"Pitchy" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... headache in pitchy darkness; and with the twilight of returning consciousness there grew in him an awful fear that he had been coffined and buried alive. For he lay at full length in a bed which yet was unlike any bed of his acquaintance, being so narrow that he could ...
— The Mayor of Troy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Mrs. Cooper. "The girls were put into cells, where girls ought never to be put," wrote their father. He "sallied forth alone, in quest of sensation," and got it in the muttering of thunder, and the flashing of lightning over the "pitchy darkness of the seven mountains." And he and the fiercely howling winds from the trees had a chase through the gloomy cloisters, whence he saw, in the vast, cavern-like kitchen, the honest islanders eating with relish his ...
— James Fenimore Cooper • Mary E. Phillips
... Groa's daughter, and he trembled at the thought. He stood by the fire, and Gudruda, watching from the shadow of the high seat, saw the dull light glow upon his golden helm, and a sigh of joy broke from her lips. Eric heard the sigh and looked, and as he looked a stick of pitchy driftwood fell into the fire and flared up fiercely. Then he saw. There, in the carved high seat, robed all in bridal white, sat Gudruda the Fair, his love. Her golden hair flowed about her breast, her white arms were stretched towards ...
— Eric Brighteyes • H. Rider Haggard
... bowels of this wasting ball Shall gallup up great flakes of rolling fire, And belch out pitchy flames, till over all Having long raged, Vulcan himself shall tire, And (the earth an ash-heap made) shall then expire: Here Nature, laid asleep in her own urn, With gentle rest right easily will respire, Till to her pristine task she ...
— Specimens with Memoirs of the Less-known British Poets, Complete • George Gilfillan
... night she awoke in the pitchy darkness to hear the wind blow and the rain roar. The dawn broke cold and gray, and the storm gradually diminished. Allie lay alone for hours, beginning to suffer by reason of her bonds and cramped limbs. The longer she was left alone the more ...
— The U.P. Trail • Zane Grey
... evening advanced, so too would the impending storm. Twilight was darkening around him when, urged on by a mistaken sense of duty, the intrepid young man descended into the boat, and not half an hour afterwards the storm came on with terrific violence, and the pitchy darkness had entirely frustrated every effort of the crew of the Stranger to trace the boat. Morning dawned, and brought with it some faint confirmation of the fate which all had dreaded. Some spars on which the name of the Gem was impressed, and which were easily recognised as belonging to ...
— The Mother's Recompense, Volume II. - A Sequel to Home Influence in Two Volumes • Grace Aguilar
... hastily on deck, completing their buttoning and belting as they went, and found that something very like a storm was brewing. As yet the breeze was moderate, and the sea not very high, but the night was pitchy dark, and a hot oppressive atmosphere boded no improvement ...
— The Red Eric • R.M. Ballantyne
... horse drew back and refused to take another step. He urged it forward, but it only threw itself back upon its haunches. Just then a vivid flash of lightning revealed a great precipice upon the brink of which he stood. It was but an instant, and then the pitchy blackness hid it again from view. But he turned his horse and anxiously rode ...
— When the Holy Ghost is Come • Col. S. L. Brengle
... before Palafox reached the southern edge of the bayou at the point opposite his only house and home, and it was pitchy dark, when, having swam across the stagnant channel, he trudged, wet and weary, to the barred door of Cacosotte's Tavern, and knocked. Mex undid the bolts and let her master in, her sagacious eyes swiftly taking note of his bodily plight and desperate mood. To her demonstration of savage ...
— A Dream of Empire - Or, The House of Blennerhassett • William Henry Venable
... The Scheldt yawned to its lowest depth, and then cast its waters across the dykes, deep into the forts, and far over the land. The earth shook as with the throb of a volcano. A wild glare lighted up the scene for one moment, and was then succeeded by pitchy darkness. Houses were toppled down miles away, and not a living thing, even in remote places, could keep its feet. The air was filled with a rain of plough-shares, grave-stones, and marble balls, intermixed with the heads, limbs, and bodies, of ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... nearer our border, each night their camp was pitched and kettles hung. Their fires lighted up the mossy trunks and overhanging branches of the giant hemlock and the towering pine, throwing their summits into a deeper gloom, and building up a wall of pitchy darkness which enclosed the ...
— The New England Magazine Volume 1, No. 3, March, 1886 - Bay State Monthly Volume 4, No. 3, March, 1886 • Various
... neighbourhood were attacked, the enemy driven out, and they were set on fire. The blaze lighted up the midnight sky, announcing to the fainting garrison that relief was approaching. Barrier after barrier was passed, and for many an hour in the midst of the howling storm and pitchy darkness a fierce battle raged. The victorious Hollanders pushed further on, but still two forts of great strength, those of Zoeterwoude and Lammen, lay between them and the city, garrisoned by the enemy's best troops and armed with heavy artillery. ...
— The Lily of Leyden • W.H.G. Kingston
... the rattling waxeth till he may not heed nor hark! And the day and the heavens are hidden, and o'er Sigurd rolls the dark, As the flood of a pitchy river, and heavy-thick is the air With the venom of hate long hoarded, and lies once fashioned fair: Then a wan face comes from the darkness, and is wrought in man-like wise, And the lips are writhed with laughter and bleared are the blinded eyes; And it wandereth ...
— The Story of Sigurd the Volsung • William Morris
... of musketry flamed, thundered, roared in the cavern, bringing down enormous fragments from the vaults. The cavern was lighted for an instant by this discharge, and then immediately returned to pitchy darkness rendered thicker by the smoke. To this succeeded a profound silence, broken only by the steps of the third brigade, ...
— The Man in the Iron Mask • Alexandre Dumas, Pere
... similar to the first, only the sides of it, instead of being formed, like the first, of perpendicular cliffs, consisted of steep, sloping banks of volcanic sand and gravel. There was, however, the same pitchy bed of lava spread out all over the bottom of it below, and in the centre a black cone thirty feet high, with a fiery furnace mouth at the top, glowing with heat, and throwing out continually the same thundering puffs of steam, and projecting the same masses ...
— Rollo in Naples • Jacob Abbott
... pitchy night the fire died down and the wood pile grew small. Neither of us moved to replenish the stock, and the darkness consequently came up very close to our faces. A few feet beyond the circle of firelight it was inky black. Occasionally a stray puff of wind set the willows shivering ...
— The Willows • Algernon Blackwood
... deadly torrents, mingled with immense fragments of scoria, had poured its rage. Over the bended forms of the priests it dashed: that cry had been of death—that silence had been of eternity! The ashes—the pitchy stream—sprinkled the altars, covered the pavement, and half concealed the quivering ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 03 • Various
... few yards my nerve began to go; for the gleam on the walls faded, the last glimmer of light went out. I was walking along an unknown path in pitchy darkness, hearing only the drip, drip, splash of the water slowly falling from the roof. Suddenly I ran against a sort of breastwork of mortared stones, and the shock almost made me faint. I stretched my hand out beyond it, but could feel ...
— Jim Davis • John Masefield
... mists from marishes, and grounds whose veins Were conduit-pipes to many a crystal spring; From standing pools and fens were following Unhealthy fogs; each river, every rill Sent up their vapours to attend her will These pitchy curtains drew 'twixt earth and heaven And as Night's chariot through the air was driven, Clamour grew dumb, unheard was shepherd's song And silence girt the woods; no warbling tongue Talk'd to the Echo; satyrs broke ...
— Pastoral Poems by Nicholas Breton, - Selected Poetry by George Wither, and - Pastoral Poetry by William Browne (of Tavistock) • Nicholas Breton, George Wither, William Browne (of Tavistock)
... a black-faced cloud the world doth threat, In his dim mist the aspiring mountains hiding, From earth's dark womb some gentle gust doth get, Which blows these pitchy vapours from their biding, Hindering their present fall by this dividing; So his unhallow'd haste her words delays, And moody Pluto winks while ...
— The Rape of Lucrece • William Shakespeare [Clark edition]
... It grows pitchy dark ere I leave the caon on my way to Carlin. Farther on, the gorge widens, and thick underbrush intervenes between the road and the river. From out the brush I see peering two little round phosphorescent balls, like two miniature moons, turned in my ...
— Around the World on a Bicycle V1 • Thomas Stevens
... words the utmost consternation fell upon the company. A great clap of thunder shook the rocks, a pitchy darkness covered the scene, and a fierce wind swept the hill. Then, looking upward, the miners saw the whole company—the dying man with them—disappearing northward in a dense black cloud, the two blazing eyes of the demon who had led them to the Carn being clearly distinguishable ...
— Legend Land, Volume 2 • Various
... and the basket-women left Number Nine gallery and went further up Number Sixteen. At one turn of the road they could see the pitchy black water lapping on the coal. It had touched the roof of a gallery that they knew well—a gallery where they used to smoke their huqas and manage their flirtations. Seeing this, they called aloud upon their Gods, and the Meahs, who ...
— Soldiers Three • Rudyard Kipling
... Having walked it twice by daylight, Casanova had no difficulty in the dark. Half way up the hill came a second angle in the wall. Here he had again to turn to the right, across soft meadow-land, and in the pitchy night had to feel along the wall until he found the garden door. At length his fingers recognized the change from smooth stone to rough wood, and he could easily make out the framework of the narrow door. He unlocked it, entered the garden, and made ...
— Casanova's Homecoming • Arthur Schnitzler
... entrance at Belle Plain, past a break in the wall of the forest where the pale light of stars showed Betty the corn-field she and Hannibal had but lately crossed, and then on into pitchy darkness again. She clung to the desperate hope that they might meet some one on the road, when she could cry out and give the alarm. She held herself in readiness for this, but there was only the steady ...
— The Prodigal Judge • Vaughan Kester
... thou foreseen the Storm's impending rage, When to the Clouds the Waves ambitious rise, 10 And seem with Heaven a doubtful war to wage, Whilst total darkness overspreads the skies; Save when the lightnings darting wingd Fate Quick bursting from the pitchy clouds between In forkd Terror, and destructive state[2:2] 15 Shall shew with double gloom the ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Vol I and II • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
... glaciers. The ice here is exceptionally compact, and, owing to the absence of the internal scattering common in bubbled ice, the light plunges into the mass, where it is extinguished, the perfectly clear ice presenting an appearance of pitchy blackness. [Footnote: I learn from a correspondent that certain Welsh tarns, which are reputed bottomless, have ...
— Fragments of science, V. 1-2 • John Tyndall
... of a pitchy brown, beneath it is yellowish and hairy; the margin of the thorax is yellowish, its disk has many short rust-coloured hairs, the elytra have 9 longitudinal impressed lines, the spaces between transversely ...
— Discoveries in Australia, Volume 1. • J Lort Stokes
... was terribly scared, 'cause he couldn't hardly guess where he was. The insides of the whale were all wet, and it was all pitchy ...
— The Doers • William John Hopkins
... the moon is full: Imps with long tongues are licking at my brow, And snakes with eyes of flame crawl up my breast; Huge monsters glare upon me, some with horns, And some with hoofs that blaze like pitchy brands; Great trunks have some, and some are hung with beads. Here serpents dash their stings into my face, All tipped with fire; and there a wild bird drives His red-hot talons in my burning scalp. Here bees and beetles buzz about my ears Like crackling coals, and frogs strut up and ...
— Gipsy Life - being an account of our Gipsies and their children • George Smith
... his mouth scorching air, as though from a deep furnace, and perceives his own chariot to be on fire. And neither is he able now to bear the ashes and the emitted embers; and on every side he is involved in a heated smoke. Covered with a pitchy darkness, he knows not whither he is going, nor where he is, and is hurried away at the pleasure of the winged steeds. They believe that it was then that the nations of the thiopians contracted their black hue, the blood being attracted. into the surface of the body. Then was Libya" (Sahara?) ...
— Ragnarok: The Age of Fire and Gravel • Ignatius Donnelly
... lost in a chaos of warring elements. So it had lain for a week. In the fury of the blizzard the Arctic night was reduced to a pitchy blackness worse than the sightlessness of ...
— The Heart of Unaga • Ridgwell Cullum
... into a downpour and darkness came, but no Richards, and at length I became alarmed for his safety. I pushed back the tent flaps and peered out into the pitchy darkness and pouring rain. ...
— The Long Labrador Trail • Dillon Wallace
... ships had favoring breezes, not one sank or went ashore; The very fat of commerce oozed between their pitchy seams; And a block of serried buildings did not half contain my store, While my lavish, thrifty bargains would ...
— Stories in Verse • Henry Abbey
... before I was awakened again, this time not by the noise of the storm, but by a curious movement of my bedstead. I had once felt the slight shock of an earthquake, and it seemed to me that this must be something of the kind. Certainly my bed moved under me. I sat up. The room was pitchy dark. In a moment I felt another movement, but this time it did not seem to me to resemble an earthquake shock. Such motion, I think, is generally in horizontal directions, while that which I felt ...
