"Swirl" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... boulder, panting and trembling, and saw Beauvayse's revolver glitter in his steady hand, as something came crashing down through the tangled jungle upon the edge of the farther shore, and a heavily-built man in khaki pushed through the shoulder-high growth of reeds, and leaped upon a rock that had a swirl of water round it. ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... sea, To see the day steal up the bay, where the enemy lies in wait, To run your ship to the harbor's lip and sink her across the strait:— But better the golden evening when the ships round heads for home, And the long gray miles slip swiftly past in a swirl of seething foam, And the people wait at the haven's gate to greet the men who win! Thank God for peace! Thank God for peace, when the great gray ...
— Poems of American Patriotism • Brander Matthews (Editor)
... disappeared around the hill, the engineer took the frying pan and walked up into the creek bed above the dike. After going some distance over the gravel bars, he came to a place where the swirl of the last freshet had gouged a hole almost to bedrock. Scooping a panful of sand and gravel from the bottom of the hole, he went back and squatted down beside the pool within ...
— Out of the Depths - A Romance of Reclamation • Robert Ames Bennet
... grimy curtain. You will often see the vista of a gorge-like street so choked with a seeming thundercloud that you feel sure a storm is just about to burst upon the city, until you look up at the zenith and find it smiling and serene. Again and again a sudden swirl of smoke across the street (like that which swept across Fifth-avenue when the Windsor Hotel burst into flames) has led me to prick up my ears for a cry of "Fire!" But Chicago is not so easily alarmed. It is accustomed to having its airs from heaven blurred by these blasts from hell. I know ...
— America To-day, Observations and Reflections • William Archer
... company with monseigneur and those who came to the villa; at times he sought or was sought by others that he knew in Rome, fared into carnival with them. Much more rarely he dipped into the swirl alone. ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston
... laboriously when he attained the top. One of the boys was just emerging from the blacksmith shop; from the build of him Andy knew it must be either Weary or Irish, though it would take a much closer observation, and some familiarity with the two to identify the man more exactly. In the corral were a swirl of horses and an overhanging cloud of dust, with two or three figures discernible in the midst, and away in the little pasture two other figures were galloping after a fleeing dozen of horses. While he looked, old Patsy came out of the messhouse, and ...
— Flying U Ranch • B. M. Bower
... Miggles caught her dripping oilskin hat from her head, with a mischievous swirl that scattered a shower of raindrops over us; attempted to put back her hair; dropped two hairpins in the attempt; laughed and sat down beside Yuba Bill, with her hands crossed lightly ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... the red maples budding in the school campus. He was far away from Colversham and its round of duties. In imagination he moved with a gay, eager crowd through the gateway leading into the great city ball ground. He could hear the game called; watch the first swirl of the ball as it curved from the pitcher's hand; catch the sharp click of the bat against it; and join in the roar of applause as the swift-footed runner ...
— The Story of Sugar • Sara Ware Bassett
... first call of the birds sounded the hum and murmur of voices, and the brown people of Lela stepped out from their houses of thatch, and greeted each other as they hurried seaward for their morning bathe—the men among the swirl and wash of the breaking surf, and the women and children along the sandy beach ...
— Rodman The Boatsteerer And Other Stories - 1898 • Louis Becke
... pool a half submerged rock checked the current and caused a little ripple of the water. Several times Alfred had seen the dark shadow of a large fish followed by a swirl of the water, and the frantic leaping of little bright-sided minnows in all directions. As his hook, baited with a lively shiner, floated over the spot, a long, yellow object shot from out that shaded lair. There was a splash, not unlike that made by the sharp edge of ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... the boat, for there was a great swirl in the water where his minnow was spinning along, a broad tail came out and hit the water with a tremendous splash, and he struck but did not hook the fish, which, however, he ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... beyond that copper fretwork all was blackness. Out of the dark came the breathing of the horses, fastened near the tobacco-cask, the croaking of frogs in a marshy place, and all the stealthy, indefinable stir of the forest at night. At times the wind brought a swirl of dead leaves across the ring of light, an owl hooted, or one of the sleeping dogs stirred and raised his head, then sank to dreams again. The tobacco-roller, weary from the long day's travel, wrapped ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... reddish Northern cheek of curdling pipeing East, at shrilly puffs between the Tower and the Custom House, encountered it to whip and ridge the flood against descending tug and long tail of stern-ajerk empty barges; with a steamer slowly noseing round off the wharf-cranes, preparing to swirl the screw; and half-bottom-upward boats dancing harpooner beside their whale; along an avenue, not fabulously golden, of the deputy masts of all nations, a wintry woodland, every rag aloft curling to volume; and here the spouts and the mounds of steam, and rolls of brown smoke there, ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... sides of the cavern, or on a rock, or being sucked down in the raging waters, or perhaps asphyxiated by want of air. All of these and many other modes of death presented themselves to my imagination as I lay at the bottom of the canoe, listening to the swirl of the hurrying waters which ran whither we knew not. One only other sound could I hear, and that was Alphonse's intermittent howl of terror coming from the centre of the canoe, and even that seemed faint and unnatural. Indeed, the whole thing overpowered my brain, and I began to believe ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... a giant even to talk that way! For the summer had smitten the distant mountains, and the June floods ran. Far across the yellow swirl that spread out into the wooded bottom-lands, we watched the demolition of a little town. The siege had reached the proper stage for a sally, and the attacking forces were howling over the walls. The sacking was in progress. Shacks, stores, outhouses suddenly developed a frantic desire to go to St. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... in and inspected; the hackle was removed from the leader, and again the coachman spatted the water just above where the trout had disappeared. It floated down and down until it touched the swirl at the edge of the jagged rock. There was a short, sharp tug; the fly disappeared into the water; a plunge, a dash of spray, then everything kept time to the singing of the reel. Both jumped to their feet just in time ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... answer him there came from above us—indeed, it had begun while he was speaking—a deafening mingling of terrific noises, of rending planks, of falling spars, the rush and swirl and roar of waters, amid which could be heard the faint ...
