"Crackling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the words of Albericus, there burst overhead a noise like the roaring of 'enormous artificial golden lions,'—that was the drum: less, in this instance, like smitten parchment than the crackling roll of clouds that embrace in thunder. The noise amazed himself,—yet Rodomant exulted in it, his audacity expanded with it, broke down the last barrier of reason. He added stop after stop,—at the last and sixtieth stop, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 56, June, 1862 • Various
... life—yes, more, more, him brought back his artist soul. Vithout him ve vould all be vorse dan dead. I can no live vidout him. Stay here"; and with the speed of the wind the devoted wife rushed back to the burning street, up the stairs, already crackling and blazing, to where the lovely landscape smiled peacefully in the dreadful glare, with its last rich glow of beauty. She tore it from its fastenings, pressed her lips fervently against it, regained the street, but with dress on fire. She staggered ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe
... Now it seemed to pick its way between cliffs, and on occasion it ran over a concrete bridge spanning some swiftly flowing stream. At least once it went through a cut which might as well have been a tunnel, and the crackling noise of its motor echoed back from stony ...
— Operation Terror • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... to guard the little children, because it was not safe there from wolves. We therefore made a blazing fire, sat ourselves around it, and heard the little folks say the Ten Commandments, when there was a rustling and crackling behind us, and my daughter jumped up and ran into the cavern, crying, "Proh dolor hostis!" But it was only some of the able-bodied men who had stayed behind in the village, and who now came to bring us word how things stood there. I therefore called to her directly, "Emergas ...
— The Amber Witch • Wilhelm Meinhold
... was a crackling in the underbrush, and the next moment the jungle vibrated to the ...
— Tom Swift and his Wizard Camera - or, Thrilling Adventures while taking Moving Pictures • Victor Appleton
... and made to look and taste like breaded cutlet; boiled ham; a fat capon, boned, stuffed, and seasoned with garlic, his erstwhile proud head rolling in scarified humility; breaded pork chops; roast pork, with unlimited crackling; cold turkey; baked duck, and ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... and tattered overcoats waited hungrily about for a job or scraps of food. After leaving Wolvehoek, we entered on Commandant De Wet's hunting-ground and the scene of his recent exploits. There, at almost every culvert, at every ganger's house, were pickets of soldiers, all gathered round a crackling fire at that chill morning hour; and at every one of these posts freshly constructed works of sandbags and deep trenches were in evidence to denote that their sentry work was no ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... conquerors had abandoned on finding their provisions run short. Two female skeletons were found twined together,—they had expired in each other's arms. One day Major Denham was roused from a reverie, by the sound caused by a skeleton crackling under his horses hoofs. The Arabs aimed blows at the limbs with their muskets, jesting at these melancholy ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... not merely balls of stone and iron to demolish the walls, but flaming balls of inextinguishable combustibles designed to set fire to the houses. One of these, which passed high through the air like a meteor, sending out sparks and crackling as it went, entered the window of a tower which was used as a magazine of gunpowder. The tower blew up with a tremendous explosion; the Moors who were upon its battlements were hurled into the air, and fell mangled in various ...
— Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada • Washington Irving
... curtains trailing in the water hung so heavy on it. The gilded paddles of the slender rowers were so feeble—they had but made a half-turn from that great javelin's road when down it came upon them, knocking the first few pretty oarsmen head over heels and crackling through their oars like a bull through dry maize stalks. I sprang forward, and snatching a pole from a half-hearted slave, jammed the end into the head of the log and bore with all my weight upon it, diverting it a little, and thereby perhaps saving the ship herself, but not enough. ...
— Gulliver of Mars • Edwin L. Arnold
... once there was a rustle as the twigs were thrown on the glowing embers; a sharp crackling followed, and a ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... and some, observing the consultations of the governor with the skipper and the trumpeter, predicted warlike measures by sea and land. The wrath of William Kieft, however, though quick to rise, was quick to evaporate. He was a perfect brush-heap in a blaze, snapping and crackling for a time, and then ending in smoke. Like many other valiant potentates, his first thoughts were all for war, his ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... did not notice a man in miner's garb who looked at him sharply and resumed his way. The operator was still on the platform as the man came to a halt. He was deriving great satisfaction from the crackling new bill which he was caressing in his pocket. The new bill would soon have had a companion, had he kept quiet, but ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... in those few moments before the chapter for reading was found. There was the sound of the turning over of the Bible leaves, and that of a light, pattering autumn rain without, (it had commenced after dark), besides the comfortable crackling of the wood-fire, and the occasional snapping of the fresh logs. The old, devoted, pious negroes; the rugged, benevolent Captain, with an expression of thought and reverent waiting in his face; and we boys, so full of youth and spirits, sat ...
— Captain Mugford - Our Salt and Fresh Water Tutors • W.H.G. Kingston
... excited, even under circumstances of the greatest danger and otherwise absorbing interest, the young man kicked the hickory log that lay nearest to it with his mocassined foot, and produced a bright crackling flame, the reflection of which was thrown entirely upon the object of his gaze; it was a large metal button, on which the number of his regiment was distinctly visible. Unable to check his desire to know further, he ...
— Wacousta: A Tale of the Pontiac Conspiracy (Complete) • John Richardson
... the lightsome passion of joy. It was not that which now often usurps this name; that trivial, vanishing, superficial thing, that only gilds the apprehension and plays upon the surface of the soul. It was not the mere crackling of thorns or sudden blaze of the spirits, the exultation of a tickled fancy or a pleased appetite. Joy was then a masculine and a severe thing; the recreation of the judgment, the jubilee of reason. It was the result of a real good, suitably applied. It commenced ...
— The World's Great Sermons, Vol. 2 (of 10) • Grenville Kleiser
... fires; out again across the vast stretches of snow with the Pole Star ever twisting and turning and coming before them again, until the sky seemed lit up with wonderful colours, and great bands of light were shooting up and sinking down only to shoot up again with a crackling like packs of ...
— Tommy Trots Visit to Santa Claus • Thomas Nelson Page
... to rest. The consequences may be anticipated. Towards midnight, the kneading trough ignited; the fire spread from the bakery to the cellars in which the year's provisions were stored, and thence along the whole lower story. The crackling of the flames, and the suffocation of the smoke providentially gave the alarm in time to save the lives, but the lives alone of all the inmates. Amidst the general terror and confusion, the Mother of the Incarnation retained her usual calm presence of mind. Seeing that any attempt ...
— The Life of the Venerable Mother Mary of the Incarnation • "A Religious of the Ursuline Community"
... droning monotonously like the loud hum of bees, rose above the faint crackling of the logs, on which Mrs. Gay had fixed her soft, unfathomable eyes, while she reconstructed, after the habit of her imagination, certain magnificent ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow
... Also, that was why he wore a beard; too much trouble to shave. We don't cry Nowel any more; instead we petition the janitor to send up a little more steam. But what a jolly picture Chaucer gives of Christmas! Wine to drink (fine ruddy wine, as red as the holly berries), crackling flitch of pig to eat, and a merry cry of welcome sounding at the threshold as your friends come stamping in ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... tumbled down the poop-ladders; pell-mell they raced amidships past that yawning open furnace; the pitch was boiling through the seams of the crackling deck; they slipped and fell upon it, one over another, and the wonder is that none plunged headlong into the flames. A handful remained on the poop, cowering and undone with terror. Upon these turned Captain ...
— Dead Men Tell No Tales • E. W. Hornung
... take long," said Kennedy, going to work on the fireplace, where he had a brisk flame crackling and sparkling in a minute ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... with an air. Her skirt testified that skillets spit grease; but in it she somehow looked as trim as a trout fly. Even the hole in her stocking gave her piquancy; and she had wonderful black hair, which probably had not been combed properly for a month, and big, crackling black eyes. They told us that one day, a week or two before we came, she had been particularly cheerful—so cheerful that one of her patrons was moved to inquire the cause ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb
... a basketful of the new corn, and carrying it home place it in the loft to dry. As the ceiling is of wickerwork, a good deal of the grain drops through the crevices and falls into the fire, where it explodes with a crackling noise. The people make no attempt to prevent this waste; for they regard the crackling of the grain in the fire as a sign that the souls of the dead are partaking of it. A few days later porridge is made from the ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer
... thing you could see was the smoke from bursting shells and the burning villages all about. But if there was nothing to see, there certainly was plenty to hear—the dull noise of the light artillery, the sharp crash of the field pieces and the crackling of small arms. On the way we passed an encampment of reserves. It was a scene exactly like one during the annual manoeuvers; some were cooking, some strolling about, but most of them loafed around on their backs, not paying any attention to the ...
— An Aviator's Field Book - Being the field reports of Oswald Boelcke, from August 1, - 1914 to October 28, 1916 • Oswald Boelcke
... the kitchen stove, for the weather during the day had been cold, and she could hear the embers crackling for more than an hour after her father went to his room. After that there followed a brief time ...
— The Trail Horde • Charles Alden Seltzer
... man turned and listened also. He cursed suddenly under his breath, and turned his eyes upon Graham with an unfriendly expression. It was a surge of many voices, rising and falling, shouting and screaming, and once came a sound like blows and sharp cries, and then a snapping like the crackling of dry sticks. Graham strained his ears to draw some single thread of ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... itself. Suspension expresses reticence, disquietude. Inspiration is an element of dissimulation, concentration, pain. Hence, we have normal, oppressive, spasmodic, superior, sibilant, rattling, intermittent, crackling, and hiccoughing respiration. ...
— Delsarte System of Oratory • Various
... when he seemed to measure himself inch by inch with fate; and like all such supreme instants, it fell suddenly flat among the passing hours. For even as the gun was lifted, at the very second that Fletcher's heavy body swung into view, he heard a crackling in the dead bushes at his back, and Uncle Boaz struck up his ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... loopholes and from the upper story of the blockhouse. The Indians kept up their war cries, terrifying in their nature and intended for that purpose, while the white men shouted encouragement to one another. The sharp, crackling fire of the rifles was incessant, and mingled with it was the sighing sound of bullets as they struck deep into the ...
— The Riflemen of the Ohio - A Story of the Early Days along "The Beautiful River" • Joseph A. Altsheler
... protect her from all harm, he begins a powerful incantation, summoning Loge to surround her with an impassable barrier of flames. As this incantation proceeds, small flickering tongues of fire start forth on every side; they soon rise higher and higher, roaring and crackling until, as Wotan disappears, they form a fiery barrier all around ...
— Stories of the Wagner Opera • H. A. Guerber
... and ours, under command of our Colonel Albright, were ordered forward into the woods to the right of the Chancellorsville House. This was the opening of the third day's battle. We moved forward in excellent line until we struck the edge of the woods. The moment the crackling of the brush under our feet apprised the enemy of our advance we received a heavy volley, which must have been very hurriedly delivered, for it passed over our heads, not a man being hit, I think. The morning was lowering ...
— War from the Inside • Frederick L. (Frederick Lyman) Hitchcock
... avowing that he came then because he wanted to hear Mirah sing. But on the particular Wednesday now in question, after entering the house as quietly as usual with his latch-key, he appeared in the parlor, shaking the Times aloft with a crackling noise, in remorseless interruption of Mab's attempt to render Lascia ch'io pianga with a remote imitation of her teacher. Piano and song ceased immediately; Mirah, who had been playing the accompaniment, involuntarily ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... advanced to its climax, so well did the young Queen Mother play up to Hamlet, that the applause was rapturous. The curtain fell, and to her utter amaze she found herself lifted high in the air and crushed to Hamlet's bosom, with a crackling sound of breaking Roman pearls and in a whirlwind of German exclamations, kissed on brow, cheeks and eyes. Then disjointed English came forth; 'Oh, you are so great, you kleine apple-cheeked girl! You maker of ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... then, the ice in the wash-basin, and the electricity which made our hair literally stand on end in the process of combing, and the gradual transformation of fingers into thumbs, showed but too plainly that the wintry air had penetrated our defences. When we crowded joyfully round a crackling, sparkling wood-fire, even while our faces glowed with the intense heat, cold shivers were creeping down our backs, and sudden draughts from an opening door set our teeth chattering. I often wished myself on a spit, ...
— Autumn Leaves - Original Pieces in Prose and Verse • Various
... stood and heard the hogs crashing their way through the undergrowth at the head of the glade, with a snapping and crackling of twigs, which by degrees grew fainter. This, too, died away; and, returning to our camp, we sat among the baggage and stared one another ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... scorch men with fire. And men were scorched—with great heat. Eh, Sammy? Is that water you have there? Quick! Give me—what? There is none? Then why the—why the—" There came an abrupt pause; then a brief, dry chuckle that was like the crackling of flame through dead twigs. "Ah, I forgot. I mustn't curse. I've got to set the example to these children. But, O God, the heat and ...
— The Swindler and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... the bush. Even the pigeons ceased to say they were afraid, but hopped silently from bough to bough, following the movements of the Kangaroo with eager little eyes. The Brush Turkey and the Mound-Builder left their heaped-up nests and joined the other thirsty creatures, and only by the crackling of the dry scrub, or the falling of a few leaves, could one tell that so many live creatures were ...
— Dot and the Kangaroo • Ethel C. Pedley
... clinging to laughter as the best of human fruit, purely human, and sane, and comforting." So whether it be the corrective laughter of Bergson, Jove laughing at lovers' vows, Love laughing at locksmiths, or the cheerful laughter of the fool that was like the crackling of thorns to Koheleth, the preacher, we recognize that it is good; that without this saving grace of humor life would be an empty vaunt. I like to recall that ancient usage: "The skie hangs full of humour, and I think we shall haue raine." Blessed humor, no less refreshing today ...
— Toaster's Handbook - Jokes, Stories, and Quotations • Peggy Edmund & Harold W. Williams, compilers
... cottage gardens, and cabbages planted over it. It was secreted among the thatch, where even the best trained bird-nesting urchin would have missed it. It was stored away under more than one hollow hearth-stone, on which a cheerful wood-fire was crackling and blazing. When were the 'womenkind' in a wrecker's village at a loss ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... not a sound broke the awful solemnity of the occasion, excepting the crackling of the fragrant pine limbs used as fuel, and the seething of the flesh as it ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... the very edge of the surf, with the effect of clutching the rocks with one hand and holding its roof on with the other. The sea was such a sight as I have not seen on shipboard, and while I luxuriously shuddered at it, I had the advantage of a mellow log-fire at my back, purring and softly crackling in a quiet ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... look. You had only to go into the third room, which we did not use, and see its stones, its shifting earth, its tumbled litter; and then return to our lodging, with the beds made, the plates on the rack, the pail of bright water behind the door, the stove crackling in a corner, and perhaps the table roughly laid against a meal,—and man's order, the little clean spots that he creates to dwell in, were at once contrasted with the rich passivity of nature. And yet our house was everywhere so wrecked and shattered, the air came and went so freely, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... hog-killing time. While the shoulders, sides, hams and lard were saved, all other parts of the porkers were distributed for prompt consumption. Spare ribs and backbone, jowl and feet, souse and sausage, liver and chitterlings greased every mouth on the plantation; and the crackling-bread, made of corn meal mixed with the crisp tidbits left from the trying of the lard, carried fullness to repletion. Christmas and the summer lay-by brought recreation, but the ...
— American Negro Slavery - A Survey of the Supply, Employment and Control of Negro Labor as Determined by the Plantation Regime • Ulrich Bonnell Phillips
... turn his head, but walked straight on, with the dwarf karroo bushes crackling and snapping under his feet, while at each call he gave an angry kick out, sending the dry red ...
— Diamond Dyke - The Lone Farm on the Veldt - Story of South African Adventure • George Manville Fenn
... nightfall with a detachment to secure this passage, and was guided through the thick forests that clothed the hillside. In the stillness of the air, at daybreak, the Phocian guards of the path were startled by the crackling of the chestnut leaves under the tread of many feet. They started up, but a shower of arrows was discharged on them, and forgetting all save the present alarm, they fled to a higher part of the mountain, and the enemy, without waiting to pursue ...
— A Book of Golden Deeds • Charlotte M. Yonge
... a little dog that wandered about there was liable to be trodden upon. On that night of storm it was a vast, bright place, so silent one could hear the ticking of the wag-at-the-wa' clock, the crisp crackling of the flames, and the snapping of the coals. The uncovered deal tables were set back in a double line along one wall, with the chairs piled on top, leaving a wide passage of freshly scrubbed and sanded oaken floor from the door to the fireplace. Firelight danced ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... the apartment in stately fashion, her black silk gown crackling pleasantly as she walked, and seated herself very primly, as befitted her ancestry and bringing-up, in one of the stiff, high-backed chairs. And presently the parson, his garden clothes off and his best coat on, came in hurriedly to ...
— Five Little Peppers and their Friends • Margaret Sidney
... and, after standing one moment to breathe the freshness, began spreading the cloth for an early breakfast. Mrs. Scudder, the mean while, was kneading the bread that had been set to rise over-night; and the oven was crackling and roaring with ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 22, Aug., 1859 • Various
... our fourteen hands"—the Frenchman spoke now to himself alone—"neither will I even go to prison. I will do as they do at Springhaven, and doubtless at every other place in England. I will have my dish of pork, which is now just crackling—I am capable of smelling it even here—and I will give some to Sam Polwhele, and we will put heads together over it. To outsail friend Englishman is a great delight, and to out-gun him would be still greater; but if we cannot accomplish those, ...
— Springhaven - A Tale of the Great War • R. D. Blackmore
... ago," she repeated, sadly, after a pause during which the crackling of the fire was very audible. "Time hath dealt harshly with us both, John;—the name hath a sweet savor. I am an old woman now. ...
— The Line of Love - Dizain des Mariages • James Branch Cabell
... yards in length and sharpened at the end, was utilized by the man in cooking the strips of meat cut from the haunch of the wild horse and very savory were the odors that filled the cave. There was the faint perfume of the crackling nuts and there was the fragrant beneficence of the broiling meat. There are no definite records upon the subject; the chef of to-day can give you no information on the point, but there is reason to believe that a steak from the wild ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... you alone?" The Grand Chew Chew waved his hand imperiously, and the courtiers with a great crackling of silver brocade ...
— The Royal Book of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... rained bolt upon bolt. In the chamber was the sound of thunder, crackling like broken glass. The bodies flamed, crumbled. There was a little smoke—nauseous, feebly protesting, beaten out by the consuming fires almost before ...
— The Metal Monster • A. Merritt
... he sang boldly, filling the woods with the mocking of his hymn. But at the sound of footsteps crackling over the dry falling twigs toward him intermittently, as if they paused in question, and then resumed their course toward him, his voice fell, brokenly silencing itself till at the encounter of a man glimpsed through the trees, and pausing in a ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... it quickly off, there would have been an end of the King and his daughter, and of our story too. However fortunately they were just in time: and still from afar off the aerial travellers saw the fireworks fly into the air, whizzing and fizzing, and crackling and sparkling, from the tower of the Townhouse, which was certainly all very splendid at a distance, but close by would have been certain death. So the King and his daughter returned safe and sound to ...
— The King of Root Valley - and his curious daughter • R. Reinick
... instant there came a crackling, tearing sound—a heaving roll—a splintering crash and uproar. The man aloft was seen to make a flying leap—or was it only a hurled fragment of the falling chimney?—and white dust rose in a fog once more and blotted out all the tragedy that ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... cabin, they found that the woodsman, or more properly the settler as we shall again term him, making a virtue of necessity, had somewhat cheered its interior. A number of fine logs, sufficient to last throughout the night had been heaped upon the hearth, and these, crackling and fizzing, and emitting sparks in all the burly of a hickory wood-fire, gave promise of a night of comparative comfort. Ensconced in the farther corner of the chimney, the settler had already taken his seat, and, regardless ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... attempted gaiety sank dismally in the silence which followed. They just stood there. The minutes thudded by; the mustiness enwrapped them. Outside the window a dead piece of branch fell crackling to the ground. Gradually he grew to be unaware of her presence, so sharp and rapid were the currents which successively swept him; and her petty curiosity, all her poor need for speculation, was lost in the depth of the spell cast over him now. She dared not look at him, she dared not take ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... at that, was sorely abashed, for he had thought his speech out on the way, reciting it many times over; and now it appeared to him vainer than the crackling of thorns ...
— The Hermit and the Wild Woman and Other Stories • Edith Wharton
... and ran to the dressing-table for scissors. Cords and tapes were soon cut in the hurry of unpacking, and from the crackling tissue-paper there emerged an evening gown of some fresh snowy stuff, delicately painted and embroidered, which drew from the maid ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... seemed more bewildered than ever. Evidently she could not understand why a total stranger should risk his life for her child when so many of her neighbors stood around; unless it might be the old fever still burned in Smith's veins, and he could not resist the lure of the crackling flames that seemed to ...
— Jack Winters' Baseball Team - Or, The Rivals of the Diamond • Mark Overton
... rejoinder, when a voice outside called "Hostile aircraft overhead," and we were drawn at a run to the door by the unmistakable sound of anti-aircraft guns, followed by the bursting out of rifle and machine-gun fire, which grew and grew till it sounded like a mighty forest crackling and spluttering in flames. We glanced into the sky at the shrapnel puffs, and immediately discovered two enemy aeroplanes flying lower than they had ever done before. We could almost see the observers leaning over the fuselage to spy out if the British on Helles were up to the monkey tricks they ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... hot, and the trout were sizzling and curling up with the bacon in the pan. Never did a luncheon taste so good as that, with fried trout and bacon, and hard-boiled eggs, soda biscuits, and a mammoth apple pie. They listened to the fire crackling; they looked up into the shining trees; they watched the water beyond the pool go ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... amended it (though no such lack would have been noted or resented by Johnny himself). Bref, he knew what they all were without going to see. And as for "society," it rustled flimsily, like tissue-paper; bright, in a way, but still thin and crackling. ...
— On the Stairs • Henry B. Fuller
... of the Union. Are they to cross the river? Evidently, for the command is still "Forward, bear center, bear right." Then, square in front, where the thick, broad leaves of the oak glitter in the sun, there is seen a cylinder of steam-like smoke, with fiery gleams at the end, a crackling explosion of a hogshead of fire-crackers, then a rushing, screaming sound in their very faces, then a few rods behind a ringing, vicious explosion. They are in the very teeth of a masked battery. The Union skirmishers have been withdrawn too soon. ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... horse and laid her upon the grass. She begged for water, and she drank and drank. But she wanted no food. There was a heavy, dull beating in her ears, a band tight round her forehead. She was aware of the gloom, of the crackling of fires, of leaping shadows, of the passing of men to and fro near her, and, most of all, rendering her capable of a saving shred of self-control, she was aware of Jim's constant companionship and watchfulness. Then sounds grew far off ...
— The Border Legion • Zane Grey
... long in coming. Three men with blackened faces sprang out from different places, and the crackling of the underwood showed that more were lurking out ...
— Tom Tufton's Travels • Evelyn Everett-Green
... in the inner cave. A man sat at a table, a curious gear fastened over his head and covering his ears. Before him was a huge apparatus from which flared a big bluish-green spark, snapping and crackling above the thunder of the waves. From the apparatus ran wires apparently up through cables that penetrated the rocky roof of the cavern and the ...
— The Romance of Elaine • Arthur B. Reeve
... room was so still you could have heard a pin drop and to an accompaniment of crisply crackling ...
— Carl and the Cotton Gin • Sara Ware Bassett
... fell across the till top. Ling Foo raised his slanted eyes. His face was like a graven Buddha's, but there was a crackling in his ears as of many fire-crackers. There he stood—the man with the sluing walk! Ling Foo still wore a queue, so his hair could not very ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... alive with the desire to become better acquainted with it without any more fighting or hurt. Tonight he knew what it meant when he saw now and then gray shadows float silently out of the forest into the moonlight—the owls, monsters of the breed with which he had fought. He heard the crackling of hoofed feet and the smashing of heavy bodies in the underbrush. He heard again the mooing of the moose. Voices came to him that he had not heard before—the sharp yap-yap-yap of a fox, the unearthly, laughing cry of a great Northern loon on a lake half a mile away, ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... had him in full sight, and knew that he could not escape me. He ran well, it is true—ran as a coward runs when his life is the stake. But I ran as Destiny runs when it gets behind a man's heels. Yard by yard I drew in upon him. He was rolling and staggering. I could hear the rasping and crackling of his breath. The great gulf of the quarry suddenly yawned in front of his path, and glancing at me over his shoulder, he gave a shriek of despair. The next instant he ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... He and Henry Sisson stacked the hay in the yard behind the house; there was no further mention made of Rosa Blencarn; but all day long Anthony, as he knelt thatching the rick, brooded over the strange sweetness of her face, and on the fell-top, while he tramped after the ewes over the dry, crackling heather, and as he jogged along the narrow, rickety road, driving his cartload of ...
— Victorian Short Stories • Various
... look seawards, but all was black night out there, touched in places with a sudden flash of foam. The voice of the gale was awful with the warring noise of the waters, and with the restless thunder of seas smiting the ice on the weather side, and with the wild and often terrific crackling sounds which arose out of the heart of the solid mass of the berg itself, as though earthquakes in endless processions were trembling through it, and as though, at any moment, the whole vast bulk would be rent ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... running, shouting Krannon's name. There was a crackling behind him as two of the hidden men hurled the corpse through the foliage after him. He turned and fired without stopping, setting the thing ...
— Deathworld • Harry Harrison
... to be strolling along the narrow, tortuous streets of the Kitai-Gorod (Chinese Town) at Moscow on a fine winter day, with the crisp snow crackling under foot, and the clear, bright, frosty sky over head. Away he goes, past painted houses and staring signs and gilded church-towers—past dark, narrow shop-doors like exaggerated rat-traps, with a ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 20, August 1877 • Various
... the discordant voice of Mariana la Mursiana, crackling in strident protest. My door was still open; I turned to look and saw her, hot-faced, tousle-haired, insufficiently wrapped, striving to ascend the gallery steps, but valiantly opposed by Madame Brossard, who ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... suddenly took him; he furiously bit and devoured the edges of his shield; he kept gulping down fiery coals; he snatched live embers in his mouth and let them pass down into his entrails; he rushed through the perils of crackling fires; and at last, when he had raved through every sort of madness, he turned his sword with raging hand against the hearts of six of his champions. It is doubtful whether this madness came from thirst for battle or natural ferocity. ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... that men were hurrying about on deck, was only shown by the somber figures who now and then passed in front of a single lantern. From out the engine room, already under water, arose the pound of heavy pounding and the weird crackling of the engines, as they ...
— The Boy Allies Under Two Flags • Ensign Robert L. Drake
... have been, I think, about the middle of October, for I remember that the sycamores were almost bare in the Luxembourg Gardens that morning, and the terrace about the queens of France were strewn with crackling brown leaves. The fat red roses, out the summer long on the stand of the old flower woman at the corner, had given place to dahlias and purple asters. First glimpses of autumn toilettes flashed ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... hosts of the air were uncommonly active while he slept. The wireless, sputtering and crackling, was carrying the news from general to general that a smart little action had been fought at Chastel, where another smart little action had been fought not long before, that the Germans had been overly daring and ...
— The Hosts of the Air • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Godamighty to mak' t' rain gie over," was the man's cheerful reply, as he took the bellows to the damp wood which lay feebly crackling and fizzing on the wide hearth. His exertions produced a spasmodic flame, which sent flickering tongues of light through the wide spaces and shadows of the hall. Otherwise the deepening gloom of the October evening was lightened only by ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... massive hull glides out through the flames; her shining sides disappear foot by foot through the smoke; the golden band flashes in the glare, and high as if in triumph does the bow rear itself heavenwards, while the stern dives deep into the waves. Then is heard a hissing and a crackling as if a hundred glowing irons had been cast into the water, as the burning stern cleaves its way into the billows, which come foaming up over the sides, and in under the counter, while the tiny flames which were flickering along the seams ...
— Garman and Worse - A Norwegian Novel • Alexander Lange Kielland
... all very silent as she turned the photographs over and there were no sounds but the sharp crackling of the fire as it burst into little spurts of flame, the noise that her hand made on the silk of her dress as she turned each picture and the little mutterings of Robin in his corner as he talked to ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... Achaia's warriors deep deplored. She said, and went. Then suddenly arose The Winds, and, roaring, swept the clouds along. First, on the sea they blew; big rose the waves Beneath the blast. At fruitful Troy arrived 270 Vehement on the pile they fell, and dread On all sides soon a crackling blaze ensued. All night, together blowing shrill, they drove The sheeted flames wide from the funeral pile, And all night long, a goblet in his hand 275 From golden beakers fill'd, Achilles stood With large ...
— The Iliad of Homer - Translated into English Blank Verse • Homer
... both bodies stiffened; a slight crackling sound was audible; a blue flash shot from where Attic's had made contact with the bed post; then a dull thud as both bodies struck the floor. Both men were electrocuted, and the ...
— Advanced Chemistry • Jack G. Huekels
... reappear. The crackling of the burning wood, the flashing of the flames, increased in violence. Suddenly, a frightful noise made Violette and Agnella utter a cry ...
— Old French Fairy Tales • Comtesse de Segur
... on! Ring on! Soon the whole earth will ring. I hear! I hear! I see your cities burning! I see the flames. I hear the crackling. I see the houses tumbling on your heads. There is no place to run to. No refuge! No refuge! Fire everywhere. The churches are burning. The factories are burning. The boilers are bursting. An end to ...
— Savva and The Life of Man • Leonid Andreyev
... pleasure in assuming. Little blue flames came up into atmospheric life, through the rending fissures where so many years of ages they had been pent into the very blackness of darkness; and as they gained their freedom, they gave tiny, crackling shouts of liberty. "We're free! we're free!" they smally cried; and I wondered if a race, buried as deeply in the strata of races as these bits of burning coal had been in the geologic periods of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 60, October 1862 • Various
... back into unconsciousness again, for the next thing I remember was of my blue patch of sky clouded with smoke, of a strange roaring and crackling, of a rain of fiery sparks on my face and of somebody beating at me with feeble hands. I opened my eyes and closed them again: the girl in blue was bending over me. With that imperviousness to big things and keenness to small that ...
— The Man in Lower Ten • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... was deafening, the little window panes were streaming; a dark, glistening shadow crept out from the bottom of the door and began to spread; the howling wind shook the very walls of the staunch cabin, while all about them roared the ear-splitting cannonade, the crash of splintered skies, the crackling of musketry, the rending and tearing of all the garments that ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... hard to believe, perhaps, until after all the cries of wolf the wolf came; until after nineteen harmless flares the twentieth revealed to the watching enemy the figure of a man above the wheat, when a crackling chorus of bullets would suddenly break the silence of night by concentrating on a target. Keeping cover from German flares is a part of the minute, ...
— My Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... angry and red, while the thunder continued to roll below them, and the crackling of the electric flashes was like minute guns. The Snowbird was winging its way along at about seventy-five miles per hour. Wash had gone into the covered galley to prepare breakfast. Jack was still ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... said the Susquehannock. "It leads above the heads of these dogs and their crackling twigs, straight to where ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... into the thick trees where the shadow lay deepest was the work of a moment. She stood and watched. But the underbrush was dense, and the crackling which she made attracted the man's attention. He stopped for a moment, and then rushed straight toward ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille
... above the shrill cries of their enemies, the children heard a new sound, a crackling rustling noise in the bushes as if some large creature was making its way through the wood. The Fidgets heard it, too, and in a twinkling they had hushed their shrill voices, broken their circle, and completely hidden themselves from sight. It was all so sudden that Rudolf and Ann had no time to ...
— The Wonderful Bed • Gertrude Knevels
... time the night was departing to the westward, when as though it were in a dream the old warrior was conscious of noise. His waking sense was stirred. Rapid, frosty crackling of snow ground by horse's hoofs came through the crevices of his covering. All unusual, he sat up with a savage bang, as it were, and bent a stiff ear to the darkness. His senses were electric, but the convolutions of his brain were dead. ...
— The Way of an Indian • Frederic Remington
... of debate. It was inevitable that the check lying on Sally's cheap little three-drawer bureau should suggest things it would purchase. Martie summarily took it to the Bank one day and brought home crackling bills in exchange. One of the first things that was purchased was the perambulator in which 'Lizabeth was proudly wheeled ...
— Martie the Unconquered • Kathleen Norris
... an instant, listening apparently. The man no longer carried the sack. They exchanged a few inaudible words. Then they crossed the clearing and entered the wood a few yards to his right. He could hear the crackling of their footsteps diminishing in ...
— Uneasy Money • P.G. Wodehouse
... officers in white jackets, and broad—brimmed straw hats, wading up to the waist amongst the reeds of the lagoon, with guns held high above their heads. They were shooting ducks, it seemed; and their negro servants were heard ploutering and shouting amidst the thickets of the crackling reeds, while their dogs were ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... they sat with Jeanne and Francisco in front of the crackling fire, Maizie's hunger for a home of her own and the man she loved was so plain that Jeanne arose impulsively and put an arm about her guest. She said nothing, but Maizie understood. There was a lump in her throat. "I should not think such ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... in the morning).—The gray curtain of mist has spread itself again over the town; everything is dark and dull. The bells are ringing in the distance for some festival; with this exception everything is calm and silent. Except for the crackling of the fire, no noise disturbs my solitude in this modest home, the shelter of my thoughts and of my work, where the man of middle age carries on the life of his student-youth without the zest of youth, and the sedentary professor repeats day by day the ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... children were having a good time with their toys in front of the fireplace in the sitting room. On the hearth blazed a snapping, crackling warm ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... the room to the fire upon the hearth, and stood with his eyes upon the crackling logs. "You kindle too soon your winter fire," he said. "These forests, flaming red and yellow, should ...
— Audrey • Mary Johnston
... of footsteps is surely drawing near. From yonder thicket the wanderer will doubtless emerge." Presently a sound fell upon our ears, and a moment afterwards we heard the crackling of dead twigs as if someone was passing ...
— The Strand Magazine, Volume V, Issue 25, January 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly • Various
... the army of sheep!—in this barren Winter the torrential rains did not fall, the grass did not sprout, and the flowers did not bloom. A bleak north wind came down from the mountains, cold and dry and crackling with electricity, and when it had blown its stint it died down in a freezing, ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... all began to call the dormouse. In a moment there was a crackling of branches and the sound of heavy footsteps, and a huge figure loomed ...
— Thirty Indian Legends • Margaret Bemister
... him, however, and he has a head big enough to go with his massive tallness. His eyes are brilliant English blue behind the big rimmed eyeglasses: his wavy hair, steel grey; his heavy mustache, bright yellow. Physically he is the crackling electric spark of the heaven-home-and-mother party, the only man who can give the cleverest radical debaters a ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Maisie Ward
... was dimly lighted, they found, when they came in sight of it, and they thrilled with excitement and joyful alarm. Suppose 'Lias's dreadful stepfather should come out and yell at them! They came forward on tiptoe, making a great deal of noise by stepping on twigs, rustling bushes, crackling gravel under their feet and doing all the other things that make such a noise at night and never do in the daytime. But nobody stirred inside the room with the lighted window. They crept forward and peeped cautiously inside ... and stopped giggling. ...
— Understood Betsy • Dorothy Canfield
... hacknied abuse of NERO, that when Rome was in flame he accompanied the crackling of doors and rafters with his very best fiddle. We grant this showed a want of fine sympathy on the part of NERO; there was, nevertheless, a boldness, an exhibition of nerve, in such instrumentation. Any way, it leaves us with ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 1, Complete • Various
... which Janet had just made up was burning in the kitchen. Rachel went up to it and thrust the leathern case into the red core of it. Some crackling—a disagreeable smell—and the little thing had soon vanished. Rachel went slowly upstairs again, and locked the door of her room behind her. The drawer of the dressing-table was still open, and there was visible in it the object she was really ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... red embers. Only the biggest one, which was wet, went on smoking and crackling. The little girl's face was all bloated, and was black with violet veins in it. Her body, which was half naked, was ...
— Marie Claire • Marguerite Audoux
... on. In the fields, right and left, were bivouacs of colonial troops with muddy helmets; they had come back from the firing line, and seemed strangely quiet. In front of us lay the town, half hidden, full of crackling sounds and echoes. Beyond, the hills of the Meuse, on which we could distinguish the houses of the villages, and the continuous rain of machine-gun bullets. We skirted a meadow strewn with forsaken furniture, ...
— The New Book Of Martyrs • Georges Duhamel
... the fire was lit and crackling. Polly loitered awhile, arranging the cinders. She had given up asking with whom her mistress had danced; but Dorothea usually described the more striking gowns, and how this or that ...
— The Westcotes • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... she mounts the funeral-pile, Crying, "They beckon me! I come! I come!" Then sunk as if the silver cord were loosed As still as death upon her silent dead. Instant the flames from the four corners leaped, Mingling in one devouring, eager blaze. No groan, no cry, only the crackling flames, The wailing notes of many instruments, And solemn chant by many voices raised, "Perfect is she who follows thus her lord." O dark and cruel creeds, O perfect love, Fitter for heaven than this sad ...
— The Dawn and the Day • Henry Thayer Niles
... I'll send a representation to the Home Office.' 'Is it not to be considered, sir, whether some of these low papers might not put it in a ludicrous light?' Then," continued Allen, who had been most dramatically mimicking the two voices, "we heard a crackling as if he were opening my letter, and after an odd noise or two he sent to call us in to where he was sitting with Richards, and the attorney he had got to prosecute us. He is a regular old wizened stick, the perfect ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... cried Claparon, the reverberation of whose voice revealed the distance it had to traverse and the emptiness of the room,—in which Cesar heard the crackling of a good fire, though the ...
— Rise and Fall of Cesar Birotteau • Honore de Balzac
... there was a sharp crackling on the opposite side of the road, and an instant later a wild boar, followed by her young, brushed past me and darted ...
— With Those Who Wait • Frances Wilson Huard
... man is superior? For my part I envy the butterfly and the flower, which perish in the full glory of youth, beauty, and love. That is the way I have always imagined an existence worth living. A dazzling display of fireworks. A sudden flashing, flaming, crackling, and detonating amid the darkness. A triumphant ascent of glittering balls and serpents, before whose splendid hues the stars of heaven pale. At every rain of fire and explosion, a rapturous, ah! and a thunder of applause from the gaping Philistines, who are in a tumult of ecstasy at the ...
— How Women Love - (Soul Analysis) • Max Simon Nordau
... in support of a resolution in favor of refunding to General Jackson the fine of one thousand dollars that had been imposed upon him by a New Orleans judge. Richardson's opening sentence was this: "I rise, Mr. Speaker, and throw myself into the crackling embers of this debate,"—from which, in the judgment of the House, he ...
— Reminiscences of Sixty Years in Public Affairs, Vol. 1 • George Boutwell
... was admitted into the music-room of the previous night's scene. The portrait of a famous Elizabethan beauty looked at him with plump and saucy arrogance. In place of the crackling fire a new one was laid, all orderly and proper, like a set of new resolutions. The genial disorder of the chairs, moved at the whim of the Olympians, had all been put straight, and the whole room possessed an air of ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... There was crackling of boughs and filling of bags, and cracking of nuts, and wild cries in pursuit of startled hare or rabbit, and though Ambrose and Stephen indignantly repelled the idea of St. John's Wood being named in the same day with their native forest, it is doubtful whether they had ever enjoyed ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... bugle note, thin and clear, and yet again it sounded. Then Little John gave a great, wild cry of yearning, of joy, and yet of grief, and, putting down his head, he dashed into the thicket. Onward he plunged, crackling and rending, as the wild boar rushes through the underbrush. Little recked he of thorns and briers that scratched his flesh and tore his clothing, for all he thought of was to get, by the shortest way, to the greenwood glade whence he knew the sound ...
— The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood • Howard Pyle
... crackling in the snow-laden bushes upon the hill: he looked back, and saw his brother coming from the other side, his game-bag over his shoulder, stooping to avoid notice, his eyes fixed intently on some object on the road beyond. It was an old man on horseback, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... branch which she carried swiftly to the tree. Then she piled dry grass and dead twigs, logs as heavy as she could carry, bits of brush. The flames licked at the tree, ran up it, seemed to fall away, sprang at it again, hungering. Now and then a long tongue of fire went crackling high up along the side of the tree. Judith went back to a spot where, in a ring of boulders, there was another grassy plot, threw herself down an lay staring at the tongues of fire which were climbing ...
— Judith of Blue Lake Ranch • Jackson Gregory
... and over plains; the waving ryefield; the mimic waving of acres of houstonia, whose innumerable florets whiten and ripple before the eye; the reflections of trees and flowers in glassy lakes; the musical steaming odorous south wind, which converts all trees to windharps; the crackling and spurting of hemlock in the flames, or of pine logs, which yield glory to the walls and faces in the sittingroom,—these are the music and pictures of the most ancient religion. My house stands in low land, with limited outlook, and on the skirt of the village. But I go ...
— Essays, Second Series • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... inclination to continue in talk, although they still walked side by side, for the elder traveller seemed to desire company. There were no sounds but that of the booming wind upon the stretch of tawny herbage around them, the crackling wheels, the tread of the men, and the footsteps of the two shaggy ponies which drew the van. They were small, hardy animals, of a breed between Galloway and Exmoor, and were known ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... of twittering fledglings, training for a shimmer life of pleasure. To see, instead of these, their silent empty habitations, extended in a long row, would be enough to make any one dull and sad. So Roger found. He kicked them into a heap under a tree, and thought that they would make a fine crackling fire. He would ...
— The Settlers at Home • Harriet Martineau
... expression in his companion's face, rose also, and for several minutes the silence was only broken by the crackling of the burning wood in the fireplace, the shrill chirp of a cricket and the plaintive call of a whip-poor-will from without. Then with a look of superstitious awe and terror upon his thin face, the moonshiner gasped, in a choking voice, "Boyd City—Richard Falkner—Mister, aint ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... through the park, along a path skirting the top of a wooded ravine, a dashing rivulet making a pleasant murmur among the rocks below, and glancing here and there through the brushwood that clothed the precipitous banks, when, with a sudden rustling and crackling, a man leaped upon the path with ...
— Dynevor Terrace (Vol. I) - or, The Clue of Life • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Ringan looked about in anxiety and distress on the desolate scene—bare heath on one side, thicket, gradually rising into forest and mountain, on the other. Suddenly he gave a long whistle, and to his great joy there was a crackling among the bushes and he beheld the shaggy-faced pony on which he had ridden all the way from Yorkshire, and which had no doubt eluded the robbers. There was a bundle at the saddle-bow, and after a little coquetting ...
— Two Penniless Princesses • Charlotte M. Yonge
... Gordon turned off the road, and drove over a rough, short descent to a ledge of solid ground by a stream and fringe of willows. The spring torrents had subsided, leaving the grass, the willows, covered with a grey, crackling coat of mud; the air had a damp, fetid smell; beyond, the swamp bubbled gaseously. The close line of hitched teams disappeared about an elbow of the thicket; groups of men gathered in the noisome shadows, bottles were passed, heads thrown ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... that we have to part, my men," he said at last in a crackling voice. "It's a bad day for all of us, and for Brisport too. For three years we have been losing money over the works. We held on in the hope of a change coming, but matters are going from bad to worse. There's nothing for it but to give it up before the balance of our fortune is swallowed ...
— The Captain of the Pole-Star and Other Tales • Arthur Conan Doyle
... few seconds there was a dead silence, save for the crackling of the fire, and the restless movements of the horses. Then from out of the darkness came a roar of laughter, and while all turned and stared in astonishment, Frontier Samson himself bounded into ...
— Glen of the High North • H. A. Cody
... were roasting strips of delicious venison over a crackling fire. Supper over, they lay down with faces to the fire and talked over prospects for the future. The stranger was with them, but had little to say. He seemed puzzled at the unusual circumstances of the journey and was constantly asking when they would return ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... was shining over his head, the stars sparkled—to use the fiddler's picturesque expression—like "gilt nails driven into the ceiling of the firmament by an audacious upholsterer." No sound could be heard, save the crackling of the snow beneath Richard's feet, as he put them down with the heaviness of old age. The road he had to follow was very narrow; its complicated windings passed through a dense forest which the axe had not ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... was no idle one. Soon the fire was crackling merrily and the chops and bacon were sizzling in the frying-pan. Bob unpacked the sandwiches and the thermos ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... opponents. The Long Toms laid at an angle of forty-five plumped their huge shells into the British guns at a range where the latter would not dream of unlimbering. And then gradually the rifle fire died away also, crackling more faintly as White withdrew to Ladysmith. At eleven o'clock Carleton's column recognised that it had been left to its fate. As early as nine a heliogram had been sent to them to retire as the opportunity served, but to leave the hill was ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... when the shrill screams were repeated with redoubled fury. At the same time Jerry heard cries of warning, coupled with his own name. He looked right and left in alarm, not knowing where the threatened danger was likely to come from. He was not kept long in suspense. Behind him he heard the crackling and crashing of branches caused by elephants bursting through the wood. Then a large female with three young, but by no means small, ones issued from the edge of the jungle and made straight at the unfortunate man. Jerry turned ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... his horse went through grass, and its dry, crackling rustle, showing how it would burn, was music to Slone. Gradually the monuments began to loom up, bold and black against the blue sky, with stars seemingly hanging close over them. Slone had calculated that ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... those distant dressing stations where the hurt soldiers waited for him. It was a picture that thrilled Luke and made his pulses tingle—the blackness of the nights; the rumble of moving artillery and troops; the flash of starlights; the distant crackling of rifle fire; the ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... control his men. First a fragile wooden summer-house caught the blaze of a torch and flared up; then a villa itself, and another and another. The flames shot higher and higher, great glowing, wavering pyramids of heat, roaring and crackling, flinging a red circle of glowing light in toward the mainland by Cumae, and shimmering out over the bay toward Prochyta. Overhead was the inky dome of the heavens, and below fire; fire, ...
— A Friend of Caesar - A Tale of the Fall of the Roman Republic. Time, 50-47 B.C. • William Stearns Davis
... found himself aroused and wide-awake as ever. His headache had departed; his every sense seemed to have gained keenness. M. Villefort's voice had ceased, and for a few seconds utter, dead silence reigned. Then he heard the fire crackling, and shortly afterward a strange, startling sound—a ...
— "Le Monsieur De La Petite Dame" • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... by her captor's hands, struggled and moaned despairingly, and, crouching back of the boat, they might have escaped discovery in the gray morning light had it not been for the telltale fire—a tiny, crackling blaze no larger than a man's hat. It betrayed them. The dancing craft upon which their eyes were fixed whipped about, almost leaping from the water at one stroke, then came towards them, now nothing but a narrow thing, half again the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... moment there was no sound in the little room, save the crackling of the fire in the fire-place, and the sound of a stick that had burned in two, falling ...
— The Eyes of the World • Harold Bell Wright
... Perigord truffle, and her incessantly moving whiskers. Her coat, of a superb black, was always in motion and shimmered with infinite changes. There never was a more sensitive, nervous, and electric animal. If she were stroked two or three times, in the dark, blue sparks came crackling from her fur. She attached herself to me in particular, just as in the novel Eponine becomes attached to Marius. As I was less taken up with Cosette than that handsome youth, I accepted the love of my affectionate and devoted cat, who is still the assiduous companion ...
— My Private Menagerie - from The Works of Theophile Gautier Volume 19 • Theophile Gautier
... was still, except for the crackling of the fires. The raging wind had lifted far above the earth and not the faintest breath of it could be heard. Only the full moon swam out with a rush into the sky and suddenly hung high and motionless overhead. I remember raising my hairy face to it for a moment. Then, I verily believe, ...
— Tales Of Hearsay • Joseph Conrad
... the house of M. Petrovitch that evening I carried, carefully sewn between the inner and outer folds of my well-starched shirt-front, where no sound of crackling would excite remark, a sheet of thin note-paper covered in a very small handwriting with the text of the Czar's letter to the ...
— The International Spy - Being the Secret History of the Russo-Japanese War • Allen Upward
... into the blaze, with my knitting on my lap—sat till the splashing of the rain outside and the fitful, sullen sobbing of the wind grew fainter and fainter on my ear. The last sounds I heard before I fairly dozed off to sleep were the cheerful crackling of the fire and the steady purring of the cat, as she basked luxuriously in the warm light on the hearth. Those were the last sounds before I fell asleep. The sound that woke me was one loud bang at the ...
— The Queen of Hearts • Wilkie Collins |