— The Magic Egg and Other Stories • Frank Stockton
... a vale there lies a cave forlorn, Which Phoebus never enters eve or morn, The misty clouds inhale the pitchy ground, And twilight lingers all the vale around. No watchful cocks Aurora's beams invite; No dogs nor geese, the guardians of the night: No flocks nor herds disturb the silent plains; Within the sacred walls mute quiet reigns, And ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... calling in angry tones to the sleepy Arabs, who tumbled from their tents in answer to his voice. But though they searched the village again and again they found no trace of the Belgian. Foaming with anger, Achmet Zek called his followers to horse, and though the night was pitchy black they set out to scour the adjoining forest ...
— Tarzan and the Jewels of Opar • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... Baker now abandoned all hope of saving the ship, and gave orders to prepare the boats for launching. And now the full measure of their disaster became for the first time known; for upon proceeding to investigate, as well as they could in the pitchy darkness, it was found that they absolutely had not a boat left capable of floating. This fact once ascertained, all hands beat a retreat to the cabin, there to consult together, in such shelter as it afforded, regarding the ...
— The Cruise of the "Esmeralda" • Harry Collingwood
... the gloomy robes, that spreading hide Thy secret majesty, lo! slow and wide, Thy heavy skirts sail in the middle air, Thy sultry shroud is o'er the noonday glare: Th' advancing clouds sublimely roll'd on high, Deep in their pitchy volumes clothe the sky; Like hosts of gath'ring foes array'd in death, Dread hangs their gloom upon the earth beneath, It is thy hour: the awful deep is still, And laid to rest the wind of ev'ry hill. Wild creatures of ...
— Poems, &c. (1790) • Joanna Baillie
... became apparent at once. The shriek of the wind rose to a scream and then a roar. The night became pitchy dark. They could see nothing around them but a narrow circle of muddy waters heaving violently. Under the far horizon in the south and west, low, sullen thunder began to mutter. Suddenly the sky parted before ...
— The Free Rangers - A Story of the Early Days Along the Mississippi • Joseph A. Altsheler
... day had engendered a gust. The thunder was muttering among the "seven mountains," and occasionally a flash of lightning illumined the pitchy darkness of the night. I walked out into the grounds, where the wind was fiercely howling through the trees. A new flash illumined the hills, and I distinctly saw the naked rock of the Drachenfels, with the broken tower tottering on the half-ruined crag, looked fearful and supernatural. ...
— A Residence in France - With An Excursion Up The Rhine, And A Second Visit To Switzerland • J. Fenimore Cooper
... his 16th. book, chap. 33. upon discourse of the Cretan cypress, attributes much to the indoles, and nature of the soil, virtue of the climate, and impressions of the air. And indeed it is very strange, what is affirm'd of that pitchy-rain, (reported to have fallen about Cyrene, the year 430. U. C.) after which, in a short time, sprung up a whole wood of the trees of Laserpicium, producing a precious gum, not much inferior to benzoin, if at least the story be warrantable: ...
— Sylva, Vol. 1 (of 2) - Or A Discourse of Forest Trees • John Evelyn
... that even the salt-marsh might perhaps be a safer resting-place for the night than the headquarters of some desperate smuggler, for such I conjectured that this lonely dwelling must be. The scud, however, had covered the moon once more, and the darkness was so pitchy black that I felt that I might reconnoitre a little more closely without fear of discovery. Walking on tiptoe I approached the little ...
— Uncle Bernac - A Memory of the Empire • Arthur Conan Doyle
... expressed but faintly the pitchy obscurity that encompassed the vehicle. The roadside trees were scarcely distinguishable as deeper masses of shadow; I knew them only by the peculiar sodden odor that from time to time sluggishly flowed in at the open window as we rolled by. We proceeded slowly; so leisurely ...
— The Luck of Roaring Camp and Other Tales • Bret Harte
... advanced into the open space before the cellar, and bowed to Prince John and the Preceptor. Then from a niche within the door of the chamber he lifted a large crucible, and a siffle of indrawn breath was heard in the crowd as he carried it toward the fire. Gathering pitchy twigs and chaff from a heap of fuel he packed them deftly into the open top, and set the jar on the brazier, returning then to the ...
— Masters of the Guild • L. Lamprey
... that before the light went. Now, in the pitchy darkness of the drenching rain, as he crouched at the foot of the wall he could hear the hoarse murmur of many voices behind it, as ...
— With Haig on the Somme • D. H. Parry
... first with her art made the night itself more dark, and involved her head in a pitchy cloud), to explore the field, and examine one by one the bodies of the unburied dead. As she approached, the wolves fled before her, and the birds of prey, unwillingly sheathing their talons, abandoned their repast, while the Thessalian witch, searching into the vital ...
— The Haunters & The Haunted - Ghost Stories And Tales Of The Supernatural • Various
... vetturino was to have changed horses at Magione, thirteen miles from Perugia, but there were none to be had, and our poor beast was obliged to perform the whole journey without rest or food. It grew very dark, and a storm, with thunder and lightning, swept among the hills. The clouds were of pitchy darkness, and we could see nothing beyond the road, except the lights of peasant-cottages trembling through the gloom. Now and then a flash of lightning revealed the black masses of the mountains, on which ...
— Views a-foot • J. Bayard Taylor
... dark, fumbling for a pair of "sneakers" he had placed beside his bed. He let himself out into the corral, being careful to keep close to the wall of the house until he reached the high board fence. Here, too, he had to feel his way because of the pitchy blackness of the night; and if the rattling wind prevented him from hearing any footsteps that might be behind him, it also covered the slight sound of his own progress down the fence to the shed. But he did not think he would be seen or followed, for ...
— Starr, of the Desert • B. M Bower
... from the gunwale, sunk into the waves, and pulled the veteran headlong after it. A loud shriek was uttered by all on shore, and a volley of execrations by those on board; but boat and man were hurried away by the rushing swiftness of the tide. A pitchy darkness succeeded; Wolfert Webber indeed fancied that He distinguished a cry for help, and that he beheld the drowning man beckoning for assistance; but when the lightning again gleamed along the water all was drear and void. Neither man nor boat was to be seen; nothing ...
— Tales of a Traveller • Washington Irving
... the sea, driven by tide and wind, rushed upon the huge masses of rock or beat direct upon the cave-indented cliffs. The spray leapt high into the air, to be caught up by the wind in whirlpools, little ghostly flecks, luminous one moment and gone forever the next. Far away across the pitchy waters they could see at regular intervals a line of white where the breakers came rushing in, here and there the agitated lights of passing steamers; opposite, the twin flares on the Welsh coast, and every sixty seconds the swinging white ...
— Nobody's Man • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... visit to the country, at the house of O'Driscol, the newly-made magistrate. It was pretty late that evening when he took leave of the Purcels, but as the distance was not far he felt no anxiety at all upon the subject of his journey. The night, however, was so pitchy dark, that even although well acquainted as he was with the road, he found some difficulty in avoiding the drains and ditches that enclosed it. At length he had arrived within a couple of hundred yards of O'Driscol's house, when as he was proceeding along suddenly found himself come unexpectedly ...
— The Tithe-Proctor - The Works of William Carleton, Volume Two • William Carleton
... Diggory to himself. He opened the door, pulling it to again after him as he crept inside; then taking a step forward in the pitchy darkness, promptly fell over a bucket with an appalling crash. Scrambling once more to his feet, he felt in his waistcoat pocket, and finding there a fusee which he remembered to have taken from a box owned by "Rats," he struck it, ...
— The Triple Alliance • Harold Avery
... little sound as possible the three young soldiers crept forward. Jacques led the way, with Leon and Earl close behind him. Every boy held his pistol gripped tightly in his right hand. Night had now fallen and pitchy darkness had ...
— Fighting in France • Ross Kay
... no time during my period of exile did I experience so much mental suffering from the cravings of hunger as when, exhausted with this long clay of fruitless search, I resigned myself to a couch of pine foliage in the pitchy darkness of a thicket of small trees. Naturally timid in the night, I fully realized the exposure of my condition. I peered upward through the darkness, but all was blackness and gloom. The wind sighed mournfully through the pines. ...
— Thirty-Seven Days of Peril - from Scribner's Monthly Vol III Nov. 1871 • Truman Everts
... frying-pan on the burning wood, and it soon tips over. Also they let the pot boil over, and presently it unsolders for want of water. Few think to keep the handle so that it can be touched without burning or smutting; and hardly any young person knows that pitchy wood will give a bad flavor to any thing cooked over it on an open fire. Live coals are rather better, therefore, than the ...
— How to Camp Out • John M. Gould
... roar of the next wave as it came bursting in, splashing them from head to foot where they sat, was a wonderful quickener to their movements, and away they scrambled through the pitchy blackness, clinging like limpets to the rough side of the cavern as they felt their feet slide upon the treacherous rocks, and thought of ...
— Harper's Young People, February 24, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various
... simple enough to find what they wanted. There was a broad skylight of dark green glass propped up a foot or more above the level of the rest of the flat roof. Beside it Terry dropped upon his knees and pushed his head under the glass. All below was pitchy-black, but he distinctly caught the odor ...
— Black Jack • Max Brand
... and I donned my rain-coat; I buckled my helmet tight. I remember you watched me, Billy, as I took my cane in my hand; I vaulted over the sandbags into the pitchy night, Into the pitted valley that served us as No ...
— Ballads of a Bohemian • Robert W. Service
... traveling. It is true they had two stout men, and all were armed, yet they might easily come upon a party too strong for them; and no one could tell what might happen, thought the princess. There was that pitchy darkness through which she could hardly see her horse's head—a thing of itself that seemed to have infinite powers for mischief, and which no amount of argument ever induced any normally constituted woman to believe was the mere negative absence of light, and not a terrible entity potent for ...
— When Knighthood Was in Flower • Charles Major
... the dim-lighted building. 'Tis a large old church, at the crossing roads—'tis now an impromptu hospital; —Entering but for a minute, I see a sight beyond all the pictures and poems ever made: Shadows of deepest, deepest black, just lit by moving, candles and lamps, And by one great pitchy torch, stationary, with wild red flame, and clouds of smoke; By these, crowds, groups of forms, vaguely I see, on the floor, some in the pews laid down; At my feet more distinctly, a soldier, a mere lad, in danger ...
— Poems By Walt Whitman • Walt Whitman
... pitchy dark. In the first gust of wind their temporary torches were extinguished, and only the red brands dancing and flitting in the gloom like drunken will-o'-the-wisps indicated their whereabouts. Their way led up Pine-Tree Canyon, at the head of which a broad, low, bark-thatched ...
— Mrs. Skaggs's Husbands and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... nature with the character of all those lifeless cliffs. Silence and darkness suit well together in solitude at noonday, and settled on huge objects make them sublime. And they were huge; all ranged together, and stretching away to a great distance, with the pitchy water, still as if ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson
... go up the hill and scare ourselves, As reckless as the best of them to-night, By setting fire to all the brush we piled With pitchy hands to wait for rain or snow. Oh, let's not wait for rain to make it safe. The pile is ours: we dragged it bough on bough Down dark converging paths between the pines. Let's not care what we do with it to-night. Divide it? No! But burn ...
— Mountain Interval • Robert Frost
... drew on our spirits sank again, for with the daylight all evidence of our security vanished away. We could no longer see the firm rock on which we lay, while we were stunned with the violence of the tempest that raged around us. The night grew pitchy dark as it advanced, so that we could not see our hands when we held them up before our eyes, and were obliged to feel each other occasionally to make sure that we were safe, for the storm at last became so terrible that it was ...
— The Coral Island - A Tale Of The Pacific Ocean • R. M. Ballantyne
... stream as we had no lantern. Looking after the fire was Rebekah, and later there came Mrs. Green, Alfred, Bob Green and the two other wives. The wind was blowing cold, and we were glad to sit near the blaze. You can picture the scene; pitchy darkness all round except where now and again gleams of light fell on the sounding sea below and made dimly visible the white line of surf. After staying some time, as there was no sign of the boat, we and the women ...
— Three Years in Tristan da Cunha • K. M. Barrow
... meteoric phenomenon that has occurred in Canada since the country became inhabited by civilized man, was first seen in October, 1785, and again in July, 1814. At noonday a pitchy darkness, of a dismal and sinister character, completely obscured the light of the sun, continuing for about ten minutes at a time, and being frequently repeated during the afternoon. In the interval between each mysterious eclipse dense masses of black ...
— The Conquest of Canada (Vol. 1 of 2) • George Warburton
... unparalleled of its kind. Men read with horror the stories of the mines, of children employed underground for twelve or fourteen hours a day, crouching in low passages, monotonously opening and shutting the trap-doors as the trollies passed to and fro. Alone each child sat in pitchy darkness, unable to stir for more than a few paces, unable to sleep for fear of punishment with the strap in case of neglect, and often surrounded with vermin. Women were employed crawling on hands and knees along these passages, stripped to the waist, ...
— Victorian Worthies - Sixteen Biographies • George Henry Blore
... to do—in old country-houses, large and crooked chimneys, which had been altered again and again, till they ran one into another, anastomosing (as Professor Owen would say) considerably. So Tom fairly lost his way in them; not that he cared much for that, though he was in pitchy darkness, for he was as much at home in a chimney as a mole is underground; but at last, coming down as he thought the right chimney, he came down the wrong one, and found himself standing on the hearthrug in a room the like of which he ...
— The Water-Babies - A Fairy Tale for a Land-Baby • Charles Kingsley
... retired beneath the seething. I saw, and my heart still shudders thereat, one linger so, as it will happen that one frog remains while the other spouts away; and Graffiancane, who was nearest to him, hooked his pitchy locks and haled him up, so that to me ...
— Dante: "The Central Man of All the World" • John T. Slattery
... Pines is gotten the Candlewood that is much spoke of, which may serve as a shift among poore folks, but I cannot commend it for singular good, because it droppeth a pitchy kind of substance where ...
— Home Life in Colonial Days • Alice Morse Earle
... then, at length, anchored off the coast of Borneo! not under very pleasant circumstances, for the night is pitchy dark, with thunder, lightning, rain, and ...
— The Expedition to Borneo of H.M.S. Dido - For the Suppression of Piracy • Henry Keppel
... experienced a wild joy in battling with, and conquering, gales that forced him to crawl along the storm-swept "deck" on hands and knees, clinging tightly to the running boards, often with lantern extinguished, and making the passage from car to car through pitchy darkness. On such nights how warm and cheerful was the interior of the caboose, when at rare intervals he found a chance to pay it dripping visits! How welcome were the cups of hot coffee from ...
— Cab and Caboose - The Story of a Railroad Boy • Kirk Munroe
... summit of one you see the gray remains of Rheinech. There is something weird and preternatural about the aspect of this place; its soil betrays signs that in the former ages (from which even tradition is fast fading away) some volcano here exhausted its fires. The stratum of the earth is black and pitchy, and the springs beneath it are of a dark and graveolent water. Here the stream of the Brohlbach falls into the Rhine, and in a valley rich with oak and pine, and full of caverns, which are not without their traditionary ...
— The Pilgrims Of The Rhine • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... Bart. She lay quite still, shivering with pleasure as the footsteps approached her. Then a match scratched—she saw by the blue spurt of flame that he was lighting a pine torch, then whirling it until the flame ate down to the pitchy knot. He held it above his head, and now she saw him plainly: the light cascaded over his shoulders, glowed on his eyes, and then puffed ...
— The Seventh Man • Max Brand
... save it, he let go the cask, which suddenly stove in, the spirits communicated with the flame, and the whole place was instantly in a blaze. Hopes of subduing the fire at first were strong, but soon heavy volumes of smoke and a pitchy smell told that it ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... by; then four. The afternoon was waning. The thick, woolly gray that surrounded them assumed a more somber shade. Night was coming, pitchy and starless, doubly so for the two lost boys, adrift on the ...
— Jim Spurling, Fisherman - or Making Good • Albert Walter Tolman
... to die or get a new Constitution, or do something that was important on the other side of the world, and the paper was to be held open till the latest possible minute in order to catch the telegram. It was a pitchy black night, as stifling as a June night can be, and the loo, the red-hot wind from the westward, was booming among the tinder-dry trees and pretending that the rain was on its heels. Now and again a spot of almost boiling water would fall on the dust with the flop of a frog, ...
— The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling
... exposed to the whole drift of the Northern Ocean; and the wind having settled down to S.W. by W., blew directly in our faces, and placed a fearful shore on our lee. Having looked around me, as well as the pitchy darkness would allow, and ascertaining from the King's Pilot, as he was called, a seaman as courageous as he was skilful, the dangerous bearing of the land, and the object he desired to gain, I took my leave of the deck, and made more room for those who could ...
— A Yacht Voyage to Norway, Denmark, and Sweden - 2nd edition • W. A. Ross
... to hear if Venning slept, for he dreaded what would happen if the boy awoke in the pitchy darkness and heard that demoniac cry. The boy's breathing came at regular intervals, and with a muttered prayer that he would sleep on, the Hunter felt for ...
— In Search of the Okapi - A Story of Adventure in Central Africa • Ernest Glanville
... boy looked doubtful; but he turned without saying anything, and passing through the doorway, was in an instant lost in the pitchy darkness of the entry. I laid my hand on the King's arm, and tried to induce him not to follow; fearing much that this might be some new thieves' trap, leading nowhither save to the POIRE D'ANGOISSE and the poniard. But the attempt was hopeless ...
— From the Memoirs of a Minister of France • Stanley Weyman
... whither may I cast my looks? to heaven? Black pitchy clouds from thence rain down revenge. The earth shall I behold, stain'd with the gore Of his heart-blood, that died most innocent? Which way soe'er I turn mine eyes, methinks His butcher'd corpse stands staring ...
— A Select Collection of Old English Plays, Vol. VII (4th edition) • Various
... begun to fall slightly as we walked out the railroad, on our route, and soon it increased to torrents. The night was pitchy dark, and we stumbled along, falling into gutters here, and nearly sticking in the mud there, until midnight, when we resolved to ...
— Daring and Suffering: - A History of the Great Railroad Adventure • William Pittenger
... with rats for prizes in the sewers; or his crawling into an abandoned doorless house in St. Giles', where his hosts were three dead men, one pendant; into another of an alley nigh Houndsditch, where the crazy hovel, in phosphoric rottenness, fell sparkling on him one pitchy midnight, and he received that injury, which, excluding activity for no small part of the future, was an added cause of his prolongation of exile, besides not leaving his faculties unaffected by the concussion of one of the ...
— Israel Potter • Herman Melville
... The pitchy quality of the blackness in the closet aided him in bruising himself; he ran into a thousand things of all kinds of shapes and textures every time he moved. And at each fresh bruise he grew madder and madder, and, holding the cat responsible, applied language to Clarence of which he had never ...
— The Green Mouse • Robert W. Chambers
... appeared the Holy Saints, and glorified men; and the last and lowest was occupied by mere men who had not yet passed from this transitory life to the regions of eternity. On one side of this lowest platform was the resemblance of a dark pitchy cavern, from whence issued appearance of fire and flames; and, when it was necessary, the audience were treated with hideous yellings and noises as imitative of the howlings and cries of the wretched souls tormented by the relentless demons. ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 1 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli
... markets of a great city. The appearance of one of these towering river transports as she comes sailing down the turbid stream of the great Father of Waters, laden to the water's edge with brown bales of cotton, and emitting from her lofty, red crowned smoke-stacks dense clouds of pitchy black smoke, is most wonderful. Unlike ocean-steamers, the river-steamer carries her load upon her deck. Built to penetrate far towards the head-waters of rivers and bayous that in summer become mere shallow ditches, these steamers have ...