— Peter Trawl - The Adventures of a Whaler • W. H. G. Kingston
... We floundered through the swirl of water that brimmed the decks and took our places. Aft, we could see the other watch standing by at the main. Good! It would be a quick job, soon over! The Old Man was at the weather gangway, conning the ship and waiting ...
— The Brassbounder - A Tale of the Sea • David W. Bone
... impression of curious faces, of one face especially with eager eyes and bobbing grey curls, and then she was caught, as it were, in the swirl of Aunt Caroline and deposited, somewhat breathless, in a car which, providentially, ...
— The Window-Gazer • Isabel Ecclestone Mackay
... chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver—glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble. The Mole was bewitched, entranced, fascinated. By the side of the river he trotted as one trots, when very small, by the side of a man who holds one spellbound by exciting stories; and when tired at last, he sat on ...
— The Wind in the Willows • Kenneth Grahame
... of old habitude they fell to the oars, Barbara rowing the better and the stronger. They felt the oily swirl of the Dee rising beneath them, and knew that there had been a mighty rain upon ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... had not reached its height. Each smothering blast of fury was stronger and fiercer than the one before it. Andy took advantage of the lulls, and save when the heavier blasts came and nearly swept him from his feet, maintained a steady trot. In the swirl of snow-clouds he could see nothing a foot from his nose. Once he found himself floundering through pressure ridges formed by the tide near shore. This he calculated was the tip of a long point jutting out into the Bay, half-way between The ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... his cap on one side, and threw a swagger into his walk, cleverly remindful of the swirl of tartan skirts, then ...
— Big Game - A Story for Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... the roar of the storm was borne in and mixed with his dreaming, so that it moved him, still asleep, to get up and out of the path of it. What finally woke him was the crash of pine logs as they went down before the unbridled flood, and the swirl of foam that lashed him where he clung in the tangle of scrub while the wall of water went by. It went on against the cabin of Bill Gerry and laid Bill stripped and broken on a sand bar at the mouth ...
— The Land of Little Rain • Mary Austin
... full flight, rosy, radiant, as lovely as Diana. Carmichael swung his cap boyishly; and there was a swirl of dust as ...
— The Goose Girl • Harold MacGrath
... enthusiasm came sweeping down on me like a flood. What work you are in the midst of! What a life! What a purpose! While I—I am lying here like an old slipper thrown up oil the sea-beach. Oh, the pity oft, the pity oft! It must be glorious to be in the rush and swirl of all this splendid effort, whatever comes of it! One's soul is thrilled, one's heart expands! As for me, the garden of my mind is withering, and I am consuming the seed I ought ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... moment the stout old man with white whiskers looked up, and the watering can fell from his hand, shooting a swirl of water down ...
— The Club of Queer Trades • G. K. Chesterton
... turning him to stone. Somebody sure had welshed! He had once been in a side show at Coney Island where the room simulated the motion of an ocean steamer. The courtroom began to do the same—slanting this way and that and spinning obliquely round and round. Through the swirl of its gyrations he could see old Tutt's vulture eyes, growing bigger, fiercer, more sinister every instant. It was all up with him! It was an execution, and the crowd down below were thirsting for his blood, waiting to tear him ...
— By Advice of Counsel • Arthur Train
... from the train gathered around them. Gladys was pale herself, and had a strong sense of the sadness of the occasion, still she had a feeling of importance. Edwin Shaw came lumbering up timidly, and Maud Page pressed quickly to Maria's side with a swirl of her wide skirts. ...
— By the Light of the Soul - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... he and Dick Balderson both leaped on to the rail, throwing off their jackets as they shouted to the men to lower a boat. Nothing could be seen of the child until, after half a minute's suspense, a little face suddenly appeared in the swirl of the muddy water some fifteen yards from the vessel's side. It was gone again in an instant, but, as it disappeared, both lads sprang from the side and with a few strokes reached the spot where they had seen the face disappear; then they dived under water ...
— Among Malay Pirates - And Other Tales Of Adventure And Peril • G. A. Henty
... enveloped in soft mist, nothing can be more delightful than to flit with a favouring wind past the picturesque Chines, or by the white cliffs of Studland. The water in the little inlets and bays lies still and blue, but out in the dancing swirl of waters set up by the sunken rocks at the base of a headland, all the colours of the rainbow seem to be running a race together. Yachts come sailing in from Cowes, proud, beautiful shapes, their ...
— Bournemouth, Poole & Christchurch • Sidney Heath
... and stood with the steadiness of a reef-light when Conscience was steering a storm ridden course, but the constant pressure on the dykes of his self-command had strained them until they might break at any moment and let the flood of passion swirl through with destructive power. He was being oppressed and seeing Conscience oppressed by a spirit which he regarded as viciously illiberal—and he accused Conscience, in his own mind, of blind obedience to a distorted sense of duty. Unconsciously he was seeking to coerce her into repudiating it ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... disappear. At length it rises within a few yards of the duck; then there is a mighty rush, two huge jaws open and shut with a snap like factory shears, and amid a whirl of foam and water and surging mud the poor duck and the hideous reptile disappear, and but for the eddying swirl and dense volumes of mud that rise from the bottom, nothing gives evidence of the tragedy that has been enacted. The other two disappointed monsters swim to and fro still ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... forever from the house of the Duchess with Barney Palmer and her father, after the denunciation of Larry by the three of them as a stool and a squealer, she was the thrilled container of about as many diversified emotions as often bubble and swirl in a young girl at one and the same time. There was anger and contempt toward Larry: Larry who had weakly thrown aside a career in which he was a master, and who had added to that bad the worse ...
