"Curdling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the Bal Jasmin. It was not well frequented; it gathered round its band-stand people with shocking reputations; the sight of a man in a dress coat would have transfixed the assembly like some blood-curdling ghost. The ladies would have huddled together in a circle round the wearer and gazed at him open-mouthed. He would subsequently have had to pay for the ball's liquid refreshment. The Bal Jasmin did not employ meretricious ornament to attract custom. A low gallery containing tables ran ...
— The Beloved Vagabond • William J. Locke
... breeze was light, the horizon was veiled with a liquid haze. Albert's mind was veiled with a similar haze and the idea he wanted would not come. He was losing his desire to find it and was, in fact, dropping into a doze when aroused by a blood-curdling outburst of barks and yelps and growls behind him, at his very heels. He came out of his nap with a jump and, scrambling to a sitting position and turning, he saw a small Boston bull-terrier standing within a yard of his ankles and, apparently, trying to turn ...
— The Portygee • Joseph Crosby Lincoln
... borne by Bedstraws has been derived from the Greek gala, milk, because they all possess to some extent the power of curdling milk when added to it. Similarly the appellation "Cheese rennet," or, Cheese running (from gerinnen, to coagulate), is given to these plants. Highlanders make special use of the common Yellow Bedstraw for this purpose, ...
— Herbal Simples Approved for Modern Uses of Cure • William Thomas Fernie
... of pewter to be brought, which weighed about sixty pounds, and flung it into the middle of the cake inside the furnace. By this means, and by piling on wood and stirring now with pokers and now with iron rods, the curdling mass rapidly began to liquefy. Then, knowing I had brought the dead to life again, against the firm opinion of those ignoramuses, I felt such vigor fill my veins that all those pains of fever, all those fears ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Volume 6 - Subtitle: Little Journeys to the Homes of Eminent Artists • Elbert Hubbard
... fair women in their brocades and diamonds, those dark young princesses and duchesses in velvet and in pearls. He dreamed of them sometimes, fancying himself one of those Djin of the southern mountains of whom the Moors told blood-curdling tales, and in the dream he flew down from the gallery on broad, black wings and carried off the youngest and most beautiful, straight to his ...
— In The Palace Of The King - A Love Story Of Old Madrid • F. Marion Crawford
... up their chant, which still went unceasingly on. Again a man sprang to his feet and went through the same horrid motions. This time the performer took from the fire a sharp nail and, with a piece of the sandy limestone common to this region, proceeded with a series of blood-curdling howls to hammer it down into the top of his head, where it presently stuck upright, while he tottered dizzily around until it was pulled out with apparent effort and with a hollow snap by one ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... thing about you I care for." He was leading her firmly away from the gate though she resisted slightly. There was a sort of joy in his eyes which frightened her. "You are not a princess in disguise," he said with an unexpected laugh she found blood-curdling. "And that's all I care for. You had better understand that I am not blind and not a fool. And then it's plain for even a fool to see that things have been going hard with you. You are on a lee shore and eating ...
— Chance • Joseph Conrad
... the wan blue, wan and pale themselves, and wearing a certain air of fixed calm, the type of an eternal quiet. At the base of the hills lay the city, a dirty mass of bricks and smoke and dust, and at its far edge flowed the Wabash,—deep here, tinted with green, writhing and gurgling and curdling on the banks over shelving ledges of lichen and mud-covered rock. Beyond it yawned the opening to the great West,—the Prairies. Not the dreary deadness here, as farther west. A plain dark russet in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... showed himself, alone, To do his ghostly battling, With curdling groan and dismal moan, And lots of chains a-rattling! But no—the chiel's stout Gaelic stuff Withstood all ghostly harrying; His fingers closed upon the snuff Which upwards he ...
— Fifty Bab Ballads • William S. Gilbert
... known that "rennet" prepared from the calf's stomach has a remarkable effect in rapidly curdling milk, and this property is utilized in the manufacture of cheese. Now, a similar ferment is abundant in the gastric juice, and may be called rennin. It causes milk to clot, and does this by so acting on the casein as to make the milk set into a jelly. Mothers are sometimes frightened when their ...
— A Practical Physiology • Albert F. Blaisdell
... hold of the beast and made a thing of horror of what a moment before had been a noble-looking animal; for suddenly a strange hissing noise issued from its jaws, its lips curled upward until it smiled—smiled, Mr. Cleek!—oh, the ghastliest, most awful, most blood-curdling smile imaginable—and then, with a sort of mingled snarl and bark, it clamped its jaws together and crushed the boy's head as ...
— Cleek: the Man of the Forty Faces • Thomas W. Hanshew
... while forward the boat seemed striking on a ledge; the sail collapsed and exploded; a .. gush of scalding vapor shot up near by; something rolled and tumbled like an earthquake beneath us. The whole crew were half suffocated as they were tossed helter-skelter into the white curdling cream of the squall. Squall, whale, and harpoon had all blended together; and the whale, merely grazed by the iron, escaped. Though completely swamped, the boat was nearly unharmed. Swimming round it we picked up the floating oars, and lashing them across ...
— Moby-Dick • Melville
... description of the panther reminds your editor of an interesting experience he had in the Adirondacks. Ingersoll says that "'the blood-curdling screams' of the puma have furnished forth many a fine tale for the camp-fire, but evidence of this screaming which will bear sober cross-examination is scant." In the fall of 1875 we were camping in a little clearing on the bank of the Racquette River; one of our guides, an impulsive ...
— The Great Round World and What Is Going On In It, Vol. 1, No. 50, October 21, 1897 - A Weekly Magazine for Boys and Girls • Various
... gradually awakens; the sighing and howling of the bleak winds are heard above; the vapor palpitates in the first rays of the coming sun, and a drifting ice-floe of curdling clouds drives wildly o'er this quickening sea ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 6, No. 6, December 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... to Molly the plots of the White Supremacy League in all its blood-curdling details, naming every man and woman who were to be the victims ...
— Hanover; Or The Persecution of the Lowly - A Story of the Wilmington Massacre. • David Bryant Fulton
... members. Departure. Squabbles. Port Augusta. Coogee Mahomet. Mr. Roberts and Tommy. Westward ho!. The equipment. Dinner and a sheep. The country. A cattle ranch. Stony plateau. The Elizabeth. Mr. Moseley. Salt lakes. Coondambo. Curdling tea. An indented hill. A black boy's argument. Pale-green-foliaged tree. A lost officer. Camels poisoned. Mount Finke in the winter. Wynbring. A new route. A good Mussulman. Depart from Wynbring. New places. Antediluvian cisterns. Still westwards. Lake Bring. Rain and a bath. ...
— Australia Twice Traversed, The Romance of Exploration • Ernest Giles
... generally curdled; a fact which leads the inexperienced mother to infer that the child is suffering from acidity; and to counteract the supposed evil magnesia is given again and again. This is a useless and pernicious practice, for curdling or coagulation of the milk always takes place in the stomach, and is produced by the gastric juice, and is so far from being a morbid process, that milk cannot be properly digested ...
— The Maternal Management of Children, in Health and Disease. • Thomas Bull, M.D.
... the silence which lay everywhere, a blood-curdling thing happened. Betty's "clanking chain" came in contact with something of iron reared up near the window and gave forth a fearsome sound. Cold chills played about Cyril's back, a distant dog barked—and ...
— An Australian Lassie • Lilian Turner
... in the distance there sounded forth those awful blood-curdling howls of wild beasts that she had heard when she sat alone by the water-tank, and each time she heard a shudder passed through her and instinctively she swerved a trifle toward her companion, then straightened up again and ...
— A Voice in the Wilderness • Grace Livingston Hill
... police car already in his hand. And then the little party seemed suddenly turned to stone. For a few breathless seconds not one of them moved. Out into the clammy night air came the echoes of a hideous, inhuman, blood-curdling scream. Quest was the first to recover himself. He leaped from his seat and rushed back across the empty hall into the study, followed a little way behind by French and the others. An unsuspected panel door which led into the garden, stood slightly ajar. The Professor, ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... I went over the blood curdling details and I flattered myself that I surely had a lot of shivery goods ...
— Back to the Woods • Hugh McHugh
... which underlay all her veneer of harmless gentility and fine manners, raised a loud, shrill laugh, ending in a multitude of reverberations like a bell. There was about this unnatural metallic laughter something fairly blood-curdling in its disclosure of overstrained emotion. She laughed and laughed, while the room was silent except for that, and every eye was fixed upon her. Poor, little Estella Griggs, of all that accusing company of Arthur Carroll's petty creditors, had the ...
— The Debtor - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... turned him 445 Again to that fierce strife, And Caius Cossus mounted, And rode for death and life. Loud clanged beneath his horse-hoofs The helmets of the dead, 450 And many a curdling pool of blood Splashed him from heel to head. So came he far to southward, Where fought the Roman host, Against the banners of the marsh 455 And banners of the coast. Like corn before the sickle The stout Lavinians fell, Beneath the ...
— Narrative and Lyric Poems (first series) for use in the Lower School • O. J. Stevenson
... lamp-lighting time came. A little gleam came cheerfully toward him out of the dark. He hurried to it, thinking of the fine supper the kind-hearted farmers would doubtless give him, when, just as he reached the gate of the door-yard, there was a most blood-curdling uproar, and two or three furious dogs came bounding ...
— The Dozen from Lakerim • Rupert Hughes
... CREAM.—Beat up the whole of a fresh egg in a basin, and then pour boiling tea over it gradually to prevent its curdling; it is difficult from the taste, to distinguish ...
— Burroughs' Encyclopaedia of Astounding Facts and Useful Information, 1889 • Barkham Burroughs
... finding an opportunity of recovering his lost treasure. Wotan appears, and taunts him with his impotence, telling him meanwhile of Siegfried's speedy arrival. Mime and Siegfried soon appear. The dwarf tries to excite the feeling of fear in Siegfried's bosom by a blood-curdling description of the terrible dragon, but finding it useless, leaves Siegfried at the mouth of Fafner's cave and retires into the brake. Left alone, Siegfried yields to the fascination of the summer woods. Round ...
— The Opera - A Sketch of the Development of Opera. With full Descriptions - of all Works in the Modern Repertory • R.A. Streatfeild
... crimson damask waistcoat and breeches, a red feather in his hat, and a diamond cross hanging from a gold chain at his neck? There, perhaps, glass in hand, and "doxy on his knee," he had roared out many a blood-curdling ditty in the choice society of ruffians only less ruffianly than himself. Perhaps, too, this other spacious building adjacent to the great hall, and connected with it by a ruinous covered way, had been the sybarite's "harem"; for "Blackbeard"—like ...
— Pieces of Eight • Richard le Gallienne
... the thud of a very heavy body colliding with a wall, and another blood-curdling scream of rage—then the thunder of what might have been an avalanche as part of a near-by wall collapsed, and a brute as big as Leviathan ...
— Guns of the Gods • Talbot Mundy
... Sweater had carefully rehearsed this speech and he delivered it very effectively. Some of those Socialists, he said, were well-meaning but mistaken people, who did not realize the harm that would result if their extraordinary ideas were ever put into practice. He lowered his voice to a blood-curdling stage whisper ...
— The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists • Robert Tressell
... muscles of his face set, it would not have been so appalling. But this deadly composure, the careless indifference with which he held his pistol in his right hand, while his left hung loosely at his side, was more than terrifying; it was fairly blood-curdling. ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... midst of the curdling and the circling of it all we seem dimly to catch a glimpse of a state in which the reality to be known and the power of knowing shall have become so mutually adequate that each exhaustively is absorbed by ...
— The Will to Believe - and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • William James
... brought blood-curdling growls from Black Bruin, who evidently did not intend to take any chances ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... floor, and a rattle of ponderous sabres. Their black conical caps and long beards, their great side-buttoned coats, and pockets stuffed with protrusive cartridges, their prancing horses, their leaded knouts, struck a blood-curdling discord amid the prayerful, white-wrapped figures. The rumble of worship ceased, the cantor, suddenly isolated, was heard soaring ecstatically; then he, too, turned his head uneasily and his roulade ...
— Ghetto Comedies • Israel Zangwill
... blazes are you growling at? Had I, in blood-curdling whisper, told you that once again there was a face at the window, you would have scoffed at me. The ill-looking scamp caught my eye after his first glance at Grant. He was mizzling when I fired. You would have sat there and argued about ...
— The Postmaster's Daughter • Louis Tracy
... them came a loud, terrible, blood-curdling shout, and gazing quickly about, the lads saw that they were directly in the road of large cavalry reinforcements that were being rushed forward to the support of the hard-pressed men ...
— The Boy Allies in Great Peril • Clair W. Hayes
... Sweyn and his mother supposed him to be cold and dead-tired, and spared all unnecessary questions. And he found himself seated beside the hearth, opposite that dreadful Thing that looked like a beautiful girl; watching her every movement, curdling with horror to see her ...
— The Were-Wolf • Clemence Housman
... the Crau presents contrasts most extreme. In winter the thermometer falls and remains below zero for many nights in succession, and the glacial bise sweeps over the face of the desert, curdling the blood; the flocks and herds seek shelter from this blast behind the long walls of dry stones, which sometimes the violence of the wind throws ...
— In Troubadour-Land - A Ramble in Provence and Languedoc • S. Baring-Gould
... they got under cover and we were alone again, when a hoarse cry arose in the court—it was blood-curdling to us, as every sound these days is full of terror and possibilities. But it turned out to be only the cry of the sentry. There had been promiscuous shooting along the railroad in the village and all our brave soldiers tumbled out of bed, fell down the stair-case ...
