"Deafening" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... late. The man pulled the cord. There was a deafening roar, a cloud of smoke, a sheet of fire, and a black projectile was sent hurtling on its way against the hill, up the side of which Paul ...
— The Moving Picture Girls in War Plays - Or, The Sham Battles at Oak Farm • Laura Lee Hope
... should bring tears to our eyes, only we are so taken up with his expression, and the fear that he is going to die or have a fit, that we have no time for weeping. True to our instincts, he is greeted with deafening applause, and coming back, he generously treats us to the ...
— Lazy Thoughts of a Lazy Girl - Sister of that "Idle Fellow." • Jenny Wren
... steel plates of several inches' thickness were chopped and sliced like pieces of cheese. Here the spectator stared about him in bewilderment and clung to his guide for safety; huge travelling cranes groaned overhead, and infernal engines made deafening clatter upon every side. It was a source of never ending wonder that men should be able to work in such confusion, with no sense of danger and no consciousness of all ...
— The Moneychangers • Upton Sinclair
... flame shot upward, and smoke, and flying earth and debris. Hradzka turned and started to run. Another salvo fell in front of him; he veered to the left and plunged on through the undergrowth. Now the bombs were falling all about him, deafening him with their thunder, shaking him with concussion. He dodged, frightened, as the trunk of a tree came crashing down beside him. Then something hit him across the back, knocking him flat. For a moment, he lay stunned, ...
— Flight From Tomorrow • Henry Beam Piper
... from the real revelation held in these sacred writings increasing numbers, in the growing generations; deafening their ears by its irrational clamor to the voice of the Living God which whispers in these pages, through the holy men who spake as they were moved of the Holy Ghost. It has fathered the doubt which to-day sits, cheerless and chill, within the hearts ...
— The Right and Wrong Uses of the Bible • R. Heber Newton
... Bells, whistles, hammers, locomotives shrieking madly, men's voices, peddlers' cries, horses' hoofs, dogs' barking—all united in doing their best to drown every other sound but their own, and made such a deafening uproar in the attempt that nothing could keep it out. Whirl, noise, dance, uproar—will it last forever? I'm so—o ...
— From Plotzk to Boston • Mary Antin
... pull out various articles before she could get at her comb and brush. Her movements were still very nervous. It was embarrassing to be there before that man with one's hair all undone and awry. Something fell from her hand, striking the edge of the table and toppling to the floor. There was a deafening explosion and the shack was full of the dense smoke of black powder. When Madge recovered from her terror the young man, looking very pale, had bent down and picked up the fallen weapon. For a moment she thought there was a strange ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick
... yards apart the opposing cannon thundered, while the musketry of the long lines of infantry swelled the deafening roar. Suddenly two Federal batteries of regulars dashed forward to even shorter range, covered by two battalions on their flank. But the gaudy Zouaves of the outer battalion lost formation in their advance; whereupon "Jeb" Stuart, with only a hundred and fifty ...
— Captains of the Civil War - A Chronicle of the Blue and the Gray, Volume 31, The - Chronicles Of America Series • William Wood
... Samuel Wells orders a charge, the Indians flee in front of the cold steel, and are pursued into the swamps by the dragoons. At the same moment the troops on the right dislodge the savages from behind the trees, and drive them headlong into the wet prairie in front. The battle is over. A long and deafening shout from, the troops ...
— The Land of the Miamis • Elmore Barce
... here was short, though slow. Lucy always had time to adjust her faculties for the overpowering contrast these lower regions presented. Long before she reached the end of the gorge she heard the sullen thunder of the river. The river was low, too, for otherwise there would have been a deafening roar. ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... Merry Monarch beat Gold Star by half a length. The usual scene followed as the winner was turned round and came back to the enclosure through a living lane, the Baron proudly leading his horse, raising his hat in answer to the deafening cheers. It was the great moment of his life, as it is to every man who has experienced the sensation of leading ...
— The Rider in Khaki - A Novel • Nat Gould
... Yule Fair was going on down in the village, and that on account of it all Eden Valley was in an uproar. The clamour was deafening at the lower end of the "clachan," where most of the show folk congregated. The rooks were cawing belatedly in the tall ashes round the big square—into which, in the old times of the Annandale thieves, the ...
— The Dew of Their Youth • S. R. Crockett
... wolves overtook and tried to swallow their prey, thus producing an eclipse of the radiant orbs. Then the terrified people raised such a deafening clamour that the wolves, frightened by the noise, hastily dropped them. Thus rescued, Sun and Moon resumed their course, fleeing more rapidly than before, the hungry monsters rushing along in their wake, lusting for the ...
— Myths of the Norsemen - From the Eddas and Sagas • H. A. Guerber
... breath in the glad anticipation of seeing the features of their lamented friend, Prescott's honored mayor, immortalized in bronze. When after moments of anxious suspense the veil which draped the statue parted and fell to earth, the sun's rays pierced the clouds, while deafening cheers rent the air. I thought I heard a weird, faint cry, an echo from the past—but cannons boomed, drums crashed as a military ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... wonderment, exclaimed, "I cannot think what is gone of Mr. Mellish's rooks. I fancy they have taken flight somewhere; but I have missed them two or three years past." All this while, according to his fellow-traveller's report, the rookery was darkening the air above with undiminished population, and deafening all ears but his with their cawings. But nature has been gently withdrawing such phenomena from the notice of Thomas Westwood's senses, from the time he began to miss the rooks. T. Westwood has passed a retired life in this hamlet of thirty or forty years, living upon the minimum which ...
— The Best Letters of Charles Lamb • Charles Lamb
... exclaimed Horatio, and the curtain slowly descended amid deafening roars of laughter, ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, No. 366 - Vol. XIII, No. 366., Saturday, April 18, 1829 • Various
... then you, with the other foot, kick backwards, saying, "Sooy, sooy." And after going through this performance many, many times, you reach the gate and shut it between yourself and the hog, leaving him on the inside, amidst deafening noise made by his hungry squeals. After you have left, he does his best to tear down the fence, so strong are the ...
— A California Girl • Edward Eldridge
... the strings of an instrument. But Aladdin, so cool and collected he was, might have been the target for praises and roses flung by beauties. He put his lips close to Peter's ear, and spoke loudly, for the noise of battle was deafening. ...
— Aladdin O'Brien • Gouverneur Morris
... underwent the experience could never clearly describe. They flung themselves upon the ground: there were the thundering roar of an earthquake, coupled with a deafening clatter, as though the whole place were falling about their ears, and a whirling hurricane of ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... was immediately successful, for the terrified animals, with a deafening roar that expressed abject fear, started forward on a gallop, with a front as resistless as the ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... horizon, the gleaming sands, each nook and corner of the dripping cave, with the frightened faces of the huddled group of children, started into vivid life for an instant, and then fell back with a deafening ...
— By Shore and Sedge • Bret Harte
... boat. In due course of a minute or two afterwards appeared the American, evidently following in the wake of the former, and attached by a tow line to her stem. The yell pealed forth by the Indians, when the second boat came in view, was deafening in the extreme; and every thing became commotion along the bank, while the little fleet of canoes, which still lay resting on the beach, put off one after the other ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... yellow, square eyes. The mud plashed under their feet as if in mocking commiseration. Hoarse exclamations of sleepy voices were heard; irritated, peevish, abusive language rent the air with malice; and, to welcome the people, deafening sounds floated about—the heavy whir of machinery, the dissatisfied snort of steam. Stern and somber, the black chimneys stretched their huge, thick sticks ...
— Mother • Maxim Gorky
... hands on the clock of the "System" were approaching twelve. It needed no ear trained to hear human heart and soul beats to detect the approaching sound of onrushing doom to the stock-gambling structure. The deafening roar of the brokers that had broken the stillness following Robert Brownley's fateful speech had awakened echoes that threatened to shake down the Exchange walls. The surging mob on the outside was roaring like a million hungry lions in an ...
— Friday, the Thirteenth • Thomas W. Lawson
... passage at last. David, every nerve tense, held her down to it. On the right seethed the Devil's Tea Kettle, sending forth a continuous deafening roar. On the left was Comfort Island with a boom! boom! of thundering breakers smashing against its high, sullen bulwarks of black rocks. The boat was so near that spray from the breakers fell ...
— Troop One of the Labrador • Dillon Wallace
... pealed the accents of the horn Upon the air of the clear morn, And deafening rose the mingled shout, Cleaving the air from that wild rout, As, guarded by a cavalcade The illustrious prisoner appeared And, 'mid the grove the dense spears made, His forehead ...
— The Poets and Poetry of Cecil County, Maryland • Various
... removed the four tubes were standing on the mound of sand. A song and dance began. One by one three of the four opposing players were summoned to guess under which tube the ball was hidden. At each guess the cries of the opposing party became deafening, and the mock struggles approached the violence of combat. The last guesser found the ball; and as he victoriously carried the latter and the tubes across to his own mound, his side scored ten. The process was repeated. The second guesser found the ball; his side scored fifteen setting ...
— Indian Games • Andrew McFarland Davis
... stewed duck; even the fat policeman—whose duty it will be, later in the evening, to break up the fights—draws up a chair to the foot of the table. And the children shout and the babies yell, and every one laughs and sings and chatters—while above all the deafening clamor Cousin Marija shouts orders ...
— The Jungle • Upton Sinclair
... Miller. At five miles from Louisa's Creek we struck another and much larger one, running to the north; and upon our right hand, close to the spot at which we struck it, was a rocky gorge, through and over which the waters must tumble with a deafening roar in times of flood. Just now the water was not running, but a quantity was lodged among the sand under the huge boulders that fill up the channel. I called this the Chirnside*. A hill in the main range eastward ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... violence which split the nerves and made the ear-drums creak. The blood surged to Roldan's head, carrying chaos with it. He had a confused sense of a flood of light in the plaza below, but could hear no other sound except the deafening uproar in his ears. Suddenly something gave way beneath his feet. He had an awful feeling of disintegration, of solid parting from solid in empty space. He kicked out wildly. His feet touched nothing. Then his head suddenly cleared, although the deep tones of the bell still ...
— The Valiant Runaways • Gertrude Atherton
... porridge, at which she was judged to be first-rate—in my mind, equal to our Kirsty. By the time it was ready, her father and Turkey came in. James Duff said grace, and we sat down to our supper. The wind was blowing hard outside, and every now and then the hail came in deafening rattles against the little windows, and, descending the wide chimney, danced on the floor about the hearth; but not a thought of the long, stormy way between us and home interfered with ...
— Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood • George MacDonald
... the Rjukan fall is enormous, its height very considerable, and its roar deafening. The earth makes an abrupt descent of nine hundred feet to the bed of the Maan midway between Lake Mjos and Lake Tinn, nine hundred feet, that is to say six times the height of Niagara, though the width of this ...
— Ticket No. "9672" • Jules Verne
... a rocket cruiser were blasting off in the corridors, a roar, deafening and powerful, filled their ears. And beneath its ferocity there were ...
— Danger in Deep Space • Carey Rockwell
... rugged veteran aspect of the Old Town is agreeably contrasted with the bright smooth forehead of the New, and there is not such an overwhelming torrent of animal life, as to make you pause before venturing to stem it; the noises are not so deafening, and the occasional sound of a ballad-singer, or a Highland piper, varies and enriches the discords; but here, a multitudinous assemblage of harsh alarms, of selfish contentions, and of furious carriages, driven by a fierce and insolent race, shatter the very ...
— The Ayrshire Legatees • John Galt
... claims the captive girl—the last of that devoted tribe—to be delivered over to her will. Her right to this remnant of her murdered husband's family is acknowledged. A knife is placed in her hand, while a deafening yell of triumph bursts from the excited squaws, as this their great high priestess, as they deem her, advances to the criminal. But it is not to shed the heart's blood of the Mohawk girl, but to sever the ...
— Lost in the Backwoods • Catharine Parr Traill
... the high and giddy mast Seal up the ship-boy's eyes, and rock his brains In cradle of the rude imperious surge And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly, death itself awakes? Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude; And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means ...
— King Henry IV, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Chiswick edition]
... at the front end of the hall, some distance from the chair he was to occupy, upon the invitation of the temporary chairman, advanced to take his seat as presiding officer amidst deafening applause. On taking the chair, General Hagood said: "I understand the purpose of this meeting to be to consider the misgovernment in South Carolina, which running through ten long years, has culminated in the shameful and shameless proceedings of our present Legislature. ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... swept up toward the zenith. Under its weird, unearthly light, the prairies, and everything upon them, took on a ghastly hue. Then came the inky-black storm-cloud—long, funnel-shaped, pendulous—and in its deafening roar and the thick darkness that could be felt, and the awful sweep of its all-engulfing embrace, the senses failed and the very breath of life seemed beaten away. The floods fell in streams, hot, then suddenly cold. And then a fusillade of hail bombarded the flat prairies, defenseless beneath ...
— Vanguards of the Plains • Margaret McCarter
... extravagance had been checked by the admonitory frown of Morgan, took advantage of the dilemma to which Dr. Beaumont's application of his own principles had reduced him, and renewed his deafening declamations, to which (as neither argument nor fact were regarded, and the length of the harangue depended on his bodily strength,) the attention of his hearers might be dispensed with. Humphreys endeavoured to impress his neighbours with an idea of the advantages that would result ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West
... these works expecting to hear the deafening noise of stampers, and you find that there are no stampers. The immense hundred-ton guns and the crank-shafts of transatlantic steamers are forged by hydraulic pressure, and the worker has but to turn ...
— The Conquest of Bread • Peter Kropotkin
... was not once permitted Even to address them. Soon as he began, 5 With deafening noise of warlike instruments They drowned his words. But here ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... were watched each moment, and their words and actions reported. Later on Fersen came in and addressed Kosciuszko courteously, speaking in German, which Niemcewicz—for Kosciuszko knew neither German nor Russian—interpreted. At midday a deafening discharge of musketry and cannon smote painfully upon the prisoners' ears: it was the salvo of joy for the ...
— Kosciuszko - A Biography • Monica Mary Gardner
... that confronted me when I came to Mulberry Street. The saloon was the chief source of mischief. It was with the saloon that I had to deal, and there was only one way to deal with it. That was to enforce the law. The howl that rose was deafening. The professional politicians raved. The yellow press surpassed themselves in clamor and mendacity. A favorite assertion was that I was enforcing a "blue" law, an obsolete law that had never before been enforced. As a matter of fact, ...
— Theodore Roosevelt - An Autobiography by Theodore Roosevelt • Theodore Roosevelt
... communicates with the sea by a small aperture under the rock. It is as placid as a summer pond, and is fitted with steps for a bathing place. Bathe, truly! with the sea ever dashing against the side, and roaring and reverberating with deafening echo. ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... mighty wind,' but soon settled again, and such a din commenced as I shall never forget; the shrill screams of the birds, the fluttering of their innumerable wings, and the rustling of the leaves of the palm trees, was almost deafening, and I was glad at last to escape to ...
— Ceylon; an Account of the Island Physical, Historical, and • James Emerson Tennent
... was terrific, coming in deafening gusts, and more than once making Dick stagger. In fact if he had set off to run inland it would have almost carried him ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... toppled backward from the force of the water and very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order: deranged: it was not human, to be killed. But it lay motionless, with the fire hose playing upon it. Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen Robot, with a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into flying metallic fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken from the violent explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled a hundred feet or more. One huge chunk, evidently a plate of the thing's body, struck into the crowd ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... ears were not spared. As soon as this part of the operation was complete, the bag of feathers was ripped open by a by-stander, and the contents stuck thickly on the parts besmeared with tar, amidst the deafening cheers of the spectators, who were by this time in such frantic excitement that I began to fear a tragedy would ensue, especially as many of them shouted, "Now hang the varmint! hang him!" This proposal was eagerly seconded by the ...
— An Englishman's Travels in America - His Observations Of Life And Manners In The Free And Slave States • John Benwell
... his mother's, and had called for me after luncheon; the idea being that I should spend the evening, and perhaps also pass the night, at the country-house where his family lived. Only when we had left the city and exchanged its grimy streets and the unbearably deafening clatter of its pavements for the open vista of fields and the subdued grinding of carriage-wheels on a dusty high road (while the sweet spring air and prospect enveloped us on every side) did I awake ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... there were so many people in the place that it was impossible to get near the bar. We were jolted about by men who, having nothing else to say, shouted "Good old Cambridge!" and "Now then, Oxford!" The pandemonium was deafening, and Jack said to me that the whole thing wasn't good enough, and unless you happened to feel like shoving into people and then pretending that you were very sorry he ...
— Godfrey Marten, Undergraduate • Charles Turley
... roared, building up to its maximum speed. The whole laboratory quivered from its vibration. The dynamo hummed and whined and the night silence outside seemed to make the noises within more deafening. Tommy Reames ran his eyes again over the power-leads to the monstrous, misshapen coils. Professor Denham bent over one of them, straightened, and nodded. Tommy Reames nodded to Evelyn, and she threw the heavy ...
— The Fifth-Dimension Tube • William Fitzgerald Jenkins
... noise of the cars he thought he could hear sad voices crying loudly the name of a beloved lost one. Sometimes the tumult would become quiet for a little; brakes, springs, wheels, all parts of the furious cast-iron machine seemed to him tired of howling the deafening rhythmical gallop, and the vigorously rocked traveller could distinguish in the diminished uproar a strain of music, at first confused like a groan, then more distinct, but always the same cruel, haunting monotone—the fragment of a song that Maria once ...
— A Romance of Youth, Complete • Francois Coppee
... face and an honest look. The prairie was now wrapped in inky gloom, and there was an impressive stillness except for the occasional rustle of a leaf, but when Harding came out of the bluff with a load of wood a puff of icy wind suddenly stirred the grass. The harsh rustle it made was followed by a deafening crash, and a jagged streak of lightning fell from the leaden clouds; then the air was filled with the roar of driving hail. It swept the wood, rending leaves and smashing twigs, while the men crouched inside the straining tent and a constant blaze of ...
— Blake's Burden • Harold Bindloss
... not a voice would approve the Manchester verdict. Perceiving this—perceiving that time or opportunity for reflection, or for the subsidence of panic, would almost certainly snatch its prey from vengeance—a deafening yell arose from the raving creatures of blood-hunger, demanding that not a day, not an hour, not a second, should be ...
— The Dock and the Scaffold • Unknown
... king of Sweden was brought before the house. The proposal was received with shouts of acclamation, and with one accord the delegates raised their voices in favor of Gustavus. But the regent, so the reporter tells us, rose to his feet, and, mid the deafening shouts of those about him, declared that he had no wish for further honor, that he was weary of leadership, that he had found more gall than honey in the post, and that there were others more worthy than himself on whom ...
— The Swedish Revolution Under Gustavus Vasa • Paul Barron Watson
... any trouble that might lie ahead for me. I wanted to be seen. I wanted to be taken from this stifling cabin with its deafening noises and sickening fumes and above all from this mad fellow who looked as I had seen a rat look when cornered in a garner. I ran to the window and peered through the smutted panes, but there was no one outside to see or to help me. The clearing was as quiet ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... remember having the utmost confidence in the headboard of my bed, which was toward the window. But that did not obliterate the siren whistle of those big shells and the moment of suspense between the lightning and the thunder. After each deafening burst I kept reiterating to myself, "Saved again," as one would repeat a chronological table of something important. About 8.00 A. M. we straggled into the breakfast room—all of us rather lifeless and with very white faces and little appetite for either eating or talking. There seemed to ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... to appear conscious of this infraction of a stringent rule and invasion of his dignity, grew redder as he shouted rapid orders and swung his big, beautiful ship well out into the stream. The guns of the Bennington boomed a deafening salute as the Queen turned her sharp nose toward the open sea; and almost the last thing Honolulu saw of her human freight was the tiny, dainty, winsome little figure in white, waving a spotless kerchief as in fond farewell. Once clear ...
— Found in the Philippines - The Story of a Woman's Letters • Charles King
... for one brief moment was interrupted for the child by the beautiful, harmonious notes, continued in more deafening fashion than ever. Children cried; women scolded; men cursed and swore. In the midst of the din the room door was ...
— Sue, A Little Heroine • L. T. Meade
... fort. They would not stand heavy punishment, and in attacking a fort generally relied upon a single headlong rush, made under cover of darkness or as a surprise; they tried to unnerve their antagonists by the sudden fury of their onslaught and the deafening accompaniment of whoops and yells. If they began to suffer much loss they gave up at once, and if pursued scattered in every direction, each man for himself, and owing to their endurance, woodcraft, and skill in hiding, usually got ...
— The Winning of the West, Volume Two - From the Alleghanies to the Mississippi, 1777-1783 • Theodore Roosevelt
... regimental plate, racing cups, and hot-house flowers. The band commenced playing "Selections," somewhat deafening, perhaps, but then it was too cold to put ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Consequently there is a better price for silver here than anywhere else in Shantung. The main street is narrow, shaded by matting laid on kao-liang stalks and lined with busy shops. Along the Grand Canal, there is a veritable "Vanity Fair'' filled with clothing booths and deafening with ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... not study in just the same way. You would be surprised if you were to step into a Korean schoolroom. All the boys sit upon the floor with their legs curled up beneath them. Instead of the quiet, silent scholars, you would hear a loud and deafening buzz. All the pupils study out loud. They not only do their studying aloud, but they talk very loud, as if each one were trying to make more ...
— Our Little Korean Cousin • H. Lee M. Pike
... filled with smoke, which, though in some degree luminous, would permit me to see nothing, and by which I was nearly suffocated. The crackling of flames, and the deafening clamour of voices without, burst upon my ears. Stunned as I was by this hubbub, scorched with heat, and nearly choaked by the accumulating vapours, I was unable to think or act for my own preservation; I was incapable, indeed, of comprehending ...
— Wieland; or The Transformation - An American Tale • Charles Brockden Brown
... unaccountable accent, which seemed to belong to no province of France, dominated the almost deafening noise; it penetrated through, even into the brandy-soddened minds of the multitude, for the suggestion was received with renewed shouts of ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a silence which was almost deafening, I could visualise Thisbe dimpling with satisfaction and undoubtedly filled with tenderness toward a lover capable of expressing himself so eloquently. I turned over with a sigh of relief and closed my eyes in pleasurable anticipation ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 159, July 21, 1920 • Various
... cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register—it was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and emblematic life. And the beans were only ten cents. We wondered why our fellow-artists cared to dine at sad little tables in their so-called Bohemian restaurants; and we shuddered lest they should seek out our resorts and ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... swung giddily round in the market-place, and the shouts of the stall-keepers, and the din of the orchestra, and the ceaseless crack of the rifle ranges, where boys were shooting for cocoa-nuts, made a noise that was almost deafening. ...
— Dick Lionheart • Mary Rowles Jarvis
... the threshold of perception is relatively high in ordinary people—the stimuli of usual conditions would be blinding and deafening, unendurable, if there weren't a defense." ...
— The Sensitive Man • Poul William Anderson
... eye of Verman fell upon the lawn-mower, and instantly he leaped to its handle. Shrilling a wordless war-cry, he charged, propelling the whirling, deafening knives straight upon the prone legs of Rupe Collins. The lawn-mower was sincerely intended to pass longitudinally over the body of Mr. Collins from heel to head; and it was the time for a death-song. Black Valkyrie hovered in ...
— Penrod • Booth Tarkington
... communication trench he saw the tanks waddling along to right and left, rearing up and bowing as they crossed the trench, like clumsy, trained hippopotamuses. And all the while the artillery was booming with continuous, deafening roar. ...
— Tom Slade Motorcycle Dispatch Bearer • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... steep, we took long strides on the snow. When we came to patches of debris we slid down at a great pace amid a deafening roar from the huge mass of loose stones set in motion by our ...
— An Explorer's Adventures in Tibet • A. Henry Savage Landor
... to his account. Then, on condition that she would come on Saturdays also, to help him clean up for Sunday, he allowed her, on that day, to bring her own children too, and all the puppies played riotously together around the place. But this he presently discontinued, for the clamour became so deafening that the neighbours complained. Besides, the young Spaniels, who were a little older, got Groups, Bunks, and Yelpers into noisy ...
— Where the Blue Begins • Christopher Morley
... of the engines, showing that he knew them by heart, and I could almost imagine the blurring, deafening sound which for seven seconds rent the air through the roar of winds ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... a deafening crackle. Blinding red flame. We ran to the door, and there, not ten feet away, our shack was burning to the ground. The little lean-to kitchen, covered with tar paper, was sending its flames high into the air. Frantically we ran to the front door, shouting above the crackling and roar of ...
— Land of the Burnt Thigh • Edith Eudora Kohl
... Chaos' doting years, Nurse of ten thousand hopes and fears, Whether thy airy, insubstantial shade (The rights of sepulture now duly paid) Spread abroad its hideous form On the roaring civil storm, Deafening din and warring rage Factions wild with factions wage; Or under-ground, deep-sunk, profound, Among the demons of the earth, With groans that make the mountains shake, Thou mourn thy ill-starr'd, blighted birth; Or in the uncreated ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... the Frau would cry out when going over her troubles and arduous occupations. "And I've got to get a husband for the Wasserhaus yet!" The Herr often went into a deafening rage about it. ...
— Villa Elsa - A Story of German Family Life • Stuart Henry
... A deafening roar, louder than thunder, arose from the people: "Down with Compulsory Education! Down with ...
— Pinocchio in Africa • Cherubini
... roars, mounted in deafening volume. The Heathflower thing answered them by going down, down, till it seemed she lay quite flat on earth. And then she came up, up, with a leap so long, so lancelike, it recovered all she had lost. Again she ...
— Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 5, June 1905 • Various
... strength of a team gone delirious with joy, the Crimson players took their positions in front of the Yale goal and prepared for the play which would give them a try at the extra point after touchdown. The stands rocked with tributes of noise, bestowing upon Broadhurst one of the most deafening ovations ever accorded a gridiron hero. He had fittingly redeemed himself. His blood-tingling length-of-the-field run in the last minute of play had tied the score at ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... the bank of the flood to the beach, some two or three hundred yards below; and there had the luck to see Will Watcombe on the opposite side, caulking an old boat. Though I could not make him hear a word, from the deafening roar of the torrent, I got him to understand at last that I wanted to cross over. Upon this he fetched another man, and the two of them launched a boat; and paddling well out to sea, fetched round the mouth of the frantic river. The other man proved to be Stickles's chief mate; and so he went ...
— Lorna Doone - A Romance of Exmoor • R. D. Blackmore
... wounded, or turning the dead upon their backs. They must have thus examined forty people, and still there was no word of Uncle Joseph. But now the course of their search brought them near the centre of the collision, where the boilers were still blowing off steam with a deafening clamour. It was a part of the field not yet gleaned by the rescuing party. The ground, especially on the margin of the wood, was full of inequalities—here a pit, there a hillock surmounted with a bush of furze. It was ...
— The Wrong Box • Robert Louis Stevenson and Lloyd Osbourne
... profanely piled; great rusty casks lie about, as in a brewery yard; the smoke from the try-works has besooted all the bulwarks; the mariners go about suffused with unctuousness; the entire ship seems great leviathan himself; while on all hands the din is deafening. But a day or two after, you look about you, and prick your ears in this self-same ship; and were it not for the tell-tale boats and try-works, you would all but swear you trod some silent merchant vessel, with a most scrupulously ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... me, for I was intent upon reaching my father. Suddenly like thunder an angry voice shouted curses and threats into my ear! A rough hand wrenched my shoulder and took the meat from me! I stopped struggling to run. A deafening whir filled my head. The moon and stars began to move. Now the white prairie was sky, and the stars lay under my feet. Now again they were turning. At last the starry blue rose up into place. The noise in my ears ...
— American Indian stories • Zitkala-Sa
... again lost amid the lashing, deafening detonation, which was prolonged with the continuous violence ...
— His Masterpiece • Emile Zola
... called in welcome, as he mounted the steps of the little platform, "I've come to inspect your latest investment"; but catching sight of the "latest investment" he broke into a deafening roar. ...
— We of the Never-Never • Jeanie "Mrs. Aeneas" Gunn
... hour. Wulf preferred working to lying still, for as the craft rolled the water washed over them, while the din of the waves striking the ship's side, and the cataracts of spray falling on to the canvas above were deafening, and it was impossible to get a moment's sleep. All were glad when morning broke, although the scene that met their eyes was the reverse of comforting. Small as was the amount of sail the vessel tore through the water under the pressure of the following wind. Great ...
— Wulf the Saxon - A Story of the Norman Conquest • G. A. Henty
... then a tornado burst forth, as Harris, pale to the lips, halted at the door. His escort sprang aside, and to a man the battalion leaped to its feet and let go with voice and foot and hand, and the din was deafening. One moment he stood there, trembling with emotion, incapable of response, then whirled and darted down the steps, leaving Willett to acknowledge the tremendous ovation that speedily died away—almost to silence—ere he, too, turned and followed. "Good-by, fellows! God ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... with Indian lodges, and the Indians were numbered by hundreds. At times of feasts, when they had a potlatch, or at the making of a "medicine-man," the reserve was a lively place and the noise deafening with their yells, both day and night. It was unsafe to go there at night when these celebrations were held. Many outrages were committed on passers-by by Indians when in a ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... about my neck now, and the wild-cat was so close that I could note the horrible colors of the glaring eyes, and feel the hot breath in my face. I wondered how it would feel when those two rows of needle-like teeth met in my flesh; and then, before I could think any more, a deafening report filled my ears, and, through the cloud of smoke that rolled over the creek, the wild-cat bounded high in air, and fell into the water with a loud splash. That was all I remembered then. The next thing I knew, I was lying in a grassy hollow, alongside the creek, ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... vivid, dazzling flash that for an instant blinded all eyes. "By God! but that's a stunner!" gasped a big trooper, and then followed the deafening bang and crash of the thunder, and its echoes went booming and reverberating from earth to heaven and rolling away, peal after peal, down the bluff-bound canon. For a moment no other sound could be heard; then, as it died away and the rain came swashing down in fresh deluge, Carey's ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... the breath and quicken the pulses—that surging sea of black heads, uncovered in token of mourning; that forest of arms beating the air to a deafening chorus of orthodox lamentation; while a portrait of Ghandi, on a black banner, swayed uncertainly ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... patriotism manifested itself in beating with small bars of iron on a large circular saw, suspended on a stick thrust through the hole in its centre and borne triumphantly between two youths. The reverberation, the deafening clangour of this, cannot possibly be described, or appreciated by one that has never heard it. Suffice it to say, that the fish-horns, even the cannon, ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... was dancing to music!—not the laboriously strummed notes of a piano, such as were beaten out by the firm-striding Miss Brown; not the clamorous, deafening, tuneless efforts of an orchestra. This was real ...
— The Poor Little Rich Girl • Eleanor Gates
... had now been freed, reappeared at the gates of the prison. These were immediately opened, and Pisani appeared, with his usual expression of cheerfulness and good humour on his face. He was at once lifted on to the shoulders of some sailors, and borne in triumph to the palace, amid the deafening cheers of the populace. On the staircase he was met by the doge and senators, who saluted him cordially. Mass was heard in the chapel, and Pisani and the council then set to business, and were for some ...
— The Lion of Saint Mark - A Story of Venice in the Fourteenth Century • G. A. Henty
... building which they erected in Lawson-street, and which is now used as the Weavers' Institute, was occupied by them. Often did they get far up the dreamy ladder of religious joy, and many a time did they revel with a rich and deafening delightfulness in the regions of zeal there. They were determined to "keep the thing warm," and to let outsiders know that if they were not a large, they were a lively, body. Primitive Methodism does not profess to be a fine, ...
— Our Churches and Chapels • Atticus
... heart from the dagger of the assassin. Her son, but seven years old, clung to his mother's hand, gazing with a bewildered look of terror upon the hideous spectacle. The vociferations of the mob were almost deafening. But the aspect of the group, so lovely and so helpless, seemed to disarm the hand of violence. Now and then, in the endless crowd defiling through the room, those in the advance pressed resistlessly on by those in the rear, some one more tender hearted would ...
— Maria Antoinette - Makers of History • John S. C. (John Stevens Cabot) Abbott
... hand, and tried desperately to use it; but Goddard kept its muzzle turned skyward, and gradually forced the man's arm, folded, against the other's chest. Suddenly the guerilla tripped and stumbled backward, carrying Goddard down on top of him as he fell. A flash, a deafening report; the red-hot flame seared Goddard's face and forehead, and he ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... whizzing, where the band-wheels each whirred away for their little sub-division of power, the boards of the floor quivered and shook with the movement of the engines, and the waterfall outside in the sun, with a thundering and deafening roar, buried the great water-wheel beneath its creamy, ...
— One of Life's Slaves • Jonas Lauritz Idemil Lie
... handsome man entered the tent; but one look at his pale, anxious face was enough to tell those inside that the news was bad. So for an instant there was silence; and in the silence, with a deafening roar and a blinding blaze of blue light, came a terrific crash of thunder followed by a sudden fierce pelt of hail ...
— The Adventures of Akbar • Flora Annie Steel
... these were hours of stern preparation At midday a furious cannonade began from one hundred and thirty Confederate guns on Seminary Ridge, which was answered with promptness and spirit by about seventy Union guns from the crests and among the boulders of Cemetery Ridge; and the deafening roar of artillery lasted for about an hour, at the end of which time the Union guns ceased firing and were allowed to cool, and to be made ready to meet the assault that was sure to come. There followed a period of waiting almost painful to ...
— A Short Life of Abraham Lincoln - Condensed from Nicolay & Hay's Abraham Lincoln: A History • John G. Nicolay
... darting in and out of their holes in the mud: an alligator now and then shows a hint of a head above the water of the creek, along whose banks walk daintily and proudly egrets and herons robed in white, and from the reeds of which myriads of water-hens send up a deafening chatter. ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 26, August, 1880 - of Popular Literature and Science • Various
... retiring disposition. Now Abel accuses his brother before God of being a murderer; when alive he would bear all the injuries of his brother in silence. For who was it that disclosed the murder committed by Cain? Was it not, as the text here tells us, the blood of Abel, fairly deafening with its constant cries the ears of God ...
— Commentary on Genesis, Vol. II - Luther on Sin and the Flood • Martin Luther
... time the news had reached the crowd without, and was received with repeated shouts, and cries of 'Long live David!' 'Long live the prince of artists!' But the cheers became almost deafening, when the pretty Lizette, having heard the wonderful story of a sign having been painted that was to hasten her marriage, and give her a dowry of 200 guineas, made her appearance, and, without a moment's hesitation, threw her arms about the neck of her benefactor, who returned her caresses ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 439 - Volume 17, New Series, May 29, 1852 • Various
... objectionable travelling companion. She sat down on a fallen log, placing her sketch-book on her lap, but it lay there idly as, unconscious of the passing time, she gazed dreamily at the great falls and listened to their vibrating deafening roar. Suddenly the consciousness of some one near startled her from her reverie. She sprang to her feet, and had so completely forgotten her companion that she stared at him for a moment in dumb amazement. He stood back some distance from her, and beside ...
— One Day's Courtship - The Heralds Of Fame • Robert Barr
... the magic protection of a tiny, dirty red flag. Secure in the guardianship of the bit of bunting, which for them was as powerful and sacred as the flag of an empire, the two workmen gazed with indifference at George and at the deafening traffic which swirled affronting but harmless around them. George slackened speed, afraid lest the jar might have snapped the plates of his accumulator. The motor-bicycle was a wondrous thing, but as capricious and delicate as a ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... the island, Amyas felt sure enough, that if its wild tenant had not seen them approach, he certainly had not heard them, so deafening was the noise which filled his brain, and seemed to make the very leaves upon the bushes quiver, and the solid stone beneath his feet to reel and ring. For two hundred yards and more above the fall nothing met his eye but one white waste of raging foam, with here and there a transverse dyke ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... allowed to smile amiably his dissent or approval. Had the rest of our company been of his mind in the matter, it would not have been so much easier for us to start the talk at once than to stop it at a reasonable hour, our Thursday nights would not have been so deafening with talk that I do not yet understand why the other tenants in the house did not unite in an indignant ...
— Nights - Rome, Venice, in the Aesthetic Eighties; London, Paris, in the Fighting Nineties • Elizabeth Robins Pennell
... of the room. There were more visitors than chairs and benches, some sat on casks standing on end, and by way of applause at some witty sally or coarse joke, pounded the casks with their heels until the din was almost deafening. At a table upon which were many bottles, one or two of them broken, sat Monsieur Mercier and his comrade Dubois, both in the first stages of intoxication when men are pleased to ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... had whiskers on both his head and his tail—fairly bristled. He grumbled out that he didn't see why he couldn't live in peace in the grass; that all he wanted was to be let alone. Then he said he knew how he could get away from the society of worms and crickets and katydids he hated, and all the deafening noises they made to drive him crazy. Thereupon, with a sulky twist of his head, he crawled toward the road. He had just crawled into the first wheel-rut when a big, jouncing, yellow Kentucky cart came by and made an end ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... Amid a deafening noise the toast was drunk, and a voice from the back yelled out: "Three cheers for Lovelace!" His health, too, was drunk, and they sang For he's ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... jewelry; the men looked like countrymen and were timid in the use of the fork. When the music began they stopped eating and their companions ordered fresh drinks. Billy could have sworn that he saw one woman crying. But as soon as the music ceased conversation began, and the rattle of dishes was deafening. ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... of the cabin window, she only saw that Timar stood at the bow with a grappler in his hand. Then suddenly a deafening noise arose, a huge foam-crowned mountain of water struck the fore part of the vessel, splashed its spray right against the window, and blinded Timea for a moment. When she looked out again, the captain was no ...
— Timar's Two Worlds • Mr Jkai
... rostrum the cheering is deafening. He is the favorite son of the state and this is the supreme moment in which he may launch his boom for ...
— The Transgressors - Story of a Great Sin • Francis A. Adams
... felt a tremendous shock, as if the earth had quaked and opened beneath me, and this was followed by a deafening uproar, the clashing of stones, the cracking of wood and glass, the grating and crushing of iron, and the pitiful cries of men, women, and children. The great mass of rock broke through the protecting barricade and rushed right upon the engine. The huge, steam-vomiting leviathan ...
— Dr. Dumany's Wife • Mr Jkai
... nothing. The enemy re-formed their line, and again charged the guns, which were pouring a heavy fire upon them. As they rushed forward, the hoofs of their horses shook the ground. A deafening cheer arose from the ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... the periphery of their being, because they are unable to penetrate to its axis. They are excited, ardent, positive, because they are superficial. Why so much effort, noise, struggle, and greed?—it is all a mere stunning and deafening of the self. When death comes they recognize that it is so—why not then admit it sooner? Activity is only beautiful when it is holy—that is to say, when it is spent in the service of that ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... further were these runners for their various employers permitted to go, yet even at that few feet of safe distance their cries were so deafening and insistent that Dorothy clapped her hands to her ears and shut her eyes, lest she ...
— Dorothy's Travels • Evelyn Raymond
... positively refused to gratify my wish.... In the spring of 1840 I met Livingstone at London in Exeter Hall, when Prince Albert delivered his maiden speech in England. I remember how nearly he was brought to silence when the speech, which he had lodged on the brim of his hat, fell into it, as deafening cheers made it vibrate. A day or two after, we heard Binney deliver his masterly missionary sermon, 'Christ seeing of the travail of ...
— The Personal Life Of David Livingstone • William Garden Blaikie
... poker glowed above the cannon. Buckshot hailed from a hundred guns, and the poker fell, but soon it came again and this time flat upon the gun. The hand that held it was nervous and fumbling. Suddenly the breech of the gun slipped lower down the upright log. Up went the muzzle, and then came a deafening boom. There was a crash over-head. The cupola of the court-house was shattered, and down came the bell upon the roof, and off it rolled and fell upon the ground with a clang. Out surged Mayo's men, but a fearful volley met ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and a little one screeching from every knothole. The bellowing of big bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush. Nighthawks swept past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face. A prowling wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage. A straying fox bayed ...
— Freckles • Gene Stratton-Porter
... half-way sped When thus to Lakshman Rama said: "There, there, dear brother, turn thine eyes; See near Prayag(327) that smoke arise: The banner of our Lord of Flames The dwelling of some saint proclaims. Near to the place our steps we bend Where Yamuna and Ganga blend. I hear and mark the deafening roar When chafing floods together pour. See, near us on the ground are left Dry logs, by labouring woodmen cleft, And the tall trees, that blossom ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... the balcony where one instant before she had stood erect and smiling! With exclamations of alarm and distress we lifted and bore her within the room and laid her tenderly down upon the nearest sofa. At that moment a deafening, terrific thunder-clap—one only—as if a huge bombshell had burst in the air, shook the ground under our feet; and then with a swish and swirl of long pent-up and suddenly-released wrath, ...
— A Romance of Two Worlds • Marie Corelli
... Through the deafening noise of the bells I contrived to shout in his ear a request that I might be put ashore, as we were now about on a level with my home. Mr. Rowe ran a plank quickly out and landed ...
— A Great Emergency and Other Tales - A Great Emergency; A Very Ill-Tempered Family; Our Field; Madam Liberality • Juliana Horatia Gatty Ewing
... rainy day. Crowded into a narrow, dirty cabin, with benches on each side and a long table in the middle, at which a set of Frenchmen with their hats on are playing cards and eating dejeuners a la fourchette all day long, and deafening you with their noise, while waiters are running against your legs and treading on your toes every moment, and the water is dropping on your head through the cracks of the deck-floor, you would be forced to admit the superlative ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... Courtyard of the Temple was one of wondrous pomp, and of even deeper significance. As Apleon rode in, a fan-fare of trumpets gave him greeting. Then when the last intricate brazen note had sounded, the mighty multitude drowned even the memory of the trumpets, by the deafening roar of ...
— The Mark of the Beast • Sidney Watson
... batteries across the Montmorenci, the distant batteries of Point Levi, the cannon of the "Centurion," and those of the two stranded ships, all opened together with redoubled fury. The French batteries replied; and, amid this deafening roar of artillery, the English boats set their troops ashore at the edge of the broad tract of sedgy mud that the receding river had left bare. At the same time a column of two thousand men was seen, a mile away, moving in perfect order across the Montmorenci ford. ...
— Montcalm and Wolfe • Francis Parkman
... was filled with great sounds, like the noise of the earthquakes that destroy beautiful big palaces, and factories which are big but not beautiful. It was deafening, it was endless, ...
— The Magic City • Edith Nesbit
... shattered doors. Before them the guards were falling slowly back, fighting every inch of the way. The dead lay in heaps. The air was thick with powder smoke. One end of the building was in flames. The roar of battle was deafening. ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... and the howl of a wolf; it consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the branches of the forest, and the tremendous crash of deafening thunder. ...
— Lives of the Necromancers • William Godwin
... reins in his teeth, a revolver in either hand, what followed was scarcely a memory. It remained afterward as a blurred, indistinct picture of action, changing so rapidly as to leave no definite outlines. He heard the answering call of three bugles; the deafening thud of horses' hoofs; the converging cheers of excited troopers; the mingling ring of revolver shots; a sharp order cleaving the turmoil; the wild neigh of a stricken horse; the guttural yells of Indians leaping ...
— Molly McDonald - A Tale of the Old Frontier • Randall Parrish |