— Children of the Whirlwind • Leroy Scott
... day, when all the canoes were ranged side by side, their gracefully curved bows came in line; dip, swirl, thud; dip, swirl, thud, sounded all the paddles together. The time was faultless. Then it was that the picturesque brigade appeared in wild perfection. Nearing a portage, spontaneously a race ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... his heavy robe following the movement in a practiced swirl. His liquid black eyes looked me over shrewdly, and he bowed toward me as he vaguely touched his chest, lips and forehead. I expected him to murmur, "Effendi," or "Bwana Sahib," or something, but he must have felt silence ...
— Sense from Thought Divide • Mark Irvin Clifton
... Tadousac, and consists of an hotel and French fishermen, to whom Quebec is a distant, unvisited city of legend. The afternoon was very hot. I wandered out along a thin margin of yellow sand to the extreme rocky point where the waters of the two rivers meet and swirl. There I lay, and looked at the strange humps of the Laurentian hills, and the dark green masses of the woods, impenetrable depths of straight and leaning and horizontal trees, broken here and there ...
— Letters from America • Rupert Brooke
... power-boat straight for the creature, which was distant about the eighth of a mile. Twice the grass choked the wheel and twice with desperate haste it was cleared by Ned. The boat had gone many yards beyond the place where Molly had seen the animal when there was a great swirl in the water beside the craft, followed by other swirls, which grew less and less as they led in a straight line up a broad tideway that opened into the upper end of the bay. A moment later another series of swirls ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... pieces of the building, which by this time had collapsed and was disintegrating. All of the children were drowned save the oldest boy, who caught a tree and was taken out almost unhurt near Blairsville. Miss Caddick clung to her fraction of the building, which was pushed into the water out of the swirl, and in an hour she was taken out safe. She said her agony in having to cut away from the children was greater than her fear after she got into ...
— The Johnstown Horror • James Herbert Walker
... by eager hands and pulled back. Twenty-four seconds later the piano will begin "The Return of the Reindeer" with a powerful accent on the first note of each bar, and Flora Rochester, Lillian McNulty, Gertrude Hamingham and Martha Wrist will swirl on, dressed in white, and advance heavily into the footlights, which will ...
— Love Conquers All • Robert C. Benchley
... hole abune the Crook, Nor stane nor gentle swirl aneath, Nor drumlie rill, nor fairy brook, That daunders through the flowrie heath, But ye may fin' a subtle troot, A' gleamin' ower wi' starn an' bead, An' mony a sawmon sooms aboot, Below the bields ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volume V. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... for one or other of such motives, I saw lately in some illustrated paper, a pictorial comparison of old-fashioned and modern travel, representing, as the type of things passed away, the outside passengers of the mail shrinking into huddled and silent distress from the swirl of a winter snowstorm; and for type of the present Elysian dispensation, the inside of a first-class saloon carriage, with a beautiful young lady in the last pattern of Parisian travelling dress, conversing, Daily news in hand, with a young officer—her fortunate vis-a-vis—on the subject ...
— Proserpina, Volume 2 - Studies Of Wayside Flowers • John Ruskin
... midday and there were hard frosts at night; but the rest in this sort of travel was wonderfully refreshing after four months of toil across prairie and {75} mountain. But on the afternoon of the 5th of September the rafts began to bounce and swirl. The banks raced to the rear, and before the crews realized it, a noise as of breaking seas filled the air, and the Scarborough was riding her first rapid. Luckily, the water was deep and the rocks well submerged. The Scarborough ran the rapid without mishap and the other rafts ...
— The Cariboo Trail - A Chronicle of the Gold-fields of British Columbia • Agnes C. Laut
... of a tragedy. Some days before, in this surging swirl of waters two priests pushed out in a canoe. The older man had been in the North for years and was "going out," the other had come from Europe to take his place; the Father would show to his successor all the beauties of the rapids. In their enthusiasm they ventured too near the "Rapid ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... in March, Hodder alighted from an electric car amid a swirl of dust and stood gazing for a moment at the stone gate-houses of that 'rus in urbe', Waverley Place, and at the gold block-letters written thereon, "No Thoroughfare." Against those gates and their contiguous grill the rude onward rush of the city had beaten in vain, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... above, where lay a score of other anxious boats, Kit and his companions went ahead on foot to investigate. They crept to the brink and gazed down at the swirl of ...
— Smoke Bellew • Jack London
... of the stuff and the onward swirl of his verse we see that this man stood for truth and justice as against hypocrisy and oppression. Folly and freedom are better far than smugness and persecution. Byron stood for the rights of the individual, for the right of free speech and free thought: ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 5 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... the frenzied Alcalde, who rushed toward Rosendo. The old man swung his enormous machete with a swirl that, had it met the official, would have clean decapitated him. But, fortunately, one of the priest's supporters threw out his foot, and the corpulent Alcalde fell heavily over it and bit the dust. Jose threw himself upon Rosendo. The old man staggered with the ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... in time to see Lad swirl along the dock with express-train speed and spring far out ...
— Further Adventures of Lad • Albert Payson Terhune
... led the way, and almost every time he cast his fly there was a swirl, the end of the slender rod bent, there was a minute of excitement, and then upon the bank lay a beautiful speckled trout. On, on, on they went over the cool, green leaves and bright red berries of the partridge vine, and past raspberries wherever the sun had struck in through the heavy trees ...
— Little Busybodies - The Life of Crickets, Ants, Bees, Beetles, and Other Busybodies • Jeanette Augustus Marks and Julia Moody
... eddying swirl was animating the multitude. Whenever the mass tended to congeal, something always seemed to stir it up again. This was due to the restless activity of Mrs. Pett, who held it to be the duty of a good hostess to keep her guests moving. From ...
— Piccadilly Jim • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... minutes later, Hetty in the pickup disappeared behind a hot swirl of yellow dust. Barney ambled to the cool pump house beneath the towering windmill. An electric motor, powered either from the REA line or from direct current stored in a bank of wet cell batteries, bulked large in the small shed. To the left, a small, gasoline-driven ...
— Make Mine Homogenized • Rick Raphael
... gean-tree like a fall of snow, or he would cast an eye admiring upon the turgid river, washing from bank to bank, and feel the strange uneasiness of wonder and surmise, the same that comes from mists that swirl in gorges of the hills or haunt old ancient woods. The sigh of the wind seemed to be for his peculiar ear. The nod of the saugh leaf on the banks was a salutation. There is, in a flutter of the tree's young plumage, some hint of communication whose secret we ...
— Gilian The Dreamer - His Fancy, His Love and Adventure • Neil Munro
... be able to see the forest because of the trees, so Mr. Wells is as one who has stood by a great river's bank for a few minutes and has not seen the river for the flash of the ripples in the sun, the swirl of an eddy here and there, the flotsam swinging by on the current; and he has gone away and prattled of the ripples and the eddy and the floating branch. The great flow of the river down below does not expose itself ...
— The Twentieth Century American - Being a Comparative Study of the Peoples of the Two Great - Anglo-Saxon Nations • H. Perry Robinson
... water hissed and ran over the baked earth; where had been dry channels, rents and scars, full of dust, were now singing torrents and broad pools fetlock deep. Prosper let his good beast go his own gait, which was a sober trot, and ever and again as he heard the ripple of running water and the swirl and suck of the eddies in it, he judged that he must soon or late touch the Wan river, whereon stood the Abbey and his bed. What to do with the girl when he got there? That puzzled him. "A well-ordered abbey," he thought, "has no place for a girl, and one ill-ordered ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... wouldn't be so unlikely, considering the errand he come on! But I'm not sure—I had just that moment's look at him through a swirl of smoke." ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... blaze! What moments of pathos she lived! What moods of holy self-abnegation and of exalted power she brought to many a sympathetic soul! Standing by her grave, on which the myrtle grows dense and dark, and over which the small birds swirl and twitter in the breezy silence, remembrance of the busy scenes of brilliant life wherein she used to move—the pictured stage, the crowded theatre, the wild plaudits of a delighted multitude—came strongly on the mind, and asked, in perplexity and sadness, what was the ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... she had taken was on the sixth floor, and from the one narrow window she could look across the yellow swirl of Tiber towards Monte Mario. She had set up her household gods. The plaster bust of Dante, and her books, on the rickety wooden table by her bedside, and, such as it was, ...
— Olive in Italy • Moray Dalton
... which baffled him, a mystery whose sinister possibilities were slowly framing themselves in his mind. While he stood there he was suddenly conscious of the sound of the opening gate, brisk footsteps up the tiled way, the soft swirl of a woman's skirt. The latch was raised, the door opened and closed. The newcomer stood upon the threshold, gazing ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... a bad cayuse and the swirl and swish of the flying noose, And the cowboy's yell as he roped a steer, but nothing of this fell on his ear. Not even a wide-brimmed hat he spied, but derbies flourished on every side, And the spurs and the "chaps" and the flannel shirts, the high-heeled boots ...
— Songs of the Cattle Trail and Cow Camp • Various
... and leaned back, looking up at the glowing swirl of billions of billions of tiny lights in the ceiling. At least, there were supposed to be billions of billions of them; he'd never counted them, and neither had any of the seventeen Rodriks and sixteen Pauls before him who had sat under them. His hand moved ...
— Ministry of Disturbance • Henry Beam Piper
... to her work, her mind stirred out of its sluggish rut, the swirl of her new thoughts quickening in her blood. Isom Chase would not die; he would live on and on, harder, drier, stingier year by year, unless a bolt from heaven withered him or the hand of man laid him low. What might come to him, he deserved, even the anguish of death with a strangling cord about ...
— The Bondboy • George W. (George Washington) Ogden
... did he make, which was to as near as he could get to the Ashland Park Tract, where every purchaser of land was legally pledged to put up no home that should cost less than four thousand dollars. After that came Broadway. A strange swirl had come in the tide of the crowd. The drift was to Washington Street, where real estate promptly soared while on Broadway it was as if the bottom had fallen out. One big store after another, as the leases ...
— The Turtles of Tasman • Jack London
... driving the winds a-swirl Or a-flicker the subtiler essences polar that whirl In the magnet earth, — yea, thou with a storm for a heart, Rent with debate, many-spotted with question, part From part oft sundered, yet ever a globed light, Yet ever the artist, ever more large and bright Than the eye of a man may avail ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... shone like gold as the rising sun beat on them. Each gate had a solid square tower on each side of it that stood out from the wall and rose above it. Beyond the wall were more towers and houses, gleaming with gold and bright colours. Away to the left ran the steel-blue swirl of a great river. And the children could see, through a gap in the trees, that the river flowed out from the town under a great arch in ...
— The Story of the Amulet • E. Nesbit
... swung a clumsy scow upon the sand at our feet. It was no child's play to cross that stream. Together with one of "The Little Dutchmen," and a representation from "The Mule Outfit," I stepped into the boat and it was swung off into the savage swirl of gray water. We failed of landing the first time. I did not wonder at the ferryman's nervousness, as I felt the heave and rush of the whirling ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... however, he found himself caught in a swirl of humanity that swept him along like a useless chip and flung him against a counter much farther down the aisle. With what dignity he could summon to his aid he righted himself and addressed the ...
— The Tangled Threads • Eleanor H. Porter
... ready to weigh anchor. He had come down himself to see it off. Hanka was with him; they stood there quietly arm in arm. They glanced at each other every few moments with eyes that were filled with youth and happiness; the harbour saluted them with a swirl of flags. When the steamer at last was under way, Tidemand swung his hat in the air and Hanka waved with her handkerchief. Somebody on the ship waved back a greeting. The steamer slid quietly out into ...
— Shallow Soil • Knut Hamsun
... drawing-room, the friendly atmosphere and tranquil voices; and how, as the quiet stream of talk flowed on, one subject after another was pleasantly mirrored on its surface—till, at a chance remark, there was a sudden change and darkening, an angry swirl, as if a monster were raising its ...
— More Trivia • Logan Pearsall Smith
... another by different routes, according to the direction of the winds. While the sea rages on one side of the archipelago, on the other it may be still and safe, lying heavy like oil. In the straits the waves may swirl high in furious whirlpools, but with a mere turn of the wheel, a slight shifting of her course, the vessel may glide into the shelter of an island where she will ride in tranquil waters, paradisiacal, limpid, affording views of ...
— The Dead Command - From the Spanish Los Muertos Mandan • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... voice of complaint, sounding from the leading periodicals, that the extravagant demands of female fashion are bringing distress into families, and making marriages impossible; and something of the same sort seems to have begun here. We are across the Atlantic, to be sure; but we feel the swirl and drift of the great whirlpool; only, fortunately, we are far enough off to be able to see whither things are tending, and to stop ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 102, April, 1866 • Various
... oncoming sea caught us up most mightily. Odd whiles, the crest of a sea would hurl forward before we had reached the top, and though the boat shot upward like a veritable feather, yet the water would swirl right over us, and we would have to draw in our heads most suddenly; in such cases the wind flapping the cover down so soon as our hands were removed. And, apart from the way in which the boat met the seas, there was a very sense of terror in the air; the continuous ...
— The Boats of the "Glen Carrig" • William Hope Hodgson
... was a rush and swirl, as the effervescent Muscovite burst his way through the throng and rushed to where Cuthbert sat. He stood for a moment eyeing him excitedly, then, stooping swiftly, kissed him on both cheeks before Cuthbert could get his guard up. "My dear young man, I saw ...
— The Clicking of Cuthbert • P. G. Wodehouse
... the eyes of each and found his way out with the astonishing certainty of movement that made so many forget his infirmity. Possibly he was not desirous of encountering Draycott's embarrassed gratitude again, for in less than a minute they heard the swirl ...
— Four Max Carrados Detective Stories • Ernest Bramah
... by the edge of the lily pads, there's a flash and swirl of spray, And the line draws taut, and the rod dips low, and I sing as he speeds away; And I whir and click with the joy of life, as the line runs in and out, And I laugh with glee as I reel him in, the gamy ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... me wondering whether the water were really as bad as it looked. My first feat was to back up cautiously almost to the fall, till my boat was dancing so vigorously that I was spattered all over. Standing up in the boat there, I could see the oily water, like a great arched snake's back, swirl past the arch towards me, bubbleless, almost without a ripple, till it showed all its teeth at once in breaking down. The piers of the arches jutted far out below the fall, like pointed islands. I was about to try to climb on the top of one from the boat, a piece of madness which would probably have ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... union of all opposite forces, of which the highest product is man. This symbol pervades all oriental art and thought. Those of you who have seen Vedder's illustrations of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam will remember the ever recurring swirl which "represents the gradual concentration of the elements that combine to form life; the sudden pause through the reverse of the movement that marks the instant of life, and then the gradual, ever-widening dispersion again of these elements ...
— What Philately Teaches • John N. Luff
... mind, but it is highly confusing to an American who gets into the swirl of traffic at a crossing—and every London crossing is a swirl of traffic most of the time—and looks left when he should look right, and looks right when he should be looking left until the very best he can expect, if he survive at all, ...
— Europe Revised • Irvin S. Cobb
... end of the caboose until the fluttering green flags faded out in the swirl of dust that pursued into the distance. Then Kendrick scrambled down to find the message. It was in a sealed envelope, bound around the stick with twine. One glance at the yellow telegram inside sent him back up the embankment ...
— Every Man for Himself • Hopkins Moorhouse
... its eyes, so as to feel the topsy-turvy swirl of the carpet's movement as little ...
— The Phoenix and the Carpet • E. Nesbit
... seek. The tyrant river that she loved, had received her, had taken her life, and then had borne her on its swirl of waters straight for that little creek where, once before, it had tossed a human ...
— Helbeck of Bannisdale, Vol. II • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... yourself the faces that swirl through the streets of a city. Now and then there is one on which the results of all evil passions are traced. Were it not for the brute in it, it might be mistaken for the face of a fiend. Though such are few, too many bear the impress of at least one evil passion. Every passion, ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... broadside-on to the current, and at that critical moment Dick's pole snapped clean in two, the recoil sending the youngster headlong into the boiling current, while the next moment the canoe swept up against the submerged rock, was rolled over and over, and her remaining occupants were flung into the swirl. ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... no sign of an island, but presently, through the gathering darkness, there loomed up a black mass in the swirl of white waters. ...
— The Motor Girls on Waters Blue - Or The Strange Cruise of The Tartar • Margaret Penrose
... spaces beyond the mountain top, and returning, met the opposing forces from the canyon and instantly became a whirlwind. It cut like myriads of teeth; it struck two-edged with the swish, slash of a sword; and it lifted the advancing cloud in a mighty swirl, bellied it as though it had been a gigantic sail, and shook from its folds a deluge of hailstones followed by snow. Through it all a grotesque shape that seemed sometimes a huge, abnormal beetle and sometimes a beast, worked slowly around the crag, now crawling, ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... his stony hollows and swims over the sandy places, looking for soft crabs, or for his favourite food, the luscious crass. Last of all comes the beautiful sea-trout, skirmishing forward with short rushes, and sometimes making a swirl near the surface of the water. The fishermen wait until they think the trout have had time to reach the inner rocks, and then softly paddle the coble away from the shore. The net is dexterously shot, and a good man can manage to do this without making a splash. The long curtain is about four feet ...
