wheeled and drenched Dennis, too, with ...
— The Raid on the Termites • Paul Ernst
... river bottom and the other end of which floated just beneath the surface where the prow of Malbihn's canoe ran upon it as he fired. The slight deviation of the boat's direction was sufficient to throw the muzzle of the rifle out of aim. The bullet whizzed harmlessly by Meriem's head and an instant later she had disappeared into the foliage of ...
— The Son of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... held open. He stepped out upon the terrace and emptied a revolver at the men who were now creeping along the edge of the ravine beneath us. One of them stopped and discharged a rifle at us with deliberate aim. The ball snapped snow from the balustrade and screamed away harmlessly. ...
— The House of a Thousand Candles • Meredith Nicholson
... the river; and for the remaining months of summer fished in the bay, finding there a pleasant change in her surroundings. Once she was chased by some men in a boat, who shot at her as she appeared for an instant to breathe. Quick and watchful, she dived at the flash, and the pellets fell harmlessly overhead. Again she rose, and again she dived just in time to avoid the leaden hail. Then she doubled back towards the estuary, and the baffled sportsmen sailed away across the bay. As autumn came once more ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees
... the three wolves was hit in the foreleg. He gave a plunge, and rolled over in the snow, snapping and snarling viciously. The report of the weapon was followed by the discharge of Randy's gun, but his aim was wild and the charge passed harmlessly over the heads ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... into the company of a few youths in the high stocks and long hair of the Quartier Latin, a petit piou-piou or so, two or three stray workmen, women whom perhaps it would be more discreet not to attempt to classify, all seated at little tables and harmlessly occupied in drinking beer and smoking cigarettes. The place was free from tourists, we were the only foreigners, the handsome Aristide evidently sang his songs for the pleasure of himself and ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... picrate. This salt is known as "Ecrasite," and has been used in Austria for charging shells. It is a bright yellow solid, greasy to the touch, melts at 100 deg. C., is unaffected by moisture, heat, or cold, ignites when brought into contact with an incandescent body or open flame, burning harmlessly away unless strongly confined, and is insensitive to friction or concussion. It is claimed to possess double the strength of dynamite, and requires a special detonator (not less than 2 grms. of fulminate) to provoke its full ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... one of those little white stars she threw it towards Mr. Linden. It went in a graceful parabolic curve and fell harmlessly, like her courage, at ...
— Say and Seal, Volume II • Susan Warner
... he does with money that may be either carried in the hand or, better, tucked into a simple etui, or dodu, that can be carried at the wrist or tied to the ankle. The order duly given, our housekeeper gives his address for the delivery of the peas, and then, as quietly and harmlessly as possible, returns to his apartment. His next office, and a most important one it is, is now ready to be performed. This new but ...
— Further Foolishness • Stephen Leacock
... followed the sound of a distant explosion; then, almost immediately, came the screech of a rifled shell. Every man who heard it swiftly asked himself, "Will it strike me?" But even as the words were thought out it had passed, high in air, clean to the rear, and burst harmlessly. A few faces turned upward and a few eyes glanced backward, as if to see the invisible enemy. But there was no pause in the column; it flowed onward quietly, eagerly, and with business-like precision; it gave forth no sound but the trampling of feet and the muttering of the officers, ...
— Stories by American Authors, Volume 8 • Various
... striking several times upon the bed with all his force, endeavoured to destroy his hideous visitor. But the head, ducking and bobbing like the white gentleman with black spots, whom Punch has never been able to touch, dexterously slipped aside at every blow, which descended harmlessly upon the bed-clothes. For several minutes the furious bridegroom continued to waste his strength in this manner, when, springing with an extraordinary bound, the head passed over the shoulder of its adversary, and disappeared ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 456 - Volume 18, New Series, September 25, 1852 • Various
... from the Confederates. Suddenly she heard the click of a musket lock just beneath her, and, looking down, saw Perkins levelling a piece at Scoville. Quick as light she drew off her slipper and dashed it into the man's face as he fired. By reason of his disconcerted aim the bullet flew harmlessly by the Union officer, who gave a quick, stern glance toward his assailant, recognized him, and galloped ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... some distance in front of him, and, although in the same second no weapon was seen in his hand, discharged a revolver at the bush behind the gun. Instantly ten or twelve men leaped from their hiding-places along the fences of both fields, and, firing hurriedly and harmlessly into the scattered ranks of the oncoming mob, broke for the shelter of the houses, where their fellows were posted. Taken on the flanks and from the rear, there was but one thing for them to do to keep from being hemmed in and shot or captured. (They excessively preferred ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... swamps; consequently, from the rising of the malaria, they are much more unhealthy than those in low plains, such as Lagos and many other places, above which the miasma generally rises for the most part passing off harmlessly. ...
— Official Report of the Niger Valley Exploring Party • Martin Robinson Delany
... angry water as they fluttered out to sea, unmindful of the leaden clouds banked up along the west, and all the symptoms of an approaching gale. The next morning it was upon us; but brought up as we were under the lea of a high rock, the tempest tore harmlessly over our heads, and left us at liberty to make ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... a swift calculation. He glanced at a clock on the wall. "Where did you get this butterfly?" he inquired, harmlessly, and the boy fell into ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... seems to have been a wit as well as a beauty—which helps you to understand; but the brilliancy of the result—aged nineteen, mind you—is out of all proportion; cause and effect do not balance. . . . Why, Boots, an ordinary man—I mean an everyday fellow who dines and dances and does the harmlessly usual about town, dwindles to anaemic insignificance when compared to that young girl—even now when she's practically undeveloped—when her intelligence is like an uncut gem still in the ...
— The Younger Set • Robert W. Chambers
... nature demands of them, the art of varying their games to make them pleasanter, without the least bit of constraint to transform them into work; for what games do they play in which I cannot find material for instruction for them? And even if I could not do so, so long as they are amusing themselves harmlessly and passing the time pleasantly, their progress in learning is not yet of such great importance. But if one must be teaching them this or that at every opportunity, it cannot be done ...
— Emile • Jean-Jacques Rousseau
... not an instant too soon, the hasty volley largely thudding harmlessly into the thick mattress, although a bullet or two sang past and found billets in the logs behind. Cavendish returned the fire, shooting blindly into the smoke, but the girl only lifted her head, staring intently ...
— The Strange Case of Cavendish • Randall Parrish
... himself. The fire-ships burnt harmlessly out. He had baffled the inventions of the endemoniada gente. He brought up a league outside the harbour, and supposed that the whole Armada had done the same. Unluckily for himself, he found it at daylight divided into ...
— English Seamen in the Sixteenth Century - Lectures Delivered at Oxford Easter Terms 1893-4 • James Anthony Froude
... eyes how that the cunning disposition of our pieces, set just where they could deal most effectively with a weak point in the fortifications, or a gateway less capable than others of defence, were doing far more hurt to the enemy than their fire did to us. For the most part their balls passed harmlessly over our heads, and the clouds of arrows were for us the greater danger, though our armour ...
— A Heroine of France • Evelyn Everett-Green
... down close to the floor and out of view, this preliminary firing was but a waste of ammunition, the heavy balls merely breaking what glass remained, and chugging harmlessly into the walls. We were ready and waiting, extra loaded guns beside each man, our nerves throbbing with the excitement of battle, every trooper posted at some point of vantage for defence. For a few moments the formation of our assailants ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... about all she could that afternoon. Her face flamed with wrath, and, gathering up the struggling pig in her arms, she hurled it at Katy, as the only missile within reach. Piggy just missed Katy's head, tumbling harmlessly into the ooze. Chicken Little was instantly remorseful, not on ...
— Chicken Little Jane on the Big John • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... socialists made their way into Belgium, and used every effort to induce the people to join them, but in vain,—a few only, who like themselves, held extreme and impracticable views of democracy, made any insurrectionary movement; and the affair exploded as harmlessly as Smith O'Brien's abortive attempt at revolution in Ireland. Had any success, short of a complete revolution, attended the efforts of the French "sympathisers," the armed intervention of England might have been necessitated, and another long war with France have spread its terrors, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... double burden. It might as well have tried to get rid of its own mane. The riders swayed and bent with its motion as if they were a part of its own bounding body. Tuttle gave the animal its head just enough to allow it to work off its disapproval harmlessly, and for the rest, it did nothing that he did not allow it to do. Finally it recognized the mastery, and, pretending to be dreadfully frightened by a sudden vivid flash of lightning, it started off on ...
— With Hoops of Steel • Florence Finch Kelly
... orchards and snug homesteads, with lanes bright with wildflowers and ferns, with high hedges and trees meeting overhead. The cold breezes, which render so bare of interest the walks round the great majority of our seaside towns, pass harmlessly over the valley of the Sid, where the vegetation is as bright and luxuriant as if the ocean lay leagues away, instead of breaking on the shore within a few feet of the front ...
— With Wolfe in Canada - The Winning of a Continent • G. A. Henty
... bullet that was discharged at that moment to pass harmlessly over his crown and bury itself in the bank beyond. The next instant the trapper dashed through the water, reaching the shore before the savage could reload. To his disappointment and chagrin, ...
— The Lost Trail - I • Edward S. Ellis
... fist swished by his ear harmlessly, and he felt a strange new mixture of elation and fright. He grabbed his vodka-and-ginger from the bar and swung it in a single sweeping arc before him. Liquid rained on the faces of ...
— Pagan Passions • Gordon Randall Garrett
... temperate, good-humoured, light-hearted, and generally remarkable for their engaging manners. Few just men, not immoderately bilious, could see them in their recreations without very much respecting the character that is so easily, so harmlessly, and ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... attract, and carry off harmlessly—it doesn't hurt us you see—the accumulated political electricity, which otherwise might rend and rive the State about which these Angry Amateurs are ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... a glow at his heart at being so addressed, got to his feet and, with the assistance of the page, donned the defensive coat. Even as he did so, two arrows rattled harmlessly upon the plates, and a third struck down the page, mortally wounded, at ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 8 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... occult wisdom. Poor Pauline was of an impulsive and ambitious temper. I think, to tell the truth, she thought herself somewhat deeper in the mysteries than she was; and she has often said to me, as we went down in the lift together, that if one's will were strong enough, one could float down as harmlessly as a feather. I solemnly believe that in some ecstasy of noble thoughts she attempted the miracle. Her will, or faith, must have failed her at the crucial instant, and the lower law of matter had its horrible revenge. There is the whole story, gentlemen, ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... over the backs of their ponies and gave them the spur. The shot they had expected rang out, passing harmlessly over them. Another followed, ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... himself, on their meeting, quite yearningly reach out to her—so decidedly, by the morning's end, and that of his scattered sombre stations, had he been sated with meaningless contacts, with the sense of people all about him intensely, though harmlessly, animated, yet at the same time raspingly indifferent. They would have, he and she at least, their common pang—through which fact, somehow, he should feel less stranded. It wasn't that he wanted to be ...
— The Finer Grain • Henry James
... black man's left wrist. The pistol held in Sambo's left hand was discharged, though the muzzle had been driven up at such an angle that the bullet passed harmlessly ...
— The Young Engineers on the Gulf - The Dread Mystery of the Million Dollar Breakwater • H. Irving Hancock
... library unconsciously uttering the engaging items of self-portraiture which, as he well knows, are to be given to the public in next week's illustrated paper. The feathered end of his shaft titillates harmlessly enough, but too often the arrowhead is crusted with a poison worse than the Indian gets by mingling the wolf's gall with the rattlesnake's venom. No man is safe whose unguarded threshold the mischief-making questioner has crossed. ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... appeared seemed to materialize from right out of the excavations. As they yelled they raised their weapons. The air was filled, for an instant, with what looked like long arrows. Most of them whistled harmlessly past the two scientists, but one hit the side of the station wagon, making a resounding thump and leaving a deep dent, while two buried themselves in the wood of the ...
— The Hohokam Dig • Theodore Pratt
... sight: 'What kind of a woman are yo' to go on dreaming of another man, and yo' a wedded wife?' She used to shudder as if cold steel had been plunged into her warm, living body as she remembered these words; cruel words, harmlessly provoked. They were too much associated with physical pains to be dwelt upon; only their memory was always there. She paid for these happy rambles with her baby by the depression which awaited her on her re-entrance into the dark, confined ...
— Sylvia's Lovers, Vol. III • Elizabeth Gaskell
... he seized the traitor by the wrist, and deflected the revolver just as the traitor's hand pressed the trigger, and the bullet whistled harmlessly through the top ...
— The boy Allies at Liege • Clair W. Hayes
... me first of all with a shower of spears. Fortunately, on encountering the first lot of threatening blacks, I had prepared a shelter for myself on deck by means of the hatches reared up endwise against the stanchions, and so the spears fell harmlessly around me. Next, the natives sent a volley of boomerangs on board, but without any result. Some of these curious weapons hit the sails and fell impotently on the deck, whilst some returned to their throwers, who ...
— The Adventures of Louis de Rougemont - as told by Himself • Louis de Rougemont
... lustre of his scales ablaze with gold, as the bow in the cloud darts a thousand changing dyes athwart the sun: Aeneas stood amazed at the sight. At last he wound [91-126]his long train among the vessels and polished cups, and tasted the feast, and again leaving the altars where he had fed, crept harmlessly back beneath the tomb. Doubtful if he shall think it the Genius of the ground or his father's ministrant, he slays, as is fit, two sheep of two years old, as many swine and dark-backed steers, pouring the ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... Aspinall was steadying himself, when at top speed, for an almost point-blank delivery, I saw Acton break his own stride, shoot out his leg, and the next moment the International was stumbling forward, whilst the ball rolled harmlessly onward into our goal-keeper's hands. I could hardly believe my own eyes, but it was a deliberate trip, if ever there was one! Aspinall tried to recover himself, failed, and came with a sickening crash against the goal-post. ...
— Acton's Feud - A Public School Story • Frederick Swainson
... stall I lived. She covered me and my companions with a large cloth every night, and restored the daylight to us in the morning. We were all perfectly helpless without her, and absolutely under her control. At her will the largest top hummed, or was silent; the whip cracked, or lay harmlessly by the side of the horse. She moved us from place to place, and exhibited or hid us at her pleasure; but she was always so extremely careful of our health and looks, and her life seemed so entirely devoted to us and to our advantage, ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... Harmlessly, even engagingly, pensive seems the foregoing strain of sentiment. Who could suppose it a prelude to detailed reminiscence on the author's part of sensual pleasures—the basest—enjoyed in the past? The venerable voluptuary keeps himself in countenance ...
— Classic French Course in English • William Cleaver Wilkinson
... security—His gun was unloaded, and his pursuer could approach him safely.—The unequal race was continued about sixty yards, when looking over his shoulder, he saw the savage within a few paces of him, and with his gun raised. Morgan sprang to one side, and the ball whizzed harmlessly by him. The odds was now not great, and both advanced to closer combat, sensible of the prize for which they had to contend, and each determined, to deal death to his adversary. Morgan aimed a blow with his gun; but the Indian hurled ...
— Chronicles of Border Warfare • Alexander Scott Withers
... volley of musketry followed the departing submarine. One bullet mushroomed itself against the steel conning-tower; another zipped through one of the guard-rails. The rest either flew harmlessly overhead or ricochetted from the surface of ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... directed by the master, who had said to him gravely:—"You know more about the prayer book than I do," came out of the cabin door quickly and a little embarrassed. All the caps went off. He began to read in a low tone, and with his usual harmlessly menacing utterance, as though he had been for the last time reproving confidentially that dead seaman at his feet. The men listened in scattered groups; they leaned on the fife rail, gazing on the deck; they held their chins in ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... said Tom, "I did not say the ball killed the macaw, I said the macaw was killed; but that was in consequence of a splinter from an epaulement of the south-east angle of the fort which the shot struck and glanced off harmlessly—except for the casualty ...
— Handy Andy, Vol. 2 - A Tale of Irish Life • Samuel Lover
... comparatively harmless; but the one on shore had reached the ford, and picking up one of the muskets of his companions, without threat or warning, fired. It was lucky for Tom that he was not a Tennessee sharpshooter, nor a Texas ranger, for the shot passed harmlessly over him. The soldier dropped the gun, and picked up the other, which he instantly discharged, and with better aim than before, for the ball struck the bateau, though not within four feet of where ...
— The Soldier Boy; or, Tom Somers in the Army - A Story of the Great Rebellion • Oliver Optic
... highwaymen fell under his next shot; at the same instant Turk, with a tremendous bound, leapt at the throat of one of the others who was in the act of levelling his pistol. The impetus was so tremendous that man and horse rolled in the road, the pistol exploding harmlessly in the air. The struggle on the ground lasted but a few seconds, and then Turk, having disposed of his adversary, turned to look after a fresh foe; but the field was clear, for the remaining robber had, on seeing Turk, turned his horse with a cry of alarm, and ridden ...
— Captain Bayley's Heir: - A Tale of the Gold Fields of California • G. A. Henty
... its high tide, now, in Wallencamp among the birds in the trees and the fowls in the door-yards, and quite as naturally and harmlessly so, for the most part, I think, among the beings of a superior order. They ...
— Cape Cod Folks • Sarah P. McLean Greene
... over the parapet, and the first glance was enough to convince him that he must bid adieu to hope. The palace was completely surrounded by the insurgents, who set up a fierce shout on observing him, and fired a volley of balls from many directions, all of which, however, passed harmlessly over his head. ...
— The Pirate City - An Algerine Tale • R.M. Ballantyne
... second later there was a second report, as the German, with Frank's bullet already in his shoulder, pressed the trigger, almost involuntarily. But ere he fired, Frank had dropped to the floor and the bullet passed harmlessly overhead. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Victorious Fleets - The Fall of the German Navy • Robert L. Drake
... to tell it the man, having no stirrups to support him, was jerked off his horse, and before he could recover himself and plant his feet firmly on the ground the rifle was twisted out of his grasp, and the bullet contained in the chamber was sent whistling harmlessly ...
— George at the Fort - Life Among the Soldiers • Harry Castlemon
... to everything," I said, "old friendships, old affections, old memories? They seem to me beautiful, and harmlessly beautiful." ...
— Father Payne • Arthur Christopher Benson
... which struck her square amidships; and five minutes later the Lackawanna, going at full speed, delivered another heavy blow. Both the Union vessels fired such guns as would bear as they swung round, but the shots glanced harmlessly from the armor, and the blows of the ship produced no serious injury to the ram, although their own stems were crushed in several feet above and below the water line. The Hartford then struck the Tennessee, which met her bows ...
— Hero Tales From American History • Henry Cabot Lodge, and Theodore Roosevelt
... again, coming in on its mighty shoulders at racing speed. The instant our keels touched the beach we all leapt out, and exerting every ounce of strength we possessed, ran the boats up high and dry before the next roller had time to do more than hiss harmlessly around our feet. It was a task of uncommon difficulty, for the shore was wholly composed of loose lava and pumice-stone grit, into which we sank ankle-deep at every step, besides being ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen
... dug-outs, however, were still intact, and they served to house a good portion of the 7th in their support position. Headquarters inhabited the ever famous Indiarubber House. This resembled an innocent barn in appearance, and the Hun had hit it hard many many times, but his shells had only bounced harmlessly off the solid concealed concrete—hence its name. The French, in the quiet days, had "done themselves well" here, and we thanked them for the excellent supply of electric light which they ...
— The Seventh Manchesters - July 1916 to March 1919 • S. J. Wilson
... Cranbourne's head. Cranbourne caught the whistling thong and tugged hard, with the result that the driver, who held on to the butt, lost his balance, pitched forward on to the flank of the nearside dray horse and rolled harmlessly on to the road. Cranbourne embraced the opportunity to get out, seized the bit rings of both horses and backed them away from ...
— Men of Affairs • Roland Pertwee
... debt was wiped off. At this he uttered a curse, muttering to Moses that he would be even with him, but little thinking his chance would so soon come to hand. Passing out of the Court into the street, he saw his own dog and that of Moses snarling at one another, but harmlessly, as both were muzzled. Taking a knife from his pocket, he cut the leather straps that bound the mouth of his own dog, and, throwing it at the other, bade it go to work with its worrying. It needed no second word of encouragement; and in ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... a detectable change. Aileen noticed it first after they had been back from Europe nearly a year. At this time she was still interested in Sohlberg, but in a harmlessly flirtatious way. She thought he might be interesting physically, but would he be as delightful as Cowperwood? Never! When she felt that Cowperwood himself might be changing she pulled herself up at once, and when Antoinette appeared—the carriage ...
— The Titan • Theodore Dreiser
... felt sure no harm had been done thereby. In 1659 Sam Clarke, for "Hankering about on men's gates on Sabbath evening to draw company out to him," was reproved and warned not to "harden his neck" and be "wholly destrojed." Poor stiff-necked, lonely, "hankering" Sam! to be so harshly reproved for his harmlessly sociable intents. Perhaps he "hankered" after the Puritan maids, and if so, deserved his reproof ...
— Sabbath in Puritan New England • Alice Morse Earle
... wind-pipe. But there IS a special provision. The larynx is so elongated that it rises up into the posterior end of the nasal passage, and is thus enabled to give free entrance to the air for the lungs, while the milk passes harmlessly on each side of this elongated larynx, and so safely attains the gullet behind it." Mr. Mivart then asks how did natural selection remove in the adult kangaroo (and in most other mammals, on the ...
