"Sputtering" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Here I go now!" She slipped off and went under, but came up sputtering and protesting. Instead of remaining to mark the sunken car, Tommy swam rapidly to shore. She found Harriet, Hazel and Jane sitting with feet hanging over the pier talking to Miss Elting. The four were dripping, but none of them seemed to mind this. The sun soon would be up, and its rays would dry ...
— The Meadow-Brook Girls by the Sea - Or The Loss of The Lonesome Bar • Janet Aldridge
... constantly, while I was there they coughed their short, sharp coughs and sent a spume of metal flying toward the German lines. Never have I seen a busier spot. And, remember—until I had almost fallen into that pit, with its sputtering, busy guns, I had not been able to make even a good guess as to where they were! The very presence of this workshop of death was hidden from all save those who had a right to ...
— A Minstrel In France • Harry Lauder
... alder, birch, soft maple, balsam-fir, and others. When the kindling is blazing put on still heavier wood, until you have a good, steady fire. Hard wood is better than soft when the fire is well going; it burns longer and can usually be depended upon for a reliable fire, not sending out sparks or sputtering, as do many of the soft woods, but burning well and giving a fine bed of hot coals. The tree belonging exclusively to America, and which is the best of the hardwoods, comes first on the hardwood list. ...
— On the Trail - An Outdoor Book for Girls • Lina Beard and Adelia Belle Beard
... a study, as he watched the progress of his cookery; while Juno took the other side of the fire, couched, and watched the hissing sputtering rabbit too, as if calculating how much she would get ...
— Brownsmith's Boy - A Romance in a Garden • George Manville Fenn
... at Clay from where he sat on the steps below him, but Clay did not notice him, and there was no sound, except the quick sputtering of the nicotine in Langham's pipe, at which he pulled quickly, and which was the only outward sign the boy gave of his interest. Clay shifted one muddy boot over the other and leaned back with his hands stuck ...
— Soldiers of Fortune • Richard Harding Davis
... that he had been expecting and that he meant to accept. With a grim smile on his lips he walked toward the German and when but one apple barrel lay between them reached across and dragged the foreman sputtering and swearing down the passageway to a window at the end of the room. By the window he stopped and putting his hand to the throat of the struggling man began to choke him into submission. Blows fell on his face and body. ...
— Marching Men • Sherwood Anderson
... to blow up. He tried to jump overboard, but the lieutenant seized him by the collar and, stumping along, made him lead the way to the magazine. A fuse had been laid to an open keg of powder, and the fire was sputtering within an inch of it when Lieutenant Toender plucked it out, smothered it between thumb and forefinger, and threw it through the nearest port-hole. There were two hundred barrels of ...
— Hero Tales of the Far North • Jacob A. Riis
... Before she had gone a yard she sank like a paving-stone to the bottom of the pool. Blue Bonnet, convulsed with laughter, went down after her, but it took the combined efforts of herself and Kitty to bring the struggling Sarah to the surface. Sputtering and choking and much puzzled over the failure of her scientific method, Sarah retired to the bank to ...
— Blue Bonnet's Ranch Party • C. E. Jacobs
... slightest suspicion great swarms of these brilliant lights would burst forth as though flocks of huge fireflies had been disturbed. They were even used as light barrages, for movements could be executed in comparative safety when a large number of these lights lay before the enemy's trenches sputtering their brilliant light. The airman dropped flares to illuminate his target or his landing field. The torches of past parades aided the soldier in his night operations and rockets sent skyward radiated their messages to headquarters in the rear. The star-shell had the same missions as other flares, ...
— Artificial Light - Its Influence upon Civilization • M. Luckiesh
... of the Spaniards, stole away southward to the Arkansas. On the bank of this rivulet, and under one of its bluffs, we chose a spot for our bivouac. The bois de vache was collected, a fire was kindled, and hump steaks, spitted on sticks, were soon sputtering in the blaze. Luckily, Saint Vrain and I had our flasks along; and as each of them contained a pint of pure Cognac, we managed to make a tolerable supper. The old hunters had their pipes and tobacco, ...
— The Scalp Hunters • Mayne Reid
... carousing with their friends, with the exception of one man, who was reading a scrap of newspaper by the light of a sputtering dip candle stuck into a ship's lantern. He looked rather surprised at receiving a visit from me at such a time of night; but, on my telling him the circumstances of our case, he made us both welcome. Not only this, he brought out some scraps of bread and meat which he had stored up in a ...
— On Board the Esmeralda - Martin Leigh's Log - A Sea Story • John Conroy Hutcheson
... leafless trees on the lawn. The branches of a huge maple scraped and fretted against my windows and woke me several times during the night. At an early hour a servant was piling high the fire, and the room was soon bathed in a cheerful glow, the logs cracking and sputtering merrily. I parted the curtains of my large old-fashioned bed, slipped to the floor feeling very well and fit, and glanced curiously about me. Every appointment of the room was long out of date, but nevertheless made for snugness and comfort. The lover of antique furniture would surely revel here. ...
— The Statesmen Snowbound • Robert Fitzgerald
... rifles tight between their knees. At midnight we arrived at B———, four miles and a half west of Verdun. The night was clear and bitter cold; the ice-blue winter stars were westering. Refugees tramped past in the darkness. By the sputtering light of a match, I saw a woman go by with a cat in a canary cage; the animal moved uneasily, its eyes shone with fear. A middle-aged soldier went by accompanying an old woman and a young girl. Many pushed baby carriages ahead of them full of ...
— A Volunteer Poilu • Henry Sheahan
... for the first time the boy could look about. In the center of the room, with a sputtering candle in his hand, stood the revengeful Jellup. His companion Ned at once remembered as one of the noisy court room spectators of the day before. Between the two, clad in his pajamas and similarly bound, ...
— The Air Ship Boys • H.L. Sayler
... cigarette and nervously lighted it at the sputtering flame Minion held for him. "Mr. Minion, something's in the wind," he complained, and hesitated. He was at the verge of telling what he had seen on the promenade deck, of the confusion on the pierhead, of the unaccountable behavior of the woman in the window above Ah Sih King's, of ...
— Peter the Brazen - A Mystery Story of Modern China • George F. Worts
... spherical-seed vessels of fruit, such as the bramble-berry, the stone-bramble, or the rasp. "Hang it!" I once heard a countryman exclaim, on helping himself at table to a spoonful of Caviare, which he had mistaken for a sweet-meat, and instantly, according to Milton, "with sputtering noise rejected,"—"Hang it for nasty stuff!—I took it for ...
— The Testimony of the Rocks - or, Geology in Its Bearings on the Two Theologies, Natural and Revealed • Hugh Miller
... interest. A youngish chap leaned over and spoke earnestly to his neighbor, then some one laughed aloud. Instantly the flood-gates were opened; the air was vibrant with the hum of conversation, the ringing of call-bells, and the sputtering of fusees. A blue haze of cigarette-smoke formed itself above the heads of the assemblage; the Utinam Club had come to ...
— The Gates of Chance • Van Tassel Sutphen
... its deep blue-black that they resembled in form their conventionally five-pointed counterfeits of silver paper. A brisk wind whirled a few dried leaves in whispering eddies across the smooth asphaltum of the driveway, but beyond this and the peevish sputtering of the arc-light on the opposite corner there was no sound. It was the kind of night which, with its crystal clearness and its steely intensity, stirs the normal pulse to keen exhilaration: yet never had John Barclay felt more hopelessly dispirited, more utterly at a loss to see ...
— The Lieutenant-Governor • Guy Wetmore Carryl
... despondency and something like invalidism; but that involuntary bubble of laughter reassured him. "Quiet, wholesome, cheerful life will restore her to health," he thought, as he put his favorite beverage and the sputtering steak on the table. "Now," he said, placing a chair at the table, "you can pour me a ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe
... complied with great accuracy with all the prescribed points of the ceremonial, here completed it, to James's no small astonishment, by placing in his hand the petition of the Lord of Glenvarloch. "What means this, ye fause loon?" said he, reddening and sputtering; "hae I been teaching you the manual exercise, that ye suld present your piece at our ain royal body?—Now, by this light, I had as lief that ye had bended a real pistolet against me, and yet this hae ye done in my very cabinet, ...
— The Fortunes of Nigel • Sir Walter Scott
... sat by the sputtering lamp until the tinkle of bell, the clatter of harness, the shout of drivers, and the distant lowing of cattle, told them it ...
— Panther Eye • Roy J. Snell
... were put on board the brig Curlew, lieutenant Head, a polite and humane gentleman, and much beloved by his own crew. He is, I am informed, son of an English baronet. He is a plain, honest man, with easy, elegant manners, and very unlike the sputtering commander of the Tenedos: a man who allowed us to be stripped of all our little pocket articles: not much to the honour of his commission, or credit of his nation. We were kept very close while on board the Curlew, because her crew was very weak, principally decrepid old men and ...
— A Journal of a Young Man of Massachusetts, 2nd ed. • Benjamin Waterhouse
... dimly in the midst of his captor's house he could see, as his eyes grew gradually accustomed to the murky gloom, a strange and savage scene, such as he had never before in his life dreamt of. In the pit of the hut some embers glowed feebly, from whose midst a fleecy object was sputtering and hissing. A second glance assured him that the savoury morsel was the head of an antelope in process of roasting. Two greasy black women, naked to the waist, were superintending this primitive cookery; all round, a group of unclad little imps, as black as their mothers, ...
— What's Bred In the Bone • Grant Allen
... match, that between the time of touching it off with the live cigar to the time of the explosion not more than three seconds could elapse. This required quick cool work on Van Horn's part, in case need arose. In three seconds he would have to light the fuse and throw the sputtering stick with directed aim to its objective. However, he did not expect to use it, and had it ready ...
— Jerry of the Islands • Jack London
... answer someone shouted, "They're getting ready for the start," and everybody looked down the hill toward the place where the racing machines were sputtering and roaring in their ...
— When A Man's A Man • Harold Bell Wright
... dry, thin man of no particular stature, who coughed a little between his sentences, and had a habit, when not talking, of humming to himself, as if in apology for his silence. This humming had no sort of tune or purpose, and was but a vague musical sputtering. He almost perilled the gravity of the oath they all took to Valmond by this idiosyncrasy. His occupation gave him a lean, arid look; his hair was crisp and straight, shooting out at all points, and it flew to meet his cap as if ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... are waiting for it and are anxious, it will never even sing. You have to go away and begin your meal, as if you were not going to have any tea at all. You must not even look round at it. Then you will soon hear it sputtering away, mad to ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... shall go back to England," he said, kicking a sputtering log into place. "I don't see why I should. For business purposes I am far more useful to the firm in South Africa than in Throgmorton Street. I have no relation left except a third cousin, and I have never cared a rush for living ...
— The Moon Endureth—Tales and Fancies • John Buchan
... which the occupants could look in upon us, if they had cared to do so; but they did not. They seem little interested in anything; and no wonder, with their hard fight with Nature. Below is a wine-shop, with a little side booth, in which some German travelers sit drinking their wine, and sputtering away in harsh gutturals. The inn is very neat inside, and we are well served. Stalden is high; but away above it on the opposite side is a village on the steep slope, with a slender white spire that rivals some of the snowy needles. ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... of them, as if Blackbeard had settled down as a decent merchant in Bristol on the spoils of the Main. Now and then the pirate would glare suddenly out, the knife in his teeth and the sulphur matches sputtering in his hat-band. During such spasms of reversion to type a score of tempestuous raids upon the market had been planned on paper in the inner room of the offices of Manderson, Colefax and Company. But they were never carried out. Blackbeard would quell the mutiny of his old self within ...
— The Woman in Black • Edmund Clerihew Bentley
... from the effects of the mad race up the hill. The sputtering flame in the lantern called her into action. Clutching it from the floor of the porch, she softly began a tour of inspection, first looking at her watch to find that it was the unholy hour of two! Had some one yelled boo! she would ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds
... forward with a tiny phonograph, a rare possession since it was the only one in the Village. The Indian carefully wound it up and lowered it into the hole. There was a craning of masked heads, . . . a period of grunting approval, . . . and then faintly from below came a whirring, a sputtering and a high, cracked voice of announcement. The White Chief's face wore its sardonic smile as the gravel was being shoveled into the grave for the little tin phonograph was bravely playing: There'll be a Hot Time ...
— Where the Sun Swings North • Barrett Willoughby
... and, those who could use their arms at all, pumping wild shots that whistled harmless over the heads of the defenders and bit the blackened prairie many a rod beyond. Only jeers rewarded the stirring spectacle,—jeers and a few low-aimed, sputtering volleys that brought other luckless ponies to their knees and sprawled a few red riders. But in less than five minutes from the warning cry that hailed their coming, Lame Wolf and his hosts were lining Elk ...
— A Daughter of the Sioux - A Tale of the Indian frontier • Charles King
... separate circles, sets, and groups belonging to the social solar system whizzed, revolved, rotated, with edifying effects on everybody concerned, unconcerned, and not at all concerned; and at intervals, when for a moment or two something hung fire, the twinkle of similar spectacles sputtering away in distant cities beyond the horizon was faintly reflected in the social sky above the incandescent metropolis. For the whole nation was footing it, heel and toe, to the echoes of strains borne on the winds from the social capital of the republic; and the social arbiter at Bird ...
— The Fighting Chance • Robert W. Chambers
... verge of the river, in the black shadows cast by the crowding material cars. Finally he crossed over to the straggling street of the camp, walking now and leading the spent mustang. Silence here, too, broken only by the sputtering sizzle of the electrics. The huge mess tent was dark; there were no lights, save in the closed commissary and in the president's car: no lights, and not a man of the camp's crowding labor army ...
— Empire Builders • Francis Lynde
... Kendal, who was with Lucy and Miss Ferrars. No one knew where Genevieve was, but Albinia was confident that she could take good care of herself, and was not too uneasy to enjoy the grand representation of Windsor Castle, and the finale of interlaced ciphers amidst a multitude of little fretful sputtering tongues of flame. Then it was, amid good nights, donning of shawls, and announcing of carriages, that Captain Ferrars and Miss Durant made their appearance together, having been 'looking everywhere for Mrs. Kendal,' and it was not in the nature of a brother not to look a little arch, though ...
— The Young Step-Mother • Charlotte M. Yonge
... just think how funny Teresina would look, choking and sputtering like a volcano pouring forth fire, smoke, and lava," chuckled Beppo, who was studying geography and liked it much better than ...
— The Italian Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... the cliff face. In this corridor were three more doorways, one at each end and a third almost opposite that in which Es-sat stood. The light was coming from an apartment at the end of the corridor at his left. A sputtering flame rose and fell in a small stone receptacle that stood upon a table or bench of the same material, a monolithic bench fashioned at the time the room was excavated, rising massively from the floor, of which it was ...
— Tarzan the Terrible • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... for the starved, of the warlike for the weak. When they cross you, you kick them, viciously, with the drawing back of your silken beard, your black, black beard, from your white teeth. With a snarl you kick them, sputtering curses in short gutturals. You do not even speak their tongue, so it cannot be ...
— Profiles from China • Eunice Tietjens
... little window, letting a draft of fresh air rush into the stifling attic. Then he sat on the edge of the tick for a few minutes, ruminating, his gaze fixed thoughtfully on the sputtering, imperilled candle. Finally he shook his head, sighed, and began to unstrap his roll of blankets. He had decided to remove only his coat and waistcoat. The sharp, staccato barking of a fox up in the woods fell upon ...
— Viola Gwyn • George Barr McCutcheon
... completely by surprise, and went sprawling; but the sword did not pitch from his hand. He had received a stiff, shrewd blow, but only a glancing one, for he had twisted his body at the last second. Now, sputtering with wrath, he scrambled to his feet and whipped back his blade for a killing slice ...
— Astounding Stories, July, 1931 • Various
... perceived to be absolutely empty, carpetless, and without a stick of furniture, or even a window-blind. There he stood staring at the disagreeable landlady. And there she stood too, staring and silent, in a black wrapper, her head almost bald, her face white as chalk, shading a sputtering candle with one bony hand and peering over it at him with her blinking green eyes. ...
— The Empty House And Other Ghost Stories • Algernon Blackwood
... ask the porter to waken her half an hour out of Jersey City, or to remonstrate about the delays and the roughness of the road. At midnight Everett and the nurse were left alone with her. Poor Charley Gaylord had lain down on a couch outside the door. Everett sat looking at the sputtering night-lamp until it made his eyes ache. His head dropped forward, and he sank into heavy, distressful slumber. He was dreaming of Adriance's concert in Paris, and of Adriance, the troubadour. He heard the applause and he saw the flowers going up ...
— Youth and the Bright Medusa • Willa Cather
... eleven clans stopped in the center of the circle, and a silence, broken only by the crackling of the fires and the sputtering of the torches, came once more over the great assembly. But a thousand eager faces were turned toward them. The Shawnees and Miamis apparently had not yet moved, still standing in rows, every ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... argument cut society in half. Learned doctors battled in the columns of scientific journals. Businessmen dictated sputtering letters to their secretaries. Housewives wrote newspapers or argued heatedly in the cornergrocery. Radiocommentators cautiously skirted the edge of controversy and more than one enthusiast had to be warned by his sponsor. Fistfights started in taverns over ...
— Greener Than You Think • Ward Moore
... is supper-time!' and as she spoke, she rose up from her spinning-wheel, and taking down some eggs and a cake of brown bread, with a large jug, from her corner cupboard, she broke the eggs into the frying-pan, and they were soon hissing and sputtering over the fire. Then she placed a large saucer on the table, and broke some bread into it; and returning to the fire, she took off the frying-pan, and emptied the eggs into a dish on the table, and sat down to her supper. But before she tasted a bit herself, she poured some nice goat's milk over ...
— Tales From Catland, for Little Kittens • Tabitha Grimalkin
... preach a sermon this July day for we are not ordained and therefore our discourse might not be accepted as orthodox. We heard a few cannon fire-crackers, popping and sputtering like distant machine guns, the last faint echoes of the noisy demonstration that filled the streets the day before. The noise soon died away and we thought how like the politician's marvelous speeches and outward demonstrations! True patriotism consists in something ...
— See America First • Orville O. Hiestand
... like a new man; I am a new man!" he exclaimed. Then he glanced at the pitiful figure, maundering and sputtering across the way. "I am going home," he went on, "and will put father to bed and nurse him and take care of him just as if—well, just as if ...
— Mingo - And Other Sketches in Black and White • Joel Chandler Harris
... to guess, at five o'clock in the morning, with my brains frying and sputtering in my head. If you want me to guess, you must ...
— A Tale of Two Cities - A Story of the French Revolution • Charles Dickens
... upon the place where the Dutchmen halted. But deeming that insufficient, Van Wandenberg ordered half a dozen torches to be lighted, for his troopers always had such things with them, being useful by night for various purposes; and hissing and sputtering in the falling snow flakes, their lurid and fitful glare was thrown on the close array of the Dutch dragoons, on their great cumbrous hats, on the steeple crowns of which, I have said, the snow was gathering ...
— The International Monthly Magazine, Volume 5, No. 1, January, 1852 • Various
... February. For the Chinaman of limited means it lasts a week, for the wealthy it may endure three. His consumption of fire-crackers during that period is immense. He burns strings a yard in length suspended from poles over his balconies. The uproar and sputtering consequent on this festivity in the Chinese quarter at San Francisco is tremendous. The city authorities limit this ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, No. 23, February, 1873, Vol. XI. • Various
... stood alone, his back turned to the Master. Moonlight still flooded the earth, the lanterns were flickering and sputtering. Some had gone out, leaving gaps of darkness in the lighted walls. Many of the guests retired without bidding farewell to their host; he liked them to feel at their ease, to take "French leave" whenever ...
— South Wind • Norman Douglas
... proper course; and, instead of forbidding us the river, he secured the services of one or two instructors, and had us all taught the art of swimming. For three months, every day of the week, the School Creek was full of sputtering, choking youngsters. Every new boy was hunted down to the river in turn, and by the end of the year there was hardly a boy at Parkhurst who could not keep his chin up ...
— Parkhurst Boys - And Other Stories of School Life • Talbot Baines Reed
... from house to house, and, when he had done, at the apices of the triangle he had traced three glowing coals were sputtering. ...
— The Spoilers • Rex Beach
... with a great sputtering of his engine, and Frank and Harry rode along quietly. But Frank felt ...
— The Boy Scouts on the Trail • George Durston
... that came along looking for trouble. From a pen nearby echoed the grunts of a hog too fat to breathe without disturbing the neighborhood. And in front of the counter, outside the hull, were two stoves with rice and fish sputtering fragrantly in oil in their respective frying-pans. A going concern, no doubt of that! Not a question of getting rich, you understand, but a bite to eat for the boys! And Tona would smile and rub her hands ...
— Mayflower (Flor de mayo) • Vicente Blasco Ibanez
... steam, and Mrs. Jones, taking some meal from her frugal stock, poured boiling water upon it, and added some salt. Then putting on the griddle some deer fat, she put the dough in large iron spoonfuls into the sputtering grease. ...
— The Cabin on the Prairie • C. H. (Charles Henry) Pearson
... opened the door of her little room she drew back astonished at the sight that presented itself. A brisk fire was roaring in the stove, and the tea-kettle was sputtering and sending out clouds of steam. A table with a white cloth on it was drawn out before the fire, and a new tea set of pure white cups and saucers, with teapot, sugar-bowl, and creamer, complete, gave a festive air to the whole. ...
— Betty's Bright Idea; Deacon Pitkin's Farm; and The First Christmas - of New England • Harriet Beecher Stowe
... but he just stared, and then I realized that he wasn't Tweel, but another Martian of his sort. Tweel's feathery appendages were more orange hued and he stood several inches taller than this one. Leroy was sputtering in excitement, and the Martian kept his vicious beak directed at us, so I stepped forward as peace-maker. I said 'Tweel?' very questioningly, but there was no result. I tried it a dozen times, and we finally had to give it up; we ...
— Valley of Dreams • Stanley Grauman Weinbaum
... those who directed the forming of the procession, the shuffling of many feet, and the muffled but irritated movements of those who had to make way. Then rose a sudden flare of light in a corner of the dark mass, followed quickly by another and another, till many hundreds of torches were aflame, sputtering, smoking and sending up tongues of flame into the black air. Again a word of command, and the even tramp of footsteps began to be heard, a mere patter as of big raindrops upon stones at first, but swelling gradually, and increasing, till the sound roused great echoes from the glowing buildings, ...
— Greifenstein • F. Marion Crawford
... the water. There was a strong head wind all day, turning the yellow waves of the Ohio over his face, and night closed in with dark, low hanging clouds. An electric storm began to rage about him. Flashing sheets of lightning ran over the surface of the water, cracking and sputtering as though angry at his presence. It was a grand, though fearful sight. Tree after tree along the shore was splintered by the sharp flashes and peals of thunder added to the terrific grandeur of nature's display. Fearing that his copper bugle would attract the lightning, ...
— The Story of Paul Boyton - Voyages on All the Great Rivers of the World • Paul Boyton
... buried all that in the desk drawer with the picture; but he had gone overboard in his best uniform to rescue a wharf-rat, and he had felt a curious sense of comfort when he held the cold little figure in his arms and was hauled on deck, sputtering dirty river water and broad Scotch, as was his way ...
— Love Stories • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... and the fiery-tongued Maalem. This mule was rejected, that saddle was returned, stirrups tied with string were disqualified, the little man's claim to have all "the money in the hand" was overruled, and the Maalem, red-hot sputtering iron in my hands, was as wax in Mr. Spinney's. My good friend and host also found Kaid M'Barak,[7] the soldier, a tall, scorched, imperturbable warrior, who rode a brave horse, and carried a gun done up in a very tattered, old, flannel case tied with half a dozen pieces of string. The ...
— Morocco • S.L. Bensusan
... "Queerest thing I ever saw up there. The dynamo wasn't protected by the sheet-lead shield in this flight as in the first to-day. I hadn't risen a hundred feet before I happened to hear the darndest sputtering in the dynamo. Look, boys, the insulation is completely burned off the wires, and the wires are nearly all ...
