"Cavern" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... believes in anarchy, the other doesn't—the one who does invites the one who does not to come with him and see what anarchy is. This he does, and, after a good supper of lobster mayonnaise, the two get down to a subterranean cavern where are assembled half the anarchists of the world, precisely six; they call themselves by the names of the week, with a leader, who ...
— Gilbert Keith Chesterton • Patrick Braybrooke
... child The varied beauties of the wild, The hill, the brook and each fair spot, Then turned to seek their leafy cot. North of the mountain Rama found A cavern in the sloping ground, Charming to view, its floor was strown With many a mass of ore and stone, In secret shadow far retired Where gay birds sang with joy inspired, And trees their graceful branches swayed With loads of blossom downward ...
— The Ramayana • VALMIKI
... is how, on the night of the 29th of July, 1835, the burgomaster took captive a little red-haired man, issuing from the cavern of Geierstein. ...
— Library of the World's Best Mystery and Detective Stories • Edited by Julian Hawthorne
... look upon, for it had at one time been half torn away by some terrific blow. At last he struck his breast with his clenched fist, drawing sound as from a drum, and his voice rumbled forth as does the surf from an ocean cavern. ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... the opening pack; Rock, glen, and cavern paid them back; To many a mingled sound at once The awakened mountain gave response. A hundred dogs bayed deep and strong, Clattered a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rung out, A hundred voices joined the shout; With hark and whoop and wild halloo, ...
— The Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... the pleasantest room in the whole house, whence, through a narrow window, she had the inspiriting view of the snowy peaks of Jura; but the bedroom and workshop of the old man were a kind of cavern close on to the water, the floor of ...
— A Winter Amid the Ice - and Other Thrilling Stories • Jules Verne
... he began to rock it gently. To Johnny's surprise it began to move. The upper end descended slowly, lifting the root in the excavation at the lower end, and with it a mass of rock, and revealing a cavern behind large enough to admit a man. Johnny gasped. The desperado coolly deposited the heavy stone on the tree beyond its axis on the rock, so that it would keep the tree in position, leaped from the tree to the rock, and quickly descended, at which ...
— Openings in the Old Trail • Bret Harte
... was still unfinished, but not for worlds would Constans have remained alone in that echoing, wind-swept cavern, surrounded by these monstrous shapes of metal. Lever and piston, wheel and shaft, the familiar outlines had disappeared, and in their stead a vast, indefinable bulk loomed through the dusk. It hung in the background like a wild ...
— The Doomsman • Van Tassel Sutphen
... abominably of oil. The flickering rays picked out here and there a bit of tarnished gold from the wall paper, and, as though purposely, made the worn spots in the carpet unusually distinct. Meaningless china ornaments crowded the mantel, but there was no saving grace of firelight in the small black cavern beneath. A little stove, in one corner of the room, smoked industriously and refused ...
— Master of the Vineyard • Myrtle Reed
... dining-table looked on the greenness of a lawny, lilac-sheltered garden, so that such light as filtered through the green jalousies was green also. There was a great block of ice somewhere in the room, and so cool it was, so greenly dim there, that it seemed almost like a cavern of the sea. Mildred wore a white dress, and, as was the fashion of the moment, a large black hat shadowed with ostrich-feathers. Once more on seeing her he had a startled impression of looking upon an ethereal creature, a being somehow totally distinct from other beings; and for ...
— The Invader - A Novel • Margaret L. Woods
... was talking to the queen I could not help admiring the jewels in her diadem, and seeing I was pleased with them she invited me to accompany her to a rock cavern near to her dwelling, where I saw such an accumulation of wealth that I began to picture myself among the richest of men. The floor of this cave was carpeted with gold dust, and nuggets of the same precious metal were piled high against its walls. But what ...
— Adventures in Southern Seas - A Tale of the Sixteenth Century • George Forbes
... answered, "To Alexandria." So they mounted the couch and she pronounced over it the conjuration, whereupon it set off with them and, in the twinkling of an eye, brought them to Alexandria. They alighted without the city and Ala al-Din hid the women in a cavern, whilst he went into Alexandria and fetched them outer clothing, wherewith he covered them. Then he carried them to his shop and, leaving them in the "ben"[FN127] walked forth to fetch them the morning-meal, and behold he met Calamity Ahmad who chanced to be coming from Baghdad. He ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 4 • Richard F. Burton
... Icelandic Geysers are, it has been observed, accounted for by the siphon theory; in other words, this theory supposes the existence of a chamber in the heated earth, not quite full of water, and communicating with the upper air by means of a pipe, whose lower orifice is at the side of the cavern and below the surface of the water. The water, being kept boiling by the intense heat, generates steam, which soon accumulates such force as to discharge the contents of the pond into the air through the narrow vent, or, at least enough to allow of the escape of the superfluous ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No 3, September 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... scarcely wonderful, that among a people devoted to superstition, those terrible passes and sultry hollows should be marked as the haunts of the powers of evil. Adyli, a deep mysterious cavern at the extremity of one of those melancholy plains, is believed to be the especial abode of gins and afreets, whose voices are heard in the night, and who carry off the traveller to devour him without remorse. A late instance was mentioned of a man who was ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 341, March, 1844, Vol. 55 • Various
... to do that," and he looked as well as he could from one to another of us, "you need never be frightened, no matter how dark and lonely a cavern you may be left in. Strive to reflect that you will soon be missed, and that your friends will naturally come back to the place where they saw you last. Stay there! Keep that important duty in your ...
— A Jolly Fellowship • Frank R. Stockton
... about eight o'clock when he wrapped his large cloak around his tall figure, pulled his hat low over his sinister brow and set out to walk alone to the secret cavern in the side ...
