"Splutter" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... missing his wife and child, quacked the alarm. The bundle made another rush, and suddenly disappeared with a tremendous splash, in the midst of which a leg and an arm appeared! Away went the whole brood of ducks with immense splutter, and Nelly gave a wild scream of terror, supposing—and she was right—that her brother had fallen into a hole, and that he would be drowned. In the latter supposition, however, she was mistaken, for Roy swam ashore in a few moments with a duck in ...
— Silver Lake • R.M. Ballantyne
... dead; but when we picked him up it was obvious that he was dying. The violet beam vanished as his body struck it—vanished with a hiss and splutter, and a puff of sulphuric smoke that mingled with the smell of ...
— Tarrano the Conqueror • Raymond King Cummings
... the man's discomfiture before it occurred; I knew what a terrible splutter there would be when the stuff began to melt and run down his windpipe. I should have laughed aloud, but the bandage was hurting me terribly. With a vague hope of getting some relief from pain, I opened the door as softly as I could, went out and closed it behind ...
— A Little Union Scout • Joel Chandler Harris
... then two, then none. There was a lack of arm-chairs for the men; the ladies hid their yawns behind their fans. At last the music ceased, and as no one said anything, a dead silence spread through the room. Candles began to splutter and ...
— Selected Polish Tales • Various
... Pete's arrival at the Concho ranch, Andy White rode in with a companion, dusty, tired, and hungry from a sojourn over near the Apache line. White made his report to the foreman, unsaddled, and was washing with a great deal of splutter and elbow-motion, when some one slapped him on the back. He turned a dripping face to behold ...
— The Ridin' Kid from Powder River • Henry Herbert Knibbs
... violent splutter of sparks, accompanied by a fizzing noise, and Jim knew that no power on earth could now avert the imminent explosion. Like a cat he worked his way backwards along the spar, which bent and heaved under his weight, until presently he stood ...
— Under the Chilian Flag - A Tale of War between Chili and Peru • Harry Collingwood
... and applied a flaming torch to the tar-smeared faggots, which began to hiss and splutter in the still, frosty, ...
— A German Pompadour - Being the Extraordinary History of Wilhelmine van Graevenitz, - Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg • Marie Hay
... played by these ultra-red rays in Nature may be thus illustrated: I remove the iodine filter, and concentrate the total beam upon a test tube containing water. It immediately begins to splutter, and in a minute or two it boils. What boils it? Placing the alum solution in front of the lamp, the boiling instantly ceases. Now, the alum is pervious to all the luminous rays; hence it cannot be these rays that ...
— Six Lectures on Light - Delivered In The United States In 1872-1873 • John Tyndall
... man began to splutter words and threats so fast that nobody could quite understand him. Mr. Damon, however, did not shrink in the least. He stood adamant in the ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... last remnant of water from his mouth with a wrathful splutter, and cleared his eyes with the back ...
— Love Among the Chickens - A Story of the Haps and Mishaps on an English Chicken Farm • P. G. Wodehouse
... prison. However, he got Archer and five small children to Kirkaldy tolbooth. But what then? In a little after, having taken a gentleman prisoner, he went with him to a public house near Clunie in the parish of Kinglassie to see some public matters accommodated; but not agreeing, Wylie made a great splutter, and amongst other imprecations said, The devil take me, if I carry him not to Couper tolbooth this night. The gentleman's man, a young hardy fellow, told him roundly, his master should not go there. Upon which, Wylie gave him ...
— Biographia Scoticana (Scots Worthies) • John Howie
... "Ods splutter hur nails!" cried the giant, who was ashamed to be outdone by such a little fellow. "Hur can do that hurself!" and, snatching up the knife, he plunged it into his stomach and fell ...
— Favorite Fairy Tales • Logan Marshall
... does he?" Batchgrew muttered indifferently. But he took a cup of coffee, stirred part of its contents into the saucer and on to the Chesterfield, and began to sup the remainder with a prodigious splutter of ingurgitation. ...
— The Price of Love • Arnold Bennett
... appetite," said Reeves, raising his glass, "of Mr. Williams!" Morgan's laugh and his drink encountering sent him into a choking splutter. All began to pay attention to the dinner, which was well cooked ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry
... their bread, they stole their meat, And all the jam they had to eat; They gobbled up their pies and cake, And everything the mice could bake; They stuffed themselves with good fresh meal, And ruined all they could not steal; They slapped their long tails in the butter Until they made a frightful splutter; Then, sleek and fine in coats of silk, They swam about in buttermilk. They ate up everything they found, And flung the plates upon the ground. And catching three mice by their tails, They drowned them in the water-pails; ...
— Poems for Pale People - A Volume of Verse • Edwin C. Ranck
... anchored steamer was vivid enough to have shaken trained men. Yet these Italian artificers and merchant seamen seemed to take it as coolly as though such sorties were an everyday occurrence. But at the end of that time there was a splutter of shots, a few faint squeals, and then a bonfire lighted up away ...
— A Master of Fortune • Cutcliffe Hyne
... goddess, who was undoubtedly one of the grandest of heathen mythical creations, being caricatured in pencil and pen and ink, under every ludicrous aspect that can be conceived. Some of the entries are brief and absurd, "Not much of a fizz," "a grand splutter," "Madam Pele in the dumps," and so forth. These generally have English signatures. The American wit is far racier, but depends mainly on the profane use of certain passages of scripture, a species of wit ...
— The Hawaiian Archipelago • Isabella L. Bird
... that she owed no one a penny, before she ventured upon any new purchase. Then my worthy friend was in his glory; and it was delightful to see how he enjoyed his work. He had but one fault, which was a slight tendency to splutter; and as he was obliged to keep that under restraint while engaged in writing, he made himself amends by a little praise of himself, when relating his exploits to a sympathising friend like myself. On his return with the inkstand to the corner of my shelf, he could not ...
— The Doll and Her Friends - or Memoirs of the Lady Seraphina • Unknown
... to my surprise, made no attempt to interfere. Jack couldn't, for I was in the way. His father began to splutter helplessly. I shot out my foot, and swept the Major heavily to the floor. I plucked him up by his collar as if he were a rabbit, and choked him till his face was nearly black. Then I put him back in his chair, where he sat ...
— The Yeoman Adventurer • George W. Gough
... tumblers filled the room. Dr. DEADEYE sat with the rest at the long deal table, puffing mightily at the brown old Broseley church-warden, whom the heat and the comfort of his evening meal had so far conquered, that he resented the doctor's treatment of him only by an occasional splutter. For myself, I sat where the warmth of the cheerful fire could reach my chilled toes, close by the side of the good doctor. I was a mere lad, and even now, as I search in my memory for these long-forgotten scenes, I am ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 99., Nov. 22, 1890 • Various
... than does her environment. One by one and very doubtfully, we enter a dark, narrow doorway; pass along a dark, harrow hall, walled and floored with stone; catch a passing vista of a kitchen, a white-jacketed and white-capped cook, and a vast amount of steam and crackle and splutter near the stove; and going up the curving stairs are led into a neat little front dining-room overlooking the square. The carpet is of unpainted pine; so are the table and chairs; but both are clean, and this fact cheers. With misgivings we ask for a lunch for seven; without ...
— A Midsummer Drive Through The Pyrenees • Edwin Asa Dix
... this? You let me go!" cried Codfish, and then began to splutter as the dry cornmeal got into his mouth ...
— The Rover Boys at Big Horn Ranch - The Cowboys' Double Round-Up • Edward Stratemeyer
... the silent, awe-stricken company, each member of which was wondering by how much of the loss his own meagre pay would be mulcted, there came a splutter of laughter. ...
— Scaramouche - A Romance of the French Revolution • Rafael Sabatini
... could easily guess how it would be under such circumstances when a fever breaks out on board—how impossible it must be to get rid of the infected atmosphere, unless perhaps by powerful and general fumigation. The seams in the deck began to splutter and hiss, and the pitch stuck to our feet as we walked about; while any piece of iron we touched seemed almost as hot as if it had been put in a furnace. We had a good supply of water on board; but it seemed, at the rate we ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston
... would not go in at first. He may have smiled at them, and coaxed, and hung back. It was a leg and an arm gripped then; a swing for Fionn, and out and away with him; plop and flop for him; down into chill deep death for him, and up with a splutter; with a sob; with a grasp at everything that caught nothing; with a wild flurry; with a raging despair; with a bubble and snort as he was hauled again down, and down, and down, and found as suddenly that he had ...
— Irish Fairy Tales • James Stephens
... that she could not. "You can, you can, you can." He kissed her, all the while reiterating, "You can, you can, you can," until it became a sort of parrot cry. Several minutes elapsed, and the candle began to splutter in its ...
— Esther Waters • George Moore
... See, the gas-jet here beside the dresser. Look—I can't turn it no higher. Hear it sing and splutter. You ain't ...
— Humoresque - A Laugh On Life With A Tear Behind It • Fannie Hurst
... and with a little touch of English powder pricked in with a pin as priming, he is ready for execution on any game that may come within reach of a safe pot-shot. When the gun goes off there is a mighty splutter, a roar like that of a small cannon, and the slugs go hurtling through the bushes, carrying away twigs and leaves, and not unfrequently smashing up the game so that it is almost useless ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... soul. As certain liquors, confined in casks too cramped in their dimensions, will ferment, and fret, and chafe in their imprisonment, so the spiritual essence or soul of Mr Tappertit would sometimes fume within that precious cask, his body, until, with great foam and froth and splutter, it would force a vent, and carry all before it. It was his custom to remark, in reference to any one of these occasions, that his soul had got into his head; and in this novel kind of intoxication many scrapes and mishaps befell him, which ...
— Barnaby Rudge • Charles Dickens
... suddenly began to splutter: A-A-A, it called. And instantly every sound ceased about the landing-stage. For that was the call of Axelson, ...
— Astounding Stories of Super-Science, August 1930 • Various
... had but just time to splutter out these comforting words and redescend the carriage, when the train put itself into movement, and the lifelike iron miracle, fuming, hissing, and screeching, bore off to London its motley convoy ...
— What Will He Do With It, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... passed, then, with a final scratch and splutter Joseph flung down his pen. With the sandbox tilted in the air, like a dicer about to make his throw, ...
— The Tavern Knight • Rafael Sabatini
... seat, and his companion followed, and with a whirr of wheels and a splutter of sparks where the motor brush caught the rail, the little trolley drove ...
— The Secret House • Edgar Wallace
... I saw Roger and the cook leap ahead, then the man doused the light. There was a sound of scuffling, a crash, a splutter of angry words. A moment later I heard the click of flint on steel, a tiny blaze sprang from the tinder, and the candle again sent up its ...
— The Mutineers • Charles Boardman Hawes
... with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment, and sidewise, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again. ...
— The Red Room • H. G. Wells
... through the hot morning. His big guns have suddenly become nervously active. Then, a little murmur along the pits and trenches, and from somewhere over behind us, this air-shark drives up the sky. The enemy's balloons splutter a little, retract, and go rushing down, and we send a spray of bullets as they drop. Then against our aerostat, and with the wind driving them clean overhead of us, come the antagonistic flying-machines. I incline to imagine there will be a steel prow with a cutting edge ...
— Anticipations - Of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon - Human life and Thought • Herbert George Wells
... with laughter. And underneath the thin flooring, as though roused by her irreverent merriment, the big car shook itself awake with a roar and splutter of indignation. But the sliding doors were thrown open, and its rage died down at the prospect of release. It began ...
— The Dark House • I. A. R. Wylie
... was so furious that for the first minute he could only splutter inarticulately. He leaped up ...
— Crime and Punishment • Fyodor Dostoyevsky
... Rogers; and his animated, bustling manner formed an agreeable contrast with the spiteful calmness of his corpse-like companion. He was extremely irritable, and even passionate; and in his moments of anger he would splutter and stutter like a maniac in his anxiety to give utterance to the flow of thoughts which crowded his mind, and, I might almost say, ...
— The Bed-Book of Happiness • Harold Begbie
... and behind them, farther down the hill, are thick lines of supports in the cover of intrenchments. It is a spectacle entirely typical of a modern battle, for there is scarcely anything to see at all. If it were not for those shells being tossed to and fro on the right there, and an occasional splutter of rifle fire, one might easily suppose that the lines of blue-coated men lying about on the stubble were all dozing in the hot ...
— The Story of the Great War, Volume II (of VIII) - History of the European War from Official Sources • Various
... understood the boatswain to splutter that the bridge ladders were gone. "I'll lower you down, sir, by your hands," he screamed. He shouted also something about the smoke-stack being as likely to go overboard as not. Jukes thought it very possible, and imagined the fires ...
— Typhoon • Joseph Conrad
... had been waiting since the debate of July 18 for the Cabinet decision. It was at once generally known as "no step at present" and wisdom would have decreed quiet acquiescence. Apparently one Southern friend, on his own initiative, felt the need to splutter. On the next day, August 4, Lord Campbell in the Lords moved for the production of Russell's correspondence with Mason, making a very confused speech. "Society and Parliament" were convinced the war ought to end ...
