Free Translator Free Translator
Translators Dictionaries Courses Other
Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Vortex   /vˈɔrtɛks/   Listen
Vortex

noun
(pl. E. vortexes, L. vortices)
1.
The shape of something rotating rapidly.  Synonyms: convolution, swirl, whirl.
2.
A powerful circular current of water (usually the result of conflicting tides).  Synonyms: maelstrom, whirlpool.



Related search:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |





"Vortex" Quotes from Famous Books



... water-drops been woven into cloud-wreaths, through what centuries they had leapt and plunged among sea-billows, or lain cold and dark in the ocean depths, since the day when this mass of matter that we call the earth had been cut off and sent whirling into space, a molten drop from the fierce vortex of its central sun! And, what is the strangest thought of all, I can sit here myself, a tiny atom spun from drift of storms, and concourse of frail dust, and, however dimly and faintly, depict the course of things, trace, ...
— The Thread of Gold • Arthur Christopher Benson

... the veil; but at the time he was not sufficiently aware of this and, as with all true glamour, was unable to grasp where the true ended and the false began. He was caught momentarily in the same vortex that had sought to lure the cat to destruction through its delight, and threatened utterly to overwhelm the dog through ...
— Lords of the Housetops - Thirteen Cat Tales • Various

... hearing this desolate confession of faith, does not demand with terror, "Is it then true that I am only an aggregate of elements organized by an unknown force, an idea realized for a few moments, a form which passes and disappears? Is it true that my mind is only a harmony, and my soul a vortex? What is the ego? what is God? what ...
— What is Property? - An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of Government • P. J. Proudhon

... concourse, I implore thee, Whose vortex draws us with resistless might. No, to some peaceful heavenly nook restore me, Where only for the bard blooms pure delight, Where love and friendship yield their choicest blessing, Our heart's true bliss, with god-like ...
— Faust Part 1 • Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

... one of a very small circle; but it is only by this small circle resolutely doing its own work that adequate ideas will ever get current at all. The rush and uproar of practical life will always have a dizzying and attracting effect upon the most collected spectator, and tend to draw him into its vortex; most of all will this be the case where that life is so powerful as it is in England. But it is only by remaining collected, and refusing to lend himself to the point of view of the practical man, that the critic can do the practical man any service; and it is ...
— English: Composition and Literature • W. F. (William Franklin) Webster

... Italian nation now flung itself with fervid zeal on the glorious treasures as well as on the dissolute filth of the intellectual development of Hellas. But it was an impulse still more profound and deep-rooted, which carried the Romans irresistibly into the Hellenic vortex. Hellenic civilization still doubtless called itself by that name, but it was Hellenic no longer; it was, in fact, humanistic and cosmopolitan. It had solved the problem of moulding a mass of different nations into one whole completely in the field ...
— The History of Rome (Volumes 1-5) • Theodor Mommsen

... an even keel, and her masts with their unfilled sails retained their places. But we dared go no nearer for fear of the death-agonies of the monster coming on, and our being sucked down into the vortex she made as she plunged beneath the sea which had borne her triumphantly so ...
— Sail Ho! - A Boy at Sea • George Manville Fenn

... capture always affords high and peculiar sport, for it is one in which every person on board sympathises, and, to a certain extent, takes a share. Like a fox-chase, it is ever new, and draws within its vortex every description of person. Even the monkey, if there be one on board, takes a vehement interest in the whole progress of this wild scene. I remember once observing Jacko running backwards and forwards along the after-part of the poop hammock-netting, grinning, ...
— The Lieutenant and Commander - Being Autobigraphical Sketches of His Own Career, from - Fragments of Voyages and Travels • Basil Hall

... water with my hands; but I had not made half-a-dozen strokes before I felt that she was going down. The next instant she had gone, sinking directly underneath me, and causing me to jump outwards in order to escape from being carried down in the vortex she ...
— The Boy Tar • Mayne Reid

... word, Some get a good name by the voice of the crowd, 35 Whilst to poor humble merit small praise is allowed, As in parliament votes, so in pictures a name, Oft determines a fate at the altar of fame.— So on Friday this City's gay vortex you quit, And no longer with Doctors and Johnny cats sit— 40 Now your parcel's arrived — [Bysshe's] letter shall go, I hope all your joy mayn't be turned into woe, Experience will tell you that pleasure is vain, When it promises sunshine how often comes rain. ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley Volume I • Percy Bysshe Shelley

... as suggestions for the utilization of his experience and energy in the treatment of various burning questions. His numerous friends also wished to do him honour, and he found himself threatened with being drawn into the vortex of London Society, for which he had little inclination, and, at that time, not even ...
— The Life of Gordon, Volume II • Demetrius Charles Boulger

... the raft!" was the cry, for the ship had sunk so low that the water was already running through the scuppers. Gradually she went down; the raft was slightly agitated by the vortex formed as the waters closed over her, and then it floated ...
— Paul Gerrard - The Cabin Boy • W.H.G. Kingston

... his friend now drew him into their vortex like an invincible magnet. His conscience accused him; but he followed Cinq-Mars wherever he went without even, from excess of delicacy, hazarding a single expression which might resemble a personal fear. He had tacitly given ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet

... some of those already drawn into the vortex noticed the effect on individuals. Those who were interested took care to compare their information. Strangely enough, as it seemed to the others, the person who took the ghastly silence least to heart was the negro. By nature he was not ...
— The Lair of the White Worm • Bram Stoker

... friendship of your son Henry, whose excellent qualities I know how to value,—I most ingenuously own to you that I have been far from happy in your house. I feel that I cannot be at ease in the vortex of dissipation; and the more I see of the higher ranks of society, the more I regret that I was born a gentleman. Neither my birth nor my fortune shall, however, restrain me from pursuing that line of life which, I am persuaded, leads to virtue and tranquillity. ...
— Tales And Novels, Volume 1 • Maria Edgeworth

... where, matching her strength against that of the river, she leaped and dived and tumbled through the foam, or, lying on her back amid a shower of spray, stretched wide her limbs and suffered the whirlpool to draw her, unresisting, into its vortex deep ...
— Creatures of the Night - A Book of Wild Life in Western Britain • Alfred W. Rees

... Within a few months he was waving farewell to her again, from the bridge of the Ocean which was carrying him off to the conquest of Egypt, buoyed by her promise that she would join him when his work was done. And long before he had reached Malta she was back again in the vortex of Paris gaiety, setting the tongue of scandal wagging by her open flirtation ...
— Love affairs of the Courts of Europe • Thornton Hall

... worse feelings were alike enlisted in behalf of the expedition. Sincerity, constancy, and generosity were all drawn in to espouse the cause of pride and self-will; and she never once recollected that the way to rescue her friend from the vortex of dissipation was not to follow her ...
— Heartsease - or Brother's Wife • Charlotte M. Yonge

... as it was possible under the circumstances to estimate the probable extent of this cyclone, its greatest diameter would appear to have been from about one hundred and sixty to two hundred miles, whilst the diameter of the vortex, through a considerable portion of which, if not actually through the centre, the Alabama appears to have passed, would probably be from about thirty to five-and-thirty or ...
— The Cruise of the Alabama and the Sumter • Raphael Semmes

... variety of form: and as long as the remedy is not applied to the root of the disease, the Atheist, if forced to relinquish one theory, will only betake himself to another, and after having gone the round of them all, will rather throw himself into the vortex of utter and hopeless skepticism, than acknowledge a God whom he cannot love, a Judge whom he cannot but dread. Christianity alone can supply an effectual remedy, and it is such a remedy as is fitted to cure alike the habitual ungodliness, the abject superstition, and the speculative infidelity, ...
— Modern Atheism under its forms of Pantheism, Materialism, Secularism, Development, and Natural Laws • James Buchanan

... continued now, although she said: "Think of the horrible things that have been done to me, think of the horrible things I've seen! Oh, you're right, of course. Unhappy people are dangerous. They clutch at the happy people round them and drag them down into the vortex of their misery. But if you're going to hate anybody for doing that, hate me. Look how I've dominated you with my misfortunes, look how I've eaten up your life by making you feel it a duty to compensate me for what I've endured. Hate me. But ...
— The Judge • Rebecca West

... Mountain. The gusts of wind began to wail in boding fury and then the storm struck the town. Dirt and papers flew before it; tin cans leapt forth from holes and alleys; and sticks and small stones, sucked up in the vortex, joined in on the devil's dance. Ancient signs creaked and groaned and threatened to leave their moorings, old houses gave up shingles and loose boards, and up the street on the deserted bank building, the fire-doors banged like cannon. Then the night came on and the streets of Keno were ...
— Shadow Mountain • Dane Coolidge

... and Tiberius had spent the best years of his life in the public service before his elevation. Yet even he, with all his experience and ability, could not resist the blandishments of power. How, then, could a giddy and weak young man, without redeeming qualities? He fell into the vortex of pleasures, and reeling in the madness which excesses caused, was soon guilty of the wildest caprices, and the most cruel atrocities. He was corrupted by flattery as well as pleasure. He even descended into the arena of the circus as a charioteer, and the races became a State ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... crisp curling hair and his chin that was firm but not markedly so; eyes that were reflective rather than compelling; earnest to the point of an absorbed seriousness—we did right to note him well. He was destined to win great glory in the vortex of flame and smoke and agony and panic into which we were to be swept within the next thirty-six hours. My chief recollection of him that night was of his careful attentiveness to everything said by our own colonel on the science of present-day war—the understanding deference ...
— Pushed and the Return Push • George Herbert Fosdike Nichols, (AKA Quex)

... factory makes upon them; his worthy farm-servants are transformed into a dirty, hungry proletariat. Where once the necessary work at least was obediently performed, contention, cheating, and opposition prevail. He himself is swept away in a vortex of complicated business, claims surge in upon him wave upon wave, and he, in his desperate struggle, drowning man that he is, has no choice but to cling to whatever comes within his grasp, and then, wearied by his fruitless efforts, to sink into ...
— Debit and Credit - Translated from the German of Gustav Freytag • Gustav Freytag

... with his position. The merely intellectual person did not appeal to him. It was rational culture he sought for, a companionable woman indeed, who could use her hands as well as her head. Sometimes their judgment erred, and carried them into a vortex of misery. ...
— Windjammers and Sea Tramps • Walter Runciman

... jug of Hollands, were criticising our leader, and asking why he did not move. Meanwhile the army was as ill off as ever it had been since the camping at Valley Forge, while the air here in the city was full of vague rumours of defection and what not. I was of necessity caught in the vortex of gaiety which my chief loved and did much to keep up. He liked to see his aides at his table, and used them as a part of the excessive state we thought at this time ...
— Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker • S. Weir Mitchell

... caught up at once into the vortex. After a few moments of desperate clinging together, they were forced into the front row, where they stood on the very edge, braced back against the pressure, half ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White

... vortex of that bubbling pool, which rimmed him on all sides ... down into the central aperture out of which emerged the leering face of Tode! And as he dropped Jim heard, thin, faint, and very far away, the despairing ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, May, 1930 • Various

... are infinite. He describes the manner in which the worlds are produced as follows: "Many bodies of various kinds and shapes are borne by amputation from the infinite [i.e., the chaotic migma of Anaximander] into a vast vacuum, and then they, being collected together, produce a vortex; according to which, they, dashing against each other, and whirling about in every direction, are separated in such a way that like attaches itself to like; bodies are thus, without ceasing, united according to the impulse given by ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker

... the most of a hint. Not a murmur of shame, Or buzz of blame, Not a flying report that flew at a name, Not a plausible gloss, or significant note, Not a word in the scandalous circles afloat, Of a beam in the eye, or diminutive mote, But vortex-like that tube of tin Sucked the censorious particle in; And, truth to tell, for as willing an organ As ever listened to serpent's hiss, Nor took the viperous sound amiss, On the snaky head of ...
— Playful Poems • Henry Morley

... ensnare his feet, be they disposed to walk ever so warily. You do not know that your holy image, rising up before me, shining upon the path I trod, and beckoning me into the right road when I swerved aside, has alone saved me from falling into that vortex of follies and vices by which men are daily swallowed up, and from which they emerge sullied and debased. You do not know that, while I am here beside you, listening to the sound of your voice, holding your hand, gazing upon your face, I feel like one inspired, who has power to make his life ...
— Fairy Fingers - A Novel • Anna Cora Mowatt Ritchie

... with ground currents of vagrant electricity. Electricity ceased to be invisible. It became sizzling, immense flash, in which many complexities made part of a simple whole. It was spectacular but brief. It was a flaming vortex of interlocked spirals of light and color and naked force. ...
— Master of the Moondog • Stanley Mullen

... plunging into riotous and blind commotions, to keep his own judgment and emotions as free as possible from a power that seizes all it can reach, draws them into its current, and sweeps them round and round like the Maelstrom, until they are overwhelmed and buried in its devouring vortex. When others are heated, the only wisdom is to determine to keep cool; whenever a people or an individual is rushing headlong, it is the duty of patriotism and of friendship to check ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... in the zenith, sending down through the apex of a dome of torn and madly gyrating cloud a flood of brilliant light. Illumined by that startling radiance, our staunch and seaworthy ship was tossed and twirled in the hideous vortex of mad sea until her motion was distracting. It was quite impossible to loose one's hold and attempt to do anything without running the imminent risk of being dashed to pieces. Our decks were full of water now, for it tumbled on board at all points; but as yet no serious ...
— The Cruise of the Cachalot - Round the World After Sperm Whales • Frank T. Bullen

... same: by the year 1935, physicists had delved into the composition of Matter, and divided and divided. Matter thus became imponderable, intangible—electrical. Until, at the last, within the last nucleus of the last electron, we found only a force. A movement—vibration—a vortex. A whirlpool of what? Of Nothingness! A vibration of Divine Thought—nothing more—built up and up to reach you ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various

... distinctness, indeed—what that joining would mean. I had largely conquered public prejudice against me by my work on the London School Board, and a smoother road stretched before me, whereon effort to help should be praised not blamed. Was I to plunge into a new vortex of strife, and make myself a mark for ridicule—worse than hatred—and fight again the weary fight for an unpopular truth? Must I turn against Materialism, and face the shame of publicly confessing that I had ...
— Annie Besant - An Autobiography • Annie Besant

... the fluid vortex flies, Scattering dun night, and horror through the skies, The swift volution and the enormous train Let sages versed in Nature's lore explain; The horrid apparition still draws nigh, And white with foam ...
— The Island Home • Richard Archer

... should not lead Private Goodbody any further into the intricacies of his subject until he has solved my problem. This he resolutely professes himself unable to do, and begs to be allowed to leave it and plunge into the giddy vortex of ...
— Punch, Volume 156, January 22, 1919. • Various

... wilder scene it is impossible for imagination to conceive than the deep rocky basin into which the river is precipitated, and from which it issues at right angles from its previous course, bearing with it portions of the wrack accumulated within the black vortex of this fearful pool, into whose gulf it is impossible to look without a shudder. The drive through the forest was delightful; and, if any sight could have repaid me for leaving the neighbourhood of the falls, this fitting pendant would be ...
— Impressions of America - During the years 1833, 1834 and 1835. In Two Volumes, Volume I. • Tyrone Power

... is not offered to society every day. Even her own sex raved about her, and about the chain of beautiful pearls she had picked up somehow on her desolate island. She always wore them; they linked her to that sacred purpose she seemed to be forgetting. Her father drew her with him into the vortex, hiding from her that he embarked in it principally for her sake, and she went down the current with him out of filial duty. Thus unfathomable difficulties thrust her back from her up-hill task. And the world, ...
— Foul Play • Charles Reade

... Mnesus, Thrasius, AEnius, and Ophelestes. And now had swift Achilles slain even more Paeonians, had not the deep-eddying River, enraged, addressed him, likening itself to a man, and uttered a voice from its deep vortex: ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer

... books that have flowed from Emile Zola's busy pen would have remained unwritten. But for my own part I would rather that the world should possess those books than that Zola when tempted, as he was, should have cast literature aside to plunge into the abominable and degrading vortex ...
— With Zola in England • Ernest Alfred Vizetelly

... satisfied, and went home—cogitating much. This boy, this cousin of his, made a vortex of good about him into which whoever came near it was drawn. He seemed at the same time quite unaware of anything worthy in his conduct. The good he did sprung from some inward necessity, with just enough in it of the salt ...
— Robert Falconer • George MacDonald

... possessed by a vivid hallucination; he seemed to be standing in the centre of a whirlwind. Downy and his mother were dim figures beyond, seen through the dust; and like shreds of paper whirled in the vortex, visions of Miss Chris's face, netted in fair hair, passed swiftly before his eyes, and the expression on each face was beseeching and sorrowful. Nothing could have dragged the truth ...
— The Gold-Stealers - A Story of Waddy • Edward Dyson

... especially to moral actions. The religion of a Prince always remains in a certain sense the ruling religion, and the Roman faith, like a whirlpool, draws the quietly passing waves to itself and into its vortex. ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. II • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... imagination to the underworld, which he pictured reaching in wide circles from a vortex of sin and misery to a point of godlike ecstasy. With Vergil as a guide, he passed through the dark portals with their ...
— Heroes of Modern Europe • Alice Birkhead

... thousands of his comrades, the call of the West came to him, and at last he yielded, and drifted toward the frontier. The life there fascinated him, drawing him deeper and deeper into its swirling vortex. He became freighter, mail carrier, hunter, government scout, cowboy foreman. Once he had drifted into the mountains, and took a chance in the mines, but the wide plains called him back once more to their desert loneliness. ...
— Keith of the Border • Randall Parrish

... breakfast; perhaps he would not come back at all; if he came back, he would not miss one corner of the muffin; and if he did miss it, why should Tom be supposed to have taken it? As he thus communed with himself, he drew nearer into the fatal vortex, and at last with a desperate plunge, he ...
— Night and Morning, Volume 2 • Edward Bulwer Lytton

... there came, from the heart of the swiftly piled up, lowering clouds, the blinding flash which shattered the peace of the world and started the overwhelming conflagration into the seething, bloody-tongued vortex into which nation after nation was sucked irresistibly. The world had become the plaything of the ...
— 'Smiles' - A Rose of the Cumberlands • Eliot H. Robinson

... irrestistable temptation! What society condemns the practice but a cold, heartless, uncivilized people that know nothing of the warm attachments of refined society? Here the dead was raised to his long-cherished hopes, and the lost was found. Here all doubt and danger were buried in the vortex of oblivion; sectional differences no longer disunited their opinions; like the freed bird from the cage, sportive claps its rustling wings, wheels about to heaven in a joyful strain, and raises its notes to the upper sky. Ambulinia ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain

... Nash were admirably seconded by the work of two architects called Wood (father and son). Terraces, squares and crescents sprang up in generous profusion to accommodate the crowds of visitors who were drawn into the vortex of fashion. The prosperity of Bath did not decline with the fading fortunes of its favourite, for it was not until the peace of Amiens opened up the continental watering places that the fashionable world forsook Bath and went elsewhere. But though ...
— Somerset • G.W. Wade and J.H. Wade

... him irresistibly to herself; he was like a man in the outer circle of a vortex, of which she was the center. The touch of her soft hand which he could still feel, the farewell glance of eyes which still glowed before his imagination, attracted him like a powerful magnet. It was true ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss

... smiled as Henry entered. "Here I am in a vortex of crime and misrule," he said, "and I should have been out of my wits if it had not been for that wine. There's another glass over there, Henry; get it and ...
— The Shoulders of Atlas - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... several parts of Clare were in a very wretched condition; but, at the opening of the new year, the most prosperous localities in that county had been sucked into the great famine vortex. Writing at this period from Ennis, the chief town, Captain Wynne says: "The number of those who, from age or exhaustion and infirmity, are unable to labour, is becoming most alarming; to those the public works ...
— The History of the Great Irish Famine of 1847 (3rd ed.) (1902) - With Notices Of Earlier Irish Famines • John O'Rourke

... was opened at the East end of New-street, the first in this department; which, drawing into its vortex the transactions of Europe, finds employment for ...
— An History of Birmingham (1783) • William Hutton

... we have seen, Pitt discouraged the bellicose tendencies of the emigres and of the Austrian and Prussian Courts. But the passions of the time ran too high to admit of the continuance of peace; and State after State was soon to be drawn into the devouring vortex of strife. Strange to say the first to suffer from the outbreak of hostilities was Poland. That Republic entered on a new lease of life in the spring of the year 1791. The constitution adopted with enthusiasm on 3rd May substituted an hereditary for an elective monarchy, and otherwise strengthened ...
— William Pitt and the Great War • John Holland Rose

... comes here, partly to better himself under our milder institutions, partly to secure immunity while conspiring to destroy them. There is thunder in Europe, but if the storm ever break it is in America that the lightning will fall, for here is a great vortex into which the decivilizing agencies are pouring without obstruction. Here gather the eagles to the feast, for the quarry is defenceless. Here is no power in government, no government. Here an enemy of order is thought ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce

... through Mr Soutar of Duff Harbour, the lawyer the marquis had employed to draw up the papers substantiating the youth's claim. The last amounted to this, that, as rapidly as the proprieties of mourning would permit, she was circling the vortex of the London season; and Malcolm was now almost in despair of ever being of the least service to her as a brother to whom as a servant he had seemed at one time of daily necessity. If he might but once be her skipper, her groom, her attendant, ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald

... uprising of his passion had been a vortex, an end, a decision. And he realized that even to that hour there had been a drag in his blood. It was over now. The hell was done with. His soul was free. This weak, quaking body of his housed his tainted blood and the ...
— The Desert of Wheat • Zane Grey

... excitement of making the descent by canoe. Lestang, M'Kay, Mackenzie, a dozen famous guides, could boast two trips a day down the rapids, without so much as grazing a paddle on the rocks. Indeed, the different crews would race each other into the very vortex of the wildest water; and woe betide the old voyageur whose crew failed of the strong pull into the right current just when the craft took the plunge! Here, where the waters of the vast prairie region are descending over huge boulders and rocky islets between banks not ...
— The "Adventurers of England" on Hudson Bay - A Chronicle of the Fur Trade in the North (Volume 18 of the Chronicles of Canada) • Agnes C. (Agnes Christina) Laut

... are trying to keep our heads, but our shoulders are bending under the pressure, and presently, I am afraid, we shall collapse and find ourselves in the vortex."—Daily Paper. ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various

... the wildest haunts of that city of dissipation, and he was speedily engulphed in the vortex of vice and folly. If he had been a rich man, this life might have gone on for ever; but without money a man counts for very little in such a circle as that wherein Reginald alone could find delight, and to the inhabitants of that region five hundred a year would seem ...
— Run to Earth - A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... boredom which the "Row" and the "Ladies' Mile" invariably inflicted upon him,—yet every now and then before him there rose a mental image of his old friend "King David,"—grey, sad-eyed, and lonely—flitting past like some phantom in a dream, and wandering far away from the crowded vortex of London life, where his name was as honey to a swarm of bees, into some dim unreachable region of shadow and silence, ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli

... enjoyed by the youthful Republic. His powerful figure was followed by many others, the majority of whom were tyrannical, some incapable, and a few whose aims were really progressive. Progress, indeed, in the vortex of the whirlpool of events which ensued was practically an impossibility. It is said that from 1825 to 1898 more than sixty revolutions burst out in Bolivia, to say nothing of intermittent foreign wars! In the course of these various struggles no less than six ...
— South America • W. H. Koebel

... daily undermined the constitution of his victims, and, as it were, muffled the footfalls of death, so strong drink does not all at once over master its victims; but how often have we known it gradually, and after years of tippling, lead them captive into the vortex of drunkenness. ...
— The Hero of the Humber - or the History of the Late Mr. John Ellerthorpe • Henry Woodcock

... gradually round to face the waves. The rolling diminished, a certain amount of pitching taking its place. Our speed had fallen from eleven knots to two. I went again to bed. After a space of calm, when we seemed crossing the vortex of a storm, heavy tossing recommenced. I was afraid to allow myself to fall asleep, as my berth was high, and to be pitched out of it might be attended with bruises, if not with fractures. From Friday at noon to Saturday at noon ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall

... the world, representing more than twenty nations, already dragged into the widening vortex of the present war; with more than five millions of the finest youth of Europe already slaughtered on the battlefield, with twenty millions who have already been wounded, nearly forty millions under ...
— With Our Soldiers in France • Sherwood Eddy

... at first encouraged them only for show. Every desire is a viper in the bosom, who, while he was chill, was harmless; but when warmth gave him strength, exerted it in poison. You know a gentleman, who, when first he set his foot in the gay world, as he prepared himself to whirl in the vortex of pleasure, imagined a total indifference and universal negligence to be the most agreeable concomitants of youth, and the strongest indication of an airy temper and a quick apprehension. Vacant to every object, and sensible ...
— Life Of Johnson, Vol. 1 • Boswell

... contrition, penitence, and wretchedness than he had ever seen in life or art. Her face stiffened with terror, her eyes fixed, her whole frame rigid, only her tears flowed quietly, without a sob. She must and would have him. She seemed to draw him to herself as into a vortex: her love had become the necessity of her life, its utterances the wild ...
— Absalom's Hair • Bjornstjerne Bjornson

... might be called the companion-piece to Porphyria's Lover; for in each the woman belongs to a social world remote from her adorer's; in each she has, nevertheless, perceived him and been drawn to him—but in Cristina is caught back into the vortex, while in Porphyria's Lover the passion prevails, for the man, by killing her, has kept her folded in "God's secret" ...
— Browning's Heroines • Ethel Colburn Mayne

... Andrew's estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life, these people lagged behind himself—who never left the country—in knowledge of what was happening ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy

... old woman rocked backwards and forwards in her chair; not for long, however, for the black birds seemed to fill the whole room, describing swift, interminable spirals round her head. She could not hear them, but she could see them, and the whirling vortex fascinated her; she could not help turning her head to follow their flight; she grew giddy and she was forced to ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers

... through her mother, her birth, her education, her inheritance, her manners, and her customs, to the vortex of the most rapid life of Paris. She can never escape it, save by becoming a nun, which is not at all probable with her manners and tastes. She has only one possible career, a life of pleasure. She ...
— Yvette • Henri Rene Guy de Maupassant

... dissolved, with tears and stormy reproaches. If those men, once so dear to each other, were now compelled to meet for the purpose of managing the impeachment, they met as strangers whom public business had brought together, and behaved to each other with cold and distant civility. Burke had in his vortex whirled away Windham. Fox had been followed by ...
— Critical and Historical Essays Volume 1 • Thomas Babington Macaulay

... to Sarka that he had drawn into some invisible vortex which tore at his brain, at his body, at his soul. Inside him a cold voice seemed ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science September 1930 • Various

... indeed no hint whatever of that quality of elucidation it seems reasonable to demand from it. Here all about me was London, a vast inexplicable being, a vortex of gigantic forces, that filled and overwhelmed me with impressions, that stirred my imagination to a perpetual vague enquiry; and my school not only offered no key to it, but had practically no comment to make upon it at all. We were within three miles of Westminster and Charing ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells

... altered the whole current of my life. From the most obscure of little towns in the most remote of provinces I was thrust without preparation into the vortex of all that is most sprightly and alert in Parisian society. The world stood revealed to me, and my self became a double one. The Gascon got the better of the Breton; there was no more custodia oris mei, and I put aside the padlock which I should otherwise ...
— Recollections of My Youth • Ernest Renan

... passions less under control, a will more stubborn, and prejudices that often neutralized his reason. His father had inherited most of the personal property of the family, and with this he had plunged into the vortex of monied speculation that succeeded the adoption of the new constitution, and verifying the truth of the sacred saying, that "where treasure is, there will the heart be also," he had entered warmly and blindly into all the factious and irreconcilable ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper

... his company for the rest of the morning. He was swept off in the vortex that followed in the wake of this lady. Once indeed he paused for a moment, as he was hurrying on some errand of the good lady's, to let me know that this was Lady Lillycraft, a sister of the squire's, ...
— Bracebridge Hall • Washington Irving

... gleaming eyes followed her into the vortex below. A vast wave of exultation suddenly rushed over him. He had held her in his arms—he had kissed this beautiful, joyous creature—this product of enchantment! Now, more than ever, was he resolved to claim her for his own. It was ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon

... Moreover, factional strife broke out within the party itself; Adams and Hamilton became alienated, and members of Adams's own cabinet virtually looked to Hamilton rather than to the president as their political chief. The United States was, at this time, drawn into the vortex of European complications, and Adams, instead of taking advantage of the militant spirit which was aroused, patriotically devoted himself to securing peace with France, much against the wishes of Hamilton and of Hamilton's adherents in the cabinet. In 1800, Adams was again ...
— Project Gutenberg Encyclopedia

... succumb to the forces striving to destroy her. And, as they sat waiting, the realization came to both what a small part of the incidents of this heaving night the dismemberment of their washing vessel would be. In the vortex of the riot, when the heavens and the ocean seemed united in the creation of chaos, they sensed the littleness of their own lives and the ...
— Dan Merrithew • Lawrence Perry

... Children played in the bluish shadow of the pavilion. Many rooks, high up, came cawing home across the softly-woven sky. They stooped in a long curve down into the golden glow, concentrating, cawing, wheeling, like black flakes on a slow vortex, over a tree clump that made a ...
— Sons and Lovers • David Herbert Lawrence

... collect the tallow which floated on the water, but it got surrounded by tallow which had caught fire, and the whole of its occupants were either burned to death or drowned. Later in the night a small skiff rowed by a single man was drawn by the tide into the vortex of the fire. Another boat ran out and saved the man, but a second boat which was pulled off by a single rower for the same purpose was drawn too near the fire, and its brave occupant perished. So eager were the multitude on the bridge to witness these scenes that some of themselves ...
— Fighting the Flames • R.M. Ballantyne

... playing the leading part in municipal matters. It is only one among many factors. Life and its relations are on an ampler scale: the wealth and refinement of the permanent population are great, and are growing unceasingly. In a few years more New Haven will be fairly within the vortex of New York. This change, which has come about so gradually that those living in it perhaps fail to perceive it readily, has affected the college in many ways. It has made the life of the professors more agreeable, more generous, so to ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various

... flume of the deep, irresistible current, and were launched into the trouble of rocks and water, Jenny realized how great their peril was, and how different the track of the waters looked at night-time from daytime. Outlines seemed merged, rocks did not look the same, whirlpools had a different vortex, islands of stone had a new configuration. As they sped on, lurching, jumping, piercing a broken wall of wave and spray like a torpedo, shooting an almost sheer fall, she came to rely on a sense of intuition rather than memory, for night ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker

... later in the same year. These works aroused keen controversy, but were not such popular stage successes as his earlier plays. Moreover, about this time, on his return from a visit to America, he plunged into the vortex of political controversy as an aggressive radical. He was a vigorous and very persuasive orator; and in that capacity, as well as in that of writer of political articles and essays, was an uncompromising foe to ...
— Three Comedies • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... appetite, not food, is the great desideratum. Fish, flesh and fowl, are here in profusion. Chickens, of{84} all breeds; ducks, of all kinds, wild and tame, the common, and the huge Muscovite; Guinea fowls, turkeys, geese, and pea fowls, are in their several pens, fat and fatting for the destined vortex. The graceful swan, the mongrels, the black-necked wild goose; partridges, quails, pheasants and pigeons; choice water fowl, with all their strange varieties, are caught in this huge family net. Beef, veal, mutton and venison, of the most select kinds and quality, ...
— My Bondage and My Freedom • Frederick Douglass

... grief, like every other passion, must have its course, and, as the spring which gushes with violence from the rock, by degrees dwindles into a rivulet; so it must be let to pass off gradually until it becomes a moderate feeling, and at length is lost in the vortex of the world. ...
— The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan • James Morier

... enough to leap after and try to save him. In all probability, the effort would have been idle, and worse; for the mad fancy that seemed urging him to self-destruction might still influence his mind, and carry another victim into the same vortex with himself. Restrained by this thought, they stood up in the boat, and watched ...
— The Castaways • Captain Mayne Reid

... a ghastly fix, for it was clear that the steamer was sinking fast. Another moment, and down she would go, dragging the unfortunate old man with her and Ken too. He knew well enough that, as she sank, she was bound to pull him also down into the vortex, and that from this great eddy he would never have the strength to rise. His one chance for life was to swim away as hard as he ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges

... disappears in a deep brown slush, the omnibus and the growler pass over it, and by and by it turns up again somewhere uninjured, with all the pure fire lambent in its facets. No doubt thoroughly good specimens of prose do get lost, dragged down the vortex of a change of fashion, and never thrown back again to light. But the quantity of excellent verse produced in any generation is not merely limited, but keeps very fairly within the same proportions. The verse-market is never really ...
— Gossip in a Library • Edmund Gosse

... of the helm into the sea; after which, his soul was sensible of being raised as high as the stars, of which he admired the immense size and admirable lustre; that the souls once out of the body rise into the air, and are enclosed in a kind of globe, or inflamed vortex, whence having escaped, some rise on high with incredible rapidity, while others whirl about the air, and are thrown in divers directions, sometimes ...
— The Phantom World - or, The philosophy of spirits, apparitions, &c, &c. • Augustin Calmet

... pleasure of the supposed officer. A benignant smile lights up the tutor's grave countenance; he enters strangely enough into familiar talk with the recently admitted collegiate; in pathetic terms he describes the temptations of this great city, the thousand dangers to which he will be exposed, the vortex of ruin into which, if he walks unwarily, he will be surely plunged. He fires the youthful ambition with glowing descriptions of the honors that await the successful, and opens to his eager view the dazzling prospect of college fame. Nor does he fail ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall

... York. It gratified me to find our views were similar upon that proposed serious departure from our traditional policy of avoiding distant and disconnected possessions and keeping our empire within the continent, especially keeping it out of the vortex of militarism. Hay, White, and I clasped hands together in Hay's office in London, and agreed upon this. Before that he had written ...
— Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie • Andrew Carnegie

... through the water caught it, the helpless raft was whirled round and round, and then horrible seemed the fate in store for them. One side dipped into the sea, and all believed that it was going to be drawn down amid the vortex. The people held on tightly for their lives. Tossing violently, however, up it again came to the surface, and floated evenly on the water. Still their condition ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston

... of the chancel, whom I rather mistrusted, was there with me: and there I lay listening: for, after all, I could not sleep a wink, while outside vogued the immense tempest. And I communed with myself, thinking: 'I, poor man, lost in this conflux of infinitudes and vortex of the world, what can become of me, my God? For dark, ah dark, is the waste void into which from solid ground I am now plunged a million fathoms deep, the sport of all the whirlwinds: and it were better for me to have died with the dead, ...
— The Purple Cloud • M.P. Shiel

... was saved by a merciful inefficiency of temperament from attaining the vortex of her whirlpool of charity. To be in the vortex is, I believe, almost always to see less. The ...
— Living Alone • Stella Benson

... with infinite effort, Perry felt himself returning to consciousness, though he had no clear conception of his surroundings. His brain was as yet but a whirling vortex of confused sounds, colors and—yes, odors. A temporary rift came in the mental cloud which fettered his faculties, and things began to take definite shape. He became aware that he was lying upon his back at some elevation from the ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, March 1930 • Various

... expensively attired. Her face had a certain vacant, languid, half ennuyee air which I have learned to associate with women of the nouveau-riche type—women with small brains and restless minds, habitually plunged in a vortex of gaiety, and miserable when left for a passing moment to ...
— Hilda Wade - A Woman With Tenacity Of Purpose • Grant Allen

... From the first morning of my arrival I found myself at once in the vortex of gayety; invitations poured in upon me—thanks to the black-bearded Titeroff—cards for dances here and there and receptions and dinners, while I spent each afternoon with Titeroff and a wandering Englishman named Mayhew, who told me he was an ex-colonel ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux

... said Mr. Chalk, decidedly. "Our boat was nearly swamped in the vortex. Fortunately, the sea was calm, and when day broke we saw a small island about three ...
— Dialstone Lane, Complete • W.W. Jacobs

... fainting from agonising feelings. He sank on the deck for a moment, and then sprang up and ran to the port to look at the men in the water. He was just in time to see the coxswain raise himself with a loud yell out of the sea, and then disappear in a vortex, which ...
— Mr. Midshipman Easy • Frederick Marryat

... horses had scrambled steepened into a perpendicular cut-bank at no great distance below, and if the current bore the two men past that point the girl knew instinctively that rescue would be impossible and they would be swept into the vortex of ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx

... the Arpalones were madly, suicidally determined to break through that vortex wall, to get into the "eye," to wreak all possible damage there. Group after group after group of five jet-fighters each came driving in; and, occasionally, the combined blasts of all five made enough of opening ...
— The Galaxy Primes • Edward Elmer Smith

... did not hear him. It seemed as though her brain ached literally with an acute physical pain. What was she to do? What could she do? She must do something! There must be some way to save herself from being drawn into the very center of this vortex toward which she was being swept closer with every second that passed. Those two old faces, haggard in their despair and misery, rose before her again. She felt her heart sink. She had counted, only a few moments before, ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard

... these, from the Catholic stand-point, are abortive and incomplete Catholicisms. The Bethesda of human faith is world-wide and as old as time; only in one particular spot an angel has come down and troubled it; and the waters have been circling there, thenceforth, in a healing vortex. Such is the sort of claim that the Catholic Church makes for herself; and, if this be so, what she is, does not belie what she claims to be. Indeed, the more we compare her with the other religions, her rivals, the more, even where she most resembles ...
— Is Life Worth Living? • William Hurrell Mallock

... begun, and Lady Lesbia Haselden was circulating with other aristocratic atoms in the social vortex, with her head ...
— Phantom Fortune, A Novel • M. E. Braddon

... time, and the main-boom would have gone down with the schooner. Fortunately we had cleared it; the schooner filled, righted a little, and then sank, dragging us and the main-boom for a few seconds down in its vortex, and then we rose to ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat

... afterwards; And, in the evening, fireworks on the hill. I knew that drink would flow from morn till night In a wild maelstrom, circling slow around The village rim, in bright careering waves, But growing turbulent, and changed to ink Around the village center, till, at last, The whirling, gurgling vortex would engulf A maddened multitude in drunkenness. And this was in my thought (the while my heart Was palpitating with its nameless fear), As, wrapped in vaguest dreams, and purposeless, I laced my shoe and gazed upon the sky. Then strange determination stirred in me; And, turning ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland

... resist the pull and the grip and the drive of other people. She couldn't even hold out against Valentina Gilchrist and Maud Blackadder. Rosalind would always be caught and spun round by any movement that was strong enough. She was foredoomed to the Vortex. ...
— The Tree of Heaven • May Sinclair

... soldiers. All who could travel on foot—multitudes with slight wounds of the upper limbs, the head or face—were told to take up their beds—a light burden, or none at all—and walk. Just as the battle-field sucks everything into its red vortex for the conflict, so does it drive everything off in long, diverging rays after the fierce centripetal forces have met and neutralized each other. For more than a week there had been sharp fighting all along this road. Through the streets of Frederick, through Crampton's ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 62, December, 1862 • Various

... Globstock, Pondersby, Marks, old Wilovich, all dead; Bullhammer, the Jam-wagon, Mosher, the Winklesteins, plunged in the vortex of the gold-born city; and lastly, looming over all, dark and ominous, the handsome, bold, sinister face of Locasto. Well, maybe I would never ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service

... face. The singing of my ears ceased, and my sight came clear, and I discovered that I had lost my bonnet in the struggle, and distinguished the white cockade dancing like a little 'cailleach' of foam in the vortex of the ...
— The True Story Book • Andrew Lang

... at sign; at; strudel. Rare: each; vortex; whorl; [whirlpool]; cyclone; snail; ape; cat; ...
— THE JARGON FILE, VERSION 2.9.10

... themselves furiously into the chasm as if bent on everlasting devastation. The river itself was rising swiftly and from time to time the great logs that had remained stranded in the upper reaches of the river also plunged into the vortex, where they twisted and sank ...
— The Peace of Roaring River • George van Schaick

... tenuous membrane. It had the right anatomical quality. Tight blown, quivering in the blast of noisy life. It was time for him to descend from the serene empyrean of words into the actual vortex. He went down slowly. "My soul is a thin, ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley

... rising blast; Dark cloven clouds drive to and fro By peaks pre-eminent in snow; A sounding river rushes past, So wild, so vortex-like, ...
— The Canadian Elocutionist • Anna Kelsey Howard

... at the mere thought of—spoken of openly as an experience which fell to all; to hear it mocked at with dainty or biting quips; to learn that women of all ages played with, enjoyed, or lost themselves for it—it was with her as if a nun had been withdrawn from her cloister and plunged into the vortex of ...
— A Lady of Quality • Frances Hodgson Burnett

... whirlpool of movement—the faintest nebula in miniature with spirals of light swiftly circling a central core. For a second I thought I could see through the roof, and the stars swarmed before me. It was as though I was at the vortex of a high whirlwind of dancing, shining specks of light. Then that sensation was gone, and there were two faint coiling spirals of yellow light upon ...
— Hunters Out of Space • Joseph Everidge Kelleam

... every direction and falling in torrents over the earth, which was deluged for fifty feet around with the dark, steaming flood. This, again sweeping into the mouth of the funnel, fell in thick streams into the churn, carrying with it the sods that were scattered within its vortex, and once more heaved and surged about ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne

... billionth sunset, or thereabouts, His Majesty held a man and a woman who had met on the roof of the world in thrall. He was lurid at the outset, dipping his camel's hair in at the round furnace door sinking toward the hills, whose red vortex shot tongues of flame into canyons and crevasses and drove out their lurking shadows with the fire of its inquisition. The foliage of Little Rivers became a grove of quivering leaves of gold, set on ...
— Over the Pass • Frederick Palmer

... all without exception had heard dreadful accounts of their pernicious effects, when they happened to break over a ship. We prepared, indeed, for the worst, by clewing up our top-sails; but it was the general opinion that our masts and yards must have gone to wreck if we had been drawn into the vortex. It was hinted that firing a gun had commonly succeeded in breaking water-spouts, by the strong vibration it causes in the air; and accordingly a four-pounder was ordered to be got ready, but our people, being, as usual, very dilatory about ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Volume 14 • Robert Kerr

... with clean and sharp-cut features carrying a bag in one hand and an umbrella in the other, stepping lightly on to a Bilbury corporation tram, station bound. This is the counsel for the prosecution (still me), his grave responsibilities honourably discharged, hurrying back to the vortex of ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, November 24, 1920 • Various

... year she had travelled nearly all over the world; London, Paris, Vienna, New York, had each in turn been her 'home' under the guidance of her wealthy perambulating American relative; and in the brilliant vortex of an over-moneyed society, she had been caught and whirled like a helpless floating straw. Mrs. 'Fred' Vancourt, as her aunt was familiarly known to the press paragraphist, had spared no pains to secure for her a grand marriage,—and ...
— God's Good Man • Marie Corelli

... attraction; and that all the dreams, the hopes, the activities of human minds were not the ripples of some central outward-speeding force, but the irresistible inner motion, as to the loadstone or the vortex, which made itself felt through the whole universe, material and immaterial alike. The intense desire to know, to solve, to improve, to gain a tranquil balance of thought, was nothing more, Hugh perceived, than this inward-drawing ...
— Beside Still Waters • Arthur Christopher Benson

... school library, and thenceforth knows what is proper behavior for an Englishman under all circumstances. He reads The Vestiges of Creation, and in afterlife is amazed to find half the world fighting the ancient theory of evolution. His love of society causes him to plunge into the vortex of the mite society and singing school if he has anything decent to wear. Cheerfully he works in pantaloons whose legs have been cut off and turned hind side before, in order that the thin and faded places ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. 22, September, 1878 • Various

... open, to attract a certain insect which floats upon the surface of the water. These collect in large numbers around his mouth; fishes feed upon them, and when lured by the desired prey within the vortex, they ...
— Stories about Animals: with Pictures to Match • Francis C. Woodworth

... sprang up, and he took to a fit and a vortex and an exasperation of running for which no description may be found. The thumping of his big boots grew as con-tinuous as the pattering of hailstones on a roof, and the wind of his passage blew ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens

... had just been reading Cuvier, to see whether he believed in the Harveian theory of the circulation. I found he did not. "The circulation vortex," says he, "is sometimes simple, sometimes double and even triple (including that of the vena porta); the rapidity of its movements is often aided by the contraction of a certain fleshy apparatus denominated hearts." Thus showing that my theory gave to the ...
— Theory of Circulation by Respiration - Synopsis of its Principles and History • Emma Willard

... always to be counted upon in the matter of temper. This grim old Puritan, of an integrity which makes him one of the giants of our early history, despite the last hours of his administration when he was beating about in the vortex of his passions, and always honest in his convictions, right or wrong, had not been gifted by nature with a pleasing address, although he could attach people to him when he chose. He was irascible and violent, the victim of a passionate jealous ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton

... evident, that with less of the instinctive philosophy which, now and then, stands so well in the stead of experience, Mr. Ellison would have found himself precipitated, by the very extraordinary successes of his life, into the common vortex of Unhappiness which yawns for those of preeminent endowments. But it is by no means my present object to pen an essay on Happiness. The ideas of my friend may be summed up in a few words. He admitted but four unvarying laws, or rather elementary principles, of Bliss. That which he considered chief, ...
— The Works of Edgar Allan Poe - Volume 4 (of 5) of the Raven Edition • Edgar Allan Poe

... his tail and fins, though without moving his station. At the next instant the tall body of Natty bent to the waters edge, and the handle of his spear disappeared in the lake. The long, dark streak of the gliding weapon, and the little bubbling vortex which followed its rapid flight, were easily to be seen: but it was not until the handle snot again into the air by its own reaction, and its master catching it in his hand, threw its tines uppermost, that Elizabeth was acquainted with the success of the ...
— The Pioneers • James Fenimore Cooper

... justify any philanthropic stranger in clapping me into a strait-waistcoat without further inquiry, endeavouring to goad H. into some dim and faint understanding of a prompter's duties, and struggling in such a vortex of noise, dirt, bustle, confusion, and inextricable entanglement of speech and action as you would grow giddy in contemplating. We perform "A Roland for an Oliver," "A Good Night's Rest," and "Deaf as a Post." This kind of voluntary hard labour used to be my great delight. The ...
— The Letters of Charles Dickens - Vol. 3 (of 3), 1836-1870 • Charles Dickens

... older man of quiet passions and even ways, the old strength of this friendship. Glenfernie seemed to brood with a mother-passion over Ian. To an extent here he confided in Strickland. The latter knew of the worry about Jacobite plots and the drawing of Ian into that vortex—Ian known now to be in Paris, writing thence twice or thrice during this autumn and early winter, letters that came to Glenfernie's hand by unusual channels, smacking all of them of Jacobite or High ...
— Foes • Mary Johnston

... ominous rolls. I cried out to my men to pull up alongside as fast as they could. We were soon up to her. "Leap, leap!" was the shout. I was afraid that the boats might get foul of some of the rigging, or be drawn into the vortex. Not a moment was to be lost. The merchantman's crew saw their danger, and threw themselves headlong over the bulwarks. The deck was already almost awash with the sea. Some reached the boats unhurt, others ...
— Hurricane Hurry • W.H.G. Kingston

... fortresses, held rigidly in formation by the unimaginable mass of the structures and by their twenty-one prodigious tractor beams. Under that awful impact, the screens and walls of the hexan spheres were exactly as effective as so many structures of the most tenuous vapor. The red glare of the vortex of those beams was lightened momentarily by a flash of brighter color, and through the foggy atmosphere there may have flamed briefly a drop or two of metal that was only liquefied. The red and green beams snapped ...
— Spacehounds of IPC • Edward Elmer Smith

... his own before that future club meeting, and he could see no better employment for it than to enable his adored wife to outshine Mrs. George B. Slade. When in New York engaged in his profession, Wilbur Edes was entirely free from the vortex of Fairbridge, but his wife, with its terrible eddies still agitating her garments, could suck him therein, even in the great city. He was very ...
— The Butterfly House • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

... of sufficient interest in the passage of the canal to be worthy of record save the giving way of a lock-gate, near Troy, and the precipitating of a canal-boat into the vortex of waters that followed. By this accident my boat was detained one day on the banks of the canal. On the fourth day the Mayeta ended her services by arriving at Albany, where, after a journey of four hundred miles, experience had taught me that I could ...
— Voyage of The Paper Canoe • N. H. Bishop

... the more outrageous is, that I got fairly drawn into the vortex, and before the third day was expired, I was as deep in mud and politics as ever a moderate gentleman would wish to be; and I drank beer with the multitude; and I talked hand-bill fashion with the demagogues; ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner

... reasonableness and sanctity.... I am glad that you—who have had temptation enough, more than enough, I am sure, in every form—have lived in the midst of this London of ours, close to the great social vortex, yet have kept so safe, and free, and calm, and pure from the besetting sins of ...
— The Brownings - Their Life and Art • Lilian Whiting

... here—though they passed the other two defects unnoticed—have attempted to supply the deficiency in this point. Some have attempted to account for this motion by analogy. It has been suggested that it was of the same nature, and produced by the same causes, as the vortex which is formed when a vessel full of fluid is emptied through an orifice in its bottom. Pontecoulant, in his account of the theory, enters more into detail. He assumes that in the process of agglomeration large bodies of matter ...
— The Story of Creation as told by Theology and by Science • T. S. Ackland

... enthusiasm of an American majority. For such an aberration there is but a single and efficient remedy: absorption in our own affairs, the discriminating study of efficient methods to prevent our being caught up by a whirlwind, even the outer edges of which may snatch us into the vortex. ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol. 1, January 9, 1915 - What Americans Say to Europe • Various

... his eighth year, sitting clasped in his father's arms, had pierced anew that tortured heart by asking questions about his mother and the mystery of death, which no human mind can answer. The child was in a vortex of wonder, grief and speculation. It was the first great lesson of his life, and he would learn it well, the more that it was so severe and incomprehensible. But sleep and fatigue overcame Hubert at length. The light from ...
— Hubert's Wife - A Story for You • Minnie Mary Lee



Words linked to "Vortex" :   current, stream, round shape, Charybdis



Copyright © 2024 Free-Translator.com