"Hiss" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... the hills: The moon went down behind us, and the stars Dropped after her; but long before I saw A planet blazing straight against our eyes, The road had softened, and the shadowy hills Had flattened out, and I could hear the hiss Of sand spurned backward by the flying mares.— Glory to God! I was at home again! The sun rose on us; far and near I saw The level Desert; sky met sand all round. We paused at midday by a palm-crowned well, And ate and slumbered. Somewhat, too, was said: The words have slipped my ...
— Atlantic Monthly Volume 6, No. 34, August, 1860 • Various
... he said; "if you got there, and found two strangers, and they attacked you, you would fight; then they would give the alarm, and others would come up before you could cross the palisade. I shall steal up. When I am close, I shall make a noise like the hiss of a snake. If my men are both there, they will repeat the sound. If they are not, and one comes forward to look for and kill the snake, I shall slay him before he has time to utter a sound. If the other runs forward at the sound of his fall, ...
— On the Irrawaddy - A Story of the First Burmese War • G. A. Henty
... fashioned him, and she paid less and less attention to convention and a trifle more to the beauty of Agatha's jewels, until the silence at the small table in the corner remained unbroken except by the faint tinkle of silver and crystal and the bubbling hiss of a ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... once. Your observations are as true as they are severe. When we would harangue geese, we must condescend to hiss; but still, my dear Barnstaple, though you have fully proved to me that in a fashionable novel all plot is unnecessary, don't you think there ought to be a catastrophe, or sort of a kind of an end to the work, or the ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat
... and carried his prize to a lapidary's bench. He perched himself on a stool and reached for his magnifying glass. A queer little hiss broke through his lips. Cut-glass beads, patently Occidental, and here in Shanghai ...
— The Pagan Madonna • Harold MacGrath
... draws up the bay, With ripple of wave and hiss of spray, And the great red flower of the light-house tower Blooms on the headland ...
— Verses • Susan Coolidge
... the Power House roof. The storm tore at me. It was beginning to rain. I was near the outer edge of the roof, and ten feet away stood the oval tower. I saw windows twenty feet up, with dim lights in them. Mingled with the storm was the hiss of the transmitter in the top of the tower, and the roar of Tugh's magnified voice. He had evidently been there only a brief time. From where I crouched on the roof, I could see overhead, along the top edge of the dam looming above ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... clary flowers, picked in the dry: the quantity for the above is twelve quarts. If there be not a sufficient quantity ready to put in at once, more may be added by degrees, keeping an account of each quart. When the liquor ceases to hiss, and the flowers are all in, stop it up for four months. Rack it off, empty the barrel of the dregs, and add a gallon of the best brandy. Return the liquor to the cask, close it up for six or eight weeks, ...
— The Cook and Housekeeper's Complete and Universal Dictionary; Including a System of Modern Cookery, in all Its Various Branches, • Mary Eaton
... English again-rising and resurrection; but there can be no doubt that conscience is better than inwit, and remorse than again-bite. Should we translate the title of Wordsworth's famous ode, "Intimations of Immortality," into "Hints of Deathlessness," it would hiss like an angry gander. ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 3, Issue 15, January, 1859 • Various
... seat. Bentley sat back. Suddenly Thomas Tyler was around his desk and had pushed back the hair from Bentley's temples. He drew in his breath with a sharp hiss when he saw the white line which ...
— The Mind Master • Arthur J. Burks
... apricot, came and chirped in the plane-tree tops; the Scops made a habit of uttering his monotonous, piping note here, of an evening; the bird of Pallas Athene, the Owl, came hurrying along to hoot and hiss. ...
— The Wonders of Instinct • J. H. Fabre
... in the pathless sweep Of the terrible northern blast; Above its roof the wild clouds leap And shriek as they hurtle past. The snow-waves hiss along the plain, Like spectral wolves they stretch and strain And race and ramp—with hissing beat, Like stealthy tread of myriad feet, I hear them pass; upon the roof The icy showers swirl and rattle; At times the moon, from storms aloof, Shines white and wan within the room— Then ...
— A Little Norsk; Or, Ol' Pap's Flaxen • Hamlin Garland
... mediaeval warriors. In the wraith-like shadows he saw the armored forms of Conquistadores in mortal strife with vulpine buccaneers. In the whirring of the bats which flouted his face he heard the singing of arrows and the hiss of hurled rocks. In the moan of the ocean as it broke on the coral reef below sounded the boom of cannon, the curses of combatants, and the groans of the dying. Here and there moved tonsured monks, now absolving in the name of the peaceful Christ ...
— Carmen Ariza • Charles Francis Stocking
... arc would melt the soft metal teeth at the right time and with even regularity. He was pale and nervous with the tension of the work, his loss of sleep and his goading of conscience, and when the carbons started to glow with the familiar hiss, he started back as if someone had come in, and ...
— The High Calling • Charles M. Sheldon
... far for a safe shot; in a minute he went down into the meadow on the other side. I then crept on hands and knees towards the nut-bushes: as I got nearer there was a slight rustle and a low hiss in the grass, and I had to pause while a snake went by hastening for the ditch. A few moments afterwards, being close to the hedge, I rose partly up, and looked carefully over the fence between the hazel wands. There was the pheasant not ...
— The Amateur Poacher • Richard Jefferies
... seen his mistake an' th' Dimocrats seen theirs, an' Jimmie come back ter his old roost. Some iv thim who didn't know the true innards iv th' situation blamed Jimmie, an' at a meetin' th' Dimocrats held—crocus, I think he called it—some iv them started ter hiss Jimmie when he begun ter spake. Th' man at th' desk, whatever title he has, thried ter stop 'em, but Jimmie was quicker than any iv 'em. He jumps up on a chair, Jimmie does, an' waves his arms theatrical like, an' ...
— The Lever - A Novel • William Dana Orcutt
... serpents hiss In what was once Persepolis. Proud Babylon is but a trace Upon the desert's dusty face. The topless towers of Ilium Are ashes. Judah's harp is dumb. The fleets of Nineveh and Tyre Are down with Davy Jones, Esquire And all the oligarchies, ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... the superintendent finished speaking when a sharp hiss sounded from an open window. Then another and more ...
— The Young Engineers in Arizona - Laying Tracks on the Man-killer Quicksand • H. Irving Hancock
... predestined creeping things reserved By my sire to Jehovah's bidding? May He preserve them, and I not have the power To snatch the loveliest of earth's daughters from A doom which even some serpent, with his mate, Shall 'scape to save his kind to be prolonged, To hiss and sting through some emerging world, 40 Reeking and dank from out the slime, whose ooze Shall slumber o'er the wreck of this, until The salt morass subside into a sphere Beneath the sun, and be the monument, The sole and undistinguished sepulchre, Of yet quick myriads of all life? ...
— The Works of Lord Byron - Poetry, Volume V. • Lord Byron
... approaching calamity, as well as for that which had been already felt. The whole country, in fact, was weltering and surging with the wet formed by the incessant overflow of rivers, while the falling cataracts, joined to a low monotonous hiss, or what the Scotch term sugh, poured their faint but dismal murmurs on the gloomy silence which otherwise ...
— The Black Prophet: A Tale Of Irish Famine • William Carleton
... one great answer to the universe—the answer of courage. He is still Prometheus, and there is no limit to what he can bear. Let the vultures of pain rend his heart as they will, he can still hiss 'coward' in the face of the Eternal. Nay, he can even laugh at his sufferings—thanks to the spirit of humour, that most blessed of ministering angels, without which surely the heart of humanity had long since broken, by ...
— Prose Fancies (Second Series) • Richard Le Gallienne
... ripples of the current the Seine seemed to be pouring down torrents of living coals; flashes of intensest crimson played fitfully across its surface, the blazing brands fell in showers into the water and were extinguished with a hiss. And ever they floated downward with the tide on the bosom of that blood-red stream, between the blazing palaces on either hand, like wayfarers in some accursed city, doomed to destruction and burning on the banks of a ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... the stream became deeper. The Marchioness, as the water rose higher, gave vent to low cries of fear resembling the hiss of a serpent; then she broke out into ringing bursts of laughter, and drew closer and closer to me. Finally, she stopped, and turning she looked straight into my eyes. I felt then that moment was a solemn one. I thought ...
— Serge Panine • Georges Ohnet
... in an instant was gone. It all happened so quickly there was no time for Mrs. Thornton to think. She saw Willis hasten away and enter the front door of the car they had been occupying; at the same instant she became aware of the approaching train. There was a shrill, angry hiss, and the freight swung into the cut with a terrible roar, then came a crashing of glass and breaking of timbers. The engineer had opened the whistle valve with such a jerk that it had stuck fast, and the whistle did its utmost. It was a doleful ...
— Buffalo Roost • F. H. Cheley
... stands before his victim and marks the utter unconsciousness of any offence with which his eyes meet his own. Such a look would blunt the very stiletto of a Corsican. What sweetness would there be in vengeance if the avenger, as he plunged the dagger in his victim's bosom, might not hiss in his ear, 'Remember!' As well find satisfaction in torturing an idiot or mutilating a corpse. I am not talking now of brutish fellows, who would kick a stock or stone which they stumbled over, but of men intelligent enough to understand what ...
— Dr. Heidenhoff's Process • Edward Bellamy
... has pictured the old Temeraire Tugged to her last berth. Why the sun and the air In that soul-stirring canvas, seem fired with the glory Of such a brave ship, with so splendid a story! Well, look on that picture, my lads, and on this! And—no, do not crack out a curse like a hiss, But with stout CONAN DOYLE—he has passion and grip!— Demand that they give us back NELSON's ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, Sep. 24, 1892 • Various
... onward, In silence and in gloom, The dreary pageant labored, Till it reached the house of doom. Then first a woman's voice was heard In jeer and laughter loud, And an angry cry and a hiss arose From the heart of the tossing crowd: Then, as the Graeme looked upward, He saw the ugly smile Of him who sold his king for ...
— The World's Best Poetry, Volume 8 • Various
... the dragons? Oh, please go on!—there's always dragons in 'chanted castles, you know, to guard the lovely Princess,—aren't you going to have any dragons that hiss, you know, an' spit out smoke, an' flames? Oh!—do please have a dragon." And Small Porges appeared from the other side of the hay-mow, flushed, ...
— The Money Moon - A Romance • Jeffery Farnol
... gathered in Pandemonium to hear the news of his success, which he related, overjoyed at having wrought the ruin of mankind and revenged himself on God by so small a thing as the eating of an apple. As he concluded and stood waiting their applause, he heard a universal hiss, and saw himself surrounded by serpents, and himself changing into an enormous dragon. The great hall was filled with the monsters, scorpions, asps, hydras, and those who stood waiting without with applause for their leader were likewise changed into loathsome reptiles. Without the hall ...
— National Epics • Kate Milner Rabb
... your hand too recklessly into an owl hole, for a hiss and a sudden nip may show that an opossum has taken up his quarters there. If you must, pull him out by his squirming, naked tail, but do not carry him home, as he makes a poor pet, and between hen-house traps and irate farmers, he has good reason, in this part of the country ...
— The Log of the Sun - A Chronicle of Nature's Year • William Beebe
... upheaved at such short intervals that the scene of devastation was completely shut out from the observers on the hills; but every few minutes they felt a sickening shock, and heard a momentary and horrible crash and hiss which seemed to fill all the air. The instantaneous motor-bombs were tearing up the sea-board, and grinding ...
— The Great War Syndicate • Frank Stockton
... savagely. For all his polish, his courtesies, and civilities had not succeeded in making Charlie conceal how much he feared and disliked him. The young horse rears the first time it hears the adder's hiss, and the dove's eye trembles instinctively when the hawk is near. Charlie half knew and half guessed the kind of character he had to deal with, and made Mackworth hate him with deadly hatred by the way in which, without one particle of rudeness ...
— St. Winifred's - The World of School • Frederic W. Farrar
... stream spurted out, and Arnold aimed it right for the piece of blazing paper. The water fell in a small shower on the fire, and then with a hiss and spluttering, and sending up a cloud of smoke, the ...
— The Story of a Lamb on Wheels • Laura Lee Hope
... With a sharp hiss the compressed gas rushed from the containing cylinder into the deflated balloon. The silken sides puffed out, losing their wrinkles. The balloon ...
— Dick Hamilton's Airship - or, A Young Millionaire in the Clouds • Howard R. Garis
... dark, I missed the third, the bells in my cap jangling at the shock. I brought my teeth together and stood breathless in apprehension, fearing that the noise might awaken him, and cursing myself for a careless fool to have forgotten those infernal bells. Above me I heard a warning hiss from old Mariani, which, if anything, increased my dread. But Ramiro snored on, ...
— The Shame of Motley • Raphael Sabatini
... door was closed tightly and then Tom Swift turned the valve that admitted the sea water. With a hiss the Atlantic began rushing in, and in a short time the outer door ...
— Tom Swift and his Undersea Search - or, The Treasure on the Floor of the Atlantic • Victor Appleton
... from him the bitter word And serpent hiss of scorning; Nor let the storms of yesterday Disturb his quiet morning. Breathe over him forgetfulness Of all save deeds of kindness, And, save to smiles of grateful eyes, Press ...
— Initial Studies in American Letters • Henry A. Beers
... with me, sisters, in my realm of wo, Whose only glory streams From its lost childhood, like the artic glow Which sunless Winter dreams! In the red desert moulders Babylon, And the wild serpent's hiss Echoes in Petra's palaces of ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 6 June 1848 • Various
... that had been muttering and growling in the distance began to burst. The great clouds seemed to grow and swell, and from the breast of them swift lightnings leapt, to be met by other lightnings rushing upwards from the earth. The air was filled with a tumult of uncertain wind and a hiss as of distant rain. Then the batteries of thunder were opened, and the world shook with their volume. Down from on high the flashes fell blinding and incessant, and by the light of them the fire-doctors could be seen running to and fro, pointing now here ...
— The Wizard • H. Rider Haggard
... them my Okkis to guard my Brave; I go to ask them to shield his breast Against the Maha's darts; To give to his arm the strength of two; To give to his foot the fleetness of two; To wring from his heart the drop of blood, If he hath such drop, that causes fear To make his cry like the Serpent's hiss[F], Among the hills of the setting sun, And when there is Maha blood on his hand, And a bunch of Maha scalps at his back. To send him back to these longing arms, That I may wipe from his weary brow The drops that spring from his toil." ...
— Traditions of the North American Indians, Vol. 1 (of 3) • James Athearn Jones
... de paper, sir. I haf heard dis from de chauffeur of de Biedermanns next door. He wass at de hotel himself wid hiss shentleman lars' night at de dance. Dey won't put ...
— The Man with the Clubfoot • Valentine Williams
... forward from his seat, he shook a finger in Bryant's face, exclaiming, "You'll get what's coming to you! Like your damned dog!" His face was entirely viperish. His finger came within an inch of the engineer's nose. His words carried a furious hiss. ...
— The Iron Furrow • George C. Shedd
... reading, and yet these powerful men shrank under his glance. As the nostrils of his big three-angled nose dilated, the scream of an eagle rang in his voice, his huge ugly hand held the crook of his cane with the clutch of a tiger, his tongue flew with the hiss of an adder, and his big deformed foot seemed to grip the floor as the ...
— The Clansman - An Historical Romance of the Ku Klux Klan • Thomas Dixon
... been in church; yet his eye kept wandering furtively, and he kept the tail of it on his unruly followers. They, on their part, drew gradually together toward the far end of the blockhouse, and the low hiss of their whispering sounded in my ears continuously, like a stream. One after another they would look up, and the red light of the torch would fall for a second on their nervous faces; but it was not toward me, it was toward Silver ...
— Treasure Island • Robert Louis Stevenson
... to the people in the street to put up a ladder, and, as she leaned and called, I could see the crowds far down, the smoke and flame bursting out below, and hear the hiss of water as it fell upon the blazing walls. It was a most exciting moment, as we hung there, watching the gallant men fix the long ladder, and one come climbing up till we could see his brave face, and ...
— Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Vol. 5 - Jimmy's Cruise in the Pinafore, Etc. • Louisa M. Alcott
... Hammed, Japheted and Shemmed With sinners—worldlings like Sir Philip Sidney And scoffers like Voltaire, who thought it bliss To simulate respect for Genesis— Who bent the mental knee as if in prayer, But mocked at Moses underneath his hair, And like an angry gander bowed his head to hiss. ...
— Shapes of Clay • Ambrose Bierce
... only other kind is the common grass snake (coluber natrix). This is fairly common. The writer has seen three linked together, lying on a bank in Kirkby-lane, a favourite walk near Woodhall. If taken unawares, without time to escape, it will hiss and make a show of fight, but it is perfectly harmless and defenceless, and usually endeavours to escape as quickly as possible, and will bury itself in the long grass, the hedge bottom, or underground with marvellous rapidity. Like the late Poet Laureate, Lord Tennyson, the ...
— Records of Woodhall Spa and Neighbourhood - Historical, Anecdotal, Physiographical, and Archaeological, with Other Matter • J. Conway Walter
... passion of a hero. For all his practical readiness of martial eye and ruling hand in action, he is also in his season "of imagination all compact." Therefore it is that in the face and teeth of all devils akin to Iago that hell could send forth to hiss at her election, we feel and recognise the spotless exaltation, the sublime and sun-bright purity, of Desdemona's inevitable and invulnerable love. When once we likewise have seen Othello's visage in his mind, we see too how much more of greatness ...
— A Study of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... who would not like to hear the hiss of escaping arrogance, to Herbert Spencer's chapters upon ...
— The Book of the Damned • Charles Fort
... and green-blue light, and the downward orange glow of the high lamps—like an enchanted dream-street peopled by countless moving shapes, which only came to earth-reality when seen close to. The painter drew his breath in with a hiss. ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... his hand, he drew near the bed, set it down, and began his usual rude rousing of His Majesty. Not at once succeeding, he took a lancet from his pocket, and was parting its cover with an involuntary hiss of hate between his closed teeth, when Curdie stooped ...
— The Princess and the Curdie • George MacDonald
... we stopped again and hailed loudly. The only sound in answer was the low hiss of a sea, which had begun to make with the breeze, and ...
— Mr. Trunnell • T. Jenkins Hains
... immersed right up to the neck in a greenish cadaverous glow. One hand, awash, clutched the bottom rung of the ladder. He was complete but for the head. A headless corpse! The cigar dropped out of my gaping mouth with a tiny plop and a short hiss quite audible in the absolute stillness of all things under heaven. At that I suppose he raised up his face, a dimly pale oval in the shadow of the ship's side. But even then I could only barely make out down ...
— 'Twixt Land & Sea • Joseph Conrad
... of silver; the chief apostle Peter having denied Him with a curse, swearing that he never knew Him; the chief priests having found Him guilty of blasphemy; the Council having condemned him to death; and when there was a hiss going up to heaven over all Jerusalem, Joseph went right against the current, right against the influence of all his friends, and begged the body ...
— Men of the Bible • Dwight Moody
... Germans in Douaumont, and the fighting still going on—but the spirit of the French not a jot changed. Here, among the civilians, they say: "Verdun will never fall," and out at the front, they tell us that the poilus simply hiss through their clenched teeth, as they fight and fall, "They shall not pass." And all the time we sit inactive on the hilltop holding that thought. It's all we ...
— On the Edge of the War Zone - From the Battle of the Marne to the Entrance of the Stars and Stripes • Mildred Aldrich
... this, And they began to hiss, And stretch their claws, And raise their paws; "Me-ow," they said, "me-ow, me-o You'll burn to ...
— CAW! CAW! - The Chronicle of Crows, A Tale of the Spring-time • RM
... fur fly 'thout con-sideration. The blood streamed down inter my face, and the smell of that and the flesh choked me. My arms wor straightened clean out with holding on; and sometimes I could jest see the green eyes o' the painter, an' feel his hot breath, as he opened his jaws to hiss and spit at me jis' like a big cat. I felt the eend uv all things wor at hand; an', shettin' my eyes, I tried hard ter say a prayer, or somethin' good an' fittin'. I couldn't think o' none, hows'ever: so I jis' turned raound, ...
— Outpost • J.G. Austin
... fire came upon a hole filled with dry wood and twigs, it suddenly and with a kind of peculiar, rather vindictive roar, rose up in long, quivering points; but it soon sank down again and ran on as before, with a slight hiss and crackle. I even noticed, more than once, an oak-bush, with dry hanging leaves, hemmed in all round and yet untouched, except for a slight singeing at its base. I must own I could not understand why the dry leaves were not burned. Kondrat explained to me that ...
— The Diary of a Superfluous Man and Other Stories • Ivan Turgenev
... with whom she is now joined in punishment: "Because of the wrath of the Lord, it shall not be inhabited, but it shall be wholly desolate. Every one that goeth by Babylon shall be astonished, and hiss at all her plagues. Cut off the sower from Babylon, and him that handleth the sickle in the time of harvest. I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water. And Babylon, the glory of kingdoms, shall be as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah: it shall never be inhabited, ...
— Pilgrimage from the Alps to the Tiber - Or The Influence of Romanism on Trade, Justice, and Knowledge • James Aitken Wylie
... sound in my ears like the never-ceasing surge and hiss of waters, a sound that waxed ever louder. Hearkening to this, I presently sought to move and wondered, vaguely uneasy, to find this impossible: I strove now to lift my right hand, found it fast held, tried my left and found it in like case, and so became conscious ...
— Black Bartlemy's Treasure • Jeffrey Farnol
... interest in the production of the piece. He had come to the conclusion that the public was a fickle, foolish thing, and no one could tell what it would hiss or applaud. Then he remembered the blackness of the night when only two years before his other opera ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Musicians • Elbert Hubbard
... ship's prow, and broadening as they passed, and wrinkling and widening, were smoothed out again with a shake, and vanished. The foam flew up, churned by the tediously thudding wheels; white as milk, with a faint hiss it broke up into serpentine eddies, and then melted together again and vanished too, swallowed up ...
— Dream Tales and Prose Poems • Ivan Turgenev
... eat out of the Dish with him, and did so for a considerable time, till one Morning, he striking the Snake on the Head, it hissed at him. Upon which he told his Mother that the Baby (for so he call'd it) cry'd Hiss at him. His Mother had it kill'd, which occasioned him a great Fit of Sickness, and 'twas thought would have dy'd, ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)
... personal God. Of his mental condition we learn something from these words: "In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers—in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man, a helpless and defenseless creature, finds himself placed, not secure ...
— The Christian Foundation, Or, Scientific and Religious Journal, Volume 1, January, 1880 • Various
... they do, they easily neglect it. If a stone fall upon a man's head, that's evil indeed; but dishonesty, infamy, villainy, ill reports carry no more hurt in them than a man is sensible of; and if a man have no sense of them, they are no longer evils. What are you the worse if the people hiss at you, so you applaud yourself? And that a man be able to do so, he must owe ...
— The Praise of Folly • Desiderius Erasmus
... the carnival time—in the spring. Nothing impressed me, so much, in my visits here (which were pretty numerous) as the uncommonly hard and cruel character of the audience, who resent the slightest defect, take nothing good- humouredly, seem to be always lying in wait for an opportunity to hiss, and spare the actresses as little ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... shuddering hiss, a rocket from a headland beyond the village leapt up and burst hot gold against the glare, and the sound of the third and fourth ...
— In the Days of the Comet • H. G. Wells
... wrinkled foolscap, Small Sam Small went over the side, in his coonskin coat. The foggy night fell down. The lights o' the Claymore showed dim in the drivin' mist. The wind had its way. An' it blowed the slob off t' sea like feathers. What a wonder o' power is the wind! An' the sea begun t' hiss an' swell where the ice had been. From the fog come the clang o' the Claymore's telegraph, the chug-chug of her engines, an' a long howl o' delight as she gathered way. 'Twas no time at all, it seemed t' me, afore we lost ...
— Harbor Tales Down North - With an Appreciation by Wilfred T. Grenfell, M.D. • Norman Duncan
... the thin blade against the stone upon the table, kissing it gently along its full length of edge. The man's breath seemed to hiss softly as the steel slipped across the stone; and as it turned deftly and came back, the hiss changed to a blissful, watery gurgling, thin and long drawn in. A prickling ran across Scanlon's scalp; he had the sensation of warm flesh being cleverly and slowly laid ...
— Ashton-Kirk, Criminologist • John T. McIntyre
... dozens of kinds, though the dirty, sickening-looking, stump-tailed moccasin predominated. There must have been thousands of serpents in the mass which covered a space twenty by thirty feet, from which came the sibilant hiss of puff adders, and a ...
— The Boy Chums in the Forest - or Hunting for Plume Birds in the Florida Everglades • Wilmer M. Ely
... double. They began to traverse the rear of MacDonald's brigade, dimly conscious of rapid movements by its battalions, and to the sound of tremendous independent firing, which did not, however, prevent them from hearing the venomous hiss ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... to them. Sometimes to-day, indeed, in reading his books, one comes across some statement in letter, article, or lecture flung out almost venomously; and one steps back mentally as if a spiritual hiss had whipped the air from some inimical sentence which had suddenly lifted its heretical head from amongst an otherwise quiet ...
— Memoir and Letters of Francis W. Newman • Giberne Sieveking
... tough stems before him, and it was as a window opened on a far view of Lundy, and the deep sea sluggishly nosing the pebbles a couple of hundred feet below. They could hear young jackdaws squawking on the ledges, the hiss and jabber of a nest of hawks somewhere out of sight; and, with great deliberation, Stalky spat on to the back of a young rabbit sunning himself far down where only a cliff-rabbit could have found foot-hold. ...
— Stalky & Co. • Rudyard Kipling
... pronounced this unpopular name, one hardy junior, quite mistaking the gravity of the occasion, began a low hiss. ...
— The Willoughby Captains • Talbot Baines Reed
... feet away. Man, I wuz so scared dat I seemed to freeze in my tracks, and couldn't move. I tried to holler but all I could do wuz croak. Den I tried to whistle but de only sound I could make wuz a hiss. After standing for whut seemed hours, wid his ears sticking straight up, de wolf finally turned around ...
— Slave Narratives: Arkansas Narratives - Arkansas Narratives, Part 6 • Works Projects Administration
... ready a bow painter and a stern rope, and the boat, like a bolt set free, flies to the land. Very probably she takes a 'shooter,' that is, gets her nose down and her stern and rudder high into the air, and, all hands sitting aft, she is carried along amidst the hiss and burst of the very crest of the galloping billow. Fortunate are they if this wave holds the boat till she is thrown high up the beach, broadside on, for at the last minute the helm must be put up or down, to get the boat to lie along the shore, but ...
— Heroes of the Goodwin Sands • Thomas Stanley Treanor
... hear him hiss "Viper!" between his teeth, as characters in melodramatic serials do to perfection, their front teeth having doubtless been designed for such purposes. But his look seemed to denote pity rather than hatred. So might a prison-warder regard a condemned man, in coming to announce the ...
— It Happened in Egypt • C. N. Williamson & A. M. Williamson
... Jimmy, slowly, and emphatically, "that it is my honest opinion that women should do as their mothers before them did, stay home, work, and raise their families and keep out of politics. Stop! Stop! Let me say what I have to say! I can't make myself heard if you hiss and yell!" ...
— Mixed Faces • Roy Norton
... creep, and once more the battle would rage and, working with might and main, the paddlers would force the canoe gradually ahead and over into the eddy of another boulder. Sometimes the water would leap over the gunwales and come aboard with a savage hiss. At other times the canoes seemed to become discouraged and, with their heads almost buried beneath the angry, spitting waves, would balk in midstream and not move forward so much as a foot to the minute. It was dangerous work, for if at any time a canoe became inclined across the current, ...
— The Drama of the Forests - Romance and Adventure • Arthur Heming
... upon it. Their chief deity, the father Zeus of the Northern pantheon, was Odin, the god of war, who wakened the spirit of battle by flinging his spear over the heads of the people, its inaudible hiss from heaven being as the song of Ate let loose on earth. Next in rank was Thor, the personification of the exploding tempest. The crashing echoes of the thunder are his chariot wheels rattling through the cloudy ...
— The Destiny of the Soul - A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life • William Rounseville Alger
... rest are feeding. These sentries station themselves on some commanding point, and when they see an enemy approaching give warning to the others by a peculiar cry. In several of the species this cry resembles the syllables 'seek-seek' repeated with a hiss. Others bark like 'toy-dogs,' while still other kinds utter a whistling noise, from which one species derives its trivial name of 'whistler' among the traders, and is the 'siffleur' ...
— Popular Adventure Tales • Mayne Reid
... me, undulating, as the dry leaves that wirble round in the winds of the winter. And from midst of them peered a trunkless skull, and on the skull was a mitre, and from the yawning jaws a voice came hissing, as a serpent's hiss, 'Harold, the scorner, thou art ours!' Then, as from the buzz of an army, came voices multitudinous, 'Thou art ours!' I sought to rise, and behold my limbs were bound, and the gyves were fine and frail, as the web of the gossamer, and they weighed on me like chains of iron. And I felt ...
— Harold, Complete - The Last Of The Saxon Kings • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... girl's keen eyes pierced him like a knife, and narrowed as, with pale face and heaving breast, she rose suddenly from her chair and faced him—amazed, bewildered, burning with sudden hatred. "And you're another!" The girl's voice was like a hiss. ...
— The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come • John Fox
... riot,—re-peopling the chambers, hearing the last cheerful good-night of that destined Pompeii, creeping on tiptoe with the mother when she gives her farewell look to the baby. Now all is midnight and silence; then the red, crawling serpent comes out. Lo! his breath; hark! his hiss. Now, spire after spire he winds and he coils; now he soars up erect,—crest superb, and forked tongue,—the beautiful horror! Then the start from the sleep, and the doubtful awaking, and the run here and there, and the mother's rush to the cradle; the cry from the window, and ...
— The Caxtons, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... behave to you? When last I was here I asked you for a kiss." As he said this he looked at her with all his eyes, with his mouth just open, so as to show the edges of his white teeth, with the wound down his face all wide and purple. The last word came with a stigmatizing hiss from his lips. Though she did not essay to speak, he paused again, as if he were desirous that she might realize the full purport of such a request. I think that, in the energy of his speaking, a touch of true passion had come upon him; that he had forgotten ...
— Can You Forgive Her? • Anthony Trollope
... for a minute. Tiffles was silent, in order that he might not interrupt the quiet admiration of the spectators. The spectators were silent, because they could not exactly understand the scene, and did not know whether to laugh, hiss, or applaud. The silence was broken, by a boy in the back part ...
— Round the Block • John Bell Bouton
... lost all her woman's nature. She kept the other four hours at her street-door, as if she were a public show. There was time to fetch a mob of Jesuits' followers, of honest Church artizans, to hoot and hiss, while children might help by throwing stones. For these four hours she was in the pillory. Some, however, of the more dispassionate passers-by asked if the Ursulines had gotten orders to let them kill the girl. We may guess what tender jailers their sick prisoner ...
— La Sorciere: The Witch of the Middle Ages • Jules Michelet
... crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings, the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the people, and the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick black clouds and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish scales creeping along the walls), ...
— War and Peace • Leo Tolstoy
... pay to them the tribute, not only of admiration, but of tears. Above all creeds,-above all religions, after all, is that divine thing,—Humanity; and now and then in shipwreck on the wide, wild sea, or 'mid the rocks and breakers of some cruel shore, or where the serpents of flame writhe and hiss, some glorious heart, some chivalric soul does a deed that glitters like a star, and gives the lie to all the dogmas of superstition. All these frightful doctrines have been used to degrade and ...
— The Ghosts - And Other Lectures • Robert G. Ingersoll
... the parties inside came out upon the window-sill and dropped lightly to the ground. The other mounted upon the window-sill, and turned round upon his knees; there was a gleam of light within the building, a flicker and a hiss, and then with a mighty roar the flame swept through it as if following the trail of some combustible. Here and there it surged, down the aisles and over the desks, white and clear, showing in sharpest silhouette every curve and angle of ...
— Bricks Without Straw • Albion W. Tourgee
... rising, and the crash of the seas on the rocks made speech impossible. He pointed suddenly along the cliff face, and not twenty yards away, with a hiss and a roar, a furious spout of water shot up into the air a rocket of white foam, a hundred feet high, and fell with a crash over the rocks ...
— Pearl of Pearl Island • John Oxenham
... fifty paces from us; and then with hiss and rattle as of the first gust of a storm in dry branches the arrows flew among them, smiting man and horse alike, and down went full half of the foremost line, while over the fallen leapt and plunged those behind them unchecked, and were upon us sword in air; and the tough ...
— King Olaf's Kinsman - A Story of the Last Saxon Struggle against the Danes in - the Days of Ironside and Cnut • Charles Whistler
... admiring glance at the pretty, fearless brunette and her strange companion. "They know at once whether people like them or not, and they govern themselves accordingly. I suppose it's instinct. When they see you're afraid of them, they spring and hiss; but when they see you take to them by nature, they make themselves perfectly at home in a moment. They don't wait to be asked. They've no false modesty. Well, then, you see," he went on, drawing imaginary lines with his ticket on the sketch he was holding up, "I shall work in Sardanapalus ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... refuse to harbor even the outcasts of the beasts. Man and wolf alike disown them. Little but reptile life is here found: tortoises, lizards, immense spiders, snakes, and that strangest anomaly of outlandish nature, the aguano. No voice, no low, no howl is heard; the chief sound of life here is a hiss. ...
— The Piazza Tales • Herman Melville
... no other man can, and he thinks he can act! I heard him once at a party of friends. My good Spiller, if his vanity ever prompted him to air his voice on the stage, the people would think he was mocking them, and one half would laugh and the other half boo and hiss." ...
— Madame Flirt - A Romance of 'The Beggar's Opera' • Charles E. Pearce
... its sable mantle over the earth. A silver moon rode in a clear sky, and the lightning express rattled down through the night with a hiss and screech that rent the silence with ...
— Dyke Darrel the Railroad Detective - Or, The Crime of the Midnight Express • Frank Pinkerton
... killed a fat ox, the men are busily engaged in boiling down the fat. Care should be taken to sprinkle a few drops of water in the pot when the fat is supposed to be sufficiently boiled; should it hiss, as though poured upon melted lead, it is ready; but if it be silent, the fat is not sufficiently boiled, and ...
— The Albert N'Yanza, Great Basin of the Nile • Sir Samuel White Baker
... something else; some in a languishing Manner; others in a Hurry; some sing it through the Teeth, and others with Affectation; some do not pronounce the Words, and others do not express them; some sing as if laughing, and some crying; some speak it, and some hiss it; some hallow, bellow, and sing it out of Tune; and, together with their Offences against Nature, are guilty of the greatest Fault, ...
— Observations on the Florid Song - or Sentiments on the Ancient and Modern Singers • Pier Francesco Tosi
... pastimes that don't require much thinking. The long ridges of surf crumble about their knees and the sun and keen vital air lull them into a cheerful drowse of the faculties. Do they speculate on the never-ending fascination of the leaning walls of water, the rhythmical melody of the rasp and hiss of the water? Do they watch that indescribable beauty of the breaking wave, a sight as old as humankind and yet never so described that one who has not ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... her neck would bend a-bout like a snake. Just as she had curved it down and meant to dive in the sea of green, which she found was the tops of the trees 'neath which she had been walk-ing, a sharp hiss made her draw back in haste. A large bird had flown in-to her face, and ...
— Alice in Wonderland - Retold in Words of One Syllable • J.C. Gorham
... fancied that he heard the rustle of the snake over the dingy carpet, and he wondered whether it would attempt to climb on to the bed. He stood up, and tried to get his revolver from the drawers. It was out of reach, and as the bed creaked beneath his weight, a faint hiss sounded from the floor, and he sat still again, ...
— The Skipper's Wooing, and The Brown Man's Servant • W. W. Jacobs
... Christ have been fed on the wholesome pasture of the Divine Word in spite of those monstrous, tearing, ravenous wolves, the Pope and his followers. The enemy of God and man, the ancient serpent, may hiss and rage. Yes, the Roman antichrist in his frantic blusterings may bite off his own tongue, may fulminate all kinds of evils, bans, excommunications, wars, desolations, and burnings, as long and as much as he likes. But if we take refuge with the Lord God, what can this inane, worn-out ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley
... feet in diameter, and slightly funnel-shaped at the orifice. Standing upon the edge, one can see the water boiling up and whirling over about twenty feet below. A hollow, growling noise is heard, varied by an occasional hiss and rush, as if the contents were struggling to get out. It emits hot vapors, and a slight smell of sulphur; otherwise it maintains rather a peaceful aspect, considering the infernal temper it gets ...
— The Land of Thor • J. Ross Browne
... calmly with his back against the earthen wall and trained his pistol upward, ready to shoot whatever should appear. Presently fragments of earth and hardened clay began to drop on the pounded floor of the corridor. I heard the soft hiss of the man-at-arms blowing up his match, and I waited for the crash and the little heap ...
— Red Axe • Samuel Rutherford Crockett
... victory the Duchess, at a cost of fifteen thousand livres, as Boileau declares, engaged the front seats of two theatres for six successive evenings—the one to be packed with applauding spectators, the other to exhibit empty benches, diversified with creatures who could hiss. Nothing could dignify Pradon's play, as nothing could really degrade that of Racine. But Racine was in the highest degree sensitive, and such a desperate plot against his fame might well make ...
— A History of French Literature - Short Histories of the Literatures of the World: II. • Edward Dowden
... not think of at all; to say nothing of the danger of swinging down into the bowels of the earth in a creel, the thing aye put me in mind of the awful place, where the wicked, after death and judgment, howl, and hiss, and gnash their teeth; and where, unless Heaven be more merciful than we are just—we may all be soon enough. So I could not think of that, till other human means failed; and I determined, in the first place, to hire Tammie Dobbie's cart, and try a smell ...
— The Life of Mansie Wauch - Tailor in Dalkeith, written by himself • David Macbeth Moir
... pylon, and Menes put some fuel under a brass kettle. He blew the flame and soon the water was boiling. On the kettle was a perpendicular spout covered with a heavy stone. When the kettle began to hiss, Menes said, ...
— The Pharaoh and the Priest - An Historical Novel of Ancient Egypt • Boleslaw Prus
... were licking each other across the roadways. It was even difficult for our ambulances to get so far, because we had to pass over a bridge to which the enemy's guns were paying great attention. Several of their thunderbolts fell with a hiss into the water of the canal where some Belgian soldiers were building a bridge of boats. It was just an odd chance that our ambulance could get across without being touched, but we took the chance and dodged between two shell-bursts. On the other side, ...
— The Soul of the War • Philip Gibbs
... nothing else in his Lodge to appear in: Confounded, and big with Resentment, he drest himself, and made his personal Appearance in that despicable Equipage. The Populace that were left behind in the Circus, hiss'd him every Step he took, they made a Ring about him, and treated him with all the Marks of Ignominy and Contempt. The most cowardly Wretch breathing was never sure so sweated, or hunted down as poor Zadig! He grew quite out of Patience at last, and cut his ...
— Zadig - Or, The Book of Fate • Voltaire
... you are, kneeling." She went over to the fire-place, took the whip from the mantle-piece, and, watching me with a smile, let it hiss through the air; then she slowly rolled up the sleeve of ...
— Venus in Furs • Leopold von Sacher-Masoch
... noonday of July, There could not run the smallest breath of wind But all the quarter sounded like a wood; And in the chequered silence and above The hum of city cabs that sought the Bois, Suburban ashes shivered into song. A patter and a chatter and a chirp And a long dying hiss - it was as though Starched old brocaded dames through all the house Had trailed a strident skirt, or the whole sky Even in a ...
— Underwoods • Robert Louis Stevenson
... only the wind, the great motive breath of all this disorder, the voice of the invisible power ruling all. Then came other voices, nearer and less indefinite, threatening destruction, and making the water shudder and hiss as if on burning coals; the ...
— An Iceland Fisherman • Pierre Loti
... then, coward! Come on, then! Good! good! On the arms, on the back, on the breast, against the belly, everywhere! Hiss, thongs! bite me! tear me! I would like the drops of my blood to gush forth to the stars, to break my back, to strip my nerves bare! Pincers! wooden horses! molten lead! The martyrs bore more than that! ...
— The Temptation of St. Antony - or A Revelation of the Soul • Gustave Flaubert
... quarter of an hour the two sat with hardly the interchange of a word. From outside came the swift steady hiss of the rain on to the shrubs in the garden, and again the clock chimed. Morris who at first had sat very quiet had begun to fidget and stir in his chair; occasionally when he happened to notice it, he drank off the port ...
— The Blotting Book • E. F. Benson
... fail, papa?" said Dexie, when she found herself alone with her father. "How can I stand before so many strange people and whistle? Oh! I'm sure I cannot. No young lady whistles in public, and I feel sure they will hiss me ...
— Miss Dexie - A Romance of the Provinces • Stanford Eveleth
... verses that hiss like Medusa's head in wrath, and who was, I think, fonder of the sound than any other of our poets. Indeed, in compounds of the kind we always make a distinction wholly independent of the doubled s. Nobody would boggle at mountainside; no ...
— Among My Books • James Russell Lowell
... there being a fine breeze, Mr Anderson agreed to make another attempt to move on, in the hopes of reaching a town before dark. They had not proceeded above a mile, when they heard a noise very much like the bark of a large mastiff, but ending in a hiss like that of a cat. Mr Anderson was observing: "What a bouncing fellow that must be," when another bark nearer to them was heard, and presently a third, accompanied by a growl a short distance further. Coming to an opening in the bushes, three enormous lions of a dusky colour were ...
— Great African Travellers - From Mungo Park to Livingstone and Stanley • W.H.G. Kingston
... a dog, in her sight! Ay, she shall see it! I will hiss in her ears as she gazes—'It is my work! this is my revenge!' Ha! ha! where her pride then?—her high birth and station?—wealth, family? Dust, shame, ...
— Guy Rivers: A Tale of Georgia • William Gilmore Simms
... could leap, or the space of time he would take to run a distance. They thought also of his form, of the rhythmic and harmonious character of his action. If an athlete showed ugly form, they would hiss him, as they would an incompetent actor. Most of their exercises were done to the accompaniment of the flute. In all the statues of athletes which have come down to us, not one shows an inharmonious development, powerful chest and weak legs, or muscular legs and poor arms. It is more ...
— The Legacy of Greece • Various
... might come, but such a death was preferable to the fate which must await her at the end of this journey. Her fingers had tightened on the reins, when the silence was suddenly broken, and, with a swift hiss, a streak of light cut through the darkness skyward, paused a moment, and then, with a muffled detonation, burst into globes of light which floated downward. The foremost of the troop reined in their horses sharply at the ...
— Princess Maritza • Percy Brebner
... the English go out, and silence prevails, save for the soft hiss of the rain that falls impartially on both ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy
... White Geese were taking their morning waddle, and Reddy ran plump into them. Now there was nothing that he liked better to eat than nice fat goose. Still, he didn't wait, but left them beating their wings and stretching their long necks to hiss, hiss, hiss, as they scattered in all directions. I guess Reddy wished his legs were ...
— Half-Past Seven Stories • Robert Gordon Anderson
... and the English ranks rose to their feet, uncased their bows and strung them all as though with a single hand. A second command and every bow was bent. A third and with a noise that was half hiss and half moan, thousands of arrows leapt forward. Forward they leapt, and swift and terrible they fell among the ranks of the advancing Genoese. Yes, and ere ever one had found its billet, its quiver-mate was hastening on its path. Then—oh! the sunlight showed it all—the Genoese ...
— Red Eve • H. Rider Haggard
... you railed about ransom; But Parrots are never wise birds, JOE, though handsome); Then Geese, Jays, and Daws; yet they're birds of a feather, And they, my dear JOSEPH, are gathered together, To hiss, squeal and peck at the Party they'd foil, But who're like to secure—as you phrase it—"the spoil." Yes, these be the birds most en evidence now; And by Jingo, my JOE, they are raising a row. They're full of cacophonous fuss, and loud spite; And they don't take their licking as ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 103, August 6, 1892 • Various
... almost sleeping again I watched the light, to see if indeed it was going to cross my face, and then a sudden shadow flitted across it, and with a hiss and flick of feathers a long arrow fled through the window and stuck in the plaster of the wall not an inch above my chest, furrowing the fur of the white bearskin over me, so close ...
— A Prince of Cornwall - A Story of Glastonbury and the West in the Days of Ina of Wessex • Charles W. Whistler
... wiping out the I. W. W. organization; they had closed the hall, and confiscated everything, typewriters and office furniture and books—including a book on Sabotage which they had turned over to the editor of the "Evening Times"! There was a hiss of anger at this. Also, they had taken to interfering with the mail of the organization; the I. W. W. were having to get out their literature by express. They were fighting for their existence, and they must find some way of getting the truth to people. If anybody had any suggestions ...
— 100%: The Story of a Patriot • Upton Sinclair
... presentation was drawing nigh. The Romanticists were, of course, anxious that the play should be a great success; the Classics were quite willing that it should be otherwise; in fact, they had bought up the claque and were making arrangements to hiss it down. But the author's friends were numerous; they were young and lusty; they held meetings behind locked doors, and swore terrible oaths ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... hiss of compressed air. The "Pollard" didn't quite make the death plunge. Then she seemed to go, ever so little, ...
— The Submarine Boys on Duty - Life of a Diving Torpedo Boat • Victor G. Durham
... . . . Oh, I'm not an imaginative fellow. Very likely it was a note set up by the wind outside. I can't even swear that I heard it; sort of took it down my spine. Shrill it was for a moment—something between a child's wail and the hiss of a snake—and, the next moment, not shrill at all, but dull and heavy, like the flap of a great wing beating the air, heavy with evil. . . . Yes, that was the sense of it—heavy with evil. I pulled up with a shiver. The Chairman was on his feet, waiting for ...
— Foe-Farrell • Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... Prussia—and, to the strains of martial music, moving down the Champ Elysees to the Place de la Concorde, was distributed thence over certain sections of the city agreed upon beforehand. Nothing that could be called a disturbance took place during the march; and though there was a hiss now and then and murmurings of discontent, yet the most noteworthy mutterings were directed against the defunct Empire. Indeed, I found everywhere that the national misfortunes were laid at Napoleon's door—he, by this time, having become a scapegoat ...
— The Memoirs of General P. H. Sheridan, Complete • General Philip Henry Sheridan
... age, would have been held as ridiculous and even insulting by any other woman belonging to the same profession, and many ladies of the highest rank honoured her with her friendship more even than with their patronage. Never did the capricious audience of a Parisian pit dare to hiss Silvia, not even in her performance of characters which the public disliked, and it was the general opinion that she was in every ...
— The Memoires of Casanova, Complete • Jacques Casanova de Seingalt
... He was silent for a moment while a great green rocket rushed upwards with a hiss and burst in a shower of many-coloured stars. Then as they watched them fall he spoke very kindly and earnestly. "But it is worth while all the same—even though one may be turned back from Paradise. Remember—always remember—that it's something to have been there! ...
— The Keeper of the Door • Ethel M. Dell
... occasion of pleasure; for nowhere could you taste more fully the pleasure of a sudden lull, or a place of opportune shelter. The reader knows what I mean; he must remember how, when he has sat himself down behind a dyke on a hill-side, he delighted to hear the wind hiss vainly through the crannies at his back; how his body tingled all over with warmth, and it began to dawn upon him, with a sort of slow surprise, that the country was beautiful, the heather purple, and the faraway hills all marbled with sun and shadow. Wordsworth, in a beautiful passage[15] of the ...
— Essays of Robert Louis Stevenson • Robert Louis Stevenson
... when she woke the sickly gray light of a Russian winter mid-day pouring into her room, and saw her maid's stolid face, back rushed the events of the night, and she drew in her breath with almost a hiss. Yes, nothing could ever be the same again. "Leave me, Johnson," she said, "I am too tired, I cannot ...
— His Hour • Elinor Glyn
... death of Malanya Sergyevna, his aunt finally got him under her control. Fedya was afraid of her: he was afraid of her bright sharp eyes and her harsh voice; he dared not utter a sound in her presence; often, when he only moved a little in his chair, she would! hiss out at once: "What are you doing? sit still." On Sundays, after mass, he was allowed to play, that is to say, he was given a thick book, a mysterious book, the work of a certain Maimovitch-Ambodik, entitled "Symbols and Emblems." This book was a medley of about a thousand mostly very enigmatical ...
— A House of Gentlefolk • Ivan Turgenev
... the wild eyes fastened themselves upon her with a look of yearning anguish, and then Hagar answered slowly, "Tell you what you've often wished to know—my secret!" the last word dropping from her lips more like a warning hiss than like a human sound. It was long since Maggie had teased for the secret, so absorbed had she been in other matters, but now that there was a prospect of knowing it her curiosity was reawakened, and while her eyes glistened with expectation, she said, "Yes, tell it to me, Hagar, and then ...
— Maggie Miller • Mary J. Holmes
... a yell of astonishment, half as a whoop of defiance, Black Thunder—the red giant being, in fact, none other than that redoubtable Wyandot brave—leaped to his feet, and wrenching his tomahawk from the tree beside him, hurled it, with a horrible hiss, full at the shaggy front of this most unexpected, formidable foe. But, quick of eye and strong of hand, the Fighting Nigger caught the murderous missile on the head of his ax, and sent it ringing, like an anvil, high up in the air. On he came amain, and with another lion-like bound had ...
— Burl • Morrison Heady
... one of those great fires of the American prairies, whose destructive range has been checked by the hand of man. In vain the flames jet out on all sides, seeking fresh element. A wide space has been cleared around them. Soon the crackling of the large trees, and the hiss of the burning grass, cease to be heard; and the whole plain becomes enveloped under a cloud of smoke rising upward ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid
... asleep, the lout! in the shade of the hillock yonder; What a dog it must be to drowse in the midst of a time like this! Why, the horses might neigh contempt at him; what is he like, I wonder? If the smoke would but clear away, I have strength in me yet to hiss. ...
— Successful Recitations • Various
... they might have no pretence to behave ill, for it is a good Maxim in Politicks as well as War to put & keep the Enemy in the wrong. They behaved tollerably well till the oration was finishd when upon a Motion made for the Appointmt of another orator they began to hiss, which irritated the Assembly to the greatest Degree, and Confusion ensued. They however did not gain their End, which was apparently to break up the Meeting, for order was soon restored & we proceeded ...
— The Writings of Samuel Adams, vol. III. • Samuel Adams
... Trent's lips with a little hiss and his eyes were flashing with a dull fire. But Da Souza held his ground. He had nerved himself up to this and he meant going through ...
— A Millionaire of Yesterday • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... wind, which had already carried her so many hundred miles on her voyage. A change, however, again came over the ocean. Dark clouds were seen hurrying across the sky; the sea, hitherto rolling in regular billows, now began to foam, and hiss, and dance wildly about, the wind carrying the spray in thick sheets from their curling summits over the deck. Sail after sail was taken off the ship, till the topsails, closely reefed, alone remained set, the gale howling and whistling ...
— The Voyages of the Ranger and Crusader - And what befell their Passengers and Crews. • W.H.G. Kingston
... paused, and Parish Thornton made no answer in words, but between his lips the breath ran out with the hiss of sobbing waters. ...
— The Roof Tree • Charles Neville Buck
... time, for Curmudgeon had got to the last but one of his cabalistic words, and in a single instant more, Prince Violet would have been changed into a cabbage. No sooner was the head thrown into the kettle, than the water began to hiss and foam, and blaze up in spires of blue sulphureous flame, until finally the kettle burst into a thousand fragments, and the head disappeared up the chimney. Then the phantom beauty, uttering a shrill, dismal scream, melted into ...
— Graham's Magazine Vol XXXII No. 1 January 1848 • Various
... that he was looking only at the shadow of a man crouching high in the bunk on the level with his eyes.—"What? What?" he said. He seemed to catch the shape of some words in the continuous panting hiss. "Yer will tell Belfast! Will yer? Are yer a bloomin' kid?" He trembled with alarm and rage, "Tell yer gran'mother! Yer afeard! Who's yer ter be afeard more'n any one?" His passionate sense of his own importance ran away with a last remnant of caution. "Tell an' be damned! Tell, if ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... all over the meeting-house, and rises high above the hiss of the sleet on the great windows. Somebody's got on the stove, to add to the confusion and horror. The only man in the whole place who is not excited is Jethro Bass himself, who sits in his chair regardless ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... of the hounds gave a stifled yelp as Nicholas straightened himself and threw out his left foot. Either the sound or the movement startled the great brown beast in front, and as the arrow twanged from the string he checked and wheeled round, and went off like the wind, untouched. A furious hiss of the breath broke from Nicholas, and he made a swift sign as he turned to his horse; and in a moment the two lithe hounds had leapt from the shelter and were flying in long noiseless leaps after ...
— The King's Achievement • Robert Hugh Benson
... into the bushes, and were received by a veritable rain of stones and spears. Not an enemy was in sight. On all sides they heard the snapping sound of the slings, the whistling of the stones, the sibilant hiss of the spears that at every step fell in increasing numbers, but they could not see whence they came, and no whisper or rustle of ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien |
