"Flash" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... that he had offered to race with him for a bowl of punch, and should have won it too, for Daredevil beat the goblin horse all hollow, but just as they came to the church bridge the Hessian bolted and vanished in a flash of fire. ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving
... can imagine how it will surprise the Queen of England when she knows how we stink. And I have a grievance of my own, viz., boys shooting with blunderbusses and powder, and with so little wit that my eyes flash with anger every time I see them creeping on their stomachs towards a starling or a couple of lean ring-plovers, and I shout and cast stones to warn the innocent creatures, since the farmer of Jaeren is, as it were, his thrall's thrall, and lets ...
— Norse Tales and Sketches • Alexander Lange Kielland
... hands, And that, once more, we suffered with our Lord, Were persecuted, crucified with Him. I tell you, Campanella, on that day When Galileo faced our Cardinals, A veil was rent for me. There, in one flash, I saw the eternal tragedy, transformed Into new terms. I saw the Christ once more, Before the court of Pilate. Peter there Denied Him once again; and, as for me, Never has all my soul so humbly knelt To God in Christ, as when ...
— Watchers of the Sky • Alfred Noyes
... cried Madame Desvarennes with a violent gesture, last flash of the late storm. "She cried, that's all. And you know when she cries I no longer know what I do or say! She breaks my heart with her tears. And she knows it. Ah! it is a great misfortune to ...
— Serge Panine, Complete • Georges Ohnet
... where the road leaves that tributary of the Kansas, and passes over to the great valley of the Platte river. In their march, across the level prairie of this high table-land, they encountered a squall of rain, with vivid lightning and heavy peals of thunder. One blinding flash was accompanied by a bolt, which struck the prairie but a few hundred feet from their line, sending up a column ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... appearance as a disturber of the peace, and the beginning of the bad name she earned for herself in certain circles eventually. But she was let off lightly for it. Mrs. Caldwell's punishments were never retrospective. She was thunder and lightning in her wrath; a flash and then a bang, and it was all over. If she missed the first movement, the culprit escaped. She could no more have punished one of her children in cold blood than she could have ...
— The Beth Book - Being a Study of the Life of Elizabeth Caldwell Maclure, a Woman of Genius • Sarah Grand
... forget the name of, but people sow it to make turf of chalk—and dear "Aunt Mary's" soft pink cheeks, which her last grandchild might envy, deepened to a tone of rose; while her eyes, so full of heavenly faith when she got upon lofty subjects, took a most human flash and sparkle ...
— Erema - My Father's Sin • R. D. Blackmore
... emotion of surprise and astonishment weakened his will momentarily, oblivion came, with what seemed a fleeting instant of memories. His life seemed to flash before his mind in serried rank, a file of events, his childhood, his life, his marriage, his wife, an image of smiling comfort, then the years, images of great and near great men, his knowledge of history, pictures of great war of 2074, pictures of the attackers of the ...
— Invaders from the Infinite • John Wood Campbell
... by the ardor of his feelings and his vehement moral earnestness. Bent on convincing, he tried to flash his meaning on the minds of his readers in the readiest and manliest way; and he was so impatient to make them see the full force of his main points that he stripped them as naked as he could. This combined clearness of perception, strength of conviction, ...
— Brave Men and Women - Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs • O.E. Fuller
... and much lightning and rain. While one of these blasts was blowing with all its violence, and the darkness was so thick that we could not see from one part of the ship to the other, we suddenly discovered, by a flash of lightning, a large vessel close aboard of us. The steersman instantly put the helm a-lee, and the ship answering her rudder, we just cleared each, other. This was the first ship we had seen since we parted with the Swallow; and it blew so hard, that not being able to understand ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 12 • Robert Kerr
... The mere tone of a man's voice had set his mind to work. His past life had given him experience in which those about him were lacking, and at the instant he heard the stranger speak this experience revealed to him as by a flash of light, a thing which had never yet been ...
— In Connection with the De Willoughby Claim • Frances Hodgson Burnett
... down feathers, and threw them under the Princess's nose. And the fluff flew into the Princess's nose, and into her mouth, and starting up she sneezed and coughed, and the ring fell out of her mouth on to the coverlet. In a flash the tiny mouse had seized it, and brought it to Waska as a ransom for the King of the Mice. Thereupon Waska and Schurka started off, and travelled night and day till they reached the stone tower where Martin was imprisoned; ...
— The Yellow Fairy Book • Various
... to see a flash of silver and ebony and a streak of brown dart before her vision and swim down the hill like a bird. Lorania was still in the saddle, pedalling from sheer force of habit, and clinging to the handle bars. Below the hill was a stone wall, and farther was a creek. There was a narrow opening ...
— Different Girls • Various
... caught of the man's face was like a lightning flash, but it was enough. He knew him to be the raftsman who had kicked Bim, and whom he had rescued from the dog's teeth at Mandrake, more than a week before. "He is one of those scoundrels who stole the Venture, ...
— Raftmates - A Story of the Great River • Kirk Munroe
... disappeared before the lighthouse in the east begins to flash. The promontory on which it stands is called San Vito after one of the musty saints, now almost forgotten, whose names survive along these shores. Stoutly this venerable one defended his ancient worship against ...
— Old Calabria • Norman Douglas
... kind lady's, was installed in it, feeling—sultry day though it were—that the warm dryness was extremely comfortable to her chilled limbs. The good lady brought her some hot tea, and moved away to the window, talking in a low murmuring voice to Lady de la Poer. Presently a fresh flash of lightning made her bury her head in the pillow; and there she began thinking how hard it was that the thunder should come to spoil her one day's pleasure; but soon stopped this, remembering Who sends storm and thunder, and feeling ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... wonderful, but it seemed to him in a flash of surprise that this was an amazing beauty. He had never seen such hair, or such a complexion. The large eyes gave him no more than a passing glance, but they were so vivid, so full of blue light as they met his, that he had a startled impression ...
— The Golden Silence • C. N. Williamson and A. M. Williamson
... it? Could that be the cause of her white looks, her weary eyes, her wasted figure, her struggling sobs? This idea came upon me like a flash of lightning on a dark night, making all things so clear we cannot forget them afterwards when the gloomy obscurity returns. I was still standing with the book in my hand when I heard cousin Holman's ...
— Cousin Phillis • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... of his tongue he urged his horses in their turn to their utmost speed. For a few minutes the sleighs ran equal, but before long, in spite of all Zakhare could do, Nicolas gained on him and at last flew past him like a lightning flash; a cloud of fine snow, kicked up by the horses, came showering down on the rival sleigh; the women squeaked, and the two teams had a struggle for the precedence, their shadows crossing and mingling on ...
— In the Yule-Log Glow, Book I - Christmas Tales from 'Round the World • Various
... People in general construed it into a design to maintain party distinctions, and encourage the whigs to the full exertion of their influence in the elections; into a renunciation of the tories; and as the first flash of that vengeance which afterwards was seen to burst upon the heads of the late ministry. When the earl of Strafford returned from Holland, all his papers were seized by an order from the secretary's office. Mr. Prior was recalled from France, ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.II. - From William and Mary to George II. • Tobias Smollett
... for our little squirrels, just after sunset, in the still summer evenings, when the small silver stars came stealing out, one by one, in the blue sky, to play among the cool dewy leaves of the grand old oaks and maples; to watch the fitful flash of the fireflies, as they glanced here and there, flitting through the deep gloom of the forest boughs, now lost to sight, as they closed their wings, now flashing out like tiny tapers, borne aloft by unseen ...
— Lady Mary and her Nurse • Catharine Parr Traill
... words left her lips the heavens were cleft in twain by a fearful flash of lightning, and in it the people saw that once again the palm-trees bowed themselves, this time almost to the ground. Then with a roar the winds were loosed, and beneath their feet the solid earth began ...
— Morning Star • H. Rider Haggard
... storm broke. There was a long roll of thunder followed by a blinding flash and then the rain began to fall ...
— Go Ahead Boys and the Racing Motorboat • Ross Kay
... shams, were all bumping up against each other in an instinctive community of emotion. The "people," luckily, predominated; the faces of workers look best in such a crowd, and there were thousands of them, each illuminated and singled out by its magnesium-flash of passion. ...
— Fighting France - From Dunkerque to Belport • Edith Wharton
... wrong in other respects," he replied, with a flash of her spirit. "But anyhow I pictured you surrounded by all the beautiful things of your life here, forever in the scent of flowers, in the lights of drawing-rooms, in the soft music of hidden instruments. God! how I tortured myself! You were never out ...
— The Silver Horde • Rex Beach
... faster than before. The ping of bullets was in the air, and the old channel was filling with powder smoke. Now and then the flash of a gun ...
— Boy Scouts on the Great Divide - or, The Ending of the Trail • Archibald Lee Fletcher
... aboard four freight steamships sailing from New York for Havre in April and May. On July 12 Secretary of the Navy Daniels, acting on advices received from The New Orleans Picayune, directed the naval radio station at Arlington, Virginia, to flash a warning to all ships at sea to be on the lookout for bombs supposed to have been placed on board certain vessels, and warning particularly the steamers Howth Head and Baron Napier that information had come to the Navy Department that explosive bombs might have ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 5, August, 1915 • Various
... surrounding forests, and all were constantly on the alert. All hunting or fishing, all labor in forest or field, all journeying, was at the imminent risk of life or liberty. From the nearest swamp or thicket, from behind some fence, stump, or clump of brake, at any moment might appear the flash of the musket or gleam of the scalping-knife. Never ending toil under these conditions, and unceasing vigilance, were the price of existence, and the stern realities of life closed in upon them on every side. Labor they must, or ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... loves in stone, and fills The air around with beauty; within the pale We stand, and in that form and face behold What Mind can make, when Nature's self would fail; And to the fond idolaters of old Envy the innate flash which such ...
— Sketches of the Fair Sex, in All Parts of the World • Anonymous
... effect constituting one of the grandest artificial spectacles imaginable. For a moment, the sky was red with the lurid glare arising from the simultaneous ignition of fifteen hundred barrels of powder. On this gigantic flash subsiding, the air seemed alive with shells, grenades, rockets, and masses of timber, the wreck of the shattered vessel. The sea was convulsed as by an earthquake, rising, as has been said, in a huge wave, on whose crest our boat was lifted like a cork, and as suddenly ...
— The Life of Thomas, Lord Cochrane, Tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, Etc., Etc. • Thomas Cochrane, Earl of Dundonald
... gentleman," answered the girl; then with a sudden flash of scorn, "but even had I not such faith in his honourable dealing, I should know how to take care of myself. Give me ...
— Tales from Many Sources - Vol. V • Various
... through his mood and impression, coloured by his emotion, tinged with his personality. Surely, if the spirits of the dead are not extinguished, but only veiled and hidden, and if it were possible by any means that their presence could flash for a moment through the veil, it would be most natural that they should come back again to hover around the work into which their experience and passion had been woven. Here, if anywhere, they would "Revisit the ...
— The Ruling Passion • Henry van Dyke
... streams like rafts down a river. Occasionally the molten lava flowing under the superincumbent crust broke through—split a dazzling streak, from five hundred to a thousand feet long, like a sudden flash of lightning, and then acre after acre of the cold lava parted into fragments, turned up edgewise like cakes of ice when a great river breaks up, plunged downward and were swallowed in the crimson cauldron. Then the wide expanse of the "thaw" maintained ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... I was very young and shy, how at one of my first London dinner-parties a charming elderly man discussed one of my earliest books with such appreciation that I at last remarked that I had written it myself. If I had looked for a surprised flash of delight at the fact that so much talent was palpitating in white muslin beside him, I was doomed to be disappointed. He gravely and gently said, "I know that to be untrue," and the conversation ...
— The Lowest Rung - Together with The Hand on the Latch, St. Luke's Summer and The Understudy • Mary Cholmondeley
... have expressed in any feigned surprise—she beheld the dark lady as the book read, moving quietly across the garden, gracefully swaying as she lightly trod the fictitious sod, stooping to pluck and then kissing the rose, and finally disappearing into the wings with a flash of brilliant eyes and the revelation of a charming countenance ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... days later somebody picked it from the roadside mud. Jim only had seen where it had fallen, and he would not deign even to point it out to a beggar. Nor would he stoop to give a reason in such a case, but would answer all remonstrances with a curl of his lip and a flash of his dark eyes. Even at school he was the same, with such a sense of his own dignity, that other folk had to think of it too. He might say, as he did say, that a right angle was a proper sort of angle, or put Panama in Sicily, but old Joshua Allen would as soon have thought of raising ...
— Rodney Stone • Arthur Conan Doyle
... great diplomatist. The ladies wished for a bracelet; they were waiting for the arrival of a man from a great Parisian jeweler. A Gaudissart accordingly appeared with three bracelets of marvelous workmanship. The great ladies hesitated. Choice is a mental lightning flash; hesitate—there is no more to be said, you are at fault. Inspiration in matters of taste will not come twice. At last, after about ten minutes the Prince was called in. He saw the two duchesses confronting doubt with its thousand facets, unable to ...
— Gaudissart II • Honore de Balzac
... soldiers stood Nicholson, facing his men as he called to them angrily to "come on." Suddenly a sepoy leaned out of the window of a house close by and pointed his musket at the tall, commanding figure beneath him. There was a flash, and on the instant Nicholson fell with a bullet ...
— John Nicholson - The Lion of the Punjaub • R. E. Cholmeley
... the gray salt spray, till all the land is hazy, dim, and dun. Let it howl on! for there is more mist than ever salt spray made, flying before that gale; more thunder than ever sea-surge wakened echoing among the cliffs of Smerwick bay; along those sand-hills flash in the evening gloom red sparks which never came from heaven; for that fort, now christened by the invaders the Fort Del Oro, where flaunts the hated golden flag of Spain, holds San Josepho and eight hundred of the foe; and but three nights ago, Amyas and Yeo, ...
— Westward Ho! • Charles Kingsley
... always wrote, even in his letters, as if writing for posterity. He was not felicitous in the use of language; the style is turgid, heavy with resounding words of many syllables, unillumined by any ray of imagination, any flash of wit or of humor; and the sentences are often involved and badly put together. But there is a genuineness, an evident sincerity of purpose, in all he wrote, and occasionally an expression of deep feeling, which are always impressive. We search for glimpses ...
— James Madison • Sydney Howard Gay
... to leave the barn, and the sinister sneer on his face gave Crosby a new and amazing inspiration. Like a flash there rushed into his mind the belief that Austin had a deep laid design in not permitting him to see the lady. With this belief also came the conviction that he was hurrying her off to New York on some pretext simply to forestall any action that might induce her to continue the contemplated ...
— The Day of the Dog • George Barr McCutcheon
... these overpowering discharges with their peculiar crack and snap; the electricity passed on quickly, and the next clap roared over the woods. But the rain was heavier than before, the fall increased after every flash, however distant, and the surface of the pond was threshed by the drops which bore down with them many leaves weakened ...
— Round About a Great Estate • Richard Jefferies
... many others: that of those "ulterior mountains," which Austria had bargained for as Boundary to Schlesien. Wild bare mountains; good for what? For invading Schlesien from the Austrian side; if for nothing else conceivable! The small riddle reads itself to him so, with a painful flash of light. [OEuvres de Frederic, iii. 34.] Looking intensely into this matter, and putting things together, Friedrich gets more and more the alarming assurance of the fate intended him; and that he will ...
— History of Friedrich II. of Prussia, Vol. XIV. (of XXI.) • Thomas Carlyle
... the Prince's instructions, was now completely overflowed, and the fleet sailed at midnight, in the midst of the storm and darkness. A few sentinel vessels of the enemy challenged them as they steadily rowed towards Zoeterwoude. The answer was a flash from Boisot's cannon; lighting up the black waste of waters. There was a fierce naval midnight battle; a strange spectacle among the branches of those quiet orchards, and with the chimney stacks of half-submerged farmhouses ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... my bit off exactly opposite the bit that was clean already," she went on, "so that I could look through it at the sun." She turned the crystal over and held it up as she spoke. A dazzling flash of pale-green light darted out, as though an unearthly finger were pointing at the sun. It was gone in a moment, and the stone looked dull and ...
— The Happy Adventurers • Lydia Miller Middleton
... feeling than she had hitherto shown, "you fancy that, because I am kept in ignorance of what you think, I am ignorant also of what others think of you! Believe me," she said, with a flash of insight that startled him, "I know more of you than if we stood closer. But you mistake my purpose. I have not sent for you to force my counsels on you. I have no desire to appear ridiculous. I do not ask you to hear what I think of your course, but what others ...
— The Valley of Decision • Edith Wharton
... slept at home: after retiring to my room, I was obliged to go downstairs to the water closet, where I went in my stockings, and without a light, not to disturb you. I was coming up again, when a sudden flash of light shone out in the upper passage. Mounting the stairs, and when my head was on a level with the upper floor, I saw you going towards Charlie's room. I went into my own, but left the door open to see when you would return; finding you did not come back, I crept softly ...
— The Romance of Lust - A classic Victorian erotic novel • Anonymous
... dreadfully when he came, he walked like any one when he went over and picked up father's gun and looked to see if it were loaded, and seemed mighty glad when he found it wasn't. Father said he could load in a flash when it was necessary, but he was dubious about a loaded gun in a house full of children. Not one of us ever touched it, until the boys were big enough to have permission, like Laddie and Leon had. He said a gun was ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... of patience and pedantry to prompt the composition of that most laborious, and, upon the whole, most humdrum and wearisome poem of modern times, the "Polyolbion," he nevertheless possessed an abounding exuberance of delicate fancy and sound poetical judgment, traces of which flash not unfrequently even athwart the dulness of his magnum opus, and through the mock-heroism of "England's Heroical Epistles," while they have full play in his "Court of Faery." Drayton's great defect ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... the summer time I thrust back the curtain, to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple, which stands opposite my chamber-window. First, the weathercock begins to flash; then, a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect; next it encroaches on the tower, and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold, as it points to the gilded figure of the hour. Now, the loftiest window gleams, and now the lower. The carved framework of the portal is ...
— Sunday at Home (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... long time, he pulled his rifle's trigger, and the flash and crack was followed apparently by one of the gray boulders opposite leaping up, and then rolling heavily down the hill. F—— jumped up in triumph crying, "Come along, and don't forget the revolver." When we had crossed the river, reckless of getting wet to our waists in icy-cold water, ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... it, and which I could not put out of my mind after I had left the house. The hotel to which I had been directed was on Union Square. It was not far from our apartments, and I intended to walk there, but I had not gone half a block before the street was lit up with a vivid flash of lightning, followed by deafening thunder, and the wind blew damp in my face. I hurried toward Third Avenue, intending to mount one of the horse cars going down-town, but suddenly a fierce gust of wind swept over me, sowing great drops of ...