— Great Britain and the American Civil War • Ephraim Douglass Adams
... daybreak on the 16th the flotilla approached the enemy's position. So silently had they moved that a small Dervish outpost a few miles to the north of Shendi was surprised still sleeping, and the negligent guards, aroused by a splutter of firing from the Maxim guns, awoke to find three terrible machines close upon them. The gunboats pursued their way, and, disdaining a few shots which were fired from the ruins of Shendi, arrived, at about seven o'clock, within range of Metemma. The town itself stood more than ...
— The River War • Winston S. Churchill
... watching him with its flaming eyes; now it gave a low growl, as though it understood, and pitied. In the interval of silence the storm without broke. The trees began to quake and cry, the light snow to beat upon the parchment windows, and the chimney to splutter and moan. Presently, out on the bay they could hear the young ice break and come scraping up the shore. Fawdor listened a while, and then went on, waving his hand to the door as he began: "Think! this, and like that always: ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... the room, his head between his hands. Speech lofty and ridiculous burst from him in a sort of splutter of fireworks, but the Englishman sat still in his chair, and a gray, bleak look came upon him, for he began to understand. He was more or less used to these outbursts, and he bore them as patiently as he could, but though seven times out of the ten they were no more ...
— Jason • Justus Miles Forman
... which the clustering ivy and shrubs at its base will some day topple down among the grass and heather—and to reach the Bishop's Gate through the single narrow stretch of Windsor Great Park that lies in Surrey. In winter, pheasants crouch under the brushwood or splutter through the trees; in summer the rhododendrons scent and empurple ...
— Highways and Byways in Surrey • Eric Parker
... the couch toward one of the two open windows. When he had lain in this new situation for the space of two minutes more, he got up again and sought the tiny kitchen, where he could be heard drawing water from the tap. "Ugh—warm as dish water!" Uncle Timothy could hear his distant splutter. ...
— Strawberry Acres • Grace S. Richmond
... on the settle, his stick into the corner; then, dropping into a seat by the fire, he began taking off his gaiters with much snuffling and mumbling and repeated inarticulate explosions of breath. This cat-like splutter always indicated deep feeling in Mr. Blee, and Phoebe asked with concern what ...
— Children of the Mist • Eden Phillpotts
... contrasted herself with the girls who weakly, or recklessly, threw themselves away. Divided thus between injury and gratitude she speedily answered her father's letter, writing upon a sheet of scented grass-green note-paper, deeply ribbed, which made her pen blot, splutter, and sprawl far more than it would have done ...
— The Town Traveller • George Gissing
... existences, that to him shall for ever remain irrealisable, unseen and enviable. He had a desire to assert his importance, to break, to crush; to be even with everybody for everything; to tear the veil, unmask, expose, leave no refuge—a perfidious desire of truthfulness! He laughed in a mocking splutter ...
— The Nigger Of The "Narcissus" - A Tale Of The Forecastle • Joseph Conrad
... bicker that keeps a man sicker, The bucket 's a shield an' a buckler to me; In pool or in gutter nae langer I 'll splutter, But walk like a freeman ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various
... The sound of the heavy plunge was followed by a regretful clamour all over the decks, and a general rush to the side. There was nothing to be seen; he had gone through the layer of fog covering the water. No one heard him blow or splutter. It was as if a lump ...
— Romance • Joseph Conrad and F.M. Hueffer
... school. Tough old marines curving "pot-hooks and hangers," as if their very lives depended on their performances, with an occasional burst of petulance, such as, "D—— the pen, it won't write! I beg pardon, sir; this 'ere pen will splutter!" which set the scholars in a roar. Then some big-whiskered top-man, with slate in hand, reciting his multiplication-table, and grinning at approval; whilst a "scholar," as the cleverest were termed, gave the instructor a hard task to ...
— Stray Leaves from an Arctic Journal; • Sherard Osborn
... was at his lip, but at this moment he choked with a great splutter; and Mr. Archer, as if startled by the noise, made so sudden a movement that one corner of the sheet tore off and stayed between his finger and thumb. It was some little time before the old man was sufficiently recovered to beg the ostler to go on, and he still kept coughing ...
— Lay Morals • Robert Louis Stevenson
... A splutter of laughter greeted this denouement, for in truth Hannah Vernon was not distinguished for her beauty, being one of the plainest, and at the same time the most good-natured ...
— A College Girl • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... blue smoke curls up from the censer and plays in the slanting sunbeams, the lighted candles faintly splutter. The singing, at first harsh and deafening, soon becomes quiet and musical as the choir gradually adapt themselves to the acoustic conditions of the rooms. . . . The tunes are all mournful and sad. . . . The guests are gradually brought to a melancholy mood and grow pensive. Thoughts of the brevity ...
— The Schoolmaster and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov |
