"Rumbling" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... sides squeez'd, how highly was I blest, Between two plump old women to be presst! A corp'ral fierce, a nurse, a child that cry'd, And a fat landlord, filled the other side. Scarce dawns the morning ere the cumbrous load Boils roughly rumbling o'er the rugged road: One old wife coughs and wheezes in my ears, Loud scolds the other, and the soldier swears; Sour unconcocted breath escapes 'mine host,' The sick'ning child returns his milk ...
— The Life of Thomas Telford by Smiles • Samuel Smiles
... the rough German [127] roads, through doubtful weather. The tribune, the throne itself, were made ready in the presence-chamber, with hangings in the grand-ducal colours, laced with gold, together with a speech and an ode. Late at night, at last, the wagon was heard rumbling into the courtyard, with the guest arrived in safety, but, if one must confess one's self, perhaps forbidding at first sight. From a comfortless portico, with all the grotesqueness of the Middle Age, supported ...
— Imaginary Portraits • Walter Horatio Pater
... uneven sidewalk toward the river. The night was clear, and he could see, across the flats and over the tracks, where tiny signal lanterns were waving and circling, and freight trains were bumping and rumbling, the glow of the arc lamps on the elevator, and its square outline against the sky. Now and then, when the noise of the switching trains let down, he could hear the hoisting engines. Once he stopped and looked eastward at the clouds of ...
— Calumet 'K' • Samuel Merwin
... day. I understand them well enough, for I would have thought exactly the same myself in my childhood. So I try to find a way out by a little free-thinking: 'tis another matter when it's a machine that does the work; no more than when an innocent cart comes rumbling down the road, as ...
— Wanderers • Knut Hamsun
... tolerably spacious deck, and a couple of cabins, to which the passengers may retire in inclement weather. Had it indeed been less convenient or agreeable, we should have found it a blessed respite after the rumbling tub of penance in which we had been cooped. Indeed, the abuse which our voiturier had vented on the desagremens et disgraces of the coche d'eau, in order to secure himself our company to Lyons, had determined us on trying this conveyance; for the habit of lying is so constant ...
— Itinerary of Provence and the Rhone - Made During the Year 1819 • John Hughes
... heart-broken manner; and continually, while he thought and she wept, and an impenetrable curtain of darkness hid the one from the other, the chaise held on its course up-hill and down-hill, now bumping and rattling behind flying horses, and now rumbling ...
— The Castle Inn • Stanley John Weyman
... Germans came to St. Eloi, where they remained very long. Then they advanced to Ypres. The whole winter I heard the rumbling of the big guns, and the whistling of the shells. I learned also every day of the sad deaths of the victims of that awful war. I was often very frightened and I have been very happy to leave ...
— The Living Present • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton
... goes out into the street again, with a bevy of other girls. The street is still and lonely; the long lines of lamps twinkle in silence; the shop windows are all shrouded in darkness; there are no rumbling wheels, save when an occasional ...
— The Secrets Of The Great City • Edward Winslow Martin
... rumbling was brewing up in the distance. The roar of the abyss, nothing can be compared to it. It is the great brutish howl of the universe. What we call matter, that unsearchable organism, that amalgamation of incommensurable energies, in which can occasionally be detected an almost imperceptible ...
— The Man Who Laughs • Victor Hugo
... maintained the gravest faces, the most mysterious silence, and were, withal, the most melancholy party of pleasure he had ever witnessed. Nothing interrupted the stillness of the scene but the noise of the balls, which, whenever they were rolled, echoed along the mountains like rumbling ...
— Short Stories Old and New • Selected and Edited by C. Alphonso Smith
... lover's breast; and Mantua itself must have broken on him in the prospect, with its towers, and walls, and water, pretty much as on a commonplace and matrimonial omnibus. He made the same sharp twists and turns, perhaps, over two rumbling drawbridges; passed through the like long, covered, wooden bridge; and leaving the marshy water behind, approached the ...
— Pictures from Italy • Charles Dickens
... another, in rapid succession. The gunboats follow. There are ten shells, thirteen inches in diameter, rising high in air. There are handfuls of smoke flecking the sky, and a prolonged, indescribable crashing, rolling, and rumbling. You have seen battle-pieces by the great painters; but the highest artistic skill cannot portray the scene. It is a vernal day, as beautiful as ever dawned. The gunboats are enveloped in flame and smoke. The unfolding ...
— My Days and Nights on the Battle-Field • Charles Carleton Coffin
... was affected by a profound politeness. As he rose and walked about the room, still talking, he salaamed and bowed. When20 I spoke it sounded like a gun, with an echo long afterward rumbling in my brain. Thoughts came to me like fury, bewildering, sometimes as points of light in the most exquisite fireworks. Objects were clothed in most fantastic garbs. I looked at my two animal companions. I seemed to read their thoughts. I felt strange affinities with them, even with the ...
— The Poisoned Pen • Arthur B. Reeve
... followed, the hoofs of their magnificent horses ringing like thousands of steel hammers breaking stones in a road; and after them the giant siege-guns rumbling, growling, the mitrailleuse with drag-chains ringing, the field-pieces with creaking axles, complaining brakes, the grinding of the steel-rimmed wheels against the stones echoing and re-echoing from the house front. ...
— With the Allies • Richard Harding Davis
... there might be a hole in the fly-screens, or a little carpentering to do, or a caster broken under the piano. Husbands with a turn for plumbing would find the club basement a perpetual place of solace, with a fresh leak or a rumbling ...
— Plum Pudding - Of Divers Ingredients, Discreetly Blended & Seasoned • Christopher Morley
... suggested Bully. So he and Bawly called as loud as they could, and so did Grandpa Croaker. But the well was so deep, and their voices sounded so loud and rumbling, coming out of the hole in the ground, that every one thought it was thunder. And the animal people feared it would rain, so they all ran home, and no one thought of grandpa and the two frog ...
— Bully and Bawly No-Tail • Howard R. Garis
... clang of the locomotive bell from the railroad station, all softened by distance. But as they listened there came another sound like nothing they had ever heard in that place before. A strange, confused rumbling, with cries jutting out through the dull, rolling noise. A little later came the faint clash of rhythmic, tumultuous cheering. Patricia's quick ears were the first to catch ...
— To Him That Hath - A Novel Of The West Of Today • Ralph Connor
... their wares without money and without price, but there were no churches. For the wares of the preachers flushed no faces and burned no throats, nor were there rattles even in contribution boxes, and there was no whirr of painted wheels. Even the hundred rumbling stamps of the Rainbow mill might as well have pounded empty air or clashed their hard steel shoes on their hard steel dies for all the profit that came to the far-away stockholders of the great ...
— Blue Goose • Frank Lewis Nason
... into bits. The noise of the other train came slowly nearer, but so slowly that all listened breathlessly. After a little they could hear the rumbling of an exhaust, and Jawn muttered, ...
— The Short Line War • Merwin-Webster
... instantly. The deep sound came rolling and rumbling from peak to peak up the gorge, then died down, and ceased. The spell broke, then, and the men made a ...
— A Double Barrelled Detective Story • Mark Twain
... was speech? The thunderstorm had passed over their heads and was rumbling over France. Henceforward powerless, they must undergo its consequences and hear its distant echoes without being able to influence the formidable elements that had been let loose during that ...
— The Frontier • Maurice LeBlanc
... make no reply. He could retain his emotion only by silence. At last the rumbling of the wheels of the stage was heard, and the four horses were reined up at the door. The boy endeavored, by activity, in seeing his trunk and other baggage properly placed, to gain sufficient fortitude to enable ...
— The Child at Home - The Principles of Filial Duty, Familiarly Illustrated • John S.C. Abbott
... piano, and half in play struck a great rumbling chord, that rolled and echoed through the room; she sounded it once more, laughing aloud with glee. Arthur had sunk down upon a chair beside her, and was bending forward, watching her with growing excitement. For again ...
— King Midas • Upton Sinclair
... she dreamed of it, she heard the tram-car grinding round a bend, rumbling dully, she saw it draw into sight, and hum nearer. It sidled round the loop at the terminus, and came to a standstill, looming above her. Some shadowy grey people stepped from the far end, the conductor was walking in the puddles, ...
— The Rainbow • D. H. (David Herbert) Lawrence
... spat. Then he held up his hand. He was listening. Far off in the drumming downpour of the rain there was a rumbling sound. He had heard it before. It was partly made up of the noise of internal-combustion engines of unthinkable power, and partly of grumbling treads forcing a way through reluctant trees. It was a long way off, now, but ...
— Morale - A Story of the War of 1941-43 • Murray Leinster
... rising skyward, but without sound; and before its upward belching had ceased a tongue of flame spurted out of its crest—and after that, perhaps two seconds later, came the explosion. There was a rumbling and a jarring, as if the earth were convulsed under foot; volumes of dense black smoke shot upward, shutting the mountain in an impenetrable pall of gloom; and in an instant these rolling, twisting volumes of black became lurid, and an explosion like that of a thousand great guns rent ...
— The Danger Trail • James Oliver Curwood
... ridge carrying the trap, two lanterns, an electric flash-lamp and a wretched little dog for bait. We had been engaged for about fifteen minutes making a pen for the dog, and Caldwell and I were on our knees over the trap when suddenly a low rumbling growl came from the grass not twenty feet away. We jumped to our feet just as it sounded again, this time ending in a snarl. The tiger had arrived a few moments too early and we were in the rather uncomfortable ...
— Camps and Trails in China - A Narrative of Exploration, Adventure, and Sport in Little-Known China • Roy Chapman Andrews and Yvette Borup Andrews
... sir!" cried Simon Ford. "The old mine will grow young again, like a widow who remarries! The bustle of the old days will soon begin with the blows of the pick, and mattock, blasts of powder, rumbling of wagons, neighing of horses, creaking of machines! I shall see it all again! I hope, Mr. Starr, that you will not think me too old to resume my ...
— The Underground City • Jules Verne
... the southwest the great heart of Paris throbbed in silence, for the beautiful, sinful city, confused by the din of the riffraff within her walls, blinded by lies and selfish counsels, crouched in mute agony, listening for the first ominous rumbling ...
— Lorraine - A romance • Robert W. Chambers
... the jests and roses, everyone could hear the rumbling of the volcano under the ground. Everyone could hear, but nobody would listen; the little flames leapt up through the surface, but still the gay life went on; and then the irruption came. Voltaire's enemy had written ...
— Books and Characters - French and English • Lytton Strachey
... large town was reached, probably St. Quentin, through which long trains of Motor Transport were rumbling. A halt was made some miles to the south of this town. While they were taking their evening meal the ever-pursuing sound of artillery fire was heard from over the ridge. Two of the companies were hastily fallen in, and marched away to this scene of activities, to undergo probably yet ...
— "Contemptible" • "Casualty"
... was growing rosy now, and he could hear the rumbling of the milk train. It was late. Pat would not lose his job this time, for he must have had plenty of time to get back to the station. Billy wormed himself under cover as the train approached, and bided his time. Cautiously, peering from ...
— The City of Fire • Grace Livingston Hill
... a vast wall of darkness surrounded him and ever and again, out of the heart of it, a great cauldron of fire flamed and by the side of it there were wild, agitated faces—and again darkness. On every side of the stumbling cab there was noise—voices shouting, women screaming, the rumbling of wheels, the plunging of horses' hoofs; sometimes things brushed against their cab—once Peter thought that they were down because they were jerked right forward against the opposite seats. And then suddenly, in the most wonderful ...
— Fortitude • Hugh Walpole
... vigorous man, sat at some distance down the table. He was talking earnestly about the town of Godalming. It was a deep, flowing, and inarticulate rumble, but I caught the Godalming pretty nearly every time it broke free of the rumbling, and as all the strength was on the first end of the word, it startled me every time, because it sounded so like swearing. In the middle of the luncheon Lady Houghton rose, remarked to the guests on ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... into a steam boiler? We stood on the ashy edge of the crater, the sharp edge sloping one way down the mountain, and the other into the bowels, whence the thick, stifling smoke rose. We rolled stones down, and heard them rumbling for half a minute. The diameter of the crater on the brink of which we stood was said to be an eighth of a mile; but the whole was completely filled with vapor. The edge where we ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... up the loose end of the rope, and drove Asako before him into a closed van, which was soon rumbling ...
— Kimono • John Paris
... dim and sullen roar of waters came to his ears, borne faintly, then stronger, on a breeze that was not of earth. Anguish and despair tinged that sodden wind. Weird and terrible came a cry. Steaming, boiling, burning, rumbling chaos—a fearful rushing sullen water! Then a flash of light like a falling star sped out of the ...
— The Day of the Beast • Zane Grey
... man, but there was one more rumbling. "I'm no' denyin' the Provost's gude-hearted. Ance he got up a hame for gaen-aboot dogs, an' he had naethin' to mak' by that. But he canna keep 'is spoon oot o' ilka body's porridge. He's fair daft to tear doon the wa's that cut St. Giles up into ...
— Greyfriars Bobby • Eleanor Atkinson
... learned from Uncle Moses, lay beyond the big house, so that our driving by would awaken no suspicion. In order that we might gain the further advantage of darkness, Uncle Moses drove slowly, and there was but a glimmer of twilight when we reached the house of the overseer. He had heard the rumbling of our wheels, and was standing at his gate as we came up. Seeing only the wagons and no horsemen, he cried out to know where the rest were. The negro beside Uncle Moses (who shrank back to escape recognition) made ready ...
— Humphrey Bold - A Story of the Times of Benbow • Herbert Strang
... morning sky was bright and cloudless, the streets of the Cabanal were rumbling as in a thunderstorm. People jumped out of bed as the crashing almost split their eardrums; and good women of the village, their hair still down and in wrappers hastily thrown on, went out on the sidewalk in front of their ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... we going to be kept here until the papers came to hand again? However, seeing that the trip would take some days, this was scarcely likely unless something extraordinary supervened. While we were discussing this latest and totally unexpected denouement we heard the low rumbling of heavy wheels. K—— cocked his ears with ...
— Sixteen Months in Four German Prisons - Wesel, Sennelager, Klingelputz, Ruhleben • Henry Charles Mahoney
... his voice in a wild howl of challenge. For a moment there was silence. Then from the ravine came a hoarse rumbling bellow. An enormous male made his appearance, his mane and beard bristling with rage. He darted his eyes hither and thither, seeking the source of the challenge. Again a hoarse roar came from his ...
— B. C. 30,000 • Sterner St. Paul Meek
... back through a road which had become for miles only a great muddy lane running between military encampments, halted at every bridge and crossroads to exhibit their passes; they passed never-ending trains of army waggons cither stalled or rumbling slowly toward Alexandria. Everywhere were soldiers, drilling, marching, cutting wood, washing clothes, cooking, cleaning arms, mending, working on camp ditches, drains, or forts, writing letters at the edge of shelter tents, digging graves, ...
— Ailsa Paige • Robert W. Chambers
... Giles, "cease thy rumbling, thou empty wine-butt. An thou must deal in curses, leave them to one more apt and better schooled—to Giles, in faith, who shall forthwith curse thee sweet and trippingly as thus—now mark me, monk! Aroint, aroint thee to Acheron dark and dismal, there may the foul fiend seize and ...
— Beltane The Smith • Jeffery Farnol
... Indian women do not make a practice of fainting on provocation, but Madeline came as near to it as she ever had in her life. For an hour she crouched on the floor, listening to the heavy voices of the men rumbling up and down in mimic thunder. Like familiar chords of childhood melodies, every intonation, every trick of her husband's voice swept in upon her, fluttering her heart and weakening her knees till she lay half-fainting against ...
— The Son of the Wolf • Jack London
... we had three sharp jerking shocks of an earthquake in quick succession, at 9.8 p.m., appearing to come up from the southward: they were accompanied by a hollow rumbling sound like that of a waggon passing over a wooden bridge. The shock was felt strongly at Dorjiling, and registered by Mr. Muller at 9.10 p.m.: we had accurately adjusted our watches (chronometers) the previous morning, and ...
— Himalayan Journals (Complete) • J. D. Hooker
... his attention, and discovered a small knob of iron concealed between the Saint's shoulder and what was supposed to have been the hand of the Robber. This observation delighted him. He applied his fingers to the knob, and pressed it down forcibly. Immediately a rumbling noise was heard within the Statue, as if a chain tightly stretched was flying back. Startled at the sound the timid Nuns started away, prepared to hasten from the Vault at the first appearance of danger. All remaining quiet and still, they again ...
— The Monk; a romance • M. G. Lewis
... the incorrectness of Helmholtz's statement that beats do not colesce into musical sounds, but that the ear will distinguish them as a rumbling noise, even when their number rises as high as 132 vibrations per second, Rudolph Koenig has constructed a series of tuning forks, recently presented by President Morton to the Stevens Institute of Technology. The following table exhibits the number of vibrations ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 401, September 8, 1883 • Various
... indeed a Pai-Ute prophet, named Wo-vo-ka or the Cutter. He later took the name Kwo-hit-sauq, or Big Rumbling Belly. To the white people he was known as Jack Wilson. He had worked on ranches near the Walker Lake reservation, until, when he was about thirty years old, while sick with a fever he went into a trance, during an eclipse of ...
— Boys' Book of Indian Warriors - and Heroic Indian Women • Edwin L. Sabin
... The watering-place was empty. Moo Kow, Miaow, and the Gee Gees had disappeared. Presently there was a booming crash and a long, deep rumbling among the distant hills. Then they knew they were near the old Moulmein Pagoda, and the dawn had come up like thunder out of China 'cross the bay. It always came up that way there. The strain was too great, ...
— New Burlesques • Bret Harte
... straight for the starry guides, not deviating in the least from the point at which their heads had been directed by their riders, and the mule followed steadily behind, with the empty barrels keeping up their hollow, rumbling sound, and it was this that seemed to form a strange lulling accompaniment to the boys' thoughts, which in the course of their progress gradually darkened into a confused nightmare-like state. It was not sleep, but a stupor in which they kept on their horses instinctively, from no voluntary effort ...
— The Peril Finders • George Manville Fenn
... the landscape. A rumbling, cracking noise is heard among the mountains. Shadows of clouds ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. III • Kuno Francke (Editor-in-Chief)
... an excess is used a diminished effect is produced. I am persuaded that the effect of a great part of our sacred music is lost by an excess of harmony and a too great volume of sound. On the same principle, a loud crash of thunder deafens and terrifies; but its low and distant rumbling produces an ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 10, August, 1858 • Various
... there was only an occasional faint rumbling of thunder, as if it were murmuring over the distant sea; the clouds broke away in the west; the sun peeped out, as if to see what had been going on in the world since he hid himself an hour before. A delicate rainbow bridge stretched from the blackened church steeple to the glittering weathercock ...
— The Village Watch-Tower • (AKA Kate Douglas Riggs) Kate Douglas Wiggin
... the fatigue of the night's journey soon made me drowsy, and before I knew it I was fast asleep. Suddenly I was awakened by a loud rumbling noise. I seized my gun instantly, and sprang toward my horse, which I had picketed in a hidden spot in the brush near by where he would be out of sight of any ...
— An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill (Colonel W. F. Cody) • Buffalo Bill (William Frederick Cody)
... a vool you bees for dat!" replied one of the most remarkable voices I ever heard. At first I took it for a rumbling in my ears—such as a man sometimes experiences when getting very drunk—but upon second thought, I considered the sound as more nearly resembling that which proceeds from an empty barrel beaten with ...
— The Best American Humorous Short Stories • Various
... a rushing fountain of mud; serried ranks of muddy men stamping through the mud with steady rhythm, moving through a rain of mud, rising upward from the ground; long lines of motor-buses filled with a mass of muddy humanity packed shoulder to shoulder, rumbling ever through ...
— All Roads Lead to Calvary • Jerome K. Jerome
... afternoon, as the party were riding silently along the trail by the margin of the river, a rumbling, muffled sound was heard, like the mutterings of thunder below the horizon. One of the Indians whom Captain Williams had induced to accompany him for some distance farther into the wilderness, told him that the noise was made ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... door, inside of the pier head and not more that 20 yards distant. There were several guard sloops, one on our bow, and the other off our quarter a short distance from us. The dark night came, the first two were lowered quietly into the water; and the third made some rumbling. I was the fourth that descended, but had not struck off from the vessel before the guards were alarmed, and fired upon us. The alarm became general, and I was immediately hauled on board ...
— American Prisoners of the Revolution • Danske Dandridge
... a long time they kept the road in sight, then, without them knowing how, it disappeared from view, although they believed that they had been keeping a straight course. It seemed to have grown suddenly dark, and there was the low rumbling of thunder. ...
— Pixy's Holiday Journey • George Lang
... here, scarcely fifty miles away from the butchery, which on clear nights threw its glow on the horizon like an artificial illumination. When, for a few moments at a time, there was a lull in the stream of heavy, snorting automobile trucks and rattling drays, and no train happened to be rumbling over the railroad bridge and no signal of trumpet or clanking of sabres sounded the strains of war, then the obstinate little place instantly showed up its dull but good- natured provincial face, only to hide it again in resignation behind its ill-fitting ...
— Men in War • Andreas Latzko
... Hermit rambled on In one long listless monotone, We heard a wild and mournful groan Come rumbling down the tunnelled way; A voice, an awful mournful bray, Singing some old funereal lay; Then solemn footsteps, muffled, dull, Approached as if they trod on wool, And as they nearer, nearer drew, We saw our Host was ...
— Collected Poems - Volume One (of 2) • Alfred Noyes
... ordered exhumation of her body, and on opening the coffin a child's cry was heard. The infant had evidently been born postmortem. It lived long afterward under the name of "Fils de la terre." Willoughby mentions the curious instance in which rumbling was heard from the coffin of a woman during her hasty burial. One of her neighbors returned to the grave, applied her ear to the ground, and was sure she heard a sighing noise. A soldier with her affirmed her tale, and together they went to ...
— Anomalies and Curiosities of Medicine • George M. Gould
... Though the distance was short, the walk was long, because rugged, dirty, and melancholy. Now and then we heard a growling noise, like distant thunder, but far more dreadful. When we had got about a third part of the way, a heavy rumbling sound made us stop to listen. It was approaching nearer and nearer, and we soon found that we were followed by innumerable carriages, and a multitude ...
— The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Volume 3 • Madame D'Arblay
... Parliamentary varies very much according to the station from which it starts. The London trains being the worst, having a large proportion of what are vulgarly called "swells out of luck." In a rural district the gathering of smock-frocks and rosy-faced lasses, the rumbling of carts, and the size, number, and shape of the trunks and parcels, afford a very agreeable and comical scene on a frosty, moonlight, winter's morning, about Christmas time, when visiting commences, or at Whitsuntide. No man who has a taste for studying the phases of life ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney
... of Japan, were lodged by the king's order in a forsaken house, which was thought to be haunted by evil spirits: the common opinion was not ill grounded, and the Portuguese soon perceived, that their lodging was disturbed. They heard a horrible rumbling all the night; they felt themselves pulled out of their beds, and beaten in their sleep, without seeing any one. One night being awakened, at the cry of one of their servants, and running with ...
— The Works of John Dryden, Volume XVI. (of 18) - The Life of St. Francis Xavier • John Dryden
... fire, the Indians had {31} fled, and such beach combers were crashing ashore, Khitroff dare not risk going back to the ship. In vain Waxel ground his teeth with rage, signalled, and waited. "The wind seemed to issue from a flue," says Steller, "with such a whistling and roaring and rumbling that we expected to lose mast and rudder, or be crushed among the breakers. The dashings of the sea sounded ...
— Vikings of the Pacific - The Adventures of the Explorers who Came from the West, Eastward • Agnes C. Laut
... Mr. Harley, shortly. "Your mother sent you two umbrellas, but I don't think we'd better start now; the storm is 'most ready to break. Guess you were having such a good time you never heard the rumbling." ...
— Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island • Mabel C. Hawley
... the hoarse rumbling of a bull. "Come on, I tell ye; or you'll tear my arm loose where it's knit. You dad-burned cub, if I had two good hands—— Say, come on; ain't you got ...
— Rimrock Jones • Dane Coolidge
... o'clock, and by-and-by the company dispersed—which they did almost simultaneously and from the stable-yard, amid a tremendous clattering of hoofs, rumbling of wheels, calls of stablemen, 'gee's' and 'woa's,' buttoning of overcoats, wrapping of throats in comforters, 'good-nights,' and invitations to meet again. Sir John himself moved up and down in the throng, speeding his parting guests, ...
— Corporal Sam and Other Stories • A. T. Quiller-Couch
... Berecynthienne" is the most marvellous. The vision alone of Rome like the mother of the Gods in her car would have made the sonnet immortal. He adds to the mere picture a noise of words that is like thunder in the hills far off on summer afternoons: the words roll and crest themselves and follow rumbling to the end: he could not have known as he wrote it how great a thing he was writing. It has all the character of verse that increases with time and seems superior to ...
— Avril - Being Essays on the Poetry of the French Renaissance • H. Belloc
... o'clock, in great fright, saying that she had seen a figure like Madre Mareno, going by the house as if floating in the air, and had heard a loud report as if there had been thunder in the distance, coming from Tamalpais. I could hear the rumbling and could not tell what it was; but I laughed at her fears and told her that it must have been a shadow, for no human being even a witch, would be out in such a night, if ...
— The Beautiful Eyes of Ysidria • Charles A. Gunnison
... details, thrilling a warlike people, and the trophies which symbolized success,—banners torn and stained in desperate conflict, destined to hang over Christian altars until the turning current of fortune should drift them back,—parks of artillery rumbling through the streets, to be melted into statue or triumphal column,—and, amid the spoils of war, everything most glorious in Art to fill that wondrous gallery, the like of which the eye of man will ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 1, No. 6, April, 1858 • Various
... shock of an earthquake was felt, presenting a rumbling noise, very audible, proceeding from ...
— Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bhootan, Afghanistan and The - Neighbouring Countries • William Griffith
... to keep them on the trail, but their speed slackened and they fell into a labored trot. For a few minutes they struggled against the gale, and then the roar Festing had heard behind the scream drowned the rumbling thunder. He threw up his arm to guard his face as the terrible hail of the plains ...
— The Girl From Keller's - Sadie's Conquest • Harold Bindloss
... word of a ship's ended journey, the closing word of her toil and of her achievement. In a life whose worth is told out in passages from port to port, the splash of the anchor's fall and the thunderous rumbling of the chain are like the closing of a distinct period, of which she seems conscious with a slight deep shudder of all her frame. By so much is she nearer to her appointed death, for neither years nor voyages can go on for ever. It is to her like the striking ...
— The Mirror of the Sea • Joseph Conrad
... its calm freshness, the two towers let fall only the sound of their chimes. But the entire house kept the quivering therefrom, sealed as it was to these old stones, melted into them and supported by them. It trembled at the least of the ceremonies; at the High Mass, the rumbling of the organ, the voices of the choristers, even the oppressed sighs of the worshippers, murmured through each one of its rooms, lulled it as if with a holy breath from the Invisible, and at times through the half-cool ...
— The Dream • Emile Zola
... where she was, I snatched up my gun, and ran toward the Pit. As I neared it, I heard a dull, rumbling sound, that grew quickly into a roar, split with deeper crashes, and up from the Pit drove a fresh volume ...
— The House on the Borderland • William Hope Hodgson
... the station clock, and observed that the 7.30 train from Washington was five minutes late. Accompanied by Jack he walked up and down the platform until the train, with the usual accompaniment of panting steam and clanging bell and rumbling trucks, pulled into the station, and drew up on the third or fourth track from the iron railing. Mr. Clayton stationed himself at the gate nearest the rear end of the train, reasoning that the Congressman would ride in a parlor car, and would naturally come out by the ...
— The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and - Selected Essays • Charles Waddell Chesnutt
... 'tis he! I hear him from afar, Thundering like the God of War; To Rosbach's plains, in dread array, The god-like hero bends his way! Hark! the rattling rumbling noise of drums! He comes, he comes! See, Prussia's awful king's at hand! He speaks, he speaks! attentive stand! His well known voice, the gallant warriours hear, And bend their wide-extended wings both ...
— Translations of German Poetry in American Magazines 1741-1810 • Edward Ziegler Davis
... a fierce storm of thunder and lightning by saying that "the young thunder-birds up in the sky are making merry and having a good time." In like manner, the Dakotas account for the rumbling of thunder, "because the old thunder-bird begins the peal and the young ones take ...
— The Child and Childhood in Folk-Thought • Alexander F. Chamberlain
... his canoe the thunder was rumbling in the distance, and the air was still as death. Breathing was an effort; the inhaled air did not satisfy the lungs, and seemed ...
— With Edged Tools • Henry Seton Merriman
... disappear. And what I could, I did—to call by cries Some straggling hunters to my aid, to rouse Fishers who live on the lake-side, to launch Boats, and approach, near as we dared, the chasm. But of the prince nothing remain'd, save this, His boar-spear's broken shaft, back on the lake Cast by the rumbling subterranean stream; And this, at landing spied by us and saved, His broad-brimm'd hunter's hat, which, in the bay, Where first the stag took water, floated still. And I across the mountains brought with haste To Cypselus, at Basilis, this news— Basilis, his new city, which he now Near Lycosura ...
— Poetical Works of Matthew Arnold • Matthew Arnold
... of shallow sleep he woke up in the morning factitiously refreshed as the train was rumbling slowly over the high-level bridge. The sun blinked full in his eyes when he looked out through the trellis-work of the bridge. Far below, the river was tinged with the pale blue of the sky. Big ships lay in the river as if they had never moved and ...
— The Roll-Call • Arnold Bennett
... there's nothing along this cursed cane-marsh," growled a deep rumbling voice in Spanish. "It is a mere bog, in which a man would sink to his armpits, were he ...
— Prisoners of Chance - The Story of What Befell Geoffrey Benteen, Borderman, - through His Love for a Lady of France • Randall Parrish
... the world with his girl on his arm and a glass of good wine in his hand; thrones upset and kingdoms conquered in the singing of a merry song. Given a corporal and four men, and great armies would bite the dust. His voice suddenly sank to a low, rumbling bass: ...
— The Downfall • Emile Zola
... secretary felt more strongly than ever the absurdity of his being an underling, he who in a few well-chosen words could so easily have twisted the meeting round his thumb. Suddenly he heard the long, rumbling sigh which preluded the ...
— Forsyte Saga • John Galsworthy
... their machine swung and swayed in all directions. Huge cavities would form in the silk of the balloon as the wind fiercely bent it in, and the stuff fairly cracked like a pistol as it flew back from the pressure. A sort of hail, preceded by a rumbling noise, hissed through the air and rattled on the covering of the Victoria. The latter, however, continued to ascend, while the lightning described tangents to the convexity of her circumference; but she bore on, right through the midst ...
— Five Weeks in a Balloon • Jules Verne
... girths, Babe spurred away into the haze of the cloudy moonlight, leaving the boy ranchers to guard the cattle. The animals, after their run, were content to remain quiet now, moving about a bit uneasily, and rumbling as if in protest now and then. They were all full-grown beasts, ready for the market, ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... cluttered with all the paraphernalia that doubles the casualty of a tenement fire, but she cleared a space with her foot and sat down on the top step. Beside her loomed the blank warehouse wall, and from the narrow passage-way below came the smell of garbage. The clanging of cars and the rumbling of trucks mingled with the nearer sounds of whirring sewing machines in Lavinski's sweat-shop on the floor below. From somewhere around the corner came, at intervals, the sharp cry of a woman in agony. With that last sound Nance was all too familiar. The coming and going of a human life were no mystery ...
— Calvary Alley • Alice Hegan Rice
... The morning of the 3rd of July opened clear and bright, and one hundred thousand men faced each other awaiting the signal of conflict; but, except the pushing of Ewell from his position, the hours passed on relieved only by the rumbling of artillery carriages as they were massed by Lee upon Seminary Ridge, and by Meade upon Cemetery Ridge. At twelve o'clock Lee ascended the cupola of the Pennsylvania College, in quiet surveyed the Union lines, and decided to strike for Hancock's Centre. Meanwhile, Pickett with his ...
— The Bay State Monthly, Volume 3, No. 6 • Various
... the troops on the Peninsula. At the appointed hour I walked up the cliff's edge whence I clearly heard the roll of fire. The question of whether musketry sounds will carry so far is settled. Evidently the Turks have taken up the challenge for it was quite a long time before the distant rumbling died away. In the cool of the evening took a walk. Commandant Bertier and la ...
— Gallipoli Diary, Volume 2 • Ian Hamilton
... fast cars from Brighton and Hastings went murmuring by overhead long, broad, comfortable-looking cars, that were brightly lit after dusk. As they flew by at night, transient flares of light and a rumbling sound of passage, they kept up a perpetual summer lightning and thunderstorm ...
— The War in the Air • Herbert George Wells
... their seats, and the accused stands awaiting the charges to be read, when suddenly there is a quick cry of terror. A strange rumbling sound fills the air, and the walls of the judgment hall are trembling to their base—the monastery and the city of London are being shaken by an earthquake! Friar and prelate grow pale with superstitious awe. Twice already has this arraignment of Wycliffe been strangely interrupted. ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Volume 07 • Various
... the guns in July along a straight and dusty road and clattered into the village called Bar-le-Duc. Of the details of such marches I have often written. I wish now to speak of another thing, which, in long accounts of mere rumbling of guns, one might never have time to tell, but which is really the most important of all experiences under arms in France—I mean ...
— On Something • H. Belloc
... Cove were streaming to their own place of worship. It was a saint's day, and the brown people—both men and women, ringed of ears and garbed in the very gayest colors—gave way with smiles and bows for the jogging old mare and the rumbling carryall. Some of the Seamew's crew were overtaken, and they swept off their hats to Prudence and the supposed Ida May, grinning up at Tunis with more than ...
— Sheila of Big Wreck Cove - A Story of Cape Cod • James A. Cooper
... It opened at the episode of Christian and Hopeful in the Enchanted Ground, and in that stuffy carriage I presently followed the example of Heedless and Too-Bold and fell sound asleep. I was awakened by the train rumbling over the points of a little moorland junction. Sunk in a pleasing lethargy, I sat with my eyes closed, and then covertly took a glance at my companion. He had abandoned the Missionary Child and was reading a little dun-coloured book, and marking passages with a pencil. ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... feathers in it; and they knew that she saw them, for she rather smiled and looked pleased, and turned to speak about them, they thought, to the lady next to her. But the coach was gone in a minute, not rattling like a hack-chaise, but making a sort of low rumbling sound, and that sound was not ...
— The Fairchild Family • Mary Martha Sherwood
... vines, a tank's machine guns snarled at him, clipping the place where he had been standing, then shifting to rage against the sheltering rock. With a sudden motor-roar, the muzzle of a long tank-gun pushed out through the vines, and then the low body of a tank with a red star on the turret came rumbling out of the camouflaged bay. The machine guns kept him pinned behind the rock; the tank swerved ever so slightly so that its wide left tread was aimed directly at him, then picked up speed. Aren't even going to waste a shell on me, ...
— Hunter Patrol • Henry Beam Piper and John J. McGuire
... over, the last carriage wheels rumbling down the street, the girls stood in the hall and looked at one another. Aunt Ellen, creaking in her new silks, toiled up the stairs, an old, shaky hand ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... curious waitings, strange screeching sounds, and heart-breaking meanings in its strife, and when at last its passion died away and there followed a strange quiet, the two men could feel the frozen earth under their feet shiver with the rumbling reverberations of the crashing and breaking fields of ice out in Hudson's Bay. With it came a dull and steady roar, like the incessant rumble of a far battle, broken now and then—when an ice mountain split asunder—with a ...
— The River's End • James Oliver Curwood
... "That rumbling, cracking sound isn't anything dangerous," he said. "The ice often does that, and often big cracks come in it out in the middle of the lake. But it is thick enough, and it won't break through with you or I shouldn't have let you go skating. But, even with all I have said, ...
— The Curlytops and Their Playmates - or Jolly Times Through the Holidays • Howard R. Garis |
