"Crackle" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the noise outside. The crackle of musketry was more noticeable, and every now and then there seemed to be heavy strokes as if directed against the palace, sounding as if the people were attempting to force the iron gate of the ...
— Marie Antoinette And Her Son • Louise Muhlbach
... fire burst out of the woods at three different points. All worked with a will to stop it by cutting traces. But the wind was wild; burning masses from the tree-tops were hurled far among the canes, and all was lost. The canes burnt like shavings, exploding with a perpetual crackle at each joint. In a few hours the whole estate—works, coolie barracks, negro huts—was black ash; and the house only, by extreme exertion, saved. But the ground had scarcely cooled when replanting and rebuilding commenced; and now the canes were from ten to twelve feet ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... though of a stiller sort than that with which the world has been hitherto acquainted. Our friend from the backwoods thought there was no fire in the coal-furnace, because he could not hear it roar and crackle, and was afterwards amazed at its steady intensity of heat. Our misguided Southern brethren had the same opinion of Northern character, and burned their hands most deplorably when they ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 86, December, 1864 • Various
... tapped several times with his stick on the brick floor of the King's Head kitchen, and had not heard a sound in answer. The clock ticked to and fro, and the tabby cat purred softly as she sat before the fire, and the wood now and then gave a little crackle as it burned gently away, and those were all the signs of life to be ...
— The King's Daughters • Emily Sarah Holt
... forest. The child's lightest cry generally broke the spell of a nightmare; but the din of terrified searchers rushing through the woods and of echoes rolling eerily back from the white hills convinced him this was no dream-land. Then, the distinct crackle of trampled brushwood and the scratch of spines across his face called him back to ...
— Lords of the North • A. C. Laut
... slender saplings for these same buds. The moose returned from the blizzardy tops of the great ridges, where for good reasons they had passed the winter, followed by the wolves who fed upon their weak and sick. Everywhere were the rushing torrents of melting snow, the crackle of crumbling ice, the dying frost-cries of rock and earth and tree; and each night the pale glow of the aurora borealis crept farther and farther toward the ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... in quest of camel-thorn, bread, eggs, and pomegranates, thinking thus to obtain the luxury of a bit of fire and something to eat in comparative seclusion. This vain hope proves that I have not even yet become thoroughly acquainted with the Persians. No sooner does my camel-thorn blaze begin to crackle and the smoke to betray the whereabouts of a fire, than shivering, blue-nosed villagers begin to put in their appearance, their backs humped up and their bare ankles and slip-shod feet adding not a little ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... red seed of the red vervain weed, burn, crackle in the fire, burn, crackle for my need! Laurel leaf, O fruited branch of bay, burn, burn away thought, memory ...
— Hymen • Hilda Doolittle
... rock to rock echoed guttural voices, but, foot by foot, unnoted by the keen eyes, the two crept steadily on through the midnight of that sheltering ravine, dismounted, hands clasping the nostrils of their ponies, feeling through the darkness for each step, halting breathless at every crackle of a twig, every crunch of snow under foot. Again and again they paused, silent, motionless, as some apparition of savagery outlined itself between them and the sky, yet slowly, steadily, every instinct of the plains exercised, ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish
... Wendovers had shown Ida everything. They had opened cabinets, peered into secret drawers, sniffed at the stale pot-pourri in old crackle vases; they had dragged their willing victim through all the long slippery passages, by all the mysterious stairs and by-ways; they had obliged her to look at the interior of ghostly closets, where the ladies of old had stored their house linen or hung their mantuas and farthingales; they ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... came to one where the ledge was higher and wider. I put down the camera, wedged it level with scraps of stone, and then sat down myself to recharge the flashlight machine. But the moment my weight got on that ledge, there was a sharp crackle, and down I went ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... were by that time) and went forward three days' march. Then we camped again, much closer to the Germans this time, in fact, almost within shouting distance; and they again set up their machine, causing sparks to crackle from the wires of a telescopic tower they raised, to the very great concern of the Afghans who were in and out of both camps all day long. One message that an Afghan told me the Germans had received, ...
— Hira Singh - When India came to fight in Flanders • Talbot Mundy
... answered. "Thunder is caused by the electric discharge. You've heard Bob's big wireless outfit crackle, when he sends out a ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... which had to last for two more days, was very welcome. The damp had not reached the biscuits, and for several minutes it could be heard cracking under the solid teeth of Dick Sand and his companions. Between Hercules's jaws it was like grain under the miller's grindstone. It did not crackle, ...
— Dick Sand - A Captain at Fifteen • Jules Verne
... or pamper us. We must see that the world is rough and surly, and will not mind drowning a man or a woman; but swallows your ship like a grain of dust.—The way of Providence is a little rude. The habit of snake and spider, the snap of the tiger and other leapers and bloody jumpers, the crackle of the bones of his prey in the coil of the anaconda,—these are in the system, and our habits are like theirs. You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity,—expensive races,—race ...
— Ralph Waldo Emerson • Oliver Wendell Holmes
... was frank and elemental. It had the crisp crackle that goes with free, unfettered youth. In a parlor some of it would have been offensive, but under the stars of the open desert it was as natural as the life itself. They spoke of the spring rains, of the Crawford-Steelman ...
— Gunsight Pass - How Oil Came to the Cattle Country and Brought a New West • William MacLeod Raine
... the door, and the camp stopped to listen. Above the swaying and moaning of the pines, the swift rush of the river, and the crackling of the fire rose a sharp, querulous cry,—a cry unlike anything heard before in the camp. The pines stopped moaning, the river ceased to rush, and the fire to crackle. It seemed as if Nature ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... feet, and the thick, dusk-green branches of the fir and pine! The gloomy background seemed to invite him further into the heart of its shade and silence. No bird whistled through the glaucous green of this silent, majestic wood; nor was there any treacherous bramble to crackle beneath his feet. For upon this chill, grey carpet no flood of sunshine ever came to coax tiny sprays out of the ground; and the layers of fine needles, or tufts of dank, sunless moss were soft ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... luxury when, at the close of a toilsome day, a few pieces of bark could be so piled as to protect from wind and rain, and a roaring fire could blaze and crackle before the little camp. Then the appetite which hunger gives would enable him to feast upon the tender cuts of venison broiled upon the coals, with more satisfaction than the gourmand takes in the choicest viands of the restaurant. Having feasted ...
— David Crockett: His Life and Adventures • John S. C. Abbott
... right and jolted over what seemed to be a shallow ditch. The road that followed was of the roughest character. If it was a road at all it was a wood-track; Evan heard the twigs crackle under the tires. They lurched and bumped alarmingly. Once they had to stop to allow the chauffeur to drag some obstruction out of the way. Evidently they had not had the car that way before, for ...
— The Deaves Affair • Hulbert Footner
... large windows opening on the garden; the floor was of oak, and there was a great fireplace where the largest logs used in a country in which the wood costs nothing could find ample room to blaze and crackle. It took the young man several days to make the necessary changes, and during that time he enjoyed a respite from the petty annoyances worked by the steady hostility of Manette Sejournant and her son. To the great indignation of the inhabitants of the chateau, he packed off the massive billiard-table, ...
— A Woodland Queen, Complete • Andre Theuriet
... had picked up the billet looked from one to the other of the faces, then he turned and gazed behind him into the darkness. The floor of the clearing was dotted with the embers of dying fires, but now and again he would hear the crackle of a branch and see a little flame spirt up and shine upon the barrels of rifles and the black bodies of the sleeping troops. Round the edge of the clearing the trees rose massed and dark like a cliff's face. ...
— The Philanderers • A.E.W. Mason
... the house fell in on the three young men above, and immediately buried them for ever in its destructive flames. The assailing crowds set up a terrific shout of triumph. The floor above now began to crackle, and so dense was the smoke below, that the old man and the woman were in a state little short of suffocation. At last the Proctor became desperate, and opening one of the ground windows, and taking his poor wife by the hand, he attempted to throw himself and her out ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... increasing about the streets, for now the Bank Holiday people began to wander back from places that were not distant, and to them it had all to be explained anew. Free movement was possible everywhere in the City, but the constant crackle of rifles restricted somewhat that freedom. Up to one o'clock at night belated travellers were straggling into the City, and curious people were wandering from group to group still ...
— The Insurrection in Dublin • James Stephens
... the end further from the main building, was a small hobbed grate. By this the woman with the flaxen hair had set her coals, and was now lighting a fire, of which the paper was flaming high and the wood began already to crackle. ...
— Ambrotox and Limping Dick • Oliver Fleming
... roused, listening. The crackle of the flames was all I heard; the cannon were silent. A few moments later a clock in the hallway struck nine times. At the same instant a deadened cannon-shot echoed the clamor of the clock. It was the last shot of the battle. ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... that prospect she had through Susan's eyes more than one glimpse of the way in which Revolutions are prepared. To listen to Susan was to gather that the spark applied to the inflammables and already causing them to crackle would prove to have been the circumstance of one's being called a horrid low thief for refusing to part with one's own. The redeeming point of this tension was, on the fifth day, that it actually appeared to have had to do with a breathless perception in our heroine's ...
— What Maisie Knew • Henry James
... are in a sweat, it will be best not to move them for fear of burning, slacken the fire, when the hops are to be turned, and increase it afterwards. Hops are sufficiently dried, when their inner stalks break short, and their leaves become crisp, and fall off easily. They will crackle a little when their seed is bursting, and then they should be removed from the kiln. Hops that are dried in the sun lose their rich flavour, and, if under cover, they are apt to ferment and change with the weather, ...
— The American Practical Brewer and Tanner • Joseph Coppinger
... reeds on the end of a spear was thrust into the flickering glow, and at once took fire and burned with the utmost fury. Fresh bundles were pushed forward beside it, and these, too, flared up with a shrill crackle of snapping canes and the roar of a fire fanned by a strong draught. Inch by inch the flames moved forward, themselves a terrible enemy, and behind them crept up and up a ...
— Jack Haydon's Quest • John Finnemore
... sap, put more wood on the fire and came and pulled off his boots and lay down beside me under the robe. And, hearing the boil of the sap and the crackle of the burning logs in the arch, ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... dew sent them back to the camp. Piute and Peon were skinning coyotes by the blaze of the fire. The night wind had not yet risen; the sheep were quiet; there was no sound save the crackle of burning cedar sticks. Jack began to talk; he had to talk, so, addressing Piute and the dumb peon, he struck at random into speech, and words flowed with a rush. Piute approved, for he said "damn" whenever his intelligence grasped a meaning, and the peon twisted ...
— The Heritage of the Desert • Zane Grey
... stood beside the unconscious man. Then he looked cautiously around. The figure of his companion was lost in the shadow of the rocks above; only a slight crackle of brush betrayed his whereabouts. Suddenly Pedro flung his serape over the sleeper's head, and then threw his powerful frame and tremendous weight full upon Concho's upturned face, while his strong arms clasped the blanket-pinioned ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte
... now dark and dismal; its occupants were hurried up a stairway and into a room filled with law-books, where a sleepy Justice of the Peace was nodding in a cloud of cigar smoke. There followed a noisy shuffling of chairs, some mumbled questions and answers, the crackle of papers, a deal of unintelligible rigamarole, then a man's heavy seal-ring was slipped upon Lorelei's finger, and she knew herself to be Mrs. Robert Wharton. It was all confused, unimpressive, unreal. She was never able fully to recall the picture of ...
— The Auction Block • Rex Beach
... unreason became formidable. There she sat with her striking forehead and her quite unimportant nose, in the large austere drawing-room of the Spatts, which was so pervaded by artistic chintz that the slightest movement in it produced a crackle—and wondered why she was so much queerer than other girls ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... kneeling on the floor before the fire, arranging shining soldiers in a row, he was aware of something that made him sharply pause and raise his head. He was, for the moment, alone in the room that was glowing and quivering now in the firelight. The faint stir and crackle of the fire, the rich flaming colour that rose and fell against the white ceiling might have been enough to make him wonder. But there was also the scent of a clump of blue hyacinths standing in shadow by the darkened window, and this scent caught him, even as the fountain ...
— The Golden Scarecrow • Hugh Walpole
... tree stood on a slope nearly a mile away. The ground was hard, and the grass seemed to crackle under the galloping hoofs. The horse she rode carried her with superb ease. He was the finest animal she had ever ridden, and from the first she believed ...
— The Top of the World • Ethel M. Dell
... speeches will not serve; hard grape-shot is questionable; but hovering between the two is unquestionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of men; their infinite hum waxing ever louder, into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of stray musketry,—which latter, on walls nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for Thuriot; new deputation of citizens (it is the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates ...
— The French Revolution • Thomas Carlyle
... him from different points of the island. These sorrowful cries, almost uninterrupted, afterwards approach, and are repeated with increasing strength. He awakes, he listens; the bushes around him crackle and rustle; even the earth emits a dull sound, as beneath the bounding of a goat; the cries are renewed and become more and more distinct, like the sobs of a child. Selkirk puts his hand to his forehead. These plaints, these ...
— The Solitary of Juan Fernandez, or The Real Robinson Crusoe • Joseph Xavier Saintine
... ox with a pointed stick, the two beasts settled their massive shoulders to the collar, and with a soft greasy swish and a crackle of half-burnt stubble the moldboard rolled aside the loam. I too felt that this was a great occasion. At last I was working my own land; with the plowshare I was opening the gate of an unknown future; and my fingers tingled as I jerked the lines. Then while the coulter sheared its guiding line, ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... forms while his father ran off the edition. This was better fun than typesetting. Before you was a long roller on two other long rollers, and at your right hand was a small roller with which you picked up ink from a stone, rolling it across and across with a spirited crackle; then you ran the small roller the length of the long roller; then you turned a crank that revolved the two lower rollers, thus distributing the ink evenly over the upper one. After that you ran the upper roller out over the two forms of ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... at this task Riggs was up in the scuttle, and from time to time we could hear the crackle of flames, and then the hissing of the water as he extinguished the burning planks. The thick smoke came down the companion and burned our eyes and nostrils as it escaped ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... all one could tell, nothing was now frozen; there was not so much as an icicle anywhere visible about her. The decks were dry, and on my kicking a coil of rope that was near my feet the stuff did not crackle, as one could have expected, as though frosted to ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... other day I came to a place where the only sounds that could be heard were the intermittent crackle of rifle-fire mingling with the shrill tones of a woman haggling over the price of bread with an old chap who had driven out with his pony and cart from an adjacent town to sell his goods. The roof of the woman's house had mostly vanished and ...
— War Letters of a Public-School Boy • Henry Paul Mainwaring Jones
... little grand sometimes, and in hopes of having a fine Yule log, both brothers strove with all their might till, between pulling and pushing, the great old root was safe on the hearth, and soon began to crackle and blaze with the red embers. In high glee, the cobblers sat down to their beer and bacon. The door was shut, for there was nothing but cold moonlight and snow outside. But the hut, strewn with fir branches, and decked ...
— Granny's Wonderful Chair • Frances Browne
... for the big bucket of water, which they always kept in a certain spot. She flung the water on the flames, but water will not quench the flames made from oil. The rail began to crackle, the sparks to fly. The "Merry Maid" was afire, with only one, feeble ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... caused fires to be lighted here and there where the gaps were widest, so that we forged onwards not only to the accompaniment of the shrill cries of the mahouts and the noise of plunging and overwhelming elephants, but to the fierce roar and crackle ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... on the sofa watching Smith, who stood before me. He had not changed countenance and seemed neither troubled nor surprised; but two drops of sweat trickled down his forehead, and I heard an ivory counter crackle between his fingers, the pieces falling to the floor. He held out both ...
— The Confession of a Child of The Century • Alfred de Musset
... was heard to reply, in his deep tones—there was a crackle of dead brush, a sound as of a man tripping and falling heavily, then oaths in a voice that made the ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... it so for the same reason that Jeekie answered questions, for the sake of cheerfulness. At least it gave light in the darkness, leaping up in red tongues of flame twenty or thirty feet high, and its roar and crackle were welcome in ...
— The Yellow God - An Idol of Africa • H. Rider Haggard
... to a point on the lake nearest the fawns' hiding-place, and wait in my canoe for the mother to come out and show me where she had left her little ones. As they grew, and the drain upon her increased from their feeding, she seemed always half starved. Waiting in my canoe I would hear the crackle of brush, as she trotted straight down to the lake almost heedlessly, and see her plunge through the fringe of bushes that bordered the water. With scarcely a look or a sniff to be sure the coast was clear, she ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... time when you feel the strain most is in the winter. Then you sit at night, shivering, as a rule, beside the stove in an almost empty log-walled room, reading a book you have probably read three or four times before. Outside, the frost is Arctic; you can hear the roofing shingles crackle now and then; and you wake up when the fire burns low. There's no life, no company, rarely a new face, and if you go to a dance or supper somewhere, perhaps once a month, you ride back on a bob-sled frozen almost stiff beneath ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... with ambulances, stragglers, and wounded men. I soon had to leave my horse, and then toiled upwards, finding everywhere streams of men winding about the almost precipitous sides of the mountain, and an intermittent crackle of musketry at the top. Only one solid battalion remained—the Dorsets. All the others were intermingled. Officers had collected little parties, companies and half-companies; here and there larger bodies had formed, but there was no possibility, in the ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... moments could hardly hold my pen, so extreme was my nervousness; but when I once fairly began, my ideas crowded upon me almost faster than I could write them. And so we all sat, nothing heard but the scratching of the pens and the occasional crackle of the examiner's "Times" as he quietly looked over the news of ...
— The Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley Volume 1 • Leonard Huxley
... her lamp, took up the furnace, and, though it was still hot from recent use, placed one hand over the draft, that the fire might not ignite too rapidly, and crept out of the cellar. Any person awake in the house, might have traced the dark progress of this woman by a faint crackle, and the sparks that shot now and then up through the black mass of coal, which was kindling so fast, that the hand which she still kept upon the draft was ...
— Mabel's Mistake • Ann S. Stephens
... populace had sought their homes, and a profound quiet wrapped the streets, save where, from the fires committed in the late tumult, was yet heard the crash of roofs or the crackle of the light and fragrant timber employed in those pavilions of the summer. The manner in which the mansions of Granada were built, each separated from the other by extensive gardens, fortunately prevented ...
— Leila or, The Siege of Granada, Book V. • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... above the crackle of flames, could be heard the clanging of the alarm bell, set ringing by Koku, who had pulled the signal in the airship shed. From there it had gone to every building in the plant, being relayed by the telephone operator, whose duty it was to look ...
— Tom Swift and his Aerial Warship - or, The Naval Terror of the Seas • Victor Appleton
... parade runs swift the psychic cackle Like thorns beneath a boiling pot that crackle. And the angels say to Yahveh looking down From the alabaster railing, on the town, O, cackle, cackle, cackle, crack and crack We wish we had our ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... beside a more definite sound—the crackle of dry leaves and the snapping of twigs beneath a heavier footfall than that of any marauding Tom, and through a clearing in the woods slouched the figure of a man, gun on shoulder, the secret of his bulging side-pockets betrayed by ...
— The Hermit of Far End • Margaret Pedler
... aided me greatly, nor were there many trees along the way to drop twigs in the path to crackle under foot; yet I found the ground uneven and deceptive, rifted with small gullies, and more or less bestrewn with stones, against which I stumbled in the darkness. I was too thoroughly trained in the stern and careful school of ...
— When Wilderness Was King - A Tale of the Illinois Country • Randall Parrish
... torch. But in vain she tried to light the wick, which always spluttered and went out again. So seeing her disappointment Young Gerard hung the lantern up, saying, "Firelight is prettier." And he set her by the fire and filled her lap with cones and dry leaves and dead bracken to burn and make crackle and turn into fiery ferns. And she ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... innocent gift from some of the young men who had asked in the past to be allowed to paint Joan and received a curt negative from Gray Michael. But the other discovery meant more. Pushing her hand about the drawer she found a pile of paper, felt the crackle of it, and pulled it eagerly to the light. Then, and before she learned the grandeur of the sum, she was seized with a sudden palpitation and sat down on Joan's bed. Her mouth grew full as a hungry man's before a feast, ...
— Lying Prophets • Eden Phillpotts
... is; but don't bother trying to deny it, Hugh. The only bad thing about it in my mind is that we'll miss those jolly fires. It's always been so fine to skate up and stand before one, to get warm, and hear the flames crackle, while the girl you're skating with sits on a log, or something like that, to warm ...
— The Chums of Scranton High at Ice Hockey • Donald Ferguson
... to crackle from the Prussian trenches, and to his amazement, after firing a few rounds in reply, the French infantrymen ran for the cover of the brush. He saw the reason for this a moment later when a big troop of German cavalry topped the rise of ground and swept on toward the French, ...
— The Children of France • Ruth Royce
... steps, watching and listening. In a minute or two I heard the crackle of withered sticks trod upon, and, looking in the direction, I saw a figure approaching among the trees, wrapped in ...
— The Room in the Dragon Volant • J. Sheridan Le Fanu
... were stationed on a little bushy hillock just outside a village. But occasionally, it was difficult to say from which direction, came the sharp crackle of rifle-fire, and beyond, the far-off thud of cannon. The ...
— England, My England • D.H. Lawrence
... the shadows of the valley at the mouth of Kingdom Come. Before he was done, the old mother knocked the ashes from her clay pipe and quietly went into the kitchen, and Jack, for all his good manners, could not restrain a whine of eagerness when he heard the crackle of bacon in a frying-pan and the delicious smell of it struck his quivering nostrils. After dark, old Joel, the father of the house, came in—a giant in size and a mighty hunter—and he slapped his big thighs and roared until the rafters seemed to shake when Tall Tom told him about ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... thousand dollars. Blake had never seen so much money in a single lump in his life before; and for many months of privation and discomfort he had not known the "feel" of a twenty-dollar note, much less of a hundred-dollar one. He heard them crackle under the man's fingers, and it was like crisp laughter in his ears. The bills were evidently ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... The crackle of the kindling fagots came to Geoffrey's ears. He saw the forty men with chains that were to haul the ...
— The Dragon of Wantley - His Tale • Owen Wister
... It is the world of "big game." Just now a heavy-headed elk, with much-branched horns fully three feet long, stood and looked at me, and then quietly trotted away. He was so near that I heard the grass, crisp with hoar frost, crackle under his feet. Bears stripped the cherry bushes within a few yards of us last night. Now two lovely blue birds, with crests on their heads, are picking about within a stone's-throw. This is "The Great ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... me the floating vessel came, so close to the ground that I could hear the silk crackle and the ropes creak, till, directly, a man leaned over ...
— Campaigns of a Non-Combatant, - and His Romaunt Abroad During the War • George Alfred Townsend
... air, and although it was three o'clock in the afternoon the light was fading, when Charnock opened the door of the caboose. A bitter wind rushed past him and eddied about the car, making the stove crackle. The iron was red-hot in places and a fierce twinkle shone out beneath the rattling door. Half-seen men lay in the bunks along the shadowy wall, tools jingled upon the throbbing boards, but the motion was gentler than usual and ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... had shot up through the floor in a crackle of blue flame, I don't think it could have had a more striking effect on my late partner. With his mouth open and his face the colour of freshly mixed putty, he stood perfectly still in the centre of the room, gazing at me like a man in a trance. For a second—a whole ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... Knutsford ladies (for "Cranford" was "Knutsford"), the "Boz"—loving Captain Brown and Mr. Holbrook, Peter and his father, and even Martha the maid, with their mise en scene of card-tables and crackle-china, and pattens and reticules, are part of the memories of our childhood. The same may be said of Our Village, except that the breath of Nature blows more freely through it than through the quiet Cheshire ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... gleeman is called Floyting Will. He comes from the north country, but for many years he hath gone the round of the forest from Southampton to Christchurch. He drinks much and pays little but it would make your ribs crackle to hear him sing the 'Jest of Hendy Tobias.' Mayhap he will sing it when the ale ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... floors, a sense of height, absolute silence, a dry, aromatic smell—this was Kirk's impression as he crossed the threshold, walking carefully and softly, that he might not break the spellbound stillness of the house. Then came the familiar crackle of an open fire, and Kirk was piloted into the delicious cozy depths of a big chair beside the hearth. Creakings, as of another chair being pulled up, then a contented sigh, indicated that his host had sat down ...
— The Happy Venture • Edith Ballinger Price
... landmarks and isolates the little camp in a sea of night, with the mutual wish for nearer companionship, we gather around the camp-fire, the one light in all the great darkness. We are grateful for its warmth, as the evenings are chill, and its cheery blaze and crackle bring a feeling of hominess and comfort welcome to every one. If there are men in the party they light their pipes and then begin the stories of past experiences on the trail, which are of the keenest interest to all campers. These stories, told while ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... visit indications of a runaway match. But they don't want to be married—'Only,' says the gentleman, 'to walk round the church.' And as he slips a genteel compliment into the palm of Mrs Miff, her vinegary face relaxes, and her mortified bonnet and her spare dry figure dip and crackle. ...
— Dombey and Son • Charles Dickens
... malkuragxeco. Cowherd bovgardisto. Cow shed bovinejo. Cowl kapucxo. Cowslip verprimolo. Coxcomb dando. Coy rezerva. Coyness rezerveco. Cozen trompi. Crab kankro. Crack (split) fendi. Crack (noise) kraki. Crackle kraketi. Cradle lulilo. Craft ruzo. Craft (vessel) sxipeto. Crafty, to be ruzi. Crafty ruza. Cram (of food) supersatigi. Cram plenegigi. Cramp (metal) krampo. Crane (bird) gruo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... join them in a week or two,—not yet, because I had wished to send home the screens painted on white velvet, and they wanted yet a sennight's work, and I knew Mrs. Strathsay would be proud of them before the crackle of the autumn fires. The maids ran hither and yon, and the bells pealed, and the knocker clashed, and the coaches rolled away over the stone pave of the court-yard, and there was embracing and jesting and crying, when suddenly all the pleasant ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 11, No. 63, January, 1863 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... go," said the timekeeper. A sigh of indrawn breaths ran round the circle, and then tense silence. Outside the trench they were in the roar of the guns boomed unceasingly, the shells whooped and screwed overhead, and from oat in front came the crackle and roar of rifle-fire; and yet, despite the noise, the trench appeared still and silent. Macalister noted that, as he had noted it over there in the ...
— Action Front • Boyd Cable (Ernest Andrew Ewart)
... and we do not hear many. We do not everywhere find great flocks of birds as we see swarms of insects. And we do not find the forest resounding with the songs of birds as it does with the hum and crackle of insects. In this ...
— The Heart of Nature - or, The Quest for Natural Beauty • Francis Younghusband
... Weitzel's brigade attacked, and after a severe fight, drove the Rebels out of the woods. While this was going on our right, we could hear the yells, hurrahs and the crackle of musketry, roar of artillery and many other concomitants of the fight, but could see but little. Consequently we stood and fidgeted round not knowing when ...
— The Twenty-fifth Regiment Connecticut Volunteers in the War of the Rebellion • George P. Bissell
... was coming out, Aunt Olivia with her. Rebecca Mary could hear the crackle of their starched skirts; Aunt Olivia's crackled loudest. Rebecca Mary had always had a queer feeling that Aunt Olivia herself was starched. There had never been a time when she could not remember her carrying her head very stiffly ...
— Rebecca Mary • Annie Hamilton Donnell
... be very angry, but he'll have to put up with it. If you explained to him, Aunt Rose, he'd understand. And I'd really rather sit with you. I shall be able to look at people and if I crackle my programme you won't glare. Of course, I shall try not to. Will you explain to him? And I did promise to go to a concert ...
— THE MISSES MALLETT • E. H. YOUNG
... inarticulate voice. A groping hand came up, clutching for deliverance. There came the slip and crackle of broken wood beneath which some living object ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... was dawning! We children poked one another, and fairly giggled with unreproved delight as we listened to the crackle of the slowly unfolding document. That great sheet of paper impressed us as something supernatural, by reason of its mighty size and by the broad seal of the State affixed thereto; and when the minister read therefrom, "By his Excellency, the Governor of the ...
— Good Cheer Stories Every Child Should Know • Various
... other loaded beasts, and he could not get past in time, for the half-seen trooper was closing with him fast, and another still rode between him and the edge of the bluff, cutting off his road to the prairie. It was evident he could not go on, while the crackle of twigs, roar of hoofs, and jingle of steel behind him, made it plain that to turn was to ride back upon the carbines of men who would be quite willing to use them. There alone remained the river. It ran fast below ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... the blanket when you're in bed to-night, Mrs. Pittis. 'Well, your highness,' said I, 'how about the pain?' 'Pah!' says the king, 'where's your philosophy? Did you never see a fly jump into a lamp-flame?' 'Yes, sure,' I answered. 'And what happened then? A moment's crackle, and an end of it. You've no time to feel pain.' 'Well, then,' said I, 'if your majesty will make a hole for me as near the middle as is convenient to yourself, I will jump into the bed straightway.' ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various
... band had stopped, and there was the distant hum of voices and the crackle of plates. Waiters were coming and going from the dining-room, and the butler stood at the door giving instructions. At one moment there was a glimpse within of ladies in gorgeous dresses, and a table laden with silver and bright with fairy-lamps. When the door opened the voices grew ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... great green earth to roam, Where sights of awe the soul inspire; But oh, it's best, the coming home, The crackle of one's own hearth-fire! You've hob-nobbed with the solemn Past; You've seen the pageantry of kings; Yet oh, how sweet to gain at last The peace and ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... who had taken him to Birmingham, had already got rid of him, and we had a horrible consciousness of his wandering roofless, in dishonour, about the smoky Midlands, almost as the injured Lear wandered on the storm-lashed heath. His room, upstairs, had been lately done up (I could hear the crackle of the new chintz) and the difference only made his smirches and bruises, his splendid tainted genius, the more tragic. If he wasn't barefoot in the mire he was sure to be unconventionally shod. These were the things Adelaide and I, who were old enough friends to stare at each other in silence, ...
— The Coxon Fund • Henry James
... while Briggs and his fellows were to sleep on their arms within the post. It now lacked but a few minutes of sunset. No further demonstration had occurred. Not an Indian had been seen within a radius of six miles, when, all on a sudden, there came a shot—then two, almost together, then a quick crackle and sputter of small-arms afar down the stream. "By Jove!" cried Bonner, from a perch by the lookout at the office. "They've ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... nothing so lovable as a coin. He is content sometimes with the dead crackle of notes; but far more often with the mere repetition of noughts in a ledger, all as like each other as eggs to eggs. And as for comfort, the old miser could be comfortable, as many tramps and savages are, when he was once used to being ...
— A Miscellany of Men • G. K. Chesterton
... clearly. As he crept tremblingly up the stairs everything assumed gigantic and menacing shapes—the clock, the pot-pourri bowls, the window-curtains, and the brass rods on the stairs. In the room there was that grey half-light that seemed so terrible, and the spurt and crackle of the fire seemed to fill the place with sounds. He scarcely saw his grandfather. In the centre of the bed, something was lying; the eyes gleamed for a moment in the light of the fire, the lips seemed to move. But he did not realise that those things were his grandfather whom he had ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... captors, but his mouth was too dry for speech. He could only glare dumbly into their evil faces, and they glared back at him in fiendish triumph. Nearer to the red glow they came, nearer yet. He could hear the crackle of the licking flames. They ...
— Rosa Mundi and Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... remark no sort of answer was vouchsafed. Nancy sat with her feet on the fender, and Tarrant kept up a great blaze with chips, which sputtered out their moisture before they began to crackle. He and she both seemed intent on this process ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing
... lofty woods are thrown On diff'rent sides, and both by winds are blown; The laurels crackle in the sputt'ring fire; The frighted sylvans from their shades retire: Or as two neighb'ring torrents fall from high; Rapid they run; the foamy waters fry; They roll to sea with unresisted force, And down the rocks precipitate their course: Not with less ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... the winter snow-drifts some sixty years ago, because he dared to open the Country of the Gods to the contemptible foreigners; and in the cry of the tofu-seller echoes the voice of old Japan, a long-drawn wail, drowned at last by the grinding of the tram wheels and the lash and crackle of the connecting-rods against the ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... a fine thing to talk about the perfumed and restful bed of balsam boughs, and the crackle of the campfire at dusk, and the dip in the mirrored bosom of the pellucid lake at dawn—old Emerson Hough does all that to perfection; but these things assume a different aspect when it rains. There are three conditions in life when any latent selfishness in a man's being, however far down ...
— Cobb's Bill-of-Fare • Irvin Shrewsbury Cobb
... Lowestoft and porcelain from China. Then, again, in the society of a real enthusiast one is apt to be bored by a recapitulation of his or her full accumulations of knowledge. You are shown a bit of "crackle." You look at it admiringly and express your pleasure. Is that enough? Can the subject be dismissed so easily? Far from it. "This is real crackle," the collector insists, with more than a suspicion that you under-value the worth of his specimen; and then and ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, December 1878 • Various
... daylight. We could see the flicker of rifle-fire, and the crackle sounded first on one part of the bay, and then another. Among the dark rocks and bushes it looked as if people ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... the mortar-boards, and the steady replenishing by the hod-men; Spar-makers in the spar-yard, the swarming row of well-grown apprentices, The swing of their axes on the square-hew'd log shaping it toward the shape of a mast, The brisk short crackle of the steel driven slantingly into the pine, The butter-color'd chips flying off in great flakes and slivers, The limber motion of brawny young arms and hips in easy costumes, The constructor of wharves, bridges, piers, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman
... bugle to rouse one; it blows first. Seeing the embers of our great fire still glowing in the dusk, I went there to warm myself, and stood there listening to the sounds from the still sleepy camp. Drowsy voices, a footfall here and there, the crackle of fire and the tinkle of pots at the cook tents. Even when reveille had blown there was still for several moments this sleep-drugged quiet, in ...
— At Plattsburg • Allen French
... found that it had burned through, and by three or four strokes with the tongs, he broke it up into large fragments of coal, of a dark-reddish color. The air being thus admitted, they soon began to brighten and crackle, until, in a few minutes, there was before him a large heap of glowing and burning coals. He put a log on behind, then placed the andirons up to the log, and a great forestick upon the andirons. He placed the forestick so far out as ...
— Jonas on a Farm in Winter • Jacob Abbott
... can be," I replied. "The wind has dropped—and even the fire doesn't crackle. Perfect stillness ...
— The Black Robe • Wilkie Collins
... tea-table, and take notes from the Philosophical Journal at a soiree; we invite our friends that we may thrust a book into their hands, and presuppose an exclusive desire in the "ladies" to discuss their own matters, "that we may crackle the Times" at our ease. In fact, the evident tendency of things to contract personal communication within the narrowest limits makes us tremble lest some further development of the electric telegraph should reduce us to a society of mutes, or ...
— The Essays of "George Eliot" - Complete • George Eliot
... made quite another creature of his cousin. The wires were down and no one from any quarter gave a response to her frantic ringing. Through the receiver she could hear only the sweep of the rain and the harsh crackle of the wind. Sometimes praying, sometimes fainting, and sometimes despairing, she stood clinging to the instrument, ringing and pounding upon it like one frenzied. Lance looked at her in amazement. "Why, God a'mighty, ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... bellows, he knelt down and blew the reluctant embers into a faint glow; when a hesitant flicker of flame caught the half-burned logs he got on his feet and stood, his fingers on the mantelpiece, his forehead on the back of his hand, watching the fire catch and crackle into cheerful warmth. He stood there for a long time. Suddenly his cheek grew rigid: some man, some beast, had—my God! wronged Materna! It was the first really clear thought; instantly some other thought must have sprung up to meet it, ...
— The Iron Woman • Margaret Deland
... feral light of the super-mongoose's eyes seemed to lance at Sowles, like an infra-red flash. Then there was a puff where the would-be messiah had stood—a crackle, and a smell of scorched air; ...
— Telempathy • Vance Simonds
... tree on shore!" quoth little Love Winslow, clapping her hands. "Dost hear, mother? I've been counting the strokes—fifteen— and then crackle! crackle! ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... wrought to an equality, and made subject to exact law,—as in this universe all irregularities are sure to be in the end. Thus, the thunder, which near at hand is a wild crash, or nearer yet a crazy crackle, is by distance deepened and refined into that marvellous bass which we all know. And doubtless the jars, the discords, and moral contradictions of time, however harsh and crazy at the outset, flow into exact undulation along the ether of eternity, and ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 7, No. 43, May, 1861 • Various
... throats, the men fighting each other like animals; trees were cut down by the bullets which tore through them from every direction; bursting shells set fire to the woods, suffocating the wounded or burning them to death; wild charges were made, ending in wilder stampedes or bloody repulses; the crackle of flames rose high above the pandemonium of battle and dense smoke-clouds drifted chokingly above this hideous carnival of death. Thus for two days the armies staggered backward and forward with no result save a horrible loss of life. Once the Union forces almost succeeded in gaining ...
— On the Trail of Grant and Lee • Frederick Trevor Hill
... personal superintendence of the slaughter of a spring-lamb in green-pea time, when the scent is in the julep and the bloom is on the mint; or possibly, now and then, the removal from the pasture to the pantry of a bit of lowing roast-beef, when I feel an inner craving for the crackle ...
— The Autobiography of Methuselah • John Kendrick Bangs
... papa strike a light and then the wood began to crackle. Then, by jinks! it began to get hot and smoky ...
— A Budget of Christmas Tales by Charles Dickens and Others • Various
... "the First Aid book says that if a lung is punctured the air gets into the tissues, and they crackle on pressure." ...
— More Tish • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... I, "I saw a figure as plainly as I see that fire, and I heard the steps as clearly as I hear the crackle of the fagots. Besides, we ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... was all gone—the face, the night, the Moon, the magic—and she was back in the grubby, stale little hole, facing an angry, stale little man. It was then that the eternal thud of the air-conditioning fans and the crackle of the electrostatic precipitators that sieved out the dust reached her consciousness again like the bite of a ...
— The Moon is Green • Fritz Reuter Leiber
... who saw all, and knew all, who had sounded all the depths of secret, helpless, and jealous love, down in the furnace of human suffering, where the heart seems to crackle like flesh over hot coals, stood in the back of the box looking at them with eyes ...
— Strong as Death • Guy de Maupassant
... his slow advance, but now he was glad the bushes were soaked with water, as they did not crackle or snap with the passage of his body, and the luminous glow in front of him broadened and deepened steadily. Near the bottom of a deep valley he stopped and from his covert saw where great fires had driven the fog away. Around the fires were many warriors, some ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... page-boys wear a look of boredom and propriety. The best clothes which every one put on helped the general effect; it seemed that no lady could sit down without bending a clean starched petticoat, and no gentleman could breathe without a sudden crackle from a stiff shirt-front. As the hands of the clock neared eleven, on this particular Sunday, various people tended to draw together in the hall, clasping little red-leaved books in their hands. The clock ...
— The Voyage Out • Virginia Woolf
... Wessex hunt. His conversation seemed exactly the right accompaniment to the meal; his stories brought glimpses of wet hedgerows, stiff ploughlands, leafy spinneys and muddy brooks in among the rich old Worcester and Georgian silver of the dinner service, the glow and crackle of the wood fire, the pleasant succession of well-cooked dishes and mellow wines. The world narrowed itself down again to a warm, drowsy- scented dining-room, with a productive hinterland of kitchen and cellar beyond it, and beyond ...
— When William Came • Saki
... curiosity was not satisfied immediately by Frank. Instead his face became set in concentration once more. After some moments of silence, broken only by the slight noise of the receiver, he pressed his hand on the sending apparatus and the Southern Cross's wireless began to crackle and spit and emit a ...
— The Boy Aviators' Polar Dash - Or - Facing Death in the Antarctic • Captain Wilbur Lawton
... noise? After a time it came again—the dry swish of dead leaves and the sharp crackle of dead ...
— Don Strong, Patrol Leader • William Heyliger
... has cast the evil eye, may her eyes crack and fall out.' And at the same time they throw the mustard, chillies and salt on the fire so that the eyes of her who cast the evil eye may crack and fall out as these things crackle in the fire. ...
— The Tribes and Castes of the Central Provinces of India - Volume II • R. V. Russell
... up yet, and at first I could hardly see my hand before my face. I never saw such ugly shadows, and once I had to stop and get breath before I could make up my mind to pass a clump of old mulberry bushes. Once in a while I heard a crackle behind me like a footstep, but I didn't look back. I knew my only chance was to plod ahead, no matter how my heart thumped or my knees shook. I thought of everything I could to bolster me up—of dear old Aunt Pam and poor little Maggie. But the sound of the ...
— Harper's Young People, January 6, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... and immediately a great cloud of steam arose, and the hissing as of a thousand serpents. We felt the strong suction under our keel, and staggered under the jerk of the ship's cable as she swung toward the beach. The paint was beginning to crackle along the rail. We could see nothing for the scalding white veil that enveloped us; we could hear nothing for the roar of steam, the bombardment of explosions, and the crash of thunder; but our nostrils were assaulted by a most unearthly ...
— The Mystery • Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
... Pasha heard about his ears the whistle and clash of sabres, the spiteful crackle of small arms, the snorting of horses, and the cries of men. For an instant he was wedged tightly in the frenzied mass, and then, by one desperate leap, such as he had learned on the hunting field, ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... us to help them. Only to send a message," was the reply, as the wireless spark began to crackle again. "We are telling the Government about her plight and a revenue cutter will be sent out to tow the schooner into some near port. She has drifted a good way off shore, but the weather is settled and there ...
— Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's • Laura Lee Hope
... My dreams that crackle under your breath... You have the dust of the world to blow on... Do not tag me and dance away, looking back... I am too old to play with ...
— The Ghetto and Other Poems • Lola Ridge
... five minutes more, and then set to work quietly, after the fashion of English mastiffs, though they waxed right mad before three rounds were fired, and the white splinters began to crackle and fly. ...
— The Junior Classics • Various
... Fracasse's trench and yet not to neglect the fair targets of the reserves advancing by rushes to the support of the 128th. Reinforced, the gray streak at the bottom of the slope poured in a heavier fire. Above the steady crackle of bullets sent and the whistle of bullets received rose the cry of "Doctor! Doctor!" which meant each time that another Brown rifle had been silenced. The litter bearers, hard pressed to remove the wounded, left the dead. Already death was a familiar sight—an article of exchange ...
— The Last Shot • Frederick Palmer |
