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Whirling   Listen
noun
Whirling  n.  A. & n. from Whirl, v. t.
Whirling table.
(a)
(Physics) An apparatus provided with one or more revolving disks, with weights, pulleys, and other attachments, for illustrating the phenomena and laws of centrifugal force, and the like.
(b)
A potter's wheel.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








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"Whirling" Quotes from Famous Books



... much of the aristocracy of England, and must confess that I was not a little prejudiced against them. On a bright sunshine day, between the hours of twelve and two, I found myself seated in a carriage, my back turned upon Aylesbury, the vehicle whirling rapidly over the smooth macadamised road, and I on my first visit to an English gentleman. Twenty minutes' ride, and a turn to the right, and we were amid the fine old trees of Hartwell Park; one having suspended ...
— Three Years in Europe - Places I Have Seen and People I Have Met • William Wells Brown

... last winter, when her little boy was ill, a Dr. Plumstead came out from Hammerville to see him," chanted Sylvia, whirling round on the tips of her toes in the dusty track, and flinging up her hands like an Italian dancing-girl, which made Rocky snort and plunge as if he wanted to join ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant

... reckoned the space of time. The sun's level rays glimmered ruddy through the woods. A green fly appeared, buzzing about the dead man. Another zig-zagged through the sunshine, lacing it with streaks of greenish fire. Others appeared, whirling, gyrating, filling the silence with their humming. And still Leverett dared not budge, dared not search the dead and take from it that for which the dead ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers

... stairs to the moment when, all but fainting, he thrust the key into his door and fell forward into purer air. Fell, for he was on his knees, and had begun to suffer from a sense of failing power, a sick whirling of the brain, a terror of hideous death. His manuscript was on the table, where he had left it after regarding and handling it with joyful self-congratulation; though it was pitch dark in the room, he could at once lay his hand on the heap of paper. Now he had it; now it was jammed tight under ...
— New Grub Street • George Gissing

... of the army and navy are taught these dances at the Military and Naval Academies, it being a national policy to be agreeable to ladies; at least this must be so, as the men never dance together. To see several hundred people whirling about, as I have seen them at the inaugural of the President, is one of the most remarkable scenes to be observed in America. The man in Washington who can not dance is a "wallflower"—that is, he never ...
— As A Chinaman Saw Us - Passages from his Letters to a Friend at Home • Anonymous

... desperate struggle. At one moment his feet touched the ground, at another he was hauled back and tossed into the whirling sea; sometimes almost losing his consciousness, but ever keeping his head cool, and striving steadily to make progress. Several times he was dashed against the beach with great force, and it was his knowledge that ...
— Under Drake's Flag - A Tale of the Spanish Main • G. A. Henty

... now. Whirling the animal about, Ned drove him into the thicket where the saddles lay ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Montana • Frank Gee Patchin

... curves of the Saskatchewan, keeping time with their paddles to their own cheery songs; their camp fires were kindled in the land of the Assiniboine and they set their traps in the wildest recesses of the Rocky Mountains where the whirling snow storms almost carried them off their feet; but north of the dividing line, the hunters had little if anything to fear from the red men. Though they encountered in the loneliest and most desolate ...
— The Life of Kit Carson • Edward S. Ellis

... tiny chair stood at the table; behind the chair stood a tiny bureau; beside the bureau, the tiniest little iron wash-stand in the world. In the chair sat a man, not tiny, indeed, but certainly nobody's prize giant. He sat in a kind of whirling tempest of books and papers, and he rode absorbedly in the whirlwind and ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison

... deep his cloudy temples bound, And when he waked he seemed as whirling round, Or in a feeble trance he ...
— International Weekly Miscellany Of Literature, Art, and Science - Vol. I., July 22, 1850. No. 4. • Various

... struggled through a cruel agony of mind, and had finally said good-bye to him for ever. How was it possible, with the length, breadth and depth of three days all crushed into the microscopic space of five hours—a dizzy whirling acceleration of time—how was it possible for her to think logically, consecutively, to even think at all? She could not think. She had lain back in the carriage, her head lax against the cushions, and simply permitted the whole ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston

... this were to last long; the distraction of the new book, the whirling of the story through one's mind, escorted by workmen, the imbecility, the wild necessity of beginning to write, the not being able to do so, the, O! ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 1 (of 3), 1833-1856 • Charles Dickens

... also blew with great violence, and at the height of Granite House the sea could be heard thundering against the reefs. In some places, the wind, eddying round the corners, formed the snow into tall whirling columns, resembling those waterspouts which turn round on their base, and which vessels attack with a shot from a gun. However, the storm, coming from the northwest, blew across the island, and the position of Granite House preserved it ...
— The Mysterious Island • Jules Verne

... drama of the flowing and ebbing tides may be watched with ever increasing wonder and delight The sea is caught by the islands and goes whirling down the channels. It is turned backwards by some stray spit of land and set beating against some other current of the same tide which has taken a different way and reached the same point in strong opposite flow. The little glistening ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham

... whose liberty is gone, whose future is to be made of weary days of monotonous drudgery and dreary nights in a damp cell, whose friends have deserted him, who is an outlaw to society—to the passenger in handcuffs this dashing and whirling toward a living entombment has no exhilaration. Charlton was glad of the darkness, but dreaded the dawn when there must come a recognition. In a whisper he begged the deputy marshal to pull his cap down over his eyes and to adjust his woolen comforter over his nose, ...
— The Mystery of Metropolisville • Edward Eggleston

... hail— When we lurk'd within the thicket, and, beneath the waning moon, Saw the sentry's bayonet glimmer, heard him chant his listless tune— When the howling storm o'ertook us drifting down the island's lee, And our crazy bark was whirling like a nutshell on the sea— When the nights were dark and dreary, and amidst the fern we lay Faint and foodless, sore with travel, longing for the streaks of day; When thou wert an angel to me, watching my exhausted sleep— Never didst thou hear me murmur—couldst thou see ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine—Vol. 54, No. 333, July 1843 • Various

... in the north-land, And shaking in the north-land her pillow to and fro; And the hurricane a-skirling Sends the feathers all a-whirling Where little Lady Icicle is waking ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson

... cordage and struck the axe deep into the oar. Another wave, however, washed it clear of the wreck. We all seized hold of it, and the next instant we were struggling in the wild sea. The last thing I saw was the boat whirling in the surf, and all the sailors tossed into the foaming waves. Then I ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne

... winter evenings were those specially devoted to music. It was at one of such times, when the village street was deserted, and the keen wind was sweeping it from end to end, sporting with the snow, lifting it in whirling clouds, and building up drifts at every corner; whilst away on the lonely marshes the ice-bound river lay shimmering in the frosty moonlight, and the blast soughed through the tall reeds and grasses, that the following little scene ...
— Story-Lives of Great Musicians • Francis Jameson Rowbotham

... hand; I traced the dusky curve of an arm and observed the busy twitching of visionary fingers by the rays of the ghostly light; the outline of a large face of a bland and sorrowful expression, pallid as any foam-flake whirling past, came into the sphere of those graveyard rays. I shrieked and shut my eyes, and when I looked again ...
— The Frozen Pirate • W. Clark Russell

... villain leaving us!" replied the doctor, tranquilly, and Joe, leaning over, saw the savage that had clung to the car whirling over and over, with his arms outstretched in the air, and presently dashed to pieces on the ground. The doctor then separated his electric wires, and every thing was again buried in profound obscurity. It was now one ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne

... spirits to come for a cup of afternoon tea. These little informal reunions are among the most delightful episodes of London life, and if established as a custom in Washington would be like the greenest of oases in the whirling breathless sandstorms of that social Sahara. But even Betty Madison, strong as she was both in position and personality, met with but a moderate success. When women have from six to twenty-five calls to pay every afternoon ...
— Senator North • Gertrude Atherton

... consciousness. For a while it seemed an excitement that was filled with joy; then it grew into an ecstasy where all existence was lost in the vortex of movement. I could not think that there had been a life beyond the whirling of ...
— Synge And The Ireland Of His Time • William Butler Yeats

... the line of reefs; presently he leaned over the taffrail and stared down at the whirling propeller; from the screws his gaze shifted to the whirling water above and about them, and thence to the tow in their wake. He put his head to one side, studied the spectacle of the straining hawser and the wallowing barge on the end of it, as if ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly

... Pike saw the scattered spires of Bessemer, Pennsylvania, whirling away into a cloud ...
— The Slim Princess • George Ade

... if they were torn from the ends of the earth by the irresistible attraction of the seventh circle, they were whirling round the center in a double ring, a ring of young men round a ring of girls; and then, as by some mysterious compulsion, they divided and cast themselves off in rows of two couples, man and girl by man and girl, linked with ...
— The Combined Maze • May Sinclair

... canopy overhead in its deep colouring; of the transparent seas where the curious mysterious marine plants and animals may be clearly seen many feet down, and in the North where hundreds of feet of depth do not hide the bottom; of the icebergs; and whirling great fields of ice, between which, if a ship get, she had as good be an almond in a pair of strong nut-crackers. How the water grows colder and murkier as it is nearer the shore; how the mountain waves are piled together; and how old Ocean, ...
— Queechy, Volume I • Elizabeth Wetherell

... His head was whirling with amazement, his heart full of indignation. Girls! Girls at Elmhurst—nieces and guests of the fierce old woman he so bitterly hated! Then, indeed, his days of peace and quiet were ended. These dreadful creatures ...
— Aunt Jane's Nieces • Edith Van Dyne

... excited, happy touch of her hand to set Brom Bones whirling up the road, for the big colt understood her ways and moods and followed them better than he would have followed whip or rein of another. Half-way, she pulled the big fellow down to a decorous canter and gradually ...
— The Shepherd of the North • Richard Aumerle Maher

... wave of relief swept over Jimmy. He had imagined—he hardly knew what he had imagined: some vast, insuperable obstacle; some tremendous catastrophe, whirling them asunder. He could have laughed aloud in his happiness. So, this was it, this was the cloud that brooded over them—that Mr. McEachern did not like him! The angel, guarding Eden with a fiery sword, had changed into a ...
— The Intrusion of Jimmy • P. G. Wodehouse

... carried several rods through the air, then cast violently to earth again. Those who witnessed the course of the tornado said that it seemed to strike the ground, then go up in the air, passing harmlessly over a mile or two of country, then strike again, all the time whirling over and over, and occasionally casting out fragments of the spoils it had gathered up. After passing east to a point beyond the Mississippi ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 26, July 1880. • Various

... the room was clear, completely free of the misty whirling methane ammonia of death that swirled around them outside. Recovering from his surprise quickly, Astro closed the door and walked to the center of the room, looking around curiously. Tom had already slipped off his mask and was examining the equipment lying on the floor. Astro ...
— Treachery in Outer Space • Carey Rockwell and Louis Glanzman

... nervous, especially after one chased him back into the tent late one night; but it was only wanting to play like a mere puppy, I tells him. He'd heard a noise and rushed out, and there the little thing was kind of waltzing in the moonlight, whirling round and round and having a splendid time. When it came bounding toward him—I guess that was the only time in his life Lysander John was scared helpless. He busted back into the tent a mere palsied ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson

... may it be with this great nation, When woman tests her high vocation; Persuasion proves a futile power To quell the joints, but quick they cower At the whirling hatchets. ...
— The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation • Carry A. Nation

... realized that he had been confronted with an apparition. He had been very little agitated at the moment, and it was not till later, when the conflict between sense and reason concerning the fact itself arose, that he was aware of any perturbation. Even then, amidst the tumult of his whirling emotions he had a sort of central calm, in which he noted the particulars of the occurrence with distinctness and precision. He had always supposed that if anything of the sort happened to him he ...
— Questionable Shapes • William Dean Howells

... another boy dropped into his vacated seat. It was this touch and go effect that Dotty liked, but to Dolly it seemed a whirling maze. ...
— Two Little Women on a Holiday • Carolyn Wells

... surprised to see her floating round the room on the arm of "the olive-colored party," whom he recognized at once. His surprise soon changed to pleasure, for his beauty-loving eye as well as his brotherly pride was gratified as the whirling couples subsided and the young pair went circling slowly by, giving to the graceful pastime the enchantment few have skill to lend it, and making it a spectacle of life-enjoying youth to be remembered by ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott

... the air sparkle: nothing is more pleasing than to see those fife-players blowing, and the dancers whirling along. Cakes and sweetmeats are taken from baskets; fresh lemonade! how eagerly the thirsty drink it down! Crowds hurry to see Polichinelle—crowds hurry to the merchant whose cymbals announce his treasures—crowds everywhere! But who is she advancing this way? Joy, joy! ...
— Barn and the Pyrenees - A Legendary Tour to the Country of Henri Quatre • Louisa Stuart Costello

... And now we were whirling along towards Basle in the rather stuffy splendours provided for us by the Compagnie Internationale des Wagons Lits, that reminded one, as much as anything of being fixed into one's allotted place in a sort of gigantic Gladstone Bag—an ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99, October 18, 1890 • Various

... more complex is the position of man on this planet than it seemed to the primitive savage, who knew only what his crude senses taught him, although, all the while, the moon was circling about him twenty five hundred miles an hour, and he was whirling with the revolving earth a thousand miles an hour, and spinning around the sun over thirty thousand miles an hour, and swooping with the whole solar system through the blue void with a still swifter gyre in a yet vaster ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger

... part of the rite, according to the account we have received, consisted in a low monotonous chant; the manual, in keeping a ball about the size of an orange constantly whirling in a vertical circle. The whole was performed in a kneeling posture. Like most other rude nations, the New Zealanders have certain fancies with regard to several of the more remarkable constellations; and are not without some conception that the issues of human affairs ...
— John Rutherford, the White Chief • George Lillie Craik

... startled by seeing Lottie rush by him, comfortably ensconced in a rocking-chair and propelled by Hemstead's powerful strokes. This was a great change for the better, in his estimation, and he hailed it vociferously. Hemstead good-naturedly put the boy in his sister's lap, and then sent them whirling about the pond with a rapidity that almost took away their breaths. But he carefully shielded them ...
— From Jest to Earnest • E. P. Roe

... you!' The boat darted swiftly along ... but all of a sudden a hurricane came swooping down on it, not like the hurricane of the night before, soft and noiseless—no; a black, awful, howling hurricane! Everything was confusion. And in the midst of the whirling darkness Aratov saw Clara in a stage-dress; she was lifting a glass to her lips, listening to shouts of 'Bravo! bravo!' in the distance, and some coarse voice shouted in Aratov's ear: 'Ah! did you think it would all end in a farce? No; ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev

... hundred-years' alienation from itself. The much-ridiculed choice of our old romantic unheraldic colours, black, red and gold, instead of the bodiless and soulless colours under which we waged the war,[24] was, among the whirling follies of the time, a faint symbolic movement of our better mind. We must reunite ourselves with the days before we ceased to be ...
— The New Society • Walther Rathenau

... Ulick every night at the theatre, and she had him to sit with her in her dressing-room during the entr'actes.... She remembered the pleasure she had taken in these conversations, and the strange, whirling impulse which drew them all the while closer, until they dreaded the touching of their knees. She had taken him back in the carriage and he had kissed her; she had allowed him to kiss her the other night, ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore

... not interest him tonight. His efforts to become a part of it were forced. A jazzy concert of piano and string music in the social hall annoyed him, and a little later he watched the dancing with such grimness that someone remarked about it. He saw Rossland whirling round the floor with a handsome, young blonde in his arms. The girl was looking up into his eyes, smiling, and her cheek lay unashamed against his shoulder, while Rossland's face rested against her fluffy hair when they mingled closely with the other dancers. Alan ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood

... hear her; she felt the desperate certainty that he would not heed could he hear. Then she struck her horse frantically with her bare hands, and pounded him with her heels, longing for the sight of King as one athirst in the bad lands longs for water. The horse snorted, and whirling and plunging went ripping through the bushes which whipped at her and tore the skin of hands and face. But in three minutes he brought her into the open and into full sight of King, riding up a gentle slope through big red-boled cedars. ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory

... proud, along with him. He beguiled the long winter evenings with many a merry tune, and not unfrequently set old Quambo dancing. Sometimes we would look in; and we found it great fun to see Quambo, in the confined space of the cabin, coming the "double shuffle"—bounding up and down, and whirling round and round, snapping his fingers and stamping his feet, until the perspiration streamed down his sooty cheeks. Mike would continue bobbing his head, meanwhile, and applauding with voice and gesture, though keeping his countenance, and looking as grave as a judge while listening ...
— Afar in the Forest • W.H.G. Kingston

... eyes to him almost unconsciously, and their look was like a cord which drew them slowly to each other. His pulses hammered in his ears, yet he heard around him still the mellow murmuring of bees, and saw the butterflies whirling deliriously together. All the forces which had held him under restraint stretched suddenly, while he met her eyes, like bands that were breaking. Before the solitary primal fact of his love for her, the fog of tradition with which civilization has enveloped the simple relation of man ...
— The Miller Of Old Church • Ellen Glasgow

... with it the visit to South Kensington, where Aunt Jerningham lived; and Atlee found himself seated beside Lady Maude in a fine roomy barouche, whirling along at a pace that our great moralist himself admits to be amongst the very pleasantest ...
— Lord Kilgobbin • Charles Lever

... toss'd by inward feud. The issue of the time to be Heaven wisely hides in blackest night, And laughs, should man's anxiety Transgress the bounds of man's short sight. Control the present: all beside Flows like a river seaward borne, Now rolling on its placid tide, Now whirling massy trunks uptorn, And waveworn crags, and farms, and stock, In chaos blent, while hill and wood Reverberate to the enormous shock, When savage rains the tranquil flood Have stirr'd to madness. Happy he, Self-centred, who each night can say, "My life is lived: the morn may see A clouded or ...
— Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace • Horace

... question hung, Randall drew a long breath. His eyes were on the two great cubical chambers, and his brain seemed whirling at what he had heard. Then he was on ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various

... earth, too, haply, like a dust-mote, Was set whirling her assigned sure way, Round this little orb of her ecliptic To some ...
— Behind the Arras - A Book of the Unseen • Bliss Carman

... at once put to, and, in a few minutes they were whirling over the snow. They directed the coachman to drive into the forest where they had had the encounter with the wolves, and when well in its shelter they stopped the sledge and alighted, and requested the coachman to do the same. ...
— Jack Archer • G. A. Henty

... certainly had the excuse of a clear road before him; there were no hedges to hide advancing cars, neither was there any possibility of whisking round a corner to find a hay-cart blocking the way. In the course of an hour they had covered a considerable number of miles, and found themselves whirling down the tremendous hill that led to the seaside town ...
— A Popular Schoolgirl • Angela Brazil

... to the last village on his road there stood a Knife-grinder, with his barrow by the hedge, whirling ...
— Folk Tales Every Child Should Know • Various

... he drew a bulky object, and he busied himself in some task which ended with a loud, sharp click, as if a spring or bolt had fallen into its place. Still kneeling upon the floor he bent forward and threw all his weight and strength upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, ending once more in a powerful click. He straightened himself then, and I saw that what he held in his hand was a sort of gun, with a curiously misshapen butt. He opened it at the breech, put something in, and snapped the breech-lock. Then, crouching down, he rested the end ...
— The Return of Sherlock Holmes • Arthur Conan Doyle

... what I could not determine, but which events soon justified, for as I closed the door behind me, and turned up the light over my table, I became conscious of a pair of eyes fixed upon me. Nervously whirling about in my chair and glancing over towards my fireplace, I was for a moment transfixed with terror, for there, leaning against the mantel and gazing sadly into the fire, was Tom Bragdon himself—the man whom but a short time before ...
— The Water Ghost and Others • John Kendrick Bangs

... French friend of mine, a dear foolish, very French heart and soul, is coming presently—his poor brains are whirling with mesmerism in which he believes, as in all other unbelief. He and I are to dine alone (I have not seen him these two years)—and I shall never be able to keep from driving the great wedge right through his breast ...
— The Letters of Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett, Vol. 1 (of 2) 1845-1846 • Robert Browning and Elizabeth Barrett Barrett

... errands were being accomplished, to complete her own sketchy toilet. Rose was an impressionist when it came to dress. She got the desired effect with the least possible effort, as was evinced now by the way she was whirling two coils of chestnut hair, from which the tangles had not been removed, into round puffs over each ear. A dab of rouge on each cheek, a touch of red on the lips, a dash of powder over the whole, sleeves turned back, neck turned ...
— Quin • Alice Hegan Rice

... clashed together, and after a momentary glizade were whirling, swift and bright as lightnings, and almost as impossible to follow with the eye. The Marquis led the attack, impetuously and vigorously, and almost at once Andre-Louis realized that he had to deal with an opponent of a very ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini

... dispute was growing heated. Nor was the act of caution altogether unwarranted, for Nozdrev also raised his fist, and it may be that one of her hero's plump, pleasant-looking cheeks would have sustained an indelible insult had not he (Chichikov) parried the blow and, seizing Nozdrev by his whirling ...
— Dead Souls • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol

... strength, agility, and swordsmanship served him in good stead. With an Alvarado's leap he landed behind the line of soldiers about to fire a volley through the raised doorway where he stood, and whirling his sword in his left hand he cut down three of them, but was bayoneted by the fourth clean through the breast. Undismayed, he grasped the weapon in one hand, cut down its owner, pulled it out of his own body, and escaped into the forest, though in addition to the ...
— Studies in Literature and History • Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall

... misgives me," said Asmund, "that thou mayst scarce sit quiet because of the iniquity of men, and I would that all ye of my kin should help him to the uttermost but of Grettir nought can I say, for methinks overmuch on a whirling wheel his life turns; and though he be a mighty man, yet I fear me that he will have to heed his own troubles more than the helping of his kin: but Illugi, though he be young, yet shall he become a man of prowess, ...
— The Story of Grettir The Strong • Translated by Eirikr Magnusson and William Morris

... roar, which the farmer told me was one of the most hideous and appalling sounds that he ever heard, he caught the poor fellow with his terrible horns, just as he had nearly got out of reach, and tossed him in the air with such force, that after whirling round and round to a great height, the body fell into the fork of the branches of the tree. The buffalo went round the tree roaring, and looking for the man, until, exhausted by wounds and loss ...
— The Mission; or Scenes in Africa • Captain Frederick Marryat

... said: 'only fancy the six-foot-one-and-three-quarters wedded to bare five feet! The absurdity struck me one night as we were waltzing and whirling past a looking-glass; I was obliged to bend double, though I never felt it till I ...
— The International Magazine, Volume 2, No. 2, January, 1851 • Various

... sometimes hear a smash as if a pebble had been dropped on the glass from above. It is a dytiscus beetle, whose compound eyes have mistaken the shine of the glass in the moonlight for the gleam of a pond. At night some of the whirligig beetles, the shiny, bean-like creatures seen whirling in incessant circles in corners by the bank, make a quite audible and almost musical sound upon the water. The activity of many of the water insects is astonishing. Besides keeping in almost incessant ...
— The Naturalist on the Thames • C. J. Cornish

... from the direction of Fort Gilkicker, followed by a terrific roar. To those standing on the top of Southsea Castle the fort seemed turned into a volcano, spouting flame and clouds of smoke, in the midst of which they could see for an instant whirling shapes, most of which would probably be the remains of the gallant defenders, hurled into eternity before they had a chance of firing a shot at the invaders. The huge guns roared for the first and last time in the war, and the great projectiles ...
— The World Peril of 1910 • George Griffith

... whirling, but a graven image might have envied me my impassivity. I bowed. "I shall be delighted," I announced banally, "to do as ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti

... ungainly sheets of canvas are clewed up or lowered down on deck; one after another the three helms are starboarded, and the three ships brought up to the wind. Then with three mighty splashes that send the sea birds whirling and screaming above the rocks the anchors go down; and the Admiral stands on his high poop-deck, and looks long and searchingly at the fragment of earth, rock-rimmed, surf-fringed, and tree-crowned, of which ...
— Christopher Columbus, Complete • Filson Young

... was not that the only real, tangible thought in that whirling chaos which was raging in ...
— The Elusive Pimpernel • Baroness Emmuska Orczy

... started for Vermont. I was exceedingly fond of travelling in the cars, and it seemed as if a thousand sunbeams had suddenly fallen upon my young life. The train left New York, and we found ourselves rapidly whirling past hills, forests, towns, and villages. Sometimes we were flying through dark, deep cuts, then crossing streams and ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various

... clouds, on bold and rapid wing, came whirling down an immense flock of birds, white, streaked with gray and brown, chirping, calling to one another, the whole flock settling upon the open places in a field in ...
— Birds Illustrated by Colour Photography, Vol II. No. 4, October, 1897 • Various

... a good humor, and showed him how to make windmills. The whole evening passed over this work and in dreaming how to make a windmill on which he could turn himself—clutching at the sails or tying himself on and whirling round. Of his mother Seryozha did not think all the evening, but when he had gone to bed, he suddenly remembered her, and prayed in his own words that his mother tomorrow for his birthday might leave off hiding herself and come ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy

... Italian, and putting out his hand he grasped a long red switch marked 'Danger' and pulled it over. Instantly all the lights in the power house went dim, and the great whirling wheels slowed down and stopped. Only the light of day illuminated the power house. Ela, standing on the controlling platform, wiped his perspiring face with the back of a hand which was ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace

... some far-off, lofty corridor of the premises. Richard swept Dorothy with a gray glance like a flashlight. Her face was troubled, but full of fortitude, and she was very white about the mouth. At sight of Richard, however, Dorothy's fortitude gave way, and went whirling down-stream in a tempest of tears and sobs. With her poor hands outstretched as if for protection, she felt her way blindly into the shelter of those arms; and Richard drew her close and closer, holding her ...
— The President - A novel • Alfred Henry Lewis

... awhile! Although the cheating merchants of the mart With iron roads profane our lovely isle, And break on whirling wheels the limbs of Art, Ay! though the crowded factories beget The blindworm Ignorance that slays ...
— Poems • Oscar Wilde

... rushing down at a pretty lively rate of speed when the boat suddenly struck something in the bow, a nail, a lodged stick of wood or some secure substance which ought not to have been there. What was the effect? The red-faced carpenter was sent whirling into the flume ten feet ahead. Fair was precipitated on his face, and I found a soft lodgment on Fair's back. It seems to me that in a second's time—Fair himself a powerful man—had the carpenter by the ...
— Hidden Treasures - Why Some Succeed While Others Fail • Harry A. Lewis

... with the lantern in my hand, plunged within the flood. My companion retained his hold of me, and with herculean strength he dragged me from the dark tide upon the frail floor over which we had been speeding. In the struggle, the lantern fell from my grasp, and sunk within the whirling waters. ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 1 July 1848 • Various

... serenity upon their souls. But for us, who knows, alas! it is on the contrary the field of the great fear, which, out of pity, it would have been better if we had never been able to see; the incommensurable black void, where the worlds in their frenzied whirling precipitate themselves like rain, crash into and annihilate one another, only to ...
— Egypt (La Mort De Philae) • Pierre Loti

... more than is permitted to man; or, rather, more than his powers can comprehend; but this proves nothing, as the elephant understands more than the horse, and the horse more than the fish. There is a principle which pervades everything which we call Nature; and this it is which has produced these whirling worlds and all the mysteries of creation. One of its laws is, that nothing it produces ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper

... Frau Plomaert was slow, but she was strong when she chose to exert herself, and when the conflict was at its thickest she lighted the balls at the fires over which caldrons of oil were seething, and whirling them round her head sent them one by one into the midst ...
— By Pike and Dyke: A Tale of the Rise of the Dutch Republic • G.A. Henty

... it rightly is to faint, but I do know that for the next little while the whole world swam away from before me in a whirling mist; Silver and the birds and the tall Spy-glass hilltop going round and round and topsy-turvy before my eyes, and all manner of bells ringing, and distant ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson

... main warned us that the natives were in sight from the ship,* and, on turning our eyes to the shore, we beheld it thronged with savages: the rapidity of whose movements, as they shouted in apparent defiance, brandishing their spears, and whirling their arms round and round with windmill-like velocity, as though to threaten our advance, rendered it impossible to estimate their number with any confidence, but they were evidently in considerable force. However, ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes

... to many a weary, aching heart. The margin of the river was fringed with willow, poplar, cotton-wood, and cypress, the delicate fresh green foliage contrasting beautifully with the deep azure sky, and the dark whirling waters of the turbid stream. It was such a day as all of us may have known, when nature wore the garb of perfect beauty, and the soothing influence is felt and acknowledged gratefully—joyfully acknowledged by every one accustomed from childhood duly to appreciate, admire, ...
— Inez - A Tale of the Alamo • Augusta J. Evans

... intrinsic in the corpuscles themselves, but was a consequence of the obstruction they met with. And, surrounding these atoms of life and light, were far larger whirls of white light that gyrated hither and thither, carrying the green corpuscles with them wherever they desired. Their whirling motion was accompanied by the waltzing rhythm. It seemed to Nightspore that the green atoms were not only being danced about against their will but were suffering excruciating shame and degradation in consequence. The larger ones were steadier ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay

... into fragments, she threw herself on a bench convulsed with mirth. As Paragot had spent fifty centimes on the chiffon I thought this hilarity exceedingly ill-natured; but when another and a larger dog came up to see what Narcisse was doing and in half a minute was whirling about with Narcisse in a death grapple, and Blanquette sprang forward, separated the two dogs at some risk and took our bleeding mongrel to her bosom, consoling him with womanly words of pity, I saw there was something tender in ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke

... girls, I fancy," Mrs. Goodward had said to him, strolling up and down the hotel veranda where through the wide French windows they had glimpses of Eunice whirling away on the ice polished floor of the ballroom within; "they cling the more to gayety as they see the graver things of ...
— The Lovely Lady • Mary Austin

... the finest and weightiest utterances delivered on the Bill. The massive head, the fine face, the rugged sense and leonine strength in face and figure, lent force to a criticism of extraordinary effectiveness on the attacks levelled against the Bill. First, the Solicitor-General took up the wild and whirling statement of one of the opponents of the Bill, and then coolly—as though it were a pure matter of business—he put in juxtaposition the enactments of the Bill, and the contrast was as laughter provoking with ...
— Sketches In The House (1893) • T. P. O'Connor

... at the door of the apartment, he turned into the elevator, his mind whirling with the strange imprisonment into which he had let his unwilling heart drift. The clerk stopped him at the ...
— The Voice on the Wire • Eustace Hale Ball

... fascinated by a reminiscence—and then, a sudden fear swelling in my throat, I ran. Back on the path I fled, my legs seeming to go of themselves, hurling my body violently along; my feet pounding behind, as if in pursuit, whirling around the turns, then down the last straight aisle, past the sentinel trees, out into ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various

... understood. No Indian exposes himself save for a purpose; but he did not understand. Erect now, his finger on the trigger of the old smoothbore, he waited passive before the darkened doorway of the cabin, looking straight before him, God alone knows what thoughts whirling in his brain. Again in front of him sounded and resounded the alien call. The dark figures against the sky took life, moved forward. Simultaneously, on the thatch of the cabin roof, appeared two other figures identical ...
— Where the Trail Divides • Will Lillibridge

... whirled in the air and brought his rival under. This, however, had been planned from the very instant that Fred made the first move to accomplish the cross-buttock, and Frank's lock-trip had brought it about by lifting the other lad from the ground by a whirling movement. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish

... tremendous pace for another half hour. At last the road took a sudden turn; and, whirling around here at the utmost speed, he burst upon a scene which was as startling as it was unexpected, and which roused to madness all the fervid passion of ...
— Cord and Creese • James de Mille

... The dervishes, having thrown off their cloaks, again folded their arms across their breasts, and bowing three times, re-commenced walking before the high priest, bending low as they passed his seat, and kissing his hands, which were joined together. The whirling at length began in reality: at first with folded arms, then with one arm extended, the other slightly bent, and held so as to form an obtuse angle at the elbow. Thus, with closed eyes and erect body, these singular people whirled round and round on one leg, making a pirouette ...
— Journal of a Visit to Constantinople and Some of the Greek Islands in the Spring and Summer of 1833 • John Auldjo

... plantation in the harried South. And now he ate greedily till the last prune was gone, when Johnnie had Buckle throw all of the green rinds into the sink. (It was this attention to detail which invested his games with reality.) Then, the repast finished, Grandpa fretted to be away, whirling his ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates

... to Fergus I shall bring you," cried Uct Dealv. "He will throw stones at you. You have never had a stone thrown at you. Ah, bad girl! You do not know how a stone sounds as it nips the ear with a whirling buzz, nor how jagged and heavy it feels as it thumps against a skinny leg. Robber! Mortal! Bad girl! You have never been whipped, but you will be whipped now. You shall hear the song of a lash as it curls forward and bites inward and drags ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... apparitions. A stone flew at the dog to scare him off, and a second, larger than the first, whisked past her and hit Diodoros on the head; she heard the dull blow. At this a cold hand seemed to clutch her heart; everything about her melted into one whirling, colorless cloud. Pale as death, she threw up her arms to protect herself, and then, overcome with terror and fatigue, with a faint cry of anguish she ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... call them coincidences and are astonished! That Julia should arrive during Noble's long process of buying a ticket to go to her was stranger than that she stopped to look at him, though still not comparable in strangeness to the fact that either of them, or any living creature, stood upon the whirling earth;—yet when Noble Dill comprehended what was happening ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington

... those tremendous downpourings that occur every hour or so the wheel-worn depressions on either side become narrow streams, divided by the white central ridge. Down the long, straight slopes these twin rivulets course right merrily, the whirling wheels of the bicycle flinging the water up higher than my head. The ravines are roaring, muddy torrents, but they are all well bridged, and although the road is lumpy, an unridable spot is very rarely ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens

... quickly opened the door and picked up the gander and, whirling it around his head, dashed it violently at the one candle which was thus knocked over and extinguished, leaving the room in darkness but for a few smouldering embers on the hearth, and with the gruesome addition to the company of what two of those present believed ...
— The Dreamer - A Romantic Rendering of the Life-Story of Edgar Allan Poe • Mary Newton Stanard

... were guarding. With the stubbornness of its kind, it wheeled about the instant it felt the tug on the rope and dashed for the main herd, Tad's body ploughing up the dust as he trailed along at a fearful pace behind the wild animal, whirling over and ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in Texas - Or, The Veiled Riddle of the Plains • Frank Gee Patchin

... a runner by our side. "Yes, sir; here you are, sir. Free 'bus, sir." And in another moment we were in the lumbering coach, and as soon as the last lingering passenger had come from the boat we were whirling over the rough pavement, through a confusing maze of streets, past long rows of dingy, ugly buildings, to ...
— Blindfolded • Earle Ashley Walcott

... see. Whirling angrily, she walked rapidly toward the office. Anything to get away from hearing Gregory's praises chanted from every lip. Better be with the idol himself than his devout followers. She flung open the door and entered the office. Gregory faced ...
— El Diablo • Brayton Norton

... you are: Goe packe with them, and giue the mother gold, And tell them both the circumstance of all, And how by this their Childe shall be aduaunc'd, And be receiued for the Emperours heyre, And substituted in the place of mine, To calme this tempest whirling in the Court, And let the Emperour dandle him for his owne, Harke ye Lords, ye see I haue giuen her physicke, And you must needs bestow her funerall, The fields are neere, and you are gallant Groomes: This done, see that you take no longer daies But send the Midwife presently to ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare

... on the hither and farther sides of our globe, strive, as it were, to detach themselves from the unity of the terrestrial spheroid, and to follow the movements of the moon. The moon, accordingly, holds them against the whirling earth, which revolves like a shaft in a fixed collar, slowly losing motion and gaining heat, eventually dissipated through space.[957] This must go on (so far as we can see) until the periods of the earth's ...
— A Popular History of Astronomy During the Nineteenth Century - Fourth Edition • Agnes M. (Agnes Mary) Clerke

... father; "and if old Mother Earth went whirling round and round with her axis perpendicular to her orbit, we should have twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness all over the earth every day ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald

... resist the whirling in her head, took out some work on which she tried to fix her attention. The elderly widow was looking over a missionary book with woodcuts, and ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston

... been placed. On emerging it perceives the cricket scampering away; not a moment was to be lost, and without reflection it leapt on the refractory victim. A lively struggle followed, a duel to the death among the blades of grass; it was a truly dramatic spectacle, the agile assailant whirling around the Cricket, who kicked violently with his hind legs. If a blow were to reach the Sphex it would be disembowelled; but it avoids the blows skilfully without ceasing its own violent attack. At last the combat ends; the cricket is brought to earth, ...
— The Industries of Animals • Frederic Houssay

... and feet running throughout the palace; he turned back and met the Prince, his master, coming downstairs with his child in his arms. The lightning stroke had killed his second wife where she lay. John followed him out into the streets, where the people were running to and fro, and through the whirling sand to the ford which crossed the creek a mile above the city. And there, as they stepped into the water, a woman rose before John, with a child in her arms, and said: 'Carry us.' The Prince, who was leading, did not see. John took them on his back, but they were heavy because of the ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch

... the polished mail. Clang! Clang!-now the black champion is about to hurl his sword with awful force against the Templar's shoulder-the false villain's horse becomes unmanageable-he rushes forward towards Conrad D'Amboise, whirling his sword wildly ...
— The Duke's Prize - A Story of Art and Heart in Florence • Maturin Murray

... charming, with the old grey walls on one side, and, on the other, the green valley with its luxuriant gardens, and leafy lanes, winding up to the ruined chateau, or the undulating hills with picturesque windmills whirling ...
— Shawl-Straps - A Second Series of Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag • Louisa M. Alcott

... of whirling snowflakes white, And the pallid moonbeams waning— Sad the heavens, sad the night! Further speeds the sledge, and further, Loud the sleighbell's melody, Grewsome, frightful 'tis becoming, 'Mid these snow fields ...
— Russian Lyrics • Translated by Martha Gilbert Dickinson Bianchi

... the great figures that stride through your history and that give to the world an unexampled picture of the lofty works of man. Our sailors, who are simple and often uncultured men, have no remembrance of these things; the brutal facts, in this whirling age in which we live, have more power to strike their imagination. What is one to say to them when they see their comrades stabbed, slaughtered by your men as if they were noxious animals—yesterday at ...
— The Birth of Yugoslavia, Volume 2 • Henry Baerlein

... who have since sung it on the stage for us. His crowning achievement last night, however, was the actual singing of a Tarentella by Rossini—a kind of movement which we have hitherto heard only from instruments—a whirling, spinning, delirious, top-like movement in which the singer seems galvanized and tyrannized by one too happy and all-mastering idea in spite of himself. The audience too, in spite of themselves, were sucked into its whirling ...
— A Unique Story of a Marvellous Career. Life of Hon. Phineas T. • Joel Benton

... as suddenly as the ship had started to fall, it ceased, and rode on an even keel, righting and floating easily in the air. The wind no longer blew with the circular motion, the whirling having come to an end. But the blinding ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood

... snowing when she stepped outside,—a soft, white curtain of closely woven flakes rapidly dimming the early evening glow and bringing nightshades on apace. The wind, too, was rising; its first fitful gusts drove the snow sweeping in whirling flurries across the open spaces, and then whistled ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... the beautiful snow How the flakes gather and laugh as they go, Whirling about in the maddening fun, It plays in its glee with every one, Chasing, Laughing, Hurrying by, It lights on the face and sparkles the eye! And even the dogs, with a bark and a bound, Snap at the crystals that eddy around, The town is alive, and its heart is aglow! To welcome ...
— Picturesque Quebec • James MacPherson Le Moine

... ephemeral glory about life's vanishing points, Wherein you burn... You of unknown voltage Whirling on your axis... Scrawling vermillion signatures Over the night's velvet hoarding... Insolent, towering spherical To ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge

... daughter, with a promise to throw himself at her feet on the following day. He was rowed back to his vessel in the same slow and stately manner, to the cadence of the same mournful old ditty. He retired to his cabin, his brain whirling with all that he had seen, and his heart now and then giving him a twinge as he recollected his temporary infidelity to the beautiful Serafina. He flung himself on his bed, and soon fell into a feverish sleep. His dreams were wild and incoherent. How long he slept he ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving

... and he mine, another time?—It's a braw thing for a man to be out a' day, and frighted—na, I winna say that neither but mistrysted wi' bogles in the hame-coming, an' then to hae to flyte wi' a wheen women that hae been doing naething a' the live-lang day, but whirling a bit stick, wi' a thread trailing at it, or boring ...
— The Black Dwarf • Sir Walter Scott

... there to help, and as soon as he could get the door open, Dallas dashed out into the whirling snow, which rushed in blinding eddies about the hut, while Abel, awestricken and panting, clung to the post and tried to pierce ...
— To Win or to Die - A Tale of the Klondike Gold Craze • George Manville Fenn

... mere existence has provided a solid basis for the nebular hypothesis, and their spiral form irresistibly suggests that they are whirling round on their central axis and concentrating. Further, we find in some of the gaseous nebulae (Orion) comparatively void spaces occupied by stars, which seem to have absorbed the nebulous matter in their formation. On the other hand, ...
— The Story of Evolution • Joseph McCabe

... ceased to think of him, not feeling any curiosity to go and see with whom his late fellow-lodger might be quarreling. He sat and watched instead, as he lounged in the sunshine, some smart carriages whirling past, their horses stepping high, the lackeys muffled from the mountain air in winter ...
— In the Quarter • Robert W. Chambers

... the plane's surface like whirling hour-glasses. Fire spouted from them in all directions. Then their movement stopped. Smoke shrouded them ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... that the sun was made to give him light by day and the moon to enable him to find his way home from the lodge at night without the aid of a policeman; that the heavens were hung with a resplendent curtain of stars and the planets sent whirling through space in a majestic dance about the God of Day, simply to afford him matter for wonder or for amusement when too tired to talk politics or too bilious to drink beer, evinces an egotism that ...
— Volume 12 of Brann The Iconoclast • William Cowper Brann

... in general terms was being discussed by Hooke, Wren, Halley, and many others. All of these men felt a repugnance to accept the idea of a force acting across the empty void of space. Descartes (1596-1650) proposed an ethereal medium whirling round the sun with the planets, and having local whirls revolving with the satellites. As Delambre and Grant have said, this fiction only retarded the progress of pure science. It had no sort of relation to the more modern, but equally misleading, ...
— History of Astronomy • George Forbes

... wages a ceaseless battle as sublime as it is terrible and unique. Such is the great Colorado River of the West, rising amidst the fountains of the beautiful Wind River Mountains of Wyoming, where also are brought forth the gentler Columbia and the mighty, far-reaching Missouri. Whirling down ten thousand feet in some two thousand miles, it meets the hot level of the Red Sea, once the Sea of Cortes, now the Gulf of California, in tumult and turmoil. In this long run it is cliff bound nine-tenths of ...
— The Romance of the Colorado River • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh

... thinking. But Ernest Le Breton was only making his first experiment in the queer craft, and he looked upon himself as a veritable Watt or Columbus when he had actually discovered that hitherto unknown object, a thing to write about. He went straight back to good Mrs. Halliss's with his discovery whirling in his head, stopping only by the way at the stationer's, to invest in half a quire of white foolscap. 'The best's a shilling a quire, mister,' said the shopman; 'second best, tenpence.' Communist as he was, Ernest couldn't help noticing the unusual mode of address; but he took the cheaper ...
— Philistia • Grant Allen

... three days longer, calm, bright, halcyon weather. On the afternoon of the twenty-seventh the clouds came down from the north, not a long furious tempest, but a brief, sharp storm, with considerable wind and a whirling, blinding fall of April snow. It was a bad night for boats at sea, confusing, bewildering, a night when the lighthouse had to do its best. Nataline was in the tower all night, tending the lamp, watching the clockwork. Once it seemed to her ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke

... was midnight, and an impressive silence fell on the trio. Then there came a noise like the flutterings of wings, a loud, blood-curdling scream, half human and half animal, and a huge black owl, whirling down from the roof of the building, perched in the circle directly in front ...
— Animal Ghosts - Or, Animal Hauntings and the Hereafter • Elliott O'Donnell

... swept into the night, the wind rose in the dark wood, the winter's moon crept pale and cold into the sky, snow began to fall, at first thinly, then in a storm, hiding the moon, flinging the fields and roads into a white shining splendour; the wind died and the stars peeped between the flakes of whirling snow. ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole

... the young lady would become the gentleman; and in whirling Hiram round, she exhibited a strength ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. IV. October, 1863, No. IV. - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various

... W.S.W. and S.W. We had fuel to make two cups of tea apiece and bare food for two days on the 20th. Every day we have been ready to start for our depot 11 miles away, but outside the door of the tent it remains a scene of whirling drift. I do not think we can hope for any better things now. We shall stick it out to the end, but we are getting weaker, of course, and the end ...
— The Worst Journey in the World, Volumes 1 and 2 - Antarctic 1910-1913 • Apsley Cherry-Garrard

... Curate, or (as some say) something much more manly, and ran, whirling his croquet mallet and shouting, to head ...
— The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth • H.G. Wells

... will all run together and look dim and misty. When I look at it in that way it seems to me to be fire no more, but water. It is as if we were down under a broad, deep river, and could see all the mass of water slowly eddying and whirling and flowing on above us, with just the little glow and glimmer of brightness that come down from the daylight and the air above. But there is one little spot that is brighter, right in the middle of the fire, where you see that one little yellow flame all by itself. In my picture, it is like ...
— The Wagner Story Book • Henry Frost

... stop his mouth with cold chicken. While I was cautiously unfastening the hamper lid, Beauty remained quiet as a dormouse; and then he proceeded personally to assist the unfastening, with a vengeance. There was a bouncing volcanic eruption, a blood-curdling howl, a mixed-up whirling round the carriage, and then—smash!—bang through the window went Beauty!—leaving me doubled up on the seat, holding out half a chicken. It was a forty-feline-power hurricane, while it lasted; and drops of perspiration trickled ...
— The Idler, Volume III., Issue XIII., February 1893 - An Illustrated Monthly. Edited By Jerome K. Jerome & Robert Barr • Various

... before I had time to realize what was happening I was fighting for my life in the howling darkness of a terrific sandstorm. The wind was demoniacal; it apparently blew from all quarters at once, in short, sharp, incessant gusts, lifting and whirling away everything that came in its path, shifting the loose sand in such masses, and hurling it with such force that to stand still would have meant being buried. Luckily the scanty vegetation where we had rested had somewhat bound the sand, but in a few minutes of the awful struggle I realized that ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell

... obtained as a gift. Sit down," Wilmot thrust the hat into his inside pocket and sat down on the beggar's left, facing the light. The faint hum of girls talking at their work came from the back of the establishment. A whirling fan buzzed and bumped. The ...
— The Penalty • Gouverneur Morris

... them up the lane from the library window with a queer grudge at heart; Bolton stiffly lumbering forward at an angle of forty-five degrees, the child whirling and dancing at his side, and now before ...
— Annie Kilburn - A Novel • W. D. Howells

... consistency according to the local by-laws. But the pebbles said, please, no; we will bide our time down here, and you shall have us for your own—play with us in the sun at the feet of these two ladies, or make the whirling shoals of us, beaten to madness, thunder back your voice when it shouts in the storm to the seaman's wife, who stops her ears in the dark night alone that she may not hear you heralding her husband's death. And the tide said very good; but a ...
— Somehow Good • William de Morgan

... fatalities have occurred. Some of these occurrences are not of the criminal sort; but when a twelve-foot alligator attacks and kills a six-foot individual, entirely out of his class and far too small to fight with him, it is murder. An alligator will seize the leg of a rival and by violently whirling around on his axis, like a revolving shaft, ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday

... was having a fierce face-to-face tussle with a big bear. His gun was on the ground and so was his sombrero, and in his hand he held his hunting knife. As Dave viewed the scene in horror, the bear made a pass with one forepaw and sent the hunting knife whirling from the cowboy's grasp. Then the bear closed in, as if to hug ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer

... about five feet water; if ye miss that, ye're aw right!" We were now rapidly approaching the beacon, and could fairly see the rocks and beach in the track of its light. On the other side there were great masses of savage surf, whirling high up in the night, the indications of the three islands on the west of the harbor. The captain had climbed up in the rigging to keep a good look-out ahead; the light of the beacon broadened on the deck; we were within the very jaws of the crags and surf; the wild ocean beating against the doors ...
— Acadia - or, A Month with the Blue Noses • Frederic S. Cozzens

... had now fairly enveloped them in whirling whiteness. "Woo, woo!" they called to those who had not yet reached camp. One after another answered and emerged from the blinding pall of snow. At last none were missing save the game ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman

... shalt tread the whirling measure, Bathe thee in its frenzied strife; Thou shalt have a mighty memory For thy ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair

... aspire to a world of prophets and sibyls. Beethoven never heard of radioactivity nor of electrons dancing in vortices of inconceivable energy; but pray can anyone explain the last movement of his Hammerklavier Sonata, Opus 106, otherwise than as a musical picture of these whirling electrons? His contemporaries said he was mad, partly perhaps because the movement was so hard to play; but we, who can make a pianola play it to us over and over until it is as familiar as Pop Goes the Weasel, ...
— Back to Methuselah • George Bernard Shaw

... than all the oceans of the world together. "What we have divided we have divided; and if no rest and peace in this world have fallen to my share, leave me alone. Let me play at quoits with cyclonic gales, flinging the discs of spinning cloud and whirling air from one end of my dismal kingdom to the other: over the Great Banks or along the edges of pack-ice—this one with true aim right into the bight of the Bay of Biscay, that other upon the fiords of Norway, across the North Sea ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad

... his. She knew by instinct what his face meant—the swollen, trembling lips, the hot eyes; and understood that he was capable of any baseness. To attempt to reach her home would be an abandonment of all hope, the ruin of Denzil. A means of escape from worst extremity, undiscoverable by her whirling brain, might suggest itself to such a mind as Mrs. Wade's. If only she could communicate with ...
— Denzil Quarrier • George Gissing



Words linked to "Whirling" :   gyration, whirl, whirling dervish



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