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More "Screech" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... a great ada[']wehi, I never fail in anything. I surpass all others—I am a great ada[']wehi. Ha! It is a mere screech owl that has frightened him. Ha! now I have put it away in the laurel thickets. There I compel it ...
— The Sacred Formulas of the Cherokees • James Mooney
... bow-hand from his side. In the strength of despair he strove to rouse courage enough—not to fight—that he did not even desire—but to run. Courage to flee home was all he could ever imagine, and it would not come. But what he had not, was ignominiously given him. A cry in the wood, half a screech, half a growl, sent him running like a boar-wounded cur. It was not even himself that ran, it was the fear that had come alive in his legs: he did not know that they moved. But as he ran he grew able to run—gained courage at least to be a coward. The stars gave a little ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... Progress! Maximilian smiled scornfully on himself. He was only a clod of grit caught in the world's great wheels. The foreign substance had wrought a discordant screech for a moment, and then was mercilessly ground into powder and thrust out of the bearings. He pondered on the first days of the Family Group, when there was extenuation; more, when there was necessity, ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... gone forth, and it says, Hamadan shall be to thee for a spoil, and desolation shall fall upon Babylon. And there shall the wild beasts of the desert lodge, and howling monsters shall fill their houses, and there shall the daughters of the ostrich dwell, and there shall the screech-owl pitch her tent, and there shall the night-raven lay her eggs, and there shall the satyrs hold their revels. And wolves shall howl to one another in their palaces, and dragons in their voluptuous pavilions. Her time is near at hand; her days shall not be prolonged; the reed and the lotus ...
— Alroy - The Prince Of The Captivity • Benjamin Disraeli
... bad, miss; he got took with one o' them fits the worst kind in the night, and liked ter died. Yer could a heerd him screech a block off." ...
— The Story of Patsy • Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin
... looked like a sapphire streaked with lapis lazuli. Nearly blinded by scuds of sand, we rode for hours through the volcanic wilderness; always the same rigid mamane, (Sophora Chrysophylla?) the same withered grass, and the same thornless thistles, through which the strong wind swept with a desolate screech. ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... voice first reached them in a sudden screech—then there was a confused noise resembling a scuffle—and Jan was again heard crying aloud for help, while at the same time his voice was interrupted, and each call appeared to come from a greater distance! Something or ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... red feud and ravage Of saber tooth and claw. With banding of the pack for might And filled or starving maw; From floundering saurians welter, Through grin and screech of ape, Struggled the deathless seed of ...
— Selected Poems • William Francis Barnard
... Now and again the screech of a fiddle could be heard or the lazy music of an accordion, coming from some "Sailors' Home." Steps of dancing with rattle of iron-shod boot-heels clicking over sanded floors, the hoarse shout of the "caller-off," and now and again angry tones with cracked feminine falsettos broke ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... to Rome for Phantasms walking the streets? Phantasms, ghosts, in this midnight hour, hold jubilee, and screech and jabber; and the question rather were, What high Reality anywhere is yet awake? Aristocracy has become Phantasm-Aristocracy, no longer able to do its work, not in the least conscious that it ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... as he snatched the bottle from his lips. "Cold tea! Weak—no milk, of course; but you might have put in a bit of sugar." Then replacing the cork, he gave the yielding stopper so vicious a twist that the neck emitted a screech which sounded strangely loud in the black silence of the night, and was followed by a heavy splash and the sound of wallowing about a dozen yards away. Then, apparently from just below the bank of the river a little higher up, there was a horrible barking ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... we have, sor; but the Irish pipes are soft, mellow, gentle things—like the Irish girls—not like them big Scotch bellows that screech for all the world like a thousand unwillin' pigs bein' forced to ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... joyous grab at the horn, which he immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing screech, ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... entering the house, Mr Blake announced the fact of there being a stranger in the stables, and suggested that the one-legged gentleman had been looking at somebody taking a glass of gin. Then Mrs Baggett burst out into a loud screech of agony. "The nasty drunken beast! he ought to be locked up into the darkest hole they've got in ...
— An Old Man's Love • Anthony Trollope
... did screech and laugh. 'Good Lord!' says she, 'how foolish white folks is! Somebody went past ...
— Oldtown Fireside Stories • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... shoulder Nilo, looking lovely in a "strucca" striped olive-green and mulberry-red. The dear little fellow knew me at once, and almost sprang to my arms, whereupon the good housewives of Cetigna uttered a screech of delight, closed round me and kissed my cloak, hands, and even lips with a fervour I ...
— The Grateful Indian - And other Stories • W.H.G. Kingston
... waxed silk all ready and chosen the right-sized needle and I'll promise not to jump or screech more than I can help. We'll make a tiny lead-pencil dot right in the middle of the lobe, then you place the needle on it, shut your eyes, and JAB HARD! I expect to faint, but when I 'come to,' we can decide which of us ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... it's very plain,' said the other, looking at the bird, which was making a feeble attempt to spread out its wings and screech contemptuously ...
— The Giant's Robe • F. Anstey
... first screech of the cat, Jim's whole attitude had changed. Amusement and wild-eyed wonder had given way to a shocking realization of the wicked cruelty. He sprang at Hall and struck him with all the best vigour of his baby fists. "Let my kitty ...
— The Preacher of Cedar Mountain - A Tale of the Open Country • Ernest Thompson Seton
... he heard the long screech of the whistle of the Overland Express announcing its approach at Green River, and a few minutes later its whistle that it was on its way. He had just reached Bubbly Spring and concealed himself in the bushes when the whistle gave a ...
— Ted Strong's Motor Car • Edward C. Taylor
... moment Jud and Ump pulled up beside me. Perhaps their minds were in the same channel. We listened for full a minute. Far down in the marsh land I could hear the frogs chanting their mighty chorus to the stars, and the little screech-owl whining from some tree-top far up against the hill. I was about to ride on when Jud caught at the rein and put up his hand. Then I heard the sound that the horse was listening to, but at the great distance it was only a sound, a faint, wavering, indefinite echo, coming up from the far-away ...
— Dwellers in the Hills • Melville Davisson Post
... Trade winds, the Reform Bill and the cycle of the harvests. Books were on his shelves by Wells and Shaw; on the table serious six-penny weeklies written by pale men in muddy boots—the weekly creak and screech of brains rinsed in cold ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... black mare, had a knack of getting so well away. One of the whips, a little dark fellow with smouldery eyes and sucked-in weathered cheeks, dashed out of covert, rode past, saluting, and dashed in again. A jay came out with a screech, dived, and doubled back; a hare made off across the fallow—the light-brown lopping creature was barely visible against the brownish soil. Pigeons, very high up, flew over and away to the next wood. The ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... strange whizzing noise, and then something struck against my face, and I heard a screech in the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... short, the rancher was an excellent marksman, and the bullet bored its way through the breast of the painted miscreant, who hardly knew what hurt him. With a screech, he threw up his arms, one grasping his gun, and toppled from the back of his pony, falling with a loud splash into the water, where for the moment ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... denounced in the Assembly, he skulked instead of defending himself, and lay concealed in some obscure garret or cellar, among his cut-throats, until a storm appeared, when, like a bird of ill omen, his death-screech was again heard. Such was the strange and fatal triumvirate, in which the same degree of cannibal cruelty existed under different aspects. Danton murdered to glut his rage; Robespierre to avenge his injured ...
— Fox's Book of Martyrs - Or A History of the Lives, Sufferings, and Triumphant - Deaths of the Primitive Protestant Martyrs • John Fox
... my tormentor uttering a raucous screech as I tossed him away. While I hastily cooked my supper, the colors of the hiding sun spread over the sky in entrancing variety. I could not see the west, but to the northeast were rifts of blood-red clouds edged with gold over a lake of pearly hue, and to the ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... frightened and begun to cry, an' at that the deacon put his arm around her an' give her a hug, an' Gran'ma Mullins looked up just in time to see the arm an' the hug. It seemed like it was the last hay in the donkey, for she give a weak screech an' went right over on Mr. Dill. She had such a grip on Hiram that if it hadn't been for Lucy he'd have gone over, too, but Lucy just hung on herself that time, an' Hiram was rescued without nothin' worse than his hair mussed an' one sleeve a little tore. Mr. Sperrit an' Mr. Jilkins ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... except the trembling Sergeant, While still begin and never end the shout and scream and buzz? Oh, never any where, save in desert groves Brazilian, Was ever heard such endless and aimless gabble yet. For there the tribes of monkeys to the number of a million, Screech and chatter without ceasing, from the sunrise to the set. Rap! rap! rap! To quell the rising clamor; Order! order! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... hear a cricket chirp now, I'd screech. This isn't really quiet. It's like waiting for a cannon cracker to go off just before the fuse is burned down. The bang isn't there yet, but you hear it a hundred times in your mind ...
— Buttered Side Down • Edna Ferber
... the wheels, others changed the axles of the waggons; some carried sacks of provisions to them or leaded them with arms; others again drove up the horses and oxen. On all sides resounded the tramp of horses' hoofs, test-shots from the guns, the clank of swords, the lowing of oxen, the screech of rolling waggons, talking, sharp cries and urging-on of cattle. Soon the Cossack force spread far over all the plain; and he who might have undertaken to run from its van to its rear would have had a long course. In the little wooden church the priest was offering up prayers and sprinkling ...
— Taras Bulba and Other Tales • Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol
... speaking always in that loud, shrill, theatrical tone with which a puppet-master supplies his puppets. I all the time sat like a mouse. My father asked, "Which of those ladies, madam, do you think is your sister authoress?"—"I am no physiognomist"—in a screech—"but I do imagine that to be the lady," bowing as she sat almost to the ground, and pointing to Mrs. Edgeworth. "No, guess again."—"Then that must be she" bowing to Charlotte. "No."—"Then this lady," looking forward to see what sort of an animal I ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... this is that saying of the prophet, to wit, that at this day the whole circumference of the world that is without the walls and privileges of this city, it shall be but like an old ruinous house, in which dwells nothing but cormorants, bitterns, owls, ravens, dragons, satyrs, the screech-owl, the great owl, the vulture, and the like most doleful birds. All their princes shall be nothing, saith the prophet, and when they call their nobles to the kingdom, none shall be there. In their very ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... to go on home. I'm tired out. I've got to get up in the morning at the screech of dawn and take up ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... with a screech like a siren whistle, Augustus commenced to run. Nate was between him and the outside door, so he bolted headfirst into the dining room. And after him went Nate Scudder, so crazy mad he didn't know ...
— The Depot Master • Joseph C. Lincoln
... I was busily observing, was the extraordinarily small number of combatants that were visible, when suddenly—it was about two o'clock in the afternoon—the Versailles batteries at Courbevoie, which had been silent for some time, began firing furiously. The horrid screech of the mitrailleuse drowned the hissing of the shells; the whole breadth of the long avenue was covered by a kind of white mist. The bastion in front of me replied energetically. It seemed to me as if the interior part of my ear was being rent asunder, when suddenly ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... get that? So I says, 'You're lucky, Bud. When I get 'em, it's usually snakes and bugs and such-like rep-tyles. Besides,' I says, 'your train is about to forgit that you got off it,' I says. With that he gives another screech that don't even mean as much as Ohio and tails onto the back platform just ...
— Success - A Novel • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... my sap all boiled in, and as I felt kinder lonesome, I thought I would come across, and sleep by your shanty fire." The old man enquired why I seemed so much terrified, and my brothers told him that I would persist in calling a screech-owl, a catamount. Old Rufus did not often laugh, but he laughed heartily on this occasion, and truly it was no wonder and when he corroborated what my brothers had already told me, I decided that what he said must be true. His presence at once gave me a feeling of protection and security ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... signs no mind—nuver paid no 'tention to all dem 'stitions an' sich lak." He didn't have any superstitions to tell only he did hear "ef a screech owl fly 'cross yo' do' hits er sign of a death in dat house, an' ef a whippowill calls at de' do' hit's er sign of death. Dat's what folks say, I don't know ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States - Volume II. Arkansas Narratives. Part I • Work Projects Administration
... majesty;— Blazing Hyperion on his orbed fire Still sat, still snuff'd the incense, teeming up From man to the sun's God; yet unsecure: For as among us mortals omens drear Fright and perplex, so also shuddered he— 170 Not at dog's howl, or gloom-bird's hated screech, Or the familiar visiting of one Upon the first toll of his passing-bell, Or prophesyings of the midnight lamp; But horrors, portion'd to a giant nerve, Oft made Hyperion ache. His palace bright Bastion'd with pyramids of glowing gold, And touch'd with shade of bronzed obelisks, ...
— Keats: Poems Published in 1820 • John Keats
... happened to our companion (the present Cornell don), you have no special taste for a plump landlord breathing passionately and genially upon your very cheek while you strive to satisfy a legitimate appetite, you may burst into a sudden unpremeditate but uncontrollable screech of mingled laughter and dismay, meanwhile almost falling backward in your chair in an effort to evade the steady pant and roar of ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... a clatter and a jangle, And a wrangle and a screech, How the old alarm clock wheezes As it sneezes out of reach! How you groan and yawn and stretch In the chilly morning air, As you pull the blankets tight, With your head clear out of ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... backed the train for nearly a mile—retiring, like a jumper, in order to take a longer leap. Then, with another whistle, he began to move forward; the train increased its speed, and soon its rapidity became frightful; a prolonged screech issued from the locomotive; the piston worked up and down twenty strokes to the second. They perceived that the whole train, rushing on at the rate of a hundred miles an hour, hardly bore upon the rails ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne
... lecture completed I wouldn't hesitate a moment, but really isn't "Cussed Be Canaan" too old? You know that lemon, our African brother, juicy as he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the "damnable spirit of Cahst" when the victim thereof sits at the first table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves? You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted "Cussed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... Moreton Bay ash which held last year's nest and chatters discordances in the very ears of his responsive mate. They will start building a loose nest on the brittlest branch forthwith, and while the lady sits on her three eggs he will screech defiances to the high heavens and perform ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... head?" Sabrina interrupted, eyes glistening. "A bat—it's blind—stone blind!" the jilted girl echoed gleefully. "There's a sign for you, Mistress Jasper Tipton, to conjure with!" She let out a screech and then a weird laugh that echoed through Crockett's Hollow. She cast off the coverlid and in one bound was in the middle of the floor, though she had lain long weeks pining away. She clapped her hands high overhead ...
— Blue Ridge Country • Jean Thomas
... the path, a large lizard flicked out from behind a stone, looked hither and thither, spied the still figure, and darted away again. And then, somewhere away among the cypresses the silence was broken; a paroquet began to screech. ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... you will hear the shrill cry of the screech-owl sounding down the silent streets in the most thickly-populated parts of the city. Or you will perhaps be aroused from sleep, as Caper often was, by the long-drawn-out cadences of some countryman singing a rondinella as he staggers along the street, fresh ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... better," said the second who had spoken. "It won't screech under the saw, and it won't be ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... to every breath of air; she knew Vague suppositions and uncertain dreams, Of what was soon to come, for she would mark The paley glow-worm's self-created light, And argue thence of kingdoms overthrown, And desolated nations; ever fill'd With undetermin'd terror, as she heard Or distant screech-owl, or the regular beat Of evening death-watch. "Maid," the Spirit cried, Here, robed in shadows, dwells FUTURITY. There is no eye hath seen her secret form, For round the MOTHER OF TIME, unpierced mists Aye hover. Would'st thou read the book of ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... a Bute. Deep Horror held her wide domain; The sky in sullen drops of rain Forewept the morn, and through the air, Which, opening, laid its bosom bare, Loud thunders roll'd, and lightning stream'd; The owl at Freedom's window scream'd, The screech-owl, prophet dire, whose breath Brings sickness, and whose note is death; 160 The churchyard teem'd, and from the tomb, All sad and silent, through the gloom The ghosts of men, in former times, Whose public virtues were their ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... from their use of the cry of the screech-owl (chathouan) as a signal, were the revolted peasants of ...
— The Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte • Bourrienne, Constant, and Stewarton
... invulnerability, shielded as he was by the duke, drove the choleric old man into a fit of impotent fury: he shook his fist at the soldier, and tried to threaten him, but could not speak for the rage and mortification that choked him: then he gave a sort of screech, and coiled himself up in eye and form like a rattlesnake about to strike; and spat furiously ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... Cambridge; "and I should like to see women taking part in the management of our sea hospitals if the scheme is ever to be any more than a dream. The talking women are like the talking men: they squabble, they recriminate, they screech and air their vanity, and they mess up every business they touch. But if you have committee work to do, and want economy and expedition, then give me one or two lady members ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... horrible screech, and began to grow bigger. She went on growing and growing. At last the spotted leopardess uttered a roar that made the house tremble. I sprang to my feet. I do not think Mr. Raven started even with ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... if I spit on that—the thing will go off. See here—yeep! yeep!" as I spat on it and hurled it into the ditch. With a yell and a screech a Comanche might have been proud of, that darkey "lit out." As he ran he turned his head, and seeing me dancing a war-dance to work off the extra hilarity which his fright had occasioned, he pulled up and joined in ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... still, I am glad to say, plentiful. They are amongst the farmers’ greatest feathered friends, killing enormous quantities of mice, which otherwise would damage his crops. {44b} We have three kinds on the moor or in the woods: 1st—the barn owl, or screech owl (stryx flammea); 2nd—the wood or brown owl (synnium aluco); 3rd—the horned-owl (asio otus). The two last are very much alike in both size and colour, but the last has two tufts of feathers rising on each aide of the head, from which it gets its name of horned-owl. ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... lid of a microtape compartment something long and dark projected, beating the air feebly. Dane, easing the Captain back on the bunk, was going to investigate when the Hoobat broke its unnatural quiet of the past few days with an ear-splitting screech of fury. Dane struck at the bottom of its cage—the move its master always used to silence it—But this ...
— Plague Ship • Andre Norton
... and haphazard. Jean was repeating in a drawling voice: moneo, mones, monet ... monebam, monebas, monebat... Suddenly Monsieur Tudesco sprang forward, dragging his chair along the floor with a horrid screech, and clapping his hand on his ...
— The Aspirations of Jean Servien • Anatole France
... "Arise!"—At the word, with a bound, to their feet spring the vigilant Frenchmen; And the dark, dismal forests resound to the crack and the roar of their rifles; And seven writhing forms on the ground clutch the earth. From the pine-tops the screech owl Screams and flaps his wide wings in affright, and plunges away through the shadows; And swift on the wings of the night flee the dim, phantom forms of the spirit. Like cabris [80] when white wolves pursue, fled ...
— Legends of the Northwest • Hanford Lennox Gordon
... printer. They both, however, found their affairs must needs wait. Orders for weapons for the tilting-match had come in so thickly the day before that every hand must be employed on executing them, and the Dragon court was ringing again with the clang of hammers and screech ...
— The Armourer's Prentices • Charlotte Mary Yonge
... every cuss in the book had a name like an Injun town, an' the' was about as many characters in the book as the' is on the earth; so I delegated Hammy to read her out loud. This suited Hammy to the limit, an' he didn't only read her—he acted her. He'd roar an' screech an' whisper an' glare into your eyes so blame natural that a feller never used the back of his chair from start to finish, an' twice I was on the point of shootin' him, ...
— Happy Hawkins • Robert Alexander Wason
... the sound of our guns was suddenly varied by a sharp, venomous screech, clap of thunder, right over our heads, followed by a ripping, tearing, splitting crash, that filled the air; a regular blood freezer. We knew that sound! It was a bursting Parrott shell from a Federal gun! And ...
— From the Rapidan to Richmond and the Spottsylvania Campaign - A Sketch in Personal Narration of the Scenes a Soldier Saw • William Meade Dame
... thought, "the moon should be shining on the white, clean hills, and underneath my boots the snow-crust would squeak. Perhaps a screech-owl would whistle his plaintive call in the ghostly orchard. How beautiful there the night would be! But here—" and I flung out my arm instinctively toward the ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of the river, which was at the termination of a long, sharp sweep of the stream to the west, and nearer by a mile than in most other parts of its course. I had not proceeded more than a quarter of a mile before the same savage screech,—which was more frightful than I can describe, being seemingly made up of the mingling tones of a man's and a woman's voice, raised to the highest pitch in an agony of rage or pain,—the same awful screech, ...
— Gaut Gurley • D. P. Thompson
... peering into chinks among the moss and the pennywort. He seemed almost as fond of these walls as of his tree trunks. He came regularly at eleven and again at three in the afternoon, and a barn owl went by with a screech every evening a little after eight. The starlings told the time of the year as accurately as the best chronometer at Whitehall. When I saw the last chimney swallow, November 30, they went by to their sleeping-trees about three o'clock in the ...
— Field and Hedgerow • Richard Jefferies
... have traveled. No furniture brings confusion to their rooms, no machinery distresses the ear with its groaning or the eye with its unsightliness, no factories belch out smoke and blacken the beauty of the sky, no trains screech to disturb sleepers and frighten babies. The simplest of simple beds—in most cases merely a few boards with a straw mattress placed thereon—the straw sandal on the foot, wooden chopsticks in place of knives and forks, ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... had not cut off the connection, the mingled clamor of the station came to the listening ear; the incessant clicking of the telegraph instruments on Goodloe's table, the trundling roar of a baggage-truck on the station platform, the cacophonous screech of the passenger-engine's pop-valve. With the phut of the closing safety-valve came the conductor's cry of "All aboard!" and then the long-drawn sobs of the big engine as Cranford started the train. Judson knew that in all human probability the superintendent's special ...
— The Taming of Red Butte Western • Francis Lynde
... awoke in Anne at the sight and expression of injustice flared suddenly upwards. Facing the still satisfied woman, who now drew a chair across the flagged floor with the screech of its wooden legs ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... mouth also was no longer closed. Her hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the screech of an owl! ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... dark night, the silent of the night, The time of night when Troy was set on fire, The tune when screech-owls cry, and ban-dogs howl." SHAKSPEARE: ib., ...
— The Grammar of English Grammars • Goold Brown
... Oft let me sit, at twilight hour of eve, When through some western window the pale moon Pours her long-levelled rule streaming light: While sullen sacred silence reigns around, Save the lone screech-owl's note, who build his bower Amid the moldering caverns dark and damp;[12] Or the calm breeze, that rustles in the leaves Of flaunting ivy, that with mantle green Invests some wasted tower. . . Then when the sullen shades of evening close Where through the room a blindly-glimmering gloom ...
— A History of English Romanticism in the Eighteenth Century • Henry A. Beers
... interrupted by the screech of a siren, and a demon car that spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were swaying from its ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... upon the hearth to-night, for that doleful wail penetrates everywhere: even the demon that lurks at the bottom of Pomoyssin must shudder as he hears it. When at length the bells stop swinging and their vibrations die away, a screech-owl flies close by the open gallery of the house, which we call a balcony, and startles ...
— Wanderings by southern waters, eastern Aquitaine • Edward Harrison Barker
... feathers and choice moss, then, as last year, made an excursion of some days. On the very morrow after their return, while they were darting to and fro close to Cuvier's window, to whose presence they had become accustomed, and which did not in the least incommode them, a screech-owl, that seemed to fall from above, pounced upon the male, seized him in his talons, and was already bearing him away, when Cuvier took down his gun, which was within reach, primed and cocked it, and fired at the owl; the fellow, mortally wounded, fell head over heels into the ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... insignia of a soldier, a man instantly becomes filled with martial ardor, and eager to face the most withering fire of musketry or artillery. But the reality is far different; very few men are so constituted, or are so reckless of their lives, that they can listen to the unearthly screech of the shell or the crash of solid shot, mingled with the sickening thud of grape and bullets, without a shiver of weakness creeping through their systems, and a helpless knocking of their knees together. It is a military fact that lines of combatants as they go into position are not made ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 2, February, 1886. - The Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 2, February, 1886. • Various
... short burst of laughter. I envied the humorist his composure. There was a clatter and jingle from a battery changing position. On the road a tractor was jolting along—I could hear its driver shout and the screech of its ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... can't strike their level. People who have heard Kellogg, and Marie Rose, and Gerster, are sick when a black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... may listen to the plover's whistle, When high above him the wild geese screech; Or the mallard flying, as the night is dying, His neck out-stretched towards the ...
— Three Wonder Plays • Lady I. A. Gregory
... the stories Listing related of his life on the roads, especially of the nights the fine ones, in which one lay on the dry grass beneath the twinkling stars, or in the forest under a beech in the branches of which the screech-owl was calling; and of the wretched, rainy, cold nights of late autumn. Then one would pull a few trusses of straw out of a stack and creep shivering into the hole, which would gradually become wet through from the dripping rain, ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... all! But oftentimes the air is changed; and in the screech of the night wind, chasing navies, subverting the tall ships and the rooted cedar of the hills; in the random deadly levin or the fury of headlong floods, we recognise the "dread foundation" of life and the anger in Pan's heart. Earth wages open war against ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 2 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... Help this rascal to set up the coach," said the hobgoblin to me; then, with a terrific screech at three countrymen at a distance, "Here, you fellows, ain't you ashamed to stand off when a poor woman ...
— Mosses from an Old Manse and Other Stories • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... were avenged. The hen, feverish and unhappy from the loss of her hope of progeny, had gone to the but to sip a little water. Tommy, appearing on the wall above her, startled her. She, flying up with a screech, startled Tommy, and ...
— A Rough Shaking • George MacDonald
... did? The beast they tied on in front turned short round, stared Lawless in the face, and stood up on its hind legs like a kangaroo, while the other animal would not stir a peg, but, laying down his ears, gave a sort of a screech, and kicked out behind. 'Pretty, playful things,' said Lawless, flipping the ashes off the end of his cigar. 'Put his head straight, William. Chut! chut! 'But the more he chutted the more they wouldn't go, and began tearing and ...
— Frank Fairlegh - Scenes From The Life Of A Private Pupil • Frank E. Smedley
... to the waist and tied on a triangle and walloped till they was cut to pieces, till they screamed like little children for mercy, and poor old wretches that had roamed the world for sixty years used to screech Mother! Mother! like little children. It was heart-renderin'! An' what used they be flogged for, do you think?—for the piggishness of the swells mostly. I'll tell you. There was a old feller lived out at Kaligiwa—that's more ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... heard the owl's screech for many and many a night; but he had seen no cause for fear in this: everything was going along nicely; their little son was in good health and they, too, knew no illness. But now the warning of the evil omen was confirmed. The pigeons which he had himself brought up were flying ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... maiden applied her delicate ear to the window, catching eagerly at every strange sound muttered forth by the growing storm. She had resumed her seat many times, when the castle-bell tolled eleven, and almost at the same moment the cry of a screech-owl was distinctly heard. The expectant damsel glided on tiptoe to the window, and listened eagerly. The cry was repeated. Emma's eye sparkled at length with joy, a deep blush overspread her cheeks, and she produced from an aperture a ladder ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 56, Number 350, December 1844 • Various
... called a council of officers to know what to do. So, when they'd smoked up all their baccy, they concluded to shorten sail, and the bo'sn came down to rouse out the crew. He ondertook to whistle, but it made such an onnateral screech, that the chaplain thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper, 'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague, hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... ... But had she? She had only thought that, if Lady Asher were not to recover, it were better that she died before she, Evelyn, arrived at Riversdale. As the carriage drove through the woods she noticed that they were empty and silent, save for the screech of one incessant bird, and she thought of the dead woman's face, and contrasted it with the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... seemed to shatter the whole scene. Its echoes were mixed with the scattering of the horrified beavers as they rushed for the water—with the short screech of the lynx, as it bounced into the air and fell back on its side, dead—with an exclamation of astonishment from Jabe—and with a crashing of branches just behind the thicket. The Boy looked around, triumphant—to see that Jabe's exclamation was not ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of my eye, I watched him bear down upon one of the stumbling-blocks to which Berry had referred. The accuracy with which he approached it was almost uncanny. I found myself standing upon one leg.... The screech of anguish with which he hailed the collision, no less than the precipitancy with which he dropped the guitar, sat down and began to rock himself to ...
— Berry And Co. • Dornford Yates
... whilom used to stand, On which the lordly falcon wont to tower, There now is but an heap of lime and sand, For the screech-owl to build her baleful bower. 1540 SPENSER: ...
— Handy Dictionary of Poetical Quotations • Various
... a screech like a steam-injin, and then she went next door and began knocking away like mad. Then I see that I 'ad gorn to number twelve instead of number fourteen. Your wife, your real wife, came out of number fourteen—and she was worse than the other. But they ...
— Night Watches • W.W. Jacobs
... boy at bay, as the laughter at his expense increased, was fairly frantic. He lost what he had hitherto retained, his self-possession. "I tell you I did!" he suddenly screamed out, in a sweet screech, like an angry bird, which commanded the ears of the crowd from its strangeness. "I tell you I did have an elephant, I did ride him, and I did have a circus every Saturday ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... placid voice, to enumerate for the hundredth time her reasons for happiness, her renown, her genius, her beauty, all men at her feet, the handsomest, the most powerful; oh! yes, the most powerful, for that very day—But an ominous screech, a heart-rending wail from the jackal, maddened by the monotony of her desert, suddenly makes the studio windows rattle and sends the terrified old ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... these fiddlers. Fellow-musicians, we are sorry that it hath been your ill-hap to have had us in your company, that are nothing but screech-owls and night-ravens, able to mar the purest melody: and, besides, our company is so ominous that, where we are, thence liberality is packing. Our resolution is therefore to wish you well, and to bid you farewell. ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... sir," said George, advancing with a miniature pitchfork or "tormentor" in his hand; "pardon my interrupting you, sir,—I did hear the screech, but as I couldn't say exactly for certain, you know, that it was a Kafir, not havin' seen one, I thought it best not to alarm you, sir, an' ...
— The Settler and the Savage • R.M. Ballantyne
... answered with a wild scream. So, he could call yet! He was calling after her to stop. Never! . . . She tore through the night, past the startled group of seaweed-gatherers who stood round their lantern paralysed with fear at the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing shadow. The men leaned on their pitchforks staring fearfully. A woman fell on her knees, and, crossing herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl with her ragged skirt full of slimy seaweed began to sob despairingly, lugging ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... 'scutcheons, And tatter'd coats of arms, send back the sound, Laden with heavier airs, from the low vaults, The mansions of the dead.—Roused from their slumbers, In grim array the grisly spectres rise, 40 Grin horrible, and, obstinately sullen, Pass and repass, hush'd as the foot of night. Again the screech-owl shrieks: ungracious sound! I'll hear no more; it makes one's blood run chill. Quite round the pile, a row of reverend elms, Coeval near with that, all ragged show, Long lash'd by the rude winds: some rift half down Their branchless trunks; others ...
— The Poetical Works of Beattie, Blair, and Falconer - With Lives, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Rev. George Gilfillan [Ed.]
... and flash out their signals, like beacon lights in the darkness, while, ringing up from the valley, the call of the whip-poor-will echoes clear and sweet, each syllable pronounced as distinctly as if uttered by a human voice. In a tree overhead a screech owl emits his evening call in a clear, vibrating tremolo, as if to warn the smaller birds that he is on watch, and considers them his lawful prey. The night hawk wheels in his tireless flight, graceful as a thistledown, soaring through space ...
— Byways Around San Francisco Bay • William E. Hutchinson
... summering safe at home; You'd never think there was a bloody war on!... O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns. Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft ... they never cease— Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out And screech at them to stop—I'm going crazy; I'm going stark, staring mad ...
— The War Poems of Siegfried Sassoon • Siegfried Sassoon
... concerning the "millions" which appear with such an imposing intention when reformers want to stir the public. No man's imagination was ever vitally impressed by figures, and I am a little afraid that the statistical gentlemen repel people instead of attracting them. The persons who screech and abuse the drink sellers are even less effective than the men of figures; their opponents laugh at them, and their friends grow deaf and apathetic in the storm of whirling words, while cool outsiders ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... was seventy devils in that gal last night, from the way she carr'd on. And now she lays there jest as peaceful as a new-born babe,—that is, accordin' to the sayin' about 'em; for as to peaceful new-born babes, I never see one that come t' anything, that did n't screech as ef the haouse was afire 'n' it wanted to call all the fire-ingines ...
— The Guardian Angel • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... the day, and in the garden alive with birds, she could hear the early morning sounds of the city, and from the servants' quarters of the house, voices, the sound of a mat being beaten and now and then the angry screech of a parrot. General Grant slept in the kitchen and his cage was put out in the yard every morning at this hour. Later it would be brought round to the piazza. He resented the kitchen yard as beneath his dignity and ...
— The Ghost Girl • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... he screech, much worse than my father when his legs were broken. And didn't everybody else roar and shout, and didn't I dance? Off I went right over the fat boy, who had tumbled down, up to the end of the field, then so bewildered was I with shock and the burning pain, ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... Chirpy Cricket was always uneasy when Simon screeched his warning that he was awake and looking for his supper. Chirpy knew that he could not depend on Simon to stay long in one place. Though you heard his screech in the orchard one moment, you might see him in the farmyard soon afterward. He never ate a whole meal in just one spot, but preferred to move about wherever his fancy took him. Simon himself said that he could eat off and on all night long, if ...
— The Tale of Chirpy Cricket • Arthur Scott Bailey
... village already partially revealed to those in advance, the riders were brought to sudden halt by a fierce crackling of rifles from rock and ravine, an outburst of fire in their faces, the wild, resounding screech of war-cries, and the scurrying across their front of dense bodies of mounted warriors, hideous in paint and feathers. Men fell cursing, and the frightened horses swerved, their riders struggling madly with their mounts, the column thrown into momentary ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... got 'bout half-way to the place whar the fox-grapes tuck holt o' the cyprus, when I was stopped by a sound far more terrefic than the screech o' the eagles. It was the creakin' an' crashin' o' timber along wi' that unairthly rumblin' ye may hear when the banks o' the Massissippi be a cavin' in, as they war then. I ked see the trees that stood atween ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... then there was the sweet note of some bird ringing clearly in the air; then a loud and piercing screech heralded the coming of a parrot or cockatoo, which seemed tame enough to care little for the stranger who was ...
— The Adventures of Don Lavington - Nolens Volens • George Manville Fenn
... the flitter in two leaps. Without orders he had the spray gun ready for action, on point and aimed at the bobbing machine heading toward them. From the earphones Soriki had left on the seat the gabble had risen to a screech and one part of Raf's brain noted that the sounds were repetitious: was an order to surrender being broadcast? His thumb was firm on the firing button of the gun and he was about to send a warning burst to the right of the alien when an order from ...
— Star Born • Andre Norton
... but it sounds particularly soft and true out in the open air this way, and without a piano to accompany her. Mine doesn't—I'm all right to sing in a crowd, but when I try to sing by myself, it's just a sort of screech. There isn't any beauty to my tones at all, and I know it and don't try to ...
— A Campfire Girl's Happiness • Jane L. Stewart
... The winds screech down from the open west, And the thunders beat and break On the amethyst Of your rugged breast,— But you ...
— Flint and Feather • E. Pauline Johnson
... told the maid that she and the countess must feel perfectly safe, if anything ever happened, 'cause my dad was the bravest man in the world, and he would rush to the rescue of the countess, if a burglar got in in the night, or the water pipes busted, or anything, and all she had to do was to screech twice and dad would be on deck, and she must open the door quicker-n scat, and she thanked me, and said she would, and for me to come, too. Say, on the dead, wasn't that a plot for an amateur to cook up? Well, sir, we had to wait so long for the countess to get on the horse chestnut that ...
— Peck's Bad Boy Abroad • George W. Peck
... and my present infliction is an idle cousin, a great amateur of the pipes, who is performing incessantly in the next room for the benefit of a probationary minstrel, whose pipes scream a la distance, as the young hoarse cock-chicken imitates the gallant and triumphant screech of a veteran Sir ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart
... aik," and besides that, did not throw the money out again. He still waited a long while until evening came on and he was forced to go home. Then he abused the frogs and cried, "You water-splashers, you thick-heads, you goggle-eyes, you have great mouths and can screech till you hurt one's ears, but you cannot count seven thalers! Do you think I'm going to stand here till you get done?" And with that he went away, but the frogs still cried, "aik, aik, aik, aik," after him till he went ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... excitement on the faces of the natives; on the contrary, they all appeared to be smiling with the utmost good humour, and as Cunningham stepped out of the boat I saw one cafe au lait coloured young minx dart forward and laughingly throw a garland of gay-tinted flowers round his neck. The screech of delight with which this achievement was greeted reached my ears even where I was, a good half mile from the beach. The laughing, shouting crowd then closed in upon the newcomers, and once again ...
— Turned Adrift • Harry Collingwood
... telling her experiences, "ye ken what like their singing is— it would frighten any decent respectable leopard." And yet in some things she was as timid as a child. When travelling in the Mission steam-launch she would bury her head in her hands and cry out in fear if the engine gave a screech or if the vessel bumped on a sandbank. She was in terror all the time she was ...
— Mary Slessor of Calabar: Pioneer Missionary • W. P. Livingstone
... despair he strove to rouse courage enough—not to fight—that he did not even desire—but to run. Courage to flee home was all he could ever imagine, and it would not come. But what he had not, was ignominiously given him. A cry in the wood, half a screech, half a growl, sent him running like a boar-wounded cur. It was not even himself that ran, it was the fear that had come alive in his legs: he did not know that they moved. But as he ran he grew able to run—gained courage at least to be a coward. The stars gave ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... which is more than sound. The Indian hath knowledge, even as the white man; and because his heart is open, the trees whisper to him; he reads the language of the grass and the wind, and is taught by the song of the bird, the screech of the hawk, the bark of the fox. And so he comes to know the heart of the man who hath sickness, and calls upon someone, even though it be a weak woman, to cure his sickness; who is bowed low as beside a grave, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... had advanced a certain distance Max stopped and imitated the call of a screech-owl, so like the whinny of a horse. It ended up with a peculiar twist, and it was this that would tell any of the other fellows the sound was intended for a signal, and did not proceed from the ...
— At Whispering Pine Lodge • Lawrence J. Leslie
... following the one-handed horseman in faded pink, who, on his bang-tailed black mare, had a knack of getting so well away. One of the whips, a little dark fellow with smouldery eyes and sucked-in weathered cheeks, dashed out of covert, rode past, saluting, and dashed in again. A jay came out with a screech, dived, and doubled back; a hare made off across the fallow—the light-brown lopping creature was barely visible against the brownish soil. Pigeons, very high up, flew over and away to the next wood. The shrilling voices of the whips rose from the covert-depths, and just a whimper now ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... catch, however, it resisted. Evidently it had not been lifted for many years, and had rusted to the staple. Carefully Alex threw his weight upward against it. It still refused to move. He pushed harder, and suddenly it gave with a piercing screech. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... — N. cry &c v.; voice &c (human) 580; hubbub; bark &c (animal) 412. vociferation, outcry, hullabaloo, chorus, clamor, hue and cry, plaint; lungs; stentor. V. cry, roar, shout, bawl, brawl, halloo, halloa, hoop, whoop, yell, bellow, howl, scream, screech, screak^, shriek, shrill, squeak, squeal, squall, whine, pule, pipe, yaup^. cheer; hoot; grumble, moan, groan. snore, snort; grunt &c (animal sounds) 412. vociferate; raise up the voice, lift up the voice; call out, sing out, cry out; exclaim; rend the air; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... scream. This is a sign that the guns are less than two thousand yards away. For the first one or two thousand yards of its flight a 3-inch shell travels faster than sound, but after that distance it so rapidly loses velocity that the sound of its screech travels faster than the shell and arrives ahead ...
— The Note-Book of an Attache - Seven Months in the War Zone • Eric Fisher Wood
... the ladies. He was nearly taken from his feet by a wild-cat yell, and a moment later that result was actually accomplished by a rush of men that tossed him bodily onto its shoulders. At the same moment, the mill and tug whistles began to screech, miscellaneous fire-arms exploded. Even the locomotive engineer, in the spirit of the occasion, leaned down heartily on his whistle rope. The saw-dust street was filled with screaming, jostling men. The homes of the town were brilliantly draped ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White
... all calm around, A pulseless silence, dread, profound, More awful than the tempest's sound. The diver steered for ORMUS' bowers, And moored his skiff till calmer hours; The sea-birds with portentous screech Flew fast to land;—upon the beach The pilot oft had paused, with glance Turned upward to that wild expanse;— And all was boding, drear and dark As her own soul when HINDA'S bark Went slowly from the Persian shore.— No music timed her parting oar,[244] Nor friends upon the lessening ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... laughter—they laugh a good deal in war time, outside the range of shells—came up to the open window; overpowered now and then by the gurgles and squawks of motor- horns, like beasts giving their death-cries. With a long disintegrating screech there came up a slate-grey box on wheels. It made a semicircular sweep, scattering a group of people, and two young gentlemen of the Royal Naval Air Service sprang down and shouted "What-ho!" very cheerily to two other young gentlemen in naval uniforms ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... this, while the potent draught seemed still to be making its way through his system; and the frightened apothecary thought that he intended a revengeful onslaught upon himself. Finally, he uttered a loud unearthly screech, in the midst of which his voice broke, as if some unseen hand were throttling him, and, starting forward, he fought frantically, as if he would clutch the life that was being rent away,—and fell forward with a ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... least a funeral marriage crave, Nor grudge my cold embraces in the grave. I have too just a title in the strife; By me, unhappy me, he lost his life: I called him hither, 'twas my fatal breath, And I the screech-owl that proclaimed ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume 5 (of 18) - Amboyna; The state of Innocence; Aureng-Zebe; All for Love • John Dryden
... the grayest, most shaggy part of the woods, I come suddenly upon a brood of screech owls, full grown, sitting together upon a dry, moss-draped limb, but a few feet from the ground. I pause within four or five yards of them and am looking about me, when my eye lights upon these, gray, motionless figures. They sit perfectly upright, some with their backs ...
— Wake-Robin • John Burroughs
... what we have, sor; but the Irish pipes are soft, mellow, gentle things—like the Irish girls—not like them big Scotch bellows that screech for all the world like a thousand unwillin' pigs bein' forced to ...
— The Eagle Cliff • R.M. Ballantyne
... the most enlightened place in the world, for there was no school, except for a short time in winter, and the people were very superstitious, believing that if they carried a hoe through the house, or broke a looking-glass, somebody "would die before long," and thinking that a screech-owl's scream and the howling of a dog were warnings; and that potatoes must be planted in the "dark of the moon," because they grew underground, and corn in the "light of the moon," because it grew above ground; and that hogs ...
— Queer Stories for Boys and Girls • Edward Eggleston
... such as you might expect to find on Cape Cod or thereabouts. Hollow-chested as he was, he had a yell in him which was quite surprising. From the time that he sighted the three horsemen he kept up a steady screech until he was safe under their noses. Then he fell flat and gasped for nearly a minute without speaking. His first words were, "That's pooty good sailin' for a man who ain't ...
— Overland • John William De Forest
... been washed ashore the time of the Spanish Armada, and had been found in the sand. Mick took it into his hands to feel the weight. Suddenly the old woman looked up, and asked Pat what was the young gentleman's name. Mick answered for himself. She rose from her stool with a screech: "Michael Darragh! Is that who ye are? Mother a' God! an' yer father's gun in his han'." Mick turned in bewilderment to Pat, but he was leaning against the wall, shaking all over. "In the name of God," he was saying. Then he took the gun away, ...
— The Weans at Rowallan • Kathleen Fitzpatrick
... table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very slowly lifts his head. The starling with impatient screech has flown The chimney, and is watching from the tree. They thought us gone for ever: mouse alone Stops in the middle of the floor to see. Now all you idle things, resume your toil. Hearth, put your flames ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... (1) The screech-owl, whose cry, despite his ill name, is one o the sweetest sounds in nature, softens his voice in the same way with the most ...
— My Garden Acquaintance • James Russell Lowell
... A screech, a bell, and two red eyes come gliding down the Admiralty Pier with a smoothness of motion rendered more smooth by the heaving of the boat. The sea makes noises against the pier, as if several hippopotami were lapping at it, and were prevented ...
— The Uncommercial Traveller • Charles Dickens
... neck, trailed behind him. After the goat (in the double sense of the phrase) came a child. The child tried to catch the goat by means of the rope, caught itself in the rope instead, and went down with a bump and a screech. Whereupon a stout woman, the boy's mother apparently, ran out from the cottage, and also made for the goat. The goat flew down the road, and the woman flew after it. At the first corner, the woman trod ...
— Diary of a Pilgrimage • Jerome K. Jerome
... nothing but screech-owls? do, do, call again; you had best part them now in the sweetness of their love!—I'll be hanged if this AEneas be the son of Venus, for all his bragging. Honest Venus was a punk; would she have parted lovers? no, he has not a drop of Venus' ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... strait for want of provisions before he could have the heart to shoot him. He gave chase nevertheless, plunging along in a ziz-zag way over a carpet of moss and dry pine-needles, and through some dense tangles of undergrowth, uttering a welcoming screech whenever he saw the bright eyes of the little trickster peering down ...
— Camp and Trail - A Story of the Maine Woods • Isabel Hornibrook
... such food as remained to them, and Bob was looking for something in which to carry some water to the cellar, when there came again that nerve-racking screech, followed by a roar and bang that seemed to knock the very bottom out of ...
— The Khaki Boys Over the Top - Doing and Daring for Uncle Sam • Gordon Bates
... the strand, They only, each by each; Home, her home, was close at hand, Utterly out of reach. Her mother in the chimney nook Heard a startled sea-gull screech, But never turned her head to look Towards the darkening beach: Neighbors here and neighbors there Heard one scream, as if a bird Shrilly screaming cleft the air:— That ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... blue-jay courts and wins and weds a Baltimore oriole. During courtship there may have been delightfully sympathetic conversation on the charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue summer air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecstasy in comparing the discordant screech of his own note with the warbling tenderness of Miss Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business relations. He is firmly convinced that a hole in a hollow tree is the only reasonable nest for a bird; she is positive that she should ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... her mouth with so manifest an intention of raising another resounding screech that I became desperate, and seized her by the wrists in my anxiety. "Sgridi ancora una volta," says I, in the purest lingua Toscana, "e la lascero qui—to get out of this mess as best you can—cosi sicuro che il ...
— Stories By English Authors: Italy • Various
... I spit on that—the thing will go off. See here—yeep! yeep!" as I spat on it and hurled it into the ditch. With a yell and a screech a Comanche might have been proud of, that darkey "lit out." As he ran he turned his head, and seeing me dancing a war-dance to work off the extra hilarity which his fright had occasioned, he pulled up and ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... stand that noise," Septimus explained when it was over. "Once I tried to work out an invention for modifying it. It was a kind of combination between a gramaphone and an orchestrion. You stuck it inside somewhere, and instead of the awful screech a piece of music would come out of the funnel. In fact, it might have gone on playing all the time the train was in motion. It would have been so cheery for ...
— Septimus • William J. Locke
... on, the men panting in their excitement. Then came the screech of a bullet, and the shout on Philip's lips froze into silence. At first he thought the bullet had struck. But it had gone a little high. A second—a third—and the biting dust of a shattered rock spat into their faces. With a strange thrill Philip saw that ...
— God's Country—And the Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... did so, Kieran saw a pale flash shoot out from the vehicle and knock over a hunter still hanging on the flanks of the fleeing people. He hugged the sand. Something went whining and whistling over him, there was a thunk and a screech. It was repeated, and then the iron ...
— The Stars, My Brothers • Edmond Hamilton
... intense gaze directed upon the flitting Esmeralda, whose goal appeared to be the cupboard, into which she attempted to propel her huge bulk; but as the shelves were but nine or ten inches apart, she only succeeded in getting her head in; whereupon, with a final screech, which paled the jungle noises into insignificance, she fainted ...
— Tarzan of the Apes • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... magnanimity of courage, a vulpine subtlety of cunning, or a pavonine strut of vanity. The spirit, freed from its fallen cell, "Fills with fresh energy another form, And towers an elephant, or glides a worm, Swims as an eagle in the eye of noon, Or wails, a screech owl, to the deaf, cold moon, Or haunts the brakes where serpents hiss and glare, Or hums, a glittering ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... it all, the convent, the company, the last refrain of former triumphs, the faithful romantic Matthieu de Montmorenci, and above all the poor Marechale, who will screech for ever in her garlic. Let us turn the page, we find another picture from these not ...
— A Book of Sibyls - Miss Barbauld, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs Opie, Miss Austen • Anne Thackeray (Mrs. Richmond Ritchie)
... sprawled beside him. The horse, catching sight of the motionless "thing" opposite me, at once stood still and snorted violently. The man cried out, "Hey! hey! What's the matter with ye, beast?" And then in an hysterical kind of screech, "Great God! What's yon figure that I see? What's yon ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... all ready, child," she quavered. "But, mark my words, Patricia, there will be something wrong with my paduasoy petticoat, or Charette will not have sent the proper tale of green stockings or Holland smocks. Did you not hear the screech ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... hear the shrill cry of the screech-owl sounding down the silent streets in the most thickly-populated parts of the city. Or you will perhaps be aroused from sleep, as Caper often was, by the long-drawn-out cadences of some countryman singing a rondinella ...
— Continental Monthly, Vol. I., No. IV., April, 1862 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... certain I did; and now that we know it was a man who got the scare I reckon he gave a little screech. I thought it was a yelp from some wild animal at the time, but it could have been an ...
— The Outdoor Chums at Cabin Point - or The Golden Cup Mystery • Quincy Allen
... a pickpocket; he is robbing birds'-nests, and he is very anxious that nothing should be said about it, but in the fall none so quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief!" as he. One December morning a troop of jays discovered a little screech owl secreted in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree near my house. How they found the owl out is a mystery, since it never ventures forth in the light of day; but they did, and proclaimed the fact with great emphasis. I suspect the bluebirds ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... the extraordinarily small number of combatants that were visible, when suddenly—it was about two o'clock in the afternoon—the Versailles batteries at Courbevoie, which had been silent for some time, began firing furiously. The horrid screech of the mitrailleuse drowned the hissing of the shells; the whole breadth of the long avenue was covered by a kind of white mist. The bastion in front of me replied energetically. It seemed to me as if the interior part of my ear was being rent asunder, when suddenly I heard a ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... our waggon. They have just placed two shells, one fifty yards in front of it, and the other fifty yards behind; one of them burst on impact, the other didn't. The progress of a shell sounds far off like the hum of a mosquito, rising as it nears to a hoarse screech, and then "plump." We mind them very little now. There is great competition for the fragments, as "curios." It is cold, grey, and sunless today. Last night there was heavy rain, and our blankets are wet still. ...
— In the Ranks of the C.I.V. • Erskine Childers
... heat. Tiny, gold-flecked, steel-blue flies poised in the air with vibrating wings. Their ears caught a gentle humming and buzzing all round them, and far away in the wood were heard now and again the tap-tap of the woodpecker and the screech of other birds. ...
— Immensee • Theodore W. Storm
... longer closed. Her hand was stiff, her heart had ceased to beat. He tried with the warmth of his own body to revive her. He shouted, he wept, he prayed. All, all in vain. Again he was in the road, again shouting like an insane being. There was a sound. Hark! It was but the screech of ...
— Some Diversions of a Man of Letters • Edmund William Gosse
... impossible to believe that yonder tiny brown fleck upon the bark was really a bird and not a lichen. He remained in this posture for perhaps a minute, only putting up his head two or three times to peer cautiously round. Unless I misjudged him, he did not discriminate between the screech of the hawk and the ank, ank of a nuthatch, which followed it; and this, with an indefinable something in his manner, made me suspect him of being a young bird. Young or old, however, he had learned one lesson well, at all events, one which I hoped would keep him out of the ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... time—a real fight, with something doin' every moment. I'd be proud to death to do it for you. An' I'd sure fight some with you lookin' on an' understandin'. That'd be a fight what is, take it from me. An' that's funny, too. I never wanted to fight before a woman in my life. They squeal and screech an' don't understand. But you'd understand. It's dead open an' shut ...
— The Valley of the Moon • Jack London
... "We suffer," says Addison, ["Spectator," No. 7, March 8th, 1710-11.] "as much from trifling accidents as from real evils. I have known the shooting of a star spoil a night's rest, and have seen a man in love grow pale and lose his appetite upon the plucking of a merrythought. A screech-owl at midnight has alarmed a family more than a band of robbers; nay, the voice of a cricket has struck more terror than the roaring of a lion. There is nothing so inconsiderable which may not appear dreadful to an imagination that is filled with omens and prognostics. A rusty ...
— Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions - Vol. I • Charles Mackay
... control room, Emmett Corbin listened to the screech of tormented metal and shuddered. The heat was suffocating, and acrid fumes assailed his nostrils and burned his eyes until he almost cried out ...
— No Hiding Place • Richard R. Smith
... intense excitement and infuse a little courage into her, was too much amazed to speak; and in another moment our visitors were in the room. Paquita started up tearful and trembling; then her two young friends, after staring at her for a few moments, delivered a screech of astonishment and rushed into her arms, and all three were locked together for some ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... a little bluster, but never really coming to blows. We never had the pleasure of seeing a stranger among us. We might hear him approaching, nearer and nearer, till, just as the eager listener fancied he might alight in sight, there would burst upon the air the screech of a jay or the war-cry of a robin, accompanied by the precipitate flight of the whole clan, and away would go the stranger in a most sensational manner, followed by outcries and clamor enough to drive off an army of feathered brigands. This neighborhood, if the accounts of ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... coffin writhed, and a hideous, blood-curdling screech came from the opened red lips. The body shook and quivered and twisted in wild contortions. The sharp white teeth champed together till the lips were cut, and the mouth was smeared with a crimson foam. But Arthur never faltered. He looked like a figure ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... the ground at such a clip that on the third day, with screech of whistle and clang of bell, we slowed at Oakland pier, where a crowd was cheering like the end of a race—which it was—and kodak fiends were underfoot as if ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... it is not well adapted to a long journey as it is slow and toilsome. When the mud is deep, progress is almost impossible. Moreover, the labour of the barrow-men constantly excites the sympathy of the humane traveller and the dismal screech of the wheel revolving upon its unoiled axle is worse than the rasp of filing a saw. The Chinese depend upon the shrieks of the wheel to tell them how the axle is wearing, but the disconsolate foreigner finds that his nerves wear out much ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... like a great scarecrow blown out from some Indian maize-field into the desert. His clothes were torn and his mask of a face was seamed and black from dust and sweat; he saw the water and let out one queer, hoarse screech and kicked at his horse ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1915 - And the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... dressed member of his family, the crested flycatcher has, nevertheless, an air of pensive melancholy about him when in repose that can be accounted for only by the pain he must feel every time he hears himself screech. His harsh, shrill call, louder and more disagreeable than the kingbird's, cannot but rasp his ears as it does ours. And yet it is chiefly by this piercing note, given with a rising inflection, that we know the ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... startling voice with a screech called to them from behind, ordering them to get out of the way, and turning, they saw a sight, such as they never beheld before. It was a carriage drawn by four horses that were pawing and snorting, in ...
— J.S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 5 • J.S. Le Fanu
... wizards know their times: Deep night, dark night, the silent of the night, The time of night when Troy was set on fire, The time when screech-owls cry and ban-dogs howl And spirits walk and ghosts break up their graves, That time best fits the work we have in hand. Madam, sit you and fear not; whom we raise, We will make fast ...
— King Henry VI, Second Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]
... to Betsy! how that wind does screech!—I say where'bouts shall I land you. This is South Denboro. Whose house do ...
— Cap'n Warren's Wards • Joseph C. Lincoln
... palisaded yards. The empty cars rolled lightly on the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor of the ground. The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with the salute of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before entering the yard; and when the ear-splitting screech of the steam-whistle for the brakes had stopped, a series of hard, battering shocks, mingled with the clanking of chain-couplings, made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters under the ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... Percy answered. "You see, she has been with us boys, and she can play, and doesn't screech if you touch her, or mind a bit if she tears her frock. So are our cousins in England—some of them. Yes, there are some jolly girls, of course; still, after all, what's the good of them, taking them altogether? They are very nice in their way—quiet and well behaved, and so on—but ...
— The Young Franc Tireurs - And Their Adventures in the Franco-Prussian War • G. A. Henty
... an interval of the faint, persistent rustling of branch and leaf, varied by the screech of a distant cockatoo and the nearer cry of a crow, as the dusk deepened into night as expeditiously as on the stage. Vanheimert was not awed by the quiet voice to which he had been listening. It lacked the note of violence which he understood; ...
— Stingaree • E. W. (Ernest William) Hornung
... voice grew in energy for a while as he proceeded, but at last gave way utterly under the fervour of imprecation, and ceased. Then, as if in an agony of foiled hate, he sent from chanter and drone a perfect screech of execration, with which the instrument dropped from his hands, and he fell back in ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... go away. When the wound has not proved instantly fatal, they have been known to stop the flow of blood by pressing with the hand upon the part, and when they did not succeed, to apply leaves and grass.... When shot, they give a sudden screech, not unlike that of a human, being in sudden and ...
— A Book of Natural History - Young Folks' Library Volume XIV. • Various
... Jacky—and made a joyous grab at the horn, which he immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing screech, Maurice ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... on which the wedge-tailed eagle really insists when in his summer quarters, is his daily spray bath from a hose. When his keeper goes in to give the daily morning wash to the cage, the eagles perch close above his head and screech and scream until the spray is turned upon them. Then they spread their wings, to get it thoroughly, and come out thoroughly soaked. When the spray is merely turned upon their log instead of upon the birds as they ...
— The Minds and Manners of Wild Animals • William T. Hornaday
... thirty odd native towns, the whole having a population of 1,200,000? This patch of China is surely in process of being awakened: there are numerous schools wherein European missionaries are teaching the German language, and enterprise greets the eye everywhere. Locomotives "Made in Germany" screech warnings to Chinese yokels to clear the way for trains heavy with merchandise of German origin—and this is but an incident in the great scheme of Germanizing the Chinese Empire. Incidentally, it is provided by the agreement between the Pekin and Berlin governments that a native land-owner in ...
— East of Suez - Ceylon, India, China and Japan • Frederic Courtland Penfield
... mahogany-like dense heart-wood rots, leaving hollow passages in the trunk and larger limbs, and often in the smaller ones, too. Here are homes for all who seek complete seclusion from storms and enemies. The little screech owl loves these hollows more than those of any other tree, and sings his little quavering night song from the dusky tops, while his mate and her eggs are safely hidden in the blackness of the hollow below. The downy woodpecker bores his nest hole in the softened heart-wood of upright ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... in a fit. I mean to screech for Miss Alice," and Muggins was about darting away, when Hugh's long arm caught and held her fast. "Oh, de gracious, Mas'r Hugh," she cried, "you skeers me so. Does you know me, Mas'r Hugh?" and she took ...
— Bad Hugh • Mary Jane Holmes
... incomprehensible, firing into a continent. Pop, would go one of the eight-inch guns; a small flame would dart and vanish, a little white smoke would disappear, a tiny projectile would give a feeble screech—and nothing happened. Nothing could happen. There was a touch of insanity in the proceeding, a sense of lugubrious drollery in the sight; and it was not dissipated by somebody on board assuring me earnestly there ...
— Heart of Darkness • Joseph Conrad
... rounding a sharp projection of earth and rock, the scattered lodges of the Indian village already partially revealed to those in advance, the riders were brought to sudden halt by a fierce crackling of rifles from rock and ravine, an outburst of fire in their faces, the wild, resounding screech of war-cries, and the scurrying across their front of dense bodies of mounted warriors, hideous in paint and feathers. Men fell cursing, and the frightened horses swerved, their riders struggling madly with their mounts, the column thrown into ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... Indigo, what is the matter?" said Percy; "you look as if this world was a howling wilderness, and you wanted to howl too. What, crying over that bird? Poh! I can buy you a screech-owl any time, that will make twice the noise he could in his best days. Come, hurry, and put ...
— Little Prudy's Sister Susy • Sophie May
... two big alert hangar doors swung up the whining screech of the jet starters, followed by thunder of the engines, filled the airfield. The atmosphere around the Duluth Municipal Airport was closely akin to Santa Anita the instant the starting ...
— The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects • Edward Ruppelt
... her apron to her eyes, and there's no telling what "foolishness" she might have committed had it not been that suddenly, right at her side, arose a most jubilant screech. ...
— Solomon Crow's Christmas Pockets and Other Tales • Ruth McEnery Stuart
... Low Country was the hyena. The voice of this beast is horrible; it begins with a guttural growl and ends with a high-pitched screech. Although cowardly to a degree, hyenas would often come to within less than a hundred yards of the fire. Occasionally they might be heard on several sides at once, uttering their unspeakable yells. We always noticed that the smell of roast meat attracted them; when meat ...
— Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer • W. C. Scully
... "detestable screech-owl! it is then thou who art come to exult over the ruins thou ...
— Ivanhoe - A Romance • Walter Scott
... many times am, and when they are in the midst of all their good cheer, I come in, in some fearful shape, and affright them, and then carry away their good cheer, and eat it with my fellow fairies. 'Tis I that do, like a screech-owl cry at sick men's windows, which makes the hearers so fearful, that they say, that the sick person cannot live. Many other ways have I to fright the simple, but the understanding man I cannot move to fear, because he knows I have no ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... subject. I am writing in the hope that this may be an opportune time to put in a plea for a much persecuted native of this and many other countries, whose principal function in the economy of nature is to kill rats and mice. The barn, or screech, owl, which is found over a great part of Europe and Asia and also in America, was once very common in Britain, inhabiting every "ivy-mantled tower," church steeple, barn loft, hollow tree, or dovecot, in which it could get a lodging. But it was ...
— Concerning Animals and Other Matters • E.H. Aitken, (AKA Edward Hamilton)
... pastime, and the warning screech of the brakes informed that he had no time to scheme, but had best continue on the plan of action that had brought him thus far—that is, trust to his star and accept what ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... clatter and a jangle, And a wrangle and a screech, How the old alarm clock wheezes As it sneezes out of reach! How you groan and yawn and stretch In the chilly morning air, As you pull the blankets tight, With your head clear out of ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... felt kinder lonesome, I thought I would come across, and sleep by your shanty fire." The old man enquired why I seemed so much terrified, and my brothers told him that I would persist in calling a screech-owl, a catamount. Old Rufus did not often laugh, but he laughed heartily on this occasion, and truly it was no wonder and when he corroborated what my brothers had already told me, I decided that what he said must be true. His presence at once gave me a feeling ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... that the rumbling grew in the earth beneath his feet and in the blackness of the vaulting overhead. Terror was in him, for his blasphemy would bring death to Darion. But the vision of Dura-ki was in him too, giving strength to tortured muscles. The bolts came away with a metallic screech, piercing against the mutter of ...
— Bride of the Dark One • Florence Verbell Brown
... the horse heard the coarse jokes of these men and women. He had long since grown painfully accustomed to it. His poor brain understood that there was no difference between the monotonous unchanging screech of a turning wheel and the shrill ...
— Romance of the Rabbit • Francis Jammes
... akinda waumish, d'ye ken. The haivers o' the two spooney craturs juist garred me feel like's I'd taen a fizzy drink or something. You ken what I mean—the kind o' a' ower kittlie feelin' that's like to garr you screech, ...
— My Man Sandy • J. B. Salmond
... restless thoughts. Here dreadful silence, solitary caves, No chirping birds with solace singing sweetly, Are harbour'd for delight; but from the oak, Leafless and sapless through decaying age, The screech-owl chants her fatal-boding lays. Within my breast care, danger, sorrow dwell; Hope and revenge sit hammering in my heart: The baleful babes of angry Nemesis Disperse their ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... not the kind of a man to make a good eavesdropper, and he wished he had knocked sooner. He pulled himself together and struck the door like a battering ram. Mary jumped and opened it with a screech. ...
— A Collection of Stories, Reviews and Essays • Willa Cather
... and the Goanese joined in the shout, the dark man setting up such an ululating screech that the very storm dwindled into second place in comparison. It was true, the unearthly yelling was carried out over the water, and very likely not a sound of it reached twenty yards inland; but it rattled our nerves, nevertheless. The skin grew prickly all up and down ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... me dyin' day. The men used to be stripped to the waist and tied on a triangle and walloped till they was cut to pieces, till they screamed like little children for mercy, and poor old wretches that had roamed the world for sixty years used to screech Mother! Mother! like little children. It was heart-renderin'! An' what used they be flogged for, do you think?—for the piggishness of the swells mostly. I'll tell you. There was a old feller lived out at Kaligiwa—that's more than twenty miles the other side of Goulburn, an' ...
— Some Everyday Folk and Dawn • Miles Franklin
... a long screech from an approaching locomotive woke up the echoes of the forest. It was answered by another from the opposite direction. Both trains were on time. The relief felt by Reuther could not be concealed. The detective ...
— Dark Hollow • Anna Katharine Green
... swim, and the bottom, most likely, quicksand. Out of the blackness of the opposite shore came a soft, high-pitched, quavering, long-drawn, smothered moan of woe, the call of that snivelling little sinner the screech-owl. Ferry murmured to me to answer it and I sent the same faint horror-stricken tremolo back. Again it came to us, from not farther than one might toss his cap, and I followed Ferry down to the water's edge. The grapevine guy swayed at ...
— The Cavalier • George Washington Cable
... and answered with a wild scream. So, he could call yet! He was calling after her to stop. Never! . . . She tore through the night, past the startled group of seaweed-gatherers who stood round their lantern paralysed with fear at the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing shadow. The men leaned on their pitchforks staring fearfully. A woman fell on her knees, and, crossing herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl with her ragged skirt full of slimy seaweed began to sob despairingly, lugging ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... sputter jes' lak dis do, an' de ooman she fotched a yell an' cried out, she did, 'Lan' er de mussiful! W'at cur'ous sort er wood is dish yer dat ac' lak dis?' De Owl he wuz startle' an' he look roun' suddint, dis-a-way, over his shoulder, an' de wimmins dey let out a turr'ble screech, 'kase dey seed 'twa'n't nuttin' but a big owl settin' ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V. (of X.) • Various
... be very wake in himself intirely. But, as cute as he was, he was out here, for he tuck the wrong one. 'Here's to your good health, Terence,' says he, 'an' now pull like the very divil,' 'an' with that he lifted the bottle of holy wather, but it was hardly to his mouth, whin he let a screech out, you'd think the room id fairly split with it, an' made one chuck that sent the leg clane aff his body in my father's hands; down wint the squire over the table, an' bang wint my father half way across the room on his back, upon the flure. Whin he kem to ...
— J. S. Le Fanu's Ghostly Tales, Volume 4 • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... with what I intended to be an awe-inspiring screech; but, owing to the flutter of my breath, the effort ended in a curious ...
— New National Fourth Reader • Charles J. Barnes and J. Marshall Hawkes
... is this spot, this wilderness, that resounds with the screech of owls and teems with spirits and Yakshas and Rakshasas. Terrible and awful, its aspect is like that of a mass of blue clouds. Casting off the dead body, finish the funeral rites. Indeed, throwing away the body, accomplish those rites before the sun sets and before ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 3 - Books 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 • Unknown
... (solus). Hail! ye black horrors of midnight's midnoon' Ye fairies, goblins, bats, and screech-owls, hail! And, oh! ye mortal watchmen, whose hoarse throats Th' immortal ghosts dread croakings counterfeit, All hail!—Ye dancing phantoms, who, by day, Are some condemn'd to fast, some feast in fire, Now play in churchyards, skipping o'er the graves, To the [2]loud music of the silent ...
— Miscellanies, Volume 2 (from Works, Volume 12) • Henry Fielding
... and Louise paced slowly up and down the station platform, chatting about the East and Louise's last visit there, before Anne was married. Presently they were interrupted by a wild clatter of hoofs and the grind and screech of a hastily applied brake. The borrowed buckboard, strong, light, two-seated, and built for service, had arrived dramatically. Collie leaned back, the reins wrapped round his wrists, and his foot pressing the brake home. In the harness stood, or ...
— Overland Red - A Romance of the Moonstone Canon Trail • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... night with gaffs. There are water-bailiffs, who keep a good look-out, or think they do, but occasionally find heads of salmon nailed to their doors in derision. The missel-thrush is called the "holm-screech." The missel-thrushes, I know, have a difficulty to defend their young against crows; but last spring I found a jackdaw endeavouring to get at a missel-thrush's nest. The old birds were screeching loudly, and trying to drive the jackdaw away. The chaffinch appears to be called "woodfinch," ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... start, and, with the shock of combat, his carefully prearranged plan of battle quite fled his mercurial mind. He met the charge with a joyous screech, forgot that he had a club, and kicked viciously out with his right foot. His heavy logger's boots connected with something soft and yielding, which instinct told Mr. O'Leary was an abdomen; instinct, coupled with experience, informed him further that no man could assimilate that mighty kick in ...
— Kindred of the Dust • Peter B. Kyne
... its deep pouch, is quite safe from birds of prey, except perhaps the owl. The owl, I suspect, thrusts its leg into the cavities of woodpeckers and into the pocket-like nest of the oriole, and clutches and brings forth the birds in its talons. In one case which I heard of, a screech-owl had thrust its claw into a cavity in a tree, and grasped the head of a red-headed woodpecker; being apparently unable to draw its prey forth, it had thrust its own round head into the hole, and in some way became fixed there, and had thus died with the woodpecker ...
— Birds and Bees, Sharp Eyes and, Other Papers • John Burroughs
... your promise. Spoil eberyt'ing if you screech or run to him. Look, dis way! De man what's settin' ...
— The Middy and the Moors - An Algerine Story • R.M. Ballantyne
... room. He was welcomed by a screech from the parrot and a dignified salaam from James, who was trimming the wick of the oil-lamp. For the last year and a half this room had served as headquarters. Many a financial puzzle had been pieced together within these dull drab walls; ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... disorder, amidst the terrible crowd, she reaches the door of her house. It is shut. There with hands and feet she beats away, crying, "Quick, quick, my love, open the door for me!" There hung she, like the hapless screech-owl whom they nail up on a farm-house door; and still as hard as ever rained the blows. Within the house all is deaf. Is the husband there? Or rather, being rich and frightened, does he dread the crowd, lest they should sack ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... light, was strewed afar, but in a squatting posture; so that they sat in a sequence, like graduated specimens, the smaller howling. But soon the doctor's face filled with horror, and he uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled with wonderful agility for one ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... everything is still, The screech-owl and the whistler shrill, Call upon our dame aloud, And bid ...
— Book of English Verse • Bulchevy
... finished off with a screech, and the serpent emitted a last note that nearly lifted the roof. When, from the comparative quiet within, the mummers judged that the dancers had taken their seats, Father Christmas advanced, lifted the latch, and put his head inside ...
— The Return of the Native • Thomas Hardy
... uncle were right—for the scream of a parrot reached my ears soon after, followed by whistlings and pipings from the forest; while soon after a horribly harsh grating screech came from overhead, and I caught a glimpse of the bird which uttered it—one of the great long-tailed Aras, on its way with three or four more to a favourite ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... the wounded General looked from him to the distant plain, where the battle tide was rolling farther away, and from which, from time to time, arose outbursts of sudden sound—the wild screech of the Highlanders, the answering cheer of the English, the spattering, diminishing shots, and now and again a sharp volley that told of some more determined struggle ...
— French and English - A Story of the Struggle in America • Evelyn Everett-Green
... books they would all sink to nothingness before yours, that they were not fit to be mentioned in the same day, and that she felt quite discouraged from writing when she thought of yours. The whole conversation of the aunties [3] made her screech with laughing; and, in short, I can neither record nor describe all that she said; far from exaggerating it, I don't say half enough, but I only wish you had seen the effect it produced. I am sure you will be the first author of ...
— Marriage • Susan Edmonstone Ferrier
... had heard the owl's screech for many and many a night; but he had seen no cause for fear in this: everything was going along nicely; their little son was in good health and they, too, knew no illness. But now the warning of the evil omen was confirmed. The pigeons which he had himself brought ...
— Brazilian Tales • Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
... uncertain dreams, Of what was soon to come, for she would mark The paley glow-worm's self-created light, And argue thence of kingdoms overthrown, And desolated nations; ever fill'd With undetermin'd terror, as she heard Or distant screech-owl, or the regular beat Of evening death-watch. "Maid," the Spirit cried, Here, robed in shadows, dwells FUTURITY. There is no eye hath seen her secret form, For round the MOTHER OF TIME, unpierced mists Aye hover. Would'st thou read the book of Fate, Enter." The Damsel for a moment paus'd, Then ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... associated with the screech-owl (Aluco candidus) of the Philippines. It is a bird of ill-omen. Compare A. Newton, Dictionary ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... the rancher was an excellent marksman, and the bullet bored its way through the breast of the painted miscreant, who hardly knew what hurt him. With a screech, he threw up his arms, one grasping his gun, and toppled from the back of his pony, falling with a loud splash into the water, where for the moment ...
— The Young Ranchers - or Fighting the Sioux • Edward S. Ellis
... when Hannah was brought on shore and found out what was going to be done with her, she should screech in a most dreadful manner, and although the pirates soon silenced her and covered her up, they did not succeed in silencing her spirit, and ever since that time,—according to the stories told by some of the older inhabitants ...
— Buccaneers and Pirates of Our Coasts • Frank Richard Stockton
... with his nerves of iron, have been found dead in their beds, with straining eyeballs and horrent hair, at the first step of the Dread Progress, thinkest thou that this weak woman—from whose cheek a sound at the window, the screech of the night-owl, the sight of a drop of blood on a man's sword, would start the color—could brave one glance of—Away! the very thought of such sights for her makes ...
— Zicci, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... gobble like a turkey and lure a whole flock of these birds within reach of their rifles. Bleating like the fawn they would draw the timid dam to her death. The moping owls would come in flocks attracted by the screech of the hunter, while packs of wolves, far away in the forest, would howl in response to the hunter's cry. The boys also rivalled the Indians in the skill with which they would throw the tomahawk. With a handle of ...
— Daniel Boone - The Pioneer of Kentucky • John S. C. Abbott
... the dame's fright was painful to behold. She would not scream—her organs of screech seemed to have lost their power—nor, as a rule, would she curse; she would just address herself to silent prayerful speed, with every symptom of ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... pushed open the door with his bill, but remained on the threshold, astonished at the sight which met his eyes. On the floor of the ruined chamber—which was but scantily lighted by a small barred window—sat a large screech owl. Big tears rolled from its large round eyes, and in a hoarse voice it uttered its complaints through its crooked beak. As soon as it saw the Caliph and his Vizier—who had crept up meanwhile—it gave vent to a joyful cry. It gently ...
— The Green Fairy Book • Various
... tell what the river is talkin' about, in its calm gentle moods or its voylent ones. Who knows what the loud angry scream and screech of the deep waves say as the tempest and storm presses down on 'em and the Deep answers back in a voice of thunder, with its great heart beatin' and heavin' up and throbbin' in its mad pain and frenzy? ...
— Samantha at Coney Island - and a Thousand Other Islands • Marietta Holley
... galloping before them to strike with their silver-headed canes could dispense with a knocker. Gaston was afraid to strike with a stone, for fear of being denied admittance, he therefore ordered the coachman to stop, and going up a narrow lane by one side of the house, he imitated the cry of the screech-owl—a signal preconcerted. ...
— The Regent's Daughter • Alexandre Dumas (Pere)
... suspense was unendurable. The logician tried to open the front of the case, but it was riveted fast. With impetuous fingers he then wrenched at the disc. With a sound like a rusty screech, it came off in his hands. The lamp so flickered that Balder feared it was going out, and even at this epoch had to look round to reassure himself. Meanwhile, a pungent, but not unpleasant odor saluted his nostrils: he turned back to the clock,—a clock ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... hesitation in firing at the one on his right, and immediately after at his companion, whose superior speed had placed him considerably in advance. As a consequence, he missed the latter, while the first emitted a screech, leaped high in air and sprawled forward on his face ...
— The Jungle Fugitives • Edward S. Ellis
... greeted the announcement, in which something like a screech from Cris Rock could be heard above all voices; while the giant himself was seen rushing through the crowd to clasp the hand of his protege, whom he had voluntarily assisted in promoting to a rank ...
— The Free Lances - A Romance of the Mexican Valley • Mayne Reid
... the lordly palace In ruins on the ground, And the dismal screech of the owl is heard Where the harp was wont to sound; But the selfsame spot thou coverest With the dwellings of the poor, And a thousand happy hearts enjoy ...
— Poems of Henry Timrod • Henry Timrod
... me Maenalian lays. Now let the wolf turn tail and fly the sheep, Tough oaks bear golden apples, alder-trees Bloom with narcissus-flower, the tamarisk Sweat with rich amber, and the screech-owl vie In singing with the swan: let Tityrus Be Orpheus, Orpheus in the forest-glade, Arion 'mid ...
— The Bucolics and Eclogues • Virgil
... passage, windows, and sides of the house, in every direction, instantly followed the ferocious order. And, in the expiring light, the fated French was seen to leap into the air; and then, spinning giddily round and round an instant, fall, with a low, short screech, prostrate on the floor; while mingled groans, rising from a half dozen others along the passage, told also the fearful effect of the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... up and threw a big eel into the back. When poor old Mrs. Carr was driving up the hill by Ingleside that eel came squirming out between her feet. She thought it was a snake and she just give one awful screech and stood up and jumped clean over the wheels. The horse bolted, but it went home and no damage was done. But Mrs. Carr jarred her legs most terrible, and has had nervous spasms ever since whenever she thinks of the eel. Say, it was a rotten trick ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... fellow was up at the top at the time, and he heard the cry; but in his fright, and all, he did not know what to do, ma'am; for he looked about from the top of the chimney, and not a soul could he see stirring, but a few that he could not make attend to his screech; the boy within almost stifling too. So he screeched, and screeched, all he could; and by the greatest chance in life, ma'am, old Mr. Eden was just going down the hill to fetch his ...
— The Parent's Assistant • Maria Edgeworth
... back, and only then did the orchestra spring to life with a screech and a mad tattoo ...
— The Yillian Way • John Keith Laumer
... from his reverie. The swiftly falling curtain of twilight had wrapped the spreading orchards and haciendas in fragrant gloom and a myriad of mysterious chirpings and rustlings forecasted the coming night, when the harsh, grating screech of a horn blared upon their monotone and a low roadster appeared suddenly around a turn in the road, careening sharply on two wheels, and bore down ...
— The Fifth Ace • Douglas Grant
... edge of the rocks when his ears were greeted by a yell of mortal fear. The captain and the rest, catching the sound, went faster. Screech after screech rang from ...
— Bruce • Albert Payson Terhune
... flinging out his hand with angry energy; "I wants to ax of you, as a sodger, for I've heer'd you're of the reggelar sarvice, whether it's a wiser and more Christian affa'r, when thar's Injuns in the land a murdering of your neighbours' wives and children, and all the settlement's in a screech and a cry, to send an able-bodied man to fight them; or to tote him off, a day's journey thar and back ag'in, to track a road that a blind man on a blind horse could travel, without axing questions of anybody? Thar's my question," he added, somewhat vehemently; "and ...
— Nick of the Woods • Robert M. Bird
... gentle feminine girl, with a most lovely and winning countenance, and I did inherently like to hear her pronounce the word "Jack"—it was so different from the boisterous screech of the Eton boys, or the swaggering call of ...
— The Monikins • J. Fenimore Cooper
... frough. Yas, sah, seem' like all de ghostes in de world habin' a conferince right dar. Seem' like all de ghosteses whut yever was am havin' a convintion on dat spot. An' dat li'l' black Mose so skeered he jes fall' down on a' old log whut dar an' screech' an' moan'. An' all on a suddent de log up ...
— The Best Ghost Stories • Various
... left her he did not go home; he could not have gone to sleep. He left the town, and walked over the fields; he walked blindly through the night. The air was fresh, the country dark and deserted. A screech-owl hooted shrilly. Jean-Christophe went on like a sleep-walker. The little lights of the town quivered on the plain, and the stars in the dark sky. He sat on a wall by the road and suddenly burst into ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... adventurous nature, though much advanced in that direction since her residence in Canada, wished to return, and go round; but four miles lost was too serious a consideration; so she shut her eyes, clutched her husband, and prayed audibly, as the driver, with a screech of encouragement to his cattle, after a few struggles and flounders, landed the ...
— Bluebell - A Novel • Mrs. George Croft Huddleston
... Owls.—The ominous screech of this, the most ominous of all birds, is still heard with alarm; and he remains with us, as in ...
— Notes & Queries, No. 41, Saturday, August 10, 1850 • Various
... woman next to me had an umbrella in her hand. I made a snatch at this and dropped off that gate like a shot. I didn't stop to think about anything except that beautiful picture was on the point of being swallowed up, and with a screech I dashed at those hogs like a steam engine. When they saw me coming with my screech and the umbrella they didn't stop a second, but with three great wiggles and three scared grunts they bolted as fast as they could go. I picked up the picture of the bridge, together with the portfolio, and ...
— Pomona's Travels - A Series of Letters to the Mistress of Rudder Grange from her Former - Handmaiden • Frank R. Stockton
... assemblage of men and women, but chiefly the latter, and of these almost all old, hideous, and of malignant aspect, their grim and sinister features looking ghastly in the lurid light. Above them, amid the smoke and steam, wheeled bat and flitter-mouse, horned owl and screech-owl, in mazy circles. The weird assemblage chattered together in some wild jargon, mumbling and muttering spells and incantations, chanting fearfully with hoarse, cracked voices a wild chorus, ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... Cashel, jeering good-humoredly. "Not the slightest occasion to lose my temper! Not when I am told that I am silly and low! Why, I think you must fancy that you're talking to your little Cashel, that blessed child you were so fond of. But you're not. You're talking—now for a screech, Miss Carew!—to the champion of Australia, the United States, and England, holder of three silver belts and one gold one (which you can have to wear in 'King John' if you think it'll become you); professor of boxing to the nobility and gentry of St. ...
— Cashel Byron's Profession • George Bernard Shaw
... were working like the flying pistons of a locomotive, and his bush hair and beard were streaming aft in the breeze as he neared the corner. Suddenly he stopped, turned about, and dashed right into the foremost of the crowd, letting out a screech and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... evening, however, when we were almost ready to retire, a strange sound startled us. At first it reminded me of the half-whining bark of a young dog, but the deep, guttural trill that followed convinced me that it was a screech-owl, for I remembered having heard these ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... throughout the long day, hearing the shriek of each approaching shell, waiting for the crash of its fall, wondering each time if this one, the rush of its approach rising louder and louder to an appalling screech, was going to be the finish—a 'direct hit.' Many of the wounded were wounded again, or killed as they lay; and from others the strength and the life had drained slowly out before nightfall. But now that ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... keep off the evil eye. If a weasel crosses his path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles into the road, or, with the innate selfishness of fear, lets some one else go before him, and attract to himself the harm which may ensue. He has a similar dread of a screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of its mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels down, and adores ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... heard my snake rattle his self in the box, and he stepped on my prairie dog and yelled murder, and he got into my box of horned toads, and my young badger scratched dad's bare feet, and a young eagle I had began to screech, and dad began to have a fit. He said the air seemed fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on the window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman came up a ladder from the outside and turned the hose on dad, then the police ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... Andrew, David," exclaimed his father, "thou art like a screech owl, every word thou sayest betokens ...
— The Fair Maid of Perth • Sir Walter Scott
... Bumpus, solemnly, with a troubled expression on his grave face, "I've heer'd a many a cry in this life, both ashore and afloat; but, since I was half as long as a marlinespike, I've never heerd the likes o' that there screech nowhere." ...
— Gascoyne, The Sandal Wood Trader - A Tale of the Pacific • R. M. Ballantyne
... screech of a siren, and a demon car that spurned the road, that splattered them with pebbles, tore past and disappeared in the darkness. As it fled down the lane of their head-lights, they saw that men in khaki clung to its sides, were packed in its tonneau, were ...
— The Red Cross Girl • Richard Harding Davis
... all boiled in, and as I felt kinder lonesome, I thought I would come across, and sleep by your shanty fire." The old man enquired why I seemed so much terrified, and my brothers told him that I would persist in calling a screech-owl, a catamount. Old Rufus did not often laugh, but he laughed heartily on this occasion, and truly it was no wonder and when he corroborated what my brothers had already told me, I decided that what he said must be true. His presence at once gave ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... boxes sent out. He fell with a thud in a soft blanket of snow. He looked up in time to see the Little Missioner flying out like a curious gargoyle through the door; the baggage-man's lantern waved, the engineer's whistle gave a responding screech, and the train whirred past. Not until the tail-light of the last coach was receding like a great red firefly in the gloom did David get up. Father Roland was on his feet, and down the track came two of the three ...
— The Courage of Marge O'Doone • James Oliver Curwood
... quadrupeds, nor the birds, their fellow-tenants of the burrow—the latter perched upon the summits of the mounds, and one after another flying off with a defiant screech as the horsemen drew near—these, after an hour spent in a slow but diligent advance, at length, and without accident, ride clear of the biscachera, and out upon the ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... Expos'd on the churchyard stones, They wagg'd their tails in scorn of her flesh, And turn'd up their bills at her bones. The convent mastiff trotting along, Sniff'd hard at the mortal leaven, Then bristled his hair at her brimstone smell, And howl'd out his fears to heaven. Then the jackdaw screech'd his joy, That he spurn'd the royal feast, And keen'd all night to the grievous owl, And the howling mastiff beast. Loud on that night was the thunder crash, Sad was the voice of the wind, Swift was the glare of the lightning flash, And the whizz it left behind. At morn when the pious ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. XX. No. 556., Saturday, July 7, 1832 • Various
... of the Indian village already partially revealed to those in advance, the riders were brought to sudden halt by a fierce crackling of rifles from rock and ravine, an outburst of fire in their faces, the wild, resounding screech of war-cries, and the scurrying across their front of dense bodies of mounted warriors, hideous in paint and feathers. Men fell cursing, and the frightened horses swerved, their riders struggling madly with their mounts, the column thrown into momentary confusion. But the surprised ...
— Bob Hampton of Placer • Randall Parrish
... and weds a Baltimore oriole. During courtship there may have been delightfully sympathetic conversation on the charm of being free birds, the felicity of soaring in the blue summer air. Mr. Jay may have been all humility and all ecstasy in comparing the discordant screech of his own note with the warbling tenderness of Miss Oriole. But, once united, the two commence business relations. He is firmly convinced that a hole in a hollow tree is the only reasonable nest for a bird; she is positive that she should die there in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various
... wife! It was worth paying for to see them together. They had wrangled all the thirty years they had been married; but Toine was good-humored, while his better-half grew angry. She was a tall peasant woman, who walked with long steps like a stork, and had a head resembling that of an angry screech-owl. She spent her time rearing chickens in a little poultry-yard behind the inn, and she was noted for her success in fattening them ...
— Maupassant Original Short Stories (180), Complete • Guy de Maupassant
... the Goanese joined in the shout, the dark man setting up such an ululating screech that the very storm dwindled into second place in comparison. It was true, the unearthly yelling was carried out over the water, and very likely not a sound of it reached twenty yards inland; but it rattled ...
— The Ivory Trail • Talbot Mundy
... I'll scare you;" and with an actual sense of relief in breaking the oppressive silence, I suddenly flung up the curtain, and, leaning out, brandished my dagger with what I intended to be an awe-inspiring screech, but, owing to the flutter of my breath, the effort ended in a curious mixture of howl ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... frightened 'n' begun to cry, 'n' at that the deacon put his arm around her 'n' give her a hug, an' Gran'ma Mullins looked up just in time to see the arm 'n' the hug. It seemed like it was the last hay in the donkey, for she give a weak screech 'n' went right over on Mr. Dill. She had such a grip on Hiram that if it had n't been for Lucy he 'd have gone over, too, but Lucy just hung on herself that time, 'n' Hiram was rescued without nothin' worse than his hair mussed 'n' one sleeve a little ...
— Susan Clegg and Her Neighbors' Affairs • Anne Warner
... soon to come, for she would mark The paley glow-worm's self-created light, And argue thence of kingdoms overthrown, And desolated nations; ever fill'd With undetermin'd terror, as she heard Or distant screech-owl, or the regular beat Of evening death-watch. "Maid," the Spirit cried, Here, robed in shadows, dwells FUTURITY. There is no eye hath seen her secret form, For round the MOTHER OF TIME, unpierced mists Aye hover. Would'st thou read the book of Fate, Enter." ...
— Poems, 1799 • Robert Southey
... woods became alive with night creatures, and the most harmless made the most noise. The owls began to hoot, and soon we heard the wildcat, whose cry—a screech like that of a lost and panic-stricken child—is one of the most appalling sounds of the forest. Later the wolves added their howls to the uproar, but though darkness came and we children whimpered around her, our mother still sat ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... fabulous bird, probably associated with the screech-owl (Aluco candidus) of the Philippines. It is a bird of ill-omen. Compare A. Newton, Dictionary of ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... bluster, but never really coming to blows. We never had the pleasure of seeing a stranger among us. We might hear him approaching, nearer and nearer, till, just as the eager listener fancied he might alight in sight, there would burst upon the air the screech of a jay or the war-cry of a robin, accompanied by the precipitate flight of the whole clan, and away would go the stranger in a most sensational manner, followed by outcries and clamor enough to drive off an army of feathered brigands. ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... Held me for your sake. Ay: there seemed some link 'Twixt your dead grannie and you, too strong for me To break; though it's been strained to the snapping-point, Times out of mind, whenever a hoolet's screech Sang through my blood; or poaching foxes barked On a shiny night to the cackle of wild geese, Travelling from sea to sea far overhead: Or whenever, waking in the quiet dark, The ghosts of horses whinneyed in my heart. Ghosts! Nay, I've been the mare between the limmers Who hears the hunters gallop ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... while the potent draught seemed still to be making its way through his system; and the frightened apothecary thought that he intended a revengeful onslaught upon himself. Finally, he uttered a loud unearthly screech, in the midst of which his voice broke, as if some unseen hand were throttling him, and, starting forward, he fought frantically, as if he would clutch the life that was being rent away,—and fell forward with a ...
— The Dolliver Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... over. To her amazement Ira gave no ground at all. His feet never moved, but like a blacksnake's head his own darted back; Jay's great hand fanned the air, and as his own force whirled him half around, Allaphair had to hold back a screech of laughter, for Ira had slapped him. Jay looked puzzled, but with fists clinched, he rushed fiercely. Right and left he swung, but the teacher was never there. Presently there was another stinging smack on his cheek and ...
— In Happy Valley • John Fox
... up to his room. He was welcomed by a screech from the parrot and a dignified salaam from James, who was trimming the wick of the oil-lamp. For the last year and a half this room had served as headquarters. Many a financial puzzle had been pieced together within these dull drab walls; many a dream had gone up to the ceiling, ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... course. In less than a week a regular system of torments was inaugurated, full of the most diabolical malice and ingenuity. The exercises of the conspirators varied from day to day, but consisted mainly of foot-scraping, solos on the slate-pencil, (making it screech on the slate,) falling of heavy books, attacks of coughing, banging of desk-lids, boot-creaking, with sounds as of drawing a cork from time to time, ...
— Elsie Venner • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... to the place whar the fox-grapes tuck holt o' the cyprus, when I was stopped by a sound far more terrefic than the screech o' the eagles. It was the creakin' an' crashin' o' timber along wi' that unairthly rumblin' ye may hear when the banks o' the Massissippi be a cavin' in, as they war then. I ked see the trees that stood atween me an' the river trimblin' and tossin' about, ...
— Our Young Folks—Vol. I, No. II, February 1865 - An Illustrated Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... can fear sit and hear as love hears it grief's heart's cracked grate's screech? Chance lets the gate sway that opens on hate's way and shews on shame's beach Crouched like an imp sly change watch sweet love's shrimps lie, a toothful ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... owls. The tawny owl is the only owl which hoots; and when I am in the woods after poachers, about an hour before daybreak, I hear with extreme delight its loud, clear, and sonorous notes, resounding far and near through hill and dale. Very different from these notes is the screech of the barn owl. But Sir William Jardine informs us that this owl hoots; and that he has shot it in the act of hooting. This is stiff authority; and I believe it because it comes from the pen of Sir William Jardine. ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 19, Issue 530, January 21, 1832 • Various
... With a screech that raised my hair, Grue whipped out his murderous knife and hurled himself backward at Kemper, but the latter shrank aside behind the partly erected cage, and Grue whirled around, snarling, hacking, and even biting at the wood frame ...
— Police!!! • Robert W. Chambers
... paper-covered book of smudged-looking poems... He thought of the wad of papers in his pocket, but he was too hungry and tired to read. The door was open; sounds came from the kitchen. The servants were talking as if they were alone in the house. Suddenly there came a loud screech of laughter and an equally loud "Sh!" They had remembered him. William got up and went through the French windows into the garden, and as he stood there in the shadow he heard the bathers coming up the sandy road; their voices rang through ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... she chants her incantation to the Stygian Gods, in a voice compounded of all discords, and altogether alien to human organs. It resembles at once the barking of a dog and the howl of a wolf; it consists of the hooting of the screech-owl, the yelling of a ravenous wild beast, and the fearful hiss of a serpent. It borrows somewhat from the roar of tempestuous waves, the hollow rushing of the winds among the branches of the forest, and the ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... ear or his heart. There was no note in its orchestra that he had not brooded on and become, which becoming is magic. The long-drawn moan of it; the thrilling whisper and hush; the shrill, sweet whistle, so thin it can scarcely be heard, and is taken more by the nerves than by the ear; the screech, sudden as a devil's yell and loud as ten thunders; the cry as of one who flies with backward look to the shelter of leaves and darkness; and the sob as of one stricken with an age-long misery, only at times remembered, but remembered then with what a pang! His ear knew by what successions ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... sending them deadly missiles through the passage, windows, and sides of the house, in every direction, instantly followed the ferocious order. And, in the expiring light, the fated French was seen to leap into the air; and then, spinning giddily round and round an instant, fall, with a low, short screech, prostrate on the floor; while mingled groans, rising from a half dozen others along the passage, told also the fearful ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... She had only thought that, if Lady Asher were not to recover, it were better that she died before she, Evelyn, arrived at Riversdale. As the carriage drove through the woods she noticed that they were empty and silent, save for the screech of one incessant bird, and she thought of the dead woman's face, and contrasted it with the ...
— Evelyn Innes • George Moore
... particular about lighting up, he lived in peace; but that, if he made the best of the oil-lamps in the steep and narrow streets, he usually fell over the cliff at an early age. Now, gas and electricity run to the very water's edge, and the South-Eastern Railway Company screech at us in ...
— Reprinted Pieces • Charles Dickens
... snatched the bottle from his lips. "Cold tea! Weak—no milk, of course; but you might have put in a bit of sugar." Then replacing the cork, he gave the yielding stopper so vicious a twist that the neck emitted a screech which sounded strangely loud in the black silence of the night, and was followed by a heavy splash and the sound of wallowing about a dozen yards away. Then, apparently from just below the bank of the river a little higher up, there was a horrible barking sound such as might have been uttered by ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... a producer, contrasts the uniformity in its own products. The albumen in the egg of the Ostrich or the Chaffinch, the casein in the milk of the Cow or the Ass, the muscular flesh of the Wolf or the Sheep, the Screech-owl or the Field-mouse, the Frog or the Earth-worm: these remain albumen, casein or fibrin, edible if not eaten. Here are no excruciating condiments, no special acridities, no alkaloids fatal to any stomach other than that of the appointed consumer; so that animal food is not confined to one and ...
— More Hunting Wasps • J. Henri Fabre
... God's omnipotence, not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, but as extensive as the race;"[121] or perhaps as extensive as all creation, and leading us to regard even "the solemn notes of the screech owl" as inspired.[122] What manner of use could the Bible be to an ignorant soul groping its way to truth and holiness, or to a dying sinner hastening to the judgment seat of God, if it were true, that "the Bible's own teaching on the subject is that everything ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... the cry of mun, and the screech of mun! Oh, sir, up to the very heavens! And the king he screeched right out like any maid, 'Oh my gentlemen, oh my gallant men!' and as she lay on her beam-ends, sir, and just a-settling, the very last souls I seen was that man's father, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... "the moon should be shining on the white, clean hills, and underneath my boots the snow-crust would squeak. Perhaps a screech-owl would whistle his plaintive call in the ghostly orchard. How beautiful there the night would be! But here—" and I flung out my arm instinctively toward the walls ...
— Penguin Persons & Peppermints • Walter Prichard Eaton
... of death," he muttered, grimly. Then at last, in uncontrollable irritation, he shouted, "Curse you, begone!" and the ill-boding bird flapped away with a startled screech, that to Van Berg's morbid fancy was like a demon's laugh. But it alighted again a little further off and drove him half wild with its dismal cries. At last there was a radiance among the trees on the eastern ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... When large and with an awning, it is not so uncomfortable, but it is not well adapted to a long journey as it is slow and toilsome. When the mud is deep, progress is almost impossible. Moreover, the labour of the barrow-men constantly excites the sympathy of the humane traveller and the dismal screech of the wheel revolving upon its unoiled axle is worse than the rasp of filing a saw. The Chinese depend upon the shrieks of the wheel to tell them how the axle is wearing, but the disconsolate foreigner finds that his nerves wear out much faster than the wooden axle. ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... wonderfully sylvan and rural, insomuch that we might have fancied ourselves in the depths of a wooded seclusion; only that, at brief intervals, we could hear the galloping sweep of a railway-train passing within a quarter of a mile, and its discordant screech, moderated by a little farther distance, as it reached the Blackheath Station. That harsh, rough sound, seeking me out so inevitably, was the voice of the great world summoning me forth. I know not whether I was the more pained or pleased ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... rabbit, and turning off the light, dashed outside just as the second went over. I naturally looked skyward, but there was not a sign of anything and, stranger still, not even the throb of an engine. A third went over with a loud screech, and my hair was blown into the air by the rushing wind it caused. I saw a flash from the sea and Thompson said she was wakened by my voice calling, "I say, come out and see this new stunt." Soon everyone was up and the shells came on steadily, ...
— Fanny Goes to War • Pat Beauchamp
... drive to remember. We came to a big hill, and as we were going down it at a smart pace the coach began to sway, then the ladies began to screech, and even the men looked so scared that I laughed outright. Lord Dereham was perfectly tipsy and he did not know the road a bit, but he drove in beautiful style and was extraordinarily amusing; as soon as the coach took to swaying, instead of slackening speed as they all begged him, he lashed ...
— The Light of Scarthey • Egerton Castle
... were all! But oftentimes the air is changed; and in the screech of the night wind, chasing navies, subverting the tall ships and the rooted cedar of the hills; in the random deadly levin or the fury of headlong floods, we recognise the "dread foundation" of life and the anger in Pan's heart. Earth wages open war against her children, and under her softest ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... producing his nippers and snapping the strand in two places, leaving a short piece about a foot in length embedded in the tough cloth. "Now yer clear; back out of it." And as he seized his rifle a green star-shell soared overhead, and there was an ear-splitting screech above them. ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... difficulty under which these scenes of rarest pathos would labour, were they brought upon the stage, is their simplicity in contrast with the ghastly and contorted horrors that envelop them. A dialogue abounding in the passages I have already quoted—a dialogue which bandies 'O you screech-owl!' and 'Thou foul black cloud!'—in which a sister's admonition to her brother to think twice of suicide assumes a ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... begging: be thou one of them practise the art of Wolner in England, to swallow all 's given thee: and yet let one purgation make thee as hungry again as fellows that work in a saw-pit. I 'll go hear the screech-owl. [Exit. ...
— The White Devil • John Webster
... dignified and handsomely dressed member of his family, the crested flycatcher has, nevertheless, an air of pensive melancholy about him when in repose that can be accounted for only by the pain he must feel every time he hears himself screech. His harsh, shrill call, louder and more disagreeable than the kingbird's, cannot but rasp his ears as it does ours. And yet it is chiefly by this piercing note, given with a rising inflection, that we know the bird is in our neighborhood; for he is somewhat of a recluse, ...
— Bird Neighbors • Neltje Blanchan
... barn owl fly off with a rat he had just shot. And at another time she plunged into the water and brought up in her claws a fish, which she carried away to her nest. The Barn Owl is white, and does not hoot, at least by many this is thought to be the case. The Brown Owl is the hooting or screech owl, and ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... heard and seen. He swung round and struck out with the sword Silence. The assassin was far from him, still the tip of the long steel reached the outstretched murderous hand, and from it fell a broken knife, while he who held it sped on with a screech of pain. Martin darted back and seized the knife, then he leapt into the boat and pushed off. At the bottom of it lay Foy, who had fallen straight into the arms of Red Bow, dragging her down ...
— Lysbeth - A Tale Of The Dutch • H. Rider Haggard
... Good-by again, Lyddy." She did not kiss the girl again, or touch her hand. Their decent and sparing adieux had been made in the house. As Miss Maria returned to the door, the hens, cowering conscience-stricken under the lilacs, sprang up at sight of her with a screech of guilty alarm, and flew ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... they were safely in their own Apartments, the beautiful Bride began to do Flip Flops and screech for Joy. ...
— Knocking the Neighbors • George Ade
... always carry candles with me. When the wind is blowing, the wood damp, and the fingers numb, they are of inestimable value in kindling a fire. I do not carry firearms, and during the night, when a lion gave a blood-freezing screech, I wished he were ...
— Wild Life on the Rockies • Enos A. Mills
... to hear their widows screech. But why am I on horseback while you are afoot?' He dismounted lightly, tapped Swallow on the chest, so that the wise thing backed instead of turning in the narrow ride, and put himself at the head of the little procession. ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... in Spanish speech, The bird in Spanish speech replied; Flapp'd round the cage with joyous screech, Dropt ...
— The Children's Garland from the Best Poets • Various
... Kellogg, and Marie Rose, and Gerster, are sick when a black cat with a long red dress comes out and murders the same pieces the prima donnas have sung. We have seen a colored girl attempt a selection from some organ-grinder opera, and she would howl and screech, and catch her breath and come again, and wheel and fire vocal shrapnel, limber up her battery and take a new position, and unlimber and send volleys of soprano grape and cannister into the audience, and then she would catch on to the highest note ...
— Peck's Compendium of Fun • George W. Peck
... you to ride up to them new people and see if they want any meat or any think?' in one long screech. ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson
... strange silence, through the open windows, there floated the clear call of the whippoorwill,—only one, for the buzz and clamor and clatter of many voices surged up again instantly, and the violins began to scrape and screech themselves into tune, and no one seemed to have noticed either the silence or the whippoorwill. But I could not for the life of me help one swift glance toward mademoiselle, and I met her eyes seeking mine in a look of ...
— The Rose of Old St. Louis • Mary Dillon
... kind produces would not contribute to the object which this work has in view. For the sake of information a few examples will suffice:-In the animal kingdom there are poisonous serpents, scorpions, crocodiles, great snakes, horned owls, screech owls, mice, locusts, frogs, spiders; also flies, drones, moths, lice, mites; in a word, creatures that destroy grasses, leaves, fruits, seed, food, and drink, and are harmful to beast and man. In the vegetable kingdom ...
— Angelic Wisdom Concerning the Divine Love and the Divine Wisdom • Emanuel Swedenborg
... ivy's sweetness. And behind the blossoming curtain, alive with the minute, multitudinous, swift-moving, glittering forms, some nobler form will be hidden in a hole or fissure in the wall. Here on many a night I have listened to the sibilant screech of the white owl and the brown owl's clear, ...
— Afoot in England • W.H. Hudson
... up a live coal between the ends of two sticks, and holding it firmly in that manner, walked a little distance among the trees. Then swinging the sticks he hurled the coal far up among the boughs. There was an angry screech and whirr and Robert saw a swift shadow passing between his eyes ...
— The Hunters of the Hills • Joseph Altsheler
... Wood dust flew as hinge screws gave with a loud screech. The door was just hanging now. One more smash! It flew inward and Red and Brad charged, two seamen ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... equatorial forest which one has heard about at home. Within a few yards, hundreds of frogs commence to croak loudly and continue steadily, with a few pauses to breathe, until daybreak. Hundreds of monkeys screech shrilly in the trees and millions of mosquitoes hum steadily within an inch or two of one's ears. All manner of animal cries are heard in the forest and the hippos blow loudly as they rise to the surface to breathe. As a matter of fact, the noise at midnight ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... 'cause I done seen 'em work for all dese years. De Lawd give de peoples a sign for all things. De moon an' de stars, dey is a sign for all them what can read 'em an' tells you when to plant de cotton an' de taters an' all your crops. De screech owls, dey give er warnin' dat some one gwine to die. About de best sign dat some person gwine die 'round close is for a cow to git to lowin' an' a lowin' constant in de middle of de night. Dat is a sign I hardly is ...
— Slave Narratives: A Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves: Volume II, Arkansas Narratives, Part 2 • Works Projects Administration
... why go to Rome for Phantasms walking the streets? Phantasms, ghosts, in this midnight hour, hold jubilee, and screech and jabber; and the question rather were, What high Reality anywhere is yet awake? Aristocracy has become Phantasm-Aristocracy, no longer able to do its work, not in the least conscious that it ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... Evidently it had not been lifted for many years, and had rusted to the staple. Carefully Alex threw his weight upward against it. It still refused to move. He pushed harder, and suddenly it gave with a piercing screech. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... parted to parrot the bid when Victor sprang to his feet, his features working, his limbs shaking so that the legs of the chair beside him, whose back he seized, chattered on the floor, while the high-pitched voice broke into a screech: ...
— Red Masquerade • Louis Joseph Vance
... of blue official paper from a drawer, and his quill pen travelled furiously over them with many a screech and splutter. ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... eye, which revolved amid its facial seams dead-white in a sightless orbit. The sideward and downward streams had left him with a dangling atrophied arm and a scalded hip, so that he came down on me, with my preconceived ideas about him, like an actual lop-sided demon. I let out one screech, and fled; but even in the act of flight I saw the poor fellow's face, and read in it the bitter regret he felt that the disaster which had befallen him should have made him unbearable to ...
— Recollections • David Christie Murray
... "Don't screech, Bertha! It's only your devoted brother-in-law. Curse your infernal ladder, and my ...
— The White Moll • Frank L. Packard
... vanished again among the trees. The moon rose out over the rim of the eastern hills and seemed almost to pause as if some Oriental Magic was being wrought. A mist arose from the river and hovered over the valley below us; the complaining water of Brush creek mingled with the wailing of the screech owl as the ghostly footfalls sounded more remote. The bullfrog's harsh troonk "ushered in the night" and, imagining one of them as the very one that escaped the serpent and leaped into the creek centuries ago, we left the place to the spirits of that unknown ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... gravity of all Cambridge; "and I should like to see women taking part in the management of our sea hospitals if the scheme is ever to be any more than a dream. The talking women are like the talking men: they squabble, they recriminate, they screech and air their vanity, and they mess up every business they touch. But if you have committee work to do, and want economy and expedition, then give me one or two ...
— A Dream of the North Sea • James Runciman
... Lady, Wizards know their times: Deepe Night, darke Night, the silent of the Night, The time of Night when Troy was set on fire, The time when Screech-owles cry, and Bandogs howle, And Spirits walke, and Ghosts breake vp their Graues; That time best fits the worke we haue in hand. Madame, sit you, and feare not: whom wee rayse, Wee will make ...
— The First Folio [35 Plays] • William Shakespeare
... result. A cordial invitation to the criminal to come forward and be executed was received in wooden silence by the school, with the exception of Johnson III., of Outwood's, who, suddenly reminded of Sammy's appearance by the headmaster's words, broke into a wild screech of laughter, and was ...
— Mike • P. G. Wodehouse
... Tresler's charge. The other party he took for his own command, selecting an advantageous position to the west. He had also established a code of signals to be used on the approach of the enemy; these took the form of the cry of the screech-owl. Thus, within a quarter of an hour after their arrival, all was in readiness for the raiders, and the valley once more ...
— The Night Riders - A Romance of Early Montana • Ridgwell Cullum
... and entered the temple of its high priestess. The front curtain was then drawn. The interior of the wagon was darkened, and the candle in a small red lantern was lighted. The hag took a cage from the top of the wagon where it had been suspended, and when she opened the door a small screech owl emerged and perched upon the shoulders of its mistress. There it fluttered its wings and at short intervals gave forth a smothered screech, allowing the noise to die away in its throat in a series of disagreeable gurgles. When the owl was seated upon the hag's shoulder, she took ...
— A Forest Hearth: A Romance of Indiana in the Thirties • Charles Major
... blow like blazes. It blowed for three days and nights, and the skipper called a council of officers to know what to do. So, when they'd smoked up all their baccy, they concluded to shorten sail, and the bo'sn came down to rouse out the crew. He ondertook to whistle, but it made such an onnateral screech, that the chaplain thought old Davy had come aboard; and he told the skipper he guessed he'd take his trick at prayin'. 'Why,' says the skipper, 'we've got on well enough without, ever since we left the Hague, hadn't we better omit it now?' ''Taint possible,' says the parson. Now you all ...
— Graham's Magazine, Vol. XXXII No. 4, April 1848 • Various
... but, for all that, it is more seemly for an eagle to mate with an eagle than with a screech-owl. Thou wilt see her anon; thy pet slave waiteth without for her mistress. Now go to her for me and bid her come; and, love-sick boy, be sure she does not fascinate thee that thou be so transfixed to her side that passers-by ...
— Saronia - A Romance of Ancient Ephesus • Richard Short
... the sound out of his ears by an angry toss of his head and hurried on, stumbling through the mouldering offal, his heart already bitten by an ache of loathing and bitterness. His father's whistle, his mother's mutterings, the screech of an unseen maniac were to him now so many voices offending and threatening to humble the pride of his youth. He drove their echoes even out of his heart with an execration; but, as he walked down the avenue and felt the grey morning light falling about him through the ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... over the railings. The figures on the floor go reeling off in a mixture of dancing and by-play as fantastic as the music. The pianist seems to get excited and to want to prove himself a Hans von Bulow of rapid execution. The fiddler weaves excitedly over his fiddle. The cornetist toots in a screech like a car-engine whistle. The movements of the dancers grow licentious and more and more rapid. They have begun the Cancan. Feet go up. Legs are exhibited in wild abandon. Hats fly off. There are occasional ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... An unnatural and artificial thirst is first awakened in these infants by meals of salt beef, bacon, anchovies, sardines, red herrings, shrimps, olives, pea-soup, and that description of diet; and when they screech for drink, in accents that might melt a heart of stone, which they do constantly (I allude to screeching, not to melting), this liquid is introduced into their too confiding stomachs. At such an early age, and to so great an ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... accelerator, trying to pull free. The truck at once swerved off the road, steering around a utility pole. As the cable tautened, there was a sickening screech of metal and the sports car was brought ...
— Tom Swift and the Electronic Hydrolung • Victor Appleton
... angry fyke,[103] When plundering hords assail their byke[104]; As open pussie's mortal foes When, pop! she starts before their nose; As eager runs the market-crowd, When "Catch the thief!" resounds aloud; So Maggie runs, the witches follow, Wi' mony an eldritch[105] screech ...
— Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, Vol. 7 • Various
... the whole circumference of the world that is without the walls and privileges of this city, it shall be but like an old ruinous house, in which dwells nothing but cormorants, bitterns, owls, ravens, dragons, satyrs, the screech-owl, the great owl, the vulture, and the like most doleful birds. All their princes shall be nothing, saith the prophet, and when they call their nobles to the kingdom, none shall be there. In their very palaces shall be thorns, and nettles, and brambles; for all among them ...
— The Works of John Bunyan • John Bunyan
... omen of the noisy screech-owl and a pregnant bitch, or a tawny wolf running down from the Lanuvian fields, or a fox with whelp conduct the impious [on their way]; may the serpent also break their undertaken journey, if, like an arrow athwart the road, it has frightened the horses. What shall I, a provident ...
— The Works of Horace • Horace
... that, did not throw the money out again. He still waited a long while until evening came on and he was forced to go home. Then he abused the frogs and cried, "You water-splashers, you thick-heads, you goggle-eyes, you have great mouths and can screech till you hurt one's ears, but you cannot count seven thalers! Do you think I'm going to stand here till you get done?" And with that he went away, but the frogs still cried, "aik, aik, aik, aik," after him till he ...
— Household Tales by Brothers Grimm • Grimm Brothers
... artillery now," he said, quivering with excitement. "The explosions come so fast I can hardly separate them. I never knew how long shells could screech before—do you mean to say they are really across the river? Go into the alley, Big Abel, and tell me if you ...
— The Battle Ground • Ellen Glasgow
... sneaking about the orchards and the groves as silent as a pickpocket; he is robbing birds'-nests, and he is very anxious that nothing should be said about it, but in the fall none so quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief!" as he. One December morning a troop of jays discovered a little screech owl secreted in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree near my house. How they found the owl out is a mystery, since it never ventures forth in the light of day; but they did, and proclaimed the fact with great emphasis. I suspect the bluebirds first told them, ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... nevertheless, glaring frightfully through his spectacles; gnashing his mustache fiercely between his teeth. "Throw her head back. Fill the eye-baths; turn him upsides-down over her open eyes. Drown them turn-turn-about in my mixtures. Drown them, I say, one-down-todder-come-on, and if she screech never mind it. Then bring her to me. For the lofe of Gott, bring her to me. If you tie her hands and foots, bring her to me. What is the womans stopping for? ...
— Poor Miss Finch • Wilkie Collins
... heard a screech-owl before, did you, Gene?" Grant crept between his blankets and snuggled down, as if his mind held nothing more ...
— Good Indian • B. M. Bower
... wasted brands do glow, While the screech-owl, sounding loud, Puts the wretch that lies in woe, In remembrance of a shroud. Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets out its sprite, In the church-way paths to ...
— Woodstock; or, The Cavalier • Sir Walter Scott
... whizzing noise, and then something struck against my face, and I heard a screech in the ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... came off easily with the screech of old nails pulling loose. In a few moments enough boards were pulled away to allow them to enter on hands and knees. A top board was pulled off to admit light, and they went in together, ...
— The Blue Ghost Mystery • Harold Leland Goodwin
... A sudden screech of laughter came from the Evening Telegraph office. Know who that is. What's up? Pop in a minute to phone. Ned ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... Will grumble at our feet, the table cry: 'Fetch my belongings for me; I am bare.' A clatter! Something in the attic falls. A ghost has lifted up his robes and fled. The loitering shadows move along the walls; Then silence very slowly lifts his head. The starling with impatient screech has flown The chimney, and is watching from the tree. They thought us gone for ever: mouse alone Stops in the middle of the floor to see. Now all you idle things, resume your toil. Hearth, put your flames on. ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 • Various
... in vain that I complain; No use to coax or chide her there; As far away from me as Spain, Although I stand beside her there. O cruel Kate! since that's my fate, I'll look for love no more in you; The seagull's screech as soon would reach Your heart, as me implorin' you. Tho' fair you are, and rare you are, The loveliest flow'r of any, O,— Too proud and high,—good-bye, say I, To ...
— Sixteen Poems • William Allingham
... began to settle down again. Owen was the first to drop back into the comfortable position he had occupied at the time that weird screech first shocked them, and brought about a sudden ...
— The Strange Cabin on Catamount Island • Lawrence J. Leslie
... terrific encounter, it occurred too close to camp for the other Assiniboines to remain in doubt for a moment. Moreover, when the victim of the Shawanoe's prowess went down not to rise again he uttered an ear-splitting screech which echoed ...
— Deerfoot in The Mountains • Edward S. Ellis
... may express the thing briefly by saying that, as far as Bream was concerned, Sam's unconventional appearance put the lid on it. He did not hesitate. He did not pause to make comments or ask questions. With a single cat-like screech which took years off the lives of the abruptly wakened birds roosting in the neighbouring trees, he dashed away towards the house and, reaching his room, locked the door and pushed the bed, the chest ...
— The Girl on the Boat • Pelham Grenville Wodehouse
... chivalrous man, upon whom he could always implicitly rely when his military duties prevented him from looking after them. On the day preceding the start Heideck was at tiffin with the Colonel, and coming events were being discussed in a serious manner, when from outside the dull screech of an automobile's horn caught their ears. Two minutes later, covered with dust and with his face a dark red from the heat, an officer appeared on the verandah who introduced himself as Captain Elliot, ...
— The Coming Conquest of England • August Niemann
... accompanied by a large dog, which rushed in among the pigs, biting their ears, and making them race about, squealing piteously. Then he seized hold of the bundle of rags containing the black baby, and began to drag it over the ground, to the no small astonishment of the baby, who added his screech to the charivari of the pigs. With loud shouts of laughter, Mr. Jackson cheered on the rough animal, and was so much entertained by the scene, that he seemed to have forgotten the traveller entirely. When at last his eye rested upon him, he merely exclaimed, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... still begin and never end the shout and scream and buzz? Oh, never any where, save in desert groves Brazilian, Was ever heard such endless and aimless gabble yet. For there the tribes of monkeys to the number of a million, Screech and chatter without ceasing, from the sunrise to the set. Rap! rap! rap! To quell the rising clamor; Order! order! order! ...
— Punchinello, Vol. 1, No. 8, May 21, 1870 • Various
... cars rolled lightly on the single track; there was no rumble of wheels, no tremor of the ground. The engine-driver, running past the Casa Viola with the salute of an uplifted arm, checked his speed smartly before entering the yard; and when the ear-splitting screech of the steam-whistle for the brakes had stopped, a series of hard, battering shocks, mingled with the clanking of chain-couplings, made a tumult of blows and shaken fetters under the vault of ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... boys then jumped and began beating up the sacks violently. But as suddenly, a pair of wings flapped up in their faces with a whirring sound, and a barn-owl began to screech madly as she rose and flew through a hole ...
— Girl Scouts in the Adirondacks • Lillian Elizabeth Roy
... up of hands and eyes, speaking always in that loud, shrill, theatrical tone with which a puppet-master supplies his puppets. I all the time sat like a mouse. My father asked, "Which of those ladies, madam, do you think is your sister authoress?"—"I am no physiognomist"—in a screech—"but I do imagine that to be the lady," bowing as she sat almost to the ground, and pointing to Mrs. Edgeworth. "No, guess again."—"Then that must be she" bowing to Charlotte. "No."—"Then this lady," looking forward to see what sort of an animal ...
— The Life And Letters Of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 1 • Maria Edgeworth
... showed their delight at getting away from this God-forsaken, tedious outpost, made themselves comfortable in the shade afforded by the sail, and began to chat with the crew of the Mindoro about the commonplaces of military service. A shrill screech from the whistle of the Mindoro resounded from the mountain side as a farewell greeting to the little troop that was climbing slowly upward, followed by the baggage-carts. The Mindoro cast off from the pier, and, having ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... followed the striking of Tom. There was a screech from the brake bands and the car came to a ...
— Tom Fairfield's Pluck and Luck • Allen Chapman
... the talking and laughing and the formless progress of the mob hushed the nearer night voices of the fields and woods; but from a distance the shuddering cry of a screech-owl could be heard; and the melancholy call of a killdee in a pasture beside the creek. The people, friends and foes together, made their way unlighted except by the tin lantern which some one had caught from where it stood on ...
— The Leatherwood God • William Dean Howells
... hand, taking some comfort because the night was very favourable to their project. The snow had melted, and a great gale blew from the sou'-west, boisterous but not cold, which caused the tall elms that stood about to screech and groan like things alive. In such a wind as this they were sure that they would not be heard, nor could they be seen beneath that murky, starless sky, while the rain which fell between the gusts would wash out the footprints ...
— The Lady Of Blossholme • H. Rider Haggard
... and his balance perfect, and the red fire blazed in his eyes and his big muscles quivered. Then he hurled himself forward—one, two, a dozen mighty bounds through flying snow, and he landed with a screech on the dome of a beaver house. There he jumped about, shaking an imaginary beaver like a fury, and gave another screech that made one's spine tingle. That over, he stood very still, looking off over the beaver roofs that dotted ...
— Ways of Wood Folk • William J. Long
... and the cry of mun, and the screech of mun! Oh, sir, up to the very heavens! And the king he screeched right out like any maid, 'Oh my gentlemen, oh my gallant men!' and as she lay on her beam-ends, sir, and just a-settling, the very last souls I seen ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... on that—the thing will go off. See here—yeep! yeep!" as I spat on it and hurled it into the ditch. With a yell and a screech a Comanche might have been proud of, that darkey "lit out." As he ran he turned his head, and seeing me dancing a war-dance to work off the extra hilarity which his fright had occasioned, he pulled up and joined ...
— In The Ranks - From the Wilderness to Appomattox Court House • R. E. McBride
... deadly missiles through the passage, windows, and sides of the house, in every direction, instantly followed the ferocious order. And, in the expiring light, the fated French was seen to leap into the air; and then, spinning giddily round and round an instant, fall, with a low, short screech, prostrate on the floor; while mingled groans, rising from a half dozen others along the passage, told also the fearful effect of the ...
— The Rangers - [Subtitle: The Tory's Daughter] • D. P. Thompson
... Imagine the air space above filled, instead of air, with a mixture of stenches of oil and filth, unwashed human bodies, and foul clothing. Conceive a perpetual clang and clash of machinery like the screech of ...
— Equality • Edward Bellamy
... bird, probably associated with the screech-owl (Aluco candidus) of the Philippines. It is a bird of ill-omen. Compare A. Newton, Dictionary ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,
... him! nothing but screech-owls? do, do, call again; you had best part them now in the sweetness of their love!—I'll be hanged if this AEneas be the son of Venus, for all his bragging. Honest Venus was a punk; would she ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Vol. 6 (of 18) - Limberham; Oedipus; Troilus and Cressida; The Spanish Friar • John Dryden
... Charles de Grainberg, a Frenchman, who has been there sketching ever since the year eighteen-hundred and ten. He has, moreover, written a super-magnificent description of the ruin, in which he says, that during the day only birds of prey disturb it with their piercing cries, and at night, screech-owls, and other fallow deer. These are his own words. You must buy his book and ...
— Hyperion • Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
... with suspicion, conscious that his business was unfit for any other eye. As He stood in hesitation, He heard the melancholy shriek of the screech-Owl: The wind rattled loudly against the windows of the adjacent Convent, and as the current swept by him, bore with it the faint notes of the chaunt of Choristers. He opened the door cautiously, as if fearing to be overheard: He entered; and closed it again after him. Guided by ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... A child, a clown, a vulgar person—and there are such in all ranks—will prefer flaring reds and blues and yellows heaped together in staring contrast. A thrush or a blackbird is but a soberly clad creature by the side of macaws and paroquets; but the one has a song and the others have only a screech. The gentle virtues are the truly Christian virtues—patience and meekness and long-suffering and sympathy and readiness to efface oneself for the sake of God ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... he said. "That's the one I told you about the other night. It isn't the same kind as we saw in old Dawson's oast-house. They screech. Get out, you old mouser! ...
— Burr Junior • G. Manville Fenn
... desperate situation, for loud thumps at the door proclaimed the advent of the visitors, who seemed likely to be provided with a decidedly Barmecide feast. Delia, however, had an inspiration. She stooped on hands and knees and foraged under the beds, announcing by a jubilant screech that she had discovered the lost property. It did not take long to move away the stones and to transfer the plates from the floor to the table, after which three much flustered hostesses opened ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... who had been growling to himself in a cross way gave a sharp bark and flew at the yellow hen, who ruffled her feathers and let out such an angry screech that ...
— The Road to Oz • L. Frank Baum
... State of Kentucky One that was reckoned a witch—full of strange spells and devices; Nightly she wandered the woods, searching for charms voodooistic— Scorpions, lizards, and herbs, dormice, chameleons, and plantains! Serpents and caw-caws and bats, screech-owls and crickets and adders— These were the guides of that witch through the dank deeps of the forest. Then, with her roots and her herbs, back to her cave in the morning Ambled that hussy to brew ...
— Songs and Other Verse • Eugene Field
... many's the word o' good advice she gave it, as it sat in its usual place beside the fire fore-nint her. But it wos all thrown away, it wos, for there wosn't another pig in all the length o' Ireland as had sich a will o' its own; and it had a screech, too, when it wosn't plaazed, as bate all the steam whistles in the world, it did. I've often moralated on that same, and I've noticed that, as it is wid pigs, so it is wid men and women—some of them at laste—the more advice ye give them, the less ...
— The World of Ice • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... rabbits and squirrels. Sometimes a particularly doughty woodsman would report that there were wildcat tracks about his trap; but none of us ever saw a wildcat, though Enoch Haver, whose father's father had heard a wildcat scream, and had taught the boy its cry, would hide in a hollow sycamore and screech until the little boys were terrified and would not go alone to their traps for days. In summer, boys, usually from the country, or from a neighbouring town, caught 'coons, and dragged them chained through alleys for our boys to see, and 'Dory Paine ...
— In Our Town • William Allen White
... soul! is that her? No need to ask! How strange her voice sounds! Screech! screech! and she so low, sweet-spoken, when she's well! Thou must keep up heart, old boy, and not look ...
— Mary Barton • Elizabeth Gaskell
... wouldn't hesitate a moment, but really isn't "Cussed Be Canaan" too old? You know that lemon, our African brother, juicy as he was in his day, has been squeezed dry. Why howl about his wrongs after said wrongs have been redressed? Why screech about the "damnable spirit of Cahst" when the victim thereof sits at the first table, and his oppressor mildly takes, in hash, what he leaves? You see, friend Twain, the Fifteenth Amendment busted "Cussed ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... us think the Great Spirit means to help us, and that we shall kill all the pale- faces. When we get further into your settlements, we do not expect to meet many such braves as you. They tell us we shall then find men who will run, and screech like women. It will not be a pleasure to torment such men. We had rather torment a bold warrior, like you, who makes us admire him for his manliness. We love our squaws, but not in the warpath. They are best in the lodges; here we ...
— Oak Openings • James Fenimore Cooper
... sickening jar and the blast cut off. The ship groaned and seemed to twist, then was still. It was the worst landing Duke had known, but they were obviously down. A second later he heard the port screech open and the thump ...
— Victory • Lester del Rey
... a joyous grab at the horn, which he immediately put to his lips; but before it could emit its ear-piercing screech, Maurice struck ...
— The Vehement Flame • Margaret Wade Campbell Deland
... boiled in, and as I felt kinder lonesome, I thought I would come across, and sleep by your shanty fire." The old man enquired why I seemed so much terrified, and my brothers told him that I would persist in calling a screech-owl, a catamount. Old Rufus did not often laugh, but he laughed heartily on this occasion, and truly it was no wonder, and when he corroborated what my brothers had already told me, I decided that what he said must be true. His presence at once ...
— Stories and Sketches • Harriet S. Caswell
... administered to these young creatures many times a day. An unnatural and artificial thirst is first awakened in these infants by meals of salt beef, bacon, anchovies, sardines, red herrings, shrimps, olives, pea-soup, and that description of diet; and when they screech for drink, in accents that might melt a heart of stone, which they do constantly (I allude to screeching, not to melting), this liquid is introduced into their too confiding stomachs. At such an early age, and to so great an extent, is this custom of provoking thirst, then quenching it with ...
— Miscellaneous Papers • Charles Dickens
... made tracks for this yere paraira, as I diskivered, when I got to the top o' that risin' ground yonder, some elk a feedin' down hyar. There was a herd of seven of 'em or more, an' soon as I gets near enuf I lets drive at 'em; and just then, hullabaloo! I heart a screech like somethin' awful, an' a Injun starts up, just like a deer a walkin' on his ...
— Picked up at Sea - The Gold Miners of Minturne Creek • J.C. Hutcheson
... the beldame, with a screech that made Lord William start back. "Spells have I none that can bind her. I would she were in my power; but she hath spell for spell. Nought would avail thee, for she is beyond my reach; her ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... to keep off the evil eye. If a weasel crosses his path, he stops, and either throws three pebbles into the road, or, with the innate selfishness of fear, lets some one else go before him, and attract to himself the harm which may ensue. He has a similar dread of a screech-owl, whom he compliments in the name of its mistress, Pallas Athene. If he finds a serpent in his house, he sets up an altar to it. If he pass at a four-cross-way an anointed stone, he pours oil on it, kneels down, and adores it. If a rat has nibbled one of his sacks ...
— Health and Education • Charles Kingsley
... Hen was almost the busiest of the whole company, for she was laying eggs. As soon as ever she had had one she would get up on a low branch and screech, "Catch it! Catch it! Catch ...
— The Book of Stories for the Storyteller • Fanny E. Coe
... skeins of dyed worsted put out to dry; there, on ropes, dance clean-washed shirts; higher up, on a shelf, volumes display their freshly marbled edges; women sing, husbands whistle, children shout; the carpenter saws his planks, a copper-turner makes the metal screech; all kinds of industries combine to produce a noise which the number of ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac
... had been tossing all out, very uneasy, till about three o'clock in the morning, when he fell into a sweet sleep. His wife, weary with anxiety and watching, was trying to get a nap in the easy chair, when, suddenly, close by them, as if in the very room, came an indescribable screech, an unearthly, long, shrill cock-a-doodle-do yell, such as only a fancy feathered ...
— Who Spoke Next • Eliza Lee Follen
... lion in there to-night," he said; "that's what delayed me. If I see another one, I'll jab him with one of these knitting needles. Hear that screech-owl? He sounds like the Kaiser'll feel next year.—Do ...
— Tom Slade with the Colors • Percy K. Fitzhugh
... costs," I yelled, "if the car sticks here it will have to be left." To lighten her a little I jumped out and pushed up behind for all I was worth. Mud was flying in all directions; we were nearly across; another twenty yards. With a final roll and screech she bounded off on to the road. I jumped aboard again and up the road we shot towards Mons. If the Hun patrols had been anywhere near they must have thought a battalion of Tanks were on their track, for the noise my old "bus" made getting across that ...
— How I Filmed the War - A Record of the Extraordinary Experiences of the Man Who - Filmed the Great Somme Battles, etc. • Lieut. Geoffrey H. Malins
... just shot. And at another time she plunged into the water and brought up in her claws a fish, which she carried away to her nest. The Barn Owl is white, and does not hoot, at least by many this is thought to be the case. The Brown Owl is the hooting or screech owl, and makes a ...
— Mamma's Stories about Birds • Anonymous (AKA the author of "Chickseed without Chickweed")
... glittering snow as it had done day by day for thousands of years. A human figure—or it might be superhuman, for his mien seemed more than mortal—lifted from the crag, to which he hung suspended by massy gyves and rivets, eyes mournful with the presentiment of pain. The eagle's screech clanged on the wind, as with outstretched neck he stooped earthward in ever narrowing circles; his huge quills already creaked in his victim's ears, whose flesh crept and shrank, and involuntary convulsions agitated his hands and feet. Then happened what all these millenniums had ...
— The Twilight of the Gods, and Other Tales • Richard Garnett
... flowers, and in this open a man was kneeling beside a fire no larger than his two hands, and at his side, watching him, stood a girl with two braids of black hair rippling down her back. It was Nawadlook who turned first and saw who it was with Mary Standish, and from his right came an odd little screech that only one person in the world could make, and that was Keok. She dropped the armful of sticks she had gathered for the fire and made straight for him, while Nawadlook, taller and less like a wild creature in the manner ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... uncomfortable, but it is not well adapted to a long journey as it is slow and toilsome. When the mud is deep, progress is almost impossible. Moreover, the labour of the barrow-men constantly excites the sympathy of the humane traveller and the dismal screech of the wheel revolving upon its unoiled axle is worse than the rasp of filing a saw. The Chinese depend upon the shrieks of the wheel to tell them how the axle is wearing, but the disconsolate foreigner finds that his nerves wear out much faster ...
— An Inevitable Awakening • ARTHUR JUDSON BROWN
... female-beautifier, and univarsal musical machine! When they all got assembled, I ondid the machine; they wer still as death! When I sot it up, they wer breathless with wonderment; when I started it, they gin a gineral screech of delight. Then I sot deown and played 'em old hund'erd, and every gal in the room vowed right eout she'd have one made straight! O-o-o! yeou'd a died to seen the excitement that instrer-ment made in Jargon Institoot. The ...
— The Humors of Falconbridge - A Collection of Humorous and Every Day Scenes • Jonathan F. Kelley
... men, and in so doing received Henri's heel and the full weight of his elephantine body on its fore paw. The horrible and electric yell that instantly issued from his agonized throat could only be compared, as Joe Blunt expressed it, "to the last dyin' screech o' a bustin' steam biler!" We cannot say that the effect was startling, for these backwoodsmen had been born and bred in the midst of alarms, and were so used to them that a "bustin' steam biler" itself, unless it had blown them fairly off their legs, would not have startled them. But the effect, ...
— The Dog Crusoe and His Master - A Story of Adventure in the Western Prairies • Robert Michael Ballantyne
... running up the stairs armed with clubs and revolvers and tried to get through the barred door at the stair head, but were checked by the captain, who was a wise tactician. The men went to their cells, and there began to howl and screech like a crazy menagerie, and kept it up for hours. Twenty or thirty of the supposed ringleaders were sent to the dark holes; but the revolt was not checked until the warden personally promised reforms, and gave his word that no further punishments ...
— The Subterranean Brotherhood • Julian Hawthorne
... sought to raise the catch, however, it resisted. Evidently it had not been lifted for many years, and had rusted to the staple. Carefully Alex threw his weight upward against it. It still refused to move. He pushed harder, and suddenly it gave with a piercing screech. ...
— The Young Railroaders - Tales of Adventure and Ingenuity • Francis Lovell Coombs
... inspiration, "like God's omnipotence, not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians and Mohammedans, but as extensive as the race;"[121] or perhaps as extensive as all creation, and leading us to regard even "the solemn notes of the screech owl" as inspired.[122] What manner of use could the Bible be to an ignorant soul groping its way to truth and holiness, or to a dying sinner hastening to the judgment seat of God, if it were true, that "the Bible's own teaching on the subject is ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... Dad heard my snake rattle his self in the box, and he stepped on my prairie dog and yelled murder, and he got into my box of horned toads, and my young badger scratched dad's bare feet, and a young eagle I had began to screech, and dad began to have a fit. He said the air seemed fixed, and he opened the window, and sat on the window sill in his night shirt, and a fireman came up a ladder from the outside and turned the ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... of it," said Strout. "In the old days, kings and queens and princes used to search for modest merit, and when found they rewarded it. Nowadays modest merit has to holler and yell and screech to make folks look ...
— Quincy Adams Sawyer and Mason's Corner Folks - A Picture of New England Home Life • Charles Felton Pidgin
... and, closing his eyes, opened them suddenly. The mountain must have been too near to show in outline now; it had probably melted into the general landscape. There was just an even, solid blackness all about him. The wind moaned, and somewhere, high and far off, he heard the screech of an eagle. But at least the rain did not assail him as it had done. This, however, was small comfort. He had lost, failed, and ...
— Tom Slade's Double Dare • Percy Keese Fitzhugh
... cross-roads in the wood. There he put down the creature, seated himself on a stone, and waited. But every time he looked at the creature he nearly fell to the ground with terror. If only a breeze sprung up, it went through the marrow of his bones, and if only the screech-owl cried afar off, he thought he heard the croaking of the creature, and the blood froze in his veins. Morning came at last, and he seized the creature, and ...
— The Hero of Esthonia and Other Studies in the Romantic Literature of That Country • William Forsell Kirby
... he goes sneaking about the orchards and the groves as silent as a pickpocket; he is robbing birds'-nests, and he is very anxious that nothing should be said about it, but in the fall none so quick and loud to cry "Thief, thief!" as he. One December morning a troop of jays discovered a little screech owl secreted in the hollow trunk of an old apple-tree near my house. How they found the owl out is a mystery, since it never ventures forth in the light of day; but they did, and proclaimed the fact with great emphasis. I suspect the bluebirds ...
— Locusts and Wild Honey • John Burroughs
... Harry the worse for not being the least of a milksop. Manners, you see, were looser a hundred years ago; tongues were vastly more free-and-easy; names were named, and things were done, which we should screech now to hear mentioned. Yes, madam, we are not as our ancestors were. Ought we not to thank the Fates that have improved our morals so prodigiously, and made us so ...
— The Virginians • William Makepeace Thackeray
... terrified child. Dymock and Shanty looked at each other, and Shanty said, "It is the beggar woman. She is still skulking about, I will be bound; hark!" he added, "listen! she will be stilling the child, she's got under the cart." But the child continued to screech, and there was neither threat nor blandishment ...
— Shanty the Blacksmith; A Tale of Other Times • Mrs. Sherwood [AKA: Mrs. Mary Martha Sherwood]
... clouds that was comin' up didn't look as if they was goin' to smooth it down any. There was a kind o' brassy look over every thin', and when the wind began to rise, it warn't with no nat'ral sound, but a kind of screech to it, on'arthly like. Wal, thar! the wind did rise, and it riz to stay. In half an hour it was blowin' half a gale; in an hour it blew a gale, and as tough a one (barrin' cyclones) as ever I see. 'T had like to ha' blow me off my pins, half a dozen times. Then nat'rally ...
— Captain January • Laura E. Richards
... corrected; thank you, Miss Blake. You heard a screech, in short, and you hurried across the hall, and found Miss Elmsdale in a fainting condition, on the floor of the ...
— The Uninhabited House • Mrs. J. H. Riddell
... "I'm in burning pain all withinside of me, Thady." I could not speak, but my shister asked him would he have this thing or t'other to do him good? "No," says he, "nothing will do me good no more," and he gave a terrible screech with the torture he was in—then again a minute's ease—"brought to this by drink," says he; "where are all the friends?—where's Judy?—Gone, hey? Ay, Sir Condy has been a fool all his days," said he; and there was the last word he spoke, and died. He had but a ...
— Tales and Novels, Vol. IV • Maria Edgeworth
... Willie, indignantly. "They are neither one nor the other. If she isn't black she's near it; and I never said she had red eyes and a blue tongue; but if you two were to hear her screech and howl, as I have, you'd confess fast enough that she was a witch." And Willie turned back to his book with the air of an ...
— Mountain Moggy - The Stoning of the Witch • William H. G. Kingston
... don), you have no special taste for a plump landlord breathing passionately and genially upon your very cheek while you strive to satisfy a legitimate appetite, you may burst into a sudden unpremeditate but uncontrollable screech of mingled laughter and dismay, meanwhile almost falling backward in your chair in an effort to evade the steady pant and ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... over his putrefying carcass, and the screech of the vulture, mingled with the angry growl of the wolf, as they contended for the remains of the man of crimes in their wild fury and ...
— Ellen Walton - The Villain and His Victims • Alvin Addison
... my dream, yonder is the ancient gate with the stone scrolls on each side.... The house is not circular, it is true, but square ... but that is a matter of no importance.... I knock at the gate, I knock once, twice, thrice, ever more and more loudly.... The gate opens slowly, with a heavy screech, as though yawning. In front of me stands a young serving-maid with a dishevelled head and sleepy eyes. She ...
— A Reckless Character - And Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... ground at such a clip that on the third day, with screech of whistle and clang of bell, we slowed at Oakland pier, where a crowd was cheering like the end of a race—which it was—and kodak fiends were underfoot as if ...
— The Range Dwellers • B. M. Bower
... fish which the hungry gull had spied. Before he reached the water he saw his mistake, and wheeling swiftly as only a gull can, he flapped back again into the air, uttering a screech ...
— The Book of Saints and Friendly Beasts • Abbie Farwell Brown
... cameo against the shadow of the cut-banks. At his feet another half-breed is wrapped in his blanket, and from here to the bow the boat is strewn with these human cocoons. The reclining friend breaks the silence with a word or two of Cree in an undertone to the steersman, a screech-owl cries, from high overhead drops down that sound which never fails to stir vagrant blood—the "unseen flight of strong hosts prophesying as they go." It is the wild geese feeling the old spring fret even ...
— The New North • Agnes Deans Cameron
... drinkers of these welcome stimulants; we seldom halt drinking until we have each had six or seven cups. We have also been able to provide ourselves with music, which, though harsh, is better than none. I mean the musical screech of parrots ...
— How I Found Livingstone • Sir Henry M. Stanley
... to be ominous, and dreaded the future event enchained to them. That the night owl should screech before the noon-day sun, that the hard-winged bat should wheel around the bed of beauty, that muttering thunder should in early spring startle the cloudless air, that sudden and exterminating blight should fall on the tree and shrub, were unaccustomed, but physical events, less ...
— The Last Man • Mary Shelley
... that? A cry in the night! The weird, haunting screech of an owl! He ridiculed himself for the sudden wild thumping of his heart. But would they never call him? This suspense was tearing at the very roots of ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... always awoke in Anne at the sight and expression of injustice flared suddenly upwards. Facing the still satisfied woman, who now drew a chair across the flagged floor with the screech of its wooden legs upon ...
— Women of the Country • Gertrude Bone
... returns of the season await my friend. May the thorns of care never beset his path! May peace be an inmate of his bosom, and rapture a frequent visitor of his soul! May the blood-hounds of misfortune never track his steps, nor the screech-owl of sorrow alarm his dwelling! May enjoyment tell thy hours, and pleasure number thy days, thou friend of the bard! "Blessed be he that blesseth thee, and cursed ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... mementoes of the same lady in the cabinet adorning the recess; and while Shirley was stooping to examine the missal and the rosary on the inlaid shelf, and while the Misses Nunnely indulged in a prolonged screech, guiltless of expression, pure of originality, perfectly conventional and absolutely unmeaning, Sir Philip stooped too, and whispered a few hurried sentences. At first Miss Keeldar was struck so still you might have fancied that whisper a charm which had ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... Loyalty's Decoy-pond, each Pops up his head, as fir'd with British blood, Hears once again the Ministerial screech, 45 And once more seeks the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... trying to soothe Paquita's intense excitement and infuse a little courage into her, was too much amazed to speak; and in another moment our visitors were in the room. Paquita started up tearful and trembling; then her two young friends, after staring at her for a few moments, delivered a screech of astonishment and rushed into her arms, and all three were locked together for some time in a ...
— The Purple Land • W. H. Hudson
... would listen with many a shake of the head to the stories Listing related of his life on the roads, especially of the nights the fine ones, in which one lay on the dry grass beneath the twinkling stars, or in the forest under a beech in the branches of which the screech-owl was calling; and of the wretched, rainy, cold nights of late autumn. Then one would pull a few trusses of straw out of a stack and creep shivering into the hole, which would gradually become wet through from the dripping ...
— 'Jena' or 'Sedan'? • Franz Beyerlein
... gave, though not so loud as a screech owl, and then she tottered, swayed, and lost her senses. If she'd fallen to the left no harm had overtook her; but to the right she fell and dropped unconscious, face forward ...
— The Torch and Other Tales • Eden Phillpotts
... sob rising to a scream, as if the old building had found voice and protested against invasion, caused a recoil of the invaders. Girls brought up in neighborly relations with the wilderness, however, could be only a moment terrified by the screech-owl. But at no previous time in its history, not even when it was captured as a fort, had the Jesuit College inclosed such a cluster of wildly beating hearts. Had light been turned on the group, it would have shown every ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... which continued all night long. First, there was a drum perpetually beating, announcing rudely enough the approaching nuptials; then there was a cricket singing shrill notes at my head; and then there was the screech-owl making the valley of Tintalous ring again with its hideous shriek. Add to all, between the roll of the big noisy drum, the cries and uproar of the people. This morning there are groups of people squatting all about. Two maharees are riding round and round one group. ...
— Narrative of a Mission to Central Africa Performed in the Years 1850-51, Volume 1 • James Richardson
... unanswerable fire was an ordeal for a force which is retreating. A retirement may very rapidly become a rout under such circumstances. It was with some misgivings that the officers saw their men quicken their pace and glance back over their shoulders at the whine and screech of the shell. They were still some miles from home, and the plain was open. What could be done to give ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... After the sound had acted on his organs of hearing, and he had connected, perhaps, some ideas with it, tears began to flow from the dead man's eyes. Finally, when, after a short prayer for his poor soul, they proceeded to hack off his head, the corpse uttered a screech, and turned and rolled just as if it had been alive, and the grave ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 61, No. 378, April, 1847 • Various
... crushing phial after phial. The boy, being light, was strewed afar, but in a squatting posture; so that they sat in a sequence, like graduated specimens, the smaller howling. But soon the doctor's face filled with horror, and he uttered a far louder and unearthly screech, and kicked and struggled with wonderful agility for one ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... cave, the cub saw the lynx-mother. The hair rippled up along his back at the sight. Here was fear, and it did not require his instinct to tell him of it. And if sight alone were not sufficient, the cry of rage the intruder gave, beginning with a snarl and rushing abruptly upward into a hoarse screech, was convincing ...
— White Fang • Jack London
... on his legs to run—see how the little critter goes ahead arter that. A kurnel (I don't mean a Kurnel of militia, for we don't vally that breed o' cattle nothing—they do nothing but strut about and screech all day, like peacocks), but a kurnel of grain, when sowed, will stool into several shoots, and each shoot hear many kurnels, and will multiply itself thus—four times one is four, and four times twenty-five is one hundred (you ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... meetings of young men and maids I many times am, and when they are in the midst of all their good cheer, I come in, in some fearful shape, and affright them, and then carry away their good cheer, and eat it with my fellow fairies. 'Tis I that do, like a screech-owl cry at sick men's windows, which makes the hearers so fearful, that they say, that the sick person cannot live. Many other ways have I to fright the simple, but the understanding man I cannot move to fear, because he knows I have no ...
— The Sources and Analogues of 'A Midsummer-night's Dream' • Compiled by Frank Sidgwick
... Marat was, like Robespierre, a coward. Repeatedly denounced in the assembly, he skulked instead of defending himself, and lay concealed in some obscure garret or cellar among his cut-throats, until a storm appeared, when, like a bird of ill omen, his death-screech was again heard. Such was the strange and fatal triumvirate, in which the same degree of cannibal cruelty existed under different aspects. Danton murdered to glut his rage; Robespierre to avenge his injured ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction, Vol. 10, Supplementary Number, Issue 263, 1827 • Various
... noise for some time. Then she plucked a blade of grass, stretched it across a hollow between her two thumbs, and, when Seppi was not looking, blew with all her might right by his ear! It made a fearful screech, which echoed and reechoed until it seemed as if the very air had been broken into a ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... every hundred metres until the tenth rose into the proud kilometre stone proclaiming the distance to the next stately town, rang too with the sound of British voices, and the tramp of British feet, and the clatter of British transport, and the screech and whir of cars, revealing as they passed the flash of red and gold of the British staff. Yet the finely cultivated land remained to show that it was France; and the little whitewashed villages; the cure, in shovel-hat and rusty cassock; ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke
... and of these almost all old, hideous, and of malignant aspect, their grim and sinister features looking ghastly in the lurid light. Above them, amid the smoke and steam, wheeled bat and flitter-mouse, horned owl and screech-owl, in mazy circles. The weird assemblage chattered together in some wild jargon, mumbling and muttering spells and incantations, chanting fearfully with hoarse, cracked voices a wild chorus, and anon breaking into a loud and long-continued peal of laughter. ...
— The Lancashire Witches - A Romance of Pendle Forest • William Harrison Ainsworth
... how can fear sit and hear as love hears it grief's heart's cracked grate's screech? Chance lets the gate sway that opens on hate's way and shews on shame's beach Crouched like an imp sly change watch sweet love's shrimps ...
— A Nonsense Anthology • Collected by Carolyn Wells
... door turned; he could not distinguish it in the uncertain light, yet he knew it was turning by a peculiarly faint screech—almost so faint as to be indistinguishable. One would not notice it except at the dead ...
— The Cab of the Sleeping Horse • John Reed Scott
... wake in himself intirely. But, as cute as he was, he was out here, for he tuk the wrong one. "Here's to your good health, Terence," says he; "an' now pull like the very divil." An' with that he lifted the bottle of holy wather, but it was hardly to his mouth, whin he let a screech out, you'd think the room id fairly split with it, an' made one chuck that sent the leg clane aff his body in my father's hands. Down wint the squire over the table, an' bang wint my father half-way across the room on his back, upon the ...
— The Purcell Papers - Volume I. (of III.) • Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu
... through the narrow streets and lanes below. How small men seem, how like a swarm of ants sweltering in endless confusion on their tiny hill! How petty seems the work on which they are hurrying and skurrying! How childishly they jostle against one another and turn to snarl and scratch! They jabber and screech and curse, but their puny voices do not reach up here. They fret, and fume, and rage, and pant, and die; "but I, mein Werther, sit above it all; I am alone with ...
— Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow • Jerome K. Jerome
... Lyddy." She did not kiss the girl again, or touch her hand. Their decent and sparing adieux had been made in the house. As Miss Maria returned to the door, the hens, cowering conscience-stricken under the lilacs, sprang up at sight of her with a screech of guilty alarm, and flew out ...
— The Lady of the Aroostook • W. D. Howells
... there to the prevalent pace. They add to the general noise the shuddering bursts of their swift percussions, and make the soul shrink from a forecast of what the aeroplane may be when it shall come hurtling overhead with some peculiar screech as yet unimagined. The motor plays an even more prominent part in the country than in London, especially in those remnants of time which the English call weekends, and which stretch from Friday afternoon to the next Monday morning. It is within these limits ...
— London Films • W.D. Howells
... again. Wood dust flew as hinge screws gave with a loud screech. The door was just hanging now. One more smash! It flew inward and Red and Brad charged, ...
— Smugglers' Reef • John Blaine
... the big clouds slowly sail; A faint breeze lingers in the rustling beech; Atop the withered oak with vagrant speech The brawling crows call down the sleepy vale; Unseen the glad cicadas trill their tale Of deep content in changeless vibrant screech, And where the old fence rambles out of reach, The drowsy lizard hugs the shaded rail. Warm odors from the hayfield wander by, Afar the homing reaper's noontide tune Floats on the mellow stillness like a sigh; One butterfly, ghost of a vanished June, Soars dimly where ...
— Pan and Aeolus: Poems • Charles Hamilton Musgrove
... hat, engaged in a deep confabulation with a boy in corduroys who sprawled beside him. The horse, catching sight of the motionless "thing" opposite me, at once stood still and snorted violently. The man cried out, "Hey! hey! What's the matter with ye, beast?" And then in an hysterical kind of screech, "Great God! What's yon figure that I see? ...
— Scottish Ghost Stories • Elliott O'Donnell
... So, he could call yet! He was calling after her to stop. Never! . . . She tore through the night, past the startled group of seaweed-gatherers who stood round their lantern paralysed with fear at the unearthly screech coming from that fleeing shadow. The men leaned on their pitchforks staring fearfully. A woman fell on her knees, and, crossing herself, began to pray aloud. A little girl with her ragged skirt full of slimy seaweed began to sob despairingly, ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... one-eyed man, when the rats went scurrying through the hold. She wasn't pink now; her color had turned to ashy yellow and her heart to ashes of roses. Girard could face the wind of the North, but a crying woman on a ship at anchor, whose rusty chains groaned to the dismal screech of tugging cordage, undid him. A lesser man—a devil-may-care fellow—could have met the issue. Girard, practical, sensible, silent, was no mate for prettiness, plump and pink. He should have wedded a widow, who could have passed him a prehensile ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 11 (of 14) - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Businessmen • Elbert Hubbard
... down the path behind him, and from a solitary apple-tree, standing like a lonely ghost in the middle of the field, came the woo of a screech owl—twice. It was answered—twice—from a clump of elder-bushes that grew in a fence-corner fifty yards west of the pasture bars. Then the barrel of a squirrel rifle issued, lifted out of the white elder-blossoms, and lay along the ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... words ended in a sort of screech of astonishment and recognition, as a hard hand was laid upon his shoulder, and ...
— Jessica, the Heiress • Evelyn Raymond
... and by-play as fantastic as the music. The pianist seems to get excited and to want to prove himself a Hans von Bulow of rapid execution. The fiddler weaves excitedly over his fiddle. The cornetist toots in a screech like a car-engine whistle. The movements of the dancers grow licentious and more and more rapid. They have begun the Cancan. Feet go up. Legs are exhibited in wild abandon. Hats fly off. There are occasional exhibitions of nature that would put Adam and Eve ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... really coming to blows. We never had the pleasure of seeing a stranger among us. We might hear him approaching, nearer and nearer, till, just as the eager listener fancied he might alight in sight, there would burst upon the air the screech of a jay or the war-cry of a robin, accompanied by the precipitate flight of the whole clan, and away would go the stranger in a most sensational manner, followed by outcries and clamor enough to drive ...
— A Bird-Lover in the West • Olive Thorne Miller
... fleeces, and with garlands crown'd: Oft, when she visited this lonely dome, Strange voices issued from her husband's tomb; She thought she heard him summon her away, Invite her to his grave, and chide her stay. Hourly 't is heard, when with a boding note The solitary screech owl strains her throat, And, on a chimney's top, or turret's height, With songs obscene disturbs the silence of the night. Besides, old prophecies augment her fears; And stern Aeneas in her dreams appears, Disdainful as by day: she seems, alone, To wander in her sleep, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil
... nor the birds, their fellow-tenants of the burrow—the latter perched upon the summits of the mounds, and one after another flying off with a defiant screech as the horsemen drew near—these, after an hour spent in a slow but diligent advance, at length, and without accident, ride clear of the biscachera, and out upon the smooth ...
— Gaspar the Gaucho - A Story of the Gran Chaco • Mayne Reid
... furriners—aye, half a dozen some do say, though I wouldn't go so far as that myself—and at the last some of them turned tail and bolted back. The ship's boy, what was in the shrouds, saw 'em on the run and set up a screech: 'Hooray! hooray!' That was all we wanted. We hoorayed too; and went at 'em in such a slap-bang go-to-glory way that in a brace of shakes there wasn't a Frenchman, a Dutchman, nor a Moor on board. They cut the grapnels and floated clear, ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... wice; and begor, 't was like the day of gineral jedgment. Thin he tore off a black veil that was on the crucifix, and he threw it on the althar, and he held up the crucifix in the air, and he let a screech out of him that you could hear ...
— My New Curate • P.A. Sheehan
... was frightfully stung. He rubbed his face with both sticky paws. The sharp stings came thicker and faster, and he wildly clawed the air. At last he forgot to hold on to the branch any longer, and with a screech he tumbled to ...
— Wigwam Evenings - Sioux Folk Tales Retold • Charles Alexander Eastman and Elaine Goodale Eastman
... Girardi made me screech with laughter. He is as funny as my father-in-law is mournful—a higher compliment to his art I cannot pay. Of course, actor-like, he appreciated an Imperial Highness' applause and looked up to my box every little while. I wish, though, he hadn't acknowledged my plaudits ...
— Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess • Henry W. Fischer
... Bute. Deep Horror held her wide domain; The sky in sullen drops of rain Forewept the morn, and through the air, Which, opening, laid its bosom bare, Loud thunders roll'd, and lightning stream'd; The owl at Freedom's window scream'd, The screech-owl, prophet dire, whose breath Brings sickness, and whose note is death; 160 The churchyard teem'd, and from the tomb, All sad and silent, through the gloom The ghosts of men, in former times, Whose public virtues were their crimes, Indignant stalk'd; sorrow and rage Blank'd ...
— Poetical Works • Charles Churchill
... ball and chain.... I think we'll make things snap and crackle a little.... This is the biggest swamp I ever tried to wriggle through.... We'll both put on our thinking caps and I guess get quite a lot of funnies in the reminiscences.... Now here is the publisher's screech for money.... O, to get out of this History prison!... I am too tired to write—I mean too lazy.... No warhorse ever panted for the rush of battle more than I for outside work. I love to make history ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... among the pigs, biting their ears, and making them race about, squealing piteously. Then he seized hold of the bundle of rags containing the black baby, and began to drag it over the ground, to the no small astonishment of the baby, who added his screech to the charivari of the pigs. With loud shouts of laughter, Mr. Jackson cheered on the rough animal, and was so much entertained by the scene, that he seemed to have forgotten the traveller entirely. When at last his eye ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 7, May, 1858 • Various
... carefully opened the shutters and peered out, but he could distinguish nothing in the intense blackness. After listening a moment and hearing no sound, he closed the shutters and went back to his work. The priest waited until he again heard the screech of the file before he dared to move. This action of Pomponio recalled him to himself, and the responsibility resting on him regarding the ...
— Old Mission Stories of California • Charles Franklin Carter
... is that I had no idea that iron traction engine wanted to marry my daughter or anybody's daughter. The tactless beast got up steam and proposed for her the day after I had offered him the living. He had never given so much as a preliminary screech on the subject, never blown a horn to show what his horrid intentions were—I only hope that if I had known I should still have had the moral courage to appoint him. The Archbishop assures me I should—but I doubt it. I was ...
— Prisoners - Fast Bound In Misery And Iron • Mary Cholmondeley
... the waxed silk all ready and chosen the right-sized needle and I'll promise not to jump or screech more than I can help. We'll make a tiny lead-pencil dot right in the middle of the lobe, then you place the needle on it, shut your eyes, and JAB HARD! I expect to faint, but when I 'come to,' we can decide which of us will pull the ...
— The Story Of Waitstill Baxter • By Kate Douglas Wiggin
... year, made an excursion of some days. On the very morrow after their return, while they were darting to and fro close to Cuvier's window, to whose presence they had become accustomed, and which did not in the least incommode them, a screech-owl, that seemed to fall from above, pounced upon the male, seized him in his talons, and was already bearing him away, when Cuvier took down his gun, which was within reach, primed and cocked it, and fired at the owl; the fellow, mortally ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 1, No. 3, August, 1850. • Various
... fiddlers. Fellow-musicians, we are sorry that it hath been your ill-hap to have had us in your company, that are nothing but screech-owls and night-ravens, able to mar the purest melody: and, besides, our company is so ominous that, where we are, thence liberality is packing. Our resolution is therefore to wish you well, and to bid you farewell. Come, ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. IX • Various
... with the open back. And Carl he just up and threw a big eel into the back. When poor old Mrs. Carr was driving up the hill by Ingleside that eel came squirming out between her feet. She thought it was a snake and she just give one awful screech and stood up and jumped clean over the wheels. The horse bolted, but it went home and no damage was done. But Mrs. Carr jarred her legs most terrible, and has had nervous spasms ever since whenever she thinks of the eel. Say, it was a rotten trick to play on the poor old soul. ...
— Rainbow Valley • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... charcoal-burners from the huts in the neighbourhood pass along the top of the Roche-Mauprat ravine, if it is in daytime they whistle with a defiant air or hurl a hearty curse at the ruins; but when day falls and the goat-sucker begins to screech from the top of the loopholes, wood-cutter and charcoal-burner pass by silently, with quickened step, and cross themselves from time to time to ward off the evil spirits that hold sway ...
— Mauprat • George Sand
... would labour, were they brought upon the stage, is their simplicity in contrast with the ghastly and contorted horrors that envelop them. A dialogue abounding in the passages I have already quoted—a dialogue which bandies 'O you screech-owl!' and 'Thou foul black cloud!'—in which a sister's admonition to her brother to think twice of suicide assumes a form ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece, Complete - Series I, II, and III • John Symonds
... about it often," he answered, almost dully. "I like it better myself, as it is. It does appear to be a long way ahead, doesn't it—that day of completion which you cover in the screech of the whistles? Only to-day, when we were scrambling about down there in the alders, it took nearly all the imagination I possessed to see two streaks of steel where there is nothing but thicket now. ...
— Then I'll Come Back to You • Larry Evans
... that any one could have come up stairs, the impatient monarch, pointing with his crutch, added, "Run to the head of the stairs, Prince Harry dear, and call and screech to them to make no delay; and I want you out with me; so get ...
— Tales & Novels, Vol. IX - [Contents: Harrington; Thoughts on Bores; Ormond] • Maria Edgeworth
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