"Crack" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... dugout—to-day thirty feet, fifty feet and twenty feet. I gather up a box full of remnants. I find I am gassed by a contact with the poor fellow coming in whom I took to the doctor. I get treatment two or three times for my eyes and throat. My hands begin to crack and smart. The flesh comes off from my neck and other parts of my body. I had a fine meeting with boys in dugout and am again visited by the doughboys and officers. I visit the ruined church area again and ...
— The War Romance of the Salvation Army • Evangeline Booth and Grace Livingston Hill
... and the incisors as clearly suggested fruit, but at that time he was in some doubt about the canine teeth. At his request some of us gravely cracked nuts with him, and after the experiment we agreed that human beings more naturally crack nuts with the back teeth, where leverage is most powerful. A suspicion remained that our pointed fangs might have been used to ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... bringing them in on real horses, and giving them a quartette or a sestette a cheval, with a solo for the Captain! Then the Captain might know all about the murder, and he would reveal it without breaking the seal—unless it were to crack a bottle—and all would end happily. As it is, all ends miserably, or would so end, but for the Captain, whose last words before the fall of the Curtain, uttered in his best French, are "Ong Avong! Marsh!" From which it may be inferred that ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 19 April 1890 • Various
... There was a sharp crack, a loud rustling, and the man darted back with only half his staff in his hand, to run out of the tent, and leave me alone with the body of the first serpent, which I half fancied was moving slowly toward where I ...
— Gil the Gunner - The Youngest Officer in the East • George Manville Fenn
... Hall boys were wild with delight, and insisted upon carrying Tom on their shoulders around the pond. A great crowd followed, and nobody noticed how this made the ice bend and crack. ...
— The Rover Boys In The Mountains • Arthur M. Winfield
... quiet and secret is their going and coming that I fail to discover them and pass on up the hill. Failing in this direction, I return to the oak again, and then perceive the bees going but in a small crack in the tree. The bees do not know they are found out and that the game is in our hands, and are as oblivious of our presence as if we were ants or crickets. The indications are that the swarm is a small one, and the store of honey trifling. In "taking up" a bee-tree it is usual first to kill or stupefy ...
— The Writings of John Burroughs • John Burroughs
... No man can hoist his brother into success. It is bound to be every man for himself. You can work over Arlt till the crack of doom, and that's all the good it will do him. People will say 'How noble of Mr. Thayer!' and they will burn moral tapers about your feet; and meanwhile they'll leave Arlt sitting on the floor alone ...
— The Dominant Strain • Anna Chapin Ray
... don't know what harm he thought the wind would do her). Instead of taking her out he would spend hours in the garage standing still and looking at her, stooping sometimes to examine her for a spot or a crack on her enamel, but always with reverence. I believe he never touched her without washing his ...
— The Belfry • May Sinclair
... brother began his series of sweeps when the instrument was yet in a very unfinished state, and my feelings were not very comfortable when every moment I was alarmed by a crack or fall, knowing him to be elevated fifteen feet or more on a temporary cross-beam, instead of a safe gallery. The ladders had not even their braces at the bottom; and one night, in a very high wind, ...
— Sir William Herschel: His Life and Works • Edward Singleton Holden
... to me, most recklessly. I could hear the almost constant crack of his lash and the rough words of goading hurled at the straining mules. The road appeared to be filled with roots, while occasionally the wheels would strike a stone, coming down again with a jar that nearly drove me frantic. The chill night air swept ...
— My Lady of the North • Randall Parrish
... hand in my trousers pockets, and the other tore my shirt open. I heard a sudden row, a blow, and the fall of a body; then one of them came tumbling down on the top of us and knocked the two fellows over, then they jumped up, and I heard your pistol crack twice and two falls, and as I got up on to my feet to lend a hand I saw one of the fellows bolting down the street, running off in another direction. That was the one, I think, that came down on the top ...
— The Golden Canyon - Contents: The Golden Canyon; The Stone Chest • G. A. Henty
... reverie, and her thoughts overlapped one another in a fretful jumble. "What will he think? These old chairs—they're hideous. I'll scrub those soot-streaks on the columns: it won't do any good, though. That long crack in the column—nothing can help it. What will he think of papa? I hope mama won't talk too much. When he thinks of Mildred's house, or of Henrietta's, or any of 'em, beside this—She said she'd buy ...
— Alice Adams • Booth Tarkington
... exaggeration whatever. Throughout the Mississippi valley there could be nothing more heartless than his treatment of the sable helots, whose luckless lot it was to have him for a master. Around his courts, and in his cotton-fields, the crack of the whip was heard habitually—its thong sharply felt by the victims of his caprice, or malice. The "cowhide" was constantly carried by himself, and his overseer. He had a son, too, who could ...
— The Death Shot - A Story Retold • Mayne Reid
... Covered with broken dishes, earless jugs, cracked plates, and bottomless saucepans," continued Mrs. Kitson. "What a dish of nuts for my neighbours to crack! They always enjoy a hearty laugh at my expense, on Kitson's clearing-up days. But what does he care for my distress? In vain I hide up all this old trumpery in the darkest nooks in the cellar and pantry—nothing ...
— Flora Lyndsay - or, Passages in an Eventful Life • Susan Moodie
... and the cook, refusing to believe it, had carried in a supererogatory dish of compot as an excuse for securing the assurance of her own eyes; and Bertha from the farm, coming round with a message from the Frau Oberinspector, had seen it too through the crack of the kitchen door as the ladies left the dining-room, and had gone off breathlessly to spread the news; and the post cart just leaving with the letters had carried it to Lohm, and every inhabitant ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... heard in the forest but the rapping on the trees. Old Man Winter carries a great hammer, and he strikes the trees a blow as he passes. The colder it grows, the louder and more frequently he raps. The trees snap, and the Indian lodges crack with his blows. ...
— Stories the Iroquois Tell Their Children • Mabel Powers
... the spinster took herself off, tugging away at her gauntlet, or what was left of it, and diversifying the movement with a vicious crack of her whip ...
— A Noble Woman • Ann S. Stephens
... again, she perceived that the ravine was like an enormous crack open on the mountain-side, and that the stream that formed the Debateable Ford flowed down the bottom of it. The ravine itself went probably all the way up the mountain, growing shallower as it ascended higher; but here, where Christina ...
— The Dove in the Eagle's Nest • Charlotte M. Yonge
... the best sorts for the general crop of early cabbages; is not liable to crack; and, when cut close to the stem, often puts forth a number of fresh heads, of fair size ...
— The Field and Garden Vegetables of America • Fearing Burr
... of surprise followed this reply. The alferez stopped and looked sharply at the simple peasant, who believed that his words had produced a good effect. More animated, he was about to continue when the crack of ...
— Friars and Filipinos - An Abridged Translation of Dr. Jose Rizal's Tagalog Novel, - 'Noli Me Tangere.' • Jose Rizal
... all round, and runned away and hid! When I come back, my childruns was cryin' awful loud, Fer nobody knowed wher they lived, an' there was such a crowd. I says, "Now, folks must shet their eyes—don't open them a crack!"— An' then I straightened out the streets, an' put ...
— With the Colors - Songs of the American Service • Everard Jack Appleton
... my chimney," said Beniah, taking up the lamp and holding it so that a large natural hole or crack could be seen overhead, it formed an outlet to the forest above—though the opening was beyond the reach of vision. The same crack extended below in the form of a yawning chasm, five or six feet wide. There seemed to be nothing on the other side of this chasm except ...
— The Hot Swamp • R.M. Ballantyne
... thinned, scant of food and pausing not to rest, the struggling men press on—ever on! Weary and faltering on the march, the first sharp crack of the rifle lights a new fire in every eye; and drinking the ...
— Four Years in Rebel Capitals - An Inside View of Life in the Southern Confederacy from Birth to Death • T. C. DeLeon
... snapped the youngster. "I wouldn't care ten cents about the brute only that the girls are aboard. I felt sorry when I saw him climb to his feet yesterday. If you hit him again hit him with something that will crack his skull. He's a devil, Verslun, and before we are much older we will ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... grip on his staff infinitesimally. Of a sudden, the end of the staff, now gripped with both hands near the center, moved at invisibly high speed. There was a crack of the wrist bone, and the gun went flying. The other end of the staff flicked out and rapped the C.I.A. operative smartly ...
— Border, Breed Nor Birth • Dallas McCord Reynolds
... never seen this place before. He lay on the floor of an empty room. The shaft of sunlight that had aroused him entered through a crack in one of the tightly drawn blinds. There were dust and grime on the wails, and ...
— The Abandoned Room • Wadsworth Camp
... again beginning to give dinner-parties in London, and at every party the matter was discussed. It was a peculiarly interesting case because the man had thrown away so large a sum of money! People like to have a nut to crack which is 'uncrackable,'—a Gordian knot to undo which cannot even be cut. Nobody could understand the twenty thousand pounds. Would any man pay such a sum with the object of buying off false witnesses,—and do it in such a manner that all ...
— John Caldigate • Anthony Trollope
... crack once, when I was playin' Beelzebub," said Tom Brangwen, his eyes full of water with laughing. "It knocked all th' sense out of me as you'd crack an egg. But I tell you, when I come to, I played Old Johnny Roger with St. ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... Uncle William's round face was thrust through the crack of the door. "You can go to sleep all right, now," he said soothingly. "There wa'n't but seven bricks left in the chimney, anyhow, and the last one's jest come down. ...
— Uncle William - The Man Who Was Shif'less • Jennette Lee
... just half the number they have in the famous cathedral at Milan. It is quite tiring enough for the most active person, especially as you have to go on your hands and knees, if you don't wish to crack your skull, and you collect all the cobwebs off the staircase upon your clothes. In any case you should be well wrapped up," he went on, without noticing my aunt's fury at the mere suggestion that she could ...
— Swann's Way - (vol. 1 of Remembrance of Things Past) • Marcel Proust
... that he nuzzles dead white bones, and would not admit their loathing; for it does not become adventurers to care who eats their bones. Be this as it may, they edged away from the mipt, and came almost at once to the wizened tree, the goal-post of their adventure, and knew that beside them was the crack in the world and the bridge from Bad to Worse, and that underneath them stood the rocky house of ...
— The Book of Wonder • Edward J. M. D. Plunkett, Lord Dunsany
... either side. A dark cloud passing over her threw her into shade; on it went, and once more the bright rays of the sun falling on her canvas brought her more clearly into view; another squall swept by, making the corvette's studding-sail-booms crack and bend as if they were about to break away ...
— The Three Lieutenants • W.H.G. Kingston
... was soon back with a gloriously messy batch of clay which he dashed painstakingly into the crack and into sundry other cracks that ...
— Chicken Little Jane • Lily Munsell Ritchie
... seemed confident and comfortable and compelling, and presently he and the maid went into the house, while the other man leaned against the railings and stared out before him at a tiny star which had appeared in a crack between the driven clouds. Lonely and afraid he looked, and strangely like herself. The misery of him drew her irresistibly. Always before, she had shunned the people of every day, having no understanding of their pleasures or sorrows, seeing ...
— The Best British Short Stories of 1922 • Various
... whom Don Fernando was betrothed. He was one of those perverse, matter-of-fact old men who are prone to oppose every thing speculative and romantic. He had no faith in the Island of the Seven Cities; regarded the projected cruise as a crack-brained freak; looked with angry eye and internal heart-burning on the conduct of his intended son-in-law, chaffering away solid lands for lands in the moon, and scoffingly dubbed him Adelantado of Lubberland. In fact, he had never really relished the intended match, to which his consent had been ...
— Wolfert's Roost and Miscellanies • Washington Irving
... him. We see that his tender care of himself is without any mixture of malice towards others; he will only not be disturbed in the pleasant repose of his sensuality, and this he obtains through the activity of his understanding. Always on the alert, and good-humoured, ever ready to crack jokes on others, and to enter into those of which he is himself the subject, so that he justly boasts he is not only witty himself, but the cause of wit in others, he is an admirable companion for youthful idleness and levity. Under a helpless exterior, he conceals ...
— Lectures on Dramatic Art - and Literature • August Wilhelm Schlegel trans John Black
... thought, in the right direction, but he had hardly gone twenty steps before he came to a sudden standstill with an emphatic "I say!" then came back repeating "I say, Jock, we are close upon the glacier; I was as near as possible going down into an awful blue crack!" ...
— Magnum Bonum • Charlotte M. Yonge
... The decorticated kernels gave a perfectly sweet, inodorous, and almost colorless oil, which rapidly thickens to an almost colorless, transparent, and perfectly elastic skin or film, which does not darken or crack easily by age. These are properties which, for fine art painting, might be of great value in preserving the tinctorial purity ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 717, September 28, 1889 • Various
... Enough light filtered through a crack above so that the girls could make out the narrow winding steps. They were very steep and only broad enough for ...
— Highacres • Jane Abbott
... breathe out the waste matter that they have taken from the blood. This waste matter poisons the air. If we should close all the doors and windows, and the fireplace or opening into the chimney, and leave not even a crack by which the fresh air could come in, we would die simply from staying in such a room. The lungs could not do their work for the blood, and the blood could not do its work for ...
— Child's Health Primer For Primary Classes • Jane Andrews
... onward, to be blocked by a huge crack in the rocky plateau. This he had to head. And then another and like obstacle checked his haste to reach that promontory. He was forced to go more slowly. Wildfire had been close only as to sight. And this was the great canyon that dwarfed distance and ...
— Wildfire • Zane Grey
... services, although it was Christmas Day, we set to work on the disinfecting of the large cabin in which the sick had lain. Stringing bedclothes and wearing apparel on lines from wall to wall, and stuffing up every crack and cranny with cotton, we burned quantities of sulphur, that the nurse had brought ...
— Ten Thousand Miles with a Dog Sled - A Narrative of Winter Travel in Interior Alaska • Hudson Stuck
... way, Noble could see but one person; a boy of fourteen who looked through a crack in a board fence, steadfastly keeping an eye to this aperture and as continuously calling through it, holding his head to a level for this purpose, but at the same time dancing—and dancing tauntingly, it was conveyed—with the other parts of his body. His voice was now sweet, now piercing, ...
— Gentle Julia • Booth Tarkington
... service was all the better for it. Now-a-days, in your crack ships, a mate has to go down in the hold or spirit-room, and after whipping up fifty empty casks, and breaking out twenty full ones, he is expected to come on quarter-deck as clean as if he was just ...
— Peter Simple and The Three Cutters, Vol. 1-2 • Frederick Marryat
... holes in creation. It is built on a low sandy point of land at the entrance of a great river, and is almost the hottest place on the earth. Mosquitos in thousands of millions; nothing for the natives to do but to cultivate sugar-canes and to perspire. There were two crack regiments quartered at Demerara, who, having to withstand the dreadful monotony of doing nothing, took I fear to living rather too well; the consequence was that many a fine fellow had been carried off by yellow fever. For my part, I took a rather high flight in the way of pastime by falling (as ...
— Sketches From My Life - By The Late Admiral Hobart Pasha • Hobart Pasha
... forever, are all such dreams. Dinkie prefers treading on his bread-and-butter before consuming it, and does his best to consume the workings of my sewing-machine, and pokes the spoons down through the crack in the kitchen floor, and betrays a weakness for yard-mud and dust in preference to the well-scrubbed boards of the sleeping porch, which I've tried to turn into a sort of nursery by day. Most fiction, I find, glides lightly ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer
... and kept to an exquisite filbert shape? The oval of the cuticles? The slender softness and coolness of the finger-tips? The backs of the hands were roughened and the palms seamed; there was a tiny crack at a finger-joint; it seemed to her that the spoiling of her beautiful hands had made so insidious a pace through these years that she had, day by day, been almost unaware of the havoc in progress. But looking down upon them in this place of ease and grace, she ...
— Married Life - The True Romance • May Edginton
... breath of air, so nobly placed upon its bending stem, so royal in its solitude. I first saw it years ago on the Simplon, feathering the drizzling crags above Isella. Then we found it near Baveno, in a crack of sombre cliff beneath the mines. The other day we cut an armful opposite Varallo, by the Sesia, and then felt like murderers; it was so sad to hold in our hands the triumph of those many patient months, the full expansive life of the flower, the splendour visible ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds
... had been accustomed to all his life long. As he sat listening to it, he thought he heard cautious footsteps in the corridor, and extinguishing his light, softly opened his door just a very little way, scarcely more than a crack—and caught a glimpse of a man, enveloped in a large cloak, stealing along slowly in the direction the other one had taken. He listened breathlessly until he heard him reach, and quietly enter, apparently the same door. A few minutes ...
— Captain Fracasse • Theophile Gautier
... did you ever see how they will poke those wonderful little fingers of theirs into every fold and crack and crevice they can get at? That is their first education, feeling their way into the solid facts of the material world. When they begin to talk it is the same thing over again in another shape. If there ...
— The Poet at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
... was a very acute and intelligent one, became terrified at these alarming symptoms of danger, especially as the ice began to crack, and loud and prolonged reports reached them from every direction. Another most suspicious thing was the sudden disappearance of the company of merchants, whom they had all along kept well in sight. There was something wrong, he ...
— Chinese Folk-Lore Tales • J. Macgowan
... See, what square yards she's got! and how well her masts stand. How light she looks aloft—and yet everything that is required— not a block too large—and yet everything works as easy as possible. On deck, too, you'll find there's no jim-crack nonsense about her— everything is for service, and intended to last; and yet, where there is any brass or varnished wood, it's kept as bright and clean as can be. There isn't a ship on the station can come up to us in reefing or furling; ...
— The Pirate of the Mediterranean - A Tale of the Sea • W.H.G. Kingston
... disentangling the coils, he whirled the stick round and round and threw it almost over the first rim of the shelf, perhaps thirty feet up. The stick did not lodge. Yaqui tried again. This time it caught in a crack. He pulled hard. Then, holding to the lasso, he walked up the steep slant, hand over hand on the rope. When he reached the shelf he motioned for Gale to follow. Gale found that method of scaling a wall both quick and easy. Yaqui pulled up the lasso, and threw ...
— Desert Gold • Zane Grey
... unanswerable. He has given to words their natural meaning. He has recognized the intention of the framers of the recent amendments. There is nothing in this opinion that is strained, insincere, or artificial. It is frank and manly. It is solid masonry, without crack or flaw. He does not resort to legal paint or putty, or to verbal varnish or veneer. He states the position of his brethren of the bench with perfect fairness, and overturns it with perfect ease. He has drawn an instructive parallel between the decisions of the ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... lawyers had found the way out of that, too, and now the Silliman boy was a secretary of the American Embassy in Rome. Accidents such as had happened to Rash were regrettable of course, but it would be folly to think that a perfectly good life must be done for just because it had got a crack ...
— The Dust Flower • Basil King
... that she had slept a long, long time. The sun was shining bright. Her door opened a crack and Arna peeped in, and seeing her awake, came to the bed ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... is thin, And it rests upon his chin Like a staff; And a crook is in his back, And the melancholy crack ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 3 - Sorrow and Consolation • Various
... a perfect surface for skating, and attracts not only the boys and girls of the village, but a large number of their elders. The lake grows lively with the gracefully gliding promenade of skaters, with here and there a group playing at hockey, while others disport themselves at "crack the whip." The friction of so many gliding feet imparts to the frozen surface a low and weirdly humming sound, and the droning note is echoed by the hills, until the valley resounds with monotonous music. ...
— The Story of Cooperstown • Ralph Birdsall
... here I'm too busy too. Never think about it. But I'll tell you, Curtis, there are some men down there," pointing out of the window in the direction of the capitol, "called the Congress, and if they would only give me the four battleships I want, I'd be perfectly willing to have any one take a crack at me." Then, for the first time recognizing the existence of the parents, the President said: "And I don't know but if they did pick me off I'd be pretty well ...
— The Americanization of Edward Bok - The Autobiography of a Dutch Boy Fifty Years After • Edward William Bok (1863-1930)
... United States slaves on the large plantations began work at sunrise, and toiled to the crack of the whip on the great plantations until sundown. Women and children, only half grown, were compelled to do their share in the fields. In Brazil conditions generally were easier for the slave. The Portuguese planter was perhaps less anxious to "drive" the work out of his bondsmen ...
— The Journal of Negro History, Volume 7, 1922 • Various
... 'Do them in half a crack before breakfast. Why, there's nothing but a bit of jography, and some kings, and three proportion sums, ...
— Thyrza • George Gissing
... the brave Libyan slingers, while shouting and even singing, began to press forward. From both sides missiles whizzed like beetles, buzzed like bees, sometimes they struck one another in the air with a crack, and every minute or two on this side or that some warrior went to the rear groaning, or fell dead immediately. But this did not spoil the humor of others: they fought with malicious delight, which gradually changed to ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... crack shot when he was young," said the pitiless Jacques. "My father often used to ...
— Lost Illusions • Honore De Balzac
... this that young Motty got the idea of bringing pals back in the small hours to continue the gay revels in the home. This was where I began to crack under the strain. You see, the part of town where I was living wasn't the right place for that sort of thing. I knew lots of chappies down Washington Square way who started the evening at about 2 ...
— My Man Jeeves • P. G. Wodehouse
... bones of the wing, which support these singular feathers in the male, are said by Mr. Fraser to be much thickened. These little birds make an extraordinary noise, the first "sharp note being not unlike the crack of a whip." (57. Sclater, in 'Proceedings, Zoological Society,' 1860, p. 90, and in 'Ibis,' vol. iv. 1862, p. 175. Also Salvin, in 'Ibis,' ...
— The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex • Charles Darwin
... Federal mortars rained down upon them, bursting, and mortally wounding them. All day long the fire of muskets and cannon—then, from sunset to dawn, the curving fire of the roaring mortars, and the steady, never-ceasing crack of the sharp-shooters along the front. Snow, or blinding sleet, or freezing rains, might be falling, but the fire went on—it seemed destined to go on to ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke
... but no matter to what a lackadaisical level he reduced his voice, her replies were always punctuated by a retort that had in it the sense of sting, as Alfio in Cavalleria Rusticana accompanies his song with the crack ...
— The Parts Men Play • Arthur Beverley Baxter
... of our moose hunts. The moose running and plunging through the snow crust, and occasionally rising up and striking at the dogs that hang on to his bleeding flanks and legs. The hunters' rifles going crack, crack, crack, sometimes killing or wounding dogs as well as ...
— Beautiful Joe - An Autobiography of a Dog • by Marshall Saunders
... morality is quite a different thing among different peoples. What would be wrong for you and me may be, and is, perfectly right for Miss King and Simpkins. I needn't go into that more fully. All you have to do is to crack up Simpkins as a first-rate sort of man that any girl would be lucky if she married; and then let me know how they hit it off together when ...
— The Simpkins Plot • George A. Birmingham
... course taken up with the preparation of Cartoons; and the nature of fresco-painting rendered the winter months not always fit for active labour. The climate of Rome is not so mild but that wet plaster might often freeze and crack during December, January, and February. Besides, with all his superhuman energy, Michelangelo could not have painted straight on daily without rest or stop. It seems, too, that the master was often in need of money, and that he made two journeys to the ...
— The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti • John Addington Symonds
... stairs that had grown so familiar to him the past week, watching anxiously the crack under the door to see if there was a light. But it was all dark! He tapped at the door lightly. But of course she would have gone to bed at once after the exertion of the journey! He tapped louder, and held his breath to listen. ...
— The Witness • Grace Livingston Hill Lutz
... you sleep; where, if you put your corset-waist on wrong side out, and are hardy enough to change it, you deserve what you're likely to get; where no sane girl will tempt Providence by walking on a crack; where, if you lose something, you have only to spit in the palm of your hand,—if you're dowered in the matter of saliva,—strike the tiny pool ...
— The Madigans • Miriam Michelson
... informs me that an earthquake in a theatre is worse than a fire, and gives me the interesting particulars of such a catastrophe as it happened in the doctor's own experience. It was a slight affair, he says, a mere 'temblorcito', as he calls it; one wall was seen to crack from top to bottom, some plaster from an opposite wall peeled off, a globe from one of the gas lamps fell among the audience, and that was all; but the panic was terrible for all that, and many were crushed to death in their ...
— The Pearl of the Antilles, or An Artist in Cuba • Walter Goodman
... sea party had all collected on deck to witness the first start. All was now ready; after countless efforts on our part, or, if it is preferred, after a thorough thrashing for every dog, we had at last got them in a line before the sledge in Alaska harness. With a flourish and a crack of the whip we set off. I glanced at the ship. Yes; as I thought — all our comrades were standing in a row, admiring the fine start. I am not quite sure that I did not hold my head rather high and look ...
— The South Pole, Volumes 1 and 2 • Roald Amundsen
... The crack of the Winchester accompanying his sharp reply, with the whistle of the bullet about their heads, gave them a momentary shock, which delayed the pursuit ...
— Cowmen and Rustlers • Edward S. Ellis
... pitiful form. So wasted was it that, save from the plentifulness and blackness of the hair, it was impossible even to conjecture whether she was young or old. Her eyelids were just not shut, which made her look dead the more: there was a crack in the clouds of her night, at which no ...
— Lilith • George MacDonald
... by sheer weight of numbers to the head of the companion-way, using my weapon with some wildness, for all was passing before me in confusion. I had received a hard crack on the head and scarcely knew what I was doing, but was merely sustained in my resistance by a sense of continuity, inherited, as it were, from the earlier part of the struggle. Somehow I found myself in the shelter of the corridor that led to the apartments of ...
— Hurricane Island • H. B. Marriott Watson
... speed, I heard the cannon steadily approaching Culpeper Court-House. All at once, as I drew near the village, I heard a tremendous clatter in the streets; a column of cavalry was advancing to the front—soon the crack of carbines was heard beyond ...
— Mohun, or, The Last Days of Lee • John Esten Cooke
... he looked round, and then crawled to a crack that appeared much wider than the rest, the boards being more than half an inch apart. Lying down over it, he was able to obtain a view of a portion of the room below. He could see a part of a long table, and looked down upon the heads of five men sitting ...
— By England's Aid or The Freeing of the Netherlands (1585-1604) • G.A. Henty
... the courtyard and down the rocky way the roll of heavy wheels, the crack of whips, and the chorus of the Szgany as ...
— Dracula • Bram Stoker
... will be a group of houses with great dragon-adorned roofs. Further towards the centre of the Fu is Prince Su's own palace and his retainers' quarters; to the south of this is an ornamental garden full of trees, a vast and mournful enclosure, standing in which the crack of outpost rifles can only be distantly heard. Moving across to the southern side—that is, the side near the French Legation and the protected Legation Street—the Christian refugees are found gathered here in huge droves. In one building there ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... he had thrust his fingers between the carpet and the wood of the window-sill, holding it back with one hand while he passed his magnifying glass over the accumulation of dust and dirt and sweepings that lay in the crack. His pains were rewarded. A tiny scrap of something that glittered in its nest of dirt caught his eye, but it was not until it lay on the tip of one finger beneath his glass that he realized the importance of his treasure trove. It was ...
— The Monk of Hambleton • Armstrong Livingston
... Prohibition was wished on us. You bet it wasn't any rough-house then. We all stood 'round the bar, solemn and quiet, And couldn't hardly think of what to say. Bill—it was funny what had happened to him. He didn't crack a smile the whole blame night. He just would shake his head, and bite his lips, And gosh, the way his eyes was shootin' fire. The last thing that he said before I left, "By God, I'll get back at 'em, you just wait! I'm closing here. But don't you fret—I'll ...
— Nonsenseorship • G. G. Putnam
... stand on his feet so Chick-chick kneeled down at his side to rub some circulation into his wrists and ankles. Suddenly a great noise of running was heard. Chick-chick looked out through the crack of ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... her lover to the door; when the sound of his steps had died away on the stairs she ran out on to the balcony to see him get into the tilbury, to see him gather up the reins, to catch a parting look, hear the crack of his whip and the sound of his wheels on the stones, watch the handsome horse, the master's hat, the tiger's gold lace, and at last to stand gazing long after the dark corner of the ...
— A Second Home • Honore de Balzac
... her childish rages possessed her, sweeping away every feeling save the primitive impulse to hurt and destroy; but search as she would she could not find a crack in the strong armour of her husband's habits and prejudices. For a long time she continued to sit where he had left her, staring at the portraits on the walls as though they had joined hands to imprison her. Hitherto she had almost always ...
— The Custom of the Country • Edith Wharton
... The crack of the door widened and beyond it the girl saw dimly, eyes fastened upon her. With difficulty she restrained a shriek. The portal swung wide and a man in uniform stepped ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... every other night, my trusty gun lay close beside me. I seized it, and, half-rising, so that the fire behind me afforded light for a steady aim, I leveled it exactly between the eyes. I fired, the bullet sped on its deadly errand, and the crack of the noble rifle, thundering against the steep rocks, returned with ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... can be grateful. If you ever come to Barry Shingle, there is an old mother I've got; and a couple of sisters, who will be showing you what they think of the matter. I have been thinking, as I lay here, what a sorrowing there would have been if you had not held on to me after I got that crack on ...
— The Three Admirals • W.H.G. Kingston
... happy long ago, until a gang of blackbirds, spluttering in a neighboring treetop woke me. And when I rose from the log and threw myself into the shape of an interrogation point, and touched the trigger, at the crack of my rifle old bullfrogg shot into the pond; the hoot-owl "scooted" into his castle in the trunk of an old hollow tree; the blackbirds cut the "asymptote of a hyperbolical curve" in the air; the squirrel fell to the ground at my ...
— Gov. Bob. Taylor's Tales • Robert L. Taylor
... delightful surprise about the way in which a familiar object looms up suddenly, a dim remote shape, and then as swiftly reveals the well-known outline. My path takes me past the line, and I hear a train that I cannot see roar past. I hear the sharp crack of the fog signals and the whistle blown. I pass close to the huge, dripping signals; there, in a hut beside a brazier, sits a plate-layer with his pole, watching the line, ready to push the little disc off the metals if the creaking signal ...
— The Upton Letters • Arthur Christopher Benson
... moving their heads with a quick vibratory motion. They dip and wash as they fly sometimes in very hot weather, but not so frequently as swallows. It has been observed that martins usually build to a north-east or north-west aspect, that the heat of the sun may not crack and destroy their nests; but instances are also remembered where they bred for many years in vast abundance in a hot stifled inn-yard against a wall facing ...
— The Natural History of Selborne, Vol. 2 • Gilbert White
... Crack your first nut and light your first fire, Roast your first chestnut crisp on the bar; Make the logs sparkle, stir the blaze higher; Logs are cheery as sun or as star, Logs we can ...
— Poems • Christina G. Rossetti
... had he to think of aggravatin', when I gripped him down at Hartley's pint, that day. If it hadn't been for that old heathen scoundrel Gattrie, my poor boy Phil, as the Injuns killed, and me, I reckon, would have sent him and young Grantham to crack their puns upon the fishes of the lake. ...
— The Canadian Brothers - or The Prophecy Fulfilled • John Richardson
... bent, had an amusing companion in a little gray squirrel, with a collar and string attached, the animal being as mischievous as a monkey, now and then hiding in one of the mendicant's several pockets, sometimes coming forth to crack and eat a nut upon his owner's shoulder. A blind beggar, of Creole nationality, sat all day long in the hot sun, on the Alameda de Paula near the Hotel San Carlos, whose companion was a chimpanzee monkey. The little half-human creature held out its hand with a piteous expression ...
— Due South or Cuba Past and Present • Maturin M. Ballou
... often result from lack of care and cleanliness. If they are not cared for as described above they are very apt during the first few days to crack. They should never be left moist. They should be washed and dried after every feeding. If the breasts are full enough to leak they should be covered with a pad ...
— The Eugenic Marriage, Volume I. (of IV.) - A Personal Guide to the New Science of Better Living and Better Babies • W. Grant Hague, M.D.
... split; to crack; to cleave. To Sleeze. v. n. To separate; to come apart; applied to cloth, when the warp and woof readily ...
— The Dialect of the West of England Particularly Somersetshire • James Jennings
... shoulder-joint with the other. His stupidity extended to an utter ignorance of music, which he only prized as the means of gaining the large sums which his extravagance craved. His wife once complained of the piano, saying, "I can not possibly sing to that piano; I shall crack my voice: the piano is absurdly high." "Do not fret, my dear," interposed the husband, soothingly; "it shall be lowered before evening: I will attend to it myself." Evening came, and the house was crowded; but, to the consternation ...
— Great Singers, First Series - Faustina Bordoni To Henrietta Sontag • George T. Ferris
... so over-watched themselves, that they were fall'n into a dead sleep, and we only wak'd at the crack. To be short, Ascyltos came in and briefly told us what he had done for our sakes: On this we got up; and as we were rigging our selves, it came into my head to kill the guard, and rifle the village; I told Ascyltos my mind. He liked the rifling well enough, but gave ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter
... Padi!—have a care! make way, for here comes a cloud of dust, and in that cloud of dust is a kibitka, drawn by three wild horses, and in that kibitka, half sitting, half clinging to the side, is an official courier. Crack goes the whip of the yamtschick; the three fiery horses fly through the dust; the courier waves his hand to an officer on horseback, and with a whirl and a whisk they disappear. Pashol! I hope they won't break their necks before ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... miles of open sea. Inland, almost as far as the Arctic Circle, mountain ranges, some of great altitude, are everywhere visible. There are also many large lakes, surrounded by the swamps, and impenetrable forests, that formerly rendered Alaska so hard a nut for the explorer to crack. Only a few miles north of the coast range fertile soil and luxurious vegetation are replaced by Arctic deserts. Here, for eight months of the year, plains and rivers are merged into one vast wilderness of ice, save during the short summer when dog-roses bloom ...
— From Paris to New York by Land • Harry de Windt
... stiff and sore and full of a black, oppressive melancholy despite the bright sunshine that poured in at every crack and crevice of the old barn. To this depression was added sudden dread as I recalled the incidents of last night and how (albeit unwittingly) I had favoured the escape of a desperate outlaw, thus placing myself in danger of ...
— Peregrine's Progress • Jeffery Farnol
... moment. But Peter Rugg did not reach home that night, nor the next; nor, when he became a missing man, could he ever be traced beyond Mr. Cutter's in Menotomy. For a long time after, on every dark and stormy night, the wife of Peter Rugg would fancy she heard the crack of a whip, and the fleet tread of a horse, and the rattling of a carriage, passing her door. The neighbours, too, heard the same noises, and some said they knew it was Rugg's horse; the tread on the pavement was perfectly familiar to them. This occurred so repeatedly ...
— Famous Stories Every Child Should Know • Various |
