"Underbrush" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... hillock and looked out across the wintry woods. They have a different expression now; they have gone gray and bedraggled, and the midday sun has thawed down the snow and diminished it. There are catkins everywhere, drifts of them in the underbrush, looking like letters of the alphabet piled in a heap. The moon rises, the stars break forth. I am cold and shiver a little, but I have nothing to do in the hut, and prefer to shiver as long as possible. In the winter I did nothing so foolish, but went ...
— Look Back on Happiness • Knut Hamsun
... into her view with the fury of a beast, rending the wood away and trampling the underbrush, reeling and muttering until he saw her. She looked at him. Her hands dropped, she stood very still with drawn face, grayish-brown, both hands unconsciously out-stretched, and the cotton swaying, while deep down in her eyes, ...
— The Quest of the Silver Fleece - A Novel • W. E. B. Du Bois
... animals, relating less to climate than to the more mechanical circumstances of life, are made with the same consummate skill that characterizes all the love work of Nature. Land, water, and air, jagged rocks, muddy ground, sand beds, forests, underbrush, grassy plains, etc., are considered in all their possible combinations while the clothing of her beautiful wildlings is preparing. No matter what the circumstances of their lives may be, she never allows them to go dirty or ragged. The ...
— Steep Trails • John Muir
... isn't so healthy," added Jerry. "Look out!" he shouted, and he pulled Bob down into the underbrush beside him only just in time, for there came a burst of bullets from a machine gun, concealed in a clump of trees, and but for Jerry's timely act when he saw it, Bob ...
— Ned, Bob and Jerry on the Firing Line - The Motor Boys Fighting for Uncle Sam • Clarence Young
... and confident manner of his companion, Henry continued silently urging his horse forward. A few moments brought them to the desired turn, and as they doubled round a point of low underbrush, the fugitives caught a glimpse of their pursuers scattered along the highway. Mason and the sergeant, being better mounted than the rest of the party, were much nearer to their heels than even the peddler thought ...
— The Spy • James Fenimore Cooper
... until the road turned toward the range and an opening which he followed into a steeper and narrower rift beyond. Here there were no clearings in the rocky underbrush until he reached Richmond Braley's land. A long upturning sweep ended at the house, directly against the base of the mountain; and without decreasing his gait he passed over the faintly traced way, ...
— The Happy End • Joseph Hergesheimer
... the Missouri river, the bluffs rise abruptly from the banks. The railroad, winding around the curves, was literally hewn from the solid rock. Deep gullies and ravines, starting from the water, Intersected all portions of the country, and the thick underbrush made this place a safe and secure hiding-place for fugitives from justice, river ...
— Jim Cummings • Frank Pinkerton
... is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home. A wild hut of underbrush, tossed together by wayfarers through the primitive forest, would acquire the home aspect by one night's lodging of such a woman, and would retain it long after her quiet figure had disappeared into the surrounding ...
— The House of the Seven Gables • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... malady—all of us—we never could wait for the great gates yonder to be opened. So Monsieur de H—— built us this one." The little door opened directly on the road, and on the cure's house. There was a tangle of underbrush barring the way; but the cure pushed the briars apart with his strong hands, beating ...
— In and Out of Three Normady Inns • Anna Bowman Dodd
... a dark one, but now that the moon had risen, long vistas of light shone down the forest avenues, generally at that time so free from underbrush. Nautauquas, looking up through the branches at the moon, thought how it was the squaw of the sun and remembered the queer tales the old women were fond of ...
— The Princess Pocahontas • Virginia Watson
... Charteris had left the beach, Colonel Musgrave parted the underbrush and stepped down upon the sand He must have air—air and an open place ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... the master of the Typhoon had sized up his companion as a fighter. The smile—daring, confident, and yet signaling their danger—assured him that he was right, and he followed close behind without question. A dozen rods up the path Neil turned into a dense thicket of briars and underbrush and for ten minutes they plunged through the pathless jungle. Now and then Nathaniel saw the three red stripes of the whipper's lash upon the bare shoulders of the man ahead and to these every step seemed to add new wounds made by the thorns. As they came out upon an old roadway the captain stripped ...
— The Courage of Captain Plum • James Oliver Curwood
... through the underbrush, Beaudry took stock of this dusky nymph with surprise. In her attitude was something wild and free and proud. It was as if she challenged his presence even though she had summoned him. Across his mind flashed the thought that this was woman primeval before the ...
— The Sheriff's Son • William MacLeod Raine
... I spake them thus gently) I espied the fugitive on his knees, saw him whip up one of my muskets (all in a moment) and fire or ever I might stay him. The shot was answered by a cry and out from the underbrush a man reeled, clasping his hurt and so fell and lay a-groaning. At this his comrades let fly their shot in answer and made off forthwith. Deserted thus, the wounded man scrambled to hands and knees and began to creep painfully ...
— Martin Conisby's Vengeance • Jeffery Farnol
... stopping from time to time and verifying his course by the sound of the axe. This came and went, and by-and-by it ceased altogether, and Jeff crept forward with a real or feigned uncertainty. Suddenly he stopped. A voice called, "Heigh, there!" and the boy turned and fled, crashing through the underbrush at a tangent, with his ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... little girl and her thoughts. He was walking in a golden mist, but he could see quite perfectly, and even far ahead down long tree aisles. At first the trees did not grow very close together, and there was little underbrush. Several narrow paths started off in different directions,—straight little paths made by people who knew where they were going. But Eric did not know where he was going, so he struck off in a place where there was no sign of a path. ...
— The Little House in the Fairy Wood • Ethel Cook Eliot
... Boulatruelle was on his way to his work, at daybreak, he had been surprised to see, at a nook of the forest in the underbrush, a shovel and a pickaxe, concealed, ...
— Les Miserables - Complete in Five Volumes • Victor Hugo
... half hid him. As the crashing sound of the huge dog through the underbrush ceased he noticed a woman coming leisurely toward him. Her arms were full of bitter-sweet berries and flaming autumn leaves. She wore no hat and Fenneben saw that her gray hair was wound like a coronal about ...
— A Master's Degree • Margaret Hill McCarter
... breeze had strengthened as darkness fell, and its breath was hot and sultry. As Pascherette plunged deeper into the woods, the heavy boom of the seas along shore died away and gave place to the softer, more vibrant hum and murmur of the great trees. The track, little more than a line of flattened underbrush, vanished before she had gone fifty yards; but the little octoroon was no stranger to nocturnal rambles, her keen eyes, and, keener still, her sense of direction, led her unerringly through the shades toward the rearward spur of the granite cliff. Creepers and hanging mosses brushed her face and ...
— The Pirate Woman • Aylward Edward Dingle
... always lying in the hollows of their arms, never failed to seek a glimpse of the relentless hound. It was fully noon when the character of the country began to change slightly. The hills were a little higher and there was more underbrush. Just as they reached a crest Henry looked back. In the far bushes, he saw a long dark form and a pointed gray head with glittering eyes. He knew that it was the great dog, a wolf hound; he was sure now, and, quick as a flash, he raised his rifle and fired at a point directly between ...
— The Border Watch - A Story of the Great Chief's Last Stand • Joseph A. Altsheler
... an hour while he was making his way over the hill, through the underbrush, around the cliff. Again and again the fish ran out my line almost to the last turn. A dozen times he leaped from the water, shaking his silvery sides. Twice he tried to cut the leader across a sunken ledge. But at last he was played out, and came in quietly towards the point of the rock. ...
— Fisherman's Luck • Henry van Dyke
... second trail. I had ridden over the trail a dozen times, and seen no communication between the ledge and trail. Nevertheless, I went on a hundred yards or so, when there was a sharp crackling in the underbrush, a shower of stones on the trail, and my friend plunged through the bushes to my side, down a grade that I should scarcely have dared to lead my horse. There was no doubt he was an accomplished rider,—another fact ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... and efforts to surprise them, and we would lie in our trenches and fire on them till they left. The enemy would be stationed on an opposite hill and they would sometimes get very close to our out-posts, who could see them moving about and talking and hear them walking in the leaves and underbrush. Our sentinels had orders not to fire on them unless they made an attack, when the sentinels fired and got back into the trenches as quickly as possible to escape being killed ...
— A Soldier in the Philippines • Needom N. Freeman
... woods, Sally's heart quailed within her; her terror was extreme. The tramp, tramp of her steed she thought was as loud as thunder, and felt sure that thus she would be betrayed. The agitation of the underbrush caused by the wind seemed to her to denote the presence of a concealed enemy. She momentarily expected a "Yank" to step from behind a tree and seize her bridle. As she rushed along, hanging branches (which at another time she would have stooped to avoid) severely ...
— Memories - A Record of Personal Experience and Adventure During Four Years of War • Fannie A. (Mrs.) Beers
... gone through what seemed to Marjorie's city-bred eyes a dense forest, but which Francis had assured her was only a belt of woodland—quite negligible. And they had come out, now, on what Francis called a clearing. It was thick with underbrush, little trees, and saplings; while bloodroot flowered everywhere, and the gleam of thickly scattered red berries showed even as they rode quickly over the grass. In the center of things were the two cabins Francis had spoken of; one quite large—Francis seemed given to ...
— I've Married Marjorie • Margaret Widdemer
... white fog of dust. Walking slowly to avoid this, I would only meet him emerging from a fresh cloud of it with a glad tongue thrown out to the breeze. Again, there were desperate plunges into wayside underbrush or down steep ravines, whence I would hear rapid splashing through a hidden stream and short, plaintive cries to tell that that wonderful, unseen wood-presence of a thousand provoking scents had ...
— The Boss of Little Arcady • Harry Leon Wilson
... she let the pony run. She had never been out alone at night before. It was scary, she admitted to herself. Once an automobile, on the way to the club with somebody's parents, caused her to dash off the road into the underbrush. Finally she reached the meeting place, and found two scared boys ahead of her. Shortly, the others arrived. There were no signs of hilarity over this adventure, they were all solemn and glum. Some of them ...
— The Cricket • Marjorie Cooke
... with an exquisite gesture, pressed her outstretched hand against my lips, then, gathering bridle, launched her horse straight through the underbrush, out into a pasture where, across a naked hill, a few log-houses reddened in ...
— The Maid-At-Arms • Robert W. Chambers
... treetops were always well over us. The patch of woods was dark. A soil of black loam was under us, a thick soft underbrush reached our knees, and lacy, flexible leaves and branches were about shoulder height. We pushed them aside, forcing our way softly forward. It was not far. The little murmuring voices of the ...
— Beyond the Vanishing Point • Raymond King Cummings
... forest, to return shortly with her gathered-up tunic filled with mangos and guavas, four cocoanuts slung in a neatly plaited basket of leaves on her bare shoulders. Exploding Eggs, cutting two sticks of dry wood from the underbrush, whirled them upon each other with such speed and dexterity that soon a small fire, fed by shreds of cocoanut fiber, blazed on a rock, with plantains heaped ...
— White Shadows in the South Seas • Frederick O'Brien
... Mitty's father and eldest brother pulled off their coats, stripped up their shirt-sleeves, and went to work to make a "clearing," as they called it, for a log house—felling the trees, and cutting and burning the underbrush. ...
— Little Ferns For Fanny's Little Friends • Fanny Fern
... back of the blade, a few dried leaves and broken sticks, with such a carver, would soon make roast and broiled of the old bell-wether himself. I know that the hair of all my colts is sorrel, and I counted five at sun-down, which is just as many as went loping through the underbrush when I loosened them from the hopples in the morning; but six-and-thirty backs can never carry seven-and-thirty growing fleeces of unsheared wool. Master knows that, for he is a scholar and can count ...
— The Wept of Wish-Ton-Wish • James Fenimore Cooper
... parties, and upon one of these excursions a woman named Cho-ko-le got lost from the party and was riding her pony through a thicket in search of her friends. Her little dog was following as she slowly made her way through the thick underbrush and pine trees. All at once a grizzly bear rose in her path and attacked the pony. She jumped off and her pony escaped, but the bear attacked her, so she fought him the best she could with her knife. ...
— Geronimo's Story of His Life • Geronimo
... minutes until the Mexican fired again. He was in the boughs of a great oak about fifty yards away, and following the flash of his weapon they saw his chest and shoulders as he leaned forward to take aim and pull the trigger. Obed fired and the soldier dropped to the ground. There was a noise in the underbrush, as if his comrades were dragging him away and then the great silence came again. As Obed reloaded he ...
— The Texan Star - The Story of a Great Fight for Liberty • Joseph A. Altsheler
... for a moment to breathe and listen. He said to himself that Patsy, for whose sake he had torn through the underbrush at the imminent danger of life and limb, was still ...
— Patsy • S. R. Crockett
... minds that Major Bonnet and good Ben Greenway have been carried off by wicked men, for this would be sad indeed for that fair girl to believe. So remember, Dickory, that it is our duty always to think the best of everything. And now I will go through the underbrush to the house, and when you get there yourself you must tell your story as if you had not ...
— Kate Bonnet - The Romance of a Pirate's Daughter • Frank R. Stockton
... It would leap ahead, and then stumble, half falling, and then leap again. Even in this way, the distance it covered was amazing; Thyrsis was appalled at the power of the creature, its tremendous bounds, the shock of its fall, and the crashing of the underbrush before it. It seemed like a huge boulder, leaping down a precipice; and Thyrsis stood at a safe distance and watched it. According to the poetry-books he should have been ashamed—perhaps moved to tears by the reproachful look in the great creature's eyes. ...
— Love's Pilgrimage • Upton Sinclair
... wait, for almost before Grace had finished speaking half a dozen men carrying life-saving paraphernalia broke through the underbrush and came running down the path ...
— The Outdoor Girls at Bluff Point - Or a Wreck and a Rescue • Laura Lee Hope
... made a brief reconnoissance. It was evident at a glance that the farther they went the steeper grew the ascent and the more tangled the low shrubbery, for it was little better, until, near the summit, trees and underbrush, and herbage of every description, seemed to cease entirely, and a vertical cliff of jagged rocks stood sentinel at the crest, and stretched east and west the entire length of the face ...
— Starlight Ranch - and Other Stories of Army Life on the Frontier • Charles King
... years younger. His kinky gray hair, generally knotted into little wads, was now divided by a well-defined path starting from the great wrinkle in his forehead and ending in a dense tangle of underbrush that no comb dared penetrate. His face glistened all over. His mouth was wide open, showing a great cavity in which each tooth seemed to dance with delight. His jacket was as white and stiff as soap and starch could make it, while a cast-off cravat of the colonel's—double starched to suit ...
— Colonel Carter of Cartersville • F. Hopkinson Smith
... moving through the woods, thickets and underbrush and over the hills and rocks, and tearing our clothes almost at every step we succeeded in driving them about six miles ...
— History of the Seventh Ohio Volunteer Cavalry • R. C. Rankin
... strong protector that had come to her in her distress, to whom she fled as naturally as a hunted animal flies to a hole, as a crippled bird to the deep underbrush. Her beauty, her sex, herself, had somehow attracted to her this male arm, and the right to take it never occurred to her. He loved her, of course, and she would make him love her more, and all would be well. If he had been penniless, unable ...
— Together • Robert Herrick (1868-1938)
... neighborhood of the marl-pit was so irregular, and the thorny underbrush so thick, that when pedestrians wished to reach the nearest highway they, were compelled either to make a long detour or to cross the deepest part of the excavation by means of the trunks of two great ...
— Monsieur de Camors, Complete • Octave Feuillet
... forget that midnight march through the forest, with the rain falling in a deluge through the dripping trees, the lightning flashing and the thunder rolling. We stumbled along upon each other's heels, falling over logs or underbrush, the wet branches switching our faces raw and soaking us through and through. It seemed to me that we must have covered fifteen or twenty miles, at least, when the first gray of the morning brightened the horizon and a halt was called, but really we had come little more than five. ...
— A Soldier of Virginia • Burton Egbert Stevenson
... something like a yard at the back," he announced, "but the fence which shut it in is so high and so protected by means of prickly underbrush that you would have difficulty ...
— The Mystery of the Hasty Arrow • Anna Katharine Green
... down a well defined, hard packed trail through thorny lavender underbrush. As they went, Joyce blazed marks on various tree trunks marking the direction back to the shell. The tough fibres exuded a bluish liquid from the cuts that bubbled slowly ...
— Astounding Stories, April, 1931 • Various
... dies out in the same spot. There are huge points of rock which time and nature are clothing with velvet garments of moss. Layer after layer of dust settles in the hollows, the rains beat it down, and the birds bring seeds. The tropical vegetation spreads out luxuriantly in thickets and underbrush, while curtains of interwoven vines hang from the branches of the trees and twine about their roots or spread along the ground, as if Flora were not yet satisfied but must place plant above plant. Mosses and fungi live upon the cracked ...
— The Social Cancer - A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere • Jose Rizal
... Bitter-root Grizzly is a bad Bear. The Bitter-root Range is the roughest part of the mountains. The ground is everywhere cut up with deep ravines and overgrown with dense and tangled underbrush. ...
— The Biography of a Grizzly • Ernest Seton-Thompson
... apple-trees and ancient stunted currant-bushes struggle for life against sturdy young pine and spruce and birch. Many a rod of heavy tumble-down stone wall—New England Stonehenges—may be seen, not as of old dividing cleared and fertile fields, but in the midst of a forest of trees or underbrush: ...
— Customs and Fashions in Old New England • Alice Morse Earle
... of fact, the unpleasantness of summer is modified by the certainty that one can go anywhere without fear of rain. And in all the coast mountains, especially the seaward slopes, the dews and the shelter of the giant underbrush hold the water, so that these areas are green and pleasant ...
— The City That Was - A Requiem of Old San Francisco • Will Irwin
... beginning of a battle. The skirmish line of the Union advance was sweeping rapidly over a rough mountainous region in the South, and in his place on the extreme left of this line was Private Anson Marlow. Tall trees rising from underbrush, rocks, bowlders, gulches worn by spring torrents, were the characteristics of the field, which was in wild contrast with the parade-grounds on which the combatants had first learned the tactics of war. The majority, however, of those now in the ranks had since been drilled too often under ...
— Taken Alive • E. P. Roe
... many of his hardships and were still able to endure the ordeal, if the end were sure relief. Jack struck a match, and with this lighted a pine knot. He surveyed the gloomy brake carefully, and at last, finding a mound where a thick growth of underbrush gave assurance of less treacherous soil, he called to Barney to aid him. The little hillock was made into a couch by means of the saddles, and the groaning veteran carefully laid upon the by no means uncomfortable refuge. As Jack held the light above him, Jones's eyes closed ...
— The Iron Game - A Tale of the War • Henry Francis Keenan
... does now. The river then flowed with a fuller tide. With the exceptions I have noted, a continuous forest overspread the whole landscape. No thickets, however, choked up the ways through it, for the underbrush was swept away every year by fires built by the Indians for that purpose. Winding footways led here and there which the Indians and wild beasts followed. The roots of the smaller grasses were destroyed by this annual burning over. A coarse long grass grew along the low banks of ...
— The Two Hundredth Anniversary of the Settlement of the Town of New Milford, Conn. June 17th, 1907 • Daniel Davenport
... the Carpathians in jeopardy. But whatever his interest in conjectures regarding the possibility of victory or defeat, his own business was too urgent to admit of other issues, and so he made his way forward cautiously through the underbrush, which in places was almost impenetrable. Four-footed things, startled by this unusual invasion of their hunting ground, started up almost beside him and fled—rabbits, squirrels, a wolf, and a brown bear, ...
— The Secret Witness • George Gibbs
... ripped away the lower part of Pegleg's face and grazed the cheek of the crouching youngster behind him. The white-eyed nephew slid head first off the buck-jumping mule and instantly scuttled on all fours into the underbrush. The rifle dropped out of Trantham's hands and he lurched forward on the mule's neck, grabbing out with blind, groping motions. Dugmore stepped two paces forward to free his eyes of the smoke, which eddied back from his ...
— The Escape of Mr. Trimm - His Plight and other Plights • Irvin S. Cobb
... the beginning was very unfavorable, being a long narrow string of villages along the Dvina which was bordered with thick underbrush extending a few hundred yards to the woods. We had a string of machine gun posts scattered through the brush, and when our line of defense was occupied there was less than two platoons left as a reserve. With us ...
— The History of the American Expedition Fighting the Bolsheviki - Campaigning in North Russia 1918-1919 • Joel R. Moore
... of the brood of young partridges I scared in the woods, and how like a flash, mysteriously and totally, they disappeared in the underbrush. I was thinking of the tiny newts and wonderful creatures I found in the shallow water in the meadow ditch. I was thinking that if the saracenas were in bloom I would go to find some of them on the morrow; or if the brilliant cardinals were, I would hunt for them at ...
— Brook Farm • John Thomas Codman
... so simple as it sounded. The stream had worn a deep channel among the rocks. Trees had fallen across it, undermined by the swift current. Here it roared through a narrow gorge and there spread into a wide pool, then again plunged through underbrush and among rocks in its haste to reach the lake far below. The goats made slow progress and, whenever it was possible to do so, wandered away into easier paths and had ...
— The Swiss Twins • Lucy Fitch Perkins
... as "The Wayside," is a unique, many gabled old mansion, situated near the road at the base of a pine-covered hill, facing broad, level fields, and commanding a view of charming rural scenery. Its dozen green acres are laid out in rustic paths; but with the exception of the removal of unsightly underbrush, the landscape is left in a wild and picturesque state. Immediately in the rear of the house, however, A. Bronson Alcott, a former occupant, planned a series of terraces, and thereon is a system of trees. ...
— The Bay State Monthly - Volume 2, Issue 3, December, 1884 • Various
... sun was setting behind the forest and the shadows were creeping out over the pasture, a Wolf really did spring from the underbrush and fall upon ...
— The AEsop for Children - With pictures by Milo Winter • AEsop
... strained his ears to listen there was only the sound of falling water or the clamor of a hidden creek. Sight was of almost as little service among those endless rows of towering trunks, between which the tall fern and underbrush sprang up. There was no distance, scarcely even an alternation of light and shadow. The vision was narrowed in and confused by the unchanging sameness of ...
— The Gold Trail • Harold Bindloss
... the escape an easy one. Crouching, their clothes the colour of clay, they trod cautiously the trench, until opposite a wood whose trees blackened the slow dawn. Then, without a word, they ran across the road, and, in a few minutes, were lost in the thick underbrush of the little forest. It was past four o'clock and the dawn began to trill over the rim of night; the east burst into stinging sun rays, while the moving air awoke the birds and sent scurrying around the smooth green park a cloud ...
— Visionaries • James Huneker
... as wretched as opportunity would allow. How much better to consider this very good world as a garden, whose beauty depends largely upon our individual exertions to make it fair. We may cultivate and enjoy the flowers, or let them become so overrun with underbrush that the blossoms are smothered and hidden under the dank growth of the ...
— The Secret of a Happy Home (1896) • Marion Harland
... had been carried outside. Roland shook the massive door. It was only latched, and opened at the first pressure. Outside the sill the tracks of blood still continued. Roland could see through the underbrush the path by which the body had been carried. The broken branches, the trampled grass, led Roland to the edge of the wood on the road leading from Pont d'Ain to Bourg. There the body, living or dead, seemed to have been laid on the bank of the ditch. ...
— The Companions of Jehu • Alexandre Dumas, pere
... sex, from whom no secrets of the affections are hid, and to whom all hearts are laid open, she had heard the story of Hawkins's folly, and the existence of the "Idiot Asylum." Alone, on Hawkins Hill, she had determined to penetrate its seclusion. Skirting the underbrush at the foot of the hill, she managed to keep the heaviest timber between herself and the "Blazing Star" tunnel at its base, as well as the cabin of Hawkins, half-way up the ascent, until, by a circuitous ...
— Tales of the Argonauts • Bret Harte
... up, and Jerry and myself mounted, and set out in pursuit of the wanderers. In a short time we struck their trail, which led through the underbrush and bottom grass, along the banks of the river for a mile or more, and then turned in the direction of a large post-oak opening, three or ...
— The Young Trail Hunters • Samuel Woodworth Cozzens
... sitting in the sun, on top of a rail fence, blinking at me consideringly. The fence skirted a little trail that led from my back yard down to Calapooia Creek. It seemed trying to push back a fringe of scrubby underbrush which ran down a hillside; a fringe which was, in truth, but a feeler from the great forest of Douglas fir which one saw marching, file upon file, row upon row, back and back to the snows of the ...
— American Cookery - November, 1921 • Various
... blindly through the underbrush, his head wagging, his shoulders slumped loosely forward like those of a drunken man, his lips framing words they ...
— The Barrier • Rex Beach
... almost startling. He is a skillful ventriloquist, also, and I remember one in particular who outwitted me completely. He was rehearsing a well-known strain, but at the end there came up from the bushes underneath a querulous call. At first I took it for granted that some other bird was in the underbrush; but the note was repeated too many times, and came in too exactly on ...
— Birds in the Bush • Bradford Torrey
... away the white flag was straight up, flashing in the very face of her foolish fawn, telling him as plain as any language what sign he must follow if he would escape danger and avoid breaking his legs in the tangled underbrush. ...
— Types of Children's Literature • Edited by Walter Barnes
... and somewhat cheerless dawn was breaking over the temporary camp when, as Buck Tooth toddled over to replenish the fire for breakfast, there came sharp cracks of rifles from the surrounding rocks and scrub underbrush, and the ...
— The Boy Ranchers Among the Indians - or, Trailing the Yaquis • Willard F. Baker
... that no ordinary person would take them for relatives, come sailing swiftly with barely an undulation among the musical congregation. The blackbird, wariest of birds—he on the top of the larch—has hardly time to dart into the dark coverts of the underbrush, and the remainder of the crew to disperse, before the Blue and the Brown sail among them like Moorish pirates out from Salee. A sparrow is caught, but in Galloway, at least, 'tis apparently little matter though a sparrow ...
— Bog-Myrtle and Peat - Tales Chiefly Of Galloway Gathered From The Years 1889 To 1895 • S.R. Crockett
... combined with the most fiendish cruelty and sublime heroism. Only a few of these raids can be narrated here. {157} June 18, 1686, when the long twilight of the northern night merged with dawn, there came out from the thicket of underbrush round Moose Factory, Hudson Bay, one hundred bush-rovers, led by Chevalier de Troyes of Niagara, accompanied by Le Chesnaye of the fur trade, Quebec, and the Jesuit, Sylvie. Of the raiders, sixty-six were Indians under Pierre Le Moyne d'Iberville and his brothers, Maricourt ...
— Canada: the Empire of the North - Being the Romantic Story of the New Dominion's Growth from Colony to Kingdom • Agnes C. Laut
... hesitatingly. "You see I thought you lived in the country, and I suppose it is a sort of country, but not the kind that I live in. Here everything is pruned and raked until it looks as if it had just had its hair parted smoothly in the middle, and its shoe-strings tied. At home there is so much underbrush, and such a tangle of weeds and high grass and briers, that the yards look as if they'd forgotten to comb their hair when they got up, and had gone around all day with it hanging down ...
— The Little Colonel's House Party • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Lydia, who was fascinated by the manoeuvre of the girl, did not notice the fact, Mr. Briggerland had reached the shore, pulled on a pair of rubber shoes, and with his mackintosh buttoned over his bathing dress, had begun to climb through the underbrush towards the spot where the glasses had glistened. When Lydia looked up he ...
— The Angel of Terror • Edgar Wallace
... firmly, I started off with her at the full run. The place was terrible, and grew worse at every step. The road here was about fifty feet wide. On each side was the burning forest, with a row of burned trees like fiery columns, and the moss and underbrush still glowing beneath. To pass through that was a thing that it don't do to look back upon. The air was intolerable. I wrapped my coat tighter over my head; my arms were thus exposed, and I felt the heat on my hands. But that was nothing to the torments ...
— The American Baron • James De Mille
... poor Jimmy, were unusually fleet, and they soon overtook Cassey. Bob's hand was almost upon him when the man doubled suddenly in his tracks and darted off into the thick underbrush. ...
— The Radio Boys Trailing a Voice - or, Solving a Wireless Mystery • Allen Chapman
... was not ten yards across—nothing more than a creek. The woods and underbrush shut it in closely. There was not a mark in the snow on either hand of footsteps—not that Ruth could see. And how heavy ...
— Ruth Fielding at Snow Camp • Alice Emerson
... allowed him to take a careful appraisement of the walnut trees, interspersed with occasional oaks, which bordered both sides of their path. They were tall, thick, straight-trunked trees, from amongst which the underbrush had been carefully cut away. It was a joy to his now vandal soul, this grove, and already he could see those majestic trunks, after having been sawed with as little wasteful chopping as possible, ...
— The Early Bird - A Business Man's Love Story • George Randolph Chester
... DO," said the stranger, with his former composure, "and I reckon that's why I want to know who wrote those verses called 'Underbrush,' signed 'White Violet,' in your last ...
— A Sappho of Green Springs • Bret Harte
... happened to you, when you were walking alone and in contemplative mood, to lie flat on your face in the grassy underbrush of a forest, amid the peculiar vegetation, of many and varying species, that grows between the fallen autumn leaves, and to let your eyes stray along the level of the earth before you? Gradually the idea of height vanishes, the interlaced ...
— The Nabob, Vol. 2 (of 2) • Alphonse Daudet
... and down her dazed face until her chin was in the hollow of her hand, and her startled eyes were fixed unwaveringly on the running water and yet not seeing it at all. A call—her step-mother's cry—rang up the ravine and she did not hear it. She did not even hear Bub coming through the underbrush a few minutes later, and when he half angrily shouted her name at the end of the vista, down-stream, whence he could see her, she lifted her head from a dream so deep that in it all her senses had for ...
— The Trail of the Lonesome Pine • John Fox, Jr.
... march in a skulking trot up the river. The frequent gullies on the lower bank made it tedious traveling there, so I scrabbled up to the upper bank, which was pretty well covered with buckeye and sycamore, and very little underbrush. One peep below discovered to me three as big and strapping red rascals, gentlemen, as you ever clapped your eyes on! Yes, there they came, not above six hundred yards in my rear, shouting and yelling like hounds, and coming ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume IV. (of X.) • Various
... next morning he was picking his way through the palmlike fern and thick underbrush of the pine forest, starting the hare from its form, and awakening a querulous protest from a few dissipated crows, who had evidently been making a night of it, and so came to the wooded ridge where he had once found Mliss. There he found the prostrate pine and ...
— Selected Stories • Bret Harte
... fort or prison, until the General gives the command for the search to begin. The object of the robbers is to hide so that the soldiers may not find them, and when found, to resist capture if possible. They may hide by climbing trees or dodging behind them, conceal themselves in underbrush, under dead leaves, etc. If played aright, the game should be a very strenuous one, the resistance offered by the robbers requiring several soldiers to overcome. A robber may resist all of the way to prison. ...
— Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium • Jessie H. Bancroft
... inclined to keep to the left, although the woods were thicker there. They pushed forward, as if passing through a jungle. Branches whipped them in the face, and beneath their feet the underbrush crackled. ...
— Frank Merriwell's Cruise • Burt L. Standish
... also, to trust to his superior wood-craft and knowledge of the locality, and Courtland still walking between him and his pursuers and covering his retreat allowed him to lead the way. It lay over ground that was beginning to slope gently; the underbrush was presently exchanged for springy moss, the character of the trees changed, the black trunks of cypresses made the gloom thicker. Trailing vines and parasites brushed their faces, a current of damp air seemed to flow just above the soil in which their lower limbs moved sluggishly as through stagnant ...
— Sally Dows and Other Stories • Bret Harte
... up from the overstocked, eaten-out, and drought-stricken ranges of the far south. Judging from the signs, the crafty old grisly, as cunning as he was ferocious, usually lay in wait for the cattle when they came down to water, choosing some thicket of dense underbrush and twisted cottonwoods, through which they had to pass before reaching the sand banks on the river's brink. Sometimes he pounced on them as they fed through the thick, low cover of the bottoms, where an assailant could either lie in ambush by ...
— Hunting the Grisly and Other Sketches • Theodore Roosevelt
... of the river is much higher than the right, which is flooded, therefore the utan on that side presents a very different appearance, with large, fine-looking trees and no dense underbrush. All was fresh and calm after the rain which prevails at this season (February). There were showers during the afternoon, at times heavy, and the Malays were much opposed to getting wet, wanting to stop paddling, notwithstanding ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz
... him. They went up the side of the ridge which divides Manoa Valley from Nuuanu. It was hard work for the tenderly nurtured maiden to climb the steep mountain ridge, at one time through a thorny tangle of underbrush, and at another clinging against the bare face of the rocks, holding on to swinging vines for support. Kauhi never offered to assist her, but kept on ahead, only looking back occasionally to see that she followed. When they arrived at the summit of the divide she was ...
— Hawaiian Folk Tales - A Collection of Native Legends • Various
... in this wilderness. No man could ever find him or see him, though he were lying right at the man's own feet. I think too much of Foxy to expose him to danger. But the best of it is, you can't put your eye, or your ear, or your fingers on that boy. You can't even smell him. He's the color of the underbrush, silent as midnight, quick as lightning. You can't detect the difference between the smell of his clothes and of his skin and burning brushwood, or deer-hide. He can sidle up to the most timid wild thing. Oh! don't you worry, son! Go to sleep; our Fox-Foot is his own ...
— The Shagganappi • E. Pauline Johnson
... her moccasined feet press the underbrush that no sound preceded her coming, until she reached the blanketed opening of a wigwam where sat an aged Algonquin chief, very grave, very dignified, very far from being immaculately clean. The young girl was not intimidated by this picturesque combination of dignity and dirt. Perhaps it was ...
— An Algonquin Maiden - A Romance of the Early Days of Upper Canada • G. Mercer Adam
... fusillade, as the party of cowboys approached, and in addition a series of sharp and wild yells which, now that the scene was reached, could be heard as arising from the underbrush outside ...
— The Boy Ranchers - or Solving the Mystery at Diamond X • Willard F. Baker
... ripples; and the bed formed of gravel and smooth stones. The banks along the low grounds are of a rich loam, followed occasionally by low bluffs of yellow and red clay, with a hard red slatestone intermixed. The low grounds are wide, and have very little timber but a thick underbrush of willow, and rose and currant bushes: these are succeeded by high plains extending on each side to the base of the mountains, which lie parallel to the river about eight or twelve miles apart, and ...
— History of the Expedition under the Command of Captains Lewis and Clark, Vol. I. • Meriwether Lewis and William Clark
... started off at a brisk trot, and in an hour we were upon the road, which we found crowded with troops and wagons. Pressing through the underbrush along-side the road, we kept on at a rapid pace. We soon heard shouts and cheers ahead of us, and in a few moments came in sight of a farm-house, in front of which was an excited crowd. Men were swarming in ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 9, No. 52, February, 1862 • Various
... and led the way into the thick underbrush once more. They had a stiff climb before they reached the summit of their ridge where the timber broke away and gave them once more their splendid view out over the Miette valley and the mountains beyond. They ran rapidly down this fair slope and soon were in camp, where Moise greeted ...
— The Young Alaskans in the Rockies • Emerson Hough
... them full of game, wild turkeys and partridges, bears and lynxes. Two deer, of unusual size, leaped from the underbrush. Cross-bow and arquebuse were brought to the level; but the Huguenot captain, "moved with the singular fairness and bigness of them," ...
— Pioneers Of France In The New World • Francis Parkman, Jr.
... drove their own conveyances, and liked to stop and talk. There were not many farms, and the third growth of white pines made a pleasant shade, though Jefferson liked to say that when he began to carry the mail his way lay through an open country of stumps and sparse underbrush, where the white pines nowadays completely arched ...
— The Life of Nancy • Sarah Orne Jewett
... indignation, the young bull got up, grunted, pawed the earth once or twice by way of ceremony, and emerged to the encounter. But the lynx had no stomach to meet the charge of that sturdy front. He snatched up the rabbit in his jaws and bounded away into the underbrush. ...
— The Watchers of the Trails - A Book of Animal Life • Charles G. D. Roberts
... ridge carried numerous thickets of underbrush. From one to another of these Pete crept swiftly, at a rate which should bring him, in perhaps an hour, abreast of the leisurely moving herd. In an hour, then, he crawled up to the crest again, under cover of ...
— The Backwoodsmen • Charles G. D. Roberts
... beheld some distance ahead the white glare of two stationary lights. The road was narrow and sandy here, and shut in by banks of underbrush; as he drew nearer a figure stepped out and stood in silhouette until his own lights picked it up. The figure waved its arms, and called attention to the car behind—evidently broken down. Here, then, the drama ...
— Flowing Gold • Rex Beach
... Niafer on the shoulder, the forest beside the roadway was agitated, and the underbrush crackled, and the tall beech-trees crashed and snapped and tumbled helter-skelter. The crust of the earth was thus broken through by the Serpent of the North. Only the head and throat of this design ...
— Figures of Earth • James Branch Cabell
... Farmer Ellison rush suddenly from cover upon the very place where she had sat, fishing. She saw him run, furiously, hither and thither, beating the underbrush with his cane, shaking the stick wrathfully. His face showed the keenest disappointment ...
— The Rival Campers Ashore - The Mystery of the Mill • Ruel Perley Smith
... pitched upon the shores of Petitsikapau Lake, where there was a thick growth of willows upon the tender tops of which hundreds of ptarmigans—the snow-white grouse of the arctic—were feeding; and rabbits had the snow tramped flat amongst the underbrush, offering an abundance of fresh food to the hunters, a welcome change from the unvaried fare ...
— Ungava Bob - A Winter's Tale • Dillon Wallace
... unmistakable answer. Now was heard a crashing in the underbrush that told of the approach of someone, and, a moment later there came into view, on the far side of the clearing, where stood the palm leaf hut, two girls, one with a gun over her shoulder, and the other with a brace of birds hanging ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... did, the fallen trunk of a tree half-buried in dense undergrowth affording us a perfectly ideal ambush; and we had scarcely settled ourselves comfortably therein when a violent swaying of the underbrush warned us that our quarry was approaching. The next instant the scrub parted right and left, the points of two enormous tusks protruded from the swaying tangle of leaves and creepers, and in the drawing of a breath the head and fore quarters of the biggest bull elephant I had ever seen ...
— Through Veld and Forest - An African Story • Harry Collingwood
... among the thickets, about half a mile below, he came upon an immense ice-jam, stretching across the stream and piled many feet high. Upon this he at once resolved to make his way over to the road on the other side, for he was already wearied threading the underbrush. Grand River, which is a narrow but deep and violent stream, ran roaring and plunging beneath the masses of ice as if enraged at being so obstructed; but the lad picked his path in safety and soon stood ...
— Our Boys - Entertaining Stories by Popular Authors • Various
... shade. [Seeing the negroes who carry the chair] The negroes are good! [Speaking at a distance] Torches, there, you understand you are not to come until you receive the signal? [The faint reflection of the torches is seen at the back of the stage, through the underbrush. Enter the musicians.] Musicians? There— at the back. Now, a little distinction and life! Vary your poses from time to time. Stand straight, mandolin! Sit down, alto! There. [Severely to a swordsman] You, first mask, don't ...
— The Romancers - A Comedy in Three Acts • Edmond Rostand |