— Lige on the Line of March - An American Girl's Experiences When the Germans Came Through Belgium • Glenna Lindsley Bigelow
... lake a number of British boats with 300 men, mostly raw militia from New Jersey. The Indians went ashore and hid. The doomed militiamen rowed on in careless, straggling disorder. Suddenly, as they passed a wooded point, the calm air was rent with blood-curdling war-whoops, and the lake seemed alive with red-skinned fiends, who paddled in among the British boats in one bewildering moment. The militiamen were seized with a panic and tried to escape. But they could not get away from the finest paddlers in the world, who cut ...
— The Passing of New France - A Chronicle of Montcalm • William Wood
... served for generations, may now be classed as "historical" in the children's library; for the time has come for a series of newer "wonder tales" in which the stereotyped genie, dwarf and fairy are eliminated, together with all the horrible and blood-curdling incidents devised by their authors to point a fearsome moral to each tale. Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder tales and gladly dispenses with ...
— The Wonderful Wizard of Oz • L. Frank Baum
... is there, I'll find him. You must be patient and remain here, where you are safe,—try to rest up from that blood-curdling ...
— The Ghost Breaker - A Novel Based Upon the Play • Charles Goddard
... enough to accept. Then, too, there were intimations of endowments to establish scholarships for women, who,—so it was argued,—after the increasing enlightenment of a few score of years, would be admitted to every privilege of culture offered to men. In short, there was matter enough to send a curdling tingle through the blood, as this tough old ark, buffeting slowly through the years, entered its familiar night. If there was deficiency in the testimony which consigned any special wonder to its keeping, there was, doubtless, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. XII. September, 1863, No. LXXI. - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various
... Powers used to spin, and they lost nothing by the physical appearance of the narrator, with his tall figure, square brow, great, black eyes, and impressive gestures; his voice, too, was deep and flexible, and could sink into the most blood-curdling tones. My recollection is that Powers was always clad in a long, linen pinafore, reaching from his chin to his feet, and daubed with clay, and on his head a cap made either of paper, like a baker's, or, for dress occasions, of black velvet. His homely ways and speech, which smacked ...
— Hawthorne and His Circle • Julian Hawthorne
... to the conclusion that war is rather a dull game, not that blood-curdling, dashing, mad, sabre-clashing thing that is seen in pictures, and which makes one fearful for the soldier's safety. There is so much of the "everlastin' waitin' on an everlastin' road." The road to the war is a journey of many stages, and there is much of ...
— The Red Horizon • Patrick MacGill
... the big motor, and as it drew up to the marshes, he heard a blood-curdling cry from the depths of the underbrush. In another instant he was out on the ground, dashing along the path. He saw Jinnie and Maudlin before either one of them knew he was near. He saw the fellow pulling the black curls, and saw a hand almost ...
— Rose O'Paradise • Grace Miller White
... snaky fingers touched my eyelids as if to close them, and that touch, light though it was, served to snap the taut film of my helpless brain and I gave a blood-curdling yell and jumped up, knocking over the devilish apparatus ...
— City of Endless Night • Milo Hastings
... their manner changed, and they delivered at us volley after volley of language incredibly foul. There were only two of these creatures who paid no heed, and their indifference to us was due to the fact that they were deeply engaged in a duel of words, exchanging the most frightful, blood-curdling epithets. Confident drunken men jostled us from time to time, and frequently I could see small, ashy-faced, ancient-eyed youths dodging here and there with food and wine. My lantern-bearer told me ...
— The O'Ruddy - A Romance • Stephen Crane
... that ran hard upon her track, and not seldom came up with her and bit her cruelly; and in the rear he saw, riding a black horse, a knight sadly accoutred, and very wrathful of mien, carrying a rapier in his hand, and with despiteful, blood-curdling words threatening her with death. Whereat he was at once amazed and appalled, and then filled with compassion for the hapless lady, whereof was bred a desire to deliver her, if so he might, from such anguish and peril of death. Wherefore, ...
— The Decameron, Vol. II. • Giovanni Boccaccio
... then a long one into Dorothy's. I could read neither. If it was horror and horror only which rendered both so pale and fixed of feature, then their emotion was similar in character and intensity. But if in either breast the one dominant sentiment was fear—horrible, blood-curdling fear—then was that fear confined to Dorothy; for while Gilbertine advanced bravely, Dorothy's steps lagged, and at the point where she should have turned into the library, she whirled sharply about, and made as if she would fly ...
— Room Number 3 - and Other Detective Stories • Anna Katharine Green
... was here then that it ought to be, the horrible, blood-curdling it that yesterday was a living, breathing man. Advancing to the bed that was hung with heavy curtains, I raised my hand to put them back, when Mr. Gryce, drawing them from my clasp, disclosed lying upon the pillow a cold, calm face looking so natural ...
— The Leavenworth Case • Anna Katharine Green
... would have answered to this she never knew. For at that moment the door flew open. The little rowdy boys who had been troubling her so much lately, let out a series of blood-curdling yells. ...
— Maida's Little Shop • Inez Haynes Irwin
... burst forth an ear-splitting, marrow-shrivelling blood-curdling yell, that seemed to rouse the entire universe into a state of wild insanity. There could be no mistaking it—the peculiar, horrid, shrieking, only too familiar ...
— The Rover of the Andes - A Tale of Adventure on South America • R.M. Ballantyne
... command with a snarl even more blood-curdling than before, but he obeyed, slinking sidewise a reluctant pace or two, and then springing to the back of the stallion with a single bound. There he crouched, still snarling softly until his master raised a significant forefinger. At that he lowered his head and maintained ...
— The Night Horseman • Max Brand
... association among the ultimate phenomena, called feelings, that this (erroneous) separation of the phenomena into two orders or aggregates—one called mind or self; the other matter, or not self—takes place; and without this curdling or associating process no such notion or belief could have been generated. "The principle of substance," as an ultimate law of thought, is, therefore, to be regarded as a ...
— Christianity and Greek Philosophy • Benjamin Franklin Cocker
... an arrow and struck to the heart Gabriel Baraona. Followed it a wild prolonged cry of many voices, peculiar and curdling to the blood, and fifty—a hundred—a host of naked men painted black with white and red and yellow markings. Guarico did not use bow and arrow, but a Carib cacique knew them, and had so many, and also lances flint or bone-headed, and clubs with ...
— 1492 • Mary Johnston
... A blood-curdling whoop rode the air. Yip's whoop. The Chinaman was dancing on the deck, away forward by the foc'sle scuttle, brandishing something over his head. More than that, Martin saw—the fore hatch was open. Other figures appeared by Yip's side. The gigantic figure of the bosun ...
— Fire Mountain - A Thrilling Sea Story • Norman Springer
... cadence of dancing feet punctuated his slumbers. His eyes opened finally, and within the range of his vision passed a parade of leaping figures. To his ears came the regular booming beat of a deerskin tom-tom, punctuated by an occasional blood-curdling yell. ...
— Lady Luck • Hugh Wiley
... indeed, it led to quite serious affrays if two parties met at a crossing. "Big Six" never gave up for any one. "Forty-one" was another famous engine on the East side. Indeed they had a rather menacing song they sometimes shouted out to their rivals, which contained these two blood-curdling lines: ...
— A Little Girl in Old New York • Amanda Millie Douglas
... storm to cease, but this was because the gang of wreckers had to haul up the ship and gather in their plunder. She kept up so lively an account of their doings that Molly left the Applebys to their own devices and Mary drew the Hipses to shore that she might listen to Polly's blood-curdling account of Bold Ben and the rest. Polly did not have to draw altogether from her imagination, for her brothers had been too often her playmates for her not to be ready with tales ...
— Three Little Cousins • Amy E. Blanchard
... and constructed in the same general way described in the preceding paragraphs. As it is naturally to be supposed, there existed always a desperate rivalry between the two forts. Some of the scenes enacted there long ago are full of blood-curdling adventure and reckless indifference to the preservation of life. The following is a true picture of one of the annual gatherings of the Indian trappers who came there to dispose of their season's furs, more than ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... new country that needed to be "opened up." He quoted Manville Fenn and other writers of boys' adventure stories thirty or forty years old to show the dangers of Australia and his own indomitable courage in tackling them: he told of Captain Cook's heart and many other blood-curdling tales, and was greeted with ironical cheers and laughter. They explained to him at great length all about the civilization of Australia, and when, an hour after the Devon coast had dropped below the horizon he became miserably sea-sick, they formed a procession before ...
— Captivity • M. Leonora Eyles
... a long time lost in thought, and at last a curdling smile lit up his swarthy face. Smee had been waiting for it. 'Unrip your plan, captain,' ...
— Peter and Wendy • James Matthew Barrie
... from Thompson's blood-curdling tales. I felt very anaemic and insignificant as I listened ...
— The Net • Rex Beach
... adventures of the night before, and, horrified that he had allowed himself to sleep, he hastily jumped up, and determined to get away from the ruins as quickly as possible. The tramps were all sleeping soundly, and the only noises to be heard were the sound of their breathing and the blood-curdling hoot of some owl perched on the pillars of the old portico. The boy picked his way carefully between the bodies of the sleeping men, and in a minute stood once more on the grand flight of steps outside. He was trembling for fear some tramp would awake and prevent ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... the planks had been started, and the water rushed in in torrents. The flames increase, the guns become heated and go off, and at last the ship suddenly sinks from our view, whilst the loud and awful death-cry of five hundred helpless beings, imprisoned in the burning vessel, rings in our ears, curdling our blood, and seeming as if it would burst the very vault of Heaven with its appalling tones. It was a fitting knell to be rung ...
— Hair Breadth Escapes - Perilous incidents in the lives of sailors and travelers - in Japan, Cuba, East Indies, etc., etc. • T. S. Arthur
... Tooth," "Captain Kidd," "The Witch Flymaker," and an admirable collection of unearthly German tales, such as "The Devil's Elixir," by Hoffmann (abridged), "Jacob the Bowl," "Rubezahl," "Der Freyschutz," and many more, but all of the unearthly blood-curdling kind. Singly, they were appalling enough to any one in those days when the supernatural still thrilled the strongest minds, but taken altogether for steady reading, the book was a perfect Sabbat of deviltry and dramatic horrors. The tales were well told, or translated in very simple ...
— Memoirs • Charles Godfrey Leland
... bitter nights in camp, the long wet marches, the trumpet call to battle. It was this last that his imagination seized upon most eagerly. He saw the silent massing of troops, the stealthy advance through the woods; and he heard the blood-curdling rebel yell as the line swept forward from cover like a tidal wave, with his father ...
— The Vision Spendid • William MacLeod Raine
... for all that happened; to make real and living the hoarse roll of musketry, the savage cries of desperadoes stripped to the waist and glistening in their sweat; to give echo to the blood-curdling notes of Chinese trumpets; to limn the tall mountains of flames licking sky high. If there is failure in these efforts, it is due ...
— Indiscreet Letters From Peking • B. L. Putman Weale
... and sunny on this especial morning for George's blood- curdling readings about "Bar. falling," "atmospheric disturbance, passing in an oblique line over Southern Europe," and "pressure increasing," to very much upset us: and so, finding that he could not make us wretched, and was only wasting his time, he sneaked the cigarette ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... that Malcolm had left his side, he sat motionless, drawn into himself, and struggling to suppress the curdling shiver. Some of the women gathered about him, but he assured them it was nothing more ...
— Malcolm • George MacDonald
... the storm soon passed and was followed by a drizzling rain and the promise of a gloomy night. As the howling wind ceased their clamor, new blood-curdling sounds smote the girl's ears—the cries of wounded and dying men and horses. Then the ghastly truth, scarcely thought of in the preceding excitement, sickened her heart, for she remembered that, scattered over the lawn and within the grove, were mutilated, bleeding forms. ...
— Miss Lou • E. P. Roe
... burn with green fire like so much shattering chrysoprase; and how, ever and anon, startling you with its white flash, a jet of spray leaps hissing out of the fall like a rocket, bursting in the wind and driven away in dust, filling the air with light; and how, through the curdling wreaths of the restless, crashing abyss below, the blue of the water, paled by the foam in its body, shows purer than the sky through white rain-cloud; while the shuddering iris stoops in tremulous stillness over all, fading and flushing alternately through the choking spray ...
— Modern Painters Volume I (of V) • John Ruskin
... it all, Pink, there's a funnier side to it than that, and it's near driving me crazy trying to figure it out. Yuh needn't tell anybody, Pink, but it's like this: I was just merely and simply romancing when I told that there blood-curdling tale! I never was south uh the Wyoming line except when I was riding in a circus and toured through, and that's the truth. I never was down in the San Simon basin. I never set on no pinnacle with no field glasses—" Andy ...
— The Happy Family • Bertha Muzzy Bower
... very devil of energy took hold of him with the coming of the storm, and he became a human dynamo. He pounded the frightened crew unmercifully, dragging the screaming islanders back to their work by the hair of their heads, and heaping upon them curses that were strange and blood-curdling. That he was a good sailorman I had little doubt. He handled The Waif with skill and patience, while the crew, with rolling eyes and quivering lips, were so terrorized by his wrath that they fled to do ...
— The White Waterfall • James Francis Dwyer
... nigh streamlet ran; Forgot were hatred, wrongs, and fears; The plaintive voice alone she hears, Sees but the dying man. She stooped her by the runnel's side, But in abhorrence backward drew; For, oozing from the mountain's side, Where raged the war, a dark-red tide Was curdling in the streamlet blue, Where shall she turn!—behold her mark A little fountain cell, Where water, clear as diamond-spark, In a stone basin fell. Above, some half-worn letters say, Drink : weary : pilgrim : drink : and : pray : for : the : kind : soul : of : Sybil : Gray : Who : built : this ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... flapped his wings, and uttered a blood-curdling shriek. Mrs. Weight gave a single squawk, and fled into the inner room, slamming the door ...
— Mrs. Tree • Laura E. Richards
... caught sight of a stray cat at the other end of the garden. In the character of a cannibal chief he hunted the white man (otherwise the cat) with blood-curdling war-whoops, but felt no real interest in the chase. He bound up his scratches mechanically with an ink-stained handkerchief. Then he went indoors. Robert was conversing with his ...
— More William • Richmal Crompton
... Patricia had, outwardly, a blood-curdling philosophy which she frankly avowed she believed in, absolutely, though Sylvia warned Joan that ...
— The Shield of Silence • Harriet T. Comstock
... mighty Hunger Bacillus stood alone, gloomy and defiant. But he knew his hour had come. "Better death," he shouted, "than the microscope!" and with these words drew his sword and dashed forth into the darkness. There was a yell, followed by the sound of steel beaten against steel, then a blood-curdling gurgle, ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 98, 1890.05.10 • Various
... where, after describing the inspiriting effects of martial music in a battle, he hazards an ingenious conjecture, whether a sort of anti-music might not be invented, which should have quite the contrary effect of "sinking the spirits, shaking the nerves, curdling the blood, and inspiring despair and cowardice and consternation." "'T is probable," he says, "the roaring of lions, the warbling of cats and screech-owls, together with a mixture of the howling of dogs, judiciously imitated ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 85, November, 1864 • Various
... Hindostan for the cane-fields since the English occupation in 1810, and serving a good purpose. Their manners illustrate the lower horrors of the Hindoo mythology, they appearing to worship pretty exclusively a race of gods and goddesses invented for robber tribes, who are appeased only by blood-curdling rites: our author saw their young men running, with yells and contortions, over a bed of live coals twenty-five feet across to earn the favor of one such cruel goddess. The Chinese, though in worship they exhibit the milder sacrificial spirit of offering sheets of paper, yet in a more stolid ...
— Lippincott's Magazine. Vol. XII, No. 33. December, 1873. • Various
... light faded out from her face and the flesh of it had that curious look of curdling, as if with ...
— Old Crow • Alice Brown
... schoolmates to seek to belittle the Cranston fame. Louis, the elder, could not invent a whopper so big as to tax the credulity of the school. Buffalo Bill was "starring it" with his theatrical company through the States that spring, playing some blood-curdling, scalp-taking; hair-raising border drama which all boys eager strove to see, and when his old chum and comrade, the captain, went to call on him at his hotel, the great chief of scouts would not rest until together they had gone to see his friends ...
— Under Fire • Charles King
... we left Waterloo at 10.25 a.m. on Friday June 24th 1904 accompanied by Sir Alfred Jones and Sir Ralph Moor who saw us off at Southampton. The latter has had much experience of Africa and told some blood-curdling stories of the manners of the natives. Adulterers used to be punished in a most barbarous way. A youth who had erred with one of the numerous wives of a Chief, was nailed by the ears to a tree in the forest and left to starve. ...
— A Journal of a Tour in the Congo Free State • Marcus Dorman
... been fired at my person. The truculent chieftain had threatened me with a hundred deaths. He was fulfilling his threat to the letter; for, notwithstanding the unskilful practice, I felt, on the eve of each discharge, a certain creeping of the flesh, and curdling of the blood, as if that moment was to be my last. If I had not yet died a hundred times, for at least so many had I felt all the sensations that should precede actual death. In truth over a hundred times: for although but fifty shots had ...
— The Wild Huntress - Love in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... wild night in March, 1875. And he has nothing but kindly memories of a much-maligned man, who, with all his faults, was never the cold-blooded murderer whose fictitious atrocities once formed the theme of a highly blood-curdling melodrama staged in the old Victoria Theatre, in Pitt Street, Sydney, under the title of "The Pirate of the Pacific." In this lively production of dramatic genius Hayes was portrayed as something worse than Blackboard or ...
— A Memory Of The Southern Seas - 1904 • Louis Becke
... troubling those who had wounded her, and the consciousness gave secret satisfaction. Her past experience taught her to appreciate stage effect, and, since she meditated a tragedy, she proposed that everything should be as tragic and blood-curdling as possible. ...
— A Face Illumined • E. P. Roe
... cards and drink absinthe and champagne; they go to the barber's, roll cigarettes, drink some more absinthe and go to bed early, after having visited a music-hall, in which monstrous dancing-girls from Sydney display their charms and moving-picture shows present blood-curdling dramas. Then there is the Governor's residence, the town hall, etc., and the only event in this quiet city of officials is the arrival of the mail-steamer, when all the "beau-monde" gathers on the pier to welcome the few passengers, ...
— Two Years with the Natives in the Western Pacific • Felix Speiser
... seen, and I was just shivering with the vision of that fiendish Catharine de' Medici who used to drop people into these holes every morning before breakfast, just as an appetizer, we heard a most blood-curdling shriek, and there stood that wretched Jimmie watching us from an open door, waving his Baedeker at us, with Mrs. Jimmie's lovely Madonna smile seen over ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... then; but the next moment there was, for he was not far past enjoying the satisfaction of distancing his pursuer, when his heart sank, and a curdling sensation of horror so convulsed him that he dropped his cap, and pressed his hands to his throat; for there, fifty yards in front, and coming toward him, was a second bear, into whose jaws ...
— Steve Young • George Manville Fenn
... should have stayed on for supper, but I couldn't; I should have choked. As it was, my soul was curdling. Another ten minutes and I should have jumped down on the lawn and run round the house on all fours, yapping and foaming at the mouth, and have wound up ...
— The Fortune Hunter • Louis Joseph Vance
... the Lizzie in a blood-curdling whisper as a new pair of pop eyes lifted from the edge of ...
— Joy in the Morning • Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
... cane is the best; I have never tried corn syrup), add one half cup sugar, stir well and put on fire to boil for at least five minutes. Let cool for a short time, than add three well-beaten eggs, stirring constantly to keep the eggs from curdling. Add a tablespoonful of cornstarch. Bake in pie crust in the regular way but slowly. To keep from browning too quickly I sometimes place a tin in oven ...
— Armour's Monthly Cook Book, Volume 2, No. 12, October 1913 - A Monthly Magazine of Household Interest • Various
... side with the fleshless anatomy of a brute, over-sailed by gray fishes with speckled sides, whose broad, unwinking eyes glared at me with maddening shine and stare,—oppressed, and almost struggling, yet all unable to achieve the struggle with the curdling blood that gorged every vein and air-cell with the hurried rush of death,—did I go out of this life red with the sin of murder? Did I ...
— Atlantic Monthly Vol. 3, No. 16, February, 1859 • Various
... warning the night was shattered by a blood-curdling shriek of terror from Mary Moosa in the room adjoining. Stonor's first thought was for the effect on Clare's nerves. He jumped up, savagely cursing the Indian woman. He ran to the communicating door. Clare was ...
— The Woman from Outside - [on Swan River] • Hulbert Footner
... to the bed and bent over it,—after a pause of several minutes, she turned and made a beckoning sign with her finger. Gueldmar advanced a little,—when a sudden eldritch shriek startled him back, almost curdling the blood in his veins. Out of the deep obscurity, like some gaunt spectre rising from the tomb, started a face, wrinkled, cadaverous, and distorted by suffering,—a face in which the fierce, fevered eyes glittered with a strange and dreadful brilliancy—the face of ...
— Thelma • Marie Corelli
... Indian massacres on those very plains across which they were going to travel when warmer days came. Grandma told her breathless audience of giant red men, whose tomahawks were always ready to descend on the heads of unlucky travelers who crossed their path—told so many blood-curdling stories of meetings between white men and Indian warriors that the little boys, James and Thomas, and little black-eyed Patty and older Virginia, were ...
— Ten American Girls From History • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... Catholic gentry used sometimes to alarm their Protestant neighbours with blood-curdling announcements that the good times of Queen Mary were coming back, and 'faggotts should be deere yet' (G.M. Trevelyan, England under the Stuarts, ...
— A Book of Quaker Saints • Lucy Violet Hodgkin
... seen at a real ball. One could understand it was a pure delight to them, and they felt every note of the music. They treated Octavia and me with the courtesy fit for queens, and some of them told us delightful things of shootings and blood-curdling adventures, and all with a delicious twinkle in the eye, as much as to say, "We are keeping up the character of the place to please you." We did enjoy ourselves. The Senator says this quality of perfect respect for women is universal in the mining camps. Any nice ...
— Elizabeth Visits America • Elinor Glyn
... he knew that this hereditary enemy of his would fly to one side of the room or the other. The great question was—which? It would hit the wall, and rebound on to the floor, where it would be seized, and borne back with blood curdling growls for the process to be repeated . . . The game, it may be said, was not governed by any foolish time limit. . ...
— Mufti • H. C. (Herman Cyril) McNeile
... hollowed out, and the rope which hangs from the hands curves in over the feet to add to the illusion. There used to be a saying that cross-eyed people could not be honest. Similarly, perhaps, Newman thought the appearance of bow-legs would increase the villainy of his pirate. Certainly, no such blood-curdling ruffian has been seen out ...
— The Jewel City • Ben Macomber
... distance comes a mournful, ghostly cry. Suddenly it ceases and like myriads of echoes it is repeated in hideous intensity—a babel of cries weird beyond description—so fierce and screeching as to be almost blood-curdling. It seems to come from all directions and distance out of measure! Vibrating over the sands and through the rocks, filling the immense void, crying out as it were for the sphinx, a veritable de profundis of the wastes. The vultures, who hold the fort during the day have given way to the night ...
— The Human Side of Animals • Royal Dixon
... an attempt was to be made to arrest Donald. The young men gathered in the hotel round the constables, and told blood-curdling stories of his dare-devilism in the North-West. The constables were fat, phlegmatic, and anything but heroic. What they had been accustomed to was an unexciting and steady beat in the drowsy old city ...
— The Hunted Outlaw - Donald Morrison, The Canadian Rob Roy • Anonymous
... highly-coloured list of their achievements—but, when it came to the story of the tragedy itself, their accounts were far less detailed and intimate than that in the Record. They were, indeed, for the most part, mere farragos of theories, guesses, blood-curdling suggestions, and mysterious hints of important information confided to the reporters but withheld from the public until the criminal had been run to earth. That this would soon be accomplished not a single paper doubted, for had not Grady, the mighty Grady, taken ...
— The Mystery Of The Boule Cabinet - A Detective Story • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... awful beings sang their hymns, rending the hearts of the guilty, and enchaining all their faculties. It rose and swelled, overpowering the sound of the instruments, stealing the judgment, palsying the heart, curdling the blood. ...
— Bulfinch's Mythology • Thomas Bulfinch
... moments of his greater impersonations. His Iago, standing in the dark street, with sword in hand, above the prostrate bodies of Cassio and Roderigo, and as the sudden impulse to murder them strikes his brain, breathing out in a blood-curdling whisper, "How silent is this town!" his Bertuccio, begging at the door of the banquet-hall, and breaking down in hysterics of affected glee and maddening agony; his Lear, at that supreme moment of intolerable torture when he parts away from Goneril and Regan, with his wild ...
— Shadows of the Stage • William Winter
... confronted by the nightmare spectacle of my brother creeping towards me on all-fours through the open door of the dining-room, and then, crowning this already over-loaded moment, there arose a series of yells from Miss McEvoy as blood-curdling as they were excusable, yet, as even in my maniac flight to the kitchen I recognised, something ...
— All on the Irish Shore - Irish Sketches • E. Somerville and Martin Ross
... more, for when it advanced pieces of sharp shale flew from the windows. To these were added from time to time showers of scalding water. We saw red beads bobbing up and down within. The family of Namgay Doola were aiding their sire. Blood-curdling yells of defiance were the only answer to ...
— The Works of Rudyard Kipling One Volume Edition • Rudyard Kipling
... believe this room is haunted," he said, "I once had a rather blood-curdling experience with something like a disembodied spirit—an adventure that came near turning my hair snowy white from fright and horror. I will tell you about it. The original of my ghost happened to be a fellow who committed suicide, ...
— Frank Merriwell's Chums • Burt L. Standish
... he was in liquor. With the bucket swinging and clattering and banging around, he made a dash up on the verandah, among the pretty muslin-clad ladies and white-duck suited men, creating havoc and destruction, and smelling of kerosene and burnt hair and ancient goat, and uttering horrible, blood-curdling bah-h-h-s, till he got into the card-table corner, and mistaking the wide glass window for an open door, he promptly jumped through it, and fell with a shower of glass outside on to the verandah again, where Thady O'Brien and the fat German with the spectacles fell on him, and tried to hold him ...
— By Rock and Pool on an Austral Shore, and Other Stories • Louis Becke
... the old genie of the forests, who gloats through the seasons over myriads of wooings that are carried on in the fastnesses of his green woods, sounded a long, low, guttural groan that rose to a blood-curdling shriek, from the branches just above the head of the moon-mad man and girl. For an instrument he used the throat of an enraged old hoot-owl, perturbed by the intrusion of the noise of the distant hunt and the low-voiced ...
— Andrew the Glad • Maria Thompson Daviess
... crimped, of course, in the Swede knew what kennels of the town. But a few tried sailormen must go to leaven that sodden, sea-ignorant lump. It was like condemning men to penal servitude. No wonder they swore. And swear they did, with mouth-filling, curdling oaths, as though in vain hope their flaming words would quite ...
— The Blood Ship • Norman Springer
... not deal with the grim picture of the drunken orgy, turned into abject terror as 'the fingers of a man's hand' came forth out of empty air, and in the full blaze of 'the candlestick' wrote the illegible signs. There is something blood-curdling in the visibility of but a part of the hand and its busy writing. Whose was the body, and where was it? No wonder if the riotous mirth was frozen into awe, and the wine lost flavour. Nor need we do more than note the craven-hearted flattery addressed to Daniel by the king, who apparently had ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - Ezekiel, Daniel, and the Minor Prophets. St Matthew Chapters I to VIII • Alexander Maclaren
... that made the expression rougher than if it had been more spontaneous. I really do not believe that he is, at bottom, at all violent. But he tried to be so in this lecture. He advocated assassination and regicide and other most violent and blood-curdling things. His voice and manner, however, in saying these terrible things were not at all convincing. When replying to the critics, he was most violent, and was hissed and shamed, over half of the audience leaving the hall, very angry and ...
— An Anarchist Woman • Hutchins Hapgood
... tales came others of ghosts and apparitions; of blood-curdling visitations or solemn warnings to men who had blasphemed or spoken ill of the priests. Then, as no one could be persuaded to sing, they played at cards and the conversation dropped to more commonplace themes. The only memory that Maria carried away ...
— Maria Chapdelaine - A Tale of the Lake St. John Country • Louis Hemon
... also says on page 350, "Prominent in the society of the Bar was a trapper, of the old Fremont party, who told blood-curdling tales of Indian fights." (See post, p. 111.) It is singular that the Doctor has failed to identify this trapper with the well-known James P. Beckwourth, whose Life and Adventures (Harpers, New York, 1856) was written from his own dictation by Thomas D. Bonner, a justice of the peace ...
— The Shirley Letters from California Mines in 1851-52 • Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe
... attempt was futile as that of a sparrow in the jaws of the little ermine. Only too well he knew the strength of these pitiless arms that clasped him now. He had learned it the night before, and his lust for vengeance gave way to ghastly and blood-curdling terror. What would these two avengers do to him; what justice would they wreak on him, now that they had him in their power? The resistless shoulders hurled him to the floor. Virginia left her bed and came creeping to be of ...
— The Snowshoe Trail • Edison Marshall
... of open spaces between, many of which were occupied by native villages, the inhabitants of which turned out en masse to gaze in awe at the wonderful sight of the huge ship rushing through the air overhead, and to greet her appearance with weird, blood-curdling cries and the beating of their great war drums. Then they crossed the Aruwimi River—an important tributary of the great Congo, shortly afterward sighting the snow-crowned summit of Ruwenzori, glistening in the sun. And here the villages abruptly ceased, and the forest growth ...
— With Airship and Submarine - A Tale of Adventure • Harry Collingwood
... another time, and began a long tale of a ghost who followed, and followed, and followed a man up and down, up and down, the corridors of an old manor house. The hero could hear the ghost's footsteps and its blood-curdling laugh, but he was afraid to turn his head, and when he did—very, very, very, slowly—the muscles of seven little necks stiffened obedient to Sally May's suggestion—he saw a terrible—but here Rosamond broke in with an hysterical cry, "Please, Sally May, ...
— Judy of York Hill • Ethel Hume Patterson Bennett
... down the river towards the agency. We had to pass through the heart of all these camps, and the squaw yelled as only a scared squaw can. The savages swarmed about our party by the hundreds and thousands, threatening vengeance, and flourishing their guns in a blood-curdling manner. A shot from one of them, or from one of us, would have sent us all into heaven in less than a moment. The shot was not fired, and we succeeded in reaching the agency in safety. I have always attributed our escape to the moral force of the government ...
— The History of Minnesota and Tales of the Frontier • Charles E. Flandrau
... meantime the wolves, which might have been taken for large collie dogs at a little distance, were trotting around the house, leaping against the door and windows and occasionally giving a blood-curdling howl. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Plebe Year at High School - The Merry Doings of the Oakdale Freshmen Girls • Jessie Graham Flower
... As her blood-curdling shouts rent the air, the three women were so stupefied that for a moment they could say or do nothing. This gave Marjorie additional time, and she made the most of it. Her entire lung power spent itself in successive shrieks more than a ...
— Marjorie's Maytime • Carolyn Wells
... stay in this city, I heard on all hands some of the most blood-curdling stories of the dire distress which, like a dark cloud, still menaces the people, some of which are too dreadful ...
— Across China on Foot • Edwin Dingle
... all the blame for it? Why, of course the manufacturer. It's entirely our fault. If some poor little fellow sticks in the snow in winter and goes to sleep, a special correspondent arrives post-haste, and in two days we have a blood-curdling story served up in all the papers. Is any blame laid on the father, the parents, that send such a child?—Not a bit of it. How should they be to blame? It's all the manufacturer's fault—he's made the scapegoat. ...
— The Dramatic Works of Gerhart Hauptmann - Volume I • Gerhart Hauptmann
... thickest. Lamb in his Specimens retains the reading of the Qq, and says of the passage: "This calling upon Light and Darkness for information, but, above all, the description of the spirit—'threw his changed countenance headlong into clouds'—is tremendous, to the curdling of the blood. I know ...
— Bussy D'Ambois and The Revenge of Bussy D'Ambois • George Chapman
... pass for a blood-curdling Levantine oath the man of the fez seized the window-curtain and pulled it down; ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... and foot. He was carried before Che' Wan Ahman's representative, and interrogated. He denied all knowledge of Wan Bong's hiding-place; but Malays have methods of making people speak the truth on occasion. They are grim, ghastly, blood-curdling methods, that need not be here described in detail; suffice it to say that the ...
— In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula • Hugh Clifford
... made itself clear, there was no one there, including the burlesquer himself, who was not smitten with a desolating dismay. There fell a silence, weighing many tons to the square inch, which deepened from moment to moment, and was broken only by the hysterical and blood- curdling laughter of a single guest, whose name shall not be handed down to infamy. Nobody knew whether to look at the speaker or down at his plate. I chose my plate as the least affliction, and so I do not know how Clemens looked, except when I stole ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... December. The sunshine was pale, but it suited his hurt eyes better: it crept slowly in the mornings over the snuff-colored carpet on the floor, up the brown foot-board of the bed, and, when the wind shook the window-curtains, made little crimson pools of mottled light over the ceiling,—curdling pools, that he liked to watch: going off, from the clean gray walls and rustling curtain and transparent crimson, into sleeps ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... them were lost! and what wonderful and blood-curdling experiences their crews underwent when they were castaways, or deserted, or were marooned on "the islands"! Here is a story of a vessel lost in Torres Straits in 1836—not a whaler, but an East Indiaman. Some of her crew and passengers ...
— The Beginning Of The Sea Story Of Australia - 1901 • Louis Becke
... trouble, and most of it came through the organ. Some of the rattling panels, in spite of every effort to make them fast, rattled the more. One night when the servants were alone in the house, of its own volition the organ sent forth, to break the still hours, a blood-curdling basso-profundo groan that suggested ghosts to their superstitious minds. The housemaid came to regard the instrument as something uncanny, and, even as the cook had done before her, shook the dust of the house of ...
— The Booming of Acre Hill - And Other Reminiscences of Urban and Suburban Life • John Kendrick Bangs
... with their inflammable, diphtheritic bridegrooms—while they sit down stairs—brooding over their wedding teaspoons! Hiked off indefinitely to Atlantic City with their gouty bachelor uncles! Hearing their own innocent little sisters' blood-curdling deathbed deliriums! Snatching their own new-born babies away from their breasts and showing them, virgin-handed, how to nurse them better! The impudence of it, I say! The disgusting, confounded impudence! Doing things ...
— The White Linen Nurse • Eleanor Hallowell Abbott
... you give to know? Who are you? Carl Walraven's wife, I suppose. His wife! Ha! ha!" she laughed—a weird, blood-curdling laugh. "I wish you joy of your husband, most magnificent madame! Tell me, fellow," turning with sudden fierceness upon the dismayed understrapper, ...
— The Unseen Bridgegroom - or, Wedded For a Week • May Agnes Fleming
... men are still in British captivity. Another Teuton who has sent blood-curdling tales to Germany may be found in the person of Martin Trojans, prisoner on Rottnest Island. It would be good to give these men an opportunity of making statements in London before a commission of ...
— What Germany Thinks - The War as Germans see it • Thomas F. A. Smith
... did she find her deep in a paper, and so the girl was—of medical advertisements. The marvellous recoveries of persons like Mrs. Joseph Huggins, of Arabella Street, Chippendale, who had been given up by six leading doctors after suffering from a blood-curdling list of ailments for seventeen years, and had been cured after taking one bottle, were a source ...
— In the Mist of the Mountains • Ethel Turner
... and ran in silence. Between the gusts of wind they could hear the Lohm church-bells ringing; and almost immediately the single Kleinwalde bell began to toll, to toll with a forlorn, blood-curdling sound altogether different from its unmeaning ...
— The Benefactress • Elizabeth Beauchamp
... carpeted existence, screened from the stern realities of life and death, that many of us are impelled to draw aside the curtain now and then, and gaze for a while behind it. This exhibition of the snakes at their feeding-time, which gave to me, as it doubtless did to several others, a sense of curdling of the blood, had no such effect on many of the visitors. I have often seen people—nurses, for instance, and children of all ages—looking unconcernedly and amusedly at the scene. Their indifference was perhaps the most painful element of the whole transaction. ...
— Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development • Francis Galton
... slow poisoning of a perishing body for many months, and dies amid the yell of a people's execration,—in sober earnest, before God, I believe he is less guilty than he who, drop by drop, pours into the soul of another the curdling venom of moral pollution, than he who feeds into full-sized fury the dormant monsters of another's evil heart. Surely the devil must welcome a human tempter with ...
— Julian Home • Dean Frederic W. Farrar
... possible, he took careful aim and hurled his knife into its mouth. Rising to his feet, spear poised, he waited to see if the knife would be effective. The creature floundered and slashed the water, gave a blood-curdling bellow, and rolled over on its back, dead. A crocodile fights with its last breath to remain on its belly, for if not dead, it drowns as soon ...
— The Adventures of Piang the Moro Jungle Boy - A Book for Young and Old • Florence Partello Stuart
... space before him, and beheld him suddenly grasp her with what he meant to be a loving cry, but which to my ears at that moment sounded strangely ferocious, and after holding her a moment suddenly release her, at which she uttered one low, curdling moan and sank at his feet. At the same instant I heard a click, which I did not understand then, but which I now know to have been the head of the hat-pin ...
— That Affair Next Door • Anna Katharine Green
... the imagination, but, speaking from experience, I will say that of all the blood-curdling sounds I ever heard, the worst is the terrific scream of a cannon ball or shell passing close over one's head; especially that kind with a cavity in the base that sucks in air. At least, they sounded that way till I got used to them. As a matter of fact, artillery in my time was not near ...
— The Story of a Common Soldier of Army Life in the Civil War, 1861-1865 • Leander Stillwell
... an answer, and the men were ordered to close the for'd hatches, and soon the iron doors were screwed down. The gas engines shot off black smoke into the curdling wake of the vessel's twin propellers, and as we surged along into the uninteresting sea the skipper sang out to have the aft hatches shut. The well-disciplined bluejackets instantly obeyed the order, and the iron slabs banged to, ...
— Some Naval Yarns • Mordaunt Hall
... momentarily expecting to feel Finn's great jaws about his throat, and his two arms were crossed below his chin for protection of that most vulnerable spot. The tiger was now furiously clawing at the partition a few inches from Finn's nose, and emitting a series of the most blood-curdling snarls and roars. ...
— Finn The Wolfhound • A. J. Dawson
... of English domesticity that are pushed just far enough back to lose the hardness of their outline in a softening haze of retrospect. There has been nothing more tragic in your travels than a sprained ankle or an interrupted affair of honour; nothing more blood-curdling than a dream of a dragoon officer knocked out of his saddle by a brickbat. Your flesh has never been made to creep: but the cockles of your heart have been warmed. Mechanically, you raise your hand to lift away your optimistic ...
— De Libris: Prose and Verse • Austin Dobson
... about something that interested Eddie Deever far more than all else—Elias Droom himself and such of his experiences as he cared to relate. The rid man told stories about the dark sides of New York life, tales of murder, thievery, rascality high and low, and he told them with blood-curdling directness. The Walker wife-murder; the inside facts of the De Pugh divorce scandal; the Harvey family's skeleton—all food for the dime-novel producer. Eddie revelled in these recitals even while he shuddered at the way in which the old ...
— Jane Cable • George Barr McCutcheon
... in the midst of the flames and the cry he let out was truly blood-curdling. Excited as he was, Pawnee Brown did not let the intonation of that cry escape him. Understanding the Indian language well, he knew it was more than a cry of terror or pain, it was a call for help! Other Indians must ...
— The Boy Land Boomer - Dick Arbuckle's Adventures in Oklahoma • Ralph Bonehill
... In fact, he repeated after the boy, in English he did not understand, a most blood-curdling oath of secrecy, and made the pirate sign—which, as every one knows, is a skull and crossbones—in the air with ...
— Long Live the King • Mary Roberts Rinehart |
