"Thunderous" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... an echo of that thunderous, far explosion, a faint wailing of voices—echoing from very far above—drifted eerily along the passage; voices in blended rage and fear, in hate, ...
— The Flying Legion • George Allan England
... urbane gunner-general, a genius among experts you were told, as the master of a thunderous magic which shot its deadly lightnings over the German area! Let him move a red pin on the map and a tractor was towing a nine-inch gun to a new position; a black pin and a battery of eighteen pounders took the road. ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... along at a speed of fully ten knots, with a continuous crying and storming of wind aloft through the rigging and in the hollows of the straining canvas, and a deep hissing and sobbing sound of water along the bends, to which was added the rhythmical thunderous roaring of the bow wave, and a frequent grape-shot pattering of spray on the fore deck as the fabric plunged with irresistible momentum into the hollows of the short, snappy Channel seas. It was black and ...
— The Castaways • Harry Collingwood
... ship skimmed along the treetops in the distance and disappeared from sight. Then there was a thunderous crash, a tearing of wood and foliage, ...
— Anything You Can Do ... • Gordon Randall Garrett
... so rude," says HARRY LAWSON, jealous for the reputation of Metropolitan Members, even though some sit on the Benches opposite. With folded hands thrust behind coat-tails, rollicking stride, thunderous voice, and blooming countenance, Sir ROBERT positively pervades the Lobby. Personally receives POPE HENNESSY; shakes hands with everybody; and finally halting for a moment under the electric-lit archway leading into House, presents ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100., Jan. 31, 1891 • Various
... withstand the tiny band of a miserable tribe. Hence, with that force which had helped him bravely to defeat the most famous pomp in all the world and the weightiest weapon of military power, and to subdue in the field all that thunderous foot, horse, and encampment; with this he had now, stealthily and like a thief, to endure the attacks of a wretched and obscure populace; nor must he blush to stain by a treachery in the night that noble glory of his which had been won in the light of day, for he took to a secret ambuscade instead ...
— The Danish History, Books I-IX • Saxo Grammaticus ("Saxo the Learned")
... later it was deep in the planet's atmosphere. The noise of its rockets had become thunderous, with air to carry ...
— This World Is Taboo • Murray Leinster
... silence swallowed his shout. Then a mighty roar burst out, an exultant roar that soared up past the impassive image of the god and rolled in thunderous echoes along the roof. "Praise to Aten! ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... chair and thrust both hands into his trousers pockets. He indulged in a few German expletives, bombastic and thunderous, which relieved him so much that he was able to conclude ...
— The Double Traitor • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... land. And then there was another despairing cry for help, so faint and yet so penetrating to the cowardly fugitive's heart that he turned, forgot everything but the fact that a brother was dying before his eyes, and took one brave plunge into the swollen river, to pass under into the thunderous darkness, feeling as if he had suddenly been grasped by a giant who was ...
— The Queen's Scarlet - The Adventures and Misadventures of Sir Richard Frayne • George Manville Fenn
... hardily enough; I had drunk my fill of terror, and could have faced the Captain had he been thrice as formidable. He did not help me at all, but stood with a thunderous frown, very quiet and self-restrained, while I plodded my way up to him, ...
— Poison Island • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... and myself, were undisturbed by any visitors during the night, for the storm increased in violence, and, as daylight approached, the clamour of the surf upon the reef was something terrific. About four in the morning, however, there came such a thunderous, sudden boom that the island seemed shaken to its coral foundations, and Niabon declared that ...
— The Strange Adventure Of James Shervinton - 1902 • Louis Becke
... thou with such thunderous speed? Five kingdoms of dead men passed over this bridge yesterday, and it shook not with their weight as it did with thee and thy strange steed. Thou art not of the pale multitude that are wont to pass this gate. What ...
— The Story of Siegfried • James Baldwin
... there are two abrupt, but soft, short chords that will represent, to the imaginative, the quick fixing of the eagle's heart on some prey beneath; and there follows a sudden precipitation down the keyboard, fortississimo, that represents the thunderous swoop of the ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... left standing when a portion of the jungle had been cleared, and the huge elephants, now gorgeous with trappings, and each bearing its showy howdah, in which were seated the Rajah himself and his principal chiefs, responded to a final blast of the highly polished brass instruments and the thunderous roll of the drums by a simultaneous uneasy trumpeting of their own, with which were mingled the cries of the mahouts, who had to ply their sharp-pointed goads to keep their ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... of Howland's right hand were sticky when he drew them away from his head, and he shivered. The tongue of flame leaping out of the night, the thunderous report, the deluge of fire that had filled his brain, all bore their meaning for him now. It had been a close call, so close that shivering chills ran up and down his spine as he struggled little by little to lift himself to his knees. His enemy's shot had grazed his head. A quarter of ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... thunder; and then all at once, turning into heavenly music, its ringing tones floated high among the arches, like clear maiden voices, and again descended into a deep roar and thunder, and then ceased. The thunderous pulsations echoed long and tremulously among the arches; and Andrii, with half-open mouth, admired ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... he shouted. "The Dark Moon!" And now his hand found the controls that threw their ship into thunderous life. It was approaching! He swung the metal ball to throw them ahead and to one side, and the roar from the stern told of the fast-growing speed that was pressing them to ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... the storm was needless, for they were just getting within sight of Barvas when a surprising change came over the dark and thunderous afternoon. The hurrying masses of cloud in the west parted for a little space, and there was a sudden and fitful glimmer of a stormy blue sky. Then a strange soft yellow and vaporous light shot across to the Barvas hills, and touched up palely the great slopes, rendering them ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Volume 11, No. 26, May, 1873 • Various
... sight at last. Purple mountains rose to the south in wild forms, looking strangely thunderous and red in the light of the sinking sun. A bay, with rocks jutting out far into the sea, seemed to embrace them with its arms. Soundings were made, and presently the Reis decided on anchoring. It was a rocky coast, with ...
— A Modern Telemachus • Charlotte M. Yonge
... of Education—straighten out the involved syntax or track an elusive x to its secret lair. In the afternoon he could not practice on the diamond with them, learning the trick of holding elusive flies or teaching himself to face thunderous outshoots at ...
— The Varmint • Owen Johnson
... with might and main. The vehement little conductor was again exerting every nerve and muscle. His bow, which was also his baton, was pouring vim and sex mystery into the dancers. As I looked at him it seemed to me as though the music, the thunderous clatter of feet, and the hum of voices all came from the ...
— The Rise of David Levinsky • Abraham Cahan
... walls of Heorot rang with the thunderous shouts of the warriors and echoed the inspiring words of the Skalds who sang of Beowulf's victory. When at last darkness settled o'er the towers and pinnacles of the palace, the grateful Danes laid themselves down to sleep ...
— Journeys Through Bookland V3 • Charles H. Sylvester
... thrown the door open and bounded out to the deck. Just as he did so the pilot leaped from the front window of the pilot house, climbed over the rail and dropped to the deck below. The volleying, the thunderous blows ...
— The Circus Boys On the Mississippi • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... its best, has an imaginative suggestiveness which approaches, though it may not quite reach, the indescribable touch of the Shakespearean tragedies. There is also a quality in it peculiar to himself—threatening and silencing; a thunderous suppression, a formidable reserve, an iron tenacity. Sometimes, again, one is reminded of the ancient Roman poets, and not unfrequently, too, of the rhythmic incantations of Sir Thomas Browne, that ...
— Visions and Revisions - A Book of Literary Devotions • John Cowper Powys
... and he heard the captain's skull sound with a terrific crack like that of a breaking egg upon some post or billet of wood, against which he must have struck. In their frantic struggles they had approached extremely near the edge of the wharf, so that the next instant, with an enormous and thunderous splash, Jonathan found himself plunged into the waters of the harbor, and the arms of his assailant ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard I. Pyle
... the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy and thunderous as a clog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly proclaimed to the nose its component ...
— The Trimmed Lamp and Others • O Henry
... be a trumpet call, summoning from bush and brake, highway and hedge, and sheltering fence, a brotherhood of kindred affinities, each claiming Abraham or Noah as his patron saint, and shouting, "My name is legion." What a myriad choir, and thunderous song!] ...
— The Anti-Slavery Examiner, Omnibus • American Anti-Slavery Society
... you!" howled Roddy Perkins, leading a wild charge for the entrance to Bannister Hall. Following him up the two flights of stairs with thunderous tread came Butch, Beef, Monty, Biff, Hefty, Pudge, Tug, Ichabod, Bunch, Buster, Bus Norton, and several second-team players, Cherub, Chub Chalmers, Don, Skeet, and Scoop Sawyer with his letter. With a terrific, ...
— T. Haviland Hicks Senior • J. Raymond Elderdice
... person together, P. Sybarite crouched, quivered, jumped for glory and the Saints—and all but brained himself on that impish and trickish grating. Clutching it and kicking footloose, he was stunned by the wonder of many brilliant new-born constellations swirling round his poor head to the thunderous music of the spheres, as rendered by the ash-can which, displaced by the vigour of his acrobatics, had toppled over and was rolling and clattering ...
— The Day of Days - An Extravaganza • Louis Joseph Vance
... up on Treasury Bench, joined in conversation. But COURTNEY turned upon him with such a thunderous cry of "Order! Order!" that TOMLINSON visibly shrivelled up, and his sentence, like the unfinished window in ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, June 20, 1891 • Various
... was bespelled by the wonder of the unknown. Beyond the water through which they slid, black and smooth as polished basalt, he saw a lighthouse winking. From his steamer time-table he learned that it must be Great Gull Island light. Great Gull Island! It suggested to him thunderous cliffs with surf flung up on beetling rock, screaming gulls, and a smuggler on guard with menacing rifle. He lost his fear of fear; he ceased to think about his accustomed life of two aisles and the show-case of new models ...
— The Innocents - A Story for Lovers • Sinclair Lewis
... were supposed to be the abode of evil spirits, a superstition doubtless arising from the fact that Indian canoes may have been caught in the current above the falls and carried to destruction below; and because of the impression and awful aspect of the falls themselves, whose thunderous roar may be heard for many miles, echoing ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... moment that an oil-can exploded with a thunderous crump twenty yards or so beyond the trench, there was a sudden noise of ripping canvas, an agonised shout, and the heavy crash of a body encountering china. Then—silence. The sap parties heard only the oil-can; Percy FitzPercy for ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... was roaring like a bull and plunging wildly under my brother's fingers, his clubfoot beating a thunderous tattoo on the parquet floor. In his fall Clubfoot's left arm had been bent under him and was now pinioned to the ground by his great weight. With his free right arm he strove fiercely to force off my brother's ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... from Covent Garden!" cried Jean de Reszke on the night of November 27th, and he clipped in his arms the friend who had come to offer his congratulations to the thunderous plaudits of the audience. M. de Reszke was in a fine glow of enthusiasm. He had sung and played Tristan and opened a new era in the style of Wagnerian performances in New York. A few days later, while the drinking horn was going from hand to hand at a medieval ...
— Chapters of Opera • Henry Edward Krehbiel
... building! Had they not heard? The speculation seemed ridiculous. Or had they heard and, alarmed, been too effectually hobbled by the coils of their nefarious designs to dare reveal themselves, to investigate the cause of that thunderous summons? Or were they, perhaps, aware of Kirkwood's entrance, and lying perdui, in some dark corner, to ambush him as ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... The thunderous detonations, to which the terrified city listened all that dreadful Friday night, meant much to those whose ears were deafened by them. A million dollars' worth of property, noble residences and worthless shacks alike, were blown to drifting dust, but that destruction ...
— The San Francisco Calamity • Various
... that he had this feeling, for he had not a moment to waste if he would save himself. As the portcullis struck the ground with a thunderous crash and rebounded, and he turned from the winch to the stairhead, a last warning, cut short in the utterance, reached him, and he saw through the gloom that his companion was already in the grip of a figure which had succeeded in passing out of the staircase. ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... is indicated by their titles, 'Niagara' and 'Goldau,' and by the nom de plume he thought proper to publish them under, namely, 'Jehu O. Cataract.' But portions of his poetry repudiate this thunderous parentage, and are soft as the whispering zephyr or the cooing of doves. The gentleness of strength has a double beauty: its own, and that of contrast. Still, the predominating character of Neal's poetry is the sweep of the wild eagle's ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 2, No 3, September, 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy. • Various
... Heav'n ran the high barricades, And giant Bastilles reeled, impossibly smitten, And men with broken hands swung thunderous blades In "Russia's wrath"—just as you've often written; Yea, the terrific tyrants really reeled, While CHESTERTON sat safe ...
— Punch, 1917.07.04, Vol. 153, Issue No. 1 • Various
... been seen and the ship was surrounded by hundreds of Terrestrial swordsmen. As the airlock opened and Damis and Turgan appeared there was silence for a moment and then a thunderous shout of joy rose to the heavens. From the forefront of the crowd, a crimson-robed ...
— Giants on the Earth • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... was lost in a sudden shout of voices rising from the lower end of the flat. The vague forms of several horsemen appeared; there came the thunderous beat of flying hoofs. Howard's lips grew tight-pressed. True lifted himself on ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory
... worked steadily alone in the dusty office, the cold, homely face bent over the books, never changing but once. It was a trifle then; yet, when she looked back afterwards, the trifle was all that gave the day a name. The room shook, as I said, with the thunderous, incessant sound of the engines and the looms; she scarcely heard it, being used to it. Once, however, another sound came between,—a slow, quiet tread, passing through the long wooden corridor,—so firm and measured ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... breathless hush, then to the canvas roof there rose a mighty cheer and a thunderous clapping of hands as by common impulse the entire audience ...
— Across the Years • Eleanor H. Porter
... After the thunderous crash came a momentary silence, which embraced both the people within the fort and the wild crowd outside. Then the rush and noise were indescribable. Even Clark gave way to excitement, losing command of himself and, of course, of his men. There was a stampede ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... demands of the shore-going dreamer. It is feigned that the sea-faring life is not one jot more dangerous than most of the laborious callings followed ashore. Let no man credit this. The sailor never springs aloft, never slides out to a yard-arm, never gives battle to the thunderous canvas, scarcely performs a duty, indeed, that does not contain a distinct menace to his life. That the calling has less of danger in it in these days than it formerly held I will not undertake to determine. If in former times ...
— The Honour of the Flag • W. Clark Russell
... he wants to say before he begins speaking, and then he should pronounce his words evenly and distinctly. He should not bang on the desk with his fist, flourish his arms in the air, talk in rhetorical rushes with long pauses between the phrases, or raise his voice to a thunderous pitch and then let it sink to a cooing murmur. These things have not the slightest effect on the typewritten page, and they make it very hard for the girl to take correct notes. No one should write a letter ...
