"Black hole" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... about the aisles, two palms, one at each side of the proscenium (real palms), and, in addition to a piano, a mustel organ to accompany the pathetic passages in the films. Moreover, the commissionaire outside, whose medals prove that he has seen service in the Charge of the Light Brigade, the Black Hole of Calcutta, and the Great Raid on the House of Commons in 1910, is not one of those blatant-voiced showmen who clamour for patronage; he is a quiet and dignified receptionnaire, content to rely on the fame and good repute of his theatre. Sometimes evening dress (from "The Laburnums," ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, March 18, 1914 • Various
... madness done And saner souls rise with the morrow's sun. But this incarnate hell that yawns before Your bright, brave soul keyed to the fighter's clench— This purgatory that men call the "trench"— This modern "Black Hole" of a modern war! Yea, Love! yet naught I say can save you, so I lay my heart in ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 2, May, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... saw the cleft in the rocky flank of Star Peak, he walked straight to the black hole ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... Waves like mountains; then a black hole, black as pitch, and great high walls. After that—I'll tell 'ee dreckly. As for ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... arms—swing up your gun! Swing it up from the bottom! That's the way! Poke 'em! Poke 'em! Put the punch into 'em!" And over Jimmie stole a cold horror. There was nothing on the end of those guns but a little black hole, but Jimmie knew what was supposed to be there—what would some day be there; the exercise meant that these affable young Leesville store-clerks were getting ready to drive a sharp, gleaming blade into the bowels ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... forest lodge in the Lorenzer wall. Now when matters took so ill a turn, he pledged himself to get her safe away from the dungeon cell. To this end he feigned that he would ride into the town, after possessing himself of the key of the black hole and after stowing a suit of his man's apparel and a loaf of bread into his saddle-poke. Then he wandered about the wood for some time, and as soon as it fell dark he stole back to the house again on foot. He had made a bold and well-devised plan, and yet he might have come to a foul end; for, albeit ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... carefully as I did and here you will find a cave." With that she disappeared into the yawning black hole, leading both burros. Barbara and Anne stared at each other in amazement, and the latter said: "Come carefully! Anything is better ...
— Polly of Pebbly Pit • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... the humane intervention of the servants of the Dutch Company, was treated with indulgence. Meanwhile the Nabob marched on Calcutta; the governor and the commandant fled; the town and citadel were taken, and most of the English prisoners perished in the Black Hole. ...
— Critical and Historical Essays, Volume III (of 3) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... were come to the lip of the volcano (it took us half a day to get up to it) we found the stone was unbelievably large—big as a cathedral. Underneath it we could look right down into a black hole which seemed to have no bottom. The Doctor explained to us that volcanoes sometimes spurted up fire from these holes in their tops; but that those on floating islands were always cold ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... Air.—The Black Hole of Calcutta is an object lesson of how necessary to life is the renewal of the air supply. Few people, however, reflect that a deficient supply of fresh air may affect the health, though far short of what will cause death. Many hospitable people ...
— Papers on Health • John Kirk
... to his own chamber, where I had never been before, and showed me how, in the chimney-neuk, was a way into a certain black hole of little ease, wherein, if any came in search for me, I might lie hidden. And, fetching me a cold fish (Lenten cheer), a loaf, and a stoup of wine, whereof I was glad enough, he left me, groaning the while at his ill-fortune, but laden with such thanks as I might give for ...
— A Monk of Fife • Andrew Lang
... there was a crash and an unearthly scream, then a thud that sounded as if it had happened in the middle of the earth. Father Donovan and I looked around in alarm, but Paddy was nowhere to be seen. Toward the wall there was a square black hole, and, rushing up to it, we knew at once what had happened. Paddy had danced a bit too heavy on an old trap-door, and the rusty bolts had broken. It had let him down into a dungeon that had no other entrance; and indeed this was a queer house entirely, with many odd nooks and corners about ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... fighting with his horse;—but the farmer had turned away. He thought that Chiltern nodded to him, as much as to tell him to go on. On he went at any rate. The brook, when he came to it, seemed to be a huge black hole, yawning beneath him. The banks were quite steep, and just where he was to take off there was an ugly stump. It was too late to think of anything. He stuck his knees against his saddle,—and in a moment was on the other side. The brute, who had taken off a yard ...
— Phineas Finn - The Irish Member • Anthony Trollope
... made a little black hole: like a spot, in his forehead. No sensation was created. M. Massarel shot a second time and made a second hole, then a third time, then, without stopping, he shot off the three remaining shots. Napoleon's forehead was blown ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... sparking, darting flames spread the width of the ravine. Burning a black hole already in the deep drifts, the crossed wires forbade the ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... and to come in contact there with the butt end of his revolver, under his red sash. No inspiration, no further word would come. But he drew his pistol, advanced two steps, and, taking aim, fired at the late monarch. The ball entered the forehead, leaving a little, black hole, like a spot, nothing more. There was no effect. Then he fired a second shot, which made a second hole, then, a third; and then, without stopping, he emptied his revolver. The brow of Napoleon disappeared in white powder, but the eyes, ...
— Selected Writings of Guy de Maupassant • Guy de Maupassant
... commander of the schooner recovered, and invited them to drink and eat. They followed him along the deck, and fell down a square black hole into the cabin. ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... be glad to hear that I am returned, without any commission as yet; without any wounds or glory; but,—at any rate, alive and harty. On board our ship, we were almost as crowded as poor Mr. Holwell and his friends in their Black Hole at Calicutta. We had rough weather, and some of the gentlemen volunteers, who prefer smooth water, grumbled not a little. My gentlemen's stomachs are dainty; and after Braund's cookery and White's kick-shaws, ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... altitude of the 50th parallel, the distance was reduced to 300 miles. On the left rose the capricious outlines of a chain of mountains, outlined in full light. Towards the right, on the contrary, was a large black hole like a vast dark and bottomless well bored in ...
— The Moon-Voyage • Jules Verne
... short time to get round, albeit the road was rough and dangerous. We had taken our bearings aright, but for a time we could see no signs of those we had come to seek. But presently with her riding-whip Flora pointed to a deep black hole ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the fire had to be built outside the cabin, against the backlogs, the door would have to be left open anyway, to admit the heat. With a few strokes of his sharp little camp ax he cut away the planks, leaving a black hole in the door. He lighted a match and ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... vegetables and others piled with more than second-hand-looking garments. Trade was not driving, but near one or two of them dirty, ill-used looking women, a man or so, and a few children stood. At a corner which led into a black hole of a court, a coffee-stand was stationed, in charge of a ...
— The Dawn of a To-morrow • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... temple of Proserpine, or Apollo, or any god or goddess you please. We were so absurd as to pay a scudo to be taken through a vile tunnel, accompanied by two torch-bearers, and two other dirty wretches, who often carry us pick-a-back through one black hole into another, splashing us through dark pools, putting us down here and there as they pleased, picking us up again, grinning like demons, and by dint of shaking their torches above, and disturbing the water below, raising foul smells enough to intoxicate fifty Sybils. At length, half ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 58, Number 360, October 1845 • Various
... circular clearing. Then others, lugging vats of a dark, heady-smelling liquor, had deposited their burden beside the drums, and formed a second circle. The balance of the thousand had crowded itself together as best it might, leaving bare the center of the clearing with its black hole and fangs of poles. Kirby, looking down at these legions, did not wonder that ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... breeches, which he held up with one hand while he grasped his firelock with the other. The rest were accoutred in similar style, excepting three ragamuffins without shirts, and with but a pair and a half of breeches between them; wherefore they were sent to the black hole, to keep them out of sight, that they might ...