— The Silent Bullet • Arthur B. Reeve
... the key, and a deluge of cold salt-water struck Craig full in the chest. He tried to sit up, but was knocked flat. Then he rolled over on the deck, choking and sputtering. He crawled on his hands and knees until he reached the chair-rail, which he clutched desperately, drawing himself up. The pitiless stream never swerved. It smacked against the flat of his back like the impact of ...
— Parrot & Co. • Harold MacGrath
... her own devices, the country girl walked into the front room and took off her hat and jacket. It was a low-roofed apartment with a sputtering fire upon which a small brass kettle was singing cheerily. A stained cloth lay over half the table, with an empty brown teapot, a loaf of bread, and some coarse crockery. Norah Brewster looked rapidly about her, and in an instant took over her new ...
— Round the Red Lamp - Being Facts and Fancies of Medical Life • Arthur Conan Doyle
... let him alone. Here's the thieving hypocrits." But the two young men had disappeared among the people, and Uncle was being taken away in such a crowd that John could get no view whatever of the situation, so he ran howling and sputtering round and round the fast increasing crowd like a child gone insane. Presently the uselessness of his action made him think of Mother and Fanny. At once he darted off to the spot where he had seen them ...
— The Adventures of Uncle Jeremiah and Family at the Great Fair - Their Observations and Triumphs • Charles McCellan Stevens (AKA 'Quondam')
... they were in earnest. There was something more inexorable in their actions than in a court of law. At the last he showed some courage of a brute kind, reviling them all, sputtering forth his hatred, and interlarding it with a confession and threats of what he wanted to do. They silenced him by leading him to the wall and adjusting the noose. Once more Rogers besought him to pray and then, when he again burst into oaths, ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton
... fearful, scrambled back, swerved, and tried to escape from the ravine; but Betty had her under good control now. She had no spurs, but she yanked savagely at the bit and wheeled Ida Bellethorne again to face the sputtering electric flames that barred ...
— Betty Gordon at Mountain Camp • Alice B. Emerson
... poor as it is, fill it with Thine own gracious influences,' be very sure that no such influences will come to you. But if you do go, be as sure of this, that so long as you hold out your emptiness to Him, He will flood it with His fulness, and the light that seemed to be sputtering to its death will flame up again. He will not quench the smoking wick, if only we carry it to Him; but as the priests in the Temple walked all through the night to trim the golden lamps, so He who walks amidst the seven candlesticks will ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... had worked on through their basket of clams, and now the last were sputtering on the stove. The work had been done almost in silence, for though the excitement now and then made Reuben break into a low whistle of some tune or other, he always checked himself the next moment ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner
... morning, it was broad day. He felt so stiff and ill he could scarcely move, and with difficulty made his way to the room below. The old woman was at the stove, frying some sputtering pork, and its rank odor was most repulsive to the fastidious ...
— Opening a Chestnut Burr • Edward Payson Roe
... was alone. The final detail he was taking into his own hands. The few that could still command the point saw the red light moving, and beside it a figure vaguely outlined making its way. When the red light paused, a spark could be seen, a sputtering blaze would run slowly from it, hesitate, flare and die. Another and another of the fuses were touched and passed. With quickening steps tier after tier was covered, until those looking saw the red light flung at last into the air. ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... this season birds' eggs in the reeds and a turtlelike terrapin, and Brodeia roots and wild onion, and young sassafras—a child could do it. Eat that...." he tossed me with his fingers a split, sputtering, piping ...
— IT and Other Stories • Gouverneur Morris
... of a court martial. Sometimes the sentences imposed were doubtless unjust, for the judges and juries were naturally bitter against the prisoners; but the punishment seldom went beyond a sound whipping, and in this case the surveyor, still sputtering and objecting to the illegal procedure, was sentenced to two score lashes, save one, and Enoch and Bryce selected the blue beech wands with which the sentence was to be ...
— With Ethan Allen at Ticonderoga • W. Bert Foster
... replace them. After some reflection I went down to breakfast, placed the trophy in a saucer, and showed it to Sarah, who screamed and traitorously ran up and informed her mistress. Mrs. Nagsby came down rampant, but of course speechless. I was thankful for this; but the violent woman, after sputtering spasmodically, caught sight of the missing article in the saucer, and, lost to all sense of shame, replaced it in position and poured forth a torrent of the ...
— The Junior Classics Volume 8 - Animal and Nature Stories • Selected and arranged by William Patten
... is followed by Mr Malone in supposing, that Hunt himself is the Templar alluded to. But Dryden seems obviously to talk of the author of the Defence, and the two Reflectors, as three separate persons. He calls them, "the sputtering triumvirate, Mr Hunt, and the two Reflectors;" and again, "What says my lord chief baron (i.e. Hunt) to the business? What says the livery-man Templar? What says Og, the king of Basan (i.e. Shadwell) to it?" The Templar may be discovered, when we learn, who hired ...
— The Works Of John Dryden, Vol. 7 (of 18) - The Duke of Guise; Albion and Albanius; Don Sebastian • John Dryden
... supremely happy in officiating at her gipsy table, where the silver tea-kettle of Queen Anne's time was going through its usual sputtering performances. To sit in a fashionable gown—however difficult the gown might be to sit in—and dispense tea to a local duchess, was Mrs. Winstanley's loftiest idea of earthly happiness. Of course there might be a superior kind of happiness beyond earth; but to appreciate that the weak human ...
— Vixen, Volume II. • M. E. Braddon
... alternating flicker of rationality, the miser fell back, sputtering, into his previous gibberish, but it took now an arithmetical turn. Eyes closed, he ...
— The Confidence-Man • Herman Melville
... moment nothing came through the phones but astonished sputtering. Finally Collier said thickly, "Alan? What sort of gag ...
— Starman's Quest • Robert Silverberg
... with a "Boo!" when she lifted her head, dried her wet eyes with her blue apron, and fell to work with a resolute face on something she was evidently much interested in. Rose could not make out what it was, and her curiosity was greatly excited, for Phebe was writing with a sputtering pen on some bits of brown paper, apparently copying something ...
— Eight Cousins • Louisa M. Alcott
... worse savours, its tiers on tiers of dark and noisome berths where men snored or thrust forth shaggy heads to rave at and curse each other; its blotched and narrow table amidships, its rows of battered sea chests, its loathsome floor; a place of never-ceasing stir and tumult, dim-lighted by sputtering lamps. ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... twitched almost imperceptibly in Disko's hands. A few seconds later a hissing wave-top slashed diagonally across the boat, smote Uncle Salters between the shoulders, and drenched him from head to foot. He rose sputtering, and went forward ...
— "Captains Courageous" • Rudyard Kipling
... the chief actors in the incident about to be related was a machine, and it is important that the reader should have this machine in his mind's eye. It was a motor-bicycle, furnished in the midst with a sputtering little engine, said to contain in its entrails the power of three horses and a half. To the side thereof was attached a small vehicle like a bath-chair, in which favoured friends of the writer are from time to time either permitted or invited ...
— Mad Shepherds - and Other Human Studies • L. P. Jacks
... it? Then there is the bachelor's return to chambers after a merry Christmas holiday, spent in a cozy country-house, full of pretty faces, and kind welcomes and regrets. He leaves his portmanteau at the barber's in the court: he lights his dismal old candle at the sputtering little lamp on the stair: he enters the blank familiar room, where the only tokens to greet him, that show any interest in his personal welfare, are the Christmas bills, which are lying in wait for him, amicably spread out on his reading-table. Add to these scenes ...
— The History of Pendennis, Vol. 2 - His Fortunes and Misfortunes, His Friends and His Greatest Enemy • William Makepeace Thackeray
... scoop-net and a bucket, which he soon filled with the crustaceans. Molly had never before seen shell-fish growing on trees, so Dick cut a few oyster-bearing branches from a mangrove tree and roasted bunches of the bivalves on the beach. When the sputtering of the oysters on the branch told Dick they were cooked, he hauled the limb from the coals, sat down with his companion on the beach, and with sharpened sticks the young people picked the roasted oysters from ...
— Dick in the Everglades • A. W. Dimock
... rig's powerful little battery discharged with a muffled sputtering and flashing of sparks. The Zid howled piercingly and dropped away from ...
— Traders Risk • Roger Dee
... tiller of the soil who probably is dangerously addicted to hunting as another man is addicted to drinking; and you may surmise respecting him that things will not go well with him after a year or two. The friend of my heart is the farmer who rides, but rides without sputtering; who never makes a show of it, but still is always there; who feels it to be no disgrace to avoid a run of fences when his knowledge tells him that this may be done without danger of his losing his place. Such an one always sees a run to the end. Let ...
— Hunting Sketches • Anthony Trollope
... steward guarded one door with his hacking knife, while with his spear Wada guarded the other door. Nor, while I had dispatched them to this duty, was I idle. Behind the jiggermast I lighted the fuse of one of my extemporized bombs. When it was sputtering nicely I ran across the poop to the break and dropped the bomb to the main deck beneath, at the same time making an effort to toss it in under the overhang where the men battered at the port-door. But this effort was distracted and made futile by ...
— The Mutiny of the Elsinore • Jack London
... of whisky into Dan's face. Half blinded by the stinging liquor, the latter fell back a pace, sputtering, and wiping his eyes. Not a man in the room stirred. The same sick look was on each face. But the red devil broke loose in Silent's heart when he saw Dan cringe. He followed the thrown glass with his clenched fist. Dan stood perfectly still and watched the blow coming. His eyes were wide ...
— The Untamed • Max Brand
... With the sputtering of the fat man there sounded, too, a shrill, childish scream of fear, and a wild yelp of pain—the latter unmistakably from a canine throat. Amid the wreckage Nan beheld a pair of blue-stockinged legs encased in iron supports; but ...
— Nan Sherwood's Winter Holidays • Annie Roe Carr
... long bath and across the snowy fields; and when, at dusk, the mother brought her two sons and her two daughters and the Pages and Stantons to her own roof, the big log, hidden by sticks of pine and hickory, was sputtering Christmas cheer with a blaze and crackle that warmed body and heart and home. That night the friends came from afar and near; and that night Bob, the faithful, valiant Bob, in a dress-suit that was his own and new, and Mrs. Crittenden's own gift, ...
— Crittenden - A Kentucky Story of Love and War • John Fox, Jr.
... sprang to the floor, Pete struck a light, and the next minute the kerosene lamp, flickering and sputtering at first, was shining in the eastward window. Outside the door the ranchman found Wells tightening his saddle-girths, while his horse, snorting with excitement, pricked up his ears and ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... shot in the dark. The States were attuned to boyish things, as a country always is in war, and a boy was better than a man for the work.... Often Bedient would bring him a cup of coffee and arrange a blanket to keep the wind from the sputtering candles. The two bunks were invariably spread together; and Bedient was ever ready for a talk in the dark, when Cairns' brain dulled and refused to be driven to further work, even under the whip of ...
— Fate Knocks at the Door - A Novel • Will Levington Comfort
... contemplating that inert thing; and imagine an angel suddenly sweeping down out of a better land and setting before him a mighty porterhouse steak an inch and a half thick, hot and sputtering from the griddle; dusted with a fragrant pepper; enriched with little melting bits of butter of the most unimpeachable freshness and genuineness; the precious juices of the meat trickling out and joining the gravy, archipelagoed with mushrooms; a township ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... will she glide?" Johnny shouted above the sputtering cough of the motor. But Bland only shook his head slowly from right to left and back again. Bland's ears were a waxy white now, and the line of his jaw had sharpened. Johnny believed that Bland ...
— Skyrider • B. M. Bower
... Prince declaring he had been cheated and Sam, although he thought his friend in the wrong, striking out with his fist and dragging Prince through the door and into a passing street car in time to avoid a rush of other waiters hurrying to the aid of the one who lay dazed and sputtering on the ...
— Windy McPherson's Son • Sherwood Anderson
... approaching us. It was a long weary wait, we were cold, wet, hungry, and tired; F., the cause of our misfortunes, had taken off his saddle, and with it for a pillow was now fast asleep. H. and I cowered over the miserable sputtering flame, and longed and wished for the morning. It was a miserable night, the hours seemed interminable, the dense volumes of smoke from the water-sodden wood nearly choked us. At last, after some hours spent in ...
— Sport and Work on the Nepaul Frontier - Twelve Years Sporting Reminiscences of an Indigo Planter • James Inglis
... punishment. Why was he to be punished? Those who read shall hear. The walls of the chamber were fitted with tubes, and electric wires, and knobs and buttons. A bright fire burned on the hearth. The thick Brussels carpet was littered with pot-boilers, all fizzing, and sputtering, and steaming, like so many young Curates at a Penny Reading. Suddenly the Philosopher looked up. He spoke to himself. "Everything is ready," he said, and pressed a button by his side. There was a sound as of a Continent expectorating, a ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100. February 21, 1891 • Various
... I am," called Marie quickly, and the small boy lit a sputtering match, so that she could sign his book and read her telegram. It was from Christy: "Awfully sorry ...
— Betty Wales Senior • Margaret Warde
... little thought that her days were about being numbered—that the time was nigh when she should carry a pack no more. She little expected that she was about to kick up her heels upon the prairie for the last time— that in a few hours her life-blood would be let forth—and her old ribs be roasting and sputtering over a camp-fire! ...
— The Boy Hunters • Captain Mayne Reid
... and terrific struggle. The stranger hurled the package toward the house. Barney caught him by the throat, beating him heavily in the face; and then, realizing what the package was, he hurled the fellow from him, and sprang toward the hissing and sputtering missile where it lay close to the foundation wall of the house, though in the instant of his close contact with the man he had recognized through the disguising beard the features of Captain Ernst Maenck, the principal tool of Peter ...
— The Mad King • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... cheerful wood-fire was sputtering and cracking in an open grate at the further end of the apartment. At one side of this fire, in a high-backed oak chair, sat a lady, her face turned towards the door. The firelight played over her features, and Alleyne thought ...
— The White Company • Arthur Conan Doyle
... strong enough to desert his couch at evening. Up to this point he had been ignored by the nightly visitors, but now they made a place for him in the circle about the sputtering lamp. It seemed, also, that, with his active presence, the talk began to assume general point and direction. Storch had been giving them plenty of tether, but now he was beginning to pull up sharply, putting their windy theories to the test. They were for clearing the ground, were they? ...
— Broken to the Plow • Charles Caldwell Dobie
... who burn the candle to the stick, The sputtering socket yields but little light. Long life is sadder than an early death. We cannot count on raveled threads of age Whereof to weave a fabric. We must use The warp and woof the ready present yields And toil while daylight lasts. When I bethink ...
— Custer, and Other Poems. • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... to several repetitions of the summons, Ned began to grow impatient; and his little pot of passion quickly boiling over, he picked up a stone, with a naughty purpose to fling it through the window; at the same time blubbering and sputtering with wrath. A man—one of two who happened to be passing by—caught ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... the miniature explosion had bowled the manager over. Choking, sputtering, blinded for the moment by the stuff that had got into his eyes, he wallowed in the dust by the ...
— The Circus Boys on the Plains • Edgar B. P. Darlington
... refused its office; a corncob imperfectly denuded dropped from his nerveless hand, and was critically examined, in turn, by the gossamer dogs, hoping against hope. A smoking brand in the fireplace fell suddenly upon a bed of hot coals, where, lacking the fortitude of Guatimozin, it emitted a sputtering protest, followed by a thin flame like a visible agony. In the resulting light Tony's haggard face shone competitively with a ruddy blush, which spread over his entire scalp, to the imminent danger of firing his ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... were like to fare worst of all—stood watching my operations, and snapped eagerly at every scrap that fell from my knife. In a very short while the fire was blazing up, the beef and beans were bubbling over it in the tin-pot, and the armadillo was sputtering on the spit beside them. In another short while all things were cooked and ready to ...
— The Desert Home - The Adventures of a Lost Family in the Wilderness • Mayne Reid
... at the mouth, and emptying his vessel in the spectators' faces? Let the right worshipful the Commissioners of Inspection give him a regiment of dragoons, and send him into Flanders among the rest. Is another eternally talking, sputtering, gaping, bawling, in a sound without period or article? What wonderful talents are here mislaid! Let him be furnished immediately with a green bag and papers, and threepence in his pocket {135}, ...
— A Tale of a Tub • Jonathan Swift
... Sputtering and choking, her heart beating wildly with fear and rage, Rosalie was thrown back upon the straw by the woman. Her throat was burning from the effects of the whiskey and her eyes were blinded by the ...
— The Daughter of Anderson Crow • George Barr McCutcheon
... understood some English, advised Enrique of what the old matchmaker proposed to do, when the vaquero threw his hands in the air and began sputtering Spanish in terrified disapproval. Did not Don Lance know that the marriage usages among his people were their most cherished customs? "Oh, yes, son," languidly replied Uncle Lance. "I'm some strong on the cherish myself, but not when it interferes with my plans. It strikes me that ...
— A Texas Matchmaker • Andy Adams
... in the dim, sputtering glow of an oil-lamp, John Cummins and Jan Thoreau solemnly set to work to thrash out the great problem that had suddenly entered into their existence. To these two there was no element of humor in what they were doing, for into their keeping had been given a thing for which God ...
— The Honor of the Big Snows • James Oliver Curwood
... Adelaide represent that all the taste and skill was in the laying out the leaves, and pinning them down, and that anyone could put on the ink; in vain did Mary represent the dirtiness of the work: this was the beauty of it in her eyes; and the sight of the black dashes sputtering through the comb filled her with emulation; so that she entreated, almost piteously, to be allowed to "do" an ivy loaf, which she had hastily, and not very carefully, pinned out with Mary's assistance—that ...
— Countess Kate • Charlotte M. Yonge
... stirring it occasionally to assist in the melting. If it is oleomargarine or process butter, it will sputter noisily and take on a curdled appearance; whereas, if it is butter, it will melt and even boil without sputtering although it foams to a ...
— Woman's Institute Library of Cookery, Vol. 2 - Volume 2: Milk, Butter and Cheese; Eggs; Vegetables • Woman's Institute of Domestic Arts and Sciences
... in the woods covered that last mile the firing ahead cropped up briskly. Then it died down into an occasional, sputtering shot or two. But every discharge of a rifle ahead was now distinctly audible to Uncle Sam's men ...
— Uncle Sam's Boys in the Philippines - or, Following the Flag against the Moros • H. Irving Hancock
... struggling through some of the scenes and speeches feels as though he were compelled to push his way through a cactus hedge: the hot and heavy blossoms of rhetoric blaze and glare out of a thickset fence of jagged barbarisms and exotic monstrosities of metaphor. The straining and sputtering declamation of narrative and oratory scarcely succeeds in expressing through a dozen quaint and far-fetched words or phrases what two or three of the simplest would easily and amply have sufficed to convey. But when the poet ...
— The Age of Shakespeare • Algernon Charles Swinburne
... began, and the Malay crowd cheered as the men in scarlet ran and took cover; and the field was soon after covered with advancing and retiring men, who ran, lay down, fired from one knee, fired from their chests, ran and took cover again; and the musketry began to roll in sputtering repetitions, till the retiring force seemed to take courage, gathered together, repelled their adversaries with half-a-dozen vigorous volleys, and advanced in turn, gradually driving their supposed enemies back, till, when the smoke was rising in a ...
— Trapped by Malays - A Tale of Bayonet and Kris • George Manville Fenn
... start and looked into the sputtering glare of a torch. Its light wove across the crags and gullies of the troll-wife's face and shimmered wetly off the great tusks in ...
— The Valor of Cappen Varra • Poul William Anderson
... I felt dazed. I looked about me. The lighted candle was sputtering itself out in its socket, fitfully darting a thin and feeble flame upward into the darkness. My mouth was parched ...
— The Trail of a Sourdough - Life in Alaska • May Kellogg Sullivan
... made a snatch at one of the sticks, and turned the bird, as he stuck it afresh in the sand, closer to the glowing embers, for the flame and smoke had nearly gone now, and the ducks were sputtering, browning, and beginning to give forth a ...
— Mass' George - A Boy's Adventures in the Old Savannah • George Manville Fenn
... clean, with a cluttered kind of cleanliness that bespeaks many housewifely tasks under way. There were mixing bowls, and saucepans, and a kettle or so, and from the oven there came the sounds of sputtering and hissing. About the room there hung the divinely delectable scent of freshly baked cookies. Emma McChesney saw herself in an all-enveloping checked gingham apron, her sleeves rolled up, her hair somewhat wild, and one lock powdered with white where she had pushed it back with a floury ...
— Roast Beef, Medium • Edna Ferber
... I recollect the kind of day it was! I smell the fog that hung about the place; I see the hoar frost, ghostly, through it; I feel my rimy hair fall clammy on my cheek; I look along the dim perspective of the schoolroom, with a sputtering candle here and there to light up the foggy morning, and the breath of the boys wreathing and smoking in the raw cold as they blow upon their fingers, and tap their feet upon the floor. It was after breakfast, and ...
— David Copperfield • Charles Dickens
... we were somewhere in the north of Yorkshire—when the machine began to make odd sounds, and we bumped in perfectly calm patches of air. We dived and then climbed, but the confounded thing kept sputtering. Archie passed back a slip of paper on which he had scribbled: 'Engine conked. Must land at Micklegill. Very sorry.' So we dropped to a lower elevation where we could see clearly the houses and roads and the long swelling ridges of a moorland country. I could never ...
— Mr. Standfast • John Buchan
... to steal along the winding paths of the garden, between the laurel-bushes,—a smell of barbecued meat sputtering over the fire. Above the door of the little kiosk, with many a soft swish of silken stirrings, hung the beautiful old flag. Then a clear little voice ...
— The Gate of the Giant Scissors • Annie Fellows Johnston
... rumbled a bit of crude song through his beard as he lighted a fire, knowing the medicine of the big open was getting its hold on Alan again. To Alan it was like coming to the edge of home once more. It seemed an age, an infinity, since he had heard the sputtering of bacon in an open skillet and the bubbling of coffee over a bed of coals with the mysterious darkness of the timber gathering in about him. He loaded his pipe after his chopping, and sat watching Olaf as he mothered the half-baked bannock loaf. It made him think of his father. A thousand times ...
— The Alaskan • James Oliver Curwood
... a shutter in one of its windows proved the room to be the very one which we had seen lighted from below. Otherwise all was still; nor was I able to detect, in my first hurried glance, any other token of human presence than a candle sputtering in its own grease at the bottom of a tumbler placed on one corner of, an old-fashioned dressing table. This, the one touch of incongruity in a room otherwise rich if not stately in its appointments, was loud in its suggestion of some hidden presence ...
— The Filigree Ball • Anna Katharine Green
... scatters them scalded and half-digested at your feet. So irritated has the poor thing's stomach become by the discipline it has undergone, that even long after all the foreign matter has been thrown off, it goes on retching and sputtering, until at last nature is exhausted, when, sobbing and sighing to itself, it sinks back into the bottom ...
— Letters From High Latitudes • The Marquess of Dufferin (Lord Dufferin)
... yellow clay trenches zigzag for miles. Other trenches run back from these to what looks like a huge Kansas 'prairie-dog town'—human burrows, where thousands of soldiers are literally living underground. From the lines of trenches running parallel to one another comes a constant, spitting, sputtering, popping of rifles, making the woods resound like a Chinese New Year in San Francisco or an old-time Fourth of July. Field guns and hand grenades furnish the 'cannon-cracker' effect. Through the ...
— America's War for Humanity • Thomas Herbert Russell
... to find how difficult it is to combine dinner-getting with baby-tending. When she opens the oven-door, there is Minna's head thrust up under her arm, the inquisitive little nose in great danger by reason of sputtering gravy. ...
— The Children's Book of Christmas Stories • Various
... me and Hernani half to death by inarticulating some horrible intelligence of the utmost importance to us, which his fright rendered quite incomprehensible. He stood with his arms wildly spread abroad, stuttering, sputtering, madly ejaculating and gesticulating, but not one articulate word could he get out. I thought I should have exploded with laughter, but as the woman said who saw the murder, "I knew I mustn't (faint), and I didn't." With this trifling exception it all went off very well. Either I was fagged with ...
— Records of a Girlhood • Frances Anne Kemble |