— Capitola the Madcap • Emma D. E. N. Southworth
... when the family with the citizens are generally at church. For Heaven's sake let not that day pass unimproved: trust not till tomorrow, it is the cheat of life—the future that never comes—the grave of many noble births—the cavern of ruined enterprise: which like the lightning's flash is born, and dies, and perishes, ere the voice of him who sees can cry, BEHOLD! BEHOLD!! You may trust to what I say, no power shall tempt me to betray confidence. Suffer me ...
— The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories • Mark Twain
... transport landed. A hillside rose before it. A vast, grass-covered area lifted up. It was a great door. The transport rolled deliberately into a monstrous, windowless, artificial cavern, and the hillside ...
— Long Ago, Far Away • William Fitzgerald Jenkins AKA Murray Leinster
... very hour Of guilty pride and power Full on the circumcised Thy vengeance fell. Then the fields were heaped with dead, Then the streams with gore were red, And every bird of prey, and every beast, From wood and cavern thronged to Thy ...
— The Miscellaneous Writings and Speeches of Lord Macaulay, Vol. 3. (of 4) • Thomas Babington Macaulay
... among them in the very places where, if they had not been, a painter with a poet's feeling would have imagined them. Crossed the river (its name Bodi), entered the sweet wood, and came to the mouth of the cavern, with the man who shews it. It was a huge place, eight hundred feet in length, and more in depth, of many different apartments; and the only thing that distinguished it from other caverns was, that the guide, who was really a character, ...
— The Life of Samuel Taylor Coleridge - 1838 • James Gillman
... toward the light, along a narrow beach of white sand lying between the wall of the cavern and the racing waters of the mysterious river, and found that the glow came from a magnificent lantern studded with emeralds, topazes, amethysts, and rubies, which hung by a chain from the roof of the grotto. Directly under this lantern, drawn ...
— The Firelight Fairy Book • Henry Beston
... the creek caught his eye. A large Basswood had been blown down. Like most of its kind, it was hollow. Its trunk was buried in the tangle of rank summer growth, but a branch had been broken off and left a hole in the main stem. In the black cavern of the hole there appeared a head with shining green eyes, then out there glided onto the log a common gray Cat. She sat there in the sunshine, licked her paws, dressed her fur generally, stretched her claws and legs after ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... return'd with his prey, And safe in his cavern he set it, The sly little fox stole the booty away; And, as he escaped, to the lion did say, 'AHA! don't you wish you ...
— Burlesques • William Makepeace Thackeray
... to fetch a candle, while Mr. Jardine with cautious hand explored the cavern-like recesses between the bath and its outer shell, recesses in which lurked serpent-like convolutions of hot-water pipes and ...
— The Golden Calf • M. E. Braddon
... divan, and brandishing a dagger over a prostrate slave, who only ventures to rise when the dagger is withdrawn. Next to him is Nebuchadnezzar on all fours, eating painted grass, with a huge gold crown on his head, which he bobs for a bite every other bar. In the right-hand corner is a sort of cavern, the abode of some supernatural and mysterious being of the fiend or vampire school, who gives an occasional fitful start, and turns an ominous-looking green glass-eye out upon the spectators. All these are in the background. In the front of the stage stands Napoleon, ...
— Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, No. 430 - Volume 17, New Series, March 27, 1852 • Various
... was to get guides for the cavern. While some men were gone to look for the Alcalde, we walked about the village, and finally encamped under a tree. One of our men had got us a bag full of fruit,—limes, zapotes, and nisperos, which last are a large kind of medlar, besides a number of other kinds of fruit, which we ate without ...
— Anahuac • Edward Burnett Tylor
... side of Castri stands a Greek monastery; some way above which is the cleft in the rock, with a range of caverns difficult of ascent, and apparently leading to the interior of the mountain; probably to the Corycian Cavern mentioned by Pausanias. From this part descend the fountain and the "Dews ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 2 • George Gordon Byron
... to love still more the innocent ignorance of my past existence. Wiser than myself, you have remained in the service of the Lord; you have understood the divine mission which had been reserved for you; you have been unwilling to step over the profane threshold and to enter the world, that cavern, I ought to say, in which I am now assailed, tossed about like a frail bark during a tempest. Nay, the anger of the waves of the sea compared to that of the passions is mere child's play. Happy friend, who art ignorant ...
— Monsieur, Madame and Bebe, Complete • Gustave Droz
... disturbance makes no difference to me," he would quietly say, "I am only sorry to have the time of the House wasted in such unreasonable fashion." Then would come another prod and a new chorus of howls rolling thunderously from the cavern under my feet. It is not in line with my present plan to describe this speech; that may be found in Hansard under the date. I touch only on the outside manner as he fought his fight. It was a fine example of cool, ...
— The Last Leaf - Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America - and Europe • James Kendall Hosmer
... The creature shrinks back, and draws slowly away. Its awful eyes are averted as though in a fear it is powerless to contend with. Its anger is lost in an arrant cowardice, and the beast slinks within a low-mouthed cavern. What is it that has power to put fear into the heart of the monarch of the mountainside, unless it is the madness which peers out of the man's ...
— In the Brooding Wild • Ridgwell Cullum
... of the lofty tapestry; and when the pontiff of Moloch asked them whether they would consent to surrender their children, his voice suddenly broke forth from the shadow like the roaring of a genius in the depths of a cavern. He regretted, he said, that he had none of his own blood to give; and he gazed at Hamilcar, who faced him at the other end of the hall. The Suffet was so much disconcerted by this look that it made him lower ...
— Salammbo • Gustave Flaubert
... came to where great trees grew on high banks on either hand and bowed closer, and at last met overhead. This part was difficult to reach because of an old fence, but a little boy might glimpse that long cavern of greenery by wading. Either I have actually seen kingfishers there, or my father has described them so accurately to me that he inserted them into my memory. I remember them there anyhow. Most of ...
— The New Machiavelli • Herbert George Wells
... appears in a very complimentary style to give into it, and consents to her projects. While the Tyrian princess and the Trojan are hunting in a forest Juno sends down a violent storm, and the Queen and AEneas take shelter alone in a dark cavern.—There Juno performed the nuptial rite and the passion of Dido was reconciled to her conscience.—Fame soon spreads the report of this alliance.—Iarba, one of Dido's suitors, hears of it and addresses an angry prayer to Jupiter Ammon from whom he was descended. Jove ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire
... the cavern, and, much startled, Uncle Barney dropped the tin box and sprang to his feet. As he did this Slugger Brown shoved his crony behind a projecting rock, and ...
— The Rover Boys on Snowshoe Island - or, The Old Lumberman's Treasure Box • Edward Stratemeyer
... of mendicancy, had usually its charm for the sternest. So she generally obtained enough to buy bread and a night's lodging, and, if sometimes she failed, she could bear hunger, and was not afraid of creeping into some shed, or, when by the sea-shore, even into some sheltering cavern. Her child throve too—for God tempers the wind to the shorn lamb! But now, so far as physical privation went, ...
— Ernest Maltravers, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... note that the telephone communicates with the observing-station, lying well forward, in line with the dummy trench. The most important of the usual offices is the hospital—a cavern excavated at the back of the trench, and roofed over with ...
— The First Hundred Thousand • Ian Hay
... of that cavern the slow, eerie ripple of motion grew. The scattered lumps melted and flowed together, converging in wavelets of blue flame ...
— A World is Born • Leigh Douglass Brackett
... pirates and hucksters, as opportunity served. Every occupation must have its heavenly patron, its departmental deity, and Hermes protects thieves and raiders, "minions of the moon," "clerks of St. Nicholas." His very birth is a stolen thing, the darkling fruit of a divine amour in a dusky cavern. ...
— The Homeric Hymns - A New Prose Translation; and Essays, Literary and Mythological • Andrew Lang
... about all day through a vast and trackless wood, where his flesh was continually torn by thorns and brambles. He grew hungry, but could find no food in this dreary solitude. At length he was ready to die with fatigue, and lay down in despair in a large cavern ...
— Children's Literature - A Textbook of Sources for Teachers and Teacher-Training Classes • Charles Madison Curry
... whereupon, furiously incensed, the Dey sent the imprisoned knights to the castle dungeon, and loaded them with chains weighing 120 lbs.; and there they remained, cramped with the irons, in a putrid cavern swarming with rats and other vermin. They could hear the people passing in the street without, and they clanked their chains if so be they might be heard, but none answered. At last their condition came to the ears of the French consul, ...
— The Story of the Barbary Corsairs • Stanley Lane-Poole
... themselves anywhere in the neighborhood, the boys got their dinner on or rather in the fire, and then returned to the root cavern to await the completion of the cooking process. When they were all safely stowed away in their places, Tom gave voice to the curiosity with which ...
— The Big Brother - A Story of Indian War • George Cary Eggleston
... she told that day was the story of the Big Bear. She said that the Big Bear lived in a cavern away up in the mountain. She said that he kept watch of the game and that sometimes he shut the game in his cavern. Antler said she had often heard the Big Bear above the voice of the storm. And Fleetfoot, ...
— The Later Cave-Men • Katharine Elizabeth Dopp
... Posilipo, is reverenced, not with the feelings that should hallow the memory of the poet, but the awe that wraps the memory of the magician. To his charms they ascribe the hollowing of that mountain passage; and tradition yet guards his tomb by the spirits he had raised to construct the cavern. This spot, in the immediate vicinity of Viola's home, had often attracted her solitary footsteps. She had loved the dim and solemn fancies that beset her as she looked into the lengthened gloom of the grotto, or, ascending ...
— Zanoni • Edward Bulwer Lytton
... took one last look round the tunnel, felt in his pockets to make sure that he had transferred to them the golden images and the document, as well as all his other belongings, and marched boldly out of the cavern. ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... which opened to receive us, diligence and all, and which was instantly closed and locked behind us; while two soldiers, with fixed bayonets, took their stand as sentinels outside. It was a vast barn-looking, cavern-like place, with mouldering Corinthian columns built into its massive wall, and its roof hung so high as to be scarce visible in the darkness. It had been a temple of Antoninus Pius, and was now converted into the Pope's ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... advice and orders how to proceed in this exigency? Away, away, Mr. Merry; it is not a time to be drawing figures, in the sand with your dirk; the flood-tide will soon be in, and we may be glad to hide our heads in some cavern among these rocks. Let us be stirring, sir, while we have the sun, and muster enough food and arms to keep life in us, and our enemies off us, until we can once ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... ancient men of the tribe, who were assembled there. If it was strong and well-proportioned, they gave orders for its education, and assigned it one of the nine thousand shares of land; but if it was weakly and deformed, they ordered it to be thrown into the place called Apothetae, which is a deep cavern near the mountain Taygetus; concluding that its life could be no advantage either to itself or to the public, since nature had not given it at first any strength or goodness of constitution. For the same reason the women did not wash their new-born infants with water, but with wine, thus ...
— Ideal Commonwealths • Various
... tall, stout-limbed, with a large head and red beard, an agreeable presence, a voice deep and sonorous, as if it rose from a cavern. He was a good ...
— The Story of Extinct Civilizations of the West • Robert E. Anderson
... is a delightful one, but all at once the stranger is surprised to find himself in a cavern, leading as might be supposed to the catacombs. It was no uncommon thing for the Duke to rise up out of a tunnel and appear in the midst of a gang of workmen when they were little expecting him, and when, perhaps, they were idling their ...
— The Portland Peerage Romance • Charles J. Archard
... course, that he had seen the boys as they emerged from the underground cavern that nearly proved their tomb. He had taken a chance on their being his comrades and had made signals to attract their attention. When he received an answering wave of the arm from Ned he delightedly began sending a message by means of the well-known semaphore code. Although the lad possessed ...
— Boy Scouts Mysterious Signal - or Perils of the Black Bear Patrol • G. Harvey Ralphson
... drinking a water called Lethe, from its quality of making people forget every thing, the votaries went down into his cave, by small ladders, through a very narrow passage. At the bottom was another little cavern, the entrance of which was also exceeding small. There they lay down upon the ground, with a certain composition of honey in each hand, which they were indispensably obliged to carry with them. Their feet were placed within the opening of the little cave; which was no sooner done, than they ...
— The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, • Charles Rollin
... of the floor of the cellar there was a well-defined fireplace, and near it were urns and flint implements; in the opposite corner there were many bones lying, apparently unburned, probably those of the last dweller in the cavern.'" ...
— Fians, Fairies and Picts • David MacRitchie
... no right to dispose of it. Afterward, on the suppression of the convent, it fell into the hands of the family to which it now belongs. The exhibition also contains a landscape by Salvator Rosa, representing a scene in the Appenines; a Magdalen kneeling in a Cavern, by Kneller; two Allegories, by Giulio Romano; several portraits by Rubens and Van Dyke, besides other works ...
— The International Weekly Miscellany, Volume I. No. 9. - Of Literature, Art, and Science, August 26, 1850 • Various
... a reindeer bone With rude and hairy hand; I pictured his fall on the cavern wall That men might understand. For we lived by blood and the right of might, Ere human laws were drawn, And the Age of Sin did not begin Till our brutal tusks ...
— The Home Book of Verse, Vol. 4 (of 4) • Various
... and began to think of the Divorce Court. It did not present itself to him, notwithstanding his respect for law and usage, as a proper refuge for dignified grief. It appeared rather as an unclean and sinister cavern where men and women are haled by adverse fate to writhe ridiculously in the presence of uncompromising truth. It should not be allowed. That woman! Five . . . years . . . married five years . . . and never to see anything. Not to the very last day . ...
— Tales of Unrest • Joseph Conrad
... blessed martyr Charles the First, abandon the hunt of a corruptible for that of an incorruptible crown? There is another beatific print just published in that style: it is of Lady Huntingdon. With much pompous humility, she looks like an old basket-woman trampling on her coronet at the mouth of a cavern.-Poor Whitfield! if he was forced to do the honours of the spelunca!—Saint Fanny Shirley is nearer consecration. I was told two days ago that she had written a letter to Lady Selina that was not intelligible. Her grace of Kingston's ...
— Letters of Horace Walpole, V4 • Horace Walpole
... on Roslin's castled rock, It ruddied all the copse-wood glen; 'Twas seen from Dryden's groves of oak, And seen from cavern'd Hawthornden. ...
— English Songs and Ballads • Various
... of a church is the basement, filled with arched pillars that sustain the building. The cavern of the brook, as the poet will have us imagine it, is like this subterranean crypt, where the pillars are like trees and the groined arches like interlacing branches, decorated with frost leaves. The poet seems to have had in mind throughout ...
— The Vision of Sir Launfal - And Other Poems • James Russell Lowell
... man lost no time, and the big screw was sent whirling in the opposite direction. And it was high time, for already the onward rush of the falling waters was slowly drawing the ship toward the big cavern. ...
— Under the Ocean to the South Pole - The Strange Cruise of the Submarine Wonder • Roy Rockwood
... set a board that was of the birchwood of Finlandy and it was upheld by four dwarfmen of that country but they durst not move more for enchantment. And on this board were frightful swords and knives that are made in a great cavern by swinking demons out of white flames that they fix then in the horns of buffalos and stags that there abound marvellously. And there were vessels that are wrought by magic of Mahound out of seasand and the air by a warlock with his breath that he blases in to them like to bubbles. ...
— Ulysses • James Joyce
... by no means common in the Islands; I have never seen it about Guernsey, though I have seen one or two near Herm; I do not know that it breeds anywhere in the Islands, except at Burhou, and there only one or two pairs breed. I was shown the nesting-place just at the opening of a small sort of cavern; there was, however, only the remains of one egg that had been hatched, and probably the young gone off with its parents. I, however, received an adult bird and a young bird of the year, shot in the harbour at Alderney ...
— Birds of Guernsey (1879) • Cecil Smith
... thirty-five feet below. We went down, and in the poorly lighted place we found some priests and others singing or chanting, crossing themselves, kissing a rock, and so on. This church probably gets its name from the tradition that the mother of Jesus was buried here. Just outside the church is a cavern that is claimed by some to be the place of Christ's agony, and by others, who may have given the matter more thought, it is supposed to be an old cistern, or place for storing olive oil or grain. Perhaps I would do well to mention ...
— A Trip Abroad • Don Carlos Janes
... following a course parallel to the flow of the water, the other two keeping at his heels. He did not look around until he had gone more than a hundred yards. Then it was that the little party found itself in a rocky section, with a rough cavern on their right—that is, the bowlders and rocks were jumbled together in such a fashion that there was some resemblance to a cave. The chief merit of the place, however, was the privacy that it afforded, rather than the strength as a means of ...
— The Hunters of the Ozark • Edward S. Ellis
... brief, for, though the palace of Jonah had a sepulchral grandeur about it—a mighty cavern beneath the waves—yet the glittering stalactites which studded the roof, and the cold columns of ice supporting its halls, nearly froze me, and at length I made ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... burning sun of India, through the tangled jungles of Oude, she wandered in quest of the young missionary and his mother, now springing away from the crouching tigers that glared at her as she passed; now darting into some Himalayan cavern to escape the wild ferocious eyes of Nana Sahib, who offered her that wonderful lost ruby that he carried off in his flight, and when she seized it, hoping its sale would build a church for mission worship, it dissolved into blood that stained her fingers. With a fiendish laugh ...
— Infelice • Augusta Jane Evans Wilson
... from her cavern. He saw the sudden gleam Of a tarn in the swarthy moorland; Or perhaps the ...
— The Posy Ring - A Book of Verse for Children • Various
... up the bank to the opening of the cavern which made back into the bold rocky shore, finding the interior about twelve feet wide and running back for forty feet, with a height of some twenty feet. It was blackened with smoke in places, and many names ...
— The Young Alaskans on the Missouri • Emerson Hough
... as neat as a white-washed ceiling. The landlord had repainted it when Strickland took the bungalow. Unless you knew how Indian bungalows were built you would never have suspected that above the cloth lay the dark three-cornered cavern of the roof, where the beams and the underside of the thatch harboured all manner of rats, bats, ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... island twenty years. He was always versifying, and inscribed a poem over the entrance of his underground observatory expressing the astonishment of Urania at finding in the interior of the earth a cavern devoted to ...
— Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene • G. Stanley Hall
... were, between two of the giant's toes. Those brown babies on the jetties never cheered us. They watched us, serious and forlorn. Alongside their primitive huts were a few rubber trees, which we knew by their scars. Late in the afternoon we came to a large cavern in the base of the forest, a shadowy place where at last we did see a gathering of the folk. A number of little wooden crosses peeped above the floor in the hollow. The sundering floods and the forest do not always keep these folk from congregation, and the comfort ...
— Old Junk • H. M. Tomlinson
... down its sleet, Till the sharp crystals pin them to the earth, And they grow still beneath the rising storm. The roofless bullock hugs the sheltering stack, With cringing head and closely gathered feet, And waits with dumb endurance for the morn. Deep in a gusty cavern of the barn The witless calf stands blatant at his chain; While the brute mother, pent within her stall, With the wild stress of instinct goes distraught, And frets her horns, and bellows through the night. The stream runs black; and the ...
— Bitter-Sweet • J. G. Holland
... into the immense cavern which we are now trying to illuminate, the more profound it appears. It is a bottomless abyss. It appears to us that our task will be accomplished more agreeably and more instructively if we show the principles of strategy put into practice in the case of ...
— The Physiology of Marriage, Part III. • Honore de Balzac
... with the object of seeing all we could in the short time at our disposal, which was limited to the space of a single day, or until the St. Magnus was due out in the evening on her return journey. We were anxious to see a large cavern known as the Orkneyman's Cave, but as it could only be reached from the sea, we should have had to engage a boat to take us there. We were told the cave was about fifty feet square at the entrance, but immediately beyond it ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... "stretches"—stretches fists and body heavenward till she raises her heels from the floor, at the same time refreshing herself with a yawn of such comprehensiveness that the bulk of her face disappears behind her upper lip and one is able to see how she is constructed inside—then she slowly closes her cavern, brings down her fists and her heels, comes languidly forward, contemplates you contemptuously, draws you a glass of hot water and sets it down where you can get it by reaching for it. You ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... roared with the pain so loud that all the cavern broke into claps like thunder. They fled, and dispersed into corners. He plucked the burning stake from his eye, and hurled the wood madly about the cave. Then he cried out with a mighty voice for his brethren ...
— THE ADVENTURES OF ULYSSES • CHARLES LAMB
... mounted the golden carriage and set off, followed by the attendants of silver and brass. The procession moved slowly along the road without stopping until it reached the foot of a high rock. Here, instead of a carriage entrance, was a large cavern which led out into a steep slope down which the horses went lower and lower. The giant Zemo-tras (he who makes the earthquakes) closed the opening with a huge stone. They made their way in darkness for some time, the terrified bride ...
— Fairy Tales of the Slav Peasants and Herdsmen • Alexander Chodsko
... marvellous in every respect; as may be perceived clearly from a little sheet of S. Paul writing, and from a larger sheet with the story of the Raising of Lazarus, in which there are most beautiful things to be seen. Worthy of note, in particular, are the hollow rock in the cavern which he represented as the burial-place of Lazarus, and the light that falls upon some figures, all of which is executed ...
— Lives of the most Eminent Painters Sculptors and Architects - Vol. 06 (of 10) Fra Giocondo to Niccolo Soggi • Giorgio Vasari
... words, came a great fear that it was all over, and he lifted up his voice and called to her by her name, and suddenly set himself to run down the slope from the mouth of the cavern, through a place of thorns and briers, calling after her very loudly and often. The elves danced about him unheeded, pinching him and pricking him, and the will-o'-the-wisps circled round him and dashed into his face, and the gnomes pursued him shouting and pelting him ...
— Twelve Stories and a Dream • H. G. Wells
... happiest plunging through woods or panting up cliffs which squaws dared not scale. Yet enforced hiding with a stranger all day in the cave was assented to by this active sylvan creature. She had not a word to say against it, and the danger of going out was her last thought. The cavern's mouth was a very awkward opening to crawl through, especially if an Indian should catch one in the act. There was nothing to do but ...
— Marianson - From "Mackinac And Lake Stories", 1899 • Mary Hartwell Catherwood
... escaped to the mountains," he observed. "We will go there. I can find the path even in the dark, and there is a cavern not far up, where they may have taken shelter. Once, when we were devil's people, we dreaded to enter it, thinking it the abode of evil spirits; now that we are God's people, we know that God is everywhere, and ...
— The Cruise of the Mary Rose - Here and There in the Pacific • William H. G. Kingston
... bottom of the boat. The boatman paddled to the entrance of the grotto, then also lying on his back he directed the skiff into a low passage, working his way along by pulling at a chain which was fastened to the roof of the rocky corridor. In a short space of time they shot into an enormous cavern, 175 feet in length, and over 40 feet in height. Here for a moment or two all seemed dazzled, but as their bewildered vision gradually grew accustomed to the light they saw that everything in the grotto, walls, sea, or ...
— The Jolliest School of All • Angela Brazil
... the Fourth of Scotland, who used often to amuse himself in wandering about the country in different disguises, was once overtaken by a violent storm in a dark night, and obliged to take shelter in a cavern near Wemys. Having advanced some way in it, the king discovered a number of men and women ready to begin to roast a sheep, by way of supper. From their appearance, he began to suspect that he had not fallen into the best of company; ...
— The Book of Three Hundred Anecdotes - Historical, Literary, and Humorous—A New Selection • Various
... clinging to the steep pitch of the gorge, until he was almost under the mouth of the cavern. He put back his head and looked up; it was a hundred feet above him and the cliffs, from where Gloria sat numb with cold and dread, looked unsurmountable. Yet ...
— The Everlasting Whisper • Jackson Gregory
... All o'er the cavern'd rock a sprouting vine Laid forth ripe clusters. Hence four limpid founts Nigh to each other ran, in rills distinct, Huddling along with many a playful maze. Around them the soft meads profusely ...
— On the Portraits of English Authors on Gardening, • Samuel Felton
... "Besides, as a matter of fact, there is nothing absurd. But you suggested rather a fantastic idea to my imagination. The brick liver is not a bad conception. Far down in the bowels of the earth, in a black cavern hollowed beneath the lowest foundations of the oldest church, the brick liver was built by the cunning magicians of old, to last for ever, to purify the city's blood, to regulate the city's life, ...
— The Witch of Prague • F. Marion Crawford
... I found a taciturn and sombre man beside a pair of saddle-horses; and thenceforward, all night long, we wandered in silence by the most occult and dangerous paths among the mountains. A little before the dayspring we took refuge in a wet and gusty cavern at the bottom of a gorge; lay there all day concealed; and the next night, before the glow had faded out of the west, resumed our wanderings. About noon we stopped again, in a lawn upon a little river, where was a screen of bushes; and here my guide, handing ...
— The Dynamiter • Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson
... is the efflorescence of a limestone cavern, given to him, no doubt, but when and where? And how is it that you did not know it, knowing his every thought?" he said in ...
— The Ordeal - A Mountain Romance of Tennessee • Charles Egbert Craddock
... down the narrow stair which leads to the rock-hewn dungeon below the hill.[1195] His tunic was stripped from him, the golden rings wrested from his ears, and, as the son of the south[1196] stepped shivering into the well-like cavern, the cry "Oh! what a cold bath!" burst from his lips. Of the stories as to how the end was reached, the more detailed speaks of a protracted agony of six days until the prisoner had starved to death, his ...
— A History of Rome, Vol 1 - During the late Republic and early Principate • A H.J. Greenidge
... to a roar, muffled to a beast-like hoarseness by his swollen jaws, and the ramada reverberated like a cavern as he bellowed out his challenge. Then the door was snatched violently open and Jefferson Creede stepped forth, looking black as hell itself. In one hand he held the sheepman's pistol and in ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... dispersed, and left him at leisure. He invited us to his cottage, a little white-and-green building, in the style of the old French settlements; and ushered us into a neat, well-furnished room. The blinds were closed, and the heat and glare of the sun excluded; the room was as cool as a cavern. It was neatly carpeted too and furnished in a manner that we hardly expected on the frontier. The sofas, chairs, tables, and a well-filled bookcase would not have disgraced an Eastern city; though there were one or two little tokens that indicated the rather questionable civilization of the region. ...
— The Oregon Trail • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... the reign of the younger Theodosius, and the conquest of Africa by the Vandals. [44] When the emperor Decius persecuted the Christians, seven noble youths of Ephesus concealed themselves in a spacious cavern in the side of an adjacent mountain; where they were doomed to perish by the tyrant, who gave orders that the entrance should be firmly secured by the a pile of huge stones. They immediately fell into a deep slumber, which was miraculously prolonged without injuring the powers of life, ...
— The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire - Volume 3 • Edward Gibbon
... feel that in some dim way the smith is poetic, as the grocer and the cobbler are not poetic, when they feast on the dancing sparks and deafening blows in the cavern of that creative violence. The brute repose of Nature, the passionate cunning of man, the strongest of earthly metals, the wierdest of earthly elements, the unconquerable iron subdued by its only conqueror, the wheel and the ploughshare, ...
— Heretics • Gilbert K. Chesterton
... behind the words, of something inflexible, invincible, grand—perhaps of a flame without heat that filled her empty heart with an unearthly coruscation, like a radiance thrown back from the walls of a cavern ...
— Sacrifice • Stephen French Whitman
... above; and directly in the line of the crevice must the surf have charged, wave after wave, for ages ere the last upheaval of the land. When the Dog-stone at Dunolly existed as a sea-stack, skirted with algae, the breakers on this shore must have dashed every tide through the narrow opening of the cavern, and scooped out by handfuls the decomposing trap within. The process of decomposition, and consequent enlargement, is still going on inside, but there is no longer an agent to sweep away the disintegrated ...
— The Cruise of the Betsey • Hugh Miller
... seen in the cave, however, beside the excitement of searching for the pirate's treasures, which the country people said were buried there. The high rocks met, forming a wide, arched cavern with a little crevice in the roof, through which we could just see the clear sky. The firm floor was full of smaller stones, which we used for seats, and one high crag almost hid the entrance. It was delicious to creep through ...
— St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, September 1878, No. 11 • Various
... connection between cause and effect. Notwithstanding the extraordinary intelligence which this quadruped exhibits upon some occasions, upon others he shows himself to be one of the most stupid brutes imaginable. For example, when he has taken possession of a cavern, and the courageous hunter enters with a torch and rifle, it is said he will, instead of forcibly ejecting the intruder, raise himself upon his haunches and cover his eyes with his paws, so as to exclude the light, apparently thinking that in this situation he can ...
— The Prairie Traveler - A Hand-book for Overland Expeditions • Randolph Marcy
... representation of their sacred reptile. Even if we safely descended the steps, we knew not the secret means by which we might reach the earth's surface, nor did either of us remember the exact point where the long dark tunnel joined the wonderful cavern. ...
— The Great White Queen - A Tale of Treasure and Treason • William Le Queux
... Irad; I will to the cavern,[143] whose Mouth they say opens from the internal world, To let the inner spirits of the earth Forth when they ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... canal that connects the Thames with the Severn; ascended by many locks; passed by a tunnel, three miles long, through the bowels of Sapperton Hill; agreed unanimously that the greatest pleasure derivable from visiting a cavern of any sort was that of getting out of it; descended by many locks again through the valley of Stroud into the Severn; continued their navigation into the Ellesmere canal; moored their pinnaces in the Vale of Llangollen by the aqueduct of Pontycysyllty; and determined to pass some days ...
— Crotchet Castle • Thomas Love Peacock
... within it, and then, crouching down under the trunk of a fallen tree which afforded me some slight protection from the tempest, I remained till nightfall. I knew that they would kindle a fire at the mouth of the cavern, the light from which would guide me to it; I was not disappointed, and, creeping cautiously along under shelter of the rocks, I got near enough to hear their voices. Close to the mouth of the cavern was another, with a small entrance, penetrating deeply into the hill, and communicating with ...
— The Settlers - A Tale of Virginia • William H. G. Kingston
... which her husband, the halt-footed god, had built for her when first he brought her from Zeus to be his wife. And entering the court they stood beneath the gallery of the chamber where the goddess prepared the couch of Hephaestus. But he had gone early to his forge and anvils to a broad cavern in a floating island where with the blast of flame he wrought all manner of curious work; and she all alone was sitting within, on an inlaid seat facing the door. And her white shoulders on each side were covered with the mantle of her hair and she ...
— The Argonautica • Apollonius Rhodius
... he was so covered with infamy, that no person could enter the lists against him, without bearing away some stain of dishonour; that he was, at present, peculiarly protected by the law, and sheltered from the resentment of Renaldo, in the cavern of his disgrace. ...
— The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom, Complete • Tobias Smollett
... days of civilization. With an improvised lance Ahan also speared three salmon in the rapids. The game and fish he dressed for her and packed among green leaves in the cool recesses at the extreme inner end of the cavern. ...
— Darkness and Dawn • George Allan England
... transported to the sea in a few hours without difficulty. Pharaoh's labourers called this region the district of Baifc, the mine par excellence, or of Bebit, the country of grottoes, from the numerous tunnels which their predecessors had made there: the name Wady Maghara, Valley of the Cavern, by which the site is now designated, is simply an Arabic translation of the old ...
— History Of Egypt, Chaldaea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12) • G. Maspero
... inclosures were fenced off for human tenantry, and the glow of embers gave a pleasant, homelike look to the place. Cavern after cavern extended back into the cliff, a network of them, but how far they went would be hard to tell. Perhaps the cave in all its subterranean ramifications has never ...
— In Africa - Hunting Adventures in the Big Game Country • John T. McCutcheon
... dark figures stood an instant, breathless, in the dark mouth of the cavern beneath the marble balustraded stairway that ascended with chaste dignity to Mrs. De Peyster's noble front door. Swiftly they surveyed the scene. Not a policeman was in sight: no one save, across the way on Washington Square benches, a few ...
— No. 13 Washington Square • Leroy Scott
... dread cavern, hoar with damp and mould, Where I must creep and in the dark and cold Offer some awful incense at a shrine That hath no more divine Than that 'tis far from life, and stern, ...
— Poems with Power to Strengthen the Soul • Various
... appreciate that she was very tired, and decided to go back to bed. This time she fell asleep. Her disordered thoughts rearranged themselves in a dazzling dream. She found herself wandering through a glorious translucent green cavern—a huge emerald. And in the distance she heard that unmistakable tumpitum-tump! tumpitum-tump! It drew her irresistibly. She fought and struggled against the fascinating sound, but it continued to draw her on. Suddenly from round a corner came the squat man, his hair a la Fuzzy-Wuzzy. He ...
— The Drums Of Jeopardy • Harold MacGrath
... the brown thrasher, the veery, the wood pewee, the chewink, and other birds. I had heard the wood thrush long before. The phoebe had already come once more and looked in at my door and window, to see if my house was cavern-like enough for her, sustaining herself on humming wings with clinched talons, as if she held by the air, while she surveyed the premises. The sulphur-like pollen of the pitch pine soon covered the pond and the stones and rotten ...
— Walden, and On The Duty Of Civil Disobedience • Henry David Thoreau
... said, "for I know Bimbane, and am fully aware of her extraordinary powers of persuasion. Her magic is potent and wonderful, ay, even to the extent of enabling her to persuade you that this blaze of sunlight is the darkness of the great cavern whence we obtain our shining stones, that yonder sun is the day-old moon, or that she herself is young and beautiful. Therefore I am in nowise astonished that you insist upon my proofs being complete. I am fully ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... fatigue, in so much that Mr Witherspoon said it would be as well to fall into the hands of the enemy as to die in the wood. I however encouraged him to be of good cheer; and it so happened, in that very moment of despair, that I observed a little cavern nook aneath a rock that overhung the burn, and thither I proposed we should wade and rest ourselves in the cave, trusting that Providence would be pleased to guide our persecutors into some other path. So we passed the water, and laid ourselves down under the shelter of the rock, where ...
— Ringan Gilhaize - or The Covenanters • John Galt
... 126. Plutarch mentions, that prophecies of evil events were uttered from the cave of Trophonius; but the allegorical story, that whoever entered this cavern were never again seen to smile, seems to have been designed to warn the contemplative from considering too much the dark side of nature. Thus an ancient poet is said to have written a poem on the miseries of the world, and to have ...
— The Temple of Nature; or, the Origin of Society - A Poem, with Philosophical Notes • Erasmus Darwin
... on the view the opening pack; Rock, glen, and cavern, paid them back; 55 To many a mingled sound at once The awakened mountain gave response. A hundred dogs bayed deep and strong, Clattered a hundred steeds along, Their peal the merry horns rung out, 60 A hundred voices joined the shout; With hark and whoop and wild ...
— Lady of the Lake • Sir Walter Scott
... at first imagined it to be; for, looking inward, he was able to follow the rough walls for a few yards, as they receded inward, when he lost sight of them in the gloom. Also he became aware of a curious charnel-house kind of stench that now and then issued from the cavern. It was just the kind of odour that one would expect to meet with in the den of a carnivorous beast, and Phil peered keenly into the darkness, more than half-expecting to see the shining eyes of a jaguar or puma ...
— Two Gallant Sons of Devon - A Tale of the Days of Queen Bess • Harry Collingwood
... grottoes to which the first party had given the name of "Music Temple." The entrance was by a narrow gorge which after some distance widened at the bottom to about five hundred feet in diameter leaving the upper walls arching over till they formed a dome-shaped cavern about two hundred feet high with a narrow belt of sky visible above. In the farther end was a pool of clear water, while five or six green cottonwoods and some bushes marked the point of expansion. One side was ...
— A Canyon Voyage • Frederick S. Dellenbaugh
... that every argument in favour of so destructive a vice, may be combated by a pen like that of Rousseau, which, Sir William Jones says, "had the property of spreading light before it on the darkest objects, as if he had written with phosphorus on the walls of a cavern." ...
— Paris As It Was and As It Is • Francis W. Blagdon
... Now the cavern door uncloses, now the saint above him stands, Blesses him without a word, and leaves a token ...
— The Poems of Henry Van Dyke • Henry Van Dyke
... to mock her eye's desire, The cavern into which she stared, Was lit with disks and lines of fire; When triple darkness did conspire, The secret ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... and, after a tramp of nearly an hour, I overtook my friend at the entrance of a cavern, where he stood waiting for me. The wounded animal had taken refuge in this cave, leaving us to do whatever we thought best. The poor beast doubtless supposed that within this murky recess he was safe from pursuit; but he was mistaken. Konwell ...
— Sanders' Union Fourth Reader • Charles W. Sanders
... right," said Chet thoughtfully. "You may have shot them—and on Cavern Island. But whose rabbits were they ...
— The Girls of Central High Aiding the Red Cross - Or Amateur Theatricals for a Worthy Cause • Gertrude W. Morrison
... northern aspect of Dunk Island, where the sea swirls about the buttresses of the hills, there is a cavern only approachable by boat. The mouth is overhung by vines and ferns, and through the moss which covers the lintel water trickles and splashes with pleasant sound. When the bronze orchid lavishly decorates the rocks with its crinkled flowers of dull gold, the entrance has a specific ...
— The Confessions of a Beachcomber • E J Banfield
... door; for on our way through the kitchen, with its high-pitched and unceiled roof,—a very cavern for echoes,—we discovered the source of the noise, and of our fright. Within a large wooden packing-case lay a poor little lamb, and its dying throes had wakened us all up, as it kicked expiring kicks violently against the side of the box. It was my doing bringing it indoors, for I never could ...
— Station Amusements • Lady Barker
... messenger, swift-footed Iris; And between Samos anon and the rocks of precipitous Imber Smote on the black sea-wave, and about her the channel resounded: Then, as the horn-fixt lead drops sheer from the hand of the islesman, Fatal to ravenous fish, plung'd she to the depth of the ocean: Where in a cavern'd recess, the abode of the sisterly Sea-nymphs, Thetis the goddess appear'd, in the midst of them sitting dejected; For she was ruefully brooding the fate of her glorious offspring, Doom'd to a Phrygian grave, far off from the land of his fathers. Near to her standing anon, thus ...
— Blackwoods Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 59, No. 365, March, 1846 • Various
... lightly-dipping oars, into the yawning chasm, he stepped nimbly from his boat, and making the painter fast to a projecting rock, he lighted a torch, and, armed only with a stout cudgel, penetrated into the innermost recesses of the cavern. There he found a vast quantity of birds and eggs, and soon became so engrossed with his sport that he paid no attention to the lapse of time, until the hollow sound of rushing waters behind him made him aware that the tide, which was ebbing when he entered the cave, had turned, and was now rising ...
— Thrilling Adventures by Land and Sea • James O. Brayman
... of course, easy. Arrived in the middle of the quaint old bridge, which leads across a cavern some three hundred feet deep, you should quickly seize the tall college graduate, and push her, not too roughly ...
— Perfect Behavior - A Guide for Ladies and Gentlemen in all Social Crises • Donald Ogden Stewart
... knowledge of years; the produce of deep thought and sublime aspirations, influencing, in its bearings, the interests of the many, yet only capable of analysis by the judgment of the few. But the stream broke forth at last from the cavern to the daylight, although the source was never traced; or, to change the image,—albeit none know the hand which executed and the head which designed, the monument of a mighty intellect has been at length dug up, as it were, from the envious earth, the brighter for its ...
— The Disowned, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... kernel stood here and there in the dusk. The owner lived elsewhere; for which no one could blame him. I marched out along the great tile-floored veranda to mention to the stupid mayordomo the relationship of money and food. He referred me to a filth-encrusted woman in the cavern-like kitchen, where three soiled and bedraggled babies slept on a dirtier reed mat on the filthy earth floor, another in a hammock made of a grain sack and two pieces of rope, amid dogs, pigs, and chickens, not to mention other unpleasantnesses, including a damp dungeon atmosphere ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... he led the way out of the cavern. He then called loudly for Hobgoblin, who, after lingering for an instant, appeared with the horse furniture, when Wayland closed and sedulously covered up the trap-door, observing it might again serve him at his need, besides that the tools were worth ...
— Kenilworth • Sir Walter Scott
... was sitting in a double-bedded room in a cheap boarding house in Washington, with Col. Sellers. The two had been living together lately, and this mutual cavern of theirs the Colonel sometimes referred to as their "premises" and sometimes as their "apartments"—more particularly when conversing with persons outside. A canvas-covered modern trunk, marked "G. W. H." stood on end by the door, ...
— The Gilded Age, Part 7. • Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) and Charles Dudley Warner |