— The Naval History of the United States - Volume 2 (of 2) • Willis J. Abbot
... relax their hold should ever do anything more than blindly rove hither and thither, arriving at nothing. Cardinal was adrift, like thousands and hundreds of thousands of others, and amidst the storm and pitchy darkness of the night, thousands and hundreds of thousands of voices offer us pilotage. It spoke well for him that he did nothing worse than take a few useless phantoms on board which did him no harm, and that he held fast to his own instinct for truth and ...
— Mark Rutherford's Deliverance • Mark Rutherford
... the pitchy darkness of the cave enough to show the high ledges that ran still further back ...
— The Boy Scout Treasure Hunters - The Lost Treasure of Buffalo Hollow • Charles Henry Lerrigo
... arms, and sank. Was it a sin To love that sinful mother? There I lay— And in the spirit far away I prayed; What words I spoke, I know not, nor how long; Until a small still voice sighed, 'Child, thou art heard:' Then on the pitchy dark a small bright cloud Shone out, and swelled, and neared, and grew to form, Till from it blazed my pardoned mother's face With nameless glory! Nearer still she pressed, And bent her lips to mine—a mighty spasm Ran crackling through my limbs, and thousand bells ...
— The Saint's Tragedy • Charles Kingsley
... the entrance of a cave. Not a word was spoken. Their instructions had been precise—for Lambert, who was born and had spent his earliest years there, knew every spot of the ground. They took their shoes off, and walking upon the hard sand which formed the ground, entered the pitchy darkness. Lambert going first, and knowing that a sound would be fatal—for they would have little chance in that narrow passage—he turned every angle as accurately as if it had been daylight, and the officers ...
— Edward Barnett; a Neglected Child of South Carolina, Who Rose to Be a Peer of Great Britain,—and the Stormy Life of His Grandfather, Captain Williams • Tobias Aconite
... strike," he growled. "Wait till the moon is from behind that cloud. Ugh! It is black here, pitchy black." A full, heavy minute elapsed, disturbed by the scuffle of the negro's feet as he ran and cowered in the furthest corner, and the soft creaking of the iron door, and a sudden suck and soughing of the night air. Then the moon slipped ...
— A Williams Anthology - A Collection of the Verse and Prose of Williams College, 1798-1910 • Compiled by Edwin Partridge Lehman and Julian Park
... perhaps a rather doubtful quantity with his conservative grammar and quiet speech, was accepted for our sakes. They took an arm on either side of us to help us up the hill, and in proof of heart-to-heart esteem shouted "Oopsidaisy!" when we stumbled in the pitchy dark. When we were brought to a stand at last by a snarled challenge and the click of rifles overhead, they answered with the chorus of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay, a classic that ought to have died an unnatural death almost a quarter of ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... we got out of the sweet-scented air, we came into another that smelt of asphaltus, pitch, and sulphur burning together, with a most intolerable stench, as of burned carcases: the whole element above us was dark and dismal, distilling a kind of pitchy dew upon our heads; we heard the sound of stripes, and the ...
— Trips to the Moon • Lucian
... dark before we reached the river; we had been much delayed by repeated falls into deep holes, and over hidden stones; thus I was well satisfied to find myself once more at home after having crossed the river, in pitchy darkness, in a similar manner as before. Every person in the village had had a good view of the stalk; therefore, as two giraffes had been seen to fall, the Arabs were waiting on the bank ...
— The Nile Tributaries of Abyssinia • Samuel W. Baker
... and unoffending victims, who strewed the floor like swaths behind the mower. Whenever a lucky individual could disentangle himself from his comrades, he darted through the door, and in spite of the storm and pitchy darkness without, thought himself too happy in escaping with a few holes in his skin. Yet he of the horns and tail, by some chance or another, always passed unhurt; a hideous laugh accompanying the adroit contrivances by which he ...
— Traditions of Lancashire, Volume 1 (of 2) • John Roby
... camphor; varnish, copal^, mastic, magilp^, lacquer, japan. artificial resin, polymer; ion-exchange resin, cation-exchange resin, anion exchange resin, water softener, Amberlite^, Dowex [Chem], Diaion. V. varnish &c (overlay) 223. Adj. resiny^, resinous; bituminous, pitchy, tarry; asphaltic, asphaltite. ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... specimen that reached my ears of the old, rough water-wit for which the Thames used to be so celebrated. Passing directly along the line of the sunken Tunnel, we landed in Wapping, which I should have presupposed to be the most tarry and pitchy spot on earth, swarming with old salts, and full of warm, bustling, coarse, homely, and cheerful life. Nevertheless, it turned out to be a cold and torpid neighborhood, mean, shabby, and unpicturesque, both as to its buildings and ...
— Our Old Home - A Series of English Sketches • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... part used to have his face gilded. On the second platform were the glorified saints, and on the lowest men who had not yet passed from life. On one side of the lowest platform was hell's mouth, a dark pitchy cavern, whence issued the appearance of fire and flames, and sometimes hideous yellings and noises in imitation of the howlings and cries of wretched souls tormented by relentless demons. From this yawning cave ...
— The Parish Clerk (1907) • Peter Hampson Ditchfield
... Mecisteus, son of Echius, and noble Alastor, supporting, bore to the hollow ships, deeply groaning. In the meantime Idomeneus ceased not his mighty valour; but always burned either to cover some of the Trojans with pitchy night,[429] or himself to fall with a crash, repelling destruction from the Greeks. Then the hero Alcathous, the beloved son of AEsyetas (and he was the son-in-law of Anchises, for he had married Hippodamia, the eldest of his daughters, ...
— The Iliad of Homer (1873) • Homer
... blue flashes from without. At length he softly rose and crept noiselessly to the door; the fastening was the primitive latch with a string attached; it opened without a sound in his cautious handling, and he found himself in the pitchy darkness outside, the wild mountain wind whirling about him, and the rain descending ...
— Down the Ravine • Charles Egbert Craddock (real name: Murfree, Mary Noailles)
... the darkness gives hopes that men will be at hand. Here there was not any human society. The fire crouched on its ashes. It was on a little circular eminence of mossed rock; black sticks, and brushwood, and dry fern, and split logs, pitchy to the touch, lay about; in the centre of them the fire coiled sullenly among its ashes, with a long ...
— The Shaving of Shagpat • George Meredith
... however, the Archduke Charles was ready to meet them with a force equal, or, perhaps, superior to their own. Moreau was compelled to fight two battles, in both of which he was defeated; and nothing but a violent storm saved the wreck of his army. This, and the pitchy darkness of the night, prevented the Austrian cavalry from acting, and enabled him to get his broken columns on the safe side of the Rhine. The archduke Charles ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan
... the roads held by our troops, and as they were infantry, could move around them, though a running skirmish was kept up for some miles. Hobson was close in rear, and Judah's men were approaching Buffington. Morgan reached the river near the ford about eight o'clock in the evening. The night was pitchy dark, and his information was that a small earthwork built to command the ford was occupied by a permanent garrison. He concluded to wait for daylight. The work had in fact been abandoned on the preceding ...
