"Cracking" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... tepefaction^, torrefaction^; melting, fusion; liquefaction &c 335; burning &c v.; ambustion^, combustion; incension^, accension^; concremation^, cremation; scorification^; cautery, cauterization; ustulation^, calcination; cracking, refining; incineration, cineration^; carbonization; cupellation [Chem]. ignition, inflammation, adustion^, flagration^; deflagration, conflagration; empyrosis^, incendiarism; arson; auto dafe [Fr.]. boiling ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... armed man, coming ever nearer and nearer, and now close to the entrance of the cave. In vain did Froda strive to free himself from the trembling maiden. Already the branches before the entrance were cracking and breaking, and Froda sighed deeply. "Must I, then, fall like a lurking fugitive, entangled in a woman's garments? It is a base death to die. But can I cast this half-fainting creature away from me on the dark, ...
— Aslauga's Knight • Friedrich de la Motte Fouque
... seems to be the theory of the De Monarchia of Dante. But there was one contemporary of Dante who said a wise thing, prophetic of the future. Rex est in regno suo, wrote Bartolus of Sassoferrato, imperator regni sui. In that sentence we may hear the cracking of the Middle Ages. When kings become 'entire emperors of their realms' (the phrase was used in England by Richard II, and the imperial style was affected by Henry VIII), unity soon prepares to fly out ...
— The Unity of Civilization • Various
... must be admitted that the public's curiosity aroused by her altercations with the police of the North and her whip-cracking exploits among the Prussian gendarmes has not been satisfied. We imagine that Mademoiselle Lola would do better on horseback than on ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... terror and despair, and nothing was to be heard but shrieks, outcries, and wild lamentations. The sky was one vast lurid canopy, like molten brass, day and night, for four days, while the whole city presented a scene of indescribable and awful din; the cracking and thundering of the flames, the frenzied screams of the women and children, the terrific falling of spires, towers, walls, and lofty battlements, the frightful explosions of the houses, blown up by gunpowder in the vain hope of stopping the progress of the flames, all formed a scene of grandeur ...
— History of King Charles II of England • Jacob Abbott
... in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 6 • Charles H. Sylvester
... from the muzzles of the revolvers, and the cracking of the weapons was followed by cries ...
— Frank Merriwell Down South • Burt L. Standish
... choked, straining against the immense clamp of his arms. When his wet red lips pushed out between his beards to kiss her she kicked. Her toes drummed against something stiff and thin that gave way and sprang out again with a cracking ...
— Mary Olivier: A Life • May Sinclair
... cushat croods, the corbie cries, The cuckoo conks, the prattling pies To geck there they begin; The jargon of the jangling jays, The cracking craws and keckling kays, They deav'd me with their din; The painted pawn, with Argus eyes, Can on his May-cock call, The turtle wails, on wither'd trees, And Echo answers all. Repeating, with greeting, ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... for a review. The carts and vehicles are usually balanced in the centre upon two wheels, which diminishes much of the pressure upon the horse. Yet the caps of the wheels are frightfully long, and inconveniently projecting: while the eternally loud cracking of the whip is most repulsive to nervous ears. On market days, the horses stand pretty close to each other for sale; and are led off, for shew, amidst boys, girls, and women, who contrive very dexterously to get out of the way of their active hoofs. The French seem ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume One • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... procession. The rain poured down in amazing volume; the ear-splitting thunder-peals broke nearer and nearer; the wind increased in fury and began to wrench off boughs and tree-tops and send them sailing away through space; the pilot-house fell to rocking and straining and cracking and surging, and I went down in the hold to see ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... for the drama. Somebody cheated me out of it next day; and my new pair of breeches, just sent home, cracking at first putting on, I exclaimed, in my wrath, "All tailors are cheats, and all men are tailors." Then ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... is frightful so long as the cause does remain a mystery, if the child lives to be a hundred years old. During a thunder-storm children will picture to themselves a battle going on above. Some think of the sky cracking or the moon bursting, or conceive of the firmament as a dome of metal over which ...
— Your Child: Today and Tomorrow • Sidonie Matzner Gruenberg
... noise in her way as the dogs did in theirs, and the din was deafening; an exasperating kind of din too, not incessant, but intermittent, now swelling to a climax, now lulling, until there seemed some hope that it would cease altogether, then bursting out again, whip cracking, dogs howling and barking, feet scampering, Angelica ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... cracking, in sudden breaks, like that which great animals make in gnawing hard substances, was now heard from the cage of the lion. It drew the attention of the Prophet, who, leaving the tiger, advanced towards ...
— The Wandering Jew, Complete • Eugene Sue
... their incomplete vision. All the aquatic animals are deaf, or rather they completely lack the organs of hearing, because they are unnecessary to them. Atmospheric agitations, thunder-bolts and hurricanes do not penetrate the water. Only the cracking shell of certain crabs and the dolorous moaning near the surface of certain fishes, called ...
— Mare Nostrum (Our Sea) - A Novel • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... Ab and Oak were among those early in the valley, Beechleaf and Bark, wide-eyed and curious, coming upon the scene as a sort of advance guard and proudly greeting Ab. All about was heard clucking talk and laughter, an occasional shout, and ever the cracking of stone upon the more fragile thing, as the monster's roasted bones were broken to secure the marrow ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... representatives of the eyebrows in the; hands of the; absence of mastoid processes in the; platforms built by the; cracking nuts with a stone; direction of the hair on the arms of the; supposed evolution of the; polygamous ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... appearance in the yard. The coupled hounds gave tongue at once, and sang out most melodiously, and all the other dogs within the kennels, or roaming at will about the yard, joined the concert. After much swearing, cracking of whips, and yelping consequent upon the cracking, silence was in some degree restored, and a consultation was then held between Nicholas and Crouch as to where their steps should first be bent. The old huntsman was for drawing the river near a place called Bean Hill Wood, as the trees thereabouts, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... to fall, he stood there weak and faint, while the dogs, on the other side of the wooden partition which now separated him from death—and what a death! erect upon their hind legs, like rampant, heraldic animals, tried to break through, cracking, in their gory jaws, long strips of wood torn from the barrier which kept them ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... a few moments' silence, during which the two fugitives clutched each other's hands so tightly that Punch's nerves literally quivered as he listened for the sharp cracking of the boards, which he seemed to know must ...
— !Tention - A Story of Boy-Life during the Peninsular War • George Manville Fenn
... first, but when the creatures commenced to come closer, frequently hitting the windows with their sharp beaks, and cracking two of them, they began to get really alarmed. Once the propeller struck the tail of one bold and incautious condor, and feathers flew in all directions; but after a quick circle he was ...
— Around the World in Ten Days • Chelsea Curtis Fraser
... shown an appliance for cracking nuts which will prevent many a bruised thumb. To anyone who has ever tried to crack butternuts it needs no further recommendation. The device is nothing more than a good block of hardwood with a few holes bored in it to fit the different sized nuts. There is no need of holding the nut ...
— The Boy Mechanic: Volume 1 - 700 Things For Boys To Do • Popular Mechanics
... upon our decks, covering everything with water. At the same time, the hull lifted, and, aided by wind, sea and current, it set still further on the reef, thumping in a way to break strong iron bolts, like so many sticks of sealing-wax, and cracking the solid live-oak of the floor-timbers as if they were made of willow. The captain stood aghast! For one moment despair was painfully depicted in his countenance; then he recovered his self-possession ...
— Afloat And Ashore • James Fenimore Cooper
... and borrowed some pins, and pinned up my shirt tail as well as I could. I then went into the dance, and told the fiddler to play me a jig. Che, che, che, went the fiddle, when the banjo responded with a thrum, thrum, thrum, with the loud cracking of the bone player. I seized a little Sambo gal, and round and round the room we went, my money and my buttons going jingle, jingle, jingle, seemed to take a lively part with the music, and to my great satisfaction every eye seemed ...
— Narrative of the Life of J.D. Green, a Runaway Slave, from Kentucky • Jacob D. Green
... creature tires me out," grunted the executioner. "He bites his lips and smiles right in my face when his very bones are cracking." ...
— The Day of Wrath • Maurus Jokai
... short I penetrated so far that I came at last to India Pastinaca,(21) where I swear to you by the habit that I wear, that I saw pruning-hooks(22) fly: a thing that none would believe that had not seen it. Whereof be my witness that I lie not Maso del Saggio, that great merchant, whom I found there cracking nuts, and selling the shells by retail! However, not being able to find that whereof I was in quest, because from thence one must travel by water, I turned back, and so came at length to the Holy Land, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... young East-Side Jewish stenographer named Bessie Kraker made up the office force of Troy Wilkins. The office was on the eighth floor of the Septimus Building, which is a lean, jerry-built, flashingly pretentious cement structure with cracking ...
— The Job - An American Novel • Sinclair Lewis
... dawned. The brag-party broke up and settlements were being made, during which operation the Captain's bragging propensities were exercised in cracking up the speed of his boat, which, by his reckoning, must have made at least sixty miles, and would have made many more if he could have procured good wood. It appears the two passengers, in their first lesson, had incidentally lost one hundred ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... Soudra's doctrine solemn; Ne'er forget one portion slight Yes, a soul so richly gifted Every child of man can find, If to mighty Foutsa lifted He but keep his heart and mind. He who goods and cattle lacking Is to fell disease a prey, In whose household bones are cracking, Cuts occurring every day, Who though slumbering never resteth From excess of bitter pain, And what he in prayer requesteth Never, never can obtain,— To earth-favouring Foutsa's figure If but reverence he shall pay Dire misfortune's dreadful rigour ...
— Targum • George Borrow
... to talk turkey to me on one point!" asserted Daunt, his veneer of dignity cracking wide and showing the coarser grain of his nature. "I made you a square business proposition and you insulted me—under the roof of a gentleman who had vouched ...
— All-Wool Morrison • Holman Day
... kneeling, tying the boy's shoe. She rose slowly with a very white face and with her hands pressed to either temple, as if she were afraid of her head cracking open. She could say nothing but the same ...
— L'Assommoir • Emile Zola
... and collected the stray ears. The hammering of scythes after the day's work was done, this monotonous village music, had ceased; in its stead could now be heard by day the creaking of ox carts over the hardened clayey road, while cries of "gee," "haw" and the cracking of whips woke the echoes in the ...
— The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Masterpieces of German Literature Vol. 19 • Various
... winter travelling is the want of water. We were obliged to content ourselves with the supply gotten from the snow, melted by the smoky fire. This water, together with the wind, had the effect of parching and cracking my swollen lips to such a degree, that when, after an interval of eight days, I had an opportunity of surveying my face in a piece of broken glass, I was at a loss to recognise my own features. The most scorching heat of summer is not so ...
— Georgie's Present • Miss Brightwell
... at the edges, so as to be considerably concaved between them, the joints on the rafters being covered by inverted caps or troughs. The concave form of the sheet is designed to prevent the sheet metal from cracking, to which it is subject by expansion and contraction ...
— Scientific American, Vol.22, No. 1, January 1, 1870 • Various
... sometimes resorted to, both in poems and pictures; namely, in the sympathy excited by excruciating bodily suffering. Suppose a man on the rack to be placed before us,—perhaps some miserable victim of the Inquisition; the cracking of his joints is made frightfully audible; his calamitous "Ah!" goes to our marrow; then the cruel precision of the mechanical familiar, as he lays bare to the sight his whole anatomy of horrors. And suppose, too, the executioner compelled to his task,—consequently an irresponsible ...
— Lectures on Art • Washington Allston
... delay on the ground that he had been away in the Isle of Dogs cracking a crib, wrote suggesting that the Germans and Moroccans should combine with a view to playing the Confidence Trick on the Swiss general, who seemed a simple sort of chap. "Reminds me of dear old Maclean," wrote ...
— The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England - A Tale of the Great Invasion • P. G. Wodehouse
... pretty feelingly, David. Isn't our property as good a thing as we of the Boston end have been cracking it up to be?" ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... on the old bay window! Like an occasional discharge of mimic musketry, it comes clashing, beating, and cracking upon the small panes; but they resist it—their small size saves them; the wind, the hail, the rain, ...
— Varney the Vampire - Or the Feast of Blood • Thomas Preskett Prest
... my practise, quit his fortunes here (Which you knew great) and to the hazard Of all Incertainties, himselfe commended, No richer then his Honor: How he glisters Through my Rust? and how his Pietie Do's my deeds make the blacker? Paul. Woe the while: O cut my Lace, least my heart (cracking it) Breake too ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... this place on our outward march, we saw at a distance what appeared to be a heavy gun, but as we approached it proved to be a large cart, on which was mounted a great wooden mortar, which had, perhaps, been used by negroes for cracking corn. When we returned a hog's head was fixed in the mouth of the mortar. "There," remarked an officer, "is the first Quaker we have seen on the Peninsula." "You must sketch it," said the colonel of the Seventy-seventh, and ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens
... silence as of death reigned in the mine; then there was a sharp cracking explosion, followed—or rather, prolonged—by another like thunder, and, while a flash of fire seemed to surround them, filling the air, firing their clothes, and scorching their limbs, the whole mine shook with a deep continuous roaring. The men ...
— Facing Death - The Hero of the Vaughan Pit. A Tale of the Coal Mines • G. A. Henty
... what you will, Peggy!" he cried, his big voice cracking and sobbing and resonant with pain. "Ah, my dear, think what you will, but don't grieve for it, Peggy! Why, if I'm all you say I am, that's no reason you should suffer for it! Ah, don't, Peggy! In God's name, ...
— The Eagle's Shadow • James Branch Cabell
... night. We crossed the field to the farmhouse which we found filled to overflowing. Ambulances were waiting there to carry the wounded back to Ypres. I saw many friends carried in, and men were lying on the pavement outside. Bullets were cracking against the outer brick walls. One Highlander mounted guard over a wounded German prisoner. He had captured him and was filled with the hunter's pride in his game. "I got him myself, Sir, and I was just going to run him through with my bayonet when he told me he had five children. As I have ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... these melancholy thoughts, a huge wave took him and washed him overboard, ship and all upset amidst the billows, he struggling afar off, clinging to her stern broken off which he yet held, her mast cracking in two with the fury of that gust of mixed winds that struck it, sails and sailyards fell into the deep, and he himself was long drowned under water, nor could get his head above, wave so met with wave, as ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... Wellsville, Paul had an awful time in an ice gorge. He could hear it cracking and grinding below as though warning him of danger. He succeeded in climbing on a cake which saved him from being carried under, and made his way to clear water ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... that his companion was evidently so much out of temper that he was not thinking of what he was doing at the moment. The coachman cracked his whip, and the spirited horses went off, at a rate of speed that threatened danger to persons traversing the narrow streets of the town. The cracking of the coachman's whip, and an occasional loud shout and the jangling of the bells, gave, however, sufficient warning of ...
— A Jacobite Exile - Being the Adventures of a Young Englishman in the Service of Charles the Twelfth of Sweden • G. A. Henty
... other. The seedlings differ in traits of vigor, hardiness, susceptibility to disease, time of beginning to bear, productiveness, and longevity, and the nuts vary in size, form, thickness of shell, ease of cracking, and ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various
... she could bear it no longer. They were singing now—a terrible thing with a refrain of oaths and GEE-UPS, and whistling noises like the cracking of whips—a bullock drivers' camp ditty. Bridget shudderingly decided that a row in Whitechapel could be nothing to this in the matter of bad language. She got up and paced the sitting-room in her dressing-gown, ...
— Lady Bridget in the Never-Never Land • Rosa Praed
... that he should continually realize a surplus: otherwise his existence is precarious, monotonous, fatiguing. The interest due to the capitalist by the producer therefore is like the lash of the planter cracking over the head of the sleeping slave; it is the voice of progress crying: "On, on! Toil, toil!" Man's destiny pushes him to happiness: that is why ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... He tasted the blood his teeth drew from his own skin as he recited that formula. Then he scrambled up. His feet tangled in the net, and he went down again, his head cracking on a ...
— Star Hunter • Andre Alice Norton
... his chair, placed his finger-tips together, and closed his eyes, with an air of resignation. Dr. Mortimer turned the manuscript to the light and read in a high, cracking voice the following curious, ...
— Hound of the Baskervilles • Authur Conan Doyle
... riven bare to the heavens. Timbers were creaking and splintering in every direction. There was a great gap already in the side of the steamer, as though some one had taken a cut out of it. Then, high above the shrieking of the escaped steam and the cracking of woodwork, the siren of the boat screamed out its frantic summons for help. Geraldine for the moment lost her nerve. She began to shriek, and ran towards the nearest boat, into which the people were climbing like ants. Thomson ...
— The Kingdom of the Blind • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... At length, some of them came upon the spot, where lay the bones of the bear at some distance out from the fire. These they attacked at once; and through the dim light Basil could see them rushing from all quarters to come in for a share. He could hear the bones cracking under their teeth, and could see them struggling and worrying the skeleton and each other in a moving mass. This soon ended. The bones were scraped clean in a twinkling; and the wolves now left them, and scattered over the ground ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... cracking twigs, of a heavy body forcing its way through undergrowth, and the first whip crashed out of the cover, his horse stumbling as he landed, but recovering ...
— The Four Faces - A Mystery • William le Queux
... metal was gone—snapped off into space. Thad clung desperately to the wire, muscles cracking, tortured arms almost drawn from their sockets. Fear flashed over his mind; what if the wire broke, and left him floating helpless ...
— Salvage in Space • John Stewart Williamson
... steady work. Work which brings all the muscles of the body into play and which demands the fixed attention of the mind and its submission to the word of command from the instructor, is many times more distasteful than the "hard labour" of lazily cracking stones. ...
— A Plea for the Criminal • James Leslie Allan Kayll
... be led down the stairs, and so came to the porter's lodge, where he beheld a half-dozen Marats assembled round a table, with bumpers of wine before them, bawling, singing, cursing, and cracking lewd jests at the expense of each prisoner as he entered. The place was in a litter. A lamp had been smashed, and there was a puddle of wine on the floor from a bottle that had been knocked over. On a bench against the wall were ...
— The Historical Nights' Entertainment • Rafael Sabatini
... got to the bow an' found the deck hand who had let down the anchor. He was blind an' his flesh was crisped and cracking. ...
— Plotting in Pirate Seas • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... have been used in the United States for the production of water gas, which, after or during manufacture, is mixed with the vapors and permanent gases obtained by cracking various grades of paraffin oil, and "fixing" them by subjecting them to a high temperature; and in considering the subject of enrichment of coal gas by carbureted water gas, I shall be forced, ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 794, March 21, 1891 • Various
... altar—not, however, in its original frame, which was removed in the seventeenth century. It seems that there was a lunette over the top, containing a Pieta.[75] Terribly defaced by bad restoration, and the cracking of the later paint, it is still a very beautiful work, and its predella has all the qualities of boldness and freedom characteristic of the master's best times. Some of the figures are perhaps too obviously life-studies, especially ...
— Luca Signorelli • Maud Cruttwell
... manageable, a good smash in the regions either of the teeth, or of the ribs—both, if possible, preferred—was supposed to improve the transaction so much, that, what with the tooth dropping, or the rib cracking, or both, as aforesaid, it was considered 'settled.' Thus originated the special title of 'rowdy mob,' or Tipperary, in reference to the Irish. Let ...
— The Eureka Stockade • Carboni Raffaello
... forward, cracking the fellow's head with the butt of his clubbed gun. Just as he did so Prescott fired squarely over Hal's left shoulder, knocking over a Moro bent on stabbing the sergeant from behind. The noise of that explosion, so close to his ear, deafened ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... picnic party. Again, coming from Pradelles with his brother, they saw a great empty cart drawn by six enormous horses before them on the road. The driver cried aloud and filled the mountains with the cracking of his whip. He never seemed to go faster than a walk, yet it was impossible to overtake him; and at length, at the comer of a hill, the whole equipage disappeared bodily into the night. At the time, people said it was the devil qui s'amusait ...
— Essays of Travel • Robert Louis Stevenson
... the Professor, as he rose from his cushion, cracking audibly, "so we're to have our coffee and what not over there, hey?... Well, my boy, I shan't be sorry, I confess, to have something to lean my back against—and a cigar, a mild cigar, will—ah—aid digestion. You do ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... were to have them, these brides, for the rest of our journey, in all stages and of all ages! Thus far none others had appeared as determined as were these two honey-mooners, that all the world should share their bliss. They were cracking filberts with their disengaged fingers, the other two being closely interlocked, in quite scandalous openness, when ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... men of the first troop cracking their jokes in the yard as they ate their rations and emptied their pannikin of wine ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... to examine the furnace, and assist them in breaking the ironstone. The furnace was a circular tower of clay, about ten feet high, and three in diameter; surrounded in two places with withes, to prevent the clay from cracking and falling to pieces by the violence of the heat. Round the lower part, on a level with the ground,(but not so low as the bottom of the furnace, which was somewhat concave,) were made seven openings, into every one of which were placed three tubes of clay, and the openings again plastered ...
— Life and Travels of Mungo Park in Central Africa • Mungo Park
... busy in camp with the packing for the voyage, had shared in the gloom of my temporary defeat. But now, as I plunged past them, I could see them leaping into the air and cracking their heels together with delight. They had wet every plank of her with their sweat, and they were as proud as I. In the light of the following days, their delight dwindled into a ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... huge gong sounds, the glass doors of the inner courtyard are thrown open with a flourish, and enters the huge bus fairly among those peacefully sitting at the tables, horses' hoofs striking fire, long lash-cracking volleys, wheels roaring amid hollow reverberations. From the interior of this bus emerge people; and from the top, by means of a strangely-constructed hooked ladder, are decanted boxes, trunks, and appurtenances ...
— African Camp Fires • Stewart Edward White
... and the day grew hotter and hotter, but Mollie, skimming along the bottom of the sea in the Nautilus was oblivious of heat. She was walking in the submarine forest of the Island of Crespo, treading on sand "sown with the impalpable dust of shells", when the sudden cracking of a sun-dried branch near at hand startled her and reminded her that time was passing. She closed her book, crept out of her tree, and set ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... fairies often go hunting, and faint sounds of fairy horns, the baying of fairy hounds, and the cracking of fairy whips are supposed to be heard on these occasions, while the flight of the hunters is said to resemble in ...
— The Glories of Ireland • Edited by Joseph Dunn and P.J. Lennox
... rock, for instance:[A]—1. Incomplete combustion of the explosive. 2. Compression and chemical changes induced in the surrounding material operated on. 3. Energy expended in the cracking and heating of the material which is not displaced. 4. The escape of gas through the blast-hole, and the fissures caused by the explosion. The proportion of useful work has been estimated to be from 14 to 33 per cent. ...
— Nitro-Explosives: A Practical Treatise • P. Gerald Sanford
... fiercer as the fire licked up the moisture, sharp cracking explosions as the logs split, and must, I knew, be sending off bursts of flame and spark, and above all a deep fluttering roar that grew louder and louder till all at once there was a crash, a low crackling, and then, ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... last, Baby Squealer stopped squealing; the twins giggled themselves to the Land of Nod; Wink and Wiggle could not keep their heavy eyes open any longer; and the four oldest children went sound asleep, for they had worked hard that day cracking nuts for Mammy's cake and seeding raisins for Aunt ...
— The Graymouse Family • Nellie M. Leonard
... her. He stood and looked at her, involuntarily listening to the beating of his own heart and the strange sounds from the river. There on the river, beneath the white mist, the unceasing labour went on, and sounds as of something sobbing, cracking, dropping, being shattered to pieces mixed with the tinkling of the thin bits of ice as they broke against each ...
— Resurrection • Count Leo Tolstoy
... cracking melon seeds, saying nothing but simply pursing up her lips and smiling, when, strange coincidence, Hsueeh Yen, Tai-yue's waiting-maid, walked in and handed her mistress a ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book I • Cao Xueqin
... describe the condition of the men inside the mine. "They have no food or water, except what they had in their dinner-pails; and it's been three days and a half since the explosion! They are breathing bad air; their heads are aching, the veins swelling in their foreheads; their tongues are cracking, they are lying on the ground, gasping. But they are waiting—kept alive by the faith they have in their friends on the surface, who will try to get to them. They dare not take down the barriers, because the gases would kill them at ...
— King Coal - A Novel • Upton Sinclair
... o'clock, when their father and uncle were galloping here and there in search of them, they were sitting at their rock table cracking more nuts, and listening proudly to the mimic roar of the water going over the dam they ...
— Harper's Young People, September 21, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... first meeting with the Eskimos. It may well be believed that there were both astonishment and satisfaction on board the Hope that night, when the hunting party returned, much sooner than had been expected, with the whip cracking, the men cheering, the dogs howling, and the sledge ...
— Fast in the Ice - Adventures in the Polar Regions • R.M. Ballantyne
... However, the Georgian Government has suffered from limited resources due to a chronic failure to collect tax revenues. Georgia's new government is making progress in reforming the tax code, enforcing taxes, and cracking down on corruption. Georgia also suffers from energy shortages; it privatized the T'bilisi electricity distribution network in 1998, but payment collection rates remain low, both in T'bilisi and throughout ...
— The 2005 CIA World Factbook • United States. Central Intelligence Agency
... toward the water again and gave a long, quavering cry that sounded like a call. He listened, but everything was silent except for the rumbling and cracking of the ice in the distance. Again he called, and this time there was an answering cry, and another, and another. Sprawley stood up and waved his paws, and then Teddy saw that the open water was dotted with heads of ...
— The Counterpane Fairy • Katharine Pyle
... regularly done out of a situation, in which the most poignant agony of mind and dreary anticipations would have been absolutely required of him. He pictured the scene to himself; he lying fermenting in the barrel, like a curious vintage; the bear sniffing querulously round it, perhaps cracking it like a cocoa-nut, or extracting him like a periwinkle! Of these chances he had been deprived by the interference of the crew. Friends are often ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... miserable pride, converted the Diet into the mockery of a government. Ostap endured the torture like a giant. Not a cry, not a groan, was heard. Even when they began to break the bones in his hands and feet, when, amid the death-like stillness of the crowd, the horrible cracking was audible to the most distant spectators; when even his tormentors turned aside their eyes, nothing like a groan escaped his lips, nor did his face quiver. Taras stood in the crowd with bowed head; and, raising his eyes proudly at that moment, ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... aim and not too good, for the animal disappeared in the farther bush, and the cracking of twigs told the young hunter that the quarry ...
— The Fiery Totem - A Tale of Adventure in the Canadian North-West • Argyll Saxby
... "But do you not worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand of God?" C. "We do." G. "Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits on the left?" C. "I did not know she did. If you can show it me in the Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her." "Oh," said my man, with uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers, "sicuro, Signor! ...
— Specimens of the Table Talk of S.T.Coleridge • Coleridge
... Sylvie had been cracking a plateful of butternuts; picking out meats, I mean, from the cracked nuts, to make a plateful; and that, if you know butternuts, you know is no small task. She brought them to her mother, with some grated maple sugar ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... music of these forests is made by crickets and tree-toads. The voice of the latter sounds like the cracking of wood. Occasionally frogs, owls, and goat-suckers croak, hoot, and wail. Between midnight and 3 A.M. almost perfect silence reigns. At early dawn the animal creation awakes with a scream. Pre-eminent are the discordant cries of monkeys ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... the woods it seemed a divinity mourning over a fallen people. The only sounds that disturbed the quiet of this buried city, were the noise of monkeys moving among the tops of the trees, and the cracking of dry branches broken by their weight. They moved over our heads in long and swift processions, forty or fifty at a time; some, with little ones wound in their long arms, walking out to the end of boughs, and holding on with their hind feet, or a curl of the tail, sprang to a ...
— Choice Specimens of American Literature, And Literary Reader - Being Selections from the Chief American Writers • Benj. N. Martin
... even before his quick muscles could act in time to save the newcomer it had happened. From behind a bush clump, a figure had popped up, rifle leveled. A thin jet of flame spat out of the rusty gun barrel, followed by a cracking report and a ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... the air; too small an angle will not generate enough lift. The tail plane must be attached with special care for its position. Its angle of incidence must exactly balance the plane, and it must be bolted on so that there is no chance of it cracking off ...
— Opportunities in Aviation • Arthur Sweetser
... hills, The following story came from her, and where she got it I do not know. She used to say it was a pleasant tale, with a good moral in the inside of it. My godmother often observed that a tale without a moral was like a nut without a kernel; not worth the cracking. (We called fire-side stories "cracks" in our part of the country.) ...
— The Brownies and Other Tales • Juliana Horatia Ewing
... the fire as only one entire arch of fire from this to the other side the bridge, and in a bow up the hill for an arch of above a mile long: it made me weep to see it. The churches, houses, and all on fire and flaming at once; and a horrid noise the flames made, and the cracking of houses at their ruins. So home with a sad heart, and there find every body discoursing and lamenting the fire; and poor Tom Hater come with some few of his goods saved out of his house, which is burned upon Fish-streets Hall. I invited him to lie at ...
— Diary of Samuel Pepys, Complete • Samuel Pepys
... wailing and uttering piercing cries. Every object of spoil was destroyed, and the torch was applied to the houses. The fire, fanned by a too willing breeze, spread rapidly, and in a moment's time, St. Gabriel was wrapt in a lurid sheet of devouring flames. We could hear the cracking of planks tortured by the blaze; the crash of falling roofs, while the flames shot up to an immense height with the hissing and soughing of a hurricane. Ah! Petiots, it was a fair image of pandemonium. The people seemed an army of fiends, spreading ...
— Acadian Reminiscences - The True Story of Evangeline • Felix Voorhies
... with a thousand noises. The Glacier wall was cracking and splitting with the noise of thunderclaps; the machines were whirring and banging and crashing. It was ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... he swung along at a cracking pace, for he could walk as well as he could run, and a finer three-quarter had never been known at Rushmere. He was a tall, powerful lad, nearly nineteen years of age, five foot ten and a half inches in his stockings, and turning the scale at twelve stone five. At the present moment he carried ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... gamut is cracking and breaking For a look, for a touch,—for such slight things; But he's such a very great musician Grimacing ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 2 (of 4) • Various
... Miles's scout was happily averted by the timely arrival of a band of mounted soldiers, whose cracking rifles laid in the dust the painted warriors—barely in time to save Little Tim, also, from utter collapse. He emerged from the tent, some hours later, wild eyed; so freighted down with red lemonade and peanuts ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... were none, or none to throw me back. At the stream-side, holding by an elder-bough, I tested the ice with my weight, proved it firm, crossed without so much as cracking it, and breasted a bare grassy slope, too little to be called a down, where a few naked hawthorns chafed and creaked in the wind. Above it was an embankment rounded like a bastion, up the left side of which I crept—or, you ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... A pedal bass, a diapasonic tone, that came from the bowels of the firmament struck fear to his heart; the tone was of such magnitude as might be overheard by the gods. No mortal ear could have held it without cracking and dying. This gigantic flood, this overwhelming and cataclysmic roar, filled every pore of Stannum's body. It blew him as a blade of grass is blown in a boreal blast; yet he sensed the pitch. Unorganized nature, the unrestrained cry of the rocks ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... O wings of the Little Death! Seal his sight and stifle his breath, Cover his breast with the gemmed shroud pressed; From north to north, from west to west, Wave, O wings of the Little Death! Till the white moon reels in the cracking skies, And the ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... stopping, the touring-car went on, sliding through the mud and over the rocks until it was practically on top of the tree. Then came a jar that threw everybody forward. The steering-wheel saved Dave, but his uncle's elbow struck the windshield, cracking ...
— Dave Porter At Bear Camp - The Wild Man of Mirror Lake • Edward Stratemeyer
... we must have made a very imposing spectacle, as we rattled through the quiet town of Compiegne, over its old stone pavement, the postilions blowing their horns, cracking their whips, the horses galloping full speed, the chars-a-bancs filled with handsomely dressed ladies, and after this long procession came the maids and the valets and mountainous piles ...
— In the Courts of Memory 1858-1875. • L. de Hegermann-Lindencrone
... the hunter his own revolver, signaling for Kelsey and Hall to do the same. The methodical cracking of the hand arms began to end the suffering of ...
— The Covered Wagon • Emerson Hough
... encumbered—for it did not occur to him that he could throw away his bundle, he was so poor—he tripped and fell. His foot caught; it is unknown in what,—in a twisted tie, or perhaps in a crevice of the cracking earth. ...
— A Lost Hero • Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward and Herbert D. Ward
... was speaking of Vaudrey's successes, he sat on the edge of a chair, staring at his hat, and wagging his jaw as if he were cracking a ...
— His Excellency the Minister • Jules Claretie
... we were up and had an early breakfast, and I had not seen the emigrants in such a cheerful mood as they all were this morning, since we left Fort Kerney. Every one was cracking jokes. ...
— Chief of Scouts • W.F. Drannan
... his party. A wild hubbub had burst forth. Muskets and pistols were cracking. Carthew, as he ran out of the hut, discharged his pistol at the sailors, but in his surprise and excitement missed them; and before he had time to level another, George Lechmere bounded upon him, and with a shout of "This is ...
— The Queen's Cup • G. A. Henty
... I had feared to light my candle lest I should make a mark of myself, but now, after cracking my shin over a box, and catching my spurs in some canvas, I thought the bolder course the wiser. I lit it, therefore, and then I advanced with long strides, my sword in my hand. 'Come out, you rascal!' I cried. 'Nothing can save you. You will at ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... comes to picking locks and cracking safes I admit to no master. The door to Inskipp's private quarters had an old-fashioned tumbler drum that was easier to pick than my teeth. I must have gone through that door without breaking step. Quiet as I was though, Inskipp still heard me. The light ...
— The Misplaced Battleship • Harry Harrison (AKA Henry Maxwell Dempsey)
... with boiling syrup, and seal at once. By this method fruit retains the flavor somewhat more than by cooking in an open kettle. An average syrup for canning fruit is made by adding a pound of sugar to a pint of water (see rule 6). In order to prevent fruit jars from cracking, wring a cloth out of cold water on which the jar should be placed before filling with the hot fruit, or by placing a silver spoon or fork in the jar before putting in the syrup, fruit or jelly. Always see that the tops are screwed on tightly before putting the ...
— Public School Domestic Science • Mrs. J. Hoodless
... that the discovery of his somewhat undignified position by these two evil-doers would not at this moment be quite opportune, so he endeavored to maintain his equilibrium at the cost of supreme discomfort, and the loud cracking of the branch on which he ...
— The Nest of the Sparrowhawk • Baroness Orczy
... a hillock, he perceived that the roadway was now a crying mass of wagons, teams, and men. From the heaving tangle issued exhortations, commands, imprecations. Fear was sweeping it all along. The cracking whips bit and horses plunged and tugged. The white-topped wagons strained and stumbled in their exertions ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... the man's eyes upon him in everything he did, and it robbed him of his confidence. He silently tested things, and saw everything in a new light; it was best not to make a noise, if you were always walking in the sight of God. He did not go on cracking his cattle-whip, but meditated a little on whether ...
— Pelle the Conqueror, Complete • Martin Andersen Nexo
... them well, Malise," said the Lord James; "'twas you who did the skull-cracking at any rate. See if your leechcraft can tell us if any of these young rogues are likely to die. I would not have their deaths on my conscience ...
— The Black Douglas • S. R. Crockett
... dhurra is sown in parallel rows about 3 feet apart, and the ground was perfectly flat, there was no difficulty in approaching the direction whence the cracking of the dhurra could be distinctly heard. The elephants appeared to be feeding towards us with considerable rapidity, and in a few minutes I heard the sound of crunching within 50 yards of me. I immediately ran along the clear passage between the tall stems, ...
— Wild Beasts and their Ways • Sir Samuel W. Baker
... Virginie the greengrocer? The urchins of the neighborhood as they ran past the shop would fling disgusting remarks at him just to see him cast down his eyes. The girls amused themselves by walking up and down before him, cracking jokes that made him go into the store. The boldest among them teased him to his face just to have a laugh, to amuse themselves, made appointments with him and proposed ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... pleasure in running the rapids. We had got over a great part of the day in safety, and were in the act of running the first part of the Rose Rapid, when our canoe struck upon a rock, and wheeling round with its broadside to the stream, began to fill quickly. I could hear the timbers cracking beneath me under the immense pressure. Another minute, and we should have been gone; but our men, who were active fellows, and well accustomed to such dangers, sprang simultaneously over the side of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... another attempt and met with repulse, did not hesitate to tell a committee of the House of Commons, which summoned him to appear as a witness, that the range was impassable. It seemed that Nature had tumbled down an impenetrable bewilderment of rock, the hillsides cracking into deep, dark crevices, and the crests of the mountains showing behind and beyond a massed confusion of crags and hollows, trackless and untraversable. Governor King declared himself satisfied that the effort to cross the range was a task "as ...
— The Life of Captain Matthew Flinders • Ernest Scott
... alternated with deep hollows, so as to form strong shadows. Now look under the abacus of this capital; you will find the stone hollowed out wonderfully; and also in this arch-mould. It is often difficult to understand how it could be done without cracking off the stone. The difference between this and late work can be felt by the hand even better than it can be seen.' He suited the action to the word and placed his ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... hardly know how to tell you. For several nights, I seemed to hear, both in the park and out of the park, round the pavilion, unusual sounds, sometimes footsteps, at other times the cracking of branches. The night before the attack on me, when I did not get to bed before three o'clock in the morning, on our return from the Elysee, I stood for a moment before my window, and I felt ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... tall bare tree trunks where I stood trotted a grey beast that was surely a shepherd's dog, for he stayed and looked back and whined a little as if his master must be waited for. I thought that I could hear the cracking of more branches once ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... believes How they laugh in their sleeves.] Hail, fellow, well met, All dirty and wet: Find out, if you can, Who's master, who's man; Who makes the best figure, The Dean or the digger; And which is the best At cracking a jest. [Now see how he sits Perplexing his wits In search of a motto To fix on his grotto.] How proudly he talks Of zigzags and walks, And all the day raves Of cradles and caves; And boasts of his feats, His grottos and seats; Shows all his gewgaws, And gapes for applause; ...
— Poems (Volume II.) • Jonathan Swift
... strangled him! The cannon had taken a hand in the game. As he shook his head free from the commotion of the smitten water he heard the deflected shot humming through the air ahead, and in an instant it was cracking and smashing the branches in the ...
— The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce, Vol. II: In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians • Ambrose Bierce
... keep this door, where I look for the main battle. In that, ye have no hand. And mind and dinnae fire to this side unless they get me down; for I would rather have ten foes in front of me than one friend like you cracking pistols at ...
— Kidnapped • Robert Louis Stevenson
... into habits which are no indication of what he regards as useful to him. Such habits have not been formed independently of his will, and yet they may appear to be purposeless, or even detrimental. Who wishes to have the inveterate habit of cracking the joints of his fingers or of biting his finger-nails? What purpose ...
— A Handbook of Ethical Theory • George Stuart Fullerton
... day, a dozen or more horsemen started off, dividing, so as to get round the pasture. Each had a stock-whip in his hand: the handle is but a foot long, but the lash is about fifteen. A loud cracking sound can be made with it, and its lash strikes through the thickest skin. The cattle, when roused, as is usual, made for the low ground, where Joseph and his sons, with one or two other men, were ready to collect ...
— Taking Tales - Instructive and Entertaining Reading • W.H.G. Kingston
... asked himself what it meant; he was become a maniac, pursued by deathless devils. He could have flown to the end of the universe in this Ballade; but, at last, his heart cracking, head bursting, face livid, overtaken by the Footsteps of the Missing, he smashed both fists upon the keys and ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... it was nothing. My mother would not agree that she might have been sleepwalking; but she was ready to put the door opening down to the fault of the latch, which certainly snicked very lightly. As for the knocks, they might be the old warped woodwork of the house cracking a bit, or a mouse rattling a piece of loose plaster. The smell was more difficult to explain; but finally we agreed that it might easily be the queer night smell of the moist earth, coming in through the open window of my mother's room, from the back garden, ...
— Carnacki, The Ghost Finder • William Hope Hodgson
... have said, it was cracking cold. We talked thirstily by the big fire, discussed the perfect yellows in Nature—symbols of purest aspiration—and the honest browns that come to the sunlight-gold from service and wear—the yellow-brown of clustered honey bees, of the Sannysin robe, of ...
— Child and Country - A Book of the Younger Generation • Will Levington Comfort
... a jet-black face, and the huge Negro lunged for Dane, roaring his rage. Before the American could dodge or strike again the other's long arms were around him. Allan was jerked against a barrel chest, felt his bones cracking in a terrific hug. Eyes, tiny and red, stared into his. Dane drove knees and fists into the Negro, but the awful pressure of those simian arms across his back increased till he could no longer breathe. The American was almost gone, the black face blurred, and the continuous snarling of the ...
— When the Sleepers Woke • Arthur Leo Zagat |