— The Romance of the Coast • James Runciman
... have come for you," suddenly broke in Grace; and stood before me all radiance, dropping somebody's arm. Excusing myself, I took her in charge and we moved gaily off. Waltzing with her was so easy that it made me feel my own motion graceful; the swirl of mingled feelings impelled me to recognize how superior she was in other things, and to proudly set her off against each lovely or dignified or sprightly figure there; and when the music closed abruptly, ...
— The Young Seigneur - Or, Nation-Making • Wilfrid Chateauclair
... which he hoped would have brought the fight to a bloody end, carried him clear of the edge, and he found himself in an instant eight feet deep in the ice-cold stream. Once and twice his gasping face and clutching fingers broke up through the still green water, sweeping outwards in the swirl of the current. In vain were sword-sheaths, apple-branches and belts linked together thrown out to him by his companions. Alleyne had dropped his shattered sword and was standing, trembling in every limb, with his rage all changed in an instant to pity. For the ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... moved by the look of mingled inquiry and curiosity with which his eyes now began to wander over the walls and cupboards, she hurried to the window overlooking her nearest neighbour, and, lifting the shade, peered out. A swirl of snowflakes alone confronted her. She could neither see her neighbours, nor could she be seen by them. A shout from her to them would not be heard. She was as completely isolated as if the house stood in the centre ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... bad one. The bronco was carried down into a swirl of deep, angry water. So swift was the undertow that Powder River was dragged from beneath its rider. Bob caught at the mane of the horse and clung desperately to it with one hand. A second or two, and this was torn from ...
— The Fighting Edge • William MacLeod Raine
... episode, the textures sparkling with wit, information, and insight. Verne regards the sea from many angles: in the domain of marine biology, he gives us thumbnail sketches of fish, seashells, coral, sometimes in great catalogs that swirl past like musical cascades; in the realm of geology, he studies volcanoes literally inside and out; in the world of commerce, he celebrates the high-energy entrepreneurs who lay the Atlantic Cable or dig the Suez Canal. And Verne's marine engineering proves especially ...
— 20000 Leagues Under the Seas • Jules Verne
... saddled and rode back to the claims, gravely discussing the potentialities of the future. Since they rode slowly while they talked, they were presently overtaken by a swirl of dust, behind which came the matched browns which were the Flying U's crack driving team, bearing Irish and Miss Allen of the twinkling eyes upon the front seat of a two seated spring-wagon that had seen far better days than this. Native Son helped to crowd the back seat uncomfortably, and waved ...
— The Flying U's Last Stand • B. M. Bower
... A sudden swirl of song in the bright sky— The little lark adoring his lord the sun; Across the corn the lazy ripples run; Under the ...
— A Treasury of War Poetry - British and American Poems of the World War 1914-1917 • Edited, with Introduction and Notes, by George Herbert Clarke
... paused and looked up and down the rapids rushing down the slope in all their wild variety, with the white crests of breaking surf, the dark massiveness of heavy-climbing waves, the fleet, smooth sweep of currents over broad shelves of sunken rock, the dizzy swirl ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... sounded over the lamentations. It slackened, sagged and disappeared in a surge of congealing waters. The wheel dogs were dragged into the opening and their mates ahead jerked backward onto them. In a fighting tangle, all settled into the swirl. ...
— Pardners • Rex Beach
... in the form of facts in juxtaposition. You read guide-books and rejoice in the acquisition of knowledge. Gradually through the perception of the same phantasmagoria comes an at-oneness with your fellows. You are caught up in the swirl of ...
— The Fourth Dimensional Reaches of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition • Cora Lenore Williams
... down on the edge of his bed. As he tore the first strip of linen things began to swim before his eyes. He sagged back on a pillow. The room and the lamp and all that was near him blended in a misty swirl. He had the extraordinary sensation of floating lightly in space that was quiet and profoundly dark—and still he was cloudily aware of footsteps ringing hollow on the bare floor of ...
— Poor Man's Rock • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... see it was a boy, an' knew things was all right. Well—we'd best be gettin' on—no tellin' how soon they may find you're gone." Once more the big Yankee bowed his back to the task in hand and a silence fell, broken only by the faint sound of the muffled oars and the swirl of water along the sides. Not even the thrill of the escape could keep the two tired boys awake, and it was nearly an hour later that they were roused by voices calling at no great distance. A tall black mass on which showed a single moving light ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... the slightest bit before her, and then he came again and brushed her slowly, gently, to one side, with an irresistible strength. She had to meet his eyes now—there was no help for it—and she saw there that swirl of yellow light—that insatiable hunger. And she knew, fully and bitterly, that she had failed. With the wolf-dog, indeed, she had conquered, but the man escaped her. If time had been granted her she would have won, she knew, but the hand of Buck Daniels, ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... A dash, a swirl, a shock, a leap, horse and hunter working in perfect accord, and a fine big calf, bellowing lustily, struggled desperately for freedom under the remorseless knee. The big hands toyed with him; and then, secure in the ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... and it is with no little difficulty that enough can be rescued to serve in the rebuilding of even the smallest of craft. The thought, therefore, that Gwen's intellectual flotsam was beginning at length to swirl about a definite object in a way to facilitate the rescue of her faculties was to me a decidedly reassuring one, and I noted with pleasure that the state of excited expectancy which she had tried in vain to conceal did not ...
— The Darrow Enigma • Melvin L. Severy
... Already a thin swirl of blue smoke was ascending past the friar's figure to the bright sky; it caressed the beam of the gallows and Culpepper's ...
— Privy Seal - His Last Venture • Ford Madox Ford
... buried under, lost in a swirl of ice and snow. Only the Central Station remained, a few moments defiant under the swift onrush of ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... sobering, though, slowly and surely into a state of panic. At Broadway the swirl of the dinner-bound was already tightening. Lights began to pop out in the tall, narrow office and loft ...
— Star-Dust • Fannie Hurst
... Now and then they quarrel and even fight: now and then one will descend with a rush and rise carrying a rat or other delicacy in its claws; but these interruptions of the pattern are only momentary. For the rest of the time they swirl and circle and never cease to watch. Bombay also has its predatory crows, who are so bold that it is unsafe to leave any bright article on the veranda table. Spectacles, for example, set up a longing ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... nothing dangerous about the ledge. It was nearly three feet wide, and had an easy downward trend. Yet you heard the hungry roar of the surf below, and try as you would not to, caught glimpses of the white swirl of it. I moved cautiously, keeping close to the face of the cliff. Crusoe, to my annoyance, sprang down upon the ledge after me. I had a feeling that he must certainly trip me as I picked my ...
— Spanish Doubloons • Camilla Kenyon
... I was given a bed-chamber in one where neither the door nor the window would shut, and where there were besides two locked doors that did not fit, and as the mistral was blowing, my hours in that room were spent in a swirl of draughts. Moreover, an old party with bronchitis was in the adjoining room, also suffering from the draughts, and in despair of recovering his health in such a situation. I complained, and was given another room where ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... invitation was needed, for as soon as the door was opened wide enough Bill Glutts staggered into the living room, followed by his crony. A swirl of snow followed them, and continued until Gif and Jack managed to ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... darling Eva!" was my prayer. A pure, unconscious depth of earnestness Was in her eyes, so indescribable You might as well the color of the air Seek to daguerreotype, or to impress A stain upon the river, whose first swell Would swirl it to the deep. A calm, sweet soul, Where Love's celestial saints and ministers Did hold the earthly under such control Virtue sprung up like daisies from the sod. Oh, for one hour's sweet excellence like hers! One hour of sinlessness, that never more Can visit ...
— Hesperus - and Other Poems and Lyrics • Charles Sangster
... however, that Grant Russell failed to recognize the single luminous eye that had risen out of the water on a long, slender stalk. "A fish," he thought, or as some would have said, a Venusian. It saw that he was looking at it, and it dropped out of sight. There was the swirl of brown water that marked its under-surface progress. It swam like a fish, but it wasn't really a fish. It was one of Venus's four dominant species and ...
— The Wealth of Echindul • Noel Miller Loomis
... lighted a cigarette and was smoking, sublimely unconscious of the blue smoke swirl that rose in telltale clouds high above her head. The baby had dropped asleep, and Claribel lay still. But her eyes were not on the ceiling; they ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... have time for a glimpse at the great dam, extending for over a mile in length and built of masonry eighty-two feet thick at the bottom. This banks up the water, we have already seen, among the hills into a prodigious lake when the great swirl of the river comes down at flood-time, and thus much of it, which would have rushed away and been lost, is stored and let out gradually through the sluice-gates ...
— Round the Wonderful World • G. E. Mitton
... warm and close and secure. His arms trembled at the thought; at which her eyelashes began to flutter and her breath to come once more, as hurried as the beat of her heart. And then, yielding utterly to the swirl of mad impulse, he kissed her—once, twice, ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... there be truly other people, with their own world under their feet, then I think it is fair to say that we all have our infinite identity in the sun. That in the rush and swirl of death we pass through fiery ways to the same sun. And from the sun, can the spores of souls pass to the various worlds? And to the worlds of the cosmos seed across space, through the wild beams of the sun? Is there seed of Mars in my veins? And ...
— Fantasia of the Unconscious • D. H. Lawrence
... airily, as eerily, They wheel about and whirl, They jeer at me, they fleer at me, They flout me as they swirl! As whirling fast or swaying slow, Reeling, wheeling, to and fro, Around, around the corpse they go, They chill me with their chants! These be neither men nor mists— Hearken ...
— Dreams and Dust • Don Marquis
... remember going through the Red Sea; at the mouth of it where the entrance is narrow, and the currents run strong, when the ship approaches the dangerous place, the men take their stations at appointed places, and the ponderous anchors are loosened and ready to be dropped in an instant if the swirl of the current sweeps the ship into dangerous proximity to the reef. It is no time to cut the lashings of the anchors when the keel is grating on the coral rocks. And it is no time to have to look about for our weapons when the sudden temptation leaps upon us like a strong man armed. You ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ephesians; Epistles of St. Peter and St. John • Alexander Maclaren
... there are that drift dreamily down stream, ever near to the shore where the waters are shallow. Some catch the current and go bounding on with sweep and swirl until the river, placid at last, slips into the tideless Everlasting. Some, alas! commanded by iron-hearted Fate, are headed up stream to fight—who dares call it Folly's battle?—against the current which yields only to the invincible will and ...
— The Arena - Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891 • Various
... and the rising breeze carried it away from shore. Not that it mattered very much now. The thing that was of consequence was that he was helplessly drifting down the river with no means of staying his progress. Soon he would be caught in the swirl of the current and then there would be no help for him. What was ...
— Ted and the Telephone • Sara Ware Bassett
... the line tumbles, plashing into the water. A new and fearful lift of the sea shatters the wreck, the fore part of the ship still holding fast to the sands; but all abaft the mainmast lifts, surges, reels, topples over; with the wreck, and in the angry swirl and torment of waters, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 104, June, 1866 • Various
... for, being naturally a sociable man, he found talking to himself an immense relief. "Try once more, just at the tail o' yon swirl, Dick, ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... short jumps, a fish-like swirl sideways, and still Collie held his seat. He eased the hackamore a little. He was breathing hard. The horse took up the slack with a vicious plunge, head downward. The boy's face grew white. He felt something warm trickling down ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... lasted only from April 11 until May 4; that of Wencelao de Lima, extending from May 4 to December 21; and that of Beirao, which continued from December 21 to early June of the following year. The De Lima cabinet was formed from elements which stood largely outside the swirl of party politics, (p. 640) but the Republican and Regenerador opposition was so intense that nothing could be accomplished by it. The Beirao government by which it was succeeded was composed entirely of Progressives. The Speech ...
— The Governments of Europe • Frederic Austin Ogg
... about four miles off the northern end of the island when suddenly there shot up in the air to a tremendous height a column of smoke. The sky darkened and the smoke seemed to swirl down upon us. In fact, it spread all around, darkening the atmosphere as far as we could see. I called Chief ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... either bonnets or shawls, merely plucking a little branch of willow to brush away the mosquitoes; and so the evening wore away in alternate intervals of chat and song. At midnight, seawards again began to swirl the tide, and we rose to go,—not without having first paid a visit to the room where the little daughters of the house lay folded in sleep. Then descending to the beach, laden with flowers and kind wishes waved to us by white handkerchiefs held in still whiter hands, we rowed on board; up went the ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... of the great upper-room were filled with oiled vellum, but they did not keep out the weather, and currents of cold air passed through them to the doorway, making the smoke of the four charcoal braziers eddy and swirl. The place was warm, yet shot with bitter gusts, and the smell of burning herbs gave it the heaviness of a chapel at high mass. Hanging silver lamps, which blazed blue and smoky, lit it in patches, sufficient to show the cleanness of the rush-strewn floor, the glory of the hangings of cloth-of-gold ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... for his valet to show the man out, descended to the dining room, dispatched his simple breakfast and turned his face and thoughts officeward. With that move came the thought of Washington. He cast it from him angrily, yet when the swirl of business affairs closed around him he experienced a certain pleasure and relief in stemming its tides and battling with its current. True, the current was swift and boded the whirlpool, but the rage that ...
— Out of the Ashes • Ethel Watts Mumford
... running only a few minutes when they sighted Mascola's speed-boat astern. The girl frowned as the Fuor d'Italia roared by in a swirl of ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton
... off any snag, and a bull's-eye lantern to shoot a sudden light, took up his position in the bows. She crept on slowly through the pitch darkness, the crew easing off at times to listen as some loud noise broke the silence—the plunge of a hippo, the snort of an angry bull, the swirl of a fish, or the cry of an otter from the bank. In one of these silences a whisper came from ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... the waters and along the banks; the barking, black-skinned otter came after me in lust and gust and swirl; the wild cat fished for me; the hawk and the steep-winged, spear-beaked birds dived down on me, and men crept on me with nets the width of a river, so that I got no rest. My life became a ceaseless scurry and wound and escape, a burden and anguish of watchfulness—and ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... incredulous pain. And there was nothing he could do. It seemed unbelievable that such things could be, in a sane world. But then, the world was no longer sane; it had gone mad nearly two years before, and he was only one of the myriad atoms caught into the swirl of its madness. ...
— Captain Jim • Mary Grant Bruce
... blinked about me, trying to collect my scattered wits. The strip of shingle stood perhaps a foot above the river and was only a few yards wide. In front, the horrible eddy lapped upon the pebbles at each revolving swirl, and behind us rose a smooth wall of rock absolutely unclimbable, even if it had not overhung. That, however, was not the worst, for a numbing sense of dismay, colder far than the chilly snow-water, crept over me as I remembered that most mountain streams in British Columbia rise and ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... already solidly formed, he shot across the ice-spewing mouth of the Klondike just in time to see a lone man dancing excitedly on the rim and pointing into the water. Next, he saw the fur-clad body of a woman, face under, sinking in the midst of the driving mush-ice. A lane opening in the swirl of the current, it was a matter of seconds to drive the canoe to the spot, reach to the shoulder in the water, and draw the woman gingerly to the canoe's side. It was Freda. And all might yet have been well with him, ...
— Burning Daylight • Jack London
... wistfully a swirl of the yellow water which hid a sandbar, and, with a sigh, gave the quartermaster a course which cleared it. "Guess I don't like ructions myself," he said. "Hullo, what's up now? There are two of the passenger boys getting pushed off the forecastle-head by their own friends ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... of wreckage just off shore. Saw a British patrol boat early Tuesday morning. I was on the surface, lying between her and the sunrise; she was hidden by a low-lying swirl of fog; she saw us first. When we saw her, I made signals, and over she came. Guess what the old bird wanted—wanted to know if I'd seen a torpedo he'd fired at me! An old scout with white whiskers; one of those retired captains, I suppose, who has gone ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... wait for their dreams to be realized. They threw themselves into the swirl of their country's ambition, as if they had never received anything other than the tenderness of a devoted mother at her hands. They were "kindled in a common blaze" of patriotism with the rest of the population. That in spite ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... A swirl of red fury swept to the beach comber's brain. Wordless, face distorted, he flung himself at the ...
— Black Caesar's Clan • Albert Payson Terhune
... all. Of wind there was not a particle; indeed, as I found later, under that soft golden haze was a dead calm that very rarely in those still latitudes was ruffled by even the faintest breeze. Only a weak swirl of current from the far-off Gulf Stream pushed my hulk onward; and this, I suppose, was helped a little by that attraction of floating bodies for each other which brings chips and leaves together on the surface of even the stillest pool. But a snail goes ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... even gave her a glance as he came up; his machine flew by with a swirl, amid a crashing crescendo; then it disappeared in the dust of ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Investigator • John T. McIntyre
... that gave the ground quite a frosty aspect for a few minutes. One can readily fancy, therefore, that the nests of these birds are often surrounded with snow, and that the bantlings may get their first view of the world in the swirl of a snow-squall. The nests are built in pine bushes and trees at various distances from the ground. Of all the hurly-burlies ever heard, that which these birds are able to make when you go near their nests, or discover them, ...
— Birds of the Rockies • Leander Sylvester Keyser |
