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More "Creaking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... are we? Where are we going? What's about to happen?" he exclaimed, in a weak voice, which I could barely hear amid the uproar caused by the seas dashing against the vessel's sides and deck, the creaking of the bulk-heads, the whistling of the wind, ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... then a creaking, one of the cradles swings out from a murky nook, a sort of wasted penguin-flipper is supplicatingly put forth, while a wail like that of Dives is ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... post; the light vanished and his companion started for the floor above. Several times the boy heard the stairs creaking, and his heart leaped into his throat; but then the sounds ceased ...
— Samuel the Seeker • Upton Sinclair
... opened my door. To get out I had to pass through my uncle's room. I proceeded on tip-toe, fearing the creaking of my thick boots might awaken the worthy man, who was still slumbering with a smiling countenance. And I trembled at the sound of the church bell tolling the Angelus. For some days past my uncle Lazare had been ...
— International Short Stories: French • Various
... small, creaking cavalcade was directly in front of the two soldiers. Another officer, riding with the skillful abandon of a cowboy, galloped his horse to a position directly before the general. The two unnoticed foot soldiers made a little show of going on, but they lingered near in the desire to overhear the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... in full steam, and rimy with frozen breath about their indignant nostrils. As he comes and goes, he talks to his team for company; his conversation is monotonous as the talk of lovers, but it has a cheerful ring through the solitude. The logs are chained and dragged creaking along over the snow to the river-side. There the subdivisions of Pinus the Great become a basis for a mighty snow-mound. But the mild March winds blow from seaward. Spring bourgeons. One day the ice has gone. The river flows visible; and now that its days ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 58, August, 1862 • Various
... were too clear to be mistaken, the "caballero" stared across to the only people in sight. There was Pedro Vijil sharpening an axe, while Merced, his wife, turned the creaking grindstone for him. The young olive branches of the Vijil family were having fun with a horned toad under the ramada where gourd vines twisted about an ancient grape, and red peppers hung in a gorgeous splash of color. Between that and the blue haze of the far mountains there ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... we were off early, but we didn't come up with the wagons until almost camping-time. The great heavily-loaded wagons were creaking along over the heavy sands. The McEttricks were behind, Aggie's big frame swaying and lurching with every jolt of the wagon. They never travel without their German socks. They are great thick things to wear on the ...
— Letters of a Woman Homesteader • Elinore Pruitt Stewart
... his weary, confused head as to the meaning of a strange creaking, and a peculiar rising and falling, and why it was that he did not ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... doctor came again. It was very unusual for him to come after dark, and his great creaking boots and rough manner would have broken in upon a ...
— The Big Nightcap Letters - Being the Fifth Book of the Series • Frances Elizabeth Barrow
... the stairway in a daze and packed his suit case. Everywhere he felt the eyes of Adam Craig upon him—less and less unkind. They stared at him from the windows by the orchard. They stared over the creaking banister as he stumbled down the stairway with his courage ebbing. They stared from the library where the porch light glimmered through the windows. . . . Fall was in the wind to-night. The old house creaked. Adam's spirit swept in always with a sighing wind. ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... as a poor ghost may gaze at familiar scenes while those it has loved are dreaming. By-and-by the city seemed to stir in its sleep. Along the waterside he could hear the clatter of some belated or too early wayfarer; a weird, intermittent creaking told him that the milk-cart of provincial towns was on its beat; from a distant freight-train came the long, melancholy wail that locomotives give at night; and then drowsily, but with the promptness of one conscientious in his duty, a cock crew. Ford knew that somewhere, unseen ...
— The Wild Olive • Basil King
... no more than out of the room when Jim slid off the bed quick as a cat; softly as a cat, on his noiseless stockinged feet he followed Mac down the hall; crafty as a cat, he crept down the creaking stairs, tread for tread, a scant arm's length behind his prey—why, God alone knows, unless for a savage joy in longer holding another thug's life in his hands. So he hung, like a leech to the blood it loves, across the corridor and to the ...
— The Red-Blooded Heroes of the Frontier • Edgar Beecher Bronson
... maintain such a clatter as to drown the hoarse cries of the stevedores, the complaint of the creaking tackle, and the rumble of the winches. They scurry hither and yon like a distracted army, forever in the way, shouting, clacking, squealing in senseless turmoil. They are timid as to the water, and for them a voyage is at all times beset with many alarms. It is no more possible to restrain ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... a vast city and millions of people live within the limits of its influence. It stands at the heart of America almost within sound of the creaking green leaves of the corn in the vast corn fields of the Mississippi Valley. It is inhabited by hordes of men of all nations who have come across the seas or out of western corn—shipping towns to make their fortunes. On all sides men are busy ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... of steam and a loud crackling of woodwork and creaking of brakes the train came to a stop and the conductor shouted the name of the station. Rather stiffly the traveler descended with his bag and stood upon the small platform looking about him curiously. The baggage man tossed out a bundle of newspapers and a pouch of mail and the train ...
— The Vagrant Duke • George Gibbs
... "Restless" was no longer especially noticeable. She was rolling and pitching in every direction, accompanied by a straining and creaking ...
— The Motor Boat Club and The Wireless - The Dot, Dash and Dare Cruise • H. Irving Hancock
... the housekeeper made her escape very frequently, and they could hear, on the first floor above them, the creaking of the wooden bedsteads and the rolling of the castors on the floor. While this was going on, the three men, Porthos especially, ate and drank gloriously—it was wonderful to see them. The ten full bottles were ten ...
— The Vicomte de Bragelonne - Or Ten Years Later being the completion of "The Three - Musketeers" And "Twenty Years After" • Alexandre Dumas
... many of them, went by; and still Diamond lay there. He never felt in the least tired or impatient, for a strange pleasure filled his heart. The straining of the masts, the creaking of the boom, the singing of the ropes, the banging of the blocks as they put the vessel about, all fell in with the roaring of the wind above, the surge of the waves past her sides, and the thud with which every now and then one would ...
— At the Back of the North Wind • George MacDonald
... and surrounded by a separate stockade, there suddenly resounded an infernal din. It was like the roar of a lion, like thunder, like the rumbling of a drum, like the laughter of a hyena, the howling of a wolf, and like the shrill creaking of rusty iron hinges. The King hearing these dreadful sounds, began to trumpet, Saba barked, the donkey, on which Nasibu sat, brayed. The warriors leaped as if scalded, and pulled the spears out of the ground. Confusion ...
— In Desert and Wilderness • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... any movements of the enemy should he re-appear. Nothing, however, occurred to interrupt their march; and in a few minutes the heavy clanking sound of the chains of the drawbridge, as it was again raised by its strong pullies, and the dull creaking sound of the rusty bolts and locks that secured the ponderous gate, announced the detachment was once more safely ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... up the creaking stairway, shaped like a ladder, and in a first-story room a maid servant brought wine and biscuits to them. On the mantelpiece, at one of the corners of the room, was an oval mirror in a flower-covered frame. Through the open window one saw the Seine, its ...
— The Red Lily, Complete • Anatole France
... hall cautiously, regretting the need of a lamp, but the place was strange, and I dare not venture about in the dark. Old as the house was, there was no creaking of boards underfoot, and, strain my ears as I would, not the ...
— Gordon Craig - Soldier of Fortune • Randall Parrish
... blown up. The sound of their feet on the staircase inspires terror in the wretched convalescent. He sits up in bed, listening, great drops of sweat collected on his forehead. He dare not get out of bed, but he must; and Villiers can suggest the sound of feet on the creaking stairs—yes, and the madness of the man piling furniture against the door, and the agony of those outside hearing the noise within. When they break into the room they find a dead man; for terror has killed him. You must come to the Nouvelle ...
— Memoirs of My Dead Life • George Moore
... night of blusterous wind and faintly phosphorescent, foam-capped sea; of flying clouds amid which the stars twinkled mistily and vanished, to re-appear presently with the tall spars and swelling canvas of the ship swaying dizzily and black among them; a night full of unaccustomed sounds of creaking and groaning timbers, of the splashing and roaring of water under the ship's bows, along her bends, and about her rudder; of strange sighings and moanings aloft; and of the low murmur of men's voices as the ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... roamed the forest, after deer and other wild animals, and had lain in wait to plunder travelers, now saw nothing, heard nothing but the creaking of the weather-vane on the top of the tower, which tormented him by day and robbed him of sleep by night until he preferred going to the gallows ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... the big river that day. There was no let-up in the steady creaking of the long sweep. Even in the swifter currents David could hear the working of it, and he knew he had seen the last of the more slowly moving raft. Near one of the partly open windows he heard two men talking just before the bateau shot into the Brule Point rapids. They were ...
— The Flaming Forest • James Oliver Curwood
... surroundings, and here and there a little log-cabin (as appropriate to this land as the chalet to the Alps) is built beside the calling ripples of the river, while saddled horses, laden burros in long lines, and now and then a vast yellow or red ore-wagon creaking dolefully as it descends, still give evidence of the mining which goes on far up the zigzag trails towards the soaring, shining peaks of ...
— The Tyranny of the Dark • Hamlin Garland
... back through the moonlight to his home, he crept up the creaking stair again, to his little, dormer-windowed room; but sleep was now, ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard
... behind, and the two rival boats were left to finish the race, which, for a long time, seemed undecided. But, at length, the Speedwell, with her strong mast groaning and creaking under the weight of the heavy canvas, began to gain steadily, and soon passed the Alert. Ten minutes' run brought them across the river; and when Frank, proud of the victory he had gained, rounded the long dock, the Alert ...
— Frank, the Young Naturalist • Harry Castlemon
... I had for the tenth time started up to stride angrily up and down the gallery, I heard the creaking of wheels, and around the corner of the house came a little French charrette, its wooden wheels making a great noise, drawn by one ox and Narcisse walking beside it, driving. I was filled with dismay, for to me it seemed not a mode of conveyance suited to the dignity of the son of one of the ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... was strongly interested in the tree, for I was told that it was the renowned peepul—the tree in whose shadow you cannot tell a lie. This one failed to stand the test, and I went away from it disappointed. There was a softly creaking well close by, and a couple of oxen drew water from it by the hour, superintended by two natives dressed in the usual "turban and pocket-handkerchief." The tree and the well were the only scenery, and so the compound was a soothing and lonesome and satisfying place; and very restful after ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... would involve the examination in detail of all the rubrics of the Prayer Book, and for this there is no room. It is enough to say that unless the rubrics, the hinges and joints of a service-book, are kept well oiled, much creaking is a necessary result. There are turning-points in our public worship where congregations almost invariably betray an awkward embarrassment, simply because there is nothing to tell them whether they are expected to stand or to sit ...
— A Short History of the Book of Common Prayer • William Reed Huntington
... like a mouse for half an hour. The reason was that I had become mercifully engrossed in one of the subsidiary problems: whether it would be better to drop from the window or to trust to the creaking stairs. Would the creaking be much worse than the thud, and the difference worth the risk of a sprained ankle? Well worth it, I at length decided; the risk was nothing; my window was scarce a dozen feet from the ground. How easily it could be ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... impressed her less with a sense of fear and anxiety than with one of pity and of love. He was her child, and therefore to be protected and caressed. She found it difficult not to leave her room in the night, and grope her way along the creaking corridors to the room in which she knew he was sleeping. She wanted to kiss him and hold him in her arms. She placed the poems on the table at her bedside and blew out the candle. It was unfortunate for her bewilderment that Arthur had not left in his notebook the rough copy of the verses ...
— The Tragic Bride • Francis Brett Young
... music, and are you turning music-mad at this time of day? Mad—that you are! The music is inside your own noddle, old addle-pate!" she went on, as she took his head in her hands and rocked it to and fro on her shoulder. "Tell me now, old man; isn't it the creaking of the wheels that sings ...
— Melmoth Reconciled • Honore de Balzac
... and his son Felix. They were near to him, every word they spoke reached his ears, and penetrated to his heart. They seemed more beautiful, more perfect than any young creatures he had ever beheld. He listened to them unfastening the chain which secured the boat, and to the creaking of the row-locks as they fitted the oars into them. It was as if one of his own long-lost days was come back again to earth, when he had sat where Felix was now sitting, with Felicita instead of Hilda dipping her little white hand into ...
— Cobwebs and Cables • Hesba Stretton
... The exercises of the conspirators varied from day to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on the slate-pencil, (making it screech on the slate,) falling of heavy books, attacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with sounds as of drawing a cork from time to ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... dream of the night, I had never thought of examining the wall of the chamber, to see whether there was in it a door or not; but I saw now at once plainly enough that the inserted patch did cover a small door. Opening it, I found within, a creaking wooden stair, leading up to another low door, which, fashioned like the door of a companion, opened upon the roof:—nowhere, except in the towers, had the Hall more than two stories. As soon as I had drawn back the bolt and stepped out, I found myself standing ...
— Wilfrid Cumbermede • George MacDonald
... such social affairs as he could not avoid; with Agnes Elliston; with Biff Bates; in an occasional game of billiards at the Idlers'; but his days, from early morning until the evening whistle, he spent amid the clang of pick and shovel, the rattling of the trams, the creaking of the crane. It was an absorbing thing to see that enormous groove cut down through the big hill, and to watch the growth of the great mounds which grew up out of the marsh. The ditch that should drain off all this murky water ...
— The Making of Bobby Burnit - Being a Record of the Adventures of a Live American Young Man • George Randolph Chester
... hours on deck, in the presence of the tempest,— peering through the darkness at those black liquid walls of water, mounting above you in ceaseless agitation, or tumbling over in cataracts of gleaming foam,—the wind roaring through the rigging,—timbers creaking as if the ship would break its heart,—the spray and rain beating in your face,—everything around in tumult,—suddenly to descend into the quiet of a snug, well-lighted little cabin, with the firelight dancing on the white rosebud chintz, the well-furnished book-shelves, ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... explained to the lieutenant the circumstances under which he is summoned to the Emperor's presence?' he asked, in his dry, creaking voice. ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... I have to do." He drank copiously from the stream; put the carpenter's basket into the cart, got the tow-rope from the boat and fastened it to the cart in this shape: A, putting himself in the center. So now the coachmaker was the horse, and off they went, rattling and creaking, to the jungle. ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade
... to their half-way shelter and put up there for the night. Once when Rolf went out to glimpse the skies before turning in, he heard a far tree creaking and wondered, for it was dead calm. Even Skookum noticed it. But it was not repeated. Next morning they ...
— Rolf In The Woods • Ernest Thompson Seton
... that this was an idle threat. The vessel was lying head to the tide, and only a small gun or two in the stern could be brought to bear, and already the ship was lost to sight in the mist. There was much shouting and noise heard astern, and then the creaking of blocks. Ned made ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty
... of breeze: but such as blows is favourable; and with infinite creaking all sail is set. The sound wakes up emigrant sorrow afresh; the wildly contagious Irish cry is raised, much to the discomposure of the captain, who stood on the quarterdeck with ...
— Cedar Creek - From the Shanty to the Settlement • Elizabeth Hely Walshe
... Old Man of the Wrekin, Whose shoes made a horrible creaking; But they said, "Tell us whether, Your shoes are of leather, Or of what, you Old Man of ...
— Book of Nonsense • Edward Lear
... The creaking of a train of these ox-carts could be heard five miles. Kittson had the government contract for carrying the mails, and managed, with the help of trading in furs and loading up with merchandise on his own account, to ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... and cracking of whips, mingled with the bleating of captured flocks of sheep and goats. Standing under a tree beside my horse I waited; through the blinding rain I could see the ox teams by our Yeomanry lines swinging round in response to the niggers' shouts and whips, and with a gurring and creaking the waggons one by one took their place in the lengthy procession, disappearing in the dense atmosphere. One tent had been left standing, right and left of its entrance were drawn up the firing party ...
— A Yeoman's Letters - Third Edition • P. T. Ross
... dramatic moment, just as Butch Brewster glanced at Hicks' alarm-clock, to start the minute of grace, a startling interruption saved the gladsome youth from having to make a decision. A heavy, creaking tread shook the corridor, and the squad beheld, looming up in the doorway, Thor. He was not in football togs, and as he started to speak his fair face as stolid and expressionless as that of a sphinx, Captain ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... like a photograph taken in the night. It cannot be clear cut. It cannot have clean outlines. It can only be a blurred mass of humanity with burdens on their shoulders; humanity bent to the ground; creaking carts; weary-eyed children and women; moving, moving, moving; like phantom shadow-shapes; in and out; one great maze through the majestic ages; one confused history of the ancient past; emerging; but not ...
— Flash-lights from the Seven Seas • William L. Stidger
... delegations of Greek and Italian children meet and escort the music on its homeward trip. In one of the crooked streets near the river its journey comes to an end. A battered door opens to let it in. A tallow dip burns sleepily on the creaking stairs. The water runs with a loud clatter in the sink: it is to keep it from freezing. There is not a whole window pane in the hall. Time was when this was a fine house harboring wealth and refinement. It has neither ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... of the window took on a bluish opaqueness. The branches of the garden cut them like sinuous, shifting lines of ink. In the deep calm of the studio the creaking of the furniture could be heard, that breathing of wood, of dust, of objects in the silence ...
— Woman Triumphant - (La Maja Desnuda) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... beasts to move from their position. At length, however, you get fairly under weigh, with about a four knot breeze, and continue to make some progress for an hour or two amidst a noise caused by the rumbling of the vehicle, the creaking, jingling, rattling, and clanking, of the atalage, the unceasing crack of the whip, and the chattering of your companions, to which the sounds at Babel were music. The movement then becomes adagio, and soon afterwards ...
— The American Quarterly Review, No. 17, March 1831 • Various
... of doing business made a strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, and as Wemmick ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... these objections to the dramatic merits of the School for Scandal, it will be seen, that, like the criticism of Momus on the creaking of Venus's shoes, they only show how perfect must be the work in which no greater faults can be found. But a more serious charge has been brought against it on the score of morality, and the gay charm thrown around the irregularities of Charles ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore
... down stylish—having a brick chimney and being painted brown. Aside the deepo was the tank and the windmill that pumped into it. Seems to me at nights, sometimes, I can hear that old windmill going around creaking and ...
— Santa Fe's Partner - Being Some Memorials of Events in a New-Mexican Track-end Town • Thomas A. Janvier
... a golden knob, fixed in the floor, close to the sofa. Immediately a creaking and rattling noise was heard; the floor opened, and a large aperture became visible. After a few minutes a table, covered with the most luxurious dishes and sparkling wines, and glittering with silver and ...
— LOUISA OF PRUSSIA AND HER TIMES • Louise Muhlbach
... was silence, then I heard furtive steps on the stair. I snapped out my light and peered out of the window just as Elsie's robust figure disappeared into the shadows. I was about to follow when the creaking of the Flynn door was repeated. In a moment another peep through the shade showed me Flynn himself, and he, too, quickly vanished. Here was a situation indeed! If Elsie was keeping tryst with her co-conspirator of the afternoon and her husband was spying upon her, a row ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... went down to a dingy frame building that cowered meanly in the shadow of the Criminal Court House. He mounted a creaking flight of stairs and went in at a low door on which "Loeb, Lynn, Levy and McCafferty" was painted in black letters. In the narrow entrance he brushed against a man on the way out, a man with a hangdog look and short bristling hair and the pastily-pallid ...
— The Fortune Hunter • David Graham Phillips
... night and slew and fell like archangels. The sky rained heroes upon the astonished earth. Surely the last fights of mankind were the best. What was the heavy pounding of your Homeric swordsmen, what was the creaking charge of chariots, beside this swift rush, this crash, this giddy triumph, this headlong swoop ...
— The World Set Free • Herbert George Wells
... old birch-broom, which base utensil I presently applied to the purpose of a horn, viz. sounding an alarm, and knocked and knocked—but no hoary-headed seneschal nor armed warder appeared at my summons. After a moment's hesitation, I gave the door a push with all my strength: it yielded, creaking on its hinges, and I stepped over the raised threshold. I found myself in a low dark vaulted hall which appeared at first to have no communication with any other chamber: but on advancing cautiously to the end I found ...
— The Diary of an Ennuyee • Anna Brownell Jameson
... born to the saddle, the leathers creaking musically under him to keep time to the shuffling fox-trot of the wiry little range pony. Once free of the mining-camp and out upon the mesa, he found a corn-husk wrapper and his bag of dry tobacco and deftly rolled a cigarette, doing it with one ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... wandered through them; many a time watched the heavy waggons as they went creaking on their way to town and the great emporium at Covent Garden, groaning beneath the wealth and weight of the vegetable produce they carried, and laden so high with cunningly- arranged nests of baskets on baskets, that one believed each moment ...
— She and I, Volume 1 • John Conroy Hutcheson
... who had passed the time of day with the saloon man had disappeared over a ridge and out of sight; Thornton consequently rode swiftly to overtake the stage. Before the four running horses had drawn the creaking wagon after them a half mile Hap Smith stopped his horses in answer to the shout from behind him and stared over ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... bridges built over the railroads were creaking under the tramp of a never-ending crowd. The street cars were crowded like beehives till the horses could not move, and some of the cars broke down, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... head and expanded its wings, and the squire, whose recent experience had prepared him for any wonder, fully expected to hear it speak, but it only croaked loudly and exultingly, or if it laughed, the sound was like the creaking of rusty hinges. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... speak of facial beauty. Some may think, in that respect, the English or the Americans handsomer. But these people have the beauty of life. Instead of the tombstone masques that pass for faces among Anglo-Saxons, they have human features, quick, responsive, mobile. Instead of the slow, long limbs creaking in stiff integuments, they have active members, for the most bare or moving freely in loose robes. Instead of a mumbled, monotonous, machine-like emission of sound they have real speech, vivacious, varied, musical. Their children are the loveliest in the world; so gay, so sturdy, so cheeky, yet ...
— Appearances - Being Notes of Travel • Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson
... heavy wob. He wore tags of yarn round his trousers beneath the knee, that looked like ostentatious garters, and frequently his jacket of corduroy was put on beneath his waistcoat. If he was too old to carry his load on his back, he wheeled it on a creaking barrow, and when he met a friend they said, "Ay, Jeames," and "Ay, Davit," and then could think of nothing else. At long intervals they passed through the square, disappearing or coming into sight round the town-house which stands ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... he wrote on and on: and meanwhile his father was behind him. He had risen on hearing the fall of the book, and had remained waiting for a long time: the rattle of the carts had drowned the noise of his footsteps and the creaking of the door-casing; and he was there, with his white head bent over Giulio's little black head, and he had seen the pen flying over the wrappers, and in an instant he had divined all, remembered all, understood all, and a despairing penitence, ...
— Cuore (Heart) - An Italian Schoolboy's Journal • Edmondo De Amicis
... the hotel, from one dirty room to another, with their loose and creaking floors, rotten and filthy, sagging as we walked, covered with matting that was rotting away. Damp and unventilated, the air was heavy and filled with foul odours of tobacco, perfumery, and cheap disinfectants. There seemed to have been no attempt to ...
— The Ear in the Wall • Arthur B. Reeve
... open field. Men lay everywhere sleeping, so exhausted the dead and living looked alike; there were ghastly bandages, dust-caked faces, bloody uniforms, features blackened by powder, and limping figures helped along by comrades. Empty ammunition wagons loaded again with wounded, went creaking slowly to the rear, the sharp cries of suffering echoing above the infernal din. Just outside the gate, under the tree shadows, was established a field hospital, a dozen surgeons working feverishly amid the medley of sounds. I had heretofore seen ...
— Love Under Fire • Randall Parrish
... cart went creaking on, Lecorbeau looked over his shoulder, with an inscrutable gaze, and watched the retreating ...
— The Raid From Beausejour; And How The Carter Boys Lifted The Mortgage • Charles G. D. Roberts
... hard. I never saw a man with a chin like his, who was not tyrannical, and idolatrous of his own will. My dear, such men are as uncomfortable to live in the same house with, as a smoky chimney, or a woman with shattered nerves, or creaking doors, or draughty windows. They are a sort of everlasting east wind that never veers, blowing always to the one point, attainment of their own ends, ...
— At the Mercy of Tiberius • August Evans Wilson
... soughing of the breeze swept towards him, and in a moment all the twigs about him were quivering and rustling and the boughs creaking with a gust of wind. It seemed to urge him away from her. The faded dead leaves that had once been green and young sprang up, raced one another, leapt, danced and pirouetted, and then something large struck him on the neck, stayed for a startling moment, and drove ...
— Love and Mr. Lewisham • H. G. Wells
... been attempted on the Virginia boards. "Othello's occupation's gone"; and all tragic efforts are confined to the legitimate Rocky Mountain drama. "Nick of the Woods" has frequently been produced with great applause, though the illusion is somewhat marred by the audible creaking of the wheels of the boat in which the Jibbenainosay sails triumphantly ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... not stay indoors, but kept walking up and down the piazza and looking for him, and at times she went a bit up the road he had taken, to meet him. She had got to thinking of the tramp, though the man had gone directly off down another road after he had his breakfast. At last she heard the old creaking, rattling buggy, and as soon as she saw Ormond's bare head, and knew he was all right, she ran up to her room and shut herself in. But she couldn't hold out against him when he came to her door with an armful of wild flowers that he had gathered for her, and boughs from some ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells
... the creaking stairs by leaps and bounds. He stood before the door behind which he had gone hungry, been cold, and glowed with enthusiasm as a young man. Silence should have reigned there now, so that the devotion ...
— The Goose Man • Jacob Wassermann
... excellence which is yet far from thee, but which thou canst attain if thou shouldst persist and wrestle, even as he has done, 'midst gloom and despondency—ay, and even contempt; he who now comes up the creaking stair to thy little studio in the second floor to inspect thy last effort before thou departest, the little stout man whose face is very dark, and whose eye is vivacious; that man has attained excellence, destined some day to be ...
— Lavengro - The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest • George Borrow
... to him. In these last rainy weeks especially, when he can't sketch out of doors, when the wind only half dries the pavement before another torrent comes, and people stay at home, and the only sound from without is the creaking of a restless shutter on its hinges, or the march across the Place of those weary soldiers, coming and going so interminably, one hardly knows whether to or from battle with the English and the Austrians, from victory or defeat:—Well! he has become like one of our family. "He will ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... like descending into some deep and oblivious tide; then a current of misery would mingle with his dreams, a sense of unutterable depression; and then he would suddenly wake in the grip of fear, formless and bodiless fear. The smallest sound in the house, the creaking of a door, a footfall, would set his heart beating with fierce hammer strokes. He would light his candles, wander restlessly about, gaze out from his window into the blackness of the garden, where the ...
— Watersprings • Arthur Christopher Benson
... dreary voyage for Violet Tempest—a kind of maritime purgatory. The monotonous thud of the engine, the tramping of feet overhead, the creaking and groaning of the vessel, the squalling babies, the fussy mothers, the dreadful people who could not travel from Southampton to Jersey on a calm summer night without exhibiting all the horrors of seasickness. Vixen thought of the sufferings of poor black ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... forgotten in London. In the still darkness came an earthquake—that most terrible of phenomena held in God's hand, whereby He saith to poor, puny, arrogant man, "Be still, and know that I am God." Isoult awoke to hear sounds on all sides of her—the bed creaking, and below the dishes and pans dancing with a noisy clatter. In the next chamber she heard Walter crying, and Kate asking if the end of all the world were come; but John would not permit her to rise and go to them. And she also heard Esther talking with them and comforting them ...
— Robin Tremain - A Story of the Marian Persecution • Emily Sarah Holt
... on the dressing-table, prepared to go downstairs. But I turned back when I got to the door, to look once more at my sister Lucy. And, Rosalie darling, as I looked, I felt as if my tears would choke me. I wiped them hastily away, however, and crept downstairs. Every creaking board made me jump and tremble lest I should be discovered, and at every turning I expected to see some one watching me. But no one appeared; I got down safely, and, cautiously unbolting the hall door, I stole quietly out into the street, and soon found Augustus, who carried my ...
— A Peep Behind the Scenes • Mrs. O. F. Walton
... I assisted by leaving the carriage and standing at the roadside till all was ready. We had some doubts about the vehicle holding together much longer, but it behaved very well. The tarantass is a marvel of endurance. To listen to the creaking of its joints, and observe its air of infirmity, lead to the belief that it will go to pieces within a few hours. It rattles and groans and threatens prompt analysis, but some how it continues cohesive and preserves its identity hundreds of ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... that set the branches tossing and swept the dead leaves racing about her ankles. And at the same instant from just above her head there beat upon the air a violent, joyous tattoo—a sound that was neither of the sea nor of the woods, a creaking, swiftly repeated sound, like the flutter of ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... had a certain transparent shamefacedness which was in itself a proof that he was not at his ease in dissipation. His collegiate peccadilloes had aroused a domestic murmur as disagreeable to the young man as the creaking of his boots would have been to a house-breaker. Only, as the house-breaker would have simplified matters by removing his chaussures, it had seemed to Clifford that the shortest cut to comfortable relations with people—relations ...
— The Europeans • Henry James
... great copper gates did slowly swing open, creaking upon their massive hinges, it was as if the flood-gates of a mighty sea had been suddenly let loose. In they poured, thousands upon thousands of them, scrambling, pushing and jumping, scurrying and hurrying, falling and tumbling, as they pressed onwards through ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a fiddler fiddle? I have. I heard a fiddler fiddle, and the hey-dey-diddle of his frolicking fiddle called back the happy days of my boyhood. The old field schoolhouse with its batten doors creaking on wooden hinges, its windows innocent of glass, and its great, yawning fireplace, cracking and roaring and flaming like the infernal regions, rose from the dust of memory and stood once more among the trees. The limpid spring bubbled and laughed at the foot ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... conducted into the still dark courtyard on a cold early morning in winter. They walked in single file—a soldier, a prisoner, a soldier, a prisoner, a soldier—there seemed to be no end to it; there was a steady shuffling of feet across the courtyard. A small gate opened in the wall with a creaking sound. All walked through it. And beyond the wall Elisaveta already caught a glimpse of a flat, endless field of snow, and of a whole row of gallows that stretched into the invisible distance. They were approaching these nearer ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... poplar. In a wide, luminous curve, the Oise lay under the hillside. A faint mist began to rise and confound the different distances together. There was not a sound audible but that of the sheep-bells in some meadows by the river, and the creaking of a cart down the long road that descends the hill. The villas in their gardens, the shops along the street, all seemed to have been deserted the day before; and I felt inclined to walk discreetly as one feels in a silent forest. All of a sudden, we came round a corner, and ...
— An Inland Voyage • Robert Louis Stevenson
... days; and then, one night, posted on the landing of the second floor, Lupin heard the creaking of a door, the front-door, as he perceived, which led from the hall into the garden. In the darkness he distinguished, or rather divined, the presence of two persons, who climbed the stairs and stopped on the ...
— The Crystal Stopper • Maurice LeBlanc
... in the long excursions which took me from her and made me feel the more forcibly the unconscious attraction which recalled me; in her white dress, seen at a distance through the mountain firs; in her dark hair loosened by the wind on the lake; in the light at her window, in the slight creaking of the wooden floor under her tread, in the rustling of her pen on the paper when she wrote, in the very silence of those long autumnal evenings which she spent in reading, writing, or in thought within ...
— Raphael - Pages Of The Book Of Life At Twenty • Alphonse de Lamartine
... ushered into Saxham's consulting-room as a long procession of those carts went creaking by. She was a dainty, piquante, golden-haired, blue-eyed little woman, quite beautifully dressed. Her gown was of black, in deference to the national mourning, but it glittered with sequins, and huge diamonds scintillated in her tiny ears, ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... last of the climbing dacoits was vanishing through the window, high above his head, and one stood motionless below. He, clearly, had been left on guard to keep the foot of the ladder. Now Jack heard plainly a shuffling and creaking and straining above. The Kachins were trying to force the door which ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... very short time the cable was slipped, for Big Sam had no notion of betraying the departure of the vessel by the creaking of a capstan; and, with the hoisting of a few sails and no light aboard except the shaded lamp at the binnacle, the Sarah Williams moved down the river ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... out of it. I was quickly roused by a combination of all conceivable sounds:— the howling of the wind, the roar of the seas, which seemed to be dashing over us. The rattling of ropes and blocks, the creaking of bulkheads, the voices of the men shouting to each other and asking what had happened, were almost deafening, even to ears ...
— Ben Burton - Born and Bred at Sea • W. H. G. Kingston
... prolongation of life with the luxurious and self-indulgent and even in the intemperate and the inebriate. Strange to say, even health is not always conducive to long life. There is a common proverb (and most proverbs are founded upon experience) about creaking hinges, and so it is that people always ailing have been known to live longer than the strong, the hearty, and the healthy. The latter have overtaxed their strength, their spirits, and their health. Even vitality itself, stronger in some than others, may in excess conduce to ...
— The Argosy - Vol. 51, No. 4, April, 1891 • Various
... steep-pitched roof, upon which the heavy rain beat again with a sound like that of distant drums. Gusts of rain and the water from the roof beat against the south windows, while the wailing wind played its mournful cadences about the eaves, and the stanch timbers added their creaking notes to swell ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... them away to the south, leaving night to settle down upon the dwellers of the prairie city, starlit and calm, while the distant glow of the prairie fires rose luridly against the eastern sky. But all night long the creaking moan of the ox-carts went on, giving the prairie a yet closer resemblance ...
— A Trip to Manitoba • Mary FitzGibbon
... over the countryside, he rode in the cart, steering Old Bots this way and that with much shouting, prodding and jerking of reins. And he drove where perhaps no man had ever driven before. His smiling confidence in Old Bots, in his rattling, creaking old cart, in his own ability as a driver were all ...
— The Short Cut • Jackson Gregory
... kind of old Hobgoblin Hall, * * * With weather-stains upon the wall, And stairways worn, and crazy doors, And creaking and uneven floors, And chimneys huge and ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... have not known me, Richie,' said he. 'I pilot you into harbour, and all you can do is just the creaking of the vessel to me. You are in my hands. I pilot you. I have you the husband of the princess within the month. No other course is open to her. And I have the assurance that she loses nothing by it. She is ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... as well as the springs creaked, and that a corner was broken off the dash-board. But we set to work upon it with a will. We tightened up the nuts and screws all over it, and wound the broken pole with wire. We nailed together the box so that the rope could be taken off, and oiled the creaking springs. We had no trouble in finding a top, as half the people in the country had come in wagons provided with covers only a year or so before. We got four bows and attached them to the box, one at each ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... much good of themselves," said Addison, loudly enough for him to hear it. We heard still another little creaking noise, this time higher up the stairs, as if he were tiptoeing back to ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... write no more. Too many letters and home business. Too much bothered with many slight ailments, which altogether keep me busy attending to them. I am like Job, who said "the grasshopper was a burthen" to him! I suppose its creaking song.—Yours ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences Vol 2 (of 2) • James Marchant
... gone a mile, however, when, as they swung creaking round a great boulder, Lapierre pulled up his horses with a loud exclamation, for almost under his horses' feet lay a man apparently dead, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... fan near his house, another a natural terrace near the river. Back of the house was a thatched shelter under which he had constructed a little sugar mill. It had a pair of hardwood rollers, each capable of being turned, with much creaking and cracking, by a large, rustic wheel made of roughly hewn timbers fastened together with wooden pins and lashed with thongs, worked by hand and foot power. Since Saavedra had been unable to coax any pack animals over the trail to Conservidayoc he was obliged to depend entirely on his own limited ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... unseeing.... Fabio ran up to him, but he, not heeding him, moved on, treading evenly, step by step, and his rigid face smiled in the moonlight like the Malay's. Fabio would have called him by his name ... but at that instant he heard, behind him in the house, the creaking of a window.... He ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... punished. It was in the month of February. My grandmother had taken my old shoes, and replaced them with a new pair. I needed them; for several inches of snow had fallen, and it still continued to fall. When I walked through Mrs. Flint's room, their creaking grated harshly on her refined nerves. She called me to her, and asked what I had about me that made such a horrid noise. I told her it was my new shoes. "Take them off," said she; "and if you put them on again, I'll ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... houseleek covered the tiles. Altogether, there was that forlorn and cheerless aspect about the place which chills the visitor, he defines not why. And Ardworth steadied his usual careless step, and crept, as if timidly, up the creaking stairs. ...
— Lucretia, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... had time to move, Vronsky stepped with an agile, vigorous movement into the steel-toothed stirrup, and lightly and firmly seated himself on the creaking leather of the saddle. Getting his right foot in the stirrup, he smoothed the double reins, as he always did, between his ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... turning inside, and then some one pulled open the heavy creaking door; an old man came out and at first looked with surprise and then in anger at the children, as he began scolding them: "What do you mean by ringing me down like this? Can't you read what is written over the bell, 'For those who wish ...
— Heidi • Johanna Spyri
... sleep soundly. The place was too new, and yet too familiar, and the rattling of the windows, the roaring of the wind in the chimney, and the creaking of the vane, without absolutely wakening her, kept her hearing alive continually, weaving the noises into some harassing dream that Humfrey's voice was calling to her, and hindrances always keeping her from him; and then of Lucilla and Owen in some ...
— Hopes and Fears - scenes from the life of a spinster • Charlotte M. Yonge
... colonel's bedside. It is my theory that Mrs. Maynard was restless after the colonel finally fell asleep, that she heard your tumble, and took her little lamp, crossed over into Miss Renwick's room, opened the door without creaking, as I can do to your satisfaction, found her sleeping quietly, but the room a trifle close and warm, set her night-lamp down on the table, as I did, threw her shadow on the wall, as I did, and opened the shade, as you thought her daughter did. Then she ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... him creaking down the aisle of the church, and the following slam of the heavy door behind him; there was a little ...
— The Second Honeymoon • Ruby M. Ayres
... topic. It was rather early in the afternoon, and she had slight hope that any other caller would appear; a female face would have been welcome to her, even that of foolish Mrs. Morton, who might possibly look in before six o'clock. To her relief the door did presently open, but the sharp, creaking footstep which followed was no lady's; the servant announced ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... up to the last tension of nerves, we finished our work and started from the room. A book standing on the table fell over; and although it was not a large book, its fall sounded to our excited system like the crack of a pistol. As we went down the stairs their creaking made our hair stand on end. As we flung ourselves on a sleepless pillow we resolved, God helping, that we had smoked our last cigar, and committed our ...
— Around The Tea-Table • T. De Witt Talmage
... this camel is generally harnessed is a rude cart of wood, ingeniously put together, without a particle of iron, and, after the fashion of such structures, shrieking, creaking, and groaning as the wheels turn on their roughly-made and ungreased axle. The drivers, however, care nothing for the hideous and incessant noise, and probably are so accustomed to it, that they would not feel at home with a cart whose wheels moved ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... a great noise and uproar and hurry in the castle court-yard below; men shouting and calling to one another, the ringing of armor, and the clatter of horses' hoofs upon the hard stone. With the creaking and groaning of the windlass the iron-pointed portcullis would be slowly raised, and with a clank and rattle and clash of iron chains the drawbridge would fall crashing. Then over it would thunder horse and man, clattering away down the winding, stony pathway, until the great ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... about four, and the ultimate darkness of the night was past. There was a faint shimmer of light in the hall, but the study doorway yawned impenetrably black. Everything was still except the faint creaking of the stairs under Mr. Bunting's tread, and the slight movements in the study. Then something snapped, the drawer was opened, and there was a rustle of papers. Then came an imprecation, and a match was struck and the study was flooded ...
— The Invisible Man • H. G. Wells
... whistling, whistling like a bird, Or may be slept too late: With eaglets broidered on his cap, And eaglets on his glove? If you had turned his pockets out, You had found some pledge of love."— "I met him at this daybreak, Scarce the east was red: Lest the creaking gate should anger you, I ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... stuffed her few articles of jewelry into her pockets, to serve in place of money, she lay down upon her bed, and trembled at the thought of what was in front of her. Down below she could hear her guardian's shuffling step as he moved about the refectory. Then came the creaking of the rusty lock as he secured the door, and shortly afterwards he passed upstairs to his room. Mrs. Jorrocks had also gone to bed, and all ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... sitting-room opened on to the passage; she might step out at any moment, and intercept his exit. He had nearly reached the last flight when he remembered that he had forgotten his manuscripts. His flesh turned cold, his heart stood still. There was nothing for it but to ascend those creaking stairs again. His already heavily encumbered pockets could not be persuaded to receive more than a small portion of the manuscripts. He gathered them in his hand, and prepared to redescend the perilous stairs. He ...
— Vain Fortune • George Moore
... hour nothing happened, and Blake was beginning to feel a bit sleepy, in spite of the fact that he had rested during the early part of the evening, when he was startled by a slight sound. It was like the creaking of a rusty hinge, and at first he thought it but one of the many sounds always more or less audible ...
— The Moving Picture Boys on the War Front - Or, The Hunt for the Stolen Army Films • Victor Appleton
... seems to say this, the saying brings him no solace. What, "creaking like a ghostly cricket," it intends, he must perceive, since he is neither deaf ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne
... boudoir scent, enervating, enfeebling, which called up for de Gery feminine visions—Aline, Felicia—permeating the fairy-like landscape, in this blue-charged atmosphere, this heavenly day, which one might have called the perfume become visible of so many open flowers. The creaking of a door made him open his eyes. Some one had just gone into the next room. He heard the rustle of a dress against the thin partition, a leaf turned in a book which could not be very interesting, for a long sigh turning into a yawn made him start. Was ...
— The Nabob • Alphonse Daudet
... waited for Rudd in the dark boot-hole under the Chief's study on Pack Monday night just before twelve. In stockinged feet he had crept downstairs, opened the creaking door without making any appreciable noise, and then waited in the boot-room, which was filled with the odour of blacking and damp decay. There was a small window at the end of it, through which it was just possible to squeeze out on to the Chief's front lawn. After that all was easy; anyone could ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... toward the conservatory and had reached the main hall when the creaking of the stairsteps brought him up with a start. Some one was descending, slowly and cautiously. For a second time and with grateful appreciation of Muriel's forethought, he carefully avoided the ferocious jaws of ...
— A Reversible Santa Claus • Meredith Nicholson
... aldermen have rechristened it Park Row. There other delegations of Greek and Italian children meet and escort the music on its homeward trip. In one of the crooked streets near the river its journey comes to an end. A battered door opens to let it in. A tallow dip burns sleepily on the creaking stairs. The water runs with a loud clatter in the sink: it is to keep it from freezing. There is not a whole window pane in the hall. Time was when this was a fine house harboring wealth and refinement. It has neither now. In the old parlor downstairs a knot of hard-faced men and women sit on ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... The bell is ringing, The pigs are squeaking, The barn door creaking, The brook is babbling, The geese are gabbling Mercy on us, ...
— Little Songs • Eliza Lee Follen
... it at the dungeon door, and turned the bolt with ease. He then led Hopeful to the iron gate of the castle, and though the lock went desperately hard, yet the key opened it. But as the gate moved, it made such a creaking ...
— The Worlds Greatest Books - Vol. II: Fiction • Arthur Mee, J. A. Hammerton, Eds.
... I hear the rusty hinges of my beloved's door give me creaking invitation. My heart creaks and throbs with respondent trepidations: Whimsical enough though! for what relation has a lover's heart to a rusty pair of hinges? But they are the hinges that open and shut the door of my beloved's ...
— Clarissa, Volume 4 (of 9) - History Of A Young Lady • Samuel Richardson
... when I pushed open the heavy door, which closed with a pulley whose creaking echoed through the vestibule. What was then my surprise to hear, in the midst of general mourning, the tones of a song and harpsichord! Monsieur de la Vablerie was singing, and Mademoiselle Jeanne accompanying him. I knew not, in those days, that the misfortune of one ...
— The Conscript - A Story of the French war of 1813 • Emile Erckmann
... moment there would have been bloodshed. But suddenly the dark shadows at the other end of the room swayed with a strange motion; a great creaking sound arose, and the warping-bars tottered forward and fell upon the floor ...
— The Young Mountaineers - Short Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... lavish singers all summer long is the indigo bunting; yet when he first came back from the South he was very shy, and his voice seemed to be out of tune, so that, even when he tried to sing, which was seldom, his effort sounded like the creaking of a rusty door-hinge. Afterwards, however, when he got the cobwebs out of his larynx, he made up for all his previous silence. Quite different is the habit of the towhee, which announces his presence by his loud, explosive trill—all too ...
— Our Bird Comrades • Leander S. (Leander Sylvester) Keyser
... the left; the path here is steep and muddy. He stops in front of a blurred circle of yellow light; by this can one faintly perceive the outlines of a building. Above the narrow doorway hangs a creaking sign which announces to all it may concern that this is the "Loup Noir," much sought after for its nearness to the racecourse and for its ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... comfort of horses. It was sans air brake and sans spring; and when the engineer made up his mind, which he often did, to stop that train, he did so in a manner the most alarming to aching limbs and weary eyes. "Let's go," the soldiers' war cry, rang out along the creaking, swaying, grinding train, and we were off on our 400-mile journey to the training area assigned to our Division ...