— Knickerbocker's History of New York, Complete • Washington Irving
... The cell, or black hole, for it had those words painted on the door, was very dark, and having recently accommodated a drunken deserter, by no means clean. Barnaby felt his way to some straw at the farther end, and looking towards the door, tried to accustom himself to the gloom, ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... him in a snug quartett party, and hear his manner of playing his own music. If you can bring about such a thing while I am in town, either at Chelsea, or at Mr. Burney's, or at Mr. Salomon's, or I care not where—if it were even in the Black Hole at Calcutta (if it is a good hole for music)—I say, if by hook or crook you could manage such a thing, you should be my Magnus Apollo for the rest of your life. I mention Salomon because we are a little acquainted. ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... jutting points, and many a frieze and coigne of vantage, placed blue lights on them all, and at the word illuminated all together, there was redoubled bedlam in that abode of Hecate, and the eternal calm of the Boodh became awful. For what deeds of outer darkness, done long ago in that black hole of superstition, so many damned souls shrieked from their night-fowl transmigrations, 'twere vain to question there were no disclosures in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. IV, No. 26, December, 1859 • Various
... rose in front of me and the line disappeared into the darkness of a tunnel. I did not like the idea of entering this black hole, for I had brought no candle with me, but the prospect of climbing the rocks was still more forbidding. It proved to be a short and straight tunnel with daylight shining at the farther end. After this came another short one, but the third was much longer and had a curve; consequently I ...
— Two Summers in Guyenne • Edward Harrison Barker
... a feebleness but rather a fullness of life, like that of a child half awake; she seemed to stretch herself and enjoy everything without noticing anything. She passed the wood, into the gray huddle of which a single white path vanished through a black hole. Along this part of the terrace ran something like a low rampart or balustrade, embowered with flowers at intervals; and she leaned over it, looking down at another glimpse of the glowing sea behind the clump of ...
— The Trees of Pride • G.K. Chesterton
... protest, three or four linnets flew down and were caught. Taking them from the nets, he showed them to me, remarking, with a short laugh, that they were all young males. Then he thrust them down the stocking-leg which served as an entrance to the covered box he kept his birds in—the black hole in which their captive life begins, where they were now all vainly fluttering to get out. Going back to the previous subject, he said that he knew very well that many persons disliked a bird-catcher, but there was one thing that nobody could say against him—he wasn't cruel; he caught, ...
— Birds in Town and Village • W. H. Hudson
... couldn't have said how many roofs she had crossed, when at length she discovered a scuttle that was actually ajar, propped wide to the pounding flood; and without pause to wonder at this circumstance, or what might be her reception and how to account for herself, she swung down into that hospitable black hole, found footing on the ladder, let herself farther down—and by mischance dislodged the iron arm supporting ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... photograph showing M 8 and the trifid nebula on the same plate, and he remarks that the former is a far more remarkable object than its more famous neighbor. Near the eastern border of the principal nebulous cloud there is a small and very black hole with a star poised on its eastern edge. This hole and the star are ...
— Pleasures of the telescope • Garrett Serviss
... snowball, snowdrift; acervation^, cumulation; glomeration^, agglomeration; conglobation^; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate [Chem], coacervation [Chem], coagmentation^, aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum [Lat.], spicilegium^, black hole of Calcutta; quantity &c (greatness) 31. collector, gatherer; whip, whipper in. V. assemble [be or come together], collect, muster; meet, unite, join, rejoin; cluster, flock, swarm, surge, stream, herd, crowd, throng, associate; congregate, conglomerate, concentrate; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... around the black hole of their prison, hoping to find some way of escape, but without success. They were beginning to get tired and discouraged, and they sat down on the floor to talk the ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... bottom by numerous straight fissures. A few pale-green waterfalls descended here and there, like narrow, motionless threads. The face of the mountain was rugged and bare. It was strewn with detached boulders, and great, jagged rocks projected everywhere like iron teeth. Tydomin pointed to a small black hole near the base, which might be a cave. "That is ...
— A Voyage to Arcturus • David Lindsay
... after a sleepless night, he sought-the Rue Rochechouart, and the house Fremin had described to him. It was there: an old weather-beaten house, with a narrow entrance and a corridor, in the middle of which flowed a dirty, foul-smelling stream of water; the room of the concierge looked like a black hole at the foot of the staircase, the balusters and walls of which were wet with moisture and streaked with dirt; a house of poor working-people, many stories high, and built in the time when this quarter of Paris was almost ...
— Prince Zilah, Complete • Jules Claretie
... the capital of India; and also the country-house of Warren Hastings at Alipur, for the entertainment of Indian princes. Lord Curzon restored, at his own cost, the monument which formerly commemorated the massacre of the Black Hole, and a tablet let into the wall of the general post office indicates the position of the Black Hole in the north-east bastion of Fort William, now occupied by the roadway. Government House, which is situated ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... through the snow. The eyes of the McGregor boy, as they followed the two departing figures, and later, as he stood in the door of the bake- shop watching the struggling miners, glistened, with hatred. It was the quality of intense hatred for his fellows in the black hole between the Pennsylvania hills that marked the boy and made him stand ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... where I would, a little later in the day I walked out of the town towards the Valley of Bones in order to ascertain for myself whether what Goza had told me was true. So it proved, for about three hundred yards from the mouth of the valley, which at that distance looked like a black hole in the hills, I found soldiers stationed about ten paces apart in a great circle which ran right up the hillside and vanished over the crest. Strolling up to one of these, whose face I thought I knew, I asked him if he would let me pass to see my ...
— Finished • H. Rider Haggard
... something big and black," answered the other lad, after a moment's hesitation. "Why, it's a big black hole!" ...
— Tom Swift in the Caves of Ice • Victor Appleton
... Judea. Russian Jewry began to "progress" as never before. In almost all the large cities, particularly in Odessa, St. Petersburg, and Moscow, the Jews were fast becoming Russified. Heretofore cooped up, choking each other in the Pale as in a Black Hole, they were now wild with an excessive desire for Russification. What Maimon said of a few, could now be applied to hundreds and thousands, they were "like starving persons suddenly treated to a delicious meal." They flocked ...
— The Haskalah Movement in Russia • Jacob S. Raisin
... which was considered unsafe is still extant. It is in one of the attics of "the Upper House," but the entrance is now very palpable. Those who are curious enough to climb up into this black hole will discover a rude wooden bench within it—a ...
— Secret Chambers and Hiding Places • Allan Fea
... Already a great, round black hole had opened in the very middle of the map of England, and the sides of the map were tilting themselves up, so that the rain ...
— The Book of Dragons • Edith Nesbit
... there came a spasmodic movement of the victim, and immediately above the middle of his forehead, a black hole marred the whiteness of the figure-head. A dreadful pause; then again the report, and the solid sound and jar of the bullet in the wood; and this time the captain had felt the wind of it along his cheek. A third shot, and he was bleeding from one ear; and along the levelled rifle Attwater ...
— The Ebb-Tide - A Trio And Quartette • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... course. It was built, or rebuilt, by the Aragonese, with four corner towers, one of which became infamous for a scene that rivals the horrors of the Black Hole of Calcutta. Numbers of confined brigands, uncared-for, perished miserably of starvation within its ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... castle. Then he was obliged to submit; and the suba, or viceroy, promised on the word of a soldier, that no injury should be done to him or his garrison. Nevertheless, they were all driven, to the number of one hundred and forty-six persons of both sexes, into a place called the Black Hole Prison, a cube of about eighteen feet, walled up to the eastward and southward, the only quarters from which they could expect the least refreshing air, and open to the westward by two windows strongly ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... extent, but in height and density. Public buildings were forced, wherever there was room for them, into the midst of thoroughfares; thoroughfares were diminished into lanes; houses sprang up story after story, neighbour mounting upon neighbour's shoulder, as in some Black Hole of Calcutta, until the population slept fourteen or fifteen deep in a vertical direction. The tallest of these lands, as they are locally termed, have long since been burnt out; but to this day it is not uncommon to see eight or ten windows at a flight; and the cliff of building which hangs ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... they saw a nice big, black hole and into it they scampered, thinking it too small a place for Zip to follow, but they did not know Zip. The hole was black enough inside and out to suit anyone, for it was nothing more or less than a long piece of stovepipe from ...
— Zip, the Adventures of a Frisky Fox Terrier • Frances Trego Montgomery
... and flattened out on the floor with arms and legs flung wide. A tiny black hole was visible through his shirt. He had been last, and the Hawk had struck him less ...
— Hawk Carse • Anthony Gilmore
... became plain even to her; he was keeping high on the ridges, going about the head of the ravine which lower down cut like a knife across the timbered tract, headed for what he took to be Gus Ingle's cave. A mile away she saw it; a great, ragged, black hole in a high mass of rock, close to the ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... Major John Bliss, who was in command at Fort Snelling from 1833 to 1836, the name "Black Starvation" might well have been applied. The negro servant, Hannibal, who clandestinely sold spruce beer to the soldiers was confined in the Black Hole for forty-eight hours; and Private Kelly, who refused to do his part in the fatigue party spent more than seventy-two hours in the Black Hole before the pangs of starvation persuaded him to promise Major Bliss to be good in the future.[238] ...
— Old Fort Snelling - 1819-1858 • Marcus L. Hansen
... off there, Alan saw the enlarging figure of Polter, his hunched shape unmistakable. He was facing the other way. He lunged and scrambled into a yawning black hole in the mountains. Polter was escaping! None of these people except himself had the drugs. He was escaping with the golden cage, out of this doomed atomic ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... A black hole appeared at the base of the bushes and from it emerged the head and shoulders of a man. Taylor drew his pistol. The man's head turned, searching the shadows to see if he was observed. He failed to detect the figures of Taylor and Masters, huddled ...
— The Whispering Spheres • Russell Robert Winterbotham
... into a black hole that yawns in the middle of a muddy field. I hadn't gone far, either, before I discovers that being your own street light wasn't such an easy trick. I expect a miner has to wear his lamp on his head so's ...
— Torchy As A Pa • Sewell Ford
... through the nose when we are asleep. Boys that stay in a room all day should not breathe. They should wait till they get outdoors. Boys in a room make carbonicide. Carbonicide is more poisonous than mad dogs. A heap of soldiers was in a black hole in India and carbonicide got into that black hole and killed nearly every one afore morning. Girls kill the breath with corsets that squeeze the diagram. Girls can't run or holler like boys because their diagram is squeezed too much. If I was a girl, I'd rather be a boy ...
— Children's Rhymes, Children's Games, Children's Songs, Children's Stories - A Book for Bairns and Big Folk • Robert Ford
... pyramid; bing[obs3]; drift; snowball, snowdrift; acervation[obs3], cumulation; glomeration[obs3], agglomeration; conglobation[obs3]; conglomeration, conglomerate; coacervate[Chem], coacervation[Chem], coagmentation[obs3], aggregation, concentration, congestion, omnium gaterum[Lat], spicilegium[obs3], black hole of Calcutta; quantity &c. (greatness) 31. collector, gatherer; whip, whipper in. V. assemble[be or come together], collect, muster; meet, unite, join, rejoin; cluster, flock, swarm, surge, stream, herd, crowd, throng, associate; congregate, conglomerate, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... little headway, though a few minutes more would have given it a dangerous start. The flames hissed and died out as Gussie threw on the water, and in a few seconds only a small black hole in the shingles remained. Gussie slid down the ladder. She trembled in every limb, but she put out her wet hand to me with a faint, triumphant smile. We shook hands across the ladder with a cordiality never ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... flung that horrid word to the winds just now. There's no ought in the case; I had a holiday yesterday, and I mean to to-day. I mean to take Inna to Black Hole, and round through the woods, ...
— The Heiress of Wyvern Court • Emilie Searchfield
... it was the earth's great ironing day. And - above all - a day that converts a railway traveller into a martyr, and a first-class carriage into a moving representation of the Black Hole ...
— The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green • Cuthbert Bede
... preoccupation with the relief and elation of a drama finished, had their first warning of what was to come in a voice that did not seem like the voice of the tenderfoot as they had heard it, but of another man. And Leddy was looking at a black hole in a rim of steel which, though twenty yards away, seemed hot against his ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer
... coal-dust. "A dromedary town," Eileen dubbed it; for it consisted of a long level with two humps, standing in a bleak desert. On one of the humps she found herself perched. Below—between the humps—lay the town proper, with its savour of grime and gain. The Black Hole was Eileen's name for this quarter; and indeed you might leave your hump, bathed in sunlight, dusty but still sunlight, and as you came down the old wagon-road you would plunge deeper and deeper into the yellowish fog which the poor townspeople ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... guardhouse at Parramatta, whence he found means to make his escape, and reached Sydney in time to swim on board the American. On being brought on shore he received a slight punishment, and was confined in the black hole at the guardhouse at Sydney, out of which he escaped a night or two after, by untiling a part of the roof. After this he was not heard of, till the watch apprehended him at Parramatta, where he had broken into two houses, which he had plundered, and was ...
— An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales, Vol. 1 • David Collins
... of Adam escorted me to the passenger car filled with German immigrants, with tin cups, babies, bags, and bundles innumerable. The ventilators were all closed, the stoves hot, and the air was like that of the Black Hole of Calcutta. So, after depositing my cloak and bag in an empty seat, I quietly propped both doors open with a stick of wood, shut up the stoves, and opened all the ventilators with the poker. But the celestial breeze, so grateful to me, had the most unhappy effect on the slumbering ...
— Eighty Years And More; Reminiscences 1815-1897 • Elizabeth Cady Stanton
... through each window at top: the doors, too, were perforated with numerous holes. In this way, a free circulation was secured, and so arranged, that the nurses could not control it; for some of the old-fashioned nurses would not have opened a window in the Black Hole at Calcutta, for fear the inmates should catch ...
— Parks for the People - Proceedings of a Public Meeting held at Faneuil Hall, June 7, 1876 • Various
... to me then in the minutes that followed that there were thousands of black demons in that black hole. At the first rushing impact I shouted to Harry: "Keep your back to the wall," and for response I got a high, ringing laugh that breathed ...
— Under the Andes • Rex Stout
... shot boomed across the sunny, blue expanse of water, driving a white puff of smoke before it. The shell disappeared in the waves about one hundred yards ahead of the Japanese steamer. The next shot struck the ship, leaving in her side a black hole with jagged ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... him in her arms, as though she feared to see him disappear down the black hole, and, in ...
— The Phantom of the Opera • Gaston Leroux
... are not exempt. The punishment of the latter for small offences is imprisonment, and a bread and water diet. An ensign, a good friend of ours at this place, told us, that, for having been concerned in a drunken riot, he was confined in the black hole for three months, and fed upon bread and water; which, he said, so shattered his nerves, that he had never since had spirits for a common ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 17 • Robert Kerr
... that marvelous tale. For years it has peeked out at me from a certain pigeon hole in my desk with the anguish of a prisoner in the Black Hole of Calcutta, and with as little hope for its liberation into the glad air of a free press. Yet it is with me now in Paris. In that last distracted moment of packing, when all sense of what is needed has left one, it was thrust ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... them, and his right hand flashed to the switch controlling the zone of force. Fast as he was, much happened in the mere moment that passed before his flying hand could close the switch. In the last infinitesimal instant of time before the zone closed in, a gaping black hole appeared in the incandescence of the inner screen, and a small portion of a ray of energy so stupendous as to be palpable, struck, like a tangible projectile, the exposed flank of the Skylark. Instantly the refractory arenak turned ...
— Skylark Three • Edward Elmer Smith
... hatch of the ship shimmered, dissolved into a black hole. Behind Travis someone let out the ...
— The Defiant Agents • Andre Alice Norton
... off than if she were in the Black Hole of Calcutta; but that doesn't make either her or us cool," said Emma Lascelles, an elder girl. "Don't preach, Peony; lessons are ...
— Six to Sixteen - A Story for Girls • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... perceived it burning in the midst of his toilet-table mat. He caught it up hastily, and it went out. His perception of possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "Here! you be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking-glass. By this help he communed with himself in silence for ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... a pallet where lay a face like a girl's, Young, and pathetic with dying,—a deep black hole in the curls. ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 6 • Various
... with the old Faust-books, and there is even the trace of one before the oldest Faust-book; at least in the archives of the University of Tuebingen an entry has been unearthed in which in 1587 two students were condemned to the 'Karzer,' or 'Black hole,' for composing a 'Puppenspiel' on the subject of ...
— The Faust-Legend and Goethe's 'Faust' • H. B. Cotterill
... be present, and I then endeavored to raise the stone by pulling on the cravat. I could only move it slightly, and it was with the aid of one of the constables that I succeeded at last in carrying it to one side. A black hole yawned beneath into which we all peered, while Musgrave, kneeling at the side, pushed down ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... pressure the door gave a little at the corners, but not midway along the side where the fastening was. Archer turned cold at the thought of their predicament, and for a moment even Tom's rather dull imagination pictured the ghastly fate made possible by imprisonment in this black hole. ...
— Tom Slade with the Boys Over There • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... he led the way down the long hall with his noiseless, gliding steps. Laurie, following close behind him, reflected that the place was exactly the sort the ophidian Shaw would choose for a lair, a long black hole, ending in—what? ...
— The Girl in the Mirror • Elizabeth Garver Jordan
... sickness so keenly in my life. If I could only have been on deck with the rest, where something was to be done, and seen, and heard; where there were fellow-beings for companions in duty and danger—but to be cooped up alone in a black hole, in equal danger, but without the power to do, was the hardest trial. Several times, in the course of the night, I got up, determined to go on deck; but the silence which showed that there was nothing doing, and the knowledge that I might make myself seriously ill, for nothing, ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... bright room when you are inside of it; quite as bright as there is any occasion for it to be, that its little lady may see to keep it tidy. Well, it is very probable, also, that if you could look into your heart from the sun's point of view, it might appear a very black hole indeed: nay, the sun may sometimes think good to tell you that it looks so to Him; but He will come into it, and make it very cheerful for you, for all that, if you don't put the shutters up. And the one question for YOU, remember, is not "dark or ...
— The Ethics of the Dust • John Ruskin
... the ends opposite from men were lost in infinite distance? To dance, or not to dance, was all the choice men had, and rather than play a part in such a show as fell to his lot, it seemed better to break the strings and let the miserable marionette fall into the black hole behind ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... look sharply at the eyeball you will see a small black hole just in the centre. This is a little window which lets the light into the inside of the eyeball. We call this the pupil. Just around the pupil is a colored ring which gives the eye its color. We say a person has blue or brown or gray eyes according as this ring is blue or brown or gray. This ...
— First Book in Physiology and Hygiene • J.H. Kellogg
... seen thee in the wood. I said in my heart, 'He is noble, he is brave. He will rest not night nor day whilst his brother lies a captive in these cruel hands. I have but to watch and to wait. He will surely come. And when he comes, I will show him the black hole in the wall — the dark passage to the moat — and he will dare to enter where never man has entered before. He will save his brother, and my vow will ...
— In the Days of Chivalry • Evelyn Everett-Green
... tablets. In the kitchen the cooks and amahs were busy with the feast-cooking. Candles were stuck everywhere on the tables and benches. They threw little pools of light on the floor before the stove and looked at the empty niche. In the night it was merely a black hole in the stove filled with formless shadow. ...
— O Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories of 1919 • Various
... but just a bit piny and dwiny from the heat. Our place is like the Black Hole of Calcutta for stuffiness. She is that languid and fretty that we can't get her to eat, so my wife made me take her out for ...
— Herb of Grace • Rosa Nouchette Carey
... all, was eager to go on. She patted the dog, and "taking herself by both ears," as she expressed it afterwards, walked steadily forward, pushed aside the dense tangle of vines and bushes, and stooped down to enter the black hole which led into the ...
— Queen Hildegarde • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... when we emerged, but there were sufficient stars out to show up the outline of the gaping walls on either side of our way. We passed a number of sentries and entered a black hole in the wall of a ruin. After stumbling over the uneven floor in a darkened passage for some minutes, we entered a small room where several officers were gathered around a table on which two burning candles were stuck in bottles. Our guide, stepping to one end of the room, ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... frightened cry came from his lips. There was no one else in the room, but his eyes ran swiftly to the visiphone. With careful precision Roger Strang brought the heat-pistol to eye level, and pulled the trigger. Farrel Strang crumpled slowly from the knees, a black hole ...
— Infinite Intruder • Alan Edward Nourse
... could not—146 in number—were shut up all night in a small room, in the hottest time of the year, and they were so crushed together and suffocated by the heat that, when the morning came, there were only twenty-three of them alive. This dreadful place was known as the Black Hole of Calcutta. The next year Calcutta was won back again; and the English, under Colonel Clive, gained so much ground that the French had no power left in India, and the English could go on obtaining more and more ...
— Young Folks' History of England • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The Black Hole of Calcutta, of which you have read so much, no longer exists. Its former site is now partially built over, but Lord Curzon has had it marked, and that portion which is now uncovered he has had paved with marble, so that a visitor can see just how large an area was ...
— Modern India • William Eleroy Curtis
... portion of the wall thus revealed, about two feet square, was a wooden trap door, fastened by a button. Colwyn unfastened the button, and opened the door. A black hole ...
— The Shrieking Pit • Arthur J. Rees
... the cafe called back, "We can't hear you," and I repeated, "Fire higher! You nearly hit me," and pointed with my finger to where the big 44-calibre ball had left a black hole in the green paint of the trough. When they saw this there were excited exclamations from the men, and I heard the one who was giving the orders repeating my warning. And then came the shock of another volley. Simultaneously with the shock a bullet cut through ...
— Captain Macklin • Richard Harding Davis
... All Europe was filled with horror at the history of the one hundred and twenty unfortunate Englishmen that were suffocated in the black hole of Calcutta. Little was it thought that an English nobleman (lord Rawdon) would so soon have repeated that crime, by crowding one hundred and sixty-four unfortunate Americans into a small prison in Camden, ...
— The Life of General Francis Marion • Mason Locke Weems
... sir. I suppose it was all due to the excitement and being fagged out with what we'd gone through in that black hole." ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... to tell you the truth,—I can do it now,—for me it means a jump out of a particularly black hole. You must understand that we're not doing downright badly; we pay our way, but that was about all. I, individually, shouldn't have paid my way for many months longer. God! how I clutched at it! You don't know what ...
— The Whirlpool • George Gissing
... greed of shipowners, and the emigrant-ships rivalled the cabins of Mayo or the fever-sheds of Skibbereen. Crowded and filthy, carrying double the legal number of passengers, who were ill-fed and imperfectly clothed, and having no doctor on board, the holds, says an eyewitness, were like the Black Hole of Calcutta, and deaths occurred in myriads. The survivors, on their arrival in the new country, continued to die and to ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne
... harbour-town, and presently swarmed out to sell and to buy, and there they delayed for a term of two months until they had finished their business and they had purchased them what sufficed of provaunt. All this while the Prince lay bound in the black hole deep down in the ship's hold, nor did anyone go near him save a Jew, a man of a certain age.[FN533] And whenever he entered that dismal place he heard the youth reciting from the Koran and he would stand to hearken until his heart was softened to the speaker and he would favour him ...
— Supplemental Nights, Volume 5 • Richard F. Burton
... had none of the feast, was not very sleepy, and woke up when he heard footsteps near him. The magicians asked him if he could show them to the lowest part of the castle. "All right," said he; "this way;" and he led them to where there was a great black hole, with a windlass over it. "Get in the bucket," said he, "and I ...
— Ting-a-ling • Frank Richard Stockton
... right, Hugh!" she murmured, patting my arm as if I had been some child that had just started awake from a bad dream. "There's no harm come to me at all, barring the weary waiting in this black hole of a place!—I've had food and drink and a light, as you see—they promised me I should have no harm when they locked me in. But oh, it's seemed like it was ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... and insects in the open, too, but suffered less, because of mutual distraction. The rest of us took turns with the natives below, lying packed between them, much as sardines nestle in a can, wondering whether the famous Black Hole of Calcutta was really such a record-breaker as they say. Brown was of the opinion that the Black Hole was a nosegay compared to our lot —"Besides which, they probably had rum with 'em!" ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... nose in. Then she pushed and twisted her head this way and that. The little door slowly slid back, and when Reddy turned to speak to her again, for he had had his back to her, she was nowhere to be seen. Reddy just gaped and gaped foolishly. There was no Granny Fox, but there was a black hole where she had been working, and from it came the most delicious smell,—the smell of fat hens! It seemed to Reddy that his stomach fairly flopped over with longing. He rubbed his eyes to be sure that he was awake. Then in a twinkling he ...
— Old Granny Fox • Thornton W. Burgess |