— On the Origin of Species - 6th Edition • Charles Darwin
... hummed harmlessly by his head and shoulders, and the thought that struck him most forcibly, as he plunged through the cabbages, was the impossibility of realising the consequences if any one of them had been a few inches nearer his head. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... the difference that, while the effects of the Allies' shells were continually manifest in the columns of smoke and dust that were signs of the damage they had wrought, a great number of the enemy's shots fell in the sea hundreds of yards from the bombarding ships, sending torrents of water towering harmlessly into the air. ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... of idleness, during which Cantwell and Grant amused themselves around the village, teasing the squaws, playing games with the boys, and flirting harmlessly with the girls, one of whom, in particular, was not unattractive. She was perhaps three-quarters Aleut, the other quarter being plain coquette, and, having been educated at the town of Kodiak, she knew the ways and the ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... satisfaction, though, the grunting inhabitants of the long-boat were found to be all right, escaping as harmlessly as Joe Fergusson; and so, with his mind relieved Old Jock went below soon after "six bells," or two o'clock, leaving the charge of the deck to Mr Saunders—who, grumbling at the captain's rather insidious usurpation ...
— Afloat at Last - A Sailor Boy's Log of his Life at Sea • John Conroy Hutcheson
... stand close by in the water and examine them at your leisure. I have thus stood over them half an hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers harmlessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when my hand approached their ova, and have even taken them gently out of the water with my hand; though this cannot be accomplished by a sudden movement, however dexterous, for ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... of Somerset Street Church, nearby and eastward of the State-House, but lower, has been seen to receive a disruptive discharge. Bunker Hill Monument, about a mile north-west and some twenty feet higher, has several times received powerful discharges, which a good conductor has always carried harmlessly away. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... again," answered Everett with a counter smile. "Ten pounds on and I'm in fighting trim." The words were said pleasantly, but for the life of him Everett could not control the hostility of a quick glance that apparently struck harmlessly ...
— Rose of Old Harpeth • Maria Thompson Daviess
... got a tighter grip on the bridle. Then the Cayuse rose upright with fore-hoofs lifted, and the man's arm was drawn back to strike. The hoofs came down harmlessly, but the fist got home, and for a moment or two there was a swaying and plunging of man and beast amidst the hurled-up snow. Then the Cayuse was borne backwards until the vicinity of the hotel verandah left no room for kicking, and ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... the entrance of the alley half-way down the block. In passing he stumbled heavily against Kent; there was a thick-tongued oath, and Loring struck out smartly with his walking-stick. By consequence the man's pistol went off harmlessly in the air. The shot brought a policeman lumbering heavily up from the street beyond, and the skirling of relief whistles shrilled on the night. But the man with a pistol had twisted out of Kent's grasp and was gone ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... grounds. In a few months, indeed, no monument would indicate the remains of any dead. In that rapidly-resolving soil the transformation of dust into dust is too perfect to leave a trace of residuum. The natural circle of transmutation is harmlessly completed, and the ...
— Hygeia, a City of Health • Benjamin Ward Richardson
... sergeant was sitting in the doorway of his dug-out, frying a strip of bacon over one rim of the brazier and making tea over the other. The bacon sizzled with an appetizing aroma and a bullet sizzled harmlessly overhead. Behind that wall of sandbags all were perfectly safe, unless a shell came. But who worries about shells? It is like worrying about being struck by lightning when clouds ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... forced backwards by sheer weight and pressure. But Wendot was no novice at the use of arms: as his third foe fell upon him with heavy blows of his weighted axe, he stepped backwards a pace, and let the blows descend harmlessly upon the solid rock of the arch; until the man, disgusted at the non-success of his endeavours to tempt his adversary out of his defended position, threw away his blunted axe, and was about to draw his sword for a thrust, ...
— The Lord of Dynevor • Evelyn Everett-Green
... and her point were supposed to be absolutely hidden from his thick and credulous understanding. It had taken him some time to make this clear to himself; passing from suspicion, through chagrin and overwounded feeling, to dull certainty that she, too, was using him, harmlessly enough from her standpoint, but how bitterly from his, he ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... the habit of cooing at Loretta as he passes their tents. His pet name precedes him down the street, the coos come from the shadowed interiors. It has been meant harmlessly. But this story of Reardon has spread rapidly, and I thought I detected a snarl in the cooing when Loretta just went by. There is something in David's threat. ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French |