— The Greater Love • George T. McCarthy
... in which the last sentences were uttered, and the creaking of the bedstead indicated that the fireman was composing his massive limbs to rest, and scarcely had Mrs Dashwood resumed her washing, when his regular heavy breathing proclaimed him to be already ...
— Life in the Red Brigade - London Fire Brigade • R.M. Ballantyne
... exhausted that he would fall asleep in the cage. He would fall asleep at supper, and go in and sink down on his cot and sleep like a log. And oh, the torture of being routed out before daybreak! Having to shake the sleep out of his head, and move his creaking joints, and become aware of the burning in his eyes, and the blisters ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... terror! Give thy roan jade spur, And spare her not! All Devon waits for thee, Thou, for the moment, most important man! A sevennight later, when the rider sent To Town drew rein before The Falcon inn Under the creaking of the windy sign, And slipped from saddle with most valorous call For beer to wash his throat out, then confessed He brought no scrap of any honest news, The last hope died, and so the quest was done. "They far'd afoot," quoth one, ...
— Wyndham Towers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... view of the table. There was a silence that made the creaking of starched evening shirt-bosoms noisy as those men drew long stealthy breaths when breathing became imperative. All my "clients" and Dominick—he at Roebuck's right. At Roebuck's left there was a vacant chair. "Shall I sit ...
— The Plum Tree • David Graham Phillips
... a ridge, long and low and weathered gray like a part of the earth. By day it had rested in a green sun-dazzle of trees or a glistering purity of snow. By night you heard the boards creaking and the lonesome sound of wind talking down the chimney. Yes, it had ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... ears the tears unshed, Grieve for their family's unlucky head. Virginia City intermits her trade And well-clad strangers walk her streets unflayed. Nay, all Nevada ceases work to weep And the recording angel goes to sleep. But in his dreams his goose-quill's creaking fount Augments the debits in the long account. And still the continents and oceans ring With royal torments of the Silver King! Incessant bellowings fill all the earth, Mingled with inextinguishable mirth. He roars, men laugh, Nevadans weep, beasts howl, Plash the affrighted ...
— Black Beetles in Amber • Ambrose Bierce
... more ado, he passed through the creaking gate, up the lime-tree avenue, heedless of the ghost-like shadows of the tombstones, and the rustle of the ...
— Wilton School - or, Harry Campbell's Revenge • Fred E. Weatherly
... bedroom door rattled a little in the draught of another door which opened and closed. She heard an unmistakable creaking of the back stairs that led to a hall behind her room and the girls' rooms, and which ...
— Kildares of Storm • Eleanor Mercein Kelly
... small room there doing some writing, when I heard a pair of feet in this passage doing a dance that was as queer as the dance of death. First came quick, funny little steps, like a man walking on tiptoe for a wager; then came slow, careless, creaking steps, as of a big man walking about with a cigar. But they were both made by the same feet, I swear, and they came in rotation; first the run and then the walk, and then the run again. I wondered at first idly ...
— The Innocence of Father Brown • G. K. Chesterton
... having arrived safely at the Towers, none the worse for her long drive yesterday. Mrs. Keziah, however, showed a disposition to qualify her report, saying:—"Th' o'ald la'ady was ma'akin' but a power show, at that. She'll be a great age, shower-ly! Only they do say, creaking dowers ha'ang longest." ...
— When Ghost Meets Ghost • William Frend De Morgan
... gently. It yielded very slightly, and he tried again and yet again. Finally, he put down the lamp and set his shoulder against the wooden barrier with all his force. A dull creaking sound rewarded his efforts, and inch by inch the huge door opened into what at first appeared immeasurable darkness. Holding up the light he looked in, and uttered a smothered exclamation. A sudden gust of wind rushed from the sea through the passage ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... as he sat in the front parlor under the little creaking room. He would sit there where he could hear every sound, where it was almost as if he was by her ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair
... sack, round which he fastened the rope in such a manner that as soon as the strain on it was relieved it could be shaken off. Then he climbed out on to the bough, and poured a little melted lard on the sheave of the block to prevent it from creaking. Then he lowered the barrel down, shook off the fastening, and drew up ...
— With Cochrane the Dauntless • George Alfred Henty
... this soft and moving web of silence. No, not quite silence, for past his ear the splendid hyacinths drifted with a musical creaking, leaf on leaf, the buoyant bulbs brushing each other. The islets joined and parted; once he saw open water and plunged for it—and over his shoulders there surged a soft coverlet. He turned and beat it; he churned his bed into a ...
— O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1921 • Various
... that the first and most peculiar effect of this misty environment was the absolute silence. The empty, invisible sails above did not flap; the sheets and halyards hung limp; even the faint creaking of an unseen block overhead was so startling as to draw every eye upwards. Muffled orders from viewless figures forward were obeyed by phantoms that moved noiselessly through the gray sea that seemed to have invaded the deck. Even the passengers ...
— The Crusade of the Excelsior • Bret Harte
... to criminals in whatever they undertake, he unscrewed the iron bars, slipped them from their places without the slightest noise, placed them against the wall, and opened the shutters, leaning heavily upon their hinges to keep them from creaking. The moon was shedding its pale pure light upon the scene, and he was thus enabled to faintly see into the room where Wilhelm and Wahlenfer were sleeping. There, he told me, he stood still for a moment. The ...
— The Red Inn • Honore de Balzac
... the boys were still at breakfast when the early morning train came creaking into the station, and the first person to come towards ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various
... Black Forest of Germany babbled in playful melody no more, but rushed on with deafening din, mingling their torrent roar with the wild creaking of the huge oaks, the rustling of the firs, the howling of the affrighted wolves, and the hollow ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds
... followed upon his heels. He flung himself at Celia's door and opened it He burst into the room, stood for a second, then ran to the window. He hid behind the curtain, looking out. With his hand he waved to his companions to keep back. The sound of wheels creaking and rasping rose to their ears. The cab had just come out into the road. Durette upon the box turned and looked towards the house. Just for a moment Hanaud leaned from the window, as Besnard, the Commissaire, had done, and, like Besnard again, he waved his hand. Then ...
— At the Villa Rose • A. E. W. Mason
... howling mobs,—and became sensible of a hoarse shouting above me. I rubbed my eyes and lay listening to the noise, doubtful for a little while of my whereabouts. Then came a sudden pattering of bare feet, the sound of heavy objects being thrown about, a violent creaking and the rattling of chains. I heard the swish of the water as the ship was suddenly brought round, and a foamy yellow-green wave flew across the little round window and left it streaming. I jumped into my clothes and ...
— The Island of Doctor Moreau • H. G. Wells
... at a distance, on the neighb'ring plain, With creaking wheels slow comes the heavy wain: High on its tow'ring load a maid appears, And Nelly's voice sounds shrill in Robin's ears. Quick from his hand he throws the cumb'rous flail, And leaps with lightsome limbs th' enclosing pale. O'er field and fence he scours, ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... on a countless throng, a throng that neither earth nor wave could hold. Thick flared all their camp-fires, and the whole wood blazed up; the flame betokened a numberless array. The earth sank under the fraying of the horse-hoofs; creaking waggons rattled swiftly. The wheels rumbled, the driver rode upon the winds, so that the chariots sounded like thunder. The earth hardly bore the throngs of men-at-arms, speeding on confusedly; they trod it, but it could not bear their weight. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... crowded the afternoon of the funeral. The decent black-clad village people, with reddening eyes and mouths drooping with melancholy, came in throngs into the snowy yard. The men in their Sunday gear tiptoed creaking across the floors; the women, feeling for their pocket-handkerchiefs, padded softly and heavily after them, folded in their ...
— Pembroke - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... goodly house And grown a mansion ruinous With winter blowing through its crumbling walls! The master paceth up and down his halls, And in the empty hours Can hear the tottering of his towers And tremor of their bases underground. And oft he starts and looks around At creaking of a distant door Or echo of his footfall on the floor, Thinking it may be one whom he awaits And hath for many days awaited, Coming to lead him through the mouldering gates Out somewhere, from ...
— The Poems of William Watson • William Watson
... twin pillars of church and school and stage were strong enough to support on the shoulders of their authority the first crude fabric or formless model of our comic theatre, while the tragic boards were still creaking and cracking under the jingling canter of Cambyses or the tuneless tramp of Gorboduc. This one play which the charity of Sidney excepts from his general anathema on the nascent stage of England has hitherto been erroneously ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... great creaking of saddles took place as the men eased their positions, and conversation began again. The Spanish soldiers filed off through a break in the barbed wire fence, the defiant trumpeters playing their pretty march-call ...
— The Surrender of Santiago - An Account of the Historic Surrender of Santiago to General - Shafter, July 17, 1898 • Frank Norris
... and four men got out. Instead of going toward the cave, they towed the globe, which floated a few inches from the earth, toward the side of the hill farthest from where the doctor stood. Three of them held it, while the fourth went forward and bent over some controls on the ground. A creaking sound came through the night and the men moved forward with the globe. Presently its movement stopped and men reappeared. Again came the creaking sound and the glow faded out as though a screen had been drawn in front of it. The four men ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... advantages of the North Cape over the stormy Atlantic was not calculated to raise the drooping spirits, and it was very early when he and his shattered guests turned in. There was little sleep on board the "Flitter" that night. Even if it had been easy to forget the danger, the creaking of the ship and the incessant roar of the water were enough for wakefulness. With each lurch of the boat it seemed more incredible that it could endure. It was such a mite of a thing to meet so furious an attack. As it rose on the wave to pause in terror ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... perfect stillness which followed it. The vessel seemed quite to stagger under the blow and to be paralysed by it, so that several seconds must have elapsed before the heavy rolling recommenced. This, and the creaking and groaning of the vessel, had something solemn about it; but some minor sounds were neither so grand nor so philosophically borne by either Papa or myself. One of the most persevering of these arose from my carelessness in having forgotten to bolt the door of a ...
— First Impressions of the New World - On Two Travellers from the Old in the Autumn of 1858 • Isabella Strange Trotter
... enjoyed the reputation of being 'desperately haunted' from, at any rate, 1865 down to its dismantling. I will merely give the experiences of my own relations, as told by them to me. My mother told how one night she and my father heard creaking and grating, as if a door were being forced open. The sound came from a passage in which was a door nailed up and clamped with iron bands. A heavy footstep came down the passage, and stopped at the bedroom ...
— True Irish Ghost Stories • St John D Seymour
... key and turned it in the creaking lock. He was stripping himself even before the two sailors were out in the sun, and by the time that Crothers and Joe Byng had realized that there was an audience of something like a thousand, including children, he was ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... ten-foot drop at the end," said Jim, casting his eye up at the creaking sails. "But it certainly was a nasty moment while one wondered if the old affair would hold. I don't believe it ever was made in ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... did not falter. Her humble and faithful admirer, Ned, appeared at the attic door, when summoned by Goody Pearse, to help her downstairs. Ned made short work of it; he lifted Mary in his arms, and trudged down the creaking steps with her without a single halt, and placed her by her desire on the settle, where her leg could rest. Mary's smile was a sufficient reward for Ned. But when Mary held out her hand, and said she owed him more than tongue could tell for going to London, Ned was speechless with emotion. ...
— Penshurst Castle - In the Days of Sir Philip Sidney • Emma Marshall
... rocking motion could be felt. Then I increased my speed in proportion to the speed of the tower itself. It was a slow start, but the momentum began to grow, and as it did each successive sway became faster and faster. Soon it was going so fast that I began to have unstable footing, the whole tower creaking like a tree that it is blown by a heavy wind. The speed kept increasing until it reached its fastest, swooshing to and fro with all of ...
— The Revolutions of Time • Jonathan Dunn
... walls and ceiling whitewashed, the floor plain boards. Yonder, near the one small window, stood a table and tall-backed oaken chair, afar off, as it were, from the doorway—a journey to them across the creaking floor. On one side an old four-post bedstead of dark oak, much damaged, was placed by the wall; the sacking hung down in a loop, torn and decayed—a bedstead on which no one had slept these hundred years past. By the table there was, too, an ancient ...
— Amaryllis at the Fair • Richard Jefferies
... Instantly, creaking and groaning, the face of the rock opened like a door, gaping blackly. Then, one after another, the three old men entered, and nothing was left but the dull light of their torches, shining on the walls of ...
— Twilight Land • Howard Pyle
... to a smock, Creaking his shoes on the plain masonry, Till honour is bought up, and no sword worn ...
— Shakespeare: His Life, Art, And Characters, Volume I. • H. N. Hudson
... an immoderate feeling of faintness and sickness, with no more remembrance of things past than has a man bereft of reason. And for some time I swung between sense and oblivion before an overpowering stench forced itself upon my nostrils, accompanied by a creaking, straining sound and sweeping motion. I could see nothing for the pitchy blackness. Then I recalled what had befallen me, and cried aloud to God in my anguish, for I well knew I had been carried aboard ship, and ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... at a temperature neither too hot nor too cold; 68 deg. F. is usually considered favorable for study. When reading in the library, sit down in a quiet spot, with your back to the door, so you will not be tempted to look up as people enter the room. Do not sit near a group of gossipers or near a creaking door. Having made the external conditions favorable for study, you should next address yourself to the task of eliminating bodily distractions. The most disturbing of these in study are sensations of fatigue, for, contrary to the opinion of many people, study ...
— How to Use Your Mind • Harry D. Kitson
... adverse, but could not recall when awake again. We remember, that day, a few watchers insecure on an exposed dockhead that projected into a sullen dreariness of river and mud which could have been the finish of the land. At the end of a creaking hawser was a steamer canting as she backed to head downstream—now she was exposed to a great adventure—the tide rapid and noisy on her plates, the reek from her funnel sinking over the water. And from the dockhead, ...
— London River • H. M. Tomlinson
... seen by her with this door-handle in his hand, she faithfully continued every day to begin her light tasks by rubbing it, and while so doing she would often call to mind the early spring twilight she had opened her eyes in so long ago, and heard creaking footsteps passing down the stairs; and then how she had heard the great bolt of the door withdrawn, and had sprung out of bed, and peering through her casement had seen him close it after him, and with his young brother steal away among the ghostly ...
— Fated to Be Free • Jean Ingelow
... stairs again, heated the milk, and brought it back. When it had been taken she kissed the small face, drew the linen sheet smooth again, and went away with the candle. In her own room she presently lay down upon her cot, rejoicing that the old lady could not hear its creaking. ...
— Mrs. Red Pepper • Grace S. Richmond
... radiance from a crude lamp and the ever-changing light of the open fire; the long, wavering shadows within the cabin; and, without, the banshee wailing of the storm wind around the eaves, the occasional crash of thunder, the creaking of limbs and fitful dashes of rain. He found himself leaning back in his chair and mentally attempting to dissect and study not the bodies, but the personalities, of the three who were the representatives of a type, in manners and customs ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson
... as the woman, who was stout and consequently slow in her movements, led the way up the creaking stairway and then through the hall on the second floor. The floor here also was loose and every step was announced by creakings, while various other sounds were emitted as the boards resumed ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... splintered a bone or two, had not the archer with the most perfect coolness clung to the other's forearms to break his fall. As it was, he dropped upon his feet and kept his balance, though it sent a jar through his frame which set every joint a-creaking. He bounded back from his perilous foeman; but the other, heated by the bout, rushed madly after him, and so gave the practised wrestler the very vantage for which he had planned. As big John flung himself upon him, the archer ducked under the great red hands that clutched for him, and, catching ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... scowled. He was a stocky man, who had been a butcher. His face was blotched by ruddiness resembling that of raw meat. Behind his cockaded silk hat pressed the faces of his aids. The little yard was filled with men who peered in at the windows. A big truck wagon was creaking as its horses backed it to ...
— The Ramrodders - A Novel • Holman Day
... say that: and it comes pat. You'll think his thoughts; and mutter them in your mind, Before he can give them tongue, Ruth. He's not said An unexpected thing since he grew out Of his first breeches: and, like the most of men, He speaks so slowly, you can almost catch The creaking of ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... beef with sheath-knives and fingers, or scooping thick pea-soup out of pannikins by means of battered iron spoons. The stench of bad beef was in his nostrils, while in his ears, to the accompaniment of creaking timbers and groaning bulkheads, echoed the loud mouth-noises of the eaters. He watched them eating, and decided that they ate like pigs. Well, he would be careful here. He would make no noise. He would keep his mind upon ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... horribly risky, but Torrance spoke with a curious unconcernedness, and Clavering laughed as, signing to two men, he prepared to do his bidding. There was a creaking and rattling, and the great door at one end of the hall swung open, and Flora Schuyler, staring at the darkness, expected to see a rush of shadowy figures out of it. But she saw only the blurred outline of two men who stooped and dragged something ...
— The Cattle-Baron's Daughter • Harold Bindloss
... decency, honour, and repose. But for us the man ends with his last line. His body that was so very real, his personal voice, his jargon—tangible and audible things—spread outward suddenly a vast shadow upon nothingness. It was the end, also, of a world. The first Presses were creaking, Constantinople had fallen, Greek was in Italy, Leonardo lived, the stepping stones of the Azores were held—in ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... for mumps. It was a world of peace and he the one dark cloud that threatened. But at last there came a time of real illness—a time when I lay for months together inside my wickerwork-basket bed, and then it was that I learned that that hard face could relax, that those country-made creaking boots could steal very gently to a bedside, and that that rough voice could thin into a whisper when it spoke to a ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the traveller with a metallic check for the sort of vehicle he demands. They were not proud, but it seemed best not to risk a second-class cab in a strange city, and when their first-class cab came creaking and limping out of the rank, they saw how wise they had been, if one of the second ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... round the court, opens the door of the postchaise, takes out his pistols, looks at the priming, and puts them back again. Then we are off again, and time enough too. It seemed to me many hours since we had arrived at that creaking old "Bell." And away we go through Addington, Eynesford, by miles and miles of hop-gardens. I dare say I did not look at the prospect much, beautiful though it might be, my young eyes being for ever on the look-out for St ...
— A Book of English Prose - Part II, Arranged for Secondary and High Schools • Percy Lubbock
... citizen in the rough: he needs polishing down with a federal holly-stone before he can be admitted into good society:' a voice like the creaking of a door resounded through the passage. Being a rough sort of citizen didn't affect me as long as I had the straight up-and-down principles within. Well, I got up the go-a-head, and walked in steady. 'T'wont do! citizen Smooth!' interposes ...
— The Adventures of My Cousin Smooth • Timothy Templeton
... hot June morning, and the little town was crowded, like some old-time immigrant ship. Women in plaid shawls and frilled caps, men in somber black as befitted a monthly occasion. Squawking of ducks and hens, trudging of donkeys, creaking of carts, unbelievably stubborn bullocks and heifers being whacked by ash-plants, colts frisking. Girls with baskets of eggs and butter; great carts of hay and straw. Apple-women with bonnets of cabbage-leaves against the sun. Herring-men bawling ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... passed the time of day with the saloon man had disappeared over a ridge and out of sight; Thornton consequently rode swiftly to overtake the stage. Before the four running horses had drawn the creaking wagon after them a half mile Hap Smith stopped his horses in answer to the shout from behind him and stared over his ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... was not "GLORIOUS." The very sight of Greek letters brings back to me the dingy, faded, ink-splashed quality of our class-room, the banging of books, Topham's disordered hair, the sheen of his alpaca gown, his deep unmusical intonations and the wide striding of his creaking boots. Glorious! And being plastic human beings we would consent that it was glorious, and some of us even achieved an answering reverberation and a sympathetic flush. I at times responded freely. We all accepted from him unquestioningly that these melodies, these strange sounds, exceeded ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... painter and Ginevra thought themselves alone, Servin rapped in a peculiar manner on the door of the dark garret, which turned at once on its rusty and creaking hinges. Ginevra then saw a tall and well-made young man, whose Imperial uniform set her heart to beating. The officer had one arm in a sling, and the pallor of his face revealed sharp suffering. Seeing an unknown ...
— Vendetta • Honore de Balzac
... sound of their footsteps is a little clank made by the hilts of swords and the butts of pistols striking against the metal on their belts. There is a slight creaking of leather, too, which could not possibly come from a band of warriors. I hear the echo of a voice! I think it is a command, a short, sharp word or two such as white officers give. The sounds of the footsteps merge now, Black Rifle, because the men are marching to the same ...
— The Lords of the Wild - A Story of the Old New York Border • Joseph A. Altsheler
... German Waiter! there are many other lands Where you can take your creaking boots and eke your dirty hands; And we think you'll have discovered, ere you reach your next address, That in England German Waiters aren't ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 101, September 26, 1891 • Various
... grew well again, and back from Uncle Roger's came Jehosophat and Hepzebiah. They came back in the old creaking buckboard with Methuselah the old, old white ...
— Seven O'Clock Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... concern. They had wide gilt frames, and were protected from ravaging flies by mosquito netting. He hoped that Ma would not hang them in the hall or the living-room. And that rocker, for which she yearned, was probably the one with the creaking coiled springs—the one that had leaped after him and clashed its jaws like ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... bore the teapot, Emil the bread, Rob the milk, and Teddy insisted on carrying the sugar basin, which was lighter by several lumps when it arrived than when it started. Some women might have found it annoying at such a time to have boys creaking in and out, upsetting cups and rattling spoons in violent efforts to be quiet and helpful; but it suited Mrs. Jo, because just then her heart was very tender; and remembering that many of her boys were fatherless or motherless, she yearned over them, and found comfort in their blundering ...
— Little Men - Life at Plumfield With Jo's Boys • Louisa May Alcott
... of reach of the monster, sings, "How can I pay? I have nothing but my feathers, nothing but my feathers!" So the crocodile goes away till next year. There are not many singing birds in Borneo besides this thrush. The soft voices of many doves and pigeons may always be heard, and often the curious creaking noise made by the wings of rhinoceros hornbills as they fly past. More musical is the voice of the Wawa monkey, a bubbling like water running out of a narrow-necked bottle, always to be heard at early dawn, and the ...
— Sketches of Our Life at Sarawak • Harriette McDougall
... more tractable and companionable, better suited for human association, less mechanically brutal. They were not monstrous enough to require motor tractors to draw them at a stately gait, but behind their teams could be up and away across the fields on short notice, their caissons of ammunitions creaking behind them. Along the communication trenches perspiring soldiers carried "plum puddings" or the trench-mortar shells which were to be fired from the front line and boxes of egg-shaped bombs which fitted nicely in the palm of the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... was gone, immediately turned round, and going to her knees, leaned, with her half-cold infant still in her arms, against a creaking chair, and prayed with as much earnestness as a distracted heart permitted her. The little ones, at her desire, also knelt, and in a few minutes afterwards, when her drunken husband came home, he found his miserable family, grouped as they were in their ...
— Phelim O'toole's Courtship and Other Stories • William Carleton
... listened. There was a stealthy creaking on the stairs. It grew more distinct; then it ...
— The Old Tobacco Shop - A True Account of What Befell a Little Boy in Search of Adventure • William Bowen
... along the magnificent avenue of royal palms which connected the east and west ends of the Island. They were bending and creaking horribly, the masses of foliage on the summits cowering away from the storm, wrapping themselves about in a curiously pitiful manner; the long blade-like leaves seemed striving each to protect the other. Through the ever-increasing roar of the storm, ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... buildings, and the gravestones scattered here and there began to issue from the shade. The road was no longer quite empty. Marketmen were moving toward the gates, leading asses and mules laden with vegetables; here and there moved creaking carts in which game was conveyed. On the road and along both sides of it was a light mist at the very earth, which promised good weather. People at some distance seemed like apparitions in that mist. Vinicius stared at ...
— Quo Vadis - A Narrative of the Time of Nero • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... cloth, with two holes for his great piteous eyes. It was in the springtide, and one night as he lay sleepless in the dark, listening to the long murmur of the wind in the swaying pines, he heard overhead sharp cries and trumpetings, and the creaking ...
— A Child's Book of Saints • William Canton
... Pecuchet was awakened by the creaking of a boot in the corridor. The evening before, according to custom, he had himself drawn all the bolts; and he called out to Bouvard, ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... turned his head vaguely away. The house was so still that the creaking of the stairs as his weight shifted from one foot to another, sounded horribly loud; he noticed it, and regretted having moved. The idea of Fifi's dying had of course never occurred to him. Something put into his head the simple thought that he ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... gusty day, and the creaking of the oaks and pines on shore, reminded us of more northern climes than Greece, and more ...
— A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers • Henry David Thoreau
... crept over me. I arose and undressed, moving on tiptoe about the room, doing stealthily what I had to do, as if I were environed by sleeping enemies whose slumbers it would be fatal to break. I covered up in bed, and lay listening to the rain and wind and the faint creaking of distant shutters, till they lulled ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... creeping round the wagon while Phil spoke. She heard the creaking of the planks and turned to see him tiptoeing toward the stall. His clothing was soiled and crumpled. His bent, slinking figure as he stole toward his booty affected her disagreeably. She ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... on the corner of High Street and the Square; a mean two-story structure of frame, across the shabby front of which hung a shabby creaking sign bearing witness that within might be found: "Archibald McBride, Hardware and Cutlery, Implements and Bar Iron." McBride had kept store on that ...
— The Just and the Unjust • Vaughan Kester
... nothing to report. He could easily find an explanation for every sound, even to the creaking noise which he felt sure was caused by one of the cows rubbing itself ...
— The Dingo Boys - The Squatters of Wallaby Range • G. Manville Fenn
... the house with a hurried step, and Christopher, after an instant's hesitation, passed to the back, and, taking off his clumsy boots, crept softly up the creaking staircase to his little ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... Barnes moaned and groaned, and tossed and heaved on her bed, but Mona slept on unconcerned and happy. Even the creaking of the stairs when granny came down in the morning did not rouse her. The first thing that she was conscious of was a hand shaking her by the shoulders, and a voice saying rather sharply, "Come, wake up. Don't you know that it's eight o'clock, and no fire lit, nor nothing! I thought I might ...
— The Making of Mona • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... open the gate without noise, but I could not succeed. Some creaking of its hinges was unavoidably produced, which I feared would be overheard by the lady and multiply her apprehensions and perplexities. This inconvenience was irremediable. I therefore closed the gate and pursued ...
— Edgar Huntley • Charles Brockden Brown
... a picture of all the variations in those sweet, busy-idle days? They vanished all too swiftly. But now the rick-yard was heaped high with golden sheaves; the carts came in steady lines, creaking under endless loads, from those fields which, two years later, lay scorched with drought, and over which famine brooded. The peasant girls tossed the grain, with forked boughs, to the threshing-machine, tended by other girls. The village boys had a fine frolic dragging the ...
— Russian Rambles • Isabel F. Hapgood
... through the rocks that run together, the ne'er resting beaches of Phineus, [and] the marine shore, running o'er the surge of Amphitrite,[59]—where the choruses of the fifty daughters of Nereus entwine in the dance,—[although] with breezes that fill the sails, the creaking rudders resting at the poop, with southern gales or the breezes of Zephyr, to the bird-haunted land, the white beach, the glorious race-course of Achilles, near the Euxine Sea. Would that, according to my mistress' prayers, Helen, the dear daughter of Leda, might sometime chance to come, ...
— The Tragedies of Euripides, Volume I. • Euripides
... she had slight hope that any other caller would appear; a female face would have been welcome to her, even that of foolish Mrs. Morton, who might possibly look in before six o'clock. To her relief the door did presently open, but the sharp, creaking footstep which followed was no lady's; ...
— Born in Exile • George Gissing
... sapless, strengthless[obs3], powerless; weakly, unstrung, flaccid, adynamic[obs3], asthenic[obs3]; nervous. soft, effeminate, feminate[obs3], womanly. frail, fragile, shattery[obs3]; flimsy, unsubstantial, insubstantial, gimcrack, gingerbread; rickety, creaky, creaking, cranky; craichy[obs3]; drooping, tottering &c. v.. broken, lame, withered, shattered, shaken, crazy, shaky; palsied &c. 158; decrepit. languid, poor, infirm; faint, faintish[obs3]; sickly &c. (disease) 655; dull, slack, evanid|, spent, short-winded, effete; weather-beaten; decayed, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... in the old chair, creaking out a dismal echo to the auctioneer's, "Going, going, gone!" while the flush deepened in Angy's cheek. Again she fastened her gaze upon the indomitable red rose which hung a pendant ear-ring on the right side of ...
— Old Lady Number 31 • Louise Forsslund
... under the sunrise, and great cracks gaped in the earth as if it were thirsty. The trenches and channels were still there, but there was little water in them; and through the ragged fringes of the rusty vineyards I heard, instead of the cheerful songs of the vintagers, the creaking of dry windlasses and the hoarse throb of the pumps in sunken wells. The girdle of gardens had shrunk like a wreath of withered flowers, and all the bright embroidery, of earth was ...
— The Blue Flower, and Others • Henry van Dyke
... alone," said Tuan. "I was so alone that my own shadow frightened me. I was so alone that the sound of a bird in flight, or the creaking of a dew-drenched bough, whipped me to cover as a rabbit ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... There was but one line which could be considered even mildly significant. "The little net," wrote Blakely, "has now a value that it never had before." Yet Angela was snuggling that otherwise unimportant billet to her cheek when the creaking stairway told her portentously of a solemn coming. Ten minutes more and the note was lying neglected on the bureau, and Angela stood at her window, gazing out over dreary miles of almost desert landscape, of rock and shale and sand and cactus, with ...
— An Apache Princess - A Tale of the Indian Frontier • Charles King
... huge sail struck by the wind, a wild creaking of the boom, and a smart dash of spray over the bows and into his face waked him from his slumber. He started up, half blinded, to look around. Buttons sat gazing over the waters with an expression of bitter vexation. They ...
— The Dodge Club - or, Italy in 1859 • James De Mille
... life of the men and women who, in mediaeval France and Germany, did the work which had been taught by Hesiod and Virgil. About all these tragedies the literature of the Middle Ages, ready to show us town vice and town horror, dens of prostitution and creaking, overweighted gibbets, as in Villon's poems, utters not a word. All that we can hear is the many-throated yell of mediaeval poets, noble and plebeian, French, Provencal, and German, against the brutishness, the cunning, the cruelty, the hideousness, ...
— Euphorion - Being Studies of the Antique and the Mediaeval in the - Renaissance - Vol. I • Vernon Lee
... grandmother had taken my old shoes, and replaced them with a new pair. I needed them; for several inches of snow had fallen, and it still continued to fall. When I walked through Mrs. Flint's room, their creaking grated harshly on her refined nerves. She called me to her, and asked what I had about me that made such a horrid noise. I told her it was my new shoes. "Take them off," said she; "and if you put them on again, I'll throw them ...
— Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl - Written by Herself • Harriet Jacobs (AKA Linda Brent)
... circumstance. In the first place she immediately relieved their wants. I have read somewhere the story of Dr. Guthrie when he was first called to the metropolis of Edinburgh. Of their filling his pockets with tracts, and with all the ardor of his noble heart, commenced his great work. He ascended the creaking stairs of a high building in the old town, and knocking at the door, an elderly woman made her appearance, whereupon he proffered her a tract. Looking earnestly upon him, and in a loud shrill voice she exclaimed, pathetically: "'Deed, Sir, I dinna ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... There you are waiting, little friendly house: Those are your chimney-stacks with you between, Surrounded by old trees and strolling cows, Staring through all your windows at the green. Your homely floor is creaking for our tread; The smiling tea-pot with contented spout Thinks of the boiling water, and the bread Longs for the butter. All their hands are out To greet us, and the gentle blankets seem Purring and crooning: 'Lie ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... nodded its head and expanded its wings, and the squire, whose recent experience had prepared him for any wonder, fully expected to hear it speak, but it only croaked loudly and exultingly, or if it laughed, the sound was like the creaking of rusty hinges. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... the busy harvester, and many a creaking wain Bore slowly to the long barn-floor its load of husk and grain; Till broad and red, as when he rose, the sun sank down at last, And like a merry guest's farewell the ...
— The Elson Readers, Book 5 • William H. Elson and Christine M. Keck
... a tremendous amount of unnecessary confusion and trouble, the oxen were inspanned, and with the usual unearthly yells and loud cracking of the long whip by Jantje, mounted upon the wagon box, the creaking, lumbering vehicle was got under way, Ramoo Samee following close behind and leading the horses, while the dogs and Leo came to heel and trotted along close behind Grosvenor and Dick, as was their wont when their masters chose to walk, which ...
— The Adventures of Dick Maitland - A Tale of Unknown Africa • Harry Collingwood
... trees, date trees, and dom palms, growing in some places in lines along the pathways, in others distributed in groups among the fields. Half a dozen saqiyehs, ranged in a line along the river-bank, raise water day and night, with scarcely any cessation of their monotonous creaking. The inhabitants do not allow a foot of their narrow domain to lie idle; they have cultivated wherever it is possible small plots of durra and barley, bersim ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... find—one an alluvial fan near his house, another a natural terrace near the river. Back of the house was a thatched shelter under which he had constructed a little sugar mill. It had a pair of hardwood rollers, each capable of being turned, with much creaking and cracking, by a large, rustic wheel made of roughly hewn timbers fastened together with wooden pins and lashed with thongs, worked by hand and foot power. Since Saavedra had been unable to coax any pack animals over the trail to Conservidayoc he was obliged to depend entirely on his own limited ...
— Inca Land - Explorations in the Highlands of Peru • Hiram Bingham
... had been a time when the stir and bustle of such arrivals had been sweet to him—not so sweet as to some, for he had never been deeply in love with the parade of office—but sweeter than to-day, when they were no more to him than the creaking of the mill to the camel that turns it ...
— Stories of Modern French Novels • Julian Hawthorne
... absolute rhythm and beat. It was like the blows from giant pile-drivers. When the melody gave way the silence was broken only by the stamp of iron-shod boots, and then again the song rose. When the singing ceased the bands played marches. They were followed by the rumble of the howitzers, the creaking of wheels and of chains clanking against the cobblestones, and the sharp, bell- like voices of ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... waiting to look ahead, for not a moment was to be lost. The helm was hard up, the after yards shaking, and the ship in the act of wearing. Slowly, with the stiff ropes and iced rigging, we swung the yards round, everything coming hard and with a creaking and rending sound, like pulling up a plank which has been frozen into the ice. The ship wore round fairly, the yards were steadied, and we stood off on the other tack, leaving behind us, directly under our larboard quarter, a large ice island, peering out of the ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... leads into the Castle-yard, and with his Key opened that door also. After he went to the iron Gate, for that must be opened too, but that Lock went damnable hard, yet the Key did open it. Then they thrust open the Gate to make their escape with speed; but that Gate as it opened made such a creaking, that it waked Giant Despair, who hastily rising to pursue his Prisoners, felt his limbs to fail, for his Fits took him again, so that he could by no means go after them. Then they went on, and came to the King's High-way again, and so were safe, because they were ...
— The Pilgrim's Progress - From this world to that which is to come. • John Bunyan
... this very winter, In the summer just passed over, Often rattled the door-handles, For the ringed hands that should close them, And the stairs were likewise creaking For the fair one robed so grandly, And the doors stood always open, And ...
— Kalevala, Volume I (of 2) - The Land of the Heroes • Anonymous
... fades the fire on the hearth, its embers Scattering wide at a stronger gust. Above, the old weathercock groans, but remembers Creaking, to ...
— A Dome of Many-Coloured Glass • Amy Lowell
... Nic lay puzzling his weary, confused head as to the meaning of a strange creaking, and a peculiar rising and falling, and why it was that he ...
— Nic Revel - A White Slave's Adventures in Alligator Land • George Manville Fenn
... yellow panels of the wainscot. So loud was the beating of the rain through all the house that, in Markheim's ears, it began to be distinguished into many different sounds. Footsteps and sighs, the tread of regiments marching in the distance, the chink of money in the counting, and the creaking of doors held stealthily ajar, appeared to mingle with the patter of the drops upon the cupola and the gushing of the water in the pipes. The sense that he was not alone grew upon him to the verge of madness. On every side ...
— The Short-story • William Patterson Atkinson
... road came a low, long, musical shouting; then with creaking and straining of wagons, four great black mules dashed into sight with twelve bursting bales of yellowish cotton looming and swaying behind. The drivers and helpers were lolling and laughing and singing, but Miss Taylor ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... over the railroads were creaking under the tramp of a never-ending crowd. The street cars were crowded like beehives till the horses could not move, and some of the cars broke down, ...
— Phemie Frost's Experiences • Ann S. Stephens
... hangings, curtains and covers of chintz, over which faded purple and crimson roses were flung broadcast on a honey-yellow ground. The colourings were discreetly cheerful, the atmosphere not unpleasantly warm, the quiet, save for the creaking of a board as he crossed the floor, unbroken. Outwardly all invited to peaceful slumber. And Tom felt more than ready to profit by that invitation this last night on shore, last night in England. His attention had been ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... by the feet of three children on their way to school. In his day the blank row of houses had been a mud taipa wall, broken just here by the little gate of the priest's house. In his day there had been that long, high-plumed bank of bamboos, forever swaying and creaking, behind the screen of which had lain the wonder ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... well-knit plot, some attempt at character, sufficient change of incident and scene, and hardly any longueurs. Even the hinge of the whole, though it presents certain improbabilities, is not of the brittle and creaking kind reprobated in that ...
— A History of the French Novel, Vol. 2 - To the Close of the 19th Century • George Saintsbury
... pervading sorcery was above, below, and around him, and that issues of life and death might be controlled by instruments the most unnoticeable and seemingly the most feeble, the Indian lived in perpetual fear. The turning of a leaf, the crawling of an insect, the cry of a bird, the creaking of a bough, might be to him the mystic ...
— The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century • Francis Parkman
... the silence came to us, over no great stretch of water as it seemed, the sound of a creaking block, the fall of a yard on deck, and a voice raised in some sharp order. Then I thought I heard an anchor plunge, and there was silence. Very ghostly it seemed to hear these familiar sounds and to see naught, and it was the more so that we might by no means ...
— Wulfric the Weapon Thane • Charles W. Whistler
... most part, were too large for comfort. When one spoke, a dozen ghostly echoes answered, and at twilight the smaller children huddled around the kitchen fire and seldom went beyond that cheerful room until bed time. Often, in the dead of night, the creaking of timber and the voices of the wind startled the little ones from sleep, and a sense of something unreal and mysterious overshadowed ...
— Sword and Pen - Ventures and Adventures of Willard Glazier • John Algernon Owens
... infringements on its empire, solitude, dark, comfortless, and unrelieved, fell around the creaking footsteps of Mr. Morris Brown. "I wish," soliloquized the worthy broker, "that I had been able advantageously to dispose of this cursed umbrella of the late Lady Waddilove; it is very little calculated for any but a single lady of slender shape, and ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... uncanniness attaching to them. They are so cunning and strong, so terrible in their numbers, so cruel, so secret. They swarm in deserted houses, where the broken casements hang rotting to the crumbling walls and the doors swing creaking on their rusty hinges. They know the sinking ship and leave her, no one knows how or whither. They whisper to each other in their hiding-places how a doom will fall upon the hall and the great name die forgotten. They do fearful deeds in ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... presently opened a door to the right, and led the way into a large gloomy room, with a little newly lighted wood fire crackling in an enormous grate, making darkness visible, and drawing the cold out of the walls. We need scarcely say it was that terrible room—the best; with three creaking, ill-fitting windows, and heavy crimson satin-damask furniture, so old as scarcely to be able to sustain its own weight. 'Ah! here you are,' observed Mr. Jawleyford, as he nearly tripped over Sponge's luggage as it stood by the fire. 'Here you are,' repeated ...
— Mr. Sponge's Sporting Tour • R. S. Surtees
... still dark courtyard on a cold early morning in winter. They walked in single file—a soldier, a prisoner, a soldier, a prisoner, a soldier—there seemed to be no end to it; there was a steady shuffling of feet across the courtyard. A small gate opened in the wall with a creaking sound. All walked through it. And beyond the wall Elisaveta already caught a glimpse of a flat, endless field of snow, and of a whole row of gallows that stretched into the invisible distance. They were approaching these nearer and nearer—to meet ...
— The Created Legend • Feodor Sologub
... way of doing business made a strongly marked impression on me, and that not of an agreeable kind. Mr. Jaggers never laughed; but he wore great bright creaking boots, and, in poising himself on these boots, with his large head bent down and his eyebrows joined together, awaiting an answer, he sometimes caused the boots to creak, as if they laughed in a dry and suspicious way. As he happened to go out now, ...
— Great Expectations • Charles Dickens
... moments he appeared engrossed in his work, turning the creaking wheel to the right, the left, and finally steadying it on its true course. Wilson waited. The man had said enough to excite his interest and he knew the best way to induce him to talk more freely was ...
— The Web of the Golden Spider • Frederick Orin Bartlett
... and jolted over the cobbles. She was here; she was here; and the loyal crowds yelled and surged to and fro, and cloths and handkerchiefs flapped and waved, and caps tossed up and down, as at last the great creaking carriage came ...
— By What Authority? • Robert Hugh Benson
... creaking of the manilla sheet. It was getting near noon, and fine, clear weather in southern waters,—just the sort of day and the time when you would least expect to feel creepy. But I remembered how I had heard that same tune overhead at night in a gale ...
— Man Overboard! • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... blustering day. The dry leaves were flying, and the weather cocks turned, creaking, around, and Gustave had to hold his head low for he was only a little boy and the wind nearly pushed him down. A bent old gentleman, walking with a cane, passed them. Puff, whisk, the wind took the old gentleman's hat and sent it racing ahead ...
— Tell Me Another Story - The Book of Story Programs • Carolyn Sherwin Bailey
... The slack breeze flapped lazily in the sails overhead and scarce ruffled the drowsy ocean. The stars one by one put out their little lights and vanished into the blue. There was no sound but the creaking of the yards and the gentle plash of the water on the hull; only these and the music of a maiden's song. It went hard with me, that night. For a while, as I sat there, gazing into her face and listening to her music and feeling the touch of her hand on my arm, I was fool enough ...
— Sir Ludar - A Story of the Days of the Great Queen Bess • Talbot Baines Reed
... is no spirit of evil which is so much dreaded by the Breton peasantry as the Ankou, who travels the duchy in a cart, picking up souls. In the dead of night a creaking axle-tree can be heard passing down the silent lanes. It halts at a door; the summons has been given, a soul quits the doomed house, and the wagon of the Ankou passes on. The Ankou herself—for the dread death-spirit of Brittany is probably female—is ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... well-wheel's creaking tongue,— He liked the thrush that fed her young,— He liked the drone of flies among His netted peaches; He liked to watch the sunlight fall Athwart his ivied orchard wall; Or pause to catch the cuckoo's call Beyond ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... snowy flight are taking From the tall tamarind unto their nest, The bullock-carts along the road are creaking, The bugles o'er the wall are sounding rest. On a calm jetty looking off to Mecca Sons of Mahomet watch the low day's rim. He too is waiting for it—with an echo Upon his lips of a ...
— Many Gods • Cale Young Rice
... event. The decision has now been reached that the time has come for China to go to war. She has been "notified" to this effect. What she will eventually do is the question. Anyway, the screws are now being put on in earnest: you can fairly hear them creaking. ...
— Peking Dust • Ellen N. La Motte
... said Drouet, creaking off in his good shoes toward the elevator. The old butterfly was as light on ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... of the little night-lamp that I found by the colonel's bedside. It is my theory that Mrs. Maynard was restless after the colonel finally fell asleep, that she heard your tumble, and took her little lamp, crossed over into Miss Renwick's room, opened the door without creaking, as I can do to your satisfaction, found her sleeping quietly, but the room a trifle close and warm, set her night-lamp down on the table, as I did, threw her shadow on the wall, as I did, and opened the shade, as you thought ...
— From the Ranks • Charles King
... insupportable on such days than in bright days, especially when there is no wind), I dozed and was shaken about, resigning myself with sullen fortitude to being persecuted by the fine white dust which was incessantly raised from the beaten road by the warped and creaking wheels, when suddenly my attention was aroused by the extraordinary uneasiness and agitated movements of my coachman, who had till that instant been more soundly dozing than I. He began tugging at the reins, moved uneasily on the box, and started shouting to the horses, staring ...
— A Sportsman's Sketches - Works of Ivan Turgenev, Vol. I • Ivan Turgenev
... jammed together on the platforms—for at the last moment, Colonel Howell had readily given his consent to the superintendent that he might also throw open the special car to the general public, as far at least as Morineville, the end of the passenger run—the creaking train crawled around a bend, and while the boys and Colonel Howell waved a farewell to Mr. Zept, the journey northward on the new ...
— On the Edge of the Arctic - An Aeroplane in Snowland • Harry Lincoln Sayler
... the tapping, and now so loud, The minister paused (though his head was bowed). Rappety-rap! This will never do, The girls are peeping, and laughing too! So the sexton tripped o'er the creaking floor, Lifted the latch and opened ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... paint The Golden Tun And others to my mind, And mellow them in rain and sun, And hang them on the wind; And I would say, "My handcraft creaking On this autumnal gale Unto all wayfarers is speaking In praise of rest ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Oct. 3, 1917 • Various
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