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More "Thud" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... slipping through and ran at us with his stick. My mother went first and escaped him. Then came my sister, then I, then my brother. My father was last of all. The man hit with his stick and it came down thud along side of me, just touching my fur. He hit again and broke the foreleg of my brother. Still we all managed to get through into the wood, except my father ...
— The Mahatma and the Hare • H. Rider Haggard
... sitting. Every little while I gave the men a rest, making them sit in the shelter of the underbrush. We had almost finished when the snipers somewhere on our left began to bang at us. I ordered the men to cover, and was just pointing out a likely place to young Hynes when I felt a dull thud in the left shoulder-blade and a sharp pain in my chest. Then came a drowsy, languid feeling, and I sank down first on my knees, then my head dropped over on my chest, and down I went like a Mohammedan saying his prayers. Connecting the hit in the back with the ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various
... moment in one of the cleared paths. From the big low roofed drill enclosure a hundred yards away came the dull thud of galloping hoofs and the voice of Sergeant Moody thundering instructions to the rookies. Moody had a heart like flint and would have faced blazing cannon to perform his duty. He had grown old and ugly in the service and was as beauty-proof ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... and heard a heavy thud and a kind of a sigh from Bill, like a horse gives out when you take his saddle off. A niggerhead rock the size of an egg had caught Bill just behind his left ear. He loosened himself all over and fell in the fire across the frying pan of hot water for washing the dishes. I dragged him out and ...
— The Boy Scouts Book of Stories • Various
... von Ruhle sprang forward with the agility of a panther. The imitation Malacca cane descended with a dull thud upon the lad's head, and like a felled ox Vernon fell ...
— The Submarine Hunters - A Story of the Naval Patrol Work in the Great War • Percy F. Westerman
... sinking, and suddenly stopped. An instant later I heard through the telephone a muffled thud, as if his head had fallen ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle
... she implored once more, extending her hands to secure her treasured book, "oh, uncle." In reply all I heard was a dull thud, and I saw Paula fall to the ground. Beside himself, my father had given her a tremendous blow on the head with ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... already landed on the further side of the wall when thud! thud! thud! other members of the flock came thumping down upon the ledge beside him. He moved aside a little way, because he didn't want to be ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... by it, she started out quite bravely; but she had taken but four steps when Tommy shouted, "Hold on fast, Polly! the hook's comin' out." Alas! the warning came too late. Before she could get hold of the beam securely, the hook came out, and with a cry of terror poor Polly fell with a dull thud to the floor. Her dress knocked over the candle as she fell, and in a second the hay that was scattered on the floor was in a blaze. All the boys except Tommy Briggs rushed screaming from the barn, but he, by straining every muscle, succeeded in dragging Polly out of the now blazing ...
— Harper's Young People, July 20, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... glittering before his eyes. Jane gave a sob and covered her eyes. Jessie swayed as though she would fall, but she never took her eyes from the fallen man; her lips moved, but she said nothing; and her face was ghastly white. Jarvis heard the dull thud against Jack's head and knew that he was falling. Whirling swiftly, he stopped a savage blow that was aimed at the stricken man, and with a back-handed cut laid the ...
— The Fat of the Land - The Story of an American Farm • John Williams Streeter
... acacias the little girls in white upon their knees before the temporary vault into which Jeanne's remains had a moment before been lowered. Abbe Jouve, with outstretched hand, was giving the farewell benediction. She heard nothing but the dull thud with which the stone slab of the vault fell back into its place. ...
— A Love Episode • Emile Zola
... once more alive with the dances, and the dull thud of the Indian drum was continually in the air. The council had agreed that Antelope was entitled to wear a war-bonnet of eagles' feathers. He was accordingly summoned before the aboriginal parliament, and from the wise men of the tribe he ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... see that Rand-Brown was racing up for the pass, and, as he reached the back, he sent the ball to him, waist-high. Then the back got to him, and he came down with a thud, with a vision, seen from the corner of his eye, of the ball bounding forward out of the wing three-quarter's hands into touch. Rand-Brown had bungled the pass in the old familiar way, and lost a ...
— The Gold Bat • P. G. Wodehouse
... spring I fired. I did not dare to wait, for I saw that he would clear the whole space and land right upon me. Without a sight, almost without aim, I fired, as one would fire a snap shot at a snipe. The bullet told, for I distinctly heard its thud above the rushing sound caused by the passage of the lion through the air. Next second I was swept to the ground (luckily I fell into a low, creeper-clad bush, which broke the shock) and the lion was ...
— Long Odds • H. Rider Haggard
... as the Yale Goliath poised himself for the effort. He crouched, and then the heavy iron sailed through the air and fell with a thud to ...
— Frank Merriwell's Races • Burt L. Standish
... One hand hung down, with a loose, loose bracelet jingling on the brittle brown wrist. And her poor little feet with the rotting shoes upon them moved delicately, as if they trod the impalpable air. Once her head struck, with a hollow thud, as we turned a corner. It was almost more than flesh and blood could bear,—like things you were afraid of when you were a child in the dark—the candles melting audibly, and walls, walls, pressing ...
— A Woman Named Smith • Marie Conway Oemler
... seemed to him that the end had come. He was hurled by the explosion of the torpedo into the corridor and dashed against the wall. The outcries of the men were drowned by the muffled thud of the inrushing water. The light went out; the Kate began to ...
— The Literary World Seventh Reader • Various
... had been poured, as was supposed, the ill-gotten gain of all the pirates, from Captain Kidd down to the last outlaw of the ocean. Twenty-seven years the sound of the hammer and the drill and the thud of blasting-powder echoed through the leafy forests, and then all ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... left on to his enemy's ribs, slipping, away under Pete's arm when he endeavoured to return the blows. For a time Jim simply led the big man a dance round the ring, landing a stinging blow now and then, to add to Pete's discomfiture; but the latter got him cornered at last, and the thud, thud, thud of the blows stirred the crowd to enthusiasm once more. Pete got after Jim smartly when the latter broke ground, and landed his best blow, a heavy right swing on the temple that sent Done down, and left him ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... over the grave bathed in a cold perspiration, his heart throbbing violently, every new thud of the earth, as it sounded violently against the coffin, sending a cold chill of horror through every nerve. Already enough earth had been thrown to cover three-quarters of the lid, and at the foot it was heaped up some distance. He tried to frame some excuse to ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... covered some five miles of his journey, to no other sound than the occasional note of some bird, when his quick ears caught the thud of a horse's feet on the trail ahead, with now and then a sharp clatter as the animal slipped on the stones. Wade slowed his own horse down to a walk, and eased his Colt in its holster. He expected to meet some harmless wayfarer, but, under the circumstances, it was just as well to be ...
— Hidden Gold • Wilder Anthony
... answer into the telephone to his Corporal, and once he flicked his lamp on an instant to glance at the watch on his wrist. Then he crouched still and silent again. The thumping of his heart nearly drowned the thud of the picks, he was shivering with excitement, and his mouth grew dry and leathery. He felt a desire to smoke, and had his case out and a cigarette in his lips when it occurred to him that, when ...
— Between the Lines • Boyd Cable
... animal from the little of it that I saw, aimed for the spot among the grass which I pictured as being just behind the shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack of the rifle broke in upon the stillness of the night with startling effect. I heard the thud of the bullet, instantly followed by a savage snarl that ended in a moan, and as the smoke drifted away I caught a momentary glimpse of a great, tawny, black-spotted form writhing convulsively in the air from its death spring and then collapsing inertly where it fell. Jan and the Basuto, ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... way, and found myself among the soaring columns of the palms, hung aloft with clusters of the great green nuts. Fallen palm fronds made a carpet for my feet—very pleasant after the rough and tangled way I had travelled, and now and again one of the cocoa nuts would fall down with a thud amid the green silence. One of these, which narrowly missed my head, suggested that here I had the opportunity of quenching very agreeably the thirst of which I had become suddenly aware. My claspknife soon made an opening through the tough shell, and, seated ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... already in motion. Then the two sides close, and you can see nothing for minutes but a swaying crowd of boys, at one point violently agitated. That is where the ball is, and there are the keen players to be met, and the glory and the hard knocks to be got. You hear the dull thud, thud of the ball, and the shouts of "Off your side," "Down with him," "Put him over," "Bravo." This is what we call "a scrummage," gentlemen, and the first scrummage in a School-house match was no joke in the consulship ...
— Tom Brown's Schooldays • Thomas Hughes
... the news that the time for escape had come, for the perpetual clash of war, the rattling of arrows, the ponderous thud of heavy stones caused a din very alarming to a young girl; and although the room in which she sat, looking into the inner court of the castle, was not exposed to missiles, she trembled at the thought that brave men were being killed, and that at any moment a shot might strike Cuthbert, ...
— The Boy Knight • G.A. Henty
... regained his balance after being almost knocked over in this humiliating way, and the horrible, as it were, sodden, thud of the blow in the face had scarcely died away in the room when he seized Shatov by the shoulders with both hands, but at once, almost at the same instant, pulled both hands away and clasped them behind his back. He did not speak, but looked at Shatov, and turned as white as his shirt. ...
— The Possessed - or, The Devils • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man's barricade, and there was a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk. He swayed backward and came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his face. He gasped, and his lips writhed in a grim smile. There was a shrinking together of the shoulders and a bending of the knees. He shook himself, as might a drowsing man, and straightened ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... following her. Once she drew rein, and listened to some bush sound. "Kangaroos," she murmured; it was only kangaroos. She crossed a dimmed little clearing where a farm had been, and entered a thick scrub of box and stringy-bark saplings. Suddenly with a heavy thud, thud, an "old man" kangaroo leapt the path in front, startling the girl fearfully, and went up the siding ...
— Over the Sliprails • Henry Lawson
... watch. It lacked five minutes of eight. The preparations for an execution had been reduced almost to a formula. One minute in the cell, twenty seconds to the trap, forty seconds for the hangman to complete his arrangements: two minutes, and then the thud of the false floor. ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, October, 1930 • Various
... scene from modern drama. It announced itself as something "West-Endy," yet it was like nothing (I imagine) even in the remote Orient. And constantly the poor play of esprit had to be carried off by the distracting thud of some falling body or covered by the deadening clash of the ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Jan. 1, 1919 • Various
... his arm, and heard a heavy thud at his side. It was a ripe Durian which had fallen from an immense height and ...
— Blown to Bits - The Lonely Man of Rakata, the Malay Archipelago • R.M. Ballantyne
... grim-faced guard on each side, with a firm grip on my arms. I wondered what was happening to the lovely Zoorph, but I did not get a chance to look. I was thrown into a cell, and the heavy wooden door shut. The thud of a bar dropped in place punctuated the evening's experience with a ...
— Valley of the Croen • Lee Tarbell
... below," he warned softly, and with a loud thud the shutter fell into the alley below. Phil was waiting ...
— The Ranger Boys and the Border Smugglers • Claude A. Labelle
... each way. The little lanterns that burn in front of the houses were blown out by the wind, and when I peered out there was nothing but the inky darkness, the howling of the wind, the thrashing of the cocoanut trees, and the thud of falling nuts. From my side window I could see the native family next door to me all on their knees in front of an image of the Virgin, and once, in a lull, caught the sound ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee
... and handsome, rather than otherwise—mantling with an expression of the most perfect excellence of heart and temper, and overshadowed by a vast mass of brown hair, sprinkled pretty well with gray!—Down he plumped from the counter with a thud that made the whole floor shake, and with a hand outstretched, that might have done for a Goliah, out he ...
— Warwick Woodlands - Things as they Were There Twenty Years Ago • Henry William Herbert (AKA Frank Forester)
... strikes you funny, Seein' I'm risin' seventy-three, To think o' me once as sweet as honey; Lor' how their fists went 'long o' me! Jake Poltevo and Pembroke Bill, I saw 'em then, and I sees 'em still, Eh, how their fists went—thud! crack! thud! None o' your booze-house scraps, Lor' love 'em; Turf to their feet and the sky above 'em— Stripped, bare-knuckle and mucked wi' blood; Queer thing, ain't it, I still thinks pleasure In the strength o' a man, bein' old, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 146, April 15, 1914 • Various
... is very obvious. The pressure of public opinion can do in the town what the law cannot accomplish. There is no lane so vile that the scream of a tortured child, or the thud of a drunkard's blow, does not beget sympathy and indignation among the neighbours, and then the whole machinery of justice is ever so close that a word of complaint can set it going, and there is but a step ...
— The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes • Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
... than either of them dreamed. At that very moment the soft thud of the closing housedoor sounded through the house. It brought her sharply to her feet, and loose from his coiling arms, with quickened breath and blanching face. A moment she hung there, tense, then sped to the door of the room, ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... the chateau. The air was full of mingled sounds, as, for example, the singing of the soldiers in the distance, which sounds like the droning of bees far away and always heralds an advance of troops; the rhythmic shuffling of feet, the thud of horses' hoofs, the chugging of autos which carry the superior officers, and the heavy wheels of the gun carriages with their clanking chains. Their order, equipment and discipline are admirable ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... under his strong left arm, Thayer dashed into the embattled line of the helpless adversary. Hurling the foe right and left and biting the Claflin quarter-back in the neck, he emerged triumphant from the melee. Dodging the enemy's bewildered secondary defence, and upsetting the umpire with a dull thud, our hero dashed down the field. Line after line vanished behind his flying feet. Shod with the wings of Mercury, he sped on and on and still on toward the far-distant goal line. Cheers thundered from the encompassing ...
— Left Tackle Thayer • Ralph Henry Barbour
... moorland. The carriages rocked and pitched like boats in a seaway, as they lumbered along, fifty abreast, scrambling and lurching over everything which came in their way. Sometimes, with a snap and a thud, one axle would come to the ground, whilst a wheel reeled off amidst the tussocks of heather, and roars of delight greeted the owners as they looked ruefully at the ruin. Then as the gorse clumps grew thinner, and the sward ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... as if wondering at her feelings; and instantly the voice of the bearded man talking to her as one might talk to a child: "Oover, me darlin'; yu've a-been long enough o' that side. Wa-ay, my swate—yu let old Jack turn 'u, then!" Then came a scuffling in the straw, a thud, again that half-human sigh, and his voice: "Putt your 'ead to piller, that's my dandy gel. Old Jack wouldn' 'urt 'u; no more'n ef 'u was the queen!" Then only her quick breathing could be heard, and his cough and mutter, as he settled down once more ...
— Tatterdemalion • John Galsworthy
... a howling dervish, grunting, snorting—unseeing, and almost unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He came to earth with a thud, his legs whirling uselessly in the air. He resembled a beetle in molasses. We sat upon his ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... tree limb smashed into the ground at my feet, following the familiar whiz just overhead of a large gun missive, with its accompanying wind gust, and at the same moment something struck with a thud the tree from which the splinter had come. Glancing up, I noticed a shell lodged in a fork of the two main branches, that had stuck there without exploding. For a shell to explode, it is necessary ...
— S.O.S. Stand to! • Reginald Grant
... 'Thanase sees Bonaventure and the cure enter; mortification smites him; a smothered cry of rage bursts from his lips; he tries to hurl his antagonist from him; and just as the two friends reach out to lay hands upon the wrestling mass, it goes with a great thud to the ground. The crowd recoils and springs back again; then a cry of amazement and horror from all around, the arm of the under man lifted out over the back of the other, a downward flash of steel—another—and ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... to interrupt him in his pleasurable pursuit; he fiddled on, regardless of all about him, as Nero is said to have done when his capital was in flames, and even left the window of his apartment open. Presently a whizzing noise, terminating in a thud above his head, arrested his attention. Upon his looking up he saw the mark of a bullet in the ceiling. Aroused to a sense of his danger, he closed the windows. Being about to put his Montagnana into its case, his astonishment may be imagined when he discovered a hole through the upper side, ...
— The Violin - Its Famous Makers and Their Imitators • George Hart
... at the very moment when he felt that his nerves would bear the strain no longer, the spell was broken. Suddenly there came a long, hissing breath close beside him, and immediately afterward a terrific thud, as something—Frobisher could easily guess what—was driven with deadly force into the heap of blankets close ...
— A Chinese Command - A Story of Adventure in Eastern Seas • Harry Collingwood
... lippit like the smith o' Bonnykelly's wife." Mastering the situation he runs off to the smith's house, and sains the new mother and her babe. And he is only just in time, for hardly has he finished than a great thud is heard outside. On going out a piece of bog-fir is found,—the image the fairies intended to substitute for the smith's wife. In North German and Danish tales it is the husband who overhears the conspirators at work, and he often has ...
— The Science of Fairy Tales - An Inquiry into Fairy Mythology • Edwin Sidney Hartland
... it described. There was such a raging, roaring clamor rising to the heavens in the distance, the confused uproar of other sounds was so violent, that in it she failed to distinguish the report of musketry. As she was turning the corner of a house there was a deadened thud close at her ear, succeeded by the sound of falling plaster, which brought her to a sudden halt; it was a bullet that had struck the facade. She was pale as death, and asked herself if her courage would ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... caller rush unannounced into your private rooms. Even among relatives and the most intimate friends, there is nothing to justify the unexpected arrival. Nothing so strikes terror to a woman's soul as the thud of trunks on the piazza and the crunch of wheels on the gravel, meaning ...
— Mother's Remedies - Over One Thousand Tried and Tested Remedies from Mothers - of the United States and Canada • T. J. Ritter
... on she ran blindly, hearing nearer and nearer the thud of those pounding hoofs. Once she stumbled and almost fell. Then, dizzily she righted herself and plunged forward. She felt her strength quite gone when suddenly, close to her, she heard Jimmy's cheery call again. ...
— Pollyanna Grows Up • Eleanor H. Porter
... his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed into the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... Dante's "Inferno." The momentarily quiet sea, too, had got up again, and was now covered with huge broken waves—raised aloft in pyramids one moment, and the next scooped out into yawning valleys, into which the vessel plunged, with a shock that made her timbers vibrate with the sledge-hammer thud of the bows meeting the billows full butt, the concussion causing columns of spray to be thrown up that came in over the cathead, drenching the fo'c's'le and pouring in a cascade into the waist, whence the broken water, ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... she might the better hear his horse's hoofs on the flagged courtyard. She heard besides Esteban's voice speaking amiably and Shere's making amiable replies. The sharp hard clatter upon the stones softened into the duller thud upon the road; the voices became fainter and lost their character. Then one clear "good-night" rang out loudly, and was followed by the quick beats of a horse trotting. Christina slowly closed the window and turned her eyes upon the room. She saw the lamp upon the table ...
— Ensign Knightley and Other Stories • A. E. W. Mason
... there motionless and clouded the eyepiece of his telescope. Then suddenly he saw a little black object shoot up into the air from the junction of two trenches near the German support line—an object which turned over and over in the air, and fell with a soft thud fifty yards to his right. A roar—and some sandbags and lumps of chalk flew in all directions, while fragments pattered down on Reginald out of ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... burning issue checkered career cool as a cucumber contracting parties crisp dollar bill crying need dark horse dastardly deed delicious refreshments departed this life devouring element doing as well as can be expected dull thud elegantly gowned entertained lavishly fatal noose few well-chosen words first number on the program floral offering foregone conclusion fought like a tiger gala attire goes without saying hard-earned coin head over heels hotly contested hurled into eternity ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... of evening air and the sound of water lapping against stone. A patch of faint light showed pale against the iron bars, and as Angela looked that way, a great grey rat leapt through the grating, and ran along the topmost bin, making the bottles shiver as he scuttled across them. Then came a thud on the sawdust-covered stones, and she knew that the loathsome thing was on the floor upon which she was standing. She lowered her light shudderingly, and, for the first time since she entered that house of dread, the young brave heart sank with the ...
— London Pride - Or When the World Was Younger • M. E. Braddon
... his arms wrought like piston-rods, his fists flew like flails; and such was the press round him that he struck no blow that failed to find a mark. The room rang with the sounds of the struggle, the shuffle, thud, and scrape of feet both booted and bare, the hoarse, harsh breathing of the combatants, their groans, their whispers, ...
— The Bronze Bell • Louis Joseph Vance
... dropping with a dull thud upon the cushioned divan. Then, having lain there listening awhile, he pressed the button of his torch, and, standing up, crept across the room in the ...
— Tales of Chinatown • Sax Rohmer
... play is stopped by a rough thud of basses and a fierce clang of chords. In the sharp blare of brass on the ascending phrase is almost lost the original motto in lowest basses. It is now heard in gradually quickened speed, while the rising phrase ...
— Symphonies and Their Meaning; Third Series, Modern Symphonies • Philip H. Goepp
... swell was in truth lifting the vessel every few seconds and letting her down with a soft thud on the coral reef. It soon became evident to every one on board that the Walrus had not many hours to live—perhaps not many minutes—for the squall to which the Captain had referred was rapidly bearing down, and each successive thud became more violent than the previous one. Knowing ...
— Charlie to the Rescue • R.M. Ballantyne
... shoulders, her eyes fixed on vacancy, her thoughts wandering. Did she not hear the violins of her ball, which reached their ears in the intervals of silence, like bursts of savage irony, with the heavy thud of the dancers shaking the floors? An iron hand, falling upon her, aroused her abruptly from her torpor. Risler had taken her by the arm, and, leading her before his ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... even distracted attention from the Dervish army. The dome of the tomb rose tall and prominent above the mud houses of the city. A lyddite shell burst over it—a great flash, a white ball of smoke, and, after a pause, the dull thud of the distant explosion. Another followed. At the third shot, instead of the white smoke, there was a prodigious cloud of red dust, in which the whole tomb disappeared. When this cleared away we saw that, instead of being pointed, it was now ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... Greatly to my relief, he then turned round and moved off, roaring furiously. Fearing that he might still pursue the zebra, which I hoped had escaped, and might, after making a circuit, come back to us, I raised my rifle and fired again. I fancied I could hear the thud of the bullet as it struck the lion behind the shoulder. Fearful were the roars he uttered; but defeated, he stalked off, evidently having had enough of the fight. Mango, who had been thoroughly ...
— In the Wilds of Africa • W.H.G. Kingston
... electric storm swept away into the distance the wind rose and howled about the house. Shutters slammed; chairs were over-turned on the porch; a brick fell with a thud from the top of the chimney to the roof; another fell down the chimney into the fireplace where its arrival was followed by a roar that seemed to shake the old ...
— Ethel Morton at Rose House • Mabell S. C. Smith
... that lay in the direction of the nearest mountain. After Joanne had blown out her candle the silence of the night seemed to grow deeper about him. The hobbled horses had wandered several hundred yards away, and only now and then could he hear the thud of a hoof, or the clank of a steel shoe on rock. He believed that it was impossible for any one to approach without ears and eyes giving him warning, and he felt a distinct shock when Donald MacDonald suddenly appeared in ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... the darker for those flashes of flame, that cut it like swords. It was very cold. I had left my blanket in the monastery, and no one was allowed to ascend, because there, of all places, the bullets flew thickest, crushing through the mat walls, and going into the teak posts with a thud. There was nothing we could do. The men, placed in due order about the camp, fired back at the flashes of the enemy's guns. That was all they had to fire at. It was not much guide. The officers went from picket to picket encouraging the men, but I had no duty; when fighting began ...
— The Soul of a People • H. Fielding
... moments there was a sound of a scuffle at the back of the tent, followed by a thud and an exclamation from Burton; so they rushed out to see what had happened, the Doctor taking the lamp from the tent-pole ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... spoke there was a loud hullabaloo from Terence, echoed by the doctor. Over they both went head first, but the doctor's heels did not follow, for they had stuck fast in the mud, into which poor Terence's head plunged with a loud thud. The doctor heroically endeavoured to pull him out, but his own legs only stuck deeper and deeper. As the marine officer came up and passed by them, he began capering about and neighing in triumph, while Jack barbarously inquired ...
— The Three Midshipmen • W.H.G. Kingston
... was so anxious to see what went on below, that he strained forward too far. With a scream, and the snap of broken boughs, he plunged forward, shot through the leafy-canopy, and landed with a sickening thud upon the ground! ...
— Ruth Fielding and the Gypsies - The Missing Pearl Necklace • Alice B. Emerson
... said, after a time; and the cry rang out, to be followed by a dull thud as of footsteps, and a clink ...
— Crown and Sceptre - A West Country Story • George Manville Fenn
... First Loud-croaker wounded Lickman in the belly, right through the midriff. Down fell he on his face and soiled his soft fur in the dust: he fell with a thud and his armour clashed about him. Next Troglodyte shot at the son of Mudman, and drove the strong spear deep into his breast; so he fell, and black death seized him and his spirit flitted forth from his mouth. Then Beety struck Pot-visitor ...
— Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica • Homer and Hesiod
... jerking muzzle, and felt the butt jar upon his shoulder. Still, as is almost invariably the case with a man whose whole force of will is concentrated on holding the little sight on a living mark, he heard no detonation. He recognized, however, the unmistakable thud of the bullet smashing through soft flesh, and that ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... wound at a rapid pace for nearly an hour. The leaves were still green, mellowing to golden; but the fruit was ripe and heavy, ready at all points to fall. In the still October air the husks above our heads would loosen, and the brown nuts rustle through the foliage, and with a dull short thud, like drops of thunder-rain, break down upon the sod. At the foot of this rich forest, wedged in between huge buttresses, we found Pontremoli, and changed our horses here for the last time. It was Sunday, ...
— New Italian sketches • John Addington Symonds
... intensely warm in the Marlborough Steel Works. Outdoors the sun beat fiercely upon the heads of toiling men and horses while the heat waves danced with a dazzling shimmer along the brick pavements. Indoors there was the steady thud of the engine, and the great hammers clanked and the belts swept through the air with a deafening whirr, while the workmen drew blackened hands across their grimy foreheads and John Randolph gave a sigh of longing for the cool forest chambers of Hollywood, as he leaned over to exchange ...
— A Beautiful Possibility • Edith Ferguson Black
... turn red all over? Do you have creeps all down your back? And do you feel it just here?" The child clapped her yellow claw to Miss Quincey's heart. "You do, you do, Miss Quincey; I can see it go thump, I can feel it go thud!" ...
— Superseded • May Sinclair
... the shiny object descended, the dome vibrated beneath their feet. As long as the vibration remained they were safe, but when it felt like a thud—the ...
— Wanted—7 Fearless Engineers! • Warner Van Lorne
... a sudden commotion behind him, a swift rush of feet, a muffled thud, and a gasping, agonized grunt. The next instant the huge acetelyne lamp that lighted the room fell to the floor with a crash and the ...
— The Texan - A Story of the Cattle Country • James B. Hendryx
... neither of us." Gerrard spoke bitterly, but Colonel Antony brought his fist down upon the table with a resounding thud. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... an expression of pain for the first time crossed his face, but he uttered no sound. At that moment the kaishaku, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with one blow the head had ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... pitch was. The ball hung; he was much too soon; the ball sailed straight up into the air! Point and cover-point both ran for it. "Crampin!" yelled out Whitaker. Neither heard; they crashed into one another; the ball fell with a dull thud. The House gave ...
— The Loom of Youth • Alec Waugh
... dangerous pitfalls rendering our footing so uncertain and treacherous that the wonder is that we ever succeeded in regaining the river trail alive. Time after time that night one could hear some poor unfortunate with his heavy pack on his back fall with a sickening thud upon the packed trail, in many cases being so stunned and exhausted that it was only by violent shaking and often by striking some of the others in the face that they could be sufficiently aroused and forced to continue ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... made his wish again, with a heart felt earnestness that was almost an ache. Oh, surely the day was not going to end in this cruel silence! Just then he heard the thud of a horse's hoofs on the wooden bridge, far down the road. Nearer and louder it came. Somebody was prancing by at last. He stood up, straining his eyes in his smiling eagerness to see. Nearer and nearer the ...
— Ole Mammy's Torment • Annie Fellows Johnston
... dodging the blow so far that he escaped the full weight of the falling iron, which struck the floor endwise with a heavy thud. But before he could get beyond its reach the massive bar tipped over, falling in such way as to strike him in the side of the head, and felling him senseless ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... a bad idea," declared Susan Atwell. "I sit near her, so I'll be the first one to hold out the olive branch. But if you hear something drop on the floor with a dull, sickening thud, you'll know that my particular variety of olive branch ...
— Marjorie Dean - High School Sophomore • Pauline Lester
... to the floor with a thud of amazement that reverberated indignation. "Well upon my word!" gasped she. Then, recovering her book—and more—"Why what a kindly gentleman he must ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... as he was alone, Max went to the window and opened it, to admit the odour of the salt weed and the thud and rush of the water as it beat against the foot of the castle and whispered amongst the crags. The moon was just setting, and shedding a lurid yellow light across the sea, which heaved and gleamed, and threw up strange reflections from the black masses ...
— Three Boys - or the Chiefs of the Clan Mackhai • George Manville Fenn
... fiercely, 'Stand up, harpoon! Up rose the harpooner, his eye like a hot coal now. The men saw nothing; they must pull fiercer than ever. The harpooner balanced his iron, swayed his body lightly, and the harpoon hissed from him. A soft thud—then a heaving of the water all round, a slap that sounded like a church tower falling flat upon an acre of boards, and drenched, and blinded, and half smothered us all in spray, and at the same moment away whirled the boat, dancing and kicking in the whale's foaming, ...
— Love Me Little, Love Me Long • Charles Reade
... he heard the sound of the feet of a horse galloping over a dry field—muffled, rapid thud approaching closer upon his right hand. Barney remained motionless. He was sure that the rider would not enter the wood which, with its low-hanging boughs and thick underbrush, ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... our furniture, chairs and chests and two rocking chairs for the mother and daughter. Here all of their leisure time, while on the move, was spent industriously applying their knitting needles, meanwhile singing to themselves to the accompaniment of the thud, thud of the oxen. ...
— Old Rail Fence Corners - The A. B. C's. of Minnesota History • Various
... diving with a vigor, as if from a rocket airlock, hitting the dirt with a thud, scrambling up, opening and spreading the great bundle, attaching the air hose. Little Lester hopping in to help fit wire rigging, most of it still imaginary. A friendly dog coming over to sniff, with a look of ...
— The Planet Strappers • Raymond Zinke Gallun
... water beside them with a thud too great for that of a man. It was the stag leaping also for safety and he began to swim about, looking at the boys with great pathetic eyes, as if he would ask them what he ought to do next for his life. Apparently his ...
— The Young Trailers - A Story of Early Kentucky • Joseph A. Altsheler
... began to say that he 'jawed' too much and would not let them go to bed, little knowing how he used to try to prolong a conversation so that he might not be left alone with a horrible fear always ready to pounce upon him when night fell, and when only the thud of the engines playing some maddening tune broke ...
— Peter and Jane - or The Missing Heir • S. (Sarah) Macnaughtan
... of seeing Storch crumple over, but he felt a thud shake the cluttered room to its foundations... He went over quietly and closed the open door. Then he put on his hat. Storch lay quite still and an ugly red pool was already luring flies to a crimson feast. The floor was covered with bits of shattered glass glistening ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... Yorimasa's opportunity. Aiming about a foot to the right of where he saw the eye glare, he drew his yard-length shaft clear back to his shoulder, and let fly. A dull thud, a frightful howl, a heavy bump on the ground, and the writhing of some creature among the pebbles, told in a few seconds time that the shaft had struck flesh. The next instant Yorimasa's retainer rushed out with blazing ...
— Japanese Fairy World - Stories from the Wonder-Lore of Japan • William Elliot Griffis
... his daze and the two sprinted wildly for the path that led down the spur on which their camp was located. They had not made more than fifty yards when they heard a dull thud, and, turning, saw the great sphere resting on the ground with a slight rocking motion ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... metallic thud as they let down a burden, which I knew must be a sack of gold. I lay quiet for a minute, and then began to wriggle through the brush to get a glimpse of them, and, in case it proved to be the camp, learn what might be the most advantageous ...
— The Devil's Admiral • Frederick Ferdinand Moore
... circle and fling himself into the air—as it seemed to me, into the empty air. Then, even while holding my breath for dread of the crash he was bound to come upon the floor, I saw him strike with a dull thud against a solid body in mid-air, and the next instant he was wrestling with some ponderous thing that was absolutely invisible to me, and the room shook with ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... want the last sad rites launched into eternity last but not least doomed to disappointment at one fell swoop sadder but wiser did justice to a dinner a goodly number budding genius beggars description a dull thud silence broken only by wended their way abreast of the times trees stood like sentinels method in his madness sun-kissed meadows tired but happy hoping you are the same nipped in the bud the happy pair seething mass of humanity specimen ...
— The Century Handbook of Writing • Garland Greever
... Biff! smack! thud! thump! The two frantic boys were hammering each other in the darkness of their room, while the listening ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... strangely because of this splendour of fulfilment, could make no instant answer. And she asked again, but using mine old love-name, and with a sureness in her far voice. And still I was so strangely dumb, and the blood to thud peculiar in mine ears; and this to pass; and speech ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... the rifle, and the figures that had loomed up seemed to melt away. But as soon as the rifle had flashed there was the fad, fad, fad of hurried steps, something whizzed in at the window, and with a dull thud a spear stuck in the floor of ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... it was all over, the heavy thud of a policeman's truncheon was heard, and a few minutes later, with Bob's help, the two men were led away to ...
— All for a Scrap of Paper - A Romance of the Present War • Joseph Hocking
... the ground with a "dull thud," but for an unexpected buffer in the shape of one of his brother warriors, who happened to be standing directly under. As a consequence, the sprawling figure came down on the head and shoulders of the astounded Comanche, who collapsed with a feeling that must have made him ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... with my pencil, I heard chopping going on at the north end of the village, followed by a heavy thud, as if a tree had fallen. It appeared that after digging about the old hearth in the first dwelling visited without finding anything of consequence, the archaeological doctor called the steamer deck hands to one of the most interesting of the totems and directed ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... yell and the shrill laughter as she struggled wildly to force her way to him. And then for a moment there was a space and a man with bent body and clenched hands was rushing forward as if upon a football field, and there came a little sickening thud and then ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... Mahones swung parallel to the quay wall, and then a derrick chain was hauled out and I heard the scrape of the big gangway as it drew along the gravel, and the thud of its iron-shod heel as it fell on deck and bridged the intervening two fathoms of water. But the black hull of the steamer blotted out all view of the people beyond it, and on the cutter I could learn nothing more of what was going ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... hastily, tossed the scrap of paper into the brimming waste-basket, and, yawning, raised her arms high above her head. The yawn ended, her arms relaxed, came down heavily, and landed her hands in her lap with a thud. It had been a whirlwind day. At that moment most of the lines in Emma McChesney's face ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... distinguish nothing ahead in the increasingly thick white fog. All I could hear was the sound of pickaxes on the ground and the thud of falling clods. The enemy had, no doubt, decided not to attack again and were digging new trenches. They no longer uttered their contemptuous guttural cries of "Cavalry! Cavalry!" They had learnt to their cost that these French cavalrymen, at the sight of ...
— In the Field (1914-1915) - The Impressions of an Officer of Light Cavalry • Marcel Dupont
... Friday night, and Saturday morning we commenced to cross over. About twelve o'clock we had crossed. No sooner had we crossed than an order came to double quick. General Forrest's cavalry had opened the battle. Even then the spent balls were falling amongst us with that peculiar thud so familiar to ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... swung along to the rhythmical thud of the drum, their voices were raised in a fearful chorus that must have made one think of the choirs of hell, and the song they sang was the song of Rouget de l'Isle, which all France had been singing these ...
— The Trampling of the Lilies • Rafael Sabatini
... heavy body was heard to strike the floor with a dull thud, and a strange voice said, "Who ...
— The Eskimo Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... were nothing to them. The trail might ring with the beat of their horses' hoofs, or only reply with the soft thud of a deep, sandy surface. They were not out to consider either their horses or themselves. Each knew that his journey was one of desperate emergency, and one of them, at least, cared nothing what might be his sacrifice, even if ...
— The Law-Breakers • Ridgwell Cullum
... fruit, but then didn't know how to get down, and called to PLANDOK for help. "Oh! get down anyway you like," said PLANDOK. "But I can't get down forwards and I can't get down backwards." "Then throw yourself down," said PLANDOK, and KELAP threw himself down and came to the ground with a great thud. The people in the house heard the sound and said," There's a durian falling." Then PLANDOK began to divide the fruit into heaps. "This is for me and that's for you," he kept calling out; and every time he put some more fruit to KELAP'S heap, he shouted louder than ...
— The Pagan Tribes of Borneo • Charles Hose and William McDougall
... For there was a thud and a faint crash repeated again and again, and though I could not see, I felt certain that the fire had attracted some deer-like creature, which had gone bounding off, till all was silent again, when I crept back, letting the canvas fall behind me, feeling horribly ...
— Through Forest and Stream - The Quest of the Quetzal • George Manville Fenn
... It sent a long vista of light through the blank and pulsating haze. The vibrations of the anvil were all but the only sounds on the air; the alternate thin clink of the smith's hand-hammer and the thick thud of the striker's sledge echoed in unseen recesses of the ...
— A Son of Hagar - A Romance of Our Time • Sir Hall Caine
... momentarily above the fence across the alley, behind the tormentor. Herbert's expression was implacably resentful, and so was the gesture with which he hurled an object at the comedian preoccupied with the opposite fence. This object, upon reaching its goal, as it did more with a splash than a thud, was revealed as a tomato, presumably in a useless state. The taunter screamed in astonishment, and after looking vainly for an assailant, began necessarily ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... children." She looked into the clear, calm eyes of the boy, and she knew she could trust him. They returned quietly to the schoolroom. The teacher had hardly taken her seat and closed the book she had held in her hand, when there was a loud crashing sound without, and a heavy thud against the outer door. ...
— Little Tora, The Swedish Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Mrs. Woods Baker
... funereal, gentle. Kenny's eyes blurred. Sweat came coldly forth upon his forehead. At the first thud of earth he choked and turned away, the pain unbearable. Adam Craig had driven his nephew away . . . with a passion of self . . . and he had died with mercy at his bedside, not love. A passionate hunger ...
— Kenny • Leona Dalrymple
... man of the enemy failed to skip aside quickly enough and the revolver crashed down on his head with a thud. That was the last of him. A second, thinking to take advantage of this action, slipped upon the giant from behind and leveled his revolver at Ivan's head. But once more Ivan was too quick for him, and, whirling suddenly, hurled his ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... hails right and left, and she was makin' dates for the next ground and lofty number, I expect; when all of a sudden they're stopped by someone, there's a brief but breezy little argument, and I hears a soft thud that listens like a short arm jab bein' nestled up against a jawbone. And there's Pimple Face doin' a back flip that ain't ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... till it was almost like a basket, with just a break in the front palings to sit into. It had a soft down cushion, covered with a damask patterned patch of wild and divaricating device; and its rockers were short, giving a jerk and thud if you leaned to and fro in it, like the trot an old nurse gives a child in an ordinary, four-legged, impracticable seat. All the better for that; the rockers were not in the way; and all Aunt Blin had wanted of it ...
— The Other Girls • Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney
... almost in the very shadow of the great arch, and waited, smoothing his mare's neck. But for the invitation in his eyes, which were solemn, yet without a trace of fear, I had never dared that last hundred yards. For above the rush of waters I heard now a confused sound within the building—the thud and clanking of heavy machinery, and at intervals a human groan; and looking up I saw that the long friezes in bas-relief represented men and women tortured and torturing with all conceivable variety of ...
— Old Fires and Profitable Ghosts • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... going to hit hard. The way to keep from being hurt was to turn the vertical energy of his arrival into motion in another direction. As he swept down to the metal surface he started running, his legs pumping wildly in space. He hit with a bone-jarring thud, lost his footing and fell sideways, both hands cradling his helmet. He got to his feet instantly ...
— Rip Foster in Ride the Gray Planet • Harold Leland Goodwin
... my bed with my bleeding, aching head in my hands, an object of abject misery. Not a sound beyond the clanging of doors was to be heard, punctuated at frequent intervals by the dull thud of blows, as some hapless wretch was being clubbed, the shrieks and howls of prisoners, and the groans of those on the verge of insanity. It was just as if all the demons of the Nether Regions were at work worrying ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... length a shot aimed at me struck my horse in the face, just above the nostril, and passing up under the skin emerged near the eye, doing the horse only temporary harm, and letting me off scot-free, much to my satisfaction, as may be supposed. Captain Baker, lying on the ground near by, heard the thud of the ball as it struck the horse, and seeing me suddenly dismount, cried out, 'the Colonel is shot,' and sprang to my side, glad enough to find that the poor horse's face had been a shield to save my life. I was sorry that the animal could not ...
— The Black Phalanx - African American soldiers in the War of Independence, the - War of 1812, and the Civil War • Joseph T. Wilson
... of meeting it, ducked and caught the other by his wrist. The fellow's sword went flying, and, at the same instant, Jack made a quick turn. As he did so, the pudgy man's rotund little body was seen to rise from the ground and describe an aerial semi-circle. He came crashing to the ground with a thud, his thick neck almost driven into his shoulders by the force of ...
— The Border Boys Across the Frontier • Fremont B. Deering
... reverberation proceeding from metal. We have already seen how readily the strings take up vibrations which are only pure when, as secondary vibrations, they arise by reversion from the sound-board. If vibration arises from imperfectly elastic wood, we hear a dull wooden thud; if it comes from metal, partials of the strings are re-enforced that should be left undeveloped, which give a false ring to the tone, and an after ring that blurs legato playing, and nullifies the staccato. I do not pose as the obstinate advocate of parallel stringing, although ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 385, May 19, 1883 • Various
... I hear it, The thud of a poor feathered death, In the swelling throat I see The splintering of song— What demon then has worked in me To tease my brain to bitterness— In me who have loved bird and tree So ...
— Miscellany of Poetry - 1919 • Various
... from the window-sill to the ground with a heavy thud, and did not move again. The ball had penetrated his brain, and he was the victim of his unscientific observations. But the lieutenant did not remove his gaze from the open window. It seemed very like slaughter to shoot down the ...
— A Lieutenant at Eighteen • Oliver Optic
... There was a thud below him as the baffled cat fell back to earth, and then Tarzan of the Apes, drawing his dinner farther up to the safety of a higher limb, looked down with grinning face into the gleaming yellow eyes of the other wild beast that glared up at him from beneath, and ...
— The Beasts of Tarzan • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... the dark bulk of the palki frightened him. Bose sat inside, huddled in a heap and breathless. The tiger, re-assured by the stillness of the object before him, ceased growling; and presently, the soft thud of his feet and his sniffing round the palki told the trembling man within that ...
— Bengal Dacoits and Tigers • Maharanee Sunity Devee
... at their baptism, which took place one cold bleak day in the margin of Seneca Lake. The horses which had brought the little company to the edge of the water, having been tied among the trees, made a constant rustling and trampling among the fallen leaves. The sharp rustle, the thud of the hoofs upon the ground, were sounds long connected in her mind with the crisis of her doubt, which then began. The maples stood above them, tall and leafless; the waters of the lake were leaden in hue and cold. Looking southward on either side of its long ...
— The Mormon Prophet • Lily Dougall
... was quite simple. While the Princess Petulant was sobbing on the nursery floor, something came through the open window and dropped with a thud just in front of her. This astonished her so much, that she stopped crying and looked up to see what it was. There stood a little pine dwarf, holding his hands ...
— All the Way to Fairyland - Fairy Stories • Evelyn Sharp
... hold of the bottom of the bag with his fingers, turned it over and gave it a vigorous shake; and then sat staring wildly at the object that had fallen, with a thud, on the bearskin by his side. He was looking at a solid nugget of gold nearly as large as, and shaped very ...
— The Cave of Gold - A Tale of California in '49 • Everett McNeil
... complaints, incessant sounds, and low moanings. At times he thought he heard the halloaing of distant voices, at times it seemed as a whisper in his own ear. In the silence that followed each blast he fancied he could detect the creaking of the wagon, the dull thud of the oxen's hoofs, or broken fragments of speech, blown and scattered even as he strained his ears to listen by the next gust. This tension of the ear began to confuse his brain, as his eyes had been ...
— A Waif of the Plains • Bret Harte
... resounded with the thunderous racket of heavy wings as the flock burst into flight, clattering away through leafy obscurity; but under the uproar of shot and clapping wings sounded the thud and splash of something heavy crashing earthward; and the Indian, springing from root to tussock, ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... lays bare the lovely youth of the spring. The stream of the Meuse runs through this rich and comely village, which the echoes of the cannonade reach only as a dull thud, their meaning lost. ...
— Letters of a Soldier - 1914-1915 • Anonymous
... a simultaneous report, and the Count de Volaski leaped into the air and fell down, with a heavy thud, ...
— The Lost Lady of Lone • E.D.E.N. Southworth
... thud at the back of the room. Honey Hoke had fallen out of his chair. Now he lay on the floor, his legs drawn up and the back of his frowsy head resting against a rung of the chair in which still sat the ...
— The Heart of the Range • William Patterson White
... strength of his mighty shoulders, back and loins into a mighty heave, and Freiderich von Bernstrum, giant though he was, went flying across the room, his head striking the floor with a terrible thud. ...
— The Boy Allies with the Cossacks - Or, A Wild Dash over the Carpathians • Clair W. Hayes
... take a cheerful view, saying to herself that David might have needed more important papers, papers which he would not like everyone to know about, and had sent by special messenger to her to get them. Then her face would brighten and her step grow more brisk. But always would come the dull thud of possibility of something more serious. Her heart beat so fast sometimes that she was forced to lessen her speed to get her breath, for though she was going through town, and must necessarily walk somewhat ...
— Marcia Schuyler • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... The whistled warning as the winged ones rise Large and more large upon our straining eyes, Till with a sweep, while every nerve is tense, The chattering covey hurtles o'er the fence; The double crack of every lifted gun, The dinting thud of birds whose course is done— These sounds, delightful to his listening ear, He heeds no longer, for he cannot hear. None stauncher, till the drive was done, defied Temptation, rooted to his master's side; None swifter, when his master gave the word, Leapt on his course to track ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... council of war, which overruled the plan for an immediate return to France. Presently a thud, followed by groans of mortal agony, was heard in the new commander's cabin. The door was burst open, and he was found dying from the thrust of his own sword. La Jonquiere, afterwards governor-general of Canada, thereupon succeeded d'Estournel. ...
— The Great Fortress - A Chronicle of Louisbourg 1720-1760 • William Wood
... with him as he sprang; something wrestled madly with him; something wrenched from beneath him; and in a clap he heard the thud of a body striking ground far below, and the slithering and splattering of some creature speeding furiously ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... The smith was quite twenty yards distant, but, gathering himself together, he flung out his arm, and with all his might threw the iron bar at the retreating sentry. The missile sped true; over and over it twisted in the air, and, catching the soldier with a horrid thud in the ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... it with the fantasies which thronged my brain. I stood still, rooted to the spot, the blood curdling in my veins, my eyes straining in vain effort to pierce the darkness. Then there arose a roar not unlike that of an angry lion; the sound of a fierce struggle; the dull thud of a blow, and Cairnes's deep voice ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... even so short a distance on Earth would have meant instant death. Here, where gravitation's pull was but one-sixth that of Earth, he still struck on a rocky floor with a thud that made him ...
— The Finding of Haldgren • Charles Willard Diffin
... discovered this apparition, upon which the wild stare of the Judge in life and in death had rested, I ran forward. I thought as I did so that I heard the scrape of clothing on the iron balcony rail and the thud of a heavy object dropping on the grass below. Flinging open the glass doors, through which a torrent of wind poured into the room, and leaning out under the twisted branches of the vine, I tried in vain to penetrate the wall of blackness before ...
— The Blue Wall - A Story of Strangeness and Struggle • Richard Washburn Child
... the shade of the great trees the fever of discontent left him, and, forgetting all except the happiness of being surrounded by the silent oaks, he penetrated deeper and deeper into the forest. The brushing of a branch against a tree, the thud of a falling nut, the dart of a squirrel, and the sight of a bushy tail disappearing round a limb—all these things which indicated that the little gray fellows were working in the tree-tops, and which would usually have brought Isaac to a standstill, now did ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... avail on this occasion. Bartlett's right leg became twisted around his with a steel-like grip that speedily convinced the younger man he would have to give way or a bone would break. He gave way accordingly, and the next thing he knew he came down on his back with a thud that seemed to ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... frozen with consternation. The captain stood slightly stooped over, his knees bent, mouth open, gasping for air, his eyes popping. Slowly, brutishly he began to wilt and topple forward. He was almost bent double before he fell; and with the thud of his body upon the deck, one of the crew groaned: "Killed by a fist ...
— The Plunderer • Henry Oyen
... story was blotted from the mind of Vic Gregg by the thud of a heavy heel on the veranda, and then the broad shoulders of Blondy Hansen darkened the doorway, Blondy Hansen dressed for the dance, with the knot of his black silk handkerchief turned to the front and above that the gleam of his celluloid collar. It was dim in the saloon, compared with the ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... to excavate from this very hard porphyry rock in search of a subterranean vault, into which had been poured, as was supposed, the ill-gotten gain of all the pirates, from Captain Kidd down to the last outlaw of the ocean. Twenty-seven years the sound of the hammer and the drill and the thud of blasting-powder echoed through the leafy forests, and ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 1, Issue 4 - April, 1884 • Various
... of Graustark sat agape. With his concluding words, Mr. Blithers deposited his clenched fist upon the table with a heavy thud, and, as if fascinated, every eye shifted from his face to the white ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon
... hunt the sprightly hare On the bonny slopes o' Windsor lea, But oh, it's ill to bear the thud And pitching o' the ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... safety, but found himself, instead, confronted by a crowd of hunters on horse and afoot. Effectually cornered, he turned to bay, and the first hound that approached was tossed a good dozen yards, landing with a thud and a howl right under the heels of Dorothy's pony. Snapping viciously out at the nearest obstacle, the brute bit the pony just above the fetlock, causing it to rear, spring forward, and throw its rider into the midst of the dogs and ...
— Sea-Dogs All! - A Tale of Forest and Sea • Tom Bevan
... With a sickening thud Grio's knife sank between the shoulders, a moment the body writhed in Basterga's herculean grip, then it sank lifeless to the floor. "Had you struck him, fool," Basterga muttered wrathfully, wiping a little blood from his sleeve, "as you wanted to strike him, he had ...
— The Long Night • Stanley Weyman
... his back to Benyon. Benyon sat motionless. Then, with a thud, the pistol fell to the ground. The next moment Benyon had broken down. His face was buried in his arms, and he was a wreck of a man, sobbing like ...
— The Man with Two Left Feet - and Other Stories • P. G. Wodehouse
... eager brain; planted her feet firmly; braced her muscles by her will; and then, with a shriek, threw up her rod, "as high as the sky," Puss said. There was a fleeting vision of a dripping white-bellied fish going skyward; and then a faint thud was heard. ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. V, August, 1878, No 10. - Scribner's Illustrated • Various
... fallen—no one knew how—from a supply wagon; or, on another and quite different day, the saddening afterthoughts of a letter from home, the stink of bloated, rotting horses, their stiffened legs pointed skyward, the acrid taste of gun-powder smoke, the frightening whine (or thud) of an unseen sharpshooter's bullet, and the twisted, shoeless, hatless body of yesterday's ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... could hear the thud and creak as Commodus threw himself back on the bed—then writhing again and groans of agony. Between the spasms Commodus began to frame ...
— Caesar Dies • Talbot Mundy
... suddenly something round fell with a soft but heavy thud upon the stone flooring of the veranda, and came bounding and rolling along past me. For a moment I did not rise, but sat wondering what it could be. Finally, I concluded it must have been an animal. Just ...
— Allan Quatermain • by H. Rider Haggard
... above came a heavy thud, as if someone had fallen on the floor above us, followed by a suppressed shuffling of feet ...
— The War Terror • Arthur B. Reeve
... out of my path, for I felt that they were indeed vain things to a man in my situation. At last, overcome with weariness, I sat down upon a rock, but I had hardly closed my eyes when I was startled by something which fell to the ground with a thud close ...
— The Arabian Nights Entertainments • Andrew Lang.
... a cat Pierre raised the butt of the heavy dog-whip which he held in his hand and it came down with a sickening thud on Billy's head. As he staggered into the middle of the cabin floor, groping blindly for a moment before he fell, he heard a strange, terrified cry, and in the open inner door he saw the white-robed figure of Isobel Deane. Then he sank down ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... the fountains. A curious effect the gate has, like lace upon pale green. Even in the window you hear the plates; a hum of talk, too, from the diners; the Hall lit up, and the swing-doors opening and shutting with a soft thud. ...
— Jacob's Room • Virginia Woolf
... spoke Nick again pressed his trigger. Kiddie saw the mustang rear on its hind legs, pawing the air as it pivoted round, and then fall over with a heavy thud. But its rider leapt clear, flung himself flat behind his fallen pony, and ...
— Kiddie the Scout • Robert Leighton
... and more snapping and snarling followed. The animal rolled clear over the fire, scattering the burning brands in all directions. Then it rolled among the horses. One steed after another kicked at it, and a flying hoof sent it against the tree with a thud. ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... labourer drops in on his way home from his work of a winter evening—heralding his approach by casting down a couple of logs or bundle of wood which he has been carrying with a thud outside the door—he does not demand liquor of that character. When in harvest time, after sundown—when the shadows forbid farther cutting with the fagging hook at the tall wheat—he sits on the ...
— Hodge and His Masters • Richard Jefferies
... of timber that lay in the direction of the nearest mountain. After Joanne had blown out her candle the silence of the night seemed to grow deeper about him. The hobbled horses had wandered several hundred yards away, and only now and then could he hear the thud of a hoof, or the clank of a steel shoe on rock. He believed that it was impossible for any one to approach without ears and eyes giving him warning, and he felt a distinct shock when Donald MacDonald suddenly appeared in the moonlight not twenty paces from him. ...
— The Hunted Woman • James Oliver Curwood
... The dull thud of the blows, the confusion, the sight of the blood drove the old woman in the corner suddenly upright on her tottering feet. Her rheumy eyes glared affrighted at the sight of the only friend she recognized in all her mad, black world lying there across ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... feeling toward this place was like that about a ruin, only this seemed older than a ruin. I could not hear my horse's foot-falls, and an apple startled me when it fell with a soft thud, and I watched it roll a foot or two and then stop, as if it knew it never would have anything more to do in the world. I remembered the Enchanted Palace and the Sleeping Beauty in the Wood, and it seemed as ...
— Deephaven and Selected Stories & Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... around, without it being seen. The crashing of the antlers as they close, the roars of hate, the squeals of combat, the cracking of breaking branches as they charge and charge, and push and strive, and—sometimes the thud of a ...
— Wild Animals at Home • Ernest Thompson Seton
... from his camel without waiting for the driver to make it kneel, and going up to Ibrahim, he struck him with his closed, but empty, hand. Not with the slap that stings and angers, he struck him, but with the thud that stuns and injures, upon the mouth, removing certain of his teeth,—such being his anger and his strength. Rising from the ground and plucking forth his knife, Ibrahim sprang at my brother who, unarmed, straightway smote him senseless, and that is talked of in Mekran Kot to this ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren
... you," said Andy as he leaped through the window. She saw him take the slope of the roof with one stride; she heard the thud of his feet on the ground below. Then a yell from without, shrill and high ...
— Way of the Lawless • Max Brand
... the spell-bound multitude in the streets, for in a moment more the fate of the doomed adventurers must be decided. Suddenly two human forms dropped from the loosened basket and struck with a fearful thud against the elevated railway, then rebounded to the street below a mass of mangled flesh. Death was instantaneous. With one impulse the throng surged about the bodies; but Dr. Gardner's eyes were still fixed ...
— Idle Hour Stories • Eugenia Dunlap Potts
... guns," Peters said, as the rattle of the machine-guns and the thud of quick-firing one-pounders joined the continuous fire of several Boer batteries and the deeper roar of their big gun, "and they seem to be in greater force than was supposed, for I can make out large reinforcements coming up ...
— With Buller in Natal - A Born Leader • G. A. Henty
... the anger had flowed now it ebbed, leaving him trembling, shaking, that strange sharp pain cutting his brain, his heart seeming to leap into his head, to beat there like a drum, and to fall back with heavy thud into his chest again. He stood waiting for calm. He was humiliated, desperately, shamefully. He could not go on here; he must leave the place. Leave it? Be driven away by that scoundrel? Never! He would face them all and show them that he was above ...
— The Cathedral • Hugh Walpole
... leaping from their intrenchments to advance along the road and drive them back; now I come to the Nabi Tchai ravines, where the concealed masses of Eussian infantry suddenly sprang up and cut off their retreat; I fancy I can see- chug! wh-u-u-p! thud!-stars, and see them pretty distinctly, too, for while gazing curiously about, locating the Russian ambushment, the bicycle strikes a sand-hole, and I am favored with the worst header I have experienced for many a day. I am-or rather was, a minute ago-bowling along quite ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... lost in the thud of hoofs as the horse started briskly, leaving Colonel John standing alone upon the road beside Bale's stirrup. The servant looked after the retreating ...
— The Wild Geese • Stanley John Weyman
... partridge down the wind; The whistled warning as the winged ones rise Large and more large upon our straining eyes, Till with a sweep, while every nerve is tense, The chattering covey hurtles o'er the fence; The double crack of every lifted gun, The dinting thud of birds whose course is done— These sounds, delightful to his listening ear, He heeds no longer, for he cannot hear. None stauncher, till the drive was done, defied Temptation, rooted to his master's side; None swifter, when his master gave the word, Leapt on ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... was not feasible, for going down on a slope as it did, any further deepening would cause the sand to fall in; we had therefore to start a new vertical shaft from the surface. After a considerable amount of digging we reached water level, and were preparing to bail the water, when with a thud the whole thing caved in, and our labour had to be recommenced. At the time the wedge of ground fell in Godfrey was working below and narrowly escaped being buried. A timely rope fortunately saved him. I never saw a man come quicker out of a hole! Now we were a bit puzzled. ...
— Spinifex and Sand - Five Years' Pioneering and Exploration in Western Australia • David W Carnegie
... The thud of fists in blows that started from the floor was new to these lean creatures that clawed and clung like cats. But they trampled on those who went down before the flyer's blows and stood upon them to spring at his head; they crowded ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, November, 1930 • Various
... door dropped into place, a heavy object fell upon it with a thud, and they were in inky darkness. There was no sound save the sobs of the two boys, and later the steady tread of a man who paced the floor overhead,—a man who ...
— Defenders of Democracy • Militia of Mercy
... streaks, rushed into the captain's cabin, broke open the closet beside the desk with a bayonet and seized the keys of the ammunition rooms. Now down the stairs and through the narrow openings in the bulkheads, where the thud of the hostile projectiles sounds more and more hollow, and here, at last, is the door of the shell-chamber containing the shells for the 8-inch guns in the ...
— Banzai! • Ferdinand Heinrich Grautoff
... the railing with a startling thud. "I'll never break fast with ye again—never—never—never! Ye've blighted the greenest memory I ever had!" And with that she was gone, slamming the door after her by ...
— Seven Miles to Arden • Ruth Sawyer
... striped body, thick as a barrel, and curved with terrible speed and power, right alongside the cockpit. He passed us, and as the boat answered to the wheel and turned, almost at right angles, the swordfish sheered too, and he hit us a sounding thud somewhere foreward. Then he went under or around the bow and began to take line off the reel for the first time. I gave him up. The line caught all along the side of the boat. But it did not break, and kept whizzing off the reel. I heard the heavy splash ...
— Tales of Fishes • Zane Grey
... sickening thud seemed to drop through his mind down to the pit of his stomach as he tried to think it out. His eyes peered into the night watching every familiar landmark—there was the old pine where they always turned off to go fishing: and yes, they were turning ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... for Violet Tempest—a kind of maritime purgatory. The monotonous thud of the engine, the tramping of feet overhead, the creaking and groaning of the vessel, the squalling babies, the fussy mothers, the dreadful people who could not travel from Southampton to Jersey on a calm summer night without exhibiting all the horrors of seasickness. ...
— Vixen, Volume III. • M. E. Braddon
... was challenged individually, and when none responded he railed against all for cowards and sent the boomerang hissing defiance against the blue sky, to fall with mutter and thud at his feet. In his rage the little man became hysterical, and the more he scolded the less important, while the swaying spear emphasised increasing agitation, but brought him neither humility nor jibe, for the race does not intentionally relieve ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... Persis; Virginia sensed rather than saw clearly the perfect, beautiful creature which carried her, delighted in the swinging gallop, drew into her soul something of the serene glory of a starlit night on the desert. The soft thud of shod hoofs upon yielding soil was music to her, mingled as it came with the creak of saddle leather, the jingle of bridle and spur-chains. She wondered if there had ever been so perfect a night, if she had ever mounted so ...
— The Bells of San Juan • Jackson Gregory
... Cuchulain,[FN104] and slept, when a cry rang out; And in fear he heard from the north-land come ringing that terrible shout: He fell, as he woke from his slumber, with the thud of a weight, to the ground, From his couch on that side of the castle that the rising sun first found. He left his arms in the castle, as the lawns round its walls he sought, But his wife, who followed behind him, apparel and arms to him ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... dull, explosive sound, and a puff of smoke leaps out. At the highest point upon the roof stands a dark figure in a desperate strait, the hands making frantic gestures, the arms swinging wildly—and then the body shoots off into frightful space, plunging upon the pavement with a revolting thud. The man's arm strikes a bystander as he darts down. The crowd shudders, sways, and utters a low murmur of pity and horror. The faint-hearted lookers-on hide their faces. ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... of the forest. And with all this the traffic returns of the Consolidated Company's railway leaped up, and Fisette, who was in charge of a dozen men stripping his find of roots and earth and moss, began to hear all round him, both near and far, the dull thud of blasting and the faint clink ...
— The Rapids • Alan Sullivan
... Here, half-way up the side of the steep promontory, the whole immensity of the surrounding height and depth came upon her in a terrifying flash of realisation. From below rose the reiterated boom of the baulked waves, each thud against the base of the great crag seeming to shake her whole being, while, whichever way she looked, menacing headlands towered stark and pitiless above the sea. She felt like a fly on the wall of some abysmal depth—only without ...
— The Moon out of Reach • Margaret Pedler
... minute we had lost one another. Crashings among the dry cedars, thud of hoofs and yells kept me going in one direction. The fiery burst of the hounds had surprised me. I remembered that Jim had said Emett and his charger might keep the pack in sight, but that none of the rest of ...
— Tales of lonely trails • Zane Grey
... the kitchen, whence a dreadful thud and a piercing shriek presently sounded. Everybody rushed to the kitchen—the doctor and Miss Oliver, Mrs. Blythe, Rilla, Miranda in her wedding-veil. Susan was sitting flatly in the middle of the kitchen ...
— Rilla of Ingleside • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... box as well as shoot. He was quite calm, though very pale. He waited for the attack, and then, judging his opportunity, let out his left with terrific force. The blow struck Dick behind the ear, and he fell to the ground with a heavy thud. ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... quietly moved to his horse's head and taken the bridle in her hand, and at once seemed to be lost in the gloom. But in a few moments he felt the muffled thud of his horse's hoof on the thick dust of the highway, and its still hot, impalpable powder rising to ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... the beloved "bawheady" with a thud that carried desolation to Beth's tender heart. Four others followed in quick succession before Beth could protest. Then clinging to Arabella, she started to run. Nan tried to run after her, but caught ...
— What Two Children Did • Charlotte E. Chittenden
... weapon to his shoulder and took a long and steady aim. Just then the stranger put his fingers to his lips and gave a low, shrill whistle. It was the last whistle that he was to give upon this earth. There was a sharp, jarring twang of the bow-string, the hiss of the flying bolt, and the dull thud as it struck its mark. The man gave a shrill, quavering cry, and went staggering back, and then fell all of a heap against the wall behind him. As though in answer to the cry, half a dozen men rushed tumultuously ...
— Otto of the Silver Hand • Howard Pyle
... thrown quoits in my youth not to be able to surmount so small a difficulty. So I fastened a black cockade amid the blood-red of the roses, and, rising in my stirrups, threw them firmly and gently, and saw them rise in the air, top the window-sill, and fall with a slight thud upon the floor. I did not wait for more, but turned and rode away; but it seemed to me that as I gained the shadow of the forest and looked back I saw the faint suggestion of a girlish form standing at the open window. I looked once again and ...
— The Tory Maid • Herbert Baird Stimpson
... sounded loud on the clear air in front of them, mingled with the thud of horses' hoofs, the jingle of spurs, and now and again the whinny of a colt; and at the intersection of the trail with a narrow winding path there rode into view old "Persimmon" Sneed,—as he was sometimes disrespectfully nicknamed, owing to ...
— The Mystery of Witch-Face Mountain and Other Stories • Charles Egbert Craddock
... eight-and-thirty strokes with the scourge—one less than Christ—that the devil might be driven out. The scourge was heavy and knotted, and the porter bared his arms that he might strike the better; the monks stood round in eager expectation. The scourge whizzed through the air and came down with a thud on Jasper's bare shoulders; a tremor passed through him, but he did not speak. Again it came down, and as the porter raised it for the third time the monks saw great bleeding weals on Brother Jasper's back. ...
— Orientations • William Somerset Maugham
... said. "I shall speak this once and never again! Listen!" For a moment the quiet voice stopped, so that the gentle cracking of the burning logs could alone be heard above the heavy thud of the girl's heart, which to her ears sounded like thunder of the surf at dawn. "You are mine, mine, do you understand? You are no silly child, you knew what you were doing when you came with me, neither am I a man, ...
— Desert Love • Joan Conquest
... Martha, and look over the stockade, and I think you can see across the river." So I hurried out to the stockade, but Jack, seeing that I was not tall enough, picked up an empty box that stood under the window of the room belonging to the Doctor, when, thud! fell something out onto the ground, and rolled away. I started involuntarily. It was dark in the yard. I stood stock still. "What ...
— Vanished Arizona - Recollections of the Army Life by a New England Woman • Martha Summerhayes
... point of contact; but as the roan mare was taking me to the station one heavy, cloud-smeared day, I passed a dull-looking villa that the groom, or instinct, told me was Judkin's home. From beyond a hedge of ragged elder-bushes could be heard the thud, thud of a spade, with an occasional clink and pause, as if some one had picked out a stone and thrown it to a distance, and I knew that HE was doing nameless things to the roots of a pear tree. Near by him, I felt sure, would be lying a large and late vegetable marrow, and its largeness ...
— Reginald in Russia and Other Sketches • Saki (H.H. Munro)
... unrelated movements and chatter combined in a species of visible and audible mist, which encircled the spread of tan bark. In the midst of everything, in the dusty glitter that poured down from the high roof, horses and men were moving like automata. The thud of the hoofs was lost in a great buzzing of voices. The odor of stables was impregnated with the scent of winter ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... terrible roaring, fled again into security. The Captain's cries for help became weaker and weaker. And now Joco took his iron stake, which he always kept by him, opened the door, and at one bound was at the side of the wild beast. His voice sounded again like thunder, and the iron stick fell with a thud on the bear's back. Ibrahim had smelt blood. Beneath his paws a man's mangled body was writhing. The beast could hardly be made to let go his prey. In the light that came through the small window, Joco soon found the chain ...
— The Continental Classics, Volume XVIII., Mystery Tales • Various
... swiftly over the moor, and I had followed at his heels. But now from somewhere among the broken ground immediately in front of us there came one last despairing yell, and then a dull, heavy thud. We halted and listened. Not another sound broke the heavy ...
— The Hound of the Baskervilles • A. Conan Doyle
... of a few minutes I heard a rustle and a creak; then Gunga Dass in a sobbing, choking whisper speaking to himself; then a soft thud—and I uncovered my eyes. ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... years I got dazed in my head, I think. 'T was th' air 'n' th' work. I was weak allus. 'T got so that th' noise o' th' looms went on in my head night 'n' day,—allus thud, thud. 'N' hot days, when th' hands was chaffin' 'n' singin', th' black wheels 'n' rollers was alive, starin' down at me, 'n' th' shadders o' th' looms was like snakes creepin',—creepin' anear all th' time. They was very good to me, th' hands was,—very ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 8, Issue 49, November, 1861 • Various
... unseen in a nimbus of dust, strap ends, and flying pine needles. His whirling undid him. We seized the rope, and just as the pack again slid under his feet we set shoulder to the rope and threw him. He came to earth with a thud, his legs whirling uselessly in the air. He resembled a beetle in molasses. We sat upon ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... a wild fit of laughter, but his laughter was suddenly checked by a resounding thud upon the shoulders. He then discovered that the Beetles standing around him were armed with sheepskin bladders attached to sticks. They did not hurt much, but the noise they made ...
— The Hero of Garside School • J. Harwood Panting
... instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomach with such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like someone beating a carpet. The kick knocked the breath out of him, and as he lay on his back on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was bleeding internally and ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... courage might fail her at the last moment. It was not that her courage was failing, she told herself, as she stood waiting. It was because she had run down the lane so quickly that her heart was beating hard. It was like the thud of a great hammer against her side; it frightened her, and she was tempted to turn and run ...
— Allison Bain - By a Way she knew not • Margaret Murray Robertson
... happen if the niggers all get free; got one for a saw-mill owner already;" all of which fell, to be sure, at John's feet with an ignorant thud. Still, when we looked at him and realized his noble nature, it seemed too bad to think there could ...
— The Harvest of Years • Martha Lewis Beckwith Ewell
... like a watch-dog. They stumbled through, climbed a dark stair, and entered a room where the traveller, without speaking to a man who lay there on a bench, locked the door, and Hache dropped the box on the table with a thud, shaking off a cap and bottle which were ...
— The False Chevalier - or, The Lifeguard of Marie Antoinette • William Douw Lighthall
... The pounding is performed by two or even three women at one mortar. Each, before delivering a blow with her pestle, gives an upward jerk of the body, so as to put strength into the stroke, and they keep exact time, so that two pestles are never in the mortar at the same moment. The measured thud, thud, thud, and the women standing at their vigorous work, are associations inseparable from a prosperous African village. By the operation of pounding, with the aid of a little water, the hard outside scale or husk of the grain is removed, and the corn is made fit for the ...
— A Popular Account of Dr. Livingstone's Expedition to the Zambesi and Its Tributaries • David Livingstone
... surface. Then, quick as thought, Josh had the great snaky fish by the head with his short sharp gaff-hook, drew it over the gunwale, and before Arthur could realise what was done the axe had descended with a dull thud, and Josh dragged the quivering half inert conger over the side and forward, clear of the ...
— Menhardoc • George Manville Fenn
... at the fifth table, are Treadwell mining men, and that fellow you see slouched against the wall, half asleep, with whiskers nearly to his waist, is Stampede Smith, an old-time partner of George Carmack, who discovered gold on Bonanza Creek in Ninety-six. The thud of Carmack's spade, as it hit first pay, was the 'sound heard round the world,' Miss Standish. And the gentleman with crumpled whiskers was the second-best man at Bonanza, excepting Skookum Jim and Taglish Charlie, two Siwah Indians who were with Carmack when the strike was ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... crowd was not thus to be cheated. At the order of the Magistrate the executioner thrust a sword into the criminal's bowels, then, unbinding the body, let it fall upon the ground with a thud: it rolled over on its back, and lay still for a moment, the white, emaciated face staring at the sky. Then the executioner seized an axe and quartered the corpse. Some sickened and turned away, but the bulk ...
— Dreamers of the Ghetto • I. Zangwill
... The "thud" of the arrow, as it struck the door, had drawn the attention of the lion. Of course, none of them saw him, but his angry growl told them that it was so. He did not show himself, however, and ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... minutes to push up the lower sash. He managed to open it some ten inches, and then, as a protest against this interference with its gradual decay, the sash-cord broke. He heard with a jump of the heart the weight thud down behind the woodwork: then, as he groped hastily behind him for a brick, to prop the sash, it came down with a run, and closed its descent with a jar that shook out two of its bottle panes to drop into the water that rushed below. Prompt ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... brain was a muddle of passion and hatred in which clear thoughts, schemes, plans, plots, were swallowed and lost. He wanted to come into physical contact with the men and things that were thwarting him; he wanted to feel the thud and jar of blows; to catch the hot breath of open antagonism; he yearned to feel the strain of muscles—this fighting in the dark with courts and laws and lawyers, according to rules and customs, filled him with a raging impotence that hurt him. And then, at the end of two weeks came a telegram ...
— 'Firebrand' Trevison • Charles Alden Seltzer
... a good many years since those boys jumped, Rusty. (Noise off stage of running.) Hark! Listen! (He crosses to L.C., pistol drawn; stands listening.) Somebody's running—coming this way—— (Dull thud ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Melodramatic Farce in Four Acts • Paul Dickey
... a hollow and stridulous voice, so unexpected and startling to Pym that he withdrew his hand, allowing the vase to drop back to the floor with a resounding thud. ...
— A Strange Discovery • Charles Romyn Dake
... the thunderous racket of heavy wings as the flock burst into flight, clattering away through leafy obscurity; but under the uproar of shot and clapping wings sounded the thud and splash of something heavy crashing earthward; and the Indian, springing from root to ...
— The Firing Line • Robert W. Chambers
... the fire-place burned in two and fell with a soft thud on the ashes; a lean hound crept stealthily to the boy's side and thrust a cold muzzle against his ragged jacket; in the cupboard a mouse rustled over the rude dishes and among the scanty handful ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... of chinking thud, as if a heavy purse had fallen on the stones. This was instantly followed by a scuffle, and she knew that the two men had closed and were wrestling. The whole truth had flashed upon her through the few words they ...
— Stradella • F(rancis) Marion Crawford
... of light. For a time his heart beat violently; however, nobody else passed, nothing whatever stirred the grass. The only sounds that reached him were faint ones from the Bois de Boulogne, the ring of a bicyclist's bell, the thud of a horse's hoofs, the rumble of carriage wheels. And time went by, nine o'clock came, and then ten o'clock. Since the rain had ceased falling, Salvat had not suffered so much from the cold, for he was wearing a thick overcoat which little Mathis ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... Clocks in the house were striking midnight. In the dining-room the company had now taken to drinking in earnest, cheering and singing loyal songs, and through the open door whirled gusts of women's laughter, and I heard the thud of guitar-strings echo the ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... o'clock, and I was just thinking of going below to turn-in when I became conscious of the sounds of a commotion of some sort; a muffled cry, which seemed to me like a call for "help;" a dull thud, as of a falling body, and a splash! The sounds certainly proceeded from the direction of the brig; and I thought that they must have emanated from a spot at about her distance from the Daphne. The slight feeling of drowsiness which had possessed me took flight at once; all my senses ...
— The Congo Rovers - A Story of the Slave Squadron • Harry Collingwood
... stone still. But had he been ready for flight he knew now that he could not have gone twenty paces before they stopped him. Where he had heard the voices of two men he now heard an overturned chair, jingle of spur and thud of boots, a sharp command. He saw two figures run out on the wall and leap down into the saddles just below. And he knew that in the other towers there had been like readiness and like action. For already he saw four mounted men and ...
— Daughter of the Sun - A Tale of Adventure • Jackson Gregory
... together, now above my head, now to right, or left, sometimes rattling in quick succession, sometimes with pauses between strokes, pauses filled in with the sound of heavy breathing and the ceaseless thud of feet upon the sward. I was already bruised in half-a-dozen places, my right hand and arm felt numb, and with a shooting pain in the shoulder, that grew more acute with every movement; my breath also was beginning to labor. Yet still Black George pressed on, untiring, relentless, ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... Swifts fled, on the night of the flood, the walls of their house had fallen with a thud, and only the strong beams remained standing. By the time the house collapsed, the baby in its cradle had drifted many miles down the river, along the banks of which much damage had been wrought. ...
— After Long Years and Other Stories • Translated from the German by Sophie A. Miller and Agnes M. Dunne
... watched it disappear in dark turns, then emerge into faintly illumined stretches. It moved steadily, without quickening of gait, a lonely shadow that they followed through the unknown to hope. Her glance hung to it, her ear strained for the thud of his pony's feet, sight and sound of him came to her like a promise of help. He was the one strong human thing in this place of remote skies and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... and have it over? Why does—but look, look, the brute has let go the branch and fallen down, down with a crash, and Archie hears the dull thud of the body ...
— Our Home in the Silver West - A Story of Struggle and Adventure • Gordon Stables
... the sill with a sickening thud, scattering the diamond dust from his sun-colored pearl wings into a fine glittering mist upon the green paint. Ugh! with a jar up flew the window and Dizzy, thinking faintly about little Flutter, cuddled among the ...
— The Cheerful Cricket and Others • Jeannette Marks
... smites him; a smothered cry of rage bursts from his lips; he tries to hurl his antagonist from him; and just as the two friends reach out to lay hands upon the wrestling mass, it goes with a great thud to the ground. The crowd recoils and springs back again; then a cry of amazement and horror from all around, the arm of the under man lifted out over the back of the other, a downward flash of steel—another—and another! the long, ...
— Bonaventure - A Prose Pastoral of Acadian Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... did the hairy paws let go their grip and the squirming body sink limply. Before it could touch the bottom-boards, a tremendous kick in the ribs from Ricardo's foot shifted it forward out of sight, whence came the noise of a heavy thud, a clatter of spars, and a pitiful grunt. Ricardo stooped to ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... pebbles from the path and threw them, one by one, against the wooden shutter, the thud of the last pebble being answered by a slight noise from within the room. Presently the shutter was opened and ...
— Prisoners of Hope - A Tale of Colonial Virginia • Mary Johnston
... collar grew and the shorter became his breath the more he kicked and thrashed, until finally the collar broke, and the half-strangled bear fell to the ground with a great thud. Feeling that he had been cruelly treated and insulted, he picked himself up with a groan and a growl, and making for the woods, was not seen again ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... hushed—the strident call of voices had ceased. Somewhere a woman was pounding grain in a wooden mortar—a dull monotonous "thud, thud, swish, thud" carrying on the dead air. Night-jars were circling above the trees, their plaintive call, "chy-eece, chy-e-ece!" filtering downward like the weird cry of spirits. Once the deep ...
— Caste • W. A. Fraser
... With a thud and a booming reverberation a systematic battering had begun on the metal door through which they had entered. It quivered visibly and rang as the powerful blows from the other side bludgeoned into it, and evenly spaced, ...
— The Affair of the Brains • Anthony Gilmore
... began to strip off his clothes. His teeth were chattering. "Well, at last," he muttered, "I shall have some peace!" He threw himself on the bed, drawing the coverings up over his head.... Presently a thud shook the house. "He has slipped from his seat," said Suvaroff aloud. "It is all over!" And he drew the bedclothes ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... to his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed into the ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... and knew the chance. All the fleeing strength of his body gathered itself together for the lightning lucky punch. Even as Joe slipped the other smote him, fairly on the point of the chin. He went over backward. Genevieve saw his muscles relax while he was yet in the air, and she heard the thud of his head on ...
— The Game • Jack London
... quite indescribable. At the height of the paroxysm, a warrior would ever and anon dart out from the circle with whirling club, and bring it down as if on the prisoner's skull, but would turn it aside so deftly that it just grazed his ear and fell with a dull thud on the ground. Other warriors made at him with their spears, which they thrust with lightning speed at his naked breast, but checked them just as they touched ...
— The Madman and the Pirate • R.M. Ballantyne
... fresh, the hedge was cleared; but as old Ben was in the act of waving his cap aloft to give a cheer—there was a crash—a sharp cry—and a sickening thud the other side of the hedge. And when the old groom with beating heart and trembling limbs, reached the farther bank, Roy and his horse were prostrate on the ground. Dudley had cleared it safely, and now having flung himself from his horse ...
— His Big Opportunity • Amy Le Feuvre
... start, a thud of hoofs along the moonlit road, two dark shadows going over the hill; and then the great, still land stretched untroubled under the azure ...
— The Troll Garden and Selected Stories • Willa Cather
... very definite in the way of reports before they reached Skulltree. The sound of explosions came booming through the trees. It was dynamite. Its down-thrusting thud on the frozen ...
— Joan of Arc of the North Woods • Holman Day
... denser. There was no more effort to carry out the insane, rather than humane, tactics of the invalid corps, who had either fired high or used blank cartridges, for now the police struck for life with their locust clubs, and the thud of the blows could often be heard even above the uproar. Every one within reach of their arms went down, and the majority lay quietly where they fell, as the devoted little band pressed slowly forward. With regret Merwyn saw Barney ...
— An Original Belle • E. P. Roe
... into view out of the woods at tight angles, to stop them, and it seemed that the three horses must crash together in a heap. With a moan the Blight buried her face on my shoulder. She shivered when the muffled thud of body against body and the splintering of wood rent the air; a chorus of shrieks arose about her, and when she lifted her frightened face Marston, the Discarded, was limp on the ground, his horse was staggering to his feet, and the Wild Dog was galloping past her, his helmet gleaming, ...
— A Knight of the Cumberland • John Fox Jr.
... that never failed to draw a crowd where it went, is no more. The rush and the swing of the long line, the crack of the driver's mighty whip and his warning shouts to "Jack" or "Pete" to pull and keep step, the steady chop-chop thud of the sand-shaker, will be seen and heard no more. In the place of the horse-plough has come the electric sweeper, a less showy but a good deal more ...
— Children of the Tenements • Jacob A. Riis
... commenced to cross over. About twelve o'clock we had crossed. No sooner had we crossed than an order came to double quick. General Forrest's cavalry had opened the battle. Even then the spent balls were falling amongst us with that peculiar thud so familiar to ...
— "Co. Aytch" - Maury Grays, First Tennessee Regiment - or, A Side Show of the Big Show • Sam R. Watkins
... coming up through the floor board and mingling with the scent on the seat, yet the nighthound couldn't find the two-and-a-half foot insectlike thing that should have been producing it. Verkan Vall lay motionless, wondering how long the next move would be in coming. Then he heard a thud above him, followed by a furious tearing as the nighthound ripped the blanket and began rending at the ...
— Police Operation • H. Beam Piper
... and more penetrating than its forerunner, lit the brown rafters of the cabane. It was succeeded by a crash like the roar of massed artillery. The walls trembled. Some particles of mortar rattled noisily to the floor. A strange sound of rending, followed by a heavy thud, suggested something more tangible than thunderbolts. Bower kicked the door ...
— The Silent Barrier • Louis Tracy
... few moments there was a sound of a scuffle at the back of the tent, followed by a thud and an exclamation from Burton; so they rushed out to see what had happened, the Doctor taking the lamp from the tent-pole ...
— Adventures in Many Lands • Various
... Mirdath. And I, utter weak and shaken strangely because of this splendour of fulfilment, could make no instant answer. And she asked again, but using mine old love-name, and with a sureness in her far voice. And still I was so strangely dumb, and the blood to thud peculiar in mine ears; and this to pass; and speech ...
— The Night Land • William Hope Hodgson
... caution and with care, Sent that arrow singing, winging Towards the eagle in the air. Straight it went, without an error, And the target, bathed in blood, Lurched, and lunged, and fell to terra Firma, landing with a thud. ...
— Fables for the Frivolous • Guy Whitmore Carryl
... steady beat of the rain they heard a noise which was half scratch, half thud. Under Rupert's hand the ...
— Ralestone Luck • Andre Norton
... from the summit of the column tightened; the gaping hole in the masonry below, gradually closed; the statue bent forward in the rays of the setting sun, and then suddenly describing in the air a gigantic sweep, fell among the flags with a dull, heavy thud, scattering a whirlwind of ...
— Paris under the Commune • John Leighton
... something worse, and I resigned myself to the silent contemplation of as wild an over as ever was bowled at Lord's. A shocking thing to the off was sent skipping past point for four. "Tripe!" muttered Raffles to himself. A very good one went over the bails and thud into Garland's gloves like a round-shot. "Well bowled!" said Raffles with less reserve. Another delivery was merely ignored, both at the wicket and at my side, and then came a high full-pitch to leg which the batsman hit hard but very late. It was a hit that might have ...
— Mr. Justice Raffles • E. W. Hornung
... fiddles, the thud of the dancing, and the peals of coarse laughter followed them from the stifling atmosphere within, and Glory ...
— The Christian - A Story • Hall Caine
... still held unconsciously on to the slim black leg, but the sudden movement of the train had jerked Amy off the seat. She clung for a moment to the rack, but her hand slipped, and she fell headlong on to the opposite seat, and there was a dull thud as her head crashed on to ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... might be going," said I in a whisper, my heart thud-thudding at my vest, my mind sharing some of John Splendid's apprehension that we were intruders on some profound grief. And yet my hunger was a furious thing that belched red-hot ...
— John Splendid - The Tale of a Poor Gentleman, and the Little Wars of Lorn • Neil Munro
... a three-rouble note from the old man and jumps out of the van. The dull thud of his heavy footsteps resounds outside the van and gradually dies away. Stillness.... In the next van a bullock utters a prolonged subdued "moo," as though it ...
— The Schoolmistress and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... in before time. It was terrible going out, half awake, to tramp round that paddock from fire to fire, from hour to hour, shouting and yelling. And how we used to long for daybreak! Whenever we sat down quietly together for a few minutes we would hear the dull THUD! THUD! THUD!—the ...
— On Our Selection • Steele Rudd
... electric bell was being rung he distinctly heard the window flung wide open, and a soft thud on the pavement. Sylvia had thrown her purse into the street. From his own room next to the schoolroom, he saw the man pick it up and go away. The doors were closed now, but he imagined the governess's anger. The incident had afterwards ...
— The Twelfth Hour • Ada Leverson
... followed a scuffle, a creaking of leather on leather, a thud. I watched them, a bit enviously, walking backwards until a twist in the road hid them from view. That same twist transformed my path into a real country road—a brown, dusty, monotonous Michigan country road that went severely about its business, never once stopping ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... have been—tremendous. We stood waiting silently for an eternity, as one waits for a hare to break covert before the beaters. From down the long hill came a small sound of horses' hoofs—a sound like the beating of the heart, intermittent—a muffled thud on turf, and a faint clink of iron. It seemed to die away unheard by the runner beside me. Presently there was a crackling of the short pine branches, a rustle, and a ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... turned, walked up the steps of the veranda, entered the wide hall, swung to the left, crossed the living-room, approached the window, and fell out, head first. There was something deeply impressive in the silence and swiftness of his action, something deliriously stimulating to the spectators in the thud of his small body on the unyielding wood. A long sigh of happiness was exhaled by the group of children. Certainly this was a new duty—a strange one, but worthy, no doubt, since it emanated from Fraulein, and beyond question interesting as a ...
— Many Kingdoms • Elizabeth Jordan
... deafened, stunned with fierce, nerve-shattering blows, every moment we thought to go under. We were in a caldron of fire. The roar of doom was in our ears. Giant hands with claws of foam were clutching, buffeting us. Shrieks of fury assailed us, as demon tossed us to demon. Was there no end to it? Thud, crash, roar, sickening us to our hearts; lurching, leaping, beaten, battered ... then all at once came a calm; we must be past; ...
— The Trail of '98 - A Northland Romance • Robert W. Service
... seemed, from all such profound and disquieting matters. For the top shelf proved not very prolific of interest; and one book after another, examined and rejected as worthless, was dropped—with a reproachful flutter of pages and final thud—into the capacious paper-basket standing on the floor below. Then, at the far end of the said shelf, he came unexpectedly upon a collection of those quaint chap-books which commanded so wide a ...
— The History of Sir Richard Calmady - A Romance • Lucas Malet
... his nose, the third on his mouth. With each kiss his strength increased an hundredfold and taking the dragon in a mighty grip he tossed him up so high that for a moment the Tsar and all the courtiers lost sight of him in the sky. Then he fell to earth with such a thud that he burst. ...
— The Laughing Prince - Jugoslav Folk and Fairy Tales • Parker Fillmore
... have been about the middle of the night that Mrs. Bobbsey, who was sleeping with Flossie on one side of the aisle, heard a noise just outside her berth. It was as if something had fallen to the floor with a thud. She opened the curtains and looked out. Freddie and his father had gone to sleep in the berth just across from her, but now she saw a little white bundle lying on the ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West • Laura Lee Hope
... in the flash of a few breathless seconds. There was the dull thud of hoofs. A scared bay thoroughbred, coming from Godbury, galloping hell for leather, with a dishevelled boy in khaki on his back. The boy had lost his stirrups; he had lost his reins; he had lost his head. He hung half ...
— The Red Planet • William J. Locke
... poured down in torrents. The hungry river, like an enormous serpent, swallowed down terraces, villages, cornfields, and covered with its flood the tall grasses and wild casuarinas on the sand-banks. From time to time there was a deep thud, as the river-banks crumbled. The unceasing roar of the rain current could be beard from far away. Masses of foam, carried swiftly past, proved to the eye the swiftness ...
— The Hungry Stones And Other Stories • Rabindranath Tagore
... the sound of music from afar and a thud, thud, thud, which foretold the advent of a steamer. Now there would be waves—real, true, up-and-down waves, and you could pitend you were going to be drowned, and the boat go upside down. What fun! What fun! The gurgles of excitement, the clutchings of Mamzelle's skirts, the shrieks ...
— More about Pixie • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... never before realized what a clang it made when it was shut. The key turned with a squeaking noise, a bolt was pushed with a solid thud; all the windows came banging down, their locks were made fast, and Johnnie and Chips felt literally, figuratively, and every other way left out in ...
— Jewel's Story Book • Clara Louise Burnham
... the pictur' anyhow," Perk finally commented when they could no longer catch the least thud of the working motor—only a more pleasing sound in the shape of gentle wavelets running up the shore of the great lake being borne to ...
— Eagles of the Sky - With Jack Ralston Along the Air Lanes • Ambrose Newcomb
... and bedtime, the children heard the sound of a banjo proceeding from the cook-house. They had never ventured into Aunt 'Liza's domain before, but the plinketty-plunk of the banjo, the sound of patting and the thud of feet keeping time to the music drew them irresistibly. Aunt Nancy was there, in the circle about the embers, as was also her old-time foe, Aunt 'Phrony, and the banjo was in the hands of Tim, a plow-boy, celebrated as being the best ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VII. (of X.) • Various
... but never jostling each other, on the narrow ledge upon and over which the Falls descend. Some were standing upright, with bowed heads, under the strong chastisement of the nearer heavier fall; some bent under it, as if overwhelmed with the thundering thud of its waters. Some were further on, where the white furies lash like living whips, and scourge and sting and scurry; and there the pilgrims were hardly visible, for the waters swept over them like a veil, and they looked in their weirdness and muteness like martyr ghosts. Further still some ...
— Lotus Buds • Amy Carmichael
... was, he had struggled to this upright position, he was making frantic, miserable efforts to raise himself still further. He, too, had heard the dull thud of feet, the shuffling gait of men when carrying a ...
— I Will Repay • Baroness Emmuska Orczy
... a bang, a scuffle, and then a dull thud; but the first to follow was only in time to see eight finger-tips clinging for a moment outside to the ledge of one of the narrow windows, ...
— The Heavenly Twins • Madame Sarah Grand
... like a club in his hands, Kazan was met by the fighting mass of them. He fought like a fiend, and there was the strength and the fierceness of two mates in the mad gnashing of Gray Wolf's fangs. Two of the wolves rushed in, and Kazan heard the terrific, back-breaking thud of the rifle. To him it was the club. He wanted to reach it. He wanted to reach the man who held it, and he freed himself from the fighting mass of the dogs and sprang to the sledge. For the first time he saw ...
— Kazan • James Oliver Curwood
... apparent torpor, was the first to hear the faint thud of hoofs in the loose sand of the roadway. He grew instantly alert, raising himself on his elbow and gazing with ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... him with his mad resolve; he merely refused to allow me to implicate myself in its execution. Well, there was a spice of savage satisfaction in the thought that Raffles had been obliged to turn to me in the end. And, but for the dreadful thud which I had heard over the telephone, I might have extracted some genuine comfort from the unerring sagacity with which he ...
— A Thief in the Night • E. W. Hornung
... career cool as a cucumber contracting parties crisp dollar bill crying need dark horse dastardly deed delicious refreshments departed this life devouring element doing as well as can be expected dull thud elegantly gowned entertained lavishly fatal noose few well-chosen words first number on the program floral offering foregone conclusion fought like a tiger gala attire goes without saying hard-earned coin head over heels hotly contested hurled into ...
— News Writing - The Gathering , Handling and Writing of News Stories • M. Lyle Spencer
... nerving his little wrist. He had meant to shoot—for that he had saved every stray penny from his sales of hogs and cider, of watermelons and chinkapins; for that he had bought the gun and rammed the powder home. Even when the thud of footsteps beat down the sunny road strewn with brown honeyshucks, he had felt neither fear nor hesitation as he crouched amid the underbrush. Rather there was a rare exhilaration, warm blood in his ...
— The Deliverance; A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields • Ellen Glasgow
... the ladder, and the upper end struck the building. The dull thud of that stroke sent a thrill to the hearts of those listeners in the room. As they saw one of the brigands seize the ladder in order to mount, they all involuntarily ...
— Among the Brigands • James de Mille
... Gardens, too, he seemed ever to take the sward rather than the seats, perhaps a wise preference, but he had an unusual way of sitting down. I can describe it only by saying that he let go of himself and went down with a thud. ...
— The Little White Bird - or Adventures In Kensington Gardens • J. M. Barrie
... of the kirk many hundreds of the town were gathered together; but there was no discourse among them. The major part were sailors' wives and weans, and at every new thud of the blast, a sob rose, and the mothers drew their bairns closer in about them, as if they saw the visible hand of a foe raised to smite them. Apart from the multitude, I observed three or four young lasses standing behind the Whinnyhill families' tomb, and ...
— The Provost • John Galt
... implored once more, extending her hands to secure her treasured book, "oh, uncle." In reply all I heard was a dull thud, and I saw Paula fall to the ground. Beside himself, my father had given her a tremendous blow on ...
— Paula the Waldensian • Eva Lecomte
... my horror, up started the head and open jaws of an enormous crocodile. The dog gave a loud shriek, and sprang half out of the water. The Mugger swam rapidly, and had got within a yard of his intended victim, when I raised my gun, and took aim at the monster's head. A thud, a splash, a bubble, and a dusky red streak in the water, was all that ensued. Presently, however, Juno's glossy black head emerged from the water; and, to my delight, began to make rapid progress toward me, and landed safely. The poor brute, wet and shivering, ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 2, No. 12, May, 1851. • Various
... another world, he hears the murmur of a large body of people, the rolling of the drum, the throbbing of the double-bass, the wail of the fiddles, sometimes the thud of the wooden-shoe dancer, and sometimes a sudden silence as the music dims away to rubbish for the big stunt of ...
— Nights in London • Thomas Burke
... than Robin, was ecstatic in all that concerned the sixth sense, and watched and criticised with rapture, wanted to learn, and pouted at being told that it was not fit for a woman. Among those stacks of paper in the dusty loft, with the stamp and thud of the press close at hand, it was possible to forget, in creating sounds and longing to fulfil the dream of the spirit, that Alda was exacting and trying, Wilmet blind to the annoyances she caused, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... THERE was the thud of horses' hoofs on the wooden floor; they brought out of the stable the black horse, Count Nulin; then the white, Giant; then his sister Maika. They were all magnificent, expensive horses. Old Shelestov saddled Giant and said, ...
— The Party and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... of mingled sounds, as, for example, the singing of the soldiers in the distance, which sounds like the droning of bees far away and always heralds an advance of troops; the rhythmic shuffling of feet, the thud of horses' hoofs, the chugging of autos which carry the superior officers, and the heavy wheels of the gun carriages with their clanking chains. Their order, equipment and discipline are admirable ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... had brought into existence for the illustration of herself, and as he pictured the slim, pale figure outside clinging in the night to the vast chimney, and as he listened to the faint intermittent thud of far-off guns. He had a spasm of delicious temptation. He was tempted by Queen's connections and her prospective wealth. If anybody was to possess millions after the war, Queen would one day possess millions. Her family and her innumerable powerful ...
— The Pretty Lady • Arnold E. Bennett
... that moment the kaishaku, who, still crouching by his side, had been keenly watching his every movement, sprang to his feet, poised his sword for a second in the air; there was a flash, a heavy, ugly thud, a crashing fall; with one blow the head had been severed from ...
— Tales of Old Japan • Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford
... and moneyless man, who dominated the clans of San Francisco simply by right of his manhood. He was not without a sort of eloquence of his own. He spoke right to the point, and his words fell like the thud of a shillalah; or rang like the clash of steel. He dealt with the rough elements of politics in an exciting and turbulent period of California politics, and was more of a border chief than an Ivanhoe in his modes ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... hilltop with Rod close behind him, and from the opposite side of the lake there came a fusillade of half a dozen shots. Instinctively Rod dropped upon his face. And in that instant, as he lay in the snow, he heard the sickening thud of a bullet and a sharp sudden cry of pain from Mukoki. But the old warrior came up beside him and they passed into the shelter of ...
— The Wolf Hunters - A Tale of Adventure in the Wilderness • James Oliver Curwood
... white and fine and useless, and she felt for the high comb Prosper had put into her hair. Then she stared around the gorgeous little room, snug from the world, so secret in its winter canyon. She heard Wen Ho's incessant pattering in the kitchen, the crunch and thud of Prosper's shoveling outside. It was suddenly a horrible nightmare, or less a nightmare than a dream, pleasant in the dreaming, but hideous to an awakened mind. She was awake. Isabella's story had thrown her mind, so abruptly dislocated, ...
— The Branding Iron • Katharine Newlin Burt
... carry him into the ranch. I'll bate back those blackguards yet," muttered Feeny, as he took a quick snap shot at some dim object flitting across the plain and sent another into the darkness, aiming vaguely where he could hear the thud of horses' hoofs. For a moment, running from point to point after each discharge, he kept up a rapid fusillade, under cover of which the hapless paymaster was borne swiftly away around the corner of the ranch and carried into the bar, where, wild with anxiety, but faithful to his trust, Mr. Dawes ...
— Foes in Ambush • Charles King
... night air swept up the stairs, and Georgie saw the panel of light from the open drawing-room door diminish in width, and presently the door shut with a soft thud, leaving him in the dark. At that his desperation seemed pressed and concentrated into a moment of fictitious courage, for he unerringly reasoned that they had left the drawing-room window open, and that perhaps in a few moments now they would ...
— Queen Lucia • E. F. Benson
... vision of a sea-nymph. She skimmed over the sand almost as if she were flying, but, as she reached the largest group of rocks, her exalted mood suddenly dissipated and her high spirits came down to earth with a thud. Sitting on the other side of the rock, calmly smoking a cigar, was a middle-aged individual in a tweed coat and a soft hat. The creek, which they had imagined was their private paradise, ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... seemed to bear a charmed life; and the girl watching him felt her heart stop, as the blood showed on his face and neck. The flying lead sent leaves fluttering to the ground, cut off twigs, and struck the tree-trunks with a thud. Flinging himself at full length on the ground Dermot reached his rifle, then crawled to shelter ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly
... batter a coastal town, Or grimly die in a hail of shells when the walls come crashing down. And many a pink-white baby girl, the queen of her home to-day, Shall see the wings of the tempest whirl the mist of our dawn away — Shall live to shudder and stop her ears to the thud of the distant gun, And know the sorrow that has no tears when a battle is lost and won, — As a mother or wife in the years to come, will kneel, wild-eyed and white, And pray to God in her darkened home for the "men ...
— An Anthology of Australian Verse • Bertram Stevens
... of labored breathing as if the unseen man was struggling with some heavy burden. Presently some square object was deposited on the floor of the lift. It seemed to slip from someone's hands, and dropped with a heavy thud that caused the lift to vibrate like ...
— The Mystery of the Four Fingers • Fred M. White
... swung parallel to the quay wall, and then a derrick chain was hauled out and I heard the scrape of the big gangway as it drew along the gravel, and the thud of its iron-shod heel as it fell on deck and bridged the intervening two fathoms of water. But the black hull of the steamer blotted out all view of the people beyond it, and on the cutter I could learn nothing more of what was going on till Haigh ...
— The Recipe for Diamonds • Charles John Cutcliffe Wright Hyne
... thigh, and the stick in his middlerib, told the spectators of a scientific adversary; and loudly now the gentleman was cheered. An undercurrent of warm feeling ran for the plucky little one at it hot again in spite of the strokes, and when he fetched his master a handsome thud across the shoulder, and the gentleman gave up and complimented him, Skepsey ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... midst of his ruminations a sound broke upon his ear—a jarring note in the peaceful murmur of the woodland life. It was the thud of a ...
— Hiram The Young Farmer • Burbank L. Todd
... answer to his soliloquy, there rose above the crackling of the fire, the muffled distant thud of galloping hoofs. A few moments later a well-built, sturdy lad astride a mettlesome pony dashed ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... cat Pierre raised the butt of the heavy dog-whip which he held in his hand and it came down with a sickening thud on Billy's head. As he staggered into the middle of the cabin floor, groping blindly for a moment before he fell, he heard a strange, terrified cry, and in the open inner door he saw the white-robed figure of Isobel Deane. Then he sank down into a ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood
... hands at the business. They wasted no time, but started to ascend the kitchen stairs just as Oscar had calculated they would. He lay low until the foremost man was just at the last step, when a club cut the air; there followed a thud and an outcry and the man went over backward upon the man who ...
— Oscar the Detective - Or, Dudie Dunne, The Exquisite Detective • Harlan Page Halsey
... much exactitude, because every time the body is flung down upon the spring mattress, the bedstead, just above your head, makes a sort of jump; while every time the body succeeds in struggling out again, you are aware by the thud upon the floor. After a time the struggle wanes, or maybe the bed collapses; and you drift back into sleep. But the next moment, or what seems to be the next moment, you again open your eyes under the consciousness of a presence. ...
— Three Men on the Bummel • Jerome K. Jerome
... shade of the great trees the fever of discontent left him, and, forgetting all except the happiness of being surrounded by the silent oaks, he penetrated deeper and deeper into the forest. The brushing of a branch against a tree, the thud of a falling nut, the dart of a squirrel, and the sight of a bushy tail disappearing round a limb—all these things which indicated that the little gray fellows were working in the tree-tops, and which would usually have brought Isaac to a standstill, now did not seem to interest ...
— Betty Zane • Zane Grey
... revolver, and fired at him with as little aim as he had at the lioness; then made for the open window. Staines seized a chair, followed him, and hurled it at him; and the chair and the man went through the window together, and then there was a strange thud ...
— A Simpleton • Charles Reade
... Swish! Thud! She faced the woods quickly. It was only a sound that she had heard how many hundreds of times! It was the snow slipping from some broad branch of the fir-trees to the ground. Yet she started now. Something was on her mind, agitating her senses, ...
— Northern Lights • Gilbert Parker
... was quiet now. The thud of that stiff-armed jolt went to every corner of that vast room. And the referee was droning ...
— Once to Every Man • Larry Evans
... on parade. No man or woman of any sensibility can help feeling proudly stirred when a Cavalry regiment goes by. The clean, alert, upright men, with their sure seat; the massive war-horses champing their bits and shaking their accoutrements: the rhythmic thud of hoofs, the keen glitter of steel, and the general air of power, all combine to form a spectacle that sets the pulses beating faster. Then, again, observe the strange elastic rhythm of the march as a battalion of tall Highlanders moves ...
— The Ethics of Drink and Other Social Questions - Joints In Our Social Armour • James Runciman
... experimentings? What his object, what his scheme, for the amelioration of mankind's woes? Gerald's stomach warned him that coffee and rolls were far dearer to him than the downfall of tyranny's bastions, and impatiently he began whistling. The rhythmic thud never ceased. He noticed an open door at the back of the house, and he went out, his long legs carrying him about the yard, toward the beach. The air was glorious, a soft breeze blowing landward from the ocean. He almost forgot ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... twisted around his with a steel-like grip that speedily convinced the younger man he would have to give way or a bone would break. He gave way accordingly, and the next thing he knew he came down on his back with a thud that seemed ...
— In the Midst of Alarms • Robert Barr
... summering safe at home; You'd never think there was a bloody war on!... O yes, you would ... why, you can hear the guns. Hark! Thud, thud, thud,—quite soft ... they never cease— Those whispering guns—O Christ, I want to go out And screech at them to stop—I'm going crazy; I'm going stark, staring ...
— Georgian Poetry 1918-19 • Various
... lies brooding for days and days. The pale sky is hung with burning, fleecy clouds. No wind stirs. The still air ferments, and seems to boil. The earth lies in a stupor: no sound comes from it. The brain hums feverishly: all nature awaits the explosion of the gathering forces, the thud of the hammer which is slowly rising to fall back suddenly on the anvil of the clouds. Dark, warm shadows pass: a fiery wind rises through the body, the nerves quiver like leaves.... Then silence falls again. The sky goes on ...
— Jean-Christophe, Vol. I • Romain Rolland
... on the landing. The heavy, regular thud of the presses came up from below. They were printing the edition that took the world's news to planters' bungalows in the jungle of Assam and the lonely policeman on the edge of Manipore. The ...
— The Path of a Star • Mrs. Everard Cotes (AKA Sara Jeannette Duncan)
... action of drawing out the plunger is proceeded with. Directly the finger is drawn out of the glove—in other words, immediately the plunger is raised out of the cylinder—the latter drops down below with a heavy thud, still in a red ...
— Scientific American Supplement No. 819 - Volume XXXII, Number 819. Issue Date September 12, 1891 • Various
... that instant a rifle cracked from Bill-Man's barricade, and there was a sharp spat and thud on the chest of Ounenk. He swayed backward and came forward again, a look of startled surprise on his face. He gasped, and his lips writhed in a grim smile. There was a shrinking together of the shoulders and a bending of the knees. He shook himself, ...
— Children of the Frost • Jack London
... was out on her long walks Captain Bontnor laboriously cultivated his neglected taste. He sat in the window-seat with much gravity, and more than made up in application for the youthful quickness which he lacked. He resolutely refused to look up from his book when he heard the alternate thud and stump which announced the passage down to the harbour of his particular crony, Mark Standon, whose other leg had been buried at sea. He kept the dictionary beside him, and when the writer used a word of sonorous ring and obscure meaning ...
— The Grey Lady • Henry Seton Merriman
... nine miles away—just to get square. It was a nasty piece of work, as we were within a few miles of the Boer laager, three hundred strong. There was moonlight, too—it was like a dream, that strange, silent ride, with only the stumble of a horse breaking the regular thud of the hoofs. We surrounded the farm in absolute silence, dismounting some thousand yards away, and fixing bayonets. I told the men I wanted no shots—that would have brought down the commando—but cold steel and silence. We crept up and swept the farm—it was weird, ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... the window to bury itself with a spiteful thud in the wall above the hearth. Both men and the woman came to their feet with astonished faces turned ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... of the sudden subglottic, expiratory or bechic arrest of the foreign body the author has given the name "audible slap;" when felt by the thumb on the trachea he calls it the "palpatory thud." These signs can be produced by no condition other than the arrest of some substance by the subglottic taper. Once heard and felt they ...
— Bronchoscopy and Esophagoscopy - A Manual of Peroral Endoscopy and Laryngeal Surgery • Chevalier Jackson
... struck the wall of the house. Captain Lynch looked at his watch. It was four o'clock. He put on a coat of pilot cloth, unhooked the barometer, and stowed it away in a capacious pocket. Again a sea struck the house, with a heavy thud, and the light building tilted, twisted, quarter around on its foundation, and sank down, its floor at an angle of ...
— South Sea Tales • Jack London
... bedstead out of the drip—and it was one of those solid, old-fashioned beds that weigh a ton—more or less. And then that drip-drop, drip-drop kept up all night until my nerves just went to pieces. You've no idea what an eerie noise a great drop of rain falling with a mushy thud on a bare floor makes in the night. It sounds like ghostly footsteps and all that sort of thing. What are you laughing ...
— Anne Of The Island • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... spite of the encouraging calm or the biting jests of the veterans. The strange sighings in the air became more numerous and more urgent. Now and then bits of twigs and boughs and leaves came sifting down, cut by invisible shears, and now and then a sapling jarred with the thud of an unseen blow. The long line in the trenches moved and ...
— The Girl at the Halfway House • Emerson Hough
... tore into the flesh so that the blood leaped into sight. There was a scream of anguish, and the victim began to twist and turn and kick about as if in his death-throes. Again the whip whistled, and again you heard the thud as it tore into the flesh, and another ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... anxiously watched a gun-team take the sharp curve, which was also a sharp slope. The impression of superb, dangerous physical power was tremendous. The distended nostrils of horses, the gliding of their muscles under the glossy skin, the muffled thud of their hoofs in the loose soil, the grimacing of the men as they used spur and thong, the fierce straining of straps and chains, the creaking, the grinding, and finally the swaying of the 90-millimetre gun, ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... clumsy though for driving. Try them on and see," and he tossed them through the door on to Eustace's bed, and went on with his unpacking. A minute later he heard a shrill cry of terror. "Oh, Lord," he heard, "it's in the glove! Quick, Saunders, quick!" Then came a smacking thud. Eustace had thrown it from him. "I've chucked it into the bathroom," he gasped, "it's hit the wall and fallen into the bath. Come now if you want to help." Saunders, with a lighted candle in his hand, looked over the edge of the bath. There it was, old and maimed, ...
— Masterpieces of Mystery, Vol. 1 (of 4) - Ghost Stories • Various
... were in the green country, and I took one last glance back at the smoke-filled sky. Faint and far came the low thud of an explosion. Then I turned my face against Ernest's breast and wept softly for the Cause that was lost. Ernest's arm about me ...
— The Iron Heel • Jack London
... down the bottom of the ladder, and then let the top lean against the tree, a couple of apples were knocked off, to come down, one with a thud on the soft soil, the other to strike in the fork of the tree and ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... had read nearly an hour, and Davy's eyelids were beginning to flutter drowsily, when they heard the slow thud of a horse's hoofs in the thick dust of the road. Betty stopped reading to listen, and Davy ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... allowed to go on without a policeman in attendance, and nearly lost ourselves among the storehouses and docks. As we walked past the lines of lofty sheds, we heard from all directions the ringing clank of iron, instead of, as in days of yore, the dull thud of the shipwright's mallet, and saw the ground under each shed strewed with ribs and sheets of iron ready to be fixed to the vast skeletons within. Papa could not help sighing, and saying that he wished "the days of honest sailing ships could come ...
— A Yacht Voyage Round England • W.H.G. Kingston
... dagger flashed. Once, twice, thrice it gleamed, and those wrestlers fell apart, while from deep down in the gulf came the thud of a fallen body. ...
— The Brethren • H. Rider Haggard
... work so well begun, but in his second stride tripped over a heavy body hidden in the shadows, and pitched headlong. Falling, he was conscious of a flashing thing that sped past his cheek, immediately above his shoulder. There followed an echoing thud against the forward partition. ...
— The False Faces • Vance, Louis Joseph
... towards her, like the spider about to pounce upon his prey. But La Marmotte was following, and he drew back, and watched the two figures speeding down the gallery, and then they halted suddenly, for the clashing ceased, and there was the thud of a heavy body falling. Through the partly-open door of the supper-room a banner of light fell crosswise on the corridor, throwing into relief the figures of the two women standing side by side with blanched faces, and for the moment there ...
— Orrain - A Romance • S. Levett-Yeats
... wheels far down the street (Ah me, and alack a day.) And I heard the thud of his horse's feet Beating a roundelay. And I felt a little song coming, coming Over my lips as humming, humming, I turned ...
— Yesterdays • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... for a moment, and then, lashing out with his left hand, came home with a heavy thud on the place indicated. Dimsdale smiled gently ...
— The Firm of Girdlestone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... lay Cuchulain,[FN104] and slept, when a cry rang out; And in fear he heard from the north-land come ringing that terrible shout: He fell, as he woke from his slumber, with the thud of a weight, to the ground, From his couch on that side of the castle that the rising sun first found. He left his arms in the castle, as the lawns round its walls he sought, But his wife, who followed behind him, apparel and arms to him brought: Then he saw his harnessed chariot, and Laeg,[FN105] ...
— Heroic Romances of Ireland Volumes 1 and 2 Combined • A. H. Leahy
... into the greasewood beside the trail with a heavy metallic thud that augured a neat profit for the ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... and spoke only in whispers, and yet our progress was not so silent but that we feared we should be heard. In the silence of the night the slightest rustle of tree or shrub sounded loud in our ears, and the thud of our feet on the loose stones seemed to me like the tramp of a troop of horses. The enemy, thought I, would certainly become aware of our approach long before we could even begin to climb the hill. But it seems after all that I was mistaken, and that the sentry ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald
... among the guests; the hosts keep a little apart, near a scaffolding, on which yams are attached. The men circle slowly round this altar, carrying decorated bamboos, with which they mark the measure, stamping them on the ground with a thud. They sing a monotonous tune, one man starting and the others joining in; the dance consists of slow, springy jumps from ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... clink of spurs on steel stirrup and the thud of boots on the ground. There followed a short silence which was broken by a ...
— The Lone Star Ranger • Zane Grey
... the young detective had ever imagined. May suddenly sprang on to his companion's shoulders, and raised himself to a level with the summit of the wall. An instant afterward a heavy thud might have been heard. He had let himself drop into the garden. The man in the slouch hat remained in the street ...
— Monsieur Lecoq • Emile Gaboriau
... moment of the mishap had remained comatose, shook his reins feebly and we jogged forward. But this was his last effort. At the next sharp bend in the road he lurched suddenly, swayed for a moment, and toppled to earth with a thud. The horse came to ...
— The Adventures of Harry Revel • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... fell to the floor with a thud of amazement that reverberated indignation. "Well upon my word!" gasped she. Then, recovering her book—and more—"Why what a kindly gentleman ...
— The Visioning • Susan Glaspell
... the trail plunged into the blackness of the forest. Then the lights of the settlement were blotted out behind them, the hum of voices ceased, and they were alone in the primeval silence of the bush. The thud and splash of tired hoofs only served to emphasize it, the thin jingle of steel or creak of pack-rope was swallowed up and lost, for the great dim forest seemed to mock at anything man could do to disturb its pristine serenity. It had shrouded all that valley, where no biting gale ever blew, from ...
— Alton of Somasco • Harold Bindloss
... a dull, sickening thud, and the bookmaker went over like a shot rabbit. His legs twitched for a moment—a little moan that was scarcely audible broke from his lips. Then he lay quite still. Sir Richard bent over him with the life ...
— Peter Ruff and the Double Four • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... crashed together, now above my head, now to right, or left, sometimes rattling in quick succession, sometimes with pauses between strokes, pauses filled in with the sound of heavy breathing and the ceaseless thud of feet upon the sward. I was already bruised in half-a-dozen places, my right hand and arm felt numb, and with a shooting pain in the shoulder, that grew more acute with every movement; my breath also was beginning to labor. Yet still Black ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... they reached the narrow strait of the winding passage, hemmed in on both sides by rugged cliffs, while an eddying current from below was washing against the ship as she moved on, they went forward sorely in dread; and now the thud of the crashing rocks ceaselessly struck their ears, and the sea-washed shores resounded, and then Euphemus grasped the dove in his hand and started to mount the prow; and they, at the bidding of Tiphys, son of Hagnias, rowed with good will to drive Argo between the rocks, trusting to ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... landed on the further side of the wall when thud! thud! thud! other members of the flock came thumping down upon the ledge beside him. He moved aside a little way, because he didn't want to ...
— The Tale of Snowball Lamb • Arthur Bailey
... the enemy failed to skip aside quickly enough and the revolver crashed down on his head with a thud. That was the last of him. A second, thinking to take advantage of this action, slipped upon the giant from behind and leveled his revolver at Ivan's head. But once more Ivan was too quick for him, and, whirling suddenly, hurled his revolver at ...
— The Boy Allies in the Balkan Campaign - The Struggle to Save a Nation • Clair W. Hayes
... along the slippery streets, trying to protect their limp wares from becoming mere blotters. The gongs of the few trolley cars that were sent out to take the early toilers to their tasks rang as though covered with a blanket of fog. The thud of the feet of the milkmen's horses was muffled, and the rattle of bottles seemed to come from afar off, as though over some ...
— The Diamond Cross Mystery - Being a Somewhat Different Detective Story • Chester K. Steele
... to occupy his mind, without dwelling on these slight external annoyances. He still tried to believe that his mother's release would be hastened by the independence which lay folded in his saddle-bags, and the thud of the wet leather against Roger's hide was a sound to cheer away any momentary foreboding. Then, Martha—dear, noble girl! She was his; it was but to wait, and waiting must be easy when the end was certain. He felt, moreover, that in spite of his unexplained disgrace, he ...
— The Story Of Kennett • Bayard Taylor
... studied lip-reading to get the details. But this was a slight vexation in the exultance of her mood. She was serene in the consciousness that Davidge already knew the facts about her, and that Lady Clifton-Wyatt's gossip would fall with the dreary thud of a story heard before. So Mamise's feet flew, and her heart made a music of its own to the ...
— The Cup of Fury - A Novel of Cities and Shipyards • Rupert Hughes
... goes, bareheaded, into the sunshine. In a few moments she staggers back, and stumbles, with unseeing eyes, towards the inner room. She pauses a second at the door, and turns, as if to speak to EZRA; but goes in, without a word. Presently a soft thud is heard ...
— Krindlesyke • Wilfrid Wilson Gibson
... a renewed crashing of glass, the muffled thud of feet descending from a height upon the soft surface of rugs, and the sound ...
— The House by the Lock • C. N. Williamson
... the light and wound from head to foot in tobacco-smoke, were the farm-hands, playing cards. They sat wrapped up in their game, bending over their little table, very quiet. Now and then came a half-oath and the thud of a fist on the table and then again peaceful shuffling and stacking and ...
— The Path of Life • Stijn Streuvels
... sped Blair. Up ran Joel and Kingdon. The line blocked desperately. A streak of brown flew by, and a moment later Joel heard the thud as the full-back's shoe struck the ball. Then down the field he sped, through the great gap made by the Yates forwards. The Harwell ends were well under the kick and stood waiting grimly beside the Yates ...
— The Half-Back • Ralph Henry Barbour
... unimpeded by overhanging boughs. Indeed, the trees were the straight, slender pines in which the region abounded, and he gained on all of his pursuers except two, who, like himself, were superbly mounted. The thud of their horses' hoofs kept near, and he feared that he might soon come to some obstruction which would bring them to close quarters. Mayburn was giving signs of weariness, for his mettle had been sorely ...
— His Sombre Rivals • E. P. Roe
... stood up, grasping his pole, thrust the point lightly into one of the tangled baulks, and pressed with his left hand against the haft. The right hand went up once more, the axe flashed and fell. A thud as the blade came down, and a ...
— The Song Of The Blood-Red Flower • Johannes Linnankoski
... tempered to any shorn lamb within that dreary fold, followed. A spark of human and vulgar interest was momentarily kindled by the collection and the simultaneous movement of reluctant hands towards their owners' pockets; but the coins fell on the baize-covered plates with a dull thud, like clods on a coffin, and the dreariness returned. Then there was another hymn and a prolonged moan from the harmonium, to which mysterious suggestion the congregation rose and began slowly to file ...
— The Argonauts of North Liberty • Bret Harte
... soft thud of his feet on the earth of the enclosure; the latch grated behind her; the ...
— The Lone Wolf - A Melodrama • Louis Joseph Vance
... The faint thud of horses' hoofs on the roadway made Tina and Larry drop to the ground. They crouched in the shadows of a tree. Galloping horses were approaching along the road. The moon went under ...
— Astounding Stories, May, 1931 • Various
... just see in the shadow the gleam of the negro's white eyes, and heard the raps upon the footboard of the bed, that imitated the drum, and was frightened. He fancied that he heard the whizzing of the sabres, and the heavy thud of the falling heads; he pulled the blanket over his ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... without any one appearing and a second and a third ringing failing to elicit any response from within the silent pile, he was about to depart, feeling greatly relieved that it was not necessary to hold parley with any one within the gloomy and forbidding edifice, when he heard a sudden light thud at his feet and discovered that the scarabaeus had dropped through a hole in his trousers' pocket which had at that moment reached a size large enough to allow it to escape. After a hurried search, he had possessed himself of the talisman ...
— The Strange Adventures of Mr. Middleton • Wardon Allan Curtis
... in the fire-place burned in two and fell with a soft thud on the ashes; a lean hound crept stealthily to the boy's side and thrust a cold muzzle against his ragged jacket; in the cupboard a mouse rustled over the rude dishes and among the scanty handful ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... and maneuvers, police officers with loaded revolvers, and sentinels at their posts with bayonets on their rifles; when one hears for whole days at a time (as I hear it in Hamovniky where I live) the whistle of balls and the dull thud as they fall in the sand; when one sees in the midst of a town where any effort at violence in self-defense is forbidden, where the sale of powder and of chemicals, where furious driving and practicing as a doctor without ...
— The Kingdom of God is within you • Leo Tolstoy
... in one of the cleared paths. From the big low roofed drill enclosure a hundred yards away came the dull thud of galloping hoofs and the voice of Sergeant Moody thundering instructions to the rookies. Moody had a heart like flint and would have faced blazing cannon to perform his duty. He had grown old and ugly in the service and was as beauty-proof ...
— Philip Steele of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police • James Oliver Curwood
... was all over in less than a minute; the echo of the last explosion died away along the mangrove-bordered shore; the thud of the last falling piece of fractured ordnance, as it crashed through the boughs of the trees, had faintly reached the ears of the flying Englishmen; and the birds were rapidly beginning to persuade themselves that ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... skimmed. Then it turned up on one side, buried the bow, or front part, deep in a big snow drift and with another motion sent Flossie and Freddie, together with the robes and blankets, flying into a pile of soft snow. Down came the Bobbsey twins with a soft thud, not being ...
— The Bobbsey Twins in a Great City • Laura Lee Hope
... no illusions concerning his own marksmanship. The most he could hope for, he thought, was to have the primitive weapon thud home painfully on the other's armored hide. Perhaps, if he were very lucky, he could knock the other from his clawed feet. But that chance which hovers over any battlefield turned in Shann's favor. At just the right moment the Throg stretched his head up from the usual hunched position ...
— Storm Over Warlock • Andre Norton
... would have struck the ground with a "dull thud," but for an unexpected buffer in the shape of one of his brother warriors, who happened to be standing directly under. As a consequence, the sprawling figure came down on the head and shoulders of the astounded Comanche, who collapsed with a feeling ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... he lay there motionless and clouded the eyepiece of his telescope. Then suddenly he saw a little black object shoot up into the air from the junction of two trenches near the German support line—an object which turned over and over in the air, and fell with a soft thud fifty yards to his right. A roar—and some sandbags and lumps of chalk flew in all directions, while fragments pattered down on ...
— No Man's Land • H. C. McNeile
... A sudden thud of pounding hoofs, a snatch of ragtime, and her foreman swept up in a cloud of white dust. His pony came from a gallop to an instant halt, and simultaneously Mac landed beside her, one hand holding the wide-brimmed hat he had ...
— Wyoming, a Story of the Outdoor West • William MacLeod Raine
... ears caught a rush of feet, a sound of voices, and Fortunio's raised above the others. Heavy steps rang on the bridge over his head, and the thud of their fall was like thunder to the man beneath. A crimson splash of light fell on the moat on either side of him. The fellow on the bridge had halted. Then the steps went on. The light flared this way and that, and Garnache almost trembled, expecting at every moment that its rays would ...
— St. Martin's Summer • Rafael Sabatini
... swept through the entrance-hall, lifting up Light's veil and at last revealing the two Children to the eyes of Time, who was still pursuing them. With a roar of rage, he darted his scythe at Tyltyl, who cried out. Light warded off the blow; and the door of the palace closed behind them with a thud. They were saved!... But alas, Tyltyl, taken by surprise, had opened his arms and now, through his tears, saw the Bird of the Future soaring above their heads, mingling with the azure sky its dream-wings so blue, so light and so transparent ...
— The Blue Bird for Children - The Wonderful Adventures of Tyltyl and Mytyl in Search of Happiness • Georgette Leblanc
... went down the stairs to Roman Alley, she heard some one stumble, and then the thud, thud, of ...
— Polly's Senior Year at Boarding School • Dorothy Whitehill
... lose his wits. With an effort, he sat up in bed and made the sign of the cross. "In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost!" he cried aloud. Instantly the huge, snarling dog fell to the floor with a thud as if struck by a sword. But after a few moments he sprang up again, and first circling the room, came crouching to the bed, howling as no mortal dog could howl, making ready to spring at the sick boy. Again ...
— For Greater Things: The story of Saint Stanislaus Kostka • William T. Kane, S.J.
... the distant dogs. It was the snarling yap of a quarrel. Then came the echo of Oolak's harsh voice and the thud of his club as he silenced them in the only manner ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... scare y'?" This to Calamity, just turning down the Ridge trail with a dun gray blanket filled with odds and ends on her shoulders, when the padded thud of the pack horse coming through the heavy timber was followed by the stalwart form of the newcomer. Face and form were frontiersman; vesture, clerical; but Old Calamity trotted back to ...
— The Freebooters of the Wilderness • Agnes C. Laut
... and the next instant they darted out upon the roof. Down into its valleys and up over its ridges the little fugitive slid and scrambled. She reached the sheer edge, the lady at the window hid her face in her hands, there came a dull, jarring thud in the paved court beneath, and the lady, looking down, saw the child lifted from the ground and borne out of sight, ...
— Strange True Stories of Louisiana • George Washington Cable
... and take the lead at a pace neither too fast nor yet too slow, but in a way to bring out the best qualities in all the animals, their spirit, fire, grace of mien and bearing ripe for action—I say, if you take the lead of them in this style, the collective thud, the general neighing and the snorting of the horses will combine to render not only you at the head, but your whole company (10) down to the ...
— On Horsemanship • Xenophon
... and when none responded he railed against all for cowards and sent the boomerang hissing defiance against the blue sky, to fall with mutter and thud at his feet. In his rage the little man became hysterical, and the more he scolded the less important, while the swaying spear emphasised increasing agitation, but brought him neither humility nor jibe, for the race does not intentionally relieve ...
— Tropic Days • E. J. Banfield
... instant, breathing rapidly. Something lying on the rug at the door moved languidly. Wesley, looking carefully about, moved swiftly to the spot and stopped. Pizarro raised his head, whining amicably, and, as Wesley bent over to pat him, wagged his tail with a spasmodic thud against the floor, in sign ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... delight of his companions, the rattle of a wagon and the thud of a horse's feet sounded from up the road. And since some one must soon drive over the bridge, which crossed right above the dam, Red scurried back again and dived into the pond, into which Johnnie Green and the others ...
— The Tale of Old Dog Spot • Arthur Scott Bailey
... like rams and they fought like dogs and they fought like tigers, and over the roaring siren sounds of the fight the gulls flew like the fume of it, screaming and swooping and circling in spirals, and through everything like the continuous thud-thud of a propeller came the dunch of tons of flesh meeting tons of flesh head on, shoulder ...
— The Beach of Dreams • H. De Vere Stacpoole
... human—which fact you may doubt—a creature of tissues and blood; he pales at the sound of your bloodthirsty shout, and shrinks from the sickening thud. He may have a vine covered cottage like yours, a home where a loving wife dwells; and when he's on duty the fear she endures is something no chronicler tells. She hears from the bleachers a thunderous roar, and thinks it announces his fate. "I reckon," she ...
— Rippling Rhymes • Walt Mason
... one milked on—there was no doubt about it. The instant he touched her she lifted her foot and with an aim which was not only deadly and unerring but remarkable, considering that she could not see her target, planted it in the pit of Wallie's stomach with such force that the muffled thud of it sounded like someone beating a carpet. The kick knocked the breath out of him, and as he lay on his back on a clump of cactus he was sure that he was ...
— The Dude Wrangler • Caroline Lockhart
... take it upstairs again," said Dick cheerfully. But he met Nell in the passage. There was the sound of a thud, a clear, low voice expostulating, and a girl's footstep on the stairs, as Nell, smoothing her hair, carried up ...
— Nell, of Shorne Mills - or, One Heart's Burden • Charles Garvice
... was nearer than either of them dreamed. At that very moment the soft thud of the closing housedoor sounded through the house. It brought her sharply to her feet, and loose from his coiling arms, with quickened breath and blanching face. A moment she hung there, tense, then sped to the door of the room, set it ...
— The Historical Nights Entertainment, Second Series • Rafael Sabatini
... it did not produce the ringing sound it would have done in an empty gun, but went home with a soft thud, I sung out, "Stand clear, sir. By Jupiter, ...
— Tom Cringle's Log • Michael Scott
... took a long while, the frozen clods of earth fell with a scattering thud, the shadow of the hole deepened by imperceptible degrees. Once the labor stopped, the sack was lowered into the ragged grave; but the opening was too shallow, and the rise and fall of the ...
— Mountain Blood - A Novel • Joseph Hergesheimer
... lithe, and active, he likewise possessed within him the white-hot flame of youth, and now, with a nameless fear to spurn him on, he ran as any healthy, frightened young animal would run. At the second turn Skinner had not passed him, but the thud of his feet was ...
— Going Some • Rex Beach
... was once more alive with the dances, and the dull thud of the Indian drum was continually in the air. The council had agreed that Antelope was entitled to wear a war-bonnet of eagles' feathers. He was accordingly summoned before the aboriginal parliament, and from the wise men of the tribe he ...
— Old Indian Days • [AKA Ohiyesa], Charles A. Eastman
... of it, he darted back and stabbed frantically at my heart. For my own part, I had hurled myself off the bed on the side opposite to him, and the blade grazed my side before ripping its way through blanket and sheet. An instant later I heard the thud of a heavy fall, and then almost simultaneously a second object struck the floor—something lighter but harder, which rolled under the bed. I will not horrify you with details, my friends. Suffice it that Papilette was one of the strongest swordsmen ...
— The Exploits Of Brigadier Gerard • Arthur Conan Doyle
... the grave was filled and the turf laid down, a trying quarter of an hour. Ah me! the thud of the spade on your mother's grave! None gave any sign of what he felt save Drumsheugh, whose sordid slough had slipped off from a tender heart, and Chalmers, who went behind a tombstone and sobbed aloud. Not even Posty ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren
... neither cried, screamed, turned deadly pale, clenched her fragile hands, bit her lips till the blood came, smashed a wine-glass, nor fell with a dull thud senseless to the floor. Nevertheless, she was extremely perturbed by this astounding revelation of Mr Bittenger's. Of course, dreams are nonsense. But still—The truth is, one tries to believe that dreams are nonsense, and up to a certain point one may succeed in believing. But it seemed to Vera ...
— The Grim Smile of the Five Towns • Arnold Bennett
... with boys. All were shouting and the prefects urged them on with strong cries. The evening air was pale and chilly and after every charge and thud of the footballers the greasy leather orb flew like a heavy bird through the grey light. He kept on the fringe of his line, out of sight of his prefect, out of the reach of the rude feet, feigning to run now and then. He felt his body small and weak amid the throng ...
— A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man • James Joyce
... answered that I suited him, and that was enough. All this time they were doing something—I could not see what—to the corpse; sometimes they were too busy rifling the dead body, I believe, to talk; again they let it fall with a heavy, resistless thud, and took to quarrelling. They taunted my husband with angry vehemence, enraged at his scoffing and scornful replies, his mocking laughter. Yes, holding up his poor dead victim, the better to strip him of ...
— The Grey Woman and other Tales • Mrs. (Elizabeth) Gaskell
... crawled upwards, but as he reached the top of the low house and passed his legs over he gave a feeble moan and then.... flopper-ti flop, flopper-ti flop, he crashed down the other side and ended with a dull thud on the ground. On the other side there he was dead as a door-nail and all covered with blood. It was our first proper work. But he was not a soldier, he was a Boxer; and in place of the former incomplete attire of ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... Everything was against him, for a heavy rain was falling, and there was no chance of Bryda coming out for a Sunday walk. But he went boldly up the steps before Mr Lambert's house and gave a heavy thud on the ...
— Bristol Bells - A Story of the Eighteenth Century • Emma Marshall
... The wind tore the sails to shreds. The sailors cast the anchor. With a thud it went into the sea, and for a moment held ...
— The Shipwreck - A Story for the Young • Joseph Spillman
... a Georgie Cohan, gettin' red, white and blue by turns, and he pawed the air, gaspin' for breath like a fat piano mover. Before he can get set for a comeback, they's a loud crash outside the door, followed by the well known dull thud. In another minute Kid Scanlan walks in, draggin' somethin' after him by the ...
— Kid Scanlan • H. C. Witwer
... am hit!" groaned the ex-counterfeiter, and fell in a heap on the head of Sid Jeffers. Then the hatch came into place with a thud and in a twinkling ...
— The Rover Boys in Southern Waters - or The Deserted Steam Yacht • Arthur M. Winfield
... dropped into the greasewood beside the trail with a heavy metallic thud that augured a neat profit for the man ...
— The Long Chance • Peter B. Kyne
... him quaver breathlessly, "I have the proof—the undeniable proof! They were intelligent beings. They did not die of disease. They were exterminated in war! They were ... but see for yourself!" There was a thud as he dropped something on the polished table top between the commissioner and Colonel Thayer. "That was dug up just now—among ...
— Watch the Sky • James H. Schmitz
... inch one. Then a wad was put in, and a shell with one of the knotted ropes fastened to it dropped in the top. The rope had been coiled in a tub so as to run out easily. The gunner applied the match. There was a dull report, and every man held his breath to listen. There was a thud high up on the cliff and then ...
— The Bravest of the Brave - or, with Peterborough in Spain • G. A. Henty
... weakness of your chin and the appetite of your mouth suggest to me that you are not over scrupulous with the women who are in your charge. I guess rather than know that you have been turned down with a dull, sickening thud by a decent girl, and in your mortification you are attempting to invent a charge which has no substance and ...
— The Daffodil Mystery • Edgar Wallace
... Stop there," thundered "Poker" John, and Jacky heard a thud as of a fist falling upon the table. "You've taken the unwarrantable liberty of poking your nose into my affairs, and, because of our old acquaintance, I have allowed it. But now let me tell you this is no d——d business of yours. There's no ...
— The Story of the Foss River Ranch • Ridgwell Cullum
... the ground out of Stonor's reach. Then, springing to his feet with incredible swiftness, he cut for the water's edge. But Mary stuck out her leg in his path and he came to earth with a thud. Stonor secured him. Clare from where she sat looked up ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... they ceased, and a third time she struck the marble with her spear. Then the noises arose all about and around the very spot where we stood, and the clang of the arms was so close that it shook and thrilled the very columns beside me. And the neighing and snorting of horses, and the thud of their ponderous hoofs flying over the earth made, as it were, a wind in my ears, so that it seemed as though a furious battle were raging all around us. But I could see nothing. Only the sounds increased, and became so violent that they awoke me, and even after waking I still seemed to ...
— Dreams and Dream Stories • Anna (Bonus) Kingsford
... returned, however, when the creature attempted to climb up by his own ladder. Seven or eight times it made the attempt, while the boy watched in breathless anxiety, but each time it slipped when half-way up, and fell with a soft heavy thud on the ice below, which caused it to gasp and cough. Then it sat down on its haunches and gazed ...
— The Giant of the North - Pokings Round the Pole • R.M. Ballantyne
... wound and take two reeling steps forward; you call feebly for help and stumble against the sofa which you fall upon, and finally, still groping wildly, you roll off on the floor, where you kick out once or twice; your clinched hand comes down with a thud on the ...
— McClure's Magazine, March, 1896, Vol. VI., No. 4. • Various
... sixth sense, and watched and criticised with rapture, wanted to learn, and pouted at being told that it was not fit for a woman. Among those stacks of paper in the dusty loft, with the stamp and thud of the press close at hand, it was possible to forget, in creating sounds and longing to fulfil the dream of the spirit, that Alda was exacting and trying, Wilmet blind to the annoyances she caused, ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... crying, with her fingers in her ears and her cap over her eye. She said she had been putting the hot water bottle to Aunt Selina's back, and it had been too hot. Just then something hit against the door with a soft thud, fell to the floor and burst, for a trickle of hot water came ...
— When a Man Marries • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... say?" he cried, bringing the chair down with a remorseful thud. "'I'd work myself to skin and bone but I'd go through ...
— Five Little Peppers Grown Up • Margaret Sidney
... strip off his clothes. His teeth were chattering. "Well, at last," he muttered, "I shall have some peace!" He threw himself on the bed, drawing the coverings up over his head.... Presently a thud shook the house. "He has slipped from his seat," said Suvaroff aloud. "It is all over!" And he drew the bedclothes higher and went ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1917 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... his lips as a deep low hum—a Psalm tune sung by hundreds of manly voices—ascended to his ears, to the accompaniment of the heavy thud of horsehoofs, and from the London Road, between the bridge and the Royalist horsemen, there emerged a compact body of troopers, in steel caps and corslets. Forming in ranks of three abreast, they charged over the bridge, and speedily cleared off the Royalists ...
— Under the Storm - Steadfast's Charge • Charlotte M. Yonge
... had left me I was on the upper deck and looking out to sea. I saw all at once the wash of a torpedo, indicated by a snake-like churn of the surface of the water. It may have been about thirty feet away. And then came a thud." ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various
... shimmering and dancing in the afternoon sun. In the field next to the camp an ancient Belgian was ploughing, his two big Walloon horses guided by a single cord, while from behind the farm there came the soft thud-thud of a football. ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... sprightly hare On the bonny slopes o' Windsor lea, But oh, it's ill to bear the thud And pitching ...
— The Bon Gaultier Ballads • William Edmonstoune Aytoun
... for him. The smith was quite twenty yards distant, but, gathering himself together, he flung out his arm, and with all his might threw the iron bar at the retreating sentry. The missile sped true; over and over it twisted in the air, and, catching the soldier with a horrid thud in the ...
— The Slowcoach • E. V. Lucas
... immediate duties elsewhere stampeded out of the mess. Overhead there was a thud of feet and ropes ends and the shrilling of pipes as the watch fell in. A Midshipman thrust his head inside the door of the Wardroom. "Boat's alongside, sir!" ...
— A Tall Ship - On Other Naval Occasions • Sir Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie
... and waist, and skirt, and shoes, subduing the snowy white with the amber of the peach, and the purple of the raspberry, as he ate the forbidden fruit. Then I watched him glide into the drawing room. There was a crash and a thud in there, which quickly brought his frightened mother to the scene, only to find the young rascal standing there catching his breath, while streams of cold ink trickled down his drenched bosom. And as he wiped his inky face, which grew blacker with every wipe, the remainder of the ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... and from the tiny open space at the window caught glimpses of the passing pageant—of the royal coaches, of the maids of honor, of Josephine in gorgeous attire, of the snow-white poodle snuggled close in the Empress's arms. Then she told how she heard a heavy thud by the kitchen fire, which made her rush back, only to discover that the head cook had fallen to the ...
— The Expedition of the Donner Party and its Tragic Fate • Eliza Poor Donner Houghton
... crowd, for they were swappin' hails right and left, and she was makin' dates for the next ground and lofty number, I expect; when all of a sudden they're stopped by someone, there's a brief but breezy little argument, and I hears a soft thud that listens like a short arm jab bein' nestled up against a jawbone. And there's Pimple Face doin' a back flip that ain't in his repertoire ...
— Shorty McCabe on the Job • Sewell Ford
... winged ones rise Large and more large upon our straining eyes, Till with a sweep, while every nerve is tense, The chattering covey hurtles o'er the fence; The double crack of every lifted gun, The dinting thud of birds whose course is done— These sounds, delightful to his listening ear, He heeds no longer, for he cannot hear. None stauncher, till the drive was done, defied Temptation, rooted to his master's side; None swifter, when his master gave the word, Leapt on his course ...
— The Dog's Book of Verse • Various
... room; the sound Of eager voices in discourse; the clang Of "sweet bells jangled"; thud of steel-clad feet That beat swift music on the frozen ground— All blent together in my brain, and rang A medley of strange noises, incomplete, And full of discords. Then out on the night Streamed from this open vestibule, a light That lit ...
— Maurine and Other Poems • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... upon the redoubt which had been located under counsel of Gridley, Prescott, Knowlton, and other officers, the dull thud of the pickaxe and the grating of shovels were the only sounds that disturbed the pervading silence, except as the sentries' "All's well!" from Copp's Hill and from the warships, relieved anxiety ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 1, Issue 5, May, 1884 - A Massachusetts Magazine • Various
... 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 one continuous pound. Faster and faster, heavier and heavier,—they blended into a discordant roar that closed around her like a wall. Here and there and to and fro, Rothgar's great charger followed the King; and here and ...
— The Ward of King Canute • Ottilie A. Liljencrantz
... and steel; and as soon as they had comfortably bestowed Sandy and me on our horse, I lit my pipe. When the first blast of smoke shot out through the bars of my helmet, all those people broke for the woods, and Sandy went over backwards and struck the ground with a dull thud. They thought I was one of those fire-belching dragons they had heard so much about from knights and other professional liars. I had infinite trouble to persuade those people to venture back within explaining distance. Then I told them that this was only a bit of enchantment which ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... three minutes to push up the lower sash. He managed to open it some ten inches, and then, as a protest against this interference with its gradual decay, the sash-cord broke. He heard with a jump of the heart the weight thud down behind the woodwork: then, as he groped hastily behind him for a brick, to prop the sash, it came down with a run, and closed its descent with a jar that shook out two of its bottle panes to drop into the water that rushed ...
— Nicky-Nan, Reservist • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (Q)
... up with a nervous movement. The crystal, left to itself, rolled off the table to the floor, and fell with a thud unbroken on the soft carpet. And I could hear the intake ...
— The Ghost - A Modern Fantasy • Arnold Bennett
... the blows of the kettledrum-sticks. An abrupt silence prepares for a fierce thunderous clamor from the tympani and the great drum (beaten with the sticks of the side-drum). This subsides to a single thud of a kettledrum; there is another eloquent silence; the English horn returns to its first plaint; but grief has died of very exercise, and the work ends in a coda that establishes a major harmony and leaves the hearer with a ...
— Contemporary American Composers • Rupert Hughes
... have struck the ground with a "dull thud," but for an unexpected buffer in the shape of one of his brother warriors, who happened to be standing directly under. As a consequence, the sprawling figure came down on the head and shoulders of the astounded Comanche, who collapsed with a feeling ...
— The Great Cattle Trail • Edward S. Ellis
... the ground with a thud, and Hippy Wingate toppled over against Elfreda Briggs and sank down, uttering ...
— Grace Harlowe's Overland Riders in the Great North Woods • Jessie Graham Flower
... looked out of the window; below, in the race, there was a jam of logs, and the air was keen with the pungent smell of sawdust and new boards. The whir and thud of the machinery down-stairs sent a faint quiver through the planks under his feet. "The mill will net a good profit this year," he said to himself, absently. "'Thalia can have pretty nearly anything she wants." And even as he said it ...
— The Way to Peace • Margaret Deland
... signal that I'll see them in hell before I bate a knot, why—you watched it yourselves—they struck me in the fo'castle, and there's two of my dead men below now; but they shall swing"—and he brought his fist upon the table with a mighty thud—"they shall swing, if there's only one rope ...
— The Iron Pirate - A Plain Tale of Strange Happenings on the Sea • Max Pemberton
... lead, fired first, but succeeded only in wounding the bear. Pain was now added to the savagery of hunger, and the infuriated monster rushed upon Phillips. Dave leaped back, but his foot slipped on a bit of ice, and he went down with a thud, his rifle flying from ...
— Last of the Great Scouts - The Life Story of William F. Cody ["Buffalo Bill"] • Helen Cody Wetmore
... and cheering and shouting. It was from the pirate sloop. The pirates were rushing about upon her decks. They had pulled the cannon back, and, through the grunting sound of the groans about him, the lieutenant could distinctly hear the thud and punch of the rammers, and he knew they ...
— Howard Pyle's Book of Pirates • Howard Pyle
... violently upon it. He saw the chandeler swaying to and fro, as if a thousand lights were dancing before his eyes; saw the other guests staggering and falling. Statuettes, bric-a-brac, and articles of furniture came crashing down; part of the ceiling fell with a thud, raising a stifling dust, which, choking the shrieking voices, rendered more distinct the grinding sound, as walls of solid masonry drew apart, gaped, and closed under ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... avoiding his rushes as well as I might. Time and again our weapons crashed together, now above my head, now to right, or left, sometimes rattling in quick succession, sometimes with pauses between strokes, pauses filled in with the sound of heavy breathing and the ceaseless thud of feet upon the sward. I was already bruised in half-a-dozen places, my right hand and arm felt numb, and with a shooting pain in the shoulder, that grew more acute with every movement; my breath also was beginning to labor. Yet still Black George ...
— The Broad Highway • Jeffery Farnol
... rigid straightway. "I am not one to take back an offer," he stated loftily. His voice was weighted to a heavier guttural, and in the deep staccatos harshly chopped off, and each falling with a thud, there was a quality so ominous and deadly that even Jacqueline had her doubts. But she would not admit them, to herself least of all. "And I, Monsieur Ney," she said, "have decided to accept," though she had not really, until that ...
— The Missourian • Eugene P. (Eugene Percy) Lyle
... of the great guns, the screaming of the carronade slides, the rattle of musketry, the groans of the dying, the shouts of his victorious sailors, the crash of the main-mast as it fell upon the bulwarks. Then the swift sissing ripple of water, the thud of the Araminta as she struck, and the cold chill of the seas as she went down. How cold was the sea—ah, how it chilled every nerve and tissue of ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the blow so far that he escaped the full weight of the falling iron, which struck the floor endwise with a heavy thud. But before he could get beyond its reach the massive bar tipped over, falling in such way as to strike him in the side of the head, and felling ...
— Jack North's Treasure Hunt - Daring Adventures in South America • Roy Rockwood
... Austin when he was two years old, joined in the general protest. But Austin, disdaining to argue the point with any one of them, had already hobbled out of the room, and before they were well aware of it had begun to essay the descent perilous. Ominous bumps were heard, and then a dull thud as of a body falling. But a bend in the wall had caught the body, and the explorer was none the worse. Then Aunt Charlotte, rushing back into the bedroom, ...
— Austin and His Friends • Frederic H. Balfour
... the room, no one knew where he was. A party went in search of him. The others, too unnerved to go back into the ballroom, crowded outside the door and listened. They could hear the steady whir of the wheels upon the polished floor, as the thing spun round and round; the dull thud as every now and again it dashed itself and its burden against some opposing object and ricocheted off in ...
— Novel Notes • Jerome K. Jerome
... a saw—my heart made such a loud thud against my side I thought stars! she wanted "an ounce o' snuff," and that article was kept in a glass jar in plain sight on the other side of the store. There was a movement in that direction, and I recovered ...
— The Blunders of a Bashful Man • Metta Victoria Fuller Victor
... for this voyage?" He spoke deliberate, grammatical English—he despised the American rendering of the language—but there was an indescribably foreign quality in his voice,—a something muted; and though he aspirated his "th's" with such conscientious thoroughness, there was always the thud of a "d" in them. Poppas stood before me in a short, tightly buttoned grey coat and cap, exactly the colour of his greyish skin and hair and waxed moustache; a monocle on a very wide black ribbon dangled over his chest. As to his age, ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... rather than lose his hat, he grabbed it in the hand that held the chicken. He cleared the fence and plunged into the timber. Looking over his shoulder, he saw a man's form on the top of the fence; the thud of boots on the sod and the crash of branches behind him sent terror through the boy's frame, and he turned towards the creek that flowed sluggishly near by. He took great bounding strides, throwing ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... the floor level with a thud that shook the house, Mr. Gillie sneezed violently, a physiological phenomenon which curiously enough never failed to present itself when any extraordinary pressure was put upon his brain cells. Wiping his watery eyes ...
— Bought and Paid For - From the Play of George Broadhurst • Arthur Hornblow
... of men were supposed to be sleeping. They were not only not asleep but kept me awake by the roars of laughter which greeted the stories they were telling. However, I managed to doze off in time, and was rudely wakened early in the morning by the metallic thud of pineapples on the ground overhead. I was wondering what it meant when a man came down to the O.C.'s room, next to mine, and aroused him with the somewhat exciting news, "Major, the Germans are making an attack." It was not long before the Major was hurrying ...
— The Great War As I Saw It • Frederick George Scott
... their caps; then hundreds and hundreds of mounted fellows with needle-guns and sabres; then three regiments of infantry, marching in superb time. Every five hundred men had a drum corps and fifes playing in perfect unison. You could almost feel the ground shake with the steady thud of their march as they tramped on. The men looked dirty and tired, but were fat, and many of them were laughing. Looking down the road as far as possible, we could still see helmets, spikes, and guns all leaning exactly the same way, and glittering ...
— France in the Nineteenth Century • Elizabeth Latimer
... with his fixed gaze the motions of the lion. Greatly irritated, the beast gave a mighty spring, uttering a terrible roar; the man, at the same moment, leaped aside, and the lion had barely touched the ground, when the club came down upon his head with a dull, shocking thud. The king of the desert rolled heavily under the stroke, and fell headlong, stunned and senseless, but ...
— St. Nicholas, Vol. 5, No. 2, December, 1877 • Various
... light was so dim and the room so crowded. The first thing that I saw when I scrambled to my feet was the fat dull face of the guard shining like a harvest moon, and presenting a mark for my fist as round and big as a punching-bag. I hit him once—and that was enough. Then I began to hear the measured thud of my brother's blows, the blows of a workman who knows how to ...
— Bunch Grass - A Chronicle of Life on a Cattle Ranch • Horace Annesley Vachell
... Dickey full at him. He had no time to parry the shock, nor Macbeth to check the force with which Ben had sent him, and the consequence was that Richard and Macbeth fell almost directly on top of the struggling Othello with a thud that threatened to rend asunder each particular board of ...
— Left Behind - or, Ten Days a Newsboy • James Otis
... were happening Columbus, sick at heart, was slowly plodding on the road to France. But he only went a little way on his long journey. For just as he was entering a narrow pass not far from Granada, where the mountains towered above him, he heard the thud of ...
— This Country Of Ours • H. E. Marshall Author: Henrietta Elizabeth Marshall
... matter, studying, reading, praying, assuring himself from time to time that if any church were true this was the one, and that to enter it was probably his duty, now that Brownson's weight was likewise thrown into the scale and it went down with a warning thud, he thrilled through with apprehension. "I feel like throwing all up," he wrote in the diary on the day the letter reached him. "Some cannot rest. How much better would it have been could I have remained in quietness at my daily pursuits, and not ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott
... flew straight, descended, struck the beast, and started again into the air, doubled like a letter V. Quickly Photogen snatched the other, shot, cast his bow from him, and drew his knife. But the arrow was in the brute's chest, up to the feather; it tumbled heels over head with a great thud of its back on the earth, gave a groan, made a struggle or two, and ...
— Stephen Archer and Other Tales • George MacDonald
... went the animal, struggling to get away from the remorseless grip. Then, when the water had reached its height, it shot the beast off to one side. Then the brute began to fall, twisting, turning, wiggling and struggling. Down it came with a thud that could be heard above ...
— Five Thousand Miles Underground • Roy Rockwood
... Then the Spaniard yelled like a devil, "Now look, Jim Barnet!—look!"— With that he jumped 'n' gripped her; She fought, but he broke her hold, Grabbed at the rope, 'n' missed it— Off of the bar they rolled, Clinched, 'n' Ide a screamin'; Thud!—they struck the ground; I turned all sick and dizzy, 'N' everything went round. How still it were for a second!— It seemed like an hour—'n' then The women was all a screechin', 'N' the ring was full ...
— Point Lace and Diamonds • George A. Baker, Jr.
... be an age to the terrified young woman crouching there in such utter fright, the vehicle stopped short with a sharp thud and a lurch forward that would have thrown Sally upon her face, had not her companion reached forward and ...
— Jolly Sally Pendleton - The Wife Who Was Not a Wife • Laura Jean Libbey
... moved to his horse's head and taken the bridle in her hand, and at once seemed to be lost in the gloom. But in a few moments he felt the muffled thud of his horse's hoof on the thick dust of the highway, and its still hot, impalpable powder rising ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... the night as you might rip linen, and fetched them to their feet. Taffy gained the porch first; and just at that moment a black shadow heaved itself on the churchyard wall and came hurling over with a thud—a clatter of dropping stones—then ...
— The Ship of Stars • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... neither of us spoke. The silence was broken by a thud, as if a flying squirrel had dropped from the roof to the balcony. A stick of wood fell apart in the grate, and the crow of the baby in the hooded cradle was answered by the ...
— The Gay Cockade • Temple Bailey
... myself among the soaring columns of the palms, hung aloft with clusters of the great green nuts. Fallen palm fronds made a carpet for my feet—very pleasant after the rough and tangled way I had travelled, and now and again one of the cocoa nuts would fall down with a thud amid the green silence. One of these, which narrowly missed my head, suggested that here I had the opportunity of quenching very agreeably the thirst of which I had become suddenly aware. My claspknife soon made an opening through the tough shell, and, ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... resting on another square block of iron embedded in the earth. This latter was the anvil. On the anvil the end of the white-hot bar was immediately laid. Another signal was given, and down came the "five-carts-of-coals weight" with a thud that shook the very earth, caused the bar partially to flatten as if it had been a bit of putty, and sent a brilliant shower of sparks over the whole place. Mrs Marrot clapped both hands on her face, and capped the event with a scream. As for Bob, ...
— The Iron Horse • R.M. Ballantyne
... sight of a figure crossing the road and entering the building he had just left. The colonel gave him time, and then retraced his steps. He took off his boots in the vestibule and went upstairs quietly. He was half-way up when he heard the soft thud of his own door closing, and grinned again. He gave the intruder time to get inside before he too inserted his key, and turning it without a sound, came into the darkened hall. There was a light in his room, and he heard the ...
— Jack O' Judgment • Edgar Wallace
... out on the sill, he dropped from sight, the boys hearing him land with a thud on the turf below. It was no great leap, though the fall must have jarred him considerably, for the boys heard him grunt, and then ...
— Tom Swift and his Giant Cannon - or, The Longest Shots on Record • Victor Appleton
... saint—or villain—enough to keep her dangling till sunset; but then, at latest, I shall have to cut her down; and woe to any Viking who happens to lie about loose and unattached, when she falls to earth with a dull thud." ...
— The Chauffeur and the Chaperon • C. N. Williamson
... parents would make him pay for it with his life. So he went off to a blacksmith and bought sharp knives and tied them on to the trunk of the palm tree: and when the Rakhas came back and tried to climb the tree, he was so badly cut by the knives, that he fell down to the ground with a thud and lay there groaning. Then the monkey cautiously descended and the Rakhas begged him to cure his wounds; the monkey answered that he would cure him if he gave him complete outfits for the children. The Rakhas said that ...
— Folklore of the Santal Parganas • Cecil Henry Bompas
... he announced in louder tones, "I'm going to let loose this six-shooter down that shaft. I should advise you gentlemen to retire to the tunnel." He peered down again intently. A sudden clatter and thud behind him startled him. He looked around. Bennington had fallen at full length across the stones, and his rifle, falling, had clashed against ...
— The Claim Jumpers • Stewart Edward White
... thongs that bound them being held by a man standing close in his rear. Thus disposed, he received a tremendous flogging from a whip with a fearful heavy leathern lash, which made me think of the Russian knout. The blows fell with a thud that made my nerves shiver, and the back of the sufferer was covered with blood, which was thrown here and there by the ensanguined instrument of torture as it whistled through the air. He took his punishment, however, to use the language of the P.R., like a man, and though his body seemed to ...
— Under the Dragon Flag - My Experiences in the Chino-Japanese War • James Allan
... Came a thud, and I was half buried under the bale of our possessions, and for a space everything was still. Then I could hear Cavor puffing and grunting, and the snapping of a shutter in its sash. I made an effort, thrust back our blanket-wrapped luggage, ...
— The First Men In The Moon • H. G. Wells
... full minute (so long did it take the stone to fall that depth) we heard a muffled, distant, crunching thud—and then immediately after, a great hissing of escaping air. The Doctor, his face tense with anxiety, sat down in the throne again still watching the blue water of ...
— The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle • Hugh Lofting
... unmanageable grip. They heard him give a kind of frenzied cry of passion, saw him raise his hands, heard a hurried scuffle at the foot of the stairs, where the Clancys, both alarmed, drew back towards their room. And then the rattle of an arm against a rail, a slither, a bumping, and a low thud. Dad, overbalancing in his rage, had pitched and fallen headlong down the stairs. Mrs. Minto and Sally set up a thin screaming. The gas flickered and burned steadily again. A shriek came from Mrs. Clancy. It was repeated. Mr. Minto lay quite still in a confused ...
— Coquette • Frank Swinnerton
... the lad stepped to the side of the fallen man. Swinging his axe quickly, he struck at the taut bond of hemp. A shower of sparks followed the ringing thud of the ...
— Boy Scouts in the North Sea - The Mystery of a Sub • G. Harvey Ralphson
... us." Gerrard spoke bitterly, but Colonel Antony brought his fist down upon the table with a resounding thud. ...
— The Path to Honour • Sydney C. Grier
... crash, a dull, explosive sound, and a puff of smoke leaps out. At the highest point upon the roof stands a dark figure in a desperate strait, the hands making frantic gestures, the arms swinging wildly—and then the body shoots off into frightful space, plunging upon the pavement with a revolting thud. The man's arm strikes a bystander as he darts down. The crowd shudders, sways, and utters a low murmur of pity and horror. The faint-hearted lookers-on hide their faces. One ...
— The Art of Public Speaking • Dale Carnagey (AKA Dale Carnegie) and J. Berg Esenwein
... opposing tufts came nearer, and now and then a dark form straightened and advanced to another shelter, or was hidden from sight by a bubble of fleecy white that burst from his shoulder. Close at the heels of the fleeing men the spiteful spurts followed fast, till they died out in the thud of smitten logs and the crashing ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... of wood in the fire-place burned in two and fell with a soft thud on the ashes; a lean hound crept stealthily to the boy's side and thrust a cold muzzle against his ragged jacket; in the cupboard a mouse rustled over the rude dishes and among the scanty ...
— That Printer of Udell's • Harold Bell Wright
... oath rang out from the duke, and with a loud thud he threw himself against the door. At the same moment I heard a window above my head open, and a voice cried: "What's the matter?" and I heard a man's hasty footsteps. I grasped my sword. If De Gautet came my way, the Six would ...
— The Prisoner of Zenda • Anthony Hope
... a voice. There followed a scuffle, a creaking of leather on leather, a thud. I watched them, a bit enviously, walking backwards until a twist in the road hid them from view. That same twist transformed my path into a real country road—a brown, dusty, monotonous Michigan country road that went severely about its business, never once stopping to flirt with the ...
— Dawn O'Hara, The Girl Who Laughed • Edna Ferber
... nearer, dropping from a canter to a quick trot that ended in a clattering walk on the stones of the yard. Through the open window Dot heard the heavy thud of a man's feet as he jumped to ...
— The Odds - And Other Stories • Ethel M. Dell
... runners, pursuer and pursued, had passed clean through them where they stood, and already with a thud the boards below had received first one, then the other. Yet they had seen absolutely nothing—not a hand, or arm, or face, or even a shred ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... room. Muller and Bill Sanderson were ahead of me, trying to separate Hal Lomax and Grundy, and not doing so well. Lomax brought up a haymaker as I arrived, and started to shout something. But Grundy was out of Muller's grasp, and up, swinging a wrench. It connected with a dull thud, and Lomax ...
— Let'em Breathe Space • Lester del Rey
... see in the shadow the gleam of the negro's white eyes, and heard the raps upon the footboard of the bed, that imitated the drum, and was frightened. He fancied that he heard the whizzing of the sabres, and the heavy thud of the falling heads; he pulled the blanket over his head, and held ...
— Jack - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet
... had set her biscuits down with a sharp thud, reckless of results. A sharp, metallic tinkle sounded at the closet where Sara had struck the edge of her tray against a shelf. The sound seemed to loosen the paralyzed tongues, and everybody began talking and exclaiming at once. Clear and shrill above the ...
— Further Chronicles of Avonlea • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... hairy paws let go their grip and the squirming body sink limply. Before it could touch the bottom-boards, a tremendous kick in the ribs from Ricardo's foot shifted it forward out of sight, whence came the noise of a heavy thud, a clatter of spars, and a pitiful grunt. Ricardo stooped to look ...
— Victory • Joseph Conrad
... led her out of the passage across a stretch of open ground, and over to a shed. Another soldier opened the door, and before Lucia quite got her breath, she heard the key turn in a lock and the thud, thud of the men's boots ...
— Lucia Rudini - Somewhere in Italy • Martha Trent
... torpor, was the first to hear the faint thud of hoofs in the loose sand of the roadway. He grew instantly alert, raising himself on his elbow and gazing with fear-wide eyes ...
— Sundown Slim • Henry Hubert Knibbs
... had his license endorsed for harbouring queer characters, feared a riot, and came outside the counter; but Jude, in his sudden flash of reason, had turned in disgust and left the scene, the door slamming with a dull thud behind him. ...
— Jude the Obscure • Thomas Hardy
... and, by the sounds, he was not sober. She heard a loud creak, and then a thud, as if he had clutched at the banisters and fallen; she heard muttering, too, and the noise of boots dropped. Swiftly the thought went through her: 'If he were quite drunk, he would not have taken them off at all;—nor if he were quite sober. Does he know I'm back?' Then ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... that morning, which was bad luck, as I heard Fitz-Jones click his gate behind me and thud after me in his snow-boots. Fitz-Jones and I had a little disagreement, not long ago, about the sole possession of a servant-maid. Since then there has been a coolness. Curiously enough, the hideous frost that raged ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 156, Feb. 19, 1919 • Various
... dust. She kept her eyes on his receding shape, watched it disappear in dark turns, then emerge into faintly illumined stretches. It moved steadily, without quickening of gait, a lonely shadow that they followed through the unknown to hope. Her glance hung to it, her ear strained for the thud of his pony's feet, sight and sound of him came to her like a promise of help. He was the one strong human thing in this place of remote skies and ...
— The Emigrant Trail • Geraldine Bonner
... on one side, and near it was hitched a horse, pawing the ground with a hoof that bore a new shoe. On the anvil was a brilliant, yellow-red loop of iron, that was not quite yet a new shoe, and it was sending out bright sparks as a hammer fell upon it—"thud, thud, thud," and a clatter. Over the anvil leaned a tall, muscular, dark-haired, grimy man. His face wore a disturbed and anxious look, and it was covered with charcoal dust. There was altogether too much charcoal along ...
— Crowded Out o' Crofield - or, The Boy who made his Way • William O. Stoddard
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