— The Book of Business Etiquette • Nella Henney
... off: read it; read it, I diplomatically added, as only he could read dramatic poetry. The compliment touched him where he lived. He did read it; read it with surpassing fire and spirit; read it as it will never be read again; for he knew how to put the right music into those thunderous interlardings and make them seem a part of the text, make them sound as if they were bursting from Shakespeare's own soul, each one of them a golden inspiration and not to be left out without damage to ...
— Is Shakespeare Dead? - from my Autobiography • Mark Twain
... knock had been ponderous, thunderous, and clumsy. Weston's had been self-assured, but polite. Now came a series of raps, now loud, now low, now quick, now slow, keeping time to a martial air. Evidently there was a rollicking fellow outside. No one moved. We sat there, all five of us, eyes wide open in surprise, trying to guess, who ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... from me but by the agonies Of prophecy, like those sparse drops which fall From clouds in travail of the lightning, when The great wave of the storm high-curled and black 55 Rolls steadily onward to its thunderous break. Why art thou made a god of, thou poor type Of anger, and revenge, and cunning force? True Power was never born of brutish strength, Nor sweet Truth suckled at the shaggy dugs 60 Of that old she-wolf. Are thy thunder-bolts, That quell ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... was dashed with stormy dew And freaked with fire as when God's hand would mar Palaces reared of tyrants, and the blue Deep heaven was kindled round her thunderous car, That saw how swift a gathering glory grew About him risen, ere clouds could blind or bar A splendour strong to burn and burst them through And mix in one sheer light things near and far. First flew before his path Light shafts of love and wrath, But winged and edged as elder warriors' ...
— Studies in Song • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... Now a thunderous roar broke out. The British artillery, unable to be used while the hand to hand fighting was in progress, was in action ...
— The Boy Allies On the Firing Line - Or, Twelve Days Battle Along the Marne • Clair W. Hayes
... disappeared. He felt alert and ready for work; now he made some tea by blending cassie with iris, then, sure of his technique, he decided to proceed with a fulminating phrase whose thunderous roar would annihilate the insidious odor of almond still ...
— Against The Grain • Joris-Karl Huysmans
... they had come within sight of the great ocean and were soon flying over it. Far beneath them the waves tossed themselves tumultuously in mid-sea, or rolled a white surf line upon the long beaches, or foamed against the rocky cliffs, with a roar that was thunderous in the lower world, although it became a gentle murmur, like the voice of a baby half asleep, before it reached the ears of Perseus. Just then a voice spoke in the air close by him. It seemed to be a woman's voice and was melodious, though not exactly what might ...
— Myths and Legends of All Nations • Various
... thunder through his brain woke up the pilgrim so hastily, that he shook himself like a person roused by force. He found that he was on the brink of a gulf, from which ascended a thunderous sound of innumerable groanings. He could see nothing down it. It was too dark with sooty clouds. Virgil himself turned pale, but said, "We are to go down here. I will lead ...
— Stories from the Italian Poets: With Lives of the Writers, Volume 1 • Leigh Hunt
... despairing yelp from some hungry animal prowling about in search of prey, and mostly from the direction of the Boer laager, where food could be scented. Twice, too, from far off to their left, where the wide veldt extended, there came the distant, awe-inspiring, thunderous roar of a lion; but for the most part of the time the stillness around was most impressive, with sound travelling so easily in the clear air that the neighing of horses was plainly heard again and again, evidently coming from the Boer laager, unless, ...
— The Kopje Garrison - A Story of the Boer War • George Manville Fenn
... unnatural twilight, the mightiest cottonwoods were now bending and nodding like the frailest reeds. And then there arose in the far northeast a faint rumbling which rushed swiftly onward toward the southeast, growing, louder as it came, and breaking over Cedar House in a thunderous roar. At the deafening crash Paul turned and ran back to Ruth, catching her in his arms. The ground was now sliding beneath their feet. The solid earth was waving and rising and falling ...
— Round Anvil Rock - A Romance • Nancy Huston Banks
... his precarious perch. Now and then a fierce rush of wind almost tore him from it. Strange fancies beset him. The air was full of that wild [v]symphony of nature, the wind and the rain, the pealing thunder, and the thunderous echo among the cliffs, and yet he thought he could hear his own name ringing again and again through all the tumult, sometimes in Pete's voice, sometimes ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... display of rabble-rousing. Torkleson paced the stage, his fat body shaking with agitation, pointing a chubby finger again and again at Walter Towne. He pranced and he ranted. He paused at just the right times for thunderous ...
— Meeting of the Board • Alan Edward Nourse
... need all the support they can get from the fear of perdition, and who are incapable of any other conception of it than a coarse and materialistic ones Let us set it down to the credit of Brother Sodom, with his stiff stock, his thunderous face, and his awful walk, that his influence over Walter was ...
— The Hoosier Schoolmaster - A Story of Backwoods Life in Indiana • Edward Eggleston
... to waste time. She went immediately to the barracks in St. Petersburg, mounted upon a charger, and, calling out the Russian guards, appealed to them for their support. To a man they clashed their weapons and roared forth a thunderous cheer. Immediately afterward the priests anointed her as regent in the name of her son; but as she left the church she was saluted by the people, as well as by the soldiers, as ...
— Famous Affinities of History, Vol 1-4, Complete - The Romance of Devotion • Lyndon Orr
... and dire were the threats which Abraham bade the neighbours convey to the defaulters on their return. His way with one and all was curt and vigorous; to Waymark it seemed needlessly brutal. A woman pleading inability to make up her total sum would be cut short with a thunderous oath, and the assurance that, if she did not pay up in a day or two, every stick would be carried off. Pitiful pleading for time had absolutely no effect upon Abraham. Here and there e tenant would complain of high rent, and point out a cracked ceiling, ...
— The Unclassed • George Gissing
... time the noise of the Wabbly was very near. There was the noise of felled trees, pushed down by the Wabbly in its progress. Great, crackling crashes, and then crunching sounds, and above them the thunderous smooth purring rumble of the monster. The 'copter man climbed into the upside-down staff car. He turned the vision set on and fiddled absurdly with ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... up, the "blow" might grow into a storm. From the upper deck Chester and Elder Malby looked out on the sublime spectacle. Like great, green, white-crested hills, the waves raced along the vast expanse. Towards the afternoon the ship and the wind had shifted their course so that the waves dashed with thunderous roar against the iron sides of the vessel which only heaved and dipped and ...
— Story of Chester Lawrence • Nephi Anderson
... soon, for, long before they reached this curve, the ice-floe touched the headland they had passed, and there arose a crashing roar mingled with thunderous sounds that were deafening. It was as if the huge fields of ice were about to be swept right over the land, and the perpendicular rocks, as they bore the brunt, echoed the terrible volleying noise. The sight was awful in its majesty: one floe ploughed up another, and vast fragments ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... guard? But after all, it usually takes tons of iron and lead to kill a man. There was marvellous vitality in the dervish masses. Thousands were knocked over by the screaming, bursting shells, which made hills and plain ring with thunderous uproar. But numbers of the apparently killed were merely wounded, and they speedily rose and truculently hastened forward anew with their fellow-tribesmen. A diversion that told momentarily in the enemy's favour occurred. The extreme dervish right at that moment appeared ...
— Khartoum Campaign, 1898 - or the Re-Conquest of the Soudan • Bennet Burleigh
... need not be a fixed fact to be a very positive one; and Kabylia, a region to whose outline no geographer could give precision, has long existed as the most uncomfortable reality in colonial France. Irreconcilable Kabylia, hovering as a sort of thunderous cloudland among the peaks of the Atlas Mountains, is respected for a capacity it has of rolling out storms of desperate warriors. These troops disgust and confound the French by making every hut and house ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 11, No. 24, March, 1873 • Various
... tumult was in his ears, a thunderous roar, the shouting of a countless multitude. "It is the Sleeper! The Sleeper is ...
— The Sleeper Awakes - A Revised Edition of When the Sleeper Wakes • H.G. Wells
... whizzed through nocturnal streets, some thunderous with traffic, others very quiet, but all lined with lofty regular buildings, Audrey was penetrated by the romance of this city where cabmen passionately and to the point of suicide and murder adored their fares. And she thought that perhaps, after all, Madame Piriac's impression ...
— The Lion's Share • E. Arnold Bennett
... two years past the Vicar had occupied a part of his leisure in writing a pamphlet against them: and by "leisure" I mean all such days as were either too inclement for fishing, or thunderous so that ...
— Sir John Constantine • Prosper Paleologus Constantine
... the street to the court-house. To Phil nothing was funnier than Alec Waterman in the throes of oratory. Waterman was big and burly, with a thunderous voice; and when he addressed a jury he roared and shook his iron-gray mane in a manner truly terrifying. In warm weather when the windows were open, he could be plainly heard in any part of the court-house square. When Phil reached the circuit court-room ...
— Otherwise Phyllis • Meredith Nicholson
... backward and forward, clasped in one another's arms, the blood from the wounded man's breast staining the armor of both. The moment passed and then, with a shower of stones and mortar from beneath their iron-shod heels, they toppled and fell; there was a thunderous splash in the water below, and as the men-at-arms came hurrying up and peered with awe-struck faces over the parapet of the bridge, they saw the whirling eddies sweep down with the current of the stream, a few bubbles rise to ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... mighty fallen! No longer do the men of God indulge in thunderous Saxon. They latinise their sermons and diminish the effect of terrible teaching. You shall hear them designate "hell" with twenty roundabout euphemisms, and spin "damnation" into "condemnation" and "damned" into "condemned," until it has not force ...
— Flowers of Freethought - (First Series) • George W. Foote
... heard a gun, and, with one stockinged foot thrust out of bed, wondered sleepily whether it was the first, second or third of the alerte, or whether indeed I had not wakened from a dream of a gun. Probably it was the last gun of the alerte, for the next sound was the thunderous roar of a bomb which clearly had landed close by (it got a railway shed and a freight car on the tracks behind me). The terrific noise and the shock to our building, which rattled as if it were coming down, considerably accelerated my movements. I snapped ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various
... have come from a planet with a high proportion of water surface, a planet possibly larger than Earth though of about the same mass and with a similar atmosphere. She could rise in Earth's air. And before each thunderous lament she ...
— The Good Neighbors • Edgar Pangborn
... savage beasts when bite and roar grow weak, Seek out some lonely nook Wherein to die; So now Sir Guy, whose thunderous voice once shook Old Ragnor's walls and made the bravest fly, Would feebly cry: "My child!" then, ...
— Rowena & Harold - A Romance in Rhyme of an Olden Time, of Hastyngs and Normanhurst • Wm. Stephen Pryer
... higher and higher in the heavens, ... hour after hour passed, and still lie wrote on, apparently unaware of the flitting time. At mid-day the bell, which had not rung since early dawn, began to swing quickly to and fro in the chapel turret,—the deep bass of the organ breathed on the silence a thunderous monotone, and a bee-like murmur of distant voices proclaimed the words: "Angelas Domine ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli
... may state quite positively, David," he commenced, "that we are—" but he got no further. From behind us in the vicinity of the prospector there came the most thunderous, awe-inspiring roar that ever had fallen upon my ears. With one accord we turned to discover the author of ...
— At the Earth's Core • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... she closed her eyes, when from quite near a furious voice, the thunderous voice of the drowned man, could be heard crying: "Say! when in the name of all that's holy are you going to get up, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... gathered and piled and blackened until they seemed fairly on the point of bursting. One would not have given two cents for his chances of a dry skin were he to start on a journey across the street. Yet somehow nothing happened. Late in the afternoon, perhaps, the thunderous portents would thin. The diffused light would become stronger. Far down in the west bars of sunlight would strike. And by evening the stars shone brilliantly from a sky swept clear. After a dozen repetitions of this phenomenon ...
— Gold • Stewart White
... believe Bessie's eyes did rest on Blanche's parasol. I thought they were on you, and envied you as a lucky dog. Seriously, though," he continued, as he saw the thunderous gleam in Neil's eyes, and the look of triumph in Blanche's, "it did not occur to me that there was anything bold or unmaidenly in what the young lady did, and I never saw a more beautiful tableau than she made, standing there in the sunshine, with her bright, wavy hair, and her ...
— Bessie's Fortune - A Novel • Mary J. Holmes
... have tried to fence a little, since my only resource—I being caught like a rat in a trap that way—was to try to gain time; but I was all in a quiver, just as I suppose he was, with the excitement of the situation and with the excitement of the thunderous night, and his short sharp question jostled out of my head what few wits I had there and made me throw away my only chance. And so I answered him, just as shortly and as ...
— In the Sargasso Sea - A Novel • Thomas A. Janvier
... and so passed in the darkness without a word, and came to the top of the beach. There was light enough to make out what was doing. The sea was running very high, but with the falling wind the waves came in more leisurely and with less of broken water, curling over in a tawny sweep and regular thunderous beat all along the bay for miles. There was no sign left of the hull of the Aurungzebe, but the beach was strewn with so much wreckage as one would have thought could never come from so small a ship. There were barrels and kegs, gratings and hatch-covers, booms and pieces of ...
— Moonfleet • J. Meade Falkner
... The thunderous detonations to which the terrified city listened all that dreadful Friday night meant the salvation of 300,000 lives. A million dollars' worth of property, noble residences and worthless shacks alike were blown to drifting dust, ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... the laprobe which had evidently been recently used as a horse blanket; the sound of hoofs, in an interminable "jog, jog—splash, splash," never hurrying; a series of exasperated howls from the captain, who was doing his best to make them hurry; the thunderous roar of rain on the buggy top and the shrieking gale which rocked the vehicle on its springs and sent showers of fine spray driving in at every crack ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... box had preserved its lonely splendour. Within it, in the far-back thunderous days of their great Boanerges, the precentor stood to lead the swelling psalm as it rose from the seated multitude—for they stood to pray, but sat to sing. From the fast-gathering mists that now threaten those receding ...
— St. Cuthbert's • Robert E. Knowles
... forbidding, yet without menace save in their senile prerogative to collapse without warning. Tiny windows marked the face of my still sturdy walls, like so many pits left by the pox, and from these in the good old feudal days a hundred marksmen had thrust their thunderous blunderbusses to clear the river of vain-glorious foes. From the scalloped bastions cross-bowmen of even darker ages had shot their random bolts; while in the niches of lower walls futile pikemen waited for the impossible to happen: the scaling ...
— A Fool and His Money • George Barr McCutcheon
... drowned out in a louder and more prolonged burst of applause from the pool room, which mingled shouts, cries and the thunderous banging of cue butts ...
— The Further Adventures of Jimmie Dale • Frank L. Packard
... which I made reference at the beginning of this article. For by the sensations that so incessantly pour in from the over-tense excited body the over-tense and excited habit of mind is kept up; and the sultry, threatening, exhausting, thunderous inner atmosphere never quite clears away. If you never wholly give yourself up to the chair you sit in, but always keep your leg- and body-muscles half contracted for a rise; if you breathe eighteen or nineteen instead of sixteen times a minute, and never quite breathe out at that,—what ...
— Talks To Teachers On Psychology; And To Students On Some Of Life's Ideals • William James
... gazed, which was better; and they were looking their grandest that day, like the walls of castles turned into mountains. And there were strange lights and shadows in the water which gave a magical, enchanted effect. There were thunderous violet clouds in the sky, with shafts of sunshine pouring through; and Jack and I discovered, deep down in the river, marvellous treasures of the enchanted castles: white marble seats and statues, and golden vases, and drowned peacocks, with spread purple tails floating under the crystal ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... saw him go, Abu Midjan, the singer, upon the foe. Like home-sped lightning he pierced the cloud, And the thunder of battle burst more loud; And like lightning along a thunderous steep, She saw the sickle-shaped sabres sweep, Keen as the sunlight they dashed away When it broke against them in flashing spray; Till the battle ebbed o'er the plain afar, Borne on the flow of the holy war. As sank from the edge ...
— A Hidden Life and Other Poems • George MacDonald
... weather did not keep truce very long. A wailing blast around the upper peaks produced a caterwauling to equal the voices of half a dozen Throg hounds. And in their poor shelter the Terrans not only heard the thunderous boom of surf, but felt the vibration of that beat pounding through the very ground on which they lay. The sea must have long since covered the beach over which they had come and was now trying its strength against the rock of the cliff barrier. They could not ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... the world, vasty deserts, trackless forests, stupendous mountains, mighty rivers, and yet—and yet what more wonderful than this little island of ours, what more tenderly beautiful than our green, English countryside? The thunderous roar of plunging cataracts, the cloud-capped pinnacles of mighty mountains may fill the soul with awed and speechless wonder, but for pure joy give me an English coppice of a summer evening when blackbird and thrush are calling, or to sit and hearken to the immemorial ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... and hills. And in the great tumult of sound, which shook the air and seemed to shatter the cliffs and ledges above the Antietam, bodies of the facing foes were pushed forward to closer work, and soon added the clash of steel to the thunderous crash of cannon shot. Under this storm, now Kershaw advanced his men. Through the open, on through the woods, with a solid step these brave men went, while the battery on their left swept their ranks ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... bar of the door had fallen with him, and the old gymnastics of other days coming back like a flash, he had seized it, made two rapid blows and laid as many of his assailants at his feet; roaring, meanwhile, oaths as thunderous as they ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... thump!" a thunderous rap at the door of Shirley's shop brought the four girls on the run from the back room, where they had been doing the last of the ...
— The Merriweather Girls and the Mystery of the Queen's Fan • Lizette M. Edholm
... for a long time quietly. The storm uprose with fearful might; it shook the house in its passing grasp, and I sat by this table, listening to the music wrought out of the thunderous echoes. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various
... words passed his lips a tongue of flame shot to the very skies. The island seemed to rock, a fierce rush of air struck Foy and shook him from the tree. Then came a dreadful, thunderous sound, and lo! the sky was darkened with fragments of wreck, limbs of men, a grey cloud of salt and torn shreds of sail and cargo, which fell here, there, and everywhere about ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... for help as she ran. But the noise of the sea drowned her cries so that neither Robin nor Tony, still dressing in one of the tents, heard anything amiss. Even as she called and shouted she realised the utter uselessness of it. No weak woman's voice could carry against that thunderous roar. In the same instant, she caught sight of Brett's head and shoulders in the distance, and she waved and beckoned to him frenziedly. With a choking gasp of relief, she caught his answering gesture before he turned and headed straight for the shore, shearing through ...
— The Vision of Desire • Margaret Pedler
... in clouds of smoke. At the moment of command Seymour had quickly ordered the helm shifted suddenly, and the Randolph had swung round so that she lay at a broad angle off the quarter of the Yarmouth. The thunderous roar of the heavy guns at short range was immediately followed by the crashing of timber, as the heavy shot took deadly effect, amid the cheers and yells and curses and groans and shrieks of the wounded and startled men on the liner, while three hearty ...
— For Love of Country - A Story of Land and Sea in the Days of the Revolution • Cyrus Townsend Brady
... fingers into his ears as Bruce stood ready to fire the "cannon." Then there was a thunderous report, as the clay bird flew through the air, and was knocked to pieces by the impact ...
— Frank Merriwell's Reward • Burt L. Standish
... himself leisurely in the pilot's seat and turned small knobs. He waited. He touched a button. There was a mildly thunderous bang outside, and the lifeboat reacted as if to a slight shock. The visionscreens showed a cloud of dust at the spaceboat's stern, roused by a deliberate explosion in the rocket tubes. It also showed ...
— The Pirates of Ersatz • Murray Leinster
... brief address the deep, thunderous boom of the sea upon the reef broke for the first time upon our ears, as though to warn us that the moment of trial was at hand; and, looking anxiously ahead, I saw that the outer extremity of the white water was already dead ahead of us, ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... hushed as these two doughty knights faced each other and, as the trumpets brayed, charged furiously to meet with thunderous shock of breaking lances and reeling horses that, rearing backwards, fell crashing upon the torn and trampled grass. But their riders, leaping clear of lashing hooves, drew their swords and, wasting no breath ...
— The Geste of Duke Jocelyn • Jeffery Farnol
... me at 4.15 A.M. for the big offensive patrol. The sky was a dark-grey curtain decorated by faintly twinkling stars. I dressed to the thunderous accompaniment of the guns, warmed myself with a cup of hot cocoa, donned flying kit, and hurried to the aerodrome. There we gathered around C., the patrol leader, who gave us final instructions about the method of attack. ...
— Cavalry of the Clouds • Alan Bott
... the houses take hard, stern tints, when the sky is clear over great part of its extent, but with heavy thunderous-looking clouds in places—clouds full of snow—the sun becomes of a red or orange hue, and reminds one of the lines of Longfellow when Othere reached the ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... enslaving the Russian workers and driving several millions of them to death on the battlefield. Now should the Russian workers consider themselves bound by this debt? When anybody asked Jimmie Higgins that question, he responded with a thunderous "No", and he regarded as hirelings or dupes of Wall Street all those Socialists who ...
— Jimmie Higgins • Upton Sinclair
... the lions, with horrid laughing jaws; They bit, they glared, gave blows like beams, a wind went with their paws; With wallowing might and stifled roar they rolled on one another, Till all the pit with sand and mane was in a thunderous smother; The bloody foam above the bars came whisking through the air; Said Francis then, "Faith, gentlemen, we're better here ...
— Poems Every Child Should Know - The What-Every-Child-Should-Know-Library • Various
... mouth of this Pit was one full mile across, and the smoke of the Pit filled the Valley at times, so that it seemed but as a glowing red circle amid dull thunderous clouds of redness. Yet the red smoke rose never much above the Valley; so that there was clear sight across to the country beyond. And there, along the further edge of that great depth, were the Towers, ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... and impressive throughout the piece, especially at the death of the blind girl; and when he had ended, a storm of applause burst from the audience. There was a clapping of hands and a thunderous stamping of feet that shook the ...
— Jasmin: Barber, Poet, Philanthropist • Samuel Smiles
... drawn off and to put on his soft-leather shoes, while Robin stood up dutifully to await him. Then he came forward, took his seat without a word, and called for supper. In ominous silence the meal proceeded, and with the same thunderous air, when it was over, his father said grace and made his way, followed by his son, into the parlour behind. He made no motion at first to pour out his wine; then he helped himself twice and ...
— Come Rack! Come Rope! • Robert Hugh Benson
... child lifted her turbid eyes to his. With unmistakable appeal her tiny hand went clutching out at one of the big buttons on his coat. Desperately for an instant she rummaged through her brain for some remotely adequate answer to this most thunderous question,—and then retreated precipitously as usual to the sacristy of ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... paralyzed all hands. The struggle on the main deck ceased abruptly. It was the strangest thing I ever beheld, the way Newman's thunderous command seemed to turn to graven images the men on deck. They were frozen into grotesque attitudes, arms drawn back to strike, boots lifted to kick. Mister Lynch stood with his capstan bar poised, as though he were at bat in a baseball game. ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... fame! The thunderous voice of P. Harris was mute, his blankly staring eyes spoke volumes, libraries in fact, but they did not make a noise. The voice which had aroused the echoes at Temple Camp, which had filled the crystal back room at Bennett's Candy Store in Bridgeboro, ...
— Pee-wee Harris on the Trail • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... tu, not the formal vous," replied the Minister, clasping his old friend's hand. "The poor lancer killed no one but himself," he added, with a thunderous look ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac
... and he and the Parson sat by a glowing fire of wreckage, the Parson reading aloud from Jorrocks or Pickwick, or the entrancing tales of Captain Marryat, and later, for more solid matter, Grote's "History of Greece," its democratic inferences counterbalanced by "Sartor Resartus," whose thunderous sentences enthralled Ishmael, if their purport was yet beyond him; wonderful pale springs when the sunshine and the blood in his veins were both like golden wine. So the time went, and it mostly belonged to himself and his dreams, with even the ...
— Secret Bread • F. Tennyson Jesse
... crowd, I quietly made my appearance. Scantily clad around the waist, I was otherwise unprotected by clothing. I opened the bolt on the door of the safety room and calmly locked it behind me. The tiger sensed blood. Leaping with a thunderous crash on his bars, he sent forth a fearsome welcome. The audience was hushed with pitiful fear; I seemed a meek lamb before the ...
— Autobiography of a YOGI • Paramhansa Yogananda
... thunderous oratorical effort. Here and there were flags, the red in the stripes dominating. They splashed bits of warm color upon the ...
— The Red Badge of Courage - An Episode of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane |
