"Scudding" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... had passed, the low grey clouds shivered and cracked in a thousand places, each grim islet went scudding to the horizon as though terrified by some great breadth, and when they had passed he stared into vast after vast of blue infinity, in the depths of which his eyes stayed and could not pierce, and wherefrom they could scarcely ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... lifting a hunter clean from the deck, shook him off somehow, and crashed down. One of the men tackling his legs dropped senseless from the buffet he got on the side of his skull, and Lund's kick sent him scudding across the deck, limp, out of the fight that could not ...
— A Man to His Mate • J. Allan Dunn
... whiskey with ill-favored glances into the retired corner where Mr. Hardy, supposedly of the W. P. S. Q. T., was studiously perusing a straw-colored Eastern magazine. Then, as if to lighten the gloom, the sun flashed out suddenly, and before the shadow of the scudding clouds had dimmed its glory a shrill whistle from down the track announced the belated approach of the west-bound train. Immediately the chairs began to scrape; the stud-poker players cut for the stakes and quit; coon-can was called off, and by the time ...
— Hidden Water • Dane Coolidge
... final interval of moderate wholesomeness and peace. He felt his old healthy joy in the green earth. One of the letters commemorates his delight in the great scudding south-west winds of February, soft forerunners of the spring, so sweet to all who live with nature.[17] At the end of his garden was a summer-house, and here even on wintry days he sat composing or copying. It was not music only that he copied. He took a curious ...
— Rousseau - Volumes I. and II. • John Morley
... river's mouth and Tilbury Dock. Nearer in, a cargo boat was standing out upon the long trail, the white of riven waters showing clearly against her unclean freeboard. Out to east a little covey of fishing-smacks, red sails well reefed, were scudding before the wind like strange affrighted water-fowl, and bearing down past a heavy-laden river barge. The latter, with tarpaulin battened snugly down over the cockpit and the seas dashing over her wash-board ...
— The Black Bag • Louis Joseph Vance
... the limitless water, darker than the sky, stars seemed to have fallen here and there. They twinkled in the night haze, small, close to shore or far away—white, red, and green, too. Most of them were motionless; some, however, seemed to be scudding onward. These were the lights of the ships at anchor or moving about ...
— The Works of Guy de Maupassant, Volume VIII. • Guy de Maupassant
... dark water, and the filling sail! The scudding like a sea-mew, with the hand Firm on the tiller! See, the red-shored land Receding, as we brave the hastening gale! White gleam the wave-tops, and the breakers' roar Sounds thunderingly on the ...
— A Woman's Love Letters • Sophie M. Almon-Hensley
... had been threatening. But, though keen eyes were watching the scudding clouds, no apprehension was felt, as it was believed to be but a passing ...
— The Circus Boys on the Flying Rings • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... first night out, an odd circumstance befell us that, for some hours, seemed likely to lose us our boat. As usual, we set to drifting at dark. The moon, close on its half, was flying, pale and frightened, through scudding clouds. However, the wind blew high and the surface of the water was unruffled. There could be nothing more eerie than a night of drifting on the Missouri, with a ghastly moon dodging in and out among the clouds. ...
— The River and I • John G. Neihardt
... watches were set, and sail was put on the brig as fast as the men became accustomed to the new way of steering, those relieved always imparting what they had learned to their successors. Before nightfall on that first day they were scudding under foresail, topsail and topgallantsail and maintopsail, with the spanker furled as useless, and the jib adding its aid to the foretopmast-staysail in keeping the brig before the quartering seas which ...
— "Where Angels Fear to Tread" and Other Stories of the Sea • Morgan Robertson
... morning the sisters were up. The weather had changed with the usual abruptness of our capricious climate. The day before had been like June. This day was like January. A dark-gray sky overhead, with black clouds driven by an easterly wind scudding across it, and ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... when Diana looked out from her window, she saw a large and dreary park wrapped in scudding rain which promised evil things for the shooting-party of the day. Mr. Marsham senior had apparently laid out his park and grounds on the same principles as those on which he had built his house. Everything was large and expensive. The woods and plantations were kept to a nicety; not ...
— The Testing of Diana Mallory • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... the three women entered with a rush. Lois, standing near the door front, saw them coming through the greenish-yellow gloom, their three black figures scudding before the wind ...
— Jane Field - A Novel • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
... sea is calm, and clear the sky—only a few clouds scudding by: The Passengers look bright, and say, "Are we not lucky in the day!" The Mate stands in the wheelhouse there, and turns the wheel with watchful care: Steering to-day is work enough; what must it be when weather's rough? ...
— Abroad • Various
... said, but we didn't need signs that morning to proclaim a windy day, for the wind already swept the courtyard, and whipped the green branches of the handsome trees which marked the driveway. My spirits rose at once when I filled my lungs with air and looked up at the scudding clouds which were being dogged across ...
— Three Times and Out • Nellie L. McClung
... a sudden, through a break in the traffic, a scudding figure had sprung into sight. It was the figure of a man in a gray frock-coat and a shining "topper," a well-groomed, well-set-up man, with a small, turned-up moustache and hair of a peculiar reddish shade. As he swung into ...
— Cleek, the Master Detective • Thomas W. Hanshew
... I looked out and saw watery clouds scudding athwart the face of the murky sky. The shutters banged, and shut me in the dark. I made haste to find the door, reached the stairway—slid down the banisters to where Mrs. Brown was waiting for me at ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... appearance of the plantations as they passed up the river; the frightened negroes leaving their work and taking to the woods, at sight of the gun-boats; then coming to peer out like startled deer, and scudding away like the wind at the sound of the steam-whistle. "Well," said one old negro, "Mas'r said de Yankees had horns and tails, but I nebber beliebed it till now." But the word was passed along by the mysterious ...
— Harriet, The Moses of Her People • Sarah H. Bradford
... brigantine was scudding away toward the west before a wind that could not have suited her better had it been made to order at the special behest of the devil himself to speed his minions upon their ...
— The Mucker • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... sweep at us. Then we come again to trim gardens and ivy garnished walls. The road follows the curves of the Lough, and we watch the black steamers ploughing along, and the brown-sailed little boats scudding before ...
— The Letters of "Norah" on her Tour Through Ireland • Margaret Dixon McDougall
... of the Captain increased when, looking back, he spied two swift scouting planes scudding along a mile or two behind him. That they might be considered a guard of honor rather than spies sent out to see that he did not play false never occurred ...
— The Thunder Bird • B. M. Bower
... the chase, the foray and the fray which formed the serious business of his life. And how picturesque the hunting scenes; the greyhound, like the mare, of purest blood; the falcon cast at francolin and coney; the gazelle standing at gaze; the desert ass scudding over the ground-waves; the wild cows or bovine antelopes browsing with their calves and the ostrich-chickens flocking round the parent bird! The Musamarah or night-talk round the camp-fire was enlivened ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 10 • Richard F. Burton
... the anchor aboard; the tide floated off the sloop; they were soon scudding before the wind under a freezing starlight. Two weary days passed over Paul, of travel by land and water. They came to the city of Richmond at last, and marched him with five other unfortunates to the common slave-pen. It was situated ...
— Tales of the Chesapeake • George Alfred Townsend
... either, who with their coats buttoned up to their chins, and hats jammed tightly over their half-shut eyes, present a tolerably secure surface to the attacks of the wind, but their fairer sisters too can be seen, with their fresh cheeks and bright eyes protected by jaunty veils, scudding along in the face or the track of the wind, as the case may he, with wonderful skill and grace, looking as trim and secure as to rigging as the lightest schooner in full ...
— California Sketches, Second Series • O. P. Fitzgerald
... the dying day was gone, and a sickly, pallid moon glimmered dully among drifts of scudding black clouds. An icy blast wailed up from the sea, and the rocking trees were like dryad specters in writhing agony. The distant Beech Walk looked black and grim and ghostly ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming
... enough, for we was free men—and I'm thinking 'tis only slaves do be giving heed to the day that's gone or the day to come—until they're old like me. [With a sort of religious exaltation.] Oh, to be scudding south again wid the power of the Trade Wind driving her on steady through the nights and the days! Full sail on her! Nights and days! Nights when the foam of the wake would be flaming wid fire, when ...
— The Hairy Ape • Eugene O'Neill
... Cape Fanshawe, scudding swiftly before a fine breeze, to the delight of our Indians, who had now only to steer and chat. Here we overtook two Hoona Indians and their families on their way home from Fort Wrangell. They had exchanged five sea-otter furs, worth about a hundred dollars ...
— Travels in Alaska • John Muir
... of passengers were gathered on the upper deck eagerly watching the colored breakwater lights and the city lights beyond. Suddenly a general curiosity was aroused by a small boat of some sort, on the left, scudding swiftly along in the darkness like a blacker streak on the black waters. A few of us who chanced to be near the captain on the smaller deck above, heard him quietly say, "Turn on the searchlight." Almost instantly an intense white light shone full on the stranger-boat, ...
— Quiet Talks on Power • S.D. Gordon
... than usual, low scudding clouds and flying wavetops seeming to mingle. Waves sheeted with foam faded ghost-like into the tossing greyness. Drifts of rain blew stingingly in from the sea. Cruel and cold the waters appeared now to Jean's anxious eyes, and she found herself repeating ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... full set when there's fun in the air. Can't tell you, Mistress Blum, how I dote on that 'ere boy. Then there's Miss Dorothy,—the trimmest, neatest little craft I ever see. It seemed, t'other day, that the deck was slippin' from under me, when I see that child scudding 'round the lot on Lady's back. You couldn't 'a' told, at first, whether she was a-runnin' away with Lady, or Lady a-runnin' away with her. But didn't the skeer follow mighty quick! I tell you the wind blew four quarters ...
— Donald and Dorothy • Mary Mapes Dodge
... landlord, or bar-keeper; steps echoing on the staircase; the ringing of a bell, announcing arrivals or departures; the porter lumbering past my door with baggage, which he thumped down upon the floors of neighboring chambers; the lighter feet of chambermaids scudding along the passages;—it is ridiculous to think what an interest they had for me! From the street came the tumult of the pavements, pervading the whole house with a continual uproar, so broad and deep that only an unaccustomed ear would dwell upon it. A company of the city soldiery, with ...
— The Blithedale Romance • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... chill and grey after the storm, with a sky obscured by scudding clouds, but a gleam of truant sunshine was sporting wantonly on the hoary castled summit of St. Michael's Mount, and promised to visit the town later on. Mrs. Pendleton walked briskly, and soon ...
— The Moon Rock • Arthur J. Rees
... time the last goal was won. Hatless, flushed, and laughing, she drew back from the fray, Olga, elated by victory, clinging to her arm. It was a moment of keen triumph, for the fight had been hard, and she enjoyed it to the full as she stood there with her face to the sudden, scudding rain. The glow of exercise had braced every muscle. Every pulse was beating with warm, ...
— The Way of an Eagle • Ethel M. Dell
... mite better? Though I dunno how you could, expect to, arter such a night as you had on't, puffin' an' blowin'!" Mrs. Pendleton followed the voice. She seemed to be borne briskly in on its wings, and came scudding over the kitchen sill, carrying a pan of freshly sifted flour. She set it down on the table, and began "stirrin' up." "I dunno where you got such a cold, unless it's in the air," she continued. "Folks say they're round, nowadays, an' you ketch 'em, ...
— Meadow Grass - Tales of New England Life • Alice Brown
... as he spoke, and Jeremy's gaze followed. The Tiger was carrying topsails and both jibs, with a single reef in her fore and main sails. She was scudding along at a great rate with the whitecaps racing by, close below the lee gunports. Jeremy whistled with delight. He had seen Stede Bonnet crowd canvas once or twice, but never in so good ...
— The Black Buccaneer • Stephen W. Meader
... resting, and we were afloat. In ten seconds more we were lying broadside to the wind. Then indeed we had to skip around lively, get up some sails, and put her properly on the wind. Before we had time to draw an easy breath we were scudding along, far from the spot which we had intended to mark with an anchored buoy. There was a good deal of water in the hold, but the brig went merrily on as if glad to get away from those two old sea spectres of the past with ...
— John Gayther's Garden and the Stories Told Therein • Frank R. Stockton
... whether he was black or white. In the midst of this Juno-like nimbus however, the negro continued to talk and act, helping the sailor and little William, until not only were the water-casks restored to their proper places, but the sail was hauled up to the mast, and the Catamaran once more scudding before the breeze, as if not the slightest accident had occurred either to ...
— The Ocean Waifs - A Story of Adventure on Land and Sea • Mayne Reid
... thought at that moment was to let go a broadside that sent the stranger scudding. Judging it unwise to keep a half-mutinous crew too near pirate ships, M. Radisson ordered anchor up. With a deck-mop fastened in defiance to our prow, the St. Pierre slipped out of the harbour through the half-dark of those northern summer nights, and gave the ...
— Heralds of Empire - Being the Story of One Ramsay Stanhope, Lieutenant to Pierre Radisson in the Northern Fur Trade • Agnes C. Laut
... had slowly come up the Mersey in a fog, and the special boat train had dashed through the same dense atmosphere to the home of fogs and soot, London, and in the whole journey to his hotel the young American had seen nothing of the mother country but telegraph-poles scudding through opacity on the railway journey, and in London the loom of buildings and lights dimly ...
— The Best Short Stories of 1920 - and the Yearbook of the American Short Story • Various
... is an account from America of a Professor King who made an ascent from Burlington, Iowa, just as a thunderstorm was approaching, with the result that, instead of scudding away with the wind before the storm, he was actually, as if by some attraction, drawn into it. On this his aim was to pierce through the cloud above, and then follows a description which it is hard to realise:—"There came down in front of him, and apparently not more than 50 ...
— The Dominion of the Air • J. M. Bacon
... observation, in 7 degrees 22' northern latitude, when a violent tornado, or hurricane, took us quite out of our knowledge. It blew in such a terrible manner, that for twelve days together we could do nothing but drive; and, scudding away before it, let it carry us wherever fate and the fury of the winds directed; and during these twelve days, I need not say that I expected every day to be swallowed up; nor did any in the ship expect to ...
— The Junior Classics, V5 • Edited by William Patten
... drooped, the leafless branches of the hazels, the faded, crumpled blackberry, the scattered decaying leaves. It was really a remarkable day for November—clear and frosty, with a bright blue sky and scudding white clouds. A strong north-east wind tested one's vitality. Hereward's was low. He buttoned his collar ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 158, January 14, 1920 • Various
... chances of the night. He knew that the ship was running into the mouth of the Bay of Biscay, or at least was fast approaching it, and he bethought him of the means of getting to the westward. The night promised to be anything but dark, for though a good many wild-looking clouds were by this time scudding athwart the heavens, the moon diffused a sort of twilight gleam in the air. Waiting patiently, however, until the middle-watch was again called, he reduced, sail, and hauled the ship off to a south-west course, hoping by this ...
— Homeward Bound - or, The Chase • James Fenimore Cooper
... above alluded to. Before that day scarcely a soul had been seen near her father's house for weeks. When a noise like the brushing skirt of a visitor was heard on the doorstep, it proved to be a scudding leaf; when a carriage seemed to be nearing the door, it was her father grinding his sickle on the stone in the garden for his favourite relaxation of trimming the box-tree borders to the plots. A sound like luggage thrown down from the coach was a gun ...
— Life's Little Ironies - A set of tales with some colloquial sketches entitled A Few Crusted Characters • Thomas Hardy
... encountered death, or many deaths, for the other. These were regions of natural peace and tranquillity, that in any ordinary times should have been peopled by no worse inhabitants than the timid hare scudding homewards to its form, or the wild deer sweeping by with thunder to their distant lairs. But now from every glen or thicket armed marauders might be ready to start. Every gleam of sunshine in some seasons was reflected ...
— Memorials and Other Papers • Thomas de Quincey
... a cloud covered the scudding moons, 'I do hope you may see her, and somehow I think, too, you will. But, Dodd,' the moons emerged, and the lower one was in transit across the face of the upper, 'I must call your attention to this strange peculiarity of our bodies, that we undergo extremes ...
— The Certainty of a Future Life in Mars • L. P. Gratacap
... abroad, [stared] To see a scene sae gay, Three hizzies, early at the road, [girls] Cam skelpin' up the way. [scudding] Twa had manteeles o' dolefu' black, But ane wi' lyart lining; [gray] The third, that gaed a wee a-back, [went a little] Was in the fashion shining Fu' gay ...
— Robert Burns - How To Know Him • William Allan Neilson
... murmured the lady. She was not succeeding, and she felt it. The boy was too ridiculous. She assumed a new pose, gazing dreamily over the side into the scudding sea. ...
— In the Roaring Fifties • Edward Dyson
... air, and his raiment, if the hat be excepted, was shabby enough for a professional mountebank out of business. A chilly wind and a drizzling rain filled the heavens with gloom; mist-clouds rolled over the land; a gray fog trailed lazily along the harbor; the scudding clouds vaulted along the heavens as if driven by the furies; and, indeed, the drenched earth was bespread with a ...
— The Life and Adventures of Maj. Roger Sherman Potter • "Pheleg Van Trusedale"
... the rain were till hanging about in a fashion rather undecided. It was a morning of gusts and of showers. The rooks swayed in the elm tops, or flew up under the scudding clouds of a treacherous sky. There was a strong smell of damp earth, and the turf of the wide spreading ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... with scudding clouds—a dun sea dappled with pale silver—and that intense greyish-white light on promenade, bleak-fronted houses and sparsely scattered visitors, which always makes everything so distinct as to seem unreal on such a day ...
— The Privet Hedge • J. E. Buckrose
... bamboo-briar, an evergreen creeper, twines itself with various other plants, which never shed their leaves in winter. These woods abound in game, which, you will believe me when I say, I had rather start than shoot,—flocks of turtle-doves, rabbits rising and scudding before you; bevies of quails, partridges they call them here, chirping almost under your horse's feet; wild ducks swimming in the pools, and wild turkeys, which are frequently shot by the ...
— Letters of a Traveller - Notes of Things Seen in Europe and America • William Cullen Bryant
... shining in the sun, flung back the light, from end to end of the undulating column. Billows of smoke, out-puffing unexpectedly, anywhere and everywhere along the line, marked down the tragedies where desperate bunnies, scudding from cover and racing up or down before the red men, were targets for fiercely biting hail of lead from two or three or more ...
— Bruvver Jim's Baby • Philip Verrill Mighels
... sing: douce Jeemsy Todd, rushing from his loom, armed with a bed-post; Lisbeth Whamond, an avenging whirlwind; Neil Haggart, pausing in his thanks-offerings to smite and slay; the impious foe scudding up the bleeding Brae-head with Nemesis at their flashing heels; the minister holding it a nice question whether the carnage was not justified. Then came the two hours' sermons of the following Sabbath, when Mr. Dishart, revolving like a teetotum in ...
— Auld Licht Idylls • J. M. Barrie
... shook his head, and pronounced this halcyon calm a "weather-breeder." And so it proved. A storm burst forth in the night; the sea roared and raged; and when the day broke, I beheld the late gallant convoy scattered in every direction; some dismasted, others scudding under bare poles, and many ...
— The Crayon Papers • Washington Irving
... been pouring its flood of light into her room was dropping behind the tall trees and the room was growing dark. The steam heat had long since died down and the room was cold. She was entirely unconscious of physical conditions. Silently as a shadow she worked, and with the swiftness of a cloud scudding before a gale of wind. In ten minutes the room was in perfect order and she was garbed in her stout riding-boots, heavy riding skirt, a warm flannel shirt waist and heavy sweater. Her wool skating cap was pulled tight down about her ears, and she carried her riding ...
— A Dixie School Girl • Gabrielle E. Jackson
... top of them; but the next instant she dropped into the gaping trough, and they were looking down upon her far below. It was a striking picture—one Joe was destined never to forget. The Reindeer was wallowing in the snow-white smother, her rails flush with the sea, the water scudding across her deck in foaming cataracts. The air was filled with flying spray, which made the scene appear hazy and unreal. One of the men was clinging to the perilous after-deck and striving to cast off the water-logged skiff. The boy, leaning far over the cockpit-rail ...
— The Cruise of the Dazzler • Jack London
... lighted brand; And the fire was burning slow As the vessel from the land, Like a stag-hound from the slips, Darted forth from out the ships. There was music in her sail As it swelled before the gale, And a dashing at her prow As it cleft the waves below, And the good ship sped along, Scudding free; As on many a battle morn In her time she had been borne, To struggle and ...
— The Ontario Readers: Fourth Book • Various
... weather was bad, and neither Papa nor the ladies had come down to morning tea when I entered the drawing-room. There had been cold rain in the night, and remnants of the clouds from which it had descended were still scudding across the sky, with the sun's luminous disc (not yet risen to any great height) showing faintly through them. It was a windy, damp, grey morning. The door into the garden was standing open, and pools left by the night's rain were drying on the damp-blackened flags of the terrace. The ...
— Youth • Leo Tolstoy
... little as the wind fills her sails, and she is off! Faster and faster she glides along, her cutwater rippling the water in front of her, and her flags fluttering bravely in the air; and her delighted owner, with laughing eyes, beholds her triumphantly scudding over the ...
— Round-about Rambles in Lands of Fact and Fancy • Frank Richard Stockton
... night, between seven and eight. The great deserted avenue was already dark. A sea fog was scudding overhead, and by degrees descending lower. The warmth was of the meagerest, and the street lamps, birds of fire in cages of glass, fluttered and danced in the prolonged gusts of the trade wind that threshed and weltered in the city ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris
... to speak of, having no headsails, and her two tanned wings bellied out while the whole of her fabric pitched and rolled over the white crested waves. The fog was growing denser around us, as if we had been journeying through a swift-moving cloud. It was scudding in from the Grand Banks, pushed by a chill gale which might first have passed over the ...
— Sweetapple Cove • George van Schaick
... little deviation from her original course as possible. The trim of the sails will depend upon the wind. If the boat is to sail against the wind, that is termed "beating to windward"; with the wind is called "scudding." With the wind sideways it is called "reaching." If the boat is sailed with the wind blowing midway between one of the sides and the stern in such a way that it sweeps from one side of the stern across the deck, this is called "three-quarter sailing" in a "quartering" ...
— Boys' Book of Model Boats • Raymond Francis Yates
... unfooted heights we clomb Through scudding mist and eddying whirls of cloud, Blind as a pilot beaten blind with foam, And shrouded as a corpse with ...
— Astrophel and Other Poems - Taken from The Collected Poetical Works of Algernon Charles - Swinburne, Vol. VI • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... or empty bottles, and swam every morning in the sea. Early in August they reached their destination. Coming in sight of the Morea, the poet said to Trelawny, "I feel as if the eleven long years of bitterness I have passed through, since I was here, were taken from my shoulders, and I was scudding through the Greek Archipelago with old Bathurst in his frigate." Byron remained at or about Cephalonia till the close of the year. Not long after his arrival he made an excursion to Ithaca, and, visiting the monastery at Vathi, was received by the abbot with ...
— Byron • John Nichol
... any of the rest of the party, had only looked at the sky! But if they had, I dare say they would have made nothing of it. There were clouds scudding about up there like shadowy sail-boats, and the sun had to fight his way through them, till by and by he gave it up entirely, and never so much as peeped out. By that time it was decidedly bad weather; the light had to be ...
— Dotty Dimple At Home • Sophie May
... him, but he could see no more than the mocking Bandar-log scudding through the trees, and Mor, his tail spread in full splendour, ...
— The Second Jungle Book • Rudyard Kipling
... of the flag fluttered back in silken, shuddering waves as if it were a reluctant thing. Occasionally a giant spring of a charger would rear the firm and sturdy figure of a soldier suddenly head and shoulders above his comrades. Over the noise of the scudding hoofs could be heard the creaking of leather trappings, the jingle and clank of steel, and the tense, low-toned commands or appeals of the men to their horses. And the horses were mad with the headlong sweep of this movement. Powerful ...
— The Little Regiment - And Other Episodes of the American Civil War • Stephen Crane
... of moonlit, white road, a string of sleeping camels at rest by the wayside; a vision of scudding jackals; ekka-ponies asleep—the harness still on their backs, and the brass- studded country carts, winking in the moonlight—and again more corpses. Wherever a grain cart atilt, a tree trunk, a sawn log, a couple of bamboos and a ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... nothing: the colossal prophetic creature in green and white over the altar, on the keystone of the vault, striking out his arms—to pull it all down or prop it all up? The very creation of the world becoming the creation of chaos, the Creator scudding away before Himself as He separates the light from the darkness. Chaos, chaos, and all these things moving, writhing, making fearful efforts, in a way living, all about nothing and in nothing, much like those voices grating and ...
— The Spirit of Rome • Vernon Lee
... instant when Oliver began to run, the old gentleman, putting his hand to his pocket, and missing his handkerchief, turned sharp round. Seeing the boy scudding away at such a rapid pace, he very naturally concluded him to be the depredator, and, shouting "Stop thief!" with all his might, made off after him, book in hand. The Dodger and Master Bates, who had merely retired into the first doorway round the corner, no sooner heard the cry, and ...
— Ten Boys from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... wind and shower. But the February rain cleared away towards noon, and the high scudding clouds, with bright spaces between, suddenly began to prophesy Spring. From Hyde Park, down the Mall, and along Whitehall, the troops gathered and the usual crowd sprang up in their rear, pressing towards Parliament Square, or lining the route. Winnington had sent a note early to Delia by messenger; ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... The children soon came scudding down out of the darkness of the upstairs to dress tumultuously at the kitchen stove. They humped and shivered, holding up their bare feet from the cold floor, like chickens in new fallen snow. They were irritable, ...
— Main-Travelled Roads • Hamlin Garland
... the Newells kept,—Thanksgiving- and Fast-Day. This was Thanksgiving-Day. The snow without was falling thick and fast. It came in great eddies and white whirls, obscuring the prospect from the windows and scudding madly around the corners. It lay in great drifts against the fences, and one large pile before the middle front-window had gathered volume till it reached half up the second row of panes; for it had snowed all night and half the day before. The roads were so blocked by it that they ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 8, No. 50, December, 1861 • Various
... Away we flew on the wings of the storm through the muck and flying spray. A wind sheer to starboard, then another to port as the enormous seas struck the schooner astern and nearly broached her to. As day broke we took in the jib, leaving not a sail unfurled. Since we had begun scudding she had ceased to take the seas over her bow, but amidships they broke fast and furious. It was a dry storm in the matter of rain, but the force of the wind filled the air with fine spray, which flew as high as the crosstrees and cut the face like a knife, making it ...
— Dutch Courage and Other Stories • Jack London
... sped those two dark specks, far out-topping the scattered remnant of the flock. Up and up, until of a sudden the sheer Fall dropped its relentless barrier in the path of the fugitive. Away, scudding along the foot of the rock-wall struck the familiar track leading to the Scoop, and up it, bleating pitifully, nigh spent, the ...
— Bob, Son of Battle • Alfred Ollivant
... jib in the water forward had brought her head to wind, and acted as a sort of floating anchor. At last I lay down at the bottom of the boat and fell asleep. It was daylight before I awoke, and it blew harder than ever; and I could just see some vessels at a distance, scudding before the gale, but they could hardly see me. I sat very melancholy the whole day, shedding tears, surrounded by nothing but the roaring waves. I prayed very earnestly: I said the Lord's Prayer, the Belief, and ...
— Olla Podrida • Frederick Marryat (AKA Captain Marryat)
... bright moonlight without, with drift scudding over the moon; at that instant the moon's face cleared, and Glam glared up against her. By that sight only Grettir confessed himself dismayed beyond all that he had ever seen; nor, for weariness and fear together, could he draw his sword to strike ...
— The Book of Romance • Various
... cause of the trouble was the carrying away of the foretop-gallant-yard, due to rotten halyards, and braces and lifts, when we were scudding before a gale off Hatteras. The yard came down on the whirl, but when it hit the deck it hit like a pile-driver—a straight, perpendicular blow—directly over the partners that held the upper end of the stanchion to which that crazy ...
— The Grain Ship • Morgan Robertson
... not much room, and the roller was ponderously closing in, but with a protruding tongue our luckless chauffeur crept slowly past the monster in safety, and a moment later we were scudding up the Poitiers road. ...
— Jonah and Co. • Dornford Yates
... to see if we could find a dipper's nest, for one of the little cock-tailed blackbirds gave us a glimpse of his white collar as he dropped upon a stone, and then walked into a pool, in whose clear depths we could see him scudding about after the insects at the bottom, and seeming to fly through the water as he beat his little rounded wings using them ...
— Devon Boys - A Tale of the North Shore • George Manville Fenn
... breeze, the gay little brig made merry and rapid way over the sparkling Mediterranean, at a rate that promised our arrival at Palermo by the sunset of the following day. As the evening came on the wind freshened, and by the time the moon soared like a large blight bird into the sky, we were scudding along sideways, the edge of our vessel leaning over to kiss the waves that gleamed like silver and gold, flecked here and there with phosphorescent flame. We skimmed almost under the bows of a magnificent yacht—the English flag floated from her mast—her sails glittered ...
— Vendetta - A Story of One Forgotten • Marie Corelli
... and gazed. Away out to the west and southwest, whence came the strong breeze blowing from the Sweetwater Hills, half a dozen dark, agile forms, bending low, were scudding afoot over the sward, and everywhere they moved there sprang up in their tracks little sheets of lambent flame, little clouds of bluish, blinding smoke, and almost in less time than it takes to tell it, ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... it lasted Pierce Phillips never knew; the experience was too terrific to be long lived. It was a nightmare, a hideous phantasmagoria of frightful sensations, a dissolving stereopticon of bleak, scudding walls, of hydrophobic boulders frothing madly as the flood crashed over them, of treacherous whirlpools, and of pursuing breakers that reached forth licking tongues of destruction. Then the river opened, the cliffs fell away, and the torrent spewed itself out into an expanse of whirlpools—a ...
— The Winds of Chance • Rex Beach
... room, hung all round with arras; and often, after the household had gone to bed, those who slept nearest to the knight were awakened out of their sleep by the noise he made in running up and down, and here and there; scudding about over the floor, and even—as far as could be guessed by the sounds—clambering up the walls, just as though, instead of being a gracious high-bred young gentleman, he had ...
— The Cuckoo Clock • Mrs. Molesworth
... about her. There was nobody in sight at all, and he was holding her like a great spider, and his bristly moustache darted forward to spike her to death, and then, somehow, she was free, away from him, scudding down the road lightly and fearfully and very swiftly. "Wait, wait," he called, "wait," but she did ...
— Mary, Mary • James Stephens
... a day of wild autumnal weather, when the wind moaned like a living thing in torture about the house, and the leaves eddied and drifted before the scudding rain, that they turned Tawny Hudson out of his master's room, and left him crouched and whimpering like a dog against the locked door. Save for his master's express command, no power on earth would have driven him away, not even Capper of the curt speech and magnetic will. But the ...
— The Knave of Diamonds • Ethel May Dell
... vessel rose to the crests, the keel half out of water aft, the Rector could see other boats from the Cabanal in the distance, vanishing in the mists of the horizon. They were all running with poles virtually bare, scudding before the wind for shelter, though it would be much more dangerous making port than to hold to the open sea. And the claws of remorse sank deep into Pascualo's heart. He seemed to be awakening from a horrible dream. That night of horror passed in the streets of the ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... eyes probably which had ever closely viewed that now well-known promontory, although Drake may possibly have seen it at a distance when scudding before the gale which drove the sorely-battered Golden Hind out ...
— Notable Voyagers - From Columbus to Nordenskiold • W.H.G. Kingston and Henry Frith
... certainly a remarkable scene, its solemnity emphasized by the thunder without, that drowned the voice of the mueddin calling to prayer, and by the lightning and rain-torrents that sent the pretty little al fresco waitresses scudding about with their serviettes on their heads to tend the few parties in the leafy square that dined on regardless of diluted wine or under the protection of umbrellas. How the Turks further wetted themselves by complex ablutions in the tank (meydiaeh) in the ...
— Without Prejudice • Israel Zangwill
... still, they found a fair variety, and were able to chronicle early blooms of such specimens as the greater stitchwort, the ground ivy, and the golden saxifrage. It was a fresh March day, with a wind blowing scudding white clouds across a pale blue sky. Rooks were beginning to build, green foliage showed on the elder trees, ...
— Monitress Merle • Angela Brazil
... are all plumed with their leafage superb, And the rose and the lily are budding; And wild, happy life, without hindrance or curb, Through the woodland is creeping and scudding; The clover is purple, the air is like mead, With odor escaped from the opulent weed ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... and only one I ever saw —my attention being drawn to him by cries from some of the game-keepers. There was much commotion, the men pointing out the game and shouting excitedly, "See the wild boar!" otherwise I should not have known what was up, but now, looking in the indicated direction, I saw scudding over the plain what appeared to me to be nothing but a halfgrown black pig, or shoat. He was not in much of a hurry either, and gave no evidence of ferocity, yet it is said that this insignificant looking animal is dangerous when hunted with the spear —the customary way. After an early ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. II., Part 6 • P. H. Sheridan
... only bird voice I hear. Throughout the spring, and far into the summer, I watch the domestic affairs in the eaves-trough. During the winter, at nightfall, I see little bands and flurries of birds scudding over and dropping behind the high buildings to the east. They are sparrows on the way to their roost in the elms of ...
— Roof and Meadow • Dallas Lore Sharp
... hand—which a French lady's maid had given her in exchange for silence over a little incident that scarcely calls for mention. The first return of her mistress to Apsley, then, was a sign of the nearing season—the lonely swallow that is seen scudding through the first break in the year by some enthusiastic ornithologist and recorded in the next morning's edition of the Times. She kept a diary, in fact, did Mrs. Butterick, and in about the middle of April of every year, might be noticed the comment, "Madame arrived—first ...
— Sally Bishop - A Romance • E. Temple Thurston
... spots of uncovered earth, where the gust has whirled away the snow, heaping it elsewhere to the fence-tops, or piling huge banks against the doors of houses. A solitary passenger is seen, now striding mid-leg deep across a drift, now scudding over the bare ground, while his cloak is swollen with the wind. And now the jingling of bells, a sluggish sound, responsive to the horse's toilsome progress through the unbroken drifts, announces the passage of a sleigh, with a ...
— Snow Flakes (From "Twice Told Tales") • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... order to make as rapid passages as possible, and sustain the ship's reputation for speed. Hence it is, that although they are the very best of sea-going craft, and built in the best possible manner, and with the very best materials, yet, a few years of scudding before the wind, as they do, seriously impairs their constitutions—like robust young men, who live too fast in their teens —and they are soon sold out for a song; generally to the people of Nantucket, New Bedford, ...
— Redburn. His First Voyage • Herman Melville
... the right and started to run. Threatening waves overspread the sea, big black clouds were scudding along madly, passing on and followed by others, each of them coming down in a furious downpour. The wind whistled, moaned, laid the grass and the young crops low and carried away big white birds that looked like specks of foam and bore ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant
... a laugh, a little strident, and crossed the room, perfume shaken from her brilliant clothes. Outside the door she broke into a song that rose above her scudding flight down the stairs. ...
— Treasure and Trouble Therewith - A Tale of California • Geraldine Bonner
... Chicago?" she asked nervously. They were now far beyond the city limits, and the train was scudding across the Indiana line at a ...
— Sister Carrie • Theodore Dreiser
... 11.30 P.M. In the stables the long row of heads in the half-darkness, the creaking of the ship, the shivering of the hull from the vibration of the engines, the sing of a sentry on the spar deck to some passer-by. Then to the forward deck: the sky half covered with scudding clouds, the stars bright in the intervals, the wind whistling a regular blow that tries one's ears, the constant swish as she settles down to a sea; and, looking aft, the funnel with a wreath of smoke trailing away off into ...
— In Flanders Fields and Other Poems - With an Essay in Character, by Sir Andrew Macphail • John McCrae
... followed by a sheet of vivid fire, until, losing its power, it yielded to the wind, and, as it rose from the water, spread like a cloud, and, passing through the masts of the schooner, was driven far to leeward, and soon blended in the mists which were swiftly scudding before the ...
— The Pilot • J. Fenimore Cooper
... sitting-room, where they remained closeted for some time. While the old soldier was listening to what the policeman had to tell him, Gimblet began to show signs of restlessness. He went to the door and looked about him. The weather was clearing, the clouds breaking and scudding fast before a wind which had arisen in the North; a tinge of blue showed here and there in the interstices between them, while a veil of mist that trailed after them shone faintly orange in the rays of ...
— The Ashiel mystery - A Detective Story • Mrs. Charles Bryce
... the lowest of the low and the vilest of the vile by granting them His grace (CCLX—CCXVIII); He that leads persons desirous of Emancipation to the foremost of all conditions, viz., Emancipation itself; (or, He that assumes the form of a mighty Fish and scudding through the vast expanse of waters that cover the Earth when the universal dissolution comes, and dragging the boat tied to His horns, leads Manu and others to safety); He that is the leader of all creatures; (or, He that sports in the vast expanse of waters which ...
— The Mahabharata of Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Volume 4 • Kisari Mohan Ganguli
... and square perpetual hostility, and you keep your armor on and your sentinels posted; but with friends you are inveigled into a false security, and, before you know it, your honor, your modesty, your delicacy are scudding before the gales. Moreover, with your friend you can never make reprisals. If your enemy attacks you, you can always strike back and hit hard. You are expected to defend yourself against him to the top of your bent. He is your legal opponent in honorable warfare. You can pour hot-shot into ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 10, Number 59, September, 1862 • Various
... on their summits. The water of the lake was transparent and calm, and looked as placid as though nothing had ever penetrated the lonely spot in which it was nestled, to mar its surface. The chief on emerging into the open glade, saw the sky had become flecked with clouds that were scudding across the heavens, in a thousand fantastic waves, while just above the peak of the topmost hill over the lake, a black cloud, heavy and portentous with a gathering storm, was rising slowly, leaving a long streak of light unbroken ...
— The American Family Robinson - or, The Adventures of a Family lost in the Great Desert of the West • D. W. Belisle
... six o'clock with darkness came a spattering of rain, heavy single drops that fell each with its splotch, exuding from the asphalt the warming smell of thaw. Then came wind, right high-tempered, too, slanting the rain and scudding it and blowing pedestrians' skirts forward and their umbrellas inside outward. Mr. Alphonse Michelson fitted his hand like a vizor over his eyes and peered out into the wet dusk. Lights gleamed and were reflected in the dark pool of rain-swept asphalt. Passers-by hurried ...
— Every Soul Hath Its Song • Fannie Hurst
... on another afternoon to watch the fisherman fleets at their work or scudding before a strong wind home with a great, round, radiant sun behind. She showed me fishers in the air, lonely fish hawks one by one flying in the late afternoon back to their nests on the Atlantic Highlands. And far out ...
— The Harbor • Ernest Poole |
