"Flapping" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... galleries, though there were many of them,—prisoners, who being condemned for lighter offences than murder or forgery, were allowed to walk under the eye of a keeper. I was conscious of passing them, but they only seemed to deepen the gloom, like ravens and bats flapping their wings ...
— Ernest Linwood - or, The Inner Life of the Author • Caroline Lee Hentz
... Go away, ugly woman," cried Mary ungratefully, flapping at her with her hands in terror at the brown face and big ...
— The Carbonels • Charlotte M. Yonge
... quarter of a mile from the stables John Straker's overcoat was flapping from a furze-bush. Immediately beyond there was a bowl-shaped depression in the moor, and at the bottom of this was found the dead body of the unfortunate trainer. His head had been shattered by a savage blow from some heavy weapon, and he was wounded on ...
— Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... and his will that is dealing with him! As I have looked from one of the northern windows of the street which commands our noble estuary,—the view through which is a picture on an illimitable canvas and a poem in innumerable cantos,—I have sometimes seen a pleasure-boat drifting along, her sail flapping, and she seeming as if she had neither will nor aim. At her stern a man was laboring to bring her head round with an oar, to little purpose, as it seemed to those who watched him pulling and tugging. But all at once the wind of heaven, which had wandered all the way from Florida or from ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... than a red rose rapping, And fear is a plash of wings. What, then, if a scarlet rose goes flapping Down the bright-grey ...
— New Poems • D. H. Lawrence
... shoot their arrows to make it rain the harder. The smaller flashes come from the bows of the children. The Thunder People have human forms, with wings of knives, and by flapping these wings they make a great noise. Thus they frighten the Cloud and Lightning People ...
— Myths and Legends of California and the Old Southwest • Katharine Berry Judson
... fearing lest they should be poisonous. For whole days he did not see a patch of sky, but tramped on beneath a canopy of branches, amidst a greenish gloom that swarmed with horrible living creatures. Great birds flew over his head with a terrible flapping of wings and sudden strange calls resembling death groans; apes sprang, wild animals rushed through the thickets around him, bending the saplings and bringing down a rain of leaves, as though a gale were passing. But it was particularly the ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... that they were startled by some unknown cause; then around the house was heard a loud flapping, the air was filled with the whirl of wings and a multitude of white-feathered breasts; you could hear tumult, noise and excited cries—the whole flock flew out suddenly, circled round the house, ...
— Sielanka: An Idyll • Henryk Sienkiewicz
... in the heavy guard was on the spot, and the whole mass was all over us, gasping, burbling, flapping their wings, fighting to clutch at us with their hideous orange hands and waving antennae. Decidedly the fight was on, and I was forced to admit the fact that, though these creatures might be sheep, even sheep have power. But the first skirmish was already won, and I had faith ...
— The Winged Men of Orcon - A Complete Novelette • David R. Sparks
... back, and, after he had bitten it in great rage, he said, 'This is one of the sinners of the thievish fire.' Therefore I, where thou seest, am lost, and going thus robed I rankle." When he had thus completed his speech the flame, sorrowing, departed, twisting and flapping its sharp horn. ...
— The Divine Comedy, Volume 1, Hell [The Inferno] • Dante Alighieri
... will of Almighty Allah. But know, O my son, that thy wife is not here, but in the seventh of the Islands of Wak and between us and it is seven months' journey, night and day. From here we go to an island called the Land of Birds, wherein, for the loud crying of the birds and the flapping of their wings, one cannot hear other speak."—And Shahrazad perceived the dawn of day and ceased to say her ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 8 • Richard F. Burton
... the men were through at the knees, and tattered at the elbows. Some were buttonless and patched. I had to put a patch in my shorts. Our civilian boots were wearing out—some were right through. Heels came off when they "right turned," others had their soles flapping as they marched. ...
— At Suvla Bay • John Hargrave
... timeless, null, Sirius they watched above where armies fell; He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull Plunge of a stone ...
— Late Lyrics and Earlier • Thomas Hardy
... his neck, partly for a pillow, partly from an instinctive craving for warmth on that bitter cold day. She was making a low moan, like an animal in pain, or perhaps more like the sobbing of the wind. Rover, highly flattered by her caress, and also, perhaps, touched by sympathy, was flapping his heavy tail against the ground, but not otherwise moving a hair, until he heard my approach with his quick erected ears. Then, with a short, abrupt bark of distrust, he sprang up as if to leave his mistress. Both he and I were ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... penetrate that intense blackness. A large, warm drop of rain fell upon Rex's outstretched hand, and far overhead rumbled a wrathful peal of thunder. The shrieking which he had heard a few moments ago had ceased, but every now and then dull but immense shocks, as of some mighty bird flapping the cliff with monstrous wings, reverberated around him, and shook the ground where he stood. He looked towards the ocean, and a tall misty Form—white against the all-pervading blackness—beckoned and bowed to him. He saw it distinctly ...
— For the Term of His Natural Life • Marcus Clarke
... wall; but poor Will in his fright tumbled down, and lay screaming. Ned and Polly had reached the wall, and, looking back, saw that their shadows had not followed. Ned's stood before Will, brandishing his pole; and Polly's was flapping a shadowy sun-bonnet with all its might. As soon as they saw that, back they went,—Ned to threaten till he broke his pole, and Polly to flap till the strings came off. As if anxious to do its part, the bonnet flew up in the air, ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag VI - An Old-Fashioned Thanksgiving, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... inch deep. As we stood on the margin of this immense lake a small flock of ducks came sailing down as if to alight; but as they skimmed the water a few inches above the surface, they seemed to scent danger, and with rapid flapping of their wings, all except one rose into the air. This one, in his descent, had gained too great an impetus to check his progress, and came down into the water, and his frantic efforts to rise again were futile, and with one or two loud squawks of distress, which ...
— The Discovery of Yellowstone Park • Nathaniel Pitt Langford
... Maupertuis Quartos are not readable for their own sake (solemnly emphatic statement of what you already know; concentrated struggle to get on wing, and failure by so narrow a miss; struggle which gets only on tiptoe, and won't cease wriggling and flapping); and then (to your horror) they prove to be carefully cleaned of all the Maupertuis-VOLTAIRE matter;—edition being SUBSEQUENT to that world-famous explosion. ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XVI. (of XXI.) - Frederick The Great—The Ten Years of Peace.—1746-1756. • Thomas Carlyle
... the ponderous Samson. "Why, what a wild duck thou art, sister, flapping and quacking because an unshotted barrel has been fired at thee. She is an unshotted gun, she has no name; and what is a thing without a name? nothing: for if it were something it would have been called something. What thing is there—that is ...
— The Advocate • Charles Heavysege
... thus passed by dramatically, accentuating, in this favourite spectacle, its mode of viewing things. And even apart from the contrast of a very different scene, he would have found it, just now, a somewhat vulgar spectacle. The temples, wide open, with their ropes of roses flapping in the wind against the rich, reflecting marble, their startling draperies and heavy cloud of incense, were but the centres of a great banquet spread through all the gaudily coloured streets of Rome, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume Two • Walter Horatio Pater
... a phantom-like ship came into view. About the great, green eye there bobbed small yellow dots. The wanderers could hear a far-away creaking of unseen tackle and flapping of shadowy sails. There came the melody of the waters as the ship's ...
— Men, Women, and Boats • Stephen Crane
... not, but now," said the gander, suddenly rising in the water and flapping his wings; "having done my duty in bringing you here, I leave you to ...
— Little Folks - A Magazine for the Young (Date of issue unknown) • Various
... heaven seem to combine into a nursery tale, and our relation to things seems for a moment so simple that a dancing lunatic would be needed to do justice to its lucidity and levity. The tree above my head is flapping like some gigantic bird standing on one leg; the moon is like the eye of a Cyclops. And, however much my face clouds with sombre vanity, or vulgar vengeance, or contemptible contempt, the bones of my skull beneath it are laughing ...
— The Defendant • G.K. Chesterton
... at the barred window of her chamber and was weeping. As Wilhelm approached the castle, the swans rushed to meet him, and the flapping of their wings and their piteous cries attracted the attention of the princess, and ...
— Second Book of Tales • Eugene Field
... furniture, and given up to dust, spiders, and rats. The apartments on the floor above them were the home of great numbers of bats, owls, and jackdaws, who found ready ingress through the large holes in the roof. Every evening they flew forth in flocks, with much flapping of wings, and weird, melancholy cries and shrieks, in search of the food not to be found in the immediate vicinity of this ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... had lost all his underwear except his shirt, and part of his socks. His breeches were torn at the knee, and he felt the chill of the wind very acutely. He could feel the damp mud through the flapping toes of his boot. ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... cavern'd Dirce flows Do white-arm'd maidens chaunt my lay, Flapping the while with laurel-rose The honey-gathering tribes away; And sweetly, sweetly Attic tongues Lisp your Corinna's early songs; To her with feet more graceful come The verses that have dwelt in kindred ...
— On The Art of Reading • Arthur Quiller-Couch
... an instant at work. The flapping and noise was prodigious, for although many of the birds were killed outright, others struck in the wing or leg were but slightly injured. Some made off along the surface of the water, others succeeded in getting up and flying away, but the greater part were either killed by the cats, or knocked ...
— The Cat of Bubastes - A Tale of Ancient Egypt • G. A. Henty
... slew chariot men, and they broke into the Trojan line as fire falls on a forest in a windy day, leaping and roaring and racing through the trees. Many an empty chariot did the horses hurry madly through the field, for the charioteers were lying dead, with the greedy vultures hovering above them, flapping their wide wings. Still Agamemnon followed and slew the hindmost Trojans, but the rest fled till they came to the gates, and the oak tree that grew outside the ...
— Tales of Troy: Ulysses the Sacker of Cities • Andrew Lang
... through the tract. We encamped close to a breeding-place of these birds, when we were kept awake all night by the noise they made. Sometimes, too, a limb of a tree would break with the weight of the birds which had alighted on it, when there would be such fluttering and flapping of wings, as made it impossible for us ...
— Twenty-Seven Years in Canada West - The Experience of an Early Settler (Volume I) • Samuel Strickland
... then looking up, stared. A girl stood before them in the doorway. Anitra, with cheeks ablaze and eyes burning, her traveling dress flapping damp about her heels, and on her head the red shawl she preferred to any hat. Behind her shoulder peered the anxious face ...
— The Chief Legatee • Anna Katharine Green
... locally or accidentally combined. They are awful and terrible to savage feeling,[618] but they have never received religious worship. A quasi-scientific explanation of thunder found among certain peoples (North American, Brazilian, Bakuana, Karen, and others) is that it is produced by the flapping of the wings of a mighty bird.[619] More commonly thunder is the voice of a deity, and lightning is his arrow,[620] or these are said simply to ...
— Introduction to the History of Religions - Handbooks on the History of Religions, Volume IV • Crawford Howell Toy
... beggars were having a lovely time. They'd taken off their comfortable winter overcoats with those wing-like, three-leaved capes which they've been wearing ever since the beginning of December, and had gone back to summer things: nice, shady, flapping felt hats and cool clothes; and they were having one of their pleasant little feasts which I used quite to envy them when we first came, while the weather was still very warm. A rough table in the road, close to the stone wall, with thick chunks of black bread, and cheese ...
— The Guests Of Hercules • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... helped at the sweeps, and for two hours the creaking of the oars and the dull flapping of the sail alone broke the silence of the calm; and the lads were by no means sorry when the skipper gave the order for the anchor to ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... constantly in the society of the beautiful Julia Williams, and the impression first made upon him by her surpassing beauty rapidly deepened into a devoted love. Wholly absorbed in his passion, he cared not how long his little brig lay with flapping sails upon the water waiting for the wind. Julia was by no means indifferent to his addresses, so ardent and yet so respectful. She already loved the gallant young sailor, though she hardly even suspected it herself, yet why did she so love the long evening walk with ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXIII No. 5 November 1848 • Various
... winter off the Cape that year. The relieved helmsmen came off flapping their arms, or ran stamping hard and blowing into swollen, red fingers. The watch on deck dodged the sting of cold sprays or, crouching in sheltered corners, watched dismally the high and merciless seas boarding the ship time after time in ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... they come!" quickly followed by bang, bang, bang along the glade; and here indeed they are, at first by twos and threes, and then a compact flight, whirling along with appealing cries of love, fluttering, and flapping their wings, and pursuing one another from bush to bush. They show now neither fear nor circumspection, and crazy, blind, and deaf, scarcely seem to notice the noise, the flashes, or the cries of the sportsmen. ...
— Le Morvan, [A District of France,] Its Wild Sports, Vineyards and Forests; with Legends, Antiquities, Rural and Local Sketches • Henri de Crignelle
... Dicky came swinging along, the sides of his old rusty raincoat flapping like the wings ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... became agitated with a swaying motion which startled the watcher not a little. He soon observed a shapeless form arising out of the midst of the water and rushing straight toward him. It was a frightful monster of a Dragon, with two great flapping ears, which was rushing so fiercely upon him. The Prince bravely drew his sword, and seizing the Dragon, cut off his head. Then he sliced off the ears and put them into his wallet, and threw the head and the body back ...
— Tales of Wonder Every Child Should Know • Various
... standing with his back to the shore exactly in a line with me, and he was swinging his great head from side to side, and flapping his ears in the enjoyment of his bath. I left the tree with my four-ounce rile, and, keeping in a direct line for his hind-quarters, I walked towards him. The grass was soft and short; I could therefore approach without the slightest noise: the only danger of being discovered ...
— The Rifle and The Hound in Ceylon • Samuel White Baker
... had this waterproof canvas covering in place he too was able to laugh at the rain that now poured down. It might not be just as cozy under his flapping canvas as beneath the steady roofs which the other boats boasted; but George would not complain, and ...
— Motor Boat Boys Down the Coast - or Through Storm and Stress to Florida • Louis Arundel
... and think, when the sunset's gold Is flushing river and hill and shore, I shall one day stand by the water cold, And list for the sound of the boatman's oar; I shall watch for a gleam of the flapping sail, I shall hear the boat as it gains the strand, I shall pass from sight with the boatman pale, To the better shore of the spirit land. I shall know the loved who have gone before, And joyfully sweet will the meeting be, When over the river, the peaceful river, ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... town of Leghorn awoke to find itself gay with bunting, the Italian and English flags flying side by side everywhere, and the Consular standard flapping over the Consulate in the piazza. In the night the British Mediterranean fleet, cruising down from Malta, had come into the roadstead, and at the signal from the flagship had maneuvered and dropped anchor, forming a long line of gigantic battleships, swift cruisers, torpedo-boat ...
— The Czar's Spy - The Mystery of a Silent Love • William Le Queux
... forwards they swayed, and first one was uppermost and then the other; but at length Ian worked his leg round the giant's and threw him to the ground. Then he called to the raven, and the raven came flapping towards him, and said: 'Put your hand under my right wing, and you will find there a knife sharp enough to take off his head.' And sharp indeed it was, for with a single blow, the giant's head rolled ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Andrew Lang
... seated on the big elephants' necks, their legs tucked comfortably behind the enormous flapping ears. They looked mysterious and proud in their position. They wore turbans and carried sticks with pointed iron spikes at the head, and when they came to the low entrance of the tent they prodded their huge beasts, which went down ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... tripped down the street on a summer's day with her dainty hands propped into the ribbon-broidered pockets of her apron, and elbows consequently more or less akimbo with her wide Leghorn hat flapping down and hiding her face one moment and blowing straight up against her fore head the next and making its revealment of fresh young beauty; with all her pretty girlish airs and graces in full play, and that sweet ignorance of care and that atmosphere of innocence and purity ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 1. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner
... flapping, like eagles after a hare; and Perseus' blood ran cold, for all his courage, as he saw them come howling on his track; and he cried, 'Bear me well now, brave sandals, for the hounds of Death ...
— The Heroes • Charles Kingsley
... poured forth their songs. But those loud, long, clear, melodious, deep-hearted, passionate, best-loved notes! As the chorus swelled from shadowy shrubs and vines to the sparking tree-tops I listened for some sound from Georgiana's room, but over there I saw only the soft, slow flapping of the white curtains like signals ...
— A Kentucky Cardinal • James Lane Allen
... these birds tearing at it in a kind of frenzy of gluttony. They were not in the least disconcerted by our approach, and not until the bearers had taken sticks to them would they leave. The heavy half-gorged flapping of a vulture's wings as it settles itself to a new aspect of its repast is the most ...
— Roving East and Roving West • E.V. Lucas
... rear. The animals were fine ones, and Garcia was evidently proud of them; showing their good points to Terence, and telling him their names. The mules were all very fond of their master, turning their heads at once when addressed by name; and flapping their long ears in enjoyment, as he rubbed their heads or ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty
... look at Winnie's Christmas fixin's foreninst yer two eyes," piped Jimmy, flapping the little breeches he was too excited to put on at the little pine branches stuck up thickly ...
— Happy Days for Boys and Girls • Various
... day, a figure in a horseman's cloak, and great boots to match, and a large flapping felt hat, stood like a statue near the auberge, where was the apostate nun, Mary. The friar thus disguised was at that moment truly wretched. These ardent natures undertake wonders; but are dashed when they ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... given anything to see Dick that night, and she lay awake for hours listening for the sound of the well-known heavy footstep. At last it came, tramp, tramp, a dull, heavy, noisy flapping through the silence of the house. She trembled, fearing that he would mistake the door and come into their room; if he did, she felt she would die of shame. The footsteps approached nearer, nearer; her husband was snoring loudly, and, casting a glance at him, she wondered if she should ...
— A Mummer's Wife • George Moore
... black shape, with a flapping something like a wing, seemed to be struggling in the aperture of the roof. In another moment the slit was clear again, and the luminous haze of the Milky Way shone ...
— The Country of the Blind, And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... momentary struggle near the flapping screen. Suddenly Hopewell Drugg, very much disheveled, half reeled through the door; but somebody pulled ...
— How Janice Day Won • Helen Beecher Long
... manner as to be insulting, until I exhibited the sealed despatch, and demanded to be escorted at once to Sir William Howe. This brought results, and I entered the city under escort of a dozen horsemen, their green coats faced with dingy white, cocked hats flapping as they rode. ...
— My Lady of Doubt • Randall Parrish
... along the forest road on the mainland leading to Williamsburg. Here, colonial records going by, telling that the brave little capital is a capital no more; there, a quaint church service, bespeaking abandoned holy walls and sacred doors flapping in the idle wind; and all along, those shapeless loads, telling of forsaken firesides, empty streets, a village deserted. After that, came only an occasional ox-cart, a load of hay, or (from the other direction) a carryall ...
— Virginia: The Old Dominion • Frank W. Hutchins and Cortelle Hutchins
... (I don't!). Fier, fiere, companion. Fier, sound, active. Fin', to find. Fissle, tingle, fidget with delight. Fit, foot. Fittie-lan', the near horse of the hind-most pair in the plough. Flae, a flea. Flaffin, flapping. Flainin, flannen, flannel. Flang, flung. Flee, to fly. Fleech, wheedle. Fleesh, fleece. Fleg, scare, blow, jerk. Fleth'rin, flattering. Flewit, a sharp lash. Fley, to scare. Flichterin, fluttering. Flinders, shreds, broken pieces. Flinging, kicking out in dancing; capering. Flingin-tree, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... pitching the chill abominations into the bath-tub, pleased by the vindictiveness of that desolate flapping sound; and in the midst his wife serenely trotted in, observed serenely, "Why Georgie dear, what are you doing? Are you going to wash out the towels? Why, you needn't wash out the towels. Oh, Georgie, you didn't go and ...
— Babbitt • Sinclair Lewis
... its way swiftly along Buckingham Palace Road towards the Mall. As they passed the long front of the Palace the traveller turned his head resolutely away, that he might not see the alien uniforms at the gates and the eagle standard flapping in the sunlight. The taxi driver, who seemed to have combative instincts, slowed down as he was turning into the Mall, and pointed to the white pile of memorial statuary in front of ...
— When William Came • Saki
... embroidered bodices of the women—though their dresses were all either black or dark blue—lent a brightness to the crowd; a bright touch was added by the gay shawls of the elder dames, and the broad slouch hats and flapping white collars of the men, ...
— Chatterbox, 1906 • Various
... hand, The wind waxes boisterous. Swinging ends of cordage crack like whips. There is an immense humming that drowns speech,—a humming made up of many sounds: whining of pulleys, whistling of riggings, flapping and fluttering of canvas, roar of nettings in the wind. And this sonorous medley, ever growing louder, has rhythm,—a crescendo and diminuendo timed by the steamer's regular swinging: like a great Voice crying out, "Whoh-oh-oh! whoh-oh-oh!" We are nearing the life-centres of ...
— Two Years in the French West Indies • Lafcadio Hearn
... of the damned, crushed, broken and in agonizing pain, and with the aasvogels tearing at my face. Pinned to the earth as by some great weight, my hands were fortunately still free; and my revolver still in its holster; and a few shots sent the lewd, cowardly birds flapping away. The blood was streaming from my face, and again and again I fainted with sheer agony; moreover the fierce midday sun beat down intolerably full in my eyes, for I lay on my back and could move nothing but my arms. But gradually the sun passed, a cool shadow fell across ...
— A Rip Van Winkle Of The Kalahari - Seven Tales of South-West Africa • Frederick Cornell
... from another tribe—he was unarmed except for one of their own spears. The curious covering on his body was flapping in the breeze. Nothing here, surely, to hold a hunting-tribe ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... great part of the time off the Cape. I had been interested in the bird from descriptions, and Coleridge's poem, and was not at all disappointed. We caught one or two with a baited hook which we floated astern upon a shingle. Their long, flapping wings, long legs, and large, staring eyes, give them a very peculiar appearance. They look well on the wing; but one of the finest sights that I have ever seen was an albatross asleep upon the water, during a calm, off Cape Horn, when a heavy sea was running. There being ...
— Two Years Before the Mast • Richard Henry Dana
... plants, and the rocks. The distant light of day formed a strange contrast with the darkness which surrounded us in the vast cavern. We discharged our guns at a venture, wherever the cries of the nocturnal birds and the flapping of their wings, led us to suspect that a great number of nests were crowded together. After several fruitless attempts M. Bonpland succeeded in killing a couple of guacharos, which, dazzled by the light ...
— Equinoctial Regions of America • Alexander von Humboldt
... forehead, hair gone grey, Fallen eyebrows, eyes gone blind and red, Their laughs and looks all fled away, Yea, all that smote men's hearts are fled; The bowed nose, fallen from goodlihead; Foul flapping ears like water-flags; Peaked chin, and cheeks all waste and dead, And lips that are ...
— Poems & Ballads (Second Series) - Swinburne's Poems Volume III • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... quilted wrapper of flowered satin, tulips and poppies on a pale buff ground, and her head was surmounted by the most astonishing nightcap that ever the mind of woman devised. So ample and manifold were its flapping borders, and so small the keen brown face under them, that Doctor Stedman, though not an imaginative person, could think of nothing but a walnut set in the ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... friends came; and there were cheerful voices outside. The door opened, and in stumbled Ethered, bearing a heavy basket of great fish, which he cast on the floor—lean green and golden pike, and red-finned roach, in a glittering, flapping heap. ...
— King Alfred's Viking - A Story of the First English Fleet • Charles W. Whistler
... which must have been seen to be understood. They advanced this time in earnest, and if I offered to let the boldest listen, by holding out my watch to him, he would draw back alarmed, although smiling, while the band would break into an outburst of joy; the ducklings flapping their wings, the white geese cackling, and the chickens going chk, ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... orders by opening the ball myself. I had been posted in the early morning very close to one of the enemy's banners—perhaps not more than forty feet away—and this gaudy flag, defiantly flapping so near the end of my nose, must have incensed me; for almost before I had realised what I was doing I was very slowly and very carefully aiming at the bamboo staff so as to split it in two and bring down the banner with a run. I fired three shots in ten minutes and ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... "Duke Mysteriously Missing," I read in the diminishing degrees of the scare-head type. Then came the picture, with a mien attractively debonair, a pleasantly smiling mouth, and a sympathetic pair of eyes, and in due course, the tale. I clutched at the flapping ends of the ...
— The Firefly Of France • Marion Polk Angellotti
... recollect, being a dollar the dozen. When we left Johanna, we must have had on board several hundred as sea-stock. Not infrequently one would get out of its cage, and if pursued would often end by flapping overboard, so by drowning anticipating its appointed doom; but it was a pathetic sight to see the poor creature, upborne by its feathers so long as dry, floating on the waste of waters in the wake of the ship which seemed almost heartlessly ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan
... on the left, called the old Milltown road, she saw a white horse and wagon, driven by a man with a rakish, flapping, Panama hat, come rapidly around the turn and disappear over the long hills leading down to the falls. There was no mistaking him; there never was another Abner Simpson, with his lean height, his bushy reddish hair, the ...
— The Flag-raising • Kate Douglas Wiggin
... them at night. The train always started before people had finished eating. At supper, one of the priests almost got left and had to run for it, a piece of meat-pie in one hand, the other holding up his flapping gray gown. ...
— Trapped in 'Black Russia' - Letters June-November 1915 • Ruth Pierce
... hand, whose business it is to chime out the hours and halves and quarters for the burgesses of Compiegne. The centre figure has a gilt breast-plate; the two others wear gilt trunk-hose; and they all three have elegant, flapping hats like cavaliers. As the quarter approaches, they turn their heads and look knowingly one to the other; and then, kling go the three hammers on three little bells below. The hour follows, deep and sonorous, from the interior of the tower; and the gilded gentlemen ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... vanished in the distance, when my attention was attracted by a dark speck far out in the offing, with a little tiny white sail. With my glass I made it out to be a ship's boat, but I saw no one on board, and the sail was idly flapping about the mast. ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... out in the morning, carrying their provisions in baskets. It was a bright spring morning, one of those days which inebriate one. Everything smelt fresh, everything seemed happy. The voices of the birds sounded more joyous, and the flapping of their wings more rapid. They had lunch on the grass, under the willow trees, quite close to the water, which glittered in the sun's rays. The air was balmy, charged with the odors of fresh vegetation; they had ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume IV (of 8) • Guy de Maupassant
... the fisherman who had rescued Gwendolen. Few details came to light. The boat in which Grandcourt had gone out had been found drifting with its sail loose, and had been towed in. The fishermen thought it likely that he had been knocked overboard by the flapping of the sail while putting about, and that he had not known how to swim; but, though they were near, their attention had been first arrested by a cry which seemed like that of a man in distress, and while they ...
— Daniel Deronda • George Eliot
... was vastly proud of my achievement, for it was far and away the longest shot that I had ever attempted. But instead of being satisfied with my success, I must needs attempt something still more difficult. Flapping down the back sight, and entirely dispensing with its use, I reloaded the weapon and determined to rely upon my eye and my judgment alone, or, in other words, upon that faculty which, by constant use, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... we do," said Scattergood. He seated himself, and mopped his brow, and fanned himself with his broad straw hat, whose flapping brim was beginning to ravel about the edges. Presently ...
— Scattergood Baines • Clarence Budington Kelland
... surprise by this evolution that the first impression was of some mistake, accident, or blunder of the helmsman, and cries of regret followed, lest the frigate might have it in her power to profit by the mishap. The flapping of canvas, notwithstanding, showed that no time was lost, and presently le Feu-Follet shot by an opening between the warehouses, under all sail. At this critical instant the frigate, which saw what passed, but which had been deceived like all ...
— The Wing-and-Wing - Le Feu-Follet • J. Fenimore Cooper
... into the kitchen garden. It might have been some corner of Italy or the South of France; the square tower of the granary rose high against the blue, the gray walls were hung with messy fruit trees, pigeons were darting and flapping their wings, gardeners were at work, the very vegetables were growing luxuriant and romantic and edged by thick borders of violet pansy; crossing the courtyard, we came into the village street, also orderly ...
— Castle Rackrent • Maria Edgeworth
... still clear and pure. The elms in the Bishop's garden rustled with a long, billowy sound, and a loud voice seemed to clamour through the terraces and the flying buttresses of the Cathedral. But he heard only the light flapping of a little morning cap, tied to a branch of a lilac bush, as if it were a bouquet, ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... blue heron among the cowslips below me. I had almost scared it to death, and it arose on flapping wings and paid me back by frightening me so I screamed as I ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... Receiver. Glowing with the consciousness of victory, the Private Secretary dressed for dinner and started out to his club. His good-humor was impaired, when he observed in his hall a pendant triangle of wall-paper flapping in the draught of the open door through which the Poet had dragged his trunks. Further on, the paint was scarred on the stairs, and the carpet of the main hall was rucked and disordered; there was also a lingering suggestion of escaping ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... of expression—that we requested the postilion to stop, that we might learn some particulars respecting this young woman, and the mode of life which she followed. She was without stockings; of a strong muscular form, and her face was half buried beneath a large flapping straw hat. We learnt that her parents were engaged in making black lead pencils (a flourishing branch of commerce, at this moment, at Nuremberg) for the wholesale dealers; and they were so poor, that she was glad to get a florin by conveying wood (as we then saw her) ...
— A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour in France and Germany, Volume Three • Thomas Frognall Dibdin
... and dinner served up just as the king had given these orders, the bird, flapping his wings, hopped off the king's hand, and flew on to the table, where he began to peck the bread and victuals, sometimes on one plate, and sometimes on another. The king was so surprised, that he immediately sent the officer to desire the queen ...
— Fairy Tales From The Arabian Nights • E. Dixon
... in the mill pond. Tuwhoo, tuwhoo! Go look in the water at midnight, and you'll see one. By the light of the moon a brownie you'll see, to be sure, but such a lazy one! Tuwhoo, tuwhoo!" screamed the old owl; and, flapping her wings, she went sailing away in ...
— A Kindergarten Story Book • Jane L. Hoxie
... know where you've sprung from, but we'll travel together for a bit." The dog ran up the hill, and for a moment stood out against the moon—a shaggy, disreputable dog with a humorous stump of a tail. He stood there with one ear flapping back and the other cocked up—a ...
— The Wooden Horse • Hugh Walpole
... swung open and shut. William moved on the terrace; they had seen him. "Hallo, William!" And Bobby Kane, flapping his towel, began to leap and pirouette on the parched lawn. "Pity you didn't come, William. The water was divine. And we all went to a little pub afterwards ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... such a look!—the very gods delighting (To say nought of beasts). There begins, then, a biting, A picking, a pecking, a sipping, And each o'er the legs of another is tripping, And pushing, and pressing, and flapping, And chasing, and fuming, and snapping, And all for one small piece of bread, To which, though dry, her fair hands give a taste, As though it ...
— The Poems of Goethe • Goethe
... beside him, and, in the instinctive fashion of all loneliness, looked out of the window. The southern trades were whipping the waves of the distant bay and harbor into yeasty crests. Sheets of rain swept the sidewalks with the regularity of a fusillade, against which a few pedestrians struggled with flapping waterproofs and slanting umbrellas. He could look along the deserted length of Montgomery Street to the heights of Telegraph Hill and its long-disused semaphore. It seemed lonelier to him than the mile-long sweep of Heavy Tree Hill, writhing against the mountain wind and its aeolian song. ...
— The Three Partners • Bret Harte
... rays of a cautiously flashed electric light would reveal our infantrymen with packs on back and rifles slung over their shoulders. A stiff wind whipped the rain into their faces and tugged the bottoms of their flapping, wet overcoats. ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... a tragedy in itself. If man's supremacy is to be challenged at all let it be by a creature of flesh-and-blood, a big-brained biped who must kill to live. Better that by far than a ghostly flickering in the deepening dusk, a whispering and a flapping and a long-drawn ...
— The Man the Martians Made • Frank Belknap Long
... the wild dog's maw, The hair was tangled round his jaw. Close by the shore, on the edge of the gulf, There sate a vulture flapping a wolf, Who had stolen from the hills, but kept away, Scared by the dogs, from the human prey; But he seized on his share of a steed that lay, Pick'd by the birds, on the sands ...
— Short Studies on Great Subjects • James Anthony Froude
... too hungry, though, to note with quick eye all that the little restaurant held of interest, nor too sleepy to respond to the friendly waitress who, seeing their dusty boots, and the sprig of sumac stuck in Fanny's coat, said, "My, it must have been swell in the country today!" as her flapping napkin ...
— Fanny Herself • Edna Ferber
... in his wide-leaved hat and flapping collar, watched the smock-frock and russet gown as they bobbed and glided, and twirled and crouched in the mazes of that mysterious dance, and the moment they stopped, shouldered his way through the usual throng of pierrots, flower-girls, Juliets, Carmens, Sikhs, and Chinamen to Lady ...
— The Ffolliots of Redmarley • L. Allen Harker
... and, torn by that great passion that comes from devotion misprized and sacrifice rewarded with scorn, she leapt up to hurl back the truth. But a vision rose before her, the picture of L. W. sobbing and bleeding, his arm flapping beside him, striving vainly to retrieve his treachery; and the words did not ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... her with their spy-glasses from the shore, and ascertained her character and force. At night a picked crew of daring fellows set off for her in a whale boat. They approached with muffled oars, as she lay rocking idly with the undulations of the sea and her sails flapping against the masts. They were close under her stern before the guard on deck was aware of their approach. The alarm was given; the pirates threw hand grenades on deck and sprang up the main chains ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... was more truth than fiction in these words. It certainly was a funny thing. On the crown of its long, bare, peaked head, stuck one of the little, furbelowed caps we once saw Mrs. Salsify engaged in making, which was tied down over its flapping ears with orange-colored ribbon. A receding forehead, little specs of eyes, a turned-up nose, and great blubber lips, adown whose corners flowed eternally two miniature cataracts. O, what a face! Surely, nobody but a grandmother would be pleased to have it said to resemble ...
— Eventide - A Series of Tales and Poems • Effie Afton
... the large Yaks in his cold plains that bide Whisk here and there, playful, their tails' bushy pride, And evermore flapping those fans of long hair Which borrowed moonbeams have made splendid and fair, Proclaim at each stroke (what our flapping men sing) His title of Honour, 'The ...
— The Travels of Marco Polo Volume 1 • Marco Polo and Rustichello of Pisa
... Martin is his name. A broad, good-humored face, swarthy and strong, with the eyes dark and small and far apart, and shaded by the inevitable berret. Caillou's is scarlet, and so is his jacket, thrown open in flapping lappels and showing a white flannel waistcoat beneath. He wears knee-breeches of brown corduroy, and thick creamy-white leggings, coarsely knit and climbing up over ankle and calf nearly to the knee. He has hemp sandals, and ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... Considered. The Flight of Birds. The Downward Beat. The Concaved Wing. Feather Structure Considered. Webbed Wings. The Angle of Movement. An Initial Movement or Impulse Necessary. A Wedging Motion. No Mystery in the Wave Motion. How Birds Poise with Flapping Wings. Narrow- winged Birds. Initial Movement of Soaring Birds. Soaring Birds Move Swiftly. Muscular Energy Exerted by Soaring Birds. ...
— Aeroplanes • J. S. Zerbe***
... bairn lies buried, and it's not mous (canny) to be out at such a time. The farmer had seen spectre maidens walking round the ruined castle of Darg, and the castle all lit up with flaring torches, and dead knights and ladies sitting in the halls at the wine-cup, and the devil himself flapping his wings on ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... the approach of an enemy, stood for some time suckling her young one, which seemed about two years old; they then went into a pit containing mud, and smeared themselves all over with it, the little one frisking about his dam, flapping his ears and tossing his trunk incessantly, in elephantine fashion. She kept flapping her ears and wagging her tail, as if in the height of enjoyment. Then began the piping of her enemies, which was ...
— Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa - Journeys and Researches in South Africa • David Livingstone
... climbed quickly to the quarterdeck. The 'Bon homme Richard' was lumbering like a leaden ship before the wind, swaying ponderously, her topsails flapping and her heavy blocks whacking against the yards. And there was the commodore, erect, and with fire in his eye, giving sharp commands to the men at the wheel. I knew at once that no trifle had disturbed ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... white, lacy, frilly frock, with touches of pale yellow ribbon here and there. Her hat was of the broad-leafed, flapping variety, circled with a wreath of yellow flowers. Patty could wear any colour, and the dainty, ...
— Patty's Butterfly Days • Carolyn Wells
... as a bright as a silver dollar. In the book we can smell the sawdust, hear the flapping of the big white canvas and the roaring of the lions, and listen to the merry "hoop la!" ...
— From Farm to Fortune - or Nat Nason's Strange Experience • Horatio Alger Jr.
... looked down at the flapping and worn foundation of the shoes so lately purchased, and then at ...
— Treasure Valley • Marian Keith
... then a joyous return to their home with booty and glory, to be everlastingly commemorated in the songs of guitar-players? or was it...? But the future is unknown, and stands before a man like autumnal fogs rising from the swamps; birds fly foolishly up and down in it with flapping wings, never recognising each other, the dove seeing not the vulture, nor the vulture the dove, and no one knowing how far he ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... pocket ticks a watch which to-morrow will replace with another more problematic still. But in the yard are the undisputable evidences of his wild unthrift. Old rusty mowing-machines, buggies with torn and flapping canvas, sleighs ready to yawn at every crack, all are here: poor relations in a broken-down family. But children love this yard. They come, hand in hand, with a timid confidence in their right, and ask at ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown
... my ankles not only tipped in awkwardly but the stiff outer edges of my boot counters dug holes in my skin so that my outing was a kind of torture after all. Nevertheless, I persisted and, while Burton circled and swooped like a hawk, I sprawled with flapping arms in a mist of ignoble rage. That I learned to skate fairly well even under these disadvantages argues a high degree ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... The risk was great, but Tonkin was accustomed to risks, and prompt to act. He flung his arms round Spankey, drew him forcibly into the level, and held on for life. There was a terrible rend; the leg of the trousers gave way at the hip, and went flapping up to grass, ...
— Deep Down, a Tale of the Cornish Mines • R.M. Ballantyne
... his more highborn wife; and though the "Kentucky jeans" apparel had long been dropped, his clothes of better material and better make would sit ill sorted on his gigantic limbs. His cotton umbrella, without a handle, and tied together with a coarse string to keep it from flapping, which he carried on his circuit rides, is said to be remembered still by some of his surviving neighbors. This rusticity of habit was utterly free from that affected contempt of refinement and ...
— The Papers And Writings Of Abraham Lincoln, Complete - Constitutional Edition • Abraham Lincoln
... There was no furniture to stumble over, and when she came to the side of the wall in the inner room from which the stairway crept up, she mounted it on her hands and knees, trembling, partly with cold, partly with fear at the noise made by the flapping of the sole of one of her old shoes. There was a step missing at the turn of the stairs, but the child knew where the vacancy was, and pulling herself over it, she reached the landing, felt all around the walls there, and made the circuit of the three small ...
— The Making of Mary • Jean Forsyth
... better-class Chinese seemed unsatisfactory. Throughout the East it is only the barefooted peasant or the sandalled mountaineer who does not seem encumbered by his feet. The felt shoe of the Chinese gentleman and the flapping, heelless slipper of the Indian are alike uncomfortable and hampering. Nor have Asiatics learned as yet to wear proper European shoes, or to wear them properly, for they stub along in badly cut, ill-fitting things too short for ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... called softly to the little black dog, that came eagerly, wagging his burr-matted tail. She laid her hand on its head when the dog jumped up to greet her. She smiled faintly while she fondled its silky, flapping ears. ...
— The Heritage of the Sioux • B.M. Bower
... it is an interesting sight to see the old birds training their young ones to fly, by getting up above them and flapping their wings a few times until all the young ones imitate them. Then they hop from one twig to another, still flapping their wings, and the young ones follow suit and begin to find that their wings ...
— Scouting For Girls, Official Handbook of the Girl Scouts • Girl Scouts
... off in her flapping bonnet, while Mrs. Poyser set out the bright oak table and reached ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... laughed Burnett, and seizing two flapping ropes he went skipping up a sort of stepladder and sprang ...
— The Rejuvenation of Aunt Mary • Anne Warner
... once intermitting the low, querulous murmur of housekeeping anxiety: now she stops to hammer with all her little life at some tough piece of bark, strikes harder and harder blows, throws herself back at last, flapping her wings furiously as she brings down her whole strength again upon it; finally it yields, and grub after grub goes down her throat, till she whets her beak after the meal as a wild beast licks its claws, and off on her ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 7, Issue 42, April, 1861 • Various
... of the food presentation. In Mataafa's house three chairs were set for us covered with fine mats. Of course, a native house without the blinds down is like a verandah. All the green in front was surrounded with sheds, some of flapping canvas, some of green palm boughs, where (in three sides of a huge oblong) the natives sat by villages in a fine glow of many-hued array. There were folks in tapa, and folks in patchwork; there was every colour of the rainbow in a spot or a cluster; there were men with their heads gilded with ...
— Vailima Letters • Robert Louis Stevenson
... grandfather. Their patroness then shut the door and sat herself down by her drum at an open window; and, the steps being struck by George and stowed under the carriage, away they went, with a great noise of flapping and creaking and straining, and the bright brass knocker, which nobody ever knocked at, knocking one perpetual double knock of its own accord as they ...
— The Old Curiosity Shop • Charles Dickens
... expected to be the first to spring into the rigging or along the jib-boom to do it, provided it was his watch on deck. It was really a sensational sight to witness these mannikins spinning up aloft and handling the flapping sail. I wonder now that more of them did not come to grief because of the stupid aversion many of the skippers had to allowing them to pass through what is known as the lubber hole—that is, a hole in the main-and fore-tops leading to the top-mast rigging. Occasionally ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman
... to be impudently tame, and the horses kicked dust over it as they trotted by. From then on old Bill and Florence vied with each other in calling Madeline's attention to many things along the way. Coyotes stealing away into the brush; buzzards flapping over the carcass of a cow that had been mired in a wash; queer little lizards running swiftly across the road; cattle grazing in the hollows; adobe huts of Mexican herders; wild, shaggy horses, with heads high, watching from the gray ridges—all these things Madeline ...
— The Light of Western Stars • Zane Grey
... horizon's waste of rushes bend Under the flapping of the breeze's wing, Departing and revisiting The haunts of ...
— Toward the Gulf • Edgar Lee Masters
... into the forest; I stood watching for him to come out again. After a few minutes I heard a furious but distant noise of flapping; the others also heard it; and we listened in silence, ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... ever since his wife's death. It was said everywhere, in the two parishes and even to Saint Pierre Port that he went off because of poor Blaisette. She came again and again to Orvilliere like a white sea-gull, crying and flapping her wings against his bedroom window. Her spirit can't rest it seems, because of his wickedness. But, now, I've been told this very day, that he's back to Guernsey: and some there are who say he's been making love to ...
— Where Deep Seas Moan • E. Gallienne-Robin
... canals; on to toy villages of miniature painted houses, standing in flowery gardens, far below the level of adjacent ponds adorned with flower-islands; through large parks and intricate plantations; past solemnly flapping windmills; far beyond, to meadows where black and white cows recognized the fact that we were not Dutch and despised us for it; then back to parks and gardens again. "I shouldn't think there could be any sort of characteristic thing left which we haven't met with. I'm sure I ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... were gay with brilliant dresses, and gilded chairs, and servants in liveries of scarlet and green and gold, and noble ladies, tottering a few steps on their ridiculous high heels, and men bewigged and becurled, their useless little hats under their arms, and their embroidered coat tails flapping against their padded, silk-stockinged calves; and red-legged, unpriestly Cardinals who were not priests even in name, but only the lay life-peers of the Church; and grave Bishops with their secretaries; and laughing abbes, whose ...
— Ave Roma Immortalis, Vol. 1 - Studies from the Chronicles of Rome • Francis Marion Crawford |
