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Whirlpool   /wˈərlpˌul/  /hwˈərlpˌul/   Listen
Whirlpool

verb
1.
Flow in a circular current, of liquids.  Synonyms: eddy, purl, swirl, whirl.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Whirlpool" Quotes from Famous Books



... the man who persists in coquetting with the Democrats, is blundering into destruction! Burnside received the dreaded summons from the Committee. So staggering was the shock of horror that even moderate Republicans were swept away in a new whirlpool of doubt. ...
— Lincoln • Nathaniel Wright Stephenson

... from the whirlpool of waters beating fiercely the rugged western extremity of Santa Catalina Island, in the West Indies, is an isolated block of basaltic rock, many feet in height, bearing a marked likeness of a human face. It is known as "Morgan's Head," from a fancied ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls - Volume VIII, No 25: May 21, 1887 • Various

... The whirlpool no longer opened before him—it had passed on down the arroyo and left in its wake a comparative calm. So that when the horse took the water he made good progress for some distance, until Mac Strann could ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand

... and the most wasted portion of our life. Maltravers had not yet found out either the set that pleased him or the species of amusement that really amused. Therefore he drifted on and about the vast whirlpool, making plenty of friends—going to balls and dinners—and bored with both as men are who have no object in society. Now the way society is enjoyed is to have a pursuit, a metier of some kind, and then to go into the world, either to make the individual object a social pleasure, or to obtain ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... Red Bloc, the Neutral Bloc and such scraps as had been too obtuse to find themselves a Bloc were drawn into the whirlpool in an amazingly short time, if in a variety of ways. In less than two years the world was rid of most of what ...
— And All the Earth a Grave • Carroll M. Capps (AKA C.C. MacApp)

... better tell you than my aunt," she said, "or than my cousins, or my uncle. They would all make such a bustle, and it is that very bustle I dread—the alarm, the flurry, the eclat. In short, I never liked to be the centre of a small domestic whirlpool. You can ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte

... engulfed the water ran like a mill-race, and there was no spot on either bank where any one could land, or even grasp with his hand, except one. It was a narrow, sharp rock, that jutted out about two feet from the bank, quite close to the vortex of the whirlpool. This rock was Martin's only hope. To miss it would be certain destruction. But if he should gain a footing on it he knew that he could climb by a narrow fissure into a wild, cavernous spot, which it was exceedingly difficult to reach from any other point. ...
— Martin Rattler • R.M. Ballantyne

... methods, or by the favoritism of sovereigns; but it is in every instance always independent of any exertion, of any socially useful labor of the inheritor, who often squanders his property in idleness or in the whirlpool of a life as inane as it is ...
— Socialism and Modern Science (Darwin, Spencer, Marx) • Enrico Ferri

... the unhappy brains that rush into the vortex of public confusion, like ships into the whirlpool. All the practical laws would be passed (and at a date earlier than that at which the public finally accept them in reality) without the sacrifices of the man who proudly calls himself a "horrible example" of the power of strong drink. How does Society do it? I am sure I do not know. ...
— The Golden Censer - The duties of to-day, the hopes of the future • John McGovern

... was as near fainting as ever lady was, without actually swooning. It was well they had stopped just by the stem of a great ash tree, against which Rachel leaned for some seconds, with darkness before her eyes, and the roar of a whirlpool in ...
— Wylder's Hand • J. Sheridan Le Fanu

... they. To say, then, that we are not capable of judging of political questions, is untrue. To say that we are not interested in such things is absurd, for who can be more anxious for good laws and good law-makers than women, who, for the most part, have sons and daughters in this whirlpool of temptation, called social and business life. If we are too ignorant to have an opinion, the fault ...
— History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III (of III) • Various

... be contested, may one day be disproved; but at least it has swept out of the way all previous conjectures, including of course Lanfear's magnificent attempt; and for our generation of scientific investigators it will serve as the first safe bridge across a murderous black whirlpool. ...
— Tales Of Men And Ghosts • Edith Wharton

... lost, but the Argo, which owed her safety to the sacred freight she bore, the fleece of the golden-backed ram, which could not perish. The biggest of these rocks which you shall come to, Scylla hath in charge. There in a deep whirlpool at the foot of the rock the abhorred monster shrouds her face; who if she were to shew her full form, no eye of man or god could endure the sight: thence she stretches out all her six long necks peering and diving to suck up fish, dolphins, dog-fish, and whales, whole ships, ...
— Books for Children - The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 3 • Charles and Mary Lamb

... built, with sixteen-inch oak sides, an' thrice braced with oak in the bows. She was spick an' span, that big black tramp, fore an' aft, aloft an' below; but in a drive o' ice—with the wind whippin' it up, an' the night dark, an' the pack a livin', roarin' whirlpool o' pans an' bergs—white decks an' polished brass don't count for much. 'Tis a stout oak bottom, then, that makes for ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan

... whirlpool of which Nation after Nation has been drawn, has entered on its fourth year. The rigid censorship which has been established makes it impossible for any outside the circle of Governments to forecast its duration, but to me, speaking for a moment not as a politician but as a student ...
— The Case For India • Annie Besant

... I felt myself drifting off once more. I was as one afloat in a whirlpool, now carried near to a straw and anon swept away as I ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine

... was standing, he wished he'd stayed on the nice horizontal sidewalk. His head was spinning dizzily, and his mind was being sucked down into the whirlpool. He held on to the post grimly and ...
— The Impossibles • Gordon Randall Garrett

... and discipline. But the reasons for this step are soon explained. In the first place, you intend a surprise. We have been long aware of your projected attack. Our spies have tracked you from your crossing the river above the whirlpool to your present position. Every man of your party is numbered by us; and, what is still more, numbered by our allies —yes, gentlemen, I must repeat it, 'allies'—though, as a Briton, I blush at the word. Shame and disgrace for ever be that man's ...
— The Confessions of Harry Lorrequer, Complete • Charles James Lever (1806-1872)

... two little lads of her own came to increase her happiness—Rob, named for Grandpa, and Teddy, a happy-go-lucky baby, who seemed to have inherited his papa's sunshiny temper as well as his mother's lively spirit. How they ever grew up alive in that whirlpool of boys was a mystery to their grandma and aunts, but they flourished like dandelions in spring, and their rough nurses ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... a most unpromising little crowd. Waifs, snatched probably from some New York whirlpool of iniquity, and wearing the brute mark on their faces, which nothing in this school of their transplanting tended to erase—a sodden little party, like stupid young beasts ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII. No. 31. October, 1873. • Various

... meanwhile been released, together with Lady Jane and her husband. For a time they lived together quietly in Sion House, but De Noailles' plan to prevent the Spanish marriage at all costs dragged them once more into the whirlpool. ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol. I • Various

... to act for Arnold, to play to his special consciousness, he was fastened to his chair, held down, so to speak, by a whirlpool of conflicting impulses. She did so much more than "lift" the inventive vulgarisation of the Bible story in the common sense; she inspired and transfused it so that whenever she appeared people irresistibly forgot the matter for her, or made private acknowledgments to the effect that ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)

... which for six hours at a time swallows up water, and then with great noise and din casts out again in whirls the water which it had swallowed. Some call it the navel of the sea, others Charybdis. It is said that this whirlpool has such power, that it draws to itself ships and other things in its neighbourhood and swallows them. Istoma said that he had never been in such danger as at that place, because the whirlpool drew the ship in which ...
— The Voyage of the Vega round Asia and Europe, Volume I and Volume II • A.E. Nordenskieold

... charlatans to tell their fortunes, when a little wine is clearer than the most mystic ball of crystal. Before the bottle the priests of Egypt and the Delphic oracle seem as faint, my son, as the echoes in a snail shell. Palmistry and astrology—let us fling them into the whirlpool of vanity! But give a man wine enough, and any observer can tell his possibilities. A touch of it—and where are the barriers with which he has surrounded himself? Another drop, and how futile are all the ...
— The Unspeakable Gentleman • John P. Marquand

... to hear that you are so poorly, and wish I could help you to sit down and work quietly at pure science. You have got into a whirlpool, and should stroke vigorously at the proper angle, not attempt to breast the whole force of the current, nor yet give in to it. Do take the counsel of a quiet looker on and withdraw to your books and studies in pure Natural History; let ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley

... an introduction to a book. It is really a personal expression of good will toward one whom I was glad to meet and touch for a moment in that strange whirlpool of human ...
— The Fight for the Argonne - Personal Experiences of a 'Y' Man • William Benjamin West

... was drawn into the whirlpool of enthusiasm and emotion. Like everyone around him, he lived minutes that were hours, and hours that were years. Events kept on overlapping each other; within a week the world seemed to have made up for ...
— The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... dishonest merchant was now very much frightened. What was to be done? The mill would not stop grinding; and at last the ship was overloaded, and down it went, making a great whirlpool where it sank. The ship soon went to pieces; but the mill stands on the bottom of the sea, and keeps grinding out "salt, salt, nothing but salt!" That is the reason, say the peasants of Denmark and Norway, why the sea ...
— McGuffey's Fourth Eclectic Reader • William Holmes McGuffey

... of immense size and had made themselves almost invincible by rolling daily in the sand until their flesh was like stone. The Holder of the Heavens, viewing their evil actions from on high, came down disguised as one of their number—he used often to meditate on Manitou Rock, at the Whirlpool—and leading them to a valley near Onondaga, on pretence of guiding them to a fairer country, he stood on a hill above them and hurled rocks upon their heads until all, save one, who fled into the north, were dead. Yet, in the fulness of time, new children of the Stone Giants ...
— Myths And Legends Of Our Own Land, Complete • Charles M. Skinner

... in twos and threes, small troops of donkeys. And all the things that moved went towards the minarets as if irresistibly drawn onwards by some strong influence that sucked them in from the solitudes of the whirlpool of human life. ...
— The Garden Of Allah • Robert Hichens

... year, 1659, when the many mixed sects, and their creators and merciless protectors, had led or driven each other into a whirlpool of confusion: when amazement and fear had seized them, and their accusing consciences gave them an inward and fearful intelligence, that the god which they had long served was now ready to pay them such wages, as he does always reward witches with for their obeying ...
— Lives of John Donne, Henry Wotton, Rich'd Hooker, George Herbert, - &C, Volume Two • Izaak Walton

... overwhelmed by the result of his own ill-considered deed? Impulse and love on Tunis Latham's part had brought about this terrible situation. Not that the girl blamed him in the least. Her thought was to protect the captain of the Seamew from being sucked into the whirlpool which she clearly beheld ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper

... supposed to be a very strange and wonderful lake, the islands of which were covered with woods and flowers, through which roamed all kinds of game, and whose waters were sucked down in a great awe-inspiring whirlpool into an underground passage under the mountains and valleys to the distant sea. Another myth, or rather pair of myths, in which geographers placed sufficient faith to give a place on the maps of the time, was the great ...
— The Lake of the Sky • George Wharton James

... laugh at me," began she, while a sudden blush flitted over her countenance. "But this is my first ball, and I feel as if I had rushed into a whirlpool, from which I have, since the first rash plunge was made, been vainly trying to escape. I feel so dreadfully forlorn. I hardly know anybody here except my cousin, who invited me, and I hardly think ...
— A Good-For-Nothing - 1876 • Hjalmar Hjorth Boyesen

... thoughts than that Olivier had taken part in it. He thought him far away in safety. It was impossible to see anything of the fight. Every man had enough to do in keeping an eye on his opponent. Olivier had disappeared in the whirlpool like a foundered ship. He had received a jab from a bayonet, meant for some one else, in his left breast: he fell: the crowd trampled him underfoot. Christophe had been swept away by an eddy to the farthest ...
— Jean-Christophe Journey's End • Romain Rolland

... touching me in cold contact: I stretched out my arms to clasp them and sink with them; and the demon pair glided between us, and separated me from them. This vain striving to join myself to my dead kindred when we touched each other in the slow, endless whirlpool, ever continued and was ever frustrated in the same way. Still we sank apart, down the black gulphs of the lake; still there was no light, no sound, no change, no pause of repose—and this was ...
— Basil • Wilkie Collins

... which touched the opinions and interests of almost every individual in the United Kingdom, and which was wholly at variance with the views heretofore held by Mr. Chamberlain himself, could have been kept outside the whirlpool of party politics. "A great statesman," it has been truly said, "must have two qualities; the first is prudence, the second imprudence." Cavour has often been held up as the example of an eminent man who combined, in his own person, these apparently ...
— Political and Literary essays, 1908-1913 • Evelyn Baring

... right angles to its previous course, to our left; while the other half, or that which fell over the eastern portion of the Falls, is seen in the left of the narrow channel below, coming towards our right. Both waters unite midway, in a fearful boiling whirlpool, and find an outlet by a crack situated at right angles to the fissure of the Falls. This outlet is about 1170 yards from the western end of the chasm, and some 600 from its eastern end; the whirlpool is at its commencement. ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone

... feelings had been his salvation. Had he been absolutely heroic, he would have considered it a duty, for his courage and his name's sake, to carry the struggle on to the bitter end, and to perish in the whirlpool he had raised. He showed that he desired to act thus, but in his children's interests he refrained, and this was, we believe, the only influence of importance which made him give way. It is true that there was not much difference ...
— History Of Egypt From 330 B.C. To The Present Time, Volume 12 (of 12) • S. Rappoport

... engagements, or fiscal cares, the gentlemen of a community are rarely interested in or informed of the last wreck of character which the whirlpool of scandal strews on the strand of society; but vague rumors relative to Mrs. Gerome's isolation had penetrated even into the quiet precincts of Dr. Grey's sanctum, and consequently invested his present mission ...
— Vashti - or, Until Death Us Do Part • Augusta J. Evans Wilson

... cavern-like in bends of the chasm, where as it rushed along past the zigzag of the broken rock the water glanced from one side, and shot almost at right angles across to the other, to whirl round and round, ever enlarging a great well-like hole, the centre of which looked like a funnel-like whirlpool, with the water screwing its way apparently into the bowels of the earth, and down whose watery throat great balls of ...
— The Crystal Hunters - A Boy's Adventures in the Higher Alps • George Manville Fenn

... the colonies; thence they passed Port Waterhouse, so called after the captain of the Reliance. The first important discovery was Port Dalrymple, called after the hydrographer of the admiralty, Alexander Dalrymple.[10] Green Isle, Western Arm, Middle Island, Whirlpool Reach, Swan Point, and Crescent Shore, preserve memorials of the ...
— The History of Tasmania, Volume I (of 2) • John West

... then, the Emperor and his Ministers misjudged the situation. They did not foresee the crisis to which their policy was conducting, and when that crisis arrived they lost their heads and blundered in trying to deal with it. They did not perceive the whirlpool toward which they were heading. They thought that they could safely expose what was precarious to a strain, and secure the substance of a real victory without having to overcome actual resistance. Had they put an extreme ambition for their country aside, and been careful ...
— Before the War • Viscount Richard Burton Haldane

... did. "Ha, ha, ha—ha, ha, ha! I could never die for laughing," bawled out the Dominie, feeling for his pannikin; but this was his last effort. He stared round him. "Verily, verily, we are in a whirlpool— how everything turneth round and round! Who cares? Am I not an ancient mariner—'Qui videt mare turgidum—et infames scopulos.' Friend ...
— Jacob Faithful • Captain Frederick Marryat

... how the waves, which can be likened only to the waves of the sea in time of storm, as if in fury at their sudden compression, rush over that rock, then curl back, and pause in the air a moment before tearing on, roaring and hissing with rage, to the whirlpool farther down the stream. See how they dash from side to side, see how the spray rises in the air for the dainty sunlight to play among its foam. Hear the noise, like that of thunder, as a great angry white horse dashes down that storm-washed ...
— Through Finland in Carts • Ethel Brilliana Alec-Tweedie

... the fragments, they applied a strong repulsion charge to the comet, creating thereby a perfect whirlpool among its particles, and quickly left it. Half an hour later they again shut off the current, as ...
— A Journey in Other Worlds - A Romance of the Future • John Jacob Astor

... sphere of life you can feel the constant pressure of this tremendous influence. It may well be named the "current" of public opinion. Draining to its profit the latent and loitering powers of the individual thinker, silently, irresistibly it moves on; checked, it becomes an angry whirlpool of confused and gyrating waters; harnessed to the wheels of national life, it will transform its energies into light, ...
— Catholic Problems in Western Canada • George Thomas Daly

... as the blood of grapes and mulberries cast before Antiochus's elephants in the book of Maccabees. Meanwhile Ahab half smothered in the foam of the whale's insolent tail, and too much of a cripple to swim,—though he could still keep afloat, even in the heart of such a whirlpool as that; helpless Ahab's head was seen, like a tossed bubble which the least chance shock might burst. From the boat's fragmentary stern, Fedallah incuriously and mildly eyed him; the clinging crew, at the other drifting end, could ...
— Great Sea Stories • Various

... about ten minutes, swept the boat off without having received a hole in her bottom, otherwise we must probably have perished. Shortly after we were jammed between a great shallow whirlpool and a large boat on our starboard beam. This boat was dashed by the current against ours, and menaced to shove her into the whirlpool. The long lateen yards of the two boats got entangled, and I was prepared to leap into the other boat, in anticipation of the destruction of ours, when the ...
— A Narrative of the Expedition to Dongola and Sennaar • George Bethune English

... the princess struggled, and sank with the mare, so that not a trace of either was ever seen again. On seeing this circumstance, Bihzad Khan dashed into the river on horseback to afford assistance to the princess; he got into a whirlpool and could not extricate himself; all his efforts with his hands and feet were vain, and he also sank. The king seeing these sad circumstances, sent for nets and had them thrown into the river, and ordered ...
— Bagh O Bahar, Or Tales of the Four Darweshes • Mir Amman of Dihli

... I'm learning more about my own Department every day. Aren't they a fine lot of fellows? Milton scares me to death. I don't doubt for a moment that if he tells me to dash to destruction in a whirlpool, I shall do so. There's a chap that could exact obedience from a mule. I'll look up his record when I get ...
— The Enchanted Canyon • Honore Willsie Morrow

... The ship might sink while I was there. I know we'll get caught in a whirlpool, or in a waterspout, or some other dreadful thing! This ...
— Bob the Castaway • Frank V. Webster

... strange thing is man? and what a stranger Is woman! What a whirlwind is her head, And what a whirlpool full of depth and danger Is all the rest about her! Whether wed Or widow, maid or mother, she can change her Mind like the wind: whatever she has said Or done, is light to what she 'll say or do;— The oldest thing ...
— Don Juan • Lord Byron

... city of enormous magnitude, with thousands of cities and kingdoms within it, the wide ocean like a whirlpool around it, and other seas, like rivers, dividing it into parts. After gazing a longwhile, I observed that it was made up of three tremendously long streets, with a large and splendid gateway at the lower end of each street; on each gateway, a magnificent ...
— The Visions of the Sleeping Bard • Ellis Wynne

... contrivance illustrating machines of this class used to free air from dust or other heavy solid impurities which may be in suspension. See Fig. 33. The air enters the passage, B (if it has no considerable velocity of itself, it must be forced in), forms a whirlpool in the conically shaped receptable, A, and passes up out of the passage, D. The heavy particles are thrown on the sides and collect there and fall through opening, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 613, October 1, 1887 • Various

... we can make a shift if we can repair the broken rudder. We must have struck a powerful cross current, or maybe a whirlpool, that tore the main rudder loose. We've rammed a sand bank, or stuck her nose into the bottom in some shallow place, I'm afraid. We can't go ahead or ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton

... drinking Up in the Elector's Castle, By our age's greatest marvel Which the German mind has wrought out, By the tun of Heidelberg. A most worthy hermit dwelt there, Who was the Elector's court fool, Was my dear old friend Perkeo; Who had out of life's wild whirlpool Peacefully withdrawn himself where He could meditate while drinking, And the cellar was his refuge. Here he lived, his care dividing 'Twixt himself and the big wine-tun; And he loved it—truer friendship ...
— The Trumpeter of Saekkingen - A Song from the Upper Rhine. • Joseph Victor von Scheffel

... my address before I left the ship, but I did not expect him to make any use of it. I thought that I had seen the last of him when I crossed the gangway and got caught in the whirlpool of fuss which eddied round the custom house shed. I was very much surprised when he walked in on me at breakfast time on the second morning after our arrival. I was eating an omelette at the time. I ...
— Gossamer - 1915 • George A. Birmingham

... ascent to which is very fatiguing, but has been accomplished, is beautiful and extensive. On the largest lake travellers have embarked in a canoe, but I believe it has never been crossed, on account of the vulgar prejudice that it is unfathomable, and has a whirlpool in the centre. The volcano is about fifteen thousand feet above the level of the sea, and nine thousand above Toluca. It is not so grand as Popocatepetl, but a respectable volcano for a country town—muy decente(very decent), as a man said in talking of the pyramids that adorn ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... that melted away in the haze beyond Syracuse; the awful rapids raging furiously below Niagara, a very ocean tortured and maddened to blind fury, pouring its irresistible torrents through the chasm above the whirlpool; and again, a cloudless October morning, with just the keen zest of early autumn in the air, as I lay high up on a hillside in Ardgour watching for deer—with the hills of Lochaber and Ballachulish reflected in ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne

... line of roaring waves came surging on, higher and more threatening than the first. Captain Eri glanced over his shoulder, turned the dory's bow toward them and waited. They broke, and, as they did so, the boat shot forward into the whirlpool of froth. Then the sleet came pouring down and shut ...
— Cap'n Eri • Joseph Crosby Lincoln

... sluice gates opened a sullen roar sounded; on one side the diverted millstream, and on the other the river, rose as two solid walls of water, rushed forward and—met; and in the twinkling of an eye the old water-course was one wild, leaping, roaring, gyrating whirlpool of up-flung froth and twisting waves that bore in their eddying clutch the battling figure ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew

... due north for thirty days and thirty nights. The first danger they met was a great whirlpool, whose center was a vast hole into which had been drawn many a brave ship. Varrak threw overboard a small barrel wrapped in red cloth and trimmed with many red streamers, but with a rope attached to it. A whale swallowed this bait and then tried to escape ...
— Classic Myths • Retold by Mary Catherine Judd

... human stream—in a whirlpool of fellow-beings—nudging their way to the boxes and the upper tiers, I now found myself. It was a terrible struggle; females screaming, were eddied around and around until their very faces were in a wire cage of their ...
— Lights and Shadows of New York Life - or, the Sights and Sensations of the Great City • James D. McCabe

... over two hundred on deck, the majority were rescued. The efforts put forth to save the drowning were marked by another calamity. A victualling sloop, which had gone with other vessels to the rescue, was drawn into the vortex of a whirlpool caused by the sudden submersion of the ...
— Grace Darling - Heroine of the Farne Islands • Eva Hope

... population, and the work of destroying human souls goes on. It is an awful thing to contemplate. Thousands of men and women, boys and girls, once innocent as the babes upon whom Christ laid his hand in blessing, are drawn into this whirlpool of evil every year, and few come out except by the way of ...
— Cast Adrift • T. S. Arthur

... three transverse galleries which have cut the gardens of to-day into much smaller plots than they were in Richelieu's time. In spite of this there is still that pleasurable tranquillity to be had therein to-day, scarcely a stone's throw from the rush and turmoil of the whirlpool of wheeled traffic which centres around the junction of the Rue Richelieu with the Avenue de l'Opera. It is as an oasis in a turbulent sandstorm, a beneficent shelf of rock in a whirlpool of rapids. The only thing to be feared therein is that a toy ...
— Royal Palaces and Parks of France • Milburg Francisco Mansfield

... solid should be detached from the rest. It is a well-known law in physics, that when fluid matter collects towards, or meets in a centre, it establishes a rotatory motion. See minor results of this law in the whirlpool and the whirlwind—nay, on so humble a scale as the water sinking through the aperture of a funnel. It thus becomes certain, that when we arrive at the stage of a nebulous star we have a ...
— An Expository Outline of the "Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation" • Anonymous

... these destructive operations of nature, the whirlwind and the whirlpool, the first whirling fancies that Christ saves from the punishment, and not from the power of sin, takes them from the gospel hope, and the second receives them into the vortex of misery. O my soul, be watchful unto ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan

... seemed of love to dream. We planned an earthly cottage Beside an earthly stream. Our wedding long is over, With toil the years fill up, Yet in the evening silence, We drink a deep-sea cup. Nothing the fay remembers, Yet when she turns to me, We meet beneath the whirlpool, We swim ...
— General William Booth enters into Heaven and other Poems • Vachel Lindsay

... was poured; Vanished the Saxon's struggling spear, 485 Vanished the mountain-sword. As Bracklinn's chasm, so black and steep, Receives her roaring linn, As the dark caverns of the deep Suck the wild whirlpool in, 490 So did the deep and darksome pass Devour the battle's mingled mass; None linger now upon the plain, Save those who ne'er shall ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott

... held indisputable, and, indeed, has the field to itself in this matter. Famed Olaf Tryggveson, seen visibly at the siege of London, year 994, it throws a kind of momentary light to us over that disastrous whirlpool of miseries and confusions, all dark and painful to the fancy otherwise! This big voyage and furious siege of London is Svein Double-beard's first real attempt to fulfil that vow of his at Father Blue-tooth's "funeral ale," ...
— Early Kings of Norway • Thomas Carlyle

... little yacht was so close when the great ship blew up that it got sucked down in the whirlpool, and rescuers and all ...
— Nuttie's Father • Charlotte M. Yonge

... Thalia looks on Broadway as Marathon looks on the sea. It stands like a gloomy cliff above the whirlpool where the tides of two great thoroughfares clash. Here the player-bands gather at the end of their wanderings, to loosen the buskin and dust the sock. Thick in the streets around it are booking-offices, theatres, agents, schools, and the lobster-palaces ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry

... fulfill my destiny. And, besides, I never thought of turning from it. I am in the power of the whirlpool ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth

... clean flame; a resinous dead stump burning like a torch; a great tree standing helpless like a martyr at the stake, suddenly transformed into a frenzied pillar of fire.... Along the front of this whirlpool of flame toiled, with despairing fury, four lean, powerful men. As they raised their blackened, desperate faces and saw the car there, actually there, incredibly there, black with its load of men, they gave a deep-throated shout ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield

... long period of blessing may arise from this brief hour. But note this. Where potions can aid, surgery must be shunned. Where a bridge spans the stream, beware of swimming through the whirlpool." ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... of restraining, fostered these associations, prided themselves on his reception, providing means of maintaining him in this style of living. Vanity and passion led him captive in their gratifications; they were inseparable from the whirlpool of confused society that triumphs at the south,—that leads the proud heart writhing in the agony of its follies. He cast himself upon this, like a frail thing upon a rapid stream, and—forgetting the voyage ...
— Our World, or, The Slaveholders Daughter • F. Colburn Adams

... in time to see Joe tottering, and caught at his arm, giving him a sharp snatch which dragged him in through the low archway where the water, though deep, was eddying round like a whirlpool. Then together they extended their hands to Hardock and ...
— Sappers and Miners - The Flood beneath the Sea • George Manville Fenn

... he, I stared blankly at the little figure with the white flag. Then bewilderment gave place before the call to action, and it seemed to me that I saw Sally there in Miss Matoaca, as I had seen her in the rising moon over the clipped yew, and in the whirlpool of the stock market. Leaving my place at the General's side, I descended the steps at a bound, and made my way through the jostling, noisy crowd to the little ...
— The Romance of a Plain Man • Ellen Glasgow

... exist in all living things, and have inherent activities by which they are distinguished from not living matter. Each individual living organism is formed by their temporary combination. They stand to it in the relation of the particles of water to a cascade, or a whirlpool; or to a mould, into which the water is poured. The form of the organism is thus determined by the reaction between external conditions and the inherent activities of the organic molecules of which it is composed; and, as the stoppage of a whirlpool destroys ...
— Discourses - Biological and Geological Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... perhaps, to analyze rightly the feelings and sensations of a young girl, when she is literally being swept off her feet in a whirlpool of passion and romance. ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy

... your message, my lord!" I cried, and without waiting for a reply turned my horse's head, and dashed into the whirlpool. ...
— For The Admiral • W.J. Marx

... pass away. The struggle continues with unabated ferocity. The combatants alternately approach and recede from our raft. We remain motionless, ready to fire. Suddenly the ichthyosaurus and the plesiosaurus disappear below, leaving a whirlpool eddying in the water. Several minutes pass by while the fight goes on ...
— A Journey to the Interior of the Earth • Jules Verne

... wind the ship was driven into this whirlpool, but Odysseus escaped on a broken piece of wreckage to the ...
— Young Folks Treasury, Volume 2 (of 12) • Various

... Griffith's Sermon seem, as I have mentioned (ante p. 675, note), to be equally scarce with original copies of the second edition of the Ready and Easy Way. They were the two last utterances of Milton before the Restoration, and so close to that event as perhaps to be sucked down in the whirlpool. Yet, as we know for certain that the Notes on Dr. Griffith's Sermon did appear, there is no need for a contrary supposition respecting the other. Very possibly original copies of both have survived somewhere; and I should be glad to hear of ...
— The Life of John Milton, Volume 5 (of 7), 1654-1660 • David Masson

... Pike, plunged into the sea with his clothes on, reached the child, and swam back with it to some steps, where they were both assisted out. Another boy, W. W. Haynes, aged twelve, saved the life of a child who had fallen from a bridge into the river at Llanberis, near a whirlpool. E. S. Deacon, a girl, twelve years old, rescued a lad from drowning at Blackpool, near Dartmouth. The boy had slipped off a rock and become unconscious, when Miss Deacon jumped into the water fully ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various

... their changing shapes, some apparently all rock, and others a bower of greenery, and admiring the skilful steering of the large vessel among them. Soon after noon the first rapid was shot, a bubbling, seething whirlpool, with clouds of white foam beaten up by the jagged ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... your old life in London, Douglas, I suppose?" said Sir Reginald. "There you will soonest forget the sad affliction that has befallen you. In the hurrying whirlpool of modern life there is ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... ruin had not yet fallen, thousands of human beings were milling in a mass, those upon the fringes of the crowd perpetually breaking away, other swarms approaching them, so that the entire agglomeration resembled a seething whirlpool ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various

... mill-pond or a whirlpool," she said, rather sententiously: "we have been stagnant for three days, and I begin to feel flat. Races are tabooed: besides, we cannot always leave mother alone. I propose we go out in the garden and have a game of battledore and shuttlecock;" ...
— Not Like Other Girls • Rosa N. Carey

... bridge, it went almost southerly for half a mile, then made an abrupt turn at right angles, pursued its way westward for another quarter of a mile, and then met the swash channel, which cut diagonally through the big marsh. At this junction of the two streams a whirlpool called the Devil's Elbow had been formed, a treacherous spot for small craft, and requiring rare skill ...
— The Fifth String, The Conspirators • John Philip Sousa

... burst from the brigantine's company as one of those suspicious logs stirred into reptilian life. A great, warty snout jutted upwards, with a swift half-turn towards the intruder, and the yellow water was swept into a furious whirlpool as the saurian secured leverage to turn by a convulsion of his ...
— Gold Out of Celebes • Aylward Edward Dingle

... of life itself divide themselves into two classes—the melodramatic and the tragic—according as the element of chance or the element of character shows the upper hand in them. It would be melodramatic for a man to slip by accident into the Whirlpool Rapids and be drowned; but the drowning of Captain Webb in that tossing torrent was tragic, because his ambition for preeminence as a swimmer bore evermore within itself the latent possibility of his failing ...
— The Theory of the Theatre • Clayton Hamilton

... Diaries are for those who lead cloistral lives and pure, so that the task is trivial, and whatsoever record of their own leap to light they shall not be shamed. Diaries are not for those whose existence is a whirlpool; for such the blank page is an added perturbation, a haunting whiteness beseeching the blackness of diurnal autobiography, an I O U that calls for instant satisfcation. To the spontaneous vexings of conscience has been added an artificial pricking ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill

... who steered the ship of our state through the hurricane of the Restoration and the whirlpool of national rejuvenation, were men who knew no other moral teaching than the Precepts of Knighthood. Some writers[30] have lately tried to prove that the Christian missionaries contributed an appreciable quota to the making of New Japan. I would fain render honor ...
— Bushido, the Soul of Japan • Inazo Nitobe

... surf breaking over the rocks on either side with great violence. There is a narrow lane of clear water; we pull in; a strong current carries the boat along with fearful speed, and several seas break into her. It seems as if we were in a whirlpool. The rudder has lost its power, and we are spun round and round helplessly; about every moment it seems to be hove on the rocks. She violently rises and falls, and then we are cast, as it were, into the smooth water of the lagoon, though ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston

... going south," said I—"to the South Pole. This swift current can have but one ending—there may be an opening at the South Pole, or a whirlpool ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille

... facts are these: the average does not vary much. A mediocrity, not disagreeable, always rules; supremity has been, is, and always will be the stick in the riffle around which the little whirlpool will always centre. This year it happens to be Jose Querida who stems the sparkling mediocrity and sticks up from the bottom gravel making a fine little swirl. Next year—or next decade it may be anybody—you, Annan, or Sam—perhaps," he added with a slight ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... became dark around them, and it seemed as if a powerful sea-horse must have got under the skiff and lifted it with his back, for George was hurled into the air. Then he felt himself caught by a rushing whirlpool which sucked him in its circles to the bottom. He lost breath and consciousness. When he came to himself again, he found himself in a closed cave, amidst strange forms of grey-brown, dripping stalactites. Above the arches of the roof he heard a loud, grunting laugh, and a voice, ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... search of pleasure and excitement. There were sight-seers and "country customers" from forty-five states; ranchers from Texas, and lumber kings from Maine, and mining men from Nevada. At home they had reputations, and perhaps families to consider; but once plunged into the whirlpool of the Tenderloin, they were hidden from all the world. They came with their pockets full of money; and hotels and restaurants, gambling-places and pool-rooms and brothels—all were lying in wait for them! ...
— The Metropolis • Upton Sinclair

... of a journal of exploration; and, though he knows naught of the sea or the prairie, he produces his hair-raising Arthur Gordon Pym and his Journal of Julius Rodman. Some sailor's yarn of a maelstrom in the North Sea comes to his ears, and he fabricates a story of a man who went into the whirlpool. He sees a newspaper account of a premature burial, and his "House of Usher" and several other stories reflect the imagined horror of such an experience. The same criticism applies to his miscellaneous thrillers, ...
— Outlines of English and American Literature • William J. Long

... in a barrel—not satisfactory to her. Went over in a tub—still not satisfactory. Swam the Whirlpool and the Rapids in a fig-leaf suit. It got much damaged. Hence, tedious complaints about my extravagance. I am too much hampered here. What I need is ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... protection of the rampart, towards which the others hastened, an arrow struck Sailor Bill slanting-wise across his forehead, and, tossing up his hands, the poor boy, who was standing on the timber which led to the wheel, tumbled over into the foaming water below that was seething like a whirlpool. ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson

... They gazed one upon another. His glazed eyes frowned darkly upon them. Supplication and scorn were mingled in his look. His lips moved, but his tongue uttered no sound. He only gasped to speak—to implore assistance. His strength gave way—the waters rushed around the rock as a whirlpool. He was again uplifted upon the white bosom of the foam, and tossed within a few yards of ...
— Wilson's Tales of the Borders and of Scotland, Volume VI • Various

... Dudley, Madame d'Espard, and my sister-in-law Emilie count for something in all this. Those women, against whom I ought to have put you more thoroughly on your guard, have cultivated your curiosity more to trouble me and cause me unhappiness, than to fling you into a whirlpool which, as I believe, ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... He sent countless messages and many couriers; but every message was intercepted, and no courier reached his destination. Meanwhile Marie Louise was lingering agreeably in Switzerland. She was happy to have escaped from the whirlpool of politics and war. Amid the romantic scenery through which she passed Neipperg was always by her side, attentive, devoted, trying in everything to please her. With him she passed delightful evenings. He sang to her in his rich barytone songs of love. He seemed romantic ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr

... was in 1833, when Dickens had just attained his majority, that he first made the plunge into the literary whirlpool. He himself has related how one evening at twilight he "had stealthily entered a dim court" (Johnson's Court, Fleet Street, not, as is popularly supposed, named for Doctor Johnson, though inhabited by him in 1766, from whence he removed in the same year to Bolt Court, still keeping ...
— Dickens' London • Francis Miltoun

... hideous hesitation, in which fugitives for whom he pleaded were allowed four times to embark and four times were brought back again to their prison. There is something there dizzy as well as dark, a whirlpool in the very heart of Asia; and something wilder than our own worst oppressions in the peril of those men who looked up and saw above all the power of Asiatic arms, their hopes hanging on a rocking mind like ...
— The New Jerusalem • G. K. Chesterton

... afterwards in murderous strifes throughout the whole Niagara country; the struggle for the military posts on the river, during the wars of France and England; the awful scene in the conspiracy of Pontiac, where a detachment of English troops was driven by the Indians over the precipice near the great Whirlpool; the sorrow and havoc visited upon the American settlements in the Revolution by the savages who prepared their attacks in the shadow of Fort Niagara; the battles of Chippewa and of Lundy's Lane, ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... the Clockmaker; "it's nothin' but its power of suction; it is a great whirlpool—a great vortex—it drags all the straw and chips, and floatin' sticks, drift-wood and trash into it. The small crafts are sucked in, and whirl round and round like a squirrel in a cage—they'll never come out. Bigger ones pass through at certain times of tide, and can come ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton



Words linked to "Whirlpool" :   flow, stream, current, Charybdis, run, feed, course



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