"Rat-tat" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... and nailed against the oak as a warning to malefactors—extended itself in a kind of grim appeal to everybody. It seemed to possess strange fascinations for all seafaring folk; and when there was a man-of-war in port the rat-tat-tat of that knocker would frequently startle the quiet neighborhood long after midnight. There appeared to be an occult understanding between it and the blue-jackets. Years ago there was a young Bilkins, one Pendexter Bilkins—a sad losel, we fear—who ran away to try his fortunes ...
— Humorous Masterpieces from American Literature • Various
... begun to rebuke Michael, when "rat-tat" went the iron ring that hung at the door. Some one was knocking. They looked out of the window; a man had come on horseback, and was fastening his horse. They opened the door, and the servant who had been with ...
— What Men Live By and Other Tales • Leo Tolstoy
... was sending the couples whirling to and fro till they seemed to leave a wake behind them among the crowd of men who remained standing about. In the slight puffs of air which came from outside the tapers flared up brilliantly, and when a dress floated by in time to the rat-tat of the measure, a little gust of wind cooled the sparkling heat which ...
— Nana, The Miller's Daughter, Captain Burle, Death of Olivier Becaille • Emile Zola
... thing) tiptoe across the room to the window, and draw an inch of the heavy curtain and peer out into the darkness and towards the music. There would be the little round gleam of the postman's lantern, bobbing along as he hurried. And flick! it was gone into a doorway, and rat-tat, flick, and there it was again—coming! Flick, rat-tat! Flick, flick, rat-tat! Coming, coming! Growing larger, growing brighter, growing louder! Next door now. They always get it next door. Flick, rat-tat! What a crasher! ...
— This Freedom • A. S. M. Hutchinson
... frigate, wife, his bride? Would blacksmiths brown Into smithereens smite the solid old renown? Rivetting the bolts in the iron-clad's shell, Hark to the hammers with a rat-tat-tat; "Handier a derby than a laced cocked hat! The Monitor was ugly, but she served us right well, Better than the Cumberland, a beauty and ...
— John Marr and Other Poems • Herman Melville
... and gun-crashes, off to the right, chilling your heart, quickening your observation with awful curiosity and drawing your attention away from the men in front as you looked for signs of a machine gun's gathering of a human harvest. Rat-tat-tat-tat in quick succession, then a pause before another series instead of continuous and slower cracks, and you knew that it was not a German but a British machine gun farther ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... the old brick house and sounded the brass knocker with an eager rat-tat-tat. Presently she heard footsteps resound along the empty hall and the Irish housekeeper flung ...
— Molly Brown's Senior Days • Nell Speed
... chair again I sat down by him. The silence of a minute or two was broken by a thunderous rat-tat at the house-door. Christopherson leapt to his feet, rushed from the room; I, half fearing that he had gone mad, followed to the head of ...
— The House of Cobwebs and Other Stories • George Gissing
... the midst of a grateful job of raking up yards and planting shrubs, I heard the rat-tat-tat of a hammer, and resolved upon a bold plan. I decided to become a carpenter, justifying myself by reference to my apprenticeship to my grandfather. One fine April morning I started out towards the suburbs, and at every house ...
— A Son of the Middle Border • Hamlin Garland
... possibly be the postman already, found it was only ten minutes past four, and dismissed the supposition with a sigh. "I don't—think—I want—" she was beginning slowly, when, of a sudden, there came a tremendous rat-tat-tat on the schoolroom door; the handle was not turned, but burst open; a blast of chilly air blew into the room, and in the doorway stood a tall, handsome youth, with square shoulders, a gracefully poised head, and Peggy Saville's eave-like brows ...
— About Peggy Saville • Mrs. G. de Horne Vaizey
... I'm the professor of musical glasses —tap, tap! ( Ahab to himself.) There's a sight! There's sound! The greyheaded woodpecker tapping the hollow tree! Blind and dumb might well be envied now. See! that thing rests on two line-tubs, full of tow-lines. A most malicious wag, that fellow. Rat-tat! So man's seconds tick! Oh! how immaterial are all materials! What things real are there, but imponderable thoughts? Here now's the very dreaded symbol of grim death, by a mere hap, made the expressive sign ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... respected reader would hand over his correspondence to his parents; and, perhaps, there is no greater test of a man's regularity and easiness of conscience, than his readiness to face the postman. Blessed is he who is made happy by the sound of the rat-tat! The good are eager for it: but the naughty tremble at the sound thereof. So it was very kind of Mrs. Pendennis doubly to spare Pen the trouble of hearing or answering ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... pompadour, stared at me with insolent familiarity. I jerked my head in hurriedly, and, shutting the window, turned my attention to Little Lottie. It was not long before my tea-kettle was singing merrily. I was about to sit down to the first meal in my new abode, when an insinuating rat-tat sounded on the door. I opened it to find the ill-looking young fellow leaning languidly against the door-jamb, ...
— The Long Day - The Story of a New York Working Girl As Told by Herself • Dorothy Richardson
... gloomy. Not long after eight the housemaid brought in a lighted lamp, and set it, as usual, upon the little black four-legged table in the drawing-room. And in the same moment the knocker of the front door sounded a vigorous rat-tat-tat, a visitor's summons. ...
— The Paying Guest • George Gissing
... night attack was evidently under way, and it is always an eerie sensation. We correctly surmised that the Turks were in retreat from Khan Baghdadi and had run into our outposts. In a few minutes we were replying in volume, and the rat-tat-tats of the machine-guns on either side were continuous. The enemy must have greatly overestimated our numbers, for in a short time small groups started surrendering, and before things had quieted we had twelve hundred prisoners. ...
— War in the Garden of Eden • Kermit Roosevelt
... feelings which swelled his throbbing bosom, and that he felt quite faint with the mighty load of honour just thrown upon his delighted shoulders by his bald-headed friend. The red-faced gentleman then sat down to the national air of rat-tat-tat, played in full chorus with knives, forks, spoons, nut-crackers, and knuckles on the polished surface of the ...
— Hudson Bay • R.M. Ballantyne
... rataplan and rat-tat of the drum are compared to the metric feet, the anapaest ([Symbols: arsis, arsis, thesis] and ...
— Selections from Erasmus - Principally from his Epistles • Erasmus Roterodamus
... Was ever morn so filled with all things new? The light that fell through long brown aisles from out the kindling blue, The creak and yawn of stretching boughs, the jay-bird's early call, The rat-tat-tat of woodpecker that waked the woodland hall, The fainter stir of lower life in fern and brake and brier, Till flashing leaped the torch of Day from last night's ...
— Complete Poetical Works of Bret Harte • Bret Harte
... horror of the situation had mastered the audience, a strong pair of hands, far back in the church, came together with an explosive clap. Like the rat-rat-tat of a quick-firing gun was the appreciative volley of recognition from the solitary applauder. It went rolling and crackling through the church defiantly, derisively, appreciatively. Halfway up the aisle a softer pair of hands touched the rattle ...
— Thoroughbreds • W. A. Fraser
... money. They come to the stable in big tourin' cars an' drove out the wagons with half the police of Oakland to help them. Say, it was sure some day. The sky rained cobblestones. An' you oughta heard the clubs on our heads—rat-tat-tat-tat, rat-tat-tat-tat! An' say, the chief of police, in a police auto, sittin' up like God Almighty—just before we got to Peralta street they was a block an' the police chargin', an' an old woman, right from her front gate, lammed the chief of police full in the face with a dead ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... said the woman hastily just as there was a little rat-tat at the brass knocker of the ...
— Witness to the Deed • George Manville Fenn
... Again the rat-tat-tat upon the panel, more peremptory than before. Stanley forced a laugh. "Danger! Why, of course not. Just a business talk. But go back and look after the girl. I don't want her coming out here while I've visitors." He patted her hand. His arm about ...
— Port O' Gold • Louis John Stellman
... by a sound, and, recognizing the delicate 'rat-tat' of her husband's knock, did not answer, indifferent whether he came in or no. He entered noiselessly. If she did not let him know she was awake, he would not wake her. She lay still and watched him sit down astride of a chair, cross his arms on its back, rest his chin on them, ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... discharge the offices of religion in that impoverished and for the most part socially abandoned spot, had just allowed himself to be persuaded by his wife that it was unnecessary to visit his sick parishioner at the other end of the island that afternoon, when a loud rat-tat was heard in the midst of a shriek of wind, through a grudged inch of open door-way. The hurricane burst into the house while a dripping, breathless girl panted forth her message, that "old Marie" had been suddenly taken bad, and was dying, and wanted but one ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... time, With boggles, hesitations, 680 Stoppings, beginnings o'er again, And getting matters into train, Could hardly overload the brain With too excessive rations, Since just to ask if two and two Really make four? or, How d' ye do? And get the fit replies thereto In the tramundane rat-tat-too, Might ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... Dan's ear, and another spurted up the chalk dust a few feet ahead of Dennis, and as the vicious rat-tat of the machine-gun farther down the trench opened, they found themselves at the edge of a deep crump-hole, into which ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry |
