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More "Downpour" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... marshes, which, it will be remembered, have been described as a pocket of clay, low-lying lands mainly reclaimed, but which become miry during heavy rains. It was General von Buelow's misfortune, that, on the very night that his flank was exposed, there should come a torrential downpour. These same marshes had figured more than once before in France's military history, and General Foch, as a master strategist, was determined that they should serve again. When the rain came, he thanked his lucky stars and ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of 12) - The War Begins, Invasion of Belgium, Battle of the Marne • Francis J. Reynolds, Allen L. Churchill, and Francis Trevelyan
... night, and they now went off to where they had been waiting in a neighbouring shed. They wanted me to go with them—but I was anxious about my bicycle, a nearly new machine. I had stowed it away as securely as I could under some thick undergrowth on the edge of the woods, but the downpour of rain had been so heavy that I knew it must have soaked through the foliage, and that I should have a nice lot of rust to face, let alone a saturated saddle. So I went away across the park to where I had left it, and the others ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... it came clouds which quickly hid the entire sky. The day turned to night. The birds ceased to sing and went to their nests. The wild beasts ran to their caves. The family sought shelter in the house from a heavy downpour of rain which continued for many days and nights. So long did it last that they became very anxious about the condition of things ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... Bank Holiday and the first fine day after a week's downpour, Members for the most part stayed away from Westminster. Some, it is charitably supposed, have gone to look after their allotments. Others, it is believed, have been kept away by a different reason. The taxicab-drivers, men constitutionally averse from extortion, have ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 15, 1917 • Various
... irksome to him as it was to Heron, yet he bore it imperturbably, for he would have had no use on this momentous journey for a handful of men whose enthusiasm and spirit had been blown away by the roughness of the gale, or drowned in the fury of the constant downpour of rain. ...
— El Dorado • Baroness Orczy
... fool I was to get wet. I stood up and looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour. But all else of the world ...
— The Time Machine • H. G. (Herbert George) Wells
... the big drops of rain began to fall. Soon after swirling sheets of water descended. Dick & Co. had all they could do to keep dry in such a downpour. ...
— The High School Boys in Summer Camp • H. Irving Hancock
... lots of water in all the cricks," offered old man Adams from his place by the fire. "Then with this cloud-bust an' downpour today, it ain't real nice travellin'. That would be about all that's holdin' Hap up. An' I'm tellin' you why: Did you ever hear a man tell of a stick-up party on a night like this? No, sir! These here stick-up gents got more sense than that; they'd be settin' ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... the hut. It was slumberously stuffy, but comfortingly full of flavors of tobacco and food. There were two days of intermission and a day of gusts and icy sleet again, turning with one extraordinary clap of thunder to a wild downpour of dancing lumps of ice, and then a night when it seemed all Labrador, earth and sky together, was in hysterical protest against ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... day for everyone. And to fill the cup of wretchedness to overflowing, the rain, beginning with a drizzle, ended with a downpour. Consultations took place between men who had not spoken to one another for weeks. Fred offered to go on, at all events to Salt Lake City, if Nelson the Canadian and Jacob would go with him. Both eagerly closed with the offer. They would be ...
— Tracks of a Rolling Stone • Henry J. Coke
... that, the eventful evening came, with many lights in the staring, undraped windows of the hotel, coldly bright bunting on the still damp walls of the long dining-room, and a gentle downpour from the hidden skies above. A close carryall was especially selected to bring Mrs. Wade and her housekeeper. The widow arrived, looking a little slimmer than usual in her closely buttoned black dress, white collar ...
— Under the Redwoods • Bret Harte
... violence of the rain lasted about twenty minutes, and then it settled to a quiet, steady downpour for about an hour, during which the thunder and lightning gradually subsided until the thunder became a mere muttering in the extreme distance, and finally died away altogether. But the sheet lightning continued to play intermittently, low down on the northern horizon ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... are!' said Paula. 'They don't even know that it is raining. I am so glad that my aunt had the tent lined; otherwise such a downpour would have gone ...
— A Laodicean • Thomas Hardy
... in the downpour, when white mists parted and fir-crowned heights looked out for a moment, or we slid down into a deep glen with mossy boulders, lichen-covered stumps, ferny carpet, and damp, balsamy smell of pyramidal cryptomeria, and a tawny torrent dashing through it ...
— Unbeaten Tracks in Japan • Isabella L. Bird
... the picnic day; no uncertain showers, to keep up a chill and fever of fear and hope among the young people, but a good, honest downpour, which everybody past twenty must recognize as being just the thing the country needed. Jenny Miller came in, smiling all over, though she professed herself "real sorry for them as was disappointed." "Tudie Peaslee sat down and cried, when she saw 'twas rainin'," she said, ...
— "Some Say" - Neighbours in Cyrus • Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards
... pools. Then they hurriedly collected some dead wood for their camp fire, and threw it, together with their saddles, blankets, etc., under an overhanging ledge which would afford them complete shelter from the coming downpour. ...
— Tom Gerrard - 1904 • Louis Becke
... shoulder, comes briskly out of the hall of the fourth division. The chevrons of a cadet captain are glistening on his arm, and he alone has not donned the gray overcoat, although he has discarded the plumed shako in deference to the coming storm; yet he hardly seems to notice the downpour of the rain; his face is grave and his lips set and compressed as he rapidly makes his way through the groups awaiting the signal to "fall ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... set forth about noon to visit the wood. Overhead the sky was clear again; but there was no motion in the heavy sultry atmosphere, while dark blue masses of banked-up clouds on the western horizon threatened a fresh downpour later in the day. My mind was, however, now too greatly excited at the prospect of a possible encounter with the forest nymph to allow me to pay any ...
— Green Mansions - A Romance of the Tropical Forest • W. H. Hudson
... top-buggy for the first third of the journey. For two or three hours we jogged along the level road which skirts the beautiful lake of Thun, with a dim and dreamlike picture of watery expanses and spectral Alpine forms always before us, veiled in a mellowing mist. Then a steady downpour set in, and hid everything but the nearest objects. We kept the rain out of our faces with umbrellas, and away from our bodies with the leather apron of the buggy; but the driver sat unsheltered and placidly soaked the weather in and seemed ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... exposed all the while to the pelting of the heavy tropical downpour, which quickly drenched us to the skin in spite of the protection of our oil-skins, we slowly groped our way along the creek with muffled oars for rather more than an hour, when we unexpectedly found ourselves at the entrance of a fairly ...
— The Pirate Slaver - A Story of the West African Coast • Harry Collingwood
... downpour had pattered against the roofs and the window-panes. The low, heavy clouds seemed as though they had burst, and were emptying themselves on the world, to reduce it to a pulp and melt it as though it were a sugar-loaf. A hot wind swept by in gusts; ...
— The works of Guy de Maupassant, Vol. 5 (of 8) - Une Vie and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant 1850-1893
... clouds had spread itself over the heavens, against which the brilliant colors of the signs and the people's clothes stood out in bold relief, they started for home. But on the outskirts of the city great drops of rain pelted them in the face, the advance scouts of a tremendous downpour. ...
— The Motor Maids in Fair Japan • Katherine Stokes
... least warning a blinding violet glare cut the gloom, the atmosphere quaked with a terrific shock of thunder, and the downpour became heavier. ...
— Nobody • Louis Joseph Vance
... is humid and warm and remarkably even, the thermometer in the inland rarely reaching above 85 F. in the shade. Rain is copious most of the year; at night it sometimes rains continuously; but a day of uninterrupted downpour did not occur during my two years of travel. It comes in showers, usually lasting an hour or two, when it clears as suddenly as it began, and within half an hour all is dry again. In the interior, on account of the vast jungles, except in case of ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... rains Baree had known. It was an inundation sweeping down out of the blackness of the skies. Within five minutes the interior of the balsam shelter was a shower bath. After half an hour of that torrential downpour, Nepeese was soaked to the skin. The water ran in little rivulets down her body. It trickled in tiny streams from her drenched braids and dropped from her long lashes, and the blanket under her became wet as a mop. To Baree it was almost as bad as his near-drowning ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... every luxury, would be idyllic. As it is, cold, rain and mist generally render this so-called pleasure trip one of monotony and discomfort, where passengers are often compelled to seek shelter throughout the day in smoke-room or saloon. Swathed in oil-skins, however, I braved the downpour, and visited one of the numerous canneries to which the Topeka tied up for a few minutes, and here I was surprised to find that Chinese labour is almost exclusively employed. And the ease and celerity with which a fish was received, so to speak, fresh ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... had rattled out of Morsbronn the rain once more fell in floods, pouring a perpendicular torrent from the transparent, gray heavens, and the roar of the downpour on slate roofs and ancient gables drowned the pounding of the ...
— The Maids of Paradise • Robert W. (Robert William) Chambers
... sort of dream of neutral colors. My seafaring friend had helped me in the sultry nights further south, had shown me a sleeping place high up among the ropes, had called me in the grey dawn, or warned me when lightning flashed and it seemed that a downpour threatened. Afterwards we had passed Madeira, a cheering vista with its white walls and red roofs and purple bougainvillea, and settled down into wintry weather and storm-vexed seas. Now the last night up the Channel had ...
— Cinderella in the South - Twenty-Five South African Tales • Arthur Shearly Cripps
... other debris, whilst the coco-palms and other trees on the islets seemed likely to be torn up by the roots. This lasted about ten minutes. Then came a sudden lull, followed by a terrific and deafening downpour of rain; then more wind, another downpour, and the sun ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... silence, listening to the downpour and the wind. The thunder crashed incessantly and the air was alive with the lightning playing about them in livid flares. They could feel one side of the car lift slightly as Joe adjusted the chain, and then the other side; could dimly hear him struggling with the ...
— Stubble • George Looms
... over Egypt, blue-shadowed before the houses and trees to the west and shimmering and illusory toward the east. A slow-moving, fragmentary cloud had gathered in the zenith just after dawn and for many minutes over the northern part of Goshen there had been a perpendicular downpour of illuminated rain. Now the sky was as clear and blue as a sapphire and the little wind was burdened with odorous scents from ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... climb up out of the valley of the Jonte. By the time he had managed it, the sun had already robbed all vegetation of its ephemeral jewellery, the Causse itself showed few signs of a downpour which had drenched it for seventy-two hours on end. To that porous limestone formation water in whatever quantity is as beer to a boche. Only, if one paused to listen on the brink of an aven, there were odd and disturbing noises to be heard underfoot, liquid whisperings, grim chuckles, ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... for my supper, and I 'd take it kindly if ye 'd cook them for me, and help eat them, too. It 's raining cats and dogs, and if I was to start out now, I 'd have a hard time finding the Lucy Ann. Ye can't see a rod ahead of ye in such a downpour." ...
— The Puritan Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... Tuesday, the day of the sale, came with a return of the east wind and a cold downpour of rain. The Colonel and Billy were busy late in the day; Mrs. Ann was tired; while John in some pain was silent at dinner. The carriage took the Colonel and his wife to the hall. He was now quiet and answered curtly the too frequent ...
— Westways • S. Weir Mitchell
... some fruit. Pecuchet had just given an intimation of the fact to Bouvard, when suddenly the thunder resounded and the rain fell—a heavy and violent downpour. The wind at intervals shook the entire surface of the espalier. The props gave way one after the other, and the unfortunate distaff-shaped trees, while swaying under the storm, dashed their ...
— Bouvard and Pecuchet - A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life • Gustave Flaubert
... privileges of rank, Carew," the Captain observed as dryly as if he had not risen from his warm bed to swim the river and walk a mile in the darkness and the downpour, in order to see how the new boys were ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... was broken by a flash of lightning, followed by a low rumble of thunder. Swift rain-drops flashed down through the leaves upon that still, white face, and a summer storm broke in startling fury on the heated earth, drenching the motionless form with a steady downpour of water. ...
— Dainty's Cruel Rivals - The Fatal Birthday • Mrs. Alex McVeigh Miller
... like locking the stable door after the horse has been stolen. But it is very questionable whether they should have been burned at any time. In a country like eastern Cuba, where at intervals of two or three days throughout the wet season there is a tropical downpour of rain which deluges the ground and beats through the most closely woven tent, a house with a tight zinc roof and a dry floor is a most valuable possession, and it should not be destroyed if there ...
— Campaigning in Cuba • George Kennan
... A sudden downpour of rain startled her, and she sat upright; then, at a noise behind, turned and saw Mary Cary coming ...
— Miss Gibbie Gault • Kate Langley Bosher
... sheet of bare rock, is hardly visible among the glens, yet here and there a bright brown patch tells of a recent landslip; and the masses of debris and banks of shingle, backed by a pestilential little swamp at the mouth of each torrent, show how furious must be the downpour and down-roll before the force of a sudden flood, along so headlong ...
— At Last • Charles Kingsley
... this dance is staged at the time of year the rains are due in Arizona, it is seldom that twenty-four hours elapse after the dance before a downpour arrives. Hopi Snake Priests ...
— I Married a Ranger • Dama Margaret Smith
... the coming of some great calamity, the end of a dream. This rain might stay for days; it looked like such a downpour; and that would mean the end of the Silver Fleece; the end of Zora's hopes; the end of everything. He gulped in despairing anger and hit the staid old horse the smartest tap ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... station, and we had to get out all our equipment and heavy cases of dressings, and put them at the side of the line, while Julian, the Prince's soldier servant, went off to try and find a man and a cart for the things. There was a steady downpour of rain, and we were soaked by the time he came back saying that there was nothing to be had at all. The station was all in crumbling ruins, so we could not leave the things there, and our precious dressings were beginning to get wet. Finally we got permission to put them in a ...
— Field Hospital and Flying Column - Being the Journal of an English Nursing Sister in Belgium & Russia • Violetta Thurstan
... Frederick Graves more nervous than ever. The weather had cleared. The air, washed by yesterday's downpour, came through the open window sweet to his nostrils. The countryside sparkled in the morning sun and the greens of the woods and fields were deeper and richer; but the beauty of the landscape touched him not. He'd scarcely slept, and when ...
— The Secret of the Storm Country • Grace Miller White
... side. I have my own ideas of whether this state of affairs is probable or not, however, and determine to pay no heed to any of these rumors, but to push ahead. So I pull out on Monday morning and take to the railway-track again, which is the only passable road since the tremendous downpour of the last ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... clergyman. "There had been a three-day downpour, up to the evening of Bailey's disappearance. About nine o'clock the wind shift to the northeast, and everything froze hard. There has been no ...
— Average Jones • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... blast. The lesser waters have a lighter quality. The hair of the sea-spirits suggests seaweed and coral. From the mouths of of the sea-chargers jets of water rise to meet the nimbus and rainbows of the semi-spherical downpour of ...
— The Sculpture and Mural Decorations of the Exposition • Stella G. S. Perry
... and various kinds of wealth, and sandal wood and aloes, and clothes and gems, and pearls and blankets and gold and silver and valuable corals. The Mlechchha kings showered upon the illustrious son of Kunti a thick downpour of wealth consisting of coins and gems counted by hundreds of millions. Then returning to Indraprastha, Bhima of terrible prowess offered the whole of that wealth ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Part 2 • Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa
... at the vineyard. The morning had dawned bright and clear. But the sky had soon clouded, and by nine o'clock there was a light shower, followed by others at brief intervals. By noon the rain had settled into a dull, steady downpour. The clouds hung low, and seemed to grow denser instead of lighter as they discharged their watery burden, and there was now and then a muttering of distant thunder. Outdoor work was suspended, and I spent most of the day at ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... around the yacht the expanse of coast and Shallows seemed to await, unmoved, the coming of utter darkness. The dinner was over a long time ago and the patient stewards had been waiting, stoical in the downpour of words like sentries under ...
— The Rescue • Joseph Conrad
... had tardily repaired their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three men waiting with the horses, ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... we walked forth together into the garden, where the wet earth already steamed under the warm downpour of sunlight, that I told Mr. Stewart of my resolution to go as soon as possible to Albany, and take up the ...
— In the Valley • Harold Frederic
... would I be likely to forget the night when it came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking ...
— The Making of an American • Jacob A. Riis
... quite drowned by the muddy torrent that rushed along the pavement. There was no longer any of that glorious greenery so apparent on bright mornings. The market gardeners, cowering in their heavy cloaks beneath the downpour, swore at the municipality which, after due inquiry, had declared that rain was in no way injurious to vegetables, and that there was accordingly no necessity to ...
— The Fat and the Thin • Emile Zola
... yard or two of gauzy stuff of a certain uncertain hue, when a thunder-storm unexpectedly broke over the haunt of artists. Torrents of rain followed, enough to wash away whole pyramids of flowers and piles of art-materials. If the downpour did nothing else it cleared the crowded street, with the celerity of magic only seen in such circumstances, and left Rose cowering in a doorway, alone as it seemed to her, but for a cab-driver who took refuge in his cab, drawn up before one of the opposite houses. The rain ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Sarah Tytler
... of a hard, continuous downpour, accompanied by a warm south wind, worked a mighty difference in the aspect of things at Roaring Water Portage. By night on the day following the arrival of the mail from Maxokama, the water was coming down the rapids with a roar, ...
— A Countess from Canada - A Story of Life in the Backwoods • Bessie Marchant
... Jehovah seemed, indeed, to be on their side. We may well believe that it was the spirit of God that put it into the hearts of Deborah and Barak to delay the battle until there should be a rainy day. When the clash finally came there was a heavy downpour. The flat plain became a swamp. The war chariots sank into the mud and were helpless. The Canaanites became panic-stricken and fled in terror. Many of them were drowned in the attempt to cross the Kishon, which is usually a shallow creek, but on that day was a deep and swiftly flowing ...
— Hebrew Life and Times • Harold B. Hunting
... earth may be iron and the heavens brass, with scarcely a green blade to be seen. The light flying showers that usually occur in July do not render watering unnecessary; in fact, a heavy soaking of a crop after a moderate rainfall is a valuable aid to its growth, for it requires a long-continued heavy downpour to penetrate ...
— The Culture of Vegetables and Flowers From Seeds and Roots, 16th Edition • Sutton and Sons
... know that western seasons do not run on schedule time; For the drought will go on drying while there's anything to dry, Then it rains until you'd fancy it would bleach the sunny sky — Then it pelters out of reason, for the downpour day and night Nearly sweeps the population to the Great Australian Bight. It is up in Northern Queensland that the seasons do their best, But it's doubtful if you ever saw a season in the West; There are years without an autumn or a winter or a spring, There are broiling Junes, and ...
— In the Days When the World Was Wide and Other Verses • Henry Lawson
... a mild drizzle we might go around and see the Patterson girls," sighed Carol. "But there is no venturing out in such a downpour. Cyrilla, you are supposed to be the brainiest one of us. Prove your claim to such pre-eminence by thinking of some brand-new amusement, especially suited to rainy afternoons. That will be putting your grey ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... adaptation of the rainbow for this office of a token is too plain to need dwelling on. It 'fills the sky when storms prepare to part,' and hence is a natural token that the downpour is being stayed. Somewhere there must be a bit of blue through which the sun can pierce; and the small gap, which is large enough to let it out, will grow till all the sky is one azure dome. It springs into sight in front of the cloud, without which ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus and Numbers • Alexander Maclaren
... vast smooth torrent of clear green, he saw the steady downpour of the falls. Out at either side, as he lay there still unable to rise, he caught glimpses through the spume-drive, glimpses of swift white water, that broke and creamed as it whirled past; that jetted high; that, hissing, swept away, away, ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... night, and next morning it was evident that the projected journey by road to St. Flour must be given up. A long day's drive across country in the teeth of biting wind and downpour was not to be thought of, though both my young friend and myself had set our minds upon seeing the wonderful Pont de Garabit, a tour de force of engineering, worthy to be set beside the Eiffel Tower, and ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards
... men have gone to pieces where lighter but more enduring men have come through the ordeal fresh and unharmed. This I have often noted in war times, when soldiers were called on to make a forced march over trying roads and in a downpour ...
— Healthful Sports for Boys • Alfred Rochefort
... the other of them arose, thinking they heard unusual noises, but it was only some disturbance caused by the storm, and morning arrived without anything unusual having taken place. The rain still continued, and Tom, looking from his window and seeing the downpour, remarked: ...
— Tom Swift and his Motor-cycle • Victor Appleton
... For each lithe attitude that flows beneath, Shrouding in scented folds sweet warmths and tumid flowers, Call them far clouds that half emerge Beyond a sunset ocean's utmost verge, Hiding in purple shade and downpour of soft showers Enchanted isles by mortal foot untrod, And there in humid dells resplendent orchids nod; There always from serene horizons blow Soul-easing gales and there all spice-trees grow ...
— Poems • Alan Seeger
... with apprehension and bathed in perspiration. As I lay there the second time, staring up into the darkness and telling myself I was a fool, there came a sudden rush of wind among the trees outside; then a vivid flash of lightning and an instant rending crash of thunder, and then a steady downpour of rain. I could guess how the gasping city welcomed it, and I lay for a long time listening to it, as it dripped from the leaves and beat against the house. A delightful coolness filled the room, an odour fresh and clean; and ...
— The Gloved Hand • Burton E. Stevenson
... I came," the other remarked, also smiling, "I heard that many inmates of his family feel ill-will against him. In real truth he is a fool! For there he drips in the heavy downpour like a water fowl, and instead of running to shelter himself, he reminds other people of the rain, and urges them to get quick out of the wet. Now, tell me, isn't this ridiculous, eh? Time and again, when no one is present, he cries to himself, then laughs to himself. When ...
— Hung Lou Meng, Book II • Cao Xueqin
... There is a perfect downpour of books eulogizing monarchs and monarchy; royal governments spend millions of the people's money to uphold and aggrandize exalted kingship and seedy princeship alike; three-fourths of the press of Europe is swayed by king-worship, or subsidized to sing the praises of "God's Anointed," while ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... office to do something or other and left Old Dimple in the library for a while. The family lost track of him then. Right in the middle of the hardest downpour, about eleven o'clock, the front door bell rang, and Mr. Sharp went to ...
— The Girls of Central High in Camp - The Old Professor's Secret • Gertrude W. Morrison
... "Good-bye," he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the slightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one's mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... what Elizabeth said that the big door ought to be shut and securely fastened. I made about three leaps and grabbed it, and a second later had it hooked and was back, the lightning at my heels. Then the clouds must have upset, for there came a downpour ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... West Street, sitting on some straw in the bottom of an open baggage wagon. It rained miraculously, and from that moment till on the following night I left New York, there was scarce a lull, and no cessation of the downpour.... ...
— The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson for Boys and Girls • Jacqueline M. Overton
... uncertainties, the rattle of keys in the lock announced the approach of visitors. The door swung open and through the grate he saw Dangloss and Quinnox. The latter wore a long military rain coat and had just come in from a drenching downpour. Lorry's reverie had been so deep that he had not heard the thunder nor the howling of the winds. Springing to his feet he advanced quickly to ...
— Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... for reading; an interminable downpour, when one is grateful for any book, even a Dictionary of Dates, or the remains of a Boyle's Court Guide. The Brave Baron shut himself into his room, laid in stores of tobacco and grog, decided, in the course of half an hour, on a comfortable position, and then laid himself out ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, July 30, 1892 • Various
... Banks and the black boys filling every available tank and cask on the station from the downpour off the roof, Nellie rose from the couch on which she had been lying, and touched ...
— In The Far North - 1901 • Louis Becke
... coming rain in the heavens. Her little saint, she said, was too honorable and too proud to risk the disgrace of failure and bring shame on her family. Therefore, he would not consent to be carried out in the fields until kind Nature, through unfailing signs, proclaimed a speedy downpour. When thunder shook the expectant earth and the first drops of rain began to fall, then he started on his little business trip and never had he failed to make it rain copiously. Friends of Don Jose Lopez, hearing all this talk, were not slow to take advantage of it. The time for the election ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... road next morning and it begins raining; at five miles it develops into a regular downpour, that speedily wets me through. A small walled village is finally reached and shelter obtained beneath its ample portals, a place that seems to likewise be the loafing-place of the village. The entrance is a good-sized room, and here on wet days the men can squat about and smoke, and at the same ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle Volume II. - From Teheran To Yokohama • Thomas Stevens
... in the sky began a splattering downpour. The storm grew in fury and lightning tore the heavens, while thunder boomed and crackled. The rain began ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science February 1930 • Various
... that recalls him personally to my memory is the fact of his being associated with a furious thunder-storm. My father and I were alone in the house at the time; my mother had gone to West Newton on a three weeks' visit. In the midst of the thunder and lightning, the downpour and the hurricane, the crash of matter and the wreck of worlds, our door burst open, and behold! of all persons in the world to be heralded by such circumstances, G. P. R. James! Not he only, but close upon his heels his entire family, numerous, orthodox, admirable, ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... the wagon up first, and then the mush will be the reward for our exertions," replied Nealie. She was bustling about with feverish anxiety now, for she had felt a spot of rain, and it was too dreadful to think what might happen if a downpour began before their belongings could be ...
— The Adventurous Seven - Their Hazardous Undertaking • Bessie Marchant
... shelter in the Government woodsheds, two miles ahead, before the inevitable downpour came to drench their bodies and impede their progress. But fate was in a merciless mood ...
— The Great Amulet • Maud Diver
... diamond-like flashes from the polished steel of the tools on the work-bench at the other end of the room. There was a pause in which the silence within the house brought out the different themes composing the rich harmony of the rain, the steady, resonant downpour on the roof, the sweet whispers of the dried grass under the torrent, the muted thuddings of the big drops on the beaten earth of the veranda floor, and the hurried liquid overflow of the eaves. It was still light ...
— The Squirrel-Cage • Dorothy Canfield
... sullenly, and in this downpour the captives waited for a mortal hour. Then three men came along, bearing trays heaped up with thick hunks of brown bread. A hunk was doled out to each of the gang, and Tristram ate his portion greedily, slaking his thirst afterwards by sucking at the sleeve of his cloak. He had hardly done ...
— The Blue Pavilions • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... the shore just as the downpour came, blotting out sea and land in one driving sheet of ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1896 to 1901 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky, the thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world; all over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of mud. Everywhere the waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted ...
— The Door in the Wall And Other Stories • H. G. Wells
... without meaning to Helena. The steady patter of the rain was on the leaves, the sullen, constant drip of water to the ground, and now, occasionally, a rush of wind, a heavier downpour. She sat before the fire, staring into it, her elbows on her knees, her face held tightly in her hands, the brown hair, wet and wayward now, about her temples. Once she moved, once her eyes changed their direction—to fix upon her sleeve in a ...
— The Miracle Man • Frank L. Packard
... followed her, he stood in a choking rage, and felt like Cain. A thick drizzle was falling, and he swung out into the night, glad of the wet coolness in his flaming face, and the wet wind that fanned him. The streets were heavily mired and the drizzle grew to a fast downpour. He turned up his coat-collar and ploughed along, growing more and more resolutely angry, and more and more resolved to fight his case out with Claudia. The house in which they lived was dark when he reached it, except for a single gas-jet in the hall at which guests bound bedward ...
— Despair's Last Journey • David Christie Murray
... in the entrance to a bazaar. The rain began to assume the proportions of a downpour. An old friar, with a big beard, a white habit, and a hood, armed with an untamable umbrella, attempted to cross the square. The umbrella turned inside out in the gusts of wind, and his beard seemed to be trying to get ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... with no land visible. Suddenly the dim outline of land was sighted and the whole crew rushed on deck to catch the first glimpse of the unknown coast of India. They had just discerned the outline of lofty mountains, when a thunderstorm burst over the land and a downpour of heavy rain blotted ...
— A Book of Discovery - The History of the World's Exploration, From the Earliest - Times to the Finding of the South Pole • Margaret Bertha (M. B.) Synge
... the Baron to care for it. Hilbrough tried the plan of shunting the antiquary to his main lines of American hieroglyphs, aboriginal architecture, and Pueblo domestic economy. But this only shifted the difficulty, for under the steady downpour of Pohlsen's erudition, Hilbrough had continually to change position, now putting the right knee over the left and now placing the left atop, to keep from nodding, and he was even reduced to pinching ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... like an infuriated steer at bay, caught in the narrow branding "pinch." He waited for a revealing flash of lightning in the hope that it would show him a way out. He should have realized the futility of his hope, but, if he were soaked by the downpour, his spirit of optimism was as yet ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... a drizzle of rain. It had seemed to Tom, riding through the long night on a horse whose legs trembled at every step, that the dawn would never come; that the world had been conquered by the downpour. At least it had seemed so until the monotony of the rain and cold deadened his senses, allowing him to fall into ...
— Tom of the Raiders • Austin Bishop
... about potatoes? Were they just a thing from foreign parts, like coffee; a luxury, an extra? Oh, the potato is a lordly fruit; drought or downpour, it grows and grows all the same. It laughs at the weather, and will stand anything; only deal kindly with it, and it yields fifteen-fold again. Not the blood of a grape, but the flesh of a chestnut, to be boiled or roasted, used in every way. A man may lack ...
— Growth of the Soil • Knut Hamsun
... to what he called the tank-room, and there Mr. Barlow discovered that the leak was in a supply pipe which could easily be shut off. This he did, and the downpour was immediately stopped, although no water could be drawn through the house until the plumbers should come ...
— Patty Fairfield • Carolyn Wells
... The day had been foggy, raw, and cold; and well on in the afternoon it had begun to rain. It was not a downpour—the water did not fall from the clouds in regular drops—but the clouds themselves had, as it were, laid themselves down in the streets of Paris and there slowly condensed ...
— Stories by Foreign Authors • Various
... was raining again, and the downpour on the top of the hill was so great that little could be seen of the condition of affairs at a distance. Sending word that the hill was taken and one old-fashioned Spanish field-piece captured, Major Morris rallied his battalion ...
— The Campaign of the Jungle - or, Under Lawton through Luzon • Edward Stratemeyer
... clap of thunder and a flash of the fiercest lightning Sally had ever seen. Instantly there was a sudden and overwhelming downpour of rain, as if the heavens had opened. Then everybody was shouting or calling. Outside the tent, Jarvis, in his hammock, and Bob, on his blankets on the ground, had been soaked to the skin before they knew what had happened, and were trying to discover ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... evening, if all went well, I should be introduced to the bride destined for me by mysterious fate. This thought kept my mind on the alert during the panting journey we made, the djin and I, one dragging the other, under the merciless downpour. ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... hotel upon his way to Staff Bombproof South, is made aware that the hundred-foot-high dust-storm that has raged and swirled throughout the morning is in process of being beaten down into a porridge of red mud by a downpour of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... together for some time, gazing at this scene in silent solemnity, when a few trickling streams began to fall upon us, showing that our leafy canopy, thick though it was, could not protect us altogether from such a downpour. ...
— The Big Otter • R.M. Ballantyne
... said, and we did, glad of the glass enclosed shelter from the downpour. With deft motions he fastened the Glow-worm behind the limousine with a tow line and then sent his car rolling down the road at a ...
— The Campfire Girls Go Motoring • Hildegard G. Frey
... stayed two days at Bretton Woods, and adored the place. Fancy drinking water from a spring at Mount Echo! The name turned water into champagne. And fancy having nice college boys disguised as waiters, to serve us, and earn enough for next winter's course! It rained one day, but the downpour was a blessing in disguise for it drew Peter and Pat nearer together and wove a spun-glass barrier between the girl and Caspian. She ran out in a torrent to get rid of the inevitable Ed, who discreetly retired in fear of a drenching; then, when his back was safely ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)
... stiff poles, practised by long warfare in their ramparts' defence: and fiercely hurl heavy stones, so be they may break the shielded line; while they, crowded under their shell, lightly bear all the downpour. But now they fail; for where the vast mass presses close, the Teucrians roll a huge block tumbling down that makes a wide gap in the Rutulians and crashes through their armour-plating. Nor do the bold ...
— The Aeneid of Virgil • Virgil
... matter what the weather, she might be seen, in her thick boots, burberry, and tam o'shanter, trudging along the roads or across the fields accompanied by the faithful collie. The winter had been a comparatively mild one, with excessive rain. But no downpour troubled her. She liked the rain to beat into her face, for the dismal, monotonous cheerlessness of the brown fields, bare trees, and muddy roads was in keeping with the tragedy of ...
— The House of Whispers • William Le Queux
... by itself with its other attendant circumstances and peculiarities, it will be found that it may then be possible to distinguish it from similar other effects. Thus a flood in the street may be due either to a heavy downpour of rain immediately before, or to the rise in the water of the river close by, but if observed carefully the flooding of the street due to rain will be found to have such special traits that it could be distinguished from a similar flooding due to the rise ...
— A History of Indian Philosophy, Vol. 1 • Surendranath Dasgupta
... storm-cloud had risen in the east, and everything indicated the approach of a thunderstorm. It was not long coming. Before Peter had completed six miles of his journey, the clouds rolled over, obscuring the moon, and an Australian thunderstorm came on with its mighty downpour, its blinding lightning, and its earth-shaking thunder. Peter rode steadily on, only pausing now and then until a flash revealed the ...
— On the Track • Henry Lawson
... he unhesitatingly agreed to make one of the number, unaware that he had been selected as the victim of a practical joke, and, as usual, was one of the jolliest of the crowd. They drove through a blinding downpour of rain and dismounted on reaching a lonely hill about three miles distant. They gave Fritz a bag to hold. It was fashioned of burlap and barrel hoops, inside of which they placed a lighted candle, and Fritz was instructed how to hold it in order to attract the "Elbadritchel." ...
— Mary at the Farm and Book of Recipes Compiled during Her Visit - among the "Pennsylvania Germans" • Edith M. Thomas
... A steady downpour of rain all through the night made our early start next day an affair of doubt and discouragement and dismal prophecy; but we persevered, and accomplished another long stage through a cold persistent drizzle before reaching an inn, where we enjoyed ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, Vol. XVII, No. 99, March, 1876 • Various
... grass, which entered his brain and set his thoughts whirling on from the particular to the universal. "It has achieved its reason for existence," he went on, patting the dry grass affectionately. "It quickened with ambition under the dreary downpour of last winter, fought the violent early spring, flowered, and lured the insects and the bees, scattered its seeds, squared itself with its ...
— Martin Eden • Jack London
... which he called the Warburton, and while on an excursion from this camp he had the singular experience of riding all day through heavy rain and camping at night without water, the sandy soil having quickly absorbed the downpour. On his return he found that the creek at the camp was running, and though repeated attempts had been made by the Afghans to goad one of the camels over, the animal obstinately refused to cross. Probably the leader thought that it was fortunate for the progress of the expedition that ...
— The Explorers of Australia and their Life-work • Ernest Favenc
... branches over the roof began to move and rustle, and there was a sudden downpour of rain; the camp fire went out, as if an extinguisher had covered it. She stood in the doorway for a breathless instant, then ran back into the cabin, and, catching the candle from the table, stepped out into the blackness; instantly the wind bore the ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... clarity impossible in our Terra's dust-filled air. As that mighty sun dropped below the horizon the sky would fill suddenly with clouds and rain would fall violently and steadily until midnight. Then the clouds would vanish as suddenly as they had come into being, the torrential downpour would cease, and, through that huge world's wonderfully transparent, gaseous envelope, the full glory of the firmament would be revealed. Not the firmament as we know it—for that hot blue sun and Nevia, her one planet-child, were many light-years ...
— Triplanetary • Edward Elmer Smith
... clapboards and splashing from its eaves; the groups of horses hitched to the scraggy apple-trees of the deserted homestead; and here and there the white canvas cover of an ox-wagon, with its yoke of steers standing with low-hung heads in the downpour. The pallid circling mists enveloped the world, and limited the outlook to a periphery of scant fifty paces; occasionally becoming tenuous, as if to suggest the dark looming of the mountain across the narrow valley, and ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... and looked out the window. Once he went outside and crept along the wall of the cabin to the east and the west, but there was no break of light in the murky sky and he went back to pipe and fire. By and by the wind died and the rain steadied into a dogged downpour. He knew what that meant—there would be no letting up now in the storm, and for another night he was a prisoner. So he went to his saddle-pockets and pulled out a cake of chocolate, a can of potted ham and some crackers, munched his supper, went to bed, and lay there with sleepless eyes, while ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... was blowing a gale. Heavy showers began to fall at intervals, chilling the atmosphere, and finally settled into a steady downpour, such as frequently occurs in the middle of summer, making everything indoors humid and unwholesome, and causing colds and sore throats ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... snarl that would have done credit to a panther driven off its prey, he slunk up a byway to shelter himself and think of new obscenities; and as he stood beneath a cloth awning to await the passing of a more than usually heavy downpour, the rotten fibers burst at last and let ten gallons of filthy ...
— Winds of the World • Talbot Mundy
... present took a solemn oath not to rest until they had avenged the lady's death. Riding together these three knights, overtaken by a storm, sought shelter in a neighboring castle, only to be refused admittance. To escape from the downpour, they therefore took refuge with their steeds in a neighboring shed, and were scarcely ensconced there when another stranger rode up seeking shelter too. As there was no room left, the first-comers forbade the stranger to ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber
... rose with joyous brightness in a sky clear as crystal. Storm, wind, and rain had vanished like the flying phantoms of an evil dream, and all the beautiful land sparkled with light and life in its enlacing girdle of turquoise blue sea. The gardens of the Royal palace, freshened by the downpour of the past night, wore their most enchanting aspect,—roses, with leaves still wet, dropped their scented petals on the grass,—great lilies, with their snowy cups brimming with rain, hung heavily on their slim green stalks, and the air was full of the deliciously ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli
... kinds of weather, but a downpour such as this he had never seen before. The rain fell steadily and relentlessly, with never a pause between. The night was too dark to see clearly, as the sheets of water were swept before the wind, but their force was terrific. Several times the boy had to turn his back ...
— The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men • Francis William Rolt-Wheeler
... instant the wall of fire is drawing closer in, the roll of the thunder is continuous, a dismal pulverization of 90,000 men! Never before has anything equal to this been seen; never before has an army been overwhelmed beneath such a downpour of lead and iron! At one o'clock all is lost. The regiments fly helter-skelter into Sedan. But Sedan begins to burn; Dijonval burns, the ambulances burn, there is nothing now possible but to cut their way out. Wimpfen, brave and resolute, proposes this to the Emperor. ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... Colonel Dick's assertion that it was an evening for a sensible man to stay where he was, and that a bowl of punch and wedding-talk and Unity at the harpsichord were to be preferred to a progress to Greenwood through such a downpour and a foot of mud. Ludwell!—Ludwell wouldn't be there anyway. He was a man of sense and would be sleeping at Red Fields, if indeed he had ever left Malplaquet. Fairfax Cary was persuaded, and after a very happy evening in the drawing-room, ...
— Lewis Rand • Mary Johnston
... streets and squares women stood in close ranks, silent, phlegmatic women, with pistols in their belts and rifles with fixed bayonets on their shoulders, the steel reflecting the terrific downpour of light with a steady and menacing glitter. These women wore gray uniforms and there were shining Prussian ...
— The White Morning • Gertrude Atherton
... named on which this mission was to be fulfilled. Metellus's own vessels were filled from the river, and the rapid march to Thala was begun. The resting place was reached and the camp was entrenched; water was there in greater abundance than had been asked or hoped, for a sharp downpour of rain made the plethoric skins presented by the punctual Numidians almost a superfluous luxury and, as a happy omen, cheered the souls of the soldiers as much as it refreshed their bodies.[1098] The devoted villagers had also brought an unexpectedly large supply of corn, so ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... the last hail-storm to trouble spring: He came in gloomy haste, Pusht in front of the white clouds quietly basking, In such a hurry he tript against the hills And stumbling forward spilt over his shoulders All his black baggage held, Streaking downpour of hail. Then fled dismayed, and the sun in golden glee And the high white clouds ...
— Georgian Poetry 1920-22 • Various
... which the silver-haired lady could listen to, but paddled across the flooded street between flashes to the pond on the green. Mr. Lingnam, scarcely visible through the sheeting downpour, trotted round the edge. He bore himself nobly, and lied at ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... iris. Never before had they risen to such a height; it was like the vegetation of tropical swamps, so much was everything drawn up by the continual moisture. Who could have supposed that such a downpour as occurred that summer would have had the effect it had upon flowers? Most would have imagined that the excessive rain would have destroyed them; yet never was there such floral beauty as that year. Meadow-orchis, buttercups, the yellow iris, ...
— Nature Near London • Richard Jefferies
... was ended a rain began to fall, and it rapidly thickened from a desultory shower to a roaring downpour that effectually quenched not only the fires around which the savages were dancing, but the enthusiasm of the dancers as well. During the rest of the afternoon and all night long the fall was incessant, accompanied by a ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... this time been augmented by the addition of almost the entire population of the settlement; one or two rosy-cheeked women, having babies in their arms, standing in the rain utterly regardless of the steady downpour. ...
— Elsket - 1891 • Thomas Nelson Page
... the library to hold himself at the magistrate's disposal; through the torrential downpour of rain Bouzille and the gendarme wended their way to the village; and left alone in her kitchen, Louise put out her lamp, for despite the shocking weather it was getting lighter ...
— Fantomas • Pierre Souvestre
... contracting gloom. A false step in that humid chamber, and my bones would pound and crackle on the rocks forty feet below. It must be gone through with now, however; and, taking a long breath, I set foot in the passage under the curving downpour that seemed taut as an ...
— At a Winter's Fire • Bernard Edward J. Capes
... the night in a blinding storm of rain that had materially increased to a torrential downpour materially helped to damp spirits already none too high. Bumping wildly into this figure or that, slipping full-length into inches of water and thereby saturating what little dry clothing that had remained so, they peered vainly into the all ...
— Norman Ten Hundred - A Record of the 1st (Service) Bn. Royal Guernsey Light Infantry • A. Stanley Blicq
... shall forget that night who took a part in it? The ceaseless downpour of the rain, The incessant thundering of the guns, The shells that ricochetted from the ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... supping on the islands of Arginusae, which lie opposite Lesbos. In the night the Spartan not only saw their watch-fires, but received positive information that "these were the Athenians;" and about midnight he got under weigh, intending to fall upon them suddenly. But a violent downpour of rain with thunder and lightning prevented him putting out to sea. By daybreak it had cleared, and he sailed towards Arginusae. On their side, the Athenian squadron stood out to meet him, with their ...
— Hellenica • Xenophon
... of those profuse southerly rains, such as often occur in Maine during the summer season. We milked in the barn and put the cows out to pasture in the midst of the downpour, for it ...
— When Life Was Young - At the Old Farm in Maine • C. A. Stephens
... enemy. They no doubt informed themselves of its contents, and were so utterly glad to get rid of us, without further loss, that they gladly sent it in to us. That night there was a heavy thunderstorm, with a tremendous downpour of rain, and under cover of it we withdrew quietly, and before long were met by ...
— Through Three Campaigns - A Story of Chitral, Tirah and Ashanti • G. A. Henty
... roofed cabin to escape this downpour. But they were fearful that at any moment the flying machine, resting so insecurely upon the shelf of ice, would be washed into ...
— On a Torn-Away World • Roy Rockwood
... the downpour, the scenery completely hidden by the clouds; but towards midday, as we climbed ever higher and higher, we plunged into pine forests where the rain began to thin to mist, veiling the trees with layers of drifting fog. Out of the forests we came—the rain ...
— The Luck of Thirteen - Wanderings and Flight through Montenegro and Serbia • Jan Gordon
... a terrible storm of thunder and lightning," burst furiously upon them, making such a roaring that none could hear his own voice. As in all such storms, the rain came down in a torrent, hiding the town from view in a blinding downpour. The men ran for the shelter of "a certain shade or penthouse, at the western end of the King's Treasure House," but before they could gain the cover some of their bowstrings were wetted "and some ...
— On the Spanish Main - Or, Some English forays on the Isthmus of Darien. • John Masefield
... rode on across the Plan Alto. In the early afternoon, in the midst of a downpour of rain, we crossed the divide between the basins of the Paraguay and the Amazon. That evening we camped on a brook whose waters ultimately ran into the Tapajos. The rain fell throughout the afternoon, now lightly, ...
— Through the Brazilian Wilderness • Theodore Roosevelt
... at first slightly, but soon a steady, heavy downpour was falling in streams from the sky, weaving a regular network of fine threads of water that at once hid the steppe and the sea. Gavrilo vanished behind it. For a long while nothing was to be seen but the rain and the long ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... enough to explain the isolation of mountaineers. For long years, even until yesterday, the only roads were the beds of tortuous and rockstrewn watercourses that were dry when you started at sunup and were suddenly transformed by a downpour to swollen, turbulent streams, perilous even ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... long white Mission, was, so far as the eye was responsible, an illimitable valley, cutting the horizon on the south and west, cut by the mountains of Santa Barbara on the east. The sun was brazen in a dark-blue sky, and under its downpour the vast olive orchard which covered the valley looked like a silver sea. The glittering ripples met the blue of the horizon sharply, crinkled against the lower spurs of the mountain. As a bird that had skimmed its surface, then plunged for a moment, rose again, Talbot ...
— The Bell in the Fog and Other Stories • Gertrude Atherton
... Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain, And the glass that had screened our forms before Flew up, and out she sprang to her door: I should have kissed her if the rain Had ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... night bursts and spreads o'er them. Evil accumulated dissolves in misfortune upon them, they are swept with blasts of despair by the tempest of fatalities, there a downpour of trials and sorrows streams upon dishevelled heads in the darkness; squalls, hail, a hurricane of distress, swirl and whirl back and forth athwart them; it rains, rains without cease: it rains horror, it rains vice, it rains crime, ...
— The Memoirs of Victor Hugo • Victor Hugo
... blushing and turning pale by turns, passed into a low, small, panelled room, smelling of cigars and spirits. Through the window, which was cut up into little panes, she could see the rain driving past, the shrubs bent and dripping from the downpour. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... New Brunswick, did not look particularly merry at two o'clock of a late September morning. There was an easterly haze driving in from the Baie des Chaleurs and the darkness was so saturated with chilly moisture that an honest downpour of rain would have been a relief. Two or three depressed and somnolent travelers yawned in the waiting room, which smelled horribly of smoky lamps. The telegraph instrument in the ticket office clicked ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Campfire Stories • Various
... occurs during storms in the north, a clatter of hail stones now followed, which in less than a minute demolished all the window-panes on the windy side, and immediately after this, indeed in the midst of it, came a downpour of rain which seemed to be the prelude of a new deluge. We children, starting up terrified, ran about screaming and clamoring. Susanna herself lost her head, and her maid succeeded in closing the shutters only when there ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. IX - Friedrich Hebbel and Otto Ludwig • Various
... soon fulfilled. There was a cold blast of wind, carrying a few big drops, and then a sudden, drumming downpour that tore up the dust of the street and swiftly converted it into a sea of mud cut by ...
— The Blood of the Conquerors • Harvey Fergusson
... it, driven by some local current of air, formed tented clouds along the promontory. It was as though yesterday's army was marshalled against other hosts that held the Chelan heights. A twilight indistinctness settled over the valley between. Rain, a downpour, was near. She hurried on to the brow of the plateau, but she dared not attempt to go down around those crumbling chimneys alone. And Tisdale had said he would come back this side of the vale. Any moment he might appear. She turned to go back to the shelter of the pines. ...
— The Rim of the Desert • Ada Woodruff Anderson
... javelins of the garrison,—that reached those at a greater distance, however. On a rainy night they pushed this wall against the gates, found the entrance to the tunnel, and at dawn were ready for the final assault. It began with a downpour of spears and stones, before which it was impossible to stand. Then the heavy slab that masked the inner door to the tunnel was lifted, and in another minute five thousand men were pouring over the walls and through the passage. Not one man attempted flight. ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... had not been taken by surprise. Through a downpour of rather badly placed shells, they held their position on the firing step and worked both their rifles and machine guns against the raiding party, which they could not see, but knew would be advancing behind the curtain of fire. Hundreds of empty cartridges ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... had to be dispensed with one day, on account of a thorough downpour of rain, the last story in Jewel's ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... inn I passed the Fontaine de Burlats, where St. Enimie was cured of her leprosy in the Merovingian age. It was a change to see something that really seemed to enjoy the incessant downpour and to enter into the spirit of it. The fountain would be remarkable in another region by the volume of water that gushes in all seasons like a little river out of the earth; but there are so many such between the Dordogne and the Tarn, wherever the calcareous formation has lent ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... day the rain came down in torrents, a regular downpour, merciless and unceasing, blinding and drenching everything,—a thick rain so dense that it was impossible to see through it from one end of the vessel to the other. It seemed as though the clouds of the whole world ...
— Madame Chrysantheme • Pierre Loti
... teeth of death, the old man crept with the sleeping babe. Another threatening of the deluge of rain, which would surely accompany the tornado, added to the misery of the painful journey; the sudden downpour of heavy drops drenched the grandfather to the skin, but the grandchild ...
— A Loose End and Other Stories • S. Elizabeth Hall
... it appears, cannot escape the hostility of "envious Fortune,"—the same who untimely cut off its lamented rival. A large, black cloud, coming up over us like a vengeful harpy, forebodes the invariable downpour, and grimly compels us to shorten ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... mercury, combined with a low weird moaning in the atmosphere, seemed to forebode the approach of some dire disaster. This was followed by a sudden blast of wind from the eastward—which came and was gone again in an instant—and which preceded a brief but terrific downpour of rain. This lasted for perhaps three minutes, when it ceased as suddenly ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... anxious, moreover, not to keep the rest of the party waiting. There was an Austrian general, however, amongst the number, and therefore we might safely have slept another hour. The morning was very unpromising, the rain descended in a dull persistent downpour. We tried to hope it was the pride of the morning. The prospect was dreary enough to damp the spirits of some of our party. One man found that urgent private affairs called him hence; another averred he had an inflammatory sore throat. I expected a third would say he had married a ...
— Round About the Carpathians • Andrew F. Crosse
... months Sylvia had been craving praise with a starved appetite, and although she found this downpour of it rather drenching, she could not sufficiently collect herself to make the conventional decent pretense that it was unwelcome. She flushed deeply and looked at her hostess with dazzled eyes. Mrs. Draper affected to see in her silence a blankness as to the subject of the talk, and interrupted ...
— The Bent Twig • Dorothy Canfield
... preference for tumbling down of themselves. Constructed on a subsoil of sandy nature, their foundations yielded at every spell of rain. In vain, architect after architect was applied to, and one mode or another was recommended of relaying and buttressing. At the next downpour, the servant would disturb his master with the news: "The walls have toppled over again, sir, into the neighbours' gardens." And the neighbours' gardens were planted with all kinds of edible vegetables, ...
— Balzac • Frederick Lawton
... change for the worse in the weather made it not easy to hear slight noises in the house. The wind was still rising. The passage of it through the great trees in the garden began to sound like the fall of waves on a distant beach. It drove the rain—a heavy downpour by ...
— I Say No • Wilkie Collins
... breaking-up of old parties. The great political crisis which had been threatening the country for many years was about to burst, and, like the first big raindrops that precede a downpour, the changes in 1854 announced its presence. It had been so long in coming that John W. Taylor of Saratoga, the champion opponent of the Missouri Compromise, was dying when Horace Greeley, at the anti-Nebraska convention held in Taylor's home in August, 1854, was writing into the ...
— A Political History of the State of New York, Volumes 1-3 • DeAlva Stanwood Alexander
... crowd stand patiently in the downpour with a deepening sense of the tragedy it foreshadowed. The people who could set their teeth and go through an inauguration ceremony scheduled in the open air on such a day might be defeated in battle, but the victor ...
— The Victim - A romance of the Real Jefferson Davis • Thomas Dixon
... a decidedly evil temper as he rode home from the hunt in the soaking rain that afternoon. The second fox had led them miles out of the way, and they had not been rewarded by a kill. The brute had eluded them, profiting by the downpour that had washed away the scent. So Sir Giles, having solaced himself several times with neat brandy from the large silver flask without which he never rode abroad, was in anything but a contented mood with the world in general ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... The downpour rapidly grew heavier, accompanied by lightning and thunder. The flashes were blinding, dazzling Jane's eyes so that she had difficulty in keeping her car in the road. It was now nearly evening, and an early darkness had already settled over the landscape. There was little ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... to weep quietly, while Spillane dropped a troubled exclamation and strode to the window. Jerry joined him in gazing out to where the cables lost themselves in the thick downpour. ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... orchard and attempts were made at vegetable-growing. But water was too scarce to do the plants justice. Everything must be sacrificed to the cattle. One lesson it taught me, however, and that is that no matter how much water you irrigate with, one good downpour from Nature's fertilizing watering-can is worth more than weeks of irrigation. Rain water has a quality of its own which well or tank water cannot supply. Plants respond to it at once by adopting a cheery, healthy aspect. It had another equally valuable character in that it destroyed the ...
— Ranching, Sport and Travel • Thomas Carson
... watch, and smilingly replied that a little half-hour would bring us easily to Montepulciano. He was a native of the place. He knew perfectly well that he would be shut up with us in that carriage for two mortal hours of darkness and downpour. And yet, such is the irresistible impulse in Italians to say something immediately agreeable, he fed us with false hopes and had no fear of consequences. What did it matter to him if we were pulling out our watches and chattering in well-contented undertone about vino ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... intelligence has taken a front place in this war? What has been the source of the spirit of self-immolation which has driven the intellectual and imaginative section of French youth to hold out both hands to catch the full downpour of the rain of death? There is no precedent for it in French history, and we may observe for ourselves how new a thing it was, and how unexpected, by comparing with the ardent and radiant letters and poems ...
— Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France • Edmund Gosse
... perfect downpour of books eulogizing monarchs and monarchy; royal governments spend millions of the people's money to uphold and aggrandize exalted kingship and seedy princeship alike; three-fourths of the press of Europe is swayed by king-worship, or subsidized ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... this was near the bottom of the straw, and sometimes among the corn. Unfortunately at 11:25 the rain began, and experiments were stopped till the afternoon. It was no light shower which could give a check to the ardor of the judges and other officers of the society, but a heavy downpour of some hours' duration, which soaked the crop through and through. Indeed, we think it a pity that the experiments should have been continued at all under circumstances in which practical harvesting would have been out of the question. However, after a short lull in the ...
— Scientific American Suppl. No. 299 • Various
... seeding, and the dry September and October had permitted our buildings to be pushed forward, but now everything was to change. A light rain began on the morning of the 15th (I did not permit it to interrupt the shredding, which was finished by noon), and by night it had developed into a steady downpour that continued, with interruptions, for six weeks. November and December of 1895 gave us rain and snow fall equal to twelve and a half inches of water. Plans at Four Oaks had to be modified. There was no more ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... war recognizes no Christmas, nor Sunday, nor holiday. The brown river, excited by rains, whirled seaward between his banks of yellow clay. Now the weather was crisp and cold, now hazy and depressing, and again a downpour. Memphis had never seen such activity. A spirit possessed the place, a restless spirit called William T. Sherman. He prodded Memphis and laid violent hold of her. She groaned, protested, turned over, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... harsh touched his cheek. It might have been snow or hail. He turned his thin cunning face to the clouds, and they threatened a downpour. They raced along, like scarves of vapour, so low that you might have thought of touching them if you stood ...
— The Fifth Queen • Ford Madox Ford
... time Miss Verity reached Marychurch the rain amounted to a veritable downpour. Driven by the southwesterly wind, it swept in sheets over the low-lying country, the pallid waters, drab mud-flats, dingy grey-green salt-marsh, and rusty brown reed-beds of the estuary. The dusty road, running alongside this last through the hamlets ...
— Deadham Hard • Lucas Malet
... probable or not, however, and determine to pay no heed to any of these rumors, but to push ahead. So I pull out on Monday morning and take to the railway-track again, which is the only passable road since the tremendous downpour of the last ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... their pathetic, poignant, horrified wonder, that such things could be. All this was intensified by the anarchy of sea and air and sky, by the incessant explosion of the waves, by the wind which seemed to sweep from end to end of a liquefying universe, by a downpour which threatened to beat their sodden bodies to pulp, by all the connotation of terror that lay in the darkness and in their unguarded condition on a barbarous, ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... outside the zareba, so as to give an early warning of the approach of the enemy; but no reliance could be placed upon them; for, altogether without discipline, they would probably creep under bushes, and endeavour to find some shelter from the pitiless downpour. ...
— With Kitchener in the Soudan - A Story of Atbara and Omdurman • G. A. Henty
... there, for the apartments preparing for him were far from ready, and he had to wait throughout the winter in the vicinity, in a castle of the Count of Oropesa, and in the midst of an almost continual downpour of rain, which turned the roads to mire, the country almost to a swamp, and the mountains to vapor-heaps. The threshold of his new home was far from an ...
— Historical Tales - The Romance of Reality - Volume VII • Charles Morris
... foot of the ladder, I mounted it, very quietly, my stout stick in my hand. I held my breath and lifted my feet with the greatest care. Suddenly a heavy cloud discharged itself at that moment in a fresh downpour of rain. ...
— The Mystery of the Yellow Room • Gaston Leroux
... dogged, dreary downpour drilling through a heavy atmosphere whose enervation was like the oppression of some malign and inexorable incubus; its incessant crepitation resembling the mutter of a weary, sullen drum, dwarfing to insignificance the stuttering of machine-guns ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... Its clear whistle is always to be heard the first thing in the morning before the other birds get up, and daring the violent rains of the S.W. monsoon it seems almost the only bird which does not lose heart at the incessant downpour. April and May appear to ...
— The Nests and Eggs of Indian Birds, Volume 1 • Allan O. Hume
... progressed the rain did likewise, true to forecast. At twelve fifteen, when the special arrived at Brighton, a stop one mile from the stadium, Davies stepped into a sullen, sweeping downpour. There was little hilarity among the detraining football followers, and crimson colors gave way to the somber black of umbrellas. Davies raised his coat collar and pulled down his hat brim, making a dash for a store front that carried ...
— Interference and Other Football Stories • Harold M. Sherman
... gay Tahitian capital, while a slashing downpour drowned the gay flamboyant blossoms, our masts and rigging creaking in the gale, and sea breaking ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... white-painted factories and their great store-houses for oil; each factory likely enough with its flag at half-mast, which does not enliven the scenery either, for you know it is because somebody is "dead again." Throughout and over all is the torrential downpour of the wet-season rain, coming down night and day with its dull roar. I have known it rain six mortal weeks in Bonny River, just for all the world as if it were done by machinery, and the interval that came ...
— Travels in West Africa • Mary H. Kingsley
... under the blankets once more, but three of the Camp Girls were trembling and shivering with fear at the fury of the storm. Ten minutes later the tent sprang a leak directly over their heads. Very shortly after that the four cots and the bedding were thoroughly soaked by the merciless downpour. ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls Under Canvas • Janet Aldridge
... growing fiercer; the sullen mutterings of the wind broke into a shriek, with a terrible downpour of rain; but the rushing crowd was stayed by a cry of joy that rose above the tumult—a cry of love from the heart of ...
— The Royal Pawn of Venice - A Romance of Cyprus • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull
... not like other rains Baree had known. It was an inundation sweeping down out of the blackness of the skies. Within five minutes the interior of the balsam shelter was a shower bath. After half an hour of that torrential downpour, Nepeese was soaked to the skin. The water ran in little rivulets down her body. It trickled in tiny streams from her drenched braids and dropped from her long lashes, and the blanket under her became wet as a ...
— Baree, Son of Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... thought was that the place was tenantless, till I caught sight of a thin spire of smoke struggling against the downpour. I hoped to come on some gardener or groom from whom I could seek direction, so I skirted the pleasance to find the kitchen door. A glow of fire in one of the rooms cried welcome to my shivering bones, and ...
— Salute to Adventurers • John Buchan
... three miles from the house, the storm had spent itself, and the downpour had died into a soft, dripping rain. The sky and the land were a dark smoke color, and seemed to be coming together, like two waves. When Ivar stopped at the gate and swung out his lantern, a white figure rose from beside John Bergson's ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... had blue-patched the racetrack after the downpour; but these had drained off to a great extent, leaving the track a little greasy perhaps, but quite usable; and Jim recalled with interest the shoeing of the Buckskin. "This was what it was for; how did the heathens know it was coming?" By mutual ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... to his throat, Queed set his face against the steady downpour. It was a mild, windless night near the end of February, foreshadowing the early spring already nearly due. He had no umbrella, or wish for one: the cool rain in his face was ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... a faint mist, the two took a quick-step run about the parade ground. They came back splashed with mud and dripping wet, but their cheeks glowed and their hearts beat quickly. After that, no matter how violent the downpour, they managed to take a turn in the open. Sometimes they circled the grounds repeatedly. Again, if the rain proved too drenching, one short run was all ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... tardily repaired their blunder by posting guards; but these were not looking for their enemies from the side of their own camp, and as we cleared the fence in the full blaze of a lightning flash, only two or three wild shots sang after us. In the black downpour Ferry reached me an invisible hand. I leapt astride his horse's croup, and trusting the good beast to pick his way among the trees himself, we sped away. Soon we came upon our three men waiting with the horses, and no great while ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... the ranch, found as described, without another home in sight, was a welcome sight to us for several reasons. One reason was that it afforded shelter from a heavy downpour of rain that greeted us as we neared it, and a better reason still was, that it gave us a chance to write and mail some letters to those who would be most ...
— Through the Grand Canyon from Wyoming to Mexico • E. L. Kolb
... since 1860. Brooklyn was too new by a millennium for the Baron to care for it. Hilbrough tried the plan of shunting the antiquary to his main lines of American hieroglyphs, aboriginal architecture, and Pueblo domestic economy. But this only shifted the difficulty, for under the steady downpour of Pohlsen's erudition, Hilbrough had continually to change position, now putting the right knee over the left and now placing the left atop, to keep from nodding, and he was even reduced to pinching himself, sometimes, in order ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston
... dale, and the rich red clay soil made a splendid contrast on road and track with the brilliant green on either hand. Still, people looked anxiously for more rain, declaring that not half enough had fallen to fill tanks or "shuits" (as the ditches are called), and it took four days of continuous downpour to satisfy these thirsty souls even for the moment. Toward the middle of the month the atmosphere became more oppressive and clouds began to come up in thick masses all round the horizon, and gradually spread themselves over the whole sky. The day ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, April, 1876. • Various
... Perhaps this very evening, if all went well, I should be introduced to the bride destined for me by mysterious fate. This thought kept my mind on the alert during the panting journey we made, the djin and I, one dragging the other, under the merciless downpour. ...
— Madame Chrysantheme Complete • Pierre Loti
... before daylight by a sudden heavy downpour of rain. The boys were soaked to the skin, the water having run in under the canvas until they were lying ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... Dalhousie it began to rain—not a mere hill-shower, but a good, tepid monsoonish downpour. Golightly bustled on, wishing that he had brought an umbrella. The dust on the roads turned into mud, and the pony mired a good deal. So did Golightly's khaki gaiters. But he kept on steadily and tried to think how pleasant ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... What to her was perilously near a second deluge—but according to Mrs. Carew was merely "the usual fall rains"—brought a series of damp, foggy, cold, cheerless days, filled with either a dreary drizzle of rain, or, worse yet, a steady downpour. If perchance occasionally there came a day of sunshine, Pollyanna always flew to the Garden; but in vain. Jamie was never there. It was the middle of November now, and even the Garden itself was full of dreariness. The trees were bare, the benches almost empty, and not one boat ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... was nearly five miles from the station, and the two big wagons made slow time with the heavy loads, especially as the roads were still muddy from a recent downpour. But none of the Camp Fire Girls seemed to mind ...
— The Camp Fire Girls on the Farm - Or, Bessie King's New Chum • Jane L. Stewart
... reached those at a greater distance, however. On a rainy night they pushed this wall against the gates, found the entrance to the tunnel, and at dawn were ready for the final assault. It began with a downpour of spears and stones, before which it was impossible to stand. Then the heavy slab that masked the inner door to the tunnel was lifted, and in another minute five thousand men were pouring over the walls and through the passage. Not one man attempted flight. Contesting every ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... After an hour's downpour the exhausted storm calmed down, and now the roar of the Bialka could be distinctly heard. It had broken down the banks, flooded the highroad and fields with dirty water and formed a lake beyond the ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... black now. A fine mist of rain was falling and threatening to become a steady downpour. It was a bad night for anyone, even those who were hardened, to be out in the woods without shelter or special covering, and it was about as bad as it could be for girls who were not at all used to even ...
— The Camp Fire Girls in the Mountains - or Bessie King's Strange Adventure • Jane L. Stewart
... came at the New Year flooded all the creeks of the Island. Accumulations of sand usually form beds through which the sweet water slowly mingles with the salt, but with the violence and impetus of a downpour of ten inches during the night, each torrent had cut a channel, through which it raced from the seclusion of the jungle to the free, open sea. Twice in the twenty-four hours the impassive flowing tide subdued the impertinence of each of the brawlers, smothered its gurgling, ...
— My Tropic Isle • E J Banfield
... over the city burst with lightning and thunder claps through the blood-red radiance. And then snow began falling. A steady white downpour, a winter blizzard with the lightning flashing above it, ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... week has put lots of water in all the cricks," offered old man Adams from his place by the fire. "Then with this cloud-bust an' downpour today, it ain't real nice travellin'. That would be about all that's holdin' Hap up. An' I'm tellin' you why: Did you ever hear a man tell of a stick-up party on a night like this? No, sir! These here stick-up gents got more sense than that; they'd be settin' nice an' snug ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... The brown, dry, hard countryside, with its dust-covered trees, becomes for the time being a shallow lake in which are studded emerald islets innumerable. Stimulated by the rain many trees put forth fresh crops of leaves. At the first break in the downpour the cultivators rush forth with their ploughs and oxen to prepare the soil for the autumn crops with all the speed ...
— A Bird Calendar for Northern India • Douglas Dewar
... Bute, engaged in agricultural and botanical pursuits. From the quiet obscurity for which his talents and character entirely fitted him Bute was forced by a mere accident. He had resided in England since the rebellion of 1745, and in 1747, a downpour of rain having prevented the departure of Frederick, prince of Wales, from the Egham races, Bute was summoned to his tent to make up a whist party; he immediately gained the favour of the prince and princess, became the leading personage ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 4 - "Bulgaria" to "Calgary" • Various
... the clouds had been gathering, hanging low over the fields. At evening came a downpour of rain, and at night a fitful wind was blowing—one moment of silence and then a throb of rain at the windows. In his office the Major sat, looking over the affairs of his estate. It was noted ...
— An Arkansas Planter • Opie Percival Read
... looked upon a real murder,—the cold-blooded killing of a man. She felt very sick. Queer little red sparks squirmed and danced before her eyes. She crumpled down quietly behind the jumper bush and did not know when the rain came, though it drenched her in the first two or three minutes of downpour. ...
— Sawtooth Ranch • B. M. Bower
... full-spout, Downpour diluvious, Pumped on the Drought. Checked, aloud crying, The voice of the Swain; The rootcrops be dying, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 93, September 24, 1887 • Various
... stand, being more than mere journalism; for the great flying week which opened on August 22nd, 1909, ranks as one of the great landmarks in the history of heavier-than-air flight. The day before the opening of the meeting a downpour of rain spoilt the flying ground; Sunday opened with a fairly high wind, and in a lull M. Guffroy turned out on a crimson R.E.P. monoplane, but the wheels of his undercarriage stuck in the mud and prevented him from rising in the quarter of an hour allowed to competitors to ...
— A History of Aeronautics • E. Charles Vivian
... which followed each other slowly, in couples, in a close, long rank, into the fine sonorous court, where the high stepping of valuable horses was sharp on the stones, and up to the ruddy portico. The night was wet, not with a downpour, but with showers interspaced by starry patches, which only added to the glitter of the handsome, clean Parisian surfaces. The sergents de ville were about the place, and seemed to make the occasion ...
— A London Life; The Patagonia; The Liar; Mrs. Temperly • Henry James
... of the privileges of rank, Carew," the Captain observed as dryly as if he had not risen from his warm bed to swim the river and walk a mile in the darkness and the downpour, in order to see how the new ...
— On the Firing Line • Anna Chapin Ray and Hamilton Brock Fuller
... witticisms, or at lowest of puns and whimsicalities, mounts up like so many squibs and crackers, fizzing through, sparkling amid, or ultimately extinguished by, the inevitable shower—the steady rush and downpour—of the home-affections. It may easily be inferred from this account that there are letters which one is inclined to read more thoroughly, and in greater ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... increased in loudness; though sheltered as we were by the forest we did not feel the wind, which was blowing off shore. The clouds continued gathering until the whole sky was obscured. I fully expected before long that there would be a downpour of rain, but as we were on a weather shore I did not think it necessary to call my companions. I continued my walk, occasionally approaching the forest and ...
— The Mate of the Lily - Notes from Harry Musgrave's Log Book • W. H. G. Kingston
... agent to take it down. The patriotic agent tried to reason with them but to no avail, so one afternoon he took the flag down for a time. In a little while, a black cloud appeared and then a heavy downpour of rain followed. The Indians, as you know were very superstitious, and they were firmly convinced that the flag was a true barometer, so the agent had to be cautious in his display ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... a minute or two later give a loud Coo-ee! for Jacky, and fancied she heard an answering cry from the blackboy, a long distance away. Then the rain again descended in a torrential downpour, and drowned out ...
— Chinkie's Flat and Other Stories - 1904 • Louis Becke
... oppressive before the beginning of the southerly monsoon. Thunder-storms of terrific violence occur during May and June. The wet season begins with heavy rains, known by the natives as "collas," and until the end of October the downpour is excessive. ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... moved via Naane[6] and Annabe to between Harmash and Nalin, 14 miles north-east. Here they stayed three days, watering twice daily, at Hadithe, about 3 miles east-north-east of Ludd. About this time the weather broke and heavy rain set in. This downpour, accompanied as it was by a considerable fall in the temperature, was a severe trial for troops attired in summer clothing who, until a few hours previously, had been ...
— Through Palestine with the 20th Machine Gun Squadron • Unknown
... advancing enemy which every ear had been expecting. The roof over us was of the poorest, and we had no confidence in it. It was made of the thin bark of spruce and balsam, and was full of hollows and depressions. Presently these hollows got full of water, when there was a simultaneous downpour of bigger and lesser rills upon the sleepers beneath. Said sleepers, as one man, sprang up, each taking his blanket with him; but by the time some of the party had got themselves stowed away under the adjacent rock, the rain ceased. It was little more than the dissolving ...
— In the Catskills • John Burroughs
... entrance to a bazaar. The rain began to assume the proportions of a downpour. An old friar, with a big beard, a white habit, and a hood, armed with an untamable umbrella, attempted to cross the square. The umbrella turned inside out in the gusts of wind, and his beard seemed to be trying to ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... and papers; the family subsided on chairs and benches with their treasures, and for some minutes nothing was heard but the rustle of paper and the steady downpour ...
— The Merryweathers • Laura E. Richards
... falling, first in a drizzle, increasing after the first hour, and by midnight we could hear the water slushing under our horses' feet. By the almost constant flashes of lightning we could see the cattle standing as if asleep, in grateful enjoyment of the sheeting downpour. As the night wore on, our fears of a stampede abated, for the buffalo wallows on the mesa filled, and water was on every hand. The rain ceased before dawn, but owing to the saturated condition underfoot, not a hoof lay down during the night, and when the gray of morning ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... gloomy, there; and large raindrops beat incessantly against the panes, so that Lialia could not tell if it were these or her tears which hid the garden from her view. The trees looked sad and forlorn, their pale, dripping leaves and black boughs faintly discernible amid the general downpour that converted the lawn into ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... weather was better now. There was a clear sky overhead, and the streets looked quite cheerful after the steady downpour, London's myriad lamps being reflected in glistening zigzags ...
— The Stowmarket Mystery - Or, A Legacy of Hate • Louis Tracy
... the storm gradually changed from unceasing downpour to squally outbursts, followed by banks of impenetrable fog that would shut down on us solidly for a few minutes, then vanish like the good intentions of yesterday; the wind switched a few points and settled to a steady gale which lashed the spent clouds into hurrying ships of the air, ...
— Raw Gold - A Novel • Bertrand W. Sinclair
... sand under the ledge of rock, a terrific but welcome downpour of rain fell, and we were able to satisfy our thirst by pressing our mouths to crevices in the rock overhead. But we were not long allowed to remain undisturbed in our shelter, for, although the tide was on the ebb, the enormous influx of water, driven over the reef by ...
— Yorke The Adventurer - 1901 • Louis Becke
... before the storm which had settled to a monotonous downpour. The riders—two or three men for every herd that had joined in the panic—circled, a veritable picket line without the password. There would be no relief ride out to them that night, and they knew it and settled to the ...
— The Lure of the Dim Trails • by (AKA B. M. Sinclair) B. M. Bower
... General Stockwell and the remainder of the Brigade have not yet arrived, but they will be following on shortly. I am very happy here. The weather has been delightful, and the country looks fine. The trees here are very tall indeed. There was a heavy downpour of rain at tea-time: the first real rain we have had while I have been ...
— At Ypres with Best-Dunkley • Thomas Hope Floyd
... boy in trouble, as before. He flung away the cigarette. "Good-bye," he said, with the sudden haste of a man who had lingered too long in view of a pressing bit of work waiting for him; and then for a second or so he made not the slightest movement. The downpour fell with the heavy uninterrupted rush of a sweeping flood, with a sound of unchecked overwhelming fury that called to one's mind the images of collapsing bridges, of uprooted trees, of undermined mountains. ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... than otherwise, rain, either a sprinkle or a downpour, has come during or just at the close of the dance, and the people are thankful and hopeful, for this is often the first rain of the season. The writer has herself stood soaked to the skin by a thunder shower that had been slowly gathering through the ...
— The Unwritten Literature of the Hopi • Hattie Greene Lockett
... shimmering and illusory toward the east. A slow-moving, fragmentary cloud had gathered in the zenith just after dawn and for many minutes over the northern part of Goshen there had been a perpendicular downpour of illuminated rain. Now the sky was as clear and blue as a sapphire and the little wind was burdened with odorous scents from the ...
— The Yoke - A Romance of the Days when the Lord Redeemed the Children - of Israel from the Bondage of Egypt • Elizabeth Miller
... Betty, above the noise. She shifted the wheel to bring the boat head-on to the waves, and this made her ride on a more even keel. Then, with a downpour, accompanied by terrific thunder and vivid lightning, the storm broke. Betty bravely stood to her post, the others offering to relieve her, but she would not give up the wheel, and remained there ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Rainbow Lake • Laura Lee Hope
... wind shrieked and darted about like a mad thing; low-hanging rusty-hued clouds swirled onward, as though rent in bits; everything whirled, got mixed up, lashed and rocked with the slanting columns of the furious downpour; the lightning flashes blinded with their fiery green hue; abrupt claps of thunder were discharged like cannon; there was a smell ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... was resumed. At times so swift was the pace that the Wondership seemed to be half flying. Thanks to her shock absorbers, but little motion was felt, although in places the roadway had been washed out by the torrential downpour and was very rough. ...
— The Boy Inventors' Radio Telephone • Richard Bonner
... nutting party the next day, owing to a downpour of rain. Betty had time to think quietly over what had happened the day before and her mind misgave her. What was it that so filled her heart and mind? That so stirred her imagination? Was it romance ...
— The Eye of Dread • Payne Erskine
... rocked uneasily on the waves, and the men, casting off their scant garments, made shift to swim to her, and climb up her slippery dipping side. The storm passed over them, a line of tropic rain, beating a lashing tattoo upon the white-tipped troubled waters; then a blinding downpour stinging on the bare brown backs of the shivering fishermen; and lastly a black shadow, lowering above a foam-flecked sea, driving quickly shorewards. Then came the sun, anxious to show its power after ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... roaring thunder-clap that echoed and re-echoed from rugged cliff to mountain summit near and far until this was whelmed and lost in the rush of a booming, mighty wind and this howling riot full of whirling leaves and twigs and riven branches. And now came the rain, a hissing downpour that seemed it would drown the world, while ever the lightning flared and crackled and thunder roared ever more loud until I shrank, blinded and half-stunned. After some while, these awful sounds hushing a little, in their stead was the lash and beat of rain, the rush and trickle of water ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... creature was stirring, there was no sound save that of the rain, but a busier time there had not been for many a long month. Thousands of millions of blades of grass and corn were eagerly drinking. For sixteen hours the downpour continued, and when it was dusk I again went out. The watercourses by the side of the roads had a little water in them, but not a drop had reached those at the edge of the fields, so thirsty was the earth. The drought, thank God, was ...
— Pages from a Journal with Other Papers • Mark Rutherford
... where they had been waiting in a neighbouring shed. They wanted me to go with them—but I was anxious about my bicycle, a nearly new machine. I had stowed it away as securely as I could under some thick undergrowth on the edge of the woods, but the downpour of rain had been so heavy that I knew it must have soaked through the foliage, and that I should have a nice lot of rust to face, let alone a saturated saddle. So I went away across the park to where I had left it, and the others drove off to Berwick—and so both Mr. Lindsey and myself broke our ...
— Dead Men's Money • J. S. Fletcher
... 9th on hospital boat "Vologjohnin" with headquarters boat and small gunboat. Downpour of rain. Gunboat landed on sand bar and headquarters boat turned back, but the "Vologjohnin" kept on going until dark. Anchored opposite an island and at daybreak proceeded further, finally reaching the only boat, the "Yarrents," ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... became visible, the pallid sea showing like a surface of molten lead, sluggishly undulating like the coils of a sleeping snake, while overhead stretched an unbroken pall of dark grey cloud that seemed to promise a drenching downpour of rain before long. ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... regular downpour. You'll get wet to your skin," Jane objected. "I ain't a-goin' to let you go out in it in that thin dress. Ain't we got ...
— The Wall Between • Sara Ware Bassett
... alarmingly rapid fall of the mercury, combined with a low weird moaning in the atmosphere, seemed to forebode the approach of some dire disaster. This was followed by a sudden blast of wind from the eastward—which came and was gone again in an instant—and which preceded a brief but terrific downpour of rain. This lasted for perhaps three minutes, when it ceased as suddenly as ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... Would the father, Benny and Alexix get home before the storm broke? If they were only in time to close the glass cases so that the wind could not get under them and upset them! The thunder increased; the clouds were so heavy that it seemed almost night. Then suddenly there was a downpour of hail, the stones struck us in the face, and we had to race to take shelter under ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... lake. The arrival of the carts, or kaerra, as they are called in Sweden, had brought the whole family of Lapps to the door of the tent. There they stood, huddled together,—Erik's father, mother, brother and sisters,—looking out to see who was arriving in such a downpour. ...
— Gerda in Sweden • Etta Blaisdell McDonald
... belief that the foundations of the earth were being torn asunder. And all the time the rain came pounding down out of the storm-riven clouds in such a deluge that it was difficult to draw one's breath while exposed to it. But even this does not convey any very clear idea of the copiousness of the downpour, which will perhaps be more easily realised from the statement that within the short space of twenty minutes it completely filled and swamped the canoe. This storm burst upon the travellers about eleven o'clock at night, and it continued with ...
— In Search of El Dorado • Harry Collingwood
... barn and chicken yards. The house was spotlessly white, with blinds conventionally green, as most New England houses are. There was a white fence shutting it off from the road, the winding, narrow road which even yet held puddles and pools of mud in its hollows, souvenirs of the downpour of the night before. Across the road, perhaps a hundred yards away, was the long, brown—and now of course bleak—broadside of the Restabit Inn, its veranda looking lonesome and forsaken even in the brilliant light of day. Behind ...
— Galusha the Magnificent • Joseph C. Lincoln
... outlined against the dark masses of leafless woods that encircled the clearing; the dooryard half submerged with puddles of a clay-brown tint, embossed always with myriads of protruding drops of rain, for however they melted away the downpour renewed them, and to the eye they were stationary, albeit pervaded with a continual tremor—but somehow he was cognizant of a certain coddling tenderness in the old woman's manner that might have been relished by a petted child, an unaffected ...
— The Phantoms Of The Foot-Bridge - 1895 • Charles Egbert Craddock (AKA Mary Noailles Murfree)
... replaces him; at ten o'clock Wimpfen replaces Ducrot. Every instant the wall of fire is drawing closer in, the roll of the thunder is continuous, a dismal pulverization of 90,000 men! Never before has anything equal to this been seen; never before has an army been overwhelmed beneath such a downpour of lead and iron! At one o'clock all is lost. The regiments fly helter-skelter into Sedan. But Sedan begins to burn; Dijonval burns, the ambulances burn, there is nothing now possible but to cut their way out. Wimpfen, brave and resolute, proposes this to the Emperor. The 3d Zouaves, ...
— The History of a Crime - The Testimony of an Eye-Witness • Victor Hugo
... one of which has the reputation of being inhabited by cannibals; and as a matter of course some of the passengers became witty over the second-hand jokes about roasted missionary. The rains which we encountered in this equatorial region were so profuse, and yielded such a marvelous downpour of water as to almost deluge us, and set the inside of the good steamship Brindisi afloat. But the air was soft and balmy, the nights gloriously serene and bright, so that it was even more refreshing, ...
— Due West - or Round the World in Ten Months • Maturin Murray Ballou
... succeeded in writing. After that I insisted on getting something to eat. I had breakfasted at an unholy hour. I had crossed the sea. I had endured great mental strain. I had tramped the streets of an exceedingly muddy town in a downpour of rain. I felt that I must have food and if possible, wine. M. is indifferent to food and hardly ever tastes wine. But he is a kind-hearted man. He agreed to eat with me, though I am sure he would much rather ...
— A Padre in France • George A. Birmingham
... to stop, we waited till nine A.M., when a break in the clouds flattered us into starting for Danilograd, to be caught in another downpour an hour later. The way was down a long slope, part mud and part broken rock, over which in either case we found the traveling easier on foot than on horseback, so that we did most of the way on foot while daylight lasted, the unfortunate porter between the cavalry and the infantry ...
— The Autobiography of a Journalist, Volume II • William James Stillman
... the Hotel du Nord at Bethune are as satisfactory as its location, and we were content indeed to remain the following day in the dull little town, because of a torrential downpour which kept us house-bound till four in the afternoon. If one really wants to step back into the dark ages, just let him linger thirty-six hours as we did at Bethune. More would probably drive him crazy with ennui, but this is ...
— The Automobilist Abroad • M. F. (Milburg Francisco) Mansfield
... areas of land from which the harvest of wheat and oats had been taken. Here and there in the distance a group of boys might be seen with their fishing rods in their hands; for at that day the Don stream was not foul by the drainage of fields, and shrunken from the downpour of the sun, and from the loss of its sheltering forest. Trout and often salmon-trout went into its quiet retreats in the face of the spring freshets; and many a congregation of foam bubbles did it hold upon its breast to screen the ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... Elinory, and I never seed nothing like 'em in my travels," called back the bride from the door, as she reefed in her skirts and sailed out in the downpour. ...
— The Road to Providence • Maria Thompson Daviess
... leave-taking, the Texans have carried the prisoners along with them. No living thing remains by the abandoned dwelling. The only sign of human occupation is the smoke that ascends through its kitchen chimney, and from the camp fires outside, these gradually getting extinguished by the downpour. ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid
... Falling in a steady downpour, it sang its mournful song through poplar and shrub. Soon the grey tiled roof of the cottage poured its libation into spouting gutters, and every rut of the road became a miniature ditch. But, with dogged persistency, the five watchers ...
— The Sins of Severac Bablon • Sax Rohmer
... the marble, and the stone used was too soft and already in places was crumbling. In Egypt, where it rarely rains, the climate is kind to the jerry-builder, and it's only when Jupiter Pluvius wants a laugh and sends a regular tropical downpour that the buildings that were a thing of beauty and a joy forever come to earth and are no more. We ourselves were on one occasion victims of this god's fun. We were told that it never rained, and our huts were built just to shelter us from the sun, but ...
— "Over There" with the Australians • R. Hugh Knyvett
... from the violets she was embroidering to Ruth's pale face. Every time the latter stirred, her mother started expectantly; but the anxiously awaited disclosure was not forthcoming. Outside the rain kept up a sullen downpour, deepening the feeling of comfort indoors; but Mrs. Levice was not what one might call comfortably-minded. Her frequent inventories of Ruth's face had at last led her to believe that the pallor there depicted and the ...
— Other Things Being Equal • Emma Wolf
... visit to Europe about twenty years ago, a carriage-road was made—not a good one, for such a thing does not exist in Persia—but a very fair riding-track (in dry weather). We reached Resht wet to the skin, the snow having ceased and given way to a steady downpour of rain. ...
— A Ride to India across Persia and Baluchistan • Harry De Windt
... going northward they knew, and knew also, after a short time, that they must be entering the lines of the enemy. They saw no signs of watch-fires, for these would long since have been quenched by the downpour. After half an hour's brisk riding all knew by the sharp sound of the beat of the horses' hoofs that they had left the soft track through the forest and were now upon a ...
— With Lee in Virginia - A Story of the American Civil War • G. A. Henty
... resistance, and had ample opportunity to prepare a defense from the bombardment that followed. The next morning, April 18, 1915, the German infantry in close formation advanced on the hill. This infantry was composed of Saxons, who continued on for a bayonet charge in spite of the downpour of lead that the British rained upon them. But the Bedfords had been reenforced by the West Kents and about thirty motor machine guns. The machine guns raked the charging Saxons in front, and shrapnel tore their flank. Only their dead and dying remained on the hill; but the German ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume III (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... Julius's hotel upon his way to Staff Bombproof South, is made aware that the hundred-foot-high dust-storm that has raged and swirled throughout the morning is in process of being beaten down into a porridge of red mud by a downpour of ...
— The Dop Doctor • Clotilde Inez Mary Graves
... at the Town Hall, at eleven o'clock that night, and long before that hour a vast crowd gathered in the adjacent streets. About ten o'clock it began to rain, but the crowd stood its ground and increased in numbers as the time went by. At a quarter to eleven the rain increased to a terrible downpour, but the people remained waiting to know which hero had conquered. Eleven o'clock came and an intense silence fell upon the crowd, whose eyes were fixed eagerly upon the window where the sign was to be exhibited. To judge by the extraordinary interest displayed by these people, one might ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... garden where a fountain throws its feathery spray into the air. We were all three in such high spirits as befit a party of pleasure seekers, journeying through a land of enchantment on a brilliantly beautiful day, for it must be admitted that in a downpour of rain Lake Como and its shores are like any other places in the rain. Miss Cassandra, who is gay even under dull skies and overhanging clouds, is gayer than usual to-day, having donned a hat in which she takes great pride, ...
— In Chteau Land • Anne Hollingsworth Wharton
... on, all the world represented: Spaniards to admire and praise, foreigners to enjoy and go home and find fault—there they were, one solid, sloping, circling sweep of rippling and flashing color under the downpour of the summer sun—just a garden, a gaudy, gorgeous flower-garden! Children munching oranges, six thousand fans fluttering and glimmering, everybody happy, everybody chatting gayly with their intimates, lovely girl-faces smiling recognition and salutation to other lovely girl-faces, gray ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... limpness to be observed in camp that morning, aggravated by a steady downpour of rain; but before noon it cleared, and the men took all but the camp stuff forward. We had supper late to avoid the flies, the still night gathering round us as we ate. Rising close above was the dark mass of Lookout Mountain, the lake ...
— A Woman's Way Through Unknown Labrador • Mina Benson Hubbard (Mrs. Leonidas Hubbard, Junior)
... day at the vineyard. The morning had dawned bright and clear. But the sky had soon clouded, and by nine o'clock there was a light shower, followed by others at brief intervals. By noon the rain had settled into a dull, steady downpour. The clouds hung low, and seemed to grow denser instead of lighter as they discharged their watery burden, and there was now and then a muttering of distant thunder. Outdoor work was suspended, and I spent most of the day at the house, ...
— The Conjure Woman • Charles W. Chesnutt
... windward side of Haleakala is serried by a thousand precipitous gorges, down which rush as many torrents, each torrent of which achieves a score of cascades and waterfalls before it reaches the sea. More rain comes down here than in any other region in the world. In 1904 the year's downpour was four hundred and twenty inches. Water means sugar, and sugar is the backbone of the territory of Hawaii, wherefore the Nahiku Ditch, which is not a ditch, but a chain of tunnels. The water travels underground, appearing only at intervals to leap a gorge, travelling high in the air on ...
— The Cruise of the Snark • Jack London
... with the pike pole for a feeler, before we dared approach the body, hook on to it, and tow it aft. It resembled that of the first victim, a skeleton clothed with skin, with the same look of horror on the face. We buried it like the other, and held to the poop, still drenched by the downpour of rain, hammered by the seas, and choked by ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... head against the cushions and closed her eyes. The baron looked out with mournful eyes at the monotonous and drenched landscape. Rosalie, with a parcel on her knee, was dreaming in the dull reverie of a peasant. But Jeanne, under this downpour, felt herself revive like a plant that has been shut up and has just been restored to the air, and so great was her joy that, like foliage, it sheltered her heart from sadness. Although she did not speak, she longed to burst out singing, to reach out her hands to catch the rain ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
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