— The Master of Silence • Irving Bacheller
... himself together, and sprung silently at the throat of the man who waited him, and there was a flash of the keen steel, and a sound as of the cleaving of soft wood, and the beast was in a twitching heap at the man's feet. I knew what it was at last, yet I could say nothing. The wolf was quite dead, with its ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... assertion of absolute creation, or at least of supernatural action. Thus, he asks whether some of his opponents believe "that at innumerable periods in the earth's history, certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into living tissues."[260] Certain of Mr. Darwin's objections, however, are not physical, but metaphysical, and really attack the dogma of secondary or derivative creation, though to some perhaps they may appear to be directed against absolute ...
— On the Genesis of Species • St. George Mivart
... and Brown, and then a flash on the teleview screen drew his eyes. There, against the blackness of its otherwise inanimate hulk, one of the jutting knobs on the bow of the mysterious submarine was glowing and pulsing with orange life! With it came the tingling shock again. ...
— Astounding Stories, February, 1931 • Various
... growled with, positively, a flash of anger at the recollection, but lapsed back into his solemnity at once. After we had been silent for a while I asked whether the man took away the ...
— Chance - A Tale in Two Parts • Joseph Conrad
... Fifth Avenue—her second ride on the Avenue that night—she began, in the cushioned privacy of the taxi, to recover somewhat from the panic of dire necessity that had driven them forth. Other matters began to flash spasmodically across the screen of her mind. One of these was William. And there the film stopped. The cold, withering look William had given Matilda a few minutes before remained fixed upon the screen. That look threatened her most unpleasantly as ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... house, but, when he turned, his eye was on the row of posts, and his right hand lay on the grip of his revolver. Again his sharp yell broke the silence and the horse dashed forward as though shot from a gun. Down the road they went until within a rod of the first bottle; then there was a flash in the sunlight, and to the clatter of the horse's hoofs came the crack-crack of the revolver. Two bottles shivered to fragments, but four remained intact, and the boy ...
— The Cow Puncher • Robert J. C. Stead
... man's face lit up with a quick appreciation, and the flash of his eyes as he looked at her would have told any onlooker that he felt here was a girl in a thousand, a girl with an angel spirit, if ever such ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... restless spirit risen from its grave at the midnight hour, which must be close at hand? Through his brain, like a flash of lightning, darted the thought that Eva had spoken to him of her invalid mother. Had she died? Was her wandering soul approaching him to drive him from the threshold of the house which ...
— Uarda • Georg Ebers
... command, though he had no military talent; but he had at his elbow the one thoroughly experienced captain available, Sir John Norreys. A great camp was formed at Tilbury to cover London; the raw country musters were in readiness every where to fly to arms when the signal beacons should flash their message over the land. How much resistance they could have offered to Parma's veterans, none can tell. But it may safely be laid down, that while the English fleet was in being, the invaders' chances of ultimate success were infinitesimal, but that if the fleet had been wiped out they would ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes
... properties of nature, and, as history tells us, he will succeed. But his aspirations pass over these isolated discoveries, which he has no idea of connecting into scientific truths: and tend ever towards some final revelation of the secret of life, to flash forth from his own brain when the flesh shall have been subdued, and the imprisoned light of intellect set free. And here Mr. Browning's metaphysical fancy is somewhat at issue with his facts. Paracelsus employed nature in the ...
— A Handbook to the Works of Browning (6th ed.) • Mrs. Sutherland Orr
... him innocently had heard his imprecations against the rich, who caught the low-breathed oath as the baby appeared, and saw the ugly look on the man's face. With instant alarm he had gone to the other side of the street, his eye upon the offender, and had been the first to see the covert motion, the flash of the hidden weapon and to fear ...
— Lo, Michael! • Grace Livingston Hill
... to see our most distant friends, and of stowing in a small compass electricity enough to exterminate an army. This imaginative ignoramus adds, "Give to our present biped acquaintance the ability to exterminate armies with a lightning flash, added to the power of sailing at will through the air or of passing at will and in safety beneath the ocean waves, and he would depopulate the earth." The writer gives much more of this Munchausen stuff which is not worthy ...
— Buchanan's Journal of Man, July 1887 - Volume 1, Number 6 • Various
... the house mount the stairway, then the second flight, now she was walking towards the rear of the building, and when he heard a door slam, indicating that she had entered the bed room, like a flash of lightning an evil thought shot through his mind. It was just one step to the open parlor door. He craned his head, and looked into the parlor, and when he saw that the shades were drawn, which would prevent his being seen from the outside, he thought that this would be a fine chance to show to ...
— The Trail of the Tramp • A-No. 1 (AKA Leon Ray Livingston)
... of the Shark paced the figure of Captain Broome, with his long, swinging gorilla-like arms. Suddenly he stopped, put his hand to his mouth and shouted an order to the men in the bow of the ship. Then came the quick move of one of the men. A flash leaped from the mouth of the forward gun, a dull detonation, and a white cloud of smoke curled back over the bow of the Shark, while the shell plunged into the water directly in front ...
— Frontier Boys in Frisco • Wyn Roosevelt
... out to sea where troubled mariners are seeking the shore. Even in your deepest griefs you can rejoice in God. As waves phosphoresce, let joys flash from the swing of the sorrow of your souls. Low measures of feeling are better than ecstacies for ordinary life. God sends His rains in gentle drops, else flowers would be beaten ...
— Gathering Jewels - The Secret of a Beautiful Life: In Memoriam of Mr. & Mrs. James Knowles. Selected from Their Diaries. • James Knowles and Matilda Darroch Knowles
... Annie a spirit he could never control as he managed people in Wall Street, for, with a sudden flash in her eyes, she said, hotly, "I do not reason thus coldly about those to whom I owe so much," and ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... beyond himself; in a physical ecstasy he spoke out that which clamored at his lips, caring nothing for his audience, unconscious of them utterly. And because that is the one thing which will grip men's minds and compel them, he held them spellbound, in spite of themselves,—until, abruptly, in a flash, he became conscious of himself, seeing himself, hearing himself. That moment he lost his hold of them. And he knew it, and stopped short. And for an ...
— Nicanor - Teller of Tales - A Story of Roman Britain • C. Bryson Taylor
... in the yard below rising to my ears, I wrote my dispatch for the press at home, less conscious then than now of the wonder of the situation. Downstairs the cure of the church next door was standing on the steps, an expectant look in his eyes. When I told him the news his smile and the flash of his eye, which lacked the meekness usually associated with the ...
— My Second Year of the War • Frederick Palmer
... influence. His was the life of the poet first of all, and yet the tale of his sympathetic friendliness, and his generosities and care-taking for others will never be fully told. The dark eyes had great powers of insight; they could flash scorn as well as shine with the soft ...
— Authors and Friends • Annie Fields
... country he travelled in his moccasins, with the old flag wrapped tightly about his breast and shoulders. At length he approached the setting sun, where she lost sight of him for a moment, the darkness that had gradually settled down, shutting out from her view the passage of her husband, quick as a flash burst into a beautiful crystal light. The heavens looked like shining silver, all around the horizon was a wide cloud of clear light blue, with a border of gold. Beneath was a broad expanse of green, with large groves of trees at regular intervals dressed ...
— Young Lion of the Woods - A Story of Early Colonial Days • Thomas Barlow Smith
... we were in one another's arms; and so we mingled our tears, and shared one common rapture. And sweet it was—sweet beyond all expression—the sweetest moment in all my life; for it had come in the midst of the drear desolation of my heart and the black despair. It was like a flash of lightning in the intense darkness, short and sudden indeed, yet still intense while it lasted, and in an instant filling all ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... these secret preliminary transactions, and so softly had the stealthy friar sped to and fro between Brussels and the Hague, that when at last the armistice was announced it broke forth like a sudden flash of fine weather in the midst of a raging storm. No one at the archduke's court knew of the mysterious negotiations save the monk himself, Spinola, Richardot, Verreycken, the chief auditor, and one or two others. The great Belgian nobles, from whom everything had been concealed, were very ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... little time, although I had known that the daylight was growing and what was around me, I had scarce seen the things I had before noted so keenly; but now in a flash I saw all—the east crimson with sunrise through the white window on my right hand; the richly-carved stalls and gilded screen work, the pictures on the walls, the loveliness of the faultless colour of the mosaic window lights, the altar and the red light over it looking strange ...
— A Dream of John Ball, A King's Lesson • William Morris
... for her call before his departure. Nelly added her smiles to his. Then, with a pleasant nod, Miss Martin left them, refusing all their offers to help her with her load. '"My strength is as the strength of ten,"' she said with a flash of fun in her eyes—'But I won't go ...
— Missing • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... again met, and short, quick sparks of light, like the fugitive flash of a summer's exhalation, gave a momentary glimpse of the combatants' fearful countenances—then a dismal groan is heard, a body falls heavily on the ground, and a shriek of horror burst from the household, who had crowded round the entrance of ...
— Gomez Arias - The Moors of the Alpujarras, A Spanish Historical Romance. • Joaquin Telesforo de Trueba y Cosio
... They unloaded each canoe, and so packed the precious contents that they could protect them from the rain by covering them with the canoes turned upside down. With their axes they soon constructed a frail camp. With the flash of powder they with difficulty kindled a fire, for everything was dripping with moisture, and every log ...
— The Adventures of the Chevalier De La Salle and His Companions, in Their Explorations of the Prairies, Forests, Lakes, and Rivers, of the New World, and Their Interviews with the Savage Tribes, Two Hu • John S. C. Abbott
... as if he had been accused, his secret read, his soul laid bare; he felt the blood burn in his face, and mount to his eyes like a drift of smoke. But Taterleg was unconscious of this sudden embarrassment, this flash of panic for the thing which the Duke believed lay so deep in his heart no man could ever find it out and laugh at it or make gay over the scented romance. Taterleg was still looking off in a general direction that was westward, a little ...
— The Duke Of Chimney Butte • G. W. Ogden
... greeted us as we passed through the gate with a chorus of barks, sending the word down the line. To his credit be it said, Jack paid little attention to them, tittupping along, head up, tail up, only when they came too close turning on them with a flash of white teeth that sent the cowardly brutes flying and brought cries of delight from the village folk who crowded nearer to inspect the strange dog, so small, so brave, and ...
— A Wayfarer in China - Impressions of a trip across West China and Mongolia • Elizabeth Kendall
... another purpose, and then fired one of them. There was a tremendous report, that rang in my ears like a hundred thunder-volleys, and rolled and reverberated far along, and died away in endless echoes. The flash lighted up the scene for an instant, and for an instant only; like the sudden lightning, it revealed all around. I saw a wide expanse of water, black as ink—a Stygian pool; but no rocks were visible, and it seemed as though I had been carried ...
— A Strange Manuscript Found in a Copper Cylinder • James De Mille
... up in the wake of the passing vessel. As he dropped the oars and leapt anxiously to his feet the frail canoe, unfitted to encounter such a peril, was clutched and lifted broadside by the foaming swell. Over it went instantly, and there was a flash of red and blue as the girl was flung ...
— In Friendship's Guise • Wm. Murray Graydon
... hold her for more than a moment, vanishing and appearing again, fantastic, in some strange lighted distance, hurting him and disappointing him ... He stopped in his walk, bewildered. He saw, with a sudden flash, that she had never appeared so fascinating to him as when she had been strangest. He saw it now at the moment when she seemed more darkly strange, more sinister and dangerous than ...
— The Captives • Hugh Walpole
... meant, 60 And if, in this minute of wonder, No outlet, 'mid lightning and thunder, Lay broad, and, his shackles all shivered, The lion at last was delivered? Ay, that was the open sky o'erhead! And you saw by the flash on his forehead, By the hope in those eyes wide and steady, He was leagues in the desert already Driving the flocks up the mountain Or catlike couched hard by the fountain 70 To waylay the date-gathering negress: So guarded he entrance or egress. ...
— Dramatic Romances • Robert Browning
... how that affair with the lady came off. As he had made his bargain—as he had undertaken to pay nearly half a year's income for his dear friend—ought he not to have as much value as possible for his money? If the dear friendship of this flash member of Parliament did not represent that value, what else did do so? But then he felt, or fancied that he felt, that Mr. Sowerby did not care for him so much this morning as he had done on the previous evening. "By-bye," said Mr. Sowerby, but he spoke no word as to such ...
— Framley Parsonage • Anthony Trollope
... Burns hath done his part. I the other day threw off an extempore epitaph on Ensign Peacock of the 3rd Regt. of the Royal East India Volunteers, who like other boys in this scarlet tainted age was ambitious of playing at soldiers, but dying in the first flash of his valour was at the particular instance of his relations buried with military honours! like any veteran scarr'd or chopt from Blenheim or Ramilies. (He was buried in sash ...
— The Works of Charles and Mary Lamb, Vol. 5 • Edited by E. V. Lucas
... but soon came to shallow water, as was proved by the swift current and the ripples. A moment later we were hard aground. In vain we pushed with the oars; the boat would not budge. Then Junior sat down and coolly began to take off shoes and stockings. In a flash Merton followed his example. There was no help for it, and we had no time to lose. Over they splashed, lightening the boat, and taking the "painter," or tie-rope, at the bow, they pulled manfully. Slowly at first, but with increasing progress, the keel grated over the stones, ...
— Driven Back to Eden • E. P. Roe
... with a flash begins, and ends in smoke; Another out of smoke brings glorious light, And (without raising expectation high) Surprises us with ...
— The Spectator, Volumes 1, 2 and 3 - With Translations and Index for the Series • Joseph Addison and Richard Steele
... bowed figure of a woman at a porch, with pale, upturned face, who that morning had bade him a silent farewell, rose before him—surely it was years ago—the woman to whom he was betrothed. Then, in a flash, he turned to see some wavering figures around him, some of his own men—not a few wounded—who faltered and shrank from the screaming buckshot, and dropped to ...
— The Story of Isaac Brock - Hero, Defender and Saviour of Upper Canada, 1812 • Walter R. Nursey
... attention been fixed just then upon Mr. Palma, he might have detected the sudden flash in his black eyes, and the nervous clenching of his right hand that rested on the arm of the chair; but the younger man was absorbed by his own emotions, and very soon his ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... later there was a deep cheer and a crowd of dark figures leaped over the wall. A flash of fire ran along the line of defenders, and then as fast as the Chassepots could be reloaded a rolling fire broke out. So heavy was it that before crossing a third of the intervening space the Germans wavered, hesitated, and then ran ...
— A Girl of the Commune • George Alfred Henty
... when on my couch I lie, In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And ...
— Journeys Through Bookland, Vol. 7 • Charles H. Sylvester
... a taut cord which had been snapped. A flash went through him, like lightning in a sunless sky, conjuring up in him strange phantasms. Whether they were sounds or sights he could not determine. But if they were sounds they were sounds which he could see. They sparkled like the vault of the sky, shone like the sun, waved like the ...
— Contemporary Russian Novelists • Serge Persky
... a flash the other life he spoke of. I was a student, it seemed, at some university, where there was a boy of my own age, a curious, wilful, perverse, tactless creature, always saying and doing the wrong thing, for whom I had felt a curious and unreasonable responsibility. I had always ...
— The Child of the Dawn • Arthur Christopher Benson
... rested, was its only support. A massive bolt alone held the trap in place. Will and the Professor were by the ice shaft, watching the plumb-line. At a signal, the Doctor struck the bolt a heavy blow with a sledge, the trap fell, and the beautiful mast shot like a flash of lightning down through the frosty atmosphere, entered the ice hole precisely in the center, and sank to the depth of 35 feet into the snow, which, added to the 9 feet of ice, made a footing of 44 feet for the towering flagstaff. The globe was again settled to the foot of ...
— Doctor Jones' Picnic • S. E. Chapman
... the book lying in his lap, and turned to it for an explanation of the mystery. It was an innocent-enough looking volume, and seemed at first glance to make matters no clearer, but as he held it in his hands there came back to him the recollection of his own schoolboy days, and like a flash the thing was plain to him. Bert had been using a "pony," and in some way had come to realise ...
— Bert Lloyd's Boyhood - A Story from Nova Scotia • J. McDonald Oxley
... steep and strait defiles, narrow passes and unknown ways, headlands sheer, and the haunts of the Nicors. Foremost he {21a} fared, a few at his side of the wiser men, the ways to scan, till he found in a flash the forested hill hanging over the hoary rock, a woful wood: the waves below were dyed in blood. The Danish men had sorrow of soul, and for Scyldings all, for many a hero, 'twas hard to bear, ill for earls, when Aeschere's head they found by the flood on the foreland ...
— Beowulf • Anonymous
... waved her hand and turned away: He caught it, crying, "Daisy, stay! Let not a flash of passion-pride Two clinging hearts ...
— Daisy Dare, and Baby Power - Poems • Rosa Vertner Jeffrey
... drew near. There was a rush, swift and sudden as the swoop of an eagle; a sharp call to follow as the mother's long jaws closed over the small of the back, just as the fox turned to leap away. Then she flung the paralyzed animal back like a flash; the young wolves tumbled in upon him; and before he knew what had happened Eleemos the Sly One was stretched out straight, with one cub at his tail and another at his throat, tugging and worrying and grumbling ...
— Northern Trails, Book I. • William J. Long
... early morning Like a flash he spied a fish. Quick he flew and quickly diving Snapped the fish and ate him straight. Then he screamed for he was happy. Then he spied another fish Quick he flew and quickly diving Snapped the fish and ate him straight. So he played while shone the sunshine, ...
— Here and Now Story Book - Two- to seven-year-olds • Lucy Sprague Mitchell
... to me as it had come to Darwin, in a sudden flash of insight; it was thought out in a few hours—was written down with such a sketch of its various applications and developments as occurred to me at the moment—then copied on thin letter paper and sent off to Darwin—all within one week. ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant
... Laudersdale for the first time, at a period thirteen years later, would you have imagined her possessed of this little drama? You fancy now that in this flash all the wealth of her soul burned out and left her a mere volition and motive power? You are ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 37, November, 1860 • Various
... on to the deck, all was terribly dark—as black as ink, as Mr McCarthy had said; but, the next instant, the whole awful scene was lit up by the most intense and vivid flash of lightning Mr Meldrum had ever beheld—the electric fluid being quite unaccompanied by any peal of thunder, although that might have been drowned by the continuous roar and shriek of the howling ...
— The Wreck of the Nancy Bell - Cast Away on Kerguelen Land • J. C. Hutcheson
... the sudden rush Of the rain, and the riot Of the shrieking, tearing gale Breaks loose in the night, With a fusillade of hail! Hear the forest fight, With its tossing arms that crack and clash In the thunder's cannonade, While the lightning's forked flash Brings the old hero-trees to the ground with a crash! Hear the breakers' deepening roar, Driven like a herd of cattle In the wild stampede of battle, Trampling, trampling, ...
— The Red Flower - Poems Written in War Time • Henry Van Dyke
... amateur was somewhat characteristic of his school, while the ex-professional contented himself with almost imperceptible movements of his feet, watching with a nonchalant yet wary caution for the coming attack. With the suddenness of a flash the Lieutenant led with his left and was back out ...
— The Long Trick • Lewis Anselm da Costa Ritchie |
