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More "Swish" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... further and in the swish of the storm he heard hoofbeats again. Looking forth from the bushes he saw another line of horsemen, but now they were going in the direction of Pope's army. Dick recognized these figures. Shapeless as he might appear on his horse that was Colonel Winchester, ...
— The Sword of Antietam • Joseph A. Altsheler
... clouds. Another silence followed. Suddenly it was broken by a swift, complete sound, a heavy boom-roar, and on the heels of this noise came a throbbing, whistling sigh that, at first faint as the sound of ocean on a distant beach, increased with incredible speed to a whistling swish, ending in a HISH of tremendous volume and a roaring, grinding burst. The sound of a great shell is never a pure bang; one hears, rather, the end of the arriving HISH, the explosion, and the tearing disintegration of the thick ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... about and dropped my hand into position. For a moment she hesitated. Then there was the swish of a riding skirt, the glint of a patent-leather boot, an arched foot in my palm, and without an ounce of lift from me she was ...
— The Colonel of the Red Huzzars • John Reed Scott
... Astorre, under the spell of this marvellous night, lay on their stomachs alert for alarms. A heavy-wheeling white owl had come by with a swish, and Biagio had called aloud to Madonna in his agony. Astorre had crossed himself over and over again: this was the Angel of Death cruising abroad on the hunt for goats or goat-herds; but "No, no!" cried Luca, eldest of the three, "the wings ...
— Little Novels of Italy • Maurice Henry Hewlett
... lion cub with whom Nero used to play, was far off in Africa, so our circus friend had to stay by himself. He curled up on the leaves, listened to the swish and patter of the rain, and ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to the fire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to each other, and listened to Dr. Silence's voice as it mingled with the swish and whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... to an interview with the head. From it Benham emerged more whitely strung up than ever. "He said he would certainly swish me if I deserved it, and I said I would certainly kill him ...
— The Research Magnificent • H. G. Wells
... of a faint rustling at his door, and what seemed to be a slight tap on the panel. He rose and opened it—the long passage was dark and apparently empty, but he fancied he could detect the quick swish of a skirt in the distance. As he re-entered his room, his eye fell for the first time on a rose whose stalk was thrust through the keyhole of his door. The consul smiled at this amiable solution of a mystery. It was undoubtedly the playful mischievousness of the ...
— The Bell-Ringer of Angel's and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... Opera House you could have heard delighted "Ohs!" and "Ahs!" from the children. There was a rustling of programs, a swish of skirts, several coughs, and one or two sneezes. Then the fiddles squeaked, there was rumble and boom of the drums, and the orchestra played the ...
— Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue Giving a Show • Laura Lee Hope
... had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... slid a few inches up the short, thick mast, as though reluctantly, while away on our weather quarter we heard the fierce shouts of the men in the approaching boat as they encouraged each other, punctuated by the quick jerk of the oars in the rowlocks, and the swish of the water as the oar-blades clipped into it. With the passage of every second those menacing sounds drew appreciably nearer, dominating even the thunderous rustle and slatting of the sail that slowly climbed into the air over our ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... clanking grew nearer—while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded—that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent light appeared on the ceiling directly over ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... which was patched by trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an occasional bee that came and was gone ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... the soldiers, the sky, the horses or the crowd. He did not feel the cold, the terror or the shame. He did not hear the swish of the knout in the air or the savage howl of pain and despair. He only saw the bare back of a man's body swelling up and covered over evenly with white and purple stripes. Gradually the bare back lost the semblance of human flesh. The blood ...
— Best Russian Short Stories • Various
... more immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between my shins in the ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... which carried their feet and their bodies in tune. She stooped, she lifted the burden of sheaves, she turned her face to the dimness where he was, and went with her burden over the stubble. She hesitated, set down her sheaves, there was a swish and hiss of mingling oats, he was drawing near, and she must turn again. And there was the flaring moon laying bare her bosom again, making her drift ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... swings over the door. Its race has fallen since its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred it from ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... one room, but she maintains that there are two; so, rather than argue, let us say that there are two. The other one has no window, and she could not swish her old skirts in it without knocking something over; its grandest display is of tin pans and crockery on top of a dresser which has a lid to it; you have but to whip off the utensils and raise the lid, and, ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... of me. We'd been wiped out. And the smell—good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse, and there I had to lie until I felt better. Just like parade it had been a minute before—then stumble, bang, swish!" ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... pressure, he attached a piece of unraveled rope, and this he carefully trained among the trees at a height of six inches from the ground, using as carriers nails driven into the trunks. The ultimate result was that a mere swish of Iris's dress against the taut cord ...
— The Wings of the Morning • Louis Tracy
... The swish of the tide continues up beyond the broad estuary, the sand-banks, and the marshes, and there are reaches more or less long (rather less than twenty miles perhaps originally in the case of the Thames, rather more perhaps originally in the case of the lower Seine) which for the ...
— The Historic Thames • Hilaire Belloc
... there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of foam as it ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... the Monarch, like a bird with a broken wing. In a few minutes there came a sudden jar that told the ship had struck the ice. Then, with a swish and rustle the silk bag, emptied of gas fell on the roof of the cabins. The Monarch had come down between two big hummocks of ice, and rested almost in ...
— Through the Air to the North Pole - or The Wonderful Cruise of the Electric Monarch • Roy Rockwood
... as "Dear Phoenix:" and was wondering how you spelled "Phoenix," when there came a swish and a thump at his window, followed by a ...
— David and the Phoenix • Edward Ormondroyd
... of coast, fringed with tall plumed palms casting wavering shadows on the yellow sand as they sway and swish softly to the breath of the brave trade-wind that whistles through the thickly-verdured hummocks on the weather side of the island, to die away into a soft breath as, after passing through the belt of cocoanuts, it faintly ripples the transparent depths of ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... with the owner's knowledge of what it is to be used for—these boys will row, with muffled oars, under some dock having valuable goods upon it. The only sound that disturbs the silence of the night is the dull splash, splash and swish of the waters against the dock or some vessel moored there. Everything is quiet, while the night watchman slowly paces along his narrow beat, at the one end of which are the dancing, moonlit waters and at the other ...
— Danger! A True History of a Great City's Wiles and Temptations • William Howe
... for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... there never is a policeman in sight when you look for one; so Miss Frisbie stamped her foot again and snorted in Peter's face. "Goodbye, Comrade Gudge!" The emphasis she put upon that word "comrade" would have frozen the fieriest Red soul; and she turned with a swish of her skirts and strode off, and Peter stood looking mournfully at her little French heels going crunch, crunch, crunch on the gravel path. When the heels were clean gone out of sight, Peter sought out the ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... day the Prince of India was in audience by the Emperor's invitation, Sergius was the sole occupant of the stone bench. The hour was pleasant; the distant effects were perfect; birds and boats enlivened the air and water; and in listening to the swish of waves amongst the rocks and pebbles below, so like whisperings, he forgot where he was, and his impatience and melancholy, and the people strolling negligently past. One of his arms lay along the edge of the bulwark before him, and he was not thinking so much as simply enjoying existence. To ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... A sharp zigzag, a swish over a bridge, where as one rather felt than saw the full green Anio dashing through rocks; and just at sunset we came upon Subiaco—rising violet, with its great pointing castle mound, from the green valley of water ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... was just enough. But for the birch-tree it was just too much. The shallow earth by which it held gave way; and the next moment, with a clatter of loosened stones and a swish of leafy branches, it crashed majestically down into the crevice, closing one end of it with a mass of boughs and foliage, and once more frightening the imprisoned cub almost out of ...
— The House in the Water - A Book of Animal Stories • Charles G. D. Roberts
... of which he gathered himself to rise upward, catching as he did so a swish of The Hollander's pipe-length which made his cigarette leap neatly, holder and all, upward and outward. The Young Pole had by this time recovered sufficiently to get upon his hands and knees behind ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... swish of footsteps through wet grass. Then all was still. He lay flat, with his cheek on the sand, and he had to look ahead and upward to make out the dark figure of Greaves on the bank. One way or another he meant to kill Greaves, ...
— To the Last Man • Zane Grey
... listening. From the wall somewhere behind the bed came a low, weird monotonous sound, half wail, half croaking moan, like a banshee with a cold. A clanking, then, as of chains. A s-s-swish. Then three dull raps, seemingly from within ...
— Cheerful—By Request • Edna Ferber
... was a crash of hoofs on the sod. Stella's clear voice rang out, and the swish of a quirt came ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... silence I heard a sound which sent my heart into my mouth. It was the clank of the levers and the swish of the leaking cylinder. He had set the engine at work. The lamp still stood upon the floor where I had placed it when examining the trough. By its light I saw that the black ceiling was coming down upon me, slowly, jerkily, but, as none knew better than myself, with a force ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... stretches away as far as you can see. It seems to meet the sky. The weaves roll and break, and roll and break from morning till night forever. Where there are rocks along the shore the ocean dashes against them. The sparkling snowy spray then leaps high into the air with a boom and a swish! ...
— Where We Live - A Home Geography • Emilie Van Beil Jacobs
... the rudder lines, the boys sitting either side of him on the bottom of the boat where they could stretch out at full length in case they felt inclined to sleep, and after they had listened to the swish of the sea under the stern for some time Neal asked as he raised his head to look over ...
— The Search for the Silver City - A Tale of Adventure in Yucatan • James Otis
... could live where he liked, and had arranged to share my dug-out—that delectable villa on Fusilier Bluff known as "Seaview." Really, under these conditions, the Peninsula, we felt, would be quite "swish." ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... he could see nothing. Removing his snowshoes and pack, 'Merican Joe climbed the tree and a few moments later Connie heard the blows of his belt ax as he hacked at the limb that held the clog. There was a swish of snow-laden branches, and amid a deluge of fine snow the frozen body of the lynx struck the ground at the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... himself on the important capture he had made, and with his hand on his captive's collar, and his revolver to his ear, was moving towards the center of the street, when a whistling "swish" was heard, the dull thud of a slung shot on the detective's head followed, and, every muscle relaxed, he sank a senseless man in ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... as she hurried up the corridor, having safely passed Miss Marlowe's door, she suddenly heard a soft footfall or the swish of a kimono, and then discovered a dark form bearing down upon her. Could it be Miss Marlowe? No, it wasn't tall enough. It must be Miss Ashwell. Judith flattened herself against the wall, which was fortunately in the shadow, in the hope that she would not ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... came tearing up. He could hear the swish of the waters, white at her foot; he could see the wet sail, the bucketing bows, the fore-deck awash. She would pass bang beneath his feet. He could see no man at the helm—only the jumping bowsprit, the thrashing foot, and that huge ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... bumper, and taking a deep breath, jerked the cord. Tired legs failed and Solomon slipped backward when the hub cap broke free of the tape and sailed through the air to clang against the wagon's fender. Lying on his back, struggling to rise, Solomon heard a slight swish as though a whirlwind had come through the yard. The scent of air-borne dust bit his nostrils as ...
— Solomon's Orbit • William Carroll
... door pushed open, and a swish of fresh air sweeps in, men along with it; as they enter, ...
— The Flag of Distress - A Story of the South Sea • Mayne Reid
... the regular swish, swish of the big wheel; but he must have been mistaken, for after a moment he realized that the Standish ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... the whole room. If, under the confidence induced by the vision I had had of him on his knees the night before, any suspicion remained in my mind of his being Gwendolen Ocumpaugh in disguise, it vanished at sight of the fearless head, lifted high in boyish freedom, and the gay swish, swish of the whip in his ...
— The Millionaire Baby • Anna Katharine Green
... was Maria who brought on the FLOOD I have learned today.... With a stone she found uncovered by the filtering from the little opening she began pounding against the wall.... Suddenly the wall bulged inward.... There was a swish, and a roar, and a deadening GUSH,—and then a RUSHING FLOOD tore open the side of the wall and burst like a torrent into our muddy, narrow cell. Higher and higher it mounted, enveloping us to our arm pits.... My 'prisoner' moved calmly over ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... carriage went back up the cave with a swish and rustle of wings, and the children went down the hill as quickly as they could—which was not very quickly because of Dickie's poor lame foot. The boy who had killed a Cromwell's man with his little sword had ...
— Harding's luck • E. [Edith] Nesbit
... material, and a large black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of which were in ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... anything else under the sun. This was when they shot past the most prominent branch of the tree that happened to stand directly in the way of the rising aeroplane. Andy believed that the wheels below must have actually brushed through the foliage, for he always declared that he heard a fierce "swish" as they passed. ...
— The Aeroplane Boys on the Wing - Aeroplane Chums in the Tropics • John Luther Langworthy
... starts out on the trail, the bells of the leaders jingling, the rattle and crunch of buckles and saddle-leather, the click of the horses' feet against the rocks, the swish as they ford a singing stream. The wind is in the trees and birds are chirping. Then comes the long, hard day, the forest, the first sight of snow-covered peaks, the final ...
— Tenting To-night - A Chronicle of Sport and Adventure in Glacier Park and the - Cascade Mountains • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... listened to the swish and murmur of the wind, the earth-old tune with the power to carry the soul back to the dawn of time, the years fell away from him and he forgot much, remembering more. He knew now that there had always been ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of the water along ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... nibble by the wayside will not be noticed, and you alone know when it is time to get the young couple home; you know, alas! when the courtship—blissful period of loitering for you—is ended and when the marriage is made, by the tighter rein, the sharper word, and the occasional swish of the whip. Ah, Dobbin, you and I—" The ...
— Two Thousand Miles On An Automobile • Arthur Jerome Eddy
... for at least a minute after Jack and Jake had left, then he heard a soft swish, and a few stars which had been visible through the upper half of the window were blotted out. The ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... that all might know of my coming. But there was no roar of welcome. "Deucalion," they lisped with mincing voices, bowing themselves ridiculously to the ground so that all their ornaments and silks might jangle and swish. Indeed, when Phorenice herself appeared, and all sent up their cries and made lawful obeisance, there was the same artificiality in the welcome. They meant well enough, it is true; but this was the new fashion. ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... mighty creak of the ladder, the swish of a heavy body through the air, an interrupted growl, and then a ripping thud. Swallow's chubby body shot squarely through the opening, accompanied by a trusty though somewhat sadly stretched vest, and the deed ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... and swiftly crossed himself. His face looked as if he saw something startling just beyond his adversary. Possibly this sudden change of expression caused Farnsworth to hesitate for a mere point of time. Then there was the swish of a woman's skirts; a light step pattered on the frozen ground, and Alice sprang between the men, facing Farnsworth. As she did this something small and yellow,—the locket at her throat,—fell and rolled under her ...
— Alice of Old Vincennes • Maurice Thompson
... into her hands the roll of papers upon the table. As softly as she had come she went. The deep sobbing breaths of the two men, the half-stifled cries with which Vine was seeking for outside help, effectually deadened the faint swish of her skirts and the tremor of her footsteps upon the ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... side of the ship and a grating sound followed. Then came other gentle thuds combined with the soft swish of water disturbed. Peggy and Brewster were on the point of going below when their attention was caught by ...
— Brewster's Millions • George Barr McCutcheon
... worried him. He was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... in the colorous landscape which some native artist would have done well to preserve. For a time no sound was heard but the distant roar of the surf, the sighing of the wind through the pines on the hill, the less romantic grunts of the women and the swish of the linen in the water. Suddenly Mariquita, the proscribed, exclaimed from ...
— The Splendid Idle Forties - Stories of Old California • Gertrude Atherton
... office beat to a froth, and I was enjoyin' it, lazy and comf'table, with my feet up on the bench and my head back; when all at once there's a big spasm of applause, the doors openin' on the back veranda are swung open, everybody starts chatterin' together, there's a swish and a rustle and a clatter of high heels; and the next thing I knew the whole blamed garden ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... the ship had left St. Vincent that a certain amount of peace came to establish itself in his heart, and the large and beautiful consolation of the sea began to make itself felt. The weather was calm and clear, and the monotonous slap and swish of the water against the ship's side was in itself soothing. The company on board were all strangers to him, and this helped to give him a feeling that he was starting anew in life. Also he was on his way to do the best he could to find his brother, if he were living, ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... and swish of thousands of shells, the guns smashed the stillness. Instantly, the flash of their explosion lit up the opposite trenches. For a fraction of a second the thought came to McKnutt how wonderful it was that man could produce a sound to which Nature had no equal, either in violence ...
— Life in a Tank • Richard Haigh
... trees as Durham reached where the road dipped to the stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, the ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... darkling course she followed. When but a few hundred yards down the path, someone called her. She thought it was a fancy and went onward, nevertheless feeling a sudden silence and trouble. Immediately she heard footsteps and the rustling swish of ...
— A Singer from the Sea • Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr
... straits we met the opposite number vessel to ours. She had an escort of three warships, so that for a flash there were seven destroyers on the breast of that water. But it was not for long. A swish, and they were nearer England and we nearer France, they getting some of our smoke and we some of theirs. Steamers go into the French port stern first, and soon I found myself treading French soil. Our Scotch labourers were hurried off the vessel, and they vanished with extraordinary quickness; ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... uncovered one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... unit;—he also told me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only left ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... great thunderstorm. The lightning flashed fearfully all about us, killing two oxen quite near to my wagon, and the thunder rolled and echoed till the very earth seemed to shake. Then came a wail of cold wind, and after that the swish of torrential rain. Although I was well accustomed to such natural manifestations, especially at this season of the year, I confess that these sights and sounds did not tend to raise my spirits, which were already lower than they should have been on that eventful ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... a fine residence with just a nameplate on the door. They were ushered into a handsome parlor and in a few moments Madam came sweeping down the broad stairway, her silken gown making a soft swish on the polished floor. She was surprised and delighted to see Mrs. Crawford, who introduced her daughter and soon stated her errand. The green was to be a walking suit for Miss Marguerite and trimmed ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... to see his yacht lying so near him, and Davy on the deck, and to hear the blows of the hammer and the swish of the plane as the carpenter went on with the alterations to which he had set him, but he got tired of sharing in activity only with his ears and eyes. One thing he had by it, however, and that was—a good lesson in quiescent ...
— The Marquis of Lossie • George MacDonald
... them all making a rush for the book. There was a swish and a whirr and a rustling of leaves, and an instant later the book lay upon the floor looking just like any other book, while Jane Gladys' strange companions ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... grim and severe, Who the long night before, with a feeling of fear, Had slumbered but fitfully, hearing the swish Of the sky-rocket over his roof, with a wish That the urchin who fired it were fast to the end Of the stick to forever and ever ascend; Or to hopelessly ask why the boy with the horn And its horrible havoc had ever been born! Or to wish, in his wakefulness, staring aghast, That this Fourth of July ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... got out of the burned region," said Jack. "It's dismal, and I like to hear the wind cutting through the dry grass with its sharp swish." ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... though as yet I could not see the bird, I heard its cry of "Honk, honk" and the swish ...
— Marie - An Episode in The Life of the late Allan Quatermain • H. Rider Haggard
... the door and went in with a swish of silk and patchouli. The candles were unlit. Miss Darrell, still wearing her hat and scarlet wrap, sat at the ...
— A Terrible Secret • May Agnes Fleming
... in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the Doctor ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... The old man was crying. Neither heard the swish in the bluff growth, neither saw the brave light in the two eyes that ...
— Sally of Missouri • R. E. Young
... the buildings and the arrangement of the streets reminded me of Spain, while the blended coloring on the parapet and walls (which only time can give) was like Ponta Delgada of the Azores. Our hotel stood on an eminence overlooking the sea, indeed so near the sea that the moan and swish of the waves were always with us. The view from my balcony brought to mind the outlook from the old monastery at Amalfi, Italy. The whole atmosphere of the place was peaceful, and this was its chief attraction. We were there over Sunday, and the impression was deepened. Our arrival ...
— Travels in the Far East • Ellen Mary Hayes Peck
... whoever that may be. "What is it all," we say, "but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?" We feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless giant may at any moment crush. We dream of the swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of fact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities just as an elephant might treat an ant-hill. It is this sense of the ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... mandolin with a swish of its red ribbons, and laid it upon the piano, where it quivered and thrummed again like a living thing, awaking weird echoes from the ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... was blowin cats an dogs but we had most of the doboys money an they didnt seem to want to go till we had it all so nobody minded the wether much. Angus had just passed six times an about all the money we had was bet when there was a swish like a punctured tire an everything seemed to blow up ...
— "Same old Bill, eh Mable!" • Edward Streeter
... bade him not loiter, and that Pierre Delouvain in front made himself fast and drew in the rope with a particular care when it came to his turn to move. But he did not know that all that surface snow might peel off in a moment, and swish down the cliffs, sweeping the party from their feet. There were rounded rocks and slabs with no hold for hand or foot but roughness, roughness in the surface, and here and there a wrinkle. But the guide went first, as often as not pushed up by Garratt Skinner, ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... moment's pause. Arnold moved to the door and held it open. They heard the swish of her skirts as she came through the outer office, and the heavier footsteps of the doctor who followed. Mr. Weatherley tried vainly to rise to his feet. He held out his arms. Fenella hastened ...
— The Lighted Way • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... again of a wild creature under the net; of a bird caught in a snare. She had left him. She had left him—sick—helpless—thirsty. The spear of the hunter had entered his very soul. 'Why?' he cried in the penetrating and indignant voice of a man calling to a responsible Maker. A gust of wind and a swish of rain answered. ...
— Amy Foster • Joseph Conrad
... gathered behind a ruined house at a place we called Enfiladed crossroads and went over to see who they were. The moment I stepped out of my trench a German machine gunner got after me and I could hear the "swish swish" of the bullets a few feet in front of me. I realized that death was very near, so I stepped short and let him get his range a little ahead of me. His gun followed me for a hundred yards. I found ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... his elbows on his knees, and the broad brim of his soft hat swept the marble floor with a gentle rhythmic swish, as it swung idly from his loosened grasp. I heard it as an accompaniment ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... unspeakable. That element now remains upon its reservation; among the superior advantages enjoyed by the man-about-town of today is that of the companionship, at his dinner in camera, of ladies having an honorable vocation. In the corridors of the "French restaurant" the swish of Pseudonyma's skirt is no longer heard; she has been superseded by the Princess Tap-tap (with Truckle & Cinch), by my lady Snip-snip (from the "emporium" of Boltwhack & Co.), by Miss Chink-chink, who sits at the receipt of customs in that severely ...
— The Shadow On The Dial, and Other Essays - 1909 • Ambrose Bierce
... away the raindrops of the night before. Signs of activity are abroad in the inn; the swish of brooms; the noisy clatter of pails. A warm aroma of coffee floats up the stairs and under the door of number fourteen, awaking Arnaud to pleasant thoughts of breakfast. He is partly dressed before his eye lights on ...
— Uncanny Tales • Various
... was so bright that our boat started about three o'clock instead of waiting for daylight, and the start swung my state-room door open. It was so warm that I let it remain, and lay there hearing the gentle swish of the water curling against the side of the steamer, and seeing the soft moonlight form a silver pathway from the yellow bank across the river to my cabin door. The machinery made no noise. There was no more vibration than on a sail-boat. And there was the whole panorama ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... and the great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... scattered handful of belated pedestrians, the infrequent windy roar of trains on the Third Avenue L, empty clapping of horses' hoofs on the asphalt ... the yowl of a sentimental tomcat ... a dull and distant grumble, vague, formless, like a long, unending roll of thunder down the horizon ... the swish and sough of waters breaking away from the flanks of the Autocratic ... and then, finally, like a tocsin, the sonorous, musical chiming of the grandfather's clock ...
— The Bandbox • Louis Joseph Vance
... seafaring matters as myself; but the captain said we were making a good voyage, and with that we were content. A stiff breeze blew the schooner along merrily, the blue sky was flecked only by the softest white clouds, and the swish, swish of the water against the vessel's sides sounded pleasantly in our ears. I began to think there were worse ways of earning a living than by ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... by an oath, cut the dying echoes of the song. She could hear the swish of a quirt falling again and again, and the sound of trampling hoofs thudding on the hard, sun-cracked ground. Startled, she sprang to her feet, and saw silhouetted against the skyline a horse and ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... the place was thronged. Every moment, fresh arrivals shouting for 'drinks.' Every moment the swish of a syphon, the popping of corks; ginger-beer and lemonade for Indian officers, seated just outside, and permitted by caste rules to refresh themselves 'English-fashion,' provided they drank from the pure source of the bottle. Not a Sikh or Rajput of them all would have sullied his caste-purity ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... gaily. A pretty group was rustling past the office, all muslin frills and silk sashes and flowers of every colour, and the prettiest and best dressed of them all came running up the steps to his side, with a swish of silken skirts and a whiff ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... behind them at the cabin was repeated once, echoing away through the black and dripping forest. After that Paul heard nothing, but to the keener ears of Henry came now and then the soft, sliding sound of rapid footsteps, a word or two uttered low, and the faint swish of bushes, swinging back into place after a body passed. He knew that the warriors were now seeking eagerly for them, but with the aid of the intense darkness he hoped that he and Paul would steal safely through their ...
— The Forest Runners - A Story of the Great War Trail in Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... which he stood, George could not resist this little bit of sarcasm at the expense of Arabi's prowess. Apparently his interrogator had no sense of humour, for although Helmar could not see the man he was convinced that he gave some sign. There was a horrid swish in the air, and the kourbash fell across his bare shoulders with ruthless force, and a great wale was raised where it struck. George uttered no sound, but, bursting with indignation and in great pain, waited for ...
— Under the Rebel's Reign • Charles Neufeld
... intend to do." The artist's face was set and stern. His eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just warming up to ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... on the subject of slang has given us two good examples of meaningless and expressive slang. The people who first called marmalade "swish" could have no reason for inventing the new name except to seem odd and different from other people. Swish is certainly not a more expressive or descriptive word than marmalade. The one means nothing, while the other has ...
— Stories That Words Tell Us • Elizabeth O'Neill
... was inclined to believe the latter—he had often averred that Bessie Belle knew quite as much as or more than he. At any rate she picked her way with admirable care, her hoofs made almost no sound upon the wet soil; only the complaint of the saddle leathers or the swish of a wet branch rose above the steady patter of the raindrops. It was not necessary to guide her; she selected the openings of her own free will, her small, sharp ears were alert, and her ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... his eyes and held out in the air his trembling hand with the palm upwards. He felt the prefect of studies touch it for a moment at the fingers to straighten it and then the swish of the sleeve of the soutane as the pandybat was lifted to strike. A hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loud crack of a broken stick made his trembling hand crumple together like a leaf in the fire: and at the sound ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... Swish! came the whip down on the withers of the late frisky runaway, and Gabe went helter-skelter down the road, headed ...
— Fred Fenton on the Track - or, The Athletes of Riverport School • Allen Chapman
... with the fouling marks about breech and muzzle, to be sworn to by half a dozen superfluous privates; there would be heat, reeking heat, till the wet pencil slipped sideways between the fingers; and the punkah would swish and the pleaders would jabber in the verandahs, and his Commanding Officer would put in certificates of the prisoner's moral character, while the jury would pant and the summer uniforms of the witnesses would smell of dye and soaps; and some abject barrack-sweeper ...
— This is "Part II" of Soldiers Three, we don't have "Part I" • Rudyard Kipling
... my thirst for a little warmth, a little sun, a little corner of blue sky avails nothing. Without, the rain falls with a long drawn SWISH, and the night is as dark as a vault. There is no wind indeed, and that is a blessed change after the unruly, bedlamite gusts that have been charging against one round street corners and utterly abolishing ...
— The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson - Volume 1 • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and say, 'Grant that we may sit, the one on Thy right hand and the other on Thy left, in Thy kingdom.' That was what he wished and hoped for, and what he got was years of service, and a taste of persecution, and finally the swish of the headsman's sword. ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture: The Acts • Alexander Maclaren
... cocks, whinnying horses and lowing cattle, the rattle of milk-tins, the squeak of the well-boom, the clank of mowing-machines, the swish of a passing brush-harrow, and, finally, the clamoring gong, were too much for Nelton. Lewis, on his way to look for a bath, caught him stuffing what he called "cotton an' wool" ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... in the night, with monotonous swish-swish and swelling wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... enough, though she had not heard the sound of the waves before, the melancholy swish! swish! now echoed through her very soul. When she felt a salt taste on her lips she thought it was a drop of spray from the sea, then she felt the faint trickling sensation of another and ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... comes!" screamed Madaline, as a moving figure could be outlined in the shadows of the low brush, and tall swamp berry trees, that just towered high enough to hide the form that bent and broke the impeding young birches. It was the swish and motion of the brush that indicated his ...
— The Girl Scout Pioneers - or Winning the First B. C. • Lillian C Garis
... mysteries of schooling" deliberately. I wondered then, I wonder still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learnt from Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at home and took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing," again, is deliberate—it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But the things I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, like the "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire—great, disconnected, time-worn chunks amidst the natural herbage of it. "The ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... closed panel. One movement of his hand and the chamber was in darkness and the telegraph instrument stilled. Backing into a corner, Henry waited, his eyes still blinded by the change from light to darkness; but he heard the opening of the panel, and the soft swish ...
— I Spy • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... nearer—while it wearily climbed the stairways, marking each move by the loose surplus of chain that fell with an accented rattle upon each succeeding step as the goblin that bore it advanced. I heard muttered sentences; half-uttered screams that seemed smothered violently; and the swish of invisible garments, the rush of invisible wings. Then I became conscious that my chamber was invaded—that I was not alone. I heard sighs and breathings about my bed, and mysterious whisperings. Three little spheres of soft phosphorescent ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... chewing it. They knew each other well. The voices of children cried from the other gardens. A fisherman's light cart shook along the sandy road, and from far away they heard a dog barking; it was muffled as though the dog had its head in a sack. If you listened you could just hear the soft swish of the sea at full tide sweeping the pebbles. The sun ...
— The Garden Party • Katherine Mansfield
... at one end of the place, curved into an outline that suggested a deep recess. The figure of a crowned woman, that moved rigidly up and down, was silhouetted over my body. Groaning creaks of wood and the faint swish of water made themselves ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... me, and had surmised who they were. Undoubtedly they were the smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I knew ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... dark trunk-rooms and up the uncarpeted stairs, her heart beat fast at the "swish" of her ...
— Golden Days for Boys and Girls, Vol. XIII, Nov. 28, 1891 • Various
... opens when the tree sways. It sways—it staggers; a loud crack as the fibres part, then with a slow heave over it goes, and, descending, twists upon the base. The vast limbs plough into the sward; the twigs are crushed; the boughs, after striking the earth, rebound and swish upwards. See that you stand clear, for the least branch will thresh you down. The flat surface of the exposed butt is blue with stains from ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... The faint swish of bushes as Lieutenant Boggs's ten men scuttled into the brush behind them—the distant beat of the army's feet getting fainter ahead of them, and then ...
— Christmas Eve on Lonesome and Other Stories • John Fox, Jr.
... of my home, Some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high Where once lay sterile snow; Soon shall I gaze across a sea Of sun-begotten grain, Which my unflinching watch hath sealed For harvest ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... the bottom-most dungeon of Peter and Paul, in the slimy pits lying under the Neva. Touman, between the two guards who held him, and who sometimes received blows on the rebound that were not intended for them, never uttered a complaint. Outside the invectives of Koupriane there was heard only the swish of the cords and the cries of Rouletabille, who continued to protest that it was abominable, and called the Chief of Police a savage. Finally the savage stopped. Gouts of blood had ...
— The Secret of the Night • Gaston Leroux
... the big red ox with a pointed stick, the two beasts settled their massive shoulders to the collar, and with a soft greasy swish and a crackle of half-burnt stubble the moldboard rolled aside the loam. I too felt that this was a great occasion. At last I was working my own land; with the plowshare I was opening the gate of an unknown future; and my fingers tingled as I jerked the lines. Then ...
— Lorimer of the Northwest • Harold Bindloss
... cursing. We dropped, gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... want of fresh air. Even on days which were exceptionally quiet—and there were not many of them,—when one would move out to look at the grounds with a view to future defences in case we were driven back, or with a desire to ease a torpid liver, suddenly there would be a loudening swish in the air and a crash which would send one of the tall pine-trees into smithereens, with a shower of broken branches in all directions, followed by another, or half a dozen more; and we would retire gracefully—sometimes even rapidly—behind ...
— The Doings of the Fifteenth Infantry Brigade - August 1914 to March 1915 • Edward Lord Gleichen
... impossible. The Boers had withdrawn to a second position a thousand yards in rear of the top of the hill. From this they directed a most accurate and damnable fire on all who showed themselves on the plateau. Beneath the crest one sat in safety and listened to the swish of bullets passing overhead. Above, the men were content to lie quite still underneath the rocks and wait for darkness. I had a message for Major Childe and found him sitting on this dangerous ground, partly sheltered by a large rock—a serene ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... little room with board and a stove and no objection to practicing. There were plenty—but the rates! The willow plume looked prosperous, and she had a way of making the plainest garments appear costly. Landladies looked at the plume and the suit and heard the soft swish of silk beneath, which marks only self-respect in the American woman but is extravagance in Europe, and added to their regular terms until poor Harmony's heart almost stood still. And then at last toward evening she happened on a gloomy ...
— The Street of Seven Stars • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... the hour by Sam, who knew Miss Elizabeth's will for having all things in running order. Peyton's drowsiness wrapped him closer and closer. Presently he was remotely aware of the opening of the door, the tread of light feet on the floor, the swish of skirts. But he had now reached that lethargic point which involves total indifference to outer things, and he did not even ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... at a fine residence with just a nameplate on the door. They were ushered into a handsome parlor and in a few moments Madam came sweeping down the broad stairway, her silken gown making a soft swish on the polished floor. She was surprised and delighted to see Mrs. Crawford, who introduced her daughter and soon stated her errand. The green was to be a walking suit for Miss Marguerite and trimmed with whatever fur would be considered most appropriate. ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... whatever else it lacked, it had a front window, with shutters, and a balcony with an iron railing, and when tucked up in their beds at night, in the tiny dark alcove, the children could hear the soft swish of ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... haunches. The raw earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those were riveted up. In the little deep water left ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... again, at Moscow, we would all of us be standing before the table ready-laid in the hall, talking quietly among ourselves as we waited for our grandmother, whom the butler, Gabriel, had gone to acquaint with the fact that luncheon was ready. Suddenly the door would open, there would come the faint swish of a dress and the sound of footsteps, and our grandmother—dressed in a mob-cap trimmed with a quaint old lilac bow, and wearing either a smile or a severe expression on her face according as the state of her health inclined her—would issue from her room. Gabriel would hasten to precede her ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... a dark and heavy night. The moon and stars lay behind drifting clouds and, now and then, came a swish of cold rain. Harry was not able to see more than a few yards to right or left, when the road ran through the woods, as it did most of the time, and not much further when fields chanced ...
— The Guns of Bull Run - A Story of the Civil War's Eve • Joseph A. Altsheler
... it could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... Canadian homestead to which her thoughts wandered. She could recall the unpolished stove, filling the place with its curious, unpleasant smell, and the icy draughts that eddied about it. She could imagine the swish of driving snow about the quivering wooden building when the dreaded blizzards raged; the strange, oppressive silence when the prairie lay still in the grip of the Arctic frost; and George coming in with half-frozen ...
— Ranching for Sylvia • Harold Bindloss
... stifled exclamation. Ned was too horror-struck to answer; above the clicking of the oars in the rowlocks he fancied he could hear the swish of the savage sharks rushing through the water at their living prey. He was not sorry when George again rested on his ...
— The Workingman's Paradise - An Australian Labour Novel • John Miller
... silence. It was so quiet outside that even the birds seemed to be listening and watching; then came the swish of weeds trampled ...
— David Malcolm • Nelson Lloyd
... daylight, I saw Maloney deliberately creep closer to the fire and heap the wood on. We gathered in to the heat, and to each other, and listened to Dr. Silence's voice as it mingled with the swish and whirr of the wind about us, and the falling of the ...
— Three More John Silence Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... Master Mordacks, who of all born men was foremost, with his wiry fingers spread, to pass them through the scattery forelock of that mettlesome horse, old Time. The old horse galloped by him unawares, and left him standing still, to hearken the swish of the tail, and the clatter of the hoofs, and the spirited nostrils neighing for a race, on the wide breezy down at the end of the lane. But Geoffrey Mordacks was not to blame. His instructions were to move slowly, until ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... quickly to the stake on which the lantern hung. The wind was rushing through the tree-tops with increased fervor; the air was cool and wet with the signs of rain; a swirl of dust flew up into her face; the swish of leaves sounded like the splashing of water in the air. Holding her heart for minutes, she at last regained some of the lost composure. A hysterical laugh fell from her lips. "What a goose! It was an owl and I've heard hundreds of them up here. Still, they ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... expedition. Dave was inclined to believe the latter—he had often averred that Bessie Belle knew quite as much as or more than he. At any rate she picked her way with admirable care, her hoofs made almost no sound upon the wet soil; only the complaint of the saddle leathers or the swish of a wet branch rose above the steady patter of the raindrops. It was not necessary to guide her; she selected the openings of her own free will, her small, sharp ears were alert, and her eyes searched the ...
— Heart of the Sunset • Rex Beach
... crossed the long toll-bridge, the horses stepping hesitatingly and curveting a little at the swish of the noisy water, climbed the sunny hills beyond, and dipped down to a level stretch of wood, in the heart of which they chose a picnic-ground by the side of ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... heavily curtained foyer, save for a meagre shaft of light that came through a slightly parted pair of portieres to the left and not a dozen feet from where he stood. He strained his ear toward this shaft of light until there came an unmistakable swish of sound, whereupon he moved forward in ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... on the movable ceiling. For a moment, there was resistance, then, very slowly, it began to open. A crack appeared in its center, and the air of the room hissed out with the swish of a minor tempest. After that, it was easier. The crack widened swiftly, and the roof rolled back to the walls, leaving the room open to ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... partaking of tea, feeding the swans swimming by, and watching the gay traffic, - the multitude of graceful little crafts with fashionably dressed men and women in softly blending tones of green, violet, pink and white, the muscular gig-rowers in training, shooting by with a regular swish of oars and followed by shouting friends on horseback; the competitors in a swimming match making their way amidst all this tumult cheered on every side; the luxuriant houseboats floating by, full of flowers and happy people, from which echoed strains of music and a flood ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... but neversomeless I ain't gwine run away: I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blessed day. YOU screech, and swish de water, Satan! I'se a ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... of the afternoon the day's work of tramping the rounds of the agents' offices is over. Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things and a swish of silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odor of gaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious young comedians, with versatile Adam's apples, gather in doorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching from somewhere comes the smell of ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... matched, the two. If Alwin lacked any of the Black One's strength, he made it up in skill and quickness. The bright steel began to fly fast and faster, until its swish was like the venomous hiss of serpents. The color came and went in Helga's cheek; her mouth worked nervously. Sigurd's eyes were fixed upon the two like glowing lamps, as to and fro they went with vengeful fury. In all the valley there was no sound but the fierce clash and clatter of the swords. ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... heels from under him and dropped him on the floor, while Loomis confronted the others who would have made some show of obeying orders. And then there was the whirr of a whip-lash, a crack and snap and swish, and a red welt shot across Burleigh's livid face as he himself staggered back to his desk. With raging tongue and frantic oath he leaped out again, a leveled pistol in his hand, but even before he could pull trigger, or Folsom ...
— Warrior Gap - A Story of the Sioux Outbreak of '68. • Charles King
... other. I swung the lantern over them just as Dutch got upon his feet, gripping his antagonist by the collar. He flung him backward over the stone curbing of the pool and fell upon him in the walk with a swish of wet garments. The guards from the outer edges of the garden had clambered down and they gathered about us as ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... into the ice below, that Garratt Skinner bade him not loiter, and that Pierre Delouvain in front made himself fast and drew in the rope with a particular care when it came to his turn to move. But he did not know that all that surface snow might peel off in a moment, and swish down the cliffs, sweeping the party from their feet. There were rounded rocks and slabs with no hold for hand or foot but roughness, roughness in the surface, and here and there a wrinkle. But the guide went first, as often as not pushed up by Garratt Skinner, and Walter Hine, like ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason
... anyhow?" she muttered, as it fell with a soft little swish on the top of the pile inside. "It's too late to write another now." And she hurried after Christy down ...
— Betty Wales, Sophomore • Margaret Warde
... corners of the feather pallet, and made it travel in a swift swish across the attic boards to the window at the front, which he opened. Supporting Maria in his arms, he signaled Angelique, with an amused face, to obey her tyrant; and she did so. But Peggy stalked behind the screens, and put her face close to the black eyes in the great soft lair built ...
— Old Kaskaskia • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... a faint rustling within the house: the swish of draperies on the stairs, a delicious whispering when light feet descend, tapping, to hearts that beat an answer, the telegraphic message, "We come! We come! We are near! We are near!" Lige Willetts stared at Harkless. He had never thought the latter good-looking ...
— The Gentleman From Indiana • Booth Tarkington
... three freighters passed in the night, with monotonous swish-swish and swelling wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment a wet streak of sand or gravel, a dozen feet in width; in quick succession ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... of her life, could forget the morning that letter reached them. It was a wet, dark November morning, and she had been lying awake for a long time listening to the patter-patter, swish-swish of the rain pouring against her window. She had heard her grandfather go down and open the front door as usual, and light the fire in the kitchen; then she heard him fill the kettle at the pump and put it on to boil. After that he went ...
— The Story of Jessie • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... night. Against her windows screamed and whined the wind, driving a swish of fine, hard snow in its breath. From two rivers came the dull groaning of the fog horns. But the storm which kept her eyes hot and sleepless was ...
— Destiny • Charles Neville Buck
... When the soft swish of the swing-door told her that Sandy's departure had been taken, she emerged with her bundle and spread it out on the table for the third time. She was all smiles. She was not a bit angry with the foolish widower. This dogmatic attitude of mind, this wonderful self-satisfaction, were ...
— The Twins of Suffering Creek • Ridgwell Cullum
... the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... a swish, a line dropped out of the sky, and a little seat rested on the ground beside me. I climbed into it, and without further ado was whisked up into the swooper that floated a few ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan
... "You be one of Parson Underwood's little chaps, baint you? A rare honest gentleman of the right sort war he—he war!" and he pulled down another boy and put me up instead, and told me all about the great fire at Stubbs's factory. You can't think what fun it was. Roar, roar, up went the flame. Swish, wish, went the water—such a ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... When a swish of skirts on the stairs announced the housemaid he retreated to the bedroom, and the girl found him standing at a south window, gazing out over the fair vista of the Italian ...
— The Strange Case of Mortimer Fenley • Louis Tracy
... night, tired as I was. It is a dreadful noise, when heard for the first time. I did not then know what a mass of water can come aboard a ship without doing much harm. So, when the head of a wave, rushing across the deck, came with a swish down the hatch to wash the 'tweendecks I started up in my hammock, pretty well startled. I soon learned that all was well, for I heard the sailors laughing in their rough, swearing fashion as they piled a tarpaulin over the open hatch-mouth. A moment later, eight bells ...
— Martin Hyde, The Duke's Messenger • John Masefield
... and fell to the ground with Bill hanging to his throat like some tiger. In the fall the money-lender's pistol went off. There was a sharp report, and the bullet tore up the ground. But no harm was done. Bill held on. Then came the swish of a skirt. Jacky was at her lover's side. She dragged the money-lender's pistol from his pocket. Then Bill let go his hold and stood panting over the prostrate man. The whole thing was done in silence. No ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... were grinning. They did not really know that in this neglected, broken-flagged inclosure, shut in on one side by smoke-blackened, poverty-stricken houses, and on the other by a deserted and forgotten sunken graveyard, they heard the rustle of green forest boughs where birds nested close, the swish of the summer wind in the river reeds, and the tinkle and laughter and ...
— The Lost Prince • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... arch over the path there dropped with a swish and crash the ten-foot branch of a coco palm, falling without warning or apparent reason, as the overripe branches of coco palms do fall. The girl whirled round; and Payne was shocked and chilled to the marrow by the sight of her as she faced ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... At last, after a short but stiff climb up a rough piece of road which terminated in an eminence commanding a wide and uninterrupted view of the surrounding country, they paused. The sea lay far below them, dimly covered by the gathering darkness, and the long swish and roll of the tide could be heard sweeping to and from the shore like the grave and graduated ...
— The Treasure of Heaven - A Romance of Riches • Marie Corelli
... bacon-hog; But th' hog he cock'd a knowing eye, As if he twigg'd the reason why, And dodg'd and dodg'd 'un such a dance, He didn't give the noose a chance; So Master Blogg at last lays off, And shams a rattle at the trough, When swish! in bolts our bacon-hog Atwixt the legs o' Master Blogg, And flops him down in all the muck, As hadn't been swept up by luck— Now that, accordin' to my ...
— The Poetical Works of Thomas Hood • Thomas Hood
... all the scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, a special horse to ride, special roses ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... which held the hangings in place, and the impetuous swish of its folds, Lal Lu sprang to her feet and gazed with indignant rebuke upon ...
— The Flaw in the Sapphire • Charles M. Snyder
... exquisite masses of bloom, the glorious and delicate scented blossoms of the garden. It tore off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly destroyed, even as his life had been; it was expiring ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... hand full of pebbles clattered against Molly's window, and was swiftly followed by a second shower from Kitty's right hand. Then they shifted the pebbles in their left hand to their right, and, swish! these pebbles ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... nose and huge flapping nostrils. It was a Thessian head! The mouth, fifty feet across, wrinkled into an horrific grin, and broken, stained teeth of iron showed in the mouth. Great talons upraised, it rent the misty wall that bound them, and writhed its awful length in. The swish of its scales seemed to come to the watchers, as it chased after a great battleship whose pilot fled in terror. Faster than the mighty spaceship the awful Thing caught it in mighty talons that ripped through solid relux. Scratching, fluttering enormous, blood-red ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... with a miserable cry against the walls. She hoped Mildred Caniper slept through a wailing that might have a personal note for her, and as she prepared to leave the room and listen on the landing, she thought she heard a new sound cutting through the swish of the rainfall and the shriek of wind. It was a smaller sound, as though a child were alone and crying in the night, and she leaned from her window to look into the garden. The rain wetted her hair and hands and neck, while ...
— Moor Fires • E. H. (Emily Hilda) Young
... looking-glasses lest the quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like 'swish,' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent forth a vapour, or, as they ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... of seafaring matters as myself; but the captain said we were making a good voyage, and with that we were content. A stiff breeze blew the schooner along merrily, the blue sky was flecked only by the softest white clouds, and the swish, swish of the water against the vessel's sides sounded pleasantly in our ears. I began to think there were worse ways of earning a living than by going ...
— At the Point of the Sword • Herbert Hayens
... and still they continued to follow the rocky shore amid silence, broken only by the swish of the paddle, for neither Forbes nor Canaris cared ...
— The River of Darkness - Under Africa • William Murray Graydon
... storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with my courage. There was warmth ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... stalwart young men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... Whisk, swish, click, click, through the little crowd at Stokesley on a fine April afternoon, of jocund children just let loose from school, and mothers emerging from their meeting, collecting their progeny after ...
— More Bywords • Charlotte M. Yonge
... long council with Mabel, he had made up his mind to walk up-stream as far as the spot where two brooks met, and formed body enough for a fly flipped in very carefully to sail downward. Here he began, and the creak of his reel and the swish of his rod were music to him, after the whirl of ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 5 • Various
... foils with Leone Rufo, but finding no stop to the drawn 'swish' of the steel, he examined the end of his weapon with a lengthening visage, for it was buttonless. Ammiani burst into laughter at the spontaneous boyishness in the faces of the pair of ambitious lads. They both offered him one of the rapiers upon equal ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... There had been a swish, a ripple upstream. And as their heads turned they saw the water part and a black head, long, evil, glistening, pointing coldly down to where they were struggling towards the shore. Phil Holmes felt his strength ooze out. He heard Professor ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... dress of some soft material, and a large black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of which were in ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... color areas can be important. Light conditions might make them look different, but their size and location are positive keys. The sound of their wings can help as much as their calls. Flying goldeneyes make a whistling sound; wood ducks move with a swish; canvasbacks make a steady rushing sound. Not all ducks quack; many whistle, squeal, ...
— Ducks at a Distance - A Waterfowl Identification Guide • Robert W. Hines
... sweet Over its shallows singing,— I hear before I awaken The Bound of the church-bells ringing, And the sound of the leaves wind-shaken, Complaining and sun-forsaken, And the oriole warbling and singing, And the swish of the wind ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... inside the blacksmith-shop and fumbled for a match. Just as he was about to strike it he heard the swish of oiled clothes passing, and waited for some time. Then, igniting his punk and hiding it under his coat, he opened the door to listen. The wind had died down now and the rain sang musically upon ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... for Champney heard again the rattle of the pails and the stool; then a swish of starched petticoat and a cooing ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... chunk of the gun cradle hurtled backward through the air with a vicious swish. A piece of the bore splintered the wheels and buried itself in the ammunition caisson. Thick hunks of gun metal crumbling like dry cake filled ...
— "And they thought we wouldn't fight" • Floyd Gibbons
... out of the burned region," said Jack. "It's dismal, and I like to hear the wind cutting through the dry grass with its sharp swish." ...
— The Voyage of the Rattletrap • Hayden Carruth
... state bed shivers beneath its velvet coverlet. Above, dim, in the smoke, a tarnished coronet gleams dully. Overhead hammers and chinks the rain. Fearfully wails the wind down distant corridors, and there comes the swish and sigh of rushes lifted off the floors. The arras blows sidewise out from the wall, and then ...
— Sword Blades and Poppy Seed • Amy Lowell
... picture show across the street sprayed its gay crowd over the sidewalks and a vaudeville house down stairs gathered up rivulets of humanity from the spray. Somewhere near by was a dance, for we heard the rhythmic swish and lisp of young feet and the gay cry of the music. Here and there came a soldier; sometimes we saw a woman in mourning; but uniforms and mourners were uncommon. The war was ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... a crash of hoofs on the sod. Stella's clear voice rang out, and the swish of a quirt came ...
— Ted Strong in Montana - With Lariat and Spur • Edward C. Taylor
... short by the flashing of a blade before her. They had passed through the hail and reached the lightning! Throwing up her sword, she swerved to one side and escaped the bolt. Another faced her in this direction. The air was shot with bright flashes. Swish—clash! they sounded behind her; then a sickening jar, as Rothgar's terrible axe fell. A yell of agony rent the air. Swish—clash! the blows came faster; her ear could no longer separate them. The ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... Warren sprang up from the sofa. "Hamilton, show the doctor in here. I am going up to my room, Tom, and you and the doctor can talk here undisturbed." And with a swish of her skirts she disappeared up the staircase as the man-servant ushered the doctor into ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... so that he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though he had ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the seal of despair on this fine and handsome visage. He is shown, not as a sea monster, but as some rabid, evasive, impatient thing, dashing from point to point—as from policy to policy—with the angry swish that tells the unspoken anger failure everywhere compels. For the victories do not bring surrender, nor does frightfulness inspire terror. The merchant ships still put to sea—and the U ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... and after her, Caesar. As she passed, one heard the swish of her silk petticoats. The travellers looked ...
— Caesar or Nothing • Pio Baroja Baroja
... faint movement in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They seemed scarcely ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... he gathered himself to rise upward, catching as he did so a swish of The Hollander's pipe-length which made his cigarette leap neatly, holder and all, upward and outward. The Young Pole had by this time recovered sufficiently to get upon his hands and knees behind the Zulu; who was hurriedly but calmly propelling himself in the direction ...
— The Enormous Room • Edward Estlin Cummings
... reef on this side. Head for the cove." He pointed to the north end of the floating mass, and Captain Cromwell put about. The island, now that he was close, appeared to be making good headway—at least four or five miles an hour. There was a swish and a swirl of water on the sides that showed it would have been folly to have run in shore there. But after he had rounded a hummock of glistening sand he saw the cove, and in a few minutes more had entered it and discovered a roughly constructed ...
— The Mermaid of Druid Lake and Other Stories • Charles Weathers Bump
... a clutching hand within her breast. Here was loneliness and solitude vastly different from that of Oak Creek Canyon, yet it held the same intangible power to soothe. The swish of the surf, the moan of the wind in the evergreens, were voices that called to her. How many more miles of lonely land than peopled cities! Then the sea—how vast! And over that the illimitable and infinite sky, and beyond, the endless realms of space. It helped ...
— The Call of the Canyon • Zane Grey
... three hundred yards distant. I might not have heard him, even with the aid of the cleft, but tonight Areskoui has given uncommon power to my ear, perhaps to aid us, and I know he is walking among thick bushes. I can hear the branches swish as they fly back into place, after his body has passed. Ah, a small stick popped as it broke ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... him. He was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown about ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... almost to the point of submergence ere she righted herself with a stagger and hove her streaming wet side up toward us, all a-glitter in the ruddy light of the sunset, as she took a corresponding roll in the opposite direction; and we could hear the rush and swish of water athwart her deck as she rolled. She remained thus for some three or four minutes, each roll being heavier than the one that had preceded it, when, quite suddenly, she seemed to steady herself; then, as we watched, she slowly settled down out of sight, ...
— A Middy in Command - A Tale of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... pole sharply. There was a swish of line in the air. Something speckled and glistening dropped on the ground at least ten feet from the brook, where it ...
— The High School Boys' Fishing Trip • H. Irving Hancock
... corners of the high balconies strange lights flashed, developing in hideous outlines the phosphorescent colors of the skeletons and long, fuzzy, exaggerated lines of the accompanying worms. The effect was thrilling. Every sound save the soft swish of the ghastly robes and the delicate footfall of ghostly feet ceased. Not a whisper from a sap-headed youth or a yap from an aged degenerate or a giggle from a silly woman ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... at first. He was looking at Andrew, who was sweeping the path at a little distance. Swish, swish, went his broom to right and left amongst the yellow leaves, leaving a ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... it reached the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ink-smeared ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... sounded for a long dive, but a moment later there came a dull, muffled report from the water, the explosive head of the harpoon, known as the 'bomb,' having burst. For a minute or two there was no sound but the swish of the line and the clank of the big winch as it ran out, while the animal sank to the bottom. There was a moment's wait, and then Hank, seeing the line tauten and hang down ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... quickly that for a moment I scarcely realized what had happened. I just lay where I was, gasping for breath, and spitting out a large mouthful of the Thames which I had unintentionally appropriated. Above the throbbing of the engine and the swish of the screw I could still hear a confused medley ...
— A Rogue by Compulsion • Victor Bridges
... cats came in their joy In the sunrise, a glittering wave. "We are tigers, are tigers," they yowled. "Down, Down, Go the swine to the grave." But we tramp Tramp Trampled them there, Then charged with our sabres and spears. The swish of the sabre, The swish of the sabre, Was a marvellous tune in our ears. We yelled "We are men, We are men." As we bled to death in the sun.... Then staunched our horrible wounds With the cry that the battle was won.... And at last, When the ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... trembling. She strove hard to control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... away now to a mere confused murmur. It was raining heavily, and the gas shone dimly through the streaked and dripping glass, throwing little circles upon the glistening cobblestones. The air was full of the sounds of the rain, the thin swish of its fall, the heavier drip from the eaves, and the swirl and gurgle down the two steep gutters and through the sewer grating. There was only one figure in the whole length of Scudamore Lane. It was that of a man, and it stood outside the door of ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack— A loud swish, Squish! "What's ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... chanting began again, accompanied by the swish of the spade as it sank into the earth and the cludding roll of the clods as they were thrown to one side. Fairchild gained the door. A moment more and he staggered with his burden into the protecting darkness of ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... tell you that a blow from a swan's wing will break a man's leg, and a peck from a swan's bill would knock out both your eyes. Hie! Swish!" ...
— Littlebourne Lock • F. Bayford Harrison
... about it. Oh, there is something incomparable about such work—the long steady pull of willing and healthy muscles, the mind undisturbed by any disquieting thought, the feeling of attainment through vigorous effort! It was a steady swing and swish, swish and swing! When Dick led I have a picture of him in my mind's eye—his wiry thin legs, one heel lifted at each step and held rigid for a single instant, a glimpse of pale blue socks above ...
— Adventures In Friendship • David Grayson
... fallen since its fire-breathing grandsire guarded the fruits of the Hesperides. Are not "soys" and "chou meins" and other such treasures of the East laid out above? And yet the dragon dozes at its post like a sleepy dog. No flame leaps up its gullet. The swish of its tail is stilled. If it wag at all, it's but in friendship or because a gust of wind has stirred ...
— There's Pippins And Cheese To Come • Charles S. Brooks
... scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath, For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head, Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape, And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore.... And when things swish or fall, they shiver but ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... Chet. "Down on the ground!" And he felt the swish of another liquid mass above his head as he obeyed his ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... preyed upon her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no arriere pensee. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... lying prone during the blinks of moon, stealing forward in the dark; till, at length, the swish of the rain on the waters of the Tarn, and the sobbing of the flock in front, ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... offering to take it or look at him—and, after a miserable pause, he left the study. But before he had reached the front door he heard a swish and swirl of drapery behind him, and felt her light hand on his arm. "Ah, no!" she said, clinging to him, "I can't let you go like this. I didn't mean all the things I said just now. I do believe in you, Horace—at least, I'll ...
— The Brass Bottle • F. Anstey
... remarked, seizing the door handle; and then watching the roll of the ship for a propitious moment, he opened the door and was gone. In the moment of his exit I heard the sustained booming of the wind, the swish of the water on the decks of the Torrens, and the subdued, as if distant, roar of the rising sea. I noted the growing disquiet in the great restlessness of the ocean, and responded professionally ...
— A Personal Record • Joseph Conrad
... a white carpet of cobwebs, which neither sun nor step of man had yet dispelled. There were the smell of the straw, the cawing of the rooks in the glen, the hissing to the breeze of the barley still standing, the swish of the scythe and the gling of the sickle, the bending and rising of the shearers, the swaying of the binders dragging the sheaves, the gluck of the wheels of the cart, the merry head of a child peeping out of a stook like a young bird ...
— The Manxman - A Novel - 1895 • Hall Caine
... they sped away with the dogs through the sweet-smelling spruce woods where every branch carried a cloth of white, and the only sound heard was the swish of a blanket of snow as it fell to the ground from the wide webs of green, or a twig snapped under the load it bore. Peace brooded in the silent and comforting forest, and Jim and Arrowhead, the Indian ever ahead, swung along, mile after mile, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... creeping, nodding, motioning, moving toward the door. One stood close beside it and struck it twice, loudly, with a metal implement that rang sharply; then it waited. Steps were heard inside,—the steps of a man in military boots: Fernandez. There was a swish of steel, too, like a sword whipped out of its scabbard, but almost at the instant when this was heard the door was opened. A blow, a faint cry, a fall, a hurry of steps in the grass; then a light. Fernandez held ...
— Myths & Legends of our New Possessions & Protectorate • Charles M. Skinner
... or wander in delight along the wood roads when every tree was clad in the witching beauty of a silver thaw, or sweep across the wide stretching country in the very poetry of motion, or hear the soft swish of the tall grass as it fell in fragrant rows before the mower, or the creak of the vans as they bore its ripened sweetness towards the great barns, while bird and bee and locust joined in the harmony of the Harvest Home, until the sun sank ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... that the smugglers made all sail, and I heard the frequent swish—swish of the water, as they threw bucketfuls on the sails, to thicken them and make them hold more wind, while we edged away, keeping as close to the wind, however, as we ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... spread about very much where it is to-day? "Bull-roarer" is just one of our local names for what survives now-a-days as a toy in many an old-fashioned corner of the British Isles, where it is also known as boomer, buzzer, whizzer, swish, and so on. Without going farther afield we can get a hint of the two main functions which it seems to have fulfilled amongst ruder peoples. In Scotland it is, on the one hand, sometimes used to "ca' the cattle hame." A herd-boy has been seen to swing a bull-roarer of his own making, ...
— Anthropology • Robert Marett
... he burst in, for the swish of silken skirt was heard down the long passage. "Il est mort,—mort" he whispered, mustering up what little French he knew and then cursing himself for ...
— Waring's Peril • Charles King
... The chanting began again, accompanied by the swish of the spade as it sank into the earth and the cludding roll of the clods as they were thrown to one side. Fairchild gained the door. A moment more and he staggered with his burden into the ...
— The Cross-Cut • Courtney Ryley Cooper
... while more, and swish, swish, swish, the Lion himself came stalking slowly along, whisking away the flies with his tail. When he saw the Goat sitting beside his den, ...
— The Talking Thrush - and Other Tales from India • William Crooke
... cloud; moisture began to form in tiny drops upon the stanchions and the deck, upon the beards and moustaches of the male part of the voyagers, upon the woolly texture of the garments of all, even upon the smoothly brushed silk of the Honourable John's top hat; save for the swish of the paddles and the running of the engines, with a whispered exclamation here and there, we could hear nothing; and we could scarcely see the length ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... comfortably. I didn't like to go back to the other salon, where there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... with a swish, and into the dark closet beyond went the equerry with a roar, Cavalcanti ...
— The Strolling Saint • Raphael Sabatini
... Maria who brought on the FLOOD I have learned today.... With a stone she found uncovered by the filtering from the little opening she began pounding against the wall.... Suddenly the wall bulged inward.... There was a swish, and a roar, and a deadening GUSH,—and then a RUSHING FLOOD tore open the side of the wall and burst like a torrent into our muddy, narrow cell. Higher and higher it mounted, enveloping us to our arm pits.... My 'prisoner' moved calmly over to the stately woman, who was holding up the ...
— Rescuing the Czar - Two authentic Diaries arranged and translated • James P. Smythe
... Davis flung the door open. "You will pay my price... in fine weather," he shouted over his shoulder. One of the men unbuttoned his wet coat rapidly, threw it at his head. "Here, Taffy—take that, you thief!" "Thank you!" he cried from the darkness above the swish of rolling water. He could be heard splashing; a sea came on board with a thump. "He's got his bath already," remarked a grim shellback. "Aye, aye!" grunted others. Then, after a long silence, Wamibo made ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a somewhat speculative thinker with whom I had often conversed, was a firm believer in the cataclysmic origin ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... trailing bushes and stretched away in mounds and hummocks beyond the far horizon. There was a deep silence everywhere, not painful, for where the sun shines there is no sorrow: the only sound to be heard was the swish of long grasses against his feet as he trod, and the buzz of an occasional bee that came and was gone in ...
— The Crock of Gold • James Stephens
... joined Audubon and myself in a kind of loggia at the back of the house, which was our common place of rendezvous. We exchanged the usual greetings, and for some minutes nothing more was said, so pleasant was it to sit silent in the shade listening to the swish of scythes (they were cutting the grass in the meadow opposite) and to the bubbling of a little fountain in the garden on our right, while the sun grew hotter every minute on the fir-covered slopes beyond. I wanted ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... romances of high young blood, of maidens' winsome purity and frank disdain, of strong men who take their lives in hand and hurl themselves upon the push of pikes. And though I cannot grasp more than a hint of the plot, yet as my feet swish through the dewy swathes of the hyacinths or crisp along the frost-bitten snow, a wild thought quickens within me into a belief, that one day I shall hear them all, and tell these tales for my very own so that the world ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... of the chamber back and forth, and there was silence save for the soft swish of his slippers along ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... lightly. There was a swish of silken petticoats, and she disappeared in an alcove, where she sat down at a desk. Keralio looked after her with undisguised admiration and puffed his cigar in silence for a few moments. Then ...
— The Mask - A Story of Love and Adventure • Arthur Hornblow
... paused at a fine residence with just a nameplate on the door. They were ushered into a handsome parlor and in a few moments Madam came sweeping down the broad stairway, her silken gown making a soft swish on the polished floor. She was surprised and delighted to see Mrs. Crawford, who introduced her daughter and soon stated her errand. The green was to be a walking suit for Miss Marguerite and trimmed with whatever fur would be considered most appropriate. The lavender would be a sort of dinner ...
— The Girls at Mount Morris • Amanda Minnie Douglas
... just gone to my room at about eleven o'clock when the doctor called me to come out and "hear the lights." I thought surely I must have misunderstood, but on reaching the balcony and listening, I could distinctly hear the swish of the "spirits" as they rushed across the sky. It sounds like a diminished silk petticoat which has lost its blatancy, but ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail and whistling away gently to himself, and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around the sides ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... young men seized the big wheels. The top-heavy load wavered an instant, then went over with a simultaneous swish and ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray
... about in the cabin, heard the rattle of dishes, the swish of a broom on the rough floor. And then presently she came out, dragging another rocker. Then she re-entered the cabin, returning with a strip of striped cloth and a sewing basket. She seated herself in the chair, placed the basket in ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... know how it happened. Kid Wolf's arms were lifted. Apparently he was helpless. But suddenly there was a swish—a lightning-like gleam of light. Something hit Stover's gun arm like a ...
— Kid Wolf of Texas - A Western Story • Ward M. Stevens
... moment there sounded a dull bang, followed by the loud ring of tin, a breathless cry, and the swish of flying water—as Johnnie came hurtling headlong out of the stall, the bucket preceding him, a shod hoof in his immediate wake, and the contents of the pail showering in all directions. There was a second bang also dull, as he landed against the bottom ...
— The Rich Little Poor Boy • Eleanor Gates
... The eyelids tremble like flower-petals under the wind of heaven. Was that a sigh or the swish of wings? Oh, wonder of wonders! ...
— The Flutter of the Goldleaf; and Other Plays • Olive Tilford Dargan and Frederick Peterson
... morning. There was something unpleasant in the isolation; it made us look longingly down to earth, wondering whether we shall ever feel really at home in the air. I, too, longed for the sound of human voices, and all that I heard was the roar of the motor and the swish of the wind through wires and struts, sounds which have no human quality in them, and are no more companionable than the lapping of the waves to a man adrift on a raft in mid-ocean. Underlying this feeling, and no doubt in part responsible for it, was the knowledge of the fallibility of that ...
— High Adventure - A Narrative of Air Fighting in France • James Norman Hall
... gloom that in the deeper shadows I could not even distinguish the figure of the girl seated beside me in the cockpit. Yet there was scarcely a break in the steady chug of the engine, or the gentle swish ...
— The Devil's Own - A Romance of the Black Hawk War • Randall Parrish
... tae," put in Marget, "and that's the window I pit the licht in to guide him hame in the dark winter nichts, and mony a time when the sleet played swish on the glass I wes near ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... accompaniment of pianos; it even went on the stage. Ladies rushed into print to expose foibles men never guessed, and to say of the sex at large what less gifted women say only of their personal friends. For years we have never ceased for a moment to hear the lash of the whip, the swish of the birch, the whizz of the arrow, the ping of the bullet, the thwack of the flail, the thud of the hammer, the buzzing of the hornet. And what does it all amount to? How much execution has been done? Is society purer or ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... from the sofa. "Hamilton, show the doctor in here. I am going up to my room, Tom, and you and the doctor can talk here undisturbed." And with a swish of her skirts she disappeared up the staircase as the man-servant ushered the doctor ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... across, wrinkled into an horrific grin, and broken, stained teeth of iron showed in the mouth. Great talons upraised, it rent the misty wall that bound them, and writhed its awful length in. The swish of its scales seemed to come to the watchers, as it chased after a great battleship whose pilot fled in terror. Faster than the mighty spaceship the awful Thing caught it in mighty talons that ripped through solid relux. Scratching, fluttering enormous, blood-red wings, the silvery ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more than half the colour—over all the chocolate and all the blue—with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... heart gave a leap! He could hear the swish-swish of the water on the other side of the banco as something made its way toward him. The eddy was the only thing that saved him, for he could see the dread thing twirling round and round as it tried to reach him. The boy was almost paralyzed with ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... drunken cats came in their joy In the sunrise, a glittering wave. "We are tigers, are tigers," they yowled. "Down, Down, Go the swine to the grave." But we tramp Tramp Trampled them there, Then charged with our sabres and spears. The swish of the sabre, The swish of the sabre, Was a marvellous tune in our ears. We yelled "We are men, We are men." As we bled to death in the sun.... Then staunched our horrible wounds With the cry that ...
— Chinese Nightingale • Vachel Lindsay
... climbing brought them out upon the semicircular platform which crowns the rock. Below them on the far side was a perpendicular black cliff, a hundred and fifty feet high, with the swirling, foam-streaked river roaring past its base. The swish of the water and the low roar as it surged over the mid-stream boulders boomed through the hot, stagnant air. Far up and far down they could see the course of the river, a quarter of a mile in breadth, and running very deep and strong, ...
— The Tragedy of The Korosko • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the scarce-felt path, with quick and desperate breath, For their circling fingers dread to caress some slimy head, Or to touch the icy shape of a hunched and hairy ape, And at every step they fear in their very midst to hear A lion's rending roar or a tiger's snore.... And when things swish or fall, they ...
— Georgian Poetry 1916-17 - Edited by Sir Edward Howard Marsh • Various
... distress they got to imagining that their servant might have been in the next room listening when Richards revealed the secret to his wife that he knew of Burgess's innocence; next Richards began to imagine that he had heard the swish of a gown in there at that time; next, he was sure he had heard it. They would call Sarah in, on a pretext, and watch her face; if she had been betraying them to Mr. Burgess, it would show in her manner. They asked her some questions—questions which were so random ...
— The Man that Corrupted Hadleyburg • Mark Twain
... fellow could scarcely have been five yards away. Another voice answered, and we were aware of bodies, stealing along through the wood; there was a faint rustling of dead leaves, and the occasional swish of a branch. We crouched low in the trail, fairly holding our breath, every nerve tense. There was no sound from below, but in the other direction one warrior—I could see the dim outline of his naked figure—passed within reach ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... was perturbed, and cursing. We dropped, gliding down, for there was no need of picking a landing with the emergency heliocopter batteries—glided down to the calm surface. For a moment we lay there, rocking—a dark blob on the water. I heard a sudden sharp swish. An under-surface freight vessel, plowing from Venezuelan ports to the West Indian Islands, came suddenly to the surface. Its headlight flashed on, but missed us. It sped past. I could see the sleek black outline of its wet back, and the lines of foam as it sheered the water. We lay ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... with a pleasure that stretched every nerve almost to breaking, until some movement of the old armourer cut off the ray of sunlight, then, still thrilling secretly, I leaned back and listened again to the sound of the polishing rag, swish! swish! ...
— The King In Yellow • Robert W. Chambers
... in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. They seemed ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... in swiftly. Through the dark we could hear the low swish of the rising river, and Burton, with a sly twinkle in his eye, remarked, "For a semi-arid country, this ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... left alone, glad of the silence which reigned on the steamer after the noisy chatter of a moment ago. She leaned over the side of the boat, listening idly to the swish of the water along ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... revolver, and a sodden packet of cigarettes. Everything damp, cold and dark; candle-end guttering. I think suddenly of something like the Empire or the Alhambra, or anything else that's reminiscent of brightness and life, and then—swish, bang—back to the reality that the damp clay wall is only eighteen inches in front of me; that here I am—that the Boche is just on the other side of the field; and that there doesn't seem the slightest chance of leaving ...
— Bullets & Billets • Bruce Bairnsfather
... it came with a swish similar to that made by a wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air, curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates. Stoner was ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... this wall—washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish—seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... voices of the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once having ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... the dressing-bell when it clanged throughout the building, nor of the swish of the water as it was heaved into the tin bath in the bathroom, but sat on with the plaits of her hair coiled like snakes on each side of her, and the whiteness of her bare arms and shoulders shining in the light ...
— Leonie of the Jungle • Joan Conquest
... work, one step at a time; but at length they found that there was firm ground in this new region. They concluded that the world was only a larger calf pen, after all; but it was a wonderfully light calf pen, and its walls were certainly a long way off. Swish! up went their tails into the air and away they scampered like ...
— Lisbeth Longfrock • Hans Aanrud
... forward, his elbows on his knees, and the broad brim of his soft hat swept the marble floor with a gentle rhythmic swish, as it swung idly from his loosened grasp. I heard it as an accompaniment to ...
— Told in a French Garden - August, 1914 • Mildred Aldrich
... the four rods of which I was in command. For one hour my pencil wrought without a pause, and delightful it was under the sunshine to indite to the steady strokes of two pair of oars, the rhythmic swish of the water, now tranquilly flowing, and easy for all ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... the war. There can be no ultimate escape from the dreadful vision that has set the seal of despair on this fine and handsome visage. He is shown, not as a sea monster, but as some rabid, evasive, impatient thing, dashing from point to point—as from policy to policy—with the angry swish that tells the unspoken anger failure everywhere compels. For the victories do not bring surrender, nor does frightfulness inspire terror. The merchant ships still put to sea—and the U boats ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... someone was busy in there. The bombardment was not half a minute old, but it was now continuous along the whole horizon behind us. The noise was that of a large orchestra of street boys each heartily banging his kerosene-tin drum. Our shells streamed overhead with an almost continuous swish. ...
— Letters from France • C. E. W. Bean
... Captain Turner, sat on the veranda, smoked their pipes, and even while keeping up a semblance of talk, had an eye and an ear on the bungalow—the "Old Man's" quarters not three hundred feet away. The boom of his jovial laughter still rang out upon the air, and presently the tinkle of guitar, the swish of feminine garments, the rasp of chairs and the merry mingling of voices told that the little dinner party, the first the camp had ever known—for what is a dinner party without women—had quit the table ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... that they were sailing in a regular sloop, and that, too, going "with lee rail awash"; for instead of the soft crooning sound the runners made usually, there was a slash and a swish of ripples cloven apart; and instead of the little fountains of ice-dust which rise from the heels of the sharp shoes when the boat is skimming the frozen surface, there rose ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... the victim prepared himself for the swing, grasped the hooks, and then, with good momentum, landed in the hammock. There was a swish, a distinct thud, and young Potter rolled out upon the deck with a gasp of amazement. Turning as quickly as he could, he looked up and saw the hammock swinging in its proper place. It was physical labor ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... was the only one of the lot who heard with no misgivings the vicious swoop of the storm; so long as the tent-pegs held he didn't care how hard it rained. But the others who woke to the roar of wind and the crash of thunder and to the swish and beat of much falling water, turned uneasily in their beds and hoped that it would not last long. To be late in starting for that particular scene of merry-making which had held their desires for so long would be a calamity they could ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... to the swish and murmur of the wind, the earth-old tune with the power to carry the soul back to the dawn of time, the years fell away from him and he forgot much, remembering more. He knew now that there had always been a longing in his heart to hear the wind-chant in the firs. He had called ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1905 to 1906 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... as well as it could be done—at least, the way you fellows do it!" He clenched his fingers as if upon the handle of a house-painter's brush. "Slap, dash—there's your road." He paddled the air with the imaginary brush as though painting the side of a barn. "Swish, swash—there go your fields and your stone bridge. Fit! Speck! And there's your old woman, her red handkerchief, and what your dealer will probably call 'the human interest,' all complete. Squirt the edges of your foliage in with a ...
— The Guest of Quesnay • Booth Tarkington
... from him, and with it the sense of need and incompleteness. It had melted as snow before a fire the moment he had heard the swish of her dress across the floor, and the breath of violets reached him. He forgot even to be ashamed of his own passing weakness as he watched her. She was all in brown with strange beautiful gold work ...
— Christopher Hibbault, Roadmaker • Marguerite Bryant
... men gathered behind a ruined house at a place we called Enfiladed crossroads and went over to see who they were. The moment I stepped out of my trench a German machine gunner got after me and I could hear the "swish swish" of the bullets a few feet in front of me. I realized that death was very near, so I stepped short and let him get his range a little ahead of me. His gun followed me for a hundred yards. I found Captain Victor Currie there trying to get the wounded away from the dressing station. ...
— The Red Watch - With the First Canadian Division in Flanders • J. A. Currie
... whirled across it and cut the dreary scene in half. Then the light died out suddenly, and she and the little girls drew their chairs close up to the stove. The house was very quiet, but she could hear the mournful wailing of the wind about it, and now and then the soft swish of driven snow upon the walls ...
— Hawtrey's Deputy • Harold Bindloss
... to those fellows!" he cried, as the ship quivered under the blow of a heavy sea, and they heard the thud of many tons of water breaking over the bows and fore hatch, while the defeated monster washed the tightly screwed ports with a venomous swish. "They cannot harm us now. Let us rather thank kindly Providence which provided Magellan's water-way; think what it would mean were we compelled to weather ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... There was a rush for the door, a swish of draperies, a little sob from Lois, who was terrified. Saton remained standing alone. He had not moved. His eyes were fixed upon the figure of the judge, who also lingered. They two were left in ...
— The Moving Finger • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... the top of the staircase she heard the man turn the switch, and the hall below her was plunged in sudden darkness. Before her the long corridor was dimly lighted by a few lights at a long distance from each other. All was very still. She heard the swish-swishing of her gown on the thick carpet and that was all. "How quiet," she thought, "so different from the glare in the passages of the hotel last night, with its echo of voices and perpetual ...
— East of the Shadows • Mrs. Hubert Barclay
... I intend to do." The artist's face was set and stern. His eyes gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just warming ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... pavement, trumpets blared, so that all might know of my coming. But there was no roar of welcome. "Deucalion," they lisped with mincing voices, bowing themselves ridiculously to the ground so that all their ornaments and silks might jangle and swish. Indeed, when Phorenice herself appeared, and all sent up their cries and made lawful obeisance, there was the same artificiality in the welcome. They meant well enough, it is true; but this was the new fashion. Heartiness had come ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... napkins of white linen. Then we heard heavy steps, the clank of scabbards on a stairway, the feet of ladies, and the swish of their gowns. With a quick movement our faces were uncovered. I rose to my feet, for there before me stood Louison and the Baroness de Ferre, between two guards, and, behind them, Louise, her eyes covered, her ...
— D'Ri and I • Irving Bacheller
... neversomeless I ain't gwine run away: I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blessed day. YOU screech, and swish de water, Satan! I'se a ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... meeting and mixing confusedly together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till, what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat of the furrovahs or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which at first is of a yellowish ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... up and down the platform, passing his pile of luggage, solitary and eloquent on the barrow. Never in his life having been made to look a fool, he felt the red heat of the thing, as a man who has not blessedly become acquainted with the swish in boyhood finds his untempered blood turn to poison at a blow; he cannot healthily take a licking. But then it had been so splendid an insanity when he urged Diana to fly with him. Any one but a woman ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... short, for, in astonishment at what she had already heard, and in her instant effort to hear no more of what was so evidently not intended for her, Miss Travers hurried from the parlor, the swish of her skirts telling loudly of her presence there. She went again to her room. What could it mean? Why was her proud, imperious Kate holding secret interviews with this coarse and vulgar woman? What concern was it of hers that Clancy should be "worse" ...
— The Deserter • Charles King
... for a meagre shaft of light that came through a slightly parted pair of portieres to the left and not a dozen feet from where he stood. He strained his ear toward this shaft of light until there came an unmistakable swish of sound, whereupon he moved ...
— Officer 666 • Barton W. Currie
... the Beacon was narrow and uneven. It ran close to the edge of the steep hillside,—so close that there were times when every one of our forty digits curled up like a bird's claw. If we went over, it would not be a fall down a good honest precipice,—a swish through the air and a smash at the bottom,—but a tumbling, and a rolling over and over, and a bouncing and bumping, ever accelerating, until we bounded into the level below, all ready for the coroner. At one sudden turn of the road the horse's body projected so ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... street the wind whirled down it, so that he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though he had ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... blossoms of the garden. It tore off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... very quiet world just now; the sun was only a little over the zenith. Only the cries of the sea gulls and the soft swish of the waves broke the silence. It would be pleasant to sleep here as her comrades were sleeping, but if she slept then she would miss the consciousness ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... said Esther, "or you—oh, it really is too bad!" she exclaimed abruptly as a soft swish along the corridor and the click of a latch told her that she had been again forestalled, and Angela was now in possession of the bathroom. "I ought to go first, because I am the eldest, and Poppy last because she is ...
— The Carroll Girls • Mabel Quiller-Couch
... the high balconies strange lights flashed, developing in hideous outlines the phosphorescent colors of the skeletons and long, fuzzy, exaggerated lines of the accompanying worms. The effect was thrilling. Every sound save the soft swish of the ghastly robes and the delicate footfall of ghostly feet ceased. Not a whisper from a sap-headed youth or a yap from an aged degenerate or a giggle from a silly woman broke the ...
— The Root of Evil • Thomas Dixon
... went with rapid steps to her study. Bazarov followed her quickly, not raising his eyes, and only with his ears catching the delicate swish and rustle of her silk gown gliding before him. Madame Odintsov sank into the same easy-chair in which she had sat the previous evening, and Bazarov took up the same position ...
— Fathers and Children • Ivan Sergeevich Turgenev
... round the place for hours, for days. He suddenly threw open the shutters and roared at them, an unexpected and fearful challenge. A moment of paralyzed terror was followed by a wild rush, the bracken breaking under their flying feet. After they had passed from his sight he could hear the swish and crashing of their frantic flight. Two boys, so frightened, would not take long to reach home and gasp ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... "Won't you come in?" She was shown into the parlor, where she sat down. The room was most interesting, furnished in unimpeachable taste. A few good pictures were on the walls, and Mrs. Cresswell was examining one when she heard the swish of silken skirts. A lady with gold brown face and straight hair stood before her with pleasant smile. Where had Mrs. Cresswell seen her before? She tried to remember, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... The music was heavenly. The swish of her silken skirts was divine. The fragrance of the roses upon her bosom ...
— More Toasts • Marion Dix Mosher
... jumping up. "We'll have a feather." The frightened peacock ran up and down the parapet in an absurd distress, curtseying and bobbing and clucking; his long tail swung ponderously back and forth as he turned and turned again. Then with a flap and swish he launched himself upon the air and sailed magnificently earthward, with a recovered dignity. But he had left a trophy. Ivor had his feather, a long-lashed eye of purple and green, of blue and gold. He handed ...
— Crome Yellow • Aldous Huxley
... come, Scattering their buds and dew upon These acres of my home, Some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high Where once lay sterile snow; Soon shall I gaze across a sea Of sun-begotten grain, Which my unflinching watch hath sealed For harvest ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... noisier cocks, whinnying horses and lowing cattle, the rattle of milk-tins, the squeak of the well-boom, the clank of mowing-machines, the swish of a passing brush-harrow, and, finally, the clamoring gong, were too much for Nelton. Lewis, on his way to look for a bath, caught him stuffing what he called "cotton an' wool" into ...
— Through stained glass • George Agnew Chamberlain
... wits, with the fore quarter of a horse atop of me. We'd been wiped out. And the smell—good God! Like burnt meat! I was hurt across the back by the fall of the horse, and there I had to lie until I felt better. Just like parade it had been a minute before—then stumble, bang, swish!" ...
— The War of the Worlds • H. G. Wells
... scuttling unnoticed in the dimness. It was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and surge of the water against the hull; the ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... you've ascinded that precipice splindid You see on its summit a wondtherful show— A lovely Swish building, all painting and gilding, The famous ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... it with a look intended to be dignified, but which was also somewhat defiant, and more than one smile passed over Warwick's countenance as he watched her. The moment the boat glided with a soft swish among the rushes that fringed the shore, she sprang up the bank, and leaving a basket behind her by way of hint, hurried to the sandy knoll, where, to her great satisfaction, she found the vines heavy with berries. As ...
— Moods • Louisa May Alcott
... the office beat to a froth, and I was enjoyin' it, lazy and comf'table, with my feet up on the bench and my head back; when all at once there's a big spasm of applause, the doors openin' on the back veranda are swung open, everybody starts chatterin' together, there's a swish and a rustle and a clatter of high heels; and the next thing I knew the whole blamed ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford
... a very human tale filtered through the silken monotonous swish of the downpour, with, for listeners to it, only the rain ...
— Through Russia • Maxim Gorky
... his aching nerves were soothed into repose. The last remnants of his ghostly fears had been swept away. They were on the windward side of the ship, untenanted save now and then by the shadowy forms of other promenaders. The whole experience, even the regular throbbing of the engines, the swish of the sea, the rising and falling of a lantern bound to the top of a fishing smack by which they were passing, the distant chant of the changing watch, all the night sights and sounds of the seaborne hostel, were unfamiliar and exhilarating. And inside his hand, even ...
— The Cinema Murder • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... it does not rise into the air, but flies downward and disappears with a swish of its tail. The nest is usually built on the ground or in a low bush or tree. It is composed of grass, fine roots, or weed stems, and lined with fine grass or hair. The eggs are usually four or five, but sometimes there are as many as seven. They are white with ...
— Ontario Teachers' Manuals: Nature Study • Ontario Ministry of Education
... to all the scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, a special horse to ride, special roses ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... on the folded rack and his head on his arms. He did not stir again, and a long silence followed. The only sound that was to be heard came from Wotan, who, sitting on his haunches on a corner of the table, washed the white fur of his belly with an audible swish. ...
— Maurice Guest • Henry Handel Richardson
... yard—not in sunny weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... sweeping curve of coast, fringed with tall plumed palms casting wavering shadows on the yellow sand as they sway and swish softly to the breath of the brave trade-wind that whistles through the thickly-verdured hummocks on the weather side of the island, to die away into a soft breath as, after passing through the belt of cocoanuts, ...
— The Ebbing Of The Tide - South Sea Stories - 1896 • Louis Becke
... stopped short and suddenly wheeled round as he caught the swish of a dress on the stairs. He looked up into Avery's face as she came swiftly down, and the blood rose in a deep, dark wave to his forehead. He made no attempt to cover or excuse his passionate outburst, which it was perfectly obvious she must have heard. He merely ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... the shuffle-shuffle of a footstep can be heard in the distance, the tinkle of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro, the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds. All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or a man's? ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... sunset they did not progress five miles. Their two pack animals found insecure footing; death awaited them hourly upon many a day at the bottom of some sheer walled cliff. They climbed with the sharp slopes on the mountains, they dropped down into the narrow, flinty canons, they heard only the swish of tree tops and the quarrelling of streams lost to their eyes in the depths below them. And they came in two weeks to Blue Lake having seen no other man or ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... study window as I write, Bertie. Slate-coloured clouds with ragged fringes are drifting slowly overhead. Between them one has a glimpse of higher clouds of a lighter gray. I can hear the gentle swish of the rain striking a clearer note on the gravel path and a duller among the leaves. Sometimes it falls straight and heavy, till the air is full of the delicate gray shading, and for half a foot above the ground there is a haze from the rebound of ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... him if I stay here," he thought; and as the thought crossed his mind, with a shriek and a swish of silk, in rushed Miss Silver and flung ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... second position a thousand yards in rear of the top of the hill. From this they directed a most accurate and damnable fire on all who showed themselves on the plateau. Beneath the crest one sat in safety and listened to the swish of bullets passing overhead. Above, the men were content to lie quite still underneath the rocks and wait for darkness. I had a message for Major Childe and found him sitting on this dangerous ground, partly sheltered by a large ...
— London to Ladysmith via Pretoria • Winston Spencer Churchill
... start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made itself into stray, ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... the apparatus fixed at last, and then "swish." They could not see anything, for it was broad daylight now, but they heard the sigh of the rocket as it passed and knew it had missed. A despairing cry went up from the perishing men, for they, like the second mate, were counting their chances and reckoning them poor indeed. It almost seemed ...
— The Moving Finger • Mary Gaunt
... long hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... is the mead; the lawn is fair And the birds sing sweet on the lea; But the echo soft of a song aloft Is the strain that pleases me; And swish of rope and ring of chain Are music to men ...
— The Complete Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar • Paul Laurence Dunbar
... the afternoon the day's work of tramping the rounds of the agents' offices is over. Past you, as you ramble distractedly through the mossy halls, flit audible visions of houris, with veiled, starry eyes, flying tag-ends of things and a swish of silk, bequeathing to the dull hallways an odor of gaiety and a memory of frangipanni. Serious young comedians, with versatile Adam's apples, gather in doorways and talk of Booth. Far-reaching from somewhere comes the smell of ham and red cabbage, and the crash ...
— The Voice of the City • O. Henry
... home, and whatever else it lacked, it had a front window, with shutters, and a balcony with an iron railing, and when tucked up in their beds at night, in the tiny dark alcove, the children could hear the soft swish of the water ...
— Chico: the Story of a Homing Pigeon • Lucy M. Blanchard
... hands. A moment she stood rocking there—a fair, lissom plant swept by a gale of ineffable emotion. Then the breath seemed to go all out of her in one great sigh, and Gregory, who dared not look her way, heard the swish of her gown, followed by a thud as she collapsed and lay ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... the plate. At the same instant he heard the thud of the ball against the catcher's glove overhead, the swish of the down-swinging ...
— The New Boy at Hilltop • Ralph Henry Barbour
... paeans and shouts and the broken pitchers of fallen Jericho. The violet phosphorescence lighted them on their way, and tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes of ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... the pass made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... was interrupted by them all making a rush for the book. There was a swish and a whirr and a rustling of leaves, and an instant later the book lay upon the floor looking just like any other book, while Jane Gladys' strange ...
— American Fairy Tales • L. Frank Baum
... of the patience and amiability of these inestimable beasts. The man who owns the cattle on a thousand hills, who employs stockmen by the dozen, who sends off hundreds of fat, contented, happy, liberty-loving oxen in droves to end their days in an unknown locality amid the clatter and swish of machinery and with the fearful scents of blood and decaying offal defiling the air, has few opportunities of studying the nicer qualities of his possessions. He may be full of bullock lore and able to recite sensational and entertaining stories illustrative of ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... said, listening. There were several distinct sounds that saluted their ears. There was the "sough" of the sea, as it came swelling up the gorge; the "whish" of the wind, as it impinged upon the crests of the ridges; and the "swish" of the sand as ...
— The Boy Slaves • Mayne Reid
... cavalry ascends the English position the swish of the horses' breasts through the standing corn can be heard, and the reverberation of hoofs increases in strength. The English gunners stand with their portfires ready, which are seen glowing luridly in the daylight. ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... A swish of petticoats, a rush of cool air with which mingled an indefinable perfume, and, like a bird taking momentary rest in the passage, she stood poised on the threshold. A beautiful woman is a tangible enchantment; and fame and fortune ...
— Half a Rogue • Harold MacGrath
... wonder still, what it was all for. Reading, almost my only art, I learnt from Aunt Charlotte; a certain facility in drawing I acquired at home and took to school, to my own undoing. "Undoing," again, is deliberate—it was no mere swish on the hand, gentle reader. But the things I learnt, more or less partially, at school, lie in my mind, like the "Sarsen" stones of Wiltshire—great, disconnected, time-worn chunks amidst the natural herbage of ...
— Certain Personal Matters • H. G. Wells
... was a whirlwind of noise in the hall, the angry barking of a small dog, the sound of a girl's voice laughing and scolding, the swish of silk skirts. A scandalized butler, obeying Lady Grosville's summons, threw the door open, and in burst ...
— The Marriage of William Ashe • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... was cut short by the flashing of a blade before her. They had passed through the hail and reached the lightning! Throwing up her sword, she swerved to one side and escaped the bolt. Another faced her in this direction. The air was shot with bright flashes. Swish—clash! they sounded behind her; then a sickening jar, as Rothgar's terrible axe fell. A yell of agony rent the air. Swish—clash! the blows came faster; her ear could no longer separate them. The thud of the falling axes became ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... next hundred and eighty seconds there was no sound but the steady swish of the bow wave and the beat of the ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... were the smugglers who infested the coast, and who knew the secret of Granfer Fraddam's Cave. Probably they belonged to Jack Truscott's famous gang, and had brought a cargo of goods that very night. I heard the swish of the waves rushing up the cave, so I knew the tide ...
— The Birthright • Joseph Hocking
... grief become joy, when a chill silence fell over the ship. The only sounds were the rattling of the rigging against the masts, the groaning of the timbers of the vessel, and the swish of the waves cut by the prow. These were not Kamchatka shores. This was only another of the endless island reefs they had been chasing since July. The tattered sails flapped and beat dismally against the ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... that they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that strange, weird sound—the sound muttered by miles of herbage when beaten down by rain—the swish and patter and sigh of the long grass and of the bracken, as they bent beneath the continuous fall, and rose in angry protest, to fling off their burden on each other, or shake it to the ground? Then a mute sympathy sprang up in her desolate heart as she grew incorporate into ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... a flash, a swish, a crunching thud: the bound body bowed over the rice sacks,—two long blood-jets pumping from the shorn neck;—and the head rolled upon the sand. Heavily toward the stepping-stone it rolled: then, suddenly bounding, it caught the upper ...
— Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • Lafcadio Hearn
... the lion cub with whom Nero used to play, was far off in Africa, so our circus friend had to stay by himself. He curled up on the leaves, listened to the swish and patter of the rain, and ...
— Nero, the Circus Lion - His Many Adventures • Richard Barnum
... only themselves seemed to have been frozen into oblivion. There was no sound, save the monotonous swish, swish of their own snowshoes, to disturb the silence—a silence otherwise as absolute and vast as the ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... before he could take a step, there was a swish of woman's garments, and before the father's astonished eyes there stood his daughter by the side of her lover. Her form was drawn to its full height, her bosom was heaving, her eyes were flashing. Taking her lover's hand, she cried: "Father, what have you done? I love this man, love ...
— Raiding with Morgan • Byron A. Dunn
... and sang—college songs that the children had learned from the fathers, school songs and popular songs that they all knew. It was fun to sit there close by the big lake, to watch the sparks fly upward, to hear the waves swish against the sand and to sing and sing as loud as ...
— Mary Jane's City Home • Clara Ingram Judson
... our infantry could be seen advancing toward this fort. As the cannon at our side would bang, and the shell would swish through the air with its querulous, vicious, whining note, we would watch its explosion, and then turn our attention to the little black specks of infantry dodging in and out among the groups of trees. Now they would disappear wholly from sight ...
— The Boys of '98 • James Otis
... A sudden swish, then from under a tangled elderberry bush there emerged a darling little boy. At the sight of the intruders he stood stock ...
— The Girl Scouts at Sea Crest - The Wig Wag Rescue • Lillian Garis
... bearing on the moment he had no way of knowing; but no further movement came from behind the partition. Whatever the emotions that had caused the sharp swish of skirts and the sharp scrape of the chair, they had evidently subsided or ...
— The Masquerader • Katherine Cecil Thurston
... exclamation, and then sounds of somebody moving hastily about the room and the swish ...
— Captains All and Others • W.W. Jacobs
... happy away from the sound of the surf on the reef and the swish of the cocoanuts. I was fourteen years in the British army in England when I made up my mind to quit civilization. I put it to the missus, a London woman, and she was for it. I've had nearly ten years now in the Cook group. D'ye know, ...
— Mystic Isles of the South Seas. • Frederick O'Brien
... sensitive spirit. If a breeze blew across the meadow he turned his cheek to its kiss; if the odor of spearmint from the brookside was wafted around him he breathed it into his nostrils with delight. He saw the shadow of a crow flying across the field and stopped to look up and listen for the swish of her wings and her loud, hoarse caw as she made her way to the nesting grounds; then he gazed beyond her, into the fathomless depths of the blue sky, and his soul was stirred with an indescribable awe. Everything filled him with surprise, with wonder and ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... immediate menace seemed only to have awaited the actual moment of embarkation, when, as we were pushing off, the rhythmical plash and swish of a paddle fell suddenly upon our ears, and we clutched the bank while a canoe shot down-stream within a length of us. Luckily the night was as dark as ever, and all we saw of the paddler was a white shirt fluttering as it passed. But there lay Levy with his heavy head between ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... down it, so that he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... herself and watching the long grass fall. She sat with the ease that belongs to persons of an essentially happy nature, who can find a comfortable spot almost anywhere; who are supple, and quick in adapting themselves to circumstances. After a final swish, Emil snapped the gate and sprang into the cart, holding his scythe well out over the wheel. "There," he sighed. "I gave old man Lee a cut or so, too. Lou's wife needn't talk. I never see Lou's scythe ...
— O Pioneers! • Willa Cather
... one of the boxes. Without a pause, as if doing some work done many times before, he slit it open and took four ingots, which he put in his pockets. He covered up the exposed box again and step by step came out of the gully. The bushes closed after him with a swish. ...
— Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard • Joseph Conrad
... and, incidentally, he has muddied the spring for me—robbed me of the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and yellow down and ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... of a coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and there is no protest against ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... quiet after this, and listened to the swish of the rain and the mighty howling of the wind. It had grown very dark, and the air was chilly. The lightning was incessant, and traced zigzag pathways of fire across the sombre heavens. The thunder was terrific, and often shook the solid earth. I asked Salome if she ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... clump upstairs and enter a room across the hall. She knew it was he. She could hear the clink of his spurs and the swish of his chaps. While she realized that he was Mrs. Adams's son and had a right to be there, she rather resented his proximity, possibly because she had not expected to see ...
— Jim Waring of Sonora-Town - Tang of Life • Knibbs, Henry Herbert
... certain harmonious arrangements of black; and the most distressing symptom of all is that Mr. Brabazon could not hold an exhibition of some very nice tints of rose and blue without inspiring Mr. Steer to go and swish water-colour about in the same manner. Mr. Steer has the defect of his qualities; his perceptions are naive: and just as he must have thought seven years ago that all modern landscape-painters must be more or less like Monet, he must have thought last summer that all modern water-colour must be ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... who he is!" spouted the whale, with a gleeful gurgle, and before any one could say "Jack Robinson!" Mr. Jonah appeared upon the deck of the Ark, and with a swish of his great tail the whale disappeared ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... channelling mole, Head in a ground-vault gaunt As your telescope's skeleton moon. Barren comfort to these will she dole; Dead is her face to their cries. Intelligence pushing to taste A lesson from beasts might heed. They scatter a voice in the waste, Where any dry swish of a reed ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... merry and sweet Over its shallows singing,— I hear before I awaken The Bound of the church-bells ringing, And the sound of the leaves wind-shaken, Complaining and sun-forsaken, And the oriole warbling and singing, And the swish of the wind in ...
— The Coming of the Princess and Other Poems • Kate Seymour Maclean
... out in the open with the sunshine pouring down and a big lazy white cloud tangled in tree-tops. So he flung himself on the moss, hands under his head, and lay there, Prince beside him, looking up, up into the far blue, listening to the swish and rustle of the wind talking secrets to the leaves, and all the tiny mysterious noises that make up the silence of a ...
— Far to Seek - A Romance of England and India • Maud Diver
... Drack's which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide; but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin. It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his posture—as ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... the headpiece of the ship's microphone to his ears Chief Electrician Sammy Smith kept close tabs on the approaching vessel with the underwater telephone. With the receivers to his hears he could hear plainly the swish of the vessel's propeller blades as she bore down upon the floating submarine. With his reports as a basis for their deductions, the Dewey's officers were able to figure out the position of the ...
— The Brighton Boys with the Submarine Fleet • James R. Driscoll
... came dancing up into the hills from the heart of S—. The wayfarers looked at each other in the darkness and listened in wonder to these sounds that rose above the swish of the restless rain. ...
— The Rose in the Ring • George Barr McCutcheon
... in a long chair under the cloister which faced the barred stone door. He swished with a rhino riding-whip at the stone column beside him, and the much-swathed individual of the plethoric paunch who stood and spoke with him kept a very leery eye on it; he seemed to expect the binding swish of it across his own shins, and the thought ...
— Rung Ho! • Talbot Mundy
... magnolias, or a tress of gray-green moss on the cypress boughs. All the world of the Salkahatchie was wrapped in siesta. The white clouds drifting on palest turquoise were the only moving things except the water flowing beneath, and its soft swish against the gunnels of the floating wharf ...
— The Bondwoman • Marah Ellis Ryan
... drowning each other. I swung the lantern over them just as Dutch got upon his feet, gripping his antagonist by the collar. He flung him backward over the stone curbing of the pool and fell upon him in the walk with a swish of wet garments. The guards from the outer edges of the garden had clambered down and they gathered about us as I ...
— Lady Larkspur • Meredith Nicholson
... the door, and just as he was turnin' away, I heard the swish of skirts and then I got Miss Vincent's voice. It was low and sweet and kinda soothin' and—well, she was the kind of dame guys kill each other for! Do you ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high Where ...
— Poems of To-Day: an Anthology • Various
... heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... so still that the shuffle-shuffle of a footstep can be heard in the distance, the tinkle of a tin pail swinging musically to and fro, the swish of an alder switch cropping the heads of the roadside weeds. All at once a voice breaks the stillness. Is it a child's, a woman's, or a ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... he drew back into the shadow. I waited also in the shadow for nearly ten minutes, then I passed on, ascended some steps and reentered the hotel. In the lounge I sank into a seat in a hidden corner and lit a cigarette. Presently I heard the swish of a woman's skirt behind me, and rising, peered out. It was Lady Lydbrook on her way out. She was carrying the cheque to ...
— The Golden Face - A Great 'Crook' Romance • William Le Queux
... there was a roar as of a desert lion bursting from its lair. They looked and saw a huge black form leap from the porch of the other house and bound toward them. He was on them in a minute. There was the swish of a saber swung by a practiced hand, and the high-peaked mask of the leader bent over the hissing blade, and was stripped away, leaving a pale, affrighted face glaring stupidly at the ebon angel of wrath in the luried fire-light. A fearful oath came through the white, strong teeth, which ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... passed in the night, with monotonous swish-swish and swelling wake. It arouses something akin to awe, this passage of a steamer's wake upon the beach, a dozen feet from the door of one's tent. First, the water is sucked down, leaving for a moment a ...
— Afloat on the Ohio - An Historical Pilgrimage of a Thousand Miles in a Skiff, from Redstone to Cairo • Reuben Gold Thwaites
... swept up and down the room once more, watching her train, over her shoulder, and listening with a rapturous countenance to the silken swish of her skirts. ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... my way to my berth, it occurred to me that I should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail, and whistling away gently to himself; and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around the ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... there was a strange sound, a roaring swish of water. Not one of them was certain which direction ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... They kept as close as possible to the wall, so that they would not be seen if a sentinel should happen to look over the parapet; and being barefooted, the slight sound they might make would be inaudible through the never-ceasing swish of the surf. Their feet were cut by the sharp edges of the rocks; many a bruise they got; but they kept on their silent way without ...
— In Clive's Command - A Story of the Fight for India • Herbert Strang
... quivering, there was a glorious flush in her cheeks; and in her eyes, a kind of fear. So he let her go, and opened the door for her and stood listening to the soft swish of her draperies as she ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... necessary to reach the dock and get a boat. She might risk being scalped, but a boat at any cost she would have, and one was sent her—as to the fearless and determined all their desires are sent. She heard the thump of oars in rowlocks, bringing the relief guard, and with a swish, out of the void of the lake a keel ran ...
— Marianson - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... out-of-doors, cigarettes in hand, and the rhythmic swish-swash of the river told that the tide was rising. The dried-up gullies and canals became silver-streaked with the incoming spray, and it needed only a windmill to make the scene as Dutch as a Van Der Neer. Piloti was moody. Something worried him, but ...
— Melomaniacs • James Huneker
... night!" Alan Hawke amused himself with the bold, black-eyed French girl's vicious stories of olden deeds done there in Etienne Garcin's gloomy spider's den. He even laughed when the red-bodiced she-devil laughingly pointed down at the loosened floor-planks in the back room, underneath which mantrap the swish of the throbbing waves ...
— A Fascinating Traitor • Richard Henry Savage
... he stopped short and suddenly wheeled round as he caught the swish of a dress on the stairs. He looked up into Avery's face as she came swiftly down, and the blood rose in a deep, dark wave to his forehead. He made no attempt to cover or excuse his passionate outburst, which it was perfectly obvious she ...
— The Bars of Iron • Ethel May Dell
... seemingly as sorely frightened as the Indians. Shortly after sunrise a low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a somewhat speculative ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... of every delight of manhood, of happiness in a woman's smile, of rapture in a woman's kiss. It meant the giving up of every joy in seeing her pass before him, of hearing the swish of her skirts on the pavement of the city; it meant the giving up of all hope ever to win her, of all thought of a future home, the patter of children's feet, the rocking of a tiny cradle. It meant the sacrifice of every thought ...
— "Unto Caesar" • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... first. He was looking at Andrew, who was sweeping the path at a little distance. Swish, swish, went his broom to right and left amongst the yellow leaves, leaving a bare space in ...
— Penelope and the Others - Story of Five Country Children • Amy Walton
... not sleep. He heard all the sounds of the land, of the river, of the night, and of the dawn. He heard the lapping of the creek water against the yacht's side; the wash of the steamers passing on the river; the stir of wild fowl at daybreak; the swish of wind and water among the reeds and grasses of ...
— The Helpmate • May Sinclair
... against this wall—washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish—seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog of a dark ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... bewilderment held him. Then in a rush came back the memory of what had happened. He listened intently. Back and forth, back and forth somewhere near went a soft footstep, the swish and glide of a moccasin. He strained his eyes, which smarted terribly, into the darkness, and presently descried a tall form pacing slowly up against the skyline of his vision and back again into the shadows. A single feather slanted ...
— The Maid of the Whispering Hills • Vingie E. Roe
... movement in the group, but it was only the swish of draperies as the four recumbent women came upright. They stared at Julia. They did not speak. ...
— Angel Island • Inez Haynes Gillmore
... to be a raging torrent, its waters racing at top speed," said one traveler who arrived in Chicago on March 26th. "We could hear the swish of the waters and hear the cries of ...
— The True Story of Our National Calamity of Flood, Fire and Tornado • Logan Marshall
... at the back of the house, which was our common place of rendezvous. We exchanged the usual greetings, and for some minutes nothing more was said, so pleasant was it to sit silent in the shade listening to the swish of scythes (they were cutting the grass in the meadow opposite) and to the bubbling of a little fountain in the garden on our right, while the sun grew hotter every minute on the fir-covered slopes beyond. I wanted to talk, and yet I was unwilling to begin; ...
— The Meaning of Good—A Dialogue • G. Lowes Dickinson
... brush, although her figure was still obscured by the tangle of wildwood; the snapping of dead twigs under her feet; the scuffling of last year's leaves on the path, now wet and plastered with mud and the slime of winter; the swish of branches as she ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... sailed the wind grew stronger and at Horse-neck Shoals the crest of breaking waves covered the deck of the Irene with foam. Following the swish of each heaving wave as it lifted and swept past the boat came a heavy jar as the craft struck in the soft mud beneath her and ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... clutch, the men dashed into the water with paeans and shouts and the broken pitchers of fallen Jericho. The violet phosphorescence lighted them on their way, and tracked with luminous curve and star every move of the enemy. The gashed water at every stroke of club or swish of tail or fin bled in blue and red fire, as if the very sea was wounded. The enemy's line of battle was broken and scattered, but not until more than one of the assailants had looked point-blank into the angry eyes of a shark and beaten it off with actual ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... it? It was all so sudden. A door flung open and a swish of rushing silk. A woman! A beautiful girl! ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... chairs had been secured by the forehanded Hobbs. The thin drizzle now aspired to something more definite in the shape of a steady downpour, and the decks were almost deserted, save for the few who huddled in the unexposed nooks where the sweep and swish of the rain failed to penetrate. There was a faraway look in the young man's eyes, as of one who dreams pleasantly, with little effort but excellent effect. His pipe had gone out, so his dream ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her trailing skirts ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... him as though to go beneath the bark on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... of the lower floor of the hotel wing which ran down toward the beach. The ocean rolled almost up to the window of his room. It was a calm night with no sea on, and lying there, listening, Cogan could just catch the low swish ...
— Wide Courses • James Brendan Connolly
... skeered; but neversomeless I ain't gwine run away: I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blessed day. YOU screech, and swish de water, Satan! I'se a gwine ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... us straight back to Castleman Hall, and to all the scenes of her young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... of the earth have truly found their way to me—the small rustle in tufts of grass, the silky swish of leaves, the buzz of insects, the hum of bees in blossoms I have plucked, the flutter of a bird's wings after his bath, and the slender rippling vibration of water running over pebbles. Once having ...
— The World I Live In • Helen Keller
... that they were in pursuit of a German spy. The remainder of his scepticism forsook him. Amid such surroundings, with the singing of the wind and the gurgling swish of the flying boat in his ears, any adventure seemed possible. The prosaic limitations of ordinary life dropped off from him. Only it seemed a pity to find the spy, since finding him ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... started off into a cross-street, when Phil imagined he heard a shout in the distance. He looked forth but could see no one in the rushing darkness, The rattle of the cab, the growing roar of the night and toe swish of the rain, which was now falling quite heavily, drowned all other sounds and he ...
— Castle Craneycrow • George Barr McCutcheon
... earth-ends were crawling and alive with hundreds upon hundreds of tiny asses climbing out of the yawning borrow-pit below with sackfuls of stuff; and the hot afternoon air was filled with the noise of hooves, the rattle of the drivers' sticks, and the swish and roll-down of the dirt. The river was very low, and on the dazzling white sand between the three centre piers stood squat cribs of railway-sleepers, filled within and daubed without with mud, to support the last of the girders as those ...
— The Day's Work, Volume 1 • Rudyard Kipling
... and at the some moment, Frank, who was standing where Jack had been a moment before, heard something swish past. ...
— The Boy Allies at Jutland • Robert L. Drake
... reconcile the holy zeal for truth and the swish of this bright blade of the intellect. He himself confesses that after reading Swedenborg he turns to Shakespeare and reads "As You Like It" with positive delight, because Shakespeare isn't trying to prove anything. The monks of the olden time read Rabelais and Saint ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great Philosophers, Volume 8 • Elbert Hubbard
... and delicate scented blossoms of the garden. It tore off the flowers remorselessly, and even for the moment he stood there, a rain of thin, white, shredded petals was flung into his face. The branches of the trees groaned and whined in the thick darkness, the swish of broken and bent bamboo came from all sides, the roar of the dust driven through the foliage filled his ears. The garden, the beautiful, sheltered garden, scene of their delights, was being ruthlessly destroyed, ...
— Six Women • Victoria Cross
... of the motor-car, and a great swish where it grazed a wet bush near the house. Somebody lowered the gas in the hall, and Mrs. Paget's voice said regretfully, "I wish we had had a fire in the parlor—just one of the times!—but there's no help for it." They ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... faint and distant murmur, the murmur to a long swish like a million rustling garments. A tree fell, with a crash, far away. Then the wind ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... the quicksilver should draw the electric fluid. The haymakers will tell you that sometimes when they have been standing under a hedge out of a storm a flash of lightning has gone by with a distinct sound like 'swish,' and immediately afterwards the wet ground has sent forth a vapour, ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... same swish and thud which had puzzled Lanyard at first hearing, the portrait slipped ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... heat of them almost overwhelmed her. The shrieks of the frantic throng at the main door of the theatre died away. She heard the shouted commands of the police and firemen—then the swish of water from the first pipe brought to play upon the flames. But they ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... bits mouthed in those velvet muzzles; a hoof pawed sharply on the road; swish of long, restless tails; creaking of saddlery; and sudden bursts of all the instruments in unison when heads were tossed and shaken. Remotely the whirr of a reaping machine. And ...
— If Winter Comes • A.S.M. Hutchinson
... heard the whirring swish of the passing squadron as it circled over the buildings. It afterwards appeared that the chateau owner was for some reason specially obnoxious to the Germans in Belgium. At last the bombing apparently ceased, but even this was deceptive. Both Blaine and Erwin, followed at a little distance ...
— Our Pilots in the Air • Captain William B. Perry
... trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings. But Mr. Lingnam only talked. He talked—we all sat together behind so that we could not escape him—and he talked above the worn gears and a certain maddening swish of one badly patched tire—and he talked of the Federation of the Empire against all conceivable dangers except himself. Yet I was neither brutally rude like Penfentenyou, nor swooningly bored like the Agent-General. I remembered a certain Joseph Finsbury who ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... yet about three hundred yards distant. I might not have heard him, even with the aid of the cleft, but tonight Areskoui has given uncommon power to my ear, perhaps to aid us, and I know he is walking among thick bushes. I can hear the branches swish as they fly back into place, after his body has passed. Ah, a small stick popped as it ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... to such an extent that his controls become inoperative, and his machine threatens to side-slip. One's ear should, apart from the inclination of the machine, and the sensation of the descent, help one materially in judging the speed of a glide. There is a "swish" that comes to the ear, now the engine is no longer making its clamour, which gives a guide to the pace of one's downward movement. Aviators who are skilled, and have done a large amount of flying, are able to judge with accuracy, ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or else made ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... it came. It had rained all day, a cold October storm, and night found me, with the chill downpour unabated, down by the North River, soaked through and through, with no chance for a supper, forlorn and discouraged. I sat on the bulwark, listening to the falling rain and the swish of the dark tide, and thinking of home. How far it seemed, and how impassable the gulf now between the "castle" with its refined ways, between her in her dainty girlhood and me sitting there, numbed with the cold that was slowly stealing away my senses with ...
— Stories of Achievement, Volume IV (of 6) - Authors and Journalists • Various
... dissatisfaction preyed upon her. She was somewhat exasperated at the rest of us, who worked cheerily and with no arriere pensee. At the end of the first week the picture hat was tucked away in the bandbox; the frou-frou of the sateen petticoat and the daring swish of the golf skirt were packed up, like the remains of a bubble that had reflected the world in its brilliant sides one moment and the next lay a little heap of soap-suds. She had gone behind in her work steadily at the factory; she was not making more than sixty cents ...
— The Woman Who Toils - Being the Experiences of Two Gentlewomen as Factory Girls • Mrs. John Van Vorst and Marie Van Vorst
... Mount, and when he desired victuals he would wade across the tides to the mainland and furnish himself forth with all that came in his way. The poor folk and the rich folk alike ran out of their houses and hid themselves when they heard the swish-swash of his big feet in the water; for if he saw them, he would think nothing of broiling half-a-dozen or so of them for breakfast. As it was, he seized their cattle by the score, carrying off half-a-dozen fat oxen on his back at a time, and hanging ...
— English Fairy Tales • Flora Annie Steel
... into the kitchen unexpectedly, with a swish of silk that was like the retreat of waves down the shingle of some ...
— Helen with the High Hand (2nd ed.) • Arnold Bennett
... now perceive that the smugglers made all sail, and I heard the frequent swish—swish of the water, as they threw bucketfuls on the sails, to thicken them and make them hold more wind, while we edged away, keeping as close to the wind, however, as we could, without ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... insects soundlessly scuttling unnoticed in the dimness. It was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and surge of the water against the hull; the ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... prone during the blinks of moon, stealing forward in the dark; till, at length, the swish of the rain on the waters of the Tarn, and the sobbing of the flock in front, warned ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... Durham reached where the road dipped to the stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... to come suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... as it reached the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ink-smeared ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... noise sounded about me like the swish of the sea, startling me for a second, but instantly I saw what had caused it. The Dagombas had let loose a flight of ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... joy, when a chill silence fell over the ship. The only sounds were the rattling of the rigging against the masts, the groaning of the timbers of the vessel, and the swish of the waves cut by the prow. These were not Kamchatka shores. This was only another of the endless island reefs they had been chasing since July. The tattered sails flapped and beat dismally against ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... stooping shoulders, in long-skirted nankeen coats, belted round the waist, with a strong, sour smell always clinging to them. And on the women's side, one could hear nothing but the patter of bare feet, the swish of petticoats. The chief valet was called Irinarh, and Alexey Sergeitch always called him in a long-drawn-out call: 'I-ri-na-a-arh!' The others he called: 'Boy! Lad! Whoever's there of the men!' Bells he could not endure: 'It's not an eating-house, God forbid!' ...
— A Desperate Character and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... Turner, sat on the veranda, smoked their pipes, and even while keeping up a semblance of talk, had an eye and an ear on the bungalow—the "Old Man's" quarters not three hundred feet away. The boom of his jovial laughter still rang out upon the air, and presently the tinkle of guitar, the swish of feminine garments, the rasp of chairs and the merry mingling of voices told that the little dinner party, the first the camp had ever known—for what is a dinner party without women—had quit the table and gathered on the porch. By this time, too, an unclouded moon had ...
— Tonio, Son of the Sierras - A Story of the Apache War • Charles King
... to sunset they did not progress five miles. Their two pack animals found insecure footing; death awaited them hourly upon many a day at the bottom of some sheer walled cliff. They climbed with the sharp slopes on the mountains, they dropped down into the narrow, flinty canons, they heard only the swish of tree tops and the quarrelling of streams lost to their eyes in the depths below them. And they came in two weeks to Blue Lake having seen no other man or ...
— Wolf Breed • Jackson Gregory
... to congratulate himself on the important capture he had made, and with his hand on his captive's collar, and his revolver to his ear, was moving towards the center of the street, when a whistling "swish" was heard, the dull thud of a slung shot on the detective's head followed, and, every muscle relaxed, he sank a senseless man in ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... sound or smelled any odour that he believed to come from the Northern Lights. Indeed, he has often felt that with all the light-producing energy and with all the rapid movement of the aurora it was mysterious that there should be absolutely no sound. The aurora often looks as if it ought to swish, but to his ears it has never done it; so much phosphorescent light might naturally be accompanied by some chemical odour, but to his nostrils never ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... timber and sawdust began to be mingled with the feminine odour of sachet and flowers. There was a babel of talk in the air—male baritone and soprano chatter—varied by an occasional note of laughter and the swish of stiffly starched petticoats. On the row of chairs that went around three sides of the wall groups began to settle themselves. For a long time the guests huddled close to the doorway; the lower end of the floor was crowded! ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... eighty seconds there was no sound but the steady swish of the bow wave and the beat ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... to detain him! He fancied he heard a rustle in the open space under the stairs. Were any one to step forth, Robert or——With a start, he paused and clutched the banister. Some one had stepped forth; a woman! The swish of her skirts was unmistakable. He felt the chill of a new dread. Never in his short but triumphant career had he met coldness or disapproval in the eye of a woman. Was he to encounter it now? If so, it would go hard with him. He trembled as he ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... readiness for the return journey. Matters having progressed this far, the mules fell at once into a deep state of dejection and somnolence, their ears lopping down, their bodies drooping and motionless, save as now and then a faint swish of tail or wag of a weary ear bespoke the knowledge of some bold, marauding fly. The driver, perched upon his seat, his feet upon the rail, his knees pushed toward his chin, sat with his broad hat drawn down upon his forehead, his hands clasped between his legs, and all his ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... illness, and was also recommended a sunbath, so we travelled together. The hotels being all full, we took up our quarters in a small boarding-house, standing in dense groves of orange trees, where each shiver of the night breeze sent the branches of the orange trees swish-swishing, and wafted great breaths of the delicious fragrance of orange blossom into our rooms. I was in bed, when the Guardsman, who had never been in the tropics before, rushed terror-stricken into my ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... walked with swaying strides nearer and nearer toward the lonely wigwam and tree. Iktomi heard the swish! swish! of the stranger's feet through the tall grass. He was passing now beyond the tree, when Iktomi, springing to his feet, called out: "How, how, my friend! I see you are dressed in handsome deerskins and have red paint on your cheeks. You are going to some feast or dance, ...
— Old Indian Legends • Zitkala-Sa
... shoulders, loins, and feet, and we were also covered with the unpleasant rime which our backs had brushed off the tent walls when we had camped. On we went, however, confident but silent. No other sound now but the swish, swish of our ski as we sped through the soft new snow. In the light of the Aurora objects stood out with the razor-edge sharpness of an after-blizzard atmosphere, and the temperature seemed to fall even lower than at midnight. Our fingers ...
— South with Scott • Edward R. G. R. Evans
... heard the faint swish of feminine movement. She came and stood demurely at the top of the wide steps, a little hoop overflowing soft, white embroidered stuff in ...
— The Gringos • B. M. Bower
... came with a swish similar to that made by a wet sheet shaken in the wind, and burst in the field on the other side of the road. A ball of white smoke poised for a moment in mid-air, curled slowly upwards, and gradually faded away. I looked at my mates. Stoner ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... wrapped in a cloud; moisture began to form in tiny drops upon the stanchions and the deck, upon the beards and moustaches of the male part of the voyagers, upon the woolly texture of the garments of all, even upon the smoothly brushed silk of the Honourable John's top hat; save for the swish of the paddles and the running of the engines, with a whispered exclamation here and there, we could hear nothing; and we could scarcely see the length of ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... and often, when he stood shoulder-high in a silver-green sea of sugar-cane, or looked up to the tufted palms that made a murmuring over his head, or listened to the rustle of corn in the sunshine, or to the swish of the heavily-podded doura in the light wind that came in from the desert, he would compare his growing love for Ruby to the growing of Nature's children in this beneficent clime. And the luxuriant richness of the green ...
— Bella Donna - A Novel • Robert Hichens
... tells you that the old fisherman is astir at Fort Point and the man with the new motor boat over at Hough's Neck is giving it a little run before breakfast, with the muffler off, as usual. A gull goes over, flying low. You do not see but you hear the soft swish of the wings. By and by the sun shows through a rift in the fog and you begin to move before a faint air from the southwest. A half hour more and the shreds of fog are melting upward into the blue of a clear day, the wind fills your sail and you are sweeping eastward with wind ...
— Old Plymouth Trails • Winthrop Packard
... circus. If the band played all the time they would never get a chance to look inside the buildings. The moment they get within earshot of the tuba horns they anchor themselves to benches or camp-stools and watch the leader swish the air with his baton. After the music stops they will begin hunting for more excitement, and may finally wander in among the pictures and admire some battle scene covering a whole wall. To-day I saw a young man and his girl standing ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... Glen, but it is a cruel kindness, for I want to be where they are growing in Clashiegar den. When summer comes people praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have not seen Tochty woods in their glory. Each autumn carries me to the harvest field, till in my study I hear the swish of the scythe and feel the fragrance of the dry, ripe grain. And in winter I see the sun shining on the white sides of Glen Urtach, and can hardly keep pen to paper ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... there was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... and after giving the rope a fierce swish through the air, as if he were hitting at Lobster's back, he put the end inside the top of his trousers, just beneath his chin, and gradually worked it down out ...
— Cormorant Crag - A Tale of the Smuggling Days • George Manville Fenn
... one of the four rods of which I was in command. For one hour my pencil wrought without a pause, and delightful it was under the sunshine to indite to the steady strokes of two pair of oars, the rhythmic swish of the water, now tranquilly flowing, and easy for all ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... really consists of one room, but she maintains that there are two; so, rather than argue, let us say that there are two. The other one has no window, and she could not swish her old skirts in it without knocking something over; its grandest display is of tin pans and crockery on top of a dresser which has a lid to it; you have but to whip off the utensils and raise the ...
— Echoes of the War • J. M. Barrie
... the cabin of the tug came a confused series of sounds. First there was the swish and pelt of the rain, varied as the wind blew the sheets of water across the deck. But, above it all, was a deep, ominous note—a grinding, crushing noise, as of giant rocks piling one on top of the other, smashing to powder ...
— The Moving Picture Boys at Panama - Stirring Adventures Along the Great Canal • Victor Appleton
... was for the first time in her life working with a scrubbing-brush, and, presently, M'riar heard its swish. ...
— The Old Flute-Player - A Romance of To-day • Edward Marshall and Charles T. Dazey
... half way, keeping his elbow fast at his side. But the doctor would not be thus partially obeyed. "Hold out your hand, sir!" he would thunder; and out would go the arm to its fullest length, and with a sharp swish through the air, down would come the strap, covering the hand from the wrist to finger tip, and sending a thrill of agony through every nerve in the body. Ten, twenty, thirty, or in extreme cases, even forty such stripes would be administered, some boys taking them as ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... clink of the teacups. It was in the swish of every silk petticoat. If I went to the theater, church or concert, the call of that germ-ridden spot of the unholy name beat into my brain with the persistency of a tom-tom ...
— The Lady and Sada San - A Sequel to The Lady of the Decoration • Frances Little
... first place," suggested Ralph, not waiting for Hugh's reply, "the sound of voices came from the same level as our own location. I'm dead sure of that fact. Then again we could hear the swish of brush, and I even caught the sound of men crashing through thickets and ...
— The Boy Scouts of the Flying Squadron • Robert Shaler
... Presently—swish! They were circling in the opposite direction to Tam, which meant that the object passed him at the rate of one hundred and forty miles an hour. But he had seen the German coming.... Something dropped from the fuselage, there was the rending crash of an explosion ...
— Tam O' The Scoots • Edgar Wallace
... rain were dying fast, and he heard a sound behind uncommonly like the distant swish of oars. It sent an unpleasant thrill through him, because he wished to be alone on the river at that particular time, but his eyes, tracing a course through all the dusk and gloom, rested upon another boat, about two hundred yards away, ...
— The Shades of the Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... two that when the uproar broke out Vance Cornish raised his eyes, but went on lighting his pipe. Then his sister Elizabeth ran to the window with a swish of skirts around her long legs. After the first shot there was a lull. The little cattle town was as peaceful as ever with its storm-shaken houses staggering ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... the duties of a runner for our unit;—he also told me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only left ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... started for somewhere else. The trees had colic; everything became as dark as winter twilight; streaks of wildfire ran miles in a second, and somebody seemed to be ripping up sheets of copper and tin the size of farms. The rain came with a swish, then with a rattle, and then with a roar, while people listened at their garret doorways and marveled. Window-panes turned ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... unnoticed in the dimness. It was noisy down here—the clank of the steering mechanism; the swish and surge of the water against the hull; ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... young ladyhood! If only Lady Dee could have revised this book of Veblen's, how many points she could have given to him! No details had been too minute for the technique of Sylvia's great-aunt—the difference between the swish of the right kind of silk petticoats and the wrong kind; and yet her technique had been broad enough to take in a landscape. "Every girl should have a background," had been one of her maxims, and Sylvia had to have a special phaeton to drive, a special horse to ride, special ...
— Sylvia's Marriage • Upton Sinclair
... together, tumble down in broken frothy masses into the vat. Beginning with a slow steady stroke the coolies gradually increase the pace, shouting out a hoarse wild song at intervals; till, what with the swish and splash of the falling water, the measured beat of the furrovahs or beating rods, and the yells and cries with which they excite each other, the noise is almost deafening. The water, which at first is of a yellowish green, ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... rose up before him. Lida nude, with hair dishevelled and inscrutable eyes, became the central figure in a turbulent orgy of cruelty and lust. Suddenly he distinctly saw her lying on the ground; he heard the swish of the whip; he observed a blood-red stripe on the soft, nude, submissive body. His temples throbbed, he staggered backwards, sparks danced before his eyes. The thought of it all became physically intolerable. His hand shook as he lit a cigarette; again his strong limbs twitched convulsively, ...
— Sanine • Michael Artzibashef
... night; nothing but darkness. Below, lined along the rails, she caught dull outlines of the white caps of the seamen, all as eager to defeat the battleships as their officers. She saw the phosphorescent gleam from a shattered wave. But she heard nothing, not even the swish ...
— Prince or Chauffeur? - A Story of Newport • Lawrence Perry
... room with swift, silent footsteps, and gathered into her hands the roll of papers upon the table. As softly as she had come she went. The deep sobbing breaths of the two men, the half-stifled cries with which Vine was seeking for outside help, effectually deadened the faint swish of her skirts and the tremor of her footsteps upon ...
— The Governors • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... he had to put his ear and shoulder against it, and push his way forward. It was better, however, when he turned into the lane. The high bank and the hedge sheltered him upon one side. The road, however, was deep in mud, and the rain fell in a steady swish. Not a soul was to be seen, but he needed to make no inquiries, for he knew whither his father had gone as certainly as though he ...
— The Doings Of Raffles Haw • Arthur Conan Doyle
... came to consciousness after being wounded the first thing that met my ears was the roar of musketry and the boom of cannon, with the continual swish, swash of the grape and canister striking the trees and ground. I placed my hand in my bosom, where I felt a dull, deadening sensation. There I found the warm blood, that filled my inner garments and now trickled down ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... the love and respect of the one woman in the world," he said, quite without heat. "If I find him, I think I shall blot him out—like that." A bumblebee was bobbing and swaying on a head of red clover, and the sudden swish of the hunting-crop left it a little disorganized mass of black and yellow down ...
— The Quickening • Francis Lynde
... was just on the point of telegraphing, when suddenly there was a rustling sound at the open French window, a swish of skirts behind him, and the next instant a pair of arms were thrown ...
— Kidnapped at the Altar - or, The Romance of that Saucy Jessie Bain • Laura Jean Libbey
... them off, I turned Newman over on his back, and, with my arm about him, prepared to lift him erect. Before I could do so, assistance arrived. Light feet pattered down the lazaret ladder; there was a swish of skirts, a gasp, and the lady was on her knees by Newman's side. "Roy—Roy—I was in time—" she cried. Her arms went ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... vanished, as I felt the swish of the tide round my ankles. It would soon be up to ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... deserts, snowcapped mountains, men moving in the blur of smoke, long watches in the night. Thirteen years in God-forsaken outposts, with never a sight of a woman's face, the sound of her voice, the swish of her gown, nor a touch of the spell ...
— The Puppet Crown • Harold MacGrath
... could to make all our hearts beat young! A picture show across the street sprayed its gay crowd over the sidewalks and a vaudeville house down stairs gathered up rivulets of humanity from the spray. Somewhere near by was a dance, for we heard the rhythmic swish and lisp of young feet and the gay cry of the music. Here and there came a soldier; sometimes we saw a woman in mourning; but uniforms and mourners were uncommon. The war was a tale ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... the harpoon-gun was followed by a swirl as the whale sounded for a long dive, but a moment later there came a dull, muffled report from the water, the explosive head of the harpoon, known as the 'bomb,' having burst. For a minute or two there was no sound but the swish of the line and the clank of the big winch as it ran out, while the animal sank to the bottom. There was a moment's wait, and then Hank, seeing the line tauten and hang down straight, ...
— The Boy With the U. S. Fisheries • Francis Rolt-Wheeler
... moved; slowly at first, then quicker; and then a long-drawn swish like the sound of an overbold wave that has broken too far up the beach and is sweeping ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... warm clothing and mufflers, and woollen caps and thick great-coats in the raw-edged cold of the breaking day. For an hour they stood there listening to the whine of overhead bullets and the sharp 'slap' of well-aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crash of shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and the ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... think Mr. Beeton cheats much,' said Dick. Bessie was flouncing up and down the room, and he was conscious of a keen sense of enjoyment as he heard the swish of her skirts and ...
— The Light That Failed • Rudyard Kipling
... thoughts came down the dusky silence from the further end of the hall. She turned her inscrutable eyes upon him in passing, and flitted noiselessly and with languid grace up the stairway, the faint swish of her gown vanishing with her. He hesitated a moment, overpowered by conflicting emotion; then ...
— Shapes that Haunt the Dusk • Various
... Couldn't neither on 'em understan' it. The boy c'u'd see the eyes o' the panther 'n the dark. Shone like tew live coals eggszac'ly. The panther 'd never sot 'n a tree when he was hungry, 'n see a boy below him. Sumthin' tol' him t' jump. Tail went swish in the leaves like thet. His whiskers quivered, his tongue come out. C'u'd think o' nuthin' but his big empty belly. The boy was scairt. He up with his gun quick es a flash. Aimed at his eyes 'n let 'er flicker. Blew a lot o' smoke 'n bird shot 'n paper ...
— Eben Holden - A Tale of the North Country • Irving Bacheller
... "Swish—thud! swish!" Half blinded by a blow dealt between the eyes by a hurling slungshot, the young engineer could discern a break in the program, the appearance of a new element that startled and astonished him. He had expected ...
— Ralph on the Overland Express - The Trials and Triumphs of a Young Engineer • Allen Chapman
... like a clammy winding-sheet; I could see nothing; I was too chilled to feel; I was as alone and powerless as a lost canoe in the ocean; but somewhere on earth or in air I heard a company of men pass me by. The sounds were unmistakable. I heard the swish of wet leaves, the pad of feet, and even the creak of the damp leather of the carrying-straps. Something cracked, pricking in my ears in a blur of sound, and I knew that the men had brushed a branch with the canoe that they were carrying on their heads. They were near me; at any moment they ...
— Montlivet • Alice Prescott Smith
... sounded the ineffable swish of silken petticoats along the corridor and the clinking of high heels on the tiles. La Senorita Marquesa d'Aumerle had obtained permission to visit His Most Serene Highness. The sentinel of the evening before was ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... the designated spot, the fellow gave a violent swish with the pen. The mates made a grab for his hand, but too late. He tore a great, ink-smeared rent through ...
— Tramping on Life - An Autobiographical Narrative • Harry Kemp
... acres of my home, Some rapture in my rags awakes; I lift void eyes and scan The skies for crows, those ravening foes, Of my strange master, Man. I watch him striding lank behind His clashing team, and know Soon will the wheat swish body high Where once lay sterile snow; Soon shall I gaze across a sea Of sun-begotten grain, Which my unflinching watch hath sealed For harvest ...
— Collected Poems 1901-1918 in Two Volumes - Volume I. • Walter de la Mare
... came the honking of the motor-car, and a great swish where it grazed a wet bush near the house. Somebody lowered the gas in the hall, and Mrs. Paget's voice said regretfully, "I wish we had had a fire in the parlor—just one of the times!—but there's no help for it." They all came in, Margaret flushed, ...
— Mother • Kathleen Norris
... further,' spake Covan to the cows. And they began to eat the grass by the side of the stream, while Covan listened to them and longed for some supper also, for they had travelled far, and his limbs were weak under him. Then there was a swish of water at his feet, and out peeped the head of the famous otter Doran-donn ...
— The Orange Fairy Book • Various
... bounding, rocking, jolting at their heels in frightfully dangerous fashion. We dare not glance at Dandy Jack, but we feel that he is in his element; and that, consequently, we are in deadly peril. Then the chorus of yells grows louder and fiercer, the swish of the whips more constant and furious. There is a tremendous rattle, a series of awful bumps that seem to dislocate every bone in my body, a feeling that the coach is somersaulting, I appear to be flying through space among the stars, ...
— Brighter Britain! (Volume 1 of 2) - or Settler and Maori in Northern New Zealand • William Delisle Hay
... was a sound—very, very slight. No dry stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping sound of branches disturbed ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert W. Chambers
... what is keeping Bob," she repeated, putting the camera down. "Maybe I'd better go back into the car. How those trees do swish about! I don't believe if I shouted, I'd be heard above the noise of the wind and ...
— Betty Gordon in the Land of Oil - The Farm That Was Worth a Fortune • Alice B. Emerson
... thinking her own thoughts, when the light swish of silken drapery near caused her to look round, and to her astonishment the girl who was called Flora stood in the shelter of the window ...
— The Children of Wilton Chase • Mrs. L. T. Meade
... in his veins at the rumbling swish of a car speeding through the pneumatic tube beneath their feet. His nerves were on edge. Then the captain of police looked up from the book and there was a peculiar glint in his ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, December 1930 • Various
... the day the Prince of India was in audience by the Emperor's invitation, Sergius was the sole occupant of the stone bench. The hour was pleasant; the distant effects were perfect; birds and boats enlivened the air and water; and in listening to the swish of waves amongst the rocks and pebbles below, so like whisperings, he forgot where he was, and his impatience and melancholy, and the people strolling negligently past. One of his arms lay along the edge of the bulwark before him, and he was not thinking so much as simply enjoying ...
— The Prince of India - Or - Why Constantinople Fell - Volume 1 • Lew. Wallace
... with its hunting whips and trophies on the wall, to the parlour, and there I awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of her skirts, and, looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at the Governor's house the winter before, and was therefore ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... come!" she whispered, "hide." Dan could hear the swish of her garments as she rapidly glided across the room to the old cabinet, then he turned and crouched low behind the writing desk that she had chosen for his place of concealment. He knelt there motionless, ...
— The Inn at the Red Oak • Latta Griswold
... and eighty seconds there was no sound but the steady swish of the bow wave and the ...
— On Land And Sea At The Dardanelles • Thomas Charles Bridges
... 'Swish-h-h' went the clumsy slug past Roland's ear. He grasped his revolver; and the resolution of the moment was to stand at bay and fight the churls. But the reflection not occupying the hundredth part of a second showed ...
— The Four Canadian Highwaymen • Joseph Edmund Collins
... said, nodding his head wisely. "There's naught as nice as th' smell o' good clean earth, except th' smell o' fresh growin' things when th' rain falls on 'em. I get out on th' moor many a day when it's rainin' an' I lie under a bush an' listen to th' soft swish o' drops on th' heather an' I just sniff an' sniff. My nose end fair quivers ...
— The Secret Garden • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... safest place for their excursions they had picked by chance on the harbour with its fleet of steamers that threaded every bay and cove, and little by little, in the exaltation of the senses following his love for this woman, the swish of the water slipping past the bows, the panorama of rock and sandy beach, and the salt smell of the sea were for ever part of this strange, emotional condition where reality and dream blended without ...
— Jonah • Louis Stone
... echo, on Murray Brush's lips, and quite to drollery, of that sympathetic curiosity of Mrs. Drack's which Mr. Pitman had, as they said, voiced. Well, there had played before her the vision of a ledge of safety in face of a rising tide; but this deepened quickly to a sense more forlorn, the cold swish of waters already up to her waist and that would soon be up to her chin. It came really but from the air of her friend, from the perfect benevolence and high unconsciousness with which he kept his posture—as ...
— The Great English Short-Story Writers, Vol. 1 • Various
... standstill at the end of the pergola, where the masses of drooping roses made the air almost faint with their perfume. Margaret stretched out her hand, plucked a handful of the creamy petals and held them against her cheek. A thrush was singing noisily. A few yards away they heard the soft swish of the river. ...
— The Evil Shepherd • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... to him, nevertheless! If he would only come, and stop his blessed prating.—Now, he is swinging his stick again.—They always carry a stick, men who have debtors, and they always wear galoshes that say "Swish, swish," like lashes through the air—[Christine puts hand against his heart.] Do you hear how my heart beats? It sounds like an ocean steamer. Now, thank Heaven, he's taking his leave with his squeaking galoshes! "Swish, swish," like ...
— Plays: Comrades; Facing Death; Pariah; Easter • August Strindberg
... he stammered at last, "you were just going to swish him, weren't you, when I turned ...
— Vice Versa - or A Lesson to Fathers • F. Anstey
... within a quarter of a mile. My moment had arrived. I signalled full speed ahead and steered straight for her course. My timing was exact. At a hundred yards I gave the signal, and heard the clank and swish of the discharge. At the same instant I put the helm hard down and flew off at an angle. There was a terrific lurch, which came from the distant explosion. For a moment we were almost upon our side. Then, after staggering and trembling, ...
— Danger! and Other Stories • Arthur Conan Doyle
... mantel,—which delicately framed timepiece had been started within the hour by Sam, who knew Miss Elizabeth's will for having all things in running order. Peyton's drowsiness wrapped him closer and closer. Presently he was remotely aware of the opening of the door, the tread of light feet on the floor, the swish of skirts. But he had now reached that lethargic point which involves total indifference to outer things, and he did not ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens
... suddenly over the sibilant Miss Sidonia Sabrina a quieting down, a lessening of twinkle and shimmer and swish. She moved slowly toward the huddle on the cot, parasol leading, and her hands crossed atop ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... as I write, Bertie. Slate-coloured clouds with ragged fringes are drifting slowly overhead. Between them one has a glimpse of higher clouds of a lighter gray. I can hear the gentle swish of the rain striking a clearer note on the gravel path and a duller among the leaves. Sometimes it falls straight and heavy, till the air is full of the delicate gray shading, and for half a foot above the ground there ...
— The Stark Munro Letters • J. Stark Munro
... policeman! But it is well known that there never is a policeman in sight when you look for one; so Miss Frisbie stamped her foot again and snorted in Peter's face. "Goodbye, Comrade Gudge!" The emphasis she put upon that word "comrade" would have frozen the fieriest Red soul; and she turned with a swish of her skirts and strode off, and Peter stood looking mournfully at her little French heels going crunch, crunch, crunch on the gravel path. When the heels were clean gone out of sight, Peter sought out the nearest bench and sat down and buried ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... cooker; air valve, pressure release valve, safety valve, tires, air escaping from tires, punctured tire; escaping steam, steam, steam radiator, steam release valve. V. hiss, buzz, whiz, rustle; fizz, fizzle; wheeze, whistle, snuffle; squash; sneeze; sizzle, swish. Adj. sibilant; hissing &c v.; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... died out suddenly, and Agatha and the little girls drew their chairs close up to the stove. The house was very quiet, and Agatha could hear the mournful wailing of the wind about it, with now and then the soft swish of driven snow upon the walls and ...
— Masters of the Wheat-Lands • Harold Bindloss
... summons from one of the four rods of which I was in command. For one hour my pencil wrought without a pause, and delightful it was under the sunshine to indite to the steady strokes of two pair of oars, the rhythmic swish of the water, now tranquilly flowing, and easy ...
— Lines in Pleasant Places - Being the Aftermath of an Old Angler • William Senior
... gasp. There was a quick patter of light feet down the stairs, the last two cleared with a jump, a swish of silken skirts, a little gush of perfume, and then, bright as a flash of light, blue-eyed Mollie stood before him. She held his card in her fingers, and all the yellow hair fell over her plump shoulders, like amber ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... splashing startled her, and looking round she saw a multitude of curious, great-eyed, black heads, something like the heads of boys, and something like the heads of dogs, thrusting from the water, and flashing under it again at sight of them with a swish that sent the spray into the air. She sprang to her feet. "Oh, look at those things! Look at them! Look at them!" She laid vehement hands upon the young man, and pushed him in the direction in which she wished him to look, at some ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... undefended, Gerald made a dash for it, and had already one foot on the wall, preparatory to scaling the cottage, when 'swish' came a lump of sea-weed in his face; and before he had recovered from the shock a pair of strong hands seized him and Marjorie's voice shouted, ...
— The Adventure League • Hilda T. Skae
... that precipice splindid You see on its summit a wondtherful show— A lovely Swish building, all painting and gilding, The famous ...
— Ballads • William Makepeace Thackeray
... this queer tableau of baffled rage was enacting itself on the starboard bow of the Jasper B., a no less strange and far less explicable thing was occurring on the port side. The swish of oars and the ripple of a moving boat drew Cleggett's attention in that direction as Loge's booming threats grew fainter. He saw that two oarsmen, near the eastern and farther side of the canal, had allowed the dainty, varnished little craft they were supposed ...
— The Cruise of the Jasper B. • Don Marquis
... swiftly toward him as though to go beneath the bark on her way to the pass. The paddles leaped to a rousing song and crashed in unison on the slopping gunwales. Dip, swish, bang! and then the accentuated thunder of forty voices, the men's hoarse and straining, the women's rich, falsetto, and musical. In the stern the old chief swayed with every rush of the boat, one sinewy hand clinched on the tiller, the other enfolding a little child. In the bow a handsome boy ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... very like an old grizzly bear, laughed in the depths of his great, hairy chest. "Dream of glory, and end on a grabat! Just so, just so. And yet one has pleasures—to sweep off an Arbico's neck nice and clean—swish!" and he described a circle with his lean, brawny arm with as infinite a relish as a dilettante, grown blind, would listen thirstily to the description of an exquisite bit of Faience or Della ...
— Under Two Flags • Ouida [Louise de la Ramee]
... mind intensely on the movable ceiling. For a moment, there was resistance, then, very slowly, it began to open. A crack appeared in its center, and the air of the room hissed out with the swish of a minor tempest. After that, it was easier. The crack widened swiftly, and the roof rolled back to the walls, leaving the room open ...
— Rebels of the Red Planet • Charles Louis Fontenay
... few inches up the short, thick mast, as though reluctantly, while away on our weather quarter we heard the fierce shouts of the men in the approaching boat as they encouraged each other, punctuated by the quick jerk of the oars in the rowlocks, and the swish of the water as the oar-blades clipped into it. With the passage of every second those menacing sounds drew appreciably nearer, dominating even the thunderous rustle and slatting of the sail that slowly climbed into the air over our heads, while the felucca, now fast gathering stern-way, ...
— A Middy of the King - A Romance of the Old British Navy • Harry Collingwood
... glimmer of the sunshine of a victorious issue to their uprising? (egad, that was a strong blast, and the waves do swish as if they were enraged at last!). Thieblin thinks not. And yet they are active, and, like the storm outside, they are gaining strength. Those of them under arms are four times as numerous as the Republicans ...
— Romantic Spain - A Record of Personal Experiences (Vol. II) • John Augustus O'Shea
... sierra, on fearsome dizzy trails, in the somber shadows of virgin forests, in the rustling of wind-blown leaves (the seductive swish of elfin skirts) she heard the voices of Juno's sylvan train. Enchanted she listened to the syren's call, and ere the echo died within her ear she had devoted her talent to literature, a priestess self-ordained in Arizona's temple ...
— Tales of Aztlan • George Hartmann
... about," he answered. "I heard the twang of a bowstring and the swish of an arrow over my head. Some one aimed—Ah, there ...
— A Mating in the Wilds • Ottwell Binns
... I ain't gwine run away: I'm gwine to stand stiff-legged for de Lord dis blessed day. YOU screech, and swish de water, Satan! I'se a ...
— The Poems of Sidney Lanier • Sidney Lanier
... they strained their ears and eyes, no sign of the missing ones came; nothing but the swish of the rain and the whistle of the wind ...
— The Cock-House at Fellsgarth • Talbot Baines Reed
... silent on the pavement if his fool-mistress would but cease from trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings. But Mr. Lingnam only talked. He talked—we all sat together behind so that we could not escape him—and he talked above the worn gears and a certain maddening swish of one badly patched tire—and he talked of the Federation of the Empire against all conceivable dangers except himself. Yet I was neither brutally rude like Penfentenyou, nor swooningly bored like the Agent-General. I remembered a certain Joseph Finsbury who delighted ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... life together. With a start of energy she sat upright, shifting her body until her feet touched the floor over the side of the bed. She knew what she must do—now, now, before it was too late. She must go out into this cool damp, out, away, to feel the wet swish of the grass around her feet and the fresh moisture on her forehead. Mechanically she struggled into her clothes, groping in the dark of the closet for a hat. She must go from this house where the thing hovered that pressed upon her bosom, or ...
— The Beautiful and Damned • F. Scott Fitzgerald
... finish his sentence. There was a rush of swift feet, a swish of skirts, then full upon him there fell a whirlwind of sobs, ...
— Oh, Money! Money! • Eleanor Hodgman Porter
... the world save only themselves seemed to have been frozen into oblivion. There was no sound, save the monotonous swish, swish of their own snowshoes, to disturb the silence—a silence otherwise as absolute and vast as the uttermost depths of ...
— The Gaunt Gray Wolf - A Tale of Adventure With Ungava Bob • Dillon Wallace
... reached the door she sprang up, and he heard the silken swish of her gray gown coming ...
— The Incomplete Amorist • E. Nesbit
... thralls clustered in the prows to rest their weary limbs and dice with knucklebones. The spirits of all lightened, and there was loud talk in the sterns among the Bearsarks. In the night the wind freshened, and the long shallow boats rolled filthily so that the teeth shook in a man's head, and over the swish of the waves and the creaking of the sheets there was a perpetual din of arms clashing. Biorn was miserably ill for some hours, and made sport for ...
— The Path of the King • John Buchan
... yellow under the darkness. Henry's heart began to beat high. Nature, as it so often did, was coming to their help. The droning song of the scalp dance had ceased and with it the voices of the warriors talking. No sound came from the river, save the soft swish of the flowing waters, and now and then a gurgle and a splash, when some huge catfish raised part of his body above the surface, and then let it ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... within it; and when at length they had done so, there ensued a weary wait that was exceedingly trying to their patience. For the darkness soon became so profound that although from time to time there came to their ears certain slight sounds, such as the sudden swish of a bough, or the crackling of withered leaves and twigs, betraying the stealthy movements of some wild creature, they could see nothing, strain ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... tea, feeding the swans swimming by, and watching the gay traffic, - the multitude of graceful little crafts with fashionably dressed men and women in softly blending tones of green, violet, pink and white, the muscular gig-rowers in training, shooting by with a regular swish of oars and followed by shouting friends on horseback; the competitors in a swimming match making their way amidst all this tumult cheered on every side; the luxuriant houseboats floating by, full of flowers and happy people, from which ...
— The Bride of Dreams • Frederik van Eeden
... of the boat between it and the bank, but he scrambled up out of the water like lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he soon caught up, but he was just raining water from his clothes, and it made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they could wring Jim Leonard's clothes out, and lay them on the shore to dry, and stay in long enough to let them dry. That was what they ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... until the maid returned; and registered to the woman's credit the discreet soft closing of the front-door and afterward the well-nigh inaudible swish of the rear door of the dining-room as the maid ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... inexperience, he may lose forward speed to such an extent that his controls become inoperative, and his machine threatens to side-slip. One's ear should, apart from the inclination of the machine, and the sensation of the descent, help one materially in judging the speed of a glide. There is a "swish" that comes to the ear, now the engine is no longer making its clamour, which gives a guide to the pace of one's downward movement. Aviators who are skilled, and have done a large amount of flying, are able to judge with accuracy, by the ear alone and ...
— Learning to Fly - A Practical Manual for Beginners • Claude Grahame-White
... all grim and severe, Who the long night before, with a feeling of fear, Had slumbered but fitfully, hearing the swish Of the sky-rocket over his roof, with a wish That the urchin who fired it were fast to the end Of the stick to forever and ever ascend; Or to hopelessly ask why the boy with the horn And its horrible havoc had ever been born! Or to wish, in his wakefulness, staring aghast, That this Fourth of ...
— Nye and Riley's Wit and Humor (Poems and Yarns) • Bill Nye
... through the hall-way overhead and out on the front veranda, and he, instead of pursuing, stood stone still, rooted to the floor, his heart beating hard, his hands clinching in amaze. What stunned him was the fact that with the footfalls went the swish ...
— 'Laramie;' - or, The Queen of Bedlam. • Charles King
... spouted the whale, with a gleeful gurgle, and before any one could say "Jack Robinson!" Mr. Jonah appeared upon the deck of the Ark, and with a swish of his great tail the whale ...
— The Cruise of the Noah's Ark • David Cory
... it was running at the very edge of the river that rushed through the channel between the two great bluffs. As the whirlpool was approached the rush and swish of the water became fiercer and more terrible. It was fascinating yet fearful to look upon, and Elsie Bellwood shuddered and drew back, more than once ...
— Frank Merriwell's Pursuit - How to Win • Burt L. Standish
... cat were busied with luncheon cook-pans, that my solitude was unimperilled. I see now there is nothing for it but the tower. And I cannot build the tower; so I am to be henceforward at the mercy of anything feline or feminine that cares to swish its tail or its skirts ...
— The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne • William J. Locke
... in his chair by the window, a deathly lassitude weighing his heart, he heard the steps of people on the stairway, the click of the ascending elevator, gay voices calling good night, a ripple of laughter, the silken swish of skirts in the corridor, doors opening and closing; then silence creeping throughout the house on the receding heels of departure—a stillness that settled like a mist through hall and corridor, accented for a few moments by distant sounds, then absolute, echoless silence. ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... to Chet. "Down on the ground!" And he felt the swish of another liquid mass above his head as he obeyed ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... her face with her hands. A moment she stood rocking there—a fair, lissom plant swept by a gale of ineffable emotion. Then the breath seemed to go all out of her in one great sigh, and Gregory, who dared not look her way, heard the swish of her gown, followed by a thud as she collapsed and lay swooning ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... 'With a hasty swish-swish of his slippers he loomed up in the ring of faint light, and suddenly appeared in the bright circle of the lamp. His extended hand aimed at my breast like a pistol; his deepset eyes seemed ...
— Lord Jim • Joseph Conrad
... maidens' winsome purity and frank disdain, of strong men who take their lives in hand and hurl themselves upon the push of pikes. And though I cannot grasp more than a hint of the plot, yet as my feet swish through the dewy swathes of the hyacinths or crisp along the frost-bitten snow, a wild thought quickens within me into a belief, that one day I shall hear them all, and tell these tales for my very own so that the world ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... with the faint swish of scything as she moved toward him, and he withdrew, taking hold of the ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... I should like an apple. I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail, and whistling away gently to himself; and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... patter as they swayed beneath the bitter blasts stiff with frost, and the moan of swinging boughs in a far-off willow bluff. It was these things that guided him, for he had left the rutted trail, and here and there the swish beneath the wheels told of taller grass, while the bluff ran black athwart the horizon when that had gone. Then twigs crackled beneath them as the horses picked their way amidst the shadowy trees stunted by a ceaseless struggle with the wind, and Winston shook ...
— Winston of the Prairie • Harold Bindloss
... some kind. Mark the swish of silken skirts; unless my eyes fail me, I caught a glimpse of silken hose as she ...
— The Madness of May • Meredith Nicholson
... sprang up from the sofa. "Hamilton, show the doctor in here. I am going up to my room, Tom, and you and the doctor can talk here undisturbed." And with a swish of her skirts she disappeared up the staircase as the man-servant ushered the ...
— The Lost Despatch • Natalie Sumner Lincoln
... which settles down on a house when the grown-ups have gone out to dinner and you have the whole evening to do what you like in. The children stood in the hall a moment after the carriage wheels had died away with the scrunching swish that the carriage wheels always made as they turned the corner by the lodge, where the gravel was extra thick and soft owing to the droppings from the trees. From the kitchen came the voices of ...
— The Magic World • Edith Nesbit
... in the spacious halls; the courts were inlaid with mosaic; there were festooned partitions and a great profusion of architectural fancies; and everywhere reigned a silence so deep that the swish of a sash or the echo of a sigh could be ...
— Three short works - The Dance of Death, The Legend of Saint Julian the Hospitaller, A Simple Soul. • Gustave Flaubert
... lit a parlor match and held it aloft, which was apparently a smoke signal, for an Indian behind the porch appeared and suddenly a swish was heard in the air, and a piece of clothesline with a noose in it came near going over Uncle Ike's head; so near that it broke his clay pipe, leaving the ...
— Peck's Uncle Ike and The Red Headed Boy - 1899 • George W. Peck
... recitations to the accompaniment of pianos; it even went on the stage. Ladies rushed into print to expose foibles men never guessed, and to say of the sex at large what less gifted women say only of their personal friends. For years we have never ceased for a moment to hear the lash of the whip, the swish of the birch, the whizz of the arrow, the ping of the bullet, the thwack of the flail, the thud of the hammer, the buzzing of the hornet. And what does it all amount to? How much execution has been done? Is society purer or nobler? ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... chloritic yellow below, ended in a thick bed of water-rolled pebbles, not in ground-rock; nor did it show the couch of excellent clay which usually underlies the surface, and which, I have said, is extracted through pits to make sun-dried brick, swish, and other building materials. We also secured some of the blood-red earth from the eastern tail of the northern "Shigh," the manganese-stained Tau and the gravelly sand washed out of the Cascalho-gravel, the latter very promising. The result of our careless ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... to control the weakness which had seized her, and, for support, rested her head upon the casement and took two or three long breaths; then with a murmured prayer for strength she gently opened the door, and the soft swish of her trailing ...
— Marion's Faith. • Charles King
... being at some distance from my boy and the horses, I lay for a short rest and a quiet look-out among some rocks and grass overlooking a little stream, and I saw a charming picture. Presently there was a slight rattle of trinkets, and a swish of the tall yellow grass, followed by the apparition of a naked Matabele warrior standing glistening among the rocks of the streamlet, within thirty yards of me. His white war ornaments—the ball of clipped feathers on his brow, and the long white cow's-tail plume which depended ...
— The Story of Baden-Powell - 'The Wolf That Never Sleeps' • Harold Begbie
... hint or fathom his intention. She walked on steadily, her eyes downcast,—her tiny feet, shod in charming little French walking shoes, peeping in and out with a flash of steel on their embroidered points, from under the mysterious gleam of silk flounces that gave a soft "swish," as she moved,—her golden hair escaping in one or two silky waves from under a picturesque black hat, fastened on by velvet ribbons, which were tied in a captivating knot under the sweetest of little white chins, a chin whose firm contour almost contradicted the sensitive lines of the kissable ...
— The Master-Christian • Marie Corelli
... him were already distant. The shadows were growing long now, but the light was still from the sunshine of the early afternoon. The man lying along the limb, knife in hand, could hear no sound save the soft swish of leaves against each other as the breeze of later day pushed its way through the forest, or the alarmed cries of knowing birds who saw on the ground beneath them a huge thing slip along with scarce a sound from the impact of his fearfully ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... it was necessary first to control the little flecks of foam that despite his endeavor still wet his lips. For you see," said the voice, and in the darkness its accents took on a slow, rhythmical sombreness, like the swish of a sword in a shuttered room, "this was far worse than the leaves. For, after all, the dead are only the dead, but to the living there ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1919 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... the morning was spent in tobogganing in wood while the snow was good. It was great fun to see the great logs slide down with a long swish and pile up in front of the cabin. The fellows worked with a will, and by noon a large supply had been pulled in. The next thing was to cut it and pile it away in the house. Smith undertook to build a sawbuck, and, with Mr. Allen's help, the job was soon accomplished. ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... gentleman with the big portmanteau, the one that passed for a negromancer. The taller man holds up the lantern and takes the gentleman by the feet, and the short one, that had pretended to be drunk, clutches hold of his head and cuts his throat, clean, with one stroke, swish! Then they leave the head and body lying in its own blood up there, steal the portmanteau, and go downstairs with it. Here is our woman in a nice fix! First of all she thinks of slipping out, before any one can suspect it, not knowing ...
— The Country Doctor • Honore de Balzac
... smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object of pleased consideration;—and all the time, ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... was still on fire when I heard the soft swish of skirts. Then she stood before me, more beautiful than even my forest-dreaming had pictured her, more desirable than ever. She courtesied low, and the amazing mass of blue-black hair seemed an over-heavy burden for the ...
— A Virginia Scout • Hugh Pendexter
... in the cabin, heard the rattle of dishes, the swish of a broom on the rough floor. And then presently she came out, dragging another rocker. Then she re-entered the cabin, returning with a strip of striped cloth and a sewing basket. She seated herself in the chair, placed the basket in her lap, and with a half smile on her face began ...
— The Two-Gun Man • Charles Alden Seltzer
... Shortly after sunrise a low, blunt, muffled rumbling, like distant thunder, was followed by another series of shocks, which, though not nearly so severe as the first, made the cliffs and domes tremble like jelly, and the big pines and oaks thrill and swish and wave their branches with startling effect. Then the talkers were suddenly hushed, and the solemnity on their faces was sublime. One in particular of these winter neighbors, a somewhat speculative thinker with whom I had often conversed, was a firm believer in the cataclysmic ...
— The Yosemite • John Muir
... An instant of numbing silence fell. A swish! A cat on a small bear's back. A scene impossible! A hairy tornado, rolling, twisting, flopping, yelling, screeching, roaring, and howling, tore, bit, scratched, clawed, and walloped all over the place. An epileptic nebula; a maelstrom that ...
— Red Saunders' Pets and Other Critters • Henry Wallace Phillips
... upset, but before it went over the wind picked it up, carried it a few feet and then dropped it, smashing in the wooden side and setting Billy free. For once the old saying came true: "That it is an ill wind that blows nobody any good." With a swish of his stubby tail Billy was off down a side street, and as he ran he could hear above the peals of the thunder and the rushing of the wind, the lions roaring and the elephants trumpeting for fear amid the confusion and excitement of the collapsed tents,—the ...
— Billy Whiskers - The Autobiography of a Goat • Frances Trego Montgomery
... If there be no E.M.F. present it will cease suddenly, and neutrality will be attained at once. Telephone circuits indicate the operation by peculiar and characteristic sounds. An iron wire circuit produces a long swish or sigh, but a copper wire circuit like the Paris-London telephone emits a short, sharp report, like the crack of a pistol, which is sometimes startling, and has created fear, but there is no danger or liability to shock. Indeed, the start has more than once thrown the listener off his stool, ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... For a few moments after getting on deck he thought he had the ship to himself. One side of the deck was clean and wet; on the other side the men were slowly moving the scrubbing-brushes backward and forward, with a drowsy swish-swish. As he walked up the deck, he saw there was one passenger who had ...
— A Woman Intervenes • Robert Barr
... reality. He is yet about three hundred yards distant. I might not have heard him, even with the aid of the cleft, but tonight Areskoui has given uncommon power to my ear, perhaps to aid us, and I know he is walking among thick bushes. I can hear the branches swish as they fly back into place, after his body has passed. Ah, a small stick popped as it broke ...
— The Masters of the Peaks - A Story of the Great North Woods • Joseph A. Altsheler
... good earth so hesitatingly with those crumpled shoes are now standing firmly in wool-lined rubber boots topped by brown corduroy trousers, upon the winter slat walk that leads to the tool house, while their owners, touched by the swish of the Whirlpool that has recently drawn this peaceful town into its eddies, are busy trying to turn their patrol wagon, that for a year has led a most conservative existence as a hay wain and a stage-coach dragged by a curiously assorted team of dogs ...
— People of the Whirlpool • Mabel Osgood Wright
... mere confused murmur. It was raining heavily, and the gas shone dimly through the streaked and dripping glass, throwing little circles upon the glistening cobblestones. The air was full of the sounds of the rain, the thin swish of its fall, the heavier drip from the eaves, and the swirl and gurgle down the two steep gutters and through the sewer grating. There was only one figure in the whole length of Scudamore Lane. It was that of a man, and it stood outside the door ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... anvil. Stumpie, dim. of stump; a worn quill. Sturt, worry, trouble. Sturt, to fret; to vex. Sturtin, frighted, staggered. Styme, the faintest trace. Sucker, sugar. Sud, should. Sugh, sough, sigh, moan, wail, swish. Sumph, churl. Sune, soon. Suthron, southern. Swaird, sward. Swall'd, swelled. Swank, limber. Swankies, strapping fellows. Swap, exchange. Swapped, swopped, exchanged. Swarf, to swoon. Swat, sweated. Swatch, sample. Swats, new ale. Sweer, v. dead-sweer. Swirl, curl. Swirlie, ...
— Poems And Songs Of Robert Burns • Robert Burns
... both hands, set her teeth and waited for the shock. Mahommed Khan's right arm rose and his sword flashed in the sunlight as he stood up in his stirrups. She shut her eyes. But there was no shock! There was the swish of whirling steel, the thunder of hoofs, the sound of bodies falling. There was a scream or two as well and a coarse-mouthed Rajput oath. But when she dared to open her eyes once more they were thundering still, headlong down the city street and Mahommed Khan ...
— Told in the East • Talbot Mundy
... poetry about haying—I mean for those not engaged in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the fence and superintends the cutting of the dew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the "swish" and a rhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not much time to attend to it, for it is lively business "spreading" after half a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low, while the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... and when the Way the Skirt sets isn't so Poor, and she is Coy and introduces the Startled Fawn way of backing up without getting any farther away, and when she comes on with short Steps, and he gets the remote Swish of the Real Silk, to say nothing of the Faint Aroma of New-Mown Hay, and her Hesitating Manner seems to ask, "Have I or have I not met a Friend?"—in a Case of that kind, the Victim is just the same ...
— More Fables • George Ade
... all so sudden. A door flung open and a swish of rushing silk. A woman! A beautiful girl! ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... grew quiet after this, and listened to the swish of the rain and the mighty howling of the wind. It had grown very dark, and the air was chilly. The lightning was incessant, and traced zigzag pathways of fire across the sombre heavens. The thunder was terrific, and often shook ...
— The Love Story of Abner Stone • Edwin Carlile Litsey
... were the branches that he could see nothing. Removing his snowshoes and pack, 'Merican Joe climbed the tree and a few moments later Connie heard the blows of his belt ax as he hacked at the limb that held the clog. There was a swish of snow-laden branches, and amid a deluge of fine snow the frozen body of the lynx struck the ...
— Connie Morgan in the Fur Country • James B. Hendryx
... were in pursuit of a German spy. The remainder of his scepticism forsook him. Amid such surroundings, with the singing of the wind and the gurgling swish of the flying boat in his ears, any adventure seemed possible. The prosaic limitations of ordinary life dropped off from him. Only it seemed a pity to find the spy, since finding ...
— Priscilla's Spies 1912 • George A. Birmingham
... were standing close to Flannagan (one of the men's horses), and the men were at stables. We were all looking up and longing to see a Hun aeroplane hit, when suddenly "s-s-s-swish, plop!" just behind me. It was one of the Archie shrapnel cases. It buried itself deep in the ground 3 yards from where we were standing. We dug it up, and I'll bring it home for you. If it ...
— Letters to Helen - Impressions of an Artist on the Western Front • Keith Henderson
... blew across the meadow he turned his cheek to its kiss; if the odor of spearmint from the brookside was wafted around him he breathed it into his nostrils with delight. He saw the shadow of a crow flying across the field and stopped to look up and listen for the swish of her wings and her loud, hoarse caw as she made her way to the nesting grounds; then he gazed beyond her, into the fathomless depths of the blue sky, and his soul was stirred with an indescribable awe. Everything filled him with surprise, with wonder and with ecstasy,—the ...
— The Redemption of David Corson • Charles Frederic Goss
... six-pounder with grape," said a voice, followed by a blinding flash, a swish in the water, the roar of a cannon. It had been fired at random, and he was unharmed. Once more he used the paddle, wondering what next ...
— Daughters of the Revolution and Their Times - 1769 - 1776 A Historical Romance • Charles Carleton Coffin
... the stables to have Johnny Reb saddled and started away, riding slowly. When he came in view of the house which she sanctified with her presence, a gray saddle mare stood fighting flies and stamping by the stone hitching post in front of the verandah, and each swish of the beast's tail was a flagellation to the boy's soul. The mare belonged to Jimmy Hancock and logically proclaimed Jimmy's presence within. Heretofore between Stuart and Jimmy had existed a cordial amity, but now the aggrieved ...
— The Tyranny of Weakness • Charles Neville Buck
... the two. If Alwin lacked any of the Black One's strength, he made it up in skill and quickness. The bright steel began to fly fast and faster, until its swish was like the venomous hiss of serpents. The color came and went in Helga's cheek; her mouth worked nervously. Sigurd's eyes were fixed upon the two like glowing lamps, as to and fro they went with vengeful fury. In all the valley ...
— The Thrall of Leif the Lucky • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... a moment. As they waited and listened to the whining of the wind, the swish of the rain and the angry muttering of the thunder, and saw the vivid lightning, it was no wonder they did not want to decide hurriedly to go out in that out burst of the elements. But it was also trying on the nerves to stay in the stalled auto, exposed as it was by the ...
— The Outdoor Girls in a Motor Car - The Haunted Mansion of Shadow Valley • Laura Lee Hope
... all is well from the easy motion of the steamer, for her plunges are few and of small moment. A silence broods over the scene; the tired passengers have gone to sleep; all John can hear as he lies there is the dull throb of the engines and the swish of water against the ...
— Miss Caprice • St. George Rathborne
... heard, little gurgles of laughter, which in Egypt, thanks be to Allah, do not degenerate into giggles, the swish of a whip in the shadow, followed by a woman's cry, and through all, above ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... in it. One likes to hear the whetting of the scythes on a fresh morning and the response of the noisy bobolink, who always sits upon the fence and superintends the cutting of the dew-laden grass. There is a sort of music in the "swish" and a rhythm in the swing of the scythes in concert. The boy has not much time to attend to it, for it is lively business "spreading" after half a dozen men who have only to walk along and lay the grass low, while the boy has the whole hay-field on his hands. He has little ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... agonised remembrance of all that banging, trampling; the swish of her own scrubbing-brush; the voices round the table where old Mrs. Cohen had stood ironing for hours and hours ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... was all so sudden. A door flung open and a swish of rushing silk. A woman! A beautiful girl! ...
— The Blind Spot • Austin Hall and Homer Eon Flint
... silence that followed, the quick-drawn breath of many excited and some agitated people could be heard. Among the latter were Mrs. Tynan and her daughter and Malachi Deely; among those who held their breath in suspence were John Sibley, Studd Bradley the financier, and the Young Doctor. The swish of a skirt seemed ridiculously loud in the hush, and the scratching of the judge's quill ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... warning passed his lips we had shot around the projecting rock, where the road had been cut from the mountain-side. We were near our journey's end then, for at the foot of the embankment that sheered down at our left we heard the swish of a mountain-stream. The horse went down. There was a cry from Tip—a sound of splintering wood—something seemed to strike me a brutal blow. Then I lay back, careless, fearless, and was ...
— The Soldier of the Valley • Nelson Lloyd
... telling of spring came against the window, bringing a confusion of gentle sounds; the swish and sigh of branches swaying and touching one another, the distant hooting of an owl. Then the great silence reigned once more. Samuel Chapdelaine was sleeping; but in this repose beside the dead was nothing unseemly or wanting in respect; chin fallen on his breast, bands lying open ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... there was a sound — very, very slight. No dry stick cracked; no dry leaves rustled; no swish of foliage; no whipping sound of branches ...
— The Flaming Jewel • Robert Chambers
... sank in a kind of sob as the roar of a breaking wave sinks with an angry swish back into silence; and as there is a pause before the next wave is flung upward to break and roar, so was there a pause now. Then came the yell of fury, faction quarrel forgotten. They were all of one ...
— The Light That Lures • Percy Brebner
... great oak trembles; the heavy rain drops through the treble roof of oak and hawthorn and fern. Under the arched branches the lightning plays along, swiftly to and fro, or seems to, like the swish of a whip, a yellowish-red against the green; a boom! a crackle as if a tree fell from the sky. The thick grasses are bowed, the white florets of the wild parsley are beaten down, the rain hurls itself, and suddenly a fierce blast tears the green oak leaves and whirls them out into ...
— The Life of the Fields • Richard Jefferies
... the parlour, and there I awaited the coming of the Tory maid. And as I sat there, gently stroking the toe of my boot with my whip, and thinking of that night at the inn, of that soft "Thank you" on the old south road, I heard the soft swish of her skirts, and, looking up, saw Mistress Jean standing in the doorway. A beautiful picture it was, like some old portrait of Lely's, the maid standing there framed in the old oak. And I, though I had been to the balls at the Governor's house the winter before, and was therefore a man of ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... like some bird of prey that circled in the sky just above him—its shadow filling him with a continual fear, the swish of its wings making him cringe. He was never happy about it; there was no time in his life when he was not in a state of inward war. His intellect rebelled; and on the other hand, there was a part of his nature that craved this sex-experience and ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... on the pavement if his fool-mistress would but cease from trying to save him, passed and repassed us in sunlit or shaded settings. But Mr. Lingnam only talked. He talked—we all sat together behind so that we could not escape him—and he talked above the worn gears and a certain maddening swish of one badly patched tire—and he talked of the Federation of the Empire against all conceivable dangers except himself. Yet I was neither brutally rude like Penfentenyou, nor swooningly bored like the Agent-General. I remembered a certain Joseph Finsbury who delighted the Tregonwell ...
— A Diversity of Creatures • Rudyard Kipling
... quietly when the wind drove the snow against the window with a sudden "swish ;" and he instantly awoke, so to say, in his sleep. Some ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... he caught the regular swish, swish of the big wheel; but he must have been mistaken, for after a moment he realized that the Standish ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... watching with wonder and envy as Marcia made her bargain with the kindly merchant, and selected her chintz. What a delicious swish the scissors made as they went through the width of cloth, and how delightfully the paper crackled as the bundle was being wrapped! Mary Ann did not know whether Kate or Marcia ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... Champney heard again the rattle of the pails and the stool; then a swish of starched petticoat and ...
— Flamsted quarries • Mary E. Waller
... Nora, and then climbed on to the little steed himself; and as soon as they were properly seated the little man said "swish," and away went the steed, galloping over the sea without wetting hair or hoof. But fast as he galloped the nine little pipers were always ahead of him, although they seemed to be going only at a walking pace. When at last he came up rather close to the hindmost of them ...
— The Golden Spears - And Other Fairy Tales • Edmund Leamy
... seal of despair on this fine and handsome visage. He is shown, not as a sea monster, but as some rabid, evasive, impatient thing, dashing from point to point—as from policy to policy—with the angry swish that tells the unspoken anger failure everywhere compels. For the victories do not bring surrender, nor does frightfulness inspire terror. The merchant ships still put to sea—and the U boats ...
— Raemaekers' Cartoons - With Accompanying Notes by Well-known English Writers • Louis Raemaekers
... clinging to her until she seemed scarcely dressed, her wet hair streaming and her wide, staring eyes looking straight ahead. After the lightning flashes, when the world was darkest, he could hear the stumbling tread of her feet and the panting of her breath, and now and then the swish of brush as it struck across her face and breast. The rain had washed away the scent of his master's feet but he knew they were following Jolly Roger, and that the girl was running to overtake him. In him was the desire to rush ahead, to travel ...
— The Country Beyond - A Romance of the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... Labrador must know it all like his own back yard—not in sunny weather alone, but in the night, when the headlands are like black clouds ahead, and in the mist, when the noise of breakers tells him all that he may know of his whereabouts. A flash of white in the gray distance, a thud and swish from a hidden place: the one is his beacon, the other his fog-horn. It is thus, often, that the ...
— The Story of Grenfell of the Labrador - A Boy's Life of Wilfred T. Grenfell • Dillon Wallace
... the post-office parade who was hailing Roderick so gaily. A pretty group was rustling past the office, all muslin frills and silk sashes and flowers of every colour, and the prettiest and best dressed of them all came running up the steps to his side, with a swish of silken skirts and a whiff of ...
— The End of the Rainbow • Marian Keith
... experience. One night last week, clear and frosty, I had just gone to my room at about eleven o'clock when the doctor called me to come out and "hear the lights." I thought surely I must have misunderstood, but on reaching the balcony and listening, I could distinctly hear the swish of the "spirits" as they rushed across the sky. It sounds like a diminished silk petticoat which has lost its blatancy, but retains ...
— Le Petit Nord - or, Annals of a Labrador Harbour • Anne Elizabeth Caldwell (MacClanahan) Grenfell and Katie Spalding
... has long hair," he added hurriedly, looking into Tim's staring eyes. "That's what makes it swish. The swishing, rushing, hushing sound it makes—that's its hair against the ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... heed to those fellows!" he cried, as the ship quivered under the blow of a heavy sea, and they heard the thud of many tons of water breaking over the bows and fore hatch, while the defeated monster washed the tightly screwed ports with a venomous swish. "They cannot harm us now. Let us rather thank kindly Providence which provided Magellan's water-way; think what it would mean were we compelled to ...
— The Captain of the Kansas • Louis Tracy
... pace. Hilda, who had never been sailing before, was delighted at the swift motion. The sky was as blue as blue could be, with flecks of white clouds all over it, the water was sparkling and clear, and dashed with a delightful little swish ...
— Cricket at the Seashore • Elizabeth Westyn Timlow
... man, but the men who had been with him were already distant. The shadows were growing long now, but the light was still from the sunshine of the early afternoon. The man lying along the limb, knife in hand, could hear no sound save the soft swish of leaves against each other as the breeze of later day pushed its way through the forest, or the alarmed cries of knowing birds who saw on the ground beneath them a huge thing slip along with scarce a sound from the impact of his fearfully clawed but padded feet as he sought ...
— The Story of Ab - A Tale of the Time of the Cave Man • Stanley Waterloo
... where there were only men, so I sat down on a sofa and looked about me, and tried to feel as if it was quite a natural occurrence to be invited to come in the evening and to find my hostess asleep. After a few minutes I heard the swish of a satin dress coming down the big salon and a lady appeared, very handsome and well dressed, whom I didn't know at all. She evidently was accustomed to the state of things; she looked about her smilingly, then came up to me, called me by name, and ...
— Chateau and Country Life in France • Mary King Waddington
... dream-city, before us the Mediterranean shimmered and shone like a sultana's satin tunic. We could drop a stone from our windows into the sea; we ran dripping from our sea-baths up long stairs, across tiled balconies, into our vast rooms; all day and all night the swish and lisp of the soft tides mingled with our ...
— Lippincott's Magazine, November 1885 • Various
... rate of brutal carelessness, in the responsible Power, whoever that may be. "What is it all," we say, "but a trouble of ants in the gleam of a million million of suns?" We feel like insects whom the foot of a heedless giant may at any moment crush. We dream of the swish of a comet's tail wiping out organic life on the planet, and we see, as a matter of fact, great natural convulsions, such as the earthquake of Lisbon or the eruption of Mont Pelee, treating human communities just as an elephant ...
— God and Mr. Wells - A Critical Examination of 'God the Invisible King' • William Archer
... dream. He pulled open the neck of his nightshirt, leaned his head against the cool brass rail of the back of the bedstead, while he listened with growing relief to the rumble of the wind in the chimney, and the swish of the rain against the casements, and watched the narrow line of light under the door ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... forest grew more and more dense; there seemed no opening, no prospect of an opening. She knew what must be in store for them if the Abbot had uncoupled his bloodhounds, so she strained every nerve in her young body, listened to every murmur or swish of the trees, every one of the innumerable, inexplicable noises a great wood gives forth. She suffered, indeed, intensely; yet Prosper never knew it. He played upon her, quite unconsciously, by wondering over the difficulties of the road, the slowness ...
— The Forest Lovers • Maurice Hewlett
... up some books she had left on a stand in the hall. He stood with his hands in his pockets, watching her ascent, hearing the swish of her skirts on the stairs: but she did not look back. She was humming softly to herself as she passed out ...
— A Hoosier Chronicle • Meredith Nicholson
... an idea. As soon as I heard Miss Patricia's silk skirts coming slowly through the hall with their soft swish, swish, I ran and sat in the doorway with my hands over my eyes, in token that there was something that she ought not to look at. It should have amused her, for she knew the story of the ebony paper-weight, but instead it seemed to arouse her suspicion that something was wrong. She looked ...
— The Story of Dago • Annie Fellows-Johnston
... coffin-lid is no pleasant thing to hear, but those who have experience maintain that much more terrible is the soft swish of the bed-linen, the reeving and unreeving of the bed-tapes, when he who has fallen by the roadside is apparelled for burial, sinking gradually as the tapes are tied over, till the swaddled shape touches the floor and there is no protest against ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... he scrambled up out of the water like lightning, and ran after the rest. He was pretty long-legged, and he soon caught up, but he was just raining water from his clothes, and it made the fellows laugh so that they could hardly run, to hear him swish when he jolted along. They did not know what to do exactly, till one of them said they ought to go down to the river and go in swimming, and they could wring Jim Leonard's clothes out, and lay them on the shore to dry, and stay in long enough to let them dry. That was what they ...
— The Flight of Pony Baker - A Boy's Town Story • W. D. Howells
... companion-way and made his way back to the stateroom of the sick passenger. Through the lightless porthole he listened for the terrifying shout, "Man overboard!" It did not come, but his ear caught the staccato beat of a motor near by, striking up abruptly out of the swish of rushing waters. In his ignorance, he decided that it was a boat from the ship going to the rescue of the daring deserters, and calmly waited for the engines of the mighty Doraine to cease their rhythmic ...
— West Wind Drift • George Barr McCutcheon
... it! Shwift! No, me lad, don't go near him! He was the divil's own, the very worsht that ever followed the swish of a petticoat. No, no; if ye go to his grave it'll bring ye bad luck for a year. It's Tom Moore ye want—Tom was the bye. Arrah! now, and it's meself ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... over to get into a more comfortable position, when he heard something hiss through the air with a swishing sound. For an instant he thought of rattlesnakes, but almost at once it was borne to his mind that he had heard this sound before—the swish of ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... the long line till we were almost at the lip of the nullah before releasing his bombs, and this was the very refinement of torture. During the whole of the two-mile journey we sat waiting for the swish-swish of the bombs, wishing that saddles were placed on the bellies of the horses instead of on their backs. Then as we were descending into the nullah he would let fly in the hope of catching us in the ...
— With Our Army in Palestine • Antony Bluett
... the dark we could hear the low swish of the rising river, and Burton, with a sly twinkle in his eye, remarked, "For a semi-arid country, this is a pretty ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... gleamed with righteous anger. Then he began calmly rolling up his sleeves. He went forward to the prisoner. "I am going to give you a taste of this," he declared, swinging his stick through the air. It hit Phil's captive with a swish, once, twice, three times. Mr. Brown was just ...
— Madge Morton, Captain of the Merry Maid • Amy D. V. Chalmers
... It was the swish and splutter of hoofs on the road before the door. The Sacramento coach! In an instant every man was expectant, and Starbuck darted outside on the platform. Then there was the usual greeting and bustle, the hurried ingress of thirsty passengers ...
— Mr. Jack Hamlin's Mediation and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... reach the dock and get a boat. She might risk being scalped, but a boat at any cost she would have, and one was sent her—as to the fearless and determined all their desires are sent. She heard the thump of oars in rowlocks, bringing the relief guard, and with a swish, out of the void of the lake a keel ...
— Marianson - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... and carnival jest, the three boys were struggling through the crowd toward the rising flame of a distant capannucci, when suddenly, with a swish and a thud, there came plump against the face of the young Giovanni one of the thin sugar eggs which, filled with red wine, was one of the favorite carnival missiles. Like a flow of blood the red liquid streamed down the broad, brown cheek of the lad, ...
— Historic Boys - Their Endeavours, Their Achievements, and Their Times • Elbridge Streeter Brooks
... flute and the violin were doing what they could to make all our hearts beat young! A picture show across the street sprayed its gay crowd over the sidewalks and a vaudeville house down stairs gathered up rivulets of humanity from the spray. Somewhere near by was a dance, for we heard the rhythmic swish and lisp of young feet and the gay cry of the music. Here and there came a soldier; sometimes we saw a woman in mourning; but uniforms and mourners were uncommon. The war was a tale that ...
— The Martial Adventures of Henry and Me • William Allen White
... up into the tree and around from branch to branch. As the rays traveled through the cedar there was a sudden wild cry from the animal, and then came a swish and a whirr as the wildcat sprang to the outer end of a limb and ...
— The Rover Boys on a Hunt - or The Mysterious House in the Woods • Arthur M. Winfield (Edward Stratemeyer)
... the country, but the slates have taken some beauty with time, having dips and dimples, and grass upon their edges. The walls are all thickly whitewashed, which is a pleasure to see. How willingly would one swish the harmless whitewash over more than half the colour—over all the chocolate and all the blue—with which the buildings of the world are stained! You could not wish for a better, simpler, or fresher harmony than whitewash makes with the slight ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell
... submarine heard at a range of about a mile on a calm night presents a curious sound which almost defies description. Its principal constituent consists of a "clankety clank! clankety clank!" at first barely distinguishable from the low swish of the water past the face of the submerged microphone, then louder when the sound has been distinguished and the human ear is on the alert. But when this sound was heard in war there was little time for analysing or noting. ...
— Submarine Warfare of To-day • Charles W. Domville-Fife
... later it was Whistler who dictated certain schemes of colour, certain harmonious arrangements of black; and the most distressing symptom of all is that Mr. Brabazon could not hold an exhibition of some very nice tints of rose and blue without inspiring Mr. Steer to go and swish water-colour about in the same manner. Mr. Steer has the defect of his qualities; his perceptions are naive: and just as he must have thought seven years ago that all modern landscape-painters must be more or less like Monet, he must have ...
— Modern Painting • George Moore
... once—on the quarter-deck of the Diana. Hermann sat smoking with a shirt-sleeved elbow hooked over the back of his chair. Mrs. Hermann was sewing alone. As Falk stepped over the gangway, Hermann's niece, with a slight swish of the skirt and a swift friendly nod to me, glided ...
— Falk • Joseph Conrad
... flower of the flax; and an old dog drowsing on the threshold.... And this would be in his mind as he wandered the hot foreign streets.... And there would be the droning of the bees in the clover, and the swish of the swallows darting to and from the eaves, and in the evening would be the singing of the crickets.... And these he would hear over the capstan's clank.... When he tumbled into his cabin after his watch, into the heeling room where the lamp swung overhead like ...
— The Wind Bloweth • Brian Oswald Donn-Byrne
... some soft material, and a large black hat with feathers. Her skirts were gathered up in her hand, and I heard the jingling of harness at the corner of the avenue where her carriage was waiting. I opened the door, and she entered with a soft swish of silk and a gentle rustling. The room seemed instantly full of perfume of Neapolitan violets, a great bunch of which were ...
— The Betrayal • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... swirling against this wall—washing vainly against it with a wistful wailing swish—seems to be thrown back on itself, and then to hasten away on either side, where lies the moist fog ...
— Creatures That Once Were Men • Maxim Gorky
... voice spoke, low and rumbling. It sounded so close at hand the fellow could scarcely have been five yards away. Another voice answered, and we were aware of bodies, stealing along through the wood; there was a faint rustling of dead leaves, and the occasional swish of a branch. We crouched low in the trail, fairly holding our breath, every nerve tense. There was no sound from below, but in the other direction one warrior—I could see the dim outline of his naked figure—passed within ...
— Beyond the Frontier • Randall Parrish
... the wind grew stronger and at Horse-neck Shoals the crest of breaking waves covered the deck of the Irene with foam. Following the swish of each heaving wave as it lifted and swept past the boat came a heavy jar as the craft struck in the soft mud beneath her and her headway ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... a soft "swish" upon the sand brought with it something round and shiny that rolled back again as the wave receded. The next influx beached it clear, and Geddie picked it up. The thing was a long-necked wine bottle of colourless glass. The cork had been driven in tightly to the level of the mouth, and the end ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... rich grassy land watered by the Big Little River, and struck off into the hills that closed in about it, following the river trail. It was very still, with no sound save the swish of the water against the willows drooping downward from its banks, no light save the dim glimmer of the early stars. For two miles he followed the stream, then left it for a short cut over the ridge, to pick it up again upon ...
— Six Feet Four • Jackson Gregory
... of yellow pine and red bricks and the litter and debris of building; always in his ears as he remembered those days were the confused noises of wagons whining and groaning under their heavy loads, of gnawing saws and rattling hammers, of the clink of trowels on stones, of the swish of mortar in boxes, and of the murmur of the tide of hurrying feet over board sidewalks, ebbing and flowing night and morning. In those days new boys came to town so rapidly that sometimes John met a boy ...
— A Certain Rich Man • William Allen White
... heavy forehead toward the dogs awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the whole pack rushed across the field toward the very ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... return journey as she hurried up the corridor, having safely passed Miss Marlowe's door, she suddenly heard a soft footfall or the swish of a kimono, and then discovered a dark form bearing down upon her. Could it be Miss Marlowe? No, it wasn't tall enough. It must be Miss Ashwell. Judith flattened herself against the wall, which ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... was a sudden swish and a swirl of restless, tumbling waters. The motion, as my carrier buried his bared legs in the waves, was such as accompanies impossible flights described in dreams, through some unknown medium. The surging waters seemed struggling to submerge us both; ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... The sharp swish of the wings of lapwings, as they dived towards her, filling the moors with their hard rasping double note, and also battling for possession of a mate, stirred her frightened blood; and at every step some new terror thrilled ...
— The Underworld - The Story of Robert Sinclair, Miner • James C. Welsh
... door, and just as he was turnin' away, I heard the swish of skirts and then I got Miss Vincent's voice. It was low and sweet and kinda soothin' and—well, she was the kind of dame guys kill each other for! ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... put and yet the truth retained. Yesterday we reclined at our ease in our cosy floating cottage, towed up the lovely river by a picturesque crew of bronze Kashmiris, the swish of the passing water only broken by their melodious voices. The brilliancy of the morning gave way in the afternoon to a soft haze which fell over the snowy ranges, mellowing their clear tones to a soft and pearly grey, while ...
— A Holiday in the Happy Valley with Pen and Pencil • T. R. Swinburne
... slowly from vast and awful solitudes to solitudes more vast and awful still. As we drew near the lake again, a little light-house gleamed, and, as we swept past it out into the broad expanse of limitless waters, the cheerful throb of the machinery quickened again upon the sea, the pleasant swish of the water against the ship greeted us once more, life, movement, and gayety sprang out again on board, and in an instant the entire steamer had burst into laughter and chat and song. We were really in far more danger, from storm or collision ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, Old Series, Vol. 36—New Series, Vol. 10, July 1885 • Various
... fifty yards from his own threshold; he had fallen helpless, faint from incessant struggling through the snow-drifts and too weak to make his cries for help heard above the rushing of the wind and the swish of the snow on the window behind which his terrified wife ...
— Up in Ardmuirland • Michael Barrett
... two hours passed and he did not stir. His stillness made his hearing more acute. The trampling of feet over his head came to him with great distinctness. He heard the singing of wind at the porthole, and, now and then, the swish of waters as they swept past the schooner. He wondered what Tayoga was doing and what would Willet think when he came back to Albany and found him gone. It gave him a stab of agony. His pride was hurt, too, that he had been trapped ...
— The Sun Of Quebec - A Story of a Great Crisis • Joseph A. Altsheler
... very bright now. The black shadow to the right had become a wedge-shaped, compact, seething mass, sweeping rapidly toward them. There was a rushing swish in the air, and the sound of hoarse shouts. A few moments later the maddened beasts swept across their path, ...
— The Sunbridge Girls at Six Star Ranch • Eleanor H. (Eleanor Hodgman) Porter
... I ran on deck. The watch was all forward looking out for the island. The man at the helm was watching the luff of the sail, and whistling away gently to himself; and that was the only sound excepting the swish of the sea against the bows and around the sides ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 6 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... sunbath, so we travelled together. The hotels being all full, we took up our quarters in a small boarding-house, standing in dense groves of orange trees, where each shiver of the night breeze sent the branches of the orange trees swish-swishing, and wafted great breaths of the delicious fragrance of orange blossom into our rooms. I was in bed, when the Guardsman, who had never been in the tropics before, rushed terror-stricken into my ...
— Here, There And Everywhere • Lord Frederic Hamilton
... fulfilling the duties of a runner for our unit;—he also told me to have a lookout for the cook while there and make some inquiries about him. I saluted and left. The first place I went to in the wagon lines was the cookhouse and as I got there I thought I noticed the swish of someone quickly disappearing round the corner and the cockney-cook there informed me that Scotty had spent the previous evening with them and had only ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... world just now; the sun was only a little over the zenith. Only the cries of the sea gulls and the soft swish of the waves broke the silence. It would be pleasant to sleep here as her comrades were sleeping, but if she slept then she would miss the consciousness of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... victim prepared himself for the swing, grasped the hooks, and then, with good momentum, landed in the hammock. There was a swish, a distinct thud, and young Potter rolled out upon the deck with a gasp of amazement. Turning as quickly as he could, he looked up and saw the hammock swinging in its proper place. It was physical labor for us to keep ...
— A Gunner Aboard the "Yankee" • Russell Doubleday
... if you enter the woods Of a summer evening late, When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools Where the otter whistles his mate (They fear not men in the woods Because they see so few), You will hear the beat of a horse's feet And the swish of a skirt in the dew, Steadily cantering through The misty solitudes, As though they perfectly knew The old lost road through the woods... But there is ...
— Rewards and Fairies • Rudyard Kipling
... little longer Karl, heralded by the swish of the gondola, would come in regularly at eight o'clock for a few hours chat over our tea. Very rarely did I vary this routine by a visit to one of the theatres. When I did, I preferred the performances ...
— A Wanderer in Venice • E.V. Lucas
... to cross her bows. When he heard the swish of the green waters cleaving before her keel, he ...
— The Gentleman - A Romance of the Sea • Alfred Ollivant
... E.M.F. present it will cease suddenly, and neutrality will be attained at once. Telephone circuits indicate the operation by peculiar and characteristic sounds. An iron wire circuit produces a long swish or sigh, but a copper wire circuit like the Paris-London telephone emits a short, sharp report, like the crack of a pistol, which is sometimes startling, and has created fear, but there is no danger or liability ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 822 - Volume XXXII, Number 822. Issue Date October 3, 1891 • Various
... the usual and accepted fashion, shivering despite their warm clothing and mufflers, and woollen caps and thick great-coats in the raw-edged cold of the breaking day. For an hour they stood there listening to the whine of overhead bullets and the sharp 'slap' of well-aimed ones in the parapet, the swish and crash of shells, the distant patter of rifle fire and the boom ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... round suddenly. The door had opened; he heard the swish of skirts, and knew it could not ...
— The Imaginary Marriage • Henry St. John Cooper
... and braces and hove the vessel to so as to steady her as they worked, but she still labored heavily in the sea, and beneath them they could hear the leaden swish of water in the floor of the hold beneath. Their labor was having its effect, and by infinitesimal gradations they were counteracting the list and getting the ship upright; but the wind was worsening, and it seemed to them also that the water was getting deeper under ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... Nan,' he said, 'you have quite a series of beautiful little pictures in your mind about that Splugen excursion. Don't you remember the drive along the Via Mala, in the shut-up carriage—the darkness outside—and the swish of ...
— The Beautiful Wretch; The Pupil of Aurelius; and The Four Macnicols • William Black
... we had been expecting ever since the beginning of the siege—namely, a Boer attack under cover of darkness. The moon had just set, and it was pitch-dark. A fierce fusillade first began from the east, and when I opened the door on to the stoep the din was terrific, while swish, swish, came the bullets just beyond the canvas blinds, nailed to the edge of the verandah to keep off the sun. Now and then the boom of a small gun varied the noise, but the rifles never ceased for an instant. To this awe-inspiring tune I dressed, by the light of a carefully ...
— South African Memories - Social, Warlike & Sporting From Diaries Written At The Time • Lady Sarah Wilson
... straight and with confidence. He realized that until now he had not really believed, despite the footprints, despite everything, that a woman was on the mountain. But he knew at last. He even heard the swish of her skirts once or twice against the bushes. Then she came through the dwarfed cedars, stepping boldly, and ...
— The Tree of Appomattox • Joseph A. Altsheler
... Now they heard the swish of a water-tank, and the guttural voice of a Chinaman, the click-clink of hammers that tested the Krupp steel wheels, and the oath of a tramp chased off the rear-platform; now the solid crash of coal shot into the tender; and now a beating back of noises as they flew past a waiting ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... in defence of their home and lives, the grave necessity of keeping off the impending danger banishing, in a measure, the thoughts of their bereavement. An ominous silence on the part of the Indians was broken at last by the swish of a blazing arrow to the roof. Mr. Arnold rushed to the garret, and with the butt of his rifle broke a hole in the covering and flung the little torch to ...
— Captured by the Navajos • Charles A. Curtis
... so, and the three stared at him. Then with a swish of leaves in the wind and a spatter of rain in their faces, the candle blew out. The girls screamed and sprang up. The hound backed into his corner and barked furiously. Whatever it was, it had crossed the threshold and was in the room ...
— Judith of the Cumberlands • Alice MacGowan
... where they are growing in Clashiegar den. When summer comes people praise the varied flower-beds of the costly city parks, but they have not seen Tochty woods in their glory. Each autumn carries me to the harvest field, till in my study I hear the swish of the scythe and feel the fragrance of the dry, ripe grain. And in winter I see the sun shining on the white sides of Glen Urtach, and can hardly keep pen to paper in this ...
— Kate Carnegie and Those Ministers • Ian Maclaren
... skirts so that they, in chill folds, wrapped her wasted frame and clung cruelly to her weary limbs to stay her onward travel? And why that strange, weird sound—the sound muttered by miles of herbage when beaten down by rain—the swish and patter and sigh of the long grass and of the bracken, as they bent beneath the continuous fall, and rose in angry protest, to fling off their burden on each other, or shake it to the ground? Then a mute sympathy sprang up in her desolate heart as she grew incorporate into this storm-swept, ...
— Lancashire Idylls (1898) • Marshall Mather
... branches of the trees as Durham reached where the road dipped to the stream. The subdued light in the pass made the distances elusive and turned the shadows into subtle mysteries of purpling greys. The air was full of the scent from the thickly growing vegetation, but, save for the rippling swish of the water trickling across the track, the silence ...
— The Rider of Waroona • Firth Scott
... move them along, and a dead calm, don't they? Waterspouts and bits of wreck smell like polecats when you're a hundred miles from land, don't they? Waterspouts and bits of wreck roar like a million wild bulls, and snort and swish as they go through the water like a thousand express trains going through ...
— Tom Finch's Monkey - and How he Dined with the Admiral • John C. Hutcheson
... still, now that Doe was no longer a platoon commander but Brigade Bombing Officer, he could live where he liked, and had arranged to share my dug-out—that delectable villa on Fusilier Bluff known as "Seaview." Really, under these conditions, the Peninsula, we felt, would be quite "swish." ...
— Tell England - A Study in a Generation • Ernest Raymond
... flapping nostrils. It was a Thessian head! The mouth, fifty feet across, wrinkled into an horrific grin, and broken, stained teeth of iron showed in the mouth. Great talons upraised, it rent the misty wall that bound them, and writhed its awful length in. The swish of its scales seemed to come to the watchers, as it chased after a great battleship whose pilot fled in terror. Faster than the mighty spaceship the awful Thing caught it in mighty talons that ripped through solid relux. Scratching, fluttering enormous, blood-red wings, the ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... when we returned the horses were harnessed and the barge in readiness to start. As soon as we were all on the boat the horses began to trot along the towing path; we glided over the water without feeling a movement, and the only sound to be heard was the song of the birds, the swish of the water against the boat, and the tinkle of bells around ...
— Nobody's Boy - Sans Famille • Hector Malot
... he roared. "You know where every piece of junk stands in this room better than I do. I can't bring a friend into that door that you don't know it. You can hear the swish of a woman's skirt on the ...
— The Foolish Virgin • Thomas Dixon
... with the smiling, complacent idiocy of my condition; when ideas came and went like motes in a sunbeam; when trees and church spires along the bank surged up, from time to time into my notice, like solid objects through a rolling cloudland; when the rhythmical swish of boat and paddle in the water became a cradle-song to lull my thoughts asleep; when a piece of mud on the deck was sometimes an intolerable eyesore, and sometimes quite a companion for me, and the object ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition - Vol. 1 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... and chloritic yellow below, ended in a thick bed of water-rolled pebbles, not in ground-rock; nor did it show the couch of excellent clay which usually underlies the surface, and which, I have said, is extracted through pits to make sun-dried brick, swish, and other building materials. We also secured some of the blood-red earth from the eastern tail of the northern "Shigh," the manganese-stained Taua and the gravelly sand washed out of the Cascalho-gravel, the latter very promising. ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... the grief become joy, when a chill silence fell over the ship. The only sounds were the rattling of the rigging against the masts, the groaning of the timbers of the vessel, and the swish of the waves cut by the prow. These were not Kamchatka shores. This was only another of the endless island reefs they had been chasing since July. The tattered sails flapped and beat dismally against ...
— Pioneers of the Pacific Coast - A Chronicle of Sea Rovers and Fur Hunters • Agnes C. Laut
... voice is heard—only the throb of the engine down below and the articulated pulsation of the paddles, every stroke of which brings forth a hollow sound from the sea, as clear and as well defined as a blow upon a drumhead; but these are softened by the swish of waters foaming under the wheel. Echoes multiply; myriads of them, faint and far, play peek-a-boo with the solemn pilot, who silently paces the deck when all the ship is ...
— Over the Rocky Mountains to Alaska • Charles Warren Stoddard
... coarse grass was bounded by the steep spur of a rise. To the left a little river would burst, all at once, in all its windings into a bluish sulphurous glow; and between the crashes of thunder there was heard the long-drawn, whistling swish of the rushes and cane-brakes springing on the boggy ground. We skirted the rise. The rain beat against it; the lightning showed its streaming and furrowed surface. We stumbled in the gusts. We felt under our feet, mud, sand, rocky ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... He could scarcely hear her. The driving rain, the swish of some great boughs against the house, the rattling of casements and doors, and the shrieking of wind in the chimney made all other sounds wellnigh inaudible. Yet as he listened he seemed to catch the accents of a far-off voice calling, now wistfully, ...
— The Circular Study • Anna Katharine Green
... that there never is a policeman in sight when you look for one; so Miss Frisbie stamped her foot again and snorted in Peter's face. "Goodbye, Comrade Gudge!" The emphasis she put upon that word "comrade" would have frozen the fieriest Red soul; and she turned with a swish of her skirts and strode off, and Peter stood looking mournfully at her little French heels going crunch, crunch, crunch on the gravel path. When the heels were clean gone out of sight, Peter sought out the nearest bench and sat down and buried his face in his ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... Mordacks, who of all born men was foremost, with his wiry fingers spread, to pass them through the scattery forelock of that mettlesome horse, old Time. The old horse galloped by him unawares, and left him standing still, to hearken the swish of the tail, and the clatter of the hoofs, and the spirited nostrils neighing for a race, on the wide breezy down at the end of the lane. But Geoffrey Mordacks was not to blame. His instructions were to move slowly, until he was sure of something worth moving ...
— Mary Anerley • R. D. Blackmore
... roar Tom clutched the handle of his whip, and the lash suddenly cut the air with a swish. It circled Rod's shoulders, sharply flicking his face, leaving a crimson streak upon ...
— Rod of the Lone Patrol • H. A. Cody
... A silhouette. A high brick wall, An awful squall. A moonlit night, A mortal fight. A man in bed, Sticks out his head. Gee Whiz! The man has riz. His arm draws back A big bootjack— A loud swish, Squish! "What's ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... fell away beneath his feet, a swish of branches was about him, the soft, cool touch of leaves against his face. A moment he was flung and tangled among willows—it was a strange revelation through a chink of consciousness in that turmoil of life and death that swept the identifying ...
— Trail's End • George W. Ogden
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