— Military Reminiscences of the Civil War V1 • Jacob Dolson Cox
... misery, and the strange sense of plundering, not the living, but the dead, as if the sunken vessel was a huge coffin, was upon them. With that cautious sense of superstitious dread choking their muttered whispers, they reached the spot and prepared to descend. The task of sinking through that pitchy consistence, into the intricacy of that black, coffin-like hold, among the drowned corpses, to do a deed of doubtful right, must have intensified the horror of great darkness and that sublimity of silence that in the under-sea peoples the void shadows ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. XII, No. 28. July, 1873. • Various
... the backs of mountain sheep. The Creek of the Mersey gurgles, twice in the four-and-twenty hours, with eddying brine, clangorous with sea-fowl; and is a Lither-Pool, a lazy or sullen Pool, no monstrous pitchy City, and Seahaven of the world! The Centuries are big; and the birth-hour is coming, not yet come. Tempus ferax, ...
— Past and Present - Thomas Carlyle's Collected Works, Vol. XIII. • Thomas Carlyle
... guides to make a "blaze," and, after a minute's delay and an ejaculation of "Game, to your high, low, jack," they emerged from the tent and in a few minutes had cut down several small dead spruces and piled the tops on the fire, which flashed up through the pitchy, inflammable mass, and we had a pyrotechnical display which startled the birds, that had gone to rest in the assurance of night, into a confused activity and clamor. The heat penetrated the camp and gave me a drowsiness which my disturbed repose of the night before rendered extremely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... dazzling headlights moved in the pitchy blackness, the wheels grated but held their own. The car came to the side door, and the little mattress came out, and the muffled shape that was Mary got in beside it. Then there was buttoning of storm curtains by willing hands, and many a whispered good wish to Rachael as she ...
— The Heart of Rachael • Kathleen Norris
... to drive in gusts. By the time it was dark not an Indian showed himself. They were housed from the storm. Lights twinkled in the teepees and the big log cabins of the trading company. Jones scouted round till pitchy black night, when a freezing, pouring blast sent him back to the protection of the tarpaulin. When he got there he found that Rea had taken it down and awaited him. "Off!" said the free-trader; and with no more noise than a ...
— The Last of the Plainsmen • Zane Grey
... good deal of joy in Shed B, and would have caused more if it had not still remained to choose our pioneer. In view of the ambiguity in which we lay as to the length of the rope and the height of the precipice—and that this gentleman was to climb down from fifty to seventy fathoms on a pitchy night, on a rope entirely free, and with not so much as an infant child to steady it at the bottom, a little backwardness was perhaps excusable. But it was, in our case, more than a little. The truth is, we were all womanish fellows about a height; and I have myself ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 20 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson
... went home; but she was quite covered with pitch, and the cock by the well-side, as soon as he saw her, cried: "Cock-a-doodle-doo! Your pitchy girl's come back to you." But the pitch stuck fast to her, and could not be got off ...
— Grimm's Fairy Stories • Jacob Grimm and Wilhelm Grimm
... 29 degrees) for the elevation (9,300 feet). During the night, I was startled out of my sleep by a blaze of light, and jumping up, found myself in presence of a party of most sinister-looking, black, ragged Tibetans, armed with huge torches of pine, that filled the room with flame and pitchy smoke. I remembered their arriving just before dark, and their weapons dispelled my fears, for they came armed with bamboo jugs of Murwa beer, and were very drunk and very amiable: they grinned, nodded, kotowed, lolled out their tongues, and scratched ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... as pitchy copper-ore (Ger. Kupferpecherz), and of some importance as an ore of copper, is usually classed as a variety of chrysocolla containing much admixed limonite. It is dark brown to black in colour, with a dull to glassy or resinous lustre, and ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 6, Slice 3 - "Chitral" to "Cincinnati" • Various
... his feet, and, groping his way in the intense darkness, made for the verandah. Here he paused for a moment, glancing upward to the sky, which he found to be obscured by a dense canopy of heavy black cloud, portending rain, which sufficiently accounted for the pitchy darkness. His eyes at length becoming accustomed to the obscurity, he looked round for the guard; and he eventually discovered the various members faithfully occupying their posts, but, one and all, squatted upon the ground evidently fast asleep. He stalked out toward the centre ...
— The Log of the Flying Fish - A Story of Aerial and Submarine Peril and Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... story edifice, built of sun-baked bricks, called adobe. The dwelling was a hundred feet long, and the roof was rendered impenetrable to rain, being covered with a thick coating of asphaltum, mingled with sand. There was a spring of this valuable pitchy substance near the village; and the roofs of all the houses in Los ...
— Christopher Carson • John S. C. Abbott
... Ossaroo included, were too well accustomed to the habits of hunters to act rashly. Any sudden movement among them might frighten the game; and if it bounded off into the forest, or even turned its head, it could no longer be seen in the pitchy darkness that surrounded them. The shining eyes were all of it that were visible; and if the creature had but chosen to shut its eyes it might have stood there till the morning light, without the least chance ...
— The Plant Hunters - Adventures Among the Himalaya Mountains • Mayne Reid
... little inn about nine in the evening on a night that was pitchy dark, and in a wind which made it necessary for him to hold his hat on to his head. "What a beastly country to live in," he said to himself, resolving that he would certainly sell Vavasor Hall in spite of all family associations, if ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... following its course for a few yards, came to a spot which was thought to be fit for our purpose. It was a sharply cold night in February, and when I dismounted I found myself standing upon some wet rank herbage that promised ill for the comfort of our resting-place. I had bad hopes of a fire, for the pitchy darkness of the night was a great obstacle to any successful search for fuel, and besides, the boughs of trees or bushes would be so full of sap in this early spring, that they would not be easily persuaded to burn. However, we were ...
— Eothen • A. W. Kinglake
... the upper edge of the field above the house into a smooth, brown path among the dark spruces. The hot sun brought out the fragrance of the pitchy bark, and the shade was pleasant as we climbed the hill. William stopped once or twice to show me a great wasps'-nest close by, or some fishhawks'-nests below in a bit of swamp. He picked a few sprigs of late-blooming linnaea as we came out upon an open bit of pasture at the top of the island, ...
— The Country of the Pointed Firs • Sarah Orne Jewett
... traveller's brain whirl when he looked into them. There impetuous torrents roared and flashed down their beds of black stone, threatening destruction to those who would cross them. Now the path was lost in the matted thorny underwood and the pitchy shades of the jungle, deep and dark as the valley of death. Then the thunder-cloud licked the earth with its fiery tongue, and its voice shook the crags and filled their hollow caves. At times, the sun was so hot, that wild birds fell dead from the air. And at every moment the ...
— Vikram and the Vampire • Sir Richard F. Burton
... to his indebtedness. My face flushed and my fingers tingled at thought of him, and so I resolutely turned my meditations elsewhere, and again in a little while I seemed to think of nothing, but lay and bathed in the silence, and indulged my eyes with the good red light of the torch, inhaling its pitchy scent. I was conscious, yet for a time I had no thought: I was like something half animal, half vegetable, which feeds, yet has no mouth, nor sees, nor hears, nor has sense, but only lives. I seemed hung in space, as one feels when going from sleep to waking—a long lane ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... dissolved; the waterfall deluged the valley; the mountains were covered with waves; the skies grew pitchy dark; ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... sky seemed growing darker and the wind was rising. A thick clump of trees hard by cast a gloomy shadow across the road, and just as they passed into this the floating clouds covered the face of the moon, and they were in pitchy darkness. ...
— The Daughter of a Republican • Bernie Babcock
... everlasting sun lies in all its power and warmth, unaffected by the cloud; and the light will yet strike, the light of His love will yet pierce through, with its merciful shafts bringing healing in their beams, and dispersing all the pitchy darkness of man's transgression. And as the mists gather themselves up and roll away, dissipated by the heat of that sun in the upper sky, and reveal the fair earth below—so the love of Christ shines in, ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... his pursuers, if there were any upon his track, could have travelled in the night, for it had been pitchy black; and, as he now had a good start of them, he thought he might go so far that they would give up the search. Then he hoped to be able to keep himself alive until he was reasonably sure that the Revenge had hoisted anchor and sailed away, when it was his purpose to make his ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... so gay, so merry, it was not likely that he knew anything of the terrible accusation against his wife and her. If that were the case there was no immediate danger, since all the Koshare were not informed of the matter. Returning to the hearth she poked the embers, placed on them another stick of pitchy wood, and fanned it with her breath until the flames burst forth, lively and bright. Until then Say had remained motionless in her seat. She had taken no notice of her friend's movements; but when the wood flamed and a warm glow ...
— The Delight Makers • Adolf Bandelier
... thee, a crippled thing. How man in bacchanalian sphere Soars to the heat of Pleasure's sun, Then, by gradations dark and drear, Sinks low as thee, poor wingless one: How hearts from proud Ambition's height Have drooped to darkest, lowest hell— From blazing noon to pitchy night, With pangs a demon-tongue may tell: How aspirations glory-fraught Have gained the goal in dark despair; How golden hopes have come to nought But ...
— The Death of Saul and other Eisteddfod Prize Poems and Miscellaneous Verses • J. C. Manning
... It was a pitchy, sleety night, the river roaring with the loose ice of spring flood, the forests noisy with the boisterous March wind. Out on the maelstrom of ice and flood launched the fifty-three colonists, March 20, 1658. By April they were safe {103} inside the walls of Quebec, and chance ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... luffed his ship as close to the wind as possible, in order to clear a point that stretched outward, and beat off to windward, but his lee-way carried him towards the land, and he was caught when he least expected the trap. The gale increased—the night grew pitchy dark—the roaring breakers were on his lee-beam—the drifting vessel strikes, rebounds, and strikes again—the cry of horror rings through the flapping cordage, and despair is in the eyes of the demon-crew. Helpless they lie amid the wrath of the storm, and the darkened face of Heaven, ...
— The Pirates Own Book • Charles Ellms
... careering through pitchy darkness, on a viewless sea, with a plausible voice at his ear insinuating villanous thoughts with ...
— Idolatry - A Romance • Julian Hawthorne
... mostly in reserve during the conflicts of the past few days. Thus reenforced, this intrepid leader marched directly toward the Monterey Pass, arriving at the foot of this rocky defile in the mountains in the midst of pitchy darkness. ...
— Three Years in the Federal Cavalry • Willard Glazier
... stroke, striking my head and hands against jagged stones and sharp corners, clutching at last something in my fingers and dragging it up with all my might. I spoke, I cried aloud, but there was no answer. I was alone in the pitchy darkness with my burden, and the house was five hundred yards away. Struggling still, I felt the ground beneath my feet, I saw a ray of moonlight- -the grotto widened, and the deep water became a broad and shallow brook as I stumbled over the stones and at last laid Margaret's body on ...
— Stories by Modern American Authors • Julian Hawthorne
... ran her, in that pitchy blackness, into the surf; she went through it close hauled, and beyond it into the deep sea the other side, and searched the outside edge of the sands, but to no purpose. Then, having shouted all together and listened, they stood back again ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... more that night, but sat up, watching and listening. It was pitchy dark, but he heard the roar of distant and new streams, and the sliding avalanches of sodden snow. He felt an awe of the elements, but he was not lonely now, nor was he afraid. That which he wished was coming, though ...
— The Eyes of the Woods - A story of the Ancient Wilderness • Joseph A. Altsheler
... what heat there was in him, and the breath was of his own lungs, putting life into hers through their two mouths....She opened her eyes. It was dark. The darkness she had come out of was bright beside this pitchy night, and her struggle back to life less painful than the fierce labor of the wind and waves. Their frail precarious craft was in ceaseless peril. His left arm held her like a vice, but for greater safety he had ...
— Martin Pippin in the Apple Orchard • Eleanor Farjeon
... gloomy shadow of the night, Longing to view Orion's drizzling look, Leaps from th' antartic world unto the sky, And dims the welkin with her [28] pitchy breath, Faustus, begin thine incantations, And try if devils will obey thy hest, Seeing thou hast pray'd and sacrific'd to them. Within this circle is Jehovah's name, Forward and backward anagrammatiz'd, Th' abbreviated names of holy saints, Figures of every ...
— Dr. Faustus • Christopher Marlowe
... ears—"that she would get home all right. But Dick had hurt his foot, and we left her on the rocks, sitting quite in a pool. And it has rained so ever since; and perhaps she is on the rocks still, and it is pitchy dark, and both of we feel as if ...
— Troublesome Comforts - A Story for Children • Geraldine Glasgow
... Madge's life! Madge, whom he loved so dearly! Madge, for whom he would have died! And yet there was something sublime in the thought of taking her in his arms and driving before the gale, the storm sails treble reefed on the bending yards, the decks awash from end to end, Madge beside him, the pitchy night in front, the engulfing seas behind; to swim or sink, to ride or smother, accepting their fate together, and, if need be, drowning at the last in ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